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areyouwell · 3 months ago

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Algophobia

Noun: An extreme and irrational fear of pain. Children and adults may have Algophobia if they possess an extreme aversion to feeling pain, typically physical.

Ch.7

Ch.6, Ch.5,5, Ch.5, Ch.4, Ch.3, Ch.2, Ch.1 <-

Pairing: Logan Howlett x F!Mutant!Reader

Warnings: nightmares, vomit, uhhhhhhh nothing intense really, for once... honestly can't remember and i literally JUST reread it :')

Word Count: 14.5K

A/N: told ya i'd keep writing. sorry this one took a little extra time, i'm literally on a train in France having finished editing and proofreading the chapter like, two minutes ago so slay boots. can't believe this fic is almost over like holy shit... congrats to anyone who's ready all of it so far because it's well within the world count of a novel and by the end will probably be over that threshold... so slay of us good job teamsquad also sorry if the layout is janky i hate posting from my phone

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Birds. The chittering of swallows, to be exact. Beyond the soft beams of sunlight through the quartered window, the chittering of swallows had caressed him awake, a gentle breeze rustling the orange leaves against the glass, whispering secrets into the light of the morning.

It wasn’t rare Logan woke up before you, in fact, considering how little of a morning person you were, it was rare you woke up before midday full-stop—and this morning seemed no different. Occasional snores bubbled from your chest, you lightly swiped at an invisible irritation around your nose as you turned in his arms, nestling tighter into his chest. Logan hummed a tender smile, smoothing your brow with the pad of his thumb. Your features furrowed as you attempted to escape his touch, unappreciative of the disturbance no matter how gentle.

Huffing a small laugh, he allowed you to burrow further into his embrace, tightening his arms around your body. Six months of this. Six months of the quiet peace of escape. Honestly, he couldn’t be more thankful for the raid on the mansion that day. Here he was, the love of his life tangled in his arms, slowly waking on a sunny, breezy autumnal morning.

His eyes raised to beyond the window, smelling the rain on the air even from inside. Maybe an hour away? An hour and a half at a push. He groaned, realising he’d need to get the bike into the barn before the showers hit. Was leaving the cosy confines of the bed really worth saving and having to scale off some rust later? Absolutely not, but Logan knew you’d be mad at him if he let a splash of rainwater ruin all his hard work.

Pressing a lingering kiss to the top of your brow, your features scrunched in disapproval as she shifted you out of his embrace having to move quickly before you searched for him again and attached yourself to his arm. You whined gravelly protests but settled back down when he pulled the covers back up over your shoulders. He’d make a coffee for you when he came back in. One of those strong ‘morning’ coffees you called them. With at least three heaps of espresso, no sugar, no cream, just caffeine.

Slipping on a fresh pair of jeans and a deep green flannel that you said brought out the colours in his eyes –utter bullshit in his correct opinion– Logan tip-toed down the stairs almost comically slow. He knew you wouldn’t wake. The sun could have exploded and you’d be more irritated if it had woken you up before 1 pm, but he still liked to take care not to disturb you, more out of principle than anything else.

The morning was as crisp as he initially thought, his skin prickly with the cool breeze. He hadn’t bothered with his jacket, since he would only be out for less than thirty seconds. Pulling the tarp from the bike and flicking up the kickstand, he wheeled it back up the small slope and into the barn. If things continued going the way they were going, Logan thought about perhaps clearing out some of the rusted old machinery, maybe making room for a chicken pen, or maybe a stall for a cow or something. You’d be good at raising animals, he thought. And he preferred the idea of getting fresh produce rather than having to head to the store every week or so.

It was an idea that refused to leave his head as he looked around the small space. Just against the far wall, he could imagine a little coop where the old, rusty plough now lay discarded. It would be a ballache to remove it, and Logan didn’t doubt the sharp edges where the metal had rusted away would get a good few swipes in, but it seemed worth it in his mind’s eye to see you crouched next to the nest, holding up a single egg proudly as if you’d laid it yourself.

But if he was to get started, he’d need his jacket. And maybe a thick pair of gloves. Sure, he could heal, but that didn’t mean you didn’t get pissed at him when he wouldn’t take these kinds of precautions, bringing up that one time he said he wanted to do things like a normal couple, to which you’d use to your advantage. “Normal people don’t simply heal their wounds three seconds later, Lo’.”

It was endearing, how much you cared. How hard you tried to keep him safe despite the fact he literally couldn’t be hurt. With a fond smile tugging his lips up at the thought of you, Logan draped the tarp back over the bike, securing the tags around the frame before patting the motorcycle, much like Todd did.

Todd.

Logan blinked. Why did he suddenly have the urge to tear into the man’s chest and rip out his fucking heart? Was his anger returning? But Todd hadn’t done anything, at least not that he could remember. Sure, he was flirtatious with you, but you never let it go too far and it made you laugh, so there wasn’t much harm there. So where the fuck did this sudden urge to split his skull come from?

Taking a deep, calming breath, he attempted to release his anger with his exhale, feeling the rage simmer down slightly, though still extremely accessible beneath the surface. Maybe he was too far away from you. Oh, he was down so bad if that was the reason. He refused to believe it until he left the barn, pulling the bolt shut, and turning to see you in the doorway, two mugs of steaming coffee grasped in your hands.

Was there a better view? He couldn’t think of anything sweeter than what he was seeing, the woman he loved, leaning against the doorframe to the cabin he shared with her away from the rest of the world, safe and free and at peace. Your soft smile could start a war, and your laugh could end it. There was no clean line to where you started and he ended, your very souls totally and completely intertwined.

And you lost her.

Logan whirled at the trees above, searching for where he swore he’d just heard a voice hiss. But he saw nothing other than clouded blue skies and fluttering leaves like an artist’s palette of a sunset. You called his name and he slowly turned his head back to you.

And froze completely.

A small crimson stain started to spread from the centre of your chest, sanguine blood flowing from a fresh wound down your front. Panic leached the colour from his face as he lurched forward, only for his feet to be stuck to the ground. He looked down frantically, tugging at his thighs in an attempt to pull himself free. You were supposed to be safe. He was supposed to keep you safe.

A strangled gurgle was ripped from your throat and he looked back to you just as you opened your mouth, a fountain of blood bubbling from your scarlet-stained lips. Trying to scream resulted in nothing but a rippling stream of sanguine with a guttural yelp. A hand gripped your shoulder from the dark beyond the doorway, a serrated knife dragging a thin line across the hollow of your neck as your palms flew to the arm holding you still in a weak attempt to stop him.

Logan desperately clawed at his legs, eyes unable to look away as Dr.Kreva stepped out from behind your bleeding body, the knife held in his closed grip. A roar tore up his voice, scraping up along his throat as the serrated edge of the blade inched further into the tendons of your neck, snapping through the muscles with a sickening squelch. Your eyes widened as your voice cut off, hands gripping Kreva’s arm falling limp by your sides, light fading from your irises.

Smoke rose from somewhere behind the cabin, and Logan could only blink before the wood erupted into flame, licks and tendrils of scorching reds devouring the exterior. He could do nothing, stuck in a quagmire of his guilt, hands of fire clawing up your legs, igniting your clothes, melting the flesh from your bones. Kreva’s glasses shone in the golden glow, stepping back into the inferno and disappearing as the support beam collapsed.

Staring in abject horror, Logan fell forward, finally released by whatever held his fast. His knees bit as he struck the earth, facing your skeleton lying face down, blackened bones of your hand outstretched towards him in a final, desperate plea for help.

“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…” He whispered to your vacant corpse. He’d failed you. Keeping you safe was his only fucking job and he’d failed. He promised you he wouldn’t leave, he wouldn’t abandon you, and he’d fucking failed.

The shadows rippled and contorted around your skeleton, rising from the ground to conjure seven figures. The same silhouettes he’d woken up to stare him down six months ago. Simultaneously, their hands stretched out over you, void-like fingers splayed, and your bones began to sink into the earth.

The ghost of your body rippled beneath the surface of the darkness before the black smoke curled up from the soil, an eighth shadow figure reforming from the void to complete what he had suspected ever since he’d read the file. There were eight of you. Eight Subjects.

Nine Lives Minus One.

They were the literal shadows of your past. And it terrified him that you had now become one. Logan’s heart thundered in his chest as he looked between the eight figures, shadowing faces simultaneously snapping to look at him, head cocking at unnatural angles.

The one he knew to be yours reached up to its neck, wrapping its long thin fingers around its own throat, before squeezing. A scream echoed in his ears, tearing at the walls of his mind before he was thrust forward, falling through to reality.

Nausea roiled in his gut as Logan jolted awake, bolt upright. The image of your charring body, flesh dripping from your bones burned in his mind’s eye, and that slight nausea shifted to the undeniable urge to vomit.

Staggering from his bed to the bathroom, bile burned his throat as he emptied the contents of his stomach into the toilet, the sounds of his own gagging echoing about the empty stall.

Two months. It had been two months since he’d lost you. And every day felt like thirty. Rage and grief accompanied him like a constant companion. The memories of your laughter, your smile, your teasing comments haunted the halls of the school, corridors once alight with comfort and giggles now felt cold damp. Absent.

They were making progress. They reassured him every long, long day, they were making progress with locating you. Charles had almost locked himself away with Cerebro to locate you, but it was difficult to get a read on anything when any signatures he felt from the once-destroyed facility kept slipping from his mental grasp. Subject One, or Obscurity, was somehow hiding all and any neurotransmitters from the old environment centre. Either that or what whole place was coated entirely with steel, which was also a possibility.

But none of them knew because nobody could get close enough to fucking find out. It was damn near impossible without alerting upwards of sixty armed guards to their approaching location. And whilst Logan would tank the bullets and take them all on alone, Scott wouldn’t let him, and neither would he let him endanger any other member of the team by storming a full frontal assault.

So Logan was forced to wait. And wait. And wait. Every day, you slipped further from him. That first night without you, he’d borderline commandeered the Blackbird to get to Todd. He needed to know what happened. Why he did do it? And it wasn’t a polite conversation.

Rage coursed through his veins as he sliced open the lock to Todd’s garage, throwing up the doors with enough force to break the mechanism completely. Pausing only to sniff the air, Logan growled as he scented Todd’s presence, a frantic Ororo trailing behind after him, placing a weak attempt at a placating hand on his bicep. But he didn’t want to be calmed down. Logan wanted blood. Fuck that, he craved blood. Wanted to taste it as he ripped Todd’s throat out with his damn teeth.

Though the office light was off, Todd’s scent was stronger in that direction, and Logan was fairly certain he was hiding. Good. Smartest decision he’d made in the last six months. Although he would have been smarter to start running the second he betrayed Logan’s trust and had you ripped away from him.

With a balled fist, Logan thrust his hand through the glass on the door, barely wincing as shards of glass embedded themselves in his knuckles. It wasn’t like he wasn’t used to that kind of sensation. And true to his senses, Todd swore from behind the desk, his voice shaky. Good.

“It better have been fuckin’ worth it for ya.” Logan snarled, ripping the desk from its roots and tossing it aside as if it weighed nothing. Various effects scattered about the floor, a lamp shattering upon impact, files and paperwork strewn like flyers in the wind.

“Jus’ w-wait a minute. I didn’t ‘ave a choice. Bastard threatened my family, what would you ‘ave done?” Todd held his hands up in defence, bowing his head as Logan’s adamantium claws slid from his freshly healed knuckles. The man’s eyes widened in horror. “Yer a fuckin’ mutant?”

Ororo’s eyes blanched, lightning crashing through a telephone pole beyond the doors outside. The blood drained from Todd’s face, as the realisation dawned on him that, they were all mutants.

Logan hated how he understood the man’s fear. And he was right. If the roles had been reversed, if it had been you who was being threatened, he would have cracked in an instant. If your safety was compromised, there was nothing he wouldn’t do to ensure right whatever had happened.

“Fuck. You’re a fuckin’ weasel, Todd. I fuckin’ trusted you!” It was taking every fibre of his self-control not to plunge his claws through his throat and rip through his tendons, but he took a deep, steadying breath.

“What happened, Todd?” Ororo asked, her eyes fading back to their natural colour.

Todd sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Round three months after y’all moved in, this glasses-wearing sleezebag waltzed into this shop like ‘e owned the fuckin’ place, askin’ after the pair of yous. I told ‘im to get lost, I weren’t in the business of information. Till ‘e asked about me wife. And me daughter, Lisa. Put the fear of God in me I tell ya.

“I didn’t ‘ave a choice, Logan, I swear it. I’d never ‘ave told ‘im anythin’ if I knew this were gonna ‘appen.” He pleaded, and Logan had to step away to stop himself from at least punching the shit out of him.

“That’s why you called me, isn’t it? Not cuz of the money, but cuz you knew what was gonna happen.” The question was rhetorical. Of course that was the reason. And if he could turn back time, he would have picked up the phone in an instant, no questions asked. Maybe he could have avoided this altogether and you’d be safe and sound, curled up by his side, back at the mansion.

But as it stood, Logan’s mutation wasn’t time travel.

“I didn’t know exactly, but yeah, I knew somethin’ was gonna ‘appen tonight…” Todd admitted, resting his elbows on his bent knees. “I liked ‘er Logan. I did. She was–”

“Shut the fuck up.” He hissed, running a stressed hand through his hair. It was only 4:36 am. You had roughly two hours on him, but if he left now and took the bike, maybe he could catch you. Or better yet, if he took the Blackbird…”

“Logan…?”

No. He’d have to land the Blackbird, which would take far too long and he also wasn’t used to piloting something like that.

“Logan?”

He’d take the bike then. Head back to the cabin with the truck and exchange vehicles. But that would take too long, even if he floored it. Fuck! The truck was nowhere near fast enough either. He had to make a choice here, sacrifice time with the small possibility of catching up to you, or possibly sacrifice you and tail Kreva so he leads him straight back to the facility.

“Logan!”

He blinked, turning back to Ororo, who had her arms folded across her chest, her brows pinched in sympathy. “You can’t go after her. It’s too late. We need to strategise this because clearly, they’re expecting you to follow her immediately,” she explained, and he grit his teeth. She was right, and he fucking hated it. Because every second wasted here was yet another second you were in their capture, and fuck knows what they would do to you this time. The thought terrified him. “Come on… we’ll head back to the school, figure something out.” Logan didn’t move, his eyes hard as he glared at Ororo, the thought of leaving your behind had his gut writhing like a ball of vicious, furious snakes. Storm sighed, realising he wasn’t going to be convinced so easily. “She was a member of our team, Logan. She was our friend. We’re not abandoning her…” There was a determination in her eye that genuinely gave Logan a kernel of hope. She was right. You were their friend. You’d made such an impact in their lives, and they weren’t about to give you up so easily.

With an extended sigh, he nodded. Fine. He’d play by their rules. But the moment things stagnated, he’d fucking find you himself.

“I’ll look after yer truck. She’s–”

“I don’t fucking care.” he snapped, not bothering to spare so much as a glance over his shoulder before returning out to the jet.

That was two fucking months ago. And he was certain things had stagnated and he just wasn’t being told. Scott had banned him from surveillance missions, claiming his fuse was too short for missions such as those, and that if he saw where you were being held, he’d snap and tear through anything and everything in his path to get to you.

Not something Logan could disagree with, but he only acquiesced because Jean convinced him it was their best bet at finding you. It physically fucking hurt not to be involved in your rescue missions, but he knew it was for the best. He didn’t particularly want anybody else hurt or captured or killed or whatever the fuck they’d do to them.

Making sure his stomach wasn’t about to surprise him with another surge of bile, Logan stood to the basin, running the cold water from the tap and cupping his hands, splashing his face vigorously in a lame attempt to wash away the nightmare. Because that’s all it was. Just a nightmare. And despite him having intimate knowledge of your mutation, the fact that the last he saw of you, you were bleeding out on a floor of tarmac, scared the shit out of him. He knew you could heal. There was documented proof of you healing from several bullet wounds, however he couldn’t shake the image from his brain.

You barely knew what had happened before you dropped to the floor, your delicately concerned smile for him morphing and shifting to an expression of complete and utter shock. The crack of your skull on the pavement, the harsh gurgle of your coagulated blood as you spat at Kreva….

You didn’t have a choice. He knew that. He knew your body would have given into the shadow in a desperate attempt to heal yourself of the bullet in your chest, but that didn’t make the memories hurt any less.

That was the last he saw of you, and it fucking haunted him. Exhaling a shaky breath, Logan stared into the droplets in the sink, before raising his head, limp strands of dark brown hair hanging damp around his eyes. His gaze shifted to the reflection of the shower. It had taken him almost a week after being back to garner the courage to use it. Not only because every time he closed his eyes he saw your bleeding chest and blanching face, but also because it was identical to the shower in your ensuite, and it fucking hurt to be near it, let alone in it.

The porcelain cracked beneath his grip, pulling him from his memories back into the present. There were times he wished he could simply let himself be lost to the past. At least he was with you there. But he promised he’d find you. He promised he’d never leave you. And he didn’t intend to break it.

Shrugging on the same flannel he’d been wearing for days and a pair of extremely worn jeans, Logan checked his watch. Two minutes past nine. His lips tugged in a bittersweet smile. You’d be furious. Running a hand down the side of his face, Logan opened the door.

Only to find Scott standing on the other side, balled fist held up as if to knock a few times on Logan’s face. If he had the energy, Logan would ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing, but it seemed the team was taking it in turns to make sure he was alright now and then. Poor Scott. It seemed he’d drawn the short straw on a particularly shit morning.

“What?” He asked blankly, fighting the urge to silently barge past the man. Sure, they may have shared a sweet moment of understanding after he’d lost you, but that was two fucking months ago. And moments of sweet understanding weren’t enough to make up for the fact you were still missing.

Scott blew out a sigh of relief, clearly expecting Logan to simply walk past him. “Uh, Marie’s looking for you. Says it’s urgent? She wouldn’t talk to any of us…” Scott sounded almost suspicious, but the moment he mentioned it was urgent, Logan was gone, shouldering past him and down the hallway. “She’s out the back!” Cyclops called after him as if he needed any kind of help with directions. He could smell a plan brewing from a mile away.

True to his nose, and annoyingly, Scott’s directions, he found Marie out by the pond, alongside Kitty, Bobby, Peter, Jubilee, Julian and to his heartwarming surprise, Artie. All of them were dressed in their gear, other than Artie who’d simply donned a black pair of trousers, a black t-shirt and a matching beanie.

“We want to help,” Marie said by way of greeting, and Logan folded his arms across his chest, releasing a slightly exasperated breath. Honestly, he was shocked it took this long for them all to catch on. He was back, and you were nowhere to be seen. Classes had all but ceased completely and the Professor wouldn’t be seen for days, sometimes weeks on end. The rest of their little team nodded with boundless determination.

His chest ached with the knowledge there was no way he was about to let these students, your students, run head-first into danger, no matter how much they wanted to. “Look, kids, as it stands, we don’t even know–” he paused, having to steel his nerves. “We don’t even know if she’s still alive.” It was entirely true. He knew you were alive. You had to be. He’d feel it if you weren’t, right? That’s at least how it felt to him. You were part of each other now, neither whole without the other. If you were head, he’d know it.

Kitty clenched her jaw, her hands balling into firsts by her sides, and Logan felt a pang of guilt. She knew. She must have known he was lying. She was somewhere between a student and an X-man, hovering between still learning and a member of the team. Being so close to you, however, it also seemed she had been left out of all the fun. His sympathy morphed into empathy, feeling her frustration as his own.

“She’s still alive.” Your friend whispered through clenched teeth, and Logan blew out a sigh. “They won’t let them help, sure, they’re still students, but I’m not. I’m part of the goddamn team, Logan. And so are you!” She hissed, and Marie and Bobby shared a look of concern before Rogue’s hand touched her shoulder compassionately.

“We don’t care that we’re students. You said it yourself, we’re stronger than anyone realises. We can help.” Bobby urged, and if Logan was being honest with himself, their argument was fairly convincing. They were strong, much stronger than even you realised. But he also knew that if–

No. Not if. When they got you back, if you ever found out that he’d allowed the students to help on the mission, he was pretty sure you’d castrate him.

“I’m sorry, I can’t let ya. Not only cuz you’re still students, but you all know, if she found out I was the one who let you help, I’d be killed.” Huffed a smile of understanding. Of course, they wanted to help you, you’d helped so many of them in the past. But he didn’t think that was it. This wasn’t out of some favour for a favour obligation towards you. You were loved. You were so so loved, by so many.

And by nobody more than him.

“Be our spy then.” Jubilee offered from behind Marie, to which Logan raised a brow.

“And how would I do that when? I’m not involved in the planning.” He tried so hard to keep the frustrated growl from his voice, but Artie's slight step back proved his failure. Fuck.

“You gotta convince them. Please? For us?” The hope in Marie’s voice took him right back to where he’d found her almost three years ago now, running from her past. Running from herself. It made sense how you and she got along so well. You were both running.

Pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, Logan could feel seven pairs of eyes all trained on him. He wasn’t one to bend to peer pressure, but at the same time, he needed an excuse for himself to get involved, and if doing it for the kids was enough, then that’s what he’d do.

“Alright. Alright. Damn, you sure none of you has a persuasion mutation?” He asked in a lame attempt to lighten the mood. At least Artie found it funny, the kid giggling away to himself in the back.

Marie beamed in gratitude, leaping into his arms and giving him one of the squeeziest hugs Logan thinks he’s ever received. “I knew you’d help! Thanks, Logan, as soon as you hear anything, please let us know, kay?” She stepped back and Logan once again felt that familiar stab of guilt impale his gut. He knew he was going to have to lie to them, because the moment they found out some kind of progress had been made, they’d be out the door like a shot before he could even start to yell ‘wait’.

“Yeah yeah, just don’t mention anythin’ ‘kay? They don’t let me know anythin’ as it is, so this’ll be hard enough without them thinkin’’m feeding back information to the damn students.” Logan grumbled, running a hand through his hair. “Okay?” He repeated after a beat of silence, only this time to a chorus of nodded heads and various ‘yes sir’s. “Good, now back to classes, all of you.”

“But… Professor Grey didn’t turn up to teach us…” Julian chimed in, to Logan’s irate twitch of his brow.

“Then go and study.” His voice left no room for argument as each student bowed their head in defeat and dragged their feet back inside until his was just him and Kitty left behind. Logan studied her face for a bit, much more crestfallen than he’d ever seen her. “Y’alright?” He asked, though instantly kicking himself for the ridiculous question. She was probably just as alright as he was, which was absolutely not alright at all.

Kitty clenched her jaw again, unable to raise her eyes further than the blades of grass at her feet. “She left again…” Logan’s heart cracked for her. You hadn’t had time to explain anything eight months ago after the attack. He didn’t even think you saw her before you left, unable to say goodbye before you were on the road with him. And now, he’d returned and you were still gone.

“She didn’t want to, kiddo. She didn’t have a choice…” he didn’t know how much Kitty knew about your situation, but he assumed anything regarding who you were, what had happened in your past and who had taken you was kept on a need-to-know basis. He hated every tear that spilled from the poor girl’s eyes, her frustration conflicting her her confusion. Wordlessly, Logan stepped forward and enveloped her in his embrace, finding the way she instantly fell into his chest heartbreaking.

“I miss her so much…” she managed to sob, her fingers clutching onto the arms of his jacket. Tears pricked his own hazel eyes, having to tilt his head up to stop them from falling. He hadn’t heard his own agony spoken aloud like this, and pain wracked the centre of his chest.

“Me too.” was all he could utter back, fighting to keep his voice stable, clearing his throat in an attempt to loosen the lump constricting his breathing. Kitty stepped back from his arms, furiously wiping the tears from her cheeks with the heels of her palms.

“Right, yeah, ‘course you do. Sorry, I didn’t mean–”

“You’re good. It’s actually kinda… refreshing. Everyone tip-toes ‘round me like ’m gonna bite their head off. Can’t really blame 'em.” He shrugged as if it wasn’t that big of a deal. He guessed he should be grateful for the way people were trying to be respectful, but it only resulted in pissing him off monumentally.

“You have been looking like you want to tear the school down recently…” Kitty giggled lightly, and Logan relaxed, thankful he was able to bring a smile back to the girl’s face. His chest constricted as he thought of your proud smile. Teaching the kids he could do. Making them feel better in any kind of capacity? That’s where he fell short, but you excelled. “S’just… Jade was like a sister to me. I hated her for what happened, but we leant on each other so much, she became the sister to me Jade used to be. And I never told her I didn’t hate her anymore. Because I did, or, at least part of me did, but I let that go…” Kitty took a deep breath, tilting her head to the sky as fresh tears stung her eyes. “What if– what if I don’t get to tell her that?”

Logan grit his teeth. “You will. Listen, I still gotta buncha shit I wanna say to her, and there’s nothin’ that can stop me from sayin’ it. We’ll get her back, aight? I promise.” He sounded a lot more confident than he felt, but Kitty blew out a long breath, her tears remaining behind her lashes. If he could bring her some kind of comfort, then perhaps he could start believing it himself. You weren’t dead. He was set on that. But you were in pain. He knew that too. Because whatever they did to you in the past wouldn’t hold a candle to how things had changed in the last seven years. New technology, new information, new drugs.

New weapons.

He shook his head. Thinking about what you were going through wouldn’t help to get you back. And as if sensing his train of thought, Kitty stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. “We will get her back.” She reiterated, only this time it was for his benefit. He offered her a weak, grim smile, before turning back to head into the mansion once again.

Only to be stopped in his tracks by Jean who came sprinting out the door, almost colliding straight into him. She skidded to a stop, pausing as if she couldn’t find the right words. Logan raised a brow.

“We have a lead.” Was all she said, though her words took a moment to register, Kitty came barrelling up behind him. “Or rather, we found a way in.”

Rap rap rap!

A groan rumbled from your lips as you held your pillow over your ears, your head pounding. Your shift last night had been long and brutal, and that was without the endless shots your coworkers poured for you.

Rap rap rap!

“Fuck off!” You called back, hearing a light giggle from beyond your messy bedroom door.

“C’mon, it’s almost midday! You can’t sleep forever!” You attempted to hide beneath the covers of your bed as Morgana opened the door, her face as bright as it usually was this early in the morning. And by this early, you really meant eleven-forty.

“I’m serious Morgo, fuck off. My shift was exhausting and I just want to sleep forever…” you complained, almost hiding as she drew back the curtains to your window. “Morgana?!”

“Get. Up!” She leapt onto your bed, hardly mindful of wherever your limbs lay, before snuggling in next to you, crimson strands of curly hair falling into your face. You sighed heavily. You loved Morgo, you really did, but she could be a total pain in your ass sometimes.

“She still not up yet?” Rowan called from the door, and you swore lowly as he too stepped into your room, followed by Atlas.

“Yeah sure, party in my room. Free real estate up in here!” You called sarcastically from beneath the covers as Rowan attempted to pull them from your body. You gasped in horror, clutching the duvet like your life depended on it.

“Don’t you fucking dare Rowan, I will drown you in shadow I swear to fucking god!” You bit, earning yourself a fit of giggled from Morgana and an appalled gape from Atlas. Your brother placed his hands on his hips, raising a light gold brow as he looked down at you.

“If you could control your powers like I can, maybe I’d believe you, freakshow. C’mon, ouuuuuut of bed.” He strained against your strength as you briefly played tug of war, before you gave up when Atlas stepped in to help your brother, ripping the covers from your clutch with their combined strength and dragging Morgana with it, the girl falling off the foot of your bed with a heavy thump.

“Hey! What the hell?” She slapped Atlas’ thigh and the poor boy jumped back, offering her a shrug of an apology. She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Ya know, I don’t know a single twenty-two-year-old who lays in bed all day. Oh, wait, yeah I do. It’s you.” Rowan poked your now exposed foot and you went to kick him half-heartedly. He took a single step back, out of your range.

“Yeah well, none of you fuckers work nights so–”

“I do!” Erin poked her head around the door, toothbrush sticking out from between her white frothy lips. It seems you weren’t the only one out late. “Well, shometimes, it–”

“Take ya brush out ya mouth, Erin…” Atlas sighed, a hand braced against his brow as if being around you all was exhausting. The girl rolled her eyes, tilting her head up so her minty saliva wouldn’t drip all over the wooden floors.

“It depends on the rota, I don’t work late every shift, unlike you.” She finished, placing the toothbrush back in her mouth and dipping out of sight. You heard the tap run as Erin spit out her toothpaste, returning around the door as she wiped her mouth, “We need to get you a new job, girlie. This one’s destroying you. Honestly, you could carry my weekly shop in the bags under your eyes.” Erin crossed the room with the sole purpose of prodding the centre of your nose, before plopping her ass down on the bed next to you.

You looked at the four of them individually, finding a bubble of happiness blooming in your chest. You loved these people. They were your family. They were everything to you. And despite your shitty job, your long hours, the tiny apartment that the seven of you were supposed to share, and how antisocial Naji was, you found yourself feeling extremely grateful for your circumstances.

“I’ll look into it…” you sighed, much to Erin and Altas’ shared glee. Clearly, he was getting tired of healing your various bar-wounds, coming home with various cuts on your palm from where you’d completely misjudged the fall of your knife when slicing up garnish.

“Knew ya would!” Erin chimed, twirling a strand of her badly dyed green hair between her fingers. Her justification was that she could control nature, so surely she should look green, no? But her original black roots had started to show through and she couldn’t be bothered to go through the faff of dyeing it all over again, so she’d just decided to grow it out.

With an irritated sigh, you stretched your arms high above your head, rolling your shoulders in an attempt to rid yourself of the crick in your neck. “Fine, I’ll get up. God, I hate Saturdays. None of you motherfuckers seem to work weekends either.” You grumbled, shooting an exasperated look to Atlas as he muttered ‘language’ under his breath.

“Did you have ya dream again?” Morgana asked, finally removing herself from your floor and dusting herself off. Rowan and Atlas went to head back down the stairs, where you could now smell bacon rising from the kitchen. Maybe it was worth getting up if Rowan was making breakfast. Or lunch, you guessed.

“Hm?” You asked, having not listened to her question at all. The girl rolled her eyes, slapping your arm as she followed you to the bathroom.

“Your dream? Did ya have it? I need to know more about Mr.Sexy and his hot claws.” She grinned and you snorted a laugh, before taking a moment to try to remember if you even dreamed at all last night. Though your awakening had been rude, you’d awoken feeling a slight panic in your chest which had nothing to do with Morgana storming your room. Although if you were being quite honest, you didn’t really want her to know more than she already did. You had a sneaking suspicion she was writing down your dreams in the hopes that she would dream of your nighttime visitor.

“Yeah, actually, I did…” you started hesitantly, giving her reflection in the mirror a flat look as she clapped her hands excitedly. Erin scooted over across your bed so she could be involved in the conversation, listening through the open door. “I don’t remember much of it,” you confessed, rolling your eyes as Morgana’s face fell. “But it was pretty mundane. We were just…” you took a moment, pretending to try and remember what it was about. “We were just chatting. On a bed, but like, a four-poster bed. Same one as last time, with the whole crossed gun thing above the headboard” It was one you’d genuinely had before, and Morgana’s shoulder sagged in disappointment. “Sorry Morgo.”

“Wait that’s so cute, why’re you apologising?” Erin called from the bed, and you snorted a laugh.

“Because I’ve had that one before. It seems to be recurring.” You shrugged, feeling a little nugget of guilt swell in your gut. Now you’d thought about it, your dream last night had been harrowing. You were caked in blood, lying on the road. He was reaching for you, stationary, the world around swirling and blurry with shadows before you blinked and he was gone. Two months you’d been having dreams similar to this one, or at least starring the same man. He was incredibly attractive, hence Morg’s nickname for him after you described him to her, but you knew nothing about him. Each dream he was silent. You were too. You were just near each other, either doing mundane things or going through what you assumed was the worst moment of your dream self’s life. It was really fucking weird.

“Awww… I wanted something new.” Morgana pouted and you narrowed your eyes at her reflection, spitting your toothpaste into the basin before splashing water across your face in a lame attempt to freshen up and wash away the memory of your nightmare.

Twirling to face her, you placed a hand on your hip. “Yeah well, seems my mind’s just conjuring shit on repeat now sooooo…” you made a face and Morgana stuck her tongue out at you, before padding out the bathroom with you in tow.

“Still, s’interesting you get dreams of the same guy. S’like you’re having a relationship in your head… wait no that just sounds sad.” Erin furrowed her brows in an attempt to think of another way of putting it, but gave up almost instantly. You flopped back down on your bed, leaning forward to your chest of drawers against the left side wall, and the fact you could easily reach the drawers from your bed was a testament to just how small your room was. Pulling out a loose pair of sweats and a grey hoodie, you didn’t hesitate to strip in front of the two girls. Having known them since childhood, it was an uncommon occurrence for the three of you to change in front of each other. And this was no different. Though Morgana’s brows furrowed as her eyes found a scar cutting straight across your chest, from just above your left breast, over the centre of your breastbone, to down below the right-hand side of your ribcage. It was gnarled and jagged, a slice made without much care, but you couldn’t remember a time when you didn’t have it.

“That’s new, when’dya get that?” She asked, eyeing you suspiciously. You’re head cocked to one side, raising a brow in confusion.

“I’ve always had this, whaddya mean?” An ember of concern ignited in your gut as you regarded her for a moment. You watched the way her eyes lost focus, almost dissociating for a moment, before she shook her head to clear the haze behind her eyes.

“Right… yeah no you totally have. Sorry, must be goin’ nuts.” The girl grinned, and you inhaled a relieved breath. You didn’t need Morgana careening off the rails right now. She was the one who kept you stable, or at least less grumpy.

“S’alright. Tough few days?” You tugged on your sweats, already hating the fact that in two hours, you’d have to be getting ready for work. It took an hour to commute to the bar, that’s if the buses were on time and not disappearing randomly. God you fucking hated the public transport here.

Morgana nodded a little absently as if still fighting back whatever brain fog she’d just encountered. “Yeah, something like that…” She trailed off, and you didn’t push any further. It happens to all of you from time to time. You were talking to Altlas the other day about the way you’d all graffiti the walls of your first hideout when you were kids, talking in detail about the first sketch you’d done before transferring it onto the wall. Only, he didn’t remember it that way. You went back and forth for a while, until he had that same faraway look enter his eye, and all of a sudden he was agreeing with you, as if a switch was flipped in his brain.

“Oh! Before he left Joseph said you could have the rest of his milkshake, by the way. In payment for the pasta you made him yesterday.” Erin chimed in, examining her nails, her legs sprawled across your bed like it was her own. And honestly, you all acted like that. The rooms were all pretty communal at this point, you’d known each other for so long.

You perked up a little. Milkshake and bacon? Maybe getting up before midday was worth it after all. Not that it was much before midday now, and in fact, the small alarm on your watch just told you it had just gone twelve. Only two hours til you needed to leave.

Fucking great.

“Kind of him, I’d take it with me if Carlos wasn’t such a stickler for company drinks. I think he’d stab me if I brought in my own…” You half-joked, to both Erin and Morgana’s morbid shock.

“Girl we really need to get you a new job.”

“Like, ASAP…” Morg finished, and you scoffed slightly. You didn’t need one that badly. Just one within the next few years would be nice…

You blew out a breath, standing from your bed after pulling on a pair of warm socks. There was a winter chill in the air, and you were certain this year was going to be a cold one. You could feel it in your bones. Rubbing at your arms, you almost slipped down the stairs, Morgana’s hand instantly steadying your steps in a hand clutching your arm. How fucking tired were you? It felt like your legs straight up didn’t damn work.

“Enjoy your trip?” You heard Rowan call from the stove, and you clenched your jaw against your dumb smile. God, you hated that joke. Or, at least, you told yourself you did, when in actual fact it made you smile every damn time he said it.

“Ha-ha, yeah ‘see you next fall’ you’re so fucking funny Ro’.” Smoothing your brow with your hand, you went to sit at the breakfast far, the rest of your found family having forsaken a dining table upon moving in and instead opting for this slightly decrepit, unstable wooden bar with garish-coloured seats that were various heights. Even the lighting matched the anarchy of the decor, the scrappy bulb flickering every so often. None of the furniture matched in your apartment but to be honest, that was part of the reason you loved it so much. It was chaotic, but it was home.

Your heart spasmed in pain, to the point where your brow furrowed. What the fuck just happened? Rowan seemed to have noticed as well, sending your an inquisitive look, which you instantly brushed off. Nothing to worry about. At least, not yet.

Rowan shrugged, shimmying the pan of baken in his hand before removing three slices and placing them on a plate before you, alongside a freshly washed fork clearly leftover from last night’s takeout they all had that you weren’t invited to because you were at fucking work goddamnit.

“Thanks, Ro’, smells great.” You offered him a small smile, one he returned, before heading over to the far too-small fridge to dig out the rest of Joseph’s milkshake he’d said you could have. You didn’t mind making pasta for him yesterday. In fact, you kind of enjoyed it. Most of the time, when the rest of your family ate, you were at work so you never got the opportunity to cook for them. That was mostly down to Rowan unless he was working the late shift at his apprenticeship, in which case the two of you would leave together and the other’s had to fend for themselves.

It was often a bombsite when you’d return.

With the first mouthful of crispy, smokey bacon, you quickly decided getting out of bed was worth the aggravation, even more so when you dumped a whole load of maple syrup onto your plate. You don’t think you’d ever met a Canadian in your life, but if and when you did, you might just have to kiss them for even being associated with maple syrup.

Speaking of sweet treats…

“Anyone want one of my special hot chocs? I’m annoyed and up early so my treat for having to deal with me,” you grinned a little wickedly into your milkshake, the room whirling in complete surprise, to the point where you had to hold up your hands in defence. “What did I say?”

“Whaddya mean ‘special hot choc’?” Rowan asked accusingly. “I’ve never taught you how to make hot chocolate before!”

“Yeah, I’m with Ro on this one. Since when did you have a special hot chocolate recipe?” Erin almost pouted, as if you’d deliberately been keeping it from her.

You thought for a moment. They were right, you didn’t always have a hot chocolate recipe. You only learned that from…

Wait, who?

And when you went…

Wait, where?

Maybe you didn’t have a special recipe after all. Were you just remembering things wrong? YOu must be. Where and when would you have picked up a special recipe for Christ’s sake? You haven’t been anywhere with anyone to have done that.

Must have been the exhaustion talking. The lights flickered again.

“Must be going crazy…” you mumbled, accepting the fact that no, you didn’t have a special hot chocolate recipe.

You felt something wither away and die in your chest.

“You really gotta stop all those late nights.” Rowan placed a hand on your shoulder, concern etched in the pinch of his brow. It hadn’t been too long ago you and Rowan had fought, the argument you’d had still echoing in your brain. It was over your mutation, and his since it was so similar yet the complete opposite. He’d berated you for not having gained control of it yet after accidentally plunging a supermarket in a blanket of shadow upon finding out they were out of your favourite bread. It wasn’t your fault, really, but you’d made the whole situation worse when you lost complete control.

Three people were taken to hospital.

Two of them died.

You shook your head. Now was not the time to be thinking about that. You’d managed to repair the relationship between you and your brother, there was no point dwelling on the past.

The idle chatter of the kitchen continued as you fell silent, turning your attention instead to the strange series of dreams you’d been having. Most of you only remembered because Morgana would remind you multiple times a day by bringing it up all the time. But there was one thing you hadn’t told her that had occurred in almost every single dream you had.

One word.

Or an animal you guessed.

Or a bug.

Were bugs animals?

Did the animal kingdom include fish and birds as well as mammals?

Shit, you were getting off-topic. Your brows furrowed in concentration, trying to remember your train of thought. What the fuck were you just thinking about? Your jaw clenched with the effort of remembering. You swore you were deep within–

Firefly.

The chair clattered behind you as you shot from your seat, eyes round and wide in panic. What the fuck was going on? Where were you? You could barely register the faces of those around you, but you knew you hadn’t seen them all in a long long time. You weren’t supposed to be here. None of this was real. You were back, he’d found you again. Shit! Where was L–

“You okay…?”

The tension left your body as Morgana settled a hand on your shoulder, her auburn brows pinched in worry. Darkness swam at the edges of your vision, before you shook your head slightly, freeing yourself of your daze.

“Yeah… shit, yeah, sorry. Fuck, what is wrong with me today?” Your voice shook slightly as you gave your family a slightly nervous smile, bending to pick the chair back up. Fuck, you really needed to sleep more. Fucking job was going to kill you off. For sure.

A quick flick of your wrist and you saw you had around an hour and a half before you needed to leave. A heavy sigh blew from your lips as you downed the rest of Joseph’s milkshake he’d so kindly donated to you, before shooting an annoyed look to the bulb as it briefly turned the kitchen into a club dancefloor, before winking out completely.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me…” Rowan lamented, placing down whatever protein shake he’d opted for the morning and dragging over a barstool to stand on. “I told Naji we needed to get this shit fixed and he told me he’d text the landlord, but this is just–”

None of you were strangers to natural phenomena. You were fucking mutants, for Christ’s sake, your very existence was a natural phenomenon. However, watching a barstool blink out of existence entirely wasn’t exactly on your list of things you’d ever seen. Or even things you would like to see. Rowan was cut off midsentence as he crashed to the floor.

You all stood in utterly stunned silence.

“Y’all saw that too, right?” Erin asked, glancing warily around the room before taking a small step toward Atlas next to the window. Well, that was one suspicion you’d had confirmed then. Tension thickened the air, static apprehension making your saliva sweet and your breath hot. What the fuck was going on?

Rowan stood from the ground, dusting himself off, his gaze tracking warily around the perimeter of the room. Another mutant, perhaps? It wasn’t exactly common in the area, but it wasn’t unheard of. Some poor kid with shitty control over their new mutation discovers their first big act of power was accidentally erasing a barstool out of existence. “Chill out, it’s most likely a power cut or some new electromagnetic mutation. We’re fine.” Rowan attempted to soothe, though his voice was anything but convincing. Especially when a squeaked gasp emitted from next to the window, where Atlas had flipped up the blind to the outside world.

“Does the sun get power cuts too? Or did you just absorb a bunch of light this morning, Ro?” Morgana asked, though her eyes were trained on the pitch black outside the crummy window. You crossed the kitchen alongside Rowan, the five of your leaning out of the window to get a good look at whatever the fuck was going on.

Or rather… not going on.

“What the hell…?” Rowan muttered as you all watched the outside world flicker in and out of existence. One second it would be the neighbourhood you’d come to know so well, the next the sky turned grey and grainy, like an old TV trying to find signal. The flat next door would completely disappear, replaced by walls of steel. Your heart raced, stomach flipping.

“Joseph’s still at work…” You breathed, and Morgana turned to you as if she’d only just realised it too, fear flickering in her dark crimson eyes.

“I’ll text him, let me–” Atlas was cut off swiftly, the floor beneath your feet flickering, before that too completely disappeared, and you were all plummeting to the ground. Wind whipped at your hair as you desperately flung your arms out in search of a shadow.

“ERIN!” Morgana screamed as Erin’s hand extended before her, attempting to search for some kind of plant life. But your flat had become nothing, merely glitches of light around you. A strong arm circled your waist and turned to see Rowan’s golden eyes wide with fear.

“My shadow!” He called, flipping the two of you so you were beneath him. You didn’t think twice, trusting he had a plan before your molecules dissolved into the darkness across his front. You could still hear the rush of wind, Morgana’s cry of pain before the descent started to slow and you could sense various shadows around you growing. The moment your world seemed solid enough, you reformed, your eyes taking a moment to adjust before you registered Altas healing the nasty looking cut on Morgana’s hand, blue glowing particles rising from where his palm encased her hand.

She must have slowed your fall, the steel floor now a pool of blood where she’d borderline drained herself to save the rest of you. Wordlessly, you crossed to where she swayed slightly, placing her arm around your shoulder to act as a support.

“Thanks…” She murmured, closing her eyes to recover from that woozy feeling of using too much of her power. You went to brush off her gratitude, to tell her it was the least you could do after she’d just saved your lives, before part of the wall before you started to close in an inch. With a hiss and a screech, the steel split in two, casting a rectangle of blinding light and causing you all to throw up your hands.

“Guys?”

You all knew that voice, and there was a collective sigh of relief when Joseph stepped through the door. But the voice you knew to be full of jokes and laughter sounded exhausted, beaten. Defeated. Where the fuck had he been?

“Joes? What the fuck is going on?” Rowan called, dimming the light so you could all remove your hand-shaped shields from your eyes. “Where’ve you– Holy shit are you okay?” Rowan ran forward, catching Joes as his knees buckled and he crumpled to the ground.

A gasp flew from your lips. He was caked in blood. And not in the way Mogana would be if she somehow lost control. He’d been hurt. Badly. Almost surgically. Various parts of his skin had been removed to leave behind raw, pulsing muscle exposed to the outside. His face had been all but completely disfigured, where his eyes used to be dark and inviting, the whites were now bloodshot and his pupils dilated.

“Move,” Atlas instructed sternly, Rowan shifting slightly to the side before he lay his hands on Joes’ chest in the same way he did for Morgana, those same blue particles rising and winding around Joes like grapevines, dipping into his various wounds and closing them over.

“They’re here to help us,” Joes muttered, his head lolling to look back out the gap in the wall. What the fuck was he talking about? Help you do what? One moment you were all having brunch and you were sipping a milkshake, the next your fucking flat had disappeared and you’d all plummeted fifty feet straight down.

You cast Morgana a confused glance, now recovering quickly, and she sent you one right back. “Who’s here?” You asked, eyes lingering on the fear in Morgo’s before Joes pointed out beyond the darkness and into the light.

Three elongated shadows shrouded the light, but it was the one in the centre who drew your attention. Broad-shouldered, strong-armed, with two little flicks of hair licked up either side of his head. You knew that outline, like a memory forgotten, or a faded dream. With the light behind them, you couldn’t see their faces, but you could see they all wore the same suits. The girl on the right gasped, her hands covering her mouth as she almost fell to her knees.

Morgana tilted her head in confusion, and you shrugged, not taking your eyes from the three shrouded figures.

Though you felt a well of unspecific emotion rise in your chest as the man in the centre spoke, his tone soft, voice deep and gruff.

“Hey, firefly.”

Logan didn’t know what he would say to you when he saw you again. When Jean had told him they’d found a lead, he expected it to be at least another month before anything would actually happen about it. He wasn’t expecting the entire team to have assembled already, suits and all, prepared to head out that night. His chest constricted with impatience when the team were stalking the halls. He knew they all had the element of surprise, but if he was being honest, stealth was never really his strong suit. He just wanted to find you. He just wanted to hold you and apologise as many times as he needed to in order to ease the heavy weight of guilt off his shoulders.

What would he say to you? How much he’d fucking missed you? How sorry he was he couldn’t protect you. How he’d promised he’d keep you safe and then lost you? But the moment those doors opened and he saw you, with Sanguine leaning heavily on your shoulders, all and any words quickly left his mind. You looked tired. That wasn’t to say you didn’t always look tired, but you looked fucking exhausted. Dangerously skinny, as well. The muscles on your arms had all but faded, your cheeks had hollowed, and your neck looked like it could be snapped with a light breeze. Fuck you looked so fragile.

“We’re gonna get you out, okay?” Logan took a step forward, only for you and the rest of the mutants to take a step back. A spear thudded into the centre of his soul as he watched you try to figure out what was going on. But it was the look in your eyes that shattered every fibre of his being.

Unfamiliarity.

You had no idea who he was.

“They don’t remember,” Joes said, rising from the floor once Atlas had taken a step back away from Logan, Scott and Kitty. She’d insisted she came with the rest of the team and said she’d just hide in the walls anyway, so they may as well take her along willingly. Scott begrudgingly agreed.

“We don’t remember what?” Logan’s eyes slid to the man with the golden hair and eyes, who looked remarkably similar to you. Rowan. His eyes narrowed. “Joes what the fuck is going on? What don’t we remember? Who are you fuckers?”

“Rowan!” The man next to him hissed. Judging from his appearance and general attitude, Logan guessed that must have been Atlas, or Harmony. He’d already run into Joseph, and rescued him when Ororo controlled enough lightning to short out their electrical units, plunging the facility into total darkness. All that was left of that practice room was blood and entrails.

Logan had made sure of it.

“None of this is real, Ro’. They’ve been forcing Naji to fuck with our minds, man. Every time one of us goes to ‘work’, they take us out into the real world and fuck with us. You saw the state I was in, man. C’mon!” Joseph pleaded, and Logan could see the cogs turning in your brain as if trying to process what he was saying.

“The fuck are you talking about?” The girl with the bright green hair piped up, boldly stepping towards Joseph and dragging him back towards the rest of the group protectively. “Who’s ‘they’? Whaddya mean fuck with us?”

“Naji wouldn’t do that, Joes.” Your just managed to keep the tremor from your voice, dropping Morgana’s arm from around your shoulders and taking a cautious step towards your brother. What the fuck was going on? You looked between the three newcomers, the girl on the right stepped forward, and your eyes narrowed on her. “Another step and you’re dead.” You hissed, extending your hand behind you to the shadows as if you could do anything but disappear into them. Morgana drew out her knife from her boot and sliced open her palm, blood swirling and morphing until three sharp spears floated above her head.

“Let’s all just take a breath…” Logan murmured in an attempt to soothe the rising tensions in the room. Why he’d thought this would go smoothly, he had no idea and found his present self kicking his past self for making such stupid fucking assumptions. He held out his palms in peace, trying in vain to come across as non-threatening as possible, his eyes trained on you. “It’s okay…” His brows pinched as you looked at him with disdain.

Who the fuck was this guy? Sure he looked and sounded exactly the same as your dream visitor, but you refused to believe they were one of the same. Just some freaky coincidence, and you didn’t even know if his mutation was the same. He hadn’t shown anything yet, and for all you knew, it could be something completely different.

But a hole of doubt had burned through your gut.

“Wait… isn’t that–”

“Shut the fuck up, Morgo.” You hissed before Morgana could even finish her inquiry. You knew exactly what she was about to ask, you’d felt her eyes flicker between you and the man ever since he’d called you firefly.

Total coincidence…

“She has a point though. Naji wouldn’t do that to us. Sure he’s antisocial and spends most of his time in his room, but we’re still his friends. His family. He wouldn’t do that… would he?” Uncertainty laced Erin’s tone as she eyed the three outsiders suspiciously, reaching into her back pocket. You glanced her way, holding your breath. You knew what he had stored away in her cargo pants, not just in her back pocket, but in all of them. Various seeds for every variety of plant you could think of, her favourite being the Venus fly trap because of course that was Erin’s favourite plant.

Logan’s chest spasmed at Erin’s words. He knew he was going to have to take them all to Charles and return their memories to them. Not knowing what would happen to the bonds you’d all made with each other terrified him. What if that just made everything ten times worse? What if you and the others remembered everything and decided to go along with Kreva’s plan? He’d already seen Rowan, Morgana and Joseph working for Kreva…

What would stop them this time?

“This is taking too damn long…” Scott muttered, throwing a glance behind his shoulder to make sure nobody was sneaking up on them. Logan couldn’t help but agree. It was taking far too long. He didn’t want to take any of you by force. That was a last resort, and only if you couldn’t be convinced. If it went against your current wishes, he honestly didn’t give a fuck. You weren’t safe here. You were back where you started, and he’d be fucking damned if he was leaving without you today. Taking the others was a luxury, taking you was the priority.

“Let me talk to them. Please. They don’t know what’s going on. Naji restores our memories before the testing begins, but they’re always erased and replaced when we come back. They don’t know anything, just give them time.” Logan couldn’t help but feel sorry for Joseph. He was the only one out of the group, perhaps other than Naji, who knew what was going on and was stuck between saving his friends and getting the fuck out of there.

“You have thirty seconds.”

“Scott!” It was the first time Kitty had spoken up since seeing you, and to be honest, Logan had almost completely forgotten she was there. She’d been non-verbal, dealing with whatever she was dealing with after seeing you in the state you were in for the first time in two months. Now, however, she seemed to have recovered.

Unlike Logan, who still found it difficult to look at you, yet equally difficult to look away.

“Thank you, man,” Joseph nodded his head in gratitude, before turning back to the rest of the group. “Look, I don’t know how to convince you, but they got a mutant back at this crazy mutant school that can help get your memories back. He’s like, the only one other than Naji who can do it.”

“If this is true,” you began, folding your arms across your chest in a way that had Logan holding his breath, the familiarity nauseating. “Then why don’t we just ask Naji to restore them? He’s our fucking friend, Joes. Why would he do this?” You implored him to see reason. To see that there was no reality where Naji would work against the group, antisocial or not.

“Because they’ve–”

“Now now, Subject Three. Don’t go spoiling all of our secrets now, will you?”

The hairs on the back of your neck prickled, though the voice meant nothing to you. You didn’t recognise it at all, but you noticed the way the three newcomers all bristled and the way Joes seemed to shrivel in fear. Following ‘Scott’’s gaze, you looked up to see Naji, bruised and beaten, his neck held in a vice grip by some formless, faceless figure with a large gun slung over his back. The mirrored window had been smashed open, blood leaking from Naji’s knuckles as his legs dangled over the side, held out over the shattered glass by the throat.

“Joes…” Rowan growled in instruction, the rest of you already being on the same page. Joes could teleport not only himself but various other people of different numbers depending on size and mass. But the man just stood there, his eyes wide, nostrils flaring in utter terror as Naji gurgled and fought against the hold around his neck.

“Kreva.” You heard the muscular man behind you snarl, and your mind did somersaults as three long, razor-sharp claws slid from his knuckles. There was no point in denying it anymore. It was most definitely the same mutant from your dreams.

“Ah, The Wolverine. How darling to see you again. Here for Subject Eight, I presume? There’s no point. It remembers nothing of your cosy little forest getaway.” Dr Kreva covered his mouth theatrically, gasping as if he’d made a terrible mistake. “Oh no, have I said too much? No matter. Once all you X-men are disposed of, this will be nothing but a bad dream to them. Isn’t that right, Eight?” It took a moment to realise the skinny, crooked-nosed man was addressing you, but how the fuck were you supposed to know that when he wasn’t even calling you by your name. And what the fuck did he mean by ‘cosy forest getaway’? You’d never even left the city.

“The fuck is going on…?” You asked aloud, taking a step back and towards Joes, who was still stuck in frozen, abject horror. “Joes… you gotta get him. He’s gonna fucking kill him!” You hit his arm with enough force to break the man from his terror-stricken paralysis, only for him to blink away from you, shaking his head wildly as if his mind was a wasp’s nest, his nails digging into either side of his temple.

“No no no nono nononononono–” Your mouth fell agape in fear as he fell to his knees, small rivulets of blood leaking down either side of his face as he clawed at the sides of his head.

“Joes?”

“Joes!”

“The hell?”

Adrenaline pumped through your blood as you slowly started to realise whatever the fuck was going on, it very much was not good. In fact, it was most likely that all of your lives were on the line. And you knew that right here, right now, you had to make a choice. You all did.

“You got a clear shot, Scott?” Kitty asked, stepping behind Logan slightly. Though he didn’t mind. As long as she was safe and out of the line of whatever fire could come their way, he was more comfortable. Now if only he could get you in a similar way.

“Lined up.”

“Don’t shoot!” Rowan waved his arms frantically as Scott’s fingers braced against his glasses, jumping between the mutant and his friend. “If you shoot Naji’s dead, for sure. Just– just hold on, okay? We can figure this out.” He pleaded, to the amusement of Dr. Kreva from above, his cackling laughter sure to haunt your nightmares for a good long while after.

“Oh, Five… always the peacekeeper. Always the pacifist. It’s a shame you’re such a killing machine, though nothing like your sibling. We should showcase that, Eight. Show them all what you’re capable of…” Kreva placed a thumb and forefinger beneath his chin mockingly, once again making a show of having you all at his mercy. “In fact… One, if you could. Not too much though, just enough to unleash the Phantom.” You felt your blood turn to ice in your veins. That was your mutant name… how the fuck did he–

Pain ripped through your mind as you fell to your knees, your hands biting painfully as you caught yourself before you broke your nose on the ground. Though where you should have felt cold steel, you instead heard the groaning of tight leather and a low grunt of impact.

It felt as if you were being unstitched, torn open with a rusty knife. Your head split apart and searched inside as Naji’s mutation invaded your conscience. You heard a scream coming from somewhere but were too focused on trying to stay sane as memory fragments of pure agony were thrust into the inner walls of your mind, scraping down your subconscious. White hot pain laced through your throat and you finally realised it was you screaming, your voice cracking and breaking as you fought Naji’s hold.

Rowan screamed your name as Logan lunged forward to catch your fall, dragging you into his lap and holding your arms by your sides. “We gotta go!” He roared to Scott, who nodded in agreement, barking out orders just as Kurt bamfed into existence. Morgana reached for you as Kurt placed his three-fingered hand on her shoulder, her desperate scream cut short as she was teleported from the room. Logan turned his attention back to you, back to the searing torment etched on your face as you writhed in his arms. “I know baby, I know, it hurts, just hold on.” He called your name soothingly, though his voice shook. Seeing you like this, in such pain, ripped at his self-control. And he loathed how you would have to do this all again when he got you back home.

What Logan didn’t know, was that you’d heard his voice, and held onto it. You wouldn’t let yourself be manipulated so easily. Fighting Naji hurt. It hurt like hell. He was fucking strong, winding a white-hot thread of memories throughout your head, but you thrashed and flailed from his twisting web, using your dream visitor’s voice as an anchor point.

“What’s happening to her?” Logan’s eyes left your face for two seconds to meet with a pair of golden ones he’d only ever seen fighting against him. Rage flared in his gut as he thought of the man who’d assisted in your capture, but this wasn’t the same guy. Sure, he had his body and his face and his powers, but this was a sibling. A brother. He was your brother, and Logan could see that in the way terror pinched his brows and widened his eyes.

“I don’t know, but we need to get her out. Now.” Logan responded, removing a hand from your arm to smooth back your hair as your neck all but snapped backwards, head almost rolling off his lap completely as your entire body contorted violently. It was getting worse.

Rowan nodded, a flicker of determination glittering in his golden eyes, before extending his hand out towards the light. “I can buy you time. Get her safe,” he instructed, and Logan found his rage toward him settling slightly. “I’m R–”

“Rowan. Yeah, I know. She spoke about you a shit ton.” He gave Rowan a half smile as his head tilted in confusion. Logan held out his hand. “Logan.”

Though the bafflement didn’t fade, Rowan shook his hand nonetheless, before getting to his feet, his hand still extended towards the light. “When I say run, run.”

“Thought you were a pacifist?” Logan asked, holding you tight against his chest as he lifted you from the ground, the shadows in the room now quivering in anticipation. Naji was winning. With a glance to both Scott and Kitty, he could see they’d been listening in and were ready to bolt at a moment’s notice.

“Not when they threaten my fucking sister,” He spat, the skin along his forearms and neck beginning to glow a bright, blinding white. “Go.” Was all he said, before the room erupted in sunlight, and Logan took off at a sprint, keeping you close to his heart. He had you back physically, your strained breaths and grunted whimpers told him that much.

Now he just needed to get you back mentally. And for that, he needed Charles.

“S’okay, you’re okay, just a little longer baby, I know…” he soothed as he raced round the corner, struggling to hold you still as you fought his hold, the darkness of the corridor lashing out in great, spiked tendrils, slashing at his arms and legs and leaving searing lines of crimson through the leather of his suit. His stomach flipped as he looked down at you, your spine arching back, head snapping, eyes rolling up behind your skull leaving behind nothing but black, hollow darkness. He was losing you. Fuck, he was losing you.

“C’mon on sweetheart, c’mon.” He ground, feet pounding against the floor as one of his shoulders was ripped back, knives of pure shadow tearing through flesh. He grit his teeth against the pain, racing through a set of open doors and launching the two of you towards the stairs, taking them two steps at a time. Your mouth opened as you released a strangled scream, your limbs jerking and flailing in his grasp, Logan almost losing his grip on your writhing body. Tucking your head between his collar and jaw, he pressed on until he could finally see the service door they’d snuck in through. “S’okay, not much farther now. Keep fightin’ him, firefly. You gotta keep fightin’.”

Serrated knives tore through your memories, flashes of pure, unadulterated agony rushing your nerves, setting your veins alight with liquid fear. Thrashing your head back, you attempted to clear your mind’s eye of Naji’s hold, razorwire slicing at the base of your brain. You had very little knowledge of brain anatomy, only knowing the basics, but you knew for certain he was attempted to break through your hippocampus both physically and hypothetically. But you held onto him. Onto the man who, in turn, held you. A kernel of safety shining within the ocean of fiery anguish. You held onto his voice, their meaning.

Shadows swirled around your wrists, encasing your hands in two sets of obsidian claws, raking down both sides of Logan’s arms. You were losing the battle, he knew you were, if Joseph was right and you didn’t remember anything, there was no way you’d have this kind of control over your mutation. Using his already-healed shoulder, he burst through the locked service door and barrelled down the stone tunnel, out into the night-air. He didn’t know what Obscurity’s range was for his mutation, but he had to assume it was limitless. Anything less and he was likely to let his guard down.

Breath burned in his lungs as he sprinted for the jet, hearing the door behind him open and close another two times for both Scott and Kitty. He didn’t know how many of your friends Kurt had managed to rescue, but it didn’t matter to him. You were there, in his arms. And as long as that was his reality, he didn’t give a shit about anything else.

His feet thundered against the metal of the ramp, and ducking into the deck of the Blackbird, he was greeted by an extremely concerned-looking Jean the moment her eyes lay on you.

“Help me…” Logan begged, collapsing to his knees, and the redhead wasted no time in extending her hand towards your rapidly twitching head, veins of pitch black etching their way up your neck towards your temples. Instantly, Jean grimaced, her mouth gaping in some unseen pain as she entered your mind. All Logan could do was sit and watch helplessly as she engaged in some kind of mental battle with Naji. Her brows pinched with effort, the tendons along the backs of her hands flexing and tensing with strain. Logan desperately swiped your sweat-matted hair from your brow as if to clear a better path for Jean’s mutation.

“Jean!” Scott barked, fear echoing around the deck of the jet as he lunged forward towards his girlfriend, only to be held back by Ororo, who looked utterly exhausted. She’d been high above the facility, concentrating on keeping the power down with various surges of lightning. And now she looked completely spent.

Slowly, gradually, your twitching started to cease, each muscle in your body relaxing separately as Jean managed to exorcise your mind of Naji’s manipulation, until you sagged in Logan’s arms, your breathing steady, your eyes closed as if you were just sleeping. Scott broke free of Ororo’s hold, rushing for Jean before she collapsed onto the hard ground. “You okay?” He asked, bracing her face in between his palms. Jean offered him a tired nod, a small smile pulling at her lips.

“Got her back.” She murmured, and Logan clenched his jaw to stop tears welling in his eyes. He gently manoeuvred your body to lie comfortably in his lap, the back of your head nestled in the crook of his elbow, his arm encasing your waist. You were back.

You were back.

Kitty knelt beside you, a hand grasping your limp, skeletal one, tears silently sliding down her cheeks. Logan knew what she was thinking. What she was contemplating. What had they done to you? What fresh horrors would you be battling once they returned your memories? Logan’s thumb slowly caressed your protruding ribs. He’d be there with you. Whatever you had to endure next, whatever fresh hell awaited you when you woke, he’d be right there next to you.

“We gotta go…” Scott muttered urgently to Ororo, who looked out beyond the ramp to the Blackbird, awaiting Kurt’s next arrival.

“We can’t… they’re still in there!” Morgana raised her head from where she’d been sat on one of the seats. “Atlas, Joseph, Naji and Rowan are still–” she was cut off by another puff of blue smoke, Kurt falling to the ground and releasing Rowan’s arm from around his shoulder. Blood leaked from the blonde’s nose, his hands braced against the steel as he caught his breath.

“Is she okay?” Were his first words, barely looking around before his golden eyes rested on your unconscious form and Logan’s protective hold. He could almost smell your brother’s disdain, his nostrils flaring as he slowly pieced together the narrative in front of him. “Logan, right?”

Logan nodded once, returning Rowan’s cold look with one of his own, baring his teeth ever so slightly as he tried to gauge the threat of you being taken from him again. Rowan visually backed off, his expression to exhaustion. “I guess a lot can happen when you don’t see someone for eight years. As long as you take care of her, that’s cool with me.” Rowan shrugged, having recognised just exactly what he was looking at.

As the Blackbird rose from the ground, Morgana clicked the belt across her middle and shakily made her way over to sit next to Rowan, eyes flickering between you and him.

“So… those dreams she had… they were actually memories?” She asked him slowly, and it took a moment for Logan to process all the subtext of the question before he nodded again. Even with your memories replaced, you could never truly forget him. The realisation made his chest swell and his heart ache. He was acutely aware of Rowan listening into the conversation. “Holy shit…” She breathed, tapping your arm lightly. “I hope you’re listening, you lucky bitch. He’s fucking gorgeous.”

So this was the Morgana from the reports. This was the girl he’d read about, not the one who aided in your capture two months ago. What the fuck had Kreva done to you all? How could he get Naji to manipulate you all in such a way? To the point where you’d all help him. Although it was a nice breath of fresh air for even a thread of humour to be woven into the cockpit. “Right, Erin? You’re with me on this, yeah?”

Morgana turned to the green-haired girl who’d curled up against the wall, her hands hugging her knees against her chest. “Erin…?” Morgana asked tentatively, and only then did Erin look up.

“We fucking left them.” She spat, her eyes rimmed red with unshed tears. “Atlas… Joes, Naji…. We just fucking left them. You got your precious Phantom back and just abandoned the rest of them.” Her hands flexed around her knees, chest tight.

“I’m sorry…” Kurt piped up from where he’d been nursing a small graze on his arm. “I couldn’t… It was carnage in there. I rescued who I could but–”

“Yeah well, it wasn’t fucking good enough. Who said we even needed rescuing anyway? This could all be total bullshit.” She hissed through gritted teeth, and Rowan placed a hand protectively on your shoulder. Logan knew he shouldn’t have bristled the way he did, the man had proven himself loyal, but he couldn’t help the memories of that night flashing to the forefront of his mind.

“Erin, we’re not abandoning them. We’re gonna go get them back, right?” Rowan looked to the rest of Logan’s team, who in turn looked at each other in uncertainty. They had you back. That’s what they came for. But something niggled at Logan’s mind. You wouldn’t stop there. If the tables had been turned and you were saving him, you wouldn’t stop until everyone was safe. He himself included, but that was given.

“No. We’re not abandoning them,” He spoke for his team, five heads snapping towards him, each with their own look of shock. “Ya know she’s just gonna go after them herself, right? And she wouldn’t stop til they’re all safe. And I dunno ‘bout you, but I ain’t letting her do that alone.” He finished, and Kitty smiled at him with tearful determination.

“Agreed.” She said, turning to the rest of the team. Ororo nodded and Scott sighed heavily, only swayed when Jean placed a hand on his arm.

“Alright then… guess that’s our next mission.” Scott sighed, irate.

“Thank you. They’re our friends so we really– Joes?” Morgana’s head tilted to the side as suddenly, seemingly out of thin air, Joseph blinked to existence, Rowan’s wrist held firmly in his grasp. Logan’s heart stopped. This wasn’t the same mutant they’d saved from testing during the mission. His eyes were glazed over, subdued hatred burning in his pupils as Rowan turned to his friend.

“Just Five.” He rasped, white foam leaking from his cracked lips.

“Joes? What’s–”

“ROWAN!” Logan roared, lunging across your form to take hold of your brother, only his fingers grazed nothing but thin air. Whatever Naji had done to Joes, it was the same thing he’d done to Morgana that night. And Rowan all too often.

But he was gone. Your brother was gone. And now there was no debate about what you’d do when you woke.

He just hoped, that whatever Charles restored, would be enough to get your brother back too. For your sake.

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lovebugism · 2 years ago

Note

hi! not sure if you’re still taking requests but if u are may i request the prompt “it’s okay to cry in front of me, you know. you don’t have to carry this alone.” with reader comforting steve? tysm <3

bug's blurb sleepover (⁎˃ᴗ˂⁎)!

Steve tends to feel things really, really deeply.

When Nancy called him bullshit at a Halloween party and ran off with the weird kid from chemistry class a day later, he felt like it was the end of the world. His world, at least.

He thought it was going to stick with him for the rest of his life — that she was right, that he really was bullshit, and that that truth would haunt him forever. It did. It does. It lurks over his shoulder sometimes, like a shadow or a sleeping dragon.

And when Robin’s mad at him, like mad mad, it makes him feel like dying.

One time he overestimated how tired he was after a shift and forgot to pick Robin up after band practice. He was startled awake from his nap out of nowhere, like his brain knew he’d done something wrong, and realized he was supposed to drive her home over an hour ago.

He found her standing with her trumpet case under the awning in a futile attempt to hide from the pouring rain. She didn’t talk to him for days — not during the drive, not at work the next day, not until he was milliseconds from groveling at her feet for her forgiveness.

But it’s different when he’s happy. He’s got you and he’s got Dustin, and he loves the two of you so much it feels like he might burst sometimes. Adoration spills from his pores like so many little rays of sunshine, leaves him a grinning and gushing thing in the place of a teenage boy.

It’s so much worse with you, though. Because sometimes he feels like his heart beats only for you — that it follows the rhythm of your pulse, that it will stop when yours does.

He can taste every word that spills from your mouth, the one’s coated in venom and honey alike. He can hear every sound of your soul, too. It’s the crackles of an old record player when you’re content, autumn leaves crunching when you’re angry, and the sounds of a deep, deep ocean when you’re sad.

You’re embedded into every fiber of his being. You’ve entwined yourself with him without even realizing it, tucked yourself into the outer regions of his bleeding heart with a fuzzy blanket and a good book — no sign of leaving any time soon.

He loves you hard, too hard. So hard there’s no breath without you.

So when Vecna almost kills you, it feels a little like his life is ending.

He watches you float in midair, his feet still stuck on the ground, totally helpless.

Tears spill from your glazed-over eyes and glitter beneath streams of moonlight. Your body is slack, but your fingers tremble and your brows twitch and your chin quivers. You’re not all there, but you can feel every ounce of fear like an ice-cold bath, painful and numbing all at once. Because you know that you’re going to die. And that there’s nothing anyone else can do to stop it.

Dustin shouts for help into his supercomm, begs for Max to bring her walkman or steal the nearest boombox they see and bring it with them to Lover’s Lake. They’re too far away, though, on the other side of town in Nancy’s too slow Station Wagon picking up more hunting supplies to kill the son of a bitch trying to kill you. He knows they won’t make it in time.

Steve shakes your shoulders and shouts in your face, but you still don’t wake. He keeps a hold of you until you’re out of his reach entirely — rising and rising and rising until you’re six feet off the ground. Then he’s just begging, shouting pleas up at you, at god, at Vecna — the shriveled skin creep doing this to you.

“Please,” he shouts to everyone and no one all at once. “Please, just— you gotta wake up, okay? I’ll be better, I’ll be so much better, I promise. I’ll listen to all the music you like, watch all the movies you want — even the ones that suck — I’ll be a better boyfriend, okay? You just— You need to wake up!”

You don’t.

You just keep on crying, like you can hear him in whatever world Vecna’s sucked you into. Eyes fluttering, neck jerking, lips trembling. You succumb completely to the monster’s curse.

It’s Eddie that saves you.

He rushes to the stolen R.V. for his guitar, the one Steve said made him look like he was overcompensating for something, the one that’s about to save your life. “What’s her favorite song?” the boy urges as he slips the strap over his head with pale and trembling fingers.

Steve looks over at his shoulder at him. It’s hard to see through the stinging tears. “Wh— What—” He can’t form words. Or thoughts, really. The only thing going through his head is that you’re about to die, that he’s about to lose you forever. It clouds his mind like thick black smoke.

“Her favorite song?” Eddie snaps. “What is it?”

He scrambles to answer. “Uh, it’s uh— it’s Take— Take On Me… Do you know that one?”

“No,” the boy answers honestly. “But I can try.”

That’s all they can do for now. Try. Hope.

He puts his fingers to the strings, trying to find the right placements, but it’s hard when you don’t know how to play the song and you’re shaking that you’re fucking freezing. Eddie’s forced to play it by ear and tells Steve that it won’t sound exactly right and that it won’t be loud without his amp.

It takes him a moment to find the melody, but Steve hears it the second it comes — the synth-y da-da-da-dum, da-da-dah, da-da-da-da-dum’s that were practically engrained in his psyche after he heard it on the radio the millionth time.

You weren’t as afflicted by the earworm as he was. You loved it.

The song came out the year the two of you started dating, so all he heard for months was that catchy beat and even catchier falsetto. You played it on the jukebox when you went to the diner, popped the tape into your radio whenever he was over at your place, requested for it to be played virtually wherever you went.

You hear the song from where you’re stuck in your own head. The strums of the guitar are quiet and a little out of tune, but the uncanny notes make sense when you’re trapped in a world that isn’t really your world. Suddenly you don’t see Vecna or his claw in your face — just Steve, Steve, Steve.

He’s with you at the diner with whipped cream on his chin, making fun of you for singing to the song so off-key. He’s with you in your childhood bedroom, spinning you around and singing all the high notes with you. He’s with you at Enzo’s, the fanciest place in Hawkins for your anniversary, and slips the mini-orchestra a hundred-dollar bill to play the song for you.

Suddenly, you’re on the ground again — back in Hawkins — and gasping for breath in his arms. You can’t see him from where he’s got his face tucked into your neck, but you can feel the scarily rapid beat of his heart and the way it matches your own.

Steve sobs into you, uncaring about how loud he is or how his snot and tears stain your t-shirt. Because he almost fucking lost you. And, for a split second, he tried to think of what a life without you would look like. He quickly came up short. There was nothing — no light, no sound, no music — just darkness. A void.

Sometimes, he thinks he would’ve died with you that night.

Vecna is dead within the next twenty-four hours after the fact. You and Nancy take turns shooting bullets in the pale patchy skin of his chest where his heart’s supposed to be while Steve and Robin throw hand-made bombs in his direction. He trips and stumbles out the window while the rotting basement erupts into flames. There’s nothing left but ashes.

Steve doesn’t feel a thing for a little while after that, just the acute urge to protect the group of you even though the boogeyman is long gone.

He doesn’t let go of you for days, always holding onto some part of you, because he’s terrified of you slipping away again.

He lets Dustin sleep at his place when the boy asks, but it’s for his own peace of mind more than anything else. He doesn’t let the boy out of his sight until his mom gets concerned about him.

He drives forty-five minutes to the hospital every day for two weeks with you so you can visit Max and Lucas, always with two peanut butter jelly sandwiches for them — just in case.

He’s on auto-pilot for a while. He just keeps on taking care of everyone else because it distracts him from himself — from his own inner turmoil, from the horrors he saw that night, from the boogeyman still in his closet.

It takes you a month for you to tell him what you saw. You were a lot like him in that way, still trying to hide from it all. You would’ve been more than happy if you could squish your great big problem into a tiny little ball that you could stomp underneath your feet and forget about completely.

But that’s not how life works.

The thing just swells and swells and swells until it takes everything in you to stay sane.

You sit Steve down on his bed and curl into his lap — knees to your chest, head tucked beneath his chin. And you tell him about it. Everything.

You tell him that Vecna showed you Brad, the boyfriend you had before Steve. It was a replay of the last night you saw him parked at Lover’s Lake, the very same place you had been when Vecna almost took you. You’re sitting in his passenger seat and he’s trying to feel you up. “Billy’s girlfriend lets him fuck her all the time,” he gripes when you swat his hand from your thigh.

“Then maybe go fuck Billy’s girlfriend,” you shoot back.

It’s the last thing you’d ever said to him before storming off and catching the late bus back home. He went missing the next day; his car still there, but no sign of the boy himself.

Vecna shows you everything you’d been making yourself sick over for years, tells you exactly what happened to him that night.

A demogorgon appears in thin air and snatches the boy, takes him to the Upside Down like he’s some kind of light night snack. The thing doesn’t eat him, though, just plays with its food for a while until it gets bored and lets him rot. Brad was down there, for days, beggingfor someone to save him. Help never came, though. Just the slow, slow hand of death.

“You never even looked for him…” you recite the words Vecna said to you, voice much softer than his cruel baritone one. “You let him rot down there while you threw yourself at a boy that didn’t even want you…”

Steve eyes squeeze shut then, like he’s trying to hide from your words. It’s about as effective as those idiots in horror movies who try to hide under their bedsheets from demons.

You sought refuge in Steve that night and many others, when Brad was acting especially douchebag-y. It was innocent at first. He was your friend. But somewhere down the line, you realized that you had bigger feelings for him than you ever did for your boyfriend. Steve, meanwhile, was still caught in the web of his complicated feelings for Nancy.

It wasn’t until you got kidnapped by Russian soldiers that he realized how much he loved you.

There’s just something about the end of the world that makes a person see clearly again.

Everything seems to hit him exactly a week later.

He’d done a pretty good job at hiding it all — the nightmares, the panic attacks, the sleepless nights. He hid that all from you because you were recovering too. He didn’t think it was fair to dump all his hurt on you while you were still trying to get back to normal.

You noticed it very quickly, though, that Steve didn’t seem to be very affected by any of it.

He was so nonchalant about everything, the kind of casual only a person who was aching could pull off.

And he’d get real reserved at times, uncharacteristically quiet, and you’d ask him if he was okay. He’d scoffed and say he was fine —of course I’m okay, what do you mean? — while his cheek speckled with red and he blinked back glassy tears.

You’d try to hug him and he’d let you, but kept shrugging off your concern — I’m fine, babe. I promise. I’m not the one who almost died.

Steve did that a lot. Made it seem like his problems didn’t mean as much because they weren’t as big as yours or Max’s or Eddie’s. He convinced himself that they didn’t. Why should he be upset when he didn’t have to meet the monster face to face or live through something traumatic all over again? What does he have to cry about?

But when he sleeps all he sees in you — in that spot at Lover’s Lake, succumbing to Vecna’s curse, while the rest of them try like hell to bring you back. In his nightmares, they never do. He watches your bones break one by one, piercing cracks in the quiet night that he can feel in his chest, before you fall limply to the ground again.

He wakes with a gasping breath, the same way you had all the time ago. You’re sleeping peacefully beside him, hair wild and face smushed into your pillow, but he can’t seem to get the vision out of his head — of your mangled body and sucked-out sockets. He stumbles off to the bathroom on tired and trembling legs.

You wake to the door slamming shut and stir at the sound of the faucet turning on.

Light spills from the crack underneath the door, bright in the darkness of your bedroom. You watch Steve’s shadow with bleary eyes, how it stands in one place for a moment and then paces back and forth.

Wiping sleep from your eyes, you tiptoe to the door, but don’t do anything when you reach it. You just wait, listen.

Steve mumbles something to himself that you can’t quite make out — you’re okay, stop being such a baby, jesus… is all you can hear. He sniffles as his feet pad the length of the tiled bathroom floor. It doesn’t take a genius to know that he’s crying.

Your knock upon the door is a soft one. You don’t want to startle him. The second he realizes you’re outside the door, he freezes.

“Stevie…” you call gently out for him. “Are you okay?”

He clears his throat. “Yeah—” Then again. “Yeah, I’m fine… Go back to bed.”

“Are you sure?” you press. “Do you want me to get anything for you?”

The boy has to take a deep breath in to stop himself from snapping at you. He’s angry at himself more than anything — for hiding, for failing at hiding. He runs two anxious hands through his hair and plants himself along the ceramic edge of the bathtub.

“I’m sure. Just… Just go back to bed, okay?”

You don’t listen. You just slide along the door frame until you’re sat on the carpeted floor of your bedroom. Steve can hear your shuffling outside.

“It’s okay if you’re not okay. You know that, right?” you ask him through the door.

Steve puts his face in his hands before he can catch his scrunching face in the mirror. Just when he thought he wasn’t going to cry, here you come, pulling this shit.

“I know,” he answers tightly, muffled through his palms. He rubs them up and down his face once, twice, and then a third time before throwing his hands into his lap. “But I’m fine, okay? Seriously.”

“You can cry in front of me, Steve. It’s okay. You don’t have to— You don’t have to go through this shit alone, you know? I’m here. I’m right here, okay? Let me help you.”

It’s that reminder that does him in; the assurance that you’re here and not a disfigured mess in the tall grass of Lover’s Lake. A sob spills from his mouth too abruptly for him to stop it.

“Steve…” you call for him again, heartbreaking on the other side of the door.

“I’m almost lost you,” he cries, more than himself than to you, then sniffles. “I’m almost fucking lost you.”

“But you didn’t. I’m still here. And I’m not going anywhere, Steve Harrington. The universe is gonna have to try a whole lot harder to keep me away from you.”

He manages a laugh through his tears. “It’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking,” you quip. “If Vecna couldn’t stop me from being with you, nothing will.”

The thought of that warms him. He realizes it’s not the universe keeping the two of you together, not fate or some higher power in the clouds. It’s love. It’s all the love the two of you have got for each other, stronger than any demogorgon or Russian soldier or dark wizard. And it’s love that’s gonna hold the two of you together for the next several decades, until you’re old and wrinkly and ugly.

But Steve won’t think you’re ugly. He’ll think you’re as beautiful as the first moment he saw you — throwing up in the bushes outside Tina’s house after your first high school party.

You rise quickly when the door opens. Steve stands in front of you, eyes puffy and face red and smiling gently down at you anyway. “I love the shit outta you, you know that?” is all he can think to say. Because that’s all that he feels in that moment.

“Of course, I know that,” you grin up at him. Your hands rise to cup his jaw, thumbs swiping at his tear-stained cheeks. Your browns pinch in concern. “You okay?”

For the first time, he’s honest.

“No…” he murmurs with the soft shake of his head. His eyes dart away from yours and to the floor where his and your twenty toes stand, still on the ground, not floating in thin air.

“No— I… I don’t think I am,” he confesses softly. His tired, sad, and heavy honey eyes flit back up to yours again. “But I will be.”

You nod until your words catch up to you. “Yeah. Yeah, you will.”

“If only out of pure spite of all the monsters to all the monsters trying to destroy our lives.”

“They’re gone now,” you promise, like a parent who’s checked under their child’s bed for shadows and ghosts. It works well enough. Here, with his face in your hands and standing in your shared bedroom, he’s never felt safer.

“Can you… Can you hold me?” he wonders, a little meekly because he feels like an idiot saying them. Then he feels even more like an idiot for feeling like an idiot. You’re his girlfriend, after all, cuddles sort of came with the package.

“Of course,” you answer without thinking twice. You grab his hand and tug him back to the bed almost immediately. “I’ll hold you for the rest of our fucking lives, Harrington, you know that.”

The two of you settle into the mattress. Steve uses you like a pillow, wraps all of his limbs around you and tucks his face into your neck. Your scent is a familiar one, warm and comforting, like home. “I like the sound of that,” he mumbles into your shoulder after a moment of quiet.

“Well, buckle in, baby. ‘Cause I got you for the next, like, six decades.”

You feel his smile form against your skin as Steve tucks himself inside your soul.

#bug's blurb sleepover #steve harrington x reader #stranger things x reader #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington smut #steve harrington fic #stranger things imagine #published by bug #stevie drabble #st drabbles

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vanishingstarrs · 5 months ago

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midnight rain ( k. bakugo x reader, slow burn, hurt x comfort, anxiety, fluff ) ( as an insomniac, this was v much self indulgent, also for the sake of this story the timeline is irrelevant, i kinda went all over the place so let's just pretend it all lines up (: also also feel free to imagine whatever quirk you'd like i never really had one in mind except for the side effect is you being v v cold bc it worked for the plot lol sorry it took so long to get this out, just wanted it to be perfect !! hope y'all enjoy <3 )

part 1, part 2, part 3

It was raining. Hard.

You were a nervous wreck.

It had been agreed that your classmates and you would be permitted to retrieve Midoriya from his self isolation. The heroes were out in the streets, instructed to call as soon as he was sighted since your class had full permission to spring into action and try to convince him to come back. The heroes told to stay back and allow you guys to take the lead on the mission.

Part of the reason you couldn’t sleep as of late was your classmate out in danger. You and Midoriya had never been best friends by any means, but you’d been close enough and you’d worked alongside him a few times. He was a nice person and always trying to help those around him, he’d come to you multiple times with theories on how to better improve your quirk so you wouldn’t overwork and accidentally freeze yourself to death. Even if he hadn’t done any of that, you likely still would’ve felt guilt over being safe while he wasn’t. He was good, and he deserved to come home.

All of this in turn meant more baking and less sleeping. You’d been out of bed for thirty minutes now, having brought your journal with you in order to go through your recipes.

You’d been in your room before, tinkering with your costume and doing little workouts while waiting for everyone to head to bed, not wanting to bother anyone.

The day had been spent training and putting more work into improving your individual powers, leveling up so that when the time came… you and your classmates could join up in the war. It was a frightening thought, and you weren’t sure you were quite ready for that again.

Speaking with Katsuki had been some help though, the way he spoke of heroes and nobility made you want to be brave like him.

And so, to thank him for the late nights, you were now up again, only this time you baked with purpose. For him. You weren’t sure how you were going to approach him to give him the baked goods, and part of you hoped he might be awake and come out on his own to save you the trouble of an awkward conversation.

You sighed as you double checked your recipe, making sure of your next step before incorporating dry ingredients with the wet ones.

It wasn't that you wished another sleepless night on Bakugo... but it was definitely easier to go to bed after having had him around. Maybe it was the fact that he didn't bullshit you, or the way he let you talk about nothing in particular until you were ready to open up about what had actually been weighing on your chest. Things you had yet to even bring up to your best friend.

You went through the motions almost at a sloth’s place, overthinking to yourself as you made sure everything was perfect for the muffins you were baking.

When all that was left to do was wait for the room to start smelling of cinnamon, you sat yourself at the island, headphones blasting as you grabbed you pen and journal again. You turned the page from your experimental recipes and found your sketches for the new costume you were working on, you'd asked Hatsume for some suggestions, but she'd dismissed you; she was too busy right now. She said she'd help you create the final design, but she didn't have the brain capacity to make something from scratch for you.

A groan left your lips as you stared at the page, just about ready to tear it and your hair out when your headphones were yanked down to your neck and the chair next to you scraped the floor as someone sat down,"Don't you ever sleep?"

"Don't you?" You scoffed, the response coming naturally,"Thought you were Mr. go to bed at seven every night, what happened?"

"That was before." He rolled his eyes,"Whatcha working on?"

You stared at Bakugo, unsure if he was actually there. Had you conjured him up somehow? Were you hallucinating? And was he actually making small talk with you right now?

"Muffins... for you, actually."

"Hah?!" His eyes bulged as he turned to the oven, like he just noticed it was on,"What are you making shit for me for? And I meant the sketches, idiot."

"Oh." You frowned.

"I'll eat them." He declared, realizing that it sounded as though he didn't care for them.

"No, it's okay." You looked away, trying to hide your smile and the fact that you were teasing,"I'll offer them up to the others. Who doesn't like apple cinnamon muffins with a nice crumble on top? No, don't worry, my efforts won't be in vein, maybe Momo will make a nice tea for us all."

"Tea? I can make tea, I'll make you the best damn tea you've ever had, and we're eating these damn muffins if it's the last thing we do." He grumbled as he stood up and found his same mug, as well as somehow finding yours amidst the array of everyone's cups.

His was orange with his first initial on it, and yours was purple with the multiple facial expressions of Kuromi all around, she was your favorite Sanrio character. You had no idea how he'd known that it was yours, but didn't dwell on it as you turned your frown back to your notebook and the aforementioned sketches.

"Been tryna come up with a new costume design, I'm not very great at it... Midoriya kinda helped me with my last one." You mentioned as he began boiling water for your tea.

You heard him scoff.

"What?" You asked immediately, self conscious now.

You had thought he'd done a pretty good job, and most of it was your idea anyway; he'd really only brought your vision to life since he was a lot better at that kinda stuff than you were.

"Nothin'. Didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to, is my costume ugly? I'm not really a big fan of the flashy stuff, I just want something simple that won't make me stand out..."

He walked back over, leaning against the island counter as he raised his eyebrows at you,"You do know the whole point of being a hero is standing out, right?"

"No..." You denied,"Not all of it. What if I just wanna help people and not be seen?"

"What about recognition?" He countered,"I see you standing back all the time, especially when you make shit like this and just leave a note, you don't always sign your name, don't you want people to know what you've done? What you've accomplished?"

"I'd hardly call baking a few cookies an accomplishment." You scoffed.

"When I got kidnapped." He brought up,"You were there."

It wasn't a question. He was stating it like it was something he knew for a fact and you didn't know how that came to be.

You'd never spoken about it, you'd gone along as a favor to your friends, they thought your power might be useful just in case the situation escalated. You'd agreed and at the end of it all, after getting him back, you'd gotten separated in the crowd. You didn't bother meeting back up, feeling you'd done all you that could and gone home. It was a long time ago, you felt.

"Who told you that? Kirishima?"

"Deku did." He corrected with a roll of his eyes,"He wanted to make sure I thanked you properly."

"You never did."

"I should've."

The oven timer dinged and you used it as your excuse to remove yourself from the conversation. You cleared your throat as you stood up and grabbed your oven mitts, your face felt warm and it wasn't just because you were removing baked goods from the oven.

"We'll have to wait for them to cool." You said aloud.

"Still gotta brew the tea, so... it's fine."

You felt incredibly awkward and he must've sensed it too, because he changed the subject back to the original.

"Y'know I can help you with this." Bakugo was holding your journal when you finally mustered up the courage to face him again,"My parents are fashion designers, I did my own costume. Won't make it too flashy if you don't want, or you could just wait for Deku if that's what ya want, he'll be back soon anyway."

"No." You said, maybe a little too eagerly.

He stared back in surprise.

"You help me." You made your way across the room again,"Please."

“Alright, alright, no begging it makes you look pathetic.” He said, though it had no fire behind it,“I guess I owe ya anyway.”

You rolled your eyes, but couldn’t help the tiny smile as he tugged you closer and took charge of the project. He made a few comparisons from your last costume to the lame prototype you’d been working on and then asked you for your favorite aspects of both before starting up from scratch on a different page, his writing was surprisingly neat as he listed a few support items he thought you should look into for the upcoming battles.

“It has to be purple.” You stated your only condition as you took the pen from him and started to shade a few spots, you had to lean close into him to be able to reach the journal and you heard him inhale sharply before moving it closer to you.

When you reached something actually resembling a good costume, you grinned and turned to him,“It’s great, Katsuki, thank you so much.”

“No problem.” He seemed to whisper, he was staring at you in a weird way that made you look back down at the costume you’d drawn up together,“Let’s, uh, eat those muffins now.”

“Wait! We have to sign our names at the bottom.” You held his arm before he could move away,“C’mon, we’re the designers.” You quickly scribbled your signature before handing the pen back to him with a grin.

He rolled his eyes, but snatched the pen from you nonetheless and quickly wrote his name next to yours. It felt… binding, weirdly enough.

You let him go and he brought over the tea he’d brewed, which had cooled a little but not enough to be cold. The muffins were perfect and you watched for a reaction that he never gave, so you went poking for compliments.

“You can say they’re good.” You teased as he took several bites in one breath.

“I was getting there.” He grumbled, after swallowing hard. He looked at the tray of muffins and then back at you,“You really made these for me?”

You shrugged,“You said they’re your favorite.”

He took another huge bite and around it he managed to get out something sounding close to a thanks.

You laughed,“You’re welcome, Katsuki.”

When he finished off two muffins, he wordlessly began helping you clean up your mess. It didn't take too long, as much as you wished that it would so you could talk to him more. When you handed him a tupperware for the muffin's he seemed to get an idea as he walked away and came back with a piece of tape and a sharpie.

He started writing "DO NOT TOUCH" on the tape.

You couldn't help snort,"Had a feeling you weren't the sharing type."

"They were made for me, weren't they?"

"Mhm." You hoped you weren't blushing as you agreed.

He stuck the tape onto the top before showing it to you,"I can share, but only with you."

You were definitely blushing now as you read "Y/N and Katsuki's muffin's" underneath the initial message for no one to touch them. You smiled,"You're sweet."

He scoffed,"Am not."

"You totally are." You teased as he rolled his eyes at you for the hundredth time while also turning you around and pushing you toward the stairs, he was holding your headphones and journal in hand and when you reached your door, you held out your hand expectantly.

He held them back,"One condition."

Feeling emboldened, you went up on tiptoes to whisper into his ear,"My door will be open, don't worry."

With your heart beating wildly in your chest, you quickly brushed your lips somewhere along his cheek while grabbing your things from his hold,"Night, Kats."

You weren't sure if you heard him say it back, but you thought he did as you escaped into the darkness of you room, blushing.

That night, you had one of your better sleeps.

The next day, however, came early. And before you knew it you, along with your classmates, were suiting up and leaving U.A. to chase a possible Midoriya lead. The state he was in when you guys finally found him broke your heart in a way you didn't know was possible, the boy was working hard to get Japan back to how it'd been before and the citizens seeking safety in U.A. didn't understand that. Tears were brought to your eyes after a touching speech from Ochaco, and when the day finally came to its end your bones too were crying from all the extra exertion.

When everyone got back, you'd set to work making a simple batch of chocolate chip cookies since the last one hadn't lasted longer than the morning on which they were discovered. The bath had been miraculous for your muscles, and you'd almost fallen asleep while sipping on the tea Momo had brewed for everyone.

The day had been quite momentous, and through it all, you couldn't help want to seek out only one person...

You sighed as you turned over in bed.

You had your phone turned on in your hand, your text messages with Mina blinking up at you as you typed and deleted the same text many times.

You deleted it one last time and reread her text.

mina ෆ⃛(ˇᵋ ˇෆ)ೄ: soooo you and bakugo ?? 👀👀 noticed he was prettttty worried abt u getting hurt / just u in gen during mission bring deku home, didn’t know y’all were so close hm 🤔🤔🤨

You debated letting your best friend know you’d somehow become sort of friends with Katsuki, having spent a few nights in each other's company. But how did you explain to her that somehow, through three simple nights, that you might be having other feelings for him. And that you'd kissed him. Well, his cheek, but still. That move was quite bold for you and then, like a coward, you ran away. You'd always dismissed things like crushes and boys, but Katsuki... he was loud, to put it simply, and therefore was much harder to ignore.

You hadn't thought he'd paid you any extra mind in comparison to everyone else during the fight, but having been focused on Midoriya... maybe you'd missed it?

You pulled out your phone again, sending your friend one last reply.

y/n ʕ•́ᴥ•̀ʔっ: lolll as if girl yk he doesn’t do friends, think he’s probs just on edge bc of midoriya

She texted back immediately, but rather than opening the text you opened up your music app and pressed play on a soothing playlist. You listened to it, along with the rain that had yet to stop, and felt your body start to relax into your pillows.

You weren't lying to your friend. Bakugo had made it clear he was at U.A. because he wanted to be number one. He didn't have time for "extras", as he so often put it, what exactly made you so different? Nothing. Exactly, you told yourself, nothing at all.

Sure, he was calmer around you on those measly nights on which you found one another. But that was just because everyone else was asleep and maybe he was being considerate. Sure, he listened to you talk on and on and watched your silly romance drama with you... but that had to be because he had nothing better to do, having already been awake... right?

You groaned, the longer you thought about it the more the frustration with yourself grew. How could you be so clueless?!

When it all became too much, you pushed your covers off and ripped your headphones off, your feet found your slippers immediately as you picked up your glasses from your nightstand and slid them on. You marched toward your door with purpose, ripping it open only to freeze at what awaited on the other side.

He had his fist up, ready to knock. There he was.

Katsuki Bakugo, right outside your door.

“Bakugo… hi.” You breathed out, you felt your heartbeat start to pick up a bit.

“What happened to Katsuki?” You faintly heard him say, but your attention was elsewhere, eyes taking him in completely.

He was wearing a pair of grey sweatpants you’d never seen before and a fitted black t shirt. His hair, you noticed, was pushed back by a black headband. You never wanted to be a headband more. Was this his usual sleep attire? Last time you could’ve sworn he was wearing a muscle tee and a pair of shorts. Focus, Y/N, focus! You yelled at yourself internally. You snapped out of it in time to hear him say your name.

Aaand shit. So preoccupied with him, you had momentarily forgotten your own attire: Kuromi pyjama bottoms and a sports bra... and your glasses— shit, shit, shit.

Embarrassed, you pulled your hair forward to try and cover yourself just a tiny bit,“Oh, my god, sorry, hold on, let me grab a shirt.”

You turned, but didn’t make it more than two steps when you felt his hand wrap around your wrist, he pulled you back and firmly asked,“Were you coming to look for me?”

You gulped, forcing yourself to meet his eyes,"Yes."

His eyes widened slightly, like he couldn't believe how easily you admitted to it.

"You too, by the looks of it." You pointed out, and he nodded.

He looked away, gaze zeroed in on the ground as he released a deep breath, and with it, how he truly felt,"All I seem to think about these days is impending doom. Well, that, and also you.” His lips pressed together and you noticed his hands clenching down at his sides, you wanted to unfold his fingers and tuck your own around them.

“Whenever I talk to you, or I’m near you… it helps. I don’t know what it is, but being with you makes me not have a fire lit up under my ass or something.” He confessed.

A weight was instantly lifted off your shoulders. You allowed yourself to smile,"That's super poetic, Katsuki, and sweet."

He rolled his eyes, and you could swear his ears were turning red too,"I'll take it back."

You gasped,"You wouldn't dare."

He shook his head, releasing a small sigh,"I'm no good with words, but am I..."

You took a step forward, listening to your heart and taking his hand into your own. He seemed to want to pull back, but you didn't let him as you wound your hands together.

"They're sweaty." He argued.

"Don't give a shit." You grabbed his other hand too,"You're not alone, you know. I feel the same way you do, not about the impending doom part, but the rest of it. Ever since that first night when you were there... I just feel at ease with you. You may say you're not good with words, but you're pretty good at listening, and I think you've done great at comforting me in your own way. I didn't really see it today, but you were there, watching me, making sure I was good, I was so scared—”

“I was terrified.” He said at the same time.

You smiled even bigger now,“Good thing it all worked out in the end, huh? You got your friend back.”

He scoffed,“He’s not my friend.”

“Am I your friend?” You asked, still grinning.

He shook his head and the smile instantly left your face as you started to pull your hands away,"Oh—"

You didn’t get a chance to fully let go as he pulled you forward with one hand and grabbed your waist by the other, and before you realized what was happening, his lips had met yours for the shortest kiss. So light it could barely qualify as one, but it was enough to freeze you in place as you once more repeated:

“Oh...”

He leaned his forehead against yours and you inhaled, consumed by him and his scent.

"Hold on, can I...?"

You didn't wait for a response as you stood up on your toes, placing a hand on his cheek and kissing him again. This one lasted longer and you thought you might've tasted chocolate from the cookies you'd made earlier on his tongue, you hadn't seen him around when you were passing them around and you were happy he'd gotten to enjoy some after all. When you pulled away, you were smiling again.

"I'm not good at this." He repeated once more.

You shook your head,"You're doing perfectly."

He kissed you a third time, another short and sweet peck that led to one more on your cheek and then the other cheek and then your forehead and lastly, your nose.

You blushed as he buried his face in your neck and hair and inhaled deeply,"You smell so good, like cookies and warmth."

"Katsuki?"

"Mm?"

He tried to move, but you kept him there by running your fingers through his hair and making him relax further into your hold. You couldn't look at him for what you were about to ask. You felt your face heat up,"I know that was our first kiss and you said we're not really friends, which I think means something and if it does mean that thing, well, our timing isn't great and we can't really go on a date or anything to even start the thing, and if Aizawa were to find out, surely we'd be dead, but could you, maybe, think about possibly staying with me tonight?"

Katsuki pulled away, hands in your hair as he agreed right away,"Thought you'd never ask."

He pulled you back into his arms, shutting the door behind himself as he walked right into your room like he owned it. "Those glasses drive me crazy." He said as he instantly made himself comfortable under the purple comforter of your bed.

"Really?" You scrunched up your nose before taking them off and putting them back on your nightstand,"I hate them."

He shook his head,"You should wear 'em more."

"When classes start back up, maybe, I'll think about it." You hesitated as you laid down next to him.

It lasted maybe one minute before he was pulling you closer, your head on his chest. You could hear the pounding in his chest as he said,"It's new for both of us, but I think we can figure this out."

His warmth and his arms around you were already making you sleepy, you agreed with him,"Mmm, tomorrow?"

He gave a grunt of acknowledgement and you could tell the lack of sleep lately was catching up with him too as he shifted his body even closer, head burying into your neck again,"Night, Y/N."

You smiled, content,"Goodnight, Katsuki."

#bnha #boku no hero academia #mha #my hero academia #bakugo katsuki #katsuki bakugo #bakugo katuski x reader #katsuki bakugo x reader #ʕ•́ᴥ•̀ʔっ #vanishingstarrs

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tarjapearce · 1 year ago

Note

YOU CANT JUST LEAVE US HEARTBROKEN LIKE THAT 😭😭😭😭😭

HOW DO THEY MAKE UP??!!!!!

he better does grand gesture, and apologizes the right way!!!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭

Ngl, I'm so nervous about this. 🫣. Hope you like ~

Pt. 3

Miguel remained glued to the door where you just left. It wasn't the raucous door slam he had expected. Dread sit on his gut at the quietness of your departure.

You weren't one for boasting up or make a show out of the situations, but you had your temper and seeing this quiet yet nerve wrecking side of you only enervated his anger. Froze it completely, leaving him with a whirlwind of emotions that mutinied in his head to be felt first.

Self loathe and guiltiness the main contenders.

His arms rested on his chest, crossed. Defensive as the creaking door from Gabriel's room opened wider.

"Miguel?"

Gabriel's voice echoed so distant in his head, despite his younger brother being a few steps away from him. A raging stupor spreaded through his limbs.

"You ok?" Gabriel tried even though he already knew the answer. He just gave a silent nod and Gabriel didn't pry further. He'd try later.

----

One week. It had been one week since you had crossed that door and vanished from his life. His mind was a corded mess of over thinking, intrusive thoughts and of course, you.

No matter how much he tried to overwork himself back in the lab, his mind often gravitated towards you.

What would you been doing? We're you doing the same as he was? No. You were probably crying and letting it all out. Something he was still working on his own. Of course you'd recommend therapy, but again, pride and fear always came his way. He was doing fine, wasn't he?

Bullshit.

Lying to himself was another thing he had perfected to a T. And it was low key terrifying for him for you to see underneath the layers (he had made sure to build sturdier), with such ease after a couple of months into the relationship with you.

But there he was, tired bones, body and soul aching from the lack of sleep. His stomach churned at the little food he consumed, the rest was coffee, to try and keep himself awake.

Cause after trying to call you next day, the only reply he got was the automated announcement of the operator.

The number you're trying to reach is no longer available or is out of reach, please contact your-

And the message kept replaying over and over. His texts didn't go through. And it didn't help that Peter arrived with the box full of his stuffs you had kept.

Peter's words fell upon deaf ears.

Peter always knew how to give him his space, but wouldn't hesitate to step up, even if it meant to be called nosy and annoying by him later. He knew he meant good. But he wasn't ready to fully grasp the fact that you had left. All thanks to him and his insecurities, something you had embraced and loved without restrains.

You loved him.

His chest constricted at the raw memory of you saying that. And tightened even more upon laying down and feel your empty space in his bed. The pillow was still deflated in the shape you had left it that fateful morning. He didn't puffed it up, fearing that the little scent of you etched to it would fade forever.

He'd fall sleep watching that small space, hoping to feel you in the morning, snuggled next to him, with your head nested on the crook of his neck, holding him like a tiny marsupial that refused to be separated from it's tree.

It was when he slept the most. Soundly and comfortable. But now, only bad dreams came for a visit.

There was no good morning kisses, no bantering for whose turn was to make the breakfast and coffee. No morning sex that probably made Gabriel uncomfortable, but the younger O'Hara was too into his business and polite to say anything. No more corny movie nights he indulged with you just for the sake of hearing you laugh at the terrible acting and cringe dialogues.

No more of your hands playing and caressing his hair just cause you wanted so, no more excited bear hugs everytime you saw him. No more of your comforting touch and words whenever he had a bad dream. No more you praising him. No more you.

Gabriel had tried to distract him, but the effort only lasted for so little that he went back to his silent mourning.

He missed it all. Missed you.

---

Gabriel let Peter and Jess in, Peter's muffled voice trying to appease a caustic Jessica whose eyes settled on a surprised Miguel on the kitchen, drinking his fifth cup of coffee.

Peter gave him an awkward smile as he followed Jessica.

"You look terrible."

Despite her anger, Jessica only pointed at his unkempt and disheveled looks.

His stubble had grown, the eyebags underneath his lower lids more prominent, bloodshot eyes that were set in a void and solemn gaze, skin ashy from the lack of sun.

"Miguel" Peter started with a sigh, "You're clearly not fine. "

He grunted and sipped the bitter coffee.

"Look, this is not our business, but we're here as your friends."

Jessica saying your name and how you were doing made his grip on the mug tighter.

"I just... don't understand. You out of everyone know the relationship with her family. Yet you accused of being like them."

"I did not"

Miguel rubbed his face and sighed. Already feeling the emotional toll he had been neglecting for the past week.

"Are you calling my friend a liar, then? She came to me, weeping, with a hecking anxiety attack saying you didn't love her anymore."

"That's.... Not true."

The constricting feeling came harder than ever upon hearing Jess' words. How could you even think that he didn't love you? He did. More than he let on. But pride was surely costing him big time.

"Then own your mistakes."

Miguel's eyes casted away from the both. Peter rubbed his neck and sighed.

"Look, Mig. We're not telling you what to do here. But I can't stand see you like this. Not when you know you can do the right thing."

"It's not that easy"

"It was easy for you to judge her-"

"Jessica"

Peter frowned and Jessica glared

"It was easy for you to say such things to her, but it's hard to apologize?"

"Exactly. You think I don't know I fucked up? I know I have to make things right-"

"Then do it!. And take a bath, I can smell you from here."

Miguel half scowled half pouted at her words. Peter just patted his shoulder softly before leaving.

-----

His first attempt at apologizing failed. He had sent flowers to your job, only for the delivery man to tell him that you had returned them, along with the box of chocolates you've always wanted to try.

He wanted to taste the waters before actually step in. And so far they'd drown him if he ventured deep enough.

But he was fighting against the tide.

---

The cold rain had soaked him, ruined the flowers and his hairstyle. He wanted to make things right, but knew that couldn't do it looking like shit. He had taken the time in getting ready. Black pants and shoes, a deep green button shirt, one that you had picked for him and praised him nonstop about it in one of your shopping outings.

Necklace in one of his pockets, flowers in one hand and his heart on the other.

Gabriel just teased him with a smile before he left. Glad that his brother seemed with a spark again.

But the rain, had ruined his plans. And now he was soaked, hair a wet wavy mess, shivering with a single tulip in his hands, all before your apartment's door.

He'd know you'd be home, it was your resting day. Taking a deep breath and swallowing back the anxiety gnawing at his head and heart, he rang the doorbell.

Small taps of your fuzzy slippers echoed closer and closer, your voice soft and serene. The same way you'd talk to him when he was grumpy or in a bad mood.

Who were you talking to?

The thought of you moving on so fast crossed his mind but instantly was fulminated. You weren't like that. You still loved him.

Right?

His breath hitched once your door swung partially open, revealing you. A messy bun ontop your head, phone on hands, puffed eyes that were red from previous crying, a sweater double your size and comfy pj pants.

"I-I'll call you later. Hm. Bye" You sniffled and hung up the call.

You closed the door on his face and he stilled for a moment, the shuffling of your locks finally turned to swung open the door completely. He swallowed thickly

Mahogany eyes locked in yours, you frowned and he sighed.

"May I... Come in?"

Miguel sighed and offered you the lone and wet white tulip. Your favorite, as a peace offer.

"Please?"

Despite the inner turmoil in your heart, you stepped aside and let him in.

Baby steps.

He swallowed as he ventured deeper in your home. It had changed little to nothing. Just like you. The only visible change in your factions was the restless look he shared with you.

You went to the bathroom and brought him a towel. He didn't know how would you react if he just pulled you closer and held you tightly.

He just took the towel instead, brushing cold fingers against warm ones. His body almost sung in delight at the little feeling of you again.

But he knew he had lost the right to your physical affection. To your attention, and the fact that you had received him and still looked after him in the admist of his wrongdoings, humbled him.

You went to the kitchen and put the kettle to boil. He was on the edge as he removed his shirt and wet clothes.

"W-What are you..." You looked at him in mild alarm as he wrapped the towel around his waist. The storm kept raging outside, thunders only enhancing the heavy atmosphere that settled between you both.

"Relax, don't wanna catch a cold."

His skin full of goosebumps, probably cold by the unforgiving rain. You went back to the living room and fetched the blanket you were using.

"Here."

You only watched him, but he refused to meet your gaze just yet.

"Im sorry."

He blurted and his eyes softened at you bracing yourself.

"I fucked up, didn't I?."

"Big time."

He nodded and wrapped himself the blanket on his shoulders. Being both emotionally and physically naked before you wasn't something he had planned on. But it was one of the least of his concerns.

You had put the tulip in a small vase and soon poured two mugs of hot cinnamon and milk tea, a drinking habit he had rubbed on you.

You sat on the couch, he followed.

"I know you don't want me here but, I really need to make this right. If... you don't want to continue this, I'll understand. I'll respect whatever choice you make."

"I just don't know if I can trust you, Miguel."

A stab on his chest. A well deserved one. He nodded.

"Is there anything I can do to fix that? Can I still fix it? "

You sighed softly and shook your head, "I don't know. I want to believe you, believe that something like that won't ever happen again."

You squeezed the mug in your hands

"You have no idea how... your words hurt. Even worse when you looked at me with such anger and disgust. It felt like my family looking at me when I left them."

Your voice cracked and he tensed, but slowly reached for your hand. Relief washing over him as you didn't recoil from his touch this time. The tea long forgotten.

"Te prometo, que nunca volverá a pasar. Y sabes que soy un hombre de palabra. I know what I said is unjustifiable, But I can't stand this... space between us" (I promise this won't happen again. You know I'm a man of word)

You knew he wasn't good with feelings, that he sometimes needed a reminder to look for help, the way he breathed as he spoke the last two words made you smile a little. He was trying.

"I know" You sniffled and wiped your eyes.

"Do you... want me to stay away until you feel ready to try it again?"

A vehement shake of your head.

"I need to get it out cause... I don't know if I can't keep bottling up these things anymore. I'm not... sweeping my feelings under the rug anymore. I'm tired of that."

"That's... something I need to keep working on"

His hand slicked his front bangs away from his face.

"It's something I've always admired from you, mi niña." His hands grabbed yours once more, relishing in the warmth and grounding feeling your body provided him, "You've... always made it look easier. I tried to learn but... I guess it doesn't works like that."

"It takes time. And willingness to share. I could teach you."

"Have you... ever felt like I'm not willing to share things or that I'm too closed off with you?"

"Yes. I feel like mostly of the times I need to take initiative for you to do things with me. That's why I said you didn't want me"

He rubbed his face as his chest constricted, just like his throat.

"I know, sometimes I'm an ass"

"Un pendejo, de hecho" (A dumbass, actually)

He chuckled and nodded as he entwined his hand with yours.

"And I'm sorry if I ever took you for granted. I'm sorry for... the many things I should've done better but I didn't cause I knew you'd stay with me anyways. And... I'll forever regret that it came to this point for me to realize that"

He cradled you close and held you with such gentleness it made your heart thump in relief. One of his arms went around your waist as his other hand caressed your hair.

Miguel was now resting on the armchair of your couch, you lying ontop of him. He didn't need the blanket anymore. His hands were too fearful of you slipping away from him.

"Have you ever felt judged by me?" Your voice soft, and melodic, music to his anxious heart.

He shook his head and pressed a firm kiss on your temple. You closed your eyes, melting into the caresses he gave as his hands roamed gently your back, saying 'She's here. She's real. She's mine again'

"All the opposite. You really felt that I didn't love you?"

"That and that you didn't want me anymore"

He sighed and cupped your face to give you a tiny and gentle kiss as he squeezed you against him.

"Mensa." (Dummy)

Your hand reached up to pull a strand of his hair as a little vendetta and he chuckled.

" Te voy a demostrar que te amo" (I'll prove my love for you)

"Can't wait" There was a little flush on your cheeks. You knew that his heartfelt and most sincere words came better in spanish.

There was a silent moment, the drip drops of the rain against your window were the perfect lullaby for you to close your eyes.

Tonight you'd sleep soundly, so would he. His hand on your hair trembled. These forms of intimacy always made him marvel at how easy was to keep you and himself happy.

"I've missed you." He whispered only for you. Your heart frisked in contempt, cause only you could make him say such words.

"I've missed you too"

He caressed your cheek once more and smiled gently.

"Are we good?"

"We're working on it"

The heavy and unpleasant feeling slowly melting off from him. He smiled as he secured you in his arms.

---

The dim lit room soon made him to yawn, awakening in a different place. A soft startle, but feeling his arms occupied with you, snuggled against him, face hidden in the crook of his shoulder, deeply asleep.

His arms couldn't get enough of feeling your skin. Feeling you, to make sure his mind wasn't hallucinating. You had given him another chance and he was ready to prove himself worthy of you.

His soft kisses on your hair stirred you awake as you hooked a leg on his waist, But when he mimicked you, his whole frame engulfed you, earning a little squeal.

He smiled as he kept crushing you.

"Miguel!" You whimpered and he let you go. Everything felt like before. Like it should.

"Want some breakfast? "

He whispered as he curled on you. you'd gladly make the big spoon if needed, strong hands cradling you closer as you nodded

"Later though, Let's stay five more minutes." You kissed his forehead in exchange.

Yeah, everything was as it should. His world was spinning again and you in the middle of it. His own moon and stars.

"Pitufina?"

You grunted at the nickname.

"¿Me amas?" (Do you love me?)

"Y mucho." ( A lot)

You mumbled in between sleepy whispers. the golden necklace once more around your neck.

"Do you?"

He grope you tighter at the question.

"More than I thought possible."

------

Taglist:

@kinkybandages

#miguel o'hara #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara x you #atsv miguel #soccer family ⚽🕷️#Pre Soccer Family ⚽🕷️#Reconciliation #t writes✨#miguel o'hara fluff #miguel o'hara angst

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modelbus · 8 months ago

Text

Anyone else have a newfound love for this song and an addiction to task force 141? No? Just me?

To my mcyt readers: …I can’t explain. Just know that is ✨ different ✨ from my usual. (Quite Suggestive) To the COD readers I've attracted: I haven't played the games and reality is what I decide to make it (feel free to send asks educating me or info dumping <3)

Pairing: John Price x Gn!Reader

Too sweet

Baby, I can never tell How do you sleep so well?

”Morning Captain.” The words are practically a ritual, although you know he won’t respond. He never does this early in the morning.

There were a lot of unwritten rules in 141. When you first joined, you fucked them all up. Continuously. More often than not, it was Soap who laughed at you while Price patiently explained why you can’t joke about Ghost being afraid of snakes.

This rule, though, only took you a few days to catch onto. The “don’t talk about the sleepless nights” rule. Everyone knew why that rule existed; you’d seen enough combat to not be that naive. You’d been there enough to wake up before the sunrise, to watch the sky bleed orange.

And that’s exactly why you don’t ask Price about the circles under his eyes. If he’s not up doing paperwork, he’s up for other reasons. You don’t pity him; being Captain isn’t something you could ever do.

“Had a dream that Gaz found a goat and convinced you to make it the base pet.” You continue. His lips quirk up, gaze turning amused, so you soldier on. “Then it ate Ghost’s clothes, so he kicked it out of the base and Gaz quit the task force over it. And Soap claimed he could speak to it, but I called bullshit on him and he disappeared.”

”Disappeared to where?”

“Hell, maybe? That’s where he fucking belongs.” You smile at him, and his eye roll—you pretend it’s fond—seems like a victory of its own.

You’re too sweet for me You're too sweet for me

“No.”

The finality of his word rings clear, but you persist. You were never too good at stopping before you crossed that line, never too good at giving up while you were ahead. Things, more often than not, ended up right as rain.

“Price—“ You try.

“You’re too young, and it’s wrong.” Never before have you seen a man so tortured. It wasn’t a question of if he wanted you, it was a question if he would let himself want you. And you both knew it. “I won’t take your innocence from you.”

You scoff, following him down the hall and out of the briefing room. So much for staying after to help him gather papers.

“I’m a soldier, hardly innocent!”

“Compared to me, you are!” He turns, and you automatically look up to his eyes. As you said before: tortured. “I’m harsh, and we both know it. You deserve to be with someone soft, someone who can be sweet with you.”

“I don’t want to be.”

From the second you laid eyes on John Price, you knew you’d never want to be. It wasn’t his age, although you never minded an older man. It was his passion, his care, his leadership and skills and everything else about him. He was magnetic, drawing you in despite everything.

And you weren’t blind to the way his gaze always met yours in a room, either.

Price sighs heavily. “Go to bed, soldier.”

Tactful retreat it is, then. “Good night, Price.” You murmur, turning away.

A pause, then another sigh. This one is lighter. “Good night.”

I work late where I’m free from the phone And the job gets done But you worry some, I know

Knocking twice, you don’t wait for Price to respond before entering his office. His light was on, shining out a signal to anyone in the hallway that he was awake.

”You’re about to owe me.” You announce, ignoring his groan.

“I was working.”

“And now you’re going to eat dinner. I had to smuggle these from the dining hall, you know.” You drop the napkin bundle you had made on his desk, opening it to reveal the food. His and yours.

“I was going to get food later.”

“Liar.” You sit in the chair across from his desk, grabbing a bread roll. “No drinks, because even I can’t smuggle that out.”

“I could get you in trouble for this.” He points out.

“But you won’t. I’m your favorite.”

Price reaches forward, taking his bread roll. Mimicking you, although he never puts his pen down. The paperwork spread out in front of him is just like every other night you’ve brought him food.

“Who says you’re my favorite? Maybe it’s Ghost.” Price smiles, and you beam back at him.

“Don’t insult me like that. I’m proud of my title as your favorite. I mean, I am the only one that you let lounge in your office.”

“Tenuously.”

“Still.”

His attention turns back to filling out his paperwork, leaving you to sit there. Per usual. You stay until all the food is gone, leaving him with only crumbs on his desk to show for it.

Sweeping the napkin and crumbs into his desk, you pause by the doorframe. His hat obscures his face, but you know he’s aware that you’re still there.

“Get some sleep sometime tonight, yeah?” You hedge.

“I should be the one telling you that.”

“Someone gotta look after you, Price. Besides, I’m not the one who doesn’t go to bed before daylight.”

Knocking at the door to signal your exit, you head out.

You treat your mouth as if it’s heavens gate The rest of you like you’re the TSA

"Never have I ever... been a virgin." Soap says, raising his beer.

"That's not how it fucking works." You argue. "You were a virgin at some point, obviously."

"You know wha' I mean."

"Just pick something else." Ghost butts in gruffly.

This is why you prefer not to play drinking games with the task force. Soap always ends up fucking them up first, and then it manages to devolve into chaos. For an elite spec ops team, 141 sure did struggle at these games.

"Fine." Soap groans, taking a drink of his beer while he thinks.

"In the meantime, I'll go-" Gaz starts, but immediately gets cut off.

"Never have I ever been a virgin right now."

You stare at Soap. He stares back. "I'm going to beat your ass for targeting during training tomorrow." You threaten him, taking a sip of your wine. You're the only one drinking wine here, but you prefer the taste of it over beer or whatever the others are drinking.

As you tilt your glass back, your eyes lock with Price's. You're reclined on the floor with Soap while he's in a chair, giving you the perfect line of sight on each other. He watches with dark eyes as you swallow, tracing your figure with a gaze so heavy that it makes you shiver.

In his hand, his whiskey remains untouched.

"You just need to get laid and then you won't be such an easy target." Soap is saying, oblivious to the tension simmering between you and Price.

"Unlike you dumbasses, I'm don't want to sleep with the first moving thing I see." You don't look away from Price pointedly. "I prefer to wait for the right person."

Ghost makes a disinterested noise from the chair next to Price, making you flick your gaze to him. He inclines his head slightly, well-aware of the thing between you and Price, but doesn't say a word. Thank fuck for Ghost.

"I'm heading to the bathroom. Don't set the room on fire while I'm gone. Soap."

"God, I didn't do anything yet!"

"Yet."

"I'll go too." Price says lowly, his footsteps tailing yours. It's not until you're in the hallway and out of earshot from the others that he speaks to you. "You're a tease, doll."

"I'm aware." You turn to grin at him, but startle at his proximity. He steps forward and you take a matching one back, your back hitting the hallway wall.

"In front of everyone, too." He murmurs, boxing you in. Your heartbeat pounds loudly in your ears, but not from fear. You know what fear feels like, and it certainly isn't the warmth pooling in your gut. "Begging for it."

"You know I have been."

His head dips, and just for a moment the bitter taste of whiskey invades your tastebuds. Your eyes flutter shut as his tongue swipes across yours, and when you open them he's gone.

Point, you.

As soft as the rain Pretty as a vine As sweet as a grape

John Price was everywhere.

His hands on your hips, his bookshelf pressing against your back, his mouth on yours. Every inch of him invaded every inch of you, and you loved it.

As it turns out, all you had to do was get shot in the field. A graze made well worth it by this reaction.

“Don’t you ever pull that shit again.” Price says into your mouth, hands tight on your skin like you’ll disappear. You’d worry that they’d leave bruises, but you already know your love looking at the reminder of him.

“Or what?” You taunt when he pulls back for air.

“Or I’ll tie you to my fucking bed.”

The threat lights your blood on fire in a way it’s never done before. Want, roaring strong, sears through you.

“Truly a terrifying prospect, the guy I’ve been waiting to ask me out finally taking me to his bed—“

He smothers your laughter with his lips and tongue, hand coming up behind your head to protect it from the shelves. You tug at his hair, earned yourself a low addicting sound. Yeah, you need to hear that more. A lot more.

“What’d medical say?” Price asks, dipping his head to trail kisses along your neck. Because he had been waiting to ambush you the second you stepped into his office, you never got to tell him.

“Um.” You struggle to collect any rational thoughts as he nips at your neck, his beard and mustache scratching your skin. “They cleared me. Wrapped it and said I was good.”

“And what do you think I have to say about that?”

Trick question.

You groan, but it comes out less annoyed and more like something entirely different. He hums in response before you can even be embarrassed by the sound.

“I don’t want to run for training.” You complain.

“I think you’ve gotten enough things that you want from me.” As if to serve as an example, he presses a quick kiss to your lips before pulling back. Not too far: his hands on your hips ensure he’s still got a hold on you.

“…maybe.” You relent, staring up at him.

He smiles, reassuring, and you know this is going to stick. “Pretty thing.”

“I know you are.”

“I was talking about you, doll.”

And you knew he was, you were making a joke, but the way he says it has your cheeks flaming. He laughs, breath fanning over your hair, amused.

“Let’s grab food from the mess hall.” He suggests.

“You? Actually grabbing food? At a reasonable time?” It’s a goddamn miracle.

“Yeah yeah, don’t rub it in. Wipe that smile off your face.”

“Yes sir.” You don’t wipe the smile off your face.

“I had my tongue in your mouth, I think you can stop calling me sir. Or Captain, frankly.”

“What, you don’t like that stuff?”

His eyes widen briefly. “Oh, you little—“

#john price #captain john price #captain price #task force 141 #call of duty #captain price x reader #john price x reader #captain johnathan price #cod #tf 141 #john price cod #john price x you #john price call of duty

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transhuman-priestess · 11 months ago

Text

Sometimes the struggles we go through to be ourselves can be as rewarding as the end result.

A pretty breezy one here. Only content notes are surgery mention and needle mention. No gore to be found, no sex neither. Just good ol' fashioned yearning.

This is definitely a bit of a right angle to my usual stuff. There's no horror, it's light on dialogue, but its in a very similar space to a lot of the other stuff, just a different way of going at it.

Daughter of Elysium

I scheduled the surgery without telling my parents. They wouldn’t understand.

When I came out as trans they were supportive, in perhaps the slightly awkward way that cis people tend to be when they want to be accepting of things they don’t understand. This was different though.

I sat in the waiting room of the clinic in Montevideo, lined with faux wood paneling and sleek glass. Peak 2010s architecture. An older building, but the clinic’s reputation spoke for itself. There was no way I was going to get this procedure done in North America. Too expensive, too niche.

Too many hoops to jump through, too. Go see this doctor, talk to this therapist. Walk with these crutches. Practice with this fake charger for a year. Bullshit, all of it. I just wanted to be me.

So I saved money where I could. I slept in the heat of the Californian summers, kept the lights off early in the winter, rode the train to work, ate cheap meals, canceled all my subscriptions, lived in a 300 sq foot apartment in Watsonville.

3 years and $100,000 Californian Dollars later, I got on a train in Santa Cruz for a 3-day journey to Uruguay.

It was late June, a few days before the solstice. This far south of the equator that meant the sun rose late and set early. It was early morning, a quarter to 7, and 5 hours ahead of California time. I was used to being awake at night, but that only made the early sunrise more disorienting.

“Lewis, Kara,” a thrill of adrenaline rushed through me as the receptionist called my name. After reciting my birthday to confirm my identity, I was taken back to preop. I changed into a surgical gown and then lay down on a gurney while a nurse ran an IV to my arm and started saline. I thought about asking what happened once the arm was removed, but I figured it wasn’t worth the explanation.

For the next 10 minutes I stared at the clock. I hadn’t brought anyone with me. This was something to do for me, by myself. No partner, no friends. I had brought a bag with one change of clothes, my passport, and my phone. I thought about calling my friend Cory, but decided against it. No sense in getting anyone worried. As far as the outside world was concerned, I was on vacation.

I guess that wasn’t too far from the truth.

At 7 sharp, a couple of orderlies came in, checked my name and date of birth, and released the brakes on the gurney. They wheeled me out into the chilled hallway, and through the double doors into the operating room.

Inside the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, and several techs were waiting. A nurse placed a mask on my face and told me to count backwards from ten. A sweet, chemical smell filled my nostrils, and the world faded out.

* * *

It wasn’t the first time I’d had surgery, so the novelty of coming up from the anesthesia surprised me. Rather than the slow, heavy feeling I’d expected, it was like waking up from a nap. Disorienting, but in a cozy way. Nothing hurt. I hadn’t expected that. Probably the painkillers were still feeding in.

I tried to open my eyes, but my lids only twitched slightly. I heard one of the nurses say “You’re awake! The doctor will be in to see you soon. Everything went well, congratulations.”

I tried to reply, but my jaw moved jerkily and I had trouble forming words. The result was a disjointed grunt emerging from my mouth. But I could tell that I had a mouth, which was good.

The nurse left. I could hear his shoes squeaking off into the distance. As they faded, the thrum of the HVAC replaced it, and an occasional mechanical whirring near me. My eyes were still closed, and for the first time I noticed the green letters in the corner of my vision. Instinctively, I tried to look at them, but they moved with my eyes. After a time I was able to make them stay put long enough to look at them.

ARLINGTON ROBOTICS SYSTEMS

BANGOR, WASHINGTON, CASCADE REPUBLIC

I managed to open my eyes after a few minutes. At first it was all much too bright, everything blown to white, but after a few seconds my vision dimmed to a comfortable level. I focused on a tiny hole in the floating ceiling above. After a moment, I managed to zoom my vision in.

I marveled for a time at the detail in the ceiling. This mass-produced object, fiberglass and paper, contained so much beauty. How many times had I stared a ceiling like this without noticing?

The doctor came in and reaffirmed that everything had gone well. She told me that rehab would start in a few days, once my new body’s systems stabilized and adjusted to neural commands. I tried to smile but couldn’t manage to get my face to move right.

The doctor chuckled and plugged a display into a port on the back of my new neck. She held it up to me, and I watched as the words “What is this for?” appeared on it. She explained that until my vocal rehab started to kick in, this display would help me communicate.

She told me to raise my arms out to my sides. I struggled with this task for a moment before finally managing to do so. For the first time I got a look at the body I’d picked out from the inside.

Gray plating, seams that slid over each other, an unapologetically mechanical body. I’d wanted that. They’re getting good at synthetic skin these days, but I wanted to distance myself from humanity. There was nothing wrong with humanity, but it never spoke to me. I’d always been somewhat apart.

* * *

I slept most of that first day. The next day they let me eat. The bioprocessor seemed to be working, the staff said, but I should keep it light, and stick to carbs rather than fat and protein until the new tract could build up a sufficient biome to support those.

Odd as it sounds, it was 36 hours post-op before I realized I hadn’t peed. The charging station that I hooked into took care of filtration and detox of what little biomass I had left. I felt suddenly elated. I actually tried to get up out of bed, and promptly tripped over my own foot, smashing my face against a wall.

The nurses rushed in, worry on their faces, but I couldn’t stop laughing, and that’s when I heard my voice.

It wasn’t like my old voice. It wasn’t cold and computerized, but warm, and rich, like an old Roland Jupiter, full of dense harmonics, singing highs, and comforting, enveloping lows.

Soon I was sitting on the floor, sobbing. My eyes didn’t water anymore, but I still went through the motions. I held my gray plastic hands to my face, and touched them to my cheeks. I felt the subtle vibrations as motors moved my eyes around. I had never felt so happy, so myself. So real.

* * *

After a week I was able to clumsily walk around the hospital room, and they moved me to the recovery house. I met a few other converts there. There was a girl named Morgan from Seattle, a guy named Case from Kansas City, a few others. I mostly kept to myself.

I started speech therapy shortly after the move. Lots of reading convoluted sentences, but also singing, reading poetry, even some play-acting. I grew to love my voice. It was obviously synthetic, but that only made it feel more like a part of me.

Motor therapy was interesting. They asked me if I played any instruments. I told them I played bass. The therapist walked to a closet and returned with a bass made entirely out of carbon fiber. I asked why they made it from that, the therapist told me I’d see shortly, and handed me the Bass.

I immediately gripped the neck with far more force than I’d intended, denting the frets and the strings. I said I understood now.

Time flew. The solstice came and went, and by August I could speak clearly, play “Highway Star,” and wash my own chassis without damaging it. I could dress myself. I could walk without tripping over my feet.

On an evening in early August, I bade farewell to my fellow converts at the recovery house, and made my way to the train station. I could have taken a cab, or the bus, but I opted to walk. It was 8 miles and took all night, but I enjoyed every moment of it. Never tiring, stopping for food to recharge myself here and there at convenience stores and night markets.

I settled into my roomette for the trip back to Santa Cruz, looking out at Montevideo Bay. I saw my reflection in the window of my train, and for the first time, really took it in, with eyes that were my own.

#ivy michaels writing #robot girl #cyborg girl #cyborg #transhumanism #cyborg conversion

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otakubimbo · 1 year ago

Text

BAD COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Pairing: Gojo Satoru x f!Reader

Warnings: MDNI, Smut, Profanity, Angst, Anal (f!receiving), Aggressive Sex, Verbal Fighting, Miscommunication DID NOT PROOFREAD

summary: You broke up with your boyfriend Gojo Satoru out of what he thought was no where. He hasn’t heard from you since you took all of your stuff out of his house while he was at work. But now here you were, soaking wet at his house in the middle of the night. Let’s just say, he wasn’t that happy to see your face.

Day 3: Hate Sex

A/n: I’m actually really enjoying making these so I hope y’all are liking them too <3

masterlist

You didn’t even know how you got to his door. Your feet just led you there as if they knew the way. So, here you were knocking on your ex’s door in the middle of the night. Well 1:00 am to be more specific. It was pathetic in a sort of way, especially since you were the one that broke up with him and also because you got caught in the rain. Your freshly done silk press now ruined.

“I know that fucker is awake. Answer the damn door.” You go to bang on the door again when it’s yanked open. Now you’re just standing there like a dumb ass with your fist raised. Gojo Satoru wasn’t wearing his blindfold, shades sitting on the point of his nose. When his face met yours, immediately a scowl fell upon his beautiful lips.

“What the fuck do you —“He paused taking in your appearance. You knew you looked like a drowned rat in running attire. You were even wearing the running shoes he got you for your birthday last year. He groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just come in.”

He steps out of your way and you carefully make your way past him to get inside. Immediately you remove your water logged shoes, standing with your arms around yourself now in the coolness of his apartment. He left you standing there in the cold until he came back throwing a towel in your direction. You could it, attempting to dry yourself off but you were soaked to the bone.

“I just need to charge my phone and I’ll call an Uber and be out your way.” You mumble attempting to gently squeeze some of the moisture out of your ruined hair.

“What have I told you about going on runs without charging your phone?! Especially in the middle of the night are you crazy?! I’ve told you how dangerous that is.” He scolds you and you simply roll your eyes.

He always thought he knew better.

“I would have been fine if I didn’t get caught in the rain” You spit back avoiding his eye contact trying your best not to freeze. Why the fuck was it so cold in here?

“You think that makes it better?! It’s the middle of the fucking night Y/N! Your house is 10 miles from here! Do you not understand how dangerous that is?! How many times have I told you?!”

You finally met his angry gaze, your face reflecting the same “I can take care of myself! If I didn’t get caught in the rain I wouldn’t have been here in the first place.”

Your arms are crosse in front of you, rage was starting to warm the cold out of your bones. You could tell your response pissed him off even more by the glare he had and the way he was aggressively moving toward you.

“Cut the bullshit. It started raining 40 minutes ago which gave you plenty of time to go home. And don’t even try to tell me you were going to run 20 miles in the rain on a fucking Tuesday.”

Yall are face to face at this point as he stands over your. His face is red with annoyance, he always looked so damn hot when he was mad. Yall ended up having a lot of angry sex that way. Not today though because for once you didn’t have any bite back. He was right and you had no idea why you were here. Your face still hardened as you sniffle, your nose trying to run. At that, his face softens and he sighs taking a step back. He didn’t have it in him to be mad at you when you looked like that. His broken heart breaking even more with every sniffle.

“Go take a shower before you get sick”

“I’ll be—“ You start but he cuts you off before you could finish your rebuttal.

“No you won’t, don’t argue with me and just go.”

He always thought he could tell you what to do.

You clamp your mouth shut. There was no point in arguing because you in fact did always get sick this way, then he used to have to take care of you for a week everyday reminding you of how maybe you should listen to him sometimes because he was right. With no further arguing, you made your way to the bathroom. You turn the shower on and strip while you wait for the shower to heat you. Looking at yourself in the mirror, you looked terrible. Only part of your hair had reverted, the bags under your eyes from the lack of sleep made you look ill, overall you looked dreadful.

“What the fuck are you doing here” You question your reflection. You hadn’t seen Satoru’s face since the break-up and it wasn’t a good breakup either. That was mainly your fault though, you just up and left no explanation. Yeah, you had your own place but most of all your things were at his place. You packed your shit, said nothing to him and blocked him. Even though, he only tried coming to your place once. Just once. And that confirmed to yourself that you made the right decision by breaking up with him the way you did. That didn’t stop you from missing the man you hated so much.

You sigh at your reflection before snorting, “You’re so stupid”

The shower was finally hot enough to slide yourself in. Once the hot water hit your skin, you immediately melted into the feeling. The tension from the argument melting away with the heat along with the cold in your bones. You decided to just go ahead and wet the rest of your hair, there was no saving it. Putting your head under the steaming water made you feel even better. You almost forgot that you couldn’t get too comfortable in there, so you quickly finished up your shower using his conditioner to make sure your hair didn’t get knocked putting it into two plats.

Once you step out the shower you see clothes laid out for you on the sink. He must have slipped in when your head was under the water. It was your favorite shirt of his and some shorts you guess you forgot, almost bringing a smile to your face.

You slipped out of the bathroom, closing the door gently behind you. He wasn’t in his room, thankfully, so you made your way back to the living room. His back was to you as he lounged on the couch. Oh how many times you’ve come out to this sight. The smell of ginger filled your nostrils and you noticed his favorite mug filled with a hot ginger tea, a bottle of whiskey next to it.

He doesn’t turn to you, but acknowledges your presence “That’s for you if you want it. I know you like it when you’re cold.”

It was your favorite., you gladly picked it up placing more than a shot into the warm cup.

He was only thoughtful when he felt like it.

“Thanks.” You say barley above a whisper but you knew he heard you because the room was completely silent besides your soft sniffles.

“No problem. I tried to charge your phone but there’s water in the port so it’s drying out.” He finally turns to you. His eyes always held secrets. You couldn’t tell what he was thinking as you nod at his comment going to sit on the opposite side of the couch. You tuck your legs into you to bring yourself some comfort as you sip on your hot tea.

Gojo didn’t know what to say to you. You broke his heart and blocked him. He had no clue why you were here. He had no clue why you even left him. All the sudden he came home, expecting to see the love his life except he came home to an empty cold apartment. You and all your things just up and gone. He tried going to your house but when you didn’t answer knowing that you were home, he didn’t know what to do with himself. He was now just alone, again.

You could never read him.

The silence between you hung in the air. It seemed like time was stopped and moving too fast at the same time. Gojo was the one to finally break the silence.

“Why?”

A simple question.

Your head slowly raised to meet his gaze. His eyes were sad, the blue sparkling in a way you’ve never seen before.

“Why what?” You knew what he meant but you didn’t want to just come out and say it. He should fucking know why.

“Don’t piss me off more than you already have.” He scoffs at you, unamused.

“You literally have no reason to be mad” now that really pissed him off. He pushed himself off the couch and stormed over to you, looking you into between his arms on either side of you. You try and sink further into the couch, casually taking a huge swig out of your cup as if you weren’t fazed by his behavior. His eyes looked wild, you hadn’t even noticed he didn’t have his shades on until right then.

“I have no reason to be mad? Me? You took all of your shit out the house and fucking blocked me, Y/N. And now here you are showing up at my door in the middle of the fucking night to play fucking mind games with me”

“I told you –“ You begin getting cut off yet again by him. He usually let you speak your mind but not tonight it seemed.

“I don’t give a fuck what you have to say. I fucking hate you, you broke my heart and then just show up like its not a fucking deal. Why the fuck are you here?! To torture me?!” His grip is tighter on the couch.

Your voice is small, “ I don’t know why I’m here. I just went on a run and before I knew it I was here.”

You avoid his gaze as he leans back aggressively running his fingers through his hair. He laughs almost defeatedly.

“Maybe I’m the cursed one instead of the honored one.” He says as he paces in front of you.

“Satoru” You say softly, reaching out to him, your hand moving on its own. He looks at your hand, snorting.

“No. You don’t get to do that.” He finally stopped pacing, standing in front of you. “Just tell me why you left” His voice and eyes pleaded at you. As much as you can see you broke his heart, yours was shattered as well too.

“I heard you”

“What” He says confused as to what the fuck you were talking about.

“With your parents. I heard you on the phone with your parents.” You say as you finally look up to meet his gaze. He still looks confused at you as if there’s no way he knows what’s going on. “Stop acting like youre confused.”

“Because I am confused!”

“You literally agreed when your dad said that you should break up with me! That you were too good for me!” You yell standing up, getting in his face.

You remember it like it was yesterday. You had fell asleep on the couch as you were watching a movie, but were woken up when you heard him talking quietly on the phone in the kitchen. His dad was yelling at him about how he needed to break up with you and that you were no good for him. His response: okay. You had never heard him not argue back with his father but this time? The time that it came to y’all’s relationship he was silent. He had no fight in him for you and you were crushed, you didn’t even know how you didn’t burst into tears right then. So you did what you thought was best and just left the next morning.

“You didn’t even defend me. You just said okay and that was that.” Your voice was cracking, tears threatening to spill out at any second. He looked at you as if you were a fucking idiot.

“For someone so smart you are so fucking stupid. I hate how fucking hardheaded you are.”

Before you could ask what he was talking about his lips crash into yours. Your bodies came together like missing puzzle pieces. You missed him so fucking much. His mouth moved harshly against yours, pushing your further into the couch.

“You never listen to me” He rasps as his mouth moves to your jaw trailing kisses to your ear. His tongue licks around your ear, sending shivers down your spine. You’re panting at this point, your legs immediately wrapping around his waist trying to pull him closer. He bites on your ear making your back arch into him, moaning into his shoulder.

“Fuck ‘toru.” You moan as your hands get tangled into his hair. His mouth licks and sucks on your neck, pulling the most delicious moans out of you. You can feel him growing between your legs as he presses himself into your now wet shorts. Your wetness is seeping through even his own layers of clothes which gets a deep throaty groan out of him.

“At least your pussy missed me, you heartless slut.” He scoffs, grinding more into you grabbing you by your throat. “Broke my heart for no fucking reason because you didn’t want to communicate.”

His grip tightens on your neck and you squirm under him as you feel yourself getting even more spurred on. The hand not occupied around your throat sinks straight into your shorts. His long thick fingers forcing their way into soaked cunt.

“Yeah your pussy really missed me. She wouldn’t have to be so needy for me now if you would of just fucking talked to me. I hate how you always just shut down.” He scolds as he’s aggressively finger fucking you, his thumb just as aggressively circling your clit. You could barely even register all that he was saying, his fingers were hitting the best parts within you. You moan his name over and over again. Your body was so close to reaching it’s climax, it was making you dizzy. Right before you were tipped over the edge, he yanked his fingers out. Before you could even complain about the emptiness in you, he shoves his slick coated fingers in your mouth. You suck on them greedily, loving the taste of yourself on his fingers. He looks darkly down at you as he yanks your shorts off, causing a gasp from you which makes him shove his fingers further down your throat gagging you.

“You know what I hate the most about you?” He asks pulling his dick free from his pants. It was as pretty as you remember, it wasn’t super thick but it was long and had the prettiest curve to it. “That you would think that of me. That you would think I didn’t love you.” He strokes his dick looking down at you, your eyes hooded and filled with love.

“But don’t worry, I’m about to fuck you like I hate you.” He says as he yanks you up, throwing you over the side of the couch so that your back is arched perfectly for him. Satoru doesn’t even give you time to think as he thrusts himself completely inside of you causing you to groan deeply from the sudden and harsh intrusion. He pounded into your relentlessly, hands placed firmly on your hips holding you in place. You didn’t know if you could take much more. He was so deep, ramming into your cervix with every thrust and every so often making your ass which you knew would make it hard for you to sit for days after. Your pussy was squeezing him tightly with every smack.

“Oh, you’re enjoying this huh? You didn’t have to break my fucking heart to get me to fuck you like this.” He growls smugly behind you as one of his hands moves from your hips to your front rubbing your combined juices on his fingers. With his, now wet, thumb he sticks it straight into your asshole that was puckering at him. You throw your head back at the intrusion now feeling overwhelmingly full. He matches the thrust of his fingers with the thrusts of his dick.

“Yes! Satoru! Yes fuck yes. Oh you’re going to make me cum baby.” You babble unable to control any feeling in your body anymore.

“Then come for me.”He commands, using his other hand to grab the back of your neck pulling you back. At that point, your mind was empty except for the feeling of him inside of you. After a few more thrusts, you cum, and you cum hard, harder than you ever had. Your eyes roll in the back of your head and you think they may get stuck like that with the way feel right now. The noises you made were so lewd and the death grip you pussy had on Satorus dick as he was trying to fuck you through your high had him cuming deeply in you.

Once both of your bodies stopped shaking, he let you both fall over the side of the couch, his back pressed against you panting hard. He catches his breath and gently pulls out of you, gaining a whimper from you. With a sigh, he picks you up and brings y’all to the bedroom, laying you down gently pulling the covers over your spent body. He slides in on the other side, turning your face to him.

“Are you ready to listen?”He asks gently, cupping your face. Your eyelids were heavy but you nod.

“The reason I didn’t argue with my dad was because I had planned on never talking to him again after we got off the phone, on top of the fact I thought you were sleeping.” Maybe he was more thoughtful than you gave him credit for, but you were still confused. Him and his father argued all of the time, but he wouldn’t ever just cut off contact with him.

“What happened?” You ask softly, now seeing how big you overreacted.

Satoru sighs before placing a kiss on your forehead, deciding on if he wanted to tell you or not. You reach out, stroking his cheek lovingly allowing him to open up on his own time, showing you were listening.

“I told him I wanted to marry you.” He says finally. Your movements immediately still and your eyes widen.

“Huh” You question, blinking several times to make sure you were awake and registering everything properly.

“I let him know I was thinking about proposing to you and when he gave me that reaction, I decided that there was no longer a point in talking to him. I couldn’t have anyone in my life who didn’t see how special you were.”

You felt like you couldn’t breath and you just said the first thing that came to your mind, “I’m an idiot”

You’re trying to hold back tears and he pulls you into an embrace.

“So it seems. But you’re my idiot. Yeah?” He asks rubbing circles into your back. You nod into his chest.

“Next time you think about pulling a disappearing act. Can you just talk to me first?” He asks and you nod again getting a chuckle out of him.

“Still hate you for breaking my heart but I can think of a few ways you can repay me” He says as he pulls you back, capturing your mouth once more. The rest of the night, you did your best to repay him for your lack of communication skills.

The next morning, you woke up wrapped up in your loving man, his head in your chest and your legs thrown over him. Unfortunately for you, you felt like shit. You, indeed, did get sick. Another incident you weren’t going to hear the end of until you got better.

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