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starry-bi-sky · 3 months ago

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Blood Blossom Au: Baby's First Commissioner Meeting :)

TL:DR This Post: Danny (orphan) gets poisoned with blood blossom extract by Vlad. He runs away from him and ends up under the care of one Pre-Robin Battinson Batman! Starry is loudly pushing her batdad agenda.

(Also known as "Late At Night, When The Nightingale Sings" on my ao3!)

This was a fun rough idea I've been sitting on for weeks, thinking about how Commissioner Gordon and Nightingale's first meeting might go.

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Commissioner Gordon likes to think that he's adjusting to the new normal of Gotham very well, -- the new normal being grown men running around dressed like bats, in military-grade strength body armor, committing acts of vigilantism, -- and slowly, little by little, he was no longer being surprised when this new normal pops up out of the shadows like the world's most terrifying daisy. His shaving lifespan thanks him for it.

....

The kid is a surprise though.

Granted, he seemed to be a surprise to the Bat too.

There's been a string of murders lately, -- which, in Gotham, is kind of like saying there's been another storm during monsoon season. And there's just been another; in some dilapidated building down in south Gotham, with the broken, boarded-up windows and mildew-crawling walls to match. The victim is a man in his thirties, multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, left in the center of the room for the blood to pool out around him.

The place is already secured when he arrives, the building swarmed with officers and the forensic detectives. The Bat emerges shortly after he does -- or, he might've been here the whole time, hiding someplace dark and shadowy. For his own sanity, Gordon doesn't think about it too hard.

The kid is a surprise, and he appears like a bolt of lightning.

He shows up in the middle of a conversation Gordon is having with the Bat.

A whistle, sharp and loud, slicing through the air, meant for open air rather than a confined space. Gordon's ears pierce and protest the sound, and the solemn, murmured chatter floating through the room abruptly cuts off like the swing of a gavel. As he turns towards the sound -- as they all do -- he swears, up and down, that he sees Batman's shoulders jump, just slightly.

At the source, perched on the window, is a boy. A boy in a gray-blue scarf and an oversized black hoodie, one that hangs off his frame and has ace bandages wrapped around the wrists in some attempt to cinch the sleeves. The hood is up, big like the rest of it, and threatens to swallow the upper half of the boy's face whole in the fabric. What upper half Gordon can see, is smeared with some kind of opaque, black face paint. He's holding onto the side of the frame with one hand, on his hip is a grappling hook. A familiar grappling hook.

Gordon has multiple questions, and his officers tense up.

Martinez puffs up, brows furrowing as his face shapes into a frown. Shoulders rolling back. "You can't be here, kid--"

The reaction is immediate, like a spark to gunpowder, the boy yanks his fingers from his mouth and his mouth twists into a scowl. Head snapping over to Officer Martinez, his hood manages to stay on but Gordon swears that as he bares his teeth, the glint makes them look sharper than they should be. His voice is rasp and quiet and harsh; snappish in its hissing; "Put a fuckin sock in it, Martinez. I'm not stayin."

Martinez reels back, and the boy immediately veers his attention off him. Like a switch, his demeanor drops. Despite half his face being covered, his mouth twists into a cringing, apologetic smile. Slanted and off-beat, embarrassed. It'd be disarming if this wasn't Gotham, and if he didn't just hiss at Martinez like he was about to bite his head off.

"Sorry." He whispers, voice deceptively polite and softer now. Gordon has to strain his ears to hear him. "I was looking for him."

He points his finger towards-- Gordon? No, Gordon follows the direction, and finds himself looking at -- the Bat.

The Bat, who always looks stiff as a pole, now looks even stiffer. Somehow. Well, the explains the grappling hook attached to the boy's waist.

"What are you doing here?" The Bat says, gruff and unable to completely smother the stumble of surprise in his tone.

The boy still holds a sheepish smile, and slips off the window ledge. His feet hit the creaky boards with a near-silent thud, the Batman finds his feet and rapidly begins crossing the room.

Gordon notes the slight tremble in the boy's legs as he straightens. He adjusts his scarf, which droops close to his knees now that he's standing, and slings a backpack -- how long has had that? -- off his shoulders. When the Bat reaches his side, he does as he always does, and looms over the boy like a spectre. A threatening mass of shadows cloaked in all-consuming black. Standing next to him, the boy looks teeny in comparison.

The Bat is a man who terrifies even the most hardened criminals, Gordon has seen grown men shiver in fear at the mention of his name. And yet when the boy looks up at him, he doesn't even flinch.

Instead, his sheepish smile melts away like ice under the sun, holding only traces of his previous embarrassment. It remains as a shadow on his face, a small upturn at the corners of his mouth. The boy pushes his hood back just enough to reveal glinting, ice-flint eyes surrounded in tar-black face paint. He holds the backpack up with one arm. "You forgot this."

#I have never seen Batman (2022) so really I'm just using battinson and crew as templates for my fic. but hey what else is new lol #dpxdc #danny fenton is not the ghost king #dp x dc #dpxdc crossover #dp x dc crossover #dpxdc fic #dpxdc au #dp x dc au #dpxdc fanfic #i dont know shit about detective work or true crime so forgive me for any bad terminology or incorrect procedure for how these things work #just a fun rough idea for how i imagined gordon's first meeting with nightingale goes LMAO. im sticking to the idea that danny doesn't #officially join the field for a *while* due to more than just health reasons. so his first appearances are brief and usually to give B smth #danny: im only here as express delivery for vader's little brother over there. yall stay safe tho.#bruce: *kill bill sirens bass-boosted* ohmygodwhatishedoinghere #batman: how did you get here... | danny: you have so many spare grappling hooks it was pr easy to just grab one and go #also danny is whispering on purpose because he doesn't have his ghost form to fall back on as a secret identity. so he *is* actually taking #extra steps to keep his identity safe. and people usually sound different when they're whispering. he also has personal beef with #office martinez despite the fact that they've never met. Danny's HEARD of his ass. he hATES his ass.#Martinez: *to batman* freak | danny: im going to Bite Him. | batman (reluctantly): hmr. please don't. | danny: im going for his shins #Martinez and Nightingale have this whole thing going on between the two of them. danny WILL slap a sticky note on Martinez's back that says #'asshole' on it and its the one spot square on his spine that martinez can't reach.#someone: why are you beefing with like. an actual 12 year old | martinez: HE'S A LITTLE RAT. THAT'S WHY. he's here to torment me #battinson: *did you grapple the whole way here* | danny: yah. it was kinda fun. i would've gotten here faster but i kept having to stop #battinson: *hnnn* im driving you back | danny:.. are you sure? | battinson already pulling him out of the room: y e s #i've been thinking about this for literally WEEKS. what did bruce forget? good question! i'll figure that out if or when i get to this #danny has Issues behind the word freak so its like a mini beserker button for him regardless of who the word is aimed at lol. lmao #martinez calls batman a freak once while nightingale is within range and its just the doom ost as danny simply Disappears from sight #like oops. you are now. In Danger. rip couldn't be me.#blood blossom au

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ghost-proofbaby · 4 months ago

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never love an anchor (e.m. x reader)

"On some level, I think I always understood that a ship could never really love an anchor."

warnings: severe hurt/brief comfort, suicidal ideations, severely depressed reader. again: detailed recount of suicidal ideations. dead dove: do not eat.

wc: 5.8k+

an: i cannot emphasize this enough - this fic deals with a severely depressed, and blatantly suicidal reader. it is extremely heavy. it is extremely triggering. it is extremely self-indulgent. the romance aspect is ambiguous and the comfort aspect at the end is brief. this is a genuine, and sincerely personal piece of writing. it is an outline of how suicidal ideations may present themselves to some people. of these 5k words, 4k is deeply littered with reader's ideations without sugar coating. please, please, please do not read this unless you're in the state of mind to read it. you've surely heard it before but i'll say it just to be sure: it is a permanent solution for temporary feelings. and, just in case no one has told you, i'm glad you're alive. if you're reading this, i'm glad that you're alive. you're enough.

if you find yourself feeling like reader, i urge that you find resources such as those linked. hotlines, therapists, friends, your doctor, your family - please. i do not wish these emotions upon anyone, and they should never be taken lightly.

that being said, here are my guts from a very vulnerable moment, spilled out across the page. please handle them with care if you choose to read.

Technically speaking, the pressure that the human body is capable of handling almost seems infinite. When introduced slowly, and time is given to adjust, there is no pinpointed amount of pressure that dooms the human body. Like a crab in slow boiling water, your body should be theoretically able to handle a steady increase, bit by bit, and never truly notice.

So why does it currently feel like you’re dying?

The pressure was never an overnight thing. It was a conglomeration you’d gathered, piece by piece, collecting little souvenirs of all the responsibilities you can’t currently remember if you’d ever agreed to along the way. It hadn’t been sudden, it hadn’t been with lack of adjusting, it hadn’t been a pressure suddenly unloaded upon you all at once – you’d done this, brick by brick, all with your own two hands.

Keeping up with friends, keeping up with work, keeping up with expectations. Always trying to run ahead of the curve, always trying to be better. You should be fine. You shouldn’t even notice. You shouldn’t be sobbing on your bathroom floor, clutching the edge of your porcelain tub, every single breath a labor of survival.

It feels like every bone in your body is splintering. It feels like the world has cracked open your ribs, one by one, just for show. You don’t feel poetic like the movies, you don’t feel like a valuable lesson learned in the books. You feel as though you’ve become nothing more than some crude display in a contemporary art gallery, and you were the one to hang yourself on the wall.

Needles prickle across your skin with another heaving sob, as if you can feel the push pins you’ve used to spread yourself out for consumption.

We still on for tonight?

The text from Eddie glares at you from your phone discarded on the floor mere inches away. You’re lucky the screen hadn’t broken when you’d thrown it down on the ground on your way to the toilet, dry heaving through all your tears.

He wasn’t a part of the issue. If anything, he was part of the solution.

A shining clean slate, pristine whites and a scratch-free surface for you to press your cheek to when it all got a bit much. An abyss of freedom and openness for when the world was all a bit smothering. An anchor to cling to, a rope to tie around your wrists to keep from floating too far. The willow tree in a graveyard to rest your back against, the caress of a warm sun even if only momentarily as you stared out across headstones of all the pieces of you that you can never get back. Every version of you that has long since buried, a few even with newly churned dirt resting upon them. Something soft, something sacred, to rest your hands upon.

Why does he still let you rest your bloodied and dirtied palms on his shoulders? Did he ever agree to that to begin with?

You can’t remember. Or maybe your brain is simply refusing to recall.

I hate to cancel, but I’m sick. I don’t think I can come out tonight :-(

What? Is everything okay? Are you okay? Do I need to bring you anything?

Please don’t.

The please is what gives you away. You should have forgone it, should have offered him a lighthearted response instead.

But there is a pit in the bottom of your stomach, and seeing all the question marks across his text only made it more terminal. Only gave it more reason to swallow you whole. Only gave it more reason to grow and to tangle up and to restrict each stuttering breath of yours that you can’t seem to steady.

Another buzz comes from your phone, but you don’t look to read it. You resort to resting your forehead against the lip of your toilet, all attempts at a deep breath futile as you finally taste the salt across your lips.

Were you too much? Were you not enough? Was it possible to be an odd juxtaposition of both?

A harrowing thought crosses your mind, and you know if Eddie could read minds across the intricate webbing that connects cell phones, he’d grab you by your shoulders. Maybe shake you until you see sense, or maybe cling to you until the thought has faded into nothingness. As if he could squeeze you hard enough to press together all the splinters that are left of your bones, forming a new body – a better body. One that can handle the pressure. One that isn’t imploding upon itself. A more durable mind, a more capable suit of skin to occupy.

Does it even matter anymore? Would it even matter if I simply vanished?

Would it be so bad to let the pit finally consume you? To just give in, to let it erase you from existence. To finally wave your white flag and let the awfulness inside of you finally win the battle, erasing you from existence and leaving behind an empty space in the world that could be filled with someone better.

Someone who could be a better friend. Someone who could be a harder worker. Someone who wasn’t choked up on their bathroom floor, beginning to contemplate if the painful gasps were even worth it.

Were you worth it? Were you worth the air in your lungs? Or could it better serve someone who could handle all the pressure?

And it wasn’t even that much pressure to begin with, if you pick it apart thread by thread. It was the natural weight of the human experience, and you were still crumbling.

There was a full bottle of ibuprofen in the cabinet. There was a busy street not far from your home. There was a bathtub that could easily be filled with water – you’d never been good at holding your breath, unless someone counted the last few months, in which that seemed to be all you were good at.

There was even a bridge, 5.27 miles away from your house exactly. You could already envision the patch of grass you could park your car at, feel the drop in temperature as you stood and overlooked the tame waves of a man-made lake.

Maybe your feet didn’t even have to leave the pavement. Maybe it would be enough to just stand in the silence and see the jump with your own two eyes.

You felt like nothing more than a ghost of yourself, yes, but maybe. Maybe, just maybe, there would still be a broken shard within you that could stir awake at it all. Maybe if you got up off the bathroom floor and set yourself into motion, it would open its eyes just in time to scream no.

Ghosts don’t just appear. They were a vibrant soul once – they were somebody once.

But it’s hard to imagine that you ever were. When it gets like this, it’s hard to push through all the tumultuous thoughts and loathly emotions to remember that. A version of you vibrant, a version of you that might have been worthy, if only for a moment.

A version of you that wasn’t insulting to compare to others. That was capable of progress, of earning your blip of existence.

You don’t want the bottle of ibuprofen. You don’t want the busy street. You don’t want the overflowing tub. You don’t even want the calm of the bridge. You just want it to stop.

There’s a knock on your front door that echoes through the entire apartment. You dread that you already know who it is, but you can’t get up to answer.

You can’t move from this very spot. You’re terrified of what will happen when you do.

Will your bones collapse into ash upon the floor? Will you make one wrong move, and in a fit of pressure, make a terribly permanent decision for what feels like a terribly permanent feeling?

Maybe you were born with the pit in your stomach. Maybe you were born with that black hole inside of you. Cursed to always be yearning, always be a juxtaposition, always be a ghost of what could have become.

You think you hear the click of your front door opening. You think you hear heavy footsteps across the hardwood floors. You think, you think, you think. That’s the issue.

The tears are still coming and going in erratic tides. The salt is drying out your lips, your cheeks, the corners of your eyes. You’d thought you’d been incapable of any more emotions like this, but your tear ducts have managed to prove you wrong.

Does it even matter anymore?

You’d left the bathroom door wide open.

Were you worth it?

You’d been home alone – past tense.

A more durable mind, a more capable suit of skin to occupy.

A soft gasp of your name has you microscopically lifting your head from the toilet seat. You know what the scene looks like; it looks like nothing more than the excuse you’d used. You look as though you’re ill, like you’ve been spilling your guts across the bathroom floor all night.

If you had been, would it all feel a little less heavy?

“Hey, Eds.”

You’re tired. You’re exhausted. Your voice is nothing more than a drag of a whisper as you look up at your anchor standing in the doorway, his face painted with concern.

Maybe you were an anchor – maybe being an anchor wasn’t a good thing. After all, what use does an anchor have beyond weighing down the ship?

“Jesus,” he mutters as he rushes to your side, falling to his knees carelessly as his hand flies out to brush back tendrils of your hair, “You look like shit.”

You felt like shit.

Selfishly, you lean into his touch, desperate for comfort. Desperate for those caring palms to soothe the ache you’d carried since birth. Desperate to hear him tell you that you’re wrong – hands to promise you that you’re worthy, fingers to wrap around your bones rather than these burning ropes. You’re bloodied and raw, fully on display, and you just want to be okay.

You don’t want the bridge. You want Eddie. You want him to magically make it okay, and that’s unfair.

You’re not his weight to carry, not his burden to shoulder.

After far too long of a silence, one in which he sits patiently in with you, all you can really reply is a broken, “Yeah.”

Immediately, he knows something is wrong. Because of course he does.

Because he’s a good friend. He’s a good person. He has the right words more often than not, and his hands were always formed to heal rather than injure. Create rather than destroy. Those warm palms are made to hold the space he’s earned in the grand scheme of the Universe, and it almost makes you nauseous as the jealousy spreads.

He’s good.

And you’re simply rotten.

You used to lie to yourself and say it was simply one rotted bit amongst plenty of good, but tonight, it all seemingly comes to clarity. You can’t dig out the bad, cleanse yourself of the rot, because it’s all decay.

You don’t have to let the pit consume you – it already has. You were born with it, and it had swallowed you whole from the first cry that had ever left your lips.

He makes himself a bit more comfortable, and you almost feel bad for reducing him to nothing more than the bathroom floor, “You wanna talk about what’s really wrong?”

“I’m sick.”

“This isn’t just some stomach bug.”

Your throat begins to tighten again, and suddenly, his gentle touch across the crown of your head burns. Your eyes water ferociously, and your chest caves into itself.

You can’t make a better body or a more sound mind out of the mess you’ve become. You can’t pull gold from tarnished rubble.

Confessing to him will only be handing over something heavy, something terrible, that he shouldn’t have to struggle with as well. But not offering him a sliver of the truth almost feels more dishonoring.

“Do you ever feel like a waste of space?” you croak, leaning back, finally accepting that the small space of the toilet that had been cooling your face has gone warm. Another thing you’ve ruined, in hindsight, “Like, this world is filled with great people, and I just… I just, I’m taking up the space- I’m wasting the space-”

You can’t get out the proper words. You don’t know how.

How do you say you want to cease to exist when you’re not really sure if that’s the truth? You’re miserable, and you’re selfish, and you’re not entirely sure your feet would have ever left the pavement if you had driven yourself to the bridge. You’d be too scared to do it.

Too scared to miss the day that science announces it’s found a cure to all your rot, a miracle drug to erase the pit, a way to reverse all the damage you’ve been comprised of your whole life.

His brows furrow and his hand stops all the calming movements, “What? Are you- are you saying you feel like a waste of space?”

It feels silly to admit it to other people. To try and describe how it all feels. Like a child trying to convince their parents the Boogeyman is real, you have to make him see that you’re right. You have evidence, you have proof, and it’s not just a feeling.

“I don’t feel like I’m a waste of space,” you finally correct, both yourself and him, “I know I’m a waste of space.”

“Bullshit.”

“Eddie, don’t-”

“No,” he cuts you off. And somehow, in only a way that he’s capable of, it’s not offensive, “You’re not. I’m not going to sit here and listen to my favorite person claim they’re wasting space-”

“I am!” It’s your turn in the cycle of interruption. You pull away from him entirely, chest heaving with the weight presenting itself once more, tears starting to fall all over again. You can’t even distinguish where the old tears stop and the new ones begin, “I really am. All I seem to do lately is just exist. And that’s such a- such a- that’s such a waste. I can’t read any of the things I should enjoy these days, I can’t even write. All of the words feel like they just come out wrong. I’m letting everyone down left and right, I’m never living up to whatever pedestal you’ve put me on. I don’t even know what I’m doing with my life. I don’t even know where I’ll be in a year from now – I can’t even see that far in the future.”

Heaves become sobs, and the crumbling has begun once more. A cycle of breaking, a cycle of demolition. Even leaving behind the rubble feels like a crime. A waste of space.

“I don’t think I’m a good person,” you manage to spit out between all your visceral reactions, “Every year, I tell myself the same thing – I’ll be better, I’ll be kinder, I’ll be worth it. And every year, I fail.”

Can he see it? All the fractures and splinters and pits and metaphors?

Can he smell it? All the rot and the destruction and hopelessness?

Can he feel it? All the pressure?

Through your sniffles, you press your back to the tub, knees to your chin as you wrap your arms around your legs, desperately trying to shrivel up. To take up less space. To waste less space.

“I used to think I could make up for it,” you whisper, “I could offer people things that made them forget I’m… so useless. But I don’t think I’m even capable of that anymore.”

If he’s about to respond, it’s drowned out by your cries. You press your eyes hard into your kneecaps, until you see stars, and you try to swallow down all the embarrassment. Try to stop all the hurt from spilling out, to stop all your guts from painting the bathroom walls.

He could simply sit there, let you wallow in your misery alone. Sit and stare as the artwork finally serves its purpose to the visitors of the gallery. Maybe jot down some commentary on how with your bones all spread out like this, the point the artist was attempting to make becomes oh so clear.

And yet, he doesn’t.

You know it’s his arms that are wrapping around you, pulling you from the chill of the tub and into the warmth of his chest. And you let yourself smother within the fabric of his shirt the same exact way in which you’ve convinced yourself you smother everyone around you, let yourself breathe in drugstore cologne and his last cigarette rather than think about all the thoughts that had been spiraling you into dismay over the last twenty four hours – over the last twenty four years.

He’d probably been smoking while waiting on your call tonight. Probably riddled with anxiety, if the shake of his hands pressing into your back are anything to go off of. An anxiety and waiting game that wouldn’t have to exist if you didn’t exist.

The thought makes you cry harder.

If a ghost dies, can it even still return back as itself? Can it still find it within itself to haunt empty hallways, and watch the ones it once loved find peace?

“You’re not useless,” it sounds as though Eddie might be crying as well, if not just a little choked up, “You’re not- I swear- You’re not useless, okay? Never have been, never will be.”

His murmured words are nice, but they fuel an unimaginable guilt. It was supposed to be a nice night. A night of movie marathons and midnight coffee, of trying to remind yourself why you still stick around. A moment of incomparable joy and sweet reprieve as your stomach ached from laughter, your cheeks swelling with an infallible grin that Eddie always seems to pull out of you.

There’s no smiling, no giggling, right now. Just his favorite band shirt from the show you two had attended a few years before, soaking with a fast-growing stain from all your tears.

When you don’t answer him, only manage to wrap your selfish arms around his waist, he continues, “How long have you felt this way, sweetheart?”

And if you hadn’t already been shattered previously, that would have finally broken you.

You can’t pinpoint when it started. You can’t clear the smoke of memories and find an exact moment that you can point to and say, there. That’s where the hurt starts — that’s where the rot starts.

“I don’t know.”

In your mind, it’s a wail. Loud and ferocious, efforts of all it has taken to withstand the pressure of your undoing screamed out loud.

But on this quiet bathroom floor, it can’t even be considered a whisper. Nothing more than the spoken words lingering from a ghost who can’t give up the haunt. An echo of a memory, an echo of the piece in you that can’t let go, not yet.

Not of existing, and not of him. Your fists hold him so firmly against you, you’re scared that you’re going to bruise him. Hurt him just from the sheer effort of trying to show that you love him.

The only way you know how to love – a violent dog who will always bite the kindest hands. Leaving behind bloodied knuckles even if you hadn’t so much as snipped this time.

You take a sharp breath, aware of the levity of the words you’re about to say, “I don’t want to exist anymore, but I wouldn’t even make it off the bridge if I tried.”

It’s not about the bridge anymore. In all likelihood, it wouldn’t be the bridge you turn to. There’s a grand metaphor somewhere in the admittance, but your mind is just too tired to try and paint a prettier picture of it for him.

Because exist is just a placeholder. And there’s a bigger, scarier word that should stand in its place.

He starts to break the hold, and you nearly sob out again just at that. Losing the warmth of his chest and arms strike pain somewhere deep within you, just north of the pit that’s devoured all that’s left of you.

“Bridge?” Phrased as a clarifying question, but when you see his face, it’s clear he knows. There are no good words left to say about it, “Sweetheart, no.”

There are worse reactions to be had. More scenarios that end in slamming doors or deafening silent treatments. Realizations that you’re right and it’s not worth it – defense mechanisms that involve them leaving first.

“I couldn’t do it, even if I want-”

Even if I wanted to. The words you can’t speak, dying on your tongue.

Do you want to? Where does the pain begin? And where could it end?

“You really don’t see it, do you?” he laughs humorlessly, his hands still gripping your biceps in a death hold, “You… you just…”

He doesn’t know what to say, and you don’t blame him. You knew this was heavy; you knew this isn’t the type of bomb to drop on someone you love.

But if you didn’t, where would the bomb have gone? You’re not equipped to detonate it. You’re not equipped to survive the explosion. You wouldn’t want to survive that explosion.

“I’m sorry,” your words pour out, beginning to shake beneath his palms, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Dry, cracked lips feel as though they nearly split from the apologies. More violence, more devastation, more of what you always knew you were. You can see it in his eyes – you’re dragging him down with you, right down to the bottom of the ocean. You’re being an anchor.

He’s all stutters and harsh breaths, panic filling the space with your own as his eyes search yours, “Don’t apologize. You don’t have to apologize. Just-”

He cuts off and is pulling you close again. Slamming your bones into his, wrapping up around you as if he might be able to keep you safe from the world. From your own mind.

“I don’t need apologies,” another squeeze of your closer to him, another attempt to pull you away from the dangers that lie within, “I don’t- I just… Can I help? How do I make it better? Just say the word. I’ll do it.”

It’s not your job. That’s not your job.

You don’t realize you’ve said the words out loud until he’s squeezing you so tightly that you now can’t breathe. Until all you are is him. All his old t-shirts he’s lent to you that hang in your closet, all the nights spent with tangled legs as you sit across from each other on your couch, all the phone calls in which he refused to be the first one to hang up. Cologne that is too cheap to be able to cling so ferociously as it does to all your surroundings, chain-smoked cigarettes you always chastise him for because they’re gonna kill you one day, the smoke of his latest blunt resting in an ashtray as his head finds home in your lap.

All the inside jokes. All the hugs. All the simple texts, if for nothing more than to just check in on each other. The broken reminders of having someone out there that cares. That loves you.

How can such rotten hands pull such love from others? How have you yet to infect him?

“I know it’s not my job,” he finally says, and you know for a fact he’s crying along with you before the first of his tears have wet the crown of your head, “It’s never been a job. You’re not a job. Okay? Get that through your head. There’s- Fuck, there’s plenty of things I wanna drill in that pretty little head of yours right now, but I know I can’t, so just get that.”

He’s trying. A little trill of his tongue that falls a bit flat when he refers to your pretty little head, a brief squeeze of your shoulders as he tries to relax a little. He wants to make you feel better. He wants to make it better.

But he’s still holding you like he’s terrified. You did that – you instilled that fear.

“I’m a mess,” you whisper in bitter realization, ash on your tongue as you process what you’ve done. You’ve already apologized, but you’re seconds away from doing so again, “I’m- I’m a mess, and I’m dragging you into it, and I’m sor-”

“Stop being sorry.” Definitive words, no room for argument. The smallest of shifts as things click into place. He isn’t budging – he isn’t letting go, “Do you remember when I first met you?”

You can’t tell if the question is meant to have a point, or if it’s meant to be a distraction. You let it grow into the latter.

“Yeah,” you breathe out against him, melting into his chest, trying to focus on his voice rather than the ones in your head, “But tell me about it anyway?”

“Two years ago. Technically, two years and seven months,” he starts in the same voice he used to take on during Hellfire sessions, before the members had scattered from coast to coast and his D&D club only became a rarity when the stars aligned. There’s still a crack to his voice from his tears, but that doesn’t stop him, “We were in some cursed fucking diner we don’t even go to anymore, in the dead of the night, and all the servers knew your name and order,” he paints the picture with a humor that should feel out of place, but it settles some of your breathing. Omitting all the vivid details, opting for triggering the memory with words you’d just get. You can feel the stick of the plastic beneath your thighs, you can smell the grease of the kitchen. You can see the cloudy night out of the oversized windows. He’s a natural born storyteller in the most subtle of ways, always knowing his audience, “You were sitting all alone in that booth, and all of Hellfire had just left. Gareth had just told us how he was going to college in California – did you know that?”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, he did,” his chin presses against the top of your head, a huff of a laugh escaping him, “Dropped the bomb it was our last summer as a club probably. We were happy for him, though. Real fucking happy. Got milkshakes to celebrate and made plans to get drunk off our asses the next night to keep the party going. It was dumb, and I’m getting off track, but…”

Baited breath, you’re waiting for him to continue. No thoughts of the bridge. No thoughts of your failures. Living in a small memory with him on the floor of your bathroom.

“Anyways, you were sitting there all alone, with a plate of fries and ranch.”

“Oh, God,” your nose scrunches and you try to pull away, suddenly remembering how embarrassing this memory ends for you. It suddenly didn’t seem like the best way for him to make you feel better by any means, “No, I remember how this story ends, and-”

“I’m not done,” he locks his arms around you, and you can feel the whisper of a smile as it brushes against your temple, “Obviously you know where I’m going with this, but I’m not done, sweetheart. Because all the other guys had just left, and I’m sitting there, realizing the only other customer was some random person over across the diner, scribbling away in some notebook. Thought you looked cute when you were all focused like that, y’know? But then you were so focused that it became distracted, and you spilled that ranch all over yours-”

“Please, stop.”

You’re laughing through the words, weakly, the air of desperation in the word please being far different from earlier in the night. No bridges, no failures.

“I was probably being a weirdo, trying to run over and help you or whatever the fuck I was trying to do. I probably made it worse, right?”

You’re there, remembering a version of Eddie that was a stranger, taking napkins to the knees of your jeans and smearing the ranch rather than really helping you clean it up. “Yeah, just a little bit.”

“Sorry for that, by the way,” he airily apologizes before continuing, “But I just remember thinking about how focused you were on that notebook. And how you laughed with the waiter. And how you were just… lost in your own little world. And how you were so cute. You were so nice. The type of person I wanted in my life. Took one look at you with that ranch all over your lap and thought, huh. I want to get to know that person.”

“Nice? I was not nice, I was-” you cut off, heart all but stopping as you recognize the point of it all. It wasn’t meant to just be a distraction. He was making a point. “I was a… a mess that day.”

“Exactly.”

He pulls away again, and this time, it’s a little easier. The world has put a pause on its ending and you can handle the weight of his arms lightening for a few seconds, just so he can get a good look at your face.

“You were a mess the day that I met you, and I still wanted you in my life,” he says each word deliberately, not breaking eye contact. Fear has broken through to determination. “And even if you’re still a mess today, I still want you. Nothing changes. You get that?”

No bridges.

No failures.

The weight of it all had been heavy. The type of sorrow you thought was never meant to be carried by more than your own two hands. But he had taken it in his palms, lifted it from you entirely, even if it would only be temporary. One day you’d have to endure the pain again, get to the root of the problem. Figure out if all your ailments had been something wired into you since birth, or things you’d picked up along your way. But for now, you could breathe again. You could hear the drumming of your heart in your ears, and you could hear every single one of both yours and Eddie’s breaths in the silence, and that was enough.

“I don’t want to die,” you finally quietly admit. Saying one of the bigger, scarier words. The thing you’d been too afraid to let slip off your tongue originally. “I just- sometimes it all gets a bit loud, you know? And I know you said don’t apologize, but I am sorry that I scared you. And I’m sorry that you have to take the bad to also get that little bit of the good with me.”

His hand leaves one of your arms for the first time since he’d first wrapped you up, and it finds its way to cradle the side of your head. Holding you as if you’re porcelain still. You know that won’t go away, not tonight. “I’d rather have your bad days than have nothing at all,” he chokes up once more, and you can see tears threatening to welt in his eyes, “You get that, too. Alright? You’re worth it. Bad, good, funny, sad – give it to me. I’m asking for it. Just don’t… don’t leave me with the nothing.”

You’re worth it.

He’s found a worth in you attached to nothing at all. He’s sitting here with you, on the bathroom floor, and his perception of you has nothing to do with what you can only offer.

It just has to do with you. He sees you, and he’s decided you’re worth it. Even now.

He smiles softly, as if he can see the realization dawning upon you, “You wanna get up off the floor now? We can go sit on your couch or bed or something.”

You’re quick to shake your head. Your knees are partially digging into his thighs, your breaths are matching his.

“Okay,” his face falls slightly, but not entirely. Not entirely, “That’s okay. Do you want me…. Do you want me to go?”

Another shake of your head. But this time, you need to offer more than just the motion of your head, especially when you can feel tears returning as your throat tightens up, “No. No, just- Stay with me? Please?”

Your hands reach out without you even processing it, gripping his wrists, desperate and clinging and still verging on the edge of violent. The thought of being alone is terrifying, but the thought of having to watch him walk out of this room is even more petrifying.

He doesn’t even flinch as you sink your claws in. His smile only returns, and he shuffles to pull you both to hold your backs up against the wall across from the toilet, “Of course. I’ll stay, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere – wouldn’t even dream of it.”

His words shake just a little less than they had when he’d first entered the room.

He can’t fix it all magically. That isn’t his job, isn’t his role, isn’t his choice. But he can sit here with you, on the floor of the bathroom, endlessly patient and tragically caring as he urges you to lay down. He stretches his legs out and pats his lap once before hovering his hands over your shoulder, guiding you until your temple is flush with his thigh.

He can choose to not hesitate as his fingers immediately push through the baby hairs by your temple, a soft hum in the back of his throat that sounds exactly as you feel.

Hesitantly content. Just for now. It’s enough.

The storm is receding. As hours pass by, and noises of uncertainty become more confident hums of a song you faintly recognize, it all settles. He stays. You stay. The storm passes for the time being, and the hole tempers itself for just the night.

It’s enough for now. You’ll worry more tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that. You’ll talk more about why you feel this way, and he’ll offer better solutions. The weight won’t simply be passed into his waiting hands and forgotten – one day, you’ll find a way to lighten it through dissipation rather than through catastrophe.

One day, the seas will calm, and you’ll find yourself the ship rather than the anchor.

And the captain can be the boy who sits on the floor with you through the sadness, content to wait out the storms with you until you find the worth he sees in you.

#not using taglist due to the triggering nature of this fic #ghost's stories #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson angst #tw suicidal ideations #this felt more like a journal entry than a fic at times #but i needed to write it so i did #writing eddie's bits were hard because i've always been bad at being on that side of these things #finding a way to have two humans discuss the emotions in question out loud was just hard #and in case anyone who's reading the tags needs to hear this: you're not a burden for telling your loved ones when you feel this way #i guarantee they'd rather have these hard and uncomfortable conversations than the alternative #the ending only feels rushed and like a band-aid because i truly don't know if i'm capable of writing that type of dialogue #it's already scary enough posting this as it is lol #but save the leaves? idk now im using humor as a coping mechanism #alright i'll shut up now no one is reading this far into the tags

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