#tired slug mumbling

[mothboyhalo]

Not me finding what I think is a good chunk of the Brazilian community fanfics website, 5 stories in and the translations stop working halfway but i don’t notice till I’m almost done with the chapter. Hold up one moment I’m going to cry I didn’t know I’d picked up Portuguese this much and I find out reading high fantasy 4halo. Happy new years you guys I’m have an existential crisis.

[briefinquiries]

Tyler Owens x Reader: You Look Like You Love Me

Request: "I wondered if you could do a Tyler Owens fic where it’s the end of the day and everyone’s exhausted from chasing all day and stuff. Readers just gotten out of the shower and is in her sleep dress, hair wet and decides to join all the storm chasers/ the team out by the bonfire so she throws one of Tyler’s flannels on, puts her boots on and goes to find Tyler and once she does there’s a slow song that comes on the speaker (I feel like they’d have music playing that the whole parking lot can hear) and it just ends with them slow dancing by the fire looking into each others eyes and talking about their future, JTyler just has this look on his face knowing he is going to marry this woman one day<3"

Word count: 2.4k

Warnings: none

A/N: thanks for the request, this was such a cute idea / fun plot to write :) Enjoy!! 

“You comin’?” Tyler asked, giving your hand a slight squeeze and nodding towards the group of people already clustered around the fire. 

You offered a small smile, which was about all you were capable of after the long day you’d had. 

“I’m really tired,” you explained. “Think I’m just gonna grab a shower then crash.”

You didn’t miss the look of disappointment that flashed across his face. But it was quickly replaced by a gentle nod. “Course, let me just grab our stuff, then I’ll head up.”

“No, you stay,” you encouraged him, nodding towards the group. “This is right up your alley, don’t miss out because I’m a tired slug.”  

Tyler tipped his head to the side affectionately. “You’re about the cutest tired slug I think I’ve ever seen,” he said in a tone that was far too serious for the context. 

You shook your head, lips tugging into a grin as you pulled your hand away from his to adjust the bag slung over your shoulder. “Shut up,” you mumbled adoringly before nodding towards the fire. “Look, they have music goin’. Why don’t you go slow dance with Boone or something?” 

“Yeah alright,” Tyler agreed, taking a step backwards. His tongue poked through his teeth in the same way that, even after almost two years together, still made your stomach flip. “I’ll be up in a little while.”

“Have fun,” you called before he turned and began walking towards where everyone else had gathered. 

Meanwhile, you had the pleasure of trudging up a flight of stairs to get to the room Tyler had booked for the night. After nearly eight hours of driving that day, the muscles in your legs felt wobbly as you made the ascent. But when you finally were able to climb into the room’s shower– the warm water rinsing off all the dirt and sweat you’d acquired for the day, you sighed out a breath of relief. 

Although you appreciated how good it felt, you didn’t waste time in the shower. Instead, you quickly lathered up your hair, rinsed it out, and scrubbed yourself clean before grabbing a towel from the rack and drying off. Before long, you had your wet hair combed out, pajamas on, and were crawling into the queen bed positioned in the center of the room. You climbed in with full intentions of passing out without a second thought. 

However, to your absolute dismay, that wasn't the case. Instead, you tossed and turned, almost nodding off– but then reaching for someone that wasn't there yet. Eyes snapping open, you sighed defeatedly. It wasn’t uncommon for you to have a hard time sleeping without Tyler. But with how exhausted you felt, you’d been hopeful. 

You laid there for about half an hour before giving up. You were just growing increasingly frustrated and knew that no amount of laying there without him was going to work. 

So instead, you climbed out of bed, grabbed Tyler’s flannel, which laid conveniently at the top of your bag and threw your boots back on. Your hair was still damp when you left the room. Luckily the June air was warm– even after the sun had gone down. As you climbed back down the stairs, noise from the fire and people gathered filled your ears. You heard music coming through a nearby speaker and the collective murmuring and laughter from each conversation blurring together in a loud hum. 

As you approached the crowd, it didn’t take long before you spotted Tyler and the rest of the crew. He was sitting back in a camp chair, dimples on full display as he laughed at something Lilly was saying in the chair next to him. Boone was crouched on the sand, knees tucked into his chest while he used a stick to poke at the fire. Dani was kicked back in an adirondack chair, sipping casually on a beer. Meanwhile, Dexter was nowhere to be seen– presumably already gone to bed for the night. 

Wrapping his flannel tighter yourself, you began weaving your way through the crowd of people and towards him. Tyler spotted you after only a moment, like his eyes were born to find you in a crowd. At first his gaze was worried, eyebrows knitting together in a look of concern. 

“There she is!” Boone announced your arrival like your own personal cheerleader. 

You offered a smile and mumbled a weak hello before heading right for Tyler. 

“Hey baby,” he said. He moved like he was going to get up, but before he could, you walked to his side and plopped yourself down across his knees. Instantly, his hand found your waist while you wrapped your arms around his neck, nestling your face into the crook of his shoulder. 

“Everything okay?” he murmured, lips lingering along your hairline. He ran a hand up your back soothingly. 

You nodded, inhaling the scent of him. “Just couldn’t sleep.”

“Ah,” Tyler said, already knowing that what you really meant was, just couldn’t sleep without you. “We can head up, if you want. Let me grab my stuff.”

But you shook your head. Pulling away from him long enough to watch the scene around you. “No, it’s nice out here. Let’s stay a little longer.”

You felt his lips connect with your temple. “Whatever you want, baby.”

“Did you and Boone get to slow dance?” you asked, a hint of playfulness evident in your tone. 

Tyler snorted. “No, we hadn’t gotten the chance yet.”

“Shame,” you muttered groggily. “You’re such a good dancer.” 

“Well you know I’d much prefer to dance with you.”

“Hey,” Boone piped in. “Now see? I know y’all are the world’s cutest couple and all that bullshit. But that right there very much hurts my feelings, T.” 

You both laughed at his antics. 

“Sorry, Boone,” Tyler said. “You’ve got tough competition.”

“Aw, c’mon Boone,” Lilly said. “Don’t let them get to ya. Dani and I will dance with you– c’mon.” 

Together, the three of them got up and joined the crowd of people dancing, leaving you and Tyler alone. 

“Alright, Owens,” you said, mustering up the strength to climb off his lap. “Our turn. Show me what kind of dance moves you got.”

He let you drag him towards a quieter part of the lawn. Using one hand, Tyler gripped your waist and pulled you close. With the other, he cupped your hand to hold out from him. Gently, he began swaying you back and forth to the beat of the song. 

“I don’t know if you’ve ever told me who taught you to dance,” you observed. 

“My mom,” he replied softly. His green eyes sparkled– the same way they did anytime he talked about his mom. 

“I’d never wanted to go to any of the school dances– never had an interest. I was always workin’ the farm or out with friends. But in my junior year of high school, I was trying to impress this girl. Her name was Sally Wakefield– so, I bought us a coupla’ tickets to the prom without even asking her first.”

“What?” you laughed. 

“I know, I know–” he said. “I got the order a little backwards there. Anyway, I went to my mom and told her I had a date to the prom and that I had to learn how to dance before. So, we spent an entire weekend in the living room. She had me push all the furniture– the couch and table and all the chairs, to the side and make a little dance floor. She put her Elton John records on repeat and that's how I learned to dance.” 

“That’s really sweet,” you smiled, just imagining teenage-Tyler slow dancing in the living room with his mom. 

“Yeah, well it didn’t end so sweet. I asked Sally Wakefield to prom the next Monday at school and she laughed in my face,” he chuckled. “So all that hard work went right to waste.”

You scoffed. “Fuck Sally Wakefield.” 

“I actually ran into her at the market a few years back– she was really nice. She’s married, has a few kids now..”

“It was for cathartic effect, Tyler. But if you insist– fuck high-school version of Sally Wakefield.”

“Oh–” he nodded. “Right. Yeah, fuck high school Sally Wakefield.”

“Plus,” you added, melting a little inside as soon as your eyes connected with his. “I don’t think all that hard work went to waste. I, for one, really enjoy dancing with you.” 

His face beamed as he gazed down at you softly. “Remember that night we went line dancin’ when we were down in Austin?”

You let out a bubble of laughter as you leaned into his embrace. “Oh my God, and Boone slipped on the lemonade that lady spilled–”

Tyler chuckled. “Him and his beer went flyin’.”

“I swear I have never seen a human being hit the ground that hard,” you said through your laughter. 

“Me either–”

“Remember when we went to your cousin's wedding– and they had that live band and an entire dance floor and we were like… the only people using it? Everyone else just stayed at their tables.”

Tyler shook his head. “Still can’t believe that.”

“Yeah, I mean ninety-five degrees or not… if I go to a wedding, I’m dancing.”

“What about your wedding?” Tyler asked suddenly, gaze softening as he peered down at you. 

Something in your chest fluttered. It wasn’t the first time Tyler had mentioned weddings or marriage, but every time he did, it pleasantly reminded you that you two were in this for the long haul. 

“What about my wedding?” you said, trying to sound casual. 

“Will there be lots of dancing at your wedding?” 

You pulled back gently from Tyler’s embrace, just enough so that you could get a better look at him. You marveled at how handsome he really was– especially under the soft, flickering glow from the fire. 

“Of course there’ll be dancing– lots of it. I wouldn’t want all your mom’s hard work to go to waste now would I?”

Tyler’s swaying slowed as he took a moment to really study you. His gaze was soft and sweet and intimate all at once. Unable to help yourself, your face broke out into an even wider grin.

“What?” he wondered.

“Nothing,” you shook your head, biting your lip. “You’re just lookin’ at me like you love me. And that makes me smile.” 

Tyler beamed. “I love you so much– you know that, right?” 

Without even hesitating you nodded. “Course I do,” you replied, leaning your head against his chest and allowing him to tighten his hold on you. “I love you, too.”

For a few more minutes, the two of you swayed casually to the music. Tyler’s embrace was safe and warm and comforting, and the longer you danced like that, the more tired you became. 

“Think we’ll see anything tomorrow?” you yawned sleepily into his shirt. You felt his cheek rest on top of your head, nestling you into the crook of his neck.  

Tyler clicked his tongue above you. “I don’t think so. Dexter wasn’t tracking anything on the radar, but you never know.” 

“What if we just had a slow day tomorrow? We could just sleep in and hang out here for another day? I saw they had a pool out back– that’d keep Boone entertained.” 

“That’s not a bad idea,” he said. “I think we could make that work.” 

You smiled against his skin, eyelids growing heavier and heavier. Gradually, you began leaning more and more of your weight against him, until finally, he gave your back a gentle rub. 

“Let’s say you and I head up to the room, yeah?”

You nodded against him, too tired to reply. 

“There we go,” he said, wrapping his arm around your shoulder. You leaned into his side, letting him guide the way. He called goodnight to everyone for you before practically carrying you up the flight of stairs towards the room. 

When you were finally inside, Tyler helped you climb into bed. You frowned when he didn’t immediately follow. Instead, you watched him head into the bathroom and close the door. 

With how tired you were– you were surprised you didn’t fall asleep as soon as your head hit the pillow. But the longer you laid there without Tyler, the more awake you felt. 

After only a few short minutes, he emerged from the bathroom and crossed the room quietly. 

“You’re not asleep yet?” he asked, peeling back the covers and climbing into bed beside you. “Thought you’d be snorin’ by the time I came back.”

Without replying, you scooted across the bed until you were wrapped back up in his embrace. You felt arms wound around your waist, anchoring you to him. You smelled his aftershave and mouthwash as you nuzzled into his chest. You heard the sound of his heartbeat, even through the fabric of his T-shirt. His presence totally engulfed all of your senses– and you knew that was exactly how it should be. 

As you finally drifted off, all you knew was Tyler, Tyler, Tyler. 

And what a wonderful thing to know. 

[almostfoxglove]

I'LL CARRY YOU: part II

YOU CARRY IT

RATING: Explicit (18+) PAIRING: Javier Peña x f!Reader WORD COUNT: 7.7k CW: Smut (piv, characters are drunk but sound of mind and consenting), drinking, and a lethal amount of yearning.

SUMMARY: Four years after he disappeared from your bed in the early morning, Javier returns to Laredo once more—exhuming a lifetime of memories.

part I | series masterlist | series on ao3 | almostfoxglove masterlist

dividers by @saradika-graphics & insp for one moment from this post (wink)

ELEVEN

You don’t know you love him, but you do. Grass-stained and grubby, dirt beneath your fingernails, digging for jewels in the front yard that yields nothing but squirming things. Earthworms, pillbugs, a slug. Beside you, Javier is on all fours, scanning the lawn through squinted eyes, his head haloed by the sun as he blocks the light. “Don’t see nothin’,” he groans, elbows bent as he dips his face close to the ground. So earnest in his hunt for something that’ll delight you—buried treasure.

You grin, watching him, knowing in your heart there isn’t anything good buried in the square of grass outside your house, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is this: the afternoon spent in the company of the lanky kid whose arrival has punched your whole life out of orbit, rewriting all that is possible for you. Reimagining. 

With a huff, Javier sits back on his heels, his t-shirt stained with soil. His mom’s gonna whack the back of his head when he gets home—lightly, lovingly—for ruining another set of clothes, but he’ll never learn his lesson. “Sorry,” he mumbles, meeting your gaze with round, warm apologies swimming in the earth of his eyes. “Can’t see anything good.”

It’s obvious he means it, obvious he’s disappointed in himself for not accomplishing the impossible. Fulfilling some childhood fantasy you’re well aware will never be real. For Javier, it’s not enough to see you dreaming; he wants to make it come true.

Small smile on your lips, you reach out to nudge his skinny arm. “I forgive you,” you tease, and he blinks once before he catches the joke in your tone and a grin grabs hold of his face, briefly creasing his cheek.

Just then the wind chime sings from your porch and both of you turn to see the sea glass shiver prettily in the breeze. In a moment that feels beyond time, you and Javier sit transfixed by its gentle magic—the sparkling tune of blue-green glass chiming in the wind. The moment ends only when Javier slumps down to lie in the grass, dropping his head into your lap. School’s only been in session for three weeks—which means you’ve known him a grand total of twenty-one days—but somehow, though he’s never done this before, his touch feels to you as natural as breathing.

Javier sighs. At eleven, he’s already burdened by the weight of the whole world, and you don’t know why.

Shy, your hand hovers over his head, stilled by hesitation. Then he wiggles a little, adjusting himself to lie with one cheek pressed to your thighs and the other turned up to you, and your hand falls softly against his temple, brushing an unruly lock away from his eyes. He makes a soft sound sort of like a hum as if you’ve done what he wanted, and pride surges in your chest—a sudden tide. Dark lashes fluttering, his eyes close. His cheek pink and gold beneath the carpet of sun.

“Sad?” you ask him softly, carding your fingers through his hair, unfazed by the sweat that wets the curls at the nape of his neck. You don’t find him gross, not for a second, but you don’t know yet what that means.

His shoulder bobs with a tired shrug. “Wanted to find you somethin’ good,” Javier mumbles.

“That’s okay. The fun part is looking.”

“Still wanted to,” he sighs.

And you know, sudden as a lightning strike, that this boy’s your best friend in the world. Doesn’t matter that you don’t know his middle name yet, or all his secrets, the feeling thrown down at you from above hits you without any warning, rearranging your cells—you love him all at once. That’s all it takes. You’d do anything for him.

EIGHTEEN

You love him, but so does everyone here—Javier Peña is an incredible drunk. Three red solo cups deep and barely eighteen, he doesn’t dance through the packed dormitory lounge, he swims. Graceful and lithe, though the occasional splash of shitty beer gulps golden from his cup, splattering on the floor. But Javier dances with his whole body, especially when he’s drunk, outweighing any mess with his charm: head thrown back and eyes closed as he sings along to whatever record someone’s put on, hips balletic, boneless, fluid. He focuses on someone for a song or two like they’re the only person in the room, then moves right along to find someone new. 

The girl he’s dancing with now is licking his neck.

You think you’re ready to go home.

When the next song ends, he comes down panting from his lyric high and his head sways in your direction: perched on the back of the couch with your feet on the cushions in the corner of the room, worrying the slit that’s cracked in the plastic rim of your cup with your thumbnail. You’re not sure how many drinks you’ve had, only that two of them were jello shots that went down like slugs and made your mouth taste like a rancid ice pop. Still does, unfortunately. No quantity of beer seems capable of rinsing it out.

Javier bends down to whisper something in the girl’s ear and she removes her lips from the column of his throat, slinking off to be swallowed by the dance floor with a smirk on her face. And that’s it: the magic of his attention—hardly anyone seems mad when he moves on. There are, from what you can see in the dark, no jealous glares or bitter remarks spat from anyone. 

Perhaps Javier gives his lust freely, fleetingly, but it is always earnest. 

Now he’s headed straight for you.

The minute he reaches you with that lazy grin, you’re cured. Happy again, drunk on the dazzle of the black lights someone tacked up on the walls with duct tape. The writhing mass of limbs and hips made neon in the dark—shocks of ultraviolet and blue raspberry and the brightest white ricocheting from painted bodies. Biceps and back pockets and necks branded with electric green acrylic. Beaming in his white button up, the top three buttons undone and collar open loose around his throat, Javier is a dream. Luminous and stained by a slender handprint low on his shirt like whoever left it had grabbed his hip.

“Why aren’t you dancing?” he asks, frowning. He blinks up at you, his gaze narrowed and face shadowed in the dark, and drops onto the couch to settle between your legs. 

You’d be surprised if you were sober, but you’re not, so you think nothing of it—though he’s never touched you like this before, in front of so many eyes.

“Too clumsy,” you reply.

Sitting above him, you’ve got the perfect view of the crown of his head. Dark curls dislodged by dancing and beer and the way he keeps running his hand through it, fingers carding between sweaty locks. When he bumps his head against the inside of your knee, you know what he wants. He never asks because he doesn’t have to. You know him. He knows you.

“Should dance with me,” he says as your hand slips mindlessly into his hair, scratching in the way that takes him apart. “I’ll let you step on my feet.”

“I’d have to get in line,” you tease, scratching harder for a second so his gaze lifts to the center of the dorm-turned-dance-floor where three girls are watching Javier as they roll their hips—three, and you don’t even have a full view of the crowd from where you’re sitting—and though his head points in exactly their direction, what you can glimpse of the expression on Javier’s face is what you’d expect to see if he were looking at a wall. Not callous, just vacant. Like there isn’t anything to see or form an opinion about.

You feel pleasure fill you in great, crashing waves—grateful for these moments when all he cares about is you.

He shrugs, tilts his head up again, and shakes his head to tell you he’s noticed you’ve stopped scratching. When your fingers move again, he hmphs, settles back against your knee. All senior year you’d wondered if he’d bore of you in college. You waited for it, figured he’d get on with new friends and stop needing you. Course Javier’s made friends, and while crossing campus together between lectures you’ve more than once witnessed girls approach him alone or in packs, and he always knows them by name. It’s not a secret that he’s fucked two girls since the semester started. Nothing is a secret between you.

And yet, here he is: tucked between your legs on this nasty couch like there ain’t a soul for miles but the two of you. Not a single thought about outgrowing you in his gaze at all.

Glaringly upset that you aren’t enjoying yourself like he thinks you ought to, too.

“Dance with me, cariño,” Javier insists—and your stomach yelps, sudden and breathless. He’s never called you this before, but he grins the moment it falls out of his mouth, so you must be smiling.

You shake your head, summoning his pout. Bottom lip jutted, licked, and glossy under elemental light. The girls who want him haven’t broken their gaze, despite your hand in his hair and his ignoring them. 

“Don’t have to be embarrassed,” he says. “Ever’one’s drunk.”

“You’re drunk,” you tease.

Javier cuts his eyes. “You’re drunk,” he grumbles, and as if on cue you hiccup once, yanking up the corner of his mouth. You stop scratching to sweep a curl off his damp forehead, charmed by the way he leans willingly into your hand. 

“Let’s go home,” he mumbles. 

You don’t question it; you take his hand without knowing whose dorm he means.

Turns out he means yours—bronze in penny-dark light at the edge of residence, a whole four blocks further from the party than his, but you’re not complaining. He has terrible pillows, a roommate. You’ve got a cozy shoebox with memory foam all to yourself.

At the front door, you drop your keys trying to fish them out of your bra, and Javier kneels to snatch them from the pavement. A single coin of light shines down outside the entrance in which he is now brightened, eyes glassy, head loosely attached. He sways, crouched still at your feet as he gazes up at you, not quite kneeling, not quite praying—but close, you think. This feels close.

“Smooth,” he chides softly, and offers you your keys. 

“Not m’fault,” you grumble as you take them. “Dress doesn’t have pockets.”

A grin. The magic of his face when he smiles properly, if only for a moment. With the light how it is, harsh and clear, all it touches is pristine. The flat of his jaw, the freckles between his collar bones, on the tanned triangle of his chest. You wonder about them, suddenly. How it might feel to make a constellation of him with your fingertips. 

“Pretty though,” Javier says.

How it would feel to make a constellation of him with your tongue.

You take the keys, face shied from illumination as if he might read the thought from your face—he probably could. A blessing and a curse, to be known by someone this well. Then the moment slips gone, gone, gone, and you and Javier walk hand in hand inside. Up three flights of stairs, down the echo chamber of your silent dorm, your hallway. He never once lets go. Long past quiet hours, now. No one awake, it sounds like, to make a peep but the two of you.

You only get one short, tremored jab of the key—it misses, then Javier whirls you around. Your spine meets your door and his eyes have never quite been this color, you think. Never quite this vibrant, this wanting, this terrified. Never quite this close to yours.

Warmth holds your face. His hands. 

“Javi?” you whisper, as he draws closer and your fool of heart skids rampant in your chest, smashing into your ribs.

He exhales sharply, fogging your face with the heat of his lungs, and you can smell the beer on him, his sweat and aftershave. You’re certain, too, that every time you’ve ever seen him nervous before now doesn’t hold a candle to the tremors you feel in him as he presses his chest gently against yours, pressing you cautiously against your door. 

Javier shakes his head, scoffs mirthfully, and licks his bottom lip. You watch his mouth—transfixed by the muscle of his tongue—and he watches yours. 

He’s going to kiss you, you realize. It looks like he’s going to—

“Porfa,” he whispers. “Una vez.”

One time.

Then you’re nodding before you can fear what nodding means, and Javier casts his shadow over all the world, disappearing everything that isn’t him, the careful press of his lips, and the way his shaking doesn’t stop until your arms have slid around his neck. He makes a small, needy sound passed from his tongue to yours as he sinks against you, whole and heavy. The sort of weight you’d carry as far as he needed, as far as you could take. 

His hands make a map of you, skimming places they’ve never ventured: high on your ribs, low on your stomach, the back of your neck, just under your chest, just over your ass. 

It’s a little clumsy—often your teeth bump in your enthusiasm and you part briefly to laugh—but it doesn’t feel wrong in the slightest. Every time Javier dips back in to kiss you again, you want more. When you slip one hand to his chest, the gold vee bared between open buttons, the slick of his skin rips a soft moan from you and Javier’s chest stutters beneath your touch. 

“Is this—” he whispers, pausing to catch your bottom lip between his again. “Is this okay?”

Giggling, though you don’t mean to—Javier draws back to look you in the eye and his are black: a body possessed. Helplessly searching for a sign you want him to stop or go on. You shake and shake your head, lay your fingertips over his soft lips, and Javier’s eyebrows dent low over his eyes, utterly lost and confused. His hands stop their trail to rest on your hips. 

To you, it’s hilarious that he could possibly wonder when it’s so obvious that this is what you should’ve been doing all this time. Now you can’t imagine how you ever avoided it before. Smiling, you feel him breathe on your hand as he scans your face for a clue before you finally get out, “Mhm,” and then, quieter, “Don’t stop.”

“Thank fuck,” Javier mutters, before crashing back into you—with meaning this time, lips needy, hands heavy in their roam, not pinching but squeezing, pulling, holding you hot against the lean of his body, those fluid hips. 

His lips, emboldened. Trailing now to your jaw, finding a spot beneath its hinge that makes you mewl and tonguing it sweetly until you wiggle him off you to kiss him properly again. 

You manage to stumble inside, eventually, Javier’s shirt shedding before the door has closed. He scoops you into his arms the moment it’s off—your feet leave the floor, lose one shoe, and he trips over it and you yelp, accidentally biting his tongue as he catches himself against your shitty dresser. It creaks beneath his hand. 

“Gonna hurt ourselves,” he grumbles into your mouth, a little frustrated, his broad hand palming your ass to grind your hips against his.

“Worth it,” you grin.

You’re young, in love with him without rank or title or practice. Still mostly a child, all wonder and cravings that haven’t yet solidified into their final form—so it’s impossible to get this right the first time. You’ve had sex just once before for a grand total of eight minutes, and though Javier’s had a few more tries he hasn’t cracked it. Doesn’t help that you’ve got just the twin bed, and he’s all limbs. Has only his concentration to give you, his gravity, his ardent hunger. 

The way you feel all night that he wants you in his new, thrilling way. Always mumbling hotly into the curl of your ear.

Fuck, you feel—feel so good.

Pretty like this, so pretty like this.

And worst, maybe, which is to say best—want you, baby—wanted you so fuckin’ bad.

Despite the champagne grape color of his blush when he loses it halfway through, you think this is the closest you’ve ever come to transcendence. Every star aligned in perfect syzygy—at last, one piece of fate has clicked into its rightful place.

“Shit,” Javier mutters as he pulls out, soft and ashamed, but you just shake your head, tugging him back to you by the nape of his neck.

“Don’t care,” you insist. “Just wanna touch you.”

You mean it; you don’t care, but Javier still looks down at you with those round eyes guileless in his shame, open as any book. Fine, you’ll prove it. Tongue wet and doting, you lick between his freckles, kiss over his collarbone, across his chest, up his neck—an act of sincerity in which you make him the sky, a chain of constellations joined by your mouth. 

Then he’s hard again, hips canting against yours, and you resume.

It’s a kind of fullness that belongs not just to the body, not purely physical—but you dismiss this as nothing more than some nonsense, drunken thought.

In his fervor, your skull bumps against the wall and he gasps a sudden apology, one hand moving to cradle the crown of your head as he rocks into the cradle of your hips. Then your sudden laughter makes Javier’s whole body freeze suddenly, ceasing all rhythm. His hands pinch warningly at your waist.

“Gotta stop—shit, nena—quit laughin’,” he rasps, breathless, desperate. 

His sudden seriousness has you lost to besotted amusement, unable to keep your laughter from bubbling out.

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” Javier pants, with his eyes squeezed shut as he fails to concentrate. “Gonna make me—fuck.” 

Then he’s undone, his sweaty forehead dropped to your chest as he comes down, disappointed, from his high.

“S’okay,” you whisper, hands slinking through his hair which now is beyond salvation. A hopeless, shaggy cause so sweet between your fingers. In an instant he’s melted, body leaden on top of yours, squishing you to the mattress, safe, secure.

For a while you stay like this, both catching your breath. His forehead pressed to the skin between your breasts. Then Javier fetches a t-shirt from your dresser and helps you clean the mess of your stomach, both of you snickering, in awe of how strange and ridiculous this all is. Shirt tossed from his hand, it jellyfishes in the air, falls deflated to the floor like a gunned down hot air balloon and Javier crawls over you, stripes your cheek with his tongue just to get you to gasp, clumsy hands shoving him off you with a gross, Javi, while he sits back on his heels. He shrugs, dark eyes drifting to your lips. 

He doesn’t have to say what he’s thinking; you just roll your eyes.

“Shut up,” you tell him, blushing as you tug on clean underwear. “S’not the same.” 

When a sleep shirt comes next he grunts in disapproval, earning a soft shove to his arm.

He drags his pants back on but the paint-stained shirt stays off, his body all cricket at the foot of your bed: leaning back on one hand, legs bent at the knee. Lean muscle and sudden joints. His smooth, tanned chest. Beautiful, same as he’s always been, and somehow entirely new. He cracks your sorry excuse for a window, asks if you mind if he smokes.

Your eyebrows rise. “That’s a disgusting habit,” you scold, all smirk as you extend your arm expectantly. “You absolutely cannot smoke in my room, alone.”

With a smirk, he lifts his hips to pull a carton from the back pocket of his jeans—one of many pairs that make a meal of his thighs. Filter pinched between his teeth, brings the cup of one hand to the end as he flicks his lighter, birthing no flame.

“Drunker than I thought,” he mumbles to himself, defeated as you sigh.

Your hand, still open and waiting, folds twice. Give it to me, you mean, and he does; you thumb it a few times before tossing it back. “Just empty,” you say. 

The hem of your shirt slips up over your ass as you stretch for your desk drawer, and Javier—not yet broken from the spell of your entanglement—makes a low sound not unlike a growl that has you grinning. You produce a matchstick like a promise, bite it between your teeth, and hold his gaze as you draw it quickly from your mouth.

The red tip sparkles, flames.

“The hell d’you learn to do that?” he asks, crawling over once more to hold his cigarette to the small fire in your hand before it dies. Lit, he sucks once before handing the cigarette to you.

You shrug coolly. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” you smirk, drinking tobacco like it’s water until your lungs too protest and hack. As you cough, Javier lights a second from the match in the last moment before it snuffs, and leans back against the windowsill to take a drag that hollows his cheeks.

He knocks his foot against your bare knee with a pointed stare. “Teach me,” he says. So you do.

TWENTY-ONE

You love him. All night, he buys everything you drink. Twenty-one at last, you’re crowded against the sticky bar of The Last Man Standing amidst the Saturday high, bodies hot and impatient in every direction. So many adults who seem so much older than you. You think you spot your old algebra teacher smoking in a corner booth with a woman who is not his wife. Javier sweeps you against his barstool with a scowl when a man twice your size elbows you out of the way to order. 

“Here,” he grunts, and smacks his thigh twice with meaning, so you climb onto his lap, pleased that his arm hooks around the small of your back to steady you against his chest. 

Tipsy, that’s what he is. What you are. 

You lie to yourself. To the version of your heart that never got older than eleven, enraptured as you were the moment he walked into that classroom and hijacked your life. A bedtime story blooms in your head: you get him, somehow, over everybody else.

Call it a birthday wish.

“Such a gentleman,” you tease. 

“Just take your shot,” Javier grumps, dark eyes rolling in that way that means he’s fighting off a grin. Stashing his cigarette between his teeth, he nudges the shot glass toward you and you watch a lick of tequila spill onto the bar before you grasp it.

Together, you swipe your tongues across the back of your hands: you his, and he yours, before Javier showers salt from little paper packets he stole from a stranger’s basket of fries. He winks as the salt clings to your skin, folding the packets neatly to stash in his back pocket. Then you clink your glasses, hook arms, lap the salt, and swallow.

Tequila stripes hot down your throat, hits the churn of your stomach, and you grin as you set down your empty glass next to his on the bartop. Tipsy in the dreamy way that can put you to sleep if you don’t drink on, your head tips onto his shoulder to rest a while and Javier, without you having to ask, tightens his hold around your waist like he knows you want him to. 

“Don’t fall asleep,” he says, before his eyes flicker to the ceiling. “Got traditions to uphold.”

Above you, bras in every color known to man hang from the rafters and ceiling fans. Lacy things, plain things, hideous things—all polluted with a sheet of charcoal dust. You stab your elbow into his ribs, but Javier only holds you tighter, keeping your body in the cage of his.

“C’mon, baby,” he says. Eyes round and dark and twinkling with mischief. He clicks his tongue—daring you though he doesn’t have to. The heat of his proximity alone would do you in. That clumsy meeting of your bodies freshman year has not returned and you don’t think it ever will. He’s got Lorraine now, but the nicknames have stuck around. It’s normal, mundane, the way you call each other baby, cariño. Endearments felt with the whole heart but not the whole body.

Nena, however, was uttered by his plush lips just that once. Out of his mind on the precipice of release, probably doesn’t remember he said it. Probably didn’t realize even at the time. 

You try not to wonder if he calls Lorraine nena now, but he probably does. Definitely does. He loves her.

“Rules are rules,” Javier presses, eyebrows flicking up.

Rolling your eyes, you wrestle your arms behind your back to unclasp your bra through your shirt. His eyes hold yours as you drag the straps down your arms—left, then right—and you’d swear desire flares briefly in his eyes as you drag your bra from the sleeve of your shirt without having to undress. Must be the alcohol. Must just be him teasing you. 

Still, your cheeks burn. 

It’s not a nice bra, not one you’d show anyone, but Javier looks down as you hold it and moves below you, repositioning how you’re sitting on his lap. 

“C’mon then,” he urges you, patting the small of your back with his broad hand. 

You toss, someone across the bar lets out a masterful whistle, and your bra catches on the blade of the ceiling fan overhead perfectly. First try. Straps swinging, scalloped from the band. You beam—delighted by the applause that roars from the patrons nearest you—and the bartender slides down the line to offer another round on the house. 

Smug, Javier leans forward to take one while you grab the other. Righteous in his posture: chest broad and upright, pressed against you. Shirt unbuttoned at the top like some swash-buckling pirate you’d swoon over in a movie. Seems it doesn’t matter how much you try to forget what it felt like to be wanted by him, you just can’t. In some other version of your lives, he might not have met Lorraine. Or he met her but didn’t want her, because he already had you.

But he has you now, anyway. Javier gets it both ways. A girlfriend—blonde, pretty, wry—and a best friend who love him in the same way, while he only has to return that affection to one.

One week from now, his mother will give you her rosary when you visit her hospital room. Green beads polished to pearls by her prayers. 

Two weeks from now, she will die. The chemo has failed, unbeknown to the two of you. 

You’ll watch Javier shoulder her casket from church to grave with Chucho, his uncle and cousins, in a suit that’s too snug across the breadth of his shoulders and the tie she bought him for prom. You’ll watch Lorraine hold his hand the whole ceremony, the whole wake, and afterwards he’ll spend a week in your bed, unable to sleep without your arms, ignoring Lorraine’s calls and chain-smoking like a man who wants to die. If he cries, he won’t let you see it. But he’ll lie with you in the burrow of your duvet, his face planted in the bowl of your neck, sometimes kissing there. Tiny, needy grazes you’ll wordlessly allow. Kissing in return the top of his head, his forehead, his cheeks and knuckles. Never his lips. 

The ashtray you set on the nightstand for him will never move. It’ll stay there, unused, for years. When you move, it will move with you, set out on new nightstand, waiting for his return.

But you know nothing of that now. Today is all tequila and the glory of his attention, and everyone you love is alive.

“I hate you,” you grump as your glasses clink again.  

Javier hmphs, feigns impatience as he squeezes your hip. He does love you. You know that—you tell yourself so all the time. He loves you, just not in the right way.

“Drink, cariño,” he says. “Before we’re twenty-two.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

You love him, so you’d wait all night. Twenty minutes ain’t that late. Try telling that to your sputtering heart, but it’s fine. It’s just twenty minutes, and the look of this place. Just the glooms of shadow between each red-clothed table and cosmos of chandeliers that willow whenever someone opens the door and lets in a draft. 

It’s just that, now that you’re here, you have no idea why he picked this place. You’ve never been, and sat at a small table by the windows, it’s obvious why. This place, with its jazz band testing sound levels on the sunken stage, with its waitresses who are all, somehow, the most beautiful women you’ve ever seen—the kind of gorgeous so grand you can’t even hate them, can’t envy them, you can only sit in awe—this place is romantic. Unbelonging to you. 

This is the sort of restaurant you take someone when you ask them to marry you.

Which—given the last two weeks—is sort of hilarious. You’re inclined to believe Javier chose this place for dinner as a joke. Planned for the two of you to sit here, stuff yourselves stupid and tipsy and quip under your breath all night at the expense of the other patrons who all appear to be having a lovely night.

Except the joke’s not so funny when no one’s here to make it. 

Your watch spins its hands, laughing at you, making you the joke.

Thirty minutes late. 

You already have a feeling he isn’t gonna show—which is to say, you know for sure. Heavy and anchoring. Disappointment can center you, plant you where you sit. Sure, it’s not the first time Javier has flaked; his own head can often get the best of him when he’s restless or spent. But it’s different, knowing the depth of his heartache. Sensing it even when he isn’t in the room and isn’t anywhere nearby, like somehow your bodies can speak to each other at any distance. 

It’s not just your hurt you carry, but his shattering. The death of all his life was about to be that he ran like hell from.

When the waitress swings by, you accept a top-up on your wine. Might as well.

Soon the jazz band is playing, piano swooping acrobatic through the air, trumpet singing, sax crooning. As the sun drops low in the sky, flirting with rooftops, the chandeliers inside the restaurant dim. Then it’s alchemy, the aura of the room. Straight out of some movie that’d break your heart half as much as you fear it breaking any second now. 

You wish you knew why he asked you to meet him here.

You wish you knew why he told you to dress up—just a little, Christ, cool it, baby.

You wish you knew why he hasn’t come.

Not that this day on your calendar hasn’t been circling around in your head like water in a tub that won’t fully drain. There isn’t anything good to tell someone who just left their fiancée at the altar, even if he is your best friend—Javier knows this. 

Maybe that’s why he still hasn’t shown. 

Seems cruel to ask you here, gussied up for nothing in the dress he ten years ago peeled off you—reverent in his gaze and fixation, alight with obvious pleasure—when he must have known he wasn’t going to come.

Might have jinxed it when you hauled it out from the grave of your closet this afternoon. Feels pathetic, now, that you put this thing back on. Desperate.

You drain your wine, let it fill you, bitter and bloody and absent of any enjoyment. 

He isn’t coming.

Still, you wait, praying you’re wrong.

As the band’s first set comes to a roaring end, the whole place alive with praise, air filled by cheers and clapping hands. Even the waitresses halt where they stand to clap, poised in their practiced intermission, perfect as marble deities each kissed with red lips. The bartender, too, in his stupid bowtie and perfectly gelled hair. Everyone here is having the time of their lives but you, who can’t shake the feeling that you’ve never wanted to be anywhere less than you want to be here right now, alone.

One glance at the menu and all you see are the dollar signs that’d gut your bank account, send you back into the overdraft you’ve just paid off. 

You sigh, try to make a game of silver linings. 

At least you won’t have to pay for some stuffy meal.

At least you won’t have to watch the waitress fall in love with Javier the second he sits down.

At least you won’t have to call a cab because you’re too buzzed to drive.

At least you won’t be up late enough to be fucked tomorrow at work.

At least you don’t have to wear these stupid, pointy shoes until the little hours.

Needless to say, you lose the game. No amount of silver brightens the rift widening to a chasm through your chest. Hollowing you out. Splitting you in two.

One more glass, then the next time the waitress swings by, you wave the white flag and she hastily brings your receipt. Obscene, for three glasses of wine and an hour and a half spent watching pleasure flame in strangers’ eyes, but you pay for it. You take the loss and its drowning weight. You carry it.

“Do you have a—” you start to ask, as the waitress takes your bills, but she cuts you off, already nodding.

“Course, sugar,” she says, and points one lacquered nail in the direction of the bar. As if rehearsed, the bartender swipes his crisp white towel along the right wing of the polished bartop, revealing a phone on the wall behind him. You nod, thank her, and are so grateful that the bartender ducks into the back as if he just now has remembered something urgent in the other room that you consider crying. 

Chucho always picks up on the third ring. Reliable, steady. Like you.

“It’s me,” you say, when he’s on the line.

“Oh honey,” he replies.

Behind you: clapping again, except this time the band’s taking five. When you turn, the plastic phone pressed clammy to your cheek, someone’s down on one knee beside their table with a ring.

You close your eyes.

“Just—tell me he’s not in a ditch somewhere,” you say to Chucho. “Just need to know he’s, I don’t know, accounted for.”

Not dead, is what you mean. Not passed out, drunk, in a ditch, is what you mean. Not blackout somewhere without you to catch him when he leaps. Without you to carry him home.

There stretches—beneath the drone of jubilation marking the best day of someone else’s life—the long, brooding quiet in which Chucho remains silent on the other line. When he speaks next, it’s in the middle of a sudden piano solo. Celebration, or their next set, doesn’t matter. You don’t hear shit. Have to plug your open ear with your hand.

“Sorry, once more?”

Crackling static. A slow, apologetic breath.

“Told him to tell you, sweetheart,” he repeats. “Would’a called if I knew he hadn’t and saved you the trip.”

Not dead. The first real silver lining. You don’t so much breathe as you deflate.

“Kid took that job,” Chucho sighs. “He flew down this morning.”

THIRTY-SIX

You love him, and when you wake in the warm arms of morning he’s long, long gone. Already a thousand miles skyward, Colombia-bound, returning once more to the jaws of something that wants him buried and dead.

There’s no note, but you knew there wouldn’t be. Javier never writes anything down, never leaves you any proof. Last photo of you together must be from college, early on. Any presence he’s had in your life since then is smoke—it dissipates with the wave of his smooth, freckled hand. Gone, like he was never here at all.

Gone, like he never kissed you.

Gone, like he never picked you.

Gone, like he’ll never come back again.

FORTY

You love him, but it’s been four years. Nothing’s the same; it can’t be.

Except for you. Not just in your love, but in your being. A lighthouse for better and worse: beacon in any storm, buried on land. Immovable. Still living thirty minutes from the house of your girlhood, ever accessible, predictable, and lodged in the filth of all that has birthed and broken you. Entirely, utterly, incapable of leaving. Trapped in the case of your unshed skin.

Today is the equinox for the red and dying. Autumn at last unfurling its cool tendrils, usurping the summer’s reign. Air sweet and temperate, tinged with the promise of showers. You—running late, neck sore, caffeine-deficient—hustle the gravel tongue of Chucho’s drive, arms heavy with a batch of groceries. An old habit you never kicked—his hip’s been fine eight months now but you still come around every other Sunday with groceries to save him the trouble, craving his company. His calloused hand soothing your back in small circles, telling you everything’s gonna be fine without uttering a word. 

You dig out the key you’ve had since sixth grade from the void of your pocket. Not graceful, but you don’t drop it. The key wasn’t Javier’s idea, but his mother’s—a woman who took one look at you and felt exactly what you did. Eternal. Took the key off her own ring and handed it over, said she’d make herself another copy. 

“Anytime.” That’s what she’d said to you, eleven and heart scared as a rabbit’s by how much more the Peña house felt like home than your own. Her key, passed to your palm, was warm from her hand. 

Now in your own it’s warm again. Like a piece of her still lives in there, same as the rosary in your car. 

“Chucho,” you call into the house, when you’ve let yourself in. Late morning light bars the old wood floors. A gem, this house. Worn as it is welcoming. All broken in leather that’s butter to the touch and floorboards that croak like frogs. As you toe out of your shoes, you huff, your shoulders already easing into their right positions just by walking in the door. 

No sign of him yet, but that isn’t strange. Could be outside already, sleeves rolled to his elbows and hat low over his eyes. Still, as you haul the groceries down the hall, you call out again. 

“I’ve had the second worst morning of my life. Come take your food, viejo.”

While you wait, you set the bags in the kitchen, plastic crinkling, the burnt roast of coffee still rich in the air. The smell of cut grass weaves through the vented window. Rosy, this room, at this time of day. Blushed by the old lace curtains that have colored with age. There’s a kind of charm to a house like this—lived in, loved in—that you’ve never felt anywhere you’ve lived. 

You’re tucking eggs into the fridge when the floor ribbits upstairs, dragging a grin across your face. Coming home. That’s what this place feels like, when you come to visit Chucho and he insists on making you tea even though by the time he gets to you, you’re usually pouring him a mug of his own. 

There he comes now, you think, as you smile into the fridge. A man who ought to get some of the credit for raising you. You listen to him descend the creaking stairs one slow foot at a time as you toss old food from the forgotten corners of his refrigerator, replacing it with what’s vibrant, green, and new.

But you aren’t really listening. Not all the way. 

If you were, you’d know the second those feet hit the ground floor that they aren’t the footsteps of Chucho at all. Wrong Peña.

“Second worst?”

Then a long whistle. You turn.

Javier, not Chucho, stands at the foot of the stairs. Four years older than last you saw him, sober and smiling, brown eyes glinting shyly. Beautiful, same as always, but what did you expect. Wearing a white button up with long sleeves rolled just like his dad, though decidedly more unbuttoned—if he were closer, you’d see the freckles on his chest, his neck. The spots you once connected like knowing him was a game. 

Are those the same jeans he was wearing, that night in your bed? Better not to linger, wonder. Wondering is a terrible thing.

Whatever’s on your face melts Javier’s smile clean off. 

He’s put it together, then. He knows what the worst morning was.

You’ve gone eight years apart, but these last four feel like decades. There’s a wisp of silver at his temples that wasn’t there before.

“You’re home,” you hear yourself say.

He clenches one hand, fidgeting fingers. Guilty, then. Sad, then. Nervous, then.

You wonder if he’s reading you the same. If you still live side by side, on the same page.

“Yeah,” Javier says, hardly louder than a breath.

And you are running, rushing. Already against him, arms thrown, anger slinking back to the bottom of its well. For the first time in your lives, Javier doesn’t immediately return your touch. He stands for two long seconds like a statue in your arms as his heart smacks against his chest and into yours. 

You hold him tighter. Four years collapse like a stack of playing cards. He feels exactly the same, like he belongs in your arms. 

When he comes to himself, your feet lift until only your toes brush against the floor—that’s how tightly he grabs you, how wholly. You hang, held in his arms as he presses his face into your neck. 

“Smell good,” he mumbles after a while, lips brushing your neck in a way that could be accidental or entirely on purpose—either way, you don’t care.

You wind one hand into his hair. It’s shorter now, just a little off the back. The next breath that leaves you is sharp, almost a laugh. 

“You smell different,” you say, and pull your head off his shoulder to get a look at him properly. 

Javier keeps you where you are, not quite on the floor, held tight to his chest. Grinning in that boyish way. You press your thumb to his dimple and gasp—having figured it out.

“You quit,” you say, eyes wide. 

His are so close. Deep, rich, inevitable—flickering between yours. He rolls them, caught by you so easily, and rocks his jaw, smacking his gum as he sets you down to shrug. Rearranging his face to appear indifferent, but you see right through it anyway.

“Tryin’ it out,” he admits.

Neither of you let go, not yet. His thumbs stroking your waist where his hands have settled; yours moving to his temples to rake through the soft of his curls, introducing yourself to the newfound grays you don’t recognize.

“Gettin’ old, Javi,” you tease.

Then his hands rise to cover yours and a moment before they do—mere atoms away from touch—you think he looks how he did in your hallway freshman year, right before he kissed you. But his hands envelop yours and you watch his mouth twitch. Not up, not to the side. Down. His brows dipping for a millisecond as he puts it together.

You’ve forgotten. You forget all the time—hardly feel it anymore after six months of wearing the ring. Used to drive you crazy, always spinning the wrong way around, but it’s become just a part of your hand.

When you try to draw away Javier’s grip locks them in a vice, pulling them from his face to look down at your fingers where, on your left hand, sits a gold band. Two tiny diamonds bracketing a sapphire—not an heirloom, but it’s pretty. Beautiful, even. You’ve come to love it.

“Shit,” Javier mumbles, his brows high and chin hung down as he ghosts his fingers over the gem in disbelief. “Look at you.”

You hardly hear it. What you really hear is a reverie, a ghost. A ship that passed too far from your harbor, scared off by the beacon of you. Warned of your lethal shores. Pensé que me casaría contigo. Rambled when he was drunk and hollow and out of his mind. A whispered confession spoken in those tiny hours he spent in your bed in which nothing beyond the mattress existed but the two of you, intertwined.

I thought I’d marry you.

But he didn’t. Javier left without the grace of a goodbye. Now he stands with your hands in his, thumbing the sapphire of a ring someone else put on your hand while he was gone. Four years in which you had no idea if he’d come back, or when, or for how long. No idea if he’d ever want to see or speak to you again. 

Your mouth, dry, deserted. Your hands shaking in his—you have to ask. Break this moment in which he seems unable to take his eyes off the stony, cobalt blue.

“How long are you back?” you ask softly.

Javier lets go of your hands to rub the back of his neck and takes a tiny step away from you. 

You know the answer the moment he moves, but you let him say it anyway. You let him cut that tiny hole in your chest that’ll bleed dry your heart.

His smile is mirthless, doomed. Like he’s putting it all together in his head.

“For good,” Javier says, staring at the floor, then the window beyond your shoulder, into the yard. Anywhere but at you. “For good, this time.”

tag list & some mutuals:

@thethirstwivesclub @la-vie-est-une-fleur29 @hediondoamor-blog @tuquoquebrute @thundermartini

@jessthebaker @pastelpinkflowerlife @ak-vintage @rav3n-pascal22 @sixhours

@spacelatinos4life @sweetpascal @leslie-lyman @biggetywitch @jeewrites

@burntheedges @studioghibelli @la-eterna-enamorada29 @goodgirlwannabe @janaispunk

@littlemisspascal @luxurychristmaspudding @tonysopranosrobe @undercoverpena @pedritosgfreal

[orangeaurora]

Steve Harrington | Spidey 🕷️

Summary: You get stuck with Steve Harrington as your lab partner in your college biology class but he never seems to show up to class or make time for important homework assignments.

Imma call this aaaaa “people who love to bicker but actually love each other” fic because reader and Steve aren’t mean enough to each other to be considered enemies. :p ALSO! I will GLADLY write a part 2 of this so lemme know 🥰

Author’s note: I haven’t written anything in so long but I love this idea and had to write it myself. I hope you enjoy. 🧡

Warnings: getting cat called, and slightly grabbed (a man grabs your wrist hard but that’s as far as it goes), slight angst, cussing, uhhhh I think that’s it??

Word count: 3.9k

You sat in the cool air of your dorm room, focused on the biology homework in front of you as your roommate Robin was quickly flipping through channels on the TV to find something to watch. “-and Spider-Man!”, you hear quickly before the channel is changed again and your eyes are adverted to Robin. “Hey! Go back!” You say excitingly as Robin shrugs and goes back a few channels. “Okay, stop!” Your eyes light up as J. Jonah Jameson is going on another rampage about the city’s new hero.

“What… this?? I hate this guy.” You shake your head and laugh. “No, not the news guy! Spider-Man!” Robin rolls her eyes and smiles slightly, like she knows something that you don’t. “Ew. You know, there could be a complete weirdo underneath that mask and you wouldn’t even know it.” You shrug and go back to doing your homework. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

“Oh suuuure…” Robin says under her breath. “Huh?” You say with your eyebrows furrowed not actually sure of what Robin had said. “What? Oh, nothing!” She smiles and quickly fills her mouth with a handful of popcorn so she can’t talk anymore.

A few hours later Robin had left the dorm room to go take a shower and you hear a quick, melodic knock on the door. You sigh and stand up from the comfy spot in your bed and shuffle yourself to the door. As you approach the door you hear the sound of small items hitting the floor, followed by a mumbled, “oh, shit, fuck… SHIT!” You swing the door open to reveal Steve Harrington dropping a bunch of boxed candy and bags of popcorn on the floor. His fit frame bent down, picking up everything quickly. “Sorry I’m late, Robin, I got caught up with Spi- OH!” He jumps slightly before finally gathering himself and looks up at you, his smile dropping. “It’s you.” He stands up straight and shrugs, and scoots past you into your dorm room.

“Yeah, come right on in!” You say with a scoff as Steve lays all his stuff on Robin’s bed. “Hm… finally here to do our biology lab, Harrington?” He scoffs and starts pulling out a bunch of movies from his backpack. “Hell no. It’s horror movie night for Robin and I.” His back stays turned away from you as he talks, your eyes burning into the back of his head the whole time. Your arms cross over your chest as you lean your back against your bed. “Soooo, lemme get this straight, you don’t show up for class, you never show up to our study sessions, and now you can’t even help with the lab that YOUR name is gonna be on… even if you didn’t do any of it?” He shrugs and finally turns around to look at you. “Yeah, sounds about right.” He takes a step towards you. “Look, I’m sorry. I’ll figure out how to be included in the lab somehow, okay?” Your eyes narrow at him as you process what he’s saying.

“No you won’t.” You say flatly. Steve’s eyebrows furrow at you, his eyes looking a little bit shocked. “Wh-what do you mean?” You roll your eyes again before grabbing some of your stuff and a blanket. “You say that every homework assignment. I’m tired of picking up the slack for you.” You slug your backpack over your shoulder before walking towards the door. “It’s almost midnight! Where are you going?!” Steve says as he slightly raises his voice, annoyed with you. “To finish our lab, ya know? The one that’s due in…8 hours.” You look at a fake watch on your wrist before opening the door, revealing Robin only a few feet away from your dorm room. “Hey, idiot, where are you going?” Robin says with a smile as you walk right past her. “Enjoy your movie night.” You say to both of them as you make your way to the library.

As you reach the library, you couldn’t help but feel as if there were eyes on you the whole way there. It was a Sunday night on a college campus, lots of kids were finally returning to their dorms after a weekend of partying, but there was no reason to feel unsafe. You shake the feeling before finally finding a study room to finish your lab in peace. Thankfully you get super focused, not allowing your mind to wonder about the interaction you had just had with Steve or about the anxious feeling you had felt only a moment before. Only an hour later, you finished your assignment and smiled. Though, as you look at the top of the page where your name was written in nice, neat handwriting, you freeze for a second, tapping your pencil on the table as you think before sighing, and quickly writing, “Steve Harrington”, right next to yours.

You quickly close your notebook before you can change your mind and shove it into your backpack. The anxious feeling suddenly comes back as you realize you’re the only one in the library. You shake your head and quickly grab your things and start to make your way back to your dorm. Before you can make it to your dorm building you hear a whistle and freeze. “Hey, pretty thing!” Someone yells out and you continue walking. “Oh, come on, I just want to talk!” The voice is getting closer and closer to you as your feet start to move as fast as they can. Unfortunately, you weren’t walking fast enough as there is now a very drunk college boy walking parallel with you. “What? A guy can’t compliment a girl anymore?” He takes a slug of his drink before turning towards you. “Hm, thanks but I’m not interested. Have a good night.” He scoffs. “Come on! It won’t hurt to give me the time of day.” “It might…” you mumble under your breath before feeling a tight grip on your wrist. “What did you say?” He says between gritted teeth. “N-nothing!” Your voice gets louder but before he can respond, another voice is heard from above.

“Now is that any way to treat a lady?” Both you and the man, who’s grip on you loosens, look above you to reveal a figure perched up on a light post. The voice is sarcastic but playful as he shoots his hand out and releases a silk like substance from his hand, throwing the man away from you onto the ground. You stay frozen in your place, not sure if it’s out of fear or confusion. “Wha-?” You can’t even finish your sentence as the perched figure stands and jumps down besides you, your eyes going wide. “S-spider-man?” Your eyes light up as a smile appears on your face.

“Oh! Seems I have a fan?” The tone of the masked man is fun yet comforting, and it reminds you of honey. “Don’t get too close.” He says with a laugh as he walks towards the drunk boy who is still plastered on the ground. The masked man makes his way to the boy and webs him to the floor before crouching next to him. “Now, let’s use our big boy words and tell the girl you’re sorry? Okay?” The boy quickly nods before shaking and looking over at you. “S-sorry.” He looks over at Spider-Man, who’s shaking his head at him. “Hm… one more time. Like you mean it.”

“I’m really sorry, ma’am.” The boy looks back at Spider-Man for approval. “Much better.” Spider-man pats him on the shoulder before standing up, “Enjoy your time outside tonight!” He says as he looks down at the boy still webbed to the ground before turning his attention to you.

“Do me a favor, princess?” You nod your head, mouth slightly agape as you stand in shock still. “Go get to your dorm safely.” He points behind you as he walks backwards, never letting his back turn from you until you start walking away. You clutch your books to your chest before quickly turning around again to see if he is still there. Your heart is beating so fast that you can feel it in your throat, but you still manage to yell a clear, “Spider-Man?” In his direction. He turns back around and looks at you, walking backwards again.

“Thank you…” you say with a small smile. “Anything for you.” He yells back before swinging into the shadows. As soon as you turn around to walk into your building, you bite your lip and smile. “Oh Robin’s gonna love this.” You mumble underneath your breath.

As soon as you open the door to your dorm room, you feel an anxious energy flood over you. Your smile fades as you look over at Robin pacing back and forth and chewing on her nails. As she makes eye contact with you, her eyes light up. “Oh my god, you’re okay! I mean…” she puts her hair behind her ear. “Of course you’re okay, why wouldn’t you be okay? You were just at the library. At the library… in the dark! And I’m really scared of the dark so… in reality I’m just projecting my own fears!! I’m just being silly.” Robin laughs nervously as she sits on her bed. Staring at you with an awkward smile.

“Ooookay.” You say with a small laugh as you sit on your bed that’s across from her. Your smile grows bigger as you two sit in silence. “Oh, god, what??” Robin says with an amused but also grossed out tone. “IsawSpider-Mantonight.” You say under your breath super quickly. Robin squints her eyes at you. “I can’t hear a word you’re saying.” She says as she leans her head in closer to you. “Spider-Man. I just saw him… right now. He… he talked to me, Robin.” Your voice grows louder and louder as you speak, excitement spilling from your body.

Robin rolls her eyes as she lays back into her bed, slamming her back into the mattress. “Oh Jesus Christ, that’s what’s got you all riled up?” If only you could see the smirk on her face. “Robin, he saved me from this super creepy guy… and then called me princess.” Robin sits up from her parallel position and looks at you. “Ew.” She frowns.

Now it was your turn to roll your own eyes as you laugh and throw one of your pillows at her. “Whatever.” She laughs now too and throws one of her pillows back. “I’m happy for you, idiot.” She smiles as she lays down and pulls her blanket over her body. “Now go to bed and dream about your little spider boy.” She giggles and lays her head on her pillow, you mirroring her actions. “Oh I plan on it.” You mumble and fall into a deep sleep, every dream including the masked man who saved you tonight.

When you wake up in the morning, you quickly check your phone to see what time it is, and it immediately puts you into a panic. “Shit!” You say as you throw your blanket off of your body and pick up a pair of dirty jeans off of the floor and tug them up your legs. “What… are… you doing?” Robin grumbles as she covers her face with her pillow. “My stupid lab is due today and class starts in like…10 minutes.” You scoff as you pull a t-shirt over your head. “And lord knows Steve isn’t gonna show up and present anything so if I’m late that means both of us are going to get zeros.” Robin groans as she turns over in her bed. “Good luck.” She says as she throws a thumbs up over at you. “Mmhmm… thanks, R.” You quickly run your fingers through your hair as you shrug with approval and grab all your things, making your way quickly out of your dorm and to your class.

You had never walked faster to a class in your life. Your feet were moving a million miles a minute as you approached your classroom. That is until you hear a voice from beside you. “You look like you’re in a rush.” You stop in your tracks as you look at the boy and scoff. “Wow, decided to show up today, huh?” You look up at him, Steve. He shrugs and puts his hands in his pockets. “Decided I had enough time for you today I guess.” Your eyes squint at him for only a moment before you scoff. “Okay, Harrington.”

You shake your head as you quickly dig through your backpack and pull out the notebook that had your lab written in it, slapping it in Steve’s hands. “Review that as we walk.” You say as your feet start moving towards your classroom again. “You have a lot to catch up on. Come on, looks like we are both in a rush.”

Steve quickly follows behind you as he looks down at the lab in his hands, a smile forming on his face. “You know you really don’t have to give me credit for any of this… you shouldn’t.” You shrug as you look up at him. “You’re smart, Steve. I know you are. You just… are occupied. It’s okay. I’ll cover for you.” You smile up at him as he looks down at you with a glimmer in his eyes, the sun hitting off of the rim of his glasses perfectly.

“We could make a deal? I’ll do the next lab by myself. I promise.” You can’t help but laugh at Steve’s words as you shake your head. “Yeahhh not holding you to that promise, Harrington. Though, I do appreciate the offer.” Steve stops walking for a second, softly grabbing your wrist. “No, I’m serious, please, let me make it up to you.” Your eyebrows furrow as your eyes meet his, seriously considering his offer. “Fine. Pinky promise me, Steve Harrington.” Steve rolls his eyes as he holds out his pinky. A sweet smile on his face as a curl falls down into his face. “Pinky promise.” He slightly whispers as you two lock fingers. As your fingers lock and your eyes meet one another’s, you feel a flutter in your chest. It feels like time is frozen until you both get knocked out of whatever trance you’re in with each other when Steve looks down at his watch that’s on the hand that is currently interlocked with yours. “Okay but seriously we should probably get to class.” You release your hand from his as you nod quickly. “Mhmm, yeah. Class.”

As you and Steve are waiting for your turn to present, you can see Steve getting antsy. His leg shakes up and down as he chews on his thumb nail, his eyes staying in one place, his face showing that though his body is in the classroom, his mind is not. “Hey…” you whisper over at him. “Relax. We’re gonna do fine.” Steve looks at you confused. “Hm? I know that.” He shakes his head and goes back to chewing on his nails, his eyes darting down at his watch over and over again. You start to grow nervous that Steve might walk out on you right now. It wouldn’t be the first time. Finally, your names are called to present your lab and Steve sighs in relief, quickly standing up.

You guys present your lab almost perfectly, besides the fact that Steve could not slow down his speech, making it known he was in a rush. As soon as you said the last word of your presentation, Steve darted out the door. You smile at your professor awkwardly and then to your classmates. “Thank you…” you say quietly as you make your way back to your seat. The seat next to you now uncomfortably empty.

As soon as class is over you close your books and make your way to your dorm. You are incredibly thankful that you have no more classes for the day as you walk through campus. You can feel your throat start to close as tears brew in your eyes. Just once you wanted Steve to actually care. So many missed homework assignments, so many missed presentations, and now, finally when Steve shows up, he reminds you once again that none of this matters to him. Did you matter to him? Why would you? He’s Robin’s friend. You’re just his lab partner. You somehow wished you were more. After almost a whole year of being put on the back burner by Steve Harrington, you still expected more from him. Wanted more from him. You quickly wipe the tears that fall down your cheeks before a voice is heard from above.

“Hey, princess!!” The voice yells down. You jump slightly before looking up and seeing your favorite masked hero looking down at you. “Why the long face, sweetheart?” You laugh softly, wiping your tears clean off of your face. “I think you have better things to do than help a girl with her feelings.” You yell back with a smile. Spider-Man quickly jumps down and takes up the space right next to you. He shrugs, “my job comes with many responsibilities.” He starts to count on his fingers as he speaks. “Beating up bad guys, helping old ladies get their cats out of trees…helping old ladies cross the street, OH and watching pretty girls walk home.” One of your eyebrows goes up as your face contorts into amusement.

“Oh so I have a stalker now?” Even though the man has a mask on, you can feel the worry on his face as he gasps. “What? No… no! That’s not what I meant! You know that’s not what I meant!” He says awkwardly and in a panic as he puts his hand on his head. “I just mean… you know, you never know what could happen because of that… creepy guy the other night.” He leans his back on the wall of the building you guys are standing next to, trying to be slick and cover up what he had said. You can’t help but laugh as you step closer to him. “Well then I guess I’m honored.” As you look at the masked man, you can’t help but feel a longing for him. You want to know his secrets, what he looks like. His favorite color and favorite movie. You want to know him. Not Spider-Man, but the man in the mask. Your smile fades as you look toward your dorm building.

“Well, I shouldn’t keep you. It’s uh, it’s sweet of you to check on me.” You start to walk backwards, making your way to your dorm. Spider-Man sighs as he throws out his hand and swings back up to the light post he was on only minutes ago. “Don’t be a stranger.” He yells down. “How could I be??? You’re stalking me, remember??” You yell back at him as he shakes his head and laughs. “In your dreams, princess!” He yells one last time before swinging away. Oh if only he knew.

You spend the rest of the day longing for another interaction with Spider-Man. Just from the two small interactions you had, he made you feel like you mattered. As you sit cuddled up in your comforter, you can hear laughter approaching your room before Robin walks in with Steve. “Oh, sorry dingus number two! I didn’t know you’d be home yet.” You sigh as you sit up and look at them both. “No problem.” A small smile forms on your lips as Steve looks over at you. He waves and scratches his neck nervously. Robin looks at you both and rolls her eyes with a loud groan. “Oh get over it already you two. I can not have my two best friends be this awkward with each other all the time. It’s killing me!” She grabs a few popcorn bags and walks towards the door again. “I’m going to the lounge to make this. You two…” she points at you both back and forth, “work this out right now. She’s joining us for movie night tonight.” Steve looks at Robin with furrowed brows and slumped shoulders, almost begging her not to leave. Like they both know something you don’t and they are communicating with their minds.

Robin tilts her head at Steve and he rolls his eyes with a quiet, “okay, fine, fine…” leaving his lips, his hands going up in surrender. Robin quickly makes her way out of the dorm room, slamming the door behind her. You can’t help but laugh at her dramatics, Steve joining in right after. “Awkward? Pft… we aren’t awkward.” Steve says as he leans against Robin’s bed, arms crossed over his chest. You smile at him and roll your eyes before pointing between the two of you. “Oh, this isn’t awkward?” He shakes his head with a smug smile. “Nah…” he laughs before sighing and looking down at the ground. “I’m sorry… about earlier. I wish I could make it up to yo-,”

“Don’t worry about it.” You quickly cut him off, not wanting to get upset, but Steve shakes his head. “No, I am worried about it. I’m sorry.” You frown slightly at him before speaking. “I just want to know why, Steve. I know I’m just your lab partner, but…” you shake your head at your own words. Steve squints slightly at you, wanting you to keep going. “But what?”

You scoff again. “Nothing. Seriously. You have better things to do, I understand that.” Steve frowns back at you now as he glides his hand through his hair. “I just wish I could explain…” you shrug at him. “There’s nothing to explain, Steve. You have your life, I have mine.” Steve pushes his glasses up his face before sticking his hands in his pockets. “Whatever you say, princess.” You smile as you look down in your lap, but suddenly a voice in the back of your head repeats the word princess back to you. It’s not the word, it’s the way he said it. It’s not mocking you, it’s sweet…like honey. You freeze, mouth going slightly dry as your head shoots up to look at him, eyes going wide in shock. The nickname, of course you’ve heard it before.

“What?” Steve says with a small chuckle, noticing the way you're suddenly studying his face. The chuckle that leaves Steve’s lips suddenly sounds familiar to you. He’s busy all the time because he is Spider-Man. A voice says in your head before you shake it away. “Nothing…nothing! We’re good, Steve, I promise.” Your mind is still running wild. You try your best to hide your thoughts, not wanting to look crazy. Steve smiles and holds out his pinky, just like earlier. “Pinky promise?” You take a deep breath before locking fingers with him again. “Pinky promise.” You smile and just as you’re about to say something else, Robin barges in the room with two bowls full of popcorn, she smiles wildly as she looks at your fingers interlocked. “Awwww… dingus one and dingus two just needed some alone time!” She says as you and Steve both roll your eyes and let go of each other’s hands. You look over at Steve one more time, his curly hair dangling in his face, his glasses perfectly framing his face, and you can’t help but smile.

Maybe your connection with Spider-Man ran deeper than just having a crush on a masked superhero. Maybe he’s been in front of you this whole time and you’ve never realized it. Whether your sudden realization was real or not, Steve Harrington had his secrets, but so did everyone else. Maybe you’d never know who was behind the masked hero, but suddenly, it didn’t matter.

[winchestersisterimaginessss]

Request: Hi! can you make one where sister Winchester has a fever and Sam and Dean give him a cold shower in the bunker and then take care of her?

A/N: I hope you like this one! Requests are open!

Pairings: Sam and Dean x Sister!Reader

You woke up to an aching body and your sheets sticking to you. You yanked them off feeling overwhelmingly hot and noticed you were in a puddle of your own sweat. You felt awful. You knew you needed advil and some water, but as soon as you got up a wave of dizziness hit you. You steadied yourself on your nightstand for a few seconds before feeling okay. You held onto the wall to steady you through the hallway until you stumbled your way into the kitchen.

“Everything alright kid?” Dean asked eyeing you up and down. “I don’t feel good,” you whimpered, feeling worse than the minutes before. You were on your tippy toes reaching for a cup from the cabinet when you felt someone come from behind you. “Go sit down kiddo. I’ll fill you up a glass of water and grab you some medicine.” Dean said while reaching over top of you to grab the glass. You nodded and slugged your way to the couch, laying down.

As soon as your rested your head down, you closed your heavy eyes. You were just so tired and drained. You felt a hand on your forehead and you flinched, opening your eyes. Dean flipped his hand around both sides feeling the warmth of your forehead. “Sam!” He called. “What?” Sam asked walking into the room. “Hey, Y/N/N is defientely coming down with something she’s burning up.” Dean said keeping his hand on your forehead. You peaked up at him as he looked at Sam with concern. He looked down at you when he felt your forehead furrow from looking up at him. His expression softened and he took his hand off your forehead, handing you a glass of water and some medicine. “Hey sweetheart, take this for me okay?” He said softly, as you sat up. You nodded still sweating and now feeling disoriented. You put the pills in your mouth and took a swig of water before feeling weak and handing it back to Dean. Sam came over with a thermometer, handing it to you. “Here, put this under your tongue.” He said as he also felt your forehead. You took it and put it under your tongue, now feeling like you were going to pass out. It beeped and Sam looked at it with disbelief, “104.” He said glancing at Dean. You really didn’t feel good. Just as you felt consciousness start to slip from under you, you jumped up with wild eyes. Your eyes did the thing they always did before you passed out which immediately caught Dean’s attention. “Sam, grab her she’s going to pass out!” Dean shouted, alerting Sam who was already one step ahead, reaching out to grab your arm. “S’ ammy I don’t feel too good.” You mumbled before collapsing into Sam’s chest. “Wow wow hey,” he said holding you up. Dean immediately rushed to grab a bag of ice, “get her to the bathroom we’ve gotta force her temperature down.” He said now rushing to the bathroom with the ice in his hand. He turned on the cold water to the bath and started filling it up with ice. He turned to Sam when he came into the bathroom and took you out of his grip. “Sorry kid,” he whispered as he submerged you in the water. Your eyes shot open, gasping for air and flailing your arms around. Dean grabbed you yanking you up as you cried out, shivering. “I know kid, I know,” he said softly as he pulled you out. Sam rushed out of the bathroom to grab you clothes as Dean grabbed a towel. He wrapped it around your quivering body while still holding you up. You were breathing heavily looking around your surroundings, dazed and confused. Dean noticed you disoriented and unbalanced so he held onto you as he tried to calm you down. “It’s alright kid, you’re alright.” He said, moving your cold wet hair out of your face. “You passed out, your fever was too high and we had to force it down. Or else you would’ve been toast.” He explained to you, sending you a sympathetic look. Your teeth were chattering and all you could think about was how cold you felt. “I- I’m s- so col- cold.” You shuddered as Sam walked back into the bathroom. “Here sweetheart, put some dry clothes on and I’ll make you some soup,” Sam said, putting a fresh set of clothes down on the bathroom counter and sending you a soft smile. He walked out as Dean sat you down on the toilet lid. “You’ll feel better after you get changed alright kiddo? I’ll be out here if you need me.” He said, turning to walk out. He shut the door to give you privacy and you shakily stood up. You got changed into your t shirt, sweatpants and one of Sam’s big sweatshirts you loved to wear. You walked out of the bathroom and cozied yourself up into all of the fabric of the sweatshirt. Dean got up and kissed the side of your head. “Get in bed kiddo we’ll be back up soon.” He said motioning to your bed. You crawled into it and he tucked you in. “Call if you need something sweetheart.” He said as he patted your leg and left your room. You snuggled deeper into your sheets finally done shivering and let sleep overtake you once more.

[iovevrse]

broken clocks, p. bueckers pt. 3

broken clocks masterlist

pairings: paige bueckers x fem reader

synopsis: when you met paige, you thought the two of you would have one of those cheesy high school love stories that lasted for years. you were wrong.

cw: slight smut (theyre 18), hs p, angst, first personn

1 Year Earlier

After that night, Paige and I talked at the pizza place. It had been as if we’d immediately become a more significant part of each other’s lives. We did everything together, and from that point on, it had been rare for me to miss a Hopkins game day.

Today was no different from the usual routine we’d adapted. It was a Friday night, and Paige had a late practice, so I’d made my way to her house to wait in her room for her. Coming over despite Paige not being there herself had been Paige’s idea. She still wanted me to come over but didn't want me to have to drive so late at night. She said her dad wouldn’t mind, but that didn’t make him any less confused when I’d shown up on his doorstep for the first time, and he told me Paige was at practice. I informed him I knew that and that his daughter said I could come over and wait for her to get back. Nonetheless, the man let me in, still confused, but he didn’t doubt it was something his daughter would do.

I sat on her bed waiting, typing away on my computer in an attempt to add something to my English essay that was due Sunday night before Paige came back. Despite Paige claiming it would be time to “lock in” on schoolwork, I knew nothing would get done tonight. She, in fact, never locked in. She just put on music and took a nap.

Like usual, Paige barged into the room with her two backpacks slugged over her shoulders. She threw them on the floor and immediately crashed into the bed, wrapping her arm around her pillow. “Hey P,” I muttered, still typing my essay, “how was practice?” I ask. She mumbled a “good” response before turning around in the bed and pulling me down with her. She wrapped her arms around my waist and cuddled me, resting her head on my shoulder. She had always been the kind of friend that was touchy, but this was different than usual. I just figured practice had tired her out completely. Maybe they had to run laps or something. I closed my computer and set it on the floor before laying in her arms, not saying a word. We’d both fallen asleep like that and a few hours later, we’d woken up.

Paige yawned and checked her phone. The time read 2:30 AM, and I rested my head on the blonde’s chest. That’s when she looked at me. I looked back, and I felt this tight feeling in my chest. I’d always noticed it happen when it came to Paige’s gaze. She had this ability to make whoever she was with or talking to the main thing her eyes were set on. We’d stayed looking at each other for what felt like forever until she leaned in, kissing me softly.

That soft kiss had escalated, and as soon as I knew it, the tall blonde was on top of me, kissing me harder than before. Paige then made her way down my body, planting light kisses. Before she had made it between my legs, her blue eyes looked at me with that same gaze again, more intense and clouded than before. “Is this ok?” the blonde whispered, her voice as raspy as it always was after waking up from a nap.

I just nodded in response, and she continued to trail kisses on my thighs, inside and out, before sliding my shorts and baby pink undies off. She looked up at me again, same as before, begging for my approval again, and once she got it, her tongue started to slowly lick at my folds, her middle finger sliding in and accompanying her tongue’s movements. Before I knew it, I was covering my face with a pillow to stay quiet and not wake up Paige’s parents or brothers.

Current Day

Seeing Paige again had brought back every negative and positive emotion I’d ever felt or had about the girl. I thought I’d done so well to forget about her until it came to having to see her again. I cursed myself for not playing it normal and acting unbothered when I saw her. You prepare yourself mentally for so many situations, telling yourself that you’d do one thing or another just for the time to come and nothing will go as planned. As I stood there, quickly texting Alexa that we needed to go, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Once again, I whipped my head around to be met with a tall, blue-eyed blonde. The same one I gave my everything to.

Almost on reflex, I shrugged her off. “Look, I’m so sorry,” Paige started. I rolled my eyes in response and continued walking in some random direction. “Please, hear me out,” pleaded the blonde as she grabbed my arm, pulling me towards her. I almost fell for it again. Her gaze made me feel like I was the only thing on her mind. Like the most important person in her world. I force myself to look away and pull back from her. “I’m not tryna hear shit of what you got to say right now, Paige.” The blonde groaned softly before stepping closer, “Just listen to me, please.”

“Nah, not today,” I mutter, forcing myself to look into her eyes again. She looked hurt, and I couldn’t help but want to take back what I said. Maybe even forget everything she did to me because the Paige I knew before would never hurt me like that. I almost opened my mouth to speak again before a taller girl pulled me away.

I guessed Alexa had finally found me, and she wasted no time dragging me away from the blonde. I wondered if maybe she’d been there longer than I thought and heard Paige’s pleas. Either way, I thanked her for getting me out of that situation. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to run into the blonde again. I knew that wouldn’t be the case though.

[nakahras]

᯽ fireworks • chuuya nakahara

synopsis • it’s the first time seeing chuuya after meursault. he left without a word and came back without a word. alternatively, the first time you tell chuuya you love him.

warnings • lower case is intentional, depictions of overstimulation/anxiety/panic attack, cursing, reader has an ability (description below), and fem!reader

wc • 2.8k

a/n • chuuya fluff my beloved <3

᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽

ability • ravalry: allows its user to read the thoughts of someone through their emotions. the user can also push thoughts onto a target as well as emotions. this can cause the target to experience hallucinations both visual and auditory. it can also cause the target to feel certain emotions against their own will. the user, if not careful, can become overwhelmed by others’ thoughts and emotions themself.

᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽

you watch as the night sky ignites into every color under the rainbow. the firework show from tonight’s festivities had been going on for almost 15 minutes now. almost all of the ada members had decided to participate. hell, even dazai caved and dressed in his best traditional clothes at the request - begging really - of atsushi. but even dazai’s participation couldn’t convince you to stay.

crowds had never agreed with you. they were noisy and it always felt suffocating. but there wasn’t a lack of effort, thanks to atsushi and dazai’s puppy dog eyes. it was comical considering those two boys are the most cat coded people you have ever met in your life. atsushi being a literal tiger at times. but unfortunately you only lasted a total of 67 minutes before your ability made everything extremely overwhelming.

even under fukuzawa’s “all men are created equal” you had a bad habit of subconsciously activating your ability and becoming far too overwhelmed by everyone else's thoughts to turn it off. dazai was able to stay back with you and use his own ability to calm you down. you were obviously grateful but you didn’t want to keep pulling him to you every time it happened.

᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽

“do i get a reward for helping out my fellow ada member?” dazai’s voice was as light as ever, obviously he had been trying to make light of your situation.

this was the first time in a long time he had come out with everyone, the first time he came out since meursault, which was also a reminder that you still hadn’t heard from a certain gravity manipulator since arriving back in yokohama. you didn’t want to ruin the fun for everyone just because of your heightened emotions and constant loss of control. it wasn’t fair to anyone, most of all dazai.

you smiled meekly at the brunette. you could see it in the way his eyes dulled, that he’d already known what you were about to say, you said it anyway. “how about i reward you with the rest of the night off? i’m not cut out for these crowds. think i’m just gonna head to the empty pier and watch the fireworks from there.”

you started to back away but dazai persistently followed. “c’mon, you can’t possibly be upset over that shr-“

“dazai.” you’d promptly cut him off, not wanting to admit to yourself, let alone dazai that you were upset. especially considering the reason.

dazai throws his hands up in surrender with a wicked smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes — although, dazai’s smiles almost never did. you’re unamused and frankly tired, so your own mask had cracks in it. dazai, ever the observant, immediately drops the cheery facade and mumbles something under his breath.

something along the lines of, “that damn slug, ruining everything by running late…” you choose to ignore the cryptic way dazai says that and instead waved.

“tell everyone i said to have a good night.”

and with that you left. not even giving dazai a chance to respond as you had already turned to leave mid sentence.

᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽•᯽

that’s how you find yourself here, sitting at the edge of the pier, knees tucked snugly into your chest as you lay your cheek on them to look up at the sky. your mind was a storm of noise but luckily the fireworks were louder. that didn’t stop you from feeling a very prominent presence approaching.

you tense, instantly recognizing his presence. it takes every ounce of self control you have to keep your head in place and not look his way. your arms tighten around your legs and it’s the only indication you give him that you’re aware he’s there. you can feel his stare, his eyes bore into the back of your head, it felt as if he continued to stare he would start to make a dent in your skull.

still, you continue to look forward and ignore his presence. the noise from the fireworks may be deafening but you’re so honed in on the redhead behind you his defeated sigh is hard to miss. he tentatively shuffles his way next to you and remains standing. you vaguely notice from your peripheral, that he isn’t in his usual dark clothing. instead you note flashes of red, gold and white. your eyebrows furrow. was he wearing a haori? which means he must be wearing a montsuki haori hakama? he never wore traditional clothing. you were itching to look over at how gorgeous he must look but resist the urge yet again.

you continue to refuse to acknowledge his presence.

another sigh.

more silence on your end.

this time he clicks his tongue, but it’s more in defeat rather than annoyance. “that damn mackerel texted me. told me he couldn’t do the one simple task i asked of him. last time i ask him for anything…” the last part of his sentence broke on into a grumble, obviously thinking out loud more than talking to you.

there’s still no verbal response from you, although your face does twist into a scowl. so that’s what dazai meant earlier. chuuya was supposed to meet you all at the festival. to what? surprise you? you didn’t want to wait for a surprise. he knew how much you loathed surprises. you just wanted him back. you wanted to confirm for yourself that he was safe.

the port mafia executive is observing you. he watches as shadows of colors provided by the fireworks dance across your face, causing you to look 10x more strikingly beautiful than you already do. you’re quite literally the most stunning thing chuuya has ever laid his eyes on. he wants to tell you so. he wants to gush over how much he missed you. he wants to hold you. but he needs you to acknowledge him first and he knows you have an opinion about meursault that you deserve to voice. the problem lies in getting you to open yourself up. next to being the most stunning, you’re also the most stubborn person he has ever met. he has his work cut out for him.

“i was gonna surprise you at the festival…” of course he was, you almost scoff at the predictability of it all.

another sigh escapes chuuya’s lips when once again he doesn’t get a response. he knows he shouldn’t poke at you. but at this point he doesn’t know how else he could elicit a reaction. he ponders on it for a moment, nervously gnawing at his bottom lip. this could get you to open up but it could also make you more upset. he makes his decision and takes in a deep breath.

“i wanted to surprise you. i thought about you a lot while i was gone. the thought of coming back to you was about the only thing that kept me sane while having to deal with that damn dazai.” his last words come out bitter, as if he truly had been suffering.

you try to keep face. gritting your teeth and sinking your nails into the palm of your hands. but the cracks in your mask were already too far gone, it snaps completely off. your head swiftly lifts and turns to finally look at him.

and god how unfair. it’s so incredibly unfair how handsome he sincerely looks. his face isn’t covered by his hat and hair is tied by an ornamental string. the reds and greens and golds of his outfit really bring out the duel colors of his eyes. even frowning like he is, he is still a shining star in a sky full of clouds.

you have to remind yourself to keep your resolve as you scowl at the redhead. unbeknownst to you, chuuya is having a very similar crisis. you look like the most priceless treasure on this god forsaken planet. the gold hair ornament you wear frames your face perfectly. the colors of your traditional wear compliments your skin tone perfectly. even your makeup, which subtly matches your outfit, is perfect. you are perfect.

your sour expression is what brings him back to reality.

you let out an appalled scoff. “you thought of me? i find that hard to believe considering you made the decision to go along with dazai’s plan without warning. do you know how messed up i was? thinking you could be dead upon hearing you had been turned into a vampire. i thought i was never going to see you again because you didn’t tell me- i didn’t know. and then when you do return i don’t hear a single thing from you? not even a text saying ‘hey, shit is crazy at the port mafia but i will see you as soon as i can. just wanted to let you know i was safe.’ i would have been happy with that, chuuya.”

he flinches at how harsh his name sounds coming from your mouth. like you had to physically force it out. you never called him by his name. it was always a pet name of some sort. it was truly heart wrenching that he had pushed you to this point. it was never his intention. with everything going on he didn’t realize that maybe he should have communicated dazai’s plan with you, but he can’t change that now. what he needs to focus on is fixing his mistake. so, he listens to you and let’s you get it all out.

“...instead you continued to leave me in the dark. i had to continue on like i wasn’t a wreck, not knowing where you were. do you know how many times i imagined you were just dead somewhere in a foreign prison? too many times to count on my hands. dazai-” you choke, not having realized that you had started to cry. you swallow thickly and continue. “dazai had to constantly be on watch because i would lose control of my ability over the smallest of things. despite being exhausted, i refused to bring myself to imagine a world without you in it. no matter how much i was spiraling, it jus wasn’t something i could bear the thought of because-”

you’re cut off again, this time by a sob that you can feel throughout your entire body. you choke again, feeling like you can’t breathe. your eyes unfocus, your hearing goes fuzzy and your limbs begin to feel numb and tingly. in your panicked haze you briefly note that you’re reaching out and latch onto some sort of soft material. the colors igniting the night sky become overwhelming so you squeeze your eyes shut. you wish you could drown out the booming noises created by the fireworks. it’s all too much, it’s been too much. your ears are ringing and your hands are trembling. the emotions swirling inside of you begging to be let out but you hold them in, not wanting chuuya to be affected. you’re nauseous, you feel as though you could throw up at any moment.

chuuya knew you got like this, he’s heard dazai recount the times this ability has caused you to overwhelm yourself and initiate a panic attack. your grip on his haori was unexpected until he saw the sheer trepidation swimming in your glistening eyes. his body reacts before his mind can and he’s scooping you into his arms. chuuya softly cradles your head, gently resting your forehead against the side of his chest where his heart lays. he’d seen somewhere that the sound of a heartbeat could calm this sort of episode. he also coos and and speaks soft words of reassurance.

it’s absurd how calming just his presence is to you, even when you’re this irate with him. you need to regulate your breathing. fast. the ringing in your ears has subsided and the thrumming of chuuya’s heart pulls you in. hyper focusing on his heartbeat helps calm you further and your breathing slows back to normal. your face is still buried in his chest and your hands are fisting his kimono. your grip loosens, signaling that you’re better. but you burrow your face further into the gravity manipulator's chest. he lets out a deep chuckle that sends vibrations through your entire head. it helps clear the fog that has built up in your head.

you utter those three words you’d been holding in since before he left. it’s like you had finally broken the dam within your heart and this was the result. now that the water has settled you have one last thing to do. but because you were so close to his chest the words came out muffled and unintelligible.

“my pretty doll, i can’t understand you when your face is covered like that. c’mere…” chuuya lets out another chuckle as you whine and pout dramatically when he peels you off of him. your face is puffy and eyes rimmed red. somehow your makeup managed to stay completely intact, you’ll have to remember to ask naomi what she used.

you huff and try to look away but he gently, yet firmly, takes hold of your face to gingerly wipe away at your tears. once he’s pleased with his work his eyes meet yours and he smiles softly. “now, what was it you were trying to say? i think i should be able to here you clearly this time.”

and something about the way he says that makes you think he actually heard it the first time and just simply wanted to hear you say it again. you turn your nose up at him and eye him suspiciously. “no. i don’t think i will…”

chuuya sighs incredulously and lets go of your face. he slumps down and rests his forehead on your shoulder. instinctively you raise your hand and sift your fingers through his wavy tresses. his hair is always surprisingly soft. you can help but to smile amusedly at his obvious defeat. you look back up to the fireworks that were still going. they must be nearing the finale because the amount of colors dancing in the sky have multiplied.

“stubborn as hell like always. i shouldn’t be surprised.” chuuya lifts his head back up and cups your cheek to turn you back to look at him. “you technically said it first, but i’ll let you hear it first. i love you.”

your lips part to respond but you find yourself mesmerized by the chuuya’s eyes. the reflection of colors swirling in his irises make it look like an actual fire has been ignited underneath them. your bottom lip begins to tremble as you feel yourself become overwhelmed by the feelings his words elicit. this time it was in the best way possible but it still made you embarrassed. you take in a shuddered breath and pout more. “god damn you, chuuya nakahara.”

with that utterance, you lean in and your lips meet his. you pour everything you have into that one kiss, hoping it explains your feelings better than any words you could ever string together would. luckily for you, chuuya has always been a firm believer of actions speak louder than words. he understands what you’re trying to convey and he reciprocates by grasping the back of your head and tilting his to deepen the kiss.

it felt as if you were falling into an abyss that consisted of only chuuya. your brain was simultaneously working in overdrive and malfunctioning all at once. the only thing in your head was chuuya.

it was only chuuya:

chuuya’s velvety hair

chuuya’s blazing warmth

chuuya’s soft lips

chuuya’s heavenly scent

chuuya’s gentle touches

chuuya.

then he chuckles against your lips and, god, you could just melt.

much to your dismay, chuuya goes and ruins it by leaning back and disconnecting your lips. you make a noise of protest but he keeps you firmly where you are. your eyes are lidded and breathing is heavy. he could sense how overwhelmed you were once again becoming. he gives you a few moments to fully cone back to him before speaking again.

you open your mouth to say it again but he interrupts. “you don’t have to, i understood you the first time.”

your mouth slowly shuts and you lean your head back on his chest, ear pressed against his beating heart. you both look up, hoping to enjoy the rest of the fireworks together.

“i’m still upset and this conversation isn’t over, but…” you trail off as the finale begins. after another moment you continue as you watched the colors multiply once again. “let’s just enjoy this. i missed you.”

his grip around you tightens. you look over to him and he’s smiling brightly at you. “i missed you, so damn much. we can go back to my place after this and talk over a bottle. how’s that sound?”

you look back to the sky with a smile playing on your lips. “sounds like heaven.”

[soldierrcore]

Ghostbusters

𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐚 𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐱 𝐌𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐎𝐂!𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫.

swearing, sexual innuendos.

Steve slammed Natasha against the wall. Vincent was leaning against the wall next to them, holding a pack of peanuts he got from the vending machine.

"Where is it?" Steve hissed, frustrated with the redhead.

"Safe." She replied.

"Do better!"

Natasha looked into his eyes, looking for an answer. "Where did you get it?"

Steve put more pressure on her arms. "Why would I tell you?"

"Fury gave it to you. Why?"

Damn! This is just like watching an episode of Real Housewives.

Steve got the idea that she had opened the file. "What's on it?"

"I don't know." She answered truthfully.

"Stop lying!" He gritted through his teeth.

Vincent could see the slight smile on her face. "I only act like I know everything, Rogers."

"I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?" Steve looked out the room's window to make sure nobody was about to come in, or nobody was watching them.

"Well, it makes sense. The ship was dirty. Fury needed a way in, so do you."

Steve lifted her a little by her jacket. "I'm not gonna ask you again."

"Steve, watch it now, will you!" Vincent spoke, lightning sparking at his fingertips again.

Natasha looked at Vincent, giving him a look that it was fine. "I know who killed Fury. Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones who do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years."

"So he's a ghost story." Steve deadpanned.

Guess we got upgraded to ghostbusters...

"Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control and went straight over a cliff, I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me." She pulled up her shirt to show him the scar on the side of her stomach.

"Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye, bikinis."

"Goddamn," Vincent mumbled to himself turned out it wasn't quite enough because Natasha looked at him with a smirk and winked.

"Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now," Steve told her. Natasha slightly smiled.

"Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried."

Natasha held up the flash drive. "Like you said, he's a ghost story."

Steve took the flash drive from her. "Well, let's find out what the ghost wants."

Natasha nodded and looked at Vincent. "First, we need to stop at a store to get mr. pretty boy over here a shirt."

___

"First rule of going on the run is, don't run, walk," Natasha informed the two.

Steve looked down at his shoes. "If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off."

"Thank you, Nat for telling me. I thought it was to run and catch everybody's attention." Vincent sarcastically chuckled while trying not to trip on his untied shoelaces.

"Shut up." She hissed stepping on his left shoe.

Vincent hit her arm. "Natasha, we've been through this Do. Not. Step on my Nike Air Trainer III's."

"Don't step on my shoes." She mocked.

"Shut up." He huffed.

She smirked. "Make me." That made Vincent speechless till they made it to the Mac store.

"The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up SHIELD will know exactly where we are." Natasha acquainted.

"How much time do we have?" Steve questioned.

"Uh...about nine minutes from..." She popped the flash drive into a MacBook Pro.

"Now."

"Fury was right about that ship, somebody's trying to hide something. This drive is protected by some sort of AI, it keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands."

Steve looked around the store looking for any Strike agents. "Can you override it?"

"The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly."

"Fucking shit," Vincent whispered next to them.

Natasha and Steve both looked at him confused.

He shrugged. "I was so close to the high score on subway surfers." He pointed to the phone.

Natasha continued to try and find out what's on the flash drive. "I'm gonna try running a tracer. This is a program that SHIELD developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from."

"Can I help you guys with anything?" An apple employee asked.

Natasha grabbed Steve's arm. "Oh, no. My fiancé was just helping me with some honeymoon destinations."

"Cool, where-"

"Umm Aaron, do you think you could help me with this?" Vincent asked pointing to a Mac book two down from Natasha and Steve.

"Sure." Aaron followed Vincent to the Mac.

"So I was thinking about buying this, now how would I set it up?"

"The first time your MacBook Air starts up, the Setup Assistant walks you through the simple steps needed to start using your new Mac. Choose a country or region to set the language and time zone for your Mac. You can respond to all the prompts, or skip some and choose "Set up later" when you see that option. For example, it might make sense to set up Apple Pay, which requires a verified credit card, and Screen Time, which you can set for different users, after initial setup. Read on for more information about setup tasks." Aaron explained to a 'trying not to fall asleep' Vincent.

"Thank you. Can I give you my card to pay for it?" He told the employee.

"Yes, you can." Aaron walked to the front of the store and swiped Vincent's card and went to the back and grabbed a bag with a Mac in it. He walked back over to Vincent handed him the bag.

Vincent shook his hand. "Thank you, sir."

"Anytime." Aaron nodded and walked away.

Vincent walked over to Natasha and Steve. "You said nine minutes, come on."

"Shh, relax. Got it."

Vincent scoffed. "Relax? You're telling me to relax are you serious."

The screen zooms in and the signal is coming from Wheaton, NJ. "You know it?" Natasha asked Steve.

"I used to. Let's go." Steve pulled the flash drive from the computer and they walked out of the store.

"Natasha, you own me fucking nine hundred seventy-nine dollars and eighty-six cents for keeping the employee busy."

"I didn't tell you to buy anything."

Vincent scoffed. "How else did expect me to distract him?"

"Standard tac-team. Two behind, to across, two coming straight at us. If they make us, I'll engage, you hit the south escalator to the metro." Steve told them as two agents are coming straight towards them.

"Shut up and put your arm around me, laugh at something I said," Natasha addressed confusing Steve

"What?"

"Do it!" Steve quickly put his arm around Natasha and laughed as Vincent looked down at his shoes making sure there were no smudges.

As they are going down the escalator Natasha spotted Rumlow on the escalator next to them going up, she turned to Vincent knowing if he saw Rumlow it would be it for them.

"Kiss me."

Vincent's eyes widened. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable. Take this Steve." She handed Steve her phone.

"Yeah, I guess they do." She quickly pulled Vincent's jacket collars down to her level so she could reach him, his hands landed on her hips, he felt her arch into his hold.

Rumlow rolled his eyes and looked away as he goes past them on the escalator.

Natasha pulled out of the kiss and started walking off the escalator with the two men following her. "You still uncomfortable?"

"Wishing the escalator was longer." He replied putting his hood on.

Steve handed Natasha her phone back. "I'm glad it's over, those things make me sick."

Vincent chuckled putting an arm around Steve. "Let's go grampa.

____

"So we have to steal a car?" Vincent asked his two superheroes/super-spy best friends...only friends except for Milo.

Natasha pushed a strand of her straight red hair out of her eyes. "Yes."

"And none of you know how to do that?" Vincent snorted.

Steve and Natasha rolled their eyes. "Yes, Vince."

"This is going to be fun I haven't done this sinc-." Vincent cut himself off as he remembered why he stopped.

"Since what?" Natasha questioned.

Vincent shook his head. "Nothing."

____

He watched as a woman parked her Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LTZ. After the woman walked inside the Mall and nobody was around the truck he hotwired the truck, as soon as the truck started Natasha opened the door to the front and climbed in and Steve climbed in the backseat.

"Where did Vincent Lanez learn how to steal a car?" Natasha questioned him.

"My older brother Timothee." Vincent smiled making a right turn. "And we're borrowing. Take your feet off the dash."

Natasha glared at him and took her feet off the dash.

"Timothee?" Steve asked, the whole time he knew Vincent he's never seen or heard about an older brother.

"Uhh, he died a year ago."

Steve frowned. "I-I didn't know, I-I'm sorry."

"It's fine Steve."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Natasha asked frowning.

Vincent sighed. "Because I can barely speak about."

Natasha nodded. "Alright, I have a question for you, oh, which you do not have to answer. I feel like if you don't answer it though, you're kind of answering it, you know?"

"Natasha."

"Was that a bad kiss?" She asked him, taking a drink of a water bottle Vincent had got her from a gas station earlier in the trip.

"No, it was a really good kiss. Why did you think it was a bad kiss?"

"I didn't say it was a bad kiss I asked if it was a bad kiss." She giggled defended herself.

They stopped at a red light and Vincent unbuckled his seat belt, he reached over the armrest console and kissed her.

"Was that a bad kiss?" He asked as he buckled his seatbelt back.

"N-No...No it wasn't." She stammered blushing.

___

Two hours into the trip Steve fell asleep and Natasha was dosing off and on.

"Why don't you go to sleep we have about thirty-two minutes left. I'll wake you when we get there." Vincent told her.

She nodded and grabbed Vincent's right hand that rested the armrest console and held his hand in hers.

Natasha soon fell asleep softly snoring. Vincent would occasionally glance down at the sleeping redhead he adored.

Vincent hopped out of the truck and woke up Steve.

"Son of a gun," Steve mumbled as he was shaken awake, he grabbed his shield and got out of the truck.

Vincent opened the passenger door and pushed a strang of Natasha's hair out of her face. "Natasha, wake up." He spoke softly.

Her eyes slowly opened and she sat up and looked around at their surroundings and shivered. "Vinnie, can I have your jacket?"

"Yeah." He took off his jacket and handed it to her, he helped her out of the truck.

"Thank you." She shivered, putting the jacket over her hoodie.

"This is it," Vincent spoke as he went to shake the gate but Natasha grabbed his arm.

Natasha put her phone in her back pocket. "The file came from these coordinates."

Steve looked at the sign on the gate that read Camp Lehigh. "So did I."

Vincent looked at him bewildered. "You were born here?"

Steve sighed while Natasha smiled.

Later that night as they walked around the base trying to pinpoint where the signal came from. "This camp is where I was trained."

"Now you tell us, after we've been here for forty minutes," Vincent murmured picking up a rock chucking it at a wall.

He and Natasha were walking on a platform while Steve was down on the ground.

Natasha held up her phone looking for a signal. "Changed much?"

"A little." Steve glanced at a camera on a pole.

"I think Steve is in la-la land." Vincent chuckled.

Natasha turned around and glanced at Steve. "Wonder what he's thinking."

"Come on Vinnie boo let's continue looking." She dragged him along with her.

____

Natasha and Vincent walked back to Steve. "This is a dead-end. Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off." She addressed putting her phone in her back pocket.

Vincent noticed a building ahead of them, he jumped over the railing of the platform walking towards the building.

"What is it?" Natasha questioned as she and Steve walked over to the building.

"Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards of the barracks. This building is in the wrong place." Vincent sighed.

"How do you know that?" Steve asked.

"Army kid."

Vincent stood back and Steve opened the lock with his shield and they entered inside, when they turned on the lights they noticed it's a SHIELD office.

"This is SHIELD." Natasha breathed out.

"Maybe where it started," Steve commented.

Vincent opened a door that entered into a room where they found old framed portraits of Howard Stark, Peggy, Col. Chester Phillips, and Vincent great great great grand father General. Thomas Lanez.

Natasha pointed to an unbalanced picture. "There's Stark's father."

Steve acknowledged. "Howard."

Natasha glanced at Steve. "Who's the girl?" Steve doesn't respond, he turned away and followed Vincent who didn't take interest in the pictures.

Vincent walked further down the room and stopped by a massive bookshelf and noticed a cobweb swaying.

"Fuck this is heavy." He mumbled as he pushed the bookshelf and it slid open to reveal an elevator behind it.

"Elevator?" Steve asked.

Natasha pulled out her phone and scanned the keypad.

She typed the password in and pushed the button it opened to Vincent's surprise the old thing worked.

Steve and Natasha walked into the elevator while Vincent gulped. "Y-You know what I-I'll stay here."

Natasha sighed and grabbed his arm. "Come on scaredy-cat."

They go down the elevator which took them to a room with old looking computers.

The elevator doors opened to a dark room, they walked out of the elevator the doors closed behind them.

Vincent gulped, he turned around and looked at the closed doors. "Oh hell no."

Natasha grabbed his hand to calm him down.

She took a glance around the room. "This can't be the data-point, this technology is ancient."

They walked to what looked like the main console. The lights flickered on. Natasha noticed a small flash drive port, she placed the flash drive in it which then activated the ancient computer.

"Initiate system?" The computer spoke.

Natasha typed using the keyboard. "Y-E-S spells yes. "

Natasha smiled and turned to Steve as the old computer started to cranks up. "Shall we play a game?" It's from a movie that...

"Yeah, I saw it." Suddenly they hear an accented voice speaking.

"Rogers, Steven. Born, 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna. Born, 1984. Lanez, Vincent. Born, 1990."

They see an old camera moving above them as it analyzed them.

Natasha looked at the camera puzzled. "It's some kind of a recording."

"I am not a recording, Fräulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me, prisoner, in 1945, but I am." The computer screen shows an old photo of Dr. Arnim Zola.

Natasha turned towards Steve. "Do you know this thing?"

"Steve buddy, we need to talk about your friends." Vincent sighed.

Steve walked off the platform looking behind the computer. "Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years."

"First correction, I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972 I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body, my mind, however, that was worth saving on two hundred thousand feet of data banks. You are standing in my brain."

Vincent scoffed. "You weren't very popular as a child where you?"

Steve walked back up where Natasha and Vincent were. "How did you get here?"

"Invited."

"It was Operation Paperclip after World War II. SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic value." Natasha informed.

"They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own."

Steve scoffed. "HYDRA died with the Red Skull."

"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place." Vincent could hear the smirk in his voice.

"Prove it." Steve challenged.

"Accessing archive." The computer screen shows them old footage of Johann Schmidt/Red Skull, of how the original SHIELD founders.

"HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much."

"Holy shit," Vincent mumbled.

"Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside SHIELD. For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed."

Natasha walked closer to the screen. "That's impossible, SHIELD would have stopped you."

"Accidents will happen." The computer screen showed them HYDRA had killed Howard and Maria Stark making it look like a car accident along with the recent death of Fury.

"HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise. We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your Life; a zero-sum."

In anger, Steve smashed the computer screen.

"As I was saying..." Zola spoke.

"What's on this drive?" Natasha questioned getting frustrated at the computer...or person.

"Project Insight requires insight. So I wrote an algorithm."

Natasha walked closer to the computer screen. "What kind of algorithm? What does it do?"

"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it."

Natasha looked at Vincent in slight fear of what it meant by 'Too dead to hear it.' As much as she hated to admit but she was scared.

Suddenly the doors started to close, Steve tried to stop it by throwing his shield in between them but he's too late. He ran over to the door and tried to pry it open with his hands but it didn't work it was sealed shut.

"Vince, Steve, we got a bogey. Short-range ballistic. 30 seconds tops." Natasha addressed with worry laced in her voice.

"Who fired it?" Vincent inquired as he looked around the room for an entrance.

"S.H.I.E.L.D."

"I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain. Admit it, it's better this way. We're both of us...out of time." Zola told the three of them.

Vincent noticed a small opening on the ground, he threw the metal door aside and grabbed Natasha, Steve jumped in just as the place exploded and protected them with his shield.

Steve and Vincent managed to get out from under the building rubble just as STRIKE agents arrived to roam the area for them.

"Fuck." Vincent groaned picking a piece of glass out of his leg. He leaned down and picked up Natasha who was out cold.

"Come on we need to hurry," Steve spoke moving rock out of the way.

____

"She's going to be alright. Right?" Vincent asked Steve who was driving, Vince had sat in the back with Natasha who had her head resting on his lap asleep.

Steve looked in the rearview mirror. "She will be fine, Vince."

Natasha groaned as she regained consciousness. "What happened?" She asked her voice rasper then usual.

"A building fell on us," Steve uttered to her. He looked away from the road just for a split second to look back at the redhead.

"Sure feels like it." She groaned.

She looked down at her waist to see Vincent's left arm resting on her, Natasha noticed something off about it.

She and noticed when he would move his arm a little his body would tense. "What happened to your arm?"

"Nothing." He responded quickly which was a red flag for Natasha.

She reached down and touched his arm, again his body tensed. "I think your arm is broken."

"It's not, It's just sore you landed right on it." Vincent chuckled.

She looked up at him. "Sorry."

"It's fine, I still want you to pay me back."

"I'm not paying you back so get over it," Natasha rolled her eye.

Vincent gave her a playful glare before turning to Steve. "Aye, grampa where are we going?"

"To see a friend."

[neonovember]

Golden Boy

part two to this request

warnings: suggestive content, miscommunication, angst if you are a tortured poet, highschool love, protective!carmen, touch depirved!carmen, mention of death

w/c: 2.8k

a/n: okay, okay, yes i know i said this would be a two part series, but god i have too much to say and it didn’t feel right to cram it into two parts. Also i wanted to add a little smut snippet and of course that required its own chapter??

The ring of the Beef doors resound through the murmur of the kitchen, the lunch time rush had dissolved to a quiet pull, regulars coming in for their pick up orders and the occasional customer seated in one of the back booths.

The soothing quiet the crew had been relishing just moments ago is interrupted by the familiar boom of Richie’s voice and the loud bang of the cartons of produce he’d left on the counter.

“Guess who the fuck I ran into down at the Market” Richie yells, beaming with the kind of smile you’d only have with the worlds biggest secret on your tongue.

The crew gathers at the kitchen station, hands rubbing tired eyes as the work day slugged on.

“What, Richie?” Sydney humours him, throwing the last of the chopped vegetables into a pot to slow cook, wiping her hand on her shoulder towel as she looks up at Richie.

“Our very own Bug” Richie replies, eyes glinting as they watch the white linen shirt of Carmen’s back stop suddenly. 

Carmen pauses, the sound of his knife falling with a clank. It takes a moment for him to turn around and face Richie, partly because he doesn’t want to meet the goofy pull of his features that told him he was playing around and partly because he doesn't want to face that what Richie said might be true. 

But he faces him anyway, because he always will for you.

“What? You saw a bug? Really Richie, you had to come all this way--” Sydney groans out, pressing a finger between her eyebrows, smoothing out the skin that has begun to wrinkle there.

“Shit, sorry, I forgot you guys don’t know her”

“Her? You got a little lady you've been keeping from us Richie?” Tina replies playfully, swatting a towel towards Richie who barely dodges it.

Carmen coughs abruptly at Tina’s comment, in which Richie bites back a grin, before raising an arm up in surrender.

“She’s an old friend of the family, Carmen and her used to be real close in High school. Come to think of it, she was your only friend actually, and was way out of your league” Richie says with a condescending tone, there is a look of thoughtfulness on Richie's face like he's actually thinking about Carmen’s high school experiencing and remembering the clear lack of friends he's had beside you.

The sound of cat calls and oooh’s resounds throughout the kitchen, the crew coddling this small but rare piece of information about Carmen’s past. Carmen wasn’t exactly conversational, whilst he regarded the crew as his flesh and blood that didn’t stop him from keeping a lot of himself and his past hidden. There was always the air of mystery that followed Carmen Berzatto, and it seemed the persona was about to deteriorate as a look of anger flashes across Carmen's face.

“Oh fuck you Cousin, She never even liked you” Carmen replies defensively, before the realisation that you were in town hits him full force.

“How did we not know this, I mean no offence Carm, but you didn’t seem like the type to be..open to friends” Sydney voices, the look of shock not hidden from her voice

“It was different with her, right? I didn't have to- she was- it was just different” Carmen mumbles, the visions of you seem to take over Carmen's mind, like visors, all he can see now is you. The curve of your neck, the smell of Lavender and shea butter from your mothers garden and your lotion. Carmen can almost taste it again, and its reminder has him craving you in a way that was all too dangerous for a man like him.

Especially since you were back in town, maybe not even a block away from him, holy fuck, you were back in town.

“Wait, uh, she’s in town?” Carmen replies, sheepishly, scratching his neck in nervousness that didn't go unnoticed by the crew. 

Carmen? Nervous? About a girl? Oh this was good.

“She came down for work, designing a whole piece of Madison Avenue. Think she’s staying for a little while” Richie replies “You should ask her when she comes tomorrow, you guys still talk..right?’ 

“Yeah uh, ‘course” Carmen mumbles, a feeling of grief washes over him like a wave, and without blinking, without a shudder of a breath you consume him again.

*

The New York winter was brutal, nothing like the December’s in Chicago, and the thought causes a grumble of cold air to leave Carmen’s mouth. Carmen couldn't help comparing everything in New York to the city he ran from, it was a habit akin to a shadow he couldn’t shake off.

Swarms of yellow cabbed taxis and car’s move through the city streets painfully slow, splashing waves of dirty street snow onto the frosted sidewalk. The rush of strangers wrapped in a decade of layers, the protective wool and fleece wrapping their hands and necks, make their way back to their apartment and homes, eager to feel the warmth of fireplaces and heaters and escape the ice cold snap of the unforgiving winds and falling snow. 

Carmen should be making his way home, in fact if he hadn’t stopped abruptly at the scene in front of the open pane window of a shop, he'd had felt the warmth of his century old apartment heater  by now. Walking back would be the right thing to do, it would be the sensible thing, but Carmen wasn’t known for his sensibility and recklessness was all he knew. Especially when it comes to you, always when it comes to you. 

So Carmen has found himself, stood stationary, looking rather strange in the middle of the street as city goers grumble and step around him, looking into the dimly lit art studio cramped between a Chinese takeout shop and a fabric store.

There you were, crouched in a chair, scribbling on a canvas across a wide workbench, papers and pens scattered messily in front of you. You haven't changed one bit, and maybe it had felt like centuries ago for Carmen when in fact it had only been a couple years but it was as if someone had taken a picture of his memories of you and placed it in front of him. 

You were so beautiful, it stole Carmen's breath away, it skipped the rhythmic beat of his heart and caused it to hammer against his chest in that nervous way you’ve always made him feel. Even surrounded by papers and stained coffee mugs and the drag of stress and sleep deprivation weighing on your sunken shoulders you are the most beautiful thing Carmen has ever, and will ever see. 

Were you real? Carmen’s feet are stone, like if he steps through the doors, if he moves even an inch you'll slip between his fingers and disappear from his vision again. He has to see you, he has to apologise and tell you everything that has happened, he has to feel your head resting against his shoulder, he needs to fall back into the gentle rhythm you both shared before it was lost to time again.

But before Carmen can move from his spot on the sidewalk, before he can even catch your gaze, he watches, in horror, as a tall haired man walks over, dressed in a brown knitted sweater and slacks that looked simple in the expensive way, and wraps his arms around you before behind.

His heart shatters completely, and he can't stop himself from watching on, you throw your head back with a laugh, hugging him back with a grin as he whispers into the nook of your neck and it's the twist of the knife in his stomach, tearing the entirety of its contents onto the sidewalk, staining the frosted pavement crimson with his innards. 

And it was like Carmen was 15 again. Seeing one of his classmates ask you to prom before he could even utter those words, watching the way you danced effortlessly in his hands beneath the gleam of the disco ball above. Your date had two left feet, and Carmen wanted to rip him off of you and replace his skittish dance moves. Carmen wanted to give you what you deserved instead of a football jock who couldn’t make you laugh.

That same childlike feeling of anger and jealousy spreads through him, that was sood replaced with anguish. He had lost you, he had waited too goddamn long and had lost you. What the fuck was he doing? How did he think he could just walk through those doors and stumble into your life again, and somehow fall back into the same familiarity of your friendship like nothing had changed? 

Carmen had done stupid things before, but Carmen had felt utterly foolish then. You were mystifying, of course you would be in a relationship, there were probably hundreds of men that threw themselves at you, and it wasn't like you were waiting for him.

The memory of saying goodbye to you was still fresh, he could remember the time when you turned your back to him, and the same way the sun shone through the hallways windows when you turned your neck to meet his gaze for the final time. 

He could remember what he had for breakfast, cereal with not enough milk and an apple, he could remember how he had two different pairs of socks on, one itching him throughout the day, he could remember the feeling of the ingrained drawings of your Geography teacher’s sketchbook, he could remember the way you looked at him when he told you to promise him not to say goodbye. 

He remembered it all like it was the day he died.

That day had been marked into his body and mind, into his subconscious until it was all that consumed him. Wherever he was, he looked for you, he searched and yearned for you in crowds and lines for coffee, in the driver's seat of cars next to him stood stationary at the traffic lights. 

Everytime he closed his eyes all he could see was the way you looked at him like you didn't believe him and it broke something, because it had been true. Carmen had promised to see you again, and he lied, and that late New York evening, it was like Carmen had died a second time.

And just like at 17, Carmen makes peace with watching you on the sidelines, bottling up any feelings he had for you in fear it would ruin everything you both shared. You were his greatest friend, and he couldn't allow himself to be selfish, not when you were you, and he was him. He didn't deserve you, and it didn't matter how hard he yearned for you because you were too good for him.

And it’s that thought that causes him to step away from his spot on the sidewalk, the imprint of his boots marking a spot on the concrete where the fallen snow hadn't touched yet, before it’s soon covered in the white flesh of frost, hiding that he was ever there.

From that moment on, Carmen watches you from afar, the unyielding desire to ensure you were safe at all times consuming him until his protective gaze fell over you like a blanket. He had kept up with your moves, silently cheering you on with each award and recognition you received throughout the years, whilst he himself began to climb the culinary ladder, or knife. He had never let his eyes waver, and then Mickey died and he came running back to Chicago with his things and a broken heart.

“Yeah, you all will meet her tomorrow at the dinner” Richies words cause Carmen to shake himself from his vision, what did he just say?

“You, You did what?” Carmen questions, unable to keep the shrill from his voice as the crew look towards him in confusion.

“Yeah I invited her, it’ll be like a catch up for the fam, she could see all the work I’ve done and see how you haven't changed-”

“Fuck Cousin, you- you should’ve told me before, now i got to make sure everyone has something to eat, and- and i got to add a a second chair” Carmen begins to mumble out, running a hand through his curls stressfully as he began to pace around the kitchen.

“Hey, Carmen relax, we've got room for one more person” Richie chuckles

“Wow, Jeff, just the sound of this girl’s name has got you shitting bricks. I think someones in loveeee” Tina singsongs with a grin, but there was something soft behind her eyes, in fact everyone in the kitchen smiled with a hint of happiness at Carmen's behaviour.

They had thought their Chef was closed off to love, and having felt its strength, each of them in their own ways tried to get Carmen out there, whether it be blind dates or meet cute’s, but it never worked out, and Carmen had always kept that part of life secret from even Richie and Sugar.

It seemed now, that you had been the mysterious woman that had stolen Carmen's heart, and they were giddy with excitement to finally meet the person who had gotten Carmen Berzatto scared shit less.

“Hey Cousin, why don’t you help me unload the rest of the cartons from the truck?” Richie replies, a subtle way of getting Carmen out of the kitchen and into a space that had fewer faces watching his every move.

“Yeah, uh okay” Carmen replies, following Richie to the back of the Bear, resting his back against the brick wall of the alleyway.

There is a silence that stretches between Richie and Carmen at that moment that Richie would usually fill with slanted jokes or rambles. But even Richie knew you were a sensitive topic for Carmen, and he waited patiently for him to approach the topic on both of your minds.

“So, we haven’t spoken in nearly 8 years and she's coming tomorrow to my restaurant” Carmen replies, and Richie nods along.

Carmen shakes his head scoffing, looking up at Richie with a look of fear and embarrassment and elated happiness all in one.

“I don’t know what i’m gonna do Cousin, I- I don’t know what to do with myself with her, fuck what if ruin everything?” 

“Hey, hey easy, I was poking fun at you before but you and her, that was something else entirely that the rest of the Family would never come close to understanding. When you were together, it was like, it was like I could see the anxiety and stress physically leave you, you fucking laughed with her Carm, when you weren’t in the mood to even smile, even after everything you’d see her and it was like nothing else mattered, like no one else mattered.

I mean, the whole family was betting on you both running off and getting eloped, you were both in your own bubble, and did not give a shit about anybody else.” Richie chuckles, resting a hand on Carm’s shoulder to stop him from pacing.

Carmen looks up at him with furrowed eyebrows, pressing his canines into his lips

“What if she doesn't want to speak to me?, Ya know, what if she came for- for you and Sugar and-and she doesn't even want to see me” Carmen rambles, fear taking over any sense

“Are you kidding Carmen? You both hadn’t spoken in nearly a decade and she still said yes to coming to the fucking Beef of all places on a Friday. She wants to see you, Carm, you've just been too stupid to see it, you've always been.” Richie replies, shaking Carmen like he was trying to shake the sense into him.

“You know what you have to do now, right?” Richie says, when you've both rested on one of the stools, lighting a cigarette for warmth against the bite of the cold.

“I’ve got to make tomorrow fucking perfect, thats what I’ve got to do. Which is almost impossible for this goddamn place” Carmen groans out, taking a drag from the wrapped tobacco stick.

Richie lets out a laugh, rubbing his stomach as he leans against the brick layered wall.

“Don’t know about that, they just might for her” Richie replies, before getting off of the stool, dusting his jeans and walking towards the pick up truck.

“Where are you going?” Carmen calls out

“You thought I was kidding about these boxes? Chop chop cousin, we gotta get them in before it fucking rains” Richie yells back, letting out a laugh at Carmens loud groan.

[wheels-of-despair]

This Is Better Pairing: Eddie Munson x You Summary: Eddie's lady love is down with The Curse, but his cuddly nature and massive paws come to the rescue. Contains: Fluff, comfort, snuggles, a human heating pad. Words: 500ish

"Hey… you okay?"

You force your eyes to snap out of their half-lidded daze and focus on the metalhead at your bedroom door. He's only just walked in, but his presence has lifted your spirits already.

"Yeah, just tired and achy," you say with a half-hearted stretch. You've been lying here like a slug for hours, on the verge of sleep, but unable to slip into the nap your body desperately needs. "How was practice?"

"Fine," he says, kicking his shoes off and crawling into bed behind you. He nestles his face in the crook of your neck and wraps an arm around your waist above the covers. "Think we've just about got the new one down."

"That's good," you smile, resting your arm on top of his. He's so warm, you can almost feel his body heat through the layers of blankets. It's the best you've felt all day.

"You gonna stay for a bit?" you ask hopefully.

"Until I get thrown out."

"Forever, then?"

"Fine by me," he mumbles, nuzzling into your neck.

Might as well utilize his gift.

"Can you do something for me?"

"Anything."

You place your palm on the back of his hand and guide him below the covers, coming to rest below your navel.

Instant warmth.

"This is where it hurts?"

"Mhm." He spreads his fingers to cover more skin, and you're overcome with appreciation for those massive paws of his.

"This is better?"

"Mhm," you hum happily, closing your eyes with a feeling of bliss.

"Hang on," he mumbles with a kiss to your shoulder. You turn just enough to see him roll out of bed and kick his way out of his jeans. He takes off his rings and watch and places them on your bedside table, pulls back the covers, and crawls in behind you. He snuggles in close, pulling your back flush with his front and settling his hand right back where you'd showed him.

You sigh as the warmth of his body and the comfort of his closeness washes over you, feeling yourself melt into the mattress. You're just seconds away from the nap you've been craving all day when you feel him shift, and suddenly feel guilty about using him.

"You don't have to stay like this, you can go find something better to do whenever you get sick of layin' here."

"I'm not moving 'til you feel better."

"You're gonna be here for a few days," you chuckle.

"I'm gonna be here for the rest of our lives," he says lowly, his voice rumbling through your body like the purr of a satisfied cat. And then, he tenses. "Shit. Was that weird? Did I make it weird?"

"Not even a little bit," you smile, wishing it were physically possible to be closer to him. You can feel yourself drifting off, finally, and manage to get out two more words before sleep takes you: "Love you."

"Love you, too," he whispers with a kiss to your neck.

[mothboyhalo]

So bad revealing that he didn’t own any Nintendo consoles growing up so he didn’t play Pokémon growing up therefore he’s not that into it really spoke to me??? Like it’s probably not the same situation nor maybe it is but I’m from a poor family, like growing up I didn’t have Nintendo products or even a computer growing up. So I related so much to the comment of watching my friends play over their shoulder going “that’s cool”. I’ve never played Pokémon other then watching the first season of the anime and not being able to continue because we couldn’t afford cable so I’m like that’s neat when I’m exposed to anything Pokémon related. I’ve always felt like it definitely impacted my ability to relate to a lot of references and I’m always self conscious about the fact I’m not all that varied in games and media. But this gave me a little comfort???? Like huh ok maybe it’s ok. Bad just admitted that in front of 3k people and immortalized that on the internet I don’t have to be ashamed.

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

SNAIL & THRUSH (II)

|| COV MASTERLIST || NEXT: CHAPTER III ||

PAIRING: Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick x F!Reader

WORDCOUNT: 8.4k

WARNINGS: Angst, self destructive tendencies, insinuations of PTSD, talks of death, thoughts of violence, banter but it’s more just straight up attacks

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

“Can you—” An aggressive sigh sounds out over the air as your fast-walking form continues on; the earth molding to your shoes. “The area isn’t locked down this far out, Ma’am. Can you just get in the bloody car, please?”

Your eyes stare straight ahead, half-lidded, and could probably melt a sheet of metal if they had to. 

Not answering, you continue to walk back into town, ignoring Gaz entirely as he attempts to coax you into the large car he’s driving. The window is down, his accented voice hitting your ears and bouncing off the invisible barrier you had put there to block out his prattle about a mile back. 

You utterly refuse to enter the vehicle, even if you were already as tired as a marathon runner. The person driving followed you at a snail’s pace at his wit's end.

Stepping on gravel that crunches under your weight, your fists swing clenched beside you in small clipped arches. If volatile had a picture attached to the definition page, it would be you.

Not only had you figured out Samson Row was dead before you could kill him yourself, but now you had to deal with weapon and drug lords who had it out for you and your mother.

Under your breath, quick worded mumbles are missed over the car’s engine, the slow forward motion of tires that stir the dust and leaves you blinking quickly. 

You’d both been at this ever since you’d forced your way out of the garage back on Base and had restrained yourself from making a scene because they had refused to give you your laptop back.

“Protection detail,” your lips curl, thinking over Laswell’s clipped sentences. “Like I want your help after all of this. Just open your home, why don’t you?” Sarcastic flails of your hands leave Gaz groaning and rolling his eyes at the childish scene, a hand going to rub over his neck soothingly. The attempt to bring clarity back to himself only barely works. “Just accept that we can’t keep our own operatives on a leash—but here! Just take the one that forced you into the back of a van and put a revolver to your forehead—God!”

“Are you done out there yet?” Kyle calls, single grip over his hat as he glares out the windshield, no longer wanting to look at you as your teeth bare else he’d get to the end of his rope before he even started climbing. “Bit of a walk back to town, y’know. Not exactly how I’d want to spend my morning, copy?” He mutters the last sentence under his breath. 

Don’t want to spend any bloody mornings like this.

“If you tell me one more time to get into the car,” you level as you crush a weed in your way, “I’m sprinting off into the field and making you run after me.” 

A long scoff and an exasperated shake of his head later, Gaz is growling an acknowledgment; tapping his fingers over the wheel. Did you not understand the severity of the situation? Hell, it was like you didn’t even care! This was his job, and he took it very seriously. There was no room for fuck-ups.

The car continues to waste gas and slug along, even if the Brit wanted to hop out and drag you into it like the stubborn brat you were acting like. 

“How many years overseas?” He asks himself as your form stomps farther away before he presses his foot to the gas lightly and hears the gears squeak. He pulls up beside you moments later, lips tight. “Fuckin’ hell mate. Have a go at this.”

“I can hear you, idiot.” Your voice sounds off, face turning slightly his way. The mid-morning sun was warm, but the breeze from the not-so-far-off Lake Michigan was a welcome feeling as it went over heated skin. “Talk quieter so I don't have to.”

Kyle didn’t understand how you could wear that thick jacket, though. It was slightly chilly, sure, but not that bad out. But he certainly wasn’t going to ask. Not when you were acting like you were going to shank him in the kneecap for breathing in your direction.

“Brilliant.” He spreads his digits from where they curl over the steering wheel, shrugging his shoulders to himself mockingly. “Anything else I should know, Ma’am?” 

Drive into a tree, you want to snap, but refrain. Even if seeing the Brit’s eyes go small and jaw go tight was a smirk-inducing sight, what you wanted was silence. A silence that you would probably never get now that your house was being invaded without your say. 

At least it’s only him, trying to find light in the situation was your father’s specialty–not yours. Your body forces out a tight breath to calm down. Could you imagine what would have happened if Laswell had forced the one with the dead eyes to watch me? Ghost?

Your body shivers tightly. If Price was at the top of your list of people you feared, Ghost was second. You couldn’t stand to feel those blue orbs lock on you in the rear-view mirror when they’d brought you in. You already had enough ghosts living at the mansion, you didn't need another.

A few seconds later, the car beside you comes to a fast halt with a ruckus of crunching gravel. You hope for a moment the car will turn around and disappear into the background.

“...Y’know what, yeah? I’m solid walking.” The clashing of keys being ripped from an ignition makes you blink in horror, head whipping to the side to watch as the car door is shoved open. 

Sergeant Kyle’s tall form greets you as your legs stall, shock coating your lungs.

“The hel–” you stop your sharp tongue. Gritted words fall instead. “And what are you doing?”

Gaz’s body goes to the back of the car, popping open the trunk and throwing out bag after bag as your jaw drops. He grasps one of the largest—a duffel bag—and slings it over his back. Two more are taken in one hand as his muscles writhe, though it looked like the apparent weight doesn't bother him much. 

The Brit ignores you, striding past as his long fingers go to his right ear. 

“Actual this is Bravo 2-6, I’ll be needing a pickup for a vehicle about a mile down-road. Parked near the edge. You copy?” A pause as you watch him continue on, looking back and forth from the still metal to his clenched fist over the straps of his belongings. A small sound escapes your throat. “No,” Gaz huffs a stiff laugh in response to the conversation you can’t hear. Your ear tips burn. “No, there’s not a damn thing wrong with the bastard, believe it or not.” 

“Hey!” Calling loudly, you stare at the figure as it gradually gets farther away, feet spread apart and the air smelling of corroding anger saturated in lake water.

“Affirm, Actual. Will do.” Kyle smoothly utters, taking his hand off his earpiece and fixing the black cord that descends from it so it won’t get in the way of his shirt collar. 

Not thinking much of your absent footsteps, the Brit’s head tilts. His ball cap blocks out the sun from his eyes yet they still squint at your practically vibrating silhouette. 

“You coming then, Love? Long walk.” Your hands snap to your pockets, the one finding the small coin immediately and bringing it into a tight grip. Suddenly, Gaz’s dark Adam’s Apple was the most offensive sight you’ve ever laid eyes on. “Best get to it, then.”

You can no more say you were fighting off a string of curses more than you were struggling against the rampage of your heart. Kyle just turns back around with a small smirk growing at the apparent slackness of your jaw; brown eyes crinkling. His internal scoreboard marks a point under his name.

Staying stationary for a good minute, stance tight and mind running, Laswell's words come back to encompass your consciousness in between the seething hatred you hold as the two of you become more separated. The price on your head—the threats to your mother’s safety as well as yours. 

Your thighs tighten. 

For better or for worse, you had to stick close to Kyle for the simple fact that he knew more about this than you did. Trained to be a killer and not hesitant to pull the trigger of a gun for the sake of his precious orders. Even now your eyes snap to the open expanse of the military base’s outer fields; the long grass and the dark ruts in the dirt. Blinking, your tense feet slam the ground as you start forward begrudgingly.

Fine. I’m an adult. I can handle it. But…maybe getting in the car would have been better than walking beside him. Your jaw clenches, not willing to admit that small fact to the man ahead of you. 

“Do you get tired of being a piece of work?” You call loudly, catching up quickly at your pace as though the man was hanging back purposely, also knowledgeable of the situation. 

He couldn’t just abandon his charge.

Kyle glances at your side profile, quirking a dark brow and sloping his chin. Being this close to him made your nose scrunch at the smell of his cologne, the scent not unpleasant but ultimately still attached to him.

“Actually, Ma’am, I take it as a compliment. Means I’m doing my job.” A pause as he fixes the hold on his gear, grunting. Not able to help himself now that the opportunity presents itself. “Do you?” 

Keeping a wide berth between you too, your face tilts to the sky, finding the whizzing forms of water birds and growling like a dog choking on a bullet. The hatred in the air was palpable; none too eager for the job ahead. 

My protection detail, you send long glances at Kyle thinking over the title again, studying his strong back and the sharp stab of his nose as it twitches to the scent of native switchgrass seeds. Keeping your studious attention far away from his brown orbs, you peel at the sides of your nails inside your pockets. The person I need protection from is already right beside me. How ironic can my life get?

But you can’t really be surprised, after all, you had expected to see him and the others again someday. Just…not like this. In the ground would have been preferable.

As you both walk in a strangling silence, your thoughts go back to your mother; wondering if she would be okay. The woman was far more stubborn than even you—there were few things that pulled her away from her work in helping others. 

Taking one hand to itch at the skin under your left eye, you stifle a yawn. 

At most, you’d text each other perhaps once a month. Quick updates and brief conversations about the weather like strangers. You couldn't talk about your nightmares or your father even though she’d been informed about the accusations on her deceased husband. 

You didn’t know if the CIA agents had told her the specifics about how he died when they delivered a detailed condolence letter and forced signatures of silence. It would destroy her if they did. 

Maybe I’ll call her when I get my phone from my nightstand back home. 

You narrow your vision. An urge to hear your mom’s soothing voice hit you like an anvil. She couldn’t make this better, but she’d certainly be able to help. 

Gaz’s eyes rove and observe the land, his combat boots leaving prints behind him. But his inspections always lead him back to you. His charge. The phantom from his past that had never really been forgotten just pushed to the side in between missions. The girl who seemed to not give a damn that he was the only person able to keep her alive at this point.

The line on Kyle’s forehead deepens. 

Part of him was completely fine with keeping his voice in his throat; listening to the chatter of birds and the clink of his bags’ zippers as he carried the great weight of them with no complaint. Another piece, the loose, reliable, part of him that followed procedure was hesitant to try and articulate how dire this was out loud to you because that wasn’t how this usually went. 

The target on your back was no joke, even Laswell knew it. But the soldier carries the burden of detail. 

Would she take me seriously if I don’t try to tell her, is the question. The Sergeant makes a noise in the back of his throat.

First impressions are a lock and seal as he was sure you were well aware. 

His lips part, half a word formed before the skin gradually falls shut again. Kyle takes a glance at you once more, looking at your wound-tight form and the utter mental exhaustion on your face. Despite his reservations about you, a sliver of regret finds his heart.

You hadn’t asked for any of this, and while you weren’t giving him much slack, his dry sarcastic nature hadn’t helped either. The two of you were just good at making the other go insane, no matter how much time you did or didn’t spend together. 

Kyle would never admit it, but it slightly impressed him.

“Should be back in town near o-twelve-hundred.” He clears his throat, trying to lose the bleeding of his stoic words. Make them lighter; airier. Attempt to be cordial. “If we keep this pace, of course. Then I can set up and be out of your hair for a bit.” 

Your feet had come to a slow drag-legged stop. Gaz blinks, noticing from the corner of his vision, and does the same—his tightness immediately going to confusion. He looks around the area, though spots nothing out of the ordinary.

Hell, what did I say now? 

But he sees your distant gaze with a stilling of his facial features, gaze falling to what you were staring quite hard at. 

You blink down at the corpse near the side of the road. 

Its small body was covered in dirtied feathers; colors of orange, gray, black, and white speaking through despite the obvious decay. A beak so long it took up larger space than the skull. 

Belted Kingfisher. 

When an animal dies the eyes are always the first to go—maggots and flies, whatnot. Soft and squishy. You don’t know why, but looking down at that small, dead, bird you longed to know what its eyes had looked like. The color, the intelligent sheen of them. Now only a black eye socket gives its voided opinions like a mute judge. 

You’d spotted it quite by accident, just looking over the landscape as the Brit tried to speak to you. A breeze ruffles the feathers that are left over the frail being and you find for the first time in a long while your head is completely silent.

Your muscles loosen.

“...Ma’am?” 

Violently flinching, the brief contact to your shoulder is snapped back in an instant, Kyle going to splay the offending hand in a sign of no harm. Dark eyebrows tight. Taking down a full breath, you miss the concern in the Sergeant’s expression, the steady look. There’s a moment when the world holds its air; the animals nearby fall wholly still as the wind carries every unsaid word better than you can annunciate it. 

Your stomach rolls at the reminder of his touch, even through layers of clothes. Gaz murmurs a question of which you ignore.

Shoving past him, on your way past his tilted face you growl upwards, “Keep your hands off of me, Garrick.” 

You increase your walking speed, trying with all of your might to fight the impending explosion of anger and anxiety. It was like your hands wanted to grip him by his neck, shove him down to the floor and let him know what it felt like to hurt the way you do. For a moment glimpse the life draining from his amber optics.

But any sort of physical pain, or even death, could never amount to knowing what you’d gone through. Not to mention you’d probably get your ass handed to you in mere seconds. 

Staring after with wide, creased, eyes, the Brit waits for a moment before he looks down at the small bird carcass you were entranced by moments prior. 

His head tilts, lungs filling.

“...Poor bugger.” He frowns and observes the way you quickly walk on with emotion on his lips. Gaz sighs and shakes his head, raising a brow back down at the now-soulless body as the telltale signs of a migraine start to pulse. “Recon I’ll be ending up like you in a bit, Mate.” 

He catches up easily, even with the weight of his bags and you have to wonder how anyone thought that this was a good idea. 

The devil beside you walks so far removed from normal life that it astounds you, and the rest of the trip is stuck in an uncomfortable silence reserved for those who dislike one another. 

Town can’t come soon enough, and you’re stopping at Hector’s Café along the way to your Estate. 

“It’s best to go straight back,” you thin your lips and slip into the building, the door creaking behind you as Gaz waits at the entrance. “I need to secure the property ASAP.” 

“You’ll get to wreck my home all you want in an hour.” Your backpack was on the main counter, and you walked to it slowly; drawing out the Sergeant's annoyance as much as you could. If you can’t hurt him physically at the moment, mentally was just as good a substitute. “I need my backpack.”

“Oh, you mean the one that left a dent in my skull.”

“Yes. I think I’ll end up keeping it as a family heirloom. Frame it maybe.”

“Ah, Lovely. Glad I can be a part of such a defining moment.” Strap in hand and a sarcastic retort on your breath, a great ruckus sound off from the backroom. 

Before you can react your jacket sleeve is being pulled sideways, a form shoving itself in between you and the kitchen door. Your eyes widen, feet stumbling to a stop before adrenaline stabs itself into your heart.

“Son of a bitch!” Rushing out, Hector wields a skillet in one hand—raised halfway above his head with a rabid snarl. “You!” He points it at Kyle, who has a small pistol gripped in his hands; bags haphazardly dropped back near the entrance. Your lips pull to a smirk when the Brit’s ready stance lessens. His wide shoulders lower like a dog’s neck fur. “You think I don’t know a government conspiracy when I see it! I lived in Jersey, motherfucker! What have you done with ‘er?” 

“Hector,” you peek over Garrick’s shoulder as the Sergeant spares you a look. “Easy with that, man….Aim for the throat, though, would you?” 

The skillet lowers, bright eyes landing on you while yours stick to his growing smile and twitching mustache. 

“Kid!” Loud laughs echo. “Holy hell, you scared the shit out ‘o me this morning. What was that all about?”

“Misunderstanding, Sir.” Gaz tries to explain, placing the pistol back into the belt of his pants as you clock it before stepping out from his shadow. It looked like an X12 to you. 

When did he get that, your eyebrows tighten and store that thought for later. There might be a chance to use that against him if you could get your hands on it.

The Café owner glares at the Sergeant as you fix the backpack strap over your shoulder. “Did I ask you, Son? I’m speakin’ to the lady.” 

“An Ex.” You lie smoothly, feeling Kyle’s shocked eyes on you instantly. Itching at the back of your neck, you feign embarrassment. “Cheated on me in high school. When he showed up, well…I did what I’d wanted to do for a while.”

Letting the sentence trail, you were excited for what came next. Genuine giddiness builds in your lungs; fighting a smile as the Brit stutters beside you. Gaz’s eyebrows pull up even higher.

“Cheated…” Hector’s accent becomes more prominent as you twist on a heel and begin heading to the door—only then do you anchor a hand to your mouth to stop the belly-deep laughter. “Oh, you’ve some nerve, showin’ back up, Son. How dare you make her see your face—!”

“Sir, I, bloody hell, I’m not—” Gaz grumbles, shooting heated glances at your disappearing form. “This isn’t….” Stuttering like a rookie. Everything in VIP Protection Training and his copious years in the army was pulling null. 

But no one was ever pulling his strings like you and it’s only been a few hours.

“See you, Hec!” 

“Hey! Come get this piece of trash out of my building.” Your face turns sideways, and Kyle notices the smirk immediately. His chest goes heavy with a wave of seething anger. 

“C’mon then, Kyle. You heard the man, didn’t you?”

If looks could melt people like gold, you would be a puddle of great Midas's curse before your skin hit the air outside, kicking the Sergeant’s bags away with a foot. 

Oh…she’s wicked, she is. The steps he takes are firm, a great cloud over his head as he re-situated his cap with taut fingers and grunts aggressively under his breath. Insulting him directly was one thing, but the chips at his character were cruel. Can I even do this? Hmm, Laswell might still be able to pull me out, let me join back up with the boys.

But everyone was counting on him for this and his stubborn side knew that he’d gone through far worse than a few verbal attacks. Physical strength was needed for this job, but many overlook the larger aspect. And if there was a single thing that Kyle Garrick was prideful about, it was his mental fortitude. Rare were the times that rigorous interrogation even put a dent into his psyche. 

“Just hold out,” he grumbles, ignoring the Cafe owner’s now-known disgust and picking up his bags. Gaz almost felt regretful for being so swift to place his body in front of a possible threat but scolded himself for thinking that immediately. This was his job. “She’s just scared, yeah? Doesn’t want to be around the bloke who,” he slightly cringes and lets the building’s front door close behind him, seeing your jacket ahead and rubbing at the back of his neck. “Who shoved her in a fucking van and put a gun to her head…Christ, Kate, what were you thinking assigning me to this?”

For the remainder of the small journey, Gaz stayed behind you, calming down as your enjoyment of his torment swiftly ended. Small victories weren't worth it, especially when the Brit says nothing in retaliation. Did your little dig at his character really insult him that much? It wasn’t the worst thing you had thought you could say. Not by a long shot.

Sure it seemed that you could piss him off, even if he never snapped and exploded with anger—he didn’t seem the type beyond back-handed comments—but if he didn’t respond it made no difference. 

You…you wanted to hurt him. Make Garrick suffer. You just didn’t know how to do it effectively, or if you could. Now you knew, though, that attacks on his person and morals were the way to go for quick results of muteness.

The iron gate of your home was up ahead, and with a delving of fingers, you produced a key from your back pocket, moving your wallet out of the way to grasp it firmly. 

I want them all to suffer. Your mind wanders as you twist the lock, hearing the metal shriek at you in figurative suffering. Blinking, the shadow behind you causes your body to be hyper-aware. A plan forms grimly, and you have to think if you even have the courage to try it. 

“Hm,” you huff, shoving open the gate and calling over your shoulder. “Close it behind you!” Tossing back the key. 

Kyle catches it, you know, because of the small thump of material meeting a ready palm. A moment later you’re walking through a path of weeds and overgrown bushes, eyes scanning the hedges blandly. You hear the gate close and a moment later, footsteps.

Gaz twirls the key in between his fingers, trying not to say something about the state of the place. But his brown vision roves from one area to another with muted shock.

Didn’t expect this.

Everything was falling into disrepair, even the gargantuan mansion of white and black coloring which normally would have been a grand sight to anyone with sense. Windows were all shut, the lawn looking more like a forest; the concrete underfoot was layered with dirt and insects—grass bleeding into the cracks. 

What should have been a multiple-million-dollar home was looking more like an abandoned lot. 

Kyle turns his confused stare to the back of your head, looking down at the key in hand. 

“Past its prime, I’ll say that.” He speaks to himself, keeping his manners despite the discourse between the two of you. 

It was one thing to bark back and forth like animals, but another to involve the place where one lives. But, your family was well off. There was no reason for it to look like this.

“Any staff I should be aware of, then?” he needs to ask as you ascend the front steps to the double doors. “Gardeners,” Garrick glances quickly at the greenery and coughs, “or, butlers, maids…anything like that” 

“Everyone quit because of the publicity.” Your voice is unusually distant, and you push aside a raggedy welcome mat to produce another key. This one is smaller and rustier, belonging to the main entrance. “Shocker, people didn’t like being harassed on their way to work by camera crews and news anchors. Didn’t hire after that.” 

Kyle’s feet shift, a strange feeling entering his skin as he blinks at you. 

You slip through the doorway first and immediately dart to the side table to the direct right—dropping your backpack dismissively with a quick, yet silent, slam. Heart jumping, your adrenaline spikes. 

Normally the small table would be reserved for purses and other small belongings, but before Gaz can come into the mansion you grab the slick body of a penknife and shove it into your sleeve with twitching fingers. Eyes snapping to the corners of the large foyer and looking over the gray walls and navy curtains. Creaking hardwood. 

“Nice place you got ‘ere,” Kyle tries to lighten the mood, if not for your stubborn sake than for his. Easier to get the job done if at least one person was willing to engage, and he’s willing to attempt it again. The bags in his hand are carefully placed down.

A hand snaps to your father’s gag and you yell when he rages, body shifting forward feebly before a shadow descends upon you. A swift force keeps you back, and your head snaps upwards. 

“Been in the family forever.” You slowly slip the blade out, trading weight from one hip to another and keeping it hidden. “Not really mine, at the end of the day.” 

The hand digs into your shoulder, forcing you to stay in your seat as your lips quiver. It’s not delicate, the hold, and when your eyes scrunch in pain, he somewhat lessons it though not enough to stop the sting. 

A slight relief at the non-confrontational action lets Gaz force out a chuckle. 

“Lots of places like that over in England—you have to wonder how they’re still standing, eh? Solid foundations.” A pause. “Proper interesting pieces of history.”

Never would the image of sepia-colored eyes like those leave you again. Inlaid in brown skin and below dark eyebrows.

You stop fidgeting, all thoughts for a moment stilling. What had he said? 

“You—” Stopping yourself, you turn and tilt your head in his direction, watching the rise and fall of his chest as he looks around the stairs to the second level and the small seating areas. Your voice echoes like it usually does; like a ghost unwilling to go to rest. Kyle closes the door behind him with one hand, only looking at you directly when it’s fully shut.

“What’s that, Love?”

Your feet rearrange over the rug.

“You’re…interested in that kind of stuff?” Kyle sees your hands clench but thinks nothing of it. His curiosity fills his lungs when he becomes familiar with the deadly expression on your face. 

The material of his clothes moves as he shrugs, turning his gaze away when he knows it makes you uncomfortable. Gaz wasn’t ignorant—he knew you didn’t like looking people in the eye. As his orbs find the dusty and dim chandelier hanging dangerously above them, he notices your eyes now settle back on him. 

“Not overly, but I can say History was one of my best subjects back in Secondary Education—erm,” his lips pull tight, a tiny pinch of a smirk on his face, “high school as you call it.”

You fiddle with the weapon secretly, unblinking vision stuck to Kyle���s feet. His comment made you think about the assignments you still had to complete for college; the papers to write. After all, if you flunked out of all the courses, you’d never be able to take your father's place at the museum. It was your ultimate goal, at the end of the day. Become like him.

The inability to move made your teeth bite down, but common sense won over. You place your hand into your pocket and slip the penknife inside, your other holds itself out loosely.

I have to be smarter than that. Discreet.

But you really wished you could have slid the blade home.

“Key.” Gaz nods, moving over and dropping it into your awaiting clutch before you rip it away and toss it to the side table. 

“Ma’am,” the Sergeant’s face twists, but you’re already stalking past him, going off deeper into the house. Brown eyes follow. “I know you don’t want me here,” his voice bounces at the stark emptiness of the mansion, “but the only reason I’m staying is to keep you safe. I’m not expecting you to—”

“East wing is all yours.” You’re halfway up the stairs and still going, feet silently stomping over the various moth-eaten rugs. But the man cannot see your face as he’s left with a line on his forehead and a blunt frown on his lips. So much for your few seconds of compliance. He’d thought he was getting somewhere.

“I’d rather be closer. Encase there’s—” Again, he’s cut off. There’s going to be a lot of that. 

“Keep to it after your little exploration. And don’t try anything, my father installed security cameras.” You didn’t give away that you didn’t know how to operate them, but that was beside the point. 

Reaching the top, you head to the west and disappear down a hallway. Kyle hears one last comment bounce.

“I leave at eight every morning!” He’s left alone with only faint light and silent walls. 

But, with a shake of his head and the grabbing of bags at his feet, he can’t say he’s surprised. 

Looking about, Kyle takes in the lack of personality and blandness all around, forgetting for a moment that this home once belonged to a late museum director. He had expected more character—more expression. Certainly more light. 

This place was at a stand-still, like time didn’t begin or end in this house and it simply was. 

He sighs, nodding. He’d just have to work with it. “East wing. Brilliant.” 

His mind still held doubts about this—had ever since Price had given him the order straight from Kate. How can you protect someone that rightly hates your guts? You had more of a chance of tearing him a new one than he did of getting you to cooperate. And that was saying something, considering he was professionally trained in hand-to-hand. 

Again, Gaz had to ask himself if he was capable of doing this job. He thinks back to that mission three years ago, expression pulling tight as he jogged up the stairs and took a swift right. 

He regretted what had happened, yes, but at the end of the day, it was just another target who had gotten what he deserved. It was what the Sergeant did—got his hands dirty to clean up messes and keep everyone else safe.

Your father couldn’t have been any more of a good influence than a bad one. Gaz had seen the file on him. The countless dead. 

He wasn’t a good man, how couldn’t you see that?

“Mate, that was her fuckin’ father.” Growling, that sliver of civilian common sense slithers back in like a rope around his neck when he goes deeper into the house, past various open doors that show meeting rooms, libraries, offices, and art rooms. No bedrooms yet. “Christ, you’re losing it. Man got his bloody head blown off right in front of ‘er.”

When had he become so desensitized to this? 

His brown eyes glared at the floor when he realized he couldn’t remember being horrified by anything he had seen in the last few years. 

Death was death—didn’t matter how bloody it was, or how drawn out. At the end, all of it was just red. 

But he’d never taken a moment to think about how that would be for someone like you. Unused to violence. There was a grand question that Garrick still didn’t know the answer to. Were you a hostage in that little stunt, or were you just leverage? 

The Captain knew the answer—leverage. There was never any intention to actually pull the trigger on you. Kyle would have flatly refused if there had been, as would Soap. Ghost was still an enigma, but part of the Sergeant wanted to believe that he didn’t want that either. 

Samson Row. 

An overwhelming hatred struck the back of his skull as he entered the first room he saw with a bed in it, setting his bags on the covers and pushing his fingers to his nose bride. Eyebrows pull in. 

No use getting like this over a dead man. Stay focused. 

His fingers had only just begun to toss off the duffel bag from over his back when he first saw it. 

His hands paused, body going as still as a stick when he breathed in tightly. 

It was a portrait of your family. Picturesque. Mother on the left father on the right, and you—younger, of course—in the middle. Gaz blinks away to study the rest of the room.

It was incredibly large, with chairs and a couch covered by white cloth to imitate oddly-shaped ghosts and the same navy curtains over a wall of nearly all window panes. And yet no personal belongings other than the picture. 

Brown eyes filter back, staring long at the small girl with a wide smile; the mother with a hand on her shoulder, and the father looking down at his daughter with a nearly missed look of adoration. Garrick half expected the image to bed down and kiss you on the forehead.

Looking away with a clenched jaw, he huffs.

Wordlessly, the Sergeant once more grabs his belongings and walks out the door. 

—

You shook above the bathroom toilet, your breaths a heaving mess of warring instincts. Take down air or let the swirling of your gut cease—the offers were tempting. You’d been in here for most of the day, knees grinding into the tile with the efficiency of a blunt chisel; clothes ruffled as your jacket lay tossed on the floor back in your dark room. 

Throwing your empty stomach up. 

Struggling to think over the day, you force yourself back from the white porcelain, shuffling on jerking legs to rest your back on the opposite wall. 

“He’s in my house. Oh, Dad, one of them is in your house.” Fingers weave through locks and clench tight, hitched words loud in the silence you’d grown to comply with like an old God. Cryptid horrors that stalk the hallways that you see from the corners of your eyes, ghosts that won't leave. “I couldn't do it, why couldn’t I just try?” 

The penknife. It would have been instantaneous. 

But you knew deep down you’d never even be able to get close. 

Sweating and panting, you can almost hear him walking the halls, studying the layout with invasive digits. A parasite. And you’d just let him in. 

The price on your head was scary, sure, but there was already a threat in your very home; learning the rooms like he had any right to be here—like he knew the memories that lived in the walls. Holidays were spent in the main living room, meals made as a family in the kitchen as the butlers watched with happy eyes. The man-made pond in the back behind a wall of green trees because your mother loved to watch the birds. 

This house was generations of your very bloodline. Stories along every surface. History.

“He can’t be here.” You gasp, curling inward as you try and suck down larger breaths. Trying to calm yourself down with reassurance. “He’ll leave soon. He has too. He will.” 

Just wait until Mom gets back, she’ll make them go away. The thought makes air return to your lungs; shaking come to a drawn-out ceasing point. Blinking, you let your hands fall to your lap, body slouching forward. She’ll make it all go away. 

When you find the strength to rise, your feet only stumble slightly, propelling you out of the bathroom towards your bare-bones room. A bed, nightstand, dresser, and couch are the only articles of furniture seen outwardly; a fireplace set into the wall with a rug by it. Curtains drawn closed and smelling of charcoal and old linens. 

Peeling back paint, you stare heavily at the nightstand’s drawer, seeing the copper handle and thinking. But you shake your head and dispel the thoughts.

The acidic taste in your mouth made you smack your lips, almost enough to make you want to gag again. But as easily as the high of injected panic came, it went with a low of immeasurable depths. Still, though, your fingers twitched with unruly nerves; anxious at every creak in the wood outside the door. 

It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair.

Exiting your room, your socked feet know where to step so the wood doesn’t talk back at you, one hand rubbing up and down your face to bring the aliveness back. You needed coffee. Something with caffeine or an immensely high sugar content to keep the rest of this at bay. 

As you turn a corner, your stomach grumbles, sweatpants bunched at your ankles. Food too, you decided.

Walking through the large, arched, entry to the kitchen, you make your way through in complete blackness. You frown, though aren’t surprised you’d spent most of the day inside your room—past the fabric barrier, the hidden French doors to the patio let in the faint light of a dying sun. 

Around seven, if you had to guess. The loss of time to you should have been concerning, but you had in fact grown used to it. 

Year number one after your father’s death was…really nothing more than a blank slate. But you didn’t want to remember any of that, truth be told. 

Stumbling to the fridge, you grip the handle and pull. 

“Bit late for supper.” Yelling, you jerk your hand back and whip to the shadow in the entrance. 

The light snaps on with a flick of a finger, and the sheepish smile on Gaz’s face leaves vexation perforating the large room. 

“Shit, sorry.”

“Do you mind, Garrick?” Your eyes go to his chest, looking away just as quickly when you spot he’d taken off his outer later and was only in the white t-shirt that hugs his physique. The army pants still remained. “What are you even doing down here? I told you to stay on your side.”

“Not really able to do my job from the corner, yeah?” He walks closer, noticing the layer of dust over the gas stove, and raises a brow; wisely knowing not to comment. “Heard you comin’ down, thought I’d make sure everything was solid.”

“I’m fine.” You take out an old carton of milk, nose wrinkling at the smell emanating from the interior. Kyle’s eyes narrow, crossing his arms over his chest. “Now leave.”

You were too tired for this. 

Slamming the milk back into the fridge and closing the door, you plan to make the trip back to your room on an empty stomach. Kyle clears his throat, seeing an opportunity presenting itself. 

I have to get her to at least tolerate me. 

He’d take every occasion he could get.

“How about I have a go at it?” He speaks quickly as you freeze in the entryway, light from the kitchen spilling out into the hall. “Sandwiches?” 

Your gaze stays dead ahead, numbly stuck to the paint of the wall as if it was going to move and entrap you. Lips pulling back you feel your heart skip a beat. 

Kyle continues, hopeful. 

“Can’t say I'm an expert at it, but I spent a good few weeknights fixin’ my own meals on Base.” You can hear him moving behind you, opening the fridge back up, and grabbing the few items you had that weren't expired. Opening cupboards that your father opened. Grabbing pans that your mother made eggs in. “...Ma’am? That alright?” 

Your eye flinches minutely, cheek pulling upward in response. Yet the churning in your stomach was volatile, and if you went another hour without food you’d probably be passing out every time you stood up. What harm was there in taking advantage of the man? A meal was a meal, and you’d only had coffee today anyways.

Saying nothing, you take one step backward and pivot. 

Gaz watches in shock, not expecting you to take him up on his offer. By the heat in your eyes, he supposed you wished you didn’t. 

I didn’t see her at all after she disappeared into her room—not even when I was doing a sweep. The Sergeant had memorized the entire mansion layout in only two hours, going into every room except the one that had been closed tight. Yours. 

It wasn’t hard for him, though it was tedious the fourth run of the place. He’d counted every window and every entrance or exit door and had locked every one that led outside. 

But he kept re-walking past that closed door; his feet taking him back even as his mind stayed focused. 

Gaz’s hand had been poised to knock at one point during that time period but had only stayed stationary before it fell back down to his side. It was best not to push too hard. Inch before the mile.

In the kitchen, he sees you slip onto the island bar stool, always keeping a side-eye on his hands as they dig through sparse ingredients. 

Egg sandwich it is, then. 

Your voice rasps out, “I don’t remember ‘cook’ being in the detail description.” 

“Well, I sure hope it wasn’t.” Kyle chortles. His brown optics spare you a quick dart, seeing your form tense over the marble countertop as he swishes away dirt from the stove; placing a pan on top. You seem subdued…fingers twitch over the handle before his eagerness to earn your favor slowed. Sickly. 

Your skin is sunken, eyes blinking fast and snapping back and forth at every sound his body makes as if he’d pounce on you. Keeping an ever-heavy glare to where his pistol was sitting in the clutch of his belt—visible from over his shirt. 

The Brit swallows and looks back. 

“My job’s just to make sure you live another day, yeah?” The man’s voice lowers and you look to the coffee bar near the abandoned family table. “I’ll be in the background the entire time.” Leaving the chair, you go to it and speak as the sound of cracking eggshells hits your ear like a caving skull.

“I have rules.” 

Garrick nods firmly, but you don’t see it as you open a bag of fresh grounds and grab a mug.

“Copy, Ma’am. It’s your house—I’ll follow what I’m told.” He shifts his arms into a crossed position and leans back against the island as the eggs sizzle. You know he wants to say more, and too tired to care to give a retort or interrupt him, you let Gaz continue. “But I’m not willing to let that interfere with my mission. Any order I’m given’ll override what you tell me if it has to, even if it’s dodgy.” 

You watch dark liquid fill the coffee pot in a deluge of blackness like a wave of ink, and with that inkiness, the pit in your stomach gets larger. 

You could always poison him. Your eyes blink, hearing the slight beep of the machine in front of you as you grip your mug. 

Nightshade.

“Well, then,” Kyle looks for plates and finds a stack in a cupboard near the entrance. “What do I need to know, Ma’am?”

Hemlock.

“I don’t like people messing with my things,” you level, filling your cup to the brim as Gaz takes the pan off the heat; putting out the flame. “Stay out of my room and the room next to it if you insist on walking around.”

Choosing the opposite end of the wide island, you put your cup down and sit. A plate with a piece of bread with the yellow and white sight of scrambled eggs is slid into view. Kyle does what’s best and goes as far away from you as possible to eat his fill as well. 

The built man stands. 

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” he admits, “I’ll be taking a look around every day, but I doubt anyone would try and break in.” 

The fingers which had picked up a small piece of egg paused with it halfway to your mouth.

Castor Bean.

“Why do you say that?” 

“The curtains.” You spare a glance at his nose, watching him take a bite out of the bread and act like the answer was obvious. He swallows and you follow the action with a tight throat. “Erm, no offense, Ma’am,” you raise a brow slowly, “but am I safe to assume you never open them? Least, not all the way?”

“What do you think?” You eat your food and take a long sip of your drink, downing half the mug in one go. You really just wanted him to disappear like a bad dream.

Large quantities of Daffodil.

“Less of a chance of anyone else knowing where your room is—would take too long to figure out. Wasting time like that isn’t how foreign cells operate…quick and easy, y’know?... Any others?” Kyle finishes his plate quickly, moving to place it in the sink; not wanting to dwell on the comment.

You take a few bites of your own, wondering silently how he can eat so quickly, and nod.

“If you hear me screaming in the middle of the night, leave me alone.” 

The air thickens.

Kyle blanks as you continue eating slowly, taking brief intermissions between bits to sip down more coffee. The tired moments of your sluggish eyes and twitching fingers. You don’t think to explain further, content to hear in those few moments absolutely nothing besides the beating of your own heart.

Rosary Pea. Induces tremors, high heart rate, and burning in the back of the throat. Fatal. 

Your mother also liked her plants, though you doubted the fauna in the back garden was still alive. You hadn’t bothered to keep it up after the gardener quit.

“I’m…not following.” Gaz scratches at his chin, face pulled back in confusion, lightly shaking his head. “Screaming?”

“Screaming.” Taking the empty plate, you wipe at your mouth with the back of your hand. “In the night. I was quite clear.” A devious smirk whittles itself over your flesh like wood. “You’ve heard my scream before, you’ll recognize it. Sound carries.” Dismissively you toss your free hand. “As I said, it’s an old property.” 

Gaz tries his best to not engage, but the words he’d been wanting to tell you slither off his tongue after a moment's thought. He had to make you understand. Strain forms again.

His head shakes with a slight parting to his lips. No matter what, every conversation always led back to an argument. “Do you think this is a joke?”

You’re walking back to your seat with the coffee pot in hand, scooping up your mug with the intention of bringing both back to your room. 

You don’t answer right away, causing the man to call your name sternly; seriously. 

“I hate you. That’s not a joke.” Your words bounce, not at all hollow like the wound in your heart. Violent and utterly true. 

You didn’t want this man around—you didn’t want him in your house, you didn’t want him in your city, you didn’t want him living. 

Walking off, the suffocating air trails after you as you disappear into the darkness, avoiding the truth. 

But this situation is not a joke. Not at all, but you can never say that out loud. Where would your thin bit of control go? The brief moments of pleasure when you make Kyle’s patience and lax nature devolve into annoyance—even anger.

The words follow after you in a deep, aggravated, sigh. 

“Yeah, trust me, Love, I’m well aware.”

Cold was a day in hell before you admitted to this boy you were terrified.

But how many more days could you keep that act up? Three? Five? Ten? How long was this even going to go on?

Your mind was scattered, torn between duty and self-preservation. Killing the Sergeant would lead you down a dark path, one you weren't sure you could take by yourself. But was that justice?

Is that what Dad would want? You have to ask yourself as you make your way back to your room in pitch blackness, guided only by the old walls of a home even more dented and destroyed than you were. 

But the worst part was that you didn’t even know the answer anymore. And everybody who could help was limited to a stray cat that didn’t like you and a mother who left you here alone during your darkest moments.

The house was filled with ghosts, but you’d never felt more alone.

TAGS:

@fatunn, @mh073099, @littlegaypng, @untitled69555, @babybooday, @caffeine-anxiety-and-randomfacts, @underrated-youngster, @jupiterredolent, @idocarealot, @karnellius, @latteisaqueen, @petrat97, @jade-jax, @roosterr, @escapefromrealitysm, @renaich, @kysa32, @human-turtle, @aurora-basin, @terumisworld, @violet-phantoms, @xxfeelmylovexx, @neelehksttr, @nezukos-number1fan, @20forty9, @mdjenjen, @marrianena, @angeldaisyy, @alhaizen​, @homicidal-slvt, @emerald-valkyrie, @raissadoesthingslmao, @misfne​, @hollyhopesworld​, @wasteland-babe​, @330bpm-whiplash​, @anna-banana27​, @justherebecausesafarisucks, @sunnynomoar​, @doggydale​, @thecrispypotatochip, @74478328​, @blueoorchid​, @das-conk-creet-baybee​, @dragonfruit1985, @chestnutsandcurls​, @vamqyr3​, @lavalleon​, @nebula67​, @urfavsunkissedleo​

[timefospookies]

“Chuuuuuyaaaaa!”

That grating voice…

“Dazai?!”

The skinny man gave the redhead a friendly wave from the couch- which he was comfortably sprawled out on with a wine glass in hand, and the TV on to a barely audible volume.

“Welcome home!”

“How the hell did you get in here?”

“Broke in.”

Chuuya stared for a few seconds, contemplating the scene with an air of resignation.

“I shoulda known,” he sighed, giving in.

He was too damn tired to even get angry. He’d been working his ass off for weeks on end and now that he finally had time to go home, he wasn’t planning on wasting that time on this idiot. So he continued on his way, closing the door behind him, removing his shoes, and placing his coat and hat on the hanger by the door. He stretched out with a groan as he walked past the couch towards the kitchen, sensing Dazai’s hazel eyes lazily tracing his every move. The brunette swirled the wine in his glass and took another sip.

“That better not be one of my good wines!” Chuuya yelled over his shoulder.

“Ha! As if!” Dazai shouted back, “Wouldn’t be caught dead downing one of your stupid snobby wines. Talk about embarrassing!”

The redhead felt his ears heat up as he twitched in visible annoyance. He scoffed as he eventually shuffled back to the couch with a bottle of wine and another glass in hand.

“Oh, shut up! You know what’s really embarrassing? Thinking that cheap sake actually tastes good!”

“It does,” the man retaliated blankly.

“Yeah, if you like the taste of piss! Now, move your ass!”

Chuuya roughly shoved Dazai to the side in an attempt to slip into the couch.

“Wha-hey! Ow?! Go sit on the other side, it’s literally completely empty!” he cried.

“It’s my damn couch, I get to decide where I wanna sit!”

“Oh my godddd, Chuuya’s so childish,”

“Chuuya’s gonna kick you out of his fucking house if you don’t move!”

Dazai scoffed, rolling his eyes, but regardless he ceded a bit of his space to him.

After an extended physical struggle, the two settled into a comfortable enough position in which neither would complain- leaning against each other, practically shoulder to shoulder; Chuuya’s foot dangling off the arm of the couch, and his own arm rested around the couch’s back; Dazai with his legs clutched to his chest, and head rested on Chuuya’s shoulder. Their wine glasses had been abandoned at the foot of the couch. As the movie on the TV droned on, the redhead felt his eyelids grow incredibly heavy. He had to make an active effort to keep his head from falling forward, as the sudden weight it gained was far too much for him to handle. He sighed, and he sighed again, and again.

“Long day?”

“Hah,” he sneered, “Try month.”

“They’re working you to the bone, huh?”

In response, Chuuya sighed once more.

“Well, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that,” the other chuckled. “Sucks to be you.”

“Yeah, that’s real helpful, asshole.”

Dazai shifted, peeling himself away from Chuuya and adjusting their position to bring the shorter man closer to his chest.

“Mmm,” he murmured, running soft slender fingers through the mafioso’s hair “My poor, poor slug...”

He scratched gently at his scalp and Chuuya couldn’t help but give a content hum as he allowed himself to melt into the man’s chest, and wrapped his arms around his waist.

“Jus’…gonna lay here a sec…” he mumbled as he slowly drifted off.

His eyes fluttered shut and soon he was snoring softly into Dazai’s chest, to which the man could only smirk. It was endearing. The warmth of the moment. The comfort. Dazai wrapped his own arms around Chuuya’s body and settled into a more comfortable laying position, so that as he fixated on his lover’s steady breathing, he too could drift into peaceful slumber.

[damagedintellect]

Skk Brainrot

💌 A Walk in Each Other’s Shoes: Chapter 3  💌  

Summary:  “They’ve been like this since returning from their mission following up with the defection of several gifted members. From what Chuuya or rather “Dazai” said a new organization was behind said defections, Sonrisa, created a machine to essentially “steal” abilities-” Chuuya dropped from the ceiling in front of Hirotsu finishing the report “But it didn’t work how they originally designed it and now me and Chuuya switched bodies!” his smile was wide, almost creepily so. Chuuya doesn’t smile often and especially not like that. Without a doubt, it was Dazai in Chuuya’s body.

Notes:  The bodyswap AU no one asked for, Dazai I gift you with emotions, I wanted to play with the hc that “No Longer Human” nullifies more than abilities

💌 Word count: 1,970 💌  <= Previous Chapter | 4 coming soon

In the other room Dazai was having a hard time staying awake. Food, a shower, the long exhausting training montage heck even the slug’s comfortable pajamas were lulling him into this sleepytime junction. It's not like he needed to wait for Chuuya. He knows the other will rewrap the bandages just fine but it's still gnawing at the back of his mind. Although he's starting to wonder, has Chuuya’s couch always been this cozy? Dazai stretched, yawning as he sprawled out over the full surface area, something he couldn’t do before. It felt like the cushions were cradling him in just the right way so that he could pass out without any effort at all. Normally his chronic insomnia would kick in and he'd lay there staring at the ceiling for hours until he took the pills Mori gave him. It frustrated him knowing that Mori took extra measures to prevent him from being able to overdose on them. Which is why Dazai has always treated them as a last ditch effort. Right now however Dazai thinks this is the first time he's going to fall asleep without copious amounts of effort on his part. A soft smile graced his lips as his eyes slipped shut.

Chuuya didn’t take very long showers so color him surprised that in the span of maybe ten minutes tops Dazai had managed to pass out on the couch. That's gotta be a record for the mackerel. Chuuya’s never seen himself look so peaceful before. It's bizarre to know that this is Dazai in his body. He frowns, if Dazai wasn’t awake then that means he rewrapped most of the bandages for nothing. 

“Tsk”

Chuuya fluffed his freshly blow dried hair as he grabbed a blanket and draped it over him. At least he didn't have to hear Dazai nag him that he couldn't sleep and that the only way to remedy it was for Chuuya to tell him a bedtime story. He only fell for that bullshit once and it was more out of habit than anything else. It's not his fault he used to do that back in the sheep for some of their younger members. Dazai teased him about it for a week even though he was the one who fucken asked!

Chuuya turned off the lights and flopped down on his own bed. His body was tired but his mind was so awake. Which was unlike him. Typically Chuuya could fall asleep any time anywhere. He rolled over to his side and groaned. 

“Don't tell me this is curtsy of one of Dazai’s bodily quirks.”

He mumbled in frustration as he got out of bed. Sometimes Chuuya will fall asleep listening to music. If he plays some it might help. He turned the volume down low and crawled back under the covers, closing his eyes. The last thing he needs is for Dazai to wake up complaining about the music. He tries to focus on the melody while imagining laying in an open field. The warmth of the sun, a nice breeze, just the quiet serenity of being at peace. Chuuya frowns, it isn't working. He smothers himself with his pillow. It was going to be a long night.

___

The feeling of weightlessness and floating in a dark expanse. It reminded Dazai of the first time he jumped in the river except it was less cold and wet. There was no uncomfortable pressure pulling air from his lungs but somehow he could still hear his muffled screaming. Slowly he opened his eyes only to be met with the ceiling fan not more than a foot from his face. In a panic he was dropped from a decent height as he woke up and registered what had been happening. 

He whimpered on the floor groggily as he regained his composure. The dull ache of falling was only second to whatever that incessant noise was. Rubbing his lower back, Dazai finally realized what the familiar sound was and stumbled to Chuuya’s room. As he swung the door open he was met with the sound of his own voice screaming. It was sincerely grating on the ears and at this volume it really was going to wake up the whole neighborhood. Now you’re not supposed to wake people up from nightmares but at this moment in time Dazai didn’t give a shit, he wanted to go back to sleep. Plus it was his body he could do whatever he wanted to it. 

Chuuya seemed to be twisting and turning in the center of the bed. It took Dazai a moment staring at his own face before he jumped into action. For a split second part of him thought this was a dream where he is outside of his body watching himself having a nightmare. He nearly forgot about their little switch despite being woken up because he was using Chuuya’s ability by accident. He wasn't sure how to go about waking his counterpart. Dazai tried to grab his shoulder but was easily pushed away, almost thrown off the side of the bed. To be fair he had to lean pretty far over to reach the other. The bed frame was raised fairly high considering Chuuya’s height and it didn’t help that his bed was a big luxury mattress so the center was much further than normal. With all of Chuuya’s thrashing about Dazai decided to crawl on top of him to shake him awake.

“Hey. Chuuya it's just a dream, you're gonna wake the whole neig-”

Chuuya’s eyes snapped open as he bolted upright eyes frantically darting around the room before scowling at Dazai being mere inches apart. He didn't say anything, still trying to process the visions his subconscious tailor made for him. He layed back down covering his face, annoyed. Just when he finally drifted to sleep he was awoken harshly by his own corrupted thoughts, and Dazai.

“Get off.” Chuuya demanded. Dazai compiled but opted to sit next to him pulling his knees to his chest. The former brunette made no effort to leave or get off the bed. They both looked at each other for a moment before Chuuya huffed again.

“Now get out.”

Chuuya continued to glare at him when he didn’t move. It was bad enough he had to be shaken awake, he didn't need Dazai’s pity too. There was an awkward pause between the two as Dazai mulled over how to bring up the theory in his mind.

“You know, I memorized your files back at the lab. I didn't think it was possible but science was able to do this,” he gestured to each other. “So I'm not really that surprised anymore.”

Chuuya raised an eyebrow as he crossed his arms. “What’s your point?”

“N somehow figured out how to revoke your capacity for dreaming. Naturally your brain would have a backlog to process, especially now that you have a vessel that has the capability.” Dazai pulled back the blanket enough to shimmy his way in, making himself at home beside Chuuya. Dazai already thought the couch was comfy but he was not prepared for the heavenly feeling of Chuuya’s bed. He practically melted into sleep again had it not been to the tension that lingered over the elephant in the room.

“Oi, I said get out!” Chuuya sat up about to push him away but Dazai sighed. “I don't like it either but unless you want to get your dick stuck in the ceiling fan you have to at least be within arms reach.”

Chuuya raised an eyebrow. “You were sleep floating? I haven’t done that since I first joined the sheep.” 

Dazai stiffened. Well that seemed to tank his self esteem. He was only as good as a seven year old, and here he thought he had natural talent considering the given circumstances. While he never properly studied physics in school it wasn’t that hard to understand. That’s disappointing, but not more disappointing than being stark awake now. They both took a long pause, it was starting to make Dazai uncomfortable. Chuuya was being too quiet, what happened to trying to kick him out? Dazai cleared his throat. “So how’d you stop the sleep floating?”

“Like hell if I know! I guess I just learned how to use my ability.” Chuuya grumbled, turning around. The warmth coming off of Dazai was oddly comforting especially since he was still shaken up. Chuuya has figured out that Dazai’s ability doesn’t completely nullify his emotions otherwise he wouldn’t be so on edge at the moment, it just dampens them severely. In a way he’s almost glad the other stayed. Although he didn’t want to talk about it in its entirety, but an eye for an eye. Chuuya hummed to himself. 

“Are all dreams like that?”

“Not particularly, but I don’t know what happened.” Dazai turned his head to look back at Chuuya. “You wanna talk about it?”

“Absolutely not, I just want to go back to sleep.”

“Fair enough.” 

They fell silent after that, letting the faint piano fill the dead air. Once again Dazai felt like he was floating but this time it was because Chuuya’s bed felt like sleeping on a cloud. The soft music was starting to lull him back to sleep with ease. He yawned loudly, spreading his limbs out. Dazai was on the cusp of sleep when he heard Chuuya grumble “Your body sucks.” When Chuuya didn’t get a response he turned around to see his counterpart had already fallen asleep.

“You gotta be fucken kidding me.” Still no response, Dazai was out like a light. Chuuya huffed watching his chest rise and fall. He still wasn’t used to the fact that he was able to stare at his own face in the candid. On impulse he reached out to poke his cheek, surprisingly squishy. He retracted his hand as Dazai’s face twitched, his mouth fell open slightly as he turned toward where Chuuya’s finger was. A few strands of red hair fell with the movement. Chuuya couldn’t help but marvel at his face. He didn’t know how to describe what he was feeling. His hands itched for some reason and he was starting to have heart palpitations and the longer he observed his face the warmer he felt his cheeks get. Chuuya took a deep breath and turned around. That was weird, he doesn’t remember feeling this sensation earlier. Was it residual tremors from the nightmare? It’s not impossible but he doubts it. Without any information he can’t exactly deduce what the strange echo is supposed to be so he shrugs and tries to go back to sleep.

He tries to slow his heart rate down and steady his breathing. Once again attempting to quiet his mind and clear his thoughts. It seemed to be working until he felt the blanket being gently pulled off his body. His eyes snap open to see Dazai starting to float up, taking the blanket with him. Not good. Luckily he was still within arm's distance and as Chuuya grabbed the other’s hand he flopped back down on the bed starfishing out into Chuuya’s personal space. The former redhead rolled his eyes. He didn’t bother pushing Dazai’s leg away nor did he let go of his hand. If he didn’t want Dazai floating away again they would need to be touching anyway so what’s the point. 

Coincidentally the warmth radiating off of his body was strangely soothing and after a few minutes he could feel his eyes getting heavy. Chuuya exhales, repositioning himself to absorb as much warmth as possible. His body was finally relaxing enough to drift back to sleep after being stark away for what felt like hours. Eventually the soft music faded away from his focus as he finally nodded off.

[choccyhearts]

i've been as snug as a bug in a rug every night lately, and i can't stop thinking about cuddling with eddie bear and being two snuggly bugs together🥺🥰

he comes home from a long day, body worn and tired. he slugs toward his room, shoulders slouched and eyes drooping, before lazily pushing his bedroom door open with his foot as he lets a loud yawn. once his eyes settle on the lump on his bed, his eyes brighten up, and his mouth breaks into a toothy grin.

all burrowed beneath his blankets is his sweet baby angel.

he quietly undresses himself down to his boxer shorts before tugging on the first pair of sweatpants he sees. he gently lifts the numerous blankets covering you, feeling like he's unwrapping a present on christmas. he slides under them and rolls close to you.

you stir and mumble as two arms wrap around you.

"jus'me, sugar, only me," eddie murmurs.

you grumble and cuddle closer to him, very happy to have your personal heater again.

"stop leavin' me, i always get cold," you sleepily complain.

eddie chuckles softly, his heart filled with warmth and love at your words.

"alright, baby, i'll try to stop."

he kisses your temple before relaxing into you, ready for a nice, long nap.

[natsarrownecklacx]

Would you still love me?

Natasha Romanoff x Reader

Summary: Your girlfriend, Natasha, tries to get you to sleep after a long day. But you have a pressing question on your mind that can’t be left till morning.

Word count: 1,035

fluff / angst if you really look for it

ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ

Sometimes you get random thoughts.

Not like usual random thoughts, for example ‘did I turn off the oven after making dinner?’ or ‘did I lock the front door when I got home?’

No. Your random thoughts are a bit… funnier. Entertaining, if you do say so yourself, but strange. At least that’s what your friends usually say about them.

Right now is one of those times. A random thought has wormed its way into your head and won’t get out.

You're cuddled up in bed with Natasha, her arms wrapped securely but comfortably around your body, your back pressed against her front.

The warmth and love emanating from the woman behind you has lulled you into a sleepy state. That, along with the fingers running up and down your side soothingly, has your eyes fluttering shut.

But still, your mind wouldn’t allow you to give into the sleep calling your name. Not with a pressing question on your mind.

“Nat.” You whisper into the previously silent room.

“Yes, Dekta.” She whispers back, wanting to keep the room's atmosphere calming in the hopes of getting you to sleep soon.

“Would you still love me if I was a slug?”

The question was so random, so out of pocket, that Natasha stills her movement on your side. Her mind working overtime to try to figure out where this could have come from. Then again, this is the kinda question she should have expected to come from you.

Natasha takes a second to think about it. Would she still love you if you were a slug?

Her fingers pick back up their motion.

You wait patiently for a reply. Focusing on the steady movement of her fingers, soft against your skin.

“No.” Natasha answers after a few moments.

She says it so surely. Like she has no regret for her answer. She says it as confidently as though she was answering a question of her own name.

“No?” You ask, feeling tears well up in your eyes. “You wouldn’t love me anymore? You’d leave me?”

A moment passes as Natasha thinks over her answer. You hope for a change in her response, some kind of acknowledgment that what she’d just said was mean. You don’t know why though. 

It’s just a silly question, right.

“No, I would not love you anymore if you were a slug.” Natasha says again. This time emphasizing her point with the full sentence.

The sensation of Natasha’s fingers dragging against your skin provides you with something to focus on. Something to ground yourself with.

Over and back.

Over, back.

Over, back.

She wouldn’t love you anymore.

You let the thought sink in. It hurts. You don’t know why, but it does.

“Oh.”

The silence that fills the room after that is different then the one before, at least for you. It’s no longer comforting, it’s suffocating.

She said she wouldn’t love you anymore. She actually said those words.

You're no longer tired, you don’t want to sleep. You want to cry.

But crying over something so silly would be stupid and so you do your best to stifle the tears threatening to break thought the confines of your eyes.

“You never asked me why.” The redhead mumbles, her forehead pressed against the back of your head.

“What?” You ask, doing your best to hide the sadness in your voice.

“You never asked me why I wouldn’t love you anymore. You know, if you were a slug.”

Clearing your throat, you ask the redhead the question she wants to be asked. Doing your best to keep your voice steady as you speak.

“Why…? Why wouldn’t you love me anymore?”

It comes out more desperate then you had intended it to. Your genuine sadness at her fast and confident answer showing even though you plead with yourself not to let it.

“Just a silly question”, you repeat to yourself over and over in your head while you wait for Natasha’s reply. “Just a silly question with no real meaning.”

“I wouldn’t love you anymore because it would hurt to much.”

Your eyes close as you try to focus on the push and pull of Natasha’s fingers once again.

Push and pull.

Push, pull.

Push, pull.

“I can have a future with you like this, y/n.”

She says the words so quietly. As though she’s afraid that, is she says it to loudly, someone will come and steal you away from her.

“I can take you on dates, I can introduce you to my family as my girlfriend. I- I can get down on one knee and ask you to be my wife. I can- we can have kids, y/n. Our own kids, who I will love so much because they will be mini versions of you.”

The admission causes your breath to hitch in your throat. Hearing Natasha’s response to your question brings tears to your eyes, only this time for a whole other reason. This time, you don’t even attempt to stop them.

“I can hold you like this.”

Natasha tightens her hold on you to emphasize her words. Bringing your body impossible closer to hers as she brings her head to rest in the crook of your neck, inhaling the sent of your shampoo that she loves so much.

She needs you.

She needs to be able to hold you, to have you in her arms.

To love you.

“To have all that right in front of me and then have it taken away? No baby, I wouldn’t love you anymore, I really don’t think I could. It would hurt too much. I think- I think the only way to survive that would be to stop altogether.”

Your tears become more heavy hearing just how much you mean to the woman you love. A woman who you love equally, with all your heart.

“To survive losing you, y/n… I’d have to hate you. I couldn’t live with the pain of loving you and not having you.”

Natasha is getting emotional at the thought of not having you in her life anymore. You can hear it in her voice. Feel it in the way she shakes ever so slightly as she holds you close to her chest. In the way her breath picks almost unnoticeable against the back of your neck.

But you do notice. How could you not.

“Please, Dekta. Please don’t ever leave me, because I can’t stand the thought of hating you. I can’t bare the thought of living without you.”

You take a moment to let her words sink in.

You need to.

When you’d asked Natasha the silly question playing on loop in your mind you didn’t expect her to give you such a declaration of love. Nor did you expect to find yourself falling more in love with the woman then you already were.

When you respond to Natasha, not even trying to hide the emotion in your voice as you do, you tighten your own hold on the woman. Bringing one of her hands, guided by yours, up to your lips to press a reassuring kiss there.

“I love you, Natasha. So, so much. I promise I will never leave you.”

Your words soothe the other woman’s heart in a way she could never put into words.

Natasha places a kiss to the back of your head, letting her soft lips linger there to convey all the love she holds for you.

You lie there for a while, just listening as her breaths even out, feeling the rise and fall of her chest against your back.

She loves you. She loves you so much she has your who future together planned out.

You drift off not long after her. Dreaming of the life you and Natasha will have together.

The love you will both share.

ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ <3 ⴵ

A/n- Fr took all my strength not to add the heart break into the ending I had originally planned. Decided to leave it nice n soft :)