#slash are/were just more able to fit in with their peers

[glitteratti]

i know i make this post once a week but oh my god. it is so absolutely embarrassing to be 25 and still so incredibly sad about my high school experience

[he-goes-down]

There Was A Time:

Previous chapters/disclaimers

7.I Don’t Care About You

Second Person POV:

After that night you and Axl only talked in a formal way when speaking about band decisions and nothing more. Duff also didn't say a word about that night, he was too drunk and hungover to remember anything. Glad he didn't, he wouldn't be able to live with himself If he knew he passed up the opportunity by falling asleep. It was now nearing the end of the November month. The boys went out to get some Christmas decorations with their minuscule budget. You were in Duffs bed, with the worst cold and the worst period you've ever had. Duff insisted you stay in his bed as it was more comfortable than the mattress, when you refused, he picked you up and sat you on the bed, he brought you a towel to lay on and gave you chocolate from his secret stash before leaving the house with Axl, Slash and Steven. Izzy was staying home to write more songs and shit. Great. You were having the worst day, and you were home with someone who wishes you would burn in hell by his hand. Shit your cramps were bad. You clutched onto your stomach in pain. You hadn't taken any painkillers yet, you didn't know why but it was just a thing to see how long you'd last without them. You coughed as you opened the covers and got out of bed. Slowly walking to the kitchen, sniffing as your nose ran slightly. You got to the kitchen and opened a cabinet to get the painkillers and took a hot water bottle out as well. You put water in the kettle and waited for it to boil. That kettle was the best purchase you ever decided on whilst living in this hell hole. You soon started to have a small sneezing fit, and it didn't help your period as your abdomen started contracting with every sneeze, causing you a lot of discomfort and pain. "Hey! You're supposed to be in bed." You heard Izzy's voice call to you. He stood there with his arms crossed. "Fuck off." You waved your hand at him as you popped the pills in your mouth and swallowed with some water. He took your arm and pulled you back. "Hey-!" You protested. "You're sick, go back to bed." He spoke deep and seriously. "Why do you care about me all of a sudden?" You pulled your arm out of his grasp. "I don't. But you're still my band manager and for the sake of the band nothing can happen to you." He said. You were shocked slightly. "I'll be fine, I won't die." You sniffed, and went back to the kitchen counter to fill your hot water bottle. "I'll do that. You need to go rest." He spoke. You were even more shocked now, but you went back to Duff bed as he told you too.

Izzy did actually make the bottle, he even brought you some pills to drink for the pain and cold. He did throw the bottle on the bed and flipped you off when he walked out though.

You did try get a nap in, but it was only for a few minutes, as you couldn't get comfortable, something was always wrong. You couldn't breathe through your nose, your pad skew, your feet too hot, or too cold. And being in the 80's you couldn't just scroll through your phone or go on your laptop to keep yourself occupied. You were bored out of your mind. The bottle was also getting cold now. You got out of bed again. Walking past Izzy's room, peeking inside to see what he was up to. He was peering at the pieces of paper scattered on his floor as his guitar rested on his lap and twiddled with a pen in his one hand. 'Ah what the hell.' You thought. You walked into his room and plopped yourself down on the floor where there wasn't a piece of paper and crossed your legs as you sat. Izzy was slightly taken aback. "What the fuck are you doing in my room!?" Maybe more than slightly taken aback. "Shut up I'm managing." You said in a congested voice and sniffed as you waved his remark off. "You're too sick to do a managers job, and go back to bed before you spray your disgusting sickness on me." He said. "It's so boring in the bed! I need to do something at least!" You protested. "Go watch TV then! Don't come bothering me!" He responded. "Axl broke the TV remember." You sniffed again. He rolled his eyes, and then proceeded to make every possible argument for you to leave. He soon gave up and let you stay. You took one of the pieces of paper closest to you and skimmed the lyrics. It wasn't finished but the words that were sprawled on the paper were, 'I think about you' 'Honey all the time my heart says yes' and repeating with a change of 'Deep inside I love you best.' But that was all you got before Izzy snatched it away from you. "That one's not done." He scolded. "Who's the lovely lady?" You teased. "Fuck off." He replied in an irritated tone, but he chuckled slightly. His smile was comforting. The next hour or so was you scavenging through the papers and giving him feedback as he played them out. You argued but it wasn't serious. The two of you laughed it out softly together. As you yelled at each other it always ended in a little giggle. The tension between you two eased. You looked over at him, he had a beautiful smile, you didn't get to see it often or ever. He looked back you, your eyes meeting. Glittering green hazel eyes. You quickly looked away as the eye contact was making the air thick and electric. "Okay let's do this one." You said, as you took another paper. He got a bit serious in his tone, "Not that one." He was worried? You glanced at the words 'Back Off Bitch' at the top of the page. "It's okay to get some rage out now and then." You said. He wasn't reaching for the paper, just sitting there in discomfort. You glanced at some more words on the page. 'Face of an angel with the love of a witch.' And more repetition of bitch and lines of crude nature. "I think that's enough." He said, back to his cold demeanour towards you. "You're still sick, get out." He said. You were confused but didn't want to push his boundaries, so you left.

After you scurried back to your room and got back into bed, thoughts were going through your mind. Confusion. Why did he change up so quickly? Did you say something? Was it the song I read, too personal maybe? Shit, was the song about you?  You didn't want to get into an overthinking day as you already had your hormones making you feel like you were in murderous rage. You were feeling tired enough to actually get a good sleep long as the cramps had you drained, and the sick had your brain all foggy. Yet before you got knocked out you thought of what had just happened. You were so disappointed. You thought, finally, the two of you were getting along and that this band manging shit wouldn't be so hard anymore, but no. The Gods had to throw it all back in your face. The future side of you would be in tears, constantly, if it was in full control and knew that Izzy Stradlin hated you. For reasons unbeknownst to you. You didn't know what time it was or how long you slept, but you knew that you were feeling horrid. Like you were dog shit on someone's shoe, and they threw it in a river full of sewage. Cramps, fever, nausea from cramps, nausea from digesting too much mucus with addition of a few hundred other symptoms of death. Fuck you had to get pills from the kitchen you thought as you forgot to bring the stuff before you went to have your nap. You turned over to the side where the bed side table stood. Pain pills laid out neatly, the fizzing of some medicine dissolving in a glass of water. A pot of lemon and ginger tea. Even two hot water bottles. Duff and the others were probably home you thought. Yet it was dead silent except for the faint sound of a soft guitar melody in the other room. The melody stopped. You heard the guitar being put down and footsteps coming closer to your room, but it became softer as it approached. Was he standing by the door? You picked up the bubbling glass of medicine filled water and took small sips, in the corner of your eye you saw Izzy peeking into the room. "Did you do this?" You asked without looking at him. He was startled as he thought you didn't know he was there. He didn't say anything, just cleared his throat a bit as he stepped into the doorway. "Thank you for caring." You said sincerely as you looked at him. He just rolled his eyes, putting his hands in his pockets.

"I don't care about you." He said. "Fuck you" He walked out of view.

[twentydaysofdrabbles]

The Concierge’s Day Off - Wander (Part 28)

It is not often that you have time to yourself. Between running the Hotel, being at the Manager’s beck and call, and monitoring the City, you only have enough time to eat and sleep on a daily basis. 

Although technically this outing can be considered an assignment from the Manager, it does include having the day to do with as you will. Which is odd. A good kind of odd, you suppose.

Which is how you find yourself wandering the streets with a cup of coffee in your hand, your breath visible in the cold morning air. The morning rush hour has past, leaving the streets mostly empty save for those with a late start, or others who have decided to wander out at this time of the day. 

You know these streets like the back of your hand, but seeing them filled with monster shops and businesses makes them a little different. How long has it been now since the Ascension? Not too many years, you think. Enough for the monsters to be welcomed to the City, to assimilate, but not to be fully accepted or to become an integral part of the community. 

Soon, you reckon. Particularly if the King is successful in his endeavors. 

At the moment, however, you stand out. Sort of. 

In contrast to the blacks and whites you are known for, you find yourself dressed in white and gold today. Courtesy of the Tailor, who wanted you to try something new for him. The white coat, with its long, wide sleeves, flutter behind you as you walk, the fabric heavy enough that it doesn’t flap in the wind, but light enough that it sways around your calves and ankles with every step. 

It’s much longer than you are used to. You’re sure you’ll still be able to run and fight with it, if needed. The Tailor is careful that way. 

The suit underneath it is more familiar to you, if one takes away the multiple embellishments. Structured shoulders, fitted waist, loose pants. Yes, very familiar. Even the thin turtleneck shirt that goes on underneath, covering swathes of what would be bare flesh all the way up to your jaw. 

Perhaps in your youth, you would not mind baring your tattoo, your collar, braving the wind with naught but your will alone. Alas, you are older. More wary. And thus you remain covered from neck to toe. 

And for a change, your white gloves are not out of place. 

It’s a beautiful suit, a stunning outfit. One that attracts attention rather than deflects it.

Exactly what the Manager intends.

So despite how annoyed you are by the stares following you down the street, you do nothing. Well, except stop by a shopfront with a clean, modern look about it. You tilt your head up to read the sign above the front, its neon lights dull in the daytime. 

Grillby’s Cocktail Bar

Here you are. And the sign before you reads ‘Open’ despite it being before noon. 

The windows are heavily tinted, so much so that it reflects everything on the street; if you were to peer closely, you would be able to look inside. As you reach out to push the door open, you are distinctly reminded of stepping through a dark mirror, into the unknown. 

Although the bar within hardly looks any different from any bar you have been to, the ones at the Continental included. Dark wood, dark metal, dark tile, warm lighting, purple glow. It looks cosy, private. A mix of sultry darkness interspersed with warm welcoming pockets of light. 

Mm, you could take some inspiration back for the VIP Bar. 

“Well, well,” a voice croons from the direction of the back room. Like a warm hearth, crackling and popping, begging to burst free of its confines. 

You turn your head just enough to look at the speaker. 

Purple. 

That is the first thing that greets you when you lay eyes on them. A fire monster, humanoid in shape and taller than any human you have met, steps out from the back room. 

Purple fire wreaths him like a second skin, its flame licking at the air above his head. His eyes are naught but white shapes looking back at you over sharp, stylish glasses, his mouth a slash of white. Like most of the other monsters you have met so far, he, too, is dressed well in a well-tailored suit with a fur lapel. 

Not a common choice of outfit, but to be honest, your current look isn’t either. 

He comes close on near silent feet, the heels of his shoes tapping softly on the marble floor. “Bit early for most of my clientele,” he says in a low croon, his voice crackling like the fire he is made of. It is a little difficult to hear him through it, but you are sure you will get used to it in time. “You lost?”

You merely stare back at him evenly, hand by your side, the other still holding your coffee. Back straight, shoulders set. Proper posture. “Good morning to you, sir,” you greet him with a respectful incline of his head. “No, not lost. Just looking for...inspiration.” You gesture with your coffee to his establishment. 

The monster seems to smirk at your choice of words, sidling closer with a leer on his face. “’Sir’? How polite.” Soon enough, he comes so close that you can feel his blazing heat through your suit and coat. He extends an arm, all gentleman-like, and bows mockingly at you. “Come, my dear, let me...inspire you.”

His forearm is strong, muscled under his suit sleeve. His bare hands look like purple lava, solid, glowing brightly like the rest of him. 

You don’t hesitate to decline the gesture, instead moving to the bar of your own accord. But the fire monster doesn’t allow that to deter him. His hot hand hovers over the small of your back as you walk, again staying close enough that you briefly consider pushing him away. 

Luckily for him, he steps away the moment you reach the bar. The barstools are luxuriously padded, soft yet firm, and gives way comfortably as you perch yourself atop it. It takes but a moment to flick the train of your coat aside so you don’t sit on it, letting it fall over the back of the stool to hang towards the floor. 

“What brings the Continental to my bar?” The monster’s sultry tone gives way to a more business-like one once he gets behind the counter, his hands splayed wide on the surface. His white stars for eyes narrow at you.

Blinking slowly at him, you take a moment to set the half-full coffee cup aside so you can fold your hands in your lap politely. “Your Family has taken its business to the Continental,” you say, as if that explains all.

The fire monster groans then, hanging his head between his shoulders in a hunch. “Of course,” he grumbles, then straightens up. “Well, are you going to buy a drink?”

That’s a quick change of tone.  

You don’t flinch, responding with, “Surprise me, please. I don’t drink alcohol.”

The fire monster, likewise, does not skip a beat. “Sure,” he intones, walking about the bar to grab bottles and glasses. In short order, a drink looking like a galaxy is placed before you, along with a card reader. He seems to stare at you, expecting you to look at the amount before you pay, but you do not; your eyes are, after all, fixed on him. 

A tap, a beep, and you slide your card back into a hidden pocket in your coat. 

He looks at you with interest then. “Grillby Ignis, proprietor and owner,” he finally introduces himself. Then, before you can respond, he inclines his head with a sultry smirk, “And you’re the Continental’s Concierge. I know.”

“What gave it away?” you deadpan, taking the drink and sipping it delicately. Oh, what an interesting taste. 

“Sans.”

What.

You have to stop yourself before you accidentally spit your drink. Oh, you would hate to ruin this coat. 

Grillby slides a napkin over and you dab at your lip carefully, flicking your dead eyes up to him. Of course the fire monster is snickering at your expense. “He said you were professional to a fault, with eyes that never give away what you were thinking. He might’ve also said you had a sense of style about you.” Those white stars that were his eyes rove you over from head to toe. “That’s an understatement.”

You don’t particularly think you are stylish on a daily basis, but you do your best. This, certainly, is out of the norm for you. But you don’t contest anything he says, merely looking at him evenly. 

Grillby curls his lip then. “He might’ve also said you were the strong, silent type.”

You’ve been called worse. A shrug answers Grillby rather than a verbal response and you take a sip of your drink to save you from answering. That and it gives you some time to read between the lines.

Sans talks about you. Not mere gossip, not to gather information or to spread rumours. But simply just you - how you present, how you talk to others. Innocuous bits of information that anyone from the Continental would gather if they had just come to the Concierge desk. 

It suddenly makes you curious about what else he says about you when you aren’t there. What he tells his Family. 

Dead eyes flick up from your drink and up to Grillby, who seems to grin at you. “It’ll cost you,” he tilts his head, taking the card reader and punching in a sum. “I don’t do anything for free, not even for Sans’...associates.” Then, as he turns it around to show you, he leers and leans in close, “What do you want to know?”

You smile a polite smile. Oh, you think the two of you will get along just fine. 

(The Concierge’s outfit of the day)

(Heaven Gaia, Spring 2022 couture)

[plaindangan]

Kinktober - Day 4

Disclaimer: R18 material! If not to your liking then please do not read!

Kinktober - Day 4

Teratophilia

“You…you sure about this, Ryota? Wh-what if I can’t control myself and hurt you? I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.” Seiko and Ryota were both in the pharmacist’s bedroom, sitting at the foot of her bed. In Seiko’s hands was a refined version of her ‘monster’ pill. What took nearly overdosing on a boatload has been reduced to one…a very strong one. 

“It won’t. I know you, Seiko! Everything is going to turn out fine!” Ryota had caught her transforming once before and had become more than just fascinated with it. It had dominated his thoughts thoroughly the more he’s been in love with Seiko…and today was the day he really wanted to meet that side of her again.

Hearing the trust in his voice, Seiko smiled, stared at the pill…and took it in one go. “Here we go…” After a moment, Seiko began to shake and convulse. Standing up she backed away form Ryota before falling onto her knees. Instinctively, Ryota ran up closer to reach out to Seiko…only to heard a voice that sent a primal fear into his heart.

“Back…up…” The growl Seiko let out, had him instantly follow her instruction, backing up until he reached the wall. Not realizing he had been thoroughly cornered as Seiko’s body began to grow and warp.

Until what was standing before him was no longer Seiko, the shy pharmacist that he had been dating for a while.

But rather, it was Seiko the living ghoul. She was now towering over Ryota at least borderline eight feet tall, looking mighty prideful over looking down at some cute little prey with her striking violet eyes and razor sharp teeth. Ryota’s eyes began to wander. It wasn’t just a change in height and facial structures, but the rest of her body was noticeably…different~ She was positively more built, with arms, legs and even an eight-pack (visible by how much Seiko’s new body was straining against her old clothes)  that would have made even the athletes among their peers think twice before messing with her. She also saw an increase in the curves department, with her aforementioned legs and hips becoming thick as logs and more than fit to crush any head (un)lucky enough to find themselves between them (and Ryota was positively considering it~). Breast wise, she had surpassed even the busty Chisa Yukizome, with her grey jugs only barely holding out at her stretched shirt and bouncing almost temptingly for Ryota with every deep breath Seiko was committing. 

“Isn’t this what you wanted, baby?~” Seiko said, almost tauntingly. One of her hands, no claws, reached out towards Ryota’s chest. The sharp edges tracing a circle on the animator’s shirt before, in a swift moment-!!

SLASH

Ripping it to shreds, to show off his bare chest. Licking her lips with her slimy, black tongue, Seiko looked down at Ryota with a very hungry look in her eyes. “God, everything about you is so damn cute~ Forget working on a new batch of meds, I’m gonna make that pelvis of yours into powder~” A demented cackle erupted from Seiko's throat as she grabbed Ryota and practically tossed him onto her bed.

As she pounced on him soon after, those claws making quick work of both their clothes, Ryota was forced to be under the whims of a very horny ghoul Seiko - a beast that wanted nothing more than to fuck the the animator until his balls couldn’t even dream about making more semen to pump into her womb and had to go on leave for weeks to recover from hours of a feral woman bouncing on aching cock~

…So you know that as soon as he recovered he was already planning when next to arrange another meeting between Seiko’s other side and himself~ Bonus: His next animated short, ‘The Man and his Beast Girl’, became critically acclaimed for how ‘realistic’ his ecchi scenes were~

[creedx13]

Creed

The reckoning 

Content warning: violence gore and bullying shame

Hellion is a smug spoiled brat and even worse he has telekinisis of all things. It started with sabertooth “jokes” he introduced himself to me by asking if I was sabertooth’s kid. I said he was my biological father’s farther and I’m not sabertooth. He then told me he was the first mutant in his family. He then said I should have been declawed cause “we don’t need another sabertooth running around” he then patted my head and said good kitty in that patronizeing way he talks to his underlings. Then he started knocking my books off my desk with his mind at random times. I don’t lose my temper too easy so I ignored him he isn't worth my time. Ignoring him didn’t work he did similar things to the new girl with the electrical powers. Fuck this guy, he was dam desprate for a fight and I gave it to him today. 

“HEY Sabertooth wannabe!” he shouted at me from the other side of the base ball diamond Mo was next to me so I asked her if she could go find storm for me and she ran off. That’s my girl this is between the big kids. “Yo creed!” I role my eyes and turn around  “what is your problem!” 

“My problem is some rabid psycho mutt is making moves on sofia when I called dibs when she first got here.” he shot back like it was a perfectly normal and acceptable thing to call dibs on a freaking person. “ you can’t call dibs on a person. She dosen’t even want to talk to you.” I dismissed  “at least she’ll be better off without a monster like you in her life.” before I could even process this the gravel from the baseball dimon flew up and cut my shirt off along with my chest binder leaving a few already healing gashes in it’s wake. I managed to stand my ground and I didn’t let this prick knock me down. As soon as the rags that used to be the top half of my out fit hit the ground the gray gravel storm stopped. He stifled a laugh at my breasts they’re small but they are certainly there. “holy shit you're a chick!?” he exclaimed raising his hands in surender. I’m not proud of this part but I saw red. Next thing I knew I was on him siting on his back clawed hand pinning him to the gravel by his throat, sharp fangs dug deep into his shoulder my second set of claws drew angry vengeful slashes down his back it didn’t matter what he threw at me I barely felt it It didn’t matter what anyone said I barely heard it. I think I heard ms. storm scream my name and I felt two heavy duty tranc darts hit me in the back. Ms. monroe is a good shot. I just caught a glimpse of my oponent? Victim? In a quivering bloody mess under me I think I smelt urine on him but then I quickly blacked out. 

I woke up strapped to an infirmary bed I was flooded with all the rage and grief and dispare guilt fear shame hellion had been putting me through for months all I could so was scream and ugly sob straped down and helpless untill I passed out again.   

I was both physically and socially isolated from my peers for the next few weeks only being able to interact with the medical staff. I humbled that asshole big time sure but I might have gone too far. So I decide to write a letter to golden boy, josh I think his name was. And ask him to heal the damage I have done. I signed the letter Jason Creed Bad Wolf. by the next day I get a letter back well I get my letter but it had been answered using the back of the page.  Don’t worry man, I healed him for you, you're welcome BTW.-Josh  he was asking for It and you didn’t strike to kill if you were anything like sabertooth he would have died ages ago he got off easy. You are not a bad wolf you are a Timber Wolf If anything. Don’t listen to hellion. Mo is worried about you but the girls will need more time but they will come around eventually.-David 

I have good friends, finally, I hope Sofia is ok. Hellion has been moved out of my class good for him.   

[pixla]

hi hon! i adore your writing and i have a request for tommy: so you know that scene in the caves when alice breaks her leg and cindy has to like put the bone back into place? could that be with tommy x gn! reader instead? and both of them have a really really cute moment where the reader confesses how they never felt alive until they met and started dating tommy? they both survive and flashforward with fluffy smut pls?

Special thanks to the j-st-patricks-day and all my friends who helped with the process of writing this fic <3

broken bones and beating hearts

Tommy slater x nb!reader

Warnings: swearing, graphic descriptions of murder, graphic descriptions of injury (eg. Broken bones and stabbings/cuts), Possessed!Cindy, alice dies, Arnie dies, vomiting, fluff, pet-names, knocking out teeth, sex, unprotected sex, this au doesn’t fit with any of the other films (feel free to tell me if there’s any others)

Word count: 3.2k

POVC= point of view change

Tommy gripped your wrists pulling you out through the narrow cavern as it collapsed only seconds later. “Fuck!” You tucked your legs close to your body, trying to shake the feeling of Cindy's grip around your ankles. “What the fuck is happening?” You looked up as Tommy still held you close, you both too scared to move from the previous near death experience.

Everything was normal. You had all just ran out into the woods, you and Alice teasing Cindy about some stupid witchcraft book she had found in nurse lane’s office. But then Cindy decided to slash Alice and Arnie’s guts open with a machete.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck!” You cried, bawling your hands into fists, wandering down what felt like endless hallways. You both soon realised that you had been going in a circle. It didn’t make any sense, it felt like another dimension or a mirror maze, where everything looked the same, maybe even was the same. “Y/N.” You turned your head to face tommy. “What?” He looked at you confused. “I didn’t say anything.”

You were going to shake it off as you just imagining it, but then you heard it again. “Y/N!” This time you knew it wasn’t Tommy, it was a woman. “Hello?!” You yelled out, hoping that someone had finally come to your rescue, but Tommy just continued to look at you like you were crazy.

You strayed from Tommy’s side following as the voice repeated your name. “Where are you going?” Tommy yelled after you as you wandered, not bothering to pay any attention to his questions.

You followed the voice, bending through the same corridors and hallways, not knowing where you’d end up. It was when you twisted round one corner you halted in your steps. It was a huge room, far larger than any of the ones you had previously found. But the greatest way it stood out was the mass in the centre of the room.

It was dark and fleshy, like clumps of meat thrown into a pile. You gasped as you stood closer gaining a better look at the thing. It was alive. It rose up and down almost like it was breathing and it thumped like a beating heart. With each whisper of your name you grew closer, drawn to it. You reached your hand out transfixed, but when your hand melted into its flesh, you froze.

It all flashed through your brain so fast. Cyrus Miller, ruby lane, billy baker…Cindy Berman. It was every single one of those shadyside phycos, even Cindy. It was all of the pain, all of the suffering and all of the evil. You lifted your hand, a thick slime dragging with. You backed up slowly, expecting to hit a wall. You were soon proved wrong when you felt your body fly backwards.

You cried out as you landed with a thud, Tommy finally catching up to you, peering over to find you clutching your leg in pain. “Shit, are you okay?!”

He had jumped down helping to lift you from the pit. You sobbed, tears running down your cheeks like a broken faucet, your hands clutching at His shirt. Tommy held you running his finger gently through your hair, shushing you softly as you buried yourself into his warmth.

Tommy gently slipped from your hold, leaning down to examine the damage. It was bad. So bad, you could practically see the bone protruding from the skin. You felt your gut wrench at the sight causing you to lean over beside you, regurgitating your dinner onto the cold cave floor. “Don’t look, okay? Just look at me.” Tommy leant over wiping your mouth with his jacket. You nodded slowly, trying your best to keep your eyes locked with Tommy’s despite how hard your morbid curiosity urged you to look down. Ripping his plaid jacket into strips he looked up at you. “We’re gonna get out of here. You’re gonna get out of here. No matter what I do, I’m gonna make sure I protect you, just like I always have.”

“I love you so much Tommy. I’ve never and never will love someone the way I do you.” You lean into him pressing your foreheads together. “I can’t lose you, okay?” He nods sympathetically, pressing a light kiss to the slope of your nose.

“Do you remember those dates we’d go on, out to the forest at night, and we’d just lay there, staring up through the cracks in the trees?” You nod. “I want you to think about that, okay? I want you to think about how many more we’ll go on once we get out of here.”

You hold a tight grip on his arm as he wipes away at the area. “I’m gonna have to put it back into place now.”

You pleaded with him, as the tears started again. “Please, no. Please just leave me here. Just go and find help okay? I can’t do it Tommy, I can’t do it”

“Hey, hey, hey. C’mon, look at me.” He places his hand on your cheek, tilting your head to look him in the eye. “You're gonna be fine, okay? You just gotta focus right now.” You nod timidly, the tears starting to slow.

He holds the bottom of your calf with one hand and your heel with the other. “Just count to three and I’m gonna do it, okay baby?” He looks up at you, his soft words lulling your anxiety. You bite your knuckle nervously, unsure as to how you should answer, but the look of trust in his eyes persuades you easily. “Okay.”

You breathe in. “One, two-” You let out a blood curdling scream as a large crack rung out, bouncing against the walls of the cave. Your fist gripped Tommy’s forearm tightly as you cried out a series of various curses. “You fucking asshole.” You whine out in pain, letting out an airy laugh trying to brighten your rather dull circumstances.

“You're okay baby.” You wince as he wraps the piece of fabric he had ripped from his jacket around your leg, tying it tight enough to hold you together for the moment. You grabbed Tommy’s shoulder as he wrapped his arm around your waist lifting you from the ground. You hiss as you feel your leg throb from the sudden movement. “Do you think you’re able to stand?” Tommy watches as you wobble trying to stay grounded. You nod. “Yeah.” You had no choice and you both knew it, if you wanted to live, you’d have to.

You both started your journey, finally entering a new environment as you trudged deeper into the earth of Shadyside. Why did these tunnels even exist? The intricate details of the maze made it easy to come to the conclusion that they were man made, but by who? Not once had you ever heard of these tunnels, and by the looks of it, nobody else had either, despite nurse Lane of course.

“Be careful.” Tommy tightened his grip around you. “You might slip.”

“Okay.” You mumble, too exhausted to form a real answer. You looked around at the walls, floor and ceiling. The further the two of you walked, the denser this moss became. You felt a wave of familiarity but you couldn’t quite place it. Red moss…red moss! It hit you, Cindy! Her red stained shirt, she said it was from the moss in the outhouses. “Tommy! It’s the fucking outhouses! We fucking made it!” You would probably be jumping up and down with joy right now if it wasn’t for your broken leg.

You look up, spotting the out house toilet openings. Wow, real nice, you’re both sitting in Sunnyvale shit and piss right now. “Yeah, but how are we supposed to get out?” Tommy sighs looking up at the roughly 15 foot climb. “You can’t climb that.”

You look at him. “Yeah, but you might.”

“No. I’m sorry but no, I’m not leaving you down here, especially when there’s Cindy running around up there trying to kill us. C’mon let’s go, if we’re at the outhouses, we must be near to camp.” He directs you along but before you can both carry on your interrupted. “Did you hear that?!”

“No I-“

“Shush.” You both stayed quiet listening as to what caught your attention. It’s screaming. Someone is screaming from the outhouses. “Hey! Help! Please, we’re stuck down here!” You yell trying to get the attention of the voices.

The space grows quiet as the screaming halts, the both of you waiting nervously for any indication of life when a head pops out from one of the seat holes. “What the fuck are you guys doing in the toilets?!”

It was ziggy, Cindy's sister. “Ziggy..” you wonder if it’s right to tell her what’s happened to her sister but you decide against it, not wanting to put the girl in such an emotionally vulnerable state whilst she’s already physically. “Gary’s up here too!” She yells down as Gary’s head pops out another toilet hole. “Hey!” He yells, surprisingly light heartedly considering there’s a murderer running around camp butchering little kids with a fucking machete. “Can you get us out of this fucking toilet or not?!”

Gary had managed to make some sort of bucket contraption with some rope. “It’s just like You’re Gothel climbing up Rapunzel's hair, okay?!” He yelled down, lowering it down to you.

You're about to slip onto the contraption when you hear Ziggy's unfortunately very familiar screams, and before you know it Gary’s decapitated body lies beside you on the floor. You and Tommy let out an in sync gasp, him pulling you away into his chest, as to protect you from the image. “We’re gonna have to find another way out.”

You think to yourself. Alice…she had shown you something whilst you were robbing nurse lanes office with Arnie. “I know how.” You pull out the book that started this whole thing.

“Baby, I don’t get how that book is gonna help us, let’s be honest it’s some random witches and wizards bullshit written how many hundreds of years ago?”

“No, tommy.” You turn the book to him parting the pages. “It’s a map.” You rest the book on the floor, the two of you leaning over it. “It's a map of camp, you see over here, these x’s are the graves we found. And over here, that’s where we entered.” You point your finger on the page. “Here, there’s another exit. Mess hall.”

His eyes lighten. “Jesus, fuck! You’re so smart!” He pulls you in for a kiss.

—-

You sat, your back arched over as you watched Tommy laid on his back kicking open the vent that led to the mess hall when another scream rang out. You instantly knew that it was ziggy, far too acquainted with the tone of her screams.

“Tommy!” With one final kick the vent flew open, Tommy hauling himself through in a split second. “Don’t move, stay here! I’m gonna go help Ziggy.”

Tommy always cared so much for the kids at camp, you honestly weren’t surprised that he was willing to risk his life for one of them.

—povc—

Tommy barged through the doors of the mess hall, an all too familiar song ringing through the speakers, the noise made his head thump as it blared.

Tommy followed the screams, grabbing a mallet that lied on a nearby counter. Cindy stood beating at a supply closet door as ziggy screamed from within. Tommy pulled cindy's shoulder for her to face him as he swung the mallet into her jaw. Cindy tumbled to the ground as she spat a mouthful of blood and teeth onto the floor. Tommy hesitated holding the mallet in his hand, ready to strike Cindy. But before he could come to any decision Cindy grabbed her machete from the ground slicing at Tommy’s thigh.

Tommy dropped to the floor, his mallet sliding across the freshly mopped floor tiles, Cindy rising to her feet, towering over Tommy. Overpowered, he crawled backwards digging the heels of his hands into the cold tile floor. He was braced for impact when Cindy stopped turning around.

—povc—

You lunged at her digging the knife you found into her back, pulling it out as she turned to face you, plunging it into her chest over and over until she hit the floor unresponsive. You fell. You had finally reached your limit. Your leg was broken for fucks sake and you just murdered Cindy. Pure-hearted, hard working Cindy Berman. You plunged your knife deep into her chest until you split it down the middle. You dragged your body over to Tommy’s wrapping your arms around him, wetting his shirt as you became inconsolable. He held his hand at the back of your neck placing soft kisses onto the top of your head. “It’s okay baby, it’s okay. She’s dead now, we’re gonna be okay.”

You heard as ziggy opened the closet door, dropping to her knees at the sight of her sister dead on the floor. The red headed girl pulled her sister's body over to face her, wrapping her arms around Cindy crying into her cold lifeless body. You crawled over to the girl pulling her away from her sister's touch into yours. “I’m sorry.” You whispered.

The three of you struggled as you heard the last bell ring signalling that the bus would be leaving. Ziggy yelled out as the bus doors began to close. The wheels began to roll forwards but before it could depart a boy budged the doors open, calling out to her. “Ziggy!” You released your grip from the girl's side as she ran to him, embracing him. You rested your head on Tommy’s shoulder at the sight of the two. “I hope she’ll be okay.”

The two of you had found a place on the bus as Ziggy sat with you fellow councillor Nick goode. Finally being able to breathe, you rest your head on Tommy’s shoulder. “I’m so glad you're okay.” You look up at him smiling at his words. “Maybe you're the one who really needs protecting, without me you’d be dead meat.” You press your lips together, smiling softly into the kiss. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if I had lost you.”

Your eyes wandered to the window watching as the camp nightwing sign slowly floated away out of sight. Finally it was over.

———

After the accident medics treated and hospitalised many of the camp nightwing campers and counselors such as you and Tommy. Your leg was thankfully saved. They said if not for Tommy it probably would have had to be amputated due to infection.

It was two months since that night, you still had to use crutches but besides that, you made a speedy recovery alongside tommy. Although he was in a much less critical condition than you and was discharged within a few days, he still spent every night in the hospital with you.

You laid beside Tommy his leg slotted between yours as the velvet underground played softly in the background. You run your fingers through his hair slowly as he whines quietly into your chest. It finally felt like the first time since that day that you both could finally relax.

You pulled away from his touch leaning over him, kissing his lips softly. “You look so pretty.” You hum. He smiles into the kiss. “Not as much as you, baby.”

You lifted yourself straddling Tommy’s hips, deepening the kiss as your hands ran down playing with the hem of his shirt, travelling underneath. He pulls away, his hand rubbing your thigh. “Are you sure? I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“I’m okay.” You reassure him, pressing soft kisses along his collarbone. You removed your shirt as Tommy’s hands floated up to your waist.

“God, you're so beautiful.” He mumbles, kissing up your chest slowly as you take off your pyjama shorts, throwing them to the floor.

You lean down unbuttoning Tommy’s jeans, taking him in your hand. Tommy twitches at the contact as you align himself to you. You lower yourself onto him slowly as his hands hold a firm grip on your lower back. Tommy lays his head back, his hips thrusting up into you.

You shiver as you lift yourself up and down, your thighs shaking from the stimulation. His thrusts hardened, your soft whimpers of his name encouraging him. “You look so fucking good right now.” He gripped your waist helping you keep a steady pace.

You steadied yourself, leaning your arms out pressing your hands against his chest as you felt yourself near your climax. “Shit, Tommy I’m gonna come.” You whined under your breath.

“Don’t worry baby, me too.” He runs his hands down your back lovingly.

You threw your head back as you felt Tommy’s hand wander down edging you on further, your breath quivering at the touch. You felt his hips buckle beneath you as he reached his peak, yours following soon after.

You sighed your body collapsing onto his chest. “I love yours so much.” You mumble into his skin as he presses a soft kiss against your forehead.

—-

It was the 16th anniversary since that day at nightwing, the two of you still happily together. Despite the permanent scar that night had left on the both of you mentally and physically, you both managed to stay strong, the event probably making the two of you even closer than you already were before.

Every year instead of hiding from the memories of that night, you both embrace it. Tommy’s favourite way to do this was to ‘reenact your youths’ in his words by driving the two of you out to the forest, where you would’ve spent so many nights together when you were younger.

You would open the sunroof and lay out the seats creating a little bed for the two of you. Probably not the safest thing the two of you could do, but most definitely the sweetest.

The two of you laid there staring up at the trees, resting your head on Tommy’s chest, your arm draped across his abdomen. Looking up at him you pressed a small kiss to the slope of his nose, pressing your heads together. The moonlight glazed over his cheeks, giving him a paler look. “You look so beautiful.”

—-

The car ride home was quiet but the atmosphere felt soft and comforting as Tommy rested his hand on your inner thigh. The velvet underground played softly on the radio as your eyes gazed out at the passing scenery.

[sp00kworm]

Evo-23 (Part 2)

Part 2 - Blackberry Eyes

Pairing: Zombie/Infected Monster (Ji-woon) x Gender Neutral Reader

Warnings: Gore, Horror, Cannibalism, Graphic Gore and Wound descriptions, Death.

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PART 1 

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“Ji-woon!” You hollered as you battered at an infected's head with the small axe in your hand. You slashed at the creature before shoving it hard and watching it fall to the floor. In a moment you were on it, smashing it’s skull in with two heavy blows. The Other, your companion, clicked and gurgled behind you, his back meeting your own before he screeched behind the gag, black veins running out from his eyes and down his arms. You’d seen him do this many times now, but the unnatural shift in his muscles and the bulge made you shudder. His fingers flexed before he howled, spit flying from his mouth, dripping down his chin as he flung himself at an infected, throwing it to the floor before he caved in its head with his fists. Another stumbled behind him and the other grabbed it by the neck over his shoulder and pulled, dragging it’s head from its body as the rest of its corpse went flying into the bushes. Ji-woon span back to deal with another as another gun shot fired at the two of you. It would attract even more infected. You were sick of it already. With a growl you beat at another infected before shouting again.

“We need to get to that shooter in the trees!” You hollered.

 The Other gurgled as his reigns flew behind his head and he rushed forwards, his body unnaturally low to the floor like a big cat. You screeched as he outstretched his arms and grappled you, holding you against his body as the veins spread and he sprinted towards the trees, sliding in the dirt, spraying leaves and mud upwards in arcs as he dodged the bullets being fired. With a howl at the hunting perch, Ji-woon flung himself at the trees, claws scrabbling at the bark as he snapped at the other human’s feet, his gag and reigns stopping him from getting a mouthful of the man’s toes.

The man cried out and aimed the hunting rifle down, shooting a round through Ji-woon's shoulder. The bullet slammed through the Other, sending him flying to the floor, but you clung to the ladder tightly, climbing up to the perch before you slammed yourself into the man. A scream sounded as he was sent flying over the edge and towards the floor where Ji-woon was waiting with open arms, foaming at the mouth at the prospect of fresh meat.

“He’s all yours!” You screamed at the Other as he gave a delighted gurgle, his arm flopping at his side from where he took the high calibre round to his shoulder.

“NO, PLEASE!” The man screamed before Ji-woon flexed his hands and popped his temples inwards, smashing bone into his brain.

 You descended the ladder slowly, watching the Other prance around the body, heaving and gurgling with fresh blood and spit dripping down his chest. You sighed and carefully undid the gag and reigns, watching as Ji-woon screeched at the lingering infected, teeth clicking and snapping, before he dug his fingers into the man’s hips and dug his way to the bones he wanted to lick clean. You shimmied back up to the perch to get the gun and bullets, sitting in the little chair with a sigh as you tried to ignore the slick eating noises beneath you. The Other needed to eat just as much as you did. Humans were the best food source for him to be able to protect you, but it didn’t make you feel any less guilty. Even if this man deserved what he was getting for trying to have you torn apart by zombies after you let him have water. You closed your eyes and clutched the rifle as you listened to the Other swat at infected and command them away. With one eye open you dared to look at the Other as he wrenched the femur from the man’s flesh and cracked the middle of it open, peering into the bloody, gooey mess inside of the hard cortical shell. With a gurgle, he pressed his lips to the end and swallowed the syrupy contents gladly. Your stomach churned and you looked away, fighting the retching that threatened to tighten your throat.

 So you sat in the hunters perch quietly, looking through the man’s back pack for anything useful aside from his rifle and bullets. He had a cleaning kit in his bag for the gun and you leafed through the things with a mild amount of confusion. You knew some things but others were beyond you. Hopefully you could learn. You shook the bag again and watched as a small journal fell out along with some old cereal bars and a compass. You pocketed the food at lightning speed before opening the notebook. The first three pages were illegible scrawl beyond the first sentence.

‘I deserve to die for killing him.’

It was repeated over and over again before the dates started to appear and the scrawl became messy writing. Most of it was mild observations about the days he had lived since killing his son. He was infected was written in a lot of the explanation but it didn’t seem to make him feel any better.

 ‘I wish we had let him die of the leukaemia so I didn’t have to put a bullet in his head and then my wife.’

 The reality of everything settled heavily in your stomach as you closed the man’s notebook. You only opened it again to tear out the pages about his gun maintenance. The diagrams were crude but would serve you well later on. You shoved the pages into your bag after folding them tightly. The rest of the journal you put away in his bag before you swallowed your tears and moved to the ladder. Ji-woon was finished with his meal, his belly slightly rounded and very little left of the man beyond pieces of grizzle and empty bones. His head was untouched and you felt bile burn your throat before you took it and a small trowel from your bag. The Other watched wordlessly as you dug a shallow grave for the man’s remains, burying them with his backpack before you dusted the blood away with plenty of dirt and a dip of your hands into the algae ridden fountain. Still, the Other followed you quietly, waiting for you to replace the gag and reigns like you usually did after he’d eaten.

 You sat on the edge of the fountain and sobbed softly. A gurgle drew your attention away from your feet and you peered at the Other crouched by your knees, his sticky hands patting your knees in some semblance of a comforting gesture. If he was human, maybe it would have said that it was going to be okay, but the cold hands only reminded you that you had condemned a man to death for the sake of maybe finding out some truths. It made you feel sick again and you reached for the Other’s hands before realising that the sticky hands were coated in blood and other bodily fluids. You tried not to cringe as Ji-woon reached upwards, his sticky fingers stroking over your cheek, moving along the flesh in a downwards motion towards your chin. His cold fingers tilted your chin upwards so you had to look at his bruised face. His black vein infested cheeks twitched before his lips parted and he smiled wide, exposing his pointed, clot covered teeth.

“Smile.” The Other gurgled as he watched you snort at his ridiculous looking face. It was silly. A mutated superhuman bleeding from his nose, smiling at you like it was some comfort. To a sick part of your brain, it was. Ji-woon wasn’t just one of the Others, he was something more than that. Part of him was still human or fighting to remember how to be.

 “I’ll try.” You whimpered as the Other reached and tugged at your cheeks, pulling the flesh taut before he let it go and patted them awkwardly, his cold fingers twitching against your warm flesh. With a heave and a shuddering sob, you finally found the strength in your knees to stand up. Ji-woon tilted his head to peer up at you, grinding his teeth and drooling as the black veins over his bruised skin receded back up his neck and into his eyes. His chest bowed outwards with a heavy breath, as though he was about to scream, but Ji-woon simply let out a long, shuddering sigh as he pulled his hands away from your skin and reached for the reigns in your hands. Gently, he tugged them free, and reached backwards to fasten the gag and attach the reigns back in place. Drool dripped through the gag, despite him just eating, but you carefully looked at his arm. The bullet wound was long gone, leaving only a dark bruise behind, and his arm was back in perfect working order. He flexed the muscles and twisted his fingers as he listened to the surroundings, his black eyes quivering back and forth, focusing on a million different things at once. He waited, patiently, like a well-trained hound, as you shouldered your backpack again and brushed off the dirt from your bottoms.

 The Other watched quietly as you headed over and grabbed at the leather reigns, tugging them gently before you started back along the path towards where the blackberries were growing.

“I guess we can go and get what we came here for now…” You whispered as Ji-woon followed behind you, gurgling quietly as you both kept a watchful eye out for any lingering infected. The blackberries you wanted grew along the bramble infested outskirts of the former city park, growing up the old iron fences. There was a lot. You pulled out a box from your backpack and smiled at Ji-woon as you plucked on of the berries free and chewed the sweet flesh. It tasted amazing in comparison to the bland, plain food items you could get your hands on normally. So, for a minute, you chewed as many as you could fit into your mouth, giggling as juice dripped over your chin before you pilled at many as you could into the container. With some gelatine you could make jams. You filled the container to the brim before pulling a few more off the brambles for yourself. Ji-woon watched from the edge of the bramble patch, his black eyes following the rivulets of juice as they dripped over your neck.

 “Can you eat human food?” You wondered out loud to the Other.

Ji-woon tilted his head as he moved through the brambles, the thorns catching his skin. The cuts healed as fast as they opened and you swallowed your mouthful as he took hold of your fingers, gurgling behind the gag as he looked at the stained pinky coloured juice over your skin.

“Can you?” You asked again.

Ji-woon rolled his shoulders and shook his head violently, as though he was trying to dislodge the gag and you scowled, remembering that he was probably eyeing up your hand as a food source. You snatched your hand away and clipped the box shut, leaving Ji-woon in the brambles as you scampered back to your bag. The Other gurgled and followed on your heels again.

“I don’t know why I asked. You only want to eat me anyway. After we find out what happened to you, you’ll just eat me and leave the outside of my bones for the crows.”

The Other stopped, holding you in place by refusing to walk on the reigns, his black eyes looking you up and down before he surged forwards and caught you by the arm.

 Ji-woon forgot his own strength, clasping his hand tight enough around your bicep to bruise.

“What?” You asked with a small quiver to your voice, “You can’t even talk to tell me I’m wrong! You’ll devour me just like that man as soon as you get the chance, with or without knowing you were once human!” You screeched, tugging away from his grasp.

Ji-woon’s hairless eyebrows dipped again as he grabbed you by the shoulders this time. He dragged the fingers of one hand down the side of his cheek, tugging at the leather straps of the gag before you dared to reach up and undo it for him. The buckle jingled as you let the gag and reigns fall away, dripping in bloodied spit. The Other clicked his jaw sharply, his teeth snapping together with a harsh grind.

“Look after…until…human.” The Other gurgled before he touched the space over the top of your heart, “F-F-Find.” He chirped before opening his mouth and leaning over in order for you to muzzle him like a dog again. He chewed against the gag as you replaced it, fingers shaking as you struggled to keep yourself together.

“Until we find about what happened. I know buddy.” You whispered before Ji-woon pressed his cold fingers to your chest again and reached upwards, dragging you towards him by the shoulder. He grumbled, spit dripping from his mouth before he blinked more bloody tears down his cheeks and clasped you tightly in a hug.

 The flood gates opened again, and you sobbed into the Other’s shoulder, wailing like a child as you clutched his torn shirt and grasped at his powerful shoulders. Fat tears streaked your cheeks as you sobbed into the bloodied material, listening to the rattling breaths of Ji-woon as he chewed against the gag and gently petted your back and hair, running his fingers over your scalp softly before he cupped the base of your back and squeezed again. The touch was comforting in the loneliest way. You hadn’t been held like this since the whole event started, and now you relished the cold arms around your body as you sniffled and hiccupped into Ji-woon’s embrace.

“Protect.” He promised against the gag with a hiss of spit, and you nodded, not saying a word as you let his cold fingers soothe the worries from your spine.

“One day you might not be able to…” You whispered under your breath before you pulled away from him and smiled gently, “Come on then. Let’s go home, huh?”

Ji-woon nodded slowly, his hands twitching by his sides as he watched you turn away from him, dragging the length of reign behind you. With a click and a gurgle, he followed in your footsteps, his head tilting towards the sides, listening for danger.

 The park was not far from the local hospital and you shuddered as you looked up at the building, the windows smashed and rotten, sun bleached skeletons hanging from the windows and laid on the tarmac. When everything had broken out, it was the first place in chaos, and you pitied the doctors who had been turned into meals for the Others and infected on that day. You remembered the bodies hanging from the window rotting that first year, dripping stinking flesh down onto the tarmac where starving infected licked the surface clean. Even the thought now made your stomach churn. You walked past quickly, with Ji-woon mimicking your speed, following close behind you.

“They used to claim that this place was where the first of your kind came from.” You told the Other, “It was the original test subject who got loose in the hospital and started the whole event on a mass scale. There was some top-secret research place attached apparently.” You spat on the tarmac, “I hope they were all eaten for making this mess.”

 The Other's eyes wandered from the tarmac, looking around at the empty bones before his eyes fixed on the bodies hanging from the windows and I’m the suicide nets between the two large hospital towers. They had died being torn apart and the zombies that had eaten them were long rotten, hanging through the nets in strewn piles of limbs and jelly. Ji-woon peered at the buildings individually before he planted his feet and stopped in his tracks.

“No way. Not today, mister.” You cursed at him as he tugged on the reigns, “We can’t go in there. It’s full of infected!”

Ji-woon reared back again and took hold of the reigns and gag, tugging it insistently, pushing himself closer so you had to look into his eyes. His mouth dripped with spit and blood as he loomed over you, his shoulders twitching. His eyes begged you even if he could not say the words. He wanted to go in there, with or without you.

Your hands shook as you looked at the building and you sighed, reaching for his gag, “One quick look. That’s it!” You insisted as Ji-woon babbled to himself and took your hand in his own, dragging you to the barricaded front doors.

 The doors had been piled with rubbish bins, wooden benches, and heavy dumpsters, preventing a hoard of most of the patients from escaping. You didn’t doubt that most of them had probably rotted away in the hallways, but you had seen even the slimiest rotten bodies still crawl. Ji-woon clicked before he heaved the dumpsters away, black veins crawling up his arms as he pulled. They swam up to his fingers where he clenched his hands and howled, tearing away the two dumpsters and letting them clatter down the steps to the building. In response to the groans both inside and outside, the Other hissed sharply, demanding no help as he dug at the planks boarding the automatic doors shut. The electricity was long gone so once the planks were gone, Ji-woon had to heave the doors open himself. You only watched as he did so and cringed, gagging as the smell from inside the hospital was released. It burned your nose it was so foul. The smell of hundreds of rotting bodies rushed out, and you reached for your scarf to cover your nose before pausing and rummaging in your bag for the filter mask you had. It would be better for cutting out any spores from rotting bodies as well. You found it quickly and pulled it over your head with a grumble before you dared to follow Ji-woon into the festering hospital.  

  The hallways by the doors were littered with bones. Corpses were laid over the remains of others, and you could only assume those were the remains of the infected who had eventually faded from existence too as their brains leaked from their ears and their bodies gave in. Ji-woon lifted a bone to his nose under the reigns, the black strap over his nose wiggling as he sniffed at it and dropped it to the floor again like a used toy. He rummaged through the bodies before tugging at the reigns and gag again. You had forgotten to remove them the first time, and so you carefully pulled them free, letting his mouth free. The Other gurgled, cracking his neck and jaw in his hands before he flexed his fingers and arms in a wave, clenching the muscles tight as the black veins spread over his bruised skin. The muscles twitched as his eyes blinked before they rolled backwards and be bent over backwards to look at you, clicking in a long groan from the back of his throat. His mouth opened in a giant, spit dripping grin, before he snapped back over and rushed forwards, disappearing down the hallways. With a gasp, you rushed after him, listening to the screeching of infected as Ji-woon smashed them against the concrete walls. You had to run quick, following the blood trails down the linoleum floors. With a screech you slipped in the guts of one infected and went flying, tumbling to your knees as you slid through the mess on the floor, staining your hands and knees. The fabric of your combat bottoms was stained a brown tinged red.

 As you fought against the tangle of intestines, you heard the buck fire of a shotgun. The snap of pellets against the wall was followed by the blood curdling scream of Ji-woon. It came from the stairs. You rushed to catch up with him as infected lumbered up from the floors and piled towards the doorway as well. They had no interest in you, covered in zombie blood and guts, and so they cajoled you along in their group as they crawled and hobbled into the opening of the stairs.

“Fuck!” Someone cursed from the stairway as the zombies started to pile together, climbing the stairs slowly. It gave Ji-woon an opportunity to heal enough to launch himself at one of them, screaming as blood dripped from his mouth and eyes. His fingers met the woman’s eye sockets and he pressed her against the wall before shoving his thumbs in as far as they would go. She screamed, her legs kicking out at the Other, and you tried not to watch as Ji-woon leaned over to lick the blood and juice from her cheeks, purring happily as his blackened tongue swiped at the snack. He twisted his thumbs with a violent jerk and pulled out the ruined mess of her eyeballs before popping them into his mouth with a happy purr. The shotgun fired again, and you cried out as Ji-woon’s ear and half of his neck was sent flying against the window behind him.

 The Other screeched, flying backwards into the wall before the only sound he could make was a pathetic whistling noise. The small hoard he had summoned were quick to slow and the remaining survivors seemed to deal with them quickly, smashing open their skulls before they grabbed you out of the mess, kicking and screaming. Ji-woon gurgled, blood bubbling in his open trachea before it flopped back and the cartilage started to heal, his hands flying out to grab at your bottoms as a male and a young girl dragged you in front of the man with the shotgun. They didn’t dare go near the healing Other but they were quick to drag their friend’s corpse away from him to delay his recovery. Ji-woon gargled violently and slammed his fist into the concrete in an attempt to grab at the foot before it slid away from him. He missed and swooned before thudding against the first step, his nose cracking and bleeding, broken, from the impact. The survivors only then dared to tie him up, grappling his arms and legs, hog tying them behind his back before they dragged him up the stairs away from you. You didn’t shout for him, you looked at the floor as you were put before their leader and the gas mask was torn from your face.

 “Now what is someone, alone, doing with an Other on a leash, hm?” He asked as he cocked the shotgun, “You know what they do…so why have you got one as a pet? Couldn’t bare to kill your lover? Pretty fucked up to let it loose on people.”

You didn’t reply, just looked at the floor. You couldn’t afford to tell these people anything.

“Fine. Be that way. We’ll see what the Doctor has to say about an Other listening to a human.” He dismissed you and turned, the shotgun perched on his shoulder. They were all dressed similarly, in old, tattered looking military clothing, and you made sure to make yourself a bit of a dead weight as two of them grabbed hold of you and heaved you to your feet. You followed willingly enough as they chatted quietly among themselves, heading up six floors before they dragged you into the floor and relocked and barricaded the doors behind them. You caught sight of Ji-woon only briefly before they carted him into an examination room, their hands full of heavy dog chains and cuffs. Fear churned in your guts as they dragged you into the side room to the examination room and sat you in a chair. They were quick to cuff you to it, ensuring that you wouldn’t be able to escape, and you felt your eyes and throat burn with tears as you looked through the glass and saw Ji-woon, naked, delirious, unhealed and chained to a hospital bed.

 You whispered his name but said nothing else as the Other’s blood dripped down the hospital bed and his neck sealed itself back shut. Still, he was loopy, delirious and upset, throwing his head left and right in an attempt to clear imaginary fog from in front of his eyes. As you watched the Other come around, the door opened quietly behind you, revealing a man in a lab coat, the sleeves rolled up his aging arms revealing puckered scars. The man was tall and thin, almost gaunt, as though his work consumed all of his waking hours. His greying hair was tied back at the back of his neck and a cigarette was perched between his lips. Dark brown eyes looked you over twice, head to toe, before he removed the cigarette from between his lips and blew a great cloud of smoke out over towards you.

“I’ve never heard of an Other listening to a human, never mind a human that takes their pet out to snack on other survivors.” he drawled as he puffed on his cigarette and looked you up and down again.

 “He doesn’t listen to me.” You whispered, “He just uses me.”

“A likely story. My entire group heard you shouting for it. It has a name, which I never thought the Others could remember. Whatever this little thing the two of you have, it’s something I’m interested in looking at.” he confessed as he looked over at the large machinery Ji-woon was being pushed inside, “But first I need him to heal that brain of his fully.”

“What do you really want out of this?” You asked, looking the Doctor in hi dark eyes. You were shocked by the lack of depth. They were cold and uncaring.

The Doctor laughed at you as he reached into his pocket and slammed down a notebook on the table in front of you before he followed it up with a bulging folder. The front was labelled with a ‘top secret’ stamp, but he opened the folder and flicked to a blue coloured tab.

“Does this answer your question?”

 You leaned forwards as best as you could, straining against the ties around your arms to get a good look at the images and writing. There was an image of Ji-woon, not unlike the image on his teacher ID, and then there was a more gruesome one of him pinned to a table, his eyes peeled open with needles piercing the pupil, back into the optic nerve.

“Your little pet was one of the originals.” The Doctor droned from behind you, “He was kept here after his first escape and then escaped again before causing all of the problems. The outbreak in the city was all his fault. This hospital was the breeding ground, and he was the catalyst.”

It was like you had swallowed a heavy rock. Your stomach clenched as you realised just why the zombies had listened to Ji-woon's call. He was their master. Most of the infected in the city were his doing. Even the Others might be his doing. You felt sick. You reached quietly as the Doctor only laughed and stubbed his cigarette out in a full ashtray.

 “Did you think he was innocent? It’s one of the Others now. He’s killed more people than any of them combined.” The Doctor gloated before he leaned over the controls in the corner of the room, looking at the heart monitor they had attached to Ji-woon. The beep was quiet and there were long pauses between them.

“Even the fact his heart works is a miracle.” The Doctor continued, “All because of some little human he couldn’t bring himself to kill.”

“If he’s the original, what do you want with him?” You asked meekly as the Other stirred in the other room. The MRI whirled to life, the magnets letting out a high pitch whine as they span.

“To study him. He might be the cure to the this, and I want my people to be able to live with the knowledge that if they put a foot wrong, they won’t be turned into monsters.” The Doctor droned as he turned to the small control panel and flicked a switch. The magnets hummed and you leaned towards the glass as Ji-woon stirred, his black eyes opening as his wounds finally closed.

 The magnets span and the MRI scanner hummed to life. You held your breath, watching the Other thrash against the dog chains. His shoulder clicked back into place only to be popped back out of its socket as he dragged at his chains, pulling them taught as the scanner started. He was quickly snapped back into place as the outside pully system went tight, keeping his head back and his shoulders pressed to the bed. You gasped as the scan started and Ji-woon let out a horrific howl. It went on for an age, the magnets spinning as his lungs roared until he couldn’t anymore, and he spat blood, whining as his eyes rolled and more blood dripped from his eyes and nose. The chains only went slack when he fell back against the bed, his mouth open as spit dripped from his mouth, mixing with the blood he had splashed all over the bedding from his thrashing. The Doctor tutted at the images and started another, initiating another round of howling from Ji-woon, his arms bulging as black veins swam down his face and shoulders then invaded his arms. The chains were drawn tight again, and you cringed at the unholy howl that left the Other as they scanned his brain again. The third scan had Ji-woon pass out, his nose pouring blood as his eyes rolled back and his teeth chattered in his mouth.

 The Doctor looked at the scans, ignoring his creature in the other room and you in favour of focusing in on one area of Ji-woon’s brain. The brain stem was enlarged at the back, with a strange looking organ attached beneath the main area. It almost looked like a tumour. You wondered if he had once been a patient, given the experimental therapy to help with a disease of some sort.

“Amazing.” The Doctor commented, “So not only has his brain enlarged but there’s a whole new area.”

“It looks like a tumour to me.” You commented bitterly.

“That’s precisely what it is. A tumour growth turned into a new centre of control. The brain stem controls all basic functions down to breathing, but this centre seems to be responsible for the Other’s abilities. Like the ungodly strength and speed, you’ve seen him have. This is the reason.” He sparked his cigarette again and hummed, “Its sad I’ve got to cut it out of him.”

 Your blood ran cold, “You’re going to do what?”

“A live brain surgery. We can’t kill an Other but removing the organ in his brain might do the trick.” The Doctor snorted, “It isn’t human anymore. Why do you think it is? That thing would eat you if I threw you into there right now.” A smile curled his lips upwards at the thought, “In fact, let’s see what he does, hm? A little live experiment never hurt anyone.” he took hold of the back of the wooden chair and tipped you backwards before dragging you to the door, laughing and wheezing as he puffed on the cigarette. His people looked on in confusion before he demanded for the door to the scanning room to be opened.

“Please don’t do this!” You begged as fear churned your guts and hammered at your heart.

“I thought you trusted your little pet?” The Doctor mocked as he slid you inside the room, your back to the thick glass viewing window, “Let’s see how much he repays you!”

You tugged against the bindings to no avail as the door slammed closed behind you and the Doctor’s wheezing laughter bounced down the corridor.

 The room was silent as Ji-woon’s mouth dripped spit and blood back against the hospital bed, his eyes closed and wiggling behind his eyelids. He was alive. His chest moved rhythmically up and down, breathing wheezily as he recovered from the MRI. What it had actually done to the Other, you didn’t know. He was dazed and sleepy, tossing his head with occasional twitches as the veins in his arms pulsed with a black light. It was something you had never seen him do before, and it worried you as you looked at the tied rope and cuffs which bound you to the wooden chair.

“Ji-woon?” You whispered softly as the Other twitched violently against the bed, his shoulders bending as his back and hips bucked forwards.

The Other gurgled again as his head rolled towards you, his ears twitching as black veins burned under his skin. His bruised face was covered with them like lines of tattoos, and they were quickly spreading down his chest. His arms were already covered, and you watched them pulse as Ji-woon tugged on the chains lightly. They were slack. Like a chain reaction, his arms bulged, and his eyes shot open as blood dripped down over his cheeks, painting him like a horror as he let out a screech and pulled the chains as taut as they could go.

 There was a commotion outside before a gravelly laugh sounded and the chains holding Ji-woon dragged against the holes, completely slack. The metal slammed against the MRI scanner as Ji-woon tore himself free and flew towards you. His mouth opened wide, exposing the black insides of his cheeks and his slick black tongue. The Other launched himself at your chair, sending you both flying back against the viewing wall. His mouth dripped spit over your shoulder before his tongue dipped out of his mouth to taste your hot skin. He purred at the taste, gurgling just like the first night you met him. Hungry. Feral. Insane.

“Ji-woon, please, it’s me.” You begged softly as his teeth pressed against your skin. He’d already torn your sleeve away and it laid down at the bottom of your wrist.

The Other gurgled before black goo dripped from his mouth and he heaved over your back, letting the spit, blood and black bile dripped over your shirt.

“J-J-Ji...woon...” He gurgled before he screeched again.

 You flinched, moving to cover your ears, and Ji-woon wrenched himself backwards, clutching his head as he let out a shriek and another howl. You watched in horror from the floor as his back rippled and cracked, the veins spreading like a web over his shoulders and down to the base of his spine. The muscles contorted in painful spirals before he let out a piercing human shout and spasmed violently. He clutched at his hair, fingers tearing scratches into the shaved sides as he tore at the pain.

“Stop it! You’re hurting yourself!” You shouted at him. Ji-woon only flinched away from the noise and collapsed, holding his head against the floor as his back bowed and a great black appendage tore from his shoulder blade. The mucus covered limb spread itself before the pointed tip slammed down against the linoleum, tearing a giant hole, revealing the solid concrete underneath. Another shriek left the Other as he slammed his feet against the floor and scrambled to hold onto something as another black, pointed, mucus covered limb burst from his skin, tearing a wound in his back. It was followed by four more in quick succession, and you tried not to cry as they slammed close to your face.

 Ji-woon clicked like a possessed child, groaning as the limbs lifted him like a spider and slammed against the sides of the room. His face was almost completely black, and you shuddered as chitin plates moved underneath his bruised skin and burst from underneath covering his face like a grotesque, insect like helmet. The slit along the middle left room for his eyes, but there was no recognition as the black limbs clicked along the walls and grabbed you by the rope that tied you to the chair, lifting you close to the Other’s face. The plates shifted and revealed his mouth, open, hungry, and filled with black pointed teeth. They snapped near your face before the Other sniffed you. He reared back slightly with a gurgle and flinched as the MRI whirled to life. A great, wet laugh sounded as the plates of his helmet shifted and clasped over his ears, protecting him from the noise as his black tongue licked at your hot skin, tasting the sweat that drenched you.

 His teeth tore open your shoulder a moment later.

 Agony laced your veins as you looked down as where the Other was suckling on the gouge. He pulled back and you watched your blood drip from his mouth. A great purr sounded as he hoisted you high with one limb dripping blood over the chair and his body as you felt the area burn with unimaginable heat. It would take you an hour to die and then three more to turn. If you were lucky, you wouldn’t wake up as an infected, but as one of the Others. At least then it wouldn’t be such torture living inside your own head. You’d remember nothing, or at least you hoped. You hung from the appendage as Ji-woon peered up at you, licking his fingers as he held you aloft, admiring the bite mark on your shoulder. The Other purred at the taste of your blood until the door slammed open. The helmet pieces snapped back into place, covering his face as the appendages whirled and slammed into the door frame. A shotgun kicked and the pellets sprayed against the hardened tentacles as Ji-woon’s arms grew again, the veins pulsing before his arms turned black completely. Thorns shot out of the skin as he howled and lowered himself, walking on four limbs as the others deflected the gun shots. You were hoisted high above the carnage, woozily swinging back and forth as you bled and the pain around the bite mark seared down to your fingers. As Ji-woon advanced on the people, you felt tears drip from your eyes, down onto his wild hair. He ignored the salty tears as he tore open a woman by her throat, the trachea held fast between his jaws. His maw opened again to tear more meat from her arms, the monstrous tentacles whipping around and piercing the other humans, leaving them with gaping holes, bleeding against the linoleum.

 “Ji-woon. Please.” You wheeze above him as he jumped on another person, tearing open their stomachs before he popped the rib cage open and crunched the bones in his mouth. The tentacles thrashed harder growing as the thorns on his arms became tough scales and his helmet moulded to the back of his head, holding his hair high over his head in a crazy spikey updo. You wept softly as he lowered you down to his eyes, black orbs shining inside the helmet before he opened his jaws, the plates parting, now part of his face, to reveal his black mouth, full of blood clots and bone shards. He clicked before reaching out a cold hand and running it up your thigh. He stopped above your knee and then smiled. Blood dripped from between his pointed teeth and ran down his chin, and he whipped his head back and forth like a dog. His hand came away from your thigh to touch the bite mark. He licked away the blood on his fingers before he touched his cool fingertips to your chest, pressing hard over your heart before he pressed them to his own chest.

“We can’t be together like this!” You sobbed, “I wanted to help you, not become one of your thrall.”

Ji-woon’s eyes blinked away blood, and it dripped over the plates over his face, “Together.” He promised you as he held you away from danger again.

 The Doctor appeared in the hall, and you watched in horror as Ji-woon slammed one sharp tentacle through the man’s stomach, pinning him to the wall with a slam and a great splash of blood. Ji-woon followed his appendage, growling as he met the man against the wall, cracking his black fingers as the ends shifted into points. With a snarl he slammed his hand through the man’s chest, enjoying the blood with a feral madness. He wailed again, the black covering his skin spreading, the plates and scales growing as he let the man fall to the floor. Spit slicked his chin at the thought of the marrow, but with a bite, he was upset. Ji-woon spat the blood and meat after the Doctor’s cries of pain.

“Stupid thing. I’ve been dying from the cancer for three years. My body will only make you ill.” He laughed as he reached into his pocket, pulling free a syringe, “But you might want this.”

You didn’t catch sight of it before a tentacle snatched it from the Doctor. Ji-woon inspected the liquid before the Doctor laughed and snatched something from his lab coat. He slumped forwards, slamming the syringe into Ji-woon’s leg. The serum seemed to have no effect, and Ji-woon swatted him away with a smash of a tentacle, sending him sprawling down the hall, his head twisted grotesquely.

 You sobbed above the Other as your arms burned in agony and your chest went viciously tight. You coughed, tasting blood in your mouth as you were lowered again. Ji-woon twitched violently as he presented you with the vial. You read the side and sniffled again. A lethal injection. The poison had already been ejected from Ji-woon’s body, and the clear fluid leaked down his bare leg before it too was covered with insect like plates.

“Please.” You begged softly.

The Other eyed you, his eyes twitching left and right, before he placed you on the floor and held the needle and syringe in front of your eyes. With one violent movement, he crushed it, and let the millilitres of drug drip from his clawed fingers.

“Together.” he stuttered again as he linked his fingers and took hold of the back of the chair, tugging you along behind him as he lumbered along the hospital corridors, groaning the word ‘together’ repeatedly like a ghost.

 When you woke again, you were laid in your small apartment. You wheezed as you looked up at the ceiling, feeling your limbs burn as you dragged them against the floor, attempting to touch your head. A cold hand grasped yours as you blinked away the red in your eyes. An armour clad Other peered at you with warm black eyes. Blood leaked from his eyes and mouth, between the creases of the plates of the helmet covering his face.

“Ji…woon.” You wheezed as your chest burned. Agony seared at every nerve as you shivered and coughed blood over his armoured thighs. A tentacle swept over your thighs, tucking you back against the mattress before it dragged your blankets over you.

“Together.” Ji-woon wheezed at you with a purr before his sharp teeth snapped and he gave you another bite on your hip. He said it again and bit your arm. The pain was already intense. You didn’t really register the bites as you raised your other hand and touched his head.

“So much for finding yourself, hm? I s-should have known… that you were a monster all along.” You heaved at him as you dragged your hand over his hair and cupped his cheek, “You’re still Ji-woon at least.” You whispered as your chest burned and you gasped and hiccupped violently.

 Ji-woon’s arms went slack as the tentacles around him waved gently. His mouth parted, dripping your own and his blood over the mattress as he leaned over your body.

“Together…Ji-woon a-a-a…” The Other gurgled as he reached for your body and touched your skin. You were cold. Freezing cold. Dead. It was as though it all came rushing back, and the Other wailed as he clutched at your body, looking for the veins that should be weaving over your neck and arms. Nothing moved under your skin. You were not going to turn into one like him. He howled, his tentacles thrashing, lashing blood and mucus over the walls as he desperately touched your face and pressed against your throat. He clicked, softly, louder and then screeched near your ears, calling for an Other who wasn’t there. Violently, he shook your body, crying for you as he cried black and red tears over your body. There was nothing. The Other wailed, throwing himself on top of your corpse as he heard his thrall thunder through the hall.

 Dead.

 He cried over your body again before he tore open his arms, spreading his blood over your lips before he took his teeth to your neck, spitting and bleeding into your mouth and the wounds to try and get you to wake back up. Your chest compressed with a breath before your eyes opened, red rimmed and burning with an orange glint around the pupils. You were not an Other. A gurgle sounded from your throat, and Ji-woon reached to cradle your head as you slumped into him. His blood dripped over the both of you as he stroked your hair like a doll, combing his fingers through the mess. Your eyes drooped shut again and your chest stilled before your body convulsed against him. Ji-woon knew what it was, and you were close to being with him, forever, if only he could get you to eat. He reached for his own leg and gouged his nails against the flesh. It hurt, but he continued, peeling open his calf underneath the plating. Blood and gore stuck under his fingernails as he plucked free a piece of muscle, fat and skin, dangling it in front of your mouth. Your eyes shot open, the veins in your eyes pulsing with black as your lips wrapped around the treat. Ji-woon let you have it, purring as you chewed and swallowed. It was then that he chirped and slid his nail under the back of your skull, straight into your spinal column.

 The scream that tore from your throat made him flinch, but he held you fast as his skin twisted and a black appendage grew from his pointed black nail, weaselling under your vertebrae before it shot upwards into your brain stem and poked the small tumour growing at the back. Ji-woon focused as his form broke off and wrapped around the tumour, stimulating the centre with new black veins, filled with the mutating virus. Your eyes rolled back as the veins webbed over the back of your neck, and Ji-woon waited for your eyes to go black before he purred and leaned forwards, kissing your dead lips. You only came to when his tongue pressed into the back of your mouth, tasting of your combined bloods and the faintest hint of blackberries. Maybe that was thanks to your last meal? You didn’t know but the veins in your neck pulsed and wormed their way down your chest, bucking you forwards, into the kiss with the Other. Your brain throbbed with the taste of food, and you reached up your cold hands to tug at the Other’s hair for a further taste of what would be your forever. Together, forever with the Other.

[sylvie-writes]

Chain of Events

word count: 2500

pairing: andy barber x female reader

warnings: cheating, age gap, some profanity.

request: can i request a andy barber x fem!reader where the reader is his asisstant and his secret mistress (in mid 20s) which she always stick by his side and help him through jacob's trail. after the trail he divorced w laurie and they got marry and have a baby girl please!! thank you!!

a/n: sorry for the wait! i hope you enjoy lovely! ngl this really fueled my love for andy. 

please excuse any mistakes!

It wasn’t something you were proud of. Something that had started off as a night with a few innocent drinks paved the way for a never ending cycle. At times you felt dirty and awful, yet that didn’t stop you from going to see him every other night. Even when you had the slightest feeling that Laurie had a hunch, it didn’t stop you. Especially when things got dark for Andy, you were the one to hold him close and not his wife. It felt so right although extremely wrong all at the same time. 

༻﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡༺

Currently, you were sitting in your apartment bed, spending your Friday night a bit differently than most. Rain gushed from the sky and rhythmically hit your bedroom window which you were spaced out on, many thoughts running through your mind and a glass of wine occasionally hitting your lips. Using your free hand you softly ran your fingers through the mop of hair that belonged to Andy who was passed out in your lap. His breathing was even and it did your heart good to see him so peaceful for once. Just two hours ago, he called you, sounding so broken and vulnerable which was out of the ordinary for Andy. The minute you answered the door, he flung himself at you and held you tight, whispering repeatedly “don’t leave me, please.” 

It absolutely tore you to pieces to hear him say that and you were quick to reassure him that it wasn’t even possible. You then lead him to the bedroom to ask what had happened. 

“Is everything alright? Talk to me, Andy.” You placed a set of his pajamas into his hands but not without a pleading look in your eyes when meeting his own sullen ones.

“Laurie’s adamant it’s him, but (y/n)-” Placing a finger on his lips, you hushed him. 

“I know, I know. You just have to ignore it okay? Laurie is just,” Pausing, you chose your next words wisely, “having a hard time with it all. Everyone copes differently.” 

He sadly nodded before standing to kiss your forehead and make his way to the bathroom to get changed and cleaned up a bit. 

The two of you continued to chat about Jacob’s trial once Andy returned from the bathroom, and he confided in you in many ways more than one. You’d never seen Andy so open, even with yourself, and clearly it helped him quite a bit as he was now relaxed. 

Time had flown and amongst your thoughts, one stood out to you in particular. When would Laurie start to question where he was? Andy always had some bullshit excuse ready to give her and would then tell you that it would be alright. Normally, before you had time to truly convince yourself, Andy’s lips would be on yours or his hands would caress you gently and you’d melt into him as did your cares. Except for now. 

The two had just gotten into a huge fight and you were sure Andy hadn’t even thought twice about telling her where he was going. Even if he did, Laurie would surely be on the lookout for his return. 

Carefully reaching over to your nightstand, you grabbed your phone to check the time and noticed that it was getting late. 

“Andy? My love, when do you have to go home?” You leaned down to whisper to the sleeping man who groaned in return. 

You repeated his name once more, this time slightly shaking his shoulder to which he rolled onto his back, a goofy grin on his lips as he looked up at you. “Well hello, honey.” 

From Andy’s point of view, you peered down at him like a disappointed mother but with a faint smile upon her lips at her child’s goofiness. 

“Nice of you to join me, sleeping beauty. I was wondering what time you had to get home. It’s starting to rain more heavily and Laurie-”

Andy sat up and turned himself so he’d be sitting shoulder to shoulder with you. Silently, he took your empty wine glass from your hand, leaning to place it on your nightstand. As he did so, he didn’t let go of your wrist, which he brought to his lips when he returned to face you. 

Murmuring against your wrist, he started to place soft and delicate kisses to the smooth skin there. “Don’t worry about it. I told her I’d be back tomorrow morning.” 

“But Andy, she knows you don’t have anywhere to stay.” You didn’t want to exactly say “Hey! Andy, you have no friends and your wife knows that!” but it was implied in a kinder way. Andy picked up on this, clearly deflecting when he just nodded in response and started to place more kisses up your forearm. 

Letting out a frustrated “hmph,” you let Andy carry on before he victoriously smiled at you.

༻﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡༺

The vicious cycle went on throughout the course of Jacob’s trial as things between Andy and his wife got worse. Even though they both lived under the same roof, slept in the same bed, and put on a facade for Jacob, they were practically separated. One night Andy drunkenly showed up on your doorstep, confessing how he had come home to find Laurie with another man. In a fit of rage he let the cat out of the bag that he had been seeing you. Funny how things work. 

You knew they were both wrong, so instead of shaming either one of them, you just let Andy cling to you for comfort. When Andy was drunk, he was like a big child and if the circumstances were different, you’d been laughing, but rather you soothingly rubbed his back and listened as that’s all he needed. Someone who would just listen.

At three in the morning, he most definitely needed you as well when you found his head in the bowl of the toilet and not sleepily nestled in your neck. (Which was ironic as the two of you would be switching places very soon.)

Christmas came quick and along with it, many miracles, one being that Jacob was not convicted.

Just as Andy was in a rush to tell you the news, Laurie was even faster to serve the divorce papers to him. In a relationship, you and your partner are supposed to be able to push through tough times without breaking. With that being said, Andy and Laurie mutually agreed that they had failed and it was time they both quit lying to themselves. It was time for real happiness. 

༻﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡༺

“(y/n) meet me at our favorite restaurant in thirty minutes.”

You were working on some case files for Neil, despite your hatred for him, and tried to tell Andy that you were busy at the moment. He didn’t listen but continued to insist that you meet him there. His tone wasn’t demanding, but it was...excited? Surely, Andy had been excited over things in his life, but you’d never actually heard the usually emotionless man speak with such ardor. 

Setting down the case files, you rushed to put on some real pants and a blouse, but nothing too fancy or flashy as you had no idea what was about to happen. 

When you arrived at the restaurant, Andy happily flagged you over. He wore the biggest smile ever and you were borderline concerned. What could have him this happy? Was he getting back with Laurie? As much as you wanted them to be a functioning family, you weren’t sure if you could deal with such heartbreak because Andy really did feel like the one. 

Ever the gentleman, Andy pulled out your chair and handed you a small bouquet as you sat in the wooden seat. Before he walked away, the man planted a smack of a kiss on your lips and hurried back to his seat since he saw the waiter out of the corner of his eye. As the waiter approached, you were just sitting there, the most shocked expression on your face as it settled within you what Andy had just done. Long ago when this whole fiasco began, you and Andy always kept it professional when out in public because so many people knew him and word could get out easily that he was cheating. 

The minute the waiter left, you were quick to chastise Andy who just laughed as if it were the funniest thing in the world which left you a bit angered. 

Since the restaurant was quiet, you extended yourself across the table so Andy could hear your harsh muttering. 

“Do you realize what you just did, Barber?!” Andy shook his head in a content manner and at this point steam was about to emerge from your ears. Before all hell could break loose and you go ballistic, Andy cut in to explain. 

“Jacob, he’s a free man!” Andy looked at you with an awaiting smile and your face immediately softened, but for only a second as that didn’t explain why he was parading your relationship out like this. Didn’t he know what he was risking, not only for himself, but you.

Your counterpart noticed the sudden change of expression on your face and continued, “But among other things, I meant to tell you that Laurie and I got divorced recently.” 

“Oh hon, I am so sorry.” Reaching across the table, you comfortingly ran your thumb over the back of his hand, but he just shook his head in detest.

“No no, it’s not a bad thing because it just opened the gateway for this,” Andy pulled his hand away and went to dig in his coat pocket. You thought to yourself, no he couldn’t be-

“(y/n), I’m gonna make this short, but sweet. You mean the world to me and I could spend all night listing off why I love you, but that will never do justice, so instead, I ask that you make me the happiest man alive, and marry me?” 

His cliche, yet utterly adorable speech could make a person’s heart melt and instantly say yes, but you’ve always been a thinker, and maybe Andy had accounted for that a bit in his proposal. 

“Andrew! You just got divorced!” In a semi-whisper slash hiss, you bent over so only he could hear, hiding your words from the prying onlookers as if you had top secret info spilling from your lips. 

“I know, but, (y/n), you are the one.” He looked a bit awkward being on his knee for so long and the ring box still patiently in hand as you processed his question. Nonetheless, Andy continued to hopefully smile at you, ignoring all of the whispers, until you excitedly replied “yes” just a mere second later, though it felt like ages for him. 

This proposal was definitely gonna be a story for generations. 

༻﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡༺

You and Andy settled for a simple courthouse wedding with just your parents in attendance as witnesses. The two of you were never really used to flaunting your relationship, and even though you could now, it just wasn’t ideal. Besides, you had bigger things to worry about.

For example, when just a few weeks after your short-lived honeymoon, you noticed some changes and came to the conclusion that you were pregnant. 

One night, you casually brought up the idea of more kids to Andy to test the waters. 

“Hey love, you awake?”

Andy lifted his eyes from his book, no longer looking as if he was asleep. He nodded his head and set the book aside giving you his full attention. 

“What’s up, gorgeous?”

“I was thinking… what if we were to have a kid. Would you be opposed to that?”

The reaction on Andy’s face was most definitely not the one in mind and he looked as if you had asked him the most appalling question on earth. 

“(y/n), I love kids,” He chuckled a bit, “I thought I made that clear, you know, by being a dad and all.” 

His lame attempt at making a “joke” eased your nerves and you just came straightforward with the gold. 

“Andy, I think I am pregnant.” 

And faster than a predator can pounce, Andy was on you in seconds, his arms hugging you close as he whispered words of excitement. 

༻﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡༺

Nine months later and that statement was very true as you held a bundle of joy in your arms. Your hours numb in pain couldn't even be compared to the gift that was before you. Andy could hardly keep his hands off your stomach for the past few months and he never failed to speak to your daughter as if she was actually there. Now that her presence was finally in the world, Andy was yet to look away from her small figure and his smile hadn’t withered the slightest. 

The nurse had stepped out a few minutes ago, giving both you and Andy some time and privacy with your newborn. Even though drowsiness overcame your body, you visibly forced yourself awake just to absorb all the time you could with her. Little ones grow up in a flash and you weren't going to miss a second if it was up to you.

Andy joined you in the hospital bed when you silently invited him in with a soft pat to the crinkly sheets. Once he snuggled up against your side, you carefully passed the little baby who was about to have her first contact with her father. 

As Andy played with her mini hands, you sleepily rested your head on his broad shoulder, watching the two and already figuring out that they’d be lifelong friends. 

“They always say with age comes wiseness, but darlin’, your momma gives that phrase a run for its money.”

You giggled at your husband’s words and propped up the little darling the smallest bit so she could “see” you and her dad. 

“Don’t listen to Daddy, munchkin. The grey in his beard says otherwise.” 

“Hey! I’m not that old, I was still able to knock-” Backhanding Andy’s leg caused him to dramatically cut his sentence short. There were plenty of years for him to taint your daughter’s innocence.

 As you observed the two, you noticed Andy gazed at her as if she hung the moon and stars for him, a familiar look he often gave you. Possibly from the lack of energy or just being enamored with the interaction, a sweet tear slipped from your own eye. Upon closer inspection, one could see that a subtle tear fell from the man beside you.

If Andrew Stephen Barber had known all those years ago he’d be here with a second chance at life, he would’ve never even waited another second to be with you. It’s funny how life can send you down the most twisted paths, yet have you come out with the most precious of gifts. 

 taglist: @memissbee @tricereads @buckybarnesthehotshot @bval-1 @tonystankschild @just-one-ordinary-fangirl @turtoix @kelbabyblue @jakiki94 @aubreeskailynn @calirindo @lady-elena-adeline @siriuslyslyslytherin @sushiinmidnight @patzammit @iwik3it​

a/n: what did you guys think? it feels like ages since i’ve written anything, and I am sure you can tell haha

if you are new here, check out my masterlist at the top of my blog for more Andy Barber (and Chris Evans characters) writing. I’d link it but tumblr always tag blocks me :( 

[echoalyssa]

Phantom | Dick Grayson

Authors Note: There’s some light language in this, but thats about all!

“Phantom to Nightwing, entering dead zone now. Start the clock and come in if I’m late. I love you.”

You now had an hour inside the base, unable to contact anyone. You were collecting intel and because you were the stealthiest and smallest, (Damian was too young for this particular mission) Bruce had sent you in.

Your boyfriend, Dick Grayson had wanted to come with you but Bruce had rejected the idea because two people was more risky than one.

Dick had been livid, it was more risky for your life for you to go alone. He was your partner even though you were all a team. Ever since childhood, the two of you fought together and somewhat seemed to share the same mind.

You push a vine our of your dace. Your black masks shows the digital map of the quietest places to step. Your hood is pulled up to disguise your features and skin tone that obviously didn't fit in with the darkness of the air around you.

You had left your mottled cloak behind, opting to only have to worry about your body and where you place it. 

Joker was extremely active underground lately, he’d evolved and Bruce had only your mission as a lead. 

Your mask displays your one hour timer on the left hand side of your vision. Fifty minutes to get into the compound and back to safety.

The compound comes into view, a flat stone building that just didn’t fit in with the forest that surrounded it. You creep forward, staying in the shadows and hugging the walls of the building until you reach the only vent.

The stone was practically flat but years of training allowed you to look your gloved fingers into a crevice and wedge a booted foot into the building.

You begin climbing, scaling upwards twenty feet. The screws of the vent are all different and you have to pull away from the wall, your body straining so you can unscrew the bottom two.

You’re small enough that you can pry the vent open enough that you can squeeze yourself in. Forty minutes your clock reads. You were going too slow. You crawl forward on your elbows, you trek forward, you should have asked for two hours. Shit.

You hit the record button on your wrist panel and pull the microphone out.

It’s a tiny one but the quality is amazing. You’re peering through a small vent above a research lab now and you thread the microphone and it’s wire through the vent. The audio feeds into your ear piece and also saves to the hard drive in your panel.

You’re holding your breath, only breathing when you have to to minimize any chance of getting caught.

“We need to move in now! He’s only getting more recruits and it’s only a matter of time before they find us again.” Says a voice.

“If they haven’t already! I say we try the new weapon on some unsuspecting crowd of bystanders now. Then they’ll be too busy trying to save those silly citizens to deal with us.”

“Yes but is it ready..?”

“It needs to be tested again and we need to find a more powerful energy source eventually.”

And then the joker walks into view of the vent. He’s holding a blueprint and he spreads it on one of the tables. It’s the paint schematic for the weapon because of course, the joker being the joker meant that everything needed to be green, purple, and white.

You raise a hand to your mask and tap twice. It takes a screenshot of your view of the blueprint and sends it to the bat hard drive.

“Did you have any luck with batons inner circle? Would anyone snitch?”

“A couple...” the speaker listens. It’s valuable intel and now Bruce would be able to feed false information to the rats.

You begin to tap their names away into the panel and then attempt to wirelessly hack into the mainframes. The firewall were strong and plentiful but eventually they all fall victim to you. Sixteen minutes your timer reads. Shit. The data downloading from their computers and into your drive is only halfway done.

It won’t be very detailed. Just minuscule bits of information because you couldn't connect physically to the computers. It’s a line of script here and there that didn't make much sense to you because you weren't super tech-y. Though every line counted and that you knew. Several addresses also pop up.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, your panel signals that the download is complete. Seven minutes reads the timer. Double shit.

You scramble backwards knowing that you’ve done all that you can. Somehow managing to turn yourself around in the small space. You’re almost at the vent when you foot clangs against the side of the vent.

You freeze, no alarms go off, but then again why would they? The timer is still ticking and you continue on, sliding out of the vent. You fumble with the screws, attempting to get them back in in case your cover hadn't already been blown. You then plant your feet, push off and flip down to the ground. You land nimbly in a rolling crouch and then pop to your feet and take off, sprinting for the tree line.

They come from the shadows. Dozens of them. All focused in on you.

You suck in a breath and draw your longswords.

“Bring it on Goonies!” You call and they surge forward all at once. Some with guns, electric batons, and swords.

You stalk forward, meeting them in the middle. You begin slashing immediately at arms, legs, torsos, anywhere that wasn’t too lethal. You weren't a killer.

Except there were just so many, the sword in your left hand falls from your grip and you pull out a disc, throwing it into the incomers. It explodes, blinding some and wounding others. 

You yank s taser out from your belt and stab it into an attackers neck while blocking an attack with your sword. And then it happens. A baton smacks into the back of your head and you stumble forward, dizzy. A blade slashes your thigh, splitting skin and muscle. A cry comes fro, your lips and you lash out desperately with your one remaining longsword. You're able to down the foe who had slashed you.

Two more take his place and then a dagger rips through your abdomen from behind. You scream, falling to your knees. Just as it gets put through your thigh, followed by your shoulder. You land in the grass face first and the world goes dark, sound fading out.

‘Dick.’ Is your last thought.

~~~

Dick is staring at the timer that is displayed by his make. 00:00:05. 00:00:04. 00:00:03. 00:00:02. 00:00:01. And the dreaded number... 00:00:00. It blares red and he stares at the forest, fists clenched. Where was she?

Tim steps forward and places a hand on his shoulder. “Give her five minutes okay? She’s smart. You know how these missions sometimes go overtime. She’s got this.”

“We never should have sent her in alone. It was too risky. Damn it!”

His fist rockets into a tree. He considers going after Bruce, giving him a piece of his mind. Then decides that it isn’t worth it and begins to prepare to go in after his love.

He makes sure to grab the miniature cauterizer and some other emergency medical supplies, stuffing them into the pouches on his belt.

“Wait, Nightwing, we’ll go together. We need a plan!” Damian calls.

His heart is pounding out of his chest and he can’t breathe. ‘What if he was too late? What if she was already gone?’

He doesn’t want to wait for a plan, time was ticking. He pushes past his adoptive brother.

“Dick wait!” Jason calls trying to grab his arm. But he keeps going, breaking for the trees to find her.

Jason and Tim look at each other, then they both look at Damian. “Stay here.” They say simultaneously/

“No way!” He yells back at his brothers.

The three of them take them off after Nightwing. And Bruce, having watched all his children run into danger, follows them in.

Nightwing is pushing through vines and branches, not caring if he makes noise or not. He knows the rest of his family will follow him, but quietly.

His mail enhances his vision in the darkness. He draws a thumb over his own panel and it activates the heat censor on his mask. Dick Grayson pushes forward quickly, scanning frantically for her heat signature.

And then he sees it. She’s always run cold. Her fingers and limbs always frozen. A small prone figure, running colder than the other surrounding bodies. He kicks up his pace, heading for her because he just knows.

“Phantom!” he yells, followed by, “Robin! I think I found her!”

He skids to a halt and falls to his knees, he can see the stab wounds. The way her blood has soared into the ground beneath her. 

Nightwing rolls her over, jamming his fingers under her neck to find a pulse. It’s there. But weak.

He rips the cauterizer out of his belt and drapes her body over him just as Jason appears. 

“Is she..?”

“Alive.” He grunts, “Not for much longer I need to..”

Jason helps him rip the uniform away enough so Dick has enough room to maneuver.

“Hold her down!”

Jason does as he’s told and Dick places the cauterizer to her skin.

“Only do what you have to, we need to get out of here. And soon.”

He pushes the two flaps of skin together and places the sparking tool to it. The heat melds the skin together. She’d need to be pumped full of antibiotics in case any of the blades were dirty and risked infection.

She only stirs slightly, too disoriented from her loss of blood. He talks to her the whole time he works on her.

He only does her abdomen, knowing that it’s her most serious injury. It might not even hold from the jolting and jostling that would occur in the journey back. Dick stabs a painkiller into her thigh, just in case she were to awaken.

He motions to Tim and Damian, who had been standing guard, to take up the rear. Grayson then scoops up his girlfriend, cradling her to his chest.

“Jason. Take point. Let’s get her home.”

~~~

He sits by her bedside. His hands are covered in her dry blood, along with his suit. He hadn’t bothered to change.

Y/N had needed a blood transfusion and he had offered immediately, hence why there was a needle in his arm funneling blood into girlfriend. Alfred had stitched do her wounds and hooked her up to an IV for hydration and anti-infection purposes.

She’d been changed out of her uniform after she was stable for cleanliness reasons and was now wearing one of his black shirts.

He’s holding her hand, his thumb tracing over the pulse point of her wrist occasionally.

It would be a long road to recovery for her though they all knew that she would bounce back and attempt to get back in to the field as soon as she could walk.

It’s days later when she finally wakes, her eyelids fluttering.

“Dick.” She whispers.

He’s right there, just like he had been, he’d only left briefly to shower but he ate and slept at her side. Jason had covered both of your patrols, with Bruce helping out.

“I’m okay. You’re okay, babygirl.” He places a hand on her face and she leans her head into his touch.

[buckysdolls]

Saviour

My first Loki fic!!

Summary- AU- Loki survives Thanos’ snap and decides to stay on Earth to help defeat Thanos. During the final battle Loki comes to your rescue.

Warning- Mentions of Guns and Knives.

Though many of the team disliked Loki, which was a fair conclusion, you found him surprisingly funny and utterly charming from the first time you’d met him. You were mesmerized my his devilishly handsome good looks and impeccable one liners that would make you chuckle under your breath. He’d always appreciate your reaction and every time he was around on earth his endless teasing and flirting had you weak at the knees. Him being the God of Mischief totally enticed you, his adventures always sounded exciting and though you weren’t impressed with his attempts to take over the human race, multiple times… you were impressed with his decision to stay and fight, becoming an Avenger to save the earth. Having failed to kill Thanos before decapitating him, Thor had a breakdown and disappeared. Loki made the decision to stay with you and Nat at the compound to try and find a way to fix Thor and the mess Thanos had created. This wasn’t a hard decision for Loki, he wanted to be around you, he was utterly drawn to you and he’d known it from the moment he first saw you in the corner of a room trying to hide your snigger after he’d said something. He remembered your eyes meeting from across the room, he remembered how you coughed your chuckle away upon meeting his gaze and lowering your head feeling shy at his attention. You were able to teach him a few things as your relationship blossomed over time. A bit of humility and compassion but he never failed to provide his usual mischievous and sarcastic nature to any situation. Even though it took him almost five years to accept his feelings were more that just an attraction or a phase, you both enjoyed being a couple and having each other for company. You felt awful finding Loki considering the circumstances, as many people had lost their loved ones, but Loki would often tell you not to bother about other people’s thoughts and to enjoy the happiness.

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

You and Loki both looked at each other from across the room, eyes wide puzzled with confusion as the God of Thunder strolled into the compound. This wasn’t the God of Thunder you had remembered; his hair was in knotty and tussled. His infamous abs were now a beer belly that hung over the belt of his trousers.

“Seems as though my brother really let himself go” Loki had made his way over to you and whispered in your ear. You tutted and rolled your eyes as you could hear the quiet snigger that escaped from his lips in your ear. Thor’s eyes landed on the pair of you, he was clearly tipsy as he stumbled over.

“Loki! Y/N!” Thor held his arms ready to engulf you in a big hug as you walked forwards to meet him. You face scrunched up as a foul smell filled your nostrils as Thor smothered you in a big hug, tossing you about in his arms.

“Y/N! It’s wonderful to see you. Stunning as usual!” Thor continued to hug you; his head now buried in the crook of your neck. You felt an arm snake around you waist and pulling you away from the hug. Though it was nice to see Thor you were so pleased to feel Loki pulling you into his side as his hand settled on you hips. You turned your head to see Loki giving Thor a death stare, he clearly didn’t appreciate Thor’s attempt to be charming towards you. Feeling the need to reassure Loki you leaned in planting a small kiss on his cheek letting your free hand settle on his right cheek. You watched as his face transformed to his smug smile he usually gave whenever he felt pleased with himself, you turned your head back to see Thor stood there, his mouth in an ‘O’ shape and his sunglasses tipped on the bridge of his nose.

“Ooooh… You two are a… thing now are you?” Thor expressed a look of shock wiggling his finger between you and Loki. You watched on as he downed the rest of his beer, his eyes peering from the side as his sight never left the pair of you. He threw the empty can on the floor and quicky burst into laughter.

“That’s great!” Thor’s pulled the pair of you into one of his welcoming hugs. You and Loki managed to steal a glance at each other as your faces were squished against the pecs of Thor slowly suffocating into his chubbiness. You could tell Loki was far from impressed, his lips straight and his eyes glaring into your soul in utter annoyane. You gave him a big sarcastic smile knowing it would annoy him. You mouthed to Loki ‘smile’ as you cuddled into Thor to tease him.

“I’m so pleased Y/N that Loki finally told you he loves you. He’d only go on and on about you when I would see him” Thor squished you both harder continuing to embrace you both. Finding Thor’s comment hilarious you met Loki’s eyes, raising, and wiggling your eyebrows as you thinned your lips inwards to hide your smile. Loki closed his eyes as he rolled them.

“Let go brother!”

Letting you both go Loki quicky walked away with a huff as you and Thor exchanged side glances both finding Loki’s reaction hilarious.

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

“I could really use some help over here” You yelled out over the communication system as the oncoming Outriders ganging up on you was becoming overwhelming. A soon as you’d shoot one more of them would appear not leaving you enough time to either reload or pull out your knives. You found yourself circled by them and being pushed to the ground, these monsters looked ghastly and drooled everywhere making you gag.

“I got you darling”

You recognised Loki’s sweet voice, oddly sounding sadistic as he was clearly enjoying the rush of brutally slaughtering a bunch of aliens. You saw multiple knives being skilfully thrown slashing through the Outriders as they fell dead, crushing you.

“These things are gross!” You called out in disgust before seeing Loki standing before you kicking the Outriders off you. You couldn’t help but notice how wonderfully handsome he looked, towering above you. He wore his signature smirk, with his pearly white teeth flashing, his striking blue eyes graced yours.

“You still look compelling to me darling” Loki smirked as he reached his hand out to you. You bit your lip, letting the corner of your lips turn up into a smile as you reached your feet. You and Loki stared deeply into each other’s eyes, completely forgetting you were in the middle of a world-ending battle. Loki threw a few knives at oncoming Outriders never letting his gaze leave yours, he expertly would catch them without looking. You couldn’t take the suspense of looking into his eyes anymore, your lust to jump on Loki was too much. You immediately took to your tiptoe and crashed your lips on to his, he didn’t resist he only pulled you closer to him so he could feel you against him. You felt the bulge from under Loki’s robes throb making you moan into the kiss. Letting his lips fit into yours, his tongue swiped and bit at your bottom lip to allow him in. He smacked his hands to your face clutching onto your cheeks, your hair wrapped in between his fingers as the kiss deepened becoming quicker and harder. You found your hands dancing in his hair pulling on strands as the kiss became needier and intense. A flash of lightening waved past you causing you both to break away breathlessly, your heads leaning on one another to look out the corner of your eyes to see the flash of lightning hit a heard of Outriders that were heading for you and Loki. You both looked to the other side of you to see Thor stood there, he wore a huge grin having just witnessed you and Loki.

“You have time to flirt later brother.” Thor walked past you both as Stormbreaker flew back into his hand. Thor winked with a quick smirk before Loki nodded at Thor as a sigh of respect before watching him fly off. You and Loki turned back-to-back to fend off many more Outriders, skilfully swapping between each other’s knives and guns. Your heavy breathing and adrenaline slowed down as the chaos around you dwindled, the sound of guns popping, and the shouting had gone. Thanos’ team was disappearing in front of you just as your team had done five years ago. The fight was over. Yours and Loki’s backs bumped into each other quickly turning around to meet each other.

“That was hot” Loki expressed cocking his head to the side with a grin.

“You found fighting a bunch of alien doggos hot?” You furrowed your eyebrows whilst trying to catch your breath, thinking how fucked up was Loki really?

“Not that Y/N. The kiss?”

“Ooooo” You nodded your head slowly letting a smile creep on your lips as you thought about it.

“Yeah that was pretty hot!” You sniggered allowing you body to flop into Loki, him catching you in his arms. Your body pressed into him for a comforting hug, he could tell how tired you were, so he stroked your hair tenderly to soothe you. You hummed noises insinuating you were enjoying the touch of Loki’s affections as his hug consumed you. Loki felt calm as he felt your arms wrap around his waist, bringing him down from the hype of the fight.  Though he would find it hard to express… he was thankful to know you survived the battle and would be able to stand by his side forever.  

[hpalways]

Radiating || Albedo

SNOW was very pretty, light to the touch and made of a color so pure that it was almost unbelievable. However, it was a double edge sword, for its beauty came with a price. It was dangerous. As an aspect of nature, a touch of it could freeze a human to death if there was no heat source available, or the slip of ice beneath the fluffy matter could cause a steep fall. This came from experience and a trusted source: you. Because you were currently struggling with the exact problem.

"Shit!" you exclaimed, losing your balance from the black ice beneath your soles. Skidding through the surfaces, you clumsily held your hands out in case you were to bump into anything. Bumping into something, you did... but it was in the least expected way.

Your toe stubbed by a rock on the ground, the external force of it sent you flying into the cool, biting air. Letting out a silent scream, you tumbled through the hills. Continuously getting hit by your surroundings, your body burst with pain. It only ended when you reached a cliff, where you tried to latch onto something to prevent your fall. Despite your panicked attempts, you were tipped over and fell for a good few seconds. 

The impact was great, knocking the oxygen out of you. Gasping and coughing from it, you laid there in the snow for a while, exhausted. You wished you could just flutter your eyes shut and sleep the stress away, but the cold was beginning to make its way back to you after all that excitement. Fingers growing numb and a cold sweat breaking out on your forehead, it was about time you find a warm source.

Pushing yourself up, you groaned to yourself and brushed yourself off. It was painful at first, but it didn't take too long for it to fade. That was the advantage for having so much strength. Strength didn't mean you were invisible to the cold though, thus why you needed to hurry up and get out of here. 

Before you could start running with your impressive speed, a monster appeared from the shadows. Lumbering towards you, it was a frostarm lawachurl. It didn't look too happy to see you, considering you must've woken them up with your ruckus. The blue, huge creature let out a snarl, ready to kill. 

Compared to you, it was slow as a slug, so you could easily outrun it. Preparing the kickstart, you were about to run a mile when a voice stilled you. "[Y/N]? Where are you?" It was a calm, low voice, soothing and steady to the ears. Coming from the cliff you were on earlier, footsteps were approaching the edge. Craning your neck back, your [e/c] eyes met teal-blue ones. Ashy blond locks laying upon his shoulders, looking winded as if he ran into trouble coming here. It was none other than Albedo, the known Alchemist of Mondstadt. The man was gorgeous; you had to rub your hues the first time you saw him. 

"Down here!" you called out. In the momentary distraction, you were nearly slashed by the monster's claws in front of you.

"You were thinking of running away earlier, weren't you," he stated, his analytical gaze haunting you. "You need to fight them. How else am I supposed to study you?"

He knew you too well. At the start of his research, you were full-on board, since he was of use to you. But as time went on, the lazier you got. He promised that he would do the best of his abilities to find out the phenomenon of you coming from another world. That was right; you were from another world. You used to live in a place where there were powers of strength and speed, but no elemental powers. Sleeping and waking up to find yourself here at Dragonspine, you were at a lost of words when Albedo magically formed Geo crystals in front of you. 

Sighing in defeat, you approached the ferocious beast. Clenching your fists, you readied your stance and rushed towards it. Your knuckles jagged, you pounded them against the monster's hard chest. With a few hits, the monster was knocked into the air, before crashing to the ground with a flat thud. It was already dead.

”I will always be in awe of this,” he murmured in the distance. You whirled around to see him furiously scribbling something on his notepad. As he did that, you hugged your arms around yourself, shivering in place. It was only then when he was finished with his journaling did he notice your predicament. Slight worry tinged his expression and he quickly beckoned you with his hand. “Let’s head back to my workshop.”

Finally! After climbing up the cliff carefully, you followed the young man back to the safety of his cozy cave. Contrary to your previous beliefs, the space was much more disorganized than you expected it to be. Vials of potions were hung up, while scatters of papers decorated his desk. His creations were laid around the place and a bookshelf sat on one side. Strewn boxes filled of who knew what laid there and in the way. 

The most important part was the fire, of course. 

Pushing passed the blond male and crouching near the fire, a breath of relief left your lips. The red, fiery thing blazed like a living thing, allowing you to be able to feel your fingers once more. While you sat there, Albedo proceeded to business. At his desk, he put down additional notes, attentative to his task. It was silent for a good amount of time, but it felt right. 

You were getting quite comfortable with him. 

His hawk-like vision suddenly noticed something about you. He got out of his seat and made his way to you. Peering down at your legs, he was in deep thought. Confused by his actions, you looked down to see what he was staring at. It was a cut — one out of the many cuts you must’ve recieved during your fall. 

“Oh, it’s nothing,” you brushed it off. “It was just a small fall I had.”

He ignored your words, rolling your sleeves and pants up to reveal multiple dark gashes made on your [s/c] skin. “Yes. A small fall,” he said sarcastically. “I’ll go fetch a concoction for your wounds and some bandages.”

“There’s no need for that. Nothing hurts at all,” you protested. He didn’t respond, marching forward to the shelf filled of clear bottles of bubbling substance. In dismay, you had no choice but to watch him find the materials. He was so stubborn, dammit.

He returned with the promised materials in hand and sat himself down. Carefully pulling his dark gloves out, tender, pale hands were shown afterwards. Your eyes widened. It was rare to see him without his gloves... they were as pretty as he was. Wait. This meant that he would apply it then. 

“H-Hold up! I can do this myself. You don’t need to waste time on me,” you argued. 

“Concoctions are different from regular ointment,” he explained. “Anyway, I don’t mind at all. My precious subject got hurt because of me. It is only right for me to do this.”

Subject? Ouch. That stung a lot more than you thought it would. Were the two of you not friends by now? Keeping quiet with disappointment, you eventually allowed him the opportunity to heal you up. Hard at work, he began to coat the liquid over your wounds. His soft skin gingerly spread it over your arms and legs, leaving tingles in its wake. Heart pounding against your chest, you averted your eyes away from him. What was this feeling you were having?

He ended it by wrapping the bandages professionally, securing the products in place. Looking proud of himself, he nodded. “That should do it.”

“Thank you for this,” you told him softly as you rolled your sleeves back down. “Hey, Albedo. Does your name have a meaning to it?”

He blinked at you for a few seconds, surprise painting his features. “It does. Why the sudden question?”

You fiddled with your hands in embarrassment. “Well, it’s just that you know so much about me through our researches, but when it comes to you, you remain a mystery to me. I want to get to know you a bit better.”

He looked shocked to hear this, as if this was the first time he heard someone say this to him. Despite having a popular reputation in Mondstadt, you knew his hidden side. He was a reserved person who didn’t form many relationships. Instead, he delved himself into the world of alchemy, seeking truth nonstop. It led you to think he was lonely... so you wanted to be by his side — there to always support him. Unfortunately, if you were to return to your world, your time with him was not going to be permanent. Nothing was permanent. 

“Well?” you said. “What’s the meaning of it?”

”Whiteness,” he replied, snapping out of his daze. “The measure of the diffuse reflector of solar radiation. Does it fit me?”

You could barely understand the jumble of words he uttered out. It sounded like he was speaking another language. Yet, the sentence sounded very bright, beautiful, strong, hard-working, intelligent, and amiable. It certainly sounded like him. Albedo was so radiating, you sometimes had to shut your eyes because it hurt. 

“Yes, it does.”

[whetstonefires]

in the shadows

hey guess who has two thumbs and just spent 5 hours straight writing another batman AU?

-

Batman wasn’t a person.

He faked it very well. When the League gathered, the line of his mask against pale skin looked natural and human, a little more perfectly fitted than the Flash’s but not quite as perfect as Green Lantern’s, which was an energy projection and not a real object and thus lay against his face flawlessly, without shift or gap.

His mouth didn’t bend into many expressions and his body language wasn’t voluble, but the emotive gestures that he did make were pretty normal. The rare smile seemed honest. He had a heartbeat, perfectly steady. His shadow (almost) always matched the shape that was blocking the light.

The stories that came out of Gotham, about the Bat—those could be exaggerations, born of terror and manipulated perception. Clark, of all people, knew how much you could convince people to believe things that weren’t real, because they made a better story. Even the scraps of photography and film showing a towering thing of black fog and long fangs could have been some clever trick with projectors.

The fact that Superman couldn’t see through his suit just meant it was well made.

He’d had to pool his observations with Diana and J’onn before he’d been sure he wasn’t imagining things. But Martian Manhunter knew shapeshifting, and said the block against his mind when he tried to touch Batman’s thoughts did not feel quite human. And Superman knew what posing as human looked like. And Wonder Woman knew truth, and its absence.

Batman wasn’t human. Which wasn’t the problem, of course.

The problem was that he was pretending he was. Pretending it rigorously in a situation where there shouldn’t be any need, unless he had something worse to hide. Pretending it in a way that overlaid on a certain inhuman predatory grace began to look very dangerous indeed.

Superman could see both things in him now, watching narrow-eyed through a roof into the room where Batman bent over a child’s bed, cape swirling up larger and darker than he let it get around them. The man and the hungry creature, flipping in and out of focus, neither ever gone but superimposed, like a trick picture that was two things at once.

Knuckles ghosted over the boy’s cheek, claws turned inward, and the child sighed softly, and sunk deeper into sleep. Batman’s heart wasn’t beating, but Clark could monitor the child’s vitals easily from here.

Batman drew his hand back, and tipped his head up—looking back at Superman as though the roof was no more a barrier to his perceptions than to Clark’s. Waited a beat, as if making sure his attention had been noticed, and then passed soundlessly between the other beds to the window, slid it open, and launched himself out through it and up onto the roof.

He didn’t bother to restrain himself to even a plausible approximation of human limits, now. The arm he reached up to the edge of the roof to pivot himself up by was too long, and his shoulder rotated further than it should have been able to, and he landed with impossible soundlessness in a billow of cape that was far, far larger than any cape that only reached to his heels should have managed, and which faded out at the edges into shadow. He knew he was found out.

Superman took the obvious invitation, and sunk down to join him. It was better, sitting like this, facing the same way on the ridgepole of a two-story building. Batman hadn’t hurt that child, that he could tell. There was no need to make this a confrontation.

“I don’t understand why,” he said at last. Out of deference for sleeping children, he kept his voice soft—he would have worried about a human being able to hear it, but now he knew he didn’t have to worry about that with Batman. “Why go to so much trouble to deceive us? We haven’t kept secret what we are. Not from you.”

Alien, alien, user of alien weapon, magical princess…

Batman sighed. He spoke almost as softly as Clark had, and his voice sounded the same as ever, except for the fact that a human voice couldn’t get this quiet without falling into a whisper. “I’m not like you.” He turned.

He’d let some of the details of his human mask fall away—what must have been the exhaustively rendered texture of skin, the flakes of dry skin on chapping lips, a crease at the corner of his mouth that had suggested he scowled or smiled more, outside of his costume. There was no pretense of a jawbone, under the skin, though the jawline externally hadn’t changed. The cowl still looked like something he was wearing, but Clark knew it was not. It flexed like skin when Batman narrowed his blank white eyes and said, “I can see you know that.”

“You’ve visited that kid every day for weeks,” Clark said. “Why?”

Batman stared at him. “How long have you known?”

“Batman…”

“You’re confronting me now because you’re worried about my intentions toward Dick. He changed your mind about something. Ergo, you’ve been sitting on this for a while. How long have you known I wasn’t real?”

That was such a bizarre choice of words Clark almost skipped answering the question to chase it down, but he held himself back. This wasn’t a story, and Batman wasn’t even a hostile source so far, if it had been. “Wonder Woman, J’onn and I pooled our observations about four months ago, in April. We were pretty sure by the time we finished comparing notes.” He shrugged. “I suspected something a long time before that, but it’s hard to say when it started to be more than…a feeling.”

“A feeling,” Batman echoed. “Yes, it would start there.”

“So?” Superman prompted. He had liked Batman. He was the last person who could insist that someone hiding the truth of his own nature was reprehensible, though the sting he’d felt about it was an uncomfortable reminder of how much most of his friends would resent him, if they knew the truth. So he’d meant to let it lie, until Batman chose to trust them, or gave them a reason not to trust him. “Why have you been visiting…Dick?”

It wouldn’t be suspicious on its own—well, not very suspicious, all things considered, in context—except that Batman had changed, around the same time. Diana said his presence seemed deeper, Clark thought he seemed to be having trouble staying within the outlines of his human mask. J’onn agreed that he seemed somehow more powerful.

Batman stayed silent a long time. Eighteen heartbeats from the boy below them, slower than those of his peers because he had an athlete’s conditioning already and was more deeply asleep than most of them. At last, the being beside him confessed, “He’s carrying me.”

“What?”

“You noticed I’m stronger now,” Batman said matter-of-factly, in a way that almost managed to cover up emotion. “That’s his doing. I was…fading, when you met me. Not up to capacity. I’m not really meant to exist that way.” He glanced over at Superman again, as though evaluating his reaction, and Clark wondered if he had really needed to do that—if he really only saw out of his eyes. J’onn could make eyes anywhere he wanted some, but he needed them to see. Batman seemed somehow less constrained by biology than that.

“Is it hurting him?”

“No! No. It…shouldn’t.” Batman ghosted a sigh, voiceless, inhuman as the wind. “I don’t know that it’s good for a child to be around me. But I’m not…taking anything from him. I’m not…feeding on him, if that’s what you think.”

It was what Clark had feared. And probably anything that would eat a child would also lie about it, but Batman was his teammate and very nearly his friend. So it was reassuring to have it so firmly denied. He’d come braced for only a little and no lasting damage and he said it was fine.

“Please,” he said. “Can you explain it to me?”

“I suppose I have to.” Batman tipped his head back, to look up at the few stars that smudged themselves visible through the red blanket of light-polluted smog overhead. Clark could make out more of them, even with his ordinary visible-light vision, than a human could have. He wondered what Batman saw. “Will you tell the others for me? Your little conspiracy?”

“Not Green Lantern and Flash?”

“Hal and Barry can figure me out on their own.” That dry sense of humor was the same, even if it was bending amusement onto a mouth that could no longer pass as human.

A breath Clark suspected he didn’t need was drawn. “A different little boy made me up,” Batman said. “Bruce Wayne. You can look the story up in the newspaper archives.

“It was a little over twenty years ago, in Gotham. A mugger shot his parents in front of him.” Another slanted glance, and then he looked away again. He certainly acted like he needed his eyes to see. “It wasn’t more terrible than things that happen to a hundred other people every day, really. But he was the right kind of terrified and angry, in the right place, at the right moment…the police reports all say he tackled the mugger from behind, and got lucky that the man hit his head. But it was me. I took him down.”

He raised his face back toward the smudged stars. “I was such a small thing, then. If that vengeance had been enough—the killer taken in and sentenced, brought to justice—I would have faded away again. Things like me are summoned and dispelled that way all the time. Or he could have taken me back into himself—the danger was past, it wasn’t a chronic part of his existence, so I would have reintegrated, probably, and not hung around rising up to protect him for the rest of his life, and probably disrupting it in the process.”

That amused quirk to the horizontal slash of a mouth, again. “But it wasn’t enough. Not for him. He clung. He brooded. He wanted to protect everyone. And I grew.” Bittersweet and fond. “I grew until I really could help. Until anyone could see me, any time I liked. Until I was solid enough to get in half a dozen fights in one night without my blows starting to go right through the enemy.”

There was no way Batman was letting him know these things about how he worked, when he wasn’t holding back, by accident. They were being given.

“Where’s Bruce now?” Clark asked. Knowing it was probably a painful topic, but hoping to hear it was some rule of magic out of a storybook, that only a child had the right kind of belief to sustain a projection of this nature. That Bruce Wayne had grown up and moved on and had a career and a family, and perhaps didn’t remember that Batman was something he’d made.

Batman’s eyes closed, and vanished completely into the black of his head. He’d kept unspooling all the while he’d been talking, Clark realized, and the gouts and folds and flame-like flickers of his cape now sprawled over more than half the roof, leaving a great circle of open space around Superman himself, and a broad open route away from Batman, as though he couldn’t just go straight up if he wanted to get away. The billows of it had now collapsed in on themselves. His voice, when he spoke, was hushed and solemn, but calm. “He didn’t make it to sixteen. He died tackling a gunman who’d been holding up a corner store where he happened to be, buying junk food he wasn’t supposed to have. The cashier fumbled the register key and bent over to pick it up, and the man panicked and started shooting. Bruce saved lives, that night. But he didn’t survive. Because I wasn’t there. I was away protecting other people, like he’d asked me to.”

“I’m sorry,” Clark said. Inadequate as always, but more so, when he’d pushed for this truth and didn’t even understand enough to know how to offer comfort. He reached out to offer a comforting, boundary-respecting brief pat on the shoulder, like he might have when he had less idea what Batman was, and his hand hung still in the air, as the face Batman turned toward him was human again, so abruptly that even to his accelerated visual perceptions it looked like some sort of glitch.

“This is his face,” Batman told him, and the grief that hadn’t been in his voice before was worn on it, in the pull of the mouth and the bend of pain around the blank white eyes. He looked like he might cry. “The way he would have looked. He never…grew this far, but…”

“In memory of him, then,” Superman said, soothing, and was able to deliver the pat on the shoulder and withdraw. It sounded like Batman was in some ways the only surviving part of Bruce Wayne, and as such had every right to his appearance, but he clearly didn’t think of himself that way, and it wasn’t Clark’s place to try to alter his self-concept, or even make comment when he’d only just been introduced to it. “That seems appropriate.”

Batman shrugged. It looked very human, except for the way the cape parts of him reacted. “I knew it best.”

Had he held the memory of his…creator’s face in his head, updating it carefully to how he would have looked with every year or month that passed? That couldn’t be healthy. It also might be unavoidable, considering Batman’s origins.

“You went on protecting Gotham, afterward?”

“What else would I do?”

“And you joined us. When Starro came.” Batman nodded, as though that was only obvious. Clark supposed it was—when you were a supernatural entity created to protect human beings, why would you not answer a call to band together with other superpowered beings to save the world? “Why did you pretend?” he asked. “To be…”

“Human?” Batman asked. He snorted in derision, either at Clark’s inability to choose a word or his own deceit. “It wasn’t the first time. I talk to the police like this, sometimes. Witnesses. It reassures people, to be talking to a…person.”

That was the same reason J’onn made himself look more human, even in blatant green—it wasn’t entirely unlike why Clark kept his own life as Clark, why Superman didn’t wear a mask. “But why…” He’d gone to such lengths, to maintain the façade. Human jaw and teeth, sculpted solid to catch X-ray vision behind flesh he’d carefully made permeable to it, when even now with the image of Bruce Wayne’s face restored he wasn’t bothering. Consistent physical proportions. Always running close against the edge of normal human limits, of strength and speed and length of jump—not hanging back, but not throwing himself onto the front line either, contributing as much with tactics and analysis as actual combat. “Why try so hard to convince us?”

Batman shrugged. “I wasn’t holding back that much. I told you. I was fading. I was never meant to last. Once it turned out the team wasn’t a one-time thing, I still didn’t want to go through the whole…process of revelation.”

“But you’re doing it now.” Clark found he was grinding his teeth, because he was putting together a picture he didn’t like. “Because. Now you’re expecting to survive.” Batman had been dying. He hadn’t thought it was worth the stress of being honest with them, because he hadn’t expected to exist long enough for their relationships to matter.

Superman glanced down through the roof at the sleeping children, and one child in particular.

“I wasn’t there in time to save his parents, either,” Batman said, and Clark knew that feeling—all this power and yet you could still arrive too late, and be too little. But Batman was defined by that feeling, founded upon it almost, so it probably struck him deeper. “But I was there afterward. I protected him from the followup attacks, meant to stop him testifying about the sabotage he’d witnessed.

“And he clung to me, whenever I came…I do try to comfort them, especially when it’s children, but usually they’re at least a little bit afraid. He wasn’t. And he didn’t have anyone else to cling to. They wouldn’t let his parents’ friends in to see him more than once, and then they left town. And then, after I came to tell him that Zucco and his men were taken care of for good, when I left I felt the distance opening…I realized I was…his, now.”

There was a strange, wondering ache in the way he said it that made it easy for Clark to repress his own discomfort with the idea of anyone belonging to anyone else, and of something that looked like a grown man asserting an intimate personal bond with an unrelated child. Batman was supposed to belong to a child, it was how he’d been made, and he’d expected to die by inches in the absence of the one who’d made him, and now he suddenly wasn’t. This little orphan was the most precious thing in his world, that was plain, and to Clark at least it was equally plain that he felt a deep guilt at replacing the boy who had been his world before.

He wondered, suddenly, if Batman had ever been this honest with anyone in his existence. Had he been this open even with his Bruce, or had his need to protect led him to put on a front, and conceal every uncertainty?

The pale smudge of Batman’s face was still and remote, and his voice was nearly calm, but the darkness of his cape had spilled out over the whole roof now, and it was gently writhing. The route out for Superman, opposite Batman’s main body, had shrunk to the merest footpath. Was that there out of instinct, or a more conscious courtesy?

“You don’t have to leave that,” Superman said quietly, flipping his thumb toward the corridor of open shingle and beam. “I know you aren’t trying to trap me, and it won’t anyway.”

The path snapped shut almost instantaneously, and a little of the strain in the atmosphere faded—Batman had been holding himself back from encircling him completely only with continuous effort. Why? Did he naturally expand to fill the available space? Or was expanding in the form of the cape an expression of emotion that was uncomfortable to suppress, in the same way it was hard to sit still when you felt anxious, or hold your tongue when you got mad?

His teammate’s whole torso was turned away, now, and this too was easy to read—shame at his own inhumanity. In front of Clark, of all people. But then, Clark made it look easy, didn’t he? It even was easy for him, when it came to things like looking like he fit in.

J’onn should have been the one to come. But it disconcerted him not to be able to pick up anything Batman did not intentionally share—Clark didn’t think he’d learned to read human body language yet, beyond the most obvious things—and Batman had been known to use fire.

“It didn’t seem wise to seem to be trying to threaten you,” Batman said flatly, into the night.

“Thank you,” said Superman, because while he didn’t mind at this point, it would definitely have made him uncomfortable earlier, before Batman had made himself so vulnerable. “Could you, do you think?”

A sidelong look. “You’re less invulnerable to magic,” Batman said. “Probably.”

Something to keep in mind. The Flash was the only teammate he had now that he was reasonably sure he could take three falls out of three. Maybe they could start practicing against each other, if they could find somewhere they could risk making a mess on that scale. Sparring—he and Diana had tried it out, gingerly. If Batman wanted to stretch out his re-expanding powers in a secure environment…

“Do you have any plans, going forward?” Now that he had a future to plan for.

“I have someone who helps me,” Batman replied. “Bruce’s guardian, after his parents died. He wanted to leave Gotham, after…but he stayed. To try to help the city, in Bruce’s memory. And to keep an eye on me.” The amusement this time was bitter. “We don’t really get along. He thinks Bruce died because of me—that I made him feel invulnerable, and then didn’t protect him. He’s projecting. But I suppose that’s what I’m for.”

Clark made a face; he didn’t like the idea of people being for purposes. Even people who’d been made. This wasn’t the time to argue about it. “But he helps you?”

“He helps.” Batman glanced down, toward Dick’s bed, as though once again he could see through the roof. “I’m trying to get him to agree to take Dick in. He did a good job with Bruce, even if he doesn’t think so.”

“Will that be the best for Dick?” Clark asked, as neutrally as he could manage. He could tell Batman’s intentions were good, but he didn’t know if putting a child entirely within the influence of a supernatural being that had latched onto him, without an external line of support, was a good idea. On the other hand, putting him in the care of an adult who would know he wasn’t delusional could only help. And Clark could be the outside support, if necessary—not that he wasn’t under Batman’s influence himself, but he wasn’t within his circle of it the way this Alfred seemed to be, resentment or not. The resentment might be the most dangerous part.

What part of this train of thought Batman sensed, he couldn’t tell, as his comrade only retorted, “It can’t be worse than here!”

A group home with four beds to a room certainly wasn’t the best environment, but surely he couldn’t be here much longer. “Have you talked to him about it?”

“He doesn’t get much privacy. He agreed to meet with Alfred last time he ducked into a closet while I was there, so now Alfred’s the focus of the plan.” Batman sighed again. “He’s so brave,” he said fondly. “It worries me. I wish he were somewhere safe.”

The wild impulse rose to offer to step in, to take the role of legal guardian if this Alfred wouldn’t. Clark sat on it. He didn’t want a child, he wasn’t equipped to care for a child, CPS would be able to see that perfectly well in a single reporter in his 20s living in a one-bedroom apartment in a somewhat run-down building. He didn’t even live in the same state, and child placement was handled on a state-by-state basis so even petitioning for custody would be horrifically involved, never mind obtaining it. Also, he had a secret identity to protect.

He couldn’t always help. The hardest lesson in life, and one he had to keep relearning.

“So your plans are…to get Dick into a safe home environment.”

“And keep him alive,” Batman affirmed. Quick, and firm, and almost not obvious about what a vital goal this was to him. Keeping this child alive, the way he’d failed to keep the one before.

“Of course.” Clark nodded. If everything he’d been told was true—and he thought it was, it felt true—then there was no need for the League to intervene. Gotham was probably safer than it had ever been. “Can I meet him, sometime?” Partly to do his part as an outside support network. Partly because he was curious, to meet this child who’d been able to reach his hand into Batman’s chest and close his fingers around his heart.

Batman glanced over, and then seemed to relax. Even the endless piles of his cape seemed suddenly to behave more like ordinary fabric. “I passed, then?”

“What?” Oh. Of course he’d known. Clark had hardly been sneaky. “Yes.”

“Not that I know what you were planning to do if I hadn’t.”

Clark didn’t know either, other than get Dick away of he seemed to need it.

“All of this is off the record, of course,” Batman added. It was a testament to how distracted Superman was by Batman’s problems that it took a long second for him to realize the potential implications of that choice of words, and read in Batman’s posture and the way his cape had developed hooks of tension in some of its folds that they were entirely intentional.

“How long have you known?” he asked.

“You attended a press event in Gotham two years ago. You still feel like you, no matter how you dress.”

“Well.” Superman tried to shake the sudden tension out of his shoulders. Batman was a good detective and data analyst, that hadn’t changed with the rest of it. He’d certainly tracked down the name of the gentleman from the Planet. “I guess that’s fair. And of course it’s off the record. I won’t even tell J’onn and Diana anything but the basics without your permission.”

“Oh.” Batman clearly hadn’t expected that. “Why?”

“You have a right to your privacy.” Clark thought back over his own approach to the whole situation and said, with a gentleness born somewhat of guilt, “You are a person, after all.”

“I’m really not,” Batman said, corner of his mouth ticking up just slightly to underline the easy irony in his voice. But the great spread of cape had fallen into easier, more geometric wrinkles, and Clark was beginning to learn to trust that over what he said with his borrowed face. Though he could almost definitely lie with the cape part of himself, too, if he needed to.

“Don’t…” His tongue flickered across the back of his teeth; be brave, Kent. “Don’t talk about my friend that way, huh?”

[almondmilks-posts]

Schlatt- executed pt2

*I am so proud of part 1

pls go show some love

Maybe a SERIES?? Maybe pt3??? Maybe some more angst?? Maybe some cute fluff with glatt?? Maybe idk if you would like to see more uwu

This took so long omg... I'm sorry

Context: in part 1 you became ghost!y/n much like Ghostbur  you forgot most of your memories including your death...

Life after death was weird. You had very vague memories of each member of the sever but other than that you completely forgot about your past life including how you died. You never expected that you would become a sentiant ghost on the server after death you also never expected Wilbur to become one either so here we are. You took a great liking to Ghostbur as he did to you, you both hanging out became a regular occurrence on the SMP you mainly liked hanging around quackity he had these homely vibes to him that made you want to be around him but you were not quite sure why although he had been seeing you less and less and when you did meet he seemed on edge always looking behind him, shaking his head off to the distance when you turn around, nothing.

You didn't know why Ghostbusr was obsessed with the colour blue, always handing out lapis lazuli to saddened goes by with a "here have some blue" but he always did. You guys can't mine down in the caves something about bedrock pressure?  but he always had stacks of blue on him at all times.

You- hey bur where do you get the blue from?

Ghostbur- oh uhhh umm I just have it sometimes I get it from Phill

You- oh cool. I want something I'm not sure I've decided on what...

Ghostbur- hmmmmm y/n how about

You- I know red mushrooms because they look so cool like lil toadstools.

Ghostbur- yes that's such a good idea

You- I need to ask Phil to see if he has any spare mushrooms adiós bur I'll see you later.

You began to float your way over the the snowy tundra that Phil resides in. You passed many different landmarks on your way only knowing by the names you and ghostbur had given them. Home home also known as the community House although in ruins after it was exploded by puffy. You did try to stop her however your attempts were unsuccessful. 

You- omg I'm so sorry I wasn't looking where I was going here look I have some seeds take this as a sorry

You were in your thoughts so much that you had phased into a body. As a ghost you are able to phase through people However you phased into the body meaning whoever you walked into was not alive. You reached your arms into your pockets to see what you have as a sorry before the mushrooms which you still haven't been managed to find any. Thecno needing them for potions ofc knowing the butcher army was coming for him he planicked stealing so many resources including some of blue from Wilbur accidentally. You found three seeds in your pockets your had picked up from when you were hanging around Callahan (he's my fav on the SMP omg) and punz this one time just giving while punz went on a nether mission for ghast tears. You extended your arm out to the person, lifting your head up to look the person in the eyes.

Glatt- y/n?

He had Horns. Deep black horns protruding out the side of his head. His skin a pale grey ash colour, contrasting his flaming red eyeballs which looked down upon you due to the height difference. His suit a very dark grey almost black but not quite,  You looked at him than back at the seeds. He seemed like he didn't take any interest in taking the seeds from you as a sorry, you furrowed your eye brows at his sort of question? You really didn't remember your past life, thecno told you that most ghosts don't when they die the ones that do are 'poor damned souls of wrong doers' comforting you that you did some good when you were living.

You- uhh sorry I don't know a y/n?? Im ghosty/n! Well it would make sense that I'm y/n well was y/n hahahaha I don't remember much from my past life unfortunately

Glatt- you don't- you don't remember how you died do you?

You- uhhh no? Should I? I ask quackity you know quackity right? Small guy, blue beanie anyway he wouldn't tell me how I died he said it was a too long to explain anyway I gotta go bye uhhhh...

Glatt- oh it's glatt

You- well nice to meet you glatt if you see Phill tell him I need some red mushrooms

And with that you floated off on your mission to find some red mushrooms. Glatt stood there face slashed red. He felt embarrassed? Sick to his stomach? He wasn't quite sure what he felt, quackity had told him of your ghost life when he was pestering quackity this one time however he was scared. He was once a ruthless tryrant president drinking all day and all night because he couldn't handle the power and disappointment of his peers knowing he was struggling being president so he turned to alcohol. He was so plastered when he stabbed you he didn't even know what he did until quackity and Niki Walked out on him with some fruitful words.

Schlatt thought back to when quackity had confronted him, carrying your enchanted diamond boots Phil brought on your wedding day and never took them off since. Quackity looked so hopeless his eyes filled with tears, trembling hands as he screamed at schlatt so hard his vocal cords never recovered even after all this time and everything he's been through. Despite this he carried on trying to ruin quackity's life. Even after death the fucker never lost his need for power and bullying quackity is all he knew how. The issue was he could not find the small mexican, he floated all through what manburg was, he floated past the church, the target, the community house but no sign of quackity. He was searching through the community house for anything he could steal just because 'he was glatt he could do what he wants'; as a ghost he really didn't change. A fit of giggles rung through his ears, he hadn't heard that noise in years. Glatt knew that it was you of course you were married for several years before the incident. He caught himself smiling as he once did to see your face (which could easily fit between his larger hands.) He floated across towards where the noise would come from. To see you, a blue sheep with a wonkey eye and Wilbur? He felt anxious, his ghost heart started beating faster, if he wasn't dead he would be having another heart attack right now that would actually kill him. He wasn't sure of it was because you look so happy contracting the last time him saw your glum face as the XP dropped or knowing Wilbur might still be bitter about the election or what happened as a result of it.

You toyed with the blue sheep known as friend. Friend was the first thing ghostbur saw when he woke up as a ghost so there was a major bond between the two,.you would argue it was a closer bond than what tied you with Wilbur but nothing could compare to that. You both had years and years of history some even before Tommy was born but you both just didn't know that. (maybe pt3 y/n becomes human??) Friend was very entertaining for a blue sheep fried could make you and ghostbur cry with laughter but just standing there. ( Ok this is my HC so it's not cannon but I think it should be) The blue sheep had a lazy eye, so for long enough if the sheep did nothing the eyes would travel opposite directions as per usual you and ghostbur were dying over this. You bent down to pick at a blade if grass to feed to friend when a glum feeling came over you. Were you being watched? You wanted to cry, so you turned your head to Look at the assailant to see glatt standing there just looking at you or through you it was unclear.

You-oh hey uhhh glatt? Ah yes I'm right would you like to come hang out with friend, ghostbur and I would love it if you joined us and I'm sure friend doesn't mind you do you? No you don't because you are a cute sheep boopboop

Glatt- I'm not so sure

You- oh come on don't be such a killer it would be fun friend is very well friendly haha come on.

You grasped his cold wrist with your much warmer hands. The size difference between the two contrasted immensely. You blushed, a warm feeling coming over you almost as if you had known him for years. Which y/n did but you didn't know that.  Schlatt frowned at you calling him a killer, did you know? Did Wilbur tell you? A lot happened to manburg after you had died, stuff you missed that you could and would have stopped. You dragged schlatt closer to where friend was excited Wilbur could meet your 'new' friend glatt.

You- hahah bur meet glatt

Ghostbur- oh uh hey glatt nice to meet you, your a friend of n/n's huh?

Glatt- uhh yea something like that

Ghostbur- oh crap! I have to meet with Callahan (he's my fave member) I'm helping him build a forest, well you guys have fun with friend. And glatt? Its nice to see you again.

And with that he floated away from the pair riend looked at schlatt than back at you, than back at schlatt. Its pink tounge slipping out of its mouth. Glatt looked down at you sitting cross legged on the grass petting friend. He thought you looked beautiful with the sun on your ghostlike form, he felt shame wash over him he really ruined you.

You- sit next to me glatt, the sun isn't that bright down here

Glatt- no I don't want to get my suit dirty!

You sighed, why was he so cold? Was it that he didn't like you, was it the fact that he didn't like friend no that's not true everyone loves friend. You frowned over thinking lots of things glatt noticed your frown after he yelled at you; he felt worse that he yelled. Many nights after your death did he think about you and his actions. He numbed the feeling penultimately resulting in further alcoholism and finally his death. He kept your diamond boots in his desk draw so they could be next to him at all times he even picked up some of your XP but that stuff didn't matter to him. Nothing mattered to him. Expect you. He never was good at expressing his feelings to you, and you never pushed him to do that.

Glatt- do you seriously not remember your past life?

You- hmmmm not much

Glatt- what do you know tell me?

You- well, I don't really remember memories it's more feelings and smells towards something? Like Niki I feel very calm and peaceful around her she smells like bread, Wilbur it's like he feels like a brother to me and he smells like gunpowder almost, ummmm who else? Oh Tecno smells like potatoes I'll tell you about that some other time

Glatt- what about me? What do I smell like ( Father Fragrance??)

You- ummmmm it's a weird metallic smell? At first I was like iron smell but I'm not so sure. I was super anxious when I first saw you almost hmmm anger? Fear? But I also wanted to give you a hug it's weird what about me... Your a ghost I'm sure it's the same for you it is for wilbur... What do I smell like glatt?

Glatt- uhh well, it's metallic aswell

You-oh heyy look it's ranboo, Ran heyy look down here? Ranboo? Oh no he's enderwalking again ok well this conversation isn't over glatt

You followed the half enderman who appears to be on his enderwalking state. You don't say much to him as you know he won't hear or respond to you. You follow him past twitch prime, past the portal near to the prison? Confused you stood behind him a little, why was he going to the prison? To see Sam you hope...

But no. He didn't.

[joonkorre]

(love) is a heartache

@drarrymicrofic prompt: hope is a heartache - léon

let it be known that harry goes through life purely on vibes. half of his reasons why for every decision at his big age are “idk imma just hope for the best”

ao3

People’s hearts twinge sometimes. For Draco, he can barely remember the last time he doesn’t have these twinges. It’s pretty normal at this point.

“No, it’s not,” Pansy says. She’s a Healer, so she’s probably right. But Draco prefers to ignore that.

“Leave it be,” Draco murmurs, lips against her scalp, “I’m fine. Say, are you free tomorrow?”

“Yeah. You want to go somewhere?”

“Mm. Sleep.”

They go out the next morning, Pansy in thick makeup and Draco practically drunk under nine layers of Charms. The air is a bit humid, which seems to get worse when the bustling street intensifies in volume into a roaring din. Pansy pulls him under an awning, yanking at his sleeve a bit to try out her disgusting sugary coffee. She always does this whenever she wants to take his attention away from something, which means he just has to look at exactly where she’s doesn’t want him to. As his lips wrap around her lipstick-stained straw, he glances up.

Across the street, a couple strolls through a gushing crowd. Fiery red hair, airy laughter, a pale arm wrapped around her fiancé’s waist. Curls of black, sleek spectacles, a protective palm on his fiancee’s shoulder. They make the perfect picture, a vibrant oil painting. Their existence is formed from bold strokes of sunlight and starburst kisses, with the focal point being a shock of phthalo green and cadmium lemon, two minute specks that make all the difference. As all good paintings do, they pin the viewer on the spot, as if the viewer himself is a thing to behold. Then they shift away.

The exhibit moves forward and out of sight. It’s closing time, the viewer has overstayed his welcome.

Something leaps in Draco’s chest and splatters on the floor of his stomach. Placing her hand over his heart, Pansy frowns at him. She doesn’t ask why Potter stared at someone who looked like a stranger to him. Only tells him to start finding answers.

Months later, on the most awaited day in recent Wizarding history, there’s a knock on Draco’s door.

He throws on a sweater, and a throw, too, for good measure. Ambling to the door, he checks the mail slot before peeking through the peephole. Nobody but a package is outside. Draco hums and unlocks his door, crouching down the moment it opens. What feels like soft satin brushes against his cheek, cool and smooth. With a flash, a pair of shiny dress shoes appear before him.

“Draco.”

Draco peers up as he rises, hands around the package. Potter has his maddening Invisibility Cloak slung over his arm, his roguish charm heightened by a perfectly fitted three-piece suit. A tiny posy is pinned on his left lapel, muted green hellebores with a few sprigs of privet berries. He’s dressed like a man in love.

Draco feels something he hasn’t felt in months at the sight. He’s trained himself to suppress it the moment it showed itself and has been relatively successful until now. The sting, without warning, bursts from within his chest, calling forth a slight wince. Potter’s brows furrow.

"How do you know where I live?"

“How long has this been going on?”

Draco frowns. “Pardon?”

“That,” Potter gestures at Draco’s chest. “The heartache.”

He rears back. What the hell is he supposed to say to that? At Potter’s unchanging expression, Draco shoves his hair out of his face with a quiet huff and puts a hand on the doorknob.

“It’s none of your business. Please leave.”

“It is, actually,” Potter stops the closing door with one arm.

“Excuse me? We haven't had a proper conversation in more than a decade and suddenly you want to act like we're friends? Leave, now.”

“Listen to me. How can it not be my business when I feel it, too?”

“Check with a Healer, then. If you can put past grudges aside, I can hand you Pansy Parkinson’s business card,” Draco grits through his teeth, pushing against the door with his entire body, his throw slipping to the ground.

“Draco, stop, I already know, stop.”

“Know what? No, I don't care. Leave at once, else I’d alert the Aurors.”

A rough slam sends Draco staggering back. Potter pants, hard lines on his face. His chest heaves under his crisp white shirt, its top two buttons unclasped, and he steps over the threshold, closing the door.

“You think they’d believe you?”

The pain shoots from his chest to the rest of his body, and for several seconds, his lungs wouldn’t work. He whips his head away from Potter, who groans and sags against the wall.

“I told you to leave.”

“I’m sorry, that was a shitty thing to say,” Potter says immediately, sweat dotting his temples.

After an uncomfortable pause, clearing his throat, he picks up the near-forgotten package from the carpet. His hand feels around the outline of the object within, rectangular and heavy. Glancing at Draco, he says hoarsely. “I know why you bought this book.”

“Know this, know that, you know nothing,” Draco lunges forward, only for Potter to twist out of the way and raise the package out of his reach.

“The Life-long Burden of Dark Curses: A Caution by Elise Arrowlane, limited edition,” he says, unbothered by Draco’s slackened jaw. “You ordered it from the new bookstore on Diagon months ago. You were small and old and grey, but I recognized you. I always could.”

“Okay,” Draco sneers, “so you’re a stalker. Old news. Anything else?”

“There’s no need to order one. I would’ve borrowed it from Hermione if you had only asked,” Potter says. “Instead, I got curious and read it for myself. That’s how I connected the dots about the heartache, how I realized we’ve both had it since that day years ago.”

“Oh, the day you slashed me into ribbons and almost cut through my heart?” Draco clenches his jaw.

Being able to shout this ugly kind of truth into the perpetrator’s face feels oddly liberating. That is, if liberation also comes with a specific kind of agony that makes Draco want to fall to his knees.

“Dark Magic leaves a mark on both the wizard and their victim, doesn’t it? No need for a book to tell us that,” Potter says, the harsh afternoon glow of him gentled by the soft lamplight in Draco’s hallway. “In certain cases, it even leaves a link. A connection.”

Draco bites the inside of his cheek and looks away. The only consequence from that horrid night was his fucked up heart and nothing else, nothing at all. Whatever Potter is insinuating, he hates it. He hates this. He hates him.

“How are you so sure there’s a connection.”

“I wasn’t,” Potter says. “The Healers said it’s a health thing I developed after the War and I just needed to avoid strenuous activity. I didn’t think much of it, but then I read the book and realized that it usually flared up whenever you watched me.”

Scoffing, Draco turns and stalks into the kitchen. Walking past the boiling kettle, he throws a cabinet door open and grabs a mug, his hand trembling.

“Interesting how my health suffers when I see the bastard who quite literally carved me open.”

“I was eating dinner when I thought I was going to die of a heart attack at 23,” Potter continues. Draco pulls the drawers out, unable to find a single bag of tea for several excruciating moments. “The next day, I was reading about your mother’s death on the Daily Prophet. That was the first sign.”

Grabbing a rag and wetting it, Draco wipes the countertop even as he’s just done so last night.

“When Ginny saw you on the street during our date and extended her hand toward you, you shook it. But your heart ached.

“I saw you looking at the picture of Ginny and I kissing on the front page of Witch Weekly. Your hair was brown and your back was curved, but I saw you. Your heart ached.

“When I announced my engagement to her on the Battle of Hogwarts’s 10th Anniversary, you were clapping along with everyone else. But your heart ached.”

Draco throws the rag on the counter. The kettle whistles, a piercing sound. “What’s your point? Are you here purely to flaunt your relationship and imply that I’m in love with Ginevra Weasley? If so, I got it. Thank you so very much, it’s been enlightening. Now get out.”

“The point is,” Potter says, lifting the kettle off the burner to pour it into Draco’s mug, placing his tea bag in, “unless the article about you being gay was wrong, Ginny isn’t the one you’re in love with.”

“What arti—” Draco stops. “That was years ago.”

His sexuality was leaked to some irrelevant gossip rag, not even making the front page. Nobody noticed, nothing changed, and it hasn’t entered his mind in what feels like forever until Potter reminds him.

“I remember.”

“You—” Draco frowns. His eyes strain on the cup of tea until they hurt. He squeezes them shut, sighing. “It doesn’t prove anything. Perhaps I’m jealous of my childhood nemesis having a better life than me, ever thought of that?”

“Yeah,” Potter says, “I’ve thought about this a lot. Which is why I’m here. To make sure.”

Draco takes it in, then, unable to help himself, curls his lips at Potter and his attire. At his artfully gelled hair, his hanging bow tie, the elegant boutonniere on the lapel of his dark blue suit. His empty ring finger.

“Couldn’t you have chosen a better date to make sure? Preferably before your wedding day?”

Potter steps closer. A respectable distance away, but closer.

“I could’ve, but I spent most of those days in denial. Then the dots connected and I couldn’t deny it anymore, so I decided to just go through with the wedding regardless, be with the woman I loved. Hoped that maybe the odd emotions I had would go away,” he shrugs, raising his eyes to meet Draco’s. “Saw Ginny at the end of the aisle and, well, I couldn’t stop thinking that it should’ve been someone else. All this time, I’ve thought that she didn’t feel… right in my arms, but I pushed it down. And there she was in that white dress.

“Seeing that today was the last straw. I had to leave.”

Draco’s breath catches in his throat. Swallowing it down, he grabs his mug, scooping out the tea bag just to have something to do. He takes a sip without blowing, ignoring its scalding heat.

“That was stupid.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re so fucking stupid,” Draco can feel a headache building. “That was a horrible decision. I never imagined you—you!—out of all people, could be this irresponsible. What the fuck.”

“You’re right.”

“Of course I am. Merlin, that poor fucking woman. If your purpose here is to make me feel bad for Ginevra and all 300 of her relatives for once in my life, you’ve succeeded, congratulations.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that to me, say that to—oh, you’d do what you want no matter what I say, wouldn’t you?”

“Depends on the situation.”

“‘Depends on the situation,’ he says,” Draco mocks, getting a carton of milk from the fridge to save his bitter, bitter tea. Potter doesn’t reply. Stirring the milk in, Draco lets out a heavy sigh.

“What do you want me to do about this?” He says. “I didn’t make you run out of your own wedding. If you expect me to take the blame for your inane decisions, the first person I Floo wouldn’t be the Aurors, but Ginevra Weasley herself.”

A small smile graces Potter’s lips. “I don’t expect anything from you but honesty.”

Draco squints.

“And how will you know if what I say is a lie? Will you reject my genuine answer if it’s not what you want to hear?”

“That won’t be a problem,” Potter says. “I trust your heart will speak the truth for us both.”

There’s a pang in Draco’s chest, and judging from the twitch of Potter’s brow, he can feel it too. Not another word is said, the two men merely facing each other from across a tiny kitchen, considering. Draco can feel the warmth of sunlight beaming through the little window and coating his nape as he leans against the sink, earl grey on his tongue. Lovely citric notes of bergamot drift up his nose. He closes his eyes. What to do, what to do.

Weightless oxfords clack against the yellowed tiles, clear and bright in Draco’s ears. Fabric rustles as Potter slips a hand into his pocket only to retrieve it a second later. Draco lets himself be cornered, barely glancing at the wool-clad arms caging either side of his waist. A clink catches his attention, however, and he tilts his head to the left.

Millimeters beside Draco’s hand on the counter, glinting in the sun, is a wedding band. Draco knows Potter and Ginevra’s in and out, has examined the picture on that day’s issue of the Daily Prophet more times than he should have. He knows the marquise droplets of Ginevra’s gems and the chevron curve of her ring, the blankness of Potter’s own band a dream and a question in his mind.

The band that’s resting on the counter is different. Rustic gold and a fissure in the middle, the fertile earth splitting open to reveal a stream of diamonds, a sparkling river. Draco sets his mug to the side and holds the ring up close, his finger smoothing over the grooves of its texture.

“Did you make a stop at a jewelry store before breaking into my home?” He asks.

“No,” Harry murmurs. Draco looks at him in surprise. “I’ve had this with me for months.”

A pause.

“I thought you said you were in denial.”

“I was, but I knew, somewhat, that I wanted someone else,” Harry’s head lowers, slow and careful, until his forehead rests against Draco’s shoulder. “I told myself that I just liked the way it looked, had to get it in case I didn’t want the other ring anymore. But I got it a size smaller. Been carrying it in my pocket ever since.”

Draco’s heart throbs and throbs. Large hands circle his waist, bunching up the back of his sweater and pressing him close, chest to chest. A blanket of pure heat envelops his body as he breathes in the timeless saffron and neroli of cologne, half-lidded eyes pinned on the band he’s given. Oh, dear, he thinks, and again when it settles at the base of his ring finger with ease, as if it belongs there and never left. Oh, dear.

[rodeoxqueen]

Stuck Thinking About You-Dante/Reader

TheLastCrusader Requested: Dante or Vergil gets immobilized in some embarrassing or inconvenient way during a job and then (Y/N) pays them company until they can be freed. How about they have a crush on (Y/N) and they don't know it is returned until the end?

Vergil’s Part: Coming Soon. 

Read it on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28187496

Warnings: Fluff, Romantic Comedy, Taking Care of The Twins, Vulnerability, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Characters Call Out The Writer for Her Lazy Writing

Dante was the Legendary Devil Hunter, a tried and true hunter with the might of hundreds of men. And here he was, paralyzed by a venomous demon. During a hunt, it had a lucky shot and hit him with a dart. It would have killed a normal man three times over, causing the victim to lose muscle function and die. Since Dante was not a normal man, his body would metabolize the poison in due time. It’s just too bad he was stuck in his current form, arms to his side and stiff. He was lucky to be able to talk anyway. 

Nero had laughed at his predicament and dragged him back to the van by the boots, throwing him onto the spare seat like a sack of potatoes. His brother had smugly walked alongside his son, entertained by how Dante complained about his now immobilized situation. 

“Laugh it up. When I can move again, I’ll be kicking your asses.” Dante threatened, face down on the cushion with his sword strapped to his back. He sounded muffled and Nero laughed at him again. 

“Wait until (Y/N) found out you got shot in the butt by a demon.” Nero jeered. Dante groaned. 

Oh God forbid you found out, his crush. The gorgeous and funny (Y/N). He’d be a laughingstock. 

You had been working on the Devil May Cry paperwork when the red devil was carried in looking like a cardboard cut out of himself. The red devil was incredibly displeased and had a sour look on his face. 

Nero and Vergil dropped him onto a couch, dusting themselves off and high-fiving. 

“What happened to Dante?” You ask, seeing how Dante was unnaturally still. 

“My brother was unluckily poisoned. The toxins shall wear off soon, although he will be stuck like this for the meanwhile.” 

You see Dante attempt to move with his grunts and groans, yet to no avail. 

“Yeah, he’s gonna have to wait for it to wear off. You should’ve seen him, he gets jabbed and he just drops like a dead body!” Nero wiped a tear of laughter off his face. 

“Anyways, I gotta go back to Fortuna. Call me when he’s back to normal.” Vergil nodded as his son left the door. 

He turned his gaze to you. 

“I am going to retire to my room. Please let me know when he can move again.” He said as he exited the first floor. 

You put your hands on your hips seeing the devil still face down on the couch. 

“Um..Dante?” 

“Yeah?” He said, slightly muted by the cushion. 

“Are you alright?” 

“Can’t move. Stuck.” 

“..Do you want some help?” 

“Nah, I’m alright.” 

“Well, are you sure?” 

“Yeah, don’t worry about me. I’m fine.” 

There was a pause. You could hear Dante trying to breathe with the leather of the couch right up on his nose. 

“Would you like to be face up?” 

Dante stopped for a moment. 

“Yes.” You grinned, getting up from your seat to help out the red devil. Rolling up the sleeves of your sweater, you began by pulling on his side at the innermost of the sofa. You grunted as you put all your might on him. 

He was literally built like a brick house, and he sure as hell weighed like one. You broke a sweat getting him to be perpendicular to the couch before gravity helped out and you tipped him over. He fell back on the couch with a resounding thump. 

“Thanks (Y/N).” He flashed his charming grin, a bit of a struggle as his face muscles were slightly numb.  

You smiled at him. You saw how his veins were slightly darker, and he was quite pale. His body must be working overtime to detox itself. 

“Do you want anything while you’re trapped like this?” He made an effort to try to shrug. 

“I’m good.” Dante was not good. He was freaking out. You were used to touching him, punching him when he said a joke too cheesy, and those grazing touches he’d freak out internally over. You had such nice hands. His side where you pulled him up had tingled. 

You made your way back to the desk, Dante’s eyes on your rear. 

You went back to work, typing up reports, and examining payments from clients. Music played from your headphones, leaving Dante in silence. 

The sounds of you typing, scratching down notes on a notebook, and humming lull him to sleep. Maybe when he wakes up, he’ll be up and running again. 

You were half an hour into your work when you heard snores. Looking up, you see that the younger Sparda twin was fast asleep, probably sleeping off the toxins. An endeared smile crept up your face, seeing how at peace he was. 

Dante was an attractive guy, he was nice and funny. He seemed to always want to hang out with you and make you laugh. What a nice half-demon who was your boss. 

The veins around his neck seemed to pulse, forcing the blood to withdraw the demonic toxins within it. 

You admired the white-haired male, before going back to the papers. 

Dante woke up a few hours later. 

He tried to stretch, only to find his limbs were still stuck to his sides. 

“Ah shit.” He mumbled, yawning. His jaw popped in several places and he tried turning his head to see you. 

You answered the phone tucked by your ear as you rapidly typed out more reports. 

Once you had hung up the phone, you saw that the sleeping man had awakened. 

“Hey, Dante. You’re up. How are you feeling?” Dante sighed.

“Still can’t move.” You frowned. Even with his metabolism? 

“Aw, that sucks.” 

“Is that all my paperwork?” Dante asked, seeing the mountain of papers on the table. You slapped the yellowed papers. 

“This bad boy can fit so many missing payments.” You joked, quoting a car commercial you saw. Dante rolled his eyes. 

“Yeah, let’s all make fun of Dante.” He said. 

You went back to check a few things. Dante peered at the clock. Crap, he always forgets to fix that clock. It’s been 4 o’clock for three months now. 

Dante coughed. He hadn’t had a sip of anything for hours now and napping always made him wake up with a desert-dry throat. He also wanted to rub his eyes but once again, can’t move. 

There was a knock on the door. You grabbed your wallet and got to the door. An amazing smell hit Dante’s nose. 

You came back into his line of sight when you came back with a plastic bag

“You hungry?” You asked, opening the box of pizza you had ordered. You hummed with approval when you saw no olives. 

“Meh, not really.” 

Just when Dante wanted to be low-key, his stomach made the loudest noise. It was like a damn whale call. Mind you, he was starving after his nap. He flushed with embarrassment but tried to play it off. 

You laughed. You made your way over to Dante. 

“It’s fine, I got enough for the two of us.” Setting the pizza box on the ground, you sat next to his still paralyzed form. 

“Oh man, you totally didn’t have to-” His stomach made a louder noise at the amplified smell of baked goods. 

You laughed at his expression. 

“It’s not like I can just move and take a slice right now.” He groaned. His eyes widened when you held up a fork of sliced pizza. You absolute angel. 

“I know.” You winked. 

“Now say ah..” You teased. He smirked, opening his mouth to be fed. 

Dante felt the warm cheesy culinary creation hit his tastebuds. He reveled in the lack of olives, something he always got on his slices whenever he ordered. 

You helped yourself to your own slices between feeding Dante. 

He swallowed wrong, and coughed. He had already hid his dry throat from you, not wanting to be needy. He continued coughing like a madman. A straw hit his lip and he simply sipped it, doing whatever he could to counter his fit. 

The familiar sweetness of cola soothed him and he let out a small burp.

“My bad.” He smiled as you laughed. His eyes darted to the can of soda you put back on the floor. Holy shit. You were drinking out of that. You gave him your straw. You were cool sharing drinks with him. That was an indirect kiss. Dante was ready to implode. Before you could notice his shock, he quickly made a diversion. 

“Where did you order this? It’s a lot better than the place I order at.” He asked after another forkful. You shrugged. 

“It was this new place that recently opened up. It’s close where I live. Thought I’d spice things up a bit and pick a new joint.” 

“Have you been there before?” 

You shook your head no. 

“Yeah, I haven’t. This was my first time ordering there.” Maybe next time Dante could take you there. 

“Feeling bold aren’t we?” You asked smugly at his mumbled sentence. Shit. He did not mean to say that out loud. 

“Uh. Yeah. I am.” He sputtered. You chuckled at the devil’s sudden bashfulnes. 

Dante wished he knew when to shut up. This was one of the times he wished he could. 

“Yeah. I like you a lot. You’re really nice to me, you’re real good looking too. This is totally not how I wanted to ask you out but here I am. This is really awkward for me. You can totally say no. I’m not going to be mad. I’m also your boss so that might be weird-” 

“Tell you what-” You quickly gave him another piece of pizza. 

“Once you can move again, I’ll take you on that offer.” You winked. Dante almost choked again. 

“I like you too, if you haven’t noticed.” You added, looking away for a moment. 

He laughed. You angel. 

Once the slices were cleared and the drink finished, you cleaned up. Dante saw through the window a completely dark night. 

“Whoa. It’s super late. Are you sure you want to go out that late?” Dante asked, genuinely worried. 

You shrugged. 

“I mean, it’s not too bad. I don’t live that far-” 

“I can teleport you home.” Vergil called from the stairs. The older twin came down with his book in hand. 

“Oh Vergil. Nice to see you again. I saved you a couple slices of pizza.” You pointed to the box that lied on Dante’s desk. 

“No need. Although the gesture was very kind of you.” Vergil quickly took out the Yamato, slashing through dimensions.

“Well this is oddly convenient plot-wise. Totally lazy writing. The writer definitely gave up with the conclusion. This is outrageously well-timed.” You said, hands on your hips. Vergil gave you a look.

“What?” 

“What.” 

“Anyways. I’ll see you soon. Call me when you’re back to normal.” You say to Dante. He winks at you and makes a click noise with his mouth. He’d do the finger guns too but again, he can’t freaking move. 

You left promptly, waving at Dante and thanking Vergil. 

The older twin turns around to see his shameless brother. 

“So, how long were you upstairs waiting for her to leave?” 

“Too long. I’m surprised she took overtime just to take care of your sorry self.” 

“I’m the one with a hot date, Mr. I Got Laid Once.” 

His brother scowled. 

“If it were not for the fact that you are not a fair match in your current condition, I would have slaughtered you by now.” The Yamato was pointed in his direction and Dante blew a raspberry at him. 

“Whatever.” 

“I’m going to bed. You can stay on the couch, you dolt.” Vergil snipped, going back up the stairs. The lights were shut off, leaving Dante in darkness. 

Dante smirked, closing his eyes. He can’t wait to wake up tomorrow and plan out a date with you.

[brendaaaa]

Happy Pair of Dinguses (Robin Buckley x fem!Reader)

“Y/n, I think we’re almost done!” Robin exclaimed excitedly from her chair beside you. You nodded, grooving your body to the Bon Jovi blasting out of Robin’s baby blue stereo. “I think so too, babe.”

You held up one of the last few puzzle pieces, squinting at it and turning it to the side curiously. It was brown with a green streak across it. “The hell is this?” You muttered to yourself, glancing at the reference image and trying to figure where it could possibly fit. “What do you think Stevie would say if he saw us?” Robin giggled, referencing your guys’ dingus best friend. You mimicked his voice, “Figures that you band and choir nerds would be doing a puzzle. Why am I friends with you again?” Robin laughed and joined in, “This can’t get out. No one can know that my best friends are so lame! It’ll be the death of me!” You both cackled together, enjoying the lovely activity of making fun of Steve. Yes, he was a douche, but your experience under the mall had bonded you three forever. You and Robin in a more-than-friends way, all three of you as possibly the strangest trio of besties that Hawkins had ever seen. Steve was mostly over the fact that you and your girlfriend were complete geeks, but he occasionally had moments where he would worry about how you two affected his popularity status. “Oh oh!” Robin exclaimed suddenly, snatching the piece you had been fretting over out of your hand. “I know where this goes!” She placed it in the correct spot. “What?” You exclaimed, sputtering. “I- right there?” Robin smiled cheesily at you with her eyes closed, “Puzzles can be deceiving, my love.” And that was true. Your puzzle was very difficult. It was abstract. It had squares, triangles and circles in various colors. It was a thousand-piecer in her dining room that you two had been working on in spare moments for days. Today you decided to actually sit down and finish it.

As of right now, you only had like twenty or so pieces left, but they were difficult pieces to place. “Yess!” Robin held up one of her hands and slapped it, giving herself a congratulatory high five. “Another one bites the dust,” she pointed at where she had just put in another piece. “Good job, babe,” you gave her a pat on the shoulder, trying not to be jealous that you hadn’t put in a piece in at least twenty minutes. It wasn’t your fault that Robin was insanely good at puzzles, as well as very proud of her skills.

You took a sip out of your glass of water, and the radio changed to play the song Paradise City, and you began to move with the sweet sounds of Slash’s guitar, and you sang along when the lyrics began. “Take me down to the paradise city, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty,” you sang in a falsetto voice, shooting a suggestive look at Robin, who bobbed her head to the music.

“Oop, another one!” she popped the reddish-yellow piece between her fingers into its rightful place. You groaned, half-joking, half-annoyed that you were struggling so bad.

You selected a yellow piece from the scattering of options that remained. “See this?” you held it right up to your girlfriend’s face. “I’m going to find this one’s place,” you promised, “I swear it!” She crossed her eyes at it, a laugh escaping her lips, and shook her head, grabbing a puzzle piece of her own. “Whatever y/n.”

You rolled your eyes at her, leaning in towards the table, intensely staring at the almost completed puzzle. Your impatience grew as you couldn’t find it, and as Robin kept inching closer to the finish.

Eventually, you just had to take a break. “Robin, I’m going to get some more water, kay?” She peered at you, trying to figure out what was up, “Okay. Don’t be long. We’re so close to finishing,” she gestured in front of her.

You nodded, grabbing your empty water glass, pushing your unkempt hair out of your face and walked to the kitchen, where you poured refilled your cup with water from the tap, leaning against the counter. You mentally shamed yourself for getting so frustrated with yourself at not being able to a stupid puzzle.

You weren’t exactly a perfectionist, but you were far from being okay with failure. You kept telling yourself that it was just something you needed to work through, but it seemed to never get better. You stood there for a moment, just staring at the oven door handle, lost in thought when Robin’s voice called you back to reality.

“Y/nnnnnnnn!” “What?” You called back. “Ready to put the last piece in, babe?” she asked, and you walked back to the dining room, confused. “Wait, aren’t you just going to finish it?” you said, brow furrowing. “No, no. You get to do the honors,” she held out the final piece, a blue one with a little orange in the corner. You felt a smile tugging at your lips as you took it from her, sitting down. “Right there,” she pointed to the only blank space still available. “Let’s do a countdown,” you suggested, and she smiled, “okay.” You made eye contact, “1…” Robin giggled with her adorable laugh that won you over every day. “2…” you said unison. “3…” you put the piece in, and it was a magical feeling, wrapping up all the loose ends, and completing this puzzle once and for all. You looked up at Robin, who had her head tilted and was smiling at you in a happy admiring way. “I love you, you know,” you blurted out, dead serious. Her eyebrows went up, and the corners of her lips perked up. She opened her mouth but nothing came out. You grinned at her. Not much that you said could ever make Robin Buckley speechless. This had done the trick apparently. “I-” she stuttered through her words, “Y/n, I love you too,” and you took her hand in yours, and like a happy pair of dinguses, you smiled at one another, lost in each other’s eyes.

Word Count: 1038