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#or maybe Squirrel Machine
shadow-coolness · 4 months
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These 2 are dating in this continuity…remember that because if i had to then so do you.
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forecast0ctopus · 2 months
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You're a furry!?!? WHAT'S YOUR FURSONA CAN WE SEE IT PLEASE?!
sdhkfj im so sorry but im not (?) a furry.....well depending on who you ask i guess? i've made sonic and pony characters before just for kicks which kind of counts? though ik some people would vehemently disagree with that. i think fursonas and all are super cool but tbh im not much into making OCs in general, human or otherwise ik youre coming off the anthrocon post - a good friend of mine decided she was gonna go, i knew a good place to stay in pittsburgh, and i like going to events :] it was super fun and the fursuits there were incredible!! super impressed with it all. we went and saw floor wars too and idk how people can dance so good in full suits but its crazy..
if my warrior cats phase lasted longer than a year i suspect i wouldve gone the furry route but percy jackson and danny phantom and stuff infected my brain instead and put me on a different path
though if i ever do make a fursona ill for sure post it here!!
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exculis · 7 months
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the fact that im like. omg 50 dollars a month!! that will change my life!!! the bar was on the floor man. 25 dollars a month wouldve changed my life.
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imaginedisish · 2 months
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Inside Out (Logan Howlett x f!reader)
A/N: Oh my god I'm back again. This is another soft!Logan fic. I couldn't hold myself back from writing this one. The next fic I have planned is going to be devious and diabolical, I promise, but for now, here's another angsty, soft and smutty Logan one shot. Couldn't stop listening to "Inside Out" by Duster while writing this one. I think it fits. Hope you guys enjoy :)
Summary: After a tense battle, you and Logan have it out (in more ways than one).
Warnings: SMUT! 18+ Minors DNI! Oral (f!receiving), Fingering, PIV (unprotected...wrap it up, this is fiction!), Allusions to PTSD/mental health, Frenemies to Lovers, Fem!reader, AFAB!reader, Mutant!reader, Telepathic!reader (with heightened senses/visions), cannon typical violence/allusions to death, non-sexual intimacy becomes sexual intimacy (not sure if that warrants a warning), angry!Logan, reader has hair (length/texture/color not described!) major angst, probably grammatical errors, I think that's everything.
Word Count: 4477 wow
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You and Logan are surrounded. You can hear the other members of the team nearby in the forest, screaming, grunting, fighting. Guns going off, ricocheting against trees. And now, there is a circle of government-sanctioned mutant hunters pointing their machine guns and rifles directly at the two of you. 
Your heart beats out of your chest. How the fuck are you going to get out of this? It seems impossible. Sure, you and Logan can regenerate, but not nearly fast enough. You’re outnumbered 2 to at least 40, and more to come. Maybe this is the end. Maybe there’s no going home this time. 
But then, an idea crosses your mind. Briefly. A flash. A shot in the dark. But it’s there. And if you’re strong enough, it might just work.
You wince as another presence weaves itself through the fabric of your thoughts. No, Charles shouts in your mind. It’s too dangerous. 
You shake him off, forcing up your mental shields. Logan recognizes that look on your face. He can tell you’re up to something. He has always been able to read you like a book. 
“Don’t you dare put yourself in danger,” he mutters under his breath so only you can hear him. “We are all walking out of here, and you’re no exception.”
You close your eyes. “When I tell you to get down, you get down.”
“Absolutely not!” His nostrils flare. The government agents cock their guns. 
“Lo, get down.”
“Fuck no!”
You can feel it coming—feel their fingers bracing their triggers. Pulling. Pulling. Pulling. Everything is silent for a moment. You can hear everything. Nothing. There’s a squirrel running up a tree just a few feet away. A cold breeze sweeps through your legs. Peace. 
It never lasts long, does it?
“NOW!”
BANG! The shots ring out, echoing against the branches, the sound shaking the trees. 
With half your focus, you shove Logan to the ground, and with the other, you stop each and every bullet pointed in your direction. You stop the agents too, freezing them in their places. Dense, heavy sweat builds upon your brow. You’re trembling, your hands stretched out towards Logan and the agents, but you’re still in control. You can hold on a bit longer.  
You swallow harshly, forcing the bullets to rain down to the ground. With the twist of your hand, you remove the magazines from each of the guns and unload them, the ammunition falling to the ground, too. With the agents still under your control, you bend their wrists just enough so that they sprain; just enough so that they can’t fight back. 
And then comes that sudden, familiar shift in your body and in your mind. You’re weakening, losing control, struggling to breathe. You growl in agony, your head ready burst from the pressure of hanging on too long—but you have to finish this. You have to save your friends. 
You have to save Logan. 
With one final push of your hand, you send the government agents flying deep into the forest, screaming in pain at the sheer force it takes. You fall to your knees, down on the ground next to Logan. You try to catch your breath, your chest heaving rapidly. You cough, choking on your own breath and saliva as the taste of metal burns at the back of your throat. You swallow it all down. One more second of that, or a few more agents to fend off, and you might not have made it. You might have died trying. 
You regain some of your energy after a few moments on the ground. It’s not until you try to stand that you notice Logan’s hand on your back. He tries to help you up, but you shake him off. 
“I’m fine,” you protest, dusting off your uniform. 
“Fine?” Fuck. He’s angry. “You call that fine? You almost died!”
You turn to face him. He wants anger? Oh, you can show him what anger fucking looks like. “We would be dead if I didn’t do that! I did what I had to do!”
He prowls toward you. His claws are still out. “Are you fucking crazy?” He’s backing you into a tree now. “Tell me, what the fuck was that? What did you think you were doing?” He retracts his claws as he pins his hands into the tree, right next to your head. The bark scratches into the rips in your uniform. 
You condescendingly poke his chest with your pointer figure. If he’s going to treat you like a child, you’re going to do the same to him. “Saving your ass, that’s what!” You shout back. 
“This is not the time or place for you two to have it out.” Scott’s grating voice fills your ears. He is the last person’s opinion you’d like to hear right now.
You and Logan snap your heads to face him. “Shut the fuck up, Scott!” You spit in unison. He throws his hands up and backs away. 
“You could’ve gotten yourself killed!” Logan practically growls. 
You shake your head, your nostrils flaring. “I was protecting you!” You shout. “And I did! It worked!”
The rest of the team starts to board the jet, but Logan shows no sign of budging. Storm crosses her arms as she stands in front of the ramp. “Logan, let’s go.” 
He doesn’t move an inch, still caging you in. “I’ve got the bike. I’ll take her with me.”
“My bike!” Scott calls from just inside the ship. Logan shoots him a death stare. Even you roll your eyes at the comment. 
“Logan,” Charles chides from next to Storm, his voice a warning. 
You tilt your head past Logan to see Charles. “It’s fine. I’ll go with him. We’ll meet you guys at the mansion.” 
Charles nods. You swear you can see a faint smirk spread across his face, but he’s turning around and wheeling himself up the ramp before you can truly make out his expression. 
The ramp shuts behind him, and the jet powers up to leave. “So how are we settling this, hm?” You ask, cockily. Logan works his jaw, staring down at you with a fury you’re not quite sure you’ve seen before. “What would you like to do, bub?” You smirk. “What, you gonna tell me we’re supposed to be a team or something? Thought that wasn’t your style.” You know you’re being harsh, using his own words against him, ripping into him, but you don’t care. The jet takes off, but neither you nor Logan pay it any mind. 
His tongue swipes his bottom lip, and you can’t help but watch. You try to ignore how much you like the sight of it. Of him. 
“Never,” he seethes, not wavering an inch. “Never do anything like that again.”
“Why?” Is all you ask, knowing full well you’re poking the bear. “It’s nothing you wouldn’t have done.”
He ignores you and presses on. “I swear to God, if anything ever happens to you, I will punch a fucking hole in the goddamn universe so big that…” He trails off, his eyes searching your face. There’s a shift in his expression. “So fucking big that…” But he still doesn’t finish the sentence. His eyes are glossed over, like he’s holding back tears. 
You’re suddenly embarrassed. You can’t keep his stare, his eyes locked on you. You look down at the leaf-covered ground, and you realize just how dirty you are. Blood on your hands, under your nails, caked into your skin. You’re finally understanding the gravity of the moment—of what could have been if your plan didn’t work. 
“It was the only way,” you pause, feeling tears sting behind your sinuses, burning as they reach your eyes. “Only way I saw it ending without you d-dying.” You have to choke the words out. “C-couldn’t lose you,” you mutter, hoping he can’t hear you. 
“And what?” He says, not backing down. “You think you’re the only one with something to lose?”
“N-no,” you stutter softly. “That’s not what I meant at all. I just—”
“I’d rather die than live in a world without you.” He says finally. He pushes himself off the tree and away from you. He turns, walking towards wherever he parked the bike. 
You look at his back in disbelief. “W-what?” “You fucking heard me,” he shouts, not bothering to stop and wait for you or to elaborate further. You push your back off the tree and follow him through the forest. 
“Slow down!” You call out, still not quite fully recovered from using your powers. But he keeps pressing forward. “Logan!” You call again. “Please, I—” You stumble a bit, almost falling over, but you catch yourself just in time. You reach out to a tree for support, gripping a low branch tightly in your hand. You suck in deep, shaky breaths as you let your eyes fall closed. 
Logan shouts your name in the near distance, his voice filled with panic. His footsteps crunch the leaves of the forest floor. You can tell he’s sprinting with every twig that cracks beneath his boots. “Fuck, are you okay?” He’s next to you now, his arms enveloping you, reaching around your waist to offer you support. 
You can feel your tears bubbling to the surface, threatening to burst. “I’m sorry,” you mumble, opening your eyes to look up at him. “I just didn’t see any other way.”
“I know.” His voice is gentler now, calmer. He helps you straighten up, taking a tentative step and watching as you take one too. He walks slowly, making sure not to rush you, keeping an eye on your every move. “I’m sorry too,” he says. “What you do…you just scare me sometimes.”
You hope he doesn’t see the tear that slips out the corner of your eye and down your cheek. “I scare myself. I still can’t control my powers. I know I’m a monster.” You can see the bike in the distance, so you take another step, but Logan stops. “I just feel so inside out sometimes, like I can’t be comfortable in my own head never mind my own skin.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” His voice is steady now, firm. His grip around your waist tightens, keeping you in place. “You’re not a monster. You’re beautiful—” He cuts himself off. “What you can do, is beautiful.”
“Then what is it that scares you?” You need to know. 
“You’re just so selfless. What you did back there…” He pauses. “You knew you could die. I saw it in the way you were standing. The way you looked at me. It was reckless.”
He searches your face, your eyes, your lips for an answer. “You’re no better,” you huff out. Logan smirks, guiding you towards the bike yet again. “It’s just what you do when you care about someone.”
“I know.” His lips are pressed against the shell of your ear. “I know,” he repeats. 
He helps you onto the back of the bike, holding your hips as you straddle the seat. His hands linger longer than they should. He squeezes softly before letting go and walking to the front. He straddles the bike himself, grabbing the key from his jacket pocket and turning it into the ignition. The bike springs to life. 
“Hang on, alright?” He calls out over the roar of the engine. You nod against his back, slipping your arms under his jacket and around his waist. He kicks the stand up, and the bike rumbles underneath you as he presses on the gas. You tighten your hold on him as the bike jolts forward. 
You rest your head on his back, letting yourself fold over him completely. He’s warm and solid underneath you. You shut your eyes, too tired to watch the tires speed across the black pavement. Aside from the engine, the tires against the street below, and the wind, there’s no sound. No one around. It’s just you and Logan. Alone. 
You feel him breathe in deeply. “Don’t know what I’d do if you didn’t make it.”  You can feel the words reverberate in his back. “I mean it.”
“But I did,” you say, lifting your head so that you can speak against his ear. “I’m right here.” He hums in affirmation, and you rest your head on his back again. You hesitantly reach your hands under his shirt this time, arms wrapping around him as tight as possible. You know this is pushing the boundaries of your “friendship,” but he doesn’t stop you—doesn’t push you away. He just hums again. “I’m not going anywhere,” you murmur, and shut your eyes. 
“Good.”
The ride back to the mansion isn’t terribly long, and you wish it could’ve been longer. Logan drives the bike into the garage, taking the keys out of the ignition and kicking out the stand. You lift your head, and before you can even think of getting up on your own, Logan is wrapping his arms around your body and lifting you off the seat. 
You let him hold you there for a moment. You try to tell yourself that this is just a hug between friends, that this whole situation is what happens when you care about someone too much. But it’s hard to lie to yourself when you feel so impossibly strongly about someone. 
He drops his arms from your body and silently takes your hand in his. He guides you to the door that leads to the mansion, keeping you close. 
It’s dark once you step inside. Everyone must have gone to bed. It likely took you and Logan five times as long as the jet to get back to the mansion. Quiet fills the halls. There’s not a stir, not a creak, not a step. You can sense that everyone is asleep, or at least in their rooms. 
“Lo?” You whisper. He squeezes your hand. A surge of confidence racks through you. “Can you stay with me?” You’re not quite sure what you mean by that—what you expect him to do if he stays. All you’re certain of is that you don’t want him to leave. 
He nods, leading you up the stairs. “Won’t go anywhere, sweetheart.” He guides you down the hall towards his room. “Let’s get cleaned up, okay?” 
He opens the door and guides you in, shutting it carefully behind him. He lets go of your hand, the sudden emptiness making your palm feel cold. How do people become so important, so quickly? How can someone letting go of your hand hurt so bad when they’re still just a few feet away? You’re not sure, but you know this feeling is dangerous. 
He’s rummaging through his drawers for a few seconds before he pulls out a t-shirt and places it on the dresser in front of him. He grabs another set of clothes, closes the drawer, and carries them over to you. He extends the shirt out to you, a soft smile playing on his lips. That’s what he is right now: soft. You’re not used to this side of him. 
You take the shirt from him, smiling back. “You should shower. You can use mine.” His head tilts towards the bathroom on the other side of his room. You nod and pad over, opening the door, turning on the lights, and closing the door behind you. 
You keep moving, undressing and turning the water on. It doesn’t take long for the water to heat up, the steam fogging every inch and surface of the room. You step inside the shower, letting the water run down your body. Your eyes fall closed while your mind searches for some kind of peace. You try to recall what Charles often told you: Calm your mind. But it isn’t working this time. Your mind is racing. 
You envision Logan’s angry, fearful face; his concern and panic. Charles’s call that it would be too dangerous echoes and reverberates. You see yourself dead on the ground, Logan holding your lifeless body in his arms. Even worse, you find yourself imagining that it didn’t work at all—that you couldn’t save the team, never mind yourself. This time it’s Logan’s body you see, on the ground, dead. Just like that, your whole world can slip out of your hands and turn to nothing. 
Choked sobs escape your throat as you let yourself fall to your knees. There’s a piercing, splitting pain somewhere deep inside your head. These visions, these feelings, this pain—it’s physical and mental. And it’s too much. It’s not the first time you’ve had visions like these after a fight or a mission, but it is the worst episode yet. 
There’s a knock on the door, followed by Logan calling your name. You try to answer, but your voice is caught in your throat. Logan knocks harder, but you still can’t speak. “I’m coming in!” The door swings open and his eyes widen as he sees your crumpled form on the shower floor, face stained red with tears. 
He shoves the shower door open, practically cracking the glass in the process. You’re suddenly hyper-aware of how naked you are, but it’s clear Logan isn’t. His gaze is trained on your face. “I-it happens, sometimes,” you stutter, reassuring him that this is normal. “A-after missions.”
Logan’s shoulders relax, his eyes softening with understanding. “I know what you mean.” His hands come up to your arms, rubbing gently. “Let me help you.” He gestures with his head toward the shower. You nod and watch as Logan takes his shirt off. He stands to take off his jeans, and you look away, taking the moment to force yourself to stand. You hear him step into the shower and slide the door shut behind him. 
“I’m sorry,” you mumble, swallowing harshly. 
Logan stands behind you, less than a foot away. The shower is just big enough for the two of you. “Nothing to be sorry for. Just let me take care of you.” 
“Okay,” you whisper. You hear him shuffle a bit, squeeze a bottle, and shuffle a bit more. 
“Can I touch you?” He asks. 
“Y-yeah,” you answer. You wonder if he can hear how fast your heart is beating. But before you can think about it too much, his hands come up to your wet hair. He massages shampoo into your scalp, his fingertips scrubbing ever so gently. You feel your shoulders settle—your body relax. No one has ever done anything like this for you before. 
You watch as the dirt trickles down your body to the drain. After a few moments of massaging, Logan nudges you forward a bit, and you take the hint to step under the water fully. You close your eyes as he scrubs the shampoo from your hair. 
When he’s done, he removes his hands from your hair and slides them down to your neck, and then to your shoulders. You step away from the water, almost bumping into his chest in the process. 
“’M’sorry,” you mumble. 
“No more apologizing, darlin��.” His hands come off your shoulders. You feel lost without the contact. You listen as the bottle pops open again, and Logan quickly scrubs the shampoo into his own hair. You instinctively step forward to let him rinse, and he does.
You take a deep breath, trying to concentrate and calm down now that his hands aren’t on you. But it doesn’t last long. He opens another bottle, pouring more liquid into his hands. 
He rests his hands on your shoulders again. You can feel the body wash run down your arms. “Can I…” Logan trails off, his hands firm, unmoving until you give the word. 
“Mhm,” you hum. His hands start to work the soap into your arms, up to your neck, your collarbone, stopping just above your chest. “Logan,” you murmur, letting yourself lean into him. You feel his heart beating against your back. His breath fans over your shoulder.
You can tell he’s losing his composure, the way he slouches around you, inviting you in. This isn’t something friends do. You two aren’t friends. This is something more. 
And he knows. 
“There’s no coming back from this,” he whispers, his lips at your temple. “If we do this.”
You push back further into him. “Who says I’d want to go back?”
Your back is suddenly met with the cold shower wall, your chest flush with Logan’s. His lips press into yours, swallowing your moans as his hands come up to your breasts, pinching your nipples lightly. He moves down your body quickly, leaving a trail of kisses down your jawline, your neck, the center of your chest, your stomach, stopping just above your clit. 
“Relax,” he soothes, his thumbs brushing your hips. He spreads your legs with the palms of his hands before pressing a kiss to your clit. You shudder at the feeling, whispering his name and throwing your head back. 
He licks a long stripe up your cunt, landing on your clit, taking it into his mouth and sucking roughly. He laps at you hungrily, like a man starved. One of his hands resting on your hip comes down in between your thighs, experimentally sliding through your folds, teasing your entrance. 
It feels so good, but you want him—need him—closer. He inserts two fingers, gently pumping in and out, flicking your clit with his tongue at the same time. 
“Logan,” you whine. You look down at him, his head buried in your cunt. He looks up at you, his eyes wide and filled with lust. You’re already close. But it’s not enough “Need you, now. Want you here.”
“I’m here,” he mumbles against your core. You’re shaking, melting underneath him. 
“N-need you,” you beg again. “Please.” 
He sucks on your clit one last time before removing his fingers from your cunt and standing up to meet you.
His hands rest on either side of your head. Your breath hitches in your throat at the sight of him. “Are you sure you want this?” His voice wavers just a bit, a slight tremble shaking the usual steadiness of his words. He looks down to your lips and back up to your eyes—his jaw working, as if he’s searching for a sign that you’ve changed your mind—that you don’t want him anymore. 
But you’ll always want him. You always have. 
“Y-yes,” You stutter. He wraps one hand around the back of your neck and uses the other to hoist one of your legs around his waist. His hard cock rubs against your stomach as he moves to line up with your entrance. 
“Wanted you this whole time, pretty girl.” He thrusts into you, sinking down to the hilt. He stays there for a moment, pulling you into him, his free hand grabbing your ass and picking you up so that both legs wrap around his waist. 
He uses the wall as leverage, fucking you into the tiles at your back. Once he’s sure you’re stable against him, his hand leaves your ass and comes in between your bodies, searching for your clit. He begins to stroke, drawing perfect circles there, while his cock hits that sweet spot inside you. 
It’s perfect, everything about this moment is perfect. It all feels so good. You moan his name, his hips rutting into you over and over again.
“Doing so good for me,” he husks, biting the skin just under your jaw, licking the spot where your pulse point is, peppering kisses there. You wonder if he does it because it’s a reminder that you’re still here, still alive, still breathing. “Taking me so well, sweetheart.” 
His words work to coax you off the edge, each swipe of his fingers and thrust of his cock bringing you closer to your orgasm. “L-Logan,” you stutter, his name—him—the only thing in your normally noisy mind. This is what peace is. This is the calm you’ve been searching for your whole life: it’s him. 
You can feel his pace growing faster, his cock pushing deeper, stretching you out as he plunges into you. “You feel so fucking good,” he groans, kissing your pulse point again. “So fucking beautiful.” 
Your walls flutter around him, your clit becoming overstimulated and sensitive as he flicks roughly. You’re so close. “Lo—” but you can’t find the words. 
“That’s it, pretty girl,” he mumbles, his forehead pressing to yours. “Want you to look at me when you come. Can you do that for me?” 
You moan a yes as he buries his cock deep inside you, before pulling out and pumping back in again. 
You can feel your eyes growing heavy, but you keep them open, watching Logan as he pulls your orgasm from you. “That’s it. I’ve got you.” His words, the bass of his voice, him, it all sends you over the edge. He works you through it, still circling your clit, his pace growing sloppier as he chases his own orgasm. 
You wrap your legs tighter around his waist. He knows what you want. “Inside,” you whisper. 
“Oh f-fuck,” he moans, coming inside you, filling you up. 
His thrusts begin to slow, his hand leaving that space between your bodies. You feel like air, weightless, drunk off the way he makes you feel. He carefully slips out of you, but he doesn’t put you back down on the ground. He simply readjusts, picking you up in his arms and carrying you out of the shower. 
He sets you down on the bathmat and crosses the tiled floor to the towel rack, where two towels conveniently hang. He wraps one towel around his waist as he strides over to you. He starts to dry you off, rubbing you gently, kissing each spot he dries as he goes. He’s worshipping you, taking care of you. No one has ever taken care of you like this. 
Once he’s finished, he wraps you up in the towel, and picks you up again. He carries you back into his room, resting you gently on the already turned-down bed. He crawls in after you, discarding his towel in the process. You toss your towel to the side, too. You nestle in under the covers, and Logan does the same. 
He wraps his arms around you, pulling you to his chest. You can feel that peace again, that calm from before, when he was buried inside of you. It was him. It was always him. Your mind is quiet, no longer all loud and inside out. 
“I’ve got you,” Logan whispers, his legs tangling with yours. 
You bury your face into his chest. “Don’t let go.” But you know you don’t need to ask. 
His mind is already made up. 
“Never will.” 
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happy74827 · 1 month
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One Call Away
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[Wade Wilson x Female!Reader]
Synopsis: During one of his "jobs," Deadpool gets a call from his favorite gal [GIF Creds: jdsheart]
WC: 1970
Category: Fluff, Major Comedy {TW: Deadpool’s Humor/Nonfiltered Personality}
This man is so hard to write. I’m always stressing the noggin when it comes to planning and plotting 😔
『••✎••』
"And away we go..."
One neck crack and a couple of hip twists later, he was off like Aladdin and his fucktoy carpet, scaling the building similarly to a chameleon on LSD.
The only thing that was missing was some epic music.
He'd been chasing this baddie around the city for almost two days now. Some big-shot mob boss with ties to Hydra, or the Mafia, or the Yakuza, or some other three-letter-acronym organization. It was hard to keep track of them all at this point. They were all the same, except for the name.
They all had their own agenda.
Kill him, keep him prisoner, pay him off...
Wade never cared enough to listen because it was always the same. He just got hired to do the dirty work, and the pay was good.
The killing was better.
This one, however, was particularly good at eluding him. He'd been trying to get his hands on this man for a few days now. It wasn't as though he was trying to be stealthy or anything, either. He'd walked right up to his front door, knocked, and was greeted with a spray of machine gun bullets.
So, the usual.
But then the guy ran and didn't stop. It was like the fucking Roadrunner met Sonic the Hedgehog, and they decided to fuck around and find out.
Wade was getting real sick and tired of being a Roadrunner, too. He had a reputation to uphold. He wasn't known as the Merc with the Mouth for nothing. He was supposed to be the one doing the running and the killing.
Not the other way around.
Finally, finally, he managed to reach the roof where the guy was currently taking cover behind a small brick shack. The sun was rising, but it was still dark, and there were a couple of floodlights shining on the rooftop. It made him think of the night he'd had that heart-to-heart with Blind Al, even though all she really wanted was for him to bring her some of that special brownie mix.
What a night that had been.
But anyway, this monologue is starting to get too long, and we should probably move things along, eh?
Right.
So, the baddie.
His name was something long and non-English.
Salvatore, or Santino, or Salvation... Whatever the fuck it was, it didn't really matter. What mattered was that it was time to make him dead.
He stepped around the corner and was met with a spray of bullets, all of which lodged themselves into his Kevlar vest.
"Oh, come on!" he yelled over the sound of the gunfire. "This is real leather, you know. I'm tired of all the offscreen sewing and shit."
When the spray finally ended, he took a moment to catch his breath.
"…ow," he whispered to himself.
"You shouldn't have followed me here," the man said.
"Yeah, whatever," Deadpool replied. "Look, I'll make this easy for you. You drop down and give me fifty, and I'll let you keep that hideous mustache you're sporting."
The man's eyes widened in surprise.
"It's not that bad, is it?"
"Yes, yes it is," Deadpool assured him. "You got a squirrel living in it or something?"
"It's just a little bit of gray, you dick," the man argued. "What about you? What's with the mask? Are you hiding a mustache under there, too, or something? Maybe some acne scars?"
Deadpool shook his head and stepped forward, his guns drawn.
"Don't come any closer!"
"You know, this would be much more intimidating if you didn't look like a cartoon mouse."
"Stop it with the mustache!"
"Alright, alright," Deadpool said. "Enough with the mustache. But what is it about your hairline? I can't put my finger on it."
The man sighed in exasperation and pulled out his pistol, aiming it right at Deadpool's face.
"Hey now, don't point that at me," Deadpool scolded him. "That's not a very nice thing to do."
He ignored him and pulled the trigger, a loud boom ringing out as the bullet fired. It whizzed by him but missed its mark.
"You really are a dick," He grumbled before aiming his gun right between the man's eyes. And he was going to shoot, honest.
He really was.
But then his phone rang, and he was well-reminded of the current song playing through his head.
I'm a buff baby that can dance like a man. I can shake-ah my fanny, I can shake-ah my can!
Needless to say, he was distracted.
He lowered his gun and looked down at his pocket, where his phone was still ringing and still vibrating against his leg.
"Shit, hold that thought," He said to the guy, and he holstered his gun.
"Wh-what the hell are you doing?!"
Deadpool put his finger up to shush him before pulling his phone out of his pocket to answer it.
If you're an evil witch, I’ll punch you for fu—
"Heyyyy," he said in a sing-songy voice, "you've reached the phone sex hotline. For kinks and fetishes, press one. For booty calls, press two. For your favorite mercenary, press three."
"Ey, pendejo—" His opponent started, but he cut him off by snapping and raising his finger.
"Cut it, Tuco Salamanca. Breaking Bad called and wants its meth-cooking mustache back."
"Wha-I-you-"
"Anyways, this is your favorite merc speaking. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?"
"Is this a bad time?"
Wade's eyes widened in shock, and his jaw dropped open when he heard her voice on the other end of the line.
"Baby girl! Is that you? Oh, how I've missed your voice. It's like hearing an angel, or an angelic chorus, or a whole bunch of angels, but you're the most important one. Like, the lead singer or something."
"I literally saw you last night." Your voice was always drenched with the most amazing kind of sarcasm, and he'd missed it.
"And?"
"It's only been a few hours."
"And?"
"That's a short amount of time."
"And?"
You sighed, but he knew you weren't really annoyed.
"Anyways, you sounded busy," you continued, "so I'll just let you go."
"What?! No! Don't hang up!" He shouted into the receiver. "I've only fiddled with my pistols! Nothing interesting is happening right now!"
"Your pistols, huh?" You asked a hint of mischief in your voice.
"Well, yeah. They're the most important part of the mission, you know."
In the corner of his eye, he could see his target making his way towards the edge of the building. Quickly and efficiently, without dropping his attention from his conversation with you, he lifted his gun and fired a shot at the man's knee.
"Ah, fuck!" the man screamed in pain. "My knee!"
"Hey! Language!" Deadpool scolded him. "The lady of the house is listening!"
"Lady of the- what the fuck?!"
"I said language, you mustachioed rat!"
"Mustachioed rat?" You asked.
"Sorry, babe," he replied. "You know how excited I get when Downtown Abbey is on."
“There’s gunshots in Downtown Abbey?"
"Gunshots? Oh, no, no. That was… uh, a car alarm. Yeah, the neighbor's car alarm was going off."
"Uh-huh," you said, not sounding very convinced. And, of course, that was right around the time the guy's gun went off again, this time hitting him square in the shoulder. It made the phone fall out of his hand and clatter onto the ground, but the call was still connected.
"Dammit!" He yelled, looking at the fresh blood dripping down his arm. "That's gonna take forever to heal!"
"Who are you talking to?" The man demanded, his gun still aimed at Deadpool's face. "You're working with someone?"
"Hey, now, I don't remember giving you permission to talk," Deadpool told him, holding his bloody arm up to his face. "Look, I've gotta call you back, babe. I know it's been so heartbreakingly long—"
"Again, only a few hours," you said.
"—but duty calls. Love you, bye."
"Love you, bye."
With that, the line disconnected.
"Ugh," he groaned, his heart aching for the loss of your sweet voice. "I miss her already."
"Ey," his opponent growled, drawing his attention. He started speaking in rapid-fire Spanish, which Deadpool didn't really understand, but he didn't have to. The guy was just ranting and raving.
"Alright, alright, chill," Deadpool said. "Just calm down. It’ll all be over soon, little buddy."
"I am not little! I am a giant!" The guy protested, and Wade could practically see the steam coming out of his ears. "And I will not chill!"
"Well, can't argue with that, I guess," Deadpool said with a shrug, and he took aim. But before he could pull the trigger, the guy was running again.
"Hey, what did I tell you about running?!" He yelled, but his voice fell on deaf ears as the guy reached the ledge.
"I am a giant!"
"No, you're a giant asshat!"
"I will not be bested by some masked buffoon!"
"Buff? Me? Why, I never!"
"You're the biggest asshole I've ever met!"
"You know what? I am a big ass! A big, round, bubbly ass." He paused for a second. "Hey, what's your favorite flavor?"
"Fuck you, you red-clad imbecile!"
"You know, I'd ask you out to dinner first, but we're kinda past that now."
"Argh!"
"Alright, enough stalling," Deadpool said. "It's time to end this."
"Yes," the guy said, turning his gun back on Deadpool. "It is."
Of course, Deadpool being the smart-ass he was, he'd already taken a step to the side. As the bullet whizzed past him, he reached for his gun.
"Now, where did I put that thing? Oh, there it is."
He aimed the gun and fired, and the man fell back onto the ground. The bullet hit him right in the middle of his forehead, his blood splattering all over the concrete.
"Ha ha! Fatality. Deadpool wins!" He said, his voice taking on the deep, grounded tone of the narrator from Mortal Kombat. "Flawless Victory."
He stood over the body for a few seconds, reveling in his victory, before he felt the presence of another.
The gun on his right side got ripped from its holster, and the barrel was aimed back into his face, as it always seems to be.
But, he already sensed it was coming, so his fingers wrapped around his other and aimed that right in the golden spot… and let’s just say, The Golden Girls was a little less golden and a lot more crimson.
"Wow, this has got to be a record," He said as he bent down to stare at the new one’s anguish. "Two dead ugly mustaches in the same day. You can call me Sweeney Todd because shit… I just shaved you the fuck up."
He didn’t give the poor bastard a chance to even whimper before he fired another two shots into the man's head. All in all, this had been the easiest payday he'd had in a while.
He picked up his cell phone and slipped it back into its pocket before bending down and scooping up the mustache man's pistol.
"Ooh, lookie here, a nice, shiny new pistol," he said to himself. "Just what I've always wanted. Well, I don't actually need it. It's not like I have any other holes in my body, but you know what they say. The more the merrier."
He stuffed the gun in his holster and turned around, heading back the way he'd come.
"Time to get back to the good stuff," he said. "I have a date with my favorite girl."
He hopped up onto the ledge and looked down, his eyes locking on the window to his apartment.
And when he arrived, bloody and battered, you could only smile while holding up little ole Mary Puppins in all her drooling glory.
God, how he missed his girls.
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luxthestrange · 1 month
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OP Incorrect quotes#52 DIVORCE!?!-
Teen!Ace*Looks at You with a raised brow*So does this mean we're married now?
Teen!Y/n: Only if I get to keep the dog and pinball machine in the divorce
Teen!Ace: Well if you're already planning for a divorce-
Teen!Y/n: Alright!, Since you wanna have an attitude, I get to keep the squirrel-proof bird feeder as well~
Teen!Ace: How DARE you!... GO FOR THE BIRD FEEDER
Teen!Y/n: I was trying to keep things civil, But if you want to raise your voice too, FINE...I am taking ALL the spoons too~, Enjoy the inconvenience of not being able to eat your cereal in a normal way~
Teen!Ace: I don't eat cereal, Because im not a child
Teen!Y/n*Flips table and points at him* -AND THIS IS WHY WE'RE GETTING A DIVORCE!?
Kid!Luffy"First son"*Clapping at the act, after he convinces You, and Ace to play House with him along with Sabo*Oooh!~If you guys get a divorce maybe it's time to bring Sabo!
Teen!Sabo*Chuckling at this*"New Husband...who is also the good twin of the husband"So this would mean me and y/n would be married?~
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Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 1: Welcome To A New Kind Of Tension]
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Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍
Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes, Jace is here unfortunately.
Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.
Chapter title is a lyric from: “American Idiot” by Green Day.
Word count: 5.1k
💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜
Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰
“What do you think, should we kill ourselves now or later?” Rio is spinning his Beretta M9 around on his index finger. This is not advisable. He doesn’t care.
Your hands are gripping the skeletal latticework of the transmission tower, steel hot enough to burn you; no electricity hums in the power lines suspended above your heads. Your eyes are on the horizon, golden June sunlight over fields no one has planted. Weeds are growing up through the earth, feral and defiantly useless, reclaiming their land just like the deer are, and the rabbits and the opossums and the turtles and the squirrels and the doves. The reign of humanity is over. Now you’re prey animals too. “Let’s wait.”
“For what?”
“Maybe someone will save us.”
“Ain’t nobody coming, Chips!” Rio says. “We’re a hundred feet off the ground in the middle of nowhere, motherfucking Catawissa, Pennsylvania, and we haven’t run into anyone since that Amish family back in Lightstreet, and I wouldn’t count on them driving by in their horse and buggy to pick us up.”
“We’re about sixty feet off the ground.”
“Okay, Bob the Builder, why don’t you whip up a helicopter or something to get us out of here?” Rio’s M9 has one bullet left in it, yours has three, nowhere near enough. At the bottom of the tower is a swarm of fifty-four zombies; you’ve counted them twice. There are no cute euphemisms: walkers, biters, the infected. They were once people and now they’re not. They wear the vestiges of their former lives, like how those who believe in reincarnation see meaning in birthmarks: here you were stabbed, there you were kissed by your true love. They lurch and snarl and hiss in their professional attire, college t-shirts, Vans and Jordans, septum piercings, wedding rings. They decompose in a miasma of metallic blood and spoiled meat. Parker had been the last one to the transmission tower, and they grabbed him by the legs. Now they’re chewing the gristle off his bones: disconnected ligaments that swing like strands of cobwebs, scarlet threads of muscle. “Oh shit,” Rio says, looking down. “We’ve got a smart one.”
Most zombies don’t have the fine motor skills to climb, swim, or open doors, but every once in a while—just like out of every 5,000 or 10,000 or however many ordinary humans you’ll pull the lever on the genetic slot machine and get a Picasso or a kid who can score a 1600 on the SATs—you run into an overachiever. This zombie, a teenage boy with red hair and a blue plaid shirt, is slowly scaling the tower. He’s already ten feet off the ground.
Rio aims his M9, semiautomatic, packs a punch but won’t break your arm with the recoil. “Fuck off, Ed Sheeran!” He fires and misses; the bullet grazes the boy’s shoulder. He groans dramatically and asks you in defeat: “Will you take care of that, please?”
You pull your pistol out of your holster and lean away from the tower to get a better angle, holding onto the scaffolding with one hand. You feel Rio’s large fingers close around your wrist, ready to yank you back if you slip. You click off the safety with your thumb, peer through the front sight, aim and wait until you’re sure. It’s a headshot: shards of skull ricochet off steel beams, half-rotten brains spray out in a mist. The carcass plummets to the earth.
“All this horror, all this catastrophe.” Rio’s eyes, dark like a mineshaft, drift mischievously back to you. “We could…distract each other.”
He’s not serious; this is a game you play. “No thanks.”
“You don’t want to die a virgin.”
“I do if you’re the only other person up here.”
“You deny a condemned man his final wish?”
“We’re not dying,” you insist. “What about Sophie?”
“Sophie would understand given the circumstances. She would want me to be happy.”
“What if we have sex and then immediately thereafter get rescued? You’d be a cheater. You’d be consumed by guilt. You’d never be able to take me back to your parents’ doomsday prepper cult commune in bumblefuck Oregon to wait out the apocalypse in peace.”
“You’re going to appreciate those doomsday preppers when you’re eating Chef Boyardee out of a can instead of shuffling around as a reanimated corpse.”
“Yeah, I’m sure I will,” you muse. “So you agree we’re going to get off this tower somehow.”
Rio sighs and whistles a morose tune: what a shame. “You should have gone out with that Marine at Corpus Christi.”
You frown, repentant, wistful. There’s nothing on the horizon except fields and trees and black storm clouds of crows taking flight. “I was afraid of making a mistake.”
“And now look at you. About to die as pure as Pope Francis.”
“How did this happen?! We’re not idiots, we’re goddamn professionals!” You re-holster your M9. You’re still wearing your uniforms from when you went AWOL, stealing away from Saratoga Springs like rats from a sinking ship.
“I’ll tell you exactly how this happened. You let that loser Parker come with us even though I knew it was a bad idea—”
“I couldn’t just leave him there! He started crying!”
“And he had one job, which was to check the oil in the Humvee, and clearly he failed because…” Rio glances at his watch. “Approximately four hours ago, the engine started smoking and the whole thing died on us, so we had to get out and walk, like we’re pioneers or some shit, and then that hoard down there came out of nowhere, and the only place left to go was up. Freaking Parker. I could murder that guy.” An awkward pause. “I mean, the zombies beat me to it. But still.”
“He had two jobs. He was also carrying the extra ammo.”
“Don’t remind me.” Rio isn’t messing around with his M9 anymore. He’s contemplating it as the sun hovers just past noon, hot and shadowless. “How many bullets do you have left?”
“Two.”
“Good. Don’t use them.”
You look at him, this man you’ve known for over four years, this man you’ve traveled the world with. You’ve already gone so much farther than Oregon together. How is it possible that what was once a six hour flight is now a month-long journey that might kill you? “It’s not over yet, Rio.”
“Remember what you promised me.”
His hushed voice in the moonlit indigo of the Humvee the night you left Saratoga Springs: Don’t let me die alone. “We’re going to be okay. We’re going to make it to Oregon.” Then you grin, sweltering summer air breathing over you, humid, heavy, the screeching of insects in the trees. “But if it comes to that, I’d be happy to shoot you first.”
Rio smiles as the zombies below growl and claw at the steel framework of the transmission tower. Flesh peels off their fingers until you can see the gore-stained white of their bones. “Don’t miss.”
“I rarely do.”
“Do you have any more packs of Cheddar Whales in your pockets or—?” He cuts off as he spots something in the distance. His eyes go wide, his jaw drops open. “What…what is that?!”
It’s an SUV, massive, dark blue, rumbling across the field in a dust storm of displaced earth. It’s headed straight towards you. There is someone standing up through the sunroof, short dark hair that whips wildly in the wind, binoculars. You can hear the engine revving and, faintly, Kanye West’s Gold Digger. As the SUV nears the tower, Sunroof Kid ducks inside and closes the hatch.
Rio explodes into hysterical, rapturous laughter. “Oh my God, we’re saved! We’re not going to die up here! Oh, thank you, Jesus, thank you. I’m never going to jack off on Sundays again.”
The SUV, still accelerating, plows through the mob of zombies. Severed limbs go flying; bones crunch and snap. There’s a woman driving, you can see now through the slightly tinted windows. She puts the monstrous vehicle and reverse and does another pass. Zombies paw futilely at the sides of the SUV, a Chevy Tahoe, as it turns out. They smack their open, soggy palms on the windows; they gnaw and lick at the bumpers and the wheel wells. The Tahoe circles to regain speed, the engine growling, a bear, a dragon, and barrels into the remaining ambulatory zombies. The hoard is now largely incapacitated. Rio is cheering and clapping his hands.
The Tahoe’s doors open, and your rescuers appear. There are two men wielding baseball bats: one with long dark curly hair, the other tall and blonde, and there’s something wrong with his face, the left side, though you are too far away to see clearly. They move rapidly through the battlefield of felled, moaning bodies, swinging their bats and crushing skulls. There’s another blonde guy, shorter, softer, pink with sunburn, wearing plastic sunglasses and a teal polo with a popped collar. He’s spinning a golf club in his right hand. He is followed out of the Tahoe by one last blonde, spindly and swift, stalking the perimeter with a compound bow, a quiver of arrows secured to his belt. Rio is singing along to Gold Digger, drumming his fists on the steel beams.
“Now, I ain’t sayin’ you a gold digger, you got needs
You don’t want a dude to smoke, but he can’t buy weed
You go out to eat, he can’t pay, y’all can’t leave
There’s dishes in the back, he gotta roll up his sleeves…”
The driver wriggles out of the Tahoe with some difficulty; she is seven or eight months pregnant. “Stay in the car,” Madame Driver tells someone inside as she slams the door shut. She’s holding a hammer and sets about euthanizing the zombies still squirming on the ground and gnashing their cracked teeth at her.
Golf Club says: “Jace, bro, that’s so embarrassing. You’re gonna let her do that?”
Curly—or, rather, Jace—shrugs. “Exercise is good for the baby.”
All three blondes respond at once in a chorus of appalled disapproval. Interestingly, your rescuers have British accents. From within the Tahoe, someone turns off the CD player. This is wise; noise tends to attract more zombies. Madame Driver, unaffected, puts her hammer through the eye socket of a former Arby’s employee.
Jace flings back: “She likes helping! It would be sexist to tell her she’s not allowed to!”
The Scarred Man looks up at you and Rio and salutes, two fingers glanced off his forehead. You begin climbing down the scalding rungs of the transmission tower to meet them.
“Oh fuck, Aemond, you gotta deal with this,” Golf Club says. He is holding a yowling zombie at arm’s length by the straps of its overalls. It’s tiny, maybe a kindergartener. “You know I can’t kill the little kid ones.”
The Scarred Man, Aemond, turns to him. He’s wearing a maroon Harvard University t-shirt. “You have to learn how to do things yourself. I might not always be around.”
Golf Club scoffs. “As if I’d outlive you.”
“Go on. You can do it,” Aemond says. Behind him, more people are emerging from the Chevy Tahoe: Binoculars Buddy, a slight girl with shifting, watchful eyes, a blonde woman in a billowing sundress and with a burlap messenger bag slung over one shoulder.
Golf Club is still struggling. “Aw, Aemond, man, he’s got light-up sneakers!”
Jace strides over irritably. “Aegon, you’re so fucking useless…” He kicks the miniature zombie to the dirt, raises his bloodied baseball bat, and brings it down on a skull that disintegrates like an overripe Halloween pumpkin. “You’re welcome.”
“Get bit, you poodle.”
Rio hits the ground first, his boots thumping against untamed earth. Aemond sets his baseball bat aside and reaches out to offer assistance as you dangle from a white-hot steel beam. “No,” Rio tells him roughly. “Back up.”
Aemond shows his palms and complies, retreating several paces. Rio helps you down. Now you can see Aemond’s face perfectly. There’s a relatively fresh wound running down the left half of his face, the violent red of burgeoning scar tissue, clear stitches; his eye has been sutured shut. But that’s not why you’re staring at him. His other eye is a focused, hypnotic blue, his short blonde hair disheveled. He keeps touching his chin, a nervous tick. Immediately, there’s something you like about him. He gives you the impression of someone who has gotten very good at hiding how afraid he is. Aemond looks away from your gaze, thinking you’re horrified by his injury. Then, reluctantly, he comes back. There’s forbidden temptation the lines of his ravaged face, a curiosity, a hesitation.
“Thank you for saving us,” you say to your rescuers, tearing your attention from Aemond. It’s not easy. “That was really, really cool of you, and we know you didn’t have to do it. So thanks.”
“Yeah,” Rio adds. “Sorry your Tahoe is covered in guts now.”
Aemond turns to confer silently with his companions, then asks you: “Where are you headed?”
“Odessa, Oregon.”
He nods. “We’re going to California.”
“NorCal,” Jace says, holding his baseball bat across his shoulders. “Bay Area.”
“Are you two together?” Aegon asks.
“Yeah,” Rio says, misunderstanding the question.
“Not like that,” you clarify. “He has a wife and baby, that’s what’s in Oregon.”
“So you’re single,” Aegon says, grinning toothily. His fellow travelers—family? friends? classmates? a combination thereof?—grumble and roll their eyes.
“Um, I mean, yeah, technically…?”
“Aemond’s also single,” Madame Driver informs you, relishing the chaos.
“He’s single but deformed and traumatized,” Aegon says. “I am mentally uninjured.”
You chuckle awkwardly. Your eyes, by their own volition, flick back to Aemond. He peers down at the ground then up at you again, smiling, a little sheepish, a little wicked.
Aegon groans, swinging his golf club around. “Man, come on.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Aemond replies.
“No, it’s just right there, all over your fucked up face.”
Madame Driver feigns a sympathetic frown at Aegon. “How sad. Guess you won’t have anyone to give your syphilis to.”
“I don’t have syphilis,” Aegon tells you. Then, to the others: “I can’t be the only single guy! It’s pathetic!”
“I’m single,” Archery Team says brightly.
“You’re like twelve. You don’t count.”
“I’m seventeen!”
“Are you Army?” Aemond asks you and Rio.
“Navy,” Rio replies. “We were stationed at Saratoga Springs in upstate New York.”
Aemond is fascinated. “You’re deserters?”
“What are you gonna do about it, Brit Boy?” Rio says. Aemond blinks at him. Aegon cackles, drawing huge circles in the air with his golf club.
“Everyone’s deserting,” you explain diplomatically.
“They were going to evacuate the base and send everyone left into New York City,” Rio says. “Fuck that, we’d heard things, we weren’t about to go on some suicide mission. We weren’t even in a combat unit for Christ’s sake, we’re Seabees.”
“You’re what?” Aemond asks, puzzled.
“We do construction. That’s why we were still at the base. If they’re putting us on the front lines, the situation is truly desperate. I’m not going in the meatgrinder. I’m not gonna be like those Hitler Youth kids sent to Russia.”
Aegon is squinting behind his sunglasses, truly lost. “Huh?”
“We should go west together,” Aemond suggests. He’s attempting to sound casual.
“I thought we didn’t want to travel with strangers, Aemond,” Jace says pointedly, mocking him. “I thought they couldn’t be trusted, Aemond. I thought they might slit our throats and steal our Tahoe in the dead of night, Aemond.”
“We’re useful!” Rio bargains. “We can shoot things!”
Aegon is very confused. “I thought you did construction.”
“Everyone has to go through basic training,” Aemond tells him impatiently, watching you.
“She got the Marksmanship Medal,” Rio says, grinning, proud.
“A lot of people get that,” you demur immediately.
“We can give you guys weapons training,” Rio continues. “You seem…like you probably don’t know about guns. Like you read a lot of books.” He gestures to Aegon. “Except that one.”
Aegon snickers, unoffended, still swinging his golf club around. “I don’t read books. I read maps.”
“Okay, lets do it,” Aemond says. “We’ll stick together across the Midwest and split up before we get to the Pacific. That puts us at ten people, and there’s safety in numbers.”
“Why do you get to make all the decisions?!” Jace demands. “Who signed that fucking contract? I didn’t consent to those terms.”
“Because that’s what Criston told us the last time the phones worked,” Aegon replies smugly. “He said Aemond’s in charge. So he is. If you want to find your way to California on your own, you’re welcome to try.”
“Who’s Criston?” you ask.
“Our fake dad,” Aegon says.
“Oh, your stepdad?”
“No, our mom is still married to our dad, he just sucks.”
“He does suck,” Archery Team confirms.
Rio tells you: “Hey, Chips, you’re standing in a torso.”
“Am I?” You look down. Your boots are buried to the ankles in the rotting gore of a bare midsection with only one limp arm still attached. You step out of it and shake off the bits of decomposing organs. “Gnarly. Thanks.” You spot Parker’s backpack containing the extra ammunition, pick it up out of the dirt, and throw it over your shoulders.
“Chips?” Aemond says. “Like…chocolate chips?”
“No, like woodchips. I’m a carpenter. I mean, I was a carpenter, I guess. That’s what I did in the Navy. Some people call the carpenters Chips.”
“I was an electrician,” Rio says. “So clearly, now that all the power is down, that turned out to be a fantastic career path.” Then he formally introduces himself. “Hi everyone, I’m Rio.”
Aegon perks up. “Oh, like the Rio Grande.”
Rio pretends to be scandalized. “Wow, racist.”
“So racist,” you agree.
Aegon’s chubby pink face fills with horror. “No, wait, I didn’t…um…”
Rio laughs and taps the nametag on his chest, black letters stitched over green camouflage: Osorio.
“His first name’s Bryan,” you say. “But no one calls him that.”
“My mom calls me Bryan. Sophie calls me Bryan.”
Aemond points at his companions, one after the other. “That’s my brother Aegon and my sister Helaena. Jace and Luke are our cousins. Then Baela and Rhaena are their girlfriends. Well, Baela…she’s kind of a fiancée. But there’s no official ring yet.”
Jace says: “Unfortunately, all the jewelry stores were looted on account of the apocalypse.”
“And I’m Daeron,” Archery Team says buoyantly, waving. Then he shields his eyes as he notices something at the edge of the field. “Oh, guys…?”
There are zombies approaching with clumsy, staggering strides, only a few now, but more will follow. That’s the thing; they are in seemingly endless supply. It’s easy to get too comfortable with them, to think of them as slow and mindless, even comical, even pitiful. But they can surprise you. And it only takes one bite to become just like them.
“Time to return to the Tahoe,” Baela announces, waddling towards the driver’s seat. Rhaena climbs in the passenger’s side. The rest of you pile into the back. The SUV has nine seats; Aegon crouches on the floor without being asked to. He’s unfolding a map he pulled from the pocket of his salmon-colored shorts and laying it flat across Rio’s knees so everyone can see. Baela turns the key in the ignition and the Tahoe rumbles to life. You spot a few red gas cans under the seats. If you can’t find more when that runs out—siphoning it out of other vehicles, stumbling across a gas station that is miraculously not drained dry—you’ll be walking, biking, or skateboarding to the West Coast. Or embracing the Amish lifestyle with a horse and buggy.
“We were planning to swing by Fort Indiantown Gap,” you tell Aemond. He twists around in his seat to look at you, that absorbed crystalline blue gaze. “That’s where we were headed before our Humvee broke down. It’s a National Guard Training Center. It’s probably cleaned out like everywhere else, but if it’s not…we might be able to find some guns and ammo there.”
“Where is it?”
“An hour south of here, just outside of Harrisburg.”
Baela is watching Aemond in the rearview mirror. He gives her a nod. “How do I get there?” Baela asks you.
“South on Route 42. Did you see the signs on your way in…?”
“Yup. Got it.” Baela steers the Tahoe across the field, kicking up a vortex of parched soil. She intentionally runs down four zombies before swerving left onto a two-lane road. Then she turns up the volume on the CD player: War Pigs by Black Sabbath. “It’s a mixtape,” she informs you.
Aegon points to southcentral Pennsylvania on a map of the United States of America, highway arteries and local route veins. “We’re here,” he says, sliding around on the floor of the Tahoe as Baela drives. His index finger traces the path; it’s a precarious balance between avoiding the most heavily populated areas and still having access to the necessary trappings of civilization: supplies to scavenge, roads to follow, buildings to take shelter in. “We’ll stop by Fort Indiantown Gap and then head northwest, thread the needle between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, stay south of Detroit and Chicago, cut across Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, that top part of Utah, then go our separate ways in Nevada. Oh my God, it’s just like the Oregon Trail! Do you guys remember that game?! Fording rivers, getting dysentery, hunting bison to extinction?” He starts humming the theme song.
Jace smirks, chomping on a Twizzler. “Hope you don’t die of a snakebite or something. That’d be awful.”
Aegon ignores him and refolds the map. “Rio! Fuck, marry, kill. The last three first ladies before Biden.”
Rhaena says, exasperated: “Aegon, you have to stop asking people that. It’s inappropriate.”
“Oh, easy,” Rio replies. “I’m fucking Laura Bush.”
“That’s what I’m saying!” Aegon gives him a high five.
“And then I have to marry Michelle.”
“You gotta.”
“Which means Melania gets the grape Flavor Aid.”
“It’s the only logical answer.”
“I’d fuck Melania,” Jace says.
“Of course you would, you sick, sick man,” Aegon mutters, rolling down a window and sticking his head out like a golden retriever, his sunglasses still on, his blonde hair flapping in the wind. There’s a tattoo in black ink on his forearm, you notice for the first time: It’s not over ‘til you’re underground.
~~~~~~~~~~
Fort Indiantown Gap is a ghost town like a gold seam emptied, an oil well run dry, a collapsed coal mine. There’s no central armory but instead a series of arms rooms, one for each unit. Every single scrap of lethal metal is gone: no pistols, no rifles, no grenade launchers or machine guns, no ammo, not even pocketknives, although you do find clean PT uniforms for you and Rio to change into, t-shirts and running shorts and sneakers. Clothes are surprisingly difficult to acquire now. Most stores have either been looted or overrun by zombies, and Amazon is tragically no longer delivering. You can break into houses that seem abandoned, but then you have to hope the people who lived there just so happened to be your size and also aren’t waiting inside to eat you. It’s not usually a wise gamble.
You study Aemond and his companions as you move through the base clearing buildings, you and Rio with loaded M9s in your holsters and clutching borrowed baseball bats; gunshots are best avoided if possible so as not to attract unwanted attention. Aemond and Jace take point, almost always; Aegon hovers on Aemond’s blind left side, wagging his golf club around, occasionally slapping Aemond’s shoulder to remind him he’s there. Daeron prowls at the back and on the periphery. Baela pretends she isn’t struggling to keep up. Luke and Rhaena are the lookouts. Helaena fills her burlap messenger bag with small treasures you don’t even notice her accumulating: bottles of Advil, batteries, lighters, pens, tweezers, Band-Aids, Uno cards. You encounter only three zombies, easily decommissioned. Fort Indiantown Gap must have been evacuated weeks ago. You wonder what pointless battles her soldiers died in. Everyone knows the dead have won.
What the abandoned base lacks in weaponry it makes up for in food. You find a chow hall with an untouched kitchen, a wealth of shelf-stable delicacies: chili, saltine crackers, applesauce, fruit cocktail with bright red gems of cherries, peanut butter, strawberry jelly, green beans, carrots, peas, beets, tuna fish, chicken noodle soup. You feast—a Thanksgiving, a Last Supper—then settle into the barracks next door as the sun begins to set. There are plenty of bunkbeds and a closet full of pillows and sheets. Someone always has to be up to keep watch; Daeron and Jace immediately go to sleep so they can get some rest before they are shaken awake sometime around 2 or 3 a.m. Baela says she’s going to lie down for a minute and almost immediately begins snoring. Helaena makes silent amendments in her notebook; she keeps an inventory of everything the group has, needs, or wants.
Outside, Rio and Aegon are engaged in a spirited game of Uno. Luke is sitting cross-legged on the roof of the Tahoe with his binoculars. Rhaena is beside him softly reading a book out loud: The Hunger Games. Aemond is on a wooden bench on the front porch of the barracks, watching the sun sink into the west. When he notices you, he seems pleased. “Hi.”
“Hi. I’m sorry we wasted your gas to come here.”
“No, it was a good idea. It was worth a shot. And now we have a safe place to sleep tonight.” His eye drops lower, his scarred brow crinkles in concern. “What happened to your hands?”
“My hands?” In the haze of the adrenaline, you didn’t even notice. Your palms are blistered, swollen and stinging. “Oh. It was the transmission tower. The steel beams got really hot while we were up there. I’ll be okay.”
“Let me bandage them. You don’t want to get an infection.”
“Really, I’m fine, I shouldn’t inconvenience—”
“Sit down,” Aemond insists. You take a seat on the bench while he goes to the Tahoe to fetch a black nylon bag about the size of a briefcase. Rio casts you a furtive, crafty grin. It’s nothing, you mouth back, more to convince yourself than him. Your pulse is thudding in your ears; your cheeks are warm. You haven’t felt like this since you almost agreed to go on a date with that Marine you met at Corpus Christi, where your battalion had been dispatched to build a series of new airplane hangars. Aemond returns to the bench and begins wiping down your palms with antiseptic. “Sorry if this stings.”
It does, but you’re grateful for the distraction. “It isn’t too bad.”
“You’re not from Oregon.” He’s noticed your accent.
“Kentucky,” you confess.
“You aren’t making a stop at home before traveling west?”
“Why would I want to go back there?”
Aemond looks at you uncertainly; he can’t tell if you’re joking. You like the way his voice goes quiet when it’s just the two of you. You like the way he barely shows his teeth when he talks, like he’s keeping secrets.
After a moment, as the sky begins to turn to orange and pink and lilac, you continue. “People join the Army for a paycheck and a place to sleep, free college, health insurance. People join the Marines to prove they’re the best. People join the Air Force because they want to be in the military but think they’re too smart for grunt work. And people join the Navy to get away from home. I wanted to get far, far, far away.”
Aemond smiles. “Are you far enough yet?” He doesn’t mean by miles. He means the fact that the world will never be the same. Now he’s coating your hands in a thick white ointment, cool and blissful.
“I was afraid of so many things, and now none of them matter.”
“We all have brand new things to be afraid of.” He gets a roll of gauze and begins to wrap your palms, careful to keep your fingers and thumbs unencumbered.
“Aemond?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened to your face?”
He shrugs. He’s trying not to be resentful about it; he can’t change it anyway. “We were scavenging supplies from a Home Depot. We had to board up the house and wait until things…got quieter and it was safe to travel out of Boston.” And by got quieter, he means that the initial wave passed, the zombies began to wander out of the cities and disperse, the survivors were hunkered down and not participating in gunfights or Vikings-style pillaging in the streets. “A piece of sheet metal fell on me from the top shelf. Aegon and Jace dragged me home, they thought I was dying.”
“I’m glad you weren’t. Who treated it?”
“I did.”
You can’t disguise your shock. “You…you stitched up your own face?”
He smirks, finishing the bandages on your hands. “I was in medical school before all this.”
“You’re a doctor?”
“I was an intern. So definitely not a doctor, but the closest thing to one I had access to. And I had taken some things from the hospital when everything went to hell. So I got a little mirror, and I lidocained myself very generously, and I started suturing.”
You don’t know what to say. His eye?? He stitched his eye shut?? “I mean…you did a great job.”
“I’m aware I look like Frankenstein, but I guess it’s better than not being here at all.”
“No, seriously. You look amazing, Aemond.”
He stares at you, bewildered. You realize how bizarre it must sound. You both start laughing as Aemond packs his supplies back into his medical kit. He touches his fingertips to his chin a few times—restless, meditative—then stands to return inside the barracks. “I’m…going to go check on Helaena.”
“Yeah. Cool. See ya.” You don’t watch him leave. This takes intentional effort.
Seconds pass anonymously: no time you need to be anywhere, nothing late, nothing early, no television premiers, no football games, no State Of The Unions, no time zones to do mental math over. You aren’t even sure what day it is. The earth has erased your invisible prisons. Now all that remain are the real ones: weather, terrain, disease, predators.
There is the creaking of weight on the porch steps. You warn him: “I’m not interested in your commentary.”
Rio winks as he says: “Maybe you won’t die a virgin after all.”
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thegnomelord · 11 months
Text
CH 1: With a Spark It Starts Just Like It Ended
CW: NSFW Blood, gore, cannon typical violence, M reader but can be read as GN, Mage reader, Monster 141 AU, reader is described as having thick fucked up arms.
AO3 3.7k words, more of an intro to what's to come lol.
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Old man Abdul had lived a good life. A harsh one. But a good one.
He was amongst the first to grab a gun and raise the fight against the Russians, risking life and limb for the freedom of Urzikstan even as members of his pack bled and died to artillery fire and noxious gas. And he alone had survived to see his country set free of tyranny and chose to stay in the military long after his hair had greyed.
And how was he rewarded for his service?
With a 'promotion' to guard the basement of a conference hall. They even called it the 'Peace House' as if that made his position grander, though in his humble opinion the only peaceful thing happening within the halls above was the lack of physical violence.
"Hey, did you fall asleep on me old man?" Taim, a bright eyed and gap-toothed human private so young he could've been one of his grandsons, asks as he throws down five playing cards on the floor between them. Royal flush, again.
Old man Abdul's eyes are soft with a glare and he throws down his own cards, already knowing he'd lost. "Go fish." He huffs, leaning back into the chair they'd been able to squirrel away.
It was embarrassing to think that boredom could torture him more than the Russians did, but they were only a few hours into their shift and he was already thinking of biting a bullet. Chances were they'd stay down here long after the diplomats up top finished bickering about who knows what...
"Hey," Taim perks up, and from the few weeks he's known him, Abdul knows the glint in his brown eyes heralds something stupid. "How about whoever loses this round takes a shot from your leg?"
He is proven correct.
"How about I throw you into a minefield so we can match?" Old man Abdul responds, his tail wagging from side to side. His tail looks more at home on a rat than any werewolf, the fur there an accidental casualty of a Russian fire mage's spell that had taken his leg off. The prosthetic leg only fitting on his human body isn't nearly as insulting as the warding totem they'd given him to protect against lethal magic after his leg had gone flying.
Taim gulps and holds his hands up. "There's no need for that sir." He quickly adds, clearing his throat and reaching to the floor to pick up their cards and shuffle them.
Taim's warding totem slips out from beneath his jacket, but it's different from old man Abdul's. Not in appearance, with the same materials every mage will make theirs differently, but in feel. It feels different...wrong.
Eyes narrowing he reaches out and holds the piece of faintly glowing rock between his claws. Heat radiates into his fingers, the magic inside pulsing in a steady even thrum like a machine instead of beating like a heartbeat; like something not quite alive.
Abdul had been in combat long enough to know how good a warding totem is with how his body reacts to it.
The shit one he'd been given barely gets the remaining fur on his tail to bristle.
Taim's makes his skin want to melt off.
"Where did you get this?" Abdul asks, tail curling up as he lets go of the totem with disgust clear on his face. "That rock could probably protect you from L3 mage without cracking, maybe even L4." Call him paranoid, but a private getting a totem to protect him from mages rarer than unicorns doesn't make any sense.
"Oh, that-" The young man clears his throat, the totem laying flat against his chest like an insult to life. "Came from up top a few days ago, guess all those terror attacks spooked command and they want to keep us normal people safe." He realizes his words and quickly adds. "-not that I'm calling you not normal or anything sir, it's just that-"
"-You're squishier than me, yes, I know." Old man Abdul rolls his eyes, leaning back into his chair with a huff.
Taim gives a nervous little giggle, scratching at his curly dark hair. "No offence sir. It's just...you know."
"We all look out for our kinfolk first." Old man Abdul sighs, going to wave him off.
His pointy ear twitches and immediately he's jumping to his feet when his sensitive hearing picks up the sound of the elevator mechanism running. No one is supposed to come down at this time, and Abdul already has his rifle raised to point at the elevator doors by the time Taim is able to get to his own feet. The old werewolf doesn't even need to say anything for the young man to stand on opposite side of him, they work together well, both guns aimed at the person revealed by the opening elevator doors.
It's just the janitor.
Taim lets out a small breath and lowers his gun, relaxing as the janitor gives them a small greeting both of them have to strain their ears to hear as a face mask muffles their words.
"That was a bit embarrassing." Taim chuckles weakly, nodding his own greeting and taking a step back so the janitor can push the heavy cart past them. Abdul notes the janitor's hands are thick and large, the veins poking out beneath latex gloves. Murky water sloshes inside the mop bucket, the trash bag filled to the brim and budging.
It's just a janitor.
But like an annoying tick on his ass, something doesn't let old man Abdul relax.
There's a buzz in the back of his mind like the one he'd get when he was being watched, and when he catches sight of the janitor's eyes beneath the wide-brimmed cap that buzzing stops; Instead replaced with a flash sense of wrongness in his bones and the feeling of tar inside his heart and an indescribable scent — like stale beer and burnt grass and deep dark rot — it has his fingers moving to the trigger before the sight of magic melting through latex can make the short trip from his eyes to his brain—
Glowing lines spring into thin air to form magic circles before their eyes.
The warding totems shatter.
'Pop' goes a head.
Both bodies drop to the ground.
"Could have told me there was a dog." Your words scrape against your throat like shards of glass from the disuse, melted latex stretching into long strands as you take off the cleaner gloves and throw them away, your fingers steaming and glowing hot with mana before you hide them away in tactical gloves.
"I-" Taim tries to say but his voice fails him, eyes and mind still blinded by the harsh glare of magical fire.
"Save it." You cut him off, pulling open the lip of the trash bag to dig out your facemask helmet. It's both a full face helmet and a gasmask, scratched up from years of use but still able to protect your head while keeping you anonymous. A shame it can't filter out the stench of burnt flesh, but you've gotten used to it.
Taim's vision clears and the moment his eyes settle on the charred remains of Abdul's head— the hollowed out skull where concentrated flame had burned a hole straight through everything in it's path, the flesh and bone charred black —he's scrambling away as fast as his feet can push him, the shattered remains of your warding totem crumbling beneath his fingers. Bile rises in his throat and he coughs when he breaths in, but his stomach is thankfully empty so he ends up dry heaving.
"On your feet." Your words are hard to understand under your gasmask, but you don't need to raise your voice. The tone you use has him scrambling to his feet in seconds.
"I- I- yes sir!" Taim manages to stutter out, doesn't even have to fake his fear as he stands at attention. He watches you reach into the dirty water to pull out a Handheld Personal Computer and shake off the residual droplets to ensure it still works before putting it in your pocket.
"When is the next check in?" You ask, reaching further into the trash bag to grasp the handhold on the heavy gas canister hidden beneath office trash. You pull it out without much effort, setting it carefully on the ground so you can recheck that the release valve is intact.
"20 minutes sir." Taim responds and he doesn't need to know Arabic to know what's inside the canister when a grinning skull is printed on the metal.
You let out a low sound, and Taim tries not to peer too closely at you. Sometimes he wonders what face a person who burns people alive without a single second of hesitation could have, but then you look at him and he sees that unnatural glow of mana in your eyes behind the darkened lenses of the helmet and he's glad he's met with the emotionless visage of the mask rather than the one beneath it.
"You have 10 to get out before Hell opens up." You say, standing back up and picking up the canister without complaint. "Use the emergency tunnels, don't spook the VIPs."
Taim is human, not sensitive to magic like the monsters are, but even he can feel the latent mana in your veins that strengthens your body. Like maggots at the back of his skull. It makes a second round of bile rise to his throat. "Yes sir."
You pay close attention to him until he disappears down the corridor before going the opposite way. Alone, it is easier to calm the lingering heat in your veins until the eternal engine of mana in your chest fizzles down to embers like a sleeping beast. Can't have your mana mess with sensitive electronics, even if that does leave you exposed on the cams (as if there's anyone alive to watch them)
"Ifrit, status?" The small radio in your ear crackles.
"Moving to the target, encountered and neutralized a wolf." You answer, taking sharp turns as you follow a path you'd memorized beforehand. "No other monsters to report."
You were lucky to run into one down in the bowels of the conference hall instead of at the front gate. Otherwise your espionage mission would have turned into a frontal assault. Not that Khaled would have minded, you were getting paid to send a loud statement after all.
"Good." You don't need to see his face to know he's smirking, your employer wasn't a huge fan of subhumans. "Continue to the objective."
You respond in affirmative, coming to a heavy metal door, locked with a passcode and even a palm scanner; It's all a valiant effort to keep sensitive data safe, but it may as well be cardboard to you. You summon another circle, this time right on the door, biting your tongue. You're not good with 'subtle' but you haven't forgotten what Taurus or Sierra had taught you; first pushing a bit of loose ash magic between the large atoms making up the metal to disrupt the bonds, then a single pulse of fire ignites the volatile ash and has the entire bottom half crumbling into red hot shards.
Molten slag drips down to the floor when you duck down under the remaining half of the door to find yourself in the server room. Steam rises when the cold air meets your hot skin, but you hardly notice as you first head to the ventilation system at the back of the room. It's dark, but you don't bother turning on the lights, the subtle mana in your eyes enough to give you primitive night vision.
"Ifrit to Alpha-Actual, connecting the payload right now." You say, setting the canister down. The ventilation collects the air from the server room to push it through the entire building and then outside, so all you have to do is melt a hole through the exit pipe until it's big enough for the hose on the canister to fit snugly inside.
"And the files?" Khaled's voice sounds in your ear once you're finished.
"Going now." Standing back up you head to the central server. Taking out the HPC you hook it up to the mainframe, watching the screen until it shows 'connection secure'. "I'm connected."
"Copy that." Your eyes scan the cracked screen (which you broke less than a week after getting it), seeing the file transfer start before Khaled even finishes speaking and trying to read and memorize the names of dozens the files but they change too quickly. "File transfer ETA 5 minutes. Sit tight."
Giving confirmation you keep an eye on the doorway. Though you are positioned in such a way that you'd see the shadow of someone coming in before they see you, years of being behind enemy lines and acting as a friendly to your foes has taught you to be careful. Especially when you can't use more than a smidgeon of mana without frying the entire server system.
You are lucky that no-one comes, the remaining guards too busy guarding the diplomats above you to check what's beneath their noses. While waiting you access the public stream to watch the peace talks, setting the sound to the lowest possible setting so you can keep an eye on the diplomats in case you need a change of plan.
"Got the files, you're clear to finish." You're moving before Khaled can finish speaking, leaving the HPC to hang by the cord from the server. "Oh, and remember: Loud."
"You get what you pay for sir." Kneeling down next to the gas canister you check to ensure your gas mask is firmly on and breathing in deeply; It restricts your breathing and makes muscles work harder, but your body is so used to it that it feels like coming back home.
"Letting the gas out now." Even with the gas mask you still hold your breath when you open the valve, the gas hissing as it escapes the canister, the fan right next to you helping push it through the system. You know there's not enough gas to reach the diplomats on the top floor, it's part of the plan, so when the gas pitters out you cast another circle inside the pipe.
The servers around you flicker meekly and crackle with electricity when you use your mana fully; Something intense and suffocating burns behind your sternum for just a second before liquid mana is rushing down your veins into your hands and coming out through the magic circle as copious amounts of ash.
The rotating fan right next to you spews some of your ash right back at you, flooding the server room in magic that has long since accepted your body enough not to hurt you. But even your seasoned stomach feels tight when you breathe in the mixture of ash and toxic gas, the chemicals turning your magic a nasty shade of green, and you make a mental note to change the filter when you're done with the op otherwise the toxified sediment collecting in there will poison you for months.
You can hear the diplomats begin to cough over the livestream in the HPC, but it all feels so distant when you shift and feel cold dog tags press against your burning chest. They're light like a noose around your neck, yet the absence of weight mocks you in a way their owners no longer can.
There's a familiar sting in your bones when your mana reservoir begins dwindling, but it's easy to push through it until the engine in your chest goes into overdrive from the stress the magic puts on your body. You only stop when the burning mana in your veins starts burning small holes in the sleeves of the janitor jacket, revealing bits of your mage marked skin.
Stopping the flow of ash your hands find themselves in your pocket, taking out a lighter. It's one of those old zippo lighters, the exterior is rusted from years of action and numerous initials are scratched into the metal, but somehow it still functions; It's the strange thing about it— the more you use it, the longer it lasts. Stop, and it dies.
"It's a bit like you, firebug."
Absentmindedly you trace the scratched initials in the metal, trying to ignore the hollowness in your chest when the screams beyond the smokescreen of ash start sounding familiar.
"Going dark." You say to them, flicking it open.
One spark is all it takes.
. . .
With Makarov having gone underground like a wanker after his escape from the gulag, Price and Laswell had been stuck with their heads in mountains of paperwork searching for the bastard. Price had known he'd be in for a headache the moment he agreed to let the boys watch a live football game between England and Scotland, but he reasoned they'd all been working hard enough to earn even a small break.
At the very least it gave them all a moment of reprieve from the stress of a possible world war.
It didn't stop Soap from being a bloody muppet.
"Oh fockin' 'ell!" Soap roars and jumps to his feet, growling at the teli where a ref held a red card above her head. "That should've been a yellow! Fock, one more eye and the ref's a right cyclops." He waves obscenities at the teli as if the ref can see them, his tail hitting Gaz every time it wagged.
"Soap!" Gaz groans and stretches one black wing to smack the werewolf over the head with his long flight feathers to stop him blocking the screen.
Though Gaz's wings are hollow, the smack still hurts. "Ow, what's that for?" Soap groans, rubbing the back of his head.
"At least take your defeat with a wee bit of dignity." Gaz smirks, folding his wings.
"Bold assumption he has any." Ghost mutters next to Price, making him chuckle.
“Oh ho! I’ll get me dignity when the bloody ref gets off 'er knees an’ stops blowing the entire game.” Soap turns to playfully snap his teeth at Gaz. "And what's tha-"
The football match cuts out, replaced with a news segment.
"-Oh, what the fock?" Soap grows quiet when the newscaster begins speaking.
"We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you breaking news. As we speak, the conference hall in Al Mazra, where diplomats from over 40 countries had come to discuss peace and trade agreements with the newly reinstated Urzikstan government, burns in the flames of another terrorist attack."
The footage shifts to a drone filming a bird's eye view shot of violent flames spewing from every hole and window to engulf the entire three story building in consuming fire, heavy plumes of smoke rising into the sky like a maw of a hungering beast to spew a storm of ash and cinders down to the ground. The clouds of ash have a sick green undertone to them.
"Shit." Gaz sucks in a breath.
"Mokarov's done hiding." Ghost notes, leaning in to look closely at the screen with narrowed eyes.
"How the fock did we miss this?" Soap asks the question in their minds, turning to look at Price. "This popped up like bloody whack-a-mole."
At that same time Price's phone rings. The dragon quickly fishes it out of his pocket, seeing Laswell's name as the caller ID before he picks it up while the reporter drawls on.
"Price, are you-"
"Yeah, I'm watching the teli." He cuts her off, knowing what she's going to say. Distantly he can hear the same news report sounding on her end.
"Authorities warn citizens to vacate the immediate area as toxic gas has been detected in the air. Military forces are already enroute, but the prospects for the diplomats survival are nonexistent."
Price's draconic eyes focus on the screen when the footage shifts to that inside the conference hall. Two diplomats argue about something Price can't begin to try and untangle, his focus on one man near the back who begins coughing. More follow suit, and even over the screen Price can tell the signs of toxic gas inhalation by the way more diplomats begin wheezing and coughing wetly.
"This isn't the Russians." Kate says after Price has put her on speaker.
"How come? Looks like some terrorist shite Makarov would pull." Johnny says, his tail curled up and the tip wagging occasionally as he pays attention to the screen.
Seconds later plumes of blackish-green smog erupt from the vents above the diplomats, spewing out with such force it knocks the the camera and the man behind it down to the ground. Ash Magic, Price realizes when he sees smoldering cinders drift almost peacefully in the all consuming fog. Seconds later something causes a spark and the volatile ash magic explodes.
"Ash mage." Ghost grunts, "Just great."
"Makarov doesn't use mages." Price says, scratching his beard.
"No, but Al-Asad does." Kate's voice drifts through the silent room as they watch several APC's arrive on the scene, armored soldiers exiting. But without any monsters who can stomach the heat like Price and with the fog of ash so thick it could be cut with a knife, the best they can do is secure the perimeter. "The CIA intercepted his broadcast before it went public, this is just the start."
Gaz hops off the couch, crossing the small distance to tap one claw at the screen. "What is that?" He asks. Seemingly hearing him, the drone camera focuses on where the main entrance of the building had been.
A dark silhouette of a person can be seen in the flames, growing darker and more refined until finally a featureless helmet emerges from the flames, a deep glow emanating from behind the lenses. It's followed by a body, clothes burnt away in some parts but the flesh beneath unharmed. Price can tell immediately it's a mage by the state of the arms — even from far away it's easy to tell the mage marks, the skin turned rough and dark like cooled magma, veins brimming with volatile mana.
Before the soldiers can fire a single bullet you lift one hand up, the dark mage marks turning to bright like fresh lava when mana flows from your chest to your fingers. A magic circle etches itself into the ground in an instant, so large the surrounding buildings fall into it's perimeter.
And with a second motion of your hand everything erupts into an all consuming cloud of ash.
Laswell's voice rings out. "That's Khaled's new attack dog."
Price and Ghost share a look, both know what will happen long before some nervous soldier caught in the ash cloud pulls the trigger. The cloud of ash explodes the second a spark is created in a weapon's chamber, plunging everything into chaos.
Great, a new wanker to worry about.
Price sighs, brows furrowing. "That's trouble all right."
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Tag list: @resident-cryptid @diejager @lovingtyrantkitten @lieutnt
Masterlist <- Chapter 1 (you are here) -> Chapter 2
You can imagine the helmet however you want, but it's in the style of the Devtac Ronin helmet.
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mickstart · 3 months
Note
Do you have any Ratiorine or individual headcanons you haven't been able to fit into fics? Maybe established relationship?
(also hi I hope you don't mind asks like this 🫡)
I LOVE ASKS LIKE THIS. ALWAYS. THANK YOU.
Okay. Ahem. Sorry for shouting.
Ok so one I kiiind of got into in my last fic but didn't really get to go into how it would play out in their established relationship - Aventurine struggles to be verbally honest and vulnerable, so he shows his love a lot of the time by buying Ratio everything and anything. He doesn't have anything else to spend his money on - he buys things just for the sake of buying them, the feeling of owning something. So having someone to SPOIL? He loves it.
Ratio mentions the university's coffee machines are awful? There are new machines AND fancy coffee varieties on campus by the next week. Ratio mentions passing interest in wanting to carbon date a rare fossil up for auction? Aventurine buys it. Ratio's microscope is calibrated wrong? Aventurine buys him a new laboratory. Key feature of their relationship is Ratio being showered in gifts. He is the galactic sugar baby.
Also just.... they are both very touchy and clingy because they can only be like that with each other. Aventurine drapes himself over Ratio like a blanket at any opportunity, hangs off his arm like a purse, and Ratio is at his absolute happiest when he's reading a new academic article with the weight of Aventurine's head on his chest.
They will both deny this but with Ratio's lack of friends / companions, and Aventurine's Trauma, they are both very possessive of each other. (In Aventurine's case he's afraid he's doomed to lose people.) But that's okay because they're both into it. That strip of exposed skin on Ratio's side permanently has bite marks on it after they get together.
Some more individual hcs below the cut because I'm rambling sfhgsfdjhg and also because the aventurine one discusses disordered eating!
So I have a lot of headcanons for aventurine. For one he is Skinny - like, worryingly so, because of a combination of growing up the way he did and the habits that's instilled in him. He dines lavishly just to say he can, but he will NOT eat regularly throughout the day unless he's going Out to eat. He squirrels food away and only eats it when he hits that "so hungry you're getting nausea" threshold. He can't stop coming up with wildly unlikely scenarios where he'll end up without food again and he'll need a stash of it.
(Fortunately, Ratio is literally a trained chef and once they're together he regularly visits with lunch or has Aventurine over for dinner so he starts eating 3 meals a day instead of 1 big meal. Aventurine is the only stoneheart with a packed lunch lovingly made by his husband.)
A lot of my headcanons for ratio tend to be more autism and projection related. (The bust is a sensory thing. The robes are actually heavier than they look because having weight on his shoulders calms him and lets him think clearer.) But I guess one thing for him is that he Really resents how the guild is reliant on IPC funding while The Genius Society gets money thrown at them simply for the status their names have. It's one of the reasons he and Aventurine have tension at first bc Ratio is Sick of the IPC lording money over them and expecting weapons and pointless research in exchange for giving him the resources to cure another disease.
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allastoredeer · 5 months
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Would you have any bottom Alastor fanfics to suggest? Ever since I came across your blog I’ve been hyper fixated on that idea but I can’t seem to find any
Surely!
I only just realized I have a total of 15 Hazbin fics bookmarked on AO3 😅 but I have a lot in my "Marked for Later" tab, and I'm sure I'll come across more bottom!Alastor fics there when I get around to going through it.
Of course, look over the tags before reading these fics, some of them are more explicit than others.
Here are the ones I've read and enjoyed:
Unhealthy Attachments by Keelywolfe (RadioApple)
Lucifer never thought to ask before what Alastor got out of having sex with him. Probably won't regret asking, right?
Right?
(Post Season Finale)
<><>
A Failure of Business Negotiation by Drowsy_Salamander (RadioStatic)
It began, as many things did for Alastor, out of curiosity. A tryst with Vox to decide whether sex was worth the hype, a neat and simple dynamic on Alastor's end. However, Vox clearly developed other ideas about what was going on and thus proceeded to utterly ruin everything between them by proposing a formal alliance.
... Alternatively: how Vox and Alastor became exes without ever dating
(NOTE: The smut is more alluded to than explicitly written, but I really enjoyed a deep dive into Alastor's brain and his thoughts surrounding sex. It was very enjoyable to read).
<><><>
601 by ChildishSadism (RadioStatic)
Humans aren't aware that the dark desires in their hearts give demons a clear path to earth. A soul in hell can be tasty but a pure soul from the human world was a delicacy that many demons fought for. Vox enjoyed indulging in this pleasure once in a while, it made his teeth feel sharper and his claws deathlier.
It was such a shame that maybe, he should have kept an eye around in case someone else was ready to steal his meal.
or Vox possesses a priest to try to harvest more souls and Alastor possesses a nun to steal his catch.
(REMINDER TO CHECK THE TAGS)
<><><>
Lucifer and his Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Relationship by Keelywolfe (RadioApple)
(NOTE: This one is actually a series. I haven't finished it yet, but it has a lot of yummy bottom!Alastor content)
<><><>
Time to Dance by voland_xx (RadioStatic)
Building a time machine is never a good idea, especially when you’re in Hell.
Sir Pentious’s newest “invention” shocks the residents of Hazbin Hotel (+1) back into their human forms. Alastor and Vox navigate this new adjustment.
or, a demon gets voraciously, hungrily obsessed with a pretty man. What’s new.
<><><>
A Poison for Lust by MatcHoMetriC (Alestial - Alastor x Zestial)
Zestial & Alastor do some 'experimentation' on how the Vee's love potion actually works
<><><>
These are all the ones I have right now, but I'm sure I have a more squirreled away in my Marked for Later tab. If you're looking for more bottom!Alastor I definitely recommend looking through the bottom!Alastor tag! <- I actually just barely glanced through it and found one that looks very interesting, this is this one, if anyone is interested:
Devil's Threeway by Mixkarules18
All Alastor was trying to do was fetch Lucifer for Charlie. It was simple, nothing should have come from it.
However, the Overlord sees something that no one else was meant to and Lucifer decides to have a little fun with him.
Or alternatively:
Two Lucifer’s, one hole
(Tell me that doesn't sound like a fantastic read! I'll be sitting down to give it a looksie right after I post this LOL)
If anyone else has a bottom!Alastor fics they'd like to recommend, send them my way! I have a mighty need
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saturna625 · 19 days
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You work at the Mystery Shack in Gravity Falls.
It's no big deal, really. I mean, every once in a while, you realize that it's gotta be a front for something. A cult, the illuminati, or the mafia, you weren't really sure.
You weren't paid enough to care, honestly.
But the job was fun enough, and the customers were cool to screw with, and it paid the bills, plus your coworkers were pretty cool.
Your boss was.... an odd man, sure. A good con, a great sense of humor, and a mouth that could make a sailor blush, but you wouldn't say he's evil.
He's got a great nephew and niece, who come up every summer. They're chill, too. Mabel sends you home with at least two new stickers every day. Your binder is getting too full. But you didn't mind, the kid was sweet. You'd find a use for these stickers, later.
Gravity Falls was an odd town, but you didn't really seem to mind that either. A little town, barely even a dot on the state map, hidden behind back roads upon back roads in the great state of Oregon. It had its moments, and it's stories.
You were decently sure the lawn gnome in your garden moved on its own, and your attic was definitely haunted (you regret mentioning that to the kids– you've found that Dipper kid trying to look up where you lived), but it was cheap and homey, and a great place to live after scraping past college.
Then your boss– who was really your boss's brother? Who had taken up his name, when he disappeared, the ultimate con, you actually admired him for that– Stanley, and his twin, the original owner of the Shack, Stanford emerged from behind the vending machine, you knew that you were maybe in a little too deep. Mafia ties, for sure.
Then quite some events happen: ie, the sky splits open, you become a statue for a hot minute, and then... aren't, anymore (dude, the squirrel that you treat as your therapist is gonna go wild when he hears this) and you're back at the Shack.
The building is warmer now. Pointdexter– or Ford, the actual one, is a pretty good man. A little blunt, with not much common sense for the amount of books smarts he has, but good.
If you find anything weird, or out of place, it's his.
If you see him fighting an interdimensional squid, and then you're told there's seviche in the kitchen, you don't question it.
And you take some seviche to go.
The shack is a little louder since Ford's arrival. Stan seems happy. Dipper too. And Mabel, well, she still gives you stickers as you leave your shift.
You're on a walk, something you read that could help with coping, through the woods. The weather is nice today, and for once, it's not raining, and even better, the air is crisp and cool.
You decide to take a new trail. It leads into a bit of a clearing, you can see a rock piling, some flowers, and a creek. It's pretty.
You take your journal out, a small, leatherbound thing (the inside cover is coated with stickers. Mabel, please) and begin to sketch it, a hobby you've picked up in the last months.
You're not the best, but you're not the worst, either. As you're finishing up, you spot a weird shift in the rocks.
Weird is normal here.
So you get up to go investigate, holding your journal at the ready, like a defensive position.
The statue does not move.
It looks like the illuminati symbol. Like the top of the pyramid on the back of a dollar bill. It's overgrown with moss, but you do not recognize it. It's hand is held out, like it's ready to shake yours.
Heh. That would be pretty funny.
If you shook the statue's hand.
It's what it wants. Shake it's hand. Shake the hand.
You draw the statue. It's a shoddy deal, but you actually enjoyed how it turned out. It looks cool.
The hand is outstretched.
You leave one of Mabel's stickers on the statue. It looks a little less intimidating that way.
Your shift starts in twenty minutes, so you tuck your journal in your jacket, and you're off to it.
Maybe you'll come back later. There's a bit more you want to do with the drawing.
Shake the hand.
You've gotta fix the angle on it. You wonder how the sculptor got it to be that way.
You clock in, and pull your journal out again, as Dipper walks through the doors, followed by Ford.
The younger twin asks what your journal is about. He's got a few of his own.
"Kind of random." You tell him. "I draw things I see on my walks, or write down recipes, or stuff like that. Dude, wait until I show you this statue I found in the woods. It'll fit right in with those notebooks you keep..."
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elsweetheart · 1 year
Text
saw rin @coeurify write some roommate!abby so i decided to write some too cos i’m feeling #inspired
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slutty!roommate!abby short fic / drabble below the cut 💋 minors dni & don’t ask for part 2
It’s not like you were dating. Just living together — roommates, that’s all it was. A shabby and cozy little apartment, tucked away in a nice enough area. There’d be a new problem each week— AC busted, closet door swinging off, flickering light bulb, and you were lucky enough to live with a 6ft blonde walking talking ‘Don’t call the plumber / electrician / whatever, I got it’ machine. Things worked out pretty well.
The two of you were close. Almost too close. Your friendship bordered on simmering sexual tension whilst always keeping it just respectful and distanced enough for neither of you to make a move. You liked to think she enjoyed it, keeping you just out of reach like this. She knew you wanted her, but where was the fun in giving in?
Abby got around. It was no rumour that she had a history of being the community strap, and whilst her crazy days had died off a little — you’d still be awoken once or twice a fortnight to the sound of a new girl with the same shrill moan, headboard thumping against the wall. All you could do was sulk, snuggle down further into your bed covers and will yourself to sleep with your stomach twisting in jealousy at the thought of Abby curled next to someone else for the night.
The two of you liked to have ‘bonding night’, you know — watch a movie, drink wine, eat snacks, sometimes a face mask would make an appearance. Abby had insisted on these nights when you’d first moved in together, so that the two of you could get to know eachother, and since then it had become a tradition every Friday night that the neither of you would miss for the world. Infact, it became such an important tradition that plans were often rescheduled around it, dates postponed, ubers cancelled. Just you, your good friend Abby, and a bottle of something pink and tangy.
“See, I’d let you pick the movie we watch more often but… everytime you do the movie sucks.” She was muffled by the popcorn stuffed into her cheek like a squirrel whilst she scrolled with the remote for an appropriate choice. Abby had real audacity to look this good tonight. She was spread out on the couch, greeny-grey tshirt so tight it was ridiculous, hair down and a little damp from her shower, black sweatpants on (and fuzzy socks, not relevant to her hotness but you couldn’t not mention them.) It took you a second to reply as you pulled your legs beneath you from your curled up position on the chair, subconsciously tucking yourself smaller.
“They don’t suck. You don’t give them a chance! You just talk over it the whole time and ramble about how bad it is.” You shrug defensively, not seeing the way her eyes flickered over to you and lingered with an adoring smile at the way your forehead scrunched and lips pushed forward in an irritable pout. She looked away when you glanced.
“Maybe they don’t suck but they’re always the same. Always a rom com with bad jokes and like 10 minute sex scenes. Is that why you like ‘em, perv?” She nudges you with her spread knee, jostling you which makes your eyes widen slightly — face prickly and hot.
“You think I only watch movies for the sex scenes? Get your mind out of the gutter.” You snicker, fingernails picking at the blanket because, no — it’s not the reason, but she didn’t have to bring that up.
“Hey, I’m not the one picking dirty movies.” Her voice drags in that flirty and sarcastic way that makes your thighs press together. She always did this. It was your thing, you could say. She winds you up, takes the conversation down a sexual route and you just sit there and take it, always scared to make a move. You just couldn’t bring yourself to, what if she was just making fun of you? You live together, if you misread things there was potential for some major awkwardness.
“If I wanted to watch something dirty I’d just… look at porn or something.” You try and combat her teasing, but it comes out stuttery and awkward and you still can’t look at it. Her smirk deepens, intrigue washing over her. You hear her put the remote down and the scrolling on screen halts as she gives you her full attention. Busying yourself to buy more time, you reach forward and take your wine glass — taking a long sip.
“What, ‘you telling me you don’t watch porn now?”
You turn a little, giving her a look. One that read as ‘you’re not seriously asking me that.’
“Do you?”
“I don’t have to. I have sex.”
You scoff, turning your body toward her now with a finger pointed ready to defend yourself.
“I have sex.”
“Oh yeah?” You hate the way she’s smiling and tilting her head.
“It’s just… been a while.”
She sighs casually, leaning back into her seat.
“Same, to be honest.”
“I literally heard some girl screaming your name like two weeks ago.” Your eyes are practically touching your brain from how hard they roll and she laughs cheekily with her tongue pinched between her teeth, a cute roll forming beneath her chin from the position of her head. Your stomach flips.
“Exactly, two weeks ago. I’m trying not to do that so much anymore. Sleep around. Gonna delete the dating apps.” She clarifies, a look of dignity in her expression as she announces this making you narrow your eyes sceptically.
“And why is this? Who is this new and improved Abby?”
Now it’s her turn to roll her eyes. “I dunno. Just don’t think I should anymore. Think I’d rather be having meaningful sex with one person now. You know, the type where you press your foreheads together and tell her you love her when you make her cum and stuff.” She just says it so casually, like it doesn’t make your stomach bottom out into your cunt at the thought of being that one person, whilst simultaneously making your heart stammer at the idea of the person being someone else.
“Y—yeah. Me too I suppose. That’s why I’m just waiting.”
You feel that your response is put together and mature enough for the conversation to come to a natural end so that you can continue bickering over what movie to watch before you embarrass yourself, but she stares at you anyway — contemplative and analytical.
“You’ve been waiting a while, huh?” Abby talks softer, sympathetic and her fingers that were resting along the back of the couch reach a little further and stroke your shoulder briefly. You can’t tell if it’s kind or patronising. Because of this you purse your lips with a shrug.
“Yeah. Haven’t had sex since my ex-girlfriend was still around so that’s…”
“A year and half.” She raises her brows and you mirror her, surprised at how fast she knew the answer. “You’d just broken up when you moved in here.”
“Oh… yeah, that’s right. I suppose that is a long time.”
She breathes out her nose, long and thoughtful before turning her body back to the TV. You do too, because you think it’s over — but the conversation is never quite over until Abby says so.
“Well, if you ever need your fix you know where my door is. You deserve to feel good too.”
She’s kidding, right?
Like, that’s not a serious offer. It can’t be. Because if it were you’d be on her bed sprawled out with two thick fingers up your cunt and not here on the couch getting wine drunk and horny. Your eyelashes are kissing your brow at how wide your stretch your eyes for a moment as you stare ahead, saying nothing. What do you say? How do you seize this glorious potential opportunity without coming across as totally desperate and ruining things? She is kidding, she has to be.
You open your mouth, maybe just to let out a meek ‘really?’ for some clarification, but she speaks again — totally ripped from the moment. “Why do I keep getting recommended only Lindsey Lohan movies? That’s you on my Netflix account right? I swear, I’ll change my password.” She chuckles, like she didn’t just offer to pity fuck you, and you weren’t just considering take her up on it. You shake yourself free of the moment and you don’t talk about it again.
Abby really did stop sleeping around, and you knew that from the lack of moans waking you up in the night. You could have been imagining things, but she’d gotten flirtier too. Wearing tighter fit clothes around her muscles, making sure to always squeeze behind you in the kitchen with her hands on your hips, chest practically to your back with a low ‘scuse me, sorry’ in your ear as she slips by, the lot of it. You felt you were running up the AC, constantly trying to fan yourself off after she worked you up. It was two fridays since she made the offer, and you decided now was the time you’d act on it. You poured yourself a glass of pink wine and waited on the couch, getting in a few gulps before she arrived for confidence.
You drank the whole glass, and she still hadn’t arrived home. Abby had never missed a ‘bonding night’ since moving in, and now she wasn’t showing up at all? No text, no apology, just total absence. You couldn’t help but feel embarrassed and pissed off, drinking half the bottle before curling into the couch and falling asleep.
You awoke to the sound of giggles and jangling keys, and your bleary eyes cracked open — flickering to the clock on the wall ticking quietly. 2:54AM. You were about to lift your head, sit up on the couch and call out for Abby, questioning where she’d been, why she missed bonding night. You were halted by the sound of two voices, only one belonging to your roommate.
“Shh, gotta be quiet or you’re gonna wake my roommate, baby. Rooms this way.” Abby, and the tottering sound of high heels behind her. You felt sick. Why did you feel so sick?
You close your eyes again when Abby’s bedroom door clicks shut, feeling your lashes grow damp as you pull a cushion over your head — trying to block the inevitable moans and will yourself back to sleep. This wasn’t the first time Abby had come home late after hanging out with friends and found you sleeping on the couch having wanted to hang out, but you’d usually atleast receive her hushed apologies as she lifts you and carries you bridal style to your own room where she’d leave you as you mutter a goodnight half awake to her. She’d never missed bonding night though, because that was off limits.
The next three days you avoided her. You felt more stupid the longer time passed, because you actually didn’t have much reason to be angry. Yes, she missed your Friday tradition but life happens, right? You were certain if it were you she’d be totally fine with it. But it would never be you, because you’d never miss it. It was a vicious thought cycle.
When you’d ignored her on the way out your door for work, she’d put it down to you not hearing her or maybe being in too much of a rush. When you’d come home, you’d spent the evening in your room, only emerging into the kitchen to heat up some noodles before retreating. She figured you were tired. When you’d shrugged her off the next day when she brought home your favourite type of chocolate — she knew something had to be up. She couldn’t work out if it was her, or you were just going through it at first, but when you’d snapped at her on day three — it became crystal clear.
“Can you stop fucking using my towel?” You emerge in the kitchen, and honestly — for the first second before she registers the anger, Abby is just relieved to hear your voice. She turns around from the counter slowly, sucking some salad dressing off her finger from her lunch she was preparing. You looked adorable — still damp, oversized pyjama t-shirt and sleep shorts, comical cartoony oversized slippers on your feet. Despite your appearance, your expression was as serious as ever, brow pinched in stress.
“Sorry.” She shrugs simply, because you’ve never had a problem with her borrowing your towel in all the time you’d lived together.
“Like, can I just come home and not have you all in my stuff?” You huff, going to walk away but she frowns, following you like a big buff lost puppy.
“Hey, hey? What is this? It’s just a towel.” She nearly whines, because why are you being like this? Your usual sweet soft self has gone grainy and abrasive on her and she didn’t like it. You were shutting her out.
“Whatever Abby, I’m just telling you.” You back down a little now, taking a few steps and she gently takes your arm in her large hand. She’s always gentle, aware of how much stronger she is than you.
“You’ve been off lately, you wanna talk about it? You know I’m here for you, right?”
You don’t look at her.
“Yeah, here for me and every other damn girl that walks through your door. Let me go.”
You don’t mean to say it, because God is it telling — you want the ground to swallow you up whole and you scrunch your face in embarrassment as you walk away, shoulders tense and face all hot. You were not this jealous, petty person. She missed your tradition, it was her fault.
Abby gave you your space for the rest of the day, and by evening you’d wound down — anger subsiding as you plonked down on the couch and curled up sulkily, just feeling humiliated and sad. You missed her.
You stared ahead when you heard her bedroom door click open, heavy slow footsteps approaching the living room along the smooth wooden floor. You don’t look, but you can see her standing there at the side, looking at you sadly, henley top and braid adorned.
“Hey.”
Her voice is smooth and low and warm like hot chocolate and you want to bathe in it. You pull the blanket over your thighs tighter over you.
“Hi.”
It was truly an honest mistake on Abby’s part. She’d woken up filled with regret (and a steaming hang over) beside the girl with lilac-y platinum hair, stretching and muttering out a ‘Happy friday’ to break the tension. The girl cracked open an eye with a tired smile and rasped “It’s Saturday, sleepyhead.” making Abby’s heart drop after a beat. Friday’s. They were your days. She was sure you wouldn’t mind missing one out though, you were always kind and gracious like that. The whole bonding night was Abby’s idea after all, it probably wasn’t all that important to you, right? She reassured herself before politely kicking out her bed-mate.
Abby slowly sits down on the couch beside you, and the weight in the room shifts like it always did when she’d join you. She held such a presence that the air would feel thicker and warmer the closer she got, almost to the point where it could be stifling. “I’m sorry I missed bonding night. Manny dragged me out to get drunk and I swear, I thought it was a Thursday—”
You cut her off, which surprised her.
“I thought you were done with bringing girls home.”
She’s silenced for a few seconds, staring at your profile. You’re beautiful even when you’re mad.
“Why does it matter?” It’s soft, like a whisper because she doesn’t want it to come off as defensive or rude like it potentially could do. She genuinely wants to know. Why were you so mad about it?
You were all tense and huffy when you reply and it makes Abby’s heart clench, just wanting to squeeze you.
“Because… because don’t offer something to someone if you don’t mean it. I’m not… I thought we… ugh, whatever. I’m not having this conversation.” You made a mental note to jump back online after this conversation and search for somewhere new to live.
Abby thinks back, and it doesn’t take her long to land on the thought of her telling you she’d be more than happy to take care of you if you needed some relief. Her shoulders relaxed in realisation and brow untensed, and she reached out to stroke a thumb along your arm, body twisted to you.
“Okay, I understand.” She soothes and you want to tear up, maybe in embarrassment or maybe from her tone of voice making you feel small and cared for. You attempt to hold off and fight the feeling. “I thought you weren’t interested. Thought I’d made it weird so I just figured… if I bring someone home things could be normal again. I dunno, it doesn’t make sense now I say it out loud.” She sighs, shaking her head with her eyes closed and brows raised at her own stupidity. You glance at her, shy and still hot-faced and look down at your lap. “Just tell me how you feel. I think… I want what you want. Just need to hear it, sweetheart.”
She can’t make you say it, not after the embarrassment you’ve already faced. So, you settle on another complaint to tell your story. “You don’t know how hard it is… being so pent up and just hearing you… hearing them get to enjoy… you. I wanna feel like that.” You feel pathetic, but your stomach curls anyway at the feeling of her coarse hand sliding up your arm and shoulder to cup the back of your neck, aiding you in looking at her.
“Yeah? I’m sorry. I think you just feel… left out.” She cooes and you preen into her touch, shifting in your seat a little. You say nothing, just let out a little air from your nose. She shuffles closer to you, bringing her warmth. “You forgive me yet? You want me to help you forgive me?” Her other hand fiddles with the blanket on your lap for permission to slide it away, and she’s so close now that you can sigh and lean your head on her strong shoulder, nodding silently. She pulls away the pink fluffy cover up and rests a hand on your bare thigh.
“You know I’d never miss bonding night. ‘D never neglect you on purpose. You’re still my number one, yeah?” She strokes the skin upwards, constantly craning her head down to look at you, watchful of your expression. “I didn’t know you wanted this, sweet girl. I would have taken care of you like you need ages ago if I knew.”
She drops a kiss to your temple and you shudder, your own arm wrapping around her strong bicep to cling to it as your thighs fall open wider. “Yeah? Can I?” She’s quiet and gentle, and you whimper when she cups your hot cunt through flimsy pyjama shorts.
She rubs a sloppy circle over the material and you whine, the sound of wetness already present from your quantity, filling the quiet room. She’d barely touched you, and you were already soaked — it was astounding. “God, you are pent up aren’t you? I’m sorry.” She chuckles in a sympathetic way, free hand coming to smooth down your furrowed brow. Abby stares you down when she slips your thin shorts to the side, fingers slipping and sliding through your drenched folds to circle your clit making you moan softly. “I know.” She hums, eyes on your lips. “You want a kiss? Will that help?”
You can’t talk, so you just nod and she brings you in whilst she languidly rubs your clit, gently sucking on your bottom lip and pressing pecks to it before finally rolling her tongue over yours. With this, she’s pressing a middle finger against your hole and easing it inside, curling up to press against your tight upper wall. You cry out a little against her mouth and she shushes you. “There you go, so fucking tight huh? S’been that long?” She grinds the ball of her hand against your clit and you hump against it, the waistband of your shorts hugging her wrist as the shape of her hand moves up and down.
“Just—needed this.” You struggle, your warm breath heating her lips making her lick over them.
“I know. Gotta use your words next time, let me know yeah? If you said the word I wouldn’t have been sleeping around.” She presses a kiss to the centre of your forehead, lips lingering there as you let out a string of moans and embarrassed pants at the sound of your own wetness against her finger. She slides in another, stretching you.
“Not gonna last long. S’been too long.” You cry and she nods, free hand sliding beneath your lower back when you arch it off the couch.
“I know. S’okay baby.”
When you cum, Abby presses her forehead to yours.
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agirlwithdemonblood · 3 months
Text
The Celebrity Next Door: Chapter 1 - Welcome to the Neighborhood
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Pairings: Jensen Ackles x Reader (Written in first person, but with Y/N)
Series Summary: Y/N's life takes an unexpected turn when she moves next door to Jensen Ackles, a famous actor navigating life post-divorce. Their initial awkward encounter over a broken window leads to a budding friendship, navigating the challenges of celebrity life and forging meaningful connections in their neighborhood.
Chapter Summary: Y/N, a New Yorker adjusting to life in Los Angeles, finds herself entangled with her neighbor Jensen Ackles and his daughter Katie after a baseball mishap leads to unexpected connections and new beginnings in their shared neighborhood.
A/N: Okay, so it may be weird but I'm writing this in first person POV, but the name will be changed to Y/N. Might be annoying, but it's easier for the story. Thank you!
Series Masterlist here!! & Main masterlist here!
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The sun beamed through the bay window of my living room, filling the air with the chirping of birds and scurrying of squirrels. It was a surprisingly joyful sound that welcomed me on my first real day in Los Angeles—a city I had dreaded joining.
Maybe my initial judgments were coloured by my New York roots; after all, I was unquestionably a city girl. I've always found comfort in the sounds of the city; cars honking, people scattered everywhere living their lives-that was the life I was used to. As much as I was excited about the new chapter of my life, there were qualities of LA that would take some getting used to, things that puzzled me.
Like why was it always so damn bright here? The sky, the buildings, the houses-all of it seemed to glow with an intensity that demanded sunglasses just to step outside. And why were the houses so enormous? It seemed ridiculous. I only need a bed, a bathroom and a kitchen yet here I was in what they called a condo, but felt more like a mansion with its space.
But despite my initial objection to LA’s charms, I couldn’t deny the peacefulness of the palm-tree-lined streets and the birdsong that greeted me each morning in a way New York never could.
I rolled onto my side, glanced at my phone, and sighed. 10:00 am already. There was still so much unpacking to do, and no one to help.
These first days were going to be busy. Pushing myself off the less-than-comfortable bed, I shuffled to the kitchen where the only thing I had set up so far was my Keurig machine. Leaning on the counter, I patiently awaited that first magical cup of morning coffee. Glancing outside, I squinted at the brilliant sunlight that threatened to overwhelm me. Seriously, why was it so damn bright here?
The coffee machine groaned, signaling it was ready. I turned to grab my mug when a sudden crash shattered the quiet. Instinctively, I dropped to the ground.
Peeking slowly over the counter, I discovered the cause—a baseball sitting right there on my kitchen floor, glass scattered everywhere around it.
I chuckled softly and shook my head. One thing I wouldn’t miss about New York: the reflex to duck for cover at every unexpected noise.
Moments later, the doorbell rang, nearly sending me into cardiac arrest. I approached guardedly, peeking through the side windows. A little girl stood on my porch, her expression guilt-ridden.
I opened the door, looked around for a parent nearby before crouching down to her eye level. “Hi there. Can I help you?”
Her small hands fidgeted with her zipper nervously. “I… I accidentally hit your window with my baseball. It’s inside your house.”
I smiled warmly. “It’s okay. What’s your name sweetie?”
Her eyes glanced up slightly, a light sniffle coming from her nose. “Katie."
“Well, Katie, I’m Y/N. Let’s go get your ball, alright? Are your parents around?”
She looked around and shook her head. “My daddy’s inside. Mommy’s not here.”
I nodded, retrieving the ball and returning to find Katie waiting patiently on the porch. I couldn’t help but giggle at her adorableness. Despite the broken window, I looked forward to having children around, filling the street with laughter and play.
Carefully navigating the scattered glass, I handed Katie her ball. She beamed up at me as I closed and locked the door behind us. “Where’s your house? I’ll take you back to your dad.”
Katie pointed to a massive white house next to mine, surrounded by a high fence and perfectly kept lawn which only peaked my curiosity.
Following Katie to her gate, I watched her disappear inside the house quickly, calling for her dad to come to the door. I waited patiently and suddenly anxiety filled my chest at the concept of meeting my new neighbour in this way.
It took a few minutes, but finally the little girl returned with a larger figure I could barely see from where I was standing. He approached the door and with every step he took towards the light, the more my breath got caught in my throat.
I knew him—or at least recognized him from somewhere. His piercing green eyes met mine, and suddenly it clicked: Jensen Ackles. I struggled to maintain composure, reminding myself he was just a person like me, despite my heart threatening to burst from my chest.
“Can I help you?” His voice was direct, cutting through my nerves.
I managed a polite smile, trying to gather my thoughts. “Hi... I just moved in next door. Your daughter accidentally threw a baseball into my kitchen window, and she came over to...”
“Katie!” His sharp voice interrupted, causing me to jump. He turned to his daughter, arms crossed. “What did I tell you about throwing the baseball around? This is the third time this month!”
Katie’s eyes dropped, on the verge of tears. I wanted to comfort her or maybe scold Jensen, but I knew nothing about parenting. Still, seeing him yell at her harshly made my anxiety rise.
The worst part of this whole situation though, was the way he was glaring into my soul, arms still crossed, a deep frown on his face. It felt like the very essence of my being was completely ruining his day.
He sighed, leaning against the doorway with a hint of apology in his eyes. “Is that all, or is there something else?”
I faltered, sensing his impatience. “Uh, no, that’s it, I guess.”
“Okay. Thanks, bye.” With that, the door closed, leaving me staring at the wooden texture of my first celebrity encounter.
As I walked back to my house, I couldn't stop the sadness that crept in. It was my first day, and it had already started roughly. I wondered if I would ever warm up to this place.
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An hour later, most of my boxes were unpacked, clothes neatly put away away, and a single family photo hung in the hallway that was taken at a family reunion over a year ago. Our family wasn't the photo taking type, and that's one thing I vowed to change, because as I stared at the empty wall with the lone photograph, I felt sad.
But when I looked around my spacious new home, I felt a sense of relief. The morning’s drama and anxiety had faded away.
I grabbed my coffee and stepped onto the front porch, sinking into the swing that came with the house. Examining the neighborhood, I noticed kids playing—biking, rollerblading, and drawing with chalk.
My gaze landed on Jensen’s front yard. Katie was there, playing with a little boy who looked just like him. Jensen was noticeably absent, which didn’t surprise me.
I headed out to collect my mail, when I heard a familiar voice calling my name. My heart warmed as Katie waved at me from her yard. Returning her wave with a smile, I realized maybe I wouldn’t hate this place after all.
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Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! Chapter 2 coming soon stay tuned!
Like, comment, and reblog, feedback is my fuel 💕
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sapphichotmess · 4 months
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Absolutely Smitten
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Modern!Ellie Williams x Plus Size!f!Reader (not really specified but that’s what I write)
Name inspired by Dodie’s song Absolutely Smitten
Even though this is not 18+, I am an 18+ blog, mdni
read the second part here!!
Warnings/Tags: horrendous writing (not edited) with very little dialogue (idk how to human), fluff, meet cute, rushed ending, reader is able-bodied
~2.7k words
I am up to doing more parts of this! Maybe? 
The melted-butter-colored morning sun filters through the windows of a quaint bakery, casting a warm glow across the wooden-floored interior. Birds chirp their songs, squirrels scutter up trees, causing the rustling of leaves, and an owl up too late calls out one last time. Such a beautiful sight is cause for a relaxing morning.
“Fuck!”
You curse as the all-too-familiar clatter of metal hitting the floor pierces the peaceful atmosphere of the bakery, abruptly drawing your attention away from the serene scene outside. Your brain still wanders as your non-stick shoes squeak on the tile flooring of the bakery, and it doesn’t catch up until you’re nearly toe-to-toe with disaster. Flour dusts otherwise pristine countertops like a fresh layer of snow and cascades like a white waterfall onto the floor. Bread dough clings stubbornly to multiple places in the kitchen: the countertop, the edges of the mixing bowl, and even the crevices between the tiles on the floor. Amidst the mess stood the culprit—a temperamental mixer that seemed to have a mind of its own recently.
"Of all the mornings for this to happen," you mutter, placing one hand on your head and one on your hip in frustration. This wasn't how you envisioned starting your day, but in the unforgiving world of small business ownership, setbacks like this were all too common.
With a resigned sigh, you set to work cleaning up the sticky, floury mess. You grab a towel and begin trying to wipe down the countertops first. The flour wipes off easily, some getting caught in the towel and some falling to the floor to be swept up. However, the dough sticks to the granite countertops no matter what you do. Your brows pinch in and your lips pull down at the edges as you realize that the dough is proving to be far more stubborn than anticipated. You try scraping it off with the edge of the towel, but it only smears and clings to the counter. Each attempt to remove it seems futile, making your blood boil.
Glancing over at the mixer, you can't help but feel a twinge of resentment towards the outdated piece of shit equipment. It had been a constant source of trouble lately, breaking down at the most inconvenient times and causing endless headaches.
Shaking your head at yourself for being mad at a machine, you step back, put your hands on your wide hips, and let out a controlled breath. You have to figure out how to fix this. And fast. Your bakery opens in—you look up to a clock and read the hands—shit! It opens in three hours!
Looking over the kitchen, you contemplate what you should do, trying to find an approach to cleaning up and getting a new batch of dough ready in three hours. As you focus on the mixer-made mess, inspiration strikes, and you bustle around to find a small bowl and a sponge, filling the bowl up with warm water. Your chest never rises, and you take slow, deliberate steps toward the mess with the full bowl, hoping it doesn’t tip and make an even bigger mess. When you make it to your destination, you dampen the sponge and gently dab at the dough, hoping that the moisture will help loosen its grip on the countertop.
To your relief, the tactic seems to work, albeit slowly. The dough begins to soften under the gentle pressure of the sponge, gradually loosening its hold on the granite surface. With careful persistence, you continue to work, methodically removing the stubborn remnants of dough until the countertops are once again clean and smooth. Once the dough is removed from the countertop, you get on your hands and knees to begin scrubbing it from the floor. This takes only a few minutes with the sponge and hot water. Finally, once all the pesky dough is removed from each and every nook and cranny, you grab the broom and start sweeping the flour from the floor.
As you sweep, your mind drifts to the tasks still left to do before opening time. Glancing at the clock, you realize you have less than three hours left. You nearly drop the broom from shock, not realizing that 30 minutes had gone by—you still need to get the new dough ready and finish the rest of the opening tasks.
Owning and managing this bakery by yourself is fucking difficult but you love it.
The aroma of fresh coffee fills the air as you start brewing a batch, ensuring that your customers will have their caffeine fix ready when the doors open. Meanwhile, you preheat the oven and begin preparing the day's first batch of pastries, expertly shaping dough into delicate croissants and twisting it into intricate shapes and florets for cinnamon rolls.
Trays of pastries fill the shelves, their golden crusts glistening invitingly in the soft morning light, now higher in the sky. The sound of the oven timer beeping signals that the first batch of cinnamon rolls is ready, and you quickly remove them from the heat, the tantalizing scent of warm cinnamon, brown butter, caramelized brown sugar, and yeasty bread filling the air.
With the rolls cooling on the counter, you turn your attention to the display case, arranging everything with steady hands and care to showcase their deliciousness to potential customers. The final touches are added—a dusting of powdered sugar here, a drizzle of simple syrup there—before you step back to admire your handiwork with a satisfied smile.
With only minutes to spare before opening time, you quickly tidy up the kitchen, wiping down countertops and washing dishes with practiced efficiency. The last of the flour is swept away, leaving the floor sparkling clean and ready to welcome customers.
Finally, shoes squeaking, you make it to the front entrance to unlock the door and flip the ‘closed’ sign to ‘open.’
But as you turn to walk back behind the counter, you hear a familiar bell ring.
The bell hanging above the door you just unlocked. The one you still stand in front of, back turned.
Suddenly, the floor is flying towards you, just a blur of dark hardwood before your eyes flutter closed, and all you can see is darkness.
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When your eyes flutter open, pain explodes through your body, your eyebrows scrunching and eyes clenched back shut. Your chest heaves with labored breaths and your heart races like it’s trying to break from your ribcage. Stars dance behind your eyelids as you struggle to regain your bearings, disoriented and dazed from the sudden fall.
What the fuck just happened?
Slowly, agonizingly, you manage to push yourself into a sitting position, blinking away the haze of confusion to assess the damage. Your head throbs with each accelerated heartbeat, a dull ache spreading through your limbs as you tentatively move to check for visible injuries. But before you can fully process what has just happened, a shadow falls over you, and a voice cuts through the fog of pain and confusion.
"Shit, I'm so sorry! Are you okay?"
The raspy voice is laced with concern, tinged with a hint of panic, and it takes a moment for the words to register. When they do, you turn to see a figure kneeling beside you, their features blurred by the remnants of your fall.
Struggling to focus and blinking hard to try and clear your vision, you manage to make out a pair of piercing green eyes staring back at you, filled with genuine worry, auburn eyebrows drawn in, causing worry lines to appear between them. As your vision fully clears, the face comes into sharper focus, and you realize that you've never seen this person before.
She sports a somewhat slender jawline, high cheekbones, proportional top and bottom lips—both somewhat plush—and fair skin smattered with freckles the looked like an artist took their brush and flung paint at them.
Despite the pain pulsing through your head and the disorientation of the fall, you find yourself momentarily captivated by the stranger's striking features. There's an undeniable warmth in her pale green gaze, a kindness that puts you at ease in spite of the awkwardness of the situation. Her eyebrows are still pulled together, the sight of the lines in between them making you want to reach out and smooth them away.
She cocks her head slightly, her short auburn hair swishing with the movement and catching a ray of sun, turning slightly red—the color reminds you of a brown border collie’s fur. As you follow the movement with your eyes, you register her earlier question. With pain still throbbing in your head you manage a weak nod, unable to find your voice amidst the chaos of the moment. The stranger's expression softens with relief at your response, the worry lines between her brows fading, and she reaches out a hand to help you to your feet.
"Here, let me help you up," she offers, her voice gentle as she assists you in standing. "I really didn't mean to slam the door like that. Are you sure you're okay?"
You manage another slight nod, though the throbbing in your head protests with each movement. Your eyes swim and something roils in your stomach, nausea curling up your esophagus. Taking a deep breath, you steady yourself with the captivating stranger's support, her hands gently holding you around waist height so as to not make you uncomfortable.
Well, fall would be an understatement—it was more like a push to the floor.
Assaulted by your own door.
God, could this morning get any worse?
As you gain footing, knees no longer shaking—though if you keep looking into those eyes, they might start all over again—the stranger lets go of you, her right hand swiping over the top of her nose before both hands are tucked in her pockets. A soft blush spreads on her cheeks, moving up from her neck all the way into her hairline.
She still seems concerned, though, softly asking, "Are you sure you're okay?"
A small smile tugs at the corners of your lips at her sheepish expression. "I think so," you manage to reply, your voice faint but steady. "Just a bit shaken up, I guess."
The stranger nods in understanding, her expression softening with relief, though the blush stays. "I'm glad to hear that," she says, her tone genuine. "I really didn't mean to barrel into you with the door like that. I was just in a hurry, and… well, I guess I wasn't paying attention."
Despite the circumstances, you can't help but chuckle breathlessly at her admission. "No harm done," you assure her, your grin widening, cheeks pushing up and making your eyes squint. "Just a little stumble, that's all."
With a shared laugh, the tension and awkwardness between you begin to bleed from the atmosphere. The stranger offers you a warm smile, straight white teeth glittering in the mid-morning sunlight, and a glimmer of amusement dancing in her eyes.
"By the way," she says, extending a slightly shaking hand towards you, "I'm Ellie. Ellie Williams."
You grasp her hand in a firm shake, a sense of gratitude washing over you at the charming introduction. You were nervous standing here in front of this… piece of art sculpted by the likes of Michelangelo, and you knew you would have stumbled and made a fool while introducing yourself. Besides, her slight awkwardness is cute.
You give her your name back, saying, "Nice to meet you, Ellie," with a small grin, the remnants of a chuckle still lingering in the back of your throat, threatening to creep up as she shuffles on her feet awkwardly. “Though I don’t know if it is very nice since you kind of slammed into me with a door…”
She jerks as though hit with something, eyebrows shooting up and eyes widening in shock. Her face darkens more, further showcasing freckles artistically splattered across her face. She stammers out another apology, her words tumbling over each other in her rush to express her regret.
"I-I'm so sorry," she says, her voice wavering with embarrassment. "I didn't mean to... I mean, I've been wanting to come into the bakery for a while now, and I guess I got a little too excited, and..."
Her words trail off into awkward silence as mortification registers on her face, her shoulders folding up towards her ears. She shifts on her feet uncomfortably, unable to meet your gaze. It's clear that Ellie is flustered, her cheeks flushed the deepest red you’ve ever seen as she struggles to articulate her thoughts.
Despite your lips turning up into a slight smile and choking on the giggles that tried to escape at the poor girl, you can't help but feel a surge of sympathy for her. "No harm done," you assure her, your grin softening. "Just a little unexpected introduction, that's all."
Ellie's shoulders relax slightly at your words, a shy smile playing at the corners of her lips. "Thank you," she murmurs, her voice barely above a whisper.
As Ellie continues to fidget nervously, hand dragging over her nose again, you sense that there's more to her awkwardness than meets the eye. So, you offer her a kind word of reassurance. "You know," you begin, "you're always welcome here at the bakery. No need to rush next time."
At your invitation, Ellie's eyes light up with gratitude, looking more like an excited dog by the minute. "Thank you," she says, her voice light and filled with genuine appreciation as she bounces on her heels, her auburn hair dancing with her movement. 
Feeling your cheeks heat at the depth of her stare, you find yourself fidgeting this time. There's something about Ellie's enthusiasm that's infectious, drawing you in despite the lingering discomfort from your fall.
Before you can gather your thoughts, Ellie reaches for a nearby pcake display, her eyes alight with anticipation. "I think I'll take one of these," she says, pointing to a freshly baked red velvet cupcake nestled among its companions.
You watch as she pays for her purchase, a sense of admiration growing within you for her unbridled enthusiasm. Despite the chaos of the morning, Ellie's presence has brought a ray of sunshine into your day, and you find yourself feeling grateful for the chance encounter.
Taking a moment to appreciate the way she lights up the room with her infectious energy, you can't help but wonder about the person behind the cheerful facade. There's a warmth in her eyes and a genuineness in her smile that speaks volumes, leaving you intrigued and wanting to learn more about her. And there's an undeniable chemistry between you, a connection that feels both unexpected and strangely familiar.
So, you summon up your courage to do something probably wholly unprofessional as a business owner. You take a deep breath and meet Ellie's green gaze head-on. "Hey, um, would it be okay if I got your number?" you ask, your voice tentative but earnest.
Ellie's eyes widen in surprise at your request, but her smile only grows wider. "Of course!" she exclaims with a small scoff-like laugh, her enthusiasm bubbling over. "I'd love that."
With a sense of relief flooding through you, you fumble for your phone, fingers trembling slightly as you input Ellie's number. As you exchange contact information, a sense of excitement blooms within you, fueled by the prospect of getting to know Ellie better.
With a final exchange of smiles and promises to stay in touch, you bid Ellie farewell, watching as she heads off down the street with a spring in her step. As you turn back to the bakery, a sense of anticipation fills your chest, mingled with the lingering ache of your fall. 
With a final nod of assurance to yourself, you straighten up and take a step forward. Despite the unexpected start to your encounter, there's something strangely comforting about Ellie's presence—as if fate had intervened to bring you together in that moment of chaos.
taglist
@les4elliewilliams @abbyshands
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hidefdoritos · 7 months
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Today's Mending
So, today is the third day I'm down with Covid. Or maybe-Covid. The campus nurse says there's been something similar going around campus, and anyone who's seen a doctor has tested negative. So did I, though I feel exactly like the past 3 times. Whatever. I'm staying away from people, wearing a mask into the bathroom and laundry room, getting takeout from the dining hall, and doing my best to recover.
I'm not well enough to sit up at my sewing machine yet, so I've been a floor goblin today. In the meager patch of sunlight that comes through our window, I've been putting the "slow" in "slow fashion."
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First we have this shirt. I thrifted a small shirt that said "ADHD is awesome" and had a little squirrel. I cut out the graphics, intending to sew them onto this shirt. However, within about 15 minutes, I lost them in my own room. I find this ironic. So, while I wait for them to turn back up, I painted a wiggly dashed line all over the back as a squirrel trail.
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The pocket of this hoodie had a little hole.
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Ladder stitching a t-shirt armpit.
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A couple tiny holes appeared in some work sweats.
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I found a tiny hole in this hoodie sleeve, so now there's a tiny mend.
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Snagged this shirt on a bin at work and tore an L-shaped hole.
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The serging by the pocket of my base layer leggings started to come out.
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Finally, these are both thrifted statement necklaces. I took the pendants off and doubled or tripled the chain, and added a loop for the fastener to hook onto.
That's about it for today. I'm gonna go get take-out dinner from the dining hall and then probably go to bed as the sun sets.
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redwinterroses · 1 year
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I like to do this grounding exercise I jokingly call "go touch grass" but honestly it's... almost exactly that.
First you need to go outside. It doesn't have to be far, it doesn't have to be "in nature" -- just somewhere with a bit of wind and sky. A parking lot is as good as a pasture. Make sure you're safe and aware of your surroundings, that you're not about to get run over by a cow or eaten by a moving van.
Close your eyes. Become aware of the surface of your skin. Can you feel the wind on it? Can you feel how it's stronger on one side of your nose and there's a bit of a lee on the other cheek? Can you feel that strand of hair against your neck? Is there sunlight? Feel how you can actually register the heat of it wherever it touches. Maybe the wind competes with the sunlight. Maybe it's cloudy. Maybe there are tiny raindrops that hit your skin. Feel it.
Look down. Really look, like you're five years old again, looking for Special Rocks. Find a bug and follow its path across the pavement. Look at the pattern in the gravel, the way it piles up against the side of your foot. Grind your toe into the ground a bit, see how you cause a mountain range to appear in the dirt. Look at the individual blades of grass, and that dead leaf -- look at its delicate veins. See the little tufts of fibers on the heads of the grassy weeds and how they tremble at the slightest breeze. You can crush them underfoot if you want to -- they'll grow back. Smell the green scent of the broken stems, and then look at how many thousands more blades of grass there are around you, unperturbed.
Look up. See the sky, through the branches or between buildings or over your neighbor's roof. Are there clouds? Look at the way the light filters through them. Tilt your head to the side and see how changing your perspective can heighten your understanding of the shadows. Is there a plane flying over? Maybe a bird? Watch it until it's out of sight. Maybe there are stars. Look closely at their shifting colors and try to name them -- is it blue? or red? or something that's neither?
Listen. Take in one by one the sounds of distant traffic, of a neighbor's washing machine, of the kids next door or the dog three doors down, the birdsong across the creek, the squirrel chittering in the maple tree. Single the sounds out one by one and really listen to them, the way you'd listen to a new song that you're trying to understand the words to. Lick your lips and listen to the sound your jaw makes when you move, or the brush of your hair against your ear, the sound your jeans make as you walk, the crunch of dry grass underfoot or the sksh-sksh of gravel.
Take in every sense with deliberate intent. Focus on your skin, on the tips of your fingers brushing against a brick wall or clasping a porch rail or just rubbing the cloth of your shirt between them. Feel how the air moves over your arms. Listen to the sound of it and the sounds of the world moving around you, whether it's a busy downtown or a rural driveway. Wiggle your toes inside your shoe and be aware of how the pressure changes as you move them. Walk and try to register each shifting muscle as your feet bend, legs picking up and setting down again.
I have bad anxiety -- some weeks worse than others. I've taken to going on a walk every day during my break at work and doing this process as I go. It never fails to make me feel more solid and grounded, and while I've never had much luck with straight meditation, I think this comes pretty close.
You are real, you exist, the world is moving at its proper pace, and all around you life is blooming and growing and shifting and becoming.
"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."
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