#oh there is a next chapter of beneath the lights but it’s kinda plot heavy so I csnt say much

[neon-danger]

Trying to remember what works I have in progress

[xenizaation]

the calligraphy club

Warning! Sexual content ahead! Minors please do not interact!

pairing: fem! reader x ateez

genre: sitcom?, high school! au, smut

word count: 4.6k

warnings: explicit language, substance use (marijuana), mentions of violence, dry humping, slight exhibitionism, slight voyeurism.

a/n: ok so here we have chapter two aaahhhhh. i'm so happy i began writing this mini series it's so fucking fun to plot and write. i hope you guys enjoy it and tune in for the next chapters as well!!! xoxo

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strolling down the noisy hallway is one of the activities you loathe most. not necessarily because of all the noise but more because of your inability to pass through unobserved. everyone acknowledges your presence by greeting you some type of way, be it the silent raise of their eyebrows paired with a friendly smile or the loudest shout of your name, all of your peers do it in some shape or form.

you sometimes told yourself it would be way easier to just barge into the principal's office and announce your arrival to everybody over the speakers, only so you exempt yourself of having to say hi to everybody in return. but you retorted to coming in late everyday, entering the high school just as the bell rings and everyone's off to their class, too busy to see you.

rushing off to your class, you stop unconsciously at a familiar smell in the empty hallway, sniffing around like you're some scent hound. it doesn't surprise you when your nose carries you to a blue door and you chuckle as you enter the room, walking inside confidently.

"oh my god, 4/20 is today?" your voice breaks the quiet atmosphere in between the walls. "why did no one tell me about it?" you ask as you throw your body on one of the comfortable beanbag chairs in the room. the scent is stronger now, drenching your nosteils immediately in satisfaction.

the walls seem to be a darker blue now, in comparison to how you remembered them. did they paint them or did they smoke so much inside here that they turned another shade? they also moved some things around, you notice, the sofa now in a different place, facing the light coming from the windows in the middle of the room, probably to help the members of the calligraphy club to not fall asleep after a heavy blunt. two beanbag chairs in front of the couch, one of which you are sat upon, and a lot of desks that carry many types of papers and inks and writing instruments on top of them. kind of an old school vibe, were it not for the present beanbag chairs.

"you seem to be busy nowadays," the raspy voice of the youngest between the two co-presidents fills the room. "getting familiar with the new guy and all that." honjoong adds as he licks the sticky part of the paper, finishing what you think is, a second joint with admirable dexterity.

"oh, you got the wrong idea, we're not familiar at all." you say, getting more comfortable in the chair beneath you.

half true. as much as you would like to know more about mingi, he always cuts it short only revealing worthless information like what his favorite food is rather than telling you what keeps him up at night (you figured it's kinda early in your relationship to ask him something like that) willingly, offering you his full trust. of course, it's only been a couple of weeks now, so you weren't worried that at some point you'll win him over, it's just that you would've liked it to be sooner. especially with the rumors of his expelling still going around...oh, what you wouldn't give just to find out the truth.

"you've been hanging out with him a lot." hongjoong says, rising an eyebrow expectantly as he lights the joint in between his lips. he puffs it two times then hands it to seonghwa, who is sat beside him, not having muttered even a word up to this point. quite the observer.

"well, he's a tough nut to crack." you mumble through a pout. "and we all know how much i love cracking nuts." you add, directing your gaze to seonghwa, offering him a wide smile as he gives a smug one in return when he inhales the smoke in his lungs with a satisfied groan.

"want some?" the older of the two asks as he leans over with his hand stretched towards you.

"don't mind if i do." you sing-song as you take the joint from seonghwa's hand, your fingers dragging gently upon his as you do.

you place it in between your lips carefully, inhaling an experimental amount just so you can get familiar with the shit that's inside. good as always, the smoke satisfies your lungs as it goes in, and you let it out with a grin.

"why is it you always have the good stuff?" you cry out loud as you hand hongjoong the stuff in question.

"because we have money and a good dealer." seonghwa answers bluntly, watching your every move like a hunter watches prey.

there were many males in your highschool but park seonghwa was the only one you would call a man. the rest were mere boys, kids even. seonghwa had a 'je ne sais quois' about him, one that would always leave you watching him in awe and admiration. every single thing he did seemed enticing and spectacular in the manner that he did it. the way his delicate fingers would roll a joint, how his tongue was eager to lick the paper and then his lips...his fucking perfect plump lips which you wished to stare at for a fucking lifetime. it drove you crazy, how he would look at you after a smoking session, through heavy lids and reddened eyes, his eyelashes blurring his vision the same way yours did. if choi san made you nervous, park seonghwa was even worse. he intimidated you.

you've never been one to back away from people you liked but with him? acting upon your carnal desires for park seonghwa made you back out in fear.

"right," you say when the joint reaches seonghwa's hand again. "maybe you can put me in contact with this dealer of yours." you smile at hongjoong and he mimicks it, shaking his head.

"then you'll never come around, baby." seonghwa answers again, voice more glazed now as the pet name leaves his mouth. you smile as you reach for the joint again, seonghwa hands it to you with a glorious look on his face, as he notices the faintest blush present over your cheeks.

"tell us about this new guy." hongjoong demands as you inhale your second hit.

"not much to say," you reply as you exhale the thick cloud of smoke out.

"oh, come on, no dirty little secret that he let out to you?" seonghwa is the one to talk this time, the pink hair on his head bouncing as he tilts it to one side.

"nope. i told you, tough nut to crack." you say as you lean over to hongjoong, handing him the joint. a sigh leaves your mouth as you start feeling all your body weight pulling you deeper into the chair, an effect of the weed that never seemed to disappear, no matter how many times you smoked. "plus, secrets stay in between friends, don't they?" your question comes out more stingy than you would maybe like it, making a silent reference to all the times they told you stuff, even about each other, that you haven't let out into the world.

"let's remember we're friends, right?" hongjoong has the same tone as yours, his quick tongue not wasting any second in reminding you of all the benefits you had by being cordial with them, one of them happening right now. smoking for free isn't something many in this school would allow even you, especially when it's quality weed like this.

"and thank god we are," you say, lolling your head from side to side below the gaze of the two males in front of you. "that shit's fucking crazy!" you add, pointing to the joint still in hongjoong's little hand. seonghwa gives a low chuckle before the thing in question finally reaches his grasp again.

"he put on quite a show a few days ago," the taller mumbles before inhaling a deep hit in his lungs. you look over to him suddenly, with your eyes as wide as you can conjure them to get as if you were asking 'you saw that?' but your words didn't really reach your mouth anymore.

"maybe you can introduce him to us." he finishes, holding the joint towards you.

"pass." you whisper as you flick your wrist, and you're not sure which offer you deny. maybe both.

"didn't take you for a pussy." hongjoong says as he innocently laughs.

"i still have to get to class, wouldn't want you to carry me bride style to there." you manage to mutter as you close your eyes, now fully understanding why the sofa on which they're standing is facing the window. you could really need some sunlight right now to keep you awake.

"that wouldn't be a problem." seonghwa urges as he looks over your layed out figure, thinking of the many other places he would carry you to.

you still don't budge, for right now it was enough, you didn't want it to be too obvious for the other people that you skipped first period to get high. but hey, who would be blaming you? everyone needs a cool off from time to time. even you. especially you.

"we want him in our club," hongjoong finally informs you, quitting in the act of beating around the bush, thing he did since you decided to sit down in the room. "a new face would be refreshing, and he seems interesting to say the least." the black haired boy says as he takes another hit.

what does mingi know about calligraphy? you didn't even see him write until now. but further than this facade, you knew it was not so much about the knowledge of the art but the social status it would bring to their club. everyone would be so shocked to see mingi in any club, considering how he didn't show any particular interest into any of them, not even when you presented them to him. if mingi joins a club it would be the talk of the school for at least two weeks. maybe two weeks and a half. and that was exactly what park seonghwa and kim hongjoong wanted.

"i don't think he even wants to join a club." you finally let out, sighing one more time as you look over to them. they look at each other, and then to you again.

"just let him know we're interested in having him around." seonghwa is the first to talk.

"and make some good publicity for us, would you?" hongjoong chimes in as he lifts to his feet abruptly and you wonder how he musters the power to do so. but then you remember they smoke here almost every day, so it would be even stranger if it was the other way around. "gonna get some water, you want anything?" he says, looking at the both of you.

you shake your head slowly and hear seonghwa mutter a quiet no, before hongjoong's light footsteps resound in the room. a door is shut off, the same as your eyes, and only silence follows. you feel to good to say anything right now, fingertips dingling in joy as a quiet warmth washes over your whole body, it makes you laugh out loud. nothing amusing in particular, just all the stress finally leaving your body with every exhale.

you open your eyes as you finish laughing, only to find seonghwa looking down to you with a 'way too attractive for you to ever handle well in this situation' smirk.

"can i have one last hit?" you ask cutely.

"sure." seonghwa says but doesn't move an inch, he just maintains eye contact with you in a manner that's not short of intimate. you blink at him, a bit confused. "come and get it." he teases, and you wonder if it's unconsciously; the way his back presses into the cushion more, how his thighs spread apart wider or how he takes another hit just to piss you off. did he plan this out or is it just a coincidence?

"c'mon seonghwa, you really gonna make me..."

"mhm." he interrupts with an approving hum. you roll your eyes and slowly manage to get to your feet, trying not to let the dizziness knock you out. as you gain your balance, you make your way across the short space in between you and him, and settle right in front of his body.

you lean over, to take the joint from his hand but he pulls it back, enlarging th distance between you and it. you laugh, poking your tongue in your cheek when you confirm in your head the game he's playing. it would be of no use denying that you want it as well, right?

"in the mood for toying with my patience?" you ask seonghwa, pressing both of your palms a bit above his shoulders on the couch's grey cussion so you can lower yourself, resting your face right in front of his. he lifts up slowly, head coming next to yours as he brushes some hair behind your ear.

"ooh, i'm in the mood for toying with more than that." he whispers, and when he settles back into the couch, he makes sure that your body comes along with his- his hand splayed on the small of your back pulling you closer as you instinctively straddle his lap with your thighs, like you did it many times before when in fact, it was the first time you and seonghwa were so close to each other.

nothing makes sense in your intoxicated mind anymore. nothing more than feeling seonghwa underneath you, at least. nothing more than how his hand drags slowly up on your back, reaching the column of your neck from which he softly brushes strands of hair, leaving it naked in front of his heavy lidded gaze.

you watch him as closely as he watches you, anticipating his every move with excitement in your heart and in between your legs. you get more comfortable in your new seat, letting all your weight drop down on seonghwa's sturdy thighs. he huffs as he looks down, examining the exposed skin of your thighs below the hem of your uniform's grey skirt, thinking of just how soft your skin might be, if you gave him permission to touch it. he doesn't yet know that in your head, you already did.

"shotgun?" he asks quietly and the only thing you can do is nod.

his lips engulf the butt as he inhales the last hit of the joint, putting it out in a closeby ashtray right after, before he turns his face back to you. his hand wraps around the back of your neck, and you shiver upon the contact, as he pulls you even closer to his face. you open your mouth, forming a little 'o' with your lips as seonghwa exhales the smoke right into your mouth, only milimiters apart from his lips touching yours.

you inhale all of it, letting the smoke explore your lungs as the relaxing feeling takes over you again, eyes rolling in the back of your head when you exhale everything out. the definition of two contrasting emotions at once, battling inside you. one moment you're feeling nervous because of how close you are with seonghwa right now and your heart beats extremely fast and the next one, you're feeling as if your floating in the naturally illuminated room, right next to the many pages with beautiful ondulated writing and the bottles of ink next to them.

your gaze sets on seonghwa again and you shamelessly place your palms on top of his chest, wishing to close the small space in between you but not being so brave yet as to act upon it. he smiles to you, taking your hand placement as an approval for continuation as his own palms find purchase on your hips, tracing the space from there to your waist. and back. then down the outside of your thighs. then back. it might make you go insane, really.

his nose brushes yours, nudging you in some kind of way to continue what you're doing. seonghwa was as good at being a tease as you were at keeping secrets. no wonder he allured you to him every time you were in the same room.

his hands take you by surprise when they stop back on their original place, on your hips, and push you down into his crotch, creating a sort of friction that you might be too ashamed to admit has your heat pooling right above him. seonghwa shows a smug smile when you jolt in his lap, repeating his movement as he keepes his face not more than a breath away from yours.

your nails now dig into his shoulders, and it takes everything you have not to let out some more than breathy moans thanks to the new sensitivity of your body brought to you by the weed. his now growing erection presses deliciously on your clothed core until his motions become yours, and you grind in his lap lewdly. in the back of your head, a little voice asks 'do you think that you're wet enough right now to leave a spot on his pants?' and the thought of it only riles you up even more.

you take it that as much as he likes teasing, he's not a big fan of waiting either. his lips softly press on yours, tongue going inside your open mouth in the blink of an eye. this time you're sure your quiet whimper gets out, and you're even more sure he heard it as he breaks the kiss apart for a short chuckle, sticking his mouth to yours right after the show of pride exits his beautiful mouth.

it's sensual, thoughtful, not a mess of lips and teeth and tongue. something that makes you want more and more and more until you're consumed entirely by it. like a moth drawn to a flame.

the way his head angles to the side so he can have better acces to you, the way his tongue flicks yours playfully before retracting into his own mouth, inviting you to claim him the same way he claims you. the way he nips on your lower lip lovingly, pressing hard enough to arise interest in you but not hard enough to draw any blood. you don't know what seonghwa does in his free time, but it's definitely not the usual high school boy stuff that the other boys you kissed before may do.

he squeezes your hips gently, a breathy moan leaving his own mouth as your lips part briefly, before you take his pillow-like lips against yours again. you press harder into his crotch, feeling the tension build up in both your body and his, tension that feels sweet and bitter at the same time. the rolls of your hips are slow though, savouring every moment in the cloudy daze of your mind, not chasing after any kind of release. and seonghwa does the same, he enjoys it to the last drop, not rushing your movements or his- and you're glad you share the same thought on it: wishing to share a good feeling, a good moment together, rather than asking more of each other.

you feel electrified when his fingertips brush over your exposed thighs again, his touch snapping you awake from even the highest of highs. you break the kiss, silently gasping for air with a sharp inhale as your breath is caught in your throat, all because of his soft touch. fuck, you couldn't last much longer like this; especially with one of his hands now climbing on the inside of your thigh, almost reaching your drenched panties when-

"as much as i'm wishing to see how this plays out, the principal chose to turn a blind eye to smoking, not to having sex." hongjoong's voice bounces around the room, and as soon as you realize, you jump off from seonghwa's lap and next to him.

quickly thinking of a way to remove the spotlight from you, your gaze juggles between hongjoong and seonghwa and you can think of nothing in your fuzzy brain. seonghwa seems half as surprised as you, but not even a quarter the amount of awkward you feel right now, it'shis best friend after all.

"you guys put on quite a show." hongjoong says as he throws his body back on the couch, opening the sealed bottle of water in his hands.

"you were watching?" your voice couldn't come out more flustered even if you tried.

"oh, just thank the universe that i was watching and not somebody else." hongjoong answers, and it leaves you wordless at the realization that he is right but also at how he says it so easily. as if he's watching people almost having sex every day.

as if he's watching seonghwa do it every day.

maybe you found the answer to why seonghwa was such a good kisser. after all, you didn't know everything that happened in the calligraphy club.

"you creep!" you exclaim, reaching over seonghwa to push hongjoong's arm. you both laugh as he hands you the water and you take a short sip, handing it over to seonghwa as well. he looks you in the eyes, smiling pervertedly as he accepts your offer and drinks from the bottle, licking his plump lips right after emptying the recipient's contents.

"so what do you say?" hongjoong voice pierces the silence. "about the new guy." he clarifies after being met with your confused gaze.

coming at least halfway to your senses now, thanks for the scare that the short boy provided, you become more aware of the situation you're in right now, the one you were in before, and the one way before that. you consider it, and deem yourself as nothing more than a mere messenger, not a maker of any decision in this case- that role will be attributed only to mingi.

the bell rings just as you rise from the couch and walk over to pick your bag up from beside your previous seat (and no, not seonghwa's lap), the beanbag chair.

"yeah, i'll tell him." you agree when you get to the door, facing them quickly to say your goodbye with two fingers pointed to your temple and then to them before quickly sliding out the door.

you still yourself when you close it, facing the cold blue surface and leaning your forehead against it softly with an exhale. in just an hour you may have accomplished what you didn't in three years of high school. you may have managed to start a rumour about yourself. that was if anyone else saw you or if hongjoong would decide that keeping his mouth shut won't be enough fun for him. but you couldn't undo things, and you didn't regret them either, you would let fate control how this one would play out.

"skipping class?" a deep familiar voice from behind startles you, and you involuntarily bang your forehead on the door as you jolt. if hongjoong's earlier intrusion wasn't enough to fully bring you to your senses then this definitely was.

"holy fuck, yeosang!" you breathe out as soon as you face the boy, rubbing the spot on your head that was impacted with one hand. "what are you doing?"

"uhmm...honey, the school is public property and this is the hallway. what are you doing?"

"nothing." you are quick to negate everything, speaking right when yeosang finishes talking. "ok, we got high during the first period." good, that was less shocking than whatever more happened in there.

"ugh, i hate that the principal lets them do that here." yeosang says, sounding a tad bit revolted. the principal let the rich kids do many things that were against the rules, that happens when certain parents donate unnerving amounts of money to the school. it was basically impossible for them to get in trouble, not that they really did cause much trouble except turning their beloved club room into a hotbox. you wondered if what hongjoong mentioned is where the principal drew the line- sex in highschool.

"you only hate it because you don't get to benefit from it." you reply to the black haired boy as you both start strolling down the big hallway, looking alive as always when people are starting to make their appearance one by one, infesting the passage just like rodents; some rushing off to their lockers, others gathered in small groups to spread the freshest rumours around.

"yes, that is one of the reasons." yeosang says, elbowing you in the ribs. you grunt as you look at him, being met with only his perfectly crafted side profile. yeosang couldn't care enough about your pain to spare you a glance.

"and what is the reason for you being a bitch today, your highness?" you ask mockingly.

"excuse you, i'm being a bitch every day." he huffs out, dismissively flicking his wrist towards you.

you roll your eyes, inching a bit further away from him so you can prevent any other sudden hits. the eyes surrounding aren't directed towards you now, contrasting the situation with mingi completely. everyone knows you're familiar with yeosang, maybe the only one who is so, just like how you are with them.

when you get to know him, like actually get to know him, kang yeosang is not half bad. of course people wouldn't bother too much in doing so, but neither did he. no one piqued his interest enough, and that was revealed from how he never asked about anyone. but you were happy about that, friendship with yeosang was one of the few that was refreshing around here. even though all else were fun, they did get tiring from time to time, so it was nice to have some different things to talk about with people.

"what you up to this weekend?"

"nothin' much." you answer, shrugging as you look to your right, boo-ing a couple that has a steamy make out session next to the lockers. they look to you and you wink, recognizing them from the book and drama clubs.

"wanna go see a movie?" yeosang asks quietly, as if he was afraid you'd say no. rightfully so, you denied his offers many times just because you had other social gatherings to attend. "there's that cute cashier at the cinema that i haven't seen a quite a while." he adds jockingly.

"sure." you accept with a light chuckle.

as you try to enter the classroom, you're met with mingi trying to exit the place. all three of you stop abruptly and you look at mingi, he looks at you. and then at yeosang, then back at you...fuck. this couldn't be more awkward even if you tried. why is it awkward?

"hi!" mingi tries to sound as jolly as possible when greeting the both of you. "i was looking for you, actually." the silver head says.

"did something happen?" you ask after both you and yeosang greet him back.

"i was gonna ask the same thing," mingi says as he follows you to the desk you share. you sit down and he takes his usual place by your side. "you never skipped class before."

"oh," you murmur as you pull your notebook from your bag, feeling flattered at the concern mingi was displaying. maybe he did consider you a friend. and maybe you were actually friends.

"don't worry about it," yeosang chimes in from the first desk on the middle row as he turns his body to the two of you. "she was busy getting stoned." he completes.

mingi looks to you with wide eyes, as if asking if it was true. you sigh, giving a light nod before squinting your eyes towards yeosang.

"every day you amaze me more, buddy." mingi says, leaning back into his chair as he places an arm across your shoulders, patting your arm a few times.

"i can say the same about you, mr 'i don't usually get into fights'." you say, mimicking his deep voice when you voice his own words back at him. he can't help but offer a muffled laugh and yeosang joins him, watching the boy with the silver locks with utmost attention.

"hey, why don't you join us for a movie this weekend?" yeosang asks and you're left in awe, tilting your head to the side as you watch him with an open mouth and raised eyebrows.

did kang yeosang just show interest in someone other than himself?

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thank you so much for your support! <3

[vodkassassin]

world state: refresh, chapter 1

Summary: Something goes wrong with the plant body contingency plan, and Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua both end up perishing. However, it appears that the System isn’t finished with them, yet. And with their new promotions, this life they find themselves in seems more like a well-deserved vacation. / Back in their previous world, the people who knew them are still in mourning. And some of them are not willing to let them go.

—

“Dude! I thought the plan was to not die!”

“I —!”

“All that work for nothing! And you didn’t just fuck up, you had to drag me down with you? I thought we were bros, man. I thought we were cool!”

Shen Yuan shrinks back, watching him with wide eyes. “Why are you yelling at me?”

“Am I yelling?” Shang Qinghua crosses his arms and turns away. “I am just so sick of dying, bro! I thought we had a contingency, so I wasn’t worried, but now! What the fuck was that?”

“I couldn’t just,” Shen Yuan reaches up and pulls at his hair in aggravation. “I couldn’t just let that happen to Binghe!”

It’s kind of weird seeing him with such a slight build and shorter hair and big eyes a bright blue, when Shang Qinghua has long since become used to the broader shoulders and taller build and long, pin-straight hair of Shen Qingqiu. Shen Yuan’s got some curl to his hair. His eyelashes go on for days.

This must be how his bro looked like back in the real world. Or, their first world. After all this, there’s no way in hell that Shang Qinghua can call the world they’d just left fake or pretend.

He wishes he could.

Shang Qinghua makes a face and squints at his friend. Should he even call him that? After all, he… “You literally committed suicide. And you took me with you. Without asking! Bro, we’re both dead!”

“It’s not my fault that the plant bodies didn’t work!” Shen Yuan wails, and Shang Qinghua jerks back, stunned. Well, it seems that the cool and collected poker face of Shen Qingqiu had been left behind with the body itself. “You told me it was ready! And I didn’t ask you to stand so close to me when I detonated!”

“How was I suppose to know that’s what you were going to do?!” Shang Qinghua shrieks. He points an accusing finger at the other man. “We had a plan, you jerk! I kinda expected that we’d, oh I don’t know, go by it? Just a little bit? Play our parts? You changed the script on me without even giving me a cue!”

“Stop talking about it like it’s a stupid movie!” Shen Yuan says, and oh man his eyes are round and tearful. That’s not fair. “Binghe was going nuclear on us, Airplane! What was I suppose to do, let him destroy the world? Because you and I both know that’s what was about to happen!”

Shang Qinghua flinches back. He ducks his head and hunches his shoulder, looking away with a glare.

Shen Yuan sighs. He clears his throat, and says, “... I’m sorry I took you with me. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I tried to wait until you were out of range, but….”

Shang Qinghua sniffs.

“The only person capable of surviving a blast like that would be the protagonist.” He sullenly admits.

The both of them are silent at that. Shang Qinghua glares down at the vast expanse of blackness that surrounds them, leaving nothing to be seen but each other, somehow untouched by the dark. It almost seems like it might be a dream, but Shang Qinghua already knows what death feels like, and that had been it.

Can he even call himself Shang Qinghua anymore, if he’d left the body of that identity behind?

“I hope it was enough to fix Xin Mo’s influence on him,” Shen Yuan murmurs worriedly. “We’re not around anymore to mitigate the damage or direct the plot. What’s going to happen now? What if our absence means that the canon plot takes over again? Was it all for nothing?”

Shang Qinghua — Airplane drops his shoulders, rubbing his hands over his face tiredly. He feels way too old for this. Why can’t death be the final rest it was suppose to be? Why does this keep happening?

“Where even are we?” He asks.

There’s a familiar ding that echoes endlessly in the void around them. Airplane shares a glance with Shen Yuan, both their expressions bearing the same look of dread and exasperation.

“Why?” Shen Yuan bemoans.

“We’re not done?” Shang Qinghua demands, feeling suddenly furious as a window, slightly too light against the inky blackness, pops up before them. “Are you kidding me?”

He turns away from the blinding brightness and covers his face, muttering furiously under his hitching breath. It’s not fair! What are they, slaves to the System? Airplane is so tired.

“What,” he hears Shen Yuan breathe out beside him.

There’s a tug on his sleeve — they’re both wearing the same robes they died in, resized to fit their new (or rather, their old) bodies but just as dirty — and he turns to glance at his friend, only to find Shen Yuan gaping at the System window in astonishment.

“Airplane,” his friend insists, eyes wide. “Airplane, read it.”

With a put upon sigh, Airplane turns back toward the window and squints at it.

Congratulations, Host 74 and Host 81! Due to your exemplary efforts to rewrite the plot of World-0690, both of you have been promoted!

“What,” Airplane gapes. “A promotion? What the fuck does that mean?”

“Keep reading,” Shen Yuan urges him, eyes still round in shock.

In compensation for your hard work and the troubles faced in World-0690, Hosts have been given the choice of their next assignments!

“I don’t want to,” Airplane whimpers. He turns away from the half-read window and throws himself at his friend.

Shen Yuan lets out a sound of surprise as he catches him, and a hand automatically goes up to pet at Airplane’s head as he buries his face into Shen Yuan’s neck.

“I — Airplane? What’s — ?”

“I don’t want to do it again,” he says, eyes stinging. Fuck, he’s crying. He squeezes his eyes shut and clings to his friend. “I don’t want to. I’m done. I don’t want to anymore. Shen Yuan, I don’t want to!”

“Shit,” his friend mutters. The hand in his hair is comforting, stroking back and forth in a heavy pet.

Airplane sucks in a deep breath, which is a mistake, because it immediately bursts back out of him in a jarring sob.

He’s just so, so done. He doesn’t want to! He isn’t sure what he does want, just that he doesn’t want this! Please, please don’t make him! Not again! Airplane is done!

Shen Yuan speaks again, louder this time. “Airplane, listen. It’ll be different this time, okay? It’s giving us a choice!”

“I don’t want to,” Airplane cries.

“Um… How about I read us the, uh… the options. Okay?”

He sniffles. It’s not like there’s a decline button, he checked before he even started reading the damn window. This isn’t fair. This is so goddamn unfair.

Shakily, he nods his head against Shen Yuan chest. “... Okay.”

“Alright. So, um… option one is to be reborn with a system in a new world that requires a rewrite. It’ll be like how we ended up in PIDW, but we’ll have to read the plot beforehand so we know what we’re going into.”

“No,” Airplane jerks back, glaring up at his friend fiercely from beneath his damp lashes. “I will not be born again. I’m not growing up for another time. My childhoods in both worlds were shitty, I’m not letting myself be a child again, Shen Yuan!”

Shen Yuan gives him a weak smile. “Third time’s the charm?”

Airplane just continues to glare at him. The other man drops the smile and sighs.

“Yeah, okay, it’s a definite no to option one. I don’t wanna go through infancy or, hell, puberty again, either. So, option two…”

Airplane is quiet as his friend gazes up at the window and rereads their options. He refuses to turn around and look at it. He doesn’t want to see it. He’s so sick of the fucking System.

[Host….]

Fuck.

Shut up.

[This system apologizes—]

Shut up, shut up, shut up! Aren’t we done with you? Haven’t I finished what you wanted? Our mission is over, right? I don’t want to talk to you! Leave me alone!

[....]

“Okay, option two,” Shen Yuan says, eyes fixed on the window. Airplane lets his forehead drop to rest against his friend’s shoulder. “We can transmigrate into already written lives, fully grown bodies. Our task in that case would be to help stop the end of the world.”

“Fuck that,” Airplane and Shen Yuan both scoff at the same time.

Airplane draws back from his friend’s embrace to share a grin with him.

“I’m sick of responsibilities. How many options are there?”

Shen Yuan glances back up to scan the window. “There’s a few pages worth… Hey, System?”

There’s a ding. Airplane directs his gaze determinedly on his friend’s face and doesn’t look behind him.

“Can you filter the options?” Another ding. “Okay, filter out all options that require us to play a prewritten character or save a world.”

Ding! Airplane watches avidly as Shen Yuan’s expression smooths out into something pleased. The other man glances back down at him, and then blinks when he realizes that Airplane has been staring at him the entire time. He coughs, and pink flushes over his cheeks.

Airplane feels a smirk crawl onto his face. “Aw, bro. You know, you’re pretty cute like this. Is this how you looked like back — uh, in our first lives?”

Shen Yuan’s blush deepens. “I — uh… yeah, I think so? I don’t have a mirror, so I can’t be one-hundred percent sure…”

Then, the other man smirks back at him, a teasing light entering his bright eyes. “You’re not too shabby yourself, bro. Actually, you’re freaking adorable. If I knew this was what Airplane Shooting Toward the Sky looked like, I’d have never even tried taking your papapa scenes seriously.”

“You never took them seriously anyway,” Airplane scoffs, fighting off his own blush. He stares into the inky blackness of the void instead. “Besides, no one should have taken them seriously.”

“Eh? Why?”

The smirk crawls back over Airplane’s face, and he glances up at Shen Yuan from beneath his eyelashes. “I’m ace.”

Shen Yuan pauses. He stares down at him, speechless for a few long moments. Airplane lifts one hand to hide how his smirk has transformed into a grin. His shoulders shake with amusement.

Finally, Shen Yuan’s face breaks into incredulousness.

“You —? Are you serious?” The man wheezes. He reaches out and slaps a hand against Airplane’s shoulder, and then does it a few more times. “Are you fucking serious? A joke! The entire thing was a joke this whole time? Airplane, I’m gonna fucking kill you, oh my god!”

Despite his words, the slaps are gentle. Shen Yuan still has one arm wrapped around him in a hug.

Airplane bursts into laughter.

“I mean,” he giggles. “The story itself wasn’t a joke? But the reader count skyrocketed after the first smut scene, and the subscriptions mirrored that. I was just a starving college student, bro. I hadn’t eaten in three days, I needed some cash.”

Shen Yuan’s hits cease, and a serious expression overcomes his outrage.

“Was it really that bad?” He quietly asks.

Airplane bites his lip and looks away. “It’s been worse than that, but… Yeah. It’s what helped me make the decision to lead PIDW into the stallion novel genre. I kept the actual story to myself and just focused on writing what the subscribers demanded. It was a huge blow to my integrity as an author, and there were a lot of times that I hated myself for it, but I was too hungry to care most of the time.”

“Shit,” Shen Yuan presses a hand over his mouth. Airplane looks away entirely before he can see the pity that’s likely to be in his friend’s expression. “That’s shitty, man. I’m sorry.”

“Whatever,” he shrugs. “After being born into it, though, there’s a lot of times I wish I’d just gone with my original draft. Starving would have been better than… a lot of what happened, back there as Shang Qinghua.”

Shen Yuan’s arm tightens around him. His hand finds its way back into Airplane’s hair.

“Hey,” he says, quietly. “What’s your name?”

Airplane snorts. “Shang Lei.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

He buries his face into Shen Yuan’s chest and laughs. “No, that’s my name.”

“Oh my god, are you serious?”

He smacks Shen Yuan in the arm, grinning. “Yes, I’m serious.”

“You hack writer. You’re so original, I’m in awe.”

Airplane rolls his eyes and snuggles into his friend’s hug. “I’d offer to let you read the original PIDW, but I don’t have it with me, and I think it would hit differently now that we both uh, actually know most of the characters personally.”

Shen Yuan makes a face. “Man. I’d totally read it, too, if it wasn’t for that. And besides, the way you wrote Binghe... that’s not him. Not anymore.”

“Yeah. You raised him differently.”

There’s a quiet sound, like sniffling. “I … I don’t think I did such a good job,” Shen Yuan whispers, and his voice is thick.

Airplane closes his eyes.

“Anyway.” He says. “Our options?”

“... Right.” Shen Yuan coughs. He straightens up. His arm tightens around Airplane like one might clutch at a teddy bear. Airplane accepts it. “Um…. The filters have narrowed down the list quite a bit. How do you feel about being reborn as forest hermits in a farming simulation become reality?”

“Um. Pass. I’m not much for manual labor.”

Shen Yuan laughs. Airplane can feel the way his body trembles with it against him. He smiles and rests his head into the crook of his friend’s neck.

“Yeah, neither am I. Uh, there’s…. Demon Lords — nah, that’s R18. We know how that goes, and since you’re ace, no thanks. Um, there’s actually a lot of otome-type worlds. Weird. System, filter out those ones.”

Airplane yawns. He’s still feeling upset over all of this, but he’s come to a decision.

Whatever new world they end up in — and goddammit, it’ll be together — he’s not going to allow Shen Yuan convince him to let himself become attached to the characters this time. He’d done so well, in the first half of his life as Shang Qinghua, keeping himself distanced from his peers and enemies alike. Life went by quick and mostly painlessly, when you didn’t connect with anyone. The real pain came after Shen Yuan talked him into seeing the people of that world as actual people.

It was lonely before then, sure. He’s not sure the hurt that came after was worth it, though. Plus, this time he’ll have his bro at his side. That’s all he’ll need.

“Oh, hello.”

He pulls back from his friend’s comfy embrace to look up at him. “Find a good one?”

“I think so,” Shen Yuan tells him. He’s smiling up at the window, and he’s got one eyebrow raised. “This one is ‘Become Game Masters of an ARMMRPG.’”

“Eh?” Airplane frowns. “... Doesn’t it mean, uh, a VRMMORPG? Like in anime?”

“No. This one is Alternate Reality Massive Multiplayer Role Playing Game. Instead of being a virtual world, in this… story, I guess? In this story, the player characters are actually people capable of dimensional travel. Each ‘game’ is a different dimension, and the people can only die in their home dimension. From the description, it’s basically the same as the synopsis of your run of the mill VRMMORPG anime, except the virtual games are real worlds.”

“Sure, but if they’re real worlds, then what does being a Game Master mean?”

Shen Yuan grins down at him.

“Hey, Airplane,” he says. “How do you feel about being an actual god?”

—

Luo Binghe curls up on his throne like a child might sit in their mother’s lap, but there is no warmth to be found for him in this position. He clutches his knees to his chest and fights off another bout of these ceaseless tears. What’s a throne worth, what’s the seat of an emperor worth, what is all the power that he’s spent years accumulating worth, if Luo Binghe himself is actually useless regarding what truly matters?

He’s the king of an entire realm, territories a-plenty in the human one as well, but none of it matters anymore.

Nothing can matter, not now.

He launches himself off the throne, startling the line of servants that kneel on the gilded floor. He ignores their jolts and their gasps of surprise, turning on his heel to leave the room entirely. It’s only a few doors deep into the private wing behind his throne, a room in the center of his palace that is more secure than any place else in all the world.

He throws open the door, and catches it before it can slam shut. He closes it with barely a whisper.

It feels wrong, making too much noise in this room. Being too loud.

Shizun never liked it to be too noisy.

Luo Binghe’s eyes sting as he approaches the shrouded and still form that lies on the dias in the center of the room. He kneels before it, and then lowers himself further to press his forehead against the cold stone floor.

“Shizun,” he whimpers. “This lowly disciple is so sorry. This scum will repent for as long as it takes. Binghe will kneel for eternity if that is what it takes. But please, please. Come back.”

His voice cracks on the last word. It echoes quietly in the room, bouncing off the walls and reaching back to him until all the Luo Binghe is able to hear are the reverberations of his own useless please.

Just like every time before, the form he kowtows to is silent and unmoving. Cold. Dead.

Luo Binghe has made the worst mistakes, and there is no way to fix them.

[Read ch. 2]

[cotncandyboifics]

A Lovely Night: Chapter 2

AO3 Link

Masterpost

Chapter 1 ~ Chapter 3 ~ Chapter 4 ~ Chapter 5 ~ Chapter 6

Pairing(s): pre-established roceit & prinxiety, anaroceit, eventual anaroloceit, eventual intruality

Word count: ~2k

Story summary: Roman's boyfriends had had a rivalry since before either of them had actually met Roman. Running a bit late to a date night, Roman accidentally gets them to start dating too.

General CW: non-detailed description of an anxiety attack, non-detailed description of physical pain, food, kissing, potentially triggering descriptions of physical bodies, swearing, caps lock, school settings, s-xual innuendos, slight description of gore(imagery), vague descriptions of anxiety, Implications of an eating disorder, fatigue, dissociation, suppression of stimming, implied heavy restriction (ED), inner monologue-style anxiety description, eating,(will be added to as I write more)

Chapter CW: kissing, swearing, subtle s-xual innuendo, (let me know if i missed anything please!)

Author notes: this is the starring role chapter! If that makes sense... after this I'm kind of making up the plot stream-of-consciousness style. I'm pretty excited to get CH 5 out.

...

Virgil knew this whole thing was a mistake.

Roman had practically begged him to break out his skirt, fishnet, and heels. He'd only just bought them, and Roman was entirely too enticed by the idea of his boyfriend wearing them. He was very nervous - he'd never worn heels before, and never a skirt out in public - but he just couldn't bring himself to say no to his love.

And so, here he stood, leaning on the railing over a valley as the sun began reaching to kiss the horizon. He'd worn his favorite ripped crop top and leather jacket, fishnets reaching across his exposed navel, down beneath his plaid purple skirt and all the way into the black high heels he wore. He'd done his makeup a little nicer than usual, winging his eyeliner and getting a bit of purple sparkles in with his eyeshadow. his hair curled and twined haphazardly over his forehead and eyes as he watched lights of houses in the valley flicker on.

This was meant to be a special date, just Janus, Roman and Virgil. Roman had planned it, and kept the events a complete secret to both his boyfriends, simply telling them when and where to meet him. Virgil checked his phone; it was two minutes to seven, the agreed upon time. Virgil tended to arrive early to most things, since he was usually anxious that he'd be late even when getting a 30 minute head start. He passed his phone between his hands, the screen flickering on when his thumb accidentally tapped it, and a picture of Roman kissing a smirking Janus on the cheek greeted him. He felt his cheeks heat up, and slid his phone back into his pocket.

A clicking noise sounded from a little ways away, and Virgil turned to seek its source.

Janus was walking up, the heels of his black and white dress shoes clicking on the pavement. He wore a black wool suit with golden accents, a red dress shirt with subtle frills and a black bowtie. On his head rested his favorite bowler hat, concealing the majority of his golden curls - some of which escaped anyway, tucked neatly against his forehead and over his ears. He smirked and bowed as he approached Virgil, dipping his head and holding one golden gloved hand fisted tight against the small of his own back. Virgil scoffed and shoved his shoulder, and Janus stumbled a bit, snickering back.

Janus joined Virgil at the railing, looking out at the valley and the setting sun. They stood in a comfortable silence for a while, Virgil needing to consistently will himself not to rest his head on Janus' shoulder that was painfully close but felt so far.

After long enough, Janus cleared his throat. "Where might our dear prince be?" He ran his fingers down the underside of one of his lapels, not yet tearing his gaze from the pink clouds surrounding the sunset. Virgil opted to check his phone.

"Uh..." He couldn't form the words, so he simply presented his phone to Janus. A single text had come through.

Romano<3 Hey babe, I'm running kinda late. Why don't you and Jannie entertain each other until I get there? Sorry. Love you <3<3<3

Janus hummed, eyebrows raised. "Well it appears we're stuck with each other for the time being." He smirked slightly, and Virgil scoffed, bumping shoulders with him.

"What a waste," Virgil mused under his breath after a few more minutes of them staring out at the sunset together.

"Ah..." Janus glanced at Virgil briefly. "Such a shame. What a lovely view. It's practically hand drawn for a couple." He sighed, a little too dramatically, and Virgil furrowed his brow at him. "If only Roman were here. Unfortunately, you're not really my type, darling."

"Really." Virgil spat, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms over his chest protectively.

"Alas it's only you and I," Janus continued, leaning slightly closer to Virgil, "and frankly, we've got no chemistry whatsoever."

"Ah, okay snakey." Virgil bit back, not daring to look at the smirk he was sure was playing on Janus' face. "I think I can make that call, huh? Just because you look all pretty in that polyester suit doesn't-"

"It's wool," Janus interjected in annoyance. Although after a moment he gasped slightly, turning to Virgil fully. "Wait a moment! Did you just call me pretty, Charlie Frown?" He leaned a little too close, and Virgil scrunched his nose, leaning away slightly.

"Stealing Ro's nicknames for me doesn't make you creative," Virgil deflected, smirking right back at Janus.

"Mmm, perhaps not," Janus leaned away, seemingly examining his fingernails through his gloves.

"And for the record, I'm also feeling no chemistry."

"Is that so?" Janus' attention was back on Virgil, and their eyes locked in an intense and silent battle. Virgil wouldn't back down, just as he never had before, but this time he wasn't sure what he was trying to prove. He straightened his posture, making his chest puff out slightly. Even if Janus was taller than him, he wouldn't shy away from a confidence contest. No, not even if his crush was literally looming over him, not even if he could swear he just saw Janus' eyes flick to his lips for an imperceptible millisecond.

"Yeah. It is." He leaned his head forward, almost bumping his forehead on Janus'. Had he ever seen Janus' face so red?

"So you agree, then," Janus spoke, voice ever so slightly unsteady, but he didn't dare back down. Even if he was nose to nose with a boy he was in love with.

"Yeah, I guess I do." Virgil scrunched his nose again. This time, when Janus' eyes flicked to his lips, it wasn't deniable. He watched it happen, clear as day.

And so, he took a chance.

He took one step forward, not moving his head at all but nearly pushing his body against Janus'. Janus responded in kind, taking a step forward as well, and they were chest to chest. Virgil reached up and gripped Janus' lapels. They were impressively soft, and Virgil realized Janus hadn't just been bragging; it was in fact a wool suit. Janus' hands came to Virgil's hips. Virgil pressed their foreheads together, and didn't dare look away from Janus' eyes. They both breathed on each other, caught up in the heat of the moment without even needing to move with each other.

They'd both been waiting for this for so long.

Slowly, Janus' arms wrapped around Virgil's waist, and Virgil tilted his jaw up slightly. Janus met him halfway, immediately initiating a passionate, openmouthed kiss. Virgil's arms wrapped around Janus' neck, and Janus held him as close against himself as he physically could.

Virgil's mind was exploding, and so was Janus'. Neither of them could believe that this was really real. But they were both too afraid to break the kiss to make sure that it was, so they just kept kissing.

Hands wandered as they did, and Virgil had his arms wrapped beneath Janus' and around his back, both of them pulling each other against themselves as snugly as they could. Neither could get enough of this feeling they'd been chasing for so many years, and the fact that it had all culminated into this moment felt intoxicating in a way neither could describe.

Eventually things slowed down, and they went from lovingly tongue battling to trading gentle slow pecks, both of them smiling stupidly as they rested their foreheads together once more.

Janus opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted. "I genuinely thought you two weren't going to stop kissing for a minute there. Jeez."

Janus gasped and Virgil yelped, both of them jumping about a foot in the air and a foot away from each other. Roman, who was sitting on the bench next to them, broke out in laughter.

"Ro you can't sneak up on us like that, man!" Virgil wheezed out though labored breaths, as he tried to calm himself. Janus just stood straight as a pencil with his hands pressed into his face.

After long enough, Roman caught his breath, but he was still smiling so big at his boyfriends. They both looked between Roman and each other, trying desperately to probe the situation without moving a muscle.

Roman brought his hands to his face, fingers curled into happy fists. "Do you know how happy it makes me that you two finally realized?" Roman practically squealed, and if it were even possible, Virgil's face went even redder. Janus collected himself, and cleared his throat.

"Well hello, Roman." He opened his mouth to say more, but the words wouldn't come. He kept glancing to Virgil, who had taken to staring at the floor.

Roman looked between the two of them for a moment. "Oh you big buffoons. Talking always has been hard for the two of you, huh? Come here, my loves." He patted the bench on either side of him, and his boyfriends came at his call, settling in with their thighs against Roman's. "Now hmm, how should we start... I suppose you can fill me in on what I missed?" he looked between them. "Surely you didn't simply see each other in your lovely-" Roman made a point to look Virgil up and down slowly, "-outfits," And Janus as well, "And just decide to attach at the lips immediately? That sounds like something I'd do, more so than either of you." Janus chuckled, and kissed Roman's cheek.

"Well, snakey here decided to make a deal about how pretty the sunset was. And how it was so romantic and all that. And how it was a waste that-" Virgil's snarky explanation was cut off.

"Excuse me, I started it? No no no Virgie," Janus smirked as Virgil's eyes widened at the nickname, "You were the first to make a sly comment about the waste of a romantic view."

"You tell Ro then, if you think you know so much better." Virgil crossed his arms over his chest and stuck his tongue out at Janus, who hummed a laugh.

"Alright. Well," His smirk was lost then, and he took to adjusting his gloves. "I then made a comment about the lack of chemistry between us, and... And I think Virgie said something about me being pretty," His smirk was no longer lost, and Virgil rolled his eyes to try and distract himself from his heart racing in his chest. "And... I'm not sure. We got... lost in the moment." Janus smiled then. A genuine smile. It was such a rare sight (as Roman and Virgil often commented to each other) that Roman nudged Virgil's shoulder so he'd look up to see it too. They both gaped at Janus happily for a few moments, before Janus cleared his throat. "So I suppose then that in the end, I was correct that you find me pretty, Virgil?"

Virgil choked on air for a moment. "Sure, yeah, whatever," He spoke under his breath, "but you were also wrong about the chemistry thing. So suck it." Virgil gave him a challenging grin.

"Ayo!" Roman snickered at the innuendo, and Virgil and Janus both rolled their eyes at him.

"But darling," Janus ignored Roman for a moment, and Virgil swore his chest would explode if Janus kept using pet names for him, "You so strongly agreed that there was no chemistry to be found between us, and yet." He held his hands out, gesturing to their circumstances and smirking yet again.

"Oh shut up pretty boy," Virgil growled in annoyance, reaching across Roman's lap and pulling Janus by the cheeks into another kiss.

[collecting-stories]

Mai Tai - ep. 02 - Rafe Cameron

Summary: Some heavy flirting and a day out with Wheezie.

A/N: The rewrite for chapter two.

Holiday in the Sun Masterlist | Outer Banks Masterlist

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

The Nassau house was arguably bigger than Tanney Hill. Enough bedrooms that you got your own and so did Sarah and Wheezie. Rafe and Topper were stuck in a room together though you saw Sarah’s boyfriend put his suitcase in her room as you dragged your suitcase into yours. It was at the end of the hall, a sliding door that you couldn’t quite figure out how to lock, and enough white that you weren’t sure if Rose thought she was in an institution or a vacation home. It was nice either way and the bed was definitely comfortable as you dropped your things and flopped back on it, legs hanging over the side as you stared up at the ceiling.

“Kinda miss that tomboy look you used to rock.”  

You sat up in bed, Rafe leaning against the open door frame, grinning at you. “Sorry to disappoint,” you replied, “it was more a cover-up than a style and I finally grew into myself in case you didn’t notice.”

“I noticed.” He said, “Oh, and Rose said dinner’s ready.”

Dinner was awkward and quiet, the leftover tension from the plane ride unresolved as you all sat around the table. Rose and your mother spent the entire meal plotting out the week, what they would do, where they would go. It was all arbitrary stuff that you didn’t care about. None of the Cameron kids seemed to care either as they stayed relatively quiet throughout the meal. Sarah would whisper back and forth with Topper but Rafe and Wheezie kept quiet, the latter texting in her lap. Ward spent the meal talking business with your stepdad and you pushed your food around your plate, counting the minutes until dinner was over and you were allowed to go into your room.

Your friends had already texted you about their own first night in Ptown and you’d promised to facetime them after dinner, something you were itching to do. Though, Rafe was making dinner slightly more bearable. Rose had said something particularly annoying and Rafe had rolled his eyes, only to realize that you were looking at him. After that it felt like every time you looked up he was staring at you, the attention making you slightly flushed.  

-

“Hey,” you greeted, leaning forward so you could see passed the refrigerator as Rafe came into the kitchen. You were sitting up on the counter, the large sliding window open behind you as you ate straight out of a pint of ice cream. “Can’t sleep?”

He nodded, running a hand through his hair, messy from sleep and notably a little long. “You?” He asked, opening the refrigerator and obscuring you from view for a moment.  

“Something like that.” You replied, stretching your legs out casually though you were actually double-checking that you didn’t have any forgotten hairs or unsightly nicks. You knew it was stupid but you couldn’t help yourself, four years had only made him more gorgeous than he’d been at 15 and you were enjoying the attention he’d already given you. At least the sleep shorts and sports bra could work in your favor. “You want some?” You offered the pint of ice cream, your spoon stuck in the middle.  

“What kind?” He asked as he took the spoon and dug in.

“Coffee.” You replied, “I snuck it in.”

“You snuck it in?” He took a bite and you watched the spoon slip back out between his lips as he swallowed the ice cream.  

“My mom’s got me on a diet, I’m only allowed like four hours of eating a day and definitely not ice cream.” You admitted, “gotta get rid of the baby fat.” As you said it you pinched the inside of your thigh to prove your point and he laughed. You looked cute enough for midnight but you weren’t above self-deprecating jokes.  

“Well your secret is safe with me.” He replied, grabbing the beer he had taken from the refrigerator, “As long as you don’t tell anyone I was drinking.”

“Where are you on your 12 steps?” You teased, waving your hand for him to pass you the beer.  

“Step 1,” Rafe replied, “fuck my life.”

You laughed, nearly spitting the beer that you’d just sipped. As you went to reply you both heard footsteps coming toward the kitchen. You slipped off the counter, almost bumping into him because he was so close. You grabbed his hand as the hall light flipped on, abandoning your ice cream to the counter as you dragged Rafe out onto the porch with you. “Sorry, I’ll be done for if my mom finds me.” You admitted, pressing your back against the wall just passed the door, out of sight.  

“Trust me, I’m in the same boat.” Rafe answered, standing close to you, watching the door. You were trapped between him and the wall and you were convinced that you would be tripping over your words if the light was actually hitting him and he wasn’t completely shadowed.  

“It’s Rose.” He finally said, able to see enough into the kitchen that he recognized his stepmom’s blonde hair.

“What’s she doing?”

“You’re gonna have to buy new ice cream.” He whispered, looking down at you and grinning.  

“No,” you whined, leaning your head back against the wall. “Damn.”

“Here, eases the pain,” he teased, passing his beer to you.

Rose left the kitchen with your ice cream and Rafe backed away from you, giving the all-clear as headed back inside. You followed after him, topping off the rest of his beer and dropping it in the bin beneath the sink.  

“You want your own this time?” He asked, pulling out two more.  

“Yes please, if I can’t eat all my calories, I’ll drink them.” You joked, watching as he popped the lid off with the edge of the counter. “That’s a neat party trick.”

“Glad your impressed.”  

“Was that the goal?” You asked, taking your beer from him.

He only smiled, trying to look as innocent as possible as he shrugged his shoulders at you. “Come on-”

“Where are we going?” You asked, cutting him off. He walked out of the kitchen and you followed after him, down the hall in the dark.

“You don’t want anyone to catch you right?” He asked, stopping at a door near the end of the hall. The entire house was on one level, windows everywhere in the main rooms to make it feel like it was outside and inside at the same time.  

“Right,” you replied skeptically. Your room was up ahead but he stopped before that.

He pushed the door open and you realized it was his bedroom, the same one you’d seen Topper moving his suitcase out of earlier in the day. “Hotel Cameron,” he joked as you walked in passed him.

“I thought the whole house was hotel Cameron.”  

“You’re mistaken.” Rafe replied.

“Well, what does Hotel Cameron have to offer then?” You asked, walking further into the room and taking a seat on the end of the chaise near the window, “besides beer?”

“A great view.”  

“Kinda dark out.” You said, glancing over your shoulder, out the window.

“Wrong view.”

You laughed even though anyone else saying it would’ve instantly made you cringe and Rafe smiled at his joke, this insanely dorky grin on his face as if he wasn’t nearly as confident as he acted. He shut the door and came further into the room having waited until he was sure that you were comfortable.

“Okay, so view, beer...anything else?” You asked.

“Great company...and possibly breakfast in bed.” He offered.  

“Are you cooking the breakfast?”  

“Definitely not.” He laughed, taking a seat on his bed, stretching out on top of the comforter.

“I was just checking, I wasn’t sure how many compliments you were gonna pay yourself before we got through this.” You teased.  

“Only a few more.”  

“Well I’m already here so I might as well stay.” You replied, you moved further up to sit with your back to the window, relaxed against the armrest as you watched Rafe lounging in bed.  

“So, your boyfriend bummed you skipped out on vacation?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend...” you said, trying to decide what he was getting at, “were you listening to my facetime earlier?”

“I may’ve overheard.”

“Overheard?” You laughed, “can’t believe you were creeping on me.”  

“I wasn’t ‘creeping’ on you.”  

You hummed, biting back a smile, “well I’m single so-” you shrugged.

“Good to know.”

-

Even though he’d offered breakfast in bed, and you could imagine how incredible that whole situation would be, you snuck out before the sun was up, heading back to your bedroom. You managed to find a pen and paper in the drawer of the desk in his room, leaving him a note that promised a raincheck on breakfast before slipping out.

When you woke up the second time it was in your own bed, in your room, and you were disoriented for a second as you tried to remember the night before. Everyone else, Rafe excluded, seemed to already be awake when you made it out to the kitchen. Sarah and Topper were sitting at the island eating while Wheezie was engaged in a pretty heated argument with Ward.  

“What’s the matter with them?” You asked, spooning some fruit into a bowl and sitting down next to Topper.  

“Wheezie wants to go to some aquarium at the resort,” Topper replied, “Sarah and I are going to the beach and Rose is going shopping.”

“It’s the aquarium in Atlantis,” Sarah said.  

“Oh well,” the door to the outside opened and Wheezie came in, red faced as Ward walked in after her, “I’m free to go to the aquarium.”

“Seriously?” Wheezie asked, suddenly perking up.

“Yeah, I’d actually love to go to the aquarium.” You’d rather that then lounging on the beach all day. Besides, you were pretty sure if you spent any more time around Rafe you would rush into something without giving it the thought it deserved.  

“Alright, aquarium it is.” Ward agreed, “but next time you throw a tantrum like that you’ll stay here, understood?”  

“Understood.” Wheezie repeated, biting down on her lower lip. Even though you could tell she was excited for the aquarium the obvious fear of disapproval from Ward won out.  

“Thanks,” Sarah whispered, leaning passed Topper to grab a piece of toast, “I just don’t wanna get stuck babysitting.”

You wanted to say that spending time with a thirteen year old didn’t amount to babysitting by any degree but you only nodded and said, “no worries.”

“What are we talking about?” Rafe asked, announcing his presence in the kitchen. He placed a hand on the back of you're chair and leaned over you to grab a piece of pineapple off your plate.  

“Hey!” You twisted around to look up at him, gaze trailing up a bare stomach and chest to meet his eyes. This was going to be a long week, “you can get your own breakfast.”

“Do you wanna go to the aquarium with us?” Wheezie asked, sitting down on the other side of the island.

“Who’s us?” He asked, still hovering over you.  

“Sarah and I are hitting the beach,” Topper replied, excluding them from Wheezie’s trip to the aquarium.

“I told Wheezie I’d go to the aquarium with her.” You said, smacking his hand when he tried to get another piece of pineapple. “Stop it.”  

His hands fell to your shoulders, gently squeezing before he let go, walking around the counter and grabbing some of the food that had been laid out for breakfast. You tried not to watch him as he moved. “Sorry, I was only trying to cash in on my raincheck.”  

“What are you talking about?” Sarah asked, looking between you and her brother.

“Nothing,” you coughed, glaring at Rafe, who only smiled. You didn’t miss the look he shared with Topper, one the suggested Sarah’s boyfriend knew exactly what Rafe was talking about.

“So,” Wheezie piped up, “do you wanna go with us?”

“Yeah alright,” Rafe agreed. He’d promised that he wouldn’t ditch her this vacation anyway and he intended to keep at least that promise. You were making it easier on him too, he could spend more time with you and hang out with Wheezie at the same time.  

-

The marine habitat in Atlantis was arguably the largest aquarium you’d ever been to and Wheezie was thoroughly enjoying stopping in front of every display, spitting out facts about different animals. “My teacher says I’m on track to becoming a marine biologist someday.” She mentioned as you walked through a deep sea fish exhibit.  

She was like a kid in a candy store from the moment you arrived, face to the glass. You lagged a little behind her, reading the cue cards that told you all the same facts that Wheezie already knew, taking in the sight of the aquarium and enjoying behind a spectator to her and Rafe.  

“Hey,” Rafe called, looking over at you as Wheezie stopped to strike up a conversation with one of the workers there. “Stop texting your boyfriend and pay attention.”

“Stop!” You laughed when he grabbed at your phone. You tried to pull it away but failed as Rafe took the phone out of your hands, holding it above his head. “God, you’re like the tallest person ever.” You grumbled, trying to reach but failing when he extended his arm all the way. “Rafe, give me my phone back.”

“We’re supposed to be on vacation, no phones.” He joked, trying to sound like your mom when she caught you texting at dinner the night before.

“Give me. My phone. Back.” You said, punctuating your words. He dropped it into your hands. “God, I forgot you were this annoying.”

“Annoying?” He turned to look at Wheezie, staring into a display, “hey Wheez, am I annoying?”

“Right now or general?”

“Unbelievable.” Rafe muttered though he smiled at the end.  

The tour resumed, your phone tucked securely into your back pocket as you walked through the aquarium with Wheezie and Rafe. She stopped again at the shark tank, looking in at the two sharks they had swimming around the indoor/outdoor habitat. Just like before, she zeroed in on the nearest worker and approached them, asking a million questions as she discussed the sharks with them.  

You stood there staring at the shark swimming through the habitat, feeling both like the conversation from earlier was over and like you wanted to continue you it. “I don’t have a boyfriend, by the way.” You blurted out, internally cursing your inability to ever let things go. “Which you knew because I told you. And besides, I wouldn’t have gone back to your room if I had a boyfriend.”

“Nothing happened.” Rafe replied, smirk working it’s way onto his face, “did you want something to happen?”  

“That’s not what I meant.” You huffed, crossing your arms under you chest and looking away from him.  

“I mean, there is a vacancy-”

“Shut up!” You knocked your hip against his.  

“Hey, I’m just laying it all out there. I mean, we’re only here for a week, might as well skip the small talk.” He shrugged.

“So I’ll...sleep with you?”

“You suggested it, not me.” He replied.  

“That’s not what I meant.” You insisted though you had definitely been thinking about it since the car ride to the Nassau house. Wheezie called the two of you over, finished looking at the sharks and ready to move on. “Besides, I’m not as tragically hideous as I was at thirteen but I’m also not as gullible.”  

“You were not tragically hideous.” Rafe laughed, following you as the two of you caught up with Wheezie.

“It was a pretty rough year, I had a golf ball sized bruise from a skateboarding accident.” You replied, “and that was just temporary...the rest of it was...”

“You were cute.”

“What?” You couldn’t hide the disbelief, even if you wanted to.  

“I thought you were cute.” Rafe repeated. “I’d use some different adjectives now but...you definitely weren’t hideous.” He said, walking ahead of you to meet up with Wheezie and leaving you standing there shocked.  

-

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[mimik-u]

Flower Child (Chapter 13): Blue (III)

Goodness, I'm nearly a year and a half late, but here we are—Chapter 13 of "Flower Child." First of all, I want to give my sincerest apologies for the delay... I mentioned this at the start of my fic "Facets," but the simplest and truest story is that my muse for writing Steven Universe and, well, writing in general petered out for a long time and has only recently returned. But, because it has recently returned, I wanted to begin to make good on a promise I made to you guys so many months ago—that one day, I would finish this story. So let's do this. <3 I'm ready now. 

(1) I read through the previous twelve chapters, lmao, and half-loved and half-hated my writing, but the point of that exercise, beyond getting acquainted with the plot of "FC" again, was to also do some quick grammar and flow revisions, so a few of the previous chapters should read just a little better than maybe they had before.

(2) Fun fact! Chapter 13 is pretty interesting because some portions of it were actually written over a year ago; it was an incredible challenge for me to work with what I had as a 2019 writer versus what I've learned as a 2020 writer.

(4) Someone asked on Tumblr a long time ago if there was a playlist I worked with in writing this story...

(5) And finally, and most importantly, this chapter is incredibly heavy, dealing with themes of suicidal ideation and extreme depression.

Please be cautious while reading if these are topics that are triggering to you!

i.

The shiny, black town car eased to a stop at the pull-through entrance of the hospital, drawing the gazes of passerby on the sidewalk. An older lady in a wheelchair, a group of what appeared to be college kids in scrubs, a scraggly-looking patient who’d obviously escaped the confines of his room to light a cigarette—they all stopped and stared as the back door of the overtly fancy car was pried open from the inside out, as a metal cane preceded a woman who quite looked like she needed it.

Blue Diamond unfolded into the light of day, trembling.

Because it was hard.

It was so hard.

To be here.

(To be.)

She wanted to collapse where she stood, dissemble and dissolve away one piece of herself at a time; she leaned heavily on the head of her cane and lit upon the sole pair of eyes that weren’t looking at her—or, really, her Lincoln. The man named Greg Universe stood next to the automatic doors with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring at the ground, all but boring a hole into it. When the sliding doors opened and closed at his backside, they appeared to be ripping into him, piece by miserable piece.

“I’ll call when I’m ready,” Blue murmured to her valet before shutting the door and slowly hobbling over to Greg.

Clank.

The onlookers glanced away as the town car drove off, resumed their lives and cared not for yet another broken person in their midst. The hospital was full of them as it was. Perhaps they were even broken themselves—very probably they were.

Blue Diamond did not care to know.

Clank.

I’m betraying her, she thought, she was always thinking. I’m leaving her behind. I’m betraying her. I’m—

Clank.

The clanking did the trick, catching Greg’s attention and only half-holding it. He lifted his head slowly and mustered a smile that must have been agony. It wobbled on his lips and very nearly disappeared in his bushy beard. It pulled at him—all over. He looked like a Picasso gone wrong, an abstraction of a man stretched too far.

“Hey, just in time.” He gave a shaky little laugh that rather sounded like a sob and then somehow kept talking, his entire physiognomy alive with his nerves. “Steven’s so excited to see you again. He hasn’t stopped talking about ya since this morning, which is kinda nuts because he was so tired yesterday, but this is a good thing, and so we should really go up and see him now because—”

She cut across him; it was a quiet act, a merciful one. “Greg.”

It was just his name, a singular syllable, a sound, but even that was enough.

Mr. Universe’s face fell into geometric disarray.

“No use hiding it, huh?” He half-wept, half-laughed again, scrubbing a hand over his face and bringing up his shirt to soak up what was left.

“No,” Blue Diamond whispered, her hands tightening on the head of her cane. “It’s scrawled all over you, I’m afraid.”

“Figures,” he said hoarsely. “I’m a mess.”

“No more than I am.” She pried one of her hands away from the other and gestured loosely at her entire body with a wry smile. “If you’re a mess, then I am a dereliction.”

It wasn’t a contest; it was the truth.

Four years of grieving had wasted her.

Blue Diamond was skeletal.

Broken.

Greg took this in and considered; his smile that really wasn’t a smile resolved itself into a quiet, aching sort of frown. It tugged his face downwards; it tugged at the hollows of her chest. She’d seen him only a little over a week ago, and yet today, he looked as though he’d aged a hundred years in the span of eight days. There were bags under his eyes and sunken dunes in his cheeks.

There was a little boy in a hospital bed.

There was a disease.

It was killing them both.

“How do I do this?” He asked the ground. “How did you—” But he stopped short; his breath hitched.

It was a highly personal question after all.

It was no short wonder that Blue’s cane didn’t snap beneath her grip.

“How did I do it?” She returned softly all the same. The slight breeze stirred the strands of hair poking out of her silvery braid.

Greg nodded mutely, the desperation in his face tangible. She could reach out if she wanted and touch his hurt, the very heart of it, and all of its dimensions. (She didn’t want to.)

“To be entirely truthful,” she murmured, “I’m not sure that I ever did.”

ii.

It was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon, and it was also 2:38AM, the very moment when a police officer had the audacity to come to their door and tell two mothers that their daughter was dead, gone, and never coming back. His expression was a gathering bruise, and his words were like bullets, striking right between the ribs.

Blue Diamond couldn’t breathe.

In the darkness, she sat on the edge of Pink’s bed and dragged every mouthful of air inwards like it was painful; her chest heaved with the awfulness of it, the punctured horror of leaking lungs.

Her child was dead.

Oh, God.

Her child was gone.

Why, oh, why, oh, God, my God?

And she was never coming back.

Goddammit.

In the coagulated darkness, Blue clutched her daughter’s favorite sweatshirt close to her chest; it was black and ratty, full of holes and little tears. A small alien logo perched on the chest, grinning up at her from depthless eyes.

They used to fight over this particular number.

Constantly.

“You’re a multibillion dollar heiress.” Blue would pinch the bridge of her nose and try not to raise her voice above an acerbic whisper. “Would it inconvenience you to buy some nicer clothes?”

Pink was unsparing in her retorts, wicked and witty, face upturned in a haughtiness to match her mother’s own. 

“Would it inconvenience you to get off my ass, Mother? It’s just a sweatshirt.”

“Pink!”

And on and on. 

The fabric was cold between Blue’s long fingers, still scented with Pink’s favorite perfume.

They were going to bury her today, mere hours from now.

Last week, they’d been fighting over this shirt.

On and on and never again.

The funeral… mere hours from now… less than three… but how could that also be true when it was only 1:52AM and Pink Diamond was coughing her last, strangled breath on a dirty pavement outside a bar on 9th Avenue?

Blue Diamond hadn’t been there, but she forced the words on the detective’s report to come to life in the theatre of her mind’s eye anyway. By the time the paramedics had arrived, Pink was all but gone; she gasped, and she coughed, and her brown eyes marbled in one final supernova of emotion. They tried to resuscitate her, but the damage was too extensive.

She’d fought back, the officer had said. (He thought it was a consolation to them.)

The proof was caked in her nails and scratched all over her arms, but it’d been three against one.

She was a lion, and they were men; she was a twenty-one year old girl, and they were men.

In the darkness, unraveling, Blue Diamond’s face dripped onto the sweatshirt, onto the alien smiling up at her with a black sliver of a mocking grin. She did not register—she did not care to register—the slow creaking of the door opening inwards.

Amber light strained from the hallway to find and reach and touch her but didn’t quite make it. 

Yellow Diamond was a shadowy figure in the doorway.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” she scolded, and yet, she moved into the room anyway—the hypocrite—her sharp heels muffled in the carpet. Stiff and forbidding, she came to stand in front of Blue, arms crossed over her chest, a frown crossed over her face. “It’s not healthy for you, Bl—“

But Blue cut across her. It was not a kind act; it was a precise incision—cold and surgical—three inches long and just as deep. “Our daughter is dead, Yellow.”

The shadowy figure recoiled but did not bite.

Even now, Yellow couldn’t bear to be seen as vulnerable, couldn’t bear to give one damn inch.

“I know that, dammit,” she muttered to the wall. “Dammit—do you not think I know that?”

But Blue had no pity for her, no shred of any emotion left except for the vicious tangle of grief; it tangled in her fingers, which sunk deep into Pink’s shirt, and it tangled in her cold eyes, leaking down her pale face and salting her anemic lips.

“Then act like it,” she hissed.

The exhortation bruised the air.

It demanded a reaction.

On its hands and knees, it begged for a response.

And yet, the shadowy figure said nothing. She didn't move her clenched fists.

She could not face Blue in the eyes.

Coward.

Hypocrite.

(Mourner.)

(Mourning.)

She simply left, staggering out of the room on precariously high heels, and Blue simply stayed, conflating the hours and the days and the minutes.

Later that day, they buried their daughter in a mausoleum, a gazebo—in a cemetery slathered in golden sun.

iii.

Greg explained the details as best as he could on the way up to Steven’s room. It was hard to find him a kidney because his blood type was O negative, which meant that he would only be able to receive a kidney from a Type O donor. And though he’d been on the waiting list for months now, and though he’d recently been moved to the top of the list given his worsening condition, it was still anyone’s guess as to when a kidney would become available.

(“If,” he could barely choke out, “we can even get one at all.”)

After slowly making their way across an expansive skywalk, they finally arrived at a pair of double doors labeled Truman Ward. The sun pierced through the tall glass windows and lit upon Blue’s sunken face, and Greg’s red eyes, and her metallic cane, and his wobbling lips—as though it was doing them a favor by doing so.

Greg reached behind her and pressed a button on the wall, alerting someone on the other side to their arrival.

“Listen”—he ran his hand along the back of his neck as the doors slowly parted open in welcome—“I’m going to go back to the room for a bit and see if I can get some paperwork done. Feel free to stay as long as ya’d like. Visiting hours don’t end ’til eight.”

Blue stared at him. 

Every moment—every hour, minute, and second with this child was precious nowadays, and here Greg was, lending her time out of his own.

She felt the gift of what he was offering deeply.

(She could have never found it in herself to be so generous with Pink.)

“Thank you.” She swept a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I… I appreciate you allowing me to visit him.”

But he only shook his head and urged her through the doors with a pinched smile.

“If he’s happy that you’re here,” he shrugged, “then I am, too.”

And with that, he waved a last goodbye, and the doors folded to a close again with her on the other side of them.

Room 11037.

Walking became a monumental task as the clinically white hallway stretched out before her, lengthened by her mind, twisted and contorted into an obstacle she had to surmount.

It should have been just a hall.

Clank.

The memory of Pink burned bright behind her eyelids, stained there permanently by principle but stamped in starkly with assistance from the harsh fluorescents overhead. She was laughing, always laughing, in these flashbulb reminiscences, her freckles coalescing and then expanding across the bridge of her nose like the bellows of an accordion.

Clank.

But it wasn’t just Pink, though it always would be.

Clank.

It was Steven now.

Clank.

A ghost she chased, as opposed to the one who perpetually haunted her (who mercifully, who cruelly stayed.)

Clank.

But he wasn’t a ghost just yet, right? He was still here and still fighting—did that not count for something? Didn't his heartbeat, the very state of its continued existence, teach her to hope?

Clank.

But hope was such an awful word—so empty, brimming with meaningless sensationalism.

Clank.

(Maybe it was the vestiges of her long dead religion, but she wanted to hope anyway.)

Clank.

Hope was such an awful word.

Clank.

Room 11037. 

The door was decisively closed. 

A tall woman with bicolored eyes leaned against it, her dark lips corkscrewed into a frown.

Blue Diamond vaguely remembered her from the cemetery but couldn’t quite place a name. She could place an expression, though, and was surprised to name the one on this stranger’s face as disdain. Disdain rolled off this mysterious woman in waves, from the resolute clench of her jaw to the iron way that her arms were folded across her chest. It burned in her eyes. It seemed to languish inside of her, seething just under a facade of smooth skin.

She was a monolith of quiet loathing.

Blue squared her rounded shoulders in a manner she thought to be composed; her hands trembled on her cane nonetheless.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” She asked it quite politely, even as the walls were harsh and white around them. She used to command rooms by the authoritative nature of her voice alone, and now she struggled to keep it together long enough to face a singular woman in front of a singular door.

“It’s not you specifically,” the woman replied, impressively put together, admirably composed. If her electric blue eye was cold, the brown one simply burned. Both were bruised underneath with tired shadows. “It’s what you stand for. It’s about the morals that Diamond Electric doesn’t have.”

“You’re an activist,” Blue surmised quickly, almost flippantly. Activists were challenging DE all of the time, and activists were always losing. Before Pink… she’d largely assumed that these sorts of protesters simply had no logical case. After Pink, she had had much more consuming thoughts on her mind than petty lawsuits against their multibillion dollar company.

“A Crystal Gem,” she corrected tersely, “but that’s not what I want to talk to you about.” Her gaze slid subtly to the doorway behind her, and Blue understood her at once.

“Steven,” she whispered.

The woman nodded.

“Steven,” she agreed, and her voice cracked as she said it, splintering into thousands of little pieces and struggling to regroup. When she swallowed to compose herself, it was almost as though she was swallowing the shards. “He likes you, and I can’t… I won’t begrudge him that.”

In the way that she said it, it was almost like she was convincing herself most of all.

“There is an implicit but there,” Blue parried softly. “You won’t begrudge him that, but.”

Again, the woman nodded, the gesture slow and measured, as though she was working something out in the tiny motion. When her squared chin came up again, her mismatched eyes were bright, intense with quiet pain.

“But don’t hurt him.”

It was a reasonable demand, but the implication behind it stung immediately and anyway.

She inhaled sharply and scrambled to defend herself, to salvage the punctured wound, but the damage was already done. Her voice came out more broken than it did cold.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“Maybe not intentionally,” the Crystal Gem said, shaking her head. “Most people never really intend to hurt someone… but it happens. We get caught up in our emotions. We get selfish. We get distant. And then we hurt people.”

It struck Blue Diamond at that very moment that she hadn’t even deigned to ask the woman’s name.

“So, all I’m saying is don’t hurt him.” She unfolded herself from the door and stepped aside. “He likes you.”

iv.

Two days after the first anniversary of Pink Diamond’s death, a doctor shined a light in Blue Diamond’s glassy eyes and waited for a pupillary response. When he received one—an involuntary but nonetheless reactive blink—he unceremoniously clicked off his pen light and straightened up into the unfriendly darkness once more.

In the sparse incandescence bleeding in from the hallway, Yellow Diamond cut a shadowy figure by his side, her usually tidy hair rumpled from all the times her fingers had become ensnared in it that day.

Her tie was loose, and lines had already begun to etch themselves beneath those hawklike eyes of hers.

Soon, they would become permanent fixtures, marked there by time and age and grief.

For now, though, they were only suggestions.

Hints of what was to come.

(So many sleepless nights.)

(How many haunted days?)

“Well?” Though the CEO tried hard to strangle her voice into a whisper, the sharpness of the syllable was still the loudest sound in the room. Subtlety had never quite been this woman’s strong suit; she wielded her words as though they were gavels to proclaim on the heads of all who dared to cross her path.

“Catatonic depression,” the doctor replied, just as succinctly, replacing his pen in the pocket of his lab coat. “The staring, the lack of movement, the loss of appetite, the elective mutism. All textbook symptoms that point to the fact that your wife is still grieving, Mrs. Diamond. Frankly, I’m worried for her health.”

The shadow on his left scowled at this diagnosis, and she fidgeted, and it was apparent by these two idiosyncrasies alone that she was scrounging deep for some incisive rebuttal against the truth that laid like a breathing corpse directly below her. 

“Then what, pray tell, do you intend to do about it?” Her voice exceeded its former intentions of quietness. “That’s the problem. Now what’s the solution?”

“Well, I admit her to the hospital and start her on an intravenous Lorazepam treatment. It’s a sedative. It’ll assuage some of her anxiety and relax her muscles to prevent spasming.”

“Yes, and then?”

They were talking about her as though she wasn’t even there.

It was a fair enough assessment.

“And then what, Mrs. Diamond?” The doctor stared at her incredulously, shoving both of his hands in his pockets. “With all due respect, I can treat your wife’s physical symptoms from sunup to sundown, but that’s not touching the heart of what is truly debilitating her. She’s grieving, ma’am, and she needs psychiatric treatment beyond what I can provide as a private doctor and you can provide as her spouse. We discussed this the last time I was here.”

“And the time before that—yes, I know,” Yellow Diamond laughed humorlessly, the sound half-mad in her constricted throat. “Because you stand there, like an imbecile, and tell me that there’s no underlying medical cause to this?!”

She jabbed an accusing hand at Blue Diamond, whose oceanic eyes were wide open and unseeing, silent tears slipping from the corners of them and falling sideways across her face. There was an untouched tray of food on her nightstand. There was a lankness in her unwashed hair. There were pill bottles accumulating like a grotesque collection next to the alarm clock.  

And there was an air, an atmosphere, an oppression of silent decay.

The funereality of it was undeniable.

An uncomfortable wooden chair stood next to the bed where Yellow Diamond had been sitting vigil for the past two nights since they had visited the cemetery on the day of the anniversary. 

Blue Diamond’s keening sobs had sliced the autumnal air.

Her daughter was dead.

Gone.

Never coming back.

She stared at nothing, it seemed to Yellow and the doctor; she languished in the visions of Pink that seized across her mind with every dripping second of consciousness. 

“Depression is an underlying medical cause, Mrs. Diamond.” 

The doctor’s voice softened. 

Minimally.

For the first time since the house call had begun, his lanky silhouette jerked a little, as though he wanted to place a hand on the CEO’s shoulder, but thought better of it upon seeing something forbidding in the other’s expression.

“And she’s tired, ma’am. You both are.” Look at you, his rust colored eyes seemed to say. You’re both historical wrecks to a long dead ghost. “You can’t take care of her alone…  moreover, you shouldn’t have to.”

But the doctor had finally overstepped one prying comment too far, and he must have known it immediately, because he took a step back from the golden eyes glowering at him in the darkness of that dusty bedroom.

Yellow Diamond’s entire face transformed, twisting itself into facets of shattered rage.

She was feral.

(Wounded.)

Apoplectic with fury.

(Grieving, she was inconsolable.)

Dangerous.

Goddammit, she was on fire.

“Do not ever deign to tell me what I can and can’t do when it comes to my wife,” she snarled, all pretense of quietness long gone, devoured in the hurricane of emotion. “Get out! OUT!”

“Mrs. Diamond, please—“

“I SAID OUT! OUT!” She shrieked, harshly shoving his shoulder with the flats of her palms. “GET THE HELL OUT!”

The doctor did not need telling again; he fled the room as the force of Yellow Diamond’s dismissal stoned his back.

Blue blinked slowly as a shaking hand suddenly clasped her arm in the wake of the carnage, the imprint of a steel wedding band carving itself into her flesh.

That hurts, Yellow.

She blinked again, the words swelling on her tongue and dying there unrestfully.

That hurts.

v.

The warnings of Steven’s guardian standing sentinel on top of her frantically beating heart, Blue Diamond turned the knob to Room 11037 and pushed inwards until the door reluctantly gave way to a sight she had forgotten to steel herself for in-between the guilt of moving on and the agonizing action of doing so.

Steven himself.

Dwarfed in a hospital bed.

A mere wisp of the boy who had sat with her on the balcony only three days ago and stuffed his face with little chocolate cakes.

Her prodigious mind working far ahead of her paralyzed body, she frantically tried to recall his text from yesterday, what it had said about his condition, if it had indicated anything about his current state at all. But he had only told her that he had passed out and ended up in the hospital again. The boy had said nothing about the extensive tubing and the wires that ribboned and scissored his entire body in streaming colors. Lines crisscrossed each other and tumbled over and under and around his blankets. 

She saw the bottom of an empty catheter bag at the edge of the bed.

And the bruises like angry embers pulsing up his arms.

Somehow, amongst all the other things she was absorbing at precisely the same time, she noticed that next to a vase of elegantly arranged sunflowers, there was an inelegantly arranged tray of hospital food.

Untouched.

He had texted not a word about the yellow pallor of his skin.

He had used exclamation points—exclamation points!—to indicate his excitement.

Blue Diamond could not shake the notion, the very absurd idea, that he had lied to her somehow, had drawn her here under false pretenses.

(This was not the truth. She had estimated at what she was getting herself into and crossed the line into getting herself into it anyway.)

“Hi,” Steven Universe said sheepishly, his cheeks flushing darkly. He was caught, and he knew it. “It’s good to see you again, Blue.”

The seconds dripped between them.

The heart monitor on the wall counted them out.

One…

Blue’s plump lips parted slightly.

Two…

Her hand shivered on the head of her cane until the sound of it rattled the clinically quiet room.

Three…

She couldn’t do this again.

She wouldn’t grieve for another dead child.

One had been too much—one had almost killed her. 

Four…

God, and there were still days where she wondered if it still would.

Without thinking, desperate for relief, Blue turned away and braced her free hand on the door, drawing in harsh, ragged breaths that scratched at her beaten lungs, that bled them anew until they were leaking.

Who was she to believe that she wasn’t falling apart at her seams? How delusional was she to hope that a boy with a flower would be the difference between her saving grace and her inevitable dissolution? Was she so naïve to overlook the contours of his illness and think that his determination would be enough to save him from the eternal truth of this world? Was she so weak?

Death didn't discriminate between the old and the young, the sinner and the saint.

Pink Diamond was only twenty-one years old.

Steven Universe was a child.

“Blue!” Steven pleaded. “Wait, please don’t go. I—”

“I cannot look at you, Steven Universe," she cut across him, her voice low and fractured. Hot tears stood in her eyes, suddenly blurring her hand against the smooth door. “I’m sorry, but I cannot bear to see…”

“Can’t bear to see that I’m dying?”

He didn’t just refuse to mince the word; he stabbed it into her back so remorselessly that she gasped sharply. She glanced down at her chest and half-expected to see it lodged there, poking out, her beating heart speared on its tip.

“People can skirt around the word all they want,” Steven laughed bitterly, “but there’s no other word for it… without a kidney, I’m gonna die soon, Blue Diamond. I’m dying right now. I think I’ve been dying all this time. And everyone… all they wanna do… is look away from me. Pearl, Garnet, my dad…”

He sniffed.

“They keep looking away, and I’m so tired of it… I-I’m exhausted.”

The door felt cold against her palm.

Icy.

On the balcony, two days ago, she accused Yellow Diamond of shoving their daughter away in a drawer with the rest of her useless items.

In an arctic hospital room, Blue Diamond was ready to consign a boy to the same grave her daughter was buried in… 

… but dead children couldn’t talk.

Dead children couldn’t be tired.

They were simply dead.

“So, please, Blue Diamond… please don’t look away.”

The seconds dripped between them.

The heart monitor on the wall counted them out.

One…

Her eyes were wide with the horror of everything, of it all, the senselessness, the depravity, the nihilistic revolutions of this awful, uncaring world.

“I had a daughter once,” she whispered to the door. “Her name was Pink Diamond, and she was… she is… my everything. She had a smile wider than this planet could ever hope to contain… and she very much liked to laugh.”

She had never talked about Pink to anyone other than Yellow before.

Even evoking her name felt like blasphemy.

Two…

A second passed, and no lightning fell from the sky to strike her dead; she supposed her own self-flagellation was the punishment and the eternal damnation alike.

“I looked away. Yellow and I both did. She wanted more from life, and we wanted to contain her life into… into a little box that could fit on the shelf with all our other trophies. She was our accomplishment, you see, our legacy.”

Three…

Blue Diamond’s hand fell away from the door, so she could bring it up to her mouth in a futile attempt to dam the sobs that racked her shoulders.

Four…

“We looked away. The night that she… she—” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word aloud. She wasn’t brave like Steven. “We thought she was in her room, and I didn’t tell her that I loved her that night because we had argued… I thought I’d get the chance the next day or the day after that because we argued all the time. It was normal for us.”

On and on and never again.

When was the last time Blue Diamond had said those three words to her daughter?

These past four years, she had scoured her brain for the answer, but the answer was as elusive as the phrase was from her mouth.

For the simple truth of the matter was that she hadn’t said it very often.

In all her vast intellect, she had always assumed that it was assumed.

Implied.

Understood.

You’ll never let me grow up, will you?

I love you, she could have said.

You’ll never let me grow up, will you?

I didn’t want you to, she would have replied then. I wanted you to collect dust with all the rest of our awards and certificates. I wanted you safe, where I could see you. I wanted to quantify the entirety of your life and itemize the particulars. I wanted you to always be mine.

I love you.

I looked away.

An oxymoron.

A tragedy.

Five…

“So if I look at you, Steven Universe,” she murmured, screwing her eyes closed tightly against the pain, “really look at you, then I have to face that truth again—that I loved someone once… and I looked away… and now she’s… gone.”

And that was the immutable truth of the matter, the conclusion she circled around to no matter how many times the Earth continued to revolve away from the day since Pink Diamond had last existed on this world.

Four thousand revolutions later, and this would still be what it came down to in the end.

Her daughter’s blood was on her hands, staining them crimson, veining her lifelines with the guilt and the awfulness and the unbearable, crucifying shame.

And her daughter’s blood cried out, You’ll never let me grow up, will you?

And every time she so much as looked at her own palms, that was the only echo she saw written across their hollows.

Those last words.

Unanswered.

Unfinished.

Undoing and undone.

Six…

“But… I’m not gone yet,” Steven argued softly. His voice fought to be heard over all the machinery keeping him alive. “I’m here.”

He must have moved because blankets shifted somewhere behind her.

Dead children didn’t move.

Dead children weren’t here.

They were simply—

Seven…

Eight…

Nine…

Ten…

Do it, she commanded herself.

Look at him.

But Blue Diamond was frozen, and she was statuesque; she was a calcification barely anchored on the foundation of her cane. One false move and she would crumble entirely. 

The safest bet on her own survival was to limp away and dare not look behind her lest she turn to salt and dust. 

Someone else could clean up the carnage.

That woman who stood at the door—she’d do it—Greg Universe and the boy’s other guardians, too.

Don’t hurt him, that same woman had also said. He likes you.

Eleven…

Twelve…

Thirteen...

vi.

It was wash day. 

For nearly a year and half after Pink Diamond died, Yellow would force Blue out of bed every few days for a bath or a shower—usually a shower because it was becoming increasingly hard for the CEO to lift her wife in and out of the tub.

Today was a tub sort of occasion, though.

Date night with the Diamonds.

The presence of death was always with them, though, an intrusive third wheel.

With a slight groan, Yellow lowered herself into the warm water behind Blue, steam rising around their naked skin like curling smoke. Once upon a time, this used to be a favorite pastime of theirs, a chance to reacquaint themselves with each other and their bodies… but now the gesture was simply hygienic in purpose, asexual and quiet.

It was always quiet in the Diamonds’ penthouse suite these days.

Silent.

“Is it too hot?” Yellow asked, her voice as gentle as she could wrangle it. Somehow, at the same time, it was still edged with the trappings of harshness. “I can add some cold water?"

She waited briefly for a reply that would never come.

Blue stared limply at her knees, pulled up awkwardly as they were to her chest. Her sensitive skin had already reddened in a couple of places where it was touching the water. There were pink fingerprints wrapped around her armpits where she’d been handled into the tub. 

“I think it’s too hot. You’re getting a rash.” A well-manicured hand flashed out from behind her ear and knobbed the far left tap. There was a quick murmur and then the steady hiss of cold water.

“There,” she humphed satisfactorily. “This’ll feel better.”

The running stream answered its assent.

Blue Diamond did not say a word.

She hadn’t in days now, maybe even weeks; time was irrelevant to her, and the words would not come. 

There was only a dullness in her head, numb and numbing, like an icy compress coiled tightly around her thoughts.

Yellow didn’t think so, but this was better than the alternative; this was the far superior solution to the problem, the pain, and the pervasiveness of the ghost who was their daughter Pink Diamond.

Because when the analgesic of her own catatonia faded, and some of the feeling tried to seep through, her chest would unfailingly tighten, a vice squeezing hard upon her weary heart.

She couldn’t breathe.

Her child was dead.

“I…” 

The sound came from behind her, guttural and choked, as though the speaker was fighting hard against the noise and losing the war.

“I’m so tired, Blue.” 

It was an admission, and it was a copout.

Both of them knew that Blue Diamond wasn’t registering a single word.

She heard them—yes, this was true.

But they came to her—they landed softly—like distant echoes; she did not feel the pain of them, the visceral agony; at the present moment, she did not even feel her own pain, the grief and the scalding water and the grief.

Because it was always the grief she was trying to repress.

Everything else was just ancillary.

“You don’t know, goddammit, you can’t know, how exhausted I am.” Yellow Diamond’s voice shattered in the tub.

And her entire body hitched.

As though to keep that from breaking, too.

“You exhaust me, Blue Diamond. You exhaust me every single day. And you don’t even know it, goddammit. Who are you? What the hell have you become?”

The question was delivered to her backside, where it slipped down her tall, curving spine and into the water, splashing there with the delivery of the tap. With a violence that was almost cruel, Yellow reached from behind her again and flung it back into an off position.

There was quietness then.

It was so still, that it was disquiet.

It was always quiet in the Diamonds’ penthouse suite these days.

Silent.

Blue continued to stare blankly at her knees.

There were red patches on her skin.

Her child was dead.

After a moment’s hesitation, her breath heavy on the back of Blue’s long, slender neck, Yellow Diamond gathered her silvery hair gently in one hand and grabbed the comb on the side of the tub with another.

She was careful as she maneuvered its teeth through damp, lank strands.

She always was.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Blue.”

That was what Blue Diamond’s note would say merely a few months later.

I’m sorry and I’m sorry and I’m sorry.

Love always, Blue.

But that was the crucial thing, wasn’t it?

Sorry was not enough; love was not enough.

Because if love had been enough, Pink Diamond would still be alive. 

vii. 

In a hospital room pierced through with golden sun, Blue Diamond turned around and faced the light of day, her heavy braid swinging along with the slow, deliberate motion. 

She wasn’t looking away, Steven Universe.

She was staring straight at him—at his sunken face and his tubing and at the catheter bag and at the sunflowers.

The boy was dying, but he was not yet dead.

It wasn’t much.

At the very least, though, it was something.

He was not gone, even if he was going.

He was here.

In this moment, in this very ephemeral second.

The heart monitor on the wall attested to that; it counted his heartbeats; it pleaded with her to have hope.

(Hope was such an awful word.)

“Those are beautiful flowers,” she whispered. Her cane clinked against the tiled floor as she carefully drew closer to observe them better.

Their petals were tall and spiky, assaulting the air with attentiveness and regal magnitude.

They vaguely reminded her of Yellow.

With a light finger, she tried to prop up one that was beginning to droop beneath the weight of all its brethren, but the moment she withdrew her touch, it fell again, sighing listlessly. 

Poor thing.

“But not quite as pretty as that hibiscus you bequeathed me.”

Steven’s eyes, edged with the trace remnant of his tears, were wide and dark, full of velvet and silvery stars.

“You don’t still have it, do you?” He asked, incredulous and rather pleased.

He played a little with his hands on top of his blankets. 

He tried to tamp down his hope for an affirmative with an unconvincing casualness.

Blue Diamond’s smile bruised her lips.

“I placed it on my nightstand, sweet boy, so I could look at it everyday.”

It took a second, but the irony of that word choice was not lost on either of them.

viii. 

Yellow Diamond placed the failed suicide note on her nightstand for Blue to see and know that she saw. They didn’t talk about it afterwards.

How could they?

What was there to say?

It remained there for a few days afterwards, shriveled and guilty-looking next to the alarm clock; every time she opened her eyes, she would see it and feel its quiet condemnation. She would close her eyes against its glare and wait for sleep or numbness one to wrestle her into the dark. 

One day, she woke up, and the paper was gone again. 

The realization drew a frown across her wrinkled face.

When she thought about getting up to search for it, and mustered the appropriate will to get out of bed, apparently, many days had passed in the interim.

A month.

She only recognized this upon surveying her bathroom on her way to the toilet; she couldn't find her shaving razor anywhere.

One night—the day, the month, the year undetermined in the abscessed haze of her mind—a dull ache throbbed through Blue’s hip, growing in intensity and sharpness with each passing second that she laid on the wounded area.

There was a part of her, not entirely inconsequential, that invited the pain. For after all, suffering was the only victory the woman had left in the entire world; she wrestled with it nightly, and she embraced it. She made it her new lover and exchanged an oath that only death would do them part. She didn’t shoot herself, or cut herself, or swallow a handful of pills that would surely do the trick.

She laid on her bad hip and convinced herself that she deserved it.

But that night—whatever night that it was—the agony was unbearable, pulling at her all over.

With a groan that wasn’t voluntary, Blue wrested herself into some semblance of a sitting position and looked for her phone so that she could call Livia for an ice pack, but it wasn’t on the bedside table as it usually was… and since it wasn’t in its usual position, she had no clue where she had last left it.

If she wanted relief, she would have to brave the kitchen herself.

She wanted relief, and the guilt of it half-immobilized her.

So she sat there for a couple more minutes still and endured the stabbing ache before finally coaxing herself upwards into the dark night of the bedroom. 

Assuming her cane in one hand, Blue crept silently towards the door and out of it, where the hallway stretched out before her like a cavernous tunnel, all the lights extinguished. 

Even the telltale glow of lamp warmth that usually emitted from the study across the hall was gone out, which meant that Yellow had likely succumbed to sleep on the couch within. 

A twinge of something bothered Blue’s sternum at the thought.

She limped forward anyway and all the same, lifting her cane off the floor to keep from making noise; the wall was her guide in its stead, the pads of her long fingers moving along its smooth planes until she reached the end of the archway, where she immediately intuited that she wasn’t alone.

In the moonlight that wept into the living room through the tall windowpanes, Yellow Diamond was a stark figure sitting on the edge of the couch, leached of all her color. Her blonde hair, her silky pajamas, the leathery musculature of her corded neck—all of it was leveled by blinding whiteness.  

Illuminated.

Vulnerable.

Exposed.

When her wife swallowed, she could see every line in her powerful jaw working through the peristaltic motion. 

In the shadowed hallway, Blue Diamond stood still, even though the sharp pain in her hip demanded attention.

For this  moment, this night, this moonlit haunting did not belong to her—even though most of them usually did.

She understood, somewhere in the mire of her own head, that to disturb this scene would be sacrilege. So she watched, and she waited.

Yellow Diamond was holding something between her sharp, angular hands.

With a jolt, she realized that it was Spinel, a stuffed pink cat who had been Pink’s favorite companion once upon a time. Her left ear was still stained from the tea Yellow had once accidentally dripped on it during a princess tea party.

Washed it though they had—several times over—the spot was stubborn; Spinel had been permanently marked.

“S’okay, Momma,” Pink had only said, grinning up at them both from gapped teeth. She had hugged the toy to her chest. The affected ear brushed against the side of her freckled neck. “That just means she’s one of a kind."

Yellow’s fingers were wrapped around the cat’s plush stomach tenderly; she stared at it from depthless, ancient eyes. 

It struck Blue Diamond—then and there—that she wanted something more from this vignette; she wanted Yellow to say something. Selfishly, she desired a confirmation for what she had already so trenchantly inferred.

She wanted, she desired, she longed, she needed to know that her wife was broken, too.

It was a horrible hunger, an itch that felt terrible to scratch.

But Blue Diamond was voracious.

Sometimes, maybe even oftentimes, she could be cruel.

After a long while, though, Yellow Diamond only placed the cat down on the coffee table and stared out into the irradiated night with her hands templed below her sharp chin, lost in silent thought.

She looked older than she ever had in all of their collected years together.

She was only fifty-four.

ix.

They talked—for a long while—as the sun slipped away from the sky, sunset coming in fragments through the slats in the window blinds. 

Blue Diamond held Steven’s hand, the one that didn’t have so many IVs in it, and rubbed smooth circles against his wrist.

“Pearl does that, too,” he smiled at her softly through hooded eyes when she began. “It’s nice.”

They talked about everything, and they talked about nothing.

He told her about his favorite show, which seemed to be about morose breakfast items from what she could vaguely surmise, and he talked to her, very quietly, about his disease.

It was rapidly progressing, far more quickly than his nephrologist had anticipated.

“Those chocolate cakes we shared on your balcony,” he admitted with the air of a child waiting to be scolded, “I may have accidentally puked them up in your toilet. Sorry..."

“It’s of no consequence,” she returned with a small, sad smile.

And this was very well true.

She wasn’t the one who had to clean it after all.

They talked about everything, and they talked about nothing.

Blue told him about the sunrise yesterday, how all the colors had seeped together in a swirl of delicious color, and she talked to him, very quietly, about Pink.

“In the best of possible ways,” she mumbled, the sound caught in the column of her throat, “you remind me of her sometimes. She smiled at everything, even when there wasn’t exactly something to be smiled about.”

“That’s a very pretty way to put it.” Steven wriggled a thumb from beneath her palm to stay it against the side of her hand.

“Yes,” she nodded gently, “I suppose so.”

When it was time for her to leave—a team of nurses had come in to administer Steven’s evening medicines and check his vitals—she pressed a kiss against his forehead.

Very light and very soft.

“You didn’t look away,” he whispered against her cheek as she withdrew. His breath was sickly sweet with disease. “Thank you, Blue.”

She froze, meeting his eyes.

There was hesitancy, and there was consuming grief.

The scribble of guilt.

Scrawled all over her face.

“I wanted to, though,” she breathed. “If we're being technical... if we're being fair... I think the impulse counts against me.”

“But you didn’t.”

Steven’s chapped lips tilted into the beginnings of a smile.

“And that’s what matters, right?”

She brushed a stray curl off of his clammy forehead and thought about Pink and Yellow and all the things she did and didn’t do.

She loved them.

She looked away.

“Yes,” she told Steven Universe. 

Yes.

x.

Alone, Blue Diamond slowly crossed the skywalk, her silvery hair crowned in all the colors of the sunset, a phone pressed against her ear.

Her cane struck the tiled floor with each shuffled step forward.

Clank.

The dial tone droned rhythmically—bzzt and bzzt and bzzt.

Clank.

She felt her heart work its way up her throat, clambering up its fleshy rungs. The immensity of what she was doing transformed her nervous system into a network of beating, pulsing neuroses.

She was ready for this, and she was not.

She could do this; she half-hoped that she wouldn't receive an answer.

Clank.

And then—

“Blue?” Yellow Diamond’s low voice threw its instinctive panic across the line. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Because this was new.

And yet, achingly familiar.

So many years of having not sought Yellow out—all those weeks, days, and months—were well-established patterns that were not easily overturned and undone.

All those collective hurts—hundreds of them, thousands.

Four years of misery sat between them like four hundred thousand miles.

Blue Diamond swallowed thickly, stopping dead in her tracks as the spillage of people continued to swarm all around her like a package freed of its contents: doctors and patients and sundry other visitors. She was the eye of their storm, and yet, she was just another broken person in the midst of so many other broken people. She was separate from them, and yet, she was their intimate kin. The contradiction seemed untenable, unworkable like all the rest.

Her fingers tightened on the head of her cane.

“I’m… I’m fine, Yellow,” she began. “Please don’t worry. I just had to… I wanted to tell you something. Are you busy?”

On the other end of the line, somewhere in a giant, yellow skyscraper at the edge of Empire City, there was the sharp intake of breath.

And the hesitant beginnings of a fearful reply.

It was a start, though.

And that was what mattered, right?

Yes, Blue Diamond thought to herself.

Yes.

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Biting Off More Than You Can Chew; part 2

Summary: Rus needs some answers and there is only one Monster in Underswap who might have them.

Tags: heatfic, dubious consent, NSFW, frenemies to lovers, mates, first time, more if I think of them

PLEASE READ THE TAGS: This is a Heat story, so there are going to be issues of consent. I don’t do partner rape, nope, but hey, I want to be straight with y’all. I like heatfics personally, but I understand how they can be troubling for some people. So there it is. 

There is still no explicit sex in this chapter. There will be eventually. 

Also on AO3

Read Chapter 1

~~*~~

One of the weirder talents that Rus possessed had to be his knack of dump picking. The dump was hands down the best place to find unexpected treasures and Rus had honed the skill of finding them to a fine art. Racecar beds, broken televisions that he could repair, books and blu-rays, he found it all. Some of it was for Blue, most of it was for bartering because entertainment was worth a hell of a lot more than G on any day. The Underground was fucking boring, and that was a fact.

With that in mind, he scavenged through his hidden stash of goods for some bribery material and luckily, he knew exactly he best kind. Hotland was only a quick shortcut away and in no time, Rus was standing at the laboratory door with his prize under his arm.

Looking at the door made him feel a little queasy, though he wasn’t sure why; sure, he’d worked here for a little while but Snowdin was better for Blue when he’d been younger, plenty more Monsters his age, so they’d moved. That…he was pretty sure that was right, eh, didn’t matter, that was ages ago. Right now, he wanted some answers and the one person in Underswap who might be able to help was behind that door, hopefully.

He knocked, his knucklebones ringing loudly against the metal door. There was no answer and Rus knocked again even harder. He was kinda on a time crunch, here.

“c’mon, undyne, open up!” he called. “i know you’re in there, it’s not like you’re going to take a stroll around hotland! you know it’s me, i walked past four cameras just to get here.”

The door remained stubbornly closed. Rus sighed and readied his secret weapon, holding up the manga over his head where he knew a camera was looking down at him. “oh, no, whatever shall do with this holiday special double-length manga of mew mew kissy cutie, sixth edition,” he said flatly.

He didn’t have to wait long after that. Slowly, the door creaked open and from the darkness within an eye peered out at him. “Papyrus?”

“hey, doll,” Rus said cheerfully, pushing firmly on the door and ignoring Undyne’s squawk as he strode in. “how’s things? still determined to stay in the old lab, huh? i ain’t judging, but you’re nuts to stay in a place where stepping outside could turn you into fish sticks. speaking of which, might want to close the door, you're letting the ungodly fires of hell in.”

“w-what are you doing here?” Undyne closed the door and then didn’t seem to know what to do, only standing by it, wringing her hands.

Time to put some of that charm of his to work. “okay, i know, we haven’t talked in person in like…a while. sorry about that,” Rus said, with all the gentle apology he could. It was true; once they’d been colleagues but Undyne kept to herself in the lab. After he’d quit, there had been no reason to come here and it wasn’t like she was gonna stop by Muffet’s for a pastry and a beer after work. Still, he was in Hotland all the time, one of his sentry posts wasn’t far away, he could have stopped by…but this place was so fucking creepy. The overhead lights were glaring down at them, and all the cameras on the nearby workstation were posed all over Underswap, the camera feed looping, spying. Even if he understood why, it was still creepy. He’d have to think about it.

“N-no, it’s all right, Papyrus!” Undyne shook her head, her messy red hair falling over her shoulders. “You didn’t have to come here anymore.”

“yeah, maybe, but we’re still friends, right?” he coaxed, “we chat on the undernet all the time, yeah? and i ain’t gonna lie, i didn’t just come over to give you this.” He held up the manga and her eyes strayed to it as he waved it enticingly, a reminder of what was at stake. “i need a favor. you know more about monster anatomy than anyone. so, do you know much about Monster sicknesses?”

“Is Sans...all right?” She gave him a worried look, biting her lip, and her eyes found anything to look at but him, “Um, is it a-about falling down?"

"nah, geez, nothing like that!” Rus exclaimed, aghast. Fuck, he hoped it was nothing like that. “it’s just something i heard about, something...weird."

She nodded, wary, but maybe hinting towards curious. "What kind of weird?"

"Like…what kind of sickness would make a monster hot and sweaty but without a fever. aggressive." he did not raise his hand to his collarbone. "kind of…bitey."

To his surprise, her expression soured. “That's not, hm, funny."

"i'm not kidding and you're right, it's not,” Rus said slowly. He squinted at her. “you have any ideas?"

She still looked doubtful, shuffling her feet against the hard tiles of the floor, daring to look back up at him with something almost like a challenge, “If you’ve been reading old journals just to mess with me—"

“undyne, you know i wouldn’t mess with you, not like that. you know that, right?” She lowered her eyes and nodded. “okay, so what do you mean old journals?”

She still seemed a little uncertain and Rus gave her a beseeching look, turning on the wide eye lights that worked so well on Blue when it came to a second dessert.  Apparently, they had an affect on fish monsters too because Undyne sighed a little and gestured at him.

“C-come on,” Undyne slouched into the lab and Rus followed, shaking away his uneasiness. This place was creepy as fuck even without the cups of dried ramen scattered all over, and laundry scattered around. Seemed like it was his fate today to walk through the realms of the slobs. Blue would be having a conniption if he saw this.

It was worse the further they went, dust layering everything, and just as he was starting to wonder if this was a secret plot to mug him for the manga and lock him up for some quality ‘science’, Undyne led him to a darkened room. She flipped on a switch with a loud click and bright fluorescents came on overhead, humming loudly, which was a good thing because he wasn’t about to go into the creepy fucking lab room in the dark. Edge would have had to start looking into those Underfell horse doctors and hope they didn’t shoot first and ask questions later.

The room was mostly empty, the only furniture was one bookshelf loaded with heavy tomes, and Undyne squatted next to it, hesitating over each one until she made a satisfied sound and pulled one free. She settled to sit on the dusty floor and Rus sat next to her, leaning in curiously. She held it out to him, “Here, look.

“regulatory hypothalamic estrus response in monsters due stagnating populaces,” he read slowly. “sounds like a real page-turner. okay, what is it?”

“It’s an e-evolutionary holdover,” she explained, opening the book, “to help maintain Monster populations. M-monsters reproduce slowly compared to some other species, and if our numbers ever drop low enough, the effect can be a hormonal response in our magic that stimulates estrus or heat.”

“okay, now you’re playing tricks on me,” Rus said flatly. “i’ve never even heard of such a fucking thing!”

“Well, we haven’t had to worry about it since the time period just after the war,” Undyne told him with a little shrug, “To be honest, we’re bordering on overcrowded. It’s only when the populace starts dipping dangerously low that it can happen.”

“so, what this is saying,” Rus tapped the yellowed pages with a fingertip, “is monsters might go into heat if they have a low population.” Like, say, Monsters getting dusted every day and twice on Sundays, in another universe where murder was less a terrible offense and more of an easy solution to a variety of problems.

“Yes,” she nodded eagerly. “M-most of the literature is, hm, from right after the war. There was a wave of heats going through all Monster’s species when our population was close to extinction levels. Of course, that was a long time ago and we haven’t seen anything like that since, but the Royal Scientist back then kept meticulous records.”

“yeah?” Rus asked, absently, still flipping through the journal. The handwriting was strange, antiquated, which he supposed made sense since this was probably written before the Queen had shed her first winter coat, “who was it?”

“Um…I’m not…” her eyes went vague and she shook her head. “Anyway, see here?” the page was full of grainy sketches, the faces discreetly blurred but all of them showing a small wound of some sort on their necks. “Monsters in heat stabilize quickly with a mate. They usually mark their mate, somehow. The most common method was biting, but a species without teeth might scratch a mark or even use some kind of ink or paint to draw it.”

Oh, fuck.

Rus swallowed dryly and kept his hands on the pages, didn’t reach up to touch the aching bitemark hidden beneath the collar of his sweatshirt. It was throbbing anxiously along with the pulse of his soul. "what…” his voice cracked, and Rus cleared his throat, “what if they mark someone who isn’t their mate?"

She blinked, her eyes owlishly large through her glasses. “I—I  don't remember anything like that in the literature. It’s hormonally driven, I wouldn’t think they’d want to mark anyone other than a potential mate and anyone compatible would probably already be in heat themselves. Even if they weren’t, no monster who wasn't interested would chance getting close enough for it to be an issue.  I-its fairly obvious, if you know what to look for. Like you were saying, sweating, aggressiveness—"

“a weird smell,” Rus muttered.

That got him a strange look. “Um, maybe? There’s a notation on a release of pheromones, that could have an odor…d-did you find another book about this, is that why you’re asking?”

“something like that,” Rus managed to give her a toothy grin even though he’d never felt less like laughing in his entire fucking life. She still seemed a little too interested, even suspicious, and Rus added hastily, “thought it might make an interesting idea for a story…maybe a manga.”

That did it. Her eyes went a little starry. “R-really? Are you going to p-post it on the Undernet?”

“might, when it’s done. okay, so, monsters go into heat and what, they get a little busy and they’re done? can’t they, you know?” He offered her a few hand gestures to convey a variety of self-service options and her cheeks flushed dark purple. But damn if he didn’t know his audience, because she giggled, too, covering her eyes.

“No, no, it’s not the kind of situation where you can help yourself. That’s why Monsters need a mate for it. Heats are usually only a problem if they don't.”

There was the info he was looking for, “so what if they don't?”

Her expression turned serious, her blush fading. “It can be dangerous, to themselves and to others. Monster in heat have been known to die from it, or to kill other Monsters in search of their mate. Not their fault, of course,” she added hastily, “can’t battle evolution. They really fixate in their mate,” she sighed. “A shame it doesn’t happen anymore, it’s sort of romantic!”

“romantic,” he echoed hollowly. Yeah, it was an real assload of flowers and kisses, wasn’t it.

“W-was that what you needed to know?” she asked hopefully. “C-can you use that for your manga?”

“it was just about perfect, ‘dyne,” he said honestly, “exactly what i needed to know. tell you what, i’ll let you read my manga when it’s done, sound good?”

Which would be never, but it wasn’t actually a lie. He owned her big time for this, though, he’d have to think of something to make it up to her. With a flourish, he sat the Mew Mew Kissy Cutie manga on top of the journal and handed both to Undyne, who was already flushing again, looking at the manga almost hungrily.  

“hey one last thing, undyne,” Rus gave her a gentle poke, startling her from her manga hypnosis, “you think the symptoms of heat are pretty obvious, right? if you know what to look for?”

“Probably not to anyone today,” Undyne gave him a nervous smile, “Or you wouldn’t be here asking about it, but I would think it was back then. The symptoms are pretty distinct.”

“yeah,” he said softly, “that’s what i thought. thanks for the help, sweetheart.” He hesitated at the door, but Undyne hadn’t opened the manga yet, and he decided to risk it, “tell you what, when you finally decided to write that letter you talked about on the undernet? i’ll deliver it for you, if you want.”

Her cheeks went bright mulberry. “Papyrus!” she moaned, covering her eyes. “I-I couldn’t…she’d never---”

“won’t know unless you try,” Rus shrugged. “anyway, i got some things to take care of, i can find my own way out. maybe i’ll see you soon, okay?”

“After working on that manga, I hope,” she teased, and yeah, he’d have to stop by again. Undyne was a good egg, she didn’t deserve to be here alone all the time, but that was for later.

Rus exhaled slowly, thinking of the problem at hand. Or rather, at other body parts. “yeah, i’m betting i’ll be getting started on that project real soon.”

tbc

Read Chapter 3

[therearemonstersinthedark]

Astronautical || Ch. 2

A Guardians of the Galaxy Fanwork

Pairings: n/a

Genre: Adventure, general

Word Count: 4k +

Rating: T to be safe, minor violence and swearing

Links: Fanfiction.net || Ao3

Summary:  Bound and helpless on Ronan's ship, Peter finds help in one of the least likely of places.

Author’s Notes:  Here we go. Chapter 2. I'll be honest, openings are my weakest and least favorite things. I am not exactly happy with this chapter, there were several plot points I had to rework, the flow isn't that great, and Nebula is a hard character for me to write(Fun but hard), but I was getting nowhere just dwelling over it, so I decided to go with what I had and just move on for now. Maybe later on I'll come back and edit it into something I can be a little more proud of, but if I want to get anywhere in this story I need to keep moving on!

Chapter 2: Come with me and Escape

Honestly, Ronan's betrayal had been more of an annoyance than an actual concern for the Titan when it had first occured. It would later prove to be a pivitol moment in the downslide of his march to control all that there was to posses in the known galaxies. It wasn't the source, no, but it was a convenient moment that Thanos found himself often looking to when laying the blame. If he was a more emotional being he may have simply killed the Kree warlord in this version of his universe, but he found it was beneath him to fear a mortal. Ronan was still worth just a bit more to him alive than dead. He simply needed to hold the reins a bit tighter this time around.

--

Peter lay on the floor of some sort of prisoner's cell on the large Kree ship. A pair of rather grumpy and well-armed guards stood sentry just outside of the bars. His hands had been bound and his blasters confiscated, and the cold hard flooring was doing his headache no favors.

"So, uh. Nice digs you got here." He tried for the fifth time to get any sort of response from them. "Whatever happened to the whole being destroyed thing? Not that I'm complaining here! I love being not-destroyed, and am more than happy to stay that way, but I'm just a bit confused."

Not even a dirty look. Tough crowd.

"Let's try something else. Does anyone want to tell me what happened here? At Xandar I mean. Were you two here when it, uh..." A twitch, the guards suddenly stiffened and Peter felt a spark of triumph.

That spark was quickly crushed beneath the sound of approaching footsteps. Oh.

The footsteps stopped just outside of the bars, and Peter found himself staring at a pair of very familiar boots that were very uncomfortably close to his face. Oh.

Hesitantly, he brought his eyes up to look into the black depths of one of the last people he was hoping to see about now. "Hey Nebula."

The android answered with a familiar sneer. "Dismissed." She snapped at the guards without breaking eye contact. He assumed. It was hard to tell sometimes when she didn't have any pupils to focus on.

Armor rattled as the guards saluted and withdrew obediently.

"So," He started cautiously, struggling into a sitting position against the wall. "To what do I owe this honor?"

"Starlord?" She hissed back, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "How do you know my name?"

Oops. A shrug, or his best attempt at one from his position as he scrambled for a reply that wouldn't end with those shoes getting acquainted with his face. "You know... Deadly assassin with blue skin and a red temper. Word gets around."

Nebula looked unconvinced, but for whatever reason seemed willing to set this issue aside for now. "Who are you?"

"I'm Star-Lord, man. Legendary outlaw? Come on, you're the ones who captured me! Your ship's all 'IDENTIFIED: STAR-LORD' and you don't even know who I am?"

"I don't," She answered flatly. "But I want to."

Well that wasn't what he was expecting.

"We all have orders to retrieve anyone who calls themselves by that name and bring them to Thanos. Why? Who are you to my father?"

"I'm the guy who touched an infinity stone and lived to tell about it." He was already buried pretty deep here. Nothing much to do but keep digging and hope he found another way out.

"That's impossible." She hissed, but she leaned closer to the bars as she spoke.

"No I really did. Well, I mean, I did in my universe. Apparently not in this one. The other Guardians and I used it to defeat Ronan and save the Galaxy-" A sharp bark of laughter cut him off.

"What are you trying to pull here? Xandar is destroyed. The Nova Corps with it. No one else stood in opposition."

"That's just what I'm saying. This is all wrong. Xandar wasn't supposed to be destroyed. Ronan was. But someone must have... changed it somehow."

"This is useless. If you're not going to make any sense then there's no point in talking with you any longer."

"No wait! I can prove it! I know things! The Orb, it's an infinity stone right? The stone of power. It's purple and Thanos kept it on Morath-no, Morag!"

"So what? You could have easily gathered that information by torturing some of these pathetic excuses for soldiers."

"No, no. I know because I stole it from Morag! but then Ronan stole it back before betraying Thanos and going after Xandar on his own."

"Ronan would never betray Thanos." Her tone was absolute, but he thought he could see a flicker of something in her expression. Damn those black eyes made her hard to read. Was she considering what he had to say or which of his limbs to break?

"But he did. And so did you." In for a penny. "The last time I saw you, you were swearing to 'hunt him like a dog' and put an end to the tyrant for good. I can help you with that!" It was Peter's turn to lean forward now. "Just let me go and I can find my friends and figure out how to fix all of this."

Nebula stiffened and pulled back from the bars. "Enough with your lies." She spat before turning on her heels and stalking away, leaving Peter staring into the dark corridor and listening to her footsteps fade away.

Well that could have gone better. But he supposed it could have gone a lot worse, too.

Nebula didn't return that night, and the guards never came back, either. He was starting to wonder if they intended to leave him to starve or die of dehydration when he finally heard the sound of footsteps returning. He'd spent much of the time dozing, but his stomach estimated that it would have been around lunch time the next day. He really hoped they brought food with them.

He was disappointed when two Kree soldiers stepped into view, empty handed save for a pair of matching blasters.

"Hey there. I had some complaints to make about the hospitality here. Is a little breakfast in bed really too much to ask? Honestly. I think I'd like to check out and head back to my ship now."

The door creaked in complaint as it was swung open. Gloved hands grabbed him roughly and manhandled him onto his feet. He was shoved between them and marched back into the large hallway of the ship. Were these the same two soldiers as before? It was hard to be sure, they kind of all started to look the same in those uniforms. Was that racist? He was too hungry and sore to care.

"So what are the chances of getting one of you lovely fellas to take my handcuffs off, huh? I promise I won't do anything naughty. It's just my arms are kinda numb, and I'd like to make sure none of my uh, cellmates chewed off any of my fingers while I slept."

He wiggled his fingers for emphasis. Or he assumed they were wiggling. He wasn't entirely joking about the lack of feeling, but the guards seemed as unconcerned about his fingers as they were about everything else.

Sighing and giving up for now Peter decided to check on his surroundings instead. They quickly proved to be about as interesting as the guards. The hallway was most likely used to transport much larger things than their current three man group. In fact, it looked like a small army could comfortably march down the corridor, complete with tanks and armaments. Peter tried not to think too hard about what that implied and instead shifted his attention to the lights. Bright white panels lined the ceiling and were set into the walls at seemingly random intervals, throwing out light and creating a halo of shadows all around them in various shades of pinks and purples. The whole thing gave off a feeling of creeping horror that was so wholesomly Kree.

He entertained himself for a while in wondering how the lights works but by the time they suddenly turned down a smaller hallway shooting off to the left he was no closer to understanding them. Gamora, with her assassin's knowledge of about everything in the universe, would be able to tell him what they were called. Rocket could probably tell him exactly how they worked and come up with at least five different ways they could be weaponized and used to escape his current predicament.

Instead he was bound and helpless to do much of anything but march down the corridor and see what the universe was planning to gut punch him with next. Had he always been this useless alone, or had he become so used to relying on his team that he couldn't function on his own anymore?

With that depressing thought heavy on his shoulders he followed the Kree through one more doorway and found himself at the foot of some staircase in some sort of dark and broody throne room. In the far corner of the room he spotted Nebula, the flash of her augmentations giving her away as she hovered in the shadows. He tossed her a wink which she answered with a disgusted snarl, then brought his attention to the stairs. Reclining on the throne at the very top of those stairs, haloed by more of those pinkish lights and cutting an imposing figure was none other than the Accuser himself.

Well shit. Despite having already gathered that Ronan was somehow alive in this... universe, reality, whatever it was, Peter couldn't escape the crawling feeling that he was looking at a dead man. A very much alive, very much dangerous, and very much holding a large hammer with a glowing infinity stone inside of it not-so-dead man. Double shit.

"Star Lord." Ronan's voice echoes around the chamber. Theatrical and overbearing, just like everything else about the Accuser. The butt of his warhammer scraped against the stonelike floor as Ronan leaned forward on his throne. "You are the Star Lord?"

Peter puffed up slightly under the other man's scrutiny.

"Forgive my disbelief, but Thanos himself has issued orders to have you retrieved on sight and be brought before him. Such orders are rare indeed. So imagine my surprise when my soldiers claim they have found that very Star Lord and then drag before me some sad excuse for a Terran street rat."

"Hey! I am not some sort of-"

"Silence!" A bang and a burst of light momentarily stunned Peter as Ronan slammed his hammer down for emphasis. A shiver made it's way up his spine as he was, for just the barest moment back in the void that the infinity stone had pulled him into not so long ago.

Satisfied by Peters seeming obedience Ronan reclined back into his chair. "So, would you care to tell me what it is that gives the Titan such an interest in you?" way the accuser said it, twice now in this very brief meeting, stirred Peter from his moment of disquiet. You. In that same damnable tone used by Yondu the first time he'd successfully stolen something from the captain. The same tone echoed by so many clients just before being laughed out of a job. The same tone sneered out by so many guards just before being tazed by his favorite weapons.

Ronan was underestimating him. Good. He knew just how to work with that.

"Well, what can I say? Maybe your boys here made a mistake. No harm done. Just untie my hands and uh, point me back in the direction of my ship, and I'll get out of your hair- you do have hair right? I was never quite sure."

It was hard to tell with his face shrouded in darkness, but the Kree warlord didn't seem to be very impressed by Peter's offer.

"I will ask you again," He ground out with quickly fading patience. "Who are you?"

"I'm a Guardian of the Galaxy." He laughed back. "I'm the guy that killed you once and I'll do it again if I have to."

"Enough. It doesn't matter who you are Star Lord. You will be delivered to Thanos and he will dispose of you as he sees fit. Until then I don't want to see you again." With a wave the guards stepped forward and roughly dragged him out of the room. The last thing he saw was Nebula's hard and calculating stare.

–

After being shoved unceremoniously back into his cell he was once again left on his own. His stomach reminded him again that he hadn't had anything to eat or drink since at least yesterday. They knew he had to have those things to live, right? It would be awfully hard to deliver him alive to Thanos if he had died of dehydration along the way.

By the time Nebula appeared with a tray in her hands he was ready to kiss the ground at her feet. Instead he just sat up as gracefully as he could muster, which was admittedly, not much, and offered her his best toothy grin as she unlocked the door and plopped it down in front of his crossed legs.

"Waiwaitwait!" He cried as she turned to leave. "I can't eat like this. Come on. At least let me have my hands back!"

For somebody with no pupils Nebula was really very talented at rolling her eyes, but she stepped around him anyways and removed his handcuffs with a click.

Peter pulled his arms in front of him and rubbed at his wrists. He could have moaned if the galaxy's angriest assassin wasn't currently glowering down at him like he was nothing but an overgrown Orloni. As soon as he was sure he wouldn't drop it, he grabbed the cup of water with both hands and drank it down greedily then started in on the food, dragging the tray closer to himself and eating with his hands when it became apparent he would not be offered any utensils. It wasn't the first time he'd eaten with his hands and as long as he didn't die here he doubted it would be his last. He managed to make it through about half his meal before Nebula's patience ran out.

The sound of her clearing her throat caused him to reluctantly drag his attention back to his current predicament. At some point the assassin had crossed back to the open door and now she leaned against the frame with her arm crossed and her lips pressed into a thin line.

"What did you mean when you said that you had killed Ronan once?" The bitter interrogational tone was as familiar as it was terrifying, and so was that gleam in her eyes and guarded hunch to her shoulders. She wanted something, but didn't want to admit she wanted it.

"Just what I said." He mumbled with a shrug and a mouthful of whatever this was. "I know it sounds completely crazy but this is all wrong. Xandar wasn't supposed to burn. Ronan was supposed to betray Thanos and steal the infinity stone for himself, and my friends and I were supposed to stop him."

"But how?" she pressed.

"The infinity stone. I-we held it and used its power against him."

Nebula's jaw clenched as she worked something over in her mind. Honestly, it was almost comical how very much alike her and Gamora were in their expressions. Not that he would ever say that to either of their faces unless he was feeling particularly suicidal that day.

"No mortal can hold an infinity stone and not be immediately destroyed." She scoffed, but there was just a hint of uncertainty in her voice now.

"Well... not to give away too much, but I may have been a teeny bit... less mortal at the time." Actually, now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure exactly how mortal he was right now. His connection to the Light had died with Ego, but if the Guardians had never saved Xandar, then what else could have changed? Was Ego even dead? Suddenly the last few bites of food on the tray seemed less than appealing.

"Do you think you could do it again?"

Could he?

A long pause followed as he stared blankly at his own hands. If he was part celestial again, which there was a good chance of that with how his luck was holding, then it was possible he could use it to destroy Ronan and find out what was going on.

"Yeah. Probably. But I'll need my friends." A sneer pulled at her lips at that, but once Nebula made up her mind about something she pursued it relentlessly. He had found his ticket out of here.

"Those stones may be the only power in this universe that can rival my father's. If you can truly wield them, then this would explain why he has such an interest in you. You are a threat to him."

"Hold up a second. I thought we were talking about taking out Ronan. Thanos is like, a thousand times more powerful that that overgrown Kree Lawyer!"

"I'm sure he would find that comparison insulting." Nebula replied coolly. "Regardless, Thanos is well on his way to controlling the galaxy, and the longer we wait the more impossible it will become to destroy him. You may be my last chance to destroy that bastard and you want to stay here cowering in your little cell?"

If Peter was being honest, she had a point. Ronan had betrayed Thanos in his universe, but here he appeared to be working under the Titan's orders like any good little minion. The odds were good that whoever was pulling the strings on this nightmare, it wasn't The Accuser. If he wanted to get to the bottom of this and get the universe back on track he needed time.

"Look. If you can get me out of here I can find my friends and I am sure we can figure out some way to set everything right again."

Nebulas eyes narrowed and her whole body tensed in a subtle yet very effective threat.

"If-If we can't figure out a way back, I will help you take out Thanos." He appeased quickly, holding his hands up in mock surrender. It seemed to work as some of the tension left her form.

"Good. Before the next cycle is through we will be passing a hidden gateway that can take us to a place where Ronan will not think to follow. What will you need?" It was weird to have Nebula asking him anything in a serious tone, without anything more than the usual undercurrent of sarcasm and seething hatred that seeped into everything she did.

Peter shoved the tray with the last few bites away from his body and leaned forward. "First, we'll need the stone."

"That won't be a problem." In the silence that followed Peter waited for her to give an explanation as to how exactly she intended to steal one of the galaxies most powerful weapons from one of the galaxy's most powerful war generals in such a way that it wouldn't be consider a problem. None ever came.

"Okay. Well. On my ship I have several storage units that should be able to safely contain it. They were made for smuggling high powered or radioactive contraband without tripping off any sensors, so they should be able to hold the stone at least for a while. Then we'll just have to steal the stone, get back to my ship-I'll need my blasters back, by the way-, and hightail it out of here before anyone notices. Piece of cake, right?"

–

The first part was easy enough. Peter described where to find the containment units, and Nebula vanished with his tray and empty cup and reappeared a short amount of time later with one in hand.

The second part was where it got a bit tricky. After a brief discussion it was decided that it would be better for Peter to already be on the Milano while Nebula stole the stone, rather than risk her having to come fetch him after an alarm was raised. No one questioned the assassin as she frog marched the once again bound Peter through the hallways. What they did not agree upon, was how after Nebula had escorted him to his ship she left him cuffed to the ladder that led to the flight deck. 'So you won't get any ideas and try to leave too early' she had told him with a smirk before vanishing back into the warship's holding bay.

"NEBULA!" He shouted after her, but she was already gone. Glancing around, he noticed that at some point his ship had been ransacked, drawers pulled open and their contents scattered about. "Oh come on guys! That is NOT COOL!" His blasters sat on a shelf on the far wall, probably Nebula's doing, and he was relieved to spy his walkman discarded on a nearby shelf. With some cursing and creative contorting he even managed to get ahold of it, wrangling the headphones around his neck with his free hand and turning on some tunes while he waited.

The waiting that followed was agony. Both because Peter was a man of action so being stuck on the ship with no clue what was going on went against every fiber of his being, and because the blasted assassin had cuffed his arm up too high and he couldn't reach the floor to sit. He was pretty sure she had done it intentionally. She was spiteful like that. By the time Nebula burst back onto the ship, followed by a very angry sounding alarm, he had managed to shimmy up the ladder into a sitting position with his legs through the rungs and was working through 'Escape' by Rupert Holmes for the second time.

"Well that doesn't sound very-" He was cut off by Nebula's hand to his face she shoved past him and up the ladder.

"MOVE! We don't have time for your idiocy!" The ship rumbled to life and jerked off the floor leaving Peter scrambling for a solid grip on the ladder before he was flung about like a ragdoll.

"What happened?!" He tried calling up past the angry sound of the Milano's engines struggling under the rough treatment.

"Just shut up and get ready. We've got five seconds until they figure out how to unjam the hangar door."

"Until they wh-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!?" Even with his death grip Peter was nearly ripped from the ladder as the Milano suddenly burst forward at full speed. Somewhere over his own screams and the protests of his poor abused ship he could hear the sound of weapons being fired at them. Loose debri was flung around the room as she dodged through the blasts, bouncing off the walls, furniture, and his body. It reminded him of when he was a child and he used to sit and watch his mother do the laundry. He used to think it looked like fun to be tossed about in the dryer as well. Like most childhood dreams, the reality was painful and disappointing.

As he moved to cover his head with his free arm something small and shiny caught his attention. Aha! Perfect! It was a tiny unassuming pocket-knife like object, only it contained a mini blowtorch, among other things, that he could use to free himself. It was made for minor self-repairs on the ship, but there was no reason it couldn't also cut through the cord holding him to the ladder.

It took several sharp turns and more than just a few embarassingly failed attempts but Peter eventually managed to swipe it out of the air at it whizzed pass. The tiny welding blade made short work of the metal cord and soon he was scrambling up into the flight deck, hastily shoving his walkman into his pocket. Another particularly sharp turn nearly sent him tumbling back down bellow. Up here at least, there was no loose debri and he managed to drag himself into the co-pilot's chair with minimal bruising.

"What the hell are you doing!?" He cried as he wrestled with the seatbelt.

"Your ship pilots like an old Shi'ar Junker!"

"Don't you blame this on my ship! I could steer better than this drunk and missing a limb!"

"Keep talking and you might get to try out that second part."

They seemed to be gaining some distance from the Kree fighters that were firing at them, and Nebula was performing a few less acrobatics to avoid their beams.

"So where is this gateway? Because all I see up ahead is one very unwelcoming asteroid belt." A stream of asteroids, most of which easily dwarfing his Milano, stretched out in front of them. The colossal rocks hovered uncomfortably close to one another, jostling and bumping into each other like the stampeding herds of cattle on an old western. And Nebula was speeding straight towards them at an alarming rate.

"Nebulaaaaaaa!" He cried as she pulled up at the last second so they were flying parallel to the great asteroids. The beams from the ships sinking futher and further behind them sent up sprays of debri as they missed wildly. Just as the last ship winked out of sight over the horizon of stone Nebula cranked the controls violently to the left and sent them careening into a gap between two gigantic boulders. Oh shit. Peter scrambled for the controls but Nebula batted him away without looking up from the windshield. She had officially lost it. He was going to die smushed in between these two rocks like some sort of Star-lord sandwich.

The Milano flipped and bounced through the increasing darkness, Peter's chest aching with every new scrape and dent. Just when he thought his ship was about to fall apart the astroids vanished and they were falling through open sky.

End Ch 2.