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reverend-dog · 1 month

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Sweet Memory

Everything hurt.

Alison shifted to relieve pressure on one hip, and groaned.

“Honey?” a voice asked. “Can you hear me?” A voice Alison knew. A voice that had no business speaking to her with such concern.

Alison heaved her eyelids upward and waited for the fog to clear from her eyes. Her ears did not deceive. “Jordan,” she croaked. The name chafed her parched throat, but she managed to squeeze out “What’re you doing here?” before she dissolved in a coughing spasm.

“Oh,” Jordan cried, and snatched a jug with a flexible straw from a bedside table, “here!” As she held the jug patiently, waiting for the fit to subside, she digested the question. “What am I doing here?” She smiled. “Silly, where else would I be?”

The room rocked and spun like a carnival ride, and Alison lay back, gasping. She wrapped her lips around the straw as Jordan held the jug close, and gulped. Cool water slid down and soothed her irritated trachea. She slid her eyes sideways to regard Jordan. “Oh,” she replied, “most anywhere else.” Details of the room crept into Alison’s awareness. “A hospital,” she noted. “What happened?”

“You don’t remember?” Jordan’s face strained in anxiety. Alison noted lines around Jordan’s eyes and mouth. Not deep, but they hadn’t been there before. “You took a surfboard upside the head. Lincoln, bless him, caught you and towed you in. You were non-responsive, so Dad insisted on bringing you in.” Her brows furrowed, and the corners of her mouth drew down more. “What…” Jordan paused and bit her lip. “What do you remember?”

Events rushed back to Alison’s memory. She sprang to a sitting position, and braced herself on the bed rails. “The crash!” she cried. “Mom and Dad!” She flicked wide eyes at Jordan, uncaring in that moment for the nature of their relationship. “Where are they?”

Jordan’s face reflected pain, though not of the body. “It came back to you,” she breathed. “Oh, baby. They --”

“Don’t!” Alison snapped. “Don’t call me that!”

Jordan recoiled as if physically struck by Alison’s words. “I – I’m sorry,” she spoke just above a whisper. “Mom – my mother insisted that we take you in. She actually went to court for it. She said it was our responsibility, even if the other driver was at fault.”

Alison pulled her eyes away from Jordan’s face, and squinted into the dark grey depths of the television that hung from the wall. “We were going home after the tournament,” she mumbled. “We heard sirens, then… there was a bang, the car shook.” Her eyes opened wider. “Mom – she must have been knocked out by the impact, her head was just limp. Dad was trying to steer. He yelled at me to get down, and I was fighting with my belt when everything just – stopped.”

Jordan stared at Alison, eyes wide and terrified. “And after?” she whispered. “What do you remember about after?”

Alison shook her head as her temper ignited. “No!” she growled, and scowled at Jordan. “What are you doing here? What are you --” She jabbed a finger at Jordan, “of all people, doing in my hospital room? Since when do you give a flying fuck about me, except for how much you can torture me?” She sat up straight. “Is that what this is? You heard about the accident, and somehow snuck in here?” She shook her head, anger staving off vertigo. “I knew from experience you’d kick a person when they’re down, but this is low even for you!” She grabbed the control unit off the bed. “Where’s the call button?”

“Wait!” Jordan begged. Urgency, unfamiliar but apparently genuine, sang clearly enough in her tone to make Alison look her way. Tears streamed down Jordan’s cheeks, following the tracks of the lines that Alison did not remember being there. Jordan dug in her pocket and hauled out a phone. She tapped the screen, then offered the device to Alison. “Just look,” she implored.

Still glaring, Alison took the phone. She glanced at the screen, blinked, and stared. The timestamp on the image claimed it had been taken a year later than the last date Alison remembered. Herself and Jordan, arms hooked over each other’s shoulders, Jordan’s free arm extended out of frame to hold the phone. They wore matching shirts, tour shirts for Alison’s favorite band. The year displayed on the shirts was the same as the timestamp.

Alison swiped the screen, and another photo appeared. The timestamp was a few months later in the same year. This time, the two of them grinned in front of Cinderella’s Castle, accidentally photobombing a proposal in the background. The third picture showed Alison and Jordan in complementary gowns, corsages adorning both their wrists. Somebody else clearly had held the phone, since both her and Jordan’s hands were interlaced.

Alison swiped more. Other people showed in some of the pictures, most of them unknown to Alison. She recognized some of the locations, but knew she had never visited some of them. And in all the pictures, she and Jordan, together, best friends… or more. The last picture clinched it: the two of them, tousled, sated, smirking, in a disheveled bed.

“What is this?” Alison whispered to Jordan.

“The car that hit yours,” Jordan told her, “was stolen. My dad was in pursuit. Mom and Dad… they didn’t know about --” Jordan’s voice cracked, she choked back a sob, then met Alison’s eyes again. “They didn’t know I’d been bullying you. When it came out that you had no next of kin, Mom insisted we foster you.”

“You must have loved that,” Alison retorted.

“I hated the idea,” Jordan confessed. “The last place I wanted you was in my house. I was scared shitless you’d call me out to them.” She chuckled. “I couldn’t believe my luck when you came out with amnesia.”

Alison’s scowl deepened. “I see,” she spat. “You took advantage of the situation to convince me we were besties, so your parents wouldn’t find out the truth.” She shook her head. “You are such a piece of shit.”

Jordan nodded, eyes downcast. “I know. And you’re right. That’s how it started. The doctors insisted we not tell you anything about the crash. They warned that forcing the memories before you were ready might make things worse.” She lifted her gaze again, and Alison blinked at the ardor that shone in Jordan’s eyes. “Then as things went on, and we spent more time together… it was like meeting for the first time.”

“Literally, for me,” Alison noted with acid in her tone.

“Before,” Jordan continued, “all I saw you as was a target. You weren’t even a person. But the way you were after the crash… you were still you, your same personality. But something, I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I just couldn’t keep on like before. For some reason, I even felt guilty for everything I did. At first, I thought of it like a second chance, a way to make up to you for it. But it was also because, if or when you learned what happened to your parents, I didn’t want you to be alone for it.

Jordan offered Alison a smile. “I didn’t mean for it to go as far as it did. You surprised me when you came on to me.” “I came on to you?” Alison cried, eyes wide.

“I held off,” Jordan claimed, “I didn’t want to take advantage of you, especially with the chance of you remembering.” She smiled again. “But you were just so damn charming, and sweet, and yes, seductive!” She shrugged. “You wore me down.”

Alison wanted to deny it. The pictures could be fake. Jordan might have sneaked into her room for the ultimate bullying. Mom and Dad might be elsewhere in the hospital, nursing their own injuries. One press of the call button, and the whole thing would be exposed.

And yet….

Something stirred, deep inside. Not a memory, but a feeling. Something tender and soft, warm and cuddly. Alison gazed at Jordan, at time etched in the corners of her eyes and mouth, and at the way her eyes met Alison’s. Jordan was not that good an actress.

“How long?” Alison asked.

Jordan smirked, and choked on a laugh. “Sorry,” she offered. “For a mad moment, I was tempted to reply, ‘Fifty-seven years.’” She dragged in a deep breath. “Three years.”

Alison stared. “We were in our senior year,” she whispered.

“I know,” Jordan acknowledged. “If it helps any, you already had enough credits that you didn’t need the finals.”

“I was going to go to college,” Alison murmured.

“You did!” Jordan told her. “I mean, you are.” Her head tilted. “You don’t remember anything since the crash?”

“Remember?” Alison shook her head, “No. But,” she searched Jordan’s eyes, then lifted one hand to touch her face. “Feel.”

Jordan’s mouth stretched in a wide smile. “Oh my god,” she sighed, “oh, thank god! I was so scared!” She clapped a hand over Alison’s, trapping it against her cheek. “I’ll help you!” she promised. “I don’t care what the doctors say! I’ll help you remember this time! I love you!”

Alison moved her fingers under Jordan’s hand, caressing Jordan’s cheek. “I believe you,” she said, then chuckled. “Hopefully it won’t take another three years.”

#fiction #short fiction #short story #writing #creative writing #amnesia #romance

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sopafa · 3 years

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Paraplegic Douxie! P3

Previous part / Next one

Douxie started drowning.

It was past lunchtime and Archie was alone in the room without a soul around to do something. He familiar was down asleep when he felt it, the body on where he was resting started moving and some gags were produced by his human troat. Archibald woke immediately, and the horror surrounded him when he saw Douxie, with his eyes still closed drowning in front of your eyes.

Some muscular spams moved his abdomen, and the tube inside his mouth made difficult his breathing. Archie didn't think it twice and punched the bottom of the wall to call for assistance, the dragon did everything to stay calm while his familiar couldn't breathe, and with some tears in his eyes, he screamed with all the force of his longs to Barbara, hoping that she could do something.

It was a matter of seconds for a couple of doctors to rush into the room, that Archie barely had time to hide behind the door.

On the nurse halfway, Barbara was talking with her son and the trollhunters team about the situation. It has been four days, and yet the wizard hadn't woke. That's when he heard the commotion and turned around to see her partners running into Douxie's room. Jim saw the color drown from his mother's face and before giving him time to react, she was already running to the Wizard's habitation.

"Oh, no..." Was everything that Jim said.

====

The intubation was the worst thing that Douxie had ever experienced. He couldn't breathe, his head was spinning, and his body felt dizzy, his eyelids felt like he had a pair of weights dangling from, and then nausea.

Luckily, some good soul removed the tube from his trachea, so he was able to breathe again. The bad part is that his body had tried to expulse the tube by himself, so the accumulation of gags did their work and, before he even knew it, he was already cover in vomit.

His body retched making his abdomen hurt, but Douxie had no strength to even move his face to avoid slop more liquid over him. A pair of hands ran fast to his face to clean him right away. Douxie made his major effort to look at them, but he was so tired, that a simple hum was the only he achieved babble before starting throwing up again.

He felt miserable, he didn't want that anybody saw him like this. He felt shame, he had probably stained the person next to him with his body fluids and he wasn't even able to look at them in the eyes.

"It's okay- it's okay." A soft voice said just on his side. It was comforting and calm.

A wet towel was gently pressed on his face and began to wipe him, while more relaxing comments were spoken by that calming voice. He tried to look again, it took him a couple of minutes, and an insane amount of will, to finally open his eyes, but after a few fail tries, he finally succeeded. That hair and that eyes could only belong to one person.

Ms. Lake, he tried to pronounce, but the only thing that came out of him was a groan.

As he expected, the bedsheets and part of Ms. Lake's uniform were covered in puke, but the doctor didn't seem to care, she was still looking at him with that warm smile.

"How are you feeling?" Barbara removed some hair from his face. "You had a long surgery, and it looks that the anesthesia didn't make you feel very well".

"'R-" The wizard tried to call for his familiar.

"He's okay. He's in here, like the rest."

Douxie fought to not close his eyes.

Maybe he was exhausted, maybe it was the drugs, but he could not keep himself awake for more time.

Once the doctors were out of the room, and only the Trollhunter's mother and the familiar were in, they share a warm smile in silence. The beeps of the monitors and the numbers on the screen showed that Douxie was stable, and his heart race was normal.

"He is going to be fine." Barbara said petting the cat.

He is going to be fine.

====

"Douxie's body was rejecting the intubation" Barb explained to the team a couple of hours later.

"That's something bad?" Toby was afraid to ask, but nobody else had the courage to.

Instead of bad news, a smile grown on the woman's lips before she started talking again.

"Actually, it's completely the opposite, Tobias. When the body rejects the help of the breathing tube, is because it can do it alone, so the tube isn't helping anymore, and it's treated as an intruder. We kept the tube to compensate for the right lung collapse, Douxie's lungs needed help doing their work, but it seems that they are doing better know"

"So, he is fine now?" Steve questioned with hope.

Barbara shook his head "He is better, but he still needs time".

====

When Douxie woke up for the second time, two days after, the analgesics were almost done. The sheets of the bed, as his gown, had been changed, at least, and his low groans captured the attention of both medics that were talking in the room.

Barbara rushed to his side and took his hand. With her motherhood aura, she looked at him and asked:

"How are you feeling?".

It took a moment for to Douxie realize where he was, and still, he tried to sit up. A big mistake, because of the moment he moved, his chest ached like hell. With a low groan, he put a hand to the place that hurt while Barbara helped him to lie down.

"Easy," She said before he tried to straighten again. "You have 3 broken ribs and had a collapsed lung. You really scared the guys out there" The second doctor -a male that Douxie didn't even care to read his name- stayed on his place a few steps of the door.

Hisirdoux didn't even try to move anymore. Instead, he sighed and asked how the rest was doing. Barbara rolled her eyes before telling him "They are fine, they had already received medical assistance, no one else is hurt... bad hurt" she corrected herself, and told him that he has been asleep for almost six days.

Douxie did not know how to react.

On a hand, it was not the first time he slept for days after a fight. On the other, it was the first time that that happened to him after meeting the Guardians of Arcadia, and he hasn't had the opportunity to tell them that fact.

Douxie disconnected himself for a moment, thinking about that. Should he told the rest that it didn't matter and was a collateral effect of using a lot of his magic? Or- wait, had he used a lot of magic on the battle? He didn't remember.

Hisirdoux sank deeper into his thoughts before he realized it. It was something simple, almost imperceptible, but he tried to accommodate under the sheets. The problem was that he couldn't.

He looked at his feet.

Barbara notices that and removed her hand from Douxie's. The redhaired ma'am looked concerned to her companion, both medics shared a serious look. But Douxie didn't even realize it.

The wizard was still looking at the blanket, there was something off.

He tried to move his fingers, but nothing.

His feet, same.

Slowly the color of his face faded, and his breathing started cracking.

His hands became fists.

"Douxie..." Barbaria tried to start.

"I- I don't" Jim's mother's heartbreak with the boy's voice. "I don't feel my legs"

Hisirdoux looked at Barbara with fear and terror in his eyes, she could see his body shaking and his voice hung by a thread.

Barbara didn't knew how to told him. She was supposed to be the one that told him the truth, but at that moment, she couldn't do it. She tried to act professional, and serious, but she couldn't because in front of her eyes there were nothing more than a poor scared child with no family, holding his sobs and asking her for help, because he couldn't feel his legs.

"Hisirdoux" Dr. Velazques approached the bed. "You suffered a very complicated accident. You fell for over 100 feets, to a car's hood. On the impact, you broke 3 ribs that occasionated the lung collapse. Also, you have some other injuries caused by the same fall, like a twisted wrist, a slight concussion, and a fracture on your spinal discs."

"A fracture? So it is not broken?" Velazques nodded, a sigh of relief was expulsed by Douxie's mouth.

"Unfortunately-" The blue-haired man looked at the doctor again. "A fracture on that zone causes irremediable damage to the nervous system. Your spinal cord was compromised, and we had to make surgery to stabilize it."

"It is fine now, right?"

"After we embed metallic bars to your spine. Yeah."

"But, why I can't feel my-"

Barbara took Douxie's hand.

"I do not think that you are understanding. Hisirdoux, we can't fix the damage to the nervous system. Your legs, hips, everything from the L5-down is paralyzed. The fall had caused you something that we call Paraplegia"

"What?-" He squeezed her hand.

"Douxie-"

"Even with rehabilitation, there is no guarantee that you would be able to walk after". Hisirdoux's heart broke.

The wizard would never walk again.

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abarbaricyalp · 3 years

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Inhale My Soul

am i reposting my favorites from the prompt meme from last night just by themselves? maybe

AO3 link in the reblog

Kisses 27: Desperate Kisses

Dissolving hadn’t felt like anything. Sam wasn’t sure he even understood what was actually happening. Maybe he’d thought it was just a trick of the reality stone. Maybe human minds weren’t meant to comprehend anything close to what had happened.

Coming back felt like dying.

He woke up on his back and he couldn’t breathe. It was like he had no lungs at all, just a trachea spasming in his throat without air, like a gills with no water. He grasped for the ground and the feeling of dirt was horrifying, a grave waiting to swallow him down into the Earth. The wind was knives on his skin. His suit felt like it was trying to pry his spine from his ribs. His legs ached like someone was trying to stretch the bones on a crank.

He must’ve screamed but there was no air to make a noise.

Finally sight came back and the first thing he saw were the trees falling over him, ready to crush him and hide him again.

Had anyone seen him disappear? No one was by his side. No one looked for him.

No, the trees weren’t falling. They were swaying in the wind. The sun kept gliding down through them with every shuffle of the leaves.

It was so quiet he felt like he could hear the leaves sighing as they grew.

It took him too long to realize the ragged breath that broke the silence like a gunshot came from his own chest. The hands digging his own grave shot to his chest, felt the rise and fall of his ribs and lungs, the proof that he was breathing. He was alive again.

He rolled onto his side and heaved until his ribs creaked, still firmly attached to his spine. There was nothing to come up, but the noise was comforting, the ache that he could name and handle was safe. Human. Living human.

His knees were in his legs when he leaned back on his haunches. They sank into the earth but the grave didn’t swallow him down. No unwilling sacrifice to be taken from him. He brought his dirt covered fingers--firm and whole and attached to him--up to his face. He found his cheeks, a beard with edges that were too straight for a man who had died and been put back together, his teeth. They throbbed in his gums like they were all about to fall out but they were there in his head. His tongue.

He could speak.

“Steve!” he shouted and his throat screamed in protest, the air in his lungs turned to fire. “Steve!” he called again and forced himself to his feet. His boots were tied. His pants were still tucked into them. There was no blood, which seemed wrong. He felt flayed open and left to soak into the ground. How could there be no blood?

“Steve!”

God, if Steve was dead…

Sam couldn’t lose more people. He couldn’t fight his way back. Not after this. Not while everything hurt so fucking much.

“Steve, please, God, where are you?!”

“Sam?”

Sam whirled around at the tired voice. The trees danced in his vision. The grass clutched at his legs, which still felt like they were being stretched out and sunk into the earth. The trees were going to take him over. The grass was going to eat him again. No one was looking. No one would find him. Why wasn’t anyone ever looking for him?

“Sam?” the voice called again.

Footsteps. Crushing grass. A metal screech in the bark of a tree. A colorful curse. “Sam, fuck, shout again!”

Sam stumbled forward, breaking free of the natural world trying to take him away again. He shoved himself away from a tree and crashed into a warm, solid, human body.

“Jesus, Sam,” Bucky breathed and wrapped his arms around Sam tightly. It hurt in the best way. Sam held him back, face hidden in Bucky’s shoulder. He didn’t even care about what gore he was smearing all over himself. Bucky’s hand came to the back of Sam’s head and Sam almost expected it to hit exposed brain but it didn’t. Instead his calloused fingers brushed over Sam’s short hair, smoothing over the natural lines and divots in it until goosebumps erupted over Sam’s skin.

Right. Things could feel good. That was part of being human and alive.

He had no idea how long they stood there. His shoulders were aching, but in a pleasant way that reminded him that there was something he loved right in front of him, in his arms.

Bucky was the first to move, stepping back half a step, a quarter of a step, barely any at all, just enough to bring his hands up to either side of Sam’s face. The cheeks and the mouth and the skin that was all there and new again. He tilted Sam’s head back, eyes intense and clear in front of Sam.

Had it not felt the same for him? Was he not grappling with his ridiculously weak claim to existence? Or, fuck, was this how he always felt after being frozen and woken up? Had he been going through this for seventy years with no one to run to? With no one to hold him and remind him that things could feel good?

Sam’s fingers tightened in Bucky’s vest and just as Bucky was starting to say something Sam couldn’t honestly answer--something about how he felt, if anything hurt, if he needed medical attention--Sam hauled him down into a desperate kiss. Their noses smashed together and pain bloomed across Sam’s face, made his eyes water, made him want to sneeze, made him want to lean into it all the more, like the pressed-on-bruise ache of Bucky’s arms around him.

He felt Bucky’s teeth notch a split into Sam’s lip by accident, crushed together with nowhere to go. Finally it softened. Bucky’s mouth pressed against his until Sam felt like he could actually breathe, until he could make his mouth do what he wanted, catch Bucky’s lower lip between both of his, wring out a noise he’d never heard the other man make before. Bucky’s hands on his face kept him close and Sam’s fingers tightened in his vest. He wanted to crawl into Bucky’s chest--felt like, maybe, he could after being unmade and remade. Their noses knocked together again as Sam tried to turn his head, kiss the other side of Bucky’s mouth, let Bucky bruise the rest of his lips.

Bucky pulled away, but didn’t let go of Sam’s face. Cool air flowed into Sam’s lungs until all of his bones and muscles felt like they slotted back into place.

“I can’t tell you how fucking happy I am to see you alive,” Bucky breathed.

We should talk about this. That. Later.

“I thought everyone was gone. I don’t know… I didn’t know how I came back. I thought it was just me.”

Bucky shook his head. “No. There’s hundreds of people. Not everyone, but at least half of us.”

Half of them.

“Oh my God,” Sam said. “Thanos won. He wiped out half of the universe.”

“I think that was us. I think...someone brought us back,” Bucky said. Pain flashed over his face as he looked at Sam and then pulled him in for another kiss. Sam tried to understand a second chance in it, but all he could feel was Bucky and relief and adoration. He wasn’t sure where that one came from more--him or Bucky.

“There’s still a fight,” someone said from behind them. Another magic shithead. Terror clutched at Sam’s chest like magic itself was enough to unmake him again, take him away again. “There’s still a world to save.”

Bucky’s hand found Sam’s between their bodies. Sam took a breath with lungs that almost seemed to work again. “What’re we waiting for then?” he asked.

#sambucky #sam wilson #bucky barnes #captain america #the falcon and the winter soldier #sambucky fanfiction #sambucky fanfic

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drawlfoy · 4 years

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Wonders of Ohio - P.7

masterlist (catch up with the series here!)

request guidelines (yes i am taking them!)

pairing: draco x reader

request: no! this is my original idea

summary: american high school senior is in for a surprise when her family takes on a foreign exchange student with a mysterious past.

warnings: teen drinking, mentions of an armed robbery, language, a brief hospital visit, and descriptions of illness

a/n: hey. so. this is definitely where stuff starts to go down. thanks so much for waiting...i have so many more things planned for this series and i’m thrilled to see it come together the way that it is right now. thank you very much for reading and thank you for your patience!

taglist: @gruffle1 @missmulti @cleopatera @hahaboop @accio-rogers @geeksareunique @eltanin-malfoy @war-sword @cams-lynn @itsivyberry @ayo-cowbelly @nerd-domland @yesnerdsblog @shizarianathania @evanstanfanatic @strawberriesonsummer @hariosborn @night-ving @straightzoinked @imintoodeeptostop @icintliviinyiniilsiji @erisdogwood @loveissupernatural

word count: 6k

song recs:

murders - miracle musical

pink in the night - mitski

always, forever - cults

ice dance - ashton gleckman

enjoy!

Y/N should’ve felt cold when she awoke on the wet pavement. Despite a figure looming over her and blocking out most of the rain, the back of her neck and body was drenched in the cool water from the puddle to her right. It was easily in the mid 40s at this point in the evening, something that would ordinarily make her toes curl and her figure tremble, but it felt...different.

She felt like her insides had been scorched, like she’d downed an entire pitcher of boiling hot water. Every movement she made hurt--right down to wiggling her fingertips and her eyes. Her body was exhausted. If she hadn’t known any better, she would’ve thought that she’d just finished running a marathon in hell.

“Can you hear me?” A posh British voice cut through her musings as the figure above her came into focus.

Draco.

“Yeah. Was there a fire?” Her words left her throat painfully, scratching their way up her vocal chords.

“Er...what do you remember?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. The memories of the night slowly began trickling back--she’d done Draco’s tie, told him to watch his drink, argued with Chad about how funny he was, and walked to...Oh, yeah. The antique store. The box. The stars inside of her.

She flinched. “I fainted. I’m sorry. That was really stupid of me.”

“What?” Draco shifted back, the light from the front of the antique store catching his face. There were lines in his forehead that she’d never seen before. “Why?”

“I didn’t eat enough today,” said Y/N. Speaking was starting to feel less and less like lighting her trachea on fire. “I was really nervous and I lost my appetite. I’m an easy fainter.”

He cleared his throat. “Er, okay. Yeah. That was it. Anyways, we have to get home. You need to, uh, eat.”

“Okay.”

Y/N allowed herself to be hauled up onto her feet, swaying slightly once her full weight was on her feet. Her sense of gravity felt like it had been loosened. With every step, she felt pulled to the ground from a different part of her core.

“Steady. Don’t fall.” By some miracle, once Draco’s hands were gently guiding her shoulders, she was able to make her way to the backseat of Heather’s car before she collapsed.

“Where are we going?” asked Y/N. Despite no longer feeling like she was near death, her head was still cloudy.

“Home,” was all Draco said as he slid in on the other side of the car.

She didn’t bother putting on her seatbelt--she still felt like she was about to keel over--and rested her head on the car window. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Draco open the passenger car door for a moment, pause, shut it, and instead tug open the door across from her and slide in.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“My insides feel like they’re on fire.” Y/N winced as she tried to shift and get the weight off of her neck. “I think I’m sick.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” said Heather from the front, her eyes catching Y/N’s from the mirror. “You were just laying down in the middle of a rainstorm. Go home and take some Zi-cam or something, jesus.”

Y/N tried to chuckle in response, but it came out as a sorry squeak instead. No one made a move to further comment on the evening’s events as Heather pulled onto the freeway and began to gain speed. The sudden lurches and changes of speed in the car set Y/N’s stomach into a churning frenzy, her head growing light again.

“Draco.”

Her voice was so soft it was hardly audible--the syllables jumbled together on her lips in a quiet mess--but he immediately snapped to attention.

“What is it?”

She took a deep breath. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“For the love of god, at least try and hold it until we get off the freeway.”

“Shut up, Heather,” said Draco. Y/N couldn’t help but feel the slightest twinge of satisfaction as he rolled his eyes and turned his attention back on her. “Is it the motion? Are you sick from that?”

“I don’t know,” she managed.

He sighed. “Helpful.”

“Dick.”

Draco frowned at her, but she could see the slightest twinkle of amusement in his eye. “Can you move into the middle seat for me? Do you need help?”

Once Y/N had scooted over from her side, he leaned away from her and pointed up to the sunroof above them. “Go ahead and count all the lights that you can see in the sky. I promise it’ll make you feel better. Just keep your head pointed up.”

She tilted her head back. The night sky was largely gloomy, but the flickering lights of the planes that dove in and out of clouds provided some glowing dots. As she counted, Heather hit the fog strips and nearly threw her back into her original seat. She felt a warm hand wrap around her wrist and gently grip, the long fingers completely encircling it.

Y/N blinked. The nausea was gone. “What are you, a sorcerer or something?” she joked, not expecting to see Draco so frozen at the comment. “Kidding. I just feel better already. Thank you.”

He nodded and turned away to look out the window. His soft grip on her hand was long gone, and Y/N took Heather’s slightly uncoordinated driving as a cue to slide back into her seat and buckle up.

“If you really need to puke,” said Heather, “I have a Target bag back somewhere under the passenger seat. Please avoid the seats. They’re authentic vegan leather.”

“I don’t think that’s a thing.”

“Just don’t throw up, okay?”

Y/N was in Art History when it happened. The chills began, so intense and teeth-chattering that her teacher took one look at her and sent her immediately to the nurse. Sylvia offered to walk her, but she was only allowed to under the condition that she avoid all physical contact with her and sanitized each surface that Y/N touched. It was a wonder she made it to the first floor office--each step felt heavier than the last, and from the beginning she felt moments from simply passing out.

A temperature check revealed that she had a mild fever--100.3 F, to be exact--and a call home resulted in her mother’s full voicemail box and the remembrance that her parents were out for the week.

“Can someone else drive you?” Nurse Hazelwood asked as she stepped away to douse her hands in hand sanitizer. “I don’t think you should get yourself home in this state.”

After some deliberation, it was decided that Sylvia would take her home and call someone for a ride back. It was a bit overkill--but she didn’t know what else to do.

“And can you make sure Draco has a ride home today?” Y/N asked as they pulled into the driveway of the Y/L/N home.

“Stop stressing so much, dude.” Sylvia took the keys out of the ignition to give her an expectant look. “You’re sick. Go inside and make some soup or something. I’m sure your boyfriend will figure it out.”

“Now I really am gonna be sick,” said Y/N as she rolled her eyes.

The rest of her afternoon was a blur. Y/N tried to force down some chicken soup, but it took all her might to keep it from coming right back up. It was safe to say her appetite was gone.

After a failed attempt at walking up the stairs to crawl into bed, she collapsed onto the couch. The last thing she remembered was the sound of footsteps outside the front door.

Y/N hadn’t been to the hospital since she had to get stitches in middle school. Then, all she did was lie back in the chair and try to shut her eyes as the needle wove in and out of her torn thigh (bad bike accident, in case anyone was curious). But now was different.

Her eyes hurt to open, like someone had thrown soap in them and the very line where her two lids met were lined with knives. Everything inside of her was on fire--a manic, all-consuming fire that made it impossible for her to keep anything down.

The nurses and doctors were no help--not like Y/N actually had her eyes long enough to see any of them--but their voices were enough to let her know what was going on.

“Fever of 104--”

“Can’t keep anything down--”

“Severely dehydrated--”

“Tested negative for everything we tried--”

“Never seen anything like this before--”

“No viruses were detected--”

“Not mono--”

As she wove in and out of consciousness, one fact stuck in her mind: I think I might die here. Something is very wrong.

When she did dream, images of the box she picked up plagued her mind. The symbol, etched lightly into the black top, glowed menacingly in her hands. Open it, open it something around her urged, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t.

It was during one of these dreams that her world suddenly shifted back to her hospital room. She was suspended above her body, looking down at the tangle of IVs and various other wires that imprisoned her...but she wasn’t alone.

The dim lighting and darkness outside confirmed her suspicion that it was indeed late at night. A figure, tall and slim, was sitting to her left. It was whispering something unintelligible as it gently took her hand and squeezed.

If Y/N could scream, she would’ve. The sudden pull back to her body was so strong that she was yanked across the room so she just barely hovered over her corporeal form. She could feel a grip, steady and firm, wrapped around her hand as a rush of cool ran through her. Each breath, each pulse, each heartbeat pulled her back to herself. It felt like a bucket of water had been poured over--into--her, extinguishing the flames that were eating away the inside of her.

The figure’s whispering finally came to an end as she settled back into her physical body. Before she drifted off to a peaceful slumber, a familiar voice rose above the quiet whispers.

“I’m sorry.”

“Y/N!”

Her eyes shot open to see her mother, heavy eye bags and all, standing over her bed. “Hi Mo-”

“You scared me half to death!” Mrs. Y/L/N interrupted, placing her hand on her forehead. “No fever. Thank god. You know, when you were a baby, you were horribly ill with…”

Y/N sat and pretended she was listening as she relinquished in the fact that she was awake, she was here. The fire inside of her was long gone, replaced with the familiar...whatever was there before. Nothing? Maybe. Nothing was good, or at least better than the painful fire. It struck her with a sudden urgency that she had no idea what day it was, much less time. What about her homework? What about her UChicago application? Her counselor was supposed to submit her letter of rec a week ago...or a week ago from whenever she was brought to the hospital.

“Honey, are you even listening?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said.

“That’s what I thought. The food here is horrendous--of course you’re excited to go home.” Mrs. Y/L/N took her glasses off to wipe at the lens in a gesture that seemed more habitual and less effective. “You poor thing. Your father is still in New York--John simply couldn’t have him leave--but he’ll be back as soon as he can. Let’s get you out of here.”

The next few hours were a strange blur of paperwork, changes of clothes, and a bag of medication. The nurses and doctors were bewildered at her miraculous recovery and expressed this at every chance they had on her way out, reminding her to immediately seek attention if she feels anything similar again.

“What day is it?” Y/N finally asked once they were on the way home.

“Wow, you really were out of it.” Mrs. Y/L/N flicked her blinker on as she merged onto the freeway. “Sunday. You were there almost a whole week.”

“Huh? What about school? Do my teachers know? How did Draco get to school? Is he ok?”

“Of course your teachers know, hun. They’re all being very forgiving with their late work policies. As long as you’re putting effort into learning the material you missed, they have no problem letting you skip out on the homework. As for Draco...I think he’s fine. Sylvia’s family took him under their wing for the week. He’s still alive.”

And such a statement was proven when Y/N walked through the front door. Draco shot up from his seat at the living room couch the moment they locked eyes, his hands wringing back and forth.

“You’re okay.”

“You’re okay too,” she responded airily. “When I wasn’t dying I was worrying myself about how you’d do without me. I see my fears of you walking into moving traffic didn’t come true, thank God.”

His lips, tight, offered her the slightest upturn.

“Y/N, dearie, no need to harass the boy,” her mother said. “Up to your room. I’ll bring you some soup in a moment. You need to rest, young lady.”

She sent one last teasing grin at Draco before she was ushered up the steps, her mother fussing over her the entire way.

“So,” Sylvia said, crossing her legs over the other and giving Y/N a wicked look, “Consider this your last formal invitation to my Halloween party. It’s this Friday. It’s not even the night before the ED deadline. You should go.”

“I don’t know, Vy,” said Y/N. Her art history notes lay untouched in front of her as the teacher droned on about something related to how mannerism as an art style came to fame during the...Reformation? She didn’t know. “I’m kind of tired. I feel bad about leaving Draco alone, too.”

“Dude.”

“What?”

Sylvia rolled her eyes. “Will you just do us all a favor and admit that you like him? It’s getting exhausting. Just ask him to come with you.”

“You’re absolutely off your rocker if you think I’m gonna do that,” Y/N said.

“I’m just saying, you’ve done weirder things. Like almost dying from...literally nothing.”

“Hey, hey, don’t be rude. I’ll think about it but no guarantees. I don’t really think Draco is the partying type, though.”

“I’d be careful about making such a wild assumption. You never know what goes on in those posh private British schools for rich kids or wherever he went.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

Her friend laughed. “No. Just an optimist.”

Y/N swung the sleeve of her cardigan at her, whacking her pretty good on the bicep. If Sylvia was bothered by it, she didn’t show it. “Fine. I’ll ask him as a friend.”

“Pansy.”

Y/N was never the type to enjoy background noise as she worked, but there was something nostalgic about hearing the identical voices of her local news anchors in the room over as she sat at the kitchen table and worked on a last minute Physics review set.

“Hey loser,” she called out as she saw a head of blond hair pass by her to get to the kettle. “Care to join me?”

Draco turned, his mouth open and ready to issue a retort before he appeared to change his mind. He’d been oddly distant lately, avoiding her in the common spaces they often saw each other and choosing to get breakfast and his evening tea at times that he knew she wouldn’t be down in the kitchen for. Perhaps that was the reason why she was sitting at the kitchen table at present, but of course she’d never admit that. Not even to herself.

“Can’t. I’m a bit busy with work.”

“Draco,” she chided. “What work is it? I can help you, you know.”

He paused for a few seconds, taking in the scatter of papers on the table and the nearly complete review sheet. “The Physics review is taking me a bit of time,” he said, his tone forced and resigned.

“Go grab it!” She grinned as his scowl deepened. “If you’re nice I’ll let you copy.”

She lost track of time as they went over his work, his pencil marks filling the page with symbols that were unfamiliar to her.

“Your handwriting is really nice,” she noted. “Like, so nice that I feel like you could really make it as a study youtuber or a study blogger or whatever. You have that potential if you want to tap into it, dude.”

“I have no idea what that is,” he said neatly as he punched an equation into her calculator.

“Fair.”

She sat still for a few more moments, watching as her study partner’s chest rose and fell with each breath he took. Sylvia’s Halloween party was just a few days away, and she needed to ask him at some point. Every time she mustered up the courage to open her mouth and hitch her breath, the words would die on her tongue.

The silence weighed heavy in the air as the words of the news anchors floated over…”multiple reports of an armed robbery….suburbs surrounding Cincinnati...cautioned to lock doors...potential link to the missing persons case…”

“Draco,” she said finally. He jolted up from his work to gaze at her. His eyes were probably the prettiest things she’d ever seen--all pale and metallic and silvery. “Uh, I’m going to this Halloween party this Friday. You should come with me, it sounds like it’ll be fun. I think that Heather will be there.”

Y/N mentally groaned at her admission to Heather’s attendance but didn’t know what else to say. She wanted him to come--even if it was so he could spend the whole time being woo-ed over by her.

“Er,” he began, twirling his pencil around his fingers. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Homework, you know.”

“Just finish it before--That’s what I’m doing.”

“I think I’m go--”

The slam of the front door made both of them jump, scattering Y/N’s long forgotten work and threatening to knock Draco’s mug over.

“Hi kids,” Mrs. Y/L/N greeted as she entered the kitchen, an armful of grocery bags in tow. “Studying?”

“Yeah,” Y/N answered. “By the way, Mom, Sylvia invited me over to her house on Friday for a sort of Halloween get together. Can I go?”

Her mother was silent for a few moments as she methodically unpacked the paper bags on the counter.

“I don’t see why not. Is Draco coming too?”

“No,” he replied before Y/N even had the chance to open her mouth.

“I don’t think you should be home alone at night, my dear,” said her mother. “Have you seen the news? There’s someone on the loose. I’d feel much better if you were with Y/N--Robert and I are going to an auction that night. We won’t be around.”

“I’ll be fi--”

“If Y/N is going, you’re going,” Mrs. Y/L/N said as she finished unloading and brushed her hands off on her thighs. Her no nonsense demeanor rarely showed itself, but when it did, she was difficult to argue with.

Y/N shrunk down in her seat as Draco sent her a sour look.

Sorry she mouthed. If he noticed, he didn’t show it.

“Remind me again why we’re walking?”

Draco’s snotty tone carried through the crisp fall air as they neared the street that Sylvia lived on.

“Because,” said Y/N, “Quite frankly, I don’t think I can get through being in an enclosed space with Heather for an entire night without being at least a little buzzed. And I’m not gonna have you drive us home.”

“Hmph.” His dress shoes, odd pointed tips and all, kicked at the fall leaves below them. His costume was literally nothing different than what he wore when he arrived--a crisp white dress shirt, an oddly cut blazer, and a weird looking green and silver pin attached to his lapel.

“If anyone asks,” she had told him from the hallway as they were getting ready to go that afternoon, “Just say you’re a corporate rat or something.”

He’d snorted at her choice of clothing--a completely dark brown set up with a picture of a shoe taped to her chest.

“I’m the shoe that that Iraqi reporter threw at Bush,” she had explained.

He just stared.

“If you aren’t having fun, please just let me know,” Y/N said as they turned one of the last corners. “We can tell her our fish died or something. Sylvia would totally understand.”

“We don’t have a fish.”

“I know, genius,” she teased, giving him a little punch. Instead of balking, he just crinkled his nose. “But she doesn’t.”

“I think she does.”

“You’re missing the point. You’ll tell me if you want to go back home, promise?”

“I want to go home.”

“You’re going to be the death of me.”

He grinned as they waited for Sylvia to open the door.

The next few hours were a bit of a blur. Y/N didn’t drink much at first--maybe the equivalent of 2 or 3 shots, spaced out in between a couple of sips of water--but the energy in Sylvia’s home definitely had her more buzzed than usual. There was something about her home that always felt twice as spooky, a type of underlying energy that pulsed at the seams.

To her surprise, Draco actually took a cup of whatever Sylvia offered him and downed it. She laughed when she saw him finally lower the cup as he furrowed his brow at her.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

His features looked softer in the dim lighting of Sylvia’s living room--all the tension that he carried in his shoulders and face seemed to be gone. When he smiled at her, it was all she could do to keep herself from disintegrating into the couch.

As the night wore on, Y/N felt herself getting progressively more tipsy, and, in her haze, she could see that Draco was going down a similar path. He was touchier than she would have expected--hanging onto her elbow or sleeve whenever Sylvia or Y/N said anything funny, not moving his leg when her thigh was pressed against his, stretching his arm out behind her and resting it on the back of the couch--and she found herself wishing she was sober enough for it to feel real. Maybe she was so drunk that she was imagining it all. Maybe she was actually asleep next to her toilet at home after throwing it all up and was just dreaming.

“Fuck!” Someone exclaimed, prompting her to look up. Abby, a girl she kind of knew from her grade, had spilled the entirety of her drink on the coffee table.

“Y/N,” Sylvia whined, “I’m too tired to get the paper towels. Will you and Draco go?”

Despite the half-hearted protests from Draco, she managed to haul him up by his arm as she pushed back the pleasure that Sylvia saw them as a sort of team, a sort of unit.

“I think she keeps the extra paper towels in her pantry,” she told him as they made their way over to the quiet part of the house. The light hanging over the kitchen island was on, but the rest of the room was bathed in darkness.

“Right he--”

Y/N froze as she saw it--or, as she would come to discover, them.

Heather and Chad stared back at them, looking much more disheveled than one is permitted simply sitting on the kitchen counter. It was hard to make it out clearly, but Heather’s cheeks looked flushed. Chad’s matched.

“In a fucking kitchen? Chad, I thought you were better than this,” Y/N said, turning and grabbing the paper towels from the cabinet behind them. “Get a room, you weirdos.”

Chad laughed, a short lived and awkward sound.

Once they were back out in the living room, Y/N tossed the paper towels to Sylvia. “I think we’re gonna head back. We have to walk, you know.”

Sylvia dramatically threw herself back onto the couch. “I suppose. Thanks for coming guys, it was nice to see you outside of class again.”

“Likewise!” Y/N called over her shoulder as she walked out of the door with Draco by her side.

The walk home was silent for the first few moments. Despite the fact that it was late October, the night was pleasantly crisp and not too cold. The only sources of illumination were the scattered street lights, casting a soft orange hue on the two.

As they turn the corner onto the main street, Y/N’s shoe caught on a crack in the pavement in a movement that would’ve sent her sprawling face-first into the cold concrete if it hadn’t been for Draco’s hand grabbing her own and yanking her back up.

“Thanks,” she said. His hands were warmer than usual despite the coolness of the air.

He just sent her a small smile as he untangled their fingers and placed his hand back into his pants pockets.

“Weird to see Chad and Heather, right?” Y/N nudged him with her shoulder. To her surprise, he nudged back.

“I guess. I thought it was obvious, though.”

“What?! No way.”

“Are you blind? Heather’s been all over Chad,” he said.

“Are you? I thought she was obsessed with you!”

“No, definitely not.”

“Are you sure about that?” she asked, turning to look at him. The dim glow of the streetlights made his hair look almost like a halo. “She wouldn’t leave you alone.”

“Dunno.” Draco shrugged. It was then that Y/N remembered how much he’d had that night.

“I’m sorry. I know you’re probably not in the right mindset to be analyzing other people right now,” said Y/N.

His lips twitched upwards. “No, no, it’s ok. I’m fine. I just couldn’t be bothered over the whole ordeal. Entirely uninspiring, I think.”

“You’re such a nerd, even when you’re drunk,” teased Y/N. “It’s honestly a wonder that you spent the first month near failing physics.”

“Sod off.” He nudged her again, hard enough to make her sway. “You’re the one who’s still an insufferable smartass. I figured drinking would make you more tolerable.”

“Don’t be a dick,” she muttered as she shoved him back. “You know you love me.”

He froze in the middle of his retaliatory shove, his hand rested on her forearm.

“Sarcasm, king,” said Y/N. “I don’t mean it. I wouldn’t blame you if I were right, though. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m quite the commodity.”

“Oh, yes, most certainly.” His tone was dripping in faux genuity as he gave her a gentle push.

As he was doing this, Y/N grabbed the offending arm and took him down with her, landing in the soft garden bush in poor Ms. McCoyle’s front yard.

“Gotcha!” she cheered as he frowned from his spot on top of her. It took all her might to ignore the fact that his face was inches away. “It’s just my smart physics brain at work.”

“Your neighbor is gonna kill us.”

“She can try.”

Draco sat up, grabbing her hand and hauling her to her feet. She took the opportunity to hang onto the sleeve of his coat as a sneaking suspicion overtook her that things wouldn’t be like this again without the clever excuse of intoxication.

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

Y/N let go of his sleeve to look up at his face in confusion. She followed his eyes, suddenly hardened with an emotion she couldn’t quite place, to their house at the end of the street.

“You shut the door behind us, right?” Draco asked.

“And locked it.”

Their front door, hanging wide open and swinging in the breeze, told a different story.

Sobering up was easy once the police sirens showed up and searched their house. Y/N could tell the responding sheriff knew they’d been drinking, but since they weren’t driving and were speaking clearly, he didn’t mention anything.

“We’ve searched the house,” he told them as they sat together outside on the curb. “It looks like it fits the profile of the other armed burglaries in the area, but nothing was taken this time. The bedroom that looks out into the garden is completely trashed--it seems like the suspect was looking through your things for something. The bedroom across the hall was displaced a bit, but nothing compared to the first.” He took another look at his notes, adjusting the thick rimmed glasses that were perched on his nose. “You kids are lucky. Whoever this is means business. There’s unfortunately not much we can do except set up a patrol to watch over the street for now. Please give us a call if you see anything or hear anything.”

They nodded. Y/N had placed a call to their parents while they waited a safe distance from the home for the police to arrive. She’d been shaking as she pressed their number into her phone, and Draco, to his credit, rested his hand on her thigh.

“We’ll be fine,” he’d said before retracting it. “Don’t worry.”

Draco seemed considerably calm for someone experiencing a home break in in a foreign country as they made their way into the house. The first responders had left the lights on, and the wash of LED bulbs did nothing to hide the disturbance of her bedroom. Everything of hers was thrown into the middle of the room from her drawers, closet, and dresser. Her laptop, open and plugged in, was left completely untouched.

“Draco,” she said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Depends, what is it?”

Y/N noted that he was getting considerably paler as they stood in her doorway. “I don’t think I can sleep here. Knowing what happened. Especially when it’s still a disaster.”

“Understandable.”

His features looked hardened again, like he’d gone through a filter of seriousness. She decided that this was probably her last chance to ask for any act of intimacy before the effects of alcohol dissipated in his system. “And I don’t want to sleep alone.”

“Er...Oh.” He stared at her. “What?”

“I know that this is really awkward, but can I, like, sleep on your floor or something? Just for tonight.” When she swallowed her throat felt painfully dry. “I don’t snore or anything. It’ll be like I’m not even there.”

Draco sucked in a long breath, casting his eyes up to the ceiling. Y/N wished she knew what he was thinking about. “Yeah. That’s fine.”

“Thank you thank you thank you,” she sang, darting into her room to grab a blanket and a pillow as he watched wordlessly by the doorframe.

The walk to his room was dead silent except for their sounds of shock when they saw the broken glass in the middle of the floor.

“I think that was from the picture frame,” Y/N said as she carefully walked into the middle of the room. Sure enough, a framed photo of her and their late dog that had been left on the wall was face down on the carpet.

“Is this when you ask me to sleep in my bed, too?” quipped Draco as he sidestepped the wreckage and sat on the opposite side of the queen mattress.

“Um...we can make a pillow barrier so we don’t touch.”

He rolled his eyes and tossed his blazer over his chair as he took off his shoes and buttonup, leaving nothing but his undershirt and dress pants. “I’m going to get changed. If you’re asleep before I get back, this is me saying goodnight.”

With that, he grabbed something from his dresser and walked into his bathroom, Y/N ripped off the picture of the shoe and placed her phone on the bedside table. Before she knew it, she was completely passed out.

It was barely dawn when she next woke up. Her head was heavy--no doubt the beginnings of a hangover--but she’d never felt more electrified.

A small huff prompted her to look to her left where Draco was just a few movements away from her. He was very clearly still sleeping, each breath leaving his lips with a whisper. His hand, draped over the covers, was millimeters away from touching her. The pink of the sunrise made his hair, now ruffled and sticking up in the side, glitter in the light. She resisted the urge to reach out and brush it away from his face.

Y/N lay there, admiring the boy sleeping next to her, until the urgency of her situation struck her. She was absolutely parched, and if she wanted to mitigate the damage she’d already done, it was in her best interest to drink a glass of water and take 4 Ibuprofen.

With a sigh, she quietly slid out from under Draco’s covers and made her way to her room, careful to avoid the glass scattered all about. She knew she had a packet of Ibuprofen somewhere in one of her dresser drawers.

The pile in her room was bigger than she remembered. She began by just throwing her clothes that had been on the ground onto her bed, sorting through everything in rough categories. When this proved unhelpful, she turned to the mini pile by her door which, to her surprise, had a few sweatshirts that definitely weren’t hers.

Draco she thought absentmindedly as she combed through the pile. Aha. A small green pouch, just like the one she kept her over the counter medications in.

Her hands struggled to undo the tie--Did she normally knot it like that?--as she admired the lining. She never noticed that the edges had silver thread stitched in.

Once she finally opened it up, she grabbed her water bottle and prepared to be faced with a variety of pill bottles as she tipped it over; however, what came out was very different.

A collection of letters. Namely, Draco’s. She knew it was wrong, but he was sleeping, and every letter looked official, stamped with a seal and etched with some sort of crest. They couldn’t have been that personal.

After a bit of bargaining, she decided to open one. If it was personal, she made the deal with herself to put it away and never speak of it again.

The parchment was heavy and clearly expensive. Her hands were shaking as she unfolded the first one, feeling guilty the whole way.

Foreign words flooded her vision. It wasn’t like the letter was written in a foreign language--but there were so many terms she didn’t understand.

Death eater...Voldemort...Crimes against the ministry...Conspiracy against Dumbledore...Hogwarts-sanctioned punishment...

She read on until a word popped out that made sense--Magic. And there it was again--Magic. Wizard. Magic.

Swallowing hard, she shoved the letter back into the envelope and opened one more. This one was much more coherent.

“Dear Mr. Draco Lucius Malfoy of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy:

It has been made apparent to us that, while serving the punishment of your accused crimes, you have unlawfully used magic (namely, a Glamour spell) in front of a muggle. Consider this to be your first strong warning. One more slip up and the Ministry will be forced to reconsider your dropped sentence of Azkaban.

Sincerely and warmly,

The Ministry of Magic -- Justice Sector”

What. What the fuck. What the fuck.

Her racing mind was put to a screeching halt at the sound of someone clearing their throat behind her.

#draco x reader #draco malfoy x reader #draco imagine #draco malfoy imagine #draco x oc #draco x y/n #draco malfoy x oc #draco malfoy x y/n #draco malfoy #draco lucius malfoy

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twodaysintojune · 4 years

Text

A Petal, A Flower, A Bouquet of Roses

Supernatural, Sastiel, Warnings-None

Find me at AO3

It had not been hard to find the actual name and cause of the disease. The specifications were also pretty straightforward. The patient will die after an approximate time of six months of coughing the first petal. It was very simple but at the same time there was some irony in it. “What is the point of a disease that kills if the disease is suffered by an angel like me?“ Castiel wondered to himself while closing the book in front of him. He didn’t need to read more.

It would be bothersome but he was more than capable to deal with it. If things came to the worse, he would use his currently minimal grace reservoirs to cure it.

He wouldn’t say anything to the brothers, especially not to Sam. There was no reason why he would inflict such an annoying situation on him.

As to the reason why he was suffering it, he realized clearly what had triggered it all.

“There is nothing worth losing you.”

Those had been the words that sealed his fate. The words that made him realize he would do anything for Sam. For both brothers, yes. But especially for Sam.

When he read the words "only a pure yet passionate unrequited love is able to trigger the disease." He was close to bark a laugh.

It had been Sam's affectionate yet friendly hug that had given him the first odd clench in his chest.

They had been doing research for another day when the first petal came out of his mouth. He knew something was wrong the moment he, an immortal being, started to cough but the touch of the velvety fleshy delicate thing in his hands had him mesmerized.

Despite knowing it was extremely unusual and definitely not normal, he waved it aside as an odd thing and nothing more. Specially considering Dean was nowhere around and Sam was stubbornly trying to do everything on his own, neglecting his own wellbeing as always. Apparently the calling out had not even lasted a week.

Five days later came the first bloom. And along it, the pain. Cas felt a prickle on his chest before the fit of coughs began. He coughed time and again and clearly felt how something crawled it's way upwards through his trachea, dragging itself along the tight breathing canal. Opening wounds where the sharp thorns managed to get stuck in the way out that immediately healed thanks to his grace.

It was a rose. A massive bloom of a pale pink so perfect and delicate, petals turning darker on the inside until it reached a deep saturated tone inside in a graceful gradient.

Castiel went looking for a reason and he found the book.

"Wow, that is a beautiful rose. Where did you get it?"

"Uh… The field outside."

Sam took the rose without a second thought, it was obvious he was mesmerized by the perfection within it. The fresh and delicate scent more potent the closer he placed it under his nose.

“You can have it if you want.”

“I uh… thanks Cas but I couldn’t.”

“I have no use for it. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it more than I can.”

“It’s just that I don’t have a flower vase.”

Castiel turned to look at him with a blank stare. Sam blushed when he realized Castiel was in the same situation since they both lived in the same place.

“Okay, I uhm… I’m sure there’s an empty beer bottle in the kitchen I can use.”

“Good.”

Days passed by. Once Castiel and Sam realized there was nothing there that could help them track Gadreel, Castiel made the decision to leave the bunker and start trying on the road. It was not what he really wanted but it was the only thing he could do. Among the random petals, he had coughed another rose and decided to leave it by the first one and a second he had coughed earlier. Sam found it the next day, right before leaving to look for Garth, who had suffered an accident. He took in a breath of the delicate perfume with a smile and went away.

Two months later Castiel received a call from Sam. He was reclined comfortably in his parked car listening to the hunter’s soothing voice.

“I see, it is a shame that she was unable to stay.”

“I mean, she could have stayed but her brother’s death was a hard hit so she’s going back to Peru.”

“Well, I guess it’s how you humans say, all’s well that—” He began to cough.

“...Cas?”

In the middle of his fit, Castiel turned to the phone once more. “I’m sorry Sam I—” a heavy series of coughs came again. “I’ll call you later.”

He turned the phone off and, feeling like he was coughing his lungs out, he saw three beautiful roses come out of his mouth. Droplets of blood dripped from Castiel’s mouth. His grace easily healed his inner organs but the ghost of the pain lingered. This was the first time more than one came out and he frowned at them.

“So this is how it works huh?”

Castiel sighed. He stepped out of the car and opened the trunk, a moment later, all three roses were placed among over almost a hundred similar looking blooms, carefully arranged on a wooden box by the few other weapons he carried with him.

Sam moved his phone away from him and looked at it frowning, pensieve.

“What? What is it?”

“Cas was… coughing.”

“What? Can he even do that?”

“I don’t… Have you ever heard him coughing before?”

“Maybe he swallowed a bug. Big fly.”

“Ew Dean, that’s gross.”

“I mean, I cannot really think of any other reason.”

Sam sighed, he waited but Castiel didn’t call back. In the end, he sighed once more and looked outside the window to watch the road pass by while his brother drove them home. When they arrived, Dean saw the flowers in the beer bottle. He picked them up.

“Oh Sammy, you did miss me! You shouldn’t have.”

Sam bitchfaced him but realized something alarming. It had been two months since he had left the bunker. No flower resilient as it were could survive such a long time unblemished with just some water and hidden in the deep darkness of the underground kitchen table. Dean immediately noticed his brother’s worried look and asked him about it. When Sam explained the situation Dean also frowned confused.

“But why would Cas be making everlasting flowers?”

“I don’t know… He said he had found it outside but he was reading a book that had a lot of

flowers drawn inside… Damn, I can’t remember which one it was.”

“Well, go check his room, maybe he took the book there.”

Sam nodded and thanked Dean for the idea. The moment he stepped in Castiel’s room, he felt a faint scent of roses by his side. He looked around sniffing, trying to find the source of the scent until he looked downwards and found a small mound of petals in the dustbin.

He picked them up and frowned once more. All the petals still looked like they had been shed from the actual flower just a couple of seconds ago. Keeping one random petal in his hand, Sam began to look into the sparse amount of items Castiel had in his place. He had never gone inside for more than a couple of seconds before and now the curiosity of Castiel’s odd behaviour made him lose what little discretion he might have still had.

He noticed that despite being living with them for a while now, there was not much about the room that could be attained to Castiel. Yes, there were books, but they were all from the bunker shelves and only a sad half used writing block that Sam recognized as his own along a pen that he had lent the angel months ago was breaking the monotony.

Castiel didn’t even have more clothes. The half open bureau that Sam scrutinized was empty and covered with a soft layer of dust. Sam felt a little pang of sadness when he realized that if something happened to the angel, there would be nothing left that he could keep with him as a reminder of the immortal being. Not like that would ever happen, it was more probable that he or Dean would meet their demise before anything happened to Castiel but still the idea of having to live knowing that his angel was gone…

Sam stopped his tracks. There was a book with a similar appearance to the one he remembered Castiel reading earlier on over the bedside table. He took it and opened it up. A quick scanning told him it was what he was looking for.

“Hey Sam!”

Dean’s voice came booming with an echo throughout the hallway.

“Yeah!?”

“We’re low on groceries, come on, we’re going to town!”

“Alright!”

Closing the book, he carefully left it on Castiel’s desk to remind himself to take it up once more. In the end if all Castiel was doing was trying to imbue flowers with life, there was no difference whether he checked about it today or tomorrow.

There were brief moments he remembered to check the book, especially when he called Castiel and was cut at the middle of their talk due to another coughing fit. Unfortunately those times were also times when he was not at the bunker.

Everytime he was back at home he was reminded to look thanks to the three roses now lingering by his lamp. And every time he was distracted from checking it because of Dean or the laundry or because he had to research something to help Jody or the girls and it was one in the morning already and he’d rather start afresh tomorrow, he said to himself time and again. It was a vicious cycle of postponing and the more time passed, the more upset Sam became when he realized that he had forgotten to check the book. Again.

About three months later, Castiel arrived at the bunker after what he felt as the longest drive of his life, which was something to say. He had had to stop almost every hour to painfully cough out several roses, missing more time. When he finally parked the car in the garage. His breathing was uneven and he wavered by his car’s door for a moment while stepping out of it. Taking as deep a breath as he could, he stumbled towards his room.

The incessant coughing attack that had begun twenty four hours ago was not receding and he knew that as an angel he was supposed to be able to fight it but for some reason his grace didn’t seem to be enough. With every fit he felt more weakened and he had come to the point where he had to make a true effort in order to be able to reach his room at all.

Castiel was afraid.

Feeling droplets of sweat on his forehead, he wondered for the first time if he had just been diving deep in denial by overlooking all the signs of an increasingly severe disease.

He went to his room, searched for the book. Panicked just a second when he didn’t see it where he had left it and then sighed in relief when he saw it on the desk. He took it, opened it up and, finding the page he was looking for, he began to read once more.

When Sam and Dean arrived at the bunker a couple hours later they saw Castiel’s car parked halfway. Dean cursed on the low.

“Aw come on man! It’s not that hard to park that stupid thing well!”

Sam sighed, “It’s alright, I’ll move it.”

Sam stepped out of the car while blocking his brother’s rant about Castiel’s lack of skills on the wheels. He approached the car towards the driver’s door when he realized the door was still halfway open. Worried, he walked a bit faster and opened it up, finding at least a hundred roses scattered over the front of the car. He was taken aback by the smell, almost too overwhelming. And he realized that, even then, this amount of roses couldn’t make it up. Making a quick glance around the inside of the car while his mind worked, he reached the trunk lever and pulled it until he heard the sure click of the mechanism bolting open.

He ran to the back of the car and opened it up only to reveal a trunk brimming to the top with blooms. Despite the beauty of the discovery, Sam’s face went livid. This was not normal at all. He suddenly felt his brother standing by his side. He looked at Sam’s discovery worried

“Dude, what the hell?”

The brothers turned at each other, sharing with a glance the same question. Sam felt something twist in his gut and he turned around. His mind flashing in an instant to three flowers lingering on a beer bottle and linking them to Castiel's constant coughing in a way he still was unable to understand.

“Cas? Cas!?”

He ran as fast as he could with his brother in tow. The closer they went to Castiel’s room, the clearer they heard Castiel’s troubled coughing. Sam entered the place and finally saw Castiel, bent over the floor, surrounded by a scattered mound of blooms. Sweating, trembling and coughing out one flower after the other. Immediately Sam kneeled by his side and held his shoulders. He inwardly panicked when he saw his friend’s features all beaten up. Dark shadows under the eyes, skin falling on his frame like an uneven rag.

“Cas? Cas answer me! What is going on!? CAS!”

Castiel panted, “Sam...” he felt so weak he was not even able to lift his head. “I’m—” a flower dropped out of his mouth after a cough. “I’m sorry. You…” Castiel drew as much air as he could. “You shouldn’t have had to see this.”

Sam clearly felt his pulse going faster and his fingers feeling colder and his breath going shallower in what was clearly the beginning of a panic attack.

“What are you talking about!? Cas? Cas please stay with me!”

Sam sensed his brother picking up the book that was haphazardly lying next to the angel and looking through the pages in a frenzy. He was about to ask him something when he felt Castiel waver under his grasp and turned back to hold him before going back to his brother. He saw Dean standing, white knuckles around the edge of the book, frantic eyes fast reading through the pages, searching in an expert way for whatever it was he was supposed to find. He saw those eyes finally stop and slow their pace. He saw a flash of understanding go through the everlasting green and then he saw him turn to look at him.

“What? What is it? What’s the cure? What do we do!? DEAN?”

Sam saw Dean’s expression waver, lips tremble. He saw him open his mouth just a little and them shutting it up, then guilt. Dean turned his back to Sam and Castiel and Sam saw his shoulders hunch with defeat.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I can't do anything.” Was all Dean could rasp out of his suddenly closed throat.

Sam felt the cold of his hands seeping upwards and blanketing him in a cruel embrace and the entirety of the room going dimmer. He turned towards Castiel, who suddenly choked a soft snort.

“Sam...” Castiel’s voice was barely audible. Rasp and desperate.

Sam turned towards him.

“I’m sorry...”

Sam saw how painful it was for him to articulate.

“If I...” He coughed another set of beautiful blooms. “If I had been braver…”

Sam snorted, this was not happening. This was just a nightmare and he was going to wake up any moment now.

“What are you talking about? You’re, you’re the best Cas! You’ve been with us for years now and...”

Sam felt Castiel’s hand over his, weak and uncertain. So unlike his always reassuring touch.

“Sam…” Castiel made an effort to look at the hunter in the eyes. He took in some more air just so that he could say his last words without a stop. “I… I’m glad I have been able to be by your side all this time.”

Sam saw Castiel give him the softest smile and he realized that he was really dying and that this was final. Forever.

Sam blamed himself, he blamed the fact that he had not looked for Castiel well enough. That he hadn't kept his friend as the priority he was supposed to be. That he had taken him for granted. Because he knew that maybe, just maybe, if he had taken a look into that book earlier on, if he had actually investigated what was wrong with his friend, then Castiel would never have had to be at the verge of death.

Suddenly Castiel began another fit and coughed out several flowers, he felt weaker with every rose that came out of his mouth. It was as if each and every single one of these roses tore apart not only his insides but ripped his grace as well, leaving but lingering shreds drifting away into nothingness. And for just a moment, Castiel thought it would be better if everything just finally came to an end. Sam sensed this as well when Castiel finally allowed his body to go lump and panicked, he held Castiel with a stronger grip.

“Cas, Cas! Come on, you’re an angel! You can fight this! You can’t… You can’t leave me like this right now!”

Castiel finally was allowed a breath after a dozen flowers came out of his mouth. A string of blood falling from his mouth and a trail of sweat on his forehead. He looked at Sam beaten, sad, heartbroken and mouthed out a single word. He was so out of breath that he was unable to get out the sound but still Sam understood.

“Why?”

“Why? Why!?” Sam laughed although there was nothing to laugh about, he looked around trying to find out a way to express himself. “Because… Because...”

He closed his mouth and bit his lip. He didn’t understand why either. Or rather, he didn’t want to understand why. Because realizing how much he had depended on the angel; thinking of all the good times, all the bad times and all the future times that would come and go without him he realized that the only reason he was holding him right now, desperate to selfishly keep him by his side was a very simple one. He felt tears starting to escape his eyes and his body tremble.

Sam heard his brother’s rushed voice behind him.

“Dammit Sam tell him! There’s no time!”

Sam shook his head, trying to get himself together and grasped Castiel harder in order to face him.

“Because I love you Cas. I… I love you.”

Sam saw Castiel let go a desperate sigh while a tear came out of his eye and, closing them, he fell over Sam’s shoulder and slumped.

Everything went still, Castiel’s rough breathing had evened out into nothingness and Sam felt panic slowly rising inside, like a wave that looks far in the distance but will surely drown everything once it arrives. He felt time stopping, the shuffle of his brother’s footsteps getting close to him, muffled by the sudden denseness of the air around him. When Sam felt like he was not going to be able to move anymore and then Castiel bent over himself with a start.

If Sam had not been shocked by the way Castiel had been throwing up flowers before, he was now by the violent spasms he was having this time. The way he was behaving it felt like he was about to throw up. He screamed Castiel’s name and thanked that his brother had finally kneeled down by his side to help him get a hold of the angel. Castiel, perched by both brothers and holding onto them desperately arched several times until a final deep crimson rose fell off his mouth along an intricate set of roots.

Finally, Castiel let go of his hold on them and fell completely on top of Sam. This time, however, Sam realized that his breathing was stable. He placed his hand on his forehead and noticed that despite having all the sweat over him, he seemed to be better now.

“Cas?”

The angel didn’t answer. He was profoundly asleep.

The next time Castiel opened up his eyes, Sam was sitting on a chair nearby, reading a book. The moment he shuffled, he caught his attention. Quickly, Sam left his book aside and helped him sit up.

“How are you doing?”

Sam gave him a glass of water that the angel took.

“I feel better… Still weakened but much better.”

“Good. That’s, uhm… That’s good.”

Sam sat by Castiel’s side and they looked at each other for a second before turning away in awkwardness.

“So...” Sam coughed. “About your disease.”

“I’m sorry Sam I…” Castiel sighed deeply “I thought I was going to be able to overcome it. Since I’m an angel after all.”

“According to the book, the hanahaki disease feeds on the patient’s life force so, with the experience we’ve had, the fact that you’re an angel doesn’t really matter.”

“I really felt like I was going to die.”

“I really felt that too.”

Both laughed nervously. Eventually Castiel took in a breath.

“Sam I—”

“Why didn't you tell me before?” Sam interrupted “Why didn’t you try to tell me you loved me?”

Castiel’s eyes turned sad. He looked downwards and focused on his hands.

“I was afraid.”

Sam stood still, waiting patiently for Castiel to speak out his mind.

“I fought it back with all I had but I still couldn’t do anything about it and yet, thinking that there was a possibility to have your rejection I...” Castiel clenched his hand over the sheets. “It would have been a hundred times worse.” He took some more air. “Besides, I would have never forgiven myself if I made you feel guilty about it later.”

Sam sighed deeply. The atmosphere was heavy with something he did not understand but was related to the experience of near death and confessions. He took Castiel’s hand.

“I’m glad I got to you before anything worse happened.”

“...Me too.”

“And, Cas?”

Castiel turned his head towards Sam to look at him, ready for his question but he was met with the hunter’s lips softly landing on his. When he went back, he saw Castiel looking as flustered as himself.

“I really do love you.”

#sastiel #supernatural fanfic #spn fanfic #spn fanfiction #Sam Winchester #Castiel #Dean Winchester #hanahaki #hanahaki disease

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kk095 · 4 years

Text

The VIP

*I'm sorry I haven't posted in awhile. This story may have some typos, but I hope everyone enjoys!*

Tara Thompson was a pop/country singer who recently achieved stardom. Her debut album sold millions of copies, had ample amounts of radio/streaming airplay, and even won her a Grammy award. She recently purchased a beautiful and expensive house in Los Angeles, and was getting acclimated to the celebrity lifestyle. Tara seemed to have it all: talent, money, newfound fame, and of course, looks.

She was a 27 year old blonde, standing at 5'5 with beautiful blue eyes, a nice California tan, and a toned but petite body. She carried herself confidently (some would say borderline cocky) and had a good sense of humor, which made her a favorite amongst talk show hosts and fans alike.

Yesterday, fate had other plans for Tara. She was a trauma patient at our emergency department after being involved in a high speed MVC. At first, we didn’t realize it was her. When the call from dispatch came in, all we heard was “27 year old female, high speed MVC. Blunt chest trauma from steering wheel injury, tachy and hypotensive, ETA 6 minutes.”

I ordered the nurses to prep trauma room 1. “Let’s make sure we have the room set up. Get an intubation tray, a chest tube tray, and a thoracotomy tray just in case. Let’s make sure we have some meds around, go to the blood bank and 4 units o-neg, 2 of platelets, and 2 of FFP. Page cardio and trauma surgery, and let’s keep radiology on standby in case she’s stable enough for a scan.” I tell my subordinates as I pop on a yellow trauma gown and a fresh pair of gloves.

Before we knew it, the ambulance's sirens could be heard as it arrived at our emergency department. Moments later, the medics wheeled the patient into our trauma room. “oh my… that’s Tara Thompson…” I realized immediately. She didn’t look like her typical self. She was on a backboard and c-collar, stripped down to just her black bra and matching underwear. She had cuts, bruises, and abrasions scattered across her body, and she was in and out of consciousness.

The medics told us that the set up 2 large bore IVs and started her on ringer’s lactate for fluid resuscitation, and pushed a round of codeine for pain management.

Upon arrival at our emergency department, Tara’s vital signs were: BP 79/42, pulse 129bpm, and her oxygen saturation was down to 94%. We immediately started her on blood transfusions and drew trauma labs (CBC, BMP, toxicology screen). Since a chest injury was suspected, I ordered a chest x ray. The chest x-ray showed a sternal fracture with 2 broken ribs on the left side, a left sided hemothorax, and herniation of the heart into the right chest. I decided to follow that up with a FAST scan, which is just an ultrasound of the chest, belly, and pelvis. The chest portion of this test further confirmed the herniation of her heart, but to my surprise, there was no evidence of pericardial effusion or tamponade. The abdominal portion of the test showed some minor bleeding in the ULQ, which is typically indicative of a spleen injury. Since the bleeding didn’t appear to be major, that injury was to be monitored conservatively. Finally, the pelvic portion of the exam came back clean.

With all that information in mind, it appeared Tara had a chest injury that was explaining her hemodynamic instability. Even though she didn’t have tamponade, cardiac herniations are associated with great vessel injuries, particularly the pulmonary arteries or veins (the princess Diana case is a prime example of this injury process).

Since she had a hemothorax on the left side, we decided to place a chest tube. Tara’s left ribcage was sterilized and I made a 1 inch incision in between her ribs. Tara moaned loudly, feeling the scalpel’s every move since she wasn’t stable enough for me to anesthetize. She yelped loudly with tears running down her face while the tube was placed into her pleural space. Blood shot from the tube and onto my yellow trauma gown.

Outside of the trauma room, you could hear media personnel and paparazzi start to swarm the hospital’s entrance, waiting room, and ER nurses station. “How’s Tara?!” “Any updates?!” “can we get a word with Tara?!” were some of the things being asked. Hospital security was completely overwhelmed by the sudden mob of people, but were able to move everyone out to the hospital’s main entrance. “you can’t just stand around in the waiting room, that’s for patients only.” One of the security guards told the nosey crowd. Hospital administration decided to make a statement to the media and paparazzi to at least appease them for a little while. “Tara Thompson was brought to our emergency department after being involved in a high speed motor vehicle accident. Her exact condition is unknown to hospital administration, but our emergency department and other coordinating departments are working diligently to stabilize her injuries. We will present another update when more information is available, thank you.” Was the statement given to news media outlets.

Back in the trauma room, Tara’s condition began to decline. Her blood pressure was plummeting and she was groaning while drifting in and out of consciousness. With her deteriorating condition in mind, we decided to intubate her. “Push succs and etomidate and get me a 7.0 ET.” I called out as I placed the laryngoscope into Tara’s open mouth. “meds in" a nurse said as another nurse handed me the ET tube. I then began the intubation process. I navigated the tube through the right side of the mouth so my view wouldn’t be obstructed. I identified the epiglottis and then placed the tube into the upper portion of the trachea. I continued lowering the tube until it was about 2cm past the vocal cords. While I held the tube in place at that level, 1 nurse removed the stylet and the other inflated the cuff with an empty syringe. While still holding the tube in place, a nurse began to place a blue tube holder. After that, we confirmed tube placement and attached an ambu bag.

After intubation, we decided that Tara needed to be taken up to the OR for emergency surgery to treat her herniated heart and associated vessel injuries. We covered up her torso with a blanket and wheeled her out of the trauma room. We headed down the hall towards the elevator which led directly to the OR floor. “BP's still dropping, doctor" a nurse called out. “let’s push vasopressors and hang another unit of blood products from the rapid infuser. Let’s try to buy her a few minutes.” I replied.

During the elevator ride up, Tara became pulseless. “no pulse, but we have activity on the monitor.” A nurse called out, shaking her head. “she’s in PEA. Someone start compressions!” I replied urgently. A nurse pulled down the blanket and began deep, harsh chest compressions on the young celebrity. There was a popping sound during CPR from the sternum and rub fractures. “let’s get epi and atropine in. I wanna do a pulse check in 1 minute.” I barked to the trauma team.

Once the meds were in, resuscitation efforts went on. Tara’s chest caved in, causing her perky B cup breasts to jiggle in sync with the chest compressions. Her belly bounced outwards and her head bobbed from the residual force of the life saving efforts. When the 1 minute mark of the code was reached, we did a pulse check in the elevator. “still no pulse. PEA still on the monitors.” A nurse said anxiously. “resume CPR. Push meds at 4 minute mark.” I replied.

We reached the surgical floor a second or two after we resumed CPR. The elevator doors opened up and we were greeted by a few surgical nurses and a surgical resident. “she coded on the way up here. Down for a little over a minute. Pushed 1 of epi and atropine, no shocks. Still in PEA.” I told the surgical resident. “ok doc. Follow us, OR 3 is prepped and ready for her.” The resident replied to me. Deep, harsh chest compressions continued on the singer while she was wheeled through the corridors of the OR floor. “wait a minute. Is that…?” The resident asked before I cut her off. “yep, it’s our VIP patient.”

Tara’s complexion was fading just as fast as she was. Her fresh, tan complexion was now a ghastly, pale that had a grayish tinge. Her lips could be seen through the blue tube holder, and they were now a reddish purple color. Her eyes were half open, staring blankly off into space, devoid of any life or emotion.

Just a minute or so later, we were in OR 3. We were greeted by the surgical attending and the OR staff who were waiting by the OR table. “oh boy, what happened to her?” the surgical attending asked me, surprised to see is bring in an active code. “she coded on the way up. Pushed 1 of epi and atropine, 0 shocks, down for 1:45 and counting. PEA present on last pulse check.” I replied to the surgical attending. The surgeon continued “ok. Let’s get her on the table on my count. One… two… THREE!”

The monitors chirped loudly during the transfer. Tara’s body moved limply while she was moved over to the OR table, still showing no signs of life. “resume compressions! Let’s get a repeat echo and an abdominal ultrasound.” With CPR ongoing, the nurses and surgical techs got the ultrasound machine set up and squirted the cold, gooey gel onto her chest and belly. The surgeon took the wand and moved it onto the gel spot on the belly. “splenic lac, but I don’t think it explains this.” The attending thought out loud, referencing the code blue. They then did a repeat echo: “ok, here’s our problem.” The surgeon said within milliseconds of the ultrasound being done. “cardiac herniation. No tamponade, but she’s bleeding into her chest. I think it might be the pulmonary veins. If it were the pulmonary artery, she would’ve died at the scene.” The surgeon continued.

We did a pulse check at the 4 minute mark, and she was still in PEA. The surgical team pushed the next round of epi and atropine, and they started the first dose of bicarb. Since Tara was in rough shape, the surgeon decided the next course of action is to open her chest via a clamshell thoracotomy in order to make structures in both halves of the thorax visible, especially because of the cardiac herniation into the right chest.

Betadine was splashed across the singer’s bare chest. The surgeon made an incision in the 5th intercostal space, which extended across the entire anterior chest. With the first cut out of the way, a 2nd cut had to be made to incise the subcutaneous tissue in order to expose the sternum, intercostal muscles, and costal cartilage. Now that the intercostal muscles were exposed, heavy scissors were used to snip through the muscle on both sides of the chest in order to create space for the rib spreader, which goes in a few steps later. The next aspect of the clamshell thoracotomy is to divide the sternum in half horizontally. This is somewhat of a challenge since it’s the 2nd hardest bone in the body (the orbital bones, a.k.a. eye sockets are #1), and because Tara sustained a sternal fracture. The sternal fracture was stable and a little above the halfway mark of the sternum, so the usual spot could be cut through. An electric sternal saw was then passed over to the surgeon so the sternum could be divided. The saw made a high pitched grinding sound as the drill cut through the dense bone effortlessly. There was some blood leakage after the drilling was done. The cause of the blood was from the inferior mammary artery being cut from the drill. This is a common complication during clamshell thoracotomies, but it’s easily treatable and isn’t an immediate concern since her heart isn’t pumping blood effectively. The next step was to place the rib spreader, which was put in the center of the chest over where the divided sternum is. With external CPR halted, the knobs on the rib spreader were turned so the chest could be opened up. The OR became filled with a popping and cracking sound from Tara’s ribs breaking.

There was an immediate rush of blood upon entry to the chest. Suction was applied to the area and clamps were placed on the inferior mammary artery since it was injured, and the descending aorta down by the diaphragm. With additional blood accumulation in the chest cavity, the OR team decided to place a 2nd chest tube, which would go on the right side. While the 2nd chest tune was being placed, the pericardium was cut and the heart was delivered so effective internal resus could take place. The 2nd chest tube drained a decent amount of blood, which pooled on the OR floor. Once proper chest tube placement was confirmed, internal massage started.

The surgeon wrapped her hands around Tara’s weakly moving heart and placed her thumbs on the left ventricle. She pushed in a hard, upwards motion on the left ventricle to pump blood outwards. The surgeon’s internal compressions made a wet, rhythmic squishing sound while she tried to force Tara’s heart to do its job. After a cycle or two of internal massage, the surgical resident took over internal resus while the surgical attending dug around in the celebrity’s chest cavity trying to control the hemorrhaging.

While the surgeon was probing around in the woman’s chest, her ET tube became clogged up with blood. In order to keep her airway intact, the ambu bag had to be disconnected and the tube had to be suctioned out. The suction made a wet, soggy slurping sound during this quick process. With the airway restored, the ambu bag was attached and oxygenation was able to continue.

Tara reached the 7 minute mark of the code with no improvement. Another bag of blood products were hung, making this her 8th transfusion (her entire blood volume), and the next doses of epinephrine, atropine, and sodium bicarbonate were injected intravenously. One of the pulmonary veins were stretched out while the other was absolutely shredded. The surgeon was having a difficult time with the shredded vessel. They clamped off the severed end and tried to staple it to the left atrium after the heart was repositioned. However, the staples didn’t hold so the vessel and left atrium continued to leak blood into the chest cavity.

The surgeon restarted their efforts to control the hemorrhage, but the medications were able to convert Tara to a shockable rhythm. The attending surgeon then ordered the team to charge the internal paddles to 20 joules. An electrical whirring was heard during the charging process before the large, spoon shaped paddles were handed off to the doctor. The paddles were lowered into the chest and placed around each side of Tara’s fidgeting heart. Once everyone backed away, shock #1 was delivered. A dull thump was heard, and Tara’s torso flopped slightly in response to the quick jolt of electricity. “still in v-fib.” A nurse called out, shaking her head. The surgical resident resumed internal massage for a moment while the paddles were recharged to a slightly stronger setting of 30 joules.

When the paddles were recharged, they were lowered back into Tara’s chest and the next shock was delivered. The singer’s torso jerked again and her toes curled, showing off a few sharp wrinkles in her soft, size 7 soles. Shock #2 failed to ameliorate the situation since v-fib was still present on the monitors. A cycle of internal massage was performed while the internal paddles were readied for the next shock. Her ET tube became clogged with blood once again, so suction was required to restore her airway. Once her airway was cleared, the next shock was delivered. A dull, wet thump was heard in the OR, and Tara’s upper body flopped limply on the OR table. This shock sent her back into PEA, so internal massage had to be restarted.

Tara’s skin was freezing cold and had a pale, grayish tinge that was becoming more and more noticeable by the second. Her heart felt warm and firm, twitching weakly but frantically. Multiple cycles of internal massage failed to convert her or achieve ROSC, so another dose of cardiac stimulating drugs were pushed at the 11 minute mark of the code. At that point, things started to become repetitive in the code. Cycle after cycle of internal massage failed to produce any change, and the room grew increasingly quiet.

Medications were pushed at the 14 and 17 minute mark of the code, respectively, and the 10th round of blood products were hung from the infuser. These 2 doses of meds failed to produce a shockable rhythm. Tara spiraled further downhill, with an agonal rhythm displaying on the heart monitors. Tara was also maxed out on meds at 17 minutes, so if she were to come back, it would either be now or never.

The surgical team performed internal massage for another 3 and a half minutes, but Tara was asystolic, had no respirations, and her pupils were fixed and dilated. Despite everyone’s best efforts, Tara Thompson was pronounced dead at 10:26am.

The flatlined monitors were switched off and the ambu bag was detached from the ET tube. A nurse began pulling off the EKG electrodes from Tara’s lifeless body while another nurse removed the IVs. The chest tubes, clamps, and rib spreaders were all removed. Tara’s eyes remained half open, almost appearing as if she was watching the nurses perform postmortem care. The nurses then shut her eyes and covered up the young woman’s battered body. Lastly, a toe tag was placed on the big toe of her left foot. The tag dangled in front of Tara’s cute, wrinkly soles as she was wheeled off to the hospital morgue.

Now that Tara was dead, the doctors and hospital administration met in order to figure out how to address the media since this was a high profile case, and her death at their facility may be bad for the hospital’s public image.

At 11am, the hospital administrator and board of directors decided to meet with the press and paparazzi, sparing the doctors of the media circus. The statement was the following:

“We thank you all for your patience this morning. As many of you know, singer-songwriter Tara Thompson was brought to our emergency department after being involved in a high speed motor vehicle accident. She arrived in unstable condition and our emergency department and required emergency surgery. During this surgery, her condition deteriorated further. Despite our staff’s best efforts, Ms Thompson passed away at 10:26am. We’re all very saddened by her untimely passing, and we request that you give her family, friends, and our staff time and space to grieve this loss properly. Thank you.”

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shotsbyshae · 5 years

Text

Living Dead Girl

Warnings: Substance use, knife play, kidnapping, mention of murders

Words: 1.8k

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader

A/N: Little Saturday drabble inspired by my favorite time of year...Halloween.

Song: Living Dead Girl by Rob Zombie

So beautiful they make you, kill.

The Winter Soldier isn’t just any ghost story.

He is your ghost story.

Something awakens you quickly and the streetlight outside your bedroom window casts a soft orange glow across the features of the man standing at the foot of your bed. Before you have time to scream, he’s on top you – pinning you to the mattress – metal fingers pinching your skin as they wrap around your throat. Your heart pounds in your chest as you open your mouth, trying to gasp for air as he pushes down harder against your trachea.

“Moy,” the Russian word is thick as it slips past his lips, blue eyes staring into your soul. “You are mine.”

Your body jerks upright in bed, a cold sweat drenching your body and dampening your sheets. The air in your room is cool with the scent of the lavender lotion you used after your shower earlier, but you also pick up hints of sandalwood. You know it’s from him – the smell – like a sense memory. The nightmare has haunted you for over ten years now and everytime you awaken from it you can smell the faint traces of cologne.

He had let you live the night he was sent to murder your aunt and uncle in cold blood, but the thought of him coming back to finish the job is never far from your mind.

10 Years Earlier

After the car accident six months earlier, your aunt and uncle, who lived just outside of DC had taken you in. A know-it-all teenager with a smart-ass attitude. All you knew about your uncle’s job was it involved the government, aside from that you didn’t care. You were sneaking in through the side door of the kitchen late one night past curfew when you heard muffled gunshots upstairs. Maybe it was the alcohol, or the Xanax you had popped earlier in the night, but you felt brazen enough to grab a large steak knife from the butcher’s block on the counter and quietly make your way up the stairs. You could hear heavy footsteps coming from your aunt and uncle’s bedroom and you instinctively kept the knife down at your side, tucked against the back of your thigh.

At the top of the stairs you had paused and looked around, no longer hearing anyone move about. You carefully edged your way along the wall until you were close to the bedroom door. Moonlight from the window at the far end of the hallway cast an eerie glow across the dark hardwood at your feet and for a brief moment you chastised yourself, because you were the girl in the horror movies who went to investigate the noise instead of running away.

As if on cue, the door to the bedroom jerked open and you were slammed into the wall by something cold and hard around your throat. The man towered over you as his metal fingers held your neck firmly in place. His long black hair framed his face almost too perfectly and you could see the black stubble along his jawline. Ice blue eyes stared down at you menacingly and you knew it was over. Quickly, your hand had brought the blade up and shoved it hilt deep into his ribs. You felt as the knife ripped through the muscle and tissue just below the metal arm. An overwhelming thrill coursed through your veins as his eyes widened in shock and his mouth opened slightly. He glanced to the knife briefly before he flicked his rage filled eyes back to you.

You were dead, you knew it.

He reached over with his free hand and pulled the knife out slowly as his metal arm released the grip on you. He held the blade up in front of you, now dark red from his blood.

“Moy,” he said the word, tilting the blade back and forth. “Mine.” He turned and walked toward the stairs, stopping for a moment at the top of them, turning to look at you. His face illuminated by the moonlight as he stared at you threateningly, “Stay.”

The smell of blood and sandalwood hung in the air as you had waited until he disappeared down the staircase before you raised your hand up to look at it – the one that had held the knife. There was a smear of blood on your index finger – his blood – and you stared at it curiously for a few moments, the thought of having almost died at his hands at the front of your mind.

Why did he let you live?

Better yet, did you enjoy stabbing him?

You pressed your index finger inside your mouth – the metallic remnants swirled against your tongue – as you contemplated the questions.

The Winter Soldier had been your first taste of blood – literally – and your world hasn’t been the same since. You like to keep your hit list as clean as possible: mobsters, pedophiles, murderers, etc. The basic scum of the Earth types.

After you make your morning coffee you find a large manila envelope lying on the hardwood in front of your apartment door, where it was shoved under the door sometime during the night. You already know what the contents of the envelope are – your next target. You place your mug on the counter and carefully peel back the metal prongs and open the flap, pulling out the file folder. Your heart stops as you open the file – the man in the photo you recognize – the name isn’t what you know him by though.

James Buchanan (Bucky) Barnes

In a box toward the bottom of the page under aliases is the name you know him best by: The Winter Soldier. You stare at the photo a moment before you pick up your coffee mug and raise it to your lips, talking quietly to the photo you say, “Looks like you’re mine.”

***

You watch from the shadows as his head slowly lifts from his chest and he takes in his surroundings. Your aunt and uncle’s house had been left to you, and it’s sat vacant for years. The bedroom is mostly dark, with some moonlight creeping through the windows. You reach over and turn the table lamp on, illuminating the corner you stand in.

His eyes widen at your presence, voice groggy as he speaks, “Who are you? Where am I?”

You notice his voice is different than you remember from that night as you slowly walk towards the dining room chair you have him tied to, “You don’t remember me?” You point to the pristinely made bed with the large steak knife in your hand. “You murdered my aunt and uncle in that bed right there.”

He glances over to the bed and his eyes flash dark for a moment – realization sinking in. A sly smirk tugs at the corners of his lips as he flicks his gaze back to you, “You tried to kill me.”

“Bingo.”

“Why now?” He questions you, trying to move his arms against the restraints. His blues eyes fixing on you as he realizes you must have injected him with a paralytic. You can’t tell if he’s angry or impressed.

“Chalk it up to fate I suppose. I only take care of those whose names I’m given, and your name just so happened to come across my desk, so to speak,” you smile coyly at the man as you move closer to him. “Looks as if we’ve come full circle.”

“You’re an assassin?” The realization sets in as you drag the knife gently up the black denim covering his thighs.

“Yup,” the word pops out of your mouth cheerfully as you continue to run the tip of the knife carefully up the front of the dark green Henley he’s wearing. “Just like you.”

“You’re not like me,” he remarks quickly. “I was brainwashed into doing what I did.”

You stop moving the knife, leaving the tip of the blade at his jugular notch, your face tilting close to his, “Then why didn’t you kill me?” You stare into his blue eyes fiercely as he considers the question. “I’ve read your file – you don’t leave witnesses – so why me?”

He continues to stare at you for a beat, “I don’t know.”

“Bull shit,” you spit out. “You and he are the same person. You know exactly why – tell me.”

You watch as he clenches his jaw, not wanting to answer and you run the blade along his collarbone causing small rivulets of blood to roll down his skin, soaking into the green fabric of his shirt. Straddling him in the chair you drape your free arm casually across his shoulder, twirling the length of his hair around your finger, “We can do this all night.”

Bucky closes his eyes for a moment before he sighs, “Your eyes – there was a darkness in your eyes. You weren’t scared.” Blue eyes glance up at you, mere inches from your own. “When you stabbed me, you weren’t scared. Most people would have been terrified – you enjoyed it.” Your eyes narrow slightly as he shifts uncomfortably under you, letting you know there’s not much longer before the paralytic wears off.

Running the knife along his jawline you smile innocently at him before you lean closer and press your lips to the corner of his mouth, his body tensing at your actions. Confusion is evident in his eyes as you lean back, your fingers still wrapped gently around his neck. He waits for you to stab the knife into his side like you did the first night – or maybe you’ll slit his throat this time.

You stand up slowly, keeping your eyes trained on his as you do, “It was nice to see you again Mr. Barnes.”

Bucky watches in surprise as you walk towards the bedroom door, “You’re not going to kill me?”

“Kill you?” You glance back over your shoulder at him incredulously. “I can’t kill you babe – you made me.”

Hours later, after the paralytic has worn off and Bucky is back at his hotel room, he finds a small business card shoved into the back pocket of his jeans. Pulling it out he sees the words typed out in dainty letters The Raven. He flips the card over, the back reveals nothing and he quickly pulls his cell phone from his pocket dialing the first person he thinks of.

“Sam,” he says urgently. “What do you know about an assassin they call The Raven?”

There’s a momentary pause on the other end of the line before Wilson scoffs, “Dude, that’s a ghost story. She’s not real.”

Bucky stares at himself in the dresser mirror, seeing the blood on his shirt from where you had sliced into his collarbone. He knows you’re real, because he had seen you, felt you, and he can still smell faint traces of lavender, as if you’re still straddling his lap.

The Raven isn’t just any ghost story.

You’re his ghost story.

#Bucky Barnes #Winter Soldier #bucky barnes x reader #marvel #mcu #fanfiction #avengers fanfiction #fanfic #avengers fan fiction #avengers #avengers fanfic #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fanfic

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sparkly-despair-imagines · 5 years

Note

Hey! ╰(⸝⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝⸝)╯ you are still doing asks again, right? If you aren't, I'm sorry for bothering you!!!could I request the sdr2 boys reacting to their s/o almost dying? kinda like how ouma fell through the floorboards in v3 and was very injured? I don't doubt he could've died from the impact, bonus if, despite crying from pain, they just say "ah, hey! I didn't see u there, wow im in so much pain,,," or something like that in the most monotone voice when spotting them

Fuyuhiko, Hajime and Nekomaru reacting to their s/o almost dying

I didn’t have the time to do all of them right now so please have Hajime, Nekomaru and Fuyuhiko for now.

Fuyuhiko and Nekomaru’s imagine takes place in a killing game scenario while in Hajime’s you’ve been dating for quite some time and you’re on the outside world.

If you guys wanna see some other characters with this prompt feel free to ask and maybe I’ll do some more.

I hope you like these!

Mod Dia

Hajime Hinata

“Isn’t the view beautiful from up here?” He turned to you with a smile.

He was taking pictures with his right hand and holding your hand on his left one, because he knew you were… prone to accidents.

This was the first time you were traveling as a couple, it felt surreal!

You wanted to see and try everything, making Hajime feel a bit worried and act more like your mom than your boyfriend.

You freed yourself from his protective grip and started to wander off closer to the tip of the cliff you were visiting.

“Careful, s/o.”

“I’m always careful, you know?” You turned around noticing some pretty flowers on the ground. “Oh, these are gorgeous.”

“You’re right, they’re really beautiful.” He said looking at directly at you. “I’m glad we came here, the view is just as amazing as I had imagined.”

He put a hand around your waist and gently pulled you next to him again.

“Feeling flirty, are we?” You giggled, taking a step on the opposite direction, not really looking at where you were going. “Did you see all the cute shops over there? I would love it if we- AHH!!”

The ground beneath you suddenly gave in and you felt yourself fall backwards.

His hand reached out to grab yours but it was no use. The only thing he was able to do is yell out your name and watch your horrified expression as you tumbled down.

You covered your head with your arms and tried to stay calm but every time your body hit the hillside you couldn’t help but to scream in both pain and fear.

You should have listened to Hajime.

If only you had listened…

Now you know that he’s going to blame himself for not being able to save you.

“Hajime…” You silently called for him, getting progressively closer and closer to the ground. “I know you’re gonna help me. Don’t… worry too much.”

You felt yourself finally hit the hard ground and after that you remember only darkness.

(…)

“I’m here for you…” You opened your eyes to see Hajime crying and holding your hand.

You were laying down and he was crouched by your side comforting you.

“Shh, it’s okay…” You placed your finger on his lips and gave him a pained smile.

“You finally woke up, thank god…” He sighed in relief. “I already called an ambulance, you just have to stay still and wait. Can you do that for me?”

“I can.” You said. “It’s… It’s not your fault, you know?”

“..Uh?”

“I know you’re worried.” You cupped his cheek with your dirty and scratched hand. “It doesn’t hurt that much.”

“S/o.” He stared at you. “I’m surprise you can even talk after that fall.”

“I’ll be ok.”

Hajime held back the urge to hug you so he didn’t hurt you more and limited himself to carefully rub the back of your hand.

He can’t believe that even though you’re suffering so much you’re worried about him.

You’re the bravest person he knows.

He believes in you. So please be strong just one more time.

Nekomaru Nidai

You were supposed to be training with Nekomaru that day but you told him that you were too tired and that you needed to rest, so he began the training with only Akane.

He was worried about you because you needed to learn how to protect yourself in case someone tried to hurt you, but he knew training in excess might do bad for one’s health.

You decided to spend your free time at the pool with some of your friends.

You had a blast and time went by flying.

”It’s getting late, s/o.” Sonia said finishing to dry her hair with a towel. “Are you sure you wish not to accompany us?”

“I want to stay a little bit more on the pool.” You gave her a reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine, you can go ahead.”

“Very well.” She returned your smile. “If you change your mind you’re welcome to join us.”

She then walked to Hajime, who was waiting for her, and the two of them entered the hotel.

You continued swimming, and after a while you decided it was enough and you got out of the pool.

It felt really nice to relax once in a while. Next time you’d make sure to bring your boyfriend along!

You stepped out of the pool, feeling refreshed and ready to join the others.

Suddenly, you felt dizzy and tried to stabilize yourself by holding onto a chaise long nearby the pool but your grip wasn’t strong enough and you fell down.

Your head hit the ground and you blacked out almost immediately.

(…)

“Is s/o… d-dead?” You heard one of your classmates say.

“This is all my fault!” You heard someone cry. “I shouldn’t have left s/o all alone.”

“Calm down, Sonia.” Another person said. “It’s not your fault. They’ll surely be ok, right Mikan?”

“I-it would appear so.” You opened your eyes, slowly regaining your vision.

The ultimate nurse was sitting next to you, desperately trying to stop the bleeding on your head.

“Where is…” You started looking around. “..Nekomaru?”

“Has someone called the guy yet?” Kazuichi turned to his peers.

“Peko went to get him.” Fuyuhiko said.

Your friends tried to keep you calm and distracted while Mikan tended to your wound.

Soon, Nekomaru was there to hold your hand and comfort you.

“I’m really sorry I let this happen to you.” He said. “I won’t blame you if you’re angry at me.”

“This.. is nothing.” You forced yourself to smile. “It is neither your or Sonia’s fault. I was clumsy. My bad, big guy.”

He closed his eyes and kept quiet for a bit, you felt his grip around your hand harden.

“Don’t blame yourself even for a second. How could you have known?” You said. “I love you. You’re amazing.”

“What?” He chuckled. “Why am I letting myself be comforted by you when *I* was supposed to be doing that to you?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be alright.”

“I’m sure you will.” He said. “I believe in my athletes. And I definitely believe in you, s/o.”

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu

It was the middle of the night.

At this time everyone was probably sleeping in their assigned room but you had the munchies so you sneaked into the kitchen for a midnight snack.

You made yourself some pancakes and sat at a corner enjoying the treat.

You were having a pretty big bite when you suddenly heard noise coming from outside. Startled, a piece of pancake got into your trachea and seemed to be stuck.

Your trachea clenched shut and you started panicking, trying to get the piece out.

Meanwhile the sound was getting closer and closer until you heard a familiar voice.

Was that… Fuyuhiko?

You wanted to scream for help but no sound would come out. Tears started forming on your eyes as you tried to cough it out.

Your throat was in searing pain, swelled and irritated.

By the time your boyfriend got to you, you were already on your knees, your face turning blue. You clutched your throat.

“S/O!” He ran to help you to your feet and started performing the Heimlich maneuver.

After some unsuccessful tries he was able to get the piece out.

You dropped to the floor again, exhausted.

He let out a huge sigh of relief seeing that you were ok, then turned to you. “What the hell were you thinking , s/o!?”

“…”

“Do you even have ANY IDEA of what could have happened!?” He kicked a nearby chair in frustration.

“What would be of me… without you?” He turned his face to you again and dried off the tears he hadn’t noticed were starting to form.

“..I’m…ok.” You said.

“That’s just because I got here in time.” He said. “How could you do this to me? What if someone took you by surprise and tried to kill you or something?”

“I’m fine now. Thanks for the help.”

“You goddamn idiot, if you ever do something like this again I swear to god-”

“Fuyu.” You stared at him.

“..Sorry, s/o.” He took a deep breath. “From now on you’re gonna stay at my dorm. You’re a danger to yourself. I clearly can’t trust you to take care of yourself so I’ll be doing it for you.”

“I don’t need a babysitter, Fuyuhiko.”

“Fuck yeah you do. And when I can’t watch you I’ll get someone to do it for me.”

“I’ll be more careful next time.” You got up and opened your arms. “Can I… have a hug?”

He didn’t say anything but allowed you to embrace him. “Don’t do this to me, s/o…”

You rubbed his back with your hand.

“As you know, I already lost someone very close to my heart.” He said. “I…won’t force you to sleep in my room or to be with me all the time. But please… At least tell me where you’re going if you don’t want me to go with you.”

“I understand.”

“Good.” He closed the distance between the two of you and kissed your lips.

When he pulled away he was blushing intensely, even though he was the one to kiss you. You laughed at his cuteness which he didn’t find very funny.

“I know that because of the situation we’re in you get worried when I’m alone.” You said. “From now on we stick together, okay?”

“Like you have to say it twice.” He smirked.

#danganronpa #sdr2 #goodbye despair #hajime hinata #fuyuhiko kuzuryu #Nekomaru nidai #imagine #scenario #killing game

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barb-aricyawp · 5 years

Note

what would peter and winter soldiers relationship be like after theyre both free from hydra and are recovering

This is such a great prompt. I’ve been sitting on it for a while and I’m glad I finally got the chance to respond to it. Part one is here. Part two is here. Part three is here.

trigger warnings: psychiatric hospitals, suicide attempts (the train is the most graphic)

The asset walks by Peter’s cell—room, it’s a room—while he sleeps. His therapist, Dr. Achebe warns him that he’s using Peter to self-harm: forcibly triggering guilt each time he looks at him. But the asset is always thinking about Peter.

Looking at him just solidifies what he’s already feeling.

---

The asset is told that Peter was given three options: he could return to Queens with his aunt, he could stay with Stark in the compound, or the US government could take him into custody for observation.

The asset is told that Peter asked, “Where is the Winter Soldier going?” and requested to be sent to Wakanda as well.

The asset is told all this and goes back to his cell room. There, he calmly strips his bed and wrings his bedsheet into a knotted rope. He tries to hang himself.

—-

It doesn’t work, of course. He is a super soldier and his collapsed trachea mends while the nurses cut him down.

He is placed on suicide watch, the blinds of his cell room are permanently open and the orderlies check in on him every five minutes. But the asset still finds a way to sneak out.

He gathers wildflowers from the brush surrounding the facility. He binds their stems with a reed that he softens on his own tongue. It leaves a bitter taste that lingers even after the Soldier has laid the flowers outside Peter’s room.

—-

It is by pure accident that they pass in the hall. The asset is on his way to physical therapy, lost in a memory about Coney Island.

“Soldier!” someone calls and the asset’s head snaps up, disoriented. Here, he is called Sargent Barnes. Only HYDRA referred to him as ‘Soldier.’ Well, HYDRA and...

It’s Peter Parker, flanked by a nurse in pastel pink scrubs. He looks well—smiling and flushed and filling out again into adolescent softness that the asset tried to carve off of him.

“Soldier!” It’s how Peter referred to him when he begged, starving and exhausted, pleading for kindness. “Soldier!” It’s what Peter said when he got out of the chair, scared and anchored only in his abuser. “Soldier!” Peter had called out to him when they were rescued.

The asset has done terrible things to this boy. Could do terrible things to him again. He shouldn’t have been rescued at all. He should have been executed.

He staggers back against the wall, folding himself into his smallest shape so as to leave room for Peter. So as to prove that he’s not a threat. His doctors practically drag him along, away from Peter who is still calling “Soldier! Soldier!”

—-

Dr. Achebe takes the asset down to the market, ostensibly so they can purchase some fruit, but most likely to give the asset some psychic distance.

He has been numb since the incident in the corridor. He is mute and expressionless as he selects five plums and a painted ceramic pot. The asset has plans to eat one plum and leave the rest in the pot for Peter outside his door.

“The problem with super soldiers,” Dr. Achebe says after she’s paid for his fruit, “Is that there is no way to protect them from themselves. Can you promise me that you won’t try to harm yourself tonight?”

“I can,” the asset says.

—-

He waits until the lights have dimmed in the hall, then he carefully removes the metal grate from the vent. The asset is slighter than he once was, withered down to the bones. He fits through the vent, slithers through to the outdoors, and makes his way to the train station.

Once there, he stands on the platform. Wakanda’s train system is not dissimilar to New York’s subway, and for a moment he feels a bit like Bucky Barnes, marveling at human ingenuity, waiting for the train to come in.

The air pressure changes in the tunnel, signaling an oncoming car. Bucky turns away from it, back to the tracks. He could walk away then, but he doesn’t.

He falls backwards and there is a moment where his spine hits the tracks, just before the train comes in, when he thinks that he has bad luck with trains.

It hurdles over him. The wheels catch his arm and mangle it against the rail. That’s all he feels before he loses consciousness.

—-

Steve is waiting by his side when Bucky wakes up. And he looks just about as terrible as Bucky feels.

“Huh,” Bucky says with mild disappointment. He realizes he’s missing a chunk of his tongue. “So, I survived that too.”

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says, scrubbing his face in both hands.

“Hey.” Bucky tries to pull out the IV in his elbow and finds that, one handed, he cannot. “Gonna lecture me on my self preservation skills?”

Steve shrugs. “Why would I? You wouldn’t listen.” He smiles when Bucky laughs, and it seems sincere. “Peter says you left him some plums before you—before the—“

Bucky puts him out of his misery. “I did.”

“That was nice of you.”

“Yeah, I’m his real guardian angel.” Bucky sits up some and regrets it. His body is in shambles, but it could be worse. Considering.

“He wants to see you, you know.”

Bucky winces. “No, he doesn’t.“

Steve gives him a look that lances straight through him. “You deserve forgiveness. And he deserves to give it to you.”

—-

Bucky goes away as the asset approaches Peter’s room. One moment, he is himself, the next he is an empty house with the lights left on.

Peter winces when he sees the asset again. At first, the asset assumes he flinched from fear. But then Peter reaches out, brushes his fingers over the mottled bruise over the asset’s mandible, and asks, “What happened?”

The asset shakes his head. “It’s not important. I—Why did you want to see me?”

Peter sits up a little straighter, as if only now remembering that he’s here. That he asked for this.

“I wanted to see if you were okay, I wanted to—I didn’t realize it until we got here, but I just realized that I know all this stuff about you, that we went through this just horrible thing together and you basically saved my life, but I don’t even know your name.”

The asset pauses. “They wouldn’t tell you my name?”

Peter shrugs. “Dr. Mwangi says he’s not allowed to disclose patient information.”

“So, I systematically tortured and brainwashed you for nearly a year and they wouldn’t tell you my name?” The asset can’t help himself—he laughs.

Peter seems startled; he’s never heard the asset laugh before. But within moments, he’s laughing too and then they’re laughing together so hard that tears squeeze from their eyes and the asset bends over laughing and hacking.

“It’s Bucky,” he says, swallowing air in great gulps. “My name is Bucky.”

“I’m Peter.” He takes Bucky’s hand, though it’s laid against his chest, hanging in a sling. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

#Anonymous #hydra trash party #whump peter parker #whump bucky barnes #suicide attempt #tw: suicide #hanging #train suicide #no editing we die like men #literally wrote this on the subway

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gyromitra-esculenta · 4 years

Text

Dumpster Fire

Yeah, I made a threat I’m going to finish it today (actually tomorrow ‘cos it’s 3am rn for me), so here’s the thing, semi-fill for PF prompt, off-shoot of Said and Done (if they didn’t exactly reconcile).

Warnings: Crack treated seriously, some amount of safe violence, and love/hate sexy-times (so not exactly safe for everywhere?)

Gabriel reformed to what felt like an elbow in his neck and a blade in his liver, which, by the virtue of itself, served as a stark reminder that Jack Morrison, contrary to his public image, rarely - if ever - fought in a way that could be considered fair and square.

It had been endearing once. Now, it was far beyond infuriating.

"A trashcan." Any other person would find it impossible to project their voice with their trachea being actively crushed, and Gabriel poured all of his now quite acute resentment into the word.

"I know..." Gabriel was deeply thankful for whatever deity that listened for the gloves, otherwise, that finger in his eye would be tipped with a blunt and bitten nail. "...my dumpsters!"

"That's why you have mac'n'cheese in your hair?"

And there went his knee, with a crack.

"Accidents at work happen," Jack hissed, twisting, and going for the gold. Little adjustment redirected that one to the thigh. It still hurt. Gabriel swore under his breath and went in for the kill. Which, at that moment, consisted of getting his hands on the little shit's neck. The resulting scuffle ended as suddenly as it began, this time in an uncomfortable silence punctuated by the creaking of the contents of the garbage bags under them and heavy breathing.

"Seriously?" Jack wheezed out as Gabriel still had his thumbs pressed into his throat.

"You, of all people," Gabriel articulated with care trying to somehow diffuse the surprisingly viscerally uncomfortable situation he found himself in, even entertaining for a moment ghosting away, "should be well aware it's an autonomous response that has nothing to..."

"Bullshit. Anyone else, yeah, but not yo..." Jack wheezed and croaked when Gabriel cut off his air entirely (on the reflex, honestly, but at least it had done away with the blabbing) - to which Jack reacted by shifting and dragging his thigh deliberately against the front of his trousers. They stared at each other in the darkness illuminated only by the sliver of light getting in through the unsealed crack under the lid of the dumpster, Jack going slightly red in the face due to the lack of oxygen, and Gabriel running equations on the time he had left now.

"Fast one," he ground out easing his hands off Jack's neck.

"Always a fast one with you."

At least, to his relief, the knife was out of his liver as Jack frantically started undoing his own belt. This had to be the new low - and the testament to how his standards took a dramatic nosedive somewhere there in the span of recent years - because dumpster sex had never been on the table before, and even the mouthing off didn't curb his unexpected enthusiasm.

The pant leg somehow hitting him in the face despite there being barely any space between them also reminded him of two facts: out of the two of them, Jack had always been the nimbler one, and he still went commando - which sent a shiver of conflicting emotions down his spine. Because, the possibility of a zip-up mishap and the chafing on the seams were far from enticing any way you spun them.

"Could you shut the fuck up with your internal monologue and fuck me already?" Jack, the little shit he was invariably, hissed, hooking his free leg on his hip. And to no surprise to Gabriel, the nanites were more than happy to take cues from the overexcited lizard brain rendering him already pantsless, which was a thing to look into – later, since Jack's ankles locked behind his back like a vice - god, those legs were deadly on their own

"So, are we..." Gabriel's hand, out of the long-standing instinct, moved to cover his mouth, and the little shit continued to mumble undeterred anyway with a smirk he felt against his palm.

"Shut up," Gabriel hissed, helping himself with the other hand. If he still needed to breathe out of the necessity and not out of the force of the habit, all the air would go out of his lungs with the sheer force the aforementioned legs tensed against his sides trying their best to break half of his ribs. Which spoke volumes because Jack, biting down on his palm now, was more than capable of achieving just that, as one unfortunate accident before did prove it beyond there being any shadow of a doubt, and made for some awkward explaining as to how an injury like that could be acquired. Getting unluckily stuck between two moving tanks wasn't that much of a lie, either, at least according to Gabriel.

After a few shallow thrusts, he felt the rigidity threatening grievous harm morph into fluid tension moving together with him, and gloved fingers dug into his back. The teeth biting into the meat of his palm slackened as he picked up the pace and Gabriel slipped two of his fingers into the burning hot mouth, pressing on the tongue fighting against the intrusion. Jack threw his head back with a guttural whine, exposing what little of his neck peeked above the line of the nanopadding for Gabriel to lean down and graze his lips over the jugular - just about now thinking he could afford to spend a bit more time on this, earlier arrangements be damned.

Especially with the muffled sounds Jack was making around his fingers and how he arched his spine like no-one his age should be able to do comfortably without throwing out their back when Gabriel bit down none too gently above the vein.

Yeah. Fuck prior arrangements.

And as soon as he decided on it, the lid of the dumpster was lifted.

"Guys. Not that I'm judging anyone here, but I'm judging so hard right now that I've never ever judged anyone more in my life before," Sombra enunciated slowly and forcibly.

There had to be, surely, a more embarrassing occurrence than this in his life before because Gabriel adamantly denied the possibility of being discovered having sex in a goddamn trashcan as the nadir of his existence. Didn't help Jack chose this moment to lick his fingers.

He weighed the prospects.

"Ten minutes."

Jack pulled his hand away from his mouth stretching a string of saliva between his lips and Gabriel's fingers - and only then it hit him how fucking unhygienic the whole ordeal was.

"Three to five, tops."

Little. Fucking. Shit.

No-one caught in flagrante delicto in current circumstances had any fucking business looking so smugly nonplussed.

"Make it fifteen," Gabriel ground out through clenched teeth and shut the lid back with enough force Sombra had to jump back to evade having her hand crushed.

After a seemingly uncoordinated tussle inside and some swearing, the dumpster's legs returned to ever so conspicuously leaving grooves in the dirt. Sombra opened her cigarette case and treated herself to one old-fashioned smoke - lighting it with the tip of her finger.

She would be lying trying to insist this - this namely being finding her co-worker of sorts love-hate banging his old flame of sorts in a garbage container - pinged as anything more than a medium blip on her morbid radar.

There were worse things out there, certainly, and most of them she had on tape.

At the twelve-minute mark out of the promised fifteen, Sombra was halfway into her second cigarette when the shaking was joined by the awful squeaking crescendo of metal on the concrete.

And then, it just stopped. Ah, blessed sil...

The dumpster literally jumped up several centimeters into the air to the accompaniment of an ungodly screeching yowl coming from its depths.

Mere seconds later, former Strike Commander crawled out of the container - falling face-first into the dirt together with his gun - but miraculously somehow managing to pull up his pants mid-flight before the landing. Had to hurt, Sombra mused, extending her hand. Morrison sprung to his feet, deposited the databank into her waiting palm, and immediately took off running down the alleyway, zipping up his fly on the way before going into feet-first slide straight into a basement window, pulling the hatch closed right behind him. Stylish.

Would be ten out of ten, if her enhanced hearing hadn't caught what sounded like him hitting several metal drums. As it was, eight and a half.

The dumpster's lid shot open with a potent clang, letting out an angrily hissing nanite cloud with an obvious grudge.

"Where is he?" Gabriel seethed after he reformed in full gear, shotguns and fingers twitching on the triggers included. She craned her neck at him.

"Who?" As ostentatiously as possible, Sombra put the databank in her pocket. "Also, there's macaroni falling out of your hood."

Gabriel closed his eyes and took a few calming breaths, purely for psychological benefits.

"I hate both of you."

#sometimes I write #reaper76 #r76 #said and done #what even is this #crack it's crack

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theramseyloft · 5 years

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Dammit tumblr. The kids (younger than 6 months old)

Betty is a bit stand-offish, but knows his name and trusts me enough to come for treats.

Here is how he reacts to me reaching for his shiny new baby.

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A post shared by Danielle Ramsey (@theramseyloft) on Nov 5, 2019 at 11:03am PST

Relaxed and confident. Doesn’t try to sit tighter or fight me off, just lets me take it and waits for me to put it back.

Rigby will come sit with me regardless of whether or not there are treats currently on offer.

Right now, she’s getting cozy with Jet and has less time for me. XD

Tandy doesn’t really come for treats anymore. I think she came to hate the crowd and got tired of being told she was rude. XD

She sits with me every time I sit down, though, and it pretty happy to get cuddle time and be preened while she preens me.

PJ is really starting to feel his cockishness!

He’ll come check on me and dance in front of me, and knock other birds out of his way for treats.

But he’s not really one to sit with me.

Not sure if you were interested in adding Luxotica, since she didn’t hatch here?

But she’s getting used to the routine enough to be at least slightly less a cryptid.

Escher mostly does her own thing.

She’s curious and clever, and wants to be kinda everywhere at once.

She and PJ are kiiind of a thing? Like the pigeon version of a highschool crush.

He follows her everywhere, and if he’s on or near me, it’s usually because Escher wanted to check for treats or chill with me.

Vynni is very much a young man.

He likes to cuddle and be preened, but he’d rather we do that from his swing than he come to me.

It think it’s less that he likes me less than that he is just hell bent on guarding his swing!

Bop... Has been out for a month, and it’s been three weeks since his last confirmed sighting.

Pippin!

Still Best Boy. ^v^

So full of love me and fite me!

Just an utter delight to work with.

Panther probably doesn’t count either, since he’s not a keeper, but he’s getting very slowly less spook-y...

At least until meds need to happen.

Can’t really blame him for that, though. The worm meds syringe has to be forced down his throat to avoid injecting them into his trachea by accident.

That would feel like torture to me too!

Lilly is quickly becoming a favorite.

Speaks her mind VERY loudly! Allows absolutely NO ONE to bully or push her around.

(Should have named her Lolli, since she’s all of 10 weeks old and constantly hitting on her own dad, who is more into her than any other hen in the loft [because she looks exactly like her mom, whom he dearly misses])

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A post shared by Danielle Ramsey (@theramseyloft) on Nov 2, 2019 at 10:07am PDT

She is Vynni’s primary rival for the swing.

Ellie is the most stand-offish of our current babies.

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A post shared by Danielle Ramsey (@theramseyloft) on Nov 5, 2019 at 10:53am PST

The adults have pretty much taught her that they’ll dog pile her every time she gets near me, so she just... doesn’t.

If it isn’t treat time, and there is a very light crowd, she may get on my knee and sit with me for a bit, but she does NOT want me to come to her!

Gus took EIGHT weeks to stop holding out so hard for me to give him specifically treats (not his regular food, yuck!) for so long and with such determination that he’d be pooping foam at the end of the work day.

This clingy little poot is the ENTIRE reason I can’t do treat time for younger babies in the loft right now!

Now that he’s finally been broken of that and will go feed himself when he’s hungry, he’s a fantastic little cuddle bug.

Spirit is going out either this afternoon or next week, depending on how soon his new family get back to me.

What a joy this little man has been! I’m really going to miss him, but he’ll make his new family SO happy!

He’s a fun, performative little cuddle bug who wants to go explore everything, and then come back to snuggle and recharge for his next exploration session. ^v^

Radish will be going home to @birdgeppetto in two and a half more weeks.

Her parents are still keeping her well pumped, but she associates my lap with treats and cuddles, so if I’m sitting down, she’s usually fighting with Gus over her spot in it (which she believes is against my tummy, with my arm around her.)

She is REALLY excited for treats, but bad at taking them individually. She is decent enough at pecking them from my palm, though.

Fortunately for me, her parents both come call her off my lap for feeding when she gets really insistent and starts slapping hard enough for them to hear her.

Samhain is too little to display much personality yet. XD

Most start expressing their opinions on things when they are a little more mobile.

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A post shared by Danielle Ramsey (@theramseyloft) on Nov 5, 2019 at 10:57am PST

Thus far, Sami is very mellow and doesn’t complain or beg when she’s petted or maneuvered.

She JUST started showing a feed me response to her beak tip being touched by my fingertips today.

SS2-2 is a peepy puddle of pudge.

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A post shared by Danielle Ramsey (@theramseyloft) on Nov 5, 2019 at 11:01am PST

They’re usually pumped a little more full than Sami, and have a VERY strong food response.

I expect this will make them especially easy to treat prime and train.

BH1-1 is already a hilarious blob, as seen in the video showing his Father’s response to me picking him up.

Nothing seems to phase him at this point.

Hands are soft and nice, and he likes them, even though being brooded is much more warm.

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useyour1010 · 4 years

Text

Stucky Tropic Love

This is the first time I published my work.

James Barnes was lying on the beach, lying under palm trees.

Steve Rogers was in the ward, sitting by the bed.

Bucky has lived on the beach for a long time, and he can still live without food, provided that he tries to get the coconut off the tree every day. Bucky's fingers were inserted into the soft sand. His right hand could clearly feel every grain of sand flowing between his fingers, but his left hand could not feel anything. The sand flowing into the blades of the robotic arm must be difficult to clean, but he didn't care These, at least now, can stay away from the annoying Hydra.

The tide rushed to the beach one after another, and it was wet with the sand, as if it had soaked something else, something belonging to Bucky. When he was young, he and Steve often climbed mountains together during the summer vacation. They firmly believed that if they crossed this mountain, they would reach the sea. You never understand children's ideas, they are the most precious and innocent gifts the world gives us. Once Steve got a foot crush and they could n’t climb anymore. Bucky started crying. For the friend ’s ankle and their dreams, Steve comforted him on the side. As a result, the last two children sat Weeping loudly on the mountain road, I was taken aback by the lumberjack who saw it. Since then, people no longer allowed the two children to go up the mountain together. They were grieved by the incident for three minutes. Then they decided to catch fish in the river.

But what happened to Bucky after he joined the army is unclear. The time after joining the army and before waking up seems to be very long. After seeing Steve, he will definitely understand that Steve always Tell him the truth.

Steve stayed beside the bed for a long time. The nurse told him that the patient would not wake up for at least two months, so Steve brought flowers and letters to the patient after completing his task every day. When he arrives at the ward, even if the patient can't hear it, he will read it carefully word by word, then put the letter back into the envelope and put it on the patient's pillow. The flowers withered and changed from batch to batch. Many letters could not be put down and filled the hospital bed.

Steve eats some popcorn every day before the patient wakes up, which reminds him of some previous things. At that time, Steve was still a small bean sprout, because he was too thin to be liked by girls. he could only stand behind and hand some popcorn to the girls, although the girls would definitely not like it. At that time he was really like a fool. He promised his best friend not to do stupid things before he came back, and he never came back after that, but Steve still did a lot of things that did not meet the conditions. If he comes back, Steve will put down all the important things in his hand and run to him to give him a big hug and tell him that he misses him.

Bucky used to put the coconut shell on the right, so that his fingers could feel the rough shell on the coconut, which made him feel comfortable. But today, he discovered that a small pit suddenly appeared on the left hand side. It appeared as if it had just appeared, and it seemed to have existed for a long time. In short, Bucky doesn't like this obtrusive pit.

Steve likes to sit on the patient's left hand, he will always hold the patient's hand, trying to warm the cold metal, although Steve has not succeeded. But today, when Steve changed the flowers in the vase for the patient, grains of sand appeared in the leaves of the iron arm. They are not many in number but enough to make people look upset. He had not found this problem before. Maybe when the children in other wards played pranks, Steve used a cotton swab and a towel to clean the sand between the leaves. In short, Steve was very angry about this prank.

On the next day, Bucky found that the small hole on his left was deeper, as if someone was sitting there, the sand between his iron arms was also cleaned up, and he almost never used his left arm. . He had to find out who had done it, so Bucky mixed sand between the blades of his metal arm again. This is so strange, Bucky decided to secretly observe his left side at night.

Steve went to the front desk before seeing the patient. He wanted to know if anyone had entered or left that ward today. The nurse was a very gentle lady. She was working for the first time today. No one had entered. That ward. This time Steve found sand again between the iron arms, more than yesterday. Steve first cleaned all the sand and then complained to the security staff about the problem. They also turned over the monitoring very seriously, and they did not. Steve doesn't plan to go back to the little apartment today, he will stay here for a whole night.

Bucky basically wanted to find the culprit, but his metal arm could not feel any touch from others, not even his own. He was awake all night, but no one was beside him, and the iron arm became very clean. This is wrong, and there must be a cause for the accident.

Steve never found sand again the next day.

Bucky's left pit did not deepen.

This state lasted only three days.

When Steve came back, the bed was almost full of sand, and he took Bucky home to take care of him.

When Bucky woke up in the morning, he felt his arm was about to break, and the pit on the left was about to bury ten coconuts. Bucky was very angry, he decided he would not lie down under this palm tree in the future. He decided to bask in the sun.

On the first day Steve took Bucky home, he just went out to buy daily necessities, and when he came back, Bucky was no longer in the apartment. It must have been intentional, it must be someone who has been following me. Steve took the shield and jumped from the balcony.

Bucky felt dizzy and was suffocating. The sun was shining on every inch of his skin. A painful feeling spread all over his body. It was like someone cut off an inch of skin with a knife, sewed it back with a needle and thread, dripped salt water on it, and roasted with fire. This pain afflicted him. He ran into the water, where it might be cooler.

Steve failed to retrieve Bucky. But he found Bucky ’s iron arm, which was on the couch where Bucky was asleep, with water drops hanging on it. If you smell it carefully, you can smell the salty smell of the ocean. This had to make him think of the things he had done before, something he could not forget.

Bucky is going to drown, forget it, so be it, it's good to sink to the bottom of the sea. Probably Steve will be waiting for him there, and they will reach the land of dreams, the place they can reach when they cross a mountain, the dream town they dream of. There will be no war here, only two of them. The seawater was still pouring into Bucky's nasal cavity. He opened his mouth, and the water instantly poured into the throat, partly into the esophagus, and partly into the trachea, filling the lungs.

Steve scrubbed the iron arm clean and placed it beside the bed. This was the only thing from a best friend. Maybe he can forget it later and start a new life. But there is always some distance between dream and reality, right? That night, he dreamed of Bucky. He coughed violently, grabbed his collar, and disappeared. Just here, Steve's dream woke up.

Steve was still lying beside the bed, it seemed that after a long time, the patient's brown hair on the bed was also wet, soaking the pillow.

Bucky was in the sea, his eyes were dark, he could not see anything, his limbs began to ache, and he felt like hundreds of poisonous insects were eating his skin. He couldn't feel anything. He may be dead.

Steve's eyes opened as he took the pillow away and dried the patient's hair with a towel.

"... Steve?"

"... Welcome back. I miss you so much."

"Is it long? I fainted?" Bucky moved his left arm, and he could feel the soft touch that the quilt was covering, and the cloth gave him.

"I will explain it to you. But, can you tell me why you have been reluctant to come back."

"... I am in love, and I have found what I want to protect." Bucky took the initiative to hug Steve.

#stucky #steve rogers #bucky barnes #winter sodier #captain America #captain america

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cerberus253 · 6 years

Text

The Long Aldrich Fanfiction Nobody Asked For (Aldi x Reader(F))

READ IT BEFORE TUMBLR TAKES IT DOWN

Table of Content (If ya just want “certain” parts):

- Set Up, “Only moments ago you were found out” - Meeting Aldi, “Almost like waiting for that request,” - Foreplay, “Aldrich beautifully chuckles.” - Cunnilingus, “Oh yes, my dearest scruple of nourishment!” - Intercourse, “Aldrich licked his lips as he watched you” - Blow Job, “Aldrich leaned back and layed down” - Resolution, “Thou looks as if finished.”

Only moments ago you were found out to be slinking in the once market streets for whatever you could scavenge. Unlike the average resident of Anor Londo, you cannot solely survive on little to nothing, for you are a rare delicacy in these parts of the forbidden land. As far to your knowledge, you are the only living human for miles, and from the reactions of the elite, it is worse than rare. From what you have witnessed, everyone kills everyone who is foreign to these parts, however, when you were kidnapped, murder was not the goal. Death would have been a quick and easy extermination, but you felt something dreadful was being planned for you by how careful they were not to mortally wound your body. You struggled and grabbed anything you could use to fend yourself, but the undead were far too strong and knocked you unresponsive.

Regaining consciousness, you could not see. Your hands were bound behind your back and you had a ringing in your ears. With ungraceful movement, you stir by accident and alert your captors. They placed you on your feet and forced you to walk. By the sound of shuffling, you guessed you were surrounded. You had no idea where they are headed, but it must have been far away from the market because you were freezing cold from the amount of time spent outside. It was eerily quiet, even for this desolate kingdom.

Finally, you sensed the entering of some building. By the sounds bouncing within, it was lofty and elevated, which meant one thing: stairs. You already have a habit of falling down stairs and it has not happened for months, but this lucky streak might end. Using this as an excuse to be annoying, you state the fact to the soldiers, to which they ignored. Eventually you did manage to trip on some steps, and because you were bound, you could barely help yourself to get up. A few more scenes of this the soldiers finally gave up and carried your grinning self the rest of the way up.

The tower was absurdly tall. You felt the air around you grow thin and drop temperature even more. The armored knights did not put you down, for there were more of your worst enemy, until you were directly in front of the door.

Almost like to return the favor, they dropped you on your back with a loud ‘thud.’ Forced to get up on your own, it felt warmer in this newfound building. Pyromancy is a familiar ability, so maybe that had something to do with the sudden temperature change. Prayers are heard from the distance in the echoing halls, and large beast sounding feet are heard mucking about, coming closer. If it was not for the blindness, you would not of been scared of a monster acknowledging you, for you have become so used to terrifying creatures they have become normal, all the way to the point where you are fascinated by the array and colorful variants of beasties; you have even become friends with a couple of them! This one, however, came far too close for comfort. You felt the musky and heavy breathing from this animal’s gaping maw. It must have recently eaten something because you were about ready to vomit by the pure stench of flesh. Luckily, it was just curious about you, and the soldiers had you move forward across the vocal filled structure.

The knights stop you in front of a large wall, which then revealed to be a door once opened. Whatever room you are about to enter was no ordinary living space. You could hear the jumbling and disgusting squish of who knows what, but your best guess was pure bone and flesh because it reeked of it, even worse than the previously met creature’s. The smell was so vile that your eyes watered. A few seconds later, you are unable to smell anything. You could breathe clearly from it, but apparently the stench was so bad it fried your sense of smell. Despite the vast danger that will highly happen, you were oddly, and silently, impressed.

Sloshing through the unknown muck, the captors drag you some feet into the room, forced you on your knees, and then left, closing the door behind them. Silence. Silence was never a good sign. You learned through your years in the monster infested streets that being scared only hinders a person from thinking correctly. Unknown if taught or developed through denial, you make light of a horrible situation. You talk to yourself, beginning with a large sigh,

“So, uh, may I have this blindfold off now? I would like to see this room. You know, to see if it’s as wonderful as it smells.” Despite the unsmellable miasma, you were still curious on seeing the carnage in the room. Anatomy has always interested you, even though you would mourn for an animal being murdered in your sights. Waiting for any noise to occur, you shift your position to something more comfortable and relaxing, for you are terrified, but you know you can deceive yourself from that feeling by sitting criss cross with a forced smile on your face. Whatever comes for you, you want its guard down.

“Hello-o?” spoken in a sing-song voice from your lips. “I would love to meet whoever I have been presented to. I bet you’re really nice!” You knew for a fact this thing was not going to be nice, yet you smiled like the sun.

Almost like waiting for that request, you heard something on the far end of the room. It swashed and churned the flesh on the floor with back prickling success, like it was made from the innards. The commotion made the thing sound immense, yet graceful, for it made a slithering sounding pattern, even though you could also make out the glopping noises of it sticking to the floor. You heard the oozing, the sucking and spurting of muck and the clattering of bones like a wind chime, patiently moving closer to your presence. It stops, and you waited for a follow up response, but there was none.

“Hello! My name is [YNH] and it is wonderful to meet you! Can you get this blindfold off? I would like to see things, please! I wanna check this room out.” Any normal person would stutter and be selective of their words in a situation like this, but staying calm is your top priority and being in denial about the apparent danger is the only way you know how.

There was no answer from the beast.

“So, uh, how about this weather, huh? Freezing. Hope your muckiness doesn’t freeze on you. Boy, wouldn’t that be annoying.” More awkward silence ensues.

“May I see you? I would love to see you! I bet you’re wonderful to look upon.” You question why you say such things during inappropriate situations, but you are most likely going to die, so might as well.

You feel a presence closer to your visage, and by judgement, it is inches from you. Heart racing and ready for unimaginable pain, you regard the sensation of something brushing the sides of your head, and to your surprise the creature took off the blinding material.

“My my, I began to wonder about my next meal's arrival. I did hope it was something delectable, but I never knew it wouldst be so...cheerfully naive,” it finally responded with a tilted expression. Although gurgled and hearing of strain, the voice sounded reagent and light, teetering on the male and female threshold of vocals.

You gaze upon a semi-human creature. The top half is of a taught pale skinned human with long snow white locks. A helm that resembled the setting sun covers half of his lean face, covering his eyes and nose but revealing cracked, yet glossy, violet lips. Royal attire of dark purple and gold hung loosely about his skeletal figure, ending in a long, split ended dress of fiber strands that puff out like a bird’s feathers. Below that mostly normal looking torso sprouted an unholy amalgamation of flesh, muck, grime, and remains, all forming together to shape an elongated tail. You could have sworn you have seen some pulsation.

Noticing you are staring at him wide eyed, he begins to speak again,

“I must give thee praise for thine attempted courage, but false emotions dost not deceiveth the Saint of the Deep. I can smelleth thy fear and it is as delicious as flesh itself,” he says with a smile. Feeling his eyes bore into you as you struggle to keep up your act, you just shrug and smile ‘I guess.’

The masked creature circles you as if curious on what is before him. You watch quizzically and try to read him, but you are only as inquisitive as he is. He crosses his arms with a scowl.

“You okay? What, do I have something on me? Do I not have enough meat on my bones for you, sir?” You really have to stop nudging others like this, it is just tempting them to eat you.

He leans in closer again, placing the back of his hand against your face, tilting his head and yours in the process. You felt a rush of blood go from your heart to your cheeks, but that was only from surprise and fear, right? After a few seconds of what felt like forever of physical contact, he jerked his branch like fingers away from you and pulled himself aback. You were becoming light headed but managed to stay put. Since when was the last time someone made passive physical contact with you? You were shocked and wanted it again, but right now is not the time for such foolishness. Pay attention and see when you can wriggle free from this disastrous situation.

While being distracted with your thoughts, his hands quickly wrapped around your neck. ‘Dammit!’ You thought. ‘Only if my hands were free I could dig my thumbs into his trachea!’ However, you noticed that yes there was pressure, he was not choking you, but rather... feeling for something?

His lips part with a small gasp,

“By the divines, thoust can not be... This is wonderful!” He pushes two fingers where your neck meets your chin, feeling your pulse. His aggressive prodding made you hear and feel your own beating heart struggle to push blood to your head, making it difficult to breath. Enjoying the scene, he cocks his head in amusement and grins,

“In all my years I never thought a single one of you wouldst be in existence still.” The Saint lightly traces your jawline with a single finger, watching you shutter. If he has not interacted with a living human being, then everyone around here must have had a second death in a most gruesome manner, and it seems he was that second death. However insane, his diction and manners say you might be able to talk yourself out of this. Make a deal to bring more food to him? Offer him a bigger treat? Whatever the case, you need to get out of here.

Before you had the time to react, he grabbed the back of your head and slammed it sideways into the grime. He waited for you to struggle and realize you were not going anywhere before he leaned his skeletal rib cage upon your back, positioning his cold lips right against your ear and whispered in a hungrily seductive tone,

“Dost thou hast any idea how long I, Aldrich, hast waited for pure blood, hot with fresh youth, spilling into my mouth? To sink my teeth into that soft skin, tasting every drop of essence in thy frail corpse? Peeling thy veins and arteries as you moan and scream in agony for me?”

With these words spoken, you feel your heart pounding in your throat. Just dying was one thing, but slow death is a curse that fills a slot of one of your greatest fears. Breathing heavily, you held back any wincing and tried your hardest to keep calm. Fear swirled unending in your head, inhibiting the lack of tracks for your train of thought. Aldrich could smash your head in right now, he would break your bones and keep you alive long enough to watch him enjoy your corpse. Despite your horror, your lack of normality within what you call a brain slurs the alarming danger with curiosity and attraction. What? Why? You are into unnatural things that are not others’ cup of tea, but nothing too grotesque. Anatomy and physiology are a personal interest, and you are skin deprived, but could these two characteristics really somehow create an unholy offspring of the ability to get off to dread and gore? Have you become that lonely and numb to violence that you blackened your bar of interest with taboo subjects?

You heat up and sweat with terror and that unnatural longing. Aldrich senses this and demands more apprehensiveness from you, running his boney hand down to your hip, squeezing and piercing your flesh. The warm blood from your body quickly drains from the wounds and you can feel his claws massaging the inside of them. With this bleeding and his heavy breath against your cheek, you want to beg to be touched, but what an ego-centrical thing to ask from a creature that eats people for breakfast. Why would he do something like that? You are just a flesh bag, nothing more nor less to Aldrich.

You accidentally let out a faint mixture of noise of a wince and moan. Oops.

“Ah, so my scarlet swan can singeth. Pray, my dear, continue. The more thou continue, the longer thou wilt live.” His voice wraps around your brain and you listen to the song of the siren. Who knows if he can see the expression on your face, which is that of frustration-- not for the situation you are in, but disappointment that you are into this.

Aldrich scratches into your back with rhythmic circular motions, going up from your hip to the side of your ribs, then curving onto your back and going south to your sides. You struggle in preventing yourself from gyrating to the movements.

With a moan, he speaks again,

“Oh, by the stars, thy warmth is such a specialty for me. I forgot how much I longed for this moment. I simply cannot wait until I-” He cuts himself off, and then proceeds to lift himself off of you, however still pinning your head to the ground. You perk your ears up in hopes you catch a sound of a hero, but alas none.

“But if I continue forth with it, however always being with me forever, I wilt never be able to see nor toucheth thee ever again. I want more than anything to eat and consume so thou wilt never be able to leave, but…” He trails off, talking to himself and sounding worried. “Oh, what a terrible position to be in.”

“A-Are you confused?” You stupidly ask in a cracked tone. Maybe forming a personal connection will convince him to let you go, but at this point if you prevent him from eating you, do you want to leave? He seems interesting as a person, and there is an artistic elegance about him that you want to study… But what are you thinking? This will not happen, no matter how strong your fantasy is.

The devourer turns you over onto your back, still having his right hand pinning, but square on your chest. Completely forgetting to check how bad your wounds are, you are mesmerized by the angle of Aldrich presented to you. He is looking off to the side with his smooth chin between his pointer and thumb. With a calm and collective pose, he breaths steadily. The slight breeze in the room loosens his silky hair and has it fall gently from his sharp shoulders; it seems to gleem in the moonlight, as well as his crowned mask. The room is dark, but moonlight pools in, bouncing off of every moist surface and turning the translucent drapes into ghosts. You can see small white and grey particles floating around as well, which is most likely dead skin flying. The atmosphere within the chamber intensifies the beauty that is Aldrich to you. ‘Fascinating,’ you think to yourself as you study him from head to torso. You want to see the rest of him, but with the position you are in, you cannot. Disappointing.

You still know you are in danger, but your heart is pumping for a different reason. Referencing of how he is, you know he will never consent, but disturbingly you long to hug him and feel his body like he did to you. Hopefully he has a heart you can listen to, following every beat it makes and its changes when you touch him specifically. The mere thought of kissing and biting him makes you weak and moist. And those lips, those violet dead lips-- ‘GAH!!! What the Hell am I thinking?! Knock it off you shit!’ Thinking angrily at those atrocious passions, you bury that inevitable explosion. ‘Don’t worry, me. Once I’m out or when I die it will end. The nothingness will come back and you won’t have these deep dark feelings anymore. Feeling nothing is better than self loathing.’ That last thought made you sad and unable to look upon Aldrich with fascination anymore, only the expression of longing for something you never had.

“Something must hast distracted thee, for thou dost not stare at me with those soulful eyes of wonder nay longer, and the drum in thy chest hath decreased.” Aldrich startled you when he spoke, and you were able to lock eyes with approximately where his would be. In a saddened expression, you dismiss him,

“It’s nothing. Just stupid mental stuff.”

“Now now, stress wrinkles the skin and we dost not require anything such, especially me.”

“Psh.” you sullenly hissed.

“Nay need to gift attitude, child,” he sharply responded. Feeling embarrassed and afraid you might get on Aldrich’s bad side, you generalize what is on your mind.

“It’s just loneliness, that’s all.” You shake your head as you speak, trying to be casual.

“I see. How strange that thy mind wanders to that place instead of focusing on the situation thou art in now. Normally victims art scared stiff, but thy...hm. Impressive.”

While you shrug in apathy, he leans in closer to you. Immediately your heart wants to burst out of your chest, and you accidentally smile and blush, darting your eyes back and forth between him and empty space. His delicate lips form a smile, and strangely it felt more personal than aggressive.

“I want to feast upon thee, but thither is something I feel I wilt miss. Something that even becoming a part of me will never fill.” Seeming like he realized what this now looks like, he pulls himself back again,

“However, I am still deciding, so dost not raise thy hopes just yet. I wouldst like to ’observe’ thee a bit more.” While stating this, he dragged his sharp finger down your torso, all the way to your naval, and you were no longer pushed against the ground. You could try to get up casually and then book it somewhere, far away from this monster, but your stupid affections are keeping you put.

Now that Aldrich has backed away a little, he is now towering over you, giving a clear view of below his hips. The fibered dress looks scratchy, but you would do anything to feel it, to cuddle and stroke the raven black strands. And the tail, that tail. It is immense compared to his body and greatly juxtaposes the human half, but despite the ugliness and filth it harbors, it is fancy. The goop shimmers like running water in the sunlight and the bones are protruding in such a way they look like decoration. Giant ribs stick up from the back to form an inverse cage, almost like spikes. Between these bones are rotting tendons that hang about like silk decor. Boils and skulls poke out from the muck but are positioned like dark spotted patterns going along his form. And everything is speckled with black tattered feathers and tarps, like a destroyed royal hall. You want to observe it further, but now is not the time.

Aldrich beautifully chuckles. However still sounding distorted, your lust for him just makes that flaw even more alluring.

“Thou stare at me with begging eyes, but they art not of freedom, art they? Nay, thou lengthy for something else. Something putrid in the eyes of common folk, but absolute heaven for thyself.” As he says this, he runs his hands up your stomach, across your breast, and cradles your face in his frail hands. Aldrich smeared the blood from your wounds across your body and painted your cheeks with it. Your face flushes with blood beneath your skin when he leaned into you for the fifth time, but he did not stop just inches from your face. He lathers your warm pink lips with the deep redness of your blood and kisses you passionately.

Filled with blood and saliva, you taste the fusion of the Devourer and you in your mouth. It took you a few seconds to realize what is happening, but once you did, you immediately accepted it. Closing your eyes, you kiss him back.You breath heavily and moan with satisfaction, and he bites your lip to make you drain even more. His silky lips overtake yours as you struggle to be just as aggressive. Becoming lost in the moment and ignoring the danger, you slide your blood soaked tongue into his mouth, licking his. A smile crosses Aldrich’s face and without missing a beat he pushes your tongue back, making his enter your mouth, taking in everything he can and almost reaching your throat. You want to touch him, dig your fingers into his thin skin or run them through his smooth hair. By keeping your hands bound behind, he is still torturing you, whether he realizes it or not.

Aldrich detaches his mouth from yours and begins to kiss your neck, ultimately leading to biting so he can lick the drawn blood. As much as you were enjoying this, you are worried about him puncturing your throat, but the thought dissipated from mind when he dragged his hands down to your breast, squeezing them. He pecks you bloodied kisses down to your collar.

“I demand to witness more of thine illustrious living corpse, and take in all the warm heat thou hast keep locked away.” As Aldrich speaks his words with lustful breath, he tears your clothing off, having no cares if he rips parts of flesh along with it. He takes in the beauty that you radiate. ‘Oh God, yes,’ you thought. ‘Do more, do anything more to me to have me beg for your touch!’ It is odd that everything is happening so fast with someone--something--that you just met, but oh lord, who cares! This beautiful beastie is elegant to be around; hearing anything escape his lips sings a lullaby to your soul, and certainly he is no stranger to appalling interests. If your unfiltered and awkward talk did not drive him away, then there would be little to nothing standing in your way to winning him over now.

Aldrich snuggles his face into your chest so he can listen and feel your heart beating for him. He cradles your breasts and pleasures your delicate tits as you move and embrace his heavy life force against your skin. You moan and nudge more and more, feeling yourself become saturated by the minute. Thinking Aldrich sensed this, he slowly drags his hand southward, grazing your side and tracing your hip. You feel the rough touch of his fingers reach underneath your trousers, lifting up your panties. Heavy sighs are released from your throat the closer he got to your clitoris. His blood soaked fingers mixes with your pleasure fluids, placing his fingers on the inner vulva and rising them to your little plump bulb of pleasure. Quickly you suck air into your lungs, to which Aldrich giggled at your surprised reaction. He lifts his head to meet your pulse and sucks on your neck. Your body moves along with the rhythm of his motions against your clit, occasionally rubbing your breast against his distinct collar bone. The harder and faster you breath, he does the same with his fingers. The rush of energy jolts through your body as he squishes the clit in between two of his bones and switching to circular motions against it occasionally. Finally, you feel it. Your body jerks with anticipation and you verbalize your thoughts, “Oh please, yes!” Upon hearing this, Aldrich uses a single finger to flick and touch your clitoris as fast and hard as he can so you may feel the most pleasurable rush. With a heavy and loud moan, you arch your back once climax hits. Aldrich slows his movements and pulls his face away from your neck, a string of thick blood drips from his smiling lips, which, to your surprise, looks more lovely dressed with you.

You lean in for a kiss, to which he welcomes. He frees his arms and hands and places them on the ground above you. Where you two done? No. No no! You wanted to lavish in this moment for a while longer. Without opening your eyes, you speak in a meek voice,

“More, please… I want more...”

You felt embarrassed about asking to go further than accepting what you have already been given, but you wanted it; you did not ask, you demanded, albeit poorly. Come on, this is your first time. Do not be hard on yourself!

Opening one eye, you see Aldrich’s magnificently grotesque tail swishing back and forth slowly and gracefully in the tar-like fluid. He had a smile across his cracked porcelain mouth.

“Oh yes, my dearest scruple of nourishment! I was not planning on being done just yet, for I hast not been entirely satisfied.”

Aldrich moves back and lifts your pelvis up, slowly pulling off the rest of your attire. A cool gust of air touches your crotch and you can feel the sticky fluids pull away. You watch as he splits the strands and lick his fingers, then throwing your pants to the side. He props you up and unties your bonds, continuing to transfer his palms to hug your thighs. You gently place your hands on his and Aldrich shutters, still fascinated by how thermal you are in comparison and how calmly you are touching him. Staring longingly, you run your fingers through his hair. It is as soft as you thought it was. Aldrich pushes you back so you may lay down, then proceeds to move his face closer to your genitalia.

He kisses your clitoris to give you the sense of how his lips feel down there. After he senses you wince in delight, he belligerently pushes his tongue against the entirety of your crotch, kneading his tongue across it. As this happens, you let out a musical groan of pleasure. He licks and flicks in such an aggressive and loving manner, just the way you knew you would enjoy it. It may not be literal devouring of flesh, but he smooshes his mouth and tongue upon you in mimicry. He makes no jerking motions as his tongue massages you, wriggling and writhing in smooth patterns inside, touching every sweet spot he can reach. Every little touch made from his tongue and lips you overhear the wet and sticky sound of departure. You listen to him swallowing your discharge created from the previous endeavors, along with the blood that soaks the both of you.

After a while, Aldrich focused his oral movements singularly on your clitoris, but he was not finished with the other. Locating your vaginal opening again, he glosses two fingers over it teasingly. Salivating his digits, he pushes them deep within you, puncturing your walls. The pain was sharper than menstruation cramps, but it was bearable, especially with your sense of tenacity with adornment.You lay there with closed eyes, focusing on the amorous vitality those slender fingers are granting you. With all his pressure inducement, he pushes you back and forth, your curves and chest shaking along with the rhythm. Every time he pulls you he grips your pelvic bone. Looking up, he sees your content face and watches your body move along with him.

Pulling out to daub your vulva, he absolutely enjoys teasing you. Seeing you so happy, he lifts his hand, waiting and watching. Growing worried, you lean up and, almost immediately, fear crept in again. Did you do something wrong? Did somehow someone stab Aldrich? ‘No,’ you thought, ‘something like that wouldn’t have happened so quickly.’ Checking to see if he is still there, you are greeted with a sly smile and a light giggle.

“Dost not fret, I am still here.”

You smile and shake your head, relaxing.

Aldrich pushes his fingers in again and shakes you more violently now. He wants more sound from your throat and sustenance from your body, and thus you do what he requests. You reach the same point again, but the build up was much more intense. You clenched the ground and gasped for air, and before you knew it, the milky white fluid of squirting released itself from your cervix.

Stunned by how much came out, you look at Aldrich for judgement. He only glanced at his hand, which is now mixed with blood and ejaculation fluids, turning pink a little. As you sweat profusely, he ingests his soft hot meal. It almost looks like he is staring at you, but you never can tell with that golden crest on his face.

So much has happened in the last hour with being around this man. At first you thought you were dinner, and now you have just become the consenting play thing for a monster. After two climaxes, you think you are done. With the accumulation loss of blood, water, and energy all around, you just want to lay down and rest for a while. Could you go again? I guess you will have to wait and see if Aldrich does something to cause that puffy lust again.

Contenting sighs relieve from your beloved monster. As he rolls over onto his back, he puts his hands behind his head and stares at you with his rose stained mouth. You lay on your side and clasp your hands together to rest your cheek upon. Observing him intensely, you notice squirming movements underneath his lower plumage. At first you did not recognize what was happening, but then once the cylinder-esque organ arrived, it dawned on you he is manipulating his mucky lower half to copy that of an inhuman cock. This mimicry is fat and thick, pulsating with the grime it is made out of. The tip is sharp yet rounded and its circumference increases as it meets the body, however, it forms what looks like to be a plump knot at the base. Tiny bumps of various sizes line around the attachment point and gradually forms then fades up the dorsal of his shaft. Two small parallel fin strands run up from his knot to his head under his ventral half. Lastly, like a faded beacon, his tip has a mauve tint, standing out and looking lovingly sickly.

Aldrich licked his lips as he watched you stare and decide what to do with his gift. Growing impatient, he moves his hand down to run it between his fingers in an urge to have you come closer. Of course it works and you crawl towards him. He adoringly brushes his finger against your hot cheek once you are in close range.

“I’m...going to screw up.” You honestly did not want to bring down the mood, but you felt like you had to warn him so he is not so disappointed in you; it felt wrong to mask this thought.

“Tush tush, mine own dearest,” he speaks as he lifts himself from his back. Aldrich helps you on top of him. He is not too wide, but your feet barely touch the ground, so you settle with planting them on protruding bones. Cupping your backside, he hoists you up, and you take his cock and feel for your opening. Once found, you gently slide it into your tight pussy, and because this is your first time at intercourse, you struggle to fit him in all the way, but you would be damned if you did not have this creature inside of you, so you bare the pain. Feeling every inch of him push and rub against your vagina was like heaven, especially when his head forced itself against the highest point of your uterus, making you squirm. You never had anything like this enter you, and so when your opening attempted to pucker but was stopped, you really felt the massivity of his dick.

Aldrich whispers in your ear,

“All thou needth is to follow the primordial urge thou hast did bury within thy breast, and I am sure thee shalt please me.” Upon hearing this, you bury your face into his rigid chest, trying to find a heartbeat, but there was none to find. He is a dead corpse, just like the rest of them.

Grabbing onto his apparel and pushing your feet against the carbon steps, you begin to rotate your stuffed hips. At first it was painful, but as you self lubricate, the pain subsides and you relish in the love making. Aldrich clenches obsessively to your butt and encourages you to go faster. Gradually you speed up, savoring every stroke your soft vaginal walls make against his stiffness. Your breast and stomach follow and squish the softness of your body onto him, pleasing your hard tits.

With raspy breaths, you gaze to your left to see your monster’s exposed neck. You see his sinewy tendons bulge against his faded skin and you hear and feel his high gasps of pleasure behind your shoulder. All those lines, ridges, and muscles attached and working to form his neck anatomy captivates you. Your lips want to kiss it, your tongue wants to taste it, and your throat wants to consume it. Before you could stop yourself, though why would you want to, you open your mouth to as wide as it can expand and bare your teeth. With as much bite force you can muster, you sink your canines into his tissue. Aldrich, surprised by this action, winces. He digs his claws into you and loudly squeeks, cracking his voice. Not knowing your own strength and scared by the new noise produced from him, you pull yourself back and continuously plead that you are sorry. You did not want him hating you and you knew you would screw up. Oh why does nobody listen to you?!

“I didn’t mean to I swear! I was just--I was just going along with--following what you said about the primordial urge and I just--I’m sorry--!”

“More.”

“...” Your brain is trying to process his answer while you have a dumbfounded expression. So you did not screw up?

“Just...do it again?” asking to make sure you knew what is being requested.

“Do it. Bite me. Drink the drops of sorrow of mine flesh and alloweth to drip down thy throat in pleasure.”

You pause for a moment, then wrap your arms around his neck and shoulders to have a solid grip. Biting down yet again, he groans and squeaks in delight of your hot mouth piercing him. The more he whimpers, the more feminine and raspy his chord’s production become. Usually you would find this noise pitiful and saddening, but this time it excites you and you bite harder, ripping skin away and running your tongue against raw flesh. You move your hand down to right beneath your gut, feeling his thick shaft inside, violently thrusting. With one arm around your back, he pushes you against him like wanting your particles to mix with his, but alas this only leads to more moaning, biting, and the spreading of ruby red blood across each other’s corpses.

Aldrich penetrates your skin as he becomes increasingly ready to ejaculate. He breathes harder and squeezes you greedily, only letting up when he releases inside of you, his throat creating the most beautiful noise of innocent cries. Once tolled, the sensation of lukewarm cum rushes inside of you, overfilling your uterus. You look down and see it seeping out, drooling onto his shaft. Slowly you pull yourself off of Aldrich, watching his semen ooze out and stick to anything in close proximity. Thick filaments stretch from his soaked cock and your saturated pussy as you detach from him. As you sit down, you squeeze his black fluids out of you with occasional thick clumps where some of his rotting flesh came off while cumming. Aldrich mashes his face into yours, kissing, and touching, you again to display his gratification from you.

“Thou hath felt absolutely extraordinary! I take absolute rapture from stuffing thee with my dead seed. Oh what ecstasy!” With every sentence ended, he purrs and kisses you again and again, all the while you cup his face ever so delicately and sweep your thumbs against his cheeks. Every time he kisses you giggle, having him struggle to dance his lips with yours.

“Thank you, thank you!” you laugh.

“I am...so joyous thou decided to stay here and alloweth each other to satisfy the other.”

As Aldrich said this, you could not help but feel he sounded vulnerable. Is he lonely? Does he feel separated from the world? Supposedly he only kept you alive because he wanted to experience your uniqueness longer, but judging how kind he was during the sensual moments and what he just said, which included the both of you and not just him, it sounded like this creature might be exposing his soft side, even if just a bit. The thought released butterflies in your stomach and you could not help but squish his cheeks with the tips of your fingers and rotate them, giving him the smushed lips of adorableness, and rub your nose and forehead against his with loving laughter. He was confused at first, but Aldrich accepted the weird physical affection you gave and laughed along with you.

“Thou art mine now; Mine forevermore. No one shall toucheth nor harm thee while I am still drawing breath, my scarlet swan. I will own thee and thou wilt love me for all eternity, and thus I shalt giveth whatever thee dreams.”

“Yes, I will. I will love you, mon cher,” you reply sweetly.

Aldrich leaned back and lied down with a fulfilled sigh. He laid his arms and hands above his head, relaxing on the floor.

Feeling not only you need to repay him for giving you multiple orgasms, but you are also not done playing with him just yet.

As you watch him lay there, breathing slowly, his chest rising and falling gracefully, your eyes gradually draw down to his crotch. His cock is moistened with his mockery of semen, and because they both are of a deep abyss like blackness, the only difference you can see are the textures: One is a little bumpy looking while the other is smooth as glass. Such beauty in what others believe is unholy to look upon. You graze your fingers against his hips, twitching nerves with every movement made by you. Looking up at him, he is still not facing you, however his breathing has become slightly faster. Aldrich’s cock is so firm against your light touch with the backs of your fingers, feeling all the fake veins submerging out. You touch and squish every crevice at your own pace, watching him progressively dance his torso. Once you have felt him up, you place your middle finger right on the top of his head, making circular motions with the tip of your finger, moving loose skin to make a little crater around his opening. As you do this, he lets out a little noise of smiling giddiness, to which you respond with the same. Underneath your finger some remaining cum squirts out, having you go to squishing his sensitive head with your middle, pointer, and thumb. You bring your hands down to his knot, wrapping your entire hand around his shaft. Starting off slowly, you move along his cock, pinching his head between your thumb and pointer finger. Aldrich practically sounds like you when he was massaging your clitoris, heavy and weak.

Rubbing your pussy against him as you move back, you lean over so your stomach is barely hovering over his body, resting on your elbows. You are scared but excited to try this, and so you begin with giving him a nice strong heavy lick on his head. He has an old umami taste about him as you lick up, down, and around his pulsating pleasure stick. You kiss and graze your teeth against it, having him sound like you when he fucked you with his tongue, high pitched and wincing for more. With every smooch and lick, his semen runs into your mouth and down your throat, having a bitter meaty aftertaste. Aldrich moves his hands down to grab at your hair, motioning you to suck him off, but you refuse just to tease him, continuing to cradle his cock and kiss it energetically.

Moaning and undulating your subtle breast upon him, your mouth makes its way to his head, covering his shaft with spit. You bunny kiss the tip and press your tongue against the opening. Looking up, you spot Aldrich moving in pattern with you, his rib cage pressing up against his pale skin, sticking out with every topped motion. Watching the skin move like rough latex from the bones push you closer into taking the mouthful.

Opening your mouth just enough so your rosey lips slip around him, you slowly stuff him into your mouth, lightly biting down to orally hug him. You are unable to take him entirely, but that is made up with poking him with your tough tongue, making shapes, and massaging your hands against whatever of his gooey cock still exposed. Pulling back, gagging with spit, then pushing him back in, with hot drool and post cum seeping out from under your lips, humming with delight all the way, you hear Aldrich’s sexual groans. With each occasional voice crack made from his tight pipes, you move faster, becoming more assertive and sucking him like a lollipop. His taste may be rancid, but the both your happiness is far too great to stop for some bad meat.

“Yes! Please do not stop. Faster, my dear!”

You sink your nails into his hips of gush, making him twitch with satisfaction. Aldrich’s breathing heightens and you feel him thicken and throb in your mouth. Realizing he is about to climax, you quickly bring your wet lips to his tip and push your thumbs into his veins and tendons.

Before you know it, dualizing with his squeakish howl, you feel this lumpy and disgusting tang suddenly burst into your mouth. Startled, you quickly pull your head back, semen and chunks spilling from your oral cavity. Wine colored thick liquids spurt from his cock. Despite the horrific taste, you still leaned ahead and drank him down. You were definitely going to be sick after this, but let us just focus on the now and burn that bridge when you cross it. As you sip him, Aldrich holds your cheek and strokes your crown like an owner to his obedient pet. He looks down towards you and you look up at him, only to shy your eyes away because you just end up giggling and smiling, being unable to finish your self entitled task. However, when this happens, all he does is beam and pet you.

Finally you grow tired of his taste and sit up, soaked with blood, spit, sweat, and cum all over your mouth, dripping down your neck.

“Thou looks as if finished. Lucky for thy tired little head, I believe I am done as well.”

“Heh, yeah,” you respond, yawning.

Aldrich hoists your plump body up so your shoulders meet. He wipes your neck and chin clean with his apparel, then holds you close and lies down on his side. You gladly accept his post sex cuddles and close your eyes, burying your face into the crook of his neck like he is a stuffed animal.

“I may not consume thee after all, now having a reason to keepeth thy heart’s alive and beating. Thou wilt satisfy me in different ways, I am sure.” Aldrich’s throat vibrates as his cooing echos through you. You have never really said this to anyone before, but maybe you can say this now and not regret it later,

“I love you.”

He squeezes you tighter.

“Good. Thou shalt love me forevermore, even after death. Maybe then, once thou hast died, I wilt mix thy particles with mine so thee shall never leave me.” Aldrich kisses your head.

What a strange way of flirting, this guy has, but it does not scare you away. You felt you can trust him because for some nobody such as yourself to change a devourer’s mind from seeing you as food to looking at you as an actually human being seems like a difficult task for anyone.

“However, I am starved. Thou hast been outside these walls, does thee knoweth of any wonderful spots to snack?”

“Yeah, a few.” Aldrich never stops thinking about eating, does he?

“Sublime! We shalt dine together as loving mates, my dearest.” As he says this, he rocks and kisses you as the both of you lay there in the rotten muck of the royal chamber of Anor Londo, just listening to each other breathe.

--- OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE NEVER AGAIN

#dark souls 3 #aldrich #devourer of gods #fanfiction #sfw #totally #yup #not lying here #tumblr staff do not interact #lemon

5 notes · View notes

abarbaricyalp · 3 years

Note

handholding- 10/12/13

hugs - 34

kisses - 7/13/27

touching - 47

sambucky :)

Buddies, I literally cannot believe I managed to get all of these done without being too repetitive.

Handholding 10: Happily doing everything with one hand if that means they don't have to let go is already posted on my blog and on AO3: ElisabethMonroe: (til i carry you home) Your Hand in My Hand

Reblogging with AO3 links in a second

Kisses 27: Desperate Kisses

Inhale My Soul

(Listen, listen y'all, you don't know how many different universes of them dying and bleeding out in each other's arms y'all aren't reading here. I didn't do that to you. You're welcome)

Coming back felt like dying.

He must’ve screamed but there was no air to make a noise.

Finally sight came back and the first thing he saw were the trees falling over him, ready to crush him and hide him again.

Had anyone seen him disappear? No one was by his side. No one looked for him.

No, the trees weren’t falling. They were swaying in the wind. The sun kept gliding down through them with every shuffle of the leaves.

It was so quiet he felt like he could hear the leaves sighing as they grew.

He could speak.

“Steve!”

God, if Steve was dead…

Sam couldn’t lose more people. He couldn’t fight his way back. Not after this. Not while everything hurt so fucking much.

“Steve, please, God, where are you?!”

“Sam?”

“Sam?” the voice called again.

Footsteps. Crushing grass. A metal screech in the bark of a tree. A colorful curse. “Sam, fuck, shout again!”

Sam stumbled forward, breaking free of the natural world trying to take him away again. He shoved himself away from a tree and crashed into a warm, solid, human body.

Right. Things could feel good. That was part of being human and alive.

He had no idea how long they stood there. His shoulders were aching, but in a pleasant way that reminded him that there was something he loved right in front of him, in his arms.

Bucky pulled away, but didn’t let go of Sam’s face. Cool air flowed into Sam’s lungs until all of his bones and muscles felt like they slotted back into place.

“I can’t tell you how fucking happy I am to see you alive,” Bucky breathed.

We should talk about this. That. Later.

“I thought everyone was gone. I don’t know… I didn’t know how I came back. I thought it was just me.”

Bucky shook his head. “No. There’s hundreds of people. Not everyone, but at least half of us.”

Half of them.

“Oh my God,” Sam said. “Thanos won. He wiped out half of the universe.”

Bucky’s hand found Sam’s between their bodies. Sam took a breath with lungs that almost seemed to work again. “What’re we waiting for then?” he asked.

Kiss 13: Frustrated Kiss

Better Than None

“Barnes, you wanna jump in? Any time’s fine,” Sam called out, though the volume wasn’t actually necessary, since he had an earpiece in and Bucky was only a few feet away, leaned on what was left of a building’s wall.

“Nah, you seem to be handling it just fine,” Bucky called back with a nod.

Sam ducked under the robot arm that had been flung at him. “Barnes, I swear, as soon as I get my hands on you--” he threatened.

“Y’know, normally that gets me going but seein’ as you were so anti-giving me a good luck kiss, I don’t know if I believe you anymore.”

“We don’t have time for this!” Sam threw the shield to cut through seven wire-y necks and caught it at degree 355 of its arc.

“It’s just a kiss. Takes two/tenths of a second,” Bucky said.

“I meant this dumbass argument.” Sam jumped out of the way of an electrical charge and Bucky watched it sail dangerously close to his head.

“Damn, maybe I am lucky without you,” he said and didn’t move at all.

“Bucky,” Sam sighed and ripped the head off of the nearest robot.

“Hot. Wish I could show you my appreciation.”

“How does me not giving you a good luck kiss translate you into not giving me any kisses?”

“It only seems fair. You’re putting my well-being at risk. There should be consequences.”

“That’s not how it works! You’re the one not--” Jesus, he didn’t have time to fall for the bait. He freed a mini-EMP from his utility belt and hurled it at the cluster of robots trying to scale the debris that first responders were using as a barricade to the rest of the street. A few seconds later, the robots fell away, powerless and useless.

“I kind of felt that in my arm,” Bucky said.

Sam growled out a huff and stalked over to Bucky. He shoved the front of the shield against his chest a little roughly and leaned in to kiss him, mostly teeth and irritation. The bastard still looked pleased when Sam pulled away.

“Good luck. Now will you please go do your job?”

Bucky grinned, all teeth and victory, and bolted into action.

Kisses 7: Passionate Kiss

Hand holding 13: Linking hands during s**

Bring Heaven to You

Sam swore he could feel Bucky’s mouth all over him. Every inch of his skin felt electric and alive. Frankenstein’s creature surging to life after a bolt of lightning, every nerve and muscle singing at the same time, overwhelming sensation in the best way. Like a freefall that keep him tethered to the mismatched hands clutching at his hips, his ribs, his chest, his shoulders, his thighs, the backs of his knees. Like Bucky couldn’t decide where he should be shocking Sam back to life either.

Bucky dragged his hand down Sam’s side, flat and steady so Sam could feel the golden band on his finger scorching his skin like it was made of fire. Like vows and rings and heavy promises weren’t enough to prove they belonged to each other, like they needed it written in flesh and blood like everything else about their lives.

Hahahaha, no. The rest is on AO3. Link in the reblog

Hand holding 12: Possessive hand holding

A Green Monster, And No We Don’t Mean The Hulk

“Welcome back to the show, Captain America!” a bubbly, young talk show host greeted. Bucky assumed he’d watched at least a few seconds of the program at some point when he was making it his life mission not to leave his apartment, but he couldn’t place her name for the life of him. “And you brought Mr. Barnes with you!” This she said with much less genuine enthusiasm and didn’t seem all that thrilled to have to look away from Sam to address Bucky.

“Well, you know I can’t stay away too long,” Sam said with a friendly smile. He held out his hand and the host took it in both of hers. It was less a hand shake and more an excuse for her to hang onto Sam, it looked like.

Sam and Bucky sat in the cushy seats for guests and, even though they’d already walked through the staging of this whole farce, Bucky was still deeply tempted to take Sam’s seat so he was between Sam and the host.

“So, Sam, last time we saw each other, you weren’t yet Captain America.”

“Funny how fast things like that can change, right?” Sam asked with twinkling eyes. Bucky wondered if the cameras were bolted down and if he could wrench one free even if they were.

“Well, I think it’s still not soon enough,” the host said and tossed her long hair over her shoulder. “You’ve always been Cap to us here. You’ve been so vocal about your mission statement as Captain America, so I won’t make you repeat yourself.” Sam nodded gratefully, though Bucky knew he’d repeat his goals and wishes until he ran out of breath if it meant one more person heard them and got inspired. “So I thought we could focus on what’s going on behind the scenes with you. Has anything else changed for you since you’ve been back?”

As if coming back to life wasn’t enough.

“Oh, definitely,” Sam said. “Buck and I just finished flipping a house down by my sister. Y’know, we got decent temporary accommodations--Buck still has his in New York--and staying with my sister again was nice, but there’s nothing like having a house to come home to that’s just ours. No pre-teens stealing all the food outta the fridge immediately after grocery shopping.”

The host laughed along with Sam, though her eyes couldn’t quite keep from flickering to Bucky. “It’s fun that you’re rooming with Mr. Barnes. Does it feel like having college roommates again?”

Sam frowned, opened his mouth to answer, ran through a bunch of diplomatic ways to say what should’ve been obvious but wasn’t because this lady was into Sam. Which, like, Bucky couldn’t blame her for. But he was anyway.

He reached over to grab Sam’s hand where it was picking at a loose thread in his pants. “Actually, it’s more like just living with a partner,” he answered for Sam. “That’s something else that’s changed too, huh?” he directed at Sam. “Turns out, with consistent showers and therapy, he thinks I’m pretty charming.”

Sam frowned again and scoffed. “No, I do not. That hasn’t changed.”

The host laughed again, forced but a decent show anyway. “Sure, we all love a good bromance,” she said.

Bucky’s eyebrows shot up.

“Don’t,” Sam warned.

“It’s a lot like a bromance, yeah. Just without the B,” Bucky said. “We kind of figured my name had enough Bs to last us for a while.”

“Sam, are you saying--”

Sam sighed and brought his other hand up to the bridge of his nose. “Unfortunately. And, yeah, he’s always like this. Some kinda puffed up bulldog or something.”

Bucky’s fingers tightened around Sam’s. “You’re my partner. I’m allowed to tell people that.”

“You don’t ever stop telling people.”

“Can’t blame him,” the host pointed out. Okay, maybe some of the hostility was misplaced, Bucky thought. Only some of it. “How did we not know about this, Cap?” she asked jovially, though Bucky thought she was still a little upset.

Sam shrugged. “Guess it’s not as exciting as superheroing. And cameras keep ending up destroyed,” he added pointedly.

Bucky narrowed his eyes at the accusation. “Half the places we go could be classified as an active war zone. It’s not always on me that media cameras get crushed under debris or aliens or something.”

“Every single one that catches you touching my face?”

Bucky shrugged.

“So...how long has this been a thing?” the host asked.

“Since before Sam took the shield. It’s actually a package deal. If you want the shield, you have to have me.”

Sam rolled his eyes and let out another long suffering sigh. “I’m sorry he’s ruining this interview.”

“Oh, no, I’m about to win an investigative journalism prize, I think,” the host laughed.

“I don’t know how investigative it is when your subject is physically incapable of shutting up,” Sam said, looking over at Bucky with a glare and the smallest pout that made Bucky want to kiss it off of his face.

So he did, holding their interlaced fingers next to their face to hide from the cameras at least a little bit.

Hugging 34: Hugging while grabbing butt

Get Sprung

(Man, I meant to put this in the fr@ story and forgot :/ )

The building came down faster than Sam expected it to. He supposed well placed explosives would do that. What happened to uncertain, uneven dynamite? Why was everything electrical and precise nowadays?

He had no idea how Bucky managed to get Sam and the shield bundled in his arms before the ceiling came down. He didn’t know how Bucky had managed to kick a piece of wall upright and then locked his metal arm to hold the shield in place above them. He had no idea how Bucky knew it’d make the perfect alcove for them. For someone who pretended not to know what math was when AJ asked for help on homework, he was very calculation savvy.

Bucky slowly freed his arm from the straps of the shield. The rubble shifted a little, pressed a little closer, and then stilled again. They both let out a small breath. There wasn’t enough room to lay out totally, or to stand fully, but they weren’t being crushed. Bucky’s arm joined the other around Sam’s waist. Sam dropped his face to Bucky’s shoulder and let Bucky’s pulse drum against his cheek for a second.

“Are you grabbing my ass?” he finally asked and Bucky coughed out a startled laugh.

“Yeah, you better hope it’s me and not some darkness monster.”

“Couldn’t blame the monster if it was,” Sam said.

“I gotta make sure it’s still there. Would be a shame to lose America’s ass, y’know.”

Sam shook his head and pulled away from Bucky enough to light up his wristlets. He shook them off and rested them on pieces of concrete and rebar to light the space.

Bucky sank down to the ground, legs bent a little to accommodate the space and Sam followed him down, settling between his legs.

“So, now we wait, huh?” he said, reaching for Bucky’s hands to tangle their fingers together.

“Guess we gotta,” Bucky agreed. “Are you hurt?”

Sam shook his head. There was still a ringing in his ears from the explosion and he was sore from Bucky tackling him out of the way, but nothing felt crushed or cut or broken. “You?”

“I’m fine,” Bucky said and then let out a breath at Sam’s arched brow. “I mean it. I’m not playing tough or anything. We got lucky. It came down on us, not sideways into us. I think there’s something lodged between the plates in my arm, but I don’t want you to do anything about it until we’re safe. It’s functional right now. I don’t need to be down an arm if we have to dig out.”

“We’re not gonna have to dig out,” Sam said. “Torres’ll track Redwing to us.”

“How’s your dumb robot?”

Sam reached for a wristlet and navigated to the Redwing menu. “Operational. Some exterior dinging, but nothing serious. He’ll be functional if we need.” Sam set the wristlet aside again and sighed. “Fuck, that was close, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. C’mere,” Bucky said, opening his arms. Sam shifted forward on his knees and leaned against Bucky’s chest, hugging him close. “‘M glad you’re okay,” Bucky murmured, lips brushing Sam’s temple.

Sam nodded and rubbed Bucky’s waist for a second. “Buck?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re grabbing my ass again.”

“I know.”

“Alright.”

Touch 47: Touching their elbow to get their attention

Quiet Birds Circling in Flight

(Jeez, the only thing that came to mind for ages on this prompt involved a spaceship but these men have SEEN aliens and spaceships so that’s not as fun :(((((( )

Sam stood outside the cenotaph long after everyone else had left the service. And that was quite the feat in and of itself. It felt like the mourning could go on for years. There’d been enough tears around him that he wasn’t sure what his own would add to the spectacle.

To everyone else, the cenotaph was a mausoleum. But Sam had been next to Bucky when he told the military to quietly bury him in the cemetery where his parents were both buried. “You know,” Bucky had said one afternoon while they watched the cenotaph being built stone by stone, engraving by engraving, “I’d wager that most mausoleums are just cenotaphs. Grave robbing and reactions to grave robbing mean probably everyone just got moved somewhere safer.”

“Plus decomposition.”

“Well, shit, Wilson. When do you stop being you after death? When does dirt become dirt again? When isn’t it your resting place? Does it even matter where your body is when alls said and done? Is that ever actually you or just a space filler?”

Sam had elbowed Bucky’s ribs and they’d each taken a piece of stone and pretended they didn’t see.

Sam weighed the shield against his shin, knocking it slightly to the side, and then looked up at the stone one ten more feet above his head.

Steve would hate this so much. Sam felt like he could feel his raging blush from the after life. Sam and Bucky had both asked for something more muted, something quieter. Hell, something that would do good for the world Steve was always trying to save. All this money and work and art, for what? A place to take pictures for likes on the internet?

No, Sam had to remind himself, it was a place for memory too.

As much as Sam kind of hated the whole thing, he couldn’t deny that looking up at the effigy of his friend inspired him the same way glancing over at him had in life too. The words wrapping around and around the base of the cenotaph sparked the same intense pride and righteousness they had the first time he heard them.

Maybe he didn’t hate the cenotaph. Maybe he just wanted the real thing back.

He startled at a gentle touch at his elbow. He thought it might’ve been another mourner come to offer condolences, though those mostly went to Bucky when someone was brave enough to approach him. Most people hadn’t looked at Sam twice. Not when Captain America was, in theory, laying in rest thirty feet beyond.

Sam was not in the mood to listen to anyone else talk about the time Steve smiled at them in a cafe or grabbed their cat out of a tree. If he heard his name again, he was going to break down.

But he had the shield now. He had to do the things Steve did. Smile when he didn’t want to. Hide any sign of weakness, lest it reflect poorly on the red, white, and blue he carried now. So he ground his teeth together until his gums ached and turned with a screwed on smile.

But it wasn’t a mourner. Not a random one anyway.

Bucky still had his fingers on Sam’s elbow, a sad look on his face. Dawn was creeping over the horizon and Sam realized with a start and a bloom of despair in his stomach that he’d spent the entire night in the park.

“Think if we wait two more days he’ll shove that stupid stone shield out of the way and come out?” Sam asked, voice wavering like a flag in the wind.

“We would literally never hear the end of it if he did,” Bucky pointed out.

Neither of them smiled. Neither of them really meant their jokes.

Sam finally broke down.

He collapsed against Bucky’s chest. It wasn’t until he lost his breath in the middle of a sob that he realized he wasn’t the only one shaking. Bucky was crying too. They clutched at each other, both terrified they might drift away, that the other might decide this was too difficult too and go back to something better at the first opportunity.

Sam didn’t even blame Steve. He’d laid awake in the temporary accommodation the government had put him up in and tried to convince himself that if he was in Steve’s shoes, he wouldn’t have saved Riley and stayed in that timeline. But he couldn’t. He knew he would have, almost certainly. And it wasn’t fair to ask Steve to give up a happy, quiet ending after more than a century of fighting and hurting.

But understanding it and accepting it didn’t make it hurt any less. “What are we supposed to do, Bucky?” he asked with an irritatingly genuine hiccup at the end of his words.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said, sounding for all the world like he was grinding his teeth together, trying to pull himself back together. “You have a lot more options than me.”

And it was true. Sam had had a job. The Air Force had reached out since he’d been back stateside. He had a family who missed him, who he missed. But it felt like something heavy and tethering had been locked away in that empty cenotaph. He didn’t want to walk away yet.

Bucky stepped back, kept a hand on Sam’s elbow. “For now, we should get back home. You need to sleep.”

Sam didn’t want to sleep. Everything hurt too much.

“Sam, come on,” Bucky insisted. “You don’t have to make any decisions right now.We could both use a few hours of being quiet, right?

Sam reached up to wipe the tears from his face. He had the shield. He had to act like it. “My place or yours?” he asked, still watery.

Bucky pretended like he didn’t notice. “Yours is nicer than mine.”

“And I have a bed.”

“I have a bed.”

“It’s unassembled in a box.”

Bucky squeezed his elbow and then tugged him into a brief hug that Sam was pretty sure they’d never speak of again. “Let’s get out of here. He’s not goin’ nowhere.”

Sam rubbed at his face again and nodded. “We-- We should order in. When’s the last time you ate?” he asked as they walked away.

“I had a better breakfast than you.”

“You didn’t have to give a speech.”

“Yeah, I’m surprised you didn’t throw up in front of everyone.”

“Shut up, I’m a great public speaker.”

“Sure, Wilson.”

“Screw you, Barnes.”

The dawn bloomed before them.

Do not stand

By my grave, and weep.

I am not there,

I do not sleep—

I am the thousand winds that blow

I am the diamond glints in snow

I am the sunlight on ripened grain,

I am the gentle, autumn rain.

As you awake with morning’s hush,

I am the swift, up-flinging rush

Of quiet birds in circling flight,

I am the day transcending night.

Do not stand

By my grave, and cry—

I am not there,

I did not die.

#sambucky #sam wilson #bucky barnes #captain america #sambucky fanfic #writing #i answer things #the falcon and the winter soldier #prompt answers

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