#then the bucket smacks her in the face and she finally wakes up

[cursed-clock-shop]

All of the Fails have swallowed a clock at some point in their lives. This causes them to wake up at the same time every day. Unfortunately, none of them were set to the same time, so Marietta had to make a schedule to keep track of when the kids wake up.

[emisprocrastinatingbywriting]

Alone and Forsaken

Chapter 8 Summary:

Joel Miller wakes with a part of himself missing and a fuzzy memory. After realizing what has happened, he meets people from your past that both comfort and shake him to his core. In a life or death situation, he forces himself into his more brutal side but finds it harder to keep himself in that mindset with thoughts of you racking his brain. All he knows is that he needs to find a way to keep you safe while stuck behind bars. Can he escape and find you? Will he leave those you once loved behind?

Warnings: Past Trauma, Joel is getting biffed around pretty hard this chapter so heavy on the injuries, Angst, Joel needs hugs but so does Jake, some friendly fluff between Joel & Jake, Paul needs to be punched ASAP.

A/N:

Hello folks! I hope the first month of your summer vacay (if you are in uni like me) is going good! We are jumping right in with Joel's perspective. This chapter is super dark as Joel goes through some pretty heavy panic at the seperation and thoughts of self harm do arise. Additionally, we get some more background to Paul and spoiler alert! He is a super creepy and violent guy. I don't go too heavy into detail into what sort of assaults he has perpetrated but reading in between the lines, you can get the jist. As always, take care of yourselves! If this is too heavy then please do not read it. If you want to keep reading but don't want to miss out, always feel free to message me and I can sparknotes it for you. Trauma is tricky and if this will trigger you, opt out babes. Choose you!

Chapter 8/20

Chapter 8: Separated Pt. 1

The first thing Joel heard was an incessant dripping noise. It pulled him from a deep sleep filled with senseless dreams about people with unfamiliar faces. He scrunched his nose at the sound in distaste, sighing at the knowledge that his day would entail patching up whatever hole that had formed on the roof. Joel knew that the frigid breeze would soon be whipping through the cabin and pulled himself from the fog. His bones ached for some inexplicable reason but it simply had to be fixed. The last thing he needed was you getting sick with no antibiotics on hand. 

You. 

The thought of kickstarted his brain as Joel’s eyes blinked open. Memories rushed back to him as he tried to place himself. The mark on his neck and the matching one on yours, the pancakes, the fight, the confessions he had made and the fire that interrupted the moment. He remembered smacking your ass before he left for the river and stooping down to fill the bucket but after that it was blank. 

Joel dug through his memories for anything else but he felt as though pieces of himself had been shredded off in his sleep. He longed for something unknown and it put him on edge. The invisible string behind his belly button that connected him inexplicitly to the only home he had in this world, to you, yanked him from his delirium. The memory he dug for remained elusive but that didn’t matter. Not when the beast within him howled at the absence of his mate.

A voice sliced through the terror that threatened to suffocate him. Joel whipped his head towards it so hard that stars formed behind his eyes. Dizzy and slightly nauseous from the abrupt movement, he dropped his head back down onto the metal with a soft thump. 

“It’s weird. If you asked me yesterday what she smelled like, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you but the second they dragged you in here I remembered. You smell like her. It’s weird but hey, congrats I guess.”

Joel’s eyes struggled to adjust to the pulsing fluorescents that hung over him. The light from them reflected off of the metal slab he was laid on and burned his retinas. Straining harder despite the pain, his eyes finally landed on a ragged looking omega locked in a cage across from his own. Alarm bells went off in Joel’s brain and he shot up off the cold surface like a bad out of hell. 

A wave of nausea knocked him backwards before he reached the door. An uncharacteristically high pitched whine tumbled from Joel’s lips as he swayed on his feet. His head felt like it had been clamped in a vice. The pressure inside of his skull made his ears ring as he swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. 

A concussion. Joel had enough to know the symptoms even before the outbreak. Not much to do for one other than to rest but after looking around, he realized that he needed to figure a way out and fast. Dried blood was caked all over his face and crept down his neck to darken his flannel. A pool of semi-congealed blood was pooled where his head had laid while the fresher blood dripped down to the floor. He watched it splatter against the cement for a second before he righted himself. 

“Hey woah there big guy, take it easy. Just take it slow. You probably have a concussion and if you puke, I swear to God I will break out of here just to slap you. I don’t care who you’re mated to,” the omega spat. 

Joel coughed and winced at the wad of bloodied spit that sourced his mouth. Swallowing it back,  he slowly eased himself down onto the bunk in his cell to take in his surroundings. The omega across from him was bruised but looked reasonably healthy. The scent of his fellow prisoner was muted but Joel picked out soft notes of citrus intertwined with a heavier aroma of cloves. This omega was mated. With no alpha in sight to protect the younger man, he winced. Joel needed to focus on getting back to his own mate who could be in the exact same situation elsewhere. 

The room that held him was small with just two cramped cages and a partly decomposed body slumped by the door. The skin of the dead sagged from the bone, the face misshapen and melting towards the floor. Rotted holes stared back at him as he watched a rat claw at its bloated abdomen. The sickly sweet scent of decay assaulted his nostrils and he turned away to keep himself from gagging. 

Metal sheets acted as beds in the tiny cells and a rickety office chair sat in the aisle between. It looked like a security office for some shitty strip mall or grocery store. There wasn’t even a toilet for the previous prisoners in the cell, just a bucket that someone had shoved in haphazardly. How nice, he thought. 

Reaching forward, Joel rattled the cage with his hand and cussed at the strength of the thin bars. He wrenched back against their hold once, twice, before he relented. As dinky as the little metal cage was, it would be impossible to tear through without the proper tools. 

“Yeah, because I haven't tried that already. I’ve just been sitting here fiddling my thumbs and waiting for them to come back all day.” 

Joel snorted and looked across at the omega who was leaned up against the side of the cage with his arms crossed. He had a full mouth and a pair of deeply set brown eyes that oozed sarcasm. His curls were dirtied but still shone in the light of the room. The strands looked as if they had been picked through for blood and filth, placed ever so carefully against his skull. Despite the horrendous circumstance and obvious injuries, the omega managed to look oddly put together. 

He wasn’t sure why, but he felt like he already knew the younger man. Joel combed his mind for a tangible connection, searching through his memories of Jackson, of the QZs, and his time on the road but he found nothing. He even pilfered through the rolodex that was buried deep in his brain of Sarah’s former friends but no, this man looked to be in his mid twenties. Sarah would have been about ten years older than him when the outbreak started. If she had lived she would be in her mid thirties, making the omega too young to fit into that part of his life. Joel’s chest ached at the thought of his pup but he shoved it away. It was not the time for that. 

It wasn’t until the omega rolled his eyes at Joel’s staring that he knew who it was. He had already seen the action a multitude of times in someone else more times than he could count. The way the corners of his mouth lifted as his face tilted towards the ceiling in an exaggerated eye roll made the identity of the omega click in his brain. 

“You’re him,” came from Joel’s mouth. 

“What? I’m who? We’ve never met. Pretty sure I’d remember if we had, big boy.” 

Joel chuckled at his cheekiness and tried to prop himself up against the bed. Sharp jolts of pain skittered from the crown of his head and burned straight down his spinal cord as he tried to get a good look at the omega he had heard stories about. The bright lights burned his retinas but after a few moments, the stars in his vision dissipated and he could see the man more clearly. He was somehow exactly how Joel imagined he would be. Defiant and saucy, yet with an undercurrent of kindness as the gaze upon Joel both analyzed his character and assessed the extent of his injuries. 

The memory of how you had glared at him and forced him down onto the couch flickered in his mind. The thought of how you had swaddled him like a baby and then cleaned his wounds curled his hands into tights fists. The bite mark on his neck stung once more but he shook himself out of despair. Joel needed to focus so that he could get back to you. Never in his life had it been so hard to focus on the task at hand but the bond demanded his attention. It was like half of his heart had been ripped from his chest and some hidden instinct inside screamed at him to slam himself against the bars until they fell open. For the sake of his damaged body, he ignored it. 

“You’re - fuck’s sake that hurts. Sorry, you’re him. You’re Jake,” he gritted out as his head pulsed with every beat in his chest. 

Jake smiled and strolled over to the edge of his cell. His bruised arms slid between the bars as he sized up the older alpha. Joel winced at the intensified scrutiny. The one good thing about the outbreak was that nobody had to meet the friends and family of whoever they were with anymore. In Joel’s case, they usually didn’t have one and he would be long gone by morning anyways if they did. But somehow, even in the brutal world he found himself in, he was forced to bear the weight of a loved one’s stare for the first time in years. 

“Hmmmm… And you know what, I always told her she would go for someone older too. I called that shit didn’t I? Miriam would be so pissed, she had her bets on that younger alpha girl that made the bread,” Jake laughed as he clapped his hands together. 

Older? Joel knew he was older. He was 56 years old for Christ’s sake but he wasn’t sure how to feel about the implication that it was a reason for your attraction to him. The humor both comforted and grated at Joel’s nerves. On one hand, it was comforting to hear your tone in Jake’s voice. On the other hand, it refocused his mind back on your absence.  

“Where is she?,” Joel pressed. 

The other man’s face darkened a bit and he sighed, looking down at his feet as he scuffed the floor. Joel’s heart clenched in his chest and the mark on his neck throbbed uncomfortably. His vision tunneled as he waited to hear the words confirming what he already knew; that he couldn’t protect you, that you were gone, that he was alone again. A deep feeling of dread bit at the lining of his stomach as he resigned himself to his fate. 

Death seemed like a small act of mercy in a world without his mate. Fuck it, he thought, at least they will probably kill me soon. If you were dead then he was more than ready to follow you to the grave. Joel couldn’t survive another loss. In fact, he refused to. It would all be so pointless, to be forced to live with the crushing weight of his own inability to perform the most basic requirements of his kind. To protect, to care, to provide, all of these things he consistently failed at. If your death had come, then he decided that he must join you and everyone else that he had been unable to keep safe. 

“I don’t know. I wish… Fuck man, I wish I could tell you where she is but I don’t know. Paul tried to bring her in but somehow that bitch got hands now, I seriously don’t know what you have been feeding her but shit. Anyways, he-”

“Wait,” he interjected, his heart stuttering in his chest from the hope that bloomed and spread warmth through his body. 

Joel swallowed, trying not to get bogged down with the brief respite from his preemptive mourning and subsequent doomsday preparations. You were alive, that was what he needed to focus on. Alive and somehow capable of taking down a fully grown alpha? He tried not to let the pride he felt get in the way. Gripping the edges of the metal to keep his hands from visibly shaking in excitement and anxiety, his mouth opened and closed like a fish as he tried to formulate coherent words. 

“She’s alive?,” he asked, voice faltering as his throat thickened with emotion. 

The nod from his prison mate lifted the pressure from his chest and Joel choked on a relieved laugh. His hand rubbed at the mark on his neck as he blinked back tears. His thoughts were consumed with you. Somehow you were alive. That was good. He could work with that. As long as you stayed away, you would be safe. Joel decided he would try his hardest to get back to you but if he died trying, the thought that you were safe from Paul was enough for him. You were young and resourceful. 

Maybe you would find one of the maps in his drawers and make it to Tommy. Most of them had Jackson marked off and Joel knew his little brother would never turn away an omega in crisis, especially one that carried his scent. He didn’t know Maria that well in comparison but he knew that Tommy loved the commanding woman for some reason, which meant she probably would welcome you too. 

A life in Jackson without him was what he had originally promised you. Despite the comfort of your safety, Joel was surprised that the thought of being stripped of time with you stung a bit. A quiet life with you shrouded in trees taken from him in the blink of an eye. He hadn’t even realized that he had made plans before they vanished, only to be replaced with the knowledge that he may never see them come to fruition. 

Skinny dipping in the river in the summer, teaching you how to hunt, cooking in the puke green kitchen and watching you enjoy his creations, strumming his guitar on the porch he built as you make distorted doodles on scraps of paper, holding you close on nights that his mind can’t escape the weight of his past, all of that was gone. As he tried to grapple with the loss of a dream, Joel was shocked to realize that all that remained was fear. He had something to lose and it terrified him. 

Jake’s voice cut into his reveries as he explained, “Paul came back a day after they dropped you off. Cooper said his face was all fucked up and he was limping pretty badly when came in. She got away but they don’t know where she went. I’m sorry but your guess is as good as mine.”  

The mannerisms that Jake displayed made Joel blink. He watched with rapt attention as the younger man’s hands moved with his words. The resemblance to you was uncanny. The only person who had ever qualified as his best friend was probably Tess, even though he had swiftly denied any attempt of attachment on his end. He wondered briefly if he ever resembled her. He wondered if parts of loved ones lingered on within every person. Maybe that was all being a human was, being made up of memories and others that were once dear.  

A questioning look from Jake was enough to snap Joel back into reality. The presence of you in the room was clear through the man in front of him but he reminded himself that your mannerisms were not you. His mate was somewhere alone, that was what Joel needed to think about. 

Rubbing at his bruised face, Joel asked, “What is this place? Where are we?” 

The omega shrugged and shuffled back to plop down on his own bed. He wrapped his arms around his knees and Joel winced at the sight of bruises darkening his golden skin. They looked worse under the harsh glow of the flickering fluorescents that flickered occasionally over his head. 

“Somewhere close to your place. Paul moved us until a couple weeks ago, a raider never came back. After that, they set up shop in this outlet mall. Pfft, so tacky. As if I would be caught dead in these,” Jake muttered bitterly as he picked at the frayed edges of his pants. 

“Are you even old enough to know what an outlet mall is?” 

Rolling his eyes, the younger man snapped, “You realize that just because the world ended and I got stuck in Josiah’s group doesn’t mean that I don’t have taste. They had an entire section for khakis in this store. KHAKIS, Joel. Be fucking for real right now.” 

A genuine laugh bubbled up from Joel’s chest and the younger man granted him a small smile. He always liked the stories you told that involved Jake but after meeting him in person, Joel liked him even more. Despite the similarities between you, the attitude reminded him of a pup with too much sass for her own good and a joke book in hand as they traversed the country. The connection caused him to sigh but he smiled through the bittersweet memory. Joel cleared his throat to ward off any more troublesome emotions that this man pulled from him. 

“How long have I been out?,” Joel asked. 

Jake hummed and deliberated for a moment before he answered, “They brought you in about two days ago. At least I think so, it’s hard to tell without windows but Cooper usually comes by to sneak me food after Paul goes to bed. He’s done that twice now, so, yeah two days.” 

Two days? Two fucking days? Joel swallowed a scream. Anything might have happened while he was out. Were you on the run? Had a bloater ripped you to bits? Did a group of raiders have you? He growled at the thought of unfamiliar hands touching his mate. Possessiveness surged from deep within his being. Nobody could have you except for him, Joel needed that drilled into the minds of anyone who would seek to harm you. Killing them if they dared to cross that line would come as a relief, he needed them to know that too. 

Baring his teeth, a low growl rumbled from his chest as his heart rate picked up. It was a purely alpha sound, something that was ripped from him involuntarily and was meant to ward off potential threats. In actuality, all it did was to bring out a worried look on Jake’s face as he watched Joel growl and spit at nothing. The threat was absent in this room but he sensed it nonetheless and it brought out the rage in him. 

“Hey,” Jake called out to him softly, “Listen, I know you’re going all Bruce Banner over there but she’s tough. Plus, Paul is obsessed and lost his shit over you claiming her. I honestly don’t know what he would do if he found her. Wherever she is, she’s better off.” 

A grunt of affirmation escaped his lips. He knew Jake was right but that didn’t stop him from worrying. This world was anything but kind to an omega. He tried to take some comfort in the knowledge that his mark might safeguard you from the worst of it. Most alphas that sought an omega to breed would hardly be able to sniff you out, just as he barely smelled the omega that sat across from him. Even if they did catch a whiff of your smell, they would likely be repelled by the notes of his scent that were intertwined with your own. 

It also helped him to think of how pissed Paul was over the bond the two of you shared. He hated that guy with a passion before a rifle had slammed into his face but now, with his face cracked open and his mate missing, your former betrothed’s days were numbered. 

Looking back across the room, Joel spied the indents of a bite mark on Jake’s neck. The omega was mated, he had forgotten that. 

“Why are you here?” Joel questioned, “She told me you were mated to his brother. Ain’t you supposed to be with him?”

Jake sighed and looked away. His eyes grew wide and watery, making Joel regret ever having asked. It wasn’t any of his business really and he wasn’t sure why he even asked. Just months ago, he probably wouldn't have. He would have kept silent and made his way out of this place without a care in the world. In all honesty, Joel would have probably left Jake to die without a second thought but your sweetness had infected him. Now he leaned in as the omega continued on with a creased brow, genuinely curious as to his mate’s whereabouts. 

“There isn’t… Paul and his guys hooked up with a different group of alphas after everything went down. They’re different from the group we were in before. They’re worse,” he said, choosing his words ever so carefully. 

Breathing in through his nose, Joel braced himself as he asked, “Worse how?” 

“Worse like that cell has had a lot of omegas in it but none of them ever come back. Neither do the betas or the alphas usually but it’s not the same.” 

Joel cocked his head at the dark haired man and waited for him to continue, though he was already pretty sure he knew where this was going. 

“The omegas get used however… However they want to use them and then they get tossed wherever. Betas and alphas go to the arena. Cooper doesn’t want me anywhere near the others or the arena, so he stuck me in here. Paul doesn’t ever really come here so… It’s better, it’s safe,” he murmured into his knees. 

Joel swallowed and prodded once more, “And the bruises?” 

“When Paul doesn’t get what he wants, he can get pretty brutal. He sent a group of guys in here to rough me up, and made Cooper watch to assert some sort of dominance over him. Typical bullshit,” Jake sighed while giving a dismissive wave of the hand.  

Typical bullshit. Again, just as it had been with some of your stories, he had no clue how to react. Joel knew cruelty, being a cruel man himself for many years. He understood the purpose of making someone watch as you tortured their loved one. He himself had used that method countless times for the simple sickening reason that it worked. But what he couldn’t understand was doing something like that to a sibling. 

Joel tried to imagine a scenario where he would ever force Tommy to watch as brutal men tortured his mate and came up blank. Even if his brother wasn’t married to one of the scariest women Joel had ever met, he still would never put his own blood through something like that. It was unthinkable. Even in his most brutal moments, he would not have been capable of that. It went against his nature. Brutality had been a means to an end for Joel. Senseless violence, in his opinion, was always messy and unnecessary. He only had to think of Salt Lake City to know that. Senseless violence against a brother was merciless. 

The screeching whine of rusted hinges halted Joel’s train of thought. The door swung open and banged against the wall. Jake jolted at the loud noise and shrunk in on himself while Joel tried not to roll his eyes at the dramatics. He had been in this position too many times to be scared by a flashy entrance. It typically meant that what was to follow would be lacking in a certain finesse. Still, when the haughty looking light haired man strolled in Joel felt the atmosphere shift as their eyes met. Just as he had with Jake, he knew who the younger alpha was in an instant. 

A bruise sagged the underside of one of his blue eyes and three bloodied scratch marks stood out against the pallid skin of his throat. Joel noticed that a clump of his blonde hair had been torn out, leaving behind a patch of raw pink skin on his scalp that gleamed from under the lights. A laugh was swallowed as Joel noticed the blood stains on the younger man’s jeans that bloomed from his upper thigh. The faint outline of bandages under denim and the slight limp to his gait gave it away. 

Did you fucking stab him? Fuck, he knew it was probably sick but the thought of you stabbing Paul made Joel fall more in love. It was definitely sick but he didn’t care. Not when pride swelled in his chest at the thought of his omega beating this piece of shit to a pulp. Joel smiled at the light haired man as he imagined your blade piercing his leg, making his captor falter for a second before he continued his approach. 

“Paul.” 

A grin stretched Paul’s thin lips over his overcrowded mouth. His blue eyes sparkled with amusement as they feasted on Joel’s rumpled form. Again, Joel bit back a laugh. Looking at Paul, he was suddenly reminded of the singing hyenas in the cartoon lion movie Sarah loved in elementary school. He half expected Paul to break out into song. 

“Very good old timer. I see the mind hasn’t gone yet,” he jeered, tapping one of his thick fingers against his temple. 

Joel didn’t answer. He refused to let this poor excuse for a man get an inch from him. Instead, he kept his face schooled as the blonde stepped closer to his cell. Crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against his bunk, Joel gave off the aura of someone who was completely unbothered. If anything, the older alpha looked bored at the childish antics. Paul’s face twitched with irritation. 

“I suppose you’re wondering why I haven’t killed you yet. I should, given the fact that you stole what was mine,” Paul hissed in contempt. 

The comment spiked his blood pressure. Joel’s jaw clicked as he mashed his teeth together to keep up the facade. He breathed in quietly through his nose to calm himself and tried to remember the matching marks the two of you shared. You were his and he was yours, nothing could change that. It didn’t matter what Paul said to get a rise out of him, in the end the bond was the ultimate truth. 

“Shame really, I was looking forward to ruining her myself. Such a tight little body but such a fucking tease. But hey, I’m sure if I tried hard enough I could wipe out any trace of you. Might take a couple hundred rounds but -” 

Joel was up in an instant, shattering his mask of indifference in an instant.  In two long strides, he was face to face with Paul and had the satisfaction of watching his eyes widen at the proximity. Before Paul had the chance to step back, Joel reached out from behind the bars and yanked the younger man against the metal hard. 

Paul grunted at the impact of his pale face slamming into the bars and twisted uselessly in his grasp. It was no use. There was no getting away from Joel when the black pit of rage inside of his soul swallowed him whole. Hot torrents of tar pumped in his veins, burning away any trace of remorse in his system and replacing it with wild fury. He needed Paul to die and he needed it to be soon. It was the only thing that could quiet the beast that beat its fists against the walls of his chest. 

“Listen to me you fucking pussy, if you so much as even look at her, I will beat you to death with my bare hands. I will fucking skin you alive and that’s not a threat boy, that’s a promise. M’gonna make it nice and slow, you’re gonna be beggin’ for me to kill ya when I’m done,” Joel spat through gritted teeth. 

After a few more harsh shoves at Joel’s thick biceps, Paul finally managed to wrangle himself out from his grasp. The younger man stumbled backwards a few steps before he caught himself against the other cell and looked up at him like a petulant child. A soft chuckle rumbled in Joel’s chest as he slunk back onto his bunk. Based on what he had heard about the alpha, he knew that Paul was an ignorant ass. What he hadn’t expected was how lame his attempt at being fearsome would be. This was downright pathetic. 

After taking a few breaths, Paul gathered himself and marched back to the front of Joel’s cell. His unblinking stare hardened under the sterile lighting. A stinking smell of rotted maple crept over from the frustrated younger alpha and tickled Joel’s nostrils. He swallowed back a retch as the stench burned the back of his throat. 

“If you survive, you get to stay here. Not many do but who knows grandpa, maybe you’ll get lucky. Most of them have been down there a while, hiding from what I can see. Maybe they’ll take it easy on the poor old man,” Paul hissed. 

As the blonde stepped forward, Joel saw a dark shadow pass over his face. He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. 

“I just wanted to tell you in person that your bond means nothing to me,” Paul laughed before he continued, “That fucking brat has been dodging me since day one but now, with you here, well I’ll have her soon enough. I don’t care about some bond, this isn't about that. This is about what is MINE.” 

Joel blanched at the statement. Since day one? He remembered you saying that Paul was about ten years older, making him about mid thirties. He would have been about twenty years old, a fully grown man, when a ten year old version of yourself waltzed into his camp. His stomach lurched at the thought of Paul lurking in the shadows, poised to snatch up an innocent child trying to survive a wretched circumstance. Disgust rolled off of Joel in waves and soured the air around him. 

“You’re a fucking sick man,” Joel growled. 

“Look who's talking, you look old enough to be her dad,” Paul snorted. 

Joel shook his head at that. It wasn’t the same. 

“Since day one? Shit, I might be into a younger woman but you man, you’re into a girl. A girl that doesn’t even exist anymore. She’s grown now and that bothers you, doesn’t it? Tears you apart that you will never have her. And you think I’m sick?” 

The words hung in the air and morphed Paul’s face. Joel saw that they had affected him. He watched as Paul went through the stages of rejection before he realized that Joel was right. Still, he knew it wouldn’t change anything about what the younger alpha had planned. Joel just needed to rattle him a bit more. 

“I will have her, one way or another. And hey, maybe if you’re still alive I’ll let you watch when I take her,” Paul sneered before he stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. 

Three brutish looking alphas stomped into the room and pulled open the door to his cell. Meaty hands yanked Joel off the bunk and got him to his feet. A small whine came from the other side of the room, making Paul turn and growl at Jake. The omega cowered under his gaze and something clicked in Joel’s brain. 

Jake had tried to help Joel without really knowing him because of the simple fact that he was your mate. He was your family, which meant he had a duty to protect him too. Despite the excruciating pain in his shoulder, Joel swallowed the pained groan that inched its way up his throat. He threw a comforting half smile to the omega and mouthed it’s okay before one of the guards placed a black hood over his face. 

The fabric stunk of countless scents from terrified or angered souls. Joel tried breathing in through his mouth but the scent nipped at his taste buds and made his mouth fill with water. He felt himself being dragged out of the store and across the uneven pavement. In the distance, he heard the crackling of fire and the drunken laughs of some rowdy alphas. 

Joel grimaced at the sound of high pitched whimpers of pain from that same direction. He hoped desperately that it wasn’t what he thought it was, but he knew that hope was futile in groups like these. He had run into similar groups in the past. Many times with Tommy and Tess, a few times with Frank and Bill, and even once with Ellie. They all had different leaders or names, but the basis was all the same. Sick alphas on the hunt to grab anything or anyone they could, uncaring of anyone else’s wants but their own. Groups like these were lawless and unkind to anyone that didn’t exude brute strength. 

Never had Joel joined a group that took from people like how these alphas did. Sure, he robbed and killed with the best of them. Hell, he was even known for his skills as a torturer. And when times were tough, incredibly so, he bit the bullet and made do with whatever meat the group could scrounge. Even if that meat once had a name and a family waiting for them somewhere. It was better than the feeling of your own stomach caved in from hunger. 

However, even when blood and the infliction of brutality was a part of his daily life, Joel never divulged into the depravity this group held. His groups, as heartless and brutal as they were, reserved a sliver of decency. Sure they’d rob, torture, and kill anyone, but they didn’t use the same type of violence he sensed these alphas used. Granted, the small kindness wasn’t much but still. It was a small piece of humanity that he refused to part with under any circumstance. How could he? It was unthinkable. 

Joel groaned as the guards carelessly pulled him up a flight of metal stairs before they slammed him to the pavement. Pain crawled up from his bruised knees, activating a dull throb in his hips as he listened to the jingle of a set of keys unlocking a door. He coughed at the pungent stench of the building. Blood was the first thing he smelled but he couldn’t pinpoint how many people it belonged to. A lot, that’s all he knew for sure. His heart thumped hard in his chest as the guards ripped the door open and turned to drag him in. 

A burst of adrenaline tightened all of Joel’s muscles, readying his body to ward off an attack as the thick air assaulted his senses. Sweat dripped down his back and he felt himself being led to a ledge before the itchy fabric was lifted from his head. Paul’s face assaulted his retinas once more and a deep grimace formed on Joel’s bruised face. If this was the last face he saw, he was going to be pissed so he looked down. 

In the center of the store, the floor had either caved in or had been ripped open. Below him was a dark hole that dropped down two floors to the basement. He squinted, trying to study the features of the furthest floor, but it was too dim to see all the way down. Fear rolled over him again as he tried to steel himself for what was to come. If he could make it up from the basement, the ground floor looked completely empty save for some abandoned boxes of merchandise. From there, he just needed to find a way out. However, planning didn’t change how hard his heart thumped against his ribs. 

Joel took a steadying breath. He had never been a huge fan of heights. Even when he was a kid, it was always Tommy who did backflips off of the highest diving board at the local pool. Joel was the one who watched from the lap lane and tried not to wince at the sound of skin slapping against the water. Looking down at the jagged crater he was about to be launched down, he suddenly longed for the days of in ground pools and sunscreen. Jumping off the highest diving board didn’t seem so bad to him anymore. 

“I really hope you survive this round. It’ll be such a bummer if they kill you before I find her. I was looking forward to giving you a show but c’est la vie.”

Rage bled into the terror and without thinking, Joel launched a fist directly into Paul’s face. The loud crunch that he heard when it landed filled him with satisfaction. That and the involuntary tears that sprung to Paul’s eyes calmed him slightly. His tears mixed with the blood that poured from his crooked nose and dripped down his face onto his sweater. 

“Better hope I don’t make it fuckhead or I’ll be coming for ya,” Joel seethed. 

Joel’s face spoke volumes. Any sense of mercy had been shut off, replaced with nothing but a primal need that screamed at him to eliminate the threat to his mate. It didn’t matter that he was an old man. It didn’t matter that he was outnumbered. It didn’t matter that he had spent the last few weeks being softened by your touch. Nothing mattered except for the fact that Joel would find a way to kill Paul. Joel knew this and based on the poorly hidden look of alarm on his face, so did Paul. 

The fear in his captor calmed him to the point that Joel barely reacted when he was shoved off the ledge. He felt himself free fall and tried to remember how high a fall had to be to kill him. He knew that at some point he knew, being a contractor who had started out in roofing, but all the safety meetings he attended back in the day had been lost with time. Joel wanted to laugh. A contractor survives the apocalypse, only to be killed by falling through a hole in the flooring. It was too perfect. In that brief moment, pieces of Joel’s life came back to him. 

Joel thought of his parents, dead before the outbreak even started, slow dancing in the kitchen after supper to an Etta James song. He thought of teaching Tommy how to drive a stick and how his brother flooded the engine almost immediately. He thought of Sarah’s first steps and how he was so proud that he cried. He thought about the time he taught Ellie how to shoot a gun and how he had promised to teach her how to play guitar. He thought of you making him split every snack and how you had looked at him when he said he loved you. Every memory was crystal clear and filled him with peace. He resigned himself to them being his last as he neared the ground.  

Instead of dying, Joel fell two stories and landed with a oompf on solid concrete. His side smacked against the floor hard and all the air wooshed out from his lungs. The fall was agonizing but it was nothing compared to the since healed over stab wounds and bullet holes that littered his body. He ignored the way his shoulder clicked when he pulled himself up. A soft groan of pain escaped his mouth from the way the ache in his hips had doubled. Joel knew that he was too old to be thrown around like this but it didn’t matter. He had a job to do. 

Ignoring the way his joints cracked with every slight movement, Joel picked himself up to survey the area. It was a basement of one of the retailers, that much was clear with the mannequins and piled up ancient clothes on stock shelves around him. High shelves formed rows of stinking fabric on one side of the space with piles of boxes littering every corner, waiting for Joel to trip over them. 

There were a few bodies strewn across the ground at the end of his aisle and more scattered in the aisles beside him. Some of them were rotting, while others seemed days or even hours old. Looking ahead, he spied an open space with pyramids of products abandoned and spaced out by a few feet. At the end of the maze of piled products sat a set of double doors that remained unobstructed. 

Bingo. 

Joel stopped himself from sprinting towards his target. As he studied the corpses, he noticed that only some of them had clearly been slain by desperate souls like him. Others looked like they had been torn apart by something else. His pulse quickened at the sight of shredded bodies, knowing that there was no alpha or beta that could have done that. That was the work of an infected. 

A soft clicking noise to his left tensed every muscle in his body. Carefully, Joel turned to face the noise and tried not to react to the proximity. The gnarled beast reared its head back and cried out, directing all of its wretched scream at him. It was so close that he smelled its previous victim's flesh in its mouth. Weaponless and injured, he prayed silently to a God he didn’t believe in for it to walk off. It was agitated, probably from the sound of Joel’s fall, and screeched again in his face. He closed his eyes for a moment, steadying himself as much as he could as it twitched in front of him. 

The sound was slight, so much so that a runner probably would have ignored it, but the clicker turned its body immediately. His lungs burned as he smothered his labored breathing beneath his palm. Another moment passed before the scuff of someone’s shoe against the rough concrete made the clicker leap forward. The shriek of it twisted his stomach and he watched it sprint after the sound. Joel heard the stranger stumbling backwards somewhere in the dark before they broke out in a hobbled jog. The pounding of infected feet against the concrete echoed in the room and he tried to ignore the sound of the injured person trying to get away as he crept towards the end of the row. 

Joel steadied his breaths as he eased himself through the wreckage of discarded merchandise. His nose twitched, catching the bitter scent of someone hidden in an aisle nearby. It was an alpha, that much he teased out but fear cloaked the rest of their aroma in battery acid. He eyed the shelves around him, looking for anything to use against any of the beings that lurked in the shadows but all he saw was rotted clothes and useless bottles of expired perfumes. 

A human scream echoed throughout the space and he grimaced. He needed to move before it came back. Stepping carefully over a pile of discarded shoeboxes, his eye caught on something at the very end of his aisle. It felt almost too good to be true, but the yellow handle was unmistakable. Laying in a pool of sticky blood was a half opened box cutter. Whoever had handled the blade was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps it was their blood that stained the floor. Either way, it was almost too good to be true. 

With the other captives hidden and the infected focused elsewhere, Joel hastened his pace towards the end of the aisle. A crack followed by a gut wrenching squelching noise sent shivers down his spine. His distraction was almost dead. 

In three long strides, relief was washing over him as he reached for the blade. With his left ear filled with the nauseating sounds of someone’s body being torn to pieces, he paused to listen for anything on his right side. When Joel couldn’t hear anything, he kneeled down to grab it. The yellow plastic had just graced the palm of his hand when an arm snaked around his neck and wrenched him back. 

Before his airway could be closed off, Joel snaked one hand under the arm and grabbed the crook of his attacker’s elbow. He pulled the limb out from around his neck and swiftly wrenched himself from their grasp. Without thinking, he slammed them against the shelf hard. The thud was loud, much too loud in such a quiet space. Joel stopped and locked eyes with the blood soaked alpha in his grasp. He saw the panic that flashed in the woman’s eyes and the nod when he placed one finger over his mouth. With their scuffle mutually halted, the two alphas stood and strained their ears for any sign of infected. 

Screechs echoed off the walls and Joel bit back a plethora of swears at the sound of multiple sets of feet running his way. In an instant, he shoved the woman back and turned towards the open space. Ignoring her pleas for him to wait, he darted towards the exit as quickly as he could. Knowing he wouldn’t make it time, Joel ducked behind one of the stacks of goods and cringed at the four runners that sprinted past. Next, the clickers approached and he waited, counting three that shambled towards the aisle. 

The infected swarmed where he had left the woman but he continued on. Unfazed, Joel left her to die. It was everyone for themselves down here. At least now, he wouldn’t have to kill her. Behind him, a woman’s voice shrieked. A crash, accompanied by a litany of garbled swears and a flurry of useless slaps against rotted skin eased his mind momentarily. 

He continued his soft steps towards the doors but before long, he felt the presence of someone or something gaining on him. Joel didn’t react. Whether it was a human or a stalker trying to get the jump on him, he knew that he needed to act as if he was unaware of it. Slowing his pace as the infected noisily ripped the stranger apart in the aisles behind him, Joel used a particularly loud crack in their bones to whirl around. 

The man behind him was startled at the action. So much so that Joel almost felt bad when he wedged the box cutter into the hollow of his throat. Blood spurted from the gash and Joel clamped his hand over the beta’s mouth as a gurgled cry was released. Fearful eyes blinked away tears as blood loss weakened the body and slumped him towards the ground. 

Scared of the thud, Joel caught him as he fell. Carefully, he lowered the dying man onto the ground and eased the blade from the jagged hole in his trachea. Red bubbles formed around the corners of the blade, popping with each attempt to draw in breath. The beta’s coughs were muffled by the hand over his mouth as he died. 

The light slowly faded from the eyes that were trained on Joel’s face. He humored him for a second and met the gaze of the dying man. In close proximity, Joel realized that he wasn’t a man at all. The beta was no more than sixteen. No more than sixteen, and now he was choking on his own blood as a man who had lived for way too long watched on. Guilt trickled into his blood and made him itchy but he quickly shook himself out of it. Ignoring the crying teen beneath him, Joel focused on the sound of the infected still digging into the woman’s corpse. He didn’t look back down when the boy’s breathing stilled. He didn’t need to be reminded of another teen that had bled to death in his arms. 

When it was clear that his kill had gone unnoticed, Joel carefully lifted himself from his victim and stood. His back twinged uncomfortably, the pinched nerve of his buttock sent pins and needles down his left leg but he ignored it. All Joel thought of was Paul’s words. He couldn’t let any of that happen. Even with his body bruised and raw, Joel pushed through the agony and inched towards the doors. He was so close. The taste of freedom squared his shoulders and quickened his pace. It all seemed too good to be true. 

And it was. 

Joel grabbed the metal knob and twisted, only to be stopped by the lock that sealed it shut. He stepped back in awe. Why did he think it was going to be that easy? It was never that fucking easy. He turned back towards the rest of the room and weighed his options as he listened to the infected dispersing from the mangled corpse. Somewhere in the room was a key and Joel needed to find it. 

Where the fuck would these assholes hide a key? 

He thought it over for a moment before it dawned on him. Where was the one place none of them would look? Joel bit his cheek in lieu of an audible sigh as he realized the obvious answer. It was hung off of one of the neck’s of infected that patrolled the space. 

Fuck. 

Joel steadied himself and he knew what he had to do to get out. Taking a deep breath in, he focused back on the threat. He allowed the belligerent fury flow through his veins at the thought of anyone touching a singular hair on his mate’s head. The lust for blood rose from his core and tensed his muscles as he stepped forward unabashedly. He didn’t need the shadows to hide his approach, not when years of loss culminated in this moment. 

If it meant that you would live, he would cut through anyone and anything without blinking. If it meant that you would live with him, that he could selfishly have you as his own for just a bit longer, he would do it ten times over.

The next few minutes was a blur of incoherent screeches from infected and the garbled cries of other captives. This had happened before. He wasn’t sure how he did it, but it was like the ruckus of the world was shut off and all that remained was his need to destroy. He didn’t even realize that he was alone until his bloodied fist connected with solid ground and his brain turned back on. 

The body beneath him was so badly beaten that it was unrecognizable. His hands dripped with their blood as he shakily rolled himself away from the sight. He cussed and pushed himself up, tearing the box cutter out of the corpse’s side with a wet thunk as he stood. Joel looked around and all he saw was bodies. Four runners and three clickers were discarded with easy stab wounds from the blade in his hand. It was the others that laid before him that turned his stomach. One had their neck snapped, another had been stabbed in the face several times, another had their skull cracked repeatedly against the concrete, and the last one was beaten to a bloody pulp. 

At another time in his life, Joel would have felt nothing at his own brutality but you had awoken something in him. The need to fulfill his own needs would have overtaken him and he would have moved on with his life. However, since that day when Joel first smelled the delicious scent of peppermint and lavender wafting over to him from the riverbank, a sense of humanity, of mercy, reawakened in him. Thick guilt weighed down on him but he muscled through it. He knew he would do it all again for you, even if it meant that he was damned to be tormented by the memories for the rest of his life. 

Swallowing all of his guilt, Joel reached down and snatched the key that hung from the neck of one of the clickers. He shuffled over to the doors as quickly as he could with his limbs snapping and popping with every step. The key slid into the lock and he held his breath, wiggling the brass before the lock clicked open. He sighed and eased the door open to reveal two flights of stairs. 

“Oh fuck me.” 

If Joel thought the basement was tough, the stairs were an absolute nightmare. The adrenaline had completely worn off when he began his steady pace upwards, which meant that he felt every nerve in his body being grated by the movement. His head pounded steadily in time with his racing heart and he was forced to stop for air on the last few stops. Joel heaved in air while he stared at the door that led to the ground floor. 

He wasn’t sure what hid in the shadows of that room. It hadn’t looked like anything other than boxes earlier but one could never be too careful. Would guards be waiting or could he find a way out through a boarded up window? Were there more stairs to the floor he fell from? Could he escape through there? Endless possibilities raced through his mind but he knew one thing, he would not go another round unarmed at the start. 

Taking one last steadying breath, Joel closed the box cutter and locked the blade in place before he slid it into his jeans. The cool plastic rubbed against the sensitive skin in between his legs but he ignored it. As long as the blade stayed close and they didn’t strip him, everything would be fine. The door made a creaking noise when he pushed it open and Joel winced, hoping for no infected. 

Before he eased himself into the room, a figure launched itself out from the musty space and tackled him to the ground. He fought against it but a sharp jab to his thigh had him crying out in surprise. Joel wondered for a moment if he had been stabbed or bit but as his brain turned to mush, he realized what had pierced his leg. Sleep tugged at his eyelids and he groggily thought of the blade hidden in his pants as hands pulled him from the floor. 

-

Hushed whispers trickled into Joel’s brain as he existed in a state between wakefulness and sleep. He fought against his eyelids but they had been weighed down with whatever tranquilizer had been injected into him. He heard the world around him, he just couldn’t muster up the strength to thrust himself into it. Instead, he was forced to listen to the heated conversation that came from the cell across from him. 

“Well, what do you want me to do? Huh? Do you expect me to just break him out of here myself and do… What exactly? Leave her here to die? I’m trying to figure out a way to get you three out, why do I give a fuck about this guy?”

An exasperated sigh in response to the unfamiliar voice. Joel tensed at the words. Were you who they were talking about? He hoped not. 

“Obviously that isn’t what I mean but we can’t just let him die. And if you let Paul get to her Cooper, I swear to fuck-”

“I know, I know, you’ll chop my balls off and feed them to me. You’ve made that perfectly clear J. I’m doing what I can to throw them off but she’s the one making it hard. Do you know how many bodies they found? Just think, that’s half of what I have tried to hide from them,” Cooper hissed back. 

A silence filled the space and Joel’s mind reeled. Bodies? There was no way that they were from you. He refused to accept that. It had to be someone else. You had never killed anyone. Or had you? He never even thought to ask. 

“Maybe we can get her out of here and then come back for him,” Jake suggested. 

“Why is she that important to you? She’s never even been nice to you or those old ladies you hung around with. For fuck’s sake, I’ve never even seen her be nice to her own daughter and she only had the one.”

A pause followed and then Jake sighed before he answered, “I don’t know. She’s not my family but I just think that if I didn’t try, I would be a bad friend okay?”

Joel heard Cooper as he started to fight back against Jake’s words but the omega bulldozed through his protests. It reminded him of some of the conversations he’s had with you where he was cut off. 

“You let Paul do what he does because he has Allie locked away. I forgive you for it because she is our daughter and she was safe for an entire year when I thought our baby was dead. You put me in here to keep me away from the others and I agreed.” 

A pin drop could have been heard in the room after Jake’s words. They weren’t accusatory. They were plain facts that forced his mate to listen. 

“Coop, you do these things because you love Allie and me. I know that. But you do realize that it’s not enough right? We can’t keep living like this. We don’t even know if our pup is still ali-”

“Don’t you fucking dare, I won’t hear it.” 

The words were harsh and tight. They sounded like a strange mixture of a command and a desperate plea. 

“Then go fucking find our daughter and then let’s get out of here. All of us. I’m not leaving behind my bestfriend’s mate and I sure as hell am not leaving behind my bestfriend’s shitty ass mom. Unlike you, I don’t pussy out when things get tough. Man the fuck up,” Jake growled. 

Your mother was alive? Your mother was alive and here? Joel cringed at the new information. He knew that the relationship had been strained, to say the least, but he also knew you never wished harm upon her for her cruelty. Harm that was most certainly being inflicted upon her if she didn’t have anyone here to look out for her. The possibilities clenched his stomach and he fought against the urge to let the sedative take him underwater once more. It would be so much easier but he needed to hear this. 

“I’m going to find our daughter. But J, let me remind you that you were the one that ran off when she was a premature infant lying in her crib when the infected broke through. You were the one that vanished with your friends. You were the one that didn’t come back for her. I kept her alive. Me. So, don’t talk to me about keeping Allie safe,” Cooper said coolly.  

After a beat, the muffled cries of the omega reached his ears and Joel felt his heart break for both of them. A murmured apology was answered with a quiet fuck you and a sigh came from Cooper as he lifted himself from his place in the cell. The hinges whined as he closed the bars behind him and marked the end of the discussion. Joel listened as the alpha passed his sedated body and moved towards the exit. As Cooper reached the doorway, his footsteps suddenly stalled. 

“I told you what Paul did to his other omegas, what he did to our little sister, what he did to,” Cooper’s voice wobbled and he paused, clearing his throat before he continued, “... what he did to me. And now he has Allie. Don’t ask me to risk her life for anybody else because I’ll choose her.”

“Coop, I would never ask that. I’m just saying that at some point you have to fight back. WE have to fight back or he wins. If that happens, we’ll all die and you’ll be left alone with him. Is that what you want? No mate, no pup, just you and him? Please, we have to do something,” Jake begged. 

Another pause filled the room and the tension was unbearable. Without the proper context, Joel couldn’t tell which one of them was right. Maybe they both were in their own way, he wasn’t sure. He listened to Cooper’s fingers drum anxiously against the frame and Jake’s restless leg bouncing in his bunk as the two battled with their own demons. 

“Everything was so easy before wasn’t it?,” Cooper finally sighed. 

A chuckle bubbled up from his mate across the room. 

“Oh yeah, hooking up in secret back in the cult was a blast. Remember when you told me that you never wanted to be mated then I fell in love with someone else and ran away with them? Remember how they hung him and then we got forced into marriage anyways? Super light stuff,” Jake said and Joel could practically hear the eye roll. 

“Exactly. Easy peasy, just like I said,” Cooper deadpanned. 

The laughter that came from the pair lifted some of the despair that clung to the walls. The room felt wider as a crack of sunlight shone through their darkened bond. 

“Remember how I was pregnant and you got mad at me for getting caught by them?,” the omega asked with his voice darkened once more. 

Cooper stopped laughing at that and cleared his throat. He was seemingly at a loss for words. Something that Joel suspected happened quite a bit given the nervous energy the alpha exuded. Just by scent alone, Cooper seemed like he was on the verge of a breakdown constantly. 

“I-”

“You don’t have to say anything. I get it. You didn’t want a mate or kids, and then they forced you to take me. It’s… Well, it’s not fine for either of us but it is what it is.” 

“No, I wanted you J. It wasn’t you, it was him. How he is, it’s not good for anyone and I just… The thought of having a mate or a pup around him was unthinkable and when you came back I was so mad. Not at you but - fuck - I don’t know…” 

“I understand Coop, I do. I just want you to stop choosing him over us, that’s all,” the omega sighed, his voice tired and dismissive. 

“Is that what you think I’m doing?,” Cooper spat before he huffed and continued, “My brother takes what he wants from everyone. EVERYONE. Even me. Paul doesn’t give a shit about anything and I can’t - look, I’m sorry I’m not as strong as you need me to be but you don’t understand what he did to me!”

A soft whine escaped Jake’s mouth and he sensed his mate bristle at the sound, almost like it pained him to hear it but he refused to let it pull him towards the cell. 

“But I do underst-”

“NO YOU DON’T! AND I AM MAKING SURE THAT YOU FUCKING WON’T, THAT’S WHY YOU ARE IN HERE JAKE!,” Cooper exploded. 

Silence blanketed the room as the string that connected the pair fizzled with conflict. It stirred a bit of anxiety somewhere in Joel but he was too groggy to do anything other than scrunch his nose at it. 

The complexity in their relationship was palpable just from the way they existed in a space together. Jake’s energy was loud and bright, while Cooper’s moved around his mate’s. They complimented each other but in a very odd way, with the omega being the one that was almost stifling in presence and the alpha sticking to the sidelines. Joel’s brain couldn’t map out their dynamic at all but he understood it as something necessary nonetheless. Two souls trapped in circumstance who both coveted one thing, a little girl that they shared. Being a father to two girls himself, he understood that small sliver of their bond. 

“Okay Coop, I don’t understand. I’m sorry, okay? This isn’t… Fuck, this isn’t how I wanted this conversation to go. I just need you to do something, please alpha. For me?” 

The sweet tone would have made Joel chuckle if he had the ability. He knew the sugary words would work on the alpha, just as your sweetness had worked on him. Alphas were like moths to a flame, obsessed with pleasing their mate and proving themselves worthy of their bond. It didn’t matter whether Cooper knew Jake’s intention behind his choice of words, nothing could have stopped him from agreeing. 

“Fuck me. Alright fine, I’m gonna - shit - I’ll figure something out for the other alpha too alright? I’m gonna go out looking for a while when Paul’s gone tomorrow. I’ll see you after lights out, m’kay? Just keep him out of trouble please. He can’t hit Paul again or my brother will kill him,” Cooper rushed out as his instincts overpowered his previous frustrations. 

“Whatever you say baby, just go get our girl.”

The lightness of Jake’s tone made the alpha grumble under his breath as he stepped back towards the exit. All Joel picked out from Cooper’s mumbled rant was fucking unreasonable, let’s just invite everyone with us, and an extremely exasperated how the fuck does he think that I can pull that off. Nevertheless, the omega across from him buzzed with energy and chirped happily from behind the bars in response. 

Joel wondered if you knew about Allie. Surely not, as he had never heard you mention your bestfriend’s child amongst the multitude of tales that had been told about him. The girl must have been born either when you were on the run from Paul the first time or when you had been thrown in the pit by your beloved husband. Either way, her existence complicated things for him.  

Joel needed to get to you but he couldn’t leave Jake. Jake wouldn’t leave without his family or your mother. And based on what he knew, he wasn’t sure how the hell he was going to convince your mother to do anything. Plus, the bodies left behind by some unknown enemy would likely be more than enough cause for the group to be on strict lockdown. He hoped that you steered clear of whoever was taking out Paul’s men. 

As the chemicals running through his veins pulled him under once more, Joel’s thoughts were filled with half-cocked plans on how he would miraculously break out of his prison. He knew that half of them were a pipe dream but he also knew that he had to try. He wasn’t sure but he had a feeling that the couple across from him could hold the key to his escape, or at least to yours if need be. Joel didn’t care if Cooper left him here, so long as he got everyone else out. 

The soft goodbyes said between the two men were drowned out by the call of his name by a soft familiar voice. A sleepy smile stretched across his face as he drifted towards the sounds of his own family bustling around in a kitchen somewhere in Austin. Ellie and Sarah bickered at the table while you laughed at something Tommy said. Maria bounced his nephew next to him and rolled her eyes hard at her mate’s antics. It was all so perfect. 

Joel knew it was a dream sprouted from pure fantasy, but he allowed himself to sink deeper into it. Tears formed in his eyes as he felt your fingers scratch at the heart shaped patch in his beard before you kissed his cheek softly. He wanted it to be real so bad that he allowed himself to believe, just for a moment, that it was. Everyone was alive and together, like it was supposed to be. As the weight of consciousness became too heavy to bear, Joel slipped off into his dreams. 

[mikalame]

tom kaulitz x flight attendant

“i cant believe your actually making me do this" i groan bill is making us go into the air again, last time i got so air sick i threw up in my hat cause the flight attendant couldn't get there quick enough. I think ill die of embarrassment if i see her again she was way to pretty to be doing that she should have been a model or something not someone rushing to get a bucket cause i couldn't hold my food down. “TOM!” bill shouts in my ear “ i smack him in the shoulder “quick screaming in my ear that shit hurts ugh”  “you thinking bout that girl again it would be so funny if she was the one to serve us again” georg snickers they all know that shes been on my mind for ages now i just hoped me meet somewhere better and not like how it did.

Well fuck me after getting pushed from behind by some lady for 5 minutes we finally sit down i thank bill for getting me an aisle seat so it would be quick for me to get up and run to the bathroom. “After 30 minutes the food should come out wake me up then mmk” georg says before putting on his eye mask and falling asleep we pass time by seeing how many skittles we can through into his mouth.

I dont hear the rattle of the cart getting pushed through the row of people as i have my head phones when it finally comes up to us i see that gustav has woken georg up and both of them are quitely laughing to themselves i look up and see its that girl agian i feel heat rise to my cheeks my vision becomes blurry and feel the breakfast coming up. I try and hold it in until shes gone but as soon as she left i shot up and bolted down the aisle. Around five minutes later i unlock the door i see her standing there holding a bottle water “um thought you might need this to um yk was down the vomit taste or something” she laughs akwardly handing me the bottle “Omg look im so sorry for last time like i was and still am so embarrased bout like throwing up and stuff and like right now ig aswell” i blush hiding my face after i drink the water “Oh no its okay i didnt mind really air sickness is more common than you think” she jokes i laugh a bit aswell. “um do you think maybe we could hangout or something like when your free oh well ig youd have to fly back after this but um...” i trail off thinking my idea was stupid and silly “no i would love to you seem real nice and sweet um do you have a phone on you i can give you my number” she says. I whip out my phone as she types the number in “well thanks umm...” “oh ___ and what your name Mr. Air sickness” “Tom, tom kaulitz i look forward to our date ___” i say while walking away feeling ten time better 

Hope yall like thanks for the love on the first post!!!! <3 plz if you have request please tell me them im dieing for it lol

[sizhui]

Guys i rewrote BEFORE SHE CALLS THEM TO DINNER almost in entirety its here under the cut check itout ♡

Before she calls them to dinner: a family haunted

"When my father left Ma, she moved away to a beach house." says Faust’s boyfriend once they finish. Still in bed, they are all too comfortable for a conversation about the dead - but pacified by the act, his anger seems frayed at the edges, so Faust lets him talk. he asks him,

"What was she like?"

"Two storeys tall, with uneven stone walls. Some of the furniture in there was plastic and modern, and some was old. On the kitchen counter, there was an aquarium with no fish."

It takes a moment for Faust’s confusion to subside, a moment to realize that he’s talking about the house and not the woman. He tells him, 

"So any old house at the coast, yeah?"

"Mm. It was built on a crag hanging over a small cove. It would be unfair to call it a cliff. The water there was shallow and green.”

Unable to stand it anymore, Faust gives in to the urge to ask; “Fine, that’s the house. But what about your Ma, Beowulf?”

The anger in him breathes; inflates, deflates. Finally, he gives up with a sigh: “Whenever I picture her, she has already drowned. She is somewhere at the bottom.”

(i) may all my attempts be fruitful and tender

It’s been around three weeks, a day more or less, since that husband of Wulfie’s finally went and kicked the bucket. Wulfie is Klara’s brother, two whole meters tall with a swimmer’s shoulders to boot. When he married a man, it came to the entire family as a great surprise, but not to Klara - he’d always been a strange one, that boy.

Though she spent a considerable amount of time sifting through thought and memory to get them in perfect order, the long willowy shape of their mother kept resurfacing into the space behind Klara’s eyelids, glistening as though slathered in oil. The post-funerary unrest seemed to remind her of the time when Mama passed away - no pomp and no nonsense, the contours of Papa’s face lax in morbid relief as he told them that he wouldn’t be driving them to her place on the fifteenth. More clearly than his expression, though, Klara can recall the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his lips; crooked, heavy. Waiting for the man’s mouth to open in a wail and let it drop.

It never did. The S. family spared little sympathy for this youngest daughter in law of theirs, and neither tears nor ram’s blood were spilled in her honor. Even her two small children shed none! Klara felt pressured into silence, moreso by the idea of her mother’s hungry ghost than the parade of solemnity around her. The grief of a child was just too unseemly, so crude, clumsy and aimless. If they couldn’t mourn her elegantly, Klara felt that Mama would have preferred to be forgotten entirely. When the funeral rolled around, for appearance’s sake, the grandmas and uncles all pretended to be sad - Laura was so young, simply such a raw talent! But that, a posthumous speech, was how everyone talked about Mama even before she was gone, so nothing ended up changing too much, and Klara was glad for it. It wouldn’t have changed much if Klara and Wulfie had cried as they lowered the casket.

Anyhow, right before they left the church, Wulfie ended up making a scene. One of the aunties told him, it seems, that people don’t come back anymore once you put them into the ground. So he really is simple, was Klara’s long overdue realization. It’s not like he didn’t know? People die on TV at home all the damn time. It took a peach-colored church devoted to the virginal heart of Mary and a bumpy graveyard sloping downhill in three layers to drill the permanence of death into that child’s head. Papa’s futile attempts to separate Wulfie from the church magazine rack he’d clung to in the wake of his tantrum embarrassed him, and he ended up smacking the boy twice on the behind in retaliation… It was really unsightly. That might have been Klara’s first time going to stand a bit off to the side pretending not to know her father and brother, hoping that her features would not betray their relation.

For one reason or another, each of Klara’s attempts to reasonably convince herself that she did all she could to help Wulfie growing up ran into the same deadend.  She barely forced herself to call when she heard the news last month… so when he picked up they both just silently breathed into the speaker. After five or so distorted puffs she heard Wulfie say, “Klara?” She can’t imagine what he must’ve thought. She held her breath for a while then, listening for movement from the other side of the line.

These days she questions everything. Maybe a depth has always slept within Wulfie, choked out and kept hidden by the harshness of his upbringing. Maybe he’s always been like Papa - no, not their foolish father who could only cling to that which he loved without the drive to know it and die for it - like Mama. But Klara had never been anything like either of them, didn’t even like to think about those things. She was always a practical girl.

A practical girl, that’s about right. A practical woman too, thinking about her mother’s funeral and her brother’s dead husband with such a straight face… Dad once called her machiavellian, but she always liked to believe that she was merely sensible, able to say what has to be said with the kind of face people want to see – please consider hiring me, I like effort and work and mediocre men. I like it joyless and hard. Wulfie wasn’t as verbose as Dad but he had more resolve when it mattered – A stone-cold bitch, he called her once, and she supposed it was fair but…

She's getting put off by this train of thought. She ought to think about something else. Against her will, her thoughts venture to the beach house where Mama lived in early summer, the peeling walls of what must’ve once been a lovely home to somebody else entirely. Muted beige and the drone of the external AC unit blended together into a monotony so fatal that not even all the music that woman played could have disrupted it. Mama’s singing echoing through the rooms, the faint lilt of her dialect versus the weight of a profound sadness -

“A mouse has grazed my entire field… Oh my Lord, what shall I reap now?”

The song told Klara that Mama was in one of her mellow moods, so she rapped her knuckles against the door with utmost gentleness. Laura brought both her palms down upon the piano keys at once, a sonant noise pierced the afternoon like an arrow…

“Well, what do you think? Am I improving?” is what she asked her daughter at that time. Her foot had gotten tangled in the remains of some plastic bag. Klara told her that her performance was a bit sad, and she got upset, told her something really fucked; told her,

“I’m gonna keep living like this for as long as it’s funny - and then I’ll just stop!” she laughed, a startling sound like marbles falling down the stairs. “I don’t care what the side characters think! Who are you? And you?”

“You make even a jokey song sound like somebody died,” Klara tried her best to elaborate, to make that mother of hers see some reason in her actions. And suddenly as though sobering up, Mama shook the plastic bag off of her foot and looked at Klara with a fondness that she hadn’t expected to see that month. “Who says it’s a joke, Little Thyme? Surely, even at this moment, thousands of people are losing their fields to infestations. How unfortunate…”

Klara wanted to tell her that they won’t let Wulfie go to school cause he was seven and didn’t yet talk like the other kids did, and to tell her that she liked painting, and that Papa had called her insane again… but she didn’t, because she would’ve reaped no benefits from that. That’s the kind of woman Klara was. She said “At least pest control will never go out of business…” or some such trivial garbage.

She doesn’t know why she’s thinking about Mama in front of Wulfie’s front door – She knows, she knows, she just won’t admit it – but she is, so deeply that she startles when she hears a distant scrape and realizes that no one’s opened the door yet, it’s just the taxi pulling away from the driveway. Signaling that she’ll take five minutes at most, she stares at the aged door of that familiar beach house and knows it’ll be heavy, that crossing the threshold would be the hardest thing she’d do in her whole life. She watches the door in patient horror, and she doesn’t imagine that Wulfie would look like the last time she saw him, that big young man in a severe shirt. She thinks a seven-year-old boy would swing the door open and sob into her skirts like they're a church magazine rack…

And then she reaches for it, feeling like an executioner at the gallows, and knocks.

(ii) singing - la la - they go

This woman here is named Laura.

Missus S. is a moniker reserved for the bile-filled mouths of adversaries. Mama is the one who cracks jokes while fumbling with the piano for their daughter’s amusement.  The death god appears and disappears as the two of them come together, the only hands that can stop the raging god that rests inside his flesh.

Alone with Marion below a dim Zagabrian afternoon, she is Laura. Lau, the way she sits on the barstool, drinking liquor she shouldn't be drinking with half a sardonic smile hanging from her lips, ra, the dirty band-aid on the bruise underneath her right eye. Marion knows what Laura is. He has no interest in his glass of wine, and yet he sips from it with a religious focus. His eyes though, betraying him, slide ever so slightly to the left. Ah -

“My dearest Mary, is there something unseemly on my face?”

The god inside Marion stirs.

“Well… if I do, wipe it off for me, will ya?”

Marion and Laura’s first date had been to a masquerade ball right before Monday of Ash. Laura had come with her schoolmates, and asked him whether he’d disguised himself as a philosophy student, or he really had no money for a better blazer. Marion lowered his glass of beer too quickly and some of it soiled his already filthy sleeve. Laura laughed, unabashed with her own absence of care, thought or ideal. The angel’s wings upon her back shook and shivered.

It's a dim afternoon and they're sitting in a dirty bar somewhere in the neighborhood, and that was almost five years ago. Laura is still laughing.

“Come on. You’re clearly ogling at something.”

„There's nothing,“ Angry Marion, Marion who walks six feet above the ground. Laura crawling in the city shadows, Laura’s fingers dancing across the piano keys like the nonexistent bones in a spider.

„My beautiful eyes?“

Marion who ignores the taunting.

„My blinding smile? You can wipe that off if you’d like, too.“

Marion rips the band-aid off of her face with a sickening squelch…?

“Keep going,” Laura tells him.

So Marion keeps going. The edges of his self burn away as he allows the deity beneath his skin to bloom and flow through his veins. Teeth bared, he shows her his true face: this power to devour, to feed on war and travesty. Old gods desire blood and flesh, and Marion provides. He is hungry, and he wants all their lives to fill the god-sized hole inside him. How corrupt of him, how awful.

Until –

„Already done.“

Slender fingers wrapped around Marion’s wrist so gently that no one would think Laura was capable of it. Against his will, Marion is anchored, pulled along with the tide. Can a suicide be a crime of passion? Yes, yes, yes, Mary, yes. And then Mary-god is just Marion again, stripped of the sentimentality of the immortal, and all his limbs tremble as he collapses into Laura’s arms, limply falling back onto the cheap double mattress.

“You’re so quiet. Could you even be honest if you tried?“ He pauses, feeling the godhood retreat into the depths of his belly.

Laura frowns a little, a phantasm in white sheets. “That hurts,“ she says in a tone most conversational. Then she stands up to get dressed, an undershirt and a shirt and a tweed dress. It's a  sight straight out of a horror movie, her bare body, ordinary and clean with nothing to suggest how terrifying it feels to press up against her skin.

"Where are you going?" Marion attempts – and fails – to sound uninterested.

"Oh?" Laura turns around at the doorstep, the barest hint of a smile on her lips. "I thought you were angry with me, still."

"Always am," says Marion, and then adds, "Look after yourself, or else I’ll be the one to kill you."

"What an opportunity! I must see to it, then," Laura pauses to grab one of Marion's hats from the coat rack and places it neatly atop her head. "My, my, as though I’d let myself be killed by just anyone. No one is Mary!"

No one is Mary. Marion wonders, in the hypothetical space inside Laura's mouth, how many versions of that statement exist, to how many people it has been rephrased: no one is Eva. No one is Robin the psychiatrist. No one is -

"Now, now, I can see you’re thinking something mean. Behave and I’ll wake you up nicely." Laura tips the hat’s brim. "Good night, Mary."

Marion spits – red from his split lip – near Laura’s feet. "Don't test me."

“My, my,” Laura simply smiles, the warmth in her voice so strange. "I'll be a dead woman in the morning if I do.“

(iii) the missing rib

“Eve, lend me a match?”

Eva studies the friend on the other side of the booth: Laura’s elbows are on the table, her face squished between her palms. It’s the way a child might sit, and yet everyone knows what she is, what she does. Deathwish Laura, Laura who believes that to live is to devour others.

Eva gives up and slides a matchbox across the table, and Laura’s clawed hand makes a grab for it as though someone has been waiting, as though someone would snatch it away from her. 

"Hey," Eva protests. "You said one.“

"I've tried sharing and I've tried caring," Laura smiles sweetly. "Neither has worked out for me."

"I know this of you," says Eva with a somewhat troubled smile. She’s always been too soft when it comes to Laura - she’s not sure what Laura does to her: maybe she put a hole in her, maybe she grew roots in her. Maybe both of those make for the same deadend.

"Besides, Eve," Laura says quietly, like sharing a secret. "What if you die tomorrow?"

"Why would I die tomorrow?" Eva laughs into her glass, but Laura looks grave all of a sudden, an uneasy look that doesn't suit her.

"This is a cruel world we live in," Laura twirls a lock of hair around her finger. "Any of us could die at any time. Don't you know that kings kept skulls in their palaces to remind them of it? Memento mori, I say, memento mori!"

Eva heaves a sigh. "I don't understand you, Laura. You're an amazing person, but you're always talking about death. It's weird."

Laura takes this as a compliment, maybe. "Does that mean I can keep the matches?" she feigns an innocent gaze, spinning the little red and yellow cardboard box in her nimble fingers.

"Sure," Eva gives up. "If you take it I won’t smoke. You’re doing me a favor."

"Perfect!" Laura claps her hands. "Now when Eve dies, every time I go for a smoke it'll be like smoking with her again."

"Laura," Eva rolls her eyes heavenwards. "There you go, being morbid again! I don't want to think about it so prematurely."

"I hope you understand," Laura goes on, "that you saying my name has a unique side effect of pulling me out of a haze and back into the harsh reality where I'm sitting with a matchbox in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other and confronting my own twisted existence. Which reminds me, I promised Robin a dinner tonight."

"Robin is out of town," used to Laura’s ramblings, Eva ignores her.

Laura shrugs, "Do you really never think about your own mortality?"

"I don't see the point," Eva downs her drink. "We all run out of luck sooner or later."

"What’s your favorite book, Eve?”

Eva eyes her. It’s not like Laura is particularly interested in books, but she likes to ask things like this, just to make you aware of how she knows what’s close to your heart at all times.

“You wouldn’t know of it,” says Eva.

"Ah, the everlasting wish of casket-sleepers to create something immortal!" Laura exclaims woefully, pretending to swoon. "They say that a part of the author always survives in the book. Hey, Eve, do you think I could read that first page you’ve been writing for a month? I'm very interested in your legacy."

"Maybe some other time," Eva humors her. She studies Laura as she tinkers with the matchbox. Open-closed. Open-closed.

"I should be a writer, too," Laura muses. "It's such a creative way to deliver a piece of your mind into this world. Nay, I think I'll stick to music and violence. When you're in Rome..." she gives a graceful little sigh.

"You're an interesting person, Laura. I wonder what you'd write."

"A eulogy," Laura giggles into her palm. "Ooh, or a suicide note."

"You want everyone to believe you're a heartless murderer," Eva studies Laura’s unreadable smile, the one that looks like a barricade or a brick wall. "But you're not."

This seems to surprise her, and she laughs quickly, lifting his eyebrows. "Ah, you're right. I'd say I'm actually an incredibly hearty murderer.”

Laura stands up abruptly and puts on an out-of-place looking fedora hat. "I'm afraid I have to be on my way. Alas, the night is young, and alas I've promised myself."

"Ah." Eva nods. "Take care. See you Tuesday.” But as Laura faded into the crowd, a little knowledge that it would be the last time borrowed itself to her mind.

(iv) lamento

Marion kicks the door shut, and immediately frowns when he turns. Laura is already there, sitting at the foot of his bed and staring into empty space. There’s a whole human skull in her hand, an off-white like the shell of an egg. He spends some time observing how bone is stitched together, stiff and firm, so unlike the tender gore he’s used to.

 

“Hey,” Says Marion when a minute’s gone by and neither of them has looked at the other, “When’d you return? The seminar doesn’t end till Tuesday.”

  

He squares his shoulders when no answer comes, none of their usual banter, but he won’t ask Laura what’s wrong. He won’t comfort her. In all these years, they’ve never once exchanged such words.

 

“I’ll be away for a while. Just wanted t’let you know,”  Laura proclaims after a while and artfully spins the skull in her fingers. 

 

“I’ll open a bottle of wine and have a divine night without you.” says Marion. “I’m not in the mood for your mind games tonight, I think.”

 

“Eve is dead,” says Laura, and rolls the skull across the floor.

 Marion stands very still for a moment as he watches it hit the wall, make the pitiful last few inches and then still, “So she is.”

 

“Tired of life, Mary?”

 

“I’m sorry that I don’t keep track of the whole pack of humans you keep on a leash for fun,” Marion is suddenly, and inexplicably, mad. “I’ll humor you. So you’ll do what now? Leave this city? Leave our children behind?"

 

Laura rubs her hands like they’re itching underneath the sleeves, “I’m going to live in a way that honors her thought.”

 

Marion’s fingers pause around the third button of his vest. Laura could’ve slit her wrists and painted the whole room red, and it would’ve surprised him less than this proclamation. “Good luck with that,” He throws his vest and shirt across the room with enough force to resound in the momentary silence.

 

“I’m serious.”

 

“Don’t make me laugh,” Marion watches her through narrowed eyes, this thing splayed across the ornate bed – this bed where they do what humans do: where Laura had once, with playful eyes, strangled a man with one of Marion’s ties and promptly cut him apart in the bathtub. He scoffs. “Laura, you’ve never done a god-honoring thing in your whole piece of shit existence.”

 

“Eve knew so,” Laura shrugs, and then looks thoughtful. “And she told me to do so anyway. It scared me when I realized she knew what I was. Looked right into my eyes and saw me. It frightened me to the core. What a wonderful feeling, fear. No one’s ever scared me like that before.”

 

“Bullshit,” Marion spits. “What could she understand?”

 

Laura laughs, a joyless sound. “You trying to say you understand?”

 

“Takes a character to know one.”

 

“You could never understand.” Says Laura, and her voice is cooler than it’s ever been before. “Your head’s so full of things. You’re much above the line of humanity and I’m much below. How could you understand?”

 

Marion stares at Laura for a while as she crawls across the floor to pick her skull up. Something about the sight finally sickens him to the point where he turns away and towards the vanity, “Then just go. The fuck did you even come to say goodbye for?”

 

“Would you prefer an honest answer or a poetic one?”

 

Marion clenches his jaw so hard that it goes white in the reflection contained within his newly cracked mirror. Inside him, the god stirs with a ferocity of a whole night of slaughter. He barks a laugh more than exhales it;“Of all the damn misery in the world, I had to be born as an extra in your story.”

 

“Now that’s pretty poetic.” Laura tilts her head, “I’m sure you’ll find a nice hill to die on, Mary. Cause that’s all you wanted when you became my lover, wasn’t it? Something worth dying for, anything. Doesn’t matter what thing.”

 

“Don’t project.”

 

“I’m not. You’re just the most like me,” In a rare occasion, Laura turns and looks him straight in the eye. For all of this, she can be a surprisingly timid woman. “Eve understood, but you’re the most like me. That’s why I came.”

“Whatever. We stick together because we’re not so easily breakable. Can’t be said for old Eve.”

 

“I’ll kill you,” Laura’s voice is entirely even. “You think I won’t? I wouldn’t even lift a finger. I’d just have to leave you alone and you’d rot, my friend.”

“I know you would,” Marion spits back. “But would it be easy? Nothing showing on that ugly mug of yours?”

 

Laura is silent. Silent, silent, not even a shuffle. “You wound me. Of course I’d cry before I sent you off.”

 

“Get out,” Marion says without turning. “Get the fuck out of here and don’t you come back.”

 

Marion waits for the creak of mattress springs as Laura stands up, for his hat to be stolen, for her to laugh with a  good night – but nothing comes.

He stands perfectly still as the sun sinks into the muddy water outside the window and the room falls dark around him, and doesn’t lap up the contents of the dusty bottle of wine after smashing it against the wall. He feels the god stir inside him, begging to be released, to hunt, to grieve, to take what it wants to take. It hurts. Everything hurts. It hurts – but why, Marion doesn’t know. Why? He thinks. Why is he mad?

What is it that he wants to take back? He would never gain the capacity to figure it out. 

(v) stay a while, thou art so -

Wulfie gets into a fight with one of the biggest guys in his class on the first night of the graduation trip, and smacks the teacher who tried to separate them on top of it. All in all spoils the last bleak traces of hope for the future in him, and as he waits to be sent back across the border he furiously taps his foot. 

„I have four hundred Euros in my suitcase. Run away with me, won't you?“

The other boy’s name is Faust, and the two of them are nothing akin to friends. They're not even acquaintances. He's almost as tall as Wulfie, his hair long and curled like a girl's. Everyone calls him a faggot, so that's what Wulfie called him too after Faust had slammed a fist into his stomach.

„Or would you rather go back home and have your bitch of a sister yell at you for embarrassing the family? What?“ adds Faust when he notices Wulfie's face is rapidly draining of color, „I listen and know things! Listening and knowing things are the basics upon which the human race evolved… into beasts, that is.“

Wulfie thinks about Klara and her gloomy older boyfriend who drives her to college in a silver car, and feels his stomach make a cartwheel. He and the boy who started beating him first ditch the class and walk around Barcelona until midnight, and then Faust gets them a room in a cheap hotel an hour away from the city center.

Wulfie frowns, already tired of the adventure. He finds that sharing a space with Faust requires a discomforting amount of small talk. Faust is always, Wulfie thinks about it for a moment, trying to fill in all the empty space around himself. Sharing an interesting factoid about the local flora. Chatting about the weather. Wondering what people would think about them both disappearing after evidently beating the shit out of each other – they go back and forth through that one several times like, I dunno, maybe they think I killed you. Haha, Beowulf, good one. At least Wulfie can count on Klara to leave him alone when he made it obvious he wants to be alone. Faust is exhausting and incomprehensible.

He starts talking the very moment the door shuts behind them: „The rooms aren't as run down as the lobby, are they? Oh, we've got a little balcony too. Have you seen my laundry bag? The red plastic one – yes, that one. Do you mind if I shower first?“

It goes on even as Faust returns from the bathroom, looking off in a normal pajama shirt, not tightened into the disgustingly neat navy shirt he'd been wearing. He glances to where Wulfie is lying in the middle of the double bed and arches an eyebrow, „Are you feeling okay?“

And that's when the thread of decency in Wulfie finally snaps, he turns his head and bares his teeth, „The hell are you going on about, ah?“

Faust blinks once, feigning ignorance, „You just seem a bit angry all the time. It’s unseemly.“

Wulfie huffs as he stands up and goes to the balcony to smoke, fumbles with the lighter in the dark. A shuffle of socked feet comes from behind – Faust joins him. The balcony is shit just like the rest of the place, just a stripe of concrete framed in poorly molten rusted iron. Faust leans against the wall; Wulfie leans against the railing. It creaks and bends an inch.

Wulfie exhales the first puff of smoke and says, „So?“

Faust has a piece of gum in his mouth. Wulfie can see him move it around the inside of his mouth. „Nothing,“ Faust shrugs. „We're just hanging out.“

„People don't just do that.“ Wulfie frowns, flicks the gathering ashes into the night. „Hang out with me.“

Faust raises both his eyebrows – they're blond like his hair, look too bright and saturated on his face – and says, „Are you blind? You're the big bully here. You've got half the school at your feet.“

There's a weird accusatory undertone to his words, not quite jealousy, but not far from it either. Wulfie supposes Faust isn't very popular. He doesn't really know. Anyway, it annoys him, the presumption that he's simply pretending not to enjoy the negative attention he gets. He frowns, „They're just curious cause I'm tall. Or cause I don't talk. Or doin' a challenge.“

One time a random girl from year eleven had just snuck up on Wulfie in the hallway and kissed him, and Wulfie flinched and shoved her six feet away on instinct. The girl looked at him all wide-eyed for a moment like, what the hell is wrong with you? before rejoining a group of friends who welcomed her full of giggles, without as much as looking at Wulfie who stood there frozen, staring down at his fist. Can't believe you actually did it, Ema!

Wulfie realizes Faust is giving him a pointed, somewhat expectant look, so he shrugs. „People don't give a damn to get to know me, and that's fine by me. It's whatever.“

Faust joins him in testing the limits of the aged railing – it creaks once more under their added weight, but doesn't cave in. He says, „What are you like, then?“

Wulfie scoffs, „I'd say fuck around and find out, but you already did.“

„You're witty.“

„Very funny,“ Wulfie runs his hand through the coarse hair in the back of his head. It needs a trim. „Just figured, even if I spent time with someone from school, it wouldn't be someone like you.“

„Oh?“ Faust arches an eyebrow. „I'll bite. What am I like?“

„I dunno,“ Wulfie narrows his eyes at him for a moment, trying to gather all he knows about Faust into something concise that separates him from the monotone procession of faces at their school. „You've got good grades. You suck up to adults but you actually think they're more worthless than shit. You probably like books. Or theater. Normal stuff like that.“

„Normal?“ Faust sounds surprised. Pleasantly so or not, Wulfie can't tell. Finally, he seems to give in, „Alright, I'm normal.“

An awkward silence settles once more over the tiny balcony. Wulfie's eyes zero in on the faint colored ring his own lipstick has left on the cig, on Faust's long hair. He remembers the way Faust's eyes would narrow when people stared at him, almost a challenge to point out this or that. Right. Just two normal guys, having a normal smoke.

„You know why I asked you to come with me?“ Faust says out of the blue. Wulfie goes to say, I don't really give a damn, but he is a bit curious, and it's not like he has better things to do. „Why?“ He expects Faust to spill the same old bullshit everyone who sucked up to him said about him being really strong and cool.

„Cause you scared me,“ says Faust. „and that was new. The feeling of looking up at someone who could snap me like a twig. It wasn't like in games, or books. It was more real and honest than anything I'd ever felt.“

Wulfie turns and gives him a long stare, then. Faust goes on rambling, „So I decided to run away and go with you. And it was mostly cause… This might sound weird, but I felt like I could relate to you. It might sound stupid now, but that's what I thought… What are you looking at me like that for? Too normal for your tastes?“

Wulfie frowns a bit, „Nah. ‘s just that… you’re the only one who came out here, so.” He waves his hand around vaguely, too overstimulated to really elaborate.

„Now you,“ Faust elbows him in the shoulder. „I told you something I've never told anyone. Now you do it, so we'll be even.“

Wulfie thinks it over, shakes his head, „That’s not how it's supposed to go. Won't be real cause you forced it out of me.“

„So you're the kind of principled man who values honesty like that, Beowulf?“ Faust's voice is airy, like it's not that important at all. „I don't care what it is as long as no one else knows. It doesn't have to be personal or meaningful.“

Wulfie gnashes his teeth. If he hates talking because he’s bad at saying what he means, he hates talking about himself on principle. What’s there left to say? The truth of Wulfie is evident. They can see he wins his fights. They can see he’s used to doing things he doesn’t like. There’s no need to explain it. There has never been a compelling enough reason to.

He imagines an entirely hypothetical conversation –  people talking about his lipstick until they didn’t dare to, putting on Klara’s lipstick like he’s trying for a confession without having to say anything. And he didn’t say anything. He just kept beating the shit out of them.

But Faust never really asked him about any of that, did he? He just asked for something, anything. And Wulfie has already slipped into what was almost a conversation way too easily, maybe because Faust doesn’t really register as other people in his head – other people were Klara and Dad and random passersby in the hallway unlucky enough to have found themselves in his proximity. Faust attacked him first and laughed as Wulfie socked him in the face. Just two normal guys having a normal smoke.

“I like bugs,” says Wulfie flatly. “I know a lot about them. When I lose my cool and need to calm down I say their names in my head.”

„Huh,“ Faust huffs a polite laugh into his hand. „Interesting. Now I can't not imagine those in your head as the soundtrack of you throwing punches. Tell me, do you say them in Latin?“

„Yes. No,” says Wulfie much too quickly, immediately feels like an idiot for it and resolves himself to explain it, if only just part way. „Too far gone by then. I don't mix bugs with fighting.“

„You really like them that much?“

The amusement in Faust's voice can pass for curiosity, so Wulfie admits, „I wanna study biology.“ He knows how stupid it sounds. But he can't help it. It's the one thing untouched by violence and judgemental stares and all else, and it's his alone.

„Thank you for sharing,“ says Faust, with too much sincerity for someone who forced him into it. „Hey, do you want to kiss?“

Wulfie chokes on an exhale of smoke, and stupidly hacks into the cool air. His hand reflexively tightens into a fist shoved into Faust's face as he stumbles back, „You making fun of me now, fucker?“

„Sure,“ Says Faust, looking all too bored. „Relax. I know you don't like me, and I don't like you either. Just thinking about how depressing it'd be to die without doing it. When I was a kid I used to think, I won't die before I have a best friend, but now I think this should generally be enough.“

Wulfie peers down at Faust and wonders what the hell is wrong with him. The guy just confessed that he expected – or intended – for this to be his final wish, that he's been like this for a long time, maybe. But he's still moping about this kind of cheesy teenage dramatics?

„If you don't feel like it, I'll find someone else.“ Faust shrugs.

It's dark outside, and none of the bars within walking distance are any good. The teachers would probably get mad if something bad happened to Faust and Wulfie came back home without him. But it's not like that would happen. Right, Faust could protect himself. He was mean and vicious and violent when they fought, he beat Wulfie worse than anyone before him and his ribs were still bruised. Faust could take whatever Wulfie dished out. If Wulfie shoved him six feet into the room, he'd stand right up and shove him back.

„It's whatever,“ says Wulfie. He turns to awkwardly stand with his elbows against the fence. Faust spits out the gum, steps on the railing and props himself up to reach Wulfie's mouth. It lasts just a second, dry and uneventful. And then a second time, experimental, Faust's tongue finding his. Wulfie keeps his hands on the railing – there's nothing sensual in it, even more so impersonal than kissing a total stranger had been, but it seals a promise anyway, the pretense that no conversation that could be made light of has happened here at all.

Faust steps back down, so there's no need to shove him away. If he did shove him away, Faust would've pushed him over and off the second floor, and there's a strange comfort in it. He seems to think for a moment, and shrugs a little, „That was okay. I forgot you smoked. I'm going to brush my teeth now.“ Then he turns on his heel and goes back into the room, leaving Wulfie feeling like it's all been a part of some bizarre schedule Faust had prearranged just to confess that he's evil and never going to make it home from Barcelona.

It's not like Wulfie cares. He looks down to find his cigarette has burned down to the filter. Sighing at the waste, he flicks it over the railing and wonders if the only person your age you can hang with after beating the shit out of them is your best friend by design

(vi) un, deux

Throughout her childhood, Klara dreamed of romance in the most depraved sense. A love like Mom and Dad's, a man ensnared so thoroughly that the more they beat each other black and blue, the more he'd come back to her. It had to have been utterly addicting, the taste of a forbidden kiss that no one else knows – still, the first time a boy shoved his tongue down her throat was more tasteless than styrofoam, a kiss barely swallowed and forced down her gullet.

There's a picture of Wulfie and his dead husband kissing framed on a cupboard in the hallway. It sends a wave of revulsion through Klara's gut on instinct, and she forces herself to look away from it and into Wulfie's face, the unshaven side of his jaw. He looks her up and down, „The books are in the living room.“

The time they talked on the phone, Wulfie ended the conversation by off-handedly muttering about some of Faust's photography books he doesn't want anymore. The living room is on the first floor. Klara doesn’t know why she expected it to be bleak and spartan, but it’s anything but. A large TV covered in a thick layer of dust, and heaps of magazines and clothing thrown about. On the kitchen counter there’s a terrarium with no bugs.

Wulfie rubs his eyes as he all but collapses into the single armchair. Klara stands at the door frozen and alert until he actually raises his eyebrows and says, “You can sit, if you’d like. For a bit.”

There’s no second seat in the living room, so Klara brings a chair from the kitchen and sits across the small table. “Give me a smoke.” 

Wulfie passes her a brand new unopened pack of cigarettes and a lighter that says Barcelona in big red letters. Klara finds it a distasteful trinket. No one moves first to light their cig. No one moves first to reach the ashtray. They sit near each other and Klara thinks about their faces - wide, rough in structure but delicately pretty around the eyes and mouth. 

“I wish you could’ve met him,” says Wulfie in the end, eyes fixed on the bright red coffee table that wasn’t there when Klara was young. “He brought life into this place.”

Nah, thinks Klara. All he brought here was more death. But she doesn’t say it. She doesn’t say anything, just lets her brother talk.

“But I didn’t know what to do, face to face with the depth of his unhappiness.” he goes on. “It scared me. Made me lonely.”

Lonely. A brother and sister, lonely for something they can never find in each other.

“When you were a child, I always wished you’d die,” Klara bites the inside of her cheek.  “But when I found out you two made a life for yourself, I was relieved. I thought, good riddance.” 

Wulfie stares deeply into the side of her nose, and Klara wonders if he knows how much it hurts her, his gaze cold and unyielding like Mama’s as Klara makes her frail unspoken confession: the one who really wanted to die was I all along. 

“But at the start,” she says in the end, and it’s perhaps the first time ever that her voice has wavered in such a way. “I really… wanted you to be born, even so. I knew Mama and Papa would only hurt you. I knew we’d be no family… It’s so selfish, but I’m glad they decided to go through with it. You’re the one good thing they brought into this world.”

It’s selfish, but I’m glad you were born - what a cruel thing to say to your brother. And yet, “It’s fine,” says Wulfie, and she doesn’t know what he’s telling her - it’s fine to be sad? It’s fine to forgive yourself? It’s fine to die? They’re not fine – nothing is fine. Even so, Wulfie’s huge body is shaking like a leaf, and more than anything Klara wanted to hear those words, to believe them. Even if they’re a lie. Even if they’re cursed.

They smoke in silence. Wulfie wears lipstick no longer, and the filter of his cigarette is clean. Klara’s is dark red – Mama’s color – she wipes her mouth into the back of her hand, and stands up, “I should go. I don’t want to keep you busy,” she says, though neither of them have better to do.

“Mhm,” says Wulfie, staring straight into the terrarium with no bugs, and Klara wonders if he’ll be fine. She wonders if she’ll be fine, anyone. “Good night, Klara.”

“Night, Wulfie.”

“Hey,” and Wulfie looks like he’s about to do the hardest thing he’s done in his whole life - allow himself to be gentle with her, if only for a moment. “Don’t be a stranger.”

She smiles, or maybe just imagines herself smiling at this.

“Good night, Beowulf.”

As Klara leaves the living room with six photography books under her arm, she wipes off the remains of her lipstick. And then she ties up her hair.

As the driver starts the car, the sun sets, slowly and mournfully as though sinking into a grave it dug for itself.

(vi) maybe I’ll be eaten by Beowulf’s Ma

“Get a move on, sweep the terrace or something.”

Faust’s left eye starting to twitch as he spoke was her cue to remove him from the house. After the old man lost his job, they moved to a two-room shack outside of Zagreb, where it was cheaper to live and she could grow some of the food on her own. Besides the room where they all slept and a kitchenette, there was a terrace and an attic. That attic was by far the more interesting of the two, but they spent one night too many huddled up there to evade drunken sluggishness. Please let him tell you about the terrace instead.

It was a square of concrete, walled up on three sides and open on the fourth towards a street called Naftaplinska cesta - oil and gas road. Nothing in Faust’s childhood was poetic other than his rage. And whenever that threatened to spill out, she would send him to sweep the terrace with a corn broom. That broom was the epitome of everything that enraged him: just like this rage of his, it was something that could be found in every household. Ordinary, cheap. You could sweep the terrace, or you could even beat your wife with it if you liked. Take your pick.

Faust’s mother did not know of the play Faust. The pinnacle of literature for that woman were the paperback erotica novels that one could buy at the newspaper kiosk. Thus, to his great disappointment, she could not name him after it. He was actually named after an inventor. In 1617, a man named Faust Vrančić jumped from a Venice tower wearing a rigid-framed parachute and survived. He would later describe it in his book of machines, calling it the Flying man. But that’s a digression. These are simply the things Faust pondered the most while sweeping the terrace: flying men, jumping men, falling men. Sometimes he imagined them gracefully landing, and sometimes they’d splat against the walls of his mind like overripe tomatoes. One miscalculation was all it would’ve taken for Faust Vrančić, the genius, to be labeled as Faust Vrančić, the suicidal idiot who had to be scrubbed off the Venetian square. But seriously, isn’t the borderline between those two dangerously thin?

As he pondered that, his rage would often subside, and he would then be allowed to come back inside. What’s more, he would even be happy that he did something kind for his mother.

“You sure about this?” Faust raised both of his eyebrows as he sat on the side of the bed and set a small ashtray between the two of them. “I mean, the last time you invited me over, you…”

Beowulf peered at him from under his ridiculous fluffy bangs like, watch your mouth, so he carefully reconsidered his wording: “...ended up screaming at me to get out.”

He almost thought Beowulf wouldn’t say anything. It wasn’t unlike him to leave Faust hanging in the middle of a pointless exchange with himself - and he didn’t mind that much. He’s always liked the sound of his own voice, and anyway, Beowulf’s aloofness made for most of his charms. But a second passed and he said, “Yeah… my bad.”

“Whatever,” It was the closest thing to an apology that he would ever get from him. “I’m done. Give me that.”

Beowulf’s lighter was heavy, ornate silver - not the kind a college freshman should carry. He had another one, a cheap plastic trinket that said BARCELONA, but he never used that one. Faust passed him the joint, and he stared at it for a while before lighting it and taking a hit. It was almost cute, even though there was nothing cute about Beowulf S., all sharp edges.

“Relax, would you?” Faust laughed a little. “It’s not gonna bite you.”

Beowulf’s eyes zeroed in on the smoke rolling out of his own mouth as he exhaled. “I’ve never smoked this shit before.”

They passed it back and forth a couple of times before Faust finally said, “This is the part where I ask you why you cried when I touched you, by the way.”

Beowulf’s dark eyebrows knitted together. He was ruggedly handsome when he did that, nothing like the panicked expression he’d flashed the previous Tuesday. “Don’t,” he said.

“Another question, then,” Faust kicked off his shoes and laid on the bed. It smelled like Beowulf’s cologne, sharp and citrusy. “What’s up with all those scars on your arms?”

He studied the coral red ring Beowulf’s lipstick had left on the blunt before putting his mouth around it. He’d known Beowulf was trouble, what with his torn clothes and his chains and his short fuse. Still, he was surprised when he took his jacket off and found a dozen scars, pale deep scratches down his forearms. 

“What? You cut yourself or something?” He nudged him with his foot, just to be mean, but Beowulf just sighed heavily as he slid down the wall until we were lying side by side. “Or something,” he said dryly. “Had enough? I didn’t call you over here to talk.”

Faust laughed at this. “Cut a guy some slack, will you? I like you cause you’re hard to get, but if you never tell me anything… I’m gonna get bored of you, you know?”

Beowulf looked straight at him, and his gaze was unfocused, like he was looking at something behind Faust’s shoulder. He briefly wondered if his words might have hurt him, before reminding myself who it was that he was talking to. Right. Beowulf couldn’t care less.

“Can I touch you a little?” Faust ran his fingers through Beowulf’s hair before he could answer. His hair was dark and fine, curled at the tips and soft to the touch. Faust felt him tense, but he didn’t pull back.

“Where’d you get this, then?”  Beowulf said suddenly, and Faust felt his rough thumb trace his own hairline. He was just trying to keep my mouth busy as his hands roamed down Beowulf’s neck and towards his chest, so he was surprised when he spoke, his voice slightly raspy.

Faust’s hands paused around the hem of Beowulf’s tank top, “My old man.‘S fine,” he whispered into Beowulf’s ear, because he seemed uncomfortable. “I manned up and took care of him.”

He wondered if getting high with Beowulf was a bad idea. I wondered if he ought to say, tell me if you want me to stop, if Beowulf was actually more frail than he looks under all that muscle. He didn’t stop, though. He pulled his black tank top over his head and threw it onto the pile of textbooks and empty beer cans on the floor.

“Yeah, we both manned the fuck up,” Faust said as he straddled Beowulf. I  “Tell me, is that lipstick your sister’s or your mommy’s?”

Beowulf grabbed his wrist with such force and speed that it very nearly scared him. In the resulting silence, he could hear both their heartbeats, each louder than the last. He said without a hint of humor, “Now you’re making fun of me?” 

“No,” Faust laughed to cover up his sudden discomfort. “I like it. It makes you stand out.”

Truth was, Beowulf stood out too much even without his penchant for makeup, too big and too silent. Deep inside Faust’s mind, the alarms kept ringing, back off while you still can, because nothing good could come out of catching feelings for a guy who was all beaten up every other time that you saw him.

Instead he pressed up against his chest and buried his face into the crook of his neck. He felt Beowulf freeze, his hands awkwardly coming to rest on the small of Faust’s back, afraid to move.

“You know, that time I started hitting you… I really wanted to…”

Beowulf finally moved to cup his waist. His hands were so big, they halfway closed around it. “Don’t say it. It feels gross.”

“Okay.” Faust’s shirt joined Beowulf’s on the floor. “ I won’t say it. Then just look at me.”

“Don’t want to,” Beowulf muttered stubbornly.

Faust grabbed his chin. “Look. At me.”

“I said I don’t want to!” Beowulf snarled, something between a child and an animal. One of his teeth was chipped away at the front. 

“What do you want from me, then?” Faust was getting tired of playing with him, felt aimless. Beowulf seemed to honestly think about it, and heaved a weary sigh that resounded in the silence. “Just want to feel a damn thing.”

That sort of thing, at least, Faust had always been good enough for. With his giving up, silence fell upon the dorm room.

“Get a move on, sweep the terrace or something.”

Faust was still pretty young when he figured out that he didn’t want to leave any remains behind when he died. In other words, he didn’t want to be Faust Vrančić who fell from the sky. He absolutely despised the idea of people looking at his body without him being present in it. Do you understand his agony? It turned out that not even leaving this world was simple.

He would later learn that autism runs in Beowulf’s family the way alcoholism ran in his. He would later see a photograph of the mother, only twenty-nine when she hurled herself off the cliff by the house they made a home in. When he understood things, he understood them all at once - how and why they got where they got - but by then it was too late. To go back would be to untangle all the knots he used to desperately tether himself to Beowulf.

He drove himself to visit the grave since Beowulf didn’t want to go, five hours to Zagreb and back. The grave had no angel statues, and stood lonelier than the rest. Standing there and murmuring prayers to a god he didn’t believe in, he felt the lines between them blurring. I was her, to you. Was I her, to you? 

In 1993, a woman named Laura S. jumped from the cliff by her house and did not survive. And although people remember the inventor of the parachute, they don’t remember her. Faust didn't think that was fair, he truly didn't. He didn’t think that the people who prevailed were worth more than the dead ones.

And it's not my senselessness killing me, thought Faust bitterly, it was you, all of you! Why won't anyone come? Even the voices in his head were silent! Why wouldn’t anyone come for him in the end and tell him it was fine to go on living, not even those he created from nothing with his two hands? Why did he have to go alone, watched only by the silent jury of other souls who fell to damnation here? Ah, I really am a cursed existence. Maybe I'll be eaten by Beowulf's mother.

It was easier once he let go, crossing the point of no return. His hands ceased shaking, and he felt a grim and mortifying tranquility once that brief struggle for life ended, as though someone had held a pillow over his face until he stilled. Though he always imagined death as some kind of an ironic triumph, Faust has always known he wouldn't live a long life. The wind was quiet with its howls that morning, and it was a good day to die.

The dark watery surface vibrated and rippled with the growls and shrieks of the corpses on the bottom, and they grew louder still when Faust jumped in and they smelled fresh meat, almost like the buzz of spreading news, today we feast! The water was cold as a grave as he sank and sank… and realized he didn’t even know how deep the sea went there. He itched to find out. Struggling with the final mouthful of water that filled his lungs, his head fell to the side, unblinking eyes turning towards the sky. And he sank

Beyond that, all memory of death has left him. He doesn’t even remember the snapping of jaws as they bickered for a taste of his flesh.

FIN

[crankynewt]

Life Could Be a Dream - Chapter 2

Live in Living Colour Series Masterlist

Masterlist

Summary: (Y/N) slowly begins to remember their life with “Pietro” before WestView as they move through the decades, but sometimes knowledge is a curse rather than a blessing.

Pairing: Pietro (Peter) Maximoff x Reader

Word Count: 1.3k

Warning: WandaVision Episode 6 spoilers! Read at your own risk!

Author’s Note: Here’s the highly requested second part to Be Okay! You don’t have to read it to understand this story, but it does fill in the gap during the 80s episode and give a little more context into the reader’s mind. Also, the reader’s powers and Halloween costume are highly based off of Starlight from the boys even though I did my best to make it gender neutral, but that’s what I kinda envisioned!

(Not My Gif!)

Your hips swayed as you danced around the kitchen, the sound of The Chords’ “Life Could Be a Dream” filled the room from the record player in the corner your beloved vinyl was spinning on. Chopping pineapple for the jell-o in the bundt mold beside you, you hummed along to the familiar tune as your feet shuffled back and forth on the checkered floor.

A whooshing sound and light breeze behind you tore your attention away from the task at hand. Turning around quickly, you were met with the smiling face of your loving boyfriend, relaxing in a chair with his feet propped up against the kitchen table. His dark jeans were complimented by a letterman jacket adorning his shoulders, his shades of grey complimenting your own and those surrounding the both of you.

“My partner and their impeccable taste in music.” He smirked, arms crossed behind his head.

“My boyfriend and his faster-than-a-bullet superspeed.” You retorted, shuffling over to your man and giving him a playful smack on the leg. “Feet off the table! We’ve gotta eat here in a few hours!”

Pietro whooshed once again, this time with one hand in your waist while the other held yours, finally slowing down enough to gently rock you to the music. Life really could be a dream, and you were experiencing it first-hand.

“What is happening? Where did this come from?!” Agent Woo asked, watching the dancing couple sway as a hexagon framed the image and the words ‘Pietro(Y/N)’ shone across the screen.

“I don’t know! When Wanda recast Pietro an extra broadcast started from inside the hex and this is what the channel’s playing.” Darcy explained, taking a sip of her long awaited coffee as the end credits began to roll. “She must have somehow created another storyline for them.”

“But, wait… Didn’t somebody say that (Y/L/N) went missing before the blip?” Monica commented, pointing at your smiling face on the screen.

“Last I heard was that they got beamed up on that spaceship in New York with Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, but nobody’s seen them since.” Jimmy added, crossing his arms with a furrowed brow.

“Well wherever they were, they’re back in action.”

You woke up with a gasp, shooting straight up as a cold sweat adorned your body. Your nightmare had been something that you couldn’t believe your mind had imagined, it was so real, so dark… 

You had been on a strange planet surrounded by shades or orange and red, weirdly dressed people fighting all around you. At the centre of it all was this purple giant, a metallic glove adorning his hand as he fought the group of you away. 

Before you knew what you were doing you were rushing towards him, hand raised as a tingling feeling ran down your arm while golden light formed around your hand. But your attack was to no avail as with a clench of his fist the giant had opened a red hole in front of you and you began free falling.

“What? What is it?” Pietro grumbled, slowly waking up at your sudden outburst. He sat up as well, rubbing his hand on your lower back soothingly. 

“It was just a dream, babe.” You brushed it off, turning to face Pietro and leaning closer towards him. His eyes still held worry and a bit of disbelief as you played it off, but rather than argue, he just held you close as the two of you laid back down until sleep took it’s hold once more. 

“How much longer ‘till he calls?” Darcy whined, spinning in her chair as the boredom of watching reruns overtook her. You and Peter had just finished your ‘80s episode, meaning that the two of you had just reunited with Wanda and Vision.

“Don’t worry, he’ll call.” Monica replied, and as if on cue the name ‘Jimmy Woo’ was flashing upon her phone screen. She was quick to answer and eagerly pressed the device to her ear. “Woo? What’d your guy say?”

“Scott said that (Y/N) hasn’t been seen since they were on a planet called Titan fighting Thanos. Stark apparently told him that they got tossed in some hole he opened and they couldn’t get them back.” Jimmy explained, the sound of a car moving filling the background as he was already on his way back from talking to Lang.

“You don’t think that he sent her to wherever this new Pietro came from, do you?” Monica responded, Darcy shrugging her shoulders in response.

“I mean, it’s well within the realm of possibilities?” 

“What are you boys doing?” You called from the bottom of the stairs to where Pietro and the twins were playing some video game on the tv, laughing and shouting as they shot at each other. “Piet, why aren’t you in your costume?”

Your boyfriend finally turned to face you and your Halloween costume had his jaw quite literally dropping. You adorned a white costume with a golden star and accents on the front, meanwhile your cape was white with countless smaller stars decorating it’s entirety.

“Wow! Babe, you look… Wow!” He ogled, speeding over to you as his eyes took in your costumed appearance. He ignored your question, Wanda having to bug her brother once more for him to drag Tommy with him to make their matching Quicksilver costumes, their hair slicked up on the sides in an odd way.

Before you knew it the five of you were making your way down the street bustling with costumed kids. Pietro and Wanda were a couple steps ahead of you with the twins, you making the decision to take a minute to appreciate your domestic life while the siblings caught up.

“Unleash hell, demon spawn!” Pietro yelled as the twins went running off to fill their buckets with candy. You weren’t trying to eavesdrop, however you weren’t very far behind them and neither twin was making any effort to speak quietly.

“Do you remember when we were at the orphanage when mom and dad died?” She asked, the duo stopping to talk to each other in the middle of the busy road. While you didn’t intend to stop yourself, the sudden confusion that struck your mind left you no other choice.

Orphanage? Why would Peter have ever been in an orphanage when both his parents were still alive?  Wait, Peter? Where was all this coming from?

Suddenly your life was quite literally flashing before your eyes. Getting your powers, joining the Avengers, falling through the portal to another reality, meeting the X-Men… Oh, and Peter. Your relationship with Peter came back in moments, from your first meeting to the day he kissed you after you almost died on a mission. And how could you ever have forgotten your wedding day?! 

“Peter?” You asked out loud. Whether you were calling out to the man who you now remember to be your husband or questioning the memories that you had just regained you weren’t sure.

Your sudden comment caused Peter/Pietro to scoff in disbelief and furrow his brows, meanwhile Wanda’s expression darkened as her eyes glared daggers into your head. 

“Did you just call me Peter?” He asked incredulously, but his face quickly softened as he saw the fear in your eyes. You were utterly dumbfounded, How did you get back here? Last thing you remembered was being at the school, then all of a sudden you were living in some sit-com town.

“Why doesn’t he remember me? Wanda, what have you done?” Your voice wavered, your gaze shifting from Peter to Wanda, who would have already murdered you if looks could kill.

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” Her eyes flashed red, meanwhile Peter was standing there as if everything around him was completely normal.

“I think you do. Don’t make me do this, Wanda.” Your eyes began glowing as well. There was no way this would be ending well.

[miracleonice87]

so happy you’re back & hope your well!! as mats birthday was a yesterday how is the secrets universe?? how did they celebrate mats birthday🥰🥺

I’m so glad you asked 🥰

Obviously Mat is playing at Worlds right now, and as we know, he had a pretty great birthday on the ice — scoring to tie it up, assisting on the gwg in OT, and being named player of the game.

What he didn’t know was that you were about to make his birthday even better off the ice.

You, London, Mike, and Nadia had traveled to Finland together to watch Mat play. The morning of his birthday started with your 21-month-old baby girl waking up just minutes after you did. With Mat still sound asleep, you took the opportunity to stealthily carry her into the bathroom and explain the importance of the day to her.

“Lon, do you know what today is, honey?” you asked, combing her still-baby-soft hair in the mirror.

“Ummmmm…” she began dramatically before a huge smile crossed her face. “Hockey!?”

You couldn’t help but laugh. “Yes, babe, you’re right. Today is a hockey day. But do you know what else? Today’s Daddy’s birthday!”

She gasped, smacking her little palms against the marble. Again with the dramatics — you couldn’t think of where she had possibly gotten them from.

“Daddy birthday, Daddy birthday!” she babbled again and again. After finishing your morning routine, you set London back on the tile and opened the bathroom door.

“Okay, ready? Go get Daddy and tell him, ‘happy birthday!’” you instructed. London nodded, then took off, bounding across the floor as fast as her tiny bare feet would take her.

She ran to Mat’s side, got inches from his face, and repeated, “Daddy birthday! Daddy birthday!” His eyes snapped open, London’s greeting surprising and delighting him all at once.

“Thank you, angel!” he said, his voice enthusiastic though thick with sleep. He lifted London up onto the bed and enclosed her in a crushing embrace, kissing her face all over as she squealed. You sat on the edge of the bed next to Mat and bent down to kiss him.

“Happy birthday, my love,” you said, nuzzling your nose against his cheek as he grinned contentedly.

“Thank you, doll,” he replied warmly.

The morning celebration didn’t last long, as Mat had a game to prepare for. Little did he know that after the game, win or lose, you’d arranged for the trainers to bring out a cake and candles once the guys were back in the locker room (and decent). When they gave you the cue, you sent London into the room ahead of you as the guys began to sing “happy birthday.”

London clapped and giggled with glee as the guys delivered their spirited, if horrendous, version of the song. When London finally spotted Mat in the crowded room of guys his age, she again bolted toward him, throwing herself into his waiting arms just as the group reached its last notes, with you just a few steps behind.

The trainers stopped in front of Mat with the cake and he reached for you by the beltloop, pulling you into his side and squeezing your hip. He beamed up at you from his seat in front of his locker, then looked down at London, perched on his knee, and pressed a kiss to her soft black hair.

“Make a wish, baby,” you whispered, wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

He beamed, glancing around the room and shaking his head lightly. “I’m not sure what else I could wish for,” he admitted.

But he closed his eyes and made a wish anyway.

Later that night, back at the hotel after a lovely birthday dinner with his parents, you sneakily greeted Mat wearing a red lace bodysuit, perched on the bed as he emerged from the shower, rubbing a towel over his wet head. When he saw you, he stopped in his tracks and scanned the room. A bottle of Veuve in a bucket of ice, two glasses, a tray of chocolate covered strawberries, massage oil on the nightstand… and no London to be found.

“Where’s the baby?” he asked skeptically as he neared the bed.

You sat up on your knees in front of him, caressing his shoulders. “With your parents,” you explained, trailing a finger down his chest, hooking it in the chain around his neck. “Aren’t Gigi and Papa just the best?” you asked as you leaned in, looping your arms around his neck.

He nodded slowly, trailing his hands from your shoulders, down your waist, and resting them on your ass.

“The best,” he emphasized, leaning in for a searing kiss. “Like I said…” he murmured, stealing another peek at your attire, “what more could I wish for?”

(hope you enjoyed! and thank you — I’m doing well and I hope you are, too ☺️)

[shemarmooresfedora]

Rebuilding Family

Summary: Y/N and Spencer were college sweethearts at Cal-Tech but once Spencer got accepted to the FBI Academy, he ended things deciding it was not fair to make Y/N wait for him. When they meet again years later, he discovers something unexpected.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

Content/Warnings: pure fluff and a happy ending as promised :)

A/N: the final chapter 😭❤️ see my full note at the end

Masterlist

Chapter 37

“What’s your location? Over,” the walkie talkie on the kitchen counter crackled.

“Dino chicken nuggets are coming out of the oven as we speak. Over,” you replied back.

“Roger that. Over and out,” Jo stated and the walkie talkie went back to static.

Spencer got them as a gift for her and she would constantly have one with her, giving the other to someone before leaving the room so they could talk through it.

You headed out to the back porch and down the steps into the yard with a big plate of nuggets and dipping sauces as well as some juice boxes and applesauce for the twins.

“Coast is clear. Do you copy? Over,” you spoke into the walkie talkie.

“Affirmative. Bring ‘em up,” Jo exited the main part of the treehouse and you saw her on its little porch.

Spencer had built her a little pulley system with a basket and rope so she could lower or raise items up into the treehouse instead of carrying them up the ladder.

You placed the food and drinks inside and then made your way up the wooden ladder.

“Thank you, Mommy,” Jo smiled as she bit into a nugget.

“No problem, Cadet Jo,” you ruffled her hair up a little as she giggled.

You ducked to get through the door of the treehouse and sat down on a cushion on the floor next to Spencer who had both the twins in his lap.

“What are we watching?” you asked as you clipped the twins’ bibs on.

“Cars!” Jo cheered.

“I wanted to watch a subtitled Russian film but I was ‘boo’ed when I made that suggestion,” Spencer grinned as he grabbed the spoon to start feeding the babies.

“Hm I wonder why,” you teased.

Once Jo got the movie playing on the laptop, she took a seat in your lap with the plate of nuggets and took turns eating one, then handing one to you, then Spencer.

Once all the kids were fast asleep in your laps and the credits were rolling, you turned to Spencer.

“You and Derek really did a good job building this treehouse, love,” you complimented him.

“Anything for my family,” he smiled, then leaned over to kiss you.

-

It was the morning of Jo’s 8th birthday party. You wanted to make it extra special in light of what happened at her 7th birthday party.

Spencer kept reminding you that it wasn’t your fault a psychopath shot you and sent you to the hospital but you just wanted to give Jo the party she deserves.

You rented a bouncy house and an inflatable water slide. Spencer was doing a magic show and Penelope was doing face paintings. You baked a huge stegosaurus-shaped cake from scratch. No kid would be bored and Jo would have an amazing time.

You settled for having it in your backyard instead of the park now that you had plenty of room. The whole team came over earlier to help set up.

Penelope got all her paints organized on the porch table as Spencer set up his mini stage for the performance. Hotch and Derek filled the slide with water while you and Emily carefully brought the massive cake to the table outside.

Jo came running outside already in her swimsuit, eager to get the first splash in the water slide.

“You have to come with me, Uncle Derek,” she insisted.

“Jo, I don’t have my swimsuit on,” he replied.

“You’re in athletic shorts. They’ll dry quick,” Savannah, his girlfriend, yelled from where she was setting up the food table.

Derek looked to Hotch to help him out. Hotch pointed back to Jo who was giving him puppy dog eyes.

“Fine,” he groaned, taking off his shirt which elicited a holler from Penelope.

Jo made her way up the steps with Derek right behind her.

Jo sat down in Derek’s lap and then turned around to face him.

“Okay, ready?” she asked him.

Derek nodded and then pushed off, sending them both down the slippery slide.

“Weee!” Jo exclaimed as they slid down.

“Again,” she demanded, “Where’s Daddy?”

“He went to put his swimsuit on, Baby J, so he can go with you,” you told her as you set Ollie down next to Ophelia in the playpen outside.

“Coming, Princess!” Spencer ran outside and scooped the little girl up in his arms as he trekked up the steps.

“How about we go down like a penguin this time?” he suggested.

Jo nodded enthusiastically as Spencer got onto his belly and Jo laid on top of him and wrapped her hands around his neck.

“1…2…3!” Spencer pushed off and they raced down the slide again, Jo giggling the whole time.

“Again!” Jo said.

“I think we are going to have to buy one of these, love,” Spencer called over to you, laughing and running up the stairs right behind Jo again.

-

“Please welcome my lovely assistant to the stage,” Spencer spoke in his magician tuxedo.

You waved as the audience clapped. You were wearing a sparkly red sequin dress to compliment Spencer’s bow tie.

“I am going to make my assistant…disappear,” he stated.

The kids in the audience gasped.

Spencer took your hand and guided you to the big black box in the center of the stage.

“Just like we practiced,” he whispered to you as you stepped inside.

You winked and he kissed your hand as he let go and closed the door.

Spencer knocked on the door a few times and wiggled his hands for some showmanship.

“Okay, on the count of 3. We’re all going to yell ‘Abracadabra’,” Spencer explained, “1…2…3!”

“Abracadabra!” all the kids yelled.

Spencer set off a small smoke bomb and quickly opened the door, revealing an empty box.

The kids all screamed in wonder.

“Bring Mommy back!” Jo yelled.

You had to stifle your laughter from behind the fake wall in the box you were hiding behind.

“Your wish is my command, Princess,” Spencer closed the door again.

“To reverse the spell, we need to say the exact same word,” Spencer stated.

“Abracadabra!” the kids yelled once again.

This time, you opened the door and the kids clapped enthusiastically.

“For this next trick, I need a volunteer from the audience,” Spencer smiled.

All the kids’ hands shot up in the air.

“I’m going to have to go with the wonderful birthday girl right in the front row,” you took Jo’s hand and escorted her up onto the stage.

“Jo, I need you to pick a card, any card. Show the audience but not me,” Spencer fanned the cards out in his hands and closed his eyes.

Jo picked the ace of hearts and showed the audience.

“Now, put it back in the pile,” he said.

“Alright,” Spencer opened his eyes and began to shuffle the cards, “Is this your card?” he asked, holding the eight of spades.

“No, Daddy. Try again,” Jo said.

“Is this it?” he questioned, holding the queen of diamonds.

“No, Daddy.”

“Oh,” Spencer smacked his forehead, “I know where I put it,” he pulled off his top hat.

Spencer then proceeded to pull a bouquet of flowers, an endless handkerchief, a rubber chicken, and many other silly things out of his hat that had the kids in tears from laughing.

Finally, he pulled out the ace of hearts, “Is this your card, Princess?”

“Yes, Daddy!” she beamed, hugging him.

-

Jo’s birthday was a complete success. She was completely worn out by the end of it and slept in late the next morning.

But when she did finally wake, she was eager to try out her gift that you and Spencer had gotten her: a big kid bike with no training wheels. It was purple which was her favorite color with a white basket on the front and a little bell on the handlebars.

You and Spencer were going to teach her how to ride it today. She padded up with some knee pads and elbow pads and her helmet.

You had the twins in their double stroller with mini bucket hats on to protect them from the sun.

“Okay, Jo. Me and Daddy will run with you for a little but then we’re going to let go but you’re going to keep pedaling,” you explained to her.

“I’m scared,” she replied, looking at the street in front of her.

You were practicing in the street in front of your house because it wasn’t very busy and it was flat. Plus, you could leave the twins in the stroller in the driveway.

“It’s okay, Baby J. You’ve got all your padding on so even if you fall, it won’t hurt at all, I promise,” you assured her.

“I believe in you, Princess,” Spencer kissed her helmet-covered head.

“I’m ready,” she nodded, moving her feet to the pedals.

“That’s my girl,” you smiled.

You and Spencer began to jog alongside her as she pedaled.

Spencer looked at you, “Okay, Princess. We’re letting go.”

You and Spencer both removed your hands from her bike and she continued to speed forward.

“Yes, Jo! You’re doing it! ” you encouraged her.

“Princess, can you turn around and come back to me and Mommy?” Spencer asked.

Jo carefully steered her bike and headed back to you both with a massive smile on her face. You and Spencer were loudly cheering her on.

“Okay, try to brake,” you said.

Jo slowly came to a stop right in between you both.

“You’re a pro!” you grinned as you both knelt down to hug her.

-

Jo had been biking for the past hour and she was still having a blast.

You and Spencer were laying in the front yard with the twins in your laps.

“Mommy, Daddy! Look!” Jo exclaimed as she did donuts on the bike.

“We’re looking, Baby J,” you laughed, “Great job!”

You leaned your head on Spencer’s shoulder.

“Y/N…” Spencer began.

“Yes, Spence?”

“Thank you,” he replied.

“For what?” you looked up at him.

“All this,” he motioned to Jo, the twins, the house, the yard, the chalk drawings on the driveway, the rocking chairs on the front porch, the doormat that said ‘The Reids’, everything he ever dreamed of, “I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” you kissed him, “I’d give you the world if I could.”

“You already have,” he smiled.

A/N: thank you everyone so so so much for reading, commenting, reblogging, etc.! i love you all so much. i’m probably going to miss this too much and do one-shots of this series in the future. also, this series hit 14,000 on ao3! that’s crazy that that many people read my work. thank you, just thank you! -dory <3

main taglist (just ask to be added/removed!): @samuel-de-champagne-problems @g0lden-cth @spencerreid9 @averyhotchner @coldlilheart @k-k0129 @ickleronniekinsemotionalrange @harrystylesandthegoobs @cmily @jswessie187 @rem-ariiana @hoodpankow @mochionly @spencerreid-187 @babymetaldoll @fics4arainyday @ssavanessa22 @all-tings-diego @idonotexiste @beepbooptoop @tvandfanfic @mggsprettygirl @big-galaxy-chaos @navs-bhat

series taglist: @doctorreiding @reidsfish

[citrinesparkles]

cat.

jason todd, eventually x gender neutral reader. 1,388 words. notes: this is part one of i don't even know how many and i cannot believe how wildly out of hand this got. this was a 500 word idea and it's gonna be at least three parts someone help (thanks to @angelz-dust for being so patient with me and encouraging on this!!! would never have made it out of the drafts without you <3) warnings: danger to kids, mention of a couple arguing, animal illness (spoiler alert: it'll be fine i Promise), a little (lot) different than my usual edit: part two here!

"let me be perfectly clear: if you even think about showing back up here, i will know, and i will make your life a living hell until i finally put you out of your misery. understood?"

"yes! yeah man i get it. understood."

"then i'd get going, if i were you." the man scrambled to his feet and bolted off across the playground, leaving jason to shout after him. "and warn any buddies you might have, too!"

he picked up the discarded knife and pocketed it. he then turned around slowly, hands visibly empty in a careful attempt not to scare the two kids behind him- well, careful not to make it worse, anyway. they, understandably, seemed a little shaken already.

"are you both alright?" he asked softly, slouching just a little to seem as harmless as possible.

probably would have been easier if they hadn't just watched him threaten someone.

the older kid- probably fifteen, if jason had to place a bet- nodded silently before glancing back at the little girl he was still hovering in front of protectively, who was just... staring.

she couldn't have been older than six.

"jazz?" the boy asked, voice tight. "are you hurt?"

he was ignored. "are you superman?"

the question, innocent and earnest and a little timid, made jason laugh. "not quite, kiddo."

she tilted her head like a curious puppy, furrowing her brow. "why are you wearing a jacket?"

jason glanced up at the boy, who seemed comforted by her mini interrogation. good.

talking was a good sign, too, so jason crouched down to meet her at eye level.

"because it gets cold out here!" he said, raising his hands up with a small wiggle of his fingers. "gloves, too."

"well, duh," jazz said with a giggle- a win, jason thought. "no fingerprints."

he nodded. "also helpful."

"and the hat to hide your face!" she said proudly, stepping forward a little to point at his helmet.

"wow, you've got the whole thing figured out, huh?"

"mhm! my friend ricky loves batman and his friends. he talks about batman and nightwing and spoiler and robin and red robin and red hood and batgirl all the time! they hide their faces like you, ricky thinks it's because of bad guys."

"they're kinda cool, huh?"

"nightwing's my favorite," she said firmly, as though it was something she had considered at great length and was fully prepared to defend.

"not red hood?" jason smacked a hand to his chest in mock hurt, shifting back dramatically. "i'm crushed, truly."

"no, ricky says red hood used to be an alien, but then got bored and now he annoys batman for fun instead. that sounds mean."

...well, okay, maybe he did annoy the big guy for fun a little. "that's an interesting theory, all right."

"ricky's got all kinds of theories. he thinks batman's a robot-" jason snorted- "and that nightwing was like pinochle."

"you mean pinocchio," the boy corrected quietly. "pinochle's what gramma plays."

"pinocchio!" she exlaimed, with a "ch" sound in the middle that made jason smile. "a doll that got turned human. that's how he does all the flips and stuff, he's got magic."

"hm, ricky seems like an interesting guy," jason said thoughtfully, making a big show of rubbing the chin of his helmet. "what do y-"

he was cut off by a loud, insistent meow, and jazz gasping even louder before taking off to the bushes.

"w- hey, don't rush off like that!" he said, shooting up off the ground as the boy sighed.

"there's this cat that she's been taking care of," he explained quietly. "the thing's got attitude for days but i think it's sick or something. jasmine's been bringing it little bits of tuna and chicken, but it's not like we can get it to a vet."

jason hummed. "why do you think it's sick?"

"it's thin, with its eyes all watery and sunk."

"might just be malnourished," he muttered.

"she's been trying to find it a home, y'know."

there was a wink-wink-nudge-nudge quality to the kid's voice that did not go unnoticed.

on one hand, it was good to hear something other than fear from him, but on the other... "what part of the tactical armor makes you think i'm an option?"

"the part where you just stuck around to check on us instead of running after that guy."

okay. maybe the quiet thing hadn't been so bad. the cocky 'amateur psychologist' thing was a little grating.

"you the real red hood?" the kid asked suddenly, shaking jason from his internal grumbling.

"what do you think?"

"i think you just saved our lives, and i wanna know who i'm thanking."

jason turned to him with a flourish. "red hood, baby saver extraordinaire. at your service."

"baby- dude, i'm seventeen!"

okay, so he would have lost his bet. "noted. still a baby, trust me."

"what are you under there, twenty something? whatever, grandpa."

jason chuckled, turning back to watch jasmine pet a small cat under one of the yellow lights littering the park. "you did well, looking out for her with that guy. you got a name?"

he scoffed. "would've been better if i'd kicked him between the legs right when he opened his mouth, instead of letting him get started on the whole 'what're you kids doing out so late?' bit," he muttered darkly, pausing for a moment before answering. "my name's jordan."

"well, jordan, what are you guys doing out so late?"

"mom works nights, and the neighbors were fighting. it was loud enough to wake jazz up, and it wasn't the kind of thing she needed to hear. i figured a trip to see her cat would be less awful than hearing them call each other things i wouldn't even call my friends." the breeze picked up, rustling the trees and catching on jason's jacket. "and then the asshole with the knife decided to make a bad night worse."

"is jazz your sister?"

"yeah, she's a good kid," jordan said, fond and warm. "sorry about the whole ricky thing, though. he's obsessed with those vigilante conspiracy videos and tells her all about them at school."

"no, no, it's fine. i can't wait to tell wing about his new origin story, he'll love that."

jasmine suddenly came bounding back towards them, grabbing their hands and yanking them to follow her. "c'mon, you need to meet cat!"

"you call it cat?"

jordan bristled subtly. "is there a problem with that, red?"

"no, no, it's an appropriate name. just making sure." jason waved his spare hand at his head. "helmet makes me hear things sometimes."

jordan opened his mouth, but his sister plowed right over whatever he was going to say, pulling on jason's hand again. "cat, meet... what's your name?"

"red hood."

"you can't be red hood!" she whirled around, indignantly putting her hands on her hips. "there's already a red hood in gotham. besides, you're not even wearing a hood, so it doesn't fit anyway."

jason turned his head to jordan, who was smiling- a good sign, but probably a bad omen for whatever he was about to say. "she's right, man. it's not a hood."

"tough crowd," jason muttered. "uh... then you can call me, uh-"

"bucket!" jasmine suggested happily, tapping his helmet. "because this looks like a bucket."

if there was one thing vigilantism had taught him, it was that sometimes you actually do need to pick your battles. this...

this was not worth fighting.

"sure, fine, whatever. hi, cat, i'm red bucket." he turned away from the kids- both of whom looked entirely too happy about the whole 'bucket' thing, he thought- and crouched down to finally look at the cat.

it did look a little sick, actually.

it was gray, and thin, and-

and now it was headbutting his knee like it was trying to push him over.

"cat likes you!" jazz cheered.

"sure does," jordan said pointedly. "isn't that interesting?"

jason opened his mouth, but his snarky comment died in his throat when the cat settled down right in front of him and blinked slowly up at him with a sweet tilt to its head.

...shit.

just- shit.

he sighed, standing up and looking back to jordan and his stupid, entirely-too-pleased-with-himself grin. "so, jazz," jason grumbled reluctantly, "where does cat live?"

[thesightstoshowyou]

Thomas Hewitt x F Reader (NSFW)

Summary: Hoyt issues an ultimatum and Thomas is the perfect gentleman.

Warnings: Dubcon, “fuck or die,” blood, gore, swearing, fingering, creampie, manipulative reader

 ~~~

             The surface beneath you is cold and hard, like steel left to sit in a dark room. This is the first thing you notice when you wake. Next comes stronger sensation: Pounding headache, sweat sliding down your face, your chest, aching muscles, burning knees. Then comes sound. You hear talking, but it sounds as though your ears are stuffed with cotton or the speaker is three rooms over.

             Your fingers twitch. You can move them, at least. That’s a start.

             “And I can see why! Look at those legs!”

             The volume turns on all at once and you flinch. It’s a man speaking. He’s close, and loud. A heavy thwack follows his words.

             “I woulda kept a pretty thing like that too. Can’t blame ya for that, Tommy.” The man’s tone is condescending. He sounds as if he is speaking to a child. You don’t even know who he is but you already dislike him.

             Your forehead head feels wet and sticky. Sweat? No, its thicker than that.

             “Tell you what, Tommy. I’m feelin’ generous today, what with this bountiful harvest. I’ll let ya’ have a go at her, huh?”

             You swallow thickly. Is he talking about…you? Sloshing water, another noisy thwack. Blood pumps furiously in your ears.

             “You ever did that to a girl, Tommy? Huh?” Laughter. Thwack, THWACK.

             You’re beginning to feel pity for this ‘Tommy.’ It takes monumental effort to crack your eyes open. For a second, you panic. Your vision is halved. You can’t see out of your left eye. Then, you wipe your face across the back of your hand, clearing your eye of the blood caked into your eyelashes. That explains the sticky feeling. What happened?

             “Oh, look-y there! Here’s yer chance!”

             Your head feeling as though it weighs a thousand pounds, you lift it and glance around. The room spins. You snap your eyes closed once more, waiting for everything to right itself. When you open them again, it takes a moment for everything to come into focus.

             You’re in a poorly lit room, like a cellar. The dirt floor is flooded, a few inches of murky water covering most of the floor. Seated on a rickety wooden table directly in front of you is an ancient sewing machine. Along the cracked and chipped walls are dusty shelves filled with dingy bottles. The whole room smells musty, air thick with humidity and something rancid, like old meat. Glancing down, you find yourself on a rusty metal table stained with—

              Movement pulls your attention to a man standing near your feet, hands on his hips. He is dressed like a sheriff and he’s leering at you. Something is tugging at the back of your mind, a memory, something urgent. It’s about the sheriff, but try as you might, you can’t bring it to the surface.

             “What’dya think of that, girlie? Wanna give ol’ Tommy a try?” You flinch away when the sheriff squeezes your calf. There’s red splattered across the front of his uniform. You hope it’s paint but instinct tells you its not.

             “Where am I?” Your words are slurred, your dry tongue thick in your mouth.

             “Bonked yer noggin real good, didn’t I?” The sheriff says with a harsh laugh. You focus on his face, on his dark eyes and his cruel lips pulled back in a sneer over yellowed teeth.

              Another noisy thwack makes you crane your neck to look behind you. Instantly, you wish you hadn’t. There’s another man there, his back to you. Tommy. His shoulder length hair is dark and his shirt, wet with sweat, clings to his broad shoulders. He’s huge, menacing even when he’s not looking at you. He’s hacking away at a mangled body, suspended in the air by chains and missing several limbs.

              Chainsaw. Screaming. Shredded flesh. SMACK goes the shotgun butt to your head.

               Memory returns like a punch in the gut and you suck in air through your teeth. You recoil, clawing at the edge of the table to pull yourself away from the monster behind you. These murderers, these animals killed…oh god, your friends…oh god, Annie….

                The scream is out of your throat before you register it’s coming. You shriek and cry, scrambling across the table toward the stairs behind you, but you’ve forgotten about the sheriff. One of his hands finds your hair, the other gripping your jaw roughly to hold you in place.

                 You writhe in his grip, but freeze when Tommy finally turns around. He wears a leather mask over the bottom half of his face. His eyes are hidden under his brow, too hard to see in the poorly lit room. You whimper, sweaty hair sticking to your tear streaked cheeks, heart hammering against your ribs.

               “Honeymoon’s over, huh?” Another mean laugh and the sheriff wiggles your head playfully back and forth, “Who’ll it be, Tommy? You or me?”

                You sob, the real reason you were kept alive now out in the open. Panic rises and you grasp his wrists, attempting to wrench yourself free. The sheriff grunts, squeezing your jaw painfully in retaliation.

               “Ya’ like that, honey? Wanna give Sheriff Hoyt a taste?” His breath reeks of stale chewing tobacco when he breaths out across your face.

             The loud clang from across the room startles you both. Tommy has set his cleaver down hard on a nearby table. He’s facing away from you again, his shoulders rising and falling in heavy breaths.

             “Weh-hell, Thomas Brown Hewitt! If I didn’t know any better, I’d say yer jealous!”

             You blink. Panic subsides, replaced by rational thought. The gears in your head whirl at top speed. Maybe this isn’t the end for you, not just yet. A plan drops into place.

             If Hoyt—if that’s really his name—gets his way, he will fuck you, kill you, and that will be that. But Thomas…. You bet that mask he’s wearing is hiding something, maybe a deformity, maybe something else. You’ll also guess not many people have been kind to him throughout his life. People are cruel and if you don’t look normal, most are quick to point it out. Perhaps, if you can win Thomas over, you’ll have a chance at survival. Who would dare challenge a chainsaw-wielding behemoth?

             It’s a gamble, sure, but it’s a gamble you must make.

             “Alright boy, alright.” Hoyt relents, releasing your head and standing up straight. “I’ll give ya’ twenty minutes. If she’s still dressed by the time I get back, I’m putting my foot down.” He laughs, long and loud as he turns and stomps up the stairs. You’re glad to see him go, but now you’re alone with Thomas.

             He still isn’t looking at you. He hasn’t spoken a word this entire time either. Maybe he can’t. You might just have to do the talking for him.

             You close your eyes and inhale slowly, steeling yourself. You push down the revulsion and fear and grief, shoving them deep in your heart to be revisited later. You must be calm. This is your only option.

             “Um, Tommy?” You try, keeping your voice as level as you can. You swallow to lend moisture to your dry throat. “Is…is it okay if I call you Tommy?” Thomas half turns, glancing at you over his shoulder and giving a curt nod. You scoot to the edge of the table and let your legs dangle over the side, hiking your dress up as discreetly as you can.

             “Um. The…the sheriff…Hoyt…. He didn’t really give us much time. Um, if it’s…I mean, I know I’m not—not in charge here, but…if it was up to me, I would…I, um, would want it to be y-you.” You glance up at him under your eyelashes, dipping your shoulder so the strap of your dress slips down your arm.

             Thomas turns further toward you, staring. You wish you could see his eyes through the gloom or know what he’s thinking. Did you guess wrong? Is he going to pick up that cleaver and bury it in your skull for your trouble? Desperately, you will your racing heart to be calm.

             Finally, he looks away. Reaching behind him, he unties his gore-soaked apron, lifting it over his head and draping it on a shelf. He begins to move toward you but pauses, turning quickly and plunging his hands into a bucket of water near the corpse dangling from the ceiling like a macabre marionette. Hastily, he scrubs his palms and fingernails. Seemingly satisfied, he wipes them on a dirty rag before turning back to you.

             Cautiously he approaches, like you’ll spook and run if he moves too quickly. He might be right. When he’s close enough for you to reach out and touch him, he stops, hands moving to his pockets, then behind him, then in front of him again. He’s nervous. He’s never done this before, you realize. That thought is almost a relief. Almost.

             You meet his gaze. His eyes are dark blue, deep and expressive. You can see his hesitance in his eyes and his body language, in the way he’s almost half turned away, as though he might run instead.

             You bite your lip and reach for his hand. Your trembling fingers close around his and you pull him closer. He lets you tow him, helplessly, until he’s standing between your legs. This close, you can smell him; sweat, coppery like blood, and something pine scented, like cleaner or cheap soap.

You place his palm on your bare knee. Christ, his hands are enormous, palms and fingertips calloused and rough against your sweaty skin. You’re sure he could crush your knee like a soda can with just one firm grasp.

             He doesn’t move, simply staring at the hand on your leg like he can’t believe this is happening. A twinge of annoyance burns under the fear. You don’t have time for this. Hoyt could come back at any minute.

             You reach under your dress, hooking your fingers in your panties before dragging them down your legs. Thomas jerks his hand away like your skin has burned him, awkwardly clasping and unclasping his fingers as you set the garment on the table next to you. Again, you reach for his hand, pulling him back, scooting closer to him until you can feel the heat from his body between your spread legs.

             This time, you guide his palm up the expanse of your thigh, under your dress. He sucks in a breath when you press his fingers to your cunt. You meet his gaze again and find him searching your face. He’s looking for something, maybe fear, or disgust, something….

             “It’s—it’s okay, Tommy,” you whisper, voice quivering, “Touch me, please.”

             He does, slowly, gingerly. His thick fingers explore the skin at the apex of your thighs, then trace between your lips, learning you. You’re sure it’s unintentional when he teases your opening before moving higher. You can’t stop the shaky gasp that slips from your trembling lips when he brushes against your clit.

             Thomas, ever observant, does it again, then applies more pressure, circling the calloused pad of his thumb around the sensitive bud. Your eyelids flutter and, unbidden, your hips buck into his hand. All the while Thomas stares, hardly blinking, watching for your reactions.

             Heat curls through your gut, surprising you, at Tommy’s ministrations. He keeps a steady, maddening pace that soon has slick leaking from your neglected cunt. Half-whimpers climb up out of your throat, barely contained behind your teeth.

             Thomas eases up and you’re almost disappointed, but then his fingers slip down your slit to find your soaked entrance once more. Testing, searching, he pushes a finger past your folds, slipping into you. Another gasp tumbles from your mouth. Just his finger, thick as it is, is almost enough.

             You grasp his forearm, urging him to move his hand. He catches on quickly and soon he’s pumping his finger in and out of you. Pleasure blooms through your core and you grind your hips down into his hand.

             “Tommy, can—can you use another finger, please, I need—

             You choke on a moan when he wastes no time in obliging, slipping another finger in next to the first. This is ridiculous, you think deliriously. You’re not sure you’ve ever been this wet before. You can feel it dripping down your thighs to pool under your ass and into Tommy’s palm.

             The coil of lust within you tightens and you realize with shock that you’re going to cum. This huge, deranged murderer is going to make you cum on his fingers. And you’re not going to help him.

             You rock your hips once, twice and then stars explode behind your eyes, knees clamping shut around his arm. Thomas groans above you, his other hand wrapping around the back of your neck, keeping you seated on his fingers when you try to pull away.

             Are you sure he hasn’t done this before?

             You pant and shudder, finally peeling your eyes open to meet Thomas’ heated gaze. His own chest heaves, the hand on your neck shaking. You swallow, intimidated by him all over again. You think he might bore a hole through your head with his gaze alone. Does he look at all his victims like this?

             You shake your head, ridding yourself of your tumultuous thoughts. You have no idea how much time you have left. Hurry, you must hurry.

             Thomas must be thinking the same thing because he gently pulls his fingers from your heat. They drip, little droplets splashing into the water covering his boots. He releases your neck to adjust himself and your eyes fall to the sizeable bulge in his pants.

             It’s your turn to watch his face as you reach out and unbuckle his belt. Slowly, you pop the button, slide the zipper. He releases a shaky exhale when you run your thumb along the long length of the overheated cock hiding behind his briefs.

             “Oh fuck,” you whisper when you free him from his underwear. Of course, his cock is huge just like the rest of him; girthy, long, one massive vein running along the underside. You’re unsure if you can handle him.

             Thomas frowns at your words, but you’re quick to reassure him, “I’m sorry, I’m just…you’re, uh, really big so I was just, um….” Your words trail off into nervous laughter, “Will you go slow?” you plead, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes.

             Thomas nods earnestly, reaching out as if he is going to cup your face. He pauses, fingers inches from your cheek, and the hand withdraws, settling nervously next to your hip. You take another deep breath. No time, no time.

             You scoot forward, spreading your thighs wide to accommodate his hips. You grip him, hard and hot under your palm, and guide him to your slick entrance. Thomas tenses when you hook your leg around his hip, using it to ease him toward you.

             Sweat beads along your forehead as he inches forward, taking the lead once you release him and lean back on your palms to brace yourself. Thomas grips your hips with shaking hands, pulling you forward, stuffing you full with his cock.

             The uncomfortable stretch is there, certainly, quivering muscles straining around Tommy’s generous girth, but your slickness eases the passage and you feel warm pleasure winning out over pain. Before long, he’s fully seated within you, his haggard breaths washing over your sweaty forehead.

             Thomas moves and you gasp, one hand flying to grip the front of his shirt. The drag of his cock along your overstuffed walls is unreal. You sigh, biting your lip in a futile attempt to keep the embarrassing sounds safely in your mouth.

             A strained groan leaves Tommy and he jerks his hips forward, wrenching a surprised mewl from your own mouth. That noise, or the way you clench around him must destroy his resolve. The grip on your hips turns bruising and Thomas begins pounding into you with enthusiasm.

             All you can do is clap a hand over your mouth, your other hand white knuckled and braced against the table. Each harsh thrust sends a jolt of pleasure up through your gut, causing you to lose control of your words.

             “Please, please, pleasepleaseplease,” you chant, not even sure what you’re begging for, your mind hazy with desire. You can barely hear yourself over the noisy slap of skin against skin, the wet squelch of your battered cunt, and the creaking of the rusty table under you.

             Thomas trembles, his thighs tensing under yours. He grunts and you can tell from the sound that he’s gritting his teeth. He’s trying not to cum. How he’s lasted this long is beyond you, but he isn’t going to have to wait much longer.

             That tight coil has returned, burning hot pleasure zinging up your back and racing across your skin. Thomas moves one hand up your hip to dig his fingers into your waist. He’s so strong, so ruthless in the way he pulls you onto his cock. He could break your spine with little effort.

             The coil snaps and you cry out, your body tensing and arching. You grip Thomas’ shoulders for dear life, pleasure pulsing through you in powerful waves as tears spill down your cheeks. At the same moment, Thomas buries his cock as deep as he can, groaning and rutting against you as he fills you up. It sits warm in your belly before trickling down your ass to make an even bigger mess of the table beneath you.

             You pant together as though you’ve both just finished a marathon. You glance up to find Thomas studying you again, searching your eyes and face. This time, he does cup your cheek, rough thumb stroking your flushed skin. The action is so unexpectedly tender your breath hitches. The way he’s looking at you—

             The door at the top of the stairs bangs open and you nearly leap out of your skin. Thomas jerks away from you to quickly button up his slacks. You reach for your underwear but don’t have a chance to put them on before Thomas scoops you into his arms, cradling you protectively against his broad chest.

             “Well, well, well, what have you lovebirds been up to?”

             You don’t hear Hoyt’s antagonizing question. You don’t hear anything but the blood pumping in your ears and your own ragged breathing. The way Thomas is holding you, gripping your flesh like his life depends on it, your cunt dripping with his cum, you know.

             You know he’s never going to let you go.

[yoonieboonie]

The Substitute Lover (5)

word count: 3.1k 

genre: fluff, angst hehe

pairing: myg x reader

summary: Finally meeting the college boy you’ve been eyeing on for months, everything goes wrong when you realise what you’re really getting yourself into.

a/n: this is part !!! Thank you for the feedback from last chapter! Also, sorry if everything is going so slow, I don’t want to rush the story. Don’t worry, shit will go down soon.  If you can, please please please leave me a feedback after reading this chapter.

 :> Thank you!!!!

NEXT | PREVIOUS

"You guys know each other?" you asked, turning to look at Namjoon. It turns out, your new friend's name was Eujin.

A pretty name for a pretty face.

"Why are you with Y/N?" Namjoon asked further, sharing a look with Hoseok. The interaction has been short so far, but the tension was so thick, it can already be cut by a knife.

Eujin shrugged her shoulders, brushing her long hair behind her back.

"She's about to pass out because she was burning with fever. I took her here to eat and drink medicine before she goes home." she explained. Hoseok, who was silent until now, looked over to me to as if to ask for confirmation. I nodded; it was true, after all.

Not having answered your question, you gave all of them a once over as you repeat yourself.

"How do you guys know each other?"

"They're my boyfriend's friends." Eujin answered.

Now that you had taken a good look of her face, you slowly recognised her. She was one of your younger professor's girlfriend. You remember her from countless of time you had to go to his office and have your papers checked. Of course you weren't sure if it was allowed, but it's none of your business anyway.

"Jagi?" Yoongi's sudden appearance startled you.

You felt as if a bucket of cold water washed over you as it finally dawned on you. You didn't really know what "Jagi" looked like, but if Yoongi was to fall for someone, she would most definitely look like Eujin. Ethereal.

What confused you is to why she's calling Yoongi her boyfriend? You thought maybe she and your professor have broken up.

You managed to hold yourself together and face Eujin, offering a hand. She raised hers to shake it as you fake a smile in return, hoping none of them would see through it.

"Hi, I'm Hoseok and Namjoon's friend too." you start to introduce yourself. "My name is Y/N."

Her face gave away a sense of realisation. She eyed you up and down, drinking your appearance in. You inwardly groan that you didn't put in effort in how you dressed today. You looked like a donkey next to her. The trio was watching quietly.

"Are you the lucky one who got my Yoongs to agree to go on a date with her?" she teased, and it almost hurt how she called him as hers. Shaking the feeling of jealousy away, you keep the smile to your face. She's his and he's hers. You had no right to be jealous.

Surprisingly, you managed to hide your disappointment with the manner of how she asked, it sounded rude and condescending. The concern she had for you vanished into thin air, but you're sure no one noticed that but you.

You wanted the ground to open up and swallow you whole. It was beyond embarrassing for it to come directly from her mouth, especially in front of Yoongi.

You tried to answer but no words came out of your mouth. Thankfully, Namjoon awkwardly laughed beside you to kill the tension arising and sat next to you.

"Anyways, how are you?" he asked. "Do you want me to take you to your apartment?"

"No need, I can get by on my own. I just need to eat first. I'm starving!" you groaned. Earning a laugh from Hoseok who ruffled your hair.

"Come on, I'll get you something to eat." You gladly nodded, forgetting the awkwardness that just occurred minutes ago. You have grown close to Namjoon and Hoseok but you are much closer to the latter.

You tail behind him as he reach out his hand to you, not bothering to look back. You hesitate for a bit, not wanting people to assume things between you two but decided against it.You lace your hand in his. If there is one thing you've learned from the first month of being friends with them, it's that they are a fan of skinship.

You used to feel uncomfortable with how often Hoseok places his hands over your shoulders or how Namjoon bumps elbows with you when you sit next to each other but after observing them, it seems that they do that to each other too. Everything was completely platonic. That was when you started to adapt to them and became comfortable with skinship too.

"Are you alright, Y/N? I'm sorry you had a run-in with that witch." he said with a scowl. So they did notice, you note. Nevertheless, you smack his shoulder at the comment. "Yoongi wouldn't appreciate you calling her that, Hobi."

Hoseok instantly forgot what he was grumbling about and beamed at the nickname. You heard that "Hoba" was Yoongi and Namjoon's nickname for him so you made one of your own. You'll never forget Hoseok's face when he first heard you say it.

"Are you alright? How are you feeling, really?" he sighed. "I want you to know that both Namjoon and I condone what Yoongi did. He was wrong in so many ways, leaving you to go home alone last night."

"To be fair, that was on me. I basically forced him on that date." you shrugged.

"You didn't, Y/N." Hoseok turned to fully look at you. Worry etched on his face. "He wouldn't be there if he didn't want to be. No one forced him. He chose to be there."

Your mind instantly trailed back to the bus ride where Yoongi had said the same thing. It made you wonder if it was true.

Trying to change the subject, you point to the line of the cafeteria. Wanting to just get food in your system and head home.

On the other side of the room were Yoongi, Eujin, and Namjoon.

"I thought I had competition, but I think I no longer have to worry." Eujin points at you and Hoseok's hands. Namjoon ignored this, knowing Hoseok and yours closeness, he didn't think any of it.

"See Jagi, you had nothing to worry about." Yoongi assured in her ear. She hummed in return, not bothering to reply.

Namjoon couldn't take it anymore so he started to address the elephant in the room.

"Is this a thing again?" Namjoon asked, pointing at both Yoongi and Eujin. He was frustrated for his friend, in all honesty. He and Hoseok have witnessed how much it affected Yoongi when she left. He didn't want that to happen again.

"We're going to try, Joon." Eujin answered for the both of them.

"Namjoon." Namjoon corrected. "Only my friends can call me Joon." Yoongi wanted to say something and bark back but didn't want to push his luck. Eujin cleared her throat at that. She didn't want to impose further. All she needed was for Yoongi to like her, everyone else is irrelevant.

"Also, tell that to me in a week after you're out the door again, leaving Yoongi for another man." That was the last straw for Yoongi. He abruptly stood and slammed a hand on the table. He felt rage creeping through his veins but mostly ashamed for himself too. It was a low moment for him. How dare Namjoon speak of that. It was a low blow, Namjoon was aware of that too, but Yoongi needs to wake the fuck up.

This startled Eujin, who stayed quiet beside Yoongi. She was guilty. Their relationship ended because she did find someone new; Yoongi just never figured out whom. All he knows is that it took an awful turn and left her broken beyond pieces. Only Yoongi was there to comfort her. She put her hand on Yoongi's trembling ones and ushered for him to take a seat.

"Look, Joon." He sighed. "I know you care about me but please, never speak of that again. We already moved past that. Don't bring it back."

Namjoon only nodded, tired of proving a point and wanting to move on from this drama already.

Besides, he already saw Hoseok and you walking in their direction. Namjoon didn't want to be insensitive in front of you, both he and Hoseok knows that you are deeply infatuated with their friend. Every time you meet with them, though you try to be subtle about it, they notice your disappointment whenever Yoongi doesn't come.

Hoseok took a seat and you sat down next to him. You almost inhale your food desperate to finally drink medicine. Your head was throbbing and you felt worse than you did earlier. Namjoon offered you a paracetamol which you gladly took. You smiled at him gratefully and drank it in one go. You'll start to feel better soon.

After a few minutes, you feel your fever going down. Leaning your head onto the bag Namjoon placed in the table, you quickly used it as a cushion for your to rest on. You paid the couple in front of you no mind. It's embarrassing enough that you practically forced Yoongi into a date, furthermore Eujin finding out and asking you about it. So you focused on Hoseok telling you a story about a dog he met on his way to the campus as Namjoon plays with your hair.

"His name is Kobe, Y/N!" he exclaims, trying to make you understand why it was so important. You tilt your head to the side, confused as to why it was a big deal.

"My name is Hobi! Kobe and Hobi, Y/N!"

You laughed out loud when you realised his point. You are absolutely endeared at how cute Hoseok is being. Namjoon just opted to roll his eyes.

"Hoba, you wasted our time." Yoongi spoke for the first time, making you turn your head towards him. Hoseok hissed at him, he was no longer ignoring him but was being petty at everything he says. This made Yoongi laugh, too. It was hard to not be obsessed with Hoseok, he's a ball of sunshine in human form.

"Where did Hobi even come from?" He added, to which Namjoon replied before Hoseok can.

"It's the nickname Y/N gave him. You know, just some perks we get for being her friend." Namjoon bragged as if it was important piece of information for Yoongi to know. You blushed at his statement and Yoongi looked away.

"Joonie, I think you've made your point." You rolled your eyes at Namjoon. You stood up and gathered your things. You need to go home now. The medicine made you feel better but you felt your body begging you to rest. You are exhausted beyond words and honestly lacking the energy to attend afternoon classes.

"I have to go now, though. I really feel like shit." you laughed.

"I'll bring you home, Y/N." Hoseok begged once again. Yoongi grew bothered by how his two closest friends were so keen with protecting you. What is up with that?

"Look, if it eases your paranoia," You start. "I promise to text you as soon as I get home."

That somehow made Hoseok sigh in defeat. You beamed at him, happy that you were able to crack him.

You face the group and bowed a little, bidding goodbye. Yoongi frowned at that, you weren't strangers. The courtesy was uncalled for and it made his stomach feel queasy. Besides, he didn't like the idea of you bowing to Eujin. It was already bad enough that you were being forced to tolerate their relationship. He wasn't sadistic, as Yoongi repeats to himself every time you're in the picture, he has a heart.

Yoongi was curious as to why you didn't get upset at him for leaving you to walk home alone last night in the first place. Nor did you question Eujin and who she is in his life. If he was being honest, this confused him. After all your efforts to ask him out on a date, your constant stares, and Hoseok's teasing when he is near you, he thought that you actually like him.

Except you are here now, acting like he's nothing. Laughing with Hoseok and Namjoon, who you have both given nicknames.

It's not that he gives two fucks though.

He does. Yoongi gives a million fucks.

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

You continued with your life as normal, spending most of it with Hoseok and Namjoon. Yoongi was occasionally present but it's usually with Eujin by his side.

You weren't going to lie, the more you see them together, the more you wish you were the one in Eujin's place. Hoseok often try to encourage you to try dating other people but you just shook your head and let him. You weren't really looking to date, liking Yoongi was just a surprise to you as it is to them.

A few weeks passed and you find yourself slowly accepting your fate. You made no attempt to talk to Yoongi unless it was needed. Eujin was still a bit odd around you, but it was alright. You didn't have to be best friends, she knew you had feelings for Yoongi and since she's dating him, it's her right to put a space between you two. So you let them.

Yoongi, on the other hand, found himself always forcing a smile whenever Eujin was around. These days, he preferred to be with Hoseok and Namjoon, attending rehearsals as much as he can.

Though he hates to admit it, he prefers it when you're there, too.

He's often frustrated at you. He hates how you can grab his full attention in a snap. He hates how your nose crinkles at everything Hoseok says. He hates how you always lean your head on Namjoon's shoulder when you laugh. He hates how you're always in his mind, rent-free.

He fucking hates it.

He recalls the next Humanities class you had with them, you walked in carrying a to-go paper bag from a local coffee shop. Yoongi scoffed, he knew you'd crack. How many times does he have to tell you for you to realise that Eujin is in his life now?

When you saw the trio, you beamed and walked happily towards them. The moment you reach them, Yoongi opened his mouth to say something about you bringing him coffee but to his surprise, you went directly to Namjoon's desk.

"Joonie, I got you the biggest size since you helped me with Accounting last week." Namjoon like the barbarian he is, didn't even wait for you to hand him the drink. He immediately grabbed the paper bag and took out the drink himself.

Yoongi's jaw almost hit the floor. He assumed wrong. He felt crimson red creep up to his cheeks as he imagined what horror it could've been if he let his mouth run. He's an idiot. Hoseok who was by his side, noticed this and started to tease him.

"You thought the coffee was for you?" He teased which made Yoongi snarl.

"Why would I think that?" He replied, annoyed out of his mind.

Hoseok teased him further as you stick the straw to the drink that you bought for him. He began to drink it while maintaining eye contact with Yoongi and you smack his head from behind.

"Hobi," you warn. "Stop teasing Yoongi."

You grab the paper bag and gave it to Yoongi. He reluctantly looked at it and raised his eyebrows at you.

"I didn't get you coffee since you didn't like it last time," you trailed off. This made Yoongi squirm at his seat, remembering how he rejected the one you bought for him last time. He was a fucking asshole.

"I got you a panini, though." you held the paper bag in front of his face. He accepted it and placed it on his desk. You flashed a grin that could light up a whole village. Yoongi felt a zoo in his stomach. Something must be wrong with him.

"I hope I didn't make you feel uncomfortable, Yoongi. Don't worry, I fully respect your relationship with Eujin." you started. "What do you say? Friends?" you offer a hand. Yoongi raised his to shake yours.

Yoongi wasn't really sure how he felt with being your friend.

But with how you treat Hoseok and Namjoon, you must be a great one.

With that, classes started and you didn't even glance his way for the rest of it. He knows because he never took his eyes off of you.

You have concluded that Yoongi was not bad of a friend as you thought he would be.

After you two have cleared everything up, he began to open up more to you. Of course, you knew your boundaries.

Hoseok became your best friend, you confide in him for everything. Namjoon sometimes jokes and gets jealous at how you're "stealing" him from their little trio.

One day while you're eating lunch with everyone, he began to tease you as the topic of your bet with Yoongi was opened up.

"She slayed that bet, in my opinion." Namjoon stated.

"I did!" you whined beside Hoseok. "I knew that the answer was Plato! If I realised it sooner, I would've won!"

"But you didn't," Yoongi pointed at finger at you while he drank his soda. Eujin just chuckled beside him.

"She had guts though." She said, eyeing me. There was that look of distaste again, swimming in her irises. You said nothing, but clear your throat.

"She did! Plus, did you know," Hoseok said with a teasing tone. "That was Y/N's first kiss!"

Everyone in the table but Yoongi laughed.

"I don't really know what came into me." You snorted. "Damn, I must've seemed bat shit crazy to you, Yoongi. No wonder you didn't want to go on that date with me."

Namjoon tapped your shoulder as if to say "there there" and you held onto it. Yoongi's eyes stayed glued to it, a part of him wanted to take it off and practically shove Namjoon off of you.

He was just a possessive friend. He thought.

He was still somewhat shocked to know that it was your first kiss. You were so bold about it, it didn't seem like it. He feels Eujin snake her hand around his waist. This brought him back to the conversation. He even found himself questioning why he even cared.

You are clouding his mind these days.

He wants you to stop.

You need to stop, he thought, as he hugs Eujin from the side. ------------------------------------

  NEXT | PREVIOUS

[novelconcepts]

fic wanting (more than any ghost could)

“Do you still see him?”

Dani raises her eyes from the polished brass frame she’s been trying to pretend for half an hour not to gaze into. “What?”

Jamie isn’t looking at her. Jamie is, in fact, half in their closet, fumbling to hang up an assortment of shirts that have invaded the floor over the past week. Her voice is casual, easy, a little too cheerful for the kind of day they’ve been having. 

“Do you still see Eddie?”

Something in Dani’s chest clenches at the name. She doesn’t hate hearing it anymore--Jamie’s helped with that more than even she can know, coaxing stories out of Dani over the years to turn Eddie into a memory she can bear carrying around instead of a sharp knife between her ribs--but there’s something about the way Jamie says it now. Like she’s trying to get at something Dani can’t see yet. 

“No,” she says, a bit more clipped than usual. “I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Since that night,” Jamie presses. “Yeah? Only, I figure you would have said something otherwise. If you’d seen him after that, I figure you would have mentioned it. Or done your scary-bug routine.”

Dani clenches her fists in her lap. “What are you getting at, Jamie?”

“Nothing,” Jamie says, her voice entirely too innocent. Dani clears her throat, a Teacher gesture she hasn’t had to use on actual children in years. 

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because--” At this, Jamie pokes her head back out of the closet, grinning. “You are having what the songs call a rainy sort of Monday.”

Dani makes a face at her. Fact of the matter is, every day has felt like a rainy sort of Monday for the last week or two. She’s been steady too long, she fears, easy in her skin for years more than she thought she’d be allowed. Four, five, six Christmases have come and gone--four, five, six birthdays--four, five, six years of setting tables and arranging flowers and kissing Jamie goodnight and good morning and good I just felt like it along the way. 

And now, things are stirring. Changing. It’s a slow motion wake-up call, nothing so reliable as to make her stomach clench up every time she sees a reflection of blonde hair and mismatched eyes...but she’s getting there. Getting to the point of wanting to cover every mirror in the house again, getting back to that old habit of letting her eyes slide out of focus when she passes shop windows and too-clean city buses. The Lady isn’t always there, but Dani can’t guess when she’ll appear, and that’s somehow the worst bit. The not knowing. 

“Jamie,” she says. “Seriously, what are you getting at?”

“Okay.” She backs out of the closet, clicks off the light, shuts the door. “Okay, this is going to sound a bit out there.”

“Like nothing else in our life,” Dani drawls, watching Jamie move across the small room to settle beside her on the mattress. Her face is alight with something not-quite excitement, not-quite pleasure. It’s Jamie’s thinking face, Dani realizes. Jamie’s idea face. 

Usually, this is the face that results in furniture moved around the apartment for a new look, or a spur of the moment trip out of state to see the ocean, or an incredibly poor new dining experiment that will absolutely result in ordering takeout and eating on the living room floor at ten in the evening. 

“How did you get rid of him?” Jamie asks. Dani bites her lip. 

“I--”

“You never told me,” Jamie presses. “Not really. You just showed up a few days later with a cup of the worst coffee England’s ever seen and a promise that you were ready. And you were, and I’m never gonna stop being grateful for it, but you never told me what happened. How’d you go from flinching away to never seeing the specter of Ex-Boyfriends Past again?”

Dani shifts, gripping the material of her shirt in both hands. “It’s...hard to explain.”

“Can be patient,” Jamie says easily, like she’s ever anything less when it comes to things like this. She moves across the mattress in an easy prowl, settling with her knees touching Dani’s like they’re just two kids at a sleepover, ready for a spooky story. 

Two kids at a sleepover, Dani thinks with a wry amusement, except the way I feel the second her knee touches mine would never fly at a Clayton House Function. Mom would be scandalized. 

“It was a weird night,” she says slowly, remembering. Her eyes flutter closed, her memory reaching out across a gulf of half a decade. Who had she been that night? Scared. Always so scared back then, but also...determined. A little drunk. Maybe more than a little. “I was thinking...I was thinking about you. About you and me, and that...”

“Kiss,” Jamie supplies, when she falters. Dani knows they’re both remembering now, how Jamie had asked if she was ready and how she’d been nodding even before she could process the question. She was ready, for Jamie, and she wasn’t, for what it would mean. 

“It was a good kiss,” Dani says, smiling a little. Sloppy, and a little chaotic, their mouths slipping and missing and locating again as the wine steered the bus. She still remembers how sturdy Jamie’s jacket felt in her fists, how steady Jamie’s hands somehow were in her hair, on her back, pulling her so close she’d thought for a minute they’d be allowed something precious and sacred and theirs on a night she had spent lost in darkness. 

“It was,” Jamie agrees. Her hands move across the divide between them, closing over Dani’s wrists, turning her palms upright. “And?”

“And I wanted it. That. You. And I knew if I didn’t deal with the rest of it, finally, I wasn’t going to get another chance. You looked so...” Broken. “Certain, when you walked away that night, that I wasn’t ready. And you were never going to push.”

Jamie makes a little humming sound, fingertip tracing Dani’s lifeline. She shivers, flexes her fingers, smiles. 

“Hard to think when you’re doing that.”

“Do it anyway,” Jamie coaxes. Dani closes her eyes again, tighter. 

“I was drunk, and I was--”

“Riled up?” Jamie suggests, laughter in her voice. Dani flips over one hand, smacks her knee lightly. 

“If you want the story, stop talking. Yes. Riled up. And angry, if I’m honest. Angry at him, and angry at myself for not being able to let him go.”

She’d been so tired, she remembers. So tired, the way a person gets when sleep is just a parade of memories best left in the dark. The way a person gets when every smile is a mask, every laugh is a reprieve, every touch of another person’s hand is electric and painful and too much to stand. 

“So, I took his glasses. And I went out to the fire. Hannah had left it...I guess, Hannah was dealing with her own stuff that night. It hadn’t occurred to me to worry. It was just me, and him, and I threw them in. I didn’t want them, you know. Tried to tell his mom that, but Judy was...” Kind. Tried. Never quite ready to see what was right in front of her. “Anyway. I tossed them in, and I watched them melt, and it was the last time I ever saw him.”

“Because?”

“Because I was ready,” Dani says, a bit helplessly, feeling unmoored by the combined distance of memory and the solidness of Jamie holding her hand. She’s on the bow of a ship, she feels, shifting her weight in a search for balance, and if either the past or the present are to push just a little harder, she thinks she’ll go over the side. 

“Because you were ready,” Jamie agrees. “Not to carry that weight anymore. Because you wanted something more. Something that would make you happy. Dani...are you happy? Right now?”

It’s a bucket of ice water, and Dani sits up straighter. Her chest aches. “Yes,” she breathes. “With you, yes.”

Jamie smiles. “I’m not asking for that. Not really. I mean...are you happy. These last few weeks, you’ve been...I don’t want to say slipping away. I don’t want to say it, ‘cuz I know where you’ll go with a thought like that, but...”

But I have been, Dani thinks. Because I can see her, Jamie. Not all the time. But enough to not know whose face will be in the mirror each morning. 

“So, I was thinking. The last time you carried something like this, it was him. And you got rid of him. Never saw him again. Banished him, some might say.” Jamie shifts a little, like she’s actually getting nervous. Dani hasn’t seen her nervous in years, not since setting a single flower on a countertop and saying, I’ve got a problem. Or rather, we’ve got a problem, Poppins.

“Jamie--”

“So, I was thinking,” Jamie repeats. “If you could get rid of something that big, something that weighed that heavy, and you could do it because...because of...”

“You,” Dani supplies, knowing this is a step too far even for Jamie’s grinning sense of accomplishment. Knowing Jamie needs her to fill in the spaces sometimes, to remind her the way she’s always reminding Dani, that she is the most important person in Dani’s world. “Because I wanted you.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says, relief flooding her face. “Yeah, me. So...why don’t we try it again?”

“Try...”

“Banishing,” Jamie says. She’s starting to lean forward, a little-kid excitement roiling up through her small frame. “Banishing the beast. You and me. You don’t have to do it on your own, Dani. You know that? We can work together.”

Dani’s mouth opens and closes. “I don’t...I let her in, Jamie. Me. I invited her.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says gently, “but the way I see it, you invited him, too. In a way. You felt responsible for his death, and you carried that all the way across the pond, and you let it sit like a stone on your chest for months. Until you decided not to anymore.”

“So...you’re saying you think I can just decide to let her go, too?” She’s not sure she likes this conversation, where it’s headed, what it implies. Jamie shakes her head aggressively, curls flopping around her face. 

“No, no, Poppins. Listen. What I’m saying is, I think we can make her let go. Together.” Jamie curls her fingers tighter around Dani’s, thumb playing reflexively across her knuckles. “Like last time. You know.”

They sit for a long stretch in silence, Dani mulling it over, Jamie just watching her with a sweet nervousness in her eyes. She looks like maybe this was the kind of idea that appears in the middle of the night, out of a dream, and when you wake up and try to pass it along to someone else, all the logic falls right out of the bottom.

“Let me...get this right,” Dani says slowly. “You think...we can banish the Lady of the Lake...from being attached to my soul...like last time. When we...”

“Wanted each other more than any ghost could want you,” Jamie affirms. She looks a little embarrassed, but with that solid marching-on expression Dani knows they both get when they’re determined to set something right. Her lips curl upward at the corners almost against her will, looking at Jamie with that expression on her face. 

“That is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard, Jamie.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says, rising up on her knees, hand sliding up Dani’s wrist, up her arm, cupping under her elbow as she guides Dani to hold her around the waist. “Yeah, it is. But it was silly last time, too. To think you could want me enough to let go of him.”

“I did,” Dani says, a lump rising in her throat. “God, I really did.”

“And now?” Jamie’s hand, trembling around her elbow. Jamie’s face, inches from her own. Something seems to release in Dani’s chest, something warm and spring-loaded and impossible to put back once it’s loose. 

“I...can’t think of anything I want more,” she says hoarsely, honestly, and then Jamie is kissing her and she can’t think of anything else. 

***

It is, far and away, the most insane idea they’ve ever had. More insane than America, more insane than a flower shop, more insane than putting one foot in front of the other despite knowing a clock was running down in the background. 

And it’s the best Dani has felt in weeks. 

There is a difference, she thinks, between living your life with a timer going and living your life actively trying to stop that timer. She’s never considered the latter before. If she’s honest with herself, she’s been living on Jamie’s philosophy of Borrowed Time ever since leaving Bly--that life is organic, that everything which begins is doomed to end, and that the beauty is in the ending. It’s a good philosophy for parties, a good thing to say to people to make yourself look enlightened and stable. 

It is ever so less enlightened, to admit to anyone over a glass of wine that she is now desperately trying to remove a ghost via sheer force of desire for her forever person. 

And, yet...

“This,” she mumbles against Jamie’s neck, “is still the most insane thing we’ve ever done.”

“The part with the ghost,” Jamie pants, “or the part where we’re performing an exorcism via sex?”

Dani raises her head, eyebrows arched. “All of it? Jamie. All of it.”

They’ve made it through the majority of a day with hands to themselves, if only because a shop you own is less likely to stay afloat if you spend the entire day groping your girlfriend behind the counter...but it’s not like Jamie has been making it easy on her. She’s got this way of being exactly where Dani wants her, exactly when Dani wants her, and still holding herself just out of reach. All day, it’s been Jamie shifting past with hands on Dani’s hips, Jamie’s fingers brushing hers as they work together on an arrangement, Jamie standing just behind her, pretending she can’t feel the way the breath pulls up through Dani’s body until her heart is pounding. 

“You’re rude,” she says now, pushing Jamie harder against the back room door. “You know that about yourself, right?”

“I’ve just been doing my job,” Jamie says, mock-innocently. “Just going about my business as usual, Poppins. Really thought we’d be able to wait until we got home--you know, like proper adults.”

Dani makes an undignified noise through her nose, grasping Jamie’s collar in one hand and holding her by the hip with the other. Jamie's grin is just a touch more smug than Dani feels capable of looking at without spinning apart. 

“You made this bed,” she says, and ducks her head to bite at Jamie’s earlobe. It’s a bed Jamie made three nights ago, kissing her senseless and promising the unkeepable promise: that they’ll be able to do this together, that they’ll be able to unwind the hold the Lady has on her through force of sheer combined will. It’s insane to think about. It’s insane to even consider. You can’t exorcise a demon through sex. 

“And yet,” Jamie says in a raw voice, head thrown back, hands clutching at Dani’s shirt, “I can’t find it in myself to show proper remorse, with you doing that.”

Dani laughs against her skin, and it is unreal how solid she feels with Jamie in her arms. There was peace in their life before, peace and passion and the kind of love that seems only to expand with the stars, but this is different. This is a feeling of being filled-in, of color spreading up through the outline of her life in layers. This is...

Deciding to fight, Dani realizes, as Jamie’s mouth takes hers, Jamie’s hands sliding up under her shirt to explore. Deciding to fight and maybe even beat her at her own game. 

“If this works,” she says, the words half a moan when Jamie’s hand works open the clasp of her bra. “If this works, you’re going to be insufferable, aren’t you?”

“More attractive, you mean,” Jamie sighs. Her shirt is half-unbuttoned. Jamie’s hips are searching for contact, rocking lightly, trying to coax Dani into touching her. “Okay, hey, you started this--” “You started it,” Dani replies, “when you rubbed up against me for like two straight minutes out front.”

“I was adjusting the racks.”

“Reaching around me to do it?”

“You happened to be in the way.”

They’re both laughing, kissing around the smiles, Dani holding Jamie steady to keep her from taking control. It makes Jamie crazy when she does this, she knows; they’re both of a similar mind on taking the lead, two people who spent their lives trying desperately to set their own pace in the world, and who have since learned to fall into step with one another. Jamie laughingly refers to it as “mutual big spoon energy”, how neither of them is particularly good at letting the other take the lead or fall behind. They spend much of their life walking side by side, in perfect tandem. It’s unlike anything Dani has ever been a part of before.

Which makes moments like this--grabbing Jamie’s wrists, pinning them above her head with one hand, forcing her to lean back and let Dani steer--all the more delicious. It is, in a way, the only time Dani feels entirely in control of her life. Moments like this, with Jamie making a strange little growling sound at the back of her throat, with Jamie trying to buck against the hand that is leisurely working its way down her body, feel so steady. 

“If you’re going to be a tease,” Jamie begins, and Dani kisses her hard enough to elicit a whimper. Jamie, who pretends she doesn’t love it, seems to go boneless between her body and the door. Her fingers flex above her head, her voice panting out of her when Dani slips a thigh between her legs and presses up. 

She lets Jamie shift her weight, lets her join in at a slow pace, until they’re moving more or less in perfect sync. Jamie’s head rocks back against the door, and Dani releases her hands to cup behind her skull, fingers digging into thick hair and keeping her from doing actual damage. 

She’s not thinking about ghosts or promises or anything except the rhythm they’ve set between them, riding out the pressure of Jamie against her until she’s shuddering and gasping into Jamie’s throat. She’s not thinking about ticking clocks or how much time anyone can possibly expect, not with the unbound way Jamie grips her hips and pulls, pulls, pulls her harder against Jamie’s bucking. 

“Remind me,” Jamie pants, eyes rolling back in her head as she struggles to find breath, “never to hire additional help. Having this room to ourselves is the best investment we’ve ever made.”

***

It doesn’t banish the Lady in the first week, and Dani is trying desperately not to be disappointed. It wasn’t likely--it isn’t likely to work at all, she reminds herself--to get the job done right away. This isn’t the same kind of possession, not the same kind of ghost, and if there's one thing her too-real dreams have taught her about Viola Lloyd, it’s that the woman was designed stubborn. 

Still, the first time she turns around and catches a smooth-faced glimpse in the bathroom mirror, all the strength goes out of her legs. 

“What?” Jamie asks, summoned by the high-pitched intake of air Dani hadn’t realized she’d made. She’s half-dressed for a day of not much of anything, cropped shirt and underwear and a bewildered expression. Dani leans her weight against the counter, covering her eyes with one hand. 

“Nothing. Just--”

“Her?” Jamie slides into the space beside her, peering into the glass. She tries so hard, Dani thinks with a stab of frustrated gratitude. She tries so hard to see what Dani can’t look away from, and all she ever comes up with is that hard, searching look going nowhere. 

“It’s silly. It was silly to think--”

“Hey,” Jamie says, catching her with a soft grip around the shoulders. “I know you’re not giving up so easy. We’ve only been trying for a couple of days.”

Dani can’t help the shaky laugh that puffs out against Jamie’s cheek when she pulls her in for a hug. “You sound like a husband reassuring his wife that there’s still time to make a baby.”

Jamie makes a perturbed noise. “I cannot think of a less appropriate analogy for our situation than a little monster coming into our world--”

Dani smacks her chest, still laughing. “So you’re saying no kids, then?”

A very specific sort of paleness seeps into Jamie’s already-fair skin. “Wait, d’you want--’cuz we’ve never talked about--how we’d even--”

“I’m kidding,” Dani says quickly, unable to commit to the cruelty of letting this particular joke linger. Of all she’s thought about in her time with Jamie, of all the mad, wonderful ideas that have sparked off at odd hours of the night, children are not one of them. Kids are complicated at the best of times, and she loves them--loves being able to listen, and help, and teach them to be the kinds of adults the world needs--but they can’t even get married. Can’t even walk in public hand in hand, like she so desperately needs sometimes. Kids are so far off her radar, it’s surprising they’ve come up at all.

Jamie, for her part, looks relieved. “I love you,” she says. “So much. But thank Christ for that, because can you imagine me raising a kid?”

“Yes,” Dani says honestly, remembering in perfect tandem Jamie’s meltdown over tattered flowers and Jamie’s strong arms lifting a sleeping Flora into the air. She’d be good at it, in her own way, if it was something they both wanted--but it feels better this way. Just the two of them. Just the two of them, and...

“So she’s still in there,” Jamie says, switching subjects with obvious relief. Her finger presses very gently to the center of Dani’s forehead. “Took you by a bit of a shock, I take it.”

Dani sighs. “I just...hoped it’d be...”

“Quick and dirty?” Jamie wiggles her eyebrows. Her hands are sliding around to rest on the back of Dani’s skirt, giving a gentle squeeze that makes Dani jump. 

“It was with him,” she says, trying to keep her composure. Jamie’s eyebrows rise even higher, and she flushes. “No, I--the banishment, I mean. Just one night. That’s all it took.”

“Maybe I’m losing my touch,” Jamie muses. She leans in, brushes her mouth against the corner of Dani’s frown. “Maybe I’m just not working hard enough...”

“I don’t--think that’s--” It’s hard to think at all, hard to keep the words in her head, with Jamie kissing a slow path: cheekbone, underside of her jaw, hollow of her throat. Her back to the mirror, Dani closes her eyes. “Jamie, aren’t we going to be late for something?”

“Movies come,” Jamie says in a low, careless voice, “and movies go. We can catch a late showing...”

She’s sinking lower, one hand resting on the small of Dani’s back, nipping gently through the fabric of a thin t-shirt. Dani sighs, letting her hands drop to rest on the counter for balance as Jamie drops to her knees, kissing along her belly, her hips, teasing the skirt up and ducking her head beneath its hem. 

That they don’t even have to talk about it, Dani thinks distantly, white-knuckling the counter as Jamie moves in along her thighs with soft bites soothed instantly by hot licks. That they don’t even have to have these conversations most days, is a wonder. She can feel it in the air when Jamie’s in the mood, can read it on every line of her body when she isn’t. The are you sure’s are still there, resting comfortably between them, but it’s like a dance they’ve choreographed together by now. 

She inhales as Jamie presses a kiss between her legs, as a soft tongue moves against the damp fabric of underwear she hasn’t gotten around to removing just yet, and there’s nothing in the world she wouldn’t give up to keep hold of this. Nothing in the world she wouldn’t sell, burn, barter away if it meant more days with Jamie, more of Jamie on her knees on the bathroom rug with hands cradling the backs of her thighs and soft groans vibrating up through her skin. 

She lets her head fall back, lets her hips go as Jamie eases away the last boundary between them, and just concentrates on riding higher, higher, far away from a world where memory can burn and surprises hide behind innocent reflections. When Jamie slides tongue into heat, she jerks once, twice, releases everything. 

“Maybe,” Jamie says, leaning back on her haunches and wiping the back of her hand across her lips. “Maybe that did the trick.”

Dani laughs, but can’t quite convince herself to look over her shoulder. It’s too good, too nice, too perfect letting the weakness of her knees carry her to the floor where she straddles Jamie’s hips and kisses her. No point ruining it by looking back. 

***

Days pass without a sign of the Lady, and Dani finds herself initiating contact more and more, hands searching Jamie out at all hours. Sometimes, she’ll just come up behind Jamie in the kitchen, arms around Jamie’s middle, and stay there while Jamie chops and preps and boils water. Sometimes, she’ll find Jamie reading on the couch and slide between her and the back cushions, head on Jamie’s chest, letting the slow rum-pum of her heart lull her into a daze. It’s everything with Jamie that makes the world a stable place, she thinks, every inch of Jamie’s calm nature, Jamie’s bad jokes, Jamie’s kiss on her temple as she passes on the way to the bathroom. 

When Jamie has to leave for a weekend conference, a one-person-ticket event they’d decided months ago would be best suited if the person who actually understood the ins and outs of growing plants attended, Dani feels like she’s walking through a dream. She sits on the edge of their bed, watching Jamie hold a series of nearly-identical jeans and flannel shirts up to her body and discard them onto a nearby chair. 

“You’re sure?” Jamie asks for the fiftieth time that day. “You’re sure you’re all right with me going?”

“Yes,” Dani’s mouth answers automatically. No, she thinks. Every time, the same response. 

“Only, I don’t have to,” Jamie presses, looking over her shoulder. “I could call out sick--”

“It’s the best chance we have of the sale prices,” Dani says, like reading a script she’s been going over for a year. “And you said it yourself, networking is everything for a small business in its infancy...”

“That was early days,” Jamie protests, abandoning a shirt and crossing to the bed. “We’ve done all right for ourselves since, and I could...”

Dani wraps arms around her waist, leaning her face against Jamie’s shirtfront and sighing. “I’d be lying if I said I was excited about a weekend alone,” she says. Jamie’s hands rest on the back of her head, sifting through her ponytail in soft, easy strokes. It’s almost enough to lull her to sleep sitting up. 

“I’m just...what if...” Jamie stops herself short. Dani looks up, mouth twisting in a parody of a smile. 

“What if the Lady comes while you’re away?”

“I don’t like it,” Jamie says. “I don’t like risking it. You’ve seemed better lately, less...”

“Flinchy?” Dani suggests, suddenly bone-tired. “She hasn’t been sneaking up as much.”

“Right. But isn’t that because--”

“We don’t know what causes it,” Dani says, trying to convince them both with a single shot. “We don’t know if she’s been absent because of dumb luck, or because she doesn't feel like coming out to play, or because--”

“Or because it’s my bloody presence helping scare her off,” Jamie says, so fiercely, Dani reaches up to press a hand to her heart. Her face is set in perfect determination, and Dani thinks with certainty that this has ceased to be a joke in Jamie’s mind, a game to help keep Dani’s off of the fear. She believes, on some level, that she’s been doing actual good for Dani’s fight with the beast in the jungle, that it’s her hands and her mouth and her steadiness that’s kept Dani safe--safer--these past weeks. 

Dani can’t say for sure that she’s wrong, if she’s honest with herself. The Lady is still there; she can feel her, lurking, watching. But it’s getting...different. Maybe because Dani just feels better, and when her head is clear, when the sun is out, when Jamie’s hands are on her skin, it’s easy to convince herself that only children get scared of the dark. 

Maybe. Or maybe there really is something to be said about this battle of wills. Of the Lady’s need coming up against Dani’s own hungers. 

“I don’t want you to go,” she says, and is pleasantly surprised at how firm her voice is. She pulls at Jamie, guiding her down until they’re laying face to face atop the blankets. She wraps a leg around Jamie, pulls her closer, kisses her gently until the line between Jamie’s brows smooths out. 

“So, it’s settled, then,” Jamie breathes against her lips. “I’ll just ring ‘em up and--”

“I don’t want you to go,” Dani repeats, hand smoothly working the button of Jamie’s jeans open. She kisses her again, open and warm, letting her tongue curl around Jamie’s sigh, and adds, “But I’ll be all right. For two days. Two days missing you. Imagine what that’ll do...”

She likes the way Jamie folds into her, the way Jamie’s skin flushes beneath the tips of her fingers as she slides a hand down and curls gently against damp heat. She moves, fingers rubbing circles that make Jamie squirm and writhe and reach down to clasp her around the wrist. 

“You’ll go,” she says softly against Jamie’s lips, the words half-muffled and entirely unimportant, as Jamie holds her wrist and guides her deeper. “And I’ll be here. Thinking about you getting back. It’s you that keeps me grounded, Jamie, but it’s this, too. The wanting.”

Jamie makes a noise, small, like she’s trying to contain herself. Dani doesn’t think she’s even arguing anymore, not really. 

“It was like that,” she says, letting the words turn into a groan when Jamie clenches around her. “That night. It was the wanting of you. Of being with you, of being happy with you. It was wanting to let it all go so I could taste this. What being happy really was.”

There’s only so much room, Jamie’s jeans too tight, but she can move enough to twist her fingers, to press her thumb down as she thrusts in, out, in. Jamie kisses her with no grace whatsoever, presses until her forehead is flush with Dani’s, sweat beading on her skin as she tips over on Dani’s command. 

“You’re sure,” Jamie says, when she’s recovered herself enough to speak. “You’re really sure?”

No, she isn’t sure. Dani hasn’t been sure of anything regarding her unwanted anchor, not since taking the Lady in that night. But she feels...something in her chest, something solid and more certain than she’s used to, nodding in agreement all the same. 

She kisses Jamie, lets Jamie take her hand and kiss each finger clean, lets Jamie roll her over and clear away the clothes and the cobwebs of worry in practiced motions. With Jamie pulling the sheets over them, she feels safer than anywhere else in the world. 

“Just come home to me,” she breathes when Jamie touches her. “Just promise you’ll always come home.”

***

Jamie, of course, keeps that promise. Jamie, for someone who doesn’t like to make many, keeps promises better than anyone Dani’s ever met. She calls when she makes it to the hotel Friday afternoon, calls again each night after the conference lets out, sits on the phone until Dani falls asleep. 

The rest of the weekend feels foggy to Dani, like someone has wrapped their apartment in a thin gray smoke. She tries to keep busy, but her attention is variable at best; a book, a puzzle, a movie can only hold her for patches of minutes at a time until she bounces to her feet and goes off in search of the next distraction.

She spends all of Saturday on old habits, keeping her head resolutely turned away from the mirror whenever she needs the bathroom, refusing to give the Lady the satisfaction of a glance. 

Sunday, the restless energy pools until she can’t stand it anymore. She takes a long walk in the summer heat, humidity pulling at her clothes, the sun baking itself into her hair. She wishes Jamie were there, pointing out dogs and laughing at kids. 

Sweat soaks into her clothes, and she heads straight for a shower upon returning home. Her eyes fixate on the towel, the clean pajamas piled on the counter, the row of neat bottles on the shower rack. She lets the water heat until the room is bathed in steam, and then, only then, does she turn to the mirror. 

Blonde hair, serious frown, one blue eye, one brown, staring back at her. What Jamie sees whenever she joins Dani at the mirror, and nothing else. Nothing more. She leans her weight on her elbows, staring her own reflection down. She keeps expecting something to jump out at her--a perfectly smooth face, dark hair stringy around a white nightgown--but, no. 

Here’s Dani Clayton, she thinks with a rebellious little laugh. She’s a bit of a weirdo, but she’s a lot stronger than she thinks. 

Jamie knew her so well, even then. Jamie, seeing straight to the heart of the matter without even being asked to look. Jamie has always been so good that way, so capable of reading Dani at the most unexpected moments. Eddie wasn’t like that. Eddie’s mother, her own mother, her old friends--they were all missing whatever critical piece Jamie’s puzzle contains. The one that lets a person look and actually see: not what is wanted, but what is there. 

She steps under the spray, shivering a little at the heat on clammy skin, and thinks, Maybe someday. Maybe someday I’ll take cold showers in July, because it won’t be a matter of fogging up the mirror before I’m safe being naked and alone. Maybe someday. 

It’s more than she’s allowed herself to hope in years. Maybe she’s crazy even to think it; maybe it’s just testing the gods, the universe, the beast in the jungle. Here kitty kitty, come out and see if you can take a bite. 

She presses her forehead to the tile wall, swaying a little, wishing Jamie were here. Wishing Jamie were sliding back the curtain, stepping into the tub, too giddy at the idea of seeing her even to wait the half hour for her to leave the bathroom. 

She wishes, and still, when hands slide around her from behind, it’s all she can do not to break Jamie’s nose with a terrified headbutt.

“Fuck,” Jamie gasps, ducking aside in the nick of time. “All right, Poppins, fair enough. Guessing you didn’t hear my merry hellos.”

Her heart is a ricochet, bounding around her ribs in time with her gasping breaths. The hands are Jamie’s--Jamie in a black t-shirt with the sleeves rolled, Jamie in shorts and a somewhat embarrassed expression--but for a moment, Dani was back at the sink in the Bly kitchen, feeling the starbursts of lust and newly-born excitement come up against the guilt of phantom gloves. 

“Next time,” Jamie says, “I will yodel.”

“Next time,” Dani agrees breathlessly, leaning back into her arms and trying not to cry and laugh at the same time as she returns to earth. “You are--”

“Home early,” Jamie supplies, kissing the curve of her shoulder. “Couldn’t stand another minute of those buttoned-up stiffs. You know how long they talked about tax benefits and profit margins? Hardly any of ‘em had touched real soil in years, I’d wager.”

“You are fully dressed,” Dani points out. Jamie pauses, looking down at herself in a dripping shirt and shorts that are going to be nearly impossible to wriggle free of. The car keys are still in her hip pocket. She reaches down, flings them out toward the counter. 

“Right. Didn’t think this through.”

Dani laughs, a mouthful of water nearly choking her, and leans her head back to nuzzle into Jamie’s neck. “You’re wonderful. And a mess.”

“Well,” Jamie says slyly. “If I’m already wet, I mean...what’s to be done, but lean into it?”

Dani can’t fault her this logic, and suddenly the laughter is turning into a very different sort of sound as one hand splays across her belly, the other easing sopping hair aside to kiss her neck with deliberate care. She lets herself lean back, the heat and the pressure of the water creating a perfect little pocket far away from the world. When Jamie cups between her legs, hips rocking gently against her from behind as she builds slow friction with nimble fingers, she wonders if maybe she’s dreaming. If maybe the strength of will has peaked and allowed the dream to spill over into reality. 

Or else maybe she’s summoned Jamie, summoned her with that restless desperate need she never quite understood before Jamie walked into her life. Either way, she presses a hand flat against the tile, breathing in steam, the world around her reducing to Jamie’s hands, Jamie sucking a soft red mark into the curve of her neck, Jamie breathing heavily against her ear, I love you, I’m home, Dani, I’m here. 

After, she lathers shampoo into her hands and washes Dani’s hair, talking merrily of foolish conventions and more foolish old men, and Dani thinks she’s never been so relaxed in her entire life. Even with the water shut off and a towel around her body, watching Jamie struggle to peel out of dripping layers, she feels good. Her eyes dart to the mirror only once, in time to watch Jamie’s swearing reflection hop in a circle as she fails to remove a sock and nearly topples over. 

There is only her. Only her, and Jamie, and this life she would kill to keep. 

***

The weeks become months, the months become years, and the Lady--the Lady is a memory more than anything else. Dani thinks she’s still in there, somewhere. Thinks this kind of ghost requires a kind of exorcism she doesn’t know how to perform. That maybe the invitation was different enough to ensure no take-backs, no pushing her back out again into that cold night and locking the door behind her. 

But she also thinks maybe Jamie was right, sitting on their bed that night with nervous hope in her eyes. Maybe an invitation, once made, can at least be amended. Maybe an unerring will, when contested with equal strength, can be placated. 

The sex ebbs and flows, as it will, but Dani finds her need for Jamie never diminishes. She never feels as though her day is complete unless she’s held Jamie’s hand, counting the callouses beneath her fingers, feeling the warmth beneath the swipe of her thumb. Some days, they spend hours on the couch, Dani wrapped around Jamie like a human blanket, talking and dozing and laughing, and Dani thinks, I almost missed this. I almost got too lost to know it. 

There are still bad days. Days where she looks furtively into standing water and thinks maybe she sees a shadow, an inkling, a seed. On those days, she walks straight to Jamie, and Jamie--who has always seen only her, who knows her so well she could tell their whole story without Dani’s help--holds her close. Rains kisses up and down her skin, grasps her face between hands that have her memorized, looks her in the eyes. 

“Still here, Poppins. Still here.”

“Yes,” she gasps on those days, and feels herself solidify a little more. She’s older now than she ever thought she’d get to see. Older, and maybe not as much of it shows on her face--Jamie’s getting these surprisingly-sexy lines around her mouth and eyes, a little more each year, and Dani can’t kiss them enough, can’t wind her hands hard enough into silver-threaded hair--but she feels it. Feels the years curling up upon themselves like the rings of a tree. Feels a little steadier, with every one she puts behind her, like an admonishment of cruel gods. Still here, she thinks with a savage kind of pride. Still here, and still here, and still her. Dani Clayton. Bit of a weirdo, stronger than she thinks, and so fucking in love with Jamie I could burst. 

“Do you think we’ll ever manage it?” Jamie asks one day, the pair of them lazy in bed though the Saturday sun has been brightening the room for hours. Dani’s head rests on her chest, Dani’s fingers playing with the waistband of her underwear. It’s a good day, a good, simple morning. Nothing pressing on the horizon. They could stay here all day. 

“Manage what?” she asks, when Jamie gives her a gentle shake as if to say wake up and pay attention to me. Her hand sneaks down a little lower, toying with soft skin. Jamie inhales slowly. 

“You are a menace. Do you think we’re ever going to be rid of her? Your beast in the jungle?”

Dani traces tiny shapes into Jamie’s skin, watching her hand disappear under cotton, watching the way Jamie’s hips jump a little when she scratches gentle circles and triangles and flower petals with blunt nails. “I don’t know.”

“You still see her?” Jamie’s lip is between her teeth, her eyes fluttering as Dani presses herself against her thigh and grinds gently. Not in a rush. Just meandering along, enjoying herself, enjoying the way Jamie still feels so alive under her hands. 

“Sometimes,” she admits. It doesn’t scare her the way it used to. It’s different now. It’s there, and it’s frustrating, but it doesn’t feel like something rising from the depths to pull her under. It feels, almost, as though after so many years of fighting Dani’s hunger for life, for Jamie, the beast, too, is tired. 

“But you’re--” Jamie swallows, a low moan passing her lips as Dani finally touches her properly. Slow, languid, she slides her fingers in and cherishes the way Jamie moves to accommodate and accept. 

“I’m what?”

“Happy,” Jamie groans. “With me. With us. You’re happy?”

Dani rolls over, watching Jamie’s brow crease with the loss of her hand. She smiles, sliding down the bed, kissing breast, belly, mapping all the little lines and scars and markers of a life lived well with her tongue. 

“Happy,” she agrees. “Very.”

There are rings on their fingers now, as she reaches up Jamie’s body without looking to tangle their hands. Rings that meant something when she bought them, meant more when they signed a piece of paper, will finally mean the same to everyone else when they stand up in front of friends and family in a few months and repeat those vows. There are rings, and there is laughter, and there are conversations in the dark and tears on a Wednesday and bad coffee and ghosts. Always ghosts. 

Maybe some things can’t be banished completely. Maybe some ghosts are more solid than others. 

As Jamie moves beneath her, coming apart under her lips, she thinks that part doesn’t matter so much. The Lady won’t be taking her. Not this time. 

She wants Jamie--wants this life for as long as she can possibly have it--more than any ghost could want her. If she knows nothing else, with Jamie on her tongue, Jamie’s kiss on her skin, Jamie’s ring on her finger, she can say that much for a certainty. 

[peppersonironi]

Duke Thomas VS The "Good Child" Stereotype Chapter 2

Next chapter for my Duke Thomas Big Bang fic is up!

(Once again, a hearty thank you to my betas @queerbutstillhereand @theycallme-ook)

Read On Ao3

It was four am on a Friday morning, a week after Duke had decided he’d had enough of Bruce’s - and the other’s - incorrect opinion of him.

It was so early in the morning, that the main group of bats had been trickling back from patrol over the past hour or so. Stephanie and Cassandra had arrived first, followed by Jason ten minutes later. Then Tim had gotten back from his route with Harper, and Kate and Bette had stopped by for a bit (but eventually left for their own homes). Dick came home next, and Bruce had returned last with Damian.

Everyone was in varying states of winding down, with Stephanie at one end of the spectrum wearing silk pajamas, a fluffy robe which Duke was sixty-seven percent sure was Bruce’s, and bright pink bunny slippers Duke was positive were Dick’s. On the other side, Bruce hadn’t even pulled off his cowl, and was sitting down in front of the Batcomputer to work on a case.

Though Duke thought that Tim deserved his own category, dressed in a strange combination of disco track suit and kevlar body armor, and was hunched over three cans of energy drinks and a quart jug filled with espresso shots.

Duke leaned down to double check that his boots were laced up - one time he hadn’t, and had then proceeded to trip and fall into a garbage pile. Not. Fun.

He looked up, however, when Bruce clicked open a case file. So did everyone else, as if drawn by some invisible force.

They all clearly saw as Bruce hovered his mouse over a link which had been typed in sometime while the big bat had been away. The only hint to what it could be was the note reading “New Evidence.”

Bruce grunted in what for anyone else would be an exclamation of curiosity and went to click the link.

Which clearly went to YouTube.

In unison, all the bats’ eyes widened in realization. You see, in a family such as this one, pranks abounded. So they all had painstakingly memorized that series of letters and numbers.

They all knew what it meant.

Suddenly, the Batcave lit up with the dancing form of one Rick Astley. It was everywhere. On the several large monitors that made up the Batcomputer. The various screens spread across the caves. Everyone’s phones somehow were affected. As well as the X-Ray machine in the med bay, which was showing a skeleton dancing.

Bruce jumped up, rage full on his face. “Who did this? Make it stop!”

No one answered, all too frozen in shock at what had happened.

“Who…” Dick whispered from beside Jason, “Who would be that brave?”

“Yeah,” Jason whispered back, “Rick Rolls were banned at the 2015 family reunion after you played it two hundred and thirteen times in a row.”

Dick grinned, “those were good times.”

The two eldest boys began to bicker, Jason complaining that Rick Rolls were a part of the war crimes banned by the Geneva Convention, and Dick saying he “liked it: so there.”

Meanwhile, the song was reaching the chorus, and the other bats finally began to react. The three girls were dancing on top of exercise equipment, popping bottles of sparkling cider - or was that champagne? For their own sakes, they should hope it’s the former - they had pulled out of what seemed to be thin air.

Damian was in the corner, trying to get Titus to dance to the music - though he glanced around every so often to make sure that no one was noticing his moment of fun.

Tim was still nursing his collection of drinks like an alcoholic nursed a bottle.

Bruce was practically foaming at the mouth by that point.

“This is NOT FUNNY!”

That, of course, made everyone just start laughing harder. In the corner, Steph started to do the macarena completely off-tempo from the music. Cass seemed to be chugging the cider that Harper was pouring into her mouth.

Just then the holographic training simulations lit up, and Rick Astly began making his way across the cave, dancing all the way.

Bruce glared up at the semi transparent form of the singer, as if trying to force him into submission.

“T-pose to assert dominance!” Jason called, cupping his hands around his mouth.

“Yeah, that’ll totally work, B! Trust us!” Dick called as well.

Bruce took a moment to turn his head and glare at the two former Robins, who only smiled like the angels they clearly thought they were.

The image was not aided by the two giant stuffed swordfish just pulled from Jason’s utility belt.

“En guarde!” He cried, and tossed the one in his left hand at Damian, who had been trying to reassure his dog that the giant man wasn’t real.

The thirteen year old screeched, but caught the four foot long fish by its fin.

“This is animal abuse!” He cried.

“It’s not abuse if it’s dead!” Jason countered, and attacked the youngest bat with a passion.

As the duel progressed, Cassandra tried to raise her hand and gurgle out a bet on who would win, but began to choke on the liquid.

Harper cursed as she tossed away the sixth bottle of cider and tried to give Cass the heimlich maneuver.

Dick, meanwhile, pressed a button on one of the many consoles spread around the cave, and several stripper poles came out of hidden storage via hydraulics. He grabbed the nearest one, and began to dance.

“I THOUGHT I DISABLED THOSE?!” Bruce bellowed, as Dick began a twirl.

Stephanie, however, didn’t seem nearly as dismayed at the sight of the poles. She herself smacked a button next to her, and several disco balls dropped down from among the stalactites to join the fun. She then began to morph her macarena into an epic macarena. A few flips here, and a few pantomiming choking your enemies there. And a whole lot of randomly throwing glitter bombs at, well, everywhere.

But especially at the nearest authority figure.

Damian tripped over a bucket during his fight - apparently left over from Alfred’s earlier cleaning spree - and the soapy liquid spilled across the floor.

But, of course, them being the bats, Alfred didn’t use normal soap.

Huge bubbles began to farm from the liquid, the longest almost three feet in diameter, and rise up to the cave’s ceiling. The suds spread around, eagerly began to mingle with Stephanie’s glitter.

A solitary bubble, relatively small, floated over to Bruce’s head, and popped on one of his cowl’s ears. He was not amused.

*****

Five minutes later, everyone was lined up next to the Batcomputer with heads bowed in either shame or disappointment.

Bruce walked up and down the row, the perfect imitation of a drill sergeant. His glare matched as well.

“This is an outrageous breach of protocol,” he was saying, “the Batcomputer is not a toy, nor something to use for your own amusement. It is a serious tool-”

“Then why’s it called the Batcomputer?”

Bruce froze and whirled on Dick, who had chosen that inopportune moment to speak up.

“Because you were nine years old and saying no to you would have gotten me a meltdown.”

“It seems to me, Bossman,” Stephanie began, tenting her fingers in an attempt to act serious (the effect was strange combined with her bathrobe and slippers) “That you are perfectly happy to let Dick get away with things. But in this situation, with women present, you are strangely cold. This shows blatant sexism on your part and in this essay I will-”

“That’s enough, Stephanie.” Bruce cut off as a round of snorts and giggle erupted from the group of bats.

“You do realise that no one here is going to speak, right?” Jason asked, “You did teach us to resist torture. And - pardon my french, Alfred - but you are no fucking way close to the level of torture I’ve gone through. Namely waking up to Batcow sitting on top of me.”

“Are you commenting on her weight?” Damian demanded, glaring daggers at Jason.

“I said no such thing.”

“ Boys .” Bruce demanded, rubbing his temples. “Jason is right - not about Batcow’s weight - but I’m not going to get any of you to talk willingly.” He paused and made eye contact with every single bat present, trying to reach into their souls.

“Therefore,” he continued slowly, “I’m giving you one last chance. Otherwise: No one gets cookies from Alfred for two months. ”

The shock was immediate. Alfred’s cookies, of all kinds, were worth more than gold in the Manor. The ability to not have them? And for two months? Bruce truly was a cruel hearted tyrant if he was willing to go to such lengths.

Duke gulped.

“Fine, then.” Bruce said simply when no one answered. “I guess we’ll just have to check the security footage of the Cave.”

Why didn’t Bruce think of that earlier? He clearly wasn’t trying to give the kids an easy way out.

Bruce stalked over to the computer and began to furiously type at the keys, pulling up the footage for the past few days. The group watched in a tense silence as Bruce rifled through the multiple recordings, searching for the culprit.

“AHA!” Bruce grunted, upon finding a specific time stamp. There was a figure emerging from the shadows. He paused and then slowed down the video so they could all see who it was.

There were several gasps as the figure came into the light, looked around, and made his way to the computer. They had shown their face, not even bothering to hide.

Everyone whirled to Duke, then back to the screen.

“No way,” Harper whispered under her breath.

Because the person on the footage, who was now adding the link to the case file and hooking up bluetooth speakers, was Duke Thomas himself.

Bruce’s eye twitched.

There was a general consensus among the resident vigilantes in the cave at that time: Duke wasn’t going to live to tell the tale.

Duke felt uneasy under their scrutiny, unsure of what to do. This was his plan, after all. To be seen differently. But so far the lack of accusations or uproarious debate was disconcerting.

He looked up at Bruce, awaiting his reaction. Bruce didn’t meet Duke’s eyes.

“Hrn,” he grumbled angrily instead and whirled on Tim. Said teenager was barely standing up straight - well, he was leaning on Steph heavily - and blinked wearily around the cave. He didn’t seem to understand what was going on.

Bruce’s eyes narrowed for a long moment before he whipped around and furiously began to mess with the playback settings on the footage. Everyone stood still, not daring to move while Bruce grumbled under his breath.

Finally Bruce straightened and pointed dramatically toward the screen.

“There,” he grunted out, and everyone subconsciously leaned a little bit forward.

They didn’t see anything different from before, though Bruce’s finger did bring their attention to one of the bats that flew across the upper left hand corner. A few seconds of footage later, and yet another bat flew across in a similar pattern. Not exactly the same, so it wasn’t really out of the ordinary. Lord knows the bats would randomly fly out and into their hair much more than necessary.

“Note how the figure is disturbed when each bat flies across the screen,” Bruce said in the same voice he used when talking about a case - cold, impersonal, and yet like he was giving a college lecture.

No one spoke, not really sure what to say. I mean, what was the correct course of action when your father figure suddenly refuses to accept reality, and is grasping at the most unlikely of straws?

“I know this technique anywhere,” Bruce said more to himself than the line of vigilantes. He turned, completely passing over Duke, and set his sights on Tim.

“Timothy Jackson Drake,” Bruce growled, stalking forward, “What possessed you to doctor this footage?”

Tim didn’t respond, only mumbled incoherently and leaned onto Steph some more.

Bruce was furious, bearing his teeth as he spat out his response: “Now is not the time to use the anti-torture training I’ve given you.”

Tim nodded slowly and draped his arm on top of Stephanie’s head.

“You should know better than this,” Bruce began, “pranks are strictly forbidden in the cave, as you very well know. And in addition, I taught you better at framing than this. You choose a victim that could actually be considered as a suspect. Trying to pin the blame on Duke was your undoing - he would never do something like this.”

Duke cringed slightly, as the rest of the bats glanced Duke’s way. All were a mix of confusion and awe.

This … was not how this was supposed to go. No, screw that. That was an outrageous understatement. Things ‘not going according to plan’ would have been Jason randomly blaming Harper for the mess on no grounds - or maybe Bruce not bothering to check the cameras, opting instead to just ground everyone.

But blatantly ignoring evidence and then lecturing someone completely unrelated? No, this was too much. It couldn’t be real. This was some kind of scare-tactic wasn’t it? Duke was too much of an adrenaline junkie to be bothered by the usual ‘hanging upside down over a busy road’ schtick.

But then Bruce moves on to possible culprits Tim could have chosen instead - did he seriously think that Ra’s Al Ghul would Rick Roll them?! - and Duke lost hope.

“Uhh, Bruce?” Duke asked after the ten minute mark.

The Dark Knight turned and faced Duke.

Duke scratched the back of his neck. “Do you think I could head out for patrol now? It’s getting light out, and since you’ve clearly got this covered… I thought I could scoot out?”

Bruce was nodding before the end of Duke’s request. “Yes, go. I’ll deal with Tim. You don’t need to worry - you won’t be blamed. It clearly wasn’t your fault.”

Duke nodded slowly, and covered his disappointment with a small smirk. “Thanks, B.”

He jogged over to the edge of the platform and dropped down beside his Signal-Cycle. A routine mounting, a quick putting on of his helmet, and he was off.

Duke was scowling as he left, wondering what on earth had gone wrong.

*****

“Did you see that smirk?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Did he blame Tim on purpose?”

“How, though? To make such a tactical move -”

“It would have taken a shit ton of planning.”

“Can we get back on the fact that Bruce was fooled?”

“Or who fooled him?!”

[cobaltusami]

Tropical Vacation pt. 7

Hey hi hello! This part was very delayed thanks to my laptop being a tool. I'm writing on a tablet computer hooked up to my tv now lol.

This part is pretty shippy too, Big shocker right? But It's Ishimondo and I couldn't resist--

Characters in this part: Lee!Taka, Ler!Mondo, Makoto, Leon, Hina, Akane, Sakura, Mahiru, Chiaki, Hiro, Nekomaru, Nagito, Hajime, Kazuichi

Word count: 1,803

Part 1: [Click or tap here!] Part 2: [Click or tap here!] Part 3: [Click or tap here!] Part 4: [Click or tap here!] Part 5: [Click or tap here!] Part 6: [Click or tap here!] Part 7: You are here.

Shortly after arriving back from waking up the two dorky gays, they showed up In the dining hall. Fuyuhiko sat down next to Peko after a small greeting and Hajime sat between Nagito and Mahiru, most likely whispering a small threat to the Lucky student for embarrassing them this morning.

“Where the heck were you? You worried us!” Mahiru complained, smacking Hajime upside the head.

Hajime yelped, rubbing the back of his head. “S-Sorry, I lost track of time…”

A few students at the table barely managed to stifle their laughter, others-- Leon, Ibuki, and Hiyoko, didn’t even try to.

“Making girls worry about you.… not cool Hajime.” Nagito chided, crossing his arms as he gave the boy next to him a look akin to a disappointed mother.

Hajime whipped around to face Nagito, His expression unreadable. “Nagito…”

Chiaki reached around Nagito, digging her fingers into Hajime’s side warningly. “Don’t threaten him.”

Nagito giggled as he watched Hajime’s face turn bright red, a small yelp slipping past his lips as he inched away from them, now nearly on the edge of his seat to avoid her fingers.

“Chiaki, don’t torture Hajime this early In the morning.” Nekomaru warned lightly, Chiaki pouted as she pulled her hand back, seemingly complying.

Hiro chuckled at this. “Looks like you’re the parent of the friend group…”

“Parent? Nah, he’s more like the big brother of the group.” Kazuichi responded. “Mahiru Is the parent of the group.”

“I am not!” Mahiru frowned. “I don’t have the stamina to mother all of you hoodlums.”

“Did she just use the word hoodlum unironically?” Makoto whispered to Kazuichi.

“I heard that Naegi! Just because you’re not In my class doesn’t mean I can’t reprimand you too!”

Makoto squeaked and shrunk back in his seat as she began to lecture both him and Kazuichi.

Celeste giggled as she sipped her tea. “I like her.”

“She’s certainly… Passionate.” Kyoko agreed, taking a sip of her own tea as she watched with amusement.

After breakfast was over, class 77 sent away the other class so they could plan the party. Nekomaru went with them to make sure Mondo left Sakura and Hina alone, he could’ve sworn that Mondo was just Akane but In guy form.

Speaking of Akane… where did she run off to?

As Nekomaru glanced around looking for the spitfire, he lost sight of Sakura and Hina. So at that point he decided to just stick around Mondo and keep an eye on him that way.

Currently the biker was walking along the beach with Taka, the pair looking for seashells or something corny like that.

Hiro approached the team manager casually. “So, You’re the brother of the group huh?”

“I guess so.” He responded with a chuckle.

“I’m the brother of my group too.” Hiro smiled. “They’re all a bunch of dorks aren’t they?”

“That would be an understatement.” Nekomaru retorted. “But they’re my dorks.”

“Even though sometimes they drive you nuts with how they behave.”

“Between Akane, Gundham, Kazuichi, Nagito and Fuyuhiko, I don’t know which one Is more misbehaved.”

Hiro chuckled. “Yeah, Mondo, Leon, and Hina are pretty chaotic too. Mondo has been on a war path since having that endurance challenge with Taka, He wrecks everyone with tickles man, It’s horrible.”

“That’s nothing! Fuyuhiko threatened to stab Nagito last week for teasing him and helping Hajime tickle him.” Nekomaru retorted.

“Hahaha! Last time we tried to take down Mondo he concussed Makoto.”

The two began sharing stories about their nerds, thus taking Neko’s attention off of Mondo. He and Taka snuck off to the park and sat down on the bench together.

They sat In silence for a bit, Just enjoying each other’s company. But eventually Taka let out a small happy sigh. “I really like this Island. What do you think about It, Kyoudai?”

“Eh?” Mondo turned his attention to his totally platonic not at all homosexual In the slightest best friend. “It beats the school so far.” He shrugged slightly, resting his arms across the back of the bench.

Taka took this as a cue to scoot a little closer, Mondo’s fingers grazed his shoulder opposite to him motioning for him to get even closer. He kept inching closer, each time Mondo would repeat the motion.

Even when their bodies were pressed against each other. “Mondo, If I get any closer to you I will be in your lap.” Taka finally said.

“I’d be okay with that.” He replied cheekily, resting his hand on his shoulder to hold him.

Totally platonic.

No homo, as they say.

Taka rolled his eyes as he rested his head against his shoulder, wrapping his arms around his middle. Mondo fully moved his arm to wrap around Taka’s shoulders now. “I bet you would.” he muttered under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” Taka smiled innocently up at the biker.

Mondo narrowed his eyes in suspicion as he slowly let the subject drop and relaxed again. “I guess I like that the Island Is big, doesn’t feel as fuckin’ cramped as the school.” He said, returning to the previous topic.

“I agree! And It’s so nice to feel the sun again.”

“Yea, and the fresh air Is nice too.” He conceded. “It’d be even better If I had my bike though, then I could finally take ya for that ride I promised.”

Taka tensed up, he never particularly cared for the idea of riding with Mondo. “Y-Yeah, such a shame.” He replied quietly.

It’s not that he didn’t trust him or anything, It’s just the thought of being on a motorcycle scared him a bit.

“S-So uh… What do you think of the classmates?” Taka asked, trying to change the subject before Mondo noticed his nervousness about motorized bikes.

Smooth.

“They seem alright, What do you think of ‘em? I trust your judgement more than mine.” Mondo asked, glancing down at the boy.

Taka pulled back slightly, looking up at Mondo with big eyes. “R-Really??”

“I mean, Yea. You’re a better judge of character than I am..”

He wasn’t expecting the next reaction.

Taka pulled back, prodding at his stomach incessantly. “Kyoudai! You should trust yourself and your opinion more!” he scolded.

Mondo yelped, his arms shooting down to block off his midsection from the Moral Compass. “EY! Will you cut that out??” He grabbed hold of Taka’s wrists and held his hands away from him.

He yanked on his wrists, pulling the smaller of the two Into his lap with a yelp. “Y’know, If you wanted me to tickle ya, Ya coulda just asked.” He smirked, coiling his arms around his prey.

“W-Wait! No! Mohohohondo!” Taka burst Into giggles as his fingers ghosted over his ribs.

“Yea, Kyoudai?” He hummed, digging into his ribs more firmly. “What’s up?”

“Hehehehahahaha! Dohohohon’t!” He whined through his giggles, blushing.

Mondo leaned forward, dusting small kisses across his neck. (what was exposed of it anyways) whilst unbuttoning his jacket, “Y’know, technically you don’t gotta wear the uniform right? We’re not in school right now.” he commented as he tugged the jacket off and dumped it unceremoniously onto the bench next to them,

Taka was too busy giggling to protest, as embarrassing as he found being tickled, he actually did enjoy it. Especially If it was Mondo doing the tickling.

He slipped his fingers under Taka’s white tee and ran them teasingly across his belly. “There, Don’t ya feel better now that you aren’t burning alive under that coat?”

Taka shook his head as he collapsed back against his chest, his giggling ramping up.

“No? Well fuck bro, I’m not sure what else I can do to help ya.” Mondo pretended to think about it. “Are your sides hurting? You want me to massage ‘em for ya?”

“N-Nohohohohoho! My sihihihides are fine!” Taka yelped, his arms wrapping around his midsection defensively.

“You suuuure? If they’re real achy, a nice massage will do wonders~” He purred, resuming his barrage of small tickly kisses to his neck.

Taka rested his head back against Mondo’s shoulder as he laughed. “Ihihihihihim suhuhuhure! Ahahahaha!”

Mondo pinched and prodded at his lean stomach and hip bones, smiling at the squeals and musical laughter it brought about. “A’ight, guess I’ll have to find another way to make ya happy.” He responded nonchalantly, withdrawing his hands momentarily only to shove them under his arms and dig into the sensitive skin.

“AAH! Mohohohohondohohoho!” He shrieked, his body doubling over as It attempted to get away from the tickles.

“Yea bro?” He snickered.

“Ihihihihihit tihihihihickles!” Taka whined through his laughter, trying to escape from Mondo’s lap to no avail.

“Uh yea bro, It’s fuckin’ supposed to.” He grinned cheekily, as soon as Taka tried to push his way to freedom, he pounced. His fingers descend cruelly on his sensitive sides, drawing a scream from the strict student.

“KYAHAHAHAHAHAHA! WAHAHAHAIT DOHOHOHOHN’T!”

“Don’t wait? I gotcha bro.” He chuckled, then leaned closer to whisper In Taka’s ear. “You wanna experience all the nice tickles, Right?”

Taka’s face grew even more red, If that was humanly possible. That bitch, I mean he wasn’t wrong but how dare he call Taka out like that?

“Hah, Gaaaaaay!”

Mondo paused his attack on poor Taka and looked up, spotting Leon across the way near an island bridge. “Leon, Fuck off. Unless you wanna be next.”

“Oh, I’m not worried.” Leon grinned. “I think you have other targets ahead of me.”

“Oh yea? Like who?”

As if waiting for that exact moment, Taka bolted out of his hold with Hina’s help. The moment he was free, A bucket of water was dumped onto Mondo, ruining his hair.

He shrieked in surprise as he jumped up, he whipped around to find the culprits.

Akane was cackling whilst she and Sakura stood there holding the tub. “I warned you I was gonna get you.” The white haired girl smiled.

“Oh, You’re so fucking dead!” He roared, jumping over the back of the bench to get the martial artist, but he ended up slipping and falling in the grass due to being soaking wet..

“Kyoudai!” Taka yelped, getting down next to him to check him for injuries.

Hina giggled evilly as the girls hurried off. Leon also disappeared, apparently he chose the side of chaos today.

Mondo sighed as he sat up and pushed his hair back out of his face.

“Are you okay?!”

“Yea, I’m fine.” He reassured him. “Sakura’s not gonna be when I get a hold of her though.”

Taka sighed in relief. Well at least he knew Mondo was actually okay and not just saying that. “Come on, Let’s get back to the hotel so you can change. Then we can get revenge.”

Mondo grinned at Taka, planting a kiss against his lips. “I fuckin’ love ya.”

Yes… No homo indeed.

[animatorweirdo]

Shaman and a moth

You struggle in the old fortress and are forced to do the dishes. Camilla sends a moth after you. 

Warning; injury

Chapter 12

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You were harshly woken up by the yelling of an orc. "Wake up, rats! Time to serve your masters!" He yelled. You groaned and rubbed your eyes. You stopped and stared at the wall. What did he mean by that? You noticed your cellmate had already woken up. "Hey, Nelle. What did that Langon guy say yesterday?" You asked after seeing it was morning. "I was a bit busy to not suffocate on that thing that happened," You added. "Would you like to have a long or a short explanation?" She asked. The orcs were opening the cells and pulling the elves out. "Short," You answered. "We're slaves and forced to work for them," She said. The door to your cell opened. Your brain then finally figured what she meant by that."Well, that sucks,"

Camilla finished with a vial and put it beside other king's foil potions she managed to make. She crumbled and aggressively wrote down on a table. She smacked the feather pen down, then drank the cup of tea. She spitted the liquid back on the cup and glared at the thing. It got cold and disgusting. She grunted in annoyance. She hated this world for a long time when she got here with you, but now she hated it even more than ever. Because there was no coffee. And you were still gone.

She looked through the window. The day was gloomy and cloudy. The smell of ashes still lingered in the air and the raining snow was not making things any better. Her thoughts came to every possible answer on your whereabouts, but there was a slim chance any of them were correct. Where in the world did you manage to drop yourself off to?

Your hands were stinging. You were doing the dishes. The goddamn dishes. You were pretty sure orcs don't use plates and forks when they eat. It's all hands and teeth. Save for the two other guys who rule this place now. You brushed off the string of your hair that got into your face. You silently groaned and tried not to move your injured shoulder much. Good thing you got paired with Nelle, so you were not alone on this. She was helping to dry the dishes.

You looked out through the windows. The class was standing out broken and the cold wind was coming into the room. You checked out your location. The dungeons were somewhere under the fortress. You almost memorized the path that leads out of there. The kitchen was somewhere on the second floor. If this fortress had floors. This whole place was a big labyrinth already. How did Maglor move around his own fortress without using a map? You sighed. It would take time to memorize the whole place before conducting a proper escape plan.

You winced and groaned when you made a wrong move with your injured shoulder. You closed your eyes for a moment to adjust to the pain. You moved the helm of your shirt to take a look at your shoulder. You hissed when you saw the state of it. You needed to clean it up, or it might get infected. You look at the rug on your hand and the only bucket of clean water. You already used most of it to clean up the dishes, so it only had enough to cover the bottom. You looked around for a moment then glanced at Nelle. "Pss..." You caught her attention. "Can you look at the door while I clean up my shoulder?" You asked. She stared at you for a moment before nodding. You took this chance to get the last clean water with the rug and begin cleaning up your wound. You silenced your hisses as the wet rug touched your shoulder. It was cold, but it felt good. You quickly wiped the blood and the dirt away. You managed to pull out tiny sticks that were still in your shoulder. Well, no wonder it still hurt. Hopefully, the whole arrow stick was not still inside you.

"Pss..." You heard Nelle to the sound you did to catch her attention. You glanced at the doorway and quickly pulled the rug away and continued doing the dishes. Nelle continuing her job as nothing happened.

An orc came through the doorway, carrying a giant bucket. He set the bucket down and you took a glance. More dishes. You mentally groaned. Luckily, the orc didn't seem to notice what you were doing before he came in.

He turned toward Nelle. "You! Lord Maluk wants to see you," He said. Lord who? Nelle set the towel down and approached the doorway. You looked at her worriedly as she went. You managed to touch her hand when she passed you. "I will be fine," She said like she read your mind. You backed away then and let her go. She then disappeared through the doorway with the orc. You couldn't help but be worried about her. What were they going to do to her? Who was lord Maluk? Was he the crazy scientist-looking guy? Nelle looked like she dealt with this kind of thing, which had to mean it's nothing good.

You resisted the urge to follow. You did want to make sure she would be okay, but that might lead to unwanted troubles. Maybe it's for the best you waited for her to come back and ask what happened. You frowned. But... Maybe she won't speak about it or tell you to forget about it. You wanted to curse at these people. You have barely known Nelle for a day and a half, but if anything happened to her; you will turn into a wendigo, kill everyone in the fortress then yourself. You chuckled at yourself, then shook your head. Your life was a mess.

The moon grazed the sky once again after the day went by. You were returned to your cell and now you were waiting for Nelle to come back. On the other side of the whole gap. Camilla was standing on the walls of Himring, holding a tiny creature with large, thin wings and six legs. Snow was falling gently against her face as she whispered to the creature, before letting it fly into the night. She looked after the creature as it disappeared into the world of the night. She felt no fear for the tiny thing since she knew it can take care of its self.

"You know you shouldn't be here so late?" Maglor asked, standing beside her. "Can't sleep," She said. They both stood there in silence for a moment. "I didn't think moths would be active during winter," He said. "They don't really care about the cold," Camilla said. She took a deep breath. "I heard a certain thing about moths," She started. "About being some kind of messengers. I wanted to try it out and it seems to be true," She explained. Maglor looked at her. "So you sent a message to someone?" He questioned. "I put him to search for (Name). We may be able to find her that way, " She said. "Hmm..." Maglor thought about it. "Not many know about this secret of the moths and usually..."He looked at Camilla. " They would respond to someone who is part with nature, " He said. "Are you really a human yourself, Camilla?" He asked. "I’m a shaman. It’s a person who’s connected to the spiritual world. I’m aware of the spirits, the monsters, and the undead," She said. "In my homeworld. I'm a healer and a person who can see something a normal human eye can't see," She said, then turned around to lean against the bastions. "That's why I was able to tell that moth to go look for (Name)," She said. Maglor looked at her surprised but understood everything she said. He looked out toward the night. "I never thought humans would be even possible to reach that kind of ability," He stated. "Some of us didn't even want such a gift, because there where we came from. The difference is seen more like a curse than a gift, " Camilla said. "So... You can see the wendigo inside (Name)?" He asked. "I don't see it, but I do sense it, and trust me... It's the coldest feeling you could ever feel," She said. Maglor silently nodded. His mind returned to the night he discovered that side of you. Your frozen eyes looking through his fea, and he felt like an unknown force was trying to touch him with a frozen touch. It was horrible. He then remembered your terror-struck face. He felt hurt for discovering such a thing about you, but after all this time he earned to help you, so you wouldn't have to suffer anymore.

"Is there a way to remove the wendigo from her?" He asked. Camilla shook her head. "I wish I knew, but there hasn't been invented a way to remove a wendigo's spirit from a human body. Attempts have been made, but the victims always ended up dead," Camilla explained with a saddened expression. Maglor felt also saddened. There was no way of separating you from the wendigo without killing you in the end. "The only way to properly kill the wendigo is to burn to the host body, but I'm not willing to kill (Name). Not yet and hopefully never," Camilla said before walking away. She left the wall and left Maglor in his thoughts. He felt his heartbreak from the thought of killing you. If it ever came to that he didn't think he would be able to do it. Killing you should not be the option. He looked at the moon and silently prayed. Don't let your fate be sealed by fire.

[wyofabdoms]

Undercover I Do -Chapter 10

Characters: Javier Peña x female reader

Summary: While on an undercover assignment posing as a married couple, you are attacked and nearly assaulted. Upon waking, all you remember about Javier Peña is what you remembering seeing from two photographs of the two of you posing as the happily married couple. As you struggle to regain your memories, Javi struggles with his own feelings for you.

Rating: Mature (Eventual smut)

Chapter Warnings: mention of attempted sexual assault, angst, soft Javi, swearing, mentions of alcohol, brief mention of prostitution

Word Count: 2630

Notes: Javi and Dixon have a heart to heart...and Dixon gives Javi some bad news. Then Javi has to face you after avoiding you since the shower incident the day before.

Read on Ao3

Javi had not set foot in her apartment since the afternoon in the shower.  He had crashed in his upstairs apartment the night that it had happened, calling the apartment phone and quickly explaining that something had come up at work and he wouldn’t be home; he would be pulling an all nighter.  He had gotten off the phone with her as fast as he could, but he could still hear the hurt in her voice as he practically threw the phone into its cradle.

He had tossed and turned restlessly before giving up on sleep all together and had once more done the only thing he considered himself good at: he’d gone to work.  He had considered for half a moment seeking out some relief from one of the willing women he knew would answer his call, but he couldn’t bring himself to pick up the receiver.  So he had thrown himself into the endless sea of writing reports, reading reports, copying reports, translating reports.  Midway through the day he’d hit a wall and had fallen into a rumpled sleep on the couch in his office.  He had been fighting against a panicked dream where he was running through an endless hallway of doors, trying to find the one behind which his partner’s screams of terror were coming from, when he was jolted awake by Dixon roughly shaking his shoulder.

The older woman assessed his haggard appearance, his hollow face and the dark circles under his eyes, the sadness in his gaze and the bloody knuckles of his hand that he had sloppily tried to bandage.  She listened to him carefully, without saying anything as he candidly explained each and every thing that had happened over the last several days.  Her eyes momentarily sparked when he told her about his partner’s attempts at initiating sex, but he thought he may have seen just the tiniest glimmer of approval as he followed up each intimate description with an explanation of his refusals.  When he had gotten her up to speed with the incident in the shower and tactics of avoidance the night before, he waited silently for her to speak; to tell him what to do next.

She sat in silence for a long time, gazing at the carpet before her.  Javi started to become uncomfortable with the ensuing silence and his fingers had begun to fidget when she finally spoke.

“I don’t think it’s much of a secret that I don’t think much of your reputation outside of this office, Agent Peña,” she began bluntly.  He flinched a little at that, not sure where this was going.  He nodded slightly, acknowledging what his boss was saying.  She continued: “And I know that early on you had your sights set on her.  It would have muddied your work relationship for sure and I think everyone could see from the start that the two of you together professionally was like partnership gold.  In all fairness you should perhaps know that I advised her against any kind of fraternization with you…quite adamantly, in fact, and several times.” Javi straightened, his brows knitting together.  “Oh yes,” she nodded when she saw his face.  “Your partner wasn’t always as resolved in rebuffing your advances as it might have seemed.  But…” Her voice faded for a moment and she seemed to be gazing into a memory for a moment before her eyes hardened and settled back on him.  “I also know that you understand better than anyone that the work...the work is what matters down here.  That is our priority.  I couldn’t risk her...or you...either of you...becoming too attached to one another outside the normal partner relationship.  This hasn’t been easy on any of us, these last few weeks; everybody playing a big game of pretend everyday.  No one has had to play it as much as you, though. And I want to say that it speaks highly of you, Peña, the way you’ve conducted yourself through all of this.” 

He made a face at that, remembering how badly he had wanted to give in to his temptations at the slightest touch of her skin on his, the feel of her warm breath on his neck as they woke up warm and tangled together in the mornings, how he had listened to her breathing softly in her sleep in the dark while he stroked strands of her hair between his fingers.  Dixon waved her hand and continued.

“Despite what you may think, it’s admirable.  You’re good at what you do, Peña.”  She sighed, her gaze dropping to the floor once more and it was a long time before she spoke again.  

“All that being said, in light of what you’ve shared with me, perhaps what I’m about to say is for the best.”  Javi felt his stomach clench and knew that he wasn’t going to like what she said next.  Her voice was softer when she finally spoke.  

“I’ve spoken to the ambassador.  He doesn’t like the idea of an agent with only partial faculties being so closely in the mix down here…” Her voice trailed off and it took Javi a moment to realize what she was telling him.

“Wait...What? Are you telling me he doesn’t want her down here anymore?”  When Dixon didn’t speak but merely looked at him sadly, he vaulted to his feet.  “What the fuck?  No fuckin’ way, Dixon!  You just want to send her home?” 

“I don’t want to send her anywhere.  This isn’t about what I wa-”

“The hell it isn’t!  You can’t do this, Dixon!  You can’t just cut her loose like this. It would be different if she had done something that warranted her getting sent home…” His voice trailed off as he almost said: like I did.  He was fuming now and he began to pace.  “This isn’t her fault.  She just needs a little more time.  She’s getting some memories back, she is, they’re just taking a while.  Her doctor said he thinks they’re just repressed because Ortiz…” he couldn’t bring him to verbalize what Ortiz had tried to do.  “...because he scared her.”  He plowed ahead.  “They’re talking about trying some hypnotherapy soon.  I know it sounds crazy but he says there have been some really good cases that have had success with it.”

“I know.  I know all of that, Agent Peña.  I get the briefings on her everyday same as you.  The ambassador is not inclined to spend taxpayers money to pay for her treatments anymore when they can just get someone new in here to take her place.”

Javi felt like he had been kicked in the stomach.  He stopped his pacing and sat back down heavily on the couch, holding his head in his hands. 

“God dammit…” The curse was barely a whisper.  They sat in silence together for several long moments.  Finally, Javi brought his head up and looked at his boss.

“What am I supposed to do now, then...with her, I mean.  Do I tell her?”  Dixon considered this for a moment.

“No,” her own voice was hoarse with emotion.  “It should come from me.  She’s still DEA, after all.”  She looked at Javi carefully.  “I’ll get the paperwork together and signed this afternoon...I can meet with her tomorrow morning.  We’ll make arrangements for her to fly home immediately; tomorrow night even.  That still means you’ll have to make it through tonight.  It might be best if you stay at your place again…”

“Fuck that.” Javi grumbled.  “I’m not gonna abandon her right before she gets this news.”  He saw Dixon flinch slightly at the implication of abandonment, but the moment was gone in an instant.  He angrily grabbed his keys, sunglasses, cigarettes and his jacket from his desk chair, scattering file folders across his desk as he rummaged for the items haphazardly.  He stormed towards the door.

“Agent Peña.”

He stopped at the threshold of the office, not turning around.

“I know what she means to you.  You’re not the only one that loves her, remember that.”

Javi felt his chest contract at her words.

He stumbled blindly out of the office.

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Javi sat in his car outside the brothel.

He was trash.

He looked like trash right now from lack of sleep.  He probably smelt like trash, too.  And he certainly acted like trash.

He had been sitting in his car for the last three hours.  He had driven around the city for hours, up and down streets whose names he didn’t know and through neighborhoods he didn’t recognize.  He knew he should have driven straight home to her, but he needed to think.  He needed to figure out what the hell he was going to say to her.  Without thinking he had ended up in the seedy neighborhood he had frequented often in the past.  He hadn’t darkened these doors for quite some time, though, and now, sitting here watching customers enter and exit the building, he felt sick to his stomach at the thought of what he was about to do.

He just needed to not think.  Just for a little bit.  He needed to not know that she would be leaving him in only a day or two.  Shamefully, he wanted to feel close his eyes and imagine whomever he was with was his partner; wanted to imagine it was her voice crying out his name as he split her open.  He clenched his eyes shut, wishing with all of his might that he was braver.  That he was stronger.  That he was a better man.  He smacked his head back against the headrest of his seat a few times before taking in a deep breath of the late Columbian air coming through his window.

His eyes slowly opened as he took another deep breath again.  His forehead furrowed as he tried to place the smell wafting through his car window.  He looked across the street opposite the entrance of the brothel and his heart nearly stopped beating.

A young girl and a crookedly bent, gray haired old woman sat side by side on overturned buckets next to a bright display.  The soft breeze fluttered across the delicate pink, soft orange, and clean white petals of dozens of vibrant bouquets of plumeria.

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The shadows were just starting to crawl up the walls as he quietly entered her apartment.  He found her curled into a ball in the recliner, knees drawn up to her chest, hair tangled and mussed, eyes red and face splotchy from crying.  He didn’t say anything but simply dropped to his knees in front of her and held out the flowers in his arms for her to see, presenting them to her as an unspoken peace offering.  She looked at them for a moment without saying anything, then took them from him, smelling them carefully, her eyes meeting his over the bright petals.  He saw every single one of the questions she wanted to ask him in her eyes.  And all he could do was take her hand in his and press a soft kiss to her knuckles above the false ring that still adorned her hand.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”  

Her eyes scrunched up and she began to cry, putting the flowers on the side table next to the half empty bottle of whiskey and sweating highball glass that he had not noticed before.  She covered her face with her hands and huffed out a breath and he could smell the whiskey.

“Why don’t you want me Javier?”  Her words were slurry and thick and sad.  His heart ached as he drew her into his embrace, holding her against his chest as she shook with sobs.  She repeated her question mixed with another sob into his chest and he stroked her hair and whispered her name, trying to calm her.  She pulled back from him suddenly, looking him directly in the eye, searching his face for some shred of information.  

“Did I do something wrong?  Before, I mean?”  When he assured her that was not the case, her face fell.  “What is it then?  Why don’t you want to be with me, Javi?”  She barely managed to choke out her next words.  “Is there someone else?”

“No, baby.  It’s not that.”

“What then?”  Her voice rose in anger now and he saw frustration lace the sadness in her eyes.  “What’s going on, Javi?  Tell me.”

“Sweetheart…”

“Don’t ‘sweetheart’ me, dammit!  Just tell me!”  Javi sat back on his haunches and sighed, thinking for a moment that Dixon’s orders be damned.  But she had been drinking, this wasn’t the right moment.  He met your gaze full on when he spoke.

“I know how unfair this must feel right now, me asking you to just trust with everything.  And I know how much its hurting you not knowing, not remembering.  But just please, please know I’m doing this because...because I love you.”  He faltered only a little on the words, surprising himself at how easily they fell from his lips.  Before he could think about that any more, he pressed on.  “I promise you: It’s all gonna make sense when things are back to how they were.”

“Great,” she huffed. “And what if that never happens, Javi?  What if I don’t EVER remember?”  She pushed past him and stood up, wobbling only slightly from the alcohol.  He stood up with her, ready to reach out and steady her if she started to fall.  She brushed his hands away. “This is bullshit.  Something else is going on that you’re not saying.  Why should I trust anything you tell me right now, Javier Peña?  How do I know you haven’t been lying to me this whole time?”

Javi felt his blood run cold and his body went rigid.  Of course she knew something was wrong; they had all been foolish to think she wouldn’t realize eventually.  His partner was so incredibly smart, after all.  He should have known more than any of the others that she wouldn’t be fooled for long.  But her last words had cut him.

“No.”  He said the small word fiercely, adamantly.  “I haven’t lied.  I haven’t lied to you once this whole time.  Not once.”

She crossed her arms over chest and just stood in the middle of the living room, looking at him warily as though trying to decide whether to believe him or not.  And suddenly Javi couldn’t stand not touching her again.  

He crossed the expanse between them in two easy steps and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him and kissing her hard.  She pushed against his chest for a moment, then wrapped her arms around his neck, sighing and relaxing into his body, his touch, his lips, his tongue against hers.

They stayed that way for a long while, pressed into one another, breathing one another’s air, tasting one another.  Javi did his very best to communicate everything with his kiss; all of the memories she was missing, all of the things he felt for her, all of the fear and uncertainty he had been keeping inside himself this entire time.  His heart was thudding in his chest and hoped that she could feel how it pounded and shouted at her closeness.

Eventually, Javi broke away, pressing his forehead to hers, breathing her name, bumping his nose against hers after a time.  Her eyes opened, too and he saw resignation...no, it was more acceptance… in her eyes.  They stared at one another that way until she nodded her head against his.

“I trust you Javier.  I always have.”

Javi had never known that words could completely ruin a man’s heart...and restore it to life all at the same time.

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8,  Chapter 9, Chapter 11,  Chapter 12,  Chapter 13

[abluescarfonwaston]

Did someone ask for a quick and angsty immortal jaskier prompt? "It was supposed to be the music," he whispered, voice breaking. Heart breaking. "The songs. I wanted my songs to be remembered forever. I never wanted this."

Why would you do this to me anon. i’m already crying over the fact dandelion outlives everyone he loves. Major Character Death Warning. Obviously. Literally everyone dies. Uuuh also this kinda turns into Lambert/Jaskier at the end but like. They’re both Centuries old so nothing Happens.

When the wasting sickness swept through Lettenhove it killed his Mother and his Father and his Sisters and left him untouched. 

He was ten and the world was over. Except he kept waking up in the morning.

At thirteen a girl at Oxenfurt, Essi Daven, played her Lute in the commons and sang and had the most beautiful cornflower blue eyes. And for the first time in years he sang a duet with her and suddenly he was a bard and he had a little sister again. 

Maybe the world hadn’t ended. Maybe it finally restart.

At seventeen he met a man with white hair and seemly as many scars on his body as his heart and fell in love. Because Bards fell in love easily and he was impossibly easy to love.

The witcher plead for his life. Plead for them to let the bard go.

“No. Both of us or neither.” He was done outliving those he loved. At seventeen he was already done with that. “You kill him and let me go and i’ll destroy your mountain. Kill every last one of you in revenge.”

He’d leave behind a song. The one he’d written as a child and had swept the town more devastating than even the scarlet fever had been. It would live on past him. He would be remembered. The people he loved would be too. Toss a coin to your Witcher. The people he loved immortalized in song.

It wasn’t supposed to make him immortal.

“Give it a rest Jaskier.” Danity snapped. “It’s not you that has to be afraid of anything. No one ever touches a troubadour. For unfathomable reasons you’re inviolable.”

He’d still feared then. Chappelle could have had him killed. He was pretty sure he could die. Mostly he feared the pain. Or dying alone.

“When an old woman gets tired of life she walks into the woods without a weapon. The results are guaranteed.” He’d told Geralt when he’d moaned about how the world was changing and -more importantly- that he had no work.

Remember how I don’t even carry a knife when I follow you out on an adventure? No weapons at all. Ever. Just me and my lute.

He’d brushed death. A thousand times he’d almost met her. He followed Geralt- who was prophesied to always have death follow after him. You’d think at some point they’d meet.

Essi and Geralt fell in love on the coast. He wrote a ballad for them. About how their love was so powerful not even death could come between them.

He never played it. Not to anyone. He didn’t think it was actually about Essi and Geralt.

When rash appeared on Essi’s face in Vizima during the quarantine his hands shook.

“Not her.” He’d screamed at the gods. They didn’t exist of course. If they had then they’d abandoned them all long ago. “Not her.”

“Jaskier?” She shivered violently. “I don’t want to be burned.”

“You won’t be. You’re going to be fine.” He promised. Clutching her hand. “Promise Poppet. You’re going to be fine.”

The cremation fires blazed outside.

“I want to be buried in the woods. With my lute and-” She hurled mostly into the bucket. “My necklace. Please Jaskier.”

“Course Poppet. When you’re old and grey I will bury you out in the forest.”

“Thank you.” She clutched the little pearl. “For giving me him. I love him.”

“I never saw him happier than when he was with you Poppet.”

“What about when he was with you?”

“Oh come now.” He shifted her in his arms and moved the bucket a little further away. “You know me. I’m insufferable.”

“I love you Jaskier.” She cried as she shivered with less and less energy.

“I love you too Poppet.”

He carried her from the city. Into the forest. Her heart stopped beating before they arrived. He dug her grave and buried her with her lute and her pearl necklace.

With the pearl he’d given to her as a birthday gift. From him and Geralt.

When Regis passed it felt absurd. Humans weren’t supposed to outlive goddamn vampires in their fifth fucking century.

And then there was Geralt. Died in Yennefer’s arms along with her.

“It was supposed to be me.” He told no one as Ciri led their bodies out to the lake. “I was supposed to die with him.” Love so great not even death can part us.

But the story was never really about him was it?

Nenneke had a garden full of plants that grew under a crystal skylight. They didn’t grow anywhere else in the world anymore.

He’d asked Geralt about it. She’d said something about the sun and how it was changing. Apparently Geralt had asked why they all didn’t live under crystal skylights then, if it was so deadly.

“It’s already too late for us.” She’d said.

She talked liked the world was ending but the world ended all the time. And he still woke up in the morning.

Zoltan’s beard turned grey. He supposed he should have been thankful that Zoltan got to turn grey. It was better than most of the people he’d loved.

“How’s your fucking hair still Gold. You’re supposed to be getting old too!”

“I dye it.” He lied with a roll of the eyes. He’d stopped dying it years ago.

That winter he buried Zoltan too.

Golden eyes stared at him in confusion. “You look just like.” He started. His thin hair was grey. His wolf medallion gleamed in the sunlight that streaked into the bar.

“You’re one of the last Witchers i think.” He told him as the waves crashed outside. “Might even be the last.”

“Fucking hope so.” He sat down across from him and stole his beer. “Shitty job and a shitty life.” He squinted at him- which Jaskier knew was entirely unnecessary. He just forgotten to adjust his eyes. “What’s your name bard?”

“Dandelion.” He answered. It had been for the last century. “Yours?”

“Lambert.” He downed the drink. “You really think i’m the last? That worth a song? One of my brothers had a lot of songs.”

“Yes I suppose he did.” He waved for another drink. “And look what it got him.”

“Died surrounded by people who loved him.”

“Are you sure you know what a pogrom is?”

That got him a sharp toothy grin.

“I could write you a song but-” He was tired of burying people he loved.

“But?”

“I’m cursed you see.” It was definitely a curse these days. “I’ll live until the last of my songs is forgotten. I really don’t need anymore material.”

Lambert leaned forward curiously. “Doesn’t sound like a curse.”

“You don’t think it sounds like a curse?” He sneered. Lambert’s face faltered. “To outlive everyone you love?”

Lambert paused. Thinking. “Write me a song then. Play it just for me. So if my song’s the last we’ll go together.”

“And what’s my payment for this song?”

“Company.” Lambert’s grey eyes glittered. “You look like you need it.”

“Not as much as you. I bet you talk to your horse.”

“Well i know you do pretty boy. Heard you in the stable.”

He leaned back on the bench. “So what’s a Witcher do in a world without monsters?”

He shrugged. “Fish mostly.”

“I can do that. Once almost snagged a catfish the size of you. Got a djinn instead. Very bad deal honestly.”

“You expect me to believe that? I know about Bards and Ballads and how you’re all rotten liars.”

“Don’t forget about fisherman and their tales.”

The boat leaked worse than an old drunkard but it was small enough and the lake calm enough that it didn’t make him sick.

“I could just kill you. Curse probably can’t fix decapitation.” Lambert offered with his stick in the water. He claimed were bombs they could use instead if they got desperate. Or bored.

He smiled and shook his head. “Give it a try.”

Lambert raised an eyebrow but pulled a silver blade from it’s sheath.

His pole reeled and the boat tilted to the side, plunging him and the sword into the water.

He laughed as the attempted to drag the monstrous fish to the boat. Lambert cursed and climbed in. Yanking at the rod until the line snapped and they fell back into the boat in a painful pile. Laughing.

He didn’t remember the last time he’d laughed.

“Sing me a song bard.” Lambert would request from under his floppy sun brimmed hat. “No else up here but me.”

“There’s an entire stone keep on the hill.”

“No ones lived there in centuries. No one can hear you up here but me.”

He frowned at the ruins on the hill. Lambert kicked him.

He grinned and for the first time in decades - sang.

Maybe. Maybe the world hadn’t ended. Maybe it had finally restart.

“What was this place called?” He asked as they wandered through the crumbled ruin, covered in moss and ivy.

“Kaer Morhen.” He said like the words hurt him.

They hurt him too. He laughed.

He laughed some more.

He couldn’t stop laughing until Lambert smacked him hard enough to see stars.

“I never got to come here. Geralt.” He caught the flinch but moved past it. “Never trusted me enough to even let me know which country it was in.”

“So you were his bard.”

He nodded as Lambert kicked a stone apart. “He was right not to tell me of course. But.” It still hurt that his best friend hadn’t trusted him with his home. He’d taken Yennefer here. But not him. Never him.

He didn’t deserve Geralt’s trust. A thief, a liar, a spy, a bard. It still hurt.

“Well a wolf finally took you here. Is it everything you fucking dreamed?”

He took it in. “Nah. It’s rubbish.”

Lambert smirked. “Yeah. At least that hasn’t changed.”

“You’re hairs getting grey bard.”

“What?” He nearly leaped into the water in his haste to look.

Grey strands streaked his beard.

“Thank you.” He cried. “Thank you.”

“Still owe me that song Dandy.”

He wrote Lambert a lot of songs. Performed for an audience of one.

“Are you really okay with the fact no one will ever hear them? I mean what’s the point in being immortalized in song if-”

“Yeah. Didn’t give a shit about the songs.”

“Hey!” He protested. Kicking him where he lounged in front of the fire. “They’re good songs!”

He grunted in fake pain. Wiggled out of range. “Did Geralt ever tell you why he liked having you around?”

“My charming personality I assume.”

Lambert snorted.

He sat down on the floor and poke him. “Don’t fall asleep. Tell me why you think he did.”

“No one tells Witchers bedtime stories.”

“Oh.” Lambert was halfway to sleep already. “Would you like one?”

“Yeah.”

“What you think happens after?” They were huddled together. Old and grey as a storm raged outside. “We die.”

“I gave up on gods when i was a child.”

“So did i.”

“Then.” He paused. Listened to the howl. “Whatever’s next at least neither of us is going alone.”

Lambert squeezed his bony hand. “What’s the chance we see them again?”

“Hm.” He pretended to consider. “Well we’re definitely going to hell so-”

“Like anyone we gave a shit about wouldn’t be.”

“Point.”

He closed his golden eyes. “Hey Dandy.”

“Yeah?”

“Sing me out.”

“It’d be my pleasure.”

And quite singing filled the drafty cabin until the song stopped.

The world ended.

And at long last no one woke up in the morning.