#oh yeah & if anyones seeing this but not my commission post. everythings open & i only got 1 taker so ✌️
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mikiruma · 9 months ago
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also idk if anyone cares abt irl updates but its mine & my bf's six monthiversary today & in ten days i'll be six months on hrt
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I’m just stopping by in your inbox to say thank you! As you could see already I really like your posts and thoughts about …well everything honestly😅 I wish I knew English better to feel more comfortable to develop the conversations you are holding here. You are saying all truth about fandom and members. Damn this fandom ….made me feel insane over the years. Like when majority of people start pressuring you to have certain approved by company (lol) or just masses’ opinions. It’d have been easier if I didn’t felt related to them back then, when I only started to listen to bts. It’s so silly I know but you find people with the same taste and interests (more or less) and you think “oh that’s my people” until they are not and you start basically self-censoring yourself. But arguing with them is even worse, especially on twitter. I’m an artist and I have a lot of inspiration from Jimin and Jungkook but it’s frightening me to even open fan artist page in social media to start to post them…The army or jikook fans sphere isn’t welcoming to me anymore. I don’t know if it would feel more fun or stressful. But I just know that I can’t hold myself and when I would see some stupid comment I would openly troll them not nicely or just response back very harshly so I would end up in report accs in a second. Lol😅 One comment about not streaming much from army or delusional shit from jikookers and here I’m telling them to shut up or flare up just laughing “yeah t*ekook f*cking dating in love and now what’s the issue”. All fan artists are so calm and especially big ones are just avoiding all of these and stay silent. I don’t think I’m capable of it. I’m too bitter and quick-tempered and if I have some real life issues and then I would see something absolutely ridiculous in my lil escape from reality time aka fandom..uuuff better someone to hold me back. How do you do it almost daily? I’m too young and inexperienced. To have artist account is like to have brand with your nick(name), and even fan artist seems to behave “professionally” in fandom spaces really taking that as their job or something. And if you won’t bend under these unspoken rules you would have no engagement or too much negativity … so that’s why I keep all drawings to myself only. Help🤣🤣🤣 yeah maybe I’m overthinking but fandom made me feel about them like this, they are driving me crazy. Anyway I just wanted to add to conversation how old time fans feel in this fandom and how you are fresh educated 🧐 air in all of this craziness.
Hello, @moon-under-sunshine. I see you frequently in my notes. Don't worry about your English, you're doing just fine and you can engage more if that's something you would like.
As to your dilemma, I do have some thoughts. You may not like it or agree with, but you came to me so I'll tell you how I see it.
I don't think fandom quarreling should stop you from posting your art. Especially if that's your passion and you want to share it with the world. It's doable and your concerns can be solved if you divide your space accordingly. Make a twitter account which is solely focused on the art you make, use it for eventual commissions if that opportunity arises and keep it simple. You attribute to it one purpose only and it doesn't need to contain your fandom thoughts. You can make a different account for that or even use another platform, like tumblr. I know fanartists seem really professional and not involved in any drama from an outside perspective. But a lot can happen behind the scenes. Don't put anyone on a pedestal, especially when it's just a username.
Not agreeing with army or jikookers is your business and no one is stopping you from sharing your thoughts. But you have to be honest about what do you want to get out if it. Do you just like to rile people up or you're open to conversation? Do you want to be honest or just a troll? What good does trolling do? Offer some sort of satisfaction which is short lived? Yes, it's annoying to read all that about having to stream or maybe some shipping theories are a bit too much or actually ludicrous, but trolling is creating conflict without taking the responsibility for your words. If wanting to express your disagreements with what others are saying is something you want to do, then you should do it in a more mature way. The best solution would of course be to just write the stuff on your own blog. Go bananas. Create your space, you'll have people agreeing and disagreeing with you, but that's the nature of social media. Yeah, it helps create echo chambers because there's less and less interaction between bloggers, but if that interaction does not have a lucrative outcome and it's based solely on trolling, then perhaps it's better to not exist at all.
You asked me how I do it daily. We have different lives so each method one has, it produces a different outcome. If something pisses me off at work, I don't bring that here. And what happens here on my blog doesn't transfer to my overall mood in day to day life. I can keep it separately and also because I don't get actually angry enough to the point of being affected by what the fandom is doing, by what messages I receive and so on. Because as much as I enjoy what I'm doing here, it's but a small fraction of my life and when I put the phone down, it disappears. Participating and talking about the fandom is not that deep for me. It doesn't represent me completely. I don't make it my purpose to prove daily if two guys are together and I certainly don't need to make my entire online identity about telling that the two guys aren't fucking. Same about army, bts or any other topic. If you can't find a bit of joy in all this that makes it worthwile, then there's no point.
You said you're young and inexperienced and that real life issues affect the way you behave online. It's good that you're honest and you're aware of that. You can't change it over night and perhaps with age, you'll see things differently. You don't have to take my advice, but I don't know, maybe channeling your short temper into something else might help. Or make one of those private accounts on twitter and just "scream" into the void and write your most outrageous thoughts you have about the fandom. But remember, it's just that. An online fandom, full of strangers typing on their phone and each has their baggage. But we can choose how we want to behave and what we want from this experience. If posting your art and wanting to get it out there is important, you can find a way to do it.
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thechekhov · 3 years ago
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Alright, alright, I caved.
After a slot opened up in me to be able to take on another show emotionally, I decided to invest in OwlHouse. I thought I would probably like it, but it won me over faster than I thought it would.
I’ve already watched a few episodes, but I realized that it might be more fun to do liveblogs, so here I am - with a liveblog...
I will be doing this episode by episode, and probably releasing them every once in a while. Everything will be under a cut, however, to save you all dash space.
If you’d like to follow, please track the #chekhov watches owlhouse tag!
(I’d also like to dedicate this post to the Tumblr Staff Rob, who did his best to restore this post for me when tumblr queue ate it.)
Without further ado...
Episode 1!!
Fair warning - this is technically not a ‘live’ blog, because I have already watched some of the show before deciding to do this, but I’ll still react to them to round things out.
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Immediately, this reminds me of Little Witch Academia... Anyone? No? Only me? I feel like maybe I’m getting my wires crossed, but there HAD to have been some inspiration taken from there?
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“No-- my only weakness! Dying!!“
Same, big snake monster. Same.
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Oh, backup snakes? This girl is READY.
Please don’t mistreat the snakes.
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Spider breath... This kid is on my wavelength. That griffin seems to be waiting to be put out of its misery though, and I don’t blame it.
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My child... where did you get that pigeon head though.....
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Nurse mother, do you REALLY think signing up your spider-summoning daughter for summer camp will actively make her antics slow down instead of ramp up to 60?
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Awww, baby makes AMVs... But also, NO ONE TOLD YOU TO THROW AWAY THE BOOK??? I know it’s symbolic, but goodness, isn’t that a bit much???
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wait a sec, is that Eda????
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Love the realistic bilingual kid experience of replying in English when your mom talks to you in your native language. Universal.
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Love this introduction of Eda’s character. She’s got that little green scarf on and everything. Like a tiny trash grandma.
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Oooh, okay, let’s extrapolate...
Lots of bones everywhere. I kinda love the aesthetic here - it’s gross and visceral, kind of like what Luz was making with her school projects. Yet in the middle of it all we have a rather clear gothic looking structure. Is this a power imbalance in the supposed kingdom?
The five circles of stained glass seem to perhaps indicate something like Hogwarts houses? Several different types of magic?
But Luz has no reason to freak out as much as she is - she LOVES weird stuff! Haha... No, I kid, I kid. I get it.
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“Am I in the bad place?“
Eyyyyy, gotta love shows referencing other shows. :)
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“Oh dear child... I’m not like you.”
Wow, what a DRAMATIC reveal for some pointy ears. :) I love her.
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We should all aspire to have such cool and stylistically well put together wanted posters. You can tell the commissioned artist really respects her craft.
Steven Universe fans watching this:
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I’m looking too.
Okay, okay, enough shenanigans, let’s have some LORE.
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I love this landscape. Teeth or bones, or whatever they are, this is one of the more unique settings we’ve gotten, though maybe I’m prejudiced because I love body horror and bones. The darker orange and red themes fit really well here.
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Things I’m desperate for: Giraffe Lore 
Things I’m more desperate for: Eda lore. Why do her limbs fall off? Is she a zombie?
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Things I’m not quite as desperate for: Hooty lore. He can keep that to himself.
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well hello there mysterious chekhov’s glyph which will DEFINITELY not be relevant in the second chapter (or end of season? Maybe? Idk it just seems important).
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Ah, yes. That would have been my reaction as well, to be fair. Somehow I didn’t expect to see this guy so early on. I figured he would be a low stress early villain that got assimilated into the Found Family. Kinda psyched that he’s just there from the start.
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....I’m just gonna presume this is all true and accept it at face value.
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Old Escape The Cops Lady and Tiny Little Demon King, I need your backstory. How did you meet.
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I love looking at background details, because like... you can tell the BG artists had fun. I particularly love how the 3 eyed toad doesn’t actually have any reward attached to her. Though the Knife Baby does intrigue me!
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“I write fanfics of food falling in love.”
Why am I being called out...
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“Noo! My weak nerd arms!”
Finally, a realistic portrayal of a protagonist thrust into a fantasy setting!
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.....................
Okay but. If only humans could pass through the barrier... wouldn’t that mean a human had to have deposited those things in there? Do they have a human on staff in this weird pseudo-prison??? Suspicious....
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Confession - when I initially saw ads for this show, I expected Eda to be a villain, not a loveable middle aged witch aunt figure. I am shockingly even MORE drawn to her this way. I expected betrayal. I expected her to be a lowkey threat?? But no. She’s just wholesome in the way a solid raccoon is.
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“Eda, are you okay?!”
“Yeah, this just happens when you get older...”
“........does it..?”
If I had to pinpoint the exact moment this show won me over...... it would probably be this one.
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I know it’s probably the wrong thing to focus on, but what is that insignia? Wings??? Like.... the kind OWLS HAVE?????
COINCIDENCE??? I THINK NOT!!!
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I’m really loving the landscape here. And those fireworks are... hmm... intricate?
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Gotta love the old tried and true Witch Apprentice Actually A Live In Intern trope. :)
Hold up...
Is that
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Is that Hooty? I thought he was just a door....
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Eda: This is my room for human stuff. I will also put my human in there.
. . .
Overall rating: I think this is a cute overall beginning. The prison break went hard! I enjoyed the characters and it kind of surprised me in a lot of ways. It definitely does a great job setting up a world with a lot more to explore while giving us a small taste of cool magic stuff and witchy battles. :)
Now on to Episode 2!!
Read the liveblogs in order by clicking here!
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90stvshowgoth · 4 years ago
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—BREAKING & ENTERING
—ch.1 —ch.2
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summary: after dabi was seen leaving your apartment complex last week, the commission has sent a lesser known hero to help guard the building until new cameras are installed. however, no security measures in the world could keep dabi out.
w/c: 5064
tags: dubcon, cuckolding, creampie, voyeurism, humiliation, exhibitionism, arson
a/n: this is the final chapter to this little duology, and the reason why its so much shorter is because the first one was really supposed to stand on its own, but i got so many requests for a sequel i couldn’t help it. so i just took the kinks i didn’t get to use last time and pay off some setup and voila. however, just ‘cause this is the last chapter of this story doesn’t mean i’m not gonna write a fuck ton of other stuff for him. ily burn man. plus i’m working on a huge, multi-chapter fic for him while i post smaller one-shots >:) that being said, enjoy.
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The impact Dabi left on your life was far bigger than you thought it would’ve been on the night you snuck him away from the law. As he was running from the cops someone saw him climb through your window, and a different person also saw him climb down the fire escape. With witnesses like that, the other tenants were downright furious.
You almost felt bad for the landlord, it wasn’t his fault you were insane enough to willingly let a villain come inside both you and your apartment.
Your landlord and the police department came up with a solution. The apartment complex would be installing new state-of-the-art locks on all fire-escape adjacent windows free of charge. This wasn’t exactly an issue with seeing Dabi again, since all you had to do was purposefully leave yours unlocked.
It would take two weeks to install all the cameras, but until then, a community-assigned hero would be stationed to guard the complex.
His name was Kao, a middle-ranked hero with bright orange hair and a winning smile framed with dimples. At first you thought he might’ve been one of the better heroes, waving you off to work and walking you there the other day, but recently he’d begun to creep you out. The friendly conversations about a tv show you both enjoyed began to turn into invasive questions about your love life.
A week of lingering glances and uncomfortable prying culminated that Friday as he had flat out asked you to dinner moments prior.
“C’mon, I just— I said that wrong, lemme try again,” He stuttered, keeping pace with you as you marched towards the building.
“No, Kao, look, you’re cool and all, but I’m really not looking to date anyone right now.” You huffed, striding into the doorway and towards the elevator. That might not’ve been the whole truth but you obviously couldn’t tell him that you had the hots for a terrorist.
He groaned, rubbing the back of his neck, “Well you just got off work, right? I remember which room you stay in, maybe I can swing by tonight?”
You whirled on him, your jaw slack in shock at the insensitivity of his words. The reminder that he knew where you lived sending a shiver down your spine, “Kao, this conversation is done. I don’t want you following me around anymore, hero,”
Deep down, your words sounded familiar. If they were raspier and said behind a thin veil of indifference, you might’ve realized that you were talking like Dabi.
“What is that supposed to mean? We’re the good guys!” You slammed your fist down on the close-door button, your mouth a thin line, daring Kao to make a move and stop the doors. He didn’t, and soon the reassuring pull of the elevator set your shaking body at ease.
‘Who does he think he is?’ You were bitter, rightfully so, you think.
You were so frustrated that you had difficulty inserting your keys into the lock, twisting it with a growl and throwing open the door, ready to collapse onto your pillow and vent to whoever was online about your heroic stalker.
When you noticed the scent of cigarettes in the air.
“Hey, doll,” Warmth surged through your chest at the sight of him, the villain’s feet kicked up onto the coffee table.
You were hanging your coat on the hook before moving beside him to the couch, “What took you so long?”
“Not happy to see me? You seem a lot bitchier than I remember,” The crude edge of his humor was a breath of fresh air compared to the stifling niceties of work, and you smiled for what felt like the first time that day.
Shaking your head, you toed out of your boots and made your way to the frayed couch, “I’ll tell you all about him,”
That got his attention, “Him?”
“A hero,” Dabi’s frown worsened, an accusatory look in his eyes, “before you ask, no, you idiot, I hate this guy, there’s not a chance I’d sleep with him.”
The tensity in his shoulders relaxed, bring the half-finished Newport to his lips as you continued, “Since you broke in last week all my neighbors lost their shit. They threatened to sue if my landlord didn’t assign a hero to watch the building for a bit. I thought he was cool, but I’ve just decided that he’s a total prick.”
He hummed, nodding understandingly, “Want me to kill him?”
You gaped, hitting him on the chest, “Wha—No, Dabi, what the hell?”
He just shrugged, the intensity of his words almost funny to you, and as you recounted the last twenty minutes the ashes of Dabi’s cigarette fell to the floor. The dying lights of the sun streamed through your window, the smoke oddly beautiful in the glow as he handed you the last hit of his cheap cigar.
“You know why heroes are like that?” You shook your head, enjoying the numbing calm of tobacco, “It’s cause they’re spoiled. They go their entire lives being praised for everything they do so they don’t know how to take no for a fuckin’ answer,”
Apparently your smoking buddy was feeling talkative, much to your delight. His words made you pause, remembering the relieved faces of your neighbors whenever they’d see the gaudy costume Kao wore as he strode by.
“Shit... guess you’re right,” You mumbled into his side, not minding the ever-present aroma of burnt skin and smoke that clung to Dabi’s coat.
He scoffed, “I’m always right, baby,” His words earning him a pinch on the arm.
“No, you ass, just about the hero stuff,” He grinned, the staples on his dimples taut against his skin as he pulled you closer, his breath hot against your ear.
“Careful, doll, you’re starting to sound like a villain,” The drop in your stomach sent heat down your skin, yet somehow you were still shivering under his predatory gaze.
You shook your head, trying to will away the red that dusted your cheeks, “No way, my quirk isn’t strong enough to be a villain,”
He raised his eyebrow expectantly, broadly gesturing for you to go on.
“Well...” God, why is this embarrassing? “I can give people headaches.”
You didn’t know if he would laugh at you or belittle you for your meaningless quirk, but he did neither.
“Think you could practice it more? Get better at it?” He was serious, staring at you and expecting an answer.
You looked away, unable to hold his gaze, “I mean, maybe? It’s not hard to do, I guess,”
Dabi smirked, pulling you onto his lap. It felt as if the week hadn’t happened at all and you were right back where you started, your face flushing at the memories of that night. He dragged you close, eyes dark as he whispered something into your ear...
“Think you could split someone’s head open with a migraine?”
Your gut wrenched, flinching at the gory idea and making you sit up in Dabi’s lap. The atmosphere in the room hadn’t changed, his stare as menacing as before.
That is, until he started to crack up. Louder than you’d ever heard before, his fit filled the apartment until he had to cup his stomach from laughing too hard; the wheeze in his rough throat echoing around the room as your blush spread all the way down your neck.
“Oh, you asshole!” If anything, your shove against his chest only made him more giddy. The panic-fueled adrenaline was still surging through your body, unwillingly making the wetness between your thighs spread, even as you tried to wrap your head around the fact that Dabi had been fucking with you.
Your legs shook as he held on to you for balance, his cackling dying down but the shit-eating grin never leaving his face, “You were so freaked out, huh?”
“Yeah, no shit!”
He hummed, running a hand through your hair and suddenly yanking you forward, basking in the sharp yelp it brought from you, “You’re cute when you’re scared,”
You’d missed the way his scabbed lips felt on yours more than you’d ever admit. There was something about him that left you breathless, eager and questioning your life choices. Groaning into his mouth before pulling back and laving your slick tongue along his disfigured lower lip, you rolled your aching heat against him to force a truly pornographic moan from his mouth.
“Oh, fuck—” One of his hands slid down your back, grabbing your ass through your jeans, “Fucking hell, you missed me that much?”
You nodded dumbly into his shoulder, pressing chaste kisses along the ragged skin as he slid his finger past the band of your jeans, cupping your dripping sex with wide eyes.
“Goddamn, s’no way you’re this wet for me already,” His eyes were scrutinizing, trying to figure out why you were hiding into his neck, “What’s got you so worked up, doll?”
You couldn’t come up with a good excuse in time, Dabi thinking back to how your thighs had tightened up when he asked if you could kill someone, your eyes were frightened back then, yes, but there was something else. Something you wouldn’t tell him.
When the realization hit him, it hit hard.
“Holy shit, you get off on being scared?” He couldn’t believe his luck, the embarrassed groan you buried into his shoulder confirming his suspicions.
Dabi ran a hand through his hair, a childish wonder over his features, “Aren’t I fuckin’ lucky?” He sneered, pulling you back til you were at eye-level again.
“I’m gonna try something, baby,” there was an edge to his voice as he settled one hand on the small of your back, pressing your tits against his chest as he held your bra strap back with the other.
“What are you… Dabi, what are you doing?” The scent of fire and burning fabric filled the air, the ends of your bralette smoking between his fingertips, embers turning to ash and sprinkling down the couch until it was flimsy enough for Dabi to rip free, teeth sinking into your neck as he held you still to keep your skin safe.
It was jarring and a bit terrifying to be restrained against someone like Dabi without knowing his intentions. But nothing in you could deny the blinding rush of pleasure it ripped down your spine.
“It’s all starting to make sense, doll-face, I guess I was right the first time,” His hands tossed the smoking bra into hallway, reaching between you and torturously pinching and pulling on the rosy blush of your tits, “you do have a thing for villains,”
“Can’t wait to fuck that tight pussy again, doll,” Without warning he shoved your torso forward, your body bouncing against the couch, his hands flying to the button of your jeans.
“—Didn’t have time to take you right last time, didn’t get to taste you,” his words made you whimper in his grasp, keeping your legs somewhat raised as tugged down the tight denim.
You fully expected him to take you rough like before, make you choke on his cock before having his fill, but as he tugged off your black panties he crawled down the trembling body beneath him, slowly moving over your ribs, your stomach, and finally your drooling cunt.
He never broke eye contact with you as he pulled your thighs closer, keeping them spread wide as the hot fan of his breath on your pussy sent a thrill through your neglected nerves.
“I want you to scream my name,” It was an order, not a request. The unhinged tremor in his hands was unsettling, an unspoken threat hanging in the air.
Dabi’s tongue immediately found your clit, mouth wrapping around the glistening bead and sucking all at once, the moan it drew from your lips unholy. He moaned at the taste, hiking up your hips onto his shoulders.
“Christ, you’re sweet, doll, like fuckin’ candy...” He muttered in disbelief, more to himself that to you, licking a wide stripe along your drenched lips, diving into you deep enough to have your limbs spasming around him.
On instinct your hand flew to your mouth to muffle the sharp cry that the villain drew. He didn’t warn you before bringing his hand up high and slapping it into the bare skin of your thigh, a scream echoing through the living room. Distantly, you wondered if your neighbors could hear...
“Don’t you dare hide a single sound from me, slut, or this ends now,” his ultimatum was scary but the insult felt heavy in a way you’d never felt before, and you nodded without a second thought, breathlessly bunching one hand into the arm of the couch above you and the other into the ashy black of his hair.
You nodded down to him, silently saying to continue; the villain fixed on watching as your chest swelled in time with your breathing, a rush of blood going to the heat of his cock.
His pace was hungry, nipping at your thighs whenever he thought you were too comfortable, spinning circles into your clit with his tongue and chuckling at the noises it brought, “You gonna cum, princess?” You could only respond with a scream of his name, the plea music to his ears, but he needed you to be louder if he was to get what he wanted.
“Louder,” Dabi called your name like a prayer, moaning into your cunt as you practically suffocated him between your thighs, “Fuck—Louder, baby, scream it,”
“Dabi!!” Your orgasm was hot against his tongue and he drank in every last drop of your climax until you were wrenching away his greedy mouth, your pussy swollen and red from his care.
Just as you started to compose yourself, a frantic banging sounded on the door. Someone from the hallway was slamming down their fist, screaming your name.
“Hey! Did you just say Dabi?! Are you okay in there?” It was Kao.
Horror clawed away any kind of afterglow as you cupped your hand to your mouth, leaning up on your elbow and whispering, “What do I say?”
Dabi’s voice was just low enough to hide behind the pounding of Kao’s fists, “Do you trust me?”
Before you could answer the hero behind the wall called your name again.
“If you don’t answer me in five seconds I’m breaking this door down!”
Your gaze flickered from the front door to the villain that was wiping your slick from his chin.
“Yes,”
Dabi grinned, grabbing your wrists and holding you against his shirt, one hand wrapped painfully around your tits and the other erupting with blue fire in his palm.
“Come and get her, hero!” You made a confused squeal, thrashing around in his grasp, eyes wide and afraid as Dabi shushed into your ear, trying to calm you down.
‘Like hell if you’d calm down, he’d practically just signed your death sentence!’ you heaved against the fugitive, trying to shake yourself free to no avail.
All you could do was squeeze your eyes shut and imagine you were somewhere else as door was jolted in its hinges, the doorknob falling with a distant clang, and before you could beg Dabi to stop whatever stupid game he was playing, Kao ran into the room, eyes furrowed and fists raised as the door squeaked on the loose hinges behind him, blissfully unaware.
“Where are y—“ Kao’s voice paused mid-sentence, you flinched in Dabi’s hold, the heat of the redhead’s stare washing over you, naked and wet, making you tilt your head down, trying to hide yourself from the world.
“Isn’t she cute, hero?” Dabi rasped against you, the heat of his fire illuminated against the sweaty sheen of your trembling body. Kao didn’t know what to do, flustered and struggling to hide the tent in his latex costume.
You knew fighting back against the villain was pointless, falling limp in the strength of his arms as he chuckled into your neck, looking over at the bump in his pants, “You were right, babe, I think he likes you,”
“Get your filthy hands off of her!” Kao screamed, diving towards the couch with his fist raised back.
Dabi simply grinned, carefully hovering his flame ever closer to your now bare tits, you couldn’t help but scream at the proximity, and whatever plan Kao had in his mind died before his fist could make impact.
His novocaine laced voice spoke calmly beside your ear, “Any closer and she’s dead,” The hot rush down your legs wasn’t due to his flames, as one hand took to rubbing your sensitive sex, the sounds it elicited from you unintentional and mortifying under the presence of Kao in the room.
“What... what do you want, you bastard?” Dabi laughed at that one, tweaking your clit between his fingers and conducting the most beautiful notes from your pillowy lips.
“I think It’s pretty obvious what I want, don’t you think?” Your name on his lips sent you keening against him despite the inferno roaring inches away from your skin. He couldn’t move without Dabi’s flames hovering ever closer to your heaving chest, and to Kao, you were very clearly about to die. Although you didn’t believe Dabi would hurt you, he had asked you to trust him before he got Kao’s attention, after all, the line between foreplay and conflagration was becoming blurry.
Kao backed up into the half wall that separated the living room from the kitchen, barely making an effort to try and hide his erection anymore, “I’ll send you to fucking Tartarus for this, Dabi.”
“Oooo, scary,” His unlit hand trailed down your jawline, tilting you to his side until he could slide his tongue into your open lips, humming into your mouth, “What do you think, doll?
“Dabi, please... wait,“ The strength in your voice wasn’t as heated as before, and even you had to admit it sounded half-assed.
Kao’s quirk must be no good for long range because all he could do was stand there, trying to avert his eyes from your drooling cunt in favor of glaring daggers at the coy villain pulling soft mewls from your lips, “I swear... I’ll see you rot in prison for this. You’ll be fucking executed, you rapist—“
“—woah, woah, that stings, hero. Doll, is that really what I’m doin’?” You groaned, not exactly answering because you couldn’t hear the question, your eyes still shut tight in embarrassment.
The growl in his voice sent another soaking rush towards your pussy, as his hand grabbed you jaw, pulling you up, “Look at me,” Your eyes widened at the sight of Dabi so close to you, his chest warm against your back, the aches of your last orgasm fading into something new.
“Tell me to stop, princess, your call,” Time stood still as Dabi kissed a soft pathway along your neck, weirdly gentle as he listened for your response, his clothed hard-on pressed firmly against your ass.
Too flustered to speak, you merely wrenched your arm free from his grasp, carding you hand through his hair and pulling him to your desperate lips. You could feel him tug into a smirk against you as your hips eagerly ground themselves on him despite the audience.
Kao choked on his own spit, stepping backwards, but stopped when Dabi aimed his ignited hand towards the hero who was having difficulty piecing together your actions in his head. “What,” His voice cracked when he called out your name, “are you...?”
Dabi pulled away, a feral glint in the blue hidden beneath his hair as he licked a disgustingly wet stripe along your cheek, chest rumbling behind you as you squirmed at the gross feeling, “I’m still gonna need you to beg, sweetheart.”
Your dignity was hanging by a thread, hinging on whether or not you followed his lead, but the insane buzz your anxiety had stirred up under Kao’s confused stare and Dabi’s aching cock was impossible to ignore. He rut himself into the dripping curve of your ass, his jeans soaked with your slick as you found the courage to speak.
“Fuh...” Carefully, Dabi pressed a loving kiss to your temple, his stare fixated on Kao’s as you strung the syllables together, “Fuck me, Dabi,”
The hero couldn’t believe his ears. She’d turned him down countless times despite his pursuits, yet she was somehow fine with this? Kao briefly thought that perhaps his crush was a villain this whole time, but that couldn’t make sense with her weak quirk.
You felt Dabi twitch beneath you, the shameless way you showed yourself off was as humiliating as it was hot, and he laughed in lightheaded disbelief against the back of your neck, taking your ass in one hand and slipping the other down his pants, tugging off the painful metal zipper until his boxers were pulled down just enough for his cock to finally be met with the soft warmth of your cunt.
“As the lady commands,” Dabi grinned, reaching around your waist to take his pierced dick in his hand, rubbing and tapping his swollen head deliberately against your clit, pre-cum drenching your pussy as you felt boneless in his arms.
“Ah-! St..S-top tea-sing, Dabi!” You babbled, squirming to try and find an escape from his grasp or maybe trying to force him inside you, but all your struggling did was make him harder. But before you could beg, you froze at the sight of Kao a few feet away, his legs bending into a sprinter’s pose. He was going to run?
Dabi was having none of it, a controlled jet of flame grazing Kao’s knee, scalding the skin beneath the latex. The hero cried out into the bite of his fist, collapsing into the wall a few feet away.
“Nah, hero. You’re not leaving just yet,” The villain rearranged you on his lap, “See, the thought of you jerking off to my girl? It kinda pisses me off, actually,”
The color in Kao’s face drained as he had no choice but to sit and watch as Dabi slowly sunk you down on top of him, one hand drawing soft circles into your stomach as you reveled in the feeling of his piercings hot against every part of you.
“Though, I’m wondering, what did you think about, huh?” Kao sputtered, unable to form words just like you, formless noises falling from your lips.
His scarred hands grasped at the flesh of your thighs, raising you up only to shove you back onto his cock, the flames that still extended to threaten Kao suddenly flared up in time with his thrusts, the weight of him felt so much deeper at this angle and it was hard to breathe, let alone speak.
“I... nothing! I didn’t—“ Another whip of fire cut through the room from Dabi’s fingertips, a cast of blue leaving bubbling skin in its wake, pain flashing across Kao’s face.
“Fuckin’ liar,” You yelped as Dabi shoved you down, moaning into your ear as you squeezed against him, sobbing his name into his chest as he picked up a steady pace in your guts.
Kao cried out, stuttering and gripping along the inflamed line of skin, “I-I thought— thought about her... fuck— I just wanted her to suck me off, alright? There, I said it! Are you happy now?”
He must’ve realized the mistake in his words as soon as he said them, squeezing your eyes shut but having no choice but to smell the stench of burning flesh and hear the sound of muffled screaming as it filled your apartment, “Can’t blame you though, her mouth is God,”
Your hands scrambled for balance against Dabi as the screaming of his victim made him downright feral, filling your tight heat so well it had you crying.
“Damn, you’re soaked for me, doll, I just knew you were a kinky fuck deep down. You’re a slutty little girl for me, aren’t ya?”
As much as it hurt to admit it, he was right. He was painfully right, and you told him so. The unhinged, unstoppable force that was Dabi ignited a passion in you that’d never been fed before. He was torturing the hero you hated all while taking your cunt in deep, harsh thrusts, the metal imbedded into his cock and his chest behind you were blisteringly hot against your skin.
“Tell him, baby,” His question fell on deaf ears, your tongue lolling from your mouth a bit at the pleasure.
It caught you off guard when he drew his hand back and slapped you across the cheek, a blistering red handprint in its wake, saying your name so softly, turning off his quirk to run his hands through your hair, he whispered, “Tell that fucking hero who you belong to,”
The world tipped over as Dabi gripped your shoulders, pushing you onto the wooden coffee table so your ass stuck in the air. In an instant he was on you again, pounding into your cunt with a glazed fervor, your words downright biblical in his ears.
“On-ly... Dabi ca—Ngh, Only Dabi can fuck me this good,” You forced the words from your throat, thankful for the table serving as an impartial shoulder to cry on as Dabi lined himself up with your cunt.
“More, princess,” The snap of his hips had you drooling onto the table, catching sight of Kao’s slumped body in the corner as Dabi’s breath sounded much louder than before.
“Fuck, baby—” You cried, craning your neck back to look at him. Sweat glistened at the crown of his dark hair, steam shading his breath as he took you hard, “Your cock is— shit its so deep in me,”
Your nerves were spent from exhaustion as he railed you, being more vocal than before as he choked at the feeling of your walls tightening around him, his fingernails digging future bruises into your hip dips, “Wanna feel you cum in me, want you to fill me up— Dabi, wanna make you feel good,”
“Fuck, doll, I can’t...” He ground his teeth together, making you squeal as he mounted you from behind, spreading your legs out wide so you had no way to hide yourself, “Gonna fuck’n cum-gonna cum in you- fuck, fuck, fuck—!“
You both hit your highs at the same time, Dabi accidentally digging your face into the wood as he held you as tightly to him as possible, his cum running hot due to his quirk as he pumped you full, that broken cry of yours like music to his ears, humping you a few times to ride out his climax.
You felt warm and safe, Dabi’s weight a comfortable blanket even with your shivering skin pressed naked into the coffee table. However, the quietly groaning hero in the corner made you quickly come back down to earth.
“Dabi... did you kill him?” Your voice was small beneath him, but he just shrugged.
“Nah, not yet, don’t worry,” He kissed your neck one more time, his thumb rubbing circles into your indented stomach, pulling you off the table and back into his arms.
He pulled out of you and grinned at the sight of his release spilling down your thighs, “Damn...” he whispered, taking in the sight with a satisfied whistle, “C’mon Doll, forget about him.”
You were grateful he carried you bridal style to your bedroom, your legs gelatin at this point, and as he laid you down to rest he grabbed one of your discarded shirts that hadn’t made it to the hamper and wiped down the remains of sex from your twitching cunt before leaving the cum-stained top ignored on the ground.
“You doing good, baby? Didn’t go too hard, did I?” His concern was diminished somewhat by the grin on his face, satisfied with the mumbling, love-drunk form he’d reduced you to.
Shaking your head, you burrowed into the warm blankets, peeking your eyes out from beyond the covers in a way that even Dabi couldn’t deny was pretty cute, “No, just... what are you gonna do with Kao?”
His face was unreadable as he leaned closer, “Do you really want to know?”
Truth be told, no, you didn’t, you were just a civilian, far removed from the complex fight between heroes and villains. You were only in this situation because you’d grown to care about Dabi. In some small, sarcastic way, he’d wormed his way into your life, and he hadn’t hurt you so far, only going as close as possible to bring you over the edge again and again.
“No...”
“Good answer,” he stood up, tucking himself back into his jeans as he went back into the living room. You heard a muffled thud and what sounded like Dabi cursing before he reappeared in your bedroom, Kao’s unconscious body slung over his shoulder. For such a wiry guy, Dabi was pretty strong. Moving to the open window he basically threw Kao’s body onto the outside metal grating, his lungs uneven after carrying him.
Just as he swung his leg onto the windowsill you shot up in your bed, hand outstretched, “Wait!”
He turned back to look at you, genuinely confused as to what you could want.
“Kiss me before you go?”
He froze, then grinned, scoffing at the innocent gesture you gave so openly to a murderer like him. There had to be something wrong with his little villain-in-training to make her okay with it, just like him. Dabi ignored that thought for another day, striding forward and finally giving you the goodbye kiss you’d been denied last time, his tongue trying to map out every detail in case he could ever forget before pulling away with a warm softness to his ocean eyes.
“I think I might be starting to like you, Doll,” A feint rush of color fell on his unmarred skin and you’re sure your heart stopped beating for a good three seconds.
His words were a worn record being played over and over in your head long after he crawled down your fire escape, the teasing, sated haze in his voice hidden beneath a rasp of smoke. You weren’t sure how much he meant what he said, but you’re sure that the first thing you said in return was exactly what he wanted to hear; at least judging from the boyish smile that lit up his face when you said it.
“Come back soon, okay?”
“Okay,”
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@effmigentlywithachainsaw @touyasfatcock @thicchaikyuuboys @awritersometimes @chey-the-simp
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syllvane · 3 years ago
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muscle memory pt. 3- sylvie x reader
a/n: i said i was going to post tomorrow but i couldn’t help myself. anyways, spoilers for episode 2 and 3 of loki, minor spoilers for the beginning of episode 3. final word count is 1.7k words!
read the previous part  read the next part   read the series  
“How is Loki doing?” You asked Mobius, walking with him to the mess hall.
“He’s doing great. Making real progress, I would say.”
“Didn’t you have to have a meeting with Renslayer this morning because of his actions?” You asked, raising your eyebrows. His face scrunched up for a second.
“It’s like every time he is making progress, he takes two steps back.”
“That sounds more believable. You still think he’s worth all the trouble though?”
Mobius sighed slightly. “I really do believe in him. It’s not just an issue of whether I believe in him though, it’s whether Ravonna and the Timekeepers do.”
“Oh, you’re on first name basis now, with Renslayer?” You turned and grinned at Mobius, who immediately flushed after realizing his mistake.
“Not a word of this to anyone.” He said strictly, although there was a smile on his face as well.
“Yeah, yeah.” You said, standing in line with Mobius as he ordered his lunch before sitting down at a two-seat table. “Ravonna and Mobius-”
“C-7.” Mobius said strictly, although you could tell he was partly amused by your antics.
You continued in the same quiet, sing-songy voice as before.
“-on a jet ski. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
Mobius finished taking a sip of his drink and then applauded quietly, so as to not draw attention.
“Has anyone ever told you that you truly have all the originality of a grade-schooler?”
Before you could answer, you were interrupted by a tall man with long dark hair speed walking over to where Mobius and you were sitting.
Although he seemed to be in a hurry, you could tell that he was sizing up everybody in the room, including yourself.
“I found- oh, sorry. Didn’t see you there. Would you mind moving so that me and my partner could discuss something?” He asked politely, even smiling.
You locked eyes with him, smiling back at him.
“I’m good, thanks. You can just pull up a chair.”
His smile wavered and he maintained eye contact for a couple of moments longer before breaking it, going to a different table and pulling over a chair.
(You ignored the pointed look Mobius shot at you, like he was asking you to be the bigger person here. Unfortunately for him, you had no such intentions.)
“Right. I know how the Variant is hiding.”
Mobius leaned back.
“Talk about burying the lead. How?”
Loki smiled slightly, this smile much different from his last- he was proud of himself.
“He’s hiding in apocalypses.” 
There was a moment of silence. You and Mobius exchanged a glance.
“Which one? There’s like a million all across history.” Mobius pointed out and Loki took a second to compose himself before starting his explanation.
You sat back as he explained his reasoning, watching with amusement as he put more salt and pepper into Mobius’ salad, handing him your own drink when he realized that Mobius’ drink was empty.
He gave you a nod of recognition and Mobius sent you another, even more exasperated glance as Loki poured your drink into the salad (although, in your opinion, seeing Loki grin like that made it worth it).
                                                             —— “How was Pompeii?” You asked, not even having to look up from the apocalypse case files to figure out that it was Loki who was approaching you.
He stopped for a minute, almost taken aback by your observation, before continuing and taking a seat in front of you.
“I was right, naturally.”
You scoffed slightly.
“Naturally.”
You looked up at him to find that his piercing eyes were already looking at you, almost curiously.
“You’re already sorting through the apocalypse files.”
“Naturally occurring disasters with no survivors, cross-referenced with the candy that Mobius picked up. You were confident that you were right so I figured I should start looking.”
Loki raised his eyebrows and smiled slightly.
“You’re smarter than you look. Could’ve saved me and Mobius some time.” 
“He forgot to cross-reference?”
He nodded, hesitating for a moment before he grabbed some of the files that you hadn’t started looking over yet.
You looked at him appreciatively, though he wasn’t looking at you anymore. 
The two of you sat there, looking at the case files in a comfortable silence for a couple of minutes before Mobius walked into your office as well.
“What’s this?” Mobius asked, taking a cursory glance at the file on top.
“Kablooie.” You said simply and Mobius sighed slightly, frustrated that he hadn’t thought of it.
He grabbed a couple of files as well, standing up as he started reading.
“I think I have something,” Loki said a couple of minutes later, splaying the case out on your desk so that everyone could see. “Class ten apocalypse. Alabama, 2050.”
You looked it over and even just with a cursory glance, you could tell that this is where the Variant was hiding- you looked over at Mobius and saw pride on his face.
“You’re gonna take my job if I’m not careful.”
“Now to pitch it to Renslayer.” You said and Mobius nodded, already halfway out of your office. He closed the door behind him and you looked at Loki. “I don’t think I’ve seen him this excited in a while. In fact, the last time I saw him this excited, I think we saw a jet ski on a mission.”
Loki smiled to himself, though the expression disappeared when he looked back at you.
“And what about you?”
“Hm?” You tilted your head slightly, caught off-guard by the question.
“What excites you?” 
You held his gaze for a couple of moments, feeling uncomfortable with how he looked at you, as if he knew something about you that you didn’t know about yourself. 
You finally looked away, standing up.
“We should go meet Mobius. We’ll be heading out as soon as he gets the approval.”
“You say this like it’s a sure thing.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Renslayer say no to him. Come on.”
                                                          ——
The rain sounded a hundred times louder when you were listening to it hit the roof of the Roxxcart, so loud that you could barely hear the sound of your own voice above the noise.
“What are you doing here?” You asked, positioning your reset baton defensively. The man standing by the plants seemed to hesitate slightly, although he was still much too calm for this kind of weather.
“Hurricane sale. Azaleas are half-off.”
“Could that be you?” You asked Loki, your eyes never leaving the man. Although his eyes continued to look between you and Loki, his gaze lingered on you longer.
“I… mean… I would’ve worn a suit, but it could be.”
You took a couple steps towards the man and he backed up, looking at you pleadingly.
“I don’t want to do this.” He said quietly and you tilted your head slightly, confused.
You took another step towards him.
“What-”
He grabbed your arm and a warm feeling came over your body.
A woman’s voice in your head lulled you to sleep, promising to bring you home and then everything went dark.
“Sylv, why are you acting so weird?” You asked, taking another sip of wine.
The blonde woman across from you smiled, although you could tell that she was forcing it for your sake.
“Another one of my suitors came and visited me today.” She said. You made a face and she laughed slightly.
“Complete fools, every one of them.”
“Fools for being deeply in love with me?” She asked, raising an eyebrow, almost as if she was allowing herself to play the part for a couple of brief moments.
“No, I’m above self-flagellation. They’re fools for thinking that they could ever win your heart.”
She laughed.
“And why is that?”
You leaned back in your chair.
“I have it on very good account that someone already has it.” You said and Sylvie‘s smile faded and her gaze didn’t quite meet yours, almost as if her mind was preoccupied elsewhere.
She looked back at you, her look apologetic.
The scene around you grew distorted, nothing quite clear anymore.
“I’m sorry.”
Her words repeated everywhere around you like you were in an echo chamber rather than…
Rather than…
Where were you?
The blonde woman that had been there a moment ago disappeared and with her, everything else.
When you came to, Mobius was kneeling beside you, waiting for you to wake up.
“C-7… are you okay?” He asked slowly, looking at you with more concern than you think anyone else ever has.
You propped yourself up and you looked around wildly for Loki or for the blonde woman- Sylvie- who had been in your head.
“Where are they?” You asked and you hated how desperate your voice sounded.
“They escaped. Take it easy, the Variant did a number on-”
“Mobius, I have to find her.” You said, trying to stand up only to be overwhelmed with nausea and dizziness.
Mobius supported you, keeping you from falling back onto the ground.
“I know. And we will, but we have more pressing issues right now. Come on.”
You didn’t protest, knowing that you wouldn’t be able to convince Mobius even if you promised to get him a jet ski afterwards.
What you had to do now, you would do alone.
He helped you through the portal back to the TVA and the rest of your team followed, all of them being immediately assigned to different Nexus events that were happening simultaneously.
You, being injured, were given the pass to stay back at the TVA. 
You wondered if the Timekeepers knew what you were about to do, if they could’ve predicted it- after all, they were the ones who had made you, right?
You headed to the sector of the TVA where they issued TemPads, looking at the data of where all the TemPads were jumping to and from when you stumbled upon something odd- there was a TemPad that only had one jump registered in its entire history.
TVA to Lamentis-1, 2077.
Huh.
The Variant- Sylvie- whatever her name was, must’ve found out a way to stop the TemPad from feeding data into the system, but it must’ve reset when she jumped to the TVA.
You grabbed one of the TemPad’s that were out of commission for charging, unplugging it. 
It was low on battery, but it would have to do.
You opened a portal for yourself using the exact same coordinates and time that they had put in and without any hesitation, you walked through.
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write-ur-wrongs · 4 years ago
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Mother, Mother pt.2
A/N: Finally ready to post part 2 of my dad!Geralt fic!!! Part 2 is loosely based on this prompt Another request with baby!👀🥰 Reader has a newborn and geralt is just watching them thinking about how much have changed and how reader turned his life around...🍪 so I really want to thank that anon for their prompt and their patience! I definitely took some liberties with this story and worry the plot got lost along the way(?) but I really hope you like it nonetheless! Full disclosure I haven’t proof-read this piece so forgive the many typos!!
__________________________________________________________
“I said, no,” Geralt repeated himself slowly and with great authority, “thank you.”
The village healer looked at the witcher with eyes wide in disbelief, unable to accept that there was anything a witcher wouldn’t do for coin. Especially this witcher – the White Wolf – or so they used to call him. He used to be a force to be reckoned with on the continent, but now it seemed there was rarely a job he’d be willing to take.
“No? B-but who will help us!” they shouted desperately, “you can’t just leave this village to fend for itself! The creature will kill us all, Witcher!”
Geralt closed his eyes and took a deep breath before repeating himself yet again. “Please understand, I can’t help you, but I know people who can. Eskel is highly qualified and will be here by the next full moon. He will help you; I assure you.”
“But you’re here now,” the healer said, still shaking his head, “you could resolve this by nightfall! Why should these people wait a week for peace?”
“Hm.” He growled, lowly, biting down on his cheek to keep himself from giving into his rage and his pride. He wasn’t just living for himself anymore, not just living for the coin or by the witcher’s code; he had a family now.
He knew the world wouldn’t be easy to convince regarding his change in career path. Hell, it had taken most of your pregnancy to convince his brothers at Kaer Morhen of his plans. When he first told them you were pregnant, and it was his, they laughed heartily while sharing quick looks of concern between one another; fearing you’d strayed and were trying to play poor Geralt for a fool.
Yet that reaction was nothing compared to the one they gave him when Geralt admitted that his days of being a witcher were over. He’d be a consultant now. He’d travel the continent only when he heard of monsters through Jaskier’s letters, and once he reached these villages, he’d take stock and refer the case to one of his brothers, who’d pay him a modest commission for the referral. Geralt never took contracts he deemed to be too dangerous (which, so it happened, was most of them). The rule was if he wouldn’t readily bring Cirilla along to help, it was too dangerous for him alone.
Once, he let pride take precedence and he accepted a contract he knew was dangerous. It felt good to be back in the saddle, both literally and figuratively. He and Roach took to the forest like birds on a breeze, and his sword was just an extension of himself as he wielded it fiercely and with grace.
While he did conquer the beast in the end, it did put up quite a fight, and everything he thought made the fight worth it was washed away the instant he limped into your home and saw the look on his pregnant wife’s face and heard the cries of his beloved child surprise. To this day, he still feels the panicked sound of Ciri’s fearful shriek and your horrified sob weigh heavily in the pit of his stomach.
He felt this very weight now as he considered this desperate healer’s words. Yes, he’d handled this type of monster many times before, but it wasn’t worth it.
“Listen to me, this type of creature is only a threat during a full moon,” Geralt said, “just educate your people, spread the word, you’re in a position of authority here – use it.”
The healer sighed deeply before muttering to themselves in frustration. They pulled their cloak tighter around their body and made a scene of grabbing the coin-filled sac from the table. Geralt rolled eyes his at the paranoid healer before gesturing for them to head outside.
“Fine, leave! But if you leave now and anyone dies, their blood will be on your hands!” shouted the healer, as Geralt tended to Roach.
Geralt rolled his eyes before mounting Roach, urging her onto the trail.
This isn’t my fight, he thought, and their people will be fine.
You were having a wonderful morning. Wren slept through the night for the first time in who-knows how long, and Ciri was relaxing as she entered her fifth day without a magical episode; those lessons with her aunt Yennefer were definitely paying off.
Now you were savouring the gentle afternoon breeze, resting your knees in the cool earth of the garden as the sun warmed you from above. You loved harvesting produce and tending to the flowers; this year was especially bountiful thanks to a rainy spring and temperate summer. As you picked tomatoes off the vine, you smiled softly at the sound of Ciri celebrating a successful hit on her target across the yard.
Meanwhile, Wren played happily in the dirt at your side. She’s been sitting up on her own now which was such a thrill. Such a small change, but it granted you freedoms you didn’t know you’d been missing.
“Mama, snek!” Wren squealed, proudly holding an earthworm up at you. You laughed in relief upon seeing what she was holding up – for half a second you thought she’d managed to snag an actual snake.
“Wow my girl,” you cooed, “what a find!”
At the sound of your praise, Wren smiled up at you brightly and closed her little fingers around the earthworm with pride.
“Careful now, love! Don’t harm it,” you said, gently prying open her stubby fingers and releasing the worm back into the soil, “these little guys play an important role in the health of our garden.”
“You know she doesn’t understand you, right mom?” Ciri said a little breathlessly after stabbing her sword into the earth.
“I don’t think we can say that with certainty, Ciri. She is a witcher’s daughter after all, we are in for a lifetime of surprises I’d say.” You replied with a small shake of your head. Ciri rolled her eyes at you before making off towards the house at a run.
“Cirilla,” you warned, “don’t leave your sword in the yard! And wipe it down before you take it in – I don’t want dirt tracked in again.”
“Mom!” she groaned, stomping back to get her sword. “Witchers don’t need to do these ridiculous chores…” she said under her breath.
“They don’t get warm meals or comfortable beds either!” you replied in a sing-song, knowing it would drive Ciri crazy – you hated when she grumbled at you. Ciri had great respect for her father but would sometimes treat you like you were nothing more than a headmistress at school. Having spent time with witchers and sorceresses alike, scolding didn’t command respect; at least when you played it light it got her attention.
“Yeah – I know! I’ve lived those lives!” Ciri shouted, storming back towards the house, sword in hand.
Fuck. You forgot she was there when Cintra fell. How could you forget?! She was alone and, on the run, and oh gods if Geralt had been here and heard this he’d –
“Ciri, wait, I’m so sorry. I’m –”
“Sounds like someone could use some help.”
You stopped cold at the sound of the strangers’ voice. It ran through you like mead – ice cold but left a strange burning sensation in its place. Ciri also stopped in her tracks, dropping her hand from the door but keeping a firm grip on the helm of her sword. Ciri cast a quick glance at the stranger standing on the edge of your property before settling her nervous eyes on you.
You did your best to evoke confidence before turning to see this stranger for yourself.
It was Visenna.
Again, you did your best to seem confident as you addressed your eldest. “Ciri,” you said, not taking your eyes off the druid, “take Wren into the house, quickly!”  
“Mom?”
“Cirilla please, take her and go into the house,” you said, impressed at your ability to keep your voice level. “And take your sword with you,” you added, turning to give her what you hopped was a look that encouraged her to stay calm and be careful.
Ciri said nothing but scooped her sister up and onto her hip with one arm while keeping her sword steadily by her side.
Once you heard the door close, you cast a quick glance to make sure your girls were safe before turning your attention back to the woman standing at the gate.
“Why are you here, Visenna?” you asked, holding your head high despite the fact your heart was pounding in your ears.
“Oh child,” her words dripped with condescension, “I never expected my son to write me back, but I had hoped he’d share the contents of my letter with his wife.”
“He told me about the letter,” you said, giving her a tight close-lipped smile, “in fact he told me all about you. So, I’m going to ask you again, why are you here?”
“If you know about the letter, then you know why I’m here.”  
“Could you be so cold as to have you forgotten your history with your son? The way you left him to be tested on like a rat? You have no right to be here.” Your voice cracked as you finished your last sentence, and Visenna tilted her head at your sign of weakness.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, dear. You weren’t there -”
“Neither were you!” you spat; with a harshness you didn’t think you had in you.
“Hm.” Visenna crossed her arms and watched you closely through narrowed eyes. You hated that she reminded you of Geralt as she seized you up – the had the same mannerisms, the same affinity for the non-verbal. Geralt could never know.
The druid’s scrutinizing glare made you squirm, and when you broke eye contact with her for a moment of reprieve, she moved to open your gate. For the briefest moment, your panic left you paralyzed as you watched the woman begin a confident stride towards the house.
“Stop!”
You whipped your head around as you heard Ciri come bursting out of the front door. She was wielding her sword up in front of her with one hand while the other hugged Wren onto her side.
“Do not come any closer, I am warning you!” she shrieked, her light eyes wild as her mousey hair blew behind her.
“Ciri-” you tried, holding one hand out to calm her.
“No!” she yelled, keeping her eyes and her sword fixed on Visenna, who was now standing stock-still at the gate.
“Stop trying to tame her, dear,” Visenna interjected. “Let the lion cub roar.”
At the sound of her old nickname, you took in a sharp breath and felt your heart drop to your stomach. It felt like the world stopped turning as Ciri reacted to the trigger.
Cirilla could handle discussions about her old life in small doses and only on her terms. Whenever the dreams came to her, it would take you hours to calm her down. More often than not, the episodes left you and Geralt drained and deeply concerned. Yennefer was really the only person Ciri responded to, and while her methods and lessons have helped, sometimes the pain brought on by the memories was simply too great.
Now, as the four of you stood in your garden, you could feel the earth begin to vibrate beneath your feet. Ciri’s jaw was clenched tight and her nostrils were flared. She slowly knelt down and placed Wren onto the ground before standing tall once again.
“Do not call me that.” She seethed, voice dripping with magic.
“Come now, child,” Visenna replied, seemingly unaware of the storm brewing, “I am your grandmother. I can help you; teach you.”
“You are not my grandmother!” Ciri shrieked, pushing a violent wind towards the druid which forced her to take a step back. “Get out of here! Leave!”
“I – I don’t mean any disrespect, Ciri. The Lioness was –”
“Ciri, no, wait –”
Everything happened so quickly. You felt the burning rush of Ciri’s magic roar past you and tried desperately to keep your eyes open so you could see Wren. Though your eyes stung against the harsh blast Ciri was emitting, you saw Wren crying soundlessly behind her sister, her chubby hands reaching out towards you in desperation. You tried to step towards her but an invisible force pushed you to the ground. You pulled yourself up on one elbow and tried to reach towards your baby without luck. Everything was burning and it took all of your strength to stay alert.
Meanwhile, Ciri’s blast of magic shot at Visenna like a bolt of lightening. Out of the tip of her sword and from her outstretched hand came a bright blue flame surrounded by pulses of violent wind. The destructive blast uprooted the gate and surrounding fence, throwing them back into the forest beyond. Burning shrapnel and earth flew towards her at breakneck speed, but the druid reacted quickly, pulling a portal with the help of an amulet and escaped the blast.
The garden in the path of Ciri’s blow burned harshly – leaving nothing behind but ash; except for the pocket where you lay. You tried to call out to Ciri to calm her down but there was no air for you to draw from. You let the force of her magic hold you down for a moment, trying to recuperate your strength, and when you looked up again you saw Wren taking a few wobbly steps toward her sister.
Holy fuck, you thought. These were her first steps.
You watched with wide eyes as Wren took step after step towards her sister, whose magic raged on. You were so drained by the weight of Ciri’s magic that you were convinced your eyes were deceiving you.
You watched in disbelief as Wren took step after step towards Ciri. The moment her little hand reached her sisters leg, the spell broke and Chaos released its hold on Cirilla. Drained from the exertion, she lost consciousness and started to collapse in on herself, her sword falling from her hand and onto the ground with a dull thud.
You scrambled to your feet and raced to Ciri, dropping to your knees once you reached her to catch her in her fall. You smoothed the ashen strands out of her face and rocked her gently from side to side, breathing shakily through your silent tears. You didn’t know when you started to cry, but when Wren waddled her way to you and nestled onto Ciri’s lap to press her face into the crook of your neck, you were sure you’d be crying forever.
“What the fuck,” Geralt growled upon seeing the destruction as he rode up to the house from the trail. In a growing panic, he urged Roach into a canter. When they got to where the gate should have been, he dismounted and ran towards the house at a sprint, his heart pounding in his ears. When he saw you sobbing on the ground with an unconscious Ciri and weeping Wren, he lost all control.
“Y/N! Y/N what happened?! Who did this?” he shouted, panic rising. When he spotted Ciri’s sword on the ground, Geralt fell to his knees beside you and quickly scanned you all for any sign of injury. You were weeping, holding tightly to Ciri, who was unconscious, and Wren, you
“Y/N please talk to me,” he said more harshly than he meant it, while brushing wild strands of hair out of your face gruffly.
“Ciri, she um –” you choked, working to slow your breathing, “she lost control of her magic…”
“Yeah, I can see that, love.” He said with an incredulous laugh, his eyes scanning your ruined garden with disbelief. “What the fuck happened to make her so upset? Did – did she have a nightmare? Did you, hm, say something to her?”
“Geralt – no,” you said quickly, the tears you managed to calm coming back with a vengeance.
“Y/N, I’m sorry I just…” Geralt regretted the insinuation that this might have been your fault but he’d only ever seen Ciri’s magic be this destructive when she was afraid or hurt. He was at a loss.
You shook your head and turned in his arms to look back at him, readjusting Ciri and Wren in your arms to free an arm which you placed onto Geralt’s chest. You held his eyes and took a steadying breath, unsure of how he’d react.
“We – we were in the garden just, just like always and,” you cast a quick glance down at your daughters before bringing your eyes back up to Geralt’s, both to ground yourself and to hopefully remind him of their proximity in order to temper his reaction, “and Visenna appeared at the gate.”
He gasped sharply at your words, and his body around you. You brought your hand up to his face and tried to calm him. His cat-like eyes were wild and unfocused – he looked like a frightened child and it broke your heart to see him like this. Wren seemed to sense this too, as she scrambled up and reached towards her father’s hair.
Wren’s light tugs managed to pull Geralt out of his shock momentarily and his eyes seemed to come back into focus. Seeing this change, you gently redirected his attention back to you.
“Visenna came for Wren… T-to take her or, or to raise her or something? She mentioned the letter…” Geralt clenched his jaw at the reminder.
You hadn’t motioned the letter in months. Geralt wasn’t at all ready to welcome his mother back into his life, and he definitely didn’t want her anywhere near his family.
“What did she do to Ciri? I swear I’ll –” he seethed.
“No, no, Geralt,” you interrupted gently, moving your hand back to his chest, “she didn’t get the chance. I don’t know what she was going to do, but Ciri came out with her sword,” you stopped short to look down at her with pride, “to protect us.”
“She did?” Geralt let out another incredulous breath, shaking his head at his child surprise.
“Yeah, it was like nothing I’ve ever seen. Her magic, it destroyed everything in its path but somehow, she was sheltering me from the blast. Visenna escaped through a portal, I- I think? But Ciri was… unstoppable.”
“Y/N, if Ciri was able to harness Chaos like this at her will, to protect you; this could mean –”
“Oh no, love, I’m sorry I’m not telling this right. She came out of the house with her sword to protect us but she lost control when Visenna called her the Lion Cub.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“Oh, I know,” you agreed emphatically before adding, “and then she called herself Ciri’s grandmother…”
“Fuck!”
“Right,” you sighed, shaking your head as a shudder ran through you.
“Da-ee,” Wren said suddenly, pushing her little hands into her father’s face, causing a shocked laugh to escape his lips. Geralt’s face softened in a way he reserved for his youngest daughter and the sight of it was enough to pull you out of whatever was left of your panic.
“Oh, gods!” you exclaimed, “Geralt you won’t believe this.”
“Hm?” he hummed, not taking his eyes off Wren; he was completely enthralled by his baby.
“She took her first steps – and, gods it was incredible Geralt – when she touched Ciri, it pulled her out of the trance!” You gushed breathlessly.
“She did? That’s my girl!” he beamed, earning a proud giggle from the toddler. “Fuck I hate that I missed this, you’re just full of surprises aren’t you, goose?” he said, peppering light kisses across Wren’s little face.
“I know, love.” You said softly, leaning into his arms once more. “I’m so relieved to have you home.”
“Come on, Y/N, let’s get our girls into the house.” Geralt said as handed Wren off to you before picking Ciri up gently as he stood. You took his outstretched hand rose to your feet along-side him. “I’m not leaving you again, I promise.”
“Geralt, you say that every time.” You tease lightly, holding the front door open for him.
 “No, I mean it this time Y/N, really.” He said quietly, as he laid Ciri down in her room. “I can’t keep doing this. When I’m gone, all I do is think of you and the girls…” he trailed off when he noticed Wren had fallen asleep on the couch. You smiled tenderly as you watched him cradle her into his strong arms.
“My love, you know you’d go crazy if you stayed here with us all the time.” You said as you smoothed his hair out of his face.
“I’d go crazy if anything ever happened to you.” he whispered.
“Hey now… we’re fine,” you tired to reassure him, “today was an anomaly. I doubt Visenna would try that stunt again. Ciri will be fine, she just needs to rest, and tomorrow we can send word out to Yen for support. We – “you paused to take a steadying breath, “we can’t let fear rule our lives, Geralt.”
“Hmm,” he hummed, setting Wren down into her bed before wrapping his arms around your frame, “now when did you get to be so wise?”
“A certain witcher taught me a few things,” you said, a small smirk playing on your lips, “always preaching something or other but sometimes the lessons stick.”
“Is that so?” he growled, a fighting back a smirk of his own.”
“Hmm,” you teased, kissing him deeply.
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skellebonez · 4 years ago
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He's Been Hurt Enough (Monkie Kid Cursed AU Fanfic)
And here it is, the follow up to Stop Lying To Me! This went through an overall minor rewrite after @winterpower98 posted some more Cursed AU art and I think it turned out much better for it.
Quick note: once again this is my interpretation of a possible way the revelation could go. I decided to go with a “Mac told Sun everything while MK was transformed last time and that’s part of why he got the stuffing beat out of him and was out of commission last fic” angle. (also no I definitely did not accidently post a draft of the summary by itself when I meant to queue this, that totally did not happen(that happened))
Summary: Wukong has questions, Macaque surprisingly has answers, and MK... well, MK is going to be just fine if Macaque has anything to say about it.
Warnings: mild descriptions of healing inuries from the last fic, hint of child neglect if you are familiar with the AU, Macaque is sightly (incredibly) out of it due to medicine
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The first thing Macaque noticed when he came to was that his head felt... wobbly, despite the fact he was clearly laying down and not moving. The second thing he noticed was a disgustingly bitter sweet taste sticking to his tongue. The third thing he noticed was that he laying chest down on a (very small and familiar smelling) pile of clothes. The fourth thing, oh it was a lot of things coming very slowly right after the other which was odd, was that he was completely shirtless and that the only reason he noticed this so slowly was half of his body was almost fascinatingly numb, outside of the warmth of the fire that seemed to be burning in front of him. The last thing he noticed was a very close, also very familiar, and very angry (worried?) looking face of a monkey right in front of his (coincidentally blocking most of that fire light).
"Congratulations," Wukong said flatly. "You are officially not dead."
Macaque stared at the other monkey for a moment before attempting to speak, coughing as the dryness of his throat hit him full force. Before he could move himself, Wukong grabbed his face (gently, more gently than he remembered being touched by the other in so long) and held something to his lips. When he tilted the object and water began to hit his lips he opened his mouth and drank, Wukong never allowing the water to flow from the canteen fast enough to risk him choking on it. It must have been emptied after a short while because the Monkey King took it away faster than Macaque would have liked, but it had been more than enough to quench his thirst and allow him to clear his throat and begin talking. "What... happened?"
The angry (worryied?) look on the other's face deepened. "Should I start when I woke up to you bleeding out over my sucessor? Or should I start when I tried to give you medicine the first time you woke up and you shoved the entire thing in your mouth?"
Well. That second bit explained part of the numbness. And the taste. And possibly why his head felt like it was swimming in that iced cream stuff MK liked so much. He was almost certainly, no definitely, very out of it from whatever Wukong had intended to use to dull his pain. Fantastic.
Instead of voicing all of this he simply said "The... first part?" His voice was rough, but firmer than it had been the first time. He had not realized how almost slurred his words has originally sounded. Wukong' expression softened and. Oh... OH, it was a worried look after all. Huh. Macaque did not expect that. That was... well, not new. But he hadn't seen that in a long time. He... missed that. He didn't realize he had missed that.
"I woke up and I smelled... blood," Wukong started softly. "I was confused, I thought that maybe I hadn't been out for very long after we calmed down MK and you hadn't treated my wounds yet but," his hand went to his side where the bandages Macaque and the kid had carefully applied still held tight. "When I looked around I saw you. Laying face down with one arm over him. And you were just. Just COVERED in blood Macaque. I thought you two had been attacked, I didn't know what kind of demon could do that to you and thought that both of you were hurt." He ran a hand down his face, taking a deep breath, reaching over to prepare something behind him. "It wasn't until I rushed over that I realized that MK was passed out and aside from scratches on his arms you were the only one that was badly hurt."
There it was, the memory of what happened finally came back to him. Telling the kid the truth. The kid losing it. Holding him until he was able to fight back the transformation. The claws. The bite. His arm throbbed, the first not numb thing about his body he felt (though not fully painful), and he was surprised that he hadn't noticed his injured arm laying out in front of him until that moment, fully bandaged and (thankfully) not looking like he was missing a chunk of himself after all.
"MK's been out since I got up. You were completely unresponsive until early sundown, and when you did wake up you were in too much pain to tell me anything. I tried to get you to take some medicine but you grabbed my arm and shoved the entire bundle in our mouth. You passed back out before you could try to eat the salve I put on your wounds too. I'm amazed y-"
"I told him," Macaque interupted without prompting, and when Wuking spun around (too fast you idiot you're going to hurt yourself) with a wet cloth in hand he just let the words fall from his mouth. Why stop them? He had already told Wukong as much as he had told the kid, and the evidence of what had transpired was litterally all over him. Not much he could hide now. It was the exact opposite of what happened then, no more tar and honey returning. Bittersweet and if he were to give it flavor it would be buttercups. "After he passed out the first time I treated your wounds and when he woke up he helped me and then started asking questions..."
Without saying a word Wukong sat and listened, face tightening as he gingerly removed something from his back (gauze perhaps, he had no bandages on) and ran the cloth over numb cuts. He looked only between the wounds and Macaque's face, letting him retell every detail. "Kid tried to fight it but I just. I didn't know what to do when he started to change again so I... I..." He coughed, throat growing dry again.
This time Wukong stopped him, holding the canteen (not empty after all) to his lips again. They sat in silence for a moment, him drinking and Wukong turning to grab a container and fresh gauze and bandages when he stopped. He nodded, going back to the other monkey's back and Macaque realized the container was healing salve for his wounds. He didn't need it or the medicine, not really, but even with his fast healing and sturdyness it never hurt to have extra help to speed up the healing process. "You what, Macaque?"
"I... think I... hugged him into submission?" Macaque scowled, not sure if he even believed what he was saying and not missing the shocked look on the other's face. "And he bit me." He added quickly.
"He BIT you!?" The Monkey King leaned sideways, looking at Macaque increduously before his gaze veered over to his bandaged arm. "Well. That explains... the everything. Your back and arms looked like you were nearly gored from behind, but with how long his claws get when... yeah, that adds up."
"Is he ok?" The question came out without him even thinking about it. Damn medicine... But this only seemed to make Wukong shake his head with a surprised chuckle.
"Yeah, MK is fine. Exhausted, but fine. I treated his arms after I got your back to stop bleeding." He went back to applying the salve, touch a bit more firm as he rubbed it through his now less matted fur. The pressure would have normally made Macaque tense but now it just made him relax further into the clothes he was resting on (which he now noticed were Wukong's top layers and a blanket the kid insisted they each got at one of the many villages they passed through).
For a while the two remained silent, the Monkey King dressing the wounds on the Six Eared Macaque's back. Maybe it was the exhaustion kicking back in or something else, but Macaque just allowed himself to lay there and not think of anything. His mind tried to wander a bit, somewhat toward the kid and somewhat toward the odd reactions of the king, but nothing really stuck with his head swimming as it was. He only opened his eyes (when had he let them close?) when he felt a gentle touch on his arm. He watched as the bandages were unwrapped slowly and the same treatment given to his back was repeated.
"You're lucky he didn't bite your dominant arm," Wukong said softly, finally breaking the silence with a shakiness in his voice that was almost missed. "Or break your arm completely. You'll heal fine, but if you were anyone else you wouldn't even have an arm to treat right now...." He shook his head and under his breath he heard the king mutter "What were you thinking?"
Macaque looked away, gaze catching the still sleeping form of MK on the other side of the low fire. The kid would be exhausted from his second (almost) transformation in 24 hours for a while yet and that made his chest hurt just like before. He remembered the betrayal on his face, so much like and yet so much worse than when he betrayed him by stealing his powers. He remembered how the kid seemed to need the hug he had offered him so long ago at the start of all this as much as he did. He remembered how scared he looked at the prospect of seeing his parents again when he asked about them. And he remembered how much he kid laughed on this journey, how happy he seemed every time he was praised for even the smallest things, how he offered Macaque so much without asking for anything in return even before he put that stupid headband on the kid. He remembered how, despite everything... MK wasn't giving up on him...
He looked back at Wukong, grabbing his leg with as much strength as he could muster in his hurt arm until the other returned his gaze. "He's been hurt enough."
There was an understanding in Sun Wukong's eyes. For the first time in more years than Six Eared Macaque would admit... they understood each other completely without needing more words. MK had been hurt enough. They would take as much hurt away from him as they could.
The moment was broken when his grip weakened he closed his eyes, unable to stay open for as long as he would like, and when he opened them back up Wukong had already finished bandaging up his arm. He noticed a soft pressure around his tail but said nothing, not right now, and he only moved when there was a gentle tapping on his side. "Can you sit up a bit? I need to put on bandages, then you should get some more rest."
Macaque complied, using his good arm to raise himself up just enough for the other's arms to go under and around him to pass the bandages between hands (no, it was not a "almost hug" no matter what his tired brain told him). It was done sooner than expected and a gentle hand on his shoulder pushed him down into the soft fabric beneath him, his gaze fixed firmly on the soundly sleeping form of the kid as he watched to make sure he was really just sleeping.
If he noticed that there were soft claws running through his hair he said nothing. And if Wukong noticed the squeeze of a tail against his own he said nothing either. Eventually he let his eyes slip closed once more, feelin his chest rumble in a soft purr. The claws against his scalp stopped and there was a warmth after a while, a weight around him. Wukong must have laid a blanet over him, but the claws returned and their tails remained intertwined even as he moved to his other side. It wasn't until he felt a rumble beside him that wasn't his own that he realized the blanket was over both of them. He said nothing, not caring about the implications as he allowed himself to drift off into sleep.
And if he, maybe, dreamed of watching the two people he had reluctantly grown to care most about happy... well, he wouldn't say anything about that either.
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luci-in-trenchcoats · 4 years ago
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Strangers (Part 3)
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Summary: Dean and the reader are taking their very first weekend away together and things couldn’t be going better in their relationship. Their first night away is going perfectly until Dean gets a notice on his emergency pager...
Masterlist
Pairing: Doctor!Dean x patient!reader
Word Count: 3,400ish
Warnings: language, crazy-ex boyfriend, mention of surgery/injury, talk of future smut
A/N: I hope you enjoy!
_____
“Beautiful! I’m here!” you heard Dean bellow from the driveway. You blushed and opened your bedroom window, Dean smirking as he leaned against his new truck.
“I have neighbors you know,” you said.
“Your neighbors should know you’re hot,” he said, flashing you a wink and walking over to the front path. 
“Dean,” you heard from below you, Dean jumping about a foot back as your dad wandered out from the garage.
“Hi Mr. Y/L/N,” he said quickly. “Lovely day, hm?”
“I ain’t too wild about you two going out in the middle of nowhere for days on end. Last time she went out of touch like that, a boy tried to hurt her. You know what happens to the next boy that tries to hurt her?” he asked.
“A slow and painful death?” winced Dean.
“Always knew you were smart. I want her back by noon on Sunday.”
“Dad!” you called out the window. “I’m thirty! I don’t have a curfew!”
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“I need to get the hell out of this house,” you groaned. Dean chuckled and you heard him come in the front door. He was up in your room quickly, grabbing your one bag while you finished packing the other. “I’m sorry about him. He likes to fuck with you cause you’re sweet.”
“No harm done. When are you moving into Eastside?” he asked.
“There’s a problem with the unit. People who were in it before got evicted and trashed the place, like trashed it bad, broke a bunch of crap. It’ll be at least a month or two before I can get in,” you said. “If I last that long.”
“You’ve survived worse,” he said as you slung your bag over your shoulder. “Got everything?”
“Yup. I am ready for three days at the Winchester cabin,” you said. 
“Got your medicine?” he asked.
“In my bag.”
“What’s that on your nightstand then?” he asked. You turned around and frowned. 
“My immunosuppressant,” you said, sitting down on the bed. “I have to take this everyday. What if I forgot it?”
“Well, you wouldn’t die,” he said with a laugh. “You might feel a little sick.”
“I’m more vulnerable to sickness for the rest of my life,” you mumbled.
“You are two months home, four months post op and you are doing incredible. Forgetting to pack something is human. Between the two of us, we got it covered,” he said.
“Thanks,” you said as you put the bottle in your backpack pocket. “I’m all set.”
“Perfect. I have been looking forward to this for weeks.”
“Wow,” you said that night as you sat in front of the fireplace. Dean came out from the bathroom shirtless in a pair of sweats and you couldn’t help but stare.
“You could take off your shirt and make it fair,” he chuckled, padding into the kitchen. You laughed and heard him moving around for a bit before he walked over with two mugs. “I heard someone likes hot chocolate.”
“You’re a dream,” you said, taking a mug from him. He settled down next to you and got between the blankets with you, throwing his arm over your shoulders to pull you into his side. Your head rested on his chest and you smiled at how warm and cozy you felt. 
“You look beautiful,” he said, almost to himself. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that.”
“Having a moment is all,” you said. “I feel kind of perfect right now.”
“Good,” he said softly. He snuggled down a little lower, the two of you quiet for a long, long time, sipping at your drinks, sinking lower down watching the fire flicker and dance. You set your mug aside when you’d finished and Dean started to play with your hair. 
“Dean,” you hummed.
“Yeah?”
“Do you wanna have sex?” you asked. He tensed and you felt your happy bubble pop. He must have felt you start to pull away because next thing you knew he had his arms around you. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that bluntly.”
“Sweetheart, I would love to...someday. You’re still recovering. It takes six months to fully heal from what you went through. It’s been four. I’m not risking hurting you,” he said.
“What?” you asked, sitting upright and turning towards him.
“It is an extremely small and minuscule chance but if you went at it, something inside of you could get hurt. You’re still tired sometimes. I will do things to you and you can definitely do things to me, but no sex. I won’t risk it. I’m sorry. Not yet.”
“You don’t want to have sex because you don’t want to hurt me?” you asked.
“That is the sole reason. Trust me, I want to. I really, really want to. But I want you to be okay more.”
You sat back and took off your shirt, Dean doing a damn good job of keeping his eyes on your face. You grabbed one of his hands and pressed it against your stomach and over your scar.
“Y/N, I’m sorry but-”
“That is the most perfect thing you could have ever said to me. I am like this, I have to take all that medicine every day the rest of my life, because he hurt me. He hurt me. I know you weren’t in my surgery but you help this heal too,” you said. “I believe you when you say you’d never hurt me. I never thought I’d believe anyone ever again when it came to that. But I trust you. I’m really glad your candy bar got stuck in the vending machine.”
“Me too,” he said. He pulled you onto his lap and smiled, kissing you while he traced a finger up and down your scar. “Like I said, gorgeous.”
“You’re gorgeous,” you said, leaning in to kiss him when a beeping started coming from the bedroom. “What’s that?”
“My work pager,” he said. “They know I’m out of town. They only use that if my phone’s out of commission. I’ll be right back.”
“It’s no problem,” you said. He got up and went to the bedroom, digging around and finding it. He walked back out and you got up as he looked around the cabin. “What is it?”
“Phone number I don’t recognize. I’m really sorry, Y/N. It could be an emergency,” he said. He pulled on his jacket and boots by the door, frowning to himself. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes tops. There’s a phone at the general store close by.”
“De, it’s fine. Maybe I’ll have a little surprise for you when you get back,” you said, flashing him a wink. “Maybe something with red lace.”
“Ten minutes. I’ll be back in ten minutes,” he said, laughing as he ran out the door. You hummed and cleaned up the mugs, heading back into the bedroom. You freshened up in the bathroom for a few minutes, shocked when you heard the truck ripping down the path. 
“Geez. Someone’s excited,” you laughed. You walked back out to the main room, giggling as Dean came rushing in. “What’s wrong?”
“Put on your shirt and get your bags,” he said as he went to the kitchen and got some water, throwing it on the fire. He tossed your shirt back at you and was already going past and getting bags. He walked outside and chucked some in his truck as you got your shoes on. He made one more trip and you put on your coat, Dean barely turning off the lights before he grabbed your hand and dragged you outside.
“Uh, oh,” you said. He didn’t let go, simply opened the passenger door and shoved you inside. You glared at him as he tossed the bags in the back. You put on your seatbelt by the time he was behind the wheel, turning around fast and heading back onto the main road. “What is your problem?”
“I need to get you back home.”
“Did something...are my parents-”
“They’re fine,” he swallowed. “Y/N...fuck, I don’t want to tell you this.”
“What happened, Dean?”
“Your ex...he got out of his institute. He nearly killed a guard and got out. He’s very...upset with you according to the police,” he said.
“No, no, no,” you said, pulling your feet up and gripping your body tight. “No. No.”
“Hey, listen to me,” he said. He pulled over and he put a hand on your arm, getting you to look up. “I’m not gonna let him get anywhere near you.”
“Dean, he’s gonna ruin…” you said, squeezing your eyes shut.
“If I see that piece of shit, he’s gonna be the one needing a transplant,” said Dean. You slowly opened your eyes and watched him take a deep breath. “We’re gonna go back home. I’m gonna stay with you. The police are with your parents already.”
“I thought my life was becoming normal again,” you said. You kicked at his dashboard, Dean sliding over and wrapping his arms around you. You tried to turn away but there was nowhere to go. You felt hot tears prickle your eyes and felt a few slip loose, something you hadn’t done in months. “I wanted to be happy. I was happy. Ten minutes ago was the happiest I’ve ever been and now it’s all fucked up.”
“I am not going anywhere,” said Dean. He put his hand on your stomach and you stilled, Dean giving you a smile. “You’re strong. I know you’re tired but you gotta be strong tonight, just for a little while. I’ll take as much as I can off your shoulder but I know I can’t take it all. We are still happy. I was gonna ask you if you wanted to stay in my spare room.”
“Yeah,” you said, wiping off your face. “Even if I question your taste in women.”
“Can’t help it really. I kinda love her,” he said. You smiled and he kissed your forehead. “It’ll be okay. He’s not coming near you. Promise.”
“Okay,” you said. He slid back behind the wheel and started to head home again. You saw where you’d dented his dash and pouted. “Sorry about your new truck.”
“You kick that hard if you’re ever in trouble, I will worry slightly less about you,” he chuckled. 
“You worry about me?” you asked.
“Yeah. I think about you a lot,” he said with a shrug. “I like you.”
“I like you too,” you said, getting your face dried off with one last swipe of your sleeve. “This is pretty much how I was when I woke up from my transplant. A screaming, crying hot mess.”
“This is easier than that was. It’s not even close,” he said. You let out a dry laugh, looking out the window as his hand reached over and took hold of yours. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
“Besides the crazy ex being even more crazy? Nothing aside from…” you said, his hand gently squeezing yours.
“What is it?”
“I’m not that happy person anymore. I’m not...this is always going to be in my life. And you’re gonna go away when tonight’s over and done. It’s too much and I can’t ask you to stay. Not when I’m putting you in danger.”
“Did you miss the part where I said I loved you? Asked you to move in and be roommates? I don’t give a fuck who’s out there, I’m not letting you go. You don’t have to be happy all the time. We’ll get back to feeling like that. I swear we will.”
“If I asked to breakup, what would you do,” you said quietly.
“We’re not breaking up.”
“But if I asked.”
“You’re afraid, for you and for me. I’m afraid too but I’m gonna take care of the both of us right now. If you ever wanted it under normal circumstances, then fine. I’d do it, even if it hurt. But you just want to protect me and I want to do the same thing. I’m winning this time. It’ll be okay. Trust me.”
“Okay,” you said. You squeezed his hand in return and felt him relax a bit. “We’re going back to my parents house?”
“Police station. That’s what your dad said. He also told me not to take my eyes off of you so I think he likes me finally,” he said.
“He’s always liked you. He gives the boys a hard time,” you said. 
“Want to listen to some music?” asked Dean. “We got two hours before we’re back.”
“Sure,” you said. You rested your head against the window and let out a sigh.
“It’ll be okay, sweetheart. I promise.”
Two Hours Later
“Hi, sweetie,” said your mom as she came into the conference room at the station you and Dean were told to wait in. She gave you a hug, Dean standing up when your dad popped in. “How was your weekend going? You two having fun?”
“Yeah. He’s better than the last guy,” you said, giving her a smile, Dean giving you a quick one in return. “They said they were still looking for him.”
“Last we heard he was holed up at some house,” said your dad. “They’ll find him.”
“I know,” you said.
“Can we get you anything?” asked your mom.
“No. Dean’s already handled the me freaking out. I’m okay,” you said. You took a seat again, Dean hanging out by the door, talking quietly to your dad. “Why did he come back?”
“His doctor told the police that he suspected he was faking the insanity plea he entered. You always thought that from the beginning. He was going to be sent to a real prison soon. They think he took the chance while he could,” said your mom. “It’s not very much fun living in a place like that when you’re sane. He has quite a bit of anger towards you now. Before, he simply wanted to get rid of you because you caught the cheating. Now he’s angry.”
“He’s angry? I’m angry. If anyone should be pissed it’s me. He could have walked out on his own like a normal person,” you said as a detective walked inside.
“There’s been an update. He engaged with officers when attempting to flee out of the back of the home. Fire was exchanged and he was pronounced at the scene,” he said. “You folks are free to go anytime but take all the time you need.”
“Let’s go home,” said your mom.
“I’m going over Dean’s place. We’re supposed to be on our first vacation right now.”
“Alright. Remember what I said,” said your dad, looking at Dean. He nodded and held out his hand for you. You took it and walked out with him, closing your eyes as you leaned against his arm.
“Let’s go home, sweetheart.”
“How’d I do?” asked Dean an hour later as you lay in the living room, an image of a fire on the tv and a space heater cranked up at your feet.
“It’s perfect,” you said, leaning back against his chest. He rested his chin on your shoulder and loosely held you in his arms. “Sorry about tonight.”
“Hey, we can drive up first thing and be out on kayaks by ten. We’re still having fun this weekend,” he said.
“What were you talking to my dad about?”
“What to do with you. Keep you in town, have me go off with you somewhere. I don’t want you to worry about it anymore. It’s over and done.”
“I’ll do my best,” you said. “Thanks for taking control while I freaked before.”
“Kinda my speciality,” he said, kissing your cheek. “Totally justified freak session by the way.”
“Oh,” you said, getting up. “Stay. I have a surprise.”
“Staying put,” he laughed as you headed to the front door and dug around in your bag. You pulled out two boxes and carried them back, Dean wearing a huge grin. “You did not!”
“I meant for it to be a surprise. A box of full sized candy bars for you and a box of swiss rolls for me,” you said, settling back down in his lap.
“I love it,” he said. “My doctor won’t but I love it.”
“We had a rough night. We deserve this,” you said.
“Yes, yes we do,” he said. “So what do you want to do tomorrow? I know we have kayaking on the list but I’m interested what else you have up your sleeve.”
“I would love to make you dinner,” you said.
“Alright. I was thinking more…” he said as you leaned back and pulled him down into a kiss. You smiled and felt his lips tug up with yours. “Well that’s definitely on the list.”
“We should probably do it every day, just to be safe.”
“Well, I am a doctor and I highly recommend it,” he said.
“Dork,” you giggled.
“Daily kissing increases your odds of-” he said as you kissed him again, Dean laughing as he grabbed your hips and spun you to face him.
“This is why you were single,” you said.
“No one could handle my awesome jokes? Must have been it,” he said, putting his hand in the back of your hair. “I worked a lot if I’m being honest. I’m cutting back more recently.”
“I wonder why?” you teased.
“Just between me and you, there’s this really hot girl. I think she has a crush on me. I’m so gonna land her.”
“Oh really?”
“Totally. You won’t tell on me though, right?” he smirked.
“Oh, never. I may have inside information on the subject though,” you said.
“Do tell,” he asked, kissing your neck gently.
“She’s crushing on you, more than you realize.”
“Yeah?” he mumbled against your skin.
“Yeah. You don’t know it yet but a big part of why she’s been so happy the past few months, and been happy on not so great days, is because of you. You’re important to her.”
“Why?” he asked, lifting his head up, green eyes looking at you. “She was the one that helped me.”
“You did the same thing for her. Just...not as obvious. You were kind.”
“I was an asshole.”
“No you weren’t. You had a bad day. I don’t like when you have bad days.”
“Me either,” he said. “You know that girl is you, right?”
“Oh my God, yes I know it’s me,” you laughed, Dean nuzzling your cheek. “De.”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“Thank you for protecting me tonight.”
“Don’t have to thank me for that,” he said. “Just want you to be safe and happy.”
“I am,” you said, giving his body a squeeze. “Love you too.”
“Love you-” he said, both your heads turning when you heard someone trying to open the front door. He pushed you behind him and a giant of a man stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. You were reaching for your phone when Dean shook his head.
“Sorry,” said the guy. “I thought you were out of town.”
“I was, not that you should know that. What’s going on, Sammy?”
“Who’s Sammy?” you asked. Dean took a deep breath and sighed.
“This is Sammy. My little brother who I haven’t spoken to in close to three years. So. What brings your home Sam?”
_____
A/N: Read Part 4 here!
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feralnumberfive · 3 years ago
Text
The Rewatch Academy: Episode 6 of Season 1
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“The Day That Wasn’t”
I am in no way a good analyst so my little analysis and speculations probably sound a bit goofy or pretty wild and probably mean nothing at all. Everything I put into this post about each episode is purely what I noticed or thought, whether it’s funny or serious. I will be making jokes, so please just leave it at that (in no way am I trying to make fun of an actor and or character!) I am also in no way saying I noticed this stuff first. This is just what I noticed while rewatching these episodes
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| 1x01 | 1x02 | 1x03 | 1x04 | 1x05 |
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☂ Klaus is lucky that he never got the briefcase shot up
☂ *Hears Klaus flush the toilet and talk* Luther: Oh good, you’re up
☂ Also Luther gave Klaus about two seconds to get up before hounding him again on getting downstairs
☂ Sounds like Tom’s accent slipped a little bit when he said “three days”
☂ Yeah they needed to have a family meeting right away and yet they took the time to go get coffee or at least order it and have it delivered
☂ “Old bastard” and “Our little psycho” 
☂ I still don’t get at this point how they wouldn’t believe Five. Look at him, he himself is evidence of his time traveling! He was gone for 45 years, but to them it was only 17. Either way they try to grasp at that, Five would look older if he made it back without messing up. He knew about their father’s death without anyone telling him. I really think all the mistrust comes from the way he looks and the way he acts (they obviously believe he’s just crazy right now)
☂ “What did Five even see?”
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☂ Also throw back to 1x02 and I didn’t realized this until now but Five doesn’t have his tie
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☂ I know it’s for the title card gag but no one questions the random umbrella falling and popping open
☂ I aspire to be as sarcastic as Hazel
☂ So where exactly is The Commission HQ at? Is it a random location in the real world? If so then wouldn’t normal people happen to stumble upon it? What about their location in space in the comics? Is this in space?? All we know is that it’s in/based off of the year 1955
☂ “I’d like to discuss the logistics of my family’s safety at your earliest convenience.” He cuts right to what’s most important to him. No “How will you stop the apocalypse?” or “What’s my job?” and even “How will my body replacement work?”
☂ Five sounds almost like he’s snapped back into a work mindset. He's suddenly polite and calm with The Handler. Maybe being back in a work environment has made his brain automatically switch into being more professional. However he might also be acting this way to try to throw her off of him being antsy with a plan
☂ Here's some Commission posters shown throughout 1x06
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☂ One of us, one of us, one of us-
☂ So basically The Commission makes up history? How do they know what to do and when to make something happen? How do they know it’s right? And what’s The Commission supposed to do when the world ends? Haven't they already fixed stuff in the past or are there just continuous time loops so they need to make sure things happen over and over again? If multiple historical events happen with multiple ways they are made, then which one gets to be in the original timeline??
☂ Dot: No hard feelings! 😁
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Ma’am does it look like he’s going to accept that
☂ Wait why are Hazel and Cha-Cha considered the best Temporal Assassins if Five was/is the best?
☂ Well Five has the job of taking down the Hindenburg again but this time from behind a desk. So it’s possible to accomplish “corrections” without actually having assassins do the work. So I guess there’s just so many timelines that they need to fix every single one of them over and over? That sounds like a pain in the ass
☂ TUA portraits!
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☂ Y’know I have to agree with Allison on this one. Vanya was left out, however she’s offering to talk with her about the important family matter and Vanya is just denying it. I get she’s upset, but her sister is offering to include her. After Vanya leaves Allison immediately wants to go after her to talk with her. On the other hand Allison should have told her it was an emergency meeting and that they didn’t have the time to ask Vanya to join them
☂ Klaus seems genuinely concerned/upset for Vanya
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☂ “We need to figure out what causes the apocalypse. Now, there are loads of possibilities. Nuclear war, asteroids.” Wow spot on, Luther! I can’t believe they actually included foreshadowing for both apocalypses (even though technically it was a chunk of the moon, not an asteroid.) I wonder how much foreshadowing for S3 was put into S2.......
☂ I know it’s big joke about Luther and the moon, but the poor guy just really believes that he was on the moon for an important reason. I mean if I were in his shoes I would believe him too since he had to send a lot of daily updates and samples
☂ “Klaus shockingly has a point. What gives us a win this time?” Shhhh careful Diego, he’s right behind you
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☂ Luther is initially the only one onboard with Five on trying to stop the apocalypse. All the others want to go off and do their own thing before the world ends. He tries to get The Umbrella Academy back together to work as a team, but his leadership skills are now severely lacking. Do people *cough cough* mainly people who hate him *cough cough* overlook Luther wanting to also get his family together to stop the apocalypse with his family? Definitely. 
☂ “We need the full force of the Academy to stand a chance.” Well golly gee, Allison, what did did Luther just try to do? Was that not him trying to round up all of The Umbrella Academy to stop the apocalypse? 
☂ Even though Vanya is ranting, how does she not hear all the creaking metal and shaking cars?
☂ *it’s sunny around them but just the block they’re walking on is rainy until she calms down* “ThAt’S a CoInCiDeNcE.” 
☂ The hall floor and Diego’s floor are so dusty
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☂ It’s sweet that Diego wants Klaus to get clean in a safe way instead of going cold turkey 
☂ Dot, what does “utter silence” mean to you?
☂ “Look at you, deadly little thing.” You’re not wrong, but I don’t think he appreciates being called “thing”
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☂ Such a smug smile
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☂ So how does Five know all of this about Karl and his son? Does it talk about Otto never washing his hands in the file? That seems like an oddly specific detail but I guess in a case file it gives as many details as possible for the worker to figure out who needs to get assassinated
☂ There are a few cog references all relating to The Commission, so I wonder if this is a nod to “Teenagers” or if they’re just using this terminology
☂ Odd tattoos (sorry for the super blurry pic)
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☂ “Can I ask you a cuckoo bananas question?” Hazel is such a fun guy
☂ “Wouldn’t it be nice to kill who you want for a change?” You mean like straight up unhinged murder? 
☂ The first time I watched this Hazel and Cha-Cha scene I for sure thought that Hazel was a dead man
☂ This scene just absolutely breaks my heart 💔
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☂ *skips 25:24-27:42*
☂ Diego is just so accepting to everything Klaus is saying
☂ I’m sorry, are we suddenly on the set of The Phantom of the Opera?
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☂ Diego, I think you’re forgetting a very important person in your life who you let down too who is also dead......(poor Ben can’t believe what his brother just said so he leaves)
☂ “Ordinary is not a word I’d use to describe you.” You’re right, it’s “Extra Ordinary” ha! Sorry Vanya, I had to use that joke
☂ Well at least we know Five ate a sandwich 
☂ How exciting! The same division that made a simple candy taste like a candy from the past, but technically it’s not the past since The Commission HQ is based in 1955, is building a human body! That sounds so promising 
☂ Sooooo whatever happened to Five’s new body? Is it just sitting in a lab somewhere?? Or is The Handler just lying about it to try to get Five to stay at The Commission?
☂ With the amount of time Five was staring at the suit, it obviously hurt him to know that while he has a new body within reach, he’s not going to get it because he’s about to leave
☂ “Course it’s a bit easier to see from 30,000 feet.” What is she talking about Reconnaissance aircraft? There was no mention of aircraft though so why would she bring that up? My closest guess is that she’s referring to strategic bombing in general, or even the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
☂ It sounds like Five suddenly has a New York accent when he says “operator” when talking to The Handler about Gloria
☂ Fuck you, Veggie Tales Hargreeves
☂ *skips 36:47-39:48*
☂ Well there’s your hit, Klaus
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☂ I love the camera moving with Klaus as he falls and the transition into Vietnam
☂ “Lock and load, Charlie’s away!” Wikipedia’s definition of a “Charlie” is  an American military slang referring to the Viiet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers
☂ Klaus desperately calling out for a medic hurts my heart
☂ Well Luther if you had left then your body wouldn’t be the way it is now
☂ *fucking skips 45:41-50:00* 
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☂ Ooooh I just really love the entirety of the “Kill Of The Night” scene! If you listen to the lyrics it’s about someone luring someone into a trap to get revenge because they messed with the wrong person (it’s also about love but we’re going to ignore that part). I personally believe it’s aimed at The Commission from Five because the entire time it plays he’s messing things up for them and in some way it’s like a little bit of revenge from him
☂ Why is Gloria confused on who Hazel and Cha-Cha are? Hasn’t she heard their names a ton of times especially since they’re some of the best assassins?
☂ How did Five know which tubes to put the messages in? 
☂ You can see at this part how Five immediately gets anxious and antsy. He has a wild look in his eyes. From this point onwards he’s constantly moving, shaking with energy, anticipation, and probably a little bit of anger
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☂ “You’re a great disappointment to me.” That’s definitely not the first time he’s heard that
☂ “I don’t belong anywhere thanks to you. You made me a killer!” The first part of that stings. Obviously he feels like he doesn’t belong anywhere, but again I think has to do with the whole “good” and “bad” thing that’s going on. He feels like he doesn’t belong at home because he’s “bad” and has done a lot of dark stuff to get home (it doesn’t help that Luther voiced his acknowledgment of this  to Five and now he has that in his mind that Luther knows and somewhat views him as “bad”). Five 100% feels shame in what he has done, and definitely has an issue of coming back to his family with blood on his hands form what he has done. He doesn’t belong in The Commission anymore because he doesn’t want to stay there to do their dirty work to kill or give out kill orders. He’s done with that or at least wants to be done with that life.
The last statement though is Five taking his anger and guilt about being becoming an assassin out on The Handler. She brought him into The Commission, which in turn he became the best assassin across The Space-Time Continuum. It’s not something he’s proud of, and he never enjoyed killing (as much as I want it to be the DNA alteration I just don’t think it exists in the show or at least not yet). However The Handler replies with “You were always a killer. I just pointed you in a direction.” which you can immediately tell has struck a chord with Five. For the briefest second he looks taken aback and his eyes ever so slightly open wider in shock, whether he took that as the truth or just a terrible accusation isn’t exactly clear. Either way he doesn’t like being accused or hearing the truth out loud of always being able to be murderous, a killer. 
I believe it’s a mixture of The Handler just trying to get into his head and a combination of the truth. Reginald trained The Umbrella Academy to use brute force, but that doesn’t mean Five had killed anyone but he was definitely violent when it came to stopping bad guys (not to mention in the pilot script he was called a “Ruthless little war machine” after violently attacking and decapitating a bunch of mannequins)
☂ Diego: I’m going to go kill Hazel and Cha-Cha!........Riiiiight after I get done walking with my mom in the park
☂ He’s so happy to see Klaus again 
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☂ ✨Gremlin✨
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☂ Who exactly does Five owe a debt to? Maybe his family after accidentally leaving them and now he wants to save them? Or is it a singular person?  
☂ Ouch! Now that’s what I call a problem later!
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☂ 
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☂ Five using “Ya’ll” is weird to hear
☂ Five is talking to his siblings like he knows what’s been happening but in reality he’s rarely been at home so how would he know
☂ I love that Five doesn't even answer Diego at the end and instead just stares at his siblings 
☂☂☂☂☂☂☂
Feel free to comment or reblog with things you have noticed too!
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janiedean · 3 years ago
Note
crack prompt inspired by all the tvd talk on your blog: damon, jaime, tony stark all walk into a bar alone and end up drunk oversharing ~~
(if you wanna include ships in it anything with delena/dalaric/bamon; brienne; pepper/bruce/strange/rhodey is okay lmfao so pretty much anything goes, i just want them being each other's therapist because the timeline collapsed for some time and their universes interacted somehow lmfao)
*spins the wheel* AAAND hello anon we can absolutely try that u__u
ten years on tumblr anniversary prompt post | buy me a coffee | commissions open
Well, now I really did bite off more than I could chew, Tony thinks as he shakes his head and hopes that he and Bruce didn't fuck up the entire fabric of reality.
Well.
He's not in New York and he wasn't in the span of five seconds since they got the machine turned on, but - but well. Bruce isn't here, so hopefully he'll figure out where the fuck he ended up. Maybe we should have been sober when trying to work out that whole different timelines and multiverses thing.
Now, damage control. He should probably try to not go anywhere, but in case he actually just... teleported somewhere, maybe he should just ask where he is. He glances at his back. He's in front of a bar named Mystic Grill, which... okay, shitty name, but he could be anywhere in fuck-all-middle-of-nowhere Idaho for all he knows. He takes out his cellphone, and there is zero reception.
Bad news.
He sees a blonde kid with a police badge coming up the road, so he clears his throat and stops him.
"Uh, officer?"
"Hello," the kid says, "I don't remember seeing you around here."
Yeah, because I'm not from this world, most likely. "Eh," Tony lies, "I was driving my car but it broke down outside town and the way I got in, there wasn't a sign. Would you mind telling me where exactly I ended up?"
"Mystic Falls," the guy says, "I didn't know the damned State of Virginia now took us off the maps, too." That was sarcastic, Tony can hear it, but.
He's sure that there is no such place where he comes from.
"Right," Tony says, "I'll, uh, be out to find a mechanic then."
The kid gives him instructions to reach one, Tony thanks him and lets him go. Well, he can't certainly go anywhere now, but at least it seems like they fucked up just his -
"What the fuck," he hears from his left side -
Just in time to see a blonde guy wearing a white armor and a white cloak fall through a portal just the same as his own, that disappears a moment later. The blonde guy has green eyes, Tony notices, is lacking a right hand because he has a rather heavy golden prothesis on it that looks tacky also for his own tastes and looks completely out of his depth as he moves to his feet.
"Uh," Tony says, "I imagine you aren't from... here."
"Certainly not," the guy says, sounding... near hysterical, as he takes the surroundings. "What - what are those things anyway?" Cars. Oh fuck, he's looking at cars. "How are you dressed? What - what are these houses?"
"Er," Tony says, "humor me a moment. What's your name and where do you come from?"
The guy rolls his eyes. "Jaime Lannister, and I come from Westeros, thank you very much, now where the hell am I?"
... Great, Tony thinks, now it's not even someplace where the USA exist. "Er," Tony says, "in another world. Listen, it's my fault, I, uh, sort of caused it, and my colleague will most likely fix it, but it's really better we don't go anywhere so he can locate us more easily. Tell you what, can I buy you a drink while we wait?"
"Another world?" The guy blurts, and then - then he stares at Tony, then at his surroundings, then rolls his eyes again.
"You know what," he says, "I've had a shit long day. What can this be on top of fucking undead Catelyn Stark? Buy me the fucking drink."
I'm not doing drunk science anymore, Tony vows to himself as they walk inside the place, and he really hopes he can spin some story as to why the guy with him is wearing bonafide armor -
"And who the fuck are the two of you now?"
So: Tony had not taken into account that there would be just one person in the bar and that this person would be of course not human because no one human could pin the two of them to the wall in a split second and hold them there with such strength, and that's how he finds out that pretty guy with blue eyes, dark hair, pale skin and homicidal face is a damned vampire.
Except that the moment Tony explains it - Jaime or whoever he is is just keeping his mouth shut, wisely - the guy stares at them, and then more, and then -
"With everything I've seen in the last years," he says, "honestly, that's not even the most fucking stupid. So, you just want to lounge around until your friend shows up to fix whatever the fuck you did?"
"Er, yes?"
"Whatever. I'm Damon. I can cover your drinks and compel the bartender to forget your face. I sorely fucking need some myself."
He lets them go, but then - "Get that armor off," he tells Jaime, "this isn't New York City."
"I can't just leave my armor around!"
"Just leave it in the bathroom and take it back later," Damon shrugs, and then nods towards what's most likely the bathroom.
Jaime shrugs and goes, muttering something about maybe having drank too much milk of the poppy, and Tony doesn't want to know whatever the hell that is.
--
"Listen," Jaime says later, wearing an attire that's still obviously Middle-Ages-like but at least doesn't stand out too much, sipping at the bourbon Damon shoved at them, "I'm choosing to think I'm making this all up, but if I'm not, how long will it be before I can go back where I come from? Because you dragged me away from a rather fucking delicate situation."
"No idea," Tony shrugs, "but he's good at his job. And he was less drunk than me. We might get you back at the point you left."
"And what would that delicate situation be?" Damon asks. "Entertain me."
"And why should I tell you?"
"First, I bought you that alcohol and you're definitely enjoying it. Second, this is my town and I could tear your throat open if I wanted to." Fuck. He just showed fangs at the both of them. What the fuck. "Also, my murderous former girlfriend who is the cause of all my problems just finally fucked off this planet for good after possessing my current girlfriend who looks like her but really is the whole contrary and my best friend just came back to life after being dead for a whole lot of time and it's a complicated situation and I need a distraction or ten."
"That... sounds like something," Tony mutters, sipping at his alcohol. It's good, at least.
"Believe me, it is. So, what's the poison from Middle Ages here?"
"Ah, fuck that," Jaime says, takes a drink, and starts talking.
--
Half an hour later, Tony thinks that he and Damon are equally staring at the guy with the same disbelieving face.
"... Was that the undead woman that got you like this?" Jaime asks, blinking. "Considering that he seems like he's some kind of living dead, that's a tad hypocritical."
"No," Damon says, "that's the least of my problems. How haven't you frenched this Brienne person already?"
"I frenched?"
"Dude, he's from the Middle Ages," Tony takes pity on him. "He means put your tongue in her mouth."
"I - what - she's not - I'm not -"
"Listen," Damon cuts him, "I've been there. I mean, thinking I couldn't live without an arse who didn't give a fuck about me, which you admitted. But you do realize you spent at least five minutes of your charming tale describing us exactly how this Brienne of yours is ripped and has pretty eyes and was about to die for you?"
"Yeah, uh," Tony says, "let it come from someone who had the right people in front of him for ages and didn't let himself go for it, you really don't wanna drag it any longer."
"That's - she's a knight, that's not -"
"Oh, sure, all knights are shit where you come from, you said that, but suddenly someone would rather hang than kill you and you're here jittering because you got sucked here while she's dealing with a zombie that wanted you dead but I have to think you don't wanna french her?" Damon rolls his eyes again, pours himself another drink and honestly, Tony has cut down on the alcohol lately but he's gonna just make a damned exception. "Please."
"He's right," Tony says, "and also, let it come from someone whose dad was loaded on money and fairly shitty and still way better than yours, whatever he said about you is wrong."
"How do you know -" Jaime starts, half-blanching.
"Told you," Tony shrugs, "loaded on money, shitty father, at least I missed out on the shit sister. Honestly, man, just fucking drop her like hot coal and follow your gut. And let it come from someone who's fucked around a lot to get distracted, if you wanted to bone her in that bath then you're into her."
"I -" Jaime goes red in the face, finishes the drink, "it's not like it ever happened with anyone else before, it was a mistake, most likely -"
Damon gives him a look that looks halfway worried.
Tony thinks he just matched it, except even more worried.
"My vampire friend," he says, "are you thinking what I am thinking?"
"I'm afraid so," Damon says, and then looks back at Jaime. "Newsflash," he goes on, "if you get hard looking at a naked woman most likely you find her attractive. Also, you can find more than one person attractive in your life. And let it come from someone who's been there in the sense that I thought I could only love fucking Katherine, you really don't want to keep on doing it."
"I didn't say I wasn't done with Cersei," Jaime replies, somewhat weakly.
"Good," the two of them reply at the same time, and Tony has to snort.
"Look at that," he says, "for once I'm the one with the healthiest relationship history sitting at a table. Who'd have thought?"
"Fuck this," Damon says, "I'm getting more bourbon."
"Please," Jaime says, and - well. Seems like when Bruce comes to collect him, Tony won't be sober.
--
"Wait," Jaime says, "wait, wait, wait, she possessed your girlfriend?"
"Yeah, well, as if," Damon shrugs, "honestly, sometimes I think I should have just run away to New York after deserting."
"You deserted what?" Tony asks.
"The fucking confederacy," Damon shrugs. "Well, what are you staring about? I'm a vampire, I've been around ages, I'm from fucking middleofnowhere Virginia, you think I got drafted with the unionists? But I disagreed and I hated it and I never wanted to go, so I fucking deserted. I hope you aren't here judging me, or -"
"Please, I used to build weapons for the army and stopped when I realized it wasn't what I wanted to be, and honestly, that just means you have a conscience, so -"
"Wait, you did what," Jaime says.
"Deserted. An army. Back in the day. Risked my neck for it, and I came back and met Katherine and honestly I should have just gone North, but -"
"Hm," Jaime says, drinking, and then - "you don't regret it?"
"No," Damon says at once, "best decision I ever took. Why, you want to do that, too?"
"Sure he wants to," Tony says when Jaime doesn't immediately reply. "Let me guess, not just your army. You want to desert the whole shebang, don't you?"
"I don't know what a fucking shebang is, but yes. So what?"
"Well, if you want my been there done that advice, do that," Damon shrugs. "From what it sounds like, your entire world is collapsing because of zombies anyway, what do you have to lose? Your sister? You're better fucking off without."
Jaime stares down at the glass, then knocks it down. "Can I have another?"
"Sure," Damon says, and generously tips it.
--
"So what," Tony says, "now that your best friend you had a thing with while your girlfriend was with your brother is back to life you're having trouble adjusting?"
"She also hadn't been possessed by my murderous ex until then," Damon shrugs.
Jaime just looks at them, then drinks some more. "Who am I to judge on that anyway," he says, "but that sounds like a lot of work."
"You wouldn't believe," Damon shrugs, knocking down some more of his bourbon. "Never mind that Stefan won't get over brooding instead of fessing up to the girl he is in love with now, but it's not like I hadn't expected it."
"Tell him to," Jaime says at once. "I let my father fuck things up for my brother once and I hate that I ever did, just - don't."
"This is getting fucking eerie," Damon says.
Tony, who is currently feeling very thankful he doesn't have siblings, takes another sip. Then -
"Man, if it's complicated just date the both of them. If they both like you and aren't the kind of super monogamous people that can't handle a threesome once in a while, they won't have a problem."
"... And what do you know?"
He shrug. "Well," he says, "my steady girlfriend was in front of my eyes for years. Took us a while to get over ourselves. The guy I was doing drunk science with, well. Was an instant hit and I didn't let myself drag it in the centuries and guess what, we have a nice lovely arrangement where I'm with both of them, they commiserate about how much of an idiot I can be and sometimes we all occasionally have sex. It's grand. You should try it."
And I really hope Bruce shows up soon.
"Huh," Damon says, "maybe it has merit. For me. Not for you."
Jaime sputters. "I said nothing!"
"You shouldn't even think about threesomes. I can see it in your face you're not the type. And certainly not including your sister."
"Fuck you," Jaime replies without meaning it, "I was not considering that." Huh. Now he sounds offended Damon implied it. Maybe he really will fess up to the other one when he's back.
"Then it means this enlightening talk has enlightened you," Tony grins. "Mind telling us more about that hand?"
"And why?"
Tony shrugs. It's not like he doesn't have time to waste. "What if I could help you with that thing?" He says, nodding towards Jaime's stump, and then - well. Time to test if he can summon the armor here, too.
--
"God," Damon says a while later, "I'll have to compel that poor bartender so hard, but fuck this is something."
Sure it is, Tony grins. "Hey, I managed to fuck with quantum reality, I'm not the first idiot that passes by."
"Seven Hells," Jaime says, "I have no idea what it is you're putting on me but if it works half as well as that thing you have, I'm going to show back up in King's Landing just to show my sister who has the useless hand now. If she didn't get herself killed."
"Well, now that is one reason I could approve of," Tony laughs, "and don't fucking move."
Sure, building a prothesis from the rests of whatever nonfunctioning electronics the bartender had lying around is... somewhat a challenge, but as stated, he has time to waste and it's not like he's wanted anywhere soon.
"By the way," Damon says as he watches him tinker around with the toolkit he found him in the backroom, "do you need advice in the whole I fucked up and want my brother to forgive me department?"
"What if I do?" Jaime replies through his teeth. "Because now that would distract me from how much this entire thing is fucking hurting."
The more they talk while he tinkers, the more Tony decides he's absolutely glad he was an only child and that his father only fucked one son up.
--
"You're doing this while not even being fucking sober?" Damon knocks back more bourbon. "You sure you don't wanna stay here and turn into an immortal? You'd be useful."
"Thanks but I like my life as it is," Tony snorts. "But if you need tech tinkered with, you can ask while I'm here."
Jaime is just staring at the steel-colored hand coming to life while Tony puts piece after piece together, his throat working up and down.
He drinks some more. "Fuck, if only I had such a thing when I realized what the fuck Aerys had turned into."
"Wait, who's Aerys now?" Damon asks.
--
He hadn't told them that part in detail.
When he's done and Tony is at the fourth finger, he kind of wants to hurl, but mostly -
"Do we really have to stay here," Damon says, "or you think we could sneak him to a VA? I can compel them to just hear that he's talking about Vietnam or something."
"He's not old enough for Vietnam, but you know what, I think we could risk that."
"What in the Seven Hells is a VA?"
"Someone I really could have used in the nineteenth century," Damon sighs, and then just as Tony moves to the last finger -
"Tony, what the hell is this?"
--
Turns out, where Bruce comes from it took him two days to figure this out. He also immediately spots three different improvements Tony could do to that hand, and when he hears the entire shebang he raises his hands and says that he can send Jaime right back when he left at any point and he and Tony, too, but he supposes that if they want to compel the VA before they leave it's not like he's in a hurry, and wait, vampires?
Damon ends up asking him if the threesome thing is really working out as well as Tony says.
While he does, Tony manages the finishing touches on the sort-of-steel-and-iron-hand he cobbled up together, and thank fuck Bruce showed up because he had been the one studying how Barnes's arm worked, back in the day, and gave Tony the pointer he needed to make sure the entire thing was... well, connected to the nervous system without needing to rip Jaime's wrist open.
"Right," he says, "try to move the fingers."
Jaime holds them in a fist.
It works.
"Seven fucking hells -"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm a genius. Just keep it out of too many lines of fire, but if you're from the middle ages it should withstand most stuff. You're welcome. And go french that knight of yours instead of waiting, really."
"I think in between him and you, you've made a case. Uh, thank you, I -"
"Nonsense, I was the reason you're here, I might as well have helped out. Hey," he says, "so, what about a last round before we drag him to the VA and Bruce here settles everything?"
"I'm so down for it," Damon says.
"Do I even have a choice," Bruce groans, but then he does sit down at the same table and lets Tony fill his glass.
"Oh, don't look like that," Tony says, "after all I didn't destroy the universe and made some friends, it could have gone worse."
"Wouldn't know about that, but I could have done worse, too," Damon says, and orders more bourbon.
"I sure as the fucking Seven Hells will never manage to explain this to anyone," Jaime says, "but I guess I'm not too disappointed, either."
"Tony," Bruce groans, "did you manage to somehow end up with two people with - never mind. Of course you did. We're never doing drunk science again, hear me?"
"Maybe so," Tony agrees, though... well.
Maybe he will want to check on them, once in a while.
But he can think about how to convince Bruce to make sure they can later.
For now, he'll enjoy his last round.
36 notes · View notes
gukyi · 4 years ago
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tattoos together | kth
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summary: you aren’t necessarily terribly particular when it comes to tattoos, and when you arrive at your favorite tattoo parlor one day in search of a new addition, one in particular catches your eye, but more importantly, so does the artist behind its creation. and slowly, you come to realize that art does not need sentimental value to be meaningful—it just needs to be loved.
{tattoo artist!au}
pairing: kim taehyung x female reader genre: fluff word count: 5k warnings: mention of tattoo needles a/n: a huge huge huge thank you to @guksflavor for commissioning me for this piece, and thank you for contributing to the blm movement !!!! for anyone wondering--this was commissioned prior to my drabble commissions post, which is why it’s longer. hope that you enjoy!!!! 
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When you go to a new city, your favorite thing to do is explore. 
Unpacking has never really been your forte, because it takes forever and it’s not as if any of the packages contain a surprise. You already know what’s in every single cardboard box strewn around your apartment, from the old clothes you never wear to the single set of nice dinnerware that you never use because you don’t ever have guests fancy enough to require usage of them. 
The beauty of the world is that it has so many hidden corners. So many hole-in-the-wall stores and secret alleyways shielded from street lights. Secrets unknown to even some of the locals. 
So yes, the boxes against the barren walls of your apartment can wait. 
They have been for the past couple of years, at least. What’s one more day?
Besides, if you hadn’t prioritized exploring over unpacking, you never would have found that little tattoo shop on the corner of South and Brooks, the one that looks more like a cottage-turned-overgrown-flower shop than a place where you go to get permanently inked. The walls are a pastel neutral shade, accented by exposed brick near the back and lined with drawings after drawings, new designs tacked over old ones, pages curling in on themselves after years of being hung up. 
From the inside or the outside, it doesn’t at all read like a stereotypical tattoo parlor. No black walls, no leather, no gothic lettering on the door. 
And that’s really the beauty of it all. That you would never know of this place if you hadn’t gone wandering, hadn’t decided that your unpacking of boxes could wait another couple of days (and maybe months, too). That there are secrets blanketing the city, and that you can learn them all, if only you keep your eyes peeled. 
Also, the tattoo parlor is right next to what you happily designate as the best bakery in the entire town, but that’s just a bonus. 
Still, Jungkook doesn’t ever seem to mind when you show up to a session with two coffees and a bag with two muffins inside of it. 
The bell above the door rings when you open it, stepping onto the beige welcome mat onto the tile. It’s been raining the past couple of days, and you can make out damp spots on the fabric where people have wiped their shoes. It’s busier than normal, today, several of the artists fielding requests and questions from eager clients, pointing at the designs on the wall or handing them their own sketches. 
But as always, Jungkook is free, loitering in the back corner with his hands tucked into the pockets of the dark jeans he’s wearing, as if he’d been expecting you all afternoon. 
Considering you are pretty much confidants after so many years of seeing him, you suppose that he’s picked up on your predictability—if only just a little. 
“What, don’t you have a job to be doing?” You ask instead of a hello, catching Jungkook’s attention immediately as you walk in, a bag of two scones in your hand. 
“Don’t have a job if you’re not here,” he quips back, strolling over casually and happily taking the napkin-wrapped baked good from your hand. He eats approximately half of it in a single bite as you settle down by his station, a vintage vanity that Jungkook says that the owner found at a thrift store. It’s awfully beat up as is, but looks more at home inside here, little succulents sitting, pressed up against the wall, and ink stains covering the countertop. 
“Touché,” you concede with a nod. 
“What are you here for today?” Jungkook asks over a mouthful of scone. “You got an actual design in mind or just want me to wing it?” 
“Am I not allowed to just say hello to one of my favorite people in the city?” You tease. 
Jungkook frowns. “‘One of’? Who else is there?” 
“Me, of course,” you tell him happily. “You got any new designs I can take a peek at?”
“See for yourself,” Jungkook says, motioning to the wall beside him as you giddily skirt over to take a look. You’re in here so often that Jungkook’s long foregone showing you which ones were recently added—deigning to sit at his table while you pick out the new ones from the old, which sketches weren’t tacked to the wall the last time you were in. 
There’s a couple of ones that you don’t recognize taped along the wall, or peeking out of the open binders that they have spread out on spare shelves and countertops, new designs of birds and flowers and snakes. But the one that really catches your eye is a small one, drawn on a piece of paper the size of a Post-it note. You almost miss it, half-hidden behind a much bigger sketch of an old grandfather clock, lines dark and heavy. It’s a simple line drawing, really, of the sun rising or setting along the horizon, its reflection shakily echoed in the water it stands above. It could almost be straight out of a scrapbook, a Polaroid of a real moment in time, a real sight someone saw. 
“This one’s new,” you say, fingers reaching up to page at the edges. 
Jungkook gets up to see what all of the fuss is about. “Oh, yeah, just added yesterday. You like it?”
“It’s pretty,” you say, unable to tear your eyes away from it. It’s so simple, so modest. Like a doodle that someone would draw in the margins of a textbook, like the start of a flipbook design in an old library book. “Looks almost like it was printed from offline.”
“You know everything in here is usually hand-drawn,” Jungkook chides. 
“Reminds me of a photograph,” you say as Jungkook reaches out with his hands to take the design down. “You know, like some really picturesque scene on a beach. With the sun reflected against the water.”
“Can’t tell if it’s rising or setting,” Jungkook comments, holding it out in front of him. 
“I think that’s the point.”
“So, where do you want it?” Jungkook asks. “And don’t say the bottom of your foot. I know you’re joking.”
You laugh, reminded of the time you had teasingly told him that you wanted a flock of birds tattooed beneath your feet, and he almost believed you before you burst into a fit of giggles. Pausing, you think. Where would you want something like that? Not your back, surely. To you, the whole point of a tattoo is to be able to see it. And not on your torso, either. You’ve grown rather accustomed to the feeling of a needle on skin, so the pain isn’t the issue, but a drawing like that isn’t meant to be kept secret. Not supposed to be hidden by your clothes. 
You can’t say that you’ve ever kept tattoos particularly serious, plotting out exactly what you’ll get inked and which part of your body will make it the most meaningful. Tattoos are but another art form, one that uses the skin as its canvas, and not all art is supposed to be perfect and purposeful and mean something. Art is in the eye of the beholder. It is, above all, supposed to make you happy. 
You love every single thing that Jungkook has drawn on your skin, and every single thing that was drawn before you met him. But this one is special. 
“Here,” you say, pulling up the sleeve of your shirt so it rests on your shoulders, tapping the empty space on your upper left arm. It’s surrounded with tattoos, with flowers and words and pictures, but there has always been an open space. One that you were saving for something extraordinary. 
“You sure? You know I can’t undo this as fast as I can do it,” Jungkook says, not to mock you but to make sure you aren’t making a mistake. 
Perhaps it’s your impulsive nature, the part of you that doesn’t really care about making mistakes so long as you can recognize that they happened, that makes you shrug. That isn’t terribly particular over where Jungkook places the needle. Tattoos are for fun. Taking everything serious is boring, anyway. 
“I’m sure,” you tell him, and Jungkook nods. He goes to transfer the design to a tattoo stencil as you wait, finishing up your scone. It’s a little harder now that you’ve waited a bit to eat it, not as soft as it was when Jungkook tore through his, but it’s delicious nonetheless. 
As you’re waiting, you hear the bell above the door ring. You turn around to look at the latest patron out of habit, that instinctual people-watching urge that bubbles up inside of you. 
You don’t recognize him. 
Which isn’t a first, per se, but you are in here rather often and have come to know most of the regulars, at least on a first-name basis. You wonder if he had just wandered in after strolling down the street, noticed the flowerpots hanging from the ceiling or the walls littered with designs or the cracking white paint that makes this place look like an old-timey ice cream store. His eyes, dark and brown and mysterious, go straight to the designs on the wall beside you, as if he knows exactly what he’s looking for. 
He looks down at you and the two of you meet eyes, his partially hidden by his caramel brown hair, yours looking up at him because it feels like you can’t turn away. There is something about him that makes you want to ask him to come here more often. Just so you can see him again. 
“Oh, Taehyung!” 
You turn back to see Jungkook returning with the design on a stencil, toothy smile widening when he sees the boy in question, a wave of familiarity rushing over his features. 
“Jungkook,” Taehyung says, and the two of them greet each other the way that all men do, with that unspoken hand grab-turned-back pat. “Was in this part of the city and thought I’d stop by. See how my favorite skin artist is doing.”
“Ugh,” Jungkook says with a roll of his eyes, “I hate when you call me that. It’s weird and makes me sound like I make art with skin.”
“Don’t you?” Taehyung poses teasingly, making Jungkook shove him playfully. 
“Shut up,” Jungkook responds, heading over to where you’re seated and placing the stencil down on the table. “Y/N here is getting one of your designs on her arm.”
That has you engaged. 
“You drew this?” You ask, picking the stencil back up and holding it out to him. 
Taehyung takes a couple of steps forward and reaches a hand out to look at the drawing in closer detail, before nodding. “Sketched it a couple of days ago. Jungkook said that it might make a nice tattoo.”
“Jungkook has terribly good judgement,” you agree. “I didn’t know you drew for Jungkook.”
“Eh, it’s not a job or anything,” Taehyung says with a shrug. “I like doodling things on the side. Jungkook being a tattoo artist is just a bonus.”
“I’ll say,” Jungkook says with a forced cough. “Y/N’s got a couple of your drawings actually, Tae. That one of the cherry blossoms, and the one with the teddy bear.”
“You did those, too?” You ask, getting more and more pleasantly surprised with every minute that passes. 
“You kidding?” Jungkook scoffs. “Taehyung’s art is all over this place. My boss is actually getting kind of annoyed with how much real estate his drawings take up, but clients seem to really like them, so they stay.”
“So you’re saying it’s not my infectious personality?” Taehyung quips, making you laugh. He and Jungkook seem to go well together. 
Jungkook sighs, a smile tugging loosely at his lips. “Get out of here, I’ve got a client,” he says fondly, motioning to you. 
“Kicking me out after five minutes? I think that’s a new record,” Taehyung says, peering at the old clock on the wall. 
“Don’t get used to it,” Jungkook says, even though it’s obvious that the both of them already are. Jungkook’s too kind, too sweet, too wonderful to ever turn away a friend. Even if he does have a client. 
“Nice to meet you, Y/N,” Taehyung says with a tip of an imaginary hat. His smile makes the blood rush to your cheeks, charming and for some reason, irresistible. “Hope that we see each other again soon. I’d love to see your tattoos.”
“I hope so too,” you say, positively enchanted, as he exits, the bell ringing on his way out. 
You wonder why you hadn’t met him before. You suppose that you just always missed each other. 
You sort of hope that, after this, you never do.
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You run into Taehyung a couple of days afterwards in the bakery next door to the tattoo parlor. You’re standing by the coffee counter, chatting to one of the baristas who always teases you for buying two of everything whenever you’re there, when you spot him wandering in, the same curious look on his face. He doesn’t notice you at first but you see him straight away, recognize him instantly. It looks like he just accidentally stumbled upon this place, like he had been walking and walking and walking and when he looked up, he was inside. 
You wonder if Taehyung comes here as often as you do. Wonder if he makes an effort to always stop in since he drops by the parlor on a regular basis. Wonder how long you’ve gone, cruelly so, just missing each other. 
“Y/N?”
You look up to see him gazing at you, a lopsided smile tugging at his features. Next to you, the barista hands you your bag of baked goods, two as always, and winks before getting back to work. 
“Hey, I didn’t see you come in,” you lie, hoping that he didn’t catch you ogling him as he walked inside. “You stop by often?”
“Whenever I get the chance to,” Taehyung says back. “I like carbs and coffee.”
“Then I suppose you’ve found the perfect place to be,” you say. And then, in a blaze of courage, you ask, “Are you just popping in, or do you want to sit down for a little?”
Taehyung smiles, warm and wonderful. “I’d be happy to.”
You snag a table in the corner, facing away from the barista who keeps sending you nonsensical and exaggerated facial expressions and gestures, because this is not a movie, and he is not your beautiful love interest who waltzes into your life and sweeps you off your feet. Even if he is rather beautiful. 
“I got two pastries,” you say, tugging them out of the bag, still wrapped in napkins. “Want one?”
Taehyung chuckles as you hand one to him. “Do you always get two of what you order?”
“Hey, I like carbs too,” you tell him defensively, making Taehyung nod in agreement. Seeing as you bought them just a few minutes ago, they’re still warm, soft between your fingers as you pull apart the dough and slowly take a bite. It tastes even sweeter than usual. 
“Do you come here often?” Taehyung poses. 
“Anytime I drop by the parlor,” you add cheerfully. “And sometimes even when I don’t.”
“We seem to always be missing each other, then,” Taehyung muses. 
“Hopefully that will change,” you add with a grin. “Jungkook finished my tattoo a couple of days ago. Do you want to see?”
“The one of my drawing?” Taehyung asks, even though he already knows the answer. 
“What else would there be?” You say, pulling up the sleeve of your shirt to reveal the design. It’s only been a few days, so the tattoo hasn’t had nearly enough time to fully heal, but the sketch is just as prominent as it was when it was first pressed into your skin. It fits perfectly in the empty space that was there before, the lines filling out the blanks between the other pictures. Almost as if that spot had been waiting for the right thing to fill it. Almost as if it had always belonged there. 
Taehyung’s mouth opens in awe as you show him, the skin still raised where the needle had pressed against it. You have to say you don’t really mind showing off your tattoos to others, especially when they bring you so much joy yourself, and people are usually more appreciative than disapproving, but watching the way Taehyung’s face lights up when he sees his design, his sketch, his art on your skin makes your heart beat something terribly fierce. 
The beauty of tattoos is that it is permanent art. Art on the wall of a museum will need to be constantly restored, will be moved from place to place as people bid hundreds of thousands of dollars on owning it. But tattoos follow you wherever you go, will keep you company no matter what the circumstances are. It is art that is permanent, because it will never leave you. 
It seems that Taehyung has realized that as well. 
“Wow, I—” Taehyung says, rubbing at the bottom of his lip, unable to tear his eyes away from the dark ink decorating your body. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I’ll let Jungkook know that you really like it,” you say, pleased. “He did an excellent job, as always.”
“Why?” Taehyung asks, the simple question being the only word he’s able to form, the only thing he’s able to think. 
“‘Why?’” You repeat, an eyebrow raised. “Why did I get it?”
“Why did you get that one?” Taehyung says for emphasis, pointing to the design laced along your upper arm. “Out of the millions of possibilities, why choose mine?”
“Oh,” you say, at a loss for words. It’s difficult to pinpoint why. It doesn’t have a terribly sentimental meaning to you. No long-lasting symbolism that has followed you throughout your life. You chose it because it was simple and easy and beautiful. Because you thought that it would be the perfect fit. “Well, I don’t have a great reason.”
“It’s permanent ink on your body,” Taehyung says. “You must have thought it meant something.”
“I just liked the way it looked,” you say. “It was so plain and modest, but it looks like a scene out of a movie. Like a moment captured in time. I don’t know—” you shrug, “—it sort of reminds me of a Polaroid picture. The sun halfway above the horizon. Its reflection on the water.”
Taehyung is speechless, a soft grin slowly inching its way across his face. He looks fond, looks grateful and honored. Like what you told him was the perfect answer. 
“Is the sun rising or setting, Taehyung?” You ask, curious. You suppose that no matter what he chooses, it’ll be the right answer. That the sun can either be rising or setting, so long as you know that it will always return. If it’s rising, it is but a reminder that there is a whole day ahead of you. That you have so much to do and so much to look forward to. And if it’s setting, it’s to let you know that you made it another day, another twenty-four hours. The sun may be saying goodbye, but you can never lose faith that it will come back to say hello. 
Taehyung seems to ponder for a moment, eyes tilting upwards as he thinks, lets the question weigh on his heart. And then he turns to you, a glint in his eye, and he says, “You think it’s the sun?”
And truth be told, you had never considered that it might be the moon. 
In the stark black-and-white of a single-color tattoo, it could be anything you wanted. It could be a massive planet in another galaxy, could be a sweet chocolate ball sinking into a warm cup of milk. But Taehyung thinks it’s the moon. He sees the absent sky as dark, sees the circle in the center as the one that watches over you when you sleep. 
The sun and the moon are the only two constants in everybody’s life. One will never be without the other. And they will always chase after each other, circling the sky every day and every night, eternally unable to stay together. 
Perhaps it is the moon. Or the sun. Perhaps it is rising, or setting. 
And perhaps that is why you chose this design. Because of its ambiguity. Because it can mean so much despite being so little, which is what art is for, isn’t it? To see something and make it beautiful in your eyes? To always look at the world through rose-colored glasses?
No matter what it is, it will remind you that you are never alone. No, even when you have nothing left, the sun and the moon will always stand by you, watch over you. They will light up the path in front of you and guard you on your journey. 
“Well,” you ask Taehyung, smiling. You wonder briefly if that was the whole point of his design. For it to represent whatever the viewer wanted it to. And then you realize that of course that was the point. That Taehyung drew it like this on purpose. Tattoos will follow you for the rest of your days. So will the sun and the moon.“What do you think it is?”
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You don’t see Taehyung for a while after that. 
Not that you had been expecting to inexplicably bump into him on the street, or anything, but you were secretly hoping that your luck had changed. That you were slowly beginning to make up for all of the moments you missed each other, all of the times you were just five minutes away from meeting, always just a little too early or a little too late. 
Still, you wish that you could see him more, or at least more often than you currently do, which is never. You know so little about him and yet there is something that draws you closer, makes you want to sift through the layers of dust between his bones, find out what makes his brain tick and his heart beat.
Ever since he walked into the tattoo parlor that day, strolling in with his hands on his pockets and witty comeback on the tip of his tongue, you haven’t been able to stop thinking about him. About how his art is etched onto your skin eternally. About how he does everything with purpose. 
Meeting him was no accident. 
Is it possible that you were always meant to know each other?
After a month, you return to the parlor, half in search of another design to add to the collection and half hoping that maybe your luck will change and you’ll be able to see him again. And if not, at least there’s always Jungkook to keep you company. 
You drop by the bakery and pick up a very optimistic three scones, just on the off chance that Taehyung may be there when you arrive. Besides, you can’t imagine Jungkook complaining about free food, let alone extra of it. 
But when you arrive, you’re shocked to see that Jungkook is busy working on someone. 
“Taehyung?” You ask, his name the first word to come out of your mouth when you enter. He’s sitting at the same stained white vanity sleeve rolled up as Jungkook presses the needle against his skin. He’s wincing, in that way that people who are getting their first tattoo do, not necessarily from pain but simply from the feeling. 
Jungkook pulls the needle away from Taehyung’s arm before the two of them both turn to look at you, equally as shocked by your presence. 
“Y/N,” Taehyung says back, almost as if your very existence has taken his breath away. 
“You weren’t supposed to come for another hour or so,” Jungkook says, checking the clock on the wall. 
“Are you complaining to the person who brings you free baked goods?” You ask, making Jungkook shake his head in a guilty no. You saunter over to the table to pull out the scones, giddy about having rightly purchased a third, when you notice the design slowly being imprinted onto Taehyung’s skin. 
It’s the same one you have. 
“Hey, what’s this?” You ask, not necessarily looking for an actual response so much as wondering aloud. Taehyung’s getting it in the same place as yours, the upper arm, a single drawing of ink on bare, untouched skin. It must mean something rather special to be his first. “Is that—?”
“Don’t be mad at me for copying you,” Taehyung says sheepishly. “The more I thought about it the more I liked it.”
“I’m not mad at you,” you tell him. 
“I don’t know,” Taehyung says with a sigh as Jungkook motions towards the needle, a silent question to see if Taehyung’s still alright with him continuing. Taehyung nods, letting only his eyes drift upwards to yours as Jungkook goes back in. “I mean, I guess it’s kind of impulsive, isn’t it? Getting a tattoo after seeing what it looked like on someone else. But when we were talking about it, I just thought about how detailed it really was. How it said so much despite being so little.”
“That’s what I thought about it, too,” you say with a grin. “It’s special. I mean, every tattoo is special, but this one is because it can mean whatever you want it to mean. Whether it’s the sun or the moon, rising or setting. And the beauty of it is that you can change your mind about it, too.” 
If one day, you would rather the moon watch over you, keep the waves calm on a quiet night, where your thoughts are loud and heavy, then it will. But if, the next day, you want some light to shine down upon the field of daisies and wildflowers in your heart, then the sun will come out. No matter which it is, it will stand guard over you, protect you from what the rest of the world will try to throw at you. 
“What do you think it is, Jungkook?” Taehyung asks, making Jungkook stop. 
Jungkook looks down at the drawing, at what he is pressing into Taehyung’s skin, and he says, “I think it’s the rising sun. Telling all of us to look forward to a brand new day.”
You smile. “And what do you think it is, Taehyung?”
Taehyung doesn’t skip a beat. “I think it can be all four all at once—the sun rising, the sun setting, the moon rising, the moon setting. It just depends on what you want it to be.”
“You know,” you say with a grin. “We’re going to have matching tattoos now.”
“Oh, are we?” Taehyung asks cheekily, even though nothing he ever does is accidental. Not the sketch, not the tattoo, and certainly not its placement. 
“We are,” you say, pulling up your sleeve for good measure. “They could be buddies. Hang out and take pictures together.”
“What about us?” Taehyung asks. “Can we hang out and take pictures together too?”
“Are you asking me out on a date?” You pose, even though you already know the answer. 
“That depends,” Taehyung quips back. “Are you saying yes to one?”
“I think I am,” you say, pleased smiles lacing their way across your faces. Taehyung is beaming, the discomfort of a needle barely even registering, as he grins at you, charming and brilliant and bright. “And I look forward to it.”
“Me too.” Taehyung nods. 
“I’m here to hopefully get another tattoo,” you tell him, raising your eyebrows. “If you want, you can stick around and maybe we can get tattoos together.”
“Isn’t that a bit impulsive?” Taehyung smirks. 
“Aren’t you?”
And you think that, even though the universe kept you apart for so long—separated by minutes, perhaps even seconds—it sort of always knows what it’s doing. You were never not going to meet. It was just a matter of when. 
And the sun and moon will never not protect you. It is just a matter of which. 
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e-milieeee · 4 years ago
Text
haunted
Summary: When Gabriel goes a step too far, Plagg has decided he’s had enough. 
Meanwhile, Gabriel Agreste has discovered that his house may or may not be haunted, because a vengeful spirit certainly seems to be after him. 
Notes: basically plagg being a little gremlin and trolling gabriel like he deserves. ft. gabe’s 3 remaining braincells. based on this post by @hamsternamedmarinette and @snail-noir im sorry its so crappy lol 
haunted
“Well,” Adrien is saying as he trudges inside the room and kicks the door shut. “There’s that, then.”
Plagg flits out from his shirt. His face is set in an angry mask, tail sticking straight up. “That’s that?” he echoes. “No, that’s absurd! Your father’s absurd! He should come back here and I’ll give him a piece of my mind and—”
Adrien squeezes his eyes shut. “Plagg, it’s fine. Forget it.”
Plagg makes an angry noise in the back of his throat. “So you’re just gonna take that? For weeks? He has no right.”
In his hand is the piece of paper—now crumpled—that his father had shoved into his fingers before he stormed off: the schedule for the fashion show. It runs for a week, but there’s also a terrifying amount of preparations to be done two weeks prior—all of which his father had decided he needed to be present for.
“I can’t risk making father angry,” Adrien settles with.
Plagg folds his arms. “Fine,” his kwami says curtly, in a manner of speaking that Adrien always finds hard to argue with. “Hypothetically speaking, then, if your father found out his plans had been cata—destroyed, would you be allowed to go out?”
“Plagg, I’m not going to break into my father’s study as Chat Noir to cataclysm his work just so I can go out with friends.”
Plagg smiles at him. It’s the smile Adrien had often gotten before he’d discovered the toilet paper in his washroom all scratched up and littering the floor. “Don’t worry,” comes the reply. “You won’t have to.”
***
Gabriel Agreste’s study is locked, but that doesn’t prove a problem for the small black shape that slips through the doors like they’re made of nothing more than mist. It’s dark, but cats have always seen better at night anyway.
There, on the top of his desk, lies the designs for the first set of clothes that are to be showcased. Meticulous notes. Fabric samples. Timing and schedules. Signatures and contracts.
The small, black cat picks the folder up with two paws. Then it crumbles into dust.
***
“Nathalie, did you touch the folder on my desk?”
It’s been a long morning—Gabriel had been up at 4 AM in an attempt to see if he could get an edge on Ladybug and Chat Noir. It had been horrendous to find someone to akumatize so early, and by the time he’d pinpointed his victim—forty five minutes later��he had nearly fallen asleep. He’d been pummelled by Ladybug and Chat Noir. Absolutely pummelled. And then, as if the situation couldn't help but get worse, Audrey Bourgeois had called him at six (just when he was about to go back to bed) and told him she couldn’t make it to the fashion show.
That woman had no regard for timezones. And no regard for him, either, because part of the marketing for the fashion week was Audrey’s attendance.
Gabriel was considering akumatizing himself when he realized the manila folder on his desk—that had been there when he left the night prior—was nowhere to be seen.
He searches through all his files. Crawls under his desk. Checks his lair. It's gone.
“Nathalie!” he bellows again, and she comes barrelling through the door to his office.
“What is it, sir?”
Gabriel takes a deep breath. “Have you seen the files for the fashion show? It was in the folder on my desk when I left.”
“Sir, I haven’t been in your office since last night, and I’m certain I saw your files there. Are you sure you haven’t misplaced it?”
Misplaced it, yeah. That’s what it was. Probably.
Now, what he needed was a nap.
***
The files do not turn up. Gabriel sends Nathalie to print them out again. The most important stuff is stored on his computer, but there are signatures he’d spent weeks getting.
He locks the files in his drawer the next time he gets it.
***
Tuesday morning finds Gabriel Agreste feeling much more refreshed. He even joins Adrien for three minutes during breakfast.
He walks into his office to find his favourite coffee mug in smithereens on the ground.
The files are still stored safely in his drawer. But there is a big, ugly tear across the dress he’d been working on for the past three months.
Gabriel screams.
***
Gabriel Agreste isn’t a fan of security cameras in his office. Especially because anyone with some hacking ability could possibly get their hands on the tape, and the last thing he needs is someone seeing him descending into his lair, or opening the safe behind his painting. Really—there’s simply too many sketchy things he’s done in the office for him to trust putting a camera there.
But he installs two of them nonetheless. His coffee mug could be an accident. But that rip on the dress? No, the only explanation is that it was intentional. But how?
Gabriel thinks of possibilities until he gives himself a headache.
***
“Father seems stressed lately,” Adrien notes to Plagg. There’s not much time for himself between busy schedules, but the moments in between he catches to talk to his kwami. The past week, stuck alone in his room with barely any interaction with his friends, has been draining. He cherishes the precious minutes he gets to spend with Plagg.
“Does he?” Plagg asks in a tone of practiced disinterest. “Well, he does have that really important fashion week thing coming up.”
“He asked me if I’d broken into his study a day ago, but he always locks his study. I think some of his files were missing.”
“Oh?” Plagg replies. “That’s terrible misfortune.”
“Father says he thinks a thief snuck in in the middle of the night and stole them, but we have security cameras all around the house and nothing happened.”
“Spooky.”
“Plagg…”
Plagg only shrugs. “Perhaps your house is haunted,” he replies disinterestedly. “Good thing you’re not scared of ghosts, Adrien.”
***
The house is haunted, and Gabriel cannot sleep.
The most terrifying part of watching the footage is that he sees nothing. There is no movement. No nothing. But then, the next morning, his files inside the locked drawer have disappeared.
Nathalie asks him about the dark rings around his eyes. He drinks two more cups of coffees in response.
***
Gabriel’s eyes are burning, but he’s determined to stay awake.
He likes to think himself neat and meticulous, but even he has his breaking point—his desk is littered with coffee cups, and he’s resorted to drinking energy drinks to keep himself awake. There’s less than ten days until the fashion show starts. It’s been so heavy on his schedule that he’s barely found time to akumatize three three people the past week.
Ladybug and Chat Noir must be having a field day while he’s sitting miserably in his office, waiting to catch the thief, too exhausted to summon up more akumas.
The clock ticks past midnight. Gabriel nearly faceplants into a coffee mug.
Another cup of redbull.
By the time it’s two in the morning, nothing shocking in particular has happened. Every time the flashing light of a car drives past the front of the house he starts, sits back down, and struggles to keep his eyes open.
It’s 2:04 when a crash sounds outside of his office.
Like a madman, Gabriel scrambles up from his seat. He knocks over a half-finished mug of coffee in the process, but that doesn’t matter. The door of his office slams open. He trips on a rug. But he gets up and runs like he’s never run before.
With all the force he can muster, he slams his palm down on the light, and the once-dark staircase and hall become bathed in golden light. The chandelier flickers twice and he stares down at the hall with half the mind to wonder if he’s going to finally see the ghost.
Gabriel is the only one in the hall.
He checks once more. Then again. Then again. But there is no one there, no source of the crash—
Oh, no.
The painting he’d bid at an auction twelve years ago—one that had cost a fortune—has fallen off the wall and face planted into the floor. The sight of it physically hurts Gabriel, and he’s scrambling towards it in a mixture of fear and anger when another noise sounds in his office.
In the months of being Hawkmoth, Gabriel Agreste has felt a generous range of emotions. But never has he felt such bone-chilling fear.
He heads back up the steps with robotic movements numbly. Down the corridor. Into his office.
There is no one there, and the mess that has been made is moreso his fault than of the invisible thief—or ghost—but then Gabriel sees one of his locked drawers open and the contents inside dumped unceremoniously on the ground.
The next day, when Nathalie finds him out cold on the ground, he attributes it to the exhaustion and the amount of coffee and energy drinks he’d consumed. But deep down, Gabriel knows that it’s the terror that’s finally caught up.
Either way, he faints.
***
Gabriel is confined to bed by a very concerned Nathalie. She usually heeds to his instructions, but the rare insistence from her and his own fatigue lands him out of commission for the day. It doesn’t stop him, however, from giving her a set of instructions.
“First, my office,” Gabriel croaks. His throat hurts—he must’ve caught a cold as well. “Please clean everything up and reinstall the locks. And then… and then…”
He thinks of the missing files—three times—and grits his teeth. “Cancel the fashion week.”
Nathalie’s jaw drops open. “Sir—”
“I know,” Gabriel mutters. “I just… I’m left with no choice. I’ll reschedule. Make up some excuse.”
She dips her head. “Noted, sir. Is that all?”
Gabriel gives her a miserable nod. She’s halfway out the door when he remembers.
“Nathalie!” he yells. “Get me a shaman, too.”
***
“The fashion week is cancelled.” Adrien looks up from practicing piano. “Father is sick, I think, which might be why. Nathalie looked super stressed when I saw her before my lessons.”
“Cancelled?” Plagg echoes dispassionately. “Huh. That’s too bad, I guess.”
“No, that’s good! I mean, it’s not good that my father is sick and Nathalie is stressed, but… at least I won’t be hounded about preparations. I even got permission to go out today.”
“Huh,” Plagg replies. He settles himself into his wheel of cheese. “I guess you’re lucky after all, then.”
Notes: yeah idk what i wrote but master fu is the shaman they hire and he finds out gabriel is hawkmoth and arrests him and the end if u wanna know what happens next 
Here’s my fics masterlist! 
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queercapwriting · 4 years ago
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“I Will Never Forgive You” (Fitz x Daisy, ft. Jemma, post 5x14 + 5x22)
It took a few months for either of them to start sleeping again. After Fitz died.
And anyway, space was big. All of these proverbial waters were uncharted, and Jemma wanted to make sure she could tell Fitz all the details of all the new things she’d learned once she found him.
Because they would find him.
He’d found her - the last time she was in space. He’d found her across the galaxy. Surely, it would be easy enough to find him across time.
They all but lived in the command center, for a few months. If they retreated to their bunks, it was to physically collapse for an hour or two. Never really more than that.
Jemma woke up screaming for Fitz.
Daisy woke up just screaming from Fitz.
The first time Jemma heard Daisy’s nightmare, she was standing over Davis’s shoulder, looking out at the vastness of it all. She hadn’t had this kind of luxury last time she was in space.
And Fitz had found her, even though she was all but dead.
She’d find him, now, even though he is all but dead.
Sort of.
She was fiddling with his ring - Daisy had thought she’d want to have it, and Jemma spent so many nights wondering if it had been Daisy herself, or Mack, or May, or some medic whose name she would never know, who’d taken it off of her dead husband’s finger. 
She was fiddling with his ring, and staring out at the infinity she was crossing for him, when she startled from the pitch of Daisy’s scream.
Piper and Jemma both whipped out their sidearms - she only vaguely remembered when she was some kid with no tactical training on the bus - and Davis flipped the ship into emergency mode.
But it was Jemma who started sprinting first.
She ripped the door open to Daisy’s bunk, ready to destroy anything and anyone that had somehow gotten in and threatened her, hurt her, but Daisy...
Daisy was just asleep. Having a nightmare.
And it was only then that Jemma heard her words.
“What are you doing? Fitz, I am begging you. No no no no no. Fitz, please. Fitz, no no no no no.”
The scream that followed, that had called her into the room to begin with, was agony more emotional than physical - though Jemma could not even begin to imagine the physical (and she could imagine quite a lot. Ward was... creative, in his torture tactics).
Piper’s eyes went wide, like she had seen and heard something indecent. Because really, she had.
“Ma’am,” she whispered, like a salute, like an apology, and scurried off to tell Davis to stand down emergency mode.
Jemma was alone with Daisy, and Daisy’s screams.
Her gun clattered to the ground and her hands were on Daisy before she could even think of what to do, what to say, or think, or feel.
She went for her wrists, first. Because Daisy was bound, in her nightmare. Jemma knew, because she’d been present, for her nightmare. So she brought her hands to Daisy’s wrists, caressed them once, twice, firm, like she was wiping away her bindings. Then her ankles, quick, efficient.
She didn’t realize she was cooing Daisy’s name until she brought her hands to Daisy’s stomach, her torso, her cheeks.
“Daisy. Daisy, wake up, you’re safe. I’m here, you’re safe.”
Daisy woke with a jolt, sitting bolt upright and immediately checking to see that she was unbound, immediately bringing her hand up to the scar behind her ear - the one she’d refused to do anything to minimize.
“Fitz,” she whispered, staring around her bunk until her gaze fell to Jemma.
“You’re safe, Daisy. He’s gone. You’re safe.”
She didn’t know if she was talking about the Doctor, or Fitz being dead but not dead but the version of him that did that to Daisy was dead... She didn’t know, and she didn’t want to know.
But she did know that her voice didn’t quake when she said it. Everything had to be steady right now. For Daisy.
Daisy stared for a long moment at her. It took everything in her to not look away.
Jemma didn’t understand, if she was honest with herself, why Daisy was still by her side. Why Daisy didn’t hate her because she’d had the audacity to defend him. Because she’d brought him tea and because she’d stayed married to him. Because she still loved him.
She didn’t understand what Daisy was doing in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of outer space, with no backup, no resources, no allies, and practically no hope.
The least she could do was have the courage to look Daisy in the eyes. It was hard. It felt almost impossible. But it was the least she could do.
“We’re going to find him, Jemma,” Daisy eventually said. Her voice was still ragged, from the yelling. The screaming that she let herself do in her dream, that she hadn’t given the Doctor - Fitz - the Doctor... Fitz. - the satisfaction of hearing in real life. In his past life. Daisy’s always life.
Jemma blinked. She’d said he was gone to comfort Daisy, not to...
“You don’t have to comfort me, Daisy. Not... not right now.”
Daisy squeezed her eyes shut, the way she often did when she needed to shut out her laptop after spending hours hunched over, working herself past exhaustion some problem or another.
No, now wasn’t the time to think about how very similar Daisy was to her husband.
“You really don’t know why I’m here, do you?” Daisy asked. Her voice was still ripped, and if it wasn’t for the reason why, it might have lit Jemma’s body up. The way Daisy’s voice would get extra low sometimes, maybe, perhaps, especially when she was talking to women, to Jemma... No, no, no, no, no, absolutely not.
Fitz would understand - Fitz had understood, they’d talked about it, about her, he had... but he was gone, now. No use in fantasizing in all that. He was gone, now, and finding him was complicated enough without... without all of that.
“Aside from Fitz, you’re my best friend, Daisy. And I’m grateful that you’re here with me, every day. I -”
“But you don’t understand why.” Daisy was waking up, now, regaining some of her amused cockiness, her devil-may-care, her swagger. Exaggerated ever so slightly, deeply adorably, by still being somewhat asleep.
Jemma looked away.
“He hurt you, Daisy. He... he tortured you. He tortured you, he violated you, and he never even apologized, and -”
“He didn’t have to, Jemma.”
“Daisy.”
“No.” Daisy’s face, her voice, was serious now, sincere and genuine and intense. Like she was when she promised Jemma she would beat them, all of them, the LMDs, the entire world, everything. To get Jemma back to Fitz. Just like she was doing now.
Except back then, before the Framework, Fitz hadn’t... 
Oh, Fitz.
“No,” Daisy said again. “He seriously screwed up, yes. It was unforgiveable, yes. It was. I meant it when I said that I will never forgive him.”
Jemma searched for the anger in Daisy’s words, her face. She couldn’t find any. Daisy took Jemma’s hands into her own. Jemma gulped.
“But I don’t need to forgive him to love him. I have done my share of unforgiveable things -”
“You’ve never done anything like what he did to you, Daisy -”
“I did. Yes, I did. I could have quaked him against the wall and walked away. I didn’t. I strangled him, Jemma. I strangled him.”
“You didn’t know what you were -”
“Yes. Yes, I did know what I was doing. I wanted to do it. Just like Fitz. I almost killed Mack, Jemma. He was out of commission, he couldn’t have fought back. I kept beating him, Jemma, over and over and over again. I was not out of my mind. Mack is my brother and I almost beat him to death. I was not out of my mind. I know you don’t believe me. But you know who does? You know who’s the only person who really understands that I did those terrible things because they were inside me?”
“Daisy -”
“Fitz. Fitz is the only person who understands. It. Was. Me. I did those things. And I didn’t have to, Jemma, I wasn’t saving the world. Fitz tortured me, he terrified me, he violated me. Yeah. And I can’t forgive him. But he did it to save the world. I tortured Mack with my own hands, and for what? For what? To prove a point? Mack couldn’t have stopped me. Fitz couldn’t have stopped me. I felt your husband’s windpipe closing and I felt Mack’s bones breaking and I didn’t. Stop. Fitz did a horrible thing, but he was trying to save the world. That doesn’t excuse him, but he is the only one who understands that I can love him and not forgive him. And I do. Love him. And I love you. And I will never abandon either of you. Do you understand me?”
“Daisy -”
“Do you understand me, Jemma?”
She squeezed Jemma’s hands tighter. Jemma squeezed back.
“Yes, Daisy. I understand.”
“Good.”
Daisy nodded like that settled it. She looked around her bunk, brow slightly furrowed.
“Do you think Piper and Davis would want pancakes?”
“I think pancakes would be good, yes.”
“Pancakes in deep space, huh? We’re going to have some stories to tell Fitz.”
“Yes,” Jemma said, watching Daisy spill out of bed, trying not to stare as she tugged on a pair of black pants she’d apparently just taken off and left on the floor. “Yes, we will.”
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cucumbers-and-olives · 4 years ago
Text
Broken Love | TUA
Summary: After receiving an odd note, through even odder means, you come to the Hargreeves mansion just in time for Mr.Hargreeves' funeral. Being there brings fights, and memories too...
Category: Angst
Fandom: The Umbrella Academy
Paring: past!Diego Hargreeves x fem!Reader
Word Count: 1.2k
Warnings/Includes: badly writing kissing scene, lots of arguing, mentions of death and funeral
A/N: im sorry for any inconsistencies! i think I got them all, but if you see any, feel free to send an ask and I can clear that up! this is one of my first non-JATP fics, so I hope you all like it!
A/N pt 2: i cannot post on time lmao sorry about that! enjoy!
Mandatory Thanking of the Betas: no beta, we die like the people from the Temps Commission at the end of s2
AO3 link here (coming soon!)
Please don’t repost my work without my permission, in part or whole. My work can also be found on AO3 @cucumbersandolives. Thank you!
“Hello? Anyone here?” You entered the empty mansion, your words echoing. The note was clutched tightly in your hand that you had found on your kitchen table.
A code you had long forgotten, on that you had come up with the members of the academy. A twist on Morse code, with a mix of Greek and Latin.
“Hey stranger,” You turned around to find the owner of the voice.
“Vanya!” You ran over to her and hugged her tight. “Oh, it’s been so long! Too long. Where’s everyone else?”
“They’re out back, prepping the grave stuff.” She cleared her throat. “I’ll let him know you’re here-“
“No, I, I should go…” You said.
“Wait.” A voice called out. A familiar one, that made you smile.
“Hi, Diego.” You saw him on the stairs. He had changed. He was older now, and he held himself differently. The teenage boy that you had known before was long gone.
There was a pause before he spoke. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
~
The kitchen was silent as he paced around. You knew the rest of the Hargreeves siblings were hiding just within earshot, but you focused on the one in front of you.
You cleared your throat. “Look you left the note-“
“Why do you keep lying?” He said, finally stopping a few feet away from you. Diego refused to look you in the eyes, he just stared into his coffee mug.
“What?”
“I didn’t leave you a note. I definitely didn’t tell you to come here. Why would I do that after last time?” He finally looked at you. He was tired, drained, you could tell.
“You are the only one in this house that wrote in Morse code, let alone our mix with Greek! Why on earth would there be a note in Morse code on my kitchen table? Telling me to come here?” You were confused, to say the least.
“It wasn’t me! And stop looking at me like that!”
“Like what?”
“A kicked puppy. I dumped you, remember?” He said, stalking off to some random corner of the house, leaving you sitting there, thinking about his words.
~
“Diego?” He was sitting on the bed, fiddling with a knife. It clattered to the floor, and you both reached to pick it up, your hands meeting for a moment.
You sat down next to him. “What’s wrong?” The silence was suffocating for a moment.
“We’re done.”
You looked at him. “Sorry, what?”
“You heard me. Please leave.”
“Diego…” You begged. “What did I do?”
He stood, walking away. “Nothing.” The bathroom door locked behind him.
“I just want you to know, that- uh, I love you, okay? Nothing can change that.” You said to the closed door. It took everything in you to not cry as you walked out of the house.
~
But you had turned away and never looked back.
“You okay?” Allison said, pulling you out of your head.
“Yeah,” You sighed. “Just old memories.”
“He still loves you, you know? Diego’s got his own-”
“-Own way of showing it, I know. But,” You paused. “I loved him once. I don’t know if I can open my heart to him again.”
You placed the coffee mug on the table gently. “If he changes his mind, I’ll be at the bar.”
Grabbing your coat, you walked away, but not before noticing the lingering Hargreeves’ in the hall. “Fuck off.” You muttered.
~
You stared at yourself in the mirror. The bathroom was the same as it had been 15 years ago.
~
“Long day, huh?” You said, smiling as he placed hot kisses all over your face.
The cold tile under your fingers was a contrast from Diego against you.
“You have no idea.” His eyes met yours for a moment, and then his lips met yours and it was amazing.
And then someone knocked.
“Do you want me to tell Dad? Or are you horny teenagers done yet?” Klaus said banging on the door.
The two of you groaned, breaking the “happy bubble”. “Go away!” Diego said.
“How about…” He paused. “No?”
You rolled your eyes. “Five minutes.”
“One.”
“Four.”
“I heard a rumor,” Your eyes went slack. “That you came out here.”
When you opened your eyes, you were outside of the bathroom, just Klaus and Allison standing outside.
“She- you-”
“Yes, I rumored you, and now, you need to go downstairs before we get in trouble.” Your eyes widened as you released what was happening.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” You muttered, fixing your messy clothes to look somewhat presentable.
“Christ, just go!” Klaus’s hands were limp and drunk, if that was possible, as he ushered you down the hall. “Don’t want to be late for daddy,” He said, in a sing-songy voice.
"Shouldn't you go meet her father too?" Allison teased.
~
You rubbed your eyes, pulling yourself out of that memory, and there he was, standing behind you. He had his signature black turtle neck on, guns and knives assorted all over him.
“What do you want?” You said softly. You didn’t bother turning around, you just looked at him through the mirror.
He started to move closer, well the smallest amount he could in the tiny bathroom, but you help out a hand, stopping him. “Don’t.” He just nodded in response.
“Are you gonna talk to me? Say anything? Cause the last words out of your mouth were the ones that kicked me out of your life, so if you’re gonna do that again, just make it quick.” You walked out of the bathroom, briefly brushing shoulders with him.
“Wait,” He said softly, stepping into the hallway behind you. “I’m sorry.”
“I.. Don’t do that to me, Diego. That isn’t fair,” You crossed your arms, subconsciously protecting yourself from him.
“Who invited you here?” He asked. He was still quiet, scared of breaking you, scared of breaking an already broken relationship.
“I don't know. Someone did though. That’s the only reason I’m here.”
There was a moment of silence as you both looked at each other.
“I’m gonna go,” You said pivoting on your foot and walking a little bit faster than you should.
Don’t- don’t fall again. It didn’t work last time.
But then again, there was a part of you that was wondering if it could work this time.
~
The rain fell steadily outside as everyone grabbed rain jackets and umbrellas.
“Can we talk?” Diego asked.
You sighed. “Why Diego? I thought we were done. You told me to leave. So what do you want now?” The rest of the academy was silently listening, but you didn’t care anymore.
“And you know what? Stop looking at me like that.” You started to walk towards the door.
“Like what?”
It took you a moment to respond. “Like you still love me.”
~
You left before the funeral started. Head and heart heavy as you left, looking back at the mansion one last time.
“He can chase if he wants to, but from now on, no more of this broken love.” You promised yourself. “No more.”
You were long gone when Five arrived, but that was a mess you certainly would have turned your back on.
~
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quicksilversquared · 5 years ago
Text
A Christmas Liar
After Ms. Bustier mentioned the annual school charity fundraiser in class, Lila seems determined to raise funds for her own "charity", aka herself. There's no way that Marinette is going to let that fly, but how successful will she be in taking Lila down in time for the holidays?
links in the reblog
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It started with a normal morning in Ms. Bustier's homeroom class.
"As you all know, it's fast approaching the holiday season, and our collège always does a fundraiser for a charity before Christmas," Ms. Bustier told the class, smiling widely. The first few cut-out paper snowflakes had appeared in the classroom window that morning, and they all knew that the collection would only grow as December went on. "So remember to remind your parents to check their emails for details soon! Our student representatives have been hard at work brainstorming what to do this year."
Marinette smiled, even as she kept drawing in her sketchbook. Jagged Stone had commissioned an outfit for his Christmas present to Penny from her, and wanted the design ready to be sent to his seamstress as soon as possible so that he could have it ready in plenty of time. He had told her not to rush, of course- "you have so much going on, and I don't want to put you behind in your studies!"- but Marinette wanted to try to get things done early.
After all, akumas could appear and eat up her free time without any notice, and so she was going to take advantage of any extra time when she could.
"Oh, a charity fundraiser?" Lila asked from the back of the room, and Marinette mentally sighed before setting her pencil down. Clearly she wasn't going to get anything done now, if she had to deal with Lila's nonsense, and her nonsense-o-meter was going wild. "That's so wonderful! Do you think that- oh, no, I suppose it would come off a little self-appreciating, never mind..."
"No, go ahead!" Ms. Bustier reassured her quickly. "What is it that you wanted to ask, Lila?"
"Well, I was wondering if maybe I could put forth one of my charities to be considered for the fundraiser's proceeds," Lila told the class, and even without turning around, Marinette could picture the way that Lila would press a hand to her chest delicately, doing her best to look bashful. Adrien's eye roll from in front of her told Marinette that her mental picture probably wasn't very far off. "But I suppose that could come off as, well..."
Ms. Bustier perked up. "Oh, how could I have forgotten that we had someone in our class who had done so much charity work before? I don't think it would come off as self-serving at all! In fact, it could add an extra connection and an element of interest to the whole thing if the school picked one of your charities. Marinette, could-"
"Student council has already settled on a charity for this year's fundraiser," Marinette said at once, not even bothering to look up. She could see exactly where this was heading, and she was going to put a stop to it. Now.
In front of her, she could see Adrien's hastily-hidden grin out of the corner of her eye.
"But this is special, Marinette," Ms. Bustier implored. "Surely they'll understand and want to support a fellow student's charity efforts! This is a pretty unique opportunity!"
"We've had multiple meetings about it, thinned our selections down, did all of the background checks and verification on our final pick, filled out all of the paperwork to submit to Mr. Damocles, and let the charity know so that we could get more information to post around," Marinette informed her, because seriously? Ms. Bustier was going to fall for it, just like that? Also, she was super glad that she had pushed for the council to make the decision early this year, because at this time the previous year, they had been working on finalizing everything still, which would have made a last-minute change like this possible. It wouldn't have been fun, or easy, but it could have been possible. "We can't change it now."
Lila let out a small sigh from the back, and Marinette turned around just in time to see her shoulders slumping. "Oh, that's really a shame, then. For a minute there, I was picturing how much good I- we could do for the children in Africa with a bit of extra funding, but I suppose if they've already picked a charity..."
Ms. Bustier glanced from Marinette to Lila. "Marinette, do you think that we could do two charities instead of one, perhaps? It would just be so nice to be able to support Lila's charity!"
Marinette was honestly going to scream.
"I'm afraid that that would make things too complicated," she said instead, politely as she could and with as little teeth-gritting as possible. "We had a couple fundraiser activities in mind- which we agreed was important, in case an akuma attack keeps people away from an in-person event- plus a couple volunteering opportunities that we wanted to offer. Plus, there would be all of the paperwork and the background checks that would have to be done to add in another charity, and that's not exactly a short process. It's a lot of work."
There was also the fact that Lila didn't have any charities, and any money they earned would- if she managed to sneak her way through their careful screening process- no doubt go straight into her own pockets.
"Oh, I could fill out paperwork so that you guys don't have to!" Lila offered eagerly. "I don't mind, it's for the kids-"
"And the email letting parents know about our fundraiser and our selected charity is already scheduled to go out today," Marinette continued, raising her voice just ever-so-slightly to drown Lila out and making a mental note to talk to Aurore to actually get that email sent over lunch. It had originally been planned for tomorrow, actually, but Marinette wasn't going to give Lila any ins. "So the deadline for any changes has passed." She pasted on her best fake smile, trying not to let any signs of a smirk through as she looked back at Lila. "It's just not possible for this year, I'm afraid. Maybe you can bring it up for consideration earlier next year."
"I suppose that's fair," Ms. Bustier agreed. She smiled over at Lila. "It's my own fault for not bringing it up earlier, it just slipped my mind. Hopefully your charities will still get plenty of support! But right now, we're going to move on to today's lesson. If everyone could please get out your notebooks, we're going to start with a quick video..."
Marinette smiled to herself as she put her sketchbook away and opened up her notebook to a fresh page. This probably wasn't the last that she would hear about Lila's so-called "charities", but at least Ms. Bustier had dropped the subject and she wouldn't be getting pressure from that angle.
Now she just had to be ready for Lila's other attempts to get her hands on charity money.
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  "I am so glad that you already had stuff all finalized," Adrien said in Marinette's ear as they headed for their next class. Lila was ahead of them, surrounded by several of their classmates. "I got worried for a minute there when Ms. Bustier hopped on the Lila's charity thing."
"I'm just glad that it's a school-wide thing, not just a class-wide fundraiser," Marinette admitted, glancing around to make sure that no one was going to overhear them. She had managed to get out of being blamed for deliberately denying Lila's "charity" a chance to get more money because she wasn't the only person in charge of the fundraiser, and she didn't want anyone in their class mishearing and blowing things out of proportion. Again. "I mean, it's obvious that Lila jumped on that because I'm class representative and she wanted to put me in a bad spot, but she couldn't when I'm just one of the people involved in that process."
Adrien nodded. "Yeah. I was so sure that she was going to drop it after you mentioned the background check and verification thing, though, and then she didn't. Which is...weird, honestly."
"Not really. If we tried going forward and I was the one doing the check, she would probably just say that I was making stuff up about her charity out of jealousy or spite and that was why it failed or something." Marinette had thought the same, honestly, but it became apparent pretty quickly what Lila was up to. Lila wasn't nearly as sly as she thought she was. "I'm surprised that she didn't jump on that and complain that I was just making the background check thing up because I was doubting her. Ignoring, of course, that we want to have statistics in our flyers and posters and emails about how the money is used, and how much work they get done, and their rating by a charity watchdog. That's standard."
"Which is why she wanted to do her own paperwork," Adrien added. He made a face. "I bet that she's still going to try to piggyback off of the fundraiser somehow, or at least rope people into donating some of their own money. I already heard Rose bringing it up, and Alya mentioned something to Nino about posting something on the Ladyblog."
Marinette winced. That wasn't good. She would have to forward the link to their charity watchdog site to Alya later on, maybe under the guise of providing a resource to get all sorts of charity statistics at once to put in her posting. That didn't guarantee that Alya would look at it, of course, but it was worth a try.
(Also, she could use her throwaway account to point out the charity's questionable status, and then- well, hope that other people would see her post and upvote it.)
"She's really going too far now," Adrien said after a moment, pulling Marinette out of her brainstorming of how she could keep Lila from pocketing a bunch of charity money. "I mean, she has been for a while, especially when she tried to get you expelled, but this is just the cherry on top of a heap of awful. I just don't know... I mean, she's sunk her claws in really deep now, I don't know how to fix it. I guess I should have recognized it earlier, but..."
"Well, there's no point in worrying about what we should have done earlier now," Marinette said as they went through the door for their next class, though she couldn't help but feel a bit validated, since she had wanted to stop Lila's lies ages ago. "We can brainstorm later, if you can get away for lunch. I was going to talk to Aurore then anyway."
Adrien looked puzzled for a moment, then caught on with a grin. "Aha, right, since she's on student council too. Is she the one in charge of submitting paperwork?"
"No, that was me. She's in charge of sending out the emails to families." Marinette grinned up at him. "And I bet that we can do a bit of damage control with that."
-0-0-0-0-
Aurore was all too willing to bring her lunch over to the Dupain-Cheng bakery instead of eating in the school cafeteria. After all, she told them as they headed upstairs, her lunch was leftovers and best served warm, and the cafeteria microwave was gross.
Marinette could believe that. Aurore had already floated the idea of setting up either a roll of paper towels near the microwave so that people could cover their dishes to keep the contents from exploding all over, or going the more environmentally-friendly route of having microwave plate covers instead, which could then be washed daily in the industrial dish washers that the cafeteria kitchen had. Clearly it was a Big Deal for her.
"You said you wanted to talk about the email right?" Aurore asked finally, finishing her grumbling about someone who had apparently microwaved fish and ugh, the smell was awful. "I thought it was meant to be going out tomorrow? I have a draft that's almost complete, I was just going to review it tonight to make sure that it was perfect, but do you need something changed?"
"We had a situation come up in our class this morning," Marinette told her, leading the way into their kitchen. Her mom had left out food for her and Adrien, it just had to be warmed up and assembled. "I don't know how much you've heard about the new girl in our class..."
Aurore frowned. "Lila? The one with the questionable stories?"
Adrien laughed. "Okay, so we aren't the only ones with working brains in the school, that's good to know. Yeah, her."
It didn't take long to get Aurore caught up, and predictably, she was furious at the idea of Lila trying to hijack their fundraiser funds.
"This is going to go one of two ways, I know it," she told them, pulling out her laptop and getting it set up next to her on the table. "Either this girl is going to make up a charity- name, mission, and all- or she's going to find a charity that already exists, and then she'll claim credit for it. The first one is easy enough to disprove, because no one will be able to find anything about the charity. We could just put a reminder in the email about checking charities out before donating to them, and then enter that link we've been using. But the second one...well, she could use their rating and reputation to collect money, and then- if I'm reading her character right- keep it all for herself."
They all thought about that.
"Well, if Alya posts anything on the Ladyblog, in theory any donations would have to be electronically, though a website," Marinette pointed out after a minute. "As for in-person donations, I would say that people should use checks instead of cash, but I don't know how many people use checks anymore, and besides, that's not going to stop her from cashing them if she wants."
Adrien made a choked, horrified noise in the back of his throat. "It- it won't? How do you even know that?"
"But it might deter her, since that's a traceable crime," Aurore pointed out, her eyes gleaming. She snapped her fingers. "And as for the Ladyblog- if she's capable of creating a website that looks decent, she might give Alya a link for that. So that's still a problem-"
"-unless we notice that and bring it to the attention of the police!" Adrien exclaimed, sitting up straight. He winced. "I'd hate to get Alya in trouble, but otherwise people will be thinking that they're doing something good and helping people in need when actually, they're just giving Lila spending money. And if she told them that Lila gave her the link, then she'd get off pretty fast."
Marinette nodded. Alya would probably be a thundercloud that they had gone to the police first instead of her, but she couldn't say that they hadn't warned her. She just never listened when it came to Lila.
"So we can put in a line reminding people to check charities before they donate and to make sure that any links they follow for charities go to the actual website," Aurore finished. Her fingers tapped away at her keyboard. "My older brother is a computer whiz, so I can text him and ask about things people should look for to make sure that a site is the real deal. Then I can get that typed up and sent during study hall, so it'll go out today."
Marinette could only grin. Maybe Aurore could be hotheaded at times, but there was no denying that she could really pull through. "That would be great."
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  Unsurprisingly, Lila sold a sob story to Alya about her charity's website being down at the moment, so she couldn't provide a link right away.
"We're working on it, of course, because this is the best time of the year to get donations and we're going to fall so far behind with every day we miss, but the entire system is down and our tech guy is having trouble," Lila told Alya, looking positively wilted. "It's so upsetting! The longer it's down, the fewer people find out about our work, and the less budget we have to work with next year."
"That's terrible!" Alya exclaimed, frowning, and Marinette exchanged an exasperated look with Adrien. "I just wish there was a way to help..."
"Maybe you could post about our school charity instead, for the time being," Marinette suggested dryly. "Since Lila's charity is on the table for next year anyway."
"But we need budget for this year!" Lila repeated, and- yep, she was gritting her teeth. The glare that she flashed Marinette left no question that she had been trying to set up some sort of fake website and the email the night before had thrown her off. Either she was trying to make a more convincing website or- more likely- she was just hoping to wait until the reminder to be careful had faded from people's minds. Or she had had to abandon the online idea entirely in favor of throwing a pity party for herself in hopes of getting cash donations with the help of their classmates, if that hadn't already been the plan all along. "If we wait for a maybe next year, we could go into debt and collapse!"
Alya was looking worried now. "Marinette, are you sure that the student council can't switch charit-"
"It's all set up. We can't change anything, Alya, we established that yesterday." Marinette spared a glance at Lila, who was clearly working to keep a poker face. "Maybe Max can help you with your website issues, he's quite good at stuff like that. We wouldn't want you missing out on donations, after all."
"Oh, I couldn't," Lila simpered, glancing towards Max as well. "We, uh- well, my tech guy is back in Italy, so they wouldn't be able to work together, and he's quite protective of the system. Plus we were in the middle of upgrades when everything crashed, so that makes everything more complicated."
"We'll figure something out, Lila," Alya promised, patting the other girl's arm. Marinette took that as her cue to leave, but she wasn't going to go far. She needed to be able to overhear, after all. "We don't want those kids in Africa to suffer, after all! We can brainstorm before class."
Adrien caught Marinette's eye as she came back to her seat. "It sounds like she's just going to go another way, but isn't about to give up."
"No, she's got the idea of getting money into her head, and she's not about to give it up." Marinette kept her voice low, so that no one would overhear. "Which means that we need to come at the problem at a different angle. Any suggestions?"
Adrien looked unexpectedly delighted at being consulted, but then he paused, clearly not coming up with any ideas. "Uh."
"My first instinct would be to try to warn Alya and Rose and whoever else is going to get sucked in, but we all know how well that would go over," Marinette said, just to fill in the space. "They would clamp down and refuse to listen."
Adrien nodded. "Yeah. But I like what you did yesterday, where you made it sound like you would have gone along if you could and suggested trying next year. Then everyone thought that you weren't fighting against her-"
"-and was actually willing to listen!" Marinette finished, smiling. It was an approach that Tikki had suggested, and she was glad that it had worked. Well, sort of. It had worked in the moment, but just- apparently- pushed the problem off for later. "Yeah, that was nice."
"Maybe we could do something similar now," Adrien suggested. "And offer to be helpful by providing that link still. Like, it doesn't need the website, right? Just the charity name."
Marinette grinned. "Right. And there's no way that she can get around not telling anyone her charity's name. And if she does...well, either it's made up, or she's going to pick a real charity and we can find the real website."
"And congratulate Lila on her site getting back up so quickly," Adrien added with a small laugh. "It's a pain to deal with her, but I'm actually curious about what she's planning on doing going forward. Like, how long can she play this game? She's going to run out of escapes soon enough."
"Yeah, I don't know..." Marinette trailed off as Alya slid into her seat, and she and Adrien exchanged one last look before he turned back to the front, greeting Nino as his best friend entered the classroom.
"Man, I can't believe what bad luck Lila has, to have her charity's website crash at a time like this," Alya said glumly, sliding into her seat. "Lila is stressed about it, of course, but she has so many other obligations for her other charity work that she can't go out and do a collection, not that it would be easy with her throat still recovering from her laryngitis surgery. She can't be out in the cold for more than ten minutes without it causing a ton of pain, which can't be fun at all."
...Naturally.
"I want to help, but if we don't have a working link to put on the Ladyblog, I just don't know..." Alya trailed off. "I mean, we could do a door-to-door, I guess, but that only ever gets fairly minimal donations. And there's so many people who set up near the Eiffel Tower, we wouldn't have a chance. But- oh!" Alya perked up as another thought hit her. "We could put posters up at school, so more people know about it and maybe help us!"
Yeah, how about no.
"That's actually against school rules," Marinette said idly, flipping through her notebook as she waited for Ms. Bustier to call for a start to class. "All posters posted in the building have to be approved by Student Council normally, so that the walls don't get too cluttered, but there's an amendment to that that say that if the school is doing a charity fundraiser, posters promoting other charities can't go up during that time. I think it's to keep the effort from getting too splintered and distracted."
Alya slumped. "Oh."
That was not actually a lie, though clearly Adrien thought it was, if the slight frown on his face was anything to go by. Marinette had picked through the guidelines to make sure that she knew every rule that she could use to turn Lila's attempts aside, and apparently the Student Council had come up with and voted to implement that particular rule at some point in the past.
"Maybe you could do a surprise collection," Marinette suggested. "As a Christmas gift to Lila." She was improvising, admittedly, but this would be a good way to keep Alya and Rose and whoever else was getting sucked in from asking Lila too much and giving her chances to control the narrative. "If you ask her what the name of her charity is, and then you can use the website that we were using on Student Council to look at charities- it has all sorts of stats that you could use, information about charities and their work. That way, you don't need to bother Lila for all that when she's so busy."
"Oh, good idea!" Alya exclaimed. She grabbed Marinette's arm. "You know, none of the rest of us has ever organized any sort of charity fundraiser before- if we put you in charge of that-"
"I'm already busy, Alya," Marinette pointed out. She wasn't about to go make a fool of herself collecting money for a charity that didn't exist, not when she had a million other things to do. "The fundraiser for the school is already going to take up all of my time. I can send you the link that we used, but that's it."
"Oh, but-"
"She already said no, Alya," Adrien cut in, so Marinette didn't have to. "Marinette was telling me about that entire process yesterday, and it sounds like a lot of work and planning to pull something off at the level the school is planning. Asking her to plan another thing on top of that for you, instead of doing it yourself- that's not fair to her."
"I just thought that it might be a good way to repair the bad blood between the two of them!" Alya objected, frowning. "Since Marinette wasn't very welcoming when Lila first arrived."
Marinette narrowly withheld a snort. Gee, I wonder why?
"But if you're busy, I guess you can wait to try to mend that bridge later," Alya added. She sighed. "We probably won't be able to raise as much money, though, since we don't have your experience."
"Mmm," Marinette managed noncommittally, ignoring the clear attempt at a guilt-trip in favor of checking her email on her phone. Alya really had been spending too much time with Lila if she was starting to act just the same. Hopefully she would cut that out after Lila's lies had been exposed and everyone realized what a manipulator she was.
Marinette's phone lit up with a text, and she didn't hesitate to open it at once.
Adrien: Remember, if you commit homicide, you won't be around to gloat when people discover the lies.
Marinette snorted in amusement.
Marinette: I'm going to gloat for a solid MONTH after she gets found out. I wasn't very welcoming? Try SHE was a bully from the start and I wasn't about to tolerate that.
In front of her, Adrien's head gave a tiny nod as he put his phone away, just in time to start class. Marinette locked her phone and put it away, resigning herself to what was probably going to be a week of poorly-concealed efforts to get her into the extra fundraising before Alya either dropped it or realized that something was up with Lila's "charity".
At least now she had Adrien on her side.
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  The school fundraiser was going well as they marched steadily closer towards the holidays, their online portal showing just how much money had already been raised by people going through the link that they had both sent out and posted on the school site. There was going to be a bake sale before the break too, with each family asked to donate two dozen cookies for them to sell at their booths near City Hall and (courtesy of Chloe) in the Grand Paris.
Marinette was really happy. People were being generous, and it really was a very deserving charity to receive the funds. On top of that, Adrien had asked for her help in baking his family's two dozen cookies, so they would get to hang out together.
(She was going to ignore the fact that Alya had tried to convince her to make another extra two dozen cookies because Lila "wasn't going to have time" because "all of her charity work"; that attempt had fallen flat when Marinette had just point-blank asked Alya why, exactly, Alya didn't just do that herself. At least with Adrien, he was just a novice baker and was going to be actively participating in the baking, but he just wanted help to be sure that his attempt turned out edible and it was a good excuse to hang out with one of his friends.)
And possibly best of all...well, Aurore's tech-savvy older brother had pulled through for them again.
"I was looking at the email that we had on file for Lila, and something about it just didn't seem right," Aurore told them as they sat together in a private study room in back of the library over lunch. "The domain on it, to be exact, because it was '.net' instead of, oh, I don't know, something actually related to the government. And my brother agreed, so we did a little searching."
Marinette was pretty sure that her jaw was on the ground. Next to her, Adrien wasn't doing much better. "You mean she was keeping her mom from finding out about everything school-related? I wondered how she got away with skipping so much school! And she was probably emailing as her mom, too, to confirm whatever stories she was telling."
Aurore grinned. "Exactly. So we did some digging, and found Mrs. Rossi's actual email. It's almost the same, just with a different domain. So I'm trying to think of what to send that wouldn't sound weird, because obviously we need confirmation that this is the right address so we can get Mr. Damocles to change it for the school system, but I don't want to come off as accusing or anything and have her tip Lila off accidentally."
Marinette exchanged a look with Adrien as she thought about it. "Well, we could just send the fundraiser email again with a comment about how we think that maybe her email was mis-entered before and is this one the correct one that we should be using. That's pretty straightforward and it asks for a response, and she might not even think to say anything about it to Lila."
"Ooh, I like that." Aurore typed that in at once, giving it a quick once-over to make sure that there weren't any errors and that the email had been entered correctly before sending it. "So, what else is going on in Ms. Bustier's homeroom? Anything new with the not-a-charity?"
"Alya's been confused about why our watchdog site doesn't list anything about Lila's 'charity'- she decided to go for the make-one-up route, apparently- and she's still been trying to find stuff on it just on Google, but apparently no connection has been made," Marinette told them, trying not to roll her eyes. "I know she and Rose were talking about trying to just go ahead with a collection of sorts anyway, so I forwarded an email talking about the importance of keeping track of how much money they raised, down to the last cent, in a ledger sort of thing." She couldn't hold back the grin. "Which Rose is really into. So even though they're trying to collect money for Lila still, at the end she won't be able to keep any of it because there'll be record of how much money they collected."
"Which, if we get in contact with Mrs. Rossi, we can make sure that that gets paid back in full!" Adrien exclaimed, scooping Marinette up in a hug for a long few seconds. Marinette prayed that she wouldn't turn red and make things weird. "Genius!"
"As long as Rose doesn't give that to Lila," Aurore pointed out. She raised an eyebrow at Marinette's head-shake. "No? You've already taken care of that?"
"She'll give Lila an electronic copy, but not the hard copy. I suggested that she might want to hold onto that to show what she did for future charity work. Which I still think is a good idea, even if Lila's charity is a sham. It doesn't change the fact that she was doing all of the bookkeeping."
Aurore made a face. "I am so glad that Samuel is doing our bookkeeping for the non-online donations, because that stuff is not fun. It's really fiddly, and if anything gets off..."
Marinette nodded. Things had gotten off fairly early on, and she had head Samuel- another member of Student Council- complaining about having to go through everything to figure out where his mistake was. Since then, he did regular, frequent checks so that he wouldn't have to go through absolutely everything again, just the most frequent donations. Admittedly, Rose was working with much smaller amounts of money- most people wanted more information on what they were donating to than just the name and "helping kids in Africa" if they were going to toss more than an euro or two into the collections basket- but it was still good practice.
Aurore's computer let out a ding, and she pulled up the student council email at once. "We already got a response! Mrs. Rossi says that yes, this one is correct, please keep using it and thank you for catching the error and were there any other recent emails that she might have missed. I'm going to forward this to Mr. Damocles with a message to note the change in email address, just a second- and done."
"Nice job," Marinette told her, leaning across the table to bump fists with Aurore. After a second's thought, she fist-bumped Adrien, too, so that he wouldn't feel left out. "That's one more thing off of our plates."
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  Their fundraiser finished right before holiday break with a silent auction, with all of the items up for purchase having been donated by parents, teachers, extended family members, community business owners, and- in the case of an array of signed CD cases and posters- Jagged Stone, Clara Nightingale, and several of their musician buddies, after Marinette had approached Jagged Stone with the request.
And of course, everyone was invited. Posters had been put up outside of the school and emails had been sent out, reminding everyone about the time and date and their charity, plus attaching a list of the items up for auction to get people's interest.
"My mom so wanted to make it, but work came up," Lila told several of their classmates when she arrived at the auction, looking sad. "And there were several things that she was really interested in, like the-"
"Ooh, barf, I can see what you mean," Aurore said, materializing at Marinette's side and wrinkling her nose at Lila. "That's a pretty obvious ploy to get people to buy things for her, isn't it? Or at least to pitch in some of their own money to help her, so that she won't have to pay them back."
Marinette nodded. It really was disgusting, but at least now Lila was moving off with the group towards one of the items so that they didn't have to hear her. She was steering clear of the signed Jagged Stone things, oddly enough, but maybe that would be a dead giveaway that she didn't actually know him. After all, Jagged Stone would sign anything put in front of him, so her going out of her way to buy a signed item when she was supposedly on great terms with him would be pretty strange.
"Do you think her mom actually can't make it, or Lila just assumed that she wouldn't know about the auction and didn't tell her?" Adrien asked. His arm was tucked through Marinette's, though she was pretty sure that it was just so that he wouldn't lose her in the crowd. "Is the fake email still on the list?"
Aurore nodded. "Yeah, up until this morning. I cleared it off so that there wouldn't be any confusion going forward."
"And I would place bets on Lila assuming that her mom doesn't know anything," Marinette added. "She wouldn't want to risk anyone asking her mom about her charity." She grinned and pointed as she noticed someone new stepping into the school. "And look, over there."
The other two looked. There, standing in the entryway and looking around, was Mrs. Rossi. She really didn't look much like Lila, but it was easy enough to recognize her from her official embassy photo.
(Her official embassy photo, where she wasn't listed as the actual ambassador, but just one of the embassy staff, but that- well, that was an interesting little tidbit that Marinette was going to sit on for a little bit longer.)
"Oh, she's spotted Lila," Aurore said gleefully, craning her neck to follow Mrs. Rossi as she wove through the crowds. "And- whoops, Lila sees her!"
Marinette hastily smothered a laugh. If Lila's expression was anything to go by, she definitely hadn't realized that her mom was getting emails from the school and was going to be coming. She had never seen the other girl look so pale before.
"I'd ask if I should go get some of that amazing-smelling popcorn that they're selling so that we can watch, but honestly, I kind of just want to let things take their course and find out later," Adrien said, glancing down at Marinette. "There's some pretty cool items up for auction that I want to check out."
Marinette considered that. On one hand, she wanted to watch Lila's downfall. On the other... well, she had been keeping an eye on the whole Lila fiasco for a while now, and she was kind of tired of it. It would probably be a bit awkward to watch, too, and there was no guarantee that it would happen right away, and they were too far away to hear anything besides.
...yeah, her decision was pretty well made.
"That sounds like fun," Marinette told him, before glancing over at Aurore. "What about you?"
"I might go point Mr. Damocles in her direction," Aurore commented, glancing around the crowd. "Or maybe that can wait until later, since I don't want to throw everything at Mrs. Rossi at once and disrupt the auction with an akumatization." She sent them a slightly sheepish grin. "But you know I like my gossip, so..."
Marinette had to laugh. That was so very Aurore. "All right. We'll bump into you later, then."
Aurore grinned in return, and then was off. Marinette watched her go for a moment, then let Adrien lead the way off into the crowds surrounding the tables. It was amazing to be able to sit back and relax after the past weeks of planning and making sure that everything, from the online link to the cookie sale to this, was going to go off without a hitch. They were well on track raise more money this year than they had any other year, and that was amazing.
And to think that she had had a hand in setting all of this up...well, Marinette just couldn't be prouder.
It was fun investigating all of the donations with Adrien, even though- as part of Student Council and also part of the team that had photographed and logged all of the donated items- she had seen them all before. Marinette couldn't help but peek at the bids despite herself, grinning when she saw some of the higher ones.
"This is amazing," Adrien commented once they had made the rounds and had gone to browse through the assorted refreshments available for purchase. "There were a lot of nice things donated. And people are definitely bidding plenty of money."
"Yeah, some people will spend more to win the prize than it's worth," Marinette told him. "Like with the voucher for stuff from our bakery- the top bid right now is for more than the value of the voucher. It's interesting, but I think that people see it as buying the item, and then making a donation on top. Or something, I don't know."
"That's really cool," Adrien commented, then pointed. "Oh, look, Nathalie and the Gorilla are here! They said that they might show up and do some shopping. I honestly thought that Nathalie was just saying that to be nice, because she's been sick and hasn't wanted to go out, but I guess she's been feeling better lately."
"Oh, that's good," Marinette said, before a memory made her frown. "Wait, I thought you commented on her being sick, like, three months ago. Is she still having problems?"
Adrien shrugged, but he was frowning, too. "I don't know. She had been having these weak, dizzy spells like Mom used to before she disappeared for a bit before I commented on it at school, I think. Maybe whatever treatment she was getting finally kicked in, I don't know."
Marinette frowned even deeper. Nathalie had been showing the same symptoms as Adrien's mom before she vanished? That was a really weird coincidence. And for both of them- presumably both, at least- to have those same symptoms for an extended period of time?
If Mrs. Agreste and Nathalie had been related, Marinette might have guessed that it was a genetic thing. But since they weren't- again, that was an assumption- then the chances of them both separately having the same condition...
"I cannot believe that I fell for such a manipulative, thieving, disgusting liar!"
Alya materialized at Marinette's side, clearly steaming. Rose, Mylène, and Juleka weren't far behind her. Rose looked like she was close to tears, and the other two just looked lost.
"Pardon?" Adrien asked politely, but Marinette could see the amusement glimmering in his eyes.
"Lila's been leading us all around by the nose, making up stories about her life and about her nonexistent charity- and I've missed a dozen akuma attacks because I was wandering around in the cold, trying to raise money for her! I offered to make a posting on the Ladyblog so that I could put up a link to her site to raise more money! She was probably just planning on pocketing it all!" Alya scowled deeper. "I can't believe we fell for it! And aren't you even surprised?" she demanded when neither Adrien nor Marinette reacted. "At all?"
"Are we meant to be?" Adrien asked dryly. "After Marinette's spent so long calling Lila a liar?"
Alya faltered for a moment, then scowled deeper. "You- you knew, but you didn't warn us?"
"Yes, because pointing out the obvious lies worked so well the first several dozen times I did it," Marinette said, adopting the same dry tone that Adrien had used. "And I gave you the watchdog charity link to use. I rather thought that its complete lack of anything about Lila's charity might tip you off."
Alya faltered. "Oh."
"But we still gave Lila money that was meant for charity," Rose said tearfully. Juleka pulled her to her side, trying to comfort her. "And it was a decent amount, too."
"You have your log, right?" Marinette reminded her. "If you tell Lila's mom how much Lila got for her 'charity', then I bet that she can get that money back to you and you can donate it to another charity."
Rose perked up at once, tears drying up magically. "Oh, that's right! We can still put that money to good use! I'm glad you suggested that we keep track of everything, Marinette."
"Yeah," Juleka agreed. "Lila sucks, but at least we can get the money back."
"We should go talk to Lila's mom before she leaves," Rose decided. She dug in her bag, pulling out the ledger notebook that she had been using for their charity collections. "Aha! Yes, I have the amount we gave Lila yesterday written here. C'mon, let's go make sure that Mrs. Rossi knows!"
"Well, all's well that ends well," Adrien said cheerfully as the other girls headed off. "I bet this isn't how Mrs. Rossi saw her evening going, and Lila definitely wasn't expecting any of this, but at least now the adults can figure everything out and Lila can actually see some consequences. And hopefully next semester, there'll be less drama now that she'll be restrained- or gone, if Mrs. Rossi or Mr. Damocles decides that Lila staying here wouldn't be a good idea."
"Hopefully," Marinette agreed. She grinned over at Adrien. "But that's enough worrying about Lila and her nonsense for tonight. I think we should just sit back and enjoy the evening, don't you?"
Adrien beamed back. "I couldn't agree more."
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flutteringphalanges · 4 years ago
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Summary:  “Am I in Hell?” Agatha’s voice was hoarse, a hint of fear in her tone. “That depends on your definition,” Dracula answered. “Perhaps.” His fingers felt cool against her burning skin, the fever raging through her body. “If you’re going to kill me, then do it,” she mumbled. The count chuckled, gazing into her eyes. “On the contrary,” he smirked. “I’m going to save you.”
((In which Dracula cares for a gravely ill Agatha))
Characters: Agatha Van Helsing/Dracula
Rating: M
Read on FFN and AO3
A/N:  Happy New Year's Eve AND happy Dracula 2020's First Year Anniversary Eve! I thought about posting this tomorrow, but I thought I made you guys wait long enough. Plus wanted to end 2020 on a good note since, well, this year has been...yeah...ANYWAY, hope you enjoy it! Feedback/likes/reblogs are greatly loved and appreciated! -Jen
                                              Chapter Twelve
Agatha leaned over the bucket again and retched the contents of her stomach out for what seemed like the umpteenth time that day. The thick, tar like liquid had already begun to congeal as most old blood does. This time around it belong to a brown bear the Count had swiftly taken out in the mountains. The third animal the couple had tried to test Agatha's theory that she didn't need to survive off of humans. So far every attempt had ended in failure.
"You're growing weaker." Dracula commented, his voice impatient and edged with worry. "And if you keep up at this rate, you risk going feral." He wasn't sure how true his implications were, but at this rate, the former nun was endangering her well being. "Please, Agatha, be reasonable. It isn't a kill if I do it for you."
"And yet it would still be on my conscience." His lover sighed, wiping the side of her mouth with her sleeve. "If I am to live forever, I simply cannot have that." She swallowed, tasting the bitter bile on her tongue. "We'll keep trying. Surely there is something out there. No creature is designed to survive on one given source from a singular thing. Humans in our case."
The elder vampire groaned in response, clearly tired by his beloved's humanity that had managed to survive during her transformation. Agatha gently rested a hand on his arm, her eyes glancing up to meet his.
"Please." She said in a soft, yet adamant voice. "I want to keep going."
"If something begins to happen. If you start to change or..." His words seemed to fade off. "If it comes down to it, I will do what's in your best interest, Agatha. Even if you hate me for a millennium for doing it." Once more he paused. "I love you."
"I know." She smiled. "Which is why we will find a solution. Together." The corners of her lips twitched into a faint smirk. "And who knows, when we do, perhaps even you will convert."
Dracula snorted and rolled his eyes. "I hate to dash your hopes, but I can almost guarantee that will not be happening. I have an acquired taste and standards to boot. If we are successful at finding an alternative, I'll leave the riches to you." He leaned in close to her ear, his breath tickling and sending a shiver up Agatha's spine. "You truly have no idea what you are missing out on. The knowledge. The stories. Everything a filthy animal's blood lacks. Deep down, I know there is an inkling of curiosity within you."
The former nun took a step back, locking eyes with him. "That's what books are for. Reliable and only harmful from their papercuts. I will not be swayed from my decision, Count Dracula." Exhaling, she glanced around the room. "So we've tried deer, bear, rabbit...perhaps livestock is our next bet. Though, I do dislike the idea of stealing someone's property."
"You can't have it both ways, Agatha." Dracula frowned, clearly irritated by her stubborn, selfless nature. "Ultimately, the end result won't leave you with the happiest outcome, but stealing as you so referred to it is less sinful than murder." He scoffed at his words. "Then again, we both know our opinions on religion. Or lack thereof."
"...We could always start a farm?" Agatha spoke after a moment's pause. "After centuries, it wouldn't hurt for you to gain a hobby. One that would benefit me and keep you out of trouble." She chuckled, the laugh laced with exhaustion. "Imagine a flock of chickens. You could sell their eggs at the village market...if one was held at night, of course."
"And I think all of this animal blood has gotten to that pretty little mind of yours." Dracula said, cupping her face between his large hands. "Come, you need your rest. We can at least agree on that."
He was right on that account. She was feeling rather drained. Not to mention nauseated from the bear. The taste still lingered on the back of her tongue. Nodding her head, she took the vampire's hand and followed him down the long stretch of hallway to where their coffin was located. It wasn't the nicest looking thing, more so an oversized box filled with dirt. But Dracula was insistent on sleeping together and promised soon he'd have something specially made. Agatha couldn't help but wonder how someone would go about commissioning a luxury couple's casket. An interesting conversation indeed.
"I really hate that we have to sleep in dirt." Agatha grimaced as Dracula lifted the lid. "I don't care how restful it may be, waking up covered in grime isn't at all pleasant."
"You are by far the fussiest vampire I've ever created." Her lover laughed, shaking his head in amusement. "No one has ever voiced as many opinions as you. Or demands for that matter."
"Like you, I have standards...they just are different than yours." The former nun replied, eyeing the large box incredulously. "One day, when I have enough strength to do so, I'm going to look into these vampiric rites of yours." She could tell by the look on his face the idea didn't excite him. "Oh please, it isn't like I plan to shove a stake through my heart. Though, I am well aware that was a failed attempt on Jonathan Harker's part."
"To bed with you." The Count ushered, helping her into their place of rest. "Enough of this nonsense. It's time to take a nap while I go out and...borrow some farm animals. I hope you realize how much I care for you, I don't haul a full grown cow back to the castle for just anyone."
"Oh so heroic." Agatha snorted, pursing her lips as Dracula leaned in to kiss her. "Blatantly asking for praise rather than quietly accepting the fact that I truly appreciate all you do. If I am fussy, you are needy."
A pleasant form of bickering. Usually they had heated discussions-often of which ended in a passionate session of fucking. But tonight was different. Perhaps his worry for Agatha caused the flame to momentarily simmer down. Messed with his ability to be both suave and an ass. She looked beautiful lying there in the coffin she clearly despised, and though part of him wanted nothing more than to take her now, he knew it needed to wait. She was hungry. Needed to feed. And the consequences of not doing that were far from good.
"Name calling is childish, my dear nun." Dracula smirked knowing the irony behind it. "Now, please have enough sense to sleep. I'm losing moonlight by the hour and if I'm to get back here before dawn, I must leave now." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Stay."
"I'm not some hound." She called after him from the confines of the casket. "I can come and go as I please…" Agatha gazed up at the coffin lid that now blocked her view of the room. "For now, I just choose to accept that perhaps you are right about resting. Sleep does sound agreeable."
The former nun could've sworn she heard Dracula answer, but her mind had already started to grow foggy. Taking in an unnecessary breath, she closed her eyes and tried not to focus on the strange feeling in her stomach. She was so tired. So worn out. So weary that it didn't take long for her to slip away from reality and into her dreams.
Even in the darkness, Agatha recognized the place from where she stood. Though far emptier and dusty, it was an unmistakable memory implanted in her mind. The old inn that she had taken refuge in soon after her escape from the ruins of what had been St. Mary's convent and her lost sisters.
Taking a step forward, the former nun felt loose stone crumble underneath her feet. Glancing down, she lightly kicked a rock on the ground and watched as it bounced across the room, hitting the wall opposite her. She wasn't exactly sure why she was here. It was a dream, for sure, but it oddly felt real at the same time.
"Agatha?"
The voice was soft, meek, and the woman knew instantly who the speaker was. From the shadows, as timid as they day they met, Mina stepped out. She wore the same, blue habit as the day they had departed, blonde hair cascading down her shoulders. A cold draft came in from a neglected open window, blowing her locks gently. The smell was intoxicating.
"Mina?" Agatha whispered, her voice hoarse. "Why are you...you need to go! Go now!" She covered her nose, throat burning. It was only a dream. Only a dream. And yet, it felt so horribly real. "Go now!"
But the other woman, oblivious to the fact her friend was now a vampire, had a look of relief plastered across her features. "You disappeared." She said, stepping closer Agatha who, in turn, backed up against the wall. "I thought I'd never see you again. Where did you go?!"
"Mina, please!" Agatha pleaded, biting down so hard on her bottom lip she could taste her own blood. "You must go now. You're in danger!"
"It's alright now." The young woman insisted, closing the distance between her and the vampire. "Now that we are together again, we can...Good God, Agatha, what's happened to your eyes?!"
The once flat edges of her teeth had begun to grow pointed and a low guttural sound rumbled deep from the bottom of Agatha's throat. She stared back hungrily at Mina, the last reminisce of control she fought to hold disappearing. The vampire stepped forward, a prisoner to her own thirsty as her victim stared back in horror. She was so thirsty. So very, very thirsty…
"Agatha?" Mina whispered weakly. "Agatha, please!"
But the rational, humane side of the former nun was gone. Mina's pleas of mercy falling on deaf ears. Without so much as a second thought. A second consideration. She lunged towards the woman, knocking her onto the ground. As her sharp nails dug into the woman's flesh, she gazed down and readied to bury her fangs into…
"AGATHA!"
Agatha's eyes shot wide open, startled awake by the sound of Dracula's voice. She looked up and saw the other vampire staring down at her in utter astonishment, his hands gripping either of her shoulders as if he'd been trying to hold her down.
"It's alright. It's alright. You were having a nightmare." He attempted to assure her as her head whipped around wildly. "I've been trying to wake you up."
"Mina…" Agatha panted, as if needing to breathe. "Mina...I tried to warn her...tried to stop myself…" She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut. "I couldn't control it." When she opened them again, the former nun looked deeply into her lover's eyes. "I was so thirsty…"
Dracula's lips pressed into a thin line as if he was trying to hold back on saying something. It wasn't until Agatha gathered herself enough that she really took in what the other vampire had yet to admit. Deep, long claw marks scraped the inside of their coffin resembling those of an animal trying to get out. Agatha looked down and noticed chips of wood sprinkled across her.
"Did I…" She swallowed, her stomach twisting. "Was that...me?"
"We're running out of time, Agatha." The other vampire said quietly. "If we don't figure things soon enough, it's only going to get worse. I'm not willing to let that happen." He paused, considering his next words carefully. "That means, I'll have no choice but to teach you how to hunt."
Agatha said nothing, but stared at the deep marks on the coffin. She thought of her dream. Of Mina. Of all of this. Swallowing, she ran a hand through her messy hair and sighed.
"Fine." She relented. "Teach me."
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