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loveharlow · 8 months ago

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SEVEN - 007

PAIRING ‧₊˚ JJ Maybank x Fem!Reader

SYNOPSIS‧₊˚[9.6k] based on 1x07 and 1x08.

WARNING(S)‧₊˚ swearing, violence, mentions of child abuse, mentions of su*cide, blackmail, breaking and entering, mentions of gun use/murder

NOW PLAYING‧₊˚

A/N‧₊˚ hope y'all are excited for the next chapter as it is the end of season one, cheer or cry, it's up to you. also small heads up, the series masterlist will be updated with some small things that'll help me flow this series better in between seasons.

˗ˏˋ series masterlist ˎˊ˗

“HELL OF A JOB MELTING THIS SHIT DOWN, DR. FRANKENSTEIN.” JJ directed the jab at Kiara, holding the solidified glob of gold in his hands as The Twinkie pulled up to a pawn shop on The Cut.

“Like you could’ve done better.” She retorted, being the first to exit the van as the rest of you followed.

“I could have.” The blonde boy sassed back. “You’re not the one who has to pawn off this piece of shit. How did I get this job anyway?” He muttered, hiking his backpack up his shoulder and walking off into the corner store.

“‘Cause you’re the best liar.” Pope chipped in. The bell above the door chimed as the six of you entered, an elderly black woman punching in numbers at the register turning her attention towards you all.

“Afternoon, ma’am.” JJ greeted.

“Afternoon.” She had a bit of sass in her voice, probably suspicious of six teenagers walking into a pawn shop mid-day.

“I see you buy gold.”

“That’s what the sign say, don’t it?” The shop owner clapped back, a hand on her hip as she pursed her lips.

“Well, I sure hope you buy a lot of it, ‘cause I’m about to blow your mind.” He told the older woman, swinging the backpack off and practically slamming it down on the counter-top.

“I ain’t got much mind left to blow, so have at it.” She challenged in her southern drawl. JJ pulled the gold from his bag, placing it in front of her. She simply laughed. “That ain’t real. It can’t be.”

“That ain’t real?” JJ raised an eyebrow, leaning against the counter. “Feel how heavy it is.” The woman took him up on his offer, struggling just to lift the melted mess off of the counter. She eyed him and up and down before pulling out a magnifying glass with a light attached, examining the gold further.

“Hm. Spray-painted tungsten.” She claimed confidently.

“Spray-painted tungsten? Really? Okay.” JJ crossed his arms and stood to his full height. The rest of the pogues wandered around the small shop while you remained next to JJ. “Why don’t you see how soft it is?” The shop owner took a hammer and nail to the block, tapping it with enough force that if it were fake, it would’ve broken easily. “Wow. Would you look at that?” JJ taunted.

“Hold ya horses.” She reprimanded. “We ain’t got to the acid test, yet.” She eyed him, turning around to grab a dropper filled with liquid before returning to her stance in front of the two of you. She let two measly drops of the liquid hit the gold, nothing happening as she did so. “...Well, it ain’t plated, and it ain’t painted.” She muttered to herself. “It looks like somebody tried to melt it down.”

“My mom.” The blonde boy blurted. “She had all this jewelry laying around the house and she thought it was best to melt it down. To, uh, consolidate it.” You turned your head at the idea, struggling to hold in a small laugh. You wondered if JJ ever considered silence as a reply.

The dark-skinned woman placed the gold down on the scale behind the register, the object clanking as she let it go. “Seven pounds? That’s a lot of earrings.” She told the both of you.

“To be honest, ma’am, it’s really hard to see my mom fall apart with Alzheimer’s.” JJ fake pouted, sniffling as he looked down. You couldn’t help but look around, muttering ‘what the hell’ under your breath.

“Mhm.” Was all the woman offered in response. “I’ll be right back.” She dismissed herself, heading towards the backroom of the pawn shop. Once she was out of sight, you lightly backhanded JJ’s shoulder.

“Ouch! What was that for?”

“Alzheimer’s? Really?”

“I had to sell it. Shed a couple tears, y’know?” He tried to reason. You simply scoffed, calling the boy ridiculous as the woman returned to her place behind the counter.

“So, I talked to my boss,” she started, shifting awkwardly behind the register. “And this is what I can do.” She slid a piece of paper across the counter, a number written on it. JJ just peered up at her through lidded eyes.

“Fifty-thousand?” He questioned. “You think I walked in here not knowing the spot price? Ma’am, I know for a fact, this is worth one-hundred-forty. At least.”

“Well, sweetie, you in a pawn shop. This ain’t Zurich.” She told him.

“...Ninety, or I walk.” He insisted.

“Seventy. Half price and I don’t ask questions about where you got this.”

JJ chewed the inside of his lip, eyeing the five of you before looking back at the woman. “I’d like that in large denominations, please.”

“Well, the snag is, I don’t have that much denominated, not here anyway. I can write you a cashier’s check.” She offered, hand on her hip.

“No, ma’am.” JJ declined. “I want the cold hard. That’s what the sign says.” He pointed to the poster in question. “Cash for gold. And that’s what I expect.”

“...Well, I have to send you to the warehouse. I have the money there. Is that all right?”

JOHN B HAD THE DIRECTIONS TO THE WAREHOUSE, DRIVING ON A BACK STREET IN THE CUT. “So, the warehouse is out here?” Pope questioned, voice laced with worry.

“That’s what she said.” JJ said absentmindedly before chuckling to himself. “That’s what she said…”

“Stop.” Pope demanded, rolling his eyes.

“I’ve never even heard of Resurrection Drive.” Sarah piped up from the passenger seat.

Suddenly, police sirens blared behind The Twinkie, a car with cop lights directing John B to pull the van over.

“Why are we getting pulled over?” John B inquired, pulling the van to stop and demanding JJ to stash the gold away. He hid the object under the seat in the back of the van where the remaining four of you sat. You couldn’t see what was happening in the front of the van completely but you swore you heard a gun cock as John B’s head whipped to the left.

“Why don’t I go ahead and see them hands in the air?” A brassy voice came from the driver’s side window and you swore you saw the end of a shotgun barrel just inches away from John B’s face. “All of y’all — hands in the air, now!” The guy commanded, all of your hands getting thrown up. The lower half of his face was covered with a skull-decorated mask but he looked so familiar...

“You get out of the car. Let’s go!” He urged John B, the boy in question slowly exiting the the van from his side. The masked man instructed your friend to let the rest of you out of the vehicle, following his every move with the end of the gun. John B slid the side door open, never taking his eyes off of the guy.

He yelled at all of you lay down in the ditch, basically shoving the fire arm in your faces as you all practically fell to the ground out of fear. The man backed away, telling you all to keep your heads down as he edged toward the van, jumping inside and beginning to rummage inside of it.

“That bitch set us up.” You sighed quietly, voice shaking from fear. There was no damn warehouse and Resurrection Drive didn’t exist.

“That old bat shanked us.” JJ said frustratedly. “Fuck!” He slammed his fist on the ground, right next to your head. You heard Sarah whimpering, the sound prompting to look to the side where you saw John B getting up from his crouched position.

You frantically waved one of your hands, trying to get him to lay back down. He simply put his fingers up to his lips, signaling you to ‘sh’ before booking it towards the blue sports car with red and blue lights still flashing in the window.

Just then, the guy hopped out of the van. You bit your lip out of anger when you eyed the gold clutched in his palm. He pointed at all of you still on the ground, not noticing John B’s absence. “Don’t move. Unless you want your goddamn brains blown all over the dirt, don’t move your fuckin’ heads!” Was the last thing he said before jumping back into his own vehicle where John B must’ve been hiding.

The five of you shot up when the sports car started to shake, some kind of altercation happening between the two guys.

“Guys, I got the gun!” JB shouted from inside the car, the rest of you rushing over with JJ at the forefront of the group. Pope grabbed the gold from the passenger seat, announcing his victory as the rest of you jumped the criminal. You managed a nasty kick to his chin after Kie got him on the ground, rendering him incapable as Sarah slammed the open car door against his head.

JJ gripped him by his shirt and sat his limp, breathless frame against his own car and you all circled around him. He didn’t waste time in snatching the mask down, revealing the thief’s identity.

“Barry?” You blurted out before you could think about your surroundings, all heads turning to you.

“Hey, Snoozie.” He dragged out breathlessly on the ground, gold grills glinting in the sun.

“You know this guy?” JJ asked, pure confusion in his eyes.

You stuttered to find a response that wouldn’t raise more questions. “I’ve... seen him around before…”

“He’s a basehead. Sells coke to my dad.” JJ’s mind left the topic alone in his rage.

“Probably knows my brother...” Sarah muttered. Barry tried to plead, saying he wasn’t gonna hurt any one of you but JJ was quick to shut him up with the butt of his own gun, hitting him in the face with it.

“JJ!” You all called out but he just pushed you all off of him, bending down to rummage the drugs dealer’s pockets and pulling out his wallet. He removed his ID, looking back and forth between the piece of plastic and it’s owner on the ground.

“We got one last stop.” He affirmed, stomping off towards the van. “Let’s go see where this son of a bitch lives.”

“I DON’T KNOW ABOUT THIS, MAN.” Pope voiced his worries from his seat in the van. JJ was driving, taking the group of you straight into ‘Crackhead Wasteland’ as Sarah called it. Pulling up in front of Barry’s trailer was something you never thought you’d be doing with the Pogues. Or at all, anymore.

The angry blonde didn’t say a word as he threw the driver’s side door open and got out, heading straight inside the trailer without looking back.

“Somebody should probably go-”

“I’ll do it.” You cut off Kiara, climbing over her and Pope to get out of the van, following JJ’s path. Entering the trailer, it smelled stale and it was so messy you could barely see the floor. Your eyes found JJ, scouring the cabinets and drawers and any place where you could store something — borderline ransacking the place.

“JJ, what are you doing?” You sighed, throwing your hands out as you made no moves to stop the blonde.

“Thou hath stealeth from us, we shall stealeth from ye.” You just scoffed, stepping towards him while he threw pillows around. “An eye for an eye, princess.”

“And then what? ‘Cause you know Barry isn’t going to just let this go. You can’t just a rob a drug dealer, JJ, he knows who we are!”

“And why is that exactly?” He stopped in his haste, approaching you with quickness, combats boots dragging across the floor. The blonde was inches, centimeters, away from you now — your noses almost brushing as he stared down at you. “I’m starting to realize that you have some secrets that you don’t want us to know about.”

“This isn't about me-”

“First, it’s the Sarah drama. Then it’s Rafe acting like he knows you and now? Now, you got a south-side drug dealer callin’ you nicknames like he has you written down in his book.” He listed. “I’m starting to think that we don’t really know you at all.” That statement hit you hard, almost physically recoiling at how bad it hurt your heart.

You didn’t even think JJ noticed half of those things, or were bothered by them. The last thing you wanted was for your friends to see you as some kind of liar. “I’m not scared of this guy.” He told you, making his way towards the back rooms as you leaned your forehead against the wall, knowing you weren’t gonna be able to stop him from whatever he’d set his mind to.

The boy retreated from the room, small duffel bag in hand and stomped right past you and out of the trailer. You eventually pushed yourself off of the wall, following him out of the house.

“Alright, so we’re looking at five-grand each as reparations for putting us through that bullshit.” He counted out bills in his hands as your feet touched the grass behind him, the remaining four of the group looking at him bewildered while you just stared irritatedly at his back with your arms crossed.

“So, that’s what we’re doing now? Robbing drug dealers?”

“This Barry guy’s going to find out.” Sarah told him. “And he’s gonna come after us.”

“Yes, he will.” Pope backed up the blonde girl. “This is not the time to start wildin’ out.”

“How’d you guys like having a gun pulled on you?” JJ semi-shouted, John B stepping into his bubble.

“Relax.”

“He had it right here on you, bro.” JJ continued ranting, pressing his finger into John B’s forehead.

“We’ve gotta go get the rest of the gold, okay?” John B reached for the duffel bag. “Just give me that shit, we’re putting it back-” The Routledge boy was cut off when JJ abruptly shoved him against the exterior of The Twinkie. He looked at his best friend, appalled for a moment. “You feel like a tough guy? What’re you gonna do when he comes for us?”

JJ put down the arm that was holding John B against the van before grabbing his backpack and hiking it up his shoulder. “I’m not putting it back.” He said with conviction in his tone before getting into the van, none of you following him inside. “You guys gettin’ in or what?”

When nobody moved, he looked around at all of you silently, meeting each of your eyes before throwing himself back out of the vehicle. He stood before the five of you now, shrugging his shoulders. “What?”

“We’re sick of your shit.” John B told the blonde, stepping up to him once again.

“Oh, my shit?”

“Yeah, your pulling guns on people shit.” Kiara backed up JB.

“You acting like a maniac-” Pope tried before he was cut off.

“Okay…Pope, I took the fall for you, man!” JJ tried to get through to him. “You know how much money I owe ‘cause of you?”

“I’m gonna pay you back and I didn’t even ask you to do that!”

“I just did pay it back!” JJ screamed at the boy. “Right here, right now, by myself.”

“JJ,” You spoke up for the first time in the last couple of minutes. “My mom has the restitution handled, okay? We’re not blaming you, alright?. But we're already in deep shit.” You tried gently, not wanting to upset the blonde more than he was already. “Just put it back, J.”

He simply bit his lip and shook his head, not meeting any of your eyes. “Nah, don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it.” He spoke, grabbing his belongings out of the van. “You can tell mommy to keep her money.” Was all he said before turning his backs to all of you, walking off.

You sighed, taking wide steps in his direction. “JJ, come on-” You tried before you were being held back by John B.

“Just… let him go.”

You huffed, turning around to look at your group of friends. “Did you guys really have to say all of that?”

Looks of offense and confusion spread across their faces. “Are you seriously blaming us?” Kiara questioned your judgment.

“I’m not blaming anyone but you all just jumped on him as if we haven’t been in this together.” You clarified, eyes on Pope. “You may not have asked him to take the fall but he did it anyway.” Your eyes drifted towards Kie. "The gun is only an issue for you until you think we need it." Then you were looking at John B. “He’s been doing all of this for you. We all have.” You reprimanded finally.

“...JJ isn’t the most level-headed person but he’s not the root of our problems, either.” Was the last thing you told the remaining four of the group before getting into the van.

“I CAN FIGURE IT OUT TONIGHT, GET IT DONE, AND WE CAN GO BACK TO THE HOUSE TOMORROW MORNING.” Pope explained his plan to retrieve the rest of the gold. The boy thought it was best to get the rest of it and store it somewhere secure until you all could find someone who wouldn’t rip you off considering what happened this morning. You’d all gathered at The Wreck, sans JJ, who no one had heard from since he went off on his own a couple hours prior.

“All right, let’s do it.” John B slapped his thighs, ready to stand before Sarah spoke.

“What about that thing with my dad?”

Pope paused, looking between the couple and craning his neck forward. “What thing?”

“I…have to go fishing with Ward.” You couldn't help but chuckle from your place against the wall, the sound coming out as more of a snort as John B shot you a side-eye.

“You’re giving up four-hundred mil’ to go kill fish?” Kiara asked unbelievably.

“Blow it off. It’s four-hundred million in gold!” Pope tried to reason.

“Look, I have to, okay?” John B said finally. “He saved me. If it weren’t for Ward, I’d be in foster care. So, I have to go. Plus, it’d be better to go after the gold at night, anyway.” The empty restaurant went silent, all of you letting the topic go. You simply pushed yourself off of the wall.

“Well, while you have father-son time with Ward Cameron, I’m gonna go track down our friend.”

AFTER SEARCHING FOR JJ FOR HOURS WITH NO LUCK, you returned to The Chateau as night fell. You hadn’t heard from John B and Sarah in hours but had texted Pope and Kie to meet up. You had to return home, begrudgingly, considering your own car had been sitting there for weeks now, collecting dust, and you needed it to make the search for JJ easier.

Pulling up, wheels crunching on gravel as you did, you parked and cut the engine just as Kie and Pope pulled up next to you in his dad’s truck. He was the first to speak as all three of you got out of your seats.

“I didn’t know you still had that thing.” He told you, eyeing the Boxwood Green Ford Bronco.

“I don’t drive it often, especially since we’ve all been riding around in the van as of recently.”

“Isn’t it-”

“My dad’s old truck, yeah. It needs some TLC before I can drive it for real. I got passed by a family of squirrels on my way over here...” You breathed out, eliciting small laughs from the duo.

“...Any luck finding JJ?” Kiara asked you. You shook your head despondently, shrugging your shoulders as your smile fell.

“I checked everywhere except his house. I figured if he did stop there, it couldn’t have been for long. But he’ll turn up, I guess...” You spoke softly, disappointment lacing your tone as you fiddled with your nails. “He always does.”

Suddenly, the greenery surrounding The Chateau was lit up with fairly lights, all of your eyes scanning the twinkling objects with confusion.

“What the hell…” Pope muttered. You all gave each other cautious looks before following the lit path up to the backyard where the boy you’d been searching the island up and down for was sat in a hot-tub surrounded by champagne glasses, inflatables, and flamingo LED posts.

“JJ?” You asked, perplexity lacing your tone as you eyed the inflatable birds in the water.

“What did you do?” Pope was quick to ask.

“I got a jet going straight up my butt right now.” He ignored both of your questions. “Y’all should get in immediately. The water’s amazing.” He advised, pouring himself a glass of champagne and cheering with himself before downing it.

“Where have you been?”

“How much did this cost?” Kiara overshadowed your initial question.

“Uh… pretty much all of it.”

“All of it?” Pope was beyond appalled. He looked like he would blow any second. “You spent all the money in one day?”

“What? Can’t a man have a little luxury in life?” JJ threw out, slurring his words mildly. “I mean, like, guys — we only live once, right? ”

“Are you kidding me?” Pope yelled. “You could have helped us buy supplies to get the rest of the gold out of the well!”

“Or literally given it to any charity!” Kiara backed up while you just stared at the blonde as he got visibly more and more agitated as his friends tore into him. You felt just as bad as when they did it earlier but you couldn’t argue that it wasn’t more justified this time. That fact didn’t make your heart ache any less for your friend. Your best friend.

“Okay, well you know what? I didn’t do that!” JJ shouted, now standing in the hot-tub. His bare chest on display for you all to see the big patches of bruises that littered his skin. You felt your jaw drop so fast, eyes laser-focused on the injuries. “I got a hot tub. For my friends.” He continued as your eyes, that wouldn’t leave his torso, filled with tears.

They were so purple, so vivid, so huge. And you knew only person could’ve given JJ Maybank fresh bruises so quickly.

“No, you know what? Screw friends. I got a hot tub for my family.” He cried. “I got this for you,” He spoke as his eyes shifted in your direction and stayed there, watching as your own drifted slowly from his bruised body to his teary, blue eyes. “Look what I did for you! Look at this!” His voice was watery as he pleaded.

You forced your lips back together, suppressing the sob you could feel building in your chest as one lonely, burning tear ran from your eye. You didn’t waste a second in walking forward and stepping into the hot tub, standing right in front of the distressed blonde. His eyes were on you now and you could see everything behind them that you couldn’t from just five feet away.

You may have given the boy whiplash with the way your arms wound around his neck and pulled him down into the tightest hug in the world in the less than a millisecond, the action so fast it made the water splash around you both as he stabilized himself.

There was a pause before his own arms encircled your waist, so tight you could barely breathe but you didn’t care. You could hear his sobs in your ear, feel his tears trailing down your neck and you basically cradled him.

“I’m so sorry.” You cooed, one of your hands now soothing his hair down.

“I was gonna kill him…” The blonde wept into the crook of your neck. You couldn’t control the tears that fell from your eyes at that, leaning your head so that it was slightly on top of his as you chewed the inside of your bottom lip to control your own sobs.

“I won’t let anything happen to you ever again. I promise you that.”

THE MORNING AFTER WHAT HAPPENED WITH JJ, you’d spent the night with him at The Chateau, Kie and Pope being summoned back to their homes. You figured it was about time to return home as well, at least to feed Marley and what not. Lightly shaking JJ’s shoulder, who was in a deep sleep next to you on the guest room bed, the blonde groaned before stretching, almost punching you in the face as he did so.

Informing him of your plans to head home and come back, he assured you that he’d be fine and that he needed to shower anyway. With that green light, you got out of the bed and slipped your shoes on before leaning down to give his sleeping figure a half-hug and a hair-shuffle. You shouted that you’d be back as you slipped out into the backyard, heading for your parked car.

The drive back home wasn’t long but it was awfully dreaded. Between the hunt for gold and the constant discourse between you and your mother, it seemed as if a break was never in the cards for you.

The sun had come up not to long ago, reaching its peak in the sky as you pulled into your Figure Eight driveway, casting a orange hue over the Cul de sac. You immediately took note of your mother’s car parked in the driveway as well, internally groaning as you did.

Walking up to the front door, you could immediately hear the faint sound of your mother yelling from inside the house. Your hand hovered above the door knob for a moment, listening to her muffled protests until you snapped out of it and entered the house quietly, careful to close the door slowly behind you.

You could tell her voice was coming from upstairs, most likely her bedroom on the upper floor all the way at the end of the hall.

“You’re going to screw us!” She yelled as you edged your way up the stairs, careful not to make the wood creak or wake Marley’s sleeping figure on the couch, where she wasn’t really allowed to be. You stood at the top of the steps now, eyeing her bedroom door from feet away that was cracked open. “Oh, your plan? What exactly is your goddamn plan, Ward?”

Ward? Why would your mother be on the phone with Ward, screaming at him in the early hours of the morning? You crept closer and closer to the door until you were at least a good ten feet away, just enough to hear her clearly.

“Peterkin and Shoupe already found Big John’s glasses on that damn island, it’s only a matter of time. And you taking a dead man’s son out to fish is not a good plan!” She mocked angrily, shuffling around her room. The unpredictable slam of objects causing you to flinch and press yourself against the wall, heart pounding in your chest as you continued to eavesdrop.

“That boy won’t tell you a damn thing about the gold. I risked my career to cover up what you did and now you’re going to screw us both over because you’re getting greedy. And I refuse to go down with you. I have everything I need to put you behind bars, don’t you forget that.” What the hell was she talking about? Your mind was running a mile minute trying to put the pieces together, if they’re even were any. “I will get in my car right now and take those files down to Peterkin if need be. Do not fuck with me, Cameron.”

Whatever was going on sounded too sinister to be any good. Your mother and Ward Cameron were the world’s most unlikely duo and you were sure that the nature of their discussion wasn’t property development or criminal justice. And by the sounds of it, they were talking about Big John and John B.

And if John B was staying at Tannyhill and Ward, as well as your mother, knew about the gold, then everything just took a very wrong, dark turn. Suddenly, something in your gut shifted and you had to get out of the house. Now. You descended the steps as quickly and quietly as possible, pausing when you got to the bottom of the steps.

“...I have everything I need to put you behind bars…I will get in my car right now and take those files down to Peterkin…”

...Files. If you wanted to know anything about whatever your mom knew, it had to be in whatever files she had that allegedly had the capability to take down a neighborhood king such as Ward Cameron himself.

But she didn’t keep work stuff at the house.

It was all at her law office.

Whipping your head side to side, scanning the kitchen-slash-living area, your eyes landed on the table next to the front door where her purse stood next to the bowl where she would drop her keys. Rushing over to it, you leaned over it, relief filling you when your guess was confirmed, the keys to her office sitting lonely in the bowl. You snatched up the keychain, looking back at your sleeping dog before exiting the house and practically sprinting towards your car.

YOUR CAR SKIRTED TO A STOP OUTSIDE OF THE OFFICE, killing the engine as you practically flew out of the driver’s seat and up the short steps that led up to the front door of ‘R.R. Law Firm’. The keys rattled as you shoved them into the keyhole, letting yourself into the workspace. You power walked through the waiting area, making a b-line for your mother’s main office.

The door was closed, her name printed in big, gold letters across the frosted window. You knew this had to be an in-and-out operation, considering the office opened in the next couple of hours and your mother had a knack for showing up early.

Walking into her office, you didn’t know where to start. The wooden desk, the drawers, the cabinets, her desktop. On a whim, you immediately went for the computer in the center of the desk, waking it up as you were immediately greeted with a password screen.

You smacked your teeth, taking a guess — her birthday? Wrong. Your birthday? Wrong. Her wedding date? Wrong. You decided to give up, knowing you didn’t have the time to play guessing games and potentially miss anything that could tell you what the hell has been going on under your nose for who knows how long.

You spotted a file cabinet in the corner of the office, unlike the others. It had key holes for each cabinet. Looking down at the stolen keys in your hand, there were only three on the metal ring — her house key, the office key, a smaller key that you hadn’t taken notice of before.

Pinching the silver object between your fingers, you walked up to the tall cabinet, sticking it in the highest drawer and twisting before pulling the receptacle open. But it was empty. And so was the next drawer. Your eyebrows pinched together, why have a locked cabinet with nothing to hide away?

So, with a passing thought, you skipped the third and fourth drawers, aiming straight for the fifth and last drawer, inserting the key and pulling it open. Almost struggling to do so with how full it was. Of course it’d be hidden in the very last drawer of a locked cabinet — hide and hide again.

It was folders on top of folders but one thing caught your eye — a manila folder with the word ‘POGUES’ written across it in bold, black letters. It was the first thing you reached for, despite it being smushed under other files and hard to get out. Once you had it between both of you hands, free from the cabinet, you just stared at it before sitting down on the floor.

Flipping it open, you felt your heart drop as your face twisted.

There were pictures. Of you and your friends that you didn’t know had been taken. Photos of you all boarding the boat the day before you found the Royal Merchant out in the storm, the photo of you and Pope sinking Topper’s boat, of you all gathered at The Wreck. Someone had been following you all for days, weeks. But why?

You soon had your answer when you went further into the photos, uncovering others underneath — a picture of Big John’s compass, photocopies of the maps you’d found and a picture of you all gathered outside of the Crain house, a note written on it. ‘They found it?’ was all it read. More importantly, you recognized pictures of pages out of your journal, pages that detailed the events of your gold hunt. Journals you always kept in your room.

You didn’t even take notice of the tears welling in your eyes until one dropped onto the pictures laid out on the hardwood floors. You quickly wiped the tears away, shuffling all of the photos back into the safety of the folder and going back into the storage bin to retrieve the next thing that caught your eye — a folded up piece of paper tucked into the corner. Unfolding the paper, you were immediately perplexed.

It was a list of payments. A bank statement. A log keeping track of monthly payments made out to R.R. from W.C. and it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together — your mother was keeping track of payments that she’d been receiving from Ward for eight months straight.

Just weeks after your dad was found.

There was an initial payment of five-hundred thousand dollars and then monthly deposits of fifty-thousand dollars from seven months ago up until the beginning of…this month. Something about it made you want to throw up. Ward Cameron had been paying your mother large sums of money ever since your dad passed and nothing about that sat right with you.

Going into to the drawer you pulled out the last two items remaining — two FedEx Packages individually labeled B.J. and O.C.. You made moves to open the B.J. labeled package first with it being the lighter of the two, the other package nearly bursting at the seam.

There was only one thing inside. An cassette tape, labeled Big John. Your hands shook. You had no idea what could possibly be on this tape or why your mother would have anything about Big John stashed in her office. She wasn’t involved in his case, so what the hell was recorded on this tape that she had to hide it away. And using the little bit of brain power you had left, you figured if B.J. stood for Big John, then O.C. could only represent one thing.

A name. Owen Carter. Your father. And suddenly, opening that second package became less appealing and you needed to get the pogues together to piece this all together. Because you had a very bad feeling that this gold wasn’t as off the radar as you all had initially assumed. And maybe those square groupers weren’t the only ones after it.

Or willing to kill for it.

“What’re you doing in here?” Your eyes shot up from you place on the floor, landing on your mother’s figure standing next to the open office door. When did she get here? Her own eyes drifted to the documents laid out in front of your frame sat on the floor, and then to the open cabinet.

You could hear your heart in your ears, your hands braced behind you. The first thing your mind told you to do was run but for some reason, you went against all caution. Snatching up the document that’d been pressing in your mind since you read it, you questioned her. “What is this?” You asked, slowly standing up and presenting the bank statement to her. You wouldn’t dare step closer.

You didn’t feel safe.

“Why were you going through my things-”

“Just answer the question.” You demanded, shaking the paper. “You’ve been getting money from Ward Cameron ever since my dad died. I want to know why.”

“Ward is... he's a donor for the law firm-”

“Don’t lie to me.” You cut off the woman as she started to take steps towards you. “These were made out to you. To your personal bank account, not the firm.” You informed. “I have a right to know.”

“There are things you don’t understand. Just put all that stuff back, it’s work related-”

“Stop lying to me!” You broke down, throwing the paper to the floor. “You have pictures of me and my friends, recent pictures. You have information on the Royal Merchant, the payments from Ward, and information on Big John and my dad.” You listed off, tears streaming as you snatched up the cassette tape. “What’s on here? Huh?” You held the object between your fingers, watching her eyes go wide.

“Put that down.”

“What’s on it?” You pressed, an expression of pure anger spreading across your mother’s face that you’d never seen before. “And the other package?” You motioned for the parcel that you’d had yet to open. “What’s in there? What are you hiding-”

“Do you ever think that I don’t have to tell you everything?!” Your mother snapped. “I am the adult here. What I do is none of your goddamn concern. So, when I tell you to put that stuff back,” She trailed, taking quick steps towards you until she was just inches away. “You put it back. Give that to me.” She spat before reaching for the tape in your hands, but you threw your arms out of her reach.

“No! Stop!” You screamed as the woman gripped your arms. “Let go of me!”

“Give me the damn tape, Y/n!”

The dispute went on for a few moments until you took the opportunity to push her away from you, her cell phone falling from her pocket as she stumbled back. A message coming through just as the device hit the floor, screen side up.

W.C.

The kid got away. He knows.

You both looked at the message, then back at each other. That’s when you knew. Your mother knew a lot more than she ever let on and she wasn’t the only one. If she knew about the gold then there was no doubt that Ward knew, but the compass. If she had photos of the compass, and John B gave it to Peterkin, then that was one more person on the list of people not to trust.

And now, by the looks of that message, John B found out something and he could be in just as much danger as you. You immediately turned to grab the files, you couldn’t leave them. You had to take everything. No matter what.

Your mother practically tackled you to the floor from behind, dragging you both down onto the hardwood. Your chin thumped against the wood, causing you to bite down on your lip, yelling out in pain. You managed to flip onto your back underneath the woman she attempted to pin your swinging arms.

“Get the hell off of me!”

“I can’t let you leave!” She hollered in your face, one of your hands successfully grabbing a hold of her hair and using it to yank your mother off of you, rolling onto your stomach to push yourself up. You went for the papers again, only to be grabbed once more by the back of your neck. You screamed out in pain as her fingers dug into the back of your neck.

You managed to kick her in the kneecap, causing the woman to fold in pain as you attempted to create distance. Failing to do so, however, as she quickly recovered and slapped you across the face, so hard, you were sure that the rings on her fingers left a series of scratch marks across your cheek.

In your stunned state, she took the opportunity to pin you against the wall with her forearm pressing painfully up against your throat, cutting off most of your air supply. “You can’t tell anyone. Do you hear me?” She sneered, her face inches from yours. “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?” Her words were jumbling together in your ears, the only clear sound being a ringing noise.

Was your own mother really so lost in her own rage that she’d kill you to keep whatever happened a secret?

You were losing air by the second, your vision going blurry and cross-eyed. Fight-or-flight kicking in your, you used whatever strength you could muster to bring one hand up enough to claw viciously at her eye, your mother crying out in agony as she released you to hold her eye. You took in a big gasp of air and used your foot to kick her down as hard as possible while she now clutched her abdomen with one hand and held her eye with the other.

Wasting little time, you bolted towards the documents and gathered them all in your arms before making a b-line to the front door and out of the office. You almost tripped down the steps trying to make it to your car. Throwing the pile of papers and parcels into the passenger seat, you threw yourself into the driver’s seat and sped off, leaving a cloud of smoke behind you.

YOUR TRUCK KICKED UP DUST AS YOU PULLED INTO THE FRONT YARD OF THE CHATEAU, JJ, Pope, and Kie already standing starstruck outside. “Where’s John B?” You asked breathlessly, frantically, as they all turned their looks of shock to you. JJ was the first speak, taking steps towards you.

“What the hell happened to your face?” He questioned, eyes on your busted lip and the claw marks decorating your cheek.

“Where’s John B?” You ignored the blonde in your hectic state, breathing heavily and eyes roaming.

“He just left...” Pope told you.

“He said something about Ward knowing about the gold.” Kiara cut in. “...He thinks that Ward killed his dad.” You sighed, looking down at the items clutched in your arms, the pogues noticing them now, too. “What is all that?”

“We’re about to find out.” You told them. “Where’s the tape player we found in the tomb?”

“SO, YOU STOLE ALL OF THIS FROM YOUR MOM’S OFFICE? AND SHE’S THE ONE WHO SCRATCHED UP YOUR FACE LIKE THAT?” JJ questioned as you splayed the stolen documents out on the coffee table inside The Chateau.

“Yes,” You spoke, opening the tape player and inserting the cassette. “I heard her talking to Ward on the phone and, I don't know, something didn’t feel right, she was threatening him with information she had, so I broke into her law office.” You explained as they all crowded around your sitting figure on the couch. “She had pictures of us, pictures of my journal pages, of the Royal Merchant research we found…I think she had something to do with what happened to John B’s dad.” You told them solemnly. “And mine.”

“I thought they ruled your dad’s death as…” Pope started, looking for the words to approach the sensitive topic. “As a suicide.”

You sighed. “They did but I never believed that. He wasn’t depressed or anything, or at least there were no signs. I know him, if it were true he would’ve left a note or something. A man as happy as my father doesn’t slit his wrists and walk into the ocean without saying goodbye. But I didn’t want to believe that the truth was any darker than that, honestly. So, I accepted what I was told.”

“What do you think the tape will prove?” Kiara piped up, leaning against the couch. You simply shrugged.

“I don’t know. But better to know than be left in the dark, right?” You concluded before pressing play on the tape record, the cassette whirling inside before a voice came through. It was Ward’s.

“Why am I doing this again?”

“You want my help?” Your mother’s voice replied, digital and static-like. “This is collateral. I help you cover up what you did and this is insurance that you won’t screw me over in the end. If I go down, so do you.” She said. “Start from the beginning, don’t leave anything out. What happened the day you killed Big John Routledge?”

You could Ward’s sigh before his voice came through once more.

“...It was a mistake, a stupid accident. It was that morning before he was pronounced missing, Owen, Big John and I were out on the water.” He explained, your heart racing. You weren’t aware that your dad was working with Ward. Or even knew him outside of a general context. “Big John, he brought us out there to talk. He told us that he’d found it, he’d found the gold. We were happy but he was focused on other things, said he need assurances. Legal assurances. I tried to tell him that we were all partners, that it would be split evenly. But he didn’t like that…”

He continued. “...He said he never agreed to it. He felt like the twenty-years he’d spent looking for the gold entitled him to a bigger share than Owen and I. He wanted to give Owen and I ten percent each, twenty percent total while he took eighty. I couldn’t do it. I tried to tell him that I’d supplied the boats and money and that Owen got the diving equipment, we both tried to tell him that it wasn’t fair. But things got heated, spiraled out of control. He grabbed me, I hit him, and Owen tried to break it up but we didn’t care. Big John, he tripped. I pushed him back and he tripped over a loose piece in the boat floor and hit his head on the edge…”

“...He started bleeding everywhere. It wouldn’t stop. I tried to console him, to fix what I’d done. But Owen was freaking out and Big John was losing consciousness. And Owen, God, he tried to call someone on the radio but I wouldn’t let him. I was scared. He kept saying we needed call someone, over and over but I ignored him and… I decided to throw Big John overboard. I thought he was dead. Owen… he was spiraling. He started calling me a monster, saying that Big John was our friend. I tried to calm him down and get on the same page but it was impossible. And when he and I got into it, he managed to get away on the emergency lifeboat we’d taken with us. Do you want me to tell you what happened to Owen?”

“No,” Your mother’s voice broke through after Ward’s monologue. “That will be recorded separately. For now, I just need to know if you’ve told anyone else, any of this, besides me.”

“Yes. Scooter Grubbs. He knows everything. I enlisted him as my new partner after what happened.”

“And what happened to Big John’s boat?”

“I sunk it. I didn’t want anyone to find it.”

“...That’s all I need for now. End of Confession Tape One.”

…The room was silent for a while, all four of you taking in the heap of information at once. Kiara was the first to break the silence, voice full of sad rage. “So, Ward actually killed John B’s dad.”

“This is so fucked.” Pope huffed, one hand on his head.

“What did she mean by tape one? Are there other tapes?” JJ spoke up, eyes on you before his next question left his lips. “Are you okay?”

You were biting your lip, holding back tears as you shook your head side to side slowly, your watery eyes meeting his. “No. I’m not.” None of them knew how to react, Kiara giving you a side hug while JJ and Pope sat in silence.

“...Should we open the other one?” Pope questioned after a moment of silence, referring to the parcel with your father’s initial on it. But you weren’t ready for that. You would open it eventually. You had to. But you had all the information to help John B right now. So, that was the goal.

You shook your head, wiping your palms against your thighs. “No. Not right now.”

“Don’t you want to know what happened to your dad? Who was involved?”

“I’m pretty sure we have those bases covered, Pope.” You laughed out sadly. “The only thing that package could have is the gorey details that I didn’t know. If, and when, I open that, I won’t be any use to you all, no matter how bad it is. Or isn’t. I’m just…not ready.”

THE THREE POGUES LEFT YOU ALONE AT THE CHATEAU, they figured it was good to keep an eye on Ward. They advised you to hang back, rest a little. But sleep wasn’t coming easy to you. You figured John B would return at some point from wherever he went. It was the early hours of the morning, close to one, when you heard the door slam shut, his voice echoing around the house.

“Pope? Kie?” He called out in the dark of the shack, you sat up from where you were laid out on the guest bed. Coming out of the room, you leaned tiredly against the door frame..

“They’ve gone Ward-watching.” You yawned, crossing your arms.

He smiled smally at your presence before basically charging towards you and sweeping you into a bear hug. “You have no idea how much I needed to see you.” He mumbled into your hair as your face was buried into his chest. When he pulled back, his hands were on your shoulders as he stared into your eyes, his smile dropping. “I have to tell you about Ward. He tried to kill me, Y/n. And I went to see Ms. Lana, she told me-”

“I know.” You cut him off. “I know everything. About Ward and the gold…about your dad. My mom is involved somehow, she had all this stuff in her office. She documented everything…” You explained, eye drifting to where the heap of evidence laid on the coffee table still.

“...What about your dad?” His hands dropped from your shoulders. “The story I got from Lana, she said that when Ward left, he said he had loose ends to tie up. She said Scooter was positive he was talking about your dad.” Your eyes were focused on the last unopened package as John B spoke.

“I’m pretty sure I can find that out but I don’t want to. Not now.” You spoke, tone firm. You didn’t have many more tears left to cry. Turning your sights back to JB, you continued. “Right now, we get some sleep and get the gold out of the well first thing in the morning. We can deal with everything else later. We can’t let him win, John B.”

WHEN YOU WOKE UP THE NEXT DAY, John B was gone. You had no clue where he went until he came back hours later, saying we needed to get everyone together, excluding Pope who had his scholarship interview today. When the missing two arrived at The Chateau, meeting you and John B on the pier behind the shack, he explained everything.

The gold was gone. When he’d woken that morning, he rushed to The Crain House, the estate littered with ‘for sale’ signs and Cameron Development construction equipment. He’d managed to get into the well himself, only to discover that the gold was gone. Every trace of it. Ward Cameron had the gold and no one knew where he or it was.

“You’re sure he got everything?” Kie questioned once he was done as she sat next to John B, who was splayed out on the wood.

“Every bar.” He sighed despondently, snatching the cast off of his arm after minutes of fiddling with it. “Look, it’s not like I expected a happy ending or some shit.”

Suddenly, Pope came running down the landing, dressed down in his professional attire. “Guys!” He stopped in the middle of the four of you, hands on his knees and a sweat stain in the middle of his powder blue button up. “Oh, God. I ran all the way down here.”

“You all right?”

“How was the interview, Pope?”

“Don’t ask.” He panted, standing up straight. “JB, Look dude, I’m sorry. About everything.”

“It’s fine–”

Pope cut him off. “But I don’t have a lot time but I have information that is tactically relevant.” He started, looking around at all of you. “So, before I had my interview, my dad said he was going down to the private airstrip to cut palms for Cameron’s big plane.” All of you perked up at this, John B showing the most expression he had in hours. “Because it was too heavy, it needed a longer landing strip to take off. So, I’m there sitting in my interview thinking to myself, hm, why would Cameron need a longer airstrip to take off?” He spoke enthusiastically, hands moving every which way as he paced the dock.

“What could be so heavy to weigh it down?”

“...Gold.” JJ realized, staring down at John B.

“Exactly.” Pope pointed excitedly. “Guys, this is our chance, but it leaves tonight, and we have to go.”

“Guys, we can’t give up now.” Kiara smiled.

“What’s the plan, big man?” JJ asked, leaning against the wooden pillar holding up the structure. But John B was looking at you.

“We’re gonna steal that shit back.” He half-smiled, sitting up now. “He doesn’t get to win.”

PARKING THE VAN BEHIND THE WIRE FENCE THAT ENCLOSED THE AIRSTRIP, you all ran towards it, grabbing a hold of the gate. Pope had a pair of binoculars, using them to get a better view of the interactions taking place.

“They’re loading up the gold.” He informed before JB snatched the binoculars away, using them for himself. Without the optical assistance, you could still get a vague view of what was happening through the trees, watching as a familiar blue Range Rover pulled up.

“There’s Ward.” John B said. Two people exited the car, John B’s face falling as they did so.

“What?” Kiara asked, noting his solemn expression. “John B, what?”

“...It’s Sarah.”

“She’s with him?” Pope whispered as if anyone could really hear the five of you.

You all continued observing, watching Sarah pace up and down the airstrip, approaching the workers who loaded the gold. Even from your distance, she looked frantic. Worried. Then Ward was grabbing her by the arm walking her to the plane but she resisted.

Within seconds, her father had picked her up by the waist and basically dragged her into the plane, her screams echoing throughout the open space.

“He’s hurting her.” John B said aloud before rushing towards the van, hopping in and starting the engine, catching all of your attention.

“Hey. What’re you doing?” Pope asked, throwing his hands up while John B reversed the van. You all started yelling and running towards the van but he started driving before you could pile in. Then it became clear when he drove the The Twinkie, straight and clean, through the wire fence and onto the airstrip, heading straight for the plane.

You all yelled after him, running thorough the break he’d made in the fence before deciding collectively to not assume you could catch up to motor vehicle in time to stop him. All the four of you could do was watch as the plane propeller’s whirled, the aircraft making a u-turn to face the correct direction of the landing strip.

John B’s van came up right beside, keeping speed with the larger vehicle. It wasn’t long before the smaller of the two was in front, John B driving the van right in front of the plane now. He brought it to a stop, parking it sideways in front of the oncoming aircraft.

You really thought that it was over. Your heart dropping in a way that made your knees weak, preparing yourself to see one of your best friends get rammed by an airplane. But at the very last second, the plane came to an abrupt halt. Shaking on its wheels just inches from the van.

The four you were relieved but only for a second before you were standing up straighter at the sound of police sirens. Pope practically flinching out of his shoes.

“Guys, I can’t arrested.”

“We’re on probation.” JJ added, referring to the two of you.

“Look, we’re no good if we’re all in jail.” Kiara reminded, guiding the three of you to follow her into the mess of palm trees and bushes, away from the private airstrip. You all ran for what felt like hours, making a good distance between yourselves and whatever was going down between the three left behind.

Mid-marathon, you all ducked when you heard a gunshot reverberate throughout the woods.

“What was that?” You inquired, fear coursing through your veins. “Did that come from the airstrip?” You worried, making moves to walk back in the direction you ran from until a hand was gripping your forearm, eyes trailing up to land on Kiara.

“We can’t go back.”

“What if something happened?” JJ sided with you.

“If something happened, we’re too late to do anything now. And we’re too far. Guys, we have to go.” Pope assured. With you and JJ taking one last glance back, you continued following the opposing two further into the woods, carrying hope that John B was okay.

next chapter>

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salem-witch-slut · 4 months ago

Text

My Kryptonite

Kara Danvers x Masc! FemReader

SYNOPSIS: Kara wants to take things to the next level with you, but she is terrified to hurt you. Not to mention, you keep getting shot at!

WORD COUNT: 8.6K

WARNINGS: Canon typical violence, stitches, blood/gunshot wounds, Kara being horny for you, fingering, eating pussy, misuse of superpowers, reader is described as muscular with lots of tattoos

Author's Note: A continuation for "This Is What I Know of Life". I have several in the works for this, I love these little fics (little my ass, each one is over 7K)

Dividers made by @cafekitsune

It had been three months since you met Kara in the bar where you used to work. Three months since you started dating Kara(Supergirl) and quit your job to join the DEO. In the club, you could only protect people inside of the area. But in here? You had more power than you ever thought possible.

You got to carry a gun at all times, and there was a gym at the agency where you got to work out to your heart’s content. Whenever Kara didn’t know where you were, she usually found you there doing whatever it was you decided to do that day. Sometimes you were practicing your hits, and other times it was just simple weightlifting.

It’s how Kara found you today. Normally you wear some loose t-shirt and sweatpants to work out at the DEO in your free time, but not today. There was a small problem with the air conditioning and the temperature was stuck at about 78 degrees Fahrenheit. And that meant you were in the least amount of clothing possible while still being considered modest.

“Hey, Alex was looking for…” Kara’s black heels paused on the steeled floors of the gym where she saw you hanging from a bar attached to a 360 machine. Her heart stopped… or did it speed up? Whatever it did, it made her face turn red!

Kara knew you were strong; you were ex-military for Rao’s sake, and she had seen you in your bra and boxers that one time when you first asked her to be your girlfriend. But there was something… something almost surreal about seeing you wearing a Nike sports bra of all things, and compression shorts that clung to you in an almost sinful way. Your skin was glistening in the lights overhead, and your dog tags hung loosely around your chest as you dropped to the floor and turned yourself around to face her. It took a lot of Kara’s willpower to not reach out and trace that V line in your abdomen that vanished under the waistband of your shorts.

“Hey,” You said, out of breath as you reached for the towel on the bench. Kara tried not to stare as she admired the way your muscles bulged when you lifted the towel up and wiped the back of your neck near your hairline. “Kara?”

“Huh?” The Kryptonian looked up from where she was staring at your defined abs and felt her entire face turn red with embarrassment. “Sorry, uh… yeah, Alex is looking for you and… I mean— obviously I said you would be here, but she still insisted that I come to tell you and I just—”

“Babe,” You stepped forward and pressed a hand against her shoulder. You felt so… so warm right now that Kara tried to not lean into your hand with all of her might, but you made it impossible. Very quickly, you bent down and captured her lips in a kiss that lasted for a few brief seconds, making Kara hungry for more. “Let me go get cleaned up and I’ll go find Alex, okay?”

“Y-Yeah,” Kara stuttered, her thoughts traveling to very… not okay places. You were about to go shower. What did you look like under the spray of the water overhead? With soap sticking to your skin and rolling across every single soft curve and sharp edge of your body? Did you tilt your head back and lean into the water or did you simply stand right under the showerhead and let gravity do its job? And the more inappropriate questions that Kara would never ask.

Kara watched you go, hand closed around your duffel bag as you headed for the bathrooms, and she immediately began walking away. Her heart was racing, and she felt like one wrong step and she could fly away in an instant.

Of course, there was only one thing on your mind. If you had asked Kara to join you… would she have said yes?

The mission that you had been sent on was more eventful than you expected. You had been in an undercover situation as you tried to look not suspicious and walk around the crowded area, looking for the threat that the DEO was mentioning all afternoon. The only problem? Kara was too busy looking at your ass instead of focusing on the task at hand.

Kara had gotten so distracted with you, and how you looked with the rain coming down from the dimly lit sky that the sound of a gunshot brought her out of her senses. It wasn’t until she saw you on the ground that she finally sprang into action and attacked the perpetrator a lot harder than she had to. It was just a human, and his arm was now broken because of how hard she had hit him… but then she saw you laying on the ground with a hand on your side and she wished that she had hit him harder.

She brought you back to the DEO in her arms and you were laughing the whole way as she kept telling you to keep your hand on your side and apply the pressure.

“Babe, it just grazed me,” You rolled your eyes as she continued to carry your body towards the medbay. “I can walk there, you know—”

“Absolutely not,” Kara snapped, nearly lasering the panel on the door to get it open. Alex was the first one to help you down onto the table and she slowly began opening up your shirt. “Is she okay?”

“She’s gonna be fine, Kara,” Alex reassured her, looking at your wound and gently touching the bruising flesh around the bullet wound. It was just a graze, and you would need stitches, but it was an easy fix and you wouldn’t even need blood this time! “How’s this feel? Does it hurt?”

You laughed at feeling Alex’s fingers against your skin and looked up at her with amused eyes. “I got shot, Danvers… yeah, it hurts.”

The two of you laughed as Alex went to put a pair of gloves on and properly clean your wound. And for a moment, you saw Kara and how she was looking at you. Your eyes fell for a second and you attempted to reach out for her hand. “Baby, I’m sorry if I wasn’t being as serious as you wanted me to—”

“It’s fine,” Kara said coldly. She backed her hand away from your touch and you frowned. She’s never refused physical contact from you like that… What was wrong? Did you do something wrong, well other than getting shot? She seemed more upset than you wanted her to be over this. “Just be careful next time.”

And just like that, Kara was leaving the medbay, her red cape swishing as she walked away. An even deeper frown textured your face as Alex returned with a suture kit and began to get to work on your stitches. You flinched a little every time she made a new stitch, but you were sitting still for the most part.

“Alex,” You asked, looking up to try and meet your superior’s gaze. “Is Kara okay?”

“Why do you ask?” Alex finished up your stitches and placed a patch over your side to keep the wound clean.

You slowly sat up, stripping off the remains of your bloodstained shirt and pulling on a gray t-shirt. How do you phrase to your girlfriend’s sister that you were worried about how she was acting? She’s been funny all day since she found you in the gym this morning.

“She’s been a little off today,” You rub the back of your neck, already looking forward to heading home so you could finally lay down. “I don’t know, I figured if anybody would know, it’d be you, right?”

Alex removes the gloves stained in your blood and tosses them in the sanitary bin, aggressively washing her hands before she looked over her shoulder at you. “Why didn’t you wear the Kevlar?”

“Uh,” You thought it was obvious. “A bulletproof vest isn’t super under cover, you know—”

“Kara’s worried about you,” Alex states, running a damp hand through her dark auburn hair to move it out of her face and she approaches your bedside. You frown as the agent sits next to you and carefully grabs your hand in hers. “I’m worried about you. I get that you’re ready to prove yourself to J’onn, but you have to remember that you’re not an alien, and you’re not bulletproof.”

“I’m not trying to—” But then it hit you… Wasn’t that exactly what you were doing? Signing up for missions left and right, going out at every possible chance to show the DEO that you aren’t just some stray off the street and you belong here with everybody else? Fighting side by side with a literal alien that actually is bulletproof?

It was making more sense now; you actually were trying too hard. And in doing so, you were going to get yourself killed somehow, and Kara would be… who knows how the Kryptonian would act if you died on the job somehow.

“Okay, maybe you’re right,” You stood up from the bed, letting out a sigh and rubbing up and down the back of your neck, almost like you were trying to soothe your headache away somehow. “I’ll try to calm down… Maybe I’ll do some in-house stuff instead of jumping at the field work?”

“I think Kara would really appreciate that,” Alex smiled as you headed out of the medbay to go get your stuff from your locker. You ejected the magazine from your pistol and checked that everything was okay before putting the safety on and tucking it into the holster that you strapped to your side.

As you were pulling on your coat jacket and you headed for the exit, you caught a glimpse of a red cape near the analyst lab and decided that talking with your girlfriend was way more important than heading home and wasting your night away.

Your boots hit the ground hard as you turned a corner, just trying to catch up to Kara who moved at inhuman speed (pun intended). “Hey Kara! Babe, wait up!”

The blonde stopped in her tracks, whipping around at high speed and you immediately stumbled on your feet to try and not fall into her. And yet, gravity had other options. Your left toes smacked against the back of your right heel, and you stumbled forward, hands slamming against the lab door as Kara stumbled backward and into the glass pane, taken by surprise at your movements.

You huffed, cheeks turning a soft pink as you looked down at Kara and watched her face tint a soft red just like yours. Her chest was rising and falling hard, almost painfully quick as you could feel the heat of her body through her supersuit. That cute red and blue outfit you loved so much with the House of El crest on her chest, the short skirt and the sheer black tights to somewhat cover up her pale legs.

Oh, why was she so beautiful? Her eyes were so blue, and you adored that strawberry flavored pink lip-gloss she wore all of the time that you loved to lick off of her lips whenever you got the chance… She’s so gorgeous and so perfect and—You were just staring at her! Oh, maybe she was uncomfortable now!

“Shit, sorry,” You stepped back, only to feel her hands had curled into the sides of your jacket and you stumbled forward, arm going over her head to stop yourself from hitting her body. Kara was quiet, and the only sound she was making was the sound of her breathing. “Kara...?”

You wish you knew what was going on in her head. What was she thinking? What was happening behind her eyes that you couldn’t seem to comprehend?

It wasn’t until you heard the sound of someone clearing their throat did you finally take a step away from her, face turning even redder than before as a lab analyst stepped around the two of you and into the room.

“I should probably head home,” Kara cleared her throat, chewing on her bottom lip with a nervous smile on her face. “I’ll uh… see you tomorrow?”

Before you could even kiss her goodbye, she was gone out of your sight. A frown was on your face instantly at the loss of contact and the miniscule words exchanged with her. Why was she pulling away like this? Have you done something wrong? Well, you did get shot but was that why she was being so cold with you?

So many questions raced around in your mind as you packed up your stuff and headed home for the night.

You could hear your cat meowing like crazy before you even opened the door. As soon as it was open, the orange tabby jumped onto the table near the entrance and started pawing at your arm, making you smile as you put your stuff down and lifted him up into your arms. “There’s my baby, did you break anything today?”

Tigger pawed at your face and began wiggling in your arms, a signal that he did not want to be held right now. You complied and put him down on the floor before heading to the kitchen to prepare his food for the night. You were basically moving on auto pilot as you mixed up the wet food with the dry, put it on the floor by his food area, and headed to the bathroom to get ready to relax for the rest of the night.

Wash face, comb hair, change clothes, put on slides, it was all so mundane and routine for you. Even grabbing the glass out of the cabinet and grabbing the bottle of alcohol in the liquor cabinet. You poured a heavy glass of whiskey, lifting the glass up and looking down at the dark amber liquid. You needed this, badly.

“Kara, why can’t I figure you out?” You muttered, seconds away from lifting the glass to your lips when it completely shattered in your hands. A look of complete shock went across your face as you looked down, the liquid coating your countertop and the glass in pieces all over the marble surface.

Tigger hissed and looked over at the window that was now fractured with a bullet hole straight through the glass. Almost immediately, your heart rate sky-rocketed as you dropped down and hid behind the couch, mere seconds before your entire apartment was riddled with gunfire.

Unfortunately, you were more focused on not getting shot and saw your cat tearing off towards your bedroom to avoid the bullet storm coming in the direction of your apartment. What the hell was happening?! Why were you being shot at?!

The momentary reprieve of fear was beginning to vanish and now you were just pissed off as your hands slid under the countertop underneath you and you grabbed the mounted pistol on the bottom of the surface, pressing your back against the couch and waiting for a second. They were using AR-15s and you waited until they were reloading to fire back. You had about 2 seconds before they reloaded the guns, and you counted in your head before you jumped up and began firing back at the assailants on the other roof of the building across from you.

So busy with taking out your attackers with assault rifles… you had forgotten about the sniper that had initially shot through the window. In seconds you were going from pissed off, to full on pain as the sniper fired a round and hit you directly in your left bicep, knocking you against the counter and back onto the ground.

Well, you were pinned down with no safe way out now… what the fuck can you do?

“Goddammit!” You had to get out of your apartment, but how? How would you get out without getting taken out by the sniper? And the couch will only hold up for so long before it begins to break, and the bullets actually start hitting you. And you had to get your fucking cat before he was shot to death too! Poor Tigger, he must be terrified…

You thought of easy exits, but none of them would be applicable without running to the bedroom first and finding your cat. And you weren’t just gonna leave him here to be riddled with gunfire… So busy thinking of a way out that you almost didn’t notice the gunfire had stopped… Completely stopped.

Your heart was racing as you looked over the side of the couch for a second, and you caught a glimpse of a red cape. No fucking way… Of course, of course she came to save your sorry ass! Kara was a wonder and you owed your fucking life to her, so many times over.

Very slowly, you dropped down to the floor and pressed your hand into your bleeding arm, the red quickly oozing from the bullet wound as you huffed and steadied your breathing. This was one of the worst nights ever…

The sound of heels hitting the hardwood floor on the other side of the couch made you relax as Kara jumped over the remains of your sofa and got down on her knees in front of you.

You smiled weakly. “Hey, Supergirl…”

“Your arm—” Kara immediately began fussing, grabbing at your shoulder and looking down at the wound and feeling her blood boil with rage. The one time she isn’t around, and you almost get killed! Why did danger always find you when she wasn’t looking? Why were you always getting hurt? Why couldn’t she fucking protect you!?

“Baby, I’m okay,” You reassured her, resisting the urge to touch her and smear blood on her super suit. Kara shook her head and before you could react, she was picking you up and lifting you back into her arms like she had done earlier that night. “Wait, wait, Tigger’s in my bedroom! He’s scared and—”

“I’ll come back for him, we need to get you somewhere safe now,” Kara reassured you as she took you through the shattered window and off into the sky. You kept constant pressure on the bullet wound, closing your eyes and trying not to look down. You’ve never been too good with flying, especially when not in an actual plane…

You knew Kara wouldn’t drop you or anything, but it was still terrifying. But before you knew it, Kara was setting you down on the ground inside of an apartment before she kissed your cheek and bolted back off into the sky, most likely to retrieve your pet.

It didn’t take a scientist to realize that this was Kara’s apartment. It was very aesthetically pleasing, and everything had a designated place to be in. Not to mention the framed photos of her and Alex on the coffee table.

In almost a blink of an eye, Kara was coming back with the orange tabby in her arms. She carefully put the cat on her floor and Tigger immediately began freaking out and tried to crawl under her couch. When he saw that he was too fat for it, he ran to her bedroom and hid under her bed.

“How did you know I was in trouble?” You questioned, pulling off your sleep shirt and grimacing at the bullet hole in your arm. Kara frowned before she grabbed the extensive first aid kit under her kitchen cabinet… why she had it, you’ll never know. Kara doesn’t get hurt.

Kara pulled out a pair of long tweezers and put her hand against your shoulder as she looked extremely hard at your arm. She was using her x-ray vision to see the bullet lodged inside your arm… Considering it was the only thing that was lead in your body, it wasn’t hard to see.

“I could hear your heartbeat,” She said softly, looking up at you as you grabbed the tourniquet from the kit and wrapped it around your arm. You pulled it tight, holding it with a steady hand as Kara reached in with the tweezers and used her expert alien precision to extract the bullet from your muscle and drop the lead onto the table. You felt tears track your face as she immediately began to apply pressure to your wound, and you let out a heartbreaking cry of pain.

“I’m sorry,” She said softly, looking up at your eyes and seeing your other hand shaking as you held the tourniquet strap. Your blood stained her hands and her super suit as she kept pressure on the wound, still whispering apologies. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

“S’okay baby,” You reassured her, smiling weakly as tears covered your face. When the blood finally stopped, Kara quickly wrapped up your arm and pressed the gentlest kiss against the white bandages, looking up at you and watching as you released the tourniquet and almost fainted as the pain began to overtake you. “Fuck… Christ, I got blood all over your apartment, I’m sorry—”

“No, no, don’t apologize please,” Kara begged, grabbing your face with both hands and smearing the warm red blood on your skin. “You’re safe. You’re here, and you're alive and that’s all that matters… I’m just sorry I didn’t get to you sooner.”

“You have done nothing but save my ass since we met,” You chuckled, leaning down and pressing the softest kiss against her lips. Kara let out a whimper before she wrapped her arms around your neck and basked in the sweetness of your kiss. You muttered against her lips. “My guardian angel…”

Kara was always looking for new ways to display her strength as she lifted you up off the table and carried you in the direction of her bathroom. Very gently, she set you down on the side of the tub before she was running a wash rag under warm water.

“So, uh… who were those guys that shot up my place?” You tried to show that you were unbothered by what happened, but it was clear that Kara was focused on what happened. Her hands were seconds away from ripping up the towel as she got down in front of you on her knees and began wiping the blood off your arm. You tried not to flinch as she cleaned off your skin, but she noticed it. Her eyes fell and she began to move slower and gentler, her fingers twitching and her hand shaking as she did so.

“You uhm… You remember that guy I went on a date with when we first met?” Kara bit her lip, avoiding your gaze. Almost like she was ashamed of the answer. “Turns out he’s running this… anti-alien gang in the underground. He’s targeting alien sympathizers.”

You chuckled. “Something tells me that this one was personal.”

“Yeah,” Was all Kara said in response as she finished cleaning off the blood from your large muscular arm, quickly cleaning your face and tossing the rag in the sink, then looking down at the patch on your side. You frowned at her dismissive attitude, reaching down and gently taking her chin between your fingertips.

“Kara,” You breathed softly. The Kryptonian shivered, never getting used to how softly you said her name. “Something is bothering you.”

“It’s nothing,” Kara stood up from the floor and washed her hands under the faucet. It was clear she was in her head about something and the way she was shrugging it off was not sitting well with you. Kara left the bathroom and you followed behind her, carefully stripping off your sleep pants that had blood splatters all over them. You folded them up and placed them on the bathroom floor as you raced after her.

“No, it’s not nothing,” You stated, nearly slipping in the hall as Kara pressed her hands on her hips and began walking around in that signature superhero pose that she always did. Only this time, she looked more distraught than regal. Her cape swung behind her all pretty like and the way her hair went down in golden waves never failed to make your heart race. “Baby, you have to talk to me, please.”

“No, I don’t,” Kara said defensively. She began to pull off her super suit, removing her cape and laying it down on her bed before she unzipped the back. You tried to focus, but watching her literally strip in front of you was doing things to you… “It’s not important. Don’t worry about it.”

“How can you say something that’s bothering you isn’t important?” You frowned, stepping closer to her and wrapping your arms around your bare abdomen as Kara pushed the suit down her body. You inhaled, trying your best not to look at the way her tights looked against her rear and how you could see the clear outline of her panties through the sheer material.

Kara stayed silent as she pushed the tights down her legs, now standing in her bra and underwear as she sat down on the bed and began unzipping her boots. Your entire face was a deep red as you tried to calm your beating heart but knew there wasn’t really a point. She could hear your fucking heartbeat. Instead, you chose to look away.

“I’m not going to be upset if you…” You rubbed your nose, looking at the wall. “If you tell me the truth on how you’re feeling, Kara. I just want you to know that you can be honest with me… I care about how you’re feeling—”

You couldn’t even blink before Kara was jumping off the bed and wrapping her arms around your neck, slamming her lips against yours and curling her hand into the front of your sports bra. Your entire body went stiff as you were taken aback by her response but quickly melted into her like she was everything you needed to stay alive.

It didn’t take more than a few seconds before Kara fell backwards on the bed on top of her cape, pulling you down on top of her and making sure the kiss wasn’t broken for even a second. You reached up and slid a hand into her long, beautiful blonde hair and felt your heart going absolutely insane inside of your chest.

But you needed answers. You broke the kiss and huffed, brows pulling down in confusion as Kara gave you a look of disdain and reached for your face, her fingertips brushing softly against your cheeks and pressing kisses all over your neck and shoulders. She was trying to distract you.

“Baby, baby, stop for a second—” You gently slid your hand from her waist to her wrist and pulled her right hand away from your face. She looked upset. “I need you… to be honest with me. Right now.”

A moment passed between you two where Kara looked away from your face and frowned, a single tear leaving her eyes as she avoided your gaze. You frowned and brushed her blonde hair away from her face. “I’m scared, okay?”

“Scared of what?”

Kara pressed her lips together and she laughed like it was the most ridiculous thing ever. “I’m an alien… I can stop cars with my bare hands, I can break bones without even trying… I hurt people; I’m dangerous! I’m scared of hurting you…”

You pressed the softest kiss to her face and tried to stifle her sobs that she couldn’t hold in anymore. You kissed all over her face, trying to calm her down. “No, Kara… baby, please just listen to me… I’m not fragile; I was in the army! Yes, I keep getting shot at, but that’s different… You would never hurt me—”

“How do you know?” Kara demanded, trying to rationalize her thought process.

You let out a soft breath and pressed a kiss against her face, and then slowly trailed your lips down her neck. She was still so warm against your cool skin, and it always made her shiver when you grabbed at her body. You could get lost in her warmth if she allowed you to.

“Because I know you, sweetheart…” You started gently, almost like the wrong word would scare her away forever and you’d never see her again. Your hands shook with slight anxiety as you pressed your palms into her sides, pulling her as close as possible and feeling her hot skin against your own. “And I know you wouldn’t hurt me. But if you’re really scared… let me take the lead with this.”

“Wh-What do you mean?” Kara stuttered at feeling your teeth gently graze her neck and you all but purred in response to her soft little whimper.

“Here, let me show you,” You gripped her waist and lifted her off the bed, making her gasp as you readjusted the way she was laying. Very carefully, you moved her cape down onto the side table and rested her head on the pillows, looking down and almost drooling over her.

Your hesitation made the super feel insecure. Kara bit down on her lip and her instincts screamed to cover herself, her heart pounding as she brought both arms over her chest and avoided your eyes. Almost immediately, you grabbed at her arms and tried to coax her into moving them away.

“I need you to relax, sweetheart,” You cooed sweetly, trying to calm Kara down to the best of your abilities. Your arm was screaming, begging for you to relieve some of the pressure so you didn’t reopen the wound, but you were determined. Not the first time you’ve been shot so you can handle it, better than anyone else could. “I’m gonna take care of you… Just breathe, yeah?”

The blonde nodded and let out a breath. Her superpowers began to shine through and you saw the ice crystals dance in the air and you smiled, leaning back down and reaching her lips for a gentle kiss. Every new one felt better than the last and Kara simply lost herself in what she knew was your sweet, and gentle presence. Never a day to go by where she didn’t welcome the place you took in her heart.

Your heart raced as Kara reached for the hooks on her bra. You carefully slid both hands from her sides up along her bare skin, pushing them under her and finding what she was reaching for. Almost like you were born to do it, your fingers unhooked the metal clasps flawlessly and you pushed the straps of the fabric down her arms and then removed it all together.

This was the first time you were really seeing Kara, without any clothes whatsoever. She could no doubt hear your heartbeat get faster and faster, and your body heat was rising with every passing second. You ignored the throbbing in your shoulder and the ache in your sides, focusing all your attention on the flawless Kryptonian in front of you.

“Oh my God, Kara,” You whispered like you were out of breath, eyes darting all over her pristine skin. Your fingers twitched, and you bit down on your lip so hard that you almost ended up drawing blood. Very slowly, your hands slid across her waist, sending shivers across her nerves and making the blonde whimper underneath you. “Can I touch you?”

“Y-You have been touching me,” Kara breathed, her voice shaky with a laugh that seemed almost forced. You gave her a look, one that she was very familiar with when she was joking and you were not having it. Of course, it was in a playful manner because this wasn’t something that should be super serious. “Please… please touch me.”

You reacted to her like she was a spell and you were being drawn in. Your body fell down and you pressed kisses across the blonde’s sternum, making Kara inhale sharply and arch her back off the mattress. Instead of touching with your hands, your tongue trailed across her hot skin and you pressed soft kisses and licks to the underside of her breasts, taking your time and basking in every single sweet sound she made.

It wasn’t until you felt her hands in your hair that you began to dive deeper, one hand squeezing at the soft mound of flesh on the left, while the right was drenched in kisses. You made eye contact, gazing into those beautiful blue irises before latching your lips onto her right nipple, your teeth slightly grazing her flesh and making her gasp.

“Ahh,” Kara released a breathy moan that made your toes curl with delight. You wanted more of those sounds. Your lips moved a bit harder and you pinched her left bud with your fingertips, pulling lightly and looking up to see her eyes fluttering as they rolled back in her head.

The superhero whimpered out your name. It was soft, gentle, but screamed inside your brain and it just spurred you on in your hunger for her. Your lips continued to venture down, licking a stripe between her ribs and across her abdomen before you curled your fingers into the fabric of her panties and looked up. “May I?”

Kara laughed again, in that breathless way that made you dizzy. “Unbelievable… you have me in my bed, almost naked, and you are still asking for permission?” Her laughter rang throughout the apartment and you kissed over her belly, resting your chin on the soft skin and rubbing your thumbs under the elastic of her underwear.

“What can I say? Manners to a fault, darling,” You cooed sweetly and Kara could only stare in pure wonder as you grabbed at the fabric of her panties with your teeth and, without using your hands, pulled them down her legs and tossed them over your shoulder.

The Kryptonian kept her legs together, shaking like a leaf in the fall wind as you slid your hands across her inner thighs and kissing at her bare knees. “Don’t be shy, Supergirl…” The blonde slowly opened her legs. “That’s it, good… Just like that…”

Kara reacted out of instinct and covered her face with both hands, hiding the only way she felt she could. You were staring her down, almost breathless as you stroked your hands across her inner thighs and seeing her legs tremble. It was one of the most vulnerable states you have ever seen her in. “Oh, Kara… You are so beautiful…”

“W-Why do you sound s-surprised?” Kara stuttered, removing her hands from her face and leaning up on her elbows to look down at you. A chuckle left your throat as you slowly crawled up the length of the bed and reached behind her head.

Kara watched as you carefully pulled her forward and stacked two more of the pillows on her bed behind her to keep the blonde sitting upright. “Well, you are an alien, babe… I mean, shit, I half-expected tentacles–”

“Are you kidding me?” Kara started laughing, her breath tickling your face as she felt her face go pink under your gaze. You laughed with her, pushing her blonde bangs away from her blue eyes and loving every passing second with her. “I can assure you, I do not have tentacles.”

“Oh, I know now… You have something I’m pretty familiar with,” You cooed sweetly, leaning down a little more and pressing a kiss to Kara’s neck as your right palm caressed her taut abdomen and between her legs. “And something I will enjoy… devouring to my deepest desires.”

“Ahhh, Rao yes…” Kara cursed, her fingers curling into the pillows as her eyes rolled back in her head. You watched with pure fascination and love at her beautiful reactions, seeing her chest rise and fall with each deep breath as your fingers gently stroked between her slick, beautiful folds.

She was so warm, so soft, and so… so everything you were addicted to. You were gentle, and you didn’t pay too much attention to a particular area on her cunt, exploring what she liked and what made her tremble and turn to putty in your hands. You pushed her legs apart a little more and looked down, watching how her body reacted.

“Wow,” You smirked. “Someone’s excited, huh?”

“Y-You’re mean,” Kara whined, hips jerking upward whenever your fingertips brushed over her clit, begging for you to touch right there. “T-T-Teasing me like th-this…”

“Oh,” Your other hand reached for her chin, slowly turning her head so she could look directly in your eyes. You bit your lip and watched her eyes dilate before focusing your fingertips against that bundle of nerves that felt so human against your hands. “This what you want?”

For the smallest second, you saw her eyes glow with heat vision before she blinked it away, forcing herself to calm down and relax. If she wasn’t careful, she would shoot lasers right through the ceiling.

“Yes! Yes, yes, Rao yes,” You loved it when she used her God’s name in vain. It proved she wasn’t as pure and innocent as people made her out to be. You rubbed at her in tight circles, watching her muscles tighten and her back arch off the mattress underneath her. “Feels so good!”

You were basking in her sweet words, enjoying the way Kara said your name, and followed it up with a soft curse word that swiftly rolled off her tongue. You were focused, watching and enjoying her wiggling on her bed before your fingers left her clit and began to dive down deeper. Kara felt your pause and looked up at you, eyes wide and toes curling against the covers around her feet. “Wh-Why did you–”

A soft grin spread on your face and before Kara could question you further, you slipped two fingers past her warm walls and inside of her tightness. The Kryptonian let out an embarrassingly loud cry of surprise melted with pleasure and her right hand went from under the pillows where she was containing her strength, to grab at your wrist and squeeze.

You instinctively flinched and stilled your movements. “Too much? Could just say so…”

“W-wait, wait,” Kara panted, her inner muscles contracting around your fingers and making you shiver at just how strong every single inch of her was. “B-Before you… keep going, we need a… a, uhm… uhh–”

“A safe word, baby?” You said, leaning down and kissing at her cheek, nuzzling against her skin and admiring how you managed to make her shiver every time. “I have something you will be able to remember… If I go too far, I want you to say ‘Kryptonite’. Think you can remember that, baby?”

Your fingers gently pressed against all her inside walls and Kara yelped, releasing your wrist and grabbing at the sheets under her body. “Y-Yes! Yes, I can remember th-that. Now pleaaaase keep going, please?”

The poor blonde looked close to tears and you decided she had enough torture. Very carefully, you set a soft and gentle pace, observing Supergirl like she was a test subject in a lab. Your eyes trailed across her facial features, how the crease in her brows would crinkle slightly, how her nostrils flared and the way her chest moved with each harsh breath in her lungs.

You had never seen Kara get winded before, never seen her truly tired. But in this moment, you could see sweat forming on her brow and dripping down her face. Kara was using so much of her strength to hold back… It was beautiful, but you couldn't help the guilt you felt.

But it didn't look like Kara had that thought process. The superhero was willingly submitting to you, which is something she's never done with anybody. Even with the miniscule information you learned about her past partner, she never seemed like the girl to submit like this… To willingly offer up control to you felt like the most intimate offering she could ever give you.

You were drawn into her like she was a livewire and you couldn’t let go. Your fingers stretched her out, relaxing her muscles from the inside and leaning down to wrap your lips back around her nipple and licking at her sensitive flesh.

Kara snapped again, her hands releasing the sheets from her grasp and curling her fingers in your hair as she voiced her pleasure out loud. You didn’t flinch this time, so entranced with her sounds and the way she showed her desperation for more. Your tongue trailed over her hot skin, and down across her sternum, going lower and lower until you were laying down between her legs, watching up close and almost drooling at the sight.

“Hear that, baby?” You pressed your hand against her lower belly and without warning, sped up your finger motions and listened to the squelching sounds her pussy made against your fingers. Kara cried out, her spine arching and her inner walls clenching down. “Such a messy girl, aren’t you? God, so sexy…”

Kara was drinking your praise up like it was water. It felt like she was feeding on you as she writhed and squirmed on the bedsheets, looking down and watching your eyes glimmer with something that she could only define as mischief.

Before she could ask what you were thinking… The Kryptonian let out a loud shout of pleasure and her entire body jolted towards your awaiting mouth. Kara swore she saw stars behind her eyes as your tongue met her clit and you gave it a soft, experimental lick while curling your fingers upward and pressing them against what you knew was a sweet spot.

“Fuuuuuck,” You stared in wonder as your tongue began working faster, drooling on her pussy and fucking down into her as deep as her muscles would allow. You had never heard Kara swear like that before, and now that you had? You wanted more. It was like you were deriving pleasure from this too, just like she was. “Fuck, fuck, shit, th-that feels so fucking good!”

In your pussy-drunk state, you had this sinking suspicion that Kara Danvers has never been eaten out before. How dare someone strip this woman bare, spread her beautiful legs, and not wish to feast upon her like she isn’t the most delectable thing in the entire galaxy?!

Your efforts doubled, wrapping your lips around her clit and experimentally sucking on the bud. Kara cried out, sitting up a little further and looking down to gaze into your eyes. Her own were glowing, and for a minute, you thought of stopping but decided against it.

Is that what Kara did when she was about to cum? Did her super powers start to act up? Her fingers dug into the bedsheets and you heard an audible tearing sound. Her breath came out cold, panting like a dog in the sun as she rolled her hips against your skilled mouth. She was practically fucking herself down on your fingers and you carefully slipped in another one, making her shamelessly call out your name.

“D-Don’t stop,” Kara begged, her teeth clenching as she lifted her hips upward and began grinding on your tongue. You persisted, your mouth keeping pace and moving your fingers faster as your other hand gripped her hip and held her as still as her super strength would allow. You twisted your tongue at just the right angle, and your fingers hit the right spot inside of her, and Kara was screaming. “Don’t stop! Oh Rao, right there! Please, please don’t st–”

Her voice cut off with a deep cry of euphoria as she fell backward on her mattress and you could feel her inner walls contracting around your fingers. The glow in her eyes got brighter and before you could realize what was happening, her heat vision activated and did exactly what you thought she would do, which was burn a hole through her ceiling.

You didn’t care. You kept fucking her through her orgasm, drooling on her cunt and hissing at her left hand going to your back and digging her nails into your flesh. She made cuts, but you endured, loving how she marked you in her own special way.

Kara’s cries of bliss faded to soft whimpers as you slowed your movements, lifting up off the bed and grinning. Her face went pink at the wetness dripping from your chin and all you did was lick your lips and wipe your mouth against your uninjured bicep.

The blonde whined as you removed your fingers from inside of her and sobbed at seeing you bring them up and lick them clean. “Fuck, you taste like cosmic bliss, babygirl.”

You didn’t get to flatter her anymore before Kara was yanking you down and pressing kisses all over your face and on your lips. She didn’t seem to mind the taste of herself as she pulled back to breathe and wiped at your nose with her hand. “Are you okay?”

You laughed, tossing your head back for a second. “Kara, baby, I’m fine… Your roof isn't though.”

Both of you looked up and saw the smoking hole in the ceiling, her face turning red and her heart beating fast enough that you could feel it if you concentrated. You chuckled, leaning down and kissing her once again before you laid on her chest. You knew she could handle your weight, and you didn’t mind basking in her warmth as you nuzzled against her bare chest and enjoyed hearing her heart.

But the second was short lived as Kara gasped and shot up straight. “Oh no, no, no,” Kara muttered, her eyes widening as she looked down and ran her fingers across your back where the blood was ever so slightly beading at the surface where her nails cut in. “I hurt you… I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to–”

“Kara, hey, hey it's okay…” You cooed softly, reaching for her face and gently rubbing your thumbs across her cheekbones. Kara couldn’t keep the tears at bay as she held you by the wrists. “It’s okay… I liked it.”

“Y-You liked that I hurt you?” She frowned.

You simply smiled and kissed her forehead. “I did. You didn’t know this about me, but I’m a bit of a masochist… A little pain during sex? I like it a lot.”

“Oh,” Kara blinked a little before she smirked and leaned back in, kissing at your neck. “Then I think I will have some fun with you too…”

“Just remember our safe word, babe,” You mumbled, practically melting in her hands as Kara started to remove your sports bra with nothing but her bare strength, tearing it at the seams and shredding the fabric to pieces.

Kara gently bit down on your neck and you gasped, bucking against her. “Kryptonite…”

Alex hadn’t bothered knocking on Kara’s door for a long time now. It used to be her apartment, and it wasn’t like Kara had super hearing to sense whenever Alex was in the hallway… oh wait, yes she did.

“Kara!” Alex shouted out from the front door as she closed it behind her, a box of breakfast pastries sitting in her right arm. “I have a present!”

Alex was so busy setting the box down on the counter and opening it up that when she heard someone stumble out of the bedroom, she did a whole double take at seeing you in one of Kara’s massive shirts that she would sleep in. Of course, it wasn’t that big on you due to your muscular build.

“Uh… Hey Alex,” You anxiously rubbed at your neck and Alex was practically gaping at the sight of you. Just from here, Alex could count at least seven hickies on your neck. You had a fresh set of bandages on your arm, which was shocking to see because Alex doesn’t remember you getting shot in the arm, just the side.

Your hair was a total mess, and Alex saw even more bite marks on your thighs. What in the actual hell did Kara do to you? She never saw Kara make those kinds of marks on any of her partners before. The blonde was deeply terrified of hurting others,so for her to bruise you and so openly? It was so bizarre!

Kara called out your name from around the corner and you looked just in time to hold out your arms. The super stumbled for a second. “What? What is it?”

You bit your lip and looked at Alex before seeing Kara use her x-ray vision to see who was on the other side of the wall. Almost instantly, she started shouting at her. “Alex! Why didn’t you knock?!”

“How did you not hear me?!” Alex chirped back, biting into a muffin on the counter and sighing. “Not so super right now, huh?”

“Honey, you should uhm…” You looked at the blonde and how she was completely bare in the hallway, much to your enjoyment. You didn’t want to tell her, but it was needed. “Put something on?”

The Kryptonian felt like dying in that moment, running back towards the bathroom and slamming the door shut harder than intended. You flinched and looked at Alex, nervously shuffling over to the kitchen island and rubbing your hands down over your face.

“Whatever you are about to say,” Alex started, making you look up. “Keep it to your damn self.”

“Wasn’t gonna say anything Agent Danvers,” You teased. “But I will tell you that my apartment was shot up last night…”

“Wh-What, why didn’t–” Alex sputtered, pushing the muffin away on the countertop and reaching for the bandages on your bicep. You simply allowed her to do whatever she liked, knowing damn well that she would pull the superior card like she loves to do whenever you get injured. Very carefully, Alex began to snip away at the bandages with her personal trauma shears that she kept on her person at all times, exposing the bullet hole in your arm. “Why do you keep getting shot at?”

“Woman, I am a lead magnet,” You said, flinching a little at the cold air touching the exposed, puckered and bruised flesh with the gaping wound on full display. Alex rewrapped your arm with the bandages sitting in the open medkit that Kara left out the night before and let out a deep, uncomfortable sigh. You frowned. “It wasn’t my fault this time.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Agent,” Alex snapped, making you blush with embarrassment. “Who was it?”

“Remember when me and Kara met? And I beat that guy up in the bar? Well, he’s targeting alien sympathizers, but I think he just had it out for me as some form of payback for getting him arrested again.”

Alex made a face of disapproval and immediately pushed the box of pastries in your direction. You immediately reached in, taking a chocolate croissant from the pile and smiling with gratitude. “If you had the night I think you had, you definitely need sugar.”

“I thought we weren’t gonna talk about it.”

“We’re not talking about it, I’m just stating something rhetorical.”

“Alex,” Kara demands her sister’s attention, wearing a tank top and sleep shorts, much to your disappointment now. “Stop embarrassing my girlfriend, please?”

You immediately felt your face turn a deep pink and pretended to be very interested in the croissant in your hands, biting into the pastry and shifting your weight back and forth between your feet and refusing to look up at either of the Danvers sisters.

“Is this my life from now on?” You muttered.

Kara snorted, picking up her own muffin and rubbing her fingers across your upper thigh making you shiver. “I didn’t hear you complaining last night, or this morning–”

Alex gagged. “Kara, gross! Stop!”

Well, if this is my life… You thought with a smile. I could definitely get used to it.

#lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #kara danvers x reader #kara zor el #kara danvers #supergirl x reader #supergirl cw #supergirl x fem!reader #supergirl 2015 #masc!reader #fem!reader #nsft #mentions of blood #mentions of violence #kara danvers smut #kara danvers x fem!reader smut

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billskeis · 9 months ago

Note

HEASIAIZIA HAI

CAN YOU MAKE LIKE BILL BEING A POLICE OFFICER AND THE READER DOING SOME STUFF THAT COULD GET HER IN JAIL BUT LIKE ok LISTEN she does the "everybody knows that im a good girl officer" thing (song by Lana del rey playing dangerous) and he lets her go but like the next day they meet again and go on a date and HOOKUP but he punishes her for doing that stuff (perhaps if it could be spraying on like stores if you get me) like punishes her not letting her release TYING HER WITH THE HANDCUFFS UGHHHHahhshshsHAJDSJS

ᡣ𐭩 police officer bill

police lights flash behind as you attempt to catch your breath in an alleyway. on the run, you’re currently hiding from the police as they’ve caught onto you and a couple of fiends vandalizing public buildings with vulgar graffitis.

as you hide your body behind a garbage chute, you kneel down to make yourself less known to the open world.

shouts boom across the street seeming as though a few of the cops have already caught onto your other friends.

bless the heavens that you weren’t caught.. yet.

“haah.. phew..! i think, i think i made it out alive!” speaking to yourself as somebody else was there.

“i don’t exactly think so, schatz.”

“oh sh—”

in your feeble escape, you try to make a run for it until a pair of arms latch onto your shoulders and push your body up against theirs.

“fuck! ow..”

“you really thought that you could get away..?”

you turn to look at the body that’s pressed up against yours. he was tall, and really pretty, actually you wondered why he didn’t just work as a model instead of being a police officer.

black locs adorned his face, with an eyebrow piercing accompanying his right, are they allowed to wear those on duty?

whatever, it makes him look hot.

“well.. i’ve been such a good girl officer.”

“my ass, you’ve been vandalizing the streets and these buildings for weeks and you know it.”

“it adds a little.. character! what can i say, this city could use a little colour to it.”

“as much as i love art, princess, what you’re doing is ILLEGAL.”

“no, what’s illegal is how hard you have this gun pressed into my backside, it hurts.”

“..?”

“um hello?? officer—”

you turn to find his name tag attached to the right side of his uniform. bill. officer bill.

“officer bill, can you at least move your gun to—i don’t know—the side more??”

“oh my sweet little thing.. that isn’t a gun.”

…

“oh.”

your eyes meet his, dark brown irises highlighted in the sunny light, his lips curled into a downward smile although his voice stern. it seems as though this police officer enjoys having you up against him.

you feel a rush of heat go to your cheeks, so you turn your body around. embarrassed, why? fuck if you’d know..

well maybe it’s the fact that the officer that currently has you captive in the back of an alleyway is not only super fucking gorgeous but he’s PACKING.

“i.. i—”

“i’m going to let you go.”

he releases his grip on you and you turn your full body to meet him once more, truly relishing in how tall and slim fit his figure is built. you have to look up at him to make eye contact.

“although under one condition,”

“and that is?”

“you go on a date with me,”

“fuck no. i’d rather be caught dead than go on a date with a police officer.”

truth be told, you did wanna go on this date, but your stubborn nature wouldn’t allow you to say yes so easily. you really wanted to test the waters and see how persistent bill was in getting that date.

“fine then, i am obligated to then turn you in.”

“waitwaitwait nevermind i’ll go on that date with you.”

fuck yourself for being this easy..

this little shit, how dare he pull the authority card on you after you had done something illegal and he do his job?? his face once emotionless now held a smirk on his lips before he slipped you a small paper.

“good girl. now stay here for a little longer, i’ll let the others know i couldn’t find you.“

“..kay, but i’m expecting a lot from you just so y’know..”

you wave him off goodbye as you see his figure disappear from away the alleyway. hearing voices chatter, you can only assume he came up with an excuse to let you off the hook in exchange for a date with you.

“oh trust me princess, i will exceed those expectations.”

“i—um..”

“use your words f’me princess,”

“how is this a date!?”

you’re currently on his bed, the tight little number that you wore is currently riding up your thighs as you clench them together.

prior to this, bill took you out to a restaurant that was AMAZING, and insisted that you go back to his house to drink a bit more.

to your naivety, bill had other intentions underlying his silver tongue words.

with your cunt hovering right above the tip of his dick, you cannot find the words to speak. how is this even possible?? how dumb could you be to sleep with a cop?? stupid stupid y/n.

with each hand on the side of your waist, the soft pads of bill’s fingertips graze over your skin sending a shiver up your spine.

“you’re leaking onto me schatzi, sure you don’t want this?”

“shut up..”

with a harsh slam, bill pulls your hips flush to his, bottoming out. you let out a surprised squeak as your walls molds to his shape.

now you’ve had sex before but not with someone this big, the stretch is something you gotta get used to.

if you were to fuck him again.

“you better watch your mouth, maus.”

“f-fuck.. a little warning would be nice, no?”

“hm, nah..”

bill uses his hands to grasp each side of your ass before lifting you up to slide you up and down his length, the stretch burning a bit but it quickly subsides as he makes you ride him.

electricity sparks from within your body and you feel your stomach starting to clench. every time he brings your butt down to touch his thigh your clit rubs his abdomen momentarily.

with your orgasm coming close, you don’t even care about the noises that fall out of your mouth. you sound like a total slut. not that bill even cares.

“i-i’m close..”

he stops.

“bill..!”

“i don’t think you deserve to come yet.”

you grind your hips in circles in an attempts to release but he brings a hand to spank your ass.

“o-ow..”

“gimme a reason to let you release, hm? you been acting up for weeks, plus the multiple warnings the force has given you just hasn’t stopped you from committing crimes has it..?”

you bite your lip in a remains of silence. no way in hell were you going to beg bill to let you come.

he wraps his arms around your waist to bring your torso closer to his, now bringing his mouth to your bare chest to lick a stripe up from in between your breasts.

a moan in approval slips out of bill’s mouth as he then brings his tongue to lick around your right nipple swirling his tongue around it.

he bites on the bud eliciting a wince out of you. your hips still on his, an achy feeling still felt in your cunt as you yearn for more.

“so? what’s it gonna be maus?”

“please..”

“please what?”

“let me come.. bill,”

“okay, but i have another condition for you.”

you cock your head to the side in confusion, wondering what he’s up to now. that is until he releases an arm off you to reach for something on the bedside table.

oh fuck no.

“you kinky shit, handcuffs?”

“it’s apart of my get-up what can i say?”

“n-no.. i’m not wearing those.”

“well then i guess you can’t cum! i can sit and wait here all night baby.”

tears begin to well from your eyes, all you want is the sweet bliss of release and the man who wanted a date with you in the first place clearly isn’t give it to you unless you put your pride aside.

well, fuck it.

you present your wrists pressed together in front of bill, looking around the room in shame. a smirk falling down on his face as he clicks the metal gadget around your limbs now connected with one another.

“good girl.”

again with no warning, bill pistons his hips up into you at a harsh and fast pace. without falter, he keeps his rhythm to which you cannot catch up to.

choking on your words, all you can do is hold onto him for stability, the pressure brought to your g spot by his tip feels amazing.

“b-bill..”

“gonna be good f’me?”

“yes..!”

your legs begin to shake and quiver as your orgasm washes down on you but bill is nowhere near done with you, never stopping his hips.

“shit, looking at how you’re sucking me in..”

“gonna cause more trouble for me and my friends?”

you’re panting so hard and your brain and legs have become so mushy only small whimpers and whines fall out of your mouth. bill clearly isn’t satisfied with your behaviour, biting into your shoulders.

“answer me.”

“ung! n-no! ‘m sorry. hic ‘m so sorry billy i won’t c-cause you anymore trouble just—hic—please slow down..!”

your cunt all sensitive and sloppy, only squelching noises can be heard in bill’s bedroom as be fucks his dick into you. body so sensitive and overstimulated you let him do you as he pleases.

he leaves sloppy kisses all over your neck and chest calling you dirty names but you can’t help but clench around him even more, milking his cock as if its asking for his seed.

your words fall onto deaf ears, clearly, as all bill does is go even faster at an inhumane pace you didn’t even know was possible.

“a-ah.. i can’t.. ‘m done, bill.. no more..”

“almost done baby, okay? just be a good girl for me and let me do the work..”

“a-ah nooo..”

it hurts. the pressure hurts. but its hurts so good.. with a final thrust, bill finally comes, releasing into your walls with his dick all nice and pressed up into your cervix.

“s-shit, coming..”

his moans are low and nasally. mouth agape and hands still on your hips with a grip so tight his nails dig into your skin leaving a trail of red marks.

your tummy feels warm and full, and bill’s thrusts in riding out his orgasm becomes all sloppy and sticky with how wet your cunt was.

you’re a hot mess, hair falling everywhere and body all sweaty. mouth lolled out as your head rest atop bill’s shoulder drool falling out.

he taps your shoulder and you raise your head to look at him, unable to open your eyes with how bill fucked the energy out of you.

“you okay maus?”

“mhm..” you nod at him as he places a sweet and gentle kiss onto your lips. all you can do is blush and smile, taking in how pretty bill is for a cop.

he shifts while still inside you, grabbing a key to unlock the handcuffs that left little marks of bruising on your wrist.

you rub your hands to smooth over the irritation. bill taking note of this swiftly grabs them and places a kiss on top of the marks. your cheeks burn red as he burn a gaze into your eyes, not looking away.

“did so damn good schatz, hope i fucked all that crime committing business outta ya.”

a/n : i hate this. i’m so sorry anon i feel like i disappointed you 😔😔😔

#tokio hotel #tokio hotel x y/n #tokio hotel x you #tokio hotel x reader #tokio hotel smut #bill kaulitz #bill kaulitz x y/n #bill kaulitz x you #bill kaulitz x reader #bill kaulitz smut #2000s #fyp

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wafflefries13 · 6 months ago

Text

A Wolf In Wolf's Clothing

Summary: A forced retreat to the woods leads to meeting a couple of new friends, one furry and one furious.

AN: Another fic I wrote a while back, another than got eaten by Tumblr. Still pretty proud of this one! Repost.

Warnings: Werewolf au, cannon typical violence, language

It was fine. This was fine. Staying in a small cabin in the middle of the woods, getting back to nature, away from the city, away from those yakuza who were tracking you down because your dad had skipped out on the massive amounts of gambiling debt he had, and seriously, Dad, you knew he had a problem, not that he would ever listen to you, but did he really have to go and play mahjong, freaking mahjong, with some super sketchy people and really think everything was just going to be fine that he was going to be okay when he already had a massive pile of debt from that pyramid scheme that you told him was a pyramid scheme or the loss from that horse race last month, and seriously, Dad, this is why mom left-!

But it was fine. You were fine.

The cabin was small, a one room structure that gave you flashbacks to ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ Thankfully, the owners had attached the outhouse to the actual house a few years back, installing a slim standing shower. Electricity came from either solar power or a gas generator hook-up out back, but there was no way you would ever get an internet connection all the way out here. But it had a fireplace! That was pretty cool, right?

You weren’t exactly sure how long you’d be out here. The detective from vice told you to stay off the grid as much as possible, that they’d get in touch with you, not the other way around. The police officer had dropped you off about an hour ago after bumping over an unpaved road tangled by tree roots and overgrown underbrush. You would never have been able to find this place by yourself. But you supposed that that was the whole point.

You’d spent your first few hours there getting the cabin to an actual livable condition. Vice had told you that this place wasn’t used a lot, and you could immediately see it. Every surface was coated in a thick layer of dust. The windows were covered in who knows how many years of grime. Cobwebs littered with tiny insect carcases huddled in every corner and crevice. You were lucky you hadn’t found a racoon nest in the chimney flue.

Finally, as the sun set, your muscles aching from the work, you decided that your temporary home was livable enough. You summoned all your knowledge from watching ‘Man vs Wild’ and lit a fire. You heated up a can of chicken noodle soup on the gas stove. The cabin didn’t have a bed, so you stacked several thick quilts stored in a cupboard, rolling out your sleeping bag on top.

You sat on your makeshift bed, back pressed against the wall, slurping your soup. Outside the window, you watched as the light slowly faded away. Wow, you didn’t realize how dark it could really get out here. You put way too much stock in the light you could get from the moon and stars, apparently. There was no accounting for the noise, though. It sounded like a million different insects were screaming from the woods outside. You thought cricket noises were supposed to be comforting, like listening to the ocean to try and fall asleep. But this just made you itch and wish for another can of bug spray. Man, vice really sent you out here with nothing, didn’t they?

Sitting back and contemplating your possible execution via yakuza boss in the near future, it took you a while before you recognized the change. Every noise outside your four walls had fallen silent. The popping of logs in the fireplace was tantamount to gun fire.

Slowly, you set down your half-finished can of soup, dragging a wooden bat out that you had snagged before the vice police shoved you in the car to bring you here. Staying as low to the floor as possible, you crawled to the front window. You pressed your back against the wall, like you had seen spies do in movies, and slowly lifted one corner of the thick curtains. You tried to crane your head to look out, but it hurt more than you thought it would and your visibility was cut by way more than half.

Why hadn’t vice at least given you a gun or something?

Taking a deep breath, you stood, holding the bat in front of you like a sword. Before you could convince yourself that this was a bad idea (too late) you burst open the front door, ready to swing at whatever you saw first.

Noise exploded back into existence as soon as you stepped into the small clearing around the cabin. Panting heavily and breaking out in a cold sweat from the adrenaline, you whipped your head back and forth to look for intruders. Left? Clear. Right? Clear. Front? Clear. Behind-?! Wait, that was the cabin, you were just there.

You felt all the energy leave you at once. The bat suddenly felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. You slumped forward, bracing your head on the backs of your hands settled on the pommel of the bat.

You heard something from the other side of the cabin. A low groan, the result of footsteps. Gulping hard, you raised the bat again, silently making your way to the corner of the house. You whipped around the corner.

A giant furry shape was slumped in a pile in front of you. It let out a low whine. You could see the powerful muscles under its thick fur coat ripple and stretch as the thing tried to get comfortable. Sensing your presents, it reared its large head, pinning you down with ruby red eyes.

A wolf. There was a wolf in front of you. You had always assumed wolves would sort of look like giant dogs, but this close you could see how different they really were. This thing was huge, first of all. Its head would come up to your shoulder when it stood. It also had long thin legs, built for fast running and careening over obstacles. The wolf snared at you, its lips pulling back as a deep growl emanate from its throat. You could almost swear it was glaring at you.

Its threat was cut short, however, by a pained yip. As it tried to stand, it faltered and fell over, back into a furry heap. You could see a patch of mismatched fur coating its back leg up along its haunch. The fur was matted, dark with something wet.

You dropped the bat, holding your hands in front of you in what you hoped was a non-threatening pose. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” You said softly. “I’m just gonna… I’ll be right back.” You ducked back around the corner, heading into the cabin. You threw open the cabinet doors, rummaging for a first aid kit you could have sworn you saw somewhere while cleaning. You found the small white box, hoping that whatever was inside was as suitable for giant wolves as it was for people.

You headed back out. Going around the cabin, you saw the wolf trying to stand and limp away again. He didn’t make it two steps before collapsing. Instead of a pained noise, this time he just left out a frustrated humph. You giggled despite yourself. The wolf’s head reared back around, locking eyes with you again. It growled at you.

“I don’t think you look as menacing as you think you do right now,” You said. You tried to talk calmly in a low voice. That’s what you were supposed to do with frightened and injured animals, right? Well, you also were supposed to leave them alone and call animal control or something, but you didn’t really have the option of doing that right now. And you didn’t think you could sleep, much less live with yourself, if you knowingly just let this wolf suffer right outside your door.

You took another step closer. The wolf snapped his jaws at you but didn’t move from his heap. “Hey, easy, big guy. I just want to help.” You held up the first aid kit, as if that was supposed to mean anything to a wild animal. The wolf glared at you, but didn’t make any movement as you took another cautious step forward. As you knelt down beside his injured back leg, he huffed again, turning his head away and resting it on his massive paws, resigned to accept you unasked for help. This close up, you could see his fur was an unusual blond. It reminded you of wheat fields just before harvest (not that you had ever seen that, being such a city kid, but pictures and imagination counted for something, right?).

You opened the kit and pulled on a pair of gloves. Parting his fur, you hissed in sympathy at his wound. There was a gash slicing through his entire haunch, more wide than it was deep, but still bleeding profusely. You could see smaller cuts and bite marks, punchers in his flesh, littering the rest of his leg and up his back. Some of these wounds had already half-healed, but had reopened again, oozing and clotted.

You threaded a hand comfortingly through his fur, speaking softly as you dabbed an antiseptic wipe along the largest gash. The wolf winced and barked at you in annoyance at the sting, but after a glare (you didn’t even know wolves could glare with such intensity before this), he resigned himself and plopped his head back down. There were some butterfly sutures that you hoped would stick on with his fur. You pushed them down, pulling the edges so the flesh closed. You tried your best to clean the other injuries, but you didn’t have a lot of butterfly sutures, and bandaids certainly weren’t going to stay down.

As you were contemplating this, a chorus of howls erupted from the woods around you. The blond wolf sprung into action immediately, jumping up and circling himself around you. You probably would have thought that was amazing or cute or something if a sense of panic hadn’t seized you. The wolf was still limping, trying to keep his back leg off the ground. His head jerked from side to side, ears constantly twitching. Whatever was out there, you could only imagine that it was closing in, and it was out for blood.

“Oh, this is going to be a bad idea,” You said to yourself. The wolf cocked his head at you. “But, hey, I’m not making any good choices tonight, I guess. Come on.” You picked up your abandoned bat, standing to guard the wolf from the tree line. You started backing up, genteling nudging the wolf with your hip in the direction of the cabin door. He seemed to get your meaning, limping along, but trying to maintain his sense of canine bravado by making threatening growls and fangs bared.

Backing your way into the cabin, you quickly locked and barred the door. You had no idea if conventional locks would keep out blood-thirsty wolves, but you figured it wouldn’t do much against determined yakuza members either, so maybe you should just cut your losses.

You heard a loud slurping and turned around. The blond wolf had his muzzle buried in your reheated soup, lapping it up and spilling everything that didn’t immediately make it into his mouth.

“Hey!” You chastised. You could have sworn he rolled his eyes at you. Could wolves do that? Like, physically? His long tongue licked his chops when he was done. He took a few stumbling steps then collapsed by the fire.

“Alright,” You said to yourself. “I guess this is happening, huh?” You could have sworn the wolf made a sound of agreement.

~~~

You woke up to the sound of bird song and a mouth full of fur.

Sputtering, you pieced together the events of last night in your head. The wolf had you pinned against the wall of your makeshift bed, his back pressed against your stomach and chest. You had a fleeting thought that he was putting himself between you and any danger that might break in. You had heard stories of mother wolves protecting human babies, maybe this was something like that? Or were you thinking of The Jungle Book? The founding of Rome? Whatever.

Either way, it made you smile a bit, petting his fur. Wow, you had no idea wolf fur was so thick! Your hand just seemed to drop forever through his soft coat. Your action was enough to rouse the wolf from his sleep just a bit. He cast a tired glance over his shoulder at you. You could have sworn you could read his expression. “Really? You’re waking me up for this?”

“Hey there, sunshine,” You said. “I should probably take another look at that leg, huh?”

The wolf huffed, rolling over. You thought for a second he was giving you room to get up, but when you started to move he rolled back over, landing heavily across you and pinning you down. “That’s, uh, that’s a no then, huh?” The wolf just shuffled to a more comfortable position (on top of you) and closed his eyes.

You sighed, reaching up and rubbing the fur between his ears. “This is my life now, huh?”

He blinked open his eyes, staring right into yours. They were a deep red, almost like uncut garnets. You had no idea animals could have eyes like that. Not just that, but something about them looked almost too… human to you. The proportion of iris to whites just sort of off from what you would expect from your average dog. Before you could put your finger on it, the wolf closed his eyes and rested his head again.

His heat radiated through you like a miniature sun. You pet through his fur, deciding to narrate your thoughts out loud. You told him about how you came to be in these woods, in this cabin, your struggles with dealing with your father's gambeling addiction for so many years, the fall festival you had gone to last year, how you wanted to start hiking now that you were trapped out here, this song you couldn’t remember the words to, summarizing the plot from some book you had to read for English class.

After the sun had already started to rise high in the sky, the wolf (you really needed a name for him, huh?) slinked off of you. You let out an exaggerated breath, thumbing your chest a few times. He flicked his tail at you.

You opened up the cooler you brought with you. Take two slices for yourself, you handed the wolf the rest of the sliced turkey you had bought for sandwiches. He ate the entire pack in one massive bite, looking at you expectantly for more. Huffing in mock annoyance, you tossed him the other two slices. He caught them in the air, flicking his tongue to get the juice from his canine maw.

He tested his weight on his back leg. You could tell it still hurt him, but he still tried to walk with his other three legs. He stretched out, arching his back. “Oooh, big stretch!” You said. There was that glare again.

He limped over to the door, scratching it. You opened it for him, assuming he had to do his doggy business or something (wait, was he trained to go outside? That would explain some things). But when you tried to close the door again, he barked at you. He scratched the door frame until you followed him outside. He would walk several feet ahead then sit, looking over at you and barking. You went back inside and tugged on your hiking shoes, spraying yourself down with a healthy dose of bug spray.

The wolf was still pretty unsteady on his feet. He would stumble occasionally, but when you would put out a hand to help him, he would snap back at you. Whatever the case, he at least seemed to know where he was going. Even in his injured state, he could keep a good distance ahead of you.

You heard water rushing as the wolf dropped out of sight. Thinking he might have fallen, you rushed to where you last saw him. The trees broke away, revealing a rippling river with cool pools stretching through the forest. You took in the beautiful scenery, the ice blue water cascading down tiny waterfalls, when sudden movement caught your eye. You focused where you saw it and gasped. A salmon jumped from the water, swimming upstream. That one was joined by another, then two more, until the whole river seemed to burst with fish.

You laughed in shock and amusement at the sight, but were cut off short by something cold and slimy hitting your face. You sputtered against it, swiping it away from you. Looking down, you saw your assailant was flopping on the sandy river bank. A giant salmon, mouth gapping and scales shimmering in the sunlight.

You heard a huff that you could have sworn sounded amused. Looking up, you saw the wolf at the edge of the bank, dipping his paw in the water. He looked deeply into the river, still as a rock, before striking all at once and bringing his paw up. He batted another fish out of the water. You put your hands up, catching it in a slimy, uncertain grip. The fish thrashed around and you ended up dropping him on his friend.

“You know all the best places, huh?” You said. The wolf shook water off of his fur and went back to focusing on the river. “I’m going to run back and get the cooler! We’ll be able to carry a lot more that way!” You weren’t sure why you were telling a wolf this, as if he could understand you, but it felt right somehow.

You carefully followed your footsteps back to the cabin, breaking a twig or making a mark on a tree as you went to make a path. Back at the cabin, you quickly pulled the food you had brought with you out of the cooler, shoving it in the mini-fridge. You didn’t have an ice maker in the cabin, so you hoped the already half-thawed cold packs would work. Almost as an afterthought, you grabbed the first aid kit, tossing it in the cooler. Luging the cooler over your shoulder, you followed your improvised markers back to the river.

You set the bulky cooler down heavily on the bank, looking up with a wide grin for your new companion. Scanning the banks and treeline, your face gradually fell as your search turned fruitless. Your new wolf buddy was nowhere to be seen.

At first, you felt sad that he had just up and left, then scared for his injury. He was still having trouble walking. What if whatever was prowling around your cabin last night came back and tried to take a bite of him?

“Wolf?” You called out, almost immediately feeling like an idiot for doing so. You knew you should have named him. Although, it wasn’t like he was trained to respond to your call. You had to remind yourself that this was a wild animal and not a trained dog from the pound, despite his reluctant friendliness. “Wolf? Where’d you go, big guy? Hello?”

“If you keep yelling like that, a whole pack is going to come and tear you apart.”

You nearly jumped out of your skin at the very human response. Bracing your hands on your knees, you looked down the drop away from the bank to the river. There was a tiny beach there. Leaving against the sandy drop was a boy, head tilted back and face bathed in the sunlight. Despite his relaxed body posture, one leg spread out in front of him, the other bent to his chest, arms loosely crossed, he had an annoyed if not pained expression across his face. His hair was the color of fresh cut wheat, but as spiky as a porcupine. Lolling his head in your direction, he opened his eyes under furrowed brows. You thought it was a trick of the light, but you could swear they were a deep red. ‘Like garnets…’ You thought, memory jumping back to your missing wolf friend.

“Uh, sorry,” You said. “I was just looking for-”

And then your heart stopped as you suddenly remembered why you were out in the middle of the woods. The whole reason you had come here, why the police had dragged you away from your everyday life for your own protection.

You tripped over your own feet flinging yourself backwards. You landed heavy on your butt. Scrambling back, your head whipped from side to side looking for something to defend yourself with. Damn it! You should have grabbed your bat when you got the cooler!

“Hey!” He yelled up at you. “You going to keep spazzing out or give me a hand here?”

“Depends,” You said. “What are you doing out here? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“The hell do you think I’m doing? I work out here.” You saw his hand come up and grip the edge of the bank. He pulled himself up, but winced in pain. Bracing his arms against the bank, he said, “I’m a forest ranger, kind of. Tag some of the animals, make sure no one’s starting forest fires, keep poachers away, that sort of thing. I kind of got banged up here, though, can’t put a lot of weight on my ankle.” He rolled his eyes, leaving the statement hanging in the air for your response.

“Oh!” Of course, you thought to yourself, you had no real reason to trust what he was saying. He didn’t look like a ranger, dressed in a black muscle shirt and dark green cargo pants. But you could tell he was having trouble standing. But then, that could be an act too…

“Sure,” You finally decided. “Hang on.” You looked through the brush until you found a fallen tree branch. You lugged it over, dropping half down the bank and keeping it ancored under your foot. You held out your hand to him. He grasped just beyond your wrist, pulling up and using the branch and a foothold to push himself up. Once he was up on the upper bank, he tried to take a step. You could immediately see his ankle give out, crumbling like wet paper. He fell to his knees with an annoyed sound, catching himself on his palms.

“You okay?” You said, retrieving the branch and not so subtly holding it in front of you.

“Yeah, fine. Whatever.” He tried to brush you off. You could see his entire calf was wrapped in bandages. It looked like some wound had reopened and was bleeding through.

“What happened?” You ask, nodding to his leg.

He looked down, growling at the red soaking through the bandages. “I have to get pretty close to some animals for my job. Checking tags or making sure they’re not hurting themselves. I thought I’d tranquilized a bear, but I guess he wasn’t all the way under.”

“A bear?! You fought a bear?”

He waved a hand at you. “I didn’t ‘fight a bear.’ I was just trying to get a blood sample and must have spooked him. He took a swipe at me. I’ll be fine.”

“That sure doesn’t look fine.” You pointed to his bandage.

He clicked his tongue. “Damn it.”

You rung your hands around the branch. “I have a first aid kit. I’m pretty good at it. I could take a look if you want.”

He practically snarled at you, trying to stand up again. “I don’t need some-” As he tried to put weight on his ankle, he let out a choked yelp, cutting into that tough guy persona he obviously was trying very hard to portray. He lost his balance, wheeling his arms. You dropped your branch, lunging forward just as he fell. You caught him under his arms, throwing your balance off. You both fell, you landing on your back. You groaned, rubbing the back of your head. Opening your eyes, you squeaked seeing his face so close to yours, bright red eyes locked on to yours. Your mouth suddenly went dry and your face went hot. He was practically pinning you down.

His face burst into a blush as he threw himself off of you. He crossed his arms stubbornly. Looking away, he said, “Yeah, fine. Maybe I need a new bandage.”

“C-cool! Yeah! Great!” Well, at least you were pretty sure he wasn’t here to kill you. That would have been a pretty good opportunity. Unless he wanted to slay you with embarrassment, which seemed like a possibility.

You silently checked out his ankle, spraying it out with antibacterial and put a fresh bandage on it. At this rate, you were going to run out of medical supplies before the week was over.

“Hey,” You said in an effort to break the tension. You noticed the tips of his ears were still a blushed red. “I don’t suppose you know anything about the wolves around here?”

His eyes snapped back to you, suddenly suspicious. “There haven’t been wild wolves in this area for over a hundred years.”

You blinked. “Wait, no, that can’t be. There was a wolf at my cabin last night. It sounded like he was being attacked by another pack or something.”

He looked at you hard. “There haven’t been wolves here in a long time. If you think you saw one, you didn’t.”

You huffed. “I’m pretty sure I know what I saw, not to mention felt. He spent the night in my cabin.”

“What kind of idiot lets a wolf spend the night in their cabin with them?”

“Ha! So you admit it could have been a wolf!”

“I didn’t say that!”

You smiled, leaning back on your hands and looking out over the river. “It was fine though. He seemed trained or something. A little prickly, but he was hurt so I didn’t mind.” You heard him mutter something that sounded like “not prickly.” You continued, “He disappeared this morning, though. Around here. I’m kinda disappointed. It’s kind of lonely out here. But hey! I guess I have a new friend now!” You good naturally punched his shoulder. He winced and you just now noticed the fading bruise. “Oops. Sorry.”

“Sure you are. And who said we were friends, anyway? You don’t even know my name.”

Putting on your most welcoming smile (and trying not to grimace at his tone), you held out your hand. “(Y/N) (L/N), trapped out in the middle of nowhere for the foreseeable future for reasons I cannot currently disclose. Very nice to meet you.”

He looked from your hand to your face a few times. He looked like he was turning something over in his head. Flexing his hand, he lifted it up and gripped yours strongly. You could feel the heat radiating from it, like he was a living space heater. “Bakugo. And that’s all you’re getting.”

You fake pouted. “We will be friends, mark my words.”

He scoffed, rolling his eyes. “What were you doing out here anyway?”

“I told you, I cannot currently discloses that information.”

He huffed a laugh. “What, are you a spy or something? Lost princess?”

If only, you thought. “Something like that.”

“Hmm. You don’t have a fishing rod.”

“Uh, yeah. I was kind of counting on my wolf friend to help me out. He did this thing where he just sort of whacked them out of the water.” You mimicked the motion in the air.

“For the last time, there aren’t any wolves around here. Just drop it.”

“Fine, fine. There wasn’t a wolf even though there definitely was. And I don’t know what I’ll do, exactly. I suppose I can survive on canned soup, saltines, and beans for however long I’m stuck out here.”

“That’s disgusting.” He leaned back, crossing his arms behind his head and looking up at the clouds. “Alright, here’s what you do. You at least have a knife, right? Good. I’m going to teach you how to make a fish weir.”

For the next hour, Bakugo talked you through cutting reeds and shaping them into a W-shaped trap in the river. According to Bakugo, the V-like entrance made it easy for fish to get in, while the indented center made it hard or impossible to get out. After some (a lot) of trial and error, you successfully trapped a huge salmon.

“I got one!” You yelled in excitement. “I got it!”

“Good for you,” Bakugo said. “Now take your knife and stab it.”

“Yeah, what?”

“Right behind the gills.”

“Uh, right, okay.” For a few blissful seconds there, you forgot you had to kill a fish to be able to eat it. Using another reed you cut for an unsuccessful weir, you pinned the fish to the side. Wincing, you stabbed the fish’s gills, trying to ignore how it flopped around the trap. Spearing it on your knife, you hoisted it out of the water, flicking it onto the bank.

“Oh, gross, gross, gross, gross, gross!” You flapped your hands. Bakugo laughed at your distress. You tried to ignore how much you liked the sound. “Oh, shut up. It’s my first time.”

He smirked and raised an eyebrow. “Your first time, huh? Glad I could walk you through it.”

You felt yourself flush. “Oh my god!” Without thinking too much about it, you speared another fish in the trap, using your knife to fling it. The half alive fish landed smack on his chest, flopping around in a mess of falling scales and fish slime.

He sputtered, slapping it away. He snarled, “Hey!”

You laughed, hands resting on your thighs. “What? Now we both have dinner.”

Catching a few more and storing them in your cooler, Bakugo taught you how to make a box-like campfire. Creating a grill with your reeds, you roasted some of the fish over the fire, picking it off with your fingers. You both sat by the river and watched the sun set.

Not wanting your time together to end, but becoming too aware of the late hour, you said, “I should probably get back to the cabin. Not sure I could find it in the dark.”

Bakugo shrugged. He struggled to stand up, waving you off when you tried to help him. Taking a few separate steps, he gripped a low hanging branch from a tree. With a thunderous crack, he ripped the branch off. Pulling off a few twigs, he held it under his arm as a makeshift crutch.

“Hey,” He said, not looking at you. It sounded like he was deliberating something. “If you ever need help, I’m usually at the fire watchtower. See? You can see the roof from here. It’s about two miles that way.” He pointed over the tree line. You could just make out the top of a brown corrugated roof.

“Sure you don’t want to take any of these back?” You asked, motioning to the cooler of fish.

“Naw. You need all the help you can get.”

“Hey!” As he wandered off, you yelled to him, “Watch out for the wolves!”

“There aren’t any wolves!”

“You’ll believe me eventually!”

~~~

You methodically tapped your fingers against the mug you held, letting the heat of your hot chocolate seep into your fingers. You were sitting in a folding chair just outside the cabin, bat leaning against the chair’s arm. You were snuggled up in a heavy blanket, watching the fireflies dance through the heavy trees, trying to remember consolations.

But really, if you were being honest with yourself, you were waiting for the wolf.

It didn’t matter if Bakugo said he wasn’t real. You knew what you saw. Maybe he had escaped from some conservation area or zoo? And he seemed used to people, so maybe he was trained? But that didn’t explain the howls you heard as you tended to the wolf’s wounds. It definitely sounded like some rival pack was hunting him down.

It broke your heart to think of him all alone and injured out there.

As if called by your thoughts, a round of howling rose from the depths of the forest. You jumped to your feet. The hot chocolate sloshed from your mug, burning your hand. Frantically waving your hand to ease the burn, you didn’t notice the heavy foot falls until it was too late. You turned as the thumping was right behind you.

It felt like you were hit by a train. Your breath left you with a ‘woomp.’ Falling hard, your arms came up to wrap around what had just barrelled into you, catching it like a football. You would like to say that you were more surprised than you actually were when your fingers dug into thick fur and bursts of dog breath panted in your face.

“Hey there, Golden Boy,” You said, rubbing between his ears. You had decided on his name, Golden Boy, while trying to convince Bakugo of his existence. It seemed apt given his brilliant coat. Your wolf friend yipped at you. Scrambling off, he crouched down in an attack position, growling at the trees. “Come on, bud.” You juggled your folding chair, blanket, bat, and (now empty) mug, pushing open the cabin door with your hip. The wolf backed into the cabin, eyes never leaving the tree line, lips curled into a snarl, until you closed and locked the door again.

You took out a bowl from the cabinets. Opening a bottle of water, you filled up the bowl, placing it near the tired wolf. Crawling over on his stomach, he didn’t even lift his head as he started to lap at the water.

“Yikes,” You said. “Rough night, huh?” You ran a hand along his back. He managed a half-hearted glare at you before deciding it wasn’t worth it and going back to his water.

“So, you’re a wolf, right?” He ignored you, which is what you expected. But you always had a habit of talking to animals like they could talk back. “Because I met a guy today, yeah, I’m not the only person stranded out here, can you imagine, and he said there aren’t any wolves in this area. I mean, I guess you could just be a really big dog. You ever seen an Irish wolfhound? Probably taller than me. Or a Caucasian shepherd dog? I hear they used to breed those in Russia to hunt bears.

“I guess it’s kind of nice to have someone else around. Not that you’re not great company.” Could wolves roll their eyes? “Just… It can get kind of scary out here, you know? Well, probably not, you live in the woods and all. No offence and all, but this isn’t really my idea of a vacation.”

You leaned against the wall, sitting cross-legged on your bed pallet. Golden Boy shuffled to you, resting his massive head in your lap while you checked his wound and changed the dressing. It seemed to be healing rapidly, way faster than you would have expected.

“The truth is,” You continued. “I’m actually in hiding. There are some people who, uh, I’m pretty sure they want me dead. Maybe not me specifically. My dad made some bad choices, hey, that can be the title of my autobiography, and now I’m paying for it.”

You felt your throat tighten up as a wave of emotion snuck up and crashed over you. You hiccuped, pressing your lips together as you tried not to cry in front of your canine audience. He looked up at you, wide, deep red eyes. Your eyes burned as tears threatened to spill out.

Without warning, Golden Boy jerked his head up, wiping his long, wet tongue across your cheek, ineffectively wiping away your tears. You sputtered at the dog drool, breaking out into a giggle fit as he kept licking your face.

“Okay, okay, I get it, stop already! I have a big, strong protector here to take care of me, huh?” He buried his head in your lap again. You rubbed his ear between your fingers. “And I’ll take care of you, too. You know that, right? We’re in this together.”

~~~

“Bakugo! I’ve come to pester you!”

The next day, you awoke to find your wolf friend missing. You weren’t exactly sure how he managed to get out of the cabin since all the doors and windows were still securely closed, but you’d seen videos of pets doing weirder things. Maybe you should have named him Houdini. After cleaning up the cabin a little and finding a more stable storage space for the salmon you caught yesterday, a deep loneliness started gnawing at you. Stowing a tin of shortbread cookies under your arm, you set out in the direction of the river to find the watchtower Bakugo had pointed out to you yesterday.

You finally found it about midday, only being scared to death at the possibility of getting hopelessly lost twice. You climbed up the high stairs to the box structure on top. The sides were made up of mesh screens, covered from the inside by thick curtains, you guessed so that he could keep an eye out for possible forest fires.

“Hello? I brought an offering!”

You heard some grumbling and banging around from inside the box. You heard a heavy lock slide open as the door cracked open. Bakugo’s ruby eyes met yours and you felt a pang of worry for your Golden Boy.

“An offering, huh?” Smiling, you held up the tin. “Fine. I guess that’s a good enough reason to bug me.”

You practically skipped inside. Bakugo pulled at the curtains causing them to zip up and spin on their rollers. The room was cluttered, which you mostly expected from going over to your bachelor friend’s houses. What you didn’t expect was exactly how it was cluttered. It wasn’t like clothes had been dropped on the floor and forgotten, a pile of dirty dishes and overflowing trash. The reality was more chaotic, like someone had turned over the place robbing it. Papers about the geography, flora, and fauna of the forest were strewn on every flat surface. The cot bed was stripped bare, looking like it hadn’t been slept in in days. There was a tall stack of books stacked on a table next to a wooden folding chair half pushed under a desk. A cork board was above the desk, red string connecting bits of cut-out newspaper articles, Polaroid photos, sticky notes with chicken-scratch handwriting, and marked-up calandras.

Bakugo half-heartedly picked up a shirt from the ground. “Wasn’t really expecting company.”

You shrugged. “You a big reader?”

You set the cookie tin down, picking up one of the books. Its pages were marked with various colored tabs. Flipping through the pages, you saw blocks of text that had been highlighted. The book fell open to reveal a copy of a wood-cut illustration of a large man with a wolf head. His snout was pointed to the sky, jaw open in mid-howl. In his meaty hands, tipped with razor sharp claws, he cradled a woman in some medieval German peasant dress. Her head was fallen back, eyes rolled back in her head, a blood stain spreading across her neck and chest. In the background, a mass of angry villagers marched forward, armed with the standard torches and pitchforks. A bone white full moon hung overhead.

Bakugo snapped the book closed in your hands. “Didn’t your parents teach you not to snoop through people's stuff?”

“I wasn’t snooping,” You said defensively. “And just so you know, no, they didn’t. My folks weren’t exactly the etiquette type.”

“Clearly.”

“Hey!”

He smirked at you, prying open the cookie tin and munching on a piece of shortbread. You sat down in the folding chair, looking down dubiously when it creaked under you.

“So, how does a guy get a gig hanging out in the middle of the woods, anyway?”

“How do you?”

You pressed your lips, trying not to let Bakugo feel the sudden drop in your mood. You blinded him with a smile. “Maybe I just really like bird-watching.”

“Sure. Bird-watching.”

You swallowed a lump in your throat. Standing, you turned away and looked out the messy windows, taking in the acres upon acres of unspoiled wilderness. “Wow, you can see for forever up here.” Squinting, you saw the dip in trees around your cabin, the red roof just barely visible. “Hey, that’s my place!” You looked over your shoulder at him and winked. “You’re not spying on me, are you?”

He popped in another cookie, wolfing it down in one bite. “You wish.”

You hummed, looking back out over the trees. “Can you..” You trailed off. “Can you see if people come into the woods?”

He came over to stand next to you, hiding the tin in the crook of his arm. “I don’t get records of who comes in or out, if that’s what you mean. That’s for the rangers at the front gates. I see campfires, sometimes. Need to make sure they don’t get out of control.”

“And if someone, or, like, a group, maybe, was trying to sneak in? Like, not going through the front gates so there was no record of them being here?”

He paused mid-bite and looked at you sideways. “You’re hiding.”

You mock-laughed. “What? No, no. Of course I’m not hiding. Why would I be hiding?”

“(Y/N),” He cut you off. He moved his head so you were forced to look directly into his ruby-red eyes.

You crossed your arms and looked away. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

He leaned back. “That’s okay. But, hey, we can look out for each other, yeah?” He curled his biceps, flexing his muscles. “Besides, you got a big, strong protector here, don’t ya? You don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Big, strong protector, huh?” You echoed.

He leaned closer, eyes half lidded. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. “Yeah.”

You suddenly became away of how close you two were standing, how you could smell the remnants of the sweet cookies on his breath, about how soft his hair looked and thinking about what it might be like to run your hand through it, about how his muscles looked when he flexed them.

You blinked hard, jerking yourself out of this impromptu daydream. You felt the tips of your ears burn as your face flushed.

“The wolf came back last night,” You blurted.

His eyebrows furrowed, mouth falling from a sultry smirk to a frustrated frown. “He did, huh?”

“Yup! I named him, even. Golden Boy. Cause his fur is this really pretty yellow, you know? Kind of like your hair, but less shaggy.” Before you could stop yourself, you reached up and messed his bed-head. Good god, it was just as soft as you thought.

He pulled away, scrunching his nose and fixing his hair. “Th-that’s stupid. Why would I look like some dog?”

“So you admit he’s real?”

“I said dog, not wolf. His owner probably just dropped him off in the woods somewhere. It’s sad, but it happens. Sounds like he’s doing alright for himself.”

“I wouldn’t say that exactly.” You leaned on your elbows. “Every night he’s come to my cabin he’s been pretty beat up. Could another animal be targeting him? A bear or another wolf - sorry, abandoned dog?”

Bakugo looked away, scratching the back of his neck. “I mean, maybe. There’s a lot of dangerous creatures out in those woods.” His voice dropped low. “A lot of dangerous creatures.”

You looked over at the stack of books, the one with the werewolf illustration placed haphazardly on the top. “Like werewolves?” You joked.

He didn’t answer you.

~~~

“Buckle up, Golden Boy, we are going on a field trip.”

It was night again a few days later. You’d spent almost two weeks in the woods by this point. Your days were mostly spent hanging out with Bakugo in the fire watch tower or hiking through the forest with him. He’d given you a blank mole-skin notebook. You’d started sketching and labeling plants and animals you saw on your hikes with him. He’d ramble off information he’d learned from preparing for this job. While your drawing skills needed some improvement, you liked the calm, methodical motions and scratch of pen on paper, taking note of the tiny details that made one plant safe to eat and different from the poisonous one.

Your nights were spent with Golden Boy. His wound had long since cleared up, surprisingly fast, but don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and all. You weren’t exactly sure why he kept coming to you at night. He obviously didn’t need any help finding food. Maybe he felt safer with you behind protective walls? A few times, you thought you saw reflective eyes in the depths of the trees, watching as you let Golden Boy inside the cabin as the moon rose. Or maybe he really did used to be someone’s pet and just felt lonely abandoned out here. He’d always be gone by the time you woke up, no matter how many times you’d fallen asleep leaning against him or curled under your arm.

You’d also kept arguing his existence to your hot-headed friend. Tonight, you finally decided to prove yourself right. You were going to bring your proof right to his front door.

“Come on,” You said, clapping your hands at the wolf lounging by the fire. “You’re going to help me rub some sweet ‘I told you so’ in a cute guy’s face.” He raised his head at you, giving you a look you had come to read from his doggy face. “What? He is. Or maybe I’ve just been stranded in the woods for too long.” You shrugged. Golden Boy let out his ‘you’re ridiculous’ puff of air noise and flopped over so the fire could warm his belly. You took two quick steps forward and rubbed your hand over his belly, it sinking into the thick fur. He let out a surprised yip and curled up, nipping at your hand before licking it and resigning himself to your attention.

You laughed, heading back to the door. “Come on! I haven’t gone hiking at night before. Think of all the cool nocturnal animals I can record in my journal. And I need my bodyguard, right? It’ll be fun-“

You cut yourself off. You opened the door, freezing as you came face-to-face with a fist, poised to knock. Looking past the fist, your throat went dry, heart dropping into your stomach, head going fuzzy. A man stood there in an expensive looking suit. He looked a little surprised, then flashed a wide used-car-salesman smile. One of his teeth was golden. You could see scars criss-crossing his knuckles and up one of his cheeks. His hair was practically a helmet with all the pomade in it.

“Well, hello there!” He said, chipper. That somehow made it worse. “I don’t suppose you’re (Y/N) (L/N), are you?”

The door blurred as you slammed it shut. Just before it closed, the man stopped it with his hands, which now seemed way too large and strong. You tried pushing it closed, but your muscles, even flooded with the adrenaline shooting through your veins, were no match for his.

You stumbled backward as he threw the door open. You saw several more equally if not more menacing men behind him. One was rolling up his sleeves, one checking the knuckle-dusters shining on his hands, one methodically fiddling with the safety on a gun.

You backed away, stopping when the back of your calves nudged into Golden Boy, who was now standing, a low growl emanating from his throat.

“Hey there, pup,” The smiling man said. He leaned down, rubbing his fingers together to encourage Golden Boy to come forward. Your wolf just snapped his fangs. “Aw, well. You hate hurting animals, but sometimes it’s just a hazard of the job.” He drew out a long hunting knife from a sheath shoved in his belt loop. It glistened in the fire light.

You were going to throw up.

“I don’t know anything,” You said, hating the waver in your voice. How could you have become so comfortable, so careless? Where the hell was your bat? “I don’t know where my dad is, I don’t know where your money is. I don’t know anything, I promise.” Tears were blurring your vision, stinging the back of your eyes.

“I’m sure you don’t, sweetheart,” He said. The other men crowded in through the door. The cabin suddenly felt ten times smaller. “But, you know, loose ends.”

Yellow blurred in your vision. Golden Boy flashed in front of you, powerful jaws clamping down on the man’s knife hand. He yowled in pain and shock, the knife clattering to the floor. The other men were stunned for a moment before lunging forward. One hit Golden Boy hard on the back of his head, another grabbing his back legs and yanking hard. Golden Boy kept his death-grip, red oozing from his mouth.

You scrambled backward, head whipping around to look for your bat. It now felt woefully useless. There, cast off in a corner. You’d been using it to dry dish towels.

It felt like 100 pounds in your hands.

You heard an unsettling thump followed by a yelp. Whipping around, you saw the man had managed to dislodge Golden Boy, throwing him against the wall. You cried a broken noise. You felt a hand grab the scruff of your neck. You jammed the bat behind you, connecting with the soft bulge of the man’s stomach. He “oof”ed and his grip loosened. You flung yourself forward, landing hard on your knees, and scrambled up. The door was wide open, the men temporarily distracted. You didn’t think twice.

You shot up, sliding like a baseball player going to home plate in front of Golden Boy. You held your bat in front of you like Excalibur itself.

“Don’t you fucking touch my dog!” You’d never said anything with such venom in your voice, but you still didn’t feel like it was enough to appropriately express your rage. Golden Boy shook his head, getting back to his feet. He stood by your side, head lowered between his shoulders, baring his teeth stained with blood.

The smiling man, who was now scowling in disgust, wrapped his bleeding hand with a way too expensive handkerchief. “God, typical. I hate dogs. Let’s hurry up and finish this.”

The one with the gun raised it, pointing it right between your eyes. You stood fast, gripping the bat so hard your hands were turning white.

You wanted to see Bakugo. It hit you like lightening that that was who was coming to your mind. You wanted to say something to him, an explanation of why you wouldn’t wake him up tomorrow morning. You wanted to make him promise he would take care of Golden Boy, after making him admit that you were right about the wolves. You wanted to hug him, to go on a walk someplace other than the woods, you wanted to cook a real meal in a real kitchen with him, you wanted to wake up in the morning with him at your side, Golden Boy at your feet.

You wanted so many things you knew you wouldn’t be getting. So you had to focus on what you could get. You wanted Golden Boy to get out of here, to be safe. And by hell or high water, you were going to do that.

You swung the bat back, aiming for the gunman’s wrist. You would knock the gun out of his hand, grab Golden Boy, kick him if you had to, get him out the door to get a head start. You’d probably get shot in the back doing it, but maybe the loud noise would startle him into running away. As long as he was safe, what else mattered?

One second you were staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, making peace with yourself. The next, the gun was gone, and so was the man. Blinking, you looked around to see where he had disappeared to. The other men, equally baffled, didn’t have time to react as they were tackled to the ground along with their firearm friend.

Golden Boy was in front of you, pushing you back by leaning his weight against your legs. You watched as your tiny cabin filled with giant wolves, gray, red, black, brown, all with flashing fangs and claws. One man with a knife reared up, pulling his arm back to throw the knife at you. Materializing out of thin air, a new man, one you hadn’t seen before, appeared behind him, catching the first in a headlock and pulling him down until he went limp in a choked-out sleep.

The new man snarled, whipping his head around to stare right into your soul. And he was naked. How did you not notice that? The man looked like he threw full grown trees around for fun, and cut them down for work. Every inch of skin, and there was a lot of skin, had some scar tissue or mark indicating a life of hard-scraps.

His eyes snapped down to Golden Boy, still setting himself firmly between you and the raucous crowd. The man jerked his head to the open door. “Wait outside,” He said, voice unbelievably gruff and low. “We’ll take care of this.”

“Okay?” You said, voice loose. You felt like you were going to faint. You grounded yourself with a tug on your sleeve. Looking down, you saw Golden Boy, his teeth gently closed around your sleeve. He somehow managed to avoid looking at you, pulling you on unsteady feet out in the cool night air. He kicked the door shut with his hide leg as soon as you were out.

All of your energy left you at once. You slumped against a tree, forehead leaning on your knees and blood rushing back into your hands as you dropped your bat. You sat there, still save for the involuntary tremors that racked your body, for who knows how long.

You heard a quiet whimper. Peeking your eyes through your fingers, you saw Golden Boy. He was pacing, eyes downcast and tail tucked between his legs. He was limping a little, his old wound bothered in no small part due to being bodily thrown against the wall.

“Hey,” You said softly. He jerked to a stop and looked up at you, bringing his eyes back down in a guilty expression. “It’s okay. Come here.” You held your hands out, palms up and fingers splayed. He trotted over to you, resting his enormous head in your hands and laying down, his chest pressing on your legs. You buried your face in the thick fur on the back of his neck. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

When the cabin door creaked open, panic seized your adrenaline abandoned muscles. Your hand shot to the bat, its strange weight now frighteningly familiar. Golden Boy barely stirred in your lap, only lazily opening his eyes and shifting closer to you as if hiding from some sort of punishment.

The burly man stepped out first, still naked, you (unfortunately) noticed. He had two yakuza members with him, one slung over each shoulder, limp and unmoving. Next came three huge wolves, one of them walking backward while pulling along another gang member by the cuff of his pants. A woman came out with him, also naked, with the longest hair you had ever seen, similarly scuffed and scraped as the first man. She was followed by two more wolves. The strange group dumped the bodies of your attackers in a haphazard pile near the tree line. Were they dead? You couldn’t tell. God, which option was better?

The man stretched, thick cords of muscle rippling under his skin. He sighed, like a tired parent, and turned to you. You cut your gaze away quickly, making sure to keep your eyes above a certain level.

“Are you badly hurt?” His voice was the same low rumble of an earthquake.

“Um, no. I-I think we’re okay. Thank you.”

He hummed, rolling his shoulders. “No thanks necessary. We stand for our own, no matter the pack.”

“I’m sorry, pack?” You asked, voice squeaking. Your brain was working overtime to process everything.

“Hmph.” The man looked disappointed but not surprised. He nudged Golden Boy with his foot. The wolf whined again, turning his head away. “You still can’t shift on command? How are you meant to lead your pack when you can’t do the most basic things?” Golden Boy whined and grumbled.

“I-what? What does any of this have to do with my dog?” You wrapped your arms protectively around him.

The man quirked an eyebrow. “A wolf without a pack is a dangerous thing. A lone creature who can’t even control his own body needs to be culled. Now that he has found a pack, he has a greater responsibility. He’s part of a whole, not only himself.”

“Hang on-” You tried to stand up only for Golden Boy to shove his weight down on you harder. “Were you the ones hurting Golden Boy? What’s the matter with you? Why would you hurt an animal? And, sorry, but why are you naked? I tried not to say anything but it’s kind of bothering me a lot.”

The man stared you down, looking back to your wolf. “You didn’t tell her anything?” Golden Boy whined. The man sighed. “This will be more difficult than I thought. Our pack must move. We’ve completed our duty.We’ll deal with this… refuse.” He looked at the unconscious yakuza. He nudged Golden Boy again. “Take care of this one. He has a lot to learn.”

The man turned, a yell building in your throat. In front of your eyes, he shifted, skin sprouting silver gray hair. You heard the pop of bones as the man seemed to fall over, but you quickly realized his entire body structure had changed. Where a person had once stood, a wolf walked. The woman from before was also gone, now just the group of wolves. The gray wolf looked back at you, nodding once, before raising up a howl with the rest of his pack.

When you finally managed to feel your heartbeat slow to a non-life-threatening level, you looked down. “Alright, we have a lot to talk about, because apparently you can do that?” Golden Boy turned away from you. “Yeah, alright, nap first. Nap sounds good.”

You passed out.

~~~

You woke up with a headache knocking at your temples. Your mouth felt thick with cotton. You felt warm, gradually taking note of the blanket that had been carefully draped over you. Blearily opening your eyes, you watched dust motes float through shafts of light that filtered through the curtains on your cabin windows. You must have forgotten to dose the fire before you went to bed. It was still crackling in the fireplace.

“Golden Boy?” You said, voice craggy. Why were you still wearing your day clothes? “Yout there, bud?”

A knuckle rapped gently on your forehead. “Exactly how hard did you hit your head?”

You shot up, immediately regretting it as pain flared up your spine to bloom in your skull. “Whoa, hey, take it easy.” A pair of hands steadied your shoulders, helping you sit up.

You blinked hard, looking up into now familiar red eyes. “Bakugo?”

He looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. “You can call me Katsuki now, you know. I think we’re close enough, after everything.”

“Everything-? Oh. Oh! Oh my god!” You tried to jump up, knees giving out underneath you. Your limbs felt like they were encased in lead.

“I told you to take it easy, dumbass,” Bakugo, Katsuki, said. He caught you before you fell, helping you sit back down. He stood up, going to the stove and sliding a pancake on top of a stack, still steaming. Pulling half onto a separate plate, he came back, handing one to you.

Numbly, you took it, tearing a piece off and shoving it in your mouth. “You have pecans in here.”

“We didn’t have any syrup, so I thought this would be a good substitute. Having pancakes on their own is kind of boring.”

“Sure. Yeah. So.” You let it hang there, watching him avoid your eyes and much on pancakes.

He swallowed. “So.” He ate half of another one before continuing. “I’m a werewolf.”

You blinked. “Okay.”

He scowled. ‘There it is,’ You thought. “‘Okay’? That’s all you have to say?”

You shrugged. “I mean, what else am I supposed to say? I’m pretty sure a group of werewolves saved my life last night. I literally saw a guy turn into a wolf, so that checks out. I might still be in shock a little bit, to be honest. So, uh, werewolf, huh?” He scoffed, rolling his eyes and shoving another pancake in his mouth. You cracked a smile and joked, “Well, you sure eat like a dog.” He punched your shoulder. You both laughed anyway.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” He said eventually. “I don’t think anyone does. I got bit by a rogue wolf. Turned pretty soon after. I’m not going to lie, I did some pretty bad stuff. I was freaked out, half out of my mind, those wolf instincts kicking in. It’s not an excuse, but… I got a job out here, thought I could isolate myself, research to see if I could find a cure or something. The pack found me almost immediately. I mean, I practically waltzed right in to their territory, so I can’t blame them. That rule they have, it’s true. A lone werewolf, someone without a pack, they’re dangerous. Unpredictable. They tried to… put me down. I usually managed to get away, but one night I made a stupid mistake. I should have died.” He looked up at you. “And then I ran in to you.”

“And then you ran in to me.” You reached out, petting your hand through his hair. It was still soft, whether as a golden wolf or a human. “So, I’m your pack now? That’s what that guy said, the other werewolf. What does that mean, exactly?”

He blushed, pulling apart his remaining pancakes. “A pack is like a family. They look out for each other, stand with each other. I didn’t tell them we were a pack or anything. I guess they just sort of inferred. Since, like, we’ve been spending a lot of time together, no matter what form.”

You grinned. “They think you’re my boyfriend?” He punched you again, with less malice this time. “Hey, I didn’t say I minded.”

“It’s a lot,” Katsuki continued quickly, the words all rushing out as if he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to say it all. “I still don’t know a lot about all this. I always shift at night. I’m trying to get better at controlling it, but it’s hard. And it’s hard to go through all the history and stuff and pull out fact from fiction. I feel like I can’t control anything and I’m so fucking useless and I-“

You pressed your lips against his. Finally. His lips were chapped, and your teeth clacked together at first, but the warmth that spread through your chest made it all worth it. A plate clattered against the floor as he shifted closer to you. His hand came up to cradle the back of your head, bringing you closer. Your fingers clenched the fabric of his shirt, pulling.

He pulled back, your breath mixing together.

“I think I like the woods, now,” You said, softly. “It’s nice out here. Good company.” He chuckled, lowley. “And I like you. A lot. And I love dogs.”

He laughed loudly, once, before pulling you back in for another kiss.

#wafflefriesfic #fanfic #bnha #katsuki x reader #mha x reader #bakugo katsuki #bakugo katsuki x reader #my hero academia x reader #werewolf au

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navstuffs · 1 year ago

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A terrible encounter

Pairing: Leon Kennedy x GN!Reader, Toji Fushiguro x GN!Reader (past?)

Summary: An encounter with someone from your past brings your feelings over the edge.

Warnings: jealous!leon, toji is YOUR krauser+ada, cursing, violence, smoking, reader's codename is Tiger, older!leon (choose your own)

Author's Notes: hey, everyone! if you thought me mixing ezio auditore with leon, well you are in for a ride :) who would be the best person to make leon jealous other than daddy toji fushiguro? tbh, i almost fried my brain for this fanfic: i have like six different versions for it, took me almost two months to actually finish. but for jealous!leon & toji i would do it all over again. spoiler alert: this is probably not the last time they meet him. enjoy!

my leon's masterlist

Toji Fushiguro is standing on the rooftop of the abandoned medical facility. It is already dark, and he has a lit cigarette in his mouth. It had been precisely twenty-eight minutes since he had arrived, his eyes focused on the place's entrance. Toji's patience is one of the most important qualities and necessary in his field of work.

When he finishes his cigarette, throwing it on the floor and pressing his boot on it, he hears the sound of a car approaching. Just in time, Toji thinks, getting his binoculars to confirm his suspicion.

The first person who sees is a dirty blonde-haired man with a tactical outfit, scanning the place. Toji isn't interested in him, changing the direction of the binoculars, searching. He doesn't take long to find the object of his desire, a smile opening on his lips.

"Long time no see, Tiger," He murmurs to himself when you join the other man.

It is going to be a fun night.

-x-

"You still good?"

Leon's voice comes through the communicator, worried. You and Leon had been investigating the facility for almost one hour. No one had been there since the last outbreak happened. No zombies or B.O.Ws were in sight, which didn't ease your worries. All rooms were empty except for a few decomposing bodies.

As two highly trained agents, you and Leon knew letting your guard down would be stupid. The place is a maze; unfortunately, you separated in a moment of distraction. And instead of meeting in the next corner, you kept going further inside the place.

"I am fine. You should keep your eyes and ears open as well, Leon."

"I am. I will feel better when we are together."

You can't help but smirk. It had been a couple of months since you two started a relationship; there were no labels yet, but you couldn't help getting attached more each day. It was simply in the small details like Leon remembering your coffee order or favorite candy by your table. You are falling in love again, slowly but much safer than in your previous relationship.

"Don't you think this place is too calm?" You ask, your voice echoing through the empty corridor.

"Yes. Something isn't right."

"Are you sure they said there might be survivors in this place?"

"That's what it was told. The control room is not even in the location of the map they gave us."

You keep your gun and flashlight steady in your hands, ready, ears focused. You are relieved both of you had enough herbs and spray, but all you want is to find Leon quick to find out what is wrong with this place.

There is a door at the end of the corridor you are in. You open it, gun in front of you, as your eyes scan the room quick. Although there is only one light source, no zombies are in sight, which is good. There are multiple small TV screens hanging on the walls, an old computer, a chair, and a table. You sigh, turning your comm.

"I think I find the control room, Leon. Some sort of-hmph!"

You can't finish the sentence, as the feeling of an icy knife blade presses against your ribs. You can hear Leon screaming your name as the comm is turned off and taken away from your ear. You could try to shoot if you are fast enough to turn around and avoid getting stabbed.

"You seriously think you will be fast enough to shoot me, Tiger?"

That voice. That damn voice you haven't heard in five years. You gulp, your hands shaking as you take your firearm down, not daring to look behind you. You glance at the dirty screen of the computer in front of you and can barely manage a silhouette of the top of this man's head.

"You disappoint me. What is the first rule I taught you?" You don't answer as the sensation of the knife's blade disappears. "Keep guard. Always."

He is right, you think. When you turn, you kick his side and watch Toji Fushiguro, your ex-mentor, dodge your kick with a fun smile on his face.

"Too slow."

Before you can point your gun at him, he kicks it down, the knife coming centimeters from your face before you dodge it. Toji, wasting no time, closes the space between you, his free hand reaching to grab your neck, your back hitting the wall. Toji roughly places your hands above your head, and suddenly you can't move him, his face inches from yours.

"Shit," You groan, frustrated.

"Oh, how much I missed this, Tiger," Toji literally purrs, pressing his body against his.

For a second, you forget about Leon, flashes of your past relationship with Toji pierce through your mind, and you hate yourself. You hate the way he makes your body feel, the way he makes you act.

You stare into his green eyes, still trying to get free, but Toji doesn't budge. The hand on your neck goes up to your chin, and he makes you stare right back at him. You refuse to look at his green eyes, refuse to fall for that trap again, but Toji whispers your name softly.

"Let them go. Now."

Leon, you think, relieved. He is here.

Leon has his gun against Toji's head, and you never heard him sound so angry. Toji ponders momentarily before letting you go, keeping his arms up and his eyes focused on you as he steps away. Leon walks in front of you, covering you with your body. Leon Kennedy is still alert, pointing his firearm at Toji's head. He gives you a quick glance as you catch your breath.

"You good?"

"Yeah."

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" Leon asks as you catch your breath, his voice cold as ice.

"They know who I am," Toji answers, pointing at you. His stance is relaxed as he crosses his arm. "It's good to see you live and well."

"What the fuck are you doing here?" You growl. It had been more than five years since you had seen the man in front of you, and he hadn't changed a bit. You never told Leon about your 'romantic' involvement with Toji Fushiguro, only that he had trained you.

"You know him?" Leon whispers, surprised.

"Yes. Unfortunately."

Leon looks at the man in front of him: he is tall, an inch smaller than Leon, body-toned, with a black shirt that Leon wonders if he bought in the child section. Every fiber on Leon's body told him this man was extremely dangerous, and Leon knew he couldn't keep his guard down. And worse, Toji keeps looking at you with that smug smile and dirty look. Leon sighs, pulling his firearm down as well, his shoulders still tense. He can't wait to get away from him.

"What are you doing here, Toji? How much did it take for you to get out of Japan this time?"

Toji? Leon knows this name pretty well. Your ex-mentor. Leon remembers your stories: how Toji found you in an island resort in Japan, being the only survivor after four days of the outbreak. Toji took you in, recruited you, and trained you to be the best, like him. Leon knew how bad his training was with Krauser, but the guy before him would give Krauser a good fight. He still had seen results from that training with scars on your body. That's why you bonded so close: you both had traumatic experiences and need some sort of comfort.

It didn't take long for Leon to fall in love with you.

"Tiger, you haven't changed a bit," Toji chuckles, his green eyes glowing in your direction. You hated him. It had been five years, and you hated how much he made you feel without touching you. Just that intense stare and your body had to obey.

No, you think to yourself. This was young you. Amateur, naive you. You weren't the same person Toji Fushiguro tricked and lied to. You didn't have to be.

"What are you doing here?" You repeat your question, your voice acid.

"I need your help with something."

You roll your eyes, giving a humorless laugh. Toji walks away into a dark part of the room, and Leon immediately raises his gun. Toji walks back, a briefcase in his hands. He places it on top of the table, his eyes going back to you.

"What is that?"

"C'mere, take a look. You were always good with this kind of stuff, anyway."

You analyze Toji before approaching. He could say he knew you better than anyone, but you also could read him. Like when Toji tends to lie, the corner of his lips moves involuntarily. With no sense of threat, you sigh.

"You trust this guy?" Leon asks, his stare never leaving Toji.

"No. But he is probably the best thing we have now," You can see Leon doesn't like this, but he trusts your judgment. Leon sighs, turning his gun down again.

"Just don't let your guard down," Leon whispers, concerned, making Toji open a big grin.

"I won't."

Toji gives two small steps away from you as you approach the table. You can feel Leon's eyes never leaving him, any false movement would prove over for Toji. Your ex-mentor doesn't seem to mind: it is like Leon doesn't even exist in his mind. You open the briefcase, revealing a laptop. You turn it on, and it asks for a password.

"Where did you find this? Does it have to do this with this place?

"I guess you will see it yourself," Toji answers enigmatically. You sigh, sitting down in the chair.

As you work to crack the password, Leon keeps his eye on Toji. The black-haired man has grabbed a cigarette from his pocket, smoking, and his green eyes are focused on you as if Leon poses no threat to him. As if admiring you.

Leon doesn't like how close he is to you and doesn't like Toji's eyes seem to wander around your body with desire. Leon would strike him if he made any small move that would represent a danger to your safety. Or if he even attempted to touch you.

Leon's hands are shaking, and he holds on his wrists. He has to control himself.

"Found anything interesting in there?" Toji asks after five minutes, and you ignore him, focused. Toji then turns his attention to Leon.

"Are you Tiger's new boy toy?"

"What if I am?" Toji shrugs as if Leon's defiant answer is fair enough.

"Wouldn't blame ya." Toji chuckles, taking a drag from the cigarette.

Your body is tense as you look at Toji, anger in your eyes. That's precisely how Toji liked you before. Angry. Enraged. "You fight better like that," he used to say. That's why he nicknamed you Tiger: you had the same intense gaze of the apex predator during a hunt. The same strength.

You feel a warm hand on your shoulder, and it is Leon giving you a half smile. You thank him with your eyes before going back to work. Silence, except for the click on the keyboard and Toji letting out smoke. You think it shouldn't take much longer when Toji's cell phone starts ringing. You freeze in your chair, recognizing that voice very well.

Because it is yours, moaning. Begging for more.

Toji lets that play for five seconds, enjoying the view of you and Leon freezing in your spots. He answers, mumbling a few words before turning the call off. You can feel yourself sweating in your clothes, not daring to look once in Leon's direction. You couldn't believe it, but you should know he would never change that damn ringtone. What would Leon think of you now?

You finally crack the password, and before you can glance at any of the documents, Toji closes the briefcase almost in your fingers.

"Hey, I wasn't done—!"

"I think you saw everything you needed," Toji smirks as if he knows something you don't. "Thank you for that, Tiger. I seriously don't know what I would do without you."

Toji's hand is almost at your cheek when Leon's firm grip stops him, holding onto his wrist. What the fuck is wrong with this man? Leon thinks, his vision going red. Toji isn't touching you again, not as long as he is there. Toji doesn't seem to struggle away from the grip, and Leon wonders if what he really sees are the green eyes softening in your direction. The moment is gone when you get up from the chair to stand near Leon, ready to defend him, and Toji's eyes are back into the malicious glow.

"I like this one, Tiger. Let's hope he can match your fire."

"Loved the ringtone, by the way, I am lucky I get to hear it every night."

"You should see my wallpaper, Kennedy," Toji chuckles, a sinister smile on his lips.

They stare at each other, scanning. Leon knows it would be a hard fight if needed. Toji is fast and strong, and taking him down would be challenging. Leon feels your hand squeezing his arms, and he lets go of Toji's wrist.

"You will find some useful information three levels down. Just go back to where you came from and follow the red signs. Just be careful to not get separated again." With that, Toji moves toward the darkness, the cigarette still lit on the table. "We shall see each other around, Tiger."

When he is gone, Leon turns to you, squeezing your hip.

"You good?" Leon asks, his voice worried. You nod, not daring to look at him. "Are you really okay?"

You nod more vehemently, giving Leon a quick smile. You and Toji were a complicated case: he saved you from your first contamination site, you being the only survivor. You two bonded during that travel, and Toji nicknamed you Tiger. He recruited and trained you for years. In the midst of that, you became a couple. He was your first for everything: ignoring the mark he left in your soul was hard. You just wished you had told Leon much sooner.

"Is he your ex-boyfriend?" Leon questions slowly.

"Something like that."

Something like that? Leon wants to ask more but can see how Toji still affects you. Pain stings in his heart, watching your conflicted and anxious gaze. He sighs because he should understand it very well. Although he and Ada never had anything too serious, it was hard to deny that there wasn't something there before.

You and Toji, on the other side, bonded. There was trust in there, Leon felt in on his bones, feelings, maybe even love. Leon knows you: he notices how you are behaving now, not looking directly at him, your gaze distant. You were thinking about Toji. Jealousy fills Leon's veins and body. He can't let this take over him, over you, so Leon gently holds him onto your chin.

"Hey, I am here. I am here. You are with me now," Leon whispers low, telling more to himself than you. Your gaze finally concentrates on his face. Back to him.

"I am sorry, Leon, I just let him distract me."

"You have nothing to apologize for, okay?" You nod, grateful.

After Leon makes sure you are okay, he turns around, his expression sour. He isn't very excited to feel Toji's indication, thinking the man had something to do with your sudden separation from him.

Toji Fushiguro is much more dangerous than he expected. Leon feels a sick feeling in his bones, on his body, and a sour taste in his mouth. Leon hopes he never sees Toji again and expects you to feel the same way.

#leon kennedy x reader #leon kennedy x you #toji fushiguro x reader #toji fushiguro x you #leon kennedy x reader x toji fushiguro #toji fushiguro x reader x leon kennedy #leon kennedy #leon s kennedy #toji fushiguro #leon kennedy fanfic #leon kennedy fanfics #toji fushiguro fanfic #toji fushiguro fanfics #YEAH I DARED!

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athena-gunpla · 3 days ago

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HGBD:R 1/144 Alus Planets System AGP-X1 "Alus Core Gundam" + Alus Planets System Armour Unit AGP-X1/E3 "Alus Earthree Gundam"

My third Core System set!!! I really have to get around to watching Re: Rise now. Compared to the previous Marsfour and Earthree kits I built, the Alus Earthree has a notably more menacing design language. It shares many of the same parts, including the entire Core Gundam sprue that was common between Marsfour and Earthree, however introduces several new and unique parts for the arms, legs, and body.

I really liked how the Alus Core Gundam differentiates itself. The longer arms, spindly fingers, and clawed feet make this suit look menacing, and the head design looks really cool. The foil stickers go on nicely and the main eye is super reflective behind the purple hood. You can choose between a red sticker for Alus or a purple one for Eldora. I went with red to add some contrast with the darker purple color scheme of the kit.

Just like the other two Core Gundams there's an impressive level of articulation baked into the little model. A neat bonus was the inclusion of actual hand options, with two open, two closed, and a beam effect handpiece in trans-purple. Unfortunately, there weren't extra hand back pieces. You need to juggle the two the kit comes with between all the hand options.

Like the other two kits, this one includes a small beam spray gun. There's no colored part to compete the shield, unfortunately, nor are there any beam sabers (instead of saber racks, this suit has two thin stabilizers on its backpack). Instead, there's a hand option piece depicting a beam effect coming directly out of the suit's fingers, which looks really cool. One minor nitpick is that the hand backing for this piece is a sticker rather than a separate part.

Just like the normal Earthree Gundam, this kit includes a full set of armour-up parts including extensions to the beam spray gun to turn it into a really cool looking beam cannon. The parts attach to the core unit in the same way as the base Earthree parts, but have interesting design variations, including more claw-like feet, a large set of four wings for the back, and some really nice purple details done using the foil sticker sheet. Due to the longer arms, there are no arm extension parts. There's also a new unique head for the Alus Earthree Gundam mode, with a crown-like v-fin design over the red foil eye sticker.

Unlike the other two kits, the Alus Earthree Armour isn't stored on a flight platform. Rather, there's a rather odd separate piece that you can attach all the extra option parts to, including the spare heads, extra hands, and Alus Earthree Armour bits. I don't think this is an in-universe delivery method, but it's a cool little extra to hold all the parts together when they're not on the kit.

The beam cannon is one of my favorite parts of the kit. It's a set of five parts that clip over the beam spray gun piece. The front two mandibles can open to deliver a less focused, larger area of effect shot, and a side part pops open to reveal a handle for two handed poses.

I ended up doing quite a lot of detail work on this kit. There's some Citadel Necron compound drybrushing on the light gray frame parts, as well as gunmetal and silver pigment powder (Tamiya weathering set C) over all the darker parts, and some soot and blueing effects on the gun (Tamiya weathering set D).

I ended up enjoying the Alus Earthree Gundam a lot more than I thought I would. It's a really fun build without too many small parts or complex techniques, and the metallic foil stickers are really well chosen and help the kit pop. I definitely recommend it for anyone looking to get into HG gunpla, or who wants a kit with decent color separation, good design, and fantastic panel lines out of the box - I don't think there's anywhere you'd have to scribe to add detail!

I still don't know who Alus is though...

#gunpla #my gunpla #hg gunpla #plamo #model building #gundam #mobile suit gundam #mobile suit gundam build divers #mobile suit gundam build divers re:rise #build divers #build divers re:rise #alus #eldora #earthree #earthree gundam #alus earthree #alus earthree gundam

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 2 years ago

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North To The Future [Chapter 4: Semi-Charmed Life]

The year is 1999. You are just beginning your veterinary practice in Juneau, Alaska. Aegon is a mysterious, troubled newcomer to town. You kind of hate him. You are also kind of obsessed with him. Falling for him might legitimately ruin your life…but can you help it? Oh, and there’s a serial killer on the loose known only as the Ice Fisher.

Chapter warnings: Language, alcoholism, addiction, murder, veterinary medicine, delicious Thanksgiving nomz, ANGST and let me repeat that last one in case you missed it ANGSTTTTTTTTT!!!

Word count: 5k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

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Here’s the thing about the Ice Fisher: he doesn’t have a type. Ted Bundy liked girls and young women. John Wayne Gacy liked boys and young men. Juan Corona liked farm laborers, Belle Gunness liked suitors who answered the marriage ads she placed in Chicago newspapers, Robert Hansen liked sex workers who he would set loose in the Alaskan wilderness and then hunt down with his Ruger Mini-14. Everyone has their preferences. But not the Ice Fisher.

The first victim was a burly mid-fifties logger and recreational hunter named Josiah Wolfenstein. The second was nineteen-year-old college student Tammy Miller; she was from Sitka and studying psychology, a choice that now strikes you as ironic. The third and most recent victim was Carol Philips: forty-three, Garth Brooks superfan, amateur baker, and beloved soccer mom. They have nothing in common except for their manner of death. They reveal no pattern. They shed no light on who the Ice Fisher is targeting, and conversely who can consider themselves safe. Everyone is a potential victim. And there is no such thing as safe.

In between veterinary appointments, you watch the local news coverage on the grainy tv in the clinic lobby, your arms crossed instinctively over your chest, your face grim.

“You want some bear mace?” Jennifer says, showing you a small black cannister attached to a keychain. “My boyfriend buys a new one for me every time someone gets murdered, so now I have extra.”

You take it tentatively. “Bear mace?”

“Yeah, but it works on people too. It has a 30-foot range. You can spray that Greek guy with it.”

You laugh and clip the bear mace to your purse: a Coach patchwork saddle bag that your parents bought you a few Christmases ago. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Chief of Police Eugene Baker, a high school classmate of your parents, is holding a press conference on the television screen. “We believe this killer to be an adult male with considerable physical strength and knowledge of the outdoors. While the first two victims were found in Dredge Lake, Ms. Philips’ remains were recovered from nearby Crystal Lake, complicating the investigation. Police are patrolling the Tongass National Forest, but we simply do not have the manpower to surveille all Juneau-area lakes at all times. We therefore will continue to ask for the public’s cooperation in submitting tips and identifying possible suspects. To this end, we have set up an anonymous 24/7 hotline staffed by volunteers; the phone number is displayed at the bottom of your screen. We advise all Juneau residents to stay vigilant, particularly around strangers, and avoid leaving their homes alone after dark…”

Outside in the violet-and-amber afternoon light, there is the sound of tires slipping on ice. Aegon’s 1985 Chevy Nova drifts sideways into a parking spot; or, rather, into a position improbably straddling three separate parking spots. He and Sunfyre exit the vehicle.

“Oh, great,” Jen grumbles. She hides behind the reception desk so she won’t have to interact with Aegon. She busies herself with cutting pieces of paper into snowflakes, impaling them with paperclips, and arranging them on the miniature Christmas tree that you obtained for the clinic.

“Hey!” Aegon announces merrily as he breezes inside. He is dressed in his light-wash Levis, black Converses, and an oversized pale green sweater with holes in it; the white of the T-shirt he has on underneath shines through the gaps like stars. Overtop he has thrown the black parka you gave him, unzipped and peppered with melting snowflakes. Half of his hair is pulled back in a messy bun. Sunfyre—still wearing his cone of shame—trots along beside him, unleashed.

“Hey,” you return, smiling. “You’re early.”

“We weren’t catching anything, there was an orca pod in the bay this morning and it scared most of the fish off. So we docked the boat after lunch.” His spots the new addition to your purse. “What’s up with that?”

“It’s bear mace. For bears…or serial killers…or you. I haven’t decided which yet. What’s up with your hair?”

“It’s a man bun,” he says, somewhat defensive. “They’re very popular in Southern California.”

“That sounds fictional.”

“I’ll have you know that in the acclaimed feature film Mulan, love interest and all-around badass General Li Shang had a man bun.”

“Literally fictional.”

“Are you going to take the stitches out of my dog’s face or are you just going to mercilessly bully me? I’m very sensitive, you know. As an Aquarius, I hide this beneath a thin veneer of rebellious behavior and inability to commit, but at my heart I am a profoundly fragile man. I’m forever just a few seconds away from disaster. I’m a Christmas ornament in the unsteady hands of a five-year-old high on the jittery, saccharine rush of Kool-Aid.”

“Tropical Punch?”

“Cherry. But knowing you, every cup would have to be a brand new flavor.”

You’re still smiling; you haven’t stopped since he walked in. Aegon smiles back. Jen peeks over the top of the reception desk with wide, curious eyes. Sunfyre whines and scratches at his cone, as if to remind everyone about the true purpose of this visit.

“Bring the beast,” you say, leading Aegon back into the exam room. He scoops up Sunfyre with a grunt and places him on top of the table; the dog’s nails click against the cool, reflective metal surface. You liberate Sunfyre from his cone, then numb his muzzle with lidocaine and remove the stitches one at a time, snipping them with surgical scissors and then pulling them out of the flesh with tweezers. Aegon watches you with his hands in his parka pockets, his expression strangely vacant.

“He’ll have a scar, won’t he?”

“Yes, a small one. But that will just make him more rugged and attractive to all the lady-dogs. Or gentleman-dogs, whatever Sunfyre is into.”

“A scar on his face,” Aegon murmurs, then shakes his pensiveness away. “What should I bring to Thanksgiving?”

“Probably nothing. I think my parents have it covered…the appetizers, the dinner, the desserts…and also, you do not strike me as someone who cooks.”

“Yeah, I eat a lot of Lunchables. But I feel like I should bring something.”

Your eyes flick to his, playful. “Are you worried about making a good first impression?”

Aegon smirks, shrugs, says nothing. Sometimes you make an appearance at Ursa Minor, sometimes you don’t; sometimes you pick up when he calls, sometimes you end up spending hours in his apartment watching the X-Files or Law & Order or 60 Minutes. Other times, you fill your time with work, family, friends, flipping through the tower of travel magazines you have stacked beside your bed. It’s not that you’re ignoring Aegon. It’s that you’re trying to figure out what being with him would be like: what you would gain, what it would cost. He hasn’t tried to touch you since that night under the Northern Lights. You haven’t tried to pry into his many mysteries. But each unanswered question is like a landmine one careless step away from eruption, and they’re filling up that space that stays between you on his threadbare floral couch. At this precise moment, Aegon seems sober, which is highly unusual. There’s something quiet and boyish about him when he’s like this, something almost vulnerable. You can picture him wandering aimlessly through the Foodland, staring at mounds of Idaho potatoes and cans of gooey apple pie filling, having no idea what to do with any of it.

“My mom really likes flowers,” you say. “And obviously she doesn’t get to see them a lot this time of year. So if you want to bring something, bring flowers.”

“Okay. Deal.”

“No rum and Cokes today?” you ask, still removing stitches with sure, deft hands.

“Not yet. But I’m counting the seconds until we’re done here, believe me.”

You recall what he told you as you sat together in Ursa Minor under Christmas lights and strands of shimmering silver tinsel: I don’t do well when I’m sober. You pull out the last stitch and pet Sunfyre’s soft fluffy head. He pants happily, his tail thumping against the table, his trusting dark eyes gazing up at you, tiny starless universes. “Why did you buy the Nova if you’re almost always too drunk to drive it?”

“So I can take Sunfyre up to the woods on nice days. He loves the trails.”

“Um, I don’t think you should be hiking out there alone.”

“Relax. Killers never get the people who deserve it.” Aegon flashes you grin, digs around in his parka pocket, tosses you a gold key that you catch in fumbling, cupped palms. “Here.”

“What is this?”

“It’s a spare. Just in case you ever want to stop by and hang out with my dog. Or, you know. Me.”

You gawk at the key, at Aegon, back to the key. “You’re giving me a…? Why would…? How…?”

“Just so you know it’s an option,” Aegon says. He lifts Sunfyre down from the exam table and leaves like the sun at dusk.

~~~~~~~~~~

You love waking up at home on holiday mornings. There is the noise of clanging pots and pans, the scents of bacon and pancakes and rising Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, the sound of one of your dad’s rock albums spinning on the record player in the living room. Today, his Thanksgiving preparation background music is Third Eye Blind; you bound down the stairs as Semi-Charmed Life drifts through the house. After a swift breakfast—your mom has already set out a plate for you, along with a glass of ice-cold orange juice and a Flintstones multivitamin—the real work begins.

The turkey is slathered with butter and herbs and placed in the oven. The neck and giblets are boiled to make stock for gravy, and then you set them aside for Sunfyre. The rolls are baked, the potatoes are mashed, the yams are smothered with brown sugar and marshmallows, the green bean casserole is topped with French’s fried onions, the stuffing is Stove Top out of the box, the cranberry sauce retains the precise shape of the aluminum can it was jiggled out of. Once you and your dad have finished setting the table, you tell him you’re heading out to pick up the mysterious friend who will be joining you for dinner.

“Your friend doesn’t have a car?” your dad asks, not critical or suspicious, merely intrigued. You have been uncharacteristically cagey about this particular friend, and with good reason. You know practically nothing besides what your parents have already surmised: male, probably single, inopportunely sexy.

“No, he does. I just told him that I’d give him a ride.” In case he gets too hammered to drive himself home, which is almost a certainty.

“Okay, ladybug,” your dad says, folding the red cloth napkins into inelegant triangles, his scruffy grey eyebrows knitted together. “Whatever floats your boat.”

When you knock on Aegon’s apartment door, he appears dressed in his most festive attire: a blue Hawaiian shirt, black jeans, combat boots, a gold chain around his neck, his white-blond hair neat and mostly straight. He is holding a bouquet of roses that have been dyed a deep sapphire color, like the ocean, like biting winter cold.

“Wow,” you say. “You look like Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo + Juliet.”

“I hope I get a happier ending.” He calls Sunfyre over. The golden retriever pads into view. He is wearing a meticulously groomed coat of fur and a blue bowtie to match Aegon’s shirt.

“Hey, buddy!” you squeal in delight, squatting down to scratch Sunfyre’s ears and cover his scarred muzzle with quick smacking kisses. “You are going to be so psyched when you see what we have for you. There’s a nice turkey neck…and a heart, and a liver…and a delicious gizzard…and maybe even some nice juicy kidneys…and I’ll slice it up all up for you into easily chewable little bites…”

“Calm down, Appletini,” Aegon says, grabbing his parka. “You wouldn’t want anyone thinking you’re the Ice Fisher.”

Back at your parents’ house, your mom and dad dash to the door to meet your enigmatic friend, clamoring like teenage girls at an Enrique Iglesias concert. Aegon beams and shakes their hands, thanking them graciously for the invitation. Your dad shoots you a furtive grin: This friend IS sexy! Sunfyre presents himself for pats and high-pitched coos of adoration.

“I’m Vince, and this is my wife Debbie,” your dad says. “But you can call us Mom and Dad, that’ll make things less confusing. That’s what most of my daughter’s friends do.”

“That is so totally cool of you. I’m Aegon.”

“Aegon?!” your mom blurts out before she can stop herself.

He sighs. “It’s Greek.”

“Oh, how exotic!” she recovers tactfully, then gasps when he hands her the bouquet. “For me?!”

“It’s the absolute least I could do. I hope you like roses. The options at the Foodland were roses, roses, or…let me think…oh yeah, more roses.”

“They’re lovely,” your mom purrs. “And such a unique color!”

“They reminded me of Alaska, all the ocean, and ice, and big open sky…and also Appletini. Because I always give her the blue mug.”

Your parents blink at him, confounded. “…Appletini?” your dad ventures, smiling.

“It’s a long story,” you say, suddenly shy.

“Well, come on in,” your mom courteously deflects. “There are deviled eggs, salmon dip, Ritz crackers, and pigs in a blanket just waiting to be eaten.”

As your mom and dad bang around the kitchen putting the final touches on dinner, you and Aegon assemble your appetizer plates and loiter in the dining room, nibbling and chatting, bathed in the flickering golden light of the woodstove and humming along to the red Third Eye Blind vinyl that is still rotating on the record player like a bloody planet. There are three unopened bottles of wine on the table. Aegon keeps glancing at them, his eyes gleaming and famished.

“Would you like a tour of the house?” you say. “An authentic Alaskan house? Come March you’ll probably never have this opportunity again. You’ll be jet-setting off to some other far-flung destination, probably somewhere warm where they have plentiful Taco Bells and internet.”

“I’m not a fan of the internet,” Aegon replies, piling a Ritz cracker worryingly high with salmon dip. “But Taco Bells are a must. Yes, lead the way, oh wise and prophetic Madame Appletini.”

You show him the kitchen where your parents are laboring (floral wallpaper), the study (more floral wallpaper), the living room (wood paneling), and the backyard (adorned with a salt lick for the friendly neighborhood cow moose). Then you take Aegon upstairs to your bedroom. He ponders the details for a nerve-rackingly long time as he gnaws on slightly-too-crispy pigs in a blanket: your stack of travel magazines, your veterinary books, your dark blue bedding, the photographs taped to your mirror, the plethora of posters tacked to your walls.

Aegon speaks without looking at you, still investigating. “Has Trent ever gotten to enjoy your extensive collection of Ricky Martin posters?”

“Not yet. Preferably not ever.”

Now Aegon turns to you; he is smiling. “I feel so sorry for him.”

“Dinner’s ready, kids!” your dad shouts up the stairs, and you obediently report to the table to eat until you are in agony, which to your understanding is the primary objective of Thanksgiving.

“Drinks?” you mom inquires as she lights the tall red candles. The blue roses are in a vase at the center of the table. “There’s Tang, and Snapple, and water of course, and Pinot Noir. Martha Stewart says that’s the best wine to pair with turkey.”

“Wine, please,” Aegon says. She fills his glass. It vanishes almost immediately.

Aegon is the perfect guest: he samples everything and offers enthusiastic compliments, even when he is clearly horrified (as he is by the green bean casserole): “The turkey is so moist and flavorful!” “The yams are like dessert!” “It’s so fun to poke this cranberry sauce!” “My, what a creative use of cream of mushroom soup!” Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Sunfyre feasts on a plate of turkey organs and a few slices of white meat. You have a glass of wine, and so does your dad; your mom has two; you lose count of Aegon’s glasses after four. He becomes increasingly uncoordinated, giggly, fogged like a window. Your parents do not encourage him to drink, but they don’t try to stop him either; they ignore his drunkenness like a ghost that stands in the corner of the room, silent, waiting, set ablaze by firelight.

“Do I detect a British accent?” your dad asks Aegon pleasantly. “So this must be a new experience for you. Did you grow up abroad?”

“I grew up everywhere.” Aegon smirks evasively, swigging his wine. “And yes, my exposure to Thanksgiving is extremely limited. But I like this. I like this a lot. I’m going to have to do it every year, wherever I am. Sunfyre will rebel if I don’t. He’ll call PETA to file a complaint.”

“You do quite a bit of travelling, I gather,” your mom says. She watches Aegon with an intense, mesmerized sort of interest. It’s almost unnerving. It’s like she is searching for something: fingerprints dusted at a crime scene, gold nuggets sifted from a river.

“All over. All the time.”

“What do you do for work?”

“Everything,” Aegon says. “Here I’m salmon trolling. In San Francisco I was a dockworker, in San Diego I was a lifeguard—you don’t want to know how little training it takes to be a custodian of human lives, it’s absolutely horrifying, they’d let a great white shark be a lifeguard if it looked good in red—in Phoenix I did construction, just outside of Denver I got a job working on a cattle ranch. In Dallas I picked cotton. In Portland, Maine I caught lobsters. I’ll try anything once. I just like to keep moving. As long as I can make enough money to have somewhere for me and Sunfyre to sleep at night, I’m happy.”

“You’re just like Jack Dawson in Titanic,” your mom sighs, smiling in a way that brightens her whole face. “All you need is the air in your lungs.”

“You work on the same boat as Heather’s brother Trent, is that right?” your dad asks.

“Oh, Trent!” your mom says. “He’s a hunk. He looks just like a long-haired Matt Damon.”

You squint at her. “Yeah, if Matt Damon did steroids.”

“He’s a nice boy, that Trent,” your dad says. “I mean, he won’t be winning Who Wants To Be A Millionaire anytime soon, but he’s solid.”

Your mom nods in agreement. “Dumb as a rock.”

“He’s a great guy,” Aegon says diplomatically. “Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Unless that fly was a salmon.” He laughs overly-loudly, sloshing red wine out of his glass and staining the tablecloth like blood on snow. Your parents pretend not to notice.

After dinner, your mom brings out dessert: one pumpkin pie, one apple pie, one plate full of Tongass Forest Cookies. Aegon samples both pies and gobbles cookies until his Hawaiian shirt is littered with crumbs, washing them down with more wine. Then he gets up to pull on his parka and let Sunfyre outside. Aegon lurches as he moves, clutching walls and counters and the backs of chairs.

“I’ll go with you,” your mom offers before you can. She helps Aegon down the icy porch steps and then plays with Sunfyre in the backyard: chasing him through the snow, throwing sticks for him to fetch, tossing snowballs for him to snap between his jaws. Aegon, wobbly but in good spirits, participates as much as he can. And the way that your mom looks at him…it’s an expression you can’t recall ever seeing on her face before. It is fascination and fondness and grief all tangled up together. The light in her eyes is beautiful; it is also breathtakingly sad.

Your dad taps one of the empty wine bottles. “He’s got a problem, ladybug.”

“I know.”

“You can’t fix that for him. He has to want to fix himself.”

“I know,” you say again, your voice a brittle whisper.

Your dad sighs deeply and clasps his hands together, stares out the window, contemplates something heavy and unseen. At last, he speaks. “I’ve loved your mother my whole life. And when she and Jesse got together, I thought it was going to kill me. It wasn’t the fact that she was with another man. It was what he put her through. There were fights, there were bruises, and then there were promises and apologies, past-due bills and handmade birthday cakes, locked doors, open doors, kicked down doors. I couldn’t get her to leave him, and I couldn’t watch it keep happening. I tried everything to get away from your mother. I joined the goddamn Marines to get away from her. Four years in Vietnam and I still couldn’t sweat her out. I came back to Juneau and used my G.I. Bill to go to the University of Alaska, and…I would never admit this to anyone except you, but you need to hear it…I waited for that marriage to fall apart. And it did, but it took Jesse drowning in the Gastineau Channel.” He looks at you with miserable, glistening eyes. “Watching the way your mother suffered with a man like that was hell. Watching you go through the same thing would be unbearable.”

There is silence: a silence as thick and perilous as the ocean. Your dad studies you, searching for understanding, for a rational consensus to be reached. You study the lines in your palms. There is nothing rational about what you’re feeling. Alaska is flush with eligible men who are not temporary, not secretive, not unrepentant alcoholics: pilots, truckers, fishermen, loggers, oil riggers, scientific researchers, park rangers. You don’t want any of them. You’ve never wanted anything the way you want Aegon. It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair.

The back door opens, and your mom and Sunfyre—elated and covered in snow—romp into the house. Your mom is giggling as she grabs a dishtowel from the kitchen and begins to clean the snow from Sunfyre’s fur. “You might want to…uh…retrieve Aegon,” she tells you. “It’s pretty cold out there.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Making snow angels.”

“Oh. Great.” You put on your own parka and head out into the afternoon twilight.

“Hey,” Aegon says from where he’s sprawled on the ground. He’s sweeping his arms and legs back and forth as stars rise in the sky.

“Hey. Are you having fun down there?”

“Yes.” His breath is a cloud in the frigid air. His arms and legs go still. “I love feeling small like this. Nothing matters. Not our pasts, not our accomplishments, not our mistakes. We’re all just bones with memories. We’re all just future space dust.”

“You don’t want to be remembered?”

“God no. What would be worth remembering? I want to be a whisper. I want to be the wind that blows over the ocean.” He cranes his neck to look up at you, thoughtful in that glazed, drunken sort of way. “You can remember me, I guess. I’ll allow that. But only you. No one else.”

“Assuming I outlive you.”

“You will obviously outlive me.” He holds his arms up in the air and you pull him to his feet.

“I think it’s time for you and Sunfyre to go home.”

“Oh no.” His face is filled with abrupt realization. “Do your parents hate me?”

“No, they like you. They like you a lot. They’re just worried about you.” And they’d be a lot more worried if they knew about the track marks on your arms or the fact that you can’t stay in one place longer than six months without being descended upon by maybe-metaphorical ghosts.

Aegon laughs wildly, almost hysterically. He reaches for your shoulder to steady himself and then stops short. He sways in the late-November air, his hair dripping from the snow, his hazy blue eyes all over you. You tuck his ever-errant lock of hair behind his ear. I love him, you think helplessly, like when you know you’re dreaming but can’t wake up. “Worried about me,” he muses without elaborating. “Worried about me.”

Your parents send Aegon home with warm hugs and Tupperware containers full of leftovers, including extra turkey meat for Sunfyre and a truly ludicrous helping of cookies. You drive to Aegon’s apartment building slowly so Sunfyre can stick his head out the back window and bark gleefully at every car you pass. It is dark when you get there, the sunset come and gone, the constellations visible in a rare clear sky: Gemini, Orion, Draco, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor. Your Jeep idles under the lusterless beam of a streetlight.

Aegon asks, a ghost of a smile on his lips: “You want to come upstairs with me?”

“Yes,” you reply. And if you do, you won’t leave until morning. “But not until I’ve talked to you about something first.”

“It’s important,” Aegon says softly, not a question but an observation, reading your face like a weather forecast: chance of sun, chance of storms.

“Yes, it’s important.”

“Okay. Let me take Sunfyre inside and I’ll be right back.”

“Okay.”

He doesn’t kiss you goodbye, he doesn’t even hug you. He reaches out with one hand and dusts his calloused thumbprint across your cheekbone, marveling at you like you’re a radiant horizon, like you’re ancient ruins: cave paintings older than the pyramids, pillars of stones and secrets. Then he gets out of the Jeep and staggers into the apartment building with Sunfyre scampering along beside him. He reappears moments later, his hands buried in the pockets of his parka. You were too anxious to wait in the Jeep; you pace back and forth beneath the dim ochre streetlight. Aegon watches you from several yards away, waiting for you to begin.

“Look,” you say. “I like you.”

“Cool.”

“No, I mean, I really like you.”

He smiles like the sun, like the Northern Lights. “So you are applying to be my Juneau girl.”

“Yes. But I need something from you first.”

His blue eyes are calm beneath the streetlight, beneath the starlight. “Name it.”

“I need you to get help.”

Aegon shakes his head, not understanding, his smile slowly dying. His lock of bone-white hair cuts his cheek in half like a scar. “What are you talking about?”

“You can go to rehab. I’ll help you find a program, I’ll take care of Sunfyre while you’re away.”

Everything about him changes, like the phases of the moon: his face darkens, his eyes go steely and sharp, everything you love about him is eclipsed. “I don’t need rehab.”

“Aegon, you obviously need rehab.”

He glares at you with savage distrust, with betrayal.

“I need you to get yourself together,” you plead. “I want to be with you, I want to let myself care about you, but I can’t do that when you’re killing yourself right in front of me.”

“I don’t see how it affects you.”

“It does. It will.”

“I’m a lot better now than I was two years ago.”

“It’s not good enough, Aegon.”

He looks down at his combat boots, then back at you. You barely recognize him. “So I’m not good enough.”

“That’s not what I said—”

“It’s what you meant, it’s what this whole fucking conversation is about, right?” he flares. “You not being satisfied with the kind of person I am. You thinking that you get any say at all in who I am. Are you delusional, are you that goddamn narcissistic? Have you staked some claim to me that I’m unaware of? Are you Christopher Columbus here to strip me bare and claim you discovered me?”

“Are you listening to me?! I’m trying to tell you that I l—”

“No, you don’t like me. You like some hypothetical version of me that you’re trying to convince yourself exists.”

You stare at him in heartbroken disbelief. “Why won’t you let me help you?”

“I don’t need your help. I don’t want your help.”

“But I thought…if you would just…we could…”

“When the fuck did I ever promise you a future?” Aegon flings like a blade. “When did I ever promise you anything? You think I showed up here to build you some cabin on the side of a mountain, get a desk job, give you Christmases and kids? That’s not me. That’s never going to be me. I’m not yours to use. I’m not a Ricky Martin poster to keep tacked up on your wall. I’m not the impetus to bail you out of your spineless, unfulfilling life.”

“Please stop.” Your throat is burning; there are hot tears slithering from your eyes. The icy wind stings against your face. “Please just stop.”

“I’m not the one who fucked this up,” Aegon hisses. “It was you, it was you, because I told you the truth but you refused to believe it. I’m not yours and I never was and I’m never going to be, so you better get that through your thick fucking skull. I’m not yours.”

“And why would I want someone like you?!” you scream into the darkness. He flinches away like you’ve hit him. His eyes are huge and glassy. “An alcoholic, an addict, a coward who runs away from anything worth living for? I’d rather die than waste my life on you. Wait, my mistake, waste the next four months on you, because then you’ll be fleeing to go terrorize some other girl in some other city. I don’t want you. I can’t wait to forget you.”

“Then go!” Aegon roars over his shoulder as he turns away. “Just fucking go!” He storms off into his apartment building; he disappears like the end of summer, leaving a jet-black endless void.

You retreat back into your Jeep, slam the door, and sit there under the silver-cold moonlight sobbing into empty, trembling hands.

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