#she's really thinking would've been a waste of bullets but she's not gonna SAY THAT gfdshjks

[solesoldier]

no one ever talks about shepard just absolutely mowing guys down in the mako and i really think they should, that should've been the first red flag

[some-pers0n]

Reading through scenes with Albatross in them, so you know what that means!! Note time!! Time to take notes about Albatross, with little sprinkles of Fathom and Lagoon.

This is a post literally only meant for me. I'm. yeah. If I ever rip it out of my drafts it's gonna be because: "Wowie you think the other dragon likers will enjoy this as well?" It's not going to be coherent at all, switching from bullet points to full on tangents. I'll eventually shorten it down to something more compact and easier to comprehend, perhaps with a character sheet for Albatross with a detailed personality section.

With that being said, lets read.

Chapter 1

Chapter where Fathom learns that he's a magic guy. Okie.

First note is entirely off-topic, but I really do love Indigo and Fathom's interactions. They're so sweet.

Lagoon's first introduction already paints her as ominous and foreboding, comparing her rising out of the sea like "a sinister iceberg". Iceberg flipping videos are spooky to me, so yeah that makes sense. Either way, it establishes her character to be one that's antagonistic, with the use of the phrase "stalked slowly up to the beach" in the next sentence making it very firm that she's not exactly a dragon we like.

Lagoon's literally beefing with a child. God I hate her so much,, I love her <333

Interesting use of the titled "most respected dragon in the Sea Kingdom" to describe Albatross. I like that it implies that Albatross is viewed more highly than even Queen Lagoon (which isn't too high of a bar to clear, but ehh). He's beloved by the kingdom. He's their first animus.

Odd to describe his expression as "suspicious" here. I like thinking that he looks like a generic evil cartoon villain/anti-semite stereotype here. The next sentence describing him with a hooked snout doesn't help.

Curious that he would complain about the TOP ceremony here. I get it's for exposition, but I find it interesting. He doesn't see a point in the exam. It's a waste of time to him and the others. He says that, if they were an animus, they would've figured it out by now.

Lagoon on the other hand wants to use this exam to weed out the animus dragons quickly. She wants another animus so she can use them in case the RainWings or MudWings try to do anything fishy, saying that they've been acting up. She views animus dragons less like actual people and more like tools for either how own vanity projects or for war.

^ Something very compelling to me here is how she uses she/her pronouns to refer to this imaginary animus they'll discover. Why does she do that? That's...quite odd. Does she want Pearl to be the animus? Strange.

Lagoon once again uses the Sapphire incident as leverage over Albatross. This is our first introduction scene to these characters and we've established that Lagoon is antagonistic and kind of a prick. She reminds Albatross of this without batting an eye. I like to personally think that she isn't as bothered by the mauling of her sister as Albatross is. Albatross was traumatized by the event and the guilt of it all has followed with him for his entire life. Lagoon on the other hand doesn't exactly seem too bothered with the idea of bringing it up just to remind Albatross about what he's done, reminding him that, no matter what he does, he destroyed Sapphire's life.

Albatross shows his disdain for being used as a tool for Lagoon. He's given her everything she wants, yet she does not feel fully satisfied with it. He also mentions he does not want an apprentice. Headcanon: I think Albatross isn't fond of the idea of having an apprentice because he kinda just hates the concept of Lagoon having another animus to look after. Honestly? I fully believe that if Fathom discovered his magic on his own time and approached Albatross privately about it, Albatross would've trained him but he would INSIST that he NEVER tell Lagoon about it. He doesn't want to doom another dragon to his fate.

!! Lagoon reacts to this aggressively. She hisses and snarls at him over this slight resistance. It shows that she's not one for the idea of Albatross ever standing up for himself. It's never been about what Albatross wants. He's barely even a dragon in her eyes. He's just a breathing wish-making device that looks ugly as hell to her.

Albatross submits. Headcanon: I think Albatross is always anxious and tries controlling himself constantly because he doesn't want to hurt Lagoon the same way he did with Sapphire. It's...very hard not to, though...

I like thinking that Albatross did the coconut thing because he was so confident that there wouldn't be an animus dragons. I also like thinking that he thought it would be something to entertain the dragonets. Like...imagine being nine or something and you're told you could hit the Pope with a basketball if you just yell at the ball. Silly.

^ Also in the Guide, Albatross says it's much easier and a lot more safe to enchant a coconut to float or something. It characterizes him as actually caring about the safety of the tribe and putting in far more thought and care into the exams than Lagoon ever could.

Albatross is bored by doing these tests. Fathom is amazed however by simply watching the coconut fly over to him.

^ Interestingly, Fathom is spooked and scared. He's unsure if the test will hurt him. He's anxious that, somehow, Albatross has enchanted the coconuts to react if somebody touched it.

"Wouldn't it just be easier to throw it at you?" BWAHWHUDHAIDUH-- INDIGO AHHHH

^ Albatross laughs at this. He's amused by the response, finding humour in such a simple question. Silly guy.

Interesting note of animus magic here is that you have to command something to do what you want. You don't ask it. You order it. Fascinating.

BONK!!

IT BROKE BONES??? I mean, obviously. It's a giant dense coconut flying at him at the speed of a bullet. Of course.

Pearl you goddamn rat.

HAHAHAHAHAH OH MY GODDDDDD how could people read this book without understanding that Lagoon is clearly evil and Wrong? "You are going to do such great things for m- for your tribe" AHAHAHHA

^ Actually obsessed with how shitty the royal SeaWing family is. That's such a silly thing of Tui to do.

Albatross is happy!! Again, going back to that headcanon I talked about, I think Albatross would like to train Fathom, but rather he doesn't want to be replaced or to sentence Fathom to a life of constantly serving a bitchy queen. That's something to worry about later. For now, everything is happy and nice.

Chapter 3

Private magic lessons with grandpapa.

I actually adore Indigo and Fathom oh my goddd they're so sweet...

Really love the interactions here. It's quite fun and goofy between all of the characters.

Fathom listened to Albatross's wishes to have him save his animus magic. Albatross knows the dangers that animus magic holds, and Fathom wants to listen to his grandpapa. Fathom really does look up to and love Albatross. He's so sweet and untraumatized <3

HANDWRITING!!! USE OF THE WORD HAND!!! NOT TALON!! HAND!!!!!

I always forget the Island Palace was a thing and the massacre wasn't at the Summer Palace you mean to tell me that this bitch needed THREE palaces????? One of which only really existing as a means for PARTIES??? Gott DAMN Lagoon chill out.

^ Fuck it. Headcanon: Albatross lives at the Island Palace. Yeah yeah it's mostly used for parties and for political diplomats to sleep, but GOD I don't think Albatross could stand to live in the same palace as Lagoon. How about Albatross lived there with his wife and raised his kids there? Now he lives there alone. Boo hoo. He's the host whenever guests come to visit. He gets pissy that his house basically becomes a nightmareish party hellscape whenever his sister comes over.

^^ It's also pretty and I think Albatross would like it.

Albatross drags Fathom to the beach where he first discovered animus magic so he could really drill it in just how fucked up animus magic is. Epic.

Albatross is silly and goofy!! He is happy and having fun and is excited to teach Fathom the ways of being a wizard. Fathom inversely is so inexperienced and gullible. Silly guy.

Something to note: So far, Albatross really hasn't been talked about like he's...stern or rude. He's only bothered by Lagoon's antics and demands. I think he's a fairly good and friendly dragon, but it just extremely annoyed by Lagoon (completely understandable)

GOD he's full of so much whimsy and joy. He's so silly. I love this little guy (I am talking about an old traumatized dragon)

Fathom describes this interaction as being new and slightly odd, as Albatross was always seen as some distant and powerful figure. A dragon of importance that was always too busy. He was always nice and friendly, but never exactly...there. Now? He gets to see how he really is: SILLY!!!

Further showing how much Albatross is having fun via by describing him jumping into the ocean with him "splashing into the sea".

Lagoon requested Albatross show Fathom the palace just in-case Albatross dies before it's finished. Now, I know I'm biased, but from how things happen later on, I feel Lagoon was plotting to dispose of Albatross the moment Fathom was discovered to be an animus. She wanted Fathom to pick up where Albatross left off. Fathom would be a new, better, more presentable animus.

^ Albatross doesn't know about this plot, so he goes along with it. He's excited to teach Fathom!!

Again, Albatross shows that he's a lot more considerate and aware. He's cautious and thoughtful. He purposefully stretches out the creation of the Summer Palace so that it doesn't cause any damage to the ecosystem.

Fathom stfu your gandpapa cares about the environment. He didn't mess up the spell, he just didn't want the ocean to explode or whatever.

Albatross is supportive of Fathom's idea to create a cover of leaves over the Summer Palace, but this is where Albatross gets serious and tells Fathom he needs to think and plot out his spells. Albatross does not want Fathom to use up his soul carelessly or to make rash and impulsive choices without thinking them through clearly. I think this fear of Fathom misusing his magic was instilled by, again, the Sapphire incident. He doesn't want Fathom to follow in his footsteps.

TRAUMA STORY TIME!!!

Albatross is obviously telling this story to Fathom as a) exposition for his backstory and b) to tell Fathom that he needs to be careful with his magic. It is not a toy. It is a powerful, dangerous force.

Fathom is hopeful and still thinks Albatross isn't really capable of harm as he assumes that his first enchantment was something grand and wonderful.

Literally how does anybody read this and come away thinking that Lagoon was entirely innocent here. Fathom literally reflects on Albatross's comment on them doing "normal brother-sister teasing", which is Sapphire and Lagoon coming down and bullying him until he snapped back at them. Fathom is like: "...I don't think that's normal brother-sister teasing, grandpapa."

AUGHHHH LAGOON YOU'RE THE WORST,,, classist loser. Treating Indigo badly and saying that, by keeping her around, they're "coddling the lower class". She obviously views herself as being better and superior to common SeaWings.

Sapphire and Lagoon are the worst. "Everything you have will be mine when I'm queen" ughhhhh

Such a terrible event shaped Albatross in a way that cannot fully be described. It scarred him. It was the first time he had used his magic, and it was to harm his sister. It was a simple mistake, yet he can never live it down. He blames himself for it. Lagoon on the other hand uses it as a means to control him. Manipulate his trauma and guilt-trips him into doing what she wants.

I blame TF2 for making me have a knee-jerk reaction to the word "spy". Albatross literally saying "a spy?" when he notices Indigo watching them made me think of the french guy.

Aww,,,Blob....

Chapter 6

oh no

Lagoon is becoming more rude towards Indigo since Fathom was revealed to be an animus. Again, she hates how she had a commoner dragon frolicking around with royals.

Lagoon more or less hosts these parties as vanity projects for her to show off everything grand about her (which was basically done by Albatross after she manipulated him into using his magic). I'm willing to bet she doesn't care really at all about what happens from a political standpoint, so long as she's known as some grand and glorious queen.

Fathom mentions that Lagoon is "skilled with diplomatic meets" because she has the power of an animus behind her. Again, she mostly relies on Albatross and his magic to be feared.

Fathom wearing jewelry that also matches the stuff Albatross wears. I wonder if that was set up by Lagoon.

IT'S BEEN THREE YEARS SINCE THE TEST?? Okey then.

These Fathigo moments are melting my heart. Tui....

BWAHAHWHAHUWDHAIWUHAI--- I always forget how charming and silly these books are. Ahhhh this is so cute and fun.

Blah blah blah let us get back to old murder man. It's THE chapter after all.

So after three years, Albatross is still too spooked to let Fathom do more than basic spells. Is he fearful? Perhaps at this point he knows about Lagoon's plot to replace him and wants to live longer. It's hard to tell. Three years is a large timeskip. A lot could happen in that gap.

I think Albatross has become a lot more...quiet and estranged since then. He completely erased the work that Fathom had made. He's a bit more erratic. If there's one thing I wish we got, it would be a better explanation for this. Something HAD to have happened in order for him to have a personality shift like this.

He's described as being unexcited when they finally completed the palace. Perhaps this was the moment. I think that, yeah, Albatross figured out that his time is up. He's going to die. Lagoon is probably going to kill him off and replace him with Fathom. I headcanon that Lagoon killed Albatross's wife, which he probably could've figured out by now as well, so him finally completing the palace would mean he's obsolete. He's finished. There's no use for him anymore. He'll be disposed.

I don't think he planned the massacre. It was rather him finally reaching a breakpoint and going "fuck it, if I'm dying tonight, I'm taking down as many other dragons as I can". He would've been repulsed by the idea, but at this point he just straight up doesn't care. I think when he first approached Lagoon he wanted to sort things out with her, but as it became increasingly obvious that she was going to be unreasonable, he just pulled out the knife and dealt with her himself.

I hate you Lagoon.

There's no real point in me describing this part. It's Lagoon just basically showing off Albatross's creations to the very-not-okay-with-animus-dragons SkyWing royals. Her head is so far up her own ass she just doesn't care.

Big fight happens.

The reactions from the other dragons are interesting. Manta, Splash, and Reef all react with anxiety and tense up. They know that Albatross isn't in a Good Mood, or perhaps they are a little aware that Albatross is going to be disposed of and Lagoon is practically throwing rocks at the bear now. No longer is she poking the bear with a stick. She's pretty much just hurling rocks and telling it that she's going to kill it.

Definitely when I rewrite this scene it's gonna be a lot more dramatic. I mean, it's the climax of Albatross's story. The big moment everyone knows. It deserves to be slightly more bombastic than this.

KNIFE!!!

Chapter 8

Still endlessly amused by there being a Clearsight chapter right before this.

Murder dragon becomes murder dragon chapter, lets go.

Straight up doesn't care anymore. Again, like I said before, I think he wants to go out with a bang. Headcanon: I don't think Albatross was at all content with how his life went. Yeah, he's the most respected dragon in the tribe, but at the cost of being a little pet for his sister to boss around. At this point he is Done with everything. Its gone fully into a manic episode.

^ Something like this as well, I don't think he liked the parties at all. Circling back into the Island Palace being his home, he hates his house basically being turned into a playground for Lagoon to show off. I also think he just generally doesn't like parties because they're loud and bother him. I'm 100% adding in my animus curse headcanon into this winglet, so with the added bonus of him being sensitive to sound it makes him yearn for peace and quiet. He's just getting that wish in a bloody and brutal way.

Interesting that Fathom tries DEFENDING Albatross even after he's fully aware that he killed Lagoon on purpose and is going after the SkyWings. He's in denial. He still loves his grandpapa and doesn't want to think he would actually do any of this. If he did, it was for a good reason, right? He would stop soon, right?

MANTA NO NONONONON NOOOOOO OH MY GOD NOOO THIS IS SO SAD NOONONONONOOO Manta is Albatross's daughter, by the way. She's trying to reason with her father.

Finally the realization is beginning to set into Fathom that, yeah, his grandpapa is going to kill everyone.

Ouughhhhh I wish Tui did more horrific moments like this. Having Albatross come into the room and act all like a horror monster is so good. She's really good with writing tension in these scenes. Love it.

Interesting that Albatross would point out Fathom's lack of an imagination of all things. Perhaps he's reaching for straws for anything that makes him better than Fathom. Reasons for why he should've been seen as a good and worthy animus.

Again, with Albatross mentioning here how he wants to kill Fathom up close, it's less about the killing them to him. It's the joy and release from watching the life drain from their eyes. To finally show how powerful he is. To show that he deserves to be seen as powerful and more than just a lapdog for Lagoon.

^ Albatross also sees Fathom as the reason for Lagoon disposing him. Albatross blames Fathom for it. If it wasn't for Fathom, he could've lived on with his miserable existence for a while longer. Maybe he could've shown Lagoon what he thought of her then.

Annnddd Albatross is dead within like two paragraphs. Yippeee.

Honestly if I'm doing this I'm giving his ass a Breaking Bad ending with him managing to live on and limp over to a place that's important to him before dying. RIP bozo.

[1-up-chump]

Assorted fallout 4 companion opinions

Preston is not boring he's simple. He's just a guy trying his best to do good in a fucked world and he's hanging by a thread. It's not his fault bethesda radiant quests suck.

Strong is wasted potential as a character. He should have been more than a dumb brute companion with the only difference being "he's not aggressive to you" he should have been a rather "smarter than the average mutant" and know a lot of advanced words and how to properly apply them (but mispronouncing them terribly) due to his interest in literature.

A super mutant who does super mutant things but can wax poetic about his POV as a mutant would've been a great companion. I know the "milk of kindness" being taken literally is a joke but honestly i was expecting strong to eventually "get it" and figure out why human so strong is bc of compassion that helps them lead a group and not a show of brute strength (which is why strong thought fist was a terrible leader bc he didn't care about his brothers, but with his dialogue it seems like he only cares about your ability to kill as long as you dont say mean things?) and like, Maybe strong is a bit NICER to travel with and his opinions could change to thinking humans are decent at most.

Nick should have had more side quests involving him. More mysteries to solve, hell i had an idea for at least a mod quest that if you side with the institute a scientist who's interested in older tech to improve advanced tech offers to fix the holes in nick's synth skin bc C'mon we are traveling the god damn commonwealth full of trash, irradiated water, and bullets from who knows where like how has nick not gotten some radroaches trying to make a nest in his chest cavity. It would make for some great dialogue and philosophy of "are you content with yourself even if you could fix some problems? What are you willing to trade off?" And give players options while hearing out both sides.

Piper also should have more side quests involving interviews with certain characters, maybe after completing certain quests you can go back to them with piper and maybe get additional quests involving old ones to tie loose ends? Or the very least have an opportunity for your character to voice their opinion on the events

Maccready. WHERE IS HIS SON????? i DID ALL THAT FOR THE GUY JUST FOR HIM TO KEEP FUCKING AROUND WITH ME AND NOT GO TO HIS DAMN SON??? Now it sounds super awful to say but the only possible outcome for his story to conclude is, macready leaves the commonwealth for a few days, and in a few days daisy wants to talk to you and she says to talk to maccready in the third rail. Turns out when maccready left to ensure the cure gets to his son, it was too late. The man is in an awful state and you gotta pass a few charisma checks to keep him in the commonwealth as a companion.

Gage. It makes some sense for him to turn on you too when you open season the raider leaders. HOWEVER, the leaders were needy dicks anyways and YOU'RE the boss so why can't you: replace the gang leaders with someone else you personally like OR Tell gage "im the boss, you got me here, you deal with me. You're lucky i like you so much" and establish dominance and give gage a sexual awakening. Gage will hate you for a few moments but ultimately with everything he said to you about his views and personal code he has to agree that you really are better/worse than colter.

That or bully him into being not a raider by either saying "do you REALLY wanna fight me?" Or "being a raider sucks this is actually beneficial for everyone even assholes like you" like the whole of nuka world would've been cooler to be like an actual fleshed out raider and not generic "haha im mean" but a "if its kill or be killed then im gonna kill the status quo to become god"

Cait is perfect in every way ngl i have nothing else to say about her except i love her

[s-brant]

Angels Roll Their Eyes (2/2)

(gif: @toesure) (PART ONE)

Summary: Hurricane Agatha approaches Kildare Island during the aftermath of the eventful Fourth of July party. JJ and Y/N are determined to continue avoiding each other after what happened at the party, but John B has other plans for them.

Warnings: Smut, strong language, angst, implied physical abuse, depictions of anxiety/panic attacks, and sickeningly sweet fluff.

Word Count: 24k

A/N: Here we goooo! To celebrate the trailer dropping today, here’s part two to Devils Roll The Dice. If you haven’t read the first part, I suggest you read it and come back so this makes sense. This one has all the drama and spice, so buckle up! Thank you for the love and support on the first part. Let me know if you enjoyed this and have fun, cause I had a blast writing it.

Hurricane Agatha.

It was the first thing she heard about as soon as she woke up yesterday to the sound of her phone blaring with an obnoxious tone that reminds her of waking up too early in the morning for work or school.

Her sleepy eyes couldn't make out who was calling, so she pressed the button to answer and lifted the phone to hear her mom's voice squawking through the speaker at her about the hurricane projected to hit the island in the middle of the night tonight.

The problem is, her parents are out of town this week, leaving her all alone to prep the house and endure the storm alone. And for someone who flinches whenever she thinks she hears the sound of thunder in the sky, that is the worst it can get.

It's a fear her friends are conscious of. One time when they were out on the HMS Pogue, a quick summer storm started to drift overhead and it took all of her self control to not fall into a blind panic when thunder began to rumble above. John B was already steering them back in the direction of the Chateau but she knew it would do nothing to calm her nerves until she was back inside of the house.

The anxiety was starting to become too overwhelming when JJ sat down beside her and threw his arm over her shoulder. It was their first month of knowing one another, so the casual friendly gesture made her jump at first and turn her head to look at him, but he acted like everything was normal.

The next person to notice was John B. With JJ currently out of commission, the only person she thought to call to help her prep the house for the incoming storm was him. Since they never got hurricanes up where she used to live her whole life, she needed someone who's been through a couple to help her while her parents weren't home.

That's how she ended up here. Sweating bullets in the front yard of her house as she unloads the contents of the van with John B was not how she envisioned her Saturday night to go, but she's glad she has someone who's willing to help.

In the past five months of being with the Pogues, she's learned that it's lovely to have friends. She never used to have any before she moved, so in situations like this or when she got so drunk at the party, she never would've had anyone to be there for her. It's quiet moments of kindness and companionship like this that make her realize how much better life has been on the other side of uprooting everything to move here—self-inflicted boy drama and all.

The sandbag on her shoulder sends a growing ache through her back muscles with every step she takes to follow him up the length of unpaved dirt path up to her front door. As usual, he makes it look way easier than it is, and it almost makes her want to laugh at how different they are.

Most of her new friends are effortless, naturally picking up anything they decide to try at while she is inept by comparison. It's part of what attracted her to JJ in the first place. He may have his insecurities the same way every other individual does, but in her eyes, he has nothing to be insecure of. Even when he wipes out on a wave and appears out of the water with sand clumped in his salt-kissed strands of blonde hair, he manages to make it look cool.

"What are you smiling about?"

John B's laughter makes her look up from where she concentrated on the dirt path to see him looking back at her. He stands at the entrance to her house with the rest of the sandbags they carried up placed meticulously in front of the door to prevent water from entering the house. They did the same thing with the back door an hour ago.

Is she smiling? She hadn't even realized her expression changed from one of exhaustion and fear at the dark clouds closing in above to a grin, so her face instantly drops in guilt. After running out on JJ for the second time two days ago to go to work, any mention of him from their friends has left her drowning in shame.

She can't recall the bulk of her memories from the night of the Fourth of July party, but she fills in the gaps between those flashes of memory with what their friends told her about it.

Thanks to her overindulgence, there are holes poked in the fabric of her memory.

It jumps from her last fully sober moment of seeing JJ across the room with the kook girl to dancing clumsily with Kie to the floral scent of her makeup wipes that she can't attach a specific visual image to.

Then, she can remember waking up with a start in the middle of the night to throw up in a pot beside the bed while he held back her hair. Before John B explained it, she was quite confused after waking up about how she somehow got from being jealous over JJ flirting with another girl to waking up in the same bed as him.

She grunts as she plops the last sandbag down into place and decides to take a seat on the steps leading up to the door.

"It wasn't anything special," Y/N says and watches him come down to sit next to her, "I was just thinking about taking something so I can pass out and avoid having a panic attack over this stupid storm."

Unlike JJ, she isn't that skilled of a liar. It's obvious to anyone who knows her well when she does it based on the way her eye contact begins to drift away and her voice raises in pitch when she speaks. She's too honest with her friends to handle keeping secrets from them, which is why it's been so difficult for her with everything that has happened recently. Not only does she lie to the Pogues, she also avoids them by association in the process of trying to avoid JJ.

Regardless of how obvious her bluffing is, John B doesn't call her out on it. Instead, he focuses on a different part of what she said.

"Are you sure you're gonna be okay alone? I know your parents are out of town till next week..." he trails off into concerned silence.

The tip of her sneaker hangs off of the edge of the bottom step and absentmindedly digs a line into the dirt as she takes in his question.

Being alone when she's prone to panicking is a recipe for disaster. Anxiety and loneliness have a relationship similar to that of a weapon and ammunition. It takes very little for her to fall down the rabbit hole of obsessive thinking and break down into a hyperventilating, fearful mess, especially when no one else is there to tug her out of those dark thoughts.

Most of the time, the people who help her with that are her parents. If they're home during one of these episodes, she'll come stumbling downstairs to them from her room for help, and they'll do everything they can to bring her down from hysterics. Her friends, on the other hand, have yet to witness her have one of those moments.

"Having people with me helps, you know? But it is what it is, I'll just try to cope the best I can and hope for the best."

He nods, and though he's a portrait of understanding, she wonders if he finds it as juvenile and stupid as she does.

Logically, she knows that this anxiety is something many people experience. She understands that it's something that is mostly out of her control but can't help but tear herself apart over it.

She thinks to herself, What kind of weirdo can't sit inside during a thunderstorm or hurricane without losing their shit? Why am I not the one in control of my own mind when this happens?

Do her friends think similar things? Do they think it's as pathetic as she does, or is she just paranoid that they pick her flaws apart as much as she does? And, of course, she wonders what JJ would think if he saw her panic like that. He may have seen her start to become anxious on the HMS Pogue, but he hasn't seen her panic panic before, not in the way that her parents have, and she wonders if he'd think less of her for it.

Right when she's about to change the topic and steer him away from a chance to think of how ridiculous she's being about the approaching hurricane, he says something that makes her look back over at him.

"Then come spend the night at the Chateau. I can distract you. We can play board games and shit."

"Really?" she asks.

The idea of anyone wanting to waste an entire night playing board games and possibly signing themselves up for having to talk her down from a panic attack makes her heart melt.

"Yeah, why not? You need a friend tonight. You know any of us would do anything for you. You're like my little sister, dude, we'd all probably hack off a limb if we thought it'd help you. Especially JJ."

John B's last second name-drop is designed specifically for where he wants this conversation to go. Underneath the need to get his friends back to normal, he does feel a little guilty for having to do this. She thinks he's only offering to let her stay with him to help her—and he is, even if there weren't a rift between her and JJ, he'd still offer—but he has a different reason.

"Right," she says softly. "Speaking of which...is he gonna be there tonight?"

With how often he escapes his house to spend a night or two in temporary safety at the Chateau, it's not an unfounded assumption. He and John B spend more time together than any of them because of this, and when she goes over to hang out, she knows that he and JJ often come as a package deal.

He tries to play it cool and not give up anything that could make her suspicious of him, looking off at the van parked in the driveway as he takes a second to collect his thoughts. It's never easy for him to deceive people he cares about, even if it's for their own good. It wasn't easy when he invited JJ to spend the night a few hours ago with the knowledge that he'd soon invite Y/N too either, but he managed.

As always, Pope is the brains behind this operation. He was the one to suggest inviting them both over to wait out Agatha together when the three of them put their heads together to come up with a solution to their oblivious friends' drama. After JJ stormed out of the house the morning after the party, they knew they had to do something about it. This was what it came to.

"Nah. I offered but he said he's staying at home until this whole thing blows over."

He isn't sure why she buys into it.

She knows JJ well enough to know that he would literally rather eat glass than be trapped in a confined space with his dad for an entire day. Perhaps it's only because it's what she wants to believe. She wants to believe that she won't have to see him again tonight after everything that happened. How can she handle having to tell him why got so drunk that night and made an ass of herself? She can't bear to tell him all of that unnecessary drama started because she was jealous.

What right does she have to feel that way? He isn't hers. They aren't together, and she thinks it's quite obvious that he doesn't want a relationship out of whatever it is they have together. It was one night. She has no right to be mad at him for flirting with other girls because of it.

"Then I'll definitely be taking you up on that offer. Thank you," she says.

The old wooden stairs make a squealing sound when she stands to make her way inside to gather her things for the night, but the feeling of a warm hand gripping her forearm stops her mid-step. Her eyes follow down the length of her arm back to where he sits, glancing at her with this knowing look in his eyes that makes her want to turn and hide.

"When are you gonna talk things out with him, Y/N?" he asks. "He misses you."

Since the party, no one has had the courage to burst her bubble of pretending not to care until now, but now that someone has, all of her bottled up emotions stir inside of her at a simple concept she hadn't considered yet.

JJ misses her.

For the first time since they began this stupid game of cat and mouse, she is confronted with how desperately she misses him back. So consumed with the task of concealing everything that happened and trying to avoid him, she hadn't acknowledged that all she ever really wants is to be with him lately.

She misses his jokes and the way he looks at her when she giggles at them. She misses his smile when they play fight on the HMS Pogue. She even misses when he dangles her over the edge of the boat as a means to end the wrestling match, making her squirm in his strong hold as he threatens to toss her overboard.

But what she misses most of all is how he never lets her fall in. It's something about the way he looks at her as he pulls her back onboard, how time itself seems to stop in the moment between when he's still holding her and when she feels her feet touch the deck again.

Then, they'll suddenly want nothing to do with each other for the next half hour.

JJ will make himself busy forgetting the way her hands felt holding onto his shoulders for dear life, burning the memory of her palm prints into his skin for the next few hours. And she'll try her hardest to forget that charming smile and the feeling of his arms around her. But it won't work, not really, and when they're both laying down to sleep at night, they'll have one thing keeping them awake.

She takes a second to internalize what he said and avoid exposing the effect it has on her to hear it before asking, "Did he tell you that?"

The sky overhead grows darker and darker by the second, but she has yet to notice it due to the topic of their conversation. With JJ involved, her attention shrinks to a tunnel leading only to him. There's no room for anything else but the audacious idea planted in the back of her mind that he might miss her as much as she misses him.

"No, he didn't," John B admits, and right when she's about to say more in response, he cuts her off, "but hear me out. I've known him since we were kids, so I can tell when things aren't right with him, and ever since your relationship with him got complicated, I picked up on some weird vibes."

Y/N doesn't give anything away with how she reacts. He can't tell if she's about to bolt like JJ did or stay to talk and open up to him. All she does is cross her arms over her chest and lean back against the railing.

"Weird in what way?"

"Weird in a way that makes me think you two have to talk it out before you ruin your friendship. I've never seen him act this way over a girl."

That doesn't surprise her. He has a reputation for chasing after any girl available to him, something the Pogues have gently teased him about, and it factors into why she doesn't want to have this dreaded conversation with him. She doesn't want to sit there and listen to him tell her that she was just another one of those girls to him.

Going for broke and being honest about what he thinks of their situation is a better strategy for trying to get her to talk to JJ than the other way around. John B can look back on what happened the morning after the party and see where they went wrong in their approach of trying to get him to talk, but she's less unpredictable and turbulent than he is. The fact that she's hearing him out is enough proof of their differences.

She sighs.

"I know we need to talk sooner or later, but it's hard, you know? I'm so embarrassed of how everything went down at the party, even though I was too fucked up to remember most of it, and I just—" There's a brief second that lapses between when she stops and when she starts again where he can almost see her working through it in her head. "I don't wanna get hurt."

John B's face falls at the mention of the party and her feelings surrounding it.

"You have nothing to be embarrassed of. You drank too much but who cares? The only person who should be embarrassed about that night is the guy that tried to take advantage of you."

That part is the most fuzzy in her mind.

She can remember what led up to it and the moment she saw JJ pull him away from her, but she can't remember anything about the interaction itself. It wasn't as if he did anything to her—not yet—but the thought of it alone makes her skin crawl because she's seen that before. She's been the JJ in that situation, pulling a wasted Touron away from someone who thought nobody would be looking out for other people at the party, and she knows how quickly those situations can escalate past "harmless" flirting.

The sound of JJ shouting at Tyler echoes in her mind as she reaches for any remaining memories left from the party. He said it right after he punched him, when he was starting to rush forward to follow him onto the ground and pin him there.

"If I see you near my girl again, you're fucking dead! You got that?"

She doesn't remember realizing that he called her that at the moment. She was confused and upset and all she wanted to do was stop him from getting himself in trouble, so she pulled him away from hitting Tyler again without realizing what he said. And even now, she tries to avoid acknowledging it. She reasons with herself, telling herself that he was pissed off and didn't mean it, because if he did, why hasn't he told her how he feels yet?

Y/N looks up and sees how dark the converging clouds have gotten in the time since they began working on prepping the house for the hurricane, so her next words are shakier than usual.

"I guess you're right." She pushes off of her spot against the railing. "But can we not talk about JJ tonight? I kind of wanna hang out and forget about the rest of the stuff I've got going on right now."

This makes him feel a pang of guilt inside of him for the ulterior motive he's kept hidden from her for the duration of the conversation, but he knows it's for the best. Even if her and JJ's inevitable conversation goes in the wrong direction and they don't end up mending fences, it's better that they let it out sooner than later. If they wait any longer, it'll make it worse, and he knows that they're stubborn enough to keep this childish game going for another week or so.

So, he keeps her in the dark for now and offers a kind, "Sure, that's cool with me," despite knowing how messy the night will soon become.

A smile pokes at the edges of her mouth, making the sides of her eyes crinkle, and she extends a hand to help him up from where he sits.

"Now," she says as they make their way inside the house for her to pack a bag, "are you ready to get absolutely crushed in Monopoly?"

It started to rain before they left her house, and by the time they pull into the driveway of the Chateau, it's pouring down on them with violent winds whipping droplets at their faces hard enough to hurt.

The rapid pace of her pulse beats with such an intensity, she can feel it in her head. They shouldn't have taken so much time at her place before heading over here. While she was packing, they talked and dilly-dallied the whole time, and now they pay the price for it.

If she knew that it would start this soon into the night, she probably would've hurried things along sooner, but it's too late. She's already starting to feel that tightness in her chest and each breath of air feels less satisfying with every inhale. It's not so bad that she loses complete control of herself, but it's getting there, and she can't express how badly she doesn't want to lose her shit in front of John B.

The passenger side door is slammed shut by the force of the wind behind her, the noise becoming swallowed up in the rest of the budding storm, and she stifles a sound of surprise that escapes her in reaction to it. They're lucky they made it here in the first place. Any later in the night and they probably would've had to take refuge at her place until it blew over.

She decides to focus on how the edges of her white sneakers are swallowed up by the muddy earth on her way through the front yard to distract herself. It stains them a deep brown color and simultaneously washes them clean from the rain coming down from above, which she'd probably be annoyed about if she weren't such a nervous wreck. But, because she's too busy keeping her backpack raised over her head to shield herself from the rain on her way up to the front door, it's not high up on her list of priorities.

Since both the screen door and the door behind it are unlocked, she doesn't hesitate to come bursting into the house as she usually does.

Y/N lets out a deep breath, feeling that telltale tension in her chest and shoulders, and laughs at the sight of John B running in as she kicks off her shoes. His t-shirt is speckled with rainwater, and his hair is saturated enough with it to stick to the sides of his face after he crosses the threshold into the Chateau.

The sound of her laughter makes JJ's heart stop from where he stands in the kitchen.

"There was an umbrella right on the dashboard, why didn't you take—"

Her heart might as well have stopped just as abruptly as the sentence she was in the middle of saying when she turned and saw him standing there.

Maybe they're both a tad too dramatic, but it takes a full few seconds for them to stop staring at each other in surprise. He looks like a deer in the headlights, eyes wide with surprise like he was caught doing something he shouldn't even though all he was doing was grabbing a beer from the fridge.

It's been two days since they last saw each other. For him, the last glimpse he got of her was when he peeked through the blinds to see her pedaling away on her bike to go to work, but hers was somewhat different.

The last time she saw him, he was asleep. Their legs were tangled together underneath the sheets and his face was smushed against her chest, allowing her to feel the soft puffs of his exhales on her skin every few seconds. It's a wonder that she managed to slip away unnoticed once she remembered she had work that morning. He was holding her closely, so closely that she found it hard to discern where she ended and he began in the dazed, hungover headspace she woke up in.

It's when the conversation she had with John B on the front steps of her house comes back to the forefront of her mind that she puts together what's happening right now. Now that they're here, it's far too late to leave. With how aggressively the wind and rain batter the area surrounding the house, it's obvious that they're not going anywhere.

It seems to click with them at the same time, because JJ turns to look at him only a half second after she does.

Y/N says, completely serious, "If you did what I think you did, I'm gonna kill you."

Before either of them can think of doing anything, John B shoots out from the doorway and runs past her in the direction of the hallway where his bedroom is.

"Gotta catch me first!"

They both chase him, JJ hopping over the back of the couch to run after him, but they end up coming to a screeching halt at the shut door right when they hear the lock turn and click.

Neither of them knows what they were planning to do when they caught him, cause it isn't like they'd hurt him, but they bang on the door nonetheless. The sound is drowned out by the sound of the wind and rain pounding the outside walls of the house, picking up speed, and for a second she wants to kick the door open.

She shouts, "John B! Open this door!"

The last thing she wanted tonight was to be trapped in a house with the one person she didn't want to see. Doesn't John B realize how embarrassing it is for her to be around him when she knows that he's gonna reject her? He may have said something about JJ never acting so weird over a girl before, but he's wrong. There's no way JJ actually wants her...right?

"I can't hear you, this storm's kinda loud!" he yells back at them through the locked door. "Maybe try again later!"

Neither of them wants to acknowledge the other. In fact, they don't even want to look at each other right now, so all they can do to stop themselves from acknowledging the elephant in the room is continue trying to get answers out of John B. What does he think that locking them together in the Chateau for the night will accomplish other than make them ignore their own drama and team up to plot their revenge on him?

Though he's significantly less angry than she is, JJ pulls the doorknob enough to make the door whine on its hinges and pleads with their friend, "This isn't funny, John B. Open the door."

"Not until you guys stop being immature and talk to each other."

She furrows her brows at him even though he can't see her, saying, "It's none of your business. You can't just trap us here cause you think you know what's best for us."

The sound of thunder rumbling above the house makes her flinch, hand shooting out to latch onto JJ's arm on an instinct she couldn't consciously resist. Feeling the warmth of his skin beneath her palm and the fingers clutched around his wrist sends shocks of familiar electricity up her body. Touching him always makes her feel hyperaware of herself, leaving her to wonder if he can sense her pulse picking up or notice how her breathing pattern turns uneven.

With that being said, it's safe to say that the night they spent together took that sensation of electricity and hyperawareness to a height it hadn't reached before.

That time, it wasn't a brush of their hands or an arm over her shoulder, it was the epitome of physical closeness. She couldn't handle it. He was so sickeningly sweet with her, yet, at the same time, he knew all of the right times to be commanding and in control too. There were awkward moments at first, sure, but once they became comfortable with each other, it was game over.

And whenever they've touched since, she hasn't been able to get those memories off of her mind. It's less prevalent now, since she's only holding onto him out of fear, but it's still there underneath it all—the unfiltered desperation of the lust in his eyes, the low noises that escaped his parted lips, and the strong pair of hands that pinned her hips down on the mattress to give him the leverage to really give it to her at the intensity she begged for.

It's pathetically easy for her to be sucked right back into the vortex of emotions, memories, and fears that haunt her whenever they touch, but he brings her back out of it just as easily when he speaks.

"You okay?"

John B was as good as forgotten by him as soon as he felt her jolt next to him and grab onto his wrist like she was hanging from a ravine and he was the only thing preventing her from falling. It makes him feel like a fool, but even when they're ignoring each other, the urge to comfort and protect her from anything that displeases her never disappears. He'd literally fistfight Zeus if it meant there'd be less thunder to scare her.

If he weren't hiding behind a locked door to avoid their wrath, JB would probably be calling him a simp right about now.

The concern on his face is so pure and unaffected by any of the chaos that surrounds them, both physical and emotional, that it makes her stomach turn with a sick feeling. God, he really does care about her. Why does that scare her? Why doesn't she want to believe that he cares? Why is she so set on believing that he wanted nothing more than a quick fuck from her?

Her eyes turn down to see their connected hands, realizing all in one moment what she did and pulling her hand away as if she were burned.

"I—Yeah," she stops, looking up at him, then back to the closed bedroom door, "I'm fine. You know how it is, it's just the storm."

They're both left with no choice but to face the music after days of avoidance that had no good reason behind it other than the respective doubts and fears they have. Yet even now that they're standing here, unsure of what comes next, they're hesitant to say or do anything that might disrupt the illusion they've created in the week and a half since they first ruined their friendship for good.

It feels as though the tension that has been boiling between them is coming close to turning explosive and all it will take is one tremor of their self-control for it to spill over.

Every feeling they have feels so contradictory. They want to but they also don't. They almost do it, then hesitate and decide to ignore each other for days. At the party, this tug of war game was at its peak for JJ when she was telling him about her jealousy and cuddling up to him, but he couldn't do it then, not when she was drunk. And by the time he had a whole night to think it over and see her biking away, he didn't want to risk it.

She looks away from him, hoping that "out of sight, out of mind" may ring true for once, and says to John B through the door, "Whatever, have fun. I won't hold JJ back when you finally come out of there though."

He won't actually do anything to him, maybe just a non-serious fight that'll end with her walking in on them rolling around on the floor trying to wrestle each other, but she likes to fuck with him anyway. For the dick move he just pulled, she thinks he can withstand a little teasing.

Without anything else to say, Y/N turns and walks off to make herself useful elsewhere—anything to distract from the buzzing, anxious energy that surrounds her from both the hurricane and being forced to confront JJ. She tries to play it cool though she is anything but at the moment, allowing herself to grimace once her back is turned to the blonde boy still standing against the wall in the hallway.

Maybe if she keeps pushing this false sense of normalcy, it'll work. It worked when they both started pretending things never happened between them initially after they had sex, so who's to say it can't work now?

All they have to do is get through the next 12-24 hours without talking and all will be well. Right?

They tried.

They truly tried to get through the night without inciting chaos within the Chateau, but, for these two idiots, not inciting chaos is a task easier said than done. Not only was John B much more stubborn with staying in his room than either of them bargained for, he didn't even attempt to speak to them for the first five hours and they were left with nothing to do but find new ways to avoid talking to each other.

It was simple in the beginning.

She went off on her own and sat with her headphones in to drown out the sounds of the storm.

With her eyes fluttered shut to block out anything but the sound of The Cure blasting into her ears, there was no reason for her to have to worry about anything once her nerves began to settle. Since the songs drowned out any sound and all she could see was darkness behind her closed eyelids, she was able to drift away with the distraction of the music.

The thing is, after a while, she started to see pieces of him in every song she skipped to. She made it a full minute into Just Like Heaven before a supercut of her most treasured memories of him began appearing in her head. Fade Into You? Skipped as soon as the first dreamy lyric flooded in through the tangled cords of the headphones. Cloud 9? Forty seconds in. By the time Dirty Little Secret came on, she decided that her playlist was mocking her.

The headphones were out of her ears, hastily wrapped up, and stowed away in the small pocket of her overnight bag before the chorus of the song could hit. Thankfully for her, JJ wasn't looking when she ripped the headphones out and put them away in a huff, so by the time he turned to see her again, she was laying down on the couch to "nap"—meaning she laid awake for another hour and cursed John B for making her endure this.

While she was daydreaming of a John B voodoo doll, JJ was worried about her.

Yes, the topic of their relationship/friendship/situationship/whatever-the-fuck-it-is was bombarding him against his will every five seconds, but not without him coming back to his concern for her. A small sound of thunder on an otherwise perfect day was enough to make her zone out and start getting antsy that day on the boat, so he didn't want to know how bad it could get during a time like this.

He tried to play it cool, and, in all honesty, his remaining scraps of sanity lasted a lot longer than hers. Four and a half hours passed, then, as the storm began to do its worst on their town, the power flickered out and left them in complete darkness. At that point, John B was passed out in his bedroom, so he didn't care nor notice when they had to find a few candles and stumble through the dark.

Somewhere along the way, having to search through the dark house for candles to light and place around the living room led them here...he isn't quite sure how.

JJ can hardly open his eyes enough to see through the rain that pounds against him the second he runs after her through the back door. The wind is so aggressive and unrelenting, it almost sends him stumbling a few steps when he follows her blurry figure a few paces behind where she tries to flee the house in a panic.

"Get back inside!" he shouts as he picks up his speed to catch up, "Y/N!"

The part of him that isn't focused on the pure physicality of trying to see and move through the stormy weather is utterly overwhelmed with fear. Not for himself but for her. She's deathly afraid of mild storms, let alone hurricanes, and yet she ran through the back door when he tried comforting her through an anxiety attack. One would think that she wouldn't want to go directly into the thing she fears the most, but what sent her running for the hills wasn't the panic itself, it was him.

It's hard for her to think rationally in this state, but all she knows is that he was there, he was saying all the right things and holding her, and she couldn't do it. The fear began to blend to one centered around both him and the storm. The hours of useless distractions and ruminating in her thoughts built up to this point of contention, then it snapped.

Between the thunder, his voice, and the voice in the back of her head that was urging her to confess her feelings and do as John B advised them to, it became too much. Maybe it was the most idiotic split-second decision she made without any regard for logic or reason or her safety, but she bailed. For the third time, she couldn't handle the pressure and ran from him.

The only difference is that he couldn't let her leave this time.

He gasps for air against the streams of water flowing down his face, soaking his hair and making it hang in his eyes to obstruct his view more than the weather already has. It happened so fast, neither of them are wearing shoes. His feet sink into the muddy yard with every stride he takes in his frantic pursuit of her and it frustrates him no end because of how it slows him down.

There's endless dangerous possibilities with her being out here. She could be knocked over into the marsh by the wind, or stuck and hurt by a piece of debris—merely thinking about it makes him call out her name louder in the hopes that it'll wake her from her panicked trance.

After trudging through the mud all the way to the edge of the yard, he finally manages to get to her.

"What are you doing?" JJ shouts, turning her around and grabbing onto both of her arms as if one gust of wind would sweep her away if he didn't, "You're gonna get hurt!"

Stumbling backwards in the direction of the screened-in porch that surrounds the back door, he uses their difference in strength to tug her away in the direction she came out in. The rain makes it difficult to keep a firm grasp on her, and she almost slips away a couple of times when the wind picks up enough to make him too unsteady to hold on.

His arms slip around her waist for a better grasp on her the closer they come to reaching the house. The last thing he wants is to almost get her back inside and lose her at the last second. She isn't thinking rationally right now with the panic she feels taking full control of her responses. He knows firsthand how it feels to be thrown headfirst into a panic attack, he's been in her shoes before and knows better than anyone the lengths your irrational mind will go to if it means survival. And for whatever reason, her response is flight, not fight.

The door to the screen porch takes all of his effort to open against the power of the wind blowing it back against the house.

He grits his teeth as he forces it open, one arm secured around her midsection, and helps her in before he slips inside too. The second he lets go of the door, it's sent slamming back into place and rattling in the frame behind them, but he doesn't spend anymore time on it other than the few seconds it takes to lock it. As soon as it clicks with him that they're safe—most importantly, that she's safe—he whips around to face her with a cold rage flowing through his veins.

"What the fuck?"

She stands in front of him with water pouring off of her in rapid drops onto the rug, and there are no thoughts in her head outside of the ones telling her to leave. Her tears blend in with the droplets of rain so seamlessly that he wouldn't know she's crying if not for the sound of it.

In between her rapid breaths and sobs, she yells back at him, "I was scared, okay?"

"Why'd you run out into the storm if you—"

"I wasn't afraid of the storm, I was afraid of you!"

The silence that follows is louder than anything they've experienced. Nothing can rival it, not the thunder, the rain, or anything can drown it out while he stares at her in shock. His eyes are wide, lips slightly parted as he reaches for something, anything, he can say in response to that, but there's nothing. For once, he is absolutely speechless.

Things got awkward between them in the initial aftermath of last week, but not like this. There was never an instance where he felt like there was nothing left for him to say to her to fill the uncomfortable silence that always brought forth memories of them together until now. Until she said the last thing he wanted or expected to hear.

His anger subsides as he picks over what he did in his head for anything that could've made her feel unsafe.

Before it evolved into him chasing after her through the hurricane, he noticed how terrible it had gotten for her when he lit the first candle. Her cheeks were streaked with tears and her chest began to rise and fall faster with each second that passed. He could see it on her face that things were getting worse, but, now that he thinks of it, it got worse once he reached out to put his hand on her shoulder.

It felt like a dream sequence in his head, so hazy and faraway now that it's over, and he was so stunned by what she was doing, he didn't run after her until a few seconds later. There was a delay in which he stood there in surprise and tried to process what the hell just happened to no avail. Though it wasn't very long, he remembers it feeling like eternity tucked into the cramped space of four seconds.

JJ's voice is softer than she's ever heard it, asking into the void of the near-darkness that encloses them, "What'd I do?" And it breaks her heart in half to hear him sound so concerned, so terrified of the idea that he did something to hurt her when all he did was try to help. "I never meant to scare you, I swear. I know how bad it can get sometimes, and I know we haven't been talking but I'd never try to hurt you if that's what you thought..."

His thoughts run rampant with the possibilities of what she was thinking at the time, and he realizes that he can't stand the idea of her thinking anything badly of him. He never cares about what people think, but, fuck, he loathes the idea of her having any ill feelings toward him.

Y/N immediately starts shaking her head, her face scrunching with the emotion and incessant tears.

"I know you'd never hurt me. I was scared because..." she stops herself mid sentence, catching it right when she was about to admit the one thing she promised herself she wouldn't.

But the need to say it doesn't go away this time. Usually, once she catches herself she comes to her senses and realizes how foolish it would've been to confess, but this time is different. This time, the urge to speak her mind and tell him everything sticks around. The words left unsaid creep up her throat, thrashing and begging to let out after months of being pushed aside.

The look in her eyes is strangely reminiscent of the way she looked at him the night they hooked up, almost yearning in its nature, and he couldn't be more confused. She's scared of him, but she's looking at him like she did when she was two seconds away from jumping his bones. And if he didn't do anything wrong, why was she afraid enough to face her worst fear in order to avoid him?

"Because what?" he asks.

That frustration from when they first stepped into the porch hasn't vanished, it only took a backseat once she said she was afraid of him, not the storm, and he can feel it stirring up again. He's tired of not having answers. He's tired of mixed signals and loneliness and unrequited love. Most of all, he's tired of her running away all the time. At this point, he questions whether or not it's worth it to expose his feelings to her and suffer the consequences.

John B was right. This isn't healthy for them, nor is it healthy for them to put their friends through this along with them, and it might be better to not be friends than to stay this way forever. At least that way they wouldn't be wishing for answers that would never come for the rest of their time together.

She decides at this moment that this has to be said before it gets worse, before she runs away again like a scared, immature child and ruins everything.

"Because," she has to shout over the lightning that cracks down on the earth down the street, something she would be trembling in fear over if she weren't so focused on him, "I've been in love with you for a couple months and it scares me more than anything, even this stupid fucking storm! And I've tried so hard to ignore it because I know you don't feel the same way, but you touched me and I just"—a soft cry escapes her—"I couldn't do it anymore."

There it is.

After months of ruminating over it and hiding everything, he knows, and her immediate feeling after she says it isn't what she thought it would be. She expected trepidation and regret, but what she finds on the other side isn't either of those, it's relief. Her dad often tells her when she's nervous about something that the anticipation is worse than the thing itself, and that has never been as true her as it is now.

However, some of the nerves return with the time that passes after she spoke in complete silence. Much like the delayed reaction he had to her running out of the house, it isn't as long as it feels to her. It's a short span of time that it takes for her words to process with him, but it feels like an eternity that he stands there with his head facing the floor in quiet contemplation.

Her heart sinks.

This means he doesn't feel the same way, doesn't it? If he were the one telling her he loved her, she likely would've leaped into his arms and said it back, but he stays where he is.

Then, after what feels like forever, she thinks she sees him start to smile and feels like she's losing her mind. It's quite dark out here, so there's only a limited amount of light to allow her to see his features, but there's no doubting it when a flash of lightning floods the porch with a split-second of harsh light.

Oh God, why is he smiling? What does it mean?

Much to her frustration, the first thing he says after her confession isn't much help in making her understand his feelings either.

"Why didn't you just talk to me?"

Why? The voice in the back of her mind asks incredulously. Is he seriously asking why? He ignored me too. He didn't want to talk about it either, so what else was I supposed to do?

Maybe she was undeniably worse when it came to the avoidance and lack of communication, but he could've reached out to her too. They both could've. Instead, they spent day after day waiting for the other to make the move and pushed the tension further and further until it finally broke. Now she's waiting for him to hurry up and reject her so she can move on with her life.

She shivers from the wind blowing at her wet skin through the screens separating them from the outside world, crossing her arms over her body to hug herself. His eyes follow her movements down to the breaths that are slowly evening out without her realizing it. It turns out that confessing your love for the guy you've been crushing on since the day you met him is a hell of a distraction.

"I thought you wouldn't wanna hear me being all emotional and shit over a one time thing. You've literally never had an actual relationship before. And that's fine," she rambles, "I'll be okay eventually, but that's not who you are and there isn't a problem with that. I just caught feelings when I shouldn't have."

In her defense, she isn't making baseless assumptions about him, he hasn't had a relationship before. His love life hasn't ever really revolved around love itself, it was mostly comprised of random chicks he'd meet at parties or at the beach during the summertime when tourists come to visit the island. Out of all of them, he's the last one the Pogues would expect to fall in love with someone and commit to a relationship, but then...

He looks over at her with a swell of emotion within him that he's never felt before. It wasn't like he hadn't known before now. He did. He even said it out loud to himself that morning after the party, but this is when it feels the most real. Now that she's said it to him, he doesn't feel so stupid for toying with the four letter word in the back of his mind for the entirety of the past week.

In all honesty, he was the last person he would've expected to fall in love with someone this quickly too. He thought he knew himself better than this. He thought he could keep himself hidden away and not let anyone close enough to see him—the real him, faults and feelings and vulnerability included—but she proved him wrong. In walked Y/N with her pretty smile, teeny bikini bottoms, and oddly strong opinions on Ratatouille, and he stood no chance.

This sudden crescendo of emotion only continues to grow when he watches her shiver, soaked to the skin, across from him and decides that he never wants to deny himself of her again. Those feelings of inadequacy that forced him to question his relationship with her may not have gone away, not by a long shot, but they can't stop him anymore. Nothing can.

Like a light flickering to life in this swirling, stormy darkness, she hears JJ's voice asking her, "What if it is who I am?"

It was said so softly, she nearly lost it beneath the rain and wind. But it was not said with a lack of certainty, which is why she questions if she heard him correctly. He sounded so sure of himself that it feels too good to be true. After his reaction, or lack thereof, to her telling him she loved him, she accepted what was coming and this was not it.

"What?"

He doesn't miss a beat.

"You heard me." There's a pause. "Maybe I needed to meet the right girl."

There is no way he's saying what she thinks he's saying because if he is...if he is then that means the tears and frustration have all been for nothing because he loves her back. But if he loves her, then what was with the kook girl? Was it to make her jealous, or is she misinterpreting him right now and he was flirting with that girl because he doesn't have real feelings for her?

"JJ..." she trails off, looking down and thinking to herself how thankful she is that it's too dark for him to fully see how nervous he made her, "don't do that."

Partly, he should feel offended that she'd think he'd toy with her feelings like that, but he isn't. He's too busy wondering what on earth made this poor girl so insecure to think that someone has to be joking to confess their love to her. It makes him wonder if anyone wronged her before she moved here, and he feels that switch of impulsive anger inside of him flip at the thought.

But that anger has nowhere to go, so it shifts into something different—a need to spend every waking moment of the rest of their time together proving to her that she doesn't have to be so afraid. Does it make him a hypocrite? Probably. It wasn't too long ago that he was telling the Pogues how much he didn't deserve to be with her, but he doesn't see himself the same way he sees her. In his head, he has reasons to believe he doesn't deserve her love, but how could she ever think that herself?

He steps closer to her, the movement something so natural and unconscious to him that he doesn't recognize he does it until he hears her breath hitch in the back of her throat. They were already close enough to reach out and touch each other if they wanted to, yet now it's the kind of closeness that wipes the slate of her mind clean with nothing else but the thought of him there to stay.

He starts to say, "I'm not fucking with you, dude, I'm being serious—"

"Then prove it."

Oh.

The sound of his unfinished sentence lingers on the tip of his tongue as he blinks away his surprise at what she said, though it was less of a statement and more of a challenge. What the challenge is, he isn't too sure, but he thinks there could be a couple of meanings there.

The fire in her eyes when she looked up at him is one he recognizes very well, it stars in one too many of his daydreams that center around their secret night together. She rose to the occasion without fail and matched his chaos every time, and that steely-eyed stare is reminiscent of it.

Yet, the sexual undertone isn't the only part of it to be discovered. There's a clear meaning there for him to actually prove it, to put his money where his mouth is, grow a pair, and tell her how he feels with no room for confusion. No more miscommunication, running away, or insecurity getting between them, just a clear cut confession like hers.

His hand runs through his hair to sweep it out of his eyes and keep the wet strands from dripping down his face. It helps him see her a little better too, grounding him to the moment and calming him at the dimmed sight of her expectant, wide eyed gaze.

There were a million versions of this whenever he let himself imagine admitting it. He only let himself picture it on the worst days, days like the one two days ago when he went home to his dad, ending the night by cleaning his own cuts and inspecting his own bruises in his locked bedroom. He did it to distract himself from wanting to storm out of the room and finally kill the son of a bitch after years of suffering in silence.

JJ closed his eyes, shaking with anger, and dreamed of how he'd tell her. There were versions with long speeches that were far too sappy to exist outside of the realm of his imagination. There were versions with him burying the words between friendly jokes to play down the extent of his feelings too, but he thought it worked best in its simplest form.

So he puts it as simply as it gets, lips fighting a soft smile as he crosses the space between them and rushes in to kiss her. It's charged with an accumulation of the pent up love, anger, and sexual desire that has been repressed until now, resulting in something utterly explosive.

He stops for a second to whisper, "I love you too," into her parted lips, and she finally lets herself go at the sound of those words.

Forget that they've only known each other for five months, when you know you know. This is the real deal. This is the kind of feeling that possesses every accessible inch of her heart and she'd never be open enough to admit that to anyone but him at the moment, but neither of them minds that. It's such a new, rapidly developing feeling that they want to protect it and keep it close to them for the time being.

His arms twine around her waist, tugging her the last bit forward and leaving no space between their bodies this time. The sudden movement draws a sharp gasp from the back of her throat and sends her hands out to brace themselves on his shoulders. The sound of the gasp that disappears into their connected mouths only fuels him on more. It makes him more eager with how he touches her with his hands drifting down the plane of her back, one of which playfully slipping beneath the hem of her soaked shirt in a way that makes her smile into the kiss.

He knows exactly what he does to her. He can sense it in the small reactions that would often go overlooked if it were someone less familiar with her.

It's easy to tell by the way she completely surrenders herself to him, letting out these soft little noises she doesn't even realize she's making when he takes control of the interaction and kisses her like he's starved for it. In a way, he is starving for affection and attention from her. He never knew it was something he needed so badly until he got it, and now he never wants to go without having her again.

That's why it doesn't surprise him when she starts getting antsy after a moment or two, especially after keeping away from him for days.

Her hands run down the length of his chest over the soaked t-shirt, taking a quiet victory in how his stomach flinches inward in response to her exploring touch, and she could swear his next exhale trembles as she continues lower. Never once does she break the kiss, which, by the way, has gone past the point of being passionate and straight to downright needy, but her concentration does falter. The perfectly paced rhythm of her mouth moving with his is interrupted when she touches him over the fabric of his shorts.

Those plushy soft lips go on an exploration of their own too. Leaving him with the first opportunity to catch his breath in minutes, she dips her head beneath the sharp edge of jaw in pursuit of the sweet spot she remembers reducing him to a grabby, moaning mess the last time they did this. It doesn't take her long, not if the tightening of his arms around her and the satisfied hum of a moan she feels vibrate beneath her mouth has anything to say for it.

He loses himself in it for a second or two...okay, fine, maybe ten.

The separate sensations combined spark a flame inside of him that burns so hopelessly for whatever she'll give him. His mind sends him images of them together, both real memories from their first time together and imagined fantasies he only let himself visit in his dreams, and he realizes how thinly spread his self control has become lately.

First, it's the thought of her from last week, thoughts of her gasping, writhing, and begging beneath him that makes his cock throb under the teasing contact of her hand through his shorts. But then he's brought elsewhere. Then, though he hasn't thought of it since the day after the party, he thinks of the mix of jealousy and anger he felt when he saw Tyler with her.

He remembers being sane one moment and charging across the room like a madman the next. He remembers how it felt to watch another person's hands slip under her dress, how it felt to see someone else try to kiss her the way he had, and this raw wound of a memory is all it takes to spur him into action.

It happens so quickly, she doesn't even notice what's happening until he has her scooped up in his arms with her legs around his waist. She doesn't even have the chance to voice her surprise or crack a joke at the expense of his neediness before he reconnects their paused kiss with enough force to make her teeth ache in the collision.

JJ's rings are colder than ice, digging into the flesh of her thighs as he holds them with a tight grip and blindly takes the few steps necessary to reach the back entrance of the house. His wet handprint smudges on one of the cracked-open glass doors and sends droplets of water dribbling down the surface. The teardrop of rain zig-zags at the swinging motion of the door on their way in, only changing course again when he nudges it shut behind him a little too loudly.

"Wh"—her question is cut off by him laying her down on the rug-covered floor in between the couch and coffee table—"What if John B wakes up?"

His first thought was to bring her into the spare bedroom, but then he realized that it shares a wall with John B. Then, he considered the pull out couch but realized that would be louder than the room adjacent to their friend's. His only conclusion was this.

It isn't nearly as romantic as either of them would've pictured, but they're not exactly picky either. They're so desperate for it, they'd likely do it on the porch in the middle of a hurricane if there weren't another option. And in their own weird way, they make it romantic.

There's no one else she'd rather risk rug burn for, and that is the peak of romance.

"John B sleeps like a fuckin' rock," JJ says, "and it's own his fault for trapping us here anyway."

He follows her down onto the floor without a second thought, not even looking up to see if they woke their friend with the sound of the door shutting behind them.

Hovered above her, he looks particularly captivating in the flickering candlelight. The fire burning in one of the three-wick candles they scoured the bathroom cabinets for brings out the warm hues in his blonde hair and highlights every edge of the angular face that looks down at her. The porch was far too dark for her to see him in all of his near-perfection, but this is enough for her to notice a multitude of things.

His slicked back, wet hair allows her to see his features better and the way he looks at her...it's enough to make anyone feel red in the face. How hadn't she see it before? She knows it was denial, but, somehow, she used to overlook the small hints along the way like how he looks at her like she's the only thing that makes sense to him. For the first time in a while, she allows herself to embrace the idea of being loved without looking for something to justify her fears surrounding it.

The sound of her voice brings him out of the mesmerized trance he fell under at the sight of her.

"I've missed you," she says softly, "like a lot."

The sweet admission slows him down for a second, making him stop to ignore the distracting desire that she sparked to life a moment ago and take the time to cherish this moment of rare serenity with her.

It's a wonder that she hasn't even acknowledged the storm raging on outside since they've come back in. It's all thanks to him, of course, since she's been too focused on everything happening between them, but it surprises him. It makes a sense of pride flare up in him on her behalf for being capable of forgetting something she fears so much.

But, on the other hand, it reminds him of how distraught she was right before their conversation/argument on the porch shifted from her panic to the topic of their relationship, and he can't help but hesitate a little.

"I missed you too." The hand he isn't using to support himself above her cups her face, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. "Are you okay though? You were just crying and I don't wanna make you—"

"Yes."

It was so said so quickly, there was zero hesitation. It's not that it doesn't surprise him that she's as eager as he is after what started to happen out on the porch, but it does make his eyes widen a little. His mouth curls with a slight grin. It's the kind that never fails to make her stomach fluttering and light with butterflies.

"You don't have to worry about me. I'm okay, and I promise I'll let you know if I'm not," Y/N clarifies.

"Okay."

There's a short moment where all they do is look at each other with a complete loss for words to convey what they feel right now. It isn't as awkward as it would've been prior to tonight. Before they confessed their feelings, they wouldn't have been able to look at one another for any longer than a few seconds without needing to walk away to break the tension. Now, things have changed. They don't feel the need to conceal how much they care anymore.

They're still the same bickering duo they've always been with the added fun of being head over heels. She never used to understand how some people could let their feelings for another person drive them crazy, but it's done more than make her crazy this past week. It made her jealous, obsessive, and somehow happy too, and no one has ever made her feel so many varying emotions in her life.

Her fingertips graze the stretch of skin between where his cargo shorts sit on his hips and his shirt rides up the side of his torso, and he swallows thickly at the feeling.

"Do I make you nervous?" she asks.

Her lilting, smooth voice is enough to soothe any nerves he could possibly have. It's as if hearing her ask that paired with the hand teasing the waistband of his shorts pulled him back to the place he'd been before when she was teasing him over his clothes.

He answers honestly, his head going fuzzy with the crushing desire that courses through him, "Not as nervous as I make you," and closes the space between them again.

The cheeky comment doesn't go unnoticed by her, not one bit. It makes her face heat up in embarrassment that is purely instinct after having to hide her feelings from her for so long. Maybe after they've been together for longer, it won't make her blush every time he acknowledges the effect he has on her out loud, but that day isn't today. Today, she goes hot in the face from a sole second of his attention, let alone this.

JJ lets his hand climb up the length of her torso as they kiss as if they have all the time in the world, as if their best friend isn't sleeping less than twenty feet away from them, until it flattens at the base of her neck. It doesn't curl around her neck and squeeze, nor does it do anything but remind her how much she loves the feeling of him touching her, the large palm of his hand simply stays draped over her throat to flaunt his ability to sway her nerves.

She's pretty sure if it were anyone else, it wouldn't work, but he's JJ for fuck's sake, and the quiet display of dominance sends an exhilarating little thrill rumbling through her. It isn't anything over the top or exaggerated like some people would do in an attempt to stake a claim over the person they love, just a simple gesture that they both know the meaning of.

She's his. After five months of friendship, two months of silent pining, and a week of sexually confused hell, she's his, and he'll never let her forget it.

The wind rattles the windows over the couch with its force and she notices that his hips grind into hers at the sudden sound. Even in the midst of such a heated moment, it's downright cute how he still makes an effort to distract her from what she fears. And, boy, does it work.

Their panting breaths in the brief seconds they allow themselves to break away from each other are the only sounds audible in the small living room. The storm drowns it all out for now, including the noises that start to leave them from the steadily building pleasure of their bodies moving together.

She can feel how hard he is through the layers that separate them with every absentminded thrust that brushes the fabric of her panties up against her clit each time. It leaves her breathless and wondering, despite already knowing, what it'll feel like when he finally slips inside of her again.

They both fantasized about it in the time they spent apart. Neither of them would dare deny it, least of all JJ. It actually became frustrating after a while because she started to become the only scenario he could conjure to get himself off when he had a rare moment of privacy. His fantasies, all stemming from the night that was so perfect, he began to question the reality of it, linger in his head.

The best part of his fantasies were the parts of them based in truth, and if he knows anything about her when she's in this state, it's that she's needy. Her tongue swipes along his bottom lip in a silent urging to let her deepen the kiss, and he complies without a second to spare, willing to entertain her every whim so long as she keeps being so good for him.

He revels in her muffled squeak of a moan when he presses down on the sides of her throat at the precise moment his hips grind down to meet hers. She can't keep herself still for any longer than a half-second, always meeting his movements halfway and unknowingly doing another thing that will be the death of him.

She leads his shirt up his body without having to second guess herself, knowing that he's always on the same wavelength as her no matter what. This was how it was the last time too. Anything she did, he was already one step ahead, and tonight isn't much different. By the time her hands ball up the dripping cotton fabric, JJ is lifting the hand off of her neck to reach for the neckline of the shirt and help tug it off.

There's a sense of urgency in everything they do. Charged up with frustration and jealousy that brewed within the days they spent apart, there's nothing to stop them from reducing themselves to a pair of panting, impatient lovers too consumed in each other to care about the outside world.

The sopping wet fabric is thrown beyond her line of sight and lands on the hardwood floor with a 'thwack' that accompanies their cacophony of moans and gasps, and she whimpers at the sight of him. It may have to do with the fact that he's guiding their bodies together at a cadence and pressure perfect enough to make her legs tremble, but seeing him like this does nothing but aid the sensation.

Golden skin glistening under the candlelight, tendrils of half-dry blonde hair falling into his face with the lazy effort of his movements, and a stray raindrop that squeezed from the wet shirt dripping down his chest...she's not gonna make it out of tonight alive, is she? In her memory, she knew he was a sight to see in the midst of a heated moment, but, fuck, memories do not hold up beside the real experience of it.

Y/N is so caught up in his seemingly endless beauty, she doesn't notice him peeling her damp denim shorts off of her hips until they're halfway down her legs, and the only reason she does notice is because he must shift his position to do it. Suddenly, the budding feeling that stirred from their needy antics is plucked away and left to ache for more in the absence of him between her thighs.

Her middle and index fingers hook around the front of his necklace to pull him back down to her, but he doesn't budge at first. He's too busy trying to rid her of her shirt to care.

It was too much of a distraction while they kissed for him to resist slipping it off of her when he got the chance to. Much to his frustration when he first realized they were trapped with each other, she's braless underneath, and it's only worse now that the t-shirt is soaked to her skin and clinging to every delicate curve.

Once the clothing gives way to the canvas of her bare skin, he submits to her urgency and follows her down by the fingers hooked around his necklace without any qualms.

As soon as they resume, it's as if they never stopped to begin with, and they start to realize how seamlessly they fit together as the seconds elapse. Neither of them are actively thinking about it while he dips his hand into the front of her panties, but it is in their subconscious.

It's a revelation of sorts, an ah-ha moment where it hits them both in a sweeping realization that it was obvious from the day they met. They should've known sooner, they should've dropped their pride and admitted it as soon as the first inklings of desire began to pop up, but they didn't. Instead, it washes over them now and they let the current take them away together.

Her mouth falls open against his cheek at the feeling of his fingers swiping through the arousal that pools in her underwear for him, dragging the wetness over his fingertips and spreading it up to brush fleetingly against her clit. It's a split-second of a touch that it makes her hips lift up off the floor on their own accord to seek out more. It makes her dig her nails into the skin stretching over his taut shoulder muscles in a wordless plea for more that he doesn't indulge her in at first.

He makes her earn it from him without having to say a single word. He touches her, but he doesn't touch where she wants or ease his fingers into her to satisfy the need she feels yet. It's a blessing and a curse that he manages to turn her on to such an extent. He does it for her like nothing else can, so much so that she's noticed a distinct difference in how it feels when she's alone versus when they're together. When she's alone, it can tend to feel like active effort, but when she's with him, it's as natural as the urge to breathe.

His smirk is felt against her skin the entire time she begs for it through the revealing actions of her body—her hips jerking up toward him, her chest pressing tightly to his, and the sound of her murmuring, "Please," in a breathy tone that could stop his heart.

"Tell me what you want," JJ says, every word constrained and tight in a way that tells her he's a lot less composed than he lets on, and "accidentally" swipes his thumb over her clit again. "Talk to me, baby."

She almost forgot in their time apart how much of an effect he has on her, but this is the best reminder of that she could possibly imagine. If she could, she would find a way to bottle the feeling he gives her and keep it with her forever so that, no matter what happens between them, she'll never have the misfortune of forgetting him.

What he said simultaneously melts her heart and frustrates her to no end because he knows! He knows damn well what she wants from him and won't give it to her unless she asks for it, and she hates herself for loving it. She hates herself for enjoying the flushed-face embarrassment it brings to her cheeks to be so open with him about what she needs.

She swallows the lump in her throat and tries to focus through the clouded landscape of her head to speak to him. It's hard to concentrate when he's above her like this, touching her, calling her pet names, and looking at her like that.

With his lips worshiping the sensitive skin along her neck, she finds it hard to choke out the words, "I want you," into the humid air that has infiltrated the house.

It's not a lie. Anything regarding her wanting him or any related feeling is no longer something she can hide anymore, but they both know it isn't exactly what he wanted. No matter how it took his breath away to hear her say it, he was seeking something more specific. He was aiming to make her ask, maybe even beg, for it. They're both too impatient to wait and based on how wet his fingertips are from barely dipping into her, he can tell she's as eager as he is.

It's been thirteen days too long since the last time they allowed themselves to meet this way, and neither of them wants to let it happen again.

She was nearly trembling with the urge to go to him whenever they were together in the company of their friends, unable to think about anything except for how badly she wanted him. All the while, he appeared so unbothered, especially on the night of the party when he flirted with someone else, that she didn't even believe he felt the same way back. Thankfully for her, she couldn't have been more wrong.

He clicks his tongue and says, still teasing her with light touches that never linger in one place for too long, "That wasn't very specific."

Part of her should know that he's about to do something based on how he withdraws his head from its cherished place in the crook of her neck, but she's too caught up in the anticipation and seeing his face for the first time in a minute to think about it. How dare he look so good? She could cry in frustration, although she might actually already be tearing up a little with the rush of neediness hitting her in its full force.

Never has she felt so turned on by so little physical contact before. It usually takes longer for her to get to this point, whether it be alone or in the past with previous partners, yet all it took was being kissed, touched, and being given his undivided attention and now...She realizes she's in trouble. He has her in an emotional and sexual chokehold at this point, and she fears that no one can compare.

"I want—" her voice is snuffed out in an instant when he eases two fingers into her, "Oh!"

So that's why he pulled away from her neck to look at her.

It was worth abandoning the mark forming on her neck just to see the expression on her face shift. She gets this cute look when anything overwhelming starts to happen where her brows scrunch a little to create a soft wrinkle between them as her mouth drops open in a moan. And after ten steady minutes of doing nothing but some over the clothes action and painstaking teasing, this is as overwhelming as it gets without it crossing the line to being too much.

It never occurred to her how much larger his fingers are compared to hers until now. This type of pleasure is like an itch only someone else can scratch to her, she feels virtually nothing when she does it to herself, but when he does it, it's like an explosive being set off inside of her. Especially with the thumb that sneaks up to circle her clit without stopping to tease her again, she is putty in his hands at this point.

Every smooth stroke of his fingers into her reaches a spot she can never quite find on her own, and she can feel the cold bite of rings when they're buried into her to the knuckle.

It's a surprise every time, even when she knows to expect it. Like a delightful chill running up through her body and down her spine exactly how it's intended to. It strikes an idea in her head for when he eventually pulls them out of her, conjuring the image of her sucking them clean for him just for the sake of imagining what it'll do to him.

With that idea tucked away in the back of her mind, he's the center of her world right now. All she breathes, thinks, and feels is him. Whether it be the sight of him, or the feelings he's giving her, or even the taste of his kiss that still lingers on her tongue, it connects to one common thread.

"What were you saying?" JJ asks, and she wants to wipe that smirk right off his face.

It's virtually impossible for her to piece together a coherent thought, let alone a sentence detailing every filthy idea she has for him, but she tries. It takes another moment or two of her succumbing to the rapid incline of pleasure that he gives her, watching her in wonder through any greedy buck of her hips or gasping inhale that makes her head loll back onto the floor.

At first, what she wanted to say was that she wanted him to touch her, to do anything more than the fleeting touches he gave before. Now, she wants more than that. Now that she's drawn in closer to the eventual high that's to come, she doesn't want it to happen like this. She wants to feel closer to him than this, wants to feel him throb inside of her and fuck her with all of the urgency and desperation that has accumulated in their time apart.

That's why her hands start to grab at the belt loops of his shorts to tug him closer by them, meeting his gaze through the hazy bliss of his fingers pumping into her. It's not enough.

"Please"—she keeps pulling him closer to her, so close that there's hardly any space left to cross, and he revels in her desperation—"just fuck me already..."

Internally, JJ is losing his shit.

Though this was what he wanted, what he coaxed out of her with the teasing and the pretend sense of a nonchalant attitude on his part, it hits him harder than he expected it to to hear her say it. It's not necessarily the act of begging itself either, it's the fact that she's the one doing it. She may have been jealous of the girl at the party, but she had nothing to worry about. Not in the slightest.

Before her, he never thought he'd fall for someone this way. It's not like he had a hatred for love or anything, he understood the appeal, it simply wasn't his thing.

He was perfectly content with his only form of companionship being his friends. Then, she came along and changed it. So to hear her say something like that isn't just breathtaking, it's the kind of thing that makes his heart ache for her. It hits him precisely where she wanted it to, and he has never felt as consumed with love the way he does now.

JJ can do nothing to stop himself from pouncing on her at this point, like some animalistic form of himself has worn down the restraint he used to keep himself at bay.

The loss she feels when his fingers slip away from her is an emptiness she mourns at first before she realizes what's happening. He pulls away slightly to reach down between them for the front of his shorts, and their hands clash as they both frantically try to undo them together. The rings adorning his fingers glisten when they catch the light and remind her of the thought that popped into her head when she first felt their coldness against her skin.

That idea paired with the promise of what they're trying to accomplish in their uncoordinated attempt to get the rest of their clothes off makes her want to press her thighs together. Her hands abandon the task of undoing his shorts for the sake of ridding herself of the last layer that separates her from him.

Her most embarrassing old pair of brightly colored panties, courtesy of past Y/N's questionable decision to trust her mom to buy some on her behalf, are hardly a sight to behold. They're the kind that come in a value pack from Walmart, vibrant blue with the word, "Tuesday," printed on the front of them, and she could hide her face into the rug in shame if she weren't so determined to get them off. Of all the days to wear the day of the week undies her mom accidentally got her, of course she chose today.

By the time she reaches for the waistband, he has pushed his shorts and underwear down his thighs and comes back to her with just as much excitement as he left with, but when he helps her tug her panties down her legs, he laughs. Apparently, he had also been too eager to touch her to notice what was written on them before.

"Cute," he breathes out through a laugh, then adds as the cotton fabric slips over her knees, "Pretty sure it's not Tuesday though."

"If you tell anyone, I swear I'll—"

He cuts her off, "Whatever you wanna threaten me with won't work, chances are I'm gonna be into it."

Her eyes are alight with a certain fire he's had yet to fully lure out of her. Even her voice is slightly more airy and seductive as a result of it.

"Promise?"

JJ grins down at her as he finally tosses her panties aside with the rest of their clothes, "Cross my heart, pretty girl."

His hands grip her thighs and tug her down the  rug to him with a quick jolt that snaps them out of the playful nature of their back and forth teasing. No matter how lighthearted of an interruption it was, the mini-conversation might as well have never existed for how easily they fall back into it again.

She watches with her forehead pressed against his as he strokes himself a few times, then drags his tip, messy with precome, through her wet heat. And though she watches it happen, her body still arches into his when he lines up with her and sinks his hips forward.

She anticipated it, but she still gasps and digs her nails into his biceps at the sensation of him pushing into her. Neither of them bothers to worry about the obvious lack of a condom—it was discussed the first time around when he offered and she told him it was okay. He's often the one to silence the alarm on her phone warning her in its title to, "Take your birth control or else, bitch," while she searches her bag for it anyway, so he trusts her.

Both of them prefer it this way enough to risk the  minuscule failure rate of the pill anyway. It's more intimate, closer, and they can both feel the warmth of each other in a way that would've been somewhat muted with an added layer between them. It makes the feeling of him entering her all the more gratifying as she tenses up around him in reaction, drawing a groan from where his parted lips brush against hers.

She lifts her head off of the floor as much as she can to capture his mouth with her own and stifle the sonorous sound despite the storm doing a better job of it.

It seems that every blast of wind and roll of thunder is in their favor tonight, so much so that he isn't even worried about getting walked in on. It's not a thought in his head at this point, the only thought he's capable of having is this. Forgive him for being shortsighted, but he doesn't give a shit if John B notices or hears what's happening when he's buried inside of her so deeply.

His hips are flush with the backs of her thighs in a matter of seconds, and right when he pauses to give her a breather, he feels her shake her head ever so slightly against where their faces are pressed together.

The touch of her hands on his hips is not timid by any means, it's commanding. Her palm prints singe an indelible claim into the surface of his skin as she guides him to start moving without a second spared to dwindle the discomfort of him filling her up. It's less like a pain and more of a pressure blooming from the insistent presence of him, not so overwhelming that it's painful, but it's an effort to breathe evenly and the only thing that'll ease this transitional moment is to continue.

At first, their bodies start to rock together lazily as though on autopilot. They'd hardly be conscious of the fact that they're doing anything if not for the initial sensations of heady ecstasy that flash like the sparks of a lighter in response to their movements. As soon as he felt her hands coax him into action, he sighed happily and surrendered himself to the instinct of wanting to move.

The merging of their bodies is less of the aggressive rutting motions they'll surely succumb to once their current pace is no longer satisfying, but that doesn't make it any less intense. She's partly sure that this is one of the most vulnerable moments either of them has ever had when it comes to sex, and it wouldn't work if it weren't them together. No other person could consume her the way he does, taking up every unoccupied space of her soul until there's nothing left but the silent begging of her heart for him.

Their kiss is messy when it breaks to allow them the chance to suck down a couple breaths of air, saliva shining on his lips in between the seconds it takes them to come crashing back together.

It's loving enough to rot her teeth with its sweetness, a slow but impossibly deep grinding of their hips together that continually presses the tip of him into that sweet spot inside of her, but it takes a turn.

Not only do her hands shift from his hips up to the sides of his waist to get a firmer hold on him, the kiss starts to become vigorous, almost hungry, in search of something more. The dreamlike sequence of the first moment or so they spent slowly fucking under the warm hues of candlelight starts to unravel to reveal the baser instincts that guide them forward.

"Fuck, you feel so good," he whispers the praise into her mouth.

As soon as the words are said, he can feel the effect it has on her. The hands braced on his waist pull his body closer to her at the same moment that she involuntarily squeezes down around him, making the smooth drag of his cock against the velvet-soft heat of her walls even tighter than he thought possible.

The sudden feeling of it makes his first returning thrust much harder than the last. He jerks forward into her with none of the restraint he's retained for the past few moments, and her reaction is nothing short of perfection, at least from his perspective. He watches her throw her head back in a moan, hips bucking to him in pursuit of more, and feels the tips of her fingernails digging crescent-shaped marks into the unmarred skin along his waist.

"JJ!" she gasps in surprise, and if her initial reaction weren't enough to spur him on in a frenzied state of desire, this is.

He almost forgot how intense it had been the first time. Their confessions of love preceding this made them both somewhat softer and sweeter in their approach when they started, but he knows how she likes it.

Nobody would expect it from her. He's another story entirely, especially considering how much John B and Pope know about him, but her? He didn't have any in depth conversations about it with either of them, so none of their friends know how dirty she is.

But when you start to tease it out of her, she's got a side to her that makes his blood run hot. Considering how polite she is, he sure as hell didn't see it coming. For fuck's sake, she's the kind of person who'll apologize to a chair if she bumps into it. With that in mind he never thought she'd be the type to demand such things of him.

Just like that, with one moan of his name, it's like she flipped a switch in him that they forgot was there in the first place. It'll never stop surprising him how little it takes to get him going when he's with her, and he doesn't see that changing no matter how long they spend together in the future. Just a touch from her is all it takes, so it's needless to say that the sound of her calling out his name was more than enough.

Those slow, deep movements he made to sink into her again and again have turned rapid and rough, but still controlled enough to have a semblance of precision to them, hitting in all the right places.

"I bet," JJ speaks lowly, "that you want John B to walk out and see us right now."

She doesn't want to admit how much of an instantaneous effect those words have on her, but the feeling of her clenching around him as she bites back a moan completely betrays her. Partly, she worries that he'll take that the wrong way and think it has something to do with John B when it has nothing to do with him at all, but he doesn't. For the spare second of thought she's allowed to have before her mind goes hazy again, she notes how much more eager he is on the upstroke of the next thrust.

Noticing how right he was in his assumption about her liking the risk of getting caught jumpstarts his heart and makes everything he does rougher. She can sense that he's starting to lose control over himself and is acting on instinct alone.

It makes her much more sensitive to everything he does, and all she can do is cling to him and enjoy it as she takes in everything he says and does. It's hard to pick one thing to focus on between the switch up in pace and what he said.

"You want John B to know you like getting fucked like a slut, don't you?"

She could get off on the sound of his voice alone. Hearing him say stuff like that kills her, it makes the swirling bliss that builds in the pit of her abdomen with every thrust he gives her triple in its extremity.

Her legs are tightly wound around his hips to keep him as near to her as possible, her hands sliding up around his waist to keep a steady grasp on him while he pounds into her. The rug scratches at her back enough to make it sting alongside the immense pleasure building in her, but she doesn't care. When blended with the good sensations, the pain underscores the addictive feeling of him inside of her, fucking her exactly how she asked him too.

Looking up at him when he's like this is simply unreal. There's no other way of describing it in her eyes except for that. He's so stunning, she's inclined to believe that he isn't even real as a means of explaining it. This shouldn't be real. It should be one of her daydreams while she steals covert stares at him as they hang out with the Pogues, but it isn't. She can't wrap her head around it.

Those strands of hair that were damp from the rain are mostly dry as they fall into his eyes with the force of his movements. The sight of him alone, set aside from the rest of it, is enough to make her writhe beneath him and claw at his back in tandem with another thrust that sends her jolting against the rug.

He takes one of his hands up from where they both held her hips for leverage to weave his fingers into the roots of her hair.

He demands between the panting breaths and moans that flood the limited space between them, tugging on her hair, "Answer me."

She instantly blurts out the words, "I want him to see us." The feeling of him tilting her head back by the fistful of hair he has wrapped up in his hand is her persistent reminder to concentrate enough to continue, and she bites down on her lip to contain a moan before speaking again, "I want him to know..."

Her cheeks burn with the mere thought of it, let alone saying it out loud. He's the only person she'd ever let in on this intimate side of her, the side that makes her crazy when she hears him say stuff like this. The reason she feels so comfortable doing this with him is that she knows he understands her. It's as if he can read her mind without even having to try, knowing exactly what to say and when to say it.

It wouldn't matter if the topic of their exhibitionism were any other Pogue or a stranger, it isn't about who it is, it's about the thrill attached to the concept of almost getting seen during such a heated moment. In all actuality, John B is probably snoring face down into his pillow right now with no care for what's happening out here, but he knows what it does to her when they push the boundaries of decency this way. It's the same rush he gets from stealing random, useless things every so often, it's the thrill of getting away with something.

The hand tangled up in the roots of her hair sneaks down between their colliding bodies to rub her clit, and her mouth drops open to take in a shaky breath.

The sight of her beneath him is undoing in and of itself. Head tilted enough to expose her neck to him, chest rising and falling rapidly with her breaths, and breasts bouncing gently with the momentum of their actions—seeing her this way makes his thrusts ramp up into more of a frenzied, uncontainable pace rather than one with the same control and cadence as before. But it's mostly the eye contact that kills him. She doesn't dare to shut her eyes the entire time, as if she can sense that he'll tell her to look at him again the second she does.

"You want him to know what?" he asks, and she knows he won't let her get away with not saying it.

She whines, utterly helpless to the climax starting to build inside of her, "Please."

What she's pleading for, she isn't quite sure, but he can tell by how she's acting that she's starting to get closer, and he wants nothing more than to tease her with the impending chance of her orgasm.

"If you wanna come, you're gonna have to do a lot better than that."

Just like that, he withdraws his hand from between them and leaves her desperate, blindly grasping for the peak she was so close to reaching, she could almost feel it already.

With JJ rocking into her at a relaxed, slower rhythm, the pleasure hasn't disappeared completely. It's there, but she can sense the feeling of her orgasm receding as quickly as it had creeped up on her as soon as he slips his hand out from between them.

It's instantly clear to him how desperate she is as all of her previous shyness surrounding having to admit this to him out loud withers away in seconds. She isn't beneath begging again at this point. He could tell her to crawl across the floor to him and she'd happily do it for the chance of touching him. It's pathetic but true. As much as she has him wrapped around her finger, he has done the same to her and she isn't afraid to admit it anymore.

Her hips jerk toward him in search of the familiar frenzy they were in before that sent her to the brink of climax, but he is impressively stubborn. Despite the fact that it physically pains him to dial it back again, he tries to keep the signs of his own frustration at bay. She knew what she had to say to get what she wants, so he'll only cave when she does.

This time around, she doesn't give a fuck about how badly she blushes or the voice in the back of her mind telling her she should keep this side of her to herself. This time, the one thing she needs to do to prompt her to open her mouth and speak the dirty words he asked her less than a moment ago is look at him. One second of staring up at him and here she is, driven mad enough to say or do anything to get him to pick up where they left off.

She says between the soft noises and breaths coming from them both, clinging to him through every slow but deep thrust that sends sparks ricocheting through her body, "I want John B to know I like getting fucked like slut." Her voice is breathless, and he hangs off of each word as she pauses, looking up at him with a challenging attitude swirling in those pretty eyes. "So stop being a tease and fuck me like one."

His jaw clenches at the bratty statement, one he's too far gone to resist at this point, and right when he's about to respond to her, she speaks again.

"Either that," she says, and a deceptively sweet smile crosses her kiss-swollen lips, "or I can go ask him to—"

She doesn't even get the chance to voice the rest of that thought before he's set into motion.

The hands on her hips flip her over with such casual strength, all she can do is yelp in surprise at the sudden movement that blurs the living room in her peripheral version until she lands with her hands and knees pressing into the rug. He was so swift in pulling out of her and tossing her onto her front like she was nothing more than a rag doll, she hardly had the time to take a breath before she ended up here.

There's hardly any time between when he pulled out to flip her over and when he returns to her again, but it feels like an eternity for them. The few second transition might as well be a few years as she feels his hands guiding her body where he wants it, pushing down on her back until it arches just so, and falls down onto her arms. But as soon as she gets situated, she feels a pair of hands yanking her arms away from where they were braced against the floor and put them behind her back.

It's only then, when he has an unflinching grasp on where he keeps her wrists behind her back with one of his hands, that she is met with the relief of him sinking into her again.

Y/N's jaw goes slack, and she cries out into the rug that her cheek is pressed into as he gives her no chance to adjust or catch her breath before resuming the brutal pace they kept a moment ago. Mentioning anyone else but him doing this to her was the quickest way to get him to snap, so it's safe to say that she's getting what she wanted. After all, she did what he asked, it's fair that she gets rewarded for it.

Amidst the sounds of the storm waging war on the landscape outside of the house, the one thing she can hear over the buzzing pleasure that drowns out her senses is the sinful blend of sounds they create together. It's the sound of their bodies merging, his name falling from her lips, and the curses he makes under his breath that never fail to drive her a little wild.

The hand that isn't holding her arms behind her slides down the length of her curved back until it wraps around her throat to pin her down, and her reaction is everything he could ask for. Seeing her rock back against him to meet him halfway makes his grip on her wrists tighten enough to turn his knuckles white.

Her hair is spread in endless directions in a fan around her head, and he can only see one side of her face from where he kneels behind her, but that glimpse is more than enough. Brows scrunched in pleasure, mouth dropped open in a gape as soft 'uh's and 'ah's escape her on the upstroke of each thrust—she's a mess right now. A beautiful, perfect mess.

"Oh God, JJ," she moans between her rapid breaths and the strong hand constricting her neck, "I'm so close. Please, just let me come."

It took virtually nothing for her to be pushed right back to the edge of the peak she was at less than a minute ago. It took a mere half-minute of this and she's once again reduced to incoherent pleas for more and shaking with no control over herself. Her legs tremble with the effort to keep herself up in this position, and she isn't even the one doing most of the work. In all fairness, this change in position has made the intensity triple. It's deeper this way, and with how harshly he slams into her, it's as though she can feel it in the base of her abdomen.

It's the enjoyable type of pain, however, not the bad type. It'll surely end up with her being sore tomorrow, but she can't hide how much she loves the painful pleasure of how rough it's getting. Being denied an orgasm when she was so, so close to it was initially disappointing too, but it was worth it. If the build up to what would've been her climax before was a spark, this is a flourishing fire spreading through her with no chance of smothering the flames.

He lets go of her throat and taps the side of her jaw in a silent request that she picks up immediately, letting her lips fall open to suck his fingers into her mouth without a second of hesitation.

The taste of her arousal on them is faint, but still there, and it occurs to her that she thought about this earlier before things evolved into chaos. Her tongue swirls around the tips of his fingers as he starts to pull them away in what feels like the blink of an eye to her, leaving him to remember what it felt like when her lips were once wrapped around a more sensitive part of him a week and a half ago.

The one other time he let himself remember it was when they were on the boat with the Pogues, yet that wasn't really of his own volition. It was hot out, so Kiara bought ice pops for them and his mind wandered far from where it should've stayed.

Shining with her saliva, his fingers are pulled from her lips with a soft 'pop' in pursuit of that sensitive collection of nerves at the apex of her thighs. She just needs is a little push to go over the edge, and when he slips his hand down her body to rub tight circles onto her clit, she loses whatever remnants of control over herself she had left.

The steady rhythm of her hips moving back against him falters as she is overwhelmed with the separate sensations culminating into one and giving her the push she needs to come. Her entire body tenses up in anticipation, and since she's pinned to the floor with her hands behind her back, she can only lay there and savor the feeling as it hits her.

After what felt like ages of having it build and build within her, then having it taken away to start the process over again, finally being given a release is a relief beyond any she's felt before.

It's so consuming, it takes away her ability to think of anything outside of how it feels to dissolve into the shockwaves of euphoria rushing through her. Every pulsing wave is prolonged by him, not even through the peak of it does he let up on his precise touches and unforgiving thrusts into her that turn a typical orgasm into the most intense thing she's ever felt.

She's melting in his arms through it all, and as if the change in position didn't make it worse, her involuntary spasms leave him hanging on by a thread.

JJ collapses onto her, barely having the chance to keep himself propped up on his arms as he lets go of her wrists and falls forward onto her sweat-slick back.

The heat of his panting exhales raises goosebumps in its wake where his face is buried into the curve of her neck, and he whines at the impossibly tight feeling of her squeezing around his cock through the end of her climax. Those sounds he doesn't realize he's making have her writhing through the aftershocks, answering with a sound of her own that almost makes him come instantly.

For that reason, he makes the decision to pull out and flip her onto her back.

At this point, she's so dazed and fucked out that she doesn't register any of it until she notices the hollow absence of him inside of her, but it doesn't matter when his face appears through the partial darkness above her.

Despite how sensitive she is right now, the sight of him makes her hands reach out blindly to pull him closer again. They're frantic in their need to get back to one another, grasping and clawing until he finds his way back to her in less than a second, hiking her legs up around his waist with a touch that is somehow demanding and tender at the same time.

It's only when he's inside of her again that it occurs to her why he rolled her onto her back again, and it makes her want to kiss him until her lips turn numb. It may be undeniably hotter to pin someone down and fuck them hoarse, but, no, that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to be able to look at her, to see her face, and the thought of that has her biting back a sudden confession of love. She isn't sure why she doesn't say it right away, since it isn't like they haven't already done it, but she keeps it to herself for a second first.

It's different now. It's not less passionate or frenetic. It isn't as if he isn't being as rough with her as he was before, but they can both sense a shift in the energy between them as soon as he reenters her. It's less about the pursuit of pleasure and more about the feelings they've kept hidden away for so long. It's a simultaneous realization that hits them a little late after they initially confessed their feelings for each other: this is reality. It's real, and when she touches him this time, he isn't going to disappear if she opens her eyes.

The realization of what happened tonight had yet to hit them until right this second, but now that it has, they move forward with a sense of sentimentality that remained partly dormant before.

If there's anything JJ dislikes, it's being vulnerable. The idea of letting someone in to see every part of him, including the parts he doesn't want to see of himself, has always terrified him after years of being made to believe he's undeserving, yet he isn't uncomfortable right now. Somehow, he feels safe with her. Sex has never been something so emotional for him until now, until her, and he doesn't want it differently.

Their bodies are drawn in close, her arms thrown around his neck, and he's so close, he can feel the muscles leading down past his lower abdomen contract with the inevitable approach of his orgasm. She can sense it too in how he acts.

When he gets close, he becomes clingier and lets his feelings get the better of him. His hands squeeze at her hips, sliding up her sides and back down to hike one of her legs up high around his waist to press deeper into her. He can't bear to allow his touch to stay in one place for too long before exploring another part of her, wanting to memorize the delicate intricacies of her body in its entirety.

It's as if she can read his mind too, cause even when she's sensitive enough to gasp when he pushes her thigh to her chest and throws his remaining energy into fucking her at a satisfying pace, she understands what he needs. She knows to reach up and run her fingers through his hair, to tug on it gently until the light strands are taut from his scalp. She knows to lift her head off of the floor enough to trail tender kisses along his face, his jaw, his neck—anywhere she can access.

"Come for me," she says into a kiss placed on the edge of his cheekbone, reeling in overstimulation as she jolts with his quickening thrusts, "I want to watch you..."

Hearing those words, paired with the kisses and fingers pulling on his hair, does it for him. It doesn't take more for his hips to falter and jerk forward into her a final few times before he comes.

Their foreheads press together as they cling to one another for stability, though it's mostly JJ clinging to her while she watches in adoration, and she has to bite her lip to contain a moan at how it feels. The aftershocks of her orgasm have yet to fade as the feeling of pulsing warmth inside of her makes them stronger, reigniting the fire she felt a moment ago if only for a second.

There's a closeness to this situation that they hadn't felt the last time, and they know it has everything to do with what was said before this happened. The sex itself feels like a dream sequence in her mind now that she's coming down from it with him, moving together slowly and gently beneath the candlelight until they ride out the ends of their highs. It was like they were put under a trance by each other, and now that it's over, the first thoughts that come to mind are of what comes next.

It's not the sole topic on their minds though. They're more focused on catching their breath from where they lay, tangled up together, on the living room floor. As soon as the very last of his orgasm faded from him, he fell onto her without a single ounce of energy left to spare. He's careful not to crush her, but, for the most part, he relaxes on top of her and lets his head rest on her heaving chest.

Strong arms slip down to loop around her waist, and she sure that she couldn't get him to release her if she wanted to, which she doesn't.

But they can't stay like this, not for any longer than a few moments anyway, since they don't know how if John B might wake up and come out of the safety of his bedroom after hours of leaving them to their own devices. JJ was right. He's out cold, but for as much as it turned them on in the heat of the moment, neither of them finds getting caught by him as hot with the clarity of their rational minds coming back to them.

He's the one to break the silence.

"As much as I wanna stay like this, we should probably move in case John B wakes up."

The sound of his voice settles in her with the effects of a sedative. It calms her more than anything else could, especially with the added comfort of him cuddling her so closely. One of her hands strokes through his hair and pushes the damp tendrils of sunshine away from his face as he cranes his neck to look up at her. And, for fuck's sake, what else is she to do except admire him?

His cheeks are dusted pink in a way they often are when he spends too much time outside without one of his hats shielding his face, and she thinks he's never looked better.

Ever since they became friends, she's had this theory about him. In the unrealistic landscape of her overactive imagination, JJ didn't come to this world the way the rest of them did. To her, it seems impossible that someone so good, even in his worst moments, could've come from someone like his dad.

So, in idle moments where she would watch him on a day out with the Pogues or daydream about him, she decided that he's the sun.

She imagines he was created in those breathtaking but brief moments where the sun meets the horizon atop the ocean and washes the sky with a vast array of colors. She likes to think he's the incarnation of it. Golden, warm, and bright for everyone but himself, he keeps the world light for her and their friends without intending to.

Some days are warmer than others too. Some days, the light is dimmed by another bruise beneath his clothes or a bad run-in with some kooks, but today is not like that. This moment is eighty-five and sunny with a balmy breeze. Looking at him right now feels like basking in the sun, and she'd burn here forever if he let her.

Without realizing she zoned out, she jolts when he pinches her arm to rouse her from her ridiculous thoughts. He has this dopey half-smile on his face that nearly draws her back into them again.

"You know what they say," he says, "if you take a picture..."

Her soft laughter invades the room, filling his heart with this light, fluttery feeling that always finds him when she's near. His smile grows as she playfully shoves him and reaches above their heads for her wet shirt to cover up with just in case. Odds are, their friend isn't waking up at the exact moment before they seclude themselves to the spare room and get dressed, but she doesn't wanna take that chance.

"I wasn't staring."

She was totally staring. But who could blame her? When someone looks at a person the way he looks at her, how could they ever stay away?

"Whatever you say."

JJ keeps smiling to himself while he pulls his underwear and shorts up his legs and waits for her to be decent enough to sneak past John B's bedroom to the bathroom at the end of the hallway.

The clothes are soaked through with rainwater, so they feel quite uncomfortable to slip back on, but they merely redress enough to be covered. She stole his shirt to avoid putting her shorts back on, the hem of the grey tee hanging right at the tops of her thighs when she walks. As soon as she slips her panties back on and picks up the rest of their cold, wet clothes, that's the cue he needs to scoop her up and take her away.

Y/N curses under her breath in surprise at feeling her feet being plucked off the ground, but she relaxes again once she's settled in his arms, realizing that it was just him who snuck up behind her and lifted her into his arms.

She doesn't say anything on the way to the bathroom. Instead, she lays her head on his shoulder in exhaustion and finds herself staring at the mark she left behind on his neck.

It's a deep, purplish red against the backdrop of his tan skin...the Pogues will surely notice the next time they see him. And while it will make her blush, it won't make her scared as it once would've. There may be a lingering sense of doubt and insecurity within her, but she wants this with him. Even if it means being teased by their friends or dealing with the jealousy of watching kook girls and tourons at parties hit on him, she wants this.

By the time the shower is spraying the rainwater from her hair and washing her clean of sweat sticking to her skin, she realizes that he isn't saying anything either, but she doesn't think it's out of any awkwardness or miscommunication. There's truly nothing to say, at least for now.

Though they didn't have the chance to talk in depth about everything yet, neither of them thinks of that right now. All they know is that they're together, whether it be officially or not, and it feels good. For once, something in his life feels right, and he lets himself enjoy it in silence.

The shower is a cramped space when shared between them and the wet clothes they have draped over the back edge of the tub, but they make it work. It's not like they mind anyway.

They bump into one another whenever they do so much as breathe, and the white walls echo the sounds of her giggling when he tries to tickle her. She leans her head back against his chest and lets out a laugh with shampoo dripping down the front of her face, and he'll be damned if he ever heard a sound as intoxicating as that.

It's a little weird. He's never been as soft and loving with a person before, and he has already felt overwhelmed in the lulls of quiet between them when he's given the chance to think about it.

When she washes his hair for him, insisting that she must return the favor after he so kindly washed hers, he was struck with the same mixture of wanting to simultaneously lean into and pull away from her that he felt the night of the party.

The warmth of the water loosens his sore muscles, washing suds of the green apple scented shampoo over his shoulders and down, down, down until it circles the drain beside his feet. All the while, her fingertips are delicately tracing over a healing bruise on his torso. Those pretty lips of hers are painted in a suppressed frown that she can't hide from him.

"Are you okay?" Y/N asks.

His instant reaction is to fake a smile, to brush it off and distract her as he usually does, yet he doesn't. He forces himself to remain neutral and not push her away.

"Happens all the time," he murmurs, shrugging and averting his eyes to reach for the soap off on the ledge.

The hands holding either side of his waist tighten as he tries to turn, pulling him back to her with more strength than he knew to anticipate from her. Their chests gently collide back together beneath the stream of water, and she can feel his breathing catch for a second or so in response.

The fact that their relationship has changed doesn't change how she handles this aspect of his life. Their new confessions don't have an impact on the part of his life he never wants to let anyone see, so she isn't going to force him to talk about it because they're trying out this whole relationship thing now. He has hard boundaries that she knows not to push sometimes. That's the way it is, and it might change as they grow closer but she knows to accept it for the moment.

As soon as he hears what she has to say next, he could crumble in relief at the realization that their new dynamic doesn't change anything.

"I didn't necessarily mean...that...I meant generally, you know? It's just that—" she sighs, "you shrink away a little when I hold you, and I wondered if I was making you uncomfortable."

Before she could finish the sentence, JJ was already thinking of what to say to prove her wrong, because that's not it. That's not what it is, and if she thinks she's done anything wrong, he'll do anything to convince her otherwise because it isn't her. It's him.

It's his dad lingering in the darker trenches of his mind, commanding his fear and attention so that even when he isn't physically present, he's still here. Part of why he denied wanting her was because he knew these types of things would arise in the beginning, that there would be difficult adjustments to make and conversations to be had, and he didn't want her to leave him as soon as she was faced with one of these things.

He shakes his head.

"You didn't do anything."

The feeing of her chest rising and falling with his begins to steady him after a moment of allowing the initial hesitation to dissolve. His internal reaction to her touch is the mental incarnation of a flinch. It's him waiting for the other shoe to drop and expecting her to do something, to hurt him, before his mind catches up with his heart. But once he realizes everything's okay, he loves it.

"It's kinda embarrassing, but I guess when you touch me, I'm expecting something else," he says softly, scared that if he speaks too loudly, everyone in the world will know how weak he feels.

She should've figured, but hearing him say it is different than wondering what the reasoning behind it is. Hearing him admit it after months of strict avoidance on the topic is a sucker punch to the gut.

Both times they had sex, he was too distracted and thoughtless to get caught up in that part of himself, but it's when the bliss of the afterglow disappears that it creeps back in. That's why he could always handle touch when it came in that context. It was his way of obtaining what he wanted without having to face this side of it—a temporary fix to a greater web of issues.

But there's nothing temporary about her. He doesn't want her to leave him, not without him resisting the urge to beg her on his knees to stay and at least remain his friend, so there's no choice but to face these momentary challenges head on.

She pauses for a second, thinking, then says, "You don't have to be embarrassed about it, I get it. We'll just have to take it day by day then. We can take it slow, and you'll let me know if it gets to be too much, okay?"

It's hard not to be shocked by how well she's taking it. A lot of people probably wouldn't feel too great after someone they love tells them they expect to be hit whenever they touch them, yet she's taking it in stride.

Things are back to normal as soon as she sees the grin on his face.

"So, you're saying you're gonna be trying not to throw yourself at me all the time?" JJ asks, then clicks his tongue as though in thought. "I give you a week. Tops."

Her eyes go wide as she looks at him. She holds her hand over her heart as she pretends to be scandalized by such an accusation, but they know it's true. They both can't keep their hands off of one another, which is why it confuses him. How can he want to reject and enjoy her touch at the same time? Sure, the discomfort disappears after the first split-second, but the fact that it happens in the first place annoys him to no end.

She rolls her eyes and tries to hide the fact that she's giggling as she reaches for the soap.

"You're a little shit, you know that?"

He doesn't miss a beat, saying back, "Yeah but I'm your little shit, so I feel like that says more about you than it does me."

While he's too busy rinsing the rest of the shampoo out of his hair, she smiles to herself at what he said.

Hers.

Nobody has ever been hers before, or proclaimed themselves as belonging to her as proudly and casually as he just did, and her heart melts over the sweet sentiment he didn't think twice about.

Less than a day ago, she was agonizing over her relationship with him and trying to ignore how powerful those feelings for him were, and now they're here. She no longer has to steal glances when he looks away or hide how jealous she feels when other girls flirt with him. To finally let the tension disappear is an immense weight off of her shoulders.

The rest of the shower is as quiet as the start of it was, and that comfortable silence continues through from when they're drying off and redressing to when they hit the mattress in the spare bedroom with tired sighs.

After the day they had, the mere suggestion of sleep is enough to make them start yawning, so being able to slip beneath the sheets and rest their heads almost sings her to sleep instantly.

Their bodies are laying in the exact outlines of where they laid the night of the party, the only difference this time being their mindsets. This time around, they aren't holding themselves back from anything, and it's most evident in the little things. Like how she doesn't turn around to shield her face from him, instead laying with her head propped on the other end of his favorite pillow.

They're so close, their noses brush if they make any slight movements, and this would be enough for him to submit to the urge to drift into sleep if not for the fact that he feels her jolt when thunder rumbles loudly outside of the window.

Much like his own fears being pushed to the side amidst their desire for each other, her anxiety about the storm wasn't on her mind until they laid down to sleep.

She was so wrapped up in him and everything that happened between them that she didn't have the time to think again until now, until she hears the violent patter of rain against the roof and feels her stomach drop at the sound of the thunder. Suddenly, she's not the one reassuring him about his fearful reactions, it's the other way around.

His warm hand takes hers, snatching it up as though he's worried it'll disappear if he doesn't take it quickly enough, and she lets him. Her eyes flutter shut with the release of a slow, deep breath, and she lets the presence of his hand in hers bring her back to earth.

JJ asks into the darkness, "Can I take you out on a real date?" After a beat of silence, the comforting sound of his voice returns to her. "Not that this isn't fun, but I think you deserve a little more effort than John B's living room floor."

A short-lived chuckle escapes her—a win as far as he's concerned. It's difficult to lure her head from the clouds when she gets this way, and it isn't like he has much experience with calming her during these moments either, but that sounded good to him. It sounded like she wasn't thinking about the increased pace of her heart or the howling wind outside.

He was planning on asking anyway. However fitting of a first night together this was, he wants to take her out for real sometime soon. He doesn't have much money for it, like at all, but they can come up with something special together, even if it's similar to the same shit they usually do together. As long as it's time alone together, they don't necessarily care if it's a perfectly traditional first date.

The tip of his thumb rubs comforting circles onto the back of her hand in the brief time it takes her to respond, stroking the soft skin as if to tell her that everything's okay. It seems to say, I'm right here. Nothing can hurt you. And it might make her crazy, but she believes him. JJ could take her back out into the eye of the hurricane at this very moment and she'd still believe his unspoken promise of not letting her into harm's way.

"Of course," she says, then pauses, and the sound of her sleepy voice hardly reaches his ears when she speaks again, "...I'm sorry I avoided you for the past few days. I was scared to tell you how I felt but I shouldn't have left that morning."

The memory of waking up in his arms is fresh in the forefront of her mind, so much so that she can remember the way his breath felt where it exhaled in warm puffs onto her skin.

In the first few moments of consciousness, it was peaceful.

She laid awake for a minute or two to count his breaths and soak in the comfort of being cuddled up next to him, wishing she could stay there for hours. It wasn't until another moment passed that it clicked with her where she was and what was going on between them recently, and that was what prompted her to slip away from the bed to get ready for her day at work.

It was the second time in a row that she left him in that bed with nothing to wake up to but the cold absence of her body between the sheets he slept under, and he can't deny that it's part of why he holds onto her hand so tightly tonight. Even though she's promised him otherwise, he can't help but think she'll be gone by the time he wakes up. At this point, he's struggling to stay conscious. She can see those pretty eyes drooping more and more by the second, yet the hand holding hers doesn't loosen its grip.

He takes a deep breath and scoots closer to her, keeping his one hand in hers while the other arm drapes itself over her waist, and he can feel her relax into the touch.

"It's okay," he says.

It's easier for him to adjust to so much physical contact when he's the one initiating. He knows that's why she only reached out to hold his hand. If she had it her way, she would've already been cuddling with him as soon as they laid down, but he likes that she gives him the space to initiate it. In the ways it counts the most, she cares about him more than anyone else has.

The touch in itself is his way of accepting her apology. However, truth be told, he already forgave her for it before knowing his love was reciprocated could be a possibility.

Right when she's about to fall asleep, the screen door slamming open and shut with the wind on the back porch makes her whip her head around to look over her shoulder in the direction of the sound. It seems like every time he successfully distracts her from it, the storm finds new ways of reminding her of what's happening outside of the safety of the Chateau.

There's the sound of a barely audible, sharp inhale, then her whispering into the dark room as she looks at the closed door, "I can't believe I went out into that. What the fuck was I thinking?"

It's beginning to close in on her again; the sounds of the storm, the sense of being trapped no matter how safe they truly are, and the rising tidal wave of anxiety that picks up speed the more she tries to will it to stop. This is the part where she tries to relieve it in some way, usually by smoking weed to sleep or going to one of her parents so they can help her through it, but she can't help herself right now.

Debris was being picked and tossed around in the wind like it weighed nothing when she was out there, she could've been knocked into the marsh or struck by a piece of debris.

How could she be so stupid?

Not only could she have hurt herself, she could've hurt JJ knowing that he'd likely follow her out into the storm to bring her back inside, and the thought of him being hurt makes the tension in her chest heavier. Her breathing picks up speed, the anxiety starting to snowball out of control when—

"Hey, look at me," JJ says, reaching up to turn her head to face him, and she damn near crumbles in relief at feeling his hand cup her cheek. It doesn't make it all disappear, but it provides a momentary comfort that she doesn't take for granted. "You're safe here. You know damn well I'll do anything to protect you. I mean, shit, dude, if I have to go out there and tell that rain to fuck off, I will."

This draws out a laugh from her, chest stuttering with the happy sound through the tears glistening in her eyes, and he never wants to stop hearing it. His thumb swipes away the first teardrop that falls before it can slip over the apples of her cheeks. I'm Her quiet cries and shaky breaths continue for a while after the laughter disappears. For a second or two, he watches with his thumb still wiping her tears away and hopes that it'll be enough to comfort her, but it can't do it completely.

He pulls away from her to get up from the bed with an idea popping into his mind, but upon hearing her whine at the loss of contact with him, he pauses to say, "I'll be back quick, don't worry."

The remaining humorous side of her left wonders if he's actually gonna go tell the rain to fuck off, but he's just opening the bedroom door to trot out into the living room.

A candle burning on the coffee table illuminates the space for him, guiding him straight to the forgotten backpack she left slumped against the arm of the couch hours before their relationship was changed for the better. It takes him an instant to get there and back with the bag in hand, and he's digging through it for a second before climbing back into bed with her.

If anyone else rifled through her bag, sifted through her personal belongings, and dug her phone out of it, she'd probably be annoyed, but she never is with him. She's inherently protective of her things, but JJ can do whatever he wants and it has always been that way. It should've been the first warning of what was to come.

He pulls the sheet back over his body and scoots up close to her, trying to resist the urge to retreat at first when he maneuvers her to lay with her head on his shoulder. It should trigger the flight or fight response that often alarms in his head, but he's able to push it away.

She's so vulnerable right now, so gentle and in need of the warmth of another person that he isn't as intimidated. It's not that she couldn't hurt him if she wanted to right now, she could, but he knows her. He knows that the last thing she'd ever want to do is hurt him, so he has to remind himself of that and give himself the permission to enjoy the physical intimacy of her touch. The part of him that questions if he even deserves it can't reach him now, not when he's so focused on her.

"Thumb?" he asks with the phone held out expectantly.

The screen is less than two inches from her face, so she has to push it back slightly, but she flattens her thumb to the button without further hesitation.

When he unwraps the pair of headphones from around the palm of his hand and plugs them into the charging port, she realizes why he left in the first place.

When she was facing away from him, eyes shut and headphones in to distract herself with music earlier, he was stealing glances at her every so often. He tried to keep away from her for the most part. It was difficult though, especially knowing what she said about being jealous the night of the party and knowing how scared she was of the hurricane. He couldn't help but keep an eye on her, for both his own selfish needs and his worry for her.

He keeps an arm tucked around her, pressing her body into his while he pops one of the headphones into her ear and the other into his. The thing is, her eyes aren't trained on the screen like his are once he starts looking through her vast collection of not-so-legally acquired music for a song that suits both of their tastes, they're trained on him.

Their taste in music tends to diverge in certain ways and overlap in others, so there's always a fifty/fifty shot of him liking what she plays when she's the one picking the music. That is why he smiles to himself and halts the endless scrolling in its tracks to hover his thumb over one song.

He obviously heard it before she played it that one time, but it's different for him now. They were riding together in the backseat of the Twinkie on the way to the beach with John B, Kie, and Pope when they let her take her turn to play a song.

That's how it is with them, the driver goes first, then it goes to the front seat passenger, and so on and so on until they make their way back to the beginning of the rotation. It was her turn when she picked this song, and it could've been the song, or the sunset shining through the window, but he felt as though his heart exploded when he looked at her in the middle of it.

He remembers feeling confused, confused as to why he couldn't catch his breath and why he suddenly adored the song he only heard casually a couple of times.

It was her. It was everything about her. The soft hum of her voice murmuring the lyrics, too shy to actually sing them in the presence of anyone else, was too delicate for the others to appreciate over the sounds of the van. He heard it though. He clung to it and admired her, so unashamed in his staring that he didn't realize he was doing it. It wasn't until she noticed that he stopped.

"Do I still have ice cream on my face or something?"

Her fingers came up to wipe at the corner over her mouth, and the action sent him turning his attention away quicker than he knew he could move, pulling the lighter out of his pocket to fiddle with as he mumbled, "Yeah, but you got it off now."

The cheery melody of Just Like Heaven bursts out of each headphone into their ears.

How did he know? How is he constantly reading her mind without realizing it?

This was her first song on the couch that she couldn't stand to sit through without thinking, naturally, of him when confronted with the topic of love. Somehow, it's like he knew that, and instead of feeling exposed and scared he'll know her feelings like before, she feels loved.

She is never skipping this song again.

"Go to sleep," he murmurs, clicking the screen off and resting it on his stomach.

It takes him a short thirty seconds to fall into an easy, calm pattern of breathing that tells her he isn't asleep, but soon will be. But she's fighting her sleepiness to continue looking at him. His eyes are fluttered shut, hair messy on the pillow, and she'd want to reach up to kiss him if he weren't trying to fall asleep.

Instead, she settles for matching her quickened breaths to the slow rise and fall of his chest beneath her hand and shuts her eyes along with him.

By the time the song reaches its end, she thinks he's asleep, but she still whispers, "Thank you," and feels his arm squeeze around her body in response.

The next songs fade into white noise at this point for her, drowning out the storm to the point where she begins to forget it's happening out there.

Maybe they can be each other's safe place when things get rough. After all, he handled this wonderfully considering his lack of experience with her anxiety and she never pushes him on his plethora of unsorted issues, even when she wants so badly to be the one to initiate the touch.

She never makes him think she pities him, or wants to "fix" him like so many partners with savior complexes who will never try to understand how it feels often do in these situations. With each other, maybe it doesn't have to be so complicated anymore, even when they have those inevitable arguments here or there.

The last thing he does before allowing himself to be dragged under is brush his lips on her forehead in a tender kiss. And when he eventually wakes to the rising sun shining through the windows in the aftermath of the violent hurricane, she's still there.

Tag List: @jjjmaybank, @its-simply-fanfiction, @naughtydild0swaggins.

[twoidiotwriters1]

Copycat: Cryptomnesia —(Marvel Fem!Oc)

A/N: The way none of them would shut up no matter how hard I tried -Danny

Words: 2,495

Phase Five Masterlist

Previous Chapter // Next Chapter

Listen to: ‘Carefully’ -by Ben Platt

xix: Parallel Truths

Cat's tongue licked what she thought was a drop of sweat and got the metallic taste of blood, she spat it out right away.

"Gross!"

"You knew the widow," Clint pointed out. "Care to tell me who she is?"

"Hey, I can hear you!" Cat brushed off the blood dripping from her eyebrow. "She was the other gorgon."

"Your partner was a black widow?" Clint looked up to the sky. "You gotta be kidding me... Was she looking for you?"

"She was here for you," Cat pressed the button on her earpiece so the mask covered her face, stopping more blood from getting into her mouth. "You saw her move Kate out of the way, she's never killed anyone she doesn't have to... unlike me."

Clint kicked the bullets that were sprawled on the floor. "Fantastic!"

"Let's just call it a night— you've been electrocuted, hit, and slapped— I'm bleeding for the first time in years and my ears are buzzing so can we just... go?"

"The Rolex," was the only thing he said back.

"Kate got it. Whose Rolex is it?"

He shook his head. "Laura. Let's go back and think this through."

"We can't go to my apartment, the gorgon knows where I live."

"I know a place."

"Hey..." she called, "the widow knows where my ex-boyfriend lives, she probably won't go near him, but..."

He nodded. "Let me know if something happens."

"I will."

Cat knocked on the door. Yelena was talking loud enough so she could hear her.

"Stop with the formalities, don't waste our time!"

Cat teleported to the inside of Kate's apartment. "I didn't know this was a party!" She said cheerfully. "Hope you don't mind me crashing it."

Kate gave a reluctant step forward, and when Yelena didn't stop her she kept going. "Can we get her out of here? I'm—"

"Hey!" Yelena pointed at a casserole in the middle of the surface. "I made dinner! Don't kick me out!"

"Wha— you knew Cat was coming?"

"Of course, she's very predictable," Yelena shrugged. "Always trying to take home every stranger she finds—"

"Okay, I think it's time you see yourself out—"

"I'm not here to fight you," Yelena threw her head back groaning. "Can you bring your girlfriend over here so we can all talk?"

Cat grabbed Kate by the elbow and pushed her forward gently. The archer gave her a questioning look. "She'll get out of here soon, I promise."

"I would say you're a prince charming, but you would need to look cleaner," Yelena pointed at the blood on her face. Cat had changed into civilian clothes before showing up, but her hair was still silver and her eyes remained purple and feline.

"Are you okay?" Kate asked. "I'm sorry about the arrow, I didn't know you were sensitive to sound—"

"Me neither!" Yelena chuckled. "I also didn't know her cape was bulletproof, I thought she just liked looking stupid—"

"Get to the point."

"I'm not here to speak with you," Yelena turned her body in Kate's direction. "Hi. You're probably thinking 'what? This is crazy! I'm going to have dinner with the enemy? And she made some really good smelling macaroni.'"

"The only thing you know how to cook..." Cat muttered.

Yelena kicked her foot and spoke in Russian. "I said no talking!"

"Then hurry up," Cat responded in the same language.

"Grumpy cat," Yelena scoffed. "Look, Kate Bishop, if I wanted to kill you—"

"You would've already," Kate stated.

"Right as you opened that door," the blonde agreed.

"I probably wouldn't even have time to shut it."

"No."

"There are only two forks on the table," Cat pointed out.

"That's right. Would you like to explain that, Kate?"

"I live alone."

"How are we gonna eat if there are only two forks?" The mutant frowned.

"You have claws."

Cat's eyes reflected the light dangerously when they glared at Yelena. "I'm not an animal."

She looked down at the casserole, scrunched up her nose, and covered it with the back of her hand, which had bloodstains and caused her to gawk at the smell.

"I'll take that as a very unkind 'I'm not hungry, thank you'," Yelena grabbed a fork and started eating.

Cat encouraged Kate to grab the remaining fork, they needed to stay in Yelena's good graces. Cat got up and the blonde stopped to look at her, she raised her hands in surrender, and also to show the blood on them.

"I wanna get rid of this," the mutant explained.

Cat soaked a dish towel and cleaned her cut in rough swipes. With one hand she held her curls out of the way and went back to her seat. Kate was done eating and Yelena was pouring a disturbing amount of hot sauce on her food.

"So what do you want?" Kate took the towel from Cat and helped her clean the wound in a gentler manner.

"Well, it's my first time in New York," Yelena sang. "But is a business trip so time is limited, but I do want to see some things! I called you, Cat, to ask if you could show me around—"

"I blocked your number."

"Well, here's my ideas. I want to see, uh, the Empire state building, the new and improved statue of liberty, and the Rockefeller center."

"Haha, very funny," Kate replied, her attention on Cat's forehead.

"What, is not good?" Yelena asked with a blank expression.

Kate looked at her, then back at Cat.

"She's truly asking," Cat mumbled.

Kate tilted her body to face Yelena. "No, they're... they're great. I mean, you gotta see the tree—"

Yelena gasped, lifting her hands in realization. "Exactly! See? I love American Christmases— the trees, the presents, the superpowered reindeer Rudolph? He's so weird," she laughed. "Cat doesn't like Christmas."

"I never had a reason to celebrate," she shrugged.

Yelena had a weird expression. "All you've gotten has been given to you, and you sneer at it." They had a short staring contest before Yelena moved her attention back to Kate. "Have you ever eaten reindeer?"

"Cannot say I've had the pleasure, no."

Yelena laughed. "No, it is not a pleasure." She ate a mouthful of macaroni. "It's um— it's really tough. It's chewy. Mmhm. You have to braise it for a really long time. You remember that time before we gutted the mobster and his idiot son, Cat? And they gave us kangaroo meat?"

Cat stared at Yelena, wondering what her point was. Although she already knew it, she was trying to make Kate's loyalty crumble by talking of all the horrible things Cat had done.

"She doesn't like exotic food either, says it reminds her of the messed up things they made her eat in the lab. Did she tell you about that? She was raised like a caged beast. A pet."

"Yelena."

"But she is no pet, no no," the young woman taunted. "Not unless they buy her the shiny collars—"

Cat's hand slammed against the table, Kate jumped in her seat but Yelena merely looked at it with disdain. "Why don't I walk you out?"

"I don't want anything from you," the blonde replied harshly. "You think you can walk away, put on that stupid costume, and now you're better than me?" Yelena went back to Kate. "She is not a saint, Kate Bishop, and whatever she's told you, she's just making sure no one tries to control her like Smerdyakov did."

Cat leaned on the table. "I don't think I'm better than you, if I did, I would've kept on doing what I was doing alone."

"Isn't that the reason why Matthew left you? Because you kept doing it?"

"I didn't want to do it and you convinced me to do it—!"

"No one put a gun in your head, you did that alone."

"I trusted you," she insisted. "Nat told me—"

"Don't use her against me," Yelena spat. "You have no right."

Cat got up, supporting both hands on the table. "She trained me. It's you who has no right to use her as an excuse to be cruel—"

"You were the ones that used her!" Yelena didn't get up, but her eyes were as bright as Cat's. "You wanted your life back and used her because she had no one!"

"I didn't want anything back!" Cat said shakily. "I had friends, and a job, I was complete. Nat insisted on trying because she wanted your stupid ass back in this world!"

Yelena slammed the fork on the table and got up as well.

"Then why didn't you take her place? You had nothing to lose!"

Cat didn't have a proper answer. It should've been her instead of Natasha, just like it should've been her instead of Pietro. Guilt clung to her throat, the cut above her eyebrow was pulsing, and her hands were cold as ice.

It was always her anger that made her commit so many mistakes throughout the years. She guessed that was probably how Yelena was feeling too. Neither of them had biological families, but they'd had someone who'd loved them, and the fact that they'd died so they could live, would forever cloud their vision.

"I had a brother too," her voice was quiet. "He died while trying to save me, it was my fault, and there's no good deed that will fix that. That's why I wear the stupid collar, cause at least this way it hurts less. Can you say the same about your job?"

Yelena decided to address the third person in the room. "Kate Bishop, you grew up here too, right? Isn't it crazy that you lived in the same city as the Avengers for years and you never saw them on the street?"

"I guess..." Kate replied quietly, feeling she was lost in the conversation.

Yelena tilted her head. "Z won't show me around, probably because she doesn't even know the city enough. So how about you give me your recommendations?"

Kate's eyes darted toward the back of Cat's head, but since the mutant didn't look away from Yelena she started talking. "There's the Christmas market in union square... but I'm not quite sure those are the right fit for the blood-thirsty vigilante type."

Yelena snorted, she moved away and sat back on her chair. "The blood-thirsty vigilante! Sometimes you're funny, Kate Bishop."

"Do you keep saying my whole name just to point out that you know it?"

Yelena nodded. "Yes. I know a lot about you."

Cat sat down, staring absently at the table as Yelena described Kate's life.

"You call Zero by her hero name. You could also call her a mercenary, or mutant. Why are we different in your eyes, Kate Bishop? Why even bother to try and risk your life for Clint Barton? How has everyone forgiven them for their past?"

"Cat and Clint saved the world."

"No. My sister saved the world. Natasha Romanoff, she saved the world. Copycat watched them fall until no one was there to protect her. Oh, stop pretending like you're not surprised, it does not look cool."

"I'm sorry, but I didn't know Natasha's sister was the other gorgon," Kate admitted, taking in a harsh breath. "Thank God I didn't kill you up there!"

Yelena laughed. "You kill me? Heard that, Z? Again, Kate Bishop, you are so funny! That's hilarious, that one is the funniest."

"Natasha and Clint were friends! Why are you after him?"

"She got hired," Cat replied. "It is personal, but at least she waited until she got a proper excuse."

"How are you not freaking out about your friend trying to kill your other friend?"

"She's not my friend, and Clint is not my friend but he could be if he survives."

"Please, like you're not happy to see me," Yelena looked at Kate. "Her boyfriend found out what she was and broke up with her, and she blames me, can you believe it? But now you have someone willing to play dumb, Z! Kate, it's so clear to me you don't know each other."

"Clint and Cat came here to protect me."

"No," Yelena's eyes darkened. "They came here to protect their reputation. Copycat is a murderer. Clint Barton is the blood-thirsty vigilante. Do you know how many people they've killed? The trail of blood that follows them, it could wrap around the entire world."

"Okay, wow, that was... very Russian," Kate taunted her. "They're Avengers."

Yelena made a face. "What does that word even mean? That it holds so much power. Zero is so afraid of it that she uses a different name—"

"When you choose to spend your life trying to help people there are going to be things that you lose. When you face the kind of threats that they have, there's going to be collateral damage—"

"My sister is gone because of them!"

"You don't know what happened," Cat replied.

"Is she collateral damage?"

"What Kate said is all Clint's words, I hope she develops her own opinions in the future," Cat gave her a stern look. "However, if you live long enough as a hero, you stop being one. You make mistakes, you become someone's bad guy. It gets harder, eats you from the inside out."

"So I should get over my sister's death? Is that what you're saying?"

"I'm saying Clint will have to live knowing he's a monster... just like me."

"That is not enough," Yelena concluded. "I'm going to complete my assignment. I'm going to kill him, and I'll sleep better knowing I did that to him. So where is Clint Barton?"

"We don't know," Kate replied.

"Zero?"

"My name is Cat," she kept a straight face. "That's what you'll call me from now on— and make no mistake, I'm no Avenger but I don't say it out of fear, the difference between them and I is I won't hesitate to kill you if I have to. Kate answered your question, now leave."

"Okay," Yelena got up, unconvinced. "Thank you for the girls' night. Truly." She walked towards the window. "One more thing? Do not get in my way again, or that cut in your eyebrow will be nothing compared to what I'll do to your girlfriend."

Yelena jumped out using her grappling hook.

"She could've used the front door, you know? And she has the audacity to call me a show-off..."

"Right? I hate her!" Kate replied.

Cat looked at her with worry. "Stay out of this, Kate. Yelena will kill you if she has to. I would."

"I won't be taking advice from you at the moment," Kate looked uncomfortable.

"If you wanna be an Avenger—"

"Now you know everything about being a hero?" Kate asked sarcastically. "Cause so far you've done nothing but insist you're a bad example of one."

Cat decided not to lash out considering the beating the archer had taken, morally and physically. Besides, Kate had a point. She wasn't a hero, she hadn't been one in almost two years.

"The fact that I'm not a hero does not make me a villain," she said. "I don't want you to get hurt."

"Don't worry, this princess can look after herself," Kate replied stubbornly.

"I'll come tomorrow to check on you," Cat sighed. "Please be here?"

"Okay," Kate took pity on her and reached to squeeze her arm a little, trying to lighten the weight on her shoulders. "I don't want you to get hurt either, so please take care of yourself. Don't try to fight Yelena alone."

"She's not my business, Clint can take care of that one by himself," she raised a brow. "I'm only here to retrieve the Rolex."

Next Chapter—>

Taglist.

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[technowoah]

THESEUS - a dsmp story ( DreamSMP x Queen!Reader)

CHAPTER FOUR : LOOK ‘EM IN THE EYE AIM NO HIGHER, SUMMON ALL THE COURAGE YOU REQUIRE THEN COUNT!

Chapter Summary: Wilbur makes a proposition, Tommy finally gets his fight, warning shots are fired and the bomb that was planted finally went off.

pairing: c!wilbur x queen!reader

an// tbh im not that happy with this one, I hope yall like it! but hopefully Ill like chapter 6 lol

⚠︎ swearing, dsmp spoliers(?), angst, fighting, minor blood mention, not proofread. Y/N/N = your nickname

word count: 5.1k

THESEUS MASTERLIST 

"Are you sure you want to do this because Tommy is a good fighter!"

"He's also good at being annoying, so you'll die either way."

"SHUT UP YOU TWO!" 

Currently Tommy and You were by a small lake in L'Manburg facing each other with swords and guns. Fundy and Tubbo were belittling Tommy on the sidelines. Tubbo was trying to convince the both of them not to do this so they wouldn't get hurt badly before the actual war begins. Wilbur was standing in between the two and Eret nervously standing off to the side with Tubbo and Fundy.

When You arrived you explained to the three people who were there, Tubbo, Fundy, and Wilbur, that Tommy and you were going to fight that day. Tubbo and Fundy were not for that idea at all, but Wilbur approved it. After a while of thinking and conversation of course he agreed. 

Eret and Tommy arrived at L'Manburg as well and apparently Tommy already told Eret that he was fighting his wife.

"You know what Eret? I'm gonna fight your wife today! Yeah it'll be a good fight, don't worry I wont hurt her that badly."

Of course Eret did not want this duel to happen and tried to convince Wilbur to not let the two do this to one another. He was concerned about the task and hand yes, but You getting hurt or even worse, killed was not a thing he wanted not needed. Tommy was a loose cannon, he worked on impulse. You were basically fighting a bull while wearing all red.

Wilbur had pulled You aside for the second time this week and started to have a conversation with you again. It was a needed conversation so when Wilbur grabbed her arm.and pulled her away you didn't hesitate this time. As the two talked in the distance you heard Fundy yelling at Tommy about the dangers of fighting You at a time like this. Your mind was all over the place at this point.

"You know how this works?" Wilbur looked at You and Tommy.

"Yes!"

"Yes I do"

You knew what was going to happen. They both had 6 bullets in their gun, if they use all of their bullets they can use their swords instead. You were in your head at this moment. Wilbur was explaining how this duel would work to Tubbo, while You contemplated whether to waste youshot by shooting in the sky or aiming at Tommy's foot. you didn't want to hurt him at all, they had a war coming soon so hurting Tommy would not help L'Manburg. Then again, when was helping L'Manburg a part of your mission?

You snapped out of your mind and saw Tommy glaring daggers at her. He looked harmless.

"I am going to beat you." Tommy said in a voice that can be only compared to a robot.

"You wish!" You scoffed and smiled, smiled which made Tommy scoff and look away.

Wilbur spoke over the two, "ALRIGHT! You two will be back to back facing away from each other, then take ten paces. When I say "fire" you two will fire and shoot and fight until one is damaged and cannot battle anymore or until I call a draw. Understand?"

"Yes Wilbur!" Tommy exclaimed.

"Of course." You calmly said.

"Alright" Wilbur agreed and motioned for the two to turn away from each other. 

They had both touched backs and You had taken a huge deep breath. 

The dilemma in your head was still spinning. Whether to shoot him or to shoot into the air. you would be a coward wouldn't you?

"You scared?" Tommy taunted you.

"No. Just getting ready to beat your ass."

"HA! That's not gonna happen. You're all talk." 

"We'll see about that." Wilbur spoke, inserting himself into their conversation.

Wilbur had stepped back towards the group of men who sat and were watching the whole duel. There was tension in the air, they all could feel it. They all thought this was a bad idea, You thought this was a bad idea. What if this tore the whole plan apart will they ever get to-

"READY? ONE!"

They both took a step.

Aim to the sky or aim towards Tommy?

"TWO!"

Where would you aim?

"THREE!"

What would happen if Tommy ended up dead?

"FOUR!"

Would Dream be happy?

"FIVE!"

If you aim towards the sky. Tommy might shoot. you would be an open target.

"SIX!"

It would be over right? If you aim at the sky?

"SEVEN!"

Tommy.

"EIGHT!"

Up in the air.

"NINE!"

How can this end?

The sky? Tommy? Where does the bullet go?

Where do you go?

"NUMBER TEN PACES, FIRE!"

*bang!*

Tommy's eyes widened and You stood my ground.

"She shot her pistol towards the sky?!" Tubbo shouted.

Wilbur stood there with a smirk and Eret let out a sigh of relief and immediately relaxed. Tommy didn't shoot his gun at all; he looked like a deer caught in the headlights. This was the right way.

-----------------

"I want you to shoot into the sky." Wilbur had taken you to an uninhabited part of the wall to talk.

"Why?"

Wilbur had sighed and looked over to where Tommy was gloating to Eret about dueling his wife.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, "Tommy is rather impulsive. He does things without thinking or with any concern for consequence. He says things without thinking too, as you've seen firsthand."

You nodded and laughed before Wilbur kept talking.

"I want him to hesitate. I want him to think for once. I know he wants to fight right now, he's riled up because of the battle. I expect him to shoot, but I hope that he won't. He won't." Wilbur seemed to be convincing himself this was a good idea.

"That's reassuring." You replied sarcastically.  

Wilbur rolled his eyes, "I believe he won't kill you nor harm you. At least that's the plan. I care for him. He's a good fighter and he should be able to see his opponent before going all ape shit." 

"I get it. I want to do this, but you said he works on impulse. What if he shoots?" You continued to worry.

"I'm here. And uh- Fundy is great at healing. We have healing potions in the van as well. You will not die on my watch. We need you for the war."

You nodded and continued to stare into Wilbur's brown eyes waiting for another comment from his mouth.

"Do this for me please? For us?"

You opened your mouth to speak, but Wilbur sighed before continuing his statement, 

"You don't have to do this. I should've said that first. I understand that death is scary, believe me I don't want to die either. So I can figure out another way to get to Tommy if you are uncomfortable with this."

This time it wasn't a forced situation. He was literally giving you a huge way out, an open path, but you already agreed to fight before. It wasn't like you were put into this without paths to take. you had options. Now that potions were involved and there are spectators that can act as doctors eased your nerves just slightly. you can do this.

"Or were you planning on shooting Tommy anyways?" 

--------------

You looked towards Wilbur and smiled warmly at him and he returned your same smile.

"WHAT THE FUCK?! YOU MADE ME LOOK LIKE THE BAD GUY! YOU-"

 "I didn't even call it a draw yet Tommy. You can still fight-" 

"It's clear that my opponent doesn't want this. If I did, I would be more of a bad guy than I already am now." Tommy dropped his gun to the green grass underneath his feet. 

You followed suit, dropping your gun onto the grass below you. You walked towards Tommy trying to find the right words at this moment. He had his head hung low looking at the gun that laid in the lush grass in front of him. You had walked towards him and put a hand on his shoulder and he began to tense up at the friendly gesture.

"Tommy, you're not a bad guy. You did the right thing at that moment. You're neutral really, if you would've shot me then yeah you would be considered "the bad guy". But in reality, there is no such thing as good or bad, there are just people with different morals." You whispered that last part and Tommy seemed to reluctantly understand, still sticking to his main idea of him being a bad guy. 

He was really stubborn, which made it harder for you to make him feel better.

"This is what I wanted Tommy! I wanted you to hesitate before you shot her." Wilbur tried to pick his spirits up by revealing his plan.

"THEN WHAT IF I SHOT HER?!" 

"you would've been fine. Plus you weren't going to brutally damage or kill Y/N right?"

Tommy stuttered a little bit before speaking, explaining himself.

"No I wasn't! My goal was at least to scare her, or graze you with my bullet." Tommy rushed.

"What if you slipped up and hit Y/N instead?" Tubbo came into the conversation leading Fundy and Eret with him.

"Then I would feel incredibly horrible that I hurt an ally." Tommy said while hanging his head. "I understand, Wilbur, I understand what today's duel was for." Tommy continued.

"To be honest, this was a last minute decision! I talked to Y/N before and we both decided it was a good idea for you. Especially when a war is coming up."

"Mhm. I am okay now. I've learned, and I just hope that I can transfer this into the war." Tommy seemed relieved, but also not wanting to learn his lesson. It was bad to assume, but it sounded like he wanted to get this lecture over with.

Wilbur humed while turning away satisfied with what happened today. He walked towards the HTO van with Fundy following suit leaving Tommy and you standing next to each other still recovering from what just happened. Eret and Tubbo were standing a few feet away from them making small glances to the two making sure they are okay.

"I still hate you." Tommy grumbled.

-----------------

The five citizens were sitting in the meeting room making potions with the brewing machines or doing their own thing at the moment. Wilbur didn't have anything planned for today except for making many potions for battle. You were helping with potions as well. you were more skilled at potion making than battle. you can hold yourself down and maybe kill someone, but you don't recommend for herself to do that.

"Wow Y/N/N you're making potions so much faster than I am. Teach me your secrets!" Tubbo exclaimed.

"What did you call me?" You asked The boy softly.

"What do you mean? I called you Y/N/N." Tubbo said, confused.

Has Dream ever called you Y/N/N before because it seems like you've never been called that before. Tubbo was still looking quizzically at you waiting for an answer.

"I don't think I've been called Y/N/N before." You answered.

"Y/N might be uncomfortable with that." Wilbur joined into their conversation.

"Oh! I'm sorry! If that made you-"

"I'm okay! You can call me Y/N/N'' You said while waving your hands to dismiss the situation.

"Good! I thought I was being a creep or something." Tubbo laughed.

"Y/N/N HELP ME OUT WITH THESE POTIONS WILL YA?" Tommy shouted from across the room.

"Okay you don't get to call me Y/N/N." 

Tommy huffed, "If my best friend can call you Y/N/N I will too!"

"Okay children settle down." Eret said while looking up from the book he was writing.

There was another pause until Fundy had spoken.

"Today seemed like a good day huh? Even though it isn't over so far, so good eh?" Fundy tried making conversation after writing whatever enchantments in his book.

"Yes it was so far! Very surprising today." Tubbo agreed with Fundy.

"Tommy and You gave me a heart attack today. I wouldn't consider this a good day so far." Eret exhaled jokingly. He seemed in good spirits today.

"I'm sorry I gave my husband a heart attack." You taunted.

"But seriously that scared me. Thank goodness nothing happened to the both of you. I wouldn't know what I would do." Eret continued.

"You would live." You said bluntly, staring at him. 

Eret nodded at you, sending a small smile your way.

"You would've been a good fighter. Have you fought before?" Fundy inquired.

"I have fought before! I've been trained as well, I'm more into the sneaky side of things, and making potions like I am now." You cheerfully explained.

"Sneaky things?" Wilbur asked.

Your eyes widened slightly before maintaining your composure. you forgot that Wilbur was still on youtail. He thinks that You is still suspicious, so of course when you said that he would jump on the opportunity to interrogate her.

"You could be a spy for us! Maybe spy on Dream and George!" Tubbo exclaimed.

Oh the irony.

Wilbur hummed, "Maybe, that would be interesting. We could get information and they wouldn't turn her down."

"It would be too late anyways if they've seen you here so it would be a major red flag if you showed up there trying to join their team." Eret spoke up, still concentrating on writing enchantments with Fundy.

Thank God that Eret was here, You would be stumbling for the right words and then eventually blowing their cover. you had this happen too many times. They are almost to the end you have to pull back.

"True. You're right!" Wilbur agreed. "Plus we've been more productive since you two came back."

Eret and you both nodded in agreement and went back to doing their tasks.

Tubbo and You were standing together on one side of the room making potions and talking to one another until Tubbo made a quiet gasp. 

You looked at him and followed his line of gaze until you saw them again. It was Sapnap and Dream on the top of the new, enlarged L'Manburg walls. Dream pulled back his hand and whipped something toward the van. It looked metal and shiny as it bounced harshly in the grass. 

Sapnap then pulled out a bow and arrow and Dream had set it on fire. Sapnap launched the arrow into the walls and it landed by the machine that Dream had thrown. The grass around the arrow caught on fire as well, not making a huge fire but enough to scare the two.

"WILBUR! You have a gift!" Tubbo said as he rushed out of the van and You watched carefully through the window so the two wouldn't do anything to the boy.

"Where did he go?!" Wilbur yelled.

"He went outside to grab the metal thing Dream and Sapnap threw." You said keeping an eye on Tubbo as he came back into the van.

Wilbur rushed towards the window where Aryia was stationed and looked towards the top of the wall where Dream and Sapnap were. Dream took one last final glance at the two in the window then turned away to jump down the wall with Sapnap following suit.

"Guys you might want to take a look at this." Tubbo said while placing the metal thing, which was an old answering machine, on the table.

Wilbur sighed, clearly exhausted with everything that had been going on. He sat down on the edge of the table. Tubbo pressed play on the machine and the recording started.

"Tommy, and Wilbur, and the rest of L'Man-child-burg. We are at war. There is no mercy. We have burned down Tubbo's house, we have planted TNT cannons around your land, we have cobblestone walled the outside, we have shot one warning shot inside your walls. WE HAVE NO MERCY, NO MERCY FOR YOU! We will burn down your houses! We will kill everything inside your walls and we will take back the land that is rightfully ours. If you do not surrender I WANT TO SEE WHITE FLAGS! WHITE FLAGS OUTSIDE YOUR BASE BY TOMORROW AT DAWN, OR YOU ARE DEAD!"

*beep~* 

There was a long beep until Tubbo shut off the recorded message. Everyone was silent looking at each other for the next move. Everyone either had a face of anger or one of concern. Eventually everyone turned to Wilbur who had his head down, his hair slightly covering his eyes in a thinking pose. We were waiting for a response from the leader, but it didn't seem like anyone had a response to this situation.

"Hey lets just-"

"Grab me a book and a pen" Wilbur spoke.

------------------

It's been about an hour since we last received the message. The sun has gone down and they are all still sitting around the meeting table. 

"What do we get? What's the report?" Wilbur asked.

Tommy started, "Okay so here's the situation, the ‘Dream boys' they're on the roof, they've already killed me and Tubbo once, they feel like they got their power. Their egos are up-" 

"They've taken it all." Tubbo added.

"I don't know man, what do you think we've got to do now? Ultimately you're the leader here." Tommy asked the older man.

Wilbur paused before speaking, "I think, the element of surprise is needed. We can't go in just guns blazing."

"My son, how are you doing?" Wilbur asked Fundy.

Fundy stuttered before speaking, "I could've been better."

Wilbur smiled then opened the book he had been writing in for the past hour.

"Before we go into battle though-

"WORDS OVER WEAPONS MY FRIEND!" Tommy interrupted Wilbur

"My gents and m'lady, may I read you the Declaration of Independence?" 

Wilbur had started to read through the Declaration complementing the writers who wrote lines in the book. He began reading the main parts of the book.

"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for-"

"Wilbur" Tommy interrupted Wilbur again

"Yes what, what?" Wilbur asked annoyed

"They're surrounding us, Wilbur." 

Tommy stood up looking out of the window at the many fiery arrows making their way towards the van and making the grass around the van catch on small fires.

From inside the van it looked like rain from hell. All the fears you once had came flooding back into your mind. you put herself right in front of the greatest fighters, and assassins in the kingdom and you might not make it out alive. 

Wilbur started to head out of the door trying to face his opponents. They all were putting themselves out there exiting the van as fast as they could like a huge target. Speaking of target, an arrow shot by Sapnap landed too close for comfort next  to Wilbur. He seemed un phased at this.  

"They're not the best shot." Wilbur turned his back on the archers and stood in the doorway to the group inside.

Wilbur began to yell at the archers, "Gentlemen how are you!?" 

"Good!" Dream replied bluntly.

Surprisingly they could hear both of each other. 

"Do you like the view of our nation!?" Wilbur asked as he smirked.

"Oh God!" Tubbo exclaimed, worried because of the taunting Wilbur was doing.

"We might be a little out gunned here gentlemen." Eret said softly to the others while placing a hand on your shoulder in a comforting way.

"I thought this was a trailer park!" Dream shouted back. 

"Very funny, listen. It seems like you've gained the upper hand in people! We will meet you in the field, but on our own terms!" Wilbur concluded.

"YEAH!" Tommy shouted at the archers hyping Wilbur up.

The rest laughed at Tommy's antics trying to keep it together.

"Please stop making things worse!" Tubbo laughed.

Another arrow was shot at Wilbur's feet. He was clearly stunned by this, turning to the rest of the L'Manburgians he spoke to them.

"We armor up gents." Wilbur said, walking away.

Just as he walked away Tommy followed Wilbur outside of the van and then an arrow was shot into Tommy's bicep by George. Tommy yelled in anger and in pain, and the rest followed suit yelling in shock. Tommy clutched the arm that the arrow had found its way into, he tried to keep it together as he fell to his knees. You rushed to Tommy's side trying to take the arrow out carefully and heal him. He kept on shielding his arm away from you and kept babbling incoherent nonsense about “leaving him alone” too.

"It's okay! I'm fine! I'm fine! Don't worry!" Tommy kept shouting.

"You're not fine Tommy, let me help!" You yelled and he finally succumbed to you.

You slowly pulled out the arrow and used bandages that Eret had rushed to give you to wrap around his arm carefully. Throughout this whole process Tommy had a face of discomfort and pain until you had successfully bandaged his upper arm so no blood would seep through. Later on you would have to tend to his wounds more delicately.

"Just stay inside!" Fundy yelled in a hurried tone and was angry at the fact someone had already gotten hurt.

This would've been the outcome of the duel if you hadn't followed Wilbur's orders. Either way he would've been injured. Of course they would go for Tommy. Wilbur's right hand man. It was bound to happen. 

You and the rest of the men were clad in netherite or diamond armor and they surrounded Wilbur waiting for another order.

"Tommy I'm putting you in charge of this army." Wilbur said.

Your eyes widened. Didn't Wilbur just say he acted on impulse. This was a bad idea. you were going to die at the hands of the people who gave this opportunity to you.

Wilbur continued, "No matter what happens during this war, no matter who wins and who loses. Just remember that we're on the right side of history."

You have heard that before. What side of history was you on? They have rubbed off on you of course, but with different morals coming from both sides, whose morals do you fit with? If you die, will you be painted in the wrong manner? Are you on the right side as you stand with Eret and Fundy in L'Manburg? Is there even a right side?

"Up the walls we go!" Tommy exclaimed as the group climbed the ladder over the walls.

Your heart was pounding as Tommy led the way towards their next destination. This was going to be very interesting.

----------------

Tommy led us to the destination where the other warriors were on top of a small tower looking down on the L'Manburgians.

"God- whatever we do, don't go up the tower." Tubbo exhaled. 

"We have to get them down to our level. We have to get them to come down on their own accord." Wilbur commanded.

"Those bastards." Tommy said as an arrow made of fire was shot precisely onto the ground.

The floor began to rumble as the ground cracked and smoke began to rise beneath you revealing the red, fiery TNT that blew up from beneath them breaking the very ground and dirt they stood on making everyone lose their balance. Everyone started screaming, scrambling to get away from the constant chain of TNT slipping and falling on the debris, and the crevices that formed. You had started to run faster,and faster, sometimes you fell to your knees because of the ground shaking and breaking underneath you. You couldn’t look back but you heard screaming and you could only hope and pray no one fell into the big canyon the TNT made behind you. Your mind was not catching up your feet as you blindly followed Tommy into his own home, cutting around the whole kingdom. The rest followed close behind making their way into the house. 

Their clothes were tattered and dirty, singes from the fire were on their war uniforms and armor. As they scrambled for safety the arrows kept coming, hitting the house and the ground outside of it. You felt like this was it for you, your first friends, your enemies shooting arrows of fire at you through your so-called enemies house. You had to stay alive though, keep up the act, but right now you didn't really have to keep an act up because you were actually scared for your life.

The grass in front of Tommy's house was burning while the men gave Tommy all of their arrows. Wilbur commanded them to hail them with arrows. Arrows began burning through the walls breaking into their safe haven. To escape this situation Wibur had told all of them to scatter and make it harder for the archers to shoot them. They all did just that, playing on the defensive dodging the arrows that were hurled towards their way. 

Eventually the archers jumped off of the tower retreating towards a nearby river. The L'Manburgians currently had the high ground and You started shooting with arrows purposefully missing so you wouldn't hurt them.

"They are heading to Ponk's tower!" Tommy shouted.

You looked up to one of the highest towers in the kingdom. Damn.

"In that case we need to start heading towards Ponk's tower!" Tubbo yelled, ceasing his arrows trying to get the rest of them to follow his lead.

The men followed Tommy through his shortcuts to get to the base of Ponk's tower faster. Fundy went forward shooting at the others at the base of the tower. You, Eret, Tommy and Tubbo followed Fundy and started shooting and dodging as well. 

For now they have retreated towards the walls of L'Manburg hiding slightly below the top. Wilbur was there at first then the rest of the groups followed. The arrows couldn't reach them and the boys cheerfully pointed that fact out. Soon they had started slowly retreating as the sun went down in the distance. You sighed and cheered with the rest of the men that they finally stopped fire. Your heart still beating fast you looked behind you towards Eret sending each other a knowing glance.

The rest were cheering and complimenting each other until Eret spoke up.

"Gentlemen, I think we need to go back to our home." Eret said.

"I think you're right, Eret." Tommy agreed happily.

They made their way back to L'Manburg into the night with Tommy leading them for the last time tonight. Tommy and Wilbur were playfully bickering through the whole walk back to L'Manburg. It was a fun time filled with laughter and it was much needed after that whole war. Even though they all were beaten and tattered with burn marks and scratches, they kept smiling. It's crazy to think about.

The fun ended for you as they reached their destination. The extended walls of L'Manburg were in their sights and your heart rate picked up even more than it had before. This is the end. 

"Gentlemen in L'Manburg I have a secret weapon." Eret says, sparking a new conversation.

"What is it?" You asked playing dumb. 

"What is it?" Wilbur asked asked as well

"A secret weapon!?" Tubbo exclaimed.

"I feel like Eret is just going to pull out a giant missile." Fundy joked around and your breath hitched. If only they knew.

"But seriously, what do you mean you got a secret weapon?" Tommy spoke fast.

"I've been grinding for equipment, I've been grinding materials." Eret said not to give it away.

"Show us please!" Tommy exclaimed as they all entered L'Manburg once more today.

You joined in as well, "I haven't seen any of this show us Eret!"

You hated lying to them.

----------------

"This is the final control room for you too!" Dream yelled with excitement showing the beautiful dark room. 

The chests were empty, there was a button on top of a podium, and there was a secret room where Dream and the rest would be hiding after the war. The plan was simple enough on paper. The two countries would fight until sun down and then Eret would lead the L'Manburgians to the final control room where he would press the button and then The citizens of L'Manburg would be killed and a life would be taken from them.

Dream has taught You about the life limit. Everyone in the kingdom had three lives and if all three lives were taken, there is no coming back. you felt weary taking away someone's life.

"This is where the battle will end." Dream said calmly

Currently it was just Eret and You with Dream. Dream kept explaining the mechanics of the room while they both listened. You kept slipping in and out of your mind at the moment.

This would be the end, he said. It will all come to an end and you will finally find your place in the huge kingdom. you can finally have closure. It will all come to an end.

"You two are on the right side of history, don't worry. Cause if you do this you'll be doing the kingdom a huge favor."

----------------

"This way." Eret led the group into the final control room.

The men were astonished about the huge tunnel entrance to the room. They continue to rush down the tunnel to catch up to Eret.

"I'm excited to show you!" Eret cheerfully said as he walked. "They will never suspect a thing!" 

They all ended up in the final control room. You made sure to stand next to Eret making sure that they stayed together. you knew where to leave and when the button was pressed but you had a few minutes to play it off.

"WHAT?"  

"This is so cool!"

"What is this place?!"

"There's nothing in the chests." Wilbur said bluntly, as he turned to us still crouching because he opened the chests.

"Eret?" Tubbo asked.

Eret pressed the button and then the wall behind Wilbur opened and revealed Dream, Sapnap, George and Punz. The men started to scream in shock. They were getting attacked. Blood was being spilled and fire was burning down the whole final control room. Eret grabbed your hand pulling you to a secret wall, opening it to reveal stairs that led out of the final control room trying to protect you from getting hurt.

The L'Manburgians fought anyone they saw, but the others knew who specifically to kill. As the L'Manburgians fought for their lives you heard Wilbur yell out over all of the chaos.

"A TRAITOR! GET OUT GET OUT!"

Were you a traitor? Yes you were. They died. The fire around their bodies began to calm as their murders stood over their bodies breathing heavily. There was an orange and purple tint to the room. It looked unreal. This was it. Their bodies began to glow a light blue color and disintegrate showing that one of their lives was taken that day. This was the closure you wanted, but why did it feel like an unfinished symphony? Like it reached the climax of the song then ended.

It's over

Eret saluted to their disintegrating bodies and you followed suit.

"Down with the revolution boys! It was never meant to be."

---------------

Wilbur's POV

"Eret how could you?" We sat on the burnt grass of L'Manburg waiting for one another to show up from being killed. 

This was what I suspected from the beginning. Sadly this is what I suspected from the beginning.

"Hey where's Y/N?!" Tubbo whipped his head frantically looking for her.

"They were a traitor as well." Fundy said sadly.

Tommy and Eret were facing each other. Tommy in L'Manburg's walls and Eret standing a few feet outside of them. It was a beautiful picture at this moment, very symbolic. 

Tubbo was talking to Eret in a distraught voice before Tommy had interrupted him. "Eret listen to me! And I mean this in the nicest way possible. You fucked up." Tommy said harshly to Eret.

Eret only smirked at this like the madman he is and spoke around him, "farewell gentlemen." And he left us in our ruins.

I had such high hopes for the two of them. Especially Y/N. I knew they were trying to find their home, their place in this huge world. Maybe they'll find it with Dream. That's not what I would've wanted, but they might want to stay there. they'll be back, they'll find their home soon.

"We'll meet again. I know you."

taglist: @hi-imuwu​

[ravenadottir]

cmm

one last time, because i hope i never have to talk about this again. wanna know how tragic it was to wake up in the morning and spend a solid thirty minutes on today's episodes?

i'll tell you... through bullet points... SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO THROUGH IT.

🚨🚨 SPOILER ALERT! 🚨🚨

sooooooo... episode 9, filler. @bobby-mckenzie called it yesterday, and yes, oh, yes it was. not even a good filler, 'cause if episode 9 was a snack, it would be yogurt. (shout out to elladine for this reference).

next we have the confirmations fusebox thought it was important to address, such as:

- gary bleaches his hair. my whole trauma is clear, thank you so much for the observation. i would've died of curiosity if you hadn't confirmed it. except WE ALL KNEW IT, and it was the one fun thing to banter about, so thanks ? no "good effort" medals for you.

- rocco has a big dick. i don't know what to tell you except... yay? for chelsea? my mc is not bouncing on that so why should i care??? what do you want me to do with this information? next time i replay s2, look him up and down and go "rocco... NICE COCK." ?? that's... weird that they felt the need to put this out there.

- lucas actually planning a van/bike trip with rocco. I'M REALLY GLAD THIS IS THE LAST TIME I SEE LUCAS NOT BEING LUCAS.

- MAYO LOG, 'BON HAPPY EAT' AND PEOPLE SAYING BILL SOUNDS LIKE GARY. I- PLEASE. i'm ✨disgusted✨

- gary misspelling a word that's so fucking obvious and common? really going out of your way and reinforcing the working class stereotype here, fusebox. they really grabbed gary by the tiddies and said "you're not gary, you're his dumb cousin, barry."

- rahim in fact brought the horse for his chad character, and you know what?? WE DIDN'T EVEN GET TO SEE THE DAMN HORSE. i repeat, THEY COULDN'T DRAW THE HORSE! do i understand how he knew about the murder mystery? no, i do not. am i gonna play it back to remember? NO ❤, I SIMPLY DO NOT CARE. CONSISTENCY LEFT THE BUILDING OVER A YEAR AGO, and i'm about to as well.

- "love on the prairie", by hannah GODDAMN griffiths??? can you be more obvious? IT'S A MIRACLE HOMEGIRL GOT TO WRITE A WHOLE GODDMAN BOOK OVER WHAT... 5 HOURS SHE WAS IN THERE? moving on.

- hannah got a surname but not... noah? carl? henrik? kassam? ibrahim? hope? priya? lottie? marisol? like- THANKS, I'LL MAKE SURE TO MAKE A FULL-ON FANFIC AND MOODBOARD WITH THIS PIECE OF SHIT INFORMATION. i'm sorry, i'm getting aggressive again, but it really tickles the pits of hell inside of me that we got her surname and not anyone else's. good for the... 3 hannah stans that are with her i guess??? 🗣 AND SHE WASN'T EVEN THERE!!!!!

- oh yeah, marisol was the killer in mine. i really tricked myself into believing this wasn't gonna be a "BLUE'S CLUES" children's detective club, and the nail thing was gonna be a ✨MISDIRECT✨. my bad. i will bring zero expectations with me next time.

- again. if this whole special was to finalize some plotlines the players needed to be unvailed, why didn't all the characters get surnames? THERE'S NO REASON FOR THAT.

ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS 'WOW'.

did i leave something untouched? i think so, because married mc's get some consequences if they cheated?

not if you're single tho. nothing interesting happens if you chose to bed someone. which is weird that i banged gary but didn't get a scene with him ?? like, nothing ??

besides that, that's all it happened. which means this whole special could've been resumed within FIVE episodes. not ten! five was more than enough.

did the single mc get a cool scene with chelsea at the end? one that i actually pictured it could be chelsea and mc in the finale of season 2 if mc is single? yes, i did. was it worth it? NO. it was the only consistent thing on chelsea so far, and for that, i... thank ... you? I DON'T. THE WHOLE THING WAS A WASTE OF MY TIME AND ENERGY.

but if you wanna see it, here it is. they laugh a lot and made me think there was some funny oregano in the drinks, but eventually they got to tell each other how special they are to one another. it was actually nice, but that's the only cumpliment i have.

this would've been perfect on afterparty if mc stole the money and was single. here? "you can always count on chelsea" should've happened back then, when mc needed a shoulder to lean on, but i digress!

i was also disappointed thinking these creepy pictures could mean something, and they were the house owner's, which would turn out to be someone importnat, but hey, I GUESS I SET MYSELF TO FAILURE EXPECTING THE BARE MINIMUM.

the only thing i truly thought about chelsea and how she's treated by men was confirmed but i can't give props to them because... RANDOM? OBVIOUS? HAS BEEN SAID BEFORE?

IN CONCLUSION:

i'm honestly sad that they felt the need to ruin all these characters for us, just so they would have a small money grab. like-

STOP INVESTING ENERGY AND RESOURCES ON SPECIALS THAT DO NOTHING FOR THEM. PLEASE, I'M BEGGING YOU. FOCUS ON THE NEW SEASON AND PLEASE, STOP WITH THE SPIN-OFFS.

milking this season just so you wouldn't do them justice?? no one asked for this. no one asked for yet another piece, if you can call it that, that just doesn't bring anything to the table. they ruined a good thing and for what?

like-

this is the type of thing people remember hating but can't remember the reasoning behind said hatred. you know why? THE WHOLE THING WAS BUSTED.

and the fact that they had zero care for female li's?? henrik? carl? hope? the actual history about the others? the whole mystery was so forced and unfunny how obvious it was.

no other new layers on anything except for disgusting foods chelsea made??

fusebox really out here saying they put some effort into this.

[roguerogerss]

A Long Day of Saving Your Ass

(gif isn’t mine, creds to the owner!)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avenger!Reader

Plot: “Hi darlin! If you’re still taking requests could you do a Bucky x reader where she gets her ass saved from literal death by Bucky during a mission and she refuses to leave his side on the way back or at the tower? And he gives her a back/foot massage to make her nerves calm down aaand they may or may not share a kiss bc they like each other? I hope that makes sense, tysm! 💞” - requested by anon

W/C: 2.3k

Warnings: mentions of fights/blood/kinda ptsd but not really? she’s pretty much just really shaken up and Bucky’s cute and protective as hell about it. also kinda sexual themes towards the end, no smut or anything though it’s all fluff!

(A/N: first of all, thank you so much for all of the love on my last fic, it really really does mean the world and that was just totally insane. okay, so, this request only came in yesterday, but I was so in love with the concept and had this wave of ideas for what I could write, and so here it is! thank you so much for this one, bby! as always, requests are open for any marvel boy you want, plus any of the stranger things boys. i do smut too hehe. any feedback is so welcome and appreciated, it really helps! please like and reblog!)

————

The quinjet was ready to take off, engine on, Steve behind the wheel. But Y/N wasn't there yet. They'd been holding off on leaving, giving her time to get out and the opportunity to do it without help, but Bucky had been antsy since he'd gotten on the vehicle and realised that she wasn't there.

It wasn't exactly a secret that he liked her, in a way that he hadn't really liked anyone in over seventy years. He'd never admitted it to anyone, not even to himself out loud, but you have to have a certain level of intelligence and basic sight to join the Avengers in the first place, and it wasn't hard to figure out.

Y/N was oblivious to it, rolling her eyes whenever Natasha teased her about 'Bucky's little crush', never taking it seriously. If she'd known that they were really serious about it, she wouldn't have hesitated to make a move. She was inherently forward, had no sense of shame whatsoever, it was common knowledge that she would've said something, at the very least.

"Hey, Y/N, where are you right now?" Bucky spoke into the intercoms, earning wide eyed glances from the rest of the team. They knew that she hated being rushed, hated being babied even more, and the fact that Bucky was doing both was probably about to blow up in all of their faces.

There were obvious sounds of struggle on her end as she answered back with a grunt, "South side, got ten guys on my case. Think I can handle it, though."

"We're ready to leave, Y/N." Bucky grunted, leaning forward in his seat and chewing at his lip. He was met back with a crash and a strangled groan from the assassin, making him shoot up and towards the exit of the ship.

"Bucky, where are you going? She'll kill you if you try to help her-" Tony was standing now, too, worried about his teammate, but figuring that she'd find some way out. Bucky shook his head and pressed the button to open the escape hatch.

"She's going to die if I don't help her, Stark. Keep the engine running, we'll be back in a second." And he was gone with that. Steve closed the hatch, radioing to Bucky to 'keep in touch' as he did so.

Bucky pulled his machine gun from the holster on his back, shooting two guards that were stationed at the front entrance of the Hydra base that they'd sneakily infiltrated, managing to only cause a few minor scenes. He was inside and backed against a wall, scoping out his route to the south side of the building, without wasting a second.

His feet pounded on the metal stairs as he made his way down to where they'd been earlier, where he knew that Y/N still was, and he looked around himself cautiously, gears in his arm turning.

He could hear the fight before he could see it, and he could tell from the noises that Y/N wasn't doing so well. A lot of crashing, thuds, groans mostly from her. The sight wasn't exactly easy to look at either, she was covered in blood, slumped against a wall and kicking her legs wildly while one of the agents held a gun to her temple.

Bucky knew that he had to act fast, and so he shot the agent with the gun without giving away his position, and then proceeded to open fire on the rest of them, trusting in the fact that Y/N knew how to dodge a bullet.

When he was sure that the agents were dead, each one of them crumpled in heaps on the floor, he slung his gun back over his shoulder and ran for Y/N, who let out a relieved sigh upon seeing Bucky. "Oh my God, Buck." She whispered. She wasn't sure what she meant by the words, what she wanted to convey in them, but he seemed to pick up just fine as he wrapped his arms around her shaking and compacted body.

"You're okay, I've got you." He rested his head on top of hers for a second, breathing heavy, just allowing himself to enjoy how it felt to have his body draped over hers. "We've gotta go, okay?"

"I can't run." She said assertively, knowing that there was no way that she'd be able to get up and run like hell, like Bucky seemingly wanted her to. He nodded once, gave her an apologetic smile, and then scooped her up into his arms without another word.

She scrambled to grip onto his black jacket, a gasp leaving her mouth as he picked her up from the floor, flesh arm supporting the backs of her knees and the metal one around her shoulders. He chuckled at her reaction, the way that she white-knuckled the leather of his combat jacket. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna drop you."

"How do you expect me to believe that?" She croaked, trying her hardest to be her usual, sardonic self, but failing miserably as she realised just how fast and hard her heart was beating.

"Because I just saved you from at least ten guys who wanted to kill you within a minute, I'm not dropping you." Bucky replied as he ascended the stairs and she buried her face in his chest, the smell of his cologne relaxing her. He allowed a soft smile to cross his face, bringing his metal hand to her head and almost rocking her like an infant or a small child who had a nightmare.

For Tony saying that she hated being 'babied', she seemed to enjoy it when it was coming from Bucky.

They were back at the ship within a few minutes. Steve had taken off, and Bucky had gone to sit in the back of the ship on his own. Or at least, he'd wanted to sit in the back of the ship on his own, but Y/N was so shaken up and had looked at him like she was a lost puppy when he'd tried to leave her alone, and so he smiled and told her to come with him.

Everyone else had looked between themselves, grinning like mad. "He really likes her." Steve commented and Natasha nodded.

"She really likes him, I'm well aware of that fact." She said.

"I've never seen The Winter Soldier so caring. And, was that - sorry if this seems outlandish - a smile? On Bucky Barnes' face? Surely not." Tony pitched in, leaning back in his chair while his friends laughed.

Meanwhile, Y/N was curled up in a chair, chewing at her fingernails and dabbing at her bloody face with a wet cloth that Bruce had given her the second that she'd gotten on the ship. Bucky watched her, his heart breaking at the way that her hands shook as she brought them to her face, at the way that her entire body shook.

"Hey." He placed a tender and soothing hand on her back, rubbing gentle circles there. "It's okay, you're safe now."

She gave him a wobbly smile that didn't quite reach her eyes and placed her hand over his, allowing him to interlock their fingers. "Yeah. Safe now."

————

She still hadn't left his side, apart from briefly so that she could take a shower. He'd offered to come back to her room with her when she'd hovered around the lounge while everyone else had already dispersed, reminding her that no one was going to hurt her.

She was laying on her bed, hair wet and wearing nothing but a big shirt, while Bucky sat awkwardly on the edge of it, twisting the sheets between his fingers. "You don't have to sit there, you know. I have a sofa, or you can sit back."

Bucky shook his head and looked round at her, she was still visibly shaking, eyes darting around to show just how on edge she was. "It's fine, darlin'. M'fine." His voice was more ragged than he'd expected it to be. "I'm just here to make sure that you're okay."

"Well," She held her arms out, "Come here, that'd make me feel okay." It was a bold move, one that told of her feelings towards Bucky, but she didn't mind much, figuring that he probably wouldn't decline her.

He chuckled, shaking his head at her, but still, kicked his boots off and lay down next to her, allowing her to wrap her arms tightly around his torso and press her cheek over his heart. "Hey, you're okay, sweetheart." He stroked her hair. "There's nothing to be on edge about, yeah? I've got you."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know. Sorry, I don't know why I'm so freaked out." Her breathing was picking back up again, so Bucky shushed her and pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head, something that drove the butterflies in her stomach wild.

"It's okay, baby." The nickname just added to the way that her stomach fluttered, and she swallowed hard to try to forget about it. "Hey, how about I do something that'll relax you, yeah?"

"And what would that be, Barnes?" She smirked mischievously and he laughed at her.

"Lay on your stomach." He removed his arm from around her shoulders, and she looked at him with one eyebrow raised, obviously thinking that he was implying something way more forward than what he was actually implying. "Woah, no, no, no. I give good back massages, metal arm and all."

She laughed, throwing her head back into the pillows at the headboard of her bed. "Oh my God, Bucky. I hate you so much." She breathed out, flipping over so that she was laying on her stomach, back exposed to him.

"Can I pull your shirt up, or?" Bucky whispered, running his hands up and down the back of her t-shirt, and she nodded.

His breath hitched in his throat and he found himself struggling to think straight when he lifted the hem of her large shirt, to show that she was only wearing a pair of black panties underneath. She didn't seem to mind, so he didn't mention it, even though his breathing was hindered as he trailed his hands from the small of her back to her shoulders, thumbs rubbing circles as he did so.

She sighed and could've sworn that her eyes rolled back into her head as she relaxed into his touch, one hand cold and the other warm. She understood what he meant when he said that he was good at giving back massages.

"Feel okay?" He asked softly, swallowing hard. She nodded again.

"My God, Bucky, feels fucking amazing." She moaned, and he hated himself when his stomach flipped upon hearing her. "You're so good at that."

He had to stop when she said that, hands still on her shoulders but unmoving, just sitting still. He couldn't think about anything else other than sex when she was moaning like that, something that he wanted to punch himself for. It was such a tender moment, she was scared and so vulnerable, and all that was going through his brain were those thoughts.

"You okay?" She asked, and when he didn't answer she flipped back over, sitting in front of him. He looked like he'd seen a ghost as his tongue darted out to lick over his bottom lip. She reached a hand out, caressing his cheek gently to bring him back to reality. "Bucky?"

"Can I kiss you?" The words were leaving his mouth before he even knew what to do with them, what they meant and how she'd react. As soon as he realised what he'd said, he had his face in his hands, shaking his head. "Shit, sorry."

"No. No, Bucky, don't apologise. Look at me." She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, prying his hands away from his face. "Yes. Of course you can kiss me."

He furrowed his eyebrows, wondering if what she'd just said was real. She was looking into his eyes so intently, staring at the light blue rings around his pupils, realising how pretty they really were now that she was this close. "Kiss me." She whispered, and Bucky took no hesitation in complying to what she was asking of him.

His lips were on hers, and they were so gentle and soft, gliding against hers effortlessly. He pulled her closer to him with a hand on her back, the other cupping her cheek lovingly. His tongue had soon slipped between her lips, earning a soft little whine from her, as his tongue met hers and they worked out how to move them together in harmony.

She eventually pulled back, breathless, and simply grinned at him before laying back and pulling him with her. They resumed their earlier position, her arms wrapped firmly around his waist, his arm around her shoulders, her head on his chest while his hand stroked her hair. "Relaxed?" He laughed and she smiled and nodded.

"I'll get goin', it's late and you look tired, princess." Another nickname, another flourish from the butterflies in the pit of her stomach. Just as Bucky was getting up to leave, she grabbed onto his shirt and pulled him back to her, snuggling back up to his chest.

"Stay. Please."

[gronjon44]

Ok so thoughts on MK-2021

I was gonna make a longer more spoilery review but I'm gonna cut it short cause there's one big thing I wanna talk about (so let's bullet point

Kano is and always will be one of my favorite characters in the MK Franchise (with Reptile, Barakka, Noob Saibot, and Scorpion) His character felt like it should and while I originally would've wanted to see Karl Urban as Kano I do really like Josh Lawsons performance.

Lui Kang and Kung Lao were really fun to watch, Lui especially (I'm not fully familiar with Kung Lao so I won't talk about him too much other then the fact I think he's neat)

I'll kinda consider this a ⚠️⚠️SPOILER⚠️⚠️ so if you wanna skip this whole bullet point snd the next one after; The villains were all awesome in this film (Reptile was awesome to see quick as it may have been, Mileena was fucking AWESOME, Reiko and Nitarra were... there? (I don't know either of them so they were just kinda canon fodder to me), Kabal was cooler then I thought he'd be (though I wanted more)

Gorro was awesome to see but he felt... underused? I'll go more into detail at the end.

Jax was alright but I never knew much about him then and I still don't

Sonya Blade was fine until the end and she just kinda felt... crammed in? Like yeah yeah know she has more in the games and she had a presence in the original 95 film, and she was an integral part of the story all the way through till the end but then she *spolier *spoiler *spoiler* with *insert name here* and she just felt like a thematic paper weight at the end.

Scorpion and Sub Zero were FANTASTIC and i have no complaints with either (at least not directly)

Raiden was there and he was played by Tadanobu Asano (of Thor) and was a MUCH NEED improvement over Christopher Lambert

And then Cole Young...⚠️SPOLIER BTW⚠️

...

...

...

(I'm doing this in a smaller font to get everything I wanna say) I wanna like his character more I do, and i have nothing against Lewis Tan he's a phenomenal actor, but Cole Young is a weird character for this film.

Hes both underutalized and at the same time completely unnecessary to the plot.

Lewis Tan is the decendant of Hanzo Hasashi (Scorpion) after all of Hanzos family was murdered by Sub Zero, say for one orphaned daughter; throughout the film he's hyped to have this big connection to Scorpion (through glimpses of a Kunai surrounded by far to even Cole seeing Hanzo in visions) and later on we see that each champion has a special power, and Coles "power" is supposedly passed down to him by his familial ties to Scorpion.

Now, from that description I'm sure you'd think Cole would gain the Hellish abilities Scorpions known for, or even his retractable Kunai, but NO, instead he gets these wrapping all across his body that act as a sort of shield to protect him and absorb incoming damage (its basically the Black Panther suit)

He also has a set of Tonfas (one of which is bladed) that appear when he needs them

Now I should point out that early on in the film it's shown to the audience that Cole is a struggling boxer trying to support his family, and if you look you can see these wrapping across his body are reminiscent of the boxing wrappings he put on his ha ds prior to a fight. But here's the thing... WHAT DOES HIM BEING A BOXER HAVE TO DO WITH HIS TIES TO HANZO?

You can argue it shows us he's always had a connection to tournament fighting, and yeah that's valid, but it doesn't change the fact that he and Scorpion don't really share a connection.

He unlocks his armor while fighting Gorro who was sent to hunt both him and his family (which frankly is such a waste of Gorro on it's own but I'll get to that in a minute)

When we see Cole get hit in his armor it glows a Hellish red, similar to the fires of Scorpions Hell based powers, but that's as far as it goes and it shows that the armor has absolutely nothing to do with their connection

If you wanted these two to share a bond in their powers, why not have Cole dress in clothes inspired by Scorpion, and then have his powers be hell based or have him control a mystical Kunai, and maybe have the soul of Hanzo watch over him

And this ties into both of the fights that Cole takes part in (Gorro and Sub Zero)

His fight with Gorro is cool, but Gorro isn't the same menace as he was in 95; he's a goon for Shang Tsung and that's it (they refer to him as a prince but even then he's mostly just a lackey, similar to Sub Zero and Scorpion were in the 95 film) And ⚠️SPOLIER⚠️ Gorro gets fucking wrecked.

And even then there is no stakes between them, other then his family might die; these two don't know each other, they have no beef, hell to Cole I bet Gorro is just a big monster.

And this is where the missed opportunity was with Sub Zero; Sub Zero HAS history with Cole there IS a beef between them (even if Cole isn't fully aware of it) but there final fight is just kinda... meh.

Sub Zero and Cole have a full fight (Sub-Z using his ice powers and Cole with his armor and Tonfas) and throughout the fight it looks like Cole might lose; that is until he cuts himself on a Kunai Raiden gave him (it was the original Kunai that belonged to Hanzo when he died) and his blood beint spilled on that blade actually SUMMONS Hanzo FROM the depths of Hell to help win the fight.

They win, Sub Zero dies, Hanzo is laid to rest blah blah blah.

Now, all of that sounds like a REALLY AWESOME IDEA in writing.

The problem is that it goes LITTERALLY NOWHERE WHEN THEY USED IT

Up until this point there is no physical evidence that shows Cole is Hanzos decendant, hell you could argue that Lui Kang is his decendant and it'd make more sense.

Cole's entire arc has been nullified by the simple fact that there is no physical evidence to show the two are related, and this whole blood feud with Sub Zero is kinda useless.

Now I'd like to propose an alternative plot point to fix this if you'll bare with me

Again, another ⚠️⚠️⚠️MASSIVE SPOLIER⚠️⚠️⚠️

...

...

...

Shang Tsung kills Kung Lao in front of Lui Kang, basically setting off that entire arc like the 95 film. Now, here's the alternative I'd like to suggest.

Shang Tsung isn't the one to kill Kung Lao, Gorro is.

Gorro is ordered by Shang Tsung to kill Kung Lao after he ⚠️SPOLIER⚠️ kills Natarra.

And instead of killing off Gorro have him leave with Shang Tsung and the two return to Outworld and Lui Kang is left with a dead Kung Lao.

And to Parralell this, instead of Gorro fighting Cole, have a prelude fight between Cole and Sub Zero, one where Sub Zero actually DOES KILL Coles family (they didn't even die in the film so there)

Sub Zero can battle Cole, Cole can discover his powers, and Sub Zero (in a panic) can just fuckint destroy his whole house with his family inside by summoning a giant ice glacier inside the house.

This in turn adds more weight to the final fight between Sub Zero, Cole and Scorpion; Cole lost his family to Sub Zero, just like Hanzo did before him. And when Cole summons Scorpion in the climax it holds more weight because TWO GENERATIONS OF THE SHIRAI RYU CLAN avenging the deaths of their families in that instant.

And as for Lui Kang make him the main fighter of the ACTUAL TOURNAMENT (they don't even do the tournament in this film they just kinda talk about it) and have Lui battle Gorro for the Title of MK Champion.

Well... that was a long post. I think I'll end it here by saying that while i do have beefs with the film I still want to make it clear I don't hate jt, in fact I genuinely enjoy it.

I just... have some criticisms.

[soap-stains]

I just remembered. We had a conversation earlier about how Maya is only useful because she can bring Mia in sometimes-

One look at Manfred and she went "mmm. I hate him."

"If he yells 'Objection' again, I'm going to walk out." "... Please don't. You're going to have to walk out, please don't-" "Objection!" ". . ." *walks to the pantry and just sits in there*

She thinks the Caretaker is chill, but I just keep saying "You're not going to like him."

Also, as soon as Polly mentioned DL-6, she went "uh... excuse you?!" She's catching on to why she shouldn't like the 'caretaker' :)

"I'm going to be a famous defense attorney!" "Yeah, you're famous. A famous pain in the ass..."

*cue crying because she has to do Grossberg's voice again*

"Can we like, get a muzzle?" "Duct tape will work." And other shouts at Maya because she needs to shut tf up

Jesus Christ is she actually thinking Miles did it?! I think she thinks Miles actually killed his dad!!!

She just tricked me into telling her the old guy was Yanni Yogi. I can't believe it.

And apparently Polly is the only one she hasn't gotten mad at.

"Miles is the only one with braincells... But there aren't many."

She just went on a long-ass rant about how Phoenix should've cared more about how Maya was hurt before worrying about missing DL-6 stuff... And then Maya's first words waking up were "The letter! Did he take it?"

I may've started screaming about "Where does [Maya] even live???" Between the 27th & 28th days and made her start crying of laughter... But in my defense where does Maya live?? The office??? Or does she have an apartment? Did Phoenix wait for her to wake up after she fell asleep again or just carry her back to the office?? WHAT HAPPENED, CAPCOM???

God she's been dying for Polly to take the stand and it's finally happening. "I don't care if it puts me in 'contempt of court' I want to cross examine the parrot."

I actually started crying when I realized Edgeworth's objection was coming up and she thought Von Karma was the one who was gonna object, but then he didn't... Then Miles objected and I continued crying--

"You wasted, what? Three days of my life on this?" She's- so salty about him confessing- meanwhile I'm still crying because I know what's gonna happen after I'm still so sad how could you do this, Miles Edgeworth--

I'm so sad, bros.

"'Maybe the bullet hit the murderer, that's why they had to take it!' I don't know why I found that so funny- 'Well I wanted a salad, but now I have a baby!'" Seriously she's dying laughing at this

Also i legit just told her everything that actually happened, as a joke, like "so, so like, the person would've got shot through the glass*points at my shoulder*, and then went 'AHHHHG' and saw inside and went 'oh it's Gregory Edgeworth, pew!'"

"So he would have a scar[if he got shot]." "Yeah, there would be a bullet." "Bullet hole. Because he would've gotten sown up."

"Take your jacket off. And your shirt. Right now." "Um... No one wants that..."

Oml she's laughing at the idea of putting the metal detector up to Von Karma's shoulder too xD. She said it's absurd.

Also, I keep challenging her thoughts if she gets something right, and subtly leading her to the answer if she isn't right. It's,,, really fun. I think she keeps forgetting I know what happened.

She's been done knew about the ballistic markings this whole time i think she's excited

I just remembered I have paws on the bottom of my socks and went ":D, aww, I have paws!! on my socks!! I'm sorry, but I have paws..." And she reacted with "... That is... The most in character thing you've said all day." And that's when I remembered I'm in Momo Yaoyorozu closet-cosplay and she's in Shoto Todoroki closet-cosplay. Why we're playing Ace Attorney in closet-cosplay, idk

"Karma's a bitch. Both of them." "Both...?" "Von Karma, and real karma." "Ayyy." "Ayyyyy!" Tbh I thought she was talking about Franzy & I was confused & scared because we haven't seen her yet and all she knows about Franziska is me being gay about her

"That's not destiny, that's just murder. Who does he think he is?"

This bitch just April Fooled me. She made herself fake cry from a random conversation we had between this. She got me. I literally just lunged at her from anger.

She keeps making kiss jokes like "you could say thank you a different way..." "I could say 'you're welcome' in a number of ways." ";)"

We both started laughing so hard we cried at Edgeworth yelling "Whoooooooop!"

You can't imagine how hard it was for

"I... I feel foolish." "You should. There's a way you can make up for it :)"

Our moods went from laughing hard to "jfc NO." as soon as we saw Lotta. And then Larry walked up and we groaned.

"Larry. Larry Butz. You really-? I can't believe you." (he stole Miles' lunch money 15 years ago)

"They just keep saying each other's names. It's cute."

As soon as Phoenix woke up she went "they fucked. There's no way they didn't." Meanwhile I was just making a "Phoenix got hella drunk and passed out in the office" joke

Unfortunately, there is a fifth case, and this is where my knowledge of the games comes to a close. All I know now comes from the anime, and I don't remember much. The cases are relatively similar to the games, I think, but it's not as easy to remember.

I’m voicing all these characters in these end credits lmaoooo (except Oldbag & Cody, actually)

Woo! We're about to start Rise from the Ashes! Wish us luck, guys!

(Now that I'm looking at the cover for this case, it has Ema & Lana... Oh no, this case... Ugh, I read a fic with this case, but i can't remember what happens other than Ema popping in and calling Phoenix 'Mia'...)

(somethings happening in this beginning and I'm so confused, there's animation)

So my best friend and I started playing Ace Attorney

We're currently on Turnabout Samurai

She does not like Edgeworth lmao. Mostly because of the autopsy thing. She's salty. But she'll grow to like him, I think.

Also, she hates Oldbag and is convinced she's the real murderer. She's spouting out why she thinks Oldbag is guilty right now-

She's also complaining about how illegal some things are... And Maya. She's jokingly fed up with Maya.

"Phoenix, get yourself together." - Her, just now

Once again convinced Wendy Oldbag did it, or at least, did something... She's trying to get me to tell her

"Why is he so stupid?"

"She's way more annoying than I thought. She's a five year old."

She's not "jokingly" fed up with Maya anymore she's like borderline wanting to murder her and just made a Haikyuu comparison I'm so confused

"Did your sister never teach you how to listen?!"