#outnumbered in a fight prompt

[detective-giggles]

I’m so asking for the bthb one. I do love a whump fic 💗

🔫

Sorry this took me so long to get to, love 😘

🔫🔫🔫🔫

TK nods and looks around. “So, what’s your plan?”

[irisintheafterglow]

hello!!! i saw your that your requests were open so i was wondering if you were able to write a hurt/comfort zoro x reader story about how the reader gets injured from a fight, but they don’t wanna be a burden so they hide it until they collapse on deck :)))

tell me that we’ll be just fine (opla!zoro x you)

wc: 1.74k

cw/tags: hurt/comfort with happy sappy ending, swearing, canon-typical violence, descriptions of blood and injury, mentions of drinking and alcohol, zoro just loves you and you worry the shit out of him

note: yassss i love hurt/comfort injury prompts (it's the innate desire to just be carried and be vulnerable and have someone care in my weakest hour and and and and) hope you like this, thank you for your request !!

likes, reblogs, and replies are always appreciated <3

“Guys, I am about to get so wasted.”

“We still have that good shit from Baratie, yeah?”

“Hiding in the back of the cellar, baby!” A loud smack rings out into the harbor as Usopp and Sanji’s hands clap together, deliriously excited after winning a scrimmage with a rival crew. Their proud vocalizations are added to by their captain and devolve into giddy skipping down the remainder of the dock as you make your way back to the ship. Zoro walks just ahead of you, glancing back every so often like he was worried you would collapse. You were planning to, but not now. Just get to the ship. Get to the ship and we’ll be fine.

“I vote Zoro for vomit duty tomorrow morning,” Nami mutters next to you, nudging your arm with her elbow. It’s a light touch but it feels like the world tilts sharply and you pray she can’t see the panic in your eyes when you try to remain upright. Despite her best efforts to remain mature and indifferent, her eyes were sparkling with self-assurance that you only saw from her when she felt a mission went well. She carries the folder of coveted Marine intelligence under one arm, her other hand holds up a bag of goodies you’d snatched from the base that would make good money down the line. “Plus, it gives us some time to take our share of this stuff. Nice finds, by the way. I’m impressed.” 

“Thanks. I learned from the best,” you reply, relief flooding you when she turns back to watch her idiot crewmates and not further inspect the limp in your step. Zoro’s eyes meet yours over his shoulder and you give him a strained smile, well aware that you probably looked like you’d crawled out of hell. When he turns away again, you exhale with great difficulty, fighting off another wave of nausea that threatens to send you stumbling into the water. It’s just a flesh wound, you figure. No need to halt their celebration just because you got a silly cut. “What’s your first pick out of the bag?”

“There’s a pretty little jeweled chalice I was looking at,” she says casually. The waning afternoon sun makes her hair look like a fire, bright and warm. “We could scrape off the rubies and pawn them at the next island.”

“Or, you could drink water from it and look like a pompous asshole.” Just keep it casual. Be normal. The pulse in your ears becomes slightly faster when you notice the foggy spots in your vision. “Freeze some of the diamonds from that candlestick and use them as ice cubes.”

“Very true,” she laughs and you force out a chuckle to mirror her, wincing at the aching pain in your side. Her eyebrows furrow and her mouth falls into a frown. Your attempts to seem fine were starting to fall through. “Hey, are you okay? You’ve been walking a little slower than usual.” 

“I’m fine, I promise. I just got punched in the gut a little harder than I anticipated,” you lie straight through your teeth, well aware that it wasn’t just a fist that had you losing enough blood to fill the galley sink. To be fair, the guy’s second blade appeared out of nowhere. You were outnumbered five to one but still held your own; only when there was a single fighter left did he resort to cutthroat tricks. One minute, you’re parrying with ease; the next, a small dagger pops out from the fighter’s left sleeve, cutting a deep wound into your side before you can block it with the saber in your right hand. It was a dirty move and you mentally kicked yourself for not anticipating foul play much sooner. To make matters worse, you were only able to staunch the blood so much before Zoro found you in the courtyard. Though you sufficiently covered your injury, he was still eyeing you like he knew that something was off. Like clockwork, every minute he was checking on you. It was wordless, but you still knew he was inspecting you, waiting for you to reveal that something happened and that you needed help.

That moment came the instant your boots met the wood of the deck. 

In seconds, your vision violently careens to the right and you’re conscious just enough to expect the thud of your head against the floor. But, the crash never comes. When you fall, your mind registers another body that you fall into, strong and stable. One arm slips effortlessly under your exhausted legs, lifting you from the ground while the other supports your upper back. Your eyes blur the image of your panicked crew like an oil painting, smearing it every which way until the colors are bleeding together more uncontrollably than the blood dripping from your side. Everything sounds like you’re drowning, rising above the water for a moment only to be pulled back down into murky disorientation. 

“Idiot,” a low voice says. It’s wrought with worry, even though you can tell they’re trying not to hide it. It’s clear enough that you know it’s coming from whoever is holding you. “Why the hell did you wait?” You’re barely able to distinguish far-off shouting from Sanji, ordering Luffy and Usopp to grab his knives. But, if all three of them were over there and Nami was throwing open cabinets looking for the med kit, that means the person holding you was… “Fuck. I knew something was wrong.” You have half the mind to articulate a weak response, but it comes out as nothing more than a groan when you’re placed onto what feels like the galley counter. The pounding in your forehead starts to become airy, like when you’re walking down the sidewalk after a night of drinking until you were on the verge of passing out. Zoro doesn’t let you go, though. His calloused fingers gently brush the dirt from your face, quietly pleading for you to stay with me, stay with me, stay with me. “You’re okay. We’re okay. Just stay with me.” 

“They’re losing a lot of blood and I can’t find the damn med kit.” 

“Where’s everyone else?”

“Above deck, having a collective panic attack.” Nami’s voice sounds like it’s coming from miles away. 

“Figures.” Zoro’s, on the other hand, is the only thing keeping you rooted and stopping you from drifting off. It’s sharp and strained, nothing like you’d ever heard from him before. Sanji’s lanky steps enter the kitchen and you hear the zip of his knife bag somewhere close to your ear.

“This is bad; I need to stop that bleeding or they might–” Zoro’s grip on your hand is tight, physically holding you down to reality. Whether you laced your fingers in his or the other way around, you didn’t remember.

“Well, let’s fucking do something about it then, waiter,” is the last thing you hear before darkness wipes your vision. 

Your eyes blink open after what feels like seconds, but the starry sky outside the window tells you it had been hours. It takes a moment for the details to come back to you, as does the soreness where they must have patched up your wound. The hard stone of the counter has been replaced by your bed and the comforting sway of the ship tells you Luffy ordered the ship to depart. It’s healing, in a way, the rocking back and forth motion of the ship that reminds you how close you were to slipping away. After a minute, you muster up enough energy to look at the rest of your room and you can’t help smiling when you see Zoro sitting at your bedside, tensely sleeping with the Wado Ichimonji laid across his lap. His eyes fly open when you whisper his name, delicately setting his blade on the floor before crouching at your side. 

“You’re okay,” he breathes and it sounds more like a reassurance for himself than for you.

“I’m okay,” you confirm just as softly, threading your fingers between his and squeezing lightly. He squeezes back, looking at you like you painted the constellations outside your window. “How long have you been here?”

“Since Sanji and Nami fixed you up, about six hours ago.”

“You’ve been sitting there for six hours?”

“I would have sat longer. I’d wait for you, no matter how long you slept,” he says and it sounds like a vow. “You scared the shit out of me, you know that?”

“Sorry,” you apologize weakly, giving him as much of a shy smile as you could. He rolls his eyes in exasperation but can’t help the corner of his mouth quirking too. “I didn’t want to bother you all while you were celebrating.”

“You really think I’m going to give alcohol priority over you?”

“Depends on the alcohol,” you point out and he shakes his head at your teasing. Your hand fits in his like a puzzle piece and you’re struck by the overwhelming feeling of safety you have whenever Zoro’s around. “But, really. I’m sorry for worrying you.” 

His eyes darted to the side like you’d said something that embarrassed him. The only thing he could think to do in that moment was bring your hand to his lips and press the lightest kiss to it. A promise that he’d always take care of you. He never was the best with words, you realized in your friendship-borderline-relationship with him. The things you said tended to short-circuit his brain and it was fascinating to watch him try and think of a coherent response. In times like these, however, when he’s simply unable to find the words for how much he feels for you, his actions are infinitely louder. 

“You should go back to sleep. I’ll still be here when you wake up. Do you need anything before you rest? Water or blankets or something?”

“No, just you. If you got in here with me, I wouldn’t mind,” you suggest nonchalantly and you giggle when his face becomes pinker. He obliges, though, slipping into the covers with you and carefully pulling you into him until you’re pressed against his chest like your own personal heater. His breathing is slow and steady, but you swear you can hear his heartbeat racing. “You’re the only one I’ll ever need, I think.”

“Feeling’s mutual, sweetheart. Just don’t do stupid shit like get stabbed again.”

if you enjoy my writing and would like to support me, you can buy me a coffee on my ko-fi! you can also check out my full masterlist here :)

[leviathanleva]

Father

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Pairing: Cooper Howard/The Ghoul x Fem Reader

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Request:

This is kind of a weird req and I want to write something for it eventually but-

Fem! Reader who was frozen but eventually escapes and falls for the Ghoul and they fuck a couple times and for some reason she has symptoms of pregnancy and they're like what the fuck but it just turns out that she was pregnant before she was frozen and the Ghoul's reactions and whatever. Angst or fluff I don't really mind :)

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[3.2k words]

[MDNI, Angst, Smut, Fluff]

[ I don't usually do requests, but I wanted to help out a friend who believed they wouldn't be able to do justice to this prompt. It's sloppy, not perfect, but time is limited and I have other projects that need my attention so I hope this suffices. ]

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Freedom.

Freedom was sweet.

Freedom was bitter.

Since the moment you’d awoken in that Gods-forsaken cryo pod in that wasting away vault you’d known there was no other path except the path of freedom. Stepping over mummified corpses, fellow vault dwellers you presumed, you’d lead wobbly legs and a pounding heart to the entrance of the vault. It felt like yesterday you’d first set foot in there. In reality, you had no idea how many years had passed, but from the looks of the rusting walls and thick blanket of dust, it had been a while.

You took what you could, stuffing a stray children’s backpack you’d found along your scavenging mission, anything and everything that would be necessary for a journey into a land you used to call home. A small pocket knife was the best you could get and it wasn’t the perfect self-defense tool, but with no other choice there wasn’t much you could do but stuff it in the pocket of your suit and hope for a miracle if you ran into trouble.

And trouble you found.

Since your first step into the bone-dry, scalding hot, merciless wasteland, you’d found trouble in the shape of a deranged group of people hammering at the vault door with makeshift weapons. You might have been able to fight off one of them, you doubted given how dizzy and out-of-touch with reality you were, but there was a slim chance. Three of them though, all large burly men with enough scars to put a military general to shame? No, that was impossible. You ended up a writhing mess on the ground, face pushed into the cracked soil and screaming and kicking as you were being taunted and tied up like a good catch after a successful hunt. Trafficking, cannibalism, organ harvesting, death. A slew of words so vile they made your stomach churn and your eyes bulge out of your skull because who in their right mind said such things to an outnumbered, weak woman who pleaded in a broken voice and had tears staining her cheeks?

Then he appeared, your guardian angel.

A man so grotesque on the outside, so vicious and bitter and terrifying, and yet he was the one who shot your captors down. He was the one who cut your wrists and ankles free and helped you sit up as you heaved and choked and sobbed. He was the one who checked you over despite the visible revulsion on his gaunt face at the sight of your vault suit. He’d dragged you to your feet, forced some sense into you, given you a stern reality check of the world he came from and never really shooed you away when you’d started following him around like a lost pup.

You loved him since that day.

And maybe it wasn’t the good kind of love because he’d used you as a distraction for his enemies more than once and never shared his water with you even if you were on the brink of passing out from dehydration. But he also let you sit close to the fire at night, told you stories of his bounty hunts, taught you how to handle a gun and always kept you in his sights lest someone thought you were up for grabs. He was a cruel man, but he was also a kind man.

You never overstepped. Always following his every order, whether it was to hide, to strip bleeding men of their valuables, or to get him another drink when his feet were kicked high and he couldn’t be bothered to do so himself. Always pliant, always willing, no questions asked because you wanted to live despite the hellhole reality you were thrust in. Maybe that’s why he grew fond of you over time, you didn’t rebel against him and took what he gave you with a whisper of gratitude. A good dog, that’s how he saw you. He slowly softened for you, split your rations evenly when you sat down to eat, thrust the canteen in your hands when he noticed your lips were dry, and smushed his hat over your head when the sun was too awful and you were too delicate to withstand it.

Cooper Howard, that was his name, a man made ghoul by the sheer toxicity of the surface, a man who gave you enough scraps to keep your love for him flourishing but never progressed things beyond a one-sided infatuation.

That is until he was left struggling on the floor of an old abandoned farmhouse, a feral ghoul looming above him and pinning him in place and snapping its jaws at him as foul-smelling, viscous drool dribbled down its chin. His hunting knife was gripped tightly, but between keeping himself from being bitten to shreds and holding one of the ghoul’s hands at bay before it could sink into his side and tear at his gut, he was stuck.

When the shot rang out and the ghoul slumped against him lifelessly, he saw you. Holding his gun as you shook violently, about ready to piss yourself because you’d never killed anything remotely resembling a human in your life, eyes wide and lips trembling and knees buckling. Smoke leisurely rose from the tip of the barrel and as he pushed the corpse off himself you sunk to your arse and burst into a fit of haggard breaths and disturbed whines.

You didn’t resist when he picked you up with alien tenderness, didn’t protest when he stuffed you in an old rickety couch and crushed you beneath his weight with a handful of sweet praises. You didn’t pull away in disgust when his tongue pushed past your lips in search of your own, twirling, dancing, letting words spill without ever being spoken. He wasn’t gentle, since the moment you heard his belt unbuckling he was all pawing hands and chopped curses, fiddling with your clothes until his need became too much to bear and he simply ripped them off. He threw a weak promise to get you new ones, but you couldn't care less at that moment. High-pitched mewls and desperate grunts bounced off the walls as he took you on that couch, rutting into you like a man possessed and gripping onto you so firmly as if you’d come to your senses any moment now and run away from him.

A radstorm raged outside, clashing against the boarded-up windows as the pitter-patter of acid rain poured against the tin roof. You never even noticed, too drunk on the sloppy sounds coming from the slick mess of your conjoined bodies, on the verge of a climax so raw it would surely knock you out. Blunt fingernails sank in your supple thighs, scarred hips slammed into yours as he fucked you dumb into the couch. His mouth never left yours, whether it was to keep himself quiet in case too many loving words escaped or because he craved your taste like a rabid dog did blood, you didn’t know. When your ankles locked around his waist he snarled, whatever self-control he’d managed to scrape by completely dissipating as he drove himself deeper. The tip of his cock snapped against the barrier of your squishy cervix so deliciously and you screamed his name in desperation and he couldn’t fucking take it anymore. He released one of your hips to slide a hand between your bodies and drag his rough thumb over your swollen clit. Your back arched, eyes rolled back and mouth agape as you bombarded him with barely coherent sentences that he didn’t deserve. He clutched at your hair when you clamped down on him, milking him for everything he had while he rocked out his release with face stuffed in the crook of your neck.

Something in him changed after that night.

It might have been the unfathomably long time without a caring touch or him finally succumbing to the little voices in his head telling him what he held for you wasn’t simply fondness. He took you every chance he got. In a guest house, against the wall of a bar after one too many drinks, bent over on a chewed-up fence after scavenging another farmhouse. He was relentless and you loved that about him. You loved everything about him. Always needy and ready and he couldn’t ask for more because this was the closest he could get to expressing himself when it came to you.

Life was good.

Everything was perfect.

Until it wasn’t.

You wince as the needle prickles your skin before retracting back in the Pip-boy. The green screen whirls, loading up and analyzing your blood sample for a full body scan. You give the damn thing a few smacks when it freezes and stutters.

Now really wasn’t the time for technical difficulties.

“You okay?”

Apparently, no matter how hard you had tried to hide your bubbling panic, it was still evident enough for Cooper to notice. He’s looking at you with a hint of suspicion, attention averted from the steaming can of cram he’d been stuffing in his mouth.

“I’m good, no worries.” you muster up a weary smile and instinctively tuck the Pip-boy closer to your stomach.

When the Vault Boy pops up on the screen with all the information available regarding your condition, you tense up. Your fingers hesitate to turn the cog to the main body scan as doubts and confusion and raw, untamable fear chew at your sensitive stomach and tug you slowly towards the gates of insanity.

“Don’t look okay to me.” Cooper straightens from his slouched-over position over the measly fire and sets aside his food before clasping a hand over one of his thighs. “Was wrong? Was I too rough again?” there’s a teasing scowl brightening his usually stoic expression, he scoffs and shakes his head. “I told you t’ smack my shoulder when I get too loose, woman. You never listen.”

You want to cry and laugh, but you do neither.

“That’s not it, Cooper.”

“Then speak for fuck’s sake!” he grumbles and gestures to you with slight agitation.

You pay him no mind, having delved too deep in the premises of your mind on what you were supposed to do if you read that single life-changing word on the scan. With a huff and a mental pat on your back, you turned the cog and opened the main body scan.

“Pregnant.”

It made sense. It explained the morning sickness that you hid, being forced out of your sleep while Cooper snored lightly next to you, and carefully pulling away before rushing to a safe spot where you could empty your stomach without being seen. You never told him, just jammed RadAway after RadAway, hoping it was poisoning or maybe some sort of flu. When the cravings came, you started second-guessing. You never gave into them, throwing caps left and right for a slice of some nearly impossible-to-get delicacy was unthinkable, you had to survive and there was no room for luxury.

You failed to spot the rugged ghoul as he left his seat and crept closer, spurred by your awkward demeanor, until he was kneeling right next to you and silently sharing the sight of the green graph.

“What in the hell…”

You recoiled at his words, at his realization, and tried to cover the Pip-boy with your hand and hide the thunderous revelation of your condition.

He was having none of it.

He smacked your hand away and gripped your forearm so tight you shuddered, bringing it closer to his eyes as his face contorted.

“What the fuck does this mean?” he spits and looks at you with something vile in those whiskey-colored eyes you loved so much.

“I don’t – ” you swallow thickly, crumbling under his gaze and snuffing out the need to rip away from him and run. You meet his stare for a split second before turning away. “ – I haven’t…Not with anyone except you.”

Lightning strikes into his core and he pulls away like bitten by a snake.

“The hell you mean you haven’t fucked anyone ‘cept me?” he stands, intimidating and cold, berating you with just his visage and nothing more. “How the fuck did you get pregnant then?”

“I’ve been with you since the day I left the vault, you know this.” you reach out for him, desperate for some sort of comfort, desperate for him to calm down because you couldn’t mentally take on both him and the news. “Cooper, please.”

He shoots you down with a snarl and a spine-chilling glare.

“Don’t fucken’ touch me.”

He’s pacing, trotting around like a cornered animal, the spurs on his boots clinking, a sickening cacophony that roots you in place and keeps your mouth shut. You don’t know what to say, you’re not a liar, yet you wish this was some twisted joke and you could laugh it off and confirm it wasn’t real.

A hand is rubbing vigorously at his chin as he tries to think, but there’s nothing in his head except that one single word that means so much and makes absolutely no sense.

He knew you weren’t lying, he’d always kept you within arm’s length, there was no way for you to even sneak past him without being noticed.

It still hurt though, the image of you leaving because he was a rotten man who’d struck gold by finding you. He was no good for you, never would be, and it tore him to shreds because he knew all of this and still he kept you by his side and cocked his gun at anyone who tried to step too close.

Why wouldn’t you bed another man when he looked like a walking corpse and acted even worse? Why wouldn’t you ditch him to be with a nice bartender or a good-mannered farmboy who would treat you like a lady should be treated?

Why wouldn’t you cheat him out of the only happiness he had?

“Is not fucking possible, Sweetheart.” he finally speaks, faltering at your audible sobs. The idea of you slipping past his fingers to sleep with someone else is pushed to the side by the absolutely pathetic sight of you curled up on the floor and crying.

Ghouls were sterile, all of them, 100%, there was no way for him to knock you up even if he wanted to. But the Pip-boy said otherwise and now he was left questioning the very foundation of his existence.

“I know that.” you sputter through choppy hiccups. “But you’re the only man I’ve been with...It doesn’t make fucking sense.” you clutch at your sides, waterfalls streaming down your cheeks and pooling under your chin, eyes distant and jittery. “What if it’s deformed because of the radiation? Or if it’s not even alive? Or – What am I supposed to do…”

His body moves despite his protests.

He kneels in front of you, encasing you between his thighs, his fingers twitching and rising as he drowns in the long-forgotten feeling of being presented with such news. His hands are shaking and he rests them over your shoulders and pretends he can’t feel his pulse rampaging in his throat.

“What do you wanna do?”

It’s such a simple question, but coming from him under such a premise makes your head spin and your heart stop.

“I – ” you press your forehead against the center of his collarbones, arms protectively curling over your belly because despite not showing there was someone in there. Someone precious. “ – I don’t know…I’d like to – I don’t know.”

You stop and start, cutting off words that you weren’t ready to tell him yet and he wasn’t ready to hear either. But life didn’t care if you were ready or not, things happened, consent or not, and now you were both stuck in a mess you’d unwittingly made all by yourselves. There was always the easy route – find a settlement, get to the doc, have it removed, done deal, easy peasy.

But did you really want that?

It wasn’t just your kid, it was his too and him not saying a word, not even mentioning discarding it made things so much harder.

No, he gave you a choice, he put everything in your hands and he was holding you while you fought a silent battle that would dictate the entirety of your future.

“I think – ”

“ – I ain’t goin’ fucken’ nowhere.” he slices through your hesitation like butter, body rigid and jaw clenched because for once he was trying to be a man and not a monster.

Maybe even a father.

You shatter in his arms like glass and he presses one of his palms against the back of your head while the other circles your waist and brings you closer.

“You’d stay?” you ask with such horror and disbelief that it clutches at his chest and he struggles to breathe. You’re no coward, despite how heavy the air feels, you look up at him and you’re so vulnerable and angelic that he forgets every setback that would come his way. “If I kept it…you’d stay?”

He can’t answer, the words refuse to form, but he holds your gaze with calm stability, a good masquerade to hide a mind that was racing and a heart that was pounding so heavily he felt his entire body pulsing. Instead, he leaned in and pressed his chapped lips against your forehead in a voiceless promise.

You suck in a breath like it’s your first and cling to the collar of his coat, disappearing in his form, hiding from the world that was so cruel yet gifted you with something so precious.

The Pip-boy is still lit and waiting, the scan bright and piercing. You skim over it absentmindedly, a simple curious flick, then look again and squint your eyes at the tiny text printed under your pregnancy announcement.

“Four months.”

You’d only been out of cryo for three…

He followed your wide-eyed stare, he was no fool, he could do basic math.

You’d been pregnant before meeting him, before leaving the vault, before the bombs.

You want to puke. You want to rip your skin off and bury yourself alive because for the love of God it couldn’t be just perfect, there had to be some sick underlying thing to ruin everything. It wasn’t his, he was right, ghouls couldn’t have children.

It wasn’t his child.

You look disgusted and utterly pained because the realization makes you mourn at the idea of carrying his baby. You wanted to, you’d give anything for it to be his and not some random bloke you couldn’t even remember the face of. You wanted it to be his…

You search his face for anger or disappointment or anything that would prepare you for what was to come. Why would he stay if the damn thing wasn’t even his? He had his own problems, his mission. You were just an obstacle that had nearly made him believe he was going to be a father and maybe it was his second chance at doing it right.

There was nothing though.

He simply blinked at you, lips parted as he formed a sentence that had you pledge yourself to him for as long as you stood and breathed.

“That don’t change a damn thing.”

Masterlist

Tag list: @bountydroid @v3lv3tf0x @silverose365

[jasmines-library]

Tried and True

WHUMPTOBER 2023 DAY FOUR: Prompt - Hiding an injury.

Fandom: Batfam/DC/Young Justice

Summary: During a fight with Bane you get critically injured but leave it hidden from your brothers. When they find out, it's a race against time to get you back to the safety of the manor. Warnings: Bullet wound, blood loss, near death experience, surgery, cursing. Word count: 2.8k Note: I'm super excited about this one. That's all i'm gonna say :)

MASTERLIST ⛤ WHUMPTOBER WORKS

🕸 ⋆ ⁶𖤐⁶ ࣪⋆🕸

Bane fired three shots down the alleyway. They ricocheted off the bricks, clattering to the ground with a metallic ping. Dick Grayson hid crouched behind the lip of a building overlooking the alleyway, his mask pulled tight over his face. He watched with cautious eyes, surveying the villain before him. You were hunched over on the opposite side of the street dual daggers pressed firmly into the palm of your clammy hands. Damian and Jason lingered nearby, Tim opted to survey with his older brother. He had his bo staff hooked under his arm, ready to draw back and swing at any second. 

“I know you’re out there little birdies.” Bane sung, drawing out his steps as he paced the length of the alley. “Why don’t you come out for a little chat?”

He fired another round of bullets, this time up into the sky. Your little brother cast a look at you from your left, you held out a warning hand.

“Nightwing?” You asked into the coms quietly, careful not to draw unwanted attention. Even though Bane was outnumbered 5-1, he was still extremely powerful and if he caught one of you off guard, you would be in some deep shit. 

“We need to wait until he gets to the end of the alley. There’s a fork. We can flank him from both sides.”

The five of you watched intently as he walked, monotonously slow. When he was a mere few steps away from the end of the alley, Nightwing gave the signal and the five of you sprang into action, disguised and protected by the thick plating of your vigilante suits each specified to fit your needs. 

Landing roughly on your feet, you jumped from the building, reading your daggers in front of you. Your brothers formed a circle besides you, trapping bane between the three exits. He grinned manically.

“Finally! I thought I was going to miss out on all the fun.” 

He hoisted his gun up onto his shoulder and eyed the five of you up. The look on his face was mad; cynical. His eyes glistened beneath his mask as they settled on Robin. He fired, releasing a fresh wave of bullets, but the youngest was small and quick enough to slip away, behind a crate. 

With his back turned, Red Robin took his chance to make a move on Bane. He swung his staff in an arc, swiping at the giant's feet in an attempt to knock him to the ground. He wobbled, but spun around and knocked him out of the way, sending him flying into a nearby pile of junk.

“Red!?” You called out through the coms.

There was static as he shuffled around, coughing slightly as he tried to recover from having the wind knocked out from him. “All good.”

You moved next, Robin at your side. Using the walls, you propelled yourself towards Bane, trying to swing your dagger and lodge it anywhere on his exposed chest, only to have to skid across the floor as he swung his arm out to hit you. Although you weren’t successful, Robin had managed to get in a well placed slice along Bane’s torso. He had been aiming for the thick tubes which pumped him full of venom, but he wasn’t so successful. 

The five of you went many rounds with Bane, swinging, slicing and dodging as you tried to get the upper hand on the giant man. Though despite being outnumbered, he had still managed to get his own in on the five vigilanties. Red Hood was suffering a twisted ankle, and Robin had a trickle of blood running down the side of his temple where Bane had managed to strike him.

“Raven!” Nightwing hollered “Flank left.”

You retreated back round the alley with your eldest brother, twisting and navigating in the dinginess to flank him from his other side. When you returned, he had Tim pinned up against a wall, gasping for air and flailing, his feet struggling to scrape against the floor. You picked up your pace, feet slapping against the concrete. You swung, leaping high into the air and bringing your daggers down in a large sweeping motion, it lodged itself in one of Bane’s tubes, staunching the flow of venom pumping into his veins. You rolled across the ground and onto your feet, skidding against the asphalt as you dodged another swing that caught Robin instead. Nightwing was suddenly flanking from Bane’s otherside, cutting off the rest of the venom’s flow. Pulling Robin to his feet, he raised his katana.

With a signal from your brother cracking out over the coms, you gripped your daggers tighter, shifting them into a more comfortable grip in front of you. The humming of Dicks escrima sticks filled the alley. There was a beat, then you all charged, using bane’s weakness to your advantage. He took a large slice across his abdomen and a shock to his body. He roared, releasing a round of bullets into the brick. Dropping like a sack of flour the five of you pressed your body to the ground, trying to dodge the lethal pieces of metal he flung your way. And that was when you felt it, a raw indescribable pain that radiated across your body above your right hip. You stifled a cry, biting your lip beneath the cover of your mask. Your breath shuddered as you rose, trying to ignore the dark red patch that bloomed across the front of your suit. You readied your daggers, trying to conceal the wound with your arm. You were hoping that the cover of the darkness would help disguise it from your brothers. 

From his place on the ground, Jason fired at bane, distracting him from Tim, who swung his bo staff again at his feet, this time bringing him to the ground. Stepping forwards,you pressed your dagger to his neck, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to get the message across. He howled and grunted as Nightwing and Red Hood made quick work of securing him with rope they had stored on their suits, then delivering a quick blow to his head to render the giant unconscious. 

Nightwing took a step back and sighed, dropping his twin fighting sticks to the ground. “Is everyone ok?”

There was a chortle of agreement between the comms. You sheathed your daggers in the hosters at your hip, groaning as your fingers brushed against the pulsating wound. 

“Call B, tell him we have Bane.”

“Copy.” You said, flicking through the channels on the comms to call your father. He answered gruffly, signifying that he would be on his way on his way over as soon as he could. You heard the rumble of the batmobile in the background. 

“B’s on his way.” You told your brothers, changing the coms back. “He’ll be here soon.”

You glanced down at your stomach, still oozing blood, crossing his arms in front of you, trying to hide the growing patch and keep some pressure on it. You could feel the warm, stickiness against your skin clinging to the fabric of your suit. You couldn’t feel the exit wound, piercing the back of your flesh. Just the thought of the bullet still lodged inside of you made the pain worsen tenfold. You just had to hope that you would get back to the manor in time to stitch yourself up. 

~~~

Left, Right. Left, Right.

You had never been more glad to see the silhouette of the wayne manor, illuminated by the lights from the many windows that had been left on whilst you were out on patrol. You were trudging back slowly with your brothers after finishing up on patrol and ensuring that The Bat had bane secured and was taking him to Arkham. Your steps had grown sluggish, your vision doubled and your breaths uneven as you tried to keep up pace with your brothers, only to end up falling behind anyway. Your whole body ached, but nothing compared to the stabbing pain near your hip. You pulled your hand away from where you had been discreetly keeping pressure on it. Your head spun as you took in the sight of the blood dousing your hands. 

Left, Right…

Not much further now. You told yourself as you forced your body to keep pressing forwards. Home was so close but felt so so far away. You made your shaky legs push on, but with your hazy vision you swayed on your feet. 

Dick turned around, noticing your absence besides him. 

“Raven?” He asked, stopping in his tracks. His panicked tone alerted the rest of the boys. 

You were leaning on a nearby fence, trying to regain your composure.

“I- I’m fine. I just need-” 

Left…

Your body gave out beneath you as you tried to push yourself away from the wall, you were swallowed by a blinding pain; hot and inflamed as you collapsed in on yourself. Jason, the closest to you, rushed forwards before your body could collide with the hard asphalt. He laid you down tenderly so that your head was lying down on his lap. Dick was by your side patting down your body for the hidden injury, followed quickly by the other two.“Raven?” Damien stared at you with wide eyes. 

“Shit.” Dick cursed when his hand skimmed the tear in your suit, pulling it back with his fingers coaxed in your blood. 

You cried out in pain, eyes flying wide. 

Damien gripped your hand tightly, wincing at your pained expression when Jason hastily tore your mask away. He wiped away the tears which stained your cheeks. 

“AH!” Your face twisted when Dick ripped apart the fabric of your suit to get a better look at the wound; circular and ugly, only around the size of a penny, but it was already an angry shade of scarlet and was leaking more blood than you though you had in your body. The fabric which had matted with your blood tugged at your skin. You squeezed Damian’s hand tightly.

“R, what happened?” 

“...Shot.” You forced out. 

Jason reached around the back of your suit searching for an exit wound then cursing loudly when he failed to find one. “It’s still in there.”

Dick cursed. “Okay. Tim?”

The boy looked up meekly. 

“Grab the emergency pack, we’ll need tweezers, bandages. Something for the pain.”

“On it.”

“Damien? Call Alfred, tell him we need help, stat.”

Hesitantly, the Wayne let go of your hands and scrambled to get his phone. Tim was rushing back over with the supplies. 

“Y/N? This is going to hurt okay?”

You nodded feebly, head lolling around in Jason’s lap. 

“Hood, keep her awake.”

Jason took your head in his hands and angled it up to face him. Your eyes were fluttering closed.

“Hey, look at me, keep ‘em open kid.”

Your eyes opened in fraction as you listened to your older brother's words, though you were in a pained daze, only registering the pain in your side.

They would never forget the inhuman scream that pushed its way past your lips as Dick dig the tweezers into the wound. The pain was indescribable as your fingers clawed against the ground. You writhed in Jason’s hold, squirming away from the onslaught of pain. Dick cringed. 

“Tim, keep her still.”

His hands were like cold vices on your arms as he pinned you down, trying to keep you still as his older brother rummaged through your body. Your screams had morphed into horse shouts by the time he finally got the bullet out. But then came the burst of agony as he pushed his hands down as hard as he could on your wound. You whimpered.

“I know. I know Y/N I’m sorry.”

Your eyes rolled into the back of your head as you began to lose a grip on consciousness. Black dots danced in your vision.

“Hey. Stay with us!” Tim patted your face. “We need to move fast.

Jason leaned you up against his chest so his brothers could wrap the bandages tightly around your stomach. Damien had returned, informing them that Alfred was on his way. Once the bandages were secured, you were laid back down in Jason's chest, eyes fluttering. Damien returned to holding your hands, rubbing his thumbs back and forth across the flat of your hand. 

“Stay awake, Raven. Talk to us.” Tim prompted.

You were silent for a horrifying moment, before muttering out a few words. “...I’m sorry.”

“No. None of that. You’re gonna be fine.”

“I love you all.”

Your breaths were becoming shallower and you struggled to get the air you needed into your lungs. The black spots began to take over your vision. 

“We love you too, Y/N. So, so much.”

You hummed contently. Your body had begun to go numb. 

A dear ran down Damien’s cheek. You reached up to wipe it away as your older brother had done to you mere minutes ago.

“It’s okay.” You hushed. “It doesn’t hurt bad anymore.”

The two eldest vigilantes swallowed thickly, sharing a wide eyed glance between each other. That was when Alfred turned up, and the next minutes went by in a blur. The boys could do nothing more than watch as they whisked you away into surgery, praying that you would pull through. 

~~~

Dick watched as you began to stir. Your face twitched and you shifted uncomfortably. He had his much larger hand wrapped around yours, and had done for a few hours, insisting that he stay with you. You were his baby sister after all. Bruce had tried to send the other to bed, but like Dick, Jason had insisted that he should be allowed to watch over you too. Bruce was about to protest, but he couldn’t dismiss the distraught look plastered on Jason’s face. He had no doubt that the youngest two were lingering around somewhere, minds too full of opposing thoughts to let them succumb to the sleep that their bodies begged them for. Damian had kept trying to sneak in before being dragged away by Bruce. 

The room had been silent for a few hours as they watched your chest rise and fall. The surgery had been hard on your body, and for a while no one was sure that you were going to pull through. Albeit there you were lying pale but showing signs of waking up, on your bed.

  Alfred and Bruce were frequently in and out of your room where you lay hooked up to all sorts of machines that made Jason cringe. His head was resting on the side of your bed by the hand that Dick wasn’t nursing. His eyes had begun to droop shut as the early hours of the day crept around, when you shifted the let out a pained whimper. When he turned his head, he was greeted by your striking eyes. 

He scrambled off of the floor and into the chair that had been pulled up by your bed. “Y/N? Hey.”

“Boys?” You blinked, your head still groggy from the anaesthesia.

The eldest boy gave your hand a reassuring squeeze. “Yeah kiddo. We’re here.”

Trying to sit up, the tug on your stitches elicited another cry of pain. Instinctively, both boys helped you sit up. 

“Take it easy, little bat.” Dick told you as you gingerly pushed back the sheets. Your hip was bound tightly in a white bandage. “He got you good.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Jay pressed. “You could have…”

“I-”

You were cut off by the sound of the door shuddering open and a pair of your ‘not so little anymore’ brothers' heads peeking around it. They were hesitant, glancing around the room until you gave them a gentle smile.

“Y/N,” Damian rushed into the room, wrapping you tightly into a hug. 

“Hey Dami.” You murmured into his ear. 

He was suddenly ripped away from you by a grinning Tim who chided “Hey, be careful with her, you demon spawn. It’s my turn.”

You chuckled as he pulled you desperately into his arms.

“I’m so glad you’re okay Y/N/N. I was so scared.”

You frowned, hoarse voice breaking as you spoke. “I’m sorry-”

“Damian.” A haggard voice sounded from somewhere in the hallway. It was followed by a pair of heavy set shoes. “How many times do I have to tell you to get back in bed-”

Bruce stopped abruptly at the sight of his children crowded before him. His eyes were clad with dark bags and his hair was unkempt on his head. 

“Hi Dad.” Your voice was barely a whisper, but he heard it nonetheless. Pushing past his sons, he was at your side in less than a second. 

And that was when the reality of the whole situation hit you. Tears threatened to spill from your eyes.

“Dad. I’m sorry. I- I wasn’t thinking.”

“Shh.” He hushed. “This isn’t your fault. This is no one’s fault but Bane’s.”

“But-”

“Listen to the old man for once little bat. All that matters is that everyone is still together.”

🕸 ⋆ ⁶𖤐⁶ ࣪⋆🕸

<- DAY THREE ⛤ DAY FIVE ->

🏷️ Taglist:

@senjoritanana

[im-totally-not-an-alien-2]

Halloween prompts no. 31 (part 13: Finale)

Ras al Ghul was concerned. The Lazarus pits had been literally boiling and frothing at the edges. In fact the pit seemed to be steadily growing in size.

Ras did some tests and discovered the chemical components of the pits had not changed, but none of the bodies thrown in were revived, instead ever single one was turned into a rage filled zombie that glowed with the pits power. He still wasn't sure what to make of this when he got word that it wasn't just his pit that was reacting this way, but all of them. More pits were even opening up at a rapid pace, but strangely enough it was only happening in North America.

As time went on the pits continued to react more and more strange. Lightning began to dance across the surface and strike anyone or anything that got near. Any inanimate objects struck would begin acting on thier own and attacking anyone who got close. Fascinating.

He was just about to inform Batman of this development because as interesting as this was he did want his pit back. Unfortunately, it was just as he thought this that crap hit the fan.

The pits in America transformed into Portals to an unknown realm and creatures of all sorts began spewing forth followed by an army of skeletons, human, animal, alien, demon, dragons, you name it. It was there. Ras wisely decided to stay out of this one.

-------

The US was quickly overrun by myths and monsters, Green Arrow and his team was getting thier butts kicked by glowing stone gargoyles, the speedsters were dealing with a herd of colorful unicorns with hair made out of lightning, a freaking Kraken had emerged in one of the great lakes and was destroying everything it could. A purple dragon with a neon green underbelly began attacking Gotham and Red Hood asked, "Who the hell pissed off Barney?!"

It was only after they defeated an arrogant black dragon and its necklace was knocked off did they have a way to fight back. Hood hurriedly put on the amulet and turned into a large red dragon. Granted he rampaged a bit before he was attacked by one of the much smaller skeleton dragons and he began fighting them. He and 'Barney' got into what was essentially a dragony fistfight and Jason roared in victory after defeating it.

Tim got thrown into one of the pits and came out with pit madness and attacked anything that moved, roaring and baring his teeth all the while until he calmed down about twenty minutes later.

Similar things began happening all over the US where odd green lightning danced across the ground bringing inanimate objects to life and driving people to either temporary or permanent pit madness when struck.

Meanwhile,

Wonderwoman was being greatly outnumbered by chimeras and armed skeleton warriors while something similar was happening with Superman, save for the fact the skeletons he was dealing with wore armor made out of kryptonite.

After hours of fighting and the skeleton armies purposely burning and tearing down any buildings they saw things suddenly changed. All the creatures collectively froze for approximately two seconds before resuming the battle, this time with the intent to capture the heros in bubble prisons instead of killing them. The first captured was Superboy.

It spiraled from there with Superman and Wonderwoman being taken out and dragged through the portal

Shazam was being herded by spirits who were trying to protect him and were preventing him from fighting.

Tim freaked out upon learning about Superboys capture and went out of his way to go through the portal and save him. And the others of course.

He manages to land of the back of a giant glowing green bird and (with a lot of difficulty) gets it to land at what looks like a prison. He finds and frees Superboy and Martian Manhunter from thier bubbles and cells, but they seem to be the only heros here. The other inmates look like true eldrich horrors and the three of them try not to look directly at them as they escape. They work together to try to find the other imprisoned heros. They instead come across a pitch black castle with a welcoming white glow and sneak inside. MM shape-shifted into one of the skeletons and went unnoticed by the strange people roaming the castle, this, unfortunately did not fool the skeletons that were on guard duty and/or patrolling the castle and they all attacked them, leading them to try to hide in a nearby room that was actually heavily guarded. Locking the door behind them, they were pleased to note the skeletons couldn't seem to get through. They were all breathing heavily when a soft beep from behind them caused them to whirl around.

Instead of a threat, they found a seemingly very much alive boy around eight to ten years of age laying in a plush bed, guarded by a growling green puppy and hooked up to what seemed to be a heart monitor and other medical equipment. The heartbeat was dreadfully slow however. Superboy picked up the black crown that was resting on the bedside table and they all shared a look.

Was this the prince? It didn't look like he was leading the charge seeing as he was clearly in a coma, but whatever was happening the boy was clearly involved somehow.

A knock on the door startled them again, followed by an eerily calm voice, "Intruders of the Realms. You have been granted audience with the sister of the prince and currently reining princess of the Realms. Come quietly and you will not be harmed."

They talked amongst themselves and agreed to talk to the princess in hopes of getting more information. If they're attacked then they would at least have a change to fight or run rather than being stuck in a room with a comatose child. Sure they could use him as a hostage, but just the thought of doing that to a little kid made Tim's stomach sick, so no.

The princess was not at all what they thought she would be. She was a little girl not much older than the boy with bright orange hair and a blue dress with a matching oversized bow on her head. She seemed just as alive as her brother and very, very angry. She claimed she was Jasmine, but to call her Jazz. The American government had committed hundreds of war crimes against the Realms and even more "acts of war". Appearently they attacked the prince directly while he was trying to settle disputes between the living and the dead caused by a portal to the Infinite Realms that the humans had created. (The creation of the portal itself broke several ancient treaties) This wasn't unusual, and Prince Phantom often forgave them, even though they didn't deserve it. Many spirits have grown increasingly angry with the living over the past year or so this has been occurring and swiftly flew into a wild rage when it was discovered thier sweetheart of a prince was captured by the GIW and tortured for months until someone rescued him. When he was returned to the castle he cried himself to sleep and hasn't awoken since.

This was bad. Really bad. It sounded like the US was the aggressor, which explains a lot of things, like why only the US was being attacked,why the president was killed and government places like the pentagon and White house were so thoughly destroyed and its staff picked off.

Jazz explained that they were capturing anyone that was involved in the horrors committed against the Realms and its people and dragging them back to the dungeons to face the same tortures they had or had planned to put Phantom and the others through.

The princess then offered them a way home so long as they told the other heros the truth about what was happening and that this was a war between two government bodies.

[lulublack90]

Prompt 6 - Ensure

@jegulus-microfic April 6, Word count 709

The fighting went on for what felt like hours. Order members against the Death Eaters. It was probably a lot less than he thought. James still didn’t know how long the fighting had actually gone on for. 

He’d taken a stunner to the chest and flown backwards into a wall. He didn’t remember much after that, apart from Sirius’s and Remus’s blurred backs in front of him as they protected him from further damage. 

Aurors began to apparate into the warring groups. The Death Eaters, now substantially outnumbered, began to disapparate. The abandoned factory filled with the sound of the retreating cracks and the final few curses flung over shoulders. 

“James! James! Hang on, we’ll get you out of here.” Sirius sounded panicked. “Remus, help me. We need to get him to Marlene.” 

James felt hands under his armpits, hauling him up and then the uncomfortable squeezing of apparition. 

“Marlene!” Sirius yelled into the dark house. “Marlene?! Where the fuck are you?!” The brown-haired witch stomped into the room. 

“Who the fuck do you think you are talking to Black?” She stopped when she saw James’s limp body. “Get him to the bedroom.” She ordered. James’s feet dragged along the wooden floor. He didn’t have the energy to lift them. 

They deposited him on the bed, and Marlene hurried in with her healer’s bag. She began running her wand up and down him, muttering under her breath. Several glowing diagrams floated above him. “Hmm,” She hummed as she inspected him. “He’ll be fine. You’ll have a nasty bruise and probably be quite sore for a week or so, but I have a balm that will help with that.” She vanished the diagrams and dug around in her bag. 

With another wave of her wand, she opened the buttons on his shirt, revealing the purpling skin beneath. Gently, she spread the balm across his chest. He sighed with relief as the tightness across his skin eased. He quickly fell asleep. Too tired to keep his eyes open. 

It couldn’t have been that long after he fell asleep that shouting woke him. 

“Did you really think I couldn’t find him, Sirius? I know exactly where he is every moment of the day.” He recognised that voice, but his sleep-addled brain couldn’t make the link. 

“Go away, you’re not wanted here,” Sirius growled back. 

“Oh, get out of the way, Sirius!” A scuffle occurred, and then James heard footsteps coming towards his room. The door flung open, and there stood still in his Death Eater robes was Regulus. James was beyond shocked. He hadn’t seen his ex for over three years. 

“Reg?” He croaked. Regulus walked to the side of his bed and took his hand. “Why are you here?” He didn’t pull his hand away. Even though Regulus was fighting on the wrong side, he knew he was safe. 

“I needed to ensure that you were alive.” He said flatly. James looked up at him, peering at his emotionless face and into his eyes. His eyes always gave him away. Most people couldn’t read them, but James could. Those steely grey windows into Regulus’s soul. He was scared. His fingers trembled ever so slightly around James’s hand. 

“I’m okay, love. Marlene checked me over. No broken bones, just bruising.” He watched as Regulus’s shoulders relaxed a notch. 

“I’m glad.” He barely whispered, his eyes trailing over James’s body. He lifted James’s hand and kissed his knuckles. “Stay safe, James.” He demanded before he gently placed James’s hand back under the covers and left the room. “Yes, yes, Sirius, I’m leaving. But if you think I’ll leave him alone, you’re as mad as Voldemort.” 

Sirius and Remus came rushing in once the door had slammed shut behind Regulus.

“James, are you alright?” Sirius clambered into the bed, checking on his friend. 

“Yeah, I’m fine. He was just checking I wasn’t dead. He won’t be back. Don’t worry.” James knew he was lying. Regulus had revealed something that he didn’t think the other two had picked up on. ‘As mad as Voldemort.’ James ran those words over and over in his head for hours. Hope, building in his chest, that maybe, just maybe, Regulus wasn’t as lost as they’d all thought he was.   

[whatsnewalycat]

“do you believe in aliens?”

Pairing: Dieter Bravo x GN Person

Summary: Meeting DB in a furniture store.

Prompt: “Do you believe in aliens?”

Trope: Meet-cute

Words: 1.4k+ (sorry can’t shut the fuck up)

Rating: Teen (because swearing)

Notes: For the @dieterbravobrainrotclub May Drabble Challege! Also slightly inspired by Broad City when Lincoln said he met Ilana in a foot locker in Times Square and she was just chillin’. First person POV.

—

It was one of those weeks.

The kind of week where you seem to have no patience for anyone or anything. The kind where extra heavy traffic adds an hour to your commute each way. When you find yourself picking fights and reaching for comfort foods and maybe smoking twice as much as you normally do.

You know the kind of week where you come home on Friday after a long day of suffering under capitalism, only to discover that your live-in boyfriend up-and-left with all of his belongings?

Maybe that last one is just a me problem.

Anyways.

After the first sleepless night on the floor of my apartment, I decided I should get a mattress. Maybe even a bed frame if I could find a good deal.

I went to this nearby furniture outlet, and right away I could tell the place was understaffed. The employees wore these bright sunshine yellow polos that made them easy to spot across the open air of the warehouse. They were outnumbered four to one, easy.

This was gonna take up my whole day. I didn’t mind, though. The way I looked at it, I could either go back to my half-empty apartment and cry about the fact that I didn’t have a bed or a tv or a boyfriend, or I could wait my turn to buy a goddamn bed.

I found the cheapest mattress/bedframe combo available, then laid down on the starch-stiff comforter and gave it a few test bounces before deciding it was good enough.

I walked up and down the aisles of sad-looking bedroom furniture sets, trying to catch the attention of a sunshine polo to no avail.

That’s when I heard him.

“They said it might be an hour wait.”

Following the voice, I turned around and saw this guy all stretched out on a king-sized sleigh bed. He radiated the same energy as a sulking teenager waiting for his parents to pick him up, scrolling on his phone with one arm tucked behind his head.

I checked over my shoulders, then asked, “Are you talking to me?”

He looked up from his phone, dark eyes peeking over the rim of his sunglasses, “You’re trying to get a sales person, right?”

“Yeah.”

He shrugged, sitting up to bend his legs criss-cross applesauce, “Might as well make yourself at home.”

“Well, what can ya do,” I sighed and looked across the warehouse, confirming the sunshine polos were neck deep in annoyed customers.

“Hey, uhhh… since you’re waiting, would you do me a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Tell me what you think about this bed.”

I turned to face the furniture in question, tilting my head as I studied the thing, “I don’t know, it’s big, I guess. Looks… sturdy,” I kicked the leg and nodded in approval, “Yeah, that frame is solid as fuck. Is it comfy?”

“Pretty comfy,” he took off his sunglasses, hooking them on the collar of his worn-out shirt before patting the bed beside him, “See for yourself.”

“You know, normally I make a guy buy me a drink before hopping into bed with him,” I teased, raising an eyebrow at him.

He gave me this charming, dimpled smile, big brown eyes all sparkling warm when he shrugged, “I’ll buy you one after, how’s that sound?”

Heat clung to my stomach and I couldn’t even bear to look at him wearing that devilish grin.

Shaking my head, I climbed onto the mattress, “I’m just giving you shit.” I laid back on the pillow and sank down into the plush bedspread, “This is so much better than the one I’m getting, oh my god.”

“Yeah?” He chuckled and laid down beside me, crossing his ankles as he stretched out, “I’ve been trying to find one that’ll put me right to sleep. I keep having these weird fuckin’ dreams and—”

He cut himself off with a sigh, then looked over at me, “Do you believe in aliens?”

The ludicrous question took me by surprise. This big bubbly laugh escaped my throat and I turned to him, lost for words. All I could do was repeat the question: “Do I believe in aliens?”

“Yeah.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

Searching his face, I smirked, “Who are you?”

“Dieter,” he rolled on his side to make eye contact with me, “What’s your name?”

So I gave him my name and then I told him, “You know, when I was a teenager I lived out in the country. I’d always see things in the sky I couldn’t quite explain. These lights that would stay static in one place for minutes before zooming off into the stars, and… and, yeah, Dieter, I do believe in aliens. Why do you ask?”

“Well, ok,” he propped his head up on the heel of his hand, “See, the person I bought my bed from told me they were abducted by aliens. And I keep having these dreams where I’m in some kind of a spacecraft and these little gray fuckers won’t stop doing experiments on me. I dunno if it’s my subconscious or if I’m being abducted, but I gotta get a new fuckin’ bed either way.”

“Why would the bed make them abduct you?”

He frowned as he considered this, looking around before returning back to me, “Maybe they have a tracking device on it. I don’t know how it works. Probably not even real.”

“But just in case, you’re getting a new bed?”

“Yeah.”

I shrugged, “Doesn’t hurt to try, huh?”

He nodded, eyes flicking around my face, then rolled onto his back. We laid there staring up at the steel support beams and ugly lights fixed to the warehouse ceiling. For a little while I wondered whether or not he would think it was strange for me to bring up my own grievances. Then I decided fuck it, why not?

“Yesterday I came home and half my apartment was missing. My boyfriend moved out while I was at work, took the bed and everything.”

“Doesn’t sound like he’s your boyfriend anymore.”

“No, I guess not.”

“You don’t seem too broken up about it.”

“It was a long time coming,” I shrugged, “It’s… I don’t know, I’ll be fine. Right now I’m mostly upset about the bed. I set up camp on the living room floor last night and could barely sleep.”

He hummed in acknowledgment, then asked, “Are you gonna get this one?”

“I fucking wish. The one I have picked out feels like a cement slab compared to this.”

“Do you want my old one?”

“The one with the alien tracking device?”

“Oh yeah,” he giggled, “I forgot about that.”

Laughter rumbled up from my belly and his, thick and genuine, the kind that can’t be contained no matter how hard you try. It vibrated through my limbs and welled in my eyes as I choked out, “I—I thought we were gonna be friends, but now you’re trying to get me abducted by aliens? What the fuck, man?”

He doubled over on his side, whole body shaking with these gasping giggles that spread like a contagion to me until I could barely breathe.

Once the laughter died down, I looked over at him wiping the tears from his eyes and felt something rare and beautiful spark in my chest.

“I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard,” I admitted, rolling on my side to face him, unable to wipe the smile from my aching face.

“Me neither.”

From just an arms length away, I met his gaze and the most inexplicable compulsion overtook me. I wanted to kiss him, I realized, and that was truly insane.

His eyes dropped to my lips as though the same thought occurred to him.

“Do you wanna get out of here? Go get a drink?” he asked.

The question bubbled up my spine and made my stomach flip.

I nodded, “I do, but my bed—”

“I’ll take care of it,” he smirked, that devilish smirk that I knew would be trouble, and shrugged, “I’ll have my PA get two of these. Deliver one to your place, how’s that sound?”

“You can do that?”

“Absolutely.”

“How?”

“I’ll explain later,” he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, looking back at me, “You coming?”

Unmistakably, this was a leap of faith. It was insanity. He could have turned out to be any number of terrible things, but he wasn’t. He was a breath of fresh air. A clean break from the funk smothering the light from my life. He was the weirdest and best thing that ever happened to me.

[jokeringcutio]

Abijah Fowler x (f) Assassin Reader Drabble [ Warnings: Smut]

AN: On popular demand, another Abijah Fowler x Reader. You are an assassin set out to kill Fowler. It doesn't go according to plan.

Warnings: Non-con/dub-con content, SMUT (not as detailed as you're used from me, sorry, I'll give the prompt a retry in the future, possibly as a consensual forbidden love fic >D ), Not beta-read. Quick Drabble. ~~ Masterlist - Request Box - Ebooks&Website - Support me on Ko-Fi ~~

You watched him through the slats of the ceiling, your heart a drumbeat in the silence. Abijah Fowler, the man with the soul of a serpent, was seated at the head of a long, dark table. Such an outlandish habit. His fingers, stained with the ink of sin, traced the lines of a map that plots downfall and destruction. The other men, shadows in the dim light, nodded and murmured their assent to his vile plans — willing puppets dancing on his twisted strings.

Corrupted souls, all of them. But they weren’t your concern.

Your grip on the hilt of your dagger tightened. You had memorized the layout of this place, moved through the corridors like a ghost, unseen, unheard. Now you hovered above them, an angel of vengeance poised to strike. Your mission was clear: end Abijah Fowler.

He was explaining something, his voice a gravelly melody that carried tales of violence and power. His strong and broad shoulders moved, dipped backward as if he tried to loosen the muscles in them. His oddly colored hair captured your attention, thinking it had been a color akin to bronze or perhaps even gold once. But streaks of grey made him seem more like the other old men in this country. If it hadn’t been for his distinct facial features, the pale color of his skin, and the large shape of his bright-colored eyes.

An angel of death you saw in him. Anyone else called him a demon.

He regaled them with stories of conquests past, painting pictures with words dipped in blood. They laughed, a chorus of discordant notes, and you felt the bitterness rise in your throat.

"Of course," Fowler's voice sliced through the laughter, "it all depends on eliminating any... unexpected threats." His eyes, predator green, suddenly fixed on you, turned upward to the ceiling and straight at your hidden person. A cold smile curled his lips. "Isn't that right?"

The room fell silent. Every muscle in your body tensed, ready to spring, to fight. But you remained still, barely breathing. There was a chance this was all just a bluff, that he hadn’t seen you. But then you saw his unwavering gaze, saw the unnatural bright green eyes that rested firmly upon you, and you knew that you were exposed, the advantage lost. You cursed inwardly, waiting for his next move, knowing the game had changed.

"Come now, don't be shy," he coaxed, his tone mocking. "Join us."

You dropped down gracefully despite the hammering in your chest. Standing before them, outnumbered but unflinching, you refused to let them show any fear. Stoically, you faced them, thinking of all the lessons and all the training you had. The men stared, their gazes ravenous, but it was Fowler who held your attention. A dangerous dance awaited, everyone could feel it in the air. But you knew his moves, knew how he could react, knew you stood little chance in a hand-on-hand combat.

Especially if he brought his demon guns.

You needed a distraction, something that could increase your chances of survival. Your heart raced, a wild drumbeat in the cavern of your chest. Words, like poisoned arrows, flew from your lips as you stepped closer to Abijah Fowler.

"I've heard tales of your prowess," you murmured, voice a silken thread designed to ensnare. "They say no man can match you in the dark arts of war and pleasure."

Fowler's green eyes glinted, a predator basking in the glow of his prey's admiration. He let out a low chuckle, the sound rumbling through the tension-thick room. "Flattery will get you nowhere, my dear." His words were honey-laced with venom.

One step. Another. Close enough now that you could count the lines etched into his weathered face. You felt the heat emanating from his broad frame. Fowler's hand shot out, swift as a striking snake, clasping your wrist in an iron grip. The trap snapped shut.

"Gotcha," he whispered, a taunt wrapped in a victory.

Instinct took over. Your body remembered its training before your mind caught up. You twisted, a flash of movement, wrenching against his hold. The element of surprise was on your side, for a heartbeat or two.

"Feisty," Fowler observed, almost admiringly.

The dance of death began. A ballet of blows and blocks. You lunged, struck, kicked—each move a desperate plea for freedom. Fowler countered, effortlessly, his strength overwhelming. The other men watched, wolves observing their alpha.

"Should we help?" one ventured, doubt lacing his voice.

“No, he can take her, easily,” another one guffawed.

You hated him for the comment and wanted to punch his face in, but you knew he was right. Fowler was bigger than you, broader, heavier, and more skilled in combat. You were trained to be a silent creeper, someone who brought death without being seen, a shadow of mercy, or an anger of hell.

Another heroic block of his attack, but your underarm was smarting. Pain shot through you, your body feeling sore. When he finally landed a blow that sent you staggering back, you tasted the copper tang of defeat.

"Never send a child to do a killer's job," Fowler sneered, advancing on you, the space between you charged with the promise of pain and something darker still.

Breath short, chest heaving. His presence loomed, an oppressive shadow eclipsing your tumultuous thoughts. Abijah Fowler's green eyes glinted with a predatory gleam, the corner of his mouth twitching upward in a macabre grin that set your nerves on edge.

Was he studying you? The feeling that settled in the pit of your stomach was unsettling. Abijah Fowler was an attractive man, despite all his oddities. And hadn’t his character been so devilish, you might have fallen for his charm. But he was a demon. And in his eyes, you now saw demonic thoughts rise as he studied your features, eyes roaming your skin as if you were unclothed.

You felt the grip of his hands around your wrists, squeezing just a bit tighter. Felt the calloused skin of his thumb as it brushed gently past the mouse of your palm.

"Outside," he commanded, voice low and laden with dark promise. The men hesitated, exchanging leering glances that spoke volumes of their wretched character. "The lass and I need privacy."

"Seems Fowler's got himself a new plaything," one of the men chuckled, coarse laughter bubbling up from the others as they filed out, their intentions thick in the air like a miasma.

Your heart thrummed against your ribs, each beat a silent drum heralding doom. He was close now, too close; the heat from his body mingled with yours. You could kill him—if only you could reach your weapon. But he had smacked it out of your hand with the first blow, it had clunked to the wooden floor aimlessly. You couldn’t even tell where it was from where you stood. Your fingers twitched, betraying the urge.

"I'm not some doll for your amusement," you managed to say, words edged with a defiance you didn't feel.

"Oh, by the time I am done with you, you will wish I’d killed you sooner,” Fowler murmured. You could smell the odd sourness of his breath and wondered what had caused it. His grip on you tightened.

“Who sent you? And why would they send someone so young and unqualified," Fowler murmured, cruel satisfaction seeping through his tone. His breath caressed your ear, sending involuntary shivers down your spine.

The room cleared, the door clicking shut behind the last man. Silence fell heavy, punctuated only by your ragged breaths and the pounding of your pulse. Then, movement. Fowler's hands were upon you, guiding you with unwanted familiarity—a predator toying with its prey.

"Let's see what you've made of," he said, pressing you down forcefully over the table that dominated the center of the room. Your cheek met cold wood, and you flinched as the ink from the maps smeared beneath you, staining your skin with the blueprint of their vile machinations.

"Consider this a different kind of battle," Fowler whispered, his voice a serpent's hiss as he leaned over you, his weight an unspoken threat.

Fowler's hand slithered up your leg, rough fingers catching on the fabric of your clothes. A tug, a deliberate pull, and the material gave way to bare skin, your exposed calf a pale contrast against the darkness of his touch. His breath hitched ever so slightly, a sign of his burgeoning arousal not lost on you.

You struggled on instinct, but stilled when you felt the bulge against your thigh increase. This didn’t actually arouse him, did it?

"Fight me," he growled, a low rumble in his chest as you twisted beneath him, struggling for leverage. "I do love it when you struggle like that."

Your muscles coiled, ready to spring, but he was a slab of stone pinning you down. The heat of his body radiated through the thin barrier of your clothing, igniting a reluctant fire within. You hated how your body betrayed you, responding to his proximity despite the storm of loathing raging in your heart.

His hand wandered with more audacity, venturing into forbidden territory. A gasp tore from your lips, unsanctioned pleasure sparking along your nerves. Fowler chuckled, a sound laced with darkness, as if he relished in pulling these reactions from you.

"Good girl," he purred, his breath hot against your ear. "Let go, just for a moment."

You fought against the tide rising within, but the dam broke under his relentless pursuit, waves of reluctant ecstasy crashing over you. Your climax hit with the ferocity of a tempest, leaving you shuddering and vulnerable in its wake.

He wasted no time, freeing his aching long cock, the size and girth you had never seen before. A gasp tore from your lips as he sheathed himself inside of you, bottoming out with little mercy. He set a grueling pace, showing little care for your pleasure or well-being at this point. But your core was slippery, your walls fluttering around him with passion, and you had to bite your tongue to keep from moaning loudly with each and every deep thrust his foreign body gave you.

Was this how it had been for every lover he had ever taken, forced or otherwise?

A second orgasm wracked through your body. You’d find an excuse for this later on, if you were to survive this ordeal. You would find a way to condone the liquid that dripped from your core and onto the table below, the way the stained ink brushed past your nipples, the way your body pulsed with pleasure after Abijah Fowler found his release.

You felt a hot palm on your naked back, gently caressing the skin there, and heard the low hum that came from his lips. He sounded pensive, as if he were determining your fate. Your thoughts slid back to your weapons and the many ways to get your hands on them, but his body still kept you trapped underneath him.

As you lay there, trembling, Fowler's voice slithered in your ear once more. "There's a task I need done," he murmured, the words vibrating against your skin. "A certain individual who needs to be...taken care of."

His implication was clear, an order veiled as an offer. "Do this for me," he continued, "to my satisfaction, and I shall spare your life."

"My life..." you rasped, your voice laden with the weight of reality. There was no choice, only the illusion of one. You nodded, sealing a devil's pact, while inside, a lethal promise took root. Fowler had ignited a vengeful blaze, and from its ashes, you would rise—his destruction, your sole aim.

This was not the end. It was a twisted beginning, and you swore to yourself, to the silent gods of retribution, that you would have your revenge.

Abijah Fowler would pay.

~ AN: I want to do this character more justice (and the smut). But quite frankly, it is a bloody miracle I have been writing anything at all. Things don't go well health-wise, but we'll know more at the end of this month. I hope to feel good enough soon to write a better drabble for Abijah and Reader.

[detective-giggles]

🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫

Hiya friend! 

🔫🔫🔫🔫

They watch as he takes cover behind a partition and Carlos shakes his head.

“Paul is up top behind the stack of tires on the east side of the course. Marjan is up there with him,” Carlos whispers. He points to an open stretch of the course without any obstacles to hide behind. “Look, they’re gonna head this way. When they do, they’re going to have to cross the north side and they won’t have anywhere to hide.”

TK grins and bites his lip. “God, you’re sexy when you do that.”

Carlos rolls his eyes. “I’ve never lost a round of laser tag. I don’t intend to start now.”

🔫🔫🔫🔫

Send me an emoji ( 🍼🧁🛏💋🧺💧⛸🔫🪪🚗🍽🥳🚑) and I’ll write and share a snippet of a WIP for you!!

[scary-grace]

Enough to Go By (Chapter 16) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Your best friend vanished on the same night his family was murdered, and even though the world forgot about him, you never did. When a chance encounter brings you back into contact with Shimura Tenko, you'll do anything to make sure you don't lose him again. Keep his secrets? Sure. Aid the League of Villains? Of course. Sacrifice everything? You would - but as the battle between the League of Villains and hero society unfolds, it becomes clear that everything is far more than you or anyone else imagined it would be. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Chapter 16

“We can’t stop here.”

“Why not? It’s out of the way. There are abandoned buildings. It’s perfect.” Dabi gestures down at the small village between the hills. “I don’t get what your problem is.”

Spinner crosses his arms over his chest. “Just trust me. It’s not a good place.”

“Why not?” Toga asks – whines, almost. “I’m tired. It’s dark. Can’t we just find somewhere and –”

“We’ll protect you if there are ghosts!” Twice chimes in. “Or you can sleep in a tree.”

Spinner’s shoulders stiffen. “Hey,” you warn. You turn your attention to Spinner. “If you know something we don’t that makes it not safe for everybody –”

“It’s safe for you all,” Spinner says. “Not for me. This is a sundown town. The CRC has a branch here.”

Your heart sinks. “The who?” Tomura says blankly. Everybody else looks just as confused.

“The Creature Rejection Clan,” you say, before anyone can prompt Spinner to explain. He shouldn’t have to explain. “They’re a hate group. Against people whose quirks visibly alter their bodies.”

“Mutants,” Spinner says shortly. “If they catch you with me we’ll all be in trouble. It’s safer to find somewhere else.”

“No,” Tomura says. You look askance at him, and you’re not the only one. “Fuck them. They don’t own this town. Why should you have to leave? Let’s just kill them and then we can all sleep.”

“Um –” You feel like you should say something about this turn of events. Like that murdering however many people are in this town’s CRC branch is a bad idea if you’re trying to keep a low profile. “Shouldn’t somebody scout and find out what we’re looking at as far as numbers go? I can do that.”

“Yes,” Compress agrees. “We should plan –”

“We don’t need a plan.” Tomura cuts him off. “We’ll tell them we’re there to steal their shit. When they attack us, we’ll kill them, and then we’ll steal their shit. Easy.”

“Like an item drop,” Spinner says, and cracks a weak, angry grin. “Fine with me. Let’s go.”

The CRC branch headquarters isn’t hard to spot. The League strategizes quietly on the walk there, trying to decide who will attack what, and you walk in the middle, unsure of what to do. They’ll tell you what to do, right? Somebody will. It’s not like you can fight. Sure enough, Tomura drops back from a conversation with Twice and falls into step beside you. “I want you to stay out front.”

“Still keeping your precious Saintess’s hands clean?” Dabi sneers. “She’s on the run. It’s too late.”

“We need a lookout,” Tomura says. “If it looks like backup’s coming, we need to know. And if anybody gets out –”

“Not likely!” Toga trills.

“Someone needs to stop them,” Tomura continues. “Can you do that?”

“Yes.” You answer before you’ve really thought about it, but you won’t be any use in the main fight, and if they’re doing this, you need to help. Besides, how hard could it be?

The answer to the question “how hard could it be” turns out to be “pretty hard”. The League is outnumbered, unable to use Dabi’s wide-range quirk without potentially burning themselves alive, and Toga and Spinner are the only ones who actually use weapons in hand-to-hand combat. The front door locks from the inside, and while you know Compress locked it on the League’s way in, it must not be very hard to unlock, because there are multiple people trying to open it and escape. You throw your weight back against it to keep it shut, but you’re not going to be able to forever. “Um –”

“Hey, where are you guys going?” Toga’s voice is syrupy sweet and all the more terrifying for it. You hear an agonized shriek. “Come back in! We were just starting to have fun!”

The pressure on the door lessens significantly, but a moment later, there’s a crash, followed by someone in a creepy mask diving through a window and sprawling out on the ground in front of you. This is your job to deal with, but you don’t have a weapon. A quick check of your surroundings reveals an umbrella stand by the door. You knock it over, spilling the umbrellas, then pick up the stand. The CRC member is on their hands and knees, struggling to rise, and you deliver a sharp strike to their kidneys with the base of the stand.

You knew what you were aiming at. You know it hurts. The CRC member shrieks, and your stomach turns. “Stay down.”

Toga vaults through the window and lands on the ground, graceful like a cat. “Thanks for grabbing him,” she says. She stabs one of her syringes into the man’s leg and his body jerks as the device on her back begins to suction blood at a rate that collapses his veins. “We’re almost done in there. It’s too bad you couldn’t see Tomura-kun fight. You’d like it when he gets angry.”

You don’t know that you would. You don’t feel very good about what you just did. You’re not sorry that you hit the guy who tried to escape, and you’re not sorry that the members of a hate group are getting what’s coming to them, but – you don’t really know why you feel weird. You just know it’s the kind of thing you should keep to yourself.

The front door opens just as Toga’s finished draining blood from the man you hit. Dabi sticks his head out. “Grab that guy and get in here. We’re searching the place.”

Toga grabs the dead man’s feet, leaving you to grab beneath his shoulders, and the two of you drag him up the front steps and into the house. You’re used to handling the injured. You’re not used to dead bodies. You’re more than a little relieved to set him down, and you don’t feel entirely better until Tomura’s touched him and turned the corpse to dust. “We’re searching in groups, in case anybody hid,” he informs you and Toga. “Toga, you’re with Compress. And you’re with me and Spinner.”

You nod and follow them deeper into the house – Tomura in front of you, Spinner behind. “Did either of you get hurt?” you ask. There’s an awkward silence. “I need to know.”

“I got clipped. It’s not that bad,” Spinner says. You glance back and see him grimacing, and you switch spots with him in line without another word. “It’s not that bad. Seriously.”

“I’ll look at it once we’re done,” you decide. You address Tomura next. “What about you?”

“They couldn’t touch me.” Tomura disintegrates the first door the three of you come to and peers inside. “Empty. Let’s search.”

There’s not much in the room. Some antiques, but those are easier to trace than regular stolen goods and would be harder to sell. There’s a bookshelf, and a case full of ancient bladed weapons, which Spinner promptly breaks and begins to sort through. “These are old but good,” he says. “They did a better job with steel back in the day. Here.”

He’s holding out a knife to you. “You should have a real weapon. I don’t know how you stopped the guy who got out –”

“Umbrella stand.”

Spinner looks honestly taken aback. “A knife’s faster,” he says. “Take it.”

“Thanks,” you say. You’ll have to think of somewhere to put it later. It won’t be much use in your backpack.

Out of everybody who’s searching the house, you and Toga come up with the items with the highest resale value – Toga has a good eye for clothing, and having recently hidden your own jewelry from Compress, you have a good idea of where to look for concealed objects. Rather than helping with the search, Dabi’s gone looking for food, but in spite of the fact that he’s found whatever the CRC was planning to eat at the conclusion of their meeting, he’s still in a mood. “Why are we doing this? Wasn’t the point of the supply caches so we wouldn’t have to?”

“This wasn’t just for food and a place to sleep. It was about taking out the trash, same as dealing with Overhaul was.” Tomura starts picking through the food. You sit Spinner down to check out his injury. “There’s no place for them in the new world.”

Dabi makes a derisive noise, and nobody else is paying attention – but you’re right up close with Spinner, and you see his eyes widen. “The new world?” he asks quietly. “I’ve never heard him say that before. Do you know what he’s talking about?”

You nod. “You should ask him.”

“No, you should tell me so I can decide if I want to know. I – ow.”

“Sorry,” you say. “Do you know what this is from?”

“It was a pitchfork. Classic, right?” Spinner scowls, grimaces, while you explore the wounds. They’re deep, but not deep enough to do real muscle or organ damage. Infection will be the biggest risk – like it usually is. “How’d you know about the CRC? Most people who have quirks like mine – don’t.”

“Most big cities have CRC offshoots. Yokohama’s no different.” You clean out the wounds one at a time, doing your best to be gentle. “They have neighborhoods they hang out in, and the clinic I worked in sat near the border of one. People they attack come to the clinic for treatment. Or hide in there to get away. The CRC are, um –”

“Top-flight assholes.”

“Yeah.” You pick up some bandages and a roll of medical tape. “I shouldn’t have talked over you earlier. I just didn’t want you to have to explain.”

“It’s okay. I’m glad somebody else knew what I was talking about.” Spinner gives you a curious look. “How are you doing with all this?”

“This?”

“Being on the run.”

“Oh,” you say. “It’s fine.”

It’s been three weeks since you took a leave of absence from work and ran for the hills, and since then, life’s been broken up into long periods of travel and short periods of stillness. Kurogiri was captured by the heroes sometime after the temporary alliance with Overhaul was made, which means that overland travel at night is the only way the seven of you can get anywhere without getting in trouble. You aren’t doing hardly any fighting, and your medical skills are only needed when somebody needs patching up, but you’re keeping busy in spite of that. You’re still the only person the police aren’t looking for.

Scouting, supply runs, running interference if the daytime hiding place is at risk of being found – all of it falls to you. You’re supposed to be a medic. On a day-to-day basis, you’re logistical support. It’s exhausting, but not particularly dangerous. It feels more like a hard day’s work than anything else, and at the end of it, you’re with Tomura, which is the important thing. You’re there to remind him that a new world can be built after the old one’s been destroyed, to convince him that the new world is something he wants to be a part of. That’s your job now, more than anything else.

Tomura comes over to check on you and Spinner. “How bad is it?”

“Painful, but they aren’t deep,” you report. “I’ll monitor them, but the infection risk is low so long as we all stay clean.”

“That’s the hard part,” Spinner mumbles. “It’s too cold to take baths outside.”

“Saintess said no more baths outside anyway,” Twice calls from the other side of the room. “Since some people can’t swim.”

“You can say Tomura-kun,” Toga says. “It’s okay.”

The realization that Tomura can’t swim was an unpleasant one for everybody, since it necessitated yanking him out of an icy pond while avoiding contact with his quirk. Twice and his clones came in handy, and nothing bad happened other than embarrassment on Tomura’s part, but it’s still not an experience you want anybody to repeat. “We’ll find ways. Worst comes to worst, I’ll rent us a motel room.”

“One motel room for all of us? You’d be doing the heroes’ work for them,” Dabi sneers. “If I have to sleep in a confined space with all of you, you’ll be dead by dawn.”

“Fine. The roof of the hypothetical motel room is all yours.”

Tomura looks irritated. “He’s this close to being more trouble than he’s worth,” he says in a low voice. “We could cut him loose without the risk he’d turn us in. He hates heroes as much as I do.”

“Yeah, but he’s our only ranged attack,” Spinner says practically. “I say stick it out.”

Tomura glances at you. You hate it when he does that on questions about strategy. “Keep him,” you agree. “He’s all talk.”

Tomura nods, still dissatisfied. Spinner looks a little nervous about it, but you aren’t – it’ll dissipate, like most of Tomura’s bad moods do sooner or later. He’s moody, but not volatile. “Do you want food?” he asks abruptly. You nod. After a second, so does Spinner, and Tomura gets up and walks away.

“Is he really getting food for us?” Spinner asks. You nod again. “And you’re sure about the new world thing. It’s not going to piss him off if I ask?”

You shake your head. Tomura mentioned Spinner specifically as someone you should talk about it with, but you think the idea itself should come from Tomura. The mission all of you are on is Tomura’s dream, really – you’re just trying to make sure it doesn’t kill him.

Tomura comes back with some of the food that Dabi scavenged, passes it out, and sits down next to you to eat. Spinner waits until Tomura’s mouth is full before he asks. “So, uh – you mentioned a new world. What’s that about?”

“Ask her.”

“No.” You glare at Tomura. “I’m your sidekick. It’s your idea. Tell him like you told me.”

“I’m not telling him like that,” Tomura says, and you elbow him, exasperated. He’s smirking slightly behind the hand as he addresses Spinner. “The old world has to be destroyed. Once it’s gone there’s a blank slate. And you –”

You elbow him again. “We get to decide what it should be like,” Tomura corrects himself. “Mainly her. And the two of you should talk about it, because you have ideas, too. Right?”

“Uh –”

“Anti-discrimination laws,” you suggest. Tomura snorts. “Come on. Anarchy isn’t sustainable long-term. A new world won’t automatically be better than the old one. If we don’t want it to be worse, we have to make sure it isn’t.”

“If you say so.” Tomura wolfs down his last few bites of food, then lies down, stretching out with his head in your lap. “I’m done planning for today.”

You can tell Spinner doesn’t like seeing Tomura call it quits when there are things to do. You make eye contact with him and try to bridge the gap. “You wouldn’t have checked out from the world if you thought it was a good place to be. Tell me what’s wrong with it.”

You and Spinner talk a bit while Tomura dozes, but things are winding down, and eventually the League barricades the front door, shuts the windows, and retreats into two of the back rooms to sleep. Tomura stirs when everyone else leaves, but when you try to get up, he won’t let you. “We can’t sleep out here,” you remind him.

Tenko kisses you. “Who said anything about sleeping?”

“Tenko –”

He cuts you off with another kiss, one hand sliding inside your jacket, the other dipping into the pocket where you keep his gloves. Tenko’s hair is getting long. You weave your fingers through it as he puts on the gloves, trying to ground yourself, to find a second of calm. You know there won’t be any once Tenko gets his gloves on.

In retrospect, having sex with Tenko for the first time the night before you went on the run might not have been the best idea, because Tenko’s been taking advantage of every second where the others are looking away ever since. In some ways it’s hot. You’ve never had a boyfriend who’s this handsy with you, this addicted to you, and the fact that Tenko barely cares about being caught in the middle of something makes it even better. But as hot as it is, you’re not sure about doing whatever Tenko’s got in mind in a place where at least two dozen people just died.

You don’t even know what he’s got in mind. “Tenko,” you mumble as his lips press against your neck. He bites down slightly and you shiver. “What are you doing?”

“Give me a second.” He’s leaving marks. One at the side of your mouth, one down against your shoulder, and you feel almost uncomfortably hot at the idea that it’ll all be visible without your veil. “Don’t rush me.”

You’re not going to rush him, but your discomfort is building, and if you don’t do something soon, it’ll be too late. You plant your hand on Tenko’s chest and push him back, crawling over him to press your lips against his. You know Tenko likes it when you show you want him, and it’s not hard for you to do. It’s not the idea of hooking up right now that bothers you – more the venue, and you find yourself caring less and less about it with every second that passes. Something is wrong with you.

Knowing that doesn’t stop you from straddling Tenko’s lap, grinding against him. There are multiple layers of clothing between you, but you know he’s getting hard, and you can pretend that the heat between your legs is the result of his touch rather than simple friction. Tenko’s kisses are eager and messy. His hands slide beneath your shirt, up from your waist to your breasts – but your bra is in the way. He taps it impatiently and speaks without pulling away. “I hate this thing.”

“I taught you how to unhook it.”

“Still.” In fairness to Tenko, you’re wearing a front-fastening bra. “I’m banning these in the new world.”

“You don’t get to ban stuff in the new world unless you’re planning to be in it,” you say, and your heart leaps when he doesn’t argue. Then you think about it. “Hate groups, heroes, and bras. That’s really what you want to get rid of?”

“I’ll think of other stuff,” Tenko says, unconcerned. He unfastens your bra, then runs his gloved fingers along the underside of your breasts. One of your nipples is captured between his thumb and forefinger, and he tugs and pinches lightly at it, making you squirm. “This is a good start.”

You hate it when he does this. You hate how much you like it. The friction between your legs provides the only relief, so you grind further into Tenko’s lap, looking for more. “Stop,” Tenko says, an edge to his voice. “Don’t do that if we can’t –”

“Who said we can’t?” You made one last addition to your med kit before you left, hidden in an inside pocket. You slide your backpack off your shoulders, reach inside, and produce one of several condoms. Tenko’s eyes widen. “What do you think?”

He slides his hands out from under your shirt to pull at your leggings and underwear. You decide that counts as a yes. Getting out of your clothes is a pain – your boots have to come off, followed by your leggings, followed by your underwear. Your boring underwear, according to Toga when she helped you pack. A thought crosses your mind, and like your thoughts usually do when you and Tenko are together, it comes out of your mouth. “Do you think my underwear is boring?”

“I think it’s in the way.”

You weren’t sure there was a right answer, but that counts. You kiss Tenko and work on unbuttoning his pants. It’s much less of a production for him, and once his cock is free, you can’t resist taking him in hand for a few strokes. Tenko’s body tenses in response, and you watch as his red eyes dilate. He picks up the condom on his own this time, putting it on with sharp, frantic movements, and as soon as it’s in place, you shift forward, lining up and sinking down onto his cock.

All the air leaves your lungs, and Tenko’s breath hisses out from between his teeth as you settle fully into his lap. “You didn’t give me a second,” he mumbles, his voice strained. A questioning sound is all you can manage in response. “I was going to eat you out.”

Your stomach ties itself in a knot instantly. You shift your weight, drawing your attention to the stretch and pressure of Tenko’s cock inside you instead of on what he just said – or maybe you’re trying to get him to stop talking. You’re not sure which. Either, way, it doesn’t work. “We haven’t done that yet,” he continues. Riding him isn’t shutting him up. You try kissing instead, but leaning forward to do it leads to an unsustainable change in pace, one that leaves you gasping. “I like how you taste.”

Tenko’s hands are on your hips, holding on with an iron grip. You were trying to set a faster pace, but his hold on you forces you to slow down, prolonging the slide of his cock against the most sensitive spots inside you and making you shudder. You wish you’d taken off more of your clothes. You feel hot and shaky all over and somehow even more out of control than you did when you were underneath him the first time. Tenko’s eyes are wide, pupils dilated so far that his irises are noting more than a thin red rim. His hips lift slowly beneath you as his hand leaves your hip to wrap around the back of your neck, pulling you down for a kiss.

Tenko’s pace is slow and intense, almost agonizing. Your legs are trembling so badly that you couldn’t maintain a rhythm of your own if you wanted to. Tenko holds on even as his control deteroiorates, while he twitches beneath you and moans into the kiss. When you draw back to breathe, you find his eyes squeezed shut. A tear leaks from beneath one of his eyelids, and you stare for a moment in shock before leaning in to kiss it away.

From there you kiss the scar over his right eye, the one you’ve never asked about, just like you’ve never asked about the one on his mouth – the location of your next kiss, once you’ve decided against kissing the birthmark on the other side. Tenko sucks down a breath, mumbles your name. Then: “I love you,” he says. Your stomach twists again, this time with anxiety. It doesn’t make a difference to Tenko – he moans and thrusts sharply upwards. Your body shifts independent of your mind, making sure his cock hits the right spot. “Fuck. I can’t – I love you –”

Whatever unspoken rule there is against saying I love you during sex, Tenko’s clearly never heard of it, and seeing and feeling him fall apart between your legs sends you over the edge in a few seconds more. For a moment, your mind goes totally blank, and in the absence of thought or restraint, the worlds almost slip out of your mouth, trailing after his name. “Tenko. Tenko –”

I love you. The weight of it keeps you silent. But only just.

Tenko doesn’t comment on the fact that you haven’t said it back. He never does, which is a relief. You’ve shown that you love him, and you’ll show it again, so it doesn’t need to be said. What does have to be said is the same thing you said last time. “We can’t sleep like this.”

“I know.” The sulky note in his voice almost makes you laugh.

By the time the two of you retreat to the back rooms, some of your anxiety’s worn off, and like always, you feel better once Tenko’s asleep next to you. You have him. All For One can’t take him away from you. He belongs to you, and you’ll keep him with you, through the end of the world and into the new one. The thought comforts you, but it’s not comforting enough to fall asleep on. You’re awake most of the night, like you have been for months.

The League of Villains is awake and in motion before dawn, heading towards Kurogiri’s last pre-capture coordinates. You’re not sure what’s waiting there. Tomura isn’t sure, either – just that it’s something his master left for him, some power that’s supposed to help him reach his goal. Dabi’s theory is that it’s some kind of super-Nomu, while Spinner thinks it’s a weapon. “What kind of weapon?” Twice asks. “Like a sword?”

“No, like a really big gun.”

The idea of Tomura with a really big gun is inexplicably entertaining to you. You struggle to muffle your laughter. “My quirk is better than a gun,” Tomura says. “If it’s a gun, Spinner, it’s yours.”

“Shouldn’t it be mine?” you ask. Tomura looks askance at you. “I don’t have a quirk or a real weapon. And I’m an okay shot.”

“In Call of Duty,” Tomura says. Spinner wheezes. “It’s a game.”

“We should get you a gun,” Toga decides. “Those creepy yakuza guys had one, and they had quirks. You should definitely have one, because you don’t.”

“A gun or a quirk?”

“Both,” Dabi says. He stops walking, and you walk directly into him. “Did you feel that?”

“Feel what?” Twice asks, and makes a fart joke that has Toga and Spinner groaning. “I gotta tell you, Dabi, if you can feel them –”

“There it is again,” Dabi says. He twists around to look at you. This time, you picked up on it, and so did Tomura. “What is that?”

“If I knew I’d say it,” Tomura snaps. “Sensei didn’t tell me.”

“You should have asked. If you had asked, then we wouldn’t be –” Dabi breaks off as the vibration strikes a third time, hard enough to make all of you stagger. A plume of dust rises from between the hills ahead of you. “What the hell is that?”

Not a hill. It’s not a hill. What you thought was a hill is the curved back of some giant thing, and now it’s straightening up, getting to its feet. It rears up, taller than you and everybody else by orders of magnitude, and you see that it’s human-shaped. Its features are craggy, like it’s been carved inexpertly from rough stone. Looking at it, it’s hard not to imagine that this is what Kurogiri was looking for, and it’s impossible for you to imagine that he was unable to find it – or that the heroes didn’t find it, too. All For One didn’t leave Tomura a weapon. He left him a mountain that walks.

The mountain-that-walks steps towards the group of you, rattling your bones on every step. “Master’s heir,” it says, in a voice that sounds like rocks shattering. “Where is he?”

Tomura steps forward. “Here.”

For a few moments they’re simply looking at each other, Tomura looking up and the mountain staring down. Then the mountain’s face distorts, an anguished howl issuing from a mouth filled with jagged teeth. “No! He’s too weak!”

“What?” Tomura snarls. The giant is clawing up dirt and stone from the ground, looking for something. For a weapon. Your blood turns to ice, but Tomura steps forward. “If you think you can just –”

“Die!”

The giant hurls a massive chunk of stone at Tomura, and you throw yourself forward, too, hitting Tomura in the back and knocking you both to the ground. You land hard, biting the inside of your cheek as the rock crashes down in the same spot as Tomura was standing a split second ago. The giant wails again, tears running down its face. “Weak,” it howls. “Too weak. Master, how could you do this to me?”

You’ve got seconds before it throws something else. It’s already looking around for another weapon. You drag Tomura to his feet and pull him away, ducking around the boulder and back to the League. “We need to get out of here.”

“Right now!” Spinner looks just as scared as you feel, which makes two of you who are reacting normally. “If we split up and run –”

“Outrun that thing? No way.” Dabi’s face splits into an eerie grin. “We’ll fight, right, Shigaraki? Or is that thing right about you?”

Tomura yanks his arm free of your grip and takes off toward the giant, throwing an order over his shoulder. “Get her out of here, Spinner!”

It makes sense. Spinner’s quirk doesn’t equip him well for a fight like this, just like your lack of a quirk doesn’t equip you at all. Spinner doesn’t look insulted at being stuck on girlfriend protection duty, and you’re not opposed to getting out of here – except you’ve got a job to do. “I’m the medic. I can’t leave!”

“If they get hit, there will be nothing to fix,” Compress says shortly. Your stomach turns at the thought of Tomura being struck by a flying boulder or getting crushed in the giant’s fist until he’s nothing more than a bloody smear in the dirt. “And he won’t be effective if he’s worried about your safety. Get clear.”

A wave of blue fire fills your vision, then dissipates. Toga’s voice is bordering on a shriek. “That didn’t work, Dabi!”

If Dabi’s flames aren’t having any effect, this opponent’s too dangerous for the League. Tomura’s the only one who could take the giant down, but he’d have to get close. There’s a horrible crash from somewhere ahead of you, and Spinner grabs your arm. “Let’s go!”

You balk again, agonized, but then you hear a voice – one that’s not the giant’s, not Tomura’s, not Dabi’s. Someone else. “How are you, Shigaraki? Are you well?”

“Sure,” Tomura says, tense and frustrated, “but I might be mincemeat in a second.”

“Then let’s have a chat, shall we? Stand by.”

Stand by for what? The giant’s coming. You can’t stand by. You all have to run. You try to say that, but suddenly a foul taste pervades your mouth, and it fills with something slimy, something that makes you cough and gag. Everyone else is doing the same. You hear Dabi curse, the words muffled and then choked off entirely. Your own body contorts in discomfort, and when you force your eyes open, you see black slime emerging from the others’ mouths, engulfing them entirely, engulfing you. It obscures your vision, and when you open your eyes, you’re somewhere else entirely.

It’s some kind of warp quirk, and overall, you much prefer Kurogiri’s. You glance around at your surroundings, just like the others are doing. They’re completely unfamiliar – an enormous room, high-ceilinged and dark. The only light comes from the tall capsules filled with bodies suspended in glowing liquid on either side of you, and from a bright screen up ahead. In front of the screen sits a man.

The location looks unfamiliar. But as you cough and struggle to clear the taste of the sludge from your mouth, you catch a familiar smell. Rot. Like a morgue, and suddenly you know exactly where you are. It was even darker last time, but the smell is unmistakable. This is where you met All For One.

All For One’s not here, and you have a feeling about who the man is, a feeling that’s confirmed a moment later when Tomura speaks. “Doctor,” he says. “It’s been a while.”

“Indeed. I always intended to reach out, but I wanted to see how you would do on your own. It’s been –” the doctor makes a displeased sound. “Underwhelming.”

“What part of taking down the Shie Hassaikai is underwhelming?”

“The fact that it wasn’t your doing. The heroes did the lion’s share of the work,” the doctor says, “while the lot of you merely swooped in, crippled Overhaul after he had already been captured, and kidnapped a child – only to return her. If you’d held onto her, I would have reached out sooner. That was quite a quirk you let slip through your fingers.”

“That wasn’t him. That was me,” you say. You’re not about to let Tomura take the fall for something you did, particularly when you aren’t at all sorry you did it. “If you’d reached out and let us know you were interested, I might have held onto her.”

You wouldn’t have, but there’s no need for the doctor to know that. He rises from his chair and turns to face you. “And who were you to make the determination to let her go?”

“I’m the one who’d have wound up taking care of her,” you say. You already didn’t like the doctor – the fact that he refused to care for Tomura when he was hurt leaves a bad taste in your mouth – but you like him even less now. You keep yourself conciliatory with an effort. “We didn’t have the capability to contain her quirk long-term. It was too much of a risk.”

“And you allow your underlings to make those decisions, Shigaraki?”

“I trust my comrades’ judgement,” Tomura says. “The League of Villains is functional whether we’re working as a group or not.”

“It’s quite a group,” the doctor says. “Let’s see – one teenage girl, one societal reject, two petty criminals, a serial arsonist and murderer, and a civilian to round things out.”

“You went with ‘civilian’ for Saintess? Really?” Dabi never says your codename with anything less than scorn. “Try quirkless next time. Then you’d be eight for eight.”

Now that you think about it, it’s weird that he targeted your lack of a record, when anyone else would agree that your quirklessness is the larger problem. The doctor ignores Dabi. “Still, it’s a team worth paying attention to – and perhaps worth helping, depending on what you intend to use them for. What do you intend to do with them?”

“Destroy All Might.”

The doctor tsks. “Those are your master’s words, and you aren’t him. Try again.”

“Destroy hero society.”

Tomura sounds like he’s taking a test. Taking one, and failing it. The doctor tsks again. “Close, but not quite.”

“Destroy everything,” Tomura snaps, and the doctor smiles. That smile cements your dislike for him for good. “Everything I see, I hate. There’s nothing about this world that’s worth saving, so I’ll destroy it all at once.”

Toga makes a skeptical sound. “What about me, Tomura? Are you even going to destroy the things I like?”

“There’s always room for my comrades’ wishes,” Tomura says. Toga grins. Tomura glances sideways, meets your eyes, then faces the doctor again. “My comrades can’t live as they want in this world. I can’t live in it at all. So I’ll tear it down, brick by brick, atom by atom, until there’s nothing left in our way.”

“Anarchy, then?”

“Anarchy’s not sustainable,” Tomura says, and you find yourself hiding a smile under your veil. “What happens next isn’t my problem. My comrades can choose what to do.”

“What if I don’t want to do anything?” Twice asks. “I want to drink coffee and eat sushi.”

“Ugh,” Dabi mutters. “I don’t give a shit about any of it. As long as nobody stops me from doing what I need to do.”

Every so often, Dabi alludes to some mission of his, trying to lure one of you into asking so he can tell you to fuck off. You’ve all learned to ignore it by now. “As long as the things I like are here, I don’t care what happens,” Toga says. “Everybody else can choose.”

It’s quiet after that, other than Twice musing out loud about whether sushi and coffee go together even slightly. The doctor raises his eyebrows. “Three of you are awfully quiet. Compress, Spinner, Saintess – what plans do you have after you’ve helped Shigaraki destroy everything?”

“I’m keeping my options open,” Compress says. “A true performer waits for the right moment to claim the spotlight.”

The doctor lets that go, probably because Compress is a real adult and not somebody he feels like kicking around. He faces you and Spinner. “The shut-in and the civilian. What will you do?”

Spinner opens his mouth and you cut him off. “I’ll do what Shigaraki asks of me,” you say. It’s not a lie – he’s asked you to build the new world, and you’ll do it as long as he agrees to live in it with you. “I’m his sidekick. That’s my job.”

“I’m not a sidekick, but I’ll do what Shigaraki asks, too.” Spinner’s smart enough not to bring up Tomura’s instructions about the new world. “I don’t have my own vision. I’ll follow the person with the best one.”

“And you believe Shigaraki’s vision is the best one.”

“Yes.” Spinner doesn’t hesitate.

“Remarkable,” the doctor says, but he doesn’t follow up with Spinner. Instead he turns to you. “I have no need to question your loyalty to Shigaraki. You had more to lose in following him than the others.”

More to lose, sure – but losing him would have been worse. The doctor returns his attention to Tomura. “It seems you do have some degree of vision, as warped and simplistic as it may be. And you are capable of inspiring some degree of loyalty. The situation is not as dire as I originally thought.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s still rather dire,” the doctor says, like Tomura’s acceptance of the backhanded compliment wasn’t the most sarcastic thing you’ve ever heard him say. “Still, I’ll assist you on a limited basis for now.”

“How limited?”

“Some financial support. You’re still lacking in that department. That being said,” the doctor continues, “I can promise significantly more should you convince Gigantomachia to submit to you. He was your master’s most powerful servant. If he accepts your rule, I’ll throw my considerable resources behind you.”

“So we have to fight him until he quits?” Dabi sounds skeptical. “Fuck that. I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

“Like what?” Spinner asks.

“There’s a potential ally I’m cultivating. If I’m right about him, it’ll be a coup for us. Way more than converting some random civilian.”

Tomura’s shoulders tense, and you pray he’ll let it slide – and he does. “I look forward to meeting them.”

“While you’re doing that, perhaps you can assist with the testing of a Nomu,” the doctor says. So he’s the one who makes them. You weren’t sure. “I’ve created a class of high-tiers, far more powerful than the Nomu Shigaraki deployed at USJ, and they’re ready to be tested against powerful heroes.”

Dabi looks like he’s about to tell the doctor to fuck off. Then he tilts his head, considering. “How powerful of a hero do you want?”

“As powerful as you can secure. If I’m correct about the strength of the high-tiers, lesser heroes will fall before them easily.”

Dabi cracks a nasty grin. “I’ve got somebody in mind.”

“Excellent. As for the rest of you –” the doctor snaps his fingers, and the smallest Nomu you’ve ever seen scurries forward. It’s carrying a box, and when you look closer, you see that it contains earpieces. “Take these. This is how I’ll contact you from now on.”

You each step forward to take them. “This is really it?” Twice asks, not all that quietly. “We just have to get the big guy to bow down?”

“It won’t be easy,” the doctor says. “His strength and stamina are unmatched. I’ll be very impressed if any of you survive.”

Spinner looks worried. You’re worried, too. Tomura isn’t. “Thanks for the tutorial,” he says to the doctor. You’re last in line to collect your earpiece, and you tuck it into your ear. “Send us back. I feel motivated all of a sudden.”

The doctor signals something – another tiny Nomu – and black sludge begins to erupt from the others’ mouths. The others’ mouths, but not yours. You look to Tomura, a surge of panic rising within you, and Tomura reaches out, his fingers closing on your sleeve for a split second before the warp tears him away. He’s gone. They’re all gone, and you’re alone in here. With the bodies floating in the glass capsules and the two tiny Nomus and the doctor.

You have the knife Spinner gave you strapped to your back, concealed with your backpack, but you don’t know the doctor’s quirk, and you still can’t fight. The only way out of here is if the doctor decides to let you go. “Sir, please –”

“Manners for me, too? I’m glad to see that someone in Shigaraki’s gang of misfits respects common courtesy.” The doctor smiles. It’s not quite a leer, but it’s enough to make your skin crawl. “Don’t worry, my dear. I’ll send you back to your master in short order. I just need to run some tests.”

“Tests?” you say uncertainly. “What kind of tests?”

“Nothing too painful, or too invasive.” The doctor beckons you closer, and you take a few hesitant steps. You don’t want him to get mad at you. This, whatever it is, will be worse if he’s angry. “All For One had a hunch when he met you, and I’d like to confirm it. You want to be as useful to your master as possible, don’t you?”

You don’t like that he keeps calling Tenko your master, but you do want to be as useful as possible. You nod. “Excellent. Hold out your hand,” the doctor says. You do, at which point he jabs a needle attached to an electrode into the meat of your palm. You yelp in pain. “Oh, hush. Has anyone explained the theory of quirk latency to you?”

Even with your palm stinging, even in fear for your life, you can’t help rolling your eyes. “Yes.”

“And you seem not to set much store by it.”

“It’s a lie,” you say. “Something they tell quirkless children so we’ll stay hopeful instead of recognizing how the world really sees us.”

“Explain it for me.”

The needle in your palm is buzzing. It feels like there are insects crawling beneath your skin. “Quirk latency theory suggests that the majority of people who appear to be quirkless are not. Instead, they possess latent quirks – quirks that don’t manifest for the first time unless certain conditions are met, and if those conditions are never met, the person in question appears to be quirkless for their entire life.”

The doctor yanks the sensor out of your palm. “Give an example.”

“If someone’s quirk is driving stick-shift perfectly,” you say. It’s the example you heard in school. It was stupid then and it’s stupid now. “It’ll never show up if they never get behind the wheel of a stick-shift car.”

“Sounds plausible, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe, but it doesn’t matter,” you say. The doctor wraps a blood pressure cuff around your arm. At least, it looks like a blood pressure cuff – when it constricts, it jabs dozens of needles into your bicep, and you whimper in pain. You can slice into your skin without blinking, but it’s different when someone else is in control. “If it never manifests and you never know what it is, it’s the same as not having one at all.”

“Mm. I suppose.” The blood pressure cuff squeezes your arm agonizingly tight, then beeps and releases. The doctor peels it away. “Your decision to release the girl, while frustrating on a professional level, was the correct decision with regard to Shigaraki’s survival. Lift the veil.”

“Sir –”

“I know your face already. Lift it.”

You raise the edge and flip it back, at which point the doctor stuffs a thermometer into your mouth. That one doesn’t stab you, but he jabs a needle into your lower lip a second later. A mask lowers over your eyes, ringed in tiny needles just like the cuff, and all the needles deliver a low, buzzing shock. The thermometer in your mouth beeps, but the doctor doesn’t remove it. “It’s intriguing that Shigaraki selected you, of all people, to serve as his sidekick – but far more intriguing is the fact that you accepted the role. All For One had charisma. The strength of his character drew others to him, and his wealth and benevolence certainly didn’t hurt. Shigaraki Tomura possesses nothing of the kind. How on earth did he entice a civilian away from what for all intents and purposes appeared to be a relatively normal, happy life?”

Not by being Shigaraki Tomura – and not just by being Shimura Tenko. You call him different names depending on who you’re with, but he’s the same person, the same man, regardless of whether you use the name given to him by his master or his father. The thermometer in your mouth beeps sharply, and the doctor extracts it in a hurry, followed by the needle in your lip. Then he lifts the eye mask away. Next he slaps electrodes onto your temples, the sides of your neck, your forehead, your chest – the same microneedles, the same electric shocks. You clench your jaw against the pain. You’re not going to make another sound.

Why are you letting this happen? The same reason you let Overhaul touch you, the same reason you didn’t give in to panic when All For One’s hand descended over your face. You’re doing it for Tenko, so you can stay with Tenko, so no one will try to take you away from him or take him away from you. When you think of it like that, it’s – not easy to survive, exactly. But it’s easier. Easy enough that the chorus of stings and shocks from the last set of electrodes don’t visibly break your composure.

It’s only once you’re free of electrodes and needles that you remember you were asked a question – and that you don’t remember what it was. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer your question. Would you mind repeating it?”

“Don’t worry. You’ve answered it,” the doctor says. “And All For One’s hunch about you was correct. You’re a victim of quirk latency. You are not quirkless.”

You look blankly at him. Your skin is stinging in a dozen places, and there’s an unpleasant buzz in your nerves. “The tests I just conducted were tests of the most common locations of quirk factors,” the doctor says. “The hands, the eyes, the mouth and nose – when receiving certain types of stimulation, quirk factors produce an abnormal response. I was unable to identify a discrete quirk factor for you, which indicates that your quirk is not vulnerable to external attack. Overhaul, Shigaraki, Compress – remove their hands, and they’re useless. Your quirk factor, however, can’t be separated from your body so easily.”

He's looking at you, clearly pleased with himself, clearly waiting for you to respond in kind. “I don’t have a quirk,” you say. Your instruments are wrong.”

“My instruments are never wrong,” the doctor says. “Neither is All For One. You have a quirk, my dear. It’s latent, and without a discrete quirk factor, we have few clues as to what it might be, but make no mistake, a quirk is present. You said you wish to be as useful to Shigaraki as possible. Imagine how much more useful you’d be with your quirk.”

“I don’t have a quirk.” You know you shouldn’t argue, that you should pretend to be happy or at least let it go, but you can’t. You’re quirkless. That’s it. That’s all you’ll ever be. “If I had an actual quirk factor, maybe I’d believe you. But those abnormal reactions – you jabbed needles into my face and shocked me. Of course my system acted up.”

“Your system reacted normally to the electric current. What indicated the presence of a quirk factor was something else. Don’t question me, my dear. This is my area of expertise.” The doctor’s smile is horrendously smug. “I’m tempted to keep you here, and send you back to Shigaraki once we’ve awakened your quirk –”

“No!”

You clamp your hands over your mouth too late to silence yourself, and the doctor continues speaking like you didn’t say a word. “But I’d prefer that Shigaraki stays focused on mastering Gigantomachia, rather than hunting me down to retrieve his favorite toy. I’ll send you back, but well away from the battlefield. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you before we’ve discovered your quirk.”

You know better by now than to argue about whether you have a quirk or not. You nod mutely, and since you have your mouth shut, the black sludge oozes from your nose instead. You squeeze your eyes shut and wait for the taste and the sensation to fade, and when you open y our eyes again, you’re on a wooded hillside somewhere in the middle of nowhere. There are clouds of dust rising in the distance, and in the midst of them, you can see Gigantomachia’s silhouette. Tenko’s already fighting him.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket, and you take it out. Twice has been messaging you. A lot.

Twice: Saintess

Twice: hey Saintess

Twice: are y coming back or what

Twice: I k already had to make ten clones of Shigaraki to go get smashed because the real one can’t focus long enough to fight the big guy

Twice: sorry TWELVE clones

Twice: i won’t make any more fart jokes if you come back right now

Twice: WHERE R U HES GOING BERSERK

Damn it. You call Twice, praying he’s not up close and personal with Gigantomachia right now, and he picks up on the first ring. It’s colossally noisy on his end of the line and you find yourself having to shout. “Hey! Tell Tomura I’m fine and tell him to get his head back in the game!”

“Hey, you’re back! What took you so long? I – hey, boss, you might want to get back out there –”

“Make another clone,” Tomura snarls, and a moment later you hear his ragged breathing on the line. “What happened? Where are you?”

“I’m fine. He just wanted to talk. I’ll tell you about it the next time we have a second.” You speak quickly, calmly, even though the sound of Tomura’s voice and the fact that he’s worried about you are this close to making you burst into tears. “He dropped me off away from the battle so I wouldn’t get trampled. I’ll make my way back. Just focus.”

“Drop a pin. Spinner and Toga will come get you.” Tomura swears into the phone a moment later. “It’s not fucking fine. He can’t just –”

“Just focus,” you say again. “We’ll talk. Be careful.”

“I love you.”

Your heart twists. “Be careful,” you say again, and you hang up the phone.

You drop the pin as requested, then use your phone camera to check out the damage the doctor’s tests did. It doesn’t look good. Your lower lip is swollen, and you’ve got a rash around your eyes and your forehead and your neck — everywhere a microneedle went in. Your eyes are puffy, maybe from the needles, maybe from wanting to cry this much and holding it in. But maybe you shouldn’t hold it in. You’ve got some time before Spinner and Toga get to you. Maybe you should just get it out of your system. You sit down on a rock, bury your face in your hands, and cry, but the longer you cry, the worse it gets. A quirk. The doctor says you have a stupid quirk, and your whole life –

You can’t think about it. You can’t stop. You have to stop right now before anybody sees, and with no one else to turn to, you find yourself turning to a coping mechanism you thought you gave up on. It was nice of Spinner to give you the knife. You know for a fact you weren’t supposed to use it for this.

But it works. You wouldn’t do it if it didn’t, and by the time Spinner and Toga come to get you, you’re neatly bandaged under your shirt and sitting behind your veil with dry eyes. “Where have you been?” Toga asks. “Tomura-kun was really upset.”

“The doctor and I needed to talk about something. It’s all okay now.” Your voice sounds perfectly steady, and you’re perfectly calm. The doctor is wrong. You don’t have a quirk. You’ve never had a quirk, and since you’ve never had a quirk, your entire life hasn’t been built around dealing with something that was never even true. “How’s Tomura?”

“If we didn’t have Twice, we’d be screwed,” Spinner says. He looks grim. “Let’s go. Somebody’s probably going to be hurt by the time we get there.”

“What did the doctor want to talk to you about?” Toga asks as the three of you hike through the woods. “Something fun?”

“Not really.” You shrug. “He just wanted to give me a hard time about letting Eri go.”

It’s a safe lie, you think. One the others will buy, if Toga’s reminiscing about how cute Eri is are anything to go by. The real question will be if you can sell that same lie to Tenko. You think you probably can. You’ve lied to him directly before. And you’ve lied by omission, every time he tells you he loves you and you don’t say it back.

[angelwings-crossbowstrings]

Whumpuary Day 11-12

Prompt: Exhaustion

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Typical TWD violence and gore

“Daryl, we need to stop. Everyone needs a break.” You wrapped your arms around yourself, pulling your jacket tighter to your body. It was cold. Late autumn, early winter. You were searching for a group that had robbed and killed some of the Commonwealth’s best scouts. Ezekiel and Mercer had assigned you and Daryl to head up the mission. Daryl was still on edge about declining Maggie’s request to venture out. It wasn’t really his decision. You played a huge part in his declination. 

“Take a break then. M’goin’ on ahead.” He was standing on a downed tree, looking through Carol’s binoculars. You knew he was yearning for the old crew. They all had their jobs now and you couldn’t tear them away from that. So, Mercer had assigned troopers to assist. Daryl looked down at you, handing you the binoculars so he could jump down. 

“Come on, Daryl. Let’s stop for the evening. I know you haven’t been sleeping. I’m alone when I go to sleep. I’m alone when I wake up.”

His jaw twisted, a sure sign he was gnawing on the inside of his lip. “Maybe I just get to bed late an’ get up early.”

You put your hands on your hips. “Daryl Dixon, are you seriously trying to lie to me right now?” He gave a quiet nah while watching his boot kick at some loose rocks. “We barely get four or five hours and with all the walking and tracking, we’re exhausted.” You had already taken in his haggard appearance and he knew you had. “And you’re not sleeping at all? It’s not just unhealthy, it’s dangerous.”

Daryl sighed, his thumb tracing over his bottom lip. He looked as if he might concede, but with a glance over your shoulder, he dropped his hand and squared his shoulders. “M’goin’. Catch up.” 

You watched him walk away until he was out of sight. Turning, you saw a trio of troopers watching with smirks and hushed laughter. Had they been amused by you being able to rein in Daryl’s stubbornness? That would explain his hasty departure. 

“You think this is funny?” You snapped, their expressions falling straight. They stood at attention with a series of no ma’am. “Ugh, set up the tents. I’m going after our fearless leader.” You stayed for a moment to make sure they followed orders. You might have placed yourself under your boyfriend’s leadership, but in his absence, they were to heed your command. 

You checked your weapons before heading out alone. Daryl couldn’t have gone far but he tended to have the ability to surprise you. You really needed to talk to him about everything. It was you who begged him to stay when Maggie asked him to go. It was you that told him you’d follow him if he tried to leave without you. You didn’t leave him a choice and maybe that wasn’t fair. You had spent so much time separating from him in fights that could have seen one or both of you dead. Now, with a chance of relative peace and safety, you couldn’t let him just willingly walk away from that. 

You sighed, running a hand through your hair. A few steps further and you could hear the crunch of leaves and snapping twigs. You knew it wasn’t Daryl. The man could move across the forest floor without a sound. When the first growl filtered through the air, you inwardly groaned. Just what you needed. Your handgun was at your hip but you pulled your knife. You were alone and didn’t need to attract any unnecessary attention. 

Lowering into a crouch, you tread the way Daryl had shown you, finding the lone walker with ease. Your eyes narrowed. It was moving with purpose, arms reaching as though something was in its sights. And it wasn’t you. 

Then you could hear him. The grunts and strained noises of Daryl engaged in a fight. Shit. You sprang to your feet, stabbing the walker in the eye as you passed. A nearby incline overlooked a small ravine, where Daryl was absolutely outnumbered by the dead. His crossbow had been discarded or dropped while he used his knives to fight off the dozen or so hands reaching for him. 

But he was flagging. 

Goddamnit, Daryl! 

You tore down the hill, kicking the feet out from under the walkers you passed so you could quickly and efficiently dispatch them. When you reached the bottom, everything seemed to go into slow motion. 

The walker had managed to get too close, grabbing Daryl’s arm as he reared back to stab the one in front of him. He used his other hand to take that one down but his arm was inches from the snapping jaws of the other. Just as it’s rotten teeth made contact with his exposed skin, a shot rang out. 

The walker dropped. 

You fired shot after shot until only three remained. Running past the archer, you took down two and turned to find him pulling his knife from the temple of the last one. 

Panting, you dropped your weapons and ran to him. He didn’t fight when you grabbed his arm. “Please please please. Are you bit? Are you hurt?” There was a light red irritation but no broken skin. You thought your legs would give out then and there, the relief surged so strongly. He still said nothing when you pulled him against you, holding him so tightly that it was a wonder he could breathe. “Don’t ever do that again! God, please, don’t!” You cried against his shoulder. His hands were on your back, rubbing gentle circles. 

“M’sorry.” Daryl finally whispered into your hair. You sniffled against him for a moment more, relishing in the feel of his warmth, the rise and fall of his chest. When you pulled back, he wasn’t looking at you. 

“It’s okay. I’m just,” your voice cracked hard enough to force a pause, “I’m just glad you’re okay.” He nodded wordlessly. “Let’s go. The shots will attract others.” You grabbed your weapons and his crossbow, handing it to him. 

The walk back was silent, your hand in his. You couldn’t give up the contact, not while your heart still raced with how close you’d come to losing him or even a part of him. When the camp came into view, you stopped, glad that he also stilled beside you.

“They’re gonna be pissed but we can’t stay here.” You sighed giving his hand a squeeze. He nodded again. When you opened your mouth again, your name was called from somewhere behind you. 

“We heard the shots.” Two troopers, Jones and Pierce, had their weapons out, lowering them as they approached. 

“We’re good.” You answered with a tight smile. “Ran into some walkers. Gonna have to move the camp.” Much to your relief, they simply nodded and moved on, relaying the order. 

“You’re right.” 

You looked away from the tents and back to your archer. His head was down, his shoulders slumped. “What?” When he lifted his head, your expression softened. He looked beat down, resigned. 

“M’exhausted. Was stupid, what I did.” His thumb was drawing nervous circles on the the back of your hand. “��Bout got me killed.” He dropped his head again, shame eating away at him. You knew that look well. 

“Hey.” You hooked a finger beneath his chin and guided him to look at you again. “I won’t say it’s okay because it isn’t. It was stupid.” The flinch would have been imperceptible to anyone else but you knew Daryl, knew what to look for when he was upset. “But you’re here. You’re safe and whole. That’s what matters.” Another silent nod. “I know there are things we need to talk about and we will. You need to rest first.”

A little of the tension bled from his face. “Okay.”

“Let’s go help gather everything. Get moved and get you to bed.” When you started walking, he fell in step automatically.

“Might need a bedtime story.” He was still looking down but he wore the smallest of smiles. You didn’t let go of his hand when you nudged him in the ribs with your elbow. 

“Don’t worry. I’ll make certain you’re tired enough to sleep.”

[jasmines-library]

Needle and thread.

WHUMPTOBER DAY 19. Prompt: “no anaesthesia.” Fandom: Batfamily

Summary: Dick is forced to carry out a life-saving emergency surgery when you are too far away to reach help before it becomes too late.

Warnings: Impalement, blood, gore, stitching, needles.

Word count: 1k (short but sour, I had to do this quickly sorry.)

MASTERLIST ⛤ WHUMPTOBER WORKS

🕸 ⋆ ⁶𖤐⁶ ࣪⋆🕸

Dick Grayson would never forget your blood curdling scream the moment the rebar punctured your stomach, ripping up skin and muscle as it forced its way through your back.

You had been flung sideways by the villain you had been fighting. The force of his throw has caused you to topple over the side of the scaffolding and sent you plummeting to the ground. Unluckily for you, you happened to land on the scrap metal.

He cried out, cursing as he fought to get to you. It was only supposed to be a simple patrol, but he was outnumbered. Dick fought hard, landing kick after kick and blow after blow with his sticks to reach you. When he landed heavily on his feet beside you, he could already see the puddle of blood below you. It gushed freely from your body. Raw and red and beautiful.

Your mouth was agape, panting against the pain. Your eyebrows upturned behind your mask as your face contorted in agony.

For a moment, he couldn’t move. He was stuck still staring at the blood stained steel. Your muscles clenched around it as you writhed.

“Y/n.” He dropped to his knees beside you when reality hit him like a ton of bricks. “Fuck.”

“Dick…”

His hands hovered over your body; he was too afraid to touch you as if touching you was going to break your fragile body more. He was wide eyed, mind running at a thousand miles a minute. He knew he needed to move you, but the rusty metal bar was the only thing preventing you from bleeding out completely. He had hit the emergency signal on his suit, and he knew help was on the way, but he had no way to gauge how long it would be before they arrived.

“Okay…” he breathed out unsteadily. His hands trembled as they moved around your body, coaxed in your blood. “I have to move you.”

Nodding, you clenched your eyes shut and gritted your teeth. Dick wrapped his hands around yours to haul you off of the bar. You howled, muscles twitching as it was ripped through you again. Your vision blurred as he lay you back down on the ground, applying pressure hard to the wound.

“Come on, Y/n. Just stay with me a little longer. Help is coming.”

“Dick…” you forced out through wet coughs. “You have to do it.”

He shook his head frantically. He hated doing it. It was something that was only supposed to be a last resort. “No. No, I can't do that to you.”

He turned his head, desperate to spot the red and green suits heading his direction, but all he could see for miles were the lights of the city.

“Robin, where are you?” He asked into the coms.

There was a crackle before he replied. “I‘m going as fast as I can, but I’m about 10 minutes out.”

He cursed. You were too far out for him to reach the bat cave and Damian was still too far away. 10 minutes and you would have lost too much blood.

“Do it.” Yo pleased. “Dick. Please.”

He took a deep breath and turned his head away, before pulling out the needle and thread that was kept in the small Medkit you carried in your suit for emergencies. Dick struggled to thread the needle with the way his fingers shook. But after finally sterilising and threading the small tool, he positioned it above the wound. It was still bleeding heavily.

“I’m so sorry.” He muttered as he made the first stitch.

You bucked forwards, contorting at the stabbing against your skin. He tried to be quick, but that did nothing to stop you feeling every stitch as the thread tugged against your skin to close the rift. You had almost blacked out by the time he had rolled you over to stitch up the entry wound. Every second was nothing but torment that seemed to replace the blood you lost.

By the time he had pulled the last stitch closed, you were a whimpering mess. Your face was stained with tears and your hair was a mess. Your whole body felt like one giant bruise; everything ached and your joints felt like a hinge that needed to be oiled.

Dick had tried his hardest to keep you awake, whispering sweet apologies into your hair as he rocked you back and forth in his arms, though you weren’t 100% sure who he was trying to make feel better; you or himself.

Your body had slowly begun to go numb after a while as you waited anstily for Damian to arrive. A chill had begun to set into your bones. By the time he had finally arrived, the pain and your senses had dulled into almost nothing at all.

🕸 ⋆ ⁶𖤐⁶ ࣪⋆🕸

<- DAY 18 ⛤ DAY 20 ->

Taglist:

@senjoritanana

@deans-spinster-witch

@amaryllis23

[thewriteadviceforwriters]

Unique Fantasy Story Idea Prompts

A young woman discovers that she is the last of her kind, a race of people with the power to control the weather. She must use her powers to save her people from extinction.

A group of friends go on a camping trip in the woods, only to discover that they have stumbled into a magical forest. The forest is home to all sorts of creatures, both friendly and dangerous.

A boy finds a magic book that allows him to travel to different worlds. He uses the book to explore new and exciting places, but he soon learns that the book is more dangerous than he thought.

A young woman is chosen to be the next in line to the throne of a powerful kingdom. However, she soon learns that the kingdom is not what it seems, and she must fight to save it from a dark and sinister force.

A group of rebels fight against an evil empire. They are outnumbered and outgunned, but they are determined to free their people from oppression.

A young man is given a magical sword that is said to be able to defeat the evil dragon that has been terrorizing the kingdom. He must journey to the dragon's lair and slay it, or the kingdom will be destroyed.

[eriisaam]

Day 7 - Free Day

(Anything goes - including repeats of the previous prompts!)

Part of @sharenaweek

In another time in a modernized and futuristic world compared to Zenith, there was a highly spirited girl, Sharena, who liked creating, yet didn't settle on any particular field. Perhaps complicating the indecisive issue was the jeering of her friend Anna, whenever Sharena did certain fields of art, particularly drawing. Between her drawings being dismissed as childish, and her brother Alfonse's being too cold and analytic to emote feeling, neither siblings and their art could help promote Anna's interests (or rather her profits), yet Sharena dismissed the concerns, as her art still brought her joy making them anyways. Nevertheless, she preservered into trying other wide ranges of creative feels, trying a bit of this, that, and everything while still searching for her calling.

Even in absence of a settled path, the passion of the hunt itself was more than enough to generate a potent amount of energy called performa, and with it, not only led her to broaden her horizons on what parts of the creative field to explore, but attracted dangers as well, in the form of stray mirages that wanted to feast on that performa.

During one of her outings with Anna and Alfonse, she was separated from them and outnumbered and cornered, and though determined to fight her way against the multiple mirages surrounding her, she was outmatched. Yet before this would've costed her life, there was a stronger mirage among the crowd who was overcome with emotions when they drew close enough to see her, and rather than join in on sealing her fate, the mirage suddenly turned against the others and protected her instead, as if suddenly overcome with a sense of recognition of who Sharena really was.

Drawn to suddenly manifest a part of her performa, then drawn further to combine it with this rogue mirage, the mirage suddenly transformed into the form of a fairy-like entity who unlocked a new form in Sharena known as Carnage Form, and with it, turned the tide of battles swiftly in Sharena's favor.

The fairy mirage was known as Mirage Peony, and though couldn't recall specific details, knew immediately that she and Sharena were entwined by fate in some way or another. In Carnage Form, Sharena can wield Mirage Peony in the form of the sentient weapon Mirage Fensalir, a weapon crafted from hopeful dreams that would assist in spreading joy and warding off the nightmarish rogue mirages. Thus began Sharena's new life as a Mirage Master.

---

And capping off this week is an AU what-if where Sharena hailed from the world of Tokyo Mirage Sessions, became a mirage master, and had a mirage alt of Peony at her side. While I know the usual conventions were that the weapon is a mirage alt of the original hero's weapon (for instance, Mirage Chrom has Mirage Falchion, Mirage Caeda has Mirage Feather, and so on), I tried to condense both Peony's Flower of Joy/Flower of Caring with Sharena's original Fensalir and shifted things around with the assumption Sharena was along the lines of Itsuki's and Tsubasa's level in this AU, rather than be a mirage variant herself, to reunite her with Fensalir in a way anyways.

Onward for one last time?

[mymoodwriting]

Disconnected

Omega!Reader x Werewolf!NCT

Genre: A/B/O

Warning: Yelling, Manipulation, Abuse, Physical Abuse, Mentions of Genocide, Mentions of Murder, Threats, Biting, Blood, Kidnapping

Words: 3.2K

Chapter Five

(Prev//Next) (@peanutpinet @starillusion13)

Prompt: By removing the weakest link, werewolves were able to grow far more powerful than anyone could ever imagine. They lived in peace knowing they were top of the food chain. That is until a certain pack made an unbelievable discovery, causing them to question their past, present, and future. Omegas aren’t supposed to exist anymore, but they couldn’t deny the fact they had found one.

“Why did you lie?”

“Jumping to conclusions, aren’t we?”

One of the witches at the table stood and came over to greet Suho. Neither was one to shake hands, so the witch offered a slight bow.

“I’m Jinki, leader of this coven, and these four are my consultants. We’re the elders here, and I hope the journey here wasn’t troublesome.”

“No.”

“Good. Now, we’ve welcomed you, but you come here with accusations.”

“Am I wrong?” Suho questioned. “Are your familiars not omegas?”

“Not all of them. So, we’re here to have a conversation.”

Jinki made his way back over to the table, summoning forth some chairs in case the others wanted to sit. This could take a while.

“You seem upset.” Jinki noted. “Why is that?”

“Because you witches lied to us. This whole time you’ve kept omegas alive and hidden from us.”

“What exactly did we lie about? Your ancestors wanted omegas removed from your pack dynamics, and so they were.”

“Then why do they still exist?”

One of the other witches burst out laughing, prompting another to do the same. It certainly added to the tension in the room.

“Is something funny?” Jeno growled.

“You guys are so dumb.” The laughing witch commented. “You really think we’re in the wrong here? That you’re the victim?”

“Kibum, that’s enough.” Jinki said. “You too, Taemin.”

“You know I’m not wrong.” Kibum countered. “The werewolves are the monsters.”

“Excuse me?” Ten spoke. “You wanna say that again.”

“This is supposed to be a civilized conversation.” Suho reminded. “Let’s not start a fight. We are guests here.”

“They started it.”

“I don’t care. In case you forgot we are in a witches coven, they outnumber us.”

“Apologies.” Jinki commented. “They’re usually better behaved, but their comments are not wrong.”

“Is that so?”

“Amuse me. What are the details of our treaty?”

“My ancestors wiped out the abomination that was vampires.” Suho explained. “To help the witches restore balance to nature. In return we were granted power by eliminating our weakest link, omegas.”

“Correct. Now tell me, when was the last time an omega was born into your packs?”

“Omegas aren’t part of our packs anymore.”

“Precisely. If it hadn’t been for this little incident, you’d be continuing your lives none the wiser to the fact omegas are alive. Outside your little pack members, no other werewolf knows omegas exist. It’d be no trouble at all to wipe all your memories right now and return you to your pack.”

“Don’t you fucken dare.” Taeyong yelled. “You can’t pretend you’re not guilty here!”

“Taeyong, isn’t it? My witch informed me of you, the one who’s very possessive of the omega. If I’m being honest with you I could have wiped your memories the second you set foot into my coven.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Out of respect to Suho I figured a conversation would be far more beneficial. As much as you don’t want to hear it, you fail to see your fault in this.”

“Then enlighten us.”

“Your ancestors committed genocide.” One of the witches stated. “Not just once, but twice.”

“Damn, Minho.” Taemin commented. “Straight to the point.”

“It’s stupid to ignore the obvious. There is a natural order to things, a balance to maintain. Of course vampires, being undead creatures that feed on the living, go against that order. To eliminate them all was to restore balance, and then your ancestors turn around looking to break it once more.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Suho asked. “My ancestors did you a favor.”

“One we did not ask for, but payment had to be given, didn’t it? Your ancestors just wanted power and they were blinded by it that they didn’t realize what the consequences of their actions would be.”

“We’re living just fine.” Ten mentioned. “So no need to worry about us.”

“Are you now?” Kibum teased. “Tell me, do you have a mate?”

“What?”

“It’s not something you werewolves partake in anymore, is it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, your soulmate, the person you feel inexplicably drawn to, who’s very scent calls to you. The one you mark with your bite, binding your souls together. Does none of that sound familiar? I bet not.”

“Your point?”

“Balance.” The last witch spoke. “Alpha, beta, and omega, the dynamic between the three maintains balance. So if you remove one, it’s all thrown off. From what everyone has seen you werewolves have surely grown in strength, but you’re far more vicious and heartless than your ancestors. So to come here and complain about your choices, it’s pathetic.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you just keep insulting us.”

“Jonghyun isn’t wrong.” Taemin added. “You wanted omegas gone, and they are.”

“You’re still lying.”

“You got what you wanted, even if it was such a ridiculous request. My ancestors knew that balance had to be maintained, and so they did just that. Omegas were removed from your packs, but kept alive. That way the natural order stayed in place, or at least well enough not to cause issues.”

“And then you kept them to yourselves.” Taeyong spat. “Like slaves. Denying them their own identities and-”

“Your ancestors slaughtered omegas!” Minho yelled. “Tore them to pieces once the magic was complete. My ancestors barely managed to save a handful for the sake of balance! You had no problem removing omegas back then, forgetting about them and moving on, and now that you discover they’re alive, all of a sudden you care for them again? When you were the ones who threw them away in the first place?”

“My kind may not be completely innocent here but you’re the ones who’ve been lying and manipulating us this whole time! You took advantage of the treaty!”

“Everyone calm down.” Jinki cut in. “Please. What happened in the past is between our ancestors, we’re only here to discuss current events. As for what was said, it’s never been our intention to take advantage of omegas, but to care for them. Despite all this, both parties have held up their end of the agreement. Your packs don’t have to deal with omegas anymore, so it’s in your best interest to let this go. Let her go.”

♥♥♥♥♥

Being back home was great, and you hadn’t even realized how much you missed it. There was a lot you needed to catch up with, but it wasn’t long before you realized you weren’t entirely alone. Seokmin noticed eyes on you, seeing two others watching. You thought maybe it was one of the witches, but you were quite surprised to see Xiaojun and Yuta. Before the other two jumped to conclusions you explained to them.

“Easy, those two are part of the pack that looked after me.”

Without invitation they got closer, probably cause they overheard you vaguely mention them. Of course both Seokmin and Jun got a little protective, stepping in front of you.

“It’s alright, they’re not going to do anything.”

“Are you alright, y/n?” Xiaojun asked. “You kinda just ran off.”

“I’m fine, just wanted to see my friends again.”

“So you two are werewolves?” Seokmin questioned.

“Yeah, why? Is there a problem?”

“No, it’s just not common to see werewolves around witches.”

“Well we’re not used to seeing wolves as familiars.” Yuta added. “Witches tend to use other creatures, so it makes me wonder.”

“We’re just as capable as anyone else.” Jun mentioned. “No need to look down on us.”

“I wasn’t, I swear. I’m just curious about the whole familiar thing. We’re not so different, so I’m just thinking out loud.”

“I guess y/n didn’t say much on the matter.”

“No she didn’t.”

“It’s not like I wanted to talk about that stuff.” You said. “It was already weird being with a pack of werewolves.”

“What’s it like?” Xiaojun asked. “Being a familiar and all that.”

“I’m not sure I understand the question.” Seokmin asked.

“I wanna know how you wound up here.”

“Xiaojun.” You hissed.

“I’m genuinely asking.”

“Well there’s not much to tell.” Seokmin continued. “We’re taken young and given to our master. We bond and grow up together. For most of our youth we remain as a wolf until we are old enough to be given a more human form. We learn to walk and talk, and begin to learn about the world around us and its history.”

“And what exactly do you as a familiar?”

“We help our master in any way we can. We learn to fight so we can protect them, and are taught about magic so we better understand those around us.”

“So you’re like a bodyguard?”

“Not quite. Witches don’t tend to leave the coven. I’d say we’re more like a connection to nature for our masters.”

“You sound more like pets than anything else.” Yuta commented.

“Yuta!”

“What? It’s true.”

“We’re not just pets.” You stated. “We’re important companions to our masters and a source of strength. We owe them our lives and are happy to serve. I’m glad I’m home with my master.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I don’t want to go back to your pack if that’s what you’re insinuating.” 

“Well it’s not up to us right now, is it?”

“If you think my master is gonna hand me over to you, then you’re crazy.”

“Woah, woah, what the hell are you talking about?” Seokmin pulled you closer to him. “What do you mean hand you over? What happened?”

“It’s nothing…”

“Y/n, as your mate it’s my job to protect you, and I can’t do that if you don’t tell me everything that is going on.”

“Mate?” Xiaojun questioned. “Werewolves don’t mate with each other anymore, let alone an omega.”

“Omega?”

“Xiaojun, shut up!”

“Y/n, what is he talking about?” Jun wondered. “What’s this about omegas, they don’t exist anymore.”

“It’s nothing, really.”

“Y/n.”

Jun’s sharp gaze and tone made you whimper, causing your ears to drop. The last thing you wanted to do was lie to your friends.

“The werewolves think I’m an omega…”

“You are.” Yuta corrected. “That witch admitted it. These two are the same.”

“That’s not true! It’s not…”

“I don’t care what’s true or not anymore.” Seokmin cut in. “You two can go back to your alpha or whatever and leave us alone. I’ve had enough of you.”

“Y/n is not leaving our sight.” Xiaojun stated.

“Fuck off.”

Seokmin tried to pull you away from the scene, but Xiaojun quickly grabbed your arm and yanked you back. Next thing you knew Xiaojun and Seokmin were growling at each other.

“Let go!”

“I don’t care if you think you’re her mate or something.” Xiaojun snapped. “She stays with us.”

“Please don’t fight.” You whimpered. “Or we’ll all be in trouble.”

“Y/n, you may think this is your home, but it’s not.” Yuta said. “Not for them either. You belong with us, in a pack, not as a familiar.”

“I should get to choose for myself, shouldn’t I? You guys were all about giving me a choice when it seemed like I would stay with you, but now you want to take that away? I don’t want to be an omega, and I don’t want to be in your pack!”

“Everybody just stop.” Jun cut in. “We can talk in circles but clearly our elders are speaking on whatever matter this is, am I right?”

“Yeah.” Yuta admitted. “They are.”

“Then let’s wait to see what happens on their end before we do anything.”

Xiaojun let you go, and Seokmin pulled you into his arms. He was still glaring at the other two but for now you all had to behave yourself. It was hard for Yuta to see you in someone else’s arms as he wanted nothing more than to rip you away from them. None of this felt right.

♥♥♥♥♥

“I understand you’ve gotten very attached to her, but she will not be leaving here with you.”

“And I’m just supposed to leave her here with you?” Taeyong spat. “Where you deny her true nature and use her.”

“You’re crossing the line.”

“Am I? When I removed that mark on her she was free to be her true self. Her scent was that of an omegas, she went into heat and we took care of her, she recognized her alpha, she-”

“Did she like it?” Kibum asked. “Seungcheol, I presume you told her what she is, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And how did she take that?”

“She denied it and wanted to come home.”

“So it seems she has no interest in your pack. Shouldn’t you respect her choice?”

“Is it really a choice when you’ve raised her with lies?”

“That is for her own protection!”

“Kibum, calm down.” Minho said. “Truth is I’m grateful that she was found by you. Another pack may not have discovered what she is, but even then all you had in mind were good intentions. It’s nice to know that not all werewolves these days hate omegas, but that is still not reason enough for her to go with you.”

“Why not?” Johnny questioned. “Like you said, we’ve looked after her. We’re capable of-”

“You can’t mate with her, or bond, or anything. You may have been affected by her heat as a result of lingering ties, but you certainly can’t get her pregnant. Omegas were removed from your packs, and the bond you share with each other is not able to include her.”

“Then put her back.” Taeyong suggested. “You can undo what you’ve done.”

“It doesn’t work that way.” Jinki spoke up. “Powerful magic removed omegas, so you’d need the same, if not more, power to return them. Even then, it’s an all or nothing situation. I understand you have no issue here, but what about the rest of your kind? If omegas suddenly reappear are you so sure they won’t be killed? Not to mention this goes against the treaty. Such actions without consulting all werewolves could lead to war, and omegas will lose the most.”

“Finding out you lied will do the same.”

“To be honest with you, even if I could return omegas to you right now, even if it was only her, I wouldn’t. There is nothing you can do to convince me otherwise. Your kind have become brutal creatures, and I don’t trust you to take care of an omega. Your people betrayed them once, I don’t trust that they won’t do it again. So by now I think you understand this conversation has just been a courtesy.”

“Courtesy? For what?”

“Suho, being the elder here, I’m sure you understand how this has to end. It would be no trouble to wipe the memories of your pack mates to make this all much easier. Of course the omega in question will also forget the events that have transpired. And I say all this as it is a means of keeping the peace.”

“You can’t-”

“That’s enough, Taeyong.”

“Suho!”

“Enough.”

Taeyong glanced between Suho and Jinki, realizing they had come to their conclusion. He couldn’t believe any of this, and didn’t want to hear anything more. He left the room, and soon enough the others did the same. Suho sighed when that happened.

“Apologies.”

“It’s not your fault. This is a very unique situation. My proposal still stands. I’m sure you know what’s best.”

“I do. Although I still need to discuss with my partner if that’s alright.”

“Of course. As long as this stays among us for now there should be no issue.”

♥♥♥♥♥

Taeyong couldn’t believe what the elders had been talking about, feeling that everything had been pointless. He had to find you, so he went off the way you did before. Your scent was long faded, but he could easily track his own members. It wasn’t long before he saw them with you and two other individuals.

“Y/n.”

When you heard your name you looked around, kinda surprised to see Taeyong. As soon as you locked eyes he stormed over to you. He didn’t care to ask about Seokmin or Jun, just grabbing your arm and yanking you towards him.

“We need to talk. In private.”

“Who the hell are you?” Seokmin asked.

“Her alpha.”

“Taeyong!”

“Come on.”

“She’s not going anywhere with you!”

“No, no, no, wait!” 

You managed to hold your ground. You didn’t want a fight breaking out, especially now that the others had shown up. Seokmin and Jun would be outnumbered, but even then you didn’t want other witches to get involved.

 “Seokmin, I’m just gonna go talk to him for a few minutes and then be right back, okay?”

“I don’t trust him.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Y/n.”

“Please. I’ll be right back.”

“Five minutes.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

From there Taeyong pulled you along, dragging you into the forest around the coven village. You kept quiet until you couldn’t take it anymore.

“Taeyong…”

“How do you feel about the pack?”

“Uh… I… I’m happy I met you, and grateful that you looked after me but… I’m home, this is home for me.”

“Do you know what the elders talked about? They intend to wipe your memories about us, and we’ll forget you too.”

“What…”

“They can’t do this.”

“Taeyong, the elders… what they say…”

“Are you okay with this?”

“I trust my master. If this is what is supposed to happen then I’m not gonna fight.”

“Y/n, you can’t just submit to-”

“We won’t even remember each other. There’s no point arguing now.”

“They’re gonna wipe out memories?”

Both you and Taeyong looked over to see Yuta. Without realizing he had followed you and was listening in to the conversation. Now that he knew what the others had planned he came over and grabbed you.

“Is that true? You’re just gonna forget us? After everything?”

“This is out of your hands, Yuta.”

“You can’t just leave like that. You’re one of us.”

“I’m not part of your pack.”

“Then I’ll make you.”

“Huh?”

You didn’t understand what Yuta was talking about, not until he sunk his fangs into your shoulder. A scream ripped from your throat and you managed the strength to shove Yuta off of you. Along with the pain your vision was starting to get blurry. You stumbled back a few steps before collapsing to the floor. The world was spinning around you and slowly fading to black.

“Yuta! What did you do!?”

“I… I don’t know… something just told me to bite her… and… is she gonna die?”

“Not if I have a say in it.”

Taeyong checked on you, seeing that you were barely conscious. Thankfully the scream only caught the attention of the rest of his pack mates and no one else. They rushed over, quickly questioning the scene.

“What do we do?” Xiaojun asked. “The witches-”

“We can’t tell them.” Taeyong stated. “And we can’t stay here either, we need to leave.”

“Leave?” Ten questioned. “How are we gonna do that without having the whole coven after us? Where would we even go?”

“I have an idea, but I need you to call the others. There’s a spell I’m gonna have to use.”

“Taeyong-”

“Trust me. She’s my omega, and I will take care of her just as I will take care of my pack.”

[divinegrey]

val ladies of your choice reacting to fem reader who gets an ace?

ooo fun prompt!! sure can do!!!

ACED / FADE, JETT, KILLJOY, NEON, REYNA, SAGE, SKYE, VIPER X F!READER

words: warnings: mentions of blood and death, general game-related violence

FADE

The last bullet fires from the chamber of your gun, slamming into the head of the poor mirror Omen who didn’t even have time to turn and realize he’d been flanked and outnumbered. 

There’s blood on your face and sand in uncomfortable places, but you did it— the mission was complete and the threat currently neutralized. 

Coming around the corner with her Vandal in hand is your girlfriend, Fade, a look of shock and awe on her face. 

“Oye, holy shit! You aced!” 

Fade collides into you, wrapping her arms tightly around your neck. Though her words are excited, you feel the fear radiating off of her when you wince, holding your hand to your side (the enemy Raze had gotten lucky, but not lucky enough during your skirmish with her). 

“Couldn’t have done it without you and your haunt,” you say, tucking your head into the crook of her neck. The smell of her clothes is comforting. “God, sand is so itchy.” 

“Tell me about it,” Fade says, pulling away but keeping her arm around you for support as you move to regroup with the others. Under her breath, just enough for you to hear, Fade whispers, “I’m relieved that you’re okay, sevgilim.” 

“I will be once Skye patches this hole in my torso,” you joke, prompting Fade to roll her eyes. Fade kisses you, and if it placates her worries, you’re all too happy to let her. 

JETT

“Aye, good fucking job! Couldn’t leave any for me, could you?” Jett dashes into your line of sight, with windswept hair and a beyond proud look in her eyes. You let out a sigh of relief, lowering your gun. 

You aced. You couldn’t believe it, but with the right amount of luck and placement, you had killed all five of the mirror agents attempting to steal your radianite, but not without some damage. 

“I can’t let you have all the fun around here,” you reply, watching Jett twirl one of her knives in the air before catching it in her hand. “Besides, I think I get to do whatever I want with you now, right?” 

At the reminder of the bet you had made with her, Jett’s face turns a rosy pink. Easy to spot with the color of her hair being as bright as it is, and you simply grin at the flustered appearance of your girlfriend. 

The duelist comes over and punches your shoulder with a grumpy expression that you know is one hundred percent fake. You sling your gun over your shoulder before scooping up your girlfriend in a fireman’s carry, prompting her to attempt to wiggle free. 

It’s fruitless— you carry Jett back to the Vulture, laughing as she shouts at you the entire time to put her down. When you do put her into a seat, she kicks you in the shin. You go down onto the ground, and the amount of laughing is worth the motherly side-eye that Sage gives you as she gets on the Vulture after you. 

KILLJOY

“How the fuck did I just do that?” The question to yourself hangs in the air as you step over the mass of bodies left in the wake. Maybe an Odin was a good idea after all. 

Skidding into view is Killjoy, sprinting to your side. She grabs onto your shoulders, then shakes you rapidly until your brain is feeling thoroughly jiggled. 

“An ace! You got an ace, mein gott!” Killjoy’s excitement is through the roof. “I got footage from my turret! The way you just went in guns blazing and it worked! You did it!” 

Her smile is infectious, and you find yourself grinning at your girlfriend as she, through the eyes of her turret, executes everything you did play-by-play, complete with mimed gestures and sound effects that has you smiling from ear to ear as you walk back to the Vulture. 

Killjoy has always been nothing but supportive of you, especially when it comes to fighting. You always stress about being a good fragger for the team, but moments like these remind you that you have a place in the Protocol for a reason. You’re a good agent, and a great one at that, with the way Killjoy is regaling your epic moment on the battlefield. 

You glance at her on the Vulture, perhaps for a few seconds too long, because Killjoy stops talking and gives you a curious look. 

You shrug. “Just lookin’ at my beautiful girlfriend.” 

Killjoy’s cheeks turn red, and she promptly elbows you in the stomach. 

Leave it to her to turn the focus back to you. You love her anyway. 

NEON

“Hoy!” Neon races into your field of view, just in time to catch you before you fall backward. Defending an entire site by yourself was not easy whatsoever, but the gunfire has stopped, so you won, right?

“Jesus, that hurts,” you say, leaning against your girlfriend’s shoulder. “Are they all dead?” 

“Are they all—” Neon laughs. “You killed all of them, mahal! You aced! I couldn’t even get here in time!” 

At Neon’s words, you glance over and register that there are five bodies on the ground in the tunnel where you had used your abilities to catch them off guard. You shot your entire clip’s worth of bullets into them, but you hadn’t realized it was all of them there. 

“Oh, shit,” you say, a woozy step to the side paired with a laugh. “I did that?” 

Neon grabs your face, pinching your cheeks. Static dances up her fingers and tingles erupt on your skin. “You did that! I was all prepared to defend B site all with Viper, scary lady, but you were over here and did it all by yourself!”

Neon lays a kiss onto your cheek, prompting you to laugh at the affection showered by your girlfriend. Always your number one supporter, especially in times like these. You’re not at all used to being a top fragger. That’s Neon’s job. 

But, it does feel rewarding to have Neon all over you on the way back to base, holding you tightly the entire time and repeating phrases of happiness and pride. 

REYNA

Upon scoring an ace on a mission, Reyna does nothing but congratulate you with a click of her tongue and a “Good work.” 

Fairly typical for her, really. 

But, back at base, you find yourself being cornered when the Empress slides into your quarters, her skin translucent and her eyes bright with what you’d call desire mixed with a little bit of danger. Reyna comes back into full form, the light of her tattoo shining on the walls of your space. 

“How rude of you, cariño, to take all of my food away from me,” Reyna says, and for a moment you think she’s referencing the dinner you just ate, but it clicks. The ace. 

“I can’t let you get all the glory all the time, Reyna,” you say with a nervous laugh, backing up until you hit your dresser. Reyna stalks, locking you in with her hands at your sides. 

“The least you could do is share a taste, mi corazón.” Reyna grips your jaw, grinning, the points of her fangs exposed to the light. You’re reminded of how terrifying your girlfriend can be, but the thrill that rushes up your spine causes a tingle low in your stomach. 

“Is this my reward?” You ask, feeling her lips ghost over yours. 

“No. It’s mine.” Reyna replies, before yanking your head to the side and sinking her teeth into your jugular. 

You grip onto her shoulders, gasping before melting into her grip. 

Maybe you deserved it a little bit, but honestly? You’re enjoying yourself!

SAGE

You pull your head up just in time to watch your compatriots rush to your side. Your gun sits in your lap and you smile. 

“I got them,” you say, your voice hardly above a whisper as you gesture to the dead agents at the other side of the field. “Ow.” 

“Look at me.” The reassuring voice of Sage, your girlfriend, prompts you to meet her gaze. Turning your head, you smile at her, resting your head on the hand she places upon your cheek. 

“I got them,” you repeat, and Sage nods, pride twinkling in her eyes. 

“You got an ace, my love. I’m so very proud of you,” Sage says, her other hand summoning a healing orb. She presses it into your skin— at the cold sensation, you wince, gritting your teeth together, until the iciness fades and gives way to the pleasant tingle of your body stitching itself back together. 

Sage focuses, eyes shut, until you feel the worst of your injuries have faded away into nothingness. With that, you’re able to stand up with her help. Sage holds you tightly with her hug, and you sink into her grasp. 

“You scared me,” Sage whispers. “I didn’t hear from you after the gunfire was done.” 

“Sorry,” you mutter in reply. “My ears were ringing.” 

Sage pulls away, cupping your face. “No need. I am simply glad you are okay.”

With a soft kiss, you feel rejuvenated. You’re grinning from ear to ear as Sage walks with you back to the Vulture. 

SKYE

You’re hounded by a dog and a bird when you finally shake off the battle adrenaline. 

“Hey! Ow! Your talons hurt!” You say, swatting the bird away while simultaneously dancing around a very excited dog. He wags his tail at you, barking while dropping into a playful pose. “Skye, your dog is attacking me!” 

“Oh, calm down, lass! He’s just happy!” Skye says as she walks over, brushing her hair out of her way. Then, she stretches her fingers. “Aced that one, did ya?” 

“I did?” You look at your kill counter— 5 kills. “Huh, I did. I did!” 

At your realization, the dog barks again, running around you in circles, then between your legs. You lean down, scratching behind the ears until the dog lets out a full body shake. Skye does a shake too, as if you were scratching an itch on her back. 

“Holy shit, I can’t believe it. Thanks for flashing them, babe,” you say, resting your elbow on her shoulder. 

“Please, you had that in the bag,” Skye says, ruffling your hair before pecking you on the cheek. “Now, are ya hurt? I’ve spent enough time hearing Chamber groan about a papercut today to shove some cotton in his mouth.” 

“I’m okay,” you reply, and Skye’s vibrant eyes shine with pride. She wraps you up in a tight hug, scattering kisses on your face until you’re giddy and laughing. Then, without complaint, she carries you back to the Vulture, claiming you’ve done all the work, time to rest!

The rest of the day is spent snuggling with Skye and her dog, feeling the joy of a well-earned victory. 

VIPER

The scientist holds her cool when you walk over, some blood smudged on your face with a lazy grin. 

“Did you hear?” You ask. “I aced.” 

Tilting her head to the side, Viper replies, “I did. Phoenix hasn’t shut up about it.” 

Shrugging, you walk around Viper, hands on your hips. “I believe I recall you saying something about my performance earlier. Care to remind me?” 

Viper exhales through your nostrils. “I said your performance was… adequate.” 

“You said it was dogshit, babe, come on,” you retort, dropping your voice to a low whisper so no one else overhears. 

Viper did say that— a method of encouragement, one that worked fairly well if your shining track record has anything to say about it. Round after round, you pushed through the pain and sweat to prove yourself and your worth to your girlfriend. Of course, Viper never means to make you feel less worthy, but she knows how you like to be incentivized. 

Viper steps closer, pulling her mask down and leaning to your ear. “And as I said earlier, you’ll be aptly rewarded for your work today.” 

You brighten instantly at her words, unable to hold back the ridiculous smile on your face. Nothing else goes said, as the others arrive, but Viper sends you another look, one full of promises. Your mind flashes to distinct sounds of pleasure, and a shiver rolls down your spine. 

You can’t wait to see what Viper has in store for you. After all, you did ace. You’re a little deserving of Viper’s attention and a reward, right? 

(You spend the rest of the night under her fingers once you get back to base. Worth it!)

~~~~~ A/N: thank you for reading!!