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fairene · 6 months ago

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good for you / ln4, part one

lando norris x fem!reader

no use of y/n, as always.

in which you and lando have parted ways, but on what terms? at what cost is he willing to get you back, and how far down are you finished with him? what lengths with the two of you go, battling with your hearts, before you can be together once more? he knows that no one is good for you, except him.

a/n⋯ a collaborative piece between myself and the lovely @jamminvroomvroom. she will be writing the next chapter, so keep your eyes out! we don't have a total idea of how long this'll be, but we are so thrilled to have it ready for you all. jas is an amazing writer, and i am so, so lucky that she wanted to do this with me. shower her with all the love, and i hope you enjoy this. as usual, reader's clothes are left up to interpretation. this is for you afterall;)!

warnings⋯ smut, MINORS DNI 18++. language, drinking, choking, p in v sex (wrap before you tap!), insecurity, arguments, exes to lovers(?(we shall see!)) possession, jealousy. if i forgot any warnings, feel free to let me know.

wc⋯ 5.2k (unedited.)

the night began well. the boy you were with was well. you were well. that was the most important thing, wasn’t it? it must be. it had to be, you convinced yourself of that very fact. truly, you had no reason to complain. your friends supported you, loved you, were obsessed with you. and you had a man on your arm who felt the exact same way, and would kiss the ground you walked on.

but others, another, would worship you. used to. but now you were alone, a goddess left untouched, brazen in this world of antagonists. yet, it was a change. it was a change that you needed. this relationship you had with damian was one of new blood. a shift from your tumultuous routine that felt liberating over a life you once mourned.

damian was a man of respectful nature, good upbringings, and he was a good chat. he was fit, treated you with a sweet tenderness that you adored him for, and didn’t devolve into a flaming lair of toxicity to keep you trapped.

and, he was a football player, which was a bonus. he played for barcelona’s team, and you couldn’t be more proud of him. after your previous relationship concluded, the pair of you were introduced by mutual friends, namely the ferrari driver, carlos. you were apathetic at first, unsure of if this was the right move. if it was too soon to want to jump into something.

but damian was kind. he adored you. what else did you want?

more.

you danced with him. in the night life of monaco, you were showered with his attention. the attention of your friends. it was a weekend off for the drivers, so you were able to meet up with the other girls you knew. kika and alexandra in particular, who’ve been entirely supportive of you these past few months.

they danced with one another, cheering you and your now boyfriend on, shouting pleasantries of how good you looked at his side.

damian’s hands around your hips felt good. it felt right. when the bass dropped, so did you. he caught your seductive actions and his eyes widened. there were no words to describe his expression besides admiration. you loved his eyes the most about him— his dark hair, tanned skin, muscular physique—

shit,

maybe you did have a type.

you spun back around, latching your arms around his neck, and he cradled your lower back with his palms. “what?” you questioned his stare that was unrelenting.

“nothin’,” he scoffed. “you’re just absolutely beautiful, innit?”

your head fell back with a laugh, patting his chest as a means to quiet him, but he kept going.

“‘m serious,” your name was low on his tongue. “you’re practically glowin’, love.”

you peppered a kiss on his lips. he met you halfway, swallowing your mouth whole. his tongue entered your mouth, and you could only respond with a noise deep within your throat. he felt the vibration against his lips, and continued his movements.

the pair of you were swaying against each other’s bodies, tongue down one another’s throats, and for a moment the world washed away. something that hasn’t happened in ages, you felt like a makeshift paradise was born between the both of you. a hideaway.

but mirages only serve their purpose for a short time before they fade away into nothingness.

you broke away from his kiss. he looked surprised, offended, but you said nothing of his expression. you brought your lips to his ear for a brief kiss, “i’ll get us drinks?”

he nodded, letting you go.

you brushed past him, trailing your hand up kika’s arm. she immediately spun towards you, alexandra’s attention drawing as well. they beamed when they saw you, following you right over to the bar. the triad of you loitered there, swirling the drinks you ordered in hand.

“so?” kika asked you, as if she’s been dying to hear this story the whole night. alexandra glowered at her, pestering her to be quiet, but you’d answer her regardless.

“it’s good.”

the girls looked at one another.

“that’s it? good?” kika looked baffled.

“what? what else do you wanna know?” you took a sip of your drink, feet hanging from the barstool that you were sat upon.

“anything!” alexandra exclaimed. “haven’t seen you this happy in months.” kika made a face at her, telltale of not to bring up what happened. ah, you thought, what happened. none of you discussed in great details of what happened that night, but they knew it was intense. intense enough for you to lock yourself away for a week with no contact. it was a horrid sight, and they were terrified for you.

“well,” you shrugged. “i am. really. damian’s a great guy.”

the girls squealed, grabbing your free hand. “he seems lovely, doesn’t he? ugh! you look so good together, too!” kika was more excited than you expected her to be, but her support meant the world. along with alexandra’s approval, you felt like you were taking the great steps that were needed to…move on. a dreadful phrase that has been bouncing back and forth in your mind.

“you really do. and he’s an excellent photographer. i mean, look at these pictures he took of you—” alexandra passed you her phone, damian’s instagram story open. it was of you, looking divine beneath the yellow-hues of the club. you’d give him credit where credit is due— you looked fantastic.

your hand flew to your mouth, covering your smile. that only had the girls squealing out more, finding your bashful attitude enough to answer their wearisome concerns. they were so worried about your state after the breakup that they would hound you. would stay as invested as they could in your life, until they were rather annoying. but you were grateful for them nonetheless. without them, you would’ve never met damian. without them, you may not have ever found happiness. however temporary it may be, it was what you felt at the moment.

when damian’s drink arrived in front of you, you swung off the stool and bid them a sweet goodbye with a kiss in your palm, blowing it in your direction. you sashayed through the crowd, slithering through the stalks of grass, and made your way into his arms. he reacted instantaneously, holding you close to his chest. his chin rubbed against your shoulder, clean-shaven, and whispered to you.

“thought you ran away on me.” he said with a hushed tone. you swiveled to hand him his drink, which he took, but not before pressing a kiss to the palm of your hand.

“me?” you made a ‘pfft’ motion with your lips. “never.”

but oh,

how right he was.

damian let out a soft laugh before the two of you made a ‘cheers’ motion with your glasses, and danced the rest of the night away. it was a beautiful evening, truly, and you shouldn’t be feeling the way you were. devoid.

you pushed down the feeling as much as you could.

when you and damian left the club that night, you were happy. glittering with the sparkles of what young love was meant to be. you’d only been dating for two months, but it had you on the edge of your seat. fantasizing about what a life you could have with him.

but some things just stay fantasies, don’t they?

“you sure you’ll be alright?” damian asked you when you unlocked the door to your flat. you hummed with appreciation, feeling the buzz of alcohol through your system.

“i’m sure, my knight.” you said with dramatics. he smiled, appreciating your small antics. they kept him on his toes.

“whatever you say, babe.” he shook his head, holding the door open for you. you stepped inside, gripping the wood, and turned to face him.

you kissed him once good night on the lips, “i’ll text you in the morning.” he nodded against your lips, unwilling to let go, but did when you laughed against him. he was sweet. a sweet, sweet boy.\

“goodnight.” you cooed. he returned the phrase, and you shut your door and locked it.

now alone in your apartment, you threw your bag to the empty countertop and sauntered over to your room. fuck taking a shower tonight, you were just too tired for all of that. you stripped of your dress and threw on an old tee shirt that you had, unknowing of its origins, and laid in your bed.

on your phone you scrolled briefly on instagram, but froze on a singular post.

it was a suggested post. you were instantly gripped. the man draped over this girls body was instantly recognizable. his tanned skin. the stubble on his chin. the curls atop his head. the curls that you used to be obsessed with, running your fingers along his scalp.

you stared at the description:

paradise!

paradise. you scoffed to yourself.

tagged in the photo was the man himself. you clicked on his profile, curious, though you promised yourself you wouldn’t. once wouldn’t hurt, would it? too late, anyways, as you were down the rabbit hole of his feed.

the first post was a feature of him at his races. then, the second slide was a picture of him and her. what was this feeling? how could you find the audacity to let your stomach churn, your heart race? it wasn’t your place anymore. your place, albeit fought for, was not at his side.

he looked happy.

but so were you.

you were.

you are.

but the suggested post of his new girl had you hooked. it had you seething. biting your thumb nail with your front teeth, you made an impulsive decision.

you liked the post.

the night was just beginning for lando when you were in your bed. in the club with his mates, he was bumping to the rap mixes they played on the speakers. drenched in the mix of sweat and alcohol, he was living the life he dreamed of having. it was everything to him, picture perfect that no one could argue.

but there was something missing.

the girl at his front, his girlfriend, grinded against him with radical intentions. she was beautiful, of course, but that was all the words that lando had for her. she accessorized well, was in the media spotlight, and that’s all the boxes it took for him to swoop her off her feet. it was easy, truthfully, and their relationship has been a breeze.

but lando didn’t want a breeze, he wanted a storm. you were the eye of the hurricane that he yearned for. nothing about that has changed– and he feared, deeply, that nothing will ever turn his head. he’d been fixated on you since he laid eyes on you, your attitude. you kept him on his toes, not laid down and bored.

the girl, samantha, spun around to wrap her arms around lando’s neck. his hand traveled to her lower back, holding her close to him. she shouted and cheered with her girlfriends, lando’s own doing the same. but he said nothing, and brought his cocktail to his lips, gurgling a deep swallow of the bitter liquid that heated his throat.

with his bloodshot eyes and weary smiles, he’d attempt to be picturesque for the media. media, media, media. everything returned to the circulation of photos that’d come out with him and his girlfriend. girlfriends. you. he’d never felt so protective of you, of anyone, than the relationship that you had with him. nothing could compare, especially how samantha boasted in every post that he was with her.

her following count jumped well over five hundred thousand since he came in the picture. of course she never said anything, made it a point to speak about, but he knew. lando watched. scrolled endlessly through his phone in the middle of night, drinking up every word that his fan spewed out. a folly of comments asking where you were. what happened between the two of you. but he never made a post about it. it had been radio silence on his end, just as it was the same for you.

but it’d end with him throwing his phone to the side, and promising himself that he didn’t care. he couldn’t care. not when you weren’t his anymore, and that you walked out on him that night with valid purpose. he failed you, and that was on him.

in the meantime of your absence, samantha was there to fill the gaps. to soothe his broken heart with her painfully long acrylics that dug into the back of his neck, her pathetic moans of pleasure when he fucked her better than anyone ever could, and the rocking of his hips against her own in the darkness of the night club.

for now, it was enough. just barely, as it scraped the surface, but lando would down cup after cup to glue the pieces of his heart that you shattered.

samantha continued her movements. lando didn’t relent either, finishing off his drink, slapping his palm against her ass. the crowd around them erupted in cheers, and lando plastered a bolstered smile across his face. this is what they wanted. the surface level teasing, the sultry nature of grotesque actions. but it is not what he wanted. he craved the solitude, the comfort you brought him in the hours of the night before his races. he’d been a phantom crawling through this season, a ghost in the shell of a formula one driver.

“you alright?” samantha asked him. apparently he hadn’t been good at hiding the turmoil from his expressive face. her puckered lips had his eyes shifting downward. her bare chest, barely covered tits.

he’d say nothing in response and simply go in for a kiss. a deep one, aggressive, filling her mouth to the brim with his tongue. maybe this could erase the memories of you, however stubborn they were on placating in his mind as permanent fixtures.

his hand came around the back of her neck, angling her head better for him to swallow her whole. the bracelet, silver imbued with his logo, clanged against her large golden hoops. it was a loud noise that samantha pulled their lips apart. she turned her head to glance at the jewelry, and her lip curled with disgust.

the bracelet. the bracelet you gave him.

she scoffed and he could hear it, but he opted to say nothing in rebuttal. instead, she stalked away from him, looming large near the bar. he followed her tail, knowing that this spat between them wouldn’t last long.

she ordered a drink. lando’s head spun as is.

samantha pulled out her phone, bringing her drink to her lips, and damn near spit out the liquid. she covered her mouth from it spilling, and lando watched with a raised brow.

“what?” he asked of her.

“she liked it.” she. who’s she? who is she?

“what? who?” lando begged for clarification. samantha spun her phone around to shove it in his face. the screen illuminated him beneath the barely visible hues of light, and his eyes nearly popped out of his skill.

you liked her post with him.

you who swore you wanted nothing to do with him ever again. you who snapped the chain of the necklace he got from you, though made of the toughest silver, the metal was nothing beneath your furious fingertips.

lando swallowed, though it did little to stifle his salivating mouth, his racing heart. he clutched the back of the bar with one hand, feeling the world collapse in on him in that moment. a singular like on a photo he didn’t even want to be posted. all it took to have him breaking out into a cold sweat, feeling nausea tug on his stomach, was a like on instagram.

fucking pathetic, wasn’t he?

his thumb came to spin the bracelet around his wrist, twirling it in front of him. samantha hadn’t noticed, too hyper focused on your account. she uttered words that he couldn’t make out. things along the lines of, ‘weird,’ ‘she’s obsessed, ‘innshe?’ but they never made sense to his ears. if anything, you were obsessed with staying away. obsessed with anything but him, contrary to his own feelings. he wasn’t even sure if they mattered to you— did they?

in retaliation, he knew only one thing to steady his heart. he took samantha by her wrist to the nearest restroom, a single stall, and banged on the locked door.

she stood there, speechless, but had a feeling how this night would end. it brought a cruel smile to her lips, but she covered it with her phone in hand. she knew this is how she’d get some of the best sex of her life, when he was riled about his ex, brimming with fury. she didn’t care that she was being used as an outlet, for she was using him for the same.

so she didn’t care.

the man in the bathroom left with a curse but lando didn’t seem to give a fuck. he pulled the girl inside and slammed the door behind him, locking it without a care in the world. against the wall she was pushed, ravished by the company of his lips. he sucked and tugged at her lower lip, becoming so bold as to bite the flesh with his top teeth. she smacked his arm and he relented, knowing damn well that you would’ve been moaning with pleasure.

his lips left no surface untouched as he trailed down the surface of her body. along her collarbones, her bare chest, but he left no marks. he never did, much to her dismay, as if he were saying that she was never really his. because she wasn’t, his thoughts were rampant. this should be you.

lando hiked up the fabric around her cunt, scrunching the dress in his hand. his other made work around his pants, shuffling them down so his blistering cock could spring to life. it did, but with the work of you in his memories, and not the girl who was spilling her breasts for him in face.

he didn’t spend long serenading her with his tongue, though it would be a different story if it was you beneath him. he spared no effort where his lips rejected, the only way he found himself happy would be with your own against his. they were claimed for you and you alone.

it would be a fair assumption to say that you utterly ruined him.

his dick slid into her with ease with the help of his spit across his hand. he had slipped a condom on, too, tearing open the packaging and threw it to the ground. samantha’s hands came to wrap around the back of his neck, her claw-like nails digging into his skin. it had him curl his lip, not finding the sensation enjoyable, but he didn’t care. not when you were thundering on his mind. his storm, his sunshine.

she moaned deeply at the contact, finding her g-spot with no effort whatsoever. she was already a mess beneath him as he solidified a pace, grunting in the wake of his thrusts.

but he wasn’t thinking of her. ‘course he wasn’t. he was thinking of the first time he had you. you in your light-toned dress, you with your big, sparkling eyes. it would be there, beneath the moonlight of his monaco apartment, that he’d taken you to his bed for the first time. and that was the first time you’d ever came at a man’s touch, and lando wouldn’t forget that he was the first you spilled a name on your tongue.

how you voice was so iridescently sweet. how it curdled his heart into a bow, tying it off with a kiss. your scent had him stirring with craze, frenzied as he ate you out that first time, and nothing ever compared. your cunt was the nectar of his life, fueling him day to day whilst he could have you. when you were his. now he was a man running on fumes, on the oils you’d left behind in his apartment. there wasn’t much he could spare, but that fucking liked photo seemed to do the trick.

it’s enough to hold him over for the time being. the pace at which hips were thrusting increased, sporadic. his hand came to clutch the base of her throat, but samantha slapped his hand away. the wall would suffice, but knew you’d beg him to hold you. clutch you with your life in his hands, bestowing him the greatest trust he could ever earn. he’d have you tearing up, whining, mewling with pleasure from his hands alone. now, the sex was black and white, when you were the whole world. ripped away from his clutch, he’d be empty handed.

she shouted his name, “lando–!” while she came over his cock, tightening around him. he’d groan, forehead flush against the concrete of the wall.

he was reaching his own. those photos of you on your instagram. the feed of your soft launch with that fucking football player. how your friends posted the pair of you— how you were glowing in every light that caught your face. you were so fucking beautiful, so perfect, that he couldn’t help but cum at the thought of you.

but this time, he made a mistake.

it had been your name that flew past his lips when he filled the condom to the brim. it was your name that he grunted in her ear. not samantha’s.

she was furious. disgusted. she shimmied out of lando’s hold, tugging her underwear up and her dress down.

lando knew he fucked up. this wouldn’t be the first time, and ultimately, not the last.

before she left with tears streaming down her face, she had words. “you’re pathetic,” she spat. “take off that fucking bracelet. you know she won’t want you back.”

and then she was gone.

lando was left in the empty stall of the bathroom with his head draped against the wall. his breaths were rampant, coming down from the high of his orgasm, but there was no regret in his mind. there was nothing there except the distress of his memories, the titration of you that fumigated him, held him in a chokehold.

he fixed his pants, washed his hands, and glanced at himself in the mirror. sweaty, bloodshot, exhausted, he didn’t recognize himself. he didn’t recognize the man that was there; unshaved, overgrown hair, sloppy dress attire. this wasn’t him. he was nothing without you, it seemed, and it would drive him into the fucking ground sooner, rather than later. but he was betting on the latter.

aggravated, he let out a curse, “fuck.” before he left the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him.

when the both of you were in your beds that night, you tossed and turned. a whirlwind of emotions swaddling the both of your beneath the comforters, you kept checking your phone to see if he texted you. you wouldn’t ever say it, but you’d unblocked him a week after you broke up. you wanted to see if he’d chase you. but he didn’t. he didn’t.

he was on his phone, too, fresh out of the shower. waiting. looming on instagram to see if you’d like any of his posts, but he saw no activity. but he did see that his fans caught wind of your liked post. confusion was stirred, wondering if the pair of you were friends again. he couldn’t help but chuckle at that insinuation, because he was wondering the same fucking thing.

but when you both put your phones down and settled in for the night, you were consumed by your memories, and so was he.

you’d dragged him from the event that night back to his flat. when you opened it with the copy of his key he gave to you, you threw your bag on the sofa without a word. you made move to run right to your shared bedroom, but lando wasn’t far behind, and grabbed your elbow.

“what is it?” he asked, confused, and that only angered you more.

“you’re serious?” you said, mouth agape. you couldn’t believe he claimed to not have a single clue what he’d done. what this mess had been amounting to for quite some time.

“clearly, otherwise i wouldn’t be asking,” he said with a bite. “would i?”

you rolled your eyes, attempting to pull your arm out from his hold. but he didn’t relent. he kept his hands firm on you, keeping you settled.

“don’t be daft,” you hissed. he simply raised a brow, shrugged his shoulders. “how you treated me.”

he was still clearly at a loss, free hand coming to rub the back of his neck with a scoff. “and how did i treat you, then?”

your hands flew up with contempt, finally loosening his grip. “this! like this!” your voice raised. “first you hate to post us, and then you say ‘we’re not that serious’?”

that night you’d been standing beside lando, keeping him company with his mates, when they popped the question about the sincerity of your relationship together. you’d expect him to answer with a smile, saying that you were very much in love— because he’s told you that numerous times— but he simply batted the question off with a ‘not too serious, innit? here for a good time.’

“you know i didn’t mean it that—”

“oh…! here we fucking go.” you turned your back on him, head falling into your hands. you ran them over your face, “you say that. you always say that. ‘it doesn’t matter,’ ‘they don’t know the truth,’ then why don’t you tell them?”

he couldn’t believe what you were saying. that you didn’t trust him, didn’t have faith in the words he spoke to you in the peacefulness of your bedroom.

“we don’t owe them shit,” he spoke your name in a controlled tone, gritting his teeth against one another.

“and when i get flamed on instagram? twitter? for taking you away from them?” the fanbase that lando acquired was some of the most valiant people you’ve ever witnessed, but could also be the most brutal.

“you know how they are—”

“i didn’t sign up for that.” you retorted quick, shouting this time, which had his face going a ghastly white. “i’ve done nothing but love you. cherish you. and you can’t owe me the decency to speak kindly on my name. defend the ‘love of your life,’ — as you’ve so called me before!”

lando was stunned to silence.

“and what do you have to say to her now? while i get numerous death threats, how they’ll kill my family, tarnish my work.” you waited for an answer, turning back to him with your hands up.

he said your name again, stepping closer to you. but you threw your hand up in front of him, halting his steps.

“no. no. what would you say?”

lando swallowed the thick, anguished lump in his throat.

“i’d tell her i was sorry.” he took a step closer, letting your hand rest on his heart as he bumped into it. your lip quivered, finally coming to terms with how emotional you’d gotten. “i’d tell her that she means the world to me, and that i’m the biggest fucking mug she’s ever met.”

your breath stifled. arm relaxing, he closed the distance.

you began to believe him.

“and i’d tell her she’s more than what the internet says.” that had you flickering your eyes up. was he still not going to make a statement? “and that their words are meaningless.”

you raised a brow at his indecency.

“threats that they’ll find my parents? dox them, send feds to their house?” you backed away from him. he realized that he fucked up again, and that it could cost him everything.

“you know that won’t happen—”

“and if it does?” you were still firm with your statements, however desperate he looked in his eyes. “what then, when i get a call that my parents house was ransacked? what would you do, oh lord of fame?”

he took a step back from you as if your words pierced through the thick flesh of his heart. he didn’t see it that way, didn’t see how you saw it. the words of hate he received online were toilsome, ignorable, but it was different from you. you didn’t ask for any of this, and he knew it more than true that you didn’t deserve it.

but he made the discovery too late.

“that’s what i thought.”

you moved to grab your bag, your phone, brushing past him whilst he was locked in place. his heart was bursting out of the cage of his chest, his mind pushing him forward, but he was terrified. terrified that if the next words he’d say, you’d be gone.

“don’t fucking call me until you figure your shit out. i’m not playing—”

you were stopped when you were pulled against lando’s chest. his stubble grazing your shoulder, bringing you a greater comfort than you’d sooner die than admit. you felt his heart against him, racing with a speed greater than his car, and let the tears slip from your eyes.

“stop,” you shook your head, begging him to let you go.

“don’t,” he begged, not even sure what he was truly begging for. “don’t go, baby, don’t leave.”

but your mind was already made up. though his begging could suffice if the circumstances were different, but he’d already made his mind up, too. he embarrassed you, threw you under the bus, and allowed you to be tormented in the eyes of the media. you knew it wouldn’t be easy, but you also thought he’d defend you.

yet, you were met with radio silence on his account.

and nothing but an endless stream of apologies, but no solution.

“let me go.” you said. metaphorically, physically. your hand went to the necklace around your neck, picking at the chain.

he shook his head, refusing.

“lando…” you hissed, trying to weave out of his grip. you finally turned to face him, seeing the tears falling from his eyes.

you were crying, too. it felt like something was ending, though you didn’t wish it to be true. but you couldn’t let this media abuse continue any further, and needed to protect yourself, your family, when he failed as its guardian.

“don’t go. please.” he begged, forehead coming to connect with yours. you sucked in a tight breath, wishing to relieve him of his sadness, but your own was overpowering.

“i have to,” you said, holding back a sob. “i’ll be back once you find a way to fix it.”

it was enough to bring the formula one driver to his knees, falling to the carpeted floor. he shriveled beneath your disappointment, unable to keep himself afloat with your wishes.

“get up.” you hissed, wiping away the tears from your own face.

but he didn’t, and laid his head on your stomach, pushing his face into you as hard as he could. you could feel the indent of his nose, his lips. the quivering of his jaw, the shaking sensation of his fingertips as he wrapped around your waist.

“don’t leave me.”

to be continued

tags ; @landoslutmeout @basicallyric @mybluesoul1 @toriiez @customsbyjcg-blog @sofs16 @strengthandstay @mybluesoul1 @f1fantasys @cmleitora @idgasb @amalialeclerc @laneyspaulding19 @staurdvst @oreosareara @sideboobrry11 @mortallyblueninja @fionamiller123 @2pagenumb @marvelfangirl04 @brune77e @allabouthappiness @tellybearryyyy @ringdingdingdingx @tillyt04 @danywonderland @rosebud224 @simpfortoomanymen @nataliambc @forcesensitivesoulmate @sweate-r-weathe-r @norlestappen @madszoca @milkandcookhot @fionamiller123 @16f1lc @jwiltsz @plotpal @inevesgf @theonottsbxtch

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undreaming-fanfiction · 4 months ago

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Of claws and waffles

I'm preparing to write the rest of the Steddie Angsty August during my vacation at the end of September, I want to enjoy the rest of the prompts and not be stressed. But in the meantime...have Steve cosplaying as Wolverine, a very judgmental Deadpool Eddie, and maybe a small X-23 too?

"Ugh, can you believe that?" Eddie gestured towards a guy in his mid-thirties dressed as the Wolverine. "Another jock jumping on the bandwagon without knowing anything about the comics. Saw it once in the movie theater, thought the costume would do wonders for his arms, bought it on ebay. I'm gonna be sick in my mask."

Even through the limited visibility of his Deadpool mask, Eddie saw Chrissy roll her eyes at his theatrics. "Go ahead. At least you'll wash it after the convention. By hand, because as you told me, the fabric is sensitive."

He just grumbled. She was right, as usual.

"You are so full of self-righteous fury, Eddie, but even through the mask, I can see you staring at that man's ass. And shoulders. And everything."

He threw his head back, almost howling. "Now you're just being mean."

"Plus," she continued, disregarding her best friend's whining, "You're not exactly being fair. You don't know him."

Now he rolled his eyes, but of course she couldn't see him. "I know his type. He's the high school sweetheart who spent most of his time in the gym or practicing moving his godly body or something."

Chrissy smiled at him, that overly beaing smile that told him in an instant that he'd said something stupid. "Ah. So like me."

"I..." he gulped, "I think I'm just going to shut up now."

He tried looking around for something, anything to redirect the conversation. Suddenly, a perfect topic changer appeared in his sight. "Okay, but that's the cutest thing I've ever seen," he nudged Chrissy and pointed at the scrawny girl, twelve or so, dressed up as X-23. "Her parents must be amazing."

Chrissy's laughter rang in his ears. "Oh, I agree," she said. As if she knew something he didn't.

He choked on his words when the girl ran back to THAT Wolverine and took his hand. "Oh for fuck's sake."

"You said it," she nudged him. "Amazing parents."

As if that wasn't humiliating enough, before Eddie could find a shovel to dig a hole to disappear into, the girl noticed him and her face split in a wide smile. "Dad! Dad, look! Mr. Pool!" She started leading him to Eddie and Chrissy through the crowd.

Oh cool. If only Eddie could do something dignified to avoid the meeting, like faint or vomit, that would be awesome. But he couldn't disappoint the girl. She had a look of absolute joy in her eyes, and he'd be damned if he was the one to make it disappear.

So instead, he leaned into the character.

"Look at you, aren't you the cutest little clawed thing I've ever seen!" he announced to the whole world. "The deadliest tiny creature, very ferocious! Yes, you are!"

He knelt down to her level and even through the consistent noise of the convention, he could hear her giggling. "I am!"

"Come on, tiny terror. Give me your best Wolverine-y growl!"

To his delight, she crouched, imitated the battle pose of X-23 and roared at him like a dinosaur. Then, in a more quiet tone, "Was that good?"

"Good?! Only good?! Do you hear her, bub?" he addressed the Wolverine who hovered over both of them. "You, little lady, were absolutely amazing! 10/10, no notes, this is your calling in life."

He felt someone move behind his back, and of course it was the traitor, ahem, Chrissy, approaching them with a camera. "I'm sorry to disturb you guys, but you make such an amazing group. Can I take your picture?"

And okay, maybe Eddie misjudged the Jockerine, because the guy ruffled X-23's hair and told her, "OK, just this once, you can say it. Swearing permitted. Ready?"

They pulled Eddie to them, and as he unsheathed his katana replicas, the Wolverine and his daughter crouched, roared at the camera, and said together, "Let's fucking go."

Eddie's traitorous mouth said exactly what he was thinking. "Oh my god. Are you single?" Which was objectively a stupid thing to say even to someone he'd met longer than two minutes ago.

The Wolverine blinked at him.

X-23 giggled and said: "dad is single. Maybe he doesn't have to be now?"

To the guy's credit, he didn't seem offended. He just laughed and ran his hand through his absolutely majestic hair that was perfectly stylized into Wolverine's. Shit. The hair. First the body, the face, and now the hair. "Now, El. Mr. Pool here probably doesn't want to be matched with the first Wolverine he sees."

And maybe it was the costume that made him so brave, but the guy was hot, nice, and his daughter was adorable, so Eddie wasn't to be blamed for what he said next, okay? "Uh, actually," he raised his hands, "you're perhaps my tenth Wolvie or so. And clearly the superior one. Having this absolutely adorable - and terrifying! - young lady by your side is also a plus. So...and feel free to stab me, or maybe just tell me no, but - I saw a really nice waffle stand outside. Let me treat you and...El?" The girl nodded, beaming at him. "...to a waffle? Or coffee, water, your choice."

El tugged at the guy's arm again. "Waffle!" she whispered so loud even Chrissy heard it.

He smiled at Eddie, and fuck. Eddie was a goner. "I think that's a yes."

...

Chrissy had ditched them to go hang out with her girlfriend, so Steve, Eddie and El were on their own.

They were sitting outside, Eddie slurping his bubble tea through a straw, mask still in place except for the bottom of his face, Steve - as the guy had introduced himself - sipping his coffee and diligently watching El chatting with other kids, nibbling on her waffles.

"So, is this your first convention?" Eddie asked. "Your kid is amazing, man. She's so happy to be here and she makes an amazing X-23."

Steve smiled and peeled his eyes from El for a second. "Yeah. I promised to take her this year, but after she saw Logan and the third Deadpool movie, she begged to go in a costume. And I just couldn't say no to her."

"She saw..." Eddie coughed. "Steve, sorry to question your parenting, but isn't she a bit too young for those movies?"

"Oh, she is," Steve snorted. "And she shouldn't have seen them. But we live alone, so I usually watch movies at home when she goes to sleep. If she goes to sleep. As she should."

"Are you telling me-"

Steve nodded. "Yep. She's incredibly sneaky. I found out the hard way when I finished the latest Alien and went to check on her in her bed. She wasn't there. I almost had a heart attack, turned the house upside down. I was about to call the police when she peeked at me from behind a curtain that I checked at least twice, and she was asking me if I was mad at her. So...uh. We discussed quite a lot from those movies afterwards, but there's no stopping her if she wants to do something."

Eddie laughed so hard he almost breathed in a tapioca pearl. "Oh wow. But good parenting! Not that I'm one to judge."

Watching El share waffles with her new friends, Steve pressed his lips together. "Yeah, I don't know about that. I'm just doing my best here, but I'm constantly terrified I'm doing something wrong. I adopted her, you know. From...a very bad situation. She couldn't properly talk or anything. So when she saw X-23 on screen, I think she related to her somehow. I've never seen her so excited about anything, so the costume was a must have. She's looking forward to going next year as well, when her hair finally grows long enough. Wig," he added at Eddie's confused silence.

"I mean, I get that," said Eddie as he set down his empty cup. "Cosplaying can be therapeutic. It's actually what my therapist suggested when I got...uh. Injured. And also how I got into cosplaying Deadpool."

"Injured?" Steve didn't sound judgmental, only curious, but Eddie had been in this situation before. Time to rip of the bandaid. He pulled off his mask and forced himself to meet Steve's eyes. "Uh. Yeah. Injured."

He knew he wasn't Deadpool kind of disfigured, but he was well used to the stares in his daily life. He kept the hair, which, hooray, good for him. But he had ugly bite scars on his neck and jawline, some going even to his cheeks. A chunk of his ear was missing too. "It was a dog when I was a kid," he said so that Steve wouldn't have to ask. "Plastic surgery is an option, they say, but it's expensive. And I don't really feel like having my face cut open again, so...yeah."

"Wow. I'm sorry."

Eddie took a deep breath. "Well, yeah. Not great. Listen, Steve. I'm super confident behind the mask, and thank you for humoring me. But this," he pointed to his face, "is usually a deal-breaker for people. So if it is for you, that's fine."

"It's not."

Eddie blinked. Then again. That wasn't how it had usually gone. "Huh?"

"I mean," said Steve, and shit, he laid his hand on Eddie's knee, when was this his life? What was happening? "I'm sorry it happened to you, but I don't get why it should matter."

"Uuuuh...because you're like, super hot? And you might want someone like that next to you?"

Steve snorted. "Bold of you to assume I don't have my own gnarly scars. I was just more lucky in their placement." When Eddie stared at him, he added: "I'm a paramedic. It happens. I rarely have time for anything, not to mention dating, but when I see a cool and funny guy give my daughter the ultimate Deadpool experience - by the way, waffles are her favorite food - and then he asks me out for a coffee? Hell. I'd be stupid to refuse."

Oh. Eddie suddenly felt a bit like crying. He forced himself to speak up, to have that final confirmation. "So, uh...this," he pointed at his face, "isn't a problem?"

"Nope. And, if you'd like a sort of quote from the first Deadpool movie with that..." Steve laughed, and Eddie knew what was coming even before he said it, "After some talking and getting to know each other...it's a face I'd be happy to sit on."

Eddie grasped at his chest. "Oh wow. You truly know the way to a man's heart."

He laughed and winked at Eddie. "This is the part when you ask for my number."

Eddie had never pulled out his phone faster in his life.

Much later, after Eddie showed El around the convention, after many pictures and wonderful memories, Eddie ran into Chrissy again. He was about to introduce her to Steve and El properly, but Chrissy smiled at him - once again that all knowing smile, why?! - and waved at her girlfriend.

"So, Eddie. I see you've met Robin's best friend, Steve."

Robin snickered and pressed a quick kiss against Chrissy's temple. "See? I told you they'd be a great match."

And, before Steve or Eddie could say anything, Chrissy picked up her camera and captured their disbelieving faces. They would keep the picture forever - Steve's mouth hanging comically open, Eddie just staring blankly into the camera, and El happily chewing on the last bite of her waffle.

#steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #steddie #steddie ficlet #steddie au #eleven stranger things #buckingham #chrissy cunningham #robin buckley #not proofread we die like my sleep schedule

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aylen-san · 5 months ago

Text

A Dance Under the Moon

When Maedhros came to Elwing for the Silmaril, he expected a battle, arguments, and threats. But the offer he received surprised him. With a mischievous smile, Elwing said: "I will give you the Silmaril if you win it the way Luthien did - through song and dance."

Maedhros was stunned. "You want me to... dance?" - His voice trembled with a mixture of confusion and slight panic.

Elwing nodded, her eyes shining. "That's exactly right. If you can enchant me as Luthien enchanted Morgoth, the stone is yours."

Maedhros was about to refuse, but Maglor, seeing a chance to avoid bloodshed, immediately agreed. The twins, always ready to support a merry venture, agreed as well.

"Well then, brother, you have been offered the bargain of the century! If Luthien could defeat Morgoth in a dance, so can you."

Maedhros sighed heavily. "Lúthien was a great dancer. And me? The last time I danced was at Turucano's wedding," he muttered frustratedly.

But Maglor was determined. "Don't worry, I'll help you remember the lessons of our childhood. We practiced for days and nights, and I'm sure you'll still remember how to move."

The next days passed in a training that sometimes resembled a play rather than a serious lesson. Maglor picked up the most difficult melodies with enthusiasm, and as he strummed the strings he never missed an opportunity to tease his brother, "More grace, brother, you're not in a tournament with orcs in Angband!"

Maedhros, hurt but trying not to show it, would turn sharply and remind him, "I am trying to dance, not play peacock. But as soon as he started moving again, Maglor didn't give up: "And don't forget to smile! No magic works without charm!" - he said with such seriousness that Maedhros could barely contain his laughter.

When his attempts to smile and not get tangled up in complicated steps failed, Maedhros snorted in annoyance, "This is a dance, not a carnival act!" But even he couldn't resist his brother's infectious laughter as he exaggerated "grace" and whirled around like a whirlwind, eyes wide open and a fake smile on his face. "This is it, Maedhros! All of Middle-earth will give you a standing ovation!"

The night of the test had come. The moon rose high in the sky, its light silvery on the shore and the calm waters. Elwing stood on a high rock, holding the Silmaril, which shone like a star. Maedhros took a deep breath and took the first step, hoping not to step on his cloak.

Elwing watched with interest, barely containing her laughter as Maedhros, performing another complicated pas, nearly tripped over an invisible rock. His attempt to regain his balance looked more like trying to jump an entire chasm. "Impressive," Elwing remarked with a mischievous smile, tilting her head slightly, "almost like Luthien... if she were a very tired and irritable elf."

Maedhros blinked at the comparison and whispered, covering his mouth with his hand, "Try that again!" The attempt to remain serious failed, and he almost laughed, feeling the tension of the dance turn into ridiculous fun.

Toward the end of the dance, Maedhros moved more carefully, as if afraid he might stumble again and lose the last vestiges of his dignity. Eventually, the music faded, and he straightened and made a deep bow, both weary and relieved.

Elwing, shaking her head slightly at his stubbornness and persistence, slowly descended from the podium. Respect glowed in her eyes, despite the hidden irony. Holding out the Silmaril with a slight smile, she acknowledged, "You have earned it, though not as gracefully as Luthien, but with no less tenacity.

Maedhros accepted the gem and nodded briefly, but could not resist adding: "If my dancing were as good as my fighting, the Silmaril would have been mine long ago."

Turning back to his brother, Maedhros leaned closer and lowered his voice to a threatening whisper, "If any of our people find out that I won the Silmaril by dancing, I will be your greatest nightmare. His gaze was serious, but the shadow of a smile lurked at the corners of his lips.

Maglor, his eyes bright with glee, could barely contain his laughter as he watched his brother struggle to keep his pride intact. He leaned closer as if to share the action, "Oh, don't worry," he replied with a smile, emphasizing the light and good-natured tone, "I promise to tell this story to anyone who will listen, especially those who worship legends of heroism and bravery. Maglor waved his hand theatrically, as if already imagining stories around the campfire where Maedhros' dance would become a new epic.

Maedhros frowned, but there was a gleam of amusement in his eyes. "Don't you dare turn this into a ballad," he added grimly, but there was no real threat in his voice.

Maglor bowed his head innocently, as if pondering his words. "A ballad? No, of course not. Perhaps an epic saga in five parts... Or at least a musical play. I think the chorus about 'the hero who entered battle through dance' would be a real hit."

Maedhros just shook his head, amazed at how quickly his brother had turned his threat into a joke.

The story had been passed down among the elves ever since, each retelling adding more jokes and exaggerations. It was said that the stars shone brighter that night, and that the sky itself smiled upon the stern Maedhros, who, for the sake of his goal, swallowed his pride and danced before Elwing.

With each retelling, the details became more incredible: some claimed that his steps were like dancing on a bonfire, others assured that Elving had deliberately offered the most difficult moves to watch, hoping that Maedhros would retreat and leave them alone. But most of all, they liked to add that the stars winked at each other at that moment, marveling that the fearsome son of Theanor, who had terrified armies with his strategies, was now fighting not enemies but complicated pas.

In time, humorous poems appeared in which Maedhros danced "like a wild boar who has forgotten the way of the forest," but with respect for his willingness to undertake this ridiculous feat for the sake of peace. There were even jokes in the elven halls that if Maedhros were offered another dance in exchange for all the Silmarilli, he would demand that the story not be told.

But behind all the ridicule there was a note of admiration: for even the most stubborn and proud of Feanor's sons had shown flexibility - not only in movement, but in spirit - to achieve his goal.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/58668676

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jolalibrary · 1 year ago

Text

stockings and stars

javier peña x f!reader

summary: Still need the star putting on the top of the tree. ive got other plans for you Because I’m the star? yeah you're my star and youre not going anywhere but on your back

from the late night texts world - but can still be enjoyed on its own. chapter warnings: allusion to/mentions of smut. no actual smut. javi undresses you, though. flirting. fluff. reader wears red lingerie and a dressing gown. javi flirting. sexy talk, romcom vibes ofc ✨ wordcount: 3k

an: to @goodwithcheese merry christmas from me, to you. thank you for everything, for the tuesday fun we have - i wanted nothing more than to have this out sooner, but life, you know? but, i adore you. and I'm so glad we found one another. ahuge thanks to @thetriumphantpanda who cheerleaded for me throughout.

text key: bold is you/reader | italics is javi

Will I be seeing Santa Javi today? I want to decorate my tree.

one time I come to yours in a red shirt

You also had the tree under your arm and a bag of baubles, I’d class those as gifts.

keep talking baby and you can decorate your tree alone

Think I’m gonna wear that shirt you left here while I do it. Make sure I have to get up on my tip toes. Hope it doesn't rise up...

you don’t play fair

I think I’ll be in stockings too…

youre killing me

Maybe they’re white and red, and…

baby if i wasn’t putting this thing up for Pop, i’d be driving over right now

Hope you hurry up, I need someone tall to put the star on top of the tree.

how am I gonna eat you out when youre perched on the tree baby

The last thing on his to-do list from his Pop is to hang the front porch garland.

He had learnt there had been a huge difference in the front and the back porch garlands. A fifteen-minute-long difference when he'd timed the response given to his sarcastic answer.

Javi learnt there was not only one for the back porch and the front, but one which sat across the fireplace and one on the staircase.

He learnt that after he'd made a joke about mixing them up—earning himself a very pointed glare, and the task of the front porch.

Now, it’s a battle he’s losing.

Tremendously so.

While he’d never want his Pop to do the more challenging tasks, he did rather hate he hadn’t thought to trade this one in for the back porch at the very least—because that had looked fucking easy.

Holding the garland in hand, he’s suddenly hit with a second wave of nostalgia, the first having arrived when he'd pulled down the box and peered into it.

It did the same thing as it had done then, all but rushed over him, layering itself on his shoulders, sitting, nothing short of a comfortable weight on him. Letting his gaze fall out over it, he smiles at the tuffs of fabric, all the bows tied by hand, all in an array of sizes and shades.

Over time, he can see how they've become sun-dyed, remembering the first year they'd been sewn into the faux greenery by his mamá, memories of her all hunched over, humming carols.

Smiling, he rolls his lips, letting out a heavier sigh than he intended as he drags it to the post he’d begin at.

But, all he wonders is whether in the years he wasn’t here, whether it was occasionally hung—or if this year is just that special.

The mere hint that he was going to ask if you wished to spend Christmas at the ranch had sent his Pop into overdrive. Practically yanked him out of his chair like he’d been electrified, a bunch of orders being flung from under his white, wiry moustache that they needed to get ready.

He wasn't sure he'd get the image of his Pop suddenly scrambling around like a man half his age, to drag the decorations out from the cupboard, would ever be erased from his mind. Least of all the sound you'd made aww'ing down the phone when he'd given you a condensed version of the story.

Because he hasn't asked you yet, not properly.

Even though he's spent the last two days at the back of barns and spending a ridiculous amount of time at the hardware store—because we need to make sure the lights stay up, Jav.

He just hasn't found the right time to ask you. A promise each time he goes to see you left in the air. Not that his Pop remembers that, instead he's just busy thinking up ways to make it special: one of which includes decorating the trees at the entrance to the ranch.

An idea having sprouted with the newest ranch hand—one which, if Javi overheard correctly, involves rope acting like tinsel and a cowboy hat being the star on the top of the trees.

Feeling his phone vibrate, he temporarily ignores it as he begins to weave the beginning of the garland around the wood—already knowing, before he tries to move it around the spindles, that it isn’t going to be easy.

Because nothing ever fucking is.

Least of all when you’re waiting for him.

His mind begins to concoct images of you in bows and sheer material, lips painted, sat waiting, smelling nothing short of heavenly as you call out for—

“Fuck,” he shouts, dropping the garland to the ground.

It had pricked him, stabbed him right in the skin—hand shaking the pain out, face likely all scrunched. And, if it didn't have sentimental value, he's sure he'd have kicked its protesting ass with everything he had. Instead, he just narrows his eyes more than he had done moments ago as he begins again.

He feels his nostrils flare when it begins to undo itself. The sound of faux bristles on wood grates him before it will even attempt to do what he needs it to.

And it makes him want to quit, to throw it back into the box and tell his Pop it isn’t worth it. But he knows it is. Knows that his mama didn’t spend hours bent over under flickering light for it not to be seen.

Javi also strongly suspects you’d love it. Likely run your fingers over several bows asking who made it. He can even imagine the look of joy on your face when he tells you.

It’s why, if he didn’t already suspect it anyway, he’s pretty sure his Pop loves you more than him. Because even the first Christmas he was back, there weren’t this many decorations; not nearly as much need to have them all out, either.

Not that Javi really minds—or blames him.

There’s a notable shift in energy when you stay over. Even more so in him. He can see there’s a cheer and a glow to the place—one Javi hates watching vanish when he takes you back to your place.

It's why, when—and where—he can, he fights for you to be here. Practically finds convincing ways to do so, including, crossword puzzles, dinner, and two-person showers. But, at some stage, your clothing dwindles, underwear runs low, and he has to make the painful drive into town to return you to your place.

Your fingers in his hair, practically clambered into his lap as you whisper that you’ll be back before he knows it. His fingers on your chin, thumb stroking out the words he says right back—that he’ll miss you all the same.

Javier Peña. Texan softie—what will the world think?

He only thinks one thing when he drives back—a response which had been there on his lips. Guess they’ll see just how much I love you. A thing you know, comment on, say back to him first thing in the morning and last thing at night. An array of promises there, sometimes spoken at a normal level and sometimes whispered.

You always keep them, just like the one that you are always back before he knows it.

He likes it when you are. Enjoys it when you’re nestled beside him, arm across his chest, hand close to his ribs—strumming them, tracing lines and words he tries to understand before sleep takes him.

He still always sleeps better when you’re beside him. When his breathing can mirror yours, when he can feel for you in the night when he’s awoken with nightmares and things he knows won’t ever come true.

Now, he’s fighting a different battle. One to get to you.

Halted in his path to freedom by the garland which refused to be hung, and could be labelled as giving him more grief than the horses which had banded together. A phrase he never thought he’d admit out loud, never mind think.

You still fighting with the garland?

baby its torturing me on purpose

Do you want me to come and help?

will you come in the stockings

No!! Your dad is there.

then stay there actually lie down, but do not begin without me

Still need the star putting on the top of the tree.

ive got other plans for you

Because I’m the star?

yeah you're my star and youre not going anywhere but on your back

Hurry then.

i’m hurrying

He does hurry—practically scratched up by the time he’s parking his truck outside your place.

As he takes the step up to your door, Javi realises how much he misses it here when he doesn’t visit. A place less frequent and often spent time in, even under your insistence of renting it.

It is always usually a stopping point, him parking up, letting you go in and grab what you need before you're back in his truck, heading back to his.

He does like your place though, likes how small it is, how cosy. Plus, it has all the things which make you, you. A thing his place is currently missing.

Although, as he steps through the door, and calls your name, he does have to admit it currently looks fucking ridiculous.

On a good day, he’d describe your place as crowded, but right now, it’s claustrophobic.

The tree you’d forced him to get is shoved into a corner, branches fluffed out, surrounded by the piles of unpacked boxes you’ve tried to discreetly hide. Your remaining floorspace is overtaken by a bit of rug, several piles of books (you have no room for, but continue to buy) and odd bits of furniture you find and attempt to restore.

For the most part, you’ve decorated. A thing you did inform him of.

You’ll be pleased to know when you get here your only job is the star. managed it all yourself, did you I’m a very competent woman, Javi. oh i know baby ive seen you with a crossword Does that do it for you? Me finishing a crossword. does something to me Get over here. im leaving now

There’s a warm, comforting glow spread out across the place from the fairy lights you’ve hung and the array of mismatched decorations—both bought and handmade—hanging from branches.

He breathes in the scent of orange which hangs in the air, his eyes finding the culprit on your fireplace, a garland—one not dissimilar to the one he’d been battled with—places there, mocking him due to the ease of which had been laid, with oranges and little beads all entwined within it.

Snorting, he glances back at your tree, spotting the things he's been with you when you've bought. And, as promised—and informed him through text—there’s nothing at the top of your tree.

“You finally made it!”

Spinning on his heel, he comes face to face with you, and fuck if the sight of you doesn’t make it all worth it.

Dressed in a red, silky dressing gown, all tied in the middle, you're a vision. Then, there's the fact your lips are painted a shade he’d now famously dub Christmas red, a colour he wants nothing more than to be stained with. A path of it from his mouth down to the space where his jeans meet his hips. A thought which seems to only make how tight his jeans are even more uncomfortable.

“Cariño, you’re…”

You sway a little, letting the fabric move—allowing his gaze to land on the stockings. The ones he’s been thinking about all afternoon. The ones he can’t wait to feel under his palm and know whether they’ll create friction when wrapped around his waist.

“Fuck me.”

“I’m kinda banking on it,” you say, biting your red-painted lip. “But first…”

His hand crawls around your waist, feeling the smooth, soft texture under his hand—swallowing, dragging his eyes up and down you, unsure how he could ever be so lucky—how something so good could ever be here for him to unwrap.

“I need you to hang the star,” you continue.

“Right now?”

Nodding, you ghost your lips over his. “I’ve been so good waiting for you.”

“You're never good. You, baby, are a menace.”

“I’m your menace.”

Snorting, he presses a kiss to your lips. “Damn right, you are.”

Moving from you, reluctantly, only to pick up the gold star he assumes you want to hang, getting a nod from you that he’s right.

“Need to ask you something too.”

And even though he’s only taken a mere short step from you, he’s floored all over again about what a picture you look like when he glances back. That you’re standing all for him, dressed in nothing but cheer and ribbons all for him.

“Go on.”

Turning to your tree, he flattens his hand to the wall for stability. “I wanted…”

His concentration slides in—suddenly aware he doesn’t want to knock anything from the branches. Doesn’t want to force things to be misplaced from where they were expertly hung.

He’s also sure he’s wanting to swallow the question. A part of him, all the way deep inside of him, having been bracing—and waiting—to hear you’d be apart for the holidays. A thing the two of you have rarely been since you moved here, not a day going by he hasn’t seen you for at least an hour.

“Wanted to know if you—shit—” the star almost sitting atop, before at the last minute protesting. “I wanted to know if you wanted to spend Christmas with me—with us, me and Pop. At the ranch.”

The star slides into place, sitting more comfortably with another shove, more branch supporting it.

But he doesn’t turn, not immediately. Not as the question hums around him, swirls in the silence of you not immediately saying yes. So much so, that it takes him a second to move on his heels, to face you—to read the answer before it’s delivered.

What he sees is something his heart couldn’t have ever prepared for.

You, grinning—a silly, almost goofy, smile spreading out as you bite down on your lip, forehead slightly crinkled.

“You… you want me to spend the holidays with you?”

“Of course—cariño, I want nothing more than for you to be with me.”

It all quick to leave his mouth, mirroring the movement to be back in front of you, fingers under your chin, lifting your eyes—those beautiful, fucking eyes—to his.

“Do… do you—wanna spend it with me?”

You pull a different face before you’re nodding. One more excited, one which begins to expel out over a smile and a bunch of escaping phrases such as I can’t believe you want me with you and of course.

“Why wouldn’t I want to be with you?”

Shrugging, you scrunch your nose—an act he finds just as cute as the first time he saw it. “Guess it’s a big deal. It’s… a thing people do with families.”

Pulling you close by your hips, your hand lands flat on his chest. “You are my family.”

“Javi,” you whisper, making each letter feel so individual the way you say it, that it makes his heart double.

“It’s true. You’re it for me, cariño. All I’ve wished for.”

Eyes widening, your eyes shimmer under the lights—more so than normal. Taking a deep breath, you lift your chin before pressing a kiss to his mouth. One which turns hungry, desperate—your mouth searing, a thing he’s craved since he woke up before the sun even rose.

“Baby,” you whisper.

And he hums.

It vibrates out, able to feel it from the way his fingers cup your cheek.

“Undo me.”

Releasing your lips with a pop, he opens his eyes, studying your eyes, moving from one to the other.

“Go on,” you urge in a whisper, more breathless, more tinged with something that makes his skin hot.

Sliding his fingers over the knot, he barely has to tug before it comes undone—unveiling you, like a curtain which wishes to part. If he’d thought you’d looked good before, he’s sure every bit of you is a sin now—a Christmas sin.

Red and lace. It’s all he sees. It sitting there, against you, hugging your breasts—sitting on your hips. His mouth is suddenly dry at the thought of running his tongue over the place it meets your skin before pulling it down.

Your fingers follow his eyes, sliding between the valley to land on the bow in the centre, twisting the edge of the tie around your index finger—palm skating over your stomach, allowing him more chance to take in how you’re stood before him in see-through fabric and promises.

“How’d I get so lucky?” he asks, more to no one, than to you.

His fingers teasing the fabric sat on your hip—marvelling, unsure how to think straight until you clear your throat, forcing his eyes to meet yours.

“Hey,” you whisper, tightening your hold on his hands, bringing his arms more around your waist, pressing your front to him, feeling the heat from your skin through your clothes. “You’re all I wished for too.”

Smiling, he looks at your tree, before landing back on you. “You look so good.”

“I know. Could look better though?” His brow arches as you slowly begin to smile, the tip of your tongue sliding over your upper lip. “Everything is held in place by bows.”

Groaning, he closes his eyes, letting his hand slide down your lower back, over sheer material before his fingers find the ribbon on your hip.

“All for you.”

“Mine,” he answers, slotting his mouth over yours—staining the four letters to your lips.

His fingers slide around, brushing over soft skin, until he finds the first bow. Undoing it with ease, licking into your mouth, only to grunt against you when you whimper as the fabric falls to your feet.

“Yours,” you say back, your own hands beginning to undo him.

an: merry christmas, love you

#javier peña x f!reader #javier peña x reader #javier peña #javier peña narcos #javi peña x reader #javi peña x you #javi pena #javier peña x you #narcos x reader #javier pena x reader #javier pena x you #javi pena x reader #narcos javier x reader #narcos javier #pedro pascal x reader #narcos fanfiction

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hyperactively-me · 1 year ago

Note

It's cliché, but what if reader caught flu in Kastron? Idk why but to me it looks like country in the north, yk, cold and stoic king and queen from the land of sun. But my point is, reader gets sick, so sick that she collapses and everybody freaks out because they think it might be poisoning of their queen

omg i love this idea so much

Your home kingdom had never experienced winters like the kind in Kastron, where the seasons were known for their harshness and the relentless snowfall that blanketed the land. Back home, there was no snow in the winter season, just gray skies and cold air. But, here in Kastron, the winters were relentless. Feet of snow would pile up and snowstorms would overtake the kingdom. On a particularly calm day, you decided to go for a walk out on the palace grounds, just to explore the snow.

You ventured into the icy wilderness that surrounded your palace. Your homeland had never experienced such a breathtaking winter wonderland, and you were determined to explore every inch of it. That morning, you had pulled on some boots, wrapped yourselves in furs and coats and pulled on some thick gloves. You slipped out of the palace without letting anyone know, wanting to be left to your own devices. You wanted quiet alone time, anyway. You had been slaving away in the study most days now that it was too cold to go outside.

As the day wore on, the cold began to gnaw at your bones, and you reluctantly decided to return to the warmth and comfort of the palace. That evening, as you lay in bed, an unsettling chill settled over you.

When morning came, you awoke to a stifling bug in your throat. Your throat was scratchy, your nose congested, and your body ached from your trek through the snow. Weak and feverish, you summoned your strength to fulfill your duties for the morning. It was a battle getting dressed and ready for the day, your eyes drooping with an exhaustion that only comes from illness.

As the day progressed, you found yourself wrapped in your readings when Simon had let himself into the study.

“It’s lunchtime,” he says, pulling your book from your hands.

“Ah, I suppose it is,” you say, sniffling ever so slightly.

Simon accompanied you as you made your way to the dining hall for lunch. The aroma of hearty seasonal foods filled the air, but your appetite had abandoned you. The weight of your illness pressed upon you, and you shivered with chills. You let Simon pull your chair out for you, and you practically drop into the seat as you sit down.

As you attempted to eat, the sickness tightened its grip. Shivers wracked your body, and sharp muscle and body aches made every movement painful. Dizziness washed over you, the sickness engulfing you entirely.

“Simon—” you slur.

With a feeling of overwhelming sickness, you collapsed at the table, and the world around you faded into darkness as you lost consciousness.

. . .

You don’t know how long you’ve been out for. Your consciousness swirled in the darkness, fading in and out. As awareness slowly crept back, you found yourself lying on something soft. It was very nice, very plush, more comfortable than your own bed. Your eyes flutter open, your eyelids feeling heavy. You were in a dimly lit room, the soft glow of candlelight flickered, casting shadows along the dark walls.

“Thank God you’re awake,” a voice whispers, relief evident in his voice.

“She’s awake,” a different voice yells out, and you groan from the volume.

“Go fetch the doctor.”

Weak and disoriented, you managed to speak, your voice hoarse and feeble. “What… happened?”

You fully open your eyes now, blinking away the fuzziness from your vision. Simon is sitting in a chair next to the bed. Two guards stand watch at the door. You look back at him, his balaclava is gone. His worry etched deep lines across his features, a frown present on his face. His hand gently rested on yours, his touch reassuring.

“Where am I?” you ask.

“My chambers,” he says gently, his hand squeezing yours lightly.

You try to push yourself to sit up, but his hand reaches to gently push you back down.

“No, no, lay down.”

You take a look around the dimly lit room, noting the sparse decoration of the large room. “What happened?” you ask again, letting him nudge you back down to resting.

Simon's expression remained somber as he recounted the incident. “You collapsed at the dining table during lunch.”

“Oh.”

“We thought you were poisoned,” he added solemnly, shifting in his seat. “Specifically, we thought your food was poisoned.”

A shiver ran down your spine as Simon's words settled in. Poisoned? It was a disconcerting thought, even in your fevered state. “Poisoned?” you repeated, your voice filled with confusion and worry.

Simon nodded, his eyes locked onto yours. “Yes, there was a moment of panic. But after an examination, it was clear that it wasn't poison. The doctors said you’ve contracted the flu.”

Relief washed over you at the revelation. The idea of poison had been unsettling, but the flu, while serious, was something that could be managed and treated. You couldn't help but wonder how a simple walk in the snow had led to such a dire situation.

“The flu,” you mumbled, still feeling disoriented.

Simon's grip on your hand tightened, and he offered a reassuring smile. “Yes, the palace doctors have been attending to you. They said that you’ll make a full recovery in a week or so.”

You’re both quiet for a moment.

“I feel like it's fair to mention that there may still be talk that you’ve been poisoned, but we’re currently trying to quell the rumors.”

You let out a weak sigh and nodded.

“Thank you, Simon,” you whispered, feeling grateful for his presence and care. It was sweet, seeing him like this. Genuinely concerned. Caring. Thoughtful. It warmed your heart.

Just then, the palace doctor entered the room, carrying an assortment of remedies and a concerned expression. They began to examine you, asking questions about your symptoms and carefully checking your vitals.

As the days went by, you remained in Simon’s chambers, isolated to give you privacy and much needed rest and quiet. Every night, he would leave, off to sleep in a different room. During this time, you spent countless hours talking to Simon.

“Are you sure I can stay here?”

“I’m quite sure.”

“I– I’ve taken over your whole room, though,” you try to argue. You feel bad for monopolizing Simon’s quarters, especially whilst being sick. You shift under the blankets and cushions.

“If I didn’t want you in my room, I wouldn’t have carried you here myself.” His voice held a tone of finality.

During this time, you spent countless hours talking to Simon, strengthening the growing bond between you two. His loyalty and devotion had been unwavering throughout this ordeal, and you couldn't help but start to feel like your connection to him was strengthening.

“I brought you some books,” he says one day, carrying a stack of books in his arms.

You immediately perk up, pushing yourself up your pillows.

“So sweet of you,” you praise, clapping your hands with a smile.

He blushes slightly. “I think you’ll like these,” he says, setting the books down on the bedside table. You eagerly scan the titles and covers. It was clear that he had put a lot of thought into selecting them for you.

“You really knew which ones I would like,” you said, genuinely touched by his considerate gesture.

Simon smiled warmly, his eyes reflecting genuinity. “I've been paying attention,” he replied softly.

You smile at his words, appreciation running through you.

More days passed, and the doctors administered treatments and provided you with nourishing soups and herbal remedies. Slowly, but surely, your strength began to return, and the flu loosened its grip on your body.

“I’m finally starting to feel better, Simon,” you said one morning, pushing the covers off your body.

“That’s good,” he nods. “Very good.”

You push yourself off the bed, standing in front of him for a moment.

“Hey– are you sure you’re okay to stand–?”

You flashed Simon a reassuring smile as you stood on your own two feet, feeling a sense of triumph over the illness that had kept you confined to his bed for what felt like an eternity.

“I'm sure,” you replied confidently, though your legs wobbled slightly under the weight of your hardly used legs. “I've been itching to get up and move around for so long now.”

Simon, still concerned, extended his arm toward you. “Just in case,” he said, offering you support. Gratefully, you accepted his arm.

With a sudden burst of confidence, you gently pull Simon to stand in front of you. His brows furrowed in confusion. However, before he could voice his curiosity, you wrapped your arms tightly around him, pulling him into a tight hug.

Simon's initial confusion melted away as you pulled him into your embrace. His arms soon encircled you in return, and you both held each other close. It was a hug filled with unspoken words, a silent confirmation of the connection that had developed between you when you were sick.

“Thank you for taking care of me,” you whisper, pressing your cheek against his chest.

Simon's arms tightened around you, and he rested his chin on top of your head.

“It’s not something I would ever think twice about,” he replies, voice warm.

You look up at him.

“I appreciate that, I really do. I would do the same for you,” you say quietly, running your hand up and down his back.

Simon smiles down at you, his eyes filled with affection. “I know you would,” he says softly, his thumb gently stroking your back.

You nod, your heart feeling lighter.

- - - - -

(masterlist)

#awww #so sweet so cute #he's so bbg #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost x reader #simon riley x reader #simon ghost x you #simon ghost x reader #simon riley x you #simon ghost riley x you #simon “ghost” riley x reader #simon “ghost” riley x you #hyperactivelyme

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especiallythewomenandthechildren · 4 months ago

Text

The Tragedy of What Was (pt. 1)

Summary: The world was not kind. Not to you, your brother Erik, or many other mutants. So why did you have to be kind to Sebastian Shaw? A decades long mission, spearheaded by Erik was interrupted by the encounter with one Charles Xavier. You had always flirted with the idea of a changed world, not in Erik's image, but one of human - mutant peace. The battle of philosophy and morals is the only one more stifling than the one between the two battling groups. Who will come on top, be left behind, and survive? (yall i am not good at summaries pls just gimme a chance)!

A/N: uhm yeah. so this is my brainchild, enjoy:) also quick warning: VERY descriptive details about death and the Holocaust so please be prepared if you choose to read!

♟️masterlist♟️

.・。.・゜✭・.✫・゜・。..✭・.✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.✫・゜・。..

The footsteps were as soft as the traipsing water droplets from the fountain. An array of hues transformed into more and more mesmerizing shades in the sky above. Trees of the purest emerald coloring adorned the edges of the scene. And in the middle of the ethereal splendor stood Charles Xavier. The youthful, handsome, and charming man was wholly swallowed with transfixion.

Back turned to him and facing the serene flowing fountain, you found peace. Your hair was styled just how Charles remembered it when you first met him. Chaos somehow peacing itself into an enhancement of your beauty. His feet carried his unbelieving being right beside you. The place he swore to always remain.

Your eyes were closed but Charles always knew you never needed vision to feel his presence. Neither him for you. Never because of your mutations but rather the wonder of your hearts’ senses. Somehow, the butterflies in the pit of your stomachs always could sense out the others matching pair.

“This is cruel, Raven.”

He practically spit it out, voice still dumbfounded by your appearance. Your face has danced behind his eyes everyday of his life since your first encounter but in all that time, never has your image felt so real. Your eyes remained closed as a soft smile formed on your lips. The same one a mother would dawn as she gently corrected her child.

“Oh Charles, we both know Raven has been dead for years.”

As soon as you uttered those words, Charles felt the tingling sensation in his legs overgrow his nerves. His knees buckled and he was ready to feel the nothingness of his lower body once more except the feeling went away with the breeze. Whatever this was, Charles wished to escape as soon as possible.

“What are you?”

The smile framing your lips dropped in an instant. “You always said you saw me beyond a label. Beyond my powers.”

Your voice started out firm but was grappled with hurt as it cracked at the end. As powerful a telepath he was, Charles was well aware that his mind was being puppeteered. Yet the question of who was powerful enough to even enter the mind of Professor X stumped him.

“What is it that you wish? What information do you need so badly that vile deception is used?”

The mind was never a stable place as he well knew and that was Charles' explanation for your sudden chorus of bubbly giggles. Your smooth hands rubbed down your face as you attempted to stop your laughter. After a long winded session, you let out an amused breath that warned Charles that whatever was to be said next was not going to be pleasant.

“My schatz. You were always the mastermind of deception.”

He wanted to protest but his vocal cords failed him. Silence was his only choice as you began circling the mid-sized fountain.

“A man of your power, you could have built the world in your image by force. Yet, you made us all build it for you through your sweet words.”

Charles had a feeling of where this was going and that tingling began crawling up his veins. You continued on, nearing the opposite side of the water.

“Charles Xavier: judge, jury, but damn the world if he was seen as executioner. No, you are a mere guiding voice,”

The setting sun illuminated your dark figure behind the asserting height of the spouting water. He saw your features sparkle even in their shadowed form.

“A voice that dictated all. Who was Saint. Who was innocent. Who was worthy.”

With each word, your voice became more and more intense. A friction and malice he had nearly forgotten you were capable of. It was that last accusation that brought Charles down. Heart, head, and legs. He crumpled to the floor as numbness silenced any nerve communication. He tried to call out from pain. For you. But the strangle of his voice only righted around his neck as a weight began overtaking his lungs.

You finally rounded the circular fountain back to Charles as he laid on the floor, twisting this way and that and an arm outstretched to you. His finger framed your face from his lower point of view as they slightly curled. They danced across the very picture of perfection in Charles' eyes. But it was your own that caused the warning bells to screech to the man.

Clean,pristine eyes met his own electric blue orbs. The clarity of your sclera juxtaposed the haze of Charles' sense of reality. You crouched to meet his level and bent your neck to the side in confusion at his horror.

“Schatz, what's wrong? Aren't I pretty this way?”

You traced your fingernails lightly across his dashing face, upwards from the cheeks and into his luscious hair. He tried to jerk away but he was held in place by an invisible force, panting as a shiver of unease rippled through him.

“You know I always thought you the most beautiful.”

Your mouth dipped into a pondering frown as you mockingly assessed the man in front of you.

“Even with all my blood?”

Charles expected your eyes to transform to their original state, the ones he never got enough of. The captivating mosaic he memorized and treasured twice as hard for when you tried to hide them away in shame from him. Instead, he was met with the appearance of yours he has tried to erase so desperately but only ended up with a more obliterated consciousness.

Slow drops of blood slithered downwards from your mouth as if mocking Charles's now matching tears. Your smooth arms transformed into a canvas of cuts and bruises as they stretched unnaturally behind you. Finally, your once pristine clothing became an ocean of crimson copper blood. In every direction, a masterpiece of Charles's worst tragedy was painted through the rouge substance.

A puddle of blood formed beneath your misfigured being but not a single drop landed on Charles. Everytime a thin river of deep red snaked its way to his legs, a sprinkle of the crystal fountain water eliminated the warm liquid.

“Here I am Charles, in all my beauty, isn't that right?”

“Y/N-”

“Or am I not worthy of it anymore? A poor excuse of whatever lowly being I am hunted as?”

The brown haired man could only speak in wheezes at this point. He would use every last breath to stop your train of thought and conviction on his perspective of you.

“You were the most worthy of us all! Better than the best of us! You were the unimaginable.”

Your breath shallowed like his but Charles's was from force. Yours was from drainage. Even in your positioning, back arched, arms stretched behind you, and neck bent upwards, your eyes filtered to the shade of blue that quickly became your favorite.

“Was I so unimaginable that you refused my reality?”

There it was. As if a dam broke, all your blood began drowning Charles. The sick joke of it all was that the harsh force pounding down on his lungs freed him the second he began inhaling nothing but copper. Just to satisfy all possible suffering.

“It felt like this. Slow. Suffocating. I know you are trying to call out to me but your powers are failing you,”

You whispered in a contrastingly soothing manner. “They are failing you like they failed me. I called for you and made yourself deaf.”

And in went the blood into his ears. Charles could feel it flow its way through the complex tunnels and deafen the mumbles of your voice. In every possible part of his body, Charles was drowned in the inside and outside in your blood. The natural reaction to close one's eyes was stripped from him as his once vibrant blues were forced to be wide open to be covered in layers of the sticky substance.

Death was surely knocking on his door. That the differing voices from your own must have been what laid ahead for Charles. Odd that they, even with the disillusion of the blood, sounded oddly familiar.

You, realizing this, let out a sly smirk, even as you were thrashing in pain and letting out your last gasps of air.

“It seems like our time has ended once more, Professor.”

With one final breath, you smile upwards.

“Send him my love.”

The violent jerk of the Professor brought even further alarm to Storm and Logan who have been trying to bring him back for the past few minutes from whatever trance he entered. Storm checked his pulse and head for any fever while Logan stood to the side in confusion and buried worry for his long time mentor.

“Something going on, Charles?”

Logan's gruff voice was perfectly audible for the elder man who clenched to his wheelchair to the point his already pale knuckles were the shade of snow. However, Charles completely ignored him as his wrinkled eyes focused on the person right in front of him. Your murderer.

.・。.・゜✭・.✫・゜・。..✭・.✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.✫・゜・。..

1944

The screams were never ending. Of birth, death, and what surrounded all, pain. Maybe it was because of the tight packaging of the cattle cart that made it feel like the screams were louder than they were. They had no space to travel so they just ricocheted off the tens of bodies crushing the others in your end of the cattle transportation.

The echo off of the dirty and malnourished folks gave the screams an echoed chorus to the sound of birth. A fragile woman with pretty features was splayed across the dirty floor, legs covered with men's jackets and women's shawls. While the clothing covered her decency, nothing could be done for her dignity as she was surrounded by cattle manure. There was nowhere else in the cart that had the less than necessary space the manure covered section provided. From what you've gathered of the man holding her hand throughout, her name is Lotte and beside her was her brother, Heinrich. Lotte's husband has been missing for the past six months.

You have been trying to tell time through the crack between the two rusty sliding doors of the cart. It has been light thrice and dark twice. Everytime the curtain of darkness is overtaken by sunlight, the small glimpse of the outside world becomes increasingly muddled. Green trees became ashy corpses. Sapphire skies transforming into a sickeningly gray.

In your time on this unknown journey, you had rarely uttered a word. You were only six years of age yet you had known that your existence was a question of debated worth so asking any of your own would only bring misery. You never asked why all three of your cardigans had a yellow star of David patched on. All that was known to you is that it was required, as your mother fearfully related to you everytime you complained why you had to dawn it but none of the other girls you saw did. Although, none of them were in your school or neighborhood as that was yet another forced move.

You found the forced adornment quite ugly. Especially with all the stains it dawned from your constant use of it as a napkin. Your youthful innocence summarized that if you were to be forced to wear the symbol that was to deem your value, it might as well be useful to you.

Chipped nails of yours picked at the fray threads from the patch as you shuddered away from yet another round of the birthing woman's screams. You buried your face into the neck of your older brother, who only wrapped his arms tighter around your small frame. It was his turn to carry you on his lap, a shift that was interchanged between him, your praying mother, and solemn father.

“Push more, I see the head!”

There were a handful of other grime ridded women who were surrounding the pretty soon to be mother. None were nurses but their experience was enough: they were mothers. From your vantage point, you could see the pool of blood growing beneath the sheets of cover. It was making you nauseous but you couldn't tear your eyes away.

“Final one!” The eldest of the women announced and you prayed for her to be right. You were unsure how much more screaming you could take. To you, it was the worst sound to be stifled in. With one final welp of excursion, a new voice replaced the now official mother. A prune like being covered in blood was somehow the cleanest in the entire filth infested cart. The rest of you were flea littered as the rats crawled over all the crowds in the overpacked area.

You still held tightly onto your brother but turned to your now weeping mother. People cry tears of joy at a new baby, even if you've never personally seen it, but you didn't think you were seeing it then. In the past years, your mother's face was constantly strewn with tears, no matter how much you tried to cheer her up in your own childlike ways. So you knew how tears of misery looked like and they couldn't be stopped as the avalanches their way down her cheek.

“Mama?” Your small confused voice broke her out of her trance on the small baby and his first moment with his mother. She reached out and petted your hair gently with a loving yet shaky smile. However, the moment could only last so long.

In the moments after his sister had done the most tremendous feat of her life, Heinrich knew what had to be done. Lotte turned to him to ask him to utter the prayer to be said when the birth of a child but the prayer uttered was a very different one. Instead of the blessings of life, Heinrich uttered the words of death. Lotte's delicate eyes squinted in confusion and offense but were in an instant, horror. Heinrich ripped the wailing baby boy from his mother's comforting arms and grasped the handle of the large rusted door. He was peeling as much as he could with only one arm and fighting off the other men and women trying to stop him.

Your mother threw her arms around the two of her children seated besides her, as if the man would do the same to you. The door's crack was opening more and more, letting in the now setting sun. It was the first time in what you can only assume days any sunlight had reached the cart's populace and looking around, it was clear to see. The ghastly paleness and bones peaking out beneath raggdy clothes. This was not the effect of capture in a cattle cart but rather years of imprisonment in open air prisons you were forced to call home.

“Heinrich!”

Lotte wailed as she tried to get up, but the weakness of labor tied her down to the disgusting floor. You would have thought Heinrich to commit his act ashamed. To not have the ability to look Lotte, or anyone, in the eyes anymore. Maybe even throw himself with the boy. Yet instead, he met Lottes hazed eyes with no remorse.

“What life do you believe he will live? This death is a mercy. Let him go without suffering or in the hands of those monsters! What kind of mother wishes suffering only second to Hell on her child?!”

And with that, the baby boy was gone. The healthy baby boy. No defects or injuries. Now in the wind to die.

You were wrong. Silence was the worst sound to be stifled in.

Looking up, you met the horrified blue eyes of your brother.

“Erik?”

His only response was to fully huddle you in his arms as if he could protect you from the truth. Protect you from your inevitable fate.

.・。.・゜✭・.✫・゜・。..✭・.✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.✫・゜・。..

Surely, this was not Earth. Rain didn’t matter; your eyes could not comprehend the desolation weaving between the desolate crowds. They were not human. Not even ghosts could compare to the ghastliness of those who might very well have been your neighbors. Sunken eyes, protruding bones, and the heavy stench of fatality. Huddled between Erik and your mama, you were shoved forward into an impending fate. Your hands clung to Erik's pants as you tried to hide from the barking officers. The three of you—and your father, standing guard as much as he could behind—were shoved and pulled in every direction. There was never a moment of peace since stepping off the cart.

As you neared the macabre gate, you were ripped from safety. A crude giant of a man yanked you from your hiding spot, away from your family. The same fate seemed to befall Erik as the four of you were being ushered in three different directions.

“ERIK!”

Your voice pierced the grating metal, now beginning to be pulled toward the boy you called for. An odd force physically pierced the gate as well as the guard hauling you away. He dropped you from his lifted arms and began crouching, as if an invisible weight was crushing him to the puddled ground. You didn’t waste any time and ran toward where Erik was being dragged. The soldiers seemed to be pulled strangely forward toward the pointed gate as well. You focused on his outstretched arm, even as your vision blurred from tears and soon darkness. As you ran to your brother, other guards tried to grab you but struggled to reach you. Anyone who got close enough seemed to trudge through invisible layers, barely grazing you. However, one lanky boy, no older than 18, managed to tackle you to the ground, easing the odd pressure on the guards.

“Y/N!”

Erik had been solely focused on reaching Mama. It wasn’t until he saw your small body on the muddy ground, unconscious and being dragged away, that he realized you had been left completely alone to fight off the brutes. Metal fragments began chipping from the gate and helmets of the men holding him back. Although, whatever destruction was to happen was avoided as Erik was knocked unconscious, unaware of the Lehnsherr fate. A grim thought to anyone but the prowling man in his tower.

.・。.・゜✭・.✫・゜・。..✭・.✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.✫・゜・。..

Time was lost to you as you wandered through the nice halls of the building. You had woken up in a room that barely passed as one. Beds and bodies as far as you could see. All dull, enhancing the dread of it all. As soon as you regained consciousness, the intimidating beings that somehow passed as men wrenched you away from wherever you had been sent. Time must have passed, as the rain had stopped. A cruel contrast to the gloom awaiting inside the brick building. Guards led you to a menacingly simple, deep-brown door. One sharp knock and you were tossed into the abyss, which turned out to be a tidy office. Your eyes met a pair hidden behind lowered glasses. He gave you a smile that provided no comfort. To your left stood Erik. Without hesitation, you ran to the brother you feared you might never see again. You were still lost in the world around you but knew one thing: you were not letting go. Latched around his hips, you quizzically eyed the smiling man. He took in the image of you two, his grin only growing.

“Understand this, Erik and Y/N—these Nazis, I'm not like them.”

The fact that he knew your names sent a shiver of discomfort down your aching spine. You stayed silent as he began unwrapping what seemed to be, of all things, a chocolate bar.

“Genes are the key, yes! But their goals? Blue eyes? Blond hair? Pathetic.”

Your eyes tracked his movements, not out of envy but out of unease. A man in this place was bitter, not sweet.

“Mmm! Eat the chocolate. It’s good.”

Still nameless, he pushed the bar closer to both of you, especially trying to coax you. Naturally, you wished for just a bite—as any six-year-old would—but Erik’s silence was enough to stifle that desire. You still did not know what had happened to your beloved parents, which sent a strange prickling sensation through your entire body. A mismatched sense of internal chemical stability. The man watched as you shivered, even in the moderately warm room.

“I want to see my mama.”

Erik broke the silence in his rather blunt way. You knew he was scared. He had been ever since your family was forced to evacuate the home generations of your family had been born in for a squalid apartment, ever since the Nazis decided the value—or lack thereof—of your people's lives.

“Genes are the key that unlocks the door to a new age.” It shouldn't have been surprising that he was ignored. The man in the chair was important, and what really mattered was that he was a Nazi affiliate. If there were any guards or officials in the room, they would have expected you both to show gratitude for the chance to speak with such a superior being.

“A new future for mankind. Evolution. You know what I'm talking about?”

He continued but you could barely grasp the meaning of his words. You looked to Erik for any signal of how you should react but the only emotion painted on his pale face was apprehension. Your attention was drawn back to the mustached man as he laid down a coin. The loud and proud symbol of the Nazi regime gleaned beneath the light. A light that had emerged from the laboratory you just realized to your right. Two tables enclosed by white walls adorned with various knives, blades, and other instruments you could only gasp at their purpose.

“It’s a simple thing I ask of you. A little coin is nothing compared to a big gate,” he said, turning to you. “Or the human body?”

He analyzed you, as you were a wild card in his eyes. The nameless man couldn’t interpret what you had accomplished, but that only exhilarated him further. With a simple gesture, Erik was instructed to go first. Concentration painted his face, and desperation motivated his hand. Stillness hung in the air.

“I tried, Herr Doktor. I can't... I don't... it's impossible.”

The doctor turned to you, prepared to ask you to try, but instead, he simply contemplated you. Thoughts spewed in his questionable mind before he took a deep breath.

“The one thing I can say for the Nazis is that their methods seem to produce results.”

His hands reached for a bell and rang it so casually before returning back to his luxurious leather seat, adjusting himself too comfortably.

“I'm sorry.”

Suddenly, the door opened, and two guards entered. That prickling feeling returned more intensely this time, but it was alleviated by the sight of your mother's beautiful face.

“Mama!”

Both you and Erik sprinted into her comforting embrace. You tried all you could to forcefully connect yourself to her. Like a parasite; if she were to disconnect from you, survival was no longer in your future.

“My darlings! How are you?”

Before any words could be uttered, she was ripped away. You clawed at the guard stopping you to get back to your personal safe haven. Your mama always knew what was best so her soft whispers to listen were the only reason you settled down. She would softly scold you in that way of hers that you did not listen to her once you got out of here anyways. You did not wish for mama's displeasure.

“Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to count to three, and you’re going to move the coin.”

The doctor made sure to emphasize the task to the both of you, not just Erik. You saw your brother readying himself for the argument of his inability when the light caught yet another imposition of metal. A caliber gun.

“You don’t move the coin, I pull the trigger. Understand?”

Prickling began feeling like it was burning inside of you. Your mouth dried as panic began setting in. You looked over your shoulder and could see that mama would not be of help this time: terror painted her graying skin as corpsely white.

“One.”

The countdown began, and you had no choice but to mimic Erik’s outstretched hands. How were you supposed to move it? You needed Mama's help.

“Mama!”

You were bawling as trepidation clawed its way through your throat. Even staring down the barrel of death, mama kept her voice steady for the light of her lives.

“You can do it.” Soft loving words of encouragement.

“Two.”

Time was moving too fast. Prickling to burn electricity. Yoru nerves were being set alight as you began screaming in fright. The coin wasn't moving. Why wasn't it moving? You look at Erik and he was nearly at the same level of breaking down as you but he needed to stay focused for the three of you.

“MAMA!”

Your arms were sore, twitching with the stinging sensation flowing up and down. All you wanted was to hug your mother and let her sing you to sleep, like she always did.

“Everything is alright, darling. All is well.”

No worry, just compassion. Just a mothers unbreaking love.

“Three.”

It moved.

The bullet moved.

It hit its target.

The stinging stopped.

Tears that slipped off your lashes halted their freefall. Stinging was no longer your problem as an unbearable pressure coursed through your veins. In and around, pain hurled its way through every crevice of your tiny, malnourished body. Your eyes focused on the coin as even the vomit you were going to hurl paused its journey upwards. Something was happening to you so distracting that you could not realize the destruction Erik was raging around you. The guards' metal helmets began piercing their skulls, drawing out their brains. The bell was caved in. All the medical instruments in the laboratory next door began trembling. Though, you did not need ears nor eyes for that. You could feel it. The pull of gravity towards Erik. Gravity that made its way to your eyes.

“Mama,” you whispered.

Sterling silver gleamed, the vision of the coin was coated in blood. Each of the miniscule blood vessels in your eyes began popping.

Pop.

Pop

It wasn’t prickling. It wasn’t burning. It wasn’t electricity. It was stabbing. Each cell in your eyes was being stabbed until only numbness remained. When you opened your eyes again after the pain, you could feel the blood unsticking from itself. The substance coated your iris. Your world was blinded by red.

“Outstanding!”

The sick man that was the doctor, was not horrified but pleased. Proud.

“So we unlock your gift with anger, Erik.”

You could not see him well, but you felt his steps gaining on you.

“And you, darling, grief.”

With his hands on you and Erik’s shoulders, he laughed as he led you all toward the laboratory that would become your personal purgatory.

“You and I are going to have a lot of fun together.”

.・。.・゜✭・.✫・゜・。..✭・.✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.✫・゜・。..

a/n: please let me know what you thought!! i love hearing people's thoughts (it means so much!) also comments often inspire me for future chapters (in like huge ways, so if you want to see something in the story let me know!)

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velvet-paradox · 4 months ago

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Stay (ch. 7)

A victory - Alone time with The Collector - A soft space - Where are the sons of KorTac? - An engagement - The Challenge Warnings: NSFW 18+ ONLY, strong language, explicit content, here we have some smut, oral (f receiving), fingering, foreplay.

You're a mess. You're sweating and sticky, out of breath and longing for just a pinch of reprieve. But Kruger is unrelenting in his training.

Long gone are the practice swords at your request.

"I agree; I think you are ready." He'd announced amongst the clacking of wood against wood on this chilly afternoon, you can see both your breath. He brought out a sword, nice and smooth in your hand as you wound it around, getting a feel for the blade.

"Finally! It has only been six months, you are well aware." You counter, rolling your shoulders.

"Ah, yes dear pet, six months of your sassy, witty little mouth. Six months of banter. Six months of 'when will I train with real weapons', well today is that lucky day, woman. Come now. From the top!"

You fell into step and formation, eyeing your opponent while the others who were out in the field among you, quieted down to see your two in action.

Your blades met with a sharp CLANK, it rang out like song through the open air. A stunning contrast to the wooden blades you were used to. It rattled up your bones, thrummed through your body. An evil grin tugged at the corner of your mouth.

This was exactly the challenge you were looking forward to.

You rushed him, made him grunt at your speed. Dodging and angling your body just so. Of course you were in ordinary clothing, your leathers from Gaz, a newly woven shirt with a fitted belt. If you had armor on you might not be as quick, but you'd worry about that later.

That thought shortly stumped your brain; you were thinking more and more about the future. Not just in general but with KorTac, belonging to the clan long enough to be forged armor for battle, for defending this village.

He tripped you under your boots while caught up in thought, landing hard on your back, your sword across your chest when Kruger brought his down against you.

"Pay attention pet!"

"I'm trying!" You barked as you swiftly got up.

"Well try harder, I know you can. You know you can."

His beratement only made you hone in your next moves, the gathering and cheering of the others, Anso in tow whooping your name as you battled. It made you faster, lunging with your sword, shouting at him, advancing and retreating in a dance. Even Kruger was quite impressed.

Out of breath and the victor you laid out in the grass next to him, he put his forearm to bump together in solidarity and praise for your hard work.

"Do you have any heirs Kruger?"

"How many times must I tell you; you are safe enough to call me Sebastian."

"Just sounds odd. At this point it would be as if I ask you to call me Y/N instead of pet." You snorted and covered your face in hysterics, your stomach tight as you chuckled. You hadn't heard your birth name in so long. And honestly the last time you did hear it, it was being sobbed out by your parents. Not exactly the best memory to come to mind.

"Surprised you remember your official title! I have a little one on the way, since you asked."

"Are you nervous for them?" You rolled your head over to him in the grass.

"Nervous? To raise an heir? Nein." He shook his head and sat up on his elbows as he explained. "Look at all the children on KorTac, we all have taken turns watching over another ones' babes. It's the communication between friends and families. Prices children are my children, their yours as well. You can teach them something only you know for certain, what sagas from your village is new to them. You help, as you helped Keeva birth the twins, where help is needed, so no pet, I am not nervous." Kruger said with a shrug and groaned when he got up, extending his hand out to help you up.

….

You're now a mess in a very, very different way.

After your bath, before you could even cover and shield your dignity König was on you. Not in a predatory way by the way he grabbed you up in his arms, laughing and swinging you around, water dripping and staining everything in sight. You giggled for him to put you down, which he did, enjoying watching your naked and wet body fall and bounce onto his bed.

"König!"

"Yes my pet, say my name. Fuck it; scream it, shout it, cry it out." He said, crawling on top of you, his hands dipping the bed at such an angle. You felt a little silly with the way your legs opened up to him. "I heard from a little birdie that you bested Sebastian out on the field today."

"I did." You sang and cupped his face, his stubble tickling the softness of your palms.

"Oh my, I told you pet. You're stronger than you give yourself credit." König snuggled into your hands, a smirk on his face as he pushed your knees apart with his own, spreading you wider. "I think a reward is in order, don't you?"

"We cannot have sex. You know that." You were startled by the sadness in your tone, you wanted this man. You wanted his eyes on you, his hands on your body, your face, in your hair. Inside you.

When you two fooled around the other night it was everything but that. You did not not in fact regret what you did with him. Quite the opposite. Gods how you wanted it but both of you knew, in order for your marriage to be true you'd need at least one witness. He hadn't even proposed and you were already unraveling yourself to him.

"I know. But I can still reward you in another way… if you let me." He wiggled his eyebrows and quirked up his face. You bounced your thumb off his bottom lip. "You remember what I did last time?"

How could you not?!

You've laid with men before but none had ever put their mouth on your sex! To your surprise you enjoyed it so much so that you came rather quickly and in quick succession it left your breathless.

You licked your lips and nodded.

"Use your words."

"Bitte, put your mouth on me once more. Reward me for my triumph." You panted, brushing back his hair from his face.

"What a good pet I have, so obedient, well trained." König cooed, delightfully teasing you. He leaned down and kissed your forehead, rubbed the shape of his lips over your eyelids, the tip of your nose before giving in to desire, slotting his mouth over yours. You both moaned at the hotness of each others breath, how perfectly you fit together.

The crackles of the fire, the glittering of the candles, the weight and heat of the man above you made you needy. You wanted this. You needed this. Adrenaline from the victory of the day and now this new sensation, this act König was enjoying and willing to give.

What a treat!

The Collector worked his way down your throat, holding your jaw in his heavy hand, turning your head to his liking as he left sloppy, open mouthed kissed over your still damp and cooling flesh. He bit you, he licked you, he sucked on your skin, familiarizing his hands on your body, the shape of you, your curves. The dips of your body, how your legs fit over his shoulders, how you smelled. How you tasted.

With a devious grin and wink König opened his mouth, a long line of his saliva slipped between your legs, hitting the hood of your clit only a second before he slurped it back up making you arch. He kept you open and vulnerable, raw and exposed as he hummed against the apex of your thighs. He's loud as he laps at your center, enjoying your yelps and wiggles, writhing from this newfound pleasure.

He holds your thighs over his bare shoulders, your heels dig into the scarred muscles, you can feel the blades of his shoulders shift when he holds you open with the palms of his hot hands. His thumbs oh so politely peel your folds apart, the point of his tongue pokes at your hole. You whine and grab at his hair, tugging him further into your cunt. This sensation is new and delightful. Your hips roll on their own, bucking up for more, more suction of your clit, more tongue fucking into you.

He's continues his torment, chuckling darkly against your center, taking turns to kiss your clit or take a chunk of thigh between his teeth, scratching his blunt nails down the inner muscles of them.

You're an absolute wreck. König is smart and clever, he can read your tells like none other. The moment he sees or hears something you like, you are done for! His middle finger sinks in deep, your pussy has been patiently waiting for some form of penetration, fluttering around the thick digit. He gawks up at you in adoration. His lips swollen and covered in your shiny arousal. You've never seen anything any more beautiful.

The flat pad of his thumb barely, just barely touched your clit and you were moaning and drooling.

He knew what he was doing and he wasn't a slouch about it. He was testing you, helping you teeter off the edge of an orgasm. One you were ready to let go of.

"König…" You sobbed feeling his twist and roll his wrist, flicking your clit lightly, adding extra pleasure and pressure to your current state. You felt feral. As feral as König was looking up at you, between your thighs, resting his face there.

"Do you know just how stunning you are? You have made me feel more alive than any hunt, any raid. I am so so ready for you, pet." König confessed, eyes lowered so his lashes touched the tops of his cheekbones, watching where his, now two fingers, were splitting you open.

"R-ready for what? What do you mean?" Your breath hitched your throat, your free hand holding your breast.

"You have got your teeth in me, pet. I want to give you everything I have got. I promise you pet, you are all that I want. I may have stolen you that day but in turn you have stolen my heart." König was confessing his love for you. A blessing and a curse, you thought. He hands that were on you, the hands that were in you had been used for malicious intent, cruelty and thirst. So why did they feel so fucking delectable enough to make you cum?

"Can I ask you something?"

Your finally calmed down, your breathing had finally evened out after three soul crushing orgasms. He picked up on how squirrelly you were getting from his actions, bucking and rolling your hips. His hands couldn't hold you still any longer so a few rapid slaps to your pussy to keep you in line seemed to work. He sucked you off his fingers as he came over your mound, smearing his seed all over your cunt. Staining you, marking you as his own.

"Of course." König hummed, holding you close to his chest. He kissed the top of your head.

"When we marry, officially… will your heirs be in attendance?" You craned your neck to see his curious expression. Thick eyebrows twisted, some of his dark red hair had stuck to his forehead at random angles from his exertion.

"My heirs?"

"Ja silly, your sons. Where are they? I have not heard a word about them since I came to KorTac," you shrugged and were a little more confused when a smile, a handsome one at that, graced his face. "Are they raiding? Traveling? Where are they?"

König cleared his throat and tilted your chin to meet his still sultry gaze. "There is something I have been meaning to tell you, pet. I did not know when or how to tell you but… I do not have any heirs, no sons, no daughters."

"How do you mean?" you worried your bottom lip after he ran his thumb over it. "How are you the leader of a clan if you have no heirs to inherit KorTac?"

"Not yet. I have had plenty of sex in my lifetime, most meaningless and there for me to drown out the noise and expectations of being a leader. A lot of energy to expel but, I can never fully reach that realm of being able to cum with a partner. With myself, absolutely. No question. But it had always been something I have dealt with. The clan dare not ask why."

"But you cum with me, every time we have fooled around." You pondered.

"Exactly," König slowly moved to roll you on to your back, his forearms caging you in, the weight of him crushing into your ribs in the softest way possible. "You are the only woman to do it. It must be fated by the Gods that you can do this to me, make me safe enough to complete. Which means, my dear dear pet, you and only you," König pushed up on one hand to cover your lower belly with his palm, his fingertips digging into the skin he found there. "You will carry the sons of KorTac. You will be the mother of KorTac, so round and full of me. Of us. The sagas and all who come to live after we have arrived in Valhalla will know your name."

Your mouth went slack. You would have fame, a legacy, a saga of your own. One that would be passed down from generation to generation. You didn't even think of that bit! You thought he would have surely put you in the ground by the end of month one. Your mouth also went slack at the way he was talking about fucking you, how you would be pregnant with your children.

"You are going to cum inside me? How will you know when it will take?"

"As long as it takes, my dear. I will fucking cum inside you every night from our wedding night on, you will always be full of me whether you are with child or not." You shuddered at his words, König smiling at your pretty face, pressing his forehead to yours, looking so deeply into your eyes. "Does that excite you?"

You swallowed hard, watching his tongue come out to lick over his lips. "Ja."

He chuckled darkly before kissing you hard and fast on the mouth. "As you can feel, I am too."

….

"I am too small, pet! I cannot reach." Tove whined as she wobbled over your shoulders, her added weight up there made you tighten your core.

"You can reach, raise your arms all the way up."

"And just what are you two darlings up to?" Keeva asked, coming outside of their homestead, carrying the twins.

Price had requested your help in celebrating Keeva's birthday, hanging a banner outside the house to signal any and everyone who happened by. Laswell had also been asked, her job was to make a special cake, hiding it in the back of the yard with presents. She at least had not been caught red handed.

"Happiest of birthday's Keeva!" You sang, holding her daughter once the banner was finally in place.

"It certainly is," she beamed and kissed Tove's head before you brought her down to hug your friend. "I have a healthy family, great friends and you this year. Hopefully for forever."

"Did König say…"

"Price. Can't tell that man anything! We are all excited for your extended stay."

She didn't say no when you reached for one of the twins, giving your friend a bit of a reprieve for even the briefest of moments.

König gave you a look when the party started, eyeing you with a baby cradled against you. You could feel his blue eyes darting to your belly, his eyes did that thing that you had picked up where you knew he was smiling under the hood.

Laswell and her wife brought the surprise cake out later that evening, everyone cheered and sang songs. Games were played. Flowers were given, presents of new boots, cloaks and salves were given to Keeva as well.

You missed that part though, too pre-occupied with König's mouth against your throat on the opposite side of the house, his thigh pressed up between your legs.

"We should not be doing this." You whined, trying to deter him to avail. One thing you learned about König is that he would do as he pleased, when he pleased. "We'll get caught."

"I am the leader, my pet, who will stop me from devouring something so sweet, hmmm?" He groaned when you started rocking your hips against his leg, even a little friction was better than nothing. "Be good for me and I shall reward you again."

You lifted the bottom of his hood and ducked beneath it to kiss him, you grabbed at his cloak, at his thicker sweater, imbedding your fingers into the designs.

"You look so pretty holding a baby."

"Imagining one of our own are you?" you smiled against his soft lips.

"Several in fact," König licked the seam of your lips, pressing himself further into you. "You will be full of me whether you are pregnant or not, keeping you seeded, rooted with me. I cannot wait."

He kissed you hard before spinning you around, pushing you face first against the side of Price's house, your hands up against the smooth wood as König leaned into your ear.

"Do it now then." You panted.

"Afraid not sweetheart but know this," his heavy chest pressed into your back, making sure you felt his full weight against you, thick hands covering your own against the house. "Gods help who we have as witness on our wedding night. I will be breeding you."

…. König wasn't breeding you that night but he was for sure rutting up into, your hands in his hair, holding his face. You two raced home, through the doors of the great hall, eager to grope and fondle each other. You tore off his mask, his cloak, his shirt, leaning your head back for him to kiss and suck at your flesh while you moved down to his pants.

Everything was rushed until you were both naked, climbing into his lap now with a wicked grin.

"You are going to be the death of me." König admitted, moving his hips against your own, his cock getting slicker by second, your arousal coast the throbbing muscle between you.

"Not before I give you sons." You smiled into the first kiss, holding him tightly to your chest. "And daughters." König sighed into your mouth, licking at your tongue, nipping your lip before assaulting your mouth in a fervor.

You lazily stroked the head of his cock, circling the forming pre-cum around the crown of it, smiling even more when you felt the big man jerk and moan. You kept a decent pace, feather light touches, you were so tempted to just get on your knees already and take him into your waiting wet mouth. He has already put his mouth on, why shouldn't you return the favor?

But König had other such plans, grabbing your arms and holding them behind your back, rocking and bucking his hips up at just the right angle to make you squirm. He pulled away from your mouth, all swollen lips and glassy, passionate eyes. It would take a thousand lifetimes to get over that look.

You awoke that morning in a fever, König had tangled himself up behind you, covered only from the waist down, loosely. The fabric of the blankets on your skin, his face pressed up against your shoulder, surprisingly not snoring. His large hands resting on your waist looked massive, especially when you covered it with your own.

You had just rolled over to face him, brushing away some hair from his eyes when you heard heavy footfalls in the distance. Your smile faded and turned into a look of shock. The door to König's bedroom was being pummeled from the other side, making the man jolt awake and grab you close.

"Whose there?!"

"I am sorry to wake you," Soap opened the door, looking wild. "Good morning, pet. There are boats arriving to shore, wanted to make sure you were awake to greet our guests."

König nodded and waved him off before rubbing at his eyes. "Well that is one way to wake up. You look… well rested."

He popped an eyebrow at you before sitting up, bringing you with him to rest against the wall.

"I am. You are as well, you did not even snore last night." You smiled and went to rise, only for König to drag you back to his warmth. You looked so cute in the morning, you thought.

Your old life was slipping through the cracks like sand through your fingers.

"Roach!"

"Horangi, brother." König grabbed Kim's hand and brought him to knock their foreheads together.

"Keegan, hello brother!"

"Alejandro."

König ushered you around, greeting these old friends and acquaintances as each one of their boats slunk up to shore. The colorful banners to signify each clan that sailed towards you was beautiful. Cardinal reds, lilac and lavender borders, a shade so close it might mistaken for the sun. You didn't know why they were all arriving, a possible meeting of the minds for s successful future raid after the winter months. Possible sharing of gifts, maybe? You didn't know but you bowed and shook hands, excited for what news anyway.

….

After a terrific dinner spread, König touched your shoulder and made his way up to his throne, taking a wide seat, hands clasped beneath the hood, under his chin.

The great hall noticed at once, attention was quietly required. The music faded to a stop, all of KorTac and its' guests set down their horns and food. So quiet and still you could hear a mouse scurry past. Even the baby goat in Anso's hands quieted their bleating.

"Friends, I have some news I wish to share."

You swallowed hard. What was he to say?

"I have made a decision, a sound one at that." He continued as he leaned forward, somehow seated looking massive to the halls' crowd.

"Are we joining forces with Los Vaqueros come spring?" Someone asked.

"Are we raiding North again?" Another questioned.

"Nein nein. Something far more important," you watched König turn his head towards your table, tempted to pull your pillow from beneath you and cover your face with it. "It appears I have found a suitable partner, a relationship I did not foresee, the Gods had not granted me such a luxury until now. My future wife, is among this lovely crowd."

Hooting and hollering rang out, everyone looking amongst themselves, you could see The Collector was pleased with his gesture.

"You may know her or of her by now. If you have not, I ask that you greet her with excitement," you started to panic, you weren't one for large gatherings like this. KorTac was big enough on its' own let alone all these guests. "Pet, will you join me?"

You got up from the bench, shifting on nervous feet you made your way over to him, he stay seated for a moment before snapping his fingers. Gaz appeared with a grin, opening up a beautifully carved wooden box. He opened it to show you its' contents.

A braided and dyed beautifully colored ribbon, it was both hard and soft. The blue an identical to the shade of König's eyes, a softer shade, matching your eye color woven together.

"Go ahead. Take it out." Gaz said.

It felt so smooth in your palm, fascinated with its beauty you didn't realize König had stood, looking down at you before the audience hushed.

"I had Gaz make this for us, pet. You already have your arm band from your village, now you will have this for the ceremony," König took the other end of the handfastening ribbon and wrapped your wrist before his own, slotting his fingers between yours. "Will you be my wife, my pet?"

It didn't take long before you let out a breath to say, "Ja."

The great hall lit up, whooping and clamoring, someone banged on a shield somewhere when he leaned down to hug you. You held onto him tightly, this felt so real, so official now. You were to be married to The Collector.

He kissed you through the hood, getting more of a reaction from the clan.

"I also have something else to tell you, my dear."

"Oh König you spoil me!" You smiled against the mask, cupping his jaw.

"As one so should. I have bought your--"

"I object to this union!"

A rushed gasp hung in the air over the excitement of your engagement. Everyone looked about the hall, eyebrows narrowed, more questions than answers until you all witnessed Ada begin to stand from her place by the hearth. She looked around the room with her head held high.

She made her way through the rows of tables and benches, pushing people aside, her eyes locked on yours as she righted her self in front of you.

"And what is your reasoning?" You voiced. You were surprised your voice didn't break.

"Because it should be me. I was here first! I should be the wife of The Collector, everyone here knows I am his favorite." Another hushed gasp was felt collectively, König squeezed your hand, giving your the confidence to stand your ground.

"Aren't you everyone's favorite?" Soap chimed in with a confused look on his face, eyes darting back and forth.

"Shut up Soap! It should be me getting that handfastening, not her!"

"What makes you think that you, Ada, are eligible to be The Collectors wife, hmm? Throwing a tantrum in front of guests and the clan, shameful."

Ada scoffed. "Like I stated before, I had him first. I know him better than you do, I have slept with him more times than I care to count, both Soap and Ghost can attest to that fact!"

"Actually a woman named Sloane was my first." König grumbled low enough that note everyone nearby was privy to it.

"You know what I meant! So tell me, pet; what makes you worthy to be König's wife?"

"Because…" you straightened your back, standing tall and speaking loud and clear with the aide of the big man next to you. You cleared your throat. "I was chosen by the Gods to birth the heirs of KorTac."

"What?" Ada furrowed her brow at you, anguish on her face if she wasn't being so cunty to you. She looked up at König with a sour expression.

"Is this true, brother?" Kruger's voice echoed the chamber.

"Indeed it is."

"You lie!" Ada pointed at you, on the verge of tears it looked as well.

"What good would it be to lie to you?"

"Because that's just not--"

"Just not what, Ada?" You lowered your voice, narrowing your eyes at her, reminding her that only herself and you knew what was being said.

"How is this possible?"

"I think you and I know why."

"You… with her?" Ada ground her jaw then and made a brash exclamation. "I challenge you to a duel."

"For what?"

"For his hand! For KorTac."

"You cannot be serious." You balked, the hall anxious and full of uneasiness.

"Oh I am very serious, pet. I will win his heart and you shall fail."

"Oh I doubt that."

"And why is that?" Ada sneered and crossed her arms over her large chest.

"You and I are very different. Your job is to fuck. My job is to fight."

Tagging: @powerfultenderness

#könig #könig x reader #konig x you #konig x reader #konig x female reader #cod imagine #konig imagine #konig fanfiction #cod fanfiction #cod fanfic

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firelordsfirelady · 8 months ago

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XIV. Paroxysmal of Anger

Author: @firelordsfirelady

Imagine: When Y/N—a princess of one of the Water Tribes—is told she’s leaving her tribe, she never expects that she’s to be betrothed to the Fire Lord’s son, nor was she prepared to be exiled the very day she arrived at the Fire Nation. With her life in the hands of her new fiancée, how will life change for the princess?

Pairing: Zuko x F!Reader

Trigger warnings: arranged marriage, feelings of fear, banishment, mentions of burns/abuse, frustration, violence, betrayal, language

Word Count: 1824

Destined to be Yin and Yang

I own no rights to Avatar the Last Airbender or any of the characters/story.

Author’s Notes

The characters as all aged up so Zuko’s banishment happens when he’s 16

Keep in mind I am bringing a unique world with inspiration from ATLA in their characters, some of the events that happen, bending, etc. Not many things may align or occur with what happened in the show. It’s intended that way, so I hope you enjoy it regardless.

See Y/N’s inspiration here.

Destined to be Yin and Yang Soundtrack (YouTube)

A few days later, the weather outside was much warmer than the frigid air of the Water tribe, so I was happily barefoot on the deck of the boat as I wore my lighter water tribe dress. I was mindlessly practicing my bending on the deck when Zuko approached me. Guiding the small strand of water, Zuko was briefly surrounded by dancing water stream before I let the stream return back home to the sea around us. I smiled as I turned around to look at the Prince. He wore a short-sleeved black top that showed off his caramel skin and made him look like a badass.

“I will never tire of weather as beautiful as this.” I walked closer to Zuko before I asked, “Are you ready for me to finally win?” Zuko’s cocky grin made my heart race as I focused on the battle ahead.

I dodged the fireball Zuko threw at me before I used a wave of ice to slide towards him before swiping my leg to try and knock the firebender off of his feet. Anticipating my move, Zuko countered me by grabbing my ankle and sliding me the opposite way on my ice. He quickly let off three fireballs my way. I rolled to avoid the first one then put up an ice shield that provided enough protection for me to stand up and ninja-roll into a standing position and fire a ball of water to put out the other fireball.

I summoned a tornado of water and centered it around Zuko. Gracefully dancing around the tornado, my limbs flowed in the air like the element I was born to bend as Zuko rushed out of the water devil. I twirled in a low circle as the water tornado changed into wave crashing into Zuko and knocking him over then I froze him in place. I was focusing on the ice hold when Iroh loud tea slurping sounded in my ear. Letting out a yelp, I lost concentration on my hold of Zuko and fell on my butt. I flicked the hair that had fallen over my face back where it belonged then brushed myself off before I stood up.

“Lesson learned--” I said after connecting with the ground again as Zuko leg swiped me and straddled me as his hand wrapped around my throat. “Don’t get distracted.” Zuko smiled victoriously for a moment before I cockily smiled at him.

“You really do like this position huh?” Zuko’s eyes widened at my brash comment and his grip faltered, which gave me the opportunity to buck my hips upwards. Throwing Zuko offbalance, I quickly grabbed his wrists as I flipped us over and straddled him before leaning down to whisper in his ear.

“I like this one better.” The intoxicating smell of rainwater and moss overwhelmed my senses, and I struggled slightly to keep my words even. Smiling victoriously as I leaned back and stood up. “I say I won this one.” I offered my hand to help the Firebender off of the group. With a face as red as a tomato, he accepted my hand to help him stand up.

“I definitely won that one.” Zuko said as he smoothed down his shirt. “I had you on the ground first.”

“I technically had you on the ground until Iroh worked on your behalf.” I smirked as Zuko rolled his eyes at me. “Can’t you just let me have this one victory?”

“No.” I rolled my eyes and sighed dramatically.

“Men and their fragile egos.” I said as I placed the back of my hand slightly against my forehead before I leaned slightly to one side. “How do they survive anything?” I laughed at myself as I straightened up and looked at Iroh who had a huge grin on his face as he looked at Zuko and me.

“Look at the two of you getting along so well.” Iroh beamed, and Zuko immediately froze beside me as he shook his head.

“She is to be my wife.” Zuko said in an even tone despite the blush on his face as he avoided looking at me. “It is my duty to get along with her.”

For some odd reason, the way Zuko said that hurt my heart, but I put a smile on my lips.

“Why don’t the two of you join me for dinner this evening?” Iroh never stopped beaming as he looked between us. “I heard the chef’s have gotten a fresh catch from the local fishery.” I bowed to the older firebender in appreciation.

“I’d love to.” I smiled as I straightened then excused myself to go bathe and change.

A few hours later, I was seated around a large wooden table with Iroh sitting across from me and Zuko to my right. The conversation was light in the room as we all spoke of how the day had been and other casual conversation. A light knock on the door sounded, and several Fire Nation members walked in to deliver a plate of fish to the three of us.

“Thank you, Shisam,” I said with a smile as the fish was placed down in front of me. “How was the fishery?” Shisam gave me a soft smile back before he bowed.

“The fishery was the fishery,” He said lightly, and I let out a small chuckle. “But I did hear that the Avatar is on Kyoshi Island.” The sound of a fork hitting a plate sounded as the words came out of the crew member’s mouth, and I didn’t need to look to know the fork belonged to Zuko.

“Set course for Kyoshi’s Island right away, and ready the rhinos.” Zuko stood up and began to walk away from the table as his long robes flowed behind him.

“Are you going to finish the fish?” Iroh asked, stopping Zuko mid stride.

“I was going to finish it later.” Zuko said as he grabbed his plate of fish and left. I chuckled at Iroh’s disappointment before sliding my plate over to him.

“You can have mine.” I gave the older man a smile. “I want to join them this time.” Iroh frowned at me.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” His face twisted in concern. “It will not be pretty. Zuko is liable to burn the entire village down to get the Avatar.”

“I won’t lie and say that I think it’s the best idea, but I have a feeling it’s important for me to go.” Iroh nodded in agreement.

“You may be right in that, but I also worry because the Kyoshi warriors are exceptional at fighting.” I nodded as I heard Iroh’s concern in his voice.

“Perhaps I shall see if Zuko needs me.” I bowed to Iroh, who smiled at me.

“Whether the Prince admits it or not, he does need you.” Iroh's soft words were spoken as I reached the threshold of the door, but I didn’t say anything as I walked away. I slowly walked towards Zuko’s room, but the man himself came rushing out of his room dressed in a warrior’s uniform. I had just opened my mouth to speak when he started talking.

“You are to stay on the boat.” Zuko ordered as I fell in stride with him as he made haste towards the deck. “I do not need anyone getting in my way of capturing the Avatar.” I frowned at his words.

“I am—“

“That’s an order.” Zuko turned to look at me as he practically growled, and I narrowed my eyes as I stepped into his personal space.

“I am your fiancée,” I said in a low growl back. “I do—“

“You are a waterbender that my father decided to place by my side,” Zuko’s voice was angry as he turned around to face me as we arrived on deck, and it drew the attention of the crew. “The only thing you’re good at is being a training partner.” My heart seized in my chest as I narrowed my eyes and clenched my fists.

“The only thing you’re good at is being an asshole.” My words were low enough so only Zuko could hear them. “You are so caught up in catching the Avatar that—“

“Maybe I’ve been playing into your fantasies for too long.” Zuko’s shout made the world stop around me. “You are nothing short of a distraction and—“ The sound of my palm connecting with Zuko’s cheek was enough to send me over the edge.

“Perhaps it was me who was playing into your fantasies, Prince Zuko.” His formal title came out of my mouth like it left a bitter taste on my tongue as I seethe in anger.

“You are nothing more than a lost Prince trying to earn his daddy’s respect.” I no longer whispered the words, and I gave no care to whoever was listening. I saw only red as I looked at the Prince, who was now staring at me in shock. “You want the respect of a man who has never ever given a shit about you and has only sought to destroy who you are.” Shaking in rage, I continued.

“But if you want to call one of the few people aboard this ship who actually believes in you a distraction,” I narrowed my eyes as tears blurred my visions. “Then you have truly lost your damn mind.” Turning on my heel, I saw a blurry vision of Iroh as I walked away from the Prince. “I hope you get your fucking Avatar.” I yelled as I opened the door to the cabins and walked inside before tears fell down my face and I quietly added, “Maybe then I’ll actually mean something to you.”

I paid no mind as the boat started moving again within an hour, nor did I pay any mind to the knock on my door shortly afterwards. The pencil in my hand worked on the sketch on the paper in front of me, and I didn’t answer as another knock, louder than the first, sounded on my door.

“Y/N,” Zuko’s voice sounded from the other side of the door. “Open the door.” I rolled my eyes and ignored him as I continued to draw the picture of a waterbender. A couple of minutes passed of silence before Zuko knocked again. I practically growled as I put the pencil down and flung open the door to see the shocked expression on Zuko’s face. Without saying anything to him, I slammed the door in his face.

“Consider your order followed.” I growled through the door as I sat back down in my chair. Seconds passed before Zuko’s footsteps moved away from the door and I heard his door across the hall close. The organ responsible for my heartbeat felt dead as I crossed my arms across my chest.

Zuko’s words earlier had hurt me deeply, and I was too hurt to talk to him right now.

Tag List @chevysstuffs @puttyly @ginger24880 @night-fall-moon @junieshohoho @0kauy @coolgirl458 @hypnoticbeing @angelruinz @preeyansha @playboygeniusphilanthropist @ssonniiu @chi-ara @hagridshaircare @stell404 @kyo-kyo1 @herondale-lightworm @simonsbluee @nadlx33333 @nerdisthenewcool @jewelsrules @soggycrout0n

#avatar imagine #zuko imagine #zuko x reader #avatar the last airbender #prince zuko #destined to be yin and yang

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luffy-addict-author · 2 years ago

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Pairing- Luffy/xreader

Warning mentions: 18+ and smut, that's it-

Basically: still riled up from a small battle, luffy needs you to pent up his energy.

Info: Requested by anon a long time ago

The attack wasn't a threat. It could barely be called a attack with how easy the opposite bad guys were taken down. On his first blow, luffy didn't resist his defense which already had the bad guys screaming and scurrying back to where they came from.Now because of those stupid people, the nerves in him started to wound up rapidly, zigzagging under his tanned skin.

Luffy blinked back at the circumstance as his back slid into the railing of the ship. His hands were holding the top of the railing behind him as he scowled and slouched even further. His lack of patience drove one of his legs to briefly jump up and down.

Now that had his attention. He stood at the same place for a test, wondering where these feelings were coming from. As seconds passed, luffy jerked away from the railing with a jump, his urges wining away. Sure he could normally never be still for too long and had to he reminded to many times to just sit down but this was way different.

Normally his impatient nerves wouldn't claw at him and now that they had the slightest taste of a battle, his skin was practically vibrating from the anticipation which he really couldn't comprehend how to satisfy- till he shifted his head around him, fixating his eyes on something, or rather, someone.

His eyes zeroed on your form, walking freely by a corner of the ship. Actually, cross that earlier point, he now had one single thought on how to release all this brimming energy inside him.

As soon as you felt him swing you into a room, most definitely without your will, you could tell something was wrong.

The lights in your rooms were still out but the daylight gave you sufficient sight to detect the wall he drastically cornered you in. concerned at his abrupt appearance, you opened your mouth to question his intention before he halted your words with a severe kiss.

utterly surprised, you shift deeper on the wall, gingerly placing your fingers on his shoulders, tempted to push him away at the first instinct but he pulls away just as fast as he went in, gripping your wrists before sliding his palm on yours, fingers locked together.

you frown your brows at him. "luffy, what the hell?" then finally notice the slight shuddering running up and down his hands. "-And why are you shaking?!"

"nothing." he lightly drags out, making eye contact and you suck in a breath at the intensity in them. Despite his previous claim, he adds on. "I have a lot of energy left."

your eyelashes flutter, waiting for him to continue more clearly. his finger's tighten around yours. "And I need your help."

more confusion pricks at your mind and you push him away to breath properly- even though he barely budges. "Right, how am I supposed to help you with that?" you ask inridiculously.

he leans his head closer, an almost desperate look in his dark eyes. "I want you to ride it out of me." Luffy utters.

You are ready to say something back but snap your mouth shut when you seriously consider what your boyfriend just said. Your brain short-circuits, leaving you to gape at him with equal disbelief along with equal flustration. However, the more the seconds stretched, you came to realize just how serious he was.

"Luffy, it's the middle of the day and we are not having sex righ-"

. . .

Okay- screw that. You were definitely riding something out of him right now.

You hadn't actually planned to agree with his very sudden demands but somewhere between pleadings and very appropriate touches, along with -now that you thought about it, those were a lot of yes coming out of your mouth- you just so happened to be drunk on him and decided to fuck it all to hell.

Which, yes, does justify why you were strangling his hips, hands curled in a tight grip beside his chest as he unrealistically fucked you deep open, muscles tense in restraint, holding himself back for your sake.

Clenching the sheets tighter under you, you moaned once again as his dick jerked against your inner walls. Your insides were aching because of his throbbing cock that stayed snug inside you, still painfully hard despite your heat. Being aware of that made you strangely more erotic and the heat building inside you again was tearing apart.

Shifting to sit more securely, luffy groaned underneath you at the movement, a whisper of your name following behind. You could see the sweat gathering a layer on his warm skin, slowly dripping down his chest and distracted from that, you almost screamed at the unexpected sharp thrust you received from him.

"Nghh- Luffy!" Gasping, you clenched around him tighter, eyes watering. Skin flushed, your hand slapped on his wrist, gripping it tight just to hold in your ground.

"Sorry." He whimpered, raising his free hand up to wipe the wetness on the side of his face. "I can't hold back anymore. I need to- faster, deeper- just please mhhm- " his words rushed in a gasp when you moved again, slightly bouncing to get the beverage, making a shudder go down his back.

Huffing your cheeks out, you gripped his hands, bringing each of them on your thighs and he instinctively squeezed the softness of your skin there, sliding them at the back of your upper knees to pull your hips more forward, forcing you to yelp out a moan. Luffy moaned back, panting heavily when you got a better posture to circle your hips, noticing too much of how his cock dragged inside your cunt.

You could feel your needs doubling each seconds till you were nodding your head, peering towards his face. You were barely breathing when the words rushed after your lips. "Go faster. Luffy- don't hold back anymo-" your sentence wasn't even finished as he exhaled a deep breath, fisting one of your thighs while his other arm circled around your back, flipping your position.

"Hey! What the-" Now under him, your face practically burned with his cock still inside you, now sliding in deeper. Spreading your legs apart more, he shifted closer, hips slamming sharply against yours. The both of you groaned loudly at the impact of his thrust.

"Oh god- Fuck, finally!-" luffy whined out, bracing his both hands on your knees, careful to keep them spread open as he liked. You whimpered his name weakly, straining your arms for support. Now in control, he wrapped your legs around his waist and you crossed them securely around him while putting your hands on his broad shoulders.

Aching badly, you almost regretted giving luffy permission as he pulled himself back and then roughly squeezed in without a warning. Though you were the one being the receiver, he moaned sensually, fluttering his eyes to look at you but nonetheless ending in a moaning mess each time you clenched tight on his cock. His movements became more harsher, hands groaping tighter, pants getting heavier and the continuse abuse towards your hole way more enthusiastic.

Your fingers curl lightly on his shoulders, few tears gliding away. "Oh luf-f, I don't ahhh- damn it." Swallowing thickly, It's only when you throwed your head back with a smooth cry that the rhythm inside you stuttered. "Fuck y/n-" his whole skin was flushed when he spoke. "How do you, ah- sound so fucking good-" He shuddered heatly. "Feel so fucking good- shit!- c-can't stop, I-" you forced him down for a kiss, feeling way too sensitive and overwhelmed from his words alone. It might have been a switch on with the sounds being released in your mouth, hands leaving your knees to the soft skin of your hips instead, making you buck against his own hips on command.

You tangled your fingers in his dark hair, deepening the kiss that soon turned into you and him licking each other's tongue lazily, casually bumping teeth now and then. You squirmed against him as he rubbed his thumb on your clit, another finger joining to add in the stimulation.

He was still looking at you with his tired eyes when your body jerked slightly on him, forcing your eyes to open up. His lips slowly curved up in a lazy smirk, dark eyes glinting wickedly. "I can feel you getting close again." He purposely strikes a lick on the warm skin of your neck, voice just above a breath. "Shit, I can go hours fucking inside of your tight heat." He whines softly, tucking his head above your shoulder. "I think I am gonna be close too. I wanna cum inside you so bad." He rocks his hips faster, grinding against you, tightening the thin knot in your stomach more.

Moaning absently, your head fogs up so thickly you barely realize you had came on him until you hear his gasp, his cock twitching roughly before following behind you. Sore, your legs slide down from his waist at the same time you freely enjoy the feeling of being filthy fill, kissing him with passion and pouring the rest of your heathy arousal into his mouth and all along his tongue.

He kisses back with intimidate force, lightly stroking his after-orgasm cock while pinning your wrists to control the fierce motions of your lips. He pumps his dick harder, slightly trying to grind on you because ah well, shit he is hard again.

#luffy #luffy smut #one piece #luffy x reader #luffy x y/n #monkey d luffy #one piece smut #one piece x reader #one piece x y/n #luffy scenarios

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angstywaifu · 5 months ago

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Permission

Lost Sister Bonus Chapter - Garrick POV If you haven't read my Lost Sister series or finished it, this is spoilers for the last few parts. So if you don't want to be spoiled for that, read those first. But I feel like the title explains what's about to happen. Enjoy.

Garrick Tavis x OC (Ophelia Riorson)

The Lost Sister Masterlist | Masterlist

I’d walked down this hall countless times in my life. Knocked on that door countless times in my life. Never had I been scared to talk to Fen in my life. Yet here I was, practically shaking with fear as I walked towards the door to his office at the end of the hall. The small box burning a hole in my pocket. Mum had told me to bring it with me, proof of the dedication I had for what I was about to ask of him.

We were on the brink of war. Aretia had descended into chaos in the last few days. And it was becoming clear we’d be heading into battle any day now. And out there anything could happen. No guarantee your friends or family would come back. Meaning I had to do this before it was too late. I had to have his permission. His blessing. Mum was confident he would give it to me.

“You’re the only one he trusts fully with her besides Xaden and Bodhi. He knows you’ll do anything to protect her.”

I hoped she was right. It wouldn’t feel right asking her one day without his blessing. He was the only parent she had. I knew if anything happened to him I could ask Xaden. But something deep down told me I needed to ask him. Knew it would be important to her in some way.

I stop in front of the door, hand raised and ready to knock. I could do this. Easier said than done. I almost jump at how loud my knock is on the door. The sound echoing more than usual down the hall. Had it always been that loud?

“Come in.” The familiar voice calls from the other side.

I push open the door, Fen already looking up at me from where he stands behind a table with a map sprawled open in front of him. Various figures are scattered across it, most likely noting points of interest and where our units are stationed. Before I can get a good look, he quickly moves around it, putting himself in front of it to block it from view.

”Garrick, you are definitely not who I was expecting to have knocking on my door. Is everything ok?” He asks, his brow furrowing as he looks at me, most likely noting the worry etched into my features.

”Yes, everything is fine sir.” I say with a nod, clearly way to quickly as he chuckles slightly at me.

He reaches forward, placing a hand on my shoulder, guiding me over to his desk. ”You sure, you seem a bit on edge.”

I lower myself into the chair in front of his desk as he takes his place behind it. Fen leaning back in his chair as he rests his hands in his lap while looking at me. I couldn’t back out now. But all I wanted to do was run out the door I’d just walked through moments ago.

”I promise you sir, I’m fine. Just nervous is all.” I admit as I give him a tight lipped smile.

”Well the only times I have ever seen you nervous are when you and Xaden have been up to something.” He pauses before smirking at me, a mischievous glint in his eyes that Xaden definitely inherited from him. “Or when you’re around my daughter. And seeing as you and Xaden have not been up to anything that I am aware of. Then I can only assume this is about Ophelia.”

Shit. That man could read me like a damn book. I could keep nothing from him. But he wasn’t wrong. It was very rare for me to get nervous. And over the last few years one of the causes had been Ophelia. Though honestly, I think she had always made me nervous. Could turn me into a stumbling mess without even trying. It was worth it though. Every time it happened, I would be graced by her laughter. Laughter that would have my heart beating faster and faster. Laughter that never failed to make me smile. Honestly everything about her made smile.

I take a deep breath and nod as I lock eyes with Fen. “Yes sir, it’s about her.”

”If you’re going to ask my permission to ask her out after all this time, you don’t need it. You’re probably the only boy I would trust with her.” A teasing tone evident in his as he smiles at me.

Clearly my feelings had not been as subtle as I thought. My mother picking up on it I could understand. She saw us together nearly every day when we we’re in Aretia. It wasn’t uncommon for Fen to see us together, but with leading the rebellion and the head of Riorson house, he was a busy man.

I laugh nervously, the box in my pocket feeling heavier than ever. “Thank you sir. But, I actually wanted to talk to you about something else to do with her.” My voice breaking slightly at the end causing Fen to chuckle at me before he furrows his brow in confusion.

”Well I must admit Garrick, you have me stumped. Which is a rare occurrence.”

I reach my shaky hand into my pocket, pulling out the box my mother had given me before I’d walked out our door. Fen looking even more confused as I raise from the chair to place it on the desk in front of me. He eyes me curiously as he reaches forward and takes the box. As he opens it his eyes go wide, taking in the ring inside. I know he knows that ring. My father was his best friend. He’d been there when my father had proposed to my mother. They’d often joked about how Fen had gone with him to find the ring and how nervous my father had been. His eyes finally move back to mine, staring me down. It was a look void of any emotion. Unable to read what was going through his mind. And honestly that made me more nervous than the idea of him getting angry at me.

”I know you know that ring sir. And I know I haven’t asked her out yet. I promise I will once this has all calmed down. And I don’t want to jinx how this could all pan out. But just in case something happens, I need your permission. Because when I ask her out that is it. There is no one else for me. And I pray to the gods it’s the same for her. But I need your permission just in case something does happen.” I blurt out, not taking a single breath.

For a while all we do is stare at each other. Fen with his blank stare, and the only sound in the room is my heavy breathing. As the seconds past my heart starts beating faster and faster. To the point it’s all I can hear. But then the corners of his mouth curl upwards. Fen’s signature smirk that he’d passed onto both his kids is all I need to calm my heavily beating heart.

”I really hope you haven’t jinxed us all. I’d like to think we’re going to win whatever is thrown our way in the coming weeks. But you aren’t wrong. Anything can happen.” He says before pausing and looking back down at the ring in the box before snapping the lid closed. He leans forward and places the box in front of me. “And just in case it does. I give you my blessing to marry my daughter one day.”

I can’t help but look at him in shock. He’d said yes. Given me permission to ask his daughter to marry me one day. All I had to do was ask her out first. As sure as I was of her feelings, I highly doubt I could outright ask her to marry me. I think she’d have a heart attack, swiftly followed by Xaden probably wanting to murder me. The way he’d been joking lately, he had to know of my feelings. The way he’d poke fun at the both of us, how embarrassed Ophelia would get. He had to know. But something tells me he would still want to murder me slightly.

I reach forward and take the box off the desk before placing it back in my pocket. “Thank you sir. I really appreciate it.”

”It’s no problem. Now I don’t mean to be rude but I do have a meeting soon. So I do have to ask you to leave.” He says as he nods towards the door, which conveniently opens to reveal my father and other high ranking leaders.

I nod him a thanks before pushing myself out of the chair and turning towards the door. My father struggling to hold his smirk as I walk towards him. And it’s all I need to know my mother told him what I was doing. The pat on the back he gives me as I pass is further confirmation.

”Oh and Garrick.” Fen calls out to me as I reach the door.

I turn to see him staring at me with his usual hard to read look. “Don’t wait too long to ask her. As you said, anything can happen.”

Little did I know how true his words would come to be.

@riorgail @going-through-shit @fw-gt @bbkissme99 @xceafh @leptitlu @came-to-laugh-but-cried @onthewaytotimbuktu @daardyrnitta @lovemesomevesey @mxtokko @krowiathemythologynerd @callsign-blue @1islessthan3books @side-angel @wolfbc97 @just-an-ace-elf

#fourth wing fanfic #garrick tavis #fourth wing #garrick tavis x reader #garrick tavis imagine #the fourth wing #garrick tavis x oc #fourth wing x reader #fourth wing imagine #the empyrean #fourth wing x oc #angsty waifu lost sister #fen riorson

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lasanya539 · 3 months ago

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make this heart beat on and on

(written for @tmnt-write-fight for @rbtlvr, @oddpocalypse, @azucar-skull)

Fandom: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Prompts: Anything with Casey Jr. maybe him adjusting to the new timeline? talking things out with Leo? up to you! can be hurt/comfort or just fluff i am not picky; Casey Jones and the terrible horrible no good very bad childhood. TW: Mentions of Su!cide, Mentions of Dissociation, Pan!c Attàck Word Count: 11523

Posted on AO3!

---

Casey Junior has… mixed feelings about the past.

In the first twenty-four hours of him making it here, he’s somehow been launched head-first into the loudest, most overstimulating place of his life, gotten kidnapped and strapped to a chair by a short, angry teenager, been interrogated by a bunch of immature mutant ninjas reptiles, almost died once, almost died twice, locked a sixteen year old turtle into an exiled dimension, and then got him back just to work his ass off to barely save him from the brink of death.

Not to mention the fact that mere milliseconds before getting here he had to watch his sensei die right in front of his eyes, had to confront faces he’d only ever heard stories about or never thought he’d see again, had to somehow be responsible for unleashing the monsters that haunted his entire life in this timeline too, had to sentence a younger version of the man that raised him to get killed at the hands of a demon, and had to beg, beg, beg for a stable pulse when he was given his destroyed body, a family looking at him with the worst kind of hope in their wide eyes.

That… was all in the span of one day.

Of course, it got better as time went on. Slowly but surely, Leonardo recovered, Casey’s due diligence paying off. Raphael’s eye got rid of the infection, his vision improving despite the scar across his eye-ridge. The markings of organic matter on Donatello’s shell diminished, strong enough for his battle shell again. Michelangelo’s compression gloves reduced the shaking in his hands, the cracks fading to scabs, fading to thin white scars.

They healed. They won. They survived.

Or, at least, a version of them did.

So, yeah, Casey Junior has a lot of mixed feelings about the past. Some of them are straightforward to categorize — his undeniable affinity for pepperoni pizza being one of them, easy to think, oh yeah this is a logical emotion to have. Much like the joy at having fresh water he could drink from the sink at all times, or the relief from studying the medical supplies stocked to the brim in the Med Bay. Times when his brain decides to go a bit easy on him, letting him breathe.

The rest of the time though, it seems like there’s a weight attached to his body, heavy, unrelenting. Tugging on his limbs, keeping his head from being held high. It feels like a threat, a warning — slithering tentacles at his heels when he walks, ready to wrap around his ankles and yank him into oblivion. A sea of darkness at his fingertips, just reach out and it’ll capture him.

He tries hard, though, to not dwell on it. To keep himself safe, he knows how to do that. It’s a delicate balance, but one he has practically mastered in his years at the Liberty Base. Keeping his eyes alert, but mind blank. Aware, but empty. Perfect little soldier, no weaknesses, no thoughts, no illogical emotions. Only orders, and a readiness to survive.

So he does. However he can.

—

“Casey!” He hears a voice coming from the kitchen. “Can you help me out with this batter?”

Shaking his head, Casey realizes he’s been spaced out watching some kind of Japanese game show with Master Splinter in the projector room, the not-so-foreign language and laugh track providing a nice background to meld into. He walks to the kitchen to find Michelangelo wearing an apron that says ‘Kiss the Turtle!’, while the entire counter is dusted in flour and baking trays.

He catches sight of him and smiles, giving him a giant bowl and a whisk. Casey notices his hands shaking just slightly. “Here, it’s batter for the brownies I’m making today. Have you ever had brownies?”

The answer was obvious, but he still obliges. “No, never. It’s like, uh, chocolate cake, right?”

“Yep! Well, kind of, you’ll see. I’ll save you an edge piece.”

He sets to whisking, the smell of sugar and butter and things he’d never tasted in years making his mouth water. He resists the urge to dunk his finger in and lick it.

Michelangelo goes back to pouring in the ingredients of a second batch, reaching up to the cabinets to grab the box of cocoa, when suddenly his hand twitches involuntarily. The box slips out of his grip and falls to the counter, the loose powder spilling on the granite.

Casey steps forward to help immediately, but Michelangelo’s rigid posture makes him rethink. He watches him count to five silently, taking a deep breath and releasing it with meditative precision, shoulders untensing and grabbing the box again. His hands are still shaking.

Casey thinks for a moment, still whisking, trying to come up with something comforting to say. A part of him knows bothering him about the injury would probably make him snap, a lesson learned from his childhood, which he definitely isn’t thinking about.

He takes a deep breath and forces a bright smile on his face. “Hey, so, what’s your favorite thing to cook?”

Michelangelo blinks, surprised. “Sorry?"

“You love to cook, right? Since you were a kid. So what’s your favorite thing to make?”

“Well, it depends,” he begins slowly. “If we’re talking dessert, then I make really good salted caramel chocolate chip cookies! Ask Leo, he always begs for leftover dough, no matter how much I tell him it’ll make him sick. A breakfast favorite is always waffles, Raph loves them. Or for lunch or dinner, truffle pork chops! There’s actually a whole story behind that recipe.” He chuckles sheepishly, rubbing a hand behind his neck. “What about you? What did you guys eat in the future? I’m sure the food situation was much different than here, huh?”

Casey’s smile turns plastic as something painful lodges underneath his ribs. “Yeah. I guess you could say that.”

Michelangelo seems to wait for him to continue, but he barely notices, ducking his head down and stirring mechanically. A sense memory of taste comes back, a flavor coating over his mouth. So many years of crouching next to his Master near a makeshift stove, watching the vermin they captured roasting on a spit. His lilting voice low in his ear, teaching him exactly how to rotate the spit, when to watch for the skin to break and crackle, how to chop off the head cleanly while still leaving enough meat to eat. The silly way they’d tap their respective meals together in a toast before they took a bite.

The batter doesn’t smell all that good anymore.

He feels a gentle touch over his arm where he’s hugging the bowl close, and his head shoots up, an apology ready on his lips. But Michelangelo only smiles, a warm, almost loving thing that puts a giant crack in the armor that sits under his skin. The darkness whispers just outside of his peripherals, waiting, watching.

“Here, that’s done now. Thank you.” He says softly. Casey nods methodically.

“Anything else I can help you with?”

“No, that was all I needed. But hey, maybe you should—”

He spins on his heel in perfect form and marches out.

—

“Level of pain, scale of one to ten?”

“One.”

“Okay, two then. Let me know if it gets above a three, and I’ll start you on ibuprofen again. Itching?”

“Scoff. No itching.”

“Good. Have you been applying that antibacterial cream?”

“Yes, mother-hen, I’ve been applying the cream. And before you start, I’ve only been keeping the battle shell on for four hours each day, no need to nag about that.”

“I’m not a mother-hen, I’m a medic.” Casey responds, practiced, not looking up from the paper pad he’s been making diligent notes on his patients with. “What about your other injuries? Take off your gauntlet and knee pads.”

Donatello rolls his eyes with all the irritation in the world, but he does as he’s told, sticking his arms and legs out for inspection. Casey studies the new green skin peeking out from the cuts, evidence of the wounds he had gotten trying to protect Michelangelo with his body when the subway tunnels collapsed. A few pin-pricks of blood catch his attention. “Have you been picking at the scabs?”

He huffs, reflexively bringing his arms back to his plastron in defense, turning away. “No. ”

“Right.” He says plainly. “Well, if it ever gets to that point, stop it. I know you know better than that. Or I’ll put the heavy-duty bandages back on.” He ignores the glare he receives, making one last note and flipping the notepad shut, sighing. “Still, though, you’re recovering pretty well. Considering.”

Donatello quickly puts his gauntlet and battle shell back on, eager to get back to the spreadsheets open on his monitor. Casey starts collecting the old bandages and throwing them in the trash along with his gloves.

“Well, I have to admit.” Donatello says eventually. “If any of us are doing any better, it’s all thanks to you.”

He halts in place, surprised. “It’s my job.”

“It’s not.” Casey feels his stare on his back where he’s turned away to the wall. “You might have been the medic back there, but you’re not one here. Certainly no one forced you to. I distinctly remember Papa telling you to move out of his way when you three got to Staten Island so he could treat his son. But you practically forced yourself into the role and starting ordering everyone around you, including me somehow.”

Casey’s lip twitches at the indignant tone at the end of the sentence. He hangs the first aid kit on the wall. “Yeah, well, there was a lot to be taken care of. Even if I had let Master Splinter take control, it would have been too much just on him. I had to step in. And besides, I’m good at what I do.”

Donatello hums approvingly. “Being confident in your own skills, that’s a good thing to have. I know you said Leo taught you all you know in the future, but he’s actually the worst out of all of us when it comes to having pride in his own work.”

Casey gulps, a sudden ashy emotion clogging his throat. Involuntarily, a memory bubbles up to the surface, the darkness not too far behind. A lesson learned between many violet floating holograms and the clanking of a hammer against metal, a calloused three-fingered hand on his shoulder, steadfast, grounding.

‘Hope may be your greatest weapon’, his Master telling him, teaching him, ‘but your pride is your greatest shield.’

“Yeah.” He chokes out, eyes blurry. He feels slimy tentacles nip at his heels, cold and terrifying. “I – I have to check on the others.”

He barely hears the questioning tone as he flees from the lab.

—

“Hey, hey, can we spar really quick?"

Casey looks up from the fairy lights on the ceiling he was zoning out at, turning to find Leonardo next to him, an eager look on his face. “Sorry?”

“Let’s spar. C’mon, it’ll be fun. I’m actually so bored right now, and I know for a fact you are too.”

“You should definitely not be sparring, you’re still in recovery.”

“Oh, come on,” he whines, stretching out all of his limbs in show. “See? Everything is fine, I’ve been doing that P.T. schedule you gave me, I’m not in pain, and I am bored. Out of. My mind. So can we just go to the dojo and spar it out? I’m really curious to see what kind of ninja warrior skills you have."

Casey gives him a look, but Leonardo just gives him a shit-eating grin that reeks of stubbornness.

“Fine.” He stands up, bones creaking with the weight of years he hasn’t yet lived but still survived. Leonardo looks happier than he has in days.

The dojo still looks quite used, the mats bruised and the punching bags a little worse for wear. Unfortunate for a family full of injured members.

“You know, it seems like you already have quite a few willing training partners for some reason.” Casey says pointedly.

“Ha, yeah, I guess I do, huh,” Leonardo rubs the back of his neck, eyes flitting away. Guilty. Casey can’t stand to look at it too long. “But the point is to train with you! So c’mon, Future Boy, show me what you got!”

Casey forces them to stretch before they start and earns an eye roll in return. They get into position, stance firm and muscles tight. They circle each other, looking for an opening. Casey moves first, and aims for a quick jab to the center of his plastron. Leonardo blocks it, responding with a swift roundhouse kick. He ducks and rolls, returning to stance.

Leonardo smirks at him, a cocky, familiar thing. Something loosens and squirms under his armor.

A flurry of strikes follow – each one of them blocking, dodging, countering with fluid precision. Almost like a dance they’ve rehearsed before, anticipation thrumming in Casey’s veins. They track each other’s movements with the same sharp gaze, prepared.

Leonardo launches a high kick to his head, his balance faltering for an instant. Casey notices, dropping low, sweeping his legs out from under him. A sharp elbow strike to the ribs, and he is forced onto the mat. They stare at each other for a second, before Casey stands up and bows respectfully.

“Wow,” Leonardo pants out, looking up at him. “I promise I’m a lot better at this, usually. You – you definitely got lucky this time.”

Casey snorts, hearing his heart beat in his ears, spirits higher than usual. “Sure, man, let’s say I did.”

Leonardo beams in response, as he helps him get up. He dusts himself off, still out of breath from the excess exercise after the weeks of recovery. Casey smirks, opening his mouth to rib him for training when he wasn’t even ready for it, but suddenly an arm hooks around his neck, pulling him to Leonardo’s side in a friendly jostle that throws him off balance.

“So, I was right, huh?” Leonardo grins cheekily. “You just needed to spar too. No way all that rad ninjosity can sit still and not have somewhere to go, amiright? I haven’t seen you look this happy in a while!”

‘A while’ actually meaning ‘ever’, Casey thinks hysterically, good mood plummeting as he suppresses the instinctive urge to twist out of the chokehold. The warmth from the contact makes the loose emotion stirs up again, but he brutally shoves it down, forcing himself to not give in. Not right now. No tentacles, no illogical feelings.

He returns the grin to the best of his ability, trying not to wilt when Leonardo dims, intelligent eyes ticking over his face.

“Yeah, you’re right!” Casey gets out as cheerfully as he can manage. “Training is a good way to – to get out of your head, huh? Who would’ve thought, right?"

Leonardo doesn’t look very convinced, but lets it slide. “Well, just you and everyone else in this family.” He says matter-of-factly. His eye-ridges come together in a slight frown, thoughtful. Casey tries to pull away, but the arm somehow tightens around him.

“Did you know,” Leonardo says eventually, “that after our first fight with the Shredder, Donnie trained in here for two days straight? The only times he stopped was to go to the bathroom, drink water, and once eat four Big Macs in a row, before immediately coming back. According to him, training was helping him ‘cope’ with everything, but it was actually making him even worse.”

Crack. The armor under his skin.

‘Shredder tore through his battle shell like it was paper.’ Casey suddenly recalls the memory like it’s a vision. Holding his Sensei’s hand one night, hearing him talk in a quiet, morose tone, as they both watched the sleeping figure of his Master flopped over his worktable, three thin but prominent scars visible on his soft shell. ‘It terrified him. All he could think about was becoming better, stronger, faster. Good enough so nothing could ever touch his ‘weak-spot’ again, so he trained like he’d gone mad. God, he was lucky Shredder only got that one scrape on him – because if Donnie hadn’t been wearing his shell…’

“Yeah, I know, I was really upset about it too.” Leonardo can probably see something on his face. What is Casey showing him? He can’t tell. “We ended up having an intervention for him. He obviously got really angry, but we did the whole shabang – banner and letters and comfort food and all. Dad’s letter was so emotional it made all of us cry, I’m not even kidding. That was probably the only reason he listened.”

Casey feels like a leaf floating on tumultuous waters, just barely staying up for air. Dark waves crashing around him, ready to submerge him. Splinters form over his armor with every encroaching wave.

Still, he brings himself back, and hums in response, feeling a perceptive stare on the side of his face. “S-sounds rough. I, um, I heard about the Shredder. You guys… did good.”

“Good, huh?” Leonardo huffs unamusedly. “Yeah. I guess you could say we did. We definitely weren’t the reason the real spirit of Shredder was released from the twilight dimension and he decided to destroy humanity, no siree.”

An unkind voice in Casey’s mind points out how utterly ironic that is. He tries to shake it away, a sense of foreboding curling at the edges of his vision, like the longer he stays here, the more danger he’ll be in.

“Still though,” he argues. “You – you fixed it, didn’t you? You killed the Shredder, you saved New York.”

Leonardo gives him a smile that only barely reaches his eyes, a wry twist of his lips, and something horrible lurches in Casey’s chest, a wild creature of grief and longing and… and—

“Yeah, I suppose we did.” He answers softly. “Couldn’t have done it alone, the world would have been destroyed if it was just the seven of us. It was Gram-Gram and all the Hamato spirits with us. Our ancestors always have our back, the same way we do each other. Anatawa hitorijanai, right?”

The darkness swallows Casey almost at the same time as the tentacles of misery seize his limbs. The glass armor shatters into shards, digging into his thin skin. Echoes of voices crowd into his ears like loud wasps: anatawa hitorijanai, you are not alone, never alone Casey Jones, remember that, the Hamato clan protects its own, anatawa hitorijanai, wherever you go I will always be right there with you, my lifesaver, my kid—

Distantly, Leonardo exclaims something in alarm. A choked sob escapes Casey’s lips, body shaking involuntarily. He feels something pulling at him relentlessly, dragging him under into a black sea of panic. He gasps for breath, fingers bunching in his shirt, trying to let oxygen through the pinhole of his throat into his lungs.

Foreign touch at his shoulders, uncertain. The tentacles slither and tighten viciously. Casey looks up without seeing and hisses, a scared and cornered response, that has the touch retreating immediately. Through the white noise of his ears he can hear words, the tone maybe meant to be calm or soothing, but all it does is make him even more aware of how exposed he feels.

Years of military training kick in, and over the cacophony of sounds a voice replays in his ear, a voice he’d follow to the ends of the earth, ‘Retreat! To the underground tunnels! Retreat!’

So he does. Orders and a readiness to survive. However he can.

—

When Casey Junior was five, he asked his sensei why the sky in his Little Wolfie the Wolfpup book was colored blue.

Sensei looked at him like there was a laugh stuck in his throat trapped by the sorrow on his face, an expression that made little sense to him. He heaved a sigh out, looking up through the tunnel grate, where they could barely catch a glimpse of the normal thick grey smog that covered the Surface and above.

‘Back then’, he said. He always started all stories of the unfathomable time before the Krang like that. ‘Back then, the sky used to be blue, mijo. It was beautiful. There weren’t so many spaceships then, it was all just blue, with white fluffy clouds that looked like cotton balls. Sometimes there would be an airplane that flew by, or sometimes there would be a bird! So when we drew the sky, we always drew it a pretty blue.’

‘Blue, like your old magic?’ Casey asked.

He chuckled, resting a warm hand on his head, fond, loving. ‘Yeah, kid. Like my old magic.’

And then of course his Master popped up behind them, and seriously explained to Casey the exact hexadecimal code that made up the color ‘sky blue’, which was very very (‘that’s two very’s’ ) different than the code for Sensei’s Ninpō blue, and that his twin was giving his charge a faulty education, and should be banned from the lab during homeschool teaching hours.

Casey chuckles wetly now, the memory a small balm on his inner turmoil. He’s sitting on a steel maintenance ramp overlooking a dry sewer reservoir, his face turned up to a patch of sunlight from a broken metal grate on the ceiling. He doesn’t really remember how he got here; one second, he was crouched low in the dojo with his pulse thudding over his whole body, the next he was running through the subway tunnels, desperate to get away. So many years of living underground have trained him well to find the few exit hatches that connect the New York tunnels to the sewers lines in his frenzy. The only safe place he’d had when he was escaping the Surface during an attack. The only safe place he has now.

He looks up, seeing fluffy white clouds that decorate a bright blue sky, a faint flicker of awe piercing through his fog of exhaustion. Exactly like his Little Wolfie the Wolfpup book. Even more beautiful, in fact.

He vaguely wonders if those so-called ‘snow days’ are actually a thing now. Maybe little kids like Wolfie really do dress up in warm wooly cardigans and hats, and make round ‘snowmen’ with rocks and sticks and carrots. Maybe they look up and see a soft sun and rain-heavy clouds with a smile. Maybe they go back home to a family that was never war-torn, never had to watch them walk out the door bitterly wondering if this was goodbye.

Casey sniffles, tears filling his vision once more. He never got to say goodbye. He buries his face in one hand, the other tightly clutching his hair, holding himself together, barely, barely.

“Wow, I never knew this place was here.”

He jolts, immediately standing up to his feet and swerving around, already reaching to his back for a hockey stick that’s not there, before his brain catches up with his body.

Raphael is on the stairs leading up to the high ramp, hands up in apology. His eyes, one normal and one scarred, tick over his stature in a discerning manner.

“Sorry, Raph didn’t mean to scare you.” He says apologetically. “Just wanted to see if you were okay.”

Casey grimaces, turning around, muscles strung tight. “I’m fine.”

“Okay.” He says, surprisingly easily. He lumbers close and settles down, dangling his feet off the ledge, a respectable distance between them.

Casey refrains from joining, feeling antsy, fists clenching and unclenching. The exhaustion still hasn’t worn off, but now it feels like it’s warping into something more, something urgent. The faint sounds of New York traffic filter down from the hole in the ceiling, dust particles floating in the stale air. Raphael is quiet on his side, seemingly calm. A bird flies by up there, making a cheerful sound. It’s a nice day outside. Warm. Cozy.

“Have you ever touched snow?”

Raphael blinks at the sudden unexpected question, glancing up at him. He’s silent for a second, unsure, but answers, “Uh, yeah, I have. It snows here in New York… December to March, I think.”

“Did you like it?”

“Snow? Yeah, of course.” Raphael puts on a small smile, just barely forced. “Snow is great. Every winter, the four of us go to the surface to play in the parks. We have snowball fights and make snow-angels, it’s a lot of fun.” He snorts. “This one time Leo shoved a whole fistfull of snow right under the new Christmas sweater Dad made me just because I made fun of his ugly unicorn-themed scarf.” He steals another glance at him. “We’ll take you next time. Promise.”

And. And Casey can’t help it — he starts laughing hysterically.

Raphael jerks back in surprise as he doubles over, clutching his stomach and chortling uncontrollably. Because isn’t it all so fucking funny? They want to take him to see snow. Snow. As if he hasn’t been dreaming of the impossible chance to build a snow-castle with his family like Wolfie and his friends ever since he was a kid. As if he didn’t brutally crush that dream the day he lost his mother. What must she be thinking now, watching him from the Spirit Realm?

“Case?” Raphael says, almost inaudible over the noise. “Buddy—”

His lungs are vibrating with the lack of air in them. He wobbles on his feet, forward and backward. His vision is blurry again – is he still laughing? Those sharp sounds are laughs, right? He doesn’t know. To be honest, he doesn’t really remember what they’re supposed to sound like. When was the last time anyone around him had laughed? Certainly not in the apocalypse, no siree! No, because they were too busy dying, right?!

“Casey.” Raphael. A strong, firm voice. “Take a deep breath. Please.”

Please, he remembers thinking, raw power of a burning, golden portal pulsating around him, a whirlwind of colors behind his eyelids as he was hurtled in between timelines. Please, no. Please let this be a dream. I want to go home. Please.

What even is home now? His timeline is torn to shreds. His family is dead. He can’t even stand to be out on the Surface to make a new life for himself. There is nobody here for him. This… this distorted reflection of the people that raised him don’t even fucking know him. They have no use for him anymore, he helped them stop the Krang and nursed them back to health. What now? Is there anything left for him? Of him?

A little pebble is accidentally kicked off the metal ramp, and Casey stops, his sharp eyes tracking its trajectory down to the dry basin. It lands innocently among the cracked concrete lines and rotten leaves covering the remains of the reservoir, dust bouncing off as the quiet sound echoes up to him.

Heh. If he had his Genius Built mask with him, he could figure out what the exact distance between them was. Easily fifty to sixty feet. He hiccups, wiping a hand roughly over his damp face, unable to look away from the tiny speck of the pebble. Is it still in one piece down there? Or did it break? It’s too far to tell.

Heh. The blunt force trauma probably fractured it in half. Involuntarily, his weight shifts from his heels to the balls of his feet.

“Hey, Casey,” Raphael is suddenly much closer, in his peripherals he can see a green arm reach out in front of him, not touching him. There’s something weird and worried in his voice. “Let’s take a step back, alright?”

Casey obeys automatically, because he’s hard-wired to listen to any turtle mutants in his vicinity. He takes a shaky step back, the pebble disappearing from his sight, blocked by a tall, scarred plastron. There’s an unmistakable flint of fear in Raphael’s furrowed eyes as he firmly places himself in front of him, body language forcibly relaxed and unthreatening.

Another chuckle bubbles up his throat. How fucking ironic. “What’s wrong, Raphael?” Casey smiles with all his teeth. “You think I’m going to jump off and kill myself? Don’t worry, I won’t. I’m not my sensei.”

Raphael gapes at him, shock and horror bleeding into one another. “I – what? I didn’t—”

“Oh, I guess I never told you, huh? Well, surprise, surprise, then.” Casey’s voice wobbles dangerously as he rubs at his face again, the storm roiling in his chest. Shivers wrack his frame, as he finally folds in on himself, dropping into a crouch and landing in an undignified manner. The opposite of a soldier. Of a ninja.

“Stupid, stupid,” the words leave his mouth before he can stop them. “Stupid illogical emotions. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

“Woah, woah, no.” Raphael sits in front of him, trying to catch his eye. “What are you sorry for? You’ve got nothing to apologize for, there’s nothing wrong with what you’re feeling.”

A sob escapes Casey as he tries to take a deep breath. “But then why do I feel so out of control? Like – like…”

Like he’s adrift at sea, like the waves crest and fall at their own will. Like he’s at the mercy of a darkness he cannot fathom how to tame. Like if he can’t keep his head up the sheer grief will swallow him whole.

“I can’t breathe.” The confession falls from his lips. “If I can’t control it, I can’t breathe.”

A long pause, then Raphael sighs eventually, a deep and sad thing. He pulls back, hands folded atop his lap in perfect meditative stance, no longer attempting to physically get through to him. Making just enough room for Casey to zone out into the middle distance, ruminating in his own weaknesses.

“Did you know…” Raphael speaks after a few minutes of silence. “I was really scared of thunderstorms as a kid?”

Casey refocuses on him, realizing he’s been unconsciously following his breathing, a pattern taught to him since he was old enough to sit still and quiet in the dojo. Inhale for four, hold for two, exhale for eight.

“Yeah, I was.” He smiles at his confused look. “Had to be like – maybe ten or eleven. Every time I heard the thunder from the surface, I used to get terrified. Like, hide in-between the furniture, hands over my ears, shaking kind of terrified. Couldn’t even sleep during night storms. It got so bad that one time I actually screamed out loud because I heard the thunder in the middle of the night, and I woke Donnie up. He came to my room to check on me, but I felt so embarrassed. Because, well, Raph’s the big brother, y’know? Brother who is the biggest. I thought it was so dumb for me to feel scared and upset because of thunder.

“But Donnie didn’t say that. Actually, all he did was explain how thunder really works, the whole science behind it. Something, something, electrical charges and shockwaves, really nerdy stuff. I think he was trying to get me to understand it so I wouldn’t be scared of it anymore, but it just made me more embarrassed. If thunderstorms were really that simple, then it was stupid to feel this scared, right?

Raphael gently nudges him with his knee. “Wrong. Because of course I was scared of thunderstorms – thunder is loud! And it booms! And it always comes so suddenly and without warning, no one can tell when it starts or stops. Yeah, Raph would get scared out of his mind, and yeah, he’d run and hide before he realized what he was doing, but it made sense why I felt that way, at least according to Donnie. Just because my emotions seemed to be out of my control, did not mean they were illogical.”

Casey gulps at the words, hands shaking as he tries to warm them up by rubbing them on his thighs. Raphael gives him a smile so familiar and well-worn, it carves into him like a cold scalpel. “Case, the crap that you’ve seen in your life – none of us can even imagine it, even after the invasion. Having to grow up in an apocalypse and then having to come here, just to save us… it’s a miracle you’re still standing. You’re mourning your home, you have the right to feel.”

A tear falls down his face, followed by another, but he doesn’t wipe them away immediately this time. A whirlwind of emotions batter through his body as he closes his eyes against them. Casey shudders in a deep breath, inhale for four. Hold. Exhale.

“We used to have thunderstorms too.” He mumbles.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Really loud ones, mostly during the evening. The sky would turn red and grey because of the smoke and mist in the air. Our climate got really messed up because of the – the Krang.” He trips over the word surprisingly, a spike of dread at the name. “But, um, yeah. I hated thunderstorms as a kid too. I used to hide in Sensei’s bed because I couldn’t sleep.” A faint smile graces his lips. “He used to stay awake with me sometimes and we’d play cards together. I always knew it made him so tired to do that, but he never complained once the next day. When the thunder started, he always came to look for me in the bunkers, and he’d just pick me up and we’d turtle pile together.”

Raphael huffs out a laugh, something quiet and gentle on his face. It keeps surprising Casey how still he can sit, a steady presence, unmovable. So unlike whatever he’s seen from a future version of his family.

“It’s easier for you to talk about your past with me instead of the others, huh?” He remarks softly.

The smile shatters in pieces. Casey’s throat is dry. “...Yeah.”

He tilts his head to the side, patient. Continues in the same gentle tone, “It’s because Raph was dead for you too long, wasn’t I?”

A trip in his beating heart, and he flits his gaze away. More memories burn behind his eyelids, every instance of his Sensei and his Masters getting a melancholy look on their faces, talking about their big brother like he’d been their north star, a beacon guiding them in their own darkness. Like losing him had crumbled the ground they stood on, leaving them broken and astray.

A more stark picture comes to mind, a large portrait of an older Raphael in the shrine room of their base, covered in scars but grinning with joy at a camera. How there was always a candle burning right under it, bright and unwavering.

Still, Raphael seems to show no emotion either way, just waits for him to answer. Casey bites his lips, anxiously picking at his nails.

“Are you… are you upset?” He asks, genuinely not sure.

He exhales sharply through his nose. “Nah, not really – at least, not anymore. It wasn’t exactly hard to figure out. You never wanted to be near the three of them unless you were helping them out, you only ever hung out with me or Dad. I’m guessing it was because we didn’t remind you of anyone, so it was easier with us.”

Well, so much for being subtle about it. Casey glances at him, a little ashamed. “Sorry.”

“Like I said, Case, nothing for you to be sorry about.” Raphael bumps his knee with his again. “I just wish I could have been there for you.”

‘I wish I could have been there for him’, Sensei’s voice comes back to him, an aching memory as they both stared at the hilt of his sword, red silk wrapped reverently under his shaking fingers. ‘It’s all I can think about sometimes. He was always there for us when we needed him, he didn’t deserve what happened to him. He didn’t deserve to die alone.’

“It was a routine supply mission. In 2032.” Casey recites after a moment. “Our base had just gotten a few more families, and clothes and food were running low. So it was you and Sensei, raiding a factory in New Jersey. Everything was going fine, it should have been easy. You’d done so many missions like this before.” He takes a shaky breath. “Sensei… he always said he never even saw the Krang mechs coming in. One minute it was quiet in the building, and the next, giant mechs and their hounds raided it. Sensei was trying to fend the hounds off the food, but somehow you got trapped trying to find a safe exit on the other side.” He fiddles with a strand of his hair. “Sensei said he wasn’t even able to catch sight of you once they started attacking, but he could feel the moment you… well.”

It’s silent for a beat, then Raphael sighs again forlornly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He replies quickly. “They were trying to destroy the resistance leader, they were targeting Sensei. You died destroying the mechs and killing those Krang, just to save him. I —” His voice cracks straight through the middle. “I would have done the same. For all of you.”

It should have made him feel better, at least one small part of the burden he’s been carrying given to someone else, a confidant with a listening ear. But instead, it makes a strong ache echo from deep within his chest. A threat from a dormant volcano finally starting to bubble beneath a crust of rock. Something long-ignored and burning, begging to be heard.

“My mother died next.” Casey couldn’t stop himself if he tried. “Lieutenant Cassandra Jones. 2035. A recon team went MIA in Maine, so she led a rescue team to get them back.” He wipes his nose roughly. “She left the day of my sixth birthday. Told me she was going to get me a present – a brand new teddy bear, none of the old hand-me-downs from the base. She never came back. My Mom left and never came back.”

Raphael gives him a despondent look as he continues, ears and neck hot, feeling the rush of an emotion he can’t name. “Then – then in 2040, Commander April O’Neil died. We were raiding a large Krang base in Massachusetts, everyone had been preparing for weeks. They were trying to put a dent in their mechs and ships to slow them down. But one of the rooms in the armory was a trap, and she got locked inside alone.” His lip quivers tremulously. “Sensei tried to get her out, but he couldn’t make portals in the future. And before he could call for backup, the Krang… blew the chamber up.”

There’s horrified gasp from his audience, but Casey barely hears it, lost in the cresting wave of sorrow.

“And then.” The words are clogging up his throat like they’re poison. “In 2042, we lost M-Master…” His voice breaks again. “My Uncle Tello.”

“No.” Raphael lets out an agonized whisper. “No, no, no. You didn’t – there’s no way—”

“There is!” He snaps. “He did! My Uncle Tello died. Don’t you get it? I lost everyone.” He jumps up, agitated and hurting. “They all died, Raphael. They’re all dead. ”

The sheen of unshed and shocked tears in his eyes sends a sharp pang of guilt through him, but it’s quickly overshadowed by his grief. “H-he was piloting a jet back from the Mount Ranier sanctuary in Washington. The Krang destroyed their entire electrical grid, and only he could help. Out of everyone in the fucking country, he was the only one with a brain big enough to do something about it. And he did!” He scoffed out a laugh. “Worked for two weeks straight until Ranier became the most secure base in the west coast! He was on his way back when a Krang missile shot him out of the fucking air.”

He can’t bear to look at Raphael right now, but he hears his ragged breathing through the ringing in his ears.

“I was talking to him.” Casey whispers. “I was in his lab, wearing his hoodie, and we were joking about Sensei. We were laughing. And then out of nowhere I – I heard him gasp over the call and—” His words dissolved into a sob, the memory haunting him. The boom of a sudden explosion cutting off into a dark and deafening silence.

Raphael’s hoarse voice echoes in the empty sewer basin. “Casey. ”

Something about the horror in his tone pisses him off. “What?” Casey spins around, words sharp as a whip, glaring. “What, Raphael? You want me to stop? Is this ‘too much’ for you?” The fire in his chest crackles and pops, burning, burning. “This was my life. The Krang picked off people that I loved, that I cared about, that I saw every day at the base, one-by- fucking -one. Until they finally won the goddamn war. They raided our base, our home, and drove us out until they made sure we were all dead.” He runs a wild hand through his hair, pacing away.

Cruel, he’s being cruel. Casey knows that. To taunt Raphael with the death of his loved ones would be to forsake almost everything he’s been taught about kindness and empathy by his teachers. By his family. By his Master.

“My Uncle Angie,” he says in a strangled voice, “was the most powerful mystic warrior in the world. The Krang could never stand a chance against him. So powerful that they couldn’t even trap his Ninpō like he did Sensei’s or Tello’s. He could build chains out of nothing and throw buildings with a flick of his wrist.” His breath stutters. “He made the portal to send me back in time.”

Bursts of orange linger in his mind, flowing robes and glowing eyes. The flash of a final, radiant wink against fiery gold. Cruel. That had been cruel too.

“Sensei asked him to make that portal.” Casey swallows against the bitter feeling, gripping the edge of his shirt with a shaking hand. “Angie told him that making a time gateway like that would take everything he had. And Sensei still told him to do it.”

The volcano finally erupts, magma spreading through his body and burning under his skin. “Sensei knew it would kill him, Angie told him it would. And he still made him create the portal. I literally watched him die – he disintegrated in front of me. And then Sensei pushed me into the portal while I watched him die in a laser blast too!

“And for what?” Casey rounds back, fury radiating off him. “Master Leonardo practically sentenced his little brother to die, and for what? For this? This stupid, loud, confusing world, with people I don’t even know? Where the sky is perfectly blue and snow is perfectly white? I can’t live off the time stolen from my Uncle’s life. I can’t.”

He digs his nails harshly into the flesh of his arm. “I – I feel them sometimes. The Krang. Their tentacles on me. The cold, pink slime. I know it’s not there anymore, but I can’t stop feeling it. I can’t stop seeing yellow eyes everywhere I go. What is wrong with me? I feel like I’m going crazy – is this my life now? Is this what Sensei died for? And I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do— ”

Raphael steps directly into his space and fiercely wraps his large arms around him.

It feels nothing like the slithering grip of the Krang. In fact, it feels nothing like any person who’s ever held him at all. The bone-crushing pressure from all sides jarrs him out of his turmoil almost immediately, the raw strength nearly lifting him off the ground. He takes a shaky breath against the rush of positive physical feedback, blinking away the tears.

Another memory comes to mind, a gloomy day in the apocalypse after a devastating mission. His Uncle Tello shoulder to shoulder with his twin, hunched over a broken metal head-piece, tears staining his mask.

‘What do you need right now?’ Sensei whispered, running a gentle finger over the smooth remains of SHELL-DON.

His Uncle huffed wetly, the sound full of longing from where Casey was eavesdropping from the door, watching him scrunch up into a tight ball, visibly shaking. Looking like he wanted to disappear from the world. ‘I’d do anything for a Raphie hug. Can you get that back?’

He feels the vibrations of Raphael’s voice through his plastron now, a grumble that seems to settle something deep within him. “I am so sorry, Casey. I am so, so sorry.”

He sounds downright distraught. Casey closes his eyes. “It’s okay, Raphael.”

“It’s not. It’s not okay. None of this is okay.” He sniffles. “I’m so sorry.”

“It is, let it go. I don’t need your pity.”

“It’s not pity!” Raphael rips them apart just to stare down at him intensely. “I’m not pitying you, Case. I feel horrible for the horrible things you went through. I - I can’t even imagine the pain you must be in, I should have figured it out before.”

“It’s not your fault.” He lamely pats the hand wrapped around his arm. “I wasn’t exactly advertising it. It didn’t want any of you to know.”

The look he gives him makes him think that’s probably not what he wanted to hear. Casey tsks. “I didn’t, okay? I thought, I don’t know. That I could just… deal with it all on my own.”

Raphael sighs again, and it irks him, especially when he says, “That’s not healthy, Case.”

A surge of irritation. “Oh, fuck off. You weren’t there, you don’t get to tell me what’s healthy and what’s not.”

“You’re right, I wasn’t.” He says firmly, not backing down. “And I’m not an idiot, I’m not going to pretend to know the kind of shit you’ve seen in your life and I’m sure as hell not going to tell you what you should and shouldn’t have done. But I know for a fact that under all that anger and sadness is a crapton of buried guilt. I know what that looks like. I know what that feels like.”

Casey swallows, caught-out, as he continues, “Maybe not to the same extent as you, but I understand what it feels like to live with the fact that someone else’s sacrifice is the only reason you’re still alive. That happened with my Gram-Gram. That almost happened with Leo.”

The words leave his mouth before he can stop them, “It’s not the same.”

“You’re right.” Raphael says simply. “Because what you’ve gone through is so much worse.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that, you’ve also gone through—”

“Shut.” He stops him, holding his palm just over his mouth, effectively shutting him up. “We’re not playing the Pain Lair Games. Raph’s being honest. I don’t know anything about your time or your loss. But.” He says pointedly. “I do know my brothers. I know Leo and Mikey and Donnie, through and through. No matter the time, age, or life. Even better than you. And I know for a fact, family is everything to them.

“It makes me so mad,” he continues, eye-ridges in a painful frown, “to think that the Krang ever put my family, our family, in so much danger. That they had to die. That they were… killed.” He takes a deep breath and glares at him with so much fervor he can’t look away. “But I can guarantee you that Leo and Mikey would never have made the choice to sacrifice themselves to get you here if they didn’t think it was worth it. I know how much Leo loves Mikey, and how much Mikey trusts Leo. They both made a choice, you don’t have to carry the torch of their deaths. It’s not on you.”

Casey’s lip tremored. “That can’t be true. They wouldn’t have had to do that, at all, if it wasn’t for me. I… got them killed. I was their burden.”

“Kid,” Raphael says helplessly, and it squeezes his heart because of how familiar it sounds. “You were their family, the same way they were yours. I told you, for them family is everything, worth sacrificing everything. They would have done anything to keep you alive.”

“To what end?” He bursts out. “They sent me back here to be safe, but for what?” He kicks off some dirt from the ramp, tight with it. “What did they want me to do, now that the Krang is gone? What did they send me here for?”

“They sent you here to be loved, Casey Junior.”

That brings him to a full stop, the answer to the question plaguing his mind for weeks, given to him with such unwavering conviction. Once again, he lets out a hurting laugh. “You have to be fucking kidding me, Raphael.”

“I’m not.” He replies, serious. “I know how it sounds, I get it. Yes, they sent you here to help us stop the Krang. But Case, they also sent you here to be loved. To be cared for. To live in a world with food and water and safety—”

“There is no way.” Casey cuts him off immediately, brushing off his hand and turning away with blurry eyes. “There is no way. There was no place safer and more loving than with my Sensei and my Uncle Angie. So what if we ended up losing our home to the Krang by the end? We would have rebuilt! We would have survived! We would have been together. ”

The worst part is that, despite his own words, he can’t help but believe Raphael whole-heartedly. Because, if what he’s saying is true, it would truly be such a Hamato Leonardo move. The guy was the leader of the resistance, the greatest ninja the world had ever seen, a shining beacon of hope and strength in the apocalypse, and yet he was always the first to give up on himself. Only he would think that his love, which Casey needed like oxygen, could be replaced by a parody.

Raphael doesn’t mind the interruption. He just seems to study him scrutinizingly. As if Casey’s a particularly complicated puzzle, and he’s finally gotten a clue.

“Would you?” He asks quietly.

Embers of simmering lava spark in indignation. He turns back to face him, straight back and steel glare. “What?”

The sharp tone does nothing to deter him. Instead, he suddenly says, “Do you know the story of how Leo became leader?”

“I – what?”

“It was a few days after we beat the Shredder. Dad just randomly told us Leo was going to take charge now. It came out of nowhere, none of us were expecting it. It took a lot of arguing, until Dad finally told us why. Because Leo was, apparently, a better strategist than me.”

Raphael laughs ruefully. “Not an easy thing to hear, I’ll tell you that much. I got so… angry. And hurt. All we did for days was just fight. It was part of the reason why we lost the key in the first place.” He sighs, but when he looks up, Casey sees the sheer pride in his eyes. “But Dad turned out to be right at the end. Leo really is the best of us at strategy. At chess, at sparring, at thinking ahead. He’ll worm his way out of any problem, there’s no one better at it than him.” He gives him a wry smile. “But you already knew that right? He was your sensei.”

An incoming, unthinkable understanding. Emotions storm in Casey’s chest wildly. “W-what are you saying?”

‘That’s it.’ A flashback. His Sensei, injured and exhausted, running away from their destroyed home, Krang mechs surrounding them on all sides. Intelligent eyes searching the landscape for a way out, a solution to their predicament, before eventually shutting in defeat. ‘The resistance failed. The Krang won.’

No, he’d immediately thought, heart in his throat, refusing to accept it. No, no, no.

“Leo is a lot of things.” Raphael continues. “Strong-headed, a little arrogant. A complete idiot, sometimes. But where it counts, he will always keep fighting. And I know for a fact he would have made you take this risk if he didn’t think the fight was already lost.”

Casey shakes his head again, heart thudding loudly. “No, no, that’s not true, the Krang hadn’t won. They just wrecked our base, that’s all. Sensei gave up too early, we would have been alright.”

Raphael gives him such a forlorn, pitiful look that it punches him in the gut. “When have you and I ever known Leo to give up, Casey?”

Never, unless it was a tactical surrender. Unless it was between a Hail Mary, or certain doom. Casey’s quivering hands grasp at his upper arms, digging into the flesh. He thinks about the blood soaking Sensei’s plastron, his heaving breaths against his ear as they ran for their lives. The exhaustion on Angie’s brows and the shake in his fingers as he summoned the chains to rescue them for the umpteenth time.

“No – we would have been fine. I wouldn’t have lost them too.”

“Remember how I said thunderstorms are my greatest fear?” Raphael asks, voice even quieter. Casey hysterically wonders how he can sound so gentle even though he can see how much his words are hurting him. “Well, do you know what Leo’s greatest fear is?”

“No, listen to me, Angie would’ve – Sensei would’ve—”

“It’s to be abandoned.” He finishes. “The emotion he can’t control, is this fear that one day he’ll wake up and realize that all the people he cared for were eventually taken away from him. And that’s the one thing he couldn’t let happen to you.”

“Well, he failed miserably then.” Casey spits out unthinkingly. Undeniably distraught, undeniably betrayed.

It would have ended the same way after all, he realizes, as tears spill from his eyes. One more mission, one more night without food or water, one last dirty wrap over their wounds. Casey would’ve lost his only remaining family either way. It was bound to end in him abandoned. Alone. Unloved.

His greatest fear.

His fiery anger dissipates, drenched in a dark tempest of sorrow and grief. Visions of a frigid life stranded alone in the apocalypse play in his mind, an existence that would have been his if it wasn’t for Angie’s and Sensei’s sacrifice, as the storm rages and roars. He’d spent so many days bristling in his rage, the unfairness that they’d taken away his freedom to choose his own life. But there wasn’t a choice at all. It was either this, or certain doom.

His sobs echo up to the open grate with the birds and the clouds, barely muffled by the plastron hugging him tightly once again. A warm, three-fingered hand strokes his back, comforting, safe.

Casey thuds both his fists against Raphael’s chest with all his strength, barely even nudging him.

“Y-you’re kind of fucked up for that, you know?” He croaks. “Why did you have to tell me that? Why couldn’t you just let me live in denial, huh?”

Raphael squeezes him once. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you? Really?”

He hesitates in response, and Casey scoffs, moving to pull away. He could go run and hide in another corner of the sewers, tame the howling feelings on his own terms. But Raphael doesn’t let him go, in fact tightening his grip.

“Let me go.” Casey sniffles, sounding more petulant than demanding.

“It wasn’t just that you were in denial, Case.” Raphael sounds desperate, like if he doesn’t keep him there he would somehow disappear. “It wasn’t that simple. If you just wanted to avoid thinking about something, fine, that would have been fine. But you were… withering away.”

He barks out a laugh, an unbidden memory of his uncle crumbling away into pieces in front of him. Withering away, disappearing. “No. I really wasn’t.”

“You were. You lived in the lair, but you were hardly even there most of the time. Sitting at a table silently for hours. Zoning out watching stupid shows I know you weren’t even listening to. Barely moving, barely even responding when any of us tried to talk to you. You always just looked so… blank.” Raphael sighs. “I’m sorry we – I – pushed you so much. But I needed to know, I needed you to tell me what you were really feeling. Because… shit, kid, you’re scaring the hell out of me.”

Casey’d seen cases like that back in his time. So many people losing so many people. Shock and mourning leaving them husks of who they were. Completely blank, unpresent. Glazed eyes staring unblinkingly, one gentle prod and the glass would shatter.

He recalls his training, mentally running through a few check-lists of symptoms, and immediately cringes away at how accurate some of them were for him. He buries his face against Raphael, weakly protesting, “I'm not doing that bad.”

He squeezes him once more, an answer in itself. The pressure automatically loosens some of the tension in his body.

“Leo has been researching for a while, on post-traumatic stress.” Raphael begins. “Mikey has been doing a bunch of readings on grief and loss. Donnie has been looking up potential people and resources for help.” He brushes back Casey’s ruly hair tucked under his chin, a comforting hug. “You've been worrying all of us for a while now.”

Casey’s lip trembles, awash with such apparent concern he doesn’t know what to do. An involuntary dark thought sours his mood, and he looks away. “Thanks, but… I hope you know you guys don’t owe me anything. Whatever I did to help you, I would have done it anyway.”

He’s suddenly flicked quite forcefully, right in the middle of his forehead. Casey rears back in surprise, rubbing his head. “ Ow ?”

“This is what I do to my brothers when they’re being dum-dums.” Raphael glares at him vehemently. “Do you seriously think that the only reason we care about you is because you doctored us back to health like we owe you a ‘life-debt’ ? What is this, the Italian mob? It’s either let us repay your debt or dishonor our name? Seriously?"

Casey looks up at him dumbly. “I have no clue what the hell you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about the fact that we care about you because you’re our family, you giant idiot.” Raphael finally exclaims, exasperatedly. “The Hamato clan watches out for its own. You don't have to go through this alone.”

His hands squeeze his shoulders again. “I see so much of us in you, Case. Not just the medical or technical smarts. The real parts of us. You have Leo’s courage and Donnie’s wisdom and Mikey’s heart. You have April’s grit, and Cassandra’s toughness. You are Hamato through and through.” Raphael snorts, shoving his head back affectionately. “And unfortunately, I am required by law to take care of my siblings.”

Casey swipes at his face, sniffling loudly again. “Yeah. Anatawa hitorijanai. ”

Raphael smiles, setting a gentle, warm hand on top of his head. And Casey suddenly feels four instead of fourteen, echoes of years worth of fond head cradles crashing into him. He closes his eyes and lets himself lean into it. He’s so tired. He misses his family. He’s so tired.

“What do I do, Raphael?” He finally begs of him, emotionally wrung out. The weight of his ill-fated existence sinks deep into his bones, too heavy for him to bear. Darkness inside him making way for murky grey smog, low visibility of any sustainable life.

“Well, first off, you start calling Raph, Raph.” He responds primly, making Casey unexpectedly snort. “The only person who ever calls me Raphael is Donnie when he’s trying to be more stuck-uppy than usual.”

“Stuck-uppy?” Casey lets out a warped laugh.

He rolls his eyes. “Stuck-uppy. Pretentious. Flamboyant. Ostentatious. Just because Raph doesn’t use big-boy words does not mean he doesn’t know ‘em.”

Casey chuckles wetly. Raph grins brightly at the sound.

“And second off,” he continues, “we’re going back to the lair. And this time, we’re not going to avoid or hide from the others, okay? We’re actually going to talk to them.”

Even though he detests that idea, he can’t help but appreciate that’s making it seem like the two of them are in this together. Still, he makes a face. “How on earth do you expect that to help?”

“It’s going to help you stop being alone.” Raph replies, hitting the target at point-blank range. His face flushes. “That’s what your sensei would have wanted, so that’s what we’re going to do. Doesn’t matter what you do with them, but we’re going to make sure you’re not isolating again. Support systems are important for addressing grief.”

A horrible thought comes to mind before he can reply to that, making him suddenly stop. “Oh god, are you —” He looks up at him with wide eyes. “Are you going to make me talk to a ‘shrink’?”

Raph blinks. “What.”

Casey continues frantically, quickly getting anxious. “Back there, everyone used to make shrink jokes. Like, a lady in glasses with a notepad and pen, making you sit in an uncomfortable chair, and asking you how you’re feeling today? Are you going to make me do that?”

There’s a pause, before Raph bursts into laughter. The sound is so unexpected and so pure something in Casey’s chest lurches.

“Is – is that what you think a therapist is?”

“Well – yeah!” He insists. “That’s what Sensei used to say. Him and everyone else.”

He wipes a tear from his eye, still chortling. Casey’s lip turns up despite himself. “Well, he’s not entirely wrong actually. But there’s not always an uncomfy chair, really. Sometimes it's a sofa. And sometimes it's a dude with a notepad instead of a lady. Still with glasses though.”

Casey can’t tell if he’s being fucked with or not. “Are you fucking with me?”

He snorts in response. “No. Well, maybe a little. Those three aren’t the only ones who did their research.” He peers down at him. “Do you want to talk to a shrink?”

At this moment, nothing sounded worse than having to tell an untraumatized stranger about his feelings when he was barely ready to acknowledge them himself. Much less air out the fact that he was apparently a scientific anomaly since he broke the space-time continuum in half. “No, I definitely do not want to talk to a shrink.”

Raph shrugs. “Okay. We’ll figure something else out.”

Casey gapes at him as he walks away, climbing down the high ramp. “Wait – really?”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t look back. “Of course. I get it. I don’t like talking about my emotions either. And since you’re Leo’s son, I am ninety percent sure there’s already an unhealthy amount of emotional suppression going on. We can work on that later.”

He chuckles once more, a short but genuine sound, not missing how Raph hides his smile again. “So I don’t have to expect a visit from Dr. Feelings?”

“Nope, and no Dr. Delicate Touch either. If they bother you, I’ll punch them.”

Casey suddenly pauses, not following him. Raph turns around when he stops hearing his footsteps, seeing him twist his hands together nervously.

“Do you think—” He licks his dry lips. Draws from the well of courage instilled in him by his sensei. “Do you think they would be… okay with this?”

Raph tilts his head at him. Discerning, older brother eyes trying to solve a younger brother problem. It almost makes him smile. “Okay with what?”

“Just. This.” Clenching and unclenching his hands in painful configurations, the sharp feedback racing up his arms. “If I… don’t think about them so much anymore?”

Raph’s eyes widen, and then soften with emotion, as he continues, “I know you keep saying that I’m not alone, and you guys can let me be a part of your family. But… I can’t stop thinking about my family. But if thinking about them hurts me, and they wouldn’t want me to hurt anymore… should I stop? Can I stop?”

Casey thinks back to the day he lost his mom. He was a tiny, screaming six year old, refusing to accept that the most important person in the world was never coming back to him. Through the tears in his eyes, silhouettes of turtles surrounded him, trying to soothe him to no avail. The thought of ever moving on from her, from the ever-lasting misery of that loss, seemed unimaginable.

He doesn’t know how that sharp pain dulled down to a small ache. He doesn’t remember how many days it took until he didn’t cry every evening waiting for her to come home. If he’d done right by her that he’d ever stopped at all.

The day he lost his Aunt Apes. The sheer horror of the news that spread through the base like wildfire and made him drop to his knees in shock. The floundering sobs that consumed and wrecked him – how long did it take to recover from that?

The night he sat in Uncle Tello’s lab and heard the call cut off into ringing silence. The way all of the equipment lights turned from purple to red, the quiet alert sent to his remaining family. He hadn’t even cried that day. He’d just curled onto the floor, numbly in shock, until Sensei broke down the door with tears streaming down his devastated face. He doesn’t really think he ever got over that.

How long would it take for these new wounds to heal? How many times must he be reminded of the injury before the fresh skin starts to settle in?

“You never stop thinking about them, Case.” Raph replies, steadily. Frank. Kind. “They’re always there with you, in your heart, in the Spirit Realm. But it does get better. You learn to accept their loss and honor the people you lost. And you and I know the best way to honor this family, in life or in death.”

“To never give up hope.”

“And to always be there for each other.” He finishes.

Casey breathes. Once, twice. Inhale, hold, exhale. The pain in his chest echoes once more, before quieting down, a bearable weight. He smiles at Raph and takes the proffered hand.

Later, when he finally gets back, his new family is waiting for him. Leonardo steps up, apologies ready on his lips, but Casey doesn’t let him start before he engulfs him in a tight hug. A few more tears escape as shaking arms embrace him with equal fervor.

“I’m so sorry.” Leonardo still confesses brokenly.

He shakes his head. “Anatawa hitorijanai. You were right. You were right.”

Michelangelo encircles him from behind, giving them a tight squeeze full of affection. And all Casey can do is close his eyes and feel like he’s with his Sensei and Uncle, basking in their love from realms away.

Donatello rubs a gentle hand on his upper arm, and Casey peeks up at him, spying the soft smile on his face. An endless depth of care under a stoic exterior. He informs him matter-of-factly, “I’m going to implant a tracker in you, CJ-squared.”

He chokes out a laugh, both at the idea and painfully familiar nickname. “I already have three.”

Behind them, Raph laughs, his other brothers joining in as Donatello looks equal parts shocked and intrigued. Their father walks into the living room, stepping in with silent feet. There is a cup of something sweet-smelling in his hands, steam curling above it.

He walks up as Casey disentangles from them, kneeling in front of him to meet him in the eye. It feels wrong to be in the presence of the esteemed Lou Jitsu by looking down at him.

“Casey.” Master Splinter says, a gravelly but proud voice. “My boy. I may not have known you in the future, but I can tell you very honestly that you are one of the bravest men I have ever had the privilege of meeting. And the blessing of having in my home. But you have been far too burdened for far too long.” He offers him the cup, the surface of the warm liquid glistening in the fairy lights of the lair. “Here. It’s a Hamato secret blend. Special.” He winks. “Only for family.”

Casey accepts the tea, staring at the face before him. A similar image comes to his mind, an old, worn picture he hasn’t looked at in months. He cracks a watery smile. “Thanks, Jiji.”

His Jiji’s eyes immediately fill up, as he turns away to weep directly onto Michelangelo’s shoulder, who pats his back comfortingly, shooting a blinding grin his way.

Casey Junior has mixed feelings about the past. His past. He doesn’t know how to stop them, doesn’t know if they ever will. But he does know how to deal with them. He has new orders, and a new readiness to survive.

Looking at the family before him, he believes he can.

#tmnt write fight #tmntwritefight #rottmnt #tmnt #casey junior #rottmnt raph #rottmnt leo #rottmnt donnie #rottmnt mikey #bad future timeline #tw apply!

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