#thank all that is good and right that ive never attempted to say it aloud like the absolute fuckpumping moron that i am

[spiritagay]

holee shit..... i just realized ko-fi is pronounced like coffee

[hoodhookage]

Congrats on 200+!!!! Ive only just seen your page and i am instantly in love with your writing 😢😢🙏 feel free to ignore this but could you do a scenario about xiao giving is super shy fem s/o oral for the first time. Just some fluffy reassurance is all that we need. If you dont feel comfortable tho i completely understand. Hope you have a fantastic rest of your day 🤗🤗

thank you so much💗 I COULD NEVER PASS UP THIS SORT OF OPPORTUNITY! i’m so grateful you wanted me to even attempt to try this out for you<3 i hope it’s not too long & that i met your expectations!! here’s xiao eating out his so for the first time

xiao let’s his fingers run through your hair, gentle eyes focused on you as you lay beside him fidgeting with the strings of his hoodie. you close your eyes when he lifts his hand now to your jaw, stroking your cheek. his touch is soft, instinctively allowing yourself to melt into his caress. xiao is many things; he’s everything you want him to be. he’s willing to make you happy and comfortable, going far lengths to achieve it.

he’s understanding and caring, in the sense that he’s always keeping an eye on you to make sure you’re never in any sort of discomfort. xiao is loving. physical or not, you always feel so appreciated by him. he does little things to make you happy, you remember how he likes to squeeze your thumb with his when you hold his hand. you both have come so far with one another, growing with every passing day.

xiao loves you in every way imaginable, getting frustrated with himself when he can’t truly show you what you mean to him when his words alone fail him. he wants you to be happy, to tell you he values your company, just being able to be with you. he appreciates you and wants to be able to take care of you the way you do for him, feeling as if he’s entirely at your mercy for the way you’ve patched that sense of longing he once felt on his own. all of that now washed away completely when you’ve brought yourself into the picture.

his presence alone makes you feel so jittery, no matter how serene or still the atmosphere may be. he’s gentle, and warm…so warm you sometimes feel as if you’re burning up at his touch, no matter how light it is. you find yourself drawn quiet even while with xiao next to you, letting your mind entertain frivolous possibilities revolving the both of you. what he makes you feel is a mix of apprehensiveness and exhilaration, just with his face leaning in to your forehead close to place a kiss.

the faint breeze from the window lingers inside and you welcome it with a deep inhale, letting it bring you back to your place between xiao and his bed. your exhale quickly allows itself to take over you, shuddering in reaction to the coolness continuously hitting your skin all over. xiao rests his lips against your forehead, another small and delicate show of affection. “you’re getting cold” responding with a sigh to how he acknowledges your change in body temperature before turning over to face him and let your chest rest against his.

even the air xiao expires so softly across you from the closeness of the both of you is warm. his chest is warm, the arms that keep you close are warm, he’s already letting you get lost in this feeling of heat he provides you with. “xiao” your face is in his shoulder when you call him, snuggling closer. he whispers your name back and begins to hold you closer “what is it?”

you try to conceal the small shake in your voice. “you make me feel really, really, warm when we’re like this”

you mumble, already wanting to hide the show of emotions he makes you feel inside so unexpectedly just from the call of your name. you breathe in, smelling xiao and his clothes as one together. “are you saying that like it’s a good thing?” he rubs delicate circles on your back, holding you with care. you nod and push your face closer into his chest almost like a final attempt to breathe him in again, he overwhelms your physical senses this way.

he pulls you back, a stern look on his face as you look up at him. “you’re nearly freezing” xiao rolls his eyes, a small smile forming on his lips as he brings his hand to your jaw to give you a small kiss. he breaks it but stays just inches away from your lips, giving you a teasing remark when you just stare at his mouth. xiao does a lot of things to you…and right now, whatever it is he’s doing to you to make you feel like this, it has you hot all over again:

this burning sensation reaching all the way into your chest and stomach, impossible to avoid. he takes you close and into another kiss as you pout, this time longer than the first. you close your eyes and let him take charge, your cheeks beginning to feel that same sensation that spread through your body when he slowly slides his tongue inside. you cup his face, gasping when he gives you a playful bite to your bottom lip before tugging on it.

“i can’t stand it when you lie to me, here” he begins to remove his arms from the sleeves and slides his hoodie off from above, his shirt getting caught with it momentarily. it’s hard to look away when you can see the bare skin of his abdomen, making you grow a little desperate for his touch. xiao motions for you to lift your arms up and you do as he asks, putting your head through to now properly wear it.

you turn your head to the side and look down at your hands, “thanks” all of these different kinds of warmths feel good when they’re from xiao. you start to wonder if he’s ever experienced this same kind of feeling. you both have that look in your eyes that tells the other you want more, stuck as if there’s no possible way to convey it aloud. all those thoughts leave your mind as soon as he pulls you in for another kiss.

you tremble into his mouth when his hand rests at your hip, giving an experimental grab as you pant and try to kiss him back just as needfully. “xiao, i think what i meant to say, from before. it was just-“ you interrupt the silence but he shushes you. “you’re alright,” he gives you a tiny kiss at your bottom lip. you think you understand now, “…you want me to take care of you, i can do that for you” stopping between sentences to give you more, this time across your face and jaw. “-but will you let me?”

he does experience that same feeling, your heart is beating twice as fast. “please”

xiao treats you with the same amount of gentleness as always, starting by taking a pillow from under his head and propping it beneath your lower back. he looks at you, “i want to try something for you- and i as well” his hand moving to lace yours. “i’ll always ask this of you, do you trust me?” you nod and let out a shaky yes. he begins after hearing your approval “alright, show me exactly where you want me the most”

you feel your body quiver as he trails his hand across your stomach, your fingers guiding his palm. you feel embarrassed when you have to stop, recollecting yourself as he looks at you. “you pleaded for me to take good care of you. i promise i want nothing more than to be able to” he reassures you. you continue until you reach your abdomen, xiao’s hand slides down a little further on his own now. “good” he sighs, getting worked up himself.

“ remove this for me” he murmurs referring to your clothes, tone still sweet when speaking with you. you start with the bottoms, pulling them down off your legs. you keep your panties on, knowing xiao will be happy to do the honours of stripping those off you himself. you hold onto the hoodie “xiao, i want to keep this on” you whisper. he would never deny you anything, but hearing you ask to keep something of his on during a moment like this has his chest swell with pride.

xiao’s hand rests at the hem of your panties, letting his middle and ring finger stretch out just a little further onto the material that starts to dampen the farther you reach. “to think you would want to let me leave you in this state” he almost whispers to himself. he lets his hand dip into your underwear, his fingers immediately met with how wet you’ve become. “your body knows exactly who it’s with right now and i can already tell” he marvels in the little to no friction his finger tips experience as he slides hands over your cunt.

“close your eyes, just let me” he strokes your hair again as he lets his finger trail around your entrance. you gasp at the feeling but it’s slow, allowing you to await and prepare for the feeling of when he enters. the push is perfect, your soaking cunt pulls his finger in with no resistance. he praises you again for how you take it, letting you relax under his touch once more. xiao pulls his finger out back to your entrance, rubbing at your clit with two of them. the contact making you squirm as he lifts his hand.

he brings his finger up to both of you before opening his mouth to clean it off. he can’t help himself when it comes to you, always wanting a little more. you feel yourself pool even harder between your legs at his action. he holds his finger out to you, “would you want to try yourself?” opening your mouth to meet him. you can still taste yourself on that finger, it’s tarte even after xiao had licked most of it off.

“do you still want to follow through with what i had in mind this time for us” he rasps. he’s only ever fingered you, and the thought of letting him try whatever it is he wanted to right now makes you feel weak. your knees instinctively press together as he waits for your answer, “you want to go…further?” your voice is unsure but still with excitement in your tone. he wants to go as far as you’ll let him, indulge you in whatever it is you want from him right now. but he has to start slow, somewhere. it’s progress.

he wants to ask again to reassure you but you’re past that, kissing him as you’re caught in a tiny adrenaline run he’s been unaware he was fuelling this whole time. all this time he’s been feeding into the fire, but this was a tiny bit of gasoline, and it’s beginning to spread. you know it’ll wear down once he begins again but you want to ride it out as long as possible.

he’s always happy when you are, but now was your turn to embarrass xiao, catching him off guard. “can we?” you try to sit up but he keeps you in place, laying you down. “as long as you want this as much as i do” he gets up from beside you, knees against yours as he holds your thighs. his hands look so much bigger from where he’s moved now, you give him another nod and he holds your panties to finally remove them.

you’re back in your original place; being naked from the bottom down right infront of xiao makes you feel unnerved. you let him slowly spread your legs as he continues to hold eye contact with you to keep you calm. he looks more enamoured by your cunt now than ever, situating himself so that his face is right above your clit, arms weighted on your thighs.

his hands come to lock yours on your sides as his you feel his hot breath, making you clench on the air. “relax, close your eyes if you need to, but i’m right here…exactly where you need me” you let your eyes close before your lips part at the feeling of xiao’s tongue swipe across you. it makes you shiver, his tongue feels long and warm, almost a bit pointy. wet like the rest of his mouth, you’re already gasping again at the feeling.

you bring your head up to look at him, xiao has his tongue running along your folds ever so slowly, eyes never leaving yours. you let the back of your head hit the pillows again as you let out a cry, his tongue is hot when it circles around your entrance. you pull the hoodie up on you in an attempt to hold your thoughts together, only to breathe in and be reminded of who’s conquering every piece of your mind, xiao. you grip his hands a little tighter while you buck into his mouth.

allowing yourself to succumb to him has you thrashing when he sucks on your clit. how he prods his tongue towards your hole to make you squirm. xiao is slowly beginning to devour you; lapping, licking, sucking, darting his tongue onto you. he lets go of one of your hands and lets a finger slide in, “i know what your body can handle, and right now it’s beginning to ask for more. i promise to only give what i know you can take” focusing his concentration and movements back on your clit.

cries and whimpers of his name fill and go beyond his room, letting yourself continue to get lost in the pleasure xiao is bringing you so intensely. the curling of his finger now turning into pumping, his mouth never leaving your messy cunt. “good, it’s really good xiao” you whine, gripping his hair as he moans into you. “i cant-“ you thrash at the feeling of him pull at your clit. “you’re perfect like this right now, finally experiencing the sort of pleasure you always bring me” he leans back down, rocking you against his mouth.

every single shock he manages to send through you has you enjoying it more than the last. it feels good, how he constantly lets you know he’ll give you what’s good for you within your limits. you feel your body course with the kind of build up that has you struggling to stay still, the kind xiao knows how to give you regularly just in other ways. this one is far more intense than the last.

you let out a broken moan of his name, trying to find the words to tell him. you properly call out his name and he looks up at you, both his hair and mouth messy from how you held onto him. “i’m going to cum” you squeak, feeling his fingers rub your gspot. your body cant hang on any longer, as if you’re on the edge. “cum for me, right here against me. i’ve got you” you shake your head furiously.

your back arches off the bed and against xiao, whos still giving you every kind of sensation imaginable and all at once. he feels you squeeze his fingers, convulsing against his mouth.

your back hits the bed as your legs still shake around his head, in complete shock at what he was able to bring you. he can feel you still pulse against his mouth and he slowly pulls off. you both stay still as he lets you calm down. he stares at you in awe, panting from his actions.

he moves back to his side on the bed and embraces you, feeling your body go limp against his. his chin rests on the top of your head as he pulls you into the covers properly. you let his forehead lean onto yours as you move away and cup his cheek, catching xiao shyly turn his gaze away.

you’re right. xiao loves you in every way imaginable, willing to go far lengths to prove it.

frustrated when even he himself has trouble to explain how he feels in just words.

a feeling that he can only describe as gentle and warm…warm enough to feel as if he’s burning up at your touch. no matter how light.

just like he does to you.

[poptod]

The Gift (Ahkmenrah x Reader)

Description: Kahmunrah gets a gift for one of Ahk’s birthdays.

Notes: i wrote this as a sorta good-bye present since ive got finals coming up but i also just realized that theres no way im gonna go more than a week without writing it's impossible. anyway smut warning still gender neutral WC: 2.7k

+

He couldn't say no.

No, that wouldn't do.

Maybe he could tell his mother –

No, that also wouldn't do. He met you during his excursions in the market outside the city gates, and he wasn't actually allowed to go there, even if it was with his older brother. Kamun wasn't allowed, either.

He was smirking right now, Kamun––watching Ahk's expression with great care and enjoyment as he stared at you. Unable to tear away from you. Kamun had made sure to make you as enticing as possible, with flowers and sheer robes of silk twisting like curls of silver around your bare body. The clothes Ahk had seen earlier were all stripped away, and your hair was cut, your body shaved and massaged with oil from rose and lavender.

The whole of the city watched him, including his parents, as he stood at the top of the palace steps, the receiver of hundreds of gifts. His birthday was a highly celebrated event in Memphis, and had since his birth grown in popularity by the sheer size of the festivities planned by his parents. Kamun hated it every single year––and honestly, Ahk couldn't blame him considering he never got a party––and on each year attempted to give him a gift he would hate, but would have to accept in order to not seem rude.

"Um..." Ahk's eyes darted to Kamun, then to you, and then to the city gathered before him. "Thank you, brother dearest. I can't ever say I haven't.. not enjoyed your gifts."

Confused murmurs ran through the crowd, but before anyone could fully question it, the Pharaoh motioned on the next gifts to be presented. You were dragged aside, still bound and gagged by Kamun. He gave you to the nearest soldier before joining the rest of the royal family at the top of the steps.

"I thought you might like that," Kamun said with a smile. "I saw you staring at them."

"This wasn't a gag gift?" Ahk said beneath his breath, quirking a brow.

"Oh, no. I have something much better planned, just you wait," he said, his grin turning saccharine. "Enjoy your gift for now."

Ahkmen tensed, breath filling his chest as he turned away from his brother. It did not leave till he met the eyes of the next gift-giver, a long sigh escaping him.

Several days ago––or perhaps several weeks ago, he didn't have a fantastic grasp on his alcohol-filled days––he and Kamun had gone into the market together in search of another pipe, after they both broke the last one fighting over it. They decided to get two this time, but before they could reach one of the proper stalls, Ahkmen found himself quite distracted with you.

You manned a stand filled with dried herbs and flowers, hanging in small pouches or tied to the wooden edges of your stall. He couldn't just let you go unheeded––not with a face like yours, decorated in strange piercings and veils of purple and gold.

Now he faced you again, this time lit by the fire crackling in his room, and shadowed by the white shrouds of silk hanging from his ceiling. Smoke from incense pooled on the soft tapestries, blurring the high-up hieroglyphs painted into the tallest pillars in his room. Those hardly meant anything to even your silhouette––curved and soft behind the heavenly white, still clothed in the sheens of thin fabric Kamun had chosen for you.

He reached forward, drawing back the curtain to reveal you glaring up at him. A long breath caught in his chest, tightening from the fear and anger apparent in your eyes, and releasing when his own contempt surfaced. This was not his fault.

"This is not my fault," he said aloud, repeating his thoughts that were currently repeating over and over that this was not his fault.

You said nothing. Not that you could, with the gag in your mouth. He didn't bother to remove it. Instead, he sat down next to you on his bed, dragging his eyes down your bare skin and the petals that rested a stark, bloody red against it.

"My brother is awful. Every year he gets me a gift that he knows is going to upset me the most. This year, I guess... this was simply the most recent happenings, and he latched onto that. I apologize on his behalf," he said, reaching forward to set his hand on your warm thigh.

You jumped back, but he did not move, and kept his eye firmly on yours. Your muscles tightened, drawing him to the dip of your collarbones, where it was clear you were holding your breath.

"Now there's no reason to be afraid of me," he said as he moved closer, halted by your own movements jerking backwards and away from him. That only seemed to irritate him more. "I won't bite.. hard."

He once again moved forward and you fell back, but this time he pressed the palm of his hand into your hip, locking you into place as he wedged himself between your legs. The heat of your thighs reached up from his own hips and into his chest, surrounding him with soft skin. Your heavy breaths, however, had yet to cease, and only worsened the closer he got to you.

Technically he could do as he pleased with you. If he wanted to, he could marry you within the hour. He could sell you. He could make you the first trophy in his harem.

"I want you to calm down," he said, looming over you like the dark of a shadow. "If you do, I'll take your gag out and you can tell me your name."

Already he could feel excitement thrumming through his system, pooling in a heat between his legs. His offer seemed to appeal to you, and your legs lightened their grip on him, your breathing calming down slowly but surely. He smiled, situating himself more comfortably in your touch before reaching forward and removing the cloth in your mouth.

"See?" He said as the gag fell, leaving your lips plush and dark. His fingers rested on the edge of your jaw, but his thumb reached up, running the pad along your lip and partway into your mouth. Good lips, good teeth, good tongue, he noted. "That wasn't so hard."

"What are you going to do with me?" You asked quietly once he removed his thumb, your voice hoarse as you looked him up and down.

"What are you willing to give me?"

You paused, blinking several times as you tried to understand his question. Your confusion ended, for the most part, when your concern was instead turned to his hand creeping up your inner thigh, running his palm along your skin.

"I can't easily rid of you. People will ask questions, you see? So now," his eyes darted across your face, "I.. or we, must decide what to do with you. I could make you a servant. It's not a bad job. I could... sell you, but that'd make you a slave, and I don't think you really want that."

You nodded.

"Understandable," he chuckled. "I could marry you, though you'd probably have to be one of my lesser spouses, since you're not royal."

Disgust was pulling at your features the moment he suggested it.

"I feel a little young for marriage, honestly," he said, his hands encircling your hips and tugging you down the bed. You yelped at the sudden movement, now placed entirely below the Prince, his body looming over you. "But I am not too young to enjoy the best parts of it, and you are quite... beautiful."

In the longer pauses between his words, he squeezed and tested the plush of your skin, memorizing the feel of your thighs in his hand. It enticed him deeply––the thought of biting into you, pumping himself into you, tainting each of his thoughts.

"I've learned that it's no fun if the other is unwilling to participate," he said softly. "So what are you willing to give me?"

Your labor. Your love. Your body. Which would you choose to keep for yourself, and which would you share?

Before you could think of an answer, frozen in place by your own embarrassment of being essentially naked in a palace bedroom, he leant down to the crook of your neck, kissing gently with feather-soft lips. Your muscles tightened again, seizing up with the sensations crowding your mind and body.

He hummed as he indulged himself in you, pushing and grinding as he pleased while you gasped and stuttered. Since your hands were still tied behind you, you could do nothing but writhe helplessly, caught in the Prince's grasp.

"What do you think of me?" He asked, not bothering to part from the skin of your neck as he spoke. The heat of his breath sent shivers down your back. "I know some of you marketplace people dislike my family quite a lot, but I know there are still those of you that retain your respect."

"My family has –" you inhaled sharply, "– has always followed your rule."

He drew away, scanning you carefully as you spoke.

"We live indebted to you."

"Then I call upon that debt," he said, twisting his hand in your hair and pulling hard.

"Y – yes, my prince," you whispered.

He dipped back down, grinding his hips into yours as his lips once more latched to your neck. A startled whine, almost a moan, came from you as he squeezed your thigh. You could do nothing in his grip, your hands tied behind your back and your head controlled by his hand. The thought of it excited him greatly, pushing him to move faster, teeth digging deeper into your flesh as you moaned helplessly.

"I would untie your hands," he mumbled, moving down your body with kisses pressed to your sternum, "but... I'll be honest..."

He flipped you onto your stomach, and you practically squeaked as he forcefully raised your hips into the air. In the same movement he flipped your scarce clothes off you. Poised in that position, he could easily grind his clothed length into you, sending you into twitches desperately trying to move away and get closer at the same time.

"... I enjoy you like this," he said, running his hand down your spine and feeling the jerks and twitches that his touch so easily brought about. "Aren't you happy that you please me?"

"Yes, my prince," you breathed out, muffled by the pillow beneath you and highlighted by the deep red blush filling your face.

"Good pet," he said softly, reaching forward and shoving his fingers in your mouth.

Without being told, you obediently allowed him to press down on your tongue, coating his fingers in saliva. Once he deemed your job done, his fingers came to circle your entrance. You sucked in another sharp breath, tensing at the sudden sensation, one that was ultimately outshone by Ahk's hand coming down on your ass, leaving a dark print of his hand.

"I told you already," he said, leaning down. "I want you to calm down. Can you do that for me?"

His fingers still teasing your heat with a feather-light touch made it incredibly hard for you to reply, and your response came out stumbling and sheepish.

"I – I'm sorry, my prince," you said, your fingers tensing and untensing in your bindings.

"I didn't ask for an apology. I asked you to calm down," his finger slipped into you as he leant down to your ear, "so I can fuck you properly."

An audible moan came from you from just his words, satisfying an itch so deep within Ahk that he ground hard enough into your hips to push your face into the bed. This time, you ground back on his fingers, panting and whining desperately as he laughed at your need.

He drew his curved finger out before pushing back in, this time with two fingers that slowly filled you up. Again you pushed back on him, already pleading incoherently for something more, which he gave in the form of his tongue. He licked a long stripe down your entrance before kissing your ass, massaging the skin he punished moments earlier.

"Please, I – I don't – please, my prince," you begged between your panting.

"Need something?" He asked, a satisfied smile stretching across his face. You were fully prepared––he just wanted to hear you say it.

"Need you, my prince," you begged, shutting your eyes tight as shame washed over you. "I need you inside me, please, please.. your holy seed."

He nearly laughed, but fortunately held it back. A fair amount of people accepted the Pharaoh and his family as rightful leaders of Egypt, but rarely did he come across someone who still genuinely believed the Pharaonic family to be gifted from the Gods.

"Are you ready to please a God?" He asked in a low voice, taking advantage of your deteriorated state.

"Yes, my prince, please," you begged, practically crying as you pushed back into him and felt nothing.

"You make a beautiful whore," he said, pulling away his skirt and thrusting deep inside you, bottoming out and holding himself there.

A long, high moan left you as you grinded back, relaxing into the feeling of being filled entirely. Each time you nudged even slightly back into him, he pushed into the bundle of nerves far within you.

"Fuck," he hissed as his grip on your hips tightened, pleasure coursing through him from your tight heat.

You bit into your pillow as he sat deep as he could in you.

"I could play with you for hours," he said, pulling out no more than an inch before forcing himself back in. You gasped, taken by surprise. "Your body is fit for a God."

He reached forward, once more twisting his fingers in your hair and pulling. He brought you up so your back met his chest, and then he began to move, pumping up into you with slow, harsh thrusts. Moans poured freely from your lips, no longer held together by bindings or by him shoving your face into the bed.

With one hand still tangled in your hair, he let the other one trail down from your neck to your chest, and onto your stomach, where he felt the bulge of his cock moving inside you. It only pushed him more, his thrusts growing faster and more needy as his own moans began to hum in the room.

He was pounding into you now, and he let you fall back down to the bed, your hips raised and your face once more buried in the sheets. With this angle he could thrust into you much faster and much deeper. The difference was certainly felt by you, pleasure surging through your veins, and by him as your walls tightened around his dick.

"I cannot wait," he said, his nails digging into your hips as he pounded you into the mattress, "to fill you with my seed.. over and over again."

"My prince," you whined helplessly, tears forming in your eyes.

"Till it drips down your thighs, everywhere you go," he said and, somehow, found the strength to thrust faster yet as your high approached. "Till no one can see you without seeing my claim to you."

"Please," you cried.

His hand reached down your body, fingers stroking perfectly in your heat as your moans increased in volume. Heavy breaths filled your chest, aching for just a little more, before he shoved his cock as far as he could inside you, stilling for a moment till hot cum poured out of him. He stayed deep as possible while he rode out his orgasm, ropes upon ropes of his seed still shooting into you and filling you up as he promised. Your own end came multiple times, clenching and pushing back into him, still babbling words of praise and thanks.

When he at last pulled out, you both collapsed, his cum already pooling and seeping out of your entrance. He chuckled, running his finger through your sex still covered in his white seed. You jerked forward, clearly oversensitive.

"I must say," he said directing your face to look him in the eye, "you are the best gift anyone has ever given me."

[jjuzoir]

request: Hello! Can I ask headcanons about being childhood!besties with Miya twins (about child and about adults)? (by nonnie!)

a/n: ofc baby!! sorry for taking so long 🤧 every time i try writing something happens it’s ridiculous 😔 anyway sorry if it’s bad ive been ✨struggling✨

- Being friends with one of them is like, hard enough— but the two? Good luck.

- You three met via your parents— yes, it’s like that, you were the new kid and awkward as hell. Your parents were having none of that shit and made a playdate for you with the twins, it’s embarrassing, you were like 13 and that’s kind of embarrassing for you and you knew it.

- Like, here you were a newly turned teenager, sitting on a couch with two guys your age all watching a weird cartoon and you all want to die.

- But at some point, you three start acting like you had known each other for your whole lives. You three fight to this day on who cracked the ice, Atsumu swears it was him and his sense of humor but you and Osamu are not taking that shit, like with what humor?

- You start hanging out after school, since you three went to the same school it started bleeding into school time and your teachers hated you three.

- During middle school you three were known to your teachers for being insufferable— more like, Atsumu and you. You two were the type of kids to pass fake notes with the stupidest shit written on it, like middle school humor, “Miss Poopy Pants” and “ICUP” so the teachers would have to read it aloud.

- Osamu and you? Known to the lunch ladies, you two were the first to arrive and gobble down anything and everything especially onigiri. They even snuck you two snacks for class— yes, you were the kids who had a whole grill in the back. Always eating.

- You three didn’t skip class though— I feel like Atsumu might’ve tried to convince you but ultimately forgot.

- During gym you three would always be in the same team if you could pick but it would end with Atsumu and Osamu fighting about dodgeball and getting disqualified leaving you alone.

- They got into Volley around then and you became their number one cheerleader, you’d fight anyone who’d say they weren’t good.

- By high school you three were known for being kind of chaotic!

- You know your parent’s discussed what school they’d put the three of you together in, they joked about separating you guys and you almost cried no joke.

- So you three go to Inarizaki together and when I tell you everyone is annoyed by you three and your shit I mean it 💕

- Especially the volleyball club, you decided to become their manager at the same time the twins got in— they were happy, finally a manager and some new kids; good, good.

- Until they learned about how absolutely full of shit the three of you are, Atsumu and Osamu are already a handful together but you? You add a whole new spice to this shit and it’s ✨embarrassing✨ for them.

- You and ‘Tsumu always goof off and get lost because you two were fighting over something, it takes the whole team’s willpower to not let you stranded.

- “All I’m saying is since Osamu looks like Atsumu, would anyone really notice if we just dye his hair yellow?”

- But they are also thankful, you manage to bring a semblance of peace during their fights. It doesn’t take much for you to calm them down, so they keep you around even if you sometimes distract the two of them too much.

- You’re still their number one cheerleader! Whenever they manage to score you’re the first to jump around and congratulate them, they’d never tell you but it’s kind of sweet seeing you so proud of them. They’d rather die than tell you though so shh.

- You being there brings a new level of competitiveness, they gotta make you proud! You’re cheering your little heart out for them; they can’t embarrass you now.

- But you can't always win, so whenever they (unfortunately) lose, you’re always the first to comfort them. You all go to your house and chill for a while, they get kinda quiet and you can feel how tense they are but they’d rather spend the afternoon after a bad match with you.

- Bet your ass you three watch Power Rangers and you all fight about who the best Ranger is; Atsumu says it’s Red Ranger and Osamu is about to snap his neck when there’s a whole Black Ranger, but they can agree to bully you when you say you like Green the best.

- Back to you being their manager, I feel like they’re kind of better behaved? Like, they get into less trouble and are less likely to fight because Kita sends you to scold them and it’s embarrassing being scolded by someone who thought the Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters was also Michelin Man.

- Now to their individual quirks; Osamu loves it when you help him cook or cook for him, he feels all happy you take the time to make him something— especially when they’re practicing, he really appreciates you coming in with some food for him and the team. He likes the fact you take care of him in small ways!

- “Awww, the little bug cares about me~”

- “Shut up, next time I’m putting cyanide in your stupid Onigiri.”

- Atsumu likes it when you’re just there, not even talking, just vibing together. He likes how you two don’t have to always talk to know what’s going on, it’s probably what he loves the most about your friendship. The fact you just get each other is something he kind of loves.

- Sometimes ruins it by saying dumb shit but it’s okay ♥︎ No it’s not ♥︎

- “Do you ever think about Taemin Paula, like who’s Paula and why are they taming her?”

- “‘Tsumu go back to being quiet, please just shut up.”

- Oh, let’s talk S/O! The two of them are protective over you, you’re their best friend!

- Osamu is more vocal about what he dislikes, he flat out tells you not to go out with them, pointing out all of what he doesn’t like and why he gets bad vibes or why he feels like they’re just not it.

- Atsumu doesn’t say much, he’s got his fair share of flings and dates— good and bad, though, it’d be unfair of him to tell you what to do. But you can tell when he doesn’t like someone you’re seeing.

- This is only if they feel like the person isn’t good enough, it’s not like they don’t want you to date. They’re just careful of it, you’re like a sibling to them and they wouldn’t want you to get heartbroken.

- Speaking about heartbreak; they get very mad at the person, you’re amazing! Why’d they go and fuck you over like that.

- Atsumu would throw hands, it’s in sight with the other person; especially if he never got bad vibes from them, he’s so mad he wasn’t there to see the red flags.

- Osamu is behind him and he’s not stopping his brother, he knew something wasn’t right about them and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t give them a piece of his mind.

- But at the end of the day, what’s most important to them is making sure you’re alright at the end of the day. They care about you, dummy.

- They’d come over to your house and cheer you up, Atsumu would tell his jokes and Osamu and you would laugh at how bad they are 💖

- “I’m glad you feel better but I’m startin’ to feel kinda bad here myself-“ “Maybe get better jokes <3”

- Once you three graduate you still keep in touch, probably more with Osamu since he’s not always busy like Atsumu; in other words, even during your adult they torment you 💕

- You’re so proud of the two of them though? Like, you’re always bragging about them, it’s just so !! Seeing the kids you grew up with become successful? Amazing.

- “Have I told you about how my childhood best friend is a PROFESSIONAL, yes PROFESSIONAL, volleyball player?”

- “[Name], I am literally his fucking brother shut up.”

- Osamu and you totally make fun of Atsumu, it’s gotten to the point you always try embarrassing more each game. Your latest (very successful, much to Atsumu’s dismay) attempt was wearing shirts with ugly childhood pictures of Atsumu, I’m talking about the type your parents bring up to make fun of you and a banner that said “Tsu-Tsu our superstar!” or something like that.

- He almost cried on national television, he was horrified, the worst part? You were in front row seats meaning that everyone the camera panned in to one of the players you’d be in full view.

- “Atsumu, is that [Name] and Osamu?” “You were so fucking ugly as a child oh my god-“

- Sakusa is having a field trip with this, that thing won’t die as long as he lives— this man will film this shit, tape it and pass it as a family heirloom.

- “Kiyoomi could you-?”

- “Don’t talk to me you gremlin baby.”

- “This was months ago, let it die!”

- “You lived your whole childhood looking like that, I don’t think I will.”

- The three of you reminiscing about high school together at Onigiri Miya? Yes, it happens and it’s ♥︎

- “Do you remember when Osamu shoved a marble up his nose, stupid kid…”

- “Tch, rough words for a fucker who bit into a brick because it looked tasty.”

- “I was young!”

- “You were 16, piss head.”

- A lot of the time you just like spending time with each other, even during your busy schedules you always do your best to talk to each other at least once a month.

- Sometimes it’s just talking over the phone and other times it’s going to fancy restaurants that Atsumu pays, other times it can also be trying to make new recipes with Osamu as Atsumu just cringes in the back.

- They're just always there for you, yes you fight and yes they’re kind of annoying but you care for them and you don’t mind it. You’d rather spend a whole other lifetime having to endure their teasing than not have them at all.

[sdvharveybby]

It’s all just a waiting game...

(F!Female farmer x Harvey)

Ha ha! Another angsty “farmer is missing and mangled” fic! Honestly I genuinely enjoy this scenario because its the trials between a husband and doctor and how he handles his emotions. 

I will be making a part 2 though, but it would help if I could get criticism or perhaps a bit of popularity for this post just to see if I did well. In any case, I hope you guys enjoy it! 

Words: 2338

“Mayor Lewis, please listen to me- she has been missing for four days now. That’s not like her at all. Something’s wrong- something happened to her.” With desperation in his voice, Harvey gripped the phone harder in his hand. There was a brief pause from the other line and finally, “Okay, I understand. I will contact Marlon and Gil now, and we’ll make up a search party to look for her.” With that Harvey whispered a thank you and ended the call. He paced the floor of the home that he and the farmer had been living in for several months now- he hadn’t showered, his clothes were disheveled, and he hadn’t slept. It was nightmarish and thousands of thoughts ran through his head, he could hardly hold back the worst thoughts. That the farmer could be gravely injured- or worse… dead. He felt hopeless and cursed himself for not being able to do more- besides wait. ‘Be patient, she’ll turn up’ rang in his head that Lewis had told him two days prior. ‘She’ll turn up- you know she’s a busy girl!’ “Just foolish.” Harvey spoke aloud as he sat down in a chair and held his face in his hands. The farmer had never been this late, sure, she may have gone to bed late or turned up early the next day, but nothing like this.

It was currently 7pm, just an hour after his phone call with Lewis, and he put on his jacket to go look around town and Cindersap forest for any sign of the farmer. He walked these areas many times since her disappearance, but he always thought, ‘What if I missed something?’ ‘What if she was lost?’ As he entered into town, attempting to wipe the sleepiness from his eyes, he saw a group of people standing in the center with heavy jackets and flashlights. As he approached, he recognized them as Jodi, Kent, Gus, Lewis, Abigail, Pierre, Caroline, and a few others. “Harvey… you look awful. When was the last time you slept?” spoke Pierre as he walked towards Harvey. Harvey looked to his feet through saddened eyes, “I don’t remember…” Everyone looked to him mournfully until Lewis broke the short tension, “Okay, everyone… Our farmer has been missing for four days now. Let’s split into teams of two and scan the area for any signs of her.” Everyone began adjusting their coats and checking if their flashlights worked. “I’m talking- Cindersap forest,” people began walking, “The beach, by the railroad tracks- we have to find her.” Harvey stood there, watching everyone disperse in their teams, and relief and stress both washed over him. If they find her, what state would she be in? He feared the worst as he had done since the first day she went missing. Lewis approached Harvey and put a hand on his shoulder, “I know you won’t like this, but please go get some sleep at your clinic. When we find her- we don’t need our only doctor exhausted. I have Marlon looking for her in the caves and Gil checking the quarry, okay?” Harvey nodded without saying a word- he was a bit crestfallen, but too exhausted to argue. “I will call you when we find her.”

           Approaching the clinic Harvey unlocked the main door and stepped inside. It was dark and foreboding as he tried to imagine the farmer in one of the beds passed out. He shook his head from his constant thoughts and began prepping the area in which he would work on her if they found her. ‘IF’ they found her is a thought that occurred to him continuously since the search party dispersed. And with that, he finally stepped into bed- passing out from his lack of sleep.

           Awoken by the sound of his phone ringing- Harvey shifted in bed. Disoriented and groggy he rubbed his face when realization struck him. It was currently 4:23am and he shot up from his bed- his blanket flying behind him as he stood and stumbled to his phone. Hastily grabbing it he put it to his ear, “Yes, hello?” “Harvey… It’s Lewis. Marlon found her in the mines on floor 107. Look… she’s really not in good shape- we need you to be ready to perform surgery right away.” Without a reply, Harvey slammed his phone down on the receiver and stood up. It was surreal. They actually found her! But a dark feeling entered his stomach and he tried to swallow the lump that formed in his throat. He felt sick to his stomach almost unable to move, “S-surgery?” he whispered- stunned and emotionless. ‘Sh-she’s so badly hurt I need to perform emergency surgery on her.’ He thought to himself- finally he slapped himself awake and tore open his door and down the stairs into his clinic.

           Turning on the lights and working on preparations for the surgery, the sting in his cheek from when he slapped himself hardly bothered him as adrenaline ran through his body- his nightmare may come true. Thoughts began in his head more profusely this time, ‘What if I can’t save her?’ ‘What if I have to watch the one I love die before me?’ ‘Why couldn’t I protect her?’ As he finally finished what he had to do- the door to the clinic burst open. Whipping around he stood to face Marlon holding the farmer bridal style with Lewis behind him- the darkness from the outside pouring in. Harveys eyes shifted to the farmer and he couldn’t breathe. The lump in his throat grew stronger, the dark awful gut feeling grew stronger, and he could hardly look at her. Her body was mangled, she was caked with blood, and she wasn’t moving. ‘She’s not moving- why isn’t she moving’ he repeated in his head over and over again. Harvey rushed to Marlon and motioned to put her on the bed, “Place her on the bed- I’ll get the IV’s ready.” With a deep gruff- Marlon shifted the farmer in his arms as he had carried her for quite a while- he placed her on the bed and moved her arms beside her. “Harvey… Harvey you need to make sure she’s still alive first…” Marlon sounded grave as he whispered words that rang through Harvey like a loud bell. “I- w-what? What are you saying?” Marlon turned to face him and opened his mouth when Lewis came to put a hand on his shoulder. He closed his mouth, looked away, and stepped aside- folding his arms as they were weak from carrying the farmer. Harvey almost threw up at the thought alone, ‘Make sure she’s still alive first…’ He walked to the bedside of the farmer and pulled out his stethoscope- he was slow- shaking as he put it to her heart and listened. His eyes were wide, and he began to sweat- unsure of what and how to handle the situation. She was the worst he had ever seen, using his eyes to navigate and analyze her body from the surface- he saw multiple fractures, broken bones, cuts, bruises, and a large laceration running down the side of her left arm. Along her left side was a large third degree burn on her upper thigh- having burned through her clothes and began to blister. Blood caked her hair and down the right side of her face- her eyes closed and pained. It looked like she hadn’t slept in days and her body was shutting down. Then… *thump… thump* Harvey cracked a small and worried smile, ‘She’s alive! She’s alive!’ he thought, and he quickly began grabbing IV’s, bandages, ointment, anything to help ease her pain. Harvey heard a short gasp from behind and he turned to face everyone form the search party standing behind him. They looked out of breath and tired, but also relieved that the farmer was found. He looked at Caroline who had given the short gasp and saw Maru fighting through the people to get to him. Through analyzing the farmer he didn’t even hear anyone walk in- and through teary eyes and cracked voice he spoke, “She’s alive, but as you can see- is gravely injured. I…” he gave a short pause and looked away- fighting back tears whilst also knowing he has a job to do, “-need to stabilize her and get her through the night. If she can make it throughout this day then I believe she’ll make it, but if not…” He couldn’t finish his sentence- Maru moved past him and began unwrapping the needles for the IV’s and rummaging through the drawers for antibiotics. Lewis cleared his throat, “We all need to leave and let them work.” Those in the search party were stunned and never broke their gaze from the mangled farmer- hardly hearing the words that Harvey spoke. It wasn’t until Marlon moved in front of them that they realized they needed to leave, and they all quickly herded out of the clinic.

           With just Harvey and Maru they both began disinfecting her words and sorting out her injuries. Maru began working on the farmers right side while Harvey began on the left- analyzing her head injury was his first priority. “Dr. Harvey… You may want to see this.” Pulling back the farmer’s burned clothes from her upper thigh revealed how bad the burn was, “Okay, once we put her on antibiotics and pain relievers, we need to begin debridement.” She nodded in response and began disinfecting the laceration on the farmers arm, instead, to prepare it for stitches and bandages. The blow to the head, Harvey surmised, seemed to be from a fall onto a rock from within the mines- the blow itself didn’t to seem bad, but the blood loss was.

           The process to stabilize the farmer took hours- it was a sigh of relief and her checking the clock that Maru said, “Dr. Harvey, it’s almost 5pm. D-Do you think she’ll be all right?” After scanning over the farmer several times looking for anything they could have possibly missed, satisfied, Harvey sat in his chair just bedside the bed and rubbed his face with his hands. He gave a long-drawn-out sigh, contemplating and reviewing all the steps they did in his head. “By this point,” he began, “It’s all up to her. With the feeding tube, IV’s, and bandages- there’s nothing more we can do but watch her hopeful progress.” He didn’t like the uncertainty towards the farmer and he silently cursed himself for allowing her in the mines time and time again. He felt like he could have stopped her, and this time- he really wished he did. Deep in his mind, he acknowledged that there was no way he could have known, but he tossed them aside. If only he was more persistent or sent her with more life elixirs or-, “Harvey- I know you’ve been in your head quite a bit, but we have done all that we can.” Maru broke through his unhealthy absorption of thought,  “Let her rest… and you should too.” Maru began grabbing her coat, “I’m going to head home. If there’s anything you need… Please call me. I want her alive just as much as you do.” Starring intently at the farmer, he gave Maru a silent nod and she left the clinic. Ever-so-hopeful Harvey wasn’t sure if he should scold the farmer or just be happy she came back in one piece. It was a mixture of both. As much as he loved the farmer with all his being- she continuously neglected the dangers of the mine. Always coming back with scraps and bruises that he’d see when he would give her a massage at night. Most of it he would ignore because they were easy to treat, but over time the scars on her body became clear- by this point, through all the physical therapy and treatment she’ll need, the farmer will likely never be able to go back into the mine again. The thought of that also saddened him though… He knew she loved going into the mine- fighting new creatures and grabbing ore or foraging for rare materials. It was just what she wanted to do and she enjoyed it- she sought out danger, but unfortunately it sought her out too. Looking up her body, it looked like the farmer was a mummy. Wrapped up in gauze with an IV in her arm and feeding tube in her mouth. Even for a doctor it was a rather scary and intimidating sight- it was all just a waiting game. It was all just seeing if she would decide to pull through- there wasn’t anything he could do by this point. Cracking the knuckles on his hands and stretching out his neck, he walked over to one of the nearby beds and scooted it as close to the farmer as he could get it. With the heart monitor in the way, it was a bit difficult, but her slow heart beats gave him a peace of mind. She was alive, and he was going to see to it that he sees all of this to the end. He laid down on the bed and finally took off his “doctor hat”- facing her and realizing the situation he… began to cry. It’s one thing to look at her as a patient, but another looking at her as his wife and the mess that she was in. He couldn’t do anything but watch and be patient- and that was his least favorite thing. Through his quiet sob he reached out his hand to gently stroke her arm, and spoke, “Honey… please come back to me….” He gave a pause to blink through his tears and continued, “It’ll be all right- I’ll take good care of you… Let’s just get through this together, okay? Please?” He kept his hand on her arm, gently stroking it with his thumb- blinking away the tears as best as he could. It’s all just a waiting game…

[wkemeup]

Guiding Light (6)

summary: It was supposed to be a simple mission. Get the intel and go home. Until everything goes wrong and you’re taken captive by Hydra and now, Bucky can’t breathe without you. Not until he brings you home. If he even can. pairing: bucky x reader chapter word count: 7.3k warnings: torture, angst™, graphic descriptions of violence, the peak of the angst ive been warning yall about 🖤series masterlist // series playlist

You laid on your stomach upon the hard lumps and broken springs of the mattress, the weight of your body heavy, impossibly aching, and somehow feathery light at the same time; like your body was not your own, like you were just barely inhabiting your own skin covered in bruising and dried blood caked into your hair, bones protruding where thick muscle once sat. Unrecognizable.

Lids heavy, you dragged your arm up to the corner of the ground under the mattress, shifting slightly and taking up all of your energy to do so. A few scratches in a single line amongst forty-seven marks of the same; tiny white lines along concrete.

Forty-eight days in Hydra’s captivity.  

“How you doing over there, Y/n?” Danny’s voice called carefully through the wall.

You closed your eyes, turning your head to face the wall, staring at the crack that allowed you an ounce of sanity in your imprisonment. Your fingertips reached out and brushed the line in the wall. Tiny rocks fell from the fracture, sharp edges scratching at your skin.

“M’okay,” you replied, though the rough tone of your voice betrayed you.

You could still feel the worn muscles and aching joints from where Cain had beat you senseless for the sake of the camera a few days prior. He had yet to explicitly tell you what your purpose was in Hydra or why they bothered keeping you alive at all, but you could tell they were ramping up to their endgame soon. Whatever it was, had to do with Bucky.

You suspected it from the beginning. They were too quick to taunt him in your face and he had become the main subject of your interrogations as of late. You had handled the videos up to this point as best as you could. It was what you were trained for, but the moment you saw Bucky’s name listed upon the cue card, you broke.

You had outright refused to say his name aloud in such a place and Cain, in his unending frustration with you, had cut off your air supply with the grip of his hand until you lost consciousness. He only released long enough for you to come back to, and then he’d close his gasp again. He did that four times before he relented.

So, despite the tears in your eyes, the awful break in your voice, and the sickening guilt in your stomach, you spoke his name at the demands of the same nature of men who had tortured and mutilated Bucky Barnes until he resembled something outside of himself.

You spoke his name and you told him he was at fault just before Cain nearly beat you to death for the second time.

When you regained consciousness hours later, you couldn’t stop crying. Heaving and desperate to catch your breath, just to picture his face as you spoke those words, words you had so carefully worked to convince him of otherwise in the three years since you’d known him. Those words were never supposed to come from your mouth, never should have parted your lips, echoed in your voice. They were lies; vicious and cruel because you knew that Bucky would latch onto them and take any excuse to give into the dormant fears in the back of his mind that constantly wondered if he really was to blame for all the bad in the world.

You had so vigilantly kept your mind away from Bucky since you’d been here, focusing only on old memories, on his smile and the blue in his eyes, on something warm and kind you could hold onto, but then suddenly, all you could think about was what he was doing without you, if he’d retreated so far into himself he resembled the withdrawn, self-loathing man you first met in the kitchen before sunrise drinking coffee or if it was worse than that, if he dove back into missions and reckless behaviors and gave into the empty part of himself he reserved for the soldier.

You weren’t sure which was worse, but having to think of him being anything other than the incredibly kind, gentle, wonderful man you knew tore at your heart in ways you couldn’t explain. You didn’t want to think that you could hold that kind of power, that being ripped from his life would alter him in such a way. His recovery was too important for that. And yet, if you let yourself think of it, if it had been Bucky that was taken forty-eight days ago and you were the one left behind, you knew with certainty that your world would have come crashing down. It has.

“When's the last time you ate?” Danny asked as a tear slipped over the bridge of your nose, bringing you out of your thoughts. You brushed it away, glancing through the small hole in the wall. Danny had been working on making it bigger, just enough so to slip a few spare bites of food to you in the days Cain ordered the agents to withhold your food as punishment.

It wasn’t large enough to catch a real glimpse of the kid in the cell beside you, but the most you could gather was the orange waves of his hair having grown from the buzzcut over the month since he arrived. Soft freckles on his paled skin and the tan camouflage pants of his military uniform.

“Don’t know,” you replied honestly. Your body had stopped growling for food weeks ago. The pangs turning into numb aches that never quite seemed to go away. Danny didn’t say a word as he pushed a bite of bread throw the wall and it dropped to the concrete by your mattress.

“Danny, don’t,” you urged, though your fingers brushed over the bread, your mouth already watering as you touched the spongey surface. “You need to eat, too.”

“They feed me on a daily basis, Y/n,” he countered, pushing through another piece. “I can afford to share with you. Please, eat.”

You brought the first bite to your mouth and swallowed it before you could even taste the stale texturing. It brought relief for a brief moment, though not nearly long enough, and you picked up the second piece.

Danny let out a groan as he attempted to push another piece of breath through the wall for you, a side effect of the beating he took shortly after yours. He estimated he had a few bruised ribs and some swelling around his eye, but insisted he was unharmed, better off than what they did to you, he would say.

You still didn’t know why they took Danny in the first place or why they were keeping him alive. This young, inexperienced soldier who was too kind and too naïve to second guess breaking protocol to help a stranger start their car. It didn’t make sense. He had no information he could give, no secrets he could expose. He was just some kid.

You mumbled a thank you as Danny took a steady breath, ripping the bread into pieces.

“You're the Avenger here, you know,” Danny chimed in light-heartedly as another bite landed into your outstretched hand and you smiled through your cracked lips, “you need to get your strength anywhere you can grab it so you’re ready for when your team comes for you.”

As easily as it came, your lips fell back to a straight line. You swallowed back the last bite he was able to offer you.

You spent the rest of the day curled up on the mattress, trying to find sleep despite the horrible aches in your body and the likely concussions you had sustained. You were still waking up after you fell asleep, so that was a decent sign at least.

The only good thing about filming those awful videos was the fact that Cain and his men left you alone for a few days. Even if it meant no food, it also meant no torture, no questions you’d refuse to answer, no nails pulled from your skin, no knives carving into you or fists barreling against your bones. It meant peace, if only for a little while.

“Hey Y/n?”

“Yeah, kid?”

Danny paused before he spoke again, a nervous shift as he turned on the squeak of his mattress. “Will you tell me about the Avengers? What they’re really like?”

You turned so your back fell against the mattress, a wash of relief over your muscles. Staring up at the ceiling, you studied the water stains and fractures in the tiling as you considered his question.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want,” Danny quickly retracted. “I didn’t mean to overstep.”

“No. No, it’s okay,” you sighed, the soft semblance of a smile aching over your lips as you tried to find comfort upon the mattress. You had tried to keep your friends away from this room for so long, that the thought of having them with you, in memory, in spirit, in conversation, brought a kind of warmth to your chest you hadn’t experienced in a long time. “Who do you want to know about?”

First, he asked about Steve, which made sense as Danny had enlisted young without any other prospects. It didn’t surprise you that he idolized the man who went from the small, scrawny kid to a decorated war hero. What did surprise you was that Danny was more interested in who Steve Rogers was than Captain America.

So, you told him the story of when you first met Steve; how he was shyer than you would have expected and had a serious aversion to following rules. He was reckless for the right reasons and passionate for what he believed in. You told him about how Steve volunteers with Sam at the VA and helps facilitate support groups for veterans with PTSD.

Danny listened intently as you talked, asking questions here and there. He was still so young and full of the kind of awe you’d see on the streets of New York when you’d race through the city on the back of Bucky’s motorcycle as Tony and Sam flew above the crowd, chasing behind Steve as he ran at exceptional pace. It was the kind of genuine excitement of a generation who grew up with superheroes in their backyards.

Then, you told him about Tony, how he was far kinder than the media gave him credit for. You told him that he was a good man under all that sarcasm and wit and about how he routes his charity donations through international banks just to take measures to keep it anonymous. You told him about the lavish parties he throws to raise money or help improve the Avenger’s public image and how he somehow became known as the modern day Gadsby, which he had explicitly states he resents.

He asked about Natasha with a slight tremor in his voice, like he was almost fearful of even saying her name, but you told him she was witty and compassionate and fearless unlike anyone else you knew. You told him she was your closest friend and that she had spent countless hours of her own free time to train with you when you first joined the team. You told him that she always wore socks around the compound, even on the hottest summer days, and made the best homemade bread you’d ever had in your life.

You told him about Sam, who was always your main source of laughter, who had a comeback for just about everything and the heart of someone twice his size. You told him about the time Sam once drove five hours just to get a specific type of chocolate from his childhood in the days after you came home from a mission that had more casualties than anyone had expected, hoping the sweets would bring back even an ounce of your smile.

Danny was enthralled the entire time, so eager to learn more and asking the kinds of questions you’d only get from someone who genuinely cared, who spent most of their life looking up to superheroes and wanting to embody them as he got older.

He asked about what it was like living at the compound, if superheroes ordered pizza, what kind of shows secret agents watch on Netflix, and what you did when you weren’t on missions. He got you laughing enough to forget about the pain in your body and the warmth of the memories allowed you a brief distraction from horrors of the room you laid in.

“They sound awesome,” Danny exhaled with a laugh and you could only picture the grin that spread over his lips, cheeks aching from smiling for so long.

“Yeah, they kinda are,” you chuckled, surprised to find you had been smiling too. Even through cracked lips and discolored bruising on your jawline, a smile still found its way back to you. How it was possible this kid was able to bring that out in you, you didn’t know.

“What about, um,” Danny started with a nervous tick in his voice, “what about Sergeant Barnes? You haven’t mentioned him...”

You clenched your jaw as you focused on the watermark on the ceiling above you, suddenly a dry ache burning in your chest that wiped away your smile.

“I know the papers talk a lot of crap about him,” Danny went on to say, “but I don’t believe that garbage. He served his country, spent decades as a prisoner of war for it, and this is the way we treat him when he comes home? It’s bullshit. He’s a veteran who got dealt a shitty hand and he shouldn’t be treated like an enemy. All these assholes talk a big game but if it came down to it, none of them would have been able to survive what they put Sergeant Barnes through, let alone resist all the brainwashing Hydra forced on him. They’re all a bunch of cowards. He’s a hero if you ask me.”

You nodded, tears welling in your eyes. It wasn’t often you came across someone who so adamantly and without persuasion believed in Bucky’s innocence. Sniffling back tears, you pressed your hand to the crack in the wall, like it was an extension of you, like maybe Danny could feel your appreciation through the barrier. The small glimpse of him you were able to see through the hole in the wall turned to you, a soft smile on his face as he pressed his hand to the crack.

You let your hand fall away, taking in a deep breath as Danny settled in against his own mattress.

“Bucky is the best man I know,” you said, the words flowing out easily, because they were true and because just being able to talk about Bucky, to have him with you like this, might have been the only thing keeping you from falling apart. “He still has a hard time accepting what Hydra did to him, what they made him do, but he’s come so far. The progress he’s made has been just... amazing to watch. He’s so strong and he cares so much but he holds the weight of the entire world on his shoulders. I just wish the rest of the world could see him the way you do.”

“I’m sure they’ll get there,” Danny replied. “They just got to get to know him, right?”

“It’ll take time,” you chuckled softly, thinking back on fonder memories.

So, you told Danny about your first interactions with Bucky nearly three years ago; how he had sat at the kitchen table hunched over his coffee at the early hours of the morning, silent and brooding for weeks before he so much as spoke to you. You told him about the first time Bucky stuck around in the kitchen as you stretched before your run and how avoidance turned to tight lipped smiles, which turned to mumbled greetings until he stood dressed in running shorts and worked up the courage to ask to go with you.

“Takes a while for him to warm up then?” Danny chuckled.

“Didn’t let me carry a conversation with him until after a few days of running in complete silence,” you confirmed, smile brimming at your lips.

You told him about the day you dragged Bucky into Brooklyn and brought him to the bookshop where you purchased a series of novels on your catch-up list. The first one he read was To Kill A Mockingbird and he had latched onto the character of Scout, pulling you aside at every opportunity to talk about what she stood for and why she was so important as a character. He asked if you would help him find essays and articles about the author and what inspired her. It was the first time you had seen him excited, eager, like he had a kind of hopefulness and light in his eyes he was lacking.

You told Danny about the playlist you started for Bucky, how it had started out as records of music from the decades he missed and the best of your generation before it turned into something else. He learned he leaned towards the acoustic trends of the 70s and 80s in bands like Fleetwood Mac and artists Jim Croce, but he’d find himself asking about your favorite music, songs you’d put on when you need uplifting, songs that made you cry, songs that he’d relate to, and he’d ask if you’d put those on his playlist, too, even if you weren’t sure if he’d like it. He told you he’d love anything you did. You’d hear the playlist echo down the hall at all hours of the day.

You told him of your first mission with Bucky in Vienna, how you would have bled out in the combat zone if Bucky hadn’t carried you out of there. You told him that Bucky was incredibly brave and selfless behind all those layers of guilt he carried upon his shoulders. Even in the months he was suffocated by the shame of it all, before he was able to start swimming back to the surface, he was still impossibly kind for the cruelty he had experienced.

He found a way to step back into the light and you could only pray he hadn’t fallen back to the darkness.

“You really care about him, huh?” Danny sighed.

You closed your eyes for a moment, trying to picture Bucky’s face. Details were starting to fade away, like the two freckles in his forehead and the patterns of gold trimming on his left arm, and that was what scared you the most. But you could still picture the blue of his eyes, the soft wave in his hair, the smile that left crinkles along the side of his face, and that was what kept you from succumbing to Hydra’s torture, to their demands.

“I love him,” you exhaled as tears slipped from the corners of your eyes. You had only said the words aloud once, from behind the glass barrier that kept you from him on the day you were taken. Saying it now, so far away from the man who needed to hear it tore at your chest but it made it real. It reminded you that it happened, that you had loved someone so deserving and so beautiful and that it was worth it, even if it led you here. Even if you’d never get the chance to tell him again.

Danny didn’t say anything, but you could hear the gentle sounds of his breathing as he listening intently. His hands brushed over the crack in the wall, the shadow casting into your room, and you mustered a sad smile, knowing it was his way of letting you know he was still there, still listening.

You brushed your nose, sniffling back more tears. “I um, never had the courage to tell him until I realized Hydra was going to take me prisoner. Thought I might not ever get the chance again and I couldn’t let him go on thinking I didn’t love him, that he wasn’t worth it or didn’t deserve of something more, because I know he thought those things of himself.”

“Does he feel the same way?” Danny asked cautiously, sincerely.

“Don’t know for sure,” you shrugged, running your fingers under your eyes to wipe at the tears. “I think he might. It’s hard to believe he would so willing open up to me the way he did, trust me with his burdens and the horrors in his dreams if he didn’t, but I...” you let out a heavy sigh, one that crushed on the weight of your chest, “I don’t think I’ll ever know.”

“I don’t understand,” Danny paused, a soft shuffling as he adjusted on his side of the wall, “of course you’ll know. You can tell him again when he gets you out of this hell hole and I’ll knock sense into him myself if it’s not the first thing he says to you.”

You chuckled through the tears on your cheeks, biting at your lip to keep your voice from breaking. “I don’t know about that, Danny.”

“But you said they’d come for you,” he questioned and a lump burned in the back of your throat.

“I know,” you confessed, “but things don’t always work out the way they should. I know my team is doing everything they can to find me. I know Bucky is doing everything he can but… people like me, in this job, we don’t always get happy endings. I’ve done more good than bad, saved more people than I’ve killed, than I’ve lost, but… the universe doesn’t take that into account. We’re all the same in her eyes and she won’t favor me because of who my friends are or how much evil I’ve prevented.”

Danny took in a careful breath after a moment of consideration, and then, “you don’t think you’ll make it out of this, do you?”

You wiped your hand over your eyes, wet tracks on your skin.

You thought of Steve and Tony, who you were sure were tirelessly working around the clock and overworking their staff to track down leads they ultimately wouldn’t find. You thought of Sam and Natasha who would spend every waking hour in the gym if they weren’t out in the field because neither of them ever learned how to sit still when something was out of their control, how Sam would resort to his charm and wit to pull the rest of the team from their hopelessness and how Nat would put on a smile and pretend like she was handling it better than she was.

Then, with a broken heart, you thought of Bucky; of ocean eyes and warm smiles, of the smell of old bookshops in Brooklyn, and sitting at the floor of your bedroom listening to music and introducing him to new books. You thought of sitting at the kitchen counter at five in the morning and the bitter taste of black coffee. You thought of morning runs and sparring in the gym, of his laugh and the glances he’d steal in your direction.

You thought of the look on his face the last time you saw him, how he had promised he would find you, lips read through the glass barrier, and how wholeheartedly you had believed him.

But that was forty-eight days ago.

“I’m not sure anymore.”

***

Later that night, you found Bucky in your dreams. At the end of an impossibly long hallway, dark shadows in overcast shielding the lights, locked doors on either side as you sprinted towards him. He stood still, impossibly so, and the floor seemed to stretch under you as you ran. Your legs were too weak, pace too slow. He was getting further and further away despite the hot breath in your lungs and the ache of your legs.

You screamed for him, but your voice was gone, broken and raspy, coming out in only a whisper. He reached out for you but the darkness was pulling him in. It wrapped like tentacles around his wrists, his ankles, his neck, but you were gaining on him, just a step away and your fingertips brushed his in a sweet moment of relief until he was yanked back sharply from your grasp.

Into the darkness he fell and you tried to follow, but you couldn’t see. You felt around aimlessly but there was only the cruel mask of empty space around you. Heart beating painfully, sobs racing through your body, and you shouted his name. A broken, desperate plea, to be unanswered.

Suddenly, you were pulled from your sleep with the series of loud clicks at the door; locks unfastening quickly resulting in a sharp twist in your chest as your heart rate increased, a conditioned response even on the verge of consciousness.

“Rise and shine, princess!” Cain’s voice barreled into the cell as the door slammed open.

You groaned, pressing your face into the mattress as the influx of florescence filled the room. Even your nightmares were better than whatever Cain had in store for you. At least you saw Bucky in your dreams.

Harsh hands gripped onto your arms and yanked you from the mattress. You tried to walk, to carry yourself to the chair bolted to the center of the room, but these men wouldn’t allow you the dignity of that. They tossed your body around like a rag doll and threw you into the chair, quickly fastening the restraints.

They were cowards. If you were at your full strength you could have taken the pair of them down, and yet, even weakened and starved and beaten, they still felt the need to cuff you under metal sheets that punctures and burned at your raw skin, red and swollen.

You turned to Cain who was leaning against the wall, arms folded over his chest, and an obnoxious, smug smirk curved upon his thin lips.

“What do you want?” you rasped, voice still altered from the last time his hand was wrapped around your throat. He chuckled at that, whether it was your taunt or the state of your voice, you weren’t sure.

“You should watch your mouth,” Cain warned, “especially since I’ve come with news for you.”

You narrowed your eyes. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Means your little boyfriend and your team of insufferable idiots just captured one of our men,” Cain replied casually, though the hardened tone of his voice remained. He pushed himself from the wall and he began to pace around you. His hand touched your shoulder as he rounded your chair, fingers sliding up your neck, around your back, and down your left arm until he faced you again

You watched him carefully, chest panting a little harder, heart in your throat.

“Jennings is a seasoned agent and he will bide us time, but it won’t be enough,” Cain continued.

A dread settled in your stomach. “Enough for what?”

“The Avengers are getting too close,” Cain said, blatantly ignoring your question, “and we will have to resort to drastic measures to get them off our tracks.” He looked to the door and Moira, the blonde woman behind the camera you had come to know, stepped through the door. Cain pressed a kiss to her cheek and she kept her eyes on you the entire time, like it was meant to be an affront. The video camera hung from her left hand.

“We’ve got a new video to shoot today,” Cain smirked, “ain’t that right, baby?”

Moira nodded. “Got something real special in store.”

They stepped aside and a new figure was shoved into the room, bound and restrained by agents, one that made your heart stop completely. It wasn’t possible, not as far as you knew and you knew pretty well from your trips to see Shuri with Bucky. This kind of technology was far beyond SHIELD’s capability and Wakanda hadn’t even breached the surface on this yet.

It wasn’t possible.

Heart in your throat, your lips parted in shock, unable to process what you were seeing.

Cain smirked, amused by the panic coursing over you and he turned to Moira, black mask curling into his right hand.

“We go live in ten.”

***

Bucky’s breaths were heavy in his chest; calculated as he filled his lungs every few steps, legs burning as he raced down the busy streets of Manhattan. A silver Toyota Highlander weaved in and out of traffic fifty feet ahead, carrying inside a Hydra affiliated scientist who had been rumored to know where they were keeping you, had maybe even laid eyes on you in person within the last three weeks.

Jennings was the one to give the scientist’s name after days of interrogation: Anton Sokolov, a geneticist known for his work on those with enhanced abilities. Sokolov’s father was one of the men Bucky became familiar with in his years under Hydra’s rule. It appeared an affinity for experimenting on unwilling human subjects ran in the blood.

“I’ll cut them off on 42nd,” Steve’s voice echoed through the coms, accompanied by the roar of his motorcycle.

“Why the hell are they heading to Times Square?” Sam grunted from several hundred feet above Bucky’s head. Wings expanded as he dove through the sky, just ahead of Bucky, enough to keep a watchful eye on the SUV. “They’re not going to escape through there. What are they playing at?”

“Capture first, ask questions later, Wilson,” Nat said through the coms in her usual teasing tone. Wind captured in her mic as she held onto Steve’s back.

Bucky skirted out of the way of a cyclist passing through the intersection as he ran straight through a red light in effort to keep up with the SUV. He was gaining on the van, closing the gap the closer he got to Times Square, the heavy traffic of pedestrians increasing with every block. Only, Bucky wasn’t running any faster. If anything, he was losing energy from the sheer exhaustion of running after a car for nearly thirty-six blocks.

They were slowing down.

“Something’s up,” Bucky panted into his mic. “They’re leading us to a trap.”

“There’s nothing out ahead of you,” Tony reported. “I’m above 42nd and 7th. You’re clear.”

“Bucky’s right,” Steve said, the roar of his engine pulling to a halt. “If they were trying to run, they took a wrong turn about forty blocks ago. They planned this.”

“Guess we better be ready for anything,” Nat replied, a tone of excitement in her voice. She was always ready for something like this. Wasn’t trained for anything else.

“Here we go,” Tony sang as the SUV passed 41st street. From above, Bucky could spot the red and gold shimmer of the iron man suit suspending in the air as he aimed an open palm at the ground ahead of the van, shooting a single blast that took out the front two wheels.

Pedestrians were screaming, running away from the scene; tourists paused to pull out cameras and iPhones at the sight of the Avengers in action while native New Yorkers kept their heads down, headphones in as they continued their commute without interruption.  

Tires broke and tore from under the van, rubber flying out to the sides as a deafening screech rang through the streets. Electric sparks burst from under metal as it scrapped along the pavement until ultimately, the SUV skidded to a stop.

Tony and Sam touched down on either side as Bucky sprinted up to the side door, denting the frame as he crashed into it. He released a guttural scream and ripped the car door from its hinges, throwing it several feet down the street.

Inside, he was met with a man in a white button-down shirt, glasses, and a black tie, holding his arms out to the side in defense. The two men in the front seat were hunched over the dashboard, the blast from Tony’s suit rendering them unconscious as blood dripped down the side of their face from the impact.

“Soldat, it’s so wonderful to see you,” Sokolov smirked, thick Russian accent as he taunted the very man who carried vengeance in his veins. Bucky gripped the cold metal of his left hand around Sokolov’s collar and yanked him from his seat, tossing him into the street and he skidded along the pavement on his back.

Bucky pushed Sam aside and stalked towards the Hydra scientist until he stood above him. Sokolov laid on his back, making no effort to run away as Bucky slowly knelt above him, his right hand curling into a fist as he raised it, ready to strike.

“I’m done with these games,” he growled. “Tell me where Y/n is, now!”

“Buck, you’ve got an audience,” Steve said carefully, appearing just a few paces ahead of him. Bucky glanced up slowly, eyeing the crowd of people who had gathered on the sidewalks, standing at a careful distance though they held their cameras and phones out to capture the Avengers in action, to capture the Winter Soldier beat a man to death.

“Yes, Soldat,” Sokolov taunted, “don’t want to upset the balance of your public image any more than you already have. You’re already a monster in their eyes. Do you wish to prove them right?”

“Shut the hell up,” Bucky spat, clenching his metal fist around Sokolov’s shirt, his right arm shaking as he held it above his head, closed into a fist. He looked up at Steve, panting, sincerely trying to bring himself back from the brink of darkness but he couldn’t find the end of the tunnel, not without you. “He knows where Y/n is.”

“That’s right, I do.”

Bucky’s eyes widened, gaze snapping back to Sokolov, who seemed quite pleased with himself. Even Steve and Sam, who stood above him wore the shock evident upon their features. Nat and Tony who had been carefully controlling the crowd to keep them from coming closer froze as they heard it through the coms. It was one thing to hear it through rumors, but another for it to be confirmed.

“But you’re too late,” Sokolov finished, pursing his lips, satisfied with the way desolation quickly replaced the ounce of hope swimming in the blue of Bucky’s eyes. “You wasted too much time, Soldat. She cannot be saved.”

“You’re stalling,” Bucky sneered, glancing up to Steve for support and he mustered a short nod.

“I was with her just days ago,” Sokolov grinned through yellowed teeth and dried lips as Bucky’s heart dropped, his stomach twisting into painful knots. “You have not seen her the way I have. She is weak. Pathetic. You do not see how she cowers in fear, how she cries out your name, begging for you to save her while we tear her apart!”

“No, you’re-- you’re lying,” Bucky accused but his throat had run dry.

“Am I?” Sokolov jeered, a laugh on his tongue. “Do you really think so, Soldat? You think that she is strong enough to withstand what we did to you? You think she could survive the torture and the pain you remember so well? You think we would even allow her to live!?”

Bucky let out a scream and dove his fist to the side of Sokolov’s face, a deafening crack of cheek bones as his knuckles hit flesh. He couldn’t stop himself, tears in his eyes and weeks of desperation and hopelessness rushing to the surface, and he swung again and again until his fist was bloody and broken and Sokolov had stopped laughing, stopped smiling, stopped taunting Bucky of the very nightmares he couldn’t remove from his head.

“Bucky,” Steve gasped, his voice distant, fearful, looking elsewhere, but Bucky could hardly hear him over the ringing in his ears.

Sokolov had slumped over, his body limp; unconscious, though still alive. Bucky panted, sweat dripping from his brow onto the man’s white dress shirt now dampened in red. He fell back from his knees, muscles aching and tiny rocks of the pavement imbedded into his right hand.

“Buck,” Steve said again, an urgency laced through his name that made Bucky narrow his eyes up at his friend. Steve swallowed, glancing down at Bucky with a kind of horror he had never seen in his eyes. For the first time, Steve Rogers was speechless.

It was then Bucky noticed the crowds had silenced completely save for a few murmurs behind hands clasped over mouths. A pin drop could be heard in the middle of Manhattan, at the center of Times Square. Steve nodded up to the sky and hesitantly, Bucky followed his gaze.

There, upon every screen in Times Square, replacing each advertisement and billboard down 7th avenue, was you.

Bound and strapped to that same God forsaken chair, silver tape covering your mouth for the first time, and tears streaming down your cheeks. Your heavy, exasperated breaths could be heard echoing through the street, your eyes frantically searching for something Bucky couldn’t see. In the top right corner of the screen was a single red dot. He realized with a horrible pang in his stomach, that the video was being streamed live.

Bucky scrambled to his feet, rushing a few yards forward, though he had nowhere else to go, no way to reach you through the projection of the screens. He spun in a circle, catching every monitor you were visible on, surrounding him from all sides.

“People of New York,” a voice called out, grainy and distorted, as a man in a black mask stepped into view of the camera. Hushed gasps came from the hordes of pedestrians watching in horror as the man grabbed a tight hold of your hair, enough for you to whimper. Bucky’s hands were shaking at his sides.

“Hydra has no demands. Only, a message to the Avengers,” the man continued. He pulled a silver handgun from behind his back from the waistband of his jeans. Bucky’s heart was in his throat as the man dragged the barrel of the gun suggestively up the side of your arm, over your collarbone, along your cheek, until he settled it at the nape of your neck.

Your breaths were coming in too fast, panic in your eyes Bucky hadn’t even seen the day you were taken, a kind of helplessness that shook him straight to his core.

“You are nothing compared to the reach of Hydra,” the man growled as he pressed the gun harder against your neck, forcing you to twist your head in search of relief. “These so-called heroes are weak, defenseless, and they cannot save you. They are made up of war criminals, assassins, soviet spies, washed up army brats, and arrogant billionaires. They will turn on you. They will turn on each other. They. Are. NOTHING.”

Bucky glanced back at his team, wide eyes fearful and powerless, his own voice lost to him.

Tony was cold faced, jaw clenched tightly as he watched the monitors. Sam knelt by the edge of the SUV, hands clasped over his knee, head bowed save for the moments he dared to look at the screens. Natasha was pacing back and forth relentlessly, hands curling and uncurling into fists by her sides, muttering under her breath as she glanced up at the projections, only to turn away as quickly because seeing you like that wasn’t something she ever thought she’d have to face. Steve stood just a few paces behind Bucky, watching him more than the monitors, his chest rising and falling at a speed that betrayed the calm nature of his expression.

There was nothing they could do. Entirely helpless but to watch.

“You will learn,” the man stated, straightening his back as he took a step away from you, withdrawing the gun and Bucky sighed of relief, though it was impossibly short lived. “You will learn that your heroes are no better than us and that, above all else, they are... mortal.”

Bucky heard the gun fire before he saw it.

The worst of his nightmares paled in comparison to the fear that coursed through his veins, the paralyzing shock that ripped and tore at him in ways Hydra had never been able to when he was held under their fist; not even under the sharp edge of a scalpel, or the machine that obliterated his memories.

The sharp echo of the sound punctured straight through his heart and he stumbled backwards, breaths short, uneasy, excruciating; watching in horror as you slumped forward in the chair, blood spraying onto the wall, dripping down concrete in thick beads.

“N-no,” he gasped out, rushing forward, staring up at the screens as blood soaked through your hair, your body unmoving. His hands curled against his pants, his jacket, shaking violently, and he couldn’t breathe. His vision was closing in, too blurry from the wet tears burning in his eyes.

Upon the screens, the man gripped at your hair, yanking your face up to the camera and Bucky heard a wail from behind him; Natasha. Your features were slack, eyes staring off far beyond where he could see and clouded over in a cold, unforgiving stare.

“No!” Bucky cried out, his voice breaking in the effort and burning raw in his throat, “no, n-no, please... God, no...”

The man shoved the chair until it tilted on its side until you fell from frame. The man laughed, a cold sinister kind of sound that curled its way into Bucky’s chest and lit him aflame. He stepped towards the camera, close enough that Bucky could see the color of his left eye, green, and the scar that rendered his right useless.

“And you dare to worship the Avengers like Gods,” the man sneered, his lips curving in a satisfied grin.

Bucky let out a scream and it echoed through the silence of the streets as he yanked the gun from its holster on his thigh and fired the entire clip into the closest billboard he could find. Bullet holes pierced the monitor, altering the image’s frame as it fragmented around it, shards of glass and plastic falling from the sky, and then it turned black. He felt no relief as he turned to the dozens of projections lining the streets, taunting him.

Then, the man stepped away from the camera and the video went dark.

Silence took over Times Square and Bucky stumbled on his feet; legs too weak to hold him. Muffled whimpers could be heard from the sidewalks, tearful cries as bystanders huddled together, holding one another, hundreds of pedestrians rendered witness to the murder -- the execution -- of an Avenger.

Bucky heaved, desperate to catch his breath, but he was too light headed, darkness tunneling in his vision and he fell to his knees. Rocks in the pavement punctured his skin through the layer of his pants but he couldn’t feel much of anything. Hands grasping at the fabric of his suit, trembling violently as a sob racked through his body, enough for it to echo amongst the silence.

A pain so indescribable burned and festered in his chest, unable to find a release, he pushed it from his body in a cry so heartbreaking, it cracked his voice, tears streaming down his face; no energy to care about the hundreds of onlookers.

He’d been subjected to so much evil in his life, so much hatred and cruelty, and you had been the good to come out of it. The one thing that led him through the darkest parts of his mind to the end of the tunnel where the warmth of light touched his skin again. You held him and encouraged him and helped him find his own footing so they he could walk there himself, towards the light he so desperately craved.

But that light had extinguished. Smothered and suffocated.

It died with you, leaving Bucky surrounded by the cold arms of darkness.

Alone.

------

This is the serious angst I’ve been trying to warn you about... Theories anyone? 😅

tags 🗽 @musiclover1263​ / @pies-wands-and-more​ / @buckygrantbarnes​ / @mywinterwolf​ / @breatheeagainnnn​ / @jewelofwinter​ / @panic-naran​ / @fairislesheets​ / @kaliforniacoastalteens​ / @captain-hammer-of-asgard​ / @daydreamsquad​ / @deanssweetheart​ / @maybesomedaytho​ / @montypythonsholysnail​ / @saharzek​ / @jillybeaner13​ / @chubby-dumplin​ / @searchingforbucky​ / @alohafromhell1​ / @tabalugax​ / @shesalatesh​ / @whyamidoingthistomyselfhelp​ / @aliensbecameourstyle​ / @bucksgoat​ / @serpensortiaaa​ / @trash-rats-unite​ / @hungry-pasta​ / @nervosaa​ / @lbuck121​/ @get0verit​ / @obama-mia​ / @imsoft-barnes​ / @this-broken-band-girl​ / @michelehansel​ / @itz-kira​ / @forever157​ / @grey-water-colors​ / @sebastianstan-posts​ / @sarcastic-and-cool​ / @no-clue-whats-happenin​ / @capsgrl​ / @happyeyesandsunshine​ / @slithredn​ / @13sunken-ships13​ / @thefandomplace​ / @sweetheartbarnes / @jennmurawski13 / @galaxkay / @moonlessnight14 / @wxstedhexrt

[scary-lasagna]

Trust || Part IV

"Tim was always defensive and stubborn, but you could tell there was so much more precious information than he was letting on. It was information that you needed, something that could possibly save your life. And he was being quiet about it. Why? "

Yandere!Hoodie/Brian x Reader

* * * You woke up with another person in your bed the next morning, unfortunately having to share with Tim. Jay moves too much in his sleep, and it was aggravating for the both of you.

But now the smell of tobacco and nicotine was making you sick. The best option was a simple breath of fresh air. You could only hope that you weren't met with a camera like last time, or worse, a red rope and a newly bought knife.

You kept the door open to the building, breathing in the fresh morning air. You even closed your eyes for a few peaceful moments.

Upstairs, though, Tim noticed your absence as soon as your foot touched the wood of the floor. But after getting up to see what you were up to, he paused at the open computer.

It was the only source of light in the room, so it was hard to ignore when it was half-lit due to a notification blocking the white screen.

Clicking on it, Tim saw it was from that ToTheArk account. It was black and white, a style most of the videos held, with static lining the edges.

It was a person, standing in the window, with [Y/N]'s red jacket. 

"Ṭ̷̓h̵̟͋ȇ̶̘y̷̒ͅ ̸̦̑a̵̖͝r̵̥̔e̶̢̍ ̶͓̈́n̴̩̍o̷̲͝t̴̝̀ ̸̤̆t̷͕̏ö̸̭́ ̴̨̿b̸̥̋ê̶̪ ̶̰̿t̶̰̃r̶̨̓ṷ̴͌s̴̩̔t̵͓̀e̴̯͆d̶͇̚.̵͈͆"

Not to be trusted? Yeah, thanks, Tim knew that already. That's why he was out of the warm bed in the first place. He ignored the video, for now, deciding on watching it later after he herds you back inside. 

He stuffed his hands in his pockets, feeling the cardboard of his smoke in the left, and the smooth texture of the picture in his right. He should give it back, Tim didn't mean to take it, but he panicked when he got caught.

Heavy footsteps thumped against the dull and dirty fabric of the carpet. 

However, they were not Tim's.

__

A flash of red was the most warning that you got before being dragged to the ground. The rope lassoed past your vision and secured around your neck. A pair of leather hands grasped your frantic arms and pulled the rope around them behind your back. 

And the cool metal of a blade pressed against your neck, "Walk." When you didn't move, the captor simply encouraged you with a harsh push on your spine. You recognized the car as Brian’s. It was one that you always ate McDonald's in after coming home from a class.

You were pushed through the car door, buckled up, and driven off. In the side mirror, you saw Tim, supposedly yelling as he stomped on the dirt and pulled at his brown locks in desperation. Jay joined him with the usual camera he carries, and you caught a glint of it from the lense that caused you to see spots for a short moment.

"Where are you ta-"

"Don't talk," Brian said, glancing side to side before making a turn. You didn't need to ask. You knew he was taking you to Rosswood. Oh god, he was going to kill you. Your own boyfriend. 

The one who you've spent so many long nights with. The one who's slept in your arms while you run your digits through his hair after he had a nightmare. The same heartbeat that calmed your insomnia on most nights would now be the one to cease yours.

Not many people were at the park, the clouds in the sky predicted rain for the day.

The ropes burned your skin, even when you weren't trying to free yourself. "Can I at least say goodbye to my friends and family?"

"No." He picked you up and aided you over a log before setting you back down to walk.

You tried to start a conversation again, to hopefully get an insight of what he'll do so you can start planning ahead, "Where are we going?"

"Shhhhshsh." The man hushed you, turning gently towards you. "Just trust me, sweetheart. Have I hurt you yet?

"Yes. I can recall a few times, actually."

His lips pursed, "Then that'll teach you something." He grabbed your elbow, quickening your pace through the woods in hope to beat the rain. It was hard to keep your balance with your hands tied behind your back.

You passed the cement building you met in before, and waited by a cellar door that the hooded man was attempting to open.

You thought about the words he said the last time you met.

"I'll make your life a living hell if you don't learn to love me."

Maybe if you started pretending now, he'd take it easy on you. Hopefully. "How about Hoodie?" You pondered aloud, causing the dirty blonde to freeze with the crowbar.

"Hoodie?" It was like he was testing the name, wondering how good it would sound once you first say 'I love you' to him. "Yeah, I like it." He spared a soft smile, one that wasn't Brian's. 

The cellar door popped before banging open with Hoodie's help. He held out his hand, flexing his fingers as he stared into the cellar. You could run. You could escape now. So why were you obeying him and allowing him to help you into his dark and creepy basement?

Maybe it's because you thought Brian was still in there, that he'll find a way to take control and help you. You wanted Brian, you wanted to cuddle on the couch with a shitty movie that neither of you liked. You wanted to feel the tender kisses along your neck, and his large hands sculpting around your curves. 

But you couldn't. Brian isn't here now.

Another fucking damp room. If you left rice in here for a few days, it'd be tender.

"It's not the best but it's the safest place."

"Safe from what? Alex?"

"Literally anyone." The scraping of the heavy bar sealed your only exit besides a window next to it. "C'mere." He mumbled, approaching you and fumbling with the rope. 

On the way through the rough terrain, your jacket struggled feebly to stay on. Hoodie ran his gloved hand gently over the bruises and you couldn't help but flinch away from the sharp pain his touch caused.

"I'm sorry, I don't know my strength sometimes." He whispered, stepping into your line of sight. He was still covering his eyes with the mask, and yet his mouth was free to feel the damp air of the cellar.

You reached up, slowly and placed your hand on his cheek. How could you not feel something for this man? It's the same one you've been dating for almost a year. But he feels alien. 

The tips of your fingers inched under his mask and took advantage of Hoodie leaning into your touch. His gloved hand made his way over yours but didn't attempt to stop your advancements.

"I've watched dormant all of these years." Your captor spoke up in a gravelly voice. "I knew you had to love me. But patience was the key."

You could now see the three freckles that flecked under his left eye, along with the baby hairs around his ear.

"I had to find a way to keep you to myself, without Brian." Your eyes twitched at the name but kept on your journey of taking the mask off. No sudden movements.

"I can tell you still think he's here." His large hand gripped around your fingers. You gulped as he pried your hand away from his skin. "He's not here [Y/N]. I'm in control now, don't you see? Can't you trust me to take care of you better than him? To love me?"

"Br- Hoodie, I don-" "He was always letting you go out with people, your family," His tone sounded disgusted, and his grip only tightened. You were starting to grow worried that he might crush a digit. "And he was always letting everyone touch you. He wasn't worried about losing you." The blonde tilted his head up to look at you, and for the first time, you could see the shape of his eyes through the fabric. 

You didn't say anything, you couldn't. Because if you did, you would scream. Scream for mercy, scream for help, scream to just scream. It was hopeless because now you're going to be trapped down here, if what Hoodie says is true. Your eyes must have revealed your thoughts, because his grip loosened, but guided your hand back onto the mask.

You shed the fabric, and what you saw was not Brian. You dropped the stiff cloth that was stained with both blood and sweat. Hoodie's eyes were sunken in, and rimmed with dark circles like never before. Sure, Brian had trouble sleeping, but not like this. But it was the color of his eyes that unnerved you. What used to be a comforting chocolate brown was now replaced with an eccentric auburn.

He sported new scars as well, and his hair was a tad too long for your liking. You wrapped your arms around his neck, you wanted to smell him. To find a trace of your lost boyfriend. It was there, but faint. The smell of the basement overcome the smell of Maplewood and smoke that you knew so well. You used to love sitting in front of that woodfire stove at his place, just to smell the sweetness of the air.

Hoodie didn't allow you to pull away but rather kept you close as he buried his face in your hair. You looked behind him at the dark basement. All of the carpets were torn up and the bricks were painted back. A few paintings and pictures hung here and there, but nothing fancy.

Except for a picture of you sleeping that hung over the TV. That one stood out. 

"Hoodie, if we're to live together we need to sort some things out." You needed to start playing into the illusion more. Flip the cards and give the captor a little bit of hope.

"I-I know that." He nodded, parting the embrace, but not too far. "I've written some down for you." The bastard almost sounded hopeful.

"Not just for me, babes." You craned your neck to look up into his auburn eyes. 

He shook his head with a chuckle, "No, I'm the one in control. I don't get rules." 

"Then I suppose I won't provide you with my end of the deal." You shrugged, unsticking yourself from his grasp. You didn't even get three steps away.

"Deal?!" You whipped around with frightened eyes. You keep forgetting you can't tease as you did with Brian. "This isn't a fucking deal, buttercup. You're here because I'm protecting you.  And you will love me, you'll cherish me, and you'll be grateful that you get it this lucky. Because I could’ve done a lot worse in getting you here."

Your chest tightened and your arms flex with your increasing heart rate, "I hate you. I want Brian." You kept your voice level. You haven't spilled any tears yet and you weren't planning to.

"I'm not Br-"

"I. Want. Brian!"

The hooded man stared at you, and if you blinked you would have missed him launching off of his right foot to fight you to the ground. Kicking, screaming, and even biting were futile. You were stuck against his warm body, and his arms locked themselves around you as you thrashed.

He stayed like that, hugging you to his chest for a good five minutes. Your limbs were exhausted while trying to put up a fight against your captor.

You finally went limp after realizing your fate. The bobbing of Hoodie's chest made you feel the primal pang of guilt and pity you got whenever you felt Brian holding back sobs in his nightmares after an argument.

And the waterworks started for you as well. You had no fucking clue why he was crying, but you knew why you were.

You'd never see your family again. Your mom would wonder why you left without a call, and your father would miss the weird way you scrunched up your nose while you were in deep thought like he always does. Tim...He'd probably miss bickering with you on the daily, and Jay would have no one to tell him to get some rest after editing for 10 hours straight.

Your hands were numb by now, and you were exhausted from the fight you put on. Hoodie seemed to be done crying as well, because he was carrying you into the depths of the cellar, with tear stains along his thin cheeks.

"This is your room." He mumbled, setting you down on the soft mattress. Each time you blinked it felt like someone poured soap into your eyes. After a few involuntary sniffles, Hoodie leaned down and pressed gentle kisses to your swollen eyelids. 

"You'll feel better after you rest."

[honeyhan-123]

Say Thank You X

Series Summary: Nearly five years have passed since Steve Rogers saves your life without so much as a thank you. When he sees you again by chance, he makes sure that he’ll never let you go and maybe teach you some manners in the process.

Series Warning: This will be a dark!Steve fic with stalking, kidnapping and manipulating as well as non-con and dub-con situations. Please don’t read it if you don’t like that sort of thing.

Chapter Warnings: talk of Stockholm Syndrome and gas lighting tactics. 

Word Count: 3.8k

AN: Whelp this one really got away from me ngl. I had intended to include so much more in this chapter yet all of a sudden I was already at 2.8k and had hardly done anything. I hope it lives up to the hype from last chapter x

I. New York ~ II. Madrid ~ III. The Apartment ~ IV. The Trip ~ V. The Basement ~ VI. The First Lesson ~ VII. The Waiting Game ~ VIII. The First Attempt ~ IX. The Darkness

Series Masterlist

My Masterlist

X. The Truth

You felt cold, huddling further into the blankets as Steve started pulling on his clothes, running a shaking hand through his hair, his eyes flickering over to you every few seconds. Even with everything that he had done to you, you still wanted to comfort him. Obviously whatever was going on was freaking him out. 

You resisted the part of your brain that craved to get out of bed and wrap your arms around him, trying to calm him down. You hated that he had done this to you, made you feel distressed for him, not only because of him. You watched as he continued to dress, pulling his pants on and then his shirt and shoes before coming back to where you lay on the bed. You watched in trepidation as he pulled you into his arms, wrapping them firmly around your body. Despite how tightly he held you, you could still feel the slight tremble that resonated through his body. Something big was clearly going on. 

‘What’s going on Steve?’ Your words were mumbled against his pale blue shirt, the fabric dampening the sound and even though Steve didn’t respond for a long time, you knew he had heard you.

‘It’s nothing Doll. Just go back to bed. I’ll be back down soon.’ You whimpered as he disentangled himself from you and stood from the bed. You watched him walk away, back towards the door, pausing once he got there to look back at you, his fear clearly reflected in his eyes as he stared at you like it may be the last time he would ever see you again. 

You were silent as his eyes held yours for a moment before breaking away and running a hand through his hair once more as he stared at the steel door in front of him. He didn’t look back as he pulled it open and closed behind him. The click of the lock signalled his departure as he left you alone once more. 

+

Steve’s heart was racing as he climbed the stairs, dreading having to open his door. He was partly tempted to just pretend he wasn’t even at home, to just leave Bucky standing out there and head back down to the basement. However he knew that it wouldn’t solve any of his problems, knowing Bucky he would just come back later or break down the door. 

Even though he had barely been away from you for a minute, he was already missing you. He felt kind of pathetic for it but the way you had felt beneath him, your walls fluttering around him just made him want to turn around and ignore Bucky. The taste of you was still on his tongue and if he weren’t so incredibly stressed about his best friend finding out what was going on, he definitely would have been hard underneath his trackies. 

While the sex had been amazing that morning, it wasn’t what he loved the most about the interaction. What had really made him feel like he was sky high was the way you hadn’t pulled away from him. Not during, and not after. 

He had worried that after yesterday it would be awhile before you came back to him yet you had lied there, curled against his chest, your arms wrapped around his torso as you both came back down. Steve didn’t want to be too hasty in moving your relationship forward, especially after what had happened yesterday, but it had filled him with hope. 

Steve paused on his way to the door, realising that he probably looked and smelt like sex. There wasn’t a lot he could about the smell about he headed into the bathroom quickly to give himself a once over, running his hands through his hair, trying to tame the post-sex style he was sporting. While a shower would be amazing, Bucky was standing outside his door, probably already wondering what the hell was taking him so long so he left the safety of the bathroom and headed back into the passage, taking the steps as slowly as he could. 

He tried to convince himself that there was no way Bucky could know what was going on. Sure he had been acting kind of strange and secluded the past month or so since meeting you again but surely Bucky hadn’t figured out what he had done. It was times like these that Steve really hated working with a bunch of super observant super spies. There was no such thing as secrets. 

Taking a deep breath and trying to calm his nerves, Steve placed his hand onto the door lock and twisted, pulling it open. 

+

You stared at the door through which Steve had left for a long time, waiting for him to come back down and tell you what the hell was going on. You didn’t understand what had happened to make him so freaked out but it was making you nervous by extension. 

Your mind was continually replaying the way his face and paled as he stared at his phone, the slight tremor of his hands as he held the sleek device, the way he had stared at you, had held you before he left, the terror that was so evident on his face. 

You scarcely dared to hope. Maybe someone had realised what had happened to you. You tried to count the days you had been trapped down here, tried to remember how long it had been. The days were fuzzy, they all tended to mix together but you were almost sure it had been over two weeks, heading towards three since that night Steve had taken you from your apartment. 

Relief flooded through you. If you were right and it had been nearly three weeks, surely Mariana was missing you, surely she had called the police once you didn’t return from your trip to New York. Maybe that was why Steve had been so panicked, some way, somehow, the police had tracked you to him. A smile covered your face, maybe you would be free soon.

However as you headed back to the bed, trying to cover yourself for when the police broke down the door, you didn’t expect the guilt to begin to bubble up through you. If the police came, they would take you away from Steve, he’d be locked away for breaking the accords, for saving his friend. 

Turmoil wrecked through your body as you sat, your fingers playing with the smooth satin sheets, your eyes flickering around the room. You tried to be rational yet every time you even thought of someone taking you away from Steve your mind would replay that morning, the way his tongue danced around your skin, the feeling of him inside of you. A shiver ran up your spine as you remembered that. The feeling of fullness he had given you was too good to resist. He had touched places inside of you previous lovers hadn’t even come close to. 

Yet with every good memory of the way he had held you as you read aloud to him, or every time he had helped with your hair before bed came a terrible memory. The feeling of his palm whacking your skin, his thick leather belt when you had tried to escape, the sheer anger that had radiated off of him yesterday tormented you. You could still feel the undeniable sting in your ass as you sat, a constant reminder of what he had done. 

You didn’t understand the turmoil you felt. You didn’t understand the guilt, the sense of sadness that came with the idea of being rescued. Any sane person would leave with the police and never look back. 

Staring at the steel door, you questioned your sanity. 

+

Bucky’s bored face was the first thing Steve saw as he pulled open the door. His best friend didn’t bother waiting for an invitation inside, merely sidestepped him and entered his house, giving him a long once over. ‘Last time I checked you were still a healthy young punk, not some senior citizen who takes five minutes to answer his doorbell.’ 

‘Sorry Buck, I uh… I was just about to take a shower.’ Lying to his best friend felt unnatural and just plain wrong but he couldn’t tell him the truth, not with everything that he had been through. 

‘Oh a shower huh? Yeah I see that. Sometimes after sex I like to shower too, helps get the smell off of me.’ Steve was glad he was no longer facing Bucky as he led him down the hall, mentally cursing himself for answering the door and not getting back in bed like he wanted to. The two men took a seat at Steve’s coffee table and the blonde twiddled his thumbs, watching his best friend stare him down. ‘Don’t even try and deny it Stevie, I’ve known for a while. I’m just really starting to get worried, you left the meeting early yesterday you’ve been completely MIA since Madrid. I know we were away on a mission but you didn’t call, not once to see how it was going. You’re just not acting like yourself and Nat and I are starting to get a little concerned. What’s going on? Who is she?’ 

‘I’m not ready to talk about it yet Buck. It’s… it’s still too new, too fragile. Plus if I do you’re gonna hate me.’ Steve could barely look him in the eyes, focusing instead on his fingers as they played with themselves. 

‘Okay, now I know something’s seriously wrong with you. I could never hate you Stevie. You my best pal, I just want to know what’s going on.’ His words did little to settle the uneasiness that bubbled in Steve’s stomach. 

‘But you will. I’m basically doing what Hydra did to you, to her.’ The admission itself felt good but the long pause that followed his words didn’t. 

‘What do you mean Steve? What do you mean you’re doing what Hydra did to me, to her?’ He could feel Bucky’s eyes on him but the words didn’t want to come. While they were definitely questionable, Steve could justify his actions to himself. He was lonely and had done so much for the world and received so little in return. He had been thrown out of his time and forced into the twenty-first century. Everything had been taken from him. Was it really so wrong for him to want something, someone to himself?

‘I just… I saw her. Years ago. It was the battle of New York and I-I saved her but she didn’t… She didn’t say thank you. Months passed; years passed, and I couldn’t get her out of my mind and then I saw her. She was working in that little cantina, you know the one we were observing because of Alejandro? I don’t know why she was there but she was. After all this time apart and to just see her again, it was too much. I didn’t want to lose her once more. I know it sounds crazy because we didn’t even know each other but I felt like we did. I had spent years obsessing over her and here she was, just ready for the taking.’ The words didn’t feel quite coming out of Steve’s mouth but he pushed on, needing for Bucky to understand.

‘I knew it was wrong, I knew I shouldn’t do it but I started to watch her, following her whenever I could and when she booked a ticket back to New York, I took it as a sign. She was coming back, she was coming back to me. She may not have known it at the time but she was.’ His mouth went dry and his mind blank as he tried to come up with the words for how to describe what happened next. 

‘What did you do to her Steve? Where is she?’ Bucky’s voice was low, as though he were talking to a frightened animal and not one of the world’s mightiest heroes. 

‘Downstairs.’ The word was barely more than a whisper yet Bucky’s reaction was immediate. He stood from the table, his chair scraping against the hardwood.

‘You’re keeping her in the basement? Steve for god sake! She’s a person too.’

 ‘Don’t you think I know that Bucky? Don’t you think I feel bad about what I’m having to do? But if I want this to work, if I want us to work then this is what I have to do. Plus this way I can always make sure she’s safe and that she won’t be able to run from me. And it’s not like I haven’t tried to make her life better.’ 

‘Make her life better? Steve, she’s trapped in your basement.’

‘She’s not trapped and she won’t be there forever. When she finally learns how to behave, I’ll take her out. She’ll live up here with me. I have it all planned out. And i am making her life better. She was miserable in Madrid, her apartment was a tiny, unconditioned little thing. She had no one except for that old lady who owned the cantina and while she may only have me now, eventually I really want her to have you and the rest of the team too. She has no family, no one who will miss her and I want to give her that, a family. I love her Buck. I know I’ve completely gone about it the wrong way but I was so scared that she would just reject me again or something like that. Surely after everything I’ve suffered, I deserve this one little piece of happiness?’

Steve watched Bucky as he absorbed everything that had been said, processing Steve’s justification of what had happened. 

‘I want to meet her.’ Bucky was firm, retaking his seat at the table across from Steve, his eyes never leaving Steve’s.

‘I’m sorry Buck but I can’t let that happen.’

‘What do you mean you can’t let that happen?’ Bucky’s response was biting yet Steve held firm.

‘She’s not ready yet. I don’t think it will take too much longer, she’s already softening towards me but she’s not ready to see anyone other than me yet, especially not after what happened yesterday.’

‘Ahh, so that was about her. What happened that made you leave so suddenly?’

Steve had to break eye contact, swallowing down his guilt. ‘She tried to escape.’ Bucky could see the guilt in Steve’s eyes and he knew what came next without even needing to ask. ‘I had to punish her. To show her that behaviour like that is unacceptable. But she’s forgiven me, or she will. She’ll understand.’

There was a long pause while Bucky stared at his best friend, confused as to when he became the type of person that thought kidnapping a young woman was okay. Yet he did have to admit, he could understand where Steve was coming from. The two of them had sacrificed so much, too much, and despite the limited amount of time Bucky had spent with his best friend since coming back from Madrid, he could see the changes in Steve already, he truly did love her in his own messed up way. 

‘I want to at least see her then. You said you had to make sure she’s safe so I assume you have cameras set up in her room.’ Steve nodded, thankful that Bucky was still talking to him, that he seemed to be coming around to the idea. He pulled out his phone, opening the security app and took a quick glance, his heart settling as he saw you were completely covered by the white sheets. At least he wouldn’t have to explain why you weren’t wearing any clothes.

Bucky’s eyes squinted as he stared at the phone, swiping through the different camera angles as he tried to find one that gave him a good enough view of your face. Although there was a screen separating the two of you, Bucky could read you like a book. He saw the conflicting emotions as they played across your face, the subdued excitement, the heavy guilt, the immense worry. He wasn’t entirely sure what it all meant but you seemed healthy enough, at least what he could see of you and he knew that despite the punishments Steve would be treating you well and the room seemed to be fully decked out with anything you could need. He nodded slowly, passing the phone back to Steve. 

‘So you’ve had her since Madrid? That was what, three weeks ago? Has she seen any sunlight since then?’ 

Yet another surge of guilt flooded Steve as he ran a hand through his hair. ‘No. I had plans yesterday, I wanted to take her for a picnic but then she tried to escape and I couldn’t really reward her after that.’

‘Steve c’mon man. You know better than this. Three weeks without having even seen the sun? The least you could do is unseal the windows. They’re unshatterable so it’s not like she’ll be able to escape through them.’ 

‘They were unsealed. How do you think she tried to escape yesterday? She threw one of the chairs against it. I need to replace it now, it’s in tatters from the force of being thrown against a window multiple times.’ 

Bucky’s lips were pursed as he considered what Steve was saying. He understood - despite still slightly disagreeing with the method used - that if Steve really wanted this to work certain things had to be done. ‘Fine, but the windows come unsealed tonight. Say it’s a reward for behaving so well today while you were gone or whatever and she better feel the sunlight before the week is up. It can’t be healthy for her going so long without it.’ 

A small smile crossed Steve’s face as he heard Bucky’s recommendations. He wasn’t berating him for being a monster or for all the awful things he had done. He was helping him, guiding him. 

‘I’m gonna head back to HQ, I need to run some errands before I head back to Wakanda.’ The smile fell from Steve’s face.

‘What do you mean before you head back to Wakanda?’ He saw the hesitation in Bucky’s face as he considered his words. 

‘Well, if you had been listening to the briefing yesterday, you would know that I wasn’t feeling so well in Sokovia, some new memories and nightmares came. I think I’m going to head back to Wakanda and see is Shuri can help me any more than she already has.’

A deep, inherently selfish part of Steve didn’t want his best friend disappearing again, he felt like he had only just got him back, but he knew that if Bucky were going to continue doing this type of work, he needed to be able to trust his mind one-hundred percent so he nodded. ‘When are you leaving?’

‘I’m not sure, in a couple of days at least. I want to meet your girl before I leave so I guess whenever you feel she’s ready for visitors.’ Steve stood from the table, bringing his best friend in for a hug.

‘I know it’s completely messed up but thanks for understanding. I love her, I really do and I want you to meet her so badly because I know you’ll love her too. She’s good for me Buck, she’s so good for me.’

‘I don’t doubt that Stevie, but I meant what I said about the sunshine thing, you need to take care of her. I know it’s hard because she’s misbehaving but you can;t screw it up. You don’t want to push her too far and not have her come back to you.’

Steve nodded solemnly as he followed Bucky back through the hallway, towards the front door, watching from the doorstep as he got into his car and drove away.

Only when the car completely disappeared from view could Steve finally let out the breath that he had been holding in. 

+

You hadn’t moved from your position on the bed, your fingers still playing with the white satin as you stared at the door, waiting to see what would happen. Without the sun shining in through your windows, you had no way of telling how much time had passed since Steve had disappeared upstairs, no way of telling what would happen when he came back down, if he came back down. 

You tried to busy yourself by retreating to your happy place, a place you spent a lot of time the past few weeks but it wasn’t quite doing it for you today. On a normal day it would just be you, sitting alone in a library, or lying in a  field in the sun reading some book, yet today there was always a presence with you. Not necessarily Steve, yet he was warm and muscular and he held you as you read aloud to him. 

You tried to get your mind to shut up, to stop thinking about that man, it wasn’t healthy, yet when you weren’t in your happy place with the men who wasn’t-Steve, you were worrying about him, about what was taking so long. 

When the familiar click of the lock sung out through the empty room, you couldn’t stop yourself from rushing to the door, ignoring your obvious nakedness. You hated yourself slightly that when you saw it was Steve standing behind the door, seemingly unhurt, you flung your arms around him without thinking. 

You pressed your body against his, craving his heat in the chill of the room, thankful that he had returned to you even though it meant that your rescue clearly wasn’t happening today. You felt his body tense slightly at your touch but eventually, the longer you held onto him for, the calmer he got, wrapping his own arms around you and pulling you impossibly closer. 

‘What happened Stevie? You had me so worried when you left.’ The sound of his nickname falling from your lips did not escape his notice as he stroked your skin, relishing in the feeling of you against him. 

‘It’s fine Sweetheart. It was just a friend coming to visit. He wanted to chat about a few things and when you’re ready for visitors, I really want you to meet him.’ 

When you’re ready for visitors.

His words echoed around in your head, swirling against your temple. You would be able to see other people? Not just Steve? He didn’t just want to keep you trapped down here for all eternity? It felt like too much to hope for, being able to go outside and talk to other people so you tried to push the thoughts down and out of your head. 

Instead you chose to focus on the feel of Steve’s palms running up and down your bare back, burying your face even further into his chest as he held onto you. 

+

Tags will be added in a reblog

XI. The Syndrome 

Series Masterlist

My Masterlist

[maraudererasmut]

Black and White (Part XIX)

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX | Part X | Part XI | Part XII | Part XIII | Part XIV | Part XV | Part XVI | Part XVII | Part XVIII | Part XIX | Part XX | Part XXI

((Author’s Note: I AM SO SORRY THAT THIS TOOK SO LONG!! I hope the chapter makes up for the fact that it took such a long time to write/post it! I hope you guys like it!!))

Remus walked into Black and White carrying two coffee cups from work, his knuckles turning white from the tightness of his grip. He was terrified, to say the least. This would be his first time seeing Sirius since their evening at the cafe, and Remus wasn't entirely sure if his presence was desired.

"Uh… Sirius? M— Mr. Black? Are… are you here?"

Of course he was there. Sirius ran the gallery himself. If he wasn't there, the door wouldn't be unlocked. Remus felt stupid asking his question aloud, but the response he got put him at ease.

"Yeah, I'm here, Remus. I'll be right out."

Remus.

So they were still on a first name basis. That was a good sign. 

It took a moment, but Sirius eventually emerged from his back office, looking rather worse for wear. His hair was left loose around his shoulders, dark inky tresses spilling over his unbuttoned collar. He looked tired; more tired than Remus felt. More tired than he had ever looked before.

"I… uh… I brought coffee…"

"What are you doing here, Remus?"

The tone of Sirius' voice didn't sound harsh or accusatory; it was filled with exhaustion and melancholy, but it wasn't rude, which was a surprise.

"Oh…" Remus glanced down at the paper cups in his hands, as if his reason for being at the gallery was obvious. "I… brought coffee," he repeated. "Cappuccino, skim milk, sprinkle of cinnamon?"

Remus watched as a slow smile bloomed across Sirius' face, lighting him up, finally revealing a hint of the gallery owner that Remus had come to know the past few weeks. Sirius walked towards Remus, straightening his posture and brushing hair out of his eyes.

"How'd you know?"

Remus shrugged, offering Sirius a friendly grin.

"A little birdy told me."

Sirius rolled his eyes and graciously accepted Remus' peace offering. The artist watched as Sirius' shoulders visibly relaxed with the first sip of coffee, a hint of colour returning to his sallow cheeks. Sirius turned his gaze towards a painting on the wall, both hands grasping the cup, as if to absorb its warmth and energy. 

"Well… remind me to thank her later."

"I'm fairly certain I brought the coffee here," Remus said, mostly joking. He took a sip from his own cup of tea, letting the spicy warmth from the chai trickle down and heat him up from the inside.

Sirius remained focused on the painting before him.

"Thank you, Remus. Not… not just for the coffee… but for coming. Here. I… appreciate it."

"Okay, who are you and what have you done with Sirius Black?" Remus teased, attempting to lighten the sudden weight of the situation, trying to deter the looming darkness that threatened its way into their thoughts. 

Sirius didn't answer for a moment. He stood and stared at the painting, one of Lily's pieces by the looks of it, before finally giving Remus a response.

"This… this is the real Sirius Black."

Remus tore his eyes away from mercurial pools of despair, so deep and turbulent, the artist could drown in them if he wasn't careful. He directed his attention to the same painting, the same blues and greys of Sirius' eyes popping out from the canvas. 

"Well…" Remus muttered to the painting, twisting his cup around between his fingers. "Hello Sirius Black. I'm— I'm Remus Lupin."

Remus heard a sharp exhale of breath beside him— almost a laugh, but not quite. At least he could help bring some levity into their conversation.

"So…" Sirius began, before taking another sip of coffee. "How much did she tell you?"

Remus pondered the question, trying to find an appropriate way of answering it.

"She… uh… mentioned your brother. And… and you and James. She explained why you left the cafe the other day, why you seemed so upset…"

Sirius closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. When he opened them, there was a hint of pain still etched into his features. 

"And where does that leave us?"

Remus turned to look at Sirius, unsure what exactly the man was asking him.

"Wh— what do you mean?"

"Are you… still interested in showing here? Did you still want to… to work with me?"

"Of course." Remus' response was immediate. There was no question in his mind: Black and White was the gallery that Remus wanted his first show to be in. He wanted Sirius to run it, curate it, put the event together. He wanted Lily and James to be there. This was the gallery for him. "Why wouldn't I?"

Sirius' eyes drifted down to his coffee cup, his shoulders folding in on themselves ever so slightly. 

"You're not worried that the erratic drunk is going to ruin things for you? Cause you too much trouble?"

"I— what?" Remus took a step towards Sirius; he considered reaching out, taking hold of the man, showing a sign of affection, but he thought better of it. Instead, he simply looked at Sirius, his voice measured, his posture firm. "None of those thoughts ever crossed my mind. I— I want to show here because you're passionate. You have drive. You're confident… you're— you're a good gallerist."

You're annoying as all hell, but you know what you want from life and you aren't afraid to go for it. Someone like me could learn a lot from someone like you. You're fascinating. An enigma. And I need to figure you out…

"And you push me to do better. I'm producing better art now than I ever have before. You have a keen eye and you give good direction."

Remus waited for Sirius to respond, but the man simply stared ahead at the painting before him. The silence loomed over them as Remus watched the ghost of the man he thought he knew slowly fading into nothingness. 

It was a few minutes before Sirius eventually spoke, his voice echoing eerily across the empty gallery.

"You don't have to lie to me to make me feel better."

His words were soaked in bitterness, his expression crestfallen. He never once tore his gaze away from the painting.

Remus took a gulp of tea, weighing his next words very carefully.

"I don't lie." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing. "You don't know me very well yet, but that's something you should remember for the future. I don't lie." Another pause, another sip of tea. "I had enough of that growing up, I don't need it in my life."

The slightest hint of a smile passed over Sirius' face.

"You also had a shitty family?

"I'm an artist," Remus mused with a dark chuckle, "Do you know any that don't?"

Sirius' smile grew as he rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, one or two. But you make a valid point."

Remus brought his cup to his lips and tilted it back, draining the remaining contents and deliberating his words. 

"So…" he began after a moment. "Where do we go from here?"

For the first time since the conversation started, Sirius shifted his focus, his eyes settling on Remus' frame silhouetted in the fading evening light. 

"Where do you want it to go?"

Remus closed his eyes and pretended to take a sip from his drink, despite the fact that it was now empty. He needed time to think. Was Sirius talking about the gallery? Was Sirius asking about Remus' desire to show his art and work together in a professional setting? Or did the question go deeper than that?

Where did Remus want things to go?

"I…" Remus opened his eyes. He stared at Lily's painting, pretending not to see the way Sirius' gaze bore into him, pretending not to think about the swirling blues and greys, the perfection of colour, they way they shifted with each emotion. "I want to make sure that our show next month is your best one yet."

"Well then…" Sirius said softly, his voice relaxing, his tone sounding more and more familiar to Remus. "We'd better get to work. There's only a few weeks left…"

Remus turned to look at Sirius and felt his cheeks flush at the smile playing on the gallery owner's lips. The artist quickly looked down at the paper cup twisting between his fingers, trying not to read into the situation any more than necessary. 

"I'd better get home then…" Remus told his cup, trying to keep his voice steady and desperately willing his cheeks to stop feeling so warm. "I still have two more pieces to paint…"

"Yes, well…" Sirius muttered. From the corner of his eye, Remus could see the gallery owner shifting his weight from foot to foot. "I'll be in touch. I'd love to see your progress if— if that's okay…?"

Since when did Sirius ask for things instead of demanding them?

"Sure, yeah… that sounds… good. I'll… see you around, Sirius."

Remus glanced up and smiled, immediately regretting his decision. The look on Sirius' face was tender, affectionate. Somehow, he looked even more handsome like this. Remus hated it. 

The artist shoved his hand forward, offering it for a shake. Sirius hesitated before reaching out and grasping Remus' hand firmly. The two men had shaken hands a dozen times at this point; there was something frustratingly different about this one, and it lingered a beat too long.

Remus pulled his hand away and spun on his heels before Sirius could stop him. 

"I'll see you around, Sirius!" He called over his shoulder before making a beeline to the door. 

"Oh… okay… T— Thank you, Remus. For… for everything!"

Before he knew what was happening, Remus was outside in the crisp autumn air, trying not to think about the way Sirius' perfect lips wrapped so delicately around his name or how badly Remus wanted to find out what those lips tasted like. 

What was wrong with him?

((Bonus: Here’s a sketch that I did in a limited palette of this scene. Yes, I know there are inaccuracies, it was a quick sketch and I didn’t read the chapter before drawing it. Oops! Anyway, here it is!))

**THIS DRAWING IS NOT CANON! IT IS DONE BY MARAUDERERASMUT, NOT REMUS!**

[bottleofspilledink]

God's Watching, Put on a Show || Chapter IV

"Listen up, girls!" Sister Lydia said, smacking her ruler on the blackboard to draw everyone's attention.

A few students visibly cringed at the noise, faces scrunching up in distaste. Eve never quite understand why that was. If anything, the sound of the wood against the board would snap her mind back to the lesson instead of letting her mind float off for the rest of the subject.

"Today will mark the beginning of the new system we've put in place" She tapped the ruler against her palm as she paced around the board.

"Your next period will be dedicated to assigning you your partner and your new schedule which will be effective this coming Monday."

A low whisper rang through the class, some excited, others... not quite. Though they were quickly hushed by another hit of the ruler.

"Now, a few ground rules before you find out who you got assigned to. This is system was made to keep you and your partner from sin. You are to build trust, camaraderie, and friendship, yes, however first and foremost, you are there to keep each other out of trouble.

"You are to guard one another and report any wrong doing you see them commit and any rule they break. This may seem like a cruel thing to do, subjecting your friend to scolding and disciplinary measures, but what you need to understand is that it's all for your own good.

"Do you understand this?"

"Yes, Sister Dolores." The girls spoke in a machine-like unison, voices indistinguishable from one another. The habit had been drilled into them after nearly four years of studying here.

How long it would take them to unlearn that was what Eve pondered as they all lined up and left, silent and eagerly nervous to meet their new partner.

Her amber eyes scanned every girl carefully. By now, Mary had told her who had ended up with who, and nothing would surprise her.

Tabitha was paired with Esther, she remembered as the girl wondered aloud who she got. Eve could only imagine how careless the nuns were when picking partners for the girls who weren't suspected of arson.

Esther had put a wad of gum into Tabitha's hairbrush while they were in the locker room, leading to the girl sobbing her eyes out as the hair she'd grown out for three years was reduced to a pixie cut.

It was stated in the handbook that girls were to have their hair meet their shoulders and we're not to have it any shorter. Though the nuns had to make an exception due to the rather delicate situation.

She could only hope that Tabitha would graduate with some hair left.

Susanna was paired with Rachel, which Eve thought explained the upset look on her face as she exited the nun's office with her new schedule.

Susanna had stolen Rachel's boyfriend the year prior. In response, Rachel destroyed her bag, as well as all the books and homework in it, making her flunk four subjects that semester and ultimately making her lose her scholarship.

The relationship didn't even last six months.

"Eve Peccator." A Sister called from the door, her voice wavering and her hands shaking with the weight of the years and the wooden clipboard.

How long has she been here?

How long has it been since she dedicated herself to God?

How long has it been since she lived for her and her alone?

She shook the thoughts from her head and entered the office, prepared to hear news that was no longer news to her.

"Eve, dear, have a seat." Mother Cecelia said, the cup of tea she held in her hands removed from her lips to reveal a saccharine smile. A smile with a tad bit of extra teeth that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"Now, I'm sure you know what you're here for," she pulled down her reading glasses from where they rested on her habit and opened a folder on her table, "so let's cut to the chase, yes?"

Eve nodded curtly.

Mother Cecilia, from what Eve knew, was a kind yet strict woman who had no tolerance or capacity for lies and deceit.

"Alright then, dear. You'll be paired with Lilith Damien. We've created a schedule for the both of you to follow, effective on Monday. Is that clear?"

Eve nodded again, the soft curls of her golden hair swaying ever so faintly as she did so.

"Good. Well, you've already been informed of this but I'll repeat it for the sake of clarity, but if Lilith is to admit to or does or even plans to do anything wrong, you are required to report it to us, no matter how small or long ago this wrongdoing seems to be." She closed the folder in her hands and slid it over to the girl.

Eve took it, but remained seated, bug-eyed and expectant of the other to say more, particularly awaiting for the woman to mention that they were using her to catch the perpetrator of the kitchen fire.

"Well? Do you have any questions? If not, then you may leave inform Sister Priscilla to send in the next girl."

But nothing came.

"Of course. Thank you for your time, Mother Cecilia."

She couldn't quite understand at the time what she felt at that moment, being used as a means to an end without her supposed knowledge, but she would later come to recognize that the feeling that tugged at her heart and nagged at her mind was that of her faith in the people who ran the school shattering into infinitesimal fragments she wouldn't be able to piece together if her very soul depend on it.

...

"Well?" Elizabeth asked the moment she sat down for lunch.

"Well, what?"

The brunette let out a huff, clearly exasperated. "Well, do we share any classes?"

Her neatly manicured hand waved her folder in the girl's face to drive the point home.

"Oh yeah." Eve pulled the papers out of her bag, passing them over without so much as a second glance. Her mind had yet to fully comprehend the lie by omission that Mother Cecilia had told her earlier.

Was she not a woman of faith?

Was she not the same woman who had so often chided others for lying?

There had to be something in her vows that prohibited lying, right?

Her thoughts were put to an end by Elizabeth's excited squeal.

"Oh thank God! We share English and chemistry at least." She tossed the papers back to her friend. "Me and Mary don't have a single class together!"

"Are there even enough classes for that to be possible?"

"Right?" Elizabeth slumped onto the table, miserable. As fun as she could be, she wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, and would often cheat off her cousin, Mary.

Cheating was explicitly stated as grounds for expulsion on the fifth page of the student handbook, but really, who cared about that when they were failing math?

"At least we share lunchtime. You're on your own there."

"Wait, really?" Her mind had been too occupied to even check the schedule after what had happened and she had neglected to check the papers altogether.

"Yeah! Didn't you check mine?" Eve's eyes flicked over to the unopened folder that she only now realized had been placed in front of her.

"Sorry, Liz..." She put her juice down, sighing. "I've just been distracted today."

"Today?" Elizabeth said in disbelief.

"You're distracted all the time!"

"Is that anything new for Eve?" Mary chimed in as she arrived, immaculately shaped brow raised.

"But it's a different distracted now! It wasn't this bad before."

"Is there something you're not telling us, Eve?" Mary teased.

"No way! I tell you guys everything."

"Do you?" The girl pressed on, brow raising even more.

"Oh! I know what you're hiding!" Elizabeth chirped, giggling as she scooted over to whisper to Eve.

"You have a boyfriend!"

The blonde nearly spit out her drink.

"I do not have a boyfriend."

"I don't know..." said Mary. "That violent reaction says otherwise."

The two girls cackled and sang childish rhymes about trees and kissing, and marriage and baby carriages, as their friend groaned, flushing up to the tips of her ears in embarrassment.

"I promise, I don't have a boyfriend."

"Prove it!" Elizabeth leaned on Eve, effectively pressing her body to the table in an attempt to crack the girl.

"Think about it for a sec, Liz." The hardness of the metal was digging into her, the flimsy fabric of her uniform not doing much to cushion her from the dull ache of it as it bit into her skin. "If I had a boyfriend, why would I try to hide it from you?"

"We're friends, so I don't need to worry about you guys ratting me out or stealing him."

Mary put her spoon down, humming. "She has a point."

"Hey!" Elizabeth was off her in an instant. "Whose side are you on?"

"I'm just here for the show." She chuckled once more. "Besides, as student council president, I can't take sides. It would be very diplomatic of me."

"Oh, c'mon! Can't you make an exception for your favourite cousin?"

"Who said you were my favourite cousin?"

"I'm your only cousin!"

"Are you?"

As they fought amongst themselves, she couldn't help but let her thoughts go astray.

"Oh God," Eve thought to herself, "if they find out..."

She pushed the thought to the back of her mind.

There was nothing for them to find out.

There was nothing that made her different from them.

There was nothing for her to worry about.

Not yet.

______________________________________________

Taglist: @melpomenismask @littlemisscalamity

(Holy shit, I've got a taglist now!!)

[empressxmachina]

Sideline - “iv.”

“Uh, h-hi, Jake.”

Just by looking at each other, they both knew the same opinion was going through their heads:

‘This was fucking weird.’

Despite that, neither of them lost sense of their humanities, and Madi didn’t appear physically hurt as a cherry on top. They solely changed sizes comparatively and nothing else, as far as they could tell. But for the smaller half of the pair to get even tinier at such a large scale was ridiculous, more than either of them ever imagined. Nevertheless, they tried to keep it together for both of their sakes.

Jake slowly continued to unravel Madi from her textile prison, eventually smoothly transferring her from fabric to flesh and feeling her skin and scarily little weight on his palm. The visual of his long fingers towering above and able to curl over her was also quite nauseating. But chundering by a friend, especially one as close to him as her (in every sense), would not be a good look.

For this to happen to someone as sweet as her and it being possible at all just made him sick and confused.

“Holy shit, Madi,” he breathed, blowing her hair back with his voice. For once in his life, he was glad to have chosen water over a soda earlier. Even if it wasn’t the same kind – the one Madi had wasn’t a favorite of his from the get-go – spreading anything across her that would drill this in her more than it already had would’ve shot his already high guilt and pity further into the sky. “How in the fuck—?”

“Ugh, do I really need to explain this again!?” Madi exploded, now second-guessing her assumptions of Jake’s intelligence. Perhaps he was more the jock stereotype than she thought with the flinching and look of astonishment by which he reacted to her, both of which shaking her as well. “What part of ‘A fucking soda did this to me’ did you not understand? If you didn’t get that, then why in fuck did you pull that shit? Did you really just want to get it off me? Did you think you’d get me off by getting it off me? Did you make me wet to get YOU off!?”

“Jesus Christ, Madeline. Chill,” Jake shushed her in a fruity voice, putting his snake-like finger up to his mouth before bringing it close to hers – his fingertip eclipsing her entire head. “I know the fucking soda did this to you; I want to know why. What kind of chemical makes people shrink and shit?” Madi couldn’t help cringing, curling into herself, having overreacted for no reason. However, her cowering soon became a cover for the blushes that Jake then caused to appear. “As for the, uh, ‘getting off,’ you’d have to be some kind of freak to get off to a doll or, I guess, being a doll, in your case. Though I’ve got to say, you are pretty adorable, Mads.”

“Please, no,” she pleaded, slumping her shoulders with her face still in hiding, knowing that her smallness was now a large part of her, despite how much she wanted it to be otherwise. “I know I probably don’t look so human, but I’d still like to be treated like one, ass wipe.”

“‘Look’ is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m not the biochemist here, but I think I know enough science to know that you shouldn’t even be functioning fully: talking, hearing, seeing, and all of that good shit.” Jake brought his Madi-holding hand closer to himself as he extended his syllables and examined her in astonishment. “What. The. Fuck?”

Meanwhile, Madi instinctively scooted further and further into the flesh wall Jake’s fingers made behind her, even though she couldn’t go anywhere else without falling to her demise and knew it, too. The thought of being overtaken by his battering ram nose or brushed by his enviable eyelashes without him even trying was just too much for the little lass.

“Yeah, uh, could you, like, not with that? ” she attempted, nearly meeting the stubble surrounding Jake’s lips and chin before he looked down at her, noticed her apprehension, and backed off, bringing her to a somewhat distant, somewhat calming eye level. “Thank you. Being comparatively short to most people in normal life was hard enough, even though I was supposedly average on charts. The last thing I need now is a close-up, okay?”

“Right. Sorry,” Jake apologized, even noting to talk more sotto voce.

Just because she wasn’t flinching at his volume for whatever reason, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t still loud. Sure, the packed stadiums and arenas for games and competitions with their high volumes probably set a standard for her, but Jake knew that this could’ve been another type of noise, and then one could add all the nonsense the body does on its own to make it even louder and more detailed. He wondered how much she could hear and see now.

“It just makes no sense how you’re like this,” he reinforced. “You’re fucking minuscule.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Madi scoffed back, also lowering her own voice but still audible to the relative giant’s ears. “I think that’s been stated enough.” Her tough outer shell hid how hard the truth just kept hitting her. Seeing nearly all her curled-up frame in her reflection in Jake’s eyes was almost vomit-inducing, especially when he rolled them in response to her sass.

“Yeah, but do you really know how tiny you are? Do you know what could happen to you like this or what could’ve happened? Hell, I don’t even know how that fucking phone of yours called me,” he said, lightly nudging it out of Madi’s grasp onto his palm next to her, somehow also muting it in the process. “I can barely see the thing. I could barely see you by that can. But I did, so everything’s pretty much going in your favor so far, huh?”

“How about no? I’m still like this, and it’s not like I didn’t already have enough stress going on in my life.”

“Well, I’m sure there’s a way to fix this, probably one as quick and obtainable as whatever in that drink caused this. We need to get you out of here, first.”

“And, exactly how did you plan on doing that?” Madi pondered aloud, noticing how Jake had nothing with him, aside from his clothes.

“Oh, uh, er—” Jake struggled to come up with an answer as Madi’s scenario hadn’t been a possibility that he had or would’ve considered. Since these were the cards he was dealt, he wasn’t sure what to do with them. “Shit, what are we going to do?”

“‘We?’ Why are you asking me? Jake, you know I can’t do anything! Look at me!”

“Don’t blame me for that! This is a two-way street, and you could’ve fucking warned me about this!”

“Are you saying that you would’ve believed that a fucking soda fucking shrunk me to…” Madi paused to estimate her new size. Through all the time she had had to adjust to it, figuring a number for it never came to mind. However, remembering how much of a mountain Jake was to most people, she soon realized that basing her little length on his large one was futile. “…whatever size I am now? You barely believed that I was here full-sized when you walked in! What the fuck would you have done differently!?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe brought a fucking bag or some shit?” Jake countered. “You didn’t need to open the fucking soda, Madi!”

“Are you blaming me for this!?” Madi shrieked, not wanting more negativity placed on herself. She ran her hands through her hair before setting them on her face and continuing, muffled, “What did I do to deserve this!?”

“This wouldn’t have happened, otherwise, would it!?” Jake barked back before immediately regretting what he said – it made evident by his elongated face and Madi’s trembling. “No, I-I didn’t mean that. Well, I kind of did but not to hurt you. This… This is just crazy, alright? I don’t even get why a recalled drink was even still available to you so late in the game, literally.” He then attempted to console her, curling his free hand directly behind her back as an assuring gesture, mostly because he was sure anything else would damage her. “I know you did nothing wrong. This probably could’ve happened to anyone, and don’t you worry. This will pass, and, just like you wanted, I’ve got you.”

Although she was unsure of whether or not that was meant to be an apology, Madi pulled her hands away at his sweet remarks, and for the first time since they had first met, she saw Jake with not only beauty but also novel capability. He hadn’t been so profound with her since their one class together way back when. Any overshadowing thoughts she had about him being a typical jock went right out the window, and she had never felt more blessed to have a friend.

However, she wasn’t as appreciative of his following comments, and the smile that shined on her face soon vanished.

“But, really, how do you want to do this?” Jake inquired. “I ask because I, uh…” He paused with a groan, not sure how to explain himself without making their scenario any more dramatic than it already was. “…I have one idea, but I think any of yours would probably be better.”

Madi, having watched him remove the hand behind her and slide it down from his nose to his chin, sensed that his something, whatever it was, might be bothering him but couldn’t tell why or be sure. Yet, knowing that the time without being noticed by nasty Nash outsiders was running out, she just went with it.

“Okay?” she accepted cautiously. “Well, I really don’t want people to know about this, so the safer and more hidden I am, the better.”

Jake attempted to hide his discomfort with her answer. His idea had technically aligned with her wants, but he had this feeling that she was not going to like it one bit.

“Alright,” he could only sheepishly respond. “Well, um, you’re the science major, so you, er, go on and figure out what’s best for you, whatever you want to do.”

“Sure.” Her reply was positive, and now she was just as positive that Jake had not only a bother but a problem. Another big problem within her oversized insanity; how wonderful. But rather than letting it boil over, she let it simmer in her subconscious, followed his suggestion, and began thinking of places to hide with him.

It took an uncomfortably short period to realize hiding with him more so meant hiding on him. Madi managed to keep a cringe inside and prayed Jake’s notion had nothing to do with that via some trap card out of his ass. Still, despite her ingenuity, she couldn’t think of one, and, like with all those math proofs from last year, she could only work with what she was given. In any other circumstance, having Jackson Averill at her will would be a dream, but the fairy-like femme floated in a nightmare… or purgatory… whichever was worse.

No possible, present view gave Madi a full vision of what or, more validly, who to plan from. He was so much to take in at once, so she asked to better see it all.

“Um,” she beckoned, “can I check out the vehicle provided for me?”

Initially, Jake didn’t catch her drift, but it didn’t take him long to click and nearly blush at her wording. It wouldn’t be the first time she called him a ride, and while this was something else, her maintained humor was a relief.

He gave her in return a prying smirk as if to ask ‘How?’, and all Madi had to do back was a couple of motions for him to become a model. She fluttered her hands his way to get him to back up, stopping when he reached the end of their row of benches. A lowering motion then directed him to set her down on said end bench. Words couldn’t describe her gratitude in knowing that if her voice or any tiny sounds she made went inaudible to his ears or any normal-sized ones were too much for her, then they would still be able to communicate somewhat.

If he stayed alert for her. God forbid him from getting distracted.

As she shook that fear out of existence, and once she and her things were gently set onto the hard surface, Jake gave her a bit more space and took a few more steps backward so that she could see him all at once. With her new perspective, really trying to not depress herself over her lack of creaking and noticeable shadow on contact, her primal instincts kicked in, unable to handle the visage of an Adonis in front of her.

Like his facial features, the years of football and weight training had done wonders for his physique. While Madi had already seen sides of him that only a few were blessed enough to observe, seeing their outlines and envisioning them bare and visible at this scale gave her chills.

Madi gestured for Jake to spin around to check if he genuinely had no pockets. Upon one rotation, especially with his phone snapped to his pelvis under his waistband, she sadly confirmed her hypothesis with a sigh – a bitter contrast to the gasp she gave to the sight of his global glutes. He truly lived up to his tight end position in and out of sports, and Madi would need a thesaurus made for a postdoc to describe his front side. The things his body had done to hers were incomparable to present possibilities, and she didn’t know how to feel.

Little did she know that Jake was pondering the same thing.

When the giant jock came back around from his turn, rather than seeing an inquisitive Madeline, he found a disgruntled one instead, and the smug look on his face fell off. Jake could only figure that her suspicions had finally meshed with his, and thus he slowly crept up and knelt on one knee before her to not frighten her even more.

“Have you come up with anything?” he asked timidly, resting his forearms on his level thigh.

“Only if your teammates aren’t as rowdy on a bus ride as they are on the field,” Madi remarked, looking up at him in bittersweet wonder, knowing fully well that if someone shook him around while she was on his person, then she’d be in deep shit. “What chance do I have of getting back to Kingston alive if I went under your hat or by your collar or something?”

“Uh, well, if we had lost tonight, I’d guess 75% or so?” Jake calculated, rubbing his chin in thought. “No one would probably want to talk about it, and they’d keep to themselves unless Coach decided to bag on everyone, which would only get them even more in their feelings.”

But they didn’t lose. If Madi hadn’t been following the score while caring for Cari, the Knights’ sore losers’ chaos she ran through that erupted afterward was enough of a tell on its own, and the look on Jake’s face made her brace for the celebratory yikes that was likely the Royals on their side.

“But the bus was lit as all fuck when I left it,” Jake continued, “and I can already envision Coach or Big Q tousling my hair or Chad going in for a chest bump once I get back. Hell, he gave me three on the field after my scoring play alone, so, uh, I’d rather not risk it.”

“Well, fuck!” Madi cursed herself, kicking her bag off her ledge in anger. Luckily, Jake was watching her every move intently and moved quickly enough to catch it. Otherwise, they both would’ve most likely forgotten it there for some soul to find, trash, or worse. He was even kind enough to carefully put her fallen clothes and phone in it for her, feeling less like storing doll accessories and more like spice sprinkling than his liking. Madi, meanwhile, was fuming too much to notice. “You might as well give me your idea, then,” she succumbed. “We don’t have much time for much else.”

“You know this could’ve been a lot easier on both of us if you had just let me bring backup,” Jake reminded her, setting her bag back down next to her and hoping to God that she’d just let him call someone for help.

“Don’t try to diverge from this by bringing up something you had control over – still have control over,” she countered, crossing her arms and cocking her head to the side. As sweet as his situational submission of silence was, she couldn’t physically stop him from doing anything if she tried. Not that she could before, but she definitely couldn’t now. “I saw you fumbling with yourself about something, and if it’s about this, then it can’t be much worse than what I’m already going through, right? Just lay it on me, dude.”

Jake sighed at her relentlessness, recognizing that she still had so much force, so much determination, even with such diminutive dimensions. She had moxie, and he liked that. He liked it so much that he was willing to put her wishes over his own and keep her new look a secret, for now, despite how dumb doing so actually was.

“Can you just promise me to not say anything until I explain it fully?” Jake hoped with a defensive slump and scrunching face. “It’ll make sense with the backstory… probably.”

If one could even call it that, his preface wasn’t much, and the time to ponder it was slim to none. But Madi hadn’t yet a reason to not trust his judgment – the calamity with the cleaners was questionable but not totally repulsive – thus, she shrugged, expressing her tolerance.

Like her with him previously, Jake knew that he wasn’t going to get better out of her, and so he began. “Okay. I have an idea, and, frankly, it’s some divine intervention or some bullshit how this shit with you had to happen on the one day I decided to be a stylish bastard.”

[winchesters-favorite-girl]

Flatline-Part Seven

A/N: Jensen and his sixteen year old daughter get into an argument before she goes out for a night with some friends. A few hours later, Jensen gets a call that is going to change his family’s life forever.

Word Count: 1,703

Warnings: Car accident, angst

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Hours passed before a surgeon came out to speak to your family and give them an update on how you were doing. Danneel broke into tears when the doctor told them that you had survived, that you were stable and that the surgery was considered successful. 

“She’s not out of the woods yet, the next forty eight hours are crucial but if she survives them then we’ll start to focus on her plan of care for the long term.” The surgeon informed your family, “She’s a strong kid, I’m hopeful for her recovery.”

Jensen held tightly onto the doctor’s words, he constantly repeated them to himself as he sat next to your bed holding onto your hand. It had been nine days since the surgery and the doctors were extremely happy with your progress. The swelling on your brain had decreased and they had completed another surgery to repair your spinal injuries as well as your hip. Soon they would be placing a metal rod in your leg and screws in the other ankle. 

Jensen should have calmed down by now, you were out of the woods, you would survive, but a pit had been growing in his stomach as he thought about something else the doctors had said, “She has extensive injuries, there is no denying that. She has a lot of surgeries and months of physical therapy ahead of her; she might never walk again but at least she’ll be alive.”

Running his hand over his head your father thought about what life was going to be like for his family, it was going to be full of changes and adapting but you were going to be there which was all he cared about.

“Hey there Mr. Jensen.” Your nurse Jenny greeted your father as she walked into the room. Jenny was a sweet Texan woman in her late fifties who your family practically adopted. She’d been your nurse the past two weeks whenever she was working, she had even come in a few times on her days off to check in on how you and your family were doing.

“Hi Jenny, what’s the word?” Jensen asked, looking up at the nurse as he continued to hold onto your hand.��

“Good news, Y/N’s pentobarbital levels are down enough so the respiratory therapist is gonna come in here soon so extubate her. She’ll be free to breathe on her own and you’ll see all her reflexes coming back soon now that the pentobarb is leaving her system. No sedation means our little miss should be waking up any time now.” Jenny told Jensen the good news.

“That’s, that’s great.” Jensen said, his voice thick with emotions.

“It is, another milestone down. Before you know it she’s gonna be walking outta this unit ready to go home.” Jenny replied as she hung another IV and checked to make sure she had everything for when they removed your breathing tube.

Jensen gave her a smile, “I can’t wait until you actually get to meet her, you’re gonna love her.”

“I’m sure I will Mr. Jensen,” Jenny responded, “All I’ve heard the past week is how amazing she is. Can’t wait to see those pretty eyes in real life. All the pictures your family’s been showing me, she’s got the prettiest eyes.”

“Yes she does.” Jensen replied, giving your hand a squeeze, “She’s not gonna be able to feel any pain when she wakes up, right?”

“No sir,” Jenny told him firmly, “She’s still getting a little bit of fentanyl for all those surgeries, plus that broken leg. We don’t want baby girl feeling any pain, she might feel a bit of slight discomfort but nothing painful.”

Nodding his head Jensen spoke, “Got it, just wanted to make sure.”

“I understand Mr. Jensen, no worries. You’re just being a good daddy.” Jenny reassured him.

Jensen let out a small laugh at the name, “It’s been a long time since she called me daddy. With my other two girls that’s my name but it’s been years since she last called me that.”

“I bet you twenty bucks that she calls you that when she wake up.” Jenny stated, shooting Jensen a knowing look but Jensen only shook his head.

“We haven’t quite been on the same page the past few months, I’d be surprised if she even wants to see me when she wakes up.”

Shaking her head Jenny shot Jensen a disapproving face, “She’s gonna be scared outta her mind when she wakes up, she’s gonna be asking for her daddy and I know you’re gonna be sitting right here cause your stubborn butt refuses to go home.”

Jensen smiled widely, “Guilty. You can’t-” His sentence was cut off by you rolling your head, your eyelids fluttering, “Sweetheart?” He said, examining your face as he stood next to you, “Can you hear me?”

Jenny stood on the other side of you, looking at your monitors then back at you. Your eyelids fluttered for another moment before they stopped.

“Is she okay?” Jensen asked, worried about your well being. 

“She’s fine,” Jenny reassured him, moving your eyelid up with her fingers before flashing her small flashlight in front of your eye to test your pupillary response which was normal. “Told you her reflexes were coming back. She’s gonna be waking up real soon.”

“That was weird, I’m used to her body twitching, not her whole body moving.” Jensen stated.

“That would be cause of the pentobarb, it’s a super strong sedative, it basically put her into a coma and paralyzed her so that she couldn’t move, now that the pentobarb is finally leaving her system she’s gonna be moving all over the place. It’s a good thing.” Jenny explained.

“Knock knock.” A voice spoke from the doorway before a woman wearing green scrubs knocked on the door.

“Hey Cindy.” Jenny greeted the woman as she started to prep you for extubation, “Mr. Jensen, this is Cindy the RT, she’s gonna take the breathing tube out. We’re gonna get Miss. Y/N ready but I think when we take the tube out you should step outside.”

“I’d rather stay if I can.” Jensen replied, his grip on your hand tightening. 

“I know you would but it’s not gonna be fun to watch,” Jenny explained as Cindy walked over and started getting her items ready to take the tube out. “She’s gonna make some gagging noises and I don’t think you wanna hear that.”

Jensen was quiet for a moment before shaking his head, “I’m gonna stay, just in case she wakes up and if not, this sounds unpleasant and I don’t want her to be alone.”

“Whatever you wanna do.” Jenny said before she returned her attention to helping Cindy.

After they pulled your breathing tube things seemed to settle down. It was around eight that night when Jensen got his usual FaceTime call from Danneel as she was putting the other kids down for bed.

“Hey kiddos.” He spoke to his three youngest who were all squishing together so that they could be in the camera.

“Hi Daddy.” JJ called to him as she gave him a toothy grin.

“Dah!” Zepplin attempted to say dad.

“How’re my babies doing?” Jensen asked.

“I’m not a baby Daddy, Zeppy and Ro are one now, do they still count as babies?” She questioned aloud before looking at her mom, “Mama are they babies still?” Danneel let out a small laugh before nodding her head.

“You guys will always be my babies!” Jensen spoke, grabbing JJ’s attention again.

“Even Y/N?” JJ said.

“Even Y/N.” Jensen confirmed before asking JJ how her day went.

“Sorry to interrupt,” The night nurse Kristen stated as she walked into the room, “I gotta do Y/N’s nightly labs and I was gonna give her a bath too since I saw it’s been a few days, you mind stepping out for a bit?” 

Jensen chewed on his lip for a moment before agreeing, “You’ll let me know if she wakes up?” He requested as he stood at the door. 

“Of course.” Kristen told him before he walked out and shut the door.

“Alright Miss. Y/N, we’re gonna get you cleaned up so when you wake up you’ll feel as good as you can.

Kristen had finished cleaning you up and was drawing her labs when you started to turn your head and then started to groan.

“Y/N? Sweetheart can you hear me?” She asked before grabbing your hand and giving it a squeeze. You responded by letting out another groan and tightening your hold on her hand. Soon your eyes were starting to blink open, causing Kristen to lean over and dim the lights.

“Y/N?” She said again.

“Ouch.” You mumbled aloud before keeping your eyes open and looking around, you were disorientated for a moment before panic started to kick in. “Where am I?” You asked, grabbing onto your neck since your throat was killing you with every word you spoke, tears started to fill your eyes, “Where’s my dad?” You asked in a raspy voice as your breathing began to pick up, “I want my dad, where is he?”

“It’s okay sweetie, you were in an accident, you’re at the hospital. I’ll go grab your dad right now, okay?” Kristen told you, giving your hand another squeeze before quickly leaving the room in search of your dad.

Your breathing continued to pick up which resulted in your heart rate spiking, causing one of the monitors that was connected to you to start beeping. Another nurse walked into the room to check what was happening.

“Oh Y/N, you’re awake.” The nurse spoke, “My name is Ashley.”

“My-my-my dad, where’s my dad?” You asked, your eyes focusing behind the nurse in search of your dad, “Th-the other nurse went to go get him.”

“Kristen is probably searching for him right now, he hasn’t gone far at all while you’ve been here.” The nurse assured you, “He’ll be here any second, okay? I promise.”

“I want my daddy.” You spoke in a small, defeated voice, “I need him.”

“Y/N?” Your dad’s voice sounded from the doorway.

You returned your glance to the door, “Dad?”

“Thank god.” Jensen sighed out as he strode over to you and quickly wrapped you in his arms, “I thought I lost you.”

Next

(Text divider by @writeyourmindaway)

[macbookpro-hard-drive]

control [jeremy h. x squipped!reader] pt.2

now to give y’all what you truly only follow me for: more writing about musical characters. catch me sitting here thinking abt hadestown amongst all of this. the longer its been since ive seen it, the more in love with it i fall, i s2g. 

warnings: squip bein a piece of shit (so just... manipulation n the like). thts rly about it but let me kno if i need to tag anything else!

      All in a moment, you were seeing stars. Rich’s arm had been clasped tightly around your waist, his other hand covering your mouth in an attempt to muffle the screams of anguish that had crashed over you in waves and dragged you under. There was a stinging in your hand, and as you went quiet, you felt Rich tense behind you. Slowly, he drew his hand back from your mouth, letting you go and, regretfully, watching you collapse onto the ground. And then you were seeing stars again - real ones, twinkling overhead as you breathed heavily. The pain tapered off, bit by bit by bit, while fatigue settled in it’s place. All you could do was lay there in the cold dirt, staring up at the the night sky as your chest heaved. Rich finally offered you a hand, waiting until you finally managed to muster up the strength to take it. In a swift movement, he pulled you back onto your feet with ease - and you noticed how buff he was compared to how he was in the past. Dirt covered your clothes, and you noticed that the sting in your hand had been due to it being sliced open by a rock that cut into it during your struggles. Fuck, you were going to have to make sure that was taken care of as soon as you were home. Finally, your gaze fell back to Rich, the headlights of his truck illuminating the entire scene in front of you. Before you could even fathom a thought, you reacted, swinging a punch at his arm and catching him off-guard. Immediately he stepped back, staring at you as he rubbed his arm, brow furrowed in confusion and anger.

      “What the fuck was that for?” He asked, voice running a little high for a moment. “Also what the fuck, you throw a pretty mean punch for a-”

      You didn’t give him time to finish the thought, curling your hands into fists and ignoring the stinging in your palm. “What the fuck, Rich - you said it’d hurt a bit-”

       “I said it’d hurt for a bit- you didn’t ask how bad-”

       “He is correct. Reviewing your memories shows that he did say it would hurt for “a bit” and not that the pain would be minor-”

       “-What the fuck?” You stumbled back slightly, looking around for the source of this new voice for a moment. “Holy shit.”

      Rich cracked a smile as you straightened up slightly. “It worked, didn’t it?”

      “I.. think?” You said, voice oozing with uncertainty.

      “It did.” The voice said, “like I previously stated, I am your Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor. Your SQUIP.”

      Was that annoyance? You frowned, looking back to Rich with uncertainty oozing from every movement. “You... you weren’t scamming me-” And you cut yourself off there, “holy shit.” You stood there, processing the events that had just occurred. It wasn’t until Rich glanced to his phone with wide eyes that you realized how late it was.

      “Hey, shit, uh - we should get going,” Rich said, “you can... deal with that later,” he picked up the box, “c’mon. I said I’d give you a ride.”

      With a slow nod, you followed him back to his truck, and pulled yourself up into the passenger seat with a small leap while Rich rambled off an apology. The whole seizing you and trying to quiet you down because, y’know, you’d been screaming and he didn’t really know how to explain that kind of shit to people without getting arrested. On one hand, you were bothered by that - the immediate instinct being to grab and hold you down - but... you understood. The thoughts of what could have came flood into your head, and - fuck, you didn’t need for the police to show up. He followed every direction you gave him, getting him to stop down the street from your house in order to make your sneaking in easier. With a quick thanks, you hopped out of his truck and shut his door as quietly as you could before crossing your front yard. As you reached your doorstep, you heard his car pulling off, and you glanced over your shoulder to watch him make a u-turn before driving away.

      “You need to bandage your hand before it gets infected.” Your SQUIP said. You shut the door behind you, locking it back as you pressed your back against it.

      Lowering your voice down to a whisper, you respond. “You kinda sound like-”

      “I know. My default setting. Of course, if you dislike it, I have other modes for your perusal-”

      You shook your head, “that’s... fine. You’re fine.” Glancing down at your bleeding palm, you head towards the bathroom to find the first aid kit tucked underneath the sink. The sting of disinfectant made you let out a hiss of pain, and you internally cursed the fact that it happened to be your writing hand that got hurt. Note-talking was going to be the highlight of your day, that was certain.

      “You should wrap it and keep the wound dry.” Your SQUIP said, right as you were about to unwrap a band-aid.

      You found the bandages, and nodded a little. “Okay.”

      “You should also avoid speaking aloud when responding to me.”

      Pausing, the bandage loosens slightly around your palm, and you looked up into the mirror for a moment. “Then how do I-”

      “Think at me.” It said, “like... telepathy.”

      You resumed your work for a moment, before going to respond. “Like-” You stopped, “like this?”

      “Indeed. I can sense some discomfort whenever you’re responding to me.”

      “Yeah,” you wrapped the bandage tight, wiggling your fingers, “I guess... it’s just... it’s kinda weird to just talk to a voice in my head.”

      “Think at me.” You frowned at the command, but it continued on with it’s thought nonetheless, “would you prefer something visual? I’m capable of manipulating your senses in order to create something for you to see - albeit a bit more holographic in order to differentiate myself from those around you.” There was a pause, before it finally spoke again, “but it would still be a visual nonetheless.”

      Processing the information, you nodded slightly. “That’d be nice but... You could still turn it off, right?”

      For a moment, you’re sure that you disappointed it - speaking aloud again. But it finally spoke once more, almost sounding resigned for that night.“Yes. You need to change. You’re still covered in dirt.” You looked down at your dirt-stained sweatpants and shirt. So you were.

      Throwing everything back into the kit, you tucked it back underneath the sink and head to your room, glad to be back in this little sanctuary. You stripped off the shirt and sweatpants, kicking them underneath your bed for the time being, making a mental note to throw that in with the rest of your laundry on Sunday, and searched through your drawers for something else to wear. You snatched up an oversize t-shirt, slipping it on before curling up underneath your blankets. Everything felt quiet. You tugged the blankets closer to you as you turned over, and soon you felt drowsiness take over, sooner than you expected. Nonetheless, you were asleep within minutes.

      The next morning, you woke up to quiet and found yourself wondering if the night before had been some fucked-up dream. Then you noticed the bandage around your hand, stretching and popping your fingers as you stared at the covered palm. Not a dream, then - but you felt alone, no voice in your head. Maybe it was broken? You scowled a little at the thought - fucking Rich Goranski who scammed you out of six-hundred dollars for a faulty pill that worked for, what, a few hours? What the fuck kind of drugs did he-

      A figure glitched into being in front of you. “Good morning.”

      You let out a shriek, hand clasping over your mouth as you jumped at the sudden sight and sound before staring at this strange holographic figure in front of you - glitching slightly with it’s movement. You opened your mouth to speak, before closing it, remembering the whole ‘telepathy’ shit. “Good morning?”

      “Is this to your liking?” Your SQUIP walked over towards your door, and you just sort of sat there staring at it’s newfound presence. “I can adjust as necessary, but-”

      “It’s fine.”

      It shot a small frown at you, but looked toward your closet. “We need to discuss this Jeremy that you’re into.”

      “What about him?” You bit the inside of your cheek, combing your fingers through your hair. There... was honestly a lot to unpack about Jeremy, if you were honest.

      The figure glitched before you, staring at your closet doors. Taking the hint, you walked over, pulling the doors open as you swore you saw a small smirk play upon it’s lips - and, to be honest, you weren’t sure why. “Why Jeremy? There are far more popular boys and girls at Middleborough that would benefit you more to date. For example,” it paused, analyzing as you watched the faintest trace of binary flash through it’s eyes, “Jake Dillinger: kicker for the football team, very attractive, popular... or Brooke Lohst: popular, pretty, and...” It paused again, “... Jake would be better for you.”

      Had you thought about dating Jake Dillinger? Sure - a lot of people fantasized about it at least once or twice, because he was Jake Dillinger. But nonetheless, you never had a connection with Jake. Not like you did with Jeremy. “I don’t... I don’t want to date Jake. He’s cute and all, but... I like Jeremy. I want to talk to him again.” Shifting your weight, you stared into the back of your closet absentmindedly. “I miss him.”

      Your SQUIP reached past you, fingers fazing through the articles of clothing hanging up before finally withdrawing it’s hands. Slowly, it extended its arm once more, tapping towards a piece of clothing, “take this out. You need to put all of this away - it isn’t cold enough for you to wear things this heavy,” it glanced back at you as you reached out, pulling article after article out of your closet, “once the weather gets colder, then you can bring back... this. But for now, you need to dress to accentuate your figure, [y/n]. Stop hiding.” Over the next few minutes, your hands begun to move on their own as the SQUIP took control, tired of your slowness compared to its own movements. Soon enough, your closet was thinned out a fair amount. How many hoodies did you own? “Too many. We need to buy you more clothing.”

      “You do realize I spent all my money on you, right?” You turned to your bed, the mountain of clothes sitting there. As you moved to take care of it, you watched your SQUIP process info once more.

      “Thrift shops are an alternative.”

      “I know, but have you considered...” You stopped folding one of your hoodies, looking back to the SQUIP, “I literally just spent all my money on you?”

      “Save up.”

      You stopped what you’d been doing. “What?”

      “You receive a weekly allowance. Besides...” It paused, a small smirk playing at the corner of its lips, “if my calculations are correct, you may have work lined up for you right about-”

      As if on cue, your phone buzzed against your nightstand. Your gaze didn’t leave your SQUIP’s form as you reached to pick it up, finding your aunt’s name scrawled across the screen. You answered, pulling the phone up to your ear only to have a request: babysitting, because somebody got into another fight and she can’t trust him to stay there alone - and then rattled off more information, talking about how Sarah has a ballet recital, and Katherine’s science project is due Monday, and in an attempt to break away from the phone call, you quickly informed her you’d be over whenever she needed you. Delighted, she gave you a time and thanked you a thousand times before saying she’d see you later.

      Immediately, your focus was on your SQUIP. “How the fuck did you know that?”

      “I see possible routes and events. This was just one of them, as, judging by your memories, there was a note about your cousin’s upcoming recital - and, knowing Thomas and Katherine would have their own reasons to not go, your aunts would call you to babysit.” You furrowed your brow, trying to process what it’d just told you before it finally let out a sigh. “Try not to think of it. I’ll take care of conjuring these things. All you need to do is listen.”

       You hesitated to agree.

       Babysitting your cousins earned you roughly fifty bucks - which was enough for you to dip into a thrift store and find a few things that your SQUIP approved of. Come Monday, you were sporting a pretty sweet jean jacket-hoodie combo and you’d found a pair of black jeans that fit rather nicely. It wasn’t much, but it was a difference from the you that hid themself as best as they could. You looked... different. You felt different, staring at yourself in the mirror, your Hylian shield pin gleaming in the light and reminding you of the battle you had over it with the SQUIP - it advocating against, and you for in an attempt to have some sort of familiarity - that you were surprised to have won. In exchange, your SQUIP directed you away from the cafeteria come lunch time.

      “You’ll still have time to eat,” it clarified, “we just have some business to take care of first.”

      “Okay,” you watched as it trailed in front of you, hands folded behind its back, shoulders squared and just oozing confidence you wish you had. “What business?”

      It peered over it’s shoulder at you, before turning it’s attention back to where you were going. “We need to get you involved in the show. If you want to get close to Jeremy, you have to spend time with him first.”

      “Wait - but it was already cast a few weeks ago, it’s not like I can-”

      “There’s more to a play than acting, [y/n].” Your SQUIP faltered in it’s gait for a moment, “Perhaps it’s useful you’re an artist.”

      The two of you neared Reyes’s classroom, chatter loud and clear. Mr.Reyes with his strong, clear voice - and then you could hear Christine Canigula, chipper as ever, and you couldn’t fight back a small smile at the mere passion she held for theatre. Standing out of sight, you gathered your confidence as best as you - it was only Mr.Reyes and Christine, after all. You could handle talking to them, finding a place for you to help out. This was going to be fine-

      And then you heard him, The moment Jeremy’s voice rang out, you turned on your heel and ducked into a bathroom - your SQUIP rematerializing in front of you as you checked the stalls. Once you confirmed you were alone, you turned to face your SQUIP, its eyes pinned to you with utmost boredom.

     “What the fuck!” You hissed, keeping your voice quiet and low. “I can’t go in there if Jeremy’s - did you know he was going to be here?”

      “Stop speaking aloud.” It chided you, before pressing its lips together. “And... Yes. The probability was high, but this is good for us. Now Jeremy will see you’re serious about this - he’ll see that you’re passionate about art. And theatre, I suppose. Calm down,” it’s voice goes softer, “you’ll do fine. I’m here.”

      You nodded slowly, turning and walking towards the sink, staring at yourself in the mirror. With a sigh, you turned back to your SQUIP, fingers grazing the cold porcelain as you nodded. “Alright,” you finally said, “what’s the plan?”

      It smiled. “As I said before - we need you to be involved in the show. Perhaps you could put those art skills of you to good use and paint scenery - or you could be running crew. Both gives you a good excuse to stay in the auditorium and near Jeremy.” It walked behind you, pressing a hand against your back, “straighten up. You need to be confident. You’ve got this.”

      You turned, looking up at it. “And if I don’t?”

      “That’s what I’m here for.”

      After a moment of hesitating, you finally nodded. What do you have to be afraid of? You took a deep breath, slowly exhaling as you stepped out of the bathroom and towards the classroom. Once more, you hesitated outside of the door, your SQUIP giving you a small nod as you finally knocked. When you stepped in, Jeremy’s eyes widened.

      “[y/n]?” He said, brows furrowed as you walked closer into the room.

      You uttered some sort of greeting, Mr.Reyes making some quip about not having any money for cookies as you grew nearer. You forced a laugh.

      Your SQUIP’s laid a hand on your shoulder. “Ask.”

      So you did. “I was wondering if there’s anything I could do for the play?” You fought to keep your voice steady, anxiety already biting at you. Your hands slowly drifted towards one another, only for a small shock to tear your fingers apart before your habit could bubble up.

      “...Really?” Mr.Reyes said, watching you - as if this was some weird prank. Maybe drama wasn’t nearly as popular here as you thought, considering what you’d heard about the cast....

      With a nod, you spoke again, “I haven’t really been into theatre for long-”

      “But you’ve always wanted to try.” Your SQUIP said, and you nearly nodded except for the thought of how weird that would make you look. Gently, it’s hand landed on your shoulder. “Calm down. I’m right here.”

      “I’ve always wanted to try, though. And I thought that maybe-”

      “You’d start with crew and audition for the spring show.”

     “-I’d, uh, start with backstage stuff and, uh, audition for the spring show?” You tried to make your words flow together effortlessly, as if you weren’t being fed lines - and, somehow, they bought it.

       Mr.Reyes nodded slowly, before looking over to Christine and smiling as he turned back to you and launched into an oddly dramatic speech about the importance of a production team, and how - if you’re interested - there’s a few zombies that they’ll need stage makeup for. But his words began to fall into meaningless dribble behind you as you caught a glimpse of your SQUIP trailing around to where Jeremy sat, giving him a slow once over. And slowly, it’s gaze turned to Christine, lips pressed into a thin line. Part of you was terrified of whatever it was thinking, about what judgement it was passing on Jeremy... the other was merely curious. Perhaps it had a better idea about-

      “As soon as you’ll need me,” the words were out of your mouth before you could even process what happened. The blend of your voice alongside your SQUIP’s as it spoke for you, and then the soft whisper of a “you’re welcome” was enough to give you goosebumps. But then Jeremy smiled at you, and everything that felt wrong melted away in an instant.

      After school, you’d typically be driving to the mall or driving home to sit around and either play video games or draw until your homework became too pressing. But this time you shoved your books into your bag and walked from your last class to the auditorium at the request of Mr.Reyes - who wanted you to watch rehearsal and get a feel for the show. When you nearly asked if that could wait until tomorrow, your SQUIP chastised you immediately - this was a chance to get close to Jeremy. So you smiled and agreed, shooting a quick text to your parents so they wouldn’t worry if rehearsal ran late, and hesitated outside of the doors for a moment. Gathering your courage, you pulled the door open to find the room completely empty as you walked down towards the front row, slinging your bag into a chair and sitting in wait for anyone to show up. Part of you hoped it’d be Rich first, because then at least it’d be a friendly face - and you could maybe ask some questions if you had them, considering he knew more about SQUIPs than you did.

      Your SQUIP materialized in front of you, arms folded across it’s chest. “Jeremy will be arriving soon. You have approximately four minutes and twenty seconds alone with him.” When you snorted, it merely glared before looking past you.

      “Sorry.” Then you felt a shock travel to your fingers, tearing them away from one another as you looked up. “What the fuck-”

      “You were picking at your nails again. You need to stop.” It sighed as it looked back to you, “we need to make the most of this time alone. It is imperative you make a good impression.” It trailed past you, aimlessly wandering back and forth as you stopped paying attention for a moment.

      The sound of the doors opening with a screech caught your attention, the loud whine making you turn to see Jeremy hesitating for a moment upon seeing that the room wasn’t empty. But the moment you laid eyes on him, he continued down, fingers curled tightly around the straps of his bag. Ever so slightly, he relaxed as he drew nearer to you.

      “Hey,” you called out with a smile, “how are you?”

      He was caught off-guard for a moment. “Fine. Why are you here?” He stopped near you, swinging his backpack into a seat and unzipping it.

      “Reyes asked-”

      “No, I know that - I just- I mean- why are you here?” He paused for a moment, fishing around in his bag, before tacking on “I thought you weren’t into theatre.”

      Shit. “I, uh-”

     “It’s a recent interest. You’re exploring your options.”

      You swallowed your panic. “It’s, uh, a recent thing. I, uh, wanted to maybe try something new...”

      Jeremy looked over at you, still suspicious, before he looked back to his bag. Shit. “Okaaaaay,” he said, obviously not entirely convinced by your answer. He paused, finally finding what he was looking for as he pulled out a thick script with pages tabbed with different colors, and then he looked back at you. “Shit, sorry, I just- I didn’t expect to see you here.”

      “No, it’s - it’s fine, Jeremy,” you insisted. The SQUIP phased through him, side-stepping and nodding towards his script. You continued on, “So, uh, who are you?”

      For a moment he stood there, just staring at you with furrowed brow and utter confusion written on his face before he finally glanced down to what he was holding. “Oh! Uh, Lysander.”

      “That’s great!” You chirped, trying to play it off as if you knew who that was.

      “Ask him if he needs help with lines.”

      “So, uh, Jeremy,” you started, “if you ever need help running lines - I’m, uh, I’m here.”

      “I’m fine.” He said, “I’m sorry, I just - you never mentioned being into this stuff before, so...”

      “I mean - it’s been a while...” You trailed off. Uncertainty began to leak in as the conversation died down, and then before you could process what was happening, you were speaking. “I’m really excited to see you perform, Jeremy. I’m sure you’ll be amazing.”

      His cheeks grew pink as he fumbled with the script slightly, looking away from you in some attempt to compose himself. “Oh. Uh. Thanks, I guess. But you should really see Christine,” he began to smile, face red, “I mean - she’s the real star, y’know?” He looked back at you, completely starry-eyed. “Have you seen her act?” Fuck. “She’s just - she’s amazing, [y/n]...”

      The door screeching open was your cue to bolt out of your seat, coming up with some excuse as you tore past Brooke and Jenna and down the hall. Your breath caught in your chest, as you turned a corner and pressed your back against the lockers as panic filled your every thought. Your SQUIP materialized in front of you once more, watching as your breath grew quick and tears began to stream down your face. Fuck, you should have known Jeremy would still be in love with her - but you didn’t think he’d forget you were with him the first time he saw her perform. It had been you and him and Michael. Just as it always was. And now, when you need someone, your SQUIP stood idly by, staring down at the ground with furrowed brow and jaw clenched, arms folded tightly over it’s chest. You focused on slowing your breathing, trying to calm down for a moment - just a moment to resurface yourself back to reality.

      You finally looked back at your SQUIP, growing frustrated. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

      “I’m processing.” It merely stated, “are you certain you want to keep pursuing Jeremy? There are other students at this school who don’t harbor feelings for Christine Canigula. Jake Dillinger, from my calculations - or that boy in broadcasting, Link. He’s also attractive. Brooke Lohst is also attractive and would be more than willing to-”

      “No!” You snapped, before calming down. “Are you - you’re saying this is hopeless, isn’t it?”

       Your SQUIP pinched the bridge of it’s nose, growing more frustrated and leaving you to grow more anxious. “No. I’m saying pursuing Jeremy will be difficult considering we have to account for his feelings for Christine. We just have to show him that you would be a much better match for him,” your SQUIP said, staring at you.

      “But how-”

      The moment you heard footsteps echoing from around the corner, your SQUIP looked back at you - and, for a split second, you thought you saw a smirk. “Tear ducts, activate.”

      That was the moment everything in your world started to tumble down.

[cottagethings]

self-quarantine activities

1. Complete a puzzle: The more pieces the better! Feeling extra saucy? Take on a Rubik's Cube. More of a word person? Crossword puzzle!

2. Start a journal or blog. Sure, it can be about the coronavirus, but it could also be about a specific interest from chess to cheese. 

3. If it won't bother your neighbors: Dust off that old instrument and practice.

4. Text all your exes just in case you have one more thing you wanted to get off your chest.

5. Write poetry. Perhaps you can craft a haiku for Mother's Day, or something without a specific structure. Just try it!

6. Watch all the really long movies you’ve avoided until now.

7. Download Duolingo, or a similar app, and teach yourself a foreign language.

8. Finally read “Infinite Jest,” “Les Miserables” or even “The Stand.” Go all in and read “Ulysses.” You got this. 

9. Meditate. Try lying down with your eyes closed, palms up and while focusing on your breath. Or spend 20 minutes sitting crosslegged and repeat a soothing word to yourself in your head. (The latter is more like transcendental meditation.)

10. Face masks, moisturizer, oh my! Treat yourself to a 10-step skin care routine you don’t have time for during a normal work week.

11. Look at pictures of puppies.

12. Put together the most attractive charcuterie board possible, but you can only use foods you already have in your fridge and cupboard.

13. Take note from "Tangled" star Rapunzel, who has an entire song about how she's spent her days alone in a castle. Activities included in her ditty: Ventriloquy, candle-making, papier-mâché and adding a new painting to her gallery.

14. Write actual letters to family and friends. After that? Write thank-you notes to service people who you remember went out of their way for you.

15. Learn calligraphy. YouTube can help.

16. Finally read the rules to those long and intense board games you've never played with the family. Encourage the family to play.

17. Put on a soap opera. Mute the sound. Create your own dialogue.

18. Have a space in your home where all of the tupperware goes? Organize it and actually match lids to containers.

19. Try on all your clothes and determine whether they “spark joy” á la Marie Kondo.

20. Better yet, go through this process with your junk drawer and supply shelves. 

21. Have a roommate meeting about how to be more considerate of one other, especially while you will likely be spending more time together. Bring baked goods.

22. Bake those goods.

23. Watch the films that won Oscars for best picture.

24. Watch films that won Independent Spirit Awards for best picture. 

25. Watch films that critics say should have won those aforementioned awards.

26. Read all the New Yorker issues piled on your desk.

27. Will Tom Hanks into recovery from coronavirus by watching every Tom Hanks movie chronologically. 

28. Knit or crochet.

29. Use Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangouts or Marco Polo to video chat with your long-distance friends.

30. Try out at-home aerobics or yoga videos. Consider downloading a fitness app with curated workout playlists.

31. Look at yourself in the mirror. Attempt a self portrait with pencil and paper.

32. Take a bubble bath (bonus: Add a glass of wine).

33. Make a classic cocktail, from negronis to Manhattans and aperol spritzes. Don't forget the garnish.

34. Coloring books: They’re not just for kids.

35. Take time to reflect: What have you accomplished in the last year? What goals are you setting for yourself in the next year?

36. Write a short story or get started on that novel.

37. Actually try to reproduce something you see on Pinterest. Probably fail. Try again.

38. Clear out the family room and camp indoors with all blankets, popcorn and scary movies.

39. Finally get around to fixing that broken door knob and loose tile or cleaning scuffed up walls. 

40. Acquire a foam roller and treat yourself to some physical therapy. 

41. Pretend you're 13 years old and fold a square piece of paper into a fortune teller you put your thumbs and pointer fingers into. Proceed to tell fortunes. 

42. Learn how to braid (fishtail, French, etc.) via YouTube tutorial..

43. Throw out all your too-old makeup and products. (Tip: most liquid products have a small symbol on them noting expirations, usually six months to a year. This includes sunscreen!)

44. Interview your grandparents (over the phone, of course) and save the audio. Can you create an audio story or book with that file?

45. Go through your camera roll, pick your favorite pics from the past year and make a photo book or order framed versions online. 

46. Go on a health kick and learn how to cook new recipes with ingredients you may not be using already, from miso to tahini.

47. Create a Google document of shows or movies you’re watching and share it among family and friends.

48. Make a list of things for which you are grateful. 

49. Have your own wine tasting of whatever bottles you have at home. Make up stories about the journey of the grapes to your mouth.

50. Work on your financial planning, such as exploring whether to refinance your loan or ways to save more money. 

51. Perfect grandma’s bolognese recipe.

52. Make coffee, but this time study how many beans you use, which types, how hot the water is, how long it brews and whether any of that makes a difference.

53. Buy gift cards from your favorite local businesses to help keep them in business while we quarantine.

54. Watch “Frozen 2,’ which went up early on Disney Plus. Another new movie on the streaming service: "Stargirl." 

55. Write a book with your family. Pick a character and each member writes a chapter about their adventures. Read aloud to each other. 

56. No March Madness? Have a Scrabble tournament. Or Bananagrams. Pictionary, anyone?

57. Get into baking with "The Great British Baking Show," but your technical challenge is baking something with the ingredients you have on hand (that you didn't already use in the charcuterie board).

58. Indoor scavenger hunt.

59. Alternate reading the Harry Potter series with your kids and cap each one off with the movie.

60. Dye your hair a new color. No one else needs to see it if you don't like it.

61. Read Robert Jordan’s 14-book “Wheel of Time” series before it streams on Amazon starring Rosamund Pike. 

62. Write a play starring your loved ones. Perform it via a video call app. 

63. Go viral in the good way by making a quarantine-themed TikTok.

64. Rearrange your sock drawer. Really.

65. Stop procrastinating and do your income taxes.

66. Make lists of all the museums, sporting events and concerts you want to visit when they finally reopen.

67. Get into comics with digital subscriptions on your tablet, like Marvel Unlimited. 

68. Rearrange your furniture to make it seem like your home is a totally different space. 

69. Practice shuffling playing cards like a Poker dealer. Be ready for employment opportunities once all casinos open back up.

70. Organize your spice rack alphabetically or get crazy and do it by cuisine.

71. Teach your dog to shake. Hand sanitizer optional.

72. Memorize the periodic table. You never know when that will come in handy.

73. Order and put together some IKEA furniture. Time yourself.

74. Get a free trial of a streaming service and binge-watch as much as you can before it expires. 

75. Apply for a new job. You have remote work experience now. 

76. Learn a new style of dance via YouTube, from bellydancing to breaking.

77. Update or write your will and organize your affairs. Yes, it sounds melodramatic and morbid but let’s face it: This is a task many of us avoid because we never have the time. Now we do.

78.The parades have been canceled but you can still make corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick’s Day.

79. Bring out the Legos. Build your house inside of your house.

80. Watch the "Star Wars" movies in this and only this order: Rogue One-IV-V-II-III-Solo-VI-VII-VIII-IX.

81. Two words: Coronavirus beard! Grow it, moisturize it, comb it, love it.

82.  Learn the words to "Tung Twista." Get them so ingrained in your brain that you can rap them as fast as Twista can. Impress everyone. 

83. Been meaning to get some new glasses? Try on new frames virtually on sites like GlassesUSA.com.

84. Attempt things with your non-dominant hand, from writing to brushing your teeth. Prepare to be frustrated.

85. How many words per minute can you type? See if you can get speedier by taking a typing course.

86. Prepare to verbally duel a bully who wants to discuss the evolution of the market economy in the Southern colonies, by memorizing Matt Damon's "Good Will Hunting" speech. 

87. Learn origami. Make cranes for your loved ones.

88. Stretch. Work on your flexibility. It's possible to get the splits back, right?

89. Try to speak in pig Latin. Or, "ig-pay, atin-Lay."

90. Talk to your plants. How are they doing? Make sure they are getting the amount of sunlight they should be. Check their soil. Water if necessary.

91. Deep condition your hair and put paraffin wax on your hands. Enjoy your soft hair and nails.

92. Consider donating money to food banks to help families struggling to get meals.

93. Write a song. If you want to make it about your time inside and put it to the tune of "My Sharona" and replace "Sharona" with "Corona," do what you have to do.

94. Study the art of beatboxing.

95. Try moving in super-slow motion. It's OK to laugh at regular speed.

96. You know how there are dozens of ways to wear a scarf, but you only wear it the one way? Learn the other ways.

97. Learn Old English words. Pepper them into your conversation. Wherefore not?

98. Try on a new shade of lipstick. See how long it takes your partner to notice it.

99. Take deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth.

100. Sleep. Get lots of it.

[awashsquid]

Part 3 of @sittingoverheredreaming‘s commission series! Group post is here, if you want to catch up (which I recommend doing before this chapter!). This part is right around 2400 words.  If you like it, thank Sam for commissioning it, reblog, leave a comment - y’all know the drill :)  If you’re interested in commissioning me, click on this handy lil link!

Haruka had returned in a matter of minutes after Hotaru’s exit, so quickly that Michiru wondered aloud how they had not ran into each other in the hall, to which Haruka just shrugged.  The nurse had acquiesced to lowering Michiru’s pain medications, and she could feel the fog dissipating from her vision.  Though this should have been a relief, the intense pain of her wounds healing at accelerated speeds acted as a hot knife, slicing and searing through each agonizing moment.  She could taste blood on her bottom lip from biting down to hold in a scream when a particularly bad wave had hit, the coppery aftertaste lingering even after the wound had stopped bleeding.

After a few minutes of Haruka whispering reassurances from beside her, Michiru began to regain enough sense to fill her in on the updates from Hotaru.  The act of explaining kept her mind somewhat distracted from the sensation of her bones knitting back together, and Haruka seemed to sense this as she quietly listened, simply nodding when Michiru would pause.

“And thus, here we are,” Michiru concluded, the somehow still perfect manicure on her left hand digging deeply into her palm as she clenched her hand into a fist from the pain.  “The handful of us against Serenity, with Mercury at her back besides.”  The pain mercifully dulled to an acute throb - impossible to ignore, but more manageable as her body and mind adjusted to its presence.  “Will you join us in killing the would-be Queen?  Of ensuring that Crystal Tokyo never comes to pass?”  

There was barely a pause before Haruka’s answer came, delivered with a small smile.  “Michi, you don’t even have to ask.  You know I would follow you anywhere, even into Hell.”  She punctuated this statement by moving a piece of hair back from where it had stuck to Michiru’s cheek, tucking it gently behind her ear, the touch as soft as a quiet wind.

Relief swelled in Michiru’s chest as the tension in her shoulders sagged.  There had not been an argument, as she had assumed there would be, and for this she was immensely grateful; she had not needed to defend the fact that Usagi, too, had died on that battlefield, and an imposter now wore her corpse.  She allowed the balm of her lover’s assurances, more effective than any medicine the hospital had to offer, to wash away the twinge of fear that the argument had been too easily won.  She almost allowed herself to believe that Haruka’s love for her meant more than her devotion to their Princess, but her brain stopped short of such blatant optimism, the serpent’s voice in the back of her mind whispering that it must be too good to be true, that she needed to ask; she could not remain blissfully ignorant in the Garden when such fruit hung inches from her face.

Michiru smiled, forcing those thoughts down, focusing only on the deep green of Haruka’s eyes as they twinkled, the brightest stars amidst the constellation of freckles on her nose, her lips wishing to explore every inch of the galaxy that her love contained.  “I’m glad to hear it.  This will be challenging enough with you; I do not wish to imagine without.”

“You’ll never have to,” Haruka replied easily before standing, the bed barely moving with the smoothness of her rising.  She leaned overtop of the resting woman and pressed a gentle kiss on the sweat-dampened forehead, and Michiru knew she should be appalled that Haruka was seeing her in such a state, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care about anything more than the lips on her brow.

As she stepped backwards, Michiru’s skin immediately tingling from the memory of those lips, gentle as a ghost, Haruka deftly plucked the call button from where it rested and placed it underneath her right hand.  “Now that’s settled, why don’t you call the nurse and ask for more pain meds?  You look like you need them.”  It wasn’t said unkindly, her lover’s eyes sympathetic and warm, but Michiru still felt the sting of the words, a cold spray of seawater splashed onto her cheek by an aggressive breeze, her cheeks flushing with the impact.

“I - perhaps it is unwise to…” her sentence drifted off as she stared at Haruka’s face, brow quirked and mouth still wearing that gently teasing smile.

“You already got approved to leave tomorrow, right?  Why make yourself suffer in the meantime?”  The corners of her mouth ticked downward and her voice took on a somber tone, losing the playful lilt of a moment before.  “I hate seeing you like this,” Haruka murmured as her eyes darted around Michiru’s body, carving out a path from the bandages on her chest to the IV in her arm, and every bruise and cut in-between.  “It’ll be easier if you just take the medicine, Michi.”  Haruka’s expression was somewhat forlorn, and Michiru found that if a suitable argument existed to the contrary, she did not know it.

“All right,” Michiru whispered, index finger lightly touching the call button.  The smile returned to Haruka’s face and she leaned down to give another feather-light kiss, the sweet temptation of her breath overpowering all traces of blood on her lips.

--

When Michiru awoke the next morning, eyes squinting with the effort of not simply succumbing back into blissful sleep, her vision cleared around the sight of hawklike eyes, watching her every breath intently.  It took another moment for her to realize that it was Haruka’s gaze that met her own. “How are you feeling, Michiru?”

Michiru forced her eyelids to open and shut several times, her vision still dark at the corners despite these efforts.  “Tired,” she replied plainly as she stared at the clock, brain initially almost too sluggish to determine what it read.  “Isn’t it a bit too early for visiting hours?”  She knew that her memory wasn’t currently at its best, but a memory stirred involving someone trying to see her and a nurse shooing them away, citing the policy as their argument faded into the blackness of sleep.

“Not if you’re family,” Haruka answered with a grin, although she took that moment to glance down at the watch on her arm.  “Visiting starts soon - bet the girls will be here right as they open it up.  Are you sure you feel well enough to leave?”

“I don’t feel as though I have much option,” she sighed, head sagging against the pillow behind it, the one that hadn’t improved from Haruka’s dozen or so attempts to fluff it up.  Hotaru had been correct; she was healing more quickly than a normal person would.  The doctor attributed this progress to his own qualifications, unable or unwilling to see what was there instead, and Michiru had allowed him to think that was the case.  But a few of the nurses didn’t seem to trust the good doctor as much as he trusted himself - the woman who had changed the bandage over her heart where the defibrillator had scorched her flesh had made a few too many comments about the now-unblemished skin for Michiru’s comfort.

“You can do anything, Michiru.  We can do anything.”  Haruka looked to the doorway, ensuring that they were alone before continuing in slightly hushed tones.  She leaned forward co-conspiratorially, eyes alight with mischief and promise. “We could run away together, just the two of us.  Let them sort out all this mess.  Didn’t you say you wanted to go back to Paris this year?”

“But you hate Paris,” Michiru blurted out, her forehead crinkling as her limited cognitive function struggled to the surface, each thought threatening to sink back down to the ocean floor.  “And if Serenity is allowed to rule, there will be no Paris, besides.”  She pictured the Eiffel Tower replaced by a huge crystal shard and wrinkled her nose in distaste.

“Maybe - or maybe they can beat her without us.  We could be eating pastries and drinking wine this time tomorrow, if you wanted.”  It was a careful argument, measured and thought out and so unlike Haruka’s usual rash insistence that it seemed somehow more logical than the alternative.  

Because of this, Michiru was running out of arguments against the temptation of flight.  She had always known herself to be selfish, and often a coward besides, and she could think of no better Eden than the penthouse suite of a fine hotel, Haruka ordering copious room service between rounds of intimacy under the silken sheets - 

She forced those thoughts out of her head before they threatened to swallow her up, definitively shaking her head in response to the proposition.  Michiru had bitten the apple long ago, the first time her fingers touched the warm metal rod and felt the call of the sea at her command; she knew that she could never remain in that garden paradise after knowing such destruction, lest she decimate its beauty.  “What about the Mission, Haruka?  Were you not always the one who loved the Princess so?”  The argument was all wrong, all backwards - shouldn’t she be the one wishing to flee, to escape the destiny she had so loathed?

“My Princess is dead.  I have no one left to protect.”  Haruka leaned forward, eyes smoldering with heat and intensity as she swore her next words, a devotion deep as prayer falling from her lips.  “No one - except you.”

Michiru felt her heart thud and flip wetly in her chest, a combination of joy and confusion that muddled the ability to feel either emotion in its entirety.  A reply did not come swiftly, but mercifully she was saved the trouble by a knock from the doorway of her hospital room, Hotaru’s pale fist rapping against the wooden doorframe and lingering there.

Without waiting for an invitation, Hotaru entered.  She was followed by Minako, the cadence of her walk almost military, and then Rei, her usual stomping footfalls louder than the rest as she bustled in behind.

“You got everything fixed, right?” Hotaru asked as she stopped at the foot of the bed, crossing her arms impatiently.

“And good morning to you all as well,” Michiru snipped, knowing that perhaps she deserved no niceties but wishing for them all the same, especially from the girl she had once looked after as though she were her own.  “Yes, everything is taken care of.”

“Good,” Minako answered, ignoring the snide remark.  “Once we get you home, Hotaru has volunteered to use her healing powers on you intermittently.  It’ll help the healing happen even faster.”

“Thank you,” she replied frankly, trying to catch Hotaru’s gaze as the younger girl pointedly looked out of the window to her right.  

Minako snorted.  “Don’t take it as a favor; we need all four of us if we have any chance of taking down Serenity, especially now that she has Mercury with her.”

“Five,” Michiru automatically corrected, also choosing to ignore the slight handed to her, the two exchanging blows in a more intense version of their usual verbal sparring, the training foils replaced with thin, sharp blades that required a deft ballet to dodge.

The three women standing at the bottom of her bed looked at one another with indiscernible expressions before Rei stepped closer to Michiru, eyes fixed firmly on her own.  “Michiru, there are four of us.”

Michiru shook her head and looked at Haruka, still sitting in the corner, her expression neutral as she watched the exchange.  “Unless the fundamentals of basic mathematics have been altered during my absence, I am counting five.  You, Hotaru, Minako, Haruka, and myself.”  She punctuated each name by gesturing loosely towards the corresponding woman, their eyes following her movements.

“Shit,” Minako cursed under her breath.

“I told you,” hissed Hotaru at the same time.  Rei was silent as she turned to glare at them both, and Minako turned away from the bed, her expression hidden from view.  Rei inhaled deeply before perching on the bed next to Michiru, the mattress sagging under her weight.

“Michiru, where’s Haruka?” she asked, her tone that nearly-gentle lilt she sometimes used with Usagi when she was being particularly difficult, a patient schoolteacher imparting a lesson on some unruly child.

She huffed somewhat, unaccustomed to being patronized by anyone, let alone one of very few people that she would consider a friend.  “She’s right there,” Michiru indicated, again pointing to the corner where Haruka sat sideways in the chair, her back resting against the wall.  “She’s been here since I woke up.”

Rei opened her mouth to say something, but Minako whipped around in a flurry of blonde hair and raised her face up to meet Michiru’s gaze, tears streaming down her cheeks even as her eyes were filled with fury.  “Haruka’s dead.”

Michiru felt her heart burst open and drop, hemorrhaging blood and bile into her stomach as it twisted and roiled in her gut.  Her eyes moved unbidden to the corner chair, where Haruka was casually engaged in staring at the ceiling.  “That’s not possible,” Michiru whispered, the words shaking as her breaths heaved unsteadily.

“Oh, it’s more than possible,” Minako answered coldly, her voice a sword as it was unsheathed, the metallic scraping present over every syllable.  “It happened.  You didn’t stab the monster; you stabbed Uranus - you stabbed Haruka - instead.”  She let out a bitter snort, and it was the sound of the blade pushing through flesh.  “You’d think you’d remember killing your own partner.”

Michiru shook her head wildly, hands clenching the hospital sheets as they balled into tight fists at her sides.  “Whatever idea of a joke you are presenting, it is not funny, Minako,” she hissed, never taking her eyes off of Haruka, almost afraid that if she looked away, the woman would disappear into the wind.

Rei took hold of her hand and Michiru startled slightly at the contact, her gaze moving to the woman on her bed instinctively.  The hand squeezed hers carefully, avoiding the IV line, and all Michiru could focus on was the fact that Rei’s middle finger’s nail polish was chipped, a piece of the red missing to reveal the pale pink underneath, naked and exposed.  “She’s telling the truth, Michiru,” Rei said in tones almost hushed enough to be a whisper, a sort of pleading in her eyes that Michiru pretended not to see as she looked back to the chair where Haruka still sat, handsome and smiling and real.

“I told you we should have run away together,” Haruka murmured sadly, a wry grin on her face.  She pulled a perfectly red apple from her pocket and took a bite, letting the juices run down her chin.

[honeyhan-123]

Say Thank You VIII

Series Summary: Nearly five years have passed since Steve Rogers saves your life without so much as a thank you. When he sees you again by chance, he makes sure that he’ll never let you go and maybe teach you some manners in the process.

Series Warning: This will be a dark!Steve fic with stalking, kidnapping and manipulating as well as non-con and dub-con situations. Please don’t read it if you don’t like that sort of thing.

Chapter Warnings: non con/dub-con (If you don’t like that sort of thing or it triggers you please do not read this), spanking with a belt, getting into some serious gas lighting techniques. 

Word Count: 2.8k

AN: Sexy times are here, get ready.

I. New York ~ II. Madrid ~ III. The Apartment ~ IV. The Trip ~ V. The Basement ~ VI. The First Lesson ~ VII. The Waiting Game 

Series Masterlist

My Masterlist

VIII. The First Attempt

You sat on the bed, your hands forcibly shoved underneath you as you waited, waited for him to go. It was agony, torture in the highest degree, knowing you were so close to freedom but that he might still be upstairs. You couldn’t hear anything outside of what happened in your room and so you had no idea whether he had left or not, but you figured he had been pretty much ready to go after breakfast; he had looked it at least. 

When you couldn’t take the waiting anymore, you jumped to your feet, heading over to the wall of windows, dragging the dining table with you as you went. If you stood on it, you would be able to reach them easily. You pressed your palm against the window, at this height you could see the grass on the other side, the way it gleamed in the sunlight, soaking up the sun for photosynthesis. You couldn’t wait until that would be you, lying in the grass, being able to feel the sun on your skin. 

Your forehead rested against the cool glass for a moment, wishing you could just be outside already, your lips tugged into a firm line. 

Jumping down from the table, you grabbed the small little tupperware container from the bench as you headed over to the bed, stripping the top sheet and lying it flat on the ground before heading to the dining room table. If you were going to make it out of here you would need provisions. You placed the lunch he had left in the center of the white satin before heading to the wardrobe. You tried to gather the most ‘normal’ looking clothes he had given you, not wanting to stick out too much when you were finally free. It would make it easier to hide from him. 

Laying the clothes and some toiletries down on your small pile, you briefly reconsidered your escape plan. You knew he would come looking for you, no matter where you went, he would follow. You didn’t even know where you were, the sky outside certainly didn’t look like you were still in Madrid. How were you meant to run when you didn’t know where to start? You were basically committing yourself to a life on the run from America’s hero. Is that what you really wanted? 

No, it wasn’t. But it was what you needed to do. Looking back at the dining table you knew you couldn’t continue to be his little doll, not for another minute. You gathered the corners of the sheet, tying them together to form a rucksack of sorts and hoisted it onto your shoulders, heading back over to the table and pressing your palm against the cool glass once again. 

It was a welcome relief on your skin as you contemplated the next step of your plan: how to smash the window… 

+

Steve had left nearly as soon as he had locked the basement door behind him. He knew that if he stayed, even for another five minutes, he would never leave. Opting instead to spend his day with you, maybe playing a little board game or sitting on the couch next to you, listening to you read your newest novel aloud. He loved the sound of your voice; the way your sweet, luscious lips curled around the words as they came out in your melodic trill. 

It had been torture in the highest form pulling away from you that morning, the ache between his legs begging him for a release and the sight of you, barely clad in what was his new favourite nightgown of yours. Oh how he had wanted to ruin your body for everyone else, ravishing you over and over again until you couldn’t walk anymore. But he had to wait, he needed your first time to be when you were ready, it would set the tone for the future of your relationship. But god was it hard to walk away from you, the way your hair was splayed across the satin sheets he had splurged on, just for you; the way you had felt so right in his arms, your body pressed against his warming him from the inside out. 

Suffice to say, his shower was a long one.

He couldn’t believe that he was really doing this, really leaving you at home, alone. You had been so well behaved the past few days, nearly always following his orders straight away. Sometimes, he could see the resistance in you, hidden behind duplicitous eyes. The sight always made him shudder, sadness creeping over his skin. You were his and he just had to wait until you realised that too, until you accepted that. Maybe that article he had read was right, maybe he had to break you before you could claim you but he hadn’t wanted to do that. He just wanted you to be his right away.

With one last glance at the basement stairs that led down to you, Steve forced his legs to carry him to his garage and drive away, all the while questioning whether or not you were really ready to be left alone.

His internal monologue had lasted all the way to the abandoned warehouse the team had been using as a headquarters, all the way through Sam’s debriefing of the mission he had missed out on and all through Nat’s threat assessment of a new up and coming cartel down in Ecuador. He knew he should be paying attention, he was the Captain of this team for crying out loud, yet every word spoken in the meeting had just flown in one ear and out the other. It was only when he heard the familiar chime of his cellphone, felt it vibrate against his thigh, that he was brought out of his internal spiral.  

His blood turned cold in his veins, his gut sinking to the floor as his phone continued to vibrate in his pocket, drawing the attention of his fellow teammates, all looking at him in wonder, curious as to who could be calling. But Steve knew better. He knew he wasn’t getting a call, everyone who had his number was in the same room as him. It was an alert; an alert that his girl was up to no good.

He excused himself from the table, heading out from the room and pulling his phone from his pocket. He forced himself to wait until he was in his office, behind closed doors before he opened it to the feed from the basement. He watched as you pressed a palm against the cool glass of the window, staring intently outside, the pressure on the glass being what had alerted him. 

A breath of relief escaped his lips. This he could deal with. He hadn’t specified that you weren’t allowed to touch the window and if that was all you were doing, that would be okay. It made sense that you wanted to look out the window, see the grass, the way it glittered in the sun. 

Steve felt a surge of guilt, it had been a while since you had felt the sun on your skin. Maybe if you were good today that could be a reward when he got home. He would pack a picnic, some dessert maybe, and you could sit out in his backyard on his lawn chairs. 

A smile crossed his face as he imagined the scene, it would be the next step to normalising your relationship and he couldn’t wait to take it with you. 

He watched as you stepped down from the window, picking up the tupperware container with your lunch as you headed back to the bed. Steve felt a surge of disappointment, were you really about to eat your lunch now? He had barely been gone for an hour, surely you weren’t hungry yet and if you ate now, you would be starving by the time he got back home. 

However, to his horror, he watched you strip the bed of its sheet, placing the packed lunch, some clothes and toiletries inside before heading back over to the window, his plans of a nice picnic in the yard ruined as he watched you pick up one of the dining room chairs, lugging it towards the bulletproof glass. Steve knew that it wouldn’t break, no matter what you threw at it but he couldn’t escape the hurt that flooded through his as he watched you try. 

When he couldn’t take it anymore; when he felt as though his rage was about to overpower him, swallow him whole, he forced himself to tear his eyes from his screen, heading back out through the hallway towards the garage, a plan forming in his head. 

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Tears cascaded down your cheeks as you stared up at the sky through the taunting window. You should have known your captor would have reinforced, unshatterable glass windows. No matter what you had thrown at it, the glass remained perfectly intact, not a crack in its perfect facade. 

You had given up shortly after breaking one of the dining room chairs from how many times you had smashed it against the window. It had seemed like the easiest thing to throw at it, something heavy and solid yet still light enough that you would be able to get some force behind it. Oh how wrong you were. All those movies where the hero easily smashes the glass by simply throwing a punch at it had lied to you. 

You dreaded Steve’s return, you knew he wasn’t going to be happy with you. The broken chair lying by the base of the wall would serve as evidence to what you had done, had tried to do. 

You didn’t hear him return, the click of the lock, the clack of his shoes against the hardwood floors. The shower had drowned out all those sounds, the water cascading around you as you scrubbed your body clean, getting it ready for him. In your desperate state you had thought that maybe if you dressed up, just like how he wanted you too, maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t be as angry. 

You had searched through the wardrobe as you returned the dresses, searching for the opposite type of dress you had that morning, trying your best to look as though you had just stepped out of the forties. 

As you washed the last strip of conditioner from your hair, you felt his steel grip around your arm, his other hand forcing the shower off as he tugged you from the warm water. You didn’t dare look at his eyes, too afraid of the rage and disappointment that you were sure you would find conveyed in his clear blue eyes. 

He didn’t say a word as he forced you onto the bed, the room unnaturally dark as you glanced at the windows, seeing that a metallic covering had formed over all of them, blocking any light that might have entered the room. 

You cowered, trying to cover your body with you hands as he stood at the foot of the bed, his eyes taking in your naked body. 

‘S-St-Steve - Sweetheart, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’ You tried to scramble up the bed, take his face into your hands, your thumbs running across his cheeks leaving a wet trail behind them. 

‘Shut up slut. I don’t want to hear it.’ He grabbed your hands in his, easily flipping your body over, pushing you face first onto the mattress, binding each hand to opposite bed posts with metal handcuffs you had never seen before. You turned your face to him, cheek pressing against the dampening satin sheets, watching as he stared down at you, trepidation flooding through you. 

Even on that first day when you had refused to get out of bed he hadn’t looked this mad, his eyes practically ablaze. ‘Steve, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry my love. I promise, I’ll be your girl, your good girl. I’m sorry.’ Your words mixed together, covered by the sobs that wrecked through your body as he circled you, the clack of his shoes against the floor the only sound emanating from him.

‘I’m sorry Doll but the time for promises has passed. Your actions today have proven that you can’t be trusted. I hadn’t wanted it to come to this, I thought that maybe we could just skip over this entire step but apparently not. You need to be broken, only then will you be able to become fully mine like I want you to be. It may take a while, but I’m a very patient man.’ His tone was mocking, poking fun at your attempted escape.

His hand trailed down your back, ever so gently as he spoke, raising goosebumps across your skin. He picked up your hips, forcing you onto your knees as you heard the clink of his belt buckle coming undone. Your eyes squeezed closed, waiting for the zip of his fly to sound through the silent room, yet it never came. Instead, you heard the faint hiss of the leather against the air before it smacked down onto the tender skin of your arse. 

You had thought his palm had hurt, but that had nothing on the stiff leather in his hands as it reigned down onto you. Unlike last time, he didn’t make you count, something you were grateful for as there was no way you could have managed it between your shouts, pleas for him to stop. He also didn’t stop at ten like he had last time, continually hitting your skin for what felt like hours as you lay, helpless, at his mercy. 

When at last he did stop, the leather ceasing its abuse against your raw skin, you couldn’t form words, not when you heard the zip of his fly you had been waiting for, not when you felt the bed shift as he kneeled behind you or when you felt his fingers against you, swirling in the slick that you had no memory of forming. 

You heard his groan, felt his fingers circle against your sweet little bundle of nerves as he pushed his tip against you. His words from that morning apparently flying out the window as he eased in, inch by inch. 

Despite the wetness - which you were still confused about - he hurt. It hurt when his thick cock stretched your walls beyond what you could manage, when his tip felt as though it were brushing directly against your womb, when his pelvis met the tender skin of your ass, no doubt smearing the blood from the cuts his belt had caused. Despite all that physical pain, it was the mental pain that hurt the most, the way pleasure wrecked through your broken body as his finger pressed against you, matching the speed at which he rutted into you. 

‘I don’t know why I didn’t just start with this. Look at how your responding to me Sweetheart, look at the way your body craves me. Only I can give you this pleasure, only me.’ His breathing was heavy, pulling at your still wet hair, forcing your back to arch despite your hands still being cuffed to the bedpost as he spoke. 

You could only moan in response, the feeling of him brushing up against that sweet spot inside you too much to bear. ‘C’mon Sweetheart. You said you were going to be my good girl, so do it. Cum for me. Cum for me now.’ 

Your body followed his commands, pulsing around his cock, milking it as he emptied into you, his cum spilling out across your lips, down your thighs as he pulled out, a gentle slap - nothing in comparison to his belt - to your ass as he got off the bed, pulling his clothes on. 

‘I don’t know how long it’s going to take to make you compliant, but like I said earlier, I’m a very patient man.’ You heard the sound of his footsteps growing fainter as he neared the door, disappearing through it, the sound of the lock clicking as you realised he wasn’t coming back, not for a while at least. He was just going to leave you like this, face pressed against the wet sheets, cum spilling out of your aching hole and your hands tied above your head. 

Although you had thought you had used up your entire supply of tears as he had hit you, fresh ones started cascading down your cheeks, the darkness your only company as you cried until sleep could claim you.

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IX. The Darkness

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