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missymurphy1985 · 3 years

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The Heartache - Part 4 (Cillian Murphy X wife!reader)

This is written from Cillian's POV. His wife has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, writing this diary is his wife's suggestion, something to help him cope.

If this is something that upsets you, I won't be offended if you don't read it, and I'll remove you from the taglist with no hard feelings at all 💜

Taglist @queenshelby @margoo0 @being-worthy @peakyscillian @peakyciills @janelongxox @elenavampire21 @ysmmsy @cloudofdisney @lauren-raines-x @misscarolineshelby @screemqueen @peaky-cillian @misselsbells06 @datewithgianni @heidimoreton @jardinsecos @bitchwhytho @gypsy-girl-08 @queenofkings1212 @alreadybroken-ts @look-at-the-soul

Last night was the first night I spent away from the hospital since Lucy was readmitted. Her sister arrived from Dublin yesterday and stayed with her while I went home to be with Ava. Poor kid hasn't seen me for three days, Paddy and Marie have taken incredible care of her though. Even Kate, our nurse, has popped in occasionally to see her and play with her. The woman's a godsend, I don't know how we'd get through this without her.

Oh Ava... My beautiful, sweet, innocent little one... She knows about the cancer. Kate spent hours going through the book she brought with her, talking to her, answering her questions. I stood in the doorway of my brother's spare room and just listened. She's so innocent..

"Will mama lose her hair?"

"Can you catch cancer like a cold?"

"Will she still be able to play dress up with me?"

She asked if her mama was going to die like her gran did. Lucy's mum passed away when Ava was 4, of breast cancer. Another 'what if' moment... Lucy never got tested for the BRCA2 gene. If only.

What good are if onlys gonna do us now huh? Just a load of hypothetical hindsight. Not gonna cure my wife is it? Not gonna stop my daughter losing her mum, is it?

I felt my fists clench, my jaw tighten. Paddy must've sensed it, coming upstairs and pulling me away from Ava's door and down the stairs into his garage, closing the door before holding me at arm's length.

"Don't get angry in front of her, get angry in front of me. She can't hear you down here."

The fire in my chest felt like an inferno. Pacing around the garage, ranting and seething, like this was someone's fault. But that's what I wanted. I wanted someone or something to blame because none of this made any fucking sense! She was young, fit, healthy... Ranting and raving. Punching his punchbag, hanging from the ceiling. Kicking over boxes of whatever tat he had lying around on the floor, before sinking onto the cold concrete floor in an exhausted mess. He knelt in front of me and placed his hands on my knees, eyes locked on mine.

"You and Ava are staying here with us, okay? As long as you need. I'll set up a camp bed in her room. That way you don't have to worry about her day to day stuff. That shit carries on as normal. We try to keep things as normal as possible for her. Understand?"

"This isn't fucking normal though is it? She's not even in double digits Pad, and her mam.."

Couldn't say it, didn't need to. He just nodded. My resolve broke down and I sobbed. Full on gut-wrenching tears. Pulling me into his arms, he just rocked me, like I used to do to him when he fell over in the playground at school, or if he'd been told off by mum for something he deserved a bollocking for. He always came to me to make it better...

Now he was returning the favour. And my god did I need that hug. He was the closest I could get to mum in that moment. I need her here. I really do...

Paddy had called her when Lucy was readmitted. I told them not to come, but if I know my mother she's already on her way.

We were in that garage for nearly an hour. Marie came to check on us and make sure I hadn't destroyed the room.. I'll apologise later. Kate took me to one side when I went upstairs to see Ava and told me she was reading.

"Does she know.." I asked, tentatively. Hopefully.. then I wouldn't have to break her heart myself.

"I didn't tell her. I wasn't sure if you wanted to tell her."

"What do I do, Kate?"

"In my opinion? She needs to be prepared. I think you should tell her."

"Can you stay? While I tell her?"

And so.. we went inside. Kate sat on the end of Ava's bed, I gave her a cuddle, lifted her up and sat her on my lap.

And we told her.

"Ava, when someone is ill, doctors can usually make them better. But sometimes the doctors can't make people better."

"Will they make mama better?"

"They can't, honey. They can't make her better."

"Will she die? Like Gran?"

"Yes, darling. She will."

"Will she come back after she's died?"

"No, she won't be able to come back."

"Did I make her poorly?"

"No, sweetheart, this isn't anyone's fault.. sometimes people get sick and no one knows why."

She fell quiet. Looked out the window, and turned back to me with a little smile.

"Will she have her own star too? Like Gran? Will they have a star next to each other?"

I felt Kate's hand on my shoulder as my head dropped, like she knew I had no strength left, and she took over.

"Ava, your Mama is going to be the biggest, brightest star in the sky. You'll see her up there every single night, waving to you and blowing you a big kiss goodnight. And when you wake up in the morning, and you hear the birds singing outside? That'll be her saying good morning."

"Are you going with Mama, Daddy?"

I scooped her into my arms, squeezing her as tight as I could.

"Daddy's going to stay here to take care of you. I'm not going anywhere baby, I promise."

I don't know whether she truly understand, Kate said not to go anymore into it. Leave her to process it in her own time. Be honest with her, don't hide anything from her. But still let her play. Let her go to school. Let her be a kid.

I hugged Kate tight after we settled Ava for bed. I'm so grateful to her for getting us through this. Paddy set up a blow up bed next to Ava's for me, and I spent that night holding my girl's hand and watching her sleep. Watching her sweet innocence slowly start to unravel. She has no true idea of what any of this means, and she won't, not until it's real.

And her Mama doesn't come home.

************************************************************

The following day, I took Ava to school and headed back to the hospital. She didn't ask any questions, but she was quiet. I spoke to her teacher after she'd gone in, explained what was happening, and she promised to keep a special eye on her for me.

I walked onto Lucy's ward just after 9am, and her sister was outside her room, coffee in hand. There were doctors in her room, running tests, checking her vitals. I watched them through the window, desperate to go inside and take her away from it all. Take her to our holiday home in Kerry with Ava, splash in the sea, eat ice creams on the beach, tease the seagulls with a bag of chips...

The pain, knowing I'll never do any of that again with her, is unbearable.

The docs left the room, and I headed in. Taking my place by her side, her hand between my fingers and my lips.

Wake up... Even if it isn't for very long...

Just wake up for me? Before you go?

#cillian murphy #cillian x oc #cillian murphy x angst #cillian fanfic #cillian murphy fanfiction #cillian murphy x requests

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multi-fandom-imagines-stuff · 3 years

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could you do one where the reader was natasha and yelena’s “sibling” when they lived in ohio, and reader was taken by the red room with them, and then when reader was a teenager, they managed to escape, leaving natasha and yelena behind, thinking reader was dead. after they take down the red room, they find the reader and have a sibling's reunion? and could you keep it gender-neutral please?

Castle on the Hill

Pairings: Natasha Romanoff/sibling!reader, Yelena Belova/sibling!reader

Description: The reader was Natasha and Yelena's "sibling" when they were undercover in Ohio, and gets taken into the Red Room with them. After escaping as a teenager, the reader stays alone, leaving everyone to believe they are dead until one day, they recieve a call from a familiar voice.

Warning: mentions of the Red Room and the torture they caused, i think that's pretty much it

Word count: 2,002

A/N: i had so much fun writing this omg it seriously made me want to cry! i hope you enjoy it!!

✩❀✩❀✩

“Tasha, stop!” I cried, giggling slightly as my sister and her friend chased me through the fields that were located a few blocks away from home.

The fields were my favorite place to play. My older sister Natasha, who was three years older than me, always liked to come to the fields with her friends. A few months ago, I had turned six and mom told me that I was old enough to go play in the fields with Tasha. My younger sister Yelena was only four, so she was still too young to play with us. But that was okay, I still liked to play with her in our backyard. We even had a playground. Tasha had taught me how to do the monkey bars without getting scared, and I passed the skill on to Lena.

Today, I was playing tag with Tasha and her friend. Of course, with them being nine and me only being six, they were a lot faster than me. Being faster than me meant that no matter how fast I ran, they would always catch up to me. Nat reached her hand out and shoved me lightly in the back. However, I wasn’t expecting it, and it caught me off guard, making me stumble a bit. My foot caught on a rock and I went tumbling forward, rolling down a small hill. The smell of grass overcame me as I continued to fall, hearing a sickening crack followed by a blinding pain in my leg. Finally, I came to a stop as I reached the bottom of the hill. I looked down at my leg. It was bent at a weird angle, and the pain was almost unbearable as I started to wail.

“Y/n!” Tasha screamed as she ran down the hill after me. “Are you okay?”

“No,” I cried, grabbing her and burying my head in her shoulder. “My leg really hurts.”

“Okay, hold on, we’re gonna get you home to mom, okay? She’ll know how to make it better,” Tasha reassured me.

I nodded feebly as she helped me up, sitting me in the basket of her friend’s bike before riding back home to get help.

——

My eyes shot open, tearing me from my dream. It was rare that I dreamt about my childhood. I had very few memories from that time, and the one I had just dreamt about was one of the most vivid. I broke my leg that day, and it took two months to heal. I remember Yelena being upset because it meant I couldn’t play outside with her for a while. As much as I didn’t like to recall that time in my life, I couldn’t help but smile at the memory.

Amongst my other memories from my childhood, there were things like my first crush—a kid in my kindergarten class—when I was five, the friends that I had made and had to leave behind, and family dinners every night. But what I remembered more than anything else were the fields we always used to play in. In the distance of those fields, there was a huge mansion made from stone, and Natasha and I always used to imagine it was a castle. Whenever the sun was setting, the orange sky made it look like there was a dragon in the castle blowing fire into the air.

Suddenly, I was pulled from my memories by the sound of my phone ringing. I looked at it sketchily. I never gave my phone number out to anybody, so the odds of getting an actual phone call were extremely rare. Against my better judgment, I picked up my phone and answered the call.

“Who are you and how did you get this number?” I asked, trying my best to sound intimidating.

“Y/n?” A voice came through from the other end.

The voice almost sounded familiar, like I had heard it before, but I couldn’t place it.

“I’m not going to ask again,” I said, my fist balling up at my side. “I am not the kind of person you want to piss off.”

“Oh my god, Yelena, it’s them,” the voice spoke, but it sounded far off like the speaker had brought the phone away from their mouth.

Did she just say Yelena?

“Tasha?” I questioned, my voice cracking ever so slightly as realization set in.

“Yeah, it’s me,” She whispered reassuringly. “It’s me.”

I fell speechless, the phone almost dropping from my hand as I moved to wipe away the tears that were already beginning to roll down my face.

Natasha, Yelena, and I were all brought into the Red Room at the same time. Natasha was eleven, I was eight, and poor little Yelena was only six. What we went through was something that no child—or grown adult for that matter—should ever have to go through. I was there for ten years. Ten years of being held prisoner, of being tortured, of being forced to kill.

I was sixteen when I graduated the Red Room. I thought it meant things were over, that I could run as far away as I could and never look back, but I was wrong. The Red Room continued to control me for two years after that, until one day I faked my own death and got out. It killed me inside to know that Lena and Tasha thought I was dead, but I knew I had no future if I stayed. My only regret was that I couldn’t save everyone else.

I distanced myself from the world, afraid of what I had become, what I had done, and what I was capable of. I escaped eleven years ago, and I’ve been alone ever since.

“Y/n, are you there?” Natasha’s voice came through the phone again, drawing me back to reality.

“How did you find me? I’m supposed to be dead.”

“I know a guy,” She responded, and I could practically hear her smirking.

Right. She’s friends with the Stark guy who owns practically the best technology on earth.

“Listen, there’s a lot we need to tell you about, and I think a reunion is in order,” Natasha explained. “We have your location and we’ll be there in an hour. Be ready.”

With that, Natasha ended the call, leaving me alone in silence. Half of my brain told me this wasn’t happening. That wasn’t really Natasha on the phone, it was just some cruel way for the Red Room to find me. But the other half of my brain believed that everything that just happened was real. As much as I wanted to err on the side of caution, the thought of seeing my sisters again made me the happiest I’ve felt since I was a child.

I glanced down at my phone to check the time. Ten minutes had passed since the phone call, giving me about fifty minutes to pack up my things and get ready.

Packing wasn’t hard. I lived a very minimalistic lifestyle, mainly due to the fact that I didn’t have a proper job, and I was always ready to run at a moment’s notice if I ever caught wind of the Red Room near me.

I finished packing and proceeded to pace the floor until the hour was up and I heard a knock at my door. Deciding that I could never be too cautious, I grabbed my handgun and checked that it was loaded before pointing it at the ground and approaching the door.

“Who’s there?” I called.

“It’s us. It’s Natasha and Yelena,” A voice with a thick Russian accent called back.

Yelena.

“Prove it,” I said again, still keeping my guard up. “Tell me something that only you two would know.”

There was a moment of silence before someone spoke up. This time, it was Nat.

“When we were little, you would spend almost every summer night catching fireflies because I told you they could grant wishes. When you found out they couldn’t, you were so mad, you didn’t talk to me for a week.”

I smiled slightly at the memory. Turning the gun’s safety on, I tucked it into my waistband and opened the door, staring face-to-face with my sisters for the first time in over two decades. Almost immediately, the two of them embraced me in a tight hug, and I never wanted to let go.

“So, what did you need to tell me?” I asked once we all pulled away from the hug.

“We’ll tell you in the car. We have to get going though, we have a long journey ahead of us,” Nat told me.

“Where are we going?” I questioned.

“Home.”

——

Natasha and Yelena explained everything to me. About how they teamed up, about how they killed Dreykov, and about how the Red Room was finally gone.

“So, the other widows, are they safe?” I questioned, processing everything they had just told me.

“Yes,” Yelena answered from the passenger seat, turning around to face me in the back. “There is no one controlling them anymore, and we are currently working toward undoing all of the mind control the Red Room created.”

“I can’t believe you guys took down the Red Room without me!” I exclaimed, crossing my arms. “I would’ve loved to help.”

“Y/n, we thought you were dead!” Nat tried to reason, but I wouldn’t listen.

I wasn’t seriously angry with her, and she knew that. Teasing each other was something we did all the time as kids.

“You can’t be mad at us,” Yelena raised her hands in mock defense. “We literally just saved so many lives.”

I continued to cross my arms, ignoring them both.

“C’mon, y/n, talk to us,” Nat glanced back at me through her mirror as she drove.

Still, I said nothing. I was extremely stubborn as a child, and I guess somethings never change.

“I’ve got an idea,” Lena whispered to Nat.

“February made me shiver,” Yelena started singing. “With every paper I’d deliver. Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn’t take one more step.”

“I can’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride,” Nat joined in. “But something touched me deep inside. The day the music died.”

The two of them went quiet and I knew they were expecting me to sing the next part. Yelena looked back at me, and eventually, I caved.

“So bye-bye, Miss American Pie,” I sang slowly, a smile creeping onto my face. “Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry. And them good ol’ boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singin’ ‘this’ll be the day that I die. This’ll be the day that I die…’”

Suddenly, all three of us were singing as loud as we could.

“Did you write the book of love, and do you have faith in god above? If the bible tells you so. Now, do you believe in rock ‘n’ roll? Can music save your mortal soul? And can you teach me how to dance real slow?”

I burst out laughing with glee, causing Yelena and Nat to follow suit. We laughed for what seemed like an eternity, until we were all red in the face and gasping for air.

Trying to catch my breath, I looked out the window just in time to see us speed past a sign that read:

Welcome to Ohio

I continued to stare out the window as I watched the fields fly by. The sun was just beginning to set, and out in the distance, I could see the “castle” that we always used to admire.

Suddenly, I thought back to when we were kids. I was filled with all the memories we made in Ohio, as a family. Even though I knew it was all fake, it was real in my head. Melina and Alexei were my parents, and Tasha and Lena were my sisters. Ohio was my home, and nothing anyone said or did could take that away from me.

#request #mcu oneshot #yelena belova #yelena belova one shot #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff oneshot #mcu x reader #black widow #black widow spoilers #mcu

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peralta-guaranteed · 3 years

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i randomly remembered when enzo broke his arm around a year ago, i know it sounds mean but could you possibly do one of mac/maya doing the same (nothing major to cause it)

"It's okay." Amy hears herself repeat the phrase for probably the hundredth time now. "It's okay." It's probably supposed to calm them all down, all three adults and one little crying, screaming boy in the car, but it's barely working.

"It's not!" Jake hisses into her direction, the fear and panic and worry in his eyes more than obvious as he clutches Mac's head against his shoulder some more, tightens the grip around his back.

"It's gonna be, though." Rosa says from the driver's seat in front - she was clearly the calmest of all of them after what happened, so she'd grabbed Amy's purse, pulled their car keys out of it, and then pushed all three of them into the backseat before starting the car. And now she was making her way to the emergency wing of the hospital at about 15mp/h higher than allowed in the inner city. "The arm's broken, but not in a bad way. It's gonna heal."

"How can a bone break in a good way?" Asks the man who once stated that as long as his blood was still inside him, things were obviously good. Mac starts wailing a little louder in his arms.

"You're stressing him out." Rosa states, matter-of-fact, before slowing down just a little before a right turn so the kid in Jake's arms doesn't get jostled too much.

"It hurt." Mac sniffles and looks over at Amy with the reddest, most tear-filled eyes she's ever seen, and it takes a lot not to cry with him.

"It's gonna be okay, peanut. The doctors like uncle Jorge are going to fix it." She tries to calm him, and maybe Jake a little bit, who nods and scratches through Mac's hair like he does when he's trying to lull him into sleep.

-*-

They make it to the emergency room in record time, frankly, and if Rosa's rushed past some traffic lights and speed radars, Amy's not going to complain once the tickets come in the mail.

A bored-looking nurse informs them that there’s only enough space for one parent in the room during the x-ray and the cast and treatment, and Jake wants to debate for the first time in his life, because that’s obviously bullshit, but Amy puts a hand on his arm and then lifts Mac out of them.

“Sit with Rosa”, she says in that voice she’s started using after Mac, that mom-voice that’s always right, “Calm down, and we’ll be back before you know it. And it’s all going to be fine.”

She’s off with the crying toddler and nurse before Jake can really protest, and Rosa is already sitting in a corner of the waiting area, so he drops down next to her instead and buries his head in his hands.

“Dude, you’re blowing this out of proportion. Kids hurt themselves all the time. He’s gonna bounce back like always.”

“I broke his arm, Rosa.”

There’s a beat of silence between them as the weight of that statement settles. Rosa gives up her nonchalant pose to lean forward as well, trying to get into Jake’s field of vision, but it’s kinda hard when he’s staring down onto the floor.

“You did not.” She hisses. “Jake, you didn’t. He fell. He was climbing. It happens.”

“I helped him up on that tower, he’s too little for it-”

“It’s on the playground, he was gonna go for it eventually-”

“I was right next to him-”

“So were Amy and I-”

“You were talking-”

“So at least you were paying better attention-”

“I coulda grabbed him, I shoulda-”

“You did what you could, immediately and without question. It’s not your fault the kid drops faster than a cannonball.” Rosa ends their little squabble, and the old lady across them lets out a little harrumph, but Rosa shoots her the deadliest glare she can muster, which means a lot. “You were over there in a flash, Jake, I’ve never seen you move so fast.”

“Wasn’t fast enough. Wasn’t good enough.” He mumbles into his hands, rubbing across his face and his hair that’s already a mess. Rosa watches him for a moment, and calculates. Pieces together the evidence, like she does as a detective, and comes to a solution that most people probably won’t like, but those usually get her results.

“Do you want to leave?” She asks, and he looks at her like she’s grown a second head. “Amy’s got it under control, she told you. It’s probably gonna take a while, anyway, we can dip out for a drink to calm down and come back and they’ll be none the wiser.”

“Are you insane?!” Jake hisses back now, giving her exactly the reaction she’d expected. “I’m not going to leave my son in the hospital to go to a bar-”

He stops and stares at her, and it seems like his own detective brain is finally catching up with his panicked dad brain, because he sees what she’s doing. So she nods.

“You’re still good. You’re still better.” She says, and they don’t need to mention who he’s better than. It was the first of his stories that he told her, after he hurt something in his wrist at the academy - how that wrist never really healed right anyway, not since he was 5 and Bobby Linder drove over it with his tricycle by accident and his mom had to rush him to the hospital and his dad asked ‘what is that?’ with beer on his breath when he showed him the cast later. They’d known each other for barely a month back then, and Rosa was still refusing to think of anyone as her friend, but the way he’d looked at his wrist in its bandage and smiled the most broken smile she’d ever seen had set something off in her head. Something that yelled Protect at her every time he mentioned his dad later, something that made her threaten Roger Peralta with one of her knives after their graduation when Jake was in the bathroom ‘real quick’, but she knew he was hiding in there so no one could see his hands shake. Good thing Rosa never gave a damn about going into the men’s toilets anyway, because she sure as hell went after him when Roger had dipped out as usual.

She watches Jake’s tense shoulders drop with another sigh.

“Being better doesn’t make me good. That bar is set so fucking low.”

“I’m not having this entire discussion with you again, Peralta. We’ve been through this way too many times anyway. You. are. a. good. dad. One accident doesn’t change that.”

“Okay.” He nods, and she can tell he’s trying to imprint her words into his brain, so she continues.

“Mac’s going to hurt himself, and others are going to hurt him, and things are gonna go bad sometimes. You’ll probably be back here in the hospital a few times, considering how much he seems to love danger. And it’s going to be okay, just like Amy said, because you’re going to be there, and you’ll help him through it, and take care of him while he heals.”

“Yeah.” He nods again, and Rosa leans closer to him some more, and finally gets into his field of vision.

“And you’re not going to even think, for one second, that you could be anywhere as bad of a father as that piece of shit. And you’re not going to believe, whatever anyone says, that Mac doesn’t know how lucky he is to have you as a dad.”

He nods a third time, and she remembers how he jokingly told her once, after a few drinks, that the little screaming voice of conscience in his head always alternates between either Amy’s voice or her voice. She hopes she’s given him some new tracks to replay if he needs to.

“Thank you, Rosa.” He says, and leans back in the most uncomfortable chair either of them have sat in, and they’ve both been to prison. He tilts over when she leans back too, lands his head on her shoulder, and she doesn’t shrug him off for once. She can have a soft spot for the Santiago-Peraltas when no one else is there to see, she supposes.

“You looked like you wanted to punch out that nurse.” She says with a quick grin, and hears him snort.

“Was thinking about it. Not enough space for two parents, what kind of bullshit is that?!”

“You couldn’t throw a proper punch anyway.”

“Hey, I know how to hit people. I trained to do it just as much as you.”

They share a giggle as the exhaustion and stress of the last hour flows out of them, and the old lady across them seems mildly shocked rather than annoyed by now, but who cares.

-*-

Amy comes back with Mac in her arms an hour later, and they’re both all smiles. Mac sports an impressive new sticker collection on his shirt, and a lollipop that’s painting his lips orange. (Amy’s have a slight tint to them as well.)

The cast on his arm is bright green, and he carefully lifts it to show Jake as he switches from his Mama’s arms into his. (Jake had jumped up from his chair so fast he almost threw Rosa, who was also getting up, to the ground.)

“Like ninja!” he says around the lollipop, and Amy wipes a bit of spit away before it can drop on Jake’s shirt.

“Yeah, just like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, buddy.” Jake nods because of course he understands his kid’s train of thought better than anyone else, and kisses Mac’s temple, stays there a second longer for that perfect toddler scent, even as it’s mixed with hospital disinfectant and playground mud.

“Look, RoRo!” Mac yells into his ear and leans over to show Rosa as well. “Turtle shell!”

“That’s pretty cool, dude.” Aunt RoRo answers as she inspects the cast to see if it’s well done or if she has to go back there and punch out a nurse herself. “Let’s get you three home.” She says after concluding that the cast is acceptable enough to let the poor hospital workers alone.

-*-

She was planning to drop them off, park their car and then head for the precinct where her bike is waiting for her, but Amy invited her up for some coffee for ‘her nerves’, and Jake offered dinner as a thanks, and Mac absolutely needed to show her the new toy he got in that package from abuela, and then suddenly she’s on a playmat on the floor for an hour after Chinese takeout and pretending to be a Ninja Tortoise or whatever. That soft spot is gonna be more trouble than it’s worth, she thinks for a second before Mac smiles at her as his Jedi figure shoots lasers at her turtle doll, and immediately realises it’s worth so much more than any trouble. Mac looks at his cast a little worried, whenever he thinks no one is watching him, and god, could he be any more like his dad? At least she and Amy already have a good instructions booklet on how to handle him, in that case.

“That green cast is pretty cool.” She says when she catches him look once more. “But you know what would make it even cooler? Drawings.”

“Drawies? On my arm?”

“Yeah, buddy. We can draw on it with a sharpie.”

He’s up and running to Amy, asking for a sharpie, in no time at all and yep, he is just as easily distracted as his dad. Mac grins wide and unworried now as he climbs on Jake’s lap on the couch, asks Amy to draw something when she returns with a set of markers, calls Rosa over to draw something too.

Amy does a little bear, his favourite animal at the moment. Rosa does a rocket ship and a pirate ship, the two best ships in the world, as they both agree. Jake does a Ninja Turtle cartoon face yelling PIZZA!, which is obviously Mac’s absolute favourite the moment it’s done.

When Jake wants to cap the Sharpie after his work of art, Mac grabs his hand and pulls it back down. “Steady, peanut. Don’t wanna scribble over Aunt RoRo’s cool ship, right?” He says with a grin over to her as she rolls her eyes. Mac’s already tried to cover several walls, most of his storytime books, and the kitchen table with his drawings as soon as he’s handed any sort of writing tool, so Jake won’t let go of the marker just to be safe, but he does let Mac’s little hand guide his big one as he makes him draw a wonky heart, right on the cast over the back of his hand, and then places a kiss on the same place on Jake’s hand.

You’re not going to believe, whatever anyone says, that Mac doesn’t know how lucky he is to have you as a dad the little Rosa voice in Jake’s head repeats as he smiles at her, and she actually smiles back.

#B99 #Brooklyn 99 #Peraltiago #Jake Peralta #Amy Santiago #mac peralta #auntie roro #rosa diaz #my writing #ficlet

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journalxxx · 3 years

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By Hook or by Crook (7)

“So! How does it look?” Toshinori asked, with a booming voice and his best hands-on-hips pose to kickstart the endeavor with a healthy dose of enthusiasm.

He wasn’t particularly successful.

“Daunting. Impossible. Like I’m gonna die of old age before I’m anywhere close to making a change.”

“A little optimism goes a long way, you know?”

“...I may not die before I’ve lugged away some of this.” Midoriya amended tentatively, scanning the extensive length of garbage-filled beach stretching before them. “And… what doesn’t kill me will make me stronger?”

“That’s the spirit!” Toshinori gave him a pat on the back, strong enough to make the boy stammer forwards. He walked around the back of the truck and started unloading the few supplies he’d brought.

“Wear these.” Toshinori threw him a pair of work gloves. He hoped he’d eyeballed the size right. “I trust you’re up to date with all your vaccines.”

“Uhm.”

“Hopefully no one’s dumping organic waste in here, but I’ll bring some traps if you see any rats. They won’t solve the problem, but it’s better than letting them scurry around freely.”

Midoriya’s eyes darted between the gloves and the beach with muted horror. “R-Rats?”

“Scared of rats?” Toshinori couldn’t help but tease. “Did I mention that I had to wade through the sewers for half an hour before finding you and the sludge villain the other day?”

Midoriya instantly looked mortified. “I-I’m sorry-”

“Not your fault! Don’t apologize!” Toshinori tossed his hands in the air. This kid desperately needed to learn the basic mechanics of humor. “I’m just saying that heroes can’t be squeamish! Rats come with the job, as well as a variety of nasty stuff and filth.”

“Right.” Midoriya followed him as Toshinori, cooler in one hand and bag of papers in the other, sat down on the last steps of the stairs. He picked an egg sandwich for himself and fished a folder out of the bag, opening it on his thighs and starting to read it.

It took him a few seconds to realize that Midoriya was still staring at him, as if awaiting further instructions.

“Well? Have at it!” Toshinori gestured widely at his new playground.

“Oh, uhm, okay.” The kid donned the gloves and took a single step towards the piles before pausing to look at Toshinori again. “I thought you wanted to ask me… stuff.”

“Yes, but I’m not sure you can handle working and talking at the same time without building up some stamina first.” Toshinori answered, eyeing the boy’s scrawny frame critically. “We’ll talk while you’ll be taking a break to catch a breather, which is probably going to happen sooner rather than later.”

“Oh… All right.” Midoriya turned away, his arms hanging limply from hunched shoulders as he muttered to himself. “...Where do I even start...?”

“From the small things. Working your way up to the heavier objects.” Toshinori explained patiently, then gave him a pointed look. “I get the feeling you’re procrastinating.”

The boy approached the closest stack… and did nothing. Was he ever going to stop waffling and get cracking? “Meanwhile, you’ll just, uh… do your own thing?”

“Surely you don’t need me to guide you through the elaborate process of moving objects from point A to point B, do you?” Maybe the kid detected the hint of annoyance in Toshinori’s voice, because he finally, finally set to grab the closest piece of junk- “...Oh. Okay, that’s not a great start.”

“What?” Midoriya stopped halfway through picking up what was probably the first electric fan ever invented, all the way back in the Iron Age. “I haven’t even done anything yet!”

“Bend your knees, not your back. Otherwise you’re going to- do you really not know this? Isn’t the correct way to lift weights Household Chores 101?”

“Oh, right, I know.” Midoriya rearranged his stance in a way that was less likely to earn him a slipped disk within the next two hours. “Do people really lift things like this though? It’s… a lot harder than the normal way.”

“For your legs, yes. For your back, no. You’ll thank me when you’ll be old enough to realize you aren’t made out of rubber.”

Toshinori munched slowly while he watched the kid carry his first loads to the truck. That act alone seemed to distract Midoriya to an amusing degree, his gaze often flicking to meet Toshinori’s eyes for just a moment before shooting back in front of him with blatant self-consciousness. Toshinori allowed the boy a few minutes of warm-up, just the time for him to finish his sandwich and sip a small cup of apple juice, before deciding to kick things into proper gear.

“Running from the truck to the heaps and vice versa would help you gain some endurance too, rather than leisurely strolling back and forth.” Toshinori commented as Midoriya walked past him.

The kid stopped in his tracks and regarded him with a mix of horror and aversion that vaguely reminded him of death-row inmates when faced with their executioners.

“What?” Toshinori went on, unperturbed. “Are you expecting to get fit without getting tired?”

“No, of course not-”

“Besides, you’ll need to keep a swift pace if you want to clear the whole beach before the admission exam.”

“Wha- All of it?! Before the…” Midoriya sputtered, arms wrapping more tightly around the broken chair he was holding as if that was supporting him instead of the other way around. “Y-You never said…”

“But of course! They don’t do things by half measures in U.A., so why should you?” Toshinori grinned. “Plus Ultra, am I right?”

Midoriya let out an incredulous chuckle. “You’re kidding, right? There’s no way I can do something like that...”

“Depends on how much elbow grease you’re willing to put into it.”

Midoriya’s expression shifted minutely as he caught onto Toshinori’s seriousness. “But… but that’s impossible! No matter how hard I work, I can’t- I can’t move stuff like that!” He griped, pointing at the wrecked husk of a van half-buried under a mound of assorted refuse. “Even if I do my best-”

“And pray tell, what’s your best?” Toshinori stood up and walked to the kid, ditching the whimsical demeanor. If playful cajoling wasn’t enough to stir him, maybe it was time to bust out the big guns. “What’s the heaviest you can lift? The fastest you can run? The hardest you can push yourself? When’s the last time you actually tried your very best, and how did it fall short?”

Toshinori was already well and truly spent for the day, but he let the provocation and drive in his words stoke the fire within him, and it flared. The Symbol of Peace broke out of his diminutive shell among dramatic wisps of steam, ready to bestow his wisdom more effectively than his rickety counterpart ever could.

“Do you know what’s the only way to gauge your limits? Reaching them. And the only way to get stronger?“ Toshinori held out his arm between them, and clenched his fist resolutely. He relished the sensation of unyielding muscles tensing and bulging under his skin, tangible proof of the truth of his assertions. “Gritting your teeth and smashing past them! Little by little, but constantly!”

Midoriya had only witnessed that transformation once, poorly and by accident, and it showed. The chair had slipped from his hands without him even noticing, and now lay forgotten at his feet on the bare sand. The kid was gawking at him with wide eyes and mouth agape, the very picture of spellbound rapture. It was far from an unfamiliar reaction from whoever was graced by the Symbol of Peace’s presence, and yet it was still flattering, every time.

“You’ll never improve if you keep dwelling on what you think you can do now. Focus on what you want to do next. Visualize it as a clear goal. Build an image out of it, and then carve it in reality. If you really want that van to move, then it will move. If you really want this beach to be clear, then it will be. But you have to put your back, sweat and heart into making it happen!”

All Might captivated his one-man audience with the usual effortlessness, boisterous showmanship and honest positivity deeply intertwined in a way that boggled his detractors’ minds, but that felt so natural and appropriate to Toshinori. He’d made an art out of it, down to the rumble of his voice and the firmness of his gestures and the levity of his attitude, the art of highlighting and displaying the very best parts of himself so that they could resonate louder, better, brighter.

“So what will it be, young Midoriya? Will you clean up this place within the next ten months or not?”

“Y-Yes. I will.” That had done the trick. It was obvious from the way Midoriya’s back straightened and his expression toughened. It was obvious from the spark kindled in his eyes, a reflection of Toshinori’s own passion, still lacking in heat but full of potential.

“Then you’d better get down to it!” The hero sealed the deal with a radiant smile and a thumbs up. “Time’s a-wastin’!”

“Yes, sir!” Midoriya picked up the chair and dashed towards the truck to unload it there, then he immediately bounced back down the stairs and towards the nearest heap of waste. Toshinori observed the boy’s next rounds with his unwavering smile and few approving nods that kept the kid a bit lighter on his feet.

How much easier it was for All Might to touch people’s hearts. How much easier to inspire, to reassure, to nurture. How much easier everything was for All Might, really. If only that shining beacon of hope wasn’t shackled by the whims of a withering body, how much richer society at large would be for it.

Toshinori let out a deep exhale that took more than just air out of him, and the flame settled down to a low glow. He couldn’t hold back a few wet coughs, and he promptly turned his shrunken back on Midoriya’s concerned glance to sit back on the cool steps.

Unfortunately, there was a lot more than motivation to strength training. Right off the bat, Toshinori could tell that Midoriya wasn’t going to last twenty full minutes of workout. He honestly didn’t know that an ostensibly healthy individual could reach the ripe age of fourteen with such poor body awareness. The boy had coordination and balance on par with a toddler’s: he stumbled on his feet, he tripped on sand, he nearly fell off the stairs twice before realizing that trying to climb them while his view was obstructed by the very items he was carrying might be a less than optimal solution. He seemed to be unaware of the existence of entire muscle groups, and Toshinori had to physically get up and mime movements for him to understand how to exert force more efficiently. Not to mention that he needed incessant needling lest his sprints quickly devolved into lax jogs.

This whole training thing was going to be… an interesting experience, Toshinori could already tell.

Exactly sixteen and a half minutes later, the boy all but collapsed on the stairs beside Toshinori, gasping for air and wiping his forehead on his sleeve.

“B-Break?” He pleaded, quite redundantly.

Toshinori took pity on his plight and pushed the cooler in his direction. “Have a drink.”

“Oh, thank you…” The lack of polite refusal made Toshinori suspect that Midoriya had forgotten to bring his own water.

“There’s sports drinks and fruit juice in there too. Save the snacks for after you’re finished, food and heavy workouts don’t always agree with each other.” Toshinori had packed food primarily for himself, expecting their after-school meeting to last long enough for him to slot in one or two meals in the meantime, but he had taken care of adding a few extras for the kid. A good idea, because the possibility of Midoriya face planting on the ground halfway through out of sheer exhaustion seemed more and more likely by the minute.

“Thank you, you didn’t have to…”

“I promised bribes, didn’t I?”

Midoriya flashed him the tiniest smile, and eagerly drank some water while Toshinori retrieved a small journal and a pen from the other bag. He skimmed through the list of preliminary topics he’d scribbled on the first page under Tsukauchi’s advice, wondering which one he should tackle first.

“All right.” Deciding to follow his instinct in spite of basic common sense, Toshinori decided to begin from the end. “These phone calls of yours. Give me an idea of what they’re like. The last one you had with your father was on April 1st, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it. Everything you talked about, as precisely as you can remember it.”

The good thing was that Midoriya’s memory was very accurate, and he was able to recall the whole conversation basically step by step. The less good thing was that said conversation was largely commonplace and unremarkable, consisting of very ordinary small talk and inquiries about school, grades, news, local events-

“Quirks?”

“Mh-hm.” The boy nodded. “We always end up talking about quirks, in one way or another. Quirks and heroes. It’s always been… a common interest.”

“Always, uh?”

“Yeah, we’ve been doing it since… forever, really. I’ve always found quirks fascinating, and he has lots of great insight to offer.”

“I can imagine...” Toshinori mumbled. Asking who had initiated that habit was probably pointless, it sounded like it had started too early in the boy’s life for him to remember - or even to understand if he had been deliberately led to develop that interest. Some intriguing nature-versus-nurture speculations could be made on the matter, but they weren’t likely to aid Tsukauchi’s case. “And in what way do you talk about them?”

“We… analyze them, discuss them. What is known for sure about a certain quirk, what can be deduced from footage and descriptions of its use, what its unmentioned limitations might be, how it could be further developed… You saw my notebook, right? Basically the kind of stuff that’s in there.”

“Wait.” Toshinori blinked. Could he have already stumbled into a treasure trove of All For One-certified information? “You mean that all that’s written in that notebook was dictated by your father?”

The kid almost choked on his next gulp of water, and shot Toshinori an almost offended look. “No! No, no, it’s all stuff I found out on my own! Well, almost all of it, there are some additions of his here and there, but… Uh, I’d say at least 90% of it is mine, and 10% of it is his… Actually, more like 95% and 5%-”

Well, that sounded less promising, but it was still a lead. “So he’s been basically teaching you how to conduct your own quirk analyses?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say teaching. I wish our school teachers were that engaging...” Midoriya let out a small sigh. “But I guess we do go about it a little like with school essays. Research, deadline, discussion and all that…”

“Pardon?”

“Well, every month we decide which heroes or quirks we’re going to talk about the next time - back in March we chose Hawks, Kido and Snatch for last month’s call, for example. During the rest of the month we gather information and draw our conclusions, and then we compare them during the next chat.”

“You’ve got quite the well-oiled routine going on there, haven’t you?”

“Actually, I think it’s just to give me a chance to make my own deductions with a clear head instead of on the fly.” Midoriya scratched said tousled head in embarrassment. “I bet he doesn’t even need to do any research, he’s always on the top of his game. I’ve never been able to, uh… one-up him, you know? He always knows what I’m driving at, and somehow he always brings my hypotheses two or three steps further than where I stop.”

Toshinori answered with a non-committal hum. No surprise there, the man was a living quirk storeroom complete with its own self-congratulatory, sentient database. “You don’t seem too bothered by it though.”

“Oh, I’m not. It’s not like he’s ever… disappointed or angry or anything, even if I don’t get stuff. He just enjoys chatting, I guess.” That he surely did, Toshinori grimly thought. Way too much. “And I do too. It’s kind of like a game. Or a challenge.”

“A challenge?”

“Yeah, uh… How can I explain…?” The boy drummed his fingers on the bottle as he collected his thoughts. “Okay, for example: one of the first things dad asked me about Hawks was what shape his wings are, and what I could deduce from that about his flight capabilities. Which was a trick question! I knew it as soon as I heard it, because I’d already figured out the real answer during my research.”

“Ah.” Toshinori blinked. “And… how is that a trick question, exactly?”

“Because Hawks doesn’t actually fly! Not like a bird, at least, so his wing shape doesn’t matter!” Midoriya beamed, and suddenly Toshinori realized that that was the first real, genuine, enthusiastic smile the boy had given him since they’d met. And, without exaggeration, not crying, panicking or grimacing made him look almost like an entirely different person. “He simply can’t! Humans can’t fly even if you stick a pair of wings to them, they’re just too heavy! Other heroes who can fly properly are mostly transformers, like Ryukyu - their whole bodies change when they shift, bone structure and all - but Hawks’ body is entirely human if you exclude his wings.”

Midoriya reached for his backpack and drew out the same charred notebook Toshinori had signed days earlier. An item so vital to the kid’s daily life that he always had it with him, apparently, even more essential than beverages during a workout session. A peculiar, if questionable, trait.

“What Hawks actually does isn’t flying, it’s levitating!” The kid held the notebook open before Toshinori’s eyes on a spread page dedicated to the hero in question. “He uses the second facet of his quirk, the telekinesis that allows him to control his feathers singularly! That also explains his incredible speed, which is completely unjustifiable if you only take into account normal bird flight aerodynamics. His propulsion is powered by his feathers - and each of them is quite speedy and powerful on its own, so it stands to reason that he would be lightning-fast when his wings contain so many of them pushing him in unison!”

Toshinori politely elected to wait for the onslaught of words to subside on its own, although he already suspected that it was a little like standing right under a waterfall and waiting for someone higher up to turn off the faucet.

“That said, that doesn’t explain everything about his quirk… For example, a single feather of his is capable of lifting and transporting an adult person, that has been extensively documented. Yet, he loses the ability to levitate relatively soon after dispatching too many of them - he becomes unable to float even when he still has at least several dozens of them attached to his body. We couldn’t figure out why that happens with the information we have. Maybe it’s harder for him to apply his power to himself, that is often the case for emitters. Maybe it messes with his proprioception, and he can’t control the feathers he hasn’t detached as finely as all the others…”

If there was one thing Toshinori was absolutely certain of at this point, it was that the kid wasn’t short on breath any more. “And this is the part you inferred on your own.”

“Yep! And dad agreed with all of it!” Midoriya’s smile grew even wider. It was astonishing how much it didn’t look like dad’s deranged, shark-like, nightmare-inducing sneer, and Toshinori could only send a quiet thanks to the heavens for that. “This is all guesswork though. Do you… by any chance, do you know if we were on the right track? I’d be really curious to know…”

“Ah, I can’t help you there, kid.” Toshinori felt suddenly on the spot. “I’m not acquainted with Hawks, nor do I know more about his quirk than the average person.”

“Oh, I thought… Since you’re both- I mean, I thought All Might may have met him during the billboard chart events, what with them both being in the top ten.”

“We passed by each other, yes, but we were never properly introduced. He wasn’t particularly interested in rubbing elbows with the old guard, I suppose.”

“Oh. Well, that’s his loss, for sure.” Midoriya, funnily enough, pouted. “Pity, I was wondering… Even if he doesn’t fly, he does flap his wings in a way that resembles a bird’s. I wonder if that’s intentional, to mislead opponents and prevent them from figuring out how he actually moves. Or maybe he does it subconsciously…”

“I’m afraid I really don’t know…” Toshinori had never met Hawks on the field either, it wasn’t common for accidents to require more than a single big-name hero to intervene these days. Especially if one of them was the number one, who often showed up first and invariably solved any incident in mere minutes-

Toshinori suddenly came back to himself and almost facepalmed in frustration. Why was he letting himself be interrogated about completely irrelevant hero trivia? He was the one asking questions! God, he was bad at this. “And your father had nothing to contribute about all this?”

“Not about this specifically, but he did raise a point I hadn’t considered.” Midoriya looked up at the sky, once again lost in his very wordy, very deep lucubrations. “Hawks has an astonishing control on his quirk. He can use his telekinesis to move hundreds of feathers at once, to sense his surroundings, he can even harden them and turn them into weapons. He made Fierce Wings into an incredibly versatile ability, and he’s so young too… And yet, there’s no record of him attending any hero school or training facility in Japan, nor abroad. He claims to be self-taught, but… admittedly, it is hard to believe. One would think he must have had some excellent education and tutoring to make it into the top ten when he was only eighteen…”

Toshinori didn’t reply. Midoriya looked back at him when the silence stretched, and whatever he spied on Toshinori’s face made him immediately backpedal. “I-I mean, it’s odd, but, uh… not suspicious per se, nor a sign of anything… weird or bad about him. There are many heroes who, ehr, prefer to keep their personal history private, especially geniuses, and that’s fine! They have all the right to! Same goes for their quirks, it makes total sense-”

Toshinori massaged his left temple slowly. Right, better just nip this topic in the bud before it got irredeemably out of hand.

He peered again at the notebook in Midoriya’s hands. So All For One had been imparting occasional, amicable quirk analysis lessons to the kid for a good decade, which sounded suspiciously like the kind of knowledge a potential underling or successor might use. On the other hand, Toshinori could think of a million other ways for the Symbol of Fear to instil skills in his son - all of them remarkably more efficient, safe, manageable and ruthless. The whole thing was contradictory in a way that didn’t sit right with Toshinori.

“Mind if I take another look at that?” Toshinori had been in a bit of a rush the first time round, and he’d only taken a cursory glance at the contents of Midoriya’s notes. But if there was a chance of those pages containing words uttered by All For One himself, a more thorough examination was in order.

“Not at all! But, uh…” Midoriya was fast to hand out the item, but his eagerness to assist was even faster to dampen. “Are you going to retain this as evidence too?”

“Mh, I don’t think that will be necessary...” Right, the poor kid’s house had probably been ransacked even further after Toshinori and Tsukauchi’s first pass. No wonder he was worried about losing this prized possession too. “But if it will be, I can make a copy of it for you to keep, so you won’t lose all your, uh, data.”

“Oh, thanks! That would be great!” The kid perked up instantly. He was so easy to please. “Although… I guess I should make a copy of it myself anyway. It’s already kind of… unrecoverable. I could detach the pages with All Might’s sign and preserve those separately, and just photocopy everything else…”

Toshinori’s imagination mercilessly supplied him with the picture of a new addition to Midoriya’s bedroom decor, his five-second poorly-made signature hung to a wall in an elegant frame. He repressed a groan, deliberately neglected to point out that he could simply provide as many new authentic signs as needed, and directed his attention back to the scorched edges of the notebook. “Right… What happened to this thing, anyway? Did someone put it in a toaster?”

Midoriya let out a totally not nervous chuckle as he wrung his hands in a totally not nervous fashion. “Oh, uhm... You know…” Toshinori didn’t, actually, but the kid didn’t elaborate either.

Well, he was allowed to have a modicum of privacy, still. Toshinori let the issue drop, and nudged the boy with his foot. “You seem well rested. Back to the trash you go.”

Midoriya shuffled to his feet less than enthusiastically, and resumed toiling away at his task. While still checking on him often, ready to poke and prod at the first hint of sluggishness, Toshinori browsed through the kid’s notebook. While the contents were indeed worthy of attention, they were scarce in quantity. It must be rather new, since less than a quarter of the pages had been filled. However, the promise of more material to be discovered made Toshinori withhold his judgement on the matter for the time being.

Once that was done, he continued his perusal of the few files Tsukauchi had already put together about the Midoriya case. Toshinori had practically begged his friend to let him have an active role, any active role in the case: he simply couldn’t bear to twiddle his thumbs until someone else kindly pointed him to All For One’s hideout for another overdue thrashing. He simply needed to be involved, or he’d probably start crawling up walls within a week.

Questioning the kid was pretty much the only suitable occupation for him, currently… Well, it was either that or questioning Mrs. Midoriya, and Toshinori was fairly sure that his brain would leak out of his ears if he heard any more details about All For One’s romantic escapades. He wasn’t exactly an expert when it came to investigative work, not by any stretch of the imagination, but he was going to spare no effort to earn some results. If that meant poring over reams of police reports in the hopes of spotting some helpful clue, so be it. At least it would keep him busy, and busy was good, especially in trying times.

He’d applied the same logic to Midoriya, in a sense. The boy seemed the kind of person who’d very easily overthink himself into a negative spiral, even in less dire circumstances than the messy family drama he’d found himself into. It would do him good to focus on a better future, rather than on his depressing present. Giving him a goal to set his sights on would keep him going more smoothly.

At first Toshinori had thought to motivate him towards his dream career, but it turned out that the boy’s strategy about the admission test was… nebulous at best. Not that he could truly blame him for it: fourteen-year-old Toshinori didn’t exactly have a multi-step plan towards becoming the Symbol of Peace either, one couldn’t help being somewhat scatterbrained at that age.

The illegal dumping site had been a serendipitous discovery, and cleaning it up was the perfect type of goal to incite the boy towards. It was very obvious and straightforward, and required no intricate planning: he simply needed to roll up his sleeves and buckle down. And the muscle he’d build while doing it would serve him well for heroic purposes too, so it was a win-win on all fronts. Not to mention that some good old physical exertion would help him sleep at night, which he was still struggling with, if the persistent bags under his eyes were of any indication. Toshinori dearly missed the times when that trick still worked on him too, when driving himself to the brink of exhaustion was a guaranteed one-way ticket to restful and regenerative dreamland. Nowadays, if he accumulated even a sliver of excessive fatigue, all he got was… well, fatigue. And a metric ton of unrelenting body pains and lasting debilitation.

The rest of the afternoon went by smoothly and unremarkably. Midoriya drudged through many rounds of garbage disposal with decreasing energy and verve, but that was to be expected. Toshinori collected more barely relevant and generally useless information, but that was to be expected too. They were both in for the long haul, there was no point in getting upset about it. Eventually the sun started to set, and Toshinori beckoned the boy back to him with a handwave.

“You have more of these?” Toshinori said, tapping his index on the big 13 on the cover of the notebook still on his lap.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Could you bring them with you next time?”

“All of them?” Midoriya seemed frazzled.

“If you still have them, yes. Would that be a problem?”

The boy scratched his head as his cheek reddened slightly. “N-No, not a problem, but some of them are really… I finished the first one when I was seven. They aren't just outdated, they’re… ehr, childish. Just doodles and misspelled ramblings.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not like I’ll be grading them.” Not yet, at least. Toshinori smirked at his own private joke. Maybe he should grade them, as a small practice run. “I just want to give a quick read to a few things here and there.”

“O-Okay…”

“Good. Well, I think we can call it a day.” Toshinori rummaged in his cooler to fetch a chocolate energy bar, and tossed it to the exhausted boy. “Catch.”

Despite the warning, Midoriya did not catch, and the snack bumped against his chest and fell to the ground with a sad clack. Reflexes were MIA too, apparently. What a rare specimen of a prospective hero Toshinori had crossed paths with.

“T-Thank you!” Midoriya immediately picked it up, unwrapped it and shoved it into his mouth as he hopped into the passenger seat of the truck. Whether it was real hunger or fear of passing as rude, Toshinori couldn’t tell.

The drive to Midoriya’s house was brief. The boy was too tired to chat - as if they hadn’t already had their fill for the day. When they arrived and Midoriya climbed out of the vehicle to be on his way, Toshinori finally addressed one last pressing issue.

“Tomorrow your father is going to call you.”

“Yeah.” The kid’s eyes dropped to the ground. Maybe Toshinori should have brought it up sooner. Way to end the meeting on a sour note.

“How are you going to handle that?”

“I’m not.” The boy shrugged. “Mom will tell him I just got my tonsils removed. It's… safer for now. I think.”

Toshinori nodded. “Let’s take a day off then. Even if you can’t speak, he might want to say something to you, and it would be strange for you not to be at home while recovering.”

“Okay.”

He looked so very small, and so very young like that, bathed in the warm hues of sunset, but with no real warmth to his eyes and demeanor. He was too small and too young to be dealing with this shit. No one was old or big enough to deal with any of All For One’s shit, really. Toshinori would have to make sure no one would have to ever again.

“Thank you for your help today. It’s very appreciated, believe me.” Toshinori offered, with his most sincere smile. “Feel free to text me or Tsukauchi if anything comes up, you should be able to reach at least one of us at any hour of day or night.”

“Okay. Thank you. Have a good evening.”

“You too, kid.” Toshinori watched him until the door of his house closed behind his back, then he drove off.

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #deku #izuku midoriya #All Might #Toshinori Yagi

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krak-house · 2 years

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aaaand part 2 of my insane number of Blackbonnet AU ideas I'll (probably) never write, because my brain is a bag of cats and I'm Obsessed with the gay pirates lol

Ed owns a chop mechanic shop and Stede's car is fancy as fuck, Ed would totally sell it for parts except Stede keeps coming by with snacks and cupcakes and lemonade as thanks for working so diligently on his baby and Ed just. can't bring himself to do it

Ed's an art thief/forger and Stede's a museum curator

alternatively, Ed is Reverse Indiana Jones and Stede gets pulled along for the ride to make sure the artifacts all stay in one piece, but really he just wants to watch Ed use that whip again...

Snow White AU. Stede is Snow

Cinderella AU. Ed is the princess this time

Stede's little Alma and Ed's rambunctious teen Izzy keep beating the shit out of each other on the playground and now they all have to be dragged into the principal's office to figure this shit out

alt, Ed's foster kid Izzy is a right terror and Stede's the soft but well-meaning principal/English teacher

Stede is a decorated violinist and Ed fiddles for extra cash on the side. cue Devil Went Down to Georgia in the background

Ed teaches metalworking and Stede historical fashion at an art uni. Ed's classes are all "do whatever the fuck u want I don't care long as everyone leaves with all their fingers attached" and Stede's focus more on interpretive essays about fashion and how they feel about it. (alt. Ed teaches poetry the same way. Izzy is going for a mfa in metalwork but somehow ends up under ed's wing despite their differing focuses. Lucius is stede's TA who's actually a poetry major. Nobody follows the rules obviously)

Ed owns the Grill and his head chef, Izzy runs front of house, and stede stumbles upon what might be the oddest most unconventional gay bar he'd ever seen, and just keeps coming back

Stede runs a nature retreat for troubled teens and Ed has been assigned community service for his parole and he chose it bc it was the shortest amount of time for the hours but he did Not know it was gonna be 24 hours a day in nature looking after dumb kids and he has Regrets but also. he's not entirely sure how this muppet of a man got a whole crew of paroled teens to listen to him and participate in story time and all that shit so he decides he's gotta learn a thing or two from him. Maybe he can use this guy's tips to get Izzy to be less of a tetchy bitch. On the other hand, Stede has absolutely heard of Ed and honestly kind of admires what he did and to have him at his retreat is such a treat! They're going to have so much wholesome law-abiding fun! Absolutely no thoughts of running away with Ed once his parole is over to live on the wild side and commit all the fun sounded crimes his kids are in for.

Stede tries and fails at blind dates and he's clearly been stood up poor guy, Ed thinks he might as well jump in and save him from looking so lonely but fuck man the more they talk the more he realizes this buttoned-up man is actually insane

ok this ones short but also. Stede has recently decided post-divorce that he's gonna wear exclusively skinny jeans bc someone told him ten years ago he has good legs and hold on, are you trying to pickpocket me? What do you mean you simply think my butt is hot, you have my wallet in your hand right now

Stede decided to try reading on his balcony and his handsome neighbour Ed is...goading his friend to whip his balls with a bullwhip? for a tiktok? that seems a little unsafe are you two sure you should be doing that?

Ed's totally not that serial killer Stede has been tasked with catching for fucking years, except maybe he is but now it's too late he's already fallen in love Hannibal-style

Ed's been the top dog in this prison for fucking years and really, he could get out any time but the outside world fucking sucks but now this dude who got arrested for tax evasion or some shit is telling all these crazy stories and Stede dude do you wanna get out of here? I've got an escape plan already ready let's fucking bounce and see that huge ball of twine or whatever

related: Ed's stuck in a holding cell at 2am for some delinquent bullshit and Stede honestly wasn't really trying to break into that car, really, it was an honest mistake and now they're both stuck here until their person wakes up to post bail and Ed learns that Stede actually was trying to break into a car because it was shiny and expensive and belonged to his mortal enemy and why have a normal midlife crisis when you could go all out, right? So obviously Ed has to teach him how to actually break into cars and not get caught, but maybe save the lesson for sometime when they weren't locked up in a police station, yeah?

as an ode to Stede's genre-bending prowess: Stede is living in Star Trek (TOS) and Ed is living in Cowboy Bebop. All of Stede's crew has bounties on their heads and Stede is just oblivious until Ed comes crashing in and honestly this exploring shit is crazy, why are we even bounty hunters again, Iz?

Ed is a gaming streamer and Stede tries out old recipes on youtube (Dylan B Hollis basically). How they meet is up to you but none of their respective followers expected that guy to show up in their videos but honestly the sexual tension is fun to watch so no one's complaining

I know I already did a rockstar AU but also. Stede runs a Very Respectable Hotel thank you very much and Ed is in the habit of trashing Very Respectable Hotels and honestly who the hell let him book a room here this is going to take ages to clean up, I don't care how hot and charming he is. Ed meanwhile is fucking obsessed with the secret doors that no one is supposed to know about and also is that a fucking waterslide into a hot tub??

Ed gets into a bar fight with Jack and Stede accidentally walks right into his fist and got knocked out and now Ed really kinda has to take him to the hospital and stay until he wakes up and if he stares a little too long and brushes Stede's hair back to see his face better that's no one's fucking business but his own, all right?

Ed has a shit sleep schedule and Stede always gets to work way too early so they always run into each other at the coffee shop on the opposite ends of their days and sleep deprivation sucks but hey at least they get to see that hot stranger every morning at fucking 5am

In honour of How To Build A Sex Room on Netflix: Stede is an interior designer with...eclectic taste and a penchant for secret passageways. Ed wants one of those secret door bookshelves and maybe some hidden hallways to connect the rest of his house to his sex dungeon because that'd be fucking sweet.

Wife Swap. Izzy has to live with Mary and the kids for 2 weeks while Stede gets swapped into Ed's life and just. decides he never wants to leave

Stede is very drunk and got divorced like 2 hours ago and Ed steadfastly refuses to tattoo his own name on Stede's ass no matter how much he compliments him. He can stay on the cot in the back of the shop though and if he decides he still wants it in the morning, well. Who is Ed to say no?

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bnhaficsforthesoul · 5 years

Text

Pregnancy Series - Surprise! (2)

You Find Out You’re Pregnant/Telling Him

Shinsou Hitoshi

Hitoshi watched as you paced around the room - your obvious anxiety stressing him out as your generally calm appearance faded. Your period was very late, a lot later for it to be just a normal switch in your period schedule, and the app on your phone had been telling you your period should be coming the following day for a little over a week.

“Kitten, what’s the matter?”

You knew you already discussed this with him and you both decided you were perfectly ready for a baby - but still, it’s a baby! If you’re pregnant, your whole life is completely changing. So it’s normal to be stressed. Along with that, you had taken a few pregnancy tests but they had shown nothing - and with some research you found the best time to take a pregnancy test after a missed period was… now. Which is why in the bathroom there was a test waiting on the counter as you paced the 5 minutes away.

“I’m… trying to figure out something. Don’t worry about it.” He wasn’t all too convinced with your response, but you didn’t want to say that you might be pregnant and get his hopes up if you weren’t actually pregnant. Then, your phone went off, and you speed walked back to the bathroom after a good 2 seconds of being frozen.

“You got this you got this you got this - oh my god.” You were hyping yourself up to look at the test in front of you, and once you did - there they stood - the 2 lines that signified your future. Even with all your previous anxiety, you couldn’t help but feel a weight be lifted off your chest. Now you knew for sure, and the reality wasn’t as scary as it had seemed before.

Hitoshi, who was very confused by your actions, followed you to the bathroom and leaned into the doorway. “What’re you doing?” You jumped a bit, having not noticed him come in as you stared at the test in your hand, but as you went to tell him the good news you were enveloped in a tight hug.

“You’re pregnant?”

You nodded into his chest, and you saw him bite his lip to hold back a smile as he looked at the test again, “That’s so exciting kitten~”

Bakugou Katsuki

“Well… did you take it? What did it say?”

Katsu had seemed very inpatient to get you pregnant, getting more and more agitated with each time that the pregnancy test showed up negative. He didn’t blame you, it’s not your fault, it’s just you two hadn’t exactly planned around your ovulation cycle and kinda just went at it, so you started at a bad time.

But this time, you had a good feeling. You texted Katsu as he was busy with hero work right now, saying that you were gonna try taking another test and that you’d tell him the results in a bit. He replied with a simple ‘okay’ but you knew he was staring at his phone waiting for your answer.

The 5 minutes went by fast, your phone alarm distracting you from the Youtube video you were watching, and you calmly walked to the counter where you had left the test and looked at the results. And just as your gut had told you - it was positive. Finally, you were pregnant!

So, you called Katsuki, who immediately asked for the status of the test.

“I did~ and guess what?”

“If you don’t say you’re pregnant I’m gonna kill you.”

“Well lucky for both of us, I’m pregnant!”

He didn’t say anything for a minute, the only sound on the phone being the background noises of the city and your occasional ‘Katsu?’ He soon came back to reality however, and let out a choked, “Great - that’s great.”

“Aww, don’t cry baby-”

“I’m not crying! I gotta go, I’ll talk to you later, love you.”

Once he hung up you could help but laugh - poor thing was gonna start crying at work, but you couldn’t blame him.

Todoroki Shouto

While at work - during recess while you were watching all the little ones play around the playground, you suddenly felt yourself get extremely dizzy, and then - you woke up inside your classroom. All your students and a few teachers stood around you, one of the them telling the kids to go back to recess.

“Y/n, are you okay? You fainted suddenly.”

You nodded, already starting to feel better. “Yeah, I’m fine. Maybe I was just in the sun for too long.”

“10 minutes? If you passed out from being in the sun for 10 minutes you should go to the doctor. I can bring your class in with mine - do you want me to call your husband to take you?”

“No, no… I’m fine-”

“Y/n - no. Go.”

Sighing, you nodded again, “Fine, I’ll go to the urgent care. I can take myself, no need to worry Shouto.”

As you promised, you made your way to the closest urgent care - it would be a big waste of time but at least you’d see if something was wrong. You arrived, checked in and all that business, and after a good couple hours you finally made it into the office and explained what happened and you just wanted to make sure you were okay. They did all their tests, and now you were sitting there waiting to see if there were any significant results.

“So after looking at your results, it appears that you are pregnant! That’s very likely the cause of your fainting, as otherwise you seem to be healthy.”

Pregnant? You were pregnant? As you left the doctor’s, her having given you a bunch of information to find an OBGYN and all those things, you thought about how to tell Shouto. You considered calling him, but figured he would rather hear the news in person.

He came home late at night - and you in your excitement were standing at the door creepily, scaring him a bit when he walked through the door.

“What are you doing love? Why are you smiling like that?”

“I’m pregnant.”

Shouto stared at you for a second, getting the gears in his brain working after a long day of hero work, and his face lit up into a big smile as he leaned over, cupping your face in his big hands as he kissed you softly. “I promise - I’ll be a good dad. I promise.”

Kirishima Eijirou

You had bought so many pregnancy tests in the past few months due to your eagerness to become a parent - every single morning after you spent it taking a pregnancy test. You had gotten used to the single line appearing on the little piece of plastic however, it seemed luck was not on your side as of late.

That is - until you glanced over the test after hearing your phone signify the 5 minutes had passed, and there were 2 lines. The second was faint, you had barely noticed it when you first looked - but it was there. Two pink lines, and you felt tears well up in your eyes. You were pregnant!

Running out of the bathroom and flopping onto the couch - you let out a happy scream. Eijirou, who had been happily sleeping all this time, walked out of the bedroom with a raised brow. “You okay baby? What happened?”

“I’m pregnant!!!” As you let out another happy squeal, Eiji excitedly ran over to you, carefully flopping himself down onto you and hugging you tightly. “We’re having a baby!” He was tearing up too - you were both so happy, after trying for so long you had finally managed to get pregnant.

“Do you think it’s a boy or a girl - I’m fine with whatever. Who’s gonna be the god parents? Ooh, we should probably call your mom-”

Eijirou was letting his excitement overtake him as he rambled on about the baby. You said nothing, instead choosing to watch your husband with a smile.

Amajiki Tamaki

“Bunny, can I ask you something?”

You were lying on the couch, technically on Tamaki’s lap - having been extremely tired lately for no apparent reason - and just watching some Netflix. Tamaki had been worried about you since this sudden fatigue began, it being odd for you to be so tired all of the sudden.

“Sure bub, what’s up.”

He threaded his fingers through your hair, thinking for a moment before speaking. “Well… I was thinking about what could have caused you to be so tired lately, and - well, a symptom of pregnancy is fatigue, maybe thats a possibility?”

That’s true - you had been trying a bit to get pregnant, so you very well could be. “I can go take a test in a bit, after this episode.” You were still tired and didn’t want to get up, but this was kinda important, so you would pick yourself up in a few minutes.

Eventually, the episode ended, and you slowly sat up, ignoring the dizzy feeling in your head as you did so - heading towards the bathroom. “Good luck bunny!” Tama gave you a positive thumbs up and a big smile, obviously hoping that he was right. You smiled back at him and went into the bathroom, digging through the cupboard for the little box that held the pregnancy test.

You sat on the floor as you waited, the cold tile helping to keep the dizziness away. Tamaki had come to sit with you once you were finished, holding your hand tightly as you rested your head on his shoulder.

“Bunny, y/n, look! Look at the test!”

Opening your eyes, you focused on the test, and your eyes widened as you saw the 2 lines - “You were right, that’s great Tama!” You looked up at him to see small tears flowing down his face, “You’re pregnant. You’re actually pregnant…” He was in a slight state of shock, squeezing your hand tightly as he stared at the test with a happy smile.

Dabi

“Will you get pregnant already?”

“I never thought I’d see the day where you were fucked out.”

Dabi rolled his eyes at your comment, releasing you from his arms and rolling over in the bed. You had just woken up, exhausted and sore from your constant attempts of getting pregnant. Dabi was very dedicated to your goal - to the point where even he was overly exhausted. Boy needed a break.

“I’ll go take another test.”

He hmmed, wanting to just go back to sleep, and you got up, stumbling a bit due to the numbness in your legs before catching yourself and making your way to the bathroom to grab a pregnancy test from the little pile you had accumulated - you were excited, okay?

It was a very relaxed process - you had come to expect a negative result but you were hopeful for a positive one, so you were fairly calm as you waited for the results. You scrolled through your phone as you waited, until a few minutes later you decided to check on the test.

A big smile broke out on your face once you saw it, with the 2 very obvious pink lines. Immediately you ran out and jumped onto the bed, causing Dabi to groan loudly and hold the pillow tightly over his head.

“Dabi, come on, wake up - I’m pregnant.”

“It’s about fucking time.”

Pouting, you sat on his stomach and pulled the pillow off of his face. “Dabiii, I’m pregnant. Aren’t you happy?”

He wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you into a hug, “Of course I’m happy. But I’m also tired as hell. Let’s go back to bed, we can celebrate later.”

Shigaraki Tomura

Leaning onto Tomura as he played video games - you attempted to calm your stomach down. You had been nauseous for a couple of days now for some reason, even having thrown up a few times - so you felt overall horrible. Sadly your attempts seemed to be in vain, as you felt the soup Kurogiri had made you start to creep its way back up your throat and you ran to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet in time to puke.

Surprisingly your boyfriend had peeled himself away from his game to come check up on you - he must be starting to get worried too. “Should I send someone to get you medicine?... Maybe they could grab some of those pregnancy things too -”

“Pregnant! Yes - get me a pregnancy test! That might be why I’m sick!” You knew you hadn’t eaten anything weird lately, and there was no one sick around so it would be odd if you managed to get sick - and with Tomura’s increased need to get you pregnant it made sense that you would be.

He didn’t say anything, just left the bathroom to make someone complete the said task, and came back afterwards to sit with you. Dabi walked in about an hour later, throwing some tylenol and a few pregnancy test boxes towards you before leaving, and Tomura excitedly handed you one.

You shoved Tomura out of the bathroom - since he didn’t want to leave at first - and took the test, tapping your foot impatiently against the wall as you sat on the sink counter, waiting for the alarm on your phone to go off. Once it did, Tomu ran into the bathroom, “Well? Are you?” Looking at the test, you saw two bright pink lines - a big yes.

Laughing lightly at Tomura’s enthusiasm as he bouncing on his heels like a little kid, you turned the test to show him, “Yup, I’m pregnant.” His reaction was a bit underwhelming after all that drama - him just giving you a “Nice” before going back to his video game. But - later that night, when he thought you were sleeping, you swore you heard him crying as he held your stomach.

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scullydubois · 3 years

Text

Only the Light Ch. 20

I now present to you a chapter that is filled with more angst than Chris Carter could ever dream of, and for that, I am truly sorry.

Scully and Mulder's foray into domesticity with Emily is interrupted by the past catching up to them. Faced with despair, they cling even tighter to each other.

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

Scully is granted maternity leave, though it’s only for two weeks, which Missy let her know is “a piss-poor bargain.” And she knows this is true, but she also has more incentive to stay at her job than ever, so she’d like not to lose it. The fact that advocating for herself and her child would mean risking her job is a mess in itself, but one lone woman can’t be expected to take down the patriarchy, and besides, she’s already tried and failed.

As for she and Mulder, they hide their flirtation in plain sight. Mulder’s perpetually present in body or spirit, but his behavior never reveals anything more than it did before. Every morning he swings by to say hi, brings Scully coffee and a bagel with full-fat cream cheese, and checks if Emily’s picked up any new words. Personally, he’s working on “alien” and if you ask him, she’ll get it soon. She knows that it refers to her UFO stuffie, so sounding out the letters can’t be far behind, much to her mother’s dismay.

On Wednesday of the first week, he shows up at 6pm with takeout carbonara from a local Italian joint. His presence makes every Scully girl happy, but it makes one in particular the happiest, and Melissa realizes that there are definitely things her sister has failed to mention. She doesn’t question it, but watches with glee as the situation unfolds.

After that first night, Mulder keeps coming back with dinner and refuses to let either sister shoulder the cost. On Friday, he stays for a movie too and gets to participate in Emily’s nightly tucking-in ritual (a tickle on the left foot, a tickle on the right foot, and a big smooch on the forehead).

Saturday afternoon, he joins them for a stroller push through the park, earning some serious side-eye from Scully when he suggests that they stop at the playground because, according to the mama bear, “Em can only take six steps at a time, Mulder.” So instead they buy hotdogs from a vendor and eat them on a bench, Emily sandwiched between her mother, her aunt, and her...Mulder. They couldn’t ask for more.

That night, Mulder hangs around after dinner because what else is he gonna do? Go home and watch old baseball games until he falls asleep? A new leaf has been offered to him, and he’s gotta turn it.

He’s baffled when, upon announcing that it’s Emily’s bathtime, Scully goes to the kitchen and switches on the sink.

Scully raises an eyebrow at him. “What, your mother never washed you in the sink when you were a baby?”

“Not that I know of...I have a hard time envisioning myself ever fitting in a sink.”

Scully scoffs. “I forget. You were a Vineyard boy.”

Before he can come up with a smart response to that (as if there actually is one), Missy pipes up. “Oh, I bet you were the kid that took baths with your mother,” she teases. “Care to confirm or deny?”

“If I did I blocked it out of memory, thank god,” he testifies.

Having spread a towel on the counter, Scully strips Emily down and perches the girl on her hip. She sticks her hand under the faucet.

“That’s not too hot, do you think?” she asks Missy, who tests it as well.

“That should be fine.”

Mulder joins in too, and immediately regrets it. He shrinks away from the water, shaking droplets all over the room. “Jesus, Scully! Are you trying to boil her?”

“Babies lose heat quickly because of their body surface to weight ratio,” she says matter-of-factly. “They’re more susceptible to the cold.”

“I think the cold will be the least of her worries,” Mulder quips.

“If you really think it’s too hot, I’ll turn it down…” There’s a concerned crease beneath her eyes, and it makes Mulder feel bad about his joking.

“No, no, you know what you’re doing,” he assures her. “You’re her mother.”

As she lowers Em into the sink, Scully’s heart twinges. Her. A mother. How many times will she have to hear this before it stops feeling like news to her?

One week and bathtime has already become routine. Missy fills a plastic cup and pours it gently over her niece, the water cascading down Em like she is nature’s own. Scully soaps her palms, then glides over her daughter’s skin with such care that its memory may blight any future affection Em is graced with. And then another waterfall, and the gentle brush of a wash cloth against eyes and nose.

Scully squeezes a penny’s worth of baby shampoo into her hand, looks to Mulder. “Come on, get in here. You’re not afraid to get your hands dirty, are you?” she says with a smirk.

He smirks back and shakes his head as she lifts his open palm and shrinks her accumulation to a dime. “Although, technically I am getting my hands cleaner…”

She boops him right on the nose with a shampooed finger. He laughs.

Missy smiles. Oh, to see destiny play out right in front of you. “Someone’s cracking dad jokes,” she points out, unable to resist. This observation is much too on-the-nose for the pair (quite literally for Mulder), who simultaneously blush but say nothing.

Mulder wipes the shampoo from his nose and plants it on Emily’s head, joining his partner in making soapy circles over the girl’s tuft of strawberry hair. Scully’s full attention is directed toward her daughter. As soon as the lather is sufficient, she dons the lifted lilt of motherhood. “Okay, time to rinse! Missy, will you do the honors?”

Missy turns the faucet, fills the cup, and lets it flow over Emily. Mulder and Scully wash their hands off in the stream.

And as Scully leans for the towel, a splash of red dirties its fresh white surface. Mulder notices it first. He points at his partner’s porcelain face. “Scully, you’re bleeding.”

Her hand shoots to her nose. Sure enough, it stains her fingers. “Shit.” She turns away, goes for a tissue. “I haven’t had nosebleeds since I was fourteen,” she tells them, as if that invalidates this one. She wipes away a glob of blood, her stomach turning. “Missy--” her voice shakes involuntarily, “--will you dry Em off?”

“Uh-huh.” She nudges Mulder. “Will you grab a new towel from the linen closet?” she whispers, not wanting to further upset her sister.

Mulder goes off without a word, and Missy squeezes out Em’s hair as best she can. “What a pretty girl!” she gushes. “All clean!”

“Yee!” Emily throws her little fists in the air, injecting joy back into the room.

“Time to put your PJs on, and get a tickle, tickle, smooch.”

Mulder scrambles back in with a new towel, skirting around Scully, who remains occupied with her own situation. He slides the soiled towel away and helps Missy swaddle Em. Mulder ruffles the little girl’s hair, and she laughs like a music box.

“Mol-dy.” She spits it out in halves, as if she’s been rehearsing.

Mulder’s eyes water with recognition. “Mulder? Mul-der? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Moldy,” the girl declares again, certain of herself.

Missy adjusts Em on her hip, smiles at Mulder. “Looks like you’re Moldy now.”

Mulder bites his lip to hide his overwhelming delight. “Yeah, I...I never thought I'd be so happy to be called moldy.”

Next thing he knows, Scully is at his shoulder with a tissue stuffed up her nostrils. “Wait, what’s going on?”

“Em called me Moldy,” he tells her, full of satisfaction.

“Oh.” It comes out relatively unimpressed, but really, she’s just distracted. “Missy, will you get a diaper on her before there’s an accident? I would but I’m still--” She gestures to her nose.

“Yeah, yeah.” Missy smiles at the baby in her arms. “PJ time, Em!” They go off toward the bedroom, a happy pair.

As soon as Em is out of sight, Mulder spirals toward his partner, panic-stricken. The glee of moments ago has evaporated.

“Are you okay?” He touches her hair, shoulders, and the familiar small of her back, unsure of where he should land.

“I’m fine, it’s fine.” Her grip on his elbows--keeping his hands firmly placed on her waistline--suggests otherwise.

“You’ve got to see a doctor,” he pleads. “This could be...”

“This could be what, Mulder?” The steel in her blue eyes is a death grip. She’s never liked being told the obvious.

“Scully…” He sighs, rubs his neck, wills her to say what they both know. When she doesn’t, he takes his hands off her and wrings them together. “The Mufon women...they said it would happen to all of them eventually.” He’s careful not to lump Scully in with their group.

“And what do they know?” she retorts. “One of them was sick. One.”

“Okay, well, don’t you think it’s better to be safe than sorry?” he reasons. “You have Emily to look out for now.”

Scully rolls her eyes. “Don’t guilt trip me. It’s a nosebleed. Those happen all the time for completely benign reasons.”

“Yeah, but they don’t happen to you. You just said--you haven’t had one since you were fourteen.”

She clenches her jaw. He’s right, and she’s playing the fool. His position is the one she would take if this were anyone other than herself. She’s gonna have to lose this fight with as much grace as possible.

“Fine. I’ll get it checked out, but they’re gonna think I’m insane for coming in because of one nosebleed.”

“That’s a nice change of pace--you being the insane one for once.”

“Well, you’re the one who wants me to go, so you’re not out of the woods.”

“Good, I’ve finally got some company!”

Scully smiles in spite of herself. “Yes, yes you do.”

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

It happens very quickly, as most calamities of life can be said to. This gives it the unreal quality of a nightmare that might soon be woken up from, if there is any justice in the world.

Scully snags a doctor’s appointment for three days after the initial nosebleed. By the time she walks into the waiting room, one nosebleed has quadrupled into four, and her minor concern has snowballed into abject terror.

Margaret Scully drove into the city to watch Emily so Missy could join her sister. Scully insisted that she would go alone, but Missy wouldn’t accept this. She threatened to tell Mulder the details of the appointment if Dana didn’t let her go, and that was enough to earn her a spot in the passenger seat. Scully can’t take the thought of Mulder witnessing the worst--let alone her reaction to the worst.

And so it goes something like this: they are taken to an exam room, at which point Scully explains her situation to a nurse, including that she has recently learned she is at high risk for cancer. The nurse assures her that such a diagnosis is highly unlikely, but makes a note for the doctor. The doctor comes in with knitted eyebrows and listens to Scully describe the aftermath of her abduction experience with a heavy emphasis on the convoluted but substantial claims of the Mufon women. She asks if Scully has had any other symptoms, to which Scully replies that it’s hard to tell because she has an infant in the house and thus, a marked lack of sleep.

The doctor laughs, but it’s not a haha laugh, more of an I feel your pain. She agrees that the women’s claims are concerning, but tells her patient not to fret. They’ll take all the precautions, run any test that might assuage her worries. There’s a quip about how it’ll be on the government’s dime since it covers Scully’s insurance, and then the doctor leaves to order an MRI.

A full body MRI, which Scully has never had, and which she hoped she would never require. There’s no deeper sickness than one that cannot be pinpointed, and no greater fear than of the unknown turning into the worst case scenario.

The MRI is completed that same day. As she slides into the machine, Scully thinks of Betsy Hagopian and wonders how she’s doing. It has been many months since she stood outside an exam room and watched Betsy enter one of these. Has fate been kind to her?

For a few minutes, her world is limited to the mere inches between her face and this life-saving yet life-ruining contraption. It is noisy and sometimes bright and altogether disorientating. She is glad when it’s over.

The images return almost immediately, and maybe it would all have been okay if Scully weren’t trained in radiology herself, if she wasn’t able to recognize the glaring speck of light in her nasal cavity for what it is. But that one glance is all she needs to know that waiting by the phone isn’t an option.

“It’s a tumor, isn’t it?” she blurts as the radiologist tries to escort her and Melissa from the room. “In the nasal cavity. I have a M.D. I saw.”

“Your doctor will call with the results,” the radiologist insists, standing by the open doorway.

“No, no, you can’t do this to me,” Scully sputters. “I know what I saw, and I don’t have any time to waste.” Her eye twitches in a combination of stress and anger. “I have an infant daughter.”

The radiologist sighs, pity on top of pity. “Perhaps your doctor will talk it through with you now.”

“Yes. Please.”

And it is talked through, though there’s no need to make it complicated: nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Inoperable, and just barely in the realm of treatable. That’s the kicker, the coyote in the pasture, the cloud covering the sun. In the words of Scully’s doctor, it is auspiciously rare. And in Scully’s brain, it is the bottom she’s been expecting to drop out from under since she held her daughter in her arms.

Melissa drives home. The sisters cannot fathom how they will tell their mother. Cannot fathom ruining her blissful time with the granddaughter she’s just met. When they turn onto their street, Scully swallows hard and coughs on her own spit. “Will you do something for me?”

Missy looks over, eager to do anything she can, yet terrified by the possibility of the request.

“Will you take me to Mulder’s?” Scully mumbles. “I would just take the car but...I can’t face mom right now. I don’t want to risk it.”

Missy bites her lip. “And what am I supposed to tell mom when she asks where you are?”

“The truth,” Scully says curtly. “She doesn’t need the backstory.”

Missy drives past their building, though she’s not completely sold on her sister’s reasoning. “Don’t you think she might wonder why you aren’t coming home to your daughter?”

“I know she’ll wonder, Melissa, I know all of this,” Scully snaps because she needs to. “I don’t care.”

“Okay.” Missy’s voice is barely perceptible. I don’t care; she knows how low her sister has to be to say those words.

They complete the drive in silence, Scully biting her nails--a habit which she has never possessed, and perhaps just acquired. The car idles as Missy pulls up to the curb of Mulder’s building.

“I can pick you up when you need it,” she tells her sister as she pulls herself out of the car. “I’ll bring Em.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Scully says, closing the passenger door and edging toward the building. Missy hears a thanks float toward the car, then her sister is gone like a teenage girl embarrassed by her mother.

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

They sit on Mulder’s couch, muted. Words cannot fathom the injustice of this situation, nor can they suffice as empathy. Their hands are clasped together, a throughline of strength between them. This is what they need now; the most primitive language of all.

Scully’s watery eyes brush Mulder’s face. His own eyes, more pained than usual, look into hers. Without a word, she drapes an arm around her partner’s shoulders and scoots into his lap. He is surprised but not distressed. What else is left for them, now?

She is tiny, so tiny. And she is his.

Their eyes meet once again, speaking in tongues. Scully nods, and then Mulder does too. This is it. This is it.

Permission granted at last, Scully’s lips travel to her partner’s jawline. The first time her lips have touched his body, and this is where they go. She is a constant box of wonders, a fortune he can never predict. Her lips are much like he has fantasized they would be: wondrously soft and silky, stroking him like they have always meant to be there. Yet he couldn’t have imagined the urgency with which they burrow into his skin. As if she’s making a mental map of his bone structure. He never expected that she would want him this much.

His hands find her hips and grip the cotton of her shirt between his fingers. It is enough to tear her away from his flesh. Mission accomplished. His breath travels past her ear, hitting her neck. It is shallow and warm as he breathes her name. Her real name, the one her family calls her. She breathes his own back to him, like a bird responding to a mating call.

She feels his lips on her neck, wet and aching. It feels like God. This is the most blasphemous thought she has ever had. She throws her head back, exposing the whole of her skin to him. What is holiness, if not this moment?

He showers her in tattoo kisses, and she lets him, she lets him, she lets him. This is not just what she wants, but what she needs. No one will save her now, she knows this. So she has decided not to be saved.

Her shirt ripples as he clutches it. “May I?” He is breathy, awe-struck.

“Only if I can do the same.” Always about equality, his Scully is. He lifts his arms, lets her strip him first. He is fraught with the temptation to feel insecure, inadequate, but this is not about him--this is all for her. There is no time to dwell on this anyway. Scully takes in the sight, then puts her own arms up with a hint of impatience. He pulls her shirt over her head, and goosebumps adorn her as the air hits her bare stomach.

It is unimaginable, the significance of this moment. All Mulder can do is keep going, lest the emotion hit him and he find himself blubbering all over her. His hands travel her body...it is slender and white, but so solid, so strong. Cartilage forming ligaments forming joints connecting bones. And her skin, stretching over her hips and framing it all. The masterpiece that is Dana Katherine Scully.

He fears for the day she will cave in on herself. Already, one of his hands covers her whole rib cage. Right now he can cradle her body comfortably against his own, but the day will come when a single cautious touch will crush her, and his heart along with it. He wants her as she is now forever.

Seeing that he wants to pamper her, Scully lets herself be pampered. He showers the taut length of her collar bone in kisses. The vibration resonates throughout her bone structure, and already she can feel him in places she’s only fantasized about having him. He is going to heal me, she thinks. If anyone could heal her in any way, it would be him doing this.

She shows her gratitude by kneading circles into his soft tissues, so tense from all their days chasing ghosts. The sinew relaxes beneath the pads of her fingers, and she feels like she has solved the most important X-File of all.

Mulder traces his way along her spine. He has never touched her here, nor ever even fantasized about it, and there is an erotic tension--like a needle about to drop on a record--that neither one of them could have seen coming. Inevitably, his hands converge at the hooks of her bra. She arches her back in approval. He slides the hooks away from each other, and both of them feel the release. She shimmies off the garment before he can pull it out of the way. No secrets, not anymore.

Mulder didn’t expect to cry and is aware that most women wouldn’t take that as a positive sign, but seeing her, like this, knowing what they both know, tears feel like the least he could offer up. She is...beautiful is too weak a word to describe it. He needs to invent a new word to capture the essence of his emotions, the reverence with which he views her. He is not a religious man, but he will worship her until the end of time.

He has known this, intuitively, for a while, and now he’s putting it into practice. He wants to do everything he can for her, give her everything she wants. Yet he doesn’t know how to, and this scares him. She has always slipped through his fingers, always turned on a dime just when he thought he figured her out. Tonight is no exception. How was he to know that he’d be on his couch with a half-naked Scully in his lap?

He fears the tears will offend her, so he nuzzles into her heartspace, his nose pressed against the heart that is--by the grace of that God she worships--still beating. His lips meet the plush of her left breast.

Where does he go from here? The dusty routine he’s used with other women--the few who have given themselves to him or let him hand himself over--is not worthy enough for Scully. He could never touch Scully in the ways he’s touched the women before because she is not like the women before. There is no mere giving or taking here, no detached exchange of commodities or pleasure for the sake of pleasure. This is survival. They are symbiotically keeping each other alive.

A drop of water hits Scully’s skin, slides down the curvature of her breast. She shudders. A tear. That’s what it is, she realizes. Mulder is crying. It’s a baptism of unfortunate proportions.

She cups her hand against his chin, tilts it up so his bleary eyes meet hers. She rests her forehead against his. “Shh, shh, it’s okay.” She kisses each eye closed, his lids fluttering beneath her lips. “It’s okay.”

His breathing steadies. He is quite certain that it is not okay, that it never will be, but he listens to her, lets himself pretend.

Hands still on his chin, she careens their lips together. His mouth on hers; a godsend. They caress each other for a moment, then Scully opens wide, and Mulder does too. They are reflecting.

If Scully could compress herself, pushing every particle of air out of her lungs and into his, she would. As a sort of thank you, for everything. For what he has done, what is doing, what he will do...She will never have to live without him. She knows this now, and it makes this easier. But he will have to live without her, and so she must make sure he gets the memories he needs to carry on. This is how grief works, she’s acquainted with it. These moments, these feelings, these bated breaths and tender touches, will be his survival mechanism for awhile. Until the day when he can throw them off and go on without her ghost. It will happen one day, and she will be glad that he made it.

She feels him pressing against her stomach, which is certainly not where she wants him. “Fox…” Her hands hover above his belt. She unzips his fly first, her hand warm against him. He is dizzy with want as her fingers curl against his belt buckle, loosening it with confidence. In a sweeping gesture, she pushes his jeans off his hips, exposing him. The thrill she feels, seeing him big and bare in front of her, is a new kind of livelihood. She’s overcome with the desire to take him in her mouth--and that has never, never been her first instinct. She ducks down, but he stops her.

“Dana, no. You.”

She doesn’t need to hear it twice. She sucks in a breath, arches her back, and slides onto him. Slowly, gasping as they go.

“Am I hurting you?”

Scully shakes her head, lips parted. It has been nothing like this before...nothing so fulfilling. She crosses her ankles, binding them completely together at last.

Unity triumphs against the self, their union abolishing the world’s insistence on the solitude of the individual. This is what it’s about, isn’t it? Being joined, not only in spirit, but in body? Knowing that whatever horrors are to come, he will feel them as she does. Her dwindling will be his too, her losses an equally empty space within him.

She is teetering on the edge of something she can never come back from. She is not afraid.

She careens her fingernails into his back as the pressure builds. If it doesn’t come to a head, she’ll die right here, she thinks.

She barely registers the cathartic noises coming out of her, though they give Mulder great delight. He thought she would be quiet, and the fact that she’s not trying to hold anything in--after holding everything in for so goddamn long--is the most moving part of the experience.

And they want this to go on forever, but they want the release. Mulder swivels his hips into her, bringing them both closer to climax. Scully curls against him.

“I’m sorry,” she cries into his ear.

“What?” He nearly pulls out of her, fearing that she’s hurt.

“No, no--” She scrambles to stay with him. “This--” she pants “--is so good.” She lowers her lips onto his as confirmation, then speaks into his open mouth. “I’m just sorry to be the one to go.”

He frames her ribcage, thumbs arching toward her belly button. “Fuck, honey...don’t say that, don’t even think that…”

They won’t linger on the choice of pet name, the tenderness with which it settles over her, nor the absolute devastation of her words. There is simply no time.

Scully hides her face in his neck as the wave breaks over both of them. There is no world anymore, only the two of them on this couch. They have forsaken the physical realm, ascending to heaven in time with their heartbeats.

Mulder understands then what his reciprocal means when she says she needs proof to believe. Now that he’s been there and felt it, he knows that heaven exists, and holy shit, what does that mean for the life he has lived and the time he has left? What did it mean for Samantha?...What will it mean for Scully?

They collapse into each other, a melted mass of skin and bone. Two becoming one, becoming two again. Mulder strokes the back of his partner’s head, presses his lips to her temple. Her chest rises against him in jagged breaths.

“You are the only proof I’ll ever need that this life is worth it,” he murmurs. “Just you.”

Scully looks up at him, tears running down her cheeks. He kisses them away and wraps his arms around her. “I don’t know if you got the memo, but I love you, Dana Scully.”

She rests her cheek against his. “I love you too, F--Mulder.”

Mulder chuckles, his amusement shaking both of them. Scully closes her eyes and snuggles into him. He puts his hand over her heart, feels it beating steadily into his palm, and longs for it to stay like that forever.

#i have been working on that last scene since uhhh...october #i apologize for any emotional distress this and the following chapters will cause lmao #probably only two or three chapters left!!!#thank you for reading <3 #only the light fic #missy and scully fic #txf #txf fic #the x-files #fox mulder #dana scully #melissa scully #mine

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pallasperilous · 4 years

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Occursus

Castiel/Dean Winchester Gen/Teen, 4341 words 15x20 coda AO3 version “The natural environment of the human soul is a human body,” Cas says. “Humans have yet to meet a foreign substrate that they don’t immediately attempt to colonize. My form in Hell was not an exception.”

Then he shuts his mouth very deliberately and gestures back to Dean like his mic is going live in three, two. “Or the bit where my soul gave you some kind of STD?” Dean finishes. “It was a poor analogy. I apologize.” “So what’s a better one?” Castiel drums his fingers for a second. “It’s more like…the way a parasitic jewel wasp injects a cockroach with venom, and transforms it into a willing host for wasp larvae.” “Holy shit are you ever bad at this,” Dean says, with that signature brand of fond horror he special-orders just for Castiel, Angel of the Gourd.

It’s half past midnight by the time Dean gets another run at Cas.

Granted, what the fuck does half past midnight even mean here, where time is as free as tap water? Why does anybody even bother? For all it matters, Dean could set his watch to eleventy minutes past twenty o’ nope and still never miss last call.

Then again, somebody felt it necessary to invent the idea of Tuesday in the first place, and Dean’s not gonna volunteer himself for the task of replacing it with something better. What’s important is that he’s survived (or rather, he hasn’t survived) a battery of poignant moments and tearful reunions. He and Sam hugged out burdens registering in the triple digits. They even had a little fight, pretty much for the fun of it, while Ellen fucking Harvelle watched them over the bar with her eyes shining. She still charged them, though.

Right at the beginning of the party Dean and Castiel had their eyes-across-the-room thing, followed by the same magnetic, exhausted embrace they’ve shared on just about every plane of reality now. Dean supposes he could ask Cas for a nickel tour of the Empty just so they could hit for the cycle, but he’d really rather not. Sam let them eke out a few gruff, tear-choked monosyllables before diving in, sweeping Cas up in a bear hug and laughing like a fucking kid. Dean doesn’t push it, because it’s been longer for Sam, after all. Or something.

And now it’s quiet, just the jukebox and the clink of glasses back in the kitchen, a few folks murmuring in booths. It might be dark outside, it might not; it’s waiting on Dean’s opinion before it commits to anything. And so is Cas, who is standing in the warm glow of the jukebox, hands in his pockets.

Dean walks up, leans against it, bottle still dangling from one hand.

“C’mon, sunshine. I’ll show you yours, you show me mine.”

Cas looks up and into Dean’s eyes with the wary, elegant patience of a deer. “What is it that you would be showing me, Dean?”

Dean gives him a long, languid blink and bites his lip, and Castiel lags for half a second before rolling his own eyes. “I see death hasn’t refined your sense of humor.”

“Nope. Guess the billionth time aint the charm.”

Cas remains stonefaced, which means a corresponding you dumbass blush starts crawling up the sides of Dean’s neck. The jukebox switches records like it’s making a suggestion.

“I’m gonna sit down outside,” Dean says. “C’mon and sit down with me. There’s a patio somewhere, right? Ellen was always talking about adding one out back. No way she hasn’t bossed somebody into buildin’ it.”

“There’s a patio,” Cas says, taking his hands out of his pockets.

Heaven’s patio is pretty nice; twenty square feet, some scattered picnic tables, fences covered in ivy and string lights. It still smells like fresh pine boards. There’s even a fire pit, which seems kinda bougie for the Roadhouse, but hell with it, it’s warm and pretty, and since when did pretentious people get to lay claim to “a hole with a fire in it”? There’s no moon overhead, and so the Milky Way is giving them the full monty — the runnelled spine of it, the ribcage packed with galaxies.

“Are they all alive?” Dean asks. The warmth from inside leaks out of his collar, wisps away.

“Who?”

Dean points up. “The stars. They always make a big deal about how most of the stars you can see from Earth have been dead for millions of years by the time we get the light from ‘em. That still true here? Or is everything on auto-renewal?”

“That’s a very complicated question,” Cas says, not looking up, only at Dean. He does that a lot, Dean knows, but it turns out to mean something different than what Dean had always assumed, which was ironically pretty similar to what it actually meant, but was reassuringly unactionable and therefore unfuckupable.

“I’m a very complicated guy,” Dean says.

Castiel smiles at that. “I don’t actually know the answer,” he admits. “And it would take an extremely long time to investigate. There are some other things I’d rather do first.”

“What, you can’t just call the kid for directory assistance?”

Castiel lets a good-humored sigh. “Like many young people these days, Jack prefers to avoid the phone.”

This is a solid riff, and Dean respects it. He picks the table closest to the fire and takes a bench and Cas sits next to him, instead of opposite. Dean thought he managed to break him of this habit a few years ago, but here all things are made whole again.

“So what,” Cas says, without a single molecule of playfulness or seduction, “is it that you want us to show each other?”

“Yeah, I was…it was a dumb joke. But I mean it, just not in a ‘playing doctor’ way.”

Castiel frowns, tightens his lips; the firelight throws a fluttering shadow across his face.

“I mean…Christ.” Dean takes a medicinal slug of his dwindling beer. “I don’t really look like this anymore either, right?” And he gestures at his usual shitshow personal presentation, which death has also noticeably failed to refine.

Castiel frowns, smoothes his hand across the surface of the table. “This is a corporeal world, Dean. It operates on a different set of rules, but your body here is no more of an illusion than it was on earth.”

“Seriously?” Dean ponders a second, squints through the dim light at his fingernails, at the high-resolution grime contained therein. “Jesus, that sounds like a lot of work. At least compared to Holodeck Heaven.”

“It is. But we didn’t build this place to be a...a…doorprize. It’s a real world,” Castiel enthuses, looming forward. “It’s the one that should have been created for all of you in the first place.” He pauses, glances down. “For all of us.”

Dean shrugs. “Okay, so no holograms. I’ll keep all that in mind next time Charlie tries to convince me to go skydiving.”

Castiel snorts, but not in pure aggravation, so Dean feels like he’s finally got a point on the board. “What I’m sayin’ is…physical or not, this place has different rules, right? So could I look at you without my eyeballs exploding? The…you know, the angel parts of you. Not just your vessel,” and Dean fwippies his hand at Cas to indicate that true beauty is contained within and Dean is completely indifferent to the fact this dork-ass alien managed to bodysnatch a guy who’s never dipped below an 8.5.

“It isn’t a vessel anymore. We can create our own bodies, now.”

“Peachy,” Dean clips, because that shit is a little late coming off the line.

Castiel sighs. “You could see me in that form without coming to harm. But you should know that I don’t consider it any more a reflection who I am than this form. Not anymore.”

Dean rolls the bottle towards him, nudges a knuckle. “You’re a real boy now, huh?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Castiel says, and smiles a smile so small that Dean would need a microscope to figure out if it’s pleased or pained.

So Dean thwacks the bottle down on the totally-real table and claps his totally-real hands. “Well then let’s go. Hit me with that angel weirdness. If we’re gonna do this, I gotta taste all thirty-one flavors.”

Castiel smiles a little more convincingly, but it still doesn’t reach his eyes. “There are really only the two,” he says, and holds his palms out to the warmth of the fire.

“Great, then we’ll be done in time to catch Letterman. Then if you’re good maybe you can help me shimmy out of this thing.”

Cas cocks his head. “Out of which thing?”

“This super real heavenly meat-suit, dude. It’s not fair if only one of us gets naked. Peep show has to go both ways. I see your angel-face, you see my soul.”

Cas looks stricken, like Dean is asking to suck on his toes next to a playground. “I mean, unless that’d fuck you up,” Dean adds.

“No,” Castiel replies, a little absently. “It wouldn’t fuck me up. But it…wouldn’t really accomplish anything, either.”

“What, no soul kink? That’s bullshit and you know it. You love this crap.”

Castiel replies, “Your soul is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” with the easy confidence of a regular latte order. With the same uncanny, 2 Blessed 2 B Stressed face he had when Dean plowed Ruby’s knife hilt-deep into Jimmy Novak’s sternum, that he had when the Empty collapsed him like a carcass in an acid bath.

That face shuts Dean right the fuck up, because it sends him skipping backwards into that fucking basement, where his phone is buzzing and the gritty concrete chill of the floor is seeping through his jeans into the useless meat of his legs and leeching into the hot, wet channels of his piece of shit heart.

Turns out you can work up a good little panic attack in heaven, which seems like a significant oversight.

From a million miles away he feels Cas’s warm, dry palm slide over the back of his hand –– there’s a ring there now that Dean lost down a motel sink drain ages ago, is nobody spotting continuity errors here?—then Cas’s hand tightens on his and it feels like a Xanax kicking in. (The good kind, direct from the hot nurse with the little paper cup, not the kind you get in a from a shady burnout at a truckstop, that’s been ground up with baking soda or benadryl and carefully remolded, as if you could possibly give that much of a shit when you’re freaking out bad enough to buy Xanax at a truckstop.)

Point being, he calms the fuck down.

Cas has good hands. They can do a lot of impressive shit, and they look nice doing it. They don’t look like –– they’ve never looked like –– they belong to somebody whose main job is destroying people, places, or things. They’re hands that how to play the cello, or make tables from reclaimed wood, or give soapy, encompassing handjobs in the shower on cold evenings.

“It’s been years, though,” Dean rasps, not looking up yet. “I was a kid when you got me out of Hell, Cas. I’ve done a lot of shit since then. Maybe souls get stretch marks.”

Castiel’s hand tightens on his, clamps it down on the table. “I’ve always been able to see it.”

“Okay,” Dean mumbles, but Cas keeps on going –

“The only time I couldn’t see any part of your soul was when I was without grace, and I promise you that was one of the greatest deprivations imaginable.”

Dean snorts, looks away, but his hand is still on lockdown. “Worse than going hungry, huh?”

“Much.”

“Hey, what about Sam? Or, hell, fucking Donatello. They both were both walking around minus their creamy filling, and you didn’t say boo.”

Cas shrugs. “I can’t see their souls under ordinary circumstances.”

“So what, mine’s just extra loud, or day-glo, or what?”

“It’s both of those things, but that isn’t why,” Cas answers, and the boy is downright wry.

Dean tugs his hand out, raps his knuckles against the wood. “Okay, so stop bein’ coy and tell me before I get a complex. And if you say it’s because of love or some shit, I’m bailing to Rowena’s.”

“You infected me,” Cas says.

“Uh,” says Dean.

The fire pops and a log shifts; Cas glances over at the kerfuffle, absently lifts his fingers to his chin like he’s looking for an old scar. “In Hell, when I retrieved you…I had to grip your raw soul. I was meant to wear a gauntlet, so I wouldn’t be burned.”

Dean snickers. “You’re telling me you were supposed to be wearing a soul condom. What happened, you get too excited and forget to suit up? It’s okay, I know I’m a lot to take in.”

Castiel purses his lips. “No, I was properly armored. But my arm was torn off in combat shortly before I reached you.”

“Ouch.”

“Ouch,” Cas agrees. “I didn’t have time to retrieve the arm or its protection from the pit, so I had to grow a new one very quickly.”

Dean really should’ve switched to whiskey before starting this. “What, you didn’t pack a spare?” He wheezes.

“Ordinarily, yes, I would have had the resources, but I was equipped very lightly for that mission. It was a raid, not a siege. You understand the difference.”

“Sure, yeah, you left your emergency arms in the trunk. So you just popped out a new one. No big.”

“It was a big. Your soul was close enough that it forced me to grow a human arm, instead of a much quicker and more powerful extensor.”

“Okay, uh,” Dean pinches at the bridge of his nose, “there’s a lot to unpack there.”

“What part of it confuses you?”

“I dunno, the bit where apparently angels are I guess heavenly octopuses,”

“The plural in the Greek is octopodes,” Cas interjects, not without pleasure.

Dean glowers. “Or the part where you can apparently swap in different drill bits,” Dean continues,

“Mm,” Cas notes, careful not to open his mouth,

“Or that I, like, accidentally bullied you into growing a person arm,” and Dean pauses for breath here, which Cas evidently takes as permission to dive in with more Planet Earth commentary.

“The natural environment of the human soul is a human body,” he says. “Humans have yet to meet a foreign substrate that they don’t immediately attempt to colonize. My form in Hell was not an exception.” Then he shuts his mouth very deliberately and gestures back to Dean like his mic is going live in three, two.

“Or the bit where my soul gave you some kind of STD?” Dean finishes.

“It was a poor analogy. I apologize.”

“So what’s a better one?”

Castiel drums his fingers for a second, listens to the fire pop in its little cage. “It’s more like…the way a parasitic jewel wasp injects a cockroach with venom, and transforms it into a willing host for wasp larvae.”

“Holy shit are you ever bad at this,” Dean says, with that signature brand of fond horror he special-orders just for Castiel, Angel of the Gourd.

“What I’m trying to avoid saying,” Castiel sighs, “is that you rubbed off on me.”

Dean nods. “Yeah. That’s fair. I wouldn’t be dumb enough to say that around me, either.” He lays a couple little pats on Cas’s hand. “Lookit you, though, seeing around that corner. I’m proud of you, man. That would’ve totally flipped your breaker back in the day.”

“Just one of the many ways you have reshaped me, Dean,” Cas says, with warm sarcasm.

“Alright, so you rawdogged me, I whammied you. Chocolate, peanut butter, peanut butter, chocolate.”

Cas’s forehead wrinkles in skepticism. “I still prefer the cockroach. But some part of your soul injected itself into one of my more exposed frequencies. Under different circumstances, I would’ve stopped and excised the affected area before it spread, but. I was being pursued, and the mission had taken much longer than any of us anticipated.”

“Us? Thought it was just you down there.”

Cas looks vaguely offended, straightens and folds his arms like he just remembered he’s giving a deposition. “No, of course not. Michael assigned sixty-six angels in eleven groups of six, each escorted to the field by a seraph. We struck simultaneously at six different areas in perdition. From there we dispersed to individual targets –– to cause as much chaos as possible in order to help obscure the object of our mission, and to increase the odds that one of us would actually find you.”

“And you were the lucky winner.” Dean pushes down a touch of sick shame at the thought of it — he’d been coiled up like a snake around somebody else’s torment, anesthetized by it. It was one of the random rags of infernal time where his own pain decreased in proportion to how much he dealt out, and that was the closest thing Hell had to a Friday night.

“I was,” Castiel nods. “I took some liberties with my assignment,” he adds, squinting. “I flattered myself that I shared a special affinity with The Righteous Man.”

“That guy always sounded like kind of a cunt to me,” Dean notes. “You know, not withstanding the fact that I’m him.”

Castiel shrugs. “I found you, and I did what was necessary to save you, and my siblings did what was necessary to save me.” A little falter enters his voice. “Only twelve of us returned from that mission.” Cas looks up, out, away. A dove coos somewhere nearby of the Roadhouse; did it have a run-in with the windshield of an eighteen wheeler one day and show up here, Dean wonders, or does heaven make its own birds from scratch? That’s gotta be a softball compared to whether Betelgeuse is still open for business.

Castiel waits until the bird shuts up, then says, “Of those twelve surviving angels, I personally murdered nine, in everything that followed.”

After a moment Dean says “Yeah,” with practiced neutrality. He’s got some similar tallies, written in Sharpie on the back of his eyelids.

Cas sighs and his attention comes back down to the table. “By the time I received the authority to restore your soul to your body, the infection had spread almost past the point of containment. That’s why I resisted taking a vessel at first. I worried that occupying a human form would speed up the process.”

“Hey now. I thought you showed up naked because you thought I’d be one of those special people,” Dean quips, “Who can handle angel stuff without going all kibbles ’n bits.”

“That was only a partial truth.”

Dean tips the beer bottle in salute. “You’re a real special flavor of asshole, Cas.”

“So I’ve been told. I was right, though. When I took Jimmy as a vessel, I contracted — condensed — myself very severely. The infection had a much shorter distance to travel to reach all of my extremities, and a human form was the most hospitable environment possible.”

“You got a raging case of the Deans.”

Cas’s head kicks back in a laugh that kinda surprises them both. “Yes,” he says, grinning. “I did. I was very displeased, and very concerned I’d be found out and judged unfit for duty. And I very much was. Unfit, that is. Though I was not found out.”

“C’mon, never? You went rogue on the company.”

“Uriel suspected. Naomi certainly detected it later, as did Metatron. But in the moment, no. The Host’s attention was focused on the Apocalypse ahead, not on debriefing a mission that was considered a success. After the Cage was closed, I had too much influence to come under that level of scrutiny.”

“Hmh.” Dean realizes he’s been systematically picking down the label on the beer bottle, so he sets it on the ground before he gets sticky little shreds everywhere. “So I gotta ask. My little souvenir, the handprint. That’s where you grabbed me, with your lil…Mister Potato Head human arm?”

“It is.”

“If I’m the one who infected you, how come I’m the one who got burned?”

“My hand didn’t burn you.”

“Well, it ain’t fingerpaint.”

“Your own soul burned it, as it flowed out of your flesh and into mine. It burned until the moment when I finally released you from my grip. My hand healed itself; your arm did not.” Castiel gives a thin scoff. “I hadn’t planned to leave you interred.”

“Oh, no? Well that’s nice to hear, you know, a decade after the fact. I still have nightmares about that shit.”

Castiel winces. “It’s no excuse, but I was in a great deal of…the equivalent of pain. It took an immense effort to break off the inflow of your soul, and when I did manage it, I was thrown quite a ways by the recoil. By the time I recovered enough to return, you were already looting a gas station,” He finishes, dryly.

“Yeah, well, Dad didn’t think much of leisure as a virtue. Also I was thirsty, because I’d just crawled out of my own grave.”

“And I was distracted, because I’d just fought my way out of the inferno while being digested by a demented human soul.”

“You wanna call it even?”

Cas lifts his brows. “If you don’t mind.”

There is a long, dark breath, during which their little smiles fade.

“So, all that,” Dean says, because he’s a fucking coward.

“All that,” says Cas, because he isn’t.

Dean clears his throat. “That means you can see my soul-stuff 24/7, huh?”

Castiel slides one leg up onto the bench, shifts to sit astride it, like he’s maybe about to deliver an after-school PSA on the Real Deal About Drugs. “I can always see myself, and extensions of my self. And since your soul made itself into an integral part of me…I can see you.”

“I take it that’s not exactly in the manual.”

“No. I didn’t entirely understand it at first — for a long time, I convinced myself it was because you were designed to be a celestial vessel, and that I had been destined to save you from Hell.”

That thin, acidic feelings starts to rise up in Dean’s chest again. “Do you…” A dry swallow reflex grabs his throat. “Hm. Fuck.”

“What?” Cas asks, scooting forward. An angel. Scooting. What a world. “You can ask me anything, Dean. I hope we’re both past being offended.”

“Have you ever thought that. This whole deal. Our…thing.” Dean lets out a breath. “The way you feel about me. The way I feel about you.”

“Do I worry that its only basis is our shared material?”

Dean licks his lips, works a jaw muscle, forces out a nod.

Cas frowns, sets one elbow up against the table, then lets his head tip to the side. “Why do you love Sam?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I get it, he’s my brother. We got shared material, too. But we’re not talking genetics.”

“Genes were the initial basis of your love for Sam. But you share half as much material with Adam. Do you love him fifty percent as much as you do Sam?”

“One, love doesn’t work that way and you know it, and two, fucking of course not. I barely know the guy, and what I’ve seen didn’t exactly blow me away.” Not that the poor dumb kid ever really had a chance. “Sam’s Sam, he’s earned it a million times over just by bein’ him.”

“Then you understand.”

“But Cas, man…I…” Dean laughs, which is an abbreviated form of screaming, “I treated you like shit.”

Cas nods. “You did.”

“Okay, the rules say you’re not supposed to agree with me.”

“But the balance remains in your favor. Dean, are you genuinely afraid that you — care for me…” and Dean can hear the FCC live-bleep in that one, like does his total cowardice have a special color Cas can see with his soul-o-vision? “Only out of some compulsion?”

“No,” Dean says, to the great surprise of his frontal cortex, which was busy kicking the shit out of itself. “No,” he says again, just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, that that answer actually came out of him and entered the living air between them.

Then the wave is rolling towards him and he enters that slim moment of body-physics where you either take a lungful and commit to diving under the break, or you kick out against the undertow, arch your back to meet the blow, and let yourself be flown all the way up to the waiting shore––

“No,” Dean says, “I love you.” And he chokes up a little, first at the release of saying it, then at how much of exactly jack-shit it changes anything so what was he even scared of, and then at the look on Cas’s face: how he’s frozen. Like that dog from that video, the one that loved tennis balls so goddamn much that his owner bought him a thousand fucking tennis balls and dumps them out all at once and the dog absolutely stalls the fuck out, just seconds on end of underspecced dog-brain hang time before he finally snaps back to reality and loses his absolute shit scrabbling all over the porch.

Castiel comes back online with a little choking noise of his own, and a kind of awkward scrabble for Dean’s hand.

“I have for a long time,” Dean continues, because apparently he’s continuing, “I’ve loved you for fucking ages, Cas. In people years, anyway, I’m sure that mean’s fuckall to somebody who’s a zillion––”

“I don’t,” Cas says thickly, “really give a damn about the age difference, Dean,” and cracks into a chuckle.

“So how come you never knew it?” Dean asks, feeling freedom turn into a hunger or something like vertigo. “If you can see my soul, how could you not know?”

Cas shrugs, a bit helplessly.

“Seriously,” Dean laughs, “how did I manage to hide that shit so well? Sammy found every nudie mag I ever shoplifted.”

Cas shakes his head. “You’ve never actually been able to hide anything from me.”

Dean scoffs. “C’mon, man. I snowed you plenty, or else we woulda had this conversation dirtside a long time ago.”

“Whatever I missed, Dean…it wasn’t because you succeeded at hiding it,” Castiel says, softly. He takes a slow, shaky breath, and meets Dean’s eyes with a smile. He lifts a hand to Dean’s face, bone and flesh on flesh and bone. “I just loved you enough to look away.”

It’s a long time before they go back inside. By any measure. {AO3}

#spn fanfiction #spn 15x20 #destiel #deancas #dean winchester #castiel #bless you all for your sexy and angsty coda fics please enjoy this massive wodge of angel lore wankery dating back 11 seasons

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kingkatsuki · 8 months

Text

You can’t tell me Bakugou wouldn’t threaten a child to protect his daughter, okay? Girl dad Bakugou loves his little girl.

Just imagine Bakugou turning up to his daughters school one afternoon to pick her up after he finds out that she’s being bullied. It’s been happening for a few weeks now, and he feels guilty that he had to find out from you. He hasn’t been home as much as he’d like to be, long hours and unsolved cases taking their toll on his home life as he takes the afternoon off especially today. Leaving his sidekicks in charge of his agency as he waits at the school gates, looking out for his little girl. And when he sees her he can feel his heart begin to melt. The downtrodden look on her face immediately switches into a smile as she catches sight of him. He crouches down as he sees her little relieved face running towards him with arms wide for a cuddle, scooping her up as he presses a soft kiss to her cheek and asks how her day was. But crimson eyes are already scanning the school grounds behind her as he asks the important question.

“Which kid is it, sweetheart?”

And with that he’s marching across the playground, making a beeline to that poor kid that’s messing around with his friends before he goes home— and Bakugou beckons him over with a whistle and the point of a finger. Crouching down again so he’s eye level as he tells the kid that bullies end up in Tartarus and if he ever even so much as looks at you in the wrong way again he knows Dynamight and he’ll get him to turn up to take him there himself.

“Understand, kid?”

And the poor kid is shaking as he nods his head, wide eyes as he watches Bakugou’s retreating back as he walks towards his daughter to take her hand. Of course, he stops for ice cream on the way home so when they come in he greets you at the door with bright blue lips and an extra cup of ice cream in your favourite flavour for you.

“Daddy got bubblegum like me, look!” Your daughter sticks out her tongue as Bakugou leans over to plant a sloppy, wet kiss on your lips.

“I can tell,” You grin, tasting it on your tongue as you lick your lips clean, taking your ice cream from him, “But now it’s gonna ruin your appetite for dinner, baby.”

“It’s fine,” Bakugou grins, wrapping his arms around you as you ate a spoonful of ice cream. Watching your daughter, now evidentially more at ease, take a seat in front of the television to watch her favourite anime, “I dealt with her little problem today.”

“The kid that was bullying her?” You turned to face him, pulling the spoon from between your lips in surprise, “You spoke to his parents? The school said they were going to do that—”

“I sorted it.” Bakugou cut you off, puffing his chest out with pride as he presses another soft kiss to your lips before stealing a bite of your ice cream, “It won’t be happenin’ again.”

“You threatened a CHILD?” You shouted across the room to Bakugou who was now sprawled out on the couch.

“What?” He gave you an uncharacteristically sheepish look that told you he knew exactly what you were talking about.

“The school just called and said the child that was bullying our daughter is terrified of going to school now in case Dynamight finds him.”

And Bakugou couldn’t stop his lips from curling into a smug grin at that, giving you a shrug as you held your hand to your forehead in shock.

“Maybe Dynamight should show up to really make it clear.”

“Katsuki, don’t you dare.”

#Bakugou x reader #soft bakugou

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alittlebitmaybe · 4 years

Text

making concessions

so i, uh, maybe wrote the nichest, dumbest cracky au ficlet in the world. i blame @yoursummerfrost who is possibly the sole audience for this. i hope you’re happy.

anyway, this is what i described in this post, aka “Geralt and Jaskier meet at a Magic: the Gathering tournament that Jaskier has no business being at but somehow he beats Geralt and then they try to have sex in the bathroom”

featuring a complete disregard for like, legal cards or real decks or any actual knowledge of MTG tournaments beyond living with someone who plays it a lot

rated M for like frottage and marking and stuff

“Fresh meat,” Yen mutters, perched against one of the folding tables, knees spread. She punctuates it with a snap of her bubble gum.

Geralt folds his arms across his chest, eyebrow raised. “This is a low-tier Magic tournament, Yen, not a grade school playground.”

“Doesn’t make him not fresh meat. He’s gonna last five minutes, tops. Someone is gonna OTK that poor bastard.”

“We’ve all got to start somewhere.”

“That kid, Geralt,” she says, “is starting nowhere.”

The man Yen calls that kid does look more like he should be at Coachella than at a Magic: the Gathering tournament—bandana, loose tank top, cuffed jean shorts, and all—but, Geralt thinks, clearing his throat, he’s definitely no kid, not with the definition in his arms and the chest hair and the light scruff along his jaw. He is, though, going around and asking people to show him their decks, which he takes from them and riffles through clumsily while oohing and ahhing.

“Good for me, at least,” Geralt adds. “One less actual competitor to knock out.”

Yen punches him lightly in the shoulder. “Sure, if you can keep it in your pants. You just went all googly-eyed. Those baby blues suck you in already?”

He drags his gaze back to her. “He’s alright. If he touches my cards like that I’ll kill him. They’re worth more than his life.”

“I know, dear. I know. Well, gird yourself, because if you both win your first matches you’re against each other.”

Geralt smiles. “No problem. I’ve been playtesting against every meta deck for weeks. My win ratios are favorable against almost anything. This whole thing is mine.”

“Nerd,” says Yen.

Geralt tugs at the hem of her vest, and she kicks out at him with her boot heel. “You’re literally a judge here. You’re certified.”

“Exactly. I’m in a position of power, but you’re just here to show off. Nerd.”

“Keep it up and I won’t share the prize.”

“Half the prize money would barely buy me dinner at Applebee’s, but thanks anyway, darling. You can keep it, I think I’ll manage.”

And well, that’s fair, actually.

“It’s not about the money,” Geralt protests.

Yen snorts. “Obviously, or no one would be here. We all just bow to the whims of MTG. And thank them. And hand over our credit cards.”

Coachella man has dropped someone’s deck all over the floor and is apologetically gathering the cards back into a haphazard pile. The spectacle has drawn stares.

“Who’s the fool, really?” Yen asks. “Him, or us?”

“Hm,” Geralt replies.

“Geralt,” says Geralt. “Bant ramp.”

“Jaskier,” says Coachella man, smiling brightly and taking the proffered hand as he settles himself across the table. “Was that last bit English?”

“It’s…my deck,” Geralt explains dubiously. “Bant ramp? Green, white, blue?”

Jaskier pulls an impressed face. “They’ve got names for things like that? You really know your stuff, Geralt.”

“Uh,” says Geralt, nonplussed. “Yeah, thanks. What are you playing, then?”

“Oh, I’ve got this great deck! It’s got all the colors because I couldn’t pick just a few, and all the cards have such pretty art, you know? I had to put in the best ones. A few of ‘em are even shiny. She’s treated me well so far, this deck. I love her.”

Geralt scans down the list of players on his tourney pamphlet. Next to Jaskier’s name it says only Five color aggro???

Geralt huffs out through his nose. That is nonsensical, and—most importantly—not something he ever playtested against. But no matter what is in that deck, Geralt’s got this in the bag. There’s no way this Jaskier guy has the land base needed to support five colors. Especially if he chose his cards, apparently, based on the art.

Jaskier begins slowly pile shuffling his deck of utterly unsleeved cards. Not even inner sleeves, much less double sleeves. Geralt’s blood pressure ticks up.

“So, uh,” he begins, “you’re new to this, huh? What got you into Magic?”

“Ah, my friend Essi plays here and there, she mentioned this and it seemed like it’d be a lark. New experience and such. And hey”—Jaskier looks up and grins—“maybe I’ll win!”

Geralt thinks about the hours and weeks and years he’s spent studying cards and losing games and analyzing pro matches. “Good luck,” he says.

“Thank you, you’re sweet.”

Jaskier continues placing each card meticulously on its own stack. Geralt shuffles his own deck again and again as he waits.

“Do you want me to, uh.”

Jaskier looks up and says, “Oh, would you? That would be so helpful. I’ve never quite got the hang of the—,” he makes a riffle shuffle gesture, “—whole shuffling thing.”

He loses the coin toss, which, he realizes a few turns later, is not an auspicious beginning. But even with Jaskier on the play and him on the draw, certainly it won’t make that much of a difference. Not when Jaskier has to squint at his hand like he’s reading all the card texts for the first time ever. At one point he even goes “Oh, that’s an interesting one,” as if surprised. It cannot make that much of a difference to go second.

And it doesn’t. Because he can’t draw shit to save his life.

While Geralt draws white mana after white mana, Jaskier throws down creature after creature, ignoring effects and the stack entirely in favor of big numbers and building a “board aesthetic.” Whatever the fuck that means. He drops a land on every turn and his mana costs curve out perfectly, despite the stretch over five fucking colors. It’s nothing short of miraculous.

Finally, Geralt is staring down a board of attackers against the lone creature he’d managed to play, and Jaskier says “Ooh, I’ve got enough of the land thingies to play this fella!” and drops—of all fucking things—a Craterhoof Behemoth. Like Geralt isn’t already nearly dead on board.

Geralt eyes the board wipe in his hand that—for fuck’s sake—requires blue.

A single blue mana needed, and a stack of Plains in front of him a mile high.

“It resolves,” he grumbles.

“Woooooo,” says Jaskier. “I mean, that’s good, right?”

“Yes,” says Geralt. “For you.”

He’s got one more draw step to try to dig for an Island. One fucking Island, a fetch land, a mana-producing artifact, anything. He’s spent way too much money on his mana fixing for this to happen.

On his draw, he takes into hand a worthless green creature.

“Fuck!” He scrubs a hand over his face, drops his hand onto the table. “That’s the game. Good one.”

Jaskier looks confused. “What do you mean? You mean I win? But I didn’t get to, you know.” He mimes pushing his attackers across the table like an advancing army. “Kill you.”

“I’m dead on board and have nothing.”

“But I wanted to attack with my big fella!”

Geralt sighs and faintly hears Yen laughing her ass off down the table. And they play out Jaskier’s turn. In which Geralt immediately dies.

As Jaskier celebrates and gathers his cards, Geralt levels him with a tired stare. “Look, be straight with me. Is this a fucking hustle?”

Jaskier laughs brightly. “What, didn’t think I could play, eh?”

“You can’t,” Geralt says. “Obviously. Unless it’s a hustle.”

“No hustling here!” Jaskier then wiggles his eyebrows lasciviously. “Unless you’d like to hustle me later. If you catch my drift.”

Geralt does. “That is not a real come on.”

“Sure it is, since you know I’m coming on to you.”

“Let’s just play out the match,” Geralt says with finality.

He’s down one, but he just needs two wins. Two wins against a deck that will, eventually, be inconsistent and impractical. He shuffles his own deck—tested and massaged until its consistency holds up to real life statistics—four times, just to make sure.

Then Jaskier holds out his deck and Geralt begrudgingly shuffles that, too.

“You have nice hands,” Jaskier comments, following his fingers on the cards. “Big. Strong. Capable.”

“Shut up,” Geralt mumbles, and pretends to ignore it when Jaskier says, Yes, sir.

He loses the match on game two, and it’s his own damn fault, this time, because Jaskier drops an infinite combo and doesn’t even realize it until Geralt opens his dumb fucking mouth.

“There it is,” he groans, resigned, as Jaskier lays down the last combo piece. “Lucky draw.”

“Eh?”

“You comboed out?”

“Eh?” Jaskier says again, fingers still on the card like he’s thinking of taking it back, face utterly perplexed.

“You—holy fucking Christ.” Geralt throws his hands in the air. “You don’t even know you have that combo, do you.”

“I—do not, per se, know that, no.”

“That effect will untap your artifact, which lets you—oh, who cares. Fine. You win. Congrats.”

Jaskier’s expression brightens. “I win? Really? But I didn’t even attack!”

“You win. Really.”

Geralt wants a beer.

“Oh!” Jaskier is now beaming. He glances at his watch, a gold-trimmed gaudy thing. “Well, that was quick. We’ve got some time before the next round, if you wanna—uh—”

“Yeah,” sighs Geralt. Heat curls in his belly alongside the mingled anger (shame? embarrassment?) and disappointment. “Whatever.”

Might as well.

Geralt shoves Jaskier back against the bathroom door as he locks it, and Jaskier promptly wraps his legs around Geralt’s waist. Without a moment of hesitation Geralt leans in, biting at Jaskier’s lips, feeling arms circle his neck and hands weave themselves into his hair. Their bodies align perfectly and when Geralt thrusts forward, Jaskier gasps into his mouth.

“Yeah,” he breathes, “yeah, like that.”

A growl leaves Geralt in response, frustration with this stupid, clueless man bubbling up within him. Jaskier tastes like red Gatorade and smells like that body butter Yen keeps on her bathroom counter.

It’s less off-putting than it should be.

He keeps going like that, not because he was told to but because it’s infuriatingly good, Jaskier’s body warm and firm and pliant against his as he rolls his hips.

“Oh, God,” Jaskier groans on a thrust that results in a particularly good drag, which separates their mouths enough for Geralt to redirect his attention. With one hand he drags down the idiotic bandana tied around Jaskier’s neck and starts to suck harsh marks into salty skin. Jaskier keeps up a noisy litany of gasps and muffled, bitten-off encouragements. “Oh, that’s—good, fuck—your mouth—like it rough, don’t you…”

Geralt doesn’t particularly like it rough, actually, when he hasn’t been fucking hustled at his own game, but Jaskier still doesn’t seem to have caught on to the part where Geralt is sort of fucking furious about this whole situation.

Instead of explaining himself, he just bites down on Jaskier’s pulse point and curls his hand around Jaskier’s waist where his shirt is rucked up, nails digging in.

“Yeah—” Jaskier says, and tugs at Geralt’s hair, and then there’s banging on the door.

“We can hear you, assholes. There’s a line out here and we gotta piss,” an angry voice calls from the other side.

“Use the ladies’!” Jaskier yells hoarsely. “There’s never anyone in there. This one’s occupied.” Geralt moves against him again. “Oh, that’s—more.”

“No,” says the angry voice. “No more.” Another round of banging. “We’re calling property management. They’ve got a key.”

“Shit,” Geralt says, dropping Jaskier, who makes an indignant noise. He unlocks and opens the door.

There is, in fact, a small crowd around the men’s room, headed by a red-faced man half a foot shorter than Geralt.

“Can’t you mind your own business?” Geralt says.

“Can’t you keep it in your pants?” the man sneers back.

“Technically,” Jaskier pipes up, straightening his bandana and swiping at his hair, “nothing ever came out of any pants.”

“Jaskier,” says Geralt, “don’t help.”

An official-looking group of people rounds the corner, accompanied by Yen, who spots Geralt and nearly falls to the floor in a mirthful fit. He rolls his eyes.

The officials don’t like that at all.

A few months later, Jaskier kneels on the other side of Geralt’s coffee table, considering his hand. He licks his lip and taps a few lands to place an enchantment, which Geralt promptly counters.

“You and your fucking—control decks,” Jaskier sighs. “Let me play one some time.”

“Make your own,” says Geralt. “You can use my collection.”

“Ah, maybe I will, and then you won’t be able to play anything at all, ever, and how would you like that?”

“Do you have anything to get rid of my flyers?”

“Unfortunately, no, Geralt, I do not, or I would have played it by now.”

“Then you should probably concede.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” He picks up his cards, sleeved properly, and slides them over to Geralt’s side. “Shuffle please.”

Geralt shuffles them.

“Shame we can’t go to the tournament today,” says Jaskier wistfully. “Banned. What rot. We didn’t even get off that day. Rudely interrupted.”

“Yeah, well, someone had no business being there, anyway.”

“I still think I could have gone all the way. Beat you, didn’t I?”

“Haven’t since.”

“Only because you learned my tricks.”

“Jaskier, you don’t have tricks.”

“Exactly.” He smiles, and Geralt can’t help but smile back. When he places Jaskier’s deck back on the table, Jaskier’s hand rests on top of his. “I am, though, Geralt, absolutely thrilled that we met. Whatever the circumstance. Or consequence. If it needs saying.”

It doesn’t, but Geralt meets his eyes and says, “Yeah, me too.”

#LAKSDGLKDFJD #yes this is how i spent my day #my fic #geraskier #the witcher #the witcher fic #geraskier fic #i might post this on ao3 later idk #just for the hell of it #dear brain can i please work on the zombie au now #WHY is this 2200 words

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vnights · 4 years

Text

A ‘fun’ day out

———

Once again, depictions of children in harmful situations. Just a warning, folks !!

———

Two cars travel next to one another down a long, quiet road. In one, Johnathan and Michael sit in the back seat, William being up front. In the other, little Charlotte and Elizabeth, with Henry at the wheel instead. Both men landed their days off on the same day, so, they decided to spend it on their kids, who haven’t seen one another in a while. Just a nice little treat for everyone.. The parents included. They pulled into a small parking lot, each stepping out of their cars, the kids uniting in between their vehicles while waiting for both fathers to join them. Henry carried out two boxes of juice pouches, while William held a large container of cheese-puffs and a bag of mini bags of assorted chips.

“Wh- Will... Why so many puffs?..” Henry commented playfully, raising a brow.

“You didn’t specify!” The men held a small bicker, being interrupted by the children, urging everyone towards the playground.

The parents set up their little station at a nearby pair of benches under a shelter for shade. The boxes were open, the chips were handed, and those cheese-puffs were uncapped. The children made off like bandits, collecting their treats and running off to play. William and Henry stayed back for conversation, keeping a somewhat strict, somewhat loose eye on them.

Immediately, the games had begun. Competitions over who’s the ‘ruler’ of the play-tower, making and destroying sand-castles, learning how to slide on their tummies, pretending they’re flying through space on the swings.. This went on for hours upon hours, before normal kid activities became a bit too boring for the eldest Afton child. Johnathan began plotting, finding his brother minding his own business, crouched down while showing his golden-plushy a cool flower he found. A Grinch-like smile rose to the olders lips, Johnny sneaking over fiendishly.

“Ha ha!” He shouted, snatching the bear up unexpectedly. Michael gasped and stood up, reaching for it. “Don’t try me, baby! Freddy’s at my mercy, now!”

“He’s Fredbear, give him back-!” Mike attempted again and again to grab it back, being hopelessly denied via height comparison. Once Johnathan looked over and saw both the girls coming over, he knew this joke was about to reach a point of no-fun. With a snicker, he tossed the bear twice in his hand, followed by him absolutely punting the stuffie into the nearby trees. “Wh-!! No!..” Michael whined, beginning to chase after his beloved bear as his brother laughed hysterically.

Running down the very slight hill and getting a considerable distance away from everyone else, Mike found his poor plush lodged in a bush. He quickly raced over and pulled him out, dusting the crumpled leaves off him and hugging him tightly after, something new and strange catching his ear. Something is.. Roaring. He raised his toes in an attempt to spot the strange noise, his eyes widening as water flowed in the distance. He raised his stuffie in the air and stepped into the plants, letting his bear be his eyes.

“What is it?... ..What’s a torrent?..” Michael was cut off, hearing the others come to join him. He got out of the bush and pointed, excitedly bouncing.

“What is it, Mikey? What’d you find?” Charlie asked as they jogged over, all the kids surrounding each other.

“Water! There’s a lotta water over there..” Mike moved aside, letting the others see, and fight for the best view.

“Whooaaa, it’s like a bridge! Look at the rocks!” Johnny shouted in excitement, pointing to rocks stationed in the waves, set up like stepping stones. He moved in, crossing the woodlands to get a closer look. Being the oldest, of course he was followed, the smaller children wanting to get close, too.

As they got to the flowing water, Johnathan took off his shoes and socks, looking 100% ready to jump in. Mike was anxious.. He thought it was a bad idea to even mess with this. As for the girls, they were entirely on Johnny’s side, their excitement building to cross this natural pathway. The moment his older brother jumped on the first stone, Michael gasped loudly and turned away, burying his face into his plushie, leading to Elizabeth to tease him over being a scaredy-cat. She then took her opportunity to play, skipping over once Johnny was finished, flawlessly reaching the other side.

“It’s okay, Mikey. I can go next if you’re scared..” Charlotte gave him a smile, moving to hop across. Like the two before her, she effortlessly bounced across the rocks, until the middle section. She slipped, falling over and slamming into the step below her, the fast-flow dragging her into the water, leaving no time to process the bruising pain. Eliza screamed loudly as Johnny gasped, unsure of what to do or how to help. Michael, however, knew exactly what to do, even if his siblings didn’t agree. He took his Fredbear and darted away, racing quickly back to the playground, and eventually to the parents.

William and Henry, in their own little bubble of the world, were about to witness history. With a juice box in both hands, the straw in his mouth, Will made sure the other was watching before he squeezed the box tightly, flattening it, and unintentionally shooting juice all over his face, squeezing each of his features shut as a reaction. Henry merely sighed, running his hand across his forehead in disappointment, before they were both pulled back into reality, watching the young boy hurry over. Catching his breath and pointing to the direction of interest, he tattled, spilling everything. Both men stood at the speed of light, William grabbing Mike’s hand before racing to find the rest of their children. Following Michael’s directions, the fear of God was struck into each of them as they saw the incident. Charlie caught in the water, with Eliza and Johnny across the torrent. Before another thought, Henry was already in the hip-deep water, pushing through the waves to reach his panicked, sobbing daughter.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ve gotcha now, don’t worry, angel-“ He comforted her softly, lifting her up in a deep cuddle while moving back to Mike and William. He handed Charlie up to the other man, who happily scooped her into a cuddle. “Take her back to the seats, if you could.”

“Sure. We’ll be waiting.” William turned to head back to their little camp, giving Charlotte continuous sways and nuzzles. She waved goodbye to the others, sniffing in with more tears falling.

“Mike, could you stay here? Be my lil’ helper, bud?” Henry asked, giving the boy a smile while Michael nodded. He went back across the water and called to Elizabeth, who came over to be carried back to the proper side of the water. Michael grabbed her hand and pulled her up to safety, both the kids watching their temporary caretaker turn back and do the same with Johnathan, who.. Wanted to be difficult. Letting him hop over the stones as before, Henry pulled himself back up into the grass and caught his breath, picking up a new topic with the kids. “Hey, hey, listen... Your dad’s gonna be mad. From me to you, it’s nobodies fault, okay?”

“Okay.” They all answered the same.

With the older man standing up and walking back with slushy shoes, both Elizabeth and Johnathan looked at Michael, scowls on their face. They all followed Henry passed the bushes and a little farther, eventually stopping to speak amongst themselves, waiting for their guide to get out of ear-shot. Michael, confused, took a single look at his brother before he was pushed down with a hard thud, leading into Johnathan standing over him.

“Why’d you have to tell?! We could’ve done it ourselves!” He nearly shouted, his frown growing darker. “You’re always such a baby! Every time the SMALLEST THING happens you always have to run to daddy! Now, we’re all gonna get in trouble!”

“Yeah! And Charlie’s hurt now, too!” Elizabeth added.

“Thanks for finding that lake, Mike. Real cool! C’mon Lizzie..” Both Johnny and Eliza moved on, leaving Michael sitting in the dirt.

The boy watched his siblings walk away, feeling sadness and guilt swell up in his stomach. His tears began to fall as he sniffed in, standing to dust himself off and grab his plushie, crying the rest of the way to their station where everyone else waited. While Henry sat with his daughter, taking a look at her hurt arm, William stood and paced, waiting for his own kids to arrive. When he paced, they knew they were screwed. And, oh, how screwed they were.

“Look who’s decided to show up! Sit down. Now.” There it is, the order. Will watched his kids line up and take their seats, each keeping their heads down. “We gave you an entire playground to play at. What happened?!”

“Will.. Settle, okay? They’re all a bit freaked out.”

A low grumble followed the other mans request, William sighing. “...Did anyone else get hurt? Is everyone else okay?”

All the kids nodded, Michael being a bit hesitant. Looking over at poor Charlotte, weeping over the pain in her arm, it was Henry’s decision that it’s best they hit the road. While the parents packed up all the things, William insisting the Emily’s take most, of not all of it, the children waited in the car, completely silent. The tension was building as the siblings watched their friends drive away, and their own father enter the drivers seat, as silent as the rest of them. Just as the previous family had, they too went home, not a single word being spoken the whole way. It was an agonizing trip.

The moment they pulled in and parked in their driveway, William made it clear that the next few hours weren’t going to be easy for them. “Get inside and sit at the table. We have so much to talk about.” On command, the children listened, getting out of the car and going inside with him. While they took their ordered seats, Will grabbed 6 pieces of paper and 3 pens, setting them in front of the kids. “You’re going to write a letter to both Charlotte and her father. You’re going to give your most sincere, heartfelt apology to that little girl, and Henry, and you’ll also be thanking him for helping you across, am I understood?” Eliza was quick to nod and immediately get to writing, while Michael was slower, and Johnny just didn’t do it. It took William slamming the table for him to get started. “And once you’re done, you’re going to walk to their home, and hand-deliver these letters! And then once you’re home, there will be no dessert, and you’ll all be going to sleep an hour early! Then maybe you’ll think twice, or possibly at all before doing something so silly and reckless! I’ll be in my room. Get on it, and don’t argue!”

Once they were left alone, Elizabeth expressed her sad-stubbornness through a small tear fit. Johnny merely took it out on Mike, kicking his feet beneath the table, and wrote at an incredibly slow speed. Nevertheless... They got their notes done, they made the trip, they came back home, and sulked in their rooms. A good day was turned bad in the blink of an eye. But, no matter how bad today went,

tomorrow is another day.

#fnaf #five nights at freddys #Henry Emily #Charlotte Emily #William Afton #Johnathan Afton #Michael Afton #Elizabeth Afton #//I FINALLY GOT THIS OOOUUUUUTTTTTTTTTTT #//HEY HEYYYYYY #//LIL’ MORE WITH THE FAM FT. THEIR PALS :)

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sunshinesukuna · 4 years

Text

ferris wheel jives and unlived lives

pairing: farmer turned soldier!iwaizumi x f!reader

warnings: war, slight gore

summary: promises are always a one way road to regret.

haikyuucreations0720 prompt: summer carnival!

words: 5.1k

i was gonna make a banner but onLINE SCHOOL. when i find the motivation i’ll make one for y’all but for now enjoy this fic in its rawest state.

big thankies to @vventure and @tsukkiscookies for beta-ing this <3333

Hands thick from a lifetime of holding shovels and axes pick up the leather-bound book on the table. Iwaizumi Hajime, 1944, is engraved in rusted metal on the cover. He flips to the calendar at the front of the page. Circled in a thick fountain pen is today’s date, with “(Y/N)” scrawled underneath.

Iwaizumi runs his finger over the lipstick stain at the bottom corner of the page. Had it been anyone else, he would have gotten a shovel from the shed and lopped their head off at the defiling of his precious journal. But not if it was you. Never for you.

He takes a deep breath before gathering all his belongings in his pocket. Not much, just his wallet with saved up money from his time serving and last month’s potato sales. Iwaizumi’s reflection glances at him from the rotary phone but he decides against calling you, lest your maid, or worse, your parents, pick up the phone. He adjusts his army cap and sweeps the dust off his shoulders before walking out the door.

You already know what time to come out anyways. Iwaizumi practically drilled it into your head the last time you saw him after you were 15 minutes late to your previous rendezvous.

Cornfields turn into suburbs and the stretch of country land morphs into that of the city. He’s never really liked the city, preferring the clean air of the long extent of his farm compared to the smog. But it’s a small price to pay to see you.

Some people give him odd looks on his way. In their defense, they do have a reason. Iwaizumi’s a scruffy farmer turned soldier riding a rickety car that groans and moans louder than the old men haggling over the price of a sack of corn Iwaizumi’s just trying to sell. He’s a black sheep among the delicate edges of the perfectly manicured lawns and pristine white paint of the government houses that all seem to wag their finger at him.

He finally stops in an empty field — he doesn’t dare park in front of your house, lest your parents see. The mayor would throw a fit if he ever saw his daughter walking around with someone the likes of Iwaizumi.

So he walks. Iwaizumi crouches by the massive oak tree that hides him from view. From his vantage point, he has clear sight of your curtained window. The glass is dented after so many pebbles flung its way. Iwaizumi saves his guilt for later and picks a small, innocuous one.

He throws another one.

The curtains crack open ever so slightly, and he catches a glimpse of an eye in between. Iwaizumi makes himself known. You open the curtains ever so widely, framing your face in between the cloth and shooting him a silly expression from atop your window. He shakes his head and beckons you to come down.

No amount of military training could have ever prepared him for all of your descents down. He can’t help but flinch every time you put your dainty foot down on a branch that looks like it’s breaking point is way overdue. Thank heavens, you make it down, your skirt slightly rustled and a leaf in your hair, but the mischievous glow in your eyes nullifying all other flaws. You hold his hands to steady yourself. They smell like iron.

"Your father?" he asks.

"Out negotiating with the city next door."

"Your mother?"

"With my father.” You snake your hands around his waist until they meet his own that are clasped behind him. Slowly, you pry them apart until you have both hands in yours. He presses a tender kiss to your knuckles. “They say there's going to be a dance after all the diplomatic issues are done with. They won't be back until midnight."

"The maid?"

"Asleep."

"You?"

"Missing you as always." Iwaizumi scoffs, but he does nothing to hide the growing smile on his face.

“Come on now, before the neighbors see us.” You grab his hand and make your way towards where you know he has his car parked, with no consideration towards anyone watching! In your defense, there isn’t anyone. Probably all in their own backyards, enjoying the luxuries that come with being part of the upper class, away from the trouble and toil of war efforts right now.

You wince a little at the loud squealing of the car opening. No one seems to have noticed, so you pull up a pastel shoe clad foot up into the dirty metal of the car.

“Where are we going today?” you ask.

“You’ll see.” He revs the engine up. You pout.

“I don’t like surprises.”

“I’ll teach you to like them, then.”

You talk for most of the ride, mostly some of the gossip you hear here and there as the mayor’s daughter. Stolen kisses between the maid and next door’s chauffeur, plans to build a new shopping center once the war’s over.

The honking tires of the city are replaced by children’s music as more and more people file into the empty lot. Some are armed with picnic baskets and blankets, others with cones of ice cream and cotton candy bigger than your head. You observe your new surroundings.

“The carnival?” you ask. Iwaizumi shrugs and holds the steering wheel closer.

“I stumbled on them when I went out. And… you said that you wanted to go, so I— (Y/N)!” Iwaizumi’s windpipe is almost crushed by the pair of arms that wrap around his neck. He doesn’t try to remove them, instead settling for a hand on the small of your back.

“I love you a thousand times!”

“H-hey,” he chokes out in his best imitation of his “army” voice. “We’re still on the road. People could see us.” You shrug and pull back anyways.

The car finally comes to a stop at a large field where other cars park. You don’t even wait for Iwaizumi to come to a full stop before you leap out the door, stumbling a little when your feet hit the warm asphalt. The air is clear and sweet in your lungs as you take in the feel of the fresh new atmosphere.

Iwaizumi’s just getting out, but you’re already walking to the other side and yanking his hand out, running as fast as you can to the opening gates. Carnival music blares through the air, mingling with people shouting at other people to come try out various games and food. So much was happening at the same time. When was the last time you went out like this without being stopped at the door by either of your parents? Second grade, probably, under the watchful eye of your nanny that tore you away from the other kids at the playground.

“Where do you want to go first?”

“Umm....” Your newly-found curiosity takes the best of you. There’s so much to see and do, and you’re not sure what should come first. From where you’re standing, you spot a large circle turning lazily in the sky. The line isn’t too long, and the view looks like it would be fantastic at this time.

“The ferris wheel, maybe?” you suggest.

“All right. You go line up and I’ll go get the tickets,” Iwaziumi says. You join the line that is steadily growing while your lover goes to buy some tickets.

Iwaizumi has just taken ten steps from you when an unwanted guest creeps up on you. Some people grumble from behind you at the appearance of this new tyrant that cuts in line so leisurely. He leans lazily on the divider right behind you and makes eyes you would rather he not make at you. The golden watch on his wrist clanks and tinkles on the metal divider. His hair is slicked back in imitation of the handsome actors on the screen, though the same can’t be said about him.

The man behind you clears his throat a few times, each getting progressively louder and louder. He really isn’t going to stop is he? What if he knows dad?

The thought crosses in your mind, and without second guessing, you turn back. Your eyes lock with him for a few seconds longer than “accidental” could pass for. Turning back without acknowledging him would be what your parent considered impolite. And you were certainly not going to attend one of your father’s weekly lectures on attitude again.

“Would you like a handkerchief?” you offered. You fished out the green cloth from the small bag you carried with you. The man accepts it with a cocky smile and a fake cough. You’re about to turn back when you feel a tap on your back.

“You know, I’m set to take over my dad’s company when he kicks the bucket. I could get a pretty girl like you all the pretty dresses and pearl necklaces you want,” he says. He slings your poor handkerchief over his finger like a dishrag.

“That’s very nice of you,” you remark politely before trying to turn away. The tap on your shoulder keeps you from breaking eye contact with him. You’re already standing a little too close to the gate for your liking, but the sudden arm on your right side inches away from your waist keeps you from going anywhere.

“What does a cute gal like you prefer? Tiffany? Swarovski? Cartier?”

“I’m quite alright, actually.” You look to the ground. Surely just buying two tickets shouldn’t take this long?

“Awh, come on. ‘Gal like you fancy a man who rides a red or white Cadillac?”

“Well, I don’t know. Men who can actually take care of their ladies instead of throwing wads of cash at them are quite popular nowadays,” you retort.

“Like me?” someone’s familiar timbre asks from behind you. You catch his reflection in the Ferris wheel door and can’t help but giggle a little bit at his sudden cockiness in the face of a new adversary.

Iwaizumi looms protectively over you, a hand on your shoulder. He’s not doing anything to the unwanted visitor in front of you, but you still enjoy his face whitening in fear. You take the chance and look up at your lover.

The sunlight hits his face perfectly like he’s the chosen child of Helios; the shadows and light bending to his will and accentuating the harsh lines of his face. You swear you can hear the man whimper.

The operator barks out for the next group of people to come inside.

“Of course!” you reply. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a ride to catch.”

The man hangs with his jaw open as he tries to form coherent words. You balance between your heels and tip toes as the operator opens the capsule doors. Like the courteous gentleman he is, Hajime offers you a calloused hand up the carriage. The capsule ascends with an unceremonious squeal.

The capsules are cramped, but one look outside has you swooning. The view of your small town, accompanied by the man’s aggravated grunt, and a warm hand squeezing your own makes you feel drunk and sober, wasted yet clear-headed at the same time. A voice breaks you out of your stupor.

“He wasn’t bothering you, right?” Iwaizumi asks.

“A little.”

His hands instinctively reach out to stroke your shoulders and hair. The intimacy of the capsule has made him more touchy. Instead of shy brushes on your forearms, he’s now melted into you, foreheads touching and breaths on your neck.

“Are you okay doll? Nothing wrong?”

“The only thing that’s wrong is how long you left me just to get some tickets for us.” You pull away. ”I missed you, you know.”

“Y-y-you did?”

Iwaizumi’s flustered. Charmingly so.

“No, I missed your friend from the army that you brought over to your house when I was there that time. What was his name? Otsubo? O’Connel? Ogawa?” Iwaizumi sighs, memories of the brown-haired delinquent he was paired up with plaguing his thoughts.

“Oikawa.” His eyes glaze over as he stares into the window behind you. You click your tongue. This airhead.

Without thinking, you press a kiss to his lips. It lingers, trapped in the confines of space, time, and your slowly waning self control. It’s nothing special, but maybe that’s what makes it all the better to remember. Who has time to remember grandiose scenes of kissing in the rain or in a fit of passion when mundane ones like these are the ones they experience the most? Quantity over quality for this one, shall we say? It’s your run-of-the-mill kiss shared by countless other actors and actresses and seen by thousands of other loyal viewers, but only truly felt by the two of you.

You finally find the will to pull back after a good 30 seconds. Residue lipstick stains his plump lips, almost camouflaging them amongst Iwaizumi’s burning crimson blush.

“Did you really think that I would miss someone other than you?” you asked.

“Well, you looked like you did.” You put a hand to his cheek.

“You’ll always be my number one, Hajime.”

The ferris wheel turns for a few more times, hushed cuddles and silent declarations of love happening inside it’s capsules, you and Iwaizumi being the main culprits. He’s alone with you, with a perfect view. What more could he want? A thought pulls on the back of his mind like an impatient child.

What is he? A mere farmer who got drafted into the war, possibly to never return. And you? The mayor’s daughter. The difference between you two is larger than that of the distance between this quaint little town in the middle of nowhere and the sea. Iwaizumi imagines his future — not necessarily bleak, but definitely filled with dirt and toil, not one he would ever want to give you.

Perhaps it’s better for you if he doesn’t come back.

You would grieve and cry for however long you pleased, but it would be the best for you. A new man would come and sweep you off your feet, like Iwaizumi once did. He would make time for you, like Iwaizumi once did. Maybe some money would be involved, and that’s where Iwaizumi can’t compete any longer. The altercation just now was proof of that.

The operator barks at the two of you to get out once your time is up. Iwaizumi hops off with ease, helping you with the strict confines of your skirt. He’s so enamoured in his thoughts, that he doesn’t realize that you’re shoving a cone of ice cream into his face.

“Hajime,” you call. Your voice, the product of years of being taught how to speak softly like the ladies of your class, a far cry from the gruff barks of the farmers where he’s from, rings in his ear like a gong.

“What are you thinking about, Iwaizumi Hajime?”

“Nothing,” he says stoically. Even though you see the postman more than you see Iwaizumi in person, you see through your lover in an instant.

“Let me guess.... You’re thinking about....” You tap your finger on your lips in mock thinking. “Me! You’re thinking about me! Aren’t you?”

“What makes you think that?” he asks, but the flush on his face is definitely not from the carnival lights.

“You’re staring at my neck like I’m the one who stole those tomatoes from your garden bed last night,” you quip. Iwaizumi does nothing except pinch your cheek, to which you respond with a squeal and a nuzzle on his neck. Before you know it, there are fingers dancing on your midriff and torso, tickling the living daylights out of you.

“Stop, Hajime!” you plead relentlessly, but he has no mercy on you. Like a good soldier, he leaves no place unchecked. Your arms, your neck, your ribs. Iwaizumi takes no prisoners. By the time he does manage to pull away, you’re panting as you lean on him.

“You could have made me spill my ice cream!” you complain as you hand one to Iwaizumi. The smile on his face is wiped away by a look of uncertainty.

“You should’ve let me pay for that, (Y/N),” he says quietly.

“Oh, please.” Your voice drops to a quiet hush as well, the smile shrinking away from your face until it’s only visible to the Iwaizumi and the sky.

“It’s my treat for you. For taking me here.”

The both of you eat your ice cream in silence. The only thing that could connect the two of you as a couple was a small patch of skin where your smaller hand touched his elbow, strong and hard from years of both farming and training.

He really should count his blessings someday. He’s alive, breathing, and healthy, for one. Iwaizumi isn’t rich, not as rich as you anyways, but he has a roof over his head and enough to make a meal for himself at least twice a day. The heavens could have stopped there, but no. They decided to send down an angel straight from their ranks to him. One with a glowing smile he would pay millions more to see just for another second,

Yeah, right, find a new husband. Hell would freeze over before Iwaizumi would ever allow that to happen.

But, like most things in his life, it’s shattered to pieces.

Literally.

The sweet summer air turns into clouds of smoke at the pull of a trigger. Iwaizumi looks up. From the clouds, fall large blocks of metal that he recognizes all too well as rocket artillery. It hangs in the air for a hot minute, like a ballerina staying in the air just before she lands from her jump. Everyone holds their breath as the first shell makes its descent.

Sirens finally break the silence. Recorded laughter melts into shrill screaming as people rush to take cover. Civilians and members of the military alike take off to who knows where — parents seeking their children, civilian lovers holding on tight, a group of friends breaking apart because two of them bear a soldier’s cap a little too proudly.

Someone screams from the other side

“A civilian attack?”

“Women and children to safety! At once!”

“Soldiers, report to the north gate at once!

And it finally happens. A symphony of thundering cracks that shakes the ground under your very feet like a seesaw. The trills and hums of falling buildings and structures soon join it, bringing an eerie soundtrack to the scene of fire and blazes that unfold before your eyes. But the star soloist in the show is perhaps the screaming. It doesn’t discriminate. Everyone screams. Old men trying to survive another five years doing so hoarsely as the hang on to what’s left of the burnt wick that they call life. Teen girls doing so, trying to huddle together with their friends under what they think is a safe spot. It’s deafening.

A pack of soldiers run past you, some carrying first-aid kits and stretchers. Iwaizumi gives them a knowing glance and a nod, before finally looking to you.

You’re the mayor’s daughter. Of all people in this town your age, you know best that during times like these, duty comes first. But what is duty when the people left to carry it out are slaves to love?

“Hajime!” you choke out. You don’t know whether the iron grip on his wrist is to keep him from going or to keep him from staying any longer with you. But you keep holding him anyways.

“Go with them,” he says. His voice is calm and steady, interpolated by the crackling of fires and the occasional thundering of what must be more bombs coming from the air.

“You—”

“I’ll meet up with you later. At your front door, next time.”

His hands moved to cup your face. Fire and explosions are reflected in the tears that start to roll down your face. Sticky residue ice cream lingers on your hand, some of it getting caught in your face as you wipe down the tears that flow so ungracefully down the side of your face.

“At my front door?” you ask.

The front door with the bronze plaque, serving as the golden gate for people of your class, but a barbed fence to those of Iwaizumi’s. The front door with a hole near the doorknob that your father never noticed, from when Iwaziumi used to sneak letters he wrote in school for you seven years ago. Maybe you would share a kiss, only to scurry back in the blueberry bushes behind your house because you saw the glint of your mother’s car in the driveway? Or maybe share a lazy nap in the sun because your father had guests from halfway around the world and the nanny was sick, and the circumstances and situation all just perfect.

Too perfect.

“Of course. If your father says anything about us, I’ll make him eat his own words.” Something bites at the back of his throat, but Iwaizumi coughs it back under the guise of ash. The last thing he needed or wanted was you getting scared.

“That’s a promise?” you ask.

“We don’t make promises in this household, doll.”

You want to say something, but another bang cuts you off, followed closely another crowd of soldiers directing people off to the side. Iwaizumi takes a long whiff of your perfume— one nicked from your mother’s shelves, yet worn countless times. You smell good.

Iwaizumi gives you a kiss on your forehead — a rather mundane one — before joining the crowd of marching soldiers.

Everything is piercing.

There’s something about the smell that invades his nose that makes him want to retch, yet fall asleep at the same time. It reminds him of the rubbing alcohol that they give the new trainee that bleeds first during hand-to-hand back at his base. Iwaizumi wrinkles his nose instinctively, but finds that the longer he smells it, the clearer his head becomes.

And the lights are just too bright. They’re a blinding white, unlike the yellow lighting he’s accustomed to. The white tiles and white sheets that wrap around him securely make it even worse. It reminds him of the showers back at boot camp, where blood and other bodily fluids contrasted proudly with the white tiles. He blinks several times as he gets his eyes to adjust to the new lighting.

A machine whirrs and buzzes behind him. Iwaizumi has never prided himself on knowing lots about military technology, but in all his years training at the military, he’s fairly sure he’s never seen anything like this before. From where he’s laying down, he makes out a valve connected to his fingers.

“Mr. Iwaizumi,” someone asks. He makes out a silhouette leaning over him. Something pounds in his heart as he hopes that it’s you that’s come to see him, but an adjustment of the light quickly kills all of them. A woman with red lipstick and dressed like a nurse from the neighborhood hospital helps him up.

“Where am I?” he manages to croak out.

“You’re at the hospital. There was an attack and you were ushered to safety when—”

It’s like someone turned a light switch in him. One minute he’s drowsy and fatigued, the next he’s up and alert, ready to pounce at anyone. Iwaizumi sits up straight, eager to hear this new information that is to be delivered.

“The others?” he asks.

“They…” The nurse trails off. She looks down apologetically, the blinding lights reflecting off the sheen of sweat on her hands. Her figure shrinks a bit. The silence is enough to fill in the blanks.

“You left the others out there to die?”

“Sir, we tried—”

The ground is cold and hard on his bare feet. Iwaizumi’s shoulders sag with the feelings of ten sacks of wheat on his shoulders. He’s getting very good at ignoring, what with people screaming around him and sirens that block out any other form of conscious thought. All he knows, hears, and wants is to run.

So he does.

He makes it down an uncountable amount of flights of stairs, until his knees ache and his calves are on fire. The metal is cold, hard, and unforgiving. The light of the tunnel keeps on dipping lower and lower until he finally drops down onto the floor. It seems to be deserted. Iwaizumi puts his hands on his knees and breathes like the drill sergeant instructed him back at camp. It seems that he won’t have much time to rest, though.

“Rouge patient!” someone barks from the other side of the room.

Iwaizumi curses under his breath. Every step he takes is a spike up his thigh. But he runs. He runs and runs and runs until he finally sees a glass door at the end of it all. The door seems to be protected by a set of numbers, like those on a calculator sitting next to it. Footsteps thunder behind him and Iwaizumi can hear people opening their office doors in hopes of intercepting him, only to have the rogue patient run past them. It’s now or never.

The door squeals as Iwaizumi puts all his body weight into the front part of his body. There’s a change in the air. The previously dingy atmosphere from inside the building is now replaced with a fresh breeze. Iwaizumi can’t stop to admire the flowers though. Without a moment’s thought, he rushes through the streets, weaving blindly through vehicles until he spots a dim alley.

It’s still the light of day, but this alley was unoccupied. Iwaizumi drops to his knees a second time, trying to put the wind back in his chest. Breathing seems to do good, so he does so shallowly until his lungs are willing to take in more oxygen at a time. No injuries, except the burning in his feet from running on bare pavement across the city.

Iwaizumi finally opens his eyes for the first time. Where was he now? DId he land at the car repair shop near your house? No, it doesn’t smell like grease and oil. The clothing factory? No, there’s no smog in the clear, blue skies above. Iwaizumi retraces his steps around the city. He closes his eyes again, visualizing his footsteps.

The smell of cotton candy drowns him in his thoughts.

There must be a carnival going on.

But instead of rolling hills and low houses, giant blocks of stone and metal crane their necks to the sky, reaching aimlessly for the sun and clouds that hang over their heads so tantalizingly. Great pictures hang suspended over the buildings, depicting beautiful people with clothes that would make any person from Iwaizumi’s part of town gasp. He wonders how he didn’t notice them during all his running before. In his defense, running from people who would do questionable things to you impairs your peripheral vision for an unknown period of time.

Something flashes out of the corner of his eye. His hands reach up to pat his waist for the revolver on his waist, but there’s nothing there. A closer look at the flashing colours reveals themselves to be… a Ferris wheel?

A simple road leads up to the ferris wheel. Street vendors and pedestrians alike bustle through the streets, enjoying the carnival. Iwaizumi can’t bring himself to care about them. The only thing on his mind right now is where you are.

His mind is spinning so quickly right now that he doesn’t notice the lack of planes the air, or people laughing and chatting instead of screaming for their lives in the streets. Everything rings in his ears the same as they did that night.

Some of the people he shoves through give him dirty looks. And he’s in luck too, not far down the street is the back of a familiar head of hair. A closer look reveals a blue bow, the same blue bow he recognizes as the one he bought you for your birthday. You had shoved his gift away and told him that the money would be better off feeding the cattle, but he had made sure that it found a snug home in your hair.

He doesn’t remember you wearing it on the car ride earlier.

There’s a cone of ice cream in your hand— not melting on the ground surrounded by ash. You blissfully lick the cone while looking at the rides whizzing above.

“(L/N)! Why haven’t you gone with the others?” Iwaizumi asks frantically. You turn your head back so casually Iwaizumi wants to yank you away. If it was any other person, he would have wanted to disappear right then and there.

But it’s you. Same eyes that widen in confusion when you look at him. Same nose that wrinkles in disgust when you see his bare feet on the concrete. Same lips that part ever so slightly at his appearance.

“I’m… sorry?” you ask.

“There was an aerial strike, and everyone had to go to safety! Why weren’t you with them? I was worried sick for you the whole time and you stroll through the streets like everything’s fine and dandy?”

People are starting to stare even harder now. Some people shuffle closer to you in case the worst situation comes to light.

“I think you have the wrong person, sir,” you say calmly.

“Wrong person? Now is not the time for joking, (L/N) (Y/N)!”

Iwaizumi wants to slap the eyebrows that are furrowing too slowly for his liking off your face, he just wants you to hurry up so the both of you can get to safety and meet at your front door like he promised but—

“(L/N) (Y/N)?”

“Who else would you be?” He must look like a madman now, screeching while other pedestrians give him odd looks. Someone seems to call the police on him, but the screeching of tires behind him is enough to dispel all sudden danger.

Black cars surround the small road, visages of baffled pedestrians and vendors reflected in their tinted windows. The drivers don’t seem to mind them, some opening the doors to their black suit clad passengers, all around his height and build. Iwaizumi feels a hand creeping up on his back, but he shakes it off and takes a long step to you.

“(L/N) (Y/N) is my grandmother’s name, sir.”

yes this is inspired by captain america. copyright don’t come for me!!!!!

#iwaizumi x reader #iwaizumi hajime x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuucreations 0720 #haikyuucreations #hqcn #iwaizumi oneshots #iwaizumi fluff #iwaizumi angst #iwaizumi haijme oneshots #haikyuu oneshots #seijoh x reader #seijoh #aoba johsai #iwaizumi hajime #hajime iwaizumi

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stormtodoroki · 4 years

Text

Appreciation Much Needed

Word count: 3.2k

Pairing: Aizawa Shouta x Reader

Warnings: Mentions of Covid-19, Fluff, brief swearing here and there, slight mentions of partial nudity, soft boy Aizawa

~~~~~Tags and Authors Note below

Ever since the news of a virus outbreak had been let loose, the tensions had been high everywhere we looked. People were panic buying items resulting in outages,it only increased when the schools had all closed down and non-essential businesses were temporarily shut down. This meant that my loving husband Aizawa Shouta had been lounging around half dressed, the only times he was well kept and proper were during video calls with the other UA staff or with his students as he talked to them about their assignments and his expectations from them while they were at home. Not that I was complaining, in fact it was probably one of the best things to ever set my eyes upon every morning before work and every evening when I got home. Shouta had decided that since he’d be working from home that he would start doing more chores around the house, especially since no one was going outside some of the Pro Heroes got more time to relax and stay home. No matter how many times I told Shouta not to worry about the chores and I could do them when I got home he’d flick my forehead and call me an idiot for thinking he was gonna let me do more work after being at work all day. Over the weeks he had me either on the couch and giving me massages or he would make me bubble baths to relax in while he finished the chores, insisting I leave it to him.

I stood in the doorway, my work uniform sticking to me as it had started to rain on my walk home from work so I had gotten a bit wet, but I was finally home and ready to relax with my hubby. A small smile appeared on my face, I had just gotten home from work and heard Aizawa talking to someone, it sounded like one of his coworkers.

“I’m not telling you again Yamada, it needs to be something grand… I need it to show just how much she's appreciated…”

I heard him sigh deeply and could just see him pinch his nose in irritation, I had to stifle the laugh that had threatened to escape my lips.

“Hizashi...Stop… you’re giving me a headache. Look, she’s going to be home soon and I can't let her hear me talk about this… Just wait for my call tomorrow okay? Bye.”

I decided to walk in more and make my presence known, I cleared my throat and stepped into the living room. Shouta had frantically looked to me becoming a stuttering mess, which was even more adorable seeing as he had his hair up messily and wore a pair of sweatpants.

“H-ow long were you standing there, kitten? What did you hear?”

I gave him a shrug and tossed my bag on the couch and removed my wet sweater before placing a chaste kiss to his cheek.

“I literally just walked in and you were saying bye to someone. Was it Toshinori? I haven't had a chance to talk to him since this whole pandemic had started. I hope he is doing well, the poor dude has a lot on his plate already.”

Shouta seemed to buy my answer and nodded, he disappeared for a moment before returning with my robe and a towel, stopping in front of me he helped me remove my wet clothes before he slid my robe on. He then pulled me into his lap as he sat on the couch and dried my hair while placing tender kisses along my neck.

“How was work today Kitten, tell me all about it while I take care of you.”

I gave Shouta a soft smile and closed my eyes for a moment before leaning back into his touch, a sigh escaped my lips.

“Well,as you know I’m in just about every room on an average day, and it's not really that different now, just the classes have so few kids we’ve been laying off more coworkers, we’ve closed a few more centers. So now we’re at a skeleton crew, which means it’s a bit harder to call in if you get sick, which hopefully no one does because we can't really afford to be short staffed.”

I let another sigh pass my lips and looked up to Shouta before letting out a yawn.

“I’ve been chasing kids who tried running away while outside on the playground, I've had to stop a one year old from hitting a five month old, the kid throws tantrums about it too, so if I upset this kid my hair gets pulled, or they hit me.”

I pause for a moment and shake my head.

“It's worth it though, I'd rather have me get hit by the one year old instead of the infant. But its been getting hard to get the kids to listen because now we have to wear masks, which I understand since we cant practice social distancing with kids since their dependent on us, but I’m basically yelling to be heard, it muffles my voice so much…”

Shouta nodded and began to massage my shoulders.

“You're very tense love, work has been straining you and giving you so much stress. You've been having trouble sleeping too, I'm worried working during this pandemic is going to cause you to burn out. I’m also worried that you're going to catch something, mask or not you're still putting yourself at risk.”

I peered up at his face and smiled softly. “Well, we are taking everyone’s temperatures before they can enter the building, also cleaning every single touch surface every thirty to sixty minutes throughout the day, though it's more frequent during the pick up and drop off process. So at least you know the shits gonna be clean when you touch it, we also have like three or so containers of hand sanitizer at the entrance so you have clean hands when entering.”

Shouta stopped massaging me, stood up from the couch with me in his arms and placed me onto my stomach, he then began to massage my back and legs, urging me to continue about everything that's been happening.

“Well, as you know I occasionally use a ride-share to get to work, but since this started it takes longer to find a driver because there's no one. I've had to wait over twenty minutes for a car for a five minute drive. That's not even the worst part about that, since it's such a short drive and a low fare sometimes I'll get a close driver and they'll cancel on me and I'll have to wait even longer for them to find me a new driver. By the time I could have just walked in and been at work.”

I let out a sigh and felt my body relax quite a bit, whether it was from the massage Shouta was giving me or it was from telling Shouta my troubles it sure was helping.

“Though I am quite grateful I get to see their amazing faces, these kids are my life...apart from you of course. I wouldn't trade these kids for anything, I love them as if they were my own. The good outweighs the bad, always does, and these kids definitely have a lot of good moments. Plus they all have such understanding parents, the support from them is amazing, I'm always getting praise from them and it makes me feel amazing, it makes me want to do more.”

After a few moments of silence and Shouta giving me a massage he picked me up and carried me to the kitchen.

“Sho...you do know I can walk right? You don’t have to carry me around.”

He mumbled an ‘I know, but I want to’ and placed me onto the counter before he moved a lock of hair out of my face, placing a kiss where it used to be. He then turned away and opened the fridge and pulled out a vanilla cupcake with what looked like a galaxy frosting, but he wasn't done as he pulled out another vanilla cupcake which had a blackish grey colored frosting that had two red dots on it.

“I know you hated having to celebrate your birthday at home, that it just felt like any other day and even though you and I had a great night It just wasn't exactly how one would want to celebrate their birthday, so I had a friend make these for us. Specialty cupcakes that represent us, they're both vanilla because I know you'd want to try mine and vanilla is your favorite flavour.”

I blinked in surprise, was it really that obvious? Yeah I spent my birthday stuck in doors and I wished that I could have gone out with friends to celebrate, but I didn't think Shouta would have noticed. I felt tears well up in my eyes and pulled Shouta in for a kiss after placing the cupcakes down,and cried silently in his embrace.

“Shouta...You didn't have to do that...I know it kinda sucked but I had your company which is all I will ever need to be happy. You truly are amazing and I don't deserve this from you…”

His laugh boomed in my ears and he cupped my face to look at me with his tired but loving eyes.

“Kitten, you deserve everything and more.You are doing so much for other front line workers during this pandemic...you're more than deserving and I want you to feel loved and appreciated throughout it all. You may not be a nurse, a doctor, or any kind of first responder, but you’re taking care of other essential workers' kids so they can keep everything running smoothly. Especially when some of these kids' parents are those first responders or hospital workers.”

The blush on my face grew and I hugged Shouta tightly, more tears were threatening to spill. He pried himself off me and excused himself for a moment, I watched him leave the kitchen and grabbed my cupcake before taking a bite, I practically screamed in delight. This cupcake is beyond amazing, it was so delicious that I couldn't form any words to describe it, it was the first time a dessert had ever had me at a loss for words. After a few minutes of being gone Shouta returned with a box and placed it on the counter, he mumbled a wait there before disappearing again, this time he came back faster and had only his laptop and a box of tissues.

“Shouta..what is all this? What are you doing?”

He sent me a small smile and turned on the computer, he turned it to face me and pushed the tissue box across the counter over to me.

“You're gonna need that, also no more questions. You're just going to have to wait and see. I promise you're going to love it.”

After making sure he had everything set up he walked over behind me and turned off the lights before pressing a file and full-screening it before pressing play.

Soon, the black screen filled with color the UA logo appearing on the screen with soft music playing in the background, I looked at Shouta confused, you just pointed to the screen whispering to watch, I turned back to the screen and my eyes widened in surprise. I saw pictures from class 1A, thanking me for continuing my work, I could feel the tears already welling up soon a rather cute bubbly girl filled the screen.

“Hello Aizawa Sensei's wife, my name is Uraraka, Ochako, and we here at class 1A appreciate all you and Aizawa sensei do for us, so, in honor of teacher appreciation week, we have decided to make you guys something, I hope you like it it's really cute!”

Once again, the screen turned black pictures and videos from each class 1A student, some of them making multiples, had flashed on the screen, words of encouragement, praise, and adoration fell upon our ears. His students expressed gravely how much they appreciate Shouta for hounding them into shape to become future pro heroes. Also praised me for having to deal with him and also, even though they haven't had me as a teacher or some sort of mentor aspect in their lives, they still sent words of praise for me, due to working in childcare and helping these little kids grow up with good strong morals.

"Sh-... Di-...I-i… Y-you…"

As hard as I tried, I just couldn't muster up any words to describe how I was feeling I couldn't even ask Shouta if he had planned this, I was a mess. With tears streaming down my face, I couldn't believe the class 1A had made such a beautiful posters and spoke such beautiful words about my Shouta, and then even included me in them, I felt so much love and appreciation coming from those students, I honestly couldn't think of any other way to spend the rest of my evening, then in Shouta's arms watching as his students showered at the both of us with praise.

“Just enjoy the video before I turn it off...Idiot.”

He gave me a noogie and then kissed me again, before getting up and walking to the kitchen and grabbing two glasses, with his back turned blocking me I couldn't see what he was doing until he handed me one of the glasses, seeing the liquid I sent him a curious look.

“Is this what I think it is? Sho...did you make me one of the drinks I made last summer?”

He nodded and mumbled an ‘I tried too at least..’ before he closed the laptop which had finished playing the videos, he finished his drink and waited for me to finish mine before carrying me to our bed. With the lights all turned off and Shouta snuggling me and playing with my hair I soon drifted off into a deep and peaceful slumber, a small smile stuck on my face.

I woke up to the sun shining onto my face through the blinds, the absence of Shouta’s warmth was immediately noticed, I sat up groggily and rubbed my eyes. Before I even had the chance to look around the door opened and a tray of breakfast was placed onto my lap and the bed dipped next to me as Shouta began to comb through my hair.

“Good morning my beautiful kitten. How did you sleep? By the look on your face I assume it was good?”

I merely nodded and ate my breakfast,every so often closing my eyes just to enjoy Shouta's careful way of combing my hair, if I could have gone back to sleep I probably would have. I looked back up to Shouta after a few minutes of our blissful silence when there was a knock at the door, he told me to continue eating and he'd go check it out.

“Sho? You've been gone awhile… Is everything okay?”

I put the empty tray to the side and stretched a bit before hopping out of bed, deciding to put on something fresh. I quickly went into the closet and threw on a black tank with some ripped jean shorts. I carefully walked down the hall, cautious as to not make any sounds to alert anyone that I was coming. My pace quickened as I heard muffled talking, I couldn't place the voices as they were hushed and seemed to be coming from far within the house. As I got closer I could tell one was Shouta but the other one was still a bit too hard to make out, as I neared our study I stubbed my toe on the coffee table, I let out a whimper and fell to the floor clutching my toe. In my state of pain I didn’t notice the talking stop or the running into the room to see what had happened. Within seconds Shouta had me in his arms asking me what happened and Yamada stood a few feet away, a silly mask on his face, which was hiding his stupid grin he always made while trying to hold back laughter as I explained what happened.

“Well, I guess I can show you now instead of later… After all you did hurt yourself being worried about me.”

I looked between the two before Shouta helped me up and then blinded me with his scarf, he led the way to the study, he let small murmurs about how I'm going to love it but he doesn’t want me to cry like his student Izuku always does. I had to bite the inside of my lip to stop myself from laughing out loud and stayed silent as Shouta whispered over to Yamada, there was a bit of shuffling around the room before he finally removed the scarf.

“Happy Teacher Appreciation Week my love. I’m sorry I couldn’t do much more for you today but I know either way you’ll like this.”

I looked around the room and gasped. The room was adorned in pictures of me in my uniform taking care of different kids of the center, there were also pictures of my kids holding heart shaped cards and other pieces of paper. Some of them showing love and affection, also few expressing how much they miss being at the center and seeing me. I was practically bawling and hugged Shouta tightly, spewing off a handful of thank yous and I love yous.

“That's only the beginning Kitty. Go look in the box on the table.”

I nodded and went over to the box, opening it I saw numerous gifts strewn about, I pulled a few out and read the tags before I squealed in delight, there were gifts from my kids and there were some from kids who were staying home and that I haven't seen since this all started.

“H-How..Shouta? How’d you pull this off?”

He simply smiled before walking over and hugging me close, he fixed my hair and placed a chaste kiss to my forehead.

“You left your laptop open one day when leaving for work, so I used it to email each parent from your classes and asked if they'd be willing to make something for you for Teacher Appreciation Week and either send it to our P.O. box, send photos or videos, or they could meet me somewhere to give the gifts. They definitely loved the idea, a lot of these parents respect you and they love how you interact with their kids. They wished they could have given them to you in person but decided that this way is easier and more adorable.”

I couldn't stop the tears from streaming down my face after hearing his explanation, he continued to rub my back and whispered about how I was lucky he was able to deal with all my crying, otherwise he’d be agitated.

“This was the best Teacher Appreciation Week ever. Thank you Shouta, this means the world to me, I seriously can not thank you enough for this.”

~~~~~

Tags: @onyxiana-is-obsessed @sweetlikepeppermints @pocket-is-obsessed

A.N: Happy Teacher Appreciation Week to all the teachers of Tumblr! To the Daycare/Childcare providers still working during this time you are appreciated and loved. Stay awesome, stay strong, keep healthy and we love you!

#shouta aizawa x reader #aizawa shouta #teacher #bnha x reader #bnha #mha #mha x reader #mha x you #bnha x you #my hero academia aizawa #my hero academia #boku no hero fanfic #appreciation #shouta aizawa x you

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