#referenced past whump involving a minor

[wangxianficfinder]

Fic finder

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1. Hello! Me again, thanks so much for the past help!! I was wondering if you’d help me one more time? I’ve been searching for another specific fic for the last three weeks and no matter the tag combos I can’t seem to find it. Essentially: it’s a one-shot where WWX is having a sort of flashback into being at the burial mounds and hallucinating lan Wanji and Jiang cheng speaking to him. He reveals some things about the three months in the BM, but in the end it turns out he wasn’t actually at there and they where trying to get him out of being influenced by resentful energy. Also lan suzhi is there at the end to help too. If you could help that’d be amazing! @spacy-thoughts

FOUND! warmth by antebunny (T, 3k, WangXian, Post-Canon, Canon Compliant, Heavy Angst, lots of mentions of dark stuff, the burial mounds as a sentient evil mountain, Temporary Amnesia, Misunderstandings, Hurt/Comfort, lots of trash fire angst, Mistaken Identity, Whump, Angst with a Happy Ending)

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2. Hello I am looking for a specific fic where WWX and LWJ get into a fight. WWX comes back from needing some to find LWJ crying because he thought they were done after the fight. The rest of the fic is them making up after the fight. I hope I gave you enough info to go on.

It’s Post cannon, hurt/comfort and not in modern setting. Sorry for the vague description.

NOT FOUND! this is me trying by queen_gee (T, 4k, WangXian, Modern AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Sad with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship)

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3. Hello!!! For the next fic finder please help me find this two fics:

A) A fix it au in which JFM and YZY has a steady relationship, all I remember is a scene where when the wens(?) attacked Lotus Pier madam yu was preggo and gave birth in the middle of it. I think Bicao or SiSi was the one who helped her gave birth.

B) An au from a k-drama that I forgot the title of in which wwx(not him but I aint gonna spoil) accidentally run over a pregnant mxy that ended up in the death of him and the baby, lwj was the baby daddy and decided to have his revenge.

Thankiee~

-♥️-

3A)

FOUND! Yearning for Miles by Murahi (M, 378k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Angst, Fluff, Slow burn, Mutual Pining, seeing the future)

3B)

FOUND! Lie for Love by sether1n3 (E, 69k, WIP, WangXian, WangYu, implied LWJ/Others & WWX/Others, Modern AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, endgame wangxian, Mpreg, NOT OMEGAVERSE, hit and run, WWX Goes to Prison, Hurt WWX, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Depressed WWX, Panic Attacks, Bisexual WWX, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Lawyer JC, Not JC Friendly, Bad Sibling JC, Violence, Insecurity, Body Dysphoria, forced seperation, Attempted Sexual Assault, Revenge, Blackmail, Artist WWX, Court, Rich LWJ, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Body Worship, Secret (2013) AU, Enemies to Lovers, Slow Burn)

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4. hi! i’m looking for a specific fic on A03; it is a casefic and has got to do with the jin watchtowers, specifically this one by the sea which is haunted by the woman ****SPOILER START**** whose husband was killed by the contractor (for demanding worker rights) and LWJ falls into the sea trying to stop WWX from getting killed, and gets very hurt in the process ****SPOILER END***. It has a lot of sea imagery, and involves all the juniors +JC. @thatficwheretheprotagisadog

FOUND? And I Will Call You Home by Spodumene (E, 42k, WangXian, Case Fic, Post-Canon, Getting Together, Pining, Angst with a Happy Ending, Love Confessions, Canon-Typical Violence, Blood, Ghosts, Suicide, Explicit Sexual Content, Attempted Sexual Assault, LWJ whump, Original Character Death(s))

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5. hello! I wasn’t sure if this has been asked, and I did try looking but sorry if I missed it! I’m looking for a fic that was a modern setting, wangxian friends with benefits, only it was more like enemies with benefits bc lan zhan was dead set on not catching feelings for him and he hated that he was starting to. i remember that it opened on a sex scene but that was as far as I got! please help!!!

FOUND? Honesty is the Best Policy (Except if You're an Asshole) by piecrust (E, 22k, WangXian, Porn with feelings, College/University)

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6. Hi! I'm looking for a fic where Wei Wuxian wakes up in Lotus Pier after being injured on a nighthunt (?) that he went on with Lan Wangji and he finds out from Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli that Lan Wangji has died.

However, we later on find out that Lan Wangji is not actually dead but instead someone sent false letters to Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen. The letter Jiang Cheng received had said that Lan Wangji had died and the letter Lan Xichen had received had said that Wei Wuxian had died. So somebody purposefully made Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji think that the other was dead.

I believe there was also a part in the fic where some guy at Lotus Pier kept calling Wei Wuxian 'Wei Ying' and Wei Wuxian kept telling him to stop because only Lan Wangji was allowed to call him that but the guy did it again and Wei Wuxian snapped.

Thank you for your help!

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7. I’m looking for a similar story to one somebody asked two fic finders ago but this one has a little twist

Is a fic where JC managed to wish WWX out of existence (I think it was with an array) and JC and LWJ are the only ones who remember WWX, LWJ tries to confront JC about it but JC won’t tell him how he did it, things happen (I think SSC) and JC needs WWX again, so he asks LWJ to help him bring Wei Ying back, they bring him back and so the story continues

FOUND? The Way It Wasn't by KouriArashi (T, 72k, WangXian, XiYao, Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, (eventually haha), Slow Build, Family Feels, Moral Ambiguity, Eventual Happy Ending)

FOUND? Not This Time by Marinelifeclub (M, 93k, WIP, WangXian, SangNing, NieLan, Canon Divergence, Time Travel, Angst, Dark LWJ, Protective LWJ, YLLZ WWX, Resentful WWX, Established Relationship, POV Alternating, Sunshot Campaign, Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, Minor XuanLi, not for jc fans, eventual 3zun, Kid Fic)

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8. I am absolutely boggled trying to find this fic that I *thought* I'd downloaded onto my reader. Was reminded of it recently by another user who was looking. Basically, it's a modern wangxian AU, where WWX reappears after X time gone/cloud hanging over his head bc of something ppl thought he causes and the Jiang sibs who are some sort of celebs (models? actors?) help him (as does LWJ.) I remember a pool scene where all were hanging out & performing normalcy while press were milling about. @thelima

FOUND! so hot out the box (can we pick up the pace) by sami (E, 20k, XiCheng, WangXian, NHS/JZX, QingLi, Modern AU, Enemies to Lovers, Thirsting, Pining, mostly thirst and dick jokes, a little smut)

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9. Hola! Hope you guys are doing well. This request is for the FicFinder.

I don't remember much, but I think WWX was a Lan probably? There was a scene that I remember: during a lecture in Hanshi, LQR was talking about always being prepared or something like that. It was a topic on talismans I think? So Jin Zixun or someone like that said something about talisman being cheap trick and as cultivators, they don't have much use of it or something? Then LQR asked WWX to show how many talisman he carries on him normally (like everytime everywhere) and the later pulls out bundles after bundles of talisman. Then he's says something like : this is the normal I carry with me every moment. If it's a night hunt, I carry much more than this. @utxqia

FOUND! From the Warm Sun by sunshine_sparrow (T, 58k, WangXian, CSSR & WWX, CSSR & LQR, Discussion of Rape, Period-Typical Sexism, Mostly CQL but probably some MDZS too, Cángsè Sǎnrén Lives, Madam Lán Lives, Qingheng-jun lives, But WCZ Still Dies, Fix-It, Happy Ending, All Soft and Very Little Angst, the wens live, Yīn Iron, Good Person MY, Good Person LQR)

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10. I’m looking for a dimension travel fix where Wei Wuxian is a doctor/engineer in his OG modern dimension but his life goes downhill. He gets transported into a dimension a lot like MDZS time, where cultivation exists and the old Wei Whxian was evil and despised. He doesn’t know Lan Wangji, but over time they fall in love. It’s kind of a time-travel/fix-it in one.

FOUND? Transverse by Kytrin, Mslead (E, 192k, WangXian, ChengSang, ZhuiLing, ZhenYi, Canon-Typical Violence, Dimension Travel, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Enemies to Lovers, Transmigration, Past Lives, Canon-Typical Death, Don't worry - he gets better) although im not 100% on that since i havent read it, i just scrolled through the "dimension travel" tag for a few minutes lol

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11. hello, my lieges. once again, i am looking for this fic where wwx rates sex toys and lwj sends him a lot and he's the only one who got five stars. thank you kindly

FOUND! This Ain’t a Stream (It’s a Goddamn Arms Race) by feenwitch (E, 5k, WangXian, Modern AU, Getting Together, Pornstars)

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12. I remember a fic, where post war LWJ is struggling and is accompanied by a a friendly Ghost (aka WWX) or something like that. I’m not exactly sure, but i still know that WWX was dead and LWJ still saw him.

FOUND? asymptotic by chinxe (T, 26k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Slow Burn, Misunderstandings, Pining)

FOUND? The Cruelty of Fate by Procrastination_Sensation (T, 15k, WangXian, Canonical Character Death, Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Minor NieLan) Or Asymptotic like the previous recs say, though I'd personally lean for asymptotic, since wwx is described as a friendly ghost

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13. Hello! I need help finding a Wangxian fic. It was kinda post cannon and in it A-Yuan got cursed if I’m right and was turned into a toddler. He spend a week like that and Wei Wuxian gets his chance at seeing Yuan being a happy child. That’s all I can remember, any help would be appreciated @casslastheaven

FOUND? The Heart Always Remembers by thelamespaceace (G, 45k, WangXian, Post-Canon, Deaged Sizhui, Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Fluff, Angst, They Love Their Son and He Loves Them)

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14. Hi, can you please find the fics that I think at that time I read at AO3.. I'm not remembering much, only the fact that Wei Wuxian already gave his golden core to Jiang Wanyin, and later Nie Mingjue give Wei Wuxian his Saber, Baxia. Since Wei wuxian can actually control Baxia without qi deviation. I've been searching for months now.

FOUND? Lynchpin by ShanaStoryteller (Not Rated, 103k, WangXian, JC & WWX, Time Travel, Fix-It, Lynchpin [PODFIC] by Opalsong, [PODFIC] Lynchpin by Gwogobo)

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15. For the next fic finder, I’m looking for a fic that’s set from a Lan Xichen POV. It’s A/B/O, and he goes to get some paperwork from the Jingshi, only to find a naked omega in his brother’s bed, (Wei Wuxian, though LXC doesn’t know who he is because the author heavily implies this is outsider pov of a time travel fixit) then LWJ comes back. LWJ growls for the first time in LXC’s hearing, who comes to the abrupt realization his brother is terrifying & just didn’t care about growling previously @any-mouse

FOUND! 💖 Disruptions by mondengel (logged in only) (M, 3k, wangxian, ABO, mating cycles/in heat)

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16. Hi! Could you help me finding this fic? In this fic, a-yuan is sick and wen qing said that only cultivation gentry have resource to heal a-yuan. So wwx walk to cloud recesses to beg them heal a-yuan. Lwj meets them (wwx and a-yuan) and he take care wwx while wwx take care of a-yuan. Long story short a-yuan is healthy again and wwx ask lqr and lxc for them to adopt a-yuan but his request refused and instead the lans bring the wen remnant to cloud recesses

There is a quote that make want to read it again. More or less it was like this "in the absence of hanguang-jun, he (a-yuan) is my light".

I have a feeling that fic has been deleted. But i still hold a hope for the reverse. Thank you

FOUND! the kite string and the anchor rope by fleurdeliser (M, 38k, WangXian, Canon Divergence)

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17. Hello! 😊 Please will you help me find this fic? I have vague memories of it being AOB and WWX was at an omega training school(?) but he wasn't very good at it so never expected to be picked? Then LXC comes to find a match for his brother. There's a dance test that wwx messes up but I think LXC found it endearing? Then WWX played the dizi for the talent portion. Not sure if it was a WIP but the last thing I remember was WWX having a private chat with LXC in the school office.

FOUND? Rattling our cages by danegen (E, 69k, WangXian, A/B/O Dynamics, but like polite, Slow Burn, Pining while fucking, so much hair combing, wwx has a vagina, POV WWX, no yin iron or wars or plot really, Canon Era, spiders--see the notes)

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18. Do you know an AU about wei ying being adopted by hualian and then if I can remember lan qiren, yu ziyuan, jiang fengmian, and others went to ghost city together with lan zhan and jiang cheng and then after they came back hualian tasked the other gods to remove their memories of their trip to the ghost city and only lan zhan fully remembers it because he was the so called wife of the prince wuxian?

Hello Fic Finder! In regards with the story that I was asking for help to find which is #42 on your list. I already know the title and author of it but it is already deleted. The title of the story is Crown Prince of Heaven and Ghost City by bluemoonstarlight if you have a copy of it can I ask for a copy because I badly want to read it.

SIMILAR! Crown Prince Hua Wuxian by Bluemoonstarlight (G, 19k, WIP, WangXian, Bottom LWJ/Top WWX, JFM and YZY Bashing, Bad Parents JFM and YZY, JYL Lives, Cultivator JYL, Supportive JYL, Protective JYL, Good Sibling JC, Protective JC, HuaLian Adopt WWX, Canon Divergence, Fantasy, Cloud Recesses Study Arc, Sunshot Campaign, Grandpa JW, Grandma MNQ, Abusive JFM, Abusive YZY, Grandma BSSR, BSSR is WWX's Grandparent, WWX is BSSR's Disciple) good news! Bluemoonstarlight has posted a revised version of that story under the title Crown Prince Hua Wuxian. (Whether the revision is to your liking is your call, but at least you’ve got *something*).

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19. Please help me find this fic.

Wangxian are soulmate or engaged i can't remember but wwx wear a mask all his life because there is a prophecy or something that he is supposed to remove after marrying lwj but lwj tell wwx that he should never remove it. Qingheng-Jun is alive and being creepy. Wangxian have a soul bond. Lwj act very distant towards wwx who keep trying to make their relationship work. There is war and wwx adopt twin son a-yuan and a-yi. Wwx returns to cr they pressure him into a ritual to remove resentful energy wwx asks lwj to do it. During ritual he start bleeding and is about to die. When he wake up after lxn scold him and accuse him of hurting lwj they kick him out and forbid him from seeing his children. He goes to yilling and take in mxy and xy. It's a ongoing and very angsty.

there is a scheming lan or jin woman who keep provoking wwx. Jin zixuan is lwj's best friend. There is some secret that everybody knows but don't tell wwx. @anee-choudhary

the-last-d-boy: i think #19 was a deleted story by wangxianist :/

imstillthinkingaboutithmm: #19 is price to pay by wangxianist. It is deleted.

I have a copy of the fic, if it is okay i can share it

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20. hello mods! i am looking for a canon divergence wangxian fic, where lan qiren is evil. he loathes wei ying and wants to hurt (kill?) wei ying. if i remember correctly, he traps wei ying in a room by acting as if he is cursed. wei ying tries to help him but instead he hurts wei ying. lan zhan finds out about what his uncle has done. in the end wangxian end up together and lan qiren is punished by being isolated. i read this fic around feb to march 2022. thank you in advance! :)

hello! i am number 20 in the Jan 26 2023 fic finder. thank you for these evil lan qiren fic details! yes that is the fic i am looking for! hope someone can help me find it :)

Ahh I know #20 on the most recent Fic Finder but I can't recall the name. iirc Lan Qiren lures Wei Wuxian to the Hanshi by saying Sizhui was in trouble. WWX sends LWJ an image of a butterfly, their symbol for LSZ, through their mental link. Hope this helps someone find it!

FOUND! And Be the Moon That Moves Your Tide by Milk_Tea_Fantasy (E, 17k, WangXian, Non-Traditional A/B/O Dynamics, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Omega LWJ, Alpha WWX, Panic Attacks, Pining, Weddings, Praise Kink, caretaking kink, Bathing/Washing, Subspace, Bottom LWJ, Submissive LWJ, Service top WWX, PTSD, Loss of Virginity, Porn with Feelings, Enthusiastic Consent, Begging, Multiple Orgasms, Edging, Crying During Sex, soul bonds, angry wedding planner JC, Nesting, Non-Consensual Touching, it's not sexual don't worry, Intersex Omegas)

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[ao3feed-destiel-02]

growing sideways

growing sideways https://ift.tt/zU0DQwt by Jcampky Castiel is years past healing from a mental breakdown that landed him in the hospital for several months, until a certain green-eyed heartbreaker somehow strolls back into his life and starts to bleed into every aspect of Cas' life that apparently wasn't as stable as he thought. Dean's just looking for safety; relief from the oppressive weight of his depression when he stumbles across a kind and genuine college student who just doesn't want to feel lonely anymore. Sam wants more than the complicated relationship he has with his brother, but after years of abuse and misunderstandings he's afraid that he and Dean will never be able to move past the things that tore them apart in the first place. Gabe wasn't trying to make things difficult for Castiel, but unfortunately Cas has the worst taste in men and in his defense, Dean is nothing like what Gabe was picturing. Words: 4912, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English Fandoms: Supernatural (TV 2005) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Rape/Non-Con Categories: M/M Characters: Castiel (Supernatural), Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Gabriel (Supernatural), Lisa Braeden, Ben Braeden, Mick Davies, Bobby Singer, Karen Singer Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester/Other(s), Castiel/Mick Davies, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester Additional Tags: Mental Health Patient Castiel (Supernatural), Flashbacks, Castiel Has OCD (Supernatural), POV Alternating, Hurt Dean Winchester, Sex Worker Dean Winchester, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Dean Winchester Has Self-Worth Issues, I think this qualifies as whump for everyone involved, Therapy, Abusive John Winchester, Dead John Winchester, Medication, Mental Health Issues, Suicidal Dean Winchester, Panic Attacks, Child Abuse, Sam Winchester is Not a Winchester, Adoptive Parent Bobby Singer, Good Parent Bobby Singer, Construction Worker Dean Winchester, Protective Gabriel (Supernatural), Grief/Mourning, Consent Issues, Abuse Outside of Castiel/Dean Winchester, Mental Breakdown, Second Chances, Cheating, It's Not Cut and Dry Cheating tho, Dean Winchester Makes Bad Decisions, Traumatized Dean Winchester, Sex Addiction, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Angst with a Happy Ending, Non-Consensual Somnophilia, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Incest via AO3 works tagged 'Castiel/Dean Winchester' https://ift.tt/XKeaM53 March 30, 2023 at 01:46PM

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Just Right: Chris

CW: Head-banging stim referenced, stimming in general in a negative context, derogatory language about stimming, referenced past abuse/noncon, institutional whump, referenced whump of a minor, conditioning, memory loss, traumatic deaths of family referenced, traumatic memory recovery, getting glass out of  foot referenced

Tagging @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @endless-whump, @whumpfigure, @stxck-fxck, @slaintetowhump

PREVIOUS (COME BACK)​

No one comes back.

He waits and waits, but no one comes back. People stand on the sidewalk, for a while, the old lady and her grandson and some other people besides. Chris doesn’t listen to them, although the sounds filter in, bounce around his mind, occasional words and half-formed sentences that he doesn’t want to understand.

Instead, Chris focuses as hard as he can on the memory of Jake promising Chris won’t be left alone. It’s difficult to focus - he’s scared and didn’t sleep last night, and the birds are loud outside and there’s so much glass that catches the light and bounces pretty white reflections off all the walls - but he tries, he tries so hard, to remember that Jake won’t make him be alone forever.

They can’t keep Jake away forever.

Can they?

The people leave. Breakfast is there, and lunch, and dinner, right on the porch where the old woman said they’d be. Chris drifts through the day, and his thoughts cycle and circle and he can’t keep them still long enough to decide what to do beyond just… staying alive. He has to stay alive. He has to wait. 

The first night, he doesn’t sleep. He waits, and waits, and tries to remember how to calm his thoughts, but nothing comes.

All he can think of is that Antoni and Leila were supposed to wait for him, but it took too long, and once the door broke down they had to go. Somewhere they’re safe, somewhere else, with the other ones, the ones Chris has heard about but hasn’t met. Kauri, who never sits still, Kauri is safe, too, somewhere else. Chris is the only one left.

Chris is the only one here to wait.

He tries to clean but he doesn’t remember how to do it very well. He washes the dishes in the sink, he can do that - and he empties out the coffee pot, full and long-since gone cold, and sets the coffee up for the next day, even though he knows no one will be here to drink it, but maybe if he makes the coffee someone will come back.

The first day, he brews the coffee, and no one comes. But maybe the second day will be different. He dumps the pot again and goes through the motions.

They destroyed the house and the television is turned over and shattered all along its front, they cut up the couch cushions even. Nothing is the same, and everything is wrong. Chris tries to sweep up the glass in Jake’s room from the lamp and steps in it instead, letting out a wild, high-pitched cry at a stab of pain straight up his leg. He can’t get the glass out, he’s too scared to touch it, and he hobbles around leaving bloody trails everywhere he goes, limping, whimpering and wishing there was anyone, anyone left.

If Jake was here, he’d sit Chris down in the bathroom and use his cell phone as a flashlight and use tweezers and Chris would watch him stick his tongue out a little like he does when he’s thinking really hard about something. Then Leila would fuss over him and Antoni would sing him songs in Russian, which Antoni doesn’t know anymore but still remembers the songs. Chris doesn’t know what Russian looks like, but he knows the sounds of the notes Antoni sings, the way his mouth shapes the letters.

Tak byvayet - staneshʹ vzrosleye ty

I, kak ptitsa, vvysʹ uletishʹ

Kem by ni byl, znay, chto dlya mamy ty 

Kak i prezhde, ilyy malysh

Chris is bad at remembering things and bad at knowing words and bad at most things, he thinks, sometimes, but when he does remember something it pops in fully-formed, and he remembers Antoni singing the songs to himself, songs he doesn’t remember in his head but his body still knows, anyway.

See, we are still in here, Antoni says, tapping the side of his own head with one finger, flashing a smile. They didn’t take it all out, it’s only hidden, Chrisha.

Why do you call me that?

I don’t… I don’t know. But I will, Chrisha. I will know, soon, and I’ll tell you once I do.

But Antoni can’t tell him, because he’s gone. Everyone is gone. There’s no one but him, now.

He’s alone, and he’s not made to be alone, they told him he couldn’t be alone or he’ll suffer and shrivel up and die, and Chris hits his head on the wall and taps his fingers desperately on the floor and cries into the hardwood, but none of it helps, because he’s still alone when he stops tapping, stops hitting, stops listening, when he stops.

All alone. 

Just like last time, some dim part of him remembers, but there wasn’t a last time, and he doesn’t know what he’s thinking about. It’s just part of the cycle of too many thoughts at once, dipping in and out of his conscious mind. It’s just another thing that slides in and around the calls of the birds and the rustle-clatter of a squirrel leaping across tree branches, the splashing sound of something in the birdbath in the yard, Doves mean peace and pigeons get no love, but they’re the same bird, baby, just a little different coloration. That’s you, honey, just a different way of being in the world and we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure you out, little dove-

He doesn’t know whose voice he keeps thinking of and he misses her so much it’s a physical pain inside his chest, making his mouth open to cry long after the tears have dried. He makes strange dry sobbing sounds, hiccups really, that come with no tears but grief pours from him in a wave, grief that he didn’t know could still be in there for a woman he doesn’t remember, doesn’t recognize, has never met.

He doesn’t know who she is and it’s his fault she’s gone.

His fault Jake is gone, they were looking for him, he knows it somehow. It’s certainty, deep in his bones. They always said if he ran, someone would find him and bring him back to Sir, and he was so good, he didn’t run, Miss Megan asked him to get in her car and Baldur was always so good for guests, and, and it’s not his fault but it’s his fault Jake is gone.

He can’t think, the circles run too fast, there are too many thoughts and not one will let him pin it down. Instead they bounce and jump and leap and crash and bash the inside of his skull, tired not tired hurt my fault not my fault where did he go come back you promised you promised you’d come back don’t leave me I don’t know where I am I don’t know how to do this the squirrels are loud today the birds are quiet do the birds know did the mourning dove know you’d be taken away from me too just a different way of being, honey, mom come back mom don’t leave jake don’t leave me alone you promised you promised you promised you promised

you promised

No one comes back. Not the first day Chris is alone, not the second.

Chris falls asleep, eventually, after the sun goes down on the second day. He curls up on the floor near the spot of dried blood, wrapping himself in Jake’s blankets until even the floor beneath him feels nearly soft. He lays his head down on Nat’s pillow and Jake’s, too, breathing in their scents and tapping on the floor, on himself, on the wall. 

He won’t leave the last bit of Jake he can see, the spot where his head hit the wall. He’ll stay right here, in the house, and stay close.

He fell asleep beside the blood before, too, in the thing he can’t remember, the reason for the pain so deep in his chest, twisting his heart in knots until he wonders if people can die like this, can die of pain in their hearts that comes from inside their heads.

Sleep is thin and drawn, it’s the way he slept in training, and Chris shifts and murmurs and cries in his dreams, blood and bone and bits of worse gray bits on the wall, screaming woman shouting man men with guns, but they turn the gun on him, the men, and they say what the fuck is a kid doing here? You have a kid, you goddamn bastard? 

And Jake is the shouting man and he is yelling of course I have a fucking kid, what did you think all the fucking trophies were for, did you think I’m the one who’s gonna be in the Olympics?

Flash and burst of sound, deaf in the dark. Chris flinches in his sleep, from moments that aren’t real because he doesn’t remember them, and false memories happen when you’ve been erased. It’s not real. None of it happened. It’s not real.

The phone rings in the early hours of the morning - there have been two sunrises since they took Jake and Nat away - and wakes him with a start, but Chris doesn’t dare answer it. He only stares at the old bit of plastic and wiring that hangs on the wall as though it might come to life and bite him, and eventually it stops ringing, the answering machine picks up, and whoever called hangs up without saying a thing.

Chris falls back asleep.

This time, he doesn’t dream.

The next time he wakes up, he can hear murmuring voices, and he goes still and quiet and tense on the floor, keeping his face turned down, letting his hair hide his eyes so no one will know he’s awake. 

“Shit, they did a fuckin’ number, didn’t they?” It’s a man’s voice, rough-edged and angry, and Chris fights the urge to curl in on himself, to hide all the soft parts and hope he will not be hit or kicked or hurt for being bad again. 

“Why would they do this?” A woman, and her voice is softer, sweeter. Chris swallows. They were only a few female handlers, but they spoke in quieter voices and were meaner, too. So much meaner, even when they didn’t have to be, even when he tried to be good. “What were they trying to accomplish, Ruth?”

“Y’know damn well.” That’s the old woman whose grandson has brought him food, and Chris carefully shifts around. They don’t know he’s right where he can see them, the pile of blankets is wrapped so tightly it looks like nothing more than another pile of the debris left behind. He moves just enough to look, through his hair, at a small crowd of people just outside the broken front door.

His eyes struggle to understand, but they seem to be holding… plastic buckets, and mops, and other things for cleaning. The thoughts bounce and jump, but he tries to grab on, to grasp them even though his heart is sick with fear and his mind wants to tumble after it.

“It’s fear, is what it is,” The first person, the man, snaps. “They want us to be fuckin’ afraid to be like Natalie, that’s what they want. I’m not afraid of them.”

“Easy to say when you don’t have kids to worry about,” The younger woman, maybe Jake’s age, replies, but she doesn’t look scared to Chris. She looks strong. She looks brave, holding her mop and bucket with a little baby strapped on her back, staring into the house over her shoulder, scruff of dark hair standing up nearly straight on its little rounded head.

“My Wilbur went through some of this,” The old woman - Ruth? - says, nodding firmly. “There’s no shame in fear, but there is shame in lettin’ fear keep you standing outside the door when there’s work to be done. Jaden’ll be back with his little friends to help in a bit, I’ve promised ‘em all the pizza they can eat. Now. This door isn’t locked, but it does make a hell of a screamin’ sound, so I think we’ll prob’ly wake the poor thing up, wherever he’s hiding.”

The woman’s eyes roam across the walls, then catch on the spot of Jake’s blood on the wall. Chris feels a wild urge to yell don’t look at it, that makes it real, but he doesn’t know why. Instead he curls up tighter, tapping under the blankets against his own skin. Finger-twist-tap-tap-tap, finger-twist-tap-tap-tap.

Now, Baldur, honey, you know better than to do that. I don’t like it when you do that, do I?

No, Sir, no, y-you, you don’t, you don’t like when I, when, when when when-

Baldur. Silence is better than stammering.

… Yes, Sir. I’m sorry my… words are bad, Sir.

That’s better.

Chris bites down hard on his lower lip, catching the protest before it can be spoken out loud, because the woman he doesn’t remember said you have to talk or no one can hear you, and Nat always says to speak how he wants to, and Jake says his words are fine, they’re fine, he’s fine even if he’s not the way they are, he’s fine he’s fine he’s not fine and Jake is never coming back but he promised, he promised, he promised-

Something about his movements must get her attention, because he hears the woman in the doorway catch her breath. “He’s right here, Ruth.”

Chris slowly raises his head. His foot aches where the glass is still stuck inside it, and it protests as he pushes up to sitting and has to move his legs, keeping the blankets wrapped around himself, pushing his back into the wall. 

“Oh, baby.” Ruth smiles at him, one of those sad smiles you give people when you feel sorry for them, and Chris pulls further into himself, dropping his head back against the wall, taking the momentary feeling for the comfort he so badly needs it to be. “I’m back, honey. I brought you some sausage biscuits for breakfast, and I brought some friends, too. This here is Naomi, she lives on your left in the house with the blue porch ceiling-” The woman with the baby waves the mop in a kind of greeting, nearly knocking the angry man in the head. “-and that’s her little girl Kaelah. And this touch of grump is Jefferson, he lives right across the street.” The angry man waves, too.

Chris, tentatively, raises a hand to wave back, his fingers just barely bending at the knuckles.

“Now, I know you’re scared, honey, I understand, but we’re here to help you clean this place back up before your people come back. Can we come in?”

Chris’s eyes roam from one face to the next, looking for signs of cruelty, looking for the kind of smile his Sir would give him. He sees nothing but openness on all of them - Jefferson with the bit of anger, but it’s not really at him, it’s at the house, what happened here. Naomi with her slight smile for him, and her little girl Kaelah grabbing at fistfuls of Naomi’s hair and sticking it in her own tiny mouth to chew on. Ruth, the same wrinkles and gray-and-black hair, the same open kindness, compassion, looking at him with the same look she’d given her own grandson the day before.

They wait, and eventually Chris presses his lips together and nods. The door scrapes loud along the floor, and he flinches back from the sound, pulling Jake’s blanket as tightly around him as it will go. 

“I’ll take the living room,” Jefferson says, his eyes roaming over the shattered television, the cut-up couch cushions and stuffing littered everywhere. “Ben and I bought a new couch a week ago, the old one’s just been sitting in the den while we figure what to do with it. I’ll call some people, have it moved in here.”

“We got a TV we don’t need in our bedroom,” Naomi says, looking around as well. “I’ll start in the-…” Her eyes move to the open-framed doorway to the kitchen, staring at the shattered wreck of ceramic, the little path that Chris had made by pushing all the wreckage to the side. The coffeemaker with its full pot still piping hot, untouched. “… we got extra plates, too, I’ll get those. I’ll call my girl Kari, that woman’s a hoarder waiting to happen and she’s got half a whole house sitting on her porch taking up space. Did they leave this poor kid anything?”

Chris clears his throat, swallows around the nervous lump there, and says, hoarsely, “Th-they, they, they left the, um, the, the food in the fridge.”

“Well, that’s a small mercy and I’ll say a prayer for that,” Ruth says, stepping inside herself, rubbing her hands together, a wedding ring with a diamond glittering on her left hand. “Let’s pray the Lord shows His mercy on the ones who did this.”

“I don’t see why we should,” Jefferson snaps, already in the living room, his boots crunching on something before he lifts his foot to sigh. “Glass is fucking everywhere.”

“We should pray for the Lord to show mercy,” Ruth says, in the voice of a woman who will brook no appeal, “because I sure as hell wouldn’t. Leavin’ a boy here in this wreck all alone.” Ruth screwed her mouth up like she might want to spit. “Imagine it, just imagine leaving a boy here all on his lonesome.”

“Th-they… they didn’t know, know I was here,” Chris says, softly. “I was hiding. I have a hiding place.”

“Hiding,” The man says tightly. “You hear that, Miss Ruth? Hiding while they fuckin’ trashed everything around him. Fucking hiding. You know who else had to fuckin’ hide in goddamn-”

“Don’t you curse the Lord’s name near me, young man.”

“… sorry, Miss Ruth.”

“Besides, I know, Jefferson. If you think I don’t know damn well… but gettin’ ourselves all worked up won’t help this boy in the here and now, will it?”

A muscle twitches in the angry man’s cheek. It reminds Chris of Jake, even though they are so different, Jake all blond hair and scruffy stubble and Jefferson looks like a cowboy in the movies Jake watches late at night, skinny-hipped in worn-out blue jeans with a giant belt buckle and hard-lined set to his jaw. But the anger - the deep-down rage - that’s the same. 

It’s not rage he has to be scared of, but rage meant to protect him, and Chris’s heart twists in a good way this time. 

“Yes, Miss Ruth.” Jefferson frowns.

Ruth sighs, her eyes roaming, taking in the enormous task ahead of them. Well… we’d best get started, the day won’t get any younger.” She holds out her hand and Chris looks up at her, hesitating before he lets her take his hand and help him onto his feet. He stands with one leg bent, to keep the weight off the glass still embedded in his heel. Jake’s blanket falls down around him to puddle on the floor at his feet. “Baby boy, what are you wearing?”

In the kitchen, Naomi is already on the phone, speaking to someone in hushed hurried tones, while baby Kaelah bats happily at her mother’s shoulders with her hands, legs swinging bare out the sides of the carrier she’s settled in.

Chris looks down, then back up. “Wh-what I, what I always wear to, to to to sleep in.” Jake’s shirt, the one he’d shoved into Chris’s hands before, before, before-

Before they took you away from me.

“Sweetie, you look like a toddler tryin’ t’wear his daddy’s clothes,” Ruth says gently. “Y’got anything left of your own, or did they tear that up, too?”

Chris shakes his head, slowly, his eyes moving to the stairs. “I, I have clothes. Um. I have clothes but, but, but but but I don’t want to, to walk on the stairs, it’ll, um, I have, I have, um, there’s there’s glass in my, in my, in my my my-”

“Glass in your foot?” Ruth asks, gently. “You step on somethin’, honey?”

Chris nods, balancing on one foot and twisting his other leg to show her the mess of his heel, with the glass still deeply inside.

“Oh honey, that had to hurt,” Ruth murmured. “Jefferson, can you-”

“Got it, Miss Ruth. You’re the CO on this little enterprise.”

“Don’t you ‘CO’ me, Jefferson, this ain’t the army.”

Jefferson laughs, and Chris feels like the walls are soaking up the sound, and his breathing eases. His lungs feel less constricted, less held still. He feels a little less frozen. He is aware without knowing that there was a time when no one came the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. 

But this time isn’t going to be like that. It’s going to be different, and he’s going to remember this.

Naomi pops her head back into the entryway. “Kari’s packin’ up, and I told them a bit of what happened - just that the cops trashed the place and left a kid behind, that’s all, they don’t know what Nat does. Kari’s husband wants to come help, too, and he’s bringin’ a buddy. Guy knows somebody who knows somebody in the movement, I guess. They’re callin’ around to see if any of the lib people will come on over to sit with the kid.”

“They won’t,” Ruth says, after a moment’s pause. “Unless it’s different than it was when Wilbur was in it. They’re islands, Naomi, always have been.”

“If a volcano blows up an island,” Naomi says, her voice edged with something Chris doesn’t understand, eyes suddenly hard and flinty, “You can’t tell me the other islands wouldn’t send some fuckin’ boats to find survivors.”

“Volcanoes are part of nature,” Ruth says, almost primly. “This isn’t natural at all.”

Ruth and Naomi share a long look, and then the woman and her baby disappear back into the kitchen.

“Ben’ll be over in about an hour, he’s calling in sick and setting someone else to take his meetings for the day,” Jefferson offers, breaking the moment of strange, weighted silence. “And I don’t work at the bar ‘til 6:30, so I got time. Ben says he’ll call a couple of people, too.”

Chris stares around at them, and feels tears stinging his eyes. He taps the inside of his wrist with his other hand, rhythmic, soothing the ache inside him, but it’s not quite the same kind of ache it was before. 

“Jaden’s bringin’ three or four of his little friends,” Ruth says firmly. “Which make us quite the crowd, and we can get this all cleaned up in no time, can’t we? And we got pizza for lunch. Jefferson, I don’t spend my good clean money on liquor, but you can, if you want.”

Jefferson laughs again. “Understood, Miss Ruth. Okay, little one let’s fix your foot-… hey, what’s your name?” He tilted his head, watching Chris with kind, dark eyes. 

Chris looks over at Ruth, who nods and squeezes his hands lightly, then lets go. The touch felt so good he nearly moves closer, back into it. He likes being touched, he’s supposed to like being touched, any way at all. “M-my, my name is, my name is, is is is Chris, my name is-… I picked the name, the, the name Chris, I picked it myself.”

His voice is low, worried they’ll laugh, but Jefferson grins at him, and it tugs a smile from Chris in return. “That’s a good choice, Chris. Now, look, we got half a couch cushion and I think that’s enough for your skinny butt. So take a seat, and I’ll get you cleaned up in no time.” He takes Chris’s arm now, helping him hobble his way into the living room, to sit slowly down on the undamaged part of the couch, holding his heel out for the man to take in warm fingers, pressing here and there, apologizing in a low voice when Chris hisses at the sharp stab of pain.

He taps hard on the couch, closing his eyes so he won’t see what happens, feeling a little faint at the thought of the clear glass shard coming out of his foot. Finger-twist-tap, finger-twist-tap, finger-twist-tap-

“What are you doin’ there, Chris?” Jefferson asks, and Chris stops.

“Nothing,” He whispers, keeping his voice slow, and careful. “Nothing, sir-”

“No fuckin’ sirs with me, I did that way too long in the fuckin’ army. Just call me Jefferson, thanks. All right, Chris, do whatever you gotta do, I’m gonna fix this as soon as I count to one, two, three-”

But he’s already squeezing hard on the count of two and Chris whines in pain as a sharp ache shoots up his leg from his heel, spikes, and then… lessens, lowers to a dim throb, hardly real pain at all. 

“Done,” Jefferson announces, brightly. “Now, let’s get you some shoes, so you don’t worry about stepping in anything again. You can come stay with me ‘til your people get back-”

Chris opens his eyes. “No.”

“No?” Jefferson’s eyebrows raise, and Ruth pauses where she’s working with a broom to sweep some crumpled papers in the entryway, looking over at the way Chris’s voice has suddenly gone stronger, harder.

“I can’t, can’t leave,” Chris says, looking Jefferson right in the eyes. Baldur, love, you know you should never meet a man’s eyes unless you’re going to-

“Why not?” Jefferson asks, confused, cutting off Chris’s nervous, cycling thoughts. 

“Because, be, because, because because he said to wait for him,” Chris says, a little louder this time, pulling his foot back and away from Jefferson’s hands, curling up on the couch cushion into the tiniest ball he can make himself. “Jake said, he said, he said to wait, and I have to, to wait for him. Right here. Until he, he comes back.”

“Chris…” Jefferson hesitates. “It could be a while-”

“Hush,” Ruth says, quick and fast the way the woman he doesn’t remember used to sometimes say things like that to a man he doesn’t remember, either. “Hush now. Not the time or the place, Jefferson. Not yet.”

“Yes, Miss Ruth. So you need to wait right here?”

“I have to wait for Jake,” Chris says, pressing his own hands against his stomach through the soft fabric of Jake’s worn-out old T-shirt, long fingers that curl into the cotton. “I have to wait for him. I, I, I said I’d wait, I said I’d wait, he promised he’d come back, and I-I-I, I have to, I have to…”

I have to do it the right way this time. Last time I did it all wrong and they died. If I can do it right this time, no one has to die. He doesn’t know where the thought comes from and it sinks back and away just as quickly. He flinches at the memory of a woman’s terrified face, his own voice screaming, and the realization that people can die with their eyes wide open.

“I have to wait,” Chris whimpers, and presses his palms up to his eyes to hide the tears that start to start to fall. There’s a pause, and then warm arms around him, holding him, but the arms aren’t right and the smell isn’t right and he’s alone, even with people in the house, he’s alone, he’s only not alone when he’s with Jake, and Jake is gone, and people have died when Chris did it wrong, he has to do it all just right this time-

Don’t move, baby. Just stay here, and it’ll be all right.

No! He’s just a child! Please, please, that’s my little boy, please no, please, God, no!

I’m coming back for you. Wait for me here.

“I have to w-wait, I have to, to wait, I have to wait for him, I have to wait…” The words bubble up unbidden, and the man holding onto him rocks back and forth, back and forth, and Chris rocks with him, crying into his shoulder, the man’s shirt damp with his tears. The women are silent, but for the sounds of their work, water pouring into a mop bucket and a broom sweeping across the floor. 

You are not hidden, there’s never been a moment you were forgotten - you are not hopeless, though you have been broken, your innocence stolen

Jake likes to sing to him, now, in his low bass voice, and he might never sing to Chris again, like the woman won’t, and how many times can he lose everyone before there’s no one left to lose?

The only sound now is Chris crying into the shoulder of a stranger, all the fear he cannot keep inside himself any longer wept out against his will, that somehow it’s happening all over again, and once more he’s the only one left in the house, once more there is blood on the wall, but he can’t remember when blood was there before and he doesn’t know why he’s so scared that Jake will die.

Just like the woman did, the one he doesn’t remember, the warm hand on his forehead when he was sick, the man the low voice murmuring, if you had a bad dream, you can crawl in with us, buddy, when he was young.

I will never stop marching to reach you in the middle of the hardest fight, it’s true

“I promised to, to wait,” Chris sobs into the man’s shirt, his skin, and feels the man’s warm hands rubbing soothingly at his back. “I promised to wait for him. He’s, he’s, he’s coming b-back, he said he’ll come back, he said to wait and I have to, to wait-”

I will rescue you

“He’s coming back,” Chris whimpers. “He’s, he’s, he’s coming back, he promised to come back-”

“I know,” Jefferson murmurs. “I know he did.”

I will rescue you

“I’m so, I’m, I’m so, so so so so scared, I’m scared, please, I’m so scared he won’t come back, please, please, I don’t want to lose anyone anymore, please, please get him back-”

I hear the whisper underneath your breath, I hear you whisper you have nothing left

“It’ll be okay, Chris,” Jefferson says softly, into his ear. “We’ll figure it out, and you can stay right here. We’ll figure this out with you, okay? We’ll… we’ll figure it out together. Okay?”

“He, he, he he he promised, he promised, he-”

“I know. I know he did.” Jefferson swallows - Chris can hear it, feel the movement of his throat. “I know he did, kiddo.” There’s a pause, and then in a slightly different voice, Jefferson asks, “Miss Ruth, what’s our next step?”

The old woman is silent, and then says softly, “We clean the house, and we get this boy a bed to sleep in, right here where he wants to be. And then I guess one of us should figure out how to pay bail.”

The phone in the kitchen rings again, and Chris can hear, through his own low sobbing, Naomi’s voice as she picks up. There’s a low conversation, and the click of the phone resting back in its cradle. 

“We might not have to do this ourselves,” Naomi says, sounding odd, like her voice is caught in her throat.

“Why not?” Jefferson’s arms tighten around Chris, and he clings to him desperately, the warmth of human contact, the reassurance that he will not be left alone again. 

“Because…” Naomi’s voice twists with a wry humor. “Jake didn’t call his lawyer or his mom, Miss Ruth.”

“Then who did he call?”

“Uh.” Naomi clears her throat. Chris looks up, to see her looking stricken, staring at Chris as though he’s grown three heads. “He, uh. He called someone who called-… you guys ever see the movie Dimmer Switch?”

“Yeah, like… a million years ago,” Jefferson says, sounding baffled.

“I don’t see movies,” Ruth says, equally confused, though hers sounds more like irritation.

Chris’s heart twists, in his chest. Something like relief, but sharp as a blade, cutting him open, laying out all his hope for them to see and take and destroy, if they want to, like all of him was cut out once before.

It’s not gone, Antoni says, inside his mind, in his memory. They buried it, they built a wall, but we are still inside ourselves. You just have to dig deep enough, Chris.

This isn’t going to be like before.

“That was, uh. That was… some girl named Krista. She’s coming here. And she’s coming with a check from Vincent fucking Shield to pay their bail. We’ll have to go do it, because Krista says she’s… she’s one of them - the Boxies - she can’t go herself, they might recognize her.”

“Then I’ll go to the jail and get them myself,” Jefferson says, strongly. “I thought Vincent Shield just talked a big game in interviews, but that’s walking the walk, huh?”

“Oh, man.” Naomi sounds stunned. 

There’s a silence.

“Does that mean Vincent Shield has been here? And I was right next door to a fucking movie star and no one told me?”

Chris laughs, putting his hands back up over his face, burying himself in Jefferson’s shoulder. Krista will come to help him, Krista will come, and they’ll go get Jake, and Jake will come back, and it won’t be like before, mourning doves are just pigeons with a prettier name, they don’t mean anyone will die, no one has to die this time, you’re the reason Ronnie died, you should never have been born, but he doesn’t know that voice, either, who said that?

Someone, darker in his mind, a place he can’t go. A place that hurts but Chris tries to dig down into it anyway, follows the voice, chases it into the pain.

Thank you, it’s, it’s hard, but, but but but thank you for getting this for, for dinner, it-it helps, thank you-

Don’t thank me. It’s the least I can do on a day like this, huh? 

A day like, like, like like like what?

 Nothing. Just thinking about tomorrow. Happy birthday, Tris-

His thoughts are interrupted by a flash of red in the window, the cardinal from before. It sits on the windowsill, briefly, looking in at him with one dark eye. Then it takes flight again, a burst of wings, and is gone.

He doesn’t remember what he was thinking about but it doesn’t matter now. He did it all just right, so no one has to die this time. No one has to die because of him, and Jake is coming back, and it’s going to be okay. Jake promised he would come back, and Chris promised he would wait right here.

They can both keep their promises this time, because Chris did it all just right.

He did it just right.

He was good, this time, and that means no one will die.

He can keep his promise, the last one he made to the woman he doesn’t remember when she was lying on the floor with her eyes wide open, to be good.

[ao3feed-geralt-jaskier]

by pokymars

{ Summary }

Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher who wears a frown upon his face daily has lived throughout his entire life believing his Soulmate died when they were just a few days old. Now enter Jaskier, a travelling Bard who isn't who he appears to be, carries a heavy secret involving his past only driven by his hope of finding his Soulmate. The two end of up having a fateful encounter ensuing chaos, monsters, obvious pining, stupidity, romance and a Sorcerer who's done with everyone's shit.

Words: 5034, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher (TV)

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage

Categories: F/M

Characters: Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Roach (The Witcher), Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Minor Characters

Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion

Additional Tags: Tags Contain Spoilers, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tags May Change, Bad Writing, My Writing Is A Mess, I apologise, Witchers Have Feelings (The Witcher), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soulmates, Soulmarks, Jaskier is a Female, Fem!Jaskier, Jaskier | Dandelion Has a Past, Insecure Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion Has Feelings, Soft Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia and Jaskier | Dandelion Are Soulmates, Jaskier | Dandelion Loves Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Loves Jaskier | Dandelion, Endgame Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, I promise, Bisexual Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Emotionally Constipated Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has a Big Dick, Touch-Starved Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Protective Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Good Friend Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Supportive Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg Friendship, Yennefer ships it, Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg Ships It, Roach is the Best (The Witcher), Roach Ships It (The Witcher), Roach is So Done (The Witcher), Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Being an Idiot, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Secret Identity, Secret Identity Fail, Identity Reveal, Jaskier pretends to be a Man, because plot reasons I dunno, Slow Romance, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow To Update, I'm Sorry, Why Did I Write This?, Mutual Pining, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm

[profoundnet]

Profound Member Post - June 2019

Header by @cryptomoon​​​ and is available on merch from her redbubble store. You can use all those fancy emojis (and more!) on our Discord Server!

The Masterpost is open for all creations by ProfoundBond members which are posted in entirely during that month.

MEMBER CONTRIBUTIONS FOR JUNE 2019!

Masterpost below the cut.

MaggieMaybe160 - @maggiemaybe160​ - MaggieMaybe160

Say Yes

Endverse!Dean's life is going pretty well with Endverse!Cas until Dean's past self shows up. A look at the episode "The End" from Season 5 from Endverse!Dean's point of view.

Tags: Canon Major Character Death

SFW

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CR Noble - @cr-noble-writes​ - CR Noble

Truth or Dare

Truth or Dare seemed like a good way to pass the time until they had to go after Lucifer. After everyone else fell asleep, the game turns naughty between Dean and Castiel. Created for the Lusty Lexis and SPN Kink bingo challenges

Tags: canon-compliant, first time, pwp, top!cas, bottom!dean

NSFW

Falling Apart

Sword & Cross Resident Rehabilitation is a last-ditch effort for Dean Winchester to move past the drug and drinking problems he developed to bury his guilt over the fire that killed his brother. Not to mention the wild visions and smoky, sentient shadows that have plagued him his entire life. It's supposed to be the best Savannah has to offer, but one look at the crumbling tile floors and dangling crown mouldings, and Dean has his doubts. Enter Castiel Novak. He’s rude, aloof, and a total dick from the moment they lay eyes on each other but Dean can’t help but feel a mysterious connection to the man. Maybe he really has lost his mind. But when Castiel starts making appearances in Dean’s vivid visions of the past, he knows there is more to their link than meets the eye. Even if Cas keeps telling him otherwise. It seems everyone at Sword & Cross knows what’s going on except for Dean. Trying to conquer his mountain of guilt and doubt and figure out the connection he is certain he shares with Castiel is only made harder by the “accidents” that seem to follow him. Not to mention his attraction to Gadreel. Whatever secret Castiel is trying so hard to keep, Dean knows he has to uncover it. Written for SPN Movie Big Bang 2019

Tags: past Dean/Lucifer, Dean/Gadreel, rehab au, flashbacks, vivid dreams, ptsd, minor character death, sam is dead when fic starts, slow burn, suicidal ideation

SFW

Washed Up Souls

Castiel has wandered the Earth for millennia, hiding from Heaven and looking for a soulmate he shouldn’t have. All he has to go on is the phrase written on his forearm: the last thing he’ll hear his soulmate say before they die. He’s living as a human on the outskirts of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hits and he hears that phrase in a prayer. Dean Winchester never bothered searching for his soulmate. Then, after a hunt, he wakes up in a strange bed with a serious wound and no recollection of how he got there. And there’s a strange, but really attractive, guy taking care of him. As the days pass and the two men learn more about each other, Castiel realizes his feelings for Dean. But what will it take for Dean to admit his own feelings for Cas? Written for the Dean Cas Reverse Bang 2019

Tags: temporary MCD, soulmate au, openly bi dean, demi cas, canon-divergent pre pilot, hurrican katrina, major character injury

SFW

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LeafZelindor - @leafzelindor

Art for “Beyond”

Art created for the SPN movie bang fic "Beyond"

Tags: Destiel, AU, Star Trek

SFW

Created for @snarkysnartes fic Beyond. 

Profound Prose - Pride

Pride picture done for Profound Poses. Wings all around.

Tags: destiel, pride

SFW

Art post for "Don't Be So Charming"

My contribution to Pie Darling's SpN movie bang fic "Don't be so Charming" 

Tags: Destiel, AU

SFW

Made for PieDarling’s fic “Don’t be so Charming”

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weldersmightyb - @weldersmightyb - weldersmightyb

Hurts So Good

Part of Dean/Cas Reverse Bang 2019 - Fic in Response to Anyrei's wonderful art! What will happen when Dean and Cas are both human and in bad places in their lives? Through the pining, angst, tears, and happiness, Dean tries to heal Cas, but Cas does just as much for Dean when they both give into the desires that have been ignored for far too long. Follow them through their stupid pining, a cute mini-case where Cas becomes a rock god, and so much pain. Trust me, the journey will be worth the tears.

Tags: No Archive Warnings Apply, Hurt/Comfort, Case Fic, Hospitalisation, Dean Winchester Whump, Rock Star Castiel (Supernatural), Grief/Mourning, Angst with a Happy Ending 

NSFW

Written for the DCRB in response to @anyreiart ‘s art.

Three Men and a Baby. Well, Two Men, an Angel, an Archnephilim, an Archangel, a Witch, and a Baby, But Who's Counting Anymore?

Spells make Dean nervous. That's just common knowledge. Especially when they make Cas drop to the ground unconscious. But once Gabriel shows up with more information, Dean has to question whether this spell is actually a bad thing. A quick ficlet in response to kuwlshadow's wonderful art.

Tags: No Archive Warnings Apply, Fluff, Mpreg but not really, Alternate Season/Series 14, Team Free Will 2.0 (Supernatural), Gabriel Joins Team Free Will (Supernatural), Rowena too, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester

SFW

Written for the DCRB in response to @kuwlshadow‘s art. 

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JessJessTheBest - @saywhatjessie - JessJessTheBest

Bold Defiance 

“You, Bold Defiance?” Dean rolled his eyes. “You are so predictable.” Castiel had been operating as ‘Bold Defiance,’ evil super-villain, for most of his life. It was the same thing, day after day: scheming, magicking, and getting inevitably foiled by The Guardian: the city’s acting superhero and Castiel’s childhood rival, Anna. It was a comfortable if not altogether productive routine. The periodic kidnapping of journalist, Dean Winchester, didn’t hurt. But what happens when one side actually wins? What does a person do when the person who opposed them, the person who defined them, is gone?

Tags: wing!fic, superhero au, Technically an alien au, journalist!dean, character death but not really, arcane magic, Jack being cute, an extreme indictment of the prison system

SFW

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Jdragon122 - @jdragon122 - Jdragon122

Art for “Giant, Anguish, Danger”

Art for SPN Movie Big Bang

Tags: jdragonart, the ritual movie, horror monster, blood, malmuses, horror fic, spn fan art

SFW

Made for @malmuses fic “Giant, Anguish, Danger”

DCRB - Sea Serpahim 

Art for the Dean Cas Reverse Bang 2019

Tags: creature!cas, marine biologist!dean, jdragonart, dcrb, supernatural, spn fanart, castiel, dean winchester

SFW 

In collaboration with @saltnhalo (fic)

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nickelkeep - @nickelkeep - nickelkeep

Scribere Jussit Amor 

When a case involving angels pops up, Sam needs a book from Cas' room and asks Dean to get it. After a quick phone call with Cas, and making sure he has the red book, written purely in Enochian, Dean's sure the brothers are ready to go. Except, Sam has now translated Cas' journal, leaving Dean to face some very harsh truths when it comes to a particular Angel of the Lord.

Tags: canon fic, diary/journal fic, canon temporary MCD, Angst with a Happy Ending, POV Alternating, implied/referenced alcohol abuse, implied/referenced suicide attempt, Sam Ships It

SFW

Made for the DeanCas Reversebang with art by @dmsilvisart

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SoloArcana - @soloarcana - SoloArcana

Sassy Castiel Vacations

The first time it happened, it took Castiel 34 hours to get back to the bunker. The second and third times took half that. By the fourth time, he thought it was time to teach Dean a lesson. Castiel stayed gone for a week. When he walked back into the bunker, Dean met him at the foot of the stairs. "Where the hell have you been, Cas?"

Tags: Dean's Daisy Dukes, Crop Top Dean, Inspired by Tumblr, Snark, Glitter, No major archive/trigger warnings

SFW

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phoenix_michie - phoenix-michie

Run To Him

Being a sheriff is all Dean Winchester has ever wanted. He loves his job, the town, and the people living in it. When a new guy moves into the neighborhood, Dean’s beloved townspeople are quick to talk and the rumors start to spread. As a new substitute teacher at the local High School, Castiel Novak attracts not only the attention of his neighbors, but also of the parents and the kids at the school. As complaints start to pour in at the station, Dean dutifully deals with them—and with Castiel, not knowing that this man is only trying to find his peace and quiet, trying to escape his past, but leading it right into Dean’s town.

Tags: Past Castiel/April Kelly, Sheriff Dean Winchester, Teacher Castiel (Supernatural), Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Mentions of Suicide Attempt, Stalking

NSFW 

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insomnia - insomnia 

The Colour of Black

Dean Winchester wakes up in hospital bruised, broken and mostly blind with little memory of how he ended up there. To the people he saved he's a hero, to none more so than the dorky guy with the amazing voice who visits every day and doesn't seem to want to leave.

Tags: AU - Soulmates, Pseudoscience, Injured Dean Winchester, Oblivious Dean Winchester, Fluff, Falling in Love, Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, First Meetings

SFW

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Wargurl83 - @wargurl83 - wargurl83 (Pillowfort)

HUMANS ARE WEIRD, A Space-Pack Bonding Story

Humans have made it to the stars, and they really will pack bond with anything. This is the story of how Dean built his own little family in space. Written for the 2019 Dean/Cas Reverse Bang.

Tags: Destiel in space, Humans Are Weird, Humans will pack-bond anything, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction

SFW 

A Symphony of Flavors 

Master Chef Castiel Novak likes his life ordered. Controlled. Sensible. He's an Alpha with no mate and no hope of finding one. His life is turned upside down with the death of his sister and taking guardianship of his nine-year-old niece, Claire. Add to that, there's a new sous chef taking up space in his very orderly kitchen with his loud music and brash attitude, and for some reason Castiel just can't take his eyes off him. Dean Winchester loves to cook, love his mom, and loves kids. His goal has been to work with Chef Novak for as long as he's been in Kansas City. What he wasn’t prepared for was an Alpha all of his own…

Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Chefs, Alpha Castiel (Supernatural), Omega Verse

Made in collaboration with @foxymoley‘s art

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Darmys - @darmysasagiri - Darmys 

Gone in 60 Seconds

Convinced by his mother walk away from his life, and save his younger brother, Dean left Seattle six years ago. Only to be told on a Monday, Sam’s taken a job from Richard Roman: Local stolen-car broker, and all-round bad guy. And Sam’s fumbled the job. Now Dean has until 8am Friday morning to get 50 high-end cars on a container ship, or Roman will kill Sam. Starring: Dean Winchester as Memphis Raines Sam Winchester as Kip Raines and Baby as Eleanor.

Tags: AU-Movie, Referenced Cas/Others, Cars, Fast Cars, Stealing Fast Cars, Underage Drinking, Vomiting, Cole Dies, Bad Language, SPNMBB 2019

SFW

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supernatural9917 

Boy Next Door

Castiel's hot, young, new neighbour is going to drive him crazy... Written for the Destiel Smut Bingo 2018. Square fill: Getting caught

Tags: Twink Dean Winchester, Older Castiel, Castiel and Dean Winchester are Neighbors, Dean is a Tease, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Age Difference

NSFW

In Flagrante Delicto

Cas gets home earlier than expected and catches Dean enjoying himself to a familiar video... A Red Carpet Chronicles Timestamp, and also fills the Destiel Smut Bingo 2018 square: Making a sex tape.

Tags: Red Carpet Chronicles, Alternate Universe - Actors, Masturbation, Castiel catches Dean during his alone time, Dean doesn't mind, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester

NSFW

Made in collaboration with @delicious-irony

Riteousness Rides Agayn: the Further Adventures of the Riteous man and his Avenging Angel

Infamous highwaymen The Riteous Man and The Avenging Angel are better known to their neighbours as brothers Daniel and Castor Smith, and to their friends as secret lovers Dean Winchester and Castiel Novak. After recovering from a near-fatal accident, Dean is ready to ride again, and their target is the wealthy and cruel Lord Talbot. With a bit of help from their friends, blacksmith Benny Lafitte and grocer Gabriel Speight, The Riteous Man and The Avenging Angel will ride again.

Tags: Alternate Universe - Historical, Restoration England, Highwaymen, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean/Cas Reverse Bang 2019

NSFW

Made in collaboration with @pimentogirl

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NadiaHart - @hartlessfiction - NadiaHart

Soother

Dean’s been a regular Soother at the maternity ward in Brodstone Memorial Hospital for a few years now. He comes in late, after work; after dinner and dessert been served and put away. After everyone's asleep and no one can ask probing, annoying, little brother-esque questions about what he’s doing and why he’s given up on finding his own mate–his own pack. He likes it, volunteering at the hospital, where’s he’s needed, it soothes something inside of him. He sincerely hopes that he's helping these pups just as much as they're helping him. And right now, that’s all he’s willing to ask for.

Tags: Alpha!Cas, Omega!Dean, meet-cute, True-mates, fluff, scents.

SFW

Art for Anarchy 

Artwork for Anarchy- a DCRB fiction by NeonBat

Tags: Shirtless Cage Fighter Dean Winchester. SFW

Made in collaboration with @neonbat666‘s fic

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thatpeculiarone - @ilovetodreamx - thatpeculiarone

Disambiguation 

It happened in a split second.

One minute, Dean was looking at him - the next, he was on the floor a few feet away.

Dean is attacked by a witch on a hunt, causing him to fall comatose and his memories to be erased. Dean spends his time unconscious reliving his life, building memories back together and seeing things from a new perspective. Meanwhile, Cas and Sam race the clock in order to try and save Dean, with many dead ends along the way. As time begins to run out, Cas realises it may be too late for him to tell Dean how he truly feels.

Cue: An angsty two-weeks in the Men of Letters bunker.

Tags: AU - Canon Divergence, Witchcraft, Pining, Angst with a Happy Ending, Memory Loss, Hunt Gone Wrong, Hurt/Comfort.

SFW

Made in collaboration with @pallasperilous‘s art! 

[dragonnan]

Mega Multi-Fandom Rec List Part 2

DISCLAIMER!!!

I will miss certain people; probably a lot of people. It’s inevitable.  3 reasons.  I haven’t read every fic in every fandom.  2, I haven’t managed to bookmark every fic out there.  3, I am not involved with every fandom.  The fandoms in my list are the ones I personally and currently am involved in which have enough fics to rec that they are worth the time linking below.

So bear with me.

4-ish - I tend to cling pretty tight to both hurt/comfort (whump) as well as canon.  I’m not hugely into romance save for maybe 1 or two couples and, again, I lean hard on whatever is either canon or VERY strongly implied OTP.  I don’t rec porn (nothing against it I just avoid it when it comes to anything that might have an underage audience).

Finally, anything I rec that may contain triggering subject matter I will tag as well as I can so heed the warnings where appropriate!

Note: I have also included some of my work below.  For a complete collection of my stories you can find them at the following links:   dragonnan’s Psych fics dragonnan’s A03 fics

Sherlock (BBC)

Gen 

Redemption by sgam76 The Knight Shift by dragonnan for tunes84  5 Times Sherlock wanted his big brother to carry him + 1 time he wouldn't admit it by SailorChibi Scenes From Recovery by maryagrawatson for Boton Cold Comfort by maryagrawatson An Act Of Rebellion by afteriwake for GlowingMechanicalHeart, Dreamin  The Precipice by takethesky87 Road to Freedom by Ariane_DeVere English as a Foreign Language by standbygo  Proportionate Response by babydrache Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus by CaitlinFairchild (Warning: Rape/non-con)  Recorded by Morgan_Stuart (Warnings: Torture, Implied Character Deaths)  I've Got You Now by ready_to_kick_some_ass No Flowers by GraceHolmes  An Interesting Puzzle by awanderingbard When Your Belly's in the Trench by Morgan_Stuart  Idle Gossip by Arnie  Extraction by Basser Flinch by Salr323  Trust Thy Doctor by becausemycroft (Unfinished)  Of Monsters by Basser Dangerous Mould by Benfan  Never That Easy by Kerkerian No Incentive So Great by thisprettywren You Were Never Supposed To Leave by Ballykissangel (Character Death - Not Sherlock or John)  No More Miracles by whitchry9 (Major Character Death)  Appearances Can Be Deceiving by SailorChibi (Warning: Rape/non-con)  The Most Awful Thing by whitchry9 Wrong by impulsereader Triage by Morgan_Stuart Lessons Learned by Morgan_Stuart Croatia-Water-Blue by hollyesque (Warning: Rape/non-con)  Hopeless Wanderer by Cyane (orphan_account) The Triple Bluff by SarahKnight  Something Broken by GhyllWyne Fractured by radculas Constantly by thesignsofserbia  In Arduis Fidelis by Salr323 Rule of Law by thesignsofserbia  Sound of Silence by SailorChibi Never Have I Ever by awanderingbard  Lost for Words by awanderingbard Fallout by Salr323 Following On by Loopy456 Oubliette by CherryBlossomTide Unforgettable by tenderly_wicked A Cure for the Final Problem by Saasan (Major Character Death)  He's Had This Nightmare Before by mirroredLife  he Holiday by Scriblit (Warning: Rape/non-con)  Paying Back by Dayja  Harmless Things by J_Baillier  It takes John Watson to save your life. by Sparkypip  Comatose by Sparkypip Everything Will Be Okay by great_big_worm (Warning: Rape/non-con)  Seek Out The Unworthy by squire  The Shallow End by hollyesque War Crimes by mossologist (Warning: Rape/non-con)  Illation by hollyesque Crushing Fears by Amaya_Ramiel Pressure by Tammany Unthinkable by Lindentreeisle (Captainblue) (Warning: Rape/non-con)  A Smelly Affair by dioscureantwins for Yitzock  Do Your Research by dioscureantwins for CherryBlossomTide (Child Abuse)  Proxy by CherryBlossomTide (Child Abuse)  Pipe Song by Mistress_Siana (Warning: Rape/non-con | Violence)  It's Not The Violin by copperbadge The Tiger and the Shark by dragonnan (Warning: Rape/non-con) 

Sherlolly

Down and Shaking When I Think I Lose by satin_doll for OhAine, GettingOverGreta A New Project by rachel614 (orphan_account)  Sherlollipops - Til Death by MizJoely Everything and More by rachel614 (orphan_account) I've Learned to Lose You by Ukthxbye for Writingwife83 These Scars We Kiss by rachel614 (orphan_account) (Warning: Includes discussions of self-harm)  A Vicious Motivator by darnedchild The Shadow of What Will Be by versarilaetus The Last Meal by theSapphireSky The Healing of Sherlock Holmes by honeycakes  Insomnia by katiebuttercup Chasing Paradise by Chibiness87 It's My Party by Mouse9 The Adventure of the Left Shoe by Jolie_Black TMI (Too Much Information) by GarudaDreamsOfRain  Handsome In Her Eyes by afteriwake Little Bird by Caffeine_faerie The Price of Sentiment by Mouse9 The Admirer by howterrifying  Dial M for Molly by dragonnan 

More Sherlolly recs can be found HERE

Series

Scheherezade ‘verse, A Felicitous Natal Celebration, and With a Little Help From My Friends Series’ by sgam76:   Sherlock is home, he and John are returning to cases, and all’s right with the world–right? But a series of minor mishaps and injuries makes two things very clear to his friends and family: first, Sherlock’s time away wasn’t the grand adventure everyone has assumed it was; and second, that time has left Sherlock with a legacy that’s bleeding into his life today. Sherlock is Not Okay, and it’s not going away. 

NOTE: These stories are not written in the order with which they occur.  They are all part of the same universe and dovetail amongst one another.  You can read them in whatever order you which - though I strongly advise beginning with Scheherezade as nothing else will quite make sense without that history.

A Felicitous Natal Celebration - Past fic

A Felicitous Natal Celebration Excursions and Alarums First Things First All Along the Watchtower TLS and the Sloane Ranger Happy Not Happy Christmas

Scheherezade ‘verse Scheherezade   A Pox on All Your Houses  Interlude in December - Note: Part 3 is a chapter taken from the org fic and posted as a one-shot.   [PodFic] Scheherezade by DefinitelyNotPie, sgam76   A Long Walk Down a Dusty Road  These Old Shades  Larceny, Lawlessness and Opium - Note: These events take place sometime during the ORG story

With a Little Help From My Friends - future fic With a Little Help From My Friends  Aftermath 

Reset Universe Series by maryagrawatson: After dealing with the Moriarty threat, Sherlock was still sent on his mission... Eleven Months Reset (Warning: Rape/non-con referenced as well as Attempted Rape)  Cracked

Sherlock Holmes (RDJ Movies)

Alive by Sharmain The Case Of The Drowning Evidence by StarkRogers Ability, Neutralized by PeaceHeather Buried Alive by drjohnhwatson Identifying the Ripper by WayWardWonderer (More of a Classic Doyle Style)  Eloquence in Motion by donutsweeper Damage by ancalime8301 A Most Belligerent Patient by kayliemalinza Associations by ancalime8301 A Matter of Precaution by moogsthewriter

Psych

Never could get the hang of Tuesdays by Liviapenn Snail Mail Sucks - Next Time, Send Me a Text by SydneyWoo I See Your Hubris...and I'll Raise You Fifty by SydneyWoo And Then The World Blew Up by SydneyWoo (Minor Character Death) Shall We Play a Game? by JR88fan Testing, Testing, One, Two, Ouch! by PapayaK This is not the Karma You're Looking For by eideann The Ticket by Kirei Latent by InsaneTrollLogic (Major Character Death) Exposed by Syncop8ed Rhythm

A Very Risky Proposition by aakira Chest Pains by AmeliaReddy The Last Man At The End Of The World by watanuki_sama A Whisper to the Living by Xparrot (Major Character Death)  Where There is Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth by dragonnan (Warnings for Blood/Gore and Horror)  You Say My Brain's Bleeding Like It's a Bad Thing by Kansas42 Stuck in an Office with You by PeterPanic Hostage Taking 101 by Syncop8ed Rhythm  The Shassiter Friendship Club by NoirCat  Suffer the Night by dragonnan  Giving Shelter to Midnight Ramblers by JR88fan Happy Halloween by NoirCat  Fathers and Sons Felonious and Otherwise by Okapi  Grace by Silence  Statement Time by NoirCat   I Don't Know How to Say Goodbye by Psychrulz (Major Character Death)  Or Is It Trust? by windscryer (Crossover w/ SPN)  Father Figures by Kirei  You Give Me Fever by dragonnan  Shawn and the Friendly Neighborhood Stalker by Nixa Jane I Would Do Anything for Love; Even That by dragonnan for mortma1984  Lingering Chill by s_c (Major Character Death)  Metal So Strong Doesn't Last Very Long by Sky Pad  An Almost World by Oldach Dreaming (Major Character Death)  Obsession by dragonnan Through Moonbeams Softly by brightblue All Nighter by dragonnan  The Seed of Doubt by Collegekid06  The Five Stages of Henry Spencer by Collegekid06   101. Dead Man's Float by MusicalLuna  Fun in the Woods with Buzz McNabb by centipede  Don't Eat the Crab by Raych Better Off Decapitated by dragonnan 

More Psych recs can be found HERE

Series

Fractures Series by VampKira: (Warnings for Child Abuse, Rape/Incest, Violent Disturbing Imagery, and Horror)  The fun filled saga of the Spencer men’s warped family dynamic and dragging their friends, co-workers, and acquaintances along for the ride.  Fractures (Part 1)  Corpses, Curses, and Cops, Oh My (Part 2)  Scars (Part 3) (Incomplete)  

What’s The Chance? Series by lapsus_calami:  The bad guy from their recent case forces Shawn and Gus to play a game of Russian Roulette. It’s about as fun as it sounds. Which is to say not fun at all.  There’s A Sixteen Percent Chance That At Least One Of Us Is Going To Die (Part 1)  There's A Thirty Two Percent Chance That At Least One Of Us Will Need Therapy (Part 2) 

A *Really* Dangerous Mind Series by Psychrulz:  Everyone knows Shawn has a tendency to get distracted. When he misses a clue and a murderer almost gets away, Chief Vick has had enough. She orders Shawn to get help and fix the problem- or else. Naturally, nothing with Shawn is ever that simple. When the fix turns out to be worse than the problem, the lives of his entire team are put in danger.  A Bitter Pill (Part 1)  Pitch Black (Part 2) 

Moonlighting Series by Redwolffclaw:  Psych/Moonlight Crossover Series - Shawn meets vampire Private Eye Mick St. John in this series where Shawn has to learn to live unlife as a newly turned vampire. Who knew being a vampire, psychic, consultant, detective, boyfriend, and best friend would be so hard?  No Such Thing As Psychics (Part 1)  12:04 Wake Up Call (Part 1.5)  Out of the Past, and Into the Fire (Part 2)  Love Lasts Forever, but Sanity Has a Shelf Life (Part 3)  Click- To Catch A Vampire (Part 4)  Hard To Believe It Will Be Okay Series by silverluna:  Carlton Lassiter is having a horribly bad day, and it’s only going to get worse.  Hard To Believe It Will Be Okay (Part 1)  Where Do We Go From Here? (Part 2)  The Spencers of Santa Barbara Series by JR88fan :  When Uncle Jack comes to town, one thing is certain: life won’t be boring.  This particular visit is no exception.  Throw in some video games, a treasure hunt, a case of benitoite gemstones worth millions, and a pair of sinister brothers who will stop at nothing to acquire those gemstones, and the Spencer men quickly find themselves in over their heads.  The Spencers of Santa Barbara: The Curse of Benitoite (Part 1)  Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill (Part 2) 

A Road Through Abbadon Series by Am_I_Zombie: (Warnings for Major Character Deaths, Violent Disturbing Imagery, and Horror)  Shawn Spencer works out his place in a rapidly changing environment. It is apocalypse season after all.  A Road Through Abbadon (Part 1)  A Funny Thing Happened On the Way Into Hell (Part 2)  A Rest Stop at the Edge of Madness (Part 3) (incomplete) 

Choose It Or Lose It Series by Texasartchick:  Lassiter’s dream comes true when he accidentally obtains indisputable evidence that Shawn is a fake.  Fortunately for Shawn and Gus, Lassie doesn’t know what he has yet, sparking a desperate race against time.   Can our dynamic duo sneak the evidence away from Lassiter before he discovers that he literally holds control over the future of Psych - and possibly Shawn’s freedom - in his hands?  Choose It Or Lose It (Part 1)  It Can Happen (Part 2)  Stir Crazy (Part 3)  This Stalker Thing Kind Of Sucks (Part 4)  The Ties That Bind (Part 5)  Helmets Not Included (Part 6)  The Spencer Syndrome (Part 7)  A Very BAMF! Lassie Fic (Part 8)  Night of the Rodentia (Part 9) (Unfinished) 

Doctor Who

Creature Fear by goodbye2pisces (Tenth Doctor)  Xeno by Laurawrzz (Tenth Doctor) Then My Mind Went Dark by the_magpie (Tenth Doctor) (Warning: Rape/non-con)  How to Live by misscam (Tenth Doctor)  A Coward Dies A Thousand Times by sashet (Tenth Doctor)  let the echo shake it all apart by sequence_fairy (Tenth Doctor) (Warning: Rape/non-con)  Time With Mother by Laurawrzz (Tenth Doctor)  A Step in the Right Direction by flutterflap (Tenth Doctor)  Voiceless by Veldeia (Tenth Doctor)  Beneath the Midnight Sky by HiddenTreasures for badwolfrun (Tenth Doctor)  Novi et Veteris by IuvenesCor (Twelfth Doctor)  Spinach Shock by Goldy, mrv3000 (Tenth Doctor)  Were He Not Romeo Called by Butterfly (Tenth Doctor)  The Devil You Know by rosa_acicularis (Duplicate Tenth Doctor)  Canvassing the Limits of Domesticity by Queen of the Castle (queen_of_the_castle_77) (Duplicate Tenth Doctor)  The Difference by themuslimbarbie (Duplicate Tenth Doctor)  The Old Have Bad Dreams by kashinoha (Eleventh Doctor)  Transfixion by tardisjournal (Eleventh Doctor)  Family Emergency by sahiya (Eleventh Doctor)  Vacation, Interrupted by shyday (Tenth Doctor)  What Is Essential by eve11 (Eleventh Doctor)  Let Her Under Your Skin, Into Your Heart by starlingnight (Eleventh Doctor)  Balance of Power by eve11 (Eleventh Doctor) 

Part 1: MCU - Iron Man, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Avengers

[witcherfic]

pokymars March 22, 2020 at 04:05AM

by pokymars

{ Summary }

Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher who wears a frown upon his face daily has lived throughout his entire life believing his Soulmate died when they were just a few days old. Now enter Jaskier, a travelling Bard who isn't who he appears to be, carries a heavy secret involving his past only driven by his hope of finding his Soulmate. The two end of up having a fateful encounter ensuing chaos, monsters, obvious pining, stupidity, romance and a Sorcerer who's done with everyone's shit.

Words: 5034, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher (TV)

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage

Categories: F/M

Characters: Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Roach (The Witcher), Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Minor Characters

Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion

Additional Tags: Tags Contain Spoilers, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tags May Change, Bad Writing, My Writing Is A Mess, I apologise, Witchers Have Feelings (The Witcher), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soulmates, Soulmarks, Jaskier is a Female, Fem!Jaskier, Jaskier | Dandelion Has a Past, Insecure Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion Has Feelings, Soft Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia and Jaskier | Dandelion Are Soulmates, Jaskier | Dandelion Loves Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Loves Jaskier | Dandelion, Endgame Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, I promise, Bisexual Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Emotionally Constipated Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has a Big Dick, Touch-Starved Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Protective Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Good Friend Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Supportive Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg Friendship, Yennefer ships it, Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg Ships It, Roach is the Best (The Witcher), Roach Ships It (The Witcher), Roach is So Done (The Witcher), Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Being an Idiot, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Secret Identity, Secret Identity Fail, Identity Reveal, Jaskier pretends to be a Man, because plot reasons I dunno, Slow Romance, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow To Update, I'm Sorry, Why Did I Write This?, Mutual Pining, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Interrogation, Part One

Also known as Jake and The Real Bad Week, Part One. Directly follows Come Back. I’ll alternate these with Chris, so you get an idea of what’s happening to both at about the same time. 

CW: Violent beating, electric shock, references to past noncon to another person, institutional brutality, pet whump setting, box boy setting, referenced past domestic abuse

Tagging @finder-of-rings, @burtlederp (@stxck-fxck, it won’t let me tag you!)

“You know,” Jake says, feeling blood thick on his tongue, “usually for something to be considered interrogating, you have to ask a fucking question.” He spits off to the side, trying not to think about the copper taste, the pinkish saliva on the floor. 

“Thanks for telling me how to do my job,” The guy says. He’s older, has a blocky face with a rough-cut jawline, looks like the kind of guy you call the muscle in a movie. His hair is a light sandy blond, graying with age. Could be late forties, early fifties. Could be younger and just lived kind of a shitty life. 

“Well, you haven’t done it so far, so I figured, maybe you just need the help.” Jake keeps his voice low, almost calm, although anger boils in his veins, alongside worry. This is what his mother always told him would happen, if he kept getting deeper into the movement. If you stick your neck out for somebody, Jake, sooner or later someone else is going to come cut your head off.

Fuck if he cares. Somebody has to stick their necks out for the rescues.

Jake thinks of Chris the night he came, the shivering boy with his hair plastered to his head in the rain, silent and with his hands always in tight fists, held perfectly still, at his side. Wide green eyes, rainwater running down his face like tears. Wrapped in a blanket and wearing nothing but a loose pair of nearly-sheer pants that rain had made stick to his legs. Nat, speaking in hurried half-whispers with Vince, who had picked the boy up from some woman he knew and brought him here in the dead hours of the night.

He doesn’t know why he’s here. He doesn’t know anything. His captor called him Baldur. 

Jake thought of taking one look at the delicately wrought, beautiful face and thinking, there’s no fucking way you were eighteen when they found you.

The guy cracks his knuckles. Jake doesn’t flinch.

“I’ve asked you enough questions,” The guy says, kicking out a chair like he’s going to sit, but he doesn’t. “Jakob Collins Stanton-… Collins is a weird middle name.”

“Mother’s maiden name,” Jake shrugs, as best he can. “Mom’s from the South, they do that down there.”

“Hm. My people are Southern, too.” 

“Must be where you get all this fuckin’ hospitality.”

The guy’s fist cracks across his cheekbone and Jake groans, but feels a weird sense of victory, anyway. Pissed you off, nyah nyah, sing-songs a bratty little voice somewhere inside his had. 

“So,” The guy says, like nothing happened. “Jakob Stanton, Junior at the university, but you’re, what, mid-twenties?”

“Non-traditional.”

“Can’t blame you. College is a fucking money-sink these days. Better off going into a business like mine.”

“What, law enforcement?”

There’s a pause. Then, “Yes,” The guy says. Jake raises his eyebrows. “Anyway. You’ve been working at this shelter for… let’s see here… two years. How’d you meet Natalie Yoder, anyway? She’s a known dangerous entity.”

Nat, wild-haired in her housecoat and pajamas, screaming obscenities at the cops to make sure the sounds were loud enough to cover the sound of Jake getting Chris safely hidden in the false-backed closet. The sound of someone slapping her, and the way it didn’t even slow her down.

The red marks on her face when they’d loaded her into the back of one squad car and Jake into the back of the other.

The relief on her face when no one came out of the house with Chris. The way Jake’s pounding heart had leapt, seeing the officers empty-handed, knowing that it meant Chris had understood, had stayed hidden, silent, safe.

Jake closes his eyes, hoping, praying someone will find him and help him. Chris can’t be on his own, not yet, he doesn’t have any of the skills. They hadn’t had time to work on adult life skillsets, yet, just getting him settled, letting him remember what it was like to live in his own skin again. 

Please, please don’t leave the house. Please be safe there. Please, please, please, Chris. I’m coming back for you. They can’t hold me forever.

Please. You deserve someone who keeps their promises, please let me keep my promise to you.

Please let me be able to.

“Yeah, lady who runs a homeless shelter and volunteers at a fucking soup kitchen, she’s a real menace to society,” Jake says dryly.

“You know damn well I’m not talking about her volunteer work. She’s been on our radar for… oh, ten, fifteen years?” 

“Whose?”

The guy stills, then. “What?”

Jake stares into the guy’s flat gray eyes. “Whose radar, man? Whose radar is Nat on? Whose radar picked me up?”

The guy looks at him for another long moment, then looks down at the papers littered across the table. There’s one of those mirrors along the wall, where people on the other side can see you but you can’t see them, but Jake doesn’t think anyone is watching. They’ll want plausible deniability, they’ll want no one to have seen him getting the shit kicked out of him by some asshole on a low-level power trip.

“I asked you a question.”

“I don’t give a fuck. You don’t ask the questions here.” The guy slides a slim manila folder out from underneath the other scattered papers. Jake’s eyes scan the front, where someone has handwritten 223499. The number means nothing to him, beyond a simple certainty that there’s a Box Boy or Box Babe in that folder.

Antoni? Leila? Krista? Chris? Kauri? Could be any of them. Could be one of the others that’ve moved on or moved out. Transitioned back into the lives they deserve, not the cages they’d been locked up in, so WRU could convince them they signed up to suffer.

“‘You don’t ask the questions here’,” Jake mocks him, knowing he’s treading a delicate line, but his palms are starting to sweat and his face hurts and he’s fucking had it with this. “What is this, a movie? Jesus, do they feed you lines to learn at the Academy, or…?”

The guy laughs, a dry, mirthless chuckle. He keeps his fingertips on the folder, then straightens his spine and stands back straight, looking at Jake. “Does it matter? It’s true, cliché or not.”

“Look. I get that you’re enjoying yourself, but I’m more than a little bit over this. Just let me leave, you don’t have shit.” Jake’s been here for hours, and he’s fucking exhausted running on the like three and a half hours of sleep he’d gotten before the raid. He’s got class on Tuesday, he needs someone to take notes since apparently he’s going to be in fucking jail.

Well, unless they have nothing, the way he thinks they do.

“How do you know if we have something on you or not?” The guy asks, his voice low, but genuinely curious. The silence stretches out between them.

Something is off about this.

“What are you charging me with?” Jake asks, watching cautiously as the older man shifts back, steps casually around the table. Jake’s eyes follow his movements. His hands are zip-tied behind him, and he keeps feeling the hard edge of the plastic rubbing against his wrists. It’s starting to hurt, and he’s sure that’s the whole idea of leaving him like this. 

Well, his wrists can join the parade of everything else that already hurts, it’s a club now, and his throbbing, burgeoning black eye is the current reigning president. 

“Whatever we want,” The guy replies, and Jake snorts, then winces as that aggravates whatever happened to his nose on the last punch. It’s not broken, but it’s definitely pissed, and probably his nose is as responsible for the taste of blood in his mouth as biting his tongue is. He can feel something running down the back of his throat, making him clear his throat and cough. Could b blood.

“Well, that tells me something,” Jake says, sitting slowly back in the seat, looking up at the guy. “You’re not a fucking cop, are you?”

It’s a shot in the dark. Just a hunch, something that itches between his shoulder blades. Something about the way the guy moves, the way his uniform doesn’t look quite the same as the other cops, like it’s old-fashioned or something. 

Something about the way the cop looks at him, not like a cop looking at a suspect, more like a butcher looking at a cow and figuring how much he’s going to pay to cut it up.

The guy goes still, before he laughs that dry little rumbling cackle again, and it’s all the answer Jake needs and definitely not the answer he wants. Because if he’s not a cop…

“I know what you are.” Jake’s voice goes nearly breathless, something not quite like panic. Deeper than that is the anger.

Finally, I get to see one of you fuckers face to face.

“And what,” The guy asks, rolling his sleeves up, a carefully practiced gesture of intimidation that makes Jake wonder if he does this in the mirror every morning just to be impressed with himself. “… is that?”

“You’re one of them.”

“Them?” The guy’s gray eyes, flat and lifeless, are on his again. Jake smiles, blood smeared wet across his teeth. Got you.

“You’re WRU.” Jake laughs, then coughs a little and spits more blood from his tongue onto the floor. “You’re fucking Facility assholes. Fucking handler. What, you paid the cops off to raid a fucking halfway house for homeless kids? Jesus, does no one actually sign up willingly? Is this how you get ‘em, you fucks with your goddamn bullshit about changing your life circumst-”

The backhand slams into the side of his face and Jake’s head snaps to the side, his body moving with it, and without his hands he can’t stop himself and he crashes to the ground on his side, head bouncing off the floor with a sickening crack, the chair he was sitting in clattering down after him.

But he’s still kind of laughing, through pain and the air that’s been knocked out of his lungs. What are the fucking odds, huh? He’s been training for cops, for law enforcement helping prop up a shitty system because the government makes the laws and we follow the laws, but that’s the thing, sometimes the laws are bullshit and leave hurting, fucked up, terrified people scattered around in their wake.

And sometimes people like Jake can see it happening.

Stick out your neck, Jake, and the cops’ll find out and cut your head off. This isn’t your fight.

Well, it sure as fuck is now, isn’t it?

He can’t stop laughing, now, because they made him practice how to talk to cops, but nobody ever figured he’d have to deal with a goddamn handler, assholes brainwashing kids like cult leaders into losing their memories, their lives, their independence, their personalities, burying it all under a wall of pain and drugs and fear.

Why didn’t he train for handlers?

Jake laughs, and spits more blood on the floor. Then he laughs some more.

“Shut up. Just keep your fucking mouth shut,” The guy growls at him, and Jake’s head pounds alongside all the other pieces of him, the pain that stitches him together. He’s a puzzle made of aches, and that has him laughing, too. What doesn’t make him laugh, right now? What doesn’t?

The kick of a steel-toed boot to his stomach definitely cuts the sound off, at least, and Jake lets out a low grunt of pain, curling in on himself trying to protect the soft parts, but the guy isn’t interested in kicking his organs, at least not now. He rights the chair and drags Jake back up into it. A fist slams into his face, and then it happens again, and again. 

Jake’s head hangs low, and he’s barely going to be able to see out of one of his eyes tomorrow, but he’s getting the feeling that’s the least of his problems.

“You’re right,” The guy says, and takes a seat across the table, calm as can be. He slides the manila folder across, spins it around so it’ll be right side up when Jake looks at it. Jake stares down, then slowly raises his eyes back up. The guy’s a bit blurred, now, and the pain is a constant of agony through his body. 

Vince has some fake teeth, from what Kauri’s owner did to him when they were kids. Jake wonders idly if Vince will pay for Jake to get some teeth replaced, since this guy’s going to knock some of them out if he keeps this up much longer. 

“I’m not with the cops. They’re going to charge you with resisting arrest-”

“Oh, fuck that bullshit,” Jake says, and his lower lip is swelling, the words are slurred more than he likes between that and his bitten tongue. “I didn’t resist shit.”

“They had to throw you into a wall,” The guy says, calmly.

“You did that!”

“Not on the paperwork, I didn’t, and you sure as fuck can’t prove otherwise. Oh no, you kicked up a fuss, as they say. That’s gonna get you a nice hefty fine.”

Jake thinks of Vince and Nat arguing, some nights, when the movie star stops by to be a fucking nuisance. I don’t do the rescuing, Nat, I just write the goddamn checks.

It’d be nice if Jake had that kind of money. Then again, he wouldn’t want to survive what Vince survived to get there - all the child actor grossness, the predatory producers and directors, Owen Grant drugging him and making him lie about what happened to save his career-

“Hey.” Fingers snap under his nose, and Jake flinches back. The guy grins. “That’s better. I like them flinchy. I told you to take a good look and see if this is anyone you recognize. This is who I’m here to recover.”

Jake’s eyes drop to the open folder laid out in front of him.

Chris looks back at him, standing with his shoulders hunched, staring with empty, blank green eyes in the white t-shirt and black shorts Jake has seen in other photos, before, snuck out by the informants who work in WRU. The flash of the black shock collar around his throat makes Jake’s teeth grind together hard enough to add that ache to the list of pains he’s already feeling.

His hair’s the same, he’s maybe a little thinner, but it’s the empty look in his eyes that gets Jake’s blood running cold, like it always does when he sees them like this. All sense of themselves shoved aside, pushed under the surface, drowning in conditioned responses in place of identity. 

And he’s just a kid.

“You know who this is, don’t you?” The guy asks, and Jake stares into Chris’s eyes. Blank. 

The boy’s hands are motionless fists like stones at the ends of his arms. Still as a statue, not moving at all. No blur of happiness, no taps on the walls, no cold feet pressed against Jake’s legs, no spiderlegs movement into his bed when the night scares him too much to get through alone.

“I’ve never seen this boy in my life,” Jake says, lips numb, and it’s the truth.

Jake only knows Chris.

This photo isn’t of Chris. It’s of an empty slate, ready to be filled with whatever they want to put there, ready to serve, to be an active participant, ready to tilt his head just so to the side and put on a smile that never reaches his eyes and say in a breathy voice, I want this. I want you. 

Just like they all do.

Because if they don’t get it just right, they’re tortured until they do.

“You’re lying to me,” The guy says, tapping his finger on the photo again. He moves the paper aside, and there’s another photo underneath. The same boy, a metal collar around his neck hooked to a chain on the wall. There’s an IV in his arm, and a bag just off to the side. His hands are tied behind his back, and there are deep, deep shadows under the boy’s eyes, wide with tears and pain and fear.

“I’m telling you, I’ve never seen this kid.” Jake’s voice is a little less confident, then. But he doesn’t know this one, either, because this is whoever Chris was, before he was a number, before he was a teenage slave, before he was destroyed and rebuilt.

“Oh, really? I’ve got one more photo I think will change your mind.”

Don’t show me what I think you’re going to show me. Don’t do it. Don’t don’t don’t don’t-

The next photo is of Chris, too. 

He’s crying in it.

Jake has barely allowed his brain to comprehend what exactly is happening to Chris in the final photo - and he will not allow himself to remember it, not ever, never again - before he’s moving, pushing himself to his feet and then crouching to get his shoulder under the table that isn’t bolted into the floor, but it should be.

“Go to fucking hell, you piece of shit,” Jake growls, and pushes the table over with his shoulder.

It falls nearly on top of the asshole in his chair, knocking him back with a low yelp and scattering photos everywhere, paperwork slipping across the floor like stones skimming the surface of a lake. By the time the guy has started to stand back up, Jake is kicking the table at him, all of it happening in some deep slow motion of misery in his mind.

Chris deserved better. Chris deserved a family. Chris deserved to be safe. They all deserve to be safe. They all deserve something other than this.

The guy gets back to his feet, baring his teeth at Jake in a snarl. They stand, staring at each other, as the guy pulls a slim back baton off his belt, hits a button, and there’s the distinct crackle of electricity.

Jake’s eyes widen, panting still with the exertion that came with pushing the table over, his leg muscles stretched and protesting. “I know what that is,” He says, his tongue a leaden weight in his mouth. His heart drops to his knees.

They hurt us all the fucking time with their sticks, Kauri whispers in his mind. Again and again and again, until we’re not bad any longer. 

“Struck a nerve,” The guy says, and wipes at his mouth with the back of one hand. Jake doesn’t take his eyes off the baton. “You do know who that is, don’t you? We’re in the market to get him back where he belongs.”

Jake slowly looks up to meet the guy’s flat gray eyes.

He’s already hurting so fucking much. What’s a little more pain, when there’s someone else’s life on the line?

It’s not your fight, Jake. If you stick your neck out-

I’m making it my fight, Mom. Let them cut my fucking head off.

I was tired of having to stand and watch and not be able to help when I was ten and the bruises were on you, I sure as fuck don’t have to stand and watch when the pain is in him. 

I can help now.

Try and stop me.

“I have no clue who that is,” Jake sneers, tightening his hands into fists behind his back. This is going to hurt. This is going to hurt and hurt and hurt, and it’s not going to stop, not until he’s not bad anymore, and Jake has no intention of being good. “But I know you’re the fucking pervert in the photo with him. You got a name so I can get you turned in to the real cops?”

The guy snorts, trying on a sneering smile, but Jake’s move with the table threw him off his smug little rhythm, and the smile isn’t real. “You can call me Mr. Everly. Or Sir.”

My Sir used to lock me outside when it stormed when I was bad

There were hooks in the wall for me in Sir’s bedroom

I had to stay in the basement sometimes so no one would see me

Jake swallows, hard. How far can anger carry you, against pain? He’s about to find out. His mother’s going to be ashamed of him, when she finds out he did this. But sometimes people are ashamed of you when you do the right thing. And right now there’s a boy waiting somewhere for Jake to keep his promise.

“All right, then, Everly. My name is Jake Stanton. I’m a junior in college. I’m twenty-five years old and I work in a homeless shelter for at-risk young adults and Nat Yoder’s been my boss for two years and I’ve never seen that kid before in my fucking life.”

“I don’t believe you.” The guy advances on him, and Jake backs up, right into a wall. It’s just the two of them, in here, and he’s sure that the camera in the corner near the ceiling is turned off. He’s going to walk out of here, but he might not be walking when he does it. He might not be crawling, either.

But he’s not going to give this guy a single piece of information he can use to ruin a life so fragile, so recently built.

Wait for me, Chris.

“I don’t give a shit if you believe me, it’s the truth.”

The guy raises the baton, brings it down, and Jake collapses to the ground, screaming at the pain that runs through every muscle as they lock up, nerves sparking with electricity. It comes down again, and again, and again, and everything is pain, and Jake’s eyes close tight and he doesn’t try to be strong, to hold out. He screams, and cries, and he holds green eyes in his mind, he holds backflips and yoga, and swinging from the high bars to the low bars, landing on his feet.

A bright and sunny smile as Chris lands on his feet, arms in the air, and immediately asks if Jake will watch him do it again.

Don’t leave, don’t run, don’t go somewhere you’re not safe, we’re coming back for you.

The baton turns into fists, into the ends of those steel-toed boots, into bruises that blossom and the sounds Jake is making are barely human as he curls up on the ground. When he’s hauled up into the chair again, the guy asks him more questions.

Jake stares at him, body singing with pain, and says nothing at all.

“You’re going to be annoying,” The guy says. “I can tell.”

Jake grins at him, bitterly, and spits a little more blood on the floor. 

“I sure fuckin’ hope so. I want my goddamn phone call.”

“Thought you said I wasn’t a cop.”

“You’re not. But I want my phone call, anyway.” Jake stares at him, bleary and blurry thanks to the blood running into his eyes. “And I know you want to listen to it.”

The guy pauses, is quiet for a second. Jake doesn’t breathe.

“Fine.”

I’m coming back for you, Chris, I promise, but first I’m going to send someone who can help. If she can find you. 

Please, please be waiting where she can find you.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

I was thinking, what if Jake accidentally triggered Chris? Like maybe Jake casually says something that sir would say when he was about to punish Chris. He’d probably feel so guilty.

So this isn’t exactly what you asked for, but it hits on another ask I received and is very similar! (sorry, other asker, I ended up losing your ask because Tumblr sucks)

CW: References to past whump involving a minor. PTSD/trauma response to stressful stimuli. Includes description of stimming including head banging. VERY vague references to past implied noncon.

Chris’s mind runs fast. Not as fast as his mouth, but that’s okay, he can mostly catch up to himself if he works at it. His mind runs fast but it also derails and crashes on tiny details when he’s trying to finish his chores, and he never had chores before he came to live here but he doesn’t mind them - it’s just hard to get them done when there keep being so many other things to look at.

He’s supposed to be cleaning the living room, and it takes Jake maybe half an hour to do this but Chris has been at it for nearly forty-five minutes, he thinks, maybe longer… and he’s still just trying to finish dusting all the shelves.

The thing is - the TV is on, because he likes the background noise, but words keep catching his attention, little phrases and bits of information his brain wants to add to the constant loop of his thoughts. Plus - plus, on top of the TV and the swirly letters he can’t read on all the books, and the way the throw pillows have kind of a cool texture - on top of all of that, there’s a chipmunk outside.

He knows it’s a chipmunk because Jake told him about how they chirp, which he didn’t know before he came here. Chris mostly didn’t know anything before he came here, but he’s learning, piece by piece.

The chirping keeps catching his attention, drawing him away, slowing him down. He’s no good at cleaning, he can’t think about it long enough, cleaning is too slow and too methodical for his brain. But he likes doing chores, because chores mean he belongs here.

He fluffs a throw pillow, then runs his fingertips over the rough braided texture right down the center, a change from the silky-touch feel of the sides. Silk, rough, silk, rough, silk, rough.

His eyes start to unfocus, go slightly blank.

Silk, rough, just like-

“How’s it going, Chris?” Nat calls from upstairs. She’s turning over all the mattresses and changing the sheets today, Antoni is with her, while Leila works on cleaning the bathroom upstairs and Jake’s down here, in the kitchen, just a few feet away. 

“It’s, it’s, it’s it’s it’s good!” Chris calls back, jerking himself into motion, but he can hear the chipmunk outside still, calling and calling and calling. Is it missing someone?

Do I miss someone?

The thought breaks in, strange and uncertain, hardly his own. It’s plaintive, sad. It’s a thought that belongs to Baldur in the dark nights, and to the numbered boy before that in the flat white room. It’s not a thought that belongs to Chris, who stands next to the window and looks out into  sunny day. It’s not a thought he wants.

So he ignores it.

 Thoughts like that come with headaches that leave him shaking in the dark, and he’s very good at ignoring anything that might bring on the pain again.

He moves to clean around the windowsills, which - who ever heard of doing that, but it’s on the list she reads out to him, and he tries to remember everything. He’s getting better.

The chipmunk chirps outside the window, a kind of throat-swallow sound, and Chris finds himself echoing the noise, making a high-pitched eep-eep-eep sound. It doesn’t sound like the chipmunk at all, but the little animal goes silent outside when he does it, and Chris feels a thrill.

It understood I was trying to talk to it. Maybe it’s listening to me.

That’s a silly thought, and he tries to tell himself it’s stupid, but when he thinks awful things about himself he can kind of hear how Jake would respond if he said them out loud. You’re smart, Chris, you’re smarter than you think you are - you’re brilliant in there, we’re just bringing it back out. Don’t talk down about yourself. The way you think about yourself is how you think about the world.

Chris mostly loves the world, now. So he tries to love himself.

The chipmunk starts back up again, and Chris moves closer, a smile on his face. Slow, and careful, step by step, cleaning forgotten, he tilts his head and-… there it is. Tiny body no bigger than a mouse in a movie, reddish-brown with the black and white stripes across its head and down its back.

Jake says they have stripes like that because the things that eat them don’t see color like people do, and the stripes help them hide.

I wish I had stripes to help me hide.

But the thought doesn’t matter, because Chris doesn’t have to hide anymore. He puts that thought away, too. Lets it sink into the revolving mix of things going on inside his mind at any given moment. Right now it’s mostly the chipmunk.

His hand keeps moving with the rag in it, wiping back and forth across the windowsill, spraying the glass cleaner and wiping at that, too, but it’s half-hearted and he knows he’s leaving streaks. He just… can’t quite stop thinking about the little chipmunk he can just see, hardly a breath of an animal, sitting in Nat’s grass under the white birch tree in her front yard.

If you go to the tree you can peel strips of white and black bark away, easy as cake, like peeling away all his skin to find the real him underneath.

There’s a voice, behind him, from the TV. Smooth, genial, warm and slightly arrogant, the voice of someone who has total and perfect confidence in themselves. 

Chris drops the glass cleaner, the plastic bottle bouncing off the floor. The chipmunk catches some hint of the sudden movement and takes off, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

“Of course, Deborah. But I don’t think it’s fair to remove this right that’s been enshrined in our laws since 1952 just because a few protesters get their, well, I won’t say it in polite company. But just because a few protesters are bothered, that’s no reason to get rid of an entire system that’s working just fine. We need to crack down on abuse, of course, and these nasty rumors about illegal acquisition - which, I know the head of WRU personally, I can tell you that’s all a bunch of nonsense-”

Chris’s constant running barrage of thoughts comes to a stuttering halt.

He turns slowly around, cleaning rag still clutched in his other hand, his heart somewhere trapped around his knees, to stare at the TV.

There’s a woman on the screen right now, with blonde hair shellacked in a kind of circle around her head, wearing bright red lipstick and a dress to match. She tilts her head at a practiced angle, and Chris unconsciously echoes the motion. His free hand twists, fingers twitching in a kind of dance, before they tap against his own side. Tap-tap-tap-tap, the motion soothing him, calming him, a rush of something pleasant that fights the fear.

“Of course, Governor Branch-”

“Oh, how do I love to hear myself called that, still,” The man replies. He sits back, the slight shine of the light off his hair makes Chris dizzy. He can almost smell the hair product that’s in it, can almost feel the smooth fabric of the suit Sir is wearing slipping through his fingers.

That’s the one he wore the night Miss Megan saved me.

“Speaking of illegal acquisitions, there’ve been persistent rumors surrounding WRU and its competing corporations about pet abuse, abductions, even minors being put into the system. What would you say o the protesters and pet liberation groups asking for better, more thorough investigations? Would you support the call for a Congressional investigation?””

Sir laughs - it’s a lovely laugh, pulling a smile onto the woman’s face, it’s a laugh Chris has dreams and nightmares about - and Chris lets out a choked-off sound. 

Baldur, darling, you do know how to make a man laugh, don’t you?

His fingers twist faster, tap harder into his side. He steps away, stumbling gracelessly, until he can find a hard surface, the wall. He taps on it as fast as he can, a constant barrage of tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, holding back the worst of the fear, keeping it at bay.

The rush of the sensation isn’t enough to beat back the fog in his mind. He’s buying time but not enough. He can hear Jake singing to himself in the kitchen, and his mouth opens to call, to say, that’s him, that’s my Sir, that’s him on TV, but no sound comes out.

Outside, the chipmunk starts chirping again.

Chris slides down to the floor, curling himself up into a ball, staring fixedly at the screen. 

“Deborah, I have spoken to my good friend Timothy Rahm - current CEO of WRU, sorry, not all your viewers are going to know that, are they? - and he has assured me again and again that WRU has absolutely no minors in the system. They have strict physical examinations and quality control checks that ensure every single pet is of legal consenting age.”

Sir smiles, flash of bright white teeth. Chris thinks of whitening strips laid out in a little stray next to Sir’s sink. He had to look good for cameras. He does look good, in his suit with his tan and his sparkly amused eyes. 

Darlin’, don’t look upset. You’re going to stay right here in the basement for the party, can’t have anyone getting too good a look, can we?

But, but, but but I don’t like the, the basement, Sir I don’t-

Baldur. You’ll stay in the basement. No arguments.

Yes, Sir.

Chris leans his head over, until it thumps into the wall. Briefly, he feels a burst of better, a wash of something like adrenaline, but soothing, calming. So he does it again. And again. And again.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

The chipmunk is silent, listening outside to the sound of Chris as his thoughts revolve and focus around the man on the TV.

He can’t hear what they’re saying any longer, he doesn’t try to. He lets the sound of Sir’s voice, melodic and warm, wash over and around him, but if he keeps thumping his head on the wall - if he keeps tapping, too, if he can just do both - he won’t let him in.

Get him to stop doing that thing with his hand, it’s annoying as hell. I don’t care how, tie his fucking hands down. Teach him not to do that anymore.

The voice wants to trickle under his skin, but a good thump - it’s not painful, it doesn’t hurt, it’s only a shake out of his freezing, it’s holding back the sounds that would hurt if they made it too far in - knocks it back out.

Not yours. Not yours. Not yours. Not yours.

He chants along with the thumps of his head, the taps of his fingers. He whispers without sound. 

Better now. Better now. Better now. Better now.

His eyes go unfocused, and Sir is gone, but Chris can’t remember quite how to find his own way back. He doesn’t know how long he floats there, waiting. He doesn’t even know what he’s waiting for.

Someone crouches down in front of him and Chris flinches - no, no, he’s not supposed to touch the walls any longer, he has to stop or he’ll be in trouble again - only to feel Jake’s warm hands on his shoulders, up his neck, on either side of his face.

Jake’s smell, simple clean shower-smell, nothing like Sir’s heavy cologne. Jake smells like soap from the shower and fresh-cut grass from mowing the lawn this morning and the sun that shone in his hair when he did it, while Chris watched from inside.

“Chris?”

“I, I, I, I… I I I saw, I saw, I saw-”

Jake’s eyebrows furrow in concern, a hint of worry lines across his forehead. “What did you see, man? Can you tell me what you saw? Can you tell me what’s in your head right now?”

Sir isn’t on TV anymore. They’ve moved on to talk about something else. Chris swallows, looking up at Jake, then shoves himself forward to push into Jake’s chest, tap-tap-tapping on his side. Jake doesn’t stop him, Jake never ever stops him, he understands the tapping helps. Jake only puts one arm around him and holds him tightly, leaving the other down so Chris can tap, twist-fingers-tap-shirt, again and again.

The simple, clean rush of calm, bit by bit, building a wall to fight back the waves of awful things that want to dig under his skin.

“Chris, I need you to talk to me. What did you see? What happened?”

Chris closes his eyes, thinks of Sir’s smile, just like it always was. His laugh.

Thinks of being good in the dark.

“I saw a chipmunk,” Chris whispers. “Saw, I saw, there was a, a, a-a-a chipmunk, saw a chipmunk, saw-… then the TV, I-… on the, the TV on the tv there was, um, on the TV-”

“Okay. Okay, I know that wasn’t it, but… do you need me to turn off the TV? Would that help?”

Chris nods into Jake’s shirt, clutching hard onto the fabric, tapping his fingers. Hold it back, hold it back, push back the fear and the noise. “Heard, on the TV, I-I-I heard, I heard-”

“It’s okay. Look, I’m going to-… there, if I stretch I can just grab it-” Jake reaches out with his free hand, shakes the side table next to the couch until the remote drops off of it onto the floor within his reach. He turns off the TV and the sudden lack of sound fills the room with a new kind of weight. “No rush, buddy.” Jake squeezes Chris’s shoulders with one arm. “No rush to tell me. Take your time. You’re okay, you’re right here with us, this is Nat’s house. Nobody’s here but us, and we’re safe. I’ve got you, man.”

“You’ve, you’ve got me,” Chris whispers. He feels an urge to thump his head on Jake’s shoulder like he did on the wall, but manages not to. Only just. He can still hear Sir’s voice, like music that won’t stop playing, like when you get a song stuck in your head.

Sir would hate him wearing Jake’s big T-shirt, would hate the silky-mesh basketball shorts he wears all the time. Would hate his knobby knees sticking out from them, his sharp elbows that dig when he doesn’t mean them to. Sir hated his cold feet under the covers.

Jake doesn’t mind any of those things. Jake gives him the shirts he likes, and holds him, and doesn’t stop him from doing the things he has to do to keep his mind from running away too far for him to catch it. Sir was on the screen, but Jake has him here, and only one of those things is real.

Outside, a bit of bark peels away from the white birch tree in the wind, slowly revealing soft, easily-damaged wood the color of pale human skin underneath.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

The Birthmother: Dad Fluff

CW: Referenced past noncon - including noncon that occurred underage, frankly discussed past abusive relationship involving minors, referenced past captivity, referenced victim blaming. Frank discussion of difficult circumstances and mindsets surrounding adoption from adoptive parent and birth parent points of view.

Danny speaks with Mina’s birthmother just after her birth. This one’s a heartbreaker, guys - for Danny and for Marie West, Mina’s birthmother. Basically I’ve been tearing up in Starbucks for two hours now and will now inflict it on all of you.

“Can… Can I ask why?” Danny folds himself into the small chair in the hospital room, the plastic pastel padding doing nothing to make it even remotely comfortable to sit in, the pale wood arms and frame nearly the same color as his skin.

He hasn’t slept since they got the call that she was finally in labor, and he can feel an exhaustion headache beginning to throb just behind his eyes - still, he’s gone longer than this without sleeping, and the teenage girl in the hospital bed beside him hasn’t slept, either.

Marie West, fifteen years old and the birthmother of Danny’s daughter, looks down at her hands. She has beautiful fingernails, carefully manicured and painted a perfect even pinkish-cream color that pops against her skin.

“Why what?” She asks, in a low voice.

They’re alone in the room, except for the tiny newborn currently sleeping in the clear plastic rolling ‘crib’ next to Marie’s bed. She’s heavily swaddled in the white blanket with pink and blue stripes that, Danny thinks, it seems like every newborn in America gets as the very first thing they own.

The baby girl is approximately eight and a half hours old, and she has lighter brown skin than her mother, a tiny little mouth that moves in her sleep, and a thick fuzz of black hair that covers her head. She will be Danny’s daughter, if Marie doesn’t change her mind before the grace period is up, and Danny’s heart beats in his throat every time he thinks of that possibility… and he’s not sure whether he wants her to keep to her plan, or if some deep part of him wants to see her decide to keep the little girl, make the best of it, create a life that her child can be a part of.

Some part of him has always been wondering what it would have been like to have his birthmother decide to create a life with him.

“Why us? I mean, um, you don’t… really have to tell me. I just asked Nate and your mom to get coffee and give us a sec because, um, I wondered if… if you wouldn’t… if you couldn’t use a few minutes. I can go, too, if that’s better.”

Danny moves to stand, and stops when he catches Marie shifting around in the bed. She’s wearing a pink hospital gown with little patterned birds on it. It has a slit on each side for feeding the baby, although Marie has told Danny she isn’t going to. I’m sorry, I just can’t, she said to the nurse, who looked at her with perfect compassion and brought in tiny little bottles of premade formula, showing Danny how to give them to the little girl they have yet to name.

He doesn’t want to - not until he knows for sure that Marie won’t decide to take her home, give her a new name, and Danny and Nate will have to start again.

“No, you’re okay, don’t go. I just.” Marie shrugs, inspecting her hands for a few moments longer. Her hair falls in thick black waves around her face. “I, I guess… I just, um, liked you.”

Danny nods, swallowing against a knot in his throat, against the nervousness that makes his fingers clumsy, his hands want to shake. It’s funny, to have lived through what he has but asking a teenager why she wanted to give him a baby is what really scares him, now. “Thanks,” He says after the pause draws just a little too long, belatedly trying to cover it. “I, um, like to think I’m… likable.”

“Yeah.” There’s another pause. In it, the newborn baby girl makes a soft, high-pitched grunting sound, and both of them look to her with automatic instinct. She quiets and settles again on her own. 

Marie sighs, and Danny wonders what she thinks, when the baby makes noise. Does a part of her want to take care of things, to hold the baby as tightly as she can and never let go? Does she just want someone to take the baby away? Is she fighting both feelings, all at once?

“Why… why did you like me?” Danny scoots the chair a little closer, wincing at the awful scraping sound it makes along the nondescript tile floor, but Marie doesn’t seem to notice. She keeps staring down at her hands.

“Because… because. Um. Because I, I just, because you said you were adopted, too, in your profile? File folder. Whatever. What the, the lady gave us to look at, my mom and me… it, like, said you were adopted when you were five.”

“Yep. I was in foster care before that.” Danny shrugs, folding his hands together, elbows on his thighs as he bends over, trying to read her face. He’s good at reading the mood of a room - he had to be, for years being able to read Abraham’s mood had been his only shot at lessening the pain he might be in. “You liked the idea of me being adopted?”

“I liked that you… you can tell her. You understand being adopted. You’re just the only one… you were the only person we looked at who I just thought could, um, like, tell her that it’s… it’s not her fault she was born.” Marie’s voice dropped into a whisper. Danny watched the tears welling up in her eyes, and suddenly he understood, all at once, the other reason he and Nate had been chosen. “It’s not her fault that she was, was fucking born... it’s mine.”

Danny lets the silence draw out between them, and then he reaches out with one rough, scarred hand to take hers. She grips onto him painfully tightly, but he doesn’t flinch - he can take this kind of pain, this is nothing, not when you’ve had your back carved up for hours kneeling in the dirt - and he keeps his eyes carefully on hers.

He doesn’t touch other people very often, but he understands, now, that Marie West doesn’t want to touch other people anymore, either, and for a very similar reason.

“You were r-raped,” He says, softly. It took him so long to say it out loud - for months after it was all over he still referred to what Abraham did as sex, as if it were normal, because Abraham had told him again and again - it was one of his rules - you can’t rape the puppy. He shudders against the memory, pushing it down, because… because this moment, in this hospital room, isn’t about him. “That’s why you liked us. Because.. Because I was, too. You were, um… you were raped. Like me.”

“N-not, like, like you,” Marie says, her voice bubbling and breaking with the tears that she is fighting like hell to hold back. He wants to tell her to cry, to sob her heart out, that he can sit here with her in silence and be someone who understands the need… but he knows just as much that she needs to not cry, that she’s been crying for months without stopping, that she just wants to be able to stop. “He w-wasn’t a stranger, he was, was my… my boyfriend.”

Danny nods, and he moves his other hand to hold onto hers, too, and they sit there in silence while she sniffs back the tears that try to escape, setting her jaw with grim determination as she fights them back inside of herself.

“We dated for, like, six months,” She says softly, almost hoarsely. “Then, one night… and I don’t know, I just, I was scared because he got so mad and I went along with it. And then we, we just kept… I never really, you know, he would get so mad I didn’t want to say no, and-”

“It doesn’t matter,” Danny whispers, with real ferocity. Her eyes go to his, and he looks right in her warm brown eyes, knowing that his own have turned to something like a cold, cold ocean blue. “Listen to me. It doesn’t matter, it took me a long t-time to, um, to understand it, but it doesn’t matter if you can say no. Not saying no isn’t the same as saying yes, Marie, okay?”

She nods, sort of rapidly, her shoulders sagging. She pulls her hands back and Danny lets go quickly, his own skin crawling with touching other people, but he ignores the feeling for now. “Did you learn th-that in therapy?” She asks with a wry smile, watery and unconvincing, but there. “I have to go to therapy now, my mom takes me.”

“I did learn that in therapy. I have… I have a good therapist. She’s about to retire, I just…” He shrugs a little. “I learned a lot from her. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t be able to do this, to have a baby, if I hadn’t gone to her.”

“I don’t want this baby,” Marie whispers, with the air of someone confessing a sin. “I don’t want her. I know she’s, it’s not her fault, and my mom thinks she’s cute, but I don’t… I don’t want his baby. You’re supposed to want babies, when you’re pregnant, but it just felt like this thing kept growing - like I had a monster inside of me - and I didn’t want it because it came from him, and I don’t… I wanted to find someone who would want, um, want her. Because it’s not her fault.” Marie rested one hand over her stomach, lightly rounded but already slowly growing less and less, day by day. “It was… it was mine.”

“It wasn’t,” Danny says, gently but firmly. “It’s not your fault. It’s not hers, sure, but it’s not, um, it’s not yours either. It’s not our fault, what happened to us. Okay?”

She looks over at him - just for a second, before her eyes skip away again. “That’s why I picked you,” She says, her voice evening out again, the tears drying as quickly as they came. Pushed deep within herself, to wait until the next breakdown, the next moment when it was all too much, too soon. “Because you, um, you know. My mom recognized you from when you were in the news, and I looked you up online and realized… she wanted me to pick someone else, kind of? But I, I just… I just thought… th-there’s nobody better for that, that baby than someone who can tell her… someone who can tell her that it’s not her fault, and that someone loves her.” Her lips pressed together, guilty and miserable. “I can’t.”

“I get that. My birthmom couldn’t, either. Thanks for telling me.” He smiles at her, encouragingly, and she manages another smile in his direction before she lays back against the pillows, picking up the remote to turn on the TV. They sit there in silence for a while.

Just when Danny has started to consider going to find Nate and Marie’s mother, she speaks again. “You have to want her, though. It’s not her fault that she was born, and you have to want her because I can’t.”

“I do,” Danny says softly. “I want her so badly, Marie. I have, I have a name picked out and everything. We… we picked our names months ago actually, before anyone chose us. We sat around talking about it for, um, for weeks and weeks… it was funny to, to talk about it and there not actually be a baby… and then we decorated the nursery but, you know, we had to talk about what if you decided to keep her and we just… had this nursery sitting around our house-”

“I won’t change my mind.” Marie shook her head. “Everyone keeps asking. I won’t. I want you to have her. I want you to, to tell her that someone loves her.”

“I will,” Danny says gently. He moves from the chair to sit on the side of the bed, just slightly resting on it with his legs off to the side and feet on the floor. Marie doesn’t look at him right away, but the set of her jaw starts to waver again. “I will, Marie, I promise. I’ll tell her every fucking day how loved and wanted she is. I… I wasn’t… I wasn’t wanted, by my parents. I wasn’t adopted because they wanted me. And I’m not ever going to do that to a kid, okay?”

“Okay.” Marie says it softly, but the strain is in her voice again. “Okay, okay. Okay. Good.”

“If you want to meet her,” Danny says gently, “We would be happy to fly down here again-”

“I won’t.”

“If you ever do. I’m going to leave all our contact info with your mom, and if you want to see her… please, Marie. This is your baby, too-”

She shakes her head rapidly, her hair flying out around her, and Danny realizes her hands are gripped onto each other so tightly she’s pressed ash-pale divots into her brown skin. “She’s not. She’s, she’s his baby.”

“Okay. I won’t push. Just know that the option is there, if you change your mind.”

She nods again, once more, curt, still not looking at him. Danny wonders, to himself, if his own mother was given a conversation like this before the state took him away. If his birthmother, barely a teenager and recovering from surgery, had been told she could see her son if she wanted and said, no, I won’t, he’s not mine.

“I’m sorry,” Danny says gently. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sure you’ve spent… this whole time getting, um, getting pressured about it. I’ll go now.”

Before he can get up, she reaches out to grab him - it’s an all-at-once movement he nearly flinches back from, and a low deep voice in his mind says never flinch or pull away from Abraham in an echo he’s nearly broken but can’t quite shake. She hisses - it has to ache, moving like that so soon after having a baby, he knows it has to hurt to do what she’s done, and to do it knowing she won’t even bring the baby home afterwards.

“Please tell her I’m sorry,” Marie says, and her voice is choked as she pulls Danny down into a hug. He doesn’t pull back, his skin crawls but he holds onto her tightly, sliding his long arms around behind her thin hospital gown, pulling her as close to him as he can. Her head falls against his shoulder and she starts to sob, muffled sounds into his sweater - even in Texas, Danny is always cold and thinks maybe he’ll never not be cold again.

He holds her while she cries, and he doesn’t say anything, but he can feel in her that she doesn’t want him to speak. She just wants there to be someone to cry with, someone who has been there, someone who knows.

“J-Just tell her I’m, I’m so sorry, I c-couldn’t, pl-please tell her I couldn’t-”

“I will,” Danny says gently, rocking back and forth a little. What Nate does for him when he cries, when he is overwhelmed by the lost time and the horror that happened, the things he saw and felt and experienced weighing him down. The way Nate rocks with him when his back hurts so badly he can’t move, when his ribs ache with every breath. “I’ll tell her every day she is loved, and wanted, and that you were so fucking strong for her.”

“St-strong would be t-t-taking her home,” Marie says, in a voice like a guilty whimper.

Danny tightens his arms around her. “No,” He says softly, but firmly. “Strong is making the choice you have to make, to keep going, for the both of you. Strong is doing what you have to do to stay alive, to survive.” He is talking to Marie West, a fifteen-year-old girl in Texas who is giving him a baby… but he’s talking to a thirteen-year-old girl thirty years ago, too, a little girl who maybe turned her face away from the tiny premature redheaded newborn they showed her and said I can’t, I can’t, I don’t want to.

He is talking, as well, to a twenty-two year old man crying as he begs for mercy that isn’t coming, that Abraham Denner never had it in him to give.

“You’re strong,” He says out loud, to her and to his birthmother and to himself. To everyone like them, to everyone who had to make the hard choices they’ve made to keep moving when it would have been easier, maybe, to give up. “You have to survive for yourself, too. I’m so, so grateful you’re doing this, but I’m so sorry this happened to you. When I tell her about you, I’m going to tell her that you had to be so fucking strong when you shouldn’t have had to be strong, I’m going to tell her that you did what you had to do to give her the family you wanted for her, I’m going to tell her that she is the most loved and wanted little girl in the world. I know you don’t want to keep her, and you think that means you don’t love her-”

“I don’t, I don’t want her, I don’t want her and I’m supposed to want my baby,” Marie half-wails, fingers twisted into the fabric of his sweater, holding tightly. “But I don’t, I don’t, and I’m supposed to and I don’t…”

He hears shuffling steps outside, low voices, one of them Nate’s. He glances up to see Marie’s mother in the doorway, a hand over her mouth, Nate’s hand over her arm to keep her from moving inside.

“Sssshhhh, it’s okay. You’re okay. You don’t have to, okay? Wanting a baby isn’t a switch that turns on, not like this.” He thinks he should kiss the top of her head, some kind of parental something, but he can’t. His skin half-burns with what it feels like to be touched without it being his idea, but he forces back the sick flip of his stomach, the sense that his control over himself is being undone, and he focuses instead on the simple fact that Marie West is hurting, and he can help her. “It’s okay. We’re going to take her home, and Nate wants to be Dad, we already decided - and I’ll be Daddy. And if you ever, ever want to see her, Marie, you’re still Mommy. Okay? And if you don’t want to be ever, that’s okay, too, it’s your choice. You decide who you are, not that guy who hurt you, not your mom or your dad, not us. You decide. You get to decide who you are, after all of this, after you survive.”

Marie nods against him, sniffling, and her sobs start to fade, to come back under control. “Oh my god,” She mutters without raising her head. “Oh my god, the fucking hormones or something, I’m so sorry, I’m crying with a fucking stranger, I’m so sorry, I just-”

“No problem.” He pats at her back, then rubs in a soothing circle. “If you want to call and talk to me about… about the thing with that guy, I’d be happy to. Whatever you need, Marie. We’re here, and we, um, we know… we know a little bit about it. Not, not the way it happened to you, but-”

“Do you ever stop feeling like it’s your fault it happened?” Marie asks, in a whisper.

Danny hopes her mother can’t hear it.

He leans down to whisper back, curled around her. “It took a while. But sometimes… sometimes I go whole weeks where I remember, the whole time, that it wasn’t. And you’ll get that, too. Okay? You’ll get there. It takes a while, and it takes therapy and I take some pills, too, but… but you’ll get there. One day you’ll wake up, and you’ll get halfway through the day and realize you haven’t thought about him at all.”

“Y-you… you promise?”

“I promise.” He holds her for another few seconds, glancing up at her mother with a slight smile. Nate raises his eyebrows in question, and Danny holds up one finger - just a second. “I promise, Marie. I absolutely swear it.”

She nods again, and slowly pulls back, wiping at her eyes almost frantically. He notices, for the first time, pretty gold stud earrings in her ears, and a small gold hoop up in the shell of her ear on one side. “Um. Can I… can I ask you something? I mean, that’s ridiculous when I just cried on you, b-but… can I… ask something?”

Danny steels himself - people are always asking can I ask you something? And the questions get worse and more invasive each time, wondering did he ever do anything that felt good and do you miss him and what was it like to have someone break your arm on purpose or his personal current absolute least-favorite, do you ever think about how if you hadn’t gone over to your friend’s house, none of it would have happened? Do you think maybe you could have done something different to make it end faster?

“Yeah,” He says softly, when he’s ready. “Go ahead.”

She licks at her lips - dry and cracked, a little chapped - and then asks, hesitantly, “What’s the name?”

“What?” He blinks, thrown totally off-guard.

“Y-you said you guys already talked about names… what, um, what name did you pick for her? For your baby.” She subtly emphasizes the your - more for herself than for him, Danny thinks. Her eyes slip over to the infant, still sleeping peacefully in her crib, making the occasional low contented grunt.

“Oh.” Danny feels relief like a wave, nearly knocking him off the hospital bed. “Oh. Yeah, sure, I’ll… sure. We want to call her Mina Nicole. After, um, after a book I like… a character in a book I like. And Nicole was Nate’s mom’s name.”

“Which name does she get? Yours or his?”

“His,” Danny says firmly. “I don’t care about my name. My brother can give it to his kids.”

“Oh, shit. Hit on a sore spot,” Marie says softly, and laughs - her laugh is low and soft, and absolutely beautiful. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s… it’s okay. Mina Nicole Vandrum.”

She repeats the name, in a soft wondering voice, then looks back at the baby. “She looks like a Mina Vandrum, I think. It’s, I like… I like the name you picked. Um. You’ll be a good dad, I think, Mr. Michaelson-”

“Danny. Just… just Danny, please.”

“Okay. Danny. Thanks for… for all that.” She waved her hand vaguely, and then settled back against the pillows. Just as she settled in, her mother sweeps into the room, making plenty of noise to seem like she’d only just walked up rather than been watching in the door.

“Marie! Brought you your coffee. I figure you don’t need decaf if you’re not going to be breastfeeding, anyway.”

“Mom, you never let me have coffee,” Marie says, surprised, as she takes the cup from her mother’s hands. “Thanks. What’s… why-”

“You’re doing a real grown-up thing, and you’ve had a real shit few grownup months,” Marie’s mother says gently, reaching out to tuck a bit of her daughter’s hair behind her ear. “I’m not going to begrudge you a cup of damn coffee, babygirl.”

Marie’s eyes well up again, but she nods, swallowing back her tears. “Th-thanks, Mom.”

There is a moment where mother and daughter look at each other, and Danny sees the child in the teenager, desperate for the first voice she ever heard to still be there to stand between her and the monsters in the world - and in her mother, tired and maybe just as scared by all of this as Marie, the woman who, fifteen years earlier, had had her own baby to bring home.

A woman who, when she cradled the newborn Marie, could never have imagined having to be this kind of strong for her daughter, not like this, not so soon.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Danny says softly, and catches the look of gratitude Marie’s mom shoots him, as he pushes himself up and off the bed. “I’d like to talk to, um, to Nate out in the waiting room for a little while.”

“Do you want to take her?” Marie’s mother asks, nodding towards the infant in the little clear plastic rolling crib. “Out in the hall? I’d love to speak with my babygirl for a little bit.”

Danny nods quickly, trying not to look too eager as he moves to pick up the tiny little newborn - she hardly weighs a thing in his arms, as he slides one hand carefully under her head to keep it steady, so it won’t fall back. She doesn’t wake up, only smacks her lips a few times and settles right under his chin as he lays her against his chest.

She feels like she was always meant to be there, right against his heart.

“Grab a b-bottle,” Marie says softly, sipping her coffee. “She’ll want to eat.”

Being a mother doesn’t always mean raising the baby yourself, Danny wants to tell her, picking up one of the tiny little prepackaged bottles of newborn formula the nurses brought in. He wants to say that sometimes being the mother your baby needs is helping her build the family you want her to have, even if you’re not in the center of it. He wants to say, my mother gave me to the state and I found my family in the end, and Mina has her family and you’re still part of it, whatever part you want to play. You’ll survive this, and it’s going to be okay.

He’s not sure how to say it without tearing up himself. He hopes someone told his mother that, when she was so little, and scared, and had to be too strong too soon.

He carries Mina carefully to the door, stopping to kiss Nate before he moves into the hallway, listening to the noisy breathing of the newborn in his arms.

Marie’s mother steps up, gives Danny a slight smile, and closes the door to the room to give she and her daughter some privacy.

“Is she oh-okay?” Nate asks, softly. “M-Marie?” His voice is low, and deep, and Danny wants to wake up to this voice every day for the rest of his life.

“She will be,” Danny says softly. “She will. She likes the name, Nate. She likes the name Mina Nicole.”

As if she understood her name had been spoken, Mina shifts in his arms a little, and her wide dark eyes flutter slowly open and then close again.

“What did you t-t-talk about?” Nate and Danny amble down the hall, Nate reaching out occasionally to touch Mina’s soft soft hair, the back of her swaddling blanket. As if reminding himself that this - that all of this - was really happening, was real.

Danny shrugs a little, smiling down at his daughter.

“Just… that, that... it’s going to be okay.”

[ashintheairlikesnow]

As a minor in the whump community, I have to say that I agree with what you've said so far. If a couple of dirty jokes really does affect someone like that, maybe whumpblr (or the internet in general) is not the place for them. But we minors, at least in my experience, hear and see way worse than most adults think we do on a pretty regular basis.

“Kids are far more aware of things than adults think they are” is probably one of the truest things ever said. 

It’s also something that, if an adult says it to you in an attempt to dismiss your discomfort, you should be wary of. And I think the response to it you’d likely get is that people should be able to curate a safe online experience, and I agree with that - I just differ on how to get there.

I would hesitate to suggest that someone who can’t handle dirty jokes that appear without prior warning can’t handle reading about torture or trauma at all. I don’t think that’s true. I would say likely not true for a lot of people on here. I know a few whumpblrs who write some pretty gory stuff but choose not to engage with my more explicit work, even if it’s consensual stuff, for their own comfort. 

They may have past trauma that is very specifically targeted to that type of content. They may be ace and want absolutely nothing to do with it, they get nothing out of it, they don’t like reading it - as one reader once put it to me in a message, “does anything important emotionally happen because I don’t want to read the sex bit.”

That’s fair! Lots of people are more comfortable reading Ora breaking Danny’s arm than they are the first time Nate and Danny attempt safe, sane, consensual kink. That is fair and valid and their right and I DO try to tag those pieces (and include content warnings BEFORE each piece that make it clear what happens) so they can avoid it if needed.

But those are involved, and not a one-off joke, which I think is where a big part of the disagreement lies.

(I do have a whole, like, hour-long rant about how we raise people in the USA to be able to handle incredible violence but treat sexuality with kid gloves in a way that leaves EVERYONE struggling when we should instead be open and accepting of the spectrum of sexuality from the start, long before it can even be referenced using that term entirely accurately - it starts by talking about the insane amount of violence you can see in a PG-13 film but even rated R films can lose distribution if the woman in a sex scene is shown actually enjoying it or god forbid topless - but that’s not entirely applicable here, beyond the fact that I think it forms a baseline for how we talk about/consume that content and put a sense of shame or something being forbidden on stuff that, for a bunch of people, is just an aspect of biology or life. And I have an adjacent rant about how we should talk a whole lot more about people for whom it ISN’T an aspect of biology or part of life and not everything needs a goddamn love story inserted in it)

wait I forgot my point.

Right.

My point is that adults should never, ever aim for minors to consume sexual content, or have that be something they want or actively work for. Ever. Evvvvverrrrrr. Ever ever ever. And don’t let an adult tell you that the explicit content is “no big deal” if it’s a big deal for you - if you come across something like that, and it makes you uncomfortable, walk the hell away. 

Get out of the place where you saw it, and if it’s a common aspect of that person’s blog, definitely avoid that blog. As stated, block unfollow disengage walk away.

Nothing personal! No offense will be taken. It’s your decision to protect yourself and we should - and I know everyone I commonly write with will - respect it. 

But - and maybe this has to do a lot with growing up in a very different internet culture - I will always disagree that it’s an adult’s responsibility to -make their content safe for minors all the time forever-. I don’t think that’s possible, let alone reasonable.

Frankly, I am incredibly weirded out that it’s considered normal to declare yourself openly a minor because my teenage self was always taught to giving away ANYTHING about your age was declaring vulnerability. That’s how much things have changed.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

For the one word asks - Peter + "drift"

CW: Whump involving a minor (character is 16) - although no direct physical harm is done to him during the drabble. Sickness, isolation, referenced shock collar. Captor bonding. Referenced abuse at the end.

There was an ache that settled into the boy’s bones and resolutely refused to leave. It dug itself into the marrow and lived there, a pounding, throbbing pain that was with him whether he was shuffling through the hallways with a handler at his side or curled up in his room praying to fall asleep just so he didn’t have to feel it hurt any longer.

He went to training, and the scrubber and broom seemed to fall out of his hands, and he kept missing when he tried to pick them up. They punished him for it, in all the ways they punished the ones like the boy, with their black sticks and the shock collar around his neck and with their hands at his hips and his face pressed into the floor, but the pain inside his bones was worse, after a while, than the pain they could inflict on him.

Eventually, they left him in his room.

He was dragged out to the bathroom and the showers, but left otherwise to lay on the cold tile shivering in his thin white shirt and black shorts, curled in around himself as tightly as he could get to stay warm. 

Handler Todd was the first one to care that he was sick.

Todd had been gone for two weeks, on vacation with his daughters - he told the boy all about it, they took a trip to Yosemite National Park, and the boy didn’t know what that was any longer but the words sounded sort of familiar, anyway. The boy got sicker and sicker and while he was sick, he thought about Todd, and how much he missed a kind touch and a nice voice, and he hoped Todd would show him photos when he got back, the way he’d shown him photos of Disneyland.

When he heard the soft beeping and the ssshhhh-click of his door unlocking and opening up, the boy didn’t move. He didn’t look up - the white light hurt his eyes now, and he kept one arm over his face all the time, desperate to find some kind of darkness to hide in. 

“435689, you up?”

It didn’t matter. When handlers spoke, you were awake, whether you actually were or not. The boy made a soft sound that he’d meant to be words but the words didn’t come, and stirred a little, keeping his hand shading his eyes as he slowly looked up, wincing at the sharp stab of pain in his head. 

“Oh, shit. You okay, kiddo?” Todd glanced over his shoulder, then shut the door behind him, dropping down into a crouch near the boy. “You look like hell.”

Did he? The boy hadn’t seen a mirror since he’d been brought into the Facility. He didn’t know what he looked like any longer. His eyes felt like sandpaper and he knew he’d been sweating, off and on, sick-sweat smell that needed another shower but he’d already had his shower, he wouldn’t get another one for a couple more days.

When Todd took his hand and slowly moved it away, the boy’s fingertips dropped onto the cold tile, and he sighed in relief at the press of Todd’s hand to his head.

Oh, sweetie, you’re burning up. No school for you mister, it’s cartoons on the couch and some good old-fashioned chicken noodle soup. Get the Tylenol, Greg-

He groaned at the spike of pain in his head. 

“Kiddo?” 

“Mom, I don’t feel good,” The boy said, softly. His voice sounded weirdly far away to him, as if hearing himself from a distance. “I think I’m sick.”

There was a silence, and Todd withdrew his hand.

The boy whimpered and tried to grab at it, to pull it back. No one had touched him in days because he might be contagious, and he was alone in his tiny white room until they used the catch-pole to make him go to the showers or the bathroom and he just, he missed it so much, he just missed someone touching him even just a little bit.

Even the ways that hurt would be better than being alone in here hurting by himself. 

“Stay right here, kiddo. I will be right back, I promise. I promise you.”

Todd pushed to his feet and was gone, and the boy’s pleas for him to stay were ignored and then unheard.

The boy drifted, for a while. The world was flat white light and white floor, white walls. He was sweaty but he shivered at a cold that would not cease, drying sweat on his skin only for it to grow clammy and gross again moments later. His hair stuck to his forehead, flopped around in greasy clumps. He couldn’t curl up tightly enough to be warm. He couldn’t cover his eyes well enough to make it dark. He couldn’t sleep or stay awake, and all he could do was drift.

Don’t you worry. I’ve already called the doctor, we’ll get you in by noon. I’m sure this is just some kind of flu or something, honey, I’m sure of it. But you have to eat something.

When was the last time the boy ate? He had no idea. He’d started throwing up the Facility shakes and they’d stopped giving them to him. All he got now was water. At least the water stayed down.

He had no idea how long Todd was gone.

He was pretty sure Todd was probably just him seeing things from the fever, anyway.

But then there was the ssshhhh-click again, and Todd came in with a bag in one hand and something big rolled up in the other. He let both hit the floor and dropped back into his crouch. “Okay, kiddo. Can you sit up for me, please?” He reached out, hands on the boy’s shoulders, and with effort they got him back up, leaning his back against the wall, tears running down the boy’s face from how much it hurt to move. 

Greg, I think he needs the ER, he’s really badly off. What’s our copay?

“Mom, I n-need a doctor,” He groaned, and cool hands settled his head back a little bit, let it rest against the wall. “I’m so sick.”

“I know you are, kiddo,” A voice sound, not his mother’s voice. He remembered her smell and her voice and her hands, but he couldn’t remember her face. “I know. Look, medicine first, yeah? Just drink what’s in this little cup.”

He drank. It tasted like flat grape soda made thick into syrup and he nearly gagged on it, but the hands gave him water to wash it down with. Then he was dipped forwards again, and he cried more at the ache, but something infinitely soft and warm wrapped around him and then was pulled together at his front, and he managed to crack his eyes to look down.

A blanket, soft fleece, and already he felt warmer in the chill air in the white room. The boy ran his fingers back and forth over it, looked slowly up through eyes bleary and blurry with tears and the ache, and saw Handler Todd watching him with concern and what the boy thought must be real affection on his face. “I can have this?”

He’d never had a blanket before.

Never been good long enough to earn one.

“Sure you can, kiddo. Just til you heal up. Now, you’ve got medicine - that’ll take down your fever in a little bit. Then I brought you what I give my little girls when they’re sick.” He pulled a six-pack of something out of a bag, and the boy stared at the little blue bottles. “It’s not… great, but these have a bunch of vitamins and shit, you need that. Technically it’s kind of a nutrient shake for toddlers who won’t eat, but hey, food is food. And also, this.” He pulled out another six-pack, and the boy knew Gatorade even though he couldn’t remember having had any in his whole life. He felt a thin smile find its way onto his face.

“You brought so much for me,” He whispered. “Is it, is this just for me?”

“Just for you, kiddo. I ran home and picked it up from our food stash in the house.”

“Cool. Th-thank you,” The boy said, and took the Gatorade the man offered him, drinking its cool sugar-sweet flavor in little sips that somehow, miraculously, stayed down like water. “Can… can I see a doctor?”

Todd sighed and sat down next to him. “I asked, they said no. Not sick enough.”

The boy blinked at him, still sipping the Gatorade, holding it in both hands like it was precious. “If I… if I get sicker I’ll be dead,” He said, softly.

“No you won’t, you’re probably past the worst of it by now.” Todd shrugged. “Just keep hydrated, and try to drink two of those little Pediagrow things each day. I’ll get you some peanut crackers once your appetite’s back. Just takes time, this flu is all over the place in the Facility right now.”

The boy wanted to argue, but he’d used up all his energy in the words he had already said. Instead, he pulled his blanket closer and leaned sideways until his head rested on Handler Todd’s arm. 

They sat there like that for a while, until Todd said, “Want to see my pictures from Yosemite?”

The boy smiled and looked up at him, grateful Todd had come back, that he cared that he was sick, that he had had fun on his vacation with his family. The boy didn’t have one any longer. It was nice that someone else got to.

“This is what you do for your kids when they’re sick?” He asked.

Todd laughed, pulling up a photo of the sunrise over mountains. “Sort of. My babies lay on the couch watching cartoons all day.”

“I think I got to do that, before,” The boy said.

Todd glanced at him and then shrugged. “Maybe. But you don’t remember any of that, right?”

There was a warning in his voice, an edge. Todd was still a handler, and memories weren’t allowed. The boy quickly shook his head, and settled in to look at the photos Todd had taken of places that looked so terribly familiar but the boy could not remember ever having seen.

***

Later, when he is sick - the whole first year he was sick all the time - he’ll lay on his mattress on the floor in the tiny little room he calls his own, and Dex will be the one who sits with him. 

The room isn’t any bigger, but it stays dark when he needs it to, and it’s his own. The sickness lasts just as long, but there is medicine right from the start, and there are other people who care.

Peter knows to be grateful for this, even when being sick doesn’t stop her from leaving bruises on her bad days.

When Peter cries for Todd in his sleep, Dex holds his hand and knows it is a handler he is calling for. It is Dex who combs his hair back from his forehead and lays the blanket over him when he kicks it off. It’s Dex who tips the little cup of syrupy liquid to his lips. It’s Dex who feeds him Gatorade and saltine crackers and Sebastian makes him chicken noodle soup to sip from coffee mugs he can barely hold in shaking hands.

Still, he cries for Todd, in his sleep.

He can’t remember if there was ever anyone who cared before him.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

I’m curious; what kind of more violent whump will you not do?

I won’t write eye gore, mouth/tooth gore, amputation/dismemberment, anything that involves organs except in one very justified circumstance, I don’t do detailed whump on minors (Peter’s past in training is about as detailed as I’ll get and you’ll see most of his actual whump is emotional and physical whump is only referenced/referred to), and there’s a couple other things too. Just personal squicks. 

When it comes to eye/teeth, I can’t even READ other people who write it, which makes me sad, because some whumpers have written some EXCELLENT eye/teeth whump and I can’t even read DESCRIPTIONS of super heavily modified teeth or anything. It just makes me feel super sick to my stomach, I don’t know why, when other things don’t.

[whumpqin]

I love this so much! The word "barn-raising" comes to mind when I think of the community, there's so much goodness between them all oh my god,,,

Amazing chapter as always Ash!! keep up the good work ❤

Just Right: Chris

CW: Head-banging stim referenced, stimming in general in a negative context, derogatory language about stimming, referenced past abuse/noncon, institutional whump, referenced whump of a minor, conditioning, memory loss, traumatic deaths of family referenced, traumatic memory recovery, getting glass out of  foot referenced

Tagging @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @endless-whump, @whumpfigure, @stxck-fxck, @slaintetowhump

PREVIOUS (COME BACK)​

No one comes back.

He waits and waits, but no one comes back. People stand on the sidewalk, for a while, the old lady and her grandson and some other people besides. Chris doesn’t listen to them, although the sounds filter in, bounce around his mind, occasional words and half-formed sentences that he doesn’t want to understand.

Instead, Chris focuses as hard as he can on the memory of Jake promising Chris won’t be left alone. It’s difficult to focus - he’s scared and didn’t sleep last night, and the birds are loud outside and there’s so much glass that catches the light and bounces pretty white reflections off all the walls - but he tries, he tries so hard, to remember that Jake won’t make him be alone forever.

They can’t keep Jake away forever.

Can they?

The people leave. Breakfast is there, and lunch, and dinner, right on the porch where the old woman said they’d be. Chris drifts through the day, and his thoughts cycle and circle and he can’t keep them still long enough to decide what to do beyond just… staying alive. He has to stay alive. He has to wait. 

The first night, he doesn’t sleep. He waits, and waits, and tries to remember how to calm his thoughts, but nothing comes.

All he can think of is that Antoni and Leila were supposed to wait for him, but it took too long, and once the door broke down they had to go. Somewhere they’re safe, somewhere else, with the other ones, the ones Chris has heard about but hasn’t met. Kauri, who never sits still, Kauri is safe, too, somewhere else. Chris is the only one left.

Chris is the only one here to wait.

He tries to clean but he doesn’t remember how to do it very well. He washes the dishes in the sink, he can do that - and he empties out the coffee pot, full and long-since gone cold, and sets the coffee up for the next day, even though he knows no one will be here to drink it, but maybe if he makes the coffee someone will come back.

The first day, he brews the coffee, and no one comes. But maybe the second day will be different. He dumps the pot again and goes through the motions.

They destroyed the house and the television is turned over and shattered all along its front, they cut up the couch cushions even. Nothing is the same, and everything is wrong. Chris tries to sweep up the glass in Jake’s room from the lamp and steps in it instead, letting out a wild, high-pitched cry at a stab of pain straight up his leg. He can’t get the glass out, he’s too scared to touch it, and he hobbles around leaving bloody trails everywhere he goes, limping, whimpering and wishing there was anyone, anyone left.

If Jake was here, he’d sit Chris down in the bathroom and use his cell phone as a flashlight and use tweezers and Chris would watch him stick his tongue out a little like he does when he’s thinking really hard about something. Then Leila would fuss over him and Antoni would sing him songs in Russian, which Antoni doesn’t know anymore but still remembers the songs. Chris doesn’t know what Russian looks like, but he knows the sounds of the notes Antoni sings, the way his mouth shapes the letters.

Tak byvayet - staneshʹ vzrosleye ty

I, kak ptitsa, vvysʹ uletishʹ

Kem by ni byl, znay, chto dlya mamy ty 

Kak i prezhde, ilyy malysh

Chris is bad at remembering things and bad at knowing words and bad at most things, he thinks, sometimes, but when he does remember something it pops in fully-formed, and he remembers Antoni singing the songs to himself, songs he doesn’t remember in his head but his body still knows, anyway.

See, we are still in here, Antoni says, tapping the side of his own head with one finger, flashing a smile. They didn’t take it all out, it’s only hidden, Chrisha.

Why do you call me that?

I don’t… I don’t know. But I will, Chrisha. I will know, soon, and I’ll tell you once I do.

But Antoni can’t tell him, because he’s gone. Everyone is gone. There’s no one but him, now.

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[raigash]

I’m absolutely fucking crying this is SO potent, and so heartbreakingly accurate

A fucking Plus Ash, I’m crying my eyes out

The Birthmother: Dad Fluff

CW: Referenced past noncon - including noncon that occurred underage, frankly discussed past abusive relationship involving minors, referenced past captivity, referenced victim blaming. Frank discussion of difficult circumstances and mindsets surrounding adoption from adoptive parent and birth parent points of view.

Danny speaks with Mina’s birthmother just after her birth. This one’s a heartbreaker, guys - for Danny and for Marie West, Mina’s birthmother. Basically I’ve been tearing up in Starbucks for two hours now and will now inflict it on all of you.

“Can… Can I ask why?” Danny folds himself into the small chair in the hospital room, the plastic pastel padding doing nothing to make it even remotely comfortable to sit in, the pale wood arms and frame nearly the same color as his skin.

He hasn’t slept since they got the call that she was finally in labor, and he can feel an exhaustion headache beginning to throb just behind his eyes - still, he’s gone longer than this without sleeping, and the teenage girl in the hospital bed beside him hasn’t slept, either.

Marie West, fifteen years old and the birthmother of Danny’s daughter, looks down at her hands. She has beautiful fingernails, carefully manicured and painted a perfect even pinkish-cream color that pops against her skin.

“Why what?” She asks, in a low voice.

They’re alone in the room, except for the tiny newborn currently sleeping in the clear plastic rolling ‘crib’ next to Marie’s bed. She’s heavily swaddled in the white blanket with pink and blue stripes that, Danny thinks, it seems like every newborn in America gets as the very first thing they own.

The baby girl is approximately eight and a half hours old, and she has lighter brown skin than her mother, a tiny little mouth that moves in her sleep, and a thick fuzz of black hair that covers her head. She will be Danny’s daughter, if Marie doesn’t change her mind before the grace period is up, and Danny’s heart beats in his throat every time he thinks of that possibility… and he’s not sure whether he wants her to keep to her plan, or if some deep part of him wants to see her decide to keep the little girl, make the best of it, create a life that her child can be a part of.

Some part of him has always been wondering what it would have been like to have his birthmother decide to create a life with him.

“Why us? I mean, um, you don’t… really have to tell me. I just asked Nate and your mom to get coffee and give us a sec because, um, I wondered if… if you wouldn’t… if you couldn’t use a few minutes. I can go, too, if that’s better.”

Danny moves to stand, and stops when he catches Marie shifting around in the bed. She’s wearing a pink hospital gown with little patterned birds on it. It has a slit on each side for feeding the baby, although Marie has told Danny she isn’t going to. I’m sorry, I just can’t, she said to the nurse, who looked at her with perfect compassion and brought in tiny little bottles of premade formula, showing Danny how to give them to the little girl they have yet to name.

He doesn’t want to - not until he knows for sure that Marie won’t decide to take her home, give her a new name, and Danny and Nate will have to start again.

“No, you’re okay, don’t go. I just.” Marie shrugs, inspecting her hands for a few moments longer. Her hair falls in thick black waves around her face. “I, I guess… I just, um, liked you.”

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