#that isn’t twisted up!!! and it would look weird to untwist it because I’m not gonna spend 200 bucks to get a hat I’d rather make it! but

[iammycharacter]

I got irrationally frustrated yesterday because I read bsd stormbringer. And yes I loved it the book was great. What pissed me off was that the hat Chuuya wears is described as being a bowler hat

Excuse me! It does not look like a bowler hat! I have seen the anime and read some of the manga but seriously! Bowler hats have a very rounded top and the sides curl up. The brim on bowler hats is also quite small!

In the anime there is a character that wears a bowler hat!! Natsume! It actually looks like a bowler hat!

Chuuyas hat brim is kinda hard to tell because it is actually very small but the top is flat or has that crease in it. If it has the crease then it’s probably a trilby or fedora but doesn’t have the brim folded up in the back. More likely a tribute because of the size of the brim.

Or it might be a pork pie hat because that is a very flat hat and I’ve seen a number of Chuuya cosplayers wear them! It deffinitly fits but the brim is too wide most of the time to be what he cannonically wears!!!

Idk if it was translated badly, or Rimbaud just know fuck all about hat types but there is no way that Chuuya wears a bowler hat

[sorry-i-ship-drarry]

Could you please do 4 with lots of banter maybe? And an amnesia fic with happy ending with any prompt that you haven't done yet? The first fic I read was based on Harry losing his memory and you wrote the 27 prompt so very beautifully. So please?

Thank you so much @slytherinnbitch for your request and your compliments. All the same for you, you are incredible my love.

It feels like rain

Dialogue Prompt- 18. We both know that i should walk away, but i can't.| TW- Alcohol | Angst with happy ending | Amnesia |

The smells of the scented candles invaded the entire living room as the music poured melodiously echoing the corners. Draco walked around the house making sure everything was close to perfect as they had planned, it'll be the perfect belated anniversary as they had planned. Everything was planned.

Only it wasn't.

The phone rung loudly, making Draco to stop chopping the coriander leaves. Huffing as the ringing grew louder, he wiped his hands over his floral customised apron embroidered with his and Harry's name and he finally picked up the call.

" hello "

" mr. Malfoy it's an emergency, we need you-"

" Macy I told you I can't. Didn't I tell you to find someone else-"

" Sir, it'-its-"

" it's what?"

" it's your boyfriend"

Draco’s breath was caught in his throat, his heartbeat quickening at the pronouncement. And then, everything stilled.

____________________________

What it's to be in love, draco had always wondered. Up until now he always thought that perhaps loving was in showering harry with gifts, or Maybe bringing him flowers, or making breakfast for him before leaving, or taking harry out for dinner, or maybe even letting him cry over his shoulder after he had a rough day but when life hurled and kicked draco's door down, everything as if twisted into untwisting circles and suddenly loving became a remembering to him.

It was no longer bringing harry his coffee in bed, but it was him adding quips everytime draco tried to soften thing's up. He still sees in Harry's movements how a part of him was twitching to touch draco, to feel him, to perhaps remember him but it was maybe harry holding himself back, the new harry, the one that would not allow conversations with draco for more than 10 minutes.

He could recall that night when he ran to the infirmary to look in depth what exactly had happened. 4 hours in the room, healing wounds, casting spells, stitching injuries, cleansing harry, he woke up in Draco's absence Only to be informed later,

" Harry's suffered amnesia "

Hope was what he was left to Drown into. A lingering small flicker of hope that perhaps in those long stares Draco gave harry while medicating him, he'd remember, or maybe he'd remember him in all the small conversation Draco's tries to make, or perhaps, he'll remember through those eyes. He hoped, and he hopes, still.

But Draco hated it in all honesty, but he had Faith, he had Faith that the man he loved is still in there and will one day come out. Only the time was running out and draco would soon have to let go of harry from keeping under observation. He was afraid that in the time all he's left, that if he doesn't remember, then how would Draco cope. It was already hard to look after harry every single day and feel his eyes brim with tears of trying to find his lost treasure.

" Macy told you me you spend a lot more time looking after me than Anyone else? What makes me special malfoy ?" Harry has asked one day

Draco stopped in his movements, giving him a curt smile" th- perhaps Because I know if I spend more time with you, you'll remember "

" why are you so obsessed with me remembering ? I mean it's not like it's such a big deal right. If anything I'm happy to have forgotten something's even " harry chuckled lightly.

Draco gulped down the knot that formed in the center of his chest, dug his nails firmly into this palms wishing that Harry would take his words back, for once harry could look at draco with a vision of more than just hatred..

As if harry sensed it he added " I- I don't know if we were friends Draco, if I have mistakenly hurt your feelings by saying that, then I'm sorry "

Draco hummed and practically ran out of the room. In that time Draco decided that not talking with harry would be a much better move than to have his feelings hurt everytime Harry opened his mouth.

But it was hard, it was hard when he realised that Harry had not once opened his mouth to say I love you, because he didn't remember..

It was late in night one day when Draco was attending harry as his last patient before he could go in loneliness,when it happened,

" can I ask you something ?" Harry asked. Draco was cleansing Harry's wounds on his back when he hummed..

"Have you,” He paused, his eyes fluttering close for a moment as he cleared his throat and asked, “have you ever been in love?"

Draco paused his movements, his heart clenching almost painfully in his chest, a knot in his throat.

" you don't have to answer if you don't want to "

Harry's muscles in the back tensed up with Draco's left arm resting on it. Draco inhaled sharply resuming cleansing when he responded "Yes,” He breathed, “yes, I have "

" what does it feel like ?" Harry asked, looking a little over his shoulder as though perhaps he wanted to watch Draco.

Draco licked his lips, smiling to himself a little as he remembered the Times when Harry had remembered Loving him " it's- it's complicated "

" how exactly ?" Harry asked again

" it's- love - it feels like rain "

" feels like rain ?"

They simultaneously whispered.

" how- how do you?" Draco stilled in a jerk

Harry turned around to face Draco, a weird look on his face "there's- there are things in my head. Like there are saying, they're all jumbled. Like I know it's there, but I can't remember who said them to me. All of it is not lost you know. At least that's what I think. But it happens only in the late hours of night when I remember something's and they vanish in the morning. I don't how to feel, but I know how I've felt before, it's all weird "

And in the dying flickering fire as if someone had dropped a log again, the fire of hope grew again in Draco.

"so- y- you're saying you remember but you can't remember who ?" Draco asked cautiously..

" I mean- yeah I think " harry replied.

Draco thought for a moment " I- "

" I feel as though most of these sayings are from Ginny "

Draco's breath hitched, stopping at the hilt, suddenly feelings as all of his organs collapsed into a whole, his brain screaming and all the memories automatically putting a lock on themselves and realisation hit Draco. Harry remembered his life before Draco, or so as it felt. Before Draco, harry had only one lover and that was Ginny and whatever recollection of phrases he had remained with of with Draco became faceless and it only sounded for Harry to feel like they're all from Ginny.

"i- perhaps " Draco replied briskly before he picked up the cotton again with shaking hands and did his wounds in a blurry vision, remaining silent.

" wait- how did- why did you say love felt like rain, isn't it what- I mean i-"

" I read it somewhere " Draco vaguely replied.

" oh " harry mouthed before he wore his shirt again and watched Draco hurriedly leave the room with slumped shoulders.

_____________________________

" pa, pa pa pa para ra rara ra " Draco hummed as he knocked down doors after door's, collapsing in his office chair, raising his legs over his table, watching a frame of Draco and harry resting over it. He smiled at it before he chugged down another gulp of whiskey burning his throat.

" sir- mr. Malfoy ?" Someone said as they flicked the light on watching Draco with narrowed eyes

" oh- Macy- oh love, you know I shouldn't call you love. Well but again, you did absolutely nothing. But you know you ruined my entire life "Draco's pale eyes glimmered in tears and he chugged down another gulp.

" si- sir.. I'm-"

" do me a favor and please, leave me alone " Draco sobbed. Macy looked at Draco in pity before she turned off the lights and walked away..

Draco remained there staring at the ceiling for a long time, river of tears flowing down his cheeks, wetting his neck and his shirt, sip after sip, he emptied the bottle, crying in the agony of pain that became friendlier minute by minute.

" liar" Draco mumbled to himself, then loudly " fucking pathetic liar" only he wished he could've yelled..

" you loved me, you said you'd never forget me, you said you could never live without me, there you are fucking breathing, living, surviving, taking my breath away, leaving me to die " draco mumbled to himself staring at harry in the picture. And he cried a little more too.

Draco smeared his face with tears, rubbing his hands over his face, releasing a shaky breath before he rested his forehead against the table and left heavy sobs, a weird pain settling into his chest that pulled him in deeper, something that left him empty, Hollow but yearning. Left him heart broken..

It was seconds later, or minutes or an hour later, he had lost the count before he got up and stumbled to Harry's room and as sobriety started settling into him, He watched harry from the door, gazing softly at the sleeping figure,he didn't want to wake him up.

" he'll be fine " Someone said besides him. Draco turned his head to see a patronus hanging in the air, it was maybe a stag, he didn't know, he didn't remember.

" what if he never remembers me ?" Draco asked as it the patronus would answer.

" trust me it'd be fine " it spoke again.

Draco watched the patronus bouncing with light blue light " you don't know that. I've only a day left with him, he'll leave from here and he wouldn't remember a single thing " Draco muffled in tears.

" it'd be fine, Draco, it will be "

Groaning, Draco threw his hand over the patronus, Making it evaporate in the air, faint words still whispering" it'd be fine" until the hallway grew dark again and Draco remained there watching harry from the door.

" what if you never come back to me ?"

And with the dying hope, Draco walked back home.

Only if he had known thing's would've changed the next night. The last night.

Draco has paraded the his healers office next morning, scenting of Harry's Cologne, wearing Harry's shirt and his pendant, he never understood why he did it, but he wore it, perhaps in the last rememberance. But no matter what he did, he couldn't bring himself to meet harry that very day. Every opportunity he got, a string tugged him back as if he wasn't ready to say goodbye and it was until the end of the day, he had to finally face Harry.

" you didn't come all day ?" Harry eyes had perhaps glimmered as Draco had entered but Draco purposely ignored it, he couldn't bring himself to hope, not anymore.

" I- I had things " Draco mumbled, wearing his gloves before he checked Harry's pulse, then looked over his scars.

" y- are you mad ?" Harry had asked several minutes later after Draco has remained suspiciously silent.

" why would I be ?"

" you haven't spoken a word " harry pointed.

" it's a strategy you see, it's easier to say goodbye now " Draco mumbled heavily as he pushed away his thrumming feelings.

"y- you'll never meet me after this ?" Harry asked innocently..

Draco bit his lips as he blinked his tears away, offering harry a little smile "I'll try "

Harry spoke again after several minutes, lifting the silence " can I ask you to do something ?"

" anything " Draco whispered.

" can you just like say something so I can remember you by it? I mean we might meet, but we might not right. So I- I just want to retain a memory, just of you "

Draco could've sworn his heart leapt several feets, throbbed Loudly and unshed tears appeared " why- why do you want to ?"

" I- I don't know. I just- I don't want to forget you " harry shrugged.

Draco inhaled before he faced harry, forming a little smile once again before he said " perhaps loving you will always remain a memory, but loving you had felt like stars colliding, sun shining and daisies blooming. Loving you was homely. Now loving you will be will only be a memory "

" who said that ?"

" me " Draco smiled and he went into writing Harry's last report before he'd be ready to go..

" that- nevermind" but Harry remembered looking at Draco's chest, watching carefully the necklace that hung around his neck..

Draco didn't see him again for the rest of the day, busying himself because then maybe, letting go would be easy, saying goodbye wouldn't hurt so much anymore as he knew it did. Maybe it'll become easier.

That night before leaving, Draco stood against Harry's door, watching him sleep one last time.

" we both know I should walk away, but I can't "

And yet, yet he walked away. And still remained.

The fire remained nothing more than a shimmering spark of red and orange and Draco saw it dying out on his couch, his knees pressed against his chest. He watched it slowly die, he watched it die.

But love wasn't remembering or their love wasn't ever supposed to be just a memory, their love was in loving, their love was, still.

That very night when Draco had revisited harry and Whispered the soft words embraced in love, the midnight stroke, harry remained awake and maybe that's why it all changed..

Maybe it was the midnight or maybe it was some unsettling feeling that had remained in Harry's chest when draco had spoken about loving and home, or maybe it was Because of the pendant he saw, he knew there was something..

It came in visions, little by little, like a reel forming, moving forward when Harry jerked awake, sitting still when he remembered. He remembered Loving.

Of course, it wasn't in loving, it was in giving another chance, it was in longing, it was in seeing Draco differently that day, it was in that smile that skipped his heart beat that changed everything..

It was in falling again, once again that he remembered. That he remembered Loving was like raining, slow at first, then rapid with middle, then soothing.

Harry jumped up from the bed, running down the hallways, Calling the home number, wishing Draco would pick up but the phone was resting on the side of the telephone, ignored on purpose.

" sir, I need you to calm down-"

" I need Draco. That's what I need. That's who I need.. don't you see I remember. I remember everything" harry manically yelled.

" yo- you remember ?"

" yes I remember. See I know. You're macy, you work under Draco, the first day you joined you spilled coffee all over Draco's shirt and somehow in trying to help him clean up, you changed his shirts colour to pink. Remember ?" Harry yelled

Macy looked in shock, words dying in her throat.

" I remember everything. I- I need to see Draco" harry ordered.

" but- he requested- he left "

" left ?where ?" Harry asked impatiently.

" he didn't say. He said he's going and didn't mention when he'll come back "

" that ass " Harry mumbled.

" do you have any idea where he might go ?" Harry shook macy violently.

" I- n-no I don't " she stammered. Harry tugged his hair as he started brainstorming, thinking about all the places he could be. All of them but nothing-

"of course, the cottage house " harry jumped up, adrenaline pumping inside every nerve of him.

" but- I - can't let you go " macy said

" oh watch me" and without even thinking Harry disapparted.

________________________________

Draco watched as the rain poured down, wetting the window. The fire had died down, maybe not even remaining sparks, and the room grew colder and darker with the absence of warmth and light. But he sat there, knees pressed against his chest, head resting on the wall behind him as his eyes begged for tears to stop, his fingers playing with the necklace lying on his chest.

And just as the thunder broke again, he saw the figure appearing in the living room. It should've scared him but Draco felt insane, hallucinated perhaps.

" Draco " it spoke..

Draco didn't reply, not wanting to feel stupid talking in hallucinations.

" it's me Draco. I'm here " he whispered.

" as if " Draco mumbled.

" I really am " he Whispered. Draco narrowed his eyes at the figure and stepped down the windowsill to face him.

" liar. I know you're not " Draco said as he approached him.

" I really am " he whispered as he too stepped closer.

Draco was an inch apart when he touched him, waiting for his hands to go through, only it didn't and Shock formulated like a slow chemical reaction and he gasped when he realised..

" you -"

" I am very much real " he chuckled holding Draco's sides.

" but you- you forgot "

" I remember, I remember everything Draco"

" no, you- you had amnesia. You're playing with me " Draco harshly Whispered..

He huffed " you think coasters make good wall posters and that they make good show pieces, that's why most of our coaster are on the wall instead of under the cups "

Draco stilled " yo- you-"

" I remember, love, I remember " and without thinking twice, Draco hugged harry breaking into heavy sobs. Mumbling incoherent words.

" I'm so sorry. I'm never forgetting you ever again. I'm so so sorry " harry Whispered as he hugged Draco tighter.

" i- I love you " Draco mumbled in sobs.

" I love you too. Fuck, I missed you "

The wind blew through the door, just as they broke the hug, the cold air stirring inside going through the fireplace, and they kissed, the fire grew again, lighting the darkness Again, the warmth invading again and Love settling in once again.

My greatest Apologies for delaying it longer than I ever should have. Ofc I'm back to writing, so further requests are soon to be delivered. Bear with me. Also thanks to @drarrywords

300 followers appreciation dialogue Prompt requests open

Angst prompt requests open

[plush-rabbit]

Ultra Gold

Warnings: Dubcon, Noncon, Omorashi, Implied Yandere, Implied Kidnapping

Word Count: 5.1K

A/N: It’s here!! I hope you all like it!!

-

He may be cruel and weird, but at least he isn’t starving you. He walks in- in what you would assume is a scheduled time but you wouldn’t know with the lack of clock and boarded up windows that don’t provide any sort of shadows or sun position to at least let you know how long you’ve been here. He’ll come in with a bottle of water and a bowl of fruit or some odd food that’s been sold by a street vendor you once visited before you’ve entered your current predicament. 

Tomura Shigaraki- a man who has committed many crimes that now include kidnapping. You frown. No, he’s kidnapped before so you aren’t even his first in that regard. You’ve been kidnapped by an already established villain for reasons that you are still unsure of. Perhaps you were too nice when you had met him. All you had done is talk to a lonely looking man on the train home, iced coffee in hand that had given you an odd boost of energy and confidence. After that fateful day, you had begun to see more of him, always secluded, never with another person and always seeking you out, making sure that you are alone. You can’t really recall any other time that had given him the wrong idea that you were interested in him romantically. Sure, he was cute with soft blue hair and an almost dangerous smile that was completely snuffed out when he spoke about his interests in gaming and comics. He had the looks of a delinquent and the personality of a soft-spoken nerd. Maybe if he were someone else, you would have grown a crush on him. If he weren’t so creepy, you could have actually fallen for him in a way that counted. 

For now, you rest on a worn bed, clean pink sheets that can barely fit the bed and an old horror manga that leaves you feeling sick in the stomach. The room is neat and empty. Not a single piece of trash that litters the cold floor and only a few books that fill a box in the corner of the room. It was empty when you arrived and the only reason it was filled with something that could entertain you was because you had called him by his name when he asked of you. Tomura. The name makes acid rise in your throat, an odd bubble that makes your mouth burn. 

He’s cruel and weird. He lingers too close to you when you sleep, watching as you eat and drink the things he offers. He touches you experimentally, watching your face twist into a mask of pain and horror to cover the pleasure that courses through your veins when he happens to circle your clit. He doesn’t do anything further than touch you through your underwear and hump your leg like a dog. He pants in your ear and calls your name, twists your nipples until you're crying and begging him to be gentle. He forces you to eat, drenching the soft candy in the water he brings you and stuffing it into your mouth when it has grown soggy enough. 

You tried to fight him in the beginning. You managed a hunger strike and slept the pain away but when he threatened to spit into your mouth like a fletching, you gave in and ate the soft fruit that only made you feel sick late into the night. 

Shadows appear under the door, the voices are muffled and you can hear the snarky laughter of one that’s silenced by a bang against the door. You flinch at the sound and scoot to the corner of the bed, knees pulled to your chest and arms wrapped tight around your legs. The shadows disappear until one is left and like a dog, your mouth salivates and stomach grumbles as the door creaks open. 

Shigaraki walks in with a bowl of fruit in one hand, a water bottle placed meticulously above it. He greets you with a smile, ignoring the look you give him, and sets the food on the floor, the water bottle placed beside it. You wonder if he’s actually interested in you romantically- or sexually- or if he’s just seeing you as some sort of pet. 

“Come on,” he gestures with a hand. “Eat up. I know you’re hungry.” His smile is terrifying, stretching past any reasonable smile you’ve seen before, twisted and wide like it’s been pinned with needles in the corners of his lips. You refuse to move. There’s still a bit of fight left inside of you. His smile falls. “Eat. It’s been a long day for me and if you try to disobey me, I will make you regret it.” His threat is enough for you to scramble into a quick crawl and sit with your legs crossed. 

You hold the bowl in your hands. Watermelon. A bright red color, seedless and huge chunks filling the bowl. Your mouth waters at the sight. It isn’t filling- mostly water-weight, but it’s something. You keep your head low, eyes glued onto the fruit. “Thank you,” you whisper in a low breath. He clears his throat and red sneakers come into your field of vision. “Thank you, Tomura.”

“Of course-” you can hear the smile- “anything for you.” He sits in a mirrored position to you. Legs crossed, hands covered in half-covering gloves as he watches you eat. “Maybe tomorrow I can bring you something a bit more filling.”

Your stomach churns at the word. You have no doubt he would bring you something filling, but you worry what he’ll place inside of the food. You still do. “No.” Your answer is hesitant, and you can feel his eyes on you. “Fruit is fine.” You force a smile to appear on your face as you look up at him. “Really,” you reassure, trying to soften your smile into something more genuine. For emphasis, you stab your fork into the sweet watermelon and bite it with vigor, humming at the taste on your tongue. 

It’s quiet afterwards. Tense and awkward and you want to bury your face into the mattress. Thoughts start to spiral in your head, until you’re gripping the plastic fork in your hand. The bowl is empty. A red-tinged watered resting in place where the watermelon was once plentiful. Your hands shake as you place the bowl down, your breathing taking a sharp inhale as it clacks against the floor. The bottle cap is twisted tightly onto the bottle and you are unable to open it, the sharp grooves digging into your skin. You are unable to open the water bottle. You lower your head and pull the bottle close to you. 

“Can you-”

“Do you-” 

Words are mixed with each other and you clamp your mouth shut. You allow him to continue and watch him with wide eyes. 

You know- you just know- that he’s reading into the words, into the fact that you both spoke at the same time. You know, because if you were in his position, you’d do the same thing. You’d over analyze and then rationalize to avoid hurting your own feelings. But when he has the ball in his court, when he is able to mold what you can and have to say, he is able to read as much as he wants into the shared moment no matter how small. 

When it’s clear that you allow him to speak first, he clears his throat. “Do you want me to open the bottle?” You swallow whatever spit has formed in your mouth- thick and sweet, something that you have to force to go down. 

“Yes, please.” You hold the bottle towards him and his finger grazes your bare skin. And it burns. You try not to pull away too fast, holding the finger close to the palm of your hand, rubbing the pad of your finger over the knuckle that he touched, trying to rid yourself of his touch. The bottle clicks open and he hands it towards you, cap loosened. You take it slowly avoiding touching him with as much ease and grace that you can muster. “Thank you,” you hesitate, the rim of the bottle against your lips, “Tomura.” You close your eyes and drink the water, gulping it down until the bottle thins as the air and water are sucked out of it. An inch of it remains and you lower the bottle, holding it in your hands carefully, running your thumbs over the ridges of the bottle. It’s tense and awkward- always has been and always will be. 

“Do you need any other books? I think I can find a DVD player somewhere and try to find a movie or something for you?” He actually sounds hopeful and you feel so tired, your eyes growing heavy and emptiness overtaking any energy you once had.

“You know what I want,” you murmur under your breath. “I want to go home.” you emphasis the last word and stare at the words on the plastic wrapping of the water bottle. “You can’t keep me here forever.” He doesn’t answer and you take it as a sign to push forward. “Please Tomura,” your voice cracks, “I miss my friends and family.”

“But you belong to me.” Your shoulders fall at his words, a hand sliding upwards, twisting and untwisting the bottle cap. “I found you and saved you from the horrors of the world, I don’t understand why you can’t see that. You're safe with me. You know that.” The bottle cap twists off and you shut your eyes as you take the final swig from the bottle.

You hold the empty bottle in your hand and he takes it from you. “No.” You swallow an anxiety that you have and force yourself to replace it with false confidence. “You stole me. You took me away from the people that I love.” Your eyes waver as they stare at his. “I want to go home Tomura.”

“No.” He answers simply. 

You gawk at him, disbelief written on your face as you stare at him. “That isn’t fair!” You shout, smacking your thighs with the flat of your hands. “I’m allowed to be a free person. You can’t just keep me here because… because you have this sick obsession with me!” Your hands wave in the air and you take in a deep breath, chest light of air. “You can’t act like some-” you turn to look at the sides as if the answer lies there- “like some child!”

His hands grab roughly at the bottle of water and he crushes it in his hand, the plastic crinkling in a harsh sound that reverbs through the empty room. You swallow what little spit there is in your mouth and stare at the bottle as it is flung towards the wall, bouncing with a thud and landing on the floor. You suck in your bottom lip, your breathing stopping as you refuse to look at him. 

You fail to notice the finger that scratches at the plastic, a long, uncut nail creating a tear in the paper.. “I am not a child,” he says through gritted teeth.

“Yes, you are!” You shout, eyes watering as you stare at him. “You can’t just steal me because you’re doing something you-” you point a finger at him- “think that whatever the hell this is is right. You’re just some bratty little kid. For fuck’s sake!” You slam your hands on the floor and he narrows his eyes at you. “I want to go home!”

It’s silent for a moment, the room only filled with your heavy breathing from the yelling- from the emotions that have piled up, from the solitude that you’ve been forced to endure because of some inept weirdo who wanted to save you as if he were the very thing that he hated. “You’re being a brat,” he says in a condescending voice. It’s like he’s speaking to a child, a dotting smile on his face as he lowers himself to the ground. A hand grabs at your chin and forces you to look at him, fabric scratching at your skin and nails sharp on you. His smile is soft, eyes scrunched up as the corners of his lips push upwards. “Don’t forget who’s in charge here.” His eyes widen expectantly, his smile now forced and thin. “Okay?” You don't answer, and instead bite the inside of your cheeks. His smile falls and the grip on your face tightens. “I don’t want to repeat myself.”

“You’re in charge,” you mutter through squished lips. “I’m sorry, Tomura.” His smile returns and he releases your face. You force yourself to not soothe over the burning sensation where he touched you. 

“Good girl,” he tells you. He leans towards you and kisses your temple, pulling away with a serious look on his face. “Don’t make the mistake again.” He grabs the fruit bowl and stands, letting out a breath. He turns on his heel, walking away from you, in a steady stride. 

Your brows furrow and your mouth falls in a frown. “Wait,” it comes out in a soft whisper, you turn and sit on your knees and shuffle towards him. “Wait,” you call out again, “Tomura?” he stops in his tracks and turns his head to the side, a scarlet eye glinting under the light. He hums in a question, and waits for you to speak. “What- What about-” the question sounds embarrassing spoken out loud but you’re sure that it’s another tortuous method of his. What about- you know?” Your eyes glance to the side and you clear your throat. “The- The bathroom break?”

He turns around to face you, head tilted to the side and he sighs. “This is just to make sure that you remember your place next time.” Your eyes widen and as if like it was just waiting to appear at the worst moment possible, you can start to feel the urge to relieve yourself. “Try not to make a mess.” The door closes with a soft click as it always has and you’re left alone.

It starts off as a small build-up. A pressure against your lower stomach that makes your legs start to bounce in a nervous tick. He hasn’t been back. You don’t know how long it’s been but you start to fear he won’t be back. But that’s ridiculous. He wouldn’t ignore you for so long. Not when both of you are so dependent on one another. Attention, the warmth of another, and for you, the source of food. He gives you life, gives you the attention that you have missed for so long, he touches you with rough hands, and gives you a pleasure that you deny yourself in fear that he has cameras hidden in the room that was made- or rather saved- for you. 

The pressure grows, something heavy and throbbing. You lie on the mattress, curled on your side, hands held and arms stretched so it rests between your legs. You whine and furrow your brows. Your body shakes and you try to remember the “hack” that your friend had once told you to in order to stop yourself from the feeling of urination. 

You breath harshly, biting your bottom lip and letting it go once your teeth dig into the soft flesh. You suck in the inside of your cheeks, your molars biting down on the soft flesh. You feel full, a swelling tummy full of water, and it’s painful. It pushes against your lower belly, your heat throbbing the further you keep yourself in this personal hell. 

He might be cruel and perverted, but he’s never withheld something like this from you. You always thought it was some sort of pride on his end, to lead you around the hideout like some sort of ant, walls much too similar for you to make any sense, eyes then covered once he saw your flickering eyes and that’s when you were sure that he kept spinning you around in circles. But now, with his silent goodbye, and lack of checking in on you in who-knows-how-long, you were starting to worry that you wouldn’t be free to go to the bathroom anytime soon.

You are still above the bed, slowly moving a leg outwards only to stop and whine when a dribble of urine rushes out. You suck in a harsh breath and dig your nails into your thighs. You try to ignore the feeling, trying to steady your breath as everything begins to twist in it’s feelings. The pain is replaced by something more pleasurable, a throbbing against your cunt and your eyes water, a high-pitched gasp escaping past your lips. You rock yourself against your forearms, the friction relieving your mind from the unbearable pain that strained against you seconds ago. It’s pathetic, rocking yourself against your arms, finding pleasure in this humiliating experience where he has metaphorically held your bladder hostage. You let out another gasp, high and broken, biting on your lower lip to silence the noises.

The door creaks open as you hump yourself on your arms, eyes shut tight and breathy moans filling the room. You are unaware of the eyes watching you, the soft click of the door that matched the one done so long ago. Your toes curl and your nails press deeper into your skin. The friction burns well, sick gratification coursing through your veins.

“I never took you for having a piss kink,” he mutters, a knee pressed down against the mattress. You freeze in place, cunt tightened as if that would prevent urine to leak. “Don’t stop. It’s actually interesting. I’ve never seen you actually pleasure yourself. And with a full bladder? You really are some sort of degenerate.” You can hear the smile in his voice as he speaks and you can feel your face burn in humiliation, your heart races and pulses in your neck, a heavy pounding that makes your ears throb. 

“I-” you lick your lips- “I need to pee, Tomura,” you croak out, pinching your eyes tight until colors and shapeless forms start to hover in your vision. “Please.” You open your eyes and and breathe heavily, your chest rising and heaving, nipples rigid and poking through the thin of your shirt. A tingle spreads from your cunt, making you tighten your legs, clit throbbing and your sex weakening. 

The bed creaks and you suck in a deep breath through pursed lips. Urine leaks out in small dribbles and you remove your arms, clamping your legs tight. You turn on your back and can feel a slick slide down. 

Heavy hands lay on your ankles and your vision clouds with tears. You yelp as your ankles are gripped and you’re pulled down the bed until your legs are bent over the bed. “It’s a heavy feel against you, throbbing and awful, pleasurable and you place your hand over your mouth, your knuckles touching your cheek. Hands slide up your legs and you release a bit more, your underwear growing wet and sticking to your skin. You bite on the skin exposed to you, pain flaring in sharp tingles.

Clothes are pulled from your skin and you lay bare on the bed, your underwear around your ankles. “A wet spot,” he hums. “Are you aroused or are you just pissing yourself like some filthy whore?” You bite deeper on your skin and whine loudly, trying to close your legs only to be paused by a hand that meets at your inner thigh. 

You cannot answer and instead choose to stay silent out of necessity, biting down on your skin. Your legs are bent upwards and rest on the edge of the bed; your underwear slowly peeled off and placed somewhere unknown. Your legs are spread and unwillingly, you spill further onto yourself, the urine smelling strong of acid and wetting the bed underneath you. 

You release your wrist from your mouth and speak through gathered saliva. “I’m sorry,” you sob, tears slipping down your cheeks, trying to cross your legs. “I need to pee, Tomura,” you cry, chest stuttering and hands moving to cover your face awkwardly. “Please,” you beg, clenching tightly on yourself to avoid any further leaking. Your lower half grows wet and uncomfortable and you can feel a heavy gaze on your sex. 

"If you do, you'll dirty the bed. I'm angry enough that I won't get you another." His nose touches against your inner thigh, a soft graze of his skin in yours that makes you flinch. "You'll have to sleep in your own piss.” You can feel your clit twitch, a spasm that shudders through your body and makes goosebumps rise and prick on your skin. “It would teach you to learn some manners.” You can feel his fingers crawl upwards towards your legs, thin and nimble fingers that touch and pull quickly against your soft flesh, the warmth of your skin burning under his touch. His nails drag against your skin and leave faint scratches. 

The pressure builds, tightening that coils around your stomach, squeezing taut, unforgiving and warm, much too hot for you to feel comfortable. His finger grazes at your labia and warmth floods out and drips onto his finger. You choke down your sob, covering your eyes and pinching your thighs together only to meet the sides of his head. Heat floods throughout your body. He’s seen you nude before, pawed at your skin like a ravenous man- like a lonely one. He’s kissed at your bare skin until you’ve cried, rough hands that jumped at contact with your sex. He’s seen it up close, pressed his face close until your scent had filled his lungs- “sweet and acidic” as he called it- but he’s never held himself so close to you when you were on the verge of leaking. 

“Such a sweet cunt-” you press the heels of your palms harsh against your mouth, stifling a groan when his tongue pushes forward and slips between your lips- “even when filled with piss.”

Your teeth gnaw on your bottom lip, the tip of your tongue lapping at the sore, tender spot left by your teeth. Your heart races, pumping loudly in your chest and pulsing deep within your cunt, “You’re being mean.” Your words are muffled and tears sting behind your closed eyelids. “Tomura-” You let out a stifled mewl, clenching your thighs tight around his head. His tongue swirls around your pulsing bud, the throbbing heat intense and feeling like an actual heartbeat as he presses his face close to your sex. 

You feel hot, warmth burning in your entire body, the tight coil held so tightly that you can imagine the seams ripping. You can’t allow yourself the mortification of relieving yourself on his face. You’re sure that he would derive some sort of twisted pleasure from seeing you in such a horrid situation. 

His chapped lips kiss your sex, lips moving open and closed, pulling against your gummy flesh, his tongue peeking in and scooping up the arousal that drips from you. His mouth leaves you cold and empty, your breathing slowing into deeper gasps for air, your hands curling and twisting the bed sheet under. His name is a broken chant on your tongue, body twisting as he pushes himself inside of you. Your walls hugging him tightly, pulling on his shaft and molding to his shape. 

He’s ruthless. Using you only as a living sex doll, fucking you slowly and without care, watching as your eyes grow wide, mouth parting open and your breasts swinging as he moves you on his cock. He fills you well, the pressure on your tummy heavier and you are unable to keep a tight grip on it, a spittle of piss spilling out onto him, drenching your burning skin. He leans over you, his breath fanning across your face and your eyes grow a distant look onto them. 

“Nothing but a fucking slut,” he says through gritted teeth. “You deserve this. Everything that has happened to you is all your fault,” he spits at you. A hand wraps around your throat, pressure against the side of your neck, making your pulse point stutter. “All you had to do was love me. All you had to do was be a good, little girl and instead you spit on me.” His hand tightens and his voice grows into an echo. “You’re lucky I care for you so much.” His canine shines and glowing red eyes are all that you see in a growing pit of darkness and hate. A thick glob of spit meets your cheekbone and you are too out of it to wipe it away. “If it weren’t for me, you’d be alone.” He leaves close to you, red eyes that stare into yours, full of hate and hurt, voice in a low snarl as he speaks. “No one will ever love you like I do.”

Your orgasm washes out in waves, cascading around his cock and keeping him there as you ride your orgasm. It’s unforgiving and harsh, your body shaking and tense, head tilted back and neck exposed, the fabric scratching underneath your nails. His cock pulls out, wet and sliding between the sandwiched folds, leaving you empty and twitching. Your twitching bud feels hot as your urine flows out, an acidic scent filling the air. Your face is flushed, eyes wet with tears and mouth open in a silent scream as you wet yourself. Your legs shake, heavy and sporadic as something wet fills the bed and stains your thighs. Your sex pulses like a heart beat, tears falling down the curve of your face. You are distant from the world, sobbing and closing your legs together, shaking your head repetitively. 

The bed squeaks and you are unknown to it. Dips fall between your body, a heavy heat moving from the curve of your stomach to the valley between your breasts,  a sticky leak trailing against you. A heated tip presses against your lower lip, your tongue sliding out in a curve. Something thick slides down the back of your throat. It’s salty and acidic, your face scrunching up and something thick fills your mouth, the girth of his cock unexpected and your eyes widen, tears catching on your lashes like dew on an early morning. 

A man filled with negative emotions, he takes it out on you. He claims to love, the perverted twist on it nothing more than a questionable attachment. He buries himself in you, cares nothing for you when you gag and choke, a wet sounding cough that vibrates on his swollen cock. He is pressed flush against you, your nose buried in a thick coil of his pubic hair. Your arms move on their own, moving to grip onto his thighs, the sharp “pat’ sound on his package slapping against your chin. Your jaw hurts, minded clouded with your post-orgasm and the humiliation that has begun to settle within you. Your body is tired, pushed beyond any limits that you thought you had. Somewhere deep in your mind, you register that this is your fault. You should have just asked for a coloring book.

Tomura curses obscenities into the room, your name mingled with foul language that makes you wince. He’s rough and terrifying. You should have realized that this wasn’t some lovesick fool; this was a grown man who has grown and festered in a wicked environment and now you must care for him as if he were a lover or suffer this fate again.

Tears slide down your eyes and you sob. You choke against him, your nails dragging against his pale skin and leaving red lines in its wake. He grunts like a mad man, words long gone, the pronunciation and control of tongue something that had slipped away from him when you began to cry. He cries your name, and you can picture the mess that he looks now- pale hair that sticks to his face, a red flushed face and drool that drips from his lips.

Spit stains both you and him and through a mouth full of cock, you call his name. It’s nowhere near filled with grace or with hate, a sore jaw that has grown tired from being pried open and fucked. “Tomura,” you call him in a muffled voice, weak vibrations that tremble from him cockhead to the base where your nose remains buried only to be pulled away.

Thick ropes shoot onto your face, the heaviness of his semen catching on your tongue and you look up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “You have a real lewd face on you right now.” His smile is stretched wide, eyes raised in a sick sense of humor. “Pretty fucking hot, if I have to be honest.” His head tilts and in his hand he holds a softening cock. “Do you want to know why I won’t let you go? Why I’m so certain that you’ll never run for help?” His cock is pressed into your mouth; the once hard flesh, soft and lingering with a salty aftertaste. “Because you have such a big mouth that I doubt you’d ever keep it a secret that you let a villain fuck and piss in your mouth.” Your bottom lip lip trembles and the flat of your tongue holds the bottom of his cock, the once prominent vein now soft. 

It’s much worse than you could have ever imagined. It’s worse than his own seed, something so thin and potent all at once. It’s acidic, burning as it goes down your throat in heavy waves. It swells your belly, your cunt throbbing in reaction, your hands clutching at your chest, nails imbedded deep in your fat. It hits harshly against you, a dull push against the back of your throat, dribbling into salty droplets on your tongue. His cock pulls away from you, limping out and dragging against your swollen lips in a tender kiss, drips of acid sparkling against your parted lips.

You lay one the soiled bed- wet, warm and sticky. Your clit still pulses, harsh and heavy, chest rising and falling in heavy heaves. The urine dries quickly, a heavy acidic scent that fills the room and sticks to your skin like an awful perfume. Sticky hands grab yours and you’re pulled upwards into a solid chest. Your knees buckle and your hands scratch at the abdomen. 

“Let’s go clean you up.” A kiss is placed on the crown of your head, a hand sliding down and leaving goosebumps in its wake as it rests on your lower back. “A nice shower will make you feel better.” The taste of him lingers on your tongue, your mouth dry from the abuse.

[extasiswings]

I can’t finish the second half of this yet, but I figured I would post the first.  Also on ao3. EDIT: PART 2 IS HERE. 

Eddie’s avoiding him.  

At first Buck brushed it off—Eddie wasn’t avoiding him, it was early in the morning, he needed coffee, he hadn’t slept well. It was a coincidence that Eddie was nowhere to be found as the sky shifted from hazy pre-dawn to full daylight.  A coincidence that Eddie just happened to walk out of every room Buck walked into, if he was in one at all.  

A locker shut too quickly.  A half-empty coffee cup left on the counter.  

By the time the first alarm of the shift goes off though, Buck’s starting to think he might have to face the inevitable.

“Where’s Eddie?”  Hen asks when he climbs into the truck.  “Aren’t you two usually attached at the hip?”

Buck forces a smile and shrugs.  “Guess not today.”

Eddie’s the last one in.  When he doesn’t give him more than a passing glance, Buck’s stomach twists.  

They make it through the morning without incident—or, rather, they make it through the morning with both of them successfully doing their jobs as Buck steals glances at Eddie every few minutes, unsuccessfully trying to get a read on him—but by the afternoon there really is no denying it.  

Eddie’s avoiding him.  And Buck doesn’t have the faintest idea why.  

“Eddie—”

When they pull back into the station, Eddie’s out of the truck first and Buck blows out a frustrated breath and calls after him.  He doesn’t stop, but Buck scrambles out and manages to catch up.

“You want to tell me what’s going on with you today?”  He asks when he finally manages to corner him in the locker room.

“Really don’t want to talk about it right now, Buck,” Eddie replies.  He seems to be looking anywhere except at Buck, his jaw tense, and Buck has never been more confused.  

“Well, we have another six hours on this shift, so…”  Buck trails off and waits, but Eddie doesn’t fill the silence.  Buck sighs.  “Seriously, what the hell is wrong?  I saw you a day and a half ago and we were fine, now you’re avoiding me and pissed off?”

“Yeah, remind me—how was watching Christopher the other day again?”

Buck pauses, feeling like he’s walking into a trap.

“It was fine?” Buck says slowly. “He was good, we had a good time.”

“Right, you said,” Eddie replies. “Neglected to mention the part where you told him I was out on a date though. Or the nice long conversation you had about it afterwards.”

And there’s the shoe dropping. Right into his stomach like a block of lead. Because, okay, yeah—maybe in the process of making conversation he had said so, it must be kinda weird having your dad out on a date and instead of saying yes or no Christopher had looked up from his coloring and asked dad’s what? And maybe that led to a very different conversation than Buck intended. And maybe he hadn’t mentioned it when Eddie came to pick Chris up, or afterwards, because Chris asked him not to.

...and maybe he’s just now realizing that was a big mistake.

“I didn’t know he didn’t know,” Buck says. “It’s not like it’s a secret—“

Eddie rakes a hand through his hair.  He still won’t look at him.

“We’ve been on five dates—five casual dates. It’s not serious—I don’t even know what it is yet—and I was going to tell him myself and answer any questions he had when it became something he needed to know about.”

Buck crosses his arms. “So it is a secret. Or was. At least from him.”

And maybe the judgment in his voice isn’t fair, maybe he’s projecting a little even though he knows that Eddie not telling Christopher he was dating and his own parents lying to him about his entire life are not remotely equatable, but it’s there in his tone and Eddie’s shoulders tense, his eyes narrowing as he finally meets Buck’s gaze.

“I don’t always tell him about absolutely everything that happens in my life immediately, especially when it doesn’t affect him,” Eddie replies, his own voice carefully even. “That doesn’t make me a bad parent.”

“I didn’t say—“

The alarm goes off and Buck swears under his breath.

Eddie brushes past him and Buck opens his mouth to call after him again.  But then he closes it, swearing again as he tries to shove everything down and follows after Eddie back to the truck.  

Hen looks between them as they get back in the truck, her eyebrows shooting up as she takes in the set of Eddie’s jaw and the way he’s staring pointedly out the window.  

“Everything...okay?”  She asks.

“Fine,” Buck replies, clicking his seatbelt and looking out the opposite window.  

Halfway to LAX, he decides to just apologize even if he doesn’t really understand what he’s apologizing for.  But then, in the time it takes to get the rest of the way there, he talks himself out of it again.  If Eddie wanted to date and hide it, that was one thing, but that didn’t mean Christopher didn’t have a right to know.  Who cares that he spilled the beans a little early?  If Eddie wanted him to babysit, he should have told him that he didn’t want Christopher to know why.  

Then they probably still would have fought about it, but then at least they wouldn’t be at work like this.  

They pull onto the tarmac and get out of the truck and everything is just fine until Bobby says—

“Buck, go help Eddie.”   

Eddie’s in the middle of giving a concussion check to the woman on the ground, but his shoulders tense slightly at Buck’s approach.

“How can I help?”  Buck asks.

Eddie clears his throat roughly.  “Can you grab that gurney, please?  I’ll need help lifting her.”  

They work in silence, Eddie sliding a backboard underneath the woman—their eyes meet for a brief moment as they lift the board up to the gurney.  And Buck hates it.  Hates the silence, hates the avoidance, hates the distance.  Normally, he wouldn’t get into this in the field, but they’re almost done anyway, so he can’t quite stop himself from saying—

“I know you’re a good dad.  That wasn’t what I meant.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow and glances pointedly down at their patient and back up at him as if to say really, you want to do this now?   

“Look, I—”  Buck blows out a frustrated breath and changes his mind again.  “I’m really not seeing the issue here.  If you want me to apologize, I’m sorry that I brought it up when Christopher didn’t know, but—”

“That’s not even half the point, Buck,” Eddie shoots back.  “You shouldn’t have been bringing it up at all.”

“He’s a kid, I figured he would have questions.”

“It’s not your place though, is it?  Because he’s not your kid!”  

Buck reels back like he’s been slapped.  The world falls out from under him as his throat closes up, and he catches the faintest flicker of regret across Eddie’s face before he adds—

“Besides, it’s not like I’m the only one of us who’s dating.  But you didn’t feel like you needed to talk to him about yourself, did you?”

Eddie’s wheeling the gurney off before Buck can untangle his tongue—or untwist his mind—enough to respond.  

Buck spends the rest of the shift in a fog replaying it all.  He considers asking Eddie what exactly that last remark was supposed to mean, but he can’t get past the sick hollowed out feeling in his gut, like he’s missed several steps walking down the stairs.  He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what to expect—they’ve only had one major fight before, and that was during the lawsuit when Buck was fighting with everyone, and this is—

It feels even more personal than that had.  

Part of the problem is, he knows that Eddie isn’t wrong.  He didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.  

Christopher is Eddie’s kid.  And maybe the lines have gotten blurred because Buck spends so much time with them, because he’s right there next to Eddie more often than not, helping to make dinner and playing games and helping put Chris to bed and checking his homework—

But.  Christopher is Eddie’s kid.  At the end of the day, that’s it.  And logically, Buck knows that, so it shouldn’t sting so much to have that very real fact thrown back in his face, but...it does.    

No, he didn’t feel the need to talk to Chris about him dating because it’s a nonissue.  He’s not going anywhere, it’s not going to change anything, He’s only doing it at all because—

Buck’s climbing into the jeep at the end of the shift when he has the thought, and it’s too sudden for him to cut it off the way he normally would, to shove it down and pretend it’s not grating at his insides.

He’s only dating because Eddie is.  So that he has something to think about except the fact that Eddie is.  And the fact that he doesn’t want—

Buck blows out a breath and rakes a hand through his hair.  Then, he shoves his keys in the ignition and starts off home.

(It’s easier to date than to admit that he’s jealous of Ana Flores.  Because if he admits that...he doesn’t know where they go from there.)

[macgyvermedical]

A Nurse Wrote This Movie: A Medical Review of Knives Out

Whoa.

Honestly, all I can say, this movie was amazing.

I don’t think I’ve ever been treated to a movie that was both this complex and still this easy to understand. I wasn’t left wondering at the end, and despite the number of times my understanding of the central crime changed, it didn’t ever feel whiplash-y or like anything was played for shock value. It was a journey through the story and it was consistently enjoyable, all 130 minutes of it.

But please, seriously, go see it for yourself before reading this post, there will absolutely be spoilers and this is a movie you don’t want spoiled.

Before I really get into it, I want to tell you that the medicine (though, I suppose, particularly the nursing) in this movie was good. Really good. Much, much, much better than I expected. What I really, really appreciated was that the resolution of the case came from something that only a nurse would know. If i had to guess, not only was there a nurse consulting, but one was part of the central writing team.

There’s really only one scene to talk about, but it spans parts of the whole movie. Here’s my explanation/review of the evening meds scene and how it relates to real life and the rest of the movie. Apologies for the lack of relevant screenshots, once the movie comes out on streaming or DVD I will have more options. Also apologies in that I have only seen this once in theaters and I am working from memory.

PICCs:

One of the main characters, Marta, is a homecare nurse for the wealthy victim Harlan Thrombey. Early in the movie, we are given a scene where she is giving him two medications for a recent shoulder injury- ketorolac and morphine- before bed.

Harlan Thrombey has a PICC in his left arm that Marta uses to administer the medications. PICCs, or Peripherally Inserted Central Catheters, are medical devices that are designed to allow medical professionals to administer IV medications and draw blood without having to start an IV or stick someone with a needle. Once inserted, they can stay in for 6-12 months, and they’re really helpful for patients who either need IV fluids/medications at home (long-term IV antibiotic therapy, for example), or who require repeated doses of medications that could be damaging to the smaller veins that traditional “peripheral” IV catheters sit in (chemotherapy, total parenteral nutrition).

PICCs consist of one or more “ports” that are accessible from the outside (the blue nubs in the pic below, where the medication goes in), and a long, flexible tube that sits in a large, deep vein that ends near the heart.

We don’t know a lot about Harlan’s medical history in the movie other than the injury to his shoulder that causes him to need the pain medication. A shoulder injury alone would not justify the insertion of a PICC, so we have to assume that either he had an existing serious health condition like cancer, or the shoulder injury was really an infection in one of the bones of his shoulder, which would justify a PICC on the basis of needing IV antibiotics multiple times per day. Since they seem to have thought of everything else, I would choose to go with that.

Medications:

The first medication’s generic name is ketorolac. Ketorolac is an NSAID, similar to ibuprofen, and works by blocking some of the chemicals that cause pain and inflammation in the tissue. It’s usually not given long-term, but for short term things like surgery or an injury it works pretty well and decreases the amount of narcotic pain medication needed. For someone over 65, the normal schedule for ketorolac would be 15mg IV every 6 hours. Marta would probably keep him pretty close to this schedule, because it’s his primary pain control beyond heat, ice, elevation, and possibly some form of physical therapy.

Morphine is an opioid. It works by blocking pain signals in the brain. It’s been around for a while, works pretty well and pretty quickly, but it’s not great for long term use either due to the fact that the body builds up a tolerance to it and it has the potential to be addicting.Since Marta seems to offer it to him instead of stating she’s going to give it to him, it looks like it was prescribed for “breakthrough” or as emergency pain relief if the ketorolac wasn’t doing enough, which is a pretty typical way to prescribe pain medication.

Now, you’ll notice that despite it reading “ketorolac” on the vial, the characters refer to the first medication by it’s brand name “Toradol” throughout the movie. This impressed me because in a medical setting, we colloquially refer to some medications by their generic name, while others we refer to by their brand names. There’s no particular rhyme or reason to the colloquial naming (though age of the drug plays in), and you kind of have to work in medicine to know which is which. We typically refer to Toradol by it’s brand name, while we refer to morphine by it’s generic. If you asked me for ketorolac or Astramorph (a brand name of IV morphine) it would just sound... weird. But its something fiction gets wrong all the time and it’s cool they got this right. For consistancy, I’m going to continue using the generic name for both medications throughout this post.

Medication Administration:

Marta goes about injecting the ketorolac first. This was yet another thing that added a little spark of nursing realism to the movie, because while not everything was shown, what was shown was done accurately. Here’s the steps to administering an IV medication through a PICC:

Open syringe package (draw needle is usually already attached)

Draw up air into syringe equal to the amount of volume of medication you want to draw

Clean top of vial with alcohol swab

Insert draw needle into vial and inject air

Flip vial/needle upside down and draw medication into syringe, recap draw needle (label syringe if giving multiple medications/doses)

Unclamp the PICC port you want to use and clean the port cap with an alcohol swab

Twist a prefilled saline syringe onto PICC port cap, and inject 5ml saline into the port

Twist draw needle off of syringe and discard into sharps container

Twist medication syringe onto PICC port cap

Inject medication

Twist off medication syringe and discard

Twist saline syringe back onto cap, inject the remaining 5ml of saline to flush the entire medication dose into the person’s vein

Untwist the saline syringe and reclamp the port

They reference the dose of ketorolac as being 100mg. As I said above, the normal dose of ketorolac is 15-30mg IV, depending on age. For Harlan, being 85, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t have gotten 15mg IV every 6 hours max. I think the mix up was intentional, meant to signal to the audience that she was supposed to give the whole vial of ketorolac with each administration, but only a portion of the vial of morphine per administration. Ketorolac does come in single-dose vials, however in this movie all vials were clearly multi-dose vials (which you can tell because the ketorolac vial says “30mg/mL” on the 10mL vial, meaning there’s 300mg of ketorolac in that vial, which would be about 20x the normal dose). 

Medication Errors:

Then she goes back to get the morphine, and realizes that she’s made a mistake. Instead of injecting the vial labelled “ketorolac” she’s administered the entire contents of the vial labelled “morphine”- 100mg, she thinks. That’s a LOT of morphine. Definitely enough for a fatal overdose in someone who’s normal dose is 3mg. 

Now, med errors are HUGE FREAKING DEALS in the medical world, and Marta would have faced substantial civil and possibly criminal charges. Assuming she survived this without jail time, she would face an investigation by her visiting nurse agency (if she worked for one, which they establish she doesn’t) and/or the board of nursing in her state, which would seek to determine whether this was negligence that lead to the med error (in which she would probably be fired/have her license suspended/revoked), or a systemic problem (in which case she would be in the clear).

I think Marta actually has a pretty good case for this being a systemic issue rather than a negligence one. The vials look extremely similar, and even if she had done everything she was supposed to do, its plausible this could have happened despite her reasonable efforts to prevent it (she could have put it down last minute and picked up the other vial by accident, and had the label facing the wrong way as she was drawing up the medication). If nothing else, since the morphine vial was not specially identified as a narcotic, it would at least shift some of the blame to the pharmacy that filled the prescription.

In the moment, though, knowing what we know about her mom’s citizenship status, this would have been a terrifying situation for her.

Plus, there’s the overarching possibility that she just killed this very powerful person who she’s been caring for for a long time.

Opioid Overdose:

Opioids bind to certain receptors in the brain, decreasing pain signals. Unfortunately, they also decrease signals in the part of the brain that controls breathing. At small doses this isn’t generally a problem, but in overdose situations it can cause respiratory depression (the person breathing too slowly to meet their needs) or respiratory arrest (the person stops breathing on their own entirely), which can lead to death.

A drug called naloxone (brand name Narcan) can stop an overdose by sitting on all those same receptors that an opioid would without actually blocking any signals, which stops the respiratory depression from the opioid pretty quickly. As mentioned in the movie, most pharmacies dispense a naloxone kit along with opioid pain medication, and was the “antidote” Marta was searching for.

Now, in opioid overdose all is not lost if you don’t happen to have naloxone available. Since the cause of death from overdose is lack of breathing, Marta could have called 911 and provided rescue breaths until EMS showed up with naloxone. Even if EMS were 10 or 15 minutes out, he could have easily survived this. But that wouldn’t have made for nearly the murder mystery.

Ironically, this is exactly what happens in the laundromat scene, when it is revealed that the housekeeper Fran figured out what was happening and was attacked with the real morphine vial. When Marta finds her, she immediately looks in her eyes (a hallmark of opioid overdose is pinpoint pupils) and begins providing CPR.

In some areas, community-level CPR guidelines have simplified to “if you find someone not breathing, start CPR”. This is due to the realization that most lay rescuers have a hard time finding a pulse quickly enough to use it to determine whether to start CPR, leading to fatally wasted time in an emergency. The thinking is that it’s better to have people do unnecessary chest compressions than not do necessary ones.

But healthcare professionals are obviously still taught to differentiate between patients who need full CPR and patients who only need rescue breaths, so assuming Fran didn’t go from talking to cardiac arrest from an opioid overdose in less than a few seconds, I would have expected Marta to give rescue breaths until the ambulance arrived.

The Resolution:

Towards the end of the movie, we find that the vials were switched already, and in subconsciously recognizing the (real) difference in viscosity between ketorolac and morphine, Marta had actually, tragically, saved his life. This was probably the best use of a nursing concept I’ve ever seen in fiction, the entire central point of the plot hinging on nursing intuition.

Kudos, writers, kudos.

[topherfoxtrot]

One day in the simple life of Jack Daniels.

This is the next installment in what I'm calling the Springville AU. You can read the first part here but basically John and Olivia move to the countryside with new identities post tfatws. This was written before the finale so nothing that happens there affect this fic. As always like comment and share if you want more people to read it. Hope you enjoy :)

John and Olivia woke up with the alarm clock at 7am. Olivia was the one to turn it off because it was at her side of the room. She sat in the bed and stretched without opening her eyes entirely quite yet. John's big hands crossed her back and neck swiftly. Olivia has no choice besides falling back into bed.

"Good morning." John whispered right next to her ear.

"Waking up in a good mood?"

"It's been a while huh?"

They both laughed.

"Stay here." John pleaded.

Olivia smiled and pressed herself against John before letting go and getting up for once.

"You know I can't. Otherwise how are the kids going to understand Romeo and Juliet?"

"That's the play of the week?"

"Of the month!" Olivia laughed "There's no way they could read all those pages in seven days."

"If they attended to school on our days they would be obliterated."

"Okay boomer." Olivia shrugged.

"What?"

"The kids taught me that."

"What does it mean?" John was embarrassed but curious.

"Well, I guess you'll have to Google it to find out."

Olivia left the room with a proud smile on her face before John could say anything else. He laid his head again and took a deep breath. I love this woman, he muttered to himself before getting up.

Their house was small. Without the veteran benefits and Olivia's paycheck there wasn't anything fancy they could afford. Still, the house was cozy enough. And the thermoregulator worked out just fine, most of the time.

While Olivia was taking a shower John started preparing breakfast like the usually did. That way Olivia could get at school on time. He put the bread in the toaster and broke four eggs, two for each of them. They used to have bacon as well, but not on those trying times. Thinking about it made John angry. He was the only person to receive three medals of honor for his services in all american history. Yet there he was not having bacon for breakfast because it was too damn expansive.

The toaster sound interrupted his thoughts before they could get any worse, but the handle of the pan still got a little crooked because of the strength John applied on it unconsciously. It has been a couple months since he got the serum but sometimes it was still hard to control his own strength.

At least it was just a pan this time. Couples weeks prior he grabbed Olivia way too hard during sex. She warned him before any damage could be done but since then John has been extra cautious around her. Every little thing in his routine was a reminder he took the serum. A reminder he couldn't save Lemar. A reminder he was not the hero they wanted him to be. It's all so unfair, he said out loud without realizing it.

"What is unfair Johnny?" Olivia came from their room all dressed up already. Her shirt was red and her scarf was brown. The overall was by the door, near the photographs they kept from their previous lives.

"What? Oh nothing! I was just... thinking out loud."

While Olivia was distracted getting the breads, John untwisted the handle of the fan. He then served her the eggs.

"Those look good! But what were you thinking about?"

"About how pretty my wife is!" John sat by the small table.

Olivia's smile was short. She quickly shifted to a serious and worried face.

"You can talk to me John. In fact, you have to." She was kind but firm.

John took a deep breath, "I know, I'm sorry. it's unfair how it all turned out. I did my best, you know I did-"

"I know that!" Olivia reassured.

"...and still it wasn't enough for them. They don't know what it takes to be a hero, Olivia."

"That's all in the past. We are different people now. Okay, Jack?" She winked at him.

"Oh yeah! That's right Maria!"

They both laughed.

"You're the real hero here." John said, "Thank you for staying on my side."

Olivia smiled from ear to ear and they both finished their breakfast in a good tone. When Olivia got up John walked with her. She entered their car and John stayed at the door while she drove away. The air was cold and the snow was still shy, but not for long.

There was nothing on their front yard except grass. There was a rod on the wall near the door but there was not flag on it. When they moved in John tored the flag to shreds. Afterwards they made a fire with it. It was really cathartic.

John breathed the cold air one last time before getting in and closing the door. He took a cold shower (the only one he knew how to take) and did the dishes from last night. With Olivia working at the school he was responsable for most house chores. He didn't like the idea of being alone the whole day at the beginning, but he had to get used to it eventually. Someone had to work and John's set of military skills proved to be quite useless in the countryside small town they scaped to.

He tried construction for a while but he would twist metals and break woods with his bare hands more often then he would like to admit. Besides even though he had a thick beard now he was still scared someone would recognize him. Recognize Captain America.

He left the job, he and Olivia had a big fight that night. In the midst of his own shame and self loathe though John figured there was indeed something he was good at: welding. And with his super strength it was even easier to handle the right tools. John worked the whole night and by the morning when Olivia woke up she met John sleeping in the spare room (the one for the kid they never had) with a heart shaped welding sculpture on his arms. Since that night John has found a new passion and income. The word spread fast that Jack Daniels, the newcomer, was a really skilled artist. He started doing pieces by demand.

***

After the shower John dressed casual clothes and went to his work room. There were still some leftovers from last night so he could work a little more instead of cooking lunch. The heart sculpture was on the wall right next to the clock. John worked until 1 pm. After lunch he did some laundry before someone knocked at the door.

"Are you Mr Daniels?" The old man asked.

"Just call me Jack, please. How can I help you sir?"

"Oh nothing special!" he made effort to talk "My boy is coming back from his first tour and I wanted to give him something y'know 'to thank him for his service', as they say."

John's face went completely blank while the man got a cellphone from his pocket to show a reference photo of what he wanted: a worm carrying a bazooka.

"First tour, you say..?" John's voice cracked.

"Yes, he went to Afghanistan!"

John swallowed and blinked more times then he should. The cold breeze from outside made his bones shiver but he stayed still as if he was actually frozen. Not by the cold though but by his own memories. After what seemed like an eternity's the old man spoke again.

"Are you okay Mr Daniels?"

"Jack!" John blinked, "Call me Jack. And please get in it's super cold outside! What's your name again?"

"It's David!"

John offered a cup of coffee to the old man and took him to his work room. David looked at all of John's previous works fascinated.

"You really know your way around welding. When did you start with it?"

"My father taught me. It was the last thing he taught me in fact."

"Oh I'm sorry."

"Don't be." John smiled politely "That was a lifetime ago."

Speaking about his life before Springville was starting to feel weird. John Walker was starting to feel like a whole different person. And Captain America was somehow an even older memory. John used to spend his days surrounded by men and women in unforms. They spoke loud and smiled bright. Jack on the other hand spends his days welting metal around and taking care of the house.

The change was abrupt but John was getting used to it. Now he wonders if forgetting his old life isn't actually a good thing. Maybe that was the problem in the first place. In Springville John gets to spend time home with his wife. John gets to wake up late if so he pleases. John gets to breath for once.

David and John talked for a while to set prices and sizes and deadlines. Once they were finished John walked David out. When the old man finally left John sighed really loud and pressed his head softly against the door. He had being holding that breath even since David entered the house.

John was done with the military (or rather the military were done with him) and even though he had some peace at his new home the world outside was still spinning. And young boys with no perspective were still being sent to fight someone else's wars. John used to take such proud of his service. How could he?

***

When Olivia got home from work John was at his room. The work was a good distraction.

"A lot of work?" Olivia leaned at the door.

"Hi, babe. Yeah an old man came here earlier. Requested a piece for his son."

"That's great! What did he order?"

"A video game thing. His son.... He's coming back, y'know.. from his first tour. They sent him to Afghanistan."

"Oh my gosh John." She got closer to him, "How are you feeling?"

John just shrugged, "Do you mind making dinner tonight? I'm kind of busy here." That was code for 'I don't wanna talk right now'.

"Yeah, of course. I'll let you work."

Olivia kissed her husband and left to take a shower. Dinner was served at seven. They both sat at the small table while the television showed the news. When Captain America Sam Wilson showed up Olivia quickly grabbed the remote to change channels, but John slightly hold her hand.

"Leave it." He said. And she did.

Sam was visiting a highschool. The kids were all really excited to meet him personally. There were lots of selfies and lots of laughter. Sam was simply the life of any party he was in.

"He's a hero." John said.

"He really is." Olivia agreed, carefully studying John's face.

He looked at the television for a while before getting back to his dinner. A good hero, he repeated to himself as an effort to let that sink. Olivia touched his hand kind of worried.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes, yes I'm alright, Olivia." He smiled to make her feel better, "I've been thinking. Sam is with them, but he's them. He can inspire kids without making them do the same mistakes I did."

"It's a good way of looking at it, John."

"Thanks. I was the hero they asked for but maybe wasn't the hero they-" he pointed at the kids on the TV, "...the hero they need."

Olivia smiled and grabbed John's hand. "I'm really proud of you."

"I'm proud of us!" John replied, their fingers intertwined.

They finished dinner and went to sleep. Tomorrow would be another day in simple life of Jack and Maria Daniels. And they were both really greatful for it.

[akitokihojo]

Delicate - Chapter 7

Inuyasha sighed out, a barely-visible puff of air appearing before his face as he walked along the length of the gate outside of the schoolyard. He felt abnormally exhausted this morning, and like anyone, he blamed it on the fact that it was Monday, the clouds were dreary, and he may have been up late playing video games. He had a chemistry test this afternoon, and he could only hope to wake up a little more by then to properly focus.

He’d caught her scent just before entering the building, his attention blindly following his nose as his eyes scoured the grounds for her. She wasn’t that far off, standing in a misshapen circle with Sango and three other girls, one of them enthusiastically telling a story that had the lot of them giggling. That smile, the rosy color of her cheeks, the way the tip of her nose was a light shade of pink from the chill of their morning, it was all like a buzz of caffeine for him. The more he watched, the more he listened to the melody of her laugh, the lighter he began to gradually feel.

Kagome was wearing black tights beneath her charcoal uniform skirt this morning as opposed to the knee-high socks she usually opted for, sparing her legs from the small nip in the air. Over her white button up, she donned a dark, knitted sweater, the baggy sleeves shielding her fingers. But, her neck wasn’t covered. Sure, her hair was worn down, waving over her shoulders in their natural order, but what good was that compared to something literally manufactured to keep heat in? The dummy was just asking for a cold. Whatever combatant thought that formulated in his head deliberately went ignored as he turned away from the building to walk toward her, a horrible fluttering expanding throughout his abdomen. Sango’s gaze met him first as he approached, then Kagome’s as the group of girls’ chatter died off into a curious and muddled silence. God, he didn’t think there was anything capable of rivaling the annoying sensation in his stomach at the moment, but when she smiled wider at him as he stopped just a foot or two before her, his heart gave a thunderous pound that he worried would wound his ribcage. His cheeks went hot, then his nose, then the remainder of his face, and the thought of his evident blush only made him heat up furthermore. Her greeting was soft and happy, bringing him to huff out, his jaw clenching, and his amber eyes drifting off to the side. As planned, Inuyasha removed the muffler from his neck, untwisting it so he could hand it over. From his peripherals, he gathered that she was confused, not immediately taking it from him, so he decidedly did the damn job himself before he ended up spontaneously combusting from flames of embarrassment. Carefully, the hanyou looped it behind her neck, twisted, then looped it again so it bunched properly to keep her warm, her raven hair billowed beneath. 

She was staring up at him with large eyes, her pink lips pinching together then growing into a shy and appreciative smile. Son of a bitch, she was fucking cute.

He walked away, heading toward the entrance of the building without a single word, and Kagome’s blush maddened as her friends made hushed and cheery noises at what had just happened.

“So, what? Are you guys together now?”

“When did you two even become a thing?”

“Wasn’t that Inuyasha? I’ve never seen him not mad.”

“Nah, he still looked mad. Just a flustered sort of mad.”

“And to think just a couple days ago you were worried.” Sango teased.

“Yeah, but y-you know happened.” Kagome said, feeling like she was standing under an intense spotlight.

“Uh, we don’t!” Eri stated, bringing the attention back to them. “Hello, hi. Details, please.”

“Oh, look at the time.” Kagome pulled back the sleeve of her left hand to look at the invisible watch along her wrist, beginning to walk backward toward their school building. “I need to - I’ve gotta - I mean, class is starting soon, so yeah. Bye.”

Sango laughed, waving and knowing full and well that her friend was heading to catch up with her favored half demon. 

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell us?”

“Sorry, guys.” She shrugged, smiling. “The best friend privilege is knowing, and the code is not spilling business that isn’t mine to spill.”

Kagome wandered over to his locker in the third row, spotting him just as he closed the small, metal door. He glanced over, his eyes never leaving her as she sauntered his way, and though his cheeks continued to reveal some of his timidness, a soft smile on his lips further ignited the spark between them.

“I don’t need it back if that’s what you’re about to ask.”

“Not yet, anyway.”

“After school. Keep it until then.”

“I actually came to walk with you. If that’s okay?”

“You don’t need to ask, dummy.” Inuyasha replied, though there was the hint of tension in his tone. He gave a notch of his head to lead the way, shoving his hands into his pant pockets to appear as casual as possible. She walked at his side, just as close as they’d walked on Saturday night, and he found it to be a source of comfort. Progressively, his preservation melted away with her warmth, wanting less to hide his affection behind a barricade and wanting more to give it to her so she’d always smile like she had before. 

“So, uh, how’d you do on your last math test?” He asked as they began their ascent up the stairs and to the second floor where their classes were.

“Oh, I totally forgot! I meant to show you!” Kagome opened her book bag at her side, pulling out the quiz after wiggling it free from between two notebooks. She held it out, positively beaming and excited for him to see her accomplishment.

Inuyasha took in the “B” next to her name before taking the paper into his grip, a smile of his own forming as his pride for her swelled. “This is the best one yet! Soon you’re not even gonna need my help.”

“I don’t know about that.” She quickly countered, a little nervous at the sound of losing any easy opportunity to see him outside of school. “I still struggle a bit. And, I mean, you do call me a dummy.”

“Not as an insult.” He chuckled, handing the test back to her so she could shove it back into her bag.

“It originated for a reason, and then just became an endearment of sorts.”

“I don’t think you’re dumb.” Inuyasha said, still smiling. He glanced at her, noticing the uncertainty in her eyes, shielded behind a small grin. Was she looking for validation? He felt something click in him, like he didn’t actually need to question what she wanted. The quick rebut she’d served just a moment ago to his comment, the look she was giving, the warm sensation building in his chest - it made it easy not to second guess his intuition. This was an understanding he’d been privileged to receive from being with her so often, from falling in love. Not a part of him desired to resist what surprisingly and so simply came to him right now, the back of his hand grazing her knuckles until he hooked one of her fingers with his own. They both stopped walking, and he pulled her closer by another inch. “Relax. I’m not going anywhere; we’ll still study together. Maybe you’ll even end up tutoring me.”

“Doubtful.” Kagome muttered with a shy smile, her finger gently clutching his in return.

“Which part?”

“Me tutoring you.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” He chuckled, her responding giggle like a gift. The bell rang and he knew the halls were about to get busy as everyone filtered through to class. He took the opportunity he had, never letting go of her finger. “Tomorrow? I’ll walk you home and we can study.”

“Okay.” She nodded, smiling.

Using his free hand, Inuyasha twirled some strands of her hair around his finger, ones that were short, and framed her jaw, and weren’t held captive by the muffler like the rest of it all still was. “Come on, dummy.” He grinned, leading her to her class with a yank on her finger.

—

Sango puffed out her cheeks in a mock pout, standing by a tree with her arms crossed over her chest after school. “Call me repetitive, but I still cannot believe you’re ditching me for a boy today.”

“You’re repetitive.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m not even ditching you,” Kagome laughed. “I said he’d be walking with us. You’re the one who chose to walk home alone.”

“Excuse me, look me in the eyes and tell me I’m third wheel material. I dare you.”

She laughed a little harder from her best friend’s dramatic exasperation. “He’s walked with us before, Sango! It’s just like every other time.”

“Bull and baloney! The last time he walked with us was before you guys got over the majority of your romantic constipation.” Sango ignored the weird look that took over Kagome’s expression, proceeding on with her argument without hesitance. “Things are better now, you’ve both gotten a clue - thank god - and moves are being made. When he said he wanted to walk you home, he meant he wanted to walk you home. Therefore, if I tag along until we hit my route, he’s gonna be uncomfortable up until then and I’m gonna be the cockblock.”

“What? Not even!”

“Oh, yeah.”

“So, you’re just gonna avoid us forever now? This is it? Whenever Inuyasha wants to come with, you’re out?” Kagome grinned, leaning her head to the side in a playful challenge.

“No, of course not. Not forever. When you guys are in an established relationship - and by established, I mean passed the mushy crap - then I’ll make my return. Maybe even sooner if I land myself a stud, because then I wouldn’t be a third wheel.” Sango shrugged.

“You’ve got one guy in mind that can’t even talk to you passed ‘hello,’ so that could take a while.”

“See you on the flip side, my main gal.”

“You realize then that this isn’t me choosing a guy over you, but you choosing your pride over everything?”

“You bet, but I’m still blaming you.”

“You know what? I’m gonna do you a favor.” Kagome cocked a brow, her smile shifting into one of deviousness.

“What? No, wait. No. I know that look, and I hate it. What are you gonna do?” Sango’s face twisted in suspicion, her brows furrowing deeply as Kagome turned about, seemingly searching the school grounds. She had a sinking feeling in her chest as a scheme had obviously just popped into Kagome’s head, and who had she just mentioned? Bad, not good, very bad. “Kay, I swear to Zeus if you -“

“Oh, there they are!” Kagome beamed, practically skipping her way over to the pair of far-off boys.

“I have no best friend!” Sango hissed, quickly ducking herself to hide behind the tree.

Inuyasha’s golden stare transferred from his friend to her as she approached, the plain expression he held while Miroku talked changing to a gentle grin. He notched his head in a silent greeting while his friend finished his sentence.

“Hi. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.” She apologized, stopping before them, a little closer to Inuyasha than in the center.

“Nothing to worry about.” Miroku kindly dismissed. “Since you’re here, let me ask you something: Do you prefer me with or without the rattail? I need a lady’s perspective.”

“Oh, god no, definitely without.” Kagome answered a little too quickly, giving a small grimace when she realize how rude it could have come off, especially as Inuyasha stifled his snorted laugh. “I mean, it’s your choice, of course! I just think the style is a bit outdated. And, this shorter cut suits you much better. Were you thinking of growing it back?”

“Wow. Not anymore.” Miroku blinked, pinching his lips into a tight line.

“Thank you.” Inuyasha boasted, like he’d finally gotten his way. He gave another small nod to Kagome, gesturing in the direction of the gate. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Hang on, I have a question.” She said, stopping Inuyasha before he could lead her off. She looked over at his friend, watching him go from feigned defeat to slightly curious when he realized it was for him. “I’m sorry if this is none of my business, but do you mind if I be a little upfront for a moment and ask how you feel about Sango?”

“Oh god, you’re gonna break him.” Inuyasha murmured beside her.

“No, I promise I won’t tell her anything. I’m just wondering.” Kagome assured.

“You mean, I haven’t made it painstakingly obvious?” Miroku asked monotonously, his grin devoid of any real emotion.

“So, you like her?”

“Something like that.”

“Why haven’t you asked her out?”

“Remember that time, a few months ago, when I stopped you guys on your way home from school?”

“Yeah.”

“I was going to try and get her number then. I had a classic pickup line planned and everything, and yet the only thing that came out of my mouth was her name. I can’t function around her. I panic around her. I freeze, I sputter, and I shave a few years off my life every time I’m around her. You see my problem?”

“Okay, you’re not good with girls. It’s fine, you’ve gotta start some-“

“I’m fantastic with girls, you take that back!” Miroku retorted defensively.

“Really? You can actually claim that right now?” Kagome earnestly asked.

“You really think you have the room to talk when you two still aren’t even dating?” Miroku chided, pointing to both Inuyasha and Kagome. He didn’t even have time to flinch before Inuyasha slugged him in the arm, his pained groan gurgled and deep. “Okay, withdrawn!” He clutched the offended spot, respectfully ignoring Kagome’s embarrassment as he continued speaking to buffer the awkwardness. “Look, there’s just something about her that fucks me up. Little-by-little, I’m talking! I’m getting better! I’m growing! I’m not always melting down like I used to! I’ll get there eventually!”

“What if I make it a little easier on you?” She offered with a simple shrug.

“How?”

“Give me your number and I’ll give it to her. That way, you don’t have to stress yourself out by asking for hers, and that’s one objective down.”

“Wait,” Miroku tilted his head skeptically. “Are you - are you saying she’s interested?”

Kagome feigned a believable frown. “Actually, I don’t know.” She lied. “Sango’s a pretty private person. She doesn’t often talk about her feelings, even to me. I’m just doing this to help you out. You’re a nice guy, and I’m her best friend. Easy in-between.”

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch.”

“No catch?”

“She said no catch. Just do it.” Inuyasha griped. “You’ve been going on and on about this since last year, and now you’re gonna question the opportunity?”

“Because, there’s gotta be a catch! She owes me nothing - you owe me nothing. So, why do me a favor?”

“No catch.” Kagome repeated, shaking her head. “Honestly, I’m just a nice person. If you want to do it yourself, by all means. I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable or push you to do something you don’t want to do. But, if I do it, we eliminate the potential to wreck yourself even more in front of her, and then the ball’s in her court. If she’s interested, she’ll text or call, if not, then nothing happens and you have your answer. Besides, I think she’s already headed home, so I can talk you up a little and say you wanted to give it to her today but she’d already left so you gave it to me to pass on.”

“No catch?”

“No catch.”

“No one’s that nice.”

“I am. Oh, and just think. It’s always easier to talk through text because you have time to think through what you want to say before you say it.”

“He’ll still mess it up.” Inuyasha quietly mentioned.

“Nah, I don’t think he will.” She said, smiling, redirecting the conversation back to Miroku. “Then, you’ll adjust, realize Sango’s super easy to talk to and there’s nothing to be nervous about, and talking to her in person will be as normal as talking to anyone else.”

“Oh, fuck, yeah okay. You drive a hard bargain, Higurashi.” Miroku eagerly opened his bag, bringing out his notebook and opening it to the first empty page. “Inuyasha, your pen.” He requested, holding his hand out as the half demon pulled his pen from his front, pant pocket. Taking the writing utensil and clicking the ballpoint end out, he began scribbling along the upper-right corner.

Kagome could tell it wasn’t just his number he was jotting down, but she didn’t try to peek, instead giving a quick side-glance to Inuyasha and winking so he knew she had this planned. Miroku tore the edge of the paper, folding up his little note and handing it over to Kagome which she happily took and slipped into the small pocket at the front of her book bag.

“Say something nice about me when you see her.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Now, can we go?” Inuyasha spoke, taking back his pen and sliding it into his front pocket once more. Kagome smiled, giving a nod and waving goodbye to his best friend before walking off with him toward the exit. As soon as they were out of the gate, and effectively out of earshot of Miroku - who had to stay behind for his stupid student council committee - he shot her a sly look. “What was that all about?”

“Just helping things along.” She replied, giving a measly shrug.

“Ka-go-me!” The shout was menacing and chilling, over-enunciated for full, grounding effect, and bringing Kagome to look wearily toward a fuming Sango who was running right toward her. Hastily, she dodged around the half demon, using him as a shield to protect herself from the temperament of her best friend.

Inuyasha stood stiffly between the two, thoroughly confused and unsure whether this was actually something he should literally be in the middle of.

“No! Wait! Don’t be mad, I didn’t do anything wrong!” Kagome proclaimed.

“What did you say!?” Sango asked, brows pinching together but no real malice to her tone. She was frantic for an answer, and naturally defensive, but Kagome should have known better than to pull one of Sango’s own stunts on her.

“Nothing about you!”

“Freaking liar!”

“No, I swear! I didn’t! In fact, the one question he asked about you, I lied about and turned the subject back on him!”

“And, what was the subject, Kagome!?”

“About whether he liked you or not!”

“Oh my god! You can’t just ask someone that!” Sango cried, shoving her face into her palms.

“What!? On Saturday, you said -“

Sango shushed her, the noise high pitched and tense. “I know what I said, but that advice wasn’t for me!”

“If it’s any consolation, he said yes!”

“He did!?”

“You said you wouldn’t tell her.” Inuyasha mentioned, turning his head to peculiarly glance at her from the side.

“Oh, because it wouldn’t be obvious when I gave her his number?” Kagome retorted, not yet coming out from the shelter his body provided.

“What?” Sango asked, slightly shocked.

“Yeah, see,” Kagome fished the folded up paper out of the pocket of her bag, sliding her arm around Inuyasha’s waist to hand it over. Her friend snatched the note like a monkey snagging a banana from its handler, unfolding it to read its contents. “I didn’t read it, I promise. He really wanted me to give that to you.”

Sango studied what was written, her cheeks becoming a bright shade of pink before lowering the small shred of paper to peer at Kagome, her eyes large and pleading. “Did you seriously ask him for his number for me? He’s gonna think I’m desperate!”

“No! I offered to give you his number for him! I told him I didn’t know if you liked him, but I just wanted to do him a favor.”

“And, he fell for that?”

“Yup. Whatever else that says is all him. I didn’t suggest a note, just the number.”

Sango quickly handed the note to Kagome, making sure Inuyasha didn’t glance to read it, her hand held open for Kagome to return it when she was done. 

I’m sorry I’m weird around you. I literally get dumbstruck by your beauty. I don’t want to mess up anymore, so here’s my number. Give me a chance. - Miroku.

Kagome beamed, slipping the small piece of paper back into Sango’s palm. “So, what do you think?”

“I don’t know. He really has no idea how I feel?”

“Look, I can honestly tell you he didn’t suspect a thing. You can go into this whatever way you want, and the guy wouldn’t know the difference.” Inuyasha testified, leaning his head to the side in a careless manner.

“You,” Sango pointed up at the hanyou’s face, a scowl forming on her own, successfully intimidating him as he flinched back an inch. “Will keep this conversation to yourself, got it? I mean it. Don’t tell him anything that happened here.”

“How are you so scary for a small chick?” He held his hands out defensively in front of him.

“My dad’s a cop.”

“Ah.”

“Believe me, he won’t say anything.” Kagome assured, finally coming out of hiding. “So, are you gonna text him?”

“You’ll find out when your friendship timeout is up.” Sango sneered, pursing her lips and crossing her arms.

“How long!?” Kagome pouted.

“To be determined.” She shrugged, walking off to take a different route home.

“Determine!”

“Two hours.”

“Hours?”

“You’ll be busy anyway, so you won’t even notice.”

“Sango!”

“Bye!” She waved from behind, crossing the street.

“You guys are weird.” Inuyasha remarked, walking on ahead.

“You really won’t tell, right?” Kagome asked, upping her speed to reach his side again.

“What? That Sango likes Miroku? Nah.” He confirmed, his tone level as he gave a small shake of his head. “I kind of figured you wouldn’t just do Miroku a favor out of the blue like that. Even before you winked.”

“So, you blindly backed me up?”

“Yup. Stupid, huh?”

She smiled, turning her head so he wouldn’t see how happy it had made her. The muffled chime of Inuyasha’s phone went off in his pocket, bringing her attention back his way as he pulled it out, his brows giving a small twitch together as he whispered an apology to her and answered.

“What’s up?” She couldn’t hear who was talking on the other end, but she continued walking at his side, minding her business to the best of her abilities, even when Inuyasha grumbled. He stopped walking, pinching the back of her sweater with his free hand to make her stay with him, his head lolling back in exasperation. “Yeah, fine, I’ll go check. I swear, you’re getting too old to leave the house.”

He hung up, grimacing deeply. “My uncle thinks he left the stove on and he won’t be back until late. I can run home real quick and I’ll meet you at your place. That okay?”

“Oh, yeah.” Kagome nodded understandingly. He flashed a small grin, his pace hastening slightly as he walked ahead to the corner, about to cross to the right where she’d just go straight. She watched him stop even though it was perfectly safe for him to go, an unsure expression on his lips as he pressed them together, eventually turning back to her as she finally reached the corner, herself.

“Unless, um, unless you just want to come with me? It’ll be a quick stop.”

Her smile grew brightly, her nod coming before her brain could actually initiate the response. When he smiled back and notched his head for her to follow, she couldn’t help the wild flutter that made home in her belly. She’d never been to his place before. She was excited. 

As if things couldn’t get any better, he’d grabbed her sleeve, pulling her closer to walk at his side again. In all honesty, she’d expected him to let go once he’d gotten his way, but he didn’t. He held onto her sleeve, keeping her with him as they walked, the silence undeniably comfortable. Kagome wondered if it would be okay to actually hold his hand. Would it make him shy away? They practically held hands yesterday, so they may as well, right? Was this the way he preferred it, or should she make the move? Maybe she’d try it slowly to properly read the situation. Because, she really, really, wanted to hold his hand.

Carefully, she angled her hand upward, her forearm following through as necessary, so she could brush the side of his fingers with her own. He didn’t look at her, nor did she look up at him, their eyes straight ahead or on their surroundings. His hand didn’t inch away, and his grip on her knitted sweater slackened, even more so as she brushed his fingers again. That second time, though, she slipped one of her fingers in the curve of his hand, then another when he welcomed her in, helping to build her courage. Inuyasha dropped his hold on her sleeve entirely, taking her hand in his, accepting the way she entwined their fingers and steadily following suit with his own grip. 

Maybe it was due to her infatuation with the boy, but she sincerely felt safe with her hand in his; protected from everything uninviting the world may put before her. After a moment, her embarrassment even faded away, far quicker than she’d ever expected it to. His hand was large and hot, engulfing and wonderfully gentle, his nails never a threat to her, but his unexpected tenderness was, his thumb smoothly rubbing back and forth over the back of her palm, threatening to provoke an eruption of butterflies in her abdomen.

“It’s this one.” Inuyasha said, guiding her through the small, front gate and pulling his small set of keys out of the pocket of his bag. Begrudgingly, he pulled his hand free from hers to open the door, letting her walk through first before following in and shutting it behind him. “Come on.” He walked up the hall a bit, her small, padded footsteps close behind him as he took a left into the kitchen, seeing the stove was off all along. 

“False alarm?” Kagome giggled.

“Better safe than sorry with that guy.” He groaned.

“Your home is nice.” She smiled, turning about to look at the small amount of decoration in the kitchen. It was a man’s home, that was for sure; it didn’t have a typical woman’s touch to it. Nonetheless, it was comfortable, kempt, and rustic.

“Well, it’s his. Totosai’s.” Inuyasha corrected with a dismissive shrug, sauntering back into the hall and toward the living room, making sure she followed.

“You live here, don’t you? And, he adopted you, so I’m sure you’re more than welcome to call this place yours.”

“I don’t know, sometimes I feel out of place.”

“You’ll only make yourself feel more out of place the more you say things like that.”

The half demon turned to her, brows furrowing speculatively. There was no animosity behind it; in fact, his smirk prodded her to elaborate.

“Like, okay say I’m feeling insecure about my looks. I don’t feel very pretty or attractive, and it’s weighing on me. I look at myself in the mirror and then I tell myself I’m ugly. Not just once, but I end up telling myself that on a regular basis. The insecurity will definitely sink through a lot faster than it would if I maybe told myself the opposite. I’d believe it wholeheartedly then. And after that, I’d never feel comfortable in my skin, or my dresses, or skirts, or jeans, or maybe even my frumpy clothes. No amount of makeup would do the trick, either, because what I did was empower my self-consciousness. I didn’t do myself any favors by allowing myself to think my negative thoughts were true. I, instead, made my own situation worse. Why do that? Insecurities, on any level, are natural, and sometimes it’s hard to convince yourself of the opposite, but it’s so much more worth it to try. And, you’d be happier when you come out.” She took a step closer to him, smiling. Inuyasha merely gazed down at her, no air of discomfort about; he simply listened. “Your situation - it’s understandable. I’d even be so bold to say it’s natural to feel out of sorts sometimes. This wasn’t the home you pictured living in as a child, and those feelings don’t need to go neglected. But, this is a home you’ve been welcomed into. Your uncle signed the papers and brought you here. I’m gonna assume you have your own bedroom, and furniture, and your clothes fit you properly so he’s definitely providing for you. You’ve got a key, and look -“ Her grin grew larger, her enthusiasm a little too pronounced as she turned to the mantle and spotted a candid picture of Inuyasha as a pre-teen, sitting on a park bench with much shorter hair. “He’s even proud to have photos of you on display. This is definitely your home.”

Quickly, flustered Inuyasha walked the few paces over to the picture and slammed it down. “Alright, alright. You made your point.” He drawled, looking back at her. “You’ve got a motivational speech for everything, don’t you?”

“Pretty much.” She giggled.

“Mind if I go change out of my uniform real quick?”

“Go for it.”

Inuyasha walked out to the hall, leaving Kagome in the living room, his stomach feeling heavy while his chest fluttered with something uncertain. He’d stopped at the frame of the entry, his hand braced on the polished wood as he looked back at her over his shoulder, watching how she didn’t even seem to notice he was still there. She was carefully resetting the picture of him that he’d planted facedown, the pads of her fingers smoothing over the edge of the cheap frame. 

“Is that what you were feeling?” The half demon asked, his tone husky. Kagome turned to him, slightly surprised, but the notch her head gave told him she didn’t immediately grasp what he was referring to. “Saturday. When you were sad. You mentioned insecurity. Was it because you didn’t feel beautiful?”

Kagome’s nerves flared dully, a small lump beginning to form in her throat. His amber eyes appeared gentle, and she couldn’t help but wonder how many times he’d thought of that night since. The shake of her head came slow at first, hardly there, but then grew into something more steady and honest.

“Will you tell me?”

She swallowed, her lips parting slightly. She still wasn’t fully comfortable talking about it, the humiliation remaining fresh, but he wanted to know and her reservation was superficial. He’d been opening up to her, trusting her, and she should do the same. He’d dropped whatever he was doing and ran to her that night. Literally ran. He calmed her down, he walked her home, he held her. Just him asking, revisiting the topic, had her feeling warmly invited to rely on him with her emotions, despite the minor apprehension holding her tongue. And, if the logic of the situation wasn’t enough, the patience he was exuding as he stood in place and waited for her to speak was. There was no caution in his expression, because there was no caution necessary between the two of them at the moment. The feeling she was receiving from him was almost the same as what she’d tried to procure during her little speech just moments ago. Safety and comfort. And, though Kagome wasn’t suddenly confident in spilling her vulnerability - as anyone would naturally feel - it wasn’t hard to let him in.

“I -“ The hesitance wasn’t planned, but she breathed to push passed it, her eyes inadvertently shying to the ground. “I wasn’t quite sure how you felt about me. I was constantly going back and forth with myself. After a while, it became too much and, um, yeah. That’s what Saturday was all about.”

Inuyasha tensed slightly, entirely unsuspecting of what she’d just stated. He’d racked his brain numerous times since Saturday night, since seeing her cry and feeling the way she clutched onto him for support, pretending he knew the deep ins and outs of Kagome’s mind so he could try and figure out what, exactly, she’d been feeling so he was better prepared to help her out of it should the situation occur again. The typical scenario that pops into a person’s head when told another is feeling insecure is looks, and he felt rotten just thinking a girl as gorgeous as she didn’t feel comfortable in her own body. He’d almost taken it as absolute confirmation when she’d brought up the hypothetical scenario just now. Another idea was her grades, or her future - because she’s in her final year of high school, and what senior isn’t panicking about their future at the moment - or maybe even something pertaining to her family. More specifically, playing backup guardian to her younger brother to help her hardworking mother out. That could easily weigh on a person, and he wouldn’t blame her for crumbling out of sight from the pressure. Inuyasha was almost prepared to make a list of the many positive attributes this one girl holds so he could help her see what he sees; so he could hopefully prevent another breakdown in the future. For some reason, he never thought it was about him. Not with how she was the first to walk into his arms, or with how she called him when she was fighting off tears. After that night, she must have understood how he felt about her, but that’s only three days of security. It made sense now that he thought about it; the half demon wasn’t known for his open displays of affection. There had never necessarily been a person he wanted to be openly affectionate with until now. As he had been coming to terms with his own emotions, gradually forcing himself out of his damaging and abrasive habits, somewhere along the lines he’d just assumed she knew. And, only ended up confusing her. That’s a good chunk of time that they weren’t on the same page, and he had no fucking idea. If she needed more obvious gestures, he could provide that. It was nerve-racking, but he would do it for her.

“Well, I hope you feel better now, because that’s a stupid thing to get upset about.” He watched as she seemingly took in his response, a small smile curving her lips, comprehending his language. “Wait for me, I’ll be right back.”

He came down the stairs, adjusting his hoodie as he went, spotting Kagome at a bookshelf at the far end of the living room as he came back through. Her brown eyes were glued on a photograph, never peering away to look at him as he approached.

“My dad.” He spoke, stopping just inches behind her.

“You look so much like him.” Kagome seemed almost astonished by the resemblance.

“Just the hair. I think I look more like my mom.”

“And the jawline.”

“And the jawline.” Inuyasha chuckled, nodding as he agreed.

“Is that your uncle with him?”

“Yeah, that’s the geezer. Come on, let’s go.”

She smiled up at him happily, following him out the door, waiting for him on the sidewalk outside the gate while he locked up. As he strode back over to her, he gave the shoulder of her sweater a small yank to lead her down the path he took to her place, his fingers casually sliding down the front of her arm until he reached her hand, tangling their fingers as they’d been before.

Their notes and homework assignments were sprawled on the floor of her bedroom between them, mostly used for reference when necessary as he quizzed her with random questions, a movie playing on the tv for soft background noise and their backs resting against the side of her bed.

“Wait, you already asked me that one!” Kagome complained, scrounging through the papers before her for the answer.

“Yeah, you got it wrong the first time, and you still can’t remember the answer I gave you.” He responded, his tone brassy but amused, breathily chuckling as he watched her go from one sheet of scribbled notes to another.

“It’s here somewhere.”

“You never wrote it down.”

“Dang it, Inuyasha!”

“Not my problem!”

“You probably distracted me.”

“It isn’t hard to do.”

Quickly, he protected his face with his hands, laughing as Kagome chucked a small, decorative pillow at him.

“So funny.” She mocked, reaching over and grabbing his notes from beside his knee. “Oh.”

“Hm?” His ear closest to her flicked, waiting expectantly for her to give him the answer.

“Oda Nobunaga.”

“So much for being a history buff, huh?” He remarked.

“You’re so sassy tonight.” Kagome laughed, putting his notes back where they once were.

“Okay, chemistry question: What’s the formula for hydrochloric acid?”

“Do you even know that off the top of your head?” She countered, grimacing.

“Wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

“What a nerd.” Kagome murmured, once more shifting through her study material. She sighed out slowly as she searched, her face scrunching like usual, and bringing the paper closer to her face, neglecting the glasses on her nightstand. “H-C-I.”

“Good. Since you’re looking at it, phosphoric acid?”

“H-3-P-O-4.”

“Mhm. Now put the notes down. The next question I ask, you should know by now.”

“Oh no.” She grumbled, complying.

“It’s easy. Say you borrow ten-thousand dollars from the bank. By the time you pay it off, you’ve paid a total amount of ten-thousand, four-hundred. What’s the additional four-hundred represent?”

“Oh, interest!”

“Good. See?” He smiled. “One last question and then I’ve gotta go. You ready?”

She hummed an affirmation, nodding as she turned to fully face him.

“It’s gonna be the toughest one. You get it right and I’ll take you out for ice cream.”

Kagome smiled eagerly, whispering an okay as she waited.

“Alright, you sure?”

“Come on.” She half-whined, the anticipation spiking. She wondered just how hard the question was going to be considering he used a reward as incentive.

“Okay, what’s sixteen divided by two?”

“What? It’s eight.” Kagome laughed lightly, brows furrowing in query.

“Yup.” He feigned a defeated sigh, shrugging and gathering his notes together. “Fair is fair. You busy Saturday?”

“No, I’m free.” She smiled, thrown off since she was sincerely expecting a tricky question.

“Great, I’ll take you out on our date then.”

She perked, her expression faltering minutely out of surprise but then growing into one of subtle elation. “Date?”

Inuyasha picked himself up off the floor, bringing the strap of his bag to rest over his shoulder. He glanced down at her as she followed suit and stood, shrugging his brows and smiling slightly in a meager response to her question. “See you tomorrow.”

“Wait, I’ll walk you out.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it.” He said, opening the door to her bedroom and giving her head a gentle shove backward. “I’ll text you when I get home.

—

He crossed the street, seeing the designated meet-up spot in the short distance, the sun still barely keeping the sky illuminated. Hues of fading orange and pink danced on patches of clouds overhead, a deep indigo overriding the majority of the sky. He didn’t see her at the statue, and he was glad he’d beat her; he didn’t like the idea of her sitting alone waiting for him. As he approached, he pulled his phone out of the front pocket of his black jeans, making sure she hadn’t texted.

His stomach was in absolute shambles, his nerves riddled and wired. Their first date. It was about time, yeah, but that didn’t make the ordeal any less unsettling. He’d never technically done this before, so his worst fear was fucking it up. He tried pretending it was just another ordinary hang out so he’d calm down a bit, but he knew that wasn’t true. This was a date. He was finally taking Kagome out on a date. He figured when they got the ball rolling, it would be a lot smoother since being around each other was easier than he’d ever imagined it would be, but up until then he felt just about ready to puke.

To busy himself as he waited, Inuyasha adjusted his grey t-shirt beneath his jacket, making sure it didn’t look too wrinkled or disheveled. He knew people were technically supposed to dress up for occasions such as these, but outside of his school uniform, he refused to wear another button up unless absolutely necessary. It wasn’t his style. He still looked appropriate, and he vaguely remembered the way her eyes lingered on him the last time he wore this shirt around her.

“Well, well, well.” Inuyasha’s gaze, heating instantly, shot to the side, landing on the tall, slender delinquent that ambled over. He’d been so distracted waiting for Kagome that he hadn’t even fucking noticed the scent of the motherfucker. “Look who it is.”

“Fuck.” Inuyasha breathed, the word dragging out hoarsely. “I’ll give you twenty bucks to leave me alone tonight.”

“Who do I look like, Jakotsu? Gonna take a lot more than that to buy me off.”

“Not tonight.” Inuyasha’s tone was clenched and assertive, staring straight into the dark eyes of the man that continued to approach.

“Why? What’s on the agenda?” He asked, carelessly. An arrogant smile expanded on his face.

“I’m serious, Ren.”

“Yeah, see, the last time we saw each other, you shoved my face into a brick wall. I’m not feeling very understanding at the moment.” He sneered.

“You came at me first.” 

“And, it wouldn’t keep happening if you’d just fix the mistake you made.”

“It’s on my to-do list. Right there next to making you kiss my ass.”

“You son of a bitch.” He swung his fist, but Inuyasha dodged in time, swerving around to the backside of his opponent and giving the quickest look around the surrounding area to make sure Kagome wasn’t in the vicinity. Multiple times he’d gotten out of these fights unscathed, and he hoped, fucking hoped, he could do the same right now.

“I gotta say, not a really good way to convince me to leave you alone.”

“Figured you wouldn’t, anyway.” Inuyasha’s shrug was barely visible, waiting for Renkotsu’s next move. He wasn’t the strongest fighter, but he was a tactical one. He liked to bait Inuyasha along, or whomever he was up against really, getting their tempers to flare so their fighting strategy was sloppy. In addition, he was, unfortunately, fast and nimble on his feet, and even though Inuyasha was good at swooping himself out of the way, Renkotsu was better at getting back in his. 

The hanyou was pushed back, but the stumble was short-lived as he grasped his bearings and threw his fist into the punk’s face, feeling the sting of his knuckle colliding with Renkotsu’s tooth. His lip must have pinched between, because blood was quick to trickle free, painting his mouth crimson as he smiled and laughed.

“You’ve gotten soft, dog boy.” He remarked, his hand hovering beneath his chin but not really even trying to stop the bleeding.

“Shut up.”

“Since when do you hold back?”

Since he was steadfast determined not to come out of this with a single indicator that would tip Kagome off or ruin her night.

“Come on, what’s changed? You been whipped or something?” He lunged, faking right but snagging Inuyasha on the left, clutching the front of his jacket and tossing him headfirst into the statue. 

The pain just above his temple was sharp, instantaneously growing unbearably hot as he picked himself up to a proper standing and felt the light leakage of liquid sliding down the side of his face, the sensation dulling and becoming hardly noticeable over the headache pressing him. There was a physical spike to his temper, his blood beginning to boil as a growl bubbled in his abdomen. Of all the members of that dumb squad, Renkotsu was the most annoying.

Something in Kagome snapped, having watched the guy attack Inuyasha. She knew this sort of stuff was happening, but it was indescribably different when she witnessed it first hand. Shock transitioned to anger. Anger transitioned to infuriation. Infuriation transitioned to irrefutable outrage, and that was that. Her next move wasn’t subconscious; she knew exactly what she was doing. Kagome ran at them, speeding up, sprinting as quickly as her legs would go and shoved the bastard as hard as she possibly could. He was sturdier than his lanky body suggested, only stumbling back several feet before his glare met her challenging scowl. Arms braced around her waist before she could lunge again, a husky voice she knew was Inuyasha’s telling her to “fucking stop,” as he pivoted on his heel and tucked her behind him. That didn’t halt her, though. Demands for him to move were grunted from her mouth as she pushed his arms away, trying to climb her way around his protective stature.

“What the fuck is that, your pet pomeranian!?” Renkotsu jibed, finally taking a moment to wipe the mixture of saliva and blood that dribbled down his chin, and spitting off to the side.

“Funny coming from a guy with premature balding!” Kagome barked, finally getting Inuyasha to let her go. He stood close, though, and she knew he was prepared to snag her out of harms way if anything happened. “Who the hell are you!?”

“Who’s asking?” He smirked.

“His pet pomeranian.” She cocked a brow tauntingly.

“You’re feisty. I like that.” He chuckled. “Name’s Renkotsu. And, you’re interrupting a private conversation between the actual dog and I.”

“And, what problem could you possibly have with him!?” Kagome fumed.

“Many.” Came his brusque reply.

“Kagome, look -“ Inuyasha spoke low, only to her, amber eyes shifting from their offender to make sure he didn’t move any closer, to the side of her face - because her sight was glued straight ahead. “Just wait for me in the park. I’ll be right there.”

“What’s he saying? Trying to act like the hero and send you off?” Renkotsu teased. “He deserves everything that’s coming for him. You know what he’s done?”

“Yeah, pissed you off.” Kagome said, her tone dismissive. “I’m gonna tell you upfront that nothing you say about him is going to change my mind from thinking you’re the little bitch here.”

“If I were you, I’d reel that attitude in, little girl. You don’t know what you’re getting into.” Renkotsu warned, his amusement dwindling away. It wasn’t difficult to determine he was a hothead, easily set off by name-calling and back talk, and he didn’t take kindly to challenges against his pride.

“Am I supposed to be scared?”

“You will be if you don’t back the fuck off. I’ll give you thirty seconds to leave.”

“And, if I don’t?”

“You’ll have to watch me kick your boyfriend’s ass. Then, maybe, I’ll take you and -“

“Finish that sentence, Renkotsu! I fucking dare you!” Inuyasha growled dangerously.

“Get her to leave, Inuyasha!” Renkotsu ordered, his voice on the edge of getting even louder.

“We’re both leaving.” Kagome said with the tone of finality, grabbing onto Inuyasha’s wrist.

“The hell he is!”

“You’re from that group of assholes, right? The one Inuyasha left? Which means you’re just carrying out orders from the top. Well, tell what’s-his-face to suck a dick and to handle his dirty work, himself.” 

Inuyasha shot a look of surprise at her, a smile spreading over his lips, and turning back to look at the bald delinquent, he notched his head in appreciation of Kagome’s profanity.

“You gonna let your bitch fight your battles, mutt?”

He shrugged, still thriving off her recent jab. “She’s doing a pretty good job. How could I not?”

“You know damn well if I take this back to Bankotsu, he’ll have us out for her, too. Shut her up.”

“Bankotsu?” Kagome grimaced, blinking bemusedly. “Are you guys siblings or something?”

“No?” Renkotsu asked more than stated, his brows furrowing deeply.

“What’s with the similar names, then? That can’t just be a coincidence; it sounds so fake. Is that your actual name?”

“They don’t go by their actual names.” Inuyasha mentioned. “It’s one of the common measures they take to help protect their real identities. All of them have a code name ending in, ‘-kotsu’.”

“Seriously? Are you kidding me?” Kagome laughed audaciously, looking Renkotsu straight in his dark, narrowed eyes. “Hate to break it to you, buddy, but twinsy names aren’t intimidating.”

“It’s not what’s in a name,” He began, walking inward, his jaw clenching and unclenching repeatedly, evident from the muscles flexing at the crook of his mandible. “It’s how you present yourself. I’ve never been one for hitting chicks, but a motherfucker just might now.”

Inuyasha swapped their grips, now the one clutching to her wrist and directing her to angle behind him with a firm tug.

“I gave you the opportunity to leave, but you wanted to push your luck. I don’t like women getting involved, but oh well. Fuck me, right?”

“Yeah. Fuck you.” Inuyasha seethed, the scowl returning to set on his features. “If you think you’re ever going to touch her -“

“And, what are you gonna do?” Stopping with a foot’s distance between them, staring into the golden eyes of his original target. “Because you’ve been so successful in warding the rest of us off? You, of all people - if we can even call you that - should know by now that we don’t give up so easily. Now, she’s in the mix. Should have made her leave when you had the chance.”

“Are we done here?” Kagome questioned, her tone sharp. His eyes flickered down to her, a single, thin brow shrugging in insolence.

“Sure. I like that dress, by the way.” He grinned briefly before pursing his lips and spitting on her, his saliva still holding a tint of red and landing in the center of her breasts to stain the pastel pink she donned.

Kagome, though repulsed and disturbed, immediately grasped Inuyasha’s arm, pinching her nails into the sleeve of his jacket so he wouldn’t retaliate. His muscles were flexed and he’d been ready to swing in her defense, and even though he could easily overpower her, he didn’t fight against her. His indignation remained rigid, though, especially with the creep standing so close to them, and she knew, by the way he glared at Renkotsu, by the furious air wafting about him, by the way his shoulders were squared and his fists were tightly clenched, that he wouldn’t hesitate to attack if Renkotsu made another move.

“See you around. Both of you.” He smiled tauntingly, turning on his heel and walking away.

It wasn’t until he disappeared around the corner that Inuyasha’s shoulders deflated, a heated sigh leaving his nose as he slowly, but gently, pulled his forearm out of Kagome’s grasp. She was still angry, but with each breath she took, progressively getting steadier and deeper, her temper was fading away. Finally, Inuyasha turned around, facing her, a frown of disapproval marring his handsome face.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Done what?” She inquired, her attitude still prominent.

“Jumped in like you did! You could have gotten hurt!”

“And, you’re mad at the thought of that, right?”

“You’re damn right I am!”

“Well, I got mad seeing it happen to you! So, I did something about it! It’s the same thing!”

“No, Kagome -“

“Yes!”

“No! It’s not supposed to work this way!” Inuyasha stepped in, leaving mere inches between them as they argued.

“I don’t care how it’s supposed to work! What does that even mean!?”

“That I don’t ever want you pulling a stunt like that again, got it!?”

“Excuse me!?”

 “He might have hit you, stupid! You can’t take punches like I can!”

“So, that makes it okay to just sit back and watch the show!? Like you’re some kind of punching bag!?”

“I would have handled it!”

“Then you should have!” Kagome yelled. “I heard him; he said you were holding back! Why were you holding back!?”

“Because you don’t like when I get into fights, Kagome! I didn’t want you to know this was happening! He came out of fucking nowhere, and I was trying to fend him off before you showed up!”

The tension in her brow decreased exponentially, his words ringing in her ears. She felt like an ass for doubting him that way, but still, no matter, she wasn’t sorry for pushing the jerk away from him. She would never be sorry. “It’s not that I didn’t think you could handle it. I knew you could have. I just got so angry and wanted to help.” Kagome calmly admitted.

“Well don’t.” Inuyasha said, authoritatively. “I don’t need your help.”

“Quite frankly, I don’t care what you think you need or don’t need right now. It’s irrelevant.” He flinched to counter but she beat him to the punch, holding her hand up to silence him. “You’re saying it because you don’t want me in the middle or getting hurt, I get that. But, it’s the exact same way I feel about you, so you and I are only going to end up going in circles about this. You can’t tell me what to do, and you can’t force me to just watch your head get thrown into cement without reacting.”

In all honesty, he’d forgotten he’d been hurt in the heat of it all, more concerned about protecting Kagome than anything. He hadn’t expected her to come flying in like a bat out of hell, fully prepared to square off with one of the lowlives of the city. Especially, for his sake. Once he saw her, he just reacted. Probably the same way she had. “Now you’re involved, though. That’s exactly what I didn’t want.”

“We’ll handle it.” Kagome said, unconcerned. To get a better angle on his cut, she leaned her head to the side, reaching up to gently hold his jaw and bring him down near her height. He showed no resistance, his long lashes fluttering softly as he closed his eyes.

“It’ll be fine.”

It really wasn’t all that bad. It looked like the bleeding had about stopped, but it should still be cleaned and bandaged. Releasing his face, she reached for his hand, pulling him in the direction she’d come from.

His grip on her palm tightened as they approached her home, noticing her mom’s car out front, and the living room and kitchen lights on. If she saw them, him specifically, with dried blood on his head, she’d know the night was disastrous and he’d put her daughter in a dangerous situation. He couldn’t have that. He’d already felt like a failure, but to have someone else think that, too - Kagome’s mother, no less - would be mortifying. Kagome’s attention drifted up to him at his notable discomfort, stopping with his cue.

“Your mom…”

“She’s a nurse, don’t worry.”

“No, I - I don’t want her to see this. I don’t want her to know what happened.”

The realization was evident on her face, but she didn’t look disappointed, her head turning to glance at her house before turning back to him.

“Climb up to my window. I’ll let you in.” She smiled.

“You sure?” He asked, and she nodded immediately, letting go of his hand. Before she could move further, he stopped her, pulling off his coat and handing it over. It made the idea of their date more believable if she came back with his jacket, plus it’d help hide the detestable stain. As she situated it over her arms, he reached down to grab the bottom of the zippers on both ends that landed at her thighs, lining them up together and zipping it for her. Kagome smiled appreciatively, turning around and heading inside.

Inuyasha snuck around the front toward the far left end as soon as she shut the door, grateful the curtains were pulled shut. As soon as he reached the tree he used for footing, he leveraged himself up, climbing until he could silently step onto the small roofing of the second story. Her room was still dark as he waited for her at the window, and though everything was muffled, he could vaguely hear her and her mom talking from downstairs. The specifics of their conversation were hard to distinguish, but he knew Kagome’s cheery tone from her upset one, and to him, she sounded happy. Probably fooling her mom into thinking everything was perfectly fine, despite the fact that she was home so soon after leaving.

Her footsteps grew closer, shuffling along as soon as she reached the top landing of the stairs, and even as she entered her room, she didn’t turn on the light until the door was closed. Her greeting smile was natural, and he couldn’t help but wonder how the hell she managed it. Kagome had every reason in the world to be upset right now, but she truly didn’t seem like she was. And, as she hurried over and unlocked the latch for him, sliding the window open, he was engulfed by the powerfully sweet scent of her that stayed locked up in her bedroom, thoroughly muddling any residual, negative thoughts from the evening.

He shut the window on his own, nodding when she mentioned she’d be right back and taking a seat on the floor with his back resting against the bed. Kagome was true to her word, returning less than sixty seconds later with a small first aid kit in hand.

“No, I told you it’d be fine.” Inuyasha chuckled quietly, taking the initiative to turn on the tv to drown out their voices.

“Cut’s need bandages.” Was her simple reply, not even sparing him a glance as she shuffled through her dresser drawers, pulling out a pair of leggings and a fresh shirt.

“The cut’s already healing. It’ll most likely be gone tomorrow.”

“Humor me.” Kagome rolled her eyes, pursing her lips as she tossed her clothes on the bottom edge of her mattress. “Close your eyes, please.”

Without hesitation, he complied, turning away for added effect. The ruffling of his jacket sounded heavy as she removed it, the material of her dress considerably lighter in comparison. It wasn’t the coldest night they’d had recently, but he still found Kagome brave for wearing it - long sleeved garment be damned. Then, an ache twinged in his chest. She’d worn that for him. And, the gesture hadn’t only gone to waste, but the dress was probably ruined now and he’d never be able to appreciate her in it.

At her signal, he opened his eyes, but he couldn’t bring himself to fully look at her, regret taking its hold on him. It wasn’t his fault, he knew, but that didn’t help any. How could he make up for this mess? How could he make her happy like he’d intended to tonight?

Kagome sauntered over, crossing to his right and then sitting at his side, thigh-to-thigh, facing him. The first aid kit was in hand, and she set it on the floor beside her, opening it and taking out some cotton balls in a sandwich baggy before turning to him. She seemed so gentle, her hands light when she pulled his bangs out of the way to asses the cut before doing anything else. As if feeling his unsubtle stare, her brown eyes drifted over to his, curious and large, then shied downward as the smallest of frowns tugged on her lips. Kagome dropped his hair, her hands falling to her lap before she bowed her head slightly, hovering over his shoulder.

Sometimes, you could say those three words to let a person know how deeply you feel for them. Sometimes, you could speak your profound emotions with more, or less, verbally, or physically. And, so badly did Kagome want to figure out how to properly express it all to him. To know Inuyasha, to have him sit with her, hold her hand, tell her things no matter the context, was a privilege she was scared for a while she’d never get to experience. Inuyasha, in his own essence, was such a wonderful gift. To have him care for her, and convey how much he cared through tumultuous anger weighted her heart. Maybe not in the moment could she appreciate the gesture, or clearly see his reasonings, but now that things were calmed and they sat so close, touching, trusting, she understood. How lucky she was. On the surface, Inuyasha was brash and hard-headed, he presented himself in a carefree manner, but truthfully, he was the most beautifully delicate person she’d ever met. 

Finally resting her head against his shoulder, Kagome breathed out slowly, taking in the faint and generic spice of a man’s body wash on her inhale. Funny enough, of all the guys she’d noticed it on, it smelled best on him. What had come over her was the sudden and dire need to tell him everything she felt for him. It had hit her like a freight train; intense and insatiable. Something, she needed to say something to subdue the fire igniting her nerve endings, but as she opened her mouth to speak, all that came out was a whispered, “I really like this shirt.” 

Of course, then, she laughed at herself. Typical of her to chicken out.

Kagome could feel his head come a little closer to hers, his cheek gently brushing against her hair as he said in return, “I know. I wore it for you.”

She smiled. He couldn’t see it, but she smiled.

“Are you okay?” Inuyasha asked, and she quickly sat up straight, forcing herself to appear fully recovered, as if nothing had ever fazed her.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Kagome replied, moving back to her prior task without delay. After opening a small bottle of peroxide, she doused a cotton ball with the liquid. “Could you hold your hair out of the way?”

His expression spoke volumes on how useless he found the gesture to be, but still, he did as she asked, eye roll and all. She gently rubbed the cotton ball over the small wound to clean it, then around the surrounding area to wipe the dried blood away. His attention was roaming over her, and she tried not to pay attention to the way it alarmed the butterflies in her stomach, focusing on her task. It was like his ember irises were actual, flickering chars, and wherever his eyes landed, she felt a pleasant, burning sensation. Her cheek, her lips, her chin, her neck, her collar bone, her lips, her neck, her shoulder, her lips. All alight. 

“Some first date, huh?” Inuyasha remarked, his tone dull.

Kagome’s soft smile in response was unintentional but genuine, dropping the dirtied cotton ball on top of the bag it came out of, and as she chose an appropriate bandage, she shrugged. “That doesn’t matter to me. I mean, we could have chilled and watched tv and slapped the first date title on that, and I would have been perfectly happy.”

“But, instead you got to see me in a fight. Kagome, I’m really sorry.”

“For what?” She asked, opening the bandaid packaging and carefully holding the very edges of the adhesive strips. She angled it properly over the cut, gently sticking it down and smoothing it out. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Besides, the way I see it, I got to yell at one of the jerks that’s been terrorizing you. Trust me, it was a good time.”

Inuyasha laughed, flinching as she rubbed her fingers over the entire bandage. “Ow.” He said playfully, instinctively grabbing her hand and pulling it away. She giggled and mumbled an apology, using her free hand to smooth down his ruffled bangs as he let them go. “By the way, we need to talk about your profanity. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk like that. ‘Suck a dick’? Is that peak Kagome temper right there?” 

“I tend to lose my filter when I’m mad.” She exclaimed.

“You’ve got quite a vocabulary on you. It’s impressive. Remind me not to get on your bad side.” He mildly joked.

He was still holding her hand, his grip adjusted to rest it against his chest, his thumb tenderly caressing over her skin.

“So, you’re not mad at me anymore?” Kagome asked, her voice softening to take on the hint of bashfulness.

“Do I look like I’m mad at you?” Inuyasha responded soothingly. He leaned a little closer to her body, relaxed, warm. “I just - I really didn’t want you getting involved, Kagome.”

“It was kind of impossible not to.”

“I know. I get that. Now, I’m just gonna worry about you whenever we’re apart.”

“They’re not like an actual gang, are they?”

“No, they’re just like you said; a group of assholes. They tend to take their crap out on others and act like they’re tough. Some of them, though, are something to be concerned about. Statistically speaking, they’re not all gonna grow out of this phase. They’re on a gateway path, and I wouldn’t doubt if Bankotsu already had dirty affiliations.” Inuyasha said, letting go of her palm as he leaned even more towards her center, his right hand now braced on the floor by her legs in a casual manner. The closer he got to her, the more comfortable he found he felt. So comfortable, in fact, that he thought nothing of the way her fingers busied themselves in the loose tendrils of his hair along the sides of his face.

“How long were you with them?” Kagome asked.

“Not long enough to actually do anything I’d regret, aside from the obvious.”

“So, you were never actually one of them.” She stated. It felt like reassurance to the stress he already carried about having made the mistake of walking with them in the first place.

He opened his mouth to say something, but his mind blanked. Not in a hopeless way, but in the sense that there was nothing that needed to be said. As he basked in her confidence in him, calmed by the tips of her fingers continuously running through his bangs and loose strands from his ponytail, he realized that neither of them were going anywhere. What the hell was he waiting for?

There was no apprehension in his lean, the fingers of his free hand curving around the side of her neck and beneath her hair, intentionally holding just before meeting her lips. Kagome leaned in the rest of the way, her mouth soft and molding against his perfectly. And, she smiled into his kiss, giggling breathily, happily as they broke.

“I want to be with you, Kagome.” He spoke, tone husky, just as content. “You and I.”

She nodded, feeling so full and light at the same time it was difficult not to be consumed by her elation. 

“Yeah?” Inuyasha smiled, almost teasing because he could tell how shy she was getting from the fresh and deep shade of her cheeks. Again, she nodded, her head ducking slightly. “Is that a yeah?”

“Shut up.” Kagome laughed, taking the initiative to kiss him again, his sigh hot against the side of her cheek while he firmly clutched her to him.

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 9 | 10 |

[let-it-raines]

Rising from the Ashes (17/?)

When her husband died, Emma wasn’t sure that she could ever move on. He left her with a broken heart and a baby who was only three-months old. It’s enough to take most people down, to make them not want to keep going, but Emma Swan isn’t most people. She’s stronger than she has any right to be. And after years of heartache, she’s found ways to move on…one of those being in Neal’s best friend, Killian Jones.

As she’s always known, however, things are more complicated than they ever seem to be. 

Rating: Mature

A/N: Remember that thing I said about a happy ending? They’re (and you guys) are getting one💜

Soon! I’m sorry to those I mislead! I didn’t realize that. Oops. They’re getting one when the story is over, I promise 😘

Found on AO3: Beginning | Current 

Tumblr: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 

Tag list: @ultraluckycatnd @jamif @artistic-writer @cs-forlife @qualitycoffeethings @resident-of-storybrooke @captainsjedi @captswanis4vr @teamhook @ekr032-blog-blog @mayquita @bmbbcs4evr @wellhellotragic @kmomof4 @jennjenn615 @onceuponaprincessworld @shady-swan-jones @snow-into-ash @andiirivera @mariakov81 @shireness-says @kristi555 @facesiousbutton82 @superchocovian @jonirobinson64  @thejollyroger-writer @tiganasummertree @snowbellewells @blowmiakisscolin

“How does that make you feel?”

She cuts her head to look at Dr. Lawrence and the way she’s tapping her pencil against her notebook, the one where she most likely writes down “Emma Swan is crazy” over and over again. It’s what she would write down if she were her own therapist because damn, sometimes she is crazy.

“Isn’t that a little cliché to ask me how that makes me feel?”

She sighs, her shoulders heaving the slightest bit, and she rolls her eyes. She likes Dr. Lawrence. She really does, but sometimes all she wants to do is take that notebook and rip it into pieces. She’s been coming here for two months now, since late February, and April isn’t bringing her any new revelations. Not that she thought therapy would. She just wanted to talk to someone else who wasn’t so emotionally invested in her life, to talk to someone who won’t get hurt by the things she has to say. They’re not all great, and she’s only a little ashamed by that. That’s what she’s supposed to be working on though.

“It is, yes, but I think it’s a legitimate question to ask when you’ve been circling around saying that it bothers you that Killian hasn’t proposed yet.”

Her lips press together in a firm line, a sour feeling settling in her stomach and making it twist into something that has to be unnatural. Feeling this way has to be unnatural. “I did not say that.”

“Not in those words, but you did.”

She sighs again, unable not to, before falling back on the couch and rubbing at her eyes, most likely making her mascara run and create some kind of weird, smoky eye raccoon look. This is a really uncomfortable couch, the cushions almost like rocks. Shouldn’t the thing be more comfortable? Aren’t people supposed to feel comfortable in here? That’s a thing, right?

“I’m not,” she starts, not really sure where the words are going as she uncovers her eyes and looks up at the paneled ceiling. They should do that in the living room. It’d look nice. “I’m not upset that Killian hasn’t proposed. Us getting married has never been a top priority for us, you know? We love each other, and a piece of paper and a diamond ring isn’t going to make us love each other more.”

“But it is more of a commitment.”

“Technically, yeah. With the whole legal aspect and all. I don’t – I don’t know. I want  to marry Killian. I really, really do. And I know he wants to marry me. He’s had a fucking ring for at least five months now, had to have had it for a few months before that, and he’s never asked me.”

“You’ve had a lot going on.”

She chuckles darkly, her stomach untwisting and sending that unpleasant feeling to her throat so that she feels like she could vomit all over the hardwood floor in here. That would probably be an extra fee that insurance doesn’t cover. “What? You mean like my dead ex-husband coming back from the dead, having to explain to him ‘hey honey, I moved on from you and am in love with your friend and can’t make you happy like that anymore. By the way, I realized most of our marriage was shit, but I can’t harbor any resentment toward you because you’re a hero and the father of our kid and have been through more bad things than I thought possible. Plus, you know, I did love you at one point and you’re a nicer guy now.’”

She finishes her words on a long breath, her shoulders releasing some of their tension, before she twists her head to the side and looks at Dr. Lawrence furiously scribbling notes down. Great, she’s probably going to get put into a mental institution now. Can her therapist do that?

Probably not.

God, she has got to get a grip.

And stop on the way home and get something for dinner so her mom isn’t forced to feed her when she picks Henry and Ada up from her house. Killian’s working late on some project with Robin that she cannot wait to be over. She swears that it’s aging him by ten years some days. He’s always so tired and stressed. Sometimes she wonders if he needs a new job, one that’s less stressful and reminds him less of his time in the Navy, but whenever she brings it up, he always says that he’s happy there and that the money is good. She believes him, but it doesn’t keep her from worrying about him and wanting to work on the stress that’s in his shoulders and between his brows.

Dr. Lawrence still doesn’t say anything, and for some reason this bothers her enough to make her keep going, to keep rambling.

“And I guess…things have calmed down now. It was like I was walking a tightrope for a long time, and I wasn’t allowed to trip or fall, you know? Because if I did, things fell apart. I had to be strong for Henry and for Ada. I had to be strong for Neal too. And Killian, even when we were going through that…even when we were going through that rough patch. But I failed, you know? I felt so lost and helpless. Sometimes I felt worthless, which is not an uncommon feeling for me but recently, it wasn’t a usual one. It took me a long time to get over Neal’s death, to get over being abandoned again, and Killian just made me feel so – he made me feel solid. Happy. Good. He was there for me when I felt like I had no one. He listened to me cry over my husband’s death. He listened to me cry over raising a baby alone. He listened to me. And he let me be me, which was something I didn’t have a lot.”

She smiles to herself thinking of it all, of all of the times Killian has been there with her and for her throughout the years, all the way back to them meeting in Oceania and him making her laugh. He’s always making her laugh.

“He’s my best friend on this planet. I can be myself when I’m with him, and he has held my hand through the shitstorm that have been parts of my life, even when I didn’t want to let him. I love him, you know? And I’m badass, by the way. Just thought that needed to be said. I’m badass and totally could have made it on my own, but Killian…with him I get to be strong and independent while also having that hand holding mine for comfort and support. He’s made my life so much better. He’s given me Ada, and really, he’s given me Henry too. So, yeah, I guess I am bothered by the fact that he hasn’t proposed yet. I’m worried that maybe he’s changed his mind again. I shouldn’t really. I know he loves me. He doesn’t let me doubt that. I just…I want to be with him fully. Hell, I want me to not have a different last name than both of my children. I want to marry him, and yeah, a part of me is worried that he doesn’t want to marry me, that everything with Neal has made our entire relationship be altered.”

Once the words are out, she knows that she can’t take them back. She doesn’t want to take them back. This is…this is her life and her emotions and she needs to feel them. It feels really good to say all of that, and honestly, she wants to say more. She wants to talk more about Killian and more about Neal. She wants to go back to what they were talking about last week and how Neal’s moving has affected everyone, especially Henry. She wants to talk about how terrified she is being a parent and putting her kids in such stressful, life changing situations.

She wants to talk.

But the clock on the wall says she only has ten minutes left, and she figures that Dr. Lawrence has to have something to say or else she’s been writing on that notepad for nothing.

She reaches up to wipe her eyes, to wipe away the tears that have been furiously falling without her permission before her hand lands on her pendant. She’s going to have to make herself look less puffy. She doesn’t even remember when she started crying.

“I think Neal coming back has altered your relationship,” Dr. Lawrence begins, and Emma sits up on the couch, straightening out her shirt and her back as she sniffles. “How could it not? Besides the emotional trauma and joy of having him be found alive, it’s completely changed your life. You and Killian are no longer parents to Henry alone. You share that responsibility even if the two of you carry the load. Your ex-husband is no longer a dead man. He’s a real human being with thoughts and feelings that aren’t always going to be perfect, so you have to adjust to that too. For as much change as you’ve been going through, Killian has been going through something too. You have to give him the emotional time to adjust as well because while I don’t know the man, I do know that he cares about you and is probably putting your feelings above his.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe Killian thinks that you’re not ready yet, that he thought you were still going through too much emotional upheaval until you two talked about it a bit – ” she looks down at her notebook, eyes seemingly searching for something “ – two weeks ago.”

Ah, so maybe she does actually pay attention.

“Does that really count as talking, though? I literally just hinted around at it.”

She smiles. “But it’s a start.”

-/-

“Henry, you have got to put your shin guards on so that we can go.”

“I can’t find them,” he shouts back over the railing.

“Of course you can’t,” she mutters to herself, rolling her eyes a bit as she looks down at Ada who is currently banging her hands against the wall and giggling to herself. Kids are so damn weird sometimes. She doesn’t understand what the purpose of banging her hands against the wall is, but if she’s about to have to go upstairs and help Henry find the rest of his soccer uniform, she can’t leave her down here by herself despite how much baby proofing they’ve done.

Her entire house is metaphorically wrapped in bubble wrap, and Ada still manages to find ways to nearly kill herself just by exploring.

This is terrifying.

How is Killian not back from his run and the grocery store yet? He’s already supposed to be here so they can go to the fields together like they’ve done every Saturday this spring. He already missed their usual breakfast, so he really needs to show up soon. Maybe he’s stuck in traffic or there was some kind of freak watermelon accident and there are watermelon all over the road. Or maybe he ran into someone he knows. She doesn’t know, and even though she really shouldn’t be angry at him right now, she’s had a bad morning and needs him.

And she misses him. He’s here, always right here, but he’s felt so distant lately, so far away. She felt so good after her therapy appointment on Tuesday, like she was ready to talk to him and finally fix things and have all of her emotions centered, but she’s barely gotten a chance to talk to him in the three days since. Both of their jobs have been busy, the kids have been insane, and then she had to deal with Neal cancelling his trip into town this weekend. She understands, really, but Henry understanding is different. He misses his dad, and if the hour long phone call last night is any indication, Neal misses Henry too.

Her life is a constant ebb and flow of being all together and all falling apart.

No, her life is good. She’s just been stressed the past few days. That’s all.

“Come on, bug,” she sighs, stepping toward Ada and picking her up, wondering when in the world this kid got so heavy. Ada lets out what has to be an actual, blood curdling scream and starts thrashing around while Emma carries her up the stairs. “Ada, shhh, it’s okay. We’re just going upstairs. You don’t have to have a meltdown.”

That somehow only makes things worse, the cries going up another decibel, and she resigns herself to this as she walks down the hallway into Henry’s room. There are clothes scattered everywhere, his notebooks spread across the floor. When in the world did his room get to be such a mess? He has to clean that tonight or tomorrow. It cannot stay like this.

“I can’t find them,” he whines again, tossing a pair of shoes out of his closet, the pair of converses landing on one of his books.

“Have you checked in your bag?”

“That’s the first place I looked.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he shouts, coming out past the doorway and running his hands through his hair, yanking at the brown strands. “Why is Ada so loud? Make her stop.”

“I’m trying, kid.”

“Try harder.”

“Hey, no,” she says sternly, trying not to yell to escalate the situation, “you do not get to tell me what to do, especially not being loud and harsh like that. I understand that you are upset and can’t find your shin guards and that your sister is being really loud. I get that. I don’t like it either, but yelling isn’t going to solve any of our problems.”

“Ada is yelling.”

“Henry,” she sighs while Ada lets out another loud cry. Shit, this is not a good day. It’s not even ten in the morning yet. “Ada is a baby. She can’t really talk. You know this. I’m going to text your dad and ask if he knows where your stuff is.”

“How would my dad know if he doesn’t live here anymore?”

Her stomach drops for a moment before she realizes that she used the wrong term for Killian. It’s usually not confusing, but sometimes it’s so easy to slip up like that.

“Your daddy,” she corrects. “I’m going to text your daddy.”

“Killian is not my daddy. He’s my step dad.”

Her stomach really does drop then, a heavy anchor weighing her down and making it nearly impossible for her legs to stay steady and her arms to stay strong against a still wailing Ada, even if her cries are beginning to calm down. What did…what did Henry just say?

Why did he just say that Killian isn’t his daddy? She knew that sooner or later he’d feel too old to call Killian his daddy, that he wouldn’t always call him by the name he started calling him when he was five, but he’s not supposed to be calling Killian his step dad. Yeah, that’s pretty much what he is, technically, but that’s also not what he is. He’s his dad. He’s the man who raised him, and Henry should never think otherwise when that used to be all he knew.

“Where did you learn that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Henry.”

He huffs, crossing his arms over his chest while his lips curl downward. Does she have the most dramatic kid in the world? Probably not. But he seems to be going for that title today. She’s just waiting for him to start crying or throwing things. Or hopefully not throwing things. That would be a disaster.

This day is kind of a disaster.

At least she hasn’t gotten to the point where she has to take away Henry’s games yet.

“My dad told me that’s what Killian is.”

Motherfucking hell.

She’s going to start crying.

And throw something.

Maybe throw Neal. Definitely throw Neal. He’s bigger than her and hundreds of miles away, but she could get it done. She could. Absolutely. All of those stories about mothers raging to protect their children – one of those is going to come true after she figures out what the hell is going on. Neal wouldn’t have told Henry that. He wouldn’t have. But then why would Henry have said that? He obviously knew he wasn’t supposed to tell her before she pushed him into saying it, so he was probably trying to protect his dad.

But why would Neal have told Henry that in the first place when they explicitly told him over and over again that this is how their family situation works?

It must be some kind of misunderstanding. It has to be. Neal wouldn’t do that, and if he did, it has to be a mistake, a slip of the tongue. She’ll call him later and get it all straightened up. It’ll be fine. Right now she really just has to focus on Henry and this situation and getting him to his soccer game.

Swallowing the gulp caught in her throat, she puts Ada on the ground, figuring that’s probably all that she wants to stop this crying, and squats down so that she’s at eye level with Henry, reaching up to brush his hair off of his forehead while he stares at her with those watery chocolate brown eyes.

“Kid,” she whispers quietly, curving her lips into a small, hopefully reassuring smile while she keeps pushing his hair back, “I need you to listen to me, okay?”

Henry nods his head up and down, his little shoulders heaving while Ada has managed to make her way to Henry’s bed and is holding herself up on it. At least she’s not banging on the door.

“Killian is your daddy. You can call him Dad if you want to, if you feel too old to be calling him Daddy. That’s okay. You are a very special kid, and like I’ve told you before, you get to be lucky enough to have two dads who love you and care for you more than anything in the world. Not every kid gets that like you do.”

“But Dad told me when we were on the phone that Kil – that my daddy is my step dad. Like how Ella has a step mom.”

She doesn’t know how to explain this. It was easier when Neal was dead, which is a horrible thing to think. But Henry understood it much more easily then. He embraced it more. Now he’s older, though, and has an entirely different situation for his life.

She wishes Killian were here. He’d help and know what to do and know what to say despite the fact that this would break his heart even more than it’s breaking hers.

“It’s…it’s grown up things. I,” she sighs, running her free hand through her hair and trying to think while her thighs begin to ache from this position. “You know how when we told you about Ada being born, we told you it was because Mommy and Daddy loved each other and that helped to make her?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, back when your dad and I were married, we loved each other and made you so that we could love you.”

“I know.”

She smiles at him again, making sure that her eyes don’t leave his except to glance over to Ada as she plops down on the ground and starts messing with some of Henry’s books. Thank God she’s stopped crying. That was miserable. Her entire life was about to implode in the span of five minutes.

“But then your dad disappeared, and I didn’t have him to help me love you or me anymore. But your daddy came along and he fell in love with me and  with you. And he was around to help you learn how to walk and talk, just like he is with Ada. He took you to the pool to go swimming and to the playground. He went to all of your school plays and all of your birthday parties. He tucked you into your bed at night and read you stories, and he’s spent so much time loving you and me and your sister that I don’t think we can even imagine how much he loves us.”

Henry nods his head, and she desperately hopes that he understands. She doesn’t understand how to explain this without scarring Henry for life about sex when he is so not ready for that. She knows that some parents are fully open with their kids about things like that, but it’s not her parenting style.

“So he and my dad are the same?”

“Y-yeah,” she sputters, knowing that she needs to attack this conversation with a better plan later but thankful that things have seemed to calm down. “They’re the same. They’re both your dads, and they both love you so much that I bet your arms don’t even stretch out that far.”

Henry sticks out his arms to test the theory out, and she can’t help but chuckle at that. He has such childlike innocence and faith for someone who keeps having his life changed and uprooted, and even though she still feels like a frayed wire right now, she knows that she has a set of good kids in her life.

Leaning forward, she wraps Henry up in a hug and holds him as tightly as she can without smothering him. He hugs her right back, and she feels a little of the lead that’s in her stomach dissipate.

“Come on,” she says as she pulls back, “we’ve got some shin guards to find and a soccer game to go to.”

They find the shin guards in the kitchen of all places, and even though they have to practically sprint across the fields to get to his match, they make it in time. She knows a lot of the other parents there, a lot of them have kids in Henry’s class, but she prefers to sit under this tree in the shade with Ada. It’s at the corner of the field, so she still has a clear shot of Henry and he does of them.

Emma: Where are you?

Emma: We’re already at the fields. Hope you get here soon!

Emma: We’ve had quite the morning. Can’t wait to tell you about it later.

She puts her phone down on the blanket and pulls Ada back to her so that she can adjust her hat on her head, making sure she’s totally shaded while she slathers more lotion on her.

“Mama,” Ada babbles, grabbing at her necklace with enough force that she could snap it. Emma has to immediately grab Ada’s hand and move it away before twisting the necklace around so that Ada can’t see the diamonds. “Mama. Mama. Mama.”

“What?” she laughs, scrunching her nose up when Ada tries to grab at it too. “Baby, you’re driving me crazy today. Nothing makes you happy, and you’re going to either rip my nose off or break the necklace your daddy gave me.”

Ada giggles at that, like it’s the funniest thing in the world, and Emma can do nothing more than shake her head as she continues to get Ada’s arms with lotion. She’s wearing a United jersey with Jones written across it that Killian got her. He’s so extra sometimes, and this is a prime example of it.

She kind of loves that.

Plopping Ada down on the blanket in front of her, she snaps a picture of her back with the soccer field in front of her, and sends it off to Killian, hoping that he’ll answer this one since he hasn’t answered any of her other texts and calls. She’s trying to ignore that and convince herself that it’s fine, but there’s this weird, sinking feeling that’s stayed with her all day. Maybe it’s the stress, or maybe it’s something else entirely.

Emma: Henry’s number one fan!

The rest of Henry’s game (or is it match? She’s really not sure.) goes by pretty quickly. He’s at the age where the kids are actually pretty competitive, so it’s not so much all of them running around and kicking balls in the wrong goal as it is them legitimately trying to win the game. Not quite as cute as it used to be, but Henry likes it. That’s all that really matters.

“Did you see me kick that goal?” Henry gasps when he runs over to her after the game, his hair covered in sweat and grass stains covering his knees. “It was awesome.”

“It was awesome,” she agrees, holding her hand up for him to high five him before holding Ada’s hand up so that she can do the same, even if it’s not with quite the same impact.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“He got called into work,” she lies, not too sure how to handle this situation. That seems to be happening a lot lately. “He’ll be home later, though.”

The smile that was on Henry’s face instantly fades, the upward curl twisting down. “He didn’t see my game?”

“No, kid. He didn’t. But he wanted to.”

“He promised that he’d come to all of my games.”

“I know,” she laments, bringing him into her side. Poor kid. Both of his dads have bailed on him this weekend, and she knows that if it’s just today, it won’t mess with him too badly. But if it’s…if it keeps happening, well, it can’t keep happening. She won’t let it keep happening. “But sometimes things happen that make us break our promises. I’m sure your daddy is so sad about not getting to see you score that goal.”

“Yeah,” Henry sighs, his shoulders sagging forward as she starts to pick up all of their stuff so they can walk to the car.

It doesn’t take long even navigating through all of the kids and parents, and soon enough she’s driving out of the soccer complex and on her way home with the kids so that Henry can get showered and Ada can take her early afternoon nap. The music cuts off in the car as a phone call comes in, and she hits the button on her steering wheel to accept Neal’s call, leaving it on speaker since he’s probably calling for Henry anyways. Good. If he can’t fly home this weekend because of work then at least Henry will have this.

“Hey, Neal,” she greets, pulling up to a stop light and inching closer to the car in front of her.

“Hey, Ems. How are you?”

“Good, good. We’re on our way home from Henry’s soccer game. Kid, why don’t you tell your dad what you did today?”

“I scored a goal,” Henry shouts from the backseat, his voice far too loud. “It was really cool. Avery kicked the ball to me, and I kicked it right past the Dragons’ goalie. She couldn’t stop me.”

“That’s awesome,” Neal laughs. She can practically imagine the smile on his face, and it makes something in her heart settle thinking of how much Neal is here for Henry even when he’s physically away.

-/-

-/-

“Come on, Emma, push.”

“I can’t,” she cries, holding onto the handrails over the bed while a contraction roars through her body, making all of her limbs shake as she feels herself shutting down, feels her will to keep going fading. “I can’t do this by myself.”

“I am right here, Hon,” one of her nurses soothes, holding onto her hand even though Emma doesn’t know her name. She should know her name. She’s the woman who is by her side while she delivers her son. If she’s the only one going to be here, Emma should know her name. It’s too painful to ask. “You’re doing just great. So is your baby. His heartbeat is so strong, yeah. He gets that from you.”

“He’s okay? He’s still doing okay? This isn’t – this isn’t hurting him, ah, too much?”

Her nurse squeezes her hand, holding on tightly as she watches people move between her legs. She’s officially had her vagina stared at by more people than she ever thought would stare at it, and even though she doesn’t want to think about that and what’s happening right now, it’s all that she can focus on.

If she doesn’t, she’ll think about Neal.

He should be here.

He should be here holding her hand and helping her through this.

He should be here to hold his son when he’s born.

He should be here.

But he’s not. He can’t help it. He’s training. This is what he has to do. This is his job. He’s helping so many other people, and that’s what she has to remind herself. That’s what she has to keep repeating over and over again as she suffers through labor. Why did no one tell her how much this hurts? They did, but it was in broad terms. It wasn’t like this. It was never described like this. Everyone always glossed over it and told her that it would be all over and she’d have her baby in her arms and that everything would be okay.

How is this okay?

How is any of this fucking okay?

She’s by herself.

She’s alone and has no one here but this nurse who she still doesn’t know the name of to help her. Neal isn’t here. Ruth isn’t here. Neither is David. Or Mary Margaret. Mary Margaret would be good at helping here. She’s been through this. She’s so soothing even when she’s annoying and pushing all of her opinions on Emma.

She doesn’t even have any friends here. All of her friends are mostly Neal’s friends, and she doesn’t know any of them well enough to ask them to be here.

Why didn’t she make more friends? Why didn’t she keep some of hers from freshman year? She had friends, didn’t she? She had people she talked to and got lunch with. She knows that she did. She had to.

She’s been alone for so much of her life, but right here, right now, is the last place she ever thought she would be alone.

She can’t do this. She can’t. It’s too much.

Maybe she’s not meant to be a mother.

She can’t be one.

How could she when she didn’t have one for most of her life?

“I can’t be a mother,” she cries, tears stinging hotly behind her eyes while her contraction begins to wane. She knows it’s only a brief moment of reprieve. Her son is almost here. She knows that he is, that has to be. She’s been suffering in here for too long for him not to be here soon. She needs him to be here. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”

“Yes, you can, Sweetie,” the nurse promises her, rubbing her thumb over her knuckles. Neal always does that, and it’s so damn soothing. She misses him. He should be here. She can’t stop thinking that. He should be here. “You can be a mother. It’s just scary right now, but you’re doing great trying so hard to help this boy come into the world.”

“But I’m alone,” she whispers, the words barely escaping her lips before they get captured by a sob, one that moves her shoulders and makes her vision completely blur.

She’s alone.

She thought she finally wouldn’t be, but she is. She’s alone and terrified.

But she’s been alone for most of her life, and the sad truth is that she knows how to deal with it. She knows how to deal with handling things by herself, how to deal with pain and happiness, with loss and with celebration.

She knows.

So she can do it. She can get through it. She has to.

She can be a mother.

She can be a mother for this kid. Maybe even for herself too.

Her eyes haven’t seen this kid outside of a black and white picture. Her hands haven’t felt him move except for the hard kicks to her ribs that have taken her breath away. Her arms haven’t held him except when she’s cradled her bump at night.

She doesn’t know anything about this kid, but she knows that she loves him. She knows that she wants to be his mom and to be there for him for every day of his life.

She knows.

This is her son, and she can do this.

And she does.

Even with the epidural, it’s possibly one of the most painful things she’s ever experienced, and she knows that doesn’t go away anytime soon. All of the books told her that about the recovery. But there was no way they could tell her the pure joy that she feels holding this red, squirmy baby in her arms. He’s beautiful. He’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen in her life, and she made him with her body.

She and Neal made him.

They’re parents. They’re freaking parents.

She can’t wait to tell him, to let him know that his son is here, but right now all she wants is to spend time with her boy, to get to hold him and never let go.

She’s never letting go.

“Hey, Henry,” she sighs, rubbing her finger across his cheek while he looks up at her. He has Neal’s nose. She always thought people who could tell who a baby looked like when they’re born are crazy, but her kid has Neal’s nose. “I’m your momma. I am. You are so precious, and I love you so damn much. I’m pretty sure you don’t understand what I’m saying, so that curse is just between you and me, okay? Yeah? Just between you and me. Your daddy never has to know.”

“You did a great job,” her nurse sighs as she stands at the door. “That’s a good baby with a healthy mom.”

“Thank you,” she whispers, leaning her head back against the pillow. It feels so comfortable, but she’s not ready to go to sleep quite yet. “It really means so much to me to have had someone to hold my hand throughout all of that.”

“It’s certainly not a problem.”

“Hey, what’s your name? I’m sorry I didn’t ask before. I was kind of busy.”

“Ingrid.”

“Thank you, Ingrid.”

Ingrid walks out of the room, and she turns all of her attention back to Henry and the roundness of his eyes, the dark lashes. He’s so bald, but he’s got this one little patch of dark hair. He’s beautiful. Just beautiful. And not crying, which she thinks she likes most of all.

“I think you and I are going to be good friends, kid,” she tells him, letting him grasp onto her finger. “Like, you eat food from my boob, so it’s pretty much a given that we’re going to be close. Just saying. My body has gone through a lot for your existence, and I expect some good mother’s day gifts someday. Your daddy knows what I like. Oh, I can’t wait for you to meet your dad. You’re going to love him. He’s so funny. I bet he’ll make you laugh all of the time, yeah? But not as much as me. Don’t tell your dad, but I’m so much funnier than him. He has no idea.”

Throughout the rest of the day, nurses and doctors come in and out to check on both she and Henry. She knows that she takes a lot of naps, but it’s all a bit of a blur for her as some of the pain starts to kick in and she struggles getting Henry to eat. Once he does, though, she feels like infinitely less of a failure. It’s a weird feeling, being so devastated by something that’s really not in her control, but she has to keep reminding herself that she’s not going to be perfect at this and that things are going to go wrong. Hell, so many have already.

But Henry is here and healthy, and that’s all that matters. That’s always been what matters.

“Thanks for making me not be alone anymore, kid.”

-/-

-/-

Neal and Henry talk for the rest of the ride home, but really, it’s mostly Henry going on and on about his game and saying the same things several times while Neal pretends it’s brand new information to him. When she pulls into the garage, the door shutting behind them, she switches the call to her phone so that she can talk to Neal for a little bit while she sends Henry inside to take his shower, hoping that he’s actually going to wash himself instead of simply standing under the water.

“Thanks for calling him today,” she tells him as she rocks Ada back and forth in her glider, hoping that she’ll fall asleep soon and not have another meltdown. “It was kind of a big day for him, and you have no idea how much that means to him.”

“Of course. He’s my kid. Just because I’m not at home anymore doesn’t mean I’m not going to be there for him.”

Her heart lurches, practically dropping to the pit of her stomach, and she has to hold back the tears that are threatening to push through. That’s literally all she’s ever wanted since the day Henry was born.

“That’s good,” she sniffles, adjusting Ada in her arms. “You’re a good dad. You’ve done such a good job adjusting to being a parent to an eight-year-old who likes to talk back and who you can’t just cuddle with to make them stop crying.”

Neal hums on the other end of the line. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You sound a little upset.”

“I – ” she begins, almost ready to spill all of her thoughts to Neal, but she bites her tongue to hold herself back. She’s not about to share how upset she is with Killian with Neal. That’s pretty much asking for disaster. She knows that they have a good relationship, a good friendship, but they’re not the kind of exes who talk about their love lives with each other. Not in graphic detail. They talk about Henry and the movies and old times. She doesn’t tell him her intimate thoughts, not anymore. “It’s been a long day. The kids had me about ready to pull my hair out.”

“Killian didn’t help?”

“He got called into work,” she lies, telling Neal the same one she told Henry earlier. Killian will call soon. He has to.

Neal clicks his tongue.

“What?” she asks, watching Ada’s eyes flutter closed.

“Nothing.”

“It’s obviously something, Neal. I know you. You click your tongue when you have something to say.”

“It’s just that, well, shouldn’t Killian be around for Henry’s soccer game?”

“Sometimes things come up.”

“That’s still a shitty thing to do.”

She huffs, all of that anger from this morning returning as the memories flood back to her brain. How in the world did she forget that she needed to talk to Neal? It’s like she got lulled into some kind of false sense of security and didn’t even realize it.

“You missed his game today too, Neal. For the exact same reason.” She doesn’t know if Killian is at work right now, but that’s what she’s going with. Something must have happened for him not to be here. “And we are far too old to be playing petty games over who is being a better parent to Henry. By the way, where the hell do you get off telling Henry that Killian is his step dad?”

She can feel her voice begin to raise, so she gets up from the chair and puts Ada in her crib, hoping that she’ll fall asleep quickly. When she exits the nursery, she can still hear the shower going, so she walks down the hall and into her bedroom, moving to the bathroom so Henry will be less likely to hear her talk. She can’t begin to count the number of arguments she and Killian have had in the bathroom. They don’t yell too often, but she doesn’t want Henry to hear any of it when they do argue.

Neal still hasn’t said anything, so she asks again. “Why did you say that?”

“I didn’t,” he finally says, his voice completely even.

“Henry told me that you did.”

“He’s a kid. He says crazy shit.”

“He’s a smart kid who only says things when he’s learned them somewhere else. Just admit to it so we can talk about it. It’s already a tricky situation, so we don’t need it to get worse.”

“What’s tricky about it? He’s my kid, and Killian is pretty much his step dad. I mean, you two aren’t married, so not really. But I figured that made it less complicated.”

Less complicated her ass. Why is he being such an ass about this? This is not him, not anymore.

“First of all, he is Killian’s kid too. I have never let Henry think that you’re not his dad. You are. That’s something I’ve made a priority for him to understand ever since he was old enough. But you cannot take away Killian’s right to him as well. Killian helped me raise him, Neal. For most of Henry’s life, Killian has been Henry’s dad too. That doesn’t just change.”

“Well, it’s not my fault that I wasn’t fucking around to raise him.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“You might as well have, going on and on about Killian this, Killian that. Fuck, Ems. He’s not the greatest man in existence. You don’t have to put him on a pedestal.”

“I don’t.”

“Please,” he scoffs, and she feels acid swish in her stomach, twisting around as she settles down on the countertop next to the sink, her legs like jello beneath her. “You so do. Ever since I’ve come back it’s been all about Killian and the life you share and the daughter you have, like our marriage was absolutely nothing to you. I bet you didn’t even consider taking me back.”

“What the hell is your problem today? I’m trying to talk to you about our son to make sure that he doesn’t get confused, and you decide to be nasty to me? No, Neal, I didn’t really consider taking you back. Life moved on. It changed. But don’t you dare for a second think that I didn’t go through hell trying to figure out how to deal with things when you came home. I nearly lost my mind trying to handle everything. I care about you. You’re my friend, and I tried my best. But there’s no way you could have expected me to drop everything to be with you when I spent years grieving you.”

“I would have done it for you.”

“Bullshit. I loved you, but you never loved me in the same way. I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I know.”

“I think you’re making a mistake being with Killian.”

“I think you’re making a mistake trying to talk to me about this when it’s really none of your business.”

“If it affects my son, it is my business.”

She scoffs, bewilderment inching its way over all of her skin, gooseflesh rising. How fucking dare he try to turn this on her, try to gaslight her. This is what he’s always done. He’s always tried to steamroll her like this. She thought he’d changed, that he’s tried to be better, so why is he being like this? He shouldn’t be like this anymore.

“You know what affects your son, Neal?” she asks, her voice cold even to her own ears. “His dad fucking with how he thinks of one of his other parents. No part of that is okay, nor will it ever be okay. Don’t do it again.”

She hears him say her name on the other end of the phone, but she hangs up before he can say anything else. He’ll call back. She knows that he will, but she’s done with that conversation. It was ridiculous, in every single way. She knew it wouldn’t be comfortable bringing up the whole step parent thing, but she didn’t think it would ever turn into…that.

What the hell was that?

Neal hasn’t talked to her like that since he found out that she and Killian were together. It was harsh, but she understood in a way. Now though, she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand why he would be rude to her life that, why he would try to make her think that she’s doing something wrong by being with Killian, to make her think that she’s a bad mother. It’s how he used to talk to her, but it’s not how the man she’s known as talked to her ever since he came back.

It’s not supposed to happen like that anymore.

All she wants to do is cry, but she’s too tired to cry. If she starts, she may not be able to stop. It’s all too much. Today has been too much for her, and she still doesn’t know where Killian is, what’s going on with him. In the back of her mind she thinks that maybe she should be calling hospitals to make sure that he’s not in one, but something in her gut keeps her from doing that. She does text Mary Margaret and David, however, hoping that maybe one of them will have the answer.

She needs to know, and worry is slowly covering each inch of her skin.

“Mom,” Henry calls, stepping into her bathroom.

“Yeah, kid?”

“Can you make me a hot dog?”

“Sure,” she sighs, giving him a watery smile and wiping away at her eyes. “Let’s go do that.”

The rest of her day is spent with her kids, trying to entertain the both of them with games and movies, even going outside to play on the play set for awhile. She never hears from Killian, and only Mary Margaret texts her back to say that she hasn’t heard from him and that David’s got a busy day at work and probably won’t get back to her until his shift is over. It bothers her, makes her practically sick to her stomach, but she can’t focus on it as she focuses on making sure Ada and Henry have a good day.

It’s what she has to do if she’s doing this alone today.

That night, after she’s got Ada in her crib, she walks to the next room over and into Henry’s. They both cleaned up in here a bit today, so she doesn’t step over any legos or sharp objects as she crawls into his bed behind him, wrapping her arm around his waist and holding onto her son like her life depends on it.

Maybe sometimes it does.

“What are you doing?” he mumbles, still flipping through one of his books.

“Cuddling with you because I love you so much.”

He squirms, but he still settles into her. “I love you too.”

“What are you reading?”

“Matilda.”

“That’s a good one.”

“I know. I like it. She has magic.”

She nods her head and settles it down onto Henry’s shoulder, reading behind him while he mumbles some of the words out loud. She doesn’t know how she got a kid who loves to read when she remembers hating it at his age, but she’s really thankful for that.

She’s thankful for Henry and how he changed her entire life for the better on the day he was born, how he brought magic into her life in a time that was so dark that even the stars seemed to disappear, blinking out one by one until there was no light left.

Except for Henry. He has always been the light.

“Did you know I love you?” she whispers to him.

“Yeah, you already said that.”

“I know.” She kisses his cheek and holds him a little closer. “It’s just that I love you and Ada so much that sometimes my heart can’t contain it, and I have to keep telling you so that you know how much I love you, how much I’ll always love you forever.”

“I love you and Ada too,” he says simply. She knows that he means the words, but they don’t have the same emotional depth that her words do. Good. He doesn’t need to feel how she’s feeling, like her heart is threatening to break into pieces over how much she loves him.

“And your dad and your daddy love you too. So much more than you even know.”

“I know. Mom, you’re making it hard to read my book.”

Emma chuckles, kissing his cheek again before she shifts out of the bed, figuring that she’s smothered him enough for tonight. Just because she needs to time with him doesn’t mean that he wants it. “In thirty minutes your light needs to be off and you need to be asleep, okay?”

“Whatever.”

“Henry.”

“Okay.”

“Good. Night, kid. Thanks for making me feel like I have real magic in my life.”

“Goodnight, Mom.”

She closes his door behind her and makes her way downstairs, quickly checking on Ada on her way. The house is quiet, only the sounds of the air conditioner running and the refrigerator making ice filling the space. Usually she’d crave something like this. She’d crave having peace and quiet and not having to worry about anything for a little while. She can fix herself a cup of hot chocolate and settle down in front of the television to watch whatever she wants. Those are the nights she craves sometimes, but now that she has one of those, she wants none of it.

All she wants is for this day to be over, possibly for this day not to exist. Frankly, it sucked, and she knows that not everything will be fixed when she wakes up in the morning. She’s still pissed at Neal. Like, if he were home she would probably have the urge to punch him pissed. She’s worried about Henry and how everything is impacting him. She’s already emailed Dr. Hopper today, but sometimes she’s worried that him going to therapy and them trying so much to give him a good life is not enough.

Sometimes she worries that she is not enough.

That she’s not enough for her children.

That she’s not enough for Killian.

He has only made her feel that way once in all of their time together, and she doesn’t hold it against him, not anymore. She understands everything that he was going through. But right now, today, she needs him, and he’s not here.

She falls asleep on the couch, and when she wakes, it’s to a twist in her neck and a twist of the front door handle, Killian coming inside as quietly as possible. At first, she’s relieved that he’s okay, that he’s home, but then she remembers the absolute hell that she’s been through all day without him by her side, without him answering any of her calls.

“Where have you been?” she whispers. She thought the words would be louder, harsher, but she finds that she can barely get them past her lips.

Right now she’s just relieved that he’s okay, that his heart is still beating within his chest.

“Why aren’t you asleep, love?” Killian asks her, stepping into the bright light of the living room so that she can see the red rim around his eyes. “You should go to bed.”

“I’d really rather know why you ignored all of my calls all day long.”

“I’ll tell you in the morning.”

“Damn it, no,” she yells, this time the words coming out as she sits up further on the couch, “tell me now. I’m done being pushed around today. You have been gone. I have been worried. Henry has been worried, and you walk in here at two in the morning telling me that we’ll talk later. No, that’s not how this works.”

Killian nods his head while his lips press together in a firm line. He looks exhausted and like he’s been crying, and beneath all of her anger, she feels the worry for him that she’s felt all day. “You’re right,” he sighs, his lashes landing against his cheeks as he looks at the ceiling before his gaze finally finds hers. “I’ve got some things to talk to you about.”

[chemicalmagecraft]

The Gamer Hero, Deku Chapter 18

"I promise I'll be careful," I told my mom before heading out.

"And I'll record the whole thing for you!"

"Thanks!" Before I left, Yang meowed and butted her head on my leg. I chuckled and rubbed her head, causing her to purr. "See you later, girl."

xoxoxo

Security was upped for the sports festival. I was mostly fine getting through because I had a student ID, but there were still some precautions. I saw some pro heroes on my way to the stadium, too. Everyone was tense as we changed into our gym uniforms. It was to be expected. Not only was the event televised, but our careers as heroes may have depended on how well we did. No pressure.

"We will be entering the stadium soon everyone!" Iida shouted when we were all in the waiting room. "Please prepare yourselves physically and mentally!"

"Midoriya," a voice that I only partially recognized said.

"What's up, Todoroki?" I asked him.

He glared at me. "You may have your magic and you may have some kind of support from All Might, but I plan to beat you." He turned around and started to walk away.

"The fuck's your problem, Half-'n-half?" Kacchan asked.

"Yeah, what's with the declaration of war?" Kirishima asked.

"Todoroki," I said. He stopped for a moment. "I'm aiming for the top too," I told him. He scoffed and walked away.

xoxoxo

To be honest I probably would have been very nervous if it weren't for Gamer's Mind. There were just so many people in the stands... I guess maybe between the USJ incident and the fact that it was known generally that the discoverer of magic was in 1-A, the first-year festival was the place to be. I made sure to look confident when we were walking in. I even used Hawkeye because I was technically allowed to for what I hoped was added impressiveness. Present Mic introduced each of the classes as they entered the field to thunderous applause.

Midnight-sensei, who was acting as referee, brandished her... whip thing. "Now for the pledge, we have Bakugou Katsuki from 1-A!"

Kacchan walked up to the podium and took the mic. "Gonna keep this brief, 'cause I'm pretty sure none of you are here to listen to me talk. I'm going to be aiming for the top." He looked sternly at all of the classes assembled. "If any of you aren't gonna do the same, you'd freaking better have a good reason." Oh thank goodness he didn't rile up the other classes too much. The people in the stands cheered at his speech, short as it was. I even saw some people from the other classes grinning.

Ding!

A quest has been created!

Sports Festival

The Yuuei sports festival is the biggest event of the year! You'd better do your best!

Completion: ?, Further rewards dependent on how well you do

I figured I'd get a quest at some point... It was interesting that there weren't any losing conditions, though. I guess it'd be a win even if I lost in the first round, though I'd lose out on anything that wasn't the question mark if I did that. Speaking of the first round...

"Give it up for Bakugou, ladies and gents!" Midnight said. "Now, let's get on with the first event!" She raised her whip, and a giant holoscreen appeared in the air above her. It cycled through a few different things before settling on the obstacle race.

"I guess it's going to be an obstacle course," I muttered, grinning. I could probably do pretty well in an obstacle course with my powerset.

xoxoxo

I did a few stretches while we waited at the start of the course. Everyone was in front of a large hallway that looked like it was supposed to bottleneck us if we all rushed through it, which we probably would considering the fact that it was a race.

"Oh my gosh, Deku! What's wrong with your spine!?" Uraraka shouted at me.

"Huh?" I looked down. Oh. My body was twisted almost all the way around. Yeah that probably looked bad.

"Spines are not supposed to do that," Tsu added, a little greener than usual.

"Sorry," I said, untwisting myself. "Forgot how flexible I got from getting the next DEX benchmark..."

"We're starting soon!" Iida shouted.

"Sorry."

The countdown started. "Begin!" Midnight shouted when it reached zero. A low hum came from me as I activated Sonic Aura. Lightning Aura would've been faster, but at the same time it might've hurt someone in the close quarters. It wasn't for long, though. I ran and jumped with all of my strength, landing on a platform made by Halitus in midair. Without wasting a moment, I switched to Lightning and shot forward.

At my top speed, I was easily able to outpace the slowed crowd, dropping back down when I was ahead of everyone. I did notice Kacchan and Uraraka flying behind me, though. Because I was so ahead of everyone else, I was the first to notice hordes of robots waiting on the other side of the bottleneck, with three giant ones in the middle. It looked like they were recycling the robots from the entrance exam. I jumped between a series of air platforms, the final one lining me up perpendicular to the center of one of the zero-pointers. I jumped at it with everything I had, using Fire Dash to propel myself even more. Just before I hit the robot, I switched to Magma Aura for more power and durability and created a lightning-enhanced spiked gauntlet to punch it with for extra piercing damage. I distantly heard Mic-sensei commenting about me.

The zero-pointer fell and I rode it down in the crater I'd punched in it. When it was done falling, I reached out for a bit of the robot's metal hull that was less heated than where I'd hit it and was by the robot's head a moment later. I'd promised myself to not overuse Elemental Embodiment because of how broken Sonic Embodiment in particular could be in a race with how it might as well be a short-range teleport with how it worked, but I was fine with a momentary use of Lightning Embodiment. I used the momentum I somehow still had after downgrading to Lightning Aura to race past the robots. For the most part I didn't bother fighting them. I was just fast enough that they couldn't really catch me, and I guess they were programmed to not chase any students who got through them. I did disable a few for EXP, though, and one robot...

I got an idea as I was approaching a two-pointer. It looked like it would just barely fit. I pointed at it, and Raimon appeared on top of it. He placed his hands on it, causing it to retract its limbs and make itself as small as possible. I opened my inventory, made it go as wide as I could make it, and rammed into the two-pointer inventory first. Luckily I was right and it disappeared in front of me, sucked into my inventory. I'd have to ask about bringing it back out in the middle of a game, but it seemed like a good ace up my sleeve.

I made it to the next obstacle with a huge gap between me and the rest of the contestants. Kacchan, Uraraka, and Todoroki were closer, but there was still some distance between us. I stared at the gaping hole in the ground in front of me, then at the stone pillars with tightropes connecting them. "There is no way they did this without a lot of earth mages," I muttered. "And how did nobody see this giant chasm by the arena? I guess it doesn't matter, though. What matters for now..." I gathered air mana on my back. "Is getting across." Because the sports festival was an opportunity to impress the hero agencies of Japan, I'd decided to not use the same few tricks over and over again. And so the air mana I was gathering formed into great wings of swirling green air. "Halcyon Wing," I intoned. I flapped them once, sending up a cloud of dust before the air stilled unnaturally. After seeing Kacchan use Fire Dash and Uraraka gravity magic to fly, I'd decided to find a way for people to fly using any element. Much like how people with healing Quirks were almost always given priority for medical training assuming they were competent enough for medical work, competent and powerful enough fliers were practically assured to get into hero schools simply on account of how useful flight is in hero work. Having flight as a relatively easily teachable skill seemed like the sort of thing that would be very useful for heroes in general. My favorite of the flight spells I'd made was an air spell, Halcyon Wing. It was a little costly, but it looked so pretty and had the ability to calm the surrounding air.

I jumped as high as I could, then flapped my wings. As a side effect of its air-calming, Halcyon Wing reduced the amount the air resisted my passage, making me fly even faster. A few students shot some generic spells at me, but I was easily able to dodge them. I dropped onto a tree on the other side of the obstacle and undid my wings. They unraveled in a shower of feathers that I grabbed with my magic, causing them to swirl around me. I used up a few of the feathers to chop off the branch I was standing on, then started using bio magic on the branch as it fell back onto the course. It grew into a small tree with an unusual root system, which drove itself into the ground in four parts like legs. I gripped onto the tree's trunk, using a thickened branch as a foothold. Bio magic was really fun once you got used to it. I made my tree walker go forward and, now that I was going slower, started listening to the commentary.

"And Midoriya's still in the lead, now with some weird plant thing!" Mic-sensei shouted.

"That's probably his bio magic," Aizawa-sensei said. "Among other things, he can use it to alter the shape of and control plants. To be honest it just looks like he's showing off now."

"To be fair, isn't that the point of the sports festival?"

Aizawa-sensei shrugged. "I suppose. And speaking of showing off, it looks like Todoroki's using some kind of ice platform and probably ice magic to fly over the chasm. That's certainly one way to do it."

I came up on the final obstacle of the race, the minefield. I'd seen it with Hawkeye while I was flying, which was why I'd made the tree walker. Though I was paying for that now, as Kacchan, Todoroki, and Uraraka were approaching behind me. I lengthened my walker's roots and increased the amount of mana I was using to make it walk, letting it go faster. I also gave it a Speed Up and started preparing a backup plan for when they caught up. Because of my walker's thin roots, it was able to step around the mines, and for the few that it stepped on in my rush, its roots were sufficient enough to not get blown away, which was why I'd used four legs in the first place.

"Damn it Deku, you won't win that easily!" Kacchan shouted from behind me. He and Todoroki were approaching quickly, with Uraraka just a bit behind them. I shot my remaining feathers in front of them, blowing up the mines. They were still gaining, though, so I pushed my walker even faster, then switched spells when they were just barely behind me. Jets of steam burst from my hands and feet, propelling me forwards and blowing the two back into some mines. I hit the ground running, keeping ahead of the others. With the lead I'd given myself, I was able to run to the end without anyone passing me.

"AND IN FIRST PLACE WE HAVE MIDORIYA IZUKU!" Mic-sensei shouted. The crowd was cheering for me. I grinned at All Might, who I saw smiling at me in the stands.

xoxoxo

"The next game of the sports festival will be a cavalry battle!" Midnight-sensei announced once everyone was back in the stadium. That was kind of good for me. I'd had an idea for a spell about a week ago that I thought I wouldn't be able to use in the sports festival because it was pretty much only useful on allies. The display changed to show what looked like the points each of the people who made it got, sorted by position. I looked at number one, for the point total I had. Ten million. It looked like there was a bonus for getting in first place, because up until first the points increased by five per position. "Here's how it works! The points of each member of the teams will be added together and put on a headband, which will be worn by your rider. You're supposed to steal those headbands, which is how you get points. Those headbands must be worn from the neck up, so getting a lot will get annoying fast. And of course, the person to beat is Midoriya, with ten million points! Whoever has that by the end is pretty much assured to get to the next round!"

"Oh," I said. Shit. That was not good. I had a giant target on my back now, or rather my forehead.

"You guys will have fifteen minutes to find your team and come up with a plan, starting now. Have fun!"

I gulped. My work would certainly be cut out for me. Even with my powers, the whole "everyone will be gunning out for you if you team up with me" thing sounded like it would make it hard to find willing teammates... I tried a few people, but they all shied away.

"Are you still looking for teammates, Deku?" Uraraka asked me from behind.

I turned around. "Are you sure about this, Uraraka? N-not that I'm not grateful, but I'm pretty sure just about everyone will be going after us because I got first last round..."

She nodded, a determined look on her face. "And that makes it even better! Everyone's eyes are gonna be on our team, so I'll definitely get noticed if I'm on your team!" She seemed to realize how what she said could be taken and blushed a bit. "Not that I don't want to help you, Deku! It's just... you know..."

I smiled. "Yeah, I get it. Come on, I think I know who else we can use." I scanned the crowd for a moment and almost immediately spotted him. I ran over to him. "Iida! If it's not too much of a bother, would you like to be on my team?"

He hesitated for a moment, then gave one of his deep bows. "I'm sorry, Midoriya. It's just... I don't want to be in your shadow for the sports festival."

I nodded. "I understand. I'll go try and find someone else." I walked away a bit.

"How did it go?" Uraraka asked, having just caught up to me.

I shook my head. "Iida didn't want to be in our group. We need to find someone else." I looked at the countdown. Half the time was up already. "And we should probably do it fast."

"Oh, so you need another person?" a loud voice said. "Well that's perfect!" I turned around to see a girl with pink dreadlocks wearing a pair of steampunk-ish goggles on her forehead. Her yellow eyes had crosshairs on them. "The name's Hatsume Mei, and I'm your answer! With my babies you'll be sure to win!"

"What's with the support gear?" Uraraka asked. "Aren't we not supposed to have them?"

"You're a support student, right?" I asked. "And I'm guessing your... 'babies' are support items?"

She grinned wider and got up in my face. "Oh, you're a smart one! Yes, of course my babies are wonderful, wonderful gadgets that heroes across the globe will use! Eventually. And everyone's eyes will be on you, the holder of the ten million points, so if I show off my babies in your team I'm sure to get good rep!"

I smiled, but backed up a bit. "Having some support gear will be awesome." I had an idea. "Actually, I just thought of something. We'll need another person, and I'll probably have to talk to Midnight-sensei about this, but... Hatsume!"

"Yes!?"

"I'll use my magic to help, but we might need to make temporary modifications to your babies, is that okay?"

She nodded energetically. "Of course, so long as you can put them back. I'd also love to see magic being used! I might be able to make even better babies!"

"Good. And I'll also try to teach you a spell I learned recently that lets me see magic, because to be honest I really wanna see that. You might be able to do it relatively easily, if your Quirk is eye-based like I'm assuming." She cackled and nodded. "And finally, how good are you at hacking?"

She rubbed her hands together. "Adopting a new baby? I like the sound of this."

"Isn't it more like kidnapping and brainwashing someone else's baby?" Uraraka asked, poking her chin.

"We've got a lot of work to do," I said, "but if we split up we should be able to get done on time."

[sargentsnowy-blog]

It's The Naysaya

Found a review on a fan fiction I was reading and decided to use it. xXPokeFictionXx posted it. /\/\ Marco carefully brushed his hair into well done Marco spikes, checking himself in the mirror and clicking his tongue. "Perfect. " Star trotted into the bathroom to see Marco dusting off his well pressed red hoodie and pants. His hair done as perfectly as always. " Why are you dusting yourself? " Star asked as she grabbed her Wand. " Super School Change! " Swirls of light encircled the girl and encased her before breaking off her like a shell. Today, she wore her blue dress with a red and pink belt wrapping around her waist. She had on her feather like blue boots that gave her a bit of height and her blue leggings. And of course her signature devil horned headband. " You know you're clean. " " But today, " Marco started, turning to the magic princess with a smile on his face. " I will confess to Jackie and ask her on a date. " Star excitedly clapped her hands together and put a hand on his shoulder. " That's great Marco! " She ignored the slight feeling of boiling blood in her arms. " Marco's back is really sweaty and it's like a waterfall going down there. " Star let her eyes widen as she looked at Marco who covered his mouth. " I didn't need to know that, Diaz. " " And now Marco's brain is saying things to his heart about —" Marco slapped his hand over his mouth and peeped through to Star. "I'm not saying this. Something else is!" Star raised an eyebrow as Marco looked at her expectantly. "Then what else is, Marco? Spill!" "If I knew, Marco would tell you he—" Marco slapped his other hand over his mouth. "Why are you talking in third person, Marco?" Star curiously bit her Wand and stared at Marco. "You didn't spell me when I was sleeping, right? RIGHT?! " " No! I would never... Lie to you about using magic on you after the beard incident. " Star started chomping on the Wand. " I dunno what this is. " /\/\ Marco walked down the hallway with Star at his side, reciting all his lines to Jackie in his head. Then through his mouth. " Jackie, Marco likes—" Marco slapped his hand over his mouth. "Jackie, I like S—" "You like what Marco? " Star asked beside him after waving to Sabrina down the hall. " Nothing! " Marco exclaimed. Star looked at him worriedly. " You sure? Your mouth isn't doing whatcha want it to do. Maybe confessing to Jackie today isn't such a good idea... " " No, Star, " Marco uncovered his mouth. " I know someone who can help. " /\/\ "I'll help you for a price, Marco. " " What do you want Janna?! " Marco was losing his patience here. And with little of it left... Eh... Who knows what could happen? No body knows 'cause it doesn't happen. " Let whatever it is do whatever it wants. " Janna said smugly, twirling her fork in her hand. " Let me guess, you already know what it is? " Marco asked in a deadpan voice. " Yep! " Marco rolled his eyes as he stood up from the lunchroom table with Star at his side. Janna got up from her seat and walked with her hands in her pockets towards Marco's locker. Marco raised an eyebrow as she turned to combination and opened his locker. "Dude... Stop stalking me." "I don't necessarily call it stalking, I call it watching from afar. " Janna replied as Star giggled. " Well... You do that Janna. Tell me if he snores at night! " Star laughed to the girl. Marco gave her a look of disbelief. " Don't egg her on! I can't believe you're on the dark side now Star! " " There's a dark side?! " Star grabbed her Wand. "Marco really wants to laugh at how cute Star is being right this second." Marco slapped his hand over his mouth as Star gave him a look of shock. Suddenly, dark gray clouds moved across the sky and blocked the sun, Marco breaking down in front of the whole school. He fell to the floor as his hands covered his chest, grabbing his hoodie as something grew from his neck. It was like a mini head that had a face and teeth... And hair. The clouds dispersed and the sun shown down to the school. "What the... " Star whispered as she grabbed her Wand and pointed it at his neck before bending down. Now she cooed and awwed at the head on Marco's neck. " So cute! I'll call you Marco Jr.! " " Marco really likes—" Marco covered the head with his hand. "Don't give this thing a name! I just want it gone! " " Well... " Janna looked at the head on Marco's neck and smiled. " I knew that was what it was. Looks like you got yourself a Naysaya! " Marco rolled his eyes as Janna tried to play a country accent. " What does this Naysaya do exactly? " " You see, " Janna removed the back of Marco's locker and pulled out a book. " The Naysaya—" "Wait a second... " Marco held up his hands and looked at Janna. " You have a secret space in my locker?!" "Yeah and? " Janna continued with what she was saying. " The Naysaya prevents ones true love from confessing to their soul mate. It blatters all of their insecurities." Marco groaned till he saw something in the picture on the page. He let out a sigh. "Star, can I borrow your dimensional scissors?" /\/\ "Oh dude! I'm put that curse on you to stop you from asking out Star! " Tom said, playing his video game. " But now I can't ask out this other girl!" Marco exclaimed, ignoring the slight burning in his face. Tom gave him a knowing look before talking again. "Sorry bout that dude." "Can you take the curse off me? " Marco asked, the Naysaya looking around the demon's bedroom in awe. " Nope. You have to let it run its course! " " How long will that take? " " How many insecurities do you have? " Tom gave him the side eye before playing his game once more. Marco let out a groan before opening a portal to his room. /\/\ Marco sat on his bed in a fortress of pillows he found in his closet. He wrapped his arms around his knees and leaned forward. "My life is over. " " Marco?! " A knocking came on his door, letting him look up. " Are you in there? Are you okay? " " Yes and no." Marco sighed. "Star, my life is over. I can't even walk peacefully without this thing yelling my insecurities." He heard shuffling, making him move to see Star's finger poking itself under the door. It sat up and twisted to look at Marco. He secretly cringed. The things Mewmans can do. "Come on Marco! Don't let A Naysaya get you down!" Star said in a high pitched voice. "You may have insecurities, but that doesn't mean anything. Just let the Naysaya say what he's got to say and except yourself! Now, if you excuse me... I'm running out of blood because this door is really cutting off my blood flow. Little Star Finger out! " And like that, the finger untwisted and moved back under the door. Marco smiled, his cheeks dusting red. " She's a good friend," The Naysaya commented. Marco gave it a look before jumping out of bed. "What do you want so I can buy your silence?!" "What? " Tha Naysaya asked, confused. " What do ya want?! " " Well... Naysaya was never asked what he wanted before... " " Well today's your lucky day" Marco said sarcastically. "What do you want?" "Well, can Naysaya have cereal, please? " Naysaya asked. " Cereal? Okay! " Just as Marco was about to march out the door, Naysaya stopped him. " But in Naysaya's own mouth... " " Sure." /\/\ Marco gave Naysaya about half the bowl of cereal before he stopped. "Now, do you promise to stay quiet about tomorrow? " Marco asked. "Naysaya's lips are sealed." /\/\ Marco wrapped a red scarf around his neck as he walked up to Jackie, Star and Janna leaning on the lockers. "What's he doing? " Janna asked. " I gave him a little pep talk yesterday of course! " Star said happily, looking over to Janna with a large smile. She didn't know... " We're in for a surprise, " Janna whispered, turning back to the scene of Marco and Jackie. " Hey Marco! You cold? You have a scarf around your neck... " " Oh this... Heh heh... I... Snowboard to school in the mornings! " Marco lied. " No way! ME TOO! " Jackie exclaimed happily before there was a muffled yet still clear statement from Marco's neck. " Marco used to tape a picture of Jackie Lynn Thomas to a pillow and practice kissing her on it. " Star flinched, Marco did the same. Jackie widened her eyes and said, " Maybe I should go... " " No Jackie wait! " Marco stopped the girl and sighed. " That wasn't me, it was... " Marco removed the scarf from his neck and revealed the Naysaya. " Hello Miss Thomas, " Naysaya said in his accent. Gasps erupted from the hallway as a crowd gathered around the scene. " He's been making me say weird stuff about me all yesterday about my insecurities. But looks like I'll come clean." Marco took a deep breath and started dropping his insecurities at his feet, letting everyone see and hear them. "But the worst one... " Marco gulped as he took out a piece of paper that had a large glob of greengreen paint on it. " This painting you made of the Earth in art class." "That was supposed to be a watermelon..." Jackie pointed out. "Well it looked like Earth to me. Anyway, it reminds me of the worse insecurity yet. This reminds me of how we're all just small dots on this little marble launched out into space for no reason, forever alone in this endless void of darkness. " " Wow Marco... That was deep... " Jackie said, her eyes wide. " And that's about it. Unless I left anything out... " Marco stared at the Naysaya who only smiled at him. " Oh Marco, you left out a lot... " " You wouldn't dare... " Marco whispered. " Oh Naysaya would, " he said back. " Dare what? " Star asked Marco curiously, walking forward to stand beside him. " It's happening..." Janna whispered, grabbing her phone and she started to record everything about to go down. "Everyone, get out your phones." Knowing Janna, everyone did as told and started to record the scene. "How about your crush on... " Naysaya began. " No... " Marco whispered. " Star Butterfly? " " What... " Star whispered, looking at Marco, but his eyes were to the ground and not looking at her at all. " SHUT UP! " Marco cried, looking at the thing on his neck. Turning towards Jackie, he saw her with her phone out, recording everything on video. " Marco told Star that he still liked Jackie so she could think he still liked Miss Thomas. BUT HE DOESN'T! " Naysaya yelled. " SHUT... UP... " Marco whispered as Star moved forward a bit. He took a step back. " Marco loves the way Star smells! Like rainbows and chocolate and vanilla! Oh! And strawberry... " Marco lowered his head further down as Naysaya kept blurting out his secrets. " Marco loves the way she looks! Her blonde hair looking like the sun! Star brightens up Marco's day! Her blue, Sapphire eyes make him want to melt when she looks at him... Similar to what's going on now. Not to mention that beautiful, Angel like voice. The way she cares for others... For him. "He doesn't care if she doesn't have curves like other girls do. Marco loves Star the way she is! Just perfect! "Marco loves the fact they live in the same house so he sees her everyday without fail. Even better, he loves watching movies and eating his nachos every Thursday. Maybe Friday or any day of the week. He loves that he takes care of her. "Oooh oh! And don't forget everytime she smiles he just wants to kiss her face! And how this all started back at that Blood Moon Ball where their souls were intertwined for all eternity! " A gasp escaped Star and other students, everyone closing in on Marco and his secret spiller. " Everything about Miss Star makes Marco love her, from her personality, to her beauty. And that's all I have to tell. " Suddenly, dark clouds covered the sky and with a zap of lightening to Marco's neck, Naysaya, was gone. The sun shined back down to the school where Marco stood, staring at his shoes. " Marco... " Star whispered, he angel like voice shining to Marco. " Save it... I know you don't like me either... So... " Marco frowned and narrowed his eyes as he stared harder at his shoes. He pulled his hood onto his head. " Marco... " Star walked over to the boy and lifted his face into the air. " Are you okay? " Marco gave a small, sad smile. " Even after that you're still worried about me... " " Well duh, you're my best friend... And... " Star leaned in and planted her lips on Marco's, making him go stiff. The students around them gasped before nodding happily, still holding their phones and filming. Star had wrapped her arms around Marco's neck as Marco finally closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her closer. Star pulled away first, Marco opening his eyes with a look of shock, surprise, and love topped it off. "... Now officially... My boyfriend, " Star announced, kissing his cheek and skipping off. The students crowded even closer to Marco who touched his lips, then cheek, and whispered, " I'm her boyfriend..." before giving a drunken smile and falling to the floor. /\/\ Well... THAT'S IT! Whoopee! Okay fine... I'll put some more... /\/\ Star happily scrolled YouTube, until she came across Janna's YouTube account. "Huh, I wonder what she's got... " Star whispered before clicking on her friend's account. Then she clicked the newest video posted... Star felt her mouth drop open as she watched the whole thing... Marco confessing and everyone filming on their phones. Even the video quality was awesome! Marco walked into her room, about to scare her only to see that... She was watching Janna's video with him confessing. And with that, Marco quickly flipped around and walked out of her room. \/\/ Copy and pasted from Random Starco One-Shots on FFN.

[let-it-raines]

“I accidentally set your plant on fire and I felt super guilty so I went to the store to buy you another plant but they ran out of the plant that you had and I didn’t know what other kind of plant you liked so I may or may not have bought you enough plants to fill a small greenhouse?”

@doodlelolly0910 tagged me in this list of prompts, and I asked her to pick one for me to write so here we are! This is definitely, like, 2,400 words of foolishness, and there may be a bad plant pun or two in there. 

This is why she never agrees to house sit. She’s done it before, but that was only for Mary Margaret and David when they went on their honeymoon. And even then, it was a disaster when the cat got outside, and by the time she’d caught Grumpy (she still can’t believe they named their cat after one of the seven dwarves when Grumpy Cat already exists), the damn cat decided that its claw marks would look absolutely wonderful all over Emma’s face.

And her chest. She’s got a scar on her chest right above her right breast from where Grumpy had gotten his claw stuck in deep.

She thought she was dying for a solid week from some kind of feline disease. She’s not even sure what ones are out there, but she was definitely going to get one from Grumpy.

So house sitting hasn’t really been her thing after that, even if it’s easy money and something she can do after she gets home from her shifts at the station. And yet here she is wandering around the gardening section of Lowes because she set Killian’s plant on fire when she was in his house last night cleaning for when he comes home from visiting his brother in England today. There’d been a funky smell, and she’d lit a candle to try to make the place smell more homey and less like somewhere that had been empty for two weeks. And of course she’d accidentally knocked the candle into the plant, setting the thing on fire.

One job. She had one main job, and it all went up in flames.

Literally.

Two weeks she managed to take care of the place with nothing going wrong, and she screwed it all up when he’s coming home today.

Dammit coconut beach candle.

Maybe if Killian had a better taste in candles this wouldn’t have happened. It smelled good and all, but she likes for her candles to smell like baked goods. He likes for his candles to smell like the beach, even though they both live five minutes away from the beach. Seriously. She can walk there. So can he.

He doesn’t need the candle.

“Can I help you, miss?”

She turns around to look at the man who’s speaking to her, a Lowe’s blue vest draped over his shoulders. She thinks his name is August, but his name tag is too small and she doesn’t have her glasses on.

“Yeah, I’m looking for a houseplant, but I don’t really know what the name of it is.”

“Do you have a picture of it?”

No because why would she take a picture of Killian’s house plant before she set it on fire? That would be premeditated murder or something ridiculous like that.

“No, sorry,” she cringes, looking around the garden. It smells like water in here. “It was tall, kind of leafy, maybe beachy? I don’t really know. It’s not my plant. It’s my neighbor’s, and I kind of accidentally destroyed it.”

“You destroyed a plant?”

“There was an accidental fire last night.”

August open his mouth, but he quickly presses his lips together, obviously remembering that he works here and isn’t supposed to judge her. He’s totally judging her.

“So tall and leafy then?” he asks, taking a step ahead of her. “Follow me and I’ll show you around while we try to find it.”

She looks at approximately sixty-seven brands (Breeds? Types? Species?) of plants, both house plants and ones that go in gardens (apparently Killian could have been growing an outdoor plant indoors), and after two hours, she’s got a cart full of twelve different tall plants. She doesn’t know how she’s going to fit them in her bug, but she’s kind of desperate. There’s no way Killian won’t notice that she killed his plant, but maybe it’ll be okay since she’s now bringing all kinds of vegetation into his house.

She’s going to have to move out of their duplex, isn’t she? She’s a plant murderer, and she’s going to have to move. There’s no other choice.

The irony is not lost on her that she’s arrested people for actual murder.

It takes some maneuvering, but she manages to get all of the plants inside, putting the one that looks closest enough to the old one in the spot in the living room and dispersing everything else throughout the house. They don’t really go, but the man obviously loves his plant for him to leave her such specific instructions on how to take care of it.

Oh God. She hopes a dead relative didn’t give it to him or something.

A dead relative probably gave it to him. Or an ex-girlfriend.

Or a current girlfriend.

That doesn’t seem quite right there. Their walls are thin, and she’d know if he had a woman over. Not that she’s listening or anything. She’d just know. Plus, they kind of have a thing going, don’t they? She’s not really sure because as much as Killian flirts with her, he flirts with everyone. It’s how he talks. There’s an innuendo constantly at the tip of his tongue, and he can twist absolutely everything into something dirty.

But they have…something. She’s not sure what. It’s been a long time since she’s had what is basically an adult crush (feelings? That seems ridiculous) on someone, and she’s not sure how to read the situation. She reads situations for a living, but it’s different when it comes to her personal life. Ruby is absolutely convinced that Killian is head over heels in love with her and that’s why his flirting is somehow different with her. It’s softer, not quite as risqué, but she doesn’t know too much about that.

All she knows is that she likes her neighbor and she burned down his plant.

And broke his candle.

Shit. She should have brought a new candle.

“Swan?” Killian calls, and she practically loses her legs from underneath her as she grabs onto the kitchen countertop. “Are you in here?”

He is not supposed to be home. For hours. She was supposed to have hours. How the hell does a flight from London get in early? It’s an international trip. It should get in late.

“In the kitchen,” she calls out, reaching up to tighten her ponytail on top of her head.

“Love, why is there dirt on my floor? And new plants everywhere? Are you starting a greenhouse? Did someone break in and…leave me plants? Is there some epidemic of a new breed of burglar? I know I’ve been gone, but I feel like you should still have kept me updated on something as fantastic as that.”

She’s not at all prepared for him to be home. His plant is not that big of a deal, but somewhere in the back of her mind she’s freaking out about this being some kind of weird sign that she’s not nurturing to life somehow. But that’s some anti-feminist shit, and she should not at all be worried about things like that.

Honestly, maybe all she wants is to make sure she gets paid for taking care of his house.

How much she spent at Lowes far outweighs how much Killian is going to pay her.

They’re not known for their Lowe prices.

That was a bad joke even in her head.

“Swan,” he says again, his body coming into view. He looks the same as when he left, but it’s not like she expected him to suddenly change his appearance because he went back home for a few weeks. His beard is a little thicker and his accent is definitely thicker, but he’s still the same. “Emma, why the bloody hell have you turned my house into a greenhouse? Are you housing some kind of animal in here that I don’t know about? It’s fine with me but our landlord will – ”

“I burned down your plant,” she blurts out, not able to keep it in anymore. She hasn’t been this nervous in months. She doesn’t even know why she’s nervous. She’s a badass deputy sheriff who kicks criminals’ asses (and deals with friendly drunk people on the roof of the Rabbit Hole but that’s a different story) and isn’t intimidated by anything. Her adult crush is obviously reverting her back to a teenager.

Hell, she wasn’t even like this as a teenager. She was much more…hardened by the world.

This is obviously a delayed reaction to Grumpy scratching her. This is it. The sickness is finally catching her.

Killian tilts his head to the side while his right brow raises in a move that is so him that it might as well be his signature. “You what now?”

“I was in here last night, and I decided to light a candle to make it smell less stuffy. And then because apparently my body is not my own anymore, I knocked your dumb coconut sea ocean banana whatever breeze candle into it, setting your plant on fire. So I went to Lowes and couldn’t find the same plant and – I guess I bought you a lot of plants, which was really dumb.”

“You killed my plant? And then you bought me – ” He gestures around the room, his lips curling into a smile while her stomach does this weird twisting thing. “ – more plants? I never knew you had such a green thumb.”

“I mean, I’d say I have a charred thumb but whatever.”

They both laugh at that, and the coils in her stomach begin to untwist, everything calming a bit. She’s been so ridiculous about this entire thing. This is not her. This is not her at all.

She’s going to have to take home some of these plants, isn’t she?

“So you don’t hate me for killing your plant?”

“No, I don’t,” he sighs, dropping his backpack and taking a few steps closer to her so that he’s hovering in her space. “Actually, I quite fancy you from time to time when you’re not murdering a plant that my mother gave me before she passed away.”

Shit.

Of course his mother gave it to him before she died. Of course. Of course. Of course.

“I am so so so sorry,” she starts, feeling heat rise in her cheeks while her stomach starts coiling up again. And then she looks at Killian, actually looks at him. The lines around his eyes are crinkled, the corners of his mouth practically at his eyes, and he’s practically vibrating from holding back his laughter. “You asshole,” she huffs, leaning forward to hit against his chest, knowing that she’s hitting a little harder than she intends to. “Your mom did not give you that plant. You made me feel bad for nothing.”

“Well, you did kill my plant and presumably break my candle.”

She has a retort on the tip of her tongue, but then she’s watching Killian’s as it traces along his bottom lip and completely ignoring the way he’s grabbing her hands on his chest and intertwining his fingers with hers, squeezing the slightest bit. Or maybe not completely ignoring it. She knows when something is happening, and something is definitely about to happen. She’s kind of…overwhelmed.

“Hey, Emma?” he whispers, his vibrant smile shifting into something much softer as he stares down at her, his breath warm and minty so close to her lips.

“Yeah?”

“Will you let me plant one on you? I really am rather frond of you and missed you very much.”

Oh my God, that was bad, she thinks to herself, having to bite down on her tongue.

It was bad, but the guy knows how to think on his toes.

“I cannot believe you just asked to kiss me by making bad plant puns.”

“Well, I never said they were going to be good. You make horrible jokes all the time. Ones that are far worse than that.”

“I do not.”

“You do.”

“Name one.”

“Well, there was last month when we were watching the weather channel and a parade got cancelled because of the rain, and you made about six separate ‘rain on your parade’ jokes.”

“Hey, now. That was – ”

“Emma?”

“Yeah?”

“Please shut up and kiss me.”

And she does, pressing up on her toes and pushing forward to brush her lips over his, timid at first before Killian releases her hands and tugs her impossibly closer by placing his hands on her back under her shirt, his lips more aggressive as they move with hers, the softness of his mouth contrasting with the roughness of his beard. It’s a burn that she wants to revel in, especially when she nips at his lip and he lets out a groan that makes her toes tingle.

They actually tingle.

Like some kind of weird fairytale.

She has no idea why he’s suddenly decided that now is the time for them to stop dancing around each other and make a move, but she is most definitely not going to complain.

He’s a damn good kisser.

“So, like,” she gasps when they pull back, breaths heavy and warm against each other while her hands move up and down his biceps while Killian’s arms stay still on her lower back, “if I set fire to all of these other plants, do we get to keep doing that?”

“Eh, I don’t know. I think I care about the earth too much to let you destroy it more.”

“I do like a man who cares about the environment.”

“Would it be too soon to say that showering together saves water?”

“It’s not too soon, but that is definitely not true. Plus, shower sex is totally overrated.”

“If you say so,” Killian hums before he quickly slants his lips over hers once again, a fleeting kiss if she’s ever felt one. “Remind me to never let you house sit for me ever again.”

Killian doesn’t ever ask her to housesit for him again, but it doesn’t really count as housesitting when you live in the same house. This new one is on the beach, so beach scented candles aren’t necessary. It doesn’t matter anyways. All of their house plants are fake now.

As if she couldn’t set one of those on fire.

(They do shower together, and it definitely does not preserve water.)