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royalydamned-archive · 1 year ago

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Make Believe - act 1

(Merritt McKinney x Reader)

Summary: The Horsemen's plans are coming together, all according to schedule. One more step remains: taking you out as the possibility of leading the investigation. In order to get to you, one of them has to become your partner for the time being. That being said, Merritt didn't even expect to be part of the equation, let alone your ultimate choice.

OR: Merritt pretends to date you. Before knowing how, he starts to believe it's real too.

|AN|: I can't believe people are still reading the first Merritt fic (and so many!!!). I love this guy so much, I just love that lil' something Woody Harrelson adds to his characters, I don't care what anyone else says, it's attractive. Here's to me being THE Merritt writer.

Anyway, this was supposed to be a one-shot, but since I am dumb like this, it will be spread out into a few chapters, but it will allow me to write more parts (and again, make this longer than it needs to be but such is life).

_____________________

These were some of the strangest few weeks in Merritt's life. Undoubtedly not the weirdest but some of the weirdest. Maybe he will end up in prison, maybe he will finally prove something in his life, chances were 50-50. God, who was he kidding? They were likely 97-3, and he was massively fucked.

Well, at least it's going to be fun, right? Gotta go out with a bang.

"The most important part should be in motion." Pretending to be busy, Merritt quickly sat up as he heard Atlas burst through the door, laptop balanced only on his arm, furiously typing with the other. With every step and dab into its keyboard, the laptop swayed on its laughable support, it must have been that real magic they had promised him keeping that thing from crashing down. "Tressler's assistant contacted me about a meeting."

"Is he paying?" the man ignored his remark, unappreciative of the effort to lighten the mood, and rushed past him, already dialing the others. Not that they knew each other well enough, but that guy was a massive dick, that much was clear.

"What are you even doing here? It's a dump."

"It's filled with the warmth of comradeship and our effort, much homier than my apartment," Merritt smirked, watching Atlas run around in a mix of slight panic and thrill of success. "Jesus, Danny, you look so cute wagging your tail like that."

The only answer was to him was a disgusted look. Good enough, he thought to himself.

Daniel's phone rang for a few times, before the distinct sound of a voicemail came through, followed by a groan of frustration. God, if Merritt had known not being here would stress him out like that, he’d go for a nice long walk with a phone turned off – at least a little payback for the bossing around he had to endure from the guy. He wasn’t even aware they had a leader among them, let alone a self-appointed one. Maybe it was time for a mutiny.

"Henley, come over to the apartment right now, we all need to talk." Canceling the call, Danny carelessly threw the phone on the small table, a bit too far to toss it like that, and ran his hand through his hair. "And where's Jack?"

"You should take a breath Danny-boy," Merritt said, teasingly.

"How about you help out? That would also be great."

"Whoa, I'm sensing hostility. Someone needs to let out some steam. You know I know a great girl you could– "

"I am not listening to that!" Daniel cut him off, already walking the opposite direction, hands thrown in the air.

"Hey, I'm just trying to help," he put his hands up in defense, fighting back a giggle. "It's not like Henley– "

"Henley what?" she asked, coming into the room, two paper cups in hand. She gave Merritt a pointed look, rising an eyebrow as she silently demanded an answer to whatever she had walked on in. If he knew the answer, he would have told her, but he hadn’t been given much to work with.

"Hey–"

"You're late," Daniel snapped, returning to the room, arms resting on his hips, the image reminding Merritt he truly is in their hideout more often than he would have like because somehow, it seemed normal.

“I’m not late, we don’t have a schedule. Here,” Henley handed Merritt one of the cups, on it with a black sharpie and a terrible handwriting was scribbled Baldy.

“Rude,” he complained with a frown to no one but himself as the two had already started arguing, and sat back onto the run-down couch him and Jack brought in last week since they were tired of sitting on the floor. It wasn’t bad, oh who was he lying to, they found it on the street, but at least it wasn’t the floor, despite both Henley and Atlas insisting they’d rather stand the whole time.

“Great, you’re late too!” Danny called out, breaking up the argument briefly when he noticed the youngest member in the doorway, who now stood frozen when all the attention turned to him.

“Sorry, I didn’t know I was supposed to come a specific hour,” Jack said, slowly moving to sit next to Merritt, who was delightfully watching the whole ordeal.

“Nobody did, kid,” he reassured him, receiving a nasty glare from the other.

“Alright, it doesn’t matter. Can we please start.” All four of them looked at each other in silence, and when nobody protested, Danny continued in much calmer manner. “So far, the most difficult part should be over. We have caught Tressler’s eye and if there are no unexpected surprises the Eye have not thought of – which I doubt – the rest of the Horsemen project will go smoothly.”

“That means that’s it, right?” Jack asked. “All we have to do is play along until we can go big enough with our shows.”

“No, absolutely not,” Atlas laughed dryly and grabbed his laptop, typing something furiously while explaining. “We still have to deal with the feds. Fortunately, the plan involves a clear way out with this. Most agents in there are described to be easily tricked with the right strategy and, of course, we have plenty. There’s a file on every single one of the people that might be involved and all of them have a pretty balanced record, some wins, significantly more loses, lucky for us, except one.”

“Perfect score. Might be fun to beat them,” Merritt said, looking around the room for support from the others. None came.

“Not really, we have to take them out of the game.”

“Whoa, hey, when we agreed to do this there was no mention of killing anyone,” Jack blurted out nervously.

“What? No, we’re killing anyone. Jesus. We’re going to make them not want to do the case, voluntarily take themselves out.”

“How would we do that? I suppose blackmail is off the table as well.” Danny shot Merritt an unamused glare and continued as if he hadn’t said anything.

“We need make them personally involved, so, I hope all of you are single, because one of us will date them as long as we need to.”

“How would we even get in contact with them?” Henley asked.

“Stalking, social media, dating sites– “ Merritt started counting on his fingers.

“And we have a general location of the area they live and spend time in. All we need is a few days of closer observation before we can narrow down some kind of a habit. Everybody has one. There, we will meet.”

“So, stalking it is, great choice.”

“What makes you think they even would be interested in any of us, even if we do find them?”

Danny turned the laptop over, showing your file, completed with a picture and general information. “Everybody will have to try, we have four shots at this, which are pretty favorable odds.”

“You guys can rest assured, very few can resist the good old McKinney charm.”

“Yeah, right. I was thinking more like Jack. Realistically speaking.”

As overdramatically as possible, Merritt placed a hand over his heart, faking shock. “You wound me, Daniel. I thought we had something.” The other man simply rolled his eyes, refusing the entertain him in such a situation – any situation, for that matter.

“We are on the right track, let’s not screw it up with this.”

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“At least they’re hot,” Merritt stated, sitting tucked away in a booth, close enough to see you, yet far enough to remain hidden. The bar was pretty empty, and they seemed almost over-dressed – some more than others, he thought, watching Danny’s cry for help outfit – but the opportunity had presented itself for them. What was a better time to pick up a stranger sitting alone at the bar than Thursday evening, looking like they had just finished a magic show? Literally.

“Focus,” Atlas snapped, taking out a small stash of notes from the inner pocket of his suit jacket. Not creepy at all. “This has to work, everybody read the cards?”

“The completely legally obtained extremely private information about a person we have been following for the last six days?” Merritt replied, sarcastically, receiving a glare. “Yes, memorized it in a very non-creepy way, in tune with this mission.”

“It’s not a mission.”

“Definitely feels like a mission, no pressure,” he mumbled to himself, stealing a secret glance at you. You were looking at your phone, trying to hide a smile with your hand, half drank glass by your side. Something came across his mind. “Hey guys, what do we do if they’re taken?”

“What?” Danny froze and started flipping through the papers. “No, that would be incorrect, every source says they are single and have not found any close personal connections, of course excluding family.”

“Again, not creepy,” he commented off-handedly. “Have seriously nobody thought of this possibility?”

“Nobody had to think of it because it’s not a factor,” Danny shot back through clenched teeth, his foot under the table tapping in an anxious rhythm. Not so sure, huh? Merritt lifted his arm in defense.

“I guess we will have to trust the Eye. And the wizard behind the curtain. They know what they’re doing,” said Henley in a calm voice, gaze fixated to the spot you were sitting in. “So, who goes first?”

“Jack will,” Daniel replied, leaving to room for others to protest. “It’s our best bet.”

“Put that pretty face to a good use for us Jacky, if this doesn’t go well Danny here might have an aneurism.”

“I won’t– “ he glared at Merritt before taking a deep breath to calm the obvious nerves buzzing under his skin. “Alright, fine. Make fun of me if caring about doing well is so funny.”

“A bit,” Henley interjected, still watching you in case you moved and disappeared from their sight. For a moment, Merritt wondered whether you could feel her intense glare stabbing your back.

“Alright, I’m going.” Slowly, Jack rose from his seat, cringing at the loud sound his chair made when scraping against the floor, and before disappearing, flashed them a reassuring smile.

“God, I remember when I looked like that,” Merritt muttered, watching the kid make his way to you with a confident smile, leaning over the bar by your side and flashed you a charming smile. He said something, a greeting, a pick-up line – not that it mattered when one looked like him – and you smiled back, answering immediately and forgetting whatever it was so engaging on your phone.

“In 1938?”

“Hilarious Danny, has your mother never taught you respect towards your elders?”

“Guys, shut up.” They exchanged a silent look, a challenge neither of them really meant, before dropping it per Henley’s request – well, command really – and turned their focus back towards the bar.

They couldn’t hear you two, it was nothing but a mute movie, leaving them guessing what you’re talking about, whether it’s doing well or…well, how else would it go? Jack had his way with people. Merritt could be the one reading them, controlling them even, but he didn’t have the social talent that just couldn’t be learned. It was natural, came as breathing. Merritt could try and make them laugh, make them uncomfortable and intimidated by his skills to gain the upper hand in the conversation, but sometimes he thought about how it must have been, to enter a room and be instantly liked.

Jack leaned over, getting closer to you, to which you smiled again, telling him something and he acted like he was listening intently, nodding his head with serious expression on his face. Merritt watched you lick your lips, studying his face. How easy was that? A mere few minutes and he had you wrapped around his finger, saving their whole plan – until he wasn’t. Until he understandingly nodded, polite smile still gracing his features, and pushed himself off of the bar, returning back to the remaining three Horsemen waiting for him.

“Wh– Jack what happened?” Daniel asked, confused as Jack finally came close enough to hear them. The younger man only shrugged and took his beer, taking a short sip.

“Wasn’t interested,” he answered simply and slipped back into his seat.

“What do you mean ‘wasn’t interested’ that wasn’t the plan.”

“Hey I did all I could, I can’t force myself on them.”

Danny groaned into the palms of his hands, trying to calm down. It was fine, surely it was fine. Strange, but fine, there were three more people at the table that could try – three more shots at success, but this is not what they had expected. It should have been done instantly, sending their best man for this type of work. If he hadn’t succeeded, there wasn’t too much hope for the others.

“Alright, it’s OK. A slight hitch, nothing we have not encountered or will not encounter along the way yet.” Danny started talking quietly, more to himself than the others, trying to calm all the thoughts and possibilities racing through his head so fast Merritt saw steam coming out of his ears. “Henley, you should try it.”

“What about a please?” she shot back calmly, seemingly enjoying his little breakdown.

“Please, don’t do this right now,” he sighed, his leg under the table speeding up. Merritt took a sip of his drink, trying to hide the grin behind his glass, and watched Henley make her way towards you, un-effortlessly striking up a conversation.

“What was it that got you rejected anyway? Did you say something creepy? Did you slip and tell them their personal detail we so legally obtained?”

“No, they just said I wasn’t their type.”

“Oh, great, so Henley should be ok,” Danny said, suddenly looking relieved, and leaned over the table where you and Henley were already chatting, as if trying to hear your conversation. “Wait, what is she doing?”

“What?” Merritt mumbled, his head snapping towards the pair at the bar. “Oh, she’s leaving too.”

“Fuck,” he said, flipping through his notes once more, eyes scanning the words, trying to find what he had missed. “God, I can’t believe we’re going to fail before we can even execute the plan.”

“Hey, look at it from the bright side, maybe this is the fastest someone had failed trying to get into the Eye,” Merritt grinned and raised his glass, offering Danny a toast, but shrugged and finished the drink on his own when he just sent him an annoyed look. “I mean, we still have two more shots.”

“We are fucked,” Danny murmured under his breath, eyes unfocused, looking at particularly nothing, just the few weeks of their work flashing before them like war flash-backs. “I’ll go now.”

Before Henley could have arrived back to the table, Daniel was already leaving, making his way towards you. With a charming smile, he leaned over the bar, but before he could open his mouth, with a friendly expression, you shook your head, presumably sending him away.

“Oh, ouch,” Merritt winced watching the interaction. “That one had to sting.”

“Eh, he got over worse,” Henley said, sitting down next to him, the glass in her hand refilled. “I take it you’re our last chance?”

“It all comes down to the McKinney charm. Like I said.”

“I don’t doubt its efficiency.” He winked at her as they shared a brief look of amusement before Daniel managed to get to the table.

“I’m going for a smoke first.”

“Are you kidding, everything now depends on you.” Merritt grimaced as he heard Danny’s voice, shouting in a shushed tone, way before he could feel his presence behind him, he was like a walking ball of stress that one could hear vibrating even from a distance. And moved surprisingly very quickly, like a little hamster.

“I bet that one must have hurt to admit,” he grinned teasingly, and took out a box of cigarettes out of his pocket, waving way too close to the other’s face before his hand got slapped away. “Give me five minutes, I’m sure they need a break too.”

Without waiting for an answer, he pushed past him, away from the overwhelming chatter and into a silent back alley. Nothing but a distant traffic and cold night surrounding him and suddenly, he felt like he could breathe again, every exhale visible in the cool air even before he managed to light one of his cigarettes.

Not even a year ago, he was just one bad evening away from quitting magic all together, losing the passion to the struggle of his everyday life, and to the fact he indeed, didn’t have any money. At all. Who besides middle-aged bored women believed in hypnotism anyway these days? No one. His stream had dried out, days of his glory way in the past and he just seemed like he had no hope, no future.

Barely he managed to blink, he was a part of a straight up insane scheme, one that could only had been set up by a complete madman – or a slightly insane genius – either way, whether the Eye exists or it’s one of the best manipulation tactics he had ever seen, he was well on his way on becoming a criminal for a possibility. Maybe even just an idea.

Maybe, at the end of this all, it would be revealed the Eye is just a concept, the work they have done and the justice – or well, so it appeared – they have brought. With Merritt’s luck, he will end up in jail, the warm feeling of using his “power” for the “greater good” the only thing warming him while he would be sleeping on a metal bench with a shared toilet right next to his head.

The door of the bar opened, and his head turned towards the sudden sound, a lone cigarette he had taken out of the box loosely hanging between his fingers. Before he could register what had happened, before he could he could have caught up on the reality he found himself standing in, one where you walked out the bar door, mumbling something about the weather under your breath as the unfavorable temperature hit you, your eyes landed on him, stopping for a few curious seconds before you slowly approached him.

“Hey, you were with the three others that took turns on me tonight.”

Slightly thrown off, he straightened his posture and fixed his hat. “So you noticed, huh?” he said with a smirk, surprised when you came even closer.

“Was very hard to miss. You had a bet or something?”

“God no, but there was an almost fight about who gets to try their luck first. You know how hard it is to come across good-looking people lately. We are a rare breed.”

You laughed, leaning against the wall next to him, arms crossed over your chest and one leg propped up. “Oh? A humble one, aren’t you?”

He just shrugged, putting the almost forgotten cigarette to his lips and lighting it. After a big drag, he rested his head on the cold brick wall. Watching you from the corner of his eye. In anyone else’s mind, the stars had aligned, the last struck of luck – a destiny maybe, but despite being a magician, Merritt didn’t believe in magic.

“I have to ask though,” you said into the silence, turning your head towards him, studying his profile for a few seconds. He hummed in response, his own head slightly rolling to the side, straining his neck so he could watch you directly. Notice every detail he needed, every slight twitch of a muscle, every time you avoided direct eye contact. He couldn’t forget this wasn’t his everyday life, this wasn’t a fun banter with a hope for a night with a happy ending. This mattered, and even though he would rather lick the inside of Atlas’ mouth than to admit it, it scared him. “Why were you the only one that didn’t come to try?”

“I am trying right now, aren’t I?”

“Are you really?”

“That depends.” Now, he turned his whole body towards you, the shoulder he was leaning his whole weight on suddenly painfully crushed by the wall, but that way, he could see your fully – your form, your face, the subtle gestures of your fingers and the way you stood (leaned) in front of him. “Is it working?”

“And if it is?” you asked, voice low, and Merritt had to look away for a second to fight a smirk.

“Then I’ll have to run back to my colleagues there and gloat a little, I’m afraid.” You laughed again, Merritt found himself enjoying the sound, not many even had such a positive reaction, if any, truly. “But maybe I could invite you somewhere, ideally less cold. With food as a bonus?”

“I’d like that.”

Tags: @wicked1will0sparkles

#nysm fanfiction #merritt mckinney x reader #now you see me fanfiction

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sobachyakukla · 7 months ago

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they would give me respirdol & i would think i was a liar the whole time. i would call myself a liar the whole time. i would hate myself for being one, engaged in this neverending war with myself, caught between one perspective & the other perspective like two walls. one reality, another one & another one & another one. my mother looks at me walking away from my chair with my laptop open in front of it, this pulled up. she sneers at me & asks in THAT tone, "what are you doing? writing?" why yes i am. since im supposed to be, documenting everything i went through & saw, just like you said when you bought me my first diary at the dollar tree. now i thought since we sacrificed that one guy claiming to be behind q & a pedo in the white house all of this would have calmed down. but clearly not. its important that these things are still documented. i believe that we can all agree on that. no amount of laughter will stop me from writing either. i was given an order, i'm gonna carry it on out. i also get scared by the proposition that me documenting my psychosis is somehow being "transmitted back in time & being used as a script for your life so be careful with what you write & be sure to only write lies, i mean good things." yeah no im going to write what happened, not what happens. my days of writing what happens are long behind me. if this works out the right way i will be removed from certain positions & life entirely. given some sort of grace & peace for once in my life. once called the sprite queen, the real MOM, & the president, all by one kookie crazy Britney spears loving lady of the Colorado desert: The self proclaimed hermaphroditic dolphin mother. now reduced to something less than dust, bone decay & hidden meanings, unworthy of forgiveness on any & every count, no friends, reminded by mother every given opportunity (except not that often now because then she'd have to admit they were real people) & stalked, harassed, everything i own technology-wise just becomes someones play thing the moment it goes too far. but i'm digressing & undressing & its hot outside & its hot inside & im not in love yay yay yay when did the florida foilage become something that could grow in ohio its the strangest thing. i keep track of everything but its not going to matter or make a difference. it hasn't, it wouldn't. i dont want to preside over the dream machine anymore its all meta-meddlers & backpack peddlers & people who dont understand. the one-point return has gotten out of hand fuck this will indeed start to rhyme. i got up & ate a bunch of bread today in my sleep & it made me want to scream & stab myself. commit seppuku. & this reality-match of ellie is getting to me in ways i cant word or i will scream. i fucking hate it. i just want it to die. see because when i am allowed to imagine it & make it something in my imagination its fine. because then my imagination gets to use its new toy thats just gathering fucking dust at this point. but here we are, wasting time, effort, & energy. all because we really swore we were right. & ya weren't. ya just weren't right about me. it just wasn't the case. & the more you try to make it the case, the more evil you become. & i liked it better when i didn't think of you like that. i really did. i said no helping me. i meant no helping me imagine anything! & touching its head makes me want to throw mine into a brick wall. just get off of my things please. or be smart about how you access them. & stop talking about this in public. homeless people overheard you, tracked me down, & assaulted me. in columbus. i dont talk to anyone so i cant be at fault.

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wolvesloveyou · 3 years ago

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This is another rant post cause life decided to shit on me this week, so ignore me.

I had my advising meeting yesterday to plan out my schedule for next semester. Scheduling wise, I went fine, and I can register for classes. Great. But then she asked about my assistant design thing.

For context, I'm a theatre major who specializes in costume design. This semester, I'm assistant designing for Taming of The Shrew. It's great. I also and a student worker for the costume shop, so I get paid as well. Awesome.

My advisor asked how it was going, I said it was going good, all the stuff I've been assigned are almost done (hopefully since we open next week) and she asked how much of that was I working on outside of work. I was confused, but I had done plenty of research outside of it so I said that. She said that as an assistant designer, that's not enough hours that can be counted since I'm being paid by the school. Meaning there's a difference between work and design. Which makes sense. I knew that. But, because of that, technically I can't be counted as assistant designer, but because she's nice (-_-) she'll let it slide and just make me assistant design again before I can be a ful designer. Fine. It's a little frustrating, but whatever. No biggie.

She then proceeded to ask how much I've been in the costume shop this past week. Well, outside of the 8 hours I work a week, none. I have other organizations that I'm a part of and hw that I need to be working on. She told me, verbatim, "you need to be spending every waking moment you can in the costume shop. You can go to class, eat, and sleep. Otherwise, you're in the costume shop. The Designer is here super late at night working on this, you should be here too."

1) No. I shouldn't have to sell my soul to work on this. I have OTHER THINGS that I've committed myself to doing that are not negotiable, and this is what happens when you encourage students to join organizations. We get conflicts. And guess what. I'M WORKING WHEN I HAVE FREE TIME. I literally took a day off my available schedule to allow myself 4 HOURS to do homework. Weekends are a whole other deal, but I'm not gonna entertain that for now.

2) the costume designer for this show is a professor. He is in his late 40s I think? I'm a 20F. I don't feel comfortable staying on campus late at night working on costumes alone with him. I'm sorry, but to me, my social anxiety and the slight fear I have of being left alone with a man significantly older than me late at night disagree with that statement. Granted, I might be overreacting here. He's gay and I'm straight, he's not going to actually pull something like that. But he's already proven himself to be extremely petty and passive aggressive. I don't want to be put in that position, and frankly, the fact that you think it's a good idea to put me in that position is worrying. Also, he works here. He chooses to be here for super long hours. That's his job. I'm a student. I'm here to learn, to take classes so I can get a degree and do something with my life. I have more things spread of a wide variety of categories to think about and manage where as he only has his job as a professor and costume shop manager. Our priorities are very different here, and staying late working on costumes isn't one of mine, especially when I have homework to do and a pet to take care of.

My advisor also said that "I should be aware that things get more demanding the week before a show, so any homework you have you should do ahead of time."

To be fair, yes, I know that. For most people who work in theatre, the week before a show opens is the most stressful and demanding. However, as a student I can't always plan around it. Non-theatre professor won't care. Even if they have a calendar out that has big projects and their due dates, they can still assign homework the week of with warning. They can make it due the next class, which gives me 2 days. I'm already nearly fully booked throughout the week, so I need the time to do it. You telling me I should have planned around it is irresponsible. Have you ever tried asking a professor who doesn't like working with students to give you homework early so you didn't have to do it the week of? It doesn't work most of the time, and some don't even see theatre as a reasonable excuse to work around it.

Now. Some of these points are valid to some degree, and I realize that. If I was working full time somewhere, and not taking classes, then yeah, I can see that and would agree. But I'm not working somewhere else. I'm a student. I'm paying to take classes and get a degree. You pushing me to spend EVERY AMOUNT OF FREE TIME I HAVE WITH YOU is just as irresponsible and annoying as those professors who think their class is the most important thing in the world. I'm sorry to break it to you, but its not. Even if it's important to my career, it's not important enough to push me to a breaking point.

I already struggle with time management and taking care of myself. I have a hard time making myself eat and drink water and do laundry and take showers and literally any other self care thing you can think of. It's hard. I can barely make myself do it without that kind of stress. I've already had instances where I've gotten sick after a show because I was dehydrated, because I FORGOT TO DRINK WATER FOR A FULL 2 WEEKS. That's not healthy. I recognize that. It's a work in progress. It's harder for me to take care of myself when I can't go home and make food, and rest properly. And you basically saying I shouldn't be leaving to do so, but staying here is astonishing.

On the bright side, instead of having 2 years left, I have a year and a half. 3 semesters. I'll be graduation in December instead of May. Hopefully I won't snap before then.

#thats my job #again #this is a rant #im probably overreacting #but at this rate #its irritating #the strangest thing is she talked about important self care is #directly before saying i need to spen ld every avaialable moment i have working #on costumes #because #no it isn't #my job is to be a student #first and formost #just because i work in a costume shop doesn't mean that all i do ever #its fucking part time #im only allowed to work 10 hours #i already work 8 #and you want to me to stay and work more without pay?#i don't get paid enough for the hours i work anyways!

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qqueenofhades · 4 years ago

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So like. What if there were a fic of Ivan and Fedyor falling in love? Just saying. Someone could write that...(and could that someone be you?!)

Fedyor Kaminsky is brought to the Little Palace when he is nine years old. Before that, he has lived his whole life in the place he was born: a small village about twenty miles southeast of Kribirsk. It is just close enough for him to be constantly aware of the Shadow Fold, looming like a thunderstorm on a hot summer day, and to know, also, the honor that it is when the examiners arrive, he receives a sharp prick in the arm, some sort of strange result takes place, and he is formally declared to be Grisha. His parents know it too, and are eager to tell him of it. They are not well off, and Fedyor is the sixth of seven children. The payment for their patriotic service will be welcome, and while his mother hugs him tightly and tells him to make the Saints proud, he feels, somehow, that they are not that grieved to see the back of him. He is the only child from his village that has been picked, and they all assemble to see him off. Just think. One of their own, in the Second Army.

Fedyor cries himself to sleep his first night in the dormitories, as most of the children do. But he wakes fully rested, hungry for breakfast, and eager to throw himself into his new life. He has a sunny temperament, a personable nature, that serves him well here, and any talented Grisha can climb high in the ranks, almost as high as the Black General himself. Back home, what did he have to look forward to, aside from the taunts and punches of his brothers, who always saw him as more like one of their sisters than one of them? He is learning things here. Religion and medicine and geography and history. And, of course, the arcane art of the Small Science, the one thing that binds these young people from all across Ravka. Their power, their responsibility, and their upcoming effort in the endless wars.

His first few years pass rather well, all things considered. When he is thirteen, it is officially declared that he will be taken onto the Order of Corporalniks, and – somewhat to everyone’s surprise, including his – he is best suited not as a Healer, but a Heartrender. It turns out that unassuming, smiling, friendly Fedyor, who knows everyone’s name and is always given an indulgent second portion of dessert from the doting canteen ladies, packs quite a punch.

It’s here where he first puts Ivan Sakharov on his back, and his whole life changes.

Fedyor and Ivan have known of each other, ever since they arrived in the same class of recruits. Ivan is a tough, taciturn northern boy from Chernast, skinny and scowling and always displeased about something, no matter what. Fedyor once saw him brood through the whole Winter Fete, and he has taken it as a professional challenge to get Ivan to smile. Once Fedyor plays a practical joke on him, to the awe of the entire dormitory, who would not dare to even imagine such things themselves. Ivan scowls at him like the Black Heretic himself, and stomps off to have his important life problems somewhere else. But now they’re both thirteen, Ivan is shooting up like a weed and channeling all that pent-up resentment into some really effective Heartrending, and Fedyor is regretting all his previous liberties. As they face each other and bow, thus to commence the duel on Botkin’s word, he thinks, Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.

Then he remembers that he’s the same Order, he has the same red kefta awaiting him when he finishes his trials, that he has as much right to be here as some tight-arse bastard from the frozen northern wastes, and that is why, thirty seconds after the duel has begun, Ivan is flat on his back and looking astonished. Everyone is applauding, and Fedyor feels somewhat confused. He strides over to his fallen adversary and offers him a hand. “Good job.”

Ivan glares at him, exquisitely sensitive to the possibility that he’s being mocked. “You’ll regret this, Kaminsky,” he says, low-voiced. “Mark my words.”

After that, for several months, Fedyor lives in terror of going anywhere in the Little Palace alone, lest Ivan suddenly leap out from behind a shrubbery and murder him. He and Ivan spar in their classes, in practice, in trying to outdo each other in Baghra’s ridiculous lessons, throwing all their effort into the sort of stupid, pointless rivalry that can only be maintained by teenage boys with too much pride and too little sense. They start to look for each other wherever they go, waste no opportunity to glare heatedly, and they are sixteen years old when Fedyor notices to his extreme vexation that during all this time spent staring at him until he has memorized his face, Ivan has gotten a little… handsome.

(What? No? Ivan? Horrifying.)

Fedyor himself isn’t exactly cursed in the face department, once a persistent bout of acne clears up. With his wavy hair, dark eyes, and easy smile, he provokes his fair share of sighs and pining among the female Corporalniks, but he is oddly uninterested in reciprocating their advances. Then he and Ivan get paired together on some training exercise that goes horribly wrong, they are trapped in the woods for hours until someone comes to find them, and with nothing else to do, they are forced to actually talk. Ivan has that northern chip on his shoulder that they all seem to, and probably started fighting Fjerdans when he was two years old, but what he says next takes Fedyor completely aback. “You’re… not that bad,” he says grudgingly. “You’re the only one who’s brave enough to actually talk to me, not just tiptoe like a mouse.”

“Well.” Fedyor throws a stick of wood at him. “Have you considered being less of a total grouch all the time?”

Ivan scoffs, lunges at him, and they end up wrestling in the leaf mold, an exercise that both of them enjoy a bit too much and take extreme care that the other not notice. By the time the search party from the Little Palace comes to retrieve them, they have forgotten all about being lost. In fact, as they were lying on the ground together, tangled up and panting and staring at the stars, Fedyor had the strangest thought that it was the best night of his life, and he doesn’t have a clue what he should make of that.

After that, an even stranger thing happens: they become friends. Well, sort of. Ivan maintains his default posture of appearing to hate everything and everyone, but Fedyor is the only person he tolerates, or allows to yank his chain in any way. And in turn, though Ivan Sakharov is the last person who would seem to need any kind of protection, the favor is returned. Once, when a city boy from Os Alta starts going on about how savage northerners are, staring pointedly at Ivan the whole time, Fedyor launches him halfway across the room. He gets in trouble, but it’s worth it. And they do undoubtedly work better together, Fedyor fighting right-handed and Ivan fighting left. They cover each other’s weak sides, learn to anticipate each other’s moves, and…

It’s a deeply inconvenient fact of life that when you are a Heartrender, and are exquisitely sensitive to pulse rates, you notice when yours starts going consistently haywire around certain people. Especially when, the year they turn eighteen, they are assigned to room together. The Little Palace is spacious, but not enough for every Grisha to have his or her own room, and since they’re no longer children, they’re not expected to share with the entire class. So Fedyor and Ivan end up in a garret room of their very own, and it is here, to his extreme consternation, that the next phase of Fedyor’s torment re: Ivan begins.

It is difficult to share a small room with Ivan and not want to look at him, and unless he is much mistaken, Ivan always seems to be concentrating a little too hard on his books whenever Fedyor is changing clothes. Fedyor is self-aware enough by this point to know that he prefers men, but he has absolutely no idea as to Ivan. Do they do this sort of thing in Chernast, or does it distract from arm-wrestling bears and shooting drüskelle? Ivan is so constantly unwilling to admit any kind of weakness or effeminacy that Fedyor figures gloomily he’s just doomed to suffer in silence. Naturally.

Except then both of them start rejecting any other romantic overtures, and they even go to the Summer Fete dance together, and Fedyor is taken aback when Zoya Nazyalensky asks bluntly the next day, “So, you and Ivan? Really?”

“What?” Fedyor is aware that Zoya and Ivan cordially hate each other, though she and Fedyor have always gotten on. “We’re not – Zoya, it’s not like that!”

He pauses.

“At least,” he adds guiltily. “It’s not like that as far as we’ve said?”

Zoya gives him a look silently agreeing that for the sake of their friendship, they will never mention Fedyor’s terrible taste in men again, though that doesn’t mean she has to like it. As for her, she’s pining after Kirigan, as almost all Grisha do at some point. Fedyor did so himself – the Black General is gorgeous, all right, shoot him – but he cares about nothing except finding the mythical Sun Summoner and engaging in a busy schedule of brooding even more intense than Ivan’s. Ivan, for that matter, seems to have struck it off with him, as Kirigan always values talent, and Fedyor has to fight down an unbecoming surge of jealousy. It’s not like they’re something. Not really.

(Though not for lack of wanting.)

After that, an even stranger thing happens, which is that people start assuming that Fedyor and Ivan are, in fact, a couple. Fedyor gets asked how his boyfriend is doing (sometimes sardonically, sometimes in a tone that turns genuinely surprised when he hastens to correct them) and he minds it less and less. Of course, for his part, Ivan is utterly oblivious. They’re sitting in a sunny hallway one day, Ivan tolerantly letting Fedyor play with his hair (though he keeps it military-short and it’s not like there’s that much of it) when Genya Safin walks by, glances at them archly, and says, “You know, Ivan, you’re much nicer now that you’re going out with him.”

Ivan turns such a deep shade of purple that Fedyor’s afraid he’s going to blow a gasket. “What?!” he splutters. “We are not – we are not – we are not going out! Never! I don’t – what are you talking – I don’t even like him!”

Fedyor’s lip quivers, despite himself. “Come on,” he says, failing to make it entirely lighthearted, wounded deeper than he wants to admit. “You don’t mean that, right?”

Ivan turns to him, flustered. “No,” he says convulsively. “Don’t look sad. Don’t look at me like that. Shh. Of course I like you.”

Fedyor brightens.

Genya gives them an obnoxiously knowing look and walks away.

By now, they’re twenty-one, old enough to be properly deployed as soldiers to the front, and Fedyor can’t help but thinking about where Ivan is, what he’s doing, if he’s all right, whenever they’re apart. He doesn’t like it, it feels wrong and unnatural, they always did better side by side anyway. Finally, they both get back to the Little Palace after a grueling campaign of many months away, Ivan against the Fjerdans and Fedyor against the Shu Han. They see each other, and it’s like lightning, rooting them to the ground. They’re dusty, dirty, banged up, bruised and bloody, but they know as a simple truth, beyond any doubt or questioning, that Fedyor will be coming to Ivan’s room tonight, and that Ivan will sit up and wait for him.

And that, therefore, is what happens. Fedyor can barely concentrate on washing up and fetching supper because he is so fixated on the knowledge of what’s coming later. He goes through the motions, barely hears his friends, barely tastes what he’s eating. He scarcely manages to wait until it’s dark. Then he gets up, slips through the corridors – they no longer bunk together, but he knows the way – and reaches the door. Fights a final attack of nerves, about how long he’s been waiting and how it might go wrong – then knocks.

“It’s open,” Ivan calls from inside, his voice dark with wanting. Of course it is.

Fedyor steps inside, and looks at him. After all this time, it feels like he should make a speech, have something more grand to say, or perhaps even an I-told-you-so. He doesn’t get around to any of that. He can’t stand it. Instead he shucks his kefta in a quick, practiced movement. Runs across the room, and climbs, claws, into Ivan’s arms.

Their kiss is rough and wet and wild, mouths open, teeth dragging, tongues scraping, trying to get as close as they possibly can, and then closer. Ivan’s hands, deft and eager, rough with calluses, spread across Fedyor’s arms and shoulders, the neat muscled column of his torso. “You should have let me do that,” he scolds between kisses, evidently referring to the business of undressing Fedyor. “I’ve been waiting long enough.”

“You’ve been waiting long enough – ?!” Fedyor Kaminsky really does love this man, but Saints help him, he is dense. “You could have said something!”

Ivan looks at him with pure wickedness in his eyes. “I thought I just did.”

Fedyor groans, grabs Ivan’s head to kiss him again, and they roll down onto the covers together, tearing at the remaining clothes in their way. It’s raw and agonized and real, this coming together, this needing, this consummation and completion, and afterward, as Fedyor lies gasping on Ivan’s chest and Ivan sleepily strokes his hair with a tenderness that seems totally inconceivable to anyone who has met him at literally any other moment, Fedyor knows, in some way, he will never truly leave this room again. That he’s here. Home.

(Later, Fedyor finds out that Ivan actually asked his boss for help with his romantic quandary, and Kirigan’s advice was evidently so terrible that Ivan decided to just give up and go for it with Fedyor rather than trying that again. Even if Aleksander Kirigan is the Black General, the Shadow Summoner, the most powerful Grisha in the world, Ivan does not intend to let him forget it. They are all fortunate that Aleksander thinks it’s funny.)

#ivan x fedyor #heartrender husbands #henchmen deserve happiness too okay #<<is my tag for them #oops now i ship it #mearcatsreturns #ask

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magicaththedemigod · 4 years ago

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an extensive analysis of “the song of achilles” by madeline miller

Or: things I noticed and couldn't keep to myself.

Because I just finished reading it and have many feelings about it, I've decided to compile all of them into a very lengthy Tumblr post.

This will be broken up into three parts:

1. Foreshadowing

2. Dramatic (and regular) Irony

3. Fatal Flaws

1. Foreshadowing

Miller does such a delightful job with foreshadowing. The number of quotes I could be spitting at you right now... but I digress. The main job of foreshadowing, especially in a tragedy like "The Song of Achilles," is to set the characters up for their tragedy.

What I like most about how Miller goes about it in this book is that she doesn't attempt to pull a shocking twist out of nowhere; instead, she takes an approach which allows the reader to fully marinate in their despair.

For example, this quote:

Achilles shook his head, impatiently. "But this was a greater punishment for her. It was not fair of them." "There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles," Chiron said. "And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?"

Let's take a moment and unpack some of this. For context, this is a conversation between Patroclus, Achilles, and their mentor Chiron. They're discussing the tale of Heracles, who's driven to madness and ends up killing his own wife and kids.

From reading the book, (SPOILER ALERT) you know that Achilles' own pride and honor end up forcing Patroclus to impersonate him in order to save the Greek army, and in doing so is killed by Hector. The fact that Chiron directs this question, "And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?" to Achilles, who is left behind after Patroclus' death is such delightful foreshadowing that I almost threw the book across the room when I first read it.

Achilles slumps into such a depression after Patroclus dies (really, after he kills Patroclus with his own fatal flaw), that he even loses the ability to care about his fame or honor anymore. He feels the greater grief, so to speak.

Even after he dies, Patroclus is left behind, unable to rest properly because they never put his name on the tomb. In that sense, Patroclus is then the one left behind, experiencing loneliness and grief.

The book is full of little hints like this, and that's part of why it's almost torture to read as someone who knows how the Iliad goes. As I said before: the foreshadowing in this book is meant to have the reader in pain from the beginning because you know nothing is going to work out in the end.

2. Dramatic (and regular) Irony

Yes, that's right. I'm about to rip into your soul.

Probably one of the biggest parts of classical Greek myths is dramatic irony (the audience knowing something the characters don't). In plays, the ending is almost always announced before the play begins. In fact, the audience most likely already knows the story from previous tellings or just general knowledge. It makes sense that it would be one of the biggest players in "The Song of Achilles."

As usual, let's start with a quote:

His eyes opened. "Name one hero who was happy." I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back. "You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward. "I can't." "I know. They never let you be famous and happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret." "Tell me." I loved it when he was like this. "I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it." "Why me?" "Because you're the reason. Swear it." "I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes. "I swear it," he echoed. We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned. "I feel like I could eat the world raw."

First of all: cute. Second of all: wow, so much pain.

As you know, Achilles is the opposite of happy at the end of the book (well, maybe after they die, but we'll get to that later). Though he swears it here with Patroclus, the two of them make decisions that ultimately lead to their downfall: Achilles decides to abandon the Greeks after they slighted his honor, Patroclus decides to help them even if it means risking his life, and Achilles lets him do it.

So let's talk about dramatic irony. The irony here is that you know, maybe just from this exchange alone, that Achilles isn't going to be the first happy hero. You know there is a war coming, know that Achilles and his famous heel will get himself killed. You might also know at this point that Patroclus will die first and send Achilles spiraling into grief before that happens.

It's painful, truly. Achilles spends his last days in utter agony, wanting to die but unable to kill himself, and Patroclus can only watch on as a ghost (spirit?). Even when Achilles does die and his ashes are put into their urn (seriously, how did any scholar ever think they weren't lovers?), they still have to wait to be reunited.

But there's still more. Consider these lines:

Hector's eyes are wide, but he will run no longer. He says, "Grant me this. Give my body to my family, when you have killed me." Achilles makes a sound like choking. "There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw."

Sound familiar? That's right: "I will kill you and eat you raw" sounds an awful lot like "I feel like I could eat the world raw," doesn't it? Another parallel from Miller: one from a time of happiness, the other from a time of extreme grief. However painful it is, I really live for connections like that.

And I've got one more for you:

Achilles shook his head. "Never. He is brave and strong, but that is all. He would break against Hector like water on a rock. So. It is me, or no one." "You will not do it." I tried not to let it sound like begging. "No." He was quiet a moment. "But I can see it. That's the strange thing. Like in a dream. I can see myself throwing the spear, see him fall. I walk up to the body and stand over it." Dread rose in my chest. I took a breath, forced it away. "And then what?" "That's the strangest of all. I look down at his blood and know my death is coming. But in the dream I do not mind. What I feel, most of all, is relief." "Do you think it can be prophecy?" The questions seemed to make him self-conscious. He shook his head. "No. I think it is nothing at all. A daydream." I forced my voice to match his in lightness. "I'm sure you're right. After all, Hector hasn't done anything to you."

See where I'm going with this? I don't think I need to explain this one.

3. Fatal Flaws

That's right, one of the most essential pieces for a tragedy: hamartia. For those who might not know, hamartia is the fatal flaw that ultimately leads to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine. In every single piece of classical greek writing, if the story is a tragedy, the main character will have a fatal flaw that makes it so.

Take Achilles:

I looked at the stone of his face, and despaired. “If you love me-”

“No!” His face was stiff with tension. “I cannot! If I yield, Agamemnon can dishonor me whenever he wishes. The kings will not respect me, nor the men!” He was breathless, as though he had run far. “Do you think I wish them all to die? But I cannot. I cannot! I will not let them take this from me!”

You probably already know what his fatal flaw is: pride. He needs the fame, needs the glorious memory of his deeds to live on forever, so badly that he is willing to sacrifice his life and what might’ve been a fulfilling and long life with Patroclus out of the limelight. His fatal flaw is what spurs each of his actions in the later half of the book, including the moment where he decides to leave the Greeks to their deaths for slandering him.

Even Patroclus has a fatal flaw: his love for Achilles.

That night I lay in bed beside Achilles. His face is innocent, sleep-smoothed and sweetly boyish. I love to see it. This is his truest self, earnest and guileless, full of mischief but without malice. He is lost in Agamemnon and Odysseus’ wily double meanings, their lies and games of power. They have confounded him, tied him to a stake and baited him. I stroke the soft skin of his forehead. I would untie him if I could. If he would let me.

Though riding into the center of the fighting, especially dressed as Achilles, will make Patroclus the prime target, he decides to do it anyway. And not out of fear for Achilles’s life; he knows how important his pride and reputation is to him, and out of desperation will do anything to keep Achilles from being devastated when it doesn’t work out for him.

(Honestly, this is the part where I start to hate Achilles for doing this to Patroclus... it’s like he doesn’t even consider Patroclus his equal and does everything without consulting him.)

Of course, Agamemnon has a fatal flaw as well. He is like the mirror image of Achilles, so proud and stubborn, righteous and arrogant. However, he is the darker image, the one that revels in taking things by force and, of course, raping women like Briseis. He serves as a poignant foil for Achilles, highlighting all the ways the traits they share can easily become corrupted. It’s part of why this novel works so well.

I hope you all enjoyed this book as much as I did. Truthfully, I did have a few problems with it, but I wanted to trying picking it apart anyway. And if you haven’t read the song of achilles... what are you doing reading these spoilers??

#why can you visibly see where i get tired #achilles #greek myth aesthetic #analysis #patroclus #song of achilles #greece #greek posts #not the language though #this is so long #effort #first time ive ever wanted to write an essay #dark academia #dark acadamia aesthetic #this took me three days #greek mythology #iliad #homer

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amphxtrite · 4 years ago

Text

sirius black x fem!reader

warnings: swearing, grammar/spelling mistakes

summary: Sirius Black meets his soulmate.

word count: 1.4k

enjoy <3

___________________________________

Every child had heard the stories of soulmates. The one person that was designed perfectly for you, and how a mark would appear on your thirteenth birthday indicating how you would meet.

Because of his upbringing, Sirius was scared of love, scared to be rejected or unwanted by that person, but once the soul mark appeared on his 13th birthday, just like in the stories, a lot of that fear melted away as he waited anxiously for his perfect match. He did feel though, that he had one of the strangest soulmate marks ever. While his friend’s marks were on their wrist, their shoulders or their arms. Sirius’s mark was on his stomach, in something of a small blob on his abdomen. It had confused him to no end since he was a kid. His younger self was happy to even have a soulmate, but how they would meet, forever remained a mystery to him.

“Pads, wake up we’ve got to get moving!” James calls out, ripping the blanket off of the dark haired boy's body. “Ah bloody hell James, what time is it?” Sirius yells back sleepily at the shock of cool air taking over him. James rolls his eyes. “It's already 8:30 Sirius, you’re going to be late!” Sirius turns to look over at the brunette and sure enough, he’s already fully dressed, “Oh shit.” Sirius mutters to himself, racing to pull on his shirt and robes. He was very grateful that he never had to show his mark often, as it hid behind his thick sweater and robes, he didn’t know to much about how you could tell someone was your soulmate and he didn’t want just anyone trying to convince him they were his match, that would be awful. Sirius rubs a bit of toothpaste on his teeth, deep in thought, before running back out and following James to breakfast, gently tapping his soulmate mark with his finger, a habit that had accumulated over the years.

“Not bad Pads you’ve still got 15 minutes to eat.” Remus jokes as Sirius sits beside him, face red and drawing deep breaths. “Can it Moony, why didn’t you wake me up earlier?” Sirius sighs bumping Remus’s shoulder lightly. “We did! You just kept murmuring for us to sod off.” Remus begins to laugh and Sirius silently turns to his breakfast, eating in comfortable silence as Peter and Remus talk about notes, while James talks with Lily. He hears a voice start to get closer.

“Emi, get back here!” He hears a girl call out, turning towards the source he looks down to see a brown and white crup puppy running towards him, moments later he sees a y/h haired girl slide onto her knees and grab the puppy gently.

“Gotcha!” you call out victoriously with a laugh, holding Emi. Your laugh turns into panic though as you continue to slide forwards, not knowing how to stop. Placing a hand up to shield your face, you slide into the boy in front of you. Sirius just registers the mark on your hand a second before you hit him, the entire table shakes. “Ow,” the both of you mutter. You felt like you’d slid right into a wall. Looking down, you inspected Emi, she smiled and yapped at you. Judging her to be alright, you look up and lock eyes with a pair of handsome dark orbs that made you feel weak. Suddenly, one of your hands felt weird, kind of tingly, the one with your soulmate mark... Quickly glancing down you notice your hand is now your natural skin tone. “No way!” you murmur. Sirius looks at you confused before feeling his own stomach tingle, he lifts his shirt up a little and notices his mark was gone too, His eyes reflected his shock, widening to the size of saucers.

You turn your gaze away from your hand “I’m uh- sorry about that.” you say casually, referencing how you’d just rammed into him. “D-don’t worry about it, I’ve just met my soulmate, I couldn’t care less.” He says grinning broadly and staring into your beautiful e/c eyes, “Soulmate.” You say, trying the word in your mouth, “I quite like that, but let’s start again, I’m y/n l/n.” Your lips turn up into a grin and you extend your hand. “Sirius Black, at your service.” He says grabbing your hand and kissing your knuckles. “Oh, what a gentleman.” You state sarcastically, but you can’t help the light blush coating your cheeks. “Only for you darling.” Sirius teases enjoying the red look on his soulmates face, although it would look better underneath- Sirius is snapped out of his thoughts by your crup puppy, using your distracted state to wriggle out of your grasp and leap into the gryffindor’s lap and place her front paws on his chest. “Well hello there Emi.” Sirius greets picking up the pup in his large hands and scratching behind her ears, smiling as her tails wagged side to side. You finally stand again and take in the scene in front of you, your soulmate, Sirius Black, smiling and your puppy licking his face affectionately.

“How’d you get the little girl? I thought we weren’t allowed to have dogs here.” Sirius asks, turning his attention back to you. “Oh, Hagrid found a whole litter of them and needed some help, so Dumbledore gave permission to a couple students to take care of them.” You replied happily.

“Padfoot what’s going on over there?” James calls out teasingly.

“Well, I’ve just met my soulmate James so I’d appreciate it if you’d shut your trap.” Sirius says annoyed.

James only smiles. “Welcome to the family miss y/n” James laughs out “Take care of our little Sirius.” You giggle at James’s comment and take a seat next to Sirius, holding Emi to your chest, feeding her little bits of dog food. Sirius feels a new warmth erupt from his chest having you next to him, and he turns to face you. “You know y/n, we may be soulmates, but I don’t know you that well yet, wanna hang out after classes today in the astronomy tower?” Sirius asks excitedly. “I’d love too, Sirius, as long as you're not secretly some serial killer or something.” you laugh jokingly. The rest of the Marauders join in laughing with you, you’re glad he has such nice friends. Sirius takes a deep breath and decides to take a chance, sliding his hand over to one of yours on the bench, and placing his pinky finger over yours. He turns over to you nonchalantly and sees a dopey grin and a pink blush on your face. He smirks proudly.

Students were starting to file out of the hall and Sirius knew his time was up, he stood up with you and handed Emi back, hearing a smile whine come from the pup’s mouth, he smiles gently and leans forward pressing a kiss to the dog’s head. “I’ll see you two lovelies after classes alright.” He says leaning back up. “Yup, see you then Siri,” you say, giving him a quick side hug, Sirius takes a deep breath of your perfume and he can definitely say he’s found his new favourite scent, a swirl of chocolate and vanilla and something he can only describe as smelling like home. He inhales again and releases you, realizing something.

“Hey wait a second, you have Charms first period too right?” Sirius suddenly remembers seeing you before. “Yeah I do, you wanna walk with me?” You ask him, extending your hand out again. Sirius smiles, takes it into his hand and kisses it again, before wrapping it in his own and heading to the East tower with you, only stopping to give Emi to Hagrid when you spotted him talking to professor McGonagall. “Thank yeh y/n, I’ll take good care of er’ until you can pick er’ up again!” Hagrid booms, you smile and wave at the professors and you pup.

You make your way into the Charms room and sit next to Sirius, pulling out your parchment and quill, you begin to tune in the lesson, Sirius on the other hand doesn’t bother listening, instead deciding to focus on more important things, like gazing at you. He doesn’t even realize you’ve noticed until he spots the familiar glow on your cheeks. Smirking again he takes one of your hands into his own and holds it against his chest. You could feel yourself melting at this and you don’t even bother with the lesson anymore, captivated by the one the universe made perfect for you, thanking whatever deity there was above for the man sitting beside you right now, gazing into your eyes and making you feel like the only girl in the world.

#harry potter imagine #sirius x y/n #sirius black #sirius black imagine #soulmate au #marauders imagine #marauders fic #crup puppy #sirius black x reader #sirius black x y/n #harry potter fluff #fanfic #harry potter

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seijorhi · 4 years ago

Note

Lev pretending to be innocent in front of the reader but is actually her stalker with those cat eyes. He asks help from her and they gradually get closer until he gets her all alone in her apartment under his care

Absolutely! Lev is prime stalker material 👀 poor reader

Lev Haiba x Reader

TW stalking, manipulation

Harmless

“Don’t you think he’s just a little… I don’t know, creepy?” your best friend murmurs in a pointed tone, stirring the sugar into her coffee.

You bite back a sigh - it’s a conversation you’ve had countless times before and it always ends the same way. You defend Lev, chastise your friend for her paranoia and distrustful nature and eventually she relents with an unconvincing ‘if you say so’.

“He’s harmless, honestly - Lev wouldn’t hurt a fly and he’s actually very sweet once you get to know him. I don’t know why you’re so against him. He’s a good friend.”

She huffs, taking a slow sip of her drink before she replies. “Well for one, he’s like an overgrown shadow. I swear, every time we’re out together we always seem to just magically run into him, all big and looming, and he’s always staring at you like he wants to gobble you up - just you by the way, he outright ignores the rest of us peasants - it’s like he’s obsessed with you or something, and-”

She keeps talking, but honestly you kind of zone out a little bit. You can’t judge her too harshly. She’s always been protective of you, ever since you guys were kids, you suppose it’s only natural for her to be wary of Lev.

And she’s not wrong per se. You do have the strangest habit of running into Lev around town, but it’s how you met, after all - quite literally running into the 6’5” giant as you were exiting the exact same coffee shop you were currently sitting in.

Spilling your piping hot coffee all over somebody else’s sweater doesn’t usually have the makings of a burgeoning friendship but Lev had been so sweet about the whole thing, blushing and bowing, shooting apology after apology (despite the fact that it was mostly your fault) that you couldn’t help but offer to buy his drink in compensation for ruining his morning - and more importantly his clothes.

Lev, grinning brightly, had agreed with a single condition - that you joined him. And really, after pouring hot coffee all over him, it was the least you could do.

“Hey, are you even paying attention to me?!”

You jerk a little, shaking yourself out of your reverie to find your friend glaring at you. It lacks any real heat though, and she just rolls her eyes and gives a long suffering sigh. “I’m worried about you, Y/N. Didn’t you say that some of your stuff has been going missing lately?”

An old picture of you and some friends on vacation, a necklace you used to wear religiously and you could swear that you’re missing one of your favourite bras and some panties, but… sometimes stuff like that just gets misplaced - it’s not like you’re exactly the tidiest person around.

Still, you can’t help the way that your brows furrow at her implication, “I said I misplaced some things. Are you honestly suggesting that Lev broke into my apartment to steal that stuff?” you ask with a snicker. The very idea of the silver haired giant sneaking around your tiny apartment is ridiculous!

Your friend’s pointed silence speaks volumes.

“Oh, come on! He’s just a friend - a little excitable maybe,” and very affectionate, always swallowing you up in tight hugs, fingers constantly seeking out yours - but somehow you don’t think that part will help your case, “but he’s just a big softie.”

She scoffs, folding her arms over her chest. She doesn’t speak for a long moment, but when she does, she reaches across the table to grab your hand in hers, squeezing it lightly. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m being a jealous, judgemental bitch because I don’t like the idea of anyone else coming to steal you away from me,” she smiles self deprecatingly, but there’s an real edge of worry in her eyes that makes your stomach twist, “but you’re the most important thing to me. I don’t want you getting hurt, and I get bad vibes from that guy.”

You open your mouth to retort, but she just shakes her head, “Just… just promise me you’ll be careful around him, alright?”

Wordlessly, you nod.

As much as you try and dismiss her concerns, as days pass you begin to wonder if maybe she isn’t wrong.

Not about Lev of course - he might be a little over exuberant but you know he doesn’t mean any harm by it - but you think, well… you’re starting to think that maybe somebody’s following you.

At first it’s just the tickling sensation on the back of your neck. When you run to the corner store on your lunch break to pick up a snack for the afternoon a shiver runs down your spine as you get the strangest feeling that somebody’s staring at you - you can feel the weight of their gaze burning into your back, but whenever you turn there’s nobody there.

There’s never anybody there.

But… didn’t you shut the door to your closet before you left for work that morning? You could have sworn that the window to your second storey bedroom was locked.

It comes to a head one night after work. You leave later than you normally would, having lost track of time trying to get some last minute emails off and by the time you actually get out the door it’s already dark outside and it’s pouring down with rain.

You’re halfway home when you get that prickling feeling on your skin, and your gut tightens uncomfortably. Tentatively you slow, shooting a furtive glance over your shoulder. The streets of the city are normally busy at this time of the night, but the rain’s driven people away - there’s not a soul in sight, including any wannabe stalkers.

The tight grip on your heart eases and you force yourself to relax. You’re imagining things now, you think with a shake of your head and a breathless laugh.

Nobody’s out to get you, you’re fine.

Except the prickling sensation on the back of your neck doesn’t go away, and with every step you take the discomfort in your gut becomes harder and harder to ignore. Fingers flit anxiously at your side, your grip tightening on the handle of your umbrella. The rain’s loud as it crashes around you, but as you turn down the music coming from your headphones you swear that you can hear heavy footfalls behind you.

All it would take is another quick glance to confirm your suspicions. It could just be another person out in the rain trying to make their way home, same as you. It could be all your head, paranoia brought about by your friend’s worries. But fear has clawed its way up your spine - it’s late and you’re tired and scared, rational thought has left the building and you don’t think about any of that before dropping your umbrella and taking off into a sprint.

You don’t look back.

You don’t stop until you're back in the safety of your apartment with the door locked, blinds shut and the deadbolt in place.

You’re still trembling twenty minutes later when there’s a knock at your front door.

Your heart leaps into your throat at the sound, your entire body tensing, and for a single moment you debate not answering the door, but… you let out a sigh, shaking your head. You’re being ridiculous.

A quick glance through the peephole sets your heart at ease. Standing in the hallway dressed in a slightly damp black overcoat, his silvery-grey hair dusted with rain, is Lev.

Relief floods through you as you quickly work at the locks, flicking open the deadbolt.

“Hey, Lev,” you murmur somewhat sheepishly, stepping back to let him come inside.

His green, catlike eyes light up at the sight of you, and he doesn’t waste a moment before leaning down and enveloping you in a tight hug - never mind his wet coat. You let yourself relax into the embrace - the comforting warmth as he wraps himself around you and strokes your back. “Y/N! I’m so glad you’re home! I know I’m kinda stopping by unannounced and all, but I was just on my way…” he trails off as he pulls back slightly, eyes narrowing as they flicker across your face.

“Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he murmurs, his hands still entwined around your waist.

You smile tightly, biting down on your bottom lip. Should you tell him? There’s still some part of you that thinks maybe it’s all in your head, that you’re working yourself up for no good reason, but what if you’re not? What if there is somebody who’s-

There’s an insistent tug at your waist and your eyes dart back up to find Lev’s frown deepening. “Something’s wrong, tell me.”

A blush finds its way to your cheeks as you carefully unwind yourself from his hold and make your way back further into your living room, “I- you’ll think I’m being stupid I guess, or paranoid, but…”

“But?” he prompts.

You take a deep breath, fingers twisting in front of you, “I think that somebody might be… following me?” you phrase it almost as a question, carefully watching his face for any sign that he might start laughing at you. But he doesn’t - Lev’s features are perfectly blank as he stares back at you, and you rush to fill the sudden heavy silence that falls between the two of you. “I know it sounds insane, but my friend got me worried the other day, and things have been going missing from my place and I’m almost positive that somebody followed me home tonight and-”

“Hey,” he says, quickly stepping forward to close the distance between you. He reaches for your hand with a soft smile and you let him take it, offering a shaking smile back when his thumb smooths over the back of your palm. “I believe you. You don’t need to be scared, I’m here for you.”

You nod, swallowing down your nerves once more.

“Do you… do you want me to stay tonight? Or at least for a few hours, you just look so fragile and frightened, I hate the thought of leaving you like this.”

Lev’s eyes show nothing but earnest concern as he studies you with a pout, and this time when your lips curl into a smile it's with genuine gratitude for your friend.

You should say no - it’s hardly fair for you to impose on him over something you’re not even sure is real, but… “Actually, that sounds good, if you don’t have plans of course - I don’t want to spoil your night or anything,” you mutter with a blush.

Lev just shakes his head with a soft laugh, “Of course not. You’re my only concern tonight, angel.”

You try not to let the relief show on your face too much. You’ll feel better knowing he’s there with you, and if nothing else you know he’ll take your mind off of things. It’s just what you need tonight - a friend. “Thank you,” you say warmly, dropping his hand so you can make your way back into the kitchen. “I was actually just about to start dinner, have you eaten yet? I was thinking pasta, but let me know if you feel like something else.”

He watches you for a moment as you open the fridge and bend over to rummage inside. “Pasta sounds great,” he calls back, shedding his damp jacket and making his way over to hang it off the coat rack by the front door.

Busy in the kitchen, you’re none the wiser to the soft click of locks turning, the deadbolt sliding back into place.

#yandere haikyuu #yandere lev #yandere lev x reader #yandere lev haiba #yandere lev haiba x reader #lev haiba #yandere hq #yandere imagines #lev haiba x reader #request #tw stalking #my writing

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athys-obelia · 4 years ago

Text

of swords and rubies

synopsis: on athanasia de alger obelia's eighteenth birthday, she sits in the ruby palace awaiting her father's present - a sweet little mandate sentencing her to death. the news his personal guard arrives with, though, is quite the different from what she expects.

character/s: athanasia de alger obelia, claude de alger obelia, felix robane

part: one / ?

warning/s: mentions of death / execution, poisoning, tlp!claude is a shit dad, tlp!felix supremacy

|•| ruby palace |•| 10:45 am |•|

"a visitor from the emperor's place, your highness."

lilian york's voice has always carried the same gentleness. for as long as she can remember, athanasia has heard softness, music, safety, in lily - the voice of a mother. the realisation, long overdue, hits her as she inquires after her mysterious guest. i've never addressed lily as such, have i?

the brunette tries for a smile. "it is his majesty's personal guard, princess, sir felix from the robane duchy. i have hannah showing him to the visitors' lounge - perhaps the knight comes bearing good news?"

the blonde princess smiles, nodding hopefully. it's all she can do for lily, she guesses, the woman who cared for her like one of her own. just as lily's smile never dimmed once during the past eighteen years, athanasia supposes she must now return the favour.

but lily never saw her father's eyes that night.

lily hadn't seen his stance harden at the mere sight of her.

the malice, the poison in claude de alger obelia's voice wasn't directed at lily.

so lily couldn't possibly know. for all athanasia knows claude could be in his study, spinning a roulette wheel to decide how to have her executed. he'd want her gone by the earliest, she assumes, probably before jennette can wake and intercede for her - or evidence is found towards the actual culprit.

either way, if the least she could do was comfort lily somewhat with a little, hopeful smile, then the smile would be priority.

|•| ruby palace |•| 11:00 am |•|

"sir," athanasia greets, recoiling as the knight grins at her. she'd heard stories of the atmosphere in the imperial palace, the deceptive, snake-like nature of noble court - surely, with a father so prominent in both politics and obelia's military, felix robane was one to be vary of.

and - being her father's personal guard would require being similarly ruthless and cunning, would it not? this smiley knight could always be the one poisoning her father against her behind their backs.

"to what do i owe this pleasure?"

the redhead attempts lightening the mood with another bright grin. "greetings to the star of the obelian empire. may the gods' blessings be with you, princess. today, i have come as a messenger regarding his majesty's wish that you join him for breakfast-"

"-wh, what? no, i... i'm not going anywhere with you."

felix robane's natural smile falls. "what is it, princess?"

athanasia steps backwards in defense as the knight tries comforting her, a trembling hand raised to cover her mouth. "y-you can tell his majesty i won't...won't be joining him."

"but, princess-"

not daring to move her eyes from the redhead, athanasia reaches for an hourglass resting on the mantle beside her, holding it up in defense. "go back. go and tell the emperor to send me the death warrant himself. there's no need to build such a roundabout way of-"

felix grimaces. "you may be misunderstanding the situation, prin-"

"-don't 'princess' me. if he has the guts, have my father tell me his decision himself. you can't force me to leave. i won't, i won't be led out of my home with you pretending as if everything is fine."

the knight holds up his hands in surrender. "you have the higher status of the two of us, your highness, i wouldn't dare pushing you into anything you do not like. i'm afraid you cannot refute the emperor's word, however. but...but if your highness has questions, i can promise to answer with complete honesty."

"how can i trust you?"

felix taps his chin in thought. "as a knight, my value is measured not by my skill, but the trust put in me by those i am pledged to. my oath is to the obelian emperor. you, princess, are his majesty's heir, so as along as your commands do not undermine the emperor's, you are included in the oath."

athanasia blinks, studying the knight. he seems to be curling into himself so as to not be percieved as a threat. she watches his careful movements, irate. "i read a book once..." she starts, feeling self conscious all of sudden. do i sound like a madwoman?

felix robane nods eagerly. "i was told the princess was an avid reader."

she flushes, glaring at her lap. "...anyway, in the book, the king's sister married a traitor, and because they were technically royalty, he couldn't just kill them under charges of treason. so instead, the king had their food poisoned."

athanasia watches the subtext register on the knight's face. "your highness...no, i- his majesty has no such thing planned. i can assure you - the matter is actually quite the opposite."

"...is it?"

he stares at his lap before looking up at her determinedly. "i can't say i know how your highness feels about your father, but...he needs you right now." felix sighs softly, "as you know, her highness the princess jennette hasn't yet regained consciousness. this makes you his majesty's most favourable heir."

athanasia stares at the hourglass in her hand before setting it down. interest piqued, she eyes the fidgeting knight. "why would you bring this up, sir robane, and to me of all people? is the emperor perhaps...ill?"

the look in the redhead's eyes is more than enough confirmation. athanasia grips the arm of her seat. "he has been having the strangest migraines ever since...well, a little after your debut, actually. except lately, these headaches seem to be weakening him. quite a lot."

a cold sweat creeping up her neck, athanasia downs a glass of water before turning to the distressed knight. "i assume you want my assistance in hiding this from the nobles. since jennette isn't here."

"essentially, yes." he nods once more. "with all the commotion surrounding princess jennette, both the nobles and commoners are watching the palace diligently. the factions are too divided - of course, a large portion of the nobles support princess jennette as your father's heir, most of them being blood purists, while an equally large believe you are more competent, having been raised in the palace. regrettably, it isn't just the nobles - we have a delegation arriving at the palace soon enough to settle matters regarding the southern territory. we cannot afford weakening his majesty's image, not right now."

her eyes flicker to the obelian coat of arms on felix's shoulder, and the sigil of house robane embroidered on his cloak. "i don't suppose i have much of choice in the matter - but since urgency of the situation affects my country, i doubt i would've refused anyway. but, sir felix..." she pauses, studying his expression, "my father's palace doesn't garuntee my safety. so i must call on your oath as a knight now."

"of course, your highness." hesitantly, as if he held a china doll in his hands, felix murmurs, "it can be a chance to get closer to his majesty, too. er - that is, if only your highness wishes it to be."

nodding, athanasia stares at her hands. "...perhaps."

|•| emperor's palace |•| 3:00 pm |•|

with her father's stare scrutinising her every move, she bows deeply in greeting.

his gaze is different, athanasia notices. the malice is gone. the hatred has dissipated.

now, as if she were a complicated math problem, claude de alger obelia stares her down, a spark of challenge alight in his eyes. "don't worry your head too much about it," he starts, "i haven't called you here for any special reason."

"...i see."

he tilts his head curiously, studying her reactions still. "oh? what's this? no declarations of love today? no pleading for attention? you're strangely quiet for someone so full of demands."

she fidgets with her dress, a deep red blooming on her cheeks in embarrassment. "i apologise if my words troubled your majesty."

claude nods slowly, eyes tracing her unkempt hair. "you overestimate yourself, princess."

athanasia inhales sharply. what does he want?

"felix's method of conveying information is a bit... exaggerated, at times," the blonde emperor says, watching her grimace under his stare, "i'm here to clear up any misunderstandings he may have unknowingly planted."

"ye, yes?"

claude's hand lands on his sheathed sword. athanasia blood freezes as he pulls it out, slowly, eyes not moving from hers. "i'm assuming you've been told of the council being held tomorrow. it will be your unofficial entrance into politics, so i hope there won't be any...mistakes. you'll need the nobility's support."

she nearly snorts. you wouldn't hesitate in burying anyone who dared look jennette in the eyes, i'm sure. still, athanasia tries smiling - lily always smiled whenever she was unsure of what to say, after all - and lets go of her skirt, nodding. "there won't be any."

the last time she spoke to her father, she'd known that whether or not he decided on mercy, she wouldn't be talking to him again. thus the courage to empty her heart, lighten her shoulders. now... now, athanasia didn't know what to think. how to act.

she flinches when he speaks, hands tracing the edge of the blade lightly. "do think this sword is important to me, athanasia?"

an odd warmth courses through her at the sound of her name. or was it because of the voice, the owner of the voice? she honestly couldn't tell. "your majesty..." athanasia swallows - what's the right answer? - "i would assume so. i'm no knight, of course...but, a sword is effective for both defense and offense in battle. and i hear your majesty's swordsmanship is unrivaled in obelia, so...yes, i think."

she watches claude draw in a long breath, staring at the weapon. "it's interesting that you think so. but at the end of the day, the sword is just another weapon, isn't it? i can always have better ones at the flick of my wrist."

"your...majesty?"

a drop of blood runs down the emperor's finger as he runs it along the edge of the blade. "it is useful, isn't it? at least...as long as i decide it is. a simple tool's value will always be decided by me, after all."

cold dread settles into athanasia's bones. "i...i see, sire."

nodding approvingly, claude de alger obelia places the beautiful sword in her hands. "happy birthday, princess."

#wmmap #sbapod #who made me a princess #suddenly became a princess one day #claude de alger obelia #athanasia de alger obelia #anastacius de alger obelia #felix robane #felix robain

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whump-town · 4 years ago

Text

A Wonderful Life

Why. Does. This. Fic. Just. Keep. Going.

I swear, the next chapter is the LAST chapter. I mean it.

Warning: talk of a miscarriage

Part one. Part two. Part three.

Haley and Hotch were not the kind of couple that managed to get pregnant on accident. They tried for years, long before law school graduations, years with the district attorney, the academy, Seattle… Hotch was worming his way into a nice cozy profiling job when Haley got their first positive test. Dave was still around back then and he’d been overjoyed-- tripping over his own excitement at just the opportunity to see so much emotion out of his prodigy.

Two months later Dave was sleeping on the couch, the future ex-Mrs. Rossi in their bed, when he got the call. He’ll never forget how quickly Aaron worked to compartmentalize everything happening. Dave could hear him softly sniffling, rubbing at his face as he took back slip-ups. Brushing away any comfort Dave might try to provide. Considering the loss he just suffered as nothing-- not a baby, not even cells. Just a stupid, silly idea.

Haley stopped trying to getting him to grieve with her.

They stopped trying after that.

It’s entirely an accident. A slap to the face to the years they spent with their lives measured out on calendars, going to doctors, and throwing money at her uterus and his sperm to magically make them physically compatible. They had both grown desperate but in opposing ways.

He could not rest. Spent the nights tossing and turning.

Haley needed a child, wanted one with all her might. To love it and teach it all the best parts of the world. She wanted to see how something good and kind could come from the two of them. She held him close and imagined a child with his annoying curiosity and her stubborn streak. Of coming to greet him at the door and squint her eyes and inform him of the mischief his child has been into. So that he might spend hours telling that baby silly stories, catching them up way past bedtime having fallen asleep to his nth retelling of how they fell in love.

The announcement could not have come at a better time.

Haley had been at home when Jason Gideon made the call in Boston that would nearly kill her husband. She hadn’t felt it, no cosmic hand wrapping tightly around her heart to tell her that the other half of her soul, the only person she’s ever loved was in mortal peril. It had been Derek Morgan, standing numbly in an isolated hospital wing, watching her husband’s body be shocked back to life, having air forced into his lungs that had been her telling moment.

And there she was with the child she thought she might never have and a dying husband.

She put an expiration date on both their heads and waited. Prepared to bury her husband and lose the only part of him she has the ability to protect. But the days crawled by and she found herself listening to that little baby’s heartbeat, the same slow pace as Aaron’s. Neither died.

But Jack’s birth could only hold off Aaron’s inability to self-preserve minimally. He’d live to see his son’s birth and Haley was certain he’d get himself killed before Jack’s fifth birthday.

Jack’s developmental delays were a point of much dispute, having a lot to do with Hotch’s denial. Hotch had been the smallest in his class, in his age bracket until ninth grade-- spent years as skinny as a rail and not meeting healthy markers for children his age. Haley had, mercifully, bitten her tongue and hadn’t reminded him that why Jack is small and missing delays have nothing to do with why Hotch had. Jack isn’t being abused at home… he’s just autistic.

Their marriage, no matter how strongly they still loved each other, was going down the drain. The news of all this had been a cross of startling and... about as hard to miss as the broad side of a barn.

“Two is-- Two is a good age to get diagnosed.” Reid, like Emily and Morgan, mistook Hotch’s primary concern. Saw his disappointment, his unease and pinned it on Jack’s diagnosis. The autism. And Hotch had smiled, calmly allowing Reid a moment’s tangent to get out what he needs to say. To try and convince Hotch that autism isn’t the end of the world-- because Reid can’t handle it. If Hotch leaves, if Hotch disowns his own son-- the way Reid’s own father had not long after his own “off the books” diagnosis had been given-- he’s not sure he can handle that.

“Reid,” Hotch had softly, placed his hand on Reid’s arm. The faintest touch. “I love Jack. I’m-- I’m not the best father but…” He won’t leave. The autism he can handle, Jack’s always been Jack and that changes nothing but finally provides some answers. Some guidance where’d they had been left blind.

It felt like Hotch was never going to be given a second chance to prove himself wrong. They seemed to turn around and there George Foyet was. Knife in one hand leaving behind a zombified Hotch and Jack. They watched, unable to do anything to help. Jack wanted Hotch and only Hotch but it was like just seeing the boy physically hurt Hotch.

“He’s late.”

They all look forward to Wednesdays. The two hours that they have to just sit and relax-- to let Jack entertain them with his many interest and love for random things he finds on their desks to play with. So they don’t take too kindly to Hotch coming in late and stealing their Jack time.

Emily glances at the clock at the bottom of her computer screen and shakes her head. Her stomach sinks as she realizes that they’re not just late, they’re nearly forty-five minutes late. Hotch abides by a strict, self-imposed schedule one made of utmost importance by Jack’s own intermingled schedule. She rolls her eyes, though, at Morgan rather than admit that it scares her just a little.

“It’s been raining,” JJ reminds them confidently. “I’m sure they’re out catching frogs in the parking lot or looking for washed-up rocks.”

Frogs. Right, Jack loves frogs. He hates to hold them but thoroughly enjoys chasing them and watching his father squirm and fight to hold them. It is pretty funny though, Aaron Hotchner scrambling to keep a tiny frog in one of his hands. Ending up slightly mud-stained, disheveled all to wrangle a frog.

It’s… humanizing (cute but she wouldn’t be caught dead calling the likes of dumbass Aaron Hotchner “cute”).

Morgan yawns, stretching out his arms high above his head. “I’m sure we have nothing to worry about,” he shrugs, tampering off the end of his yawn with the back of his hand. It’s far more likely that they’re getting breakfast-- the two of them love muffins. It wouldn’t be the first time that Hotch has stopped to get breakfast. If that goes in their favor, he’ll probably bring them some too. That’s not to say they’re not walking down the hall right now, Hotch trying to be as patient as possible as Jack hops down the hall.

Besides, if there was anything to worry about Dave would have gotten a call. If not for the simplicity of one of Hotch’s stories-- some long-winded, exasperated thing about Jack weighing down his pockets with rocks, Jack having a bad morning and he’s not going to be in for a few more minutes because he had to clean oatmeal off of himself and kitchen floor. Then, at the very least, something.

Yet, they have only radio silence.

Which is good.

Probably.

“Any word from Monsieur Crabbyass this fine morning?”

David Rossi has always been fascinated with the relationship between Emily and everyone else on the team-- though his typical interest is in the utter insubordination that occurs so effortlessly and flawlessly between Hotch and Emily. Naturally, it’s on his mind. He can’t consider the week complete until they’ve both stormed into his office to whine about the other. It makes him reconsider why came back.

It’s for that fact that he knows this is going to crush her the most.

Morgan and Hotch go about like a match to a candle wick. Burning one another to the ground. Things between them don’t go unsaid. If there’s an issue they get to it and neither can walk away until their hands are clear.

JJ and Hotch make the perfect parental tag team. So much of what they do is hidden but the thoughtless, mechanical way the two work together is never taken for granted. If shit hits the fan, those two are who you want.

Garcia and Hotch may not get a lot of time but they know she’s his soft spot.

Reid and Hotch are the strangest carbon copy of one another venturing to having a little too much in common to nothing at all.

Emily and Hotch have far too much left unsaid. Tension and, what he believes, to be penance for the courses of action they have both taken. In her inability to trust the team, running from them and forcing Hotch to kill her to protect her. His distance from them, which she has always read as distrust and tinged with his ego. Neither are as simple as they prefer to pretend to perceive themselves to be.

Not as mysterious either.

Leaving him, standing on the catwalk watching her little joke hit the others with fond laughter. Monsieur Crabbyass. That’s a good one and Aaron is probably never going to hear it. Never clench his jaw and glare to the side, forcing himself not to react and admit that it’s actually kind of funny.

Dave watches over them for another moment, taking in their innocence. Emily still snickering at her own joke, Garcia and JJ both shaking their heads at her. Morgan shakes his head but there’s no hiding his own amused smirk.

“He’s not coming in.” Dave clears his throat, “there was an accident on the way here this morning.” He can’t even get out what he needs to say, they’re already trying to talk over him. “Jack alright,” he’s standing there, trying to get his piece out. “Jessica’s already made her way to the hospital, sitting with Jack. He’s hardly got a scratch.”

There’s general ease that settles them with the relief that Jack is fine.

“And Hotch?”

On life support.

Laying in the intensive care unit with defibrillator sticky pads on his chest, waiting for the next episode of tachycardia to have the nurses and doctors of the unit holding their breath. Wondering just how many more times his body can take them beating the shit out of it or if he’ll come back this time. How many more times can he toe that line before he can’t come back?

“I--” Derek is standing numbly at his desk. Arms limp at his side. “What are-- Is Jack-- Jack is alright? How? Can we-- Will they let us back-- back to see him? They have to let us back to see him, right?”

To see what?

That his body is laid out on a stretcher bare of blankets and pillows. Neck held still by a brace. Jaw titled back and pale, cracked lips stretched around an incubation tube. The hiss of which fills the small empty room. To see that he’s covered in crisp white bandages, wrapped delicately around the purple bruises up and down his ribs. His unstable, flail chest.

To see the x-rays?

To have a doctor stand and explain the damage, the history of Aaron Hotchner’s bones. Old cracks and improperly healed aches. By forty, it’s easy to assume that the ghosts of childhood have long since lost their grasp, but today they nearly cost him his life. A decade worth of cheap shots to his sides, his father’s angry tyrannical downpours wore down the bones.

When he hit the steering wheel, those old bones never stood a chance. They gave out on him.

And what of Jack?

It’s one thing to have those words written out “In the event of my death…” but those are just words to be said. Never meant to be used. Jessica doesn’t understand all of Jack’s charts. She won’t ask him what color his socks are and let him weigh his pants down with rocks and carry him when he gets tired. She won’t get muddy and slimy to chase down frogs. But Jack and everything he owns (aside from some silly knick-knacks and stupid things he thought better to go to Morgan or maybe Garcia) go to Jessica Brooks.

In the event of my death…

“If he’s still alive by the time that we get there… it’s unlikely that they let anyone aside from family back.”

They stand in the silence of that. Of the implication. Does a single one of them know how to do any of this without him? Morgan doesn’t want to be fucking Unit Chief. He got his taste, he’s done. And, the most surprising part is that the somber, truth omission of what they are all thinking comes from Emily Prentiss. Righting her shoulders like she’s standing in front of the nurses and defending them right now.

“But we are his family.”

#tw miscarriage #criminal minds #aaron hotchner #criminal minds fanfiction

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quillandink333 · 4 years ago

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Scarlet Carnations ~ Part I

BotW Link X Zelda ~ Detective AU

Rating: T

Word Count: 2.9k

WARNINGS: death, murder, loss, trauma, blood and gore, terrorism, organized crime, self-harm

Summary: Inspector Zelda Hyrule, assisted by the faithful Constable Link Fyori, is infamous for cracking the most confounding of cases in a town dominated by crime. Her latest assignment is to solve the murder of her own godmother, Impa Sheikah, the late CEO of Sheikah Tech. Incorporated, while staying under the radar of the dreaded Yiga organization.

Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV • Part V • Part VI • Part VII • Epilogue • Masterlist

A deafening blast jolted me out of my slumber. I snapped upright.

As a member of law enforcement, I was painfully familiar with the sound of a gunshot, and that was exactly what I’d just heard.

I strained my ears with bated breath, trying to hear over my own thundering heartbeat.

Loud, frantic footsteps raced down creaky, wooden stairs. Then a terrified scream filled the halls of my childhood home.

I tore away the sheets and rushed to where the scream seemed to have come from. When I reached the parlour was when I stumbled upon the scene. There, right at the foot of my mother’s memorial, was my godmother’s cold, lifeless corpse. Kneeling beside her was her granddaughter, Paya, weeping into her open palms in shock.

Only a minute or two had passed since I’d awoken at the sound of gunfire. “Wait here,” I ordered, then made a break for the front entrance, the nearest and most instinctual escape route.

But when I threw the doors open, there wasn’t a soul to be found.

I returned to the parlour with my tail between my legs. Then my toe hit something heavy and metallic that clacked underfoot. When I looked down and saw what it was, I froze. With caution, I ever so slowly stepped away from the weapon.

“Great...” I muttered, seeing as now it would have my toe prints on it. But the longer I looked at it, I realized I’d seen this revolver somewhere before.

Then it hit me. It hit me like a two-ton train car.

I quickly made sure Paya’s head was turned. Then with terribly trembling hands, I did what I had to do and carefully tucked it away in my nightgown.

I’d feared the precinct wouldn’t allow me to participate in the investigation seeing as I’d been on the scene at the time of the crime. However, it seemed they trusted me enough to even appoint me as the lead investigator. Granted, I had done a lot to earn their trust over the past three years, but this was unheard of.

Nevertheless, I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. The next morning, at seven o’clock sharp, I returned to the scene of the crime equipped with all the necessary tools of my trade.

I looked out the window of the cramped police buggy at our destination in utter astoundment. There were already droves of officers there, awaiting the arrival of me and my partner. The sight of the place I’d once called home being chained off and hidden from the public like this was jarring, to say the least. Of all the strange crime scenes I’d seen, this was the strangest. I never could’ve imagined I’d be returning here, not to eat Auntie Impa’s delicious pork buns or to hear Auntie Purah talk about her latest technological endeavours, but for work. How could I have?

“Zelda! Good—good morning!” greeted a rather skittish Paya when she opened the door for us.

“Good morning, Paya.”

She nearly lost her smile when she noticed Constable Fyori standing beside me. “Please, come in.” She stepped aside, and he and I entered into the low-ceilinged yet stately vestibule, removing our shoes and leaving them by the door. “Can I get either of you anything? Some tea, maybe?”

My assistant opened his mouth, but I raised a hand, silencing him. “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. We have important business to take care of.”

“Oh, yes, of course! Silly me,” she chortled. “I’ll let you get to it, then.”

The first order of business was to examine the body. In most cases, a specialist would be needed to perform an autopsy, but unlike most inspectors, I had the forensic knowhow to take care of it myself. One might have said this was a side effect of my hobbies and my avid interest in all things related to science that I’d harboured since grade school. However, a full autopsy complete with the weighing of the body and the removal of the organs would come later. For now, it would suffice to determine two simple things: the time of death and the cause of death.

But before I could even get close to the body, I was stopped by my assistant, who grabbed me gently by the arm.

“You don’t have to do this,” he uttered in his typical, mousy tone. “I can call for someone else to come and take care of it for you.”

The look of real and profound concern seated deep in his aquamarine eyes pulled at my heartstrings. It had been a year, roughly, since he’d first begun working under me. He was always so worried for me, and I always felt terrible because of it. I unhooked his hand from my arm, putting on a warm smile. “I’ll be okay, Link.”

He looked at me as if to ask, “Are you sure?”

“Really, it’s fine. Don’t worry,” I insisted. “Thank you, though.” This finally got him to return my smile, albeit only briefly.

I already had a decent estimate of the time of death. The period we were looking at was between half ten at night, when the last person awake (which had just so happened to be me) had gone to bed, and three in the morning, when the gunshot had given me that rude awakening. Really I should have examined the body as soon as I’d discovered it. In most other cases I worked on, I even wished I’d been the first on the scene, before the stiff had yet to even go stiff. Of course, the one time I happened to be one of the first to discover a murder, it had to be like this.

And yet, until I knew who was responsible for this atrocity, grieving could wait.

Right off the bat, I could tell that this had been a homicide. This may have seemed obvious to someone like Paya, but as a detective, I’d had to forcefully train myself to assume nothing and question everything. Based on the characteristics of the hole running straight through her neck, however, I determined that the gun had been shot from too far a distance for it to have been suicidal. Auntie Impa’s arms simply weren’t long enough.

But for a death caused by hemorrhage from a severed jugular vein, there was a shockingly small amount of blood. The rush-woven mat beneath her was nearly spotless, and I knew from experience how difficult it was to get stains out of these mats. Even when I checked underneath the mat, there was still nothing. No blood, and no bullet.

With a final nod, I stood up and signalled the other officers to take the body away.

“Now, let’s see here...” I said to myself, scanning the area immediately surrounding the corpse before approaching my mother’s altar. But when I laid eyes on the damage it had sustained, I stumbled back.

Though she hadn’t been a follower of the same faith held by the Sheikahs, my mother’s memory had been enshrined here because, like myself, they’d been like a second family to her.

With all due caution, I picked up what remained of her photograph. The glass was shattered, and a bullet had completely erased her face.

If this wasn’t a sign of the Yiga organization, I didn’t have a clue what was. Who else would’ve borne such ill will toward Hilda Hyrule, the town’s beloved last mayor who’d been dead ever since the tragic “accident” at City Hall eighteen years prior? That massacre had been what had ushered in their age of power, and with no one left to stand in their way, they’d been terrorizing the city ever since.

Before I’d even had the chance to begin my analysis, I heard Paya’s timid footsteps shuffling up to me. “Zelda?” she whispered, obnoxiously tapping her finger on my shoulder. “Excuse me...”

I turned my head and forced a grin. “What is it?”

“Umh, I didn’t know he’d be accompanying you today.” I didn’t even have to follow her gaze to know who she was eyeing.

I suppressed a sigh. “Constable Fyori is my partner,” I reminded her politely. “I take him with me on all of my investigations.”

“Yes, I know, but...” Now her gaze was nervously flitting back and forth between me and Link. “I-I wasn’t prepared to see him again after so long. What if—what if he says something to me?”

“He won’t,” I huffed. “Now, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh my, I’m so sorry,” she fretted. “I’ll get out of your hair.” I gave her a nod of the head in thanks, and she kindly stepped back and out of my space. But even after that, I could still feel her intense stare from across the room. I let out the sigh I’d been holding in. Sure, Paya was irritating, and I was going on maybe four or five hours of sleep at most, but there was no excuse for me to be irrational, especially since it would get me nowhere in my line of thinking. What I wouldn’t have done for a nice, hot cup of chamomile at that moment.

Based on the extreme angle of the bullet’s trajectory, one could tell at a glance where the shooter had to have been positioned. They’d have been standing above the altar with very little space between the two—definitely not enough for an entire person. Therefore the bullet that had taken the victim’s life had to have been a different one. This was backed up by the absence of any blood around the hole or anywhere else on the shrine. So why had I only heard one gunshot that night? And where in the world was the bullet responsible for Auntie Impa’s death if not on the scene of the crime?

After photographing the hole and scribbling my thoughts and observations down in my notebook, I began the procedure of extracting the bullet from the altar. This was a delicate task, one that I admittedly had a hard time trusting anyone else in the force with. Once I’d succeeded in retrieving the bullet, I determined it was of the same calibre as the one that had passed through the victim’s throat, meaning it was likely that it had been fired from the same gun. Unfortunately, all these facts corresponded with the weapon I’d found on the scene mere hours ago, two chambers of which were empty. There may have been no prints left on the trigger, but even so, I simply didn’t have it in me to run a striation comparison.

Standing up straight and taking a quick, deep breath, I turned to my assistant, who seemed to be investigating the mantelpiece. “Right, then, Fyori.” He turned his head as I approached him. “Anything to report?”

“No, madam,” he replied solemnly, avoiding my gaze and peering straight ahead over the top of my head.

“Is that so...?” I tapped the end of my pen against my chin habitually. “We seem to have a dreadfully diligent killer on our hands.” I gave the room another once-over from where I stood beside him. “You’ve been thorough in your search as always, I presume?”

“Of course.”

“And you found nothing? Not even a fingerprint?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“Then let’s move on,” I sighed, turning toward the doorway leading out into one of the building’s many corridors. He followed, just a few paces behind me. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to check since we got here.”

“That’s strange...” muttered Auntie Purah as she jumped through the footage captured by the front entrance’s security camera. “Symin, did I miss something?”

The Sheikah estate’s security supervisor shook his head. “Not that I could see.”

“Let me check it again.”

But even when she rewound and skipped through it a second time, the only person to appear was still myself on my initial search for the killer. Link gave me a furtive glance. I smiled at him in reassurance.

“Perhaps the other cameras caught something,” I suggested. “It would make sense that the culprit wouldn’t want to simply waltz right in through the front door.”

Auntie Purah looked to Symin. “Well, there are three other cameras, but two of them are so far removed from the scene that I doubt they’d be of much help.”

“And the third?” I asked, reaching for my notebook and something to write with.

“That would be the courtyard camera.”

“Ah, perfect!” The courtyard was located at the very centre of the property and served as an intersection between the four main hallways. “That one’s bound to have caught something. Let’s see.”

But this, too, would turn out fruitless. Throughout the night, there wasn’t even the shadow of a clue as to the killer’s movements.

“This...” I gaped. “This is impossible.” I knew for a fact that this particular model of camera was designed for the very purpose of protecting its footage from being altered or obstructed. Could the killer have made themselves invisible somehow?

“I don’t believe it.” Auntie Purah shook her head creakily. “Our company takes great pride in the reliability of our security cameras!”

Enraged, the tiny, old lady tried to stand up from her seat. Then a loud crack resounded throughout the cramped surveillance office. She screamed.

“Miss Purah, please calm down,” urged the kindly Symin, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” she seethed, adjusting her glasses. “Thank you.” I didn’t know the man as well as I did the rest of the family as he had become a part of it a few years after I’d left the nest. However, it seemed like he would make a fine successor to Auntie Impa’s role of keeping her elder sister’s enduring impulsivity in check.

“There’s no reason to worry, Auntie. This is no fault of yours or your company’s,” I said, hoping to ease her pain a little. She’d suffered a terrible loss, and it was taking a great toll on her. It was difficult to watch such a brilliant mind come undone because of something like this. But after hearing my words, she looked up at me with a wrinkly smile. “My partner and I will just have to do an even more thorough inspection of the property tomorrow.”

The ride back to the precinct wasn’t a pleasant one. By the end of the day, my own mind had deteriorated into a swirling whirlpool of confusion, resentment, and woe. The investigation so far had borne so little results, it was hard to imagine that tomorrow’s search would be that much more successful. Of course there was still so much more that needed to be looked into, but right now, I just couldn’t see this turning out well. I still hadn’t solved the mystery behind my mother’s death in eighteen long years. Why, in this case, would I prove to be any less of a failure?

I curled my fists against my legs, trying my hardest to forget about the empty feeling in my stomach. Despite this, I knew I didn’t have the energy to do much more rational thinking today, if any at all.

Then my colleague broke the silence. “She was important to you, wasn’t she?” he asked, but such a personal question was strangely out of character for him.

“Yes.” I smiled sorrowfully into my lap. “I never really thought of her as a mother figure,” I admitted, “but she did put a lot of time and effort into raising me, in my actual mother’s stead.”

“She must’ve been a wonderful person.”

This made me laugh, to both his and my surprise. “Well, she would often scold me and Paya with the strictest attitude you can imagine, but I suppose she always had our best interests at heart.”

The longer I thought about Auntie Impa, the more I mulled over who could possibly have wanted her dead. She had already been getting on in age. Had the perpetrator’s need to kill her really been that dire? The only time people ever went that far was when their victim’s life would’ve put them in danger somehow if they’d have allowed them to go on living. But then again, there was the Yiga organization. They went around committing murders a couple times every week for seemingly no reason other than to flaunt their power. Perhaps Auntie Impa really had been just another one of their prey. Even so, I couldn’t shake the suspicion that there was more to it than that.

“Don’t you think it’s strange?”

The constable cocked his head, but kept his eyes on the road.

But then I stopped myself. There was still no proof of the Yiga’s involvement, so there was no point in bringing it up now. “Well, all of it is quite strange, frankly,” I amended. “The lack of blood, the missing bullet...”

“Could the killer have moved the body from somewhere else, perhaps?” he tentatively suggested.

“Very good, Link. That’s exactly what I’ve been theorizing.” The tips of his ears flushed, and he seemed to shrink back into his seat a little. “Oh, but then...wouldn’t that make it more likely for the cameras to have caught something?”

“That is true,” he concurred. “And there’s still been no sign of the murder weapon?”

I swallowed hard. “No...” My eyes flickered down toward my briefcase. “None.”

#my writing #fanfic #botw #zelink #botw zelink #zelink botw #botw link x zelda #botw zelda x link #link x zelda #zelda x link #zelink fanfic #zelink fic #zelink ff #zelda pov #detective au

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doorsclosingslowly · 3 years ago

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From Each According to Their Ability, To Each According to Their Need

A good relationship is just teamwork: everyone has their strengths and some things they can’t or won’t do, and the trick is fitting everything together. Jesper has the charm, the shamelessness, the beauty, and the reckless disregard for his heart and self-preservation, so he’ll be the crumple zone in-between Inej’s morals and Kaz’ cold reticence. He’ll get them through this fight. He’ll make this relationship work.

10k | Jesper/Kaz/Inej | Sun Summoner Jesper AU | content note: explicit sex

Jesper has a good reason for why he’s been sitting inside Kaz’ office while Kaz does paperwork and Inej sharpens her knives. A great, important reason. He’s not a masochist for boring himself to death. Okay, so he’s also miserably bored and jittery and it’s been an hour and he’s already tired of un- and reloading his guns over and over so the motions become as fast as possible. The minutes are crawling like ants under his skin. If he was anywhere else, he’d have left in search for a card table a long time ago, but those busy eyes will focus on his back the second he gets up, and they’ll know exactly where he’s headed, and—maybe he doesn’t want to give them another reason to talk about him when he can’t defend himself. It isn’t spite that keeps him rooted down here, but… close enough.

So if putting his cards to their intended use is out, why not… On the first try, though, the stack of cards that was supposed to take the loose shape of the Crow Club collapses when he’s at the third layer. Fucking ants. Kaz doesn’t even look up from his paperwork, only grits his teeth and viciously swipes away the three of hearts that landed right on the last word he’s written. The word’s smudged, and the card’s back has an ink blot on it. Marked. Ruined.

Before Kaz can get in the customary insult about his lack of work ethic, Jesper huffs, “I’m finetuning my dexterity.” Kaz doesn’t even bother with the easy follow-up insult (“If that’s supposed to be dexterity, you’d better write your will before I send you on the next job. Except you can’t even bequeath anything but your ugly shirt. How long did it take you to lose the last kruge I paid you? Forget dexterity, practice winning a single card game sometime.” But why is Jesper doing all of Kaz’ work for him when he doesn’t even care enough to look up?!)

Either he’s genuinely too busy or still angry from whatever fight he had with Inej two days ago that they stopped the instant Jesper opened the door—and still taking it out on Jesper, who wasn’t even there—or he’s decided that scattering playing cards all over his table is still better than the next form of fidgeting Jesper might come up with. Either way, Kaz leaves him alone to try again. It only barely helps. There’s no thrill in playing with himself—at least this way, but even wanking’s no fun when the only two faces he wants to imagine above him right now are angry and keeping secrets.

No, they need to talk first. That’s why he’s here. Why he’s enduring this agony.

He’s waiting for the tension to burst. He just didn’t expect it to take hours. Kaz and Inej, though, are both some sort of hyper-patient freaks. Utterly devoid of mercy. Trust Jesper to fall for the strangest, worst, cruellest amazing people in all of Ketterdam. They’re not going to make the first move. And Jesper doesn’t want to, either.

It was going so well in the beginning. He had Kaz coming undone—coming, from his hand, in his arms, and passing out from how great the sex was, and then the next day him and Inej and Kaz had a conversation that went incredibly well, too. “Yesterday was so good and I think you liked being able to touch me when I’m glowing, so let’s do it again sometime? And I like Inej as well as you and she likes me too and she adores you, and you love her, so—let’s try this as the three of us?” or however it went in detail, Jesper was honestly too nervous at the time to really remember anything but the way Kaz frowned until his blotchy red cheeks betrayed him and he nodded and Inej said something moving and clever that Jesper wishes he could recall. They agreed, though, he’s sure of it. They agreed to give it a try.

So after that he’s been going up to Kaz’ bedroom in the night sometimes and practicing “unleashing the sun” as he now calls it (no not his dick), and complimenting Inej and kissing her hand like she’s a lady from a penny play, the way he’d usually do anyway but it’s more, now, since they’ve both agreed it can mean something different. It makes her laugh at him, anyway, careless and bright, which is what matters. Calling her darling and love and dearheart. Buying her snacks. And he’s made himself scarce occasionally when Kaz and Inej are together, but they probably didn’t notice neither his exit nor his presence in the first place, caught up in some silent conversation.

Anyway. It went great. Jesper spent weeks almost bursting with joy. He got sent out to intimidate a guy from the Liddies and terrified him into submission just on the strength of how widely he was grinning. He’s happy. Inej was happy. Even Kaz was vituperating failing Dregs with less hatred than usual, and it was all because they’re together now, together as more than a quasi-Barrel Boss and his favoured stooges, which honestly is a rush much bigger than gambling, bigger than alcohol, bigger than going supernova (Reverse order of fun there. Lighting up is the most intense thing Jesper’s ever felt, blotting out every other desire, the only time outside a gun battle when he can’t even remember what gambling feels like, but he does not like it).

And then, a two days ago, the fight. He interrupted something that wasn’t meant for him—that was about him, though, he’s sure, if the way Kaz’ dark eyes back then bored bloody holes into his chest were anything to go by—he saw them and they shut him out and later, Inej materialized in front of him and asked Jesper whether he was okay, for reasons he cannot understand. When he went back up to Kaz’ bedroom Kaz hissed at him to leave, because he ‘just wanted to sleep’. He looked tired, too, but not the exhaustion of work but emotional turmoil, loathing, dread, that Jesper could have helped him forget. Except he didn’t want Jesper to try. He didn’t want Jesper. He’s been avoiding Jesper like the Queen’s Lady, not even assigning him work, and he’s been even more grumpy than usual, too. Vicious, brutal, with everyone. Even Inej.

So now Jesper’s stubbornly sitting in a room with a man who suddenly hates him and a woman who won’t explain, enduring the torture of quiet parallel work until someone cracks, and maybe it won’t even be him.

If it’s not working out, it’s, well—not fine, Jesper’s going to be absolutely heartbroken, but he’s broken up before with people he might not have adored as much, and didn’t work for besides, people who weren’t the terrors of the Ketterdam underworld, but it was okay. He got over it. He’s not a child.

He’d just like to know it’s over before he makes an absolute fool of himself. No. Makes more of an absolute fool of himself. Thanks, imaginary insulting Kaz, but that one was pretty weak. Jesper’s even losing his Kaz imitation skills now, and it’s only been two days of complete disregard and freeze-out. What if he can’t solve this? What if it’s forever?

The cards scatter across Jesper’s corner of Kaz’s working table—one landing right next to Kaz’ pen, again—and they spread out all over the floor and, ignoring Kaz’ hateful glare and Inej’s concerned one, he quickly dives under the desk to pick them up. Kaz’ good leg is tensing rhythmically, as if he wants to tap it, wants to run—except Jesper’s wrong there, because Kaz never runs away—and his bad one looks miserably taut. Yet another thing the Sun Summoner could help him with, if Mr Dirtyhands Bastard of the Barrel Brekker, terror of Ketterdam, inspiration for the sexiest creep in all of dirt cheap fiction, gang leader in all but name, would deign to speak to him. It’s the only thing Jesper’s power is good for. No use, though. Jesper comes back up and sits down with a baleful sigh and expertly shuffles his cards. Shuffles them again. He could invent a few new tricks, but… he checks the pockets of the coat he’s slung over his chair, and he doesn’t have a marked deck in there. He’s stuck with the genuine article. He doesn’t usually play with marked cards after all: if Jesper’s in control of what’s going to happen, it’s not gambling anymore, just work.

It’s just, if Jesper messed it up again, he’d like the chance to make amends. Apologize. Work it out, maybe, if that’s on the cards, get screamed at, or find a place on a boat if it’s so irreparable Kaz just wants him gone. If it’s something in Kaz’ or Inej’s past, he can’t do anything, since Inej barely trusts him with the clean-picked bones of what was done to her at the Menagerie and Kaz doesn’t trust him at all, so. Fuck.

Whatever it is, Jesper didn’t notice because he’s an idiot. He was floating on what he thought was requited love, and the sudden safety of Kaz hiding his identity as the Sun Summoner, and how well they all fit together. Kaz, the miserable bastard, opening up slightly and allowing himself to feel good; Inej being safe and cherished and in control; and beside them, Jesper, laying the world and his heart at their feet. He thought.

But now everything’s fucked, and Kaz and Inej still haven’t cracked. They’re working as normal, if without any of the little exchanges that Jesper’s come to cherish. Still: he’s almost bursting out of his skin with the need to run, to gamble, to fight and maybe even lose, get worked over a little (if he’s lucky, at least Inej will worry about his bruises), and his paramours are both just at work. They’re both okay. It’s not fair. Jesper’s wanted for more money he’s ever seen in every country he can name because he’s the fucking Sun Summoner, but honestly? He’s normal compared to those two. How are they still sitting still? How is anything they do now up to their own exacting standards? Don’t they feel the tension? Can’t they feel Jesper’s agony?

Card houses are boring; shuffling is excruciating. Shooting cards in mid-air? But Kaz will definitely complain if the office smells like gun powder, let alone the potential damage to his precious stolen décor. He’ll complain, which means he’ll look at Jesper. Insult him. Eviscerate him. Order him to fuck off even, probably, and Jesper’s already got his gun out and ready but—it’s no use. It’s not what will scratch this bleeding itch. He can’t bear this anymore.

Someone has to throw themselves on this kindled bomb before it explodes, so it might as well be Jesper. He’s got the least dignity to lose.

He pulls on his most devil-may-care smile, and then he says, “You’re both breaking up with me, right?”

“Jes…” Inej looks up, shocked.

Kaz doesn’t say anything. His face hardens, and he looks back down at his paperwork. Not writing anything, though, so Jesper knows at least he’s paying attention. At least he’s vaguely interested.

“You can tell me. It’s fine.” I should have expected it, Jesper bites back. This is bad enough already. He doesn’t need to look more of a sad idiot than necessary, but they’re just staring up (Inej) and down (Kaz), giving him more time to think: more time to make mistakes, with cruelty so well-aimed it might almost be intentional, time to be to be impulsive, maudlin. I was pretty sure you’re in love with each other even before this started. Fuck, I was great playing third wheel before, and I’m pathetic enough I’ll cheerfully go back to it. I love you. I want you to be happy. The itching under Jesper’s skin is still there, and he needs a gamble, a fight, a—he needs to stop. He won’t hurt them. “Just tell me, please?”

“Jesper, no—”

“You’re both tense and angry, and you haven’t talked to me in two days.” He looks at Inej, who’s furrowing her brow, ready to argue, but— “You asked me how I was doing but you didn’t talk. Kaz won’t even look at me. You won’t even give me work, boss, and I know you don’t tolerate freeloaders. And you shied away when I tried to hug you, Inej. You didn’t do that before. I saw you arguing, and I know it was about me, and—I’m sorry. Whatever I did, I’m sorry. I’ll go, if you want.”

There. It’s out. He’s done his part. Fighting this would be more humiliating, and if there’s anything that gambling has taught him, it’s how to take a loss on the chin and keep on going. The itching under his skin’s receding, but he doesn’t feel any better. Just tired.

“No, Jesper. Why do you assume—” Earlier, Inej turned her whole body towards Jesper, arranged in a careful pose of openness that couldn’t disguise her nerves and that made Jesper feel more exposed but less alone, at least, but now her body turns as her eyes flicker over to Kaz. They stare at each other, another silent fight, and then he glares back down at his paperwork. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

This time, Kaz should say here, and doesn’t. Fuck, Jesper misses his mockery.

“We’re worried it’s not reciprocal,” Inej says.

“Not reciprocal? What do you mean? That’s ridic—” except Da used to tell Jesper he’s overwhelming in his enthusiasm, just like a whirlwind, when Jesper cried to him about some neighbour kid or other not coming shooting with him even though she’d agreed; that when he got into something it was hard to say no to him even if—fuck. Fuck. And now, Inej had to protect Kaz from—

“No, Jes, not that,” Inej cuts in quickly, shocked by his bare-faced horror. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that.”

“What do you mean, then?” Jesper can’t keep himself from glowering, still bruised from the implication.

“You pleasure Kaz and then you leave. You don’t have to do that. You’re not a servant. Not a sla—” She bites off her words, but Inej’s said enough. Jesper knows what she means.

“Something reminded you of the Menagerie, didn’t it?” he asks softly. In the corner of his eyes, he can see Kaz—flinch, as if Jesper had struck him, as if he’d touched him, and he doesn’t know what it means. What it means for them, for the relationship with Kaz that Jesper still wishes he could have. What it means, that Kaz acts as if Jesper can hurt him.

He still doesn’t understand the fight, Kaz’ reaction, but he does know what Inej’s afraid of. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m fine. I really like it, actually.”

“Even so—” Inej looks dubious, and Jesper’s got to move ‘world-class actor’ way up to the front of his truly extensive list of skills, if he’s somehow managed to fool her into missing the torch he’s carried for Kaz for pretty much the entire time they’ve known each other—“you’re vulnerable, Jesper. No, Jes, listen to me—” because of course she’s anticipated his grimace— “you don’t have any control in this situation. The Dregs. The Sun Summoning. The kruge you owe. Kaz has far too much power over you.”

“Kaz is our boss. He’s ordering both of us around.”

“And there are things I won’t do for him. Can you say the same? What if you want to stop one day? Could you?”

“I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.” Jesper chances a look over at Kaz. He’s blank, not even angry, completely still except for the muscle jumping in his jaw. But he’s watching Jesper. Finally, finally, he’s meeting Jesper’s eyes.

“Jesper—”

“Look at me,” Jesper says, and since they’re already watching him more intently than any fat-walleted Pigeon already, he stretches his arms over his head—gratifyingly, despite the tension, both Kaz’ and Inej’s eyes trace the strong lines of his jaw and neck. He pulls his shoulders back when he drops his arms so the open collar of his lush pale green shirt reveals as much of his chest as possible. “Look at me again. I’m the most handsome guy in Ketterdam. The funniest. The best lay. I slept with plenty of people before I started this thing with you, and I could pick anyone if it ends. There were cries of despair all over the Barrel when they realized I was off the market.”

“Stop blowing smoke up your own ass and get to the point.” Kaz, as intended, looks disgusted at Jesper’s ego, but no longer miserably vicious. Viciously miserable. And he’s talking. Inej loses a little of her worry to involuntary amusement, too.

“The point is: I’m here instead. So clearly, I want to be here. I want this, I want you—” Inej wears a tiny smile— “and if you keep questioning me, what you’re really impugning is my incredible beauty and sexual magnetism and superb taste, and honestly, that’s offensive.” Even Kaz snorts, so score… let’s say, five, for Jesper. “Also, really, you should have stalked me back to my bedroom after. The images I get are more than enough for some quality time with my hand.”

(Kaz, flushed and stunned and staring straight into Jesper’s eyes.)

(Inej’s lips on his cheek and on his neck.)

“I’m good. Don’t worry about me. I’ll follow you whenever, whyever, wherever. That’s my job, right?”

“That’s the problem, Jes.” Inej’s rolling her eyes, but she looks much less apprehensive now. Just fond.

“We both know you couldn’t… well, obviously you could make me do something I don’t want to, you do it all the time. I don’t like bouncer duty, especially if no fight breaks out. I don’t like watching card games when I’m not allowed to play. I don’t like sniping in the middle of the night. You think I lucked into a face like this without guarding my beauty sleep? But that’s it, right? I’d be complaining the whole time. I’m not complaining here. I’m an enthusiastic participant.”

“You will kill Mark Heener, even if you have to stay up all night for a month. That’s an order,“ Kaz rasps, and really? That’s what he got out of Jesper (almost) baring his heart?

“I feel safe with you.” He looks at Inej, who’s actually fucking interested. Inej, who’s starting to look less afraid now, and because he’s always going to feed his own heart to hungry dogs to make her happy, he adds, “I like you. Both. That should be obvious.”

Inej glows. Jesper keeps his eyes trained on her, because he really doesn’t need Kaz’ derision, he doesn’t, even though he’s curious—oh yeah, he’s already looked. And Kaz doesn’t look happy exactly at Jesper’s dangerously-close-to-a-confession, but there’s none of the contempt or revulsion that Jesper forced himself not to be afraid of that made him keep his feelings quiet, more—fear. Confusion. As if the problem isn’t that Jesper hopes that Kaz loves him back. But that Jesper loves him.

“Oh, seriously, Kaz, I was never subtle about finding you attractive.”

“There is a vast difference between lust and… this. I can’t give you what you want. I will never touch you. I’m the Bastard of the Barrel. Dirtyhands.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “I’ve never actually cared—”

“I know three channels by which to contact the Little Palace,” Kaz hisses. “Five ways to lure you there without you catching on, and at least fifteen to subdue you should you resist. All your fears. Your secrets. Your addictions and abject weaknesses. Should I ever need the money—”

“And yet, I’m still here,” Jesper cuts in, before Kaz can say something that really hurts. “You saved my life more times than I can count. Three million kruge wasn’t enough for you to sell me out. And two weeks ago, you bullied me into promising I’ll only gamble at Dregs establishments because—”

“I’m tired of paying you wages only to watch everything disappear into the Dime Lions’ coffers. You’re the pigeonest pigeon in all of Ketterdam, and I want those fat stacks of money you lose every night to go to me exclusively.”

Jesper grins at him. It won’t help his case much to continue the argument about how only gambling in Dregs’ houses means Kaz can cut Jesper off, or make sure he won’t get beat up by those he owes money to, or that Kaz actually explained his contingency plans for when Jesper’s revealed as the Sun Summoner to Jesper, in person, only a few weeks ago. Kaz knows what Jesper suspects, and Jesper knows that Kaz knows he does, and Kaz knows what Jesper thinks about the fact that Kaz knows Jesper suspects he secretly does like him, and so fucking on and so fucking forth, and Inej does too, probably, even though she doesn’t enjoy the dance, the paper chase for affection, even half as much as Jesper does. Anyway.

“I’ve seen the way you look at me, Kaz,” Jesper purrs. The way you look at me when I’m touching your dick, like you want to burn my face you’re your brain. “You’re not as good a liar as you think. You want me too. You both want me. I can’t blame you, I’m gorgeous.”

“I can’t give you what you want. I will never touch you, Jesper. Never.”

He’s so focused on that, as if Jesper hadn’t told him—three times, probably, already that those words won’t hurt him, won’t scare him off. “That’s a fairy tale view of sex,” Jesper says. “The idea that there’s one true way of sleeping with people. That everything must be symmetrical—that within the confines of anatomical possibilities, everyone has to act out their role or it’s not true love, and that it’s penetrative, and naked, and kissing, and with the lights on. Out. I don’t really care.”

Kaz bristles, though Jesper hopes it’s more because he called an aspect of Kaz’ worldview fairy tale than because Kaz actually believes some of that horseshit. He can’t quite read Inej. Impressed, worried, sorry? He ploughs on..

“I’ve never planned a decent heist before. I can’t disappear into thin air like a fucking ghost. Not that good with knives, but neither of you can actually handle a gun—not that well, boss, or you wouldn’t send me out to play sniper. I can’t look at a bleeding wound, but you can. Et fucking cetera. We do different things, and that’s what makes us a lethal team. Sex is just another heist.”

“An interesting philosophy,” Kaz rasps. “Simplified to the point of complete incoherence.”

Fuck him. Jesper’s put thought into this, okay? “There are far more ways to have sex that don’t involve touch. That don’t involve the guy sticking his dick somewhere and rutting until he gets off. It’s only fun when you’re doing it with your partners, not acting to a script.” Jesper smiles at Inej, Kaz, Inej again, open and friendly. Trying not to let his heart betray how desperate he is for them to believe them, for this to work. “You have to trust me, though. Trust me when I say that something gets me going. Trust me when I say I’ll stop you if I don’t like it. You don’t have to understand, it doesn’t have to be something that arouses you, but if I say I like it, I do. And if you don’t like it, if it brings back memories you don’t want or you just don’t want to do it, we’ll stop, of course, but that’s for you. Don’t make my choices for me.”

“I hope this plan of yours is better than the last one you came up with,” Kaz rasps.

“We’ll just have to see, won’t we?” Jesper grins widely. Gently. He’s so close now to everything he’s ever dreamed of. “I promise I’ll stop this when I’m unhappy, if you promise the same thing.” Then he offers his hand for Kaz to shake, and Kaz actually takes it. “The deal is the deal.”

He repeats the ritual with Inej, and then watches her and Kaz shake, even though she’s not Kerch enough to put much trust into the oath and also too clever to really need it. This is for Kaz, though: so he can believe he’s not forcing anyone because they’ll veto, and for Inej to see that Kaz sees this as the terms of the deal. Watching the reflections of shadows, et cetera.

His guns, Jesper leaves on top of Kaz’ paperwork next to his scattered deck and his holster.

Then, he saunters into the pitch-black bedroom. It’s probably best the curtains stay closed. Jesper has negative amounts of control over his power at the best of times, and when he’s getting lucky—well it didn’t used to happen, but then, he didn’t used to sleep with Kaz Brekker and Inej Ghafa either. Kaz lights a candle before he closes the door, and that’s better, anyway. Whatever the situation may warrant—and there’s conflicting opinions, perhaps, because Kaz would laugh if he heard but—it looks romantic.

Jesper undresses slowly. One by one, he pushes the shirt buttons through their holes with deft, deliberate movements. It’s not nerves. He’s not shy about his body: he knows he’s gorgeous, has undressed for others often enough though he’s never had the chance to take his time like this, and even before he tried talking it out with Kaz and Inej today he knew they found him attractive. That, at least, was assured. His body is the one thing he’s always been sure of, and he isn’t baring himself now, not like he did earlier. There are no painful, invisible scars on his skin, not like those his lovers bear. The lines and holes on his belly are from battle or clumsiness. What you see is what you get. And what you see is…

He grips the right cuff of his gorgeous pale green ruffled shirt—worn especially for Kaz today, because Kaz hates it—and then he pulls his arm out before he swings the empty sleeve over his head, stretching, showing off the taut long line of his torso, and then he lets the shirt drop to the floor. He doesn’t look at either of them. He doesn’t need it. He’s not that insecure.

Besides, the utter silence in the room, apart from the ticking wall-clock, is answer enough. No rustling of minuscule movement, no words, no breath. Like awe. Like fear. And so—

“You know, this is usually when the applause starts.”

Two voices in unison. “Shut up, Jesper.”

And that’s what Jesper’s been missing. If he makes this fun, exasperating, ridiculous, then maybe he can steal the tension from their backs. He’ll convince them he likes it. Them. It’s lucky, then, that Jesper’s as exceedingly talented at being a jokesmith as he is as a gunslinger and a lover. They’d never get through this without him.

Jesper bends down to unbuckle his boots. He doesn’t bother with graceful this time, and then he says, “We should hire DeKappel.” A beat so Kaz can start formulating various schemes Jesper might be proposing, and then, “Jurda fields are nice and all, but if he’s trying to capture true beauty… Well, he’s not going to, not until he paints one of me undressing.”

“DeKappel is dead, Jesper,” Kaz rasps drily, and Jesper throws his boots into a random corner.

“I thought you were a criminal genius. You’ll find a way to hire him anyway, for this ass,” Jesper shoots back, and then he pulls his trousers and underwear down with a single, suave movement. Unfortunately, he’s trying too hard to be cool: never a good look, and so uncharacteristic for Jesper who usually does not put any effort to enhance his natural amazingness—he doesn’t need it, but he might be a little nervous—but anyway, he fails getting them off in one fell swoop and tangles up his legs somehow. He hops around the room, trying not to fall. It wasn’t even planned, and Inej’s laughing. Unburdened, bellydeep delight in his misfortune: music in Jesper’s ears. Kaz is scowling, either because of the chaos Jesper brought to his once-pristine bedroom, or because he’s trying not to join her. Definitely the second. Jesper’s lost count of how much he scored already in the private game of putting Kaz at ease.

Inej strips down to her quilted undershirt and her underpants efficiently. No flourish, no stumbling: the master showing how it’s done right, which Jesper tells her, and is rewarded with another huff of laughter.

Jesper preens. Stretches, showing off his half-hard dick, and realizes he’s still wearing his striped socks.

“Leave them,” Inej orders.

And who is Jesper to deny his lady her wishes?

Kaz is still standing by the door. Awkward gloved fingers picking at the collar of his shirt. His eyes meet Inej’s for some time while he loosens his tie, and then Jesper’s. Jesper quickly looks away, before Kaz can get angry at him for seeing something he shouldn’t. Still. “Should I…?”

“If you feel better wearing your clothes, keep them on,” Jesper tells him as confidently as he can with his heart beating against his throat. “Like I said, there are no rules. No implications. No meanings. Sit down on your chair, if you like. Pull it over here, so you can get a good view,” and without even a complaint, with gratifying haste, Kaz obeys. “You’ve never met a rule you didn’t break, creatively, viciously, for enormous profit. We’re thieves. Gangsters. And I like your suit, it makes you look hot.”

Kaz glowers at him, but his cheeks are red.

Jesper grins back. “Very sleek. Modern. I know you’re dressing as a mercher, but honestly, none of them come close to looking anything as good as you, so I’m sorry to say. Failure. You’re too handsome to be a mercher. Have you seen them?”

It’s fun, complimenting Kaz, and it’s even more fun having both of them stare at the way he marches over to the bed and languidly stretches out, lies down, cock bobbing slightly, their eyes tracing up and down his body, but… “Not that you’re not really stroking my ego right now—stroking it hard, wet, twist at the end, just how I like it,” Jesper does his best lustful leer, and nearly ends up laughing at himself because he’s trying (too hard? Not enough? Trying to sabotage it before it even starts?), “but you do know I’m not good at laying still? I’m going to fidget unless we do something.”

“If I minded your need for movement, I’d have gotten rid of you years ago,” Kaz rasps. “These are your rules. I thought you were all about breaking them. If you want to move, move.”

And Jesper hates to admit it, but once again, Kaz is right. “I guess that’s why you’re the boss, boss,” and blissfully, Jesper braces his feet against the footboard, arching his back, dangling the left foot over the edge and then changing his mind, tapping his heel against the wood in an offbeat rhythm.

Kaz is watching him, eyes gone even darker with arousal, and yeah—from his vantage point, he’s probably got a really decent view of Jesper’s ass right now.

“Inej—what do you want to do? Or if you haven’t decided yet. if you’re comfortable, on the bed with me, I just want to lay my head in your lap.”

And then, Inej’s suddenly next to him. Jesper still doesn’t know how she manages it. He was looking at her! Only glancing back over to Kaz to find out how he took the suggestion, and then the next instant Inej’s pushing Jesper up by his shoulders and sliding under him. Jesper lets his head plop down. “You’re such a weird fucking miracle, you know that?”

Inej, grinning, pets his face.

“Hey! I mean it. You’re the weirdest person in this room. The nicest, and you do know we’re all gangsters, so nice is weird. Not the most beautiful, though—I’m afraid that adjective was created just for me,” because if he doesn’t make a joke now he’ll only get sappier, and then Jesper starts lightly touching his own skin, running his hands over his nipples and his stomach and the burls and snarls of long-healed wounds. Inej’s generous hands touch his mouth, and from behind the foot of the bed Kaz’s heated stare completes the tableau. They mocked him for it, but this is safe. This is nearer than heaven. This— “I like this one.”

“You nearly bled out. And when that wasn’t enough, you burned up,” Kaz hisses.

“But I didn’t. Inej got me back to the Slat, and you refused to even look at me for the week I spent in bed until she found a healer. You were so angry. I thought you were going to kill me if the sepsis didn’t.” You were angry because I was showing off and it nearly got me killed, Jesper doesn’t say. Because you wanted me to live. That’s when I found out you care.

Kaz, though, looks far too uncomfortable, and Inej’s stopped petting Jesper. That’s what happens when he gets too distracted. Too comfortable with them. “You don’t have to say it,” he soothes. “I know why. But this is getting boring, so, tell me what you want me to do. What you’d like to do to me. This is a judgment free zone. Except for Kaz judging me, I think I’ve developed a fetish. At this point I don’t even know whether I could get off without a rasped insult or two.”

Kaz scowls at him.

“I could pretend to be deeply embarassed, if you like.”

Kaz scowls.

“I did actually mean it when I said, ‘tell me your fantasies’.”

Kaz keeps scowling. Then, after a while, while Inej slowly grows bolder exploring Jesper’s face, pushing her fingers into his mouth and asking him to suck, he whispers, “I would touch your face first, Inej. Pull you toward me and kiss you, and feel your breasts against my body. Slide down, lick it, while Jesper kisses my neck.”

He speaks clearly, without hesitation, but something keeps Jesper from sinking along into the fantasy. Kaz, naked, caressing Inej and licking her tits, while Jesper sucks bruises into his neck… something feels off, wrong, and Kaz is smiling confidently but then, he’s a great actor when the heist calls for it. He’s a great actor. He’s acting. Kaz, naked… This isn’t him, or if it is his genuine fantasy: this is him wishing he wasn’t himself.

He’s sharing his fantasies but—

“How about something a little more practical. Inventive. We don’t need to skip straight to touching. I have plenty of fantasies where you’re not touching anyone at all, or not touching me with anything but your gloves or your boots or your cane. A letter-opener. The Crow Club’s expense filings. I’m not picky.”

Torn between disbelief and—intrigue, Kaz looks intrigued, and that’s going to fuel so many nights now, that cane head trailing down Jesper’s naked chest, the idea that Kaz might actually want…

“You can use a lot of things to touch people. You do it all the time, Kaz. It’s not a power thing,” because he doesn’t want to worry Inej right now, and if the idea of Jesper stroking Kaz off reminded her of bad experience he might need to talk to her in private before he expands on this. If only the two of them actually trusted him and told him, out loud, what fucked them up and how Jesper can reconcile both of their issues. He’s running blind, though, and the only safe territory is jokes. “Not always, anyway, and not right now. Right now, object insertion’s called being practical.”

But Kaz has fixated on something else entirely. “Expense filings? How the fuck would I use paper to get you off?”

Jesper just threw it in there for fun, but actually, “Paper bends. You could wrap your dick in it, get a layer between yourself and my lips, and I bet it’ll feel at least as weird as getting touched by the sun. You could make an entire paper suit, too, it’s thinner and stiffer than cloth so it’ll distort the sensation of Inej’s hands. With a nice paper tie, too, and maybe a paper hat.” He’s really getting into this, now. Kaz, stripping down, and then slowly building up a new armour just so Inej and Jesper can touch him… “In solidarity, both Inej and me have donned paper suits as well. Inej doesn’t even rustle when she moves because she’s ridiculous, and mine has strategic cut-outs. Wouldn’t want to deprive you of all this beauty. It really makes a dent in Kaz’ paperwork, anyway—at least halves the amount of things he has to read tonight, so he has much more time to spend with us. Which is good, because it takes hours to construct all our suits.”

Kaz looks sincerely disturbed. Inej’s hiding her face in her hands. She groans in despair, and the sound goes straight to Jesper’s dick. At least one out of the three of them’s getting off on his hard creative work.

“Oh, come on! At least half of Kaz’ schemes are more convoluted and incomprehensible than this. And yet, they always work. I really think I deserve the benefit of the doubt here. I’d really like to wrap my lips around a roll of those dull reports you read while you’re ignoring me. Slick them up with my tongue. Bleed the ink. Lick all the way down to the signatures…”

“Don’t mock me.”

“I’m not, boss. But improvising a million plans with whatever’s available is your job, boss. I’m just thinking out loud.”

“Stick to your strengths, Jesper. Thinking clearly isn’t it.” A beat. Kaz looks both impatient and strangely, uncharacteristically unsure. “You don’t mind? Not that. Using gloves?”

That’s what spurs Jesper into honesty. Overcompensating with humour keeps him safe, but if one of them must be embarrassed here—well, it’s just wrong when it’s Kaz. He flushes. “The leather’s hot, Kaz. It’s what makes it special. They’re a part of you, and I wonder what it would feel like, those gloves on my body. The cane’s you, too. And I think about you, not some person you could have been. You, and if that’s feeling your gloves… I’ve imagined it.”

“So that’s what you like,” Kaz rasps. “Being fondled by a cripple.”

“Kaz—”

“The last person who said something far less insulting about my boss, I shot in the head,” Jesper snipes back. “You should know, I don’t tolerate anyone dismissing Kaz Brekker like that.”

Inej looks angry, but now that she can see Kaz’ quick incredulous flush, far less angry than she was back then. They’d both gone out for pastries, and in the queue a couple of patrons had been talking about the Dregs’ recent expansion into Liddies territory and the woman had made the unwise choice of talking about the Dregs’ de-facto leader in front of Jesper. Inej had tried to pull him home quickly after they bought their gemberbolussen but Jesper’d waited for the woman outside the shop, and—

Kaz, though, swallows what might have been pleasure. He probably doesn’t like being defended, or being seen to like being defended, or… Anyway, he hisses, “Are you ashamed of the monster I am? We should end this farce now, then. The idea that I might become anyone but Dirtyhands, just for you, is illusory.”

Inej hides her face in her hands. It’s impossible to tell whether it’s exasperation or an attempt to hide her laughter.

Jesper, at least, is hiding both. “Kaz, I just said I kill people for mocking you. I meant—well, most of what I said about using objects. I’m not claiming the moral high ground. And you know I don’t mind Dirtyhands—I even found Matz Drescher hot and he was way more of a dick than you. Sorry, he was a much smaller dick,” he says, when Kaz starts scowling. “I meant to say—he had a much smaller dick.”

Kaz still looks hilariously offended—or offended again for a new reason—and so does Inej, who’d complained to Jesper at length after Pim brought The Misfortunes of Virtue to the Slat’s eating room and then explained to her what it was about. Jesper couldn’t really understand then whether she disliked the impropriety of reading pornography in a common room or the blasphemy more, or how funny Pim found the Kaz caricature, but he didn’t care: he went out and bought it the same day.

“But Kaz. I don’t mind a single thing about who you are,” Jesper spells out, because Kaz is a genius, but if he’s still hung up on the idea that Jesper’s not totally in love with him, he’s also the stupidest man alive. “I’m game for whatever you need. Gloves, no contact, dickishness, whatever. What either of you need. I’ll be the crumple zone. I’m committed to figuring this thing out.”

Then, because Kaz is still just staring, surprise, want, grief and so much more flickering over his face: and Jesper hadn’t dropped out of university he’d probably be ready to write a monograph or two about his chosen field, Kaz-expression-ology, now… Because Jesper could watch him forever and it still wouldn’t tell him any more than he knows right now, he hides his face against Inej’s quilted undershirt.

And quickly emerges again, because Jesper doesn’t hide from his feelings. Often. More than once a minute, at least, but he’ll force himself to make this one of the occasions. Because if he doesn’t, if everything grinds to a halt here, they’ll realize what lies below what he just said, the abject love, and so he puts cheer in his voice and says, “But anyway. Back to business. We were in the process of having sex.”

Inej’s still watching Jesper far too keenly.

“How about I eat you out?” Jesper allows his eyes a quick dart to Kaz—who looks hungry, no problems there right now—before he stretches his head back as far as it’ll go, looking up at upside-down Inej now grinning down at him. “I think you might like it. I’m very, very good. What do you think, o invisible silent Wraith, robber of all Ketterdam’s secrets? Ready to find out why every nonnevot is so incredibly lucky to be devoured by me?” He raises his left hand with pointer and middle finger spread, and licks, slowly, all the way up from the v to the tips and down again, while giving his best, most intense smoulder to Inej. Inej, who’s giggling at him again.

“Stop, stop,” she begs, hiding her face in her hands.

“I thought you were supposed to be good at this,” Kaz rasps, sounding fond and just as amused as Jesper wants him.

“Sorry.” Jesper licks his lips and drops his voice even lower, a suave rumble he can’t hold for long until he’ll have to gasp for breath. “I forgot to mention. The Jesper Fahey Seduction Experience is limited to Crows who haven’t already agreed to go out with me. You get the leftovers.”

“Fair.” Inej shimmies out of her underpants as well and drops them off the side of the bed. She pats the blanket in-between her thighs when Jesper, stunned into silence, doesn’t react for a second. “As long as you only wildly exaggerated the skills of your tongue in terms of talking. Not… Come here, Jes.”

She laughs at him again when he crawls slowly closer like the caricature of a hunting cat and when he softly caresses her right leg, then pulls it up and deposits the thigh atop his shoulder.

He licks a slow stripe up along the outer seam of her cunt, then again, focusing on the trembling in her thighs and the laughter and the shy hand that settles in his hair, just trying to get a feel for it. Not the act itself, but Inej’s reactions. In his eagerness he’s chosen a tactically stupid beginning: he can’t monitor Inej’s minute expressions from down here with his face buried in her sex. If he could completely trust she’ll stop him when it gets too much, or, alternately, if he could trust this will never hurt her at all, he could lose himself, but so… She’s wet already, and that’s good. Jesper doesn’t know what Kaz is doing at all, either, except for the drag of the chair that may be him finding a better place to watch.

He pulls one arm up slowly—and maybe Jesper’s overthinking this, but these are the most important people in his life: he needs to protect them, and his mind won’t shut up—slowly, he reaches for her, I’m not restraining you don’t worry, and starts toying with Inej’s lips, not penetrating, while he laps at her clit. Gently, at first, while he learns the way she squirms—while he guesses what might mean too much pressure and no, here please and anything she’s not saying, because Inej’s far too quiet, and only her hands digging into his hair and pushing him down give him the certainty to not try and look at her face for clues.

Carefully, he puts his hand into service. One finger, then two, curling towards the front, massaging, matching the movement of his mouth, and again and again until Inej’s body curls all around him when she comes. Silent, of course.

Kaz is utterly silent as well. Maybe he’s not even there. Maybe he went back to work, and Jesper turns, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and— “So you are enjoying the show!”

His arms are hanging down straight and his hands are balled into fists, and Kaz is hunched forward, but still—those trousers are bulged a little more than usual. (It probably says things that Jesper’s got a yardstick for ‘usual’ here. But—)

“Why don’t you take care of this? For me… us?” Inej, asking gently somewhere above Jesper’s head.

“It’s easier when you do it.”

Jesper can’t help it. He snickers at the way Kaz glares-pleads at him, and apologizes, and tries hard not to crow with delight but— “Kaz Brekker, admitting I’m better than him?! Don’t be ashamed. You can’t excel at every single thing, and hand jobs happen to be one of my areas of expertise.”

“You’re scrubbing the floor in my office tomorrow, Jesper.”

“Is that what Inej meant with the dangerous power—“ Jesper bites his tongue. Just in time. Kaz looks pissed, but neither Kaz nor Inej have stormed out yet, though they might if he gives them time to process… “Give me a pillow, Inej.”

She pulls it out from under her back, somehow making that appear dignified, and Jesper throws it at Kaz’ face. Kaz, unfairly, catches it.

“We’re practicing a new trick today. It’s a shame, I’d love to watch that erection but it might not be enough to get you off. Hold it against your crotch and hump it. More friction.”

A beat. Kaz just sits there, clutching the pillow against his lap, and then— “You said after you finish getting me off, you touch yourself thinking about us. Show me.” His voice is even hoarser now. It’s unfair.

Jesper was so focused on him and Inej and making sure neither of them got hurt, all along, that he almost forgot he had a body. Now, though—now, with Inej still slick on his lips and Kaz’ rough voice and the knowledge he wants to watch Jesper—wants to watch Jesper jerking off, it all bleeds back with a vengeance. He’s close already. He’s so close. He squeezes the root of his dick tightly, staving off the end, thinking about wounds, open, bleeding, full of pus—squeezes, lies there, eyes closed, breathing, breathing, and listens to the soft rhythmic rustling of a pillow. Which doesn’t help.

“You’re in the right position,” Jesper whispers, when he dares softly trail his hand up and down his prick again. “Look at me. That’s how I imagine it, usually. I’m on my back in my room, and you’re both watching. With interest.”

Kaz laughs at him. It sounds more than a little breathless. “I should have known you get off on being the centre of attention, you egotistical asshole.”

Jesper doesn’t look across at him, or up at Inej. It would be over too soon. He can’t stop feeling the heat of Inej’s thighs underneath his head, though, and that… Kaz could mock him, for how incredibly turned on he is right now, for the certainty that if anyone was to touch Jesper’s too-sensitive skin now it would be over—but Kaz doesn’t know shit about sex. Point, Jesper. Instead, blindly, he starts needling, “You’re doing well, boss.”

“Fuck you.” Kaz can’t even muster his normal bloodlust. He sounds vaguely humiliated, and shouldn’t.

“No, you’re fucking you.”

Inej actually slaps Jesper’s head, and Kaz groans—and the smack and the sound travel down to Jesper’s dick, better than anything he could imagine, so he’s down a couple of points again, or up? It’s hard to tell now. It’s hard to tell, because his hand’s sped up without giving Jesper notice, and he can still smell Inej, all around his head, on his face, and Kaz is breathing audibly now, moaning, then not, because he’s biting either his glove or his cheek again Jesper thinks and honestly, either—and the pillow’s still thwacking, thwacking away and—thwack, a groan, a word that’s definitely not Jesper but still it’s—

And Jesper bites his own lip bloody when he comes because any word he might say can and will be used against him.

Inej starts petting his head.

Before Jesper even has his breath back, he can hear the quiet scratch of Kaz’ chair: can hear the cane and the limp, coming closer to the bed, a drawer pulled open and then shut again. Movement towards another corner.

“Kaz,” Inej says. She sounds neutral. Carefully neutral. Viciously neutral. Not like she’s sounded the rest of the night.

“You interrupted me before I finished reading my reports,” Kaz rasps. “I need to get back to work. Stay here.”

Inej shifts under Jesper’s head, jostling him off. She’s about to go after Kaz. Jesper touches her arm: turning the grab into a telegraphing move just in time, showing his intent to pull her back into bed without actually doing it. “Leave it,” he says—pleads, probably, he doesn’t have his shell fully back, and then he shouts after Kaz with as much obnoxious enthusiasm as he can muster, “That was fun, right? I had a great time. Let’s do this again!”

The door shuts.

Jesper burrows his head back into Inej’s lap, and then he says softly, “Let’s give him a little time to calm down. We all have our troubles.”

“I don’t know how you can do this,” Inej replies, stroking his hair. She sounds sad now: the last thing he wants for her, and Jesper doesn’t know how to make it better. “How you’re so reckless with your heart.”

“It’s nothing.” He’s laid out far more tonight than he’s ever intended, and that’s probably the answer. Jesper just doesn’t know when he should shut up. He gambles with everything. He’s only here because he gambled away the kruge he would have needed to escape Ketterdam, and because he carelessly lost his heart, too. Why not give everything else away when he’s not paying attention? He’s tried, Ghezen knows; he’s been watching Kaz and Inej for signs and made jokes and he weathered this pretty well for someone who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, who isn’t even trusted with their demons, but at the same time, when he’s trying to disguise and reveal so many things at once, something real’s bound to slip through. He whispers into Inej’s soft thigh, “Someone had to do it. That’s the point of partnerships: finding the person who can do what you can’t, and forcing them to do it.”

“Let me up for a second.”

Jesper doesn’t know what he’s going to do when Inej leaves too. Find another card game at the Crow Club, probably. Maybe even the Kaelish Prince, to really piss Kaz off. But Inej just pulls the duvet out from under him and gets onto the mattress again, spreading it over both of them. She puts her head on his shoulder and lies awkwardly half on top of him, the ribbing of her undershirt balancing out the mattress spring digging into his back, wrapping her arms around him. It’s almost too much.

This, more than anything that’s happened tonight, is too much. Jesper turns his head to the side. He rests his hands loosely on Inej’s back, then starts tracing random shapes.

“I’m sorry,” Inej says suddenly.

It takes a moment for Jesper to catch up. “For being concerned I was letting Kaz have his sordid way with me?”

Inej pokes him in the ribs, hard.

“You’re looking out for me, that’s good. I’m glad we talked. But I’m not as weak as I look, right? I know what I was getting into. I know how to take risks. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Jes, you’re the worst risk-taker I know. You don’t make many good choices. I’ve never seen as much money as you’ve gambled away. Don’t just gamble away your heart. You’ll get hurt,” Inej whispers.

Jesper, bravely, pretends to have suddenly fallen asleep.

Jesper’s hand is tangled in Inej’s hair. He uncurls it and then, his whole body, stretching out his arms and legs and the neck that’s aching from a severe lack of pillows. He uncurls, and regrets it immediately. Those long dark strands were the only thing that’s comfortable here: Inej must have moved a lot during the night, fighting for her place, and now she’s with her back to Jesper taking up more than half of the already narrow lumpy mattress, and she’s also wrapped up tight in Kaz’ thin duvet. The only duvet. Kaz could surely afford more, and Jesper doesn’t ever sleep with fewer than two blankets and a duvet and his old throw from home, not in the dank Ketterdam nights, but Kaz is an austere bastard who luxuriates in suffering, other people’s and his own, apparently, and even if he had another duvet then Inej would have stolen that one as well.

The bed smells of sweat: Inej’s, faintly, Jesper’s own, but below it, the soft sour odour of a certain someone not changing his bedclothes often enough after—knowing him, unpleasant dreams.

At least Jesper’s feet are still warm. Unlike everything else about him, because he’s still lying buck naked except for his socks in Kaz Brekker’s bed after getting him and Inej off and also singlehandedly solving everyone’s relationship troubles. His feet are nicely toasty and the rest is an icicle, goosebumped and shivering and he’s so lucky the room is pitch-black thanks to the curtains and Inej’s asleep and Kaz is gone, because roosting on top of the Slat may be a power thing on Kaz’ part but it’s also far draftier up here than down in Jesper’s room, so frigid that Jesper’s dick’s probably shrivelled back into his body. Not that it matters, and given the stuff they’ve been doing… Not that it matters, probably, to anyone but him. But hey, there’s value in being a little vain about your beauty. It got him into this bed, after all.

If Jesper let his teeth clatter so loud it woke up Inej, that would be pretty funny. She’d be mortified about hogging most of the mattress and the entire duvet. She’s also the one who had to do actual work the past two days, though, and probably even more than usual because Jesper was on his non-consensual vacation, so it all depends on how much of an asshole Jesper is. She was pretty sweet to him this night, so—

Jesper’s pulse jumps when a thin stripe of light appears on him, growing thicker, and then he closes his eyes and starts feigning sleep. A heartrender would call his bluff immediately, because his pulse is still racing: but a heartrender would know he’s awake even when he’s calm, most likely, though he’s never actually asked one about their powers. Maybe he should. At least find out whether it’s possible to force the light back under his skin when it’s started glowing out. But the only place where he’s gonna learn that is the Little Palace, and that’s the last place Jesper’ll ever go to.

If a heartrender got into this room, they’d have much bigger problems than whether Jesper can convincingly pretend to be asleep, though. It’s Kaz’ bedroom. No-one’s supposed to come in here uninvited. Except for Inej. Also, the door didn’t squeal when it opened. Someone knows those hinges intimately.

The quiet limping gait and the cane seal the deal. It’s Kaz. No reason for Jesper’s heart to gallop with terror, and at the same time—the best reason. What’s Kaz doing in here? Apart from this being his bedroom, and him probably needing to sleep too. Time to kick Jesper out, probably. Thanks, until next time, by the way why haven’t you sniped the Liddies’ treasurer yet. Should Jesper have gotten up as soon as he realized he was awake? But Inej’s here too, and Kaz wouldn’t just kick her out of bed.

He wouldn’t… this close, Jesper can hear the faint creaking of his leather gloves somewhere over his head. Somewhere to the left of him, where Inej’s sleeping, roughly where her head should be. Jesper doesn’t dare open his eyes, but he’d bet a thousand kruge Kaz is very softly petting her hair. He’s not jealous. He’s not hurt. He isn’t. He always knew what Kaz feels for Inej. Besides, Kaz is already hiding him and giving up a lot of money to keep his secret. Asking for anything more would be far too greedy, the kind of greed that costs everything: and Jesper doesn’t mind losing that much when it’s gambling, but Kaz… So he’s definitely not jealous.

He's opened his eyes, though, to confirm his suspicion, and sees Kaz pull back his hand and raise the tips of his gloved fingers to his lips. It’s too intimate. Jesper was never supposed to see Kaz like this, and he screws his eyes shut again, keeping his breathing free and even.

Fingertips ghost against the corner of Jesper’s mouth, so hesitant he almost misses them.

He might have, if he was still asleep; but those fingers are warmer than the air, and the rich earthy smell of leather tinged with the iron of old blood—the odour and sensation burn into him like the dark spots on his retinas when he once looked at the sun, and though he can’t taste any wetness, any spittle, he imagines them anyway. The glove touched Kaz’ lips before Jesper’s. He never imagined that Kaz would kiss him. Kiss Jesper. He licks his lips, because if these are the only traces of Kaz he’ll ever have inside him then—

“You’re awake,” Kaz hisses, still quietly enough not to wake Inej. “Get up.”

Jesper’s never managed to deny Kaz anything. The bed’s uncomfortable anyway.

He tiptoes quietly out into the office after his boss.

Kaz is proffering Jesper’s holstered guns, when Jesper turns around from trying to close the bedroom door as quietly as possible. It still made a tiny screech, but maybe, if Kaz lets him spend more time here then he’ll learn it well enough to…

“It’s a little past three bells. Mark Heener of the Liddies tends to leave his house at four to visit Lispet at the Sweet Shop so his wife won’t notice. It’s a good opportunity, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yeah, boss,” Jesper mumbles, still too mellowed by the scent of leather and old blood to come up with a decent riposte. “You got it. Anything you want.”

“Change the socks first, though,” Kaz rasps, and lets his eyes trail slowly up from Jesper’s feet to—yeah, Jesper’s still as good as naked.

“You know enough about anatomy to be aware that dicks shrink when it’s freezing, right?” Jesper means for it to come out more teasing and less self-conscious than it does, but Kaz is just staring at him. And not at his face, either. “You’re basically the Dregs’ boss. You can afford more than one duvet. In fact, I insist, and more pillows and a new mattress as well. When we’re doing this again I want to be actually comfortable.”

Kaz’ ears are slowly pinking up. It’ll have to be answer enough, because instead of reacting to Jesper’s unspoken question, the bastard just rasps, “It’s fifteen past now. You might need to hurry if you want to catch Heener before he gets to the Sweet Shop. And get to your room before anyone in the Slat wakes up, because I’ve already sent yesterday’s clothes to the laundry, so you can’t even slink to your room in my cast-offs.”

“I could protect my modesty with one of those gorgeous sweaty socks.” Jesper waggles his toes. In the green-and-yellow stripes, his feet look almost like grotesquely distended caterpillars. Sometimes he really misses the farm.

Kaz scowls.

“Don’t worry, boss.” Jesper buckles his holsters around his hips and winks at Kaz again. He’s too off-balance for a mock-seductive pose, but this will have to do. “This is all yours.”

#behold: the jesper character study pretending to be a pwp #jesper fahey #kaz brekker #inej ghaja #kaz x jesper #kaz x inej #jesper x inej #kaz x inej x jesper #sun summoner jesper au #dimtraces makes things #shadow & bone #shadow and bone

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sassy-starker · 5 years ago

Text

Five Times Stark Industries Employees Saw Peter Parker

(And One Time They All Found Out Who He Was)

Word count: 9128

CW: none

Notes: I promised @tony-is-my-daddy that I would tag them in my fluff fic and that was literally almost 2 weeks ago so I’m really, really sorry. I got caught up with finals and everything, but, I finally present to you, A Self-Indulgent Fic Where Peter and Tony Act Sappy And Confuse Employees

Peter couldn’t focus. His eyes were bleary and his mind was wandering. His attention was completely taken up by the hollowness in his chest. The workshop felt all too empty and quiet, but he knew that background noise wouldn’t help. He needed someone there. He needed people— hell, even just a person— to be with him. His mind felt distant, yet all too aware at the same time and it was driving him insane. He hated the winter. He hated seasonal affective disorder. He hated this.

In a rash decision, before his brain could even think, Peter pulled out his Stark Phone and tapped into messages. He tapped on his most recent contact and began to type.

Peter: hey, do you think i could go down to the intern labs and just work down there?

Peter: like the ones with the individual workspaces?

Peter: i need to be around people

Tony: Of course! I should be done with my meeting at about 5 so then we can go binge shitty rom-coms and cuddle and eat Chinese food

Tony: Pepper saw me on my phone. Gotta go

Peter: <3

Tony: <3

Peter, now with confirmation, gathered up what he was working on in his backpack and shoved his phone in his pocket before getting up and moving to the elevator.

“Where to, Peter?” FRIDAY asked him.

“Fifty-fourth floor please.”

The elevator moved relatively quickly down the floors, and it wasn’t long until it dinged and the doors opened, revealing rows and rows of worktables with interns scattered around and working on individual projects. Peter knew that they moved on and off the floor, depending on whether they were working in groups with their department or solo.

People looked over to the unknown young man while he set his stuff down on a table. He paid no mind, feeling comforted by having people around. He always felt nice when he knew that he wasn’t all alone, that the world was still there and time was still moving on. Just as he sat down, though, a lab director from some floor below them walked right up to the desk.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re allowed to be here,” he said in a sickly sweet, obviously fake voice.

“Excuse me?” Peter asked politely, looking up to the man.

“This space is for interns and employees. You don’t appear to be either,” the man elaborated.

“No, I’m allowed to be here,” Peter shot back simply before looking away from the man and reaching for his bag to pull out his project materials.

“Who do you think you are?” the lab director interrogated. “I’ll get you kicked out of this building!”

“I’m Peter-” the young adult started, but was cut off by FRIDAY interrupting.

“No last names, Peter,” the AI warned. “We don’t want anything to happen to you. I can assure that Peter is allowed to be here.”

Peter simply looked up and gave a shrug to the lab director before continuing to pull out the materials from his bag. The man looked up to the ceiling fearfully before retreating back to his own workspace.

That was the first time they saw Peter.

The next time Stark Industries employees saw Peter could only be described as chaotic.

The door to the stairs opened and somebody rushed out, weaving their way around people and workstations with practiced ease, all while laughing so hard that there were tears falling from their eyes.

Upon closer inspection, the employees realized that it was, in fact, the mysterious young man from only a week earlier.

Moments after Peter rushed in, the elevator dinged and the doors opened, and out ran the Tony Stark, covered in red and blue glitter. Not to mention that he looked furious, but not the type of furious where he was genuinely angry. It was more like that fond kind of furious, where you’re annoyed and upset, but can’t help but find the situation a bit funny and the person responsible is somebody you care about.

Tony ran out of the elevator, also weaving around his employees and their projects, obviously chasing the young man. By that point, though, the young man was laughing so hard that he had slowed down considerably. Thanks to that fact, Tony caught up and tackled him to the ground. All the employees were frozen in shock and just watching as their boss stood up and rubbed glitter off his skin to get it onto the man he was now standing above.

“No!” shouted the younger, getting up from his spot on the floor and giving the engineer a light shove. Both of them were still smiling and laughing about it though. “This is gonna take forever to wash off!”

“How do you think I feel?” Tony retorted, sprinkling some glitter into the other man’s curly hair. Once again, the younger man gave him a light push.

That’s when the two of them became acutely aware of the attention they had garnered.

“Sorry for disrupting your work,” Peter apologized to the crowd of employees sheepishly.

“We’ll send somebody to clean up the mess we made,” Tony told them, eyeing the trail of glitter he had left on the floor, “but get back to work.”

Hesitantly, they all began to go back to their workstations, but kept their eyes on the two men as they talked quietly and walked back to the elevator. Nobody said a word until the elevator doors had closed, obscuring their view of their boss and the mysterious man.

“Who the fuck is that kid?” Ashley questioned, turning to the coworkers she was in an experimenting group with.

“I have no idea,” Dylan answered, slowly tearing his eyes away from the elevator doors.

“He’s definitely a weird one,” Jenna piped up decisively. “I mean, have you ever even seen a picture of Tony Stark smiling that fondly?”

“And he talked back to him!” Dylan added on. “Like, holy shit, that kid shoved him and Stark only laughed!”

“I’ve seen a lot of strange things while working here,” Ashley told them, sparing a glance at the elevator, “but this is definitely one of the strangest.”

“Please?” Peter begged.

“No,” Tony answered for what felt like the hundredth time. “Gossip spreads across the building quickly and basically every employee is already trying to figure out who you are! I don’t want them finding out and leaking it to the press!”

“But they already know, so what does it matter? It’s not like the rumors will go away if they just don’t see me again!” Peter argued, jumping up from where he was seated in order to stand in front of his boyfriend.

“The rumors will die down if they don’t see you again. They’ll eventually move onto talking about something else,” Tony replied, grabbing Peter’s hand and pulling him close. Peter embraced the man and the two just stood there for a few moments.

“I just want you to be safe,” Tony told him quietly.

“I’ll be fine,” Peter responded, pulling away but still holding onto his boyfriend’s hands. “All your employees sign NDA’s, so even if they did leak something to the press, which I doubt they would, legal would be on their ass and sue them for all they’re worth.”

Tony sighed, realizing that Peter had a good argument that he just couldn’t counter.

“Fine. You can come help me with the presentation.”

Peter pumped his fist in the air and let out a whoop in victory, causing Tony to roll his eyes fondly.

+++

When the employees working in R&D walked into the small auditorium on the 16th floor, they knew Tony Stark was going to be there, but they didn’t expect the infamous mystery man to be there. On the stage, Peter was talking animatedly about something or other while Tony just listened, a fond smile on his face and his eyes sparkling.

The crowd walked in hesitantly, everybody’s eyes on the two men up front, who still hadn’t acknowledged them. When everyone was seated and the clock struck the exact time the presentation was supposed to start, the two finally turned to them to get started.

“Hello, R&D department! I hope you’re all doing well!” Tony greeted with his press smile on. “You all know who I am, but I have somebody else here with me today.”

“What’s up? I’m Peter,” the younger man introduced himself, hitting the woah as he said his name.

“Did you just-” Tony started with a sigh before cutting himself off. “You and your fucking tiktok dances.”

“You say that as if you didn’t ask me to teach you the Renegade last week!”

“That was different! That was for the Stark Industries tiktok! I need to be relatable so I stay relevant!” Tony defended.

“And yet you still won’t let me teach you the dance to ‘Say So’ even though it’s iconic!” Peter shot back.

“You and I have different ideas of what counts as iconic,” Tony said dryly before turning back to the crowd of employees.

“Anyway, today Peter and I will be telling you all about the new prosthetics line that your department will begin developing!”

Despite the importance of the presentation, the employees were only half listening as they were more focused on whispering about the mystery boy.

“Okay but what the actual fuck happened at the beginning of this?” Jenna asked quietly as she leaned over to her coworker on the right of her.

“No fucking clue. I can't believe this dude is just casually talking and joking around with Tony fucking Stark!” Dylan whispered in reply, not taking his eyes off the stage.

“And apparently he taught Stark how to do the Renegade. That’s fucking insane,” Ashley added from Jenna’s left.

The three turned their attention back to the two men on stage, finally listening to what they were saying again.

“Street smarts!” the younger man exclaimed, jumping in about something they were saying before.

“Stay alert out there,” both Peter and Tony quoted with large smiles. As if nothing happened, they jumped right back into the presentation.

“This is the weirdest fucking thing in the world,” Dylan declared quietly.

“I second that,” Ashley muttered.

“I third that,” Jenna added on without taking her eyes off the stage.

The presentation went on a bit longer, but it didn’t drag on. It helped that the entire time the two men were joking around and making the employees progressively more and more confused.

Peter and Tony wrapped up the presentation soon enough and the R&D employees began to file out, most of them keeping their eyes on the two men talking quietly on stage. Jenna, Ashley, and Dylan walked out together, some of the last to exit the auditorium, and the three made it to the elevator before Jenna realized she left her jacket behind. She told her friends that she would catch up to them and way back to the now empty seats. Not paying attention to the world around her, she looked for where she had sat and made her way through the row until she reached her seat and found her cardigan.

“See, I told you it would be okay,” said a voice from the stage. Jenna turned around and saw Peter talking to Tony, the men standing close together.

“You know I just get worried,” the billionaire replied, his voice more sincere than Jenna could’ve ever imagined. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I can take care of myself, Tones. You don’t need to worry so much.”

Jenna felt like she was intruding on a private moment, so she started to make her way out of the rows of seats and back to the door as quickly and quietly as possible.

“Just because I don’t need to worry doesn’t mean I won’t. I care so much about you, Peter. You know I love you.”

Jenna froze in place, right at the end of the row of seats and about to step into the main aisle that led to the doors. Against her better judgment, she found herself staring up at the two men on the stage, her gaze stuck on them. She just couldn’t look away.

Peter and Tony were basically right up against each other. They only were a couple inches apart with both their hands intertwined. She couldn’t see it earlier, but, now that they were right next to each other, Jenna could tell that Peter was about half a foot shorter than Tony. The younger man was looking up at the billionaire with a bright smile that was returned. It was like nothing she could’ve ever imagined; a ball of sunshine and pop culture references right next to a man known to be scuffed up and rough around the edges. It was like this boy brought out a completely different side of Stark.

“I love you too,” Peter replied softly before leaning up on the balls of his feet to give Tony a soft kiss on the lips.

Jenna, sucked in a breath of air harshly, the sound being enough to alert the men to her presence. The two men stared at her with wide eyes for a moment and she stared right back.

“Shit.” Tony broke the silence of the room, his voice conveying the concern written across his face. Peter put a hand on his forearm and schooled his features into a comforting look. The man looked over at him and tried to take solace in his lover’s gentleness.

“I told you something was gonna go wrong,” the billionaire said with a mix of concern and fear on his face.

“We’re not getting into this argument again,” Peter responded decidedly, his tone making it sound final.

“I- I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize I was walking in on anything. I just came in because I forgot my jacket! I . . . please don’t fire me, Mister Stark,” Jenna stammered once she had broken out of her shocked stupor.

“He’s not going to fire you,” Peter reassured her with a kind tone.

“Well . . .” Tony said, but his tone was a bit humorous.

“You’re not gonna fire her because we decided we couldn’t wait until we got back to the penthouse to be all sappy.” Peter gave the man a stern look and it occurred to Jenna once again that this soft, delicate-appearing brunet clad in pastels had somehow reined in the man who had spent so many years being known as a playboy.

“I’m not going to fire you, but you can’t tell anybody, not even anyone within the company. If you do, my legal team can and will sue you for all you’re worth. Understood?” Tony had a dangerous edge to his voice, letting the girl know that he was completely serious. There was no way that this was an empty threat.

“Understood,” Jenna replied with a curt nod. “But I just have one question.”

“Shoot,” Peter told her.

“How old are you? Because . . . well, you look pretty young.”

Tony started laughing and Peter gave him an annoyed look.

“Stop laughing! You do this every time!” Peter exclaimed, lightly slapping his arm.

“Everybody thinks you’re, like, sixteen! You look barely old enough to have your license!” Tony shot back, his laughter dying down.

“I’m twenty-one,” he told Jenna. “I’m not underage, if you were wondering. Tony may be a bit of a mad scientist, but he doesn’t date people who are underage.”

“Okay, good. I was just worried for a second. Um, thank you for not firing me and I swear I won’t tell anybody. I should get going,” she rushed out with a relieved smile. Without another word, she made her way out of the auditorium, holding her jacket close to her chest.

When she got back to her floor, Dylan and Ashley bombarded her with questions about what took her so long, but she just told them that it took her a second to find it. Of course, they weren’t satisfied with that answer, but Jenna didn’t let anything slip.

That was the third time Stark Industries employees saw Peter.

When Jenna walked into work the next morning, early as always, she found an envelope sitting on her designated area of her group desk, which separated into four sections for her project team to sit at. Across the front, it had her first name written out in a neat, cursive scrawl. She furrowed her brows as she looked at it, questions racing through her mind as she wondered who it could’ve been from.

Without another thought, she ripped it open and pulled out the contents. She unfolded the paper that was inside only to find a letter written in the same handwriting.

Dear Jenna,

I wanted to write you a letter, but realized that I never caught your name yesterday. I hope you don’t mind, but I asked FRIDAY who you were. Thinking back on it, that definitely makes me sound like a creep, so I apologize.

I wanted to thank you for not completely flipping out on Tony and I in the auditorium yesterday. I know that the whole thing was definitely crazy and it would’ve made sense if you freaked out. I also wanted to thank you for not immediately telling anybody. Seeing as no news stories have come out and nobody in the building has confronted Tony, I’m assuming you didn’t leak it, which is relieving.

I hope you’re doing well and if you need literally anything, just drop off a letter in the company mailroom in box 106.

As a thank you, there’s a Starbucks gift card also in the envelope! I wasn’t sure if you liked coffee, but seeing as you work in R&D and most of the employees in that department survive off coffee, I’m going to assume you do. Enjoy!

I’ll (hopefully) talk to you soon!

-Peter

P.S. Tony might not say it, but he’s also grateful that you haven’t leaked anything! I can promise that you’re good in his books :)

“What’s that?” Ashley asked, sneaking up behind Jenna and startling the woman.

“It’s nothing,” Jenna replied quickly while shoving the letter back into the envelope and cramming it into her bag. Ashley gave her a suspicious look but let it go, sitting down at her area of the group desk that was beside Jenna’s.

“I have a prediction!” Dylan announced as he entered the almost empty floor and waltzed over to Jenna and Ashley. He collapsed onto his stool and dumped his bag onto the floor beside him.

“This should be good,” Ashley muttered sarcastically, crossing her arms.

Jenna just looked away.

“So, we’ve established that it’s strange that nobody has ever heard of Peter and how, out of nowhere, he shows up!”

“Yeah, that’s kinda why we all think it’s weird,” Jenna shot at him, hoping that it covered up her panic.

“It’s also odd that he’s got a bit of a resemblance to Stark,” Dylan continued, decidedly ignoring her.

“I don’t see it,” Jenna interrupted once more, but the man didn’t stop.

“Maybe, just maybe, Peter is Stark’s son who he didn’t want in the spotlight until he was old enough to handle it!”

Ashley gasped while Jenna glanced away from them with a look of both panic and amusement.

“Or Peter is Stark’s illegitimate child and he doesn’t want to have a scandal!” Ashley built on the theory with an excited smile and wide eyes.

“What do you think, Jenna?” Dylan asked, and both of Jenna’s teammates had their eyes on her.

“I think you two are full of bullshit,” Jenna told them, trying hard to keep her voice steady. “He’s probably just Stark’s intern. Maybe he’s a super genius or something.”

“Bor-ring!” Ashley replied with a roll of her eyes.

“Yeah, our theory is way better,” Dylan bragged, a bit of humor in his tone.

Jenna stayed oddly quiet for the rest of the morning.

+++

When lunch rolled around, Dylan and Ashley went off to the food court floor of the building, but Jenna decided that she wanted to make use of the Starbucks gift card she’d been given. When she opened the envelope back up to get it, she discovered that it was a two-hundred dollar gift card, which left her in shock for a few moments. Still, she shook herself out of it and went to go get a sandwich and a coffee.

After lunch, she found herself back with her teammates, working on their project, but sipping on a venti white chocolate mocha this time around. Around half an hour after they’d come back from lunch, the elevator doors opened to reveal Peter, wearing a sunny yellow sweater that matched the smile on his face. He walked out of the elevator and seemingly ignored all the eyes on him. He made his way over to a table working on prosthetics and began to help them out, the team there looking a bit surprised but extremely grateful for the assistance.

When Peter looked up and spotted Jenna, he gave her an even brighter smile, which she returned. She shook the coffee cup in her hand a little, bringing his attention to it, and he gave a silent chuckle. Jenna took a sip of her mocha and turned back to her project.

“What the fuck was that?” Ashley asked, drawing both of her teammates away from where they were designing arm prosthetics.

“What?” Dylan and Jenna replied in unison.

“That little interaction you just had with Peter,” the blonde woman elaborated, looking at Jenna accusingly.

“What interaction?” the man piped up before the brunette could respond.

“She and Peter made eye contact and smiled at each other and then Jenna held up her coffee cup and Peter chuckled!”

Dylan gave Ashley an incredulous look before shifting his gaze to Jenna.

“It was nothing,” Jenna defended with a level voice before getting back to work.

“Does this have something to do with the letter from this morning?”

“What letter?” Jenna and Dylan asked in unison.

Ashley sighed. “Jenna, come on, just tell me what’s going on? Is there something you know that we don’t?”

Before the brunette could even respond, Peter passed by their table.

“Hey, Jenna!” the young man greeted cheerily.

“Hey, Peter,” she responded, a smile on her face.

When he was gone, she went right back to her work, ignoring the looks from her teammates.

Jenna knew it was going to be a long rest of her day.

That was the fourth time Stark Industries employees saw Peter.

By the next Friday, the questions from Dylan and Ashley had died down, but the suspicious glances were definitively not stopping, nor becoming anymore secretive. Luckily, though, Jenna was becoming better and better at ignoring the looks from her coworkers.

There were no more appearances from Peter, but Jenna had been enjoying exchanging letters with the brunet. The letters would sometimes be accompanied by pictures, mostly of Peter and Tony, and the woman had fun printing dumb pictures of her own and sending them back. The two would share funny stories and talk about themselves, though Peter still never shared his last name, but the brunette didn’t blame him for that; she knew he wanted to continue to keep himself on the down low. Tony would sometimes put in a few sentences on a letter, mostly a short quip about something his boyfriend wrote, and Jenna couldn’t help but find her boss’s dry wit rather humorous.

As the weekend approached once more, Jenna found herself feeling glad to get away from her teammates’ conspicuous looks and probing questions. When it reached midday, she was beyond happy to escape to the food court, rushing in order to get ahead of Ashley and Dylan.

When she walked into the food court, she knew there was something going on. The chatter of the floor was quieter than normal, despite the normal amount of people being there. It was less conversation and more pointed whispers. When she followed where everybody’s eyes were looking, she discovered Peter sitting at one of the round tables on his own.

The young man had a couple slices of pizza on a plate in front of him, with one slice in his hand. He had wireless earbuds in and his phone was propped up using a pop socket attached to the back. It was obvious that he was watching some show or another.

Jenna simply shrugged and went to grab her own food, paying no mind to the whispered gossip spreading across the floor. She got a container of Chinese food from one of the stations and looked around to find a place to sit before realizing that she didn’t know where to go. She usually sat with her teammates, but she had been trying to escape them until she had to get back to work, which left her with nobody to eat lunch with.

In a strange and unusual burst of confidence, Jenna walked across the floor and toward Peter’s table, decidedly brushing off the eyes that followed her. She put her food down and sat in the chair across from her boss’s boyfriend, attempting to act casual as the quiet chatter toned down in order to hear what happened next.

Peter looked up when she sat down, seemingly confused that somebody was joining him at his table. When he saw that it was Jenna, however, he cracked a bright smile. He took out his earbuds and put them back into the carrying case before shutting off his phone and setting it face down on the table.

“Hey, Jenna!” His tone was bubbly, an air of familiarity to it. Just hearing him talk made Jenna feel calmer; the boy had a way of doing that.

“Hey, Peter,” she greeted back, less excitedly but still conveying that she was happy to see him again. “What’s up?”

“Not much! Tony’s in a meeting and I decided to come down here for lunch. I didn’t like how quiet it was.”

“I think you mentioned that once. That you don’t like being alone in spaces, I mean.” Jenna paid attention to every word in every letter she received from the young man. She felt like she connected to him in a way that she’d never connected to anybody before; it wasn’t like any friendship she had in the past.

“Yeah. It just feels nice to know that the world is still turning and I’m not completely alone.” He looked sad for a moment, eyes glazed over and distant. It was a somber kind of happiness, a mix of emotions that weren’t supposed to be mixed in case of an explosion, but not a loud one; it was more of a combustion, internal and quiet, soft and powerful. “But, anyways, what’ve you been up to?”

“Not much,” Jenna replied, trying to move on from the delicate moment. “Been working on the prototype for the prosthetics and I think it’s going well. There’s a few bits and pieces that me and my teammates have gotta work out before we send the design to our lab director, but I think we’ll get there soon.”

“That’s really cool! I honestly can’t wait for the prosthetics line to go into production! I think it's really gonna change the game since it’s gonna be a high tech line but also more affordable than the competitors!” Peter’s eyes were shining, the gleam replacing the far off look from only moments earlier.

“I’m excited for it too!” Jenna admitted. “I know it’s gonna help so many people and I can’t wait for it to go on the market!”

Peter opened his mouth to respond, but his phone buzzed before he could speak. He picked it up and read the notification, giving a small chuckle and typing out a response before looking up at Jenna.

“Was that . . .?” Jenna trailed off, unsure of how to finish the sentence but sure that the brunet caught her drift.

“Yeah,” Peter responded easily with a fond, but exasperated, look. “He finished his meeting and asked if I saved him some food from my lunch. I did, but I’m tempted to eat it myself and tell him to go get his own food.”

Jenna snorted.

“I’m not that mean, though, so I’m gonna take him the last two slices.” He slid his phone into his back pocket and his earbuds case into his front one before standing up and grabbing the plate with the two slices of pizza.

“I’ll see you later, Jenna!” he called as he walked away, heading towards the private elevator.

“See you, Peter!” With that, the woman went back to eating her lunch, as if nothing had happened at all.

When two people sat down at the table, Jenna looked up at them, only to find her two teammates, who had bewildered and suspicious looks on their faces. Dylan’s brow was furrowed and Ashley’s eyes were narrowed, the blonde obviously more dubious than him.

“What the actual fuck, Jenna?” she asked, voicing everybody’s thoughts.

“What?” the brunette replied as if she didn’t know.

“Don’t act all innocent! How are you so friendly with him?! This shit doesn’t add up!” Dylan nodded along to Ashley’s words.

Jenna gave an exasperated sigh.

“Sorry, but that’s confidential information. NDA’s and all that, ya know?” She was trying everything she could to weasel her way out of it, but it was the first time she’d given her teammates a semi-straight answer, even if it wasn’t that revealing.

“Oh, come on, Jenna!” Dylan finally spoke up. “It can’t be anything that serious! Just tell us what’s going on?”

“I’m afraid that Ms. Locke is right, Mr. Hoffman. This is confidential information that Ms. Locke does not have the authority nor the necessity to reveal to you,” FRIDAY interrupted, garnering the attention of the people watching.

Jenna only shrugged under the intense gazes of her coworkers, but it still shut them up about it.

That was the fifth time Stark Industries employees saw Peter.

It was relatively quiet for the next few weeks after the food court incident. While the suspicious glances remained, the questions had died down, though whispers still followed Jenna around as her coworkers spread rumors about how she knew Peter.

Speaking of the brunet, he hadn’t shown up since the incident, but he and Jenna had continued to exchange letters, becoming closer friends as time went on. The next time news about Peter came, it was only news for Jenna, as nobody else had any clue of how the young man was involved.

It had happened when Tony Stark had come to the R&D floor to talk to the employees there about the progress on the prosthetics line. Everybody had been trying extra hard to look busy as the man went around, all of them hoping to seem like they were valuable employees who actually did work.

Jenna’s team was the last that the billionaire came to, but as soon as he started talking to them, the brunette noticed something.

He had an engagement ring on.

The woman mentioned nothing, though she did freeze for a moment when she noticed it. Still, she pushed through and continued with the discussion about the progress they had been making.

When her boss later stepped away to answer a text, she quickly told her coworkers she had to use the restroom, rushing away and going down the hallway that Tony had gone down, which happened to lead to the bathrooms.

When she got there, she found him smiling down at his phone and typing quickly.

“Did you guys get . . .?” Jenna started, but trailed off at the end, startling the man a bit. He looked up at her, eyes a bit wide, but immediately recognized her. He looked confused at the question for a moment before realizing that her eyes were on his ring.

“Yeah, we did,” Tony answered, looking a bit sheepish as a blush painted his cheeks.

“How did it happen?” It was obvious that the girl was excited to find out.

“It’s actually pretty funny. I got down on one knee to propose and he looked so exasperated and I freaked out because I thought he was gonna break up with me or something. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring box. He was planning on proposing that night too.”

“That’s absolutely incredible!” Jenna told him excitedly, but still kept her voice quiet.

“When we told our friends, they all looked so unsurprised that something like that would happen for him and I.”

The two both laughed before the billionaire’s phone buzzed again.

“I’ve got a meeting in, like, five minutes, so I should probably go.”

The two said their goodbyes and he started to walk back out to the main area to head to the private elevator, but stopped and turned around before he could.

“Just do you know, you’re invited to the wedding.”

Without another word, he walked away, leaving Jenna standing there in shock. A million thoughts were racing through her head and her eyes were still trained on the end of the hallway where the man had disappeared from.

“I’m invited to the wedding,” she whispered to herself. Taking a moment, she shook herself out of it and began walking back to her team’s table to get back to work.

Before she could get there, though, Ashley rushed at her and grabbed her arm, pulling her back the way she came. The blonde pulled her into the women’s restroom and checked every stall to make sure they were empty before turning back to her coworker.

“What the fuck it this?!” She held up a letter and Jenna immediately knew who it was from. She snatched it from her co worker's hand and skimmed through it, praying to Thor that it wasn’t one of the letters that explicitly mentioned Peter dating Tony. She then proceeded to thank Thor when she realized that it was one one of the notes that mentioned a relationship, but not outright who it was with.

“Okay, Peter and I have been talking through letters. So what?” she replied, attempting to keep her voice steady so it sounded like she wasn’t fazed by the whole thing.

“Are you fucking with me?! You’re friends with this mysterious dude who’s all buddy-buddy with Tony fucking Stark and you’re expecting me to just let that go?! You’re out of your mind!” Ashley was obviously worked up about the whole thing and the brunette didn’t know what to say, but, luckily, her coworker started talking again before she could get a word out.

“You’ve been so secretive these past couple months and it’s been annoying as all hell! You’re not telling me anything and it feels like I’m so disconnected from you! Just tell me what’s going on!”

“I can’t! I can’t tell you what’s going on! I’m sorry that I don’t wanna lose my fucking job just so you can know every aspect of my life! Just let it go and leave me and my letters alone!” Jenna blew up, which was something she didn’t do very often.

Unsurprisingly, Ashley looked taken aback, shock written across her face. Jenna immediately regretted it.

“I’m sorry,” she told her friend softly. “I just can’t tell you.”

Jenna turned around and left the bathroom, the letter in her grasp. As soon as she was out, she went to her lab director and asked if she could leave a little early, giving the excuse of feeling sick. Of course, her lab director was understanding as always and let her go. She quickly gathered her stuff, ignoring the looks from Ashley and Dylan, and hightailed it out of there.

+++

“Dylan!” the R&D lab director, Kelsey, called from her office.

The man shot up from his team’s table, where the silence was as dense as molasses and the tension was so thick that you could cut it with a knife.

“Yes?” Dylan asked as he made his way over and placed himself in the open doorway. The director stood up and handed him a couple files.

“I have to go to a meeting, but these files need to be turned in. Could you take them up to the boss’s office for me?”

“You- you want me to take these to Mr. Stark?” His voice was a bit shaky.

“It’s not that big of a deal. You go to floor 89, you find the office with his name on it, you knock on the door, you tell him that I sent you, you give him the files, and you leave. I promise it’s not as stressful as you think it is.” Kelsey’s tone was comforting, but it did little to ease his anxieties.

“Okay,” he muttered, turning around and heading towards the elevator.

When the doors opened and Dylan stepped in, he found himself alone in the elevator. The silence was filled up by his anxious thoughts about what could go wrong. He spent the entire ride up trying to take deep breaths and remember that it was a simple job; just go in, give him the files, and leave.

The elevator stopped and he stepped off onto the eerily quiet office floor. It seemed that nobody was there and it freaked him out; it felt like a horror movie. He crept along the halls until he made it to a door with his boss’s name on it. He raised his hand to knock until he heard voices coming from inside.

“I don’t get why it’s such a big deal.” That was Tony Stark’s voice, and Dylan recognized it immediately.

“It just is!” A voice replied. It took Dylan all of three seconds to realize that it was the mysterious Peter who seemed to show up at the most random of times.

Against his better judgment, Dylan peered through the semi-open blinds that covered the windows of the office. When he did so, he found Peter sitting on the edge of the desk and Tony a couple feet in front of him.

“It doesn’t seem like that hard of a decision. If you don’t like this guy, don’t invite him to the wedding! It’s so simple!” The billionaire looked confused at the dilemma at hand, though Dylan had no clue what they were talking about. He was getting married?

“But it’s not! I don’t want to invite him, but it would be rude if I didn’t!” Peter looked worked up about the whole thing, face slightly flushed and fiddling with his hands.

“It might be rude, but if you don’t want him there, then don’t invite him!”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Except that it is.”

“Maybe for you!” It wasn’t a yell, but it wasn’t quiet. Peter had stopped fiddling with his fingers and was now pulling slightly at his hair.

“What do you mean?” Tony spoke like he could accidentally shatter the young man in front of him if he wasn’t careful.

“I mean that you’re Tony Stark. You’re a famous billionaire that can do whatever you want. If you don’t want to invite somebody, you don’t invite them. You don’t care if it’s rude because you’re Tony fucking Stark and you can do anything you’d like. I’m not like that, I can’t just do whatever I want. I’m Peter Parker, an average guy from Queens, and I’ve always been just that. If I’m rude, there’s consequences and it can actually affect my life. I have to think things like this over, even if you see it as trivial.”

Tony paused for a moment, letting the words sink in.

“Except you’re not just some average guy. You’re Peter fucking Parker. You’re incredible. You’re gonna change the entire world. Maybe I don’t get these kinds of things because I was raised in such a different world than you, but all I want is for you to be happy. Whatever choice you make here, I’ll be fine with, but that isn’t what I care about. I care about you, because you’re the most amazing person on this planet. You’re Peter Parker, the man I fell in love with.”

Dylan’s jaw dropped as he finally found the closure he’d been seeking for months. He knew what Peter’s last name was, he knew what relationship he had to Tony Stark, he knew who Peter was. He had never expected this, though. He cringed as his mind went back to that theory he had about Peter being Tony’s son.

He watched as the two shared a short kiss and finally moved back in front of the door, feeling the need to give his boss the files, run back down to his floor, and tell his teammates everything.

Dylan knocked on the door and he could almost feel the two men inside freeze in shock. It only took a second before the door opened, though, and revealed Peter Parker standing there with Tony Stark slightly behind him, both of them looking worried.

“Uh, I’m from R&D and my lab director, Kelsey, asked me to deliver these files,” Dylan stuttered out, failing at his attempt to remain casual.

“Oh, uh, yeah, yeah, thanks,” Peter replied, seemingly relieved as he took the files.

“I, um, bye, I guess,” Dylan stammered before turning around and booking it out of there. He could feel the two men’s eyes on him as he left.

When Dylan got to the elevator, he pressed on the button a few times, praying for it to arrive faster, and jumped on the moment the doors had opened wide enough to get through. He then adamantly pressed the button for the R&D floor. The elevator ride down felt much longer than the one up.

When Dylan did get to his floor, he raced through the doors and to his teammates, grabbing each of them by the upper arm and dragging them into the men’s restroom. He checked every stall to make sure they were alone before locking the bathroom door and turning back to his teammates.

“You guys aren’t gonna believe this!” Dylan announced. “I found out some crazy shit!”

“Why am I here?” Jenna asked him in a deadpan voice. “Can I leave?”

“Jenna, you’ll actually wanna hear this! I found out who Peter is!”

Ashley and Jenna both froze, but for different reasons.

“You gotta tell us!” Ashley exclaimed excitedly.

“No, you better fucking not!” Jenna said over her.

“What?! Why?!” Dylan looked genuinely confused.

“Because we’re not supposed to know! It’s obvious he wants to keep his identity a secret! You can’t go around telling people! You need to tell him and Stark that you know so they can feel sure that his identity won’t get leaked!”

“God, you’re such a buzzkill, Jenna,” Ashley shot at her.

“No, I’m a good person.”

It made her teammates go silent, the words piercing through them like knives.

“If you wanna go and tell and lose your job, then go ahead, but I want no part of it.” Jenna turned around and started to leave.

“Do you know?” Dylan asked her, making the woman stop in her tracks.

“What?” Jenna slowly turned back to him.

“Do you know?” he repeated, voice cold and serious.

Jenna stayed silent for a few moments, mulling over what she could say.

“Not on purpose . . .”

“And you didn’t tell us?” Ashley questioned, betrayal written across her face.

“Sorry I respect their privacy!” It was obvious that she was very much not sorry.

“Wait . . . did you find out when you went back to get your jacket after the presentation?!” Dylan exclaimed, looking like he had put all the puzzle pieces together. When Jenna stayed quiet, he knew that he had gotten his answer. “Holy shit! What happened?! Did you, like, see them kiss or some shit?!”

“Kiss?!” Ashley shouted.

“Jesus Christ,” Jenna muttered, putting her head in her hands.

“No fucking way! They’re in a relationship?!”

“Yeah!”

“That’s it,” Jenna declared decisively and turned around.

“Where are you going?” Ashley asked her, bewilderment shining in her eyes.

“I’m going to go tell them that Dylan figured it out and that you know,” Jenna told the blonde, voice laced with venom.

Jenna unlocked the door and left, not letting her teammates get another word in, but the two followed her out and watched as she stormed past all her coworkers and to the elevator, disappearing as soon as the doors opened.

“I might lose my job,” Dylan muttered, eyes wide and trained on the now closed elevator doors.

“Is it true?” one of the other employees, Amelia, asked as she walked up to Dylan and Ashley.

“Is what true?” Ashley replied.

“That Peter and Stark are in a relationship? You guys were implying it in there, and you aren’t exactly good at being quiet.”

“I’m definitely gonna lose my job,” Dylan whispered, correcting his earlier statement.

“So it is true!” Eric, another employee, shouted.

Everybody started talking, the floor turning into a storm of chattering.

“We’re so fucked. We’re absolutely, completely, utterly fucked,” Ashley murmured, only loud enough so Dylan could hear, and the man only nodded in agreement.

The two slowly walked forwards, looking around at their gossiping coworkers as they made their way back to their desk. They looked completely horrified, and guilt was quickly eating away at Dylan.

Before they could sit down, the elevator doors opened and Jenna walked out with Tony and Peter in tow. Everybody stopped, staring at the three of them. Peter looked nervous and tears were glistening in his eyes, but Tony just looked furious, his expression mirroring Jenna’s.

“Okay, which of you knows?” Tony asked the room, his voice deadly calm. He didn’t yell or scream, but that steady tone was almost worse than him blowing up at them.

One employee raised their hand, and everybody else followed, the last people to put their hands up being Ashley and Dylan.

“All of you, go to the auditorium. Now. All the other employees will meet you there. Do not say a word of this to them before I get there to talk to them about it. Do I make myself clear?”

If looks could kill, all of the R&D employees, minus Jenna, would be dead. All of them mumbled their confirmations or nodded and slowly shuffled off to the elevators, heading to the auditorium floor.

Ashley and Dylan had fallen into the back of the crowd and were the last to get onto an elevator, meaning they could see the floor before the door closed. The two watched as Tony turned back to Peter and Jenna, who were looking regretful and heartbroken respectfully. The last thing they saw before the elevator started moving was Peter beginning to cry and burying his face in Tony’s shoulder as the man embraced him and Jenna putting a comforting hand on his back.

By the time the R&D employees reached the auditorium and began to make their way into the seats, other employees were either already there or just getting there. There was chatter, a mix of people confused why they had been called there and those who knew praying that they wouldn’t be fired. The chatter seemed to die down a bit as everybody was seated, all of them waiting in anticipation for whatever was going to happen.

After a few minutes, the doors of one of the entrances to the auditorium, which had been closed, slammed open. Everybody turned, though plenty of them couldn’t see the doors, and watched as Tony Stark stormed down the aisle towards the stage, Jenna Locke behind him and looking slightly less, but still plenty, furious. The two made their way up the three stairs that led up to the stage.

All the employees gazed up at the two standing center stage, and they were glaring back at them with serious faces. After a moment of silence, Tony finally spoke.

“I’m sure the majority of you are wondering why I called everybody to the auditorium. Today, somebody found out something that they shouldn’t have about my private life and, instead of coming and talking to me about it in order to keep it confidential, they went and told somebody, and those people’s department overheard. That person who found out and told will be fired and the person who was first told and was complicit in revealing information about my life will be put on probation.”

In the back of the auditorium, Dylan and Ashley sank down in their seats.

“You may also be wondering why I have one of your coworkers up here with me today. If you weren’t already aware, this is Jenna Locke.”

Jenna gave the audience a curt nod.

“Jenna also found out about this information a couple months ago. Instead of telling anybody, she talked to us and promised to keep it to herself, and she has kept that promise. She was also the one who told me about the information leak.”

The employees, minus the R&D department, were on the edge of their seats, eager to find out the information but scared of their boss and what he could do to them if things got out.

“Seeing as nothing can seem to stay a secret here, I have elected to talk to you all about it. Keep in mind that what happened in terms of this information being revealed was a serious breach of confidentiality and disrespected not just my own privacy. Take this as a warning. If any of you are to tell anybody outside of this company about this, your employment will be terminated and my legal team will sue you to kingdom come. This is not a three strikes you’re out situation. Do not tell a soul about this. Keep in mind the fact that you all signed non-disclosure agreements when you took this job. This counts as a company secret, and you will treat it as one.”

Everybody seemed to nod or give a murmur of confirmation. It wasn’t much, but it appeared to satisfy the man.

“Moving on, I’m sure you’ve all either seen or heard about Peter. Only a select few of you know who he is, though without his consent, and others have seen us interact but never known who we are to each other. This information about our private lives was discovered and we have no choice but to let you all know in fear of rumors and gossip being spread around and taken outside the company. Everybody, please meet my fiancé, Peter Parker.”

The room was shocked into silence, the only sound being the clacking of Peter’s shoes as he softly walked out from the wings and to Tony’s side. None of the employees uttered even a sound as they looked up at the boy, whose eyes were still slightly red and puffy from when he had cried only ten minutes earlier.

“Hey, everybody. I’m Peter. You’ve all probably seen me around,” the young man introduced himself, voice only loud enough to hear. “Like Tony said, we weren’t planning on telling people yet, but we don’t get that choice anymore.”

They were still silent.

“Since this will be your only chance to do so, we’ll be answering questions about this,” Peter continued. Nobody spoke, until one person in the third row raised their hand and the young man motioned to them. “Yes, go ahead.”

“How, uh, how old are you?” the woman asked quietly, looking slightly concerned.

Peter sighed as Tony looked to him with a humorous smile.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he told the billionaire, who didn’t have a chance to respond before Jenna started laughing a bit. “You too?! I can’t believe you would betray me like this! This happens every fucking time!”

The employee who asked furrowed her eyebrows, seemingly mirroring the confusion of the rest of the audience.

“I’m twenty-one,” Peter told her. “Tony likes to make fun of me because I look like I’m not old enough to drive. Jenna’s laughing because she asked the same question when she found out.”

The woman nodded along with the explanation and everybody went silent again before another person raised their hand and Peter pointed to them.

+++

Eight Months Later

“And this is your team!” Kelsey told the new employees excitedly. “Meet Jenna and Ashley! They’ve been here for a while and are definitely excited to show you the ropes!”

“It’s nice to meet you!” Jenna greeted. “What’s your name?”

“I’m River,” the new guy replied quietly, cheeks flushed.

“I’m glad to have you on the team, River!” Ashley exclaimed.

“I’ll leave you all to it!” Kelsey gave River one last smile and walked off to talk to some teams about their projects.

“We’re finishing up some last touches on the update to the prosthetics line,” Jenna explained to the new recruit as he sat down. He nodded along as she began to explain the project.

Jenna was cut off by the elevator doors opening and Peter walking onto the floor.

“Excuse me for a second,” the woman told her team before jumping up and running over to the brunet.

“Who’s that?” River asked Ashely as he watched Jenna excitedly embrace the man and begin to talk to him.

“Have you signed all your NDAs?”

River nodded.

“Peter!” Ashely called. “Come meet the new kid!”

Peter bounded over eagerly, a large smile on his face as he approached the two employees, Jenna trailing him.

“Uh, hi, I’m River.”

“Nice to meet you, River! I’m Peter Parker. It’s always great to see new faces around here!”

“It’s great to be here,” he replied awkwardly.

Peter nodded and was off again, going around to teams and helping with projects, but, more importantly, just talking to the employees in general.

“Is he a director or something? Everybody seems to know him,” River questioned his team.

“He’s even better than a director,” Ashley told him with a grin. “He’s Tony’s Stark’s fiancé.”

Shock painted itself across River’s face.

“There’s no way that’s real!”

Ashley and Jenna glanced at each other before turning back to River. They didn’t say anything else to him, which was unnerving to the new employee.

As if on cue, the elevator doors opened once more and the Tony Stark walked out, a small smile adorning his face. Peter worked up from where he was helping a team and flitted over to the man happily. The two shared a short kiss before Peter turned back a bit.

“We still on for lunch on Friday, Jenna?”

“Of course!”

Peter shot her a smile and the couple entered the elevator, talking quietly as they disappeared behind the metal doors.

“Okay, so maybe it is real.”

Tag List (Let me know if you would like to be added or removed):

@darkerstarker @dim-ships-johnlock @haylove5

#axiwrites #starker #starker fanfic #tony stark/peter parker #starker fluff #starker fanfiction #theres a little hint of angst but its barely there #this was an excuse to write cute scenes #anyways i hope yall like it

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jumin-deserves-better · 4 years ago

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My thoughts on all the Mystic messenger characters and their routes :

Ok, last week I finished playing the mystic messenger game. I completed all the routes, DLCs etc. And, OMG, WHAT A RIDE WAS THAT ! . It doesn't have any appealing plot like other otome games, but this game sure did capture my heart,which most of the otome games fail to do so. The fact I could relate to some of the characters, I felt bad for them, concerned, weirded out at times , and so happy when they changed into a happy person because of me. The game deserves all the praise it gets, 10/10 👍

In this post, I will give my rating based on my playthrough for each character, and I will also say who is my true route as well, i.e, the route I fell in love the most, And please remember, these are based on MY opinions alone, please don't come at me, if it doesn't match yours 👀, Feel free to share your opinions about the characters as well & this post is way long beware ~☆

My playthrough order : I followed the recommended playthrough to get a clear picture of the storyline.

Zen 》Yoosung》 Jaehee》 Jumin 》 Seven》 V 》 Ray.

And for your kind information, I never played this game to get a bad ending, i didn't want to hurt those precious fictional characters just for getting one CG 🤐, but I do know what happens

SPOILER FREE!, I will be just giving MY OWN ratings , except for the rika part lol don't worry, ladies.!

Anyways, let's just jump into it ;),

Zen 🤍:

THAT SMIRK THOUGH 😏

His route : 9/10 ( not the best route, but I liked it anyways, as he is my 1st route)

His character: 8/10 ( I don't like narcissism or narcissistic people, I know it was his coping mechanism, but I kind of dislike those type of men, his attitude in Jumin's route, kinda pissed me off apart from that , he is great ! )

Is he my true route ? : NO, I don't like guys who are narcissistic, I understand that that its was his coping mechanism, to make him believe in himself, but still being narcissistic all the time is not ok, I have a bad memory because of those type of guys, moreover, I am not that confident irl 😂 , I mean the MC in Zen's route,will have to say lots of weird ass choices, and the fact that will impress him⁉️, i wouldn't even say those choices irl to anyone . I wouldn't mind being friends with him though. He is definitely the ideal BF material, but he is just isn't for me..Sorry, Zen.😅

Yoosung 💚 :

AWW CUTIE 🥺💕

His route : 9/10 ( apart from the "You are just like Rika", I personally enjoyed his route, the character development was the best at the end 👌)

His character : 9/10 (OMG! He is just so cute, I am not the one to get attracted to the 'younger guy' type, but this guy just changed everything for me, but he needs lots of attention , beware, yandere yoosungs will pop out if u don't care about him enough, and the fact this guy was the only one who was supportive for Jumin's relationship with MC in Jumin's route , showed how much of a cutie he is!, unlike others 😒, he was a bit annoying in V's route, but it is understandable, he deserves to knw the truth about the person who he admires )

Is he my true route ? : Kind of a YES & a NO. Eventhough I enjoyed his route more than Zen, like I said earlier I am not into those 'younger guy' type, he is a guy who loves to be babied and protected by a mature MC , and well...I am not that mature either 😛,in reality, I am a independent person, but when it comes to relationships, i liked to be babied 😏. I personally think he deserves someone better than me, I don't want to ruin his happiness 🥺

Jaehee 🤎 :

A friend in need is a friend indeed, my bae,Jaehee! 😄

Her route : 7/10 ( ok, I am gonna be honest here, I did not enjoy her route, I was happy that she realized her dreams and goes for it, but do we have to ruin a character just for making this route dramatic? Yes, I am talking about Jumin, Do u guys even know, how much I struggled to even start Jumin's route, I was literally scared of him because of his potrayal in this route as that jerk which he was btw,this route actually made me avoid Jumin for sometime.I expected the relationship between Jumin and Jaehee to become a healthy one, but oh well, whatever, & the after ending was just frustrating,all the RFA members just isolated Jumin, seriously, eventhough he did wrong things ,I felt so bad for him, imagine his thoughts at that moment , ugh...Jaehee deserves a better route, I am just not a fan of 'downgrading one character to give more importance to the main one', it's just bad writing)

Her character : 8/10 ( she is an amazing friend, a bit mature one at that. But personally i felt , if she really wanted to pursue her dreams ,she could have resigned, if she is not liking it . She was behaving a bit ignorant at times, especially in Zen's route. She could have communicated with Jumin beforehand about her difficulty in handling the job? I knw it's very difficult to suddenly quit the job, but she has every right to resign,she does have the money to open a coffee shop, thn why?. Don't come at me, and tell me that I hate her just because she is a female character,HELL NO, I like her but still her route made me have mixed feelings. She was being rude at times , I really understood why CHERTIZ did this, to show women can liberate themselves to work for their dreams, but in a professional point of view, I still think the route could have been handled better. Small businesses success isn't as easy to get, and in my point of view it would have been nice to show how MC and Jaehee make it through in her route rather than making Jumin a jerk, because it ruined Jumin at first for not only me but also a number of players ,but oh well,🏃‍♀️, I do like her, she could be a great friend, nothing more that that )

Is she my true route? : NO, I am straight. I see Jaehee as a friend. Some ask a romantic route for her, but I don't mind about that , I was just glad that I could help her to realize her dreams as a FRIEND.

Jumin 💜 :

I don't see a selfish jerk here, I see a soft boi , in a gigantic body, who is just lonely

His route : 10/10 ( Seriously, I did not expect to like his route one bit, I thought I would hate him more, but turns out, I freaking fell in love with the flawed "him" , HECK YEAH! this was the only route where i was being TRUE TO MYSELF, did not refer any guides, understood his loneliness, I could relate to him so bad, I was happy to help him during his vulnerable times 🤧.Zen was annoying ,but I didn't care much about it, because I knw why he was like this. I prefer the good ending, and yes he does propose for marriage to whom he have talked for only 11 days, but I was very sure he will listen to you, if u don't want the marriage immediately )

His character : 9/10 ( He is so cute in his own way,mature, intelligent,awkward and even gets insecure,because he thinks he does not deserve you?! , you deserve better than me ,Jumin 😫, he does get possessive and irrational and that could make others uncomfortable, but for me, I understood that as well, being an empath myself ,as this dude never had a relationship with anyone,he is new into this, I don't mind teaching him new things about the world, about love. His characterization in Jaehee's route was god awful and cheritz did a bad job in it , I think they decided to make him like this, just for DRAMA,Jumin might have a bad way of showing emotions but he is not a soul less demon. I have seen people calling Jumin an abuser, but I didn't see that at all, he was being an idiot and he acknowledges it, every damn time, an abuser doesn't do this at all, and no..I don't think Jumin is dominant daddy material one bit like how the fandom perceives him. This is his first relationship with a woman, I feel he would be sweet, embarrassed loving and a loyal husband material, and I love his "opposed to living together before marriage" thing as well, as my religion follows that too as well )

Is he my true route? : A. BIG. FAT. YES. HE IS JUST MY TYPE, dear lord. I have never seen someone so perfect and also with flaws just like me , this guy made me realize that all along, I just never showed empathy towards others and that's why no one wanted to talk to me irl, I didn't care what people told about me. He seriously made me understand my own flaws and I corrected it, he made me into a better person, big thx , Mr.Jumin . Morever , I was being myself in his route only, I loved all of his calls , he brings up the strangest things just to talk to you, that's just so cute WTH , this man will be so loyal I am sure of it !.I don't really care about his riches, I am just in love with his true self 😫🥺

707 ❤ :

The main man of this game, hmmm....

His route : 7/10 ( ok, I was so hyped to play his route , cuz even before I started to play this game, 707 was so popular, I expected a lot, but it was a meh for me...he did have a VERY HEARTBREAKING PAST , he was suffering from a lot of things, I understand. But the whole route wasn't that gud though...and his secret endings are just painfully depressing and angsty, V's death just broke my heart, I felt so frickin bad for Jumin, how would he even handle those things?.It just destroyed me completely. Moreover I don't find 707's jokes funny at times, his route had good plot, but 707 failed to impress me in his own route)

His character : 7/ 10 ( oh boi,I am scared that I would be slaughtered with hatred for telling this, the fact that he was faking his own personality was very shocking to me, I did not expect that. I despise tsunderes ,and 707 is the literal definition of it, so yeah, It ended up being annoying for me. Even though I was hella depressed like 707 before, I couldn't find him #relatable at all. I don't knw why , but I couldn't see him more than a friend 🚶‍♀️)

Is he my true route? : NOPE. I was not impressed by him at all, don't knw why lol, I tried to like him as he is THE REAL TRUE ROUTE,but it is still not getting into my heart, maybe because I already started to love Jumin, idk. I felt bad for 707, I wouldn't mind helping him as a friend, but as a significant other...NAH....,I am not into these type of guys 🥴,sorry seven...

V 💙 :

I can understand why Jumin and V were best friends...they be looking like DADDY 👀

His route : 8 /10 ( for me, I was happy that V finally understood that he was basically a obsessive simp for Rika, I hated that he blamed himself more, which somehow I agree, I feel like he could have said something to the RFA , yoosung was hella annoying in this route, he spoke as if Rika is an angel or something, which she is not btw, yoosung, she brainwashed saeran and freakin created a cult, and this is not something an angel would do 🥴, V is not just flawed or anything,he doesn't even love himself,and so clings to rika because she was so wonderful in her eyes as an idea .He kept the freakin truth hidden,just because Rika doesn't want to, of course, my baby,yoosung will ask about . V is too emotional,and he was a victim of rika's abuse and manipulation just like Saeran,I liked the plot and though I didn't fall in love with him , I did have a tinsy bit of crush on him, mainly because of his looks, more like a puppy love, the voice acting was on point 👌)

His character : 7/ 10 ( boi could have handled the situation with his crazy GF much better, he actually let Saeran get brainwashed by Rika, he could have done something, and the fact that he liked Rika only as an idea, showed that this guy was in a very toxic relationship, Rika and V are the perfect example of what happens when two people who doesn't love themselves date, and he was clearly the victim of Rika's abuse and manipulation. I also don't think he is an angel either, he has done some wrong things definitely, and the fandom should acknowledge his wrong doings)

Is he my true route? : NO. Though Jumin and V are very similar , I did not like the fact that he simped for his crazy GF out of his obsession alone and though, she was clearly showing red flags earlier, he thinks that the power of love can change her lol . He was so confusing for me to understand. 😂

Ray 💖 :

His route : 10/10 ( The drama , the music, the plot & the voice acting was just fantastic, I was blown away by this route, but that doesn't mean I liked Saeran as a character, the boi needs therapy, not romance lol, sry,and the recovery from his brainwashed state was unrealistic )

His character : 7/10 ( seriously, the voice acting for both the personalities was just mind blowing, he is such a well written character, but his abandonment issues isn't something u should romanticize about, he loved the affection that the MC was giving , but one wrong move, he will change just like that , he confused affection with love. Some are telling that Jumin was abusive, which he is not btw , for me, suit Saeran was super abusive, WTH)

Is he my true route ? : HELL NO. Eventhough he was practically innocent because he was under the influence of that elixir or some kind of a drug and brainwashed by Rika , I would never in my life try to have a romantic relationship with those kind of people. I may like him after he receives proper therapy ,but NO, just No, I can help him as a person, but I wouldn't go for a kiss or something with him. 🙄

Rika 💔:

This scene still gives me goosebumps 🙄

Her character : -infinity / 20 ( she deserves this uwu)

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Ok, hear me out, I hate Rika so much , i know she has been through a lot, i really do.. but it doesn't mean you can emotionally abuse and brainwash Saeran, he would have been a better person,she turned a person who loves ice cream and cloud watching into a self destructive psycho, another story showed how much she is capable of by her words , She manipulated V to not tell RFA that she is gonna start a cult, WHAT THE HELL, V, do you not knw what she is trying to do here 😳 ? But whatever,V was being manipulated by her "playing as a victim" tactics, she also played with Jumin's feelings for her, I was about to throw my hands on her, how dare u do that to my man ??, made yoosung to obsess over her to make him think that she is absolutely a gud person, and left him to ponder over her so called 'passing' , making him unable to move on from her.

And oh god,the backstory did not make me feel bad for her one bit, it only made me understand why she has become like this. Like dude, I understood she had a shitty past, but so did the other members of RFA, but did they all become like a manipulative victim player? Hell no.. they learned from their mistakes and they change, but even when all the members were trying to help her, she denies that she doesn't need a therapy. She deserves a proper mental therapy and a proper jail time. NO EXCUSE FOR THAT, she did the same manipulation and brainwashing for all of her disciples to get them into Mint eye.

But as a character , Rika just rocked it for me , she was so successful in making me and a lot of the fans hate her as an antagonist. Her voice actor was so gud,she had such a good way of speaking manipulative, like God, I understood why all the RFA members were all kind of whipped for her, she is such a master piece as an antagonist. 🚶‍♀️🤫

Vanderwood 💞👀 :

I NEED A VANDERWOOD ROUTE 😫

His character: 10/10 idk, why am I giving a rating for him though? I just love him 😂

Ok, I know he is a side character, but for some reason, I liked him more than 707 lol 👀, I just spoke with him only in one chatroom , but boi , was I whipped for him 😜

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

My favourite to least MM main characters and routes :

JUMIN - 19/20 ( 1st)

YOOSUNG - 18/20 (2nd)

ZEN & RAY - 17/ 20 ( 3rd)

V & JAEHEE - 15 / 20 ( 4th )

707 - 14 / 20 ( 5th, it's not that I hate him or something, it's just that I was neither IMPRESSED by his character nor the route, I don't mind him one bit! )

Rika -Though she doesn't have a route or a gud character she deserves a -infinity/20 ( and no place in my heart 🚶‍♀️)

Overall, this game is the best otome game ! , I actually paid for getting the hourglasses, I mean, I suck at patience, I was so intrigued by the story, but it was seriously worth it !. There are a number of otome games which charge more than this.

Anyways,

Thank you, Cheritz for creating Mystic messenger. This game totally changed how I perceived life, love ❤ and Romance 💕

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