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angelkurenai · 4 years ago

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Lucky idiot - Dean Winchester x Reader

Title: Lucky idiot

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Warnings: None

Summary: Hey sweetheart May I request a DeanxReader Imagine where reader is a mermaid but with a twist?Idk if you know the kids show called 'H2O just add water'But basically reader always turns into a mermaid if she gets into contact with water.And I imagined that reader would rescue dean from drowning after he was pushed off from a cliff by a ghost or sth?Then like thelittle mermaid moment where he sees her face after waking up.Then sam shows up and reader disappears.Then they meet her at a cafe I❤️u

“Look, all I'm saying is if you'd let me drive for this ti-”

“Get back to research, Sammy, I've got enough things on my head. Don't need you to make me more dizzy than I already am.” Dean grumbled before his brother could even get to finish his sentence.

“Which is exactly my point here.” Sam couldn't help but huff “Do you really think it's a good idea to drive while being so dizzy? I mean, for the love of, Dean, you nearly drowned three to four hours ago! Unless you're trying to finish the ghost's job right now, I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, letting me drive would give both of us higher chances of getting out of the car alive.”

“Bold of you to assume that if I let you drive, you'd get out of this car alive.” the older Winchester retorted with a half smile, that didn't feel even half as real though, before focusing as much as he could on the road before him “Besides, I've been more than nearly killed plenty of times and despite the trip to the other side, I was always the one to drive the car. I'm fine, just like every other time, Sammy. Only impatient to get some food. Again nothing new.”

“And that's supposed to calm me down now, or what? Honestly, Dean-” Sam huffed, shaking his head “I can't understand you sometimes. It was pure luck that you even found yourself out of there, alive. I mean, if the fall from that kind of cliff didn't do it then the water would have certainly been it and you know it.”

“But again it wasn't. Neither of the two did it for me as you can see, tough as it might have been. Unless, of course, your ranting is looking to be a serious contestant in that?”

“I assure you, me and my ranting are not trying to bore you to death. It's the last thing I want. But that doesn't mean I am not going to talk about it. Seriously Dean-” another shake of his head that this time earned an eye roll from the older Winchester “You could have drowned so easily and yet somehow you found your way to the shore, which let me point out is absolutely not normal. Not in the kind of situation you were in. Not unless there was some kind of help coming from very deep within that part of the water which is even more disturbing to think about. Maybe in equal measures to you not admitting that you being safe and sound on the shore within minutes from the spot you fell is suspicious. What if the ghost isn't the only supernatural creature here to begin with? What if we have to look more into other beings like...”

Sam kept going. Dean was sure of it. Not because he was listening closely, not because he was paying attention to every word and pondering over it because he had to admit that he hadn't made it out of the water on his own. There was no way he would have made it out alive on his own, that much he knew and could understand just like every other sane human being would easily would. That didn't mean it was because that's what he was currently wondering about. Not when there was little wondering to do about it, no. Both because he didn't have the mind to and also because... well, for the same reason as to why he couldn't listen to his brother at the moment. The images running through his mind.

Yes, he was sure Sam was talking to him but only because of the murmuring he could hear, which sounded more like a distant echo. And it was exactly because of those images which he couldn't shake off, he could never forget, that everything else around him sounded and looked distant and blurry. As if he wasn't part of the scenery, as if he wasn't living in it, but was actually more immersed in another world.

And truth be told, he was in a way. He was too focused in his memories, in the images, in the feelings that were still as vivid as they were a couple hours ago when he really felt them that he was almost reliving the moment. Even if part of that world, part of those feelings and moment were also just as distant and blurry as the present.

Dean was struggling, his entire body was struggling, his lungs were struggling, every cell and every inch of him, struggling to hold onto life. He wanted to hold onto the air in his lungs desperately so but as even more of it left and he couldn't find new one, his actions became more frantic and panicked than his thoughts. The fact that he had not been able to prepare for any of it had not helped to give him a head start of any kind, making it easier and faster for his vision to get blurry and filled with dark spots as the air and therefore fight left his body.

It was only when his mind had started feeling like it didn't care anymore, like there was no reason for fight and like maybe, just maybe, sleep would be a good choice. It wouldn't hurt anymore and he wouldn't have to struggle too hard, even if he really didn't get the chance to wake up ever again. His mind was in such a haze that all reason and will had left, perhaps even his perception of reality too. Because in his haze as he looked up he saw the blur of something that shouldn't have been there not only because he was all alone and sinking but also because it looked like something that shouldn't exist.

Then again, as he thought of it now in the car, he found about the existence of many things that shouldn't exist. Killed plenty of them too.

And yet none like this. It was no surprise that he kept it to himself, that he still wondered if it was all real in the first place. The flash of a shimmering white tail, not one of a shark or a dolphin, a fish could have been accurate if it wasn't for its shape and the colors that it reflected, sparkling under the minimal sun that could reach such depth almost holographic, extending long - almost endless in his eyes at that moment - brushing past his arms and legs, it was all still there in his mind. Vivid and clear as much as it had been that moment, which wasn't to say a lot, but he still could not shake off the feeling of arms wrapping around his body. Real hands, belonging to a human, touched his face. A small shake, he was sure there was that, but not only was his head a mess his eyes were also nearly closed and what sight he had was blurry. It didn't last long, Dean was surprised to even remember it, before a pair of arms wrapped around his torso and it was in that moment he felt the pull only followed seconds later by water moving past him at a speed that is by no means normal, but is certainly enough for Dean to close his eyes shut completely. The dizziness it offered mixing with his already hazy mind, led easily enough to him losing both track and sight of what was happening; and he was fairly sure his consciousness too.

He felt like he was coming in and out of consciousness far too many times for anything to make sense. There was no telling apart reality from hallucination to even dreams.

The feeling of being dragged into the shore was something like a ghost feeling in the back of his mind, arms around his torso dragging him and struggling to pull him out of the sea, sounds of struggling and an effort beyond the person's strength – because obviously the lack of water and presence of drenched clothes that only became heavier this way along with the sticking sand made it all much harder to move. Similar to that was the feeling of a pair of hands, human-like, far too human-like and that somehow set Dean on edge, that pressed on his chest, pushing with all the strength the person could master. And certainly similar to the feeling of hands on his face, the touch much more clear than when he was underwater, though still under a veil of haziness in his minds.

All of those moments, though, despite how blurry they seemed, despite how hard it was for him to figure out if they were real, he knew there was one that he couldn't have dreamed of; that it had to be real. The feeling of lips pressing on his cheek, chaste and feather-like and very hesitant much like the way a forehead rested against his; all shortly after he felt the water pour out of his lips – out of his lungs – like there was no ends. But there was, and in the end he could finally get the precious and much-needed oxygen his body was craving for. He was probably – certainly – still very dizzy and his vision had plenty of black spots but there was no mistaking the sigh of relief he heard, human-like so human-like, and a hand cupping his cheek.

“What could you possibly be doing there you idiot?” the voice was low, sounding very much English and very much human “If only you knew how lucky you were.” a small laugh, and it was probably the sweetest sound he'd ever heard, one he would never forget, he should never forget and he knew he'd hate himself if ever forgot “Lucky idiot. Hm seems fitting, since I can't get a name out of you. Who knows what-”

He could not remember more words being uttered, not from that soft and caring voice. He only remembered someone, someone that sounded a lot like Sam and was most likely him though his dizzy brain couldn't even put that together, call out his name in the far distance before came the sound of hasty rustling and water splashing. It was in those hasty few seconds that he got something he wished he could hold onto forever: His eyes slid open, just slightly so, catching sight of a face, your face.

Admittedly he had felt all air leave his lungs for the second time in that moment, and when your eyes met his and he noticed you pause for a half second, he couldn't stop himself from reaching out to touch you to make sure you were real. Or at least try to, because he didn't have the strength to get more than halfway there. Fact which he regretted later because he couldn't tell if you really had been a fragment of his imagination, what if the face he saw was only in his mind – hard as it would be for him to even dream and therefore make up such a sight.

A sight that combined with the very much mermaid-like, he could only now tell that he was driving and had sobered up, tail vanishing below the surface of the water had been keeping him on edge. Too much for it all to just have been a fragment of his own imagination. Not because it sounded and looked too crazy, nothing could with the kind of life he had, but because he didn't want it to be just him. He wanted it to be real even if he didn't know where he would ever get to see that face, feel those gentle and caring hands that had pulled him to his safety (if he was right about all of it) and hear that compassionate if not clearly teasing voice that revealed a real spark and personality underneath that he could easily adore.

Wait- Adore?

“That's it. That's the caf- Wait- Aren't you gonna stop he- Dean? Dean? Dean!” Sam nearly yelled to get his brother's attention, thankfully making the older Winchester press on the breaks and make the car come to a halt. The younger Winchester could only thank their lucky stars that the road was empty at the moment.

“Huh? Wh-what?” Dean blinked in surprise, as if finally having been brought back to reality.

“Alright, that's it.” Sam huffed stubbornly “We go in there, get something to eat and then you give me the keys and I'm keeping them for the next three days for sure. And I won't hear a single thing from you. We're lucky to be both alive at the moment. Got it?”

He did not leave any room for argument as he stormed out of the car and made his way to the cafe they were originally heading to. Dean, in all honesty, couldn't be more glad for it. It had been anything but silent in his head all this time, he could use a couple seconds of not thinking and not talking to put himself together because at the end of the day he had work to do as well.

Or at least that was what he kept telling himself, repeating the words over and over again like a mantra, to the point he almost believed it. To the point he believed that he had gotten you off his mind, to the point he believed he was getting over everything and to the point that he had convinced himself he was focused on the job and there would be no further distractions. Or at least so he thought until he pushed the cafe's door open and before he could take more than one step inside, felt something – or rather someone – collide with him.

He looked down, lips parted and ready to retort, only for the words to die out in his lips and every though to drown in the sea of disbelief and surprise that took over his entire being. Once more all air had left his lungs and yet the struggle for air had never been as painfully sweet as now.

“Well, look at that...” your voice was soft just like the smile that formed on your lips as your eyes locked with his and Dean still had trouble wrapping his mind around the fact that you were there, right in front of him; before you added in a low voice “It's the lucky idiot.”

#supernatural #supernatural imagine #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural one shot #supernatural x reader #dean #dean winchester #dean x reader #dean winchester x reader #dean imagine #dean winchester imagine #dean fanfiction #dean winchester fanfiction #dean one shot #dean winchester one shot #mermaid #fantasy #au #x reader

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fancytrinkets · 3 years ago

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writing tag game

Thank you for tagging me @johaeryslavellan!

How many works do you have on Ao3?

What's your total Ao3 wordcount?

246,241

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The top 4 are Good Omens fic followed by one Dragon Age 2 fic from years ago:

The Angel Line (humor) (Aziraphale/Crowley)

The Naked Truth (humor) (Aziraphale/Crowley)

Obliviate (romance, bittersweet, happy ending) (Aziraphale/Crowley)

The Last Battle (humor) (Aziraphale/Crowley)

In Good Hands (humor) (FHawke/Varric)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I didn’t used to respond to every comment back when I started posting, but now I reply to everything. I just love the whole commenting process. I like talking about the world I’m writing in with other people who love it, too. I am always SO EXCITED to see the (1) notification for my ao3 inbox. And it is unbearably wonderful to see a (2), (3), or more at a time. I’ve noticed I’m usually equally excited if it’s a comment on my fic or a reply to a comment I’ve left on someone else’s fic. (Sometimes I experience a mix of appreciation and disappointment when it’s a new comment for me if I’m expecting a reply back from another writer about their fic. That’s such a strange feeling and I wonder sometimes if other people get that, too.)

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Oh, I don’t really do angst. And probably that’s not what people want from me anyway, judging by how many of my top fics are humorous.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

I mean they all have some degree of happy ending, so I’m not sure how to measure them against each other. For some of them, the happy ending is also a ‘happy ending’ if you know what I mean..

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you've written?

I don’t. Unless you count the silly stories my friends and I wrote for each other in high school? We definitely had some X-Files, Lord of the Rings, vampire universes intersecting with each other, but I can’t really remember a lot of that because I was 15 then and now I am 40.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I haven’t. I’m very glad about that.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Oh, yes I do. It’s the loving, vanilla kind mostly. I am willing to read more adventurously than I’m interested in writing.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No. I mean I hope! If I have, I haven’t realized it!

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! A bunch of my Good Omens fic has been translated into German and Russian, which is so cool. I love that people translate fics. I can’t read either of those languages, so I can’t personally vouch for how the translations turned out in terms of mood and tone and pacing with the word choices used, but that’s part of the beauty of being in fandom spaces where everyone is coming in with their own talents to share and develop. Translation is an art that needs to be practiced and no two translators will approach a work the same way.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have not, though it was something I was interested in — and seriously considering — with a wonderful, talented Good Omens writing friend before I kind of lost all my steam for Good Omens writing.

What's your all time favourite ship?

Whatever ship I’m into at any give time. So that means right now it’s Dorian/MTrevelyan from Dragon Age, but who knows what it’s going to be in 5 or 10 years...

What's a WIP you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Oh, I have a Good Omens fic set in 1885 that stalled out because I was doing too much research and not enough writing. I’m not sure if I want to finish it, though. I just put a lot of outlining and drafting time into it. And then I just lost momentum. I doubt I’ll ever come back to that and I’m okay with it.

What are your writing strengths?

I’m good at dialogue. I also think I’m good at keeping an eye on the pacing at the scene level — speeding things up when I need to, slowing things down when it’s called for. And I am REALLY good at editing. I don’t hang onto stuff that doesn’t fit just because I like it. I have removed thousands and thousands of words of writing I really love just because it’s not quite where things need to go. I find that fun. I always save what I cut and sometimes reuse it later.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Sometimes I really struggle with character voice. While dialogue is a strength in general, that same thing can be really tough when I’m not hearing the voice of certain characters the way I’d like to. I also think a potential weakness is how I don’t like putting characters through deeply traumatic experiences. I like caretaking and treating the characters I write with gentleness. It’s deeply enjoyable for me, though perhaps it’s not always what makes a story satisfying.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I don’t do it. My native language is English and my two learned languages —Spanish and French — are so long abandoned that it would be difficult to get any of it back. So I tend not to include other languages because I don’t have that expertise. When I’m reading a fic in English — because that’s all I can read well — I always appreciate footnotes with translations for the parts in a different language. I don’t tend to have the sustained focus to go back, copy-paste, and Google translate everything. So anything that isn’t translated in a footnote is just content I miss. That’s totally fine if the writer isn’t writing it for me — if they want to add extra layers of meaning for multilingual people. But if the writer wants everyone to know, then please, yes, put the footnote in!

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

The X-Files with my friends in high school, but while there was an internet back then, none of us had connected computers, so these were just stories we wrote for each other.

What's your favourite fic you've written?

I don’t know if I can pick one! I like most of what I write even years later, but I don’t know how to stack them against each other. Some are serious while others are funny, and even cracky — some stick close to canon, while some are deeply transformative and weird. They all feel so different to me.

Right now I am really enjoying my Dragon Age Inquisition work-in-progress, Bold Indeed, a Trevelyan/Dorian romance that deals with: love, friendship, loss, gentleness, justice, what we owe each other (yes, I thinking of you, Chidi from The Good Place), what it means to become a ‘good’ murderer as part of your job, how easy it can be to fit within authoritarian structures, how difficult it can be to push against and overturn an established order, the inadequacy of kindness — but also the potentially transformative power of kindness. And all of that is tucked into the story of a mature and gentle romance between two people who are each going through a process of personal growth and change. Anyway, it’s a weird writing project, but I love it despite my occasional anxieties about whether I am a deeply bad person (hah, yes, I know how that sounds, but I also feel it seriously sometimes).

#memes #writing tag game #dragon age fanfiction #good omens fanfiction #my writing

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that-one-girl-behind-you · 4 years ago

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Illicio 19/?

Part 18

CWs for this chapter: -Depression -Parental neglect -Past implied suicidal ideation (These are present in the very first POV, and are related to Martin's past. Please feel free to skip it if the topics make you uncomfortable) -Canon character death

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Gerry's never been to the Lonely before, though he's felt its grip on him many times in his life.

It has loomed over him ever since he was a child, alone and confused and fearing and craving his mother's hugs in equal measure. Back when he first started learning about the fears he did wonder why it never struck, why it never pulled him in to devour him whole. It was only later that he understood what made him so resistant to this particular fear.

You defeat the Lonely with love, and Gerry has never been short of that.

XIX

Martin is seven years old the first time he realizes how utterly and completely alone he is. Back then he still goes by a name that isn't his, and he doesn't yet have the words to describe why it feels wrong.

He looks around at all the children in his classroom; their clothes look clean and smell good, and their mothers not only pick them up from school, but they look happy when doing so. He asks mum once why she never smiles, does something hurt? Maybe the doctor can give her more pills?

Mum doesn't respond. She merely gives Martin that long, serious look that always makes Martin think he said something dumb, and goes to her room, leaving Martin alone with his cold supper and a slow gathering fog that he can't see.

Martin is fourteen years old when he first understands he's unwanted. He's begun to figure out who he is, and his clothes are ill-fitting, just like he himself is, bouncing around between groups of people that aren't really his peers, and merely accept his presence like one would any other part of the scenery.

Mum is no longer subtle, and the look isn't serious as much as it is distasteful, no matter how hard Martin tries. He would like to tell someone about this, but when he thinks of reaching out he remembers the only messages in his old school notebooks are those of well-meaning teachers, wishing him luck and praising a potential that Martin knows isn't there.

He's sixteen years old, when Martin comes to the conclusion that he's perhaps meant to be alone forever. Mum's illness has gotten so bad that Martin has to drop off school to work and care for her. She doesn't look at him anymore, not even when Martin finally shows up looking like he's always wanted to. He doesn't know exactly how to feel about this, because as much as he didn't want a fight, it's yet another proof that his existence is irrelevant in her life.

He tries to tell himself this is just his poor self esteem. Of course his mother loves him, she's his mother. She kept him alive, she cared for him, she's just... ill. And she's always been strong-willed. To a child it might've looked like irritation, but Martin is an adult now and he's learned life is not at all like in Hallmark movies, and if he sat down to cry every time mum didn't say 'I love you' back, he'd seldom have time to do anything else.

Martin is twenty two when he accepts he's exhausted. Of this life, of his mother, of himself. He wants to do something about it, but the pill bottles behind the bathroom mirror scare him just as much as the University pamphlets he hides under his pillow.

He strides up to the imposing looking building by the river with his forged CV in hand because he doesn't know what else to do. He gets the job, but as the Head of the Institute shakes his hand to dismiss him, Martin looks at Elias Bouchard's bright green eyes, and knows that he knows. That somehow this man has realized he's an impostor, that he's gotten this far only by convincing people he's far more capable than he actually is.

But he needs the money, and this job is far less demanding than anything else he could've gotten with his lack of credentials. He signs the contract, and he doesn't notice the jealous cling of the fog around him, as the Eye turns its gaze on him.

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"What is this place?" Tim asks when they come into the cavernous chamber.

Basira looks around, nailed in place by the unsettling feeling of relief she's experiencing. The cells are empty behind their rusted bars, but Basira can See the outlines of the prisoners where they died when they were Known by a power they couldn't even begin to understand.

"It's- it's a place of Beholding," she mutters. She hates it here, hates how comfortable she feels in this place that's so permeated with death. It's another reminder of what she is, of all the shit she let pass; it's a bit of a bad joke, that after looking the other way for so long she's now become something that can't look away. "Jon's up there. And Martin too."

"What about Gerry?" Tim asks.

"I dropped him there. Not sure where he went after." They whip around at the new voice, and sure enough the entrance to the passageway they came through is now a very large version of Helen's door, with the Distortion herself swinging too-long legs as she sits on an enlarged doorknob. "He was in quite a fit about Martin, though."

"Well, better late than never, I guess." Tim grunts.

Basira rolls her eyes, because of course Tim has been so lost on his personal drama of whether or not he wants to forgive Jon that he hasn't noticed anything else. Still, her mouth twitches; it's a good distraction from the constant wondering about Daisy. She cups her hands around her mouth, taking a tentative step forward.

"Jon? Did you find them?" she calls out. No one responds, and Basira gets a muted pang of surprise at the way her stomach drops with worry. Maybe she did care after all. "Get ready. Elias was here. And Lukas too."

"That's comforting," she hears Tim grumble behind her as he follows her lead. It feels... it's different.

It's not Daisy. It will probably never be Daisy again, but it feels good to have a team at her back.

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

The Lonely smells like tears.

It's a deceptively simple smell, building up like bad memories and a knot at the back of your throat.

Much like in the Dark, there's no colors here. Unlike the Dark, there is nothing here, not even fear, or the certainty that there is something waiting for you to give up and consume you.

The Lonely doesn't care about you.

No one does, or you wouldn't have ended here. Do you care about this? You have always cared so much. It was exhausting, and it did nothing but cause trouble to you and the ones you thought you loved.

Isn't this a lot easier? You don't have to feel anything, here. You can't hurt anyone here.

"-on? Can you hear me?"

The scent of lavender hits softly like a memory, and Jon blinks until he can distinguish between the cold inside him and the cold around him.

"Gerry?" he asks, but his hand closes around nothing.

"-m here." Gerry's voice reaches him from far away, even though Jon is sure they were holding on to each other when they entered.

"I- I can't see you."

"-ou feel me?"

He can, Jon finds. A thread of white-hot steel pulling at the left side of his chest, the ghastly feeling of lips on his own.

"Yes. Yes, I can." A love that is felt but not seen, just like-

"-ind Martin," Gerry says from his corner of the Lonely, which could be an inch or a mile away. "-ocus on that."

That- that makes sense. Martin is still human, he's the most at risk here. Once they find him, they can get out, and the other will follow. Should follow.

"Okay, I- be careful." Jon tries to add something else, but the words that Gerry uttered so easily on the kitchen floor that night feel impossible to push out.

"-ove you," Gerry whispers, before his presence fades away.

'Me too,' Jon thinks fiercely, desperately and futilely. 'Me too, and I will find the two of you if I have to Know every inch of the Lonely, until it can't keep you from me.'

The Beholding purrs in delight at the declaration. It doesn't care why the Archivist uses it as long as he does. Jon should probably care about that a little more than he does, but the only thing in his mind now is Martin, and the need to get him out of here before he can't distinguish between it and himself.

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

"Can you see the entry?" Tim asks, stepping away from the dry corpse in the center of the room.

"Not really," Basira shrugs. "I can see where their trails end, but- we can't go in, Tim."

And that's that, he supposes. She says it with such finality, with such certainty, that Tim has no choice but to accept it as fact.

Martin is gone.

Martin, the last of them, the only one untouched by all this shit. Martin who brewed them tea and pretended he wasn't making cow eyes at Jon even though he behaved like an absolute ass. Martin who found Tim at his living room with fire in his veins and offered him the same unconditional friendship they'd shared before everything began to go south.

He warned them about this. He warned both of them and the worst part is he can't even be angry at Jon about it, because Jon is gone too, and because he himself wasn't able to keep Martin here, he wasn't enough.

This is- he's the only one left. They're all gone, and they slipped through his fingers even after he got a second chance, one after the other, Danny, Sasha, J-

"I wouldn't touch him right now if I were you," Helen says somewhere in the room, and it's only when he opens them that Tim realizes he's shut his eyes; he looks in time to see Basira's hand retreating from his shoulder, as Helen speaks again. "Should I go get Melanie?"

"No," Basira says immediately. "She's out. We don't- we don't go to Melanie unless there's no other choice. We have to-"

"We have to what?" Tim snaps. He's so tired of this, of losing people- he liked it much better when he'd just woken up and all he could feel was rage. "Let's just pop your eyes out too, so I can blow the fucking place up." And himself too, if he's lucky.

"Could you stop moping around already?!" Basira whips around to face him. Her eyes are burning with intensity, and her fists are clenched and shaking by her sides. "You've seen him walk from worse, you've walked from worse. Now- now we have to- I don't know what happened here, but if Elias walked out of jail exactly today, then it's got to have something to do with Martin, or-"

"Or Jon's marks." The answer hits Tim like a slap to the face.

'You're just missing one, aren't you?'

'The Lonely, yes.'

'How convenient isn't it? Martin's sudden promotion.'

'I'm well aware it's my fault, Tim, thank you.'

What else could it be? Whatever Elias is planning-

He turns to her, and in her eyes he finds the same understanding, the same clicking of pieces he just went through. The fourteen marks were deliberate, orchestrated; Annabelle Cane's statement was nothing short of a confession.

It doesn't change anything, not really, everything that happened, everything Jon did is still there, a wound that scarred badly and that still aches when pulled at, but-

"We have to get them away," Basira says.

But at least for now, Tim has a purpose again.

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

Gerry's never been to the Lonely before, though he's felt its grip on him many times in his life.

You defeat the Lonely with love, and Gerry has never been short of that.

Whether or not it's been paid in kind is another matter entirely, but he loved his mother, and he loved Gertrude, and he loved every soul he helped save from a fate worse than death. It has to be enough now, and if it isn't... well, Gerry's always been good at making round pegs fit into square holes, and this won't be the exception. He won't let Martin be the exception.

He wanders across the Lonely for what feels like hours, when he spies a figure hunched on the floor. There's no heart to race in his chest, but Gerry hurries his steps when he recognizes the muted black of Martin's hair, the tired curve to his shoulders.

"Martin? Martin!" Gerry exclaims, falling to his knees across from him, and swatting away at the thick fog that lays around the man like a cloak. "Fuck, I- it's so good to see you. What the hell were you thinking?!"

Martin doesn't look at him, doesn't even look up, and when Gerry lays his hands on his shoulders there's a thin layer of cool dampness that he wipes away hurriedly.

"Huh. I didn't expect you'd be here," Martin's voice echoes oddly, like it's carrying across water. "I thought they'd stop if I let them put me here. Did they send you here too?"

"I- n- no, Martin." Gerry tries to crouch lower to enter his field of vision, before he carefully lays a hand on Martin's round cheek to softly pull his face up. "No, we- Jon brought me in. We came here for you.

"Jon." Martin's grey eyed focus on him, and Gerry feels like he's been punched in the gut. He can't taste the emotion in Martin's voice like he can with Jon's, but he doesn't need to. He's heard the kind of sorrow poured in those three letters.

"Yes, he- he's here too. Now that I got you, we just need to-"

"You should go to him."

"I mean, yes, we both need to-"

"I think it's better if I stay here, Gerry."

"...What?" Gerry scowls, then feels his eyes widening in terror when his hand starts going through Martin's cheek. "Shit- Martin no! We need-"

"I really loved him, you know?" Martin's silhouette is growing harder to see, like a mirror fogging up.

"Of course I know, you- Martin you pretty much only tolerated me because of him, I know you love him."

Martin lets out a chuckle; it's a low, sad sound that makes Gerry's stomach churn.

"At first, I suppose." He shrugs, and his contour grows a bit fainter. The only thing Gerry can see clearly is his sad little smile, like some twisted version of the Cheshire cat. "I was sad at first that you- but you turned out to be so amazing, in the end. I was happy he found you."

Fuck. Fuck, fuck- Gerry tries to grab at him again, but his hand just goes clean through.

"Martin, it's- it's not over. We're not done, he wants you, he still-"

"I think it's time to go now-"

"Martin Blackwood you're not going anywhere," Gerry snaps. This can't- this is not going to end like this. He won't let it. They were supposed to sit down and talk about the future, there was going to be a future to talk about, for fuck's sake! "I will follow you to the end of the Lonely if I have to, you're not going to shake me off this easily."

"I really liked that about you too. You made me feel wanted."

"That's because I do, you idiot!"

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

"They're safe, see? At least for now." The voice is insidious, frustrating. It gives off the feeling of practiced politeness, empty pleasantries that mean even less than cold, uncaring silence. "It's very heartwarming, if ultimately futile, of course."

"I take it you're the reason I can't reach them?" Jon asks coldly. He can feel the Forsaken rearranging itself as they speak, the space between his and the two silhouettes hunched over in the distance growing wider and wider, so that every step he takes towards then moves him ten steps back.

"Does it really matter?" Peter asks. "They don't need you there, and it's only a matter of time before they give up."

"I will find them first," Jon says simply; there is no other choice, no scenario where they don't come out of this together. He'll make sure of it.

Peter laughs, and the sound echoes oddly around Jon, like only the ghost of it was reaching his ears.

"I doubt so. But you're welcome to keep trying."

"Why don't you come speak face to face, Lukas?" The fog around him takes on a sickly green hue where the glow of his eyes illuminate it, and the Lonely curls more thickly around him, hiding Peter from his Sight, from his reach. "Afraid of being seen?"

"I've dealt with your kind before, Archivist."

"So that's a yes, then."

"Fooling around with that toy of yours really have you some undeserved bravado, didn't it?" He sounds a bit disgruntled now, Jon notices with a muted, dark amusement. "Since he's not human, I'm not sure if he can even be consumed here, you know? I wonder if he'll just walk around forever until he shuts down."

"I'm not his only anchor," Jon scowls. That much is true, isn't it? Melanie-

"Please. Do you really believe he'll walk away without you? Both of you? Anchors are very effective, Archivist, as long as you aren't tied to a sinking one." Peter's smirk is palpable in his voice, and Jon grits his teeth. That's- it's not entirely wrong. Gerry's far too selfless, far too dedicated to putting others before himself.

"He'll do it for Martin," Jon says with far more vigour than he feels. That was the plan, and Gerry's not stupid in the least. Out of the three of them, Jon's the one that has a highest chance of survival here. If he has a chance to at least pull Martin out-

"Oh, but Martin doesn't want to go." Peter chuckles. "You let him fly too close, Archivist. This is his place now."

Silence stretches over them for a moment, the echo of Jon's breathing the only sound for miles.

"...You brought him in here, though." That's what Gerry said, what the Eye confirmed. Martin chose to come willingly, but it was Peter who opened the door. "You can kick him out. Both of them."

Peter doesn't respond immediately, and Jon focuses on the two silhouettes that he can see, but will never reach, not as long as the Lonely keeps pushing them apart.

"I could. For a price."

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

It feels like his words resonate around them for an eternity, before the odd dissonance of the Lonely takes it away completely.

Martin is still there, barely visible and barely tangible under his bruising grip, the only sound between them is Gerry's agitated breathing.

"Martin?" Gerry asks carefully. While Martin has stopped fading away into the fog, he doesn't seem to be getting better either. But if his words kept him here, then- then maybe there's still a chance. "I'm- I know I'm not Jon, but- but I came here for you, alright? I wanted to come for you."

But it doesn't work that way, does it? You can be the most desired, the most loved person in the world and still be alone.

"Why?" Martin asks. His eyes fix on Gerry's, grey and empty of any and all emotion, but it has to mean something, that he hasn't left, that he still wants to know.

"We need you," Gerry answers truthfully. He doesn't know too well what it means, but it's been a while since this was just about Jon.

"You know that's a lie, Gerry." The corner of Martin's lips twitches into a humorless smile.

"It's not, it's-"

"I think I want to stay. Nothing hurts in here. It feels... quiet. We can all be happy, like this." There's a longing in his voice when he says it, a soft wistfulness that Gerry doesn't trust right now.

"Martin, I'm- listen to me," Gerry asks, nearly begs. He shouldn't have been the one to find him, he realizes with a start. It has to be someone he loves, he remembers telling Melanie so long ago. And still the fact remains that Gerry's the only one here, and if he's not enough, then he'll have to remind him of the one who might just be. "Think of why you did this, think-

"...What?"

"Martin, who is your reason?"

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

"You want me to stay in their place." Jon says quietly, clenching a fist in the fabric of his jumper as the realization dawns on him. "Why?"

Peter stalks around him, watching him under the cover provided by his patron. He can feel the Eye searching for him, but its intensity is growing fainter by the second, as the Archivist begins to bend under the weight of his own doubt.

"Trust me, Jon, the Eye has given me plenty of reasons. But I must admit I'm simply not too happy with Elias at the moment and I'm very curious to see what he'll do if you don't make it out of here." Bit of an understatement, honestly.

"I-"

"That's the offer," Peter interrupts. "What do you say, Archivist?"

The desolate questioning in Jon's face is an absolute delight to behold.

"Take your time. Though I feel like the choice should be easy. Or are you hesitating because your pet undead will die without you anyways? You can't have everything, Jon." Peter tuts consolingly. "Either he dies out there, or the three of you stay in here."

"You said- you know Elias is planning something. He-"

"Oh, he'll try to get you back of course." Too much invested in this one, years of orchestrating his marks and survival. Elias won't just start over, Peter isn't even sure he could start over, without the Mother's webs that drape over this one's shoulder as a blessing. "Granted, I'm not sure how much of you there'll be left by the time he works his way back into my good graces.But that's not necessarily a bad thing in your books, is it?"

"...It isn't." The thrum of the Eye in the air fades a little more, when Jon lets his head drop.

Peter isn't terribly surprised. He might not be Martin, whose entire core calls to the Forsaken like they are one and the same, bit Jonathan Sims is still am incredibly lonely man.

It's about regret, in his case. Peter can feel all the mistimed connections that haunt him, when he reached out only to find it was far too late and he'd pushed way too far. The memory of waking up alone in a hospital room, and knowing he was neither expected nor wanted back.

"I thought so. Your friends will be much safer without you, Jon. You know that." He's not sure how much more convincing Jon actually needs, but it can't hurt to double down, he decides as he stops his pacing by his side and leans in to whisper in his ear. "You can't hurt anyone here."

"I... I suppose so."

"You know so." And Peter does too. Won't it be poetic, to keep Elias' pet in here as revenge for his own sabotaged ritual? Not much he can do, if there's no one to wear the crown. "It's all up to you, Jon. What do you want?"

Peter has dealt with beholders before, far more than he should, actually. He knows how they work, how for all they preach omniscience, they home in on a purpose, and become blind to everything else. Gertrude wanted war, Elias wants power, and this sad, broken man wishes uselessly for redemption, and if he can't have it, he'll have immolation.

"So? What will it be?" he asks.

Jon's head tilts up slowly, and Peter freezes at the intense neon green of his eyes, and the downward curve of his tightly pressed lips.

"A statement, I think," he says, and all around him the Watcher's eyes burn holes through the fog, pinning Peter in place like stakes, their focus so heavy it stings.

He tries to remain calm, to keep his fear from the Eye. This is his domain, and he can't be harmed here, not even by Elias' trained dog-

"Peter Lukas, you will give me your story."

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

His reason.

Did he have one?

Was it saving the world, or did he just want to look good while killing himself? Was it revenge against these things that took all the ones he loved, or spite at not being taken himself?

This place makes it hard to think. All you can do is sit and feel the emptiness inside you, smell the tears and listen to the silence. Was that his reason, finding a place to escape to? Maybe he just wanted to rest, for once, forever.

He's so tired.

There's a man before him. His hands are heavy on Martin's shoulder and face, but so careful, like he's made of glass or secrets. The man's eyes are beautiful, desperate mix of greens and blues, and his lips curl around words that barely reach him, words Martin doesn't know if he wants to hear.

He did have a reason, didn't he? It had a name and a face, a lopsided smile and eyes swimming with sadness.

Didn't he hate Martin? That's what they had in common, isn't it? Before the worms, before the fear.

Where is he now?

Martin remembers him, dead in all but name, laid on a hospital bed like a broken doll. His hand is limp in Martin's own, l and every time he presses it to his lips Martin swears it's grown colder.

Was that his reason? What was he more afraid back then, the thought that he wouldn't wake up, or that he might?

The man before him speaks again, and his hands on him feel heavier, warmer.

He doesn't like him, Martin remembers. How easily he stepped into the Archives, how well they fit together. Martin looks at him, and he doesn't know if he wants to tell him to go away or ask him what took him so long, why couldn't he have come before Martin gave up on his future for a chance at saving Jon's?

Martin tries to recall the man's name; maybe it'll help him figure out why he's here. It's a good name, he's sure, because he's a good man. A simple name, the kind you say with a smile. An incredibly, absolutely, undeniably mulish and irritating name, what on Earth is he doing here?!

Martin came here to keep him safe, because even knowing this was a trap for Jon, it was the only way to get Elias to stop hurting him, why would this idiot follow him in?!

Now all the work he did will be for nothing, because Martin knows as sure as the sky is blue that Gerry won't go away, won't let him fade into the grey. He'll find Martin again and again and again, until he answers his question, or the Lonely consumes them both.

This was a gamble he took to try and protect him, and now both of them are here and Jon is lost in here too, and Martin wants to scream at the absurdity of it all.

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

"Did you pack-"

"I packed the first things I saw, Basira, if they don't like it they're going to have to suck it up."

"That's fair."

"Where are they going?"

"North. Daisy had- she has a place. A cottage on the countryside."

"Oh, Martin will eat that stuff right up."

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

"-tin come on." Gerry tries again. Martin is still there, still tangible under his hands, but he still won't talk, won't look at him, the only sign of life to him is the slight furrowing of his brow. "Think- think of him, he's coming for you, we both did. Tim would've come too if he'd been there I'm sure, he's a prick but he loves you. So many people care, Martin, but we need you to care too, we-"

It's alright, he tells himself with just the slightest edge of panic. He's got time, and he'll keep going until the Lonely steals his last breath from his lungs, they are not going to lose Martin.

"Just- you have to- Martin I know you have what you need to break it, but you need to remember it yourself. You need-"

"I need you-" Martin's voice rings out clear and firm, without the ringing of the Lonely, and Gerry freezes. Martin's eyes are bright and green and burning with righteous indignation as he scowls down at him. "-to stop being so incredibly infuriating!"

And then Martin is collapsing against him, and it's all Gerry can do to hold him steady as a wave of relief washes over him.

"I'm- sorry?" He asks, his voice tinged with confusion.

"No you're not," comes Martin's sullen voice, muffled against his shoulder.

Gerry lets out a bark of somewhat hysterical laughter, tightening his grip around Martin's frame. He feels solid, and growing warmer by the second, and Gerry feels a little like he did when Jon opened his eyes after so much begging.

"No, I'm not."

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

The man gasps in exhaustion and pain, as the last of his tale tumbles out of his lips.

The Archivist watches, adds the story to his archive with the same delight with which one would enjoy a feast.

It's a pathetic, hilarious joke that Peter Lukas ultimately dies protecting the Pupil's secrets, when the Archivist demands the truth.

The Eye hums in delight, and the Forsaken shies away from its unblinking gaze, from the power of its chosen, from the future this promises.

It knows with glorious certainty that when the Archive speaks next, the world will listen.

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

Martin feels the Lonely break around them like something being ripped from his chest.

He misses it immediately, the pungent smell of salt and humidity, and the emptiness inside him. The arms around his shoulders, the scent of lavender and ink under his nose, the warmth of another body pressed tightly against his is overwhelming.

"-'re back!" He hears Basira scream somewhere, and the sound of echoing steps coming closer.

"Hey there," Gerry whispers somewhere close to his ear. "I have someone for you."

And Martin's heart drops, because he knows who that is, and he knows what he said the last time he saw him. How could he forgive him for that? For turning him away when he came to him with a promise of freedom, of a future together? Of-

"Martin?" Jon says his name like a prayer, like he doesn't know if he's more afraid of his silence or his response, and when Martin lifts his face from Gerry's shoulder, he finds that he looks much the same, his teeth worrying nervously at his bottom lip as his dark eyes search Martin's face for... for what?

"Jon." Martin's own voice is a pitiful, exhausted thing, but the name sounds just right in his lips, like a memory, like an answer to a question he can't bear to think right now.

It's like Jon's strings have been cut, and he goes down on his knees by their side, slotting himself right under the arm Gerry lifts for him. Martin has a spare second to think of how well they fit together, before Jon buries his face in his chest and it hits Martin that he's here too, held between them like he belongs, like they were waiting for him.

"I'm sorry I didn't find you," Jon whispers into his chest. He feels nothing like Martin imagined, and is somehow much more real for that. "I'm sorry I let it get this far."

What could he possibly say to that? That it's not Jon's fault that Martin wanted to die? That he's sorry too, because now Jon has all the marks and nobody knows what that means, but it can't be good?

Objectively speaking, Martin knows it would've been much better for them -maybe even for the whole world, who knows what Elias is thinking?- if they'd let him in the Lonely.

It's tough to voice that aloud however, with Gerry's arms around him and Jon tucked so perfectly under his chin. Their presence hurts, but Martin hasn't felt this much like himself ever since Tim first came, and he knows he needs them here precisely for this reason. Without the Lonely's overbearing, suffocating presence all around him, it's all too easy to see just how close he came to losing himself.

"...I've missed you," Martin says in the end, probably long past the time they've stopped waiting for an answer. Still, it's the truth, and Martin's spent so long denying it that it feels almost like another lie. He tightens his arms around Jon, partly to check if he's allowed, but mostly to confirm he's actually real and there.

Gerry clears his throat a little. "Would you like me to leave you two alone?" he asks quietly.

'You found me,' Martin wants to say. 'You found me, and you didn't let go, why would I want you to leave?'

Words are still difficult though, especially with the fog still trying to pull at him, yelling at him from all sides that he doesn't matter, that they saved him out of some misguided sense of heroism, and not any particular interest for him. That it is he who is intruding, that they could've lost each other, and it would've been his fault.

Martin shakes his head and shifts to lean a bit more comfortably on his shoulder. His neck is already starting to smart from bending down, but even the pain is a blessing, a reminder that he's alive, that he's human and can feel things, good and bad.

The faint scent of lavender drifting up from Gerry's hair and Jon's comforting weight in his arms are grounding. Soothing.

"Martin?!" Tim's arrival is heralded by the room growing warmer, as if to chase away the remnants of the fog that clings to Martin's tired bones. "Fuck. You're- are you alright?"

"Right as rain," Martin rasps out, cracking an eye open -when did he close them?- to look up at him. Even splashed in blood and dirt, Tim's a sight for sore eyes, the concern in his gaze so simple and sincere not even the Lonely can twist it into loathing. "What are the bags for?"

"Management said you had too many vacation days saved up," Tim croaks with a laugh just this side of hysterical. "We booked you a holiday."

And Martin would like to respond to the joke, he really would, but his eyelids are growing heavy with exhaustion, and it's all he can do to aim a smile -who knew he could still do that?- his way, before he lets go.

"You have to get away before he comes back-" is the last he hears Basira say.

It's not over, he remembers, they're not done. But for the time being, they're all together and they're safe, and Martin is here because they want him to; it still feels like a lie, but nothing else makes sense and he has to allow the tentative, absurd hope that it might be true.

Martin decides that, maybe for once, the rest can wait.

#vit writes #jongerrymartin #jgm #illicio

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years ago

Text

Welcome to Surgery: Kauri

CW: MEDICAL WHUMP - includes muzzling, dehumanization, past noncon ref pet whump, and the leadup to hospital/surgery whump (which will be in Kauri’s next piece, just as a warning). Also some thoughts on an abusive relationship from the perspective of someone still trapped in the cycle of abuse. stay safe.

Tagging: @maybeawhumpblog, @pepperonyscience, @haro-whumps, @18-toe-beans, @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @giggly-evil-puppy, @whimpers-and-whumpers, @whump-it, @lumpofwhump, @pumpkinthefangirl

“Aw, he’s sleeping.”

Kauri jerks awake at the soft male voice entirely too close to him, trying to pull away and curl up, turning his face against the cold tile floor with something like a whimper. He shivers in his regulation clothes, the thin white shirt and black shorts hardly enough against the chill in the stale, recirculated air coming from a vent somewhere up in the ceiling.

They had blindfolded him, after the last visit from the handlers, and in a room that is nothing but thin white light and identical white walls and 162 white tiles, he doesn’t really mind the darkness. At least it’s something different than the white.

He doesn’t want more handlers, more black sticks, more punishment that they keep telling him isn’t even his actual discipline. This isn’t the same place, they say. He’s not here for training. There will be a new kind of discipline, here.

His mind runs in circles, every day he’s stuck in the room where the light never changes, the tiles never count to any other number, and there’s not even a single black speck on the wall to think about. Only thinks about what he did wrong, and what they’ll do to fix it.

Discipline is a necessary and humane event ensuring the continued obedience and well-being of a pet

shut up shut up shut up

“Hey, it’s okay, buddy.” A hand moves roughly through his hair and Kauri flinches away, tries to twist himself free, lifts his hands to push at the stranger’s arms. Fingers twist into the clean, brittle black curls until his scalp hurts. “Hey. No, sir,” The voice scolds, like he’s a misbehaving dog. “We don’t do that here. Look, I don’t want to pull a handler in, but if I have to…”

Kauri goes very, very still, drops his hands back down immediately. Just as quickly as the sudden grip had tightened, it loosens and the hand starts petting him again.

Kauri gets it - he doesn’t try to escape this time.

“There you go,” The voice coos. “Good, good, 645898.”

He doesn’t know this voice at all, but it’s the first touch since he was brought back here - two weeks or three weeks or maybe just two days ago - that hasn’t involved hitting him with something. He takes a breath as the fingers relax and start carding through his curls again. He doesn’t know who it is, or what they’re going to do, but… it feels so good. So much better than everything else has felt. “Ssshhh, it’s okay. It’s okay, buddy. You worried about those big mean guards coming back? Don’t be scared, it’s just us, bud. Just us. We don’t even have those big old sticks, we’re the scientists. You can trust us.”

The voice isn’t familiar - but Kauri’s life has been reduced to pain and the chalky drink they give him instead of food. Maybe he has heard this voice before and he just doesn’t remember. The voice talks to him like he should know it, at least, and Kauri’s days have run together anyway.

They’re boiled down to daydreams about how good it had been with Owen, how nice Owen had been to him, and how much he wished he’d just… understood how fortunate he was. If he’d only been grateful for the life Owen gave him, for the way he touched him and treated him - if he’d only been grateful that Owen let him spend unsupervised time with another pet, this would never have happened.

This is what you get.

He’s here to be repaired, but no one will tell him what the repair is, exactly. They just leave him here in this room, and then they hurt him with the black sticks, and then they leave again. He hasn’t seen anyone from before, he doesn’t think - his original training is still fuzzy, beyond individual memories that come and go - except for a single handler.

It had been the one with dark hair and eyes and expensive black boots. He’d come by and smiled with the same sharp flash as the light off the edge of a knife. That handler came by to see him.

His own, Everly, didn’t. He’s not Everly’s trainee anymore - as far as he can tell, he’s not anyone’s actual trainee any longer. But… in a world both numbingly familiar and totally new, Kauri had sort of expected to see Everly as a part it, too.

No visit from him… but Handler Connor came by.

Long time no see, 645898. Did you miss our days together that much? Had to act up just so you could get sent back for disobedience and I could get you up against that wall again?

Y-you can’t touch m-m-me, they, they said I have to be, to be left al, alone… for, for s-s-surgery… He’d still been shaking from the last round of the sticks, the electricity that never seemed to stop racing through his nerves. Kauri hated what being shocked did to his voice, hated it.

No, you’re right. I don’t get to have all that much fun with you. I’m only here for a little… hello. Say hello, sweetness.

H-Hello… Hello, Handler.

Good. So you still know how to follow a real man’s order, at least. Honestly, I’m a little sad you didn’t get handed over to me for repair, but there’s always next time. I missed you. That son of a bitch they sold you to… he doesn’t know how lucky he is.

Kauri had swallowed against a weird feeling at the words, pressed with his back against the wall, Handler Connor in his space without quite touching him, his skin crawling and wishing for touch at the same time. The man who hurt him most here had said something Owen himself never had - that maybe Owen was the lucky one, and Kauri the gift.

H-How lucky… I am?

Oh, sweet thing. If I took you home you’d be trained for pain and I’d count my lucky fucking stars every day. Someone should tell you how perfect you are - those big eyes that get so scared, your hair, I know you’d bleed so well if you went to the right guy with the right knife… someone should tell you you’re perfect. It might as well be me.

He’d felt gratitude, at the closest thing to kind words he’d ever heard from a handler, and disgust at himself for being grateful - both in equal measure.

But… as nice as it was to hear, it isn’t true. Kauri is the one who should be grateful. Owen wants him back - Director Renford promised he did, she said Owen wants him back and even as Kauri, so he clings onto his name and onto how wonderful Owen is, not to want him refurbished after he broke his protocols so badly.

“I don’t know why you insist on doing this.” A second voice - female, maybe? - and Kauri twitches again. The hand gently petting through his hair pauses, and then pulls away, and Kauri fights an urge deep down to reach out and try to pull it back.

Please, please, someone be nice to me again. Someone touch me. Someone be kind. I feel like I’m not real unless someone is touching me.

“Doing what, Delevigne?”

“I don’t know… that. Interacting with them. It’s not like we’ll see him after his post-op care is over with. He’s just a number.”

“I mean, I know, but look, he’s so scared… poor little buddy. You just had a hard time following the rules, huh?” The hand pats through his hair one more time, and then Kauri feels fingers close around his arm, pulling him up. He goes willingly enough, turning his head slowly in the direction the man must be standing. It’s so cold in here that even just being near him is warmer than the air everywhere else, and Kauri unconsciously moves closer, almost pressing against his side.

“Man, gotta love how needy they get,” The man cooed. “He’s a sweetie, right?”

“He’s a skinny, is what he is,” The female voice says, flatly. “Was he skinny when he got here?”

“Yeah. He’s not too skinny, though, he’ll do fine on the table. I think he looks pretty good for his first week in R&D to be honest. They said his owner went a little crazy on him…” A fingertip traces along the dark, healing bruises at Kauri’s throat and he flinches away from it out of sheer surprise, blinking rapidly behind his blindfold. “I’d believe it.”

“That’s an owner for you. Roll of the dice, every time - and don’t tell the Director I said it, but it takes a certain kind of cold motherfucker to order a Romantic, if you ask me.”

“… don’t you own a Romantic, Delevigne?”

There’s a pause, and then a sort of brittle, cynical laughter. “I didn’t say I wasn’t one of those cold motherfuckers, Ty. I work long hours, no time for a relationship - so I bought one. Employee discount makes it a pretty decent investment, actually, especially if you have them trained for housework, too. Besides, I’m only home long enough to even see him awake like twice a week, so I figure he’s got it made. He and my cat are fucking inseparable. He doesn’t complain about it.”

A pause.

“Del, you and I both know they make sure the merchandise is good and grateful before they ever leave. How many of them even can complain? Can yours?”

“You know, I have no idea. I never asked. He’s a really good listener, though.”

The fingers that were so nice in his hair are suddenly back up on his skin, ghosting up Kauri’s cheekbones and around behind his head, untying the blindfold. Kauri blinks hard as his eyes have to adjust to the brighter light coming in behind them in the open doorway, hunching his shoulders just slightly away from the overwhelming sharp… cologne? bodywash? smell and presence of the man in front of him.

The woman is leaning against the doorway with her arms crossed, short dark hair in a pixie cut and thick black glasses perched on her nose. The man has long hair pulled into a low bun at the back of his neck and a bright, engaging smile. Both of them are wearing long white coats with scrubs on underneath. They look more like actors playing scientists or doctors, like the scientists in Owen’s movies, than what Kauri thinks an actual scientist would look like.

There’s a flash, in Kauri’s mind, of a woman standing beside him as he sits on an examination table swinging small legs, getting to pick a toy out of a special box because he’d been so good during his checkup today, and Keira is off to the side playing with her dinosaur toy-

A blinding flash of pain and Kauri whimpers, clenching his eyes shut, as the memory is forced back behind the broken wall of his mind.

“Ooooh, what’s this? You okay, buddy?” Hand in his hair, taking his chin to turn him to look, and it never occurs to Kauri to try and fight the touch, because that’s what being a human pet is - you are touched, or not, and you have no control. He only nods, slowly, breathing in and out. The man takes both hands and begins to rub at his temples, and it feels… so good. “Trying to remember something, huh?” Kauri nods, slowly, keeping his eyes closed. “Well you should know better by now, little man. The whole point is to make sure you can’t do that. Take deep breaths, it’ll pass.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk to them. This wastes so much time, we could have him halfway prepped by now.”

“Oh, shut up, Del. He’s freaking himself out. You have no heart, you know that?”

“Yeah. That’s why I work here, numbnuts.”

The man rolls his eyes, giving Kauri a bit of a wink, as though they’re conspiring together. Kauri only stares, wide-eyed, unsure how to handle this new type of person entirely unlike anyone else he’d ever met at the Facility. The man pulls his hands back. “There we go… better, right?” The man grins as Kauri slowly nods.

He has a wide mouth, and even with everything that has happened to him, Kauri nearly smiles back on instinct alone. The man’s expression is just that infectious.

The man steps back to look him over, suddenly businesslike. “All right, kiddo, enough time wasted. Let’s see you ready to go.”

Kauri swallows, moving into Position One, clasping one wrist with the other hand behind his back, lifting his chin without ever quite looking them in the eyes, either of them. “G-Good… morning,” He tries, and his voice is rough and hoarse - he’s been screaming too much, wearing his throat back to raw even as it heals from what Owen did.

But when they start hitting him, it’s hard not to scream.

“Mid-afternoon, really,” The woman says dryly. “But a good try, I’ll give you that, ‘898.”

“Look at you, being so good for us,” The man praises, his voice thick with patronizing, condescending affection. Kauri feels blood pooling in his cheeks even as he drops his eyes to the floor. Even Owen never talked to him like this. “What do you think, Del? Isn’t he so good?”

“I think I’m here to do a fucking job, not drool all over the merchandise,” the woman - Delevigne, apparently - says in a voice that is trying for annoyed but mostly landing on amused. “Honestly, Tyler, you spend so much time petting them, it’s a wonder you keep turning down the Director’s offers to give you one for a bonus.”

“Nah, I don’t want that kind of obligation in my life. Bring one home and you have to feed it, give it water…” Tyler frowns, considering. Kauri doesn’t move, doesn’t even shift position. His legs and feet tingle from getting up off the floor, and every once in a while he twitches, a little, an involuntary muscle spasm left over from all the electricity that’s been forced through his skin. Tyler moves up and around him in a slow circle, taking in the visible bruises, the healing marks around his bare neck. “Plus… you know I don’t really like that if you get one everyone assumes you’re sleeping with it.”

“Yeah, well, you and the Director are probably the only ones who don’t at least try it out. You like them so much- why not, Ty?”

“They can’t say no, Del, that’s why.”

“So? Isn’t… that kind of the fucking point?”

Tyler shook his head. “If they can’t say no, they can’t say yes. I’m not interested in taking someone home who can’t consent.”

“Oh, but performing surgery on them-”

“That’s different. What we do here is important work, we’re making really important scientific discoveries about human behavior modification that could impact the industry for decades.” Tyler finally stops, back around in front of Kauri, and reaches out, lifting his chin slowly with two fingers. “Besides, this guy signed a contract.”

None of us ever remember the signing. I bet he knows why we don’t remember signing.

Kauri’s eyes raise and finally meet Tyler’s.

Shining, warm brown, but not the right kind of brown. Not dark and intense, but open and light and all these new eyes do is remind Kauri of what his stupid fucking aberrant behavior cost him… his chance to have something just for him, even if it had been in passing, in private, in the quiet mornings before Owen woke up.

With an aching heart, Kauri looks from the man - Tyler - to the Delevigne woman, waiting for an order, for some idea of what to expect.

Tyler pats him on the back, a little too hard, and he laughs when Kauri stumbles and catches himself, forcing his spine back to straight. “Sorry, bud,” He says in a tone that suggests he doesn’t actually care at all. “Okay, 645898, you need to head to the OR to get prepped. Now normally there’d be more of us involved - you’d have nurses, couple of handlers. But the Director wants this hush-hush, so Del and I are it as far as getting you into the room today. Can you handle that? Can you follow us like a good boy?”

Kauri bites back some hint of himself - of who he really was, maybe - that wanted to snap if you stop talking to me like I’m a dog, I’ll get right on it. All he does is look between the two of them again and slowly, carefully nod.

“I can follow you.”

Just because they aren’t handlers doesn’t mean they won’t have the black sticks, or some other way to hurt him.

When the Delevigne woman twists herself around to grab something that must have been hanging on the hooks outside his door, Kauri feels his stomach drop. “W-wait-” He whispers, barely able to manage even that much of a protest. He’s not drugged, but he’s hungry, they haven’t given him any of the chalk-drink since yesterday. The world is seems to smudge itself, a little, around the edges. “Wait, I’ve never w-w-worn, never-… I’m not a, a biter!“

Just the once, only the one time, and he had learned his lesson after that.

“Ssssshhh.” Tyler’s voice stays soft and saccharine even as he moves around behind Kauri, pulling his wrists behind his back. It never occurs to Kauri to fight him. “Sorry, bud, I’m sure this is all super new to you, but if we’re not going to have handlers to help us, we have to take some extra precautions.”

“But, but I don’t bite,” Kauri whispers.

“I know, buddy, I know. Look, you have to wear one for surgery, anyway, so we might as well get you ready now, huh? Think of it as saving you some time later on, okay?”

Kauri has never actually had to wear what Delevigne holds in her hands before, but he’s seen them on other boys, the ones who had a reputation for biting. The ones who tore skin, did real damage, who weren’t so easily drugged into the pliable, loose-limbed empty boxes they could build into perfect little-

Stop it, stop it, this is how you got sent back here, don’t think like that don’t think

Owen doesn’t want you to think

You weren’t made to think

He manages a nod, just to show he’s listening, wide blue eyes focused absolutely on the black straps and dangling, unattached mask hanging from Delevigne’s hand as she steps closer to him. Behind the dark glasses, her eyes are distant, businesslike. She looks beyond him, not directly at him.

“All right, 645898. Open up. Tyler’s a nice guy-” Tyler squeezes the hands holding his wrists twice, as if in emphasis, but all it does is hurt and Kauri winces. Some of the trainees are good at taking pain, it’s all they ever do, but Kauri isn’t trained for it. “-but I’m not a guy and I’m not nice. So open up.”

Kauri’s heart is pounding, but he slowly hesitantly opens his mouth.

The cylinder of heavy, slightly soft plastic slips between his teeth too easily, pressing lightly against his tongue with a faint chemical taste. When she tells him to close, he feels the solid plastic give just slightly between his teeth.

“You’ll be able to bite down on this when the pain is bad,” Delevigne tells him, looking it over thoughtfully. “Trust me when I say you’ll want that option, because the pain will be bad. We’re only allowed to give you a local anesthetic this time.”

“We are?” The man behind Kauri speaks right in his ear and Kauri jumps in nervous surprise “Oh, sorry, buddy. You didn’t know I was this close, huh?” He laughs again, and his laugh is odd and hard to understand - it sounds nice, but he is holding Kauri’s wrists behind his back while Del fastens the straps around his head, forcing the bit in further as she tightens them, until it pulls at the edges of Kauri’s mouth, making them ache.

He’s never worn a muzzle before.

One comes with the box the new owners get, but Owen had thrown his away.

What’s the point if I don’t get to hear you? He’d asked a newly-woken Kauri, who had still been blinking sleepily at him, trying to shake off the transport drugs, sweaty and so, so glad that he’d been given to his owner at last.

Once it’s fastened, he stares a little blankly, biting down on the plastic to test it, trying to move his tongue to get more comfortable. The black mask section is added, clipped onto little hooks on either side along his cheek, and fresh air comes only through small holes punched into the front.

Not that the air here is ever fresh.

“There, how’s that?” Tyler asks brightly. Kauri has no idea what he expects, exactly - he can’t talk, he can barely get enough air to breathe. The straps are too tight along the back, and the corners of his mouth are already aching.

He plays it safe and nods, but his heart is beating too hard, and he’s sure - so sure - the scientists can hear it in the perfect silence of his room, broken only by the soft constant ssshhhhhhh of the ventilation system.

“Perfect. All right, let’s get you moving, bud.” Tyler grabs him by one arm and pulls him and Kauri stumbles along behind, leaving the room and feeling suddenly an absurd wish to turn around and go back to it, to the tenuous safety of 162 tiles and the flat matte white and the light that never fades or changes.

He knows his room - but he doesn’t know where they are taking him, and he doesn’t know what happens next.

He shivers in the cold air, walking between them, his eyes moving to take in details of a part of the Facility he’s never really seen. The interiors of the holding rooms all look the same as everywhere else, but there’s color here - color-coded folders hang next to doors, muzzles hang off hooks. Now and then a number is scrawled on a dry-erase board next to a door - if he doesn’t look right at it and doesn’t try to know what the numbers are, it doesn’t hurt him to make the observation - and Kauri wonders if there are others here, listening to the shuffle-scrape of the pulling him down the hallway.

“Now, you should expect a lot of pain, like we said,” Tyler says, a spring in his step. Delevigne walks beside him without any perceptible emotion on her face, even though Kauri steals glances when he thinks she’s not looking. She looks like she’s thinking, like she’s somewhere deep inside her head. “A lot of pain. Normally we like to knock ‘em out for stuff this invasive, but the Director was pretty… adamant, and honestly, 645898, you do not want to piss her off, not even if you’re us.”

That he understood, and Kauri nodded quickly to agree with him, making a low, affirming noise in his throat. Tyler grinned and slapped him on the back encouragingly, nearly knocking him off his feet.

Delevigne caught him by his other arm, rolling her arms. “Hey, don’t damage the fucking merchandise before we’ve even finished the prototype, dumbass.”

“Whoops, sorry. You’re okay, aren’t you, ‘898?”

Kauri nods quickly, but his eyes are still scanning the hallways. As they turn a corner, the white walls are suddenly blue, and he feels assaulted by the color, even though it’s not all that bright. Blue walls with photos hung at regular intervals, of people doing important scientific work, he thought. Lots of people in the same white long coats Tyler and Delevigne wore giving a thumbs-up next to dazed-looking trainees.

Director Renford pops up in one photo, standing next to a kneeling man with short dark hair. Kauri stumbles to a stop, and the two scientists stop with him, shooting each other a look of something like curiosity, then looking back to him.

The tall dark-haired man has darker eyes, too, although Kauri can’t tell what color they are from the photo. Director Renford looks… young, even though he can tell it’s her. She has long hair in a braid, and her hand lays along the back of the kneeling man’s neck in an obvious display of possession.

Kauri wants to ask, but all he can do is make a muffled, curious sound and point.

Delevigne snorts. “The Director’s first, I think. Ten. He was the tenth successful trainee or something? I don’t know, we have to do a whole… orientation packet with company history, but I’ll be honest - I took a lot of smoke breaks that day.”

“I didn’t,” Tyler says. “I remember most of it. Poor bastard signed his fucking life away thinking they were going to fix his anxiety disorder. Now he balances her goddamn checkbook.”

“I heard a rumor once that he, uh, balances more than that, if you get my drift. Apparently the Director is generous with her friends. Besides, he’s less anxious now, isn’t he?” Delevigne laughs, and Tyler laughs, and Kauri wants to shrink into the floor until he disappears, but there’s nowhere to escape to. All he does is look at the kneeling man’s dark eyes and try to find some sign of life there, stare and stare at the blank expression and Director Renford’s hand on the back of his neck, her self-satisfied little smile, until finally they yank him by the arm and pull him away.

Three cheers for tyranny, unapologetic apathy, sings some ghostly voice in the back of his head, a song he’s never heard and doesn’t know… but maybe he knew before. His head starts to hurt, at least, usually a sign that he’s trying to dig something out from the wall, something that isn’t ready to break free.

They turn another hallway - this one is painted a soft pastel yellow, has more photos on the walls. Now he can see that the rooms have open doors and carpeted floors. They’re offices, with great wooden desks and warm lamps and decor. Some of the desks have people sitting at them, shuffling papers or signing things, typing away at computers. When the people look up, they don’t look at Kauri but through him, the way Delevigne does. They call their greetings to the scientists holding him, but no one stops working, and Delevigne and Tyler don’t stop walking.

Another hallway, a soft dusty red. Now the rooms look like… hospital rooms at the clinic, the place Kauri hates most in the world beyond the Facility training rooms themselves. Each room has two hospital beds, curtains to draw around them, a bunch of machinery. He sees only one boy, lying on his back with some kind of thing down his throat, the soft hissss, hisssss of a machine moving.

“Shit, looks like 533456 isn’t looking any better,” Tyler mutters.

“Yeah, well, you can’t bash someone’s head into the wall that many times and expect them to pop right back up good as new,” Del says, with an angry edge to her voice. “Trainees are an investment. If I were the Director, I’d sue for damages, not just fire the stupid bastard.”

Tyler laughs, and it’s not the soft, patronizing laughter he’s been using with Kauri but a harder-edged sound, and Kauri twists his head to look at him, anxious biting on the bit in his mouth, pushing into the plastic that gives only a little between his teeth. “I wouldn’t worry about that. That asshole’s good-looking and he’d make a good guard dog. I think the Director will get her investment back.”

Suddenly Kauri wondered, for the first time, what the guards signed when they agreed to work here. And what the Director would do to the guard who damaged company property badly enough to get fired for it.

Finally, they moved into a hallway painted a gentle gray, like a winter sky somewhere flat and frigid cold where Kauri thought, with a sharp stab of pain inside his skull, he might once have lived. It looks like the clouds when it snows, but Kauri has never seen snow except on the ski trips Owen takes, and in those places they are high up in the mountains and the skies don’t look the same up there.

No, this is like when Mom comes back from the diner and says, You remember old George VanHoorn, he says there’s snow coming. Man knows his skies, I guess I can’t disagree or I’ll owe him the next slice of pie-

Kauri groans, muffled, as the pain nearly knocks him off his feet, feeling like a blow inside his skull that throws him forward, only staying on his feet when Tyler and Delevigne hold him up, limp between them.

“He’s trying to think,” Delevigne says, disinterested. “I don’t have time for that, we have three surgeries today, and this is the one we have to nail. I am not letting this little asshole get me dragged in front of the Director for failing to meet expectations.”

“He’s fine,” Tyler says, just a little defensively, and leans over to pet through Kauri’s hair, holding him gently as he gets his feet back underneath him, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes as his world spins with agony. He can’t remember any longer what it was that caused the pain, only that he had done something wrong, tried to remember something he wasn’t supposed to know. “You’re okay, right, buddy? Not gonna mess up our schedule today, are you?”

Kauri shakes his head rapidly, blinking away the tears, making low hnnnh, hnnnnh, hnnnnh noises behind the muzzle, struggling to take enough air in by sucking it through his teeth and breathing through his nose to stop feeling the world’s sick-dizzy spin around him.

“Good boy, that’s what I thought. All right, bud…” They all but drag him further down the hallway, Kauri struggling to get his feet back under him, bare heels smacking into the floor unevenly. Then they stop in front of a big set of wide double-doors, open to show a room larger than four or even five of the training rooms inside.

There’s a hospital bed there, already. A large sort of metal table that’s bolted into the floor. There are machines everywhere.

Kauri tries to take a deep breath, but he can’t. So he takes several shallow ones, and the world spins again. His heart pounds in his chest, tries to break through, has to settle for nearly bruising his breastbone. The hands on his arms tighten, become inexorable, inescapable.

On a small table on wheels next to the metal table, there’s a tray with a stippled, textured pale blue paper laid out on it. On top of the paper there’s a series of things Kauri vaguely recognizes from Owen’s movies and TV shows as surgery tools - he can see what he knows is a scalpel, actually two scalpels. He can see some tools he doesn’t know, too.

And next to the tools is something he doesn’t recognize at all - it looks like a necklace made up of small flat circles with blue stones in the middle, but the connection isn’t thread or chain but wires.

There’s a loud beep from somewhere nearby, and Kauri nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Welcome to surgery, little buddy,” Tyler says, in a low sweet voice.

“Let’s get you on the table,” Delevigne says, kicking the doorstops so the double-doors swing closed behind him and latch with an audible click.

“Let’s get me my promotion,” Tyler laughs, and Kauri can barely walk as they drag him towards the table.

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efrmellifer · 4 years ago

Text

Dulcis Somnia

Etien woke with a groan, pleased to be on her side this time, but pleased with little else.

She rolled to the other side, burrowing under the covers and more firmly under Aymeric’s arm again, tips of her ears brushing his throat and the underside of his chin.

“You don’t move this much at night,” he mumbled. “Is it morning already?”

“Not that you can tell by the light,” she replied. “The weather is shi—” she cleared her throat— “certainly unpleasant. I’ve never been so glad I don’t have to go anywhere.” She hunkered down even further.

He hummed. “But I still do.”

“I know, darling. I’m sorry. Do you want me to walk with you? You won’t have to brave it alone.”

“You were just saying how glad you were that you had nowhere to be.”

She tipped her head, trying to look at him, pinned though she was. “A walk to the Congregation is nothing. Or are you starting with the House of Lords today?”

The playful disgust was audible in his voice as he told her, “Oh, please don’t remind me.”

“House of Lords it is, then,” Etien giggled.

“You can stay here,” Aymeric said finally. “Here, where it’s warm and you won’t twist your ankle on the ice.”

“If you insist.” She shrugged slightly.

Finally opening his eyes to the bedroom, not even half-filled with the weak light of an overcast morning, he kissed her forehead, then her lips. “I do.”

“All right, then. Get dressed, I’ll make you something to eat before you go.”

Aymeric sat up, rubbing at his eye with the back of his hand. “You know, you have been more concerned with that lately. I used to have to convince you to have something, even on mornings off.”

No longer held down, Etien slid from the bed, folding over the covers. “I have the time—and cause, really—to be sure I eat, and I’m extending it to you. I should never have taken such poor care of myself out there.” She came around the bed, running the backs of her knuckles over his cheek. “And neither should you now.”

He sighed, though more out of determination to leave the warmth of the bed than in frustration with Etien. “Oh, fine. Nothing too heavy, please.”

“Oh, so no cream in your coffee?”

“Who am I, Estinien?”

Etien chuckled, stepping out of the room and padding down the hall in her new slippers.

“Do you have everything?” she asked as Aymeric rose from the table not much later.

“I believe so,” he murmured. “What is there for me to forget?”

With a pleasant smile, she shrugged, getting up herself to follow him to the door. “I just know I tended to forget things here now and then. My eye mask, a pair of gloves.”

Aymeric stopped walking. “Were those not on purpose?”

“The gloves were, the eye mask was not. Gods, trying to sleep in eternal light was… a trial all its own.”

“Had I known it had been a mistake, I would have flagged down that pixie to bring it back with them.”

“Feo would have called you sentimental and doting.”

With a squeeze of her hand, he replied, “A small price to pay, if you would have slept easier.”

“You’re going to be late, Lord Speaker.”

“I suppose so. I’ll see you later, Etien.”

Her lips quirked up just before she rolled onto her toes, grasping at Aymeric’s clothing to hold herself up and give him a kiss goodbye. “Not if I see you first.”

When Aymeric got home, it was to the image of Etien surrounded by knitting, a wide square of powder blue spread over her lap, yarn trailing from the carved bowl at her feet.

The rhythm of the needles clicking together and the motion of her hands as she worked through a stitch were strangely calming, even when he’d only watched them for a moment.

“Before you ask, it doesn’t tangle if I keep it down there,” she said without lifting her eyes from the needlework.

“What… is that?” Aymeric asked. “I know you’ve been working on something rather big—two of them, unless it changes colors every so often.”

“This is a receiving blanket. This one is almost done, and its twin will stay unfinished until this one is complete. Switching back and forth was driving me up the wall.”

Aymeric picked up the yarn bowl, pulling on the yarn to keep it from tangling while he fed it to Etien’s fingers. “Was there something different about it that was giving you trouble?”

“Not exactly. It was the starting over from the same point every time, I think. I would start with a half-done blanket, get it to three-quarters, and then swap to a half-finished one again.” She was quiet for a moment. “That, and struggling with the yarn. The bowl helps, but yarn is still finicky.”

He dug his fingers into the skein, pulling on the loose end some more before winding it through the indent in the bowl again.

“When you finish that row, would you still be amenable to taking a walk with me, like you offered to earlier?”

She smiled, needles clicking all the faster as she tried to finish up the last few stitches quickly, rising from the loveseat to put on her coat and boots.

When she returned to the drawing room, all dressed for the outdoors, Aymeric chuckled before pressing himself up to go put his outerwear back on.

The Central Highlands were quiet. The stillness was what they needed, both still in their thoughts as they walked.

Their hands, woven together, kept them tethered as they crunched through the snow, the only other sounds they were taking notice of the bleating of wandering karakul.

“I love karakul,” Etien murmured out of the blue.

“Well, you certainly love eating karakul,” Aymeric responded.

She turned to look at him. “Growing up in the Twelveswood, you learn to appreciate birdsong and roast fowl in equal measure, because the forest can give you both if you’re kind. Tenuous relationship with the Elementals notwithstanding. So I like watching the karakul trot around, and I like roast karakul when it’s on the menu.”

He laughed. “That is a good point. I think Ishgard as a whole forgets what it was like when we weren’t having to fight the land for what we need from it.”

“Camp Cloudtop was having quite a bit of success with the pumpkins,” Etien offered.

“Thanks to you, your knowledge, and your onion-gathering.”

She smiled. “I do what I can.”

Aymeric squeezed Etien’s hand. “And you have been able to do much for us.”

They continued on in silence, their loose grip on each other tightening, drawing them closer together as the sun sank lower in the sky. The tracks of their footprints converged at a point or two, conveying just how close they were walking now, voices low as the light above them began to fade, stars twinkling in the darkest spots.

The sun had gone, but light still clung to the horizon, a glow like dying embers even as the pinpoints of constellations made themselves apparent.

Aymeric stopped, looking up. “Looking at the sky now, who would have thought it was so dim and dull earlier?”

Etien lifted her gaze to the sky, shielding her eyes, and nodded with a low hum. “But what an excuse to stay in bed it could have been. Skies like this make you come out and see them.”

“Seen a lot of these skies, have you?”

She was quiet for a long time, counting the stars, or maybe connecting them with her eyes. “Not these skies. Thanalan’s skies, Limsa’s skies they use to navigate the waters—same in the Ruby Sea and onward with the stars of the far east. I’ve been looking at the skies over The Black Shroud since I was old enough to tip my head back. And there were the skies of Norvrandt, striking because the deep blue was such a contrast to the light.” She sighed. “But I feel like I rarely get a good look at the skies over Coerthas. Maybe because we’re up at dawn or a little after, when the stars have already been put away for the day. But even if I’d seen this a thousand times, it’s always better with someone you love.”

Aymeric bent, kissing her briefly. “And better still reflected in your eyes.”

They kept walking. Even when snow started falling, they trod on.

“But speaking of the skies over Limsa,” Etien said finally.

“What of them?”

“I’ve been thinking, about my mother and… it’s silly.”

“Dearest, some of the thoughts you call silly are the most interesting things I’ve ever heard.”

“Oh. Thank you. I had been thinking, I’m the oldest of my parents’ children, so I had wondered what sort of mental state my mother was in, when she was having me. Her family was a bunch of seafarers, and she had even convinced my father—er, you know—to do a little traveling before they settled down in Alder Springs. Again, for him. So, did I put a stop to that? What might they have done if not for me?”

“A thought-provoking concept, but not something you could ever find an answer to, is it?”

“I suppose not.” Etien slowed to a stop. “I still think about it, though.”

“To the point of guilt?”

Etien sighed. Caught. “Not yet. I would hate to have been the thing that killed her dreams, though.”

“Why could you not be a new dream?” Aymeric asked, tipping his head to get a better look at her. “If you were, it would have happened more than once.”

Her eyebrows knit. “Oh?”

“Yes,” he replied simply, guiding her under a tree. “Because it happened to me, as well.”

Etien’s eyes just widened as she searched for words.

“For lack of a better way to explain, I wanted you to enjoy the new Ishgard you had helped create. I wanted to enjoy it with you,” he told her. “I had once been ready to die for the changes I wanted to enact, as well you know.” He absently rubbed at his wrist. “But I much prefer satisfying this new desire. It, like the stars, is better with someone I love.”

Etien leaned fully back against the tree they were sheltered under, gently tugging Aymeric to her. “Ishgard wouldn’t be home without you.”

“It would no longer be Ishgard without you,” he rebutted before closing the gap between them, lifting Etien from the snowy ground to negate the difference between her height and his.

Even with them so close now, he waited for her to make the next move. He could have simply claimed her lips, and in fact he rather wanted to. But how long had he waited for her, over and over? The space of a few breaths was nothing. If all she wanted to do was gaze down at him with love in her eyes, that would also suit him, in truth.

But she let her eyes slip closed, leaning in to press her lips to his, and utterly relaxing into his arms when he reciprocated.

For some time, the snow fell and they exchanged kisses, the longer liplocks broken up with tiny pecks across each other’s cheeks and planted on foreheads.

But as Aymeric was lowering Etien to put her feet on the ground again, he whispered, “You have naught to fear of killing dreams. I will do my best to ensure all yours come true, and as for mine, you’ve already fulfilled many of them. You still do.”

Arm in arm, they made their way home, living out dreams while still awake.

#fic #Aytien #okay yes it's a lot of dialogue #in fairness this was really more of a long exploration of ideas I had

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yoolee · 4 years ago

Note

Hey, so I’m thinking I may be ace but not entirely sure? I have zero desire nor interest to have sex nor do I see people in a sexual light (not very often anyways). I keep doubting myself that since I haven’t been in a relationship that perhaps I just “have to wait for the one” but I really couldn’t care less about who I get with (man or woman, I don’t really have a preference)or when. I think that I *am* ace but then again I keep doubting myself. Any advice on how to figure out such things?

OH MY GOD APPARENTLY I HAD A LOT OF THOUGHTS ON THIS SORRY.

TL;DR - BRAINS ARE WEIRD. BODIES ARE WEIRD. BOTH ARE INVOLVED IN SEXUAL ATTRACTION and both are dynamic - so try not to worry about fitting a single definition for all time, and go easy on yourself - your body feels what it feels and what’s right for you.

In this LITERAL SIX PAGE ESSAY I will ramble more:

CAN I CONDENSE THIS into bullet points let’s try:

It’s okay not to define yourself. We all learn things about ourselves as we grow and experience things, and (as a whole) sexual attraction isn’t a one-time-done-deal (though aspects may be)

It’s typically easier to know what we DON’T WANT than it is to know what we DO, so don’t feel weird about not knowing for sure

The media has NO IDEA how often or how little people think about sex and trust me the answer to that question varies WILDLY.

Check out AVEN to read about experiences and see if any of them feel like yours.

Know that level of sexual interest fluctuates over time based on all kinds of inputs (age, medication, other people, stress), so don’t worry too much about changes from your baseline limited/no interest - it’s a bucket, not a pre-measured dose.

If you DO decide to try a relationship or try physical intimacy, do it for YOU not because you feel like you should, and be upfront with your partner about your baseline interest levels before you make it to a bed (or wherever else you choose to instigate)

If you decide it’s not something you want to explore, but you still want an intimate or romantic relationship with someone - know that it’s absolutely possible, more common than you might think, and definitely doable. It may take a few tries, and a few awkward conversations, but those get easier.

OKAY NOW THE LONG ASS VERSION SORRY

It’s okay not to define yourself. We all learn things about ourselves as we grow and experience things, and (as a whole) sexual attraction isn’t a one-time-done-deal (though aspects may be)

I don’t think how you feel about sex is something you figure out once and are done with, so I’d encourage you to be open to the idea that your definition for yourself may flex a little or change with factors like age or medication that you’re on or the people you’re with, and that’s okay! And it may not, that’s also okay! Bodies and brains are weird and also dynamic, sometimes things are hard coded (whether or not cilantro tastes like soap!) Some things vary over predictable pattern (generally, kiddo taste buds are wired to prefer sweet and this, generally along a predictable sort of timeline, decreases as they age) and sometimes WHO THE FUCK KNOWS (why does person A prefer A dark roast coffee and person B a medium roast and person C thinks both taste like mud and would like to stick to their peppermint tea, please, which person D - Lee - can’t even stand the barest, faintest, tiniest sip of it?) and sometimes the right circumstances make the difference (Person F may hate brussel sprouts - unless grandma makes them with her magic balsamic vinegar, but it’s not the same when Aunt E tries) point being - give yourself some grace if you don’t feel like you perfectly fit one single bucket at all points in your life.

Consider, to go back to food - Sally KNOWS she’s allergic to peanuts and that cilantro tastes like soap. These are hard coded. So even without trying a Thai stiryfry with peanut sauce, she knows it’s not for her. Less clearly life or death, she’s not a fan of catfish, just because the texture is kind of rubbery, even though her sister loves it. How does she feel about seabass? Dunno, she hasn’t had it. If she has a general idea that seafood’s not her thing, cool - plenty of other things to eat (in this metaphor, plenty of other kinds of relationships to have with people! Physical intimacy is only one) if, one day, she decides to try it, she may learn she likes it, and she also may learn she likes seabass EVEN LESS than catfish. But she can also live her whole life not knowing for sure, and--who cares what her seafood preference is? Why does she have to tell anyone - unless she’s going over to someone’s house and they ask what she likes so they can serve it, and she can tell them, definitely no peanuts or cilantro, not a huge fan of seafood (or, not a huge fan of seafood but if you have a recipe you really like, I may be willing to try it? Both are okay). It may also turn out that the first time she had it, she kinda liked it, but then she had it prepared by someone else and, nope, gross and weird. There’s all sorts of reasons why what tasted one way today will taste different tomorrow. Not everything changes like that (see, peanuts - or, in this metaphor, your kind of baseline) but it may fluctuate a bit in a number of directions, based on a number of factors, internal and external (who prepares the seabass! Is it fresh?)

The internet is often one of the few safe spaces for people to openly, proudly define themselves from a sexual identity perspective, so you see a lot of folk doing so - and that’s GREAT. But I PROMISE YOU there’s a HUGE POPULATION who is right there with you going...am I this? Or that? Why don’t I know?

It’s typically easier to know what we DON’T WANT than it is to know what we DO

Seriously. It is. Maybe you aren’t sure if you want to kiss someone or not. I bet you DO know that you DON’T want to kiss rusty chainsaw blade dripping mysterious green goo. While there are personalities that are very good at clear decisions and classifications (I want to eat at Restaurant A because I want tacos and Restaurant A is the first restaurant I know of that serves tacos) there is also an equally common personality that is wired towards possibilities. (I could eat tacos. But pasta also sounds good, and so does baingan ka bharta.) For the latter, it’s usually easier to focus in on, I don’t know what I want but I know I do NOT want a sandwich. And that’s okay

(related - sometimes our bodies don’t even know we’re hungry. Are we? Or are we thirsty? WHO KNOWS)

Hopping back to Sally and her seabass. Sally knows for sure she’s not into catfish. She’s never eaten catfish, but they freak her out and her stomach flips over just thinking about it. Cool. But seabass? She doesn’t feel that immediate stomach flip aversion. But her mouth doesn’t water either. She KNOWS her sister tried it and love it. But you know what? Her sister also likes reality TV so her judgement? Different than Sally’s.

Whether she wants to try it one day or not doesn’t change anything except what tense she can use when talking about it. If she tries it, maybe she’ll learn she LOVES seabass. Maybe she’ll learn she only likes it when a particular chef makes it, and only if it’s seasoned with chili flakes first. And, also, honestly, maybe she will try it, and it will make her sick and lead to a miserable 24 hours in the bathroom and a wish she’d never tried it. That’s a risk. It’s up to Sally if she wants to take it, and whether she does or not, NOBODY ELSE’S BUSINESS except hers and the potential chef making it.

Society is weird about this SO WEIRD and puts SO MUCH PRESSURE - ignore it. There is no ‘normal’ when it comes, specifically, interest level in engaging with sexual activities

If you find yourself pressured to ‘try’ - ask yourself how much of it is YOU and how much of it is SOCIETY. It’s okay to try if you want to, or you’re curious. BUT if you’re trying because you think you ‘should’ I’m gonna tell you flat out and point blank that you are probably going to be in for a very uncomfortable experience, literally and figuratively. And y’all listen. Media does NOT align with reality. It does a lot of people a hug disservice with its prevalent narratives about sex drives. Some of the horniest people I know are cis women in their forties, and I knew teenage cis guys embarrassed and worried that all they wanted was to cuddle when movies were shoving down their throats that they should be thinking sex 24/7. Don’t assume anything about your potential partners.

You don’t have to try something if your gut says, not for you.

Personal experience? I’ve had to break off relationships with some good people (and some shitty ones) because I was hoping for something to click into place and it never did. Those were harder to end than the ones where the other person did something bad or dumb or stupid, because there wasn’t any one thing I could point to. But as much as it sucked to dump people I liked but didn’t connect with on levels I had hoped, I think we both learned stuff, and it wasn’t time wasted. Others, I was better prepared to say up front, and we explored other options together that we both got something out of, and they ended for other reasons (....usually me being like, ugh, other people and their emotions, no thanks, but, I’m also kind of a self-centered bitch, full disclosure, which you could probably guess from the fact I am STILL TALKING)

Communication is key

To that point, if you ever find yourself in a relationship that seems to be drifting from casual to serious, COMMUNICATE. Tell your partner up front that hey, you’re not sure sex is for you, you’re not into intimate touch, are they okay with that. If NO, you’ve saved both of you some future heartache, if YES, then it’s on the table to talk about later and explore--or not--together. And you don’t have to worry about how or when to bring it up for the first time. The earlier you do it, the less stressful it will be, promise, because you can lay that casual tidbit, and it’s out there. Communication is key.

You don’t owe society sex, and you don’t owe your partner sex, not even to see if it’s for you or not. But you do owe them communication and honesty. If physical intimacy is something your partner needs to feel fulfilled in a relationship, and it’s not for you - then a romantic relationship may not be right for you both. It’s okay not to know that up front as long as you communicate it may be a possibility and get their buy-in, and communicate when you ARE sure. As much as that sucks, it’s a thing just like any other (like, person A wants kids and person B doesn’t - there are some things were there isn’t exactly a compromise, and everyone ends up miserable - baseline expectations around sexual needs can be one of them).

It’s easier than it sounds - Hey, not gonna lie, you’re cute and this is fun but kissing is as far as it goes for now. Hands there don’t really do it for me. Before this goes further, I just want to be upfront that I consider myself ace, so I don’t really see sex happening. Before this goes further, I’m pretty new at the whole sex thing and honestly not sure it’s really for me, so I need you to go slow. Etc etc etc. Most of the time you get an ‘okay’ and life goes on. Sometimes they ask questions in which case, shiny! Communication! Answer honestly, and ask in return.

You’re not drawing up a legally binding contract about you will or won’t do - you’re just aligning expectations, and check in with them when they change.

Check out stories!

Check out AVEN. Even within asexuality, there’s a lot of variability in how people define themselves - read some of the experiences and see if any of them feel close enough to yours that the definition feels ‘right’ for you. If not, don’t sweat it! Just means you’re still exploring. Some people find they can masturbate but once another person is involved, it’s a no-go. Others find that it takes a long time to ramp them up but it’s possible with a patient partner they trust. Others never feel anything. Others are okay with it in the moment, but don’t spontaneously feel their own desire to instigate it. Asexuality is a pretty welcoming variety!

Sex drive is impacted by a lotta things

Know that lots of things impact sex drive in particular. Like. Again, for cis women, the data suggests the more you have sex the more you want it - it can ramp up like that. Also, some people get going with visuals (pictoral imagination, porn, naked people in front of them) but a LOT of people need WORDS (legit, why do you think romance novels are such a booming business?) this can come in things partner says or, you know, written erotica (Just like with porn though you have to be careful - recommend Smart bitches, trashy lit)

It doesn’t necessarily remain static over time. For example, medication and age are both two big inputs to this (ask any nursing home staff - I’m deadly serious. It’s honestly a little concerning because of dementia and consent issues, but like, it’s a thing for sex drives to WILDLY SPIKE in 80 somethings) you could be in a lull, or impacted by meds (for example, hormonal BC is pretty well known to suppress sex drive, and yet, being pregnant--which hormonal BC supposedly mimics to an extent--tends to make some folk absolutely and unexpectedly nutters for physical sensation)

It can be kinda shocking to go, like, years without any interest in sex as an activity or people as sexual partners, and then all of a sudden hormones whallop you upside the head and scream at you do something about them - that doesn’t mean WHO YOU ARE has changed. It just means your biology is responding to something. ANd listen

L I S T E N

If we knew HOW, consistently, to turn attraction on and off? That would be a thing.

We don’t.

Like. One of the weird ass symptoms of SLEEP PARALYSIS of all things, which is basically, a nightmare you have where you think you’re awake but you aren’t (you ARE semi conscious) and you can’t move, is the idea of an incubus hanging out in the room, because people feel like spontaneously aroused. And we have NO IDEA WHY. And it’s NOT ALL THE TIME. ANd yet it’s documented across CULTURES across TIME, it’s a THING.

So.

If your body is not doing something other bodies are doing - well, it’s doing what it needs to to be your body. If your body suddenly stops or starts doing something, and it concerns you (sudden appearance of sex drive! Sudden vanishing of it!) talk to a doc.

Otherwise - your hair gets longer, sometimes you get freckles where you never had them before, your tastebuds change. This is just one more thing on the list of shrug.

#omfg lee stop talking #this is not troll advice #I couldn't give troll advice on this one I just couldn't #Anonymous

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docholligay · 5 years ago

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Prompt: "All knowledge is a door." -Charles de Lint; Waifs and Strays

1700 words! All of my OW universe is here, the title of this one is “The WInd at the Door” if you’re looking for time placement. Thank you for reading/commenting!

Mercy knew things. This was her burden and her blessing. Her mother had always cautioned her, that all knowledge was a door, and when you walked through it, you could never forget the room you had entered. Sometimes you couldn’t go back to the one you had left.

It had confused her, as a small child. Her mother loved knowledge, she soaked up Torah and science in equal measure, she lived for the pursuit of knowing things. She was a brilliant scientist, and her father was a brilliant linguist, and all her life Mercy had thought knowledge was the only thing worth striving for. How could knowledge be a trap?

But of course, Mercy thought, working in her tiny corner of the lab, it hadn’t been that simple. Knowledge was only a door, and sometimes it led you to great places, and no one wanted to spend all their lives in one room, but, her mother had been warning her, even the greatest things come with consequences. Some doors remained locked, some doors led to darkness, some doors forced you to grapple for the knob.

Her mother had encouraged her learning, always, but with that had tried to keep Angela’s heart even, to caution her against putting knowledge over everything. It is better to be the kinder than the smarter, my Angela. Learn things to ease the lives of others, for what did Hashem give you this gift but to show love? All knowledge is a door. Write that which is good on each doorpost your cross through.

Mercy had learned these things well at her arm, even only having thirteen too-brief years with her and her father.

And so, there were things Mercy kept to herself. There were doors she had opened behind which laid pain, there were doors she had opened whose keys were not hers to share.

The paper in front of her encapsulated them both.

Winston was working in the larger part of the lab. He felt embarrassed over it, that he had taken up so much space, but Mercy refused to let him feel that way. Her work was generally smaller by necessity, and Winston had done her a kindness to give up so much of that space in the first place. It was his own home, after all. Her home scarcely had room for an office.

She had worked with him from the first time they had pulled Tracer back through. It sounded a bit self-congratulatory–Tracer herself had been a part of her own rescue, and Mercy maintained a more standard sort of person would not have survived it–but the truth was that without them it never would have happened. Not without Mercy, and not without Winston.

They had come to be very fond of each other, over the first turn in Overwatch, and now over the second. She was not given to lie to those she was fond of, but that did not mean she had to open the door for him. What could he do about the information? Mercy herself was at a loss, sitting in the corner of this room trying to compound some medication. Winston’s skills could add nothing to this.

Eventually, he would have to know, have to go through the door, unless Mercy’s experiments happened to work. She was beginning to feel they would not. The door behind her was shutting, slowly. There was no going back. There was only a prayer for the room’s mercy.

“Angela?”

His voice broke her concentration. He was looking at her, smiling, and she easily slipped the paper under her notebook as she looked up to him.

“It’s almost noon. I was going to go make a sandwich, if you’d like one.” He said it gently, but with a tone of prodding–Mercy’s general tendency to live on coffee and wine was well known–and there was little opportunity for her to say no without being tattled on to Pharah.

All knowledge is a door, and no one seemed to keep very many of them shut to Pharah.

Except, of course, the one Mercy had gone through.

She wanted to invite Pharah in, if only to have someone to share the room with, to tell, to help bear the contents of this place. But the keys were not hers. Mercy believed in discretion when at all possible, even if medical ethics had not made it a requirement. Tracer had be very clear, even all those years ago, that anything regarding her health was information only for Mercy and Tracer, in all the world. Mercy had given up trying to convince her. It rarely seemed to worry her.

Well, that made one of them.

She clipped down the stairs in Winston’s home to the roomy and spacious kitchen and dining area, where, much to his delight, the Overwatch crew had come to have family dinners, popping with food and conversation and friendship. London was still, at least on the East End, a bit of a pile of rubble, but that seemed not to effect Winston’s happiness or Tracer’s general cheer, and the warmth filled the room, when they gathered.

“Is chicken salad okay?” He took down a loaf of bread, a large half cut in two for him, slices for Mercy.

She gave a laugh. “Lena?”

He nodded. “Lena.”

She was going to turn into a bit of chicken salad, if she wasn’t careful. There was near always a generous bowl of it in the fridge, waiting for tea or a midnight snack or whatever else might come up.

There was an invitation the fridge, in curved lettering. Tracer and Emily’s wedding. They’d been engaged right before Tracer and Pharah had been taken, before Moira got her hands on them and did her best to pull them both apart. She hadn’t managed, as much through her own ineptitude as anything else. But she had hurt them. And Null Sector had tattered up London.

But still Tracer and Emily had pressed on. That was Tracer’s way, no matter what door she went through. You could always find the sun, she’d told Mercy, and the time came that she couldn’t find it, she’d know it was time to roll up the tent, as it were. But for today, she could still find it. She’d been laying in a hospital bed, barely recovered from the coma Mercy had to put her in, when she’d said that.

She was a wonder in more ways than one.

Mercy had always found the door to knowledge, blessed it with a kiss of her hand, but could never quite find the way to resilience Tracer had. Mercy had always hated her own sense of melancholy, the way the rooms she knew and the people she had left in them bore a terrible weight on her back. Some nights, she simply sat in her office and cried. It didn’t matter how ardently she searched for answers, there were always people for whom the answer would never come in time.

Her mind turned to Yael, even though that wasn’t fair. Yael died the same way she lived, fighting and grasping and taking down as much as she could with her. She died so that people like Mercy could live, and she had known for many years that whatever door she went through, it could only ever end this way. You could not make someone come through a door, and see the world in a different way, and Yael had kept certain softer doors closed and locked.

But still, there was a pang of guilt as Mercy thought of her. Of Reinhardt. Of Jack. Of those who had fallen in the service of something greater. Of those who would continue to fall for it, peace bought, as always, in blood.

WInston set the sandwich in front of her, startling her into a jump. She gave a laugh and a wave of her hand, and Winston settled in next to her.

“Angela?” He cleared his throat, fiddling with the edge of the plate, “Are you…Are you alright?”

Mercy had many skills and talents, but lying, concealment, avoidance, any and all of those things that meant you could hide your own feelings, were not among them. She worked at it, if for no other reason than she sometimes walked through doors that were not hers, secret doors to dark paths with monsters and treasures inside, and it did little good if you couldn’t draw a curtain over the door.

People would keep asking for the key.

“Oh,” she shook her head, trying desperately to believe this lie that she’d cultivated, “I have been working with a neurologist (this part was true. Yael had told her the best lies have a bit of truth.) and his writing is being so far over my head. A difficult problem (also true)” she looked at WInston. “For a conference. In California.” And there was the lie, as neatly wrapped as she could make it.

She wanted to tell him. She wanted to throw her arms around him, and cry, and drag him into this room with her, tell him every worrying thing she knew, the worse things she suspected, the fears that hung at the edge of this room, shadowed and growling and hateful. She wanted someone to be scared with her.

He looked at her with trust. He believed her, because Mercy was supposed to be honest, and good. Sometimes, one cannot be both, Mercy thought. What would the sages say, over this sort of lie? Is it better to be honest, or to be trustworthy? Mercy had never been a sage, herself. She had never known the answers easily.

Winston nodded at her. “If there’s any way I can help you.”

You can’t. There’s a door waiting. I have to open it. The wind is rattling it, hard, and it will pop open whether I take the knob or not. I already know what’s behind it. I have to open it for someone else, show her the wolf that’s been hiding there, and know that she will simply shut it behind us, hold it shut as long as she can. I will be there in the dark by myself.

All knowledge is a door. Sometimes the room behind it is bright. Sometimes, it’s dark.

Sometimes you have no choice but to go through.

#madegeeky

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kurtty-drabbles · 5 years ago

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I feel what you feel au (Part 5)

N/A: I think this won´t be the last one. Ok. It will end in part 6.

@djinmer4 @dannybagpipesarecalling @bamfoftheundead @everykurt

The Shiars are ruthless as all the X-men can testify -who can forget the Pheonix Saga? Certainly not Jean Grey- and yet, no one truly ponders about how the society works and right now Excalibur is getting the answer for a question that was never solicited. Cerise (no last name given or need) is a warrior that needs to prove her true worth by defeating 1000 villains on Earth. Cap Brian and the others didn´t accept such fact at the face value.

It was an unpleasant talk with Courtney Ross, the ever flirty boss of Excalibur -who seems to enjoy to flirt with Kurt and Kitty in equal measure and does not care for soulmate´s etiquettes- which prove Cerise´s story to be true. No ill intention ...for now.

"Are you happy, Kitty?" Courtney asked peering at Kitty´s brown eyes and Kitty frowns at her-bad blood among them even if it is one-sided makes such words be a bit salty- and the blonde woman points at Cerise for a moment then at Kitty´s soulmate mark. "You and Kurt are connected throughout the universe"

Kitty is not one to remain silent in such provocation. "And that never stop you from trying to take me to bed...my age was never a problem to you" she confessed not to take her own words in a positive light, after all, what if Kurt had taken her to bed and ignore her own age?

Courtney grins amused at such words. "And it was never a problem intake Kurt to my bed...but if it makes you feel better, I would like to have slept with you. And before you ask you...Is because I know the woman you´ll become...that´s very attractive" and she concludes with her flirty attitude.

Kitty now can see why Meggan dislikes her so much and wonders if will be in good tone to punch Courtney right here and now. "Punch your boss is never wise...oh, didn´t I tell you? I can see bits of the future" she states twirling her hair. "Also, you and Kurt will be together...you´ll get there. Just have patience and continue to grow as he has to stop being such slut...and that comes from me" she concludes and leads herself back to her multiverse. Zaorva will want to give her a mission.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Cerise is naive in such aspects of Earth- as she truly thought people on the TV were real and stuck on the small box as she labels it and was ready to break it to set them all free- while in other aspects she seems to understand more or less. Cerise thought Kurt is attractive and makes no attempt in hiding her attraction.

Kurt for his part didn´t seem to notice for Cerise all that much-sure, she´s lovely, yet, Kitty marching ahead and talking with Rachel seems far lovely as her chestnut hair is not tied in any form and is free to bounce by the soft wind and by her movements- and this didn´t deter Cerise in any form.

Cap Brittain and Meggan watch her obvious interest unsure of what will happen next. Brian whispers in her ear kindly. "What you think?" this is a question that engulfs many scenarios and doubts here. Meggan hummed softly and stated. "Things will never be boring here, right Brian?" and he chuckles shaking his head amused.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Cerise is with Excalibur for almost 2 weeks and picks up some habits but not the entirety of their meanings and when she saw Meggan and Brian kissing after a good mission completed- Meggan and Brian punched the monster until there´s no more monster- Cerise thought this was Kurt was waiting for.

So, Cerise grabs Kurt and gives a kiss-which she did label as mouth contact- and kissed him in front of the others and offer a big smile for the elf who in turn is conflicted. His eyes look up to Kitty and Kurt wonders if he wasn´t in such a situation ...would he have been like been kissed like that?

Self-aware much, Kurt?

And Kurt bamf away leaving a confused Cerise behind and Kitty bitting her lips. She didn´t take her white pill and can feel his conflicted emotions and emotions.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

"Elf, can we talk? I know what are you feeling..." she states as she opens his door-open, not phase and Kurt is thankful for this little act in favor of his privacy-and Kurt is upside down, literally, looking at Kitty as if waiting her final decision about his life.

"I feel what you feel, elf, you don´t want to date Cerise?" she asked knowing the answer and Kurt can be honest (and hate himself for it) as he can confess some things Kitty already knows.

"I´ll never like Karma. You did date Karma...and while we agree on a date other people, I can´t help by wonder if ..." Kurt trails of unsure.

"If I could sit and wait for you? Well, do you want to sit and wait for me?"

"if I date Cerise...if I get the same arrangement you have or had" Kurt is a bit spiteful here even though he has no real ill intention against Karma "will you be jealous?"

"I think so...but, do you want to wait for me or do you want me to sit and wait for you?"

"I don´t know...maybe? Is just...I never had a real relationship, hell Scott and Jean had their strangeness and oddness here and there, I mean, Jean is sort of a God" he jokes weakly "and yet, they are still together and still love each other. I can admit to you...me and Amanda never had this nor I ever felt this for anyone..."

"Wanna know something, elf?" Kitty offers a weak smile. "me neither and this situation is really odd..."

In the end, Kurt made his mind about Cerise and the Shiar is more than happy to be with Kurt-she may not get some Earth costumes but is familiar with friends with benefits- however, Cerise look at Kitty for a moment.

"Are you his wife?" she asked remembering how some humans marry different sizes of humans.

Kitty blushes and shakes her head.

"So...you´re his woman then?"

"I´m his soulmate"

"What this mean? Are you two together?"

"Not yet...I´m still too young"

"But...you´re a warrior. There´s no such thing as a young warrior. So, Kitty is old enough to have her soulmate...whatever this means" and adds something a bit too much Courtney-esque. "Should I sleep with you too?"

Kitty blushes and smiles awkwardly at that.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

How Kitty managed to tangled herself with Shield is all thanks to Cap Britain and her aunt Moira who were asked by Shield if they have someone to lend for a special mission and, in the end, Kitty was pick -she suspects it was a way to take her away from Kurt and Cerise...is awkward to watch and even Cerise seems to agree- and is thanks to this call that allows Kitty to meet Polaris, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver.

To sum up the mission, they are dealing with a phaser (Kitty is shocked too) who is stealing data from Shield and the Avengers and using this information to hunt down mutants and humans of interest.

Kitty created a plan to stop the evil phaser and it was a success- she tells her team and Kurt seems to be the proudest and it makes Kitty offers a real smile at the elf- and once the mission is over she is allowed to meet more of the Shield´s composed and spot Lorna aka Polaris alone.

Now, she´s not too friendly with the Maximoff + Lorna to meddle, but, at the same time, she can´t ignore how lonely Lorna feels right now. "Uhm, hi? any problems?" and Lorna looks up and shakes her head but then stops.

"You know about me and Alex, don´t you?" Kitty only nods as well, who doesn´t know about a man that abandoned his future wife in the altar because...because.

"Well, he was my soulmate...or rather was" and she shows her arm to where her soulmate mark should be "and now my soulmate mark is gone ...Wanda told me is not uncommon and it means the universe is selecting me a new soulmate, but, honestly ...I don´t think I need one"

"Soulmates aren´t always easy as media made out to be"

"True and my sister is married to a robot and is happy with such marriage. On the bright side, my brother is no longer with Inhuman princess" and now she smirks amused "Good, cause Wanda was ready to kill Crystal...she cheated on Pietro in many levels...she tricks him into believing she was his soulmate, gaslight him and cheat on him...piece of advice, don´t mention the name Inhuman near Wanda unless you want to see her truly mad"

"Sisters are here for that. I think"

"Yeah. They still offer to kick Alex´s ass...which I´m not completely against it"

"Nightcrawler is my soulmate" she confessed and Lorna blinks and nods.

"He´s a womanizer, but, look...he´s better than Alex and is a good person ...with flaws like any human, but, he seems to be a good match for you. I think. I mean, he´s still a womanizer and if he tries to do anything like Alex did let me know and we kick his ass"

Kitty laughs amused and nods promising this won´t be necessary.

#I feel what you feel au #kitty pryde #kurtty #kurt wagner #cerise #the maximoff twins #Crystal was the worst and the writing blaming Pietro for everything in that bad relationship is wow #So in my verses Wanda will and should kick Crystal´s ass and Pietro should be far away from her

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the-end-of-the-storm · 6 years ago

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GoT 8x01: the wait is over and winter is definitely here - beware the spoilers below -

I just want to say beforehand that I woke up at 2.30 am to watch the new episode - so if this makes no sense at all, well ... let’s blame it on my sleep-deprived brain.

• Don’t know if we already knew this but they actually played the same song from the pilot when D*ny and Jon arrived and it made me a bit melancholic. It’s been a ride.

• The way Missandei eyes the Northerners watching her with distrust had me feel for her. However, watching it for the second time, it gave me another vibe too. As she was a slave, she knows exactly what it means to serve and obey someone you don’t want. So, if Missandei ends up urging D*ny at some point to leave the North be and just rule the other six kingdoms, well, I wouldn’t be surprised.

• Did you notice how happy D*ny was when her dragons intimidated the Northerners? It‘s been a while since I’ve seen her this happy:

This shot is Immediately followed by what has become her signature smug smirk that I dislike so much. Ships aside, a Queen worthy of the title shouldn’t have this kind of reaction to her children imposing fear on her newest subjects who she knows do already not like her all that much. This is like the dragon pit all over again, you know, when she was late to the meeting she demanded, and rode in on a dragon like she already owns the place, when it would have been so much smarter to be a little respectful and humble.

• The Jon and Bran reunion was nice; I suppose as nice at it can get with 3-eyed-Bran. Also, if Jon ever starts looking at D*ny like this, I‘ll start reevaluating him being part of the pack but not a heartbeat before:

• They made Sansa look THIS good for a reason. A sight for sore eyes, isn‘t it Jon?

(And yeah, this is her watching Jonny Boy.)

(And so is this.)

(Now, she’s too busy hugging her man. A smile on her lips and CLOSED eyes ... hmm. Do you see how her hands aren’t even attached to each other yet? Alright, let’s move on, shall we?)

• Lyanna Mormont is the Noorf in a nutshell and I’m here for her angry little girl attitude:

•Sansa isn’t here for chit chat with the saviour and whenever I think I couldn’t stan my girl more, I do. But I’m a bit afraid too, Sansa hates her new Queen amd D*ny KNOWS. 🔥

• Ok, I watched the meeting with the lords very carefully and I made some observations that I just want to throw in here for good measure: 1) D*ny is the last one to sit down at the Lord‘s table and it means things. 2) When poor little Lord Umber (who fucking deserved better!!) adressed Sansa an then Jon, we have them both in the frame, and no one else. However, when he adresses D*ny, we have her literally standing alone by the fireplace. 3) we have Jon and Sansa alone in a frame on 3 separate occasions, while we have only one shoot of Jon and the supposed love of his life alone (unless you count the one with D*ny and Jon‘s crotch ... then, well good for you, I guess). 4) Jon’s “It was the honor of my life.” fucked me the fuck up. You know, I was really afraid after the leaks that although I whole-heartily believe in Pol!Jon I would be miffed at him before it was officially revealed but I was soo wrong. This whole episode I felt so sad for Jon. He’s been through so much and willing to sacrifice everything he ever wanted to keep his people as safe as he can ... he deserves so much better than to be with the woman who took the honor of his life away from him without giving a single fuck about it. And yes, I did notice how Sansa glared at D*ny during this. Jon “I had a choice: keep the crown or protect the Noorf. I chose the Noorf.” I rest my case. 5) “If anyone survives the war to come, we’ll have Jon Snow to thank.” Right in front of D*ny; Tyrion, you brave, brave fool. 6) I think the leaks said, that neither Sansa nor D*ny said anything and I was very happy to find out that that wasn’t true. This is a very long scene, and D*ny only delivered us this little gem: Sansa: “What do dragons eat anyway?” (Which is a damn reasonable enquiry.) “D*ny: “Whatever they want.” 🔥 Maybe I’m overreacting things but this felt like a threat. Seriously, the Dark D*ny Force was strong in this one. They really went there ... wow. I mean it‘s not as if the food question wasn‘t legit. Also this whole the dragons *only* ate 17 goats and 11 of some-other-animal today is proof to me that the food thing is going to be huge. (Also, at first, I thought D*ny was worried that they eat too much when it was the other way around. LOL.)

• Tyrion: “Lady of Winterfell: has a nice ring to it.” Sansa: “So does Hand of the Queen; depends on the queen I suppose.” She really isn’t messing around, is she?

Also Sansa, same scene: “I used to think you are the cleverest man alive.” accompanied by her little judgy smile. She sure knows how to break a man’s heart.

• I’m crossing my fingers for D*ny to suggest to reactivate the Sansa/Tyrion marriage. Let’s be honest, Tyrion would be all for it in a heartbeat. She’s smarter, prettier and old enough that he wouldn’t feel like a creep anymore and now she actually is the Lady of Winterfell. He wanted her before - he must be drooling for her now.

• I was absolutely not disappointed with the Jon/Arya reunion. I thought - considering the circumstances - it was really cute and worthy.

• Arya: “She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met.” Stark sister feels. *-*

• Jon‘s „I'm her family, too.“ killed me a little bit inside. Man, my Jon feels are killing me right know. How can anyone see this and still claim that Jon will abandon his pack to become a Targaryen?

• When Sansa is the Queen of Shade, Cercei is the Queen of Smirk. I wonder if there’s anyway for Cercei to get out of this alive.

• Back to the food thing: it‘s been two years since S7, so thanks for the reminder that the Lannister army in the Field of Fire was people too, and were burned up like Sunday roast. 🔥

• I can’t believe that Yara is absolutely not pissed that D*ny couldn’t give less craps about her being abducted by Euron. even though without her Dany couldn’t have crossed the Narrow Sea.

• Alys Karstark, I see you and your red hair and your complete random appearance that served no plot purpose. Yet.

• Davos “What if the Seven Kingdoms (...) were ruled by a just woman and an honorable man.” I see what you did there, D&D. Also, if you guys are contemplating a J/D marriage, could you please have the decency and do it in front of Sansa? I need that. Thanks x

• If D&D wanted be to stop believing in Pol!Jon they shouldn’t have him happy-riding a dragon and kissing D*ny seconds after having her low-key threatening his sister. It’s just not believable that if this romance was real and between equals that he wouldn’t make it clear that she can’t threaten his family. Dany: “She doesn’t need to be my friend but I am her queen. If she can’t respect me ...” Jon: *then perish*

• Ok, but seriously D*ny, why would you give the guy you’ve just met and whose family and people despise you access to the the very things that gave you all your power? Why would you suggest dragon riding like it means nothing? Hop on, Jonny Boy. Just no. I have soo many questions. Why would you be so careless? (Arrogance, that’s why.)

• JON DOESN’T SAY “WE COULD STAY HERE FOR A THOUSAND YEARS.” But Pol!Jon replies with “We’d be pretty old.” giving no indication that that would be an enticing thought. No, he’d rather go back and fight some wights. Jon has a family he cares about and I don’t think she can relate at all.

•Rheagal is a creeper. Seriously, did you see the full on of him during the J/D snagging. Get a life, Rhaegal!

• I LOVED the Tent 2.0 Scene. Get my son some air. Also, while Jon talks serious stuff, Sansa’s like “No, she’s much prettier (than the Mad King).” with the same gaze she had when Littlefinger told her that a marriage alliance between J/D would make sense. I think it was the same weird voice too, but I’m not 100% sure right now. Jon really does reply nothing after Sansa questioning his motives for bending the knee and it tells me all I need to know.

• On this note, I want to repeat that I really need someone suggest a J/D marriage to Sansa.

• Sam finding out about his father and especially his brother broke my heart. It was everything I wanted and knew his reaction to be. And it was much worse to watch unfold than the leaks made it out to be. Especially since the scene started out really cute with Sam all nervous to be talking to them and cute about his book-stealing past and then he even tries to stay reasonable after hearing about his father but then he learns about his brother ... and it’s just too fucking much. Look at his face. I never ever cry during shows or movies but if I hadn't been prepared beforehand, I probably would have.

• Bran needs to stop staring at people in the courtyard. Just sayin’.

• Jon and Sam in the crypts. My poor babies. I don’t really want to say anything about their talk at this point because I believe in Jon and his agenda and if he needs to be detached to deal with keeping up the facade, then my man needs to do what he needs to do. However, I will be watching his next interaction with Sansa very closely. OK, to be honest, since I already had read the leaks before the episode, I was a little distracted during the parentage reveal and I couldn’t help but imagine Jon thinking “Well, this explains a fucking lot.”

• Last but not least: JAIME IS IN WINTERFELL!!!

My favorite moments:

- The Tarly Reveal

- Jon x Arya Reunion

- all Jonsa scenes

- Sansa and Tyrion on the battlements

On my threatened-to-be-burned watchlist:

🔥 Sansa Stark

🔥 Lyanna Mormont

🔥 Lord Varys

🔥 Samwell Tarly

🔥 Gendry Waters / Baratheon

🔥 JAIME LANNISTER (I have a hard time imagining Jaime to keep his mouth shut when he realizes that D*ny doesn’t just fry up soldiers in battle but that it’s her favorite method of conducting justice. There is too much history and PTSD between them, they’re like a time bomb; you can’t put them under one roof without at least threatening to set it off.)

All in all, this was such a good episode and I’m thrilled to see what’s to come. I’m so happy that Jon is still all I hoped for him to be inside and that Jonsa is still on track. I was even a little surprised at how they portrayed D*ny in this episode, because D&D aren’t even trying anymore, are they? I might be a little biased but I think if you’re not a full on stan there wasn’t much to root for her in this one. Anyways, everything within the episode fitted neatly with our Pol!Jon, Dark!D*ny and Jonsa theories and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Cheers xxx

#got spoilers #jonsa #jon snow #Sansa Stark #dark!dany #anti-daenerys #Jon x Sansa #season 8 spoilers

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years ago

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Spider-Girls #1 Thoughts

FINALLY I’ve gotten to the series I was most anticipating!

Just about the ONLY thing I was remotely interested in Spider-Geddon for was this mini-series.

My hype was strong because even though at the time I’d not finished RYV proper the prospect of seeing Mayday again, in her proper outfit (we’ll talk about that) and interacting with Annie was a fanservice dream, especially after Houser established that in the RYV universe (though this didn’t exactly make sense with the original RYV mini from Secret Wars) that Mayday was miscarried in this universe.

So how did this issue measure up in delivering on that enticing prospect?

Well in short it did a good job.

Let’s get the negatives out of the way.

Mayday’s costume is off model on both the cover and interior of the comic, albeit in different ways. On the cover she has webpits which she never had outside of her redesigned costume from Secret Wars: Spider Island and Web Warriors. In the interior the artist neglects to draw the red on her boots. At first I thought it was just because she was being drawn in motion or a mistake but no the art is consistent. Then I thought maybe in the prior issues of Spider-Geddon she also had no red on her boots but no, she did. So this artist just screwed up.

A nitpick? Perhaps but given how contentious the issue of Mayday wearing her true costume has been ever since Spider-Verse it’s worth talking about.

A more significant problem where Houser, much as I have liked her work in the past, really didn’t do her homework, was presenting Peter a(and arguably MJ) as wholly unaware of the Inheritors.

Why is this a problem. Because this version of Peter Parker literally debuted during Spider-Verse, specifically Spider-Verse #2, an anthology comic which was written with the explicit intention of teasing Renew Your Vows during Secret Wars. So he should absolutely know about the Inheritors. The only way this makes sense is if the RYV Peter of Secret Wars and the one of RYV the ongoing are in fact not one and the same. Which was a theory some held when Conway’s run began because of how much it didn’t line up with the Secret Wars mini-series.

Another little nitpick is the Vulture gang. They were pretty lame although I suppose that may have been the point and it echoes Spider-Geddon #1 where Miles fights the equally lame Vulturions.

A more significant problem which I grant you may be addressed in future issues is that Peter’s reaction to Mayday is simply the initial shock of her reveal and then he seems relatively non-chalant. Mary Jane, in a brief yet heartbreakingly brilliant scene, goes off on her own to be upset, but Peter doesn’t do anything like that or show signs of being that thrown for a loop from seeing his dead daughter alive and well.

Now look I’m going to be very harsh. Maybe extremely controversial here. Call me out if I am because I’ve never been through a tragedy like a miscarriage. In such a situation from what little I know, a mother being more upset than the father wouldn’t be unrealistic or unreasonable. Buuuuuuut...unless RYV Peter is way more different than the Peter we know and love from 616 seeing Mayday (let alone finding out her Dad is dead) should get under his skin and we should see that. In 616 after the Clone Saga there was more than one scene depicting Peter being upset about MJ’s miscarriage.

Another problem is that Mayday and Anya comment that it’s nice seeing the city so normal. I didn’t understand that exchange and can only summise that Houser is implying being with the |Web Warriors they haven’t seen a normal (for them) version NYC in awhile. This doesn’t really make sense because the Web Warriors isn’t Mayday’s day job, she still operates in her version of NYC regularly last we checked. Unless this series takes place REALLY soon after Web Warriors and Mayday has changed back to her old outfit and then just helped monitor the Inheritors leading into Spider-Geddon and little else. But that’s not the implication of the prior issues of this event.

Also, though this is more a problem with Spider-Geddon #1-2 I admit but i’m only just realizing it now, where was Anya until now? In Web Warriors she lives on Loomworld with Spidey-UK who is her (most recent) mentor. But she wasn’t around in any of the prior issues of this event until now. And for a girl who just lost her mentor (again) she seems nonchalant. Sure as a someone who at best is lukewarm to her character I don’t care about seeing her reaction. Heck I’d rather she be outright absent from this series and it be all about Annie and Mayday. But from a writing POV she should have a reaction to Billy’s death.

Finally Houser continues to insist Annie’s hyper Spider Sense was something her parents only recently learned of.

That’s about it for the negatives.

Pretty much everything else about the story was GREAT.

Do not mistake my above negatives for me disliking the story.

I didn’t.

I LOVED it.

Where it succeeded it really succeeded.

After the bitter disappointment of the last arc of RYV this was Houser very much back on form.

In a lot of ways this issue feels like RYV #24. But because it isn’t an issue of that series I can’t hold it against the story for again focussing on Annie. In this series Annie, Ayna and Mayday are the leads, Peter and MJ are the supporting characters and there is no pretense of that.

Now for sure, as is typical with most of Houser’s issues, Annie is more centre stage than everyone else, being the only character afforded an inner monologue. Now I’m actually okay with this for now because Spider-Girls seems to be to Spider-Geddon what Scarlet Spiders was to Spider-Verse (ironically including ‘siblings’ one of which sports the Spider-Ben outfit) and in that series every issue gave focus to a different lead. If that is the case then this was simply Annie’s turn and the next two issues will give the focus to Mayday and Anya. If that isn’t the case then...that might be a problem.

That all being said this wasn’t BAD focus for Annie. Throughout Houser’s run the main tension for Annie has been between wanting more independence and adult responsibility vs. her being able to live up to that. Case in point she does need her parents help in this story.

In that sense I suppose this issue was a little repetitive of themes we’ve hit on before. But no one said she finished that arc by RYV #23 nor that it should be over by that point anyway. She’s a kid so for her to get that independence and responsibility within like 10 issues would feel unrealistic and unearned. What’s nice about this issue is that the situation organically confers onto her that sense of independence, trust and responsibility. We just need to see if she’ll be able to handle it now.

We also get more expansion on her ‘unique’ Spider Sense. It’s a little inconsistent in this story because prior to this she got outright visions but the impression given at the start of this issue is that her latest vision is more vague. Now of course Mayday’s spider sense to a lesser extent was capable of seeing the future as was Kaine’s. I don’t mind her borrowing from the latter but given the similarities between Annie and Mayday already it was a problem; having such visions more frequently didn’t help that much. This issue does rectify this issue a little by connecting her more directly to the Web of Life and Destiny giving her Spider Sense a greater root in magic.

Love or hate that it’s certainly more unique. I typically dislike magic in Spider-Man, but given how RYV has ended and this may well be the last hurrah for the RYV characters there ain’t much to lose in going this direction.

On Mayday’s side (yeah heads up Anya is just kinda just there so I have little to say about her) Houser does little but what little she does goes a long way; more is less in this case.

Unlike Slott, Costa or Gage who either wrote Mayday out of character, generically or the way a human being wouoldn’t react, Houser seems to have enough knowledge of basic human emotion to get that you know, seeing her Dad alive and with a daughter who isn’t her would upset Mayday.

Rather than rearing to tear the Inheritors a new one like In Spider-Geddon #2 or Spider-Verse, Mayday here just vents a little too hard on the Vulture gang and is a little more distracted and quiet than she normally would be. It’s subtle. It’s in character. It’s well done.

I also appreciate that Mayday was able to one hit K.O. two Vultures at once. Mayday in that moment became the most bad ass character in the issue. It also created a nice subtle parallel with Annie. At the start of the issue Annie tells and shows off how being a hero for a long time has made her such a competent fighter. Mayday’s prowess in the previously mentioned moment shows that off too. Realistically Annie may well be a more competent and effective fighter than Mayday given how she’s been doing it for longer and has had extensive X-Men training. Although Mayday has had more direct training from Peter, the Avengers (including American Dream), Phil Urich and noticeably Elektra. I’d like for this angle to be explored going forward. Seeing how Mayday sigs where Annie zags is surely one of the most obviously interesting prospects of a series like this.

Apart from the great MJ scene where she is sad by seeing Mayday, the only other positive I have is the art.

Now I was less than thrilled by the post-time skip RYV art to be honest. I felt a lot of the time it felt sketchy, unfinished even.

Here Genolet, whilst not being s slam dunk super star Spidey artist like Ottley or Stegman, delivers smooth, clean, effective artwork that serves the story and has a dash of Phil Noto to it in my eyes.

So yes.

There are problems with this issue but so far it has a lot of greatness to it and I’m very interested to read on!

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birth-fic-lover · 6 years ago

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It’s not twins

Olivia was a loner but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to become a mother, she preferred living miles away from anyone and her partner didn’t mind since he was away most the year with work. Olivia and her love suited each other, they both were loners but they both wanted kids. She worked on from home on the computer, so she knew she wouldn’t have to worry about child care.

It didn't take long for their wishes to come true, they were both over the moon. Olivia missed having her own family around, though they were noisy she still loved them. Her many sisters were sad went she had made the decision to leave the big family, she often wondered growing up in such a big family was the reason she now wanted only a small number of people around her.

During the second month of her pregnancy she was getting anxious for things to start to happen, then her stomach started churning. She dashed down the hall to the bathroom, where she threw herself over the toilet and was sick again and again. Stupid morning sickness, serves her right for wanting something to happen she thought unhappily.

A few weeks later Olivia felt rewarded by seeing her 10 week pregnant body. Standing sideways in front of the mirror she noticed the small pregnant belly and she could feel how firm it was. She wondered if it was normal to be showing this early though it was only a little, she knew it wasn’t obvious unless you looked for it.

Then at 16 weeks she noticed how puffy and tender her breasts were, she was amazed how much her body had changed and she was only 3 and a half months pregnant. She wished her partner was home to see this but he would be working away for next couple of months. She couldn't resist examining her pregnant body closer, she cupped hands over her tender swollen breasts and her nipples were hard. Each time her fingers brushed over them it felt so good.

A couple of weeks later when she hit the 4 months pregnant mark her condition was becoming more obvious, this was all proof that that a baby was growing inside her. So she didn’t mind that already she was struggling to fit in most her clothes and her once loose clothes were snug. But she was measuring larger then she was meant to, maybe she had been over eating or she had got the dates wrong.

A week or two later when she was doing the washing up she felt her first little flutter from deep inside her womb as my unborn baby moved for the first time. Dropping everything she took off the gloves and she moved her hands under her shirt to already round four months pregnant belly. “Well hello baby, I wondered what it was like having a baby move inside you. I wish your daddy was here too feel this."

Thinking about him she moved her hands higher and fondled her bare plump breasts under her top, she had given up with bras since no one would see her. Soon her nipples were hard and her four months pregnant body became more aroused as they were fondled by her slightly damp fingers.

She walked upstairs deciding to get out of her restricting clothes. As she caught herself in the bedroom mirror, she noticed she was definitely getting a belly. She just loved the way she looked when pregnant shape looked though her back was killing her. "Well baby, you’re a bit bigger than expected. But I don’t mind at all.” Olivia said rubbing her tummy. She had wanted this child for so long.

When she was five months pregnant, she picked up her man from the station glad her had finally came home. Though she noticed she had to push her seat back to accommodate the belly, it was unmistakable as it jutted out of her. When Roy got into the car his eyes looked like they were going to pop out his head. “how have you been?” he asked.

"Well there’s someone I want you to meet," she told him. Taking his hand, she moved it to where the baby was moving and kicking. "That's our baby" she said with a smile as he joined her in equally big smile.

"Wow! Are you sure there’s only one or maybe you’ve got your dates mixed? What do the doctors say?" her partner asked enjoying the feel of her stomach.

“Please don’t be mad, we do live so far away. To be honest I haven’t been going, I don’t like hospitals and women have been doing this for thousands of years” Olivia explains.

Her partner left it he wanted to enjoy his time with her until he left again. She often couldn't help wondering if Roy ever looked at other girls when on business trips. He was always away more than he was at home, but he seemed so keen to become a father.

But when he was away she would enjoy her own body, her breasts were just starting to fill with milk, making them soft and nearly double their normal size, and they were so sensitive. She would spend the lonely nights enjoying her growing body, there was just something about her being pregnant.

The night after Roy left to go back to work over seas she hand another of these sessions in her room. Her stomach was so firm and round and her hands were always drawn to her rounding pregnant tummy to feel the baby kick. It was such an amazing sensation. Moving her hands higher, she began to fondle her breasts and overly sensitive nipples. She had wrapped a robe around her naked gravid body, but at the rate she was growing it wasn’t going to fit for much longer.

At 6 months all Olivia could do a lot less around the house, she was starting too feel overdue already. Her baby was very active and very big, her breasts seemed to keep growing with her firm and smooth orb of a belly.

Recently the online supermarket stopped delivering since it was so far from the town. So once a week she would have to drive for an hour to get shopping, and it was getting tighter and tighter each time behind the steering wheel. Also each time took her a little longer than as she didn't want to do anything that would hurt the unborn baby. She hated going out in public as so many stared at her and her belly.

A month later Olivia was watching TV, her entire belly filled her lap. When she had clothes on she looked almost comical like she had just put a beach ball under her top it stood out so much. She then herd a knock on the door and when she answered it a not quite as pregnant women stood before her, Olivia invited her in.

“My name’s Carol, are you Olivia?” The women explained that the way the wife of Roy, that all this time he has been living 2 lives. That’s why neither of the women hardly saw him. Both of them cried and talked. “He always had a thing for wanting to spread his seed around the country, how far along are you?”

“I’m 33 weeks, what about you?” Olivia said feeling huge next to Carols tiny bump.

“I’m 20 weeks, i am really sorry to break the news to you. Especially because you got two babies on the way” Carol said.

“Oh no, it must be horrid finding out your husband’s had another women. Oh and I’m only carrying one, so we are totally even” Olivia explained. She was tired of people thinking it was twins, she couldn’t cope with two especially now she knew she would totally be on her own.

Olivia was lucky that she worked from home, though she was struggling now days to type with her bump in the way. She had sorted her finances so she could survive without money from the man who used her. She noticed that her belly seemed a lot lower than before, she was relived as the mystery of why everyone thought it was twins had been revealed obviously she was a month further along than first thought. She decided she must of got her maths wrong and she was just carrying larger because of that.

Squeezing behind the steering wheel of her car she did her weekly drive to the supermarket. She would hear people sometimes gossiping about her. "She's huge, she won’t admit it’s multiples" she heard one women whisper. "I heard she won’t even go get a check-up, she's going to have a shock if anything goes wrong" another woman added.

The strong fast kicks from her unborn baby told her the baby was going to be born any day now, she was gave she had everything she needed at home. She payed for her shopping and wasn’t looking forward to her next trip next week. The journey back was long and uncomfortable for Olivia, she hoped the baby would come soon.

But the baby got bigger and stronger, and her breasts kept growing. Her nipples were always hard and leaking. She could feel the baby putting so much pressure on her hips, she was certain she was overdue. She was done with being pregnant, none of her clothes fit her.

One day when she awoke something felt different, she undressed and looked at herself in the mirror. If possible she was carrying the baby even lower as it had dropped into position to be born. She could only waddle around the house, and it seemed apart from a few robes she couldn’t really wear much either. She could feel the lack of space in her active belly.

One morning her plump breasts were so filled with milk that they actually were painful. Undoing the top buttons of her nightgown, she began fondling the nipple with her thumb until they were even firmer and taking them between her thumbs and forefingers milking her own breasts. The relief washes over her until she felt a twinge, she stops wondering if that a contraction. She waits and after an hour she knows enough have passed that she knows her baby will be born today.

The contractions were still mild and far apart so she washed her huge pregnant body for the last time. Her pregnant belly was huge and really low, unknown to her she was 38 weeks. She decided to put the nightgown back on for now, she slowly make her way downstairs. She didn’t want anyone, she wanted to do this one her own. Her labour kept progressing, with pains coming every 15 minutes and getting a little stronger. “Ooooohhhhh baby, I can tell you are going to be big being almost a month overdue”. She had decided that’s how overdue she must be, being this big.

She rode the contractions until she couldn’t take it any longer then waddled back up the stairs the contractions were coming every 10 minutes and make her double over and gasp for my breath. Suddenly there was intense pressure in her lower back and she gripped the table in the upstairs hall and moved her knees wide apart wanting to push as she groaned loudly. "Oh baby, not yet I need to do this slowly because you’re going to be big and I don’t want to damage myself".

But it all gets too much when her waters suddenly break and she can feel the baby enter the birth canal. She starts to crawl to her bedroom, “naaaggggggg baby pleeeeeese wait for me to get to the bed” she begs. But she knew her baby was going to be born right now, the contractions were different she felt the baby move and push though her lips as it crowns. She starts to pant and she sways her hips while on her hands and knees, she abandons the idea of going to her room she just wants the baby out.

She feels the head pop out of her, she then feels one shoulder leave then the other and the baby rushes out of her. Olivia looks at her son in wonder, "Wow, you’re so tiny, makes me wonder how this little guy made my belly so big.” She wobbly gets up and carries the baby to the bed and lays him down. She takes of the nightgown and then she lays next to her son, she get him to start feeding.

She feels a strange sensation, but guesses it the afterbirth. She starts to do some experimental pushing, but the pain gets more and more intense as she feels something hard travelling down her birth canal. It feels like another baby but she refuses to believe it’s twins. She feels another long pain like a contraction that build up, shakily she feels down there and feels a head emerging. She can’t pretend anymore, she is having another baby.

On the next contraction she pushes with all she’s got, groaning then grunting then screaming as the baby's head pushed out in a gush. She gets the shoulders out with the next contraction and delivers the baby. Her baby now has a brother, looks like it was twins after all.

#fpreg

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disarmingly · 6 years ago

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for kofi anon who wanted slice of life yoonkook with a hint of magic except there’s more than a hint im sorry i hope this is okay let me know if it isnt i will try again! please note that the very first section takes place in ‘present day’ for them while everything after that first section is their past leading up to that present. <3

jeon jungkook is your average good looking sort of introverted loves music is good at video games and dancing and singing and pretty much anything else he tries...young man. except for one thing.

"one thing," his boyfriend half scoffs half whines, snuggling himself closer to jungkook's side like a petulant cat that despite being smaller in stature manages to take up more space. jungkook says it's the shoulders. namjoon says it's yoongi's ~personality~. they are both probably right. anyway we weren't talking about yoongi. we were talking about jungkook and how he's your average fresh university grad who can walk on his hands and do backflips and draw and paint and make anyone who looks at him too long fall in love with him and-- --yeah. "one thing~," yoongi repeats with a groan and presses his face to jungkook's shoulder. bites him absently for good measure. jungkook yelps. * jungkook's magic manifested when he turned sixteen. "like a fucking disney princess," yoongi scowled the first time It happened. 'It' was a boy who had never met jungkook before, meeting his eyes in the supermarket and going five different shades from red to pink before stumbling over to him and babbling something along the lines of 'you're so beautiful oh my god'. yoongi, there at the time, stood to his full shorter height and stood slightly in front of a baffled jungkook, tilted his head at the blushing boy and said, "you're not wrong, but he's taken." the stranger apologized several times and walked away but both yoongi and jungkook were definitively aware of his eyes on jungkook their whole way through the checkout and out the automatic doors. "what the hell was that?" yoongi's hypothetical question would get its answer in the days and nights to follow as one by one jungkook felled multitudes of strangers and some not-strangers (much more awkward) -- not with a sword but with his....well...whole self. * some people's magic comes out at birth. some require a certain age. some are catalyzed by an event or even a special word. yoongi wishes jungkook could have been one of the minority of people in the world who didn't have magic at all. or that his magic could be something useful, like a magically present umbrella whenever he needed it. but no. jungkook's magic is exactly the kind of magic an average golden boy like jungkook would have: love. * "but it doesn't last," jungkook points out, shelving a book 'about soulmates and inevitable doom' where it actually belongs (certainly not with the gardening books, though jungkook was amused to find it there.) in addition to being temporary, if it's happened once, it doesn't happen again, so at least there's that. but yoongi, crouched low and properly ordering the books on the bottom shelf makes a clicking noise with his tongue to show exactly what he thinks and feels about that. jungkook sighs. "what do you want me to do? never leave the house again? i have to go to school--" "of course not!" yoongi's voice is louder than either of them expect it to come out. they get appropriately shushed. jungkook's ears turn red and yoongi feels immediate guilt for embarrassing him but he has a point to make. he continues, more quietly, "...that's...that’s not what i want." for a while they just keep silently setting this particular bookshelf's contents to rights. students file out. a few teachers leave. goodbyes and groans of 'see you tomorrow' get passed back and forth. at some point yoongi shuffles his way closer to jungkook, close enough to lean against his leg the way cats press along a person's shins when they want to say 'pet me human'. jungkook does in fact run his fingers through yoongi's dark dark hair, wishes yoongi wasn't quite so low to the ground so he could run them down to brush back and forth against his undercut; but later. there's something almost as therapeutic about petting as being petted. maybe that's just them. that's fine. when yoongi takes jungkook's wrist, it's just to tug his hand forward and kiss the palm, kiss his wrist, nose against his pulse and say, "i don't want you under house arrest. i want to take you to the movies. i want to go to the fair with you so you can win me stuff i don't need. i want to sit on the beach with you and everyone and toast marshmallows and....and all of the stuff we do. i want to walk to school with you. even if i'm not going here soon anymore." the last one hits hard. they haven't really talked about it. how yoongi going to university and jungkook still in high school will put a steep cut into their time...doing anything, house arrest or no. yoongi kisses his hand again. jungkook lowers himself so they can be closer. "that's very romantic," he says and he smiles too wide, so wide it hurts, smiles against the crying feeling. they're not breaking up. he shouldn't feel so sad. that's what he's been telling himself. but maybe yoongi understands. because yoongi says, "hey...hey come on." yoongi's arms fit around jungkook perfect. yoongi's mouth to jungkook's mouth also fits perfect. and yoongi's low toned reassurances of, "it's okay. it's okay," fit perfect enough. because it's more complicated than that, but sometimes perfect enough is about wanting to do the right thing even if one doesn't know precisely what that is. right now yoongi wants to let jungkook know he loves him. so he tells him it's okay. and he means all of it: the change of time and distance, jungkook's sometimes infuriating magic, and so on. it's okay. * what jungkook said is true. the effects of his magic which he can't control unless he never meets anyone's eyes ever again (impossible), vary in time. for some people predisposed to loving him already, the effects last longer. for absolute strangers, it seems the effects last anywhere from 24 hours to a week, the latter end of which is harrowing when it's someone who goes to school with him or lives in his neighborhood. but one of the things yoongi dislikes most about going to university is all the time away from jungkook in which god knows how many people are falling in love with him. the harmless ones are negligible he supposes; but some get pushy. he remembers several instances of people following jungkook home, waiting outside his window, and even ambushing him in empty classrooms. and it's not that jungkook can't take care of himself. jungkook is a soft heart but he knows how to defend himself and yoongi and the others have worked very hard to help him realize he's worth defending. still. yoongi's phone buzzes. he frowns and pulls to the side of the rode. dropping his feet to the ground with some difficulty. stupid namjoon and his stupid long legs; yoongi apparently didn't adjust the seat of the borrowed bicycle enough. whatever. he gets his phone out and his eyes widen. he sends a quick reply then bikes the rest of the way to the local high school so fast and so not within the standard cycling laws that no less than fifteen cars blare their horns at him en route. * he drops the bicycle in a hurry to get to jungkook who's seated on the curb with his head to his knees to avoid further incidents. it speaks volumes how tired he must be because he doesn't move and this scares yoongi more than almost anything, so when he lays a careful hand on jungkook's shoulder and jungkook jerks under his touch, he's honestly relieved, though he doesn't want to upset him. jungkook's eyes have dilated to be lamp-like. yoongi does the first thing that comes to his muscle memory and drops a kiss to jungkook's forehead. then he leans back and studies him. he has a split lip already swollen and starting to bruise at the right corner. right cheek too. there's a shallow bleeding scrape along his jaw too, smudged with gravel and dirt and yoongi's emotions can't settle on furious or devastated so he's both. he wants to frame jungkook's face but doesn't want to aggravate his bruises; and anyway he knows full well they should clean him up first, probably grab some antiseptic, some bandaids, an ice pack. jungkook sighs. "hey," yoongi settles for curling his hand on one of jungkook's knees. jungkook cracks half a smile. it looks like it hurts. "it's a little like a curse isn't it," jungkook says and he means it to come across as a joke but it falls flat because it's sort of true. "kook--" "i've never had it happen like that." jungkook interrupts and it's quiet. still pool quiet. yoongi aches. listens -- not just for jungkook's words but equally to his silence. cars pass. a little girl and her mother and a giant golden retriever start to pass by but not before the golden catches jungkook's tired eyes and pulls them over to him. he licks at jungkook's face and the mother is apologizing profusely but jungkook is giggling and then laughing and so yoongi fills in for him, "it's fine. this happens a lot." "dogs like him huh?" the mother says, clearly relieved and also bemused now. the little girl is curiously watching while petting the dog's fur the wrong way. a closer look has the mother frowning though and it's a fair question when she asks, "...are you both okay?" it's more delicate than yoongi associates with most parental strangers. he hates when people assume they know best or think they have the right to butt in just because they are 'an adult' or a parent or whatever. but she says it cautiously, like she knows it might be none of her business but is unwilling to ignore a boy with a fast blooming black eye; and that, yoongi can respect. so he says, "we will be." pauses. "thanks." the mother nods and they leave soon. jungkook watches them go, tension drawn out of him leaving him purely exhausted. yoongi had thought they would double-up on the bicycle because that's what they usually do, jungkook gleeful with the wind carding through his hair as yoongi pedals and complains that jungkook should be the one doing this; but that was before he got jungkook's text. seeing his line of vision, jungkook says, "can we...can we just walk?" yoongi kisses his temple very carefully, reaches for his hand and says, "whatever you want." * it's this near nightmare that spurs namjoon and taehyung into action. or rather, faster action. because they had been working on various experiments ('wasting' lab equipment but not really in their opinion and taehyung could charm the legs and arms off of a living person so they've gone unpenalized anyway) before. but when they all meet up next on the beach, jungkook's bruises and cuts still in the early stages of healing, it's too much. they go as far as to hide in cupboards ('how did you fit????' hoseok asks at some point, and namjoon just grimaces and says 'i fit okay') so they can stay in the school lab over night. this goes on for months and it's a bitter cold day in january when namjoon and taehyung (both slightly very too caffeinated) slam into jimin's garage (a modified hangout room complete with video game consoles, a bunch of musical instruments, a sofa, and a beanbag chair) and say, "we did it!" and then, "well, we think we did it." * magic is not science. but maybe science can be a little magic. jungkook's magic is the magic of love at first sight. namjoon's magic is the understanding of how things work. taehyung's magic is tricks of light. the perfectly round glasses they give jungkook that day are a product of both of these things, as well as the disciplined persistence of friendship. when jungkook puts them on, yoongi melts a little and thinks: how is this supposed to help if he's cuter than ever? but it does help. jungkook tests it on the first stranger he sees the next day -- a transfer student whose eyes happen to fall on jungkook first. he blinks. then he looks away. jungkook lets go of a breath so loud the people seated next to him turn and stare. he flushes pink from cheeks to ear tips; slides down in his chair -- embarrassed...and jubilant. * "weirdly it doesn't work on animals?" jungkook half says half asks but it doesn't matter. he loves animals and if that was all his magic had an effect on he wouldn't need these glasses in the first place. "huh," namjoon says which means he's going to pursue the why of it. "which you're very happy about," yoongi says. jungkook hums affirmative. they laugh. * they're walking back from the beach -- having declined seokjin's offer to drive them, wanting to have a little more time alone before parting ways (yoongi to his shared apartment with namjoon, jungkook back to the house with his family) -- and they're holding hands when jungkook pauses so quickly it jars yoongi to a stop. he trips. jungkook keeps him from falling. "sorry." "'s okay. uh...?" yoongi squints. in the sundown light jungkook's pink hair has a lavender cast. and jungkook has his special glasses on but yoongi's as deep in love as ever. that's not magic though. it's just how yoongi feels. it's this and other sappy thoughts he's having when jungkook angles his head down until their foreheads touch, brushes his nose against yoongi's nose and says, "no one's around." oh. yoongi's relaxed look goes narrow again but he's no good at denying jeon jungkook anything. he sighs. "fine." * yoongi's magic, though it rarely comes into play because it's too flashy and yoongi by nature isn't a flashy person, is also special. * an interesting thing about human beings: they rarely look up. but if they did on this particular night, they might see this: two boys holding hands and kissing against the pink lilac blue of twilight, the emerging moon as their backdrop, some 1800 feet up in the air. *

#yoonkook #sugakookie #drabble #kofi request #still taking kofi requests kofi name is darling #thank you for your help <3 #my moon and my stars #slice of life yoonkook w magic

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aenigmaticdays · 6 years ago

Text

Coda: Chapter 3 - Friction

A/N: I really, really thought this would have stopped here. It’s been hard, stripping Fitzsimmons down to the bare bones, but the pages grew and grew until I had to split this chapter up into 2. So no, it’s not quite the end yet.

Also on AO3 or FF.net

“Fitz?”

Is that…?

Her voice. Her voice.

What the hell...?

He has to be dreaming.

Fitz blinks once, twice and still sees the same thing. The same face.

Her face, those worried eyes. Hears her voice, calling his name.

There’s no fucking way that he’s blacked out beneath Jemma Simmons, when all he remembered was running to the nearest shelter before something detonated and something else heavy had hit him hard enough to pass out.

Waking up beneath Simmons in the worst way possible isn’t what Fitz had counted on. In fact, he hadn’t counted on ever seeing her again, let alone meeting her in this manner, months after he’d said his goodbyes.

And if Simmons is here, the rest of the team isn’t far behind.

The vague possibility of their paths crossing again existed, of course, something that he’d feared and hoped in equal measure. The overlap between the black-ops paramilitary stuff and the other kinds of missions that deal with potential extra-terrestrial activity Edwin takes on always make him edgy.

In the past few weeks, it has just been low-key risk management and technologically-driven security solutions, but being in Greenwich right now drives home this overlap of what the team’s doing with what they might run across in this mission.

Or rather, whom.

That worry as it seems now, is fully merited.

The rest of the boys have told him with matching grimaces that it doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it often involves some kind of fatality that no one can really solve—at least, no one whose knowledge goes beyond advanced weaponry and engineering. Their part has always been to provide more of the brawn than the brain and it’s Fitz, as they tell him, who tips the scales a little more in the latter direction and gives the team a wee bit more class.

For it to have happened in Greenwich—the place of yet another battle between humans and races determined to subjugate humans—is a kind of unpleasant reminder of being led back by the tip of his nose to the very things he’d been trying hard to move on from.

Bruised, dusty and too flustered for his liking, Fitz takes his time sitting up, too aware of the heat of her hands on his shoulders even through the thick fabric of his gear.

“Simmons? What are—”

Before he can have another word in edgewise, she starts babbling, something so familiar that a completely different kind of ache stops him short.

“—might be hurt when the blast happened and your head…there might be a concussion that I need to check—”

“Simmons! Stop! I’m alright.”

She finally does and moves awkwardly to the side as he sorts himself out, getting first to his knees, then to his feet.

However, the shock of seeing Jemma Simmons in the flesh fades enough for him to notice the rubble around them and their very precarious position just under a jutting pillar that’s in danger of toppling right over their heads.

“We have to move. Now,” he grates out and grabs her hand, starting to navigate clumsily over the debris when a chorus of voices reaches them.

They take a mere ten steps before Smithy emerges out of the cloud of dust with a torch and a weapon dangling loosely in his hand.

“Fitzy, you alright there?”

Shite.

It’s Smith who has come calling. Or rather, Smithy, the large Viking that Fitz dubs him in secret, with a penchant for telling the wrong jokes at the wrong times, which is why Fitz loves him too much and hates that he’s soon about to be the victim of a stray, throwaway line that will only make things more awkward.

“Yeah. The rest of the guys?”

A beefy finger points in a direction. “Outside. Waiting for you. Everyone’s good, considering the circumstances.” In the dim light, Smithy’s eyes widen in curiosity when it finally registers on him that Fitz isn’t alone. “And who do we have here?”

“Let’s get out of here first before story time starts, shall we?”

Fitz grimaces at the sharp, knowing glance that he gets in response. But he’d take his new team’s funny brand of shelter and protection over the dread of talking to Simmons again, despite the lad jokes the guys are certain to spring on him when the site’s secured and the place canvassed.

Simmons is oddly quiet as they make their way to where his team is and as Fitz had fully expected, garners wide-eyed stares when she stumbles out of the rubble after him. With her hand still tightly latched onto his and barely any physical space between them, he can only imagine what sort of picture he’s presenting to a team that is currently gaping at the both of them.

The surrealism of the moment strikes him hard, along with the urge to laugh hysterically at this twist of fate or whatever the cosmos has done this time by putting him straight where both his old life and his new one converge.

Avoiding her eyes, he gently disengages himself from Simmons and faces his leader. “What’s going on, Langston?”

Langston’s disgruntled shrug says it all. “Nothing that we should know about, apparently. Direct orders to stand down and move out.”

Classified information, then. Above their pay grade. Only those with the appropriate clearance levels have access, the knowledge meant only for a particular group of people within S.H.I.E.L.D. so the rest should buzz off. Fitz isn’t part of S.H.I.E.L.D. any longer, though he can probably guess what it’ll be about as he takes in the aftermath around them.

From where he stands, he finally sees May, Daisy, Hunter and Bobbi trying to contain the fallout, and with May’s usual efficiency, things get done quicker than most people can blink.

In some alternate universe, he’d be waiting in a lab awaiting the new toy or gadget that they’ll bring back.

Now however, he’s content to stay back, to watch with detached eyes.

But there’s still Simmons by his side, silently taking in everything and suddenly, he’s unsure what to do with her.

He opens his mouth to say something, but a vast chasm suddenly opens up between his mind and his tongue. All he knows is that what has been worth saying has long been said, which leaves the mundane and the banal.

So what’s really left but yet another cursory (and lame) adieu and a clean getaway?

(He’ll pray later to whatever higher being out there—even if the odds have never quite been in his favour—in the transport that’s arranged for the team, that this severing is permanent this time around.)

He faces her and aims for an evenness that he barely feels. “Simmons, I have to go.”

oOo

Jemma is entirely unprepared for this. Whatever this is, but it’s almost akin to a second-chance that she knows she needs to grab by the bull’s horns. But how rare is it that Fitz is—

“Wait!”

Her body functions apart from her mind for once, as she clutches his arm again and pulls him back.

The detonation, the weird hums, the blast…and Fitz. It’s taking a while for her to catch up—mentally and emotionally—but all she knows is that Fitz is turning to leave and that he simply isn’t going to flit out of her life the way he did all those months ago.

Between the force of her pull and her yell, Fitz jerks to a stop and so does his entire team.

Someone nudges Fitz’s side. “You know her?”

The man Fitz called Smithy earlier shoots her a meaningful look. “Looks like this isn’t over yet.”

His eyes flit to her then back to the group of men moving to stand rather protectively around him. “She, um…was someone I used to work with.”

Disbelief wars with anger. “Honestly, Fitz, someone you used to work with? Is that all we are? All we were?”

To his credit, he looks a little uncertain at her outburst.

But the euphoric excitement of seeing him again crashes with that muttered denial, melding with rising hurt and outrage that she can’t contain. There’s not a Simmons in any multi-verse that would willingly go on in life without a Fitz, she’s that sure of it now (how wrong she’d been all along), but hearing him so easily disavowing the weight of their personal history to a curious audience nearly puts paid to that theory.

“From the looks she’s giving him, I doubt that.” The tallest, blond one strokes an imaginary goatee and looks like he’s starting to enjoy himself to her chagrin.

“Now this is something the bloke’s never mentioned.”

“Quite a bit of drama here. Ah, is that why that thing you had with Amélie—”

“So, still waters and all, eh, Fitz?”

The men look as interested in their bickering as gossiping old ladies at a Sunday morning brunch, which makes her cringe. Thankfully, Fitz seems to feel the same—she doesn’t miss the glare that he shoots his team and the rife speculation that their untimely reunion seems to spark.

Beyond the surface irritation however, this Fitz is somehow…scarily indecipherable. Shuttered, with so much distance and a touch of coolness that she isn’t used to seeing on his face, more so when he’s talking to her.

Not so much of an open book any more, then. For all of his warmth and kindness that she’s used to seeing, to be the recipient of the other end of the emotional spectrum from Fitz, of all people, sparks a twinge of panic.

But just because she’s crossed some distance in her own head, or even jumped some major emotional obstacles, there’re still the physical ones to overcome with him. With the added complication of the last half a year of separation, this version of Fitz might as well be a stranger she’d be trying hard to reconnect with.

Unless, what they had before…it’s all irrevocably lost.

Had it taken all but 6 months to erase them completely?

“This is Agent Simmons.” Fitz looks at the men around him and introduces her curtly to them. “She’s with S.H.I.E.L.D..”

He gets a slap on his back and several nods of acknowledgement by the team with that revelation. Jemma doesn’t know much he has or hasn’t told them or just how settled he’s been in this new life but it’s apparently enough to bring out those looks of sympathy…for him.

She sighs, the painful edges of their stilted interaction rubbing salt into the wound of their broken friendship. “We can’t be doing this, Fitz.”

“—what the lady said, Fitzy lad,” Smithy chimes in with a smirk. The mischievous twinkle on his face suddenly reminds her of Trip, along with the nagging feeling that Fitz has found another team of his own to fit into.

Someone else—the team leader, perhaps—cuts right back in. “As fun as it is seeing Fitz in a domestic dispute, there is actually still work to be done. And those reports aren’t going to write themselves, ladies, if you’ve conveniently forgotten.” He pauses long enough for the loud groans to fade. “Wheels up in fifteen.”

The relief that shows up on Fitz’s face is stark. “Yeah, copy.”

The rest of his team reluctantly head out, leaving the both of them alone. Only a few feet separate them now, yet this awkwardness is as new as the man standing in front of her.

Jemma tries again, needing a solid footing with him but finds none. Her hand darts out to grab at his arm, yet again. “Fitz…it’s…it’s good to see you. I was hoping you could…stay and talk a bit?”

He’s silent for a moment as he stares at her. “I think we’ve said all we needed to say, haven’t we, Simmons?”

She doesn’t quite know how to answer that. There are in fact, a thousand things she wants to say, having imagined every conversation between her and Fitz nightly in her bunk, but seeing him in the flesh, so changed, so altered in a way she can’t recognise, leaves those words clogged in her throat.

“I—”

“You heard Langston,” he rushes on, looking in the direction where his team went. “It’s not the best time, I have to go, and I think May and Daisy will be looking for you. I’m sure S.H.I.E.L.D.—”

“Please, Fitz.” Her protesting plea comes out unbidden, causing him to pause.

The hardness in his face softens for a second, as he shakes his head with a small sigh. “I’m glad to see you well, Simmons. Take care of yourself.”

That goodbye tastes like a subtle and involuntary form of rejection. It’s not in him to be cruel at all but she feels the sharp sting of it just the same. The formality of his address is jarring—never in their years together had he spoken to her like that—, snagging the air in her lungs and widening the fissures in her heart.

Through eyes that suddenly burn hot, she watches despondently as he stalks out of the alcove and into the night.

The post-mission briefing goes by in a fog.

There isn’t much she can say about the 084 at the end of a hard week at the lab. That it comes with the power to influence human behaviour as well as the ability to tear open a dimensional rift that existed for all of 4.56 seconds when the blast happened are cause enough to get S.H.I.E.L.D. lab techs moving a little faster and more enthusiastically. Test results remain inconclusive, especially with the kind of dark matter they’ve been dealing with, which isn’t of the Earth variety, just to complicate matters.

But weak boundaries between realms, mysterious portals, inter-dimensional slippages are all quite beyond any of their expertise right now. Maybe they’ll just leave it to the self-styled Avengers to deal with those—Jemma couldn’t actually care less.

Kranz takes over from her with a technology update and she’s more than happy to sit back to let her mind wander to the previous week’s meeting with Fitz.

It’s new fodder that she obsesses over, and how wrong it’d gone in so many ways and how she might pull a mulligan. As she’d done the entire week with every spare moment she had, taking apart every facet of their brief interaction and putting every word and action under a mental microscope, the immutable conclusion that emerges each time is that Fitz had truly given up on them.

Her thumbs brush absently across the pages of the report she’d just given Coulson as her jumbled thoughts finally coalesce in an idea so reckless that it continually twists her insides in dreaded anticipation.

Only when the rest of the room clear out later does Jemma ask to speak to Coulson privately.

With a tight, tearful hug from Daisy, cheerful little twin smirks from Hunter and Bobbi and solemn nods from May and Mack, she walks off the Zephyr with her bags and into the dreary and muggy London evening.

There will be a ton of favours she knows she’ll owe Hunter by the time she’s settled. But he’s gone through hoops and hoops to get her here—something she suspects that he’s doing more for Fitz than her after his wry confession that he’s been in and out of Fitz’s corner since he’d left—by giving her more than probably deserves at the moment.

Pressing the button and the code that she’s been given at the entrance of the nondescript warehouse where Edwin has his team headquartered, Jemma waits until the opaque doors slide open to reveal an empty sitting area and an electronic barrier that requires a biometric scan before she can even step foot into its inner sanctum.

The barrier slides open silently before she can do anything else, the corridor ahead lighting up as she shoulders the bags with a deep breath and walks ahead.

She’s rustled the hornet’s nest. No turning back now for the stings that await.

It’s Edwin Sorcher himself who meets her halfway, the man whose name she can finally put a face to. There’s an assessing glint in his eye before he holds out his hand and she gets the uneasy feeling that he already knows way more than he lets on.

“Jemma Simmons, in the flesh. Welcome to Citadel.”

oOo

Housed in the residential zone of Edwin’s cluster of warehouses, her smallish bunk isn’t unlike the ones she’d lived in previously, except that it isn’t underground or on a plane. The squeaks and squawks of urban wildlife interrupts her first early morning, and along with the sunrise to regulate her body’s biorhythms, waking up in London’s backyard of sorts takes some getting used to.

It is far from a difficult change in routine really, the adjustment passably pleasant as far as transatlantic upheavals go.

But everything else lies outside Jemma’s comfort zone; she’s eking out a series of paths she’d never envisioned past S.H.I.E.L.D.’s grey walls since the Academy.

The induction here in contrast, is as quick as the one at S.H.I.E.L.D. had been bureaucratic and multi-tiered. Without mincing words, Edwin points out everything that she needs to know, gets her settled in Fitz’s small lab with a makeshift space of her own and then ushers her out of the building to look at the residential spaces of the place.

The discussion she had with Edwin the night before had instilled a new sense of hope, prompting her to wonder if this was what Fitz craved when he’d left: the exhilarating chance of a fresh start, the opportunity to forget and forge something entirely new on his own.

The bland terms of their agreement had been hashed out, rehashed and then renegotiated, until both were satisfied with what they’d put on the table. At the end of it, with her contract drafted, Edwin told her unhappily that she’d driven a very hard bargain, then ordered her straight to her bunk to get some rest after their signatures were put to paper.

Not for the first time, Jemma wonders just how presumptuous this move of hers to South London really is, depending as she is, on the assumption that the decade-long friendship with Fitz is more invincible than they’d both thought, and that Fitz would be willing to have anything to do with her after what she’d done to him. That he’d still have her around in any kind of capacity, even if he’s seeing someone else, as heart-splintering as that might be.

It isn’t a coincidence that her arrival is timed such that Fitz’s team is away on assignment for a week in Africa, thanks to Hunter, whose private conversations with Edwin (and Fitz) have probably paved the way.

In the lab, two days after her stepping off the Zephyr, Jemma takes a moment to centre herself. This small space, even without Fitz, is Fitz in every way, the tells (the slight quirk in the arrangement of his half-finished prototypes, the physical files, the tools) in this pristine, organised room only obvious to her because she knows—knew—him in and out. This ingrained habit of his hasn’t changed at least, as meagre a source of comfort as she has in putting together what she knows of him in his absence.

She’s on his turf now, attempting to piece back together their shattered relationship, or rather, to tell him how much she’d missed him beyond friendship, that she’d stop at nothing to show him how important he is to her—

The rush of footsteps into the lab cuts even that thought away as she turns to face, for the second time, shocked blue eyes.

It finally registers on her that he’s back early, still fully dressed in the same black tactical gear she’d first seen him in, with an atypical-looking rifle of sorts slung over his right shoulder and a backpack hanging on his left.

Five full days early, which meant the assignment hadn’t gone according to plan, leaving her as flustered and as unprepared as him for this unexpected meeting.

Just the thought of this sends her into a freefall. Like a week and a half ago, when that shock detonation had sent her careening into him, adrenaline and anticipation now flow through her veins, fusing into a mass of tumbling emotions she can’t separate from one another.

“Fitz,” she begins with trepidation, “I—”

Taking a tentative step into the lab, Fitz blinks twice and rubs a hand over his face as confusion slowly melds into irritation. “This has to be a fucking joke.”

She steels herself for the outburst, needing some courage for the specific and uncomfortable questions that are just around the corner.

“No, it isn’t, Fitz. You wouldn’t talk to me the last time we met, so I…I took matters in my own hands.”

“You…you took matters—what have you done, Simmons?” He stalks to his bench, dumps the rifle on it and unceremoniously drops his pack on the floor before turning to face her with his arms crossed over his chest. “Why are you here?”

It’s only now, in the harsh fluorescent lighting that she gets a good look at him. With a pang, she realises there’s so much she finds unfamiliar and yet familiar.

But it doesn’t matter that he’s slightly bulkier and more leanly-muscled and assumes some sort of distance between them like a protective coat of arms.

The hard introspection she’d put herself through had merely helped her articulate clearly what she hadn’t bothered to put into words before: that she has loved every iteration of him and probably always will, from the handsome, pasty boy in mismatched colours and odd cardigans, to the man who struggles with trembling hands and faltering speech…to the one right now who’s harder to read, who’s more confident in his own abilities, whose distrust now shines a little too brightly in his gaze.

The old hurt, however, lingers in his eyes. That vibrant blue which she loves, becomes a faded and dimmed version of what she remembers as he looks at her, now hooded and fortified by the mile-high walls he had constructed for himself in the intervening months.

There’s so much timidity in her voice when she ventures a question of her own. “How…how have you been, Fitz?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t—I…I…just, don’t make this any harder, Simmons. Just answer the question.”

“I’m trying not to, I swear.” She’s fumbling around, hating this stilted, awkward moment that has barely just begun. It’s infinitely harder to be brave, she finds, to do the right thing, to say the right words, and later, to stick around, than to run away and call it the convenient solution to problems. “I just wanted to be your friend again, Fitz, if you’d let me.”

He stiffens noticeably on her emphasis of that word.

Not the best of beginnings, then.

“You’ve come a long way for that,” he says flatly, his hands already busy with dismantling his vest and weapons, stopping only when he finally notices the new setup of his small lab and the space sharing that he’d be required to do in the future. “What’s this really all about?”

“Can’t you tell?” She asks softly, desperate to erase the wariness that laces his response. And to set that initial course of action, she knows that he rightfully needs an explanation—no, her full disclosure—of her sudden insertion in a space that’s probably sacred to him. But her frantic thoughts, rushing at a mile an hour, prove to be tiny snares that refuse to settle into logical coherence.

“Can’t I tell…? No, I can’t, Simmons!” He gestures wildly around him, his escalating distress manifesting as a trembling hand and a raised voice. “All I know is that we’ve just returned from Africa, I’m bloody tired and…and…there’s…there’s this! You!”

Mutely, she watches him pace with a fist pressed to his mouth, anxiously trying to find the words other than sorry.

“Fitz, please, please listen to me.”

He stops abruptly in a corner of the room, fighting for control as much as she is.

“I—I know I’ve made an unforgivable mess, Fitz. I know that. You have every right to be angry. I took advantage of our friendship, your affection and your attention…I just…I just wish I saw it sooner before and—”

“And so here you are, trying to apologise?”

“It’s more than that, Fitz. I know we didn’t part on the best of terms—”

He interrupts her with some annoyance. “At the risk of rehashing a history that I’d rather leave alone till the end of the universe comes, I don’t recall ever trying to make you feel bad about it. I offered to do those things and you know damn well too that I did. To give you the oxygen. To bring Will back.”

“I know! And I wish you weren’t so noble—”

“Because that wouldn’t give me the chance to play the hero?” He cuts in bitingly.

Frustration pools deep at his insistent interruptions, at his deliberate dodging of the conversation that she’s been trying to steer them into having. “That’s not what I’m saying!”

“Is that why you’re here?” Fitz stubbornly repeats the question, the pinched look on his face growing with each punctuated syllable. “If this is some effort on your part to—” He paces in a tight circle, gesturing at her then at himself, seemingly at a loss for words. “There’s no need to make amends, Simmons. I did what I, no—we did what we had to do, and that’s it, okay? We both made choices and now we live with them.”

“That’s just it, Fitz! I can’t live with them!” Some deep-buried instinct born of emotional turmoil tells Jemma that this is their last chance. Mess this up and there’ll be nothing more left of them to salvage.

He tilts his head upwards and sighs. “Some things are best left alone.”

“This isn’t!”

Conversely, his agitation spurs her on. It’s the only thing that she’s hanging onto right now—any show of emotion, any kind of reaction from him—because it’s the only indication she has that he hasn’t turned completely indifferent to their friendship, or whatever he’s willing to restore to them both.

“What about S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Fitz demands suddenly.

He’s raking his hand through his hair, rubbing his hand over his mouth—all the signs of increasing agitation that she wants to take away, but only exacerbates.

“Indefinite leave of absence,” she tells him simply, feeling the burden of the past few months shed immediately, as though giving voice to those words could make that fact more concrete than it really is. “And a temporary place here with Citadel.”

The shock that rolls off him is like a tangible wave of disbelief and incredulity. “You what? Coulson allowed that?”

“I told Coulson that I needed to go. And with some help from Hunter, I did. They both understand.”

“It’s been six months, Jemma!” He finally yells, the agony so clear now on his face that it hauls her back to the very day he’d left. “I’ve only had six sodding months away from you…that’s like a magical number isn’t it? Six sodding months to get over you and I really thought I was on my way there. And then you waltz in here after all this time like nothing’s out of place, wanting our friendship back like nothing ever broke it in the first place—”

“No, that’s not it at all!” She puts in urgently as tears start to burn at the corner of her eyes, as the pressure on her chest grows with the revelation he’d just tossed at her. If the months of separation have brought such a different outcome for her, and as eager as she is to talk out her personal revelations, it’s harder to accept that Fitz isn’t even willing to meet her halfway.

“I…I couldn’t come to terms with what your leaving really meant, Fitz. For six months, I wondered and struggled with how I’d done everything wrong such that you had to leave. Then envisioning a future without you…I couldn’t do it.”

“Really? When you came back from Hydra, when you chose Will…that was you moving onto a future without us.” Fitz stalks up to her, forcing her back against the lab bench as he leans in, heedless of her personal space. “I did nothing, Simmons, that you didn’t already first do to us. I left because there was nothing else there for me. Maybe it’s the coward’s way out, but it was the only option I could stomach back then.”

His mirthless chuckle and flinty stare dissect her as he delivers blow after blow of hard truth that feels like a blade in her ribs.

“Is that what you wanted to hear? I helped bring Will back to you, because it was him you wanted. Will, the man you said you loved! You’ve made that abundantly clear. So tell me, why are you here, in South London, when you should be at S.H.I.E.L.D. with Will Daniels at your side?”

The anger that pours from him shouldn’t be unexpected. But everything shifts yet again in a fundamental way, condensing, shrinking around her despite the conclusions she’d come to in the months they were apart. Hearing everything from Fitz’s perspective merely confirms how her words about Will, tossed out in a fit of despair and confusion, had merely raked over festering wounds and left them with such prominent scars.

Time might have passed, but the current of grief and hurt remains. Jemma knows that full well. But to adequately convey that it’s him that she’d really ever wanted or needed or that she’s beyond sorry for playing too big a part in making him feel that he could never measure up, is a momentous task she’s clueless to undertake.

“Will isn’t even in the picture.”

He retreats hurriedly as though she’d burned him and hikes a thumb backwards over his shoulder in challenge. “Everything you’ve said and done previously contradicts that statement.”

She stops short for a few seconds.

Fitz had always held his own in an argument, their competitive natures always providing the creative fodder that had driven them forward together. But this man…this man, unmoved by her half-baked confessions and still full of questioning doubt, makes her feel as though Fitzsimmons is truly over.

This man in front of her, programmed by betrayal and holding her up to relentless scrutiny, is terrifying.

Never had she wished more than now that she could take back that thoughtless statement said so long ago; evidently, it’d torn Fitz up more than he’d let on and just…why hadn’t she looked past her own confusion to see how devastating this would have been on him?

“Don’t you want to know what happened after you left?”

His scoff is loud in the enclosed space, his knuckles already white from the death grip he has on the lab bench which he’s leaning against.

“It’s none of my business, Simmons, what you do now.”

“You’re hearing it, anyway,” she snaps in return, tired of hitting her head against the Fitz-sized-wall repeatedly for all the lack of progress they’d made. “Will…left. Those first few days after you—I can’t remember them too well, only that I couldn’t stop obsessing over why you went away and how big a part I’d played in it. I think he tried to talk to me, but all I could think about was you and the gaping hole you’d made when you left. So he…all he could do was to walk away a week later and I can’t even blame him once for it.”

Fitz is already shaking his head as she barrels on ahead in a rambling glut in order to quell the doubts and hurts that he’d been sequestered with, panicked that she’s on the verge of losing him again when she’s so close in laying the first, small brick in their wrecked foundation of mutual respect and trust.

“I missed you, Fitz. I don’t know what to say to convince you, but you’re really all that I want. In whatever way you want me back. You’re the only one I could love in the way you need me to. It’s you, Fitz. I just need you by my side, Fitz, in whatever way you want us to be. I’m…sorry I took so long, I’m sorry I couldn’t figure it out earlier and made you suffer. I need you to believe me. If you couldn’t trust anything I said before, please believe me this time.”

The light-headedness that sweeps in after her clumsy, inelegant confession leaves her shaking and wrung-out.

He flinches instead, his scepticism almost a tangible entity as he hangs his head. “Did you come to this conclusion only after I left?”

Involuntarily, the question makes her think back to the days and weeks that had greyed out everything else and brought to the fore the mind-crippling fear that she’d truly lost him.

“If I can forget those months apart from you, it wouldn’t be soon enough. If I thought Maveth was my greatest nightmare,” she pauses as he briefly turns shimmering eyes to her, “the last half a year surpassed that a million times. I don’t know how else to convince you, Fitz, because I know this probably sounds flaky and glib and…and hollow and empty. But could we, please, have this chance again?”

Fatigue and defeat wash out the anger in the slump of his shoulders.

“It doesn’t work that way. We can’t just turn back the clock, Simmons and you know it. There’s no such thing as starting over, no reintroductions or the pretence that we’re both 16 years old and achingly shy and completely out of our depths in a whole new world in an Academy too unprepared for us.”

Not when the following years have left them out at pasture too long for the scars to be erased. It’s what Fitz doesn’t say but what she hears all the same. He’s merely echoing what hadn’t already occurred to her.

Still, her voice cracks as his implication sinks in. “You…you don’t want to try? Not at all? Not even as colleagues?”

He fiddles anxiously with a spare part on the bench before putting it down, as though mulling his next words. When he finally looks up at her, the conflict and guilt written on his face break her all over again.

“This—this is not what I wanted at all, Simmons. Not someone who…who suddenly realises I’m worth something more only after I left, but hasn’t been sure of it when I was around for years.” He waves that bit away, as though it’s an insignificant detail that he shouldn’t have bothered with. “The point is, I wanted you happy and I’ve long accepted that it wouldn’t be with me. So you don’t have do this only because Will is gone.”

Her denial is sure, this time. “You don’t understand! I’m not—”

“—and honestly? I…I don’t know what you’re really saying right now,” he squeezes his eyes shut in consternation, “I’m not ready to…I can’t process this, alright?”

Caught at this impasse, misery lodges itself as a lump in her throat. Floundering in an area where there’s no specific scientific method to follow, no easy answers waiting at the end of the line, she’s steering a ship into a treacherous storm without any navigation markers.

It takes her a few tries to find her voice, as impulse prompts her to move towards him and grab both his hands tightly in hers.

“You were once my best friend. But you’re also much more than that.” He snaps his eyes back to hers as the familiarity of the words washes over the both of them. “Please, Fitz, please let me show you.”

#Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D #AOS #Marvel #Marvel: AOS #Fitzsimmons #Fitz x Simmons #Leo Fitz #Jemma Simmons #fanfic #fanfic au #My writing

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