#nobody asked for this crossover. But i did so you guys have to deal with it now

[odd-critter]

i dont know why i stayed up to draw this it was on impulse. But its here now

[gilbirda]

Friendly neighborhood vigilante. Chapter 18

BatmanxDP crossover. JasonxJazz

[Read on AO3] [Read on FF.net]

Based on this post

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“Are you still mad at me?”

Jason sighed. “I’m not mad.”

She didn’t like his answer, but contained herself. Like she did all the thousand times in the last hour.

“I promise I’m not mad.”

Her eyes were deep turquoise pools without end. He usually didn’t feel analyzed when she looked at him, she was very firm on never using her skills on him despite joking about not being a good doctor; but now he could almost feel her poke around in his head. He didn’t like it.

“I was mad, but I‘m not anymore. Promise.”

She liked that answer even less than the other one. “I’m sorry.”

She was being honest. Like she had been the first thousand times she apologized.

It wasn’t about being sorry or being mad with her. It was just—

“I shouldn’t have said yes without asking.”

He stopped walking, took a deep breath and turned to look at his girlfriend. She was twisting the hem of her blouse, her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyebrows furrowed. He had no doubt that Jazz was sorry about making that deal with Bruce the previous day, but it didn’t mean that her actions didn’t hurt.

He ignored the pinch in his chest.

Jazz was not like his family, he tried to remind himself once more. She didn’t act because she thought she knew what he wanted better than him, or because she was so sure she was in the right that she wouldn’t waste time asking him if he agreed.

The moment Bruce was out of that window she looked at him with wide eyes. “I fucked up,” she had said without hesitation, throwing him off the spiraling thoughts of betrayal.

How he was feeling was probably written in his face, he had no doubt. Sure, the Pit wasn’t clouding his thoughts — and it hasn’t done so in a while, not even when he thought that Jazz had used him as a guinea pig with the Lazarus Waters — but even with a clear head he was still not okay.

They had talked. For hours.

Figures that his first real argument with his girlfriend would be Bruce’s fault — he was not counting the whole drama of that week as a “couple’s argument".

Jazz's usual ramblings, which in any other situation would be endearing, was then grating to his ears. Excuse after excuse, she kept explaining, or trying to, that she thought he needed to go to that dinner. That his problems with Bruce, while valid, shouldn’t deny him a relationship with the others. That she would be there and could act as a shield—

He had to stop her right there.

It was an awful lot of assumptions, he told her. She didn’t even know about his past, he growled.

That made her stop. “You are right, I don’t. I wish to know, when you want to tell me. I want to know everything about you.” She finally looked him in the eyes properly. “But I still think that deep inside you want to go to the dinner.”

He wanted to go. He wanted to see Alfred and see his second childhood home (the nicer one) and meet the new people in the family.

She knew he wanted to go, because she was one of the few people in the world that could see past his tough guy exterior and actually made an effort to see what was inside.

Still, he would like it if next time, his girlfriend didn’t make a decision for him. He told her so and the argument ended in a better tone, with a hug and soft kiss goodnight.

Why was Jazz insisting again, you ask?

“You shouldn’t have, no. But you apologized and I think I’ve told you to not apologize if nobody was hurt. I’m fine. Shall we go to that damn dinner?” He gestured towards the elevator, and of course Jazz didn’t move.

She stopped biting her lip, but her hands kept torturing the hem of her blouse.

“You don’t look fine.”

Okay. Not only were they going to that stupid dinner because of her, but they were going to be late because of her as well.

He sighed, rubbing his face.

“Well I’m perfectly okay. Can we please get moving?”

Jazz frowned, like he just kicked a puppy or something.

“Danny always—”

“Well I’m not Danny!”

The silence was only broken by the echo of his shout in the empty hallway. It was only then that he noticed he was breathing heavily.

Jason stopped, straightened his back and took a deep breath. Only then he looked back at Jazz, finding those hurt eyes that he had only seen back at his other safehouse, when he accused her of so many horrible things.

The image of a bruised wrist passed behind his eyes.

He was not his father. Either of them.

“Listen—”

“I’m—”

Both stopped talking, looking at each other in a tense silence.

When she didn’t say anything else, he continued. “I’m not your brother, Jazz. I understand that you feel sorry and I understand why you jumped like that. Yes, I’m upset, but I just— I don’t need a talk about feelings right now, ok?”

She processed his words for a moment.

“You need time.” It wasn’t a question.

“I— Yes.”

She tilted her head. “Time away from ‘us’?”

“What? No!” What the actual fuck? “No, I just got you back, why would I want to be apart from you?”

Jazz’s cheeks tinted a bit red just as she looked down at her hands, finally letting go of the piece of clothing.

“Just wanted to check,” she said with a small shrug, still looking down. “Didn’t want to assume things.”

This made him chuckle.

“You are silly.”

At least she was smiling when she looked up at him. “Can I hug you?”

Instead of an answer, Jason walked towards her and pulled her into his chest, easily circling his arms around her body. It was comfortable and it felt right, having her so close. He kissed the top of her head, breathing in her shampoo.

“We cool?” She asked against his chest.

He nodded, even if she wouldn’t be able to see it. “We cool.”

By the time they got to the bike, all the bad feelings had been replaced with tender kisses. Jazz offered to bail on the dinner and blame it on her if necessary, but at that point Jason was so fed up with the stupid dinner he wanted to go out of spite.

The ride was uneventful, Jazz’s long dress pants and heeled sandals weren’t a problem to ride a motorbike.

They made the trip to the Manor in silence, Jason’s mind disconnected from the motions as familiar landscape passed by them at high speed. It has been a while since he climbed the hills towards Bristol, but he couldn’t remember if the last time was when he brought that first edition to Alfred so he knew he was alive, or if there was a more recent instance.

In any case, the familiar shape of Wayne Manor was impossible to miss, nor were the empty roads that were far from civilization and the common people living in the rest of the city.

Jason expected to feel rage, to feel dread, to feel the painful anticipation before facing something that you really don’t want to experience — but as troubling thoughts started to plague his mind, he felt strong but gentle arms tighten around his waist, not giving the thoughts enough time to settle in his mind.

That’s right, he wasn’t alone. He didn’t need to face things alone. Not anymore.

The silence was broken as he parked close to the door and both got out of the vehicle.

“It’s… big.”

He snorted at her comment. “Don’t let the opulence get to you.”

Jazz hummed in thought. “Oh it doesn’t. Is not my first time in a mansion this big.” She turned to look at him with a little smile. “I haven’t told you about the time we lived in a mansion?”

He chuckled as he stored the helmets away. “Sounds like a fun story. Wanna share with the class?”

Her eyes glazed over for a moment, and he knew she was considering if she needed to lie to him. It didn’t hurt that much, especially not now that he knew why she needed to measure her words.

“The GIW paid my parents an absurd amount of money in exchange of our house and all the ghost hunting technology. Danny was thrilled, of course, since he always wanted to be rich. We had our own butler and everything.” She sighed dramatically. “It ended quickly when Danny found out that what the GIW truly wanted was access to the portal to nuke the Ghost Zone. He barely stopped them in time and the day was saved once again.”

“Nuke the Ghost Zone?” He asked as they started walking towards the Manor. “Sounds dangerous.”

“Very. The Ghost Zone, or the Infinite Realms, are like… what was the word?” Jazz thought about it for a moment, one finger on her lips with smudged pale pink lipstick. Which reminded him to check that he didn’t have lipstick stains on his face. He would never live that down. “It is like… a mirror dimension of this one! Yes, that was the thing. Anyway, if that one is destroyed, this one goes as well.”

He lifted an eyebrow, stopping right at the front door. “You guys have dealt with crazy stuff, haven't you?”

Her smile was tired. “You have no idea.”

There was more she wanted to say, but both knew it wasn’t the moment or the place. There was so much pain, so many secrets, in her teal eyes that he wondered how he hadn’t noticed before. Had she been hiding all of that from him? Of course she had, she was good and hiding and lying. Jazz was burdened by secrets that weren’t her own and a past she couldn’t share.

Once again she reminded him so much of Dick, and how his brother was all smiles and circus tricks to distract you from the pain Jason could see in his eyes when Dick thought nobody was looking. He knew there were things his brother wasn’t telling him, and he never pressed. Everybody had their secrets. Even him. Even his girlfriend.

But, unlike with his brother, Jason wanted to know those secrets — not to make sure she was not a supervillain, but because he wanted to carry that burden with her. It hurt to see her in pain. He wanted to take away her sorrows so she didn’t have to look like this.

Jason cupped her face with one hand, for once not worrying about his calloused palm being rough on her soft skin. She leaned into the touch.

He put his other hand on her waist, leaning in for a last kiss. She eagerly placed her hands on his chest, responding to the kiss with a little smile against his lips. He felt her sigh and melt into his arms, all worrying thoughts escaping her mind this time.

He may not be able to take away all her sorrows, but he was happy to distract her from them for the moment.

When they parted, he saw a curtain quickly be closed in a nearby window.

He sighed, knowing that it was showtime.

“Ready?”

At her nod, he rang the bell.

Of course, the door was opened immediately. Alfred had been waiting behind the closed door, with half the family standing there, trying to not make it obvious they've been eavesdropping.

“Welcome,” the butler said with a smile. Jason answered with one of his own, happy to see the old man. “May I take your coats?”

Jazz hid her nervousness as she gave her denim jacket to the butler, softly introducing herself to him.

“Jason.”

He looked up, finding Bruce standing there with a stupid turtleneck and sensible jeans, selling the whole “dad” thing. He kept an open and non-aggressive stance, with a small smile. He even wore stupid superhero slippers.

“Bruce.”

Jazz came back to the tense silence, tapping him on the shoulder.

“Your jacket, dear?”

He looked away from Bruce and took off his jacket, deciding to not give it to the man to ruin this night for him and his girlfriend. Jazz deserved to have a good time, and he would not be the one that fucks this up for her.

“Jasmine—”

“Jazz is fine,” her smile was polite, although not as warm as the ones she gave him. “Thank you for inviting us.”

It was a charged sentence, of course, since Bruce never intended to actually personally invite anyone — he always sent Dick to mediate between them. And they only accepted to come after he fucked up so bad he had to make a deal to even start apologizing.

He knew. They knew. The others knew.

Jason snorted.

He loved his girlfriend to bits.

“So…”

Everyone turned to look at Dick, who was smiling in that specific way. The one where he was trying hard to become a distraction.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“She knows who you are.”

“Well, maybe she wants to have a more formal introduction, given the circumstances.”

“She is right here.”

Now everyone looked at Jazz, who didn’t seem amused at being talked over like she wasn’t there.

“Right. Okay.” Jason sighed dramatically and got ready for grating night. “Jazz, these are Dickolas, Timbit, and Bruce, who you have already met.” He vaguely made a gesture towards them. Tim was biting his lips, trying not to laugh. “This is Alfred,” he put a hand on his shoulder, smiling when the older man placed one of his gloved hands over his, “he taught me how to cook.”

Jazz’s eyes widened when she made the connection — right, he had scarcely talked about his childhood that dinner when they kissed for the first time.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Alfred said with a slight bow.

She answered with one of her own. “The pleasure is all mine. Jason has talked a lot about you.”

He hadn’t, right? Now he couldn’t remember exactly how much he had told her.

To hide his blush, he continued. “And this is Cass.” He pointed at the silent and observant figure of Cassandra next to Bruce. “She is—”

“Black Bat.”

Cass smiled broadly at Jazz’s words, nodding and approaching her to sneak her arms around her before anybody could stop her. She pet Jazz’s long red hair a few times before letting her go.

“Welcome.” She said.

Jazz blinked in confusion for a moment before smiling back.

“Thanks!”

Both smiled at each other for a few moments, his girlfriend’s shoulders finally relaxing. She was nervous, he knew, and she was hiding it well. Did Cass notice that as well?

She was some of the few he interacted less with, and he didn’t know her as much as the others. From his investigation he knew who she was and where she came from, what she was capable of and why she didn’t kill; but he had never seen her without her suit, or from this close. Black Bat was a shadow, barely seen but always there.

But Cassandra was all smiles when she took Jazz’s hand in hers and pulled her further into the house with a skip in her step, visibly excited to meet the new person.

“The others are in the living room.” Alfred answered Jason’s unasked question. “Dinner will be served in an hour.”

With that, he disappeared through a door and went probably to the kitchen to finish preparing everything.

Right.

Dinner.

“Everything alright?” Tim’s question brought him back to the group already walking away from him. He rushed to Jazz’s side.

“Uh?” Jazz’s attention snapped back to Tim, her eyes had been fixed on a corner in the ceiling. “Sorry, can you repeat that?”

Tim glanced at Jason with a slight frown, silently asking if he knew what’s up. “You seem distracted.”

He hadn’t even finished his sentence and Jazz was already looking away, this time up the giant stairs that went to the east and west wings of the Manor. Her eyes on the door toward the East Wing, the Family Wing.

“Darling?” Jason gently touched her side.

“I’m…” Her eyes moved with intention, like they were following something running down the stairways and towards the hallway to the left. “Is just…”

When her eyes started to water, Jason pulled on her arm and made her stop. Something was up, he was sure of it.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry, I…” with her free hand she wiped the tears away. “It’s— This house has belonged to the family for generations, right?”

Everyone looked at Bruce, who tilted his head. “Yes. Why is that important?”

Ah, Bruce. Always demanding.

“Well, huh.” She sighed, wiping away more tears, careful to not smudge her eyeliner too much. “There’s no easy way to say this but… The place is haunted.”

As she said it, she glanced behind Bruce, narrowing her eyes. There was nothing there, of course. Nothing except—

“Ghosts?”

“Yeah, that’s what haunted means.”

Dick rolled his eyes at the answer. “I mean, are there ghosts here?”

Jason didn’t miss Tim’s nervous look at Bruce, or how the man looked around, wary.

“There are ghosts everywhere in this damn city.” She chuckled. “But this place feels like… You know when a cursed place feels wrong? Like you don’t need to know the backstory to know something bad happened there?”

Everyone tensed. Jazz wiped more tears.

“Well, this place is like that, but the opposite. So many lives, so many—” More tears flowed down her face, but she didn’t seem sad. She frowned like she was getting pretty annoyed. “Damn it!” She turned on her heels and glared at the empty stairs. “Yes, I can see you! And hear you! Stop making a show!”

Jason felt it. He didn’t know how, but he felt like something that was there had fled away at the woman’s words.

“Thank you!” She huffed, straightening her back and wiping her wet hands on the hem of her blouse. “So rude!” She shook her head in disbelief, finally turning back to them. “I’m sorry, what was I saying?”

Jason was the one that recovered first. Yes. His girlfriend could see ghosts. That was normal. Just one more thing to the list.

“What did you see?”

Did she see Bruce’s parents? They didn’t die in the Manor, but…

“I couldn’t say… Not every ghost maintains their form when they are created, and these didn’t.” She smiled, apologetic. “They were very chatty, though. I’m sorry.”

There was a moment of silence, broken when Tim clicked his tongue.

“Well, that’s surely something that happened.”

“Uh…”

“So my house is haunted?”

Jazz blinked. “You’ve never noticed? Have you never felt the protection magic around the house? Even mortals are capable of detecting ghost magic, especially as strong as this one is.”

Dick mouthed “ghost magic”, flabbergasted.

“No. I can’t say that I have.” Bruce answered slowly. “If I show you photos, could you identify the ghosts?”

Cass pulled the hand she was still holding and hugged Jazz close to her chest and away from Bruce. “No work talk.”

“Right, um,” he cleared his throat, suddenly very uncomfortable, “sorry about that. Tonight is supposed to be a normal family dinner.”

Jason wondered how many lectures he had gotten before they arrived. He still found it funny that his apology had been coached via comms — sad, but funny. It wasn’t surprising that the old man was incapable of offering an honest apology on his own.

They continued walking, Jazz now more present than before, offering casual explanations about what she was used to with ghosts, why she was crying — she laughed, saying that it was her body’s way of reacting to ghostly presence — and that she had been planning on setting up a protection spell but this was stronger than whatever she could do anyway.

Soon they were in the main living area, the voices of the others bouncing out of the door. Jason recognized the place — that’s where the gaming console was when he was little, and where Bruce usually sat to read with him after school and before patrol.

The memories weren’t as painful as he thought they would be. Sad, of course, given that those moments were from a life he couldn’t get back no matter how much he wished for it.

But the room wasn’t the same quiet haven he remembered. Someone was arguing loudly while someone else was laughing, and sounds coming from the TV, probably a video game, were blasting from speakers.

It was the same place, but at the same time it wasn’t.

Jazz didn’t draw attention to him when he picked her free hand and interlaced their fingers, she kept talking with Dick about something regarding her gymnastics class.

“Oh, hey!” Bernard, Tim’s boyfriend, was the first one that noticed them arrive. He stood up and walked towards Tim, extending his hand to shake Jazz’s. “Hello, I’m Bernard.”

She shook it, confused. “You are…?”

“Tim’s boyfriend.”

She finally made the connection, smiling. “Ah, I remember reading about you.”

“I hope not in those stupid tabloids.”

“That and when I looked up the Dyonysus cult.”

Bernard blushed deep red, quickly withdrawing his hand. “Listen—”

“Hey I’m not judging you. I wasn’t even looking for you,” she laughed. “I just did a research of all the occult stuff happening in Gotham before I moved here.”

“You must have been researching for weeks.” Blondie number two jumped over the sofa she was lounging on and shouldered Bernard out of the way. “Stephanie Brown.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jazz shook the offered hand. “Spoiler?” She asked for confirmation.

“Yup!” The woman beamed. “It’s so nice to have another girl around. Jason should have gotten braver and asked you out before.”

“Hey.”

Jazz looked uncomfortable for a second. “Things happen when they need to happen.” She looked at him, her eyes full of worry. “I— I haven’t told you yet, but I may have found out about you that night?”

This made him stop. “What?”

“Yeah.”

“And you still said yes?”

She blushed, looking away. “Yeah.”

He remembered her flirting back, how she blushed easier than usual, how she looked at him when he finally said the words. His speech had been pathetic and yet she had looked like he hung the moon and stars.

Had she known he was Red Hood then? And she said yes?

“You are weird.”

She chuckled, getting on the tip of her toes to kiss him on the cheek, the hand entwined with his squeezing for a second.

Someone clicked their tongue, the sound clearly displeased. Jazz jumped back to put a bit of space between them, suddenly very aware of their audience.

“Dami, be nice.” Dick said in a tired tone.

“I just don’t see what’s so interesting about her. Is a civilian who just happens to be involved in the supernatural.”

“She can see ghosts!”

“No way!” The last person to introduce themselves, Duke, stood up from where he had been sitting on the floor, leaving his controller aside. “You can see them too?”

“Ah, metahuman, right?” Jazz’s smile was wide. “Signal.”

“Yeah!”

“And you can see ghosts?”

“I can see… well, I call it ‘ghost vision’ but maybe it is not the same thing as you do,” he chuckled, quickly shaking her hand. “I can see auras and a bit on how they move in the past and in the future.”

“You can see the future???”

Aaaaand they lost her. Jazz’s eyes glowed with excitement, ditching Jason to follow Duke to the sofa and sit down to ask him a myriad of questions. She tried not to be too invasive, but he knew she would start asking about his childhood soon.

He sat down next to her, not acknowledging the others as they stood around either on the other sofas, the loveseat or on the floor. They were very obviously looking at him like he was an animal in a zoo, waiting, comparing.

This was exactly what sickened about coming to the Manor — they weren’t looking at him when he was there. Each had a mental image of “Jason Todd” and struggled to match it with the person he actually was. Or, in the case of Bruce, he was still trying to find the little boy that died.

The walls started to feel too narrow, the room too small for him, when he felt a soft touch on the back of his hand. He looked up, finding the smiling face of Jazz, his vision clearing around her.

“Right, Jay?”

He tried to mask his confusion. “About what.”

He saw the worry flash behind her eyes, but she quickly moved on. “About when I told you I saw your suit and I had to pretend I didn’t see anything.”

Oh right. When she drilled onto him about how to properly hide his stuff and how obvious he was.

“It’s not my fault you broke into a poor guy’s apartment late at night. You pervert.”

Her face went red immediately. “I— I didn’t—” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not the scoundrel that likes to break in through the window, like other people.”

“And whose fault is it? You refuse to get that damn lock.”

“I will do it when I do it!”

It was adorable how frustrated she got with the teasing. He couldn’t stop the smile that stretched his lips.

He didn’t care who was watching anymore, or if the others were trying to walk on eggshells around him. Jazz reminded him that it was okay to just be and he knew she would be in his corner if it came to it.

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[adhd-merlin]

Twenty questions for fanfic writers:

(Nobody tagged me I'm just procrastinating!!)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

42, but most of my older stuff is on livejournal, where it shall remain.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

193,392.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Right now only Merlin. I’m a ‘one fandom at the time’ kind of person.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Four out of five are Sherlock fics and I doubt anyone cares about that, so I’m going to make it Top 3 Merlin fics:

Call It Anything We Want (Arthur/Gwen/Merlin) - link

All Downhill from Here (Merlin/Arthur) - link

Unwavering (Merlin/Gwaine) - link

I like that it’s a mix of ships!

5. Do you respond to comments?

I do! I like talking to other people about The Characters. Sorry if I’ve ever rambled at you.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don’t really write angst. The only one I can think of is a Sherlock fic based on the theme of mismatched names in a soulmate AU (if this means anything to you). The first part was bittersweet (Sally Donovan/Harry Watson), the second part just sad (John/Sherlock)—both probably not that good. I wrote it a decade ago and I’m not going to re-read it now to see if I am right.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Call It Anything We Want. Everything gets solved and everyone is happy! The end.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

None so far!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Sometimes! All kinds :)

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Generally I don’t, but funnily enough the fic of mine with the most kudos is a Sherlock x Harry Potter crossover. (It was for a fanfic exchange and my recipient had this crossover on their wishlist.) There’s nothing particularly crazy about it.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Someone asked me if they could translate a fic of mine once and I said it was fine, but they never got back to me with a link, so I don’t know if they actually did it. I don’t think so.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Ooooh this takes me back. Yes—nothing that was ever published, but I did attempt to co-write a fic with a fandom friend once. We had become friends through livejournal by commenting on the same on-going fic—and when I say friends, I mean we ended up exchanging emails, photos, talking about personal stuff and chatting for hours every day.

Which might not sound like a big deal now, but this happened over 15 years ago, when people didn’t carry the entire internet in their pocket, and chatting with someone for hours meant sitting at the family computer in the living room. Also there was a 6-hour time difference between us.

It escalated to the point where we were making promises to visit each other someday and I had even told my mum about him, but one day he just vanished. (This wasn’t romantic by the way—he was gay, I was questioning; it truly was ‘just’ being friends). Never found out what happened to the guy and I was heartbroken about it for a while. Needless to say, that fic never got finished.

It was a Brokeback Mountain modern AU by the way.

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

I’ve never written or read any Jane Eyre fic but I’m going to say Jane Eyre/Mr Rochester. I just love them individually and as a couple.

As a fanfic reader, while I do have favourite ships, I’m fairly open-minded, and to me an exceptionally written story trumps a specific pairing any day. For example, I’ve read loads of John/Sherlock fics, but what ended up sticking in my mind years later are the fics that were very original or well written, regardless of the ship—like the one where Mycroft and Anthea are the same mind in two bodies and John ends up dating both, or the fem!Lestrade/Mycroft fic (even though this wasn’t a ship I particularly cared about), or the one where John and Sherlock have to take a seal to a sanctuary (gen). On the other hand, most of the Johnlock fics I've read have blurred together, even if (or maybe because) this was the ship I read more fics about.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

There’s one in which Merlin and Gwaine go on a diplomatic visit to the Druids which has been sitting in my Google docs folder for a while, but first I want to finish another fic, because I’ve already written most of it and it’s been languishing in my drafts for even longer. I think I’ll finish the latter eventually—if only for sunk cost fallacy reasons—but I’m not sure about the Merwaine one (which might be platonic Merlin & Gwaine, by the way—I’ve not really decided).

16. What are your writing strengths?

I’ve been told by some that my characterisation was good, but I suppose that’s quite subjective.

One thing I’m trying to pay more attention to now is the overall narrative structure—I don’t write long fics, but even with shorter works you still need an inciting incident, a climax, and a resolution at the very least. I didn’t use to think about it much, but I’m trying to be more mindful of it. Just…making sure those elements are there, I suppose, and that the pacing doesn’t feel off. Not saying I’m good at it but I like to think it’s made my writing a bit better?

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Basic ass prose lol. I started writing fanfic to post online when I was a teenager with a poor grasp on the English language, and what helped me immensely at the time was keeping in mind my English teacher's advice to “just KISS!!” (“Kiss It Short and Simple”).

I still think about it to this day when I get stuck, and it is very helpful when you just need to get the words out and on the page, but it doesn’t make for beautiful prose.

Sometimes I read other people’s work and marvel at their precise use of vocabulary, their inventive metaphors, their evocative language—then I look at my own writing and it’s like, “They were in a room. She was wearing a red dress. It was dark outside.” You know what I mean? But I do this in my spare time as a hobby so I don’t stress about this too much. I’m not trying to win the next Pulitzer Prize or anything.

That and I’m not good at describing stuff. I don’t like descriptions. “They were in a room”—oh, what did it look like? I don’t know! Use your imagination.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

My thoughts are: do it sparingly, do it only if there is a point to it, and try to get it checked by a native speaker (or at the very least do some basic research to make sure it is correct). I have nothing against it in theory, but it can be off-putting to a reader who happens to speak that language if the dialogue sounds unnatural or is just plain wrong. If we are talking about dead or fictional languages it’s not as important, I guess, but never assume there won’t be a nerd who knows Old English or Sindarin ready to correct you.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Brokeback Mountain. Weirdly enough, it had a very active fandom on livejournal back in the day.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

I don’t remember them all, but for Merlin I’m going to say this ficlet in which Arthur and Gwen have a baby called Ygraine and Merlin is the doting third parent/uncle figure.

It’s actually part of a Merwenthur series but it can be read on its own as Arthur/Gwen + best friend Merlin. I just want them to be happy!!!

Excerpt:

Scattered on the floor around the three of them are a couple of the rag dolls Guinevere enjoys sewing, some of the wooden figurines Merlin enjoys carving, and the wooden sword Ygraine enjoys smacking on people’s heads. She’s going through a phase — which Arthur finds slightly unsettling, even though Guinevere assures him it is normal — in which she seems to delight in the mild suffering of others, and gleefully seizes the opportunity to cause it when it presents itself. The methods employed are varied and impressively effective in their simplicity: pulling hair, twisting noses, biting fingertips, grabbing ears — especially those of people who insist on making themselves an easy target by parading around with a pair that looks so easily grabbable — and other such tricks as can be devised by the devious mind of a baby who can now confidently rely on her grasping skills. (...) Ygraine’s improper handling of a sword is unimportant, since that can be easily fixed with proper training; her fledgling sadistic streak, on the other hand, is slightly more worrying, being something Ygraine cannot have inherited from her mother, and having thus prompted in Arthur a level of self-scrutiny he doesn’t feel entirely comfortable with.

I also quite like An Act of Balance actually (Daemons!AU, Gen, Arthur & Merlin). I don’t think it’s the best thing I’ve written or anything, it was just fun to write.

Excerpt:

“So,” Merlin said, his voice muffled, due to him being half-inside Arthur’s wardrobe. “Gwen told me you’ve been asking questions about my daemon.” Arthur choked on the water he was drinking. “Sire?” Merlin stuck his head out, looking at Arthur in concern. “I’m fine!” Arthur rasped out, thumping his chest with his fist. Merlin grabbed a couple of shirts from the wardrobe. “Red or blue?” he asked, holding up first one and then the other, while Arthur tried to get his coughing under control. “I think blue. More flattering. I would’ve told you if you’d asked.” “That… blue flatters me?” Arthur asked hoarsely, blinking back tears. “About my daemon,” Merlin said, looking at Arthur as if he despaired of his intelligence.

tagging (if you feel like it): @agapantoblu @centurieslove @sexy-sapphic-sorcerer @holocrone @0hheytherebigbadwolf

@thefollow-spot @liviapeleia + anyone who wants to answer these (consider yourself tagged by me 🫵)

[gaysheep]

now my experiences might not be universal but as far as im concerned you asked far fewer questions about video games when you were a kid. the first time you encountered waluigi in mario tennis or mario party or whatever other mario spinoff you encountered him in for the first time because they only put him in spinoffs you didnt say "who's this goofster stomping around like he's a member of the crew?" you said oh ok that's waluigi i guess.

super smash bros melee the crossover fighting game starring all your favorite nintendo characters (well pikachu was second party but thats pikachu everyone knows who pikachu is) had a whole three characters who nobody in north america knew who the fuck they were, two of which were from games that weren't localized at all and one of which was from a game that was enough of a commercial failure in the united states hardly anyone remembered it a little under a decade later. now to be fair ness was in the one on the n64 also but its not like he'd gotten another game. "oh earthbound's failure was overexaggerated" you say that but my brother lived the super nintendo era and not a single one of his gaggle of friends had even heard of earthbound it was not on anyone's radar come on. but no one said "hey these aren't iconic nintendo characters" we all went "well i guess they can be here too" and now we say "you cant main a smash character if you havent played their game" like we werent saying "thats marth i dont know who the fuck he is but hes like a brother to me" in 2001

youd just go into the store and look at a game's boxart and decide you wanted that one and yknow what it usually worked out for you. i did this longer than you'd expect too i was in 7th or 8th grade and thought to myself "yknow i havent really played any console rpgs lately" so i looked up "rpgs for the wii" and i saw a gamefaqs rec thread or some shit where a guy went "well xenoblade is coming out." and i looked up xenoblade and found virtually no information about it other than that it was coming out and thought to myself "yeah xenoblade... that looks like an rpg i could get into." and you know what i did? i preordered it this may very well have been the first game i ever preordered i thought "well they were talking about it on gamefaqs so it must be a big deal i wanna make sure i can play it day 1" but i didnt need to reserve a copy of fucking xenoblade chronicles the store probably could have given me every copy in stock for no profit loss when i walked in there with my gir t shirt and my little receipt because i was one of all three and a half people in north america who played this game counting the gamefaqs guy. and xenoblade chronicles knocked me flat on my ass it was one of the best games i'd ever experienced i'd played plenty of story heavy rpgs before but this one hooked me in a way none of them ever had.

fast forward around 4 years the 4th smash game comes out but this one was different. this was when we really started to go in on the crossover fighters, character slots were now real estate that potential entrants had to earn the right to occupy as if one game ago they didnt make a failed NES peripheral a playable fighter and give it an emotional subplot in subspace emissary. no longer was it "cool i guess this guy is here" it had become "who the hell is this and what do they think they're doing in smash bros?"

and thus came that fateful night when amidst crazy new character reveals like the fucking wii fit trainer they unveil a cinematic trailer and announce that shulk from xenoblade chronicles was joining the fight. to which the unilateral reaction was "who the fuck is shulk why was this trailer framed like we already have a rapport with shulk i dont know this man why does he say stuff like 'im really feeling it?'"

but i knew who shulk was.

[livingmeatloaf]

WIP Wednesday snippet

"washed up nobody worms his way into local governmental leader's heart" was in the lead when i last checked the Out of Context Wip poll.

Taxes fried my brain on Wednesday, so you get it now! What is time anyway!!

The summary refers to "A Serpent Among the Lotus", my double-post-canon crossover with endgame Jiang Cheng/Zhuzhi-Lang. Zhuzhi-Lang is stuck in a form closer to his birth form right now, mostly monstrous.

"I am dangerousss."

"Yeah? So am I. And so is the sect leader. If he's not worried, I'm not." Jiang Cheng shrugged. It had gotten easier to shed the awkwardness of referring to himself like that with each day. Now, Jiang Wanyin sat separate from Sect Leader Jiang, held at a distance if only for the hours they spoke together.

Zhuzhi-Lang considered him, propping his head up on his folded arms. "Tell thiss one about your ssect leader? He musst be different from thosse I've met before."

Jiang Cheng sighed. "What's there to tell? He's loud and short tempered and yells a lot {lists his negative qualities as he sees them or has heard}."

"Jiang-gongzi does not like his sect leader."

"What? That's not true!" Jiang Cheng huffed at Zhuzhi-Lang's disbelieving look. "He's powerful," he said slowly. "He has a very strong core." That little fact comes with a bewildering stab of guilt and grief that he shoves back down. "He looks out for everyone in his sect. He makes sure no kids are running around begging on the street with no home. He does his best to be fair in dealings." He was quickly running out of nice things to say about himself. "Um, he looks fine, I guess? People used to say he was the fifth most handsome bachelor of his generation."

"Only fifth then? What doessss he rank now?"

Jiang Cheng stopped. Lan Huan was still technically a bachelor, secluded though he was. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian were married. He did not dwell on them. Jin Zixuan...

"Second, I guess, of those who were originally ranked."

"Handssome man."

"I guess."

"Oh? Jiang-gongzi preferss women?"

"Maybe?" He scratched his head, then shook it. "Who has time to consider romance or attractiveness or anything? We're still reestablishing our sect."

Zhuzhi-Lang hummed. Songs of insects filled in the long stretch of silence. Jiang Cheng fidgeted.

"Do uh... Do you prefer lady demons or guy demons?" Zhuzhi-Lang looked at him and Jiang Cheng puffed up defensively. "Fair's fair, you asked first!"

"Thiss one hass only found a human man attractive." Zhuzhi-Lang tipped his head, long hair sliding over his arm to pool against his chest in a dark waterfall. "Where does Wanyin-gongzi rank on the list?"

Jiang Cheng choked on the sip of water he had just taken. He sputtered some incoherent response about not ranking at all.

They turned to safer topics, Jiang Cheng complaining about the water ghouls that cropped up around this time of year and how annoying they were to hunt down. It was nice to complain casually. As sect leader, he didn't really have anyone he could talk this candidly with. They compared water ghouls to some demons and similar resentful dead further west.

The notes Jiang Cheng has taken from his conversations with Zhuzhi-Lang far outstrip the few scrolls they have on demons. He sets some of the scholarly disciples who work in the library to organize and transpose his notes into useful scrolls. After all, if one demon has floated down the river, what would stop more from following?

Whatever choice wins the poll will get a snippet post like this! Go vote, or send me an ask with a summary and I'll be happy to talk about any of these! :D

[27twinsister]

If you die enough times you get to meet Kamen Rider Ghost

Fandoms: Sentika F8ABA6 Jisariz & Kamen Rider Ghost (Crossover)

(Also mentions Decade a little tiny bit because Tsukasa and Jisariz are played by the same actor and Decade has different universes and all that.)

A/N: This is the niche crossover I wrote the other night. AO3 is still down so I’m posting it here. I do want to post it on AO3. I might post it under a different title there, I just…titles are hard.

Hurt/Comfort, 668 words, Not Rated

Summary: Takeru is always aware of heroes who died, whether they get revived later or not. But in this case, the person he hears about isn’t a superhero who dies in battle, and he wants to make sure she’s okay.

Content warnings: Characters talk about death, dying, and being killed in canon-compliant ways. Nobody dies in the fic. Casual spoilers for both shows.

Takeru was always aware of heroes who died, Kamen Rider or not. Sometimes the deaths were permanent, other times they were temporary. Either way, Takeru noticed every time they died.

And thanks to Tsukasa, Takeru caught wind of deaths happening in a different world. The world seemed to have reincarnation, so it wasn’t a big deal, but there was one problem: it seemed to be the same person killing the same victim every time. An adult man and a teenage girl.

Takeru got Tsukasa to take him to this world.

In this world, Takeru was surprised to see someone who looked shockingly like Tsukasa about to kill a teenage girl, and he knew he had to intervene.

"Stop," Takeru transformed and stood between the girl and her killer.

"Who are you to stop me?"

"I’m Kamen Rider Ghost!"

Takeru hadn’t fought in a while, so while he wasn’t particularly strong (and was mortal), he was able to stall and let the teenage girl get away.

After the man disappeared, Takeru decided to look for the girl again and ended up finding her sitting on a beach.

Takeru demorphed and approached her.

"Hey. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Yeah…" the girl nodded quietly.

"Uh, what’s your name? I’m Tenkuuji Takeru."

"I’m Ayuka."

"Ayuka…this is going to sound weird, but," Takeru paused. It was always hard to explain this out loud. "So, I’m Kamen Rider Ghost. That means a few years ago, I died. And ended up coming back to life. And then I died again- it’s a long story. But ever since then…"

"How did you die more than once?"

"Well, the first time I died I stayed dead for a few months before managing to revive myself. But even after that there have been times where, say, my heart stopped and I temporarily died- it’s complicated. Anyways, I’m alive now. But I have…more experience than average with being dead. And my friend told me that you…have also been dying a lot too," he said. He wasn’t sure how to word that, but Ayuka didn’t seem offended. "Is that true?"

"Yeah. I’ve been killed a lot," Ayuka said way too casually. "But I’m used to it."

Takeru wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

"Is that bad?" Ayuka asked after a moment.

"Kind of, yeah. Is there anything I can do…maybe stop that guy from killing you?"

"No. I kind of like that he’s the only one that kills me. He protects me from other people so that he can kill me himself. Is that bad?"

Takeru wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Like, yes, that was terrible. But if she was used to it, and even liked it…

"I think it is kinda bad. But I can’t make you change how you feel. Do you need a hug?"

Ayuka nodded, and Takeru gave her a hug.

Usually, when Takeru met other people in this situation, he asked how they died. Usually they were heroes and the answer was dying in battle. But in this situation, knowing Ayuka had been killed multiple times within a short period of time, Takeru didn’t ask. She probably wouldn’t want to talk about it.

"It hurts," Ayuka said. Her voice cracked and she hugged Takeru closer.

"Hm? What does?"

"Every time…usually he stabs me or chokes me. Does it ever hurt less?"

Takeru knew the answer to that question, and he felt a knot in his stomach as he answered.

"I wish it did. But even when I was a ghost, I could still get hurt in battles. I couldn’t die because I was already dead. But I don’t think the ability to feel pain ever really goes away."

(Unless the person was permanently dead, but he didn’t want to say that part out loud.)

Takeru quietly held Ayuka as she cried.

He wished he could do something to help her.

For now, all he could do was stay in this world and protect her.

[asmallermorehonestsoul]

RWBY: Volume 9 Ep. 10- Of Solitude and Self

In which a choice must be made.

26 minutes! Oh boy, that’s a long episode

SUMMER!!! We start again with the flashback of her reading… “I love you, just the way you are, always” awwww

Is this when she disappeared? Oh no…

Awww the Tai and Summer moment was cute… oof…

Summer and Raven?! Oh by… and Summer has some bitterness…

But they were going on the mission together? Honestly I figured that might be the case…

Poor Ruby, no, you don’t have to be someone else! Nobody is perfect!

Jaune! He did ascend? And that “You never were the hero” from the trailer was to him, though it doesn't seem like Alyx meant it harshly

She sent him back?

So they got the Cat out of Neo… eh we will deal w her later I guess, bc now the Cat is even more monstrous, great

Ruby chose to be herself bc that is enough :’)

KICK CC’S ASS RUBY!! HELL YEAH

Oh, oh jeez, the Jabberwalkers could do it too

Yeah… what are we gonna do about Neo…

 Group hug, yay!

What is the deal w the Roman construct, is it just like… better done bc it’s Roman? But no, it’s still not really him…

And now Neo ascended too? Ok we are only like halfway through what is about to happen

Little… I hope they’re ok…

Yeah guys, you did your best! You at least got CC out of the picture, which is probably for the best.

LITTLE!! Or whoever they will be!

HAPPY RUBY!!! Blessed image

Somewhat!! They are somewhat of a lot of things!

Awwww Somewhat remembers their time with Ruby as Little as being happy

WE HAVE TO LEAVE SOMEWHAT AND JUNIPER… AWWW… but at least they are both ok and together! So that’s nice

They went through the door! I don’t know where they are now though… also is Jaune really gonna stay older?

They’re at the Blacksmith’s workshop?

THE BROTHER GODS CAME FROM THE EVER AFTER???

 BROTHERS LORE?? THEY WERE A CUTE LITTLE BABY GOD GOAT AND BABY GOD DEER??

So they were supposed to take care of the Ever After, and CC really was supposed to be a force for good…

THE EVER AFTER SAID THE BROTHERS DID NOT PASS THE VIBECHECK AND ASKED THEM TO LEAVE SFDSDFDSFG

Alyx left a wish behind for Jaune! He’s young again, except with some white streaks! And sorry, you will have to get used to you teenage voice again lol

The door isn’t taking them where, but when they are needed most? Huh…

They made it to Vacuo! But what’s with the ships?

The song for the extended end credits is so pretty, though I will wait to check out the lyrics for the soundtrack drop.

The end credits were an ad for the JL crossover oh come on!

Well that episode did not go how i was expecting. I mean, I think we all expected Ruby to pick herself, and it was a sweet moment, as well as her reion with her team. But we got a hint of Summer Rose lore, and I had suspected Raven might have been there on the last mission... the lore about the brother gods (although i guess not really gods) was neat. They’re from Ever After and their constant struggle is messing up the balance, because it requires acceptance. To be honest, I wish we have focused more on Ruby, though, but again it was cool. And what an ending! They made it to Vacuo, though what will happen next, I don’t know...

[figofswords]

ok in light of recent hxh news today i would like to discuss the sheer comedic potential of a batman crossover. i think damian would make it his life’s mission to murder killua. killua just wants snacks. batman thinks he can adopt gon and killua and rehab them into Not Killing People like he did with cassandra and damian but it’s not working. 

bruce: you ran away from your horrible assassin family because you didn’t want to be an assassin? because...killing is wrong?

killua: no i just wanted to do my own thing or whatever. hey can i have more of your butler’s cookies

everyone’s convinced gon must also have some secret fucked up backstory like killua but then they find out no, he’s just Like That. ra’s al ghul wants to recruit these kids into the league. he is unsuccessful. the court of owls wants to take them and turn them into talons, but the talons sent to retrieve them just run back with their tails between their legs. the joker tries to mess with them but trips gon’s hisoka alarms and gon punches him in the face so hard that he crawls into hiding and doesn’t show up again for a year. everyone’s convinced there must be some sort of secret plot here—what is the zoldyck heir doing in gotham? where did these kids get their abilities? who are they working for?—but no. they’re here to do tourism with alluka. eventually they just sort of...show up in the batcave.  no one knows how they got in there. they’ve decided to temporarily accept batman’s adoption offer because illumi rolled into town and they really don’t want to have to deal with him.

bruce: so....you’re asking for my protection

killua: i could handle it myself but we’re on vacation

alluka: yeah we’re on vacation!

killua: no illumis allowed on vacation that’s the rules

bruce: you’re an assassin. and you want my protection

gon: he’s reformed!

killua: i’m reformed while we’re on vacation :33 but actually it’s alluka who needs protection and she’s never done anything wrong in her life

gon: except for those people she killed!

killua: except for those people she killed

bruce: 

killua: anyway do you have any snacks

eventually bruce just gives up because he can’t figure out how to make them leave and they’re, like, twelve so he can’t exactly throw them in arkham or blackgate but he also can’t put them in juvie either because they’ll break out plus illumi is pretty fucked up, actually, so he’s happy to take him out. hisoka shows up and jumpscares jason so bad that jason shoots him dead on the spot. damian gets over his murderplots for killua when killua teaches him nen and now the three of them are besties. everyone loves gon. nobody understands gon, but everyone loves him. jason LOVES him for punching the joker like that and on the spot decides that this is his new kid brother, his only brother, fuck you guys this kid is GREAT. alluka gets soooooo many souvenirs. eventually bruce figures out how to contact mito and he calls her like 

bruce: mito freeccs.

mito: hello?

bruce: this is batman. did you know your kid won’t leave my house.

mito: oh i’m so glad gon is seeing the world and finding himself <3<3<3 isn’t he such a great kid?????

bruce:

[distant sounds of gon and killua teaching damian how to break solid rock with his fists using the walls of the batcave as a demonstration]

bruce: .....yes. he’s. he’s great

[duskandstarlight]

Embers & Light (Chapter 39, NSFW Nessian)

Notes: Well, over a year you've had to wait for these two to seal the deal... BUT NO LONGER. And because I'm thankful to you all for sticking with this story, I've granted you with over 16k of sinful naughtiness. I think it's safe to say this is NSFW but you guys have read my smut before, you know the drill.

Embers & Light has always very much been the alternative story to Habits, but I couldn’t help but write in some crossover moments here to highlight the differences in events--timeline is a fascinating thing! Lemme know if you spot the moments :)

Please let me know what you think :) Comment and kudos will make my day!

I won't be able to write much of August (wedding & mini-moon) but I'll be doing my best to get you guys something as soon as possible. Hopefully by the end of the month, anyways <3

Oh! And I got a bookstagram. Find me at bookships.and.fandoms (and bear with me, I cba to take pretty pics atm)

Chapter 39 Cassian POV

Cassian stared at the doorway and the staircase beyond it, his gaze fixed and unwavering. Nesta had slipped out of the living room to follow Feyre up the stairs over ten minutes ago and he was already consumed with the biting sort of worry that gnawed at your insides.

He wasn’t concerned about what Nesta might be discussing with Feyre—that was her business—but because he couldn’t help but fret when it came to Nesta’s wellbeing.

It was a myriad of concerns that trampled through his mind like a herd of cattle. Had she slept enough? Had she recovered from being caught in the crowds the day before? Was her conversation with Feyre going to have her take three steps back rather than one forward? Cassian had spied the book of fairytales she’d slipped into her bag. Had guessed what she’d intended to do with it.

And then there was the fact that Nesta had left the bed before he’d woken again. Cassian couldn’t help but feel disappointed that she’d not been there when he’d opened his eyes, especially after the night before.

But that was how it was with he and Nesta. When the sun dipped below the horizon, Cassian often felt as if they were on the right path; as if once the world shut its eyes, the pressure was off and their play could continue. But as soon as light bled back into the sky, things weren’t the same. They weren’t cold… but Cassian felt suspended in a limbo of flirtatious banter and respectful distance. Which was hard, when all Cassian wanted to do was be as close to her as possible: to hold her hand and wind a hand through her hair. To kiss her brow and mouth and sink his teeth into her neck—

Cassian’s jaw tightened. He wanted to do wicked things. He wanted to make her moan and shatter. Wanted to know how she felt wrapped around him. Wanted to see if she’d gasp awake as he pushed inside of her.

Their trip home was going to be a turning point. Or at the very least it would be a milestone—a hammered notch as they progressed towards something. Yet, Cassian wasn’t naive: he wasn’t expecting Nesta to fall into his arms and never leave. But he hoped that it might make Nesta see their connection—not the tie between them, but the chemistry that Cassian knew would forever exist even if the mating bond was severed.

From the very first moment his gaze had settled on the haughty, vicious sister Cassian had known. Had nearly been brought to his knees—the heart-stopping moment so powerful, it suspended time as he felt something turn inside of him, as if something that had lain dormant had finally snapped open an eye.

And because of that Cassian would willingly allow Nesta to forge the reigns when it came to whatever it was between them. He could go slow. He would take the chance that Nesta might grow to accept him, even as he was seized by the terror that she might grow bored and draw a line under things before he had the chance to prove that he was worthy.

Cassian took a deep, steadying breath that made his ribcage heave. Thought of the lullaby that sat in his room at the House. Used that to ground himself and banish the painful thoughts.

Nesta had cared enough to gift him a piece of his past that nobody else had ever gone to the effort to find for him. And that was… everything. It was everything to him.

“I can hear the worry grinding gears in your brain.”

Rhys was standing where Mor had been a few moments earlier, his hands tucked into the pockets of his trousers, his eyebrows raised. Cassian hadn’t noticed Mor slip away. Couldn’t even recall what she'd been saying to him. Had he ignored her? He didn’t know. Didn’t really care. They all knew he was head over heels when it came to Nesta anyway.

Cassian blinked. It took him a moment to process Rhys’s words, but his body finally caught up. An instinctive grin tugged at the corners of his mouth and he commanded his eyes to sparkle, even though it was all fake. “I was under the impression you didn’t think I had one.”

Rhys didn’t chuckle or retort with something dry. Sometimes his brother allowed him to indulge in his self-deprecating behaviour, but it didn’t seem like today was one of those days. Instead, he cut to the chase. “They’re fine.”

Cassian bristled. Didn’t bother to pretend his mind wasn't solely on what was happening upstairs. “Feyre’s speaking with you now?”

Nesta would hate that. Would know if her sister was communicating to her mate whilst they were talking.

His brother’s laugh was as smooth as velvet. “No, she locked me out. It’s a habit she’s started recently and it’s usually coupled with the mental finger.”

This time, Cassian’s smile was genuine, as was the chuckle that chased it. “Feisty.”

“You have no idea,” Rhys responded with a wink.

Mor, who had breezed back to Cassian’s side with a new cup of coffee, rolled her eyes. “We do actually, you two are like rabbits.”

“We’re mated,” Rhys replied with a wave of his hand. “It’s to be expected.”

Mor lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Cauldron, I need to bed someone rather than hearing about my cousin’s exploits with my best friend.”

“Head to Rita’s and find yourself a pretty fae,” Cassian drawled, tugging Mor into a one armed hug.

“Mmm,” Mor hummed, but she chewed on her lip again. Glanced nervously at Azriel, who was in deep conversation with Elain. His shadows were tucked in neatly to his frame rather than trailing, ever-moving and loose around his body, but Cassian knew he could hear them.

Cassian dropped a friendly kiss to Mor’s head before he let her go. Tussled her hair, grinning mischievously when she squawked in disapproval.

As if sensing that his cousin wanted a change of subject, Rhys looked square at Cassian. “Azriel will come over later to update you on the latest movements.”

Cassian sobered as if someone had poured icy water down his back. “Not later,” Cassian corrected firmly.

Tomorrow. No the day after that. Cassian couldn’t guarantee that he’d be able to stop once he’d had his first proper taste of Nesta.

But of course they couldn’t do that—wouldn’t. The situation in Illyria was too dire for them to be so selfish as to lock themselves away for days.

It didn’t mean Cassian didn’t want to, though.

“You’ve got plans?” Rhys asked lightly and Mor froze.

You’ve got no idea, Cassian thought. But then realised his brother knew. Of course he did. Surely everyone in this room knew how desperate he was to get back to Illyria. To have Nesta in his bed again, writhing and moaning, their bodies slick with sweat as they moved in unison.

Clenching his jaw, Cassian grounded that desire between his teeth, until it was nothing but broken, delicious shards that scraped down his throat. His blood coiled. “Yes. Maybe.”

If she doesn’t change her mind.

“It has to be tomorrow, Cass.”

Biting back a sigh, Cassian nodded. “I know. Come at noon. I suppose I’ll be camped out in Illyria for the foreseeable future.” He cast a stern look at Mor. “Send me letters.”

“You have a housemate,” Rhys reminded him. “You’re not going to be entirely alone.”

Mor grinned slyly. “A very beautiful housemate.”

Cassian was more than aware of that.

He grunted and unable to stop himself, he voiced the fear that always niggled away at the back of his mind. “For now.”

But Rhys just loosed another manicured shrug, that was at odds with the ground-breaking revelation that followed it. “For a long while. Nesta has expressed her desire to remain in Illyria long-term despite the discontent. Assuming you don’t mind sharing your bungalow.”

It felt as if an iron band of hope was clamped around Cassian’s chest. He stared at his brother. Tried not to blink. Crossed his arms firmly over his chest, protecting his heart. “And you know this how?”

“Nesta spoke with me. We have arrived at a truce, of sorts.”

That must have been what they’d spoken about yesterday on the balcony. He wanted to know more—everything—but Cassian would not press Rhys. If Nesta wanted to tell him, she would. He had to respect that.

So, he bit back his curiosity and grumbled, “About time.”

Rhys clapped his hand on Cassian’s back, but there was something wary in his expression, as if there was something he wanted to say but wouldn’t. Finally, he said, “Patience is a virtue, brother.”

“I’m not the patient sort.”

“You are when it counts,” Rhys countered, and Cassian didn’t say anything because they both knew what he was referring to. Rhys had been the first to know. Had witnessed Cassian in a tangled web of despair and longing and unwanted visions. His brother had immediately put two and two together. Because he’d been there, too. Knew what it was to want someone you thought you couldn’t have. To hope that someone might finally grow to see you in colour rather than in black and white.

Cassian cast another look towards the empty doorway and the quiet hallway beyond it.

A shiver of anticipation ran through him. It was time for them to go home.

***

In the end, Cassian folded to his worry and had Elain fetch Nesta from upstairs. It was time to go, he’d insisted, even though there was no true reason as to why they needed to leave quite so quickly.

“No guesses required to identify why you want to head back to Illyria,” Mor muttered out the side of her mouth, as the creak of the stairs a few flights above heralded the sisters return. Cassian jabbed his elbow into his friend’s ribs and Mor yelped through her grin, even as she had to sidestep, the nudge throwing her off balance. “What? It’s all over your face. You think I can’t read you after five hundred years?”

“Don’t announce it to the room,” Cassian muttered darkly under his breath, “and you won’t find yourself torn to pieces.”

Mor briefly bumped against his arm, the jostle affectionate. Unfazed by his threat, she glanced sideways at him with rich chocolate eyes. “I won’t. We just want you to be happy, you know.”

Cassian’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “Now isn’t the time for a lecture about finding a more suitable mate.”

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. He hadn’t meant for it to happen, hadn’t meant to voice what he’d kept inside for so long.

Mor’s eyes widened, but she wound her arms around his waist. Cassian allowed her to tuck herself under his arm. His friend scented of citrus and cinnamon. When she craned her neck to look up at him, her expression was glowing with sincerity and Cassian realised that she hadn’t been insinuating that Nesta wasn’t right for him at all. “We’re all cheering you on from the sidelines, Cass, I promise.”

The muscle in Cassian’s jaw flexed. He looked away from her, towards the doorway again, unable to help himself. “Don’t say anything.”

She tightened her grip on his waist. “I won’t. I promise.”

“She doesn’t want it.”

Mor untangled herself from him. Shook her head in disagreement. “She does. She just isn’t ready to admit it yet.”

They both fell quiet as Nesta walked through the door with Elain and Feyre. The first thing Cassian noticed was that she scented of water and salt—tears.

Heart pattering with concern, Cassian quickly scanned Nesta’s expression and body language, searching for clues. But Nesta remained close to her sisters rather than apart, her fingers snagged in Feyre’s, her expression not in tatters but smooth and calm, like still waters.

“Ready to go?” Mor chirped from beside him. “I can winnow you back when Sala arrives.”

Nesta’s grey-blue eyes slid to Mor. “I called her on my way down.”

“Then you have time to see the snowdrops you gave me before you leave,” Elain responded eagerly, tugging at Nesta’s arm. “The cuttings took well to the soil. I planted them beneath the shade of the birch trees near the river.”

Cassian watched Nesta disappear into the garden. Surveyed the way a strand of golden brown hair that had escaped her loose braid floated on the breeze, as if it was part of the element rather than separate, as Elain bent to show her the snowdrops.

Yet despite the clear ease to Nesta’s movements, Cassian couldn’t help but ask Feyre whether everything was okay when she came over to hug him goodbye.

“We’re fine,” Feyre assured him, as together they watched Mor tentatively sit beside Azriel on the couch. For once the Shadowsinger’s shadows didn’t lighten, but Azriel still turned to her, drawn by some magnetism as she began to speak with him.

Slim fingers closed around his. Squeezed. “Thank you for fetching the book of fairytales for Nesta.”

The strand of ebony hair that had wrangled free of Cassian’s hair tie tickled the side of his forehead as he inclined his head. That had been a long time ago, when Nesta was a viper that he dared to poke with a stick, just so he could get a reaction. “Of course.”

“You travelled all that way on barely healed wings just to fetch a book.”

It wasn’t just a book, but Cassian knew Feyre understood that, so he only grunted, “Az took me most of the way. He waited to winnow me back.”

But Feyre’s eyes were burnished, as she asked, “Is there anything you won’t do for my sister?”

“It depends,” Cassian replied honestly. Because although he’d rather die than see Nesta hurt, Cassian wouldn’t hesitate to stand up to her when her fire was ill-wrought. And that’s what he liked about the both of them: if he was an ass Nesta told him straight, and he did the same for her. A grin slashed across his face. “Your sister has claws and teeth when she’s angry.”

It wasn’t long before Sala landed on her four large paws in the garden, prompting goodbyes. Mor winnowed Nesta and Sala, whilst Az’s scarred hand closed around Cassian’s arm.

Together, Cassian and his brother passed through realms of shadows and light and raging wings. Then Illyria was taking shape before Cassian bit by bit: there was the sting of winter on his cheeks, the crunch of snow beneath his feet, the scent of pine and untamed air. It felt like that wonderful first heave of your lungs after being starved from air. It alerted Cassian senses—woke him up.

Not bothering to say goodbye for the second time, Azriel bled straight back into shadow, but Mor raised a hand in a parting wave from where she stood beside Nesta and Sala. Her long golden hair caught on the breeze. It tussled behind her like its own puff of wind, before she vanished into nothing.

When Cassian’s eyes snapped to Nesta, he found her standing with her eyes closed, breathing in the wilderness of their surroundings. After a few beats, Sala jumped onto her hind legs, climbing up Nesta’s body with her snow-crusted paws to knock her head impatiently against Nesta’s.

A breath of laughter clouded in front of her as Nesta ruffled Sala’s ears. She murmured something Cassian couldn't identify in the manticore’s ear, before Sala dropped onto all fours and padded through the snow in the direction of the main camp.

Cassian watched the manticore go. He suspected Sala was going to seek out the widows camp and check everything was in order. It was the kind of thing Nesta would fret about—that whilst she was warm and fed, others might not be extended the same courtesy.

Or, the dark part of his mind whispered, she wants Sala out of the house.

You can fuck me wherever you like in the bungalow, Cassian.

The many needles of thrill pierced through him just as Nesta met his stare from across the snow. Suddenly, Cassian didn’t know what to say. His tongue felt swollen and thick in his mouth, words suddenly as viscous as tar. The atmosphere had altered—the aura surrounding them despite the distance suddenly heavy with promise: a change that pointed to something new.

The siphons on the back of Cassian’s hands glowed in anticipation. Nesta merely raised an eyebrow at him. Turned. Walked towards the house just as he caught the thick scent of jasmine and vanilla on the wind.

Cassian’s nostrils flared as it wound around him; invisible ropes of arousal. And then he was moving, following Nesta’s footprints.

His friends had winnowed them to the back of the house, halfway between the small stone outhouse and the backdoor. They weren’t far from the bungalow, but it felt like miles as Cassian stomped noisily after Nesta, his boots compacting the snow as if they were grinding shards of glass into powder.

When Cassian drew up behind Nesta, she already had a hand half-raised towards the door. Even though he wasn’t touching her, she was a whirlpool of warmth. It sucked him in, begging him to line his torso against her back, so when she cursed, realising she hadn’t taken her gloves off, Cassian didn’t hesitate to reach over her shoulder and rest his palm against the wood, encasing her.

The touch of his bare skin—or Nesta’s—was the key to the magical lock. A thunk sounded as the bolt released but Cassian didn’t push open the door—was too preoccupied with the female before him—who had twisted to stare up at him.

As soon as their gazes snagged, history began to knit together in a rush of thread, until it was a tangible, living thing. Because this moment had been written in the stars as soon as Cassian had seen Nesta in her amethyst dress in the human realm; her hair wielded into a mighty crown, her expression haughty and defiant, yet burning with the potential of a life not yet lived. They’d denied that history, even as it waited patiently in the wings. It had watched as they danced around each other, fumbling and snarling their way to this very moment—

They moved in unison. Cassian’s head bowing just as Nesta reached upwards; her body bowing to his, her palms sliding across his jaw until they were around his neck. Their lips met with a force that rattled Cassian’s bones. This wasn't a brush of a kiss. This was immediate and awakening: Nesta tasted like life and breath, like destiny. And yet again, Cassian knew with startling clarity that they were meant for this, he and Nesta. They were meant for each other and nobody could tell him otherwise, including her.

A soft breath whooshed out of Nesta as her back hit the door, but then Cassian was pushing it open, guiding her inside in a whirlwind of noise and wreckage.

The scrape of wood on the flagstone tiles sounded as Nesta’s back knocked against the table before Cassian turned them, his wings grazing against cupboards and the cool walls. Items clattered and shattered, but Cassian used his wings to keep a check on his surroundings, the touch guiding him to the left-hand wall where he could press her against the wall and devour.

Because Cassian could not tear his mouth from Nesta’s. Couldn’t stop tasting her. Couldn’t stop craving the roll of her tongue and the sound of her guttural moans. It fuelled a fireball inside of him; it roared into life in the centre of his heart, before spreading throughout his limbs, rushing through his body until it settled deep in his groin, aching and burning—screaming for relief.

When they finally hit the wall, the thud of their bodies shook the cabinets and the porcelain within it. Without thinking, Cassian took the brunt of it, his hand flying to cup Nesta's lower back and head to purposefully shield her from the hurt.

Because he was coarse and rippling, galloping towards a primal sort of wilderness that Cassian wasn’t sure he could control.

If Nesta was ignorant to the fact or wholly aware Cassian didn’t know. All he knew was that her hands were scrabbling at his leather like dancing flames, tugging him closer.

When he pressed his body over hers, aligning every inch of her to every inch of him, she whined.

Cassian swallowed it. Slanted his mouth across hers. Tucked his wings in tight as every muscle in him tensed in anticipation.

Nesta tasted of chai and vanilla and embers with a destiny to roar.

Another strangled noise came from her throat as Cassian sank his hands deep into the hair at her scalp, coaxing strands free from her braid as his fingers threading through her hair, just as he had done the night prior when he’d coaxed her to sleep. But this wasn’t a soothing touch. This was a touch to startle every nerve ending to life.

Time began to bleed around them, but Cassian only registered the fluidity of the frantic dance they had not learnt. The way Nesta arched into him as his palm slid back to span her waist. The pant of her breath against his skin. His heaving chest. The way his wings began to spread again of their own volition, like a fan unfolding to reveal a secret pattern—as if they were controlled by nothing but the ache of his cock as it strained against the leather of his pants.

As if in acknowledgement that his body was no longer ruled by him, his hips slanted upwards of their own accord. It was a desperate bid to relieve the ache, and his throat vibrated with a thunderous growl as Nesta dug her nails deeper into the leather of his jacket, using it for leverage as she arched into him.

Something turned further inside of Cassian, like a lock beginning to grind as a key turned. And then it felt as if he were plunging beneath water; ducking into the depths and travelling beneath an invisible barrier before emerging on the other side buoyant and surging with power.

Ruby crashed through his veins, like the walls of a dam broken free and… singing light. Magic roared so loudly in Cassian’s ears that he no longer heard the galloping beat of his heart or the sawing of their breath.

Reeling, he tore his mouth from Nesta’s. Her eyes were just as wide, puddles of startled moonlight—endless mercury—and Cassian didn’t need to look down to know that her hands were wreathed in silver.

For a moment they stared at one another. Time slowed until it was sluggish around them and then the feeling receded, as if Cassian was being carried by a wave as it was dragged unwillingly from the shore on thundering feet.

Sound bled back into Cassian’s ears, like raindrops slowly blotting paper. A moan whispered on a wind carried through him, the words fleeting—her name three times, like always—before they dispersed into nothing and ragged breathing filled the hole.

Fuck, they needed to be careful. He needed to be careful if just kissing her led to some transcendental experience. Cassian knew Nesta became open during sex—had seen tumbled images of tangled limbs and heard her moans—and he couldn’t afford to lose her when she had finally let him in. Couldn’t let her down, even though he wanted nothing more than to finally be found worthy by someone.

That twisted rope between them couldn’t widen and strengthen. Couldn’t finally open and click into place with a consensual snap.

Because Cassian had heard stories of mates who had gone to bed. Who had fleetingly accepted what they wanted in their hearts but not in their minds. And after they had both finished and life had been breathed into that bond, only death could sever their Cauldron-blessed connection.

Cassian would not have a mate with regrets, but he didn’t have the will-power to deny himself of her any longer. Not when he could scent how much Nests wanted him. When he could feel it like an unquenchable ache in his bones—an ache which made him tremble and shake. His rocky warrior exterior ground to nothing but sand.

As if Nesta could read his thoughts she tipped her head back, baring the column of her neck.

A resounding guttural sound dragged from his throat. The noise was animalistic and unchained. A booming crack ricocheted around the walls, the muscles in Cassian’s back burning as his wings snapped outward.

Something toppled from somewhere and crashed to the floor, but Cassian didn’t bother to raise his head to look at what it was.

And then time seemed to both slow and drive into a frenzy. Cassian launched at Nesta’s neck at the same time he tugged at her hair, urging her head to fall back even farther.

His lips were against the column of her throat in the blink of an eye; his teeth scraping, his mouth sucking until her blood pounded in his ears. Nesta’s knees buckled but Cassian quickly pinned her body to the wall, holding her up, his knee sliding firmly between her legs…

And… nothing. There was no panic or sensation of being trapped—no sudden fire launching him back thirty feet—but Cassian still tore his mouth from Nesta’s neck. Had to know she wasn’t panicking. “Ok?” he rasped.

A frown burrowed Nesta’s brows. Her swollen lips parted in confusion. Somehow it made her look more beautiful.

Cassian raised a shaking hand to trace it away. “Nesta. Are you ok?”

Understanding dawned like millions of unfurling petals.

When Nesta spoke she was short of breath, the words an exhale. “Don’t hold back.”

Cassian practically arched into her at the words but he made himself remain still, even as his body vibrated with tension. His bones creaked but he held fast.

That stubborn, beautiful chin lifted and Nesta’s eyes glinted wicked yet pure. Always an oxymoron, his Nesta.

“Don’t hold back,” she repeated, her voice stronger this time. She pushed her hips against his thigh and the friction had her lips parting, a shaky breath tumbling from her lungs. “I can take it.”

The words were like slashing knives of pleasure, severing the leash on any control Cassian thought he had.

The subsequent rush of air Cassian loosed was akin to a snorting horse.

Then he was moving and their mouths were fused together again, their tongues a delicious push and pull of control and pleasure before he yanked away.

“Thank fuck,” he gasped. His hands flew to her hips, guiding her to ride his thigh. “Thank fuck, Nesta.”

The friction had Nesta moaning, her fingernails digging so hard into the leather of his jacket Cassian was sure she had dented the material. But he didn’t care. Didn’t care about anything but the living fervour that clawed at them.

His hands were everywhere at once. Tangled in her hair. Sliding over her cheek. Cupping her ass. Attacking the buttons at the back of her dress, until they popped and scattered. Until he could pull the material down her arms, exposing tantalising creamy skin.

At the first sight of her breasts, Cassian growled. He bowed his head to capture a nipple sharply between his teeth before he laved over it with his tongue, smoothing over the wound. He relished the way Nesta cried out. Arched into him. She began to tear at his jacket. It snagged on his wings but Cassian shrugged it off until it hit the floor with a thud.

The first slide of Nesta’s palms beneath his tunic was like oil sizzling in a pan. Cassian hissed as the callouses of her palms scraped deliciously over his skin and scars and ink. Snarled as she made quick work of the stays and fastenings. Tried to focus on her other breast as she inched her hand beneath the tight leather fabric and eased him free.

Fingers wrapped sinfully around him, causing Cassian to snarl around a peaked nipple—to buck sharply—pressing them more firmly against the wall.

“Don’t bother,” Nesta moaned as Cassian wrenched desperately at the fabric of her dress, trying to coax it further down her body. She ground down onto his thigh as it to emphasise her point—her need—and the heat of her burned.

It was all Cassian needed to hear. He fumbled desperately with her skirts until a hand was under the material and sliding up her thigh. Until fabric ripped and her underwear fell away in what Cassian imagined to be a ripple of lace.

In one swift movement, Cassian lifted Nesta’s body upwards, until her legs were gripped tightly around his hips and her back was flush against the wall. Her hands flew to find purchase, grappling at the back of his neck, and when she was steady she raked her hand purposefully through the hair which had come loose from his tie. Tugged at the leather until his hair fell over his face. Whined. Tangled her fingers through the ebony strands as if they were her reigns.

Cassian splayed the hand that wasn’t supporting her body against the cold wall. Tried to catch his breath, but the position evened out the height between them. Just a slight movement would allow him to capture her lips with his, and Cassian couldn’t deny that demanding tug that drove him to devour. Nesta seemed to feel the same way. Moaned in relief as Cassian tasted her as if he couldn’t get enough, gave back as good as she got. Over and over they moved, until they were nothing but an undulating wave of tongue and teeth and groans. The pleasure was a surging, roiling entity. It was all consuming. It overtook Cassian’s body, demanding that his hand drag from her ass straight to her core.

When his fingers slid through wetness, Cassian’s groan sounded like thunderous defeat. He dropped his head to Nesta’s collarbone. Gently pressed his lips to her clavicle. To her shoulder. Tried to ground himself as he slid straight to the spot that made her keen—as pleasure ignited down the bond like a crashing wave. Brushed over it again and again and again. Relishing in the noises he coaxed from her. At the curling fists of desire that clenched agonisingly inside of him.

Cassian had to see Nesta fall. Had to look into her eyes as she broke.

But he wanted to be inside of her when it happened.

Cassian was reaching for his cock at the same time that Nesta let out a broken moan. “Do it,” she breathed. There was no bite of authority in her voice, as if all of the energy she had directed in the pursuit of pleasure had smoothed over the serrated edge of her personality he loved so much, leaving a softer version in its wake. “Please. Just—”

A satisfied snarl ripped from Cassian as he felt her want. And in that moment, Cassian knew there would be nothing gentle about how this was going to play out. It was going to be rough and frantic, riding a wave of pleasure that had been building for too long. Knew afterwards that they would sink to the cold floor in a mass of tangled limbs and mingled breath.

And Cassian wanted that. Had never wanted release so badly in his life.

Something clambered in the back of his mind. Something he needed to remember, but his limbs were moving of their own volition. He didn’t even bother to pump his cock or squeeze it to relieve the tension. Only cared about finally being inside of her.

The heat and slickness of her was sinful and divine when he lined himself up at her entrance. The hand he had braced against the wall came to span her cheek. It relied on Nesta clamping on tightly to his waist with her legs and the press of his torso against hers, but they managed it.

Shaking, Cassian raked back the hair that had fallen free from her braid back from Nesta’s face, just as she tugged him in for a bruising kiss.

There was a moment when everything paused and trembled. As Nesta pulled away and stared at him, her eyes swimming silver—glowing with it—her pupils obscured.

His magic surged at the sight of it. Crashed against his skin as if it was trying to escape. His siphons burned bloody.

“Cassian,” Nesta panted. Despite the keen desperation, there was cushion to his name. Gently, Nesta bowed her head until her forehead rested against his. The gesture was surprisingly tender. It tugged at his heartstrings, triggered his hips into movement as they finally pushed forward.

The tight heat that wrapped around him like velvet was so immediate that Cassian swore. Sweat trickled down his back and seeped into the tunic Nesta hadn’t gotten round to discarding. He trembled as Nesta’s breath stuttered and he felt the burning pain mixed with pleasure as he sunk in an inch. Felt the stretch of Nesta’s body as it strained to fit around him.

Claws dug into his back—Nesta’s nails—biting into his skin, until the metallic tang of blood infused the air.

Cassian’s body stilled before he even had a second to register that he needed to stop. That instinct buried deep to make sure she never hurt.

And then a knock rapped at the front door.

“No,” Nesta moaned. She shifted her hips and Cassian sank a little deeper. That pain flared again through the pleasure and Cassian grip on her turned vice like.

Sense stumbled into his desire addled brain, like a fawn on gangly legs.

But then it righted itself.

Another sharp rap at the door cleared his head completely.

He bowed to bury his face in the crook of her neck but Nesta whined. Tilted her hips again, urging him deeper. “Nesta, stop.”

“No.” Her whimper was doused in frustration, but all Cassian could feel was that sharp needle of pain.

He tried to pull back, but Nesta clamped down around him with that incredible strength of hers. The strength that only seemed to appear at times of desperation or anger.

Cassian’s jaw flexed, his features hardening. “I’m hurting you.”

“You’re not,” Nesta countered, defiance colouring her expression.

“I am,” Cassian retorted, not allowing for a passing beat of their hearts to pass before he replied. “I’m hurting you. Don’t pretend that I’m not.”

I can feel it, Cassian wanted to explain, but didn’t. Knew somehow that if he did they might not end up joining at all.

Desire fogged Nesta’s mind and it fuelled the punch to her next words. “I don’t care.”

Ire punched through Cassian’s desire enough for him to see red. “Well, I do,” he snapped.

Nesta’s nostrils flared at his tone and her eyes burned silver. Cassian wondered how everything had gone southward so quickly—they were on a sinking ship and he needed to patch it up. Knew she felt rejected. So, he kissed her and pushed back that unquenchable ache he felt for her. Knew it hit home because she gasped softly into his mouth, her surprise tart on his tongue.

He pulled out. As soon as his cock fell free that pain throbbed and ebbed. But Nesta moaned all the same.

Moaned again as he drew his head back to stare at her.

She surprised him when her eyes remained open rather than closed off. There was no hard shield. Nothing but want and a vulnerability that made his heart squeeze.

It gave him the courage to do the right thing.

He kissed her again. Trailed a thumb across her swollen lips, ignoring the desire that roared as Nesta sucked it into her mouth, her tongue darting across the top before the bit down lightly.

“This is how things are going to go,” Cassian murmured lowly, pulling his thumb out of her mouth and across her jawline, trailing the wetness all the way to the sensitive spot behind her ear. Nesta shuddered.

“I’m going to get the door and send whoever it is away,” Cassian continued. He paused to let the words sink in. Lowered his head to trace a path with his nose, up the slope of her shoulder, all the way up her neck until his lips were grazing the shell of her ear. “You will go to your bedroom. When they’re gone, I’ll find you.”

Another shiver coursed through Nesta’s body. Her fingers tightened around his neck.

When Nesta next spoke, Cassian knew he’d piqued her interest. “What then?” she demanded.

“Then I’m going to make you come until you see stars.”

Nesta’s entire body froze. For a long moment, she didn’t so much as breathe, but Cassian felt the throb of her blood and magic as it pounded against her skin.

Then, Nesta’s hands worked between them, until her small palms were splayed across his chest. She pushed firmly, indicating that she wanted to get her down. Her body slithered to the floor, her lean legs falling away from his body.

The sudden distance between them felt like miles.

Nesta lifted her chin. “Hurry or I’ll start without you.”

A breath heaved at Cassian’s lungs and he felt his pupils contract, pushing out his irises until they were swallowed by black. The image of Nesta sprawled on the bed wearing nothing but skin, her legs open, a hand moving between her legs had that coil within him tightening to the point of pain.

A growl spiked through the air as another knock sounded at the door.

Nesta must have known she’d wrangled back control, because she arched a cool eyebrow at him.  “I thought you were going to answer the door?”

A dark chuckle forced its way out of his chest, but it was mechanical rather than true. Because there was nothing funny about resisting Nesta right now and his body seemed to know that.

Cassian reached for her before he knew what was happening. Rested his forehead against hers. Breathed once. Twice. “I need to calm down,” he confessed.

Nesta snickered, but the sound fell flat as her breath hitched upwards at the end. It betrayed the effect he had on her, even as she said silkily, “Did the image of me pleasuring myself get you hard?”

“I was already hard,” he growled. He pressed a lingering kiss to her mouth. “As you well know.”

A hand reached between them. Stroked over him—the touch feather light but tantalising enough that Cassian bucked into her touch.

And then cunning words, “Maybe I’ll let you watch.”

A string of swear words left Cassian’s mouth. He yanked back from Nesta, as if someone had tugged firmly on a leash. Tugged up his pants and jerked ruthlessly at the ties until they fastened, trapping his cock back into the leather.

With a growl, Cassian waved a hand towards the living room—to Nesta’s room to the right of it. “Leave before I fuck you against the wall, Nesta,” he barked.

Nesta’s sly laugh skittered over his skin, and without pulling her dress back up to cover herself, Nesta sashayed through the nearest arch and disappeared.

*** It had been Mas and Roksana at the door, laden with bags full of groceries and supplies from the market. With full access to the house, there was no reason why they shouldn’t have just come right in. Which meant Mas had suspected somehow, enough so that she had left the bags on the front step and remained standing with Roksana a few feet back.

“I am sorry Sinta, but the meat might spoil,” the housekeeper had apologised as soon as he’d opened the door, his hair a tangled mess from where Nesta had yanked it free of its tie. He hadn’t had the sense to recover it from the floor, but he had righted his tunic and fastened his pants.

And thank the Cauldron for that, because Roksana peeked up at Cassian with wide eyes from her position of safety behind Mas’s legs. He didn’t know when Lorrian had brought the youngling back to the camp, but Cassian guessed it hadn’t been easy on the two of them to take a little girl out of the warmth and back into the snow.

Cassian tried to soften the eyes that he knew were a little wild. He raked his hands through his hair and sent them his most disarming smile, but there was fuck all he could do about his scent. So he thanked her, trying to keep his voice light and conversational. Ordered her to take the rest of the day off.

To the housekeeper’s credit, she did not linger. Had merely nodded and rushed Roksana back into the snow, towards the main vein of the camp.

Yet, whilst the housekeeper’s interruption had been unwanted, it did grant Cassian some breathing space as he rammed perishables into the cool box. Because even though Cassian would allow Nesta to decide how this all played out, he needed to lay down a rule of his own: he could give her the space to decide what she wanted—for him to prove that he could be what she needed—but there was one thing he could not suffer through.

And if they had stormed ahead in a hurricane of lust; with Nesta’s back against the wall as Cassian pounded into her… Well, it would be too late for Cassian to lay down his one condition once they were sweaty and sated. Nesta was more likely to get up and walk away. To not look back.

Cassian found Nesta sitting at the dresser in her room re-braiding back her hair.

Leaning against the doorjamb, Cassian opened his mouth to explain who had been at the door, but an iron band closed fast around his chest, robbing him of breath.

“What are you wearing?” The words came out of him eventually, entirely uneven to the point of being choked.

Because Nesta was wearing his shirt. It was the same steel blue shirt she’d worn that first day in Illyria. The shirt that was an identical match to her eyes, purchased before Cassian had realising what his subconscious had done. A shirt he’d had to hide away in the spare room because Cassian hadn’t been able to bare seeing it in his closet—of being reminded that his mate was a ghost who had banished him away.

Go home, Cassian.

Nesta met Cassian's eyes in the mirror. Announced with cool simplicity, “You ripped my dress.”

“And this is your way of torturing me?”

An indifferent shrug. “Why wear my own clothing when I know what fate it will suffer?”

Cassian knew his nostrils billowed, but he remained propped up against the doorframe. Pretended he was stuck to it like glue because his body was trembling for him to launch across the distance and claim her mouth. Her neck. Her.

The silence seemed to unnerve Nesta. Cassian knew that from months of living with her. From months of studying her slight tells when her masks slipped.

Right on cue, Nesta reset her posture—a gesture that most people read as defiant. But Cassian knew it was also a sign of nerves. She shrugged with feigned indifference, even as her throat tightened and that damned pulse fluttered temptingly against her throat. “You liked it the last time I wore it.”

Cassian huffed a breath. He had liked it the last time she wore it, even if she’d been so gaunt that he’d worried she might wither away. But the shirt… it had put images in his mind that Cassian had long tried to store away, imprisoned in rock and flame: her in his clothing, not fucking other males but him, her lithe legs wrapping around his waist as he sank deep—

Which brought Cassian neatly to the point he needed to discuss with her…

Nesta’s eyes tracked Cassian in the mirror as he peeled himself out of the doorway and came to stand behind her. When their eyes locked into place, it felt as if someone had punched him in the chest. There was something deep in Nesta’s gaze that made it feel as if he was tumbling down a rabbit hole, that magnetism between them drawing him in like gravity.

When Cassian’s fingers brushed Nesta’s neck—ran down the braid she had draped over her shoulder—Nesta shivered. “You had your hair down then,” he rasped. Didn’t wait for her to protest, as he slowly coaxed the tie free from the end of her hair.

Nesta turned preternaturally still, watched him gently part her hair in the mirror until it fell free from her plait, his calloused fingers brushing over her skin as he coaxed her hair to fall down her back.

The pulse hammering at her throat and the warmth radiating from her skin were the only indications that Nesta was alive rather than stone.

Only when Cassian had finished and lifted his hands from her neck, did Nesta come back to life.

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. But she cocked her head slightly to dissect him. “It’s a nuisance like this. It gets in the way.”

“It’s beautiful,” Cassian corrected, his voice rasping, like sand scraping against skin. He ran a hand through her hair as if to emphasise his point, his fingers running down, down, down until her waist.

When Nesta stood and turned into the warmth of him, Cassian scented what she wanted. But there was something else simmering in her expression—surprise. As if she’d caught the truth in his words and hadn’t expected someone to truly think her beautiful.

She stepped closer, until the lines of her torso ghosted his. Until Cassian’s heart pounded so hard he could hear the frantic tempo of it in his ears. Nesta tilted her head back so she could stare up at him and Cassian’s hand weaved through the mane of her hair before he could stop himself.

He was desperate to touch her again. Desperate.

But Cassian waited. Waited for Nesta to reach up on tiptoes and press her mouth to his.

The kiss was not like their bruised, desperate kisses from earlier. It was coaxing and unsure; the tentative beginning of something that was not merely fuelled by ardour. But it soon blossomed into something more, like a snowball rolling down a mountain blanketed white, gaining speed as it grew and grew—

Dragging his mouth away from hers, Cassian fought for breath. Battled to remember what he needed to do and say. But then Nesta was tugging his head back down again, her fingers tangled in his hair, the gesture indicative of an insistent need that Cassian knew would not go away.

As always, Nesta tasted divine. Addictive. He could taste the curl of her power on his tongue—silver and white, life and death—and he wondered if she could taste his. Knew his siphons were glowing scarlet—

“Nesta,” he murmured hoarsely, her name a caress against her lips. He couldn’t invoke a distance between them, couldn’t stop touching her. His nose brushed hers as her drew back an infinitesimal amount. Closed his eyes. Inhaled deeply, summoning courage. “You can dictate how this goes between us. But if we do this, I can’t—there’s no-one else. Just you and me.”

The subsequent pause was one of the worst of Cassian’s life. It was barely a breath. The blink of an eye. But it felt as if it was malleable and elastic, drawn out by the hands of fate as everything suspended in time.

He didn’t want to open his eyes, but in the end he managed it. Caught Nesta’s eyelashes flutter downwards, casting shadows on her skin. Her fists tightened in the fabric of his tunic, anchoring him to the moment.

She swallowed. Shook her head. Agreed with a conviction he had not been expecting, “No-one else.”

The relief that swooped through Cassian was so fierce it was painful. But he still didn’t dare to believe it.

He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger so Nesta could not look away. So he could look into the deep waters of her irises and know she was telling him the truth.

But her gaze was steady and unwavering, as he demanded, “Say it again.”

His voice cracked but Nesta didn’t appear to notice. Her grip on him tightened. “No-one else,” she repeated on an outward breath.

A low, ravaged moan sounded from Cassian’s throat. “Diyosa,” he murmured, slipping into Illyrian. Goddess.

“Bruha,” Nesta corrected. She fumbled over the pronunciation but Cassian felt as if he had been an ember that had burst into flame. Witch.

He let out a rough bark of laughter. Then he swore in a long, drawn out moan. “No Illyrian,” he ordered roughly. Pressed his mouth firmly against hers, the kiss searing. “Otherwise this will be over far too quickly.” Another kiss. “And I want to take my time.”

The smile Nesta painted against Cassian’s lips was feline. “You’ve made a lot of promises, General. I hope you don’t disappoint.”

Cassian snarled. Spun her body until her back was cradled against his chest. “I have, haven’t I?” he mused lightly, even though the hammering of his heart must have beat a betraying rhythm against her shoulder blade.

In the mirror, Nesta’s expression grew less poised and controlled. Delight mixed with anticipation clung to her features at this game they played; this tussle for control. She did not try to wrangle free from his hold or shift uncomfortably in his arms at having her back enclosed against his.

It thrilled him—that trust. Enough so that when he met her eyes in the mirror, Cassian found that his irises had been swallowed by his pupils until they were only a ring of chocolate gold.

Slowly, Cassian brushed Nesta’s hair over to one shoulder with his left hand. Traced his fingers down the arc of her neck to her collarbone. Continued a path down the centre of her chest, to the pyrite which glittered between her breasts.

When his fingers met the first button of his shirt, Cassian toyed with it. Purposefully grazed his nose against the shell of her ear. “Shall I start here?” he murmured. “Undress you in front of the mirror whilst you watch?”

Nesta suppressed a shudder, but Cassian caught it. Could swear he felt her blood boiling beneath her skin as he slipped the button free of its hole. Then another. And another. Until there were no more buttons and the material hung free.

Leaning back into his body, Nesta rested her head against his chest. Curved her back slightly so her chest thrust upwards, silently instructing him where she wanted his hands.

And Cassian couldn’t deny her. He turned his palm so it was face up and curled into a loose fist. Brushed his knuckles down her sternum all the way to her bared naval, before bringing it back up. His fingers ran up the side of the material free of buttons, until he was at her collarbone—her shoulder—leaving a litter of goosebumps in his wake.

This time, Cassian snickered when she shivered. Dropped a slow and deliberate kiss to her bare shoulder as he slowly, slowly inched the material down, down, down over her arm. Repeated the motion on the other, until the shirt pooled onto the floor, exposing her bare body to the mirror: endless creamy skin, divine curves, the luscious full weight of her bare breasts, and… lower.

Nesta’s eyes, which had been tracking the fabric as it fell away, snapped to his as a feral growl ripped from him. And she moaned at the expression on his face. Grabbed at his hands, pulling them to her body.

“Touch me,” Nesta hissed, but it came out strangled. Almost pleading. Another crack in her armour as it broke and fell away.

The sight was enough to threaten Cassian to his knees. He guided her body backwards, his hands splaying firmly across her stomach despite her whine, until his legs hit the edge of the mattress

Neither of them broke eye contact in the mirror. Not when Cassian coaxed Nesta down to sit on the bed with him. Not when he pulled her between his legs, her back firmly against his chest. Not when he bowed his head to kiss the slope between her neck and shoulder.

When Cassian finally brushed a thumb over her nipple, Nesta back bowed so fiercely Cassian was thankful he had an arm strapped across her stomach.

The small noise she loosed fuelled his fire and Cassian held on to her. Stroked over that peaked nipple again as Nesta careened into his touch. Followed it with a firmer roll with his thumb and forefinger. Used the fingertips of his other hand to draw slow, tantalising circles across the silken skin of her lower stomach, before he moved southwards…

The air around them hushed when Cassian’s fingers stilled. Anticipation built and only when it vibrated with tension did Cassian slide his hands to cradle Nesta’s hips.

A snarl of frustration, but Cassian paid the sound no heed. Only grazed his thumbs over Nesta’s hipbones. Watched her expression in the mirror—the way her face contorted as she squirmed into his touch as if she was a puppet on strings. Ground back onto him, pressing into that building ache that was bordering on painful.

Fuck, Nesta.

Cassian wasn’t sure if he had spoken out loud or in his head, all he knew was the blessed, fleeting relief he felt as he bucked into the small of Nesta’s back on instinct. He was rock hard and thirsting to be touched, but the thickening scent of Nesta’s arousal pulled his focus.

A groan rumbled from Cassian’s throat as Nesta’s hand darted between her legs. He caught her wrist just in the nick of time. Kissed the heart of her palm. Rumbled into her ear, “Not yet, sweetheart.”

His voice was coarse enough that Nesta shivered, the goosebumps travelling down her skin like a cresting wave. She didn’t struggle against him, nor did she move to disobey him as he dropped her wrist. Instead, she waited, trembling and shaking at every pass of his thumbs over her skin.

Cassian buried his nose behind the shell of her ear. Breathed Nesta in, steadying the drum of his pulse.

Not once did he take his eyes off of hers in the mirror, especially as he murmured, “Shall we find out if you’re wet for me?”

Nesta squeezed her eyes tightly shut, as if the movement would steady her. Swallowed hard. It was so unlike her to take stock, to show any signs that she was rattled, that Cassian softened. He nuzzled at her neck, trailed a line of kisses instilled with promises. A hand flew up to tangle in Cassian’s hair, keeping him there.

“Yes.”

The word stuttered out of Nesta on several staccatos, but she forced her eyes open and met his gaze in the mirror. Watched as he pulled her tighter against him and hooked her legs over his thighs so she was spread wide. Slipped his hand across and down…

The first ghost of a touch had Nesta panting through her nose. The second had her gritting her teeth. The third had her moaning, her back bowing so sharply as he skimmed straight over the place she wanted him the most.

Her head hit the centre of his chest with a resounding thud that had his bones creaking, but she did not look away from him. Seemed to know the game they were playing without him having to express it.

When Cassian brought his fingers lower and discovered just how wet Nesta was, he had to force his wings in tight to his back to hide his surprise. Growled, “You’re soaked.”

Pleasure and embarrassment twisted in Cassian’s stomach, and Cassian wanted to tell her that it was not something to be ashamed of, that he wanted her just as much as she clearly wanted his fingers between her legs.

Her eyes glinted steel, her stare commanding. “Make me come—“ she ordered, but Cassian chose that moment to roll his finger over that spot at the apex of her thighs.

The command bottomed out of Nesta as she inhaled sharply. Satisfaction bloomed inside of Cassian; because he may have done this countless times before but barely enough with her. And nothing seemed to matter apart from him seeking out her satisfaction. Of learning about what made her body freeze with pleasure and what made her come undone. “There?” he murmured into her ear, repeating the movement, before he passed his fingers down further. Until they were at her entrance, playing gently before he drew upwards and circled.

This time, Nesta groaned. Her hips jerked sharply beneath him, tilting, guiding him to just the right place.

Picking up on the cue, Cassian increased the tempo and friction until Nesta’s hips were rolling in a punishing rhythm against the hard length of him.

And Cassian snarled in satisfaction, his fingers tightening around her hip in a plea for her to keep moving—to not stop pushing back on him—because it was blissfully good. The rapid tightening in his groin was almost painful, the cord so tight that Cassian thought it might snap. But he couldn’t stop Nesta, not when she looked so bewitching, the arousal so stark on her face as he stroked and circled and pressed.

Burning pleasure clambered to its peak and Nesta’s eyes grew so heavy they fluttered closed. Something unintelligible left her lips, her head tipping back into the heart of his chest.

When Nesta’s arms wound around his neck, her knuckles accidentally grazing the leather of his wings, Cassian part-snarled, part-roared. Swore. Held her even tighter as his wings snapped out high and mighty behind him. They wrapped around Nesta’s body before Cassian’s pleasure-fogged mind could stop them curling towards her, starved for her touch.

Fuck, he was unhinged. So desperate for relief—in the scent and feel of his mate—that his control was barely there. Enough so that he didn’t react when Nesta reached out her hand—

Sense knocked Cassian for six only when Nesta’s fingers were millimetres from touching the membrane. He drew back his wings so fast  the air around them stormed, but he swooped in before surprise could register on Nesta’s face. Dipped his chin and coaxed her head even further back so he could claim her mouth.

The taste of her lips was as vital as breathing, the scrape of her nails on his scalp grounding. He moaned into her mouth at the same time as she whimpered. His hand was still moving between her legs, interchanging the same three patterns over and over again, mixing things up as soon as Nesta’s moans grew too untamed: he wanted to draw out her pleasure, not sate it with a few choice strokes.

Pulling away, Cassian pressed a kiss to her forehead. Coaxed her to dip her chin until she was looking back at their reflection in the mirror: ebony and golden brown, tan and cream.

Nesta’s irises were wisps of silver, but when he traversed past that bundle of nerves so he could slip two fingers inside of her, they flickered into living flame.

That was indication enough that she liked what he was doing. Cassian had quickly learnt that Nesta became completely readable between the sheets, that mask slowly crumbling away until she broke completely.

Curving his fingers as much as he could, Cassian pressed upwards hard—again and again— revelling in the strangled sounds Nesta made. The way she writhed but tried her best to hold his gaze.

Cassian dropped a lingering kiss to the crown of Nesta’s head. Murmured into her hair, “Is that good, sweetheart?”

The only response Cassian received was a long moan which extended into a whine as he withdrew his fingers. Then a sharp cry as he swept them upwards, swirling them in a well-practiced motion that had Nesta’s lower half seizing in pleasure.

Cassian circled again. Again. Firmer. Faster. Nesta’s cries grew louder, her breathing became more laboured. A silver wreathed hand flew to his forearm—not to stop him, but to keep him there.

Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.

The bond between them creaked and cracked as it expanded.

Nesta panted his name.

“Are you going to come for me, sweetheart?” Cassian scratched out.

In vain, Nesta attempted to burrow her head into his shoulder, but Cassian’s voice dropped out of soft and into the role of general within the fraction of a heartbeat. “Eyes on the mirror, Nesta, or I’ll stop.”

It seemed to take all of Nesta’s energy to fight her leaded eyelids and meet his dark eyes in their reflection. When she did, Cassian’s magic roared and pounded beneath his skin, as if it was trying to break free and join Nesta’s. There was a pressure and power fuelling the sensation that was separate to him. It was like the magnetic force which rules the relentless ebb and flow of the tide—that desperate crash followed by a scrabbling, thundering retreat.

That twisted rope between them grew corporeal, tugging at their ribcages as if it was clambering to remind them both of its existence. Of the cost of this exchange.

Something deepened in both of their gazes, but if Nesta had felt what Cassian had, she gave no indication. She only arched her hips back into his, grinding backwards.

Cassian loosed a rough groan that skittered across the shell of her ear. Her gaze was purposeful but hooded, as if she was in a continual battle with the pleasure weighting her eyelids.

“Good girl,” he praised as Nesta’s eyelashes fluttered from the strain of maintaining eye contact. And then his fingers were everywhere at once and Nesta’s moans fell away to short gasps that rose in volume.

Nesta tightened her fingers around his neck, scrabbling for purchase, for some sort of tether as her pleasure launched high into the air. The hand that had been at her hip, steadying her, encouraging her to roll back on him moved to her breast; cupping and pinching and rolling as she stuttered pants and words that Cassian couldn’t make out.

When Cassian slid two fingers inside of her again and pressed down firmly on her clit with his palm, Nesta’s cry was wild.

“Look at me,” Cassian ordered as Nesta’s eyes flew shut. His voice was resonant—startling—even to him. It punched through the bubble that had encased them—their entwined scent—and Nesta’s eyes snapped open.

For a beat, time seemed to stand still around them. Their gaze fastened back into place and for a moment, Cassian could see a conflict of thoughts swirl in the magic of Nesta’s irises.

He froze just as anguish crashed down that bond, right into the heart of his chest.

It knocked the breath from him. Confusion rattled inside of his head but he came up empty of answers. Had he gone too far? Had he hurt her somehow?

“Sweetheart—“ he started, but stopped. Unsure of what to say because he could still smell how much she wanted this. Could feel how soaked she was. But perhaps that was what the mating bond did. Fooled reason with an overwhelming drive to pleasure and claim.

Cassian went to draw his hand away but Nesta’s hand whipped out, her fingers curling around his wrist. Desperation flooded her next words—the plea in them stark. “Don’t stop.”

As if to punctuate her point, she rolled her hips. His fingers slid over her of her own accord and she stumbled a moan. Light barrelled down the bond and Cassian’s blood spiked, thrilled as he felt the truth of her words, as she ground back into him again.

“Fuck that feels good,” Cassian grunted into her ear. His hips pushed into the small of her back, accentuating his point. It chased the delicious reprieve from the ache in his cock, even as he knew this moment wasn’t about him. As he pulled her back into the solid muscle of his chest, steadying her movements so he could pick up where he left off: so he could watch the pleasure whip away her conflicted expression until her eyes were once again blazing with the promise of flame.

Silver mist climbed from Nesta’s fingertips into the air. It crawled over the glowing ruby siphons across the backs of his hands, past the corded muscle of his forearm and the rolled up sleeves of his tunic, to his chest, his neck…

A sheen of metal shone in Cassian’s eyes, flickering across his irises so they appeared to turn a metallic gold. The lick of Nesta’s magic didn’t burn. It was a rush of heat—the tender caress of a lover’s kiss instilled into his skin over and over again, ascending Cassian to another realm of pleasure, as if he’d climbed a staircase to an entirely new place.

It felt like an extended method of foreplay Cassian had never been privy to before, lighting up every nerve ending until he was so hard he could cut stone.

Gritting his teeth through the pain-cloaked pleasure, Cassian focussed instead on Nesta’s bare skin.

The tempting fullness of her breasts. The way desire had completely rewritten her countenance. The way she whimpered and then cried out.

Cassian sped up his movements. Until his fingers were no longer teasing, but dancing over her with sure, quick movements designed to thrust her towards a crescendo.

Nesta’s magic swirled into flame, the heat of it a licking promise down Cassian’s limbs. He groaned, swore at the exquisite pain on her face as she hung at the precipice, ready to plummet into rapture.

Her climax became a tangible, living thing and Cassian wanted to see it play out for as long as he possible could. Wanted to see her break for him again and again and again.

So, he waited until she reached the summit and when she was there he slowed down his movements. Ordered through her whimpering, “Look at me Nesta.”

Metallic irises met his, and then Nesta was trembling and shaking in fits and bursts as her release ripped out of her like a taut cord cut loose. Cassian drew her orgasm out as best he could, suspending that pleasure until finally Nesta slumped against him, spineless.

She turned her head to bury it in his shoulder and Cassian let her. Stroked her hair. Pressed a kiss to her sweaty head. Murmured, “Good?”

Slowly, Nesta nodded, but for a long while, that was the only communication he received. But Cassian let her recover. Watched the way her ribcage moved as she heaved for breath. Relished the way her body was splayed out over him, her legs held wide open from where they were hooked over his thighs.

Unable to help himself, Cassian brushed over her sex. Delighted in the way Nesta shuddered rather than batted him away. Fresh desire reignited across her expression and Cassian played gently for a few minutes, revelling in the wetness that had gathered from her release.

Finally, Nesta lifted her head to meet his gaze again. “Did I burn you?”

“No,” Cassian replied hoarsely, his heart squeezing at the genuine fear in her words. He let out a rough laugh, passed his fingers lightly over the knot at the apex of her legs for the last time before he withdrew them.

Nesta moaned softly, even as her brow twisted into a small frown.

“It felt good,” Cassian elaborated. He kissed her shoulder at the same time that he pushed his hips into hers as if to demonstrate just how much he’d liked her magic. “I’m being strangled to death in these pants,” he confessed.

When Nesta cocked her head, her hair moved in a golden tangle. Then she smirked. Unravelled her limbs from him and turned.

Nesta slung her legs over his waist so she was straddling him just as Cassian’s hands caught in her hair. A booming sounded as his wings snapped out and fanned behind him, settling like falling fabric.

“We can’t have that,” Nesta remarked, her breath a whisper against his skin.

“No,” Cassian agreed roughly. “It’s your favourite part.”

Nesta snorted a laugh, but it was not derisive. “Egotistical bat,” she muttered.

A slow, smug smile was Cassian’s only reply. Because he was more focussed on her mouth. With the feel of her silken skin beneath his palms as he ran them up her legs and over her rounded ass. His touch was a promise as he tugged her into his body and ground up into her core, the seam of his trousers doing nothing to relieve the damning ache in his cock.

Together they gasped, and then, as always, they moved at the same time, their mouths slanting one another within a fraction of a second.

The heat of Nesta was liquid, the touch of her smoke—feverish and everywhere all at once. It was the same heat that had roared into existence when Cassian had pinned her against the wall earlier, yet… better somehow. Passionate and awake rather than fogged with lust. Life-giving.

A shuddered groan was pulled from Cassian’s chest as Nesta’s hands slid beneath his tunic and met his burning skin. And then the tunic was on the floor—the rest of his clothing was torn from him soon after. It all happened at such speed Cassian could barely keep up, but when Nesta reached for his bare, burning skin—the tattoos on his arms and the faint scar on his stomach—her fingers were gentle.

“Battle scar,” Cassian panted in explanation, as Nesta’s fingers lingered on the silvery tissue that wound over his lower abdomen: a permanent reminder of what had happened to him during the final battle with Hybern. “The trauma was too great for Madja to heal completely.”

“I remember,” Nesta replied shortly and she looked so fierce that Cassian reached for her. Cupped her cheek with his palm.

“Still breathing, Nes.”

Nesta nodded, but when she kissed him this time there was something fierce and desperate about it, her fingers burying deeper into the mane of his hair.

And then a hand was trailing down his skin and closing around his cock. The touch was sinful and a glimpse of the heavens. When he hissed into her mouth, Nesta gripped tighter—until pain laced the pleasure—just how he liked it.

His groan was that of rumbling thunder as she began to move her hand. It was everything Cassian needed, but it was too much, too good. He scrambled to hold on to some sense of control, because he’d never been this close to losing it from just a few touches.

Then Nesta stopped. Glanced downwards—

The realisation thumped through Cassian so loudly his heartbeat punched like a fist against his ribcage.

“Don’t you dare,” Cassian choked out.

Nesta’s eyes shot to his, but rather than looking startled she arched a challenging eyebrow.

“If you so much as try to put my cock in your mouth I’ll explode,” Cassian rasped.

Before she could protest, he was gathering her to him and had slipped a hand down between her legs.

Just the touch of his fingers had Cassian seizing back control. Nesta stilled at the sudden pleasure, as if she was trying to coax time into suspending the sensation.

“Still so wet,” Cassian purred against the tip of her ear.

Gliding his fingers over the centre of her, Cassian paused briefly at the apex of her legs, toying with her clit, before he ran them back down. When he drew his fingers back, rubbing them together and raising them to the faelight, they glittered.

Nesta’s nostrils flared as if she was an animal in heat. And Cassian knew before he spoke that his voice? would be what pushed them over the edge. But he said it anyway, his voice dropping impossibly low,  “Is this all for me?”

Nesta launched at him until their mouths collided, until they were nothing but a clash of teeth and tongues, their skin so flush they may as well have been fused together.

Burying her fingers deeper into the tangled mane of his hair, Nesta tugged sharply. Met his gaze head on. Demanded, “Fuck me.”

All it took was those two words. Cassian moved, flipping them so Nesta’s back was flush against the mattress. He covered her body with his and Nesta whined at the contact, her body bending and arching towards him as if she were a plant and he was sunlight.

Cassian ran a hand up her bare thigh to her ass, coaxing her leg to bend, but Nesta was too impatient. She broke free from the weight of his body, repositioning herself until legs were wrapped tightly around his hips.

An uneven laugh choked out of him. “So stubborn,” Cassian chided darkly, but he allowed his hips to fall into the cradle of hers. Hissed as he loosed his control and thrust so his cock could glide through her centre. “Fuck,” he grunted. “Nesta, fuck.”

Nesta’s breathy whine fuelled the sparks of pleasure that crackled through him like static energy. He kissed her hard. “There’s a high probability I won’t survive this.”

The snort Nesta loosed tried to sound unaffected, but her voice shook as she accused him, “Liar.”

But he wasn’t lying. And Nesta knew it. She had to know it because his walls were now shattered around them in splintered shards.

Yet, Cassian found himself assuring her. “Not lying," he grunted as he passed over her again. Pressed a lingering kiss to her mouth—a parting goodbye as he moved to kiss the underside of her jaw, down the column of her throat. Down further, to flick his tongue and scrape his teeth over both nipples.

He moaned when she moaned; their sounds a chorus of want until he couldn’t take it anymore. Cassian’s claws clipped around the metal of the bed frame at the same time that he pushed off of the palms that were framing her face, until he was on his knees before her.

Despite the desire coursing through him, Cassian’s head was nothing but clear as he slid his hands under Nesta’s ass and lifted her effortlessly, positioning her so that the undersides of her thighs were flush against his knees.

Nesta’s hair was tousled over the pillow, her lips swollen and parted as she surveyed him. When she tried to wrap her legs back around his hips, Cassian held firm. And despite the fact that Nesta listened to nobody, she allowed him to bend her knees and press his calloused palms to the insides of her thighs in silent instruction.

They fell open and a growl rumbled in Cassian’s throat. His hand was fisting his cock, lining it up to her entrance before he knew what was happening. But then he remembered the pain from before. And even though Nesta was more than ready for him, the thought of hurting her made him feel physically sick.

When he moved away, Nesta let out a strangled noise. A hand shot out, closing around his wrist. “You said you’d fuck me.”

Cassian wanted to explain, but that meant alluding to that tie between them, that instinct that couldn’t allow him to see her hurt. Cassian knew Nesta wasn’t ready for that. Knew that if he so much as breathed a word about it that this precious moment would fall away.

And Cassian was selfish. He had to see how this played out. Had to know if Nesta could grow to accept the bond between them—deem him worthy enough to accept something that was Cauldron blessed.

So, he only drawled, “Patience is a virtue, sweetheart.”

One swift movement had Cassian gathering Nesta into his arms. This time, he allowed Nesta’s legs to wind around him. She gripped him like a vice and Cassian knew it wasn’t from fear of him dropping her. When he sat back against the headboard and guided her onto his lap, Cassian expected her to bite out a comment about doing all of the work, but Nesta only let out a pleased sound. Weaved a hand back into his ebony hair. Wrapped a tight fist around his length, twisting once at the tip, before she guided him to her entrance.

Cassian hissed a curse as she closed around the head. Murmured her name into her mouth. Gripped tightly at her hips when she didn’t stop sinking down on him, as he felt that pain mixed with the sweetest pleasure.

“Nesta.” The way he said her name was firm and commanding, but he still had to dig his fingers hard enough into her skin that he was sure it would leave temporary bruises. The thought made him falter, but then that sharp pain flared again as she resisted against him, and he knew that the bruises were a necessary evil. “Nesta,” he barked, “Go slowly.”

Something creaked and cracked between them. A stretching, growing pain reached its fingers down that bond, the sensation strong rather than constricted as it fought to make its way down their usually thin tie.

Nails dug into Cassian’s neck. A whimper sounded in his ears as Nesta fell forwards, burying her face into his neck. “Please,” she whined in frustration. “Cassian—”

She broke off as she clamped down around him and Cassian felt an ebb of pleasure cut through the pain—that promise of something more.

“Don’t make me hurt you, sweetheart,” Cassian pleaded and the rawness in his voice stopped her resisting against him. He eased a hand between them, touched her right where she wanted him. Allowed her to tug his face upwards so she could kiss him. It was infused with desperation and Cassian eased his hold on her hip. Allowed her to lower herself downwards until she had slid another inch deeper. Continued to stroke her until Nesta began to shake.

“I’m going to—,” Nesta gasped against his mouth. Her body trembled and Cassian’s blood roared at bringing her to the edge again so soon, despite the pain. “Cassian—”

Abruptly, Cassian moved his hand away.

Nesta’s snarl whipped around the room, but Cassian smoothed the sound away by fusing his mouth on hers. She stopped shaking but the sharp bite of Nesta’s glare pierced its teeth through his flesh in a flash of silver.

“It will be better if you wait,” Cassian gritted out in explanation when they parted. Nesta’s breath gusted against his skin. “And I don’t think I can hold on if you come so soon. You feel so good, Nesta. So tight.”

As if on cue, Nesta contracted around him and Cassian ground his teeth together so hard that the muscle in his jaw worked. But he let Nesta slide down on him another inch. Then another. And another. Until their hips were finally flush with one another and that pain had bled away until it was nothing.

The moaned words that fell from Nesta were indistinguishable, but he felt her tremor. Felt that surge inside of him as Nesta repeated herself with a whine that indicated she was toppling over the ledge of control, like a glass teetering before it fell.

And then she was moving and Cassian let her. He was unable to think or breathe. Could only focus on the feel of her.

“Fuck,” Cassian groaned. His head thunked back hard against the headboard as she ground her hips into his, testing the feel of him. “This is better than I’d dreamed.”

No soft snicker, only an untamed whine. Then teeth scraping a sinful path down his neck to his pulse.

Cassian’s hips kicked up hard as her teeth nipped.

“Sorry,” he gasped, because even though Nesta had told him not to hold back, he was still concerned about hurting her. But Nesta’s fingernails bit into his skin and her body moulded to him—a delicious second skin—as she inhaled sharply. “Again,” she demanded with a fierceness that did not allow disobedience. “Do that again—”

It didn’t take a second command for Cassian to thrust up hard. And true to her word, Nesta took him all. Did not change her mind and ask him to hold back. Instead, Cassian knew that this was exactly what she wanted—no, needed. She needed this punishing rhythm just as much as he did.

And it felt… incredible. Beyond anything Cassian had ever felt before. The blood roaring in his ears intermingled with Nesta’s cries and the slap of his hips meeting hers, was the only thing he could hear, his senses narrowed down to the sensation of her wrapped around him, so tight …

It was too good. It threatened to break him, to take everything that he was and reform it entirely, as if he was going to shatter and be pieced back together as someone else entirely. The air around them became taut with pressure, tanning leather stretched too tight over a rack, as if their joining controlled one of the essential elements.

“Cassian.” That one word threatened to break him. Not bat or it or you, only his name falling from her lips as if it was their secret. “More.”

Exhaling a curse, Cassian planted his feet firmly on the mattress and thrust up with as much vigour as he could muster. The movement had them slipping from their upright position and Cassian’s claws absent-mindedly closed around the metal bed frame, strapping them in for the ride as his body coiled and tensed as he slammed into her over and over.

Nesta cried out. Grabbed fistfuls of his hair as they moved together as if they had been made for this moment, their wild gasps melded together until they were one.

Only when release teetered too close to the edge did Cassian drop the rhythm. Cupped the breasts he had dreamed of more times than he could count. The breasts he’d had the privilege of seeing bare and glorious only twice before.

Capturing a nipple between his teeth, Cassian scraped his teeth hard enough that Nesta stopped rocking and angled her hips until he was pressing impossibly deep inside her. She whimpered. Clenched and unclenched. Throbbed in a way that told him she was as close as he was—that if he wasn’t so close himself, he could drive her over the edge with a few well-timed thrusts.

The understanding had him letting out a jagged groan. “Are you close, sweetheart?”

A whine in response, but Cassian didn’t let it go. He raked back the hair from her sweaty forehead. Pressed his lips to her swollen ones in a lingering kiss. Watched the frown that knitted her brow as she was overtaken by the feel of them.

“What do you need, Nesta. Tell me and I’ll give it to you.”

Nesta wound her hands around his head, buried her face into his neck. Began swaying and circling her hips in a rhythm that was dictated purely by the chase of pleasure. “Just… this,” she panted. “I just need this.”

Then it was only the licking fire of her breath against his skin. The magic that curled around them like a heated blanket and the building anticipation of both of their releases, which pulled at him like a strange sort of magnetism, begging him to fall with her in unison.

“Cassian—” Nesta began in warning, but he had already felt her begin to quake, as if the ground was moving beneath their feet—the mountains trembling.

That pull became a driving force—a cresting wave of pleasure so profound that Cassian felt that twist inside of him—that signal that he was about to join her.

He groaned, jerking his head back so it collided with wood, the pain grounding him enough that he could say, “That’s it, sweetheart. Come for me.”

As soon as the words left his lips, Nesta broke, as if she’d been waiting for him to ask it of her. Her cry was muffled and Cassian wanted to tear her mouth from his neck—to hear her break for him—but then she was sinking her teeth into his skin right over his pulse.

Roaring, Cassian kicked his hips up hard on instinct as she marked him, but the shock distracted him. Clouded the desperate clamber of his release so he could hold himself back.

Cassian held tightly onto Nesta as she slumped against him. When she lifted her teeth from him, Nesta whined like an animal. Dragged her tongue over the dent she’d made in his neck—once, twice, three times.

He shuddered. Couldn’t help it. Turned his face into her hair. Breathed her in. The gesture was tender, like an animal tending to the wound of a significant other—its mate.

And wrapped in this moment, Cassian could almost believe that this was something more than sex for Nesta as her forehead came to rest on his collarbone. As she kissed the hollow of his throat. Then the knot. His lips.  

“Good?” Cassian asked softly. He lifted a hand to her face, ran a calloused thumb over her cheekbone.

Nesta made a rare, content sound that vibrated through him like a balm. She leant into his hand, her eyelashes swooping down.

When she finally pulled back to survey him, her eyes were still dark. She shifted her hips. Moaned quietly. Rasped, “You’re still hard.”

It was a miracle Cassian hadn’t followed. If it hadn’t been for her teeth in his neck, Cassian would have been wrestling with the embarrassment of finishing too soon.

“I was too preoccupied with your teeth in my neck.”

A flush crept its way up Nesta’s face, like vines reaching their wicked encroaching fingers up a wall. But she raised her chin. “You wanted me to do it.”

It was true, he had wanted her to. And he wanted to do the same to her—to mark her as his so everyone would know that she was off limits for the brief hours before her body healed.

“And what about you?”

The patter of Nesta’s heart broke into a sprint. It was the only thing that betrayed her feelings, her expression devoid of any reaction. “What do you mean?”

Cassian leant forward until their noses brushed. Lifted his eyebrows. “Do you want me to bite you, Nesta?”

Nesta’s nostrils flared. If she had wings, they’d have flung wide by now. Would have collided with furniture and cut through air.

That was answer enough.

In one movement, Cassian lifted himself up and over, until Nesta was on her back and he was pressing her body into the mattress. Breath gushed out of her lungs but it was not from fear, not as Nesta turned herself out bare and tilted her chin for him—for once not in defiance but as an act of vulnerability—of complete and utter trust.

Every instinct in Cassian clambered to the surface, but he closed a fist around it until its life fluttered against the cage of his palms and fingers: his to control, rather than the other way around.

Slowly, Cassian lowered his nose to the exposed skin and breathed her in: her scent and the life that pummelled beneath her skin, the roaring of her blood as it crashed through her veins. It took everything in him not to move inside of her, to thrust up hard and feel the way her breasts would move against his chest.

“I could do it right here,” Cassian murmured, his mouth ghosting over the pale column of her neck until he came across that pulse. He brushed a tongue across it.

The movement was a mirror of what he’d done before in the human realm and Nesta knew it. But this time she did not jerk back from him demanding what he’d done. Instead, her body drew up beneath him, exposing more of her neck, begging for more.

Cassian groaned, raking his teeth over that swell at the same time that he pushed in deep. Nesta’s groan was guttural and everything. His blood turned molten, so hot that he expected his skin to melt away until he was nothing but bones.

“Please,” Nesta panted, her fingers tightening around his back.

Another flick of his tongue over her pulse. “Do you want me to bite you or fuck you?”

“Both.”

That was enough to loosen the fist on Cassian’s control. He sat back on his knees, prying her hands from his neck, coaxing her fingers until they were above her head and clasped around the railings of the headboard. Nesta’s breasts rose with the movement, her peaked nipples so tempting he bent to take one into his mouth. Then the other. Suckled until she mewled and her nipples were no longer rosy but red from his attention.

Cassian lifted his head and surveyed Nesta. Warned her, “Hold on tight.”

And then there was no thinking, no worrying or desperation to hold back. It all came as easy as breathing, their tempo,the snap of his hips and the shift of the mattress as her body shouldered the impact. At some point, Cassian’s body fell over hers, needing to feel every inch of her against him. His wild, punishing rhythm dropped into a rough rocking that was intimate at the same time it was claiming.

Nesta didn’t seem to mind—let out a pleased moan of consent, her legs clamping tighter around his hips until they were flush with hers. When he next moved she whined, and Cassian felt that change inside of her—somehow—that twisting fist of pleasure that glimmered down the bond, pushing against the walls of that thread, pushing it wider and wider, like a heart expanding.

Silver-wreathed fingers tugged his head down until Nesta could claim his mouth, fusing them together so they were complete. Cassian shuddered as her fire cascaded from her fingertips and down his body. His magic, attracted to hers, began to suck out of his pores, but it didn’t leech him of power. Instead, it was like his magic was searching for its mate, desperate to be reunited.

Then that sensation again, as if Cassian had ducked beneath something and had come up for air somewhere else.

Ruby greeted silver like a long-lost lover, blending until their magic was a metallic sheen of scarlet—a fog that misted their bodies, rubbing tantalisingly against their skin as they rocked and moaned their way to release.

“Don’t stop,” Nesta begged desperately through stuttered breaths, and Cassian wondered how many times she’d reached this pinnacle with other males only for it to be taken from her.

Cassian’s hand found its way to her face, his thumb stroking over her cheek as that coiled release twisted across her devastatingly beautiful face. “Can’t,” he panted honestly, his other hand searching for hers across the mattress until he was clasping it—holding on for dear life. “I’m so close, sweetheart. You have no idea how good you feel.”

“Come with me then,” Nesta pleaded. Her eyelashes had fluttered downwards as she took in a sharp breath of pleasure, but now they opened. Stared deep into his soul. “Come with me—”

Then her body turned both loose and taut, clamping yet completely molten as her release ripped out of her.

“Fuck,” Cassian swore. Invisible hands clasped around his ass, tugging him deeper—deeper. Everything in him tightened as Nesta crashed around him, and that siren called to him, singing her name, over and over as pleasure clawed at him, desperate to whip out of him.

Nesta, Nesta, Nesta.

Cassian launched at her neck, his teeth sinking deep enough to claim as Nesta cried out, her body trembling as he continued to thrust into her, wringing out her release at the same time he desperately clambered towards his own.

He managed to pull out just in time, his teeth still deep in her neck, his release spilling hot onto her stomach in bursts of pleasure.

And even though Cassian had vowed to bite her and Nesta had already marked him, he found himself apologising at the red, angry dents in her skin. How was it that he couldn’t bare to hurt her but biting her neck was a completely different story?

“Sorry,” Cassian rasped. His mouth was as dry as a desert as he gingerly touched his fingers to the marks, but Nesta’s fingers clasped around his, halting him. Then she raised her other hand and brushed her knuckles over the identical marking on his. Reminding him that she’d done the same—had been the first to do it.

“I liked it,” Nesta admitted brazenly, but she didn’t stop him from dragging his tongue over the marks. Shivered instead. Held his head to her.

“That was intense,” Cassian rasped eventually against her ear, after the quiet had settled over them like a blanket. He nuzzled at her neck again, unable to help it—just one more precious moment like this until he had to pull away.

When Cassian pulled back to meet Nesta’s eyes, he found that the blue bled back into her irises. “It was always going to be intense,” she replied frankly.

Then Nesta looked down at her body, as if she’d only just remembered how he’d marked her in a different way. “You didn’t have to do that—pull out. I can take a tonic.”

Cassian hadn’t wanted to pull out at all—and neither had that tie which bound them together—but that wasn’t the point. “I’d rather be cautious,” he explained—a little too shortly, because Nesta bristled.

“Neither of us have had a tonic in a while,” Cassian elaborated when Nesta’s expression hardened.

He tried not to think about how his body had been desperate to spill inside of her. For him to press as deep as he possibly could until he was spent.

Climbing off of the bed, Cassian disappeared down the hallway and into the bathroom. When he returned, he was holding a wet towel.

“A while?” Nesta queried, picking up their conversation, as he began to clean her up.

Cassian cocked an eyebrow, but he didn’t dare meet her eyes lest she read him. His shoulders turned rigid at the thought. “Have you been sneaking people in and out of the bungalow that I’m not aware of?” he asked.

They both knew that Cassian would tear any male she brought back to the bungalow to pieces, but neither of them voiced it.

“You go back to Velaris,” Nesta accused. “You visit the other camps.”

For a moment, Cassian stared at her. Did she believe that he’d been fucking other fae? She had taunted him in Velaris the other day, but Cassian had thought that it was just their extended, agonising tussle of foreplay.

Perhaps you should go in search of some female company tonight.

Cassian managed to huff a breath, but it wasn’t one of amusement. He knew that his expression was steely as he said, “I told you that I don’t sleep with Illyrians. And I haven’t been fucking around in Velaris.”

From the way Nesta’s expression darkened, Cassian wasn't sure she believed him.

She opened her mouth to throw back a retort, but Cassian wanted the discussion to end. If she knew he’d barely touched another female since he’d met her, she’d run the other way. It was too intense a confession for someone who didn’t know what they wanted.

“It was self-inflicted,” Cassian supplied, his tone flinty enough to warn her that he wasn’t willing to discuss the subject any further.

Climbing off of the bed to further his point, Cassian extended a hand towards her. Banished any of the rigidity to his posture. “Come stand in the tub with me.”

There was a sinful promise behind the order. Already Cassian could envisage how he’d press Nesta against the tiles, his lips trailing open mouthed kisses as he kneeled before her—

Nesta must have thought similarly, because the pleasure that sparked in his stomach was not his own. But still she studied him, her head cocked as if she was trying to figure him out. Her hair was a muss of golden brown, her skin glistening with sweat that Cassian wanted to lick off.

Nesta parted her lips, taking stock, but Cassian didn’t allow her to speak. “I’ll make it worth your while,” he vowed. Meant it. Because already he was turning hard again, that desire to have her roaring.

He’d known this would happen. Knew that finally being inside of her wouldn’t sate him but stoke the embers into flames. But Cassian didn’t hide it—utterly unashamed of this need for her. From the way Nesta’s nostrils billowed, he knew she'd marked the change in his scent.

Nesta’s eyes flicked to his cock and the she-devil smirked, her lips curving in a way that had Cassian thinking about how they might wrap around him—how her tongue might feel, how warm she’d be…

In one supple movement, Nesta stood. Took his hand, her slim fingers threading around his large ones. Raised her chin and levelled him with a smoky blue gaze that promised wicked, wonderful things. “Then lead the way, general.”

Tags (let me know if you want to be added/removed): @arinbelle @superspiritfestival @sayosdreams @perseusannabeth @mylittlebigplanet @biggestwingspan-az @bellsqueen @ekaterinakostrova @bookstantrash @prophecyerised @rainbowcheetah512 @awesomelena555 @wannawriteyouabook @lovelynesta @melphss @darkshadowqueensrule @laylaameer01 @a-trifling-matter @grouchycritic7794 @thalia-2-rose @champanheandluxxury @swankii-art-teacher @princessconsuela02 @lavendergoomsltd @princessofmerchants-reads @jeakat @sjm-things @imwritingthesewords @nestable @inejbrekkxr @silvernesta @inyourmindeye @amelie775 @helen-the-weirdo @pizzaneverdisappoints @wishfulimaginings @trash-for-nessian @my-fan-side @sophilightwood @valkyriesupremacy @vidalinav @onceupona-chaos @inardour @thesunremembersyourface @teagoddess99 @ellies-iced-coffee @nehemikkele @misswonderflower

[jimothy-hopkins]

Meddling Kids. Part III.

WARNING! This work contains mentions of drug use, violence, and other things that may disturb or trigger some fields. If you cannot handle content like this, I ask that you just click away. Please read at your own risk, thank you.

This is apart of a Manhunt/Bully crossover series. Please enjoy and be aware that because of the nature of Manhunt that this may not be suitable for everyone. I hope you enjoy this part!

Edward sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he sat in the room, the three sophomores surrounding him.

“Ok, fine. I’ll help you. If you ever tell anyone, I’ll have all three of you in more debt than the whole continent combined.” He spat.

“Alright, got it,” Jimmy nodded.

“But how are we-” Pete started.

“You’re gonna do a drug deal tonight for us, Eddie boy,” Gary interrupted.

“What?” It’s already late,”

“Fun fact, I don’t give a shit! Cause someone’s probably dead, and you probably have a connection to the guy who did it,”

“Stop saying she’s dead. Alice is not dead,”

“Ok, that’s enough,” Jimmy said, “chill out. Ed, you’re gonna do what we say as we promised. You’re gonna text your guy, get your money, and let us follow you.”

“Fine,” The older student stood. Gary smirked.

“W-wait, I don’t know if I wanna do this. I could get in trouble,” Pete spoke.

“Then you sit here and make sure nobody comes in,” Gary said, “I’ll call if anything happens,”

“Oh, ok. Gary, uh, you guys be safe,” Pete called as they walked out.

Jimmy threw a peace sign as they walked out, entering the dark snowy night. Snow crunched under their feet as they allowed Edward to get a distance ahead of them. Gary noticeably shivered underneath his sleek jacket. Jimmy moved closer to be of some use for warmth and to make sure someone would jump at Gary.

The trio walked a long way to New Coventry. A sense of paranoia overtook Jimmy. He could sense that Gary felt it too. They were now shoulder to shoulder. Jimmy cringed from his aching ears and squinted his eyes to look ahead at Edward. They’d done a job of following so far. The police hadn’t even spotted than, and it had been a while since curfew started. They ducked behind cars, trash cans, and bike stands to evade detection. Edward had even jumped a few good times in surprise when they managed to dart into his field of vision on accident.

They darted into a back alley as Edward slowed his walk, crouching close to one another and peering out from the wall.

Gary looked ahead, watching as Ed stopped in front of a man dressed in dark clothing. He analyzed his face and noticed he was wearing skull makeup, like how he’d done on Jimmy for Halloween.

“You came late tonight, pretty boy,” The man greeted.

“Mhm, I know,” Ed replied softly.

“You’re lucky I wasn’t busy with my altar tonight. Otherwise, I’d leave you hangin’,”

“You have it, right?”

“Of course, of course, here,” He handed him the drug in exchange for the cash. “Anyways, what are you doing Friday?”

“Homework, college applications,” Edward answered.

“You really are takin’ the Ivy league seriously, huh?”

“It’s not my choice. It’s my parents,” Ed replied.

“You really do let em’ stomp on you, don’t you?” He asked, leaning closer to the teenager.

“It’s all or nothing. I want a future,” He stepped back.

“You can have a future, with us. You know us, you might as well be one of our own. You’ve already sinned, just embrace it, my friend. Your soul is tainted,” He leaned in, his hands gripping Edward’s hips. The man leans into the teenager’s face.

“Stop. I don’t fuck with you like that.” Edward demanded sharply as he pushed the man back.

“Fine, be that way. But you’re gonna meet me in the Devil’s Lounge Friday night pretty boy,” The shady man snarled.

“Ok, I’ll be there,” Edward sighed.

The man gave a nod as he walked off, disappearing behind a corner. Jimmy and Gary stood up to follow Edward as he sped past them. They wound through the icy streets, trying not to slip before they halted at the edge of new Coventry.

“Ed, you good?’ Jimmy asked, concerned.

“What’s the Devil’s Lounge?” Gary added.

“I’m fine Jimmy, and I’ll tell you guys tomorrow. I’m tired and don’t feel good,” Ed mumbled as he strayed away.

Jimmy and Gary watched the senior walk away, left with a million unanswered questions.

[honeyxmonkey]

On the topic of the last anons ask, I'd like to delve a bit deeper into the relationship Douxie and Superman actually have in the DC crossover.

So like anon said, they personally think that Supes and Douxie would have a mutually respectful relationship and while I do think there is some truth to that I'd like to let you all in on how my brain thinks they'd interact with eachother!

So the first time they actually meet is when Diana brings this "kid" to the watchtower. No one knows why, nobody even knows who this kid is, but he and Diana seem rather friendly with eachother so nobody really questions it!

Diana is showing the kid around, explaining quite alot of things and asking his opinion on certain aspects of things to the stability of the watchtower, to the airtightness of the team.

And the reason she brought him up there is because she recognizes his part in keeping the world safe and he's been doing it alot longer than anyone here has so she wants his opinion on how they're running things. After all, his own team works so well together.

Douxie ends up giving legitimate criticisms on some things and one of the things he says catches Superman's attention.

"Maybe you all should focus less on what the news expects from you and more on what the world needs." He says after Diana asked him about what he thinks of the whole bad media thing.

"Woah, hey." Superman cuts in, brows furrowed. "You're saying we should just ignore the government and everyone in charge and do whatever the hell we want?"

Douxie gives him a once over and very clearly rolls his eyes. "Sir, no intention of disrespect but if youre always so focused on the government, you're going to miss the little things." He crosses his arms. "Are you even aware of what's really going on in the world?'

"Excuse me?"

Douxie once again rolls his eyes and looks at Diana. "Dont tell him."

Wonder Woman opens her mouth to protest but Douxie cuts her off with a hand on her shoulder and a confident smile. "My team can handle those things. We'll let you guys..." he looks at Superman again and the sarcastic smile he gives him makes the man's blood boil. "Handle the "big guns"."

"Dont tell me what?" Superman demands.

Douxie gives him a flat look. "If you needed to know I'd tell you."

"And who the hell are you to decide what we are and aren't aloud to know?"

Douxie sighs, crossing his arms. "Trust me, if you knew what the world was really like, I don't think you could handle it." He pauses for a moment. "Actually I'm not sure if I trust you to handle it."

"What the hell does that mean!?"

"It means stick to what you know, and we'll stick to what we know." Douxie said, scooting past him and walking down the hall again. He looked over his shoulder at Diana and smiled. "Thanks for the tour Diana. We'll make sure to call if we ever need some extra muscle."

"Goodluck Hisirdoux!" Diana waves to him, blatantly ignoring the glare she feels Clark giving her.

"What the hell was that about? Who's the kid?" He demands.

"Hes not a kid." Diana insists. "Besides, he's got his own things to deal with in keeping earth safe. It's best to just let him do what he needs to do."

"Thats our job, Diana."

"He does it... differently."

There's a pause.

"I hope you don't mean killing people."

"He doesn't do that."

"Then WHAT."

"Clark, if he says it's on a need to know basis then I trust him on that. Besides, I'm sure if you knew what he did..." she trails off... "nevermind the point is to not judge a book by its cover. He's a good man, and a trustworthy ally. We have an agreement to call on eachother's teams if we ever need help."

"And who exactly is his team?"

Diana just shrugs. "I've never met them but Douxie trusts them and that's good enough for me."

So yeah. Their first meeting is already very tense. Douxie has a tendency to not trust the League with the knowledge of the trolls because he knows they're going to want to take over the whole operation and they wouldn't know a damn thing about how to protect it. He knows they would like it even less that a human teenager is the Trollhunter and would try and make the entire Arcadia team step down. Douxie being the only adult on the team doesn't really help when he doesn't even look like an adult 😅. So his next best bet is to let the League handle all the alien threats and the corrupt business men, and the Guardians will handle all the secret magic stuff. He doesn't want them to know about the larger world of magic if he can help it. That's his plan atleast. Things go awry when a potentially world ending catastrophe forces the Arcadia gang to fight alongside the Justice League. That's not a good day for Douxie.

[miraculouswolf99]

Breaking Into The Watchtower Part 1

Miraculous Ladybug-DC Universe crossovers are some of my favorite fanfictions. They are just a good match. I especially love ones where the Justice League either ignores the Paris situation or one of the League members gets the messages for help and doesn’t believe them. Mostly, it’s the Flash, Guy Gardner, Green Lantern, or Booster Gold.

In this story, some of the miraculous have changed hands for my story. There will be new holders and different holders for old miraculous. All of my OC characters will also be included. Nathaniel has the fox, Marc has the turtle, Rose has the horse, Juleka has the tiger, and Alix will have the bunny.

*****

“This is most definitely not something that I would ever have thought that I would ever do,” White Wolf says.

“We are magical teenagers that use the power of mini gods and mystical jewelry,” Beautifly says. “Your statement pretty much sums up every day of our lives.”

“Trust me, I never thought that I would be doing anything like this before I met Plagg,” Cat Noir said.

“At least I can cross this off my bucket list,” Ladybug giggled.

“Why is the name of the Olympian gods would this be on your bucket list,” White Wolf looked at the teen hero weirdly.

“I put it on after they started to ignore our cries for help,” Ladybug crossed her arms. “Or, when it was made obvious that they were ignoring us, at least.”

“How much sleep have you gotten lately,” Beautifly asks. “You only get this sassy when you haven’t slept in about two days.”

“I remember going to sleep on Wednesday,” Ladybug put her hand on her chin as she started thinking.

“Uh… It’s Saturday,” White Wolf deadpanned.

“Oh,” was all Ladybug could say.

“If you don’t go right to sleep after we get back, I am sending Plagg over to destroy every device you have to make sure you are not distracted and can finally sleep,” Cat Noir threatened.

“But what if there is an akuma,” Ladybug protested.

“Then we will have to make sure that Cat Noir saves his power so that he can Cataclysm the moth when it comes out of the akumatized object,” White Wolf says.

“And the damage,” Ladybug continued to protest.

“We will get to that when we get there,” White Wolf said.

“You are sometimes too selfless for your own good,” Beautifly shook her head.

“Yeah, she tends to be like that,” Cat Noir chuckled. “Why do you think I force myself between her and the villains we face when she tries to protect me because she will take the hit for me. But she needs to be the one that the attack does not hit because she is the one that purifies the akuma.”

“We are a very colorful crew,” Beautifly giggled.

“Says the butterfly girl whose hero outfit is almost entirely black,” White Wolf said.

“Not my fault that Flutter is a monarch butterfly kwami,” Beautifly shrugged.

“I certainly wish that I had some color on my suit,” Cat Noir says. “While the black makes my eyes pop, the color doesn’t match my personality at all. Why couldn’t Plagg be a tabby cat or a white cat?”

“Because he is the literal god of bad luck and nobody thinks of either of those two other kinds of cats when bad luck comes to mind,” Ladybug stated. “Deal with it, Chaton.”

“Yeah, you really need some sleep before you become permanently sassy,” Beautifly says.

“I blame Hawkmoth and his never-ending late-night akumas,” White Wolf stated. “My ears are still ringing from that banshee akuma he created last week.”

“And talk about unoriginal,” Cat Noir rolled his eyes. “Scream Queen was probably the most obvious choice of name in the history of villain names.”

“Even more so than that Poison Ivy woman in Gotham,” Beautifly asked.

“Well, she could have called herself Mother Nature,” Cat Noir shrugged.

“Point made,” Beautifly said.

The four then looked at the rest of their teams preparing themselves for what was going to be done. The Greek hero team had stayed the same throughout the three years of fighting, but the French team had changed. Their current members were Vulpix, Emerald Turtle, Queen Bee, Viperion, Lady Unicorn, King Monkey, Ryuko, Shadow Cat, and Bunnix. The last two being the newest members of the hero team. The Greek team was Gladiator with the grizzly bear miraculous, Tigress with the leopard miraculous, and Ocean Mage with the mermaid miraculous. The last one being the only person to be currently using a magical creature miraculous on the planet.

All of the heroes were getting ready in their own ways. Ryuko, Ocean Mage, and Viperion were meditating. King Monkey, Bunnix, Tigress, and Gladiator were all getting themselves hyped up for the mission. Queen Bee was trying to find a way to take off her gloves to file her nails. Vulpix and Emerald Shell were cuddling, comforting each other, and probably trying really hard not to start making out. The same could be said about Shadow Cat and Lady Unicorn. Those four were always the more timid ones of the group, even though all of them were amazing heroes.

“Alright, does everyone remember their parts of the plan,” Ladybug asked them, snapping them out of their trances.

“I will make sure that everything goes smoothly and no one truly gets hurt,” Viperion says.

“White Wolf, Lady Unicorn, and I take out our biggest worries to being discovered before we are ready,” Bunnix added.

“The rest of us force them into a position where they have to listen to us,” Gladiator said.

The rest of the team nodded in agreement. Some of them were still looking nervous about what they were about to do.

“Are you sure doing this is the right thing to do,” Lady Unicorn asked. “We could get into serious trouble for this.”

“We wouldn’t be doing this at all if they stopped ignoring us,” Tigress crossed her arms. “Even with all these miraculous being active, Hawmoth’s akumas are getting more and more dangerous.”

“He is also akumatizing more dangerous people like con artists, martial artists, and policemen,” Ocean Mage says. “What’s to stop him from going all Scarlet Moth and sending his moths to a prison if he gets desperate enough?”

“That is why we need their help,” Ladybug said. “If contacting them through official means does not help, then we must do what we have to.”

“I just hope that we don’t get labeled as criminals for this,” Beautifly said.

-----------------------------

If there was one thing that Robin currently was, it was bored. He had to stop himself from yawning as he sat in another long and boring meeting of the Justice League.

One would think that a young hero like him would not be a part of one of these meetings. But this was less of a war room and more of a meeting between all heroes to discuss general things involving heroes in general and not entirely league business. It was always the same things being discussed in these meetings. Egotistical politicians trying to control the league, villains breaking out of prison again, as well as discussing potential new members of the League and the Young Justice team.

Other than Robin, the rest of the Bat-family was there as well. Batman, Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, Oracle, Spoiler, Orphan, Batwing, and even Batwoman. The Super family was also there. Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, and the former Superboy that now called himself Krypton. Robin smirked at how Conner had finally broken the trend of having “Super” in his hero name. He may be a clone, he knew that both Kara and Jon both adored him. The other young heroes that were there were Red Arrow, Artemis, Aqualad, Tempest, Miss. Martian, Beast Boy, Starfire, Zatanna, Kid Flash, and Impulse.

And other than Batman and Superman, there were also the mentors of the other young heroes as well. Green Arrow, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Dr.Fate, and the Flash. The other adult heroes in the room were Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Wonder Woman, Sparton, Black Canary, Red Tornado, all three Green Lanterns, Black Lightning, Captain Marvel, Captain Atom, the Atom, and Katanna.

As Robin looked around, he noticed that he was not the only bored-looking young hero. The entire Bat-family looked to be wanting to be anywhere else, especially since they lived in a city where a crime was committed every five seconds. But the other heroes that looked bored were Superboy, Krypton, Red Arrow, Aqualad, and Beast Boy. They were all probably like him. They were excited to be part of league meetings until it was discovered that there was a lot more politics involved than actual hero work.

“Does anyone have anything else that they would like to add,” Superman asked the room.

“How about we talk about actually saving people instead of dealing with politicians,” Nightwing muttered, making the Bat-family hide their snickers.

“Especially that psycho Lex Luthor,” Krypton muttered from his place next to Nightwing.

“Well, if that is all…” Superman was about to wrap up the meeting.

“Wait,” Zatanna shot up from her seat, her hands on her head. “I sense something.”

All the younger heroes were all now thinking how something interesting was finally going to happen during one of these meetings. But the heroes were also all reaching for their weapons if they had them.

“What is it,” Wonder Woman asked the magician, her hand on her sword.

“There is an incoming magical…” Zatanna was cut off.

A bright blue portal opened up right under her feet. She fell in before she could finish her warning. The portal closed right after she fell into it.

“What in the world,” Flash gasped.

“ZATANNA,” the members of Young Justice yelled their former team member’s name.

“Oracle,” Batman did not even have to say the entire order.

“I’m on it,” the wheelchair-bound hero immediately started typing on her holographic computer. “She’s… I can’t find her.”

“What do you mean you can’t find her,” Captain Atom demanded to know.

“It’s like she vanished into thin air,” Oracle continued typing. “She’s nowhere in the Watchtower, or on Earth, not even on my planet in our galaxy. There is no sign of Zatanna anywhere.”

“She managed to say that it was something magical that was approaching,” Wonder Woman says.

“Dr. Fate, can you do something,” Superman requested of the lord of order.

The master sorcerer stood up from his seat. While he, personally, did not care for Zatanna other than a fellow user of the mystic arts, his current host body was that of her father. So finding her will hopefully silence all the yelling that Zatara is currently doing inside of the helmet.

But before the lord of order could do anything, another portal opened up behind him. But unlike the bright blue of the first one, this portal was a ring of blue surrounding a white portal. Something had quickly reached through and Dr.Fate was instantly turned into an ice statue. An invisible figure sneaked through the portal before it closed.

This caused all the other league members and Young Justice members to all jump and, drawing their weapons or preparing their powers. They all looked around and were on guard just in case another portal opened up.

“Oracle,” Batman ordered her again.

She was typing as quickly as humanly possible.

“I can’t find anyone else in the Watchtower,” she said, still typing. “I’ve run heat scans, x-ray scans, even the program to search for invisible opponents. I still can not find anyone else in the Watchtower.”

A soft tune suddenly played throughout the room. It was like a theme song for a peaceful day in the Fall played on a flute. A ball of light soon soared to the end of the room and brightly flashed. When the flash died down, the heroes were all shocked to see a message had been written in light in the air.

“We Just Want To Talk.”

It floated there for about a minute before Superman and Maritan Manhunter flew over to the message to examine it. But the moment that one of them touched it, it vanished in a burst of orange smoke-like light.

“It was an illusion,” Nightwing was the first to realize it.

“Maybe that is how they are hiding,” Red Robin opened up his own holographic screen over his glove and started typing. “Under an illusion.”

“And if they are magical like Zatanna said, it would not be possible to detect them since the technology that can detect magic has not been invented yet,” Oracle added.

“There is no such thing as magic,” yelled out Kid Flash.

Young Justice rolled their eyes, used to the constant rants that the speedster goes on about his disbelief in magic. It certainly annoyed those like Aqualad and Tempest, who both were born in Atlantis and attended the conservatory of sorcery there. Few other magical heroes tolerated the loud-mouth. Which was why heroes like Phantom and his brother Gold Siren wanted nothing to do with the team. (Reference to my fanfictions on Wattpad, Phantom Music and Home.)

“Try to find out where the illusion came from,” Superman ordered.

“You could try looking right in front of you,” a female voice was suddenly heard.

The heroes all turned and saw three masked teenagers standing there. Two boys and a girl. 

The first boy was a redhead with his bangs covering his right eye. He had on a fox-themed skin-tight orange and white outfit with red boots, gloves, and a red jacket. He also had real fox ears and a real fox tail as well. A flute was strapped to his back.

The boy next to him had black hair with green tips, which matched his turtle-themed outfit. The outfit also had a dark green leather jacket and boots with a green shield on his back, going with the goggle-like mask over his eyes.

The girl was blond with a single black streak in her ponytail. Her outfit was definitely themed by bumblebees. But unlike the shoes of the two next to her, her shoes had a slight heal to them. Like a two-inch-high wedge heel. Around her waist was a spinning top on a string.

“What have you done to our allies,” Captain Atom demanded of them.

“They are perfectly fine,” the turtle boy informed them.

“Why should we believe you,” Robin held his katana in his hand.

“Because we need your help and harming your fellow heroes would not help our situation,” the fox boy crossed his arms.

“What could you possibly need from us,” Black Lightning’s hands sparked with his powers.

“How about for you to stop ignoring us while we have been fighting a terrorist for three years,” the bee girl yelled at them.

“We also are not lying,” the fox boy said. “We have no reason to lie when surrounded by most of the world’s heroes.”

Before they could say anything else, all three were surrounded by separate green spheres that floated them up into the air. The Green Lanterns all had their rings pointed at one of the masked teens.

“This is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous,” the bee girl complained as she crossed her arms.

“I got captured by the original Green Lantern,” the fox boy looked to be almost fanboying inside of his sphere.

“Lucky, I got that class clown Guy Gardner,” the turtle boy almost seemed to pout.

“Hey,” Guy Gardner protested, offended.

“Why are you here, where is Zatanna, and what did you do to Dr. Fate,” Superman demanded of the three as he flew close to them.

“You know, you are a lot less threatening than you think you are,” the bee girl stated with a smirk. “By the way, whoever told you that underwear on the outside of your pants was a good choice needs to be thrown into fashion jail.”

Most of the Young Justice team had to stop themselves from laughing. Even Superboy, Supergirl, and Krypton were trying not to laugh. They had no idea who this girl was, but she was certainly sassy.

“How did you get into the Watchtower undetected,” Superman continued to demand answers from them.

“That is for us to know,” the fox boy started.

“And you to find out,” the turtle boy finished.

The smirks the three had told the league something, alright. Batman was the first to realize what it meant.

“There are more of them,” he said.

As if him saying that was their cue to come in, three more masked teens almost seemed to materialize into the room. A guy in a monkey-themed outfit hit his Ruyi Jingu Bang against the ground and then threw it into the air.

“Uproar,” he yelled.

He threw his now glowing staff into the air, the staff letting out a flash as it spun in the air. With a swift flick of her lasso, Wonder Woman grabbed the weapon before it could fall back into the monkey boy’s hand. But something else fell into his hands that they did not see.

But then came the second masked teen, who looked like he had been born of the ocean. He took out what seemed to be a hilt made out of sapphire. Water came out of the hilt as the masked boy flicked his wrist, the water forming into a whip. Before they could move, the teen whipped all of the Green Lantern’s hands at once. Pulling his whip, the masked teen caused their hands to collide together.

That was when the monkey boy threw the object that he had caught out of the air. Katana was close enough to try and slice through it with her sword, but she was intercepted by a second masked girl, this one appearing out of nowhere and seemed to have a tiger theme to her. Even if she was purple and black and not orange and black. Katana’s sword was met with a metal tiger-claw gauntlet. While they fought, a bunny-themed girl showed up and intercepted Green and Red Arrow, fighting both archers at once. Then, to the shock of the Green Lantern trio, a stuffed octopus child’s toy landed on their connected hands.

For a moment, nothing happened and they wondered why a stuffed animal had been thrown at them. But then their rings all started to malfunction at once. The rings stopped glowing and all three trapped teens were released from their bubbles. And since the rings were no longer working, the Lanterns all fell to the ground without their ability to fly.

“We’re teenagers, not stupid,” the bee girl smirked.

No longer wanting to underestimate the masked teens, the big hitters of the league all started to move toward them. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Red Tornado, and Captain Atom.

“Venom,” the bee girl shouted.

The top in her hand seemed to grow a bit in size and start glowing. As Superman flew at her, she dodged him and managed to touch him with her top. He fell to the ground and did not move from his punching pose. He was paralyzed.

“Confusion,” a female voice shouted.

Wonder Woman turned around to almost immediately be scratched on her arm by a girl in a leopard-themed outfit. The scratch on her arm glowed purple and the hero suddenly became very dizzy and could not seem to focus. She had never been drunk before, but she was sure this was probably how it felt.

Captain Atom’s hands lit up as he aimed one of his energy blasts at the masked teens. As he was just about to blast, another masked teen appeared. This one was themed by a brown-furred bear. Probably a grizzly bear.

“Roar,” a male voice yelled just as Captain Atom blasted.

The bear boy’s fist lit up gold and he punched right into the energy beam. To the surprise of the league, he was able to keep the beam at bay with a single punch.

Red Tornado was about to throw one of his twisters when he was hit on his robot head by a thrown horseshoe. It bounced and flew around like a boomerang-gone-wild until it landed back in the hand of a horse-themed girl.

All of the heroes and masked teens in the room were either fighting or dodging the attacks of another from one of the other groups.

“Enough,” a male and female voice shouted at once.

Even the Justice League froze as the voices boomed throughout the room. Standing on the other side of the room were six more masked teens. Three boys and three girls. The two that had shouted were a ladybug-themed girl and a boy with an icy wolf outfit. The boy standing next to the ladybug girl looked to be related to Catwoman while the girl next to the wolf boy was like a butterfly turned human. The last two were a snake boy and a girl that looked to be dragon-themed.

“All of you, front and center, now,” the ladybug girl ordered.

All of the animal-themed teens stopped what they were doing immediately. They put their weapons away and walked over to join the others at her sides.

Wonder Woman looked at the group for a few moments. The drunk feeling had been lifted from her and she could focus. There was something about them that was making an old memory of her’s rise to the surface. An old story that her mother used to tell her about when she had been friends with, who she had called, an adorable and wise little creature known as a kwami. A creature that she also remembered was bound to a magical object called a miraculous.

“The ladybug and black cat are active once more,” she gasped.

The league looked at the Amazon princess in shock. She actually had an idea who these teens were.

“We thought that you would be the one to recognize our magic, Wonder Woman,” the ladybug girl softly smiles.

Wonder Woman approached the group, putting her sword away as she did. And surprising the league again, she bowed to the ladybug girl and cat boy. The two of them and the wolf boy and butterfly girl bow back.

“It is an honor to meet the wielder of the ladybug miraculous,” Wonder Woman said.

“The honor is all ours, daughter of Hippolyta,” the ladybug girl says. “Tikki says to tell your mother ‘hi’ for her.”

Wonder Woman smiled at that.

“Would you care to explain exactly what is going on,” Batman ordered them, crossing his arms. “Starting with where Zatanna is and what you did to Dr. Fate and Superman.”

The bunny girl got out a pocket watch from her pocket. She checks the time.

“We can answer the first question now,” she smirked. “We’re right on time.”

She put her watch away and then threw her hands forward yelling “Burrow.” Out popped the same type of portal that Zatanna had disappeared through. And seconds after the portal was opened, out fell the magician.

“What just happened,” Zatanna immediately asked.

“The rest of your comrades will be fine somewhere between five to ten minutes,” the butterfly girl says.

“Before we go into the full explanation, do you guys have a bathroom in this place by any chance,” the leopard girl asked.

[writingtoforgetreality]

Speak Of The Devil (Malcolm Bright x Winchester!Reader) | Prodigal Son/Supernatural Crossover

[Prodigal Son-Masterlist], [Supernatural-Masterlist]

Summary: What started as a normal case for the NYPD ended in you needing help from your family. Malcolm had never met your brothers & they had no idea you were dating. Things were bound to get complicated, it was inevitable. Still, you had to focus on this case before another person got killed.

Words: 5,557

Warnings: spoilers for 2x02 (doesn’t follow the actual plot obviously), murder, demons, language, confused Malcolm, lil hint at Destiel (barely there, could be missed if you don’t pay attention - sorry, I couldn’t help myself), I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun while writing something

If you like my work & wanna support me: a coffee would be highly appreciated ❤

The NYPD was assigned to solve a “creepy ass case”, as JT so lovingly put it. As Malcolm & you got to the crime scene, you understood what your fellow coworker had warned you about. Ugh, you hated churches with your guts. Well, that was not entirely true. But whenever a murder happened on a holy ground, nothing good ever came out of it. That was what you experienced before you started working for the police. Before that…you also worked for the police somehow? Just, they were not aware of that & you might have done some criminal things. For the greater good, though! Your brothers & you had saved thousands of people. They still did. You just needed to get out of this life & see if there was more for you to achieve. And there was. Not only did you find a great family who was also your team, at the same time you found Malcolm, your boyfriend.

Back to the case. Walking into a crime scene had always been bizarre to you. It showed you how close you still were to murder, even though you promised your brothers to distance yourself from it entirely. Technically, you did. This was different, though. At least you told yourself so. Gil, JT, Dani & Edrisa were already inspecting the scene when you two walked in. Oh no. This could not be good. The image in front of you seemed familiar & if it were not inappropriate to roll your eyes at a dead person, you would do it. Gil briefly explained the situation to you. Apparently the victim had been a member of the church for 30 years. The Lieutenant & Malcolm interrogated Sister Agnes. She was the one who found the body. There was another thing bothering you, so you did not really pay attention to whatever she was saying. Your focus was solely on JT, who had been through way too much to stand here & act as if everything was fine. A slight touch on his shoulder made him turn his head in your direction.

“Hey, you okay?” of course you were concerned about him. He was family, after all.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” he brushed you off as if he did not know what point you were trying to get across.

“Really? Because usually when Malcolm says he’s fine…well, he’s everything but.” a chuckle lightened the mood a little. You had to keep a closer eye on JT for the time being. Just in case.

“Our victim here performed an exorcism.” Malcolm’s statement let your eyes snap back to where he was standing. Edrisa smiled excitedly at him. This woman…She was the sweetest soul. Could be annoying, too. But in a sweet & loving way. Maybe she should turn down her excitement for murder. Who were you kidding? Your boyfriend was probably worse when it came to that. Wanting to have a closer look at the book Malcolm was referring to, you put your gloves on & carefully walked over to him. Trying not to mess up any possible clues left behind by the killer.

“Can I have a look?” you gestured to the small book & Malcolm handed it over to you. Shit. If you remembered correctly, there was a similar one back at the bunker. A look inside the pages confirmed your assumption. No need to freak out right away. There were tons of crazy people out there. Just because of this murder in this church & this book did not mean that there was anything supernatural involved. You just hoped it would stay that way. For everyone’s sake.

Your face fell when Edrisa said that there was a note left behind, written in blood. To the others, it looked like a sign without meaning. It looked familiar to you but you could not quite pinpoint where you remembered it from. Sister Agnes’ words made you stop in your tracks.

“Abaddon.” she breathed out. Sure, why the hell not? Okay, maybe this case was something for your brothers. But wait a damn minute…last time you checked, Abaddon was stabbed with the First Blade. She could not possibly be back, could she?

“Now we know our killer’s name.” Malcolm’s words gained the attention of the entire team. There was no way he had everything figured out already. You knew he was a great profiler but even that would have been too fast for him.

“Oh? Who is it?” Gil asked intrigued.

“You know.” Malcolm paused for a few moments. Probably for dramatic effect but what did you know? “The devil.” you could not help but laugh at his words. Great, now everyone was looking at you weirdly. Oh, he made a joke. Of course he did. Sometimes you forgot that you were not an active part of the hunting life anymore. A few coughs from you stopped the awkward tension in the room. At least a bit.

In no way did you want to defend Lucifer. He had made your life literal hell one too many times. But even he would not go as far & do something as cruel as this. Again, last time you checked, he was dead. But death did not agree with Lucifer. How many times had he died? You probably should not be the one to judge. You were not better by any means.

Excusing yourself to get some fresh air, you grabbed your phone out of your pocket. Hopefully he would pick up. It had been a while since you last talked. The phone rang & rang & slowly you lost hope. Maybe he really was mad at you for being radio silent for so long.

“(Y/N)?” his voice startled you slightly.

“Sam! Uh, hi.” suddenly you turned shy.

“It’s so good to hear from you! How are you?” he was happy that you decided to call after so long.

“I’m good, thanks. Actually, I need to ask you for a favor…” you started.

“What is it? Everything alright?” Sam was growing concerned. Back then, you hated relying on another person, too stubborn to ask for help, because you wanted to do everything on your own.

“There’s a case here in New York…I believe it’s your kind. And I genuinely don’t think I can deal with this on my own.”

“But you’re safe, right?”

“I am, as safe as one can be.” you chuckled. Working for the police & all that. Not that you would tell Sam on the phone. If they were to come by, he would find out sooner or later. “I’ll send you the details, alright? Be here as fast as you can.”

“Okay, no problem. Take care, okay?”

“You too. See you soon.” wow, you were about to see your brothers again. Hopefully everything would be fine & nobody would rip your head off.

“See you, (Y/N).” Sam ended the call & you let out a breath you did not know you were holding.

The phone call should stay a secret for the time being. People breaking out in panic was everything but convenient. Besides, you did not need your team looking at you like you were a lunatic. Malcolm explained possession trance disorder when you joined everyone again. How could one human being know so much about so many unimportant things? Like, this man was a human dictionary. Looking over at Gil, you had to grin by how hard he was trying to make sense of what Malcolm was saying. Gil noticed you staring at him & gave you a look. The one that made you not want to mess with him. Still, you laughed shortly, you could not keep it in any longer. Malcolm gave you a questioning look but you simply shrugged him off by a wave of your hand.

The last interrogation of the day was with the guy who was currently doing the painting job inside the church. Unfortunately, you did not get any more information. Everything he told you, you had already heard from the others. Basically, after interrogating everyone, you were certain that this was not a common case for the NYPD. And you were more than happy that your brothers were on their way to come over. How would you explain any of this to Malcolm? He knew you had two brothers but you had also told him that you were not necessarily talking, only when it came to emergencies. Great, Malcolm would freak out. Even more so than normal, probably.

“Why do we have to visit your father again?” you shot the question at Malcolm as you were walking over the psychiatric yard, looking for Martin. He rolled his eyes at you, exhausted by your constant questioning.

“I’ve explained it a thousand times, (Y/N).”

“Well, I don’t see how any of this is connected to him.” you argued. Whenever Malcolm had the great idea to visit his father, you tagged along. Simply because you knew it was always hard for him & you wanted to support him wherever you could. Right now, though, you were losing your patience. After all, you knew the cause of this case. But your brothers had yet to arrive so you should play along for now.

“Malcolm, my boy. (Y/N)! Always nice to see you.” Martin started, excited to see his son accompanied by you. The first time you visited Martin, he took an immediate liking to you. Probably because he could see that you were good for Malcolm & his son meant the world to him. Still, he was a narcissistic psychopath. Remembering clearly how he had told you that everyone had flaws during your first meeting. Ah, good times.

“I wish I could say the same, Dr. Whitly.” a sarcastic smile plastered on your face. From then on, you let Malcolm do the talking, not really paying attention to what he was saying. Your thoughts were with your brothers, hoping they would get their asses here quickly before you had to endure more of this bullshit. It was frustrating when you knew how to solve this case but there was nobody you could talk to, not about this. Malcolm desperately tried searching for a non-supernatural explanation. Of course he did. And you just stood by, not being helpful at all. Malcolm did notice your quietness but did not comment on it. Not when you were with his father. He would ask you later today, when you were back at home.

Sam sent you a message earlier today, asking for your address to meet up. This meant that they would not take much longer. The knock on the door was confirmation enough. Malcolm walked over, ready to open it & you did not have enough time to warn him. Oh, this was bound to be fun.

“Uh…Hello?” Malcolm, everyone. Great first impression.

“You’re not (Y/N).” you could make out Dean’s voice. Walking up to where Malcolm was standing in the doorway, you looked over his shoulder & smiled at your brothers. They really were here, it had been too long. Softly pushing Malcolm out of the way, you pulled both of them in a long overdue hug. It was only then when you realized how much you had missed them. Malcolm observed the interaction from afar, confusion obviously shown on his face. Right now, you could only focus on the men in front of you, though.

“It’s good to see you guys again.” smiling widely at them. Sam nodded at you & even Dean could not hide the small smile that was forming on his face.

“I’m sorry…Can I help you guys?” Malcolm spoke up, waiting for answers from either you or the strangers that now entered his apartment.

“No, but we’ll help you.” Dean walked over to Malcolm & patted his shoulder.

“Sam, Dean. This is Malcolm. Malcolm. These are my brothers.” you awkwardly introduced them to each other. Malcolm’s mouth hang open & he could not form a coherent sentence.

“Nice to meet you.” Sam held out his hand & it took Malcolm a second to shake it.

“Your brothers?” Malcolm whisper-yelled.

“Yeah?”

“And what are they doing here?” it was not his intention to sound rude, you knew that. Yet, he seemed rather frustrated because you clearly knew they were coming over but decided against telling your boyfriend.

“Remember when I told you that they had a similar job to ours?” Malcolm nodded at you. “This case we’re working on…that’s one of their kind. We wouldn’t be able to solve it without their help.” you tried explaining.

“We have the best working team out there! Of course we could’ve solved it alone!” but you simply shook your head at him. He would understand sooner or later.

Sam & Dean sat down on the expensive couch, Dean putting his feet on the coffee table. Good thing Malcolm did not care too much about his furniture. Malcolm & you brought drinks from the kitchen & sat across from them. Dean only eyed Malcolm, though. The inevitable was about to happen, you just hoped Malcolm would deliver accordingly.

“Who the hell are you?” he was judging Malcolm & neither Sam’s elbow nudging him nor your dirty look changed the way he looked at him. What could you say? Dean was very protective of you, even after ages of not talking.

“Malcolm Bright, profiler for the NYPD.” that made the brothers’ eyebrows raise. Thank God he did not let slip that he was the son of a serial killer.

“You’re working for the police?” Sam eyed Malcolm, now being confused as to why you would get them involved with the police even though you were aware of what they had been through.

“Well, yeah. I mean, (Y/N) & I met there.” Malcolm reasoned. Great, the cat was out of the bag now.

“Seriously (Y/N)?” Dean looked…disappointed?

“Okay, wait a minute. Let me explain!” Sam & Dean nodded at you to continue. “When I left you guys, I really tried to leave this life behind. I did. But I still wanted to help people. So…one thing came to another & then I was part of the NYPD &-“ you were interrupted by Dean, of course.

“And slept around with this guy?” Dean looked Malcolm over & you rolled your eyes at him. Malcolm looked offended but stayed silent.

“This guy is my boyfriend. And his name is Malcolm.” you defended him. “And I asked you to help me with this case, not with my dating life.” looking at Dean sternly, he nodded at you & apologized. He could get caught up in the heat of the moment but you had more important things to focus on.

Throughout your talk, Malcolm sent you questioning looks every now & then. You brushed him off, telling him you would explain it later. Sam & Dean got the message & tried keeping the talk casual. Clearly, your boyfriend did not know about the supernatural & it would be better if it stayed that way.

“Okay, so tomorrow, we’ll talk to Norman & see what we can find out.” Malcolm concluded after some long confusing hours.

“Sammy & I need some sleep after that long ass drive anyway. We’ll be meeting at his house first thing in the morning. Don’t be late.” when he said that, he stared at Malcolm. Rolling your eyes at his childish antics, you slapped him lightly on the chest.

“Do you wanna stay here for the night?” you asked when they were walking to the front door.

“Um, no. We’re checked in at the motel a few blocks down. Besides…” Dean gestured wildly with his hands. “This entire apartment looks too luxurious for us. How did you get so much money anyway?” Dean asked, again motioning at the expensive looking apartment.

“It’s actually Malcolm’s…I moved in not too long ago.” explaining to both of them. Sam nodded, looking satisfied with your current living situation. Dean, of course, had another thing to comment on.

“Oh wow, (Y/N)…Good catch.” winking at you, you shoved him out of the apartment, shaking your head.

“Good night!” you said before closing the door behind them, letting out a long sigh.

“Your brothers are…nice.” Malcolm started. You winced at his choice of words. In your head, it all worked out way better.

“I’m sorry, Mal…They can be quite protective.”

“No, it’s fine, I get it. They’re, uh, very into this religious thing, huh?”

“Oh, you have noooo idea.” you chuckled.

“Why didn’t you tell me they were coming by?”

“I don’t know…I guess I didn’t want you to think that you’re not good enough for this case.”

“But?”

“But I need you to trust me when I tell you that Sam & Dean are the ones who should handle this one.”

“I trust you, you know that, (Y/N). But you have to give me permission to say “I told you so.” when we solve this case without their help.” Malcolm held out his hand for you to shake.

“Deal.” you smiled at him. Your brothers & boyfriend might not become best friends but you did not expect them to. All you wanted was to get rid of whatever killed that priest. And you knew that the supernatural feared Sam & Dean. This would be over soon.

“You sure these are the same guys who were at our apartment yesterday?” Malcolm whispered to you when you were approaching two men in suits. Not their usual flannel attire, they were working a job after all.

“Just play along, alright?” Malcolm nodded at you. He promised to trust you on this & you seemed like you knew what you were doing.

“Detectives.” Dean greeted you.

“Shut up.” you threw back almost immediately. Sam & Dean laughed at your comment.

“I missed you, lil sis.” Dean said with a genuine tone, one that made you smile wildly.

“Alright, let’s do this.” Sam knocked on the door, waiting for it to open. They introduced themselves as FBI & showed the woman in the doorway their badges. Shooting Malcolm a look as if to say “Don’t ask.” & he just acted as if he had not seen this. The woman led you upstairs to a room. She warned you to not cross the salt lines. All of you nodded. Well, all but Malcolm. The poor man could not understand a thing. Sometimes you wished you were this innocent when it came to cases like this. If it were not for Malcolm, this would have felt like the good old days when you spent your time solving case after case with your brothers. Yeah, it had been dangerous & exhausting but you still liked being a hunter. Also, the three of you were one hell of a team.

The door opened & you were met with countless geometrical lines made out of salt. Because a simple circle would not do the job or what? Fucking show-off. Careful not to mess with the salt, the four of you stepped inside the dark room. Norman’s back was facing you. While Sam & Dean simply took in the room to check for any indicators of anything supernatural, Malcolm started interrogating Norman. You signaled the boys to let him do his job.

“The salt keeps him out.” suddenly, Norman’s voice was way deeper than when he first started talking. Weird guy. Still, you did not think it was him.

“Who?” Malcolm asked in a calm voice. He was good at this. Even though he almost always got himself killed.

“The demon.” Norman said. What the hell was wrong with him? Malcolm turned around to you & found the three of you rolling your eyes. Really desperate if a person wanted to be a demon.

“He’s clearly mentally ill.” Malcolm stated quietly.

“Oh, really?” you sarcastically shot back. Who would have thought? Malcolm started lifting one of his foot, meaning to cross the line.

“Mal, wait. Don’t.” you warned him but when did Malcolm ever listen? You were not sure how Norman even noticed Malcolm crossing the line, his back was still facing you after all, but all of a sudden things escalated. Apparently, Norman thought Malcolm was a demon. He was everything but, really. He just had some demons to fight but he was not one. Norman was grabbing a lamp, wanting to attack Malcolm with it but you got everything sorted before anything bad could happen. Norman was on his way in the hospital & you were just glad that everyone was fine.

When all of you were outside the house again, Sam & Dean looked annoyed.

“Dude, we wasted time with this madman.” Dean started. “That’s bullshit.”

“Dean, stop.” you cut him off before the situation got too intense. “He was the only suspect we had. We couldn’t have known he was mentally ill.”

“We should check out the church tonight.” Sam suggested.

“Why at night?” Malcolm asked curiously.

“Oh, look how precious he is.” Dean mocked. If he kept acting that way you might as well salt & burn his bones next. Turning to Malcolm, you tried reasoning with him.

“Because we can’t risk people watching us. Not when we’re doing this.” Malcolm understood but he also planned a lot of questions for when you were back home.

“Alright, we’ll meet there later. Dean & I will take care of everything we might need.” Sam said before walking off to Baby.

“I see you took great care of her.” nudging Dean, motioning at the beautiful ’67 Chevy Impala. Another thing you had missed dearly. Countless nights had been spent in the backseat, you associated this car with a lot of happy memories.

“Always.” Dean smiled at you. “Baby misses you, too, you know?”

“I’m sure she does. After all, I had the brains. Of course she misses my smartness.” Dean shook his head at you, rolling his eyes at the same time. Saying goodbye & turning around, Malcolm gave you a look.

“What?”

“Baby? Her? You sure you were talking about the car?” oh, that was bothering him. Now you understood.

“It’s a long story.” you laughed & gave him a kiss on the cheek before walking past him. He let out a short laugh & smiled at your actions.

“(Y/N)? I think we should talk.” Malcolm started shortly after you entered your shared apartment.

“Oh no…that’s never a good sign.”

“What’s going on here?” you could tell he was serious. Fuck, you hated lying to him. One of the reasons why you had barely mentioned your brothers was to avoid questions you did not want to answer. It was now or never. Telling Malcolm to sit down, you were about to start at the very beginning. There were still a few hours left before you had to be at the church, might as well use it appropriately. Hopefully, Malcolm did not decide to leave you after opening up to him.

“So…you’re telling me that monsters are real, your brothers hunt them down & you used to help them before you left.” you nodded when Malcolm tried processing what you had just told him. “And my girlfriend saved the world more than once.” he concluded.

“Pretty much, yeah.” he was silent for a few seconds. That would be the moment he would ask you to leave.

“My girlfriend is a badass.” Malcolm mumbled & started laughing then. You joined in.

“Really? That’s all you have to say?” you questioned, not really believing that he dealt with it so casually.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m freaking out.” he confessed. “You know, makes me think of all the cases we couldn’t solve. Maybe we weren’t successful because of…supernatural beings playing a part. But honestly, it’s just another thing that got added to my plate. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Mal…”

“No, really. I mean it. Besides, now I know that if I ever meet a monster, you’re here to fight it off. Or your brothers. If I were a monster, I’d be scared as shit of them.” Malcolm finished & you laughed, throwing your entire body back on the couch. That actually went quite well? At least something positive.

Churches were creepy in general. But churches at night? That was a whole other level of madness. You met Sam & Dean at the Impala, Dean’s face buried in the trunk, looking for suitable weapons. Malcolm had promised not to question your actions & you were thankful for it. Because you had other things to focus on. Dean handed out weapons which you gladly accepted.

“Mal? You gotta promise me to stay behind.” concerning eyes met his & he knew better than to argue with you. Malcolm gulped but nodded anyway.

“You ready to do this?” Sam asked.

“I am but I think (Y/N)’s a little rusty.” Dean commented.

“Just...let’s get this over with…” rolling your eyes at Dean, you hated to admit that he was most likely right. You had not been on a hunt in a very long time but you knew you could fight when push came to shove.

The four of you entered the church silently, weapons at ready. After walking around for a while, Dean lifted his hand to stop you all. Trying to get a better look at what made him freeze, you were shocked when you saw Jonah, the painter, pacing these holy grounds. Why did you not think of him? It was quite obvious, really. Maybe you were getting rusty.

“Well, he is a demon, no doubts, but he isn’t Abaddon.” Dean spoke, quietly enough as to not get caught. “So if you guys distract this son of a bitch, I can catch him off guard from behind & stab him.”

“No, wait. You can’t kill him, Dean.” you argued. There was still a possibility of a human being somewhere inside.

“What? Why?” Dean turned towards you & tilted his head in confusion. Sighing out, you tried to talk some sense into him.

“Let Sam do an exorcism. We don’t know if Jonah’s still in there.” Dean thought about this for a few seconds but nodded afterwards. Sam grabbed an old lore book with the exorcism inside. He remembered the words by heart but better safe than sorry, right? Your plan was to stay hidden, the church was dark enough to do that without getting caught.

The demon was confused when he heard the first words of the exorcism, already struggling to stay inside Jonah. Good, he was not a strong one. Malcolm stayed close with you. Sam & Dean each took one side of the church, just in case something went wrong. Sam continued with the latin words & the demon was unable to move anymore. He was trapped in one place. That was when all of you made yourself shown to him. Hopefully, Jonah was still alive in there. If not, you had a lot of explaining to do. You already had but another dead person would make everything even more complicated.

“I AM ABADDON!” the demon screamed & you noticed that he barely had enough strength to stay in Jonah’s body anymore. Malcolm stayed in the background, simply observing & letting you do your job.

“I’m sure you wanna be, pal.” Dean got closer to the demon but not too close for it to be dangerous. “But we got rid of her a long time ago.” and it was true. Abaddon’s death was years ago. Why this demon thought to be her? You were not sure. But you also did not care. You just wanted this to be over. Sam finished the ritual & black smoke came out of Jonah’s mouth. After that, he fell to the floor & all of you ran over to him. Malcolm checked for a pulse & nodded when he felt it. Letting out a breath, you were glad that you could save him. Grabbing your phone out of your pocket, you dialed 911 & called Gil right after.

In no time, cars were surrounding the church. Sam, Dean, Malcom & you were standing in a small circle outside. Gil approached you.

“What the hell happened? And who the hell are you guys?” the second question was directed at your brothers who coughed a little, not knowing how to answer. Time to sell a little fake story.

“Gil, these are Sam & Dean, my brothers.” Gil shook both men’s hands.

“Didn’t know you had brothers.” he noted.

“Long story…Anyway, they came to visit & stayed at our apartment. They kinda overheard Malcolm & I talking about the case. Sam, here, has the brains-“

“Hey!” Dean feigned hurt at your words.

“And he pieced everything together. We didn’t wanna waste time & before I even had the chance to call you, we had already caught him.” as soon as you finished, Malcolm joined in to help with your little white lie.

“Jonah was poisoned by the lead in the paint he was using. It can cause dissociative behavior that can be mistaken for possession.” thank God for Malcolm “Human Dictionary” Bright. Gil could not argue with this so he simply went back over to the rest of the team. Nice job.

“Thanks guys.” addressing Sam & Dean.

“So that’s it, huh?” Sam asked, sad that he knew he had to let you go again. Yet, he supported your decision.

“Hey, Malcolm?” Dean looked at him. “I wanna show you something, come on.” Malcolm followed Dean to the black car which left you alone with Sam.

“He’s gonna kill him, isn’t he?” Sam laughed at your words.

“Possibly.” then he turned serious again. “I miss you.” Sam confessed, his jaw clenching.

“I miss you, too, Sammy.” looking up at him, you continued. “And I’m sorry for disappearing off the radar. It’s just…when I left, this entire starting new thing took more time than I thought it would.”

“I get it & I’m not asking you to come back with us. I can see that you like it here. You’ve finally found your happiness & by the way Malcolm looks at you? He’s utterly in love with you, (Y/N). Take care of yourself, okay?”

“I will, I promise. You, too. Call me when you’re starting the next apocalypse.” you joked with him. He then pulled you into a big hug, one that you had missed so much. Sam always gave the best hugs.

“What is it?” Malcolm asked Dean, nervous as to why he wanted to talk to him alone.

“Look, man, (Y/N)’s my little sister & I’d do anything for her. So if you ever hurt her…know that I’ll beat the crap outta you.” Malcolm gulped but found enough courage to answer him.

“I love (Y/N). I’d never to do anything to hurt her. I get why you worry, I do. But she’s safe here. I promise.”

“Hey Dean, go easy on him.” their heads snapped in the direction your voice was coming from. By the smile on your face, he knew you were joking. Sam & you reached the car.

“I’ll miss you.” approaching Dean, you were more than satisfied when he opened his arms for you to pull you into a hug. He pressed a soft kiss on top of your head before releasing you again.

“Malcolm promised me to keep you safe.”

“Did he now?” turning around, eyeing your boyfriend with a smirk.

“Check in with us, okay?” Dean grew serious.

“I will, I promise. You guys take care of yourselves, okay?” both men nodded. “Tell Cas I said hi. How are you two doing anyway?” you stopped briefly to wink at him which made Sam chuckle quietly. “And bring him next time.”

“Alright, goodbye.” Dean said, laughing at you, Sam joining him.

“Bye, guys.” you waved at them when they got into the car.

Leaning into Malcolm’s side, you could feel his arm sneaking around your waist to keep your close. For a few moments, you stood there in silence, watching the Impala slowly disappear out of your view.

“Do I need to be jealous of this Cas guy?” Malcolm asked all of a sudden & you broke out into laughter. His confused face was hilarious.

“Trust me, Mal. If you meet him, you’ll know that there’s no need to be jealous.” tears were threatening to escape your eyes. The simple image of you & Cas together made you laugh out loud.

“I guess I need to trust you on that.”

“Hey, remember what you said when you thought we wouldn’t need help solving this case?” you asked him, changing the topic entirely. His face showed you that he did, in fact, not remember.

“I told you so.” you smirked at him, enjoying how his smile slowly faltered. Rolling his eyes at you, he wanted to say a witty remark. You knew what he was trying to do but before he had the chance, you silenced him with a long, soft kiss. That always managed to do the job. Pulling away after a few seconds, you lovingly stared into his eyes. This moment could have been overly romantic. If it were not for you putting salt into his wound.

“I told you so.” repeating your previous words, you walked away from him, sarcastically smiling as you did so. You were right about this & Malcolm prepared himself to hear the same words over & over from now on.

Published (04/15/2021) by Cathy

Tags: @thefictionalgemini, @prodigalsonlovingbisexual, @octopus5555, @claudiaparker30, @the-unknown-fan-girl, @popcornanon, @jasminetea-andpaisho, @anatanotegami, @blackandwhitejoker (thanks for your support <3)

[bimbosupreme]

mephistopheles love post

the equivalent of a mental breakdown tangent is all going under a read more

yes believe it or not that freaky ass literally not even human clown in fgo gets love, and love from who? me and like 3 other people

first off

ok and with that out of the way,

i’m not even familiar with their lore. Reason why i stopped caring about the lore behind faust and mephistopheles is that an interlude happens that shows that mephistopheles is just some homunculi made by some mage nobody named faust. and even then the interlude doesn’t talk about the lore behind the novel, its just you helping mephy kill faust

that being said though i would hope the developers expand on their origins more and potentially even release a “true” mephistopheles (a girl can dream)

So, they’re not even the real deal demon known as Mephistopheles in the first place, and i can hear u going “well that’s lame” and like, no, we just need to redirect our feelings from appreciating a demon to appreciating a homunculi who has a weird characterization in the fate universe

Design tangent:

Fgo was actually my first gacha, and so when I came across this servant I kinda instantly fell in love with their design, I love the colors used in their final ascension and overall appearance. The hat that has horns but they're not quite horns, theyre these weird colorful pointy twisty things, the large garish butterfly ornament on their chest (which isnt ugly at all and somehow works so well with their everything on them) is cool, the tights are so cool to look at, i mean look -- a checkered pattern with golden lining on the shorts portion, the tits out look like yes we get it youre insane, the gloves??? purple and also cool, plus theyve got this gradient thing going on? and the fingers have this line going through them, thats so cool. actually the only other servant that comes close to this in terms of “out there” colorful designs is probably final ascension kama and qsh ( i love them both). Also, mephy has this scissor weapon?? thats so cool lol i dont see any other servant wielding giant scissors (for the love of god give mephy an animation update i need to see them use the scissors while doing flips) and they also have this bomb obsession going on? cant relate, but the bombs designs are so so cool i mean its a fucking centipede -- no idea if centipedes are a thing in the original faust but thats something Ill have to look up at some point. ALSO mephy is wearing heels oh my god anytime people wear heels is an automatic win. No clue whats going on with the hair but its kinda cute (dont question me on that) and it has curls and the hair colors are cool i mean its like a lavender thing with darker purple highlights? i love colorful things and i love people with wacky personalities so. Oh my god their tail how could i forget that its so cute and dumb i almost forgot it was there, like what is that even a whip? i dont.. but its got these little purple tips to them that are kinda cute/cool but more cool because tails are fucking up there alongside heels in terms of cool stuff on characters. and of course their fluffly cape -- again no idea what the designers were going for i mean look its a mess of a design i have no fucking idea what any of it means and i hope they explain it someday because that hair and the butterfly and the tail and the hat and the fluffy garb and a bomb obsession?? and this got the go ahead - yeah lets add that to the game like what

ALSO LETS TALK ABOUT THEIR EYES

appreciate these with me for a second

god.

oh and the blue lipstick and face paint god thats a cool design ugh

they can be normal too or at least as normal as possible i mean they even trimmed their eyebrow here lol but you can see the not so well hidden insanity/goofiness peaking through with the inside of the suit at the bottom being highlighter purple and a green shirt with gold accents underneath the black coat at the front <3, fuckin hate that hairstyle tho bro we gotta get that middle part hairstyle outta hereeeee--

TAKE A DETOUR AND LOOK AT THIS LINK THOUGH THIS IS THE MOST NORMAL AND BEST IVE SEEN THEM IN FANART. THE POTENTIAL IS THERE. WE CAN HAVE NICE THINGS AND THEY LOOK GREAT ITS POSSIBLE. I HAVE TEARS STREAMING DOWN MY FACE FROM THAT DRAWING.

anyways this is me going off all about why i like their design! but we haven’t even touched the nitty gritty of it all. their personality! what personality you may ask? havent they always been some weirdo laughing a lot and saying dumb shit all the time? well yes and no

Characterization:

True to their dumb little clown design mephy also acts like one.

Some servants bond 1 lines are like “fuck off” and some actually talk to you, nah this bastard mephistopheles’ just laughing. and for the second bond line it seems to imply theyre fuckin with you more (showing up and dissapearing and saying ‘afterimage’) so thats nice that theyre actually making some effort to mess with you in a way? some servants take a long time to actually interact with you so this shows theyre not afraid of interacting with you and thats just at bond 2. and of course the third bond line implies they were probably trying to betray you, its stated in more than 1 place that mephistopheles (actually isnt this a caster class thing?) will betray you or attempt to do so. So the third bond line seems to imply that their attempts have been stopped by you and that’s what they say after some failed attempts. So after stopping this freak from doing some shit their next bond line is actually doing a confession! a jester being honest who couldve seen that one coming but theyre 100% not lying, they really arent a demon but a homunculi made by faust

speaking of faust we’re going to backtrack a little into their interlude that i brought up at the start of this post, its one of those dream interludes and it starts with mephy asking you to help him plant bombs for their eventual reuinion/showdown with faust -- in the meantime faust keeps sending golems in an attempt to kill both you and mephy

When you track faust down, it’s shown that faust was your typical mage, inhumane and uncaring. It’s also pointed out that this faust killed innocents, but this typical mage behavior is boring to mephy, and they say that boring typical behavior is why they wanted to kill them

 so i really cant blame mephistopheles for being the way they are, being raised by this type of guy, even if mephy was always messed up and wacky from the beginning its no reason for faust to attempt to kill him.

Mephistopheles also shows up in salem, cu alter’s interlude, and of course the knk crossover event, and some other things im most likely forgetting but those 3 are ones that i find notable

anytime they show up theyre actually helpful, in salem mephy points out that the nature of the being responsible for the salem epic of remnant is something alien rather than a typical foreign god, mephy also tells you that time is also being sped up and in their weird way they try to cheer you up by spouting some nonsense at the beginning (guda needed some kind of distraction from the grim events that had just transpired at that point in the story), i cant quite remember what mephy did in the knk event but they were a part of your group and were helpful the whole time, actually @/zeravmeta does an amazing analysis of their role in the knk event as well as some extra character analysis here

mephistopheles is kinda cryptic in a weird way though,

like overall i mean theyre a jester homunculi in appearance so yeah its to be expected but come on i love morally gray characters, despite their supposed betrayal hints scattered around here and there

they have this one line that always gets to me

and this line is said with a completely serious face too

the rare serious mephistopheles face! its kinda grim to see that line, no laughs, no nothing, their voice is kinda serious and monotone too. of course this could be just to get you to lower your guard but its still kinda out there that they have this rarely used portrait and that line, so i like to take it as being said to you when youre by yourself and with sincerity

and at least sei (with her wacky outfit and all lol) seems to get along with mephy and thinks theyre nice woohoo

so at the end of the day you have this guy that laughs a lot and gives mixed signals

and they fuck with you

and will most likely try to kill you more than once but hey thats just another tuesday at chaldea

Before I finish last thing I want to point out is this snippet from the fgo source material book which provides more information on servants, and this specific translated bit under mephistopheles

at the core of it all this homunculi....can be your friend! you just need to not go into despair i guess

of course this entire post is an overanalysis into an underwritten character, quarantine + all online college classes have done this to me, i have a douman icon what did you expect

OH...BEFORE I REALLY SIGN OFF AND FINISH THE POST HEY CLOWN LOVERS CHECK OUT THESE FANARTS AND FANARTISTS...

THE FIRST ONE IS HASENDOW YES THE DOUMAN DESIGNER... <3

i cant believe they drew mephy

twice !

and for those of you on twitter check out @cuz_pb and @L0VEYAMA003

[anthropwashere]

deadfic: Bang Babies got nothin’ on the Ghost Kid

More deadfic for @goodintentionswipfest! There was a post circulating on here once upon a time riffing on how OP Danny is compared to regular superheroes, so here’s about 4k of a Static Shock/Danny Phantom crossover that didn’t end up going anywhere.

=

The first time they see him, he’s just a black and white streak that nearly knocks them both out of the sky.

“Who—what was that?” Static gapes once he’s regained his balance. Green data splashes across Gear’s visor, obscuring his own incredulous expression.

“No idea, but they just clocked 154 miles per hour.”

“Well the speed limit here is only 45. Wanna pull ‘em over?”

Gear snorts. “If we can catch ‘em, sure.”

But whoever or whatever it was is long gone. After a week with no other sightings of ‘Flash Noir’ as they call the stranger, they let it go. Whatever it is will turn up, or it won’t. So long as no one’s getting hurt by it, it’s not really their problem, right?

=

The second time they see him is a week after that, and he’s hovering over the school roof just… watching. Other people see him too, and they all point and stare at the figure all in stark black and white, a teenage boy from the waist up and a ribbon of black from the waist down. 

Virgil and Richie share a mutual look of relief. They’d started to think they’d imagined him, never mind what Backpack had recorded. But when they look up at the roof again the kid is gone.

=

The third time they see him, he’s just a black speck barely glimpsed in the streaky post-rain evening sky. They only realize it’s him—and that he’s there at all—because Backpack catches him on the edge of its radar. He’s too high up, way too high up. The air’s just too thin for normal people—or normal bang babies, for what that’s worth. They try to get as close as they can anyway, but he blinks out of existence long before they can make out any details.

=

The fourth time they see him, he’s got a minivan and a corolla balanced in each hand like gravity’s got better things to do than pay him any mind. He’s holding them by the bumpers. Gear promptly loses his mind trying to figure out the physics behind such a feat, so it’s only Static that sees the guy toss a grin their way as he sets the two vehicles down on a stretch of road aways away from the car accident he’d apparently saved them from joining.

The strange kid waves at the families he’d saved, then takes off before Static and Gear can get near him. Backpack helpfully informs Gear that this mysterious guy encroaching on their hero turf clocked 60 miles in two seconds flat.

=

The fifth time they see him, he’s waiting for them in the junkyard looking infuriatingly smug. Static and Gear gape, then jump for him. It’s been starting to feel like chasing a mirage, but this time the guy stays put.

“Relax,” he tells them with a laugh and a lazy grin. “I’m not a bad guy.”

This close they can see he’s not any older than they are. He’d look like any normal kid, except for the glowing green eyes and shock of white hair fluttering in a breeze that isn’t there. 

“Then why are you stalkin’ us?” Static challenges.

“I wouldn’t say ‘stalk,’” the guy replies, defensive. “I’ve just never seen any other superheroes before. I was curious, that’s all.”

“I guess you don’t watch the news much,” Gear says, unimpressed. “You can go a day without hearing about a super making headlines somewhere.”

The kid’s grin turns uneasy. “I’m, uh, not actually from around here. Superheroes are a bit thin on the ground, where I’m from.”

“And where’s that, the North Pole?” Static asks.

The kid rolls his eyes. “Through an interdimensional rift in space four blocks from here. Hang a right past the Lovecraft reference and straight on ‘til morning.”

Static and Gear share an exasperated look.

“Look, kid,” Gear begins heatedly, only to be cut off.

“Oh no, no fair. You guys look like you’re still in high school too, so cut it out with the ‘kid’ stuff. The name is Phantom.”

Gear huffs. “Fine, Phantom. Point is we appreciate the help. You’re doing good work. But the superhero thing’s dangerous. You can’t just, y’know, jump into it.”

As if the two of them hadn’t done just that. But, y’know. It felt right to warn the guy, at least.

“It’s not a matter of ‘if’ you’ll get hurt if you stick with it,” Static adds. “And, okay, you might be new in town, so maybe you don’t know, but the two of us have got Dakota covered just fine.”

Phantom rolls his eyes, bouncing into the air. Gravity really doesn’t pay him any mind at all. How does he fly? Telekinesis? He does it like he’s so used to it the switch from standing to hovering is as natural as breathing. “Trust me, this city’s a walk in the park compared to what I deal with. Forgive me for seeing a chance to lend a hand to a couple of kids who clearly needed the help.”

“Now wait a minute—”

He drifts higher. “Oh, and by the way, there’s a guy calling himself Hotstreak waiting for you on ice by the community center. You’re welcome.”

“Wait—!”

But he blinks out of sight just like his name would suggest he could. There’s a pause as they both stare stupidly at thin air, then Gear swears. “‘On ice?’ Don’t tell me he’s got ice powers too.”

Phantom does, in fact, have ice powers too. Talk about overkill.

=

The sixth time Phantom makes an appearance, Virgil Hawkins is eating dinner with his dad and sister. He happens to glance out the window only to see a pair of neon green eyes staring back at him. Virgil drops his glass, yelping when milk splashes his mostly empty plate and spills into his lap.

“What’s the matter with you?” His sister asks.

“Uh. I—nothing! Nothing at all! I just—remembered that I, uh. Book report! I left my book report at Richie’s and I need to go get it!”

“Can’t it wait until school tomorrow?” His dad asks.

“No—no, it can’t, because I, uh, I still need to type it up and—and it’s due first period!” 

He runs out of the kitchen and out the front door before either of them can yell at him to clean up the mess he’d made. He stands on the stoop, panting and trying not to panic, and Phantom swoops into view upside down with that smug grin on his face again.

“Well hey there, sparky,” he says.

Virgil thinks he maybe has a heart attack, a little bit, before he finds the strength to speak. “You’ve gotta be kidding me!” He yells in a furious stage whisper, grabbing the kid out of the air to drag him closer. “The first rule of superheroes is minding the secret identity thing, especially around family, and you just blew that right out of the water!”

Virgil’s hand goes briefly numb and Phantom slips out of his grasp. “I wouldn’t say ‘just,’” he replies, looking guilty.

Virgil’s gonna strangle him, he really is. “How long have you known who I am?”

“Wwwwwell, a couple weeks back I saw local heroes Static and Gear walk into an abandoned gas station and two normal teenagers walk out. I don’t know your real names and I didn’t know you lived here, I swear. I was just flying by and recognized your hair out of the corner of my eye. I swear,” he repeats hastily at Virgil’s murderous expression.

Virgil counts to five, then back down again, and is still just as pissed. “Fine. Okay. C’mon.”

He starts walking towards Richie’s house, because no way is he doing this on his own. Behind him Phantom asks, “Uh, where are you going?”

“We are going to R—Gear’s place. The three of us are gonna sort this out, and don’t you even think of pulling another one of your disappearing acts to get out of it!”

Phantom scoffs. “Oh yeah, because I’m so inconspicuous otherwise. Here, hold still.” He grabs Virgil’s shoulder and a chill washes over him. He startles, trying to pull away, but Phantom may as well have steel rebar for bones. Virgil looks down and yelps even louder than when he’d spilled milk all over himself; the ground has fallen away without even a rusty, trusty trash can lid underfoot. And speaking of feet, where are his feet?

“Augh, what? Whoa, no, let me go!”

“Quit squirming.”

Oh, no. He’s not getting the evil grunt orders fifty feet in the air. He grabs the hand he can’t see and sends a warning bolt. Phantom grunts, twitching. 

“Augh, easy sparky! Which way is Gear’s house?”

“How is this less inconspicuous you maniac? Put me down—and don’t drop me!”

“Oh, for—you’re invisible right now.” He looks up and there’s nobody above him, but he can hear Phantom all the same. “I pulled a disappearing act and brought you along. Seriously, man, I know I’ve been goofing off and setting you on edge, but I really didn’t mean to spy. You wanna talk to Gear about the blown cover thing—I really don’t know your names still, by the way—and I wanna come to an agreement.”

Virgil sighs. These bang babies all gotta stop being so crazy. But hey, at least this one doesn’t seem like he’s about to rob any banks. “Hang a right at this light.”

=

It is officially too weird to watch your own body reappear before your own eyes. Virgil shudders.

“First time with invisibility?” Phantom waggles his eyebrows. “How do you feel?”

“...Tingly. Warn me before you do that again, alright?”

“You just gave me blanket permission to do it again basically whenever, you realize that, right?” 

“Wh—I did not!”

Phantom rolls his eyes and phases through the roof. Seriously, there’s got to be a limit to how many spooky ooky poltergeist powers a guy can have, right? A moment later Virgil hears Richie yowling, and Phantom reappears with Richie in tow. He sets Richie down, gentle as you please, then promptly explodes.

Virgil recoils, blinking white light out of his vision. When he can see clearly again, Phantom is gone and there’s a regular teenager standing in his place, black-haired and fresh out of glowing green eyes. One forearm is bandaged from wrist to elbow.

“Wh-what?” Richie asks for the both of them.

The kid smiles, waving his uninjured hand. “Danny Fenton. It’s nice to see you without the visor.”

=

Turns out, Danny wasn’t kidding about being from a different dimension. He shows them the door he pops in and out of and everything. It’s an emergency exit of an old theater downtown, perfectly normal to Virgil’s eyes. Richie opens it. Rusty hinges squeal and Virgil can glimpse the vague suggestion of chairs in the dark.

“It only works if you’re focusing on the Ghost Zone,” Danny says.

“The what now?”

Richie shakes his head. “Oh no, no way. Please don’t tell me I’m talking to a dead guy.”

Danny laughs. “Nah, I’m basically as normal as either of you when I’m like this.”

Considering Virgil can do exactly as much damage as he can wearing his superhero gear, that’s not exactly comforting.

Danny nudges Richie aside, shuts the door and opens it up again. Just like that the theater’s interior is gone. There’s a hole in the world instead, bleeding radioactive green into the alleyway. There are hundreds—no, thousands—of violet doors floating in a green void that twists in dizzying shapes before his eyes. There’s no ground, no sky, it goes on forever in all directions.

“That—” Richie swallows. “That’s where you’re from?”

Danny shuts the door. Virgil tries to ignore the relief that makes jelly out of his knees, but dang, that really needed a better warning. “No, of course not. I’m from Earth, same as you. Just a, well, a slightly different one, I guess. A parallel one. That place is where ghosts come from. I only ended up here by mistake.”

“Take a left at the Lovecraft reference?” Virgil asks, rubbing his eyes. 

“Ha, pretty much. I was trying to escape the Lovecraft reference. That’s, uh, not what it’s name probably is? My friend Sam called it that and I can’t understand it, so, that’s kind of stuck. It’s got enough teeth to deserve being called ‘Lovecraft reference,’ anyway.”

“Sam?” Richie asks. “Is that someone else, uh, on your team?”

“It’s not really a team. She doesn’t have super powers or anything, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s right, you said superheroes are thin on the ground where you’re from,” Virgil says. “So I guess it’s just you dealing with the big and toothy?” 

“Basically, yeah. Not a lot of opportunity to do what I did to get my powers.”

“What’d you—”

Danny holds up both hands. “Nope, nuh-uh. You’ve got your secrets, I’ve got mine.”

=

The seventh time they see Phantom, they finally see him in proper action. Ebon’s gang has struck a bank—Virgil’s big mouth and bad luck strikes a home run, as usual—and by the time Static and Gear arrive on the scene they’ve stolen a truck and are two blocks from the bank. Talon is flying overhead, keeping an eye out for cops or goody-good superheroes, while the rest of the gang’s inside.

They don’t stop to see who’s hurt. They’d passed an ambulance on the way, and it’s not like either of them are good for more than getting the injured to emergency care. They take chase, and the armored truck doesn’t make it another block before Gear’s knocked Talon out of the sky and Static has netted the truck in a web of electricity. It’s heavy though, too heavy for him to do more than keep its tires squealing in place and hoping Gear can gimmick up something to slow it down a little more. Ebon’s smart though. He’s not gonna pick a fight here, and Static will burn himself out long before the tires do.

“Gear!” He yells desperately.

“Working on it!”

But it’s Phantom that swoops in from nowhere, soaring down in front of the truck. He, impossibly, lifts the wheels off the street one-handed. It’s enough help to let Static focus his attention on popping the wheels off before releasing his net. He sinks to his knees, disc wobbling dangerously beneath him, catching his breath.

“I—hate—armored trucks,” he wheezes.

“Static!” Phantom calls out, startled, which means breaktime is over. He stretches his hand out and ties Shiv up with a nearby stop sign before he gets to his feet again. Phantom’s rushed off to help Gear with Talon who’s back in the air, which just leaves Ebon to Static.

Ebon slides out of the truck, an inky, glowering smear. “Who’s the new guy?”

“Friend from out of town. Why, you feelin’ like we’re not bondin’ like we used to?”

Ebon doesn’t reply, just slaps Static away. The air gets knocked out of him and he lands in a sprawl halfway down the street. Before he can recover he hears Talon scream. He slams his hands to his ears reflexively, but luckily she wasn’t aiming at him. Not so luckily, Gear and Phantom hit asphalt a few yards away.

“You okay?” Static calls out.

“I hate when she does that,” Gear complains too loudly, shaking his head like a dog and looking nauseous. Yeah, Static hates it too. He’d take getting slapped around by Ebon over having his hearing scrambled any day. 

Phantom springs up quicker than either of them, grinning madly. “She wants a screaming match, huh?” 

Gear looks as aggrieved as Static feels. “Do not tell me you can do that too.”

Phantom’s grin widens, eyes blazing, as Talon rejoins Ebon and Shiv at the armored truck. Shiv must’ve cut himself free of the stop sign at some point. Static makes a mental note to use two stop signs next time. The three of them are hauling bags out of the back, clearly planning on Ebon’s easy getaway trick to get at least some of the cash they’d stolen.

Static gets to his feet, zapping his disc underfoot again as he considers a half dozen strategies to take them out and not liking any of them. Ebon’s always been too slippery; it’s likely he’ll get away no matter what—

A hand claps down on his shoulder. 

“Stay behind me,” Phantom says.

“What are you—”

But there’s no time to finish asking what because Phantom takes a deep breath and wails. There’s waves of concentric neon green energy bursting from his mouth, radiating out and down to Ebon’s gang. The armored car, down two tires, goes shrieking and sparking down the street. Two parked cars follow after, their windows shattering, their frames buckling. Ebon, Talon, and Shiv don’t even have time to grab at their ears; they go down like bowling pins, and don’t get up again.

The click of Phantom’s teeth when he finally stops wailing seems awfully loud. Static feels like he just walked out of a concert he’d been too near the speakers at for; his ears are ringing, his hands and feet are tingling, and his chest hurts vaguely. He swallows, looks back at Gear who’s just shaking his head a little. He looks at Phantom; the kid’s got beads of green on his forehead and he’s breathing hard.

“Sorry,” his voice cracks a little, “That one’s kinda hard to put a lid on.”

=

After sorting out things with the police—which Phantom vanished for, literally—they invite him back to the gas station for what is, in essence, dinner and an interrogation. Richie declares he’s had enough surprises and Virgil agrees. So they stop to grab a couple of pizzas and manhandle Danny to the gas station. Danny lets himself be manhandled with no shortage of eye rolling.

“Sit,” Richie orders, shoving a paper plate laden with three slices of pepperoni into Danny’s hands. “Explain.”

Danny sits obediently, raising his eyebrows like he’s trying not to grin. “Uh, explain what?”

“You! Your ridiculous collection of powers, where you come from, why you’re not strutting around your weird parallel Earth or whatever as Grand High Emperor of—of everything!”

Danny can’t help the grin. Virgil’s hiding one behind a can of soda too though, so he can’t judge. “Grand High—what? Do you have one of those here?”

“Danny.”

“C’mon. We agreed on no details, didn’t we? This wouldn’t even be a conversation we’d have if you were the ones coming to my city.”

“We agreed to that when it seemed like you were just another souped up Bang Baby,” Virgil cuts in, “but this is getting ridiculous. I’m not sure I like the idea of Superman’s ghost charging through Dakota any time he feels like it, especially since supers tend to bring their problems along with ‘em.”

“If you want me gone, I’ll leave. I was just trying to give you guys a hand when things were slow in Am—my city.”

“We never asked your overpowered butt for help in the first place!” Richie snaps.

Danny opens his mouth to snap something back but his phone goes off instead. He glares at them both as he pulls it out of his jeans pocket, flipping it open. His eyes widen at whatever the text reads, he fires off a quick reply, then drops his uneaten pizza on the table. “Look, here I am, going. All right?”

“Trouble in paradise?” Virgil quips.

Danny ignores it, but stops halfway to the door to look back over his shoulder. His eyes are bright green, which Virgil’s learning means more trouble than it’s worth. “You know what? How about you come visit Amity Park with me?”

=

The Ghost Zone is just as dizzying as Static thought it would be, and in no time at all he’s hopelessly lost and he has a monster of a headache. It’s like he’d put his face right up against a neon sign no matter where he looks; just bright green smears and the odd clutter of purple doors. “Man, you sure you’re not lost?”

Phantom throws a grin over his shoulder. “Relax, I’ve done this plenty of times.”

“Is it even safe for, uh, regular people to be here?” Richie asks nervously. “I’m getting some bizarre readings here that Backpack can’t make heads or tails of. I feel like I should have nabbed a HAZMAT suit too.”

“My parents and friends have been in and out of the Ghost Zone dozens of times, and they’re totally fine.”

“Radiation poisoning can take decades to affect people,” Gear points out.

“Eh, so maybe they’ll glow in the dark or something twenty years from now. Ectology is kind of in its infancy. Anyway, we’re here.”

There’s a circular hole of swirling green, lighter than the fog around them and suspended in a solid looking riveted steel frame. Phantom holds up one hand to stop them, sticking his head through. “We’re good,” he says when he’s popped back out. “C’mon.”

Gear and Static share one last nervous look before following after.

They find themselves in some kind of high-tech basement done all out in sleek chrome, like a mad scientist’s lab out of a Saturday morning cartoon. There are beakers and flasks bubbling with syrupy neon green stuff, barrels with CAUTION stamped on the sides, and the kind of tables that wouldn’t look out of place in a flashy investigation show morgue. Static breaks out in goosebumps and can’t even pretend to play it off on it being a little chilly in here. 

“My parents built the Ghost Portal,” Phantom says, pointing back at the circle of green light still swirling behind them. “But I’m the one who made it work.”

Seeing the Portal on this side makes Gear’s breath hitch, and Static breathes out a stunned, “Whoa.” It’s an octagon framed by fat black and yellow caution stripes, easily fifteen feet in diameter. The Portal itself is identical to how it appeared on the Ghost Zone’s side, a constant dizzying swirl of toxic greens staining the enormous lab like some kind of mutant aquarium.

“Is this thing open all the time?” Gear stutters. “How is your family not dead? Heck, the whole city? This thing’s pouring out energy on a—I need to invent a new scale to quantify these readings just so I can make sense of them!”

Phantom laughs, grabbing a chrome cylinder glittering with green designs. “Don’t worry about it, seriously. My mom would know if it was, like, properly dangerous. Now c’mon, I want you to meet a regular of mine.”

=

Two more teenagers are waiting for them outside an evacuated post office. The girl, white with a distinctly Goth taste in clothes, gives Phantom a look that plainly states she thinks he’s nuts. “You didn’t mention you’d be bringing them through,” she says flatly.

The guy, black with thick-rimmed glasses and dressed like he can’t decide if he’s going for ‘frequents Starbucks’ or ‘military surplus’, rolls his eyes and waves. “Hi, I’m Tucker. That’s Sam. Don’t mind her, she’s just pissed the Box Ghost got the jump on her.”

“The one time I leave the house without a Thermos,” she huffs, crossing her arms.

“Sorry about the wait.” Phantom says. “Guys, this is Static and Gear.”

“Charmed,” Static says automatically. Gear just grunts.

“Don’t need three guesses to guess who,” Tucker grins. “We can catch up later. You wanna do the honors, Danny?”

“Nah.” Phantom looks at Static and Gear, looking worryingly pleased. “I helped you out with the, what’s it, Ebon and Friends. Why don’t you take a crack at one of mine?”

[blueskiesandstarrynights]

Whatever Happens I'ma Stand Tall- Jatp time loop au, Chapter 2: Loop 2, Didn't We Already Do This?

And here's chapter 2! I'm glad to get this one done, it's been bugging me for a bit.

Word Count: 2120

Tag list: @enby-chaos-fox @lagoonaaa

If anyone else wants to be added, just let me know!

Masterpost of chapters (x)

Looks like today is gonna be another sunny day, with temperatures in the low to mid eighties.

Julie awoke with a gasp and scrambled to shut off her alarm and wipe away her damp cheeks from her tears, trying to figure out what had just happened. She nearly knocked her phone off her nightstand trying to grab it, but once she got it she checked the date on her phone and nearly started crying with relief when she saw the date: Saturday, March 7, 2020.

It wasn’t real.

It wasn’t real.

Whatever she thought she had just experienced was just a dream. A nightmare created from her fears that today’s plan didn’t work. It was ok. They’re going to play the Orpheum and her band is going to crossover. She’d still lose them, but she had already accepted that.

But she had to be sure. Had to be sure it really was just a nightmare and her boys are still here. She quickly got dressed and dashed down to the studio only to find the guys a few seconds from poofing away.

Reggie noticed her first and called out, “Oh hey Julie! We were just about to-”

He cut himself off once he saw that Julie’s eyes had filled with tears and asked, “Whoa, Julie are you okay?”

She wiped her tears with a soft smile before saying, “Yeah, yeah I’m okay. I just had this really vivid dream that you guys were jolted out of existence and I couldn’t save you.”

“Well you don’t have to worry, it was just a nightmare, we’re right here and not going to go down without a fight.” Luke smiled at her.

Julie nodded and wiped the final tear tracks from her face before smirking and saying, “Don’t you guys have a gig to secure? You’re not crossing over without it.”

“We were just about to go and check on Wil- the gig,” Alex replied, looking anxious to leave and check on someone who she assumed to be Willie, Alex’s ghost friend who was going to be helping them get the gig for tonight. Julie wondered if he was more than just a “ghost friend” and filed that piece of information for later as Luke gave her a salute and a “See ya later boss,” before poofing away with Alex and Reggie in tow.

Julie took a deep breath to steady herself and push down the anxious thoughts and worries that had pushed their way to the front of her mind since the guys had left.

But every second that passed meant they were one second closer to being jolted out of existence. Every second that passed brought them closer and closer to their doom. Every second brought them closer and closer to that horrifying nightmare she had.

But it was just a nightmare, she tried to remind herself. It wasn’t real and she was going to help the guys peacefully cross over tonight. But then why was her dream so vivid and detailed? Was it-

No. She steadied her breathing and made her way back inside the studio, worrying about this wasn’t going to do anything, anything good at least. She decided to spend the morning in song writing in the studio, but when the guys came back with info about the Orpheum, the events of the day started unfolding in an eerily familiar pattern. A pattern suspiciously like her vivid nightmare from the night before. By the time she was at the Orpheum and the guys were once again running late, she brought up her concerns to Flynn.

“Have you ever had deja vu? Or had an oddly vivid dream that came true in real life?” Julie asked abruptly, causing Flynn to pause munching on the snacks that had been left in the room.

She gave Julie an odd look before replying, “Closest thing I can think of is a vague sense of deja vu when I was younger, but nothing vivid. Any particular reason you’re asking me this?”

Julie sighed. “Kinda. Last night I had this super vivid dream of today that ended with the guys being jolted out of existence. I failed and they experienced pain up until the moment they were just erased from all existence. And normally that wouldn’t scare me, because it was just a dream, but every single thing that happened in the dream has happened, and I’m terrified I’m going to have to watch them die all over again!”

Flynn placed the snacks on the table so she could move closer to Julie and give her a hug.

“C’mon that’s not going to happen. It’s not going to play out, it’s just a dream. And even if it did, they’re going to cross over, this is their unfinished business. My guess is the part in the dream where they die was simply your brain creating what you fear is going to happen. As for the rest of the day...well I can’t really comment on that, I’m neither a psychic nor a psychologist.”

There was a knock on the door followed by the stage manager calling out, “Hey Julie! It’s time!”

“Just a second!” she called back.

“Look, not to sound weird for using a dream of all things as a source of valid information, but what happened in the dream at this point? Did they come?” Flynn inquired.

Julie looked like she was holding back tears as she shook her head and said, “Yeah, they come in partway through the performance, that’s not even my main worry right now. I just-” she rests her forehead against Flynn’s. “I don’t know if I can-”

The stage manager once again knocks on the door and announces, “Hey Julie! You’re on!”

With too many emotions swirling around, Julie pushed her way out the door and into the alley at the side of the Orpheum, ignoring her best friend's shouts behind her. As she takes a breath of the stink of Hollywood Boulevard, she finally lets out the tears she had been holding in.

“I don’t know if you can hear me mom, but I don’t think I can do this. If I was supposed to help the guys, I don’t think I can. They’re not here, and I’m scared that even if they do come, it won’t matter. I’m worried they’re not going to come, but I’m terrified that I’ll have to watch them die; I don’t know if I can do that a second time. I just-” she gives a soft sniffle before saying, “I miss you so much. Every day. And it hurts every day that you’re not with us. The guys have helped, playing music with them makes me feel closer to you. Every time I look into the audience, I can see you smiling and cheering me on.

I miss you Mom. More than you can ever know. I miss being held in your arms and being told everything’s going to be okay, because even when all the odds say it’s not, you still made me believe it anyway.” She’s trying to wipe her tears from her eyes when she notices a woman next to her offering her a flower. It’s a dahlia. A red dahlia, like the ones Mom used to love. She hugs the flower to her chest and she feels like she can feel everything that made her mom who she was. She can hear her mothers laugh ringing in her ears, right next to the beautiful melody that is her voice, and she can feel the warmth of her hugs, can smell the flowery perfume she always used, and she can almost see her mom’s signature dark curls.

With the dahlia in hand, Julie barrels back through the Orpheum side door, heading straight for the stage, stopping only to show Flynn the dahlia and declare, “Signs,” before rushing onto the stage, not even thinking about what she was doing. Seeing the dahlia had reminded Julie of Flynn’s theory that her mom was behind everything, and took the flower as a sign to go up on stage. To keep going. To stand tall.

And she did. She performed the Orpheum, and her boys came and being up on that stage gave her a ridiculous amount of euphoria. After the guys disappeared and she was hounded by her family and Flynn backstage, the adrenaline from the night almost caused her to forget about the guys. Almost.

Once they get back home, Julie wants nothing more than to go to the studio, but is stopped when Carlos asks her, “Hey Julie, can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Uh, sure just give me a minute.”

“Ok, I’ll wait up. Don’t ghost me,” he responded, adding a completely unsubtle wink at the end, causing Julie’s eyes to grow wide in shock. Had he figured it out? If so, how? Or was this just another one of his theories that didn’t hold any merit?

She shook her head, deciding to deal with that later, before turning to her dad and saying, “Just a minute,” and headed for the studio.

She opened the doors and stared inside the darkened room, taking a large shuddery breath, scared of what she’d find if she turned on the light. Scared that the guys’ didn’t cross over, but instead are here, collapsed on the floor, moments away from dying a second time. Not wanting to prolong this any further, she reached over to the switch on the wall and turned the light on, and lo and behold, there they were piled on top of each other just as she feared, and seeing them like this caused her breathing to grow more ragged, which wasn’t helped by a jolt that simultaneously racked the boys bodies.

They coughed and moaned from the jolt but forced themselves up once they saw Julie and all tried to put on brave faces for her.

“Julie what are you doing here, why didn’t you just go straight to bed?” Reggie asked.

“I said she’d come out here, but nobody ever listens to me,” Alex complains.

Julie sniffled and pointlessly tried to wipe her eyes before saying, “I, uh, wanted to say goodbye and to thank you guys.”

Watching them now feels so much worse than the dream. She knew playing the Orpheum wasn’t going to work, yet she still performed there anyway. Now there was nothing she could do. They were being forced to relive the pain of dying over and over again, until they were wiped from existence entirely. There were so many things she wanted to do with them, and things they wanted to do. In fact, there was something they needed to do, considering they were ghosts in the first place and therefore had unfinished business. They had so much ahead of them, yet their time was being cut short too early, just like their lives in ‘95.

She collapses onto the floor and tries to get as close to them as she can without passing through them; doing so would just be another painful reminder of the separation between her and them, and how much they’re about to be separated permanently.

She numbly listens to them as they list off their final requests just as they did last time, before they’re finally killed and she is left in an empty studio, left with nothing but instruments that won’t be used again and her tears. Oddly enough, just like in her dream she finds the world being taken over by a blinding white light accompanied with still quiet before-

Looks like today is gonna be another sunny day, with temperatures in the low to mid eighties.

Julie’s eyes shoot open and quickly shuts off the alarm trying to make sense of what just happened. Why was she back in her room? What was that white light? Her theory about a dream turned out to be garbage since you can’t have a dream within a dream right? Confused, Julie reached over to her nightstand to grab her phone to check the date and what she saw nearly made her choke on air.

Saturday, March 7, 2020

Saturday, March 7, 2020

That was yesterday’s date. And now that she thought about it, it was the date for the day before as well. Panicking now, Julie goes straight for Flynn’s contact and texts her:

Julie: 911

Julie: Flynn

Julie: Get here asap

Julie: Somethings wrong

Flynn: What

Flynn: Jules whats wrong

Julie: Idk

Julie: Its weird

Julie: Just come here itll be easier to explain in person

Flynn: Alright be there in 5

Julie closed her phone, sighed, fell back into her pillows and groaned. This was going to be a long day. Again.