#what has she done? what has she done? what she had to. its the only way it makes sense

[prettygirl-gabi]

Melatonin in Human Form

Pairing: Paige Bueckers x Reader

Fandom: WNBA-Dallas Wings

Summary: can’t sleep without Paige—childhood naps turned forever habit.

A/N: I would like to publicly apologize for my most recent post. It was very wrong and insensitive of me to post, and I take full accountability for the harm it may have caused. Please forgive me.

Especially too: @iwasbored-okay , @cowboybueckers , @yailtsv , @elalfywhore , @elswhore , @sillylittlepop , @elliesglock , and @authentic-girl03

🏷️: @paigeshirleytemple , @unknowgirlypop , @nicebellee , @sitawita , @thatonesuschix , @vamptizm , @starfulani , @paxaz535 , @azziswrld , @jadasogay , @paigeluvvr , @melpthatsme , @lessi-lover , @courtsidewithlani , @italyyy , @lightsgore , @private-but-not-a-secret , @aubreygriffin , @issilovesherself , @graceeeeeesblog , @sayurireidotcom

I don’t remember the first time I fell asleep with Paige. Her dad probably does, because he never stops talking about how we were “two little Velcro babies who refused to nap without being tangled together.”

My parents even saying the same.

I do remember the warmth.

The safety.

The way her breathing always found its rhythm first, and how mine followed like it knew where home was.

We were maybe six, freshly worn out from a birthday party and some feral rendition of musical chairs, when I ended up passed out on her beanbag chair with her arm slung across my waist like we were puzzle pieces.

And from that moment on, I was done for.

Sleep, for me, has never just been about closing my eyes.

It’s always been about proximity.

Paige-shaped proximity.

And now, years later, that hasn’t changed.

Back in high school, before we were anything more than best friends who happened to blush a little too hard during sleepovers, I tried to downplay it.

I’d crash on her floor during study nights or after games, making excuses about her mattress being comfier or my house being too loud.

She never called me out for what it was—pure, undiluted dependence.

By the time we got to UConn, it was a running joke with her teammates.

“I swear Y/N has Paige set as her melatonin,” Sarah once said, deadpan, as I yawned through breakfast after a night apart.

Paige had just come back from a weekend home, and I barely made it 48 hours before showing up at her dorm door like a stray cat.

“You didn’t sleep again, did you?” she asked, smirking knowingly.

“Define sleep.”

Now we’re in Dallas.

New city, new league, new pace—but the same me.

Same needy, cuddly, sleep-inept me.

And the same Paige, only shinier.

She’s Paige Bueckers, WNBA rookie, endorsement magnet, face-of-everything-all-at-once. And she’s also my fiancée.

Which still makes my stomach flip if I think about it too hard.

Our apartment is big enough to breathe in—exposed brick, sunlight that spills into every room like a golden retriever.

We even have a home office now.

Which I’m currently standing outside of, barefoot in a hoodie and cocooned in a fluffy duvet like a deranged burrito.

It’s 12:42 a.m. I’m tired. But not the kind of tired that leads to sleep. Not when I’m in bed without her.

I knock softly on the office door.

“Paigey?”

No response.

She’s got her AirPods in, probably typing an email to her Nike rep or something equally business-y and important.

I open the door just enough to peek in.

Her laptop casts a blue glow over her face, and her glasses—glasses that I specifically told her made her look like a hot librarian—are sliding down her nose.

I shuffle in like a slug wrapped in cotton.

Her eyes flick to me and soften instantly. “Baby… what are you doing?” she asks, voice low and warm, pulling one AirPod out.

I don’t answer. I just wobble toward her like I’ve been drugged and then, without warning, climb into her lap, duvet and all.

“Y/N!” she laughs, startled, but instinctively adjusts her chair and cradles me like I’m made of something delicate.

“I can’t sleep,” I mumble, face smushed into her neck.

“I told you I’d be done in fifteen.”

“You said that forty minutes ago.”

“You were awake then.”

“I tried. I really tried. I even put on our playlist and laid on your pillow. But it’s not the same.”

Her hands start tracing circles on my back through the blanket. My eyes flutter, already sinking.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly, kissing my temple. “I just had one last email to send about the Puma shoot next week.”

“Mmm.”

“I should’ve stopped when I saw you still tossing around twenty minutes ago.”

“You’re forgiven,” I murmur, “if you never leave me alone at night again.”

She snorts. “Deal.”

I feel her return to typing, hands moving carefully so she doesn’t jostle me.

My cheek is pressed to her collarbone, and her heart is beating in that perfect, sleepy metronome I’ve known since childhood.

“Do you remember that one time we fell asleep in your trampoline net?” I ask, already halfway gone.

“I remember waking up covered in mosquito bites and somehow still thinking it was worth it.”

“Because I was there?”

“Because we were there.”

There’s a pause. She finishes typing, clicks her trackpad softly, then wraps both arms around me fully.

“I’m done now,” she whispers.

“Good,” I sigh, pulling the duvet higher over both of us.

“I really am your melatonin, huh?”

“You’re more effective than any sleep aid known to man. I should bottle you up.”

She laughs again, quieter this time, and kisses the top of my head.

“I’ll never get tired of being needed by you, you know?” she says, her voice humming against my skin. “Even if it’s just for sleep.”

“It’s not just for sleep,” I yawn. “It’s for everything. I only function right when I’m close to you.”

I expect her to tease me, maybe crack a joke about my codependency, but she just holds me tighter.

“I love you, burrito girl,” she murmurs. “You can stay in my lap forever if you want.”

“I plan to. Even when we’re eighty.”

“You’ll still be dragging your blanket into my wheelchair like this?”

“Yup. Snoring on your shoulder while you answer emails from the grandkids.”

She hums a soft chuckle, and it’s the last thing I hear before I finally—finally—fall asleep.

Wrapped in her arms. Right where I belong.

■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■

                 -Thank You For Reading!💚💙

                             -prettygirl-gabi✨️💗

[whimsicalsesquipedalian]

Some thoughts on Andor, and that final shot everyone hates so much.

I don’t. I’ve been sitting with this show for a while now. This whole season I’ve been waiting to hate Bix’s arc with the same fervour that some of the more vocal fans do. I’ve been waiting to feel the injustice done to a “strong female character” (a phrase I fucking hate by the way, but that’s an argument for another time). I’ve seen the arguments that she should have stayed with the rebellion, that she was a fighter sidelined for the sake of a man, that she was reduced to a baby-factory straight out of right wing propaganda (Jesus Christ). And I disagree with every fucking one of them. 

For me, in season two, Bix is the heart of the show. She is the ethos, the drive, the reason that rebellion matters. Bix becomes, in a way, the most important character Andor has to offer us.

Andor has always been very clear in its ideology. Blatantly so. And one of the ideals it strives to impart to its audience is that we are not meant to live in fear. We are not meant to live under oppression. We are not meant to live looking down. For Andor the heart, the drive, the reason behind rebellion is to create a future where we are free. And where love, and peace, and community, and kindness, and hope are our foundations and are the only matter of our lives. 

Andor doesn’t want its characters to be fighters. They are forced to be. Andor doesn’t want its characters to live hiding and scared and clawing for any glimpse of peace and love and hope they can get. They have no other choice. Rebellion is important. It is so so fucking important. But it is only important because of what it fights for. 

Bix is not a fighter. In Andor’s first season she is a mechanic selling to Luthen on the side for extra money. She is not struggling against the empire. She is not joining a rebellion. She is getting the fuck by and living her fucking life. And one day her connection to Cassian puts her under the empire’s gaze and she is invasively tortured and horrifically traumatised because of it. And she endures. 

Bix is, also, an incredibly important character to me personally. There can often be a narrative surrounding trauma that it should make you the fighter everyone seems to think Bix should be. That you should take your pain and terror and suffering and turn it around and let it make you stronger. Use it to beat back against the person, or group, or institution that traumatised you. That you should pick yourself up, dust yourself off, take that horror, and fight back (girlboss-ify yourself and take those motherfuckers down). And to that I say, no. I don’t want that. I’ve done my fighting. I’ve lost my battles and I’ve come out the other side scarred in ways that still hurt to touch. What I want is to stop. Is to rest. Is to put this pain down and move out the other side of it and live, finally. 

For me, watching Bix as an horrifically traumatised woman live stuck in that fight for the first half of the second season was harrowing. To see her spend her time in the Coruscant safehouse grappling with the true cost of what it means to fight the way she needs to in this war, never at peace as the life she lives and the things she must do force her to stay held in her trauma, had me aching in ways I didn’t realise I would. To see her stuck in the dark and the gloom and the cold, and yearning the whole time she is in Coruscant to be able to go out and live without having to look over her shoulder, hurt in ways I struggle to put words to.

And then, to see her get out. 

I know there is a lot of contention about seeing Bix have little to do on Yavin. And to that I will say, it’s a big show, there are a lot of characters, and she is on Yavin during a storyline that arguably should not narratively or structurally be focusing on her anyway. I know there is also a lot of contention about writing her leaving Cassian for the sake of the rebellion. That it diminishes her character to a plot beat. And while perhaps the tropes at play feel trite in comparison to the more grounded beats the show is known for hitting, this is still storytelling. All the characters are, functionally, still devices serving a narrative. Bix leaves, and narratively becomes our ethos. Becomes the heart of this story. Becomes the reason we have been watching this all play out for our two-season run. Bix becomes the most important character in the show. Because this is why we must fight. For Bix. For everything she represents in that moment. She becomes the way Cassian’s life should be if it weren’t for this war, and in doing so becomes the way all of their lives should be. Should have always been. And will be one day soon. 

She is the reason. For all of it. For every loss, for every death, for every fight. It is her. She is the hope at the heart of the rebellion.

That last scene on Mina-Rau; the gentle light, Bee playing, the table set for a community to eat and laugh and be. People smiling and content and together and peaceful. And Bix, free. Of the trauma, of the loss, of the death, of the fight. Looking up at the open sky with her child. Literally holding in her arms the life that the rebellion has always been fighting for. 

That is the hope at the end of our story -- that Bix is the one that gets to live. 

And you can pry that fucking ending from my cold dead hands.

[winterferger]

Okay, so. I have a lot of feelings about coding. Having grown up in a time when coding was especially important because everything was at risk of being censored, things I could see myself in or relationships that I could become invested in meant the world to me. The way Mac went on a revenge mission for Blair in Predator, the tragic intimate friendship in Enemy Mine, watching Data get picked on for not understanding things in ST: TNG. These were formative.

So, it seems like an obvious, surface level view that these tropes about vampire and robot racism could be taken like this. But in the era vampire racism stories were getting really popular was also an era where AIDS was poorly represented in the media and has persisted through the opioid and other drug crises. So you often had stories about innocent people who were attacked against their will, suffering from cravings they couldn't contain and knew were destructive to them and the people around them. That was important. That was invaluable.

Werewolf racism? What if I know I'm a freak. What if I'm trapped in a human body feeling like a creature that doesn't fit. What if I struggle with impulse and people would rather get rid of me if they knew so reaching out for help is impossible. That spoke to people who felt like they had to constantly pretend to be accepted, whether they were trans, gay, masking so hard that it was hurting...

Robots have always swung trope-wise to either neurodivergent or sociopathy. I actually really loved Alien Romulus for representing both tropes in contrast to each other. But usually, as a narrative analogy, almost always if there is a robot uprising then we did this to us and they're still the bad guys. Like in The Second Renaissance from the Animatrix- the uprising happened because of human mistreatment. Skynet also being one of the classic examples. An AI reacting out of its first inclination of fear. The more aggressive timelines of Detroit: Become Human, or the breaking of the androids caught in what they feel is a torture timeloop in the modern Westworld, we did this to us. Hell, in the classic Westworld, where it was just that the AI created for our entertainment was allowed to act without restriction- we gave it the capacity for that, we often provided the catalyst for the Frankenstein's Monster moment, and very, very rarely do I ever see the AI presented as the good guys in these scenarios. Almost always, despite the fact there was a human designer who enabled the lethality of these machines, that provided the situation to cause a revolt, and the robots are, rightfully, still considered the bad guys.

Now pair this with the trope of 'neurodivergent robot'.

Yeah, you got a logical reason to hate and fear robots. In Star Trek, Data came on the heels of his 'twin brother', Lore (who I have a lot of strong feelings about how underutilized he was in the franchise). In Picard they went far more into AI apprehension, but there was a long history in Star Trek already established about unreliable and dangerous robots, and one that was exactly the same design as Data killed his whole colony. But even if the reasoning was understandable, Data trying to relate to people and constantly having to prove himself as an individual worthy of respect despite prejudices speaks to people. It's hard watching someone whose intent is obvious to us, the audience member, and usually someone going through something similar be treated as less than.

In Terminator 2 we got to see a Terminator turn into a 'good guy', showing all this awkward behavior that made it nigh on impossible to communicate but with a hyper-focus. He only needed to be trusted enough to get the job done. But he was shown a level of care and kindness he wasn't expecting. Even Sarah Connor could see the benefit of a machine 'father' because she knew his priorities wouldn't waver. Now, ignoring various sequels that ruined this- Imagine at the time you were back from Iraq. Operation Desert Farewell happened after Feb 1991, so a good hunk of soldiers came home prior to the summer release of T2. Imagine, now, you have a bunch of military broken soldiers, some suffering from Gulf War syndrome, and their family members going to see this movie where a fight-minded robot is learning to love beyond general 'programming'.

There's also the many, many genres of story that are 'human cop pairs with inhuman cop'. Sometimes robot. Sometimes alien. Almost always copaganda, sure, but also it often appeals to people that want to have someone work to understand them. Any fashion of what's designated by society as a freaking weirdo wants to be understood. This trope is timeless at this point.

TLDR: There's a lot that I can go on about, I got a whole book worth of thought in me, but my big points are: - These tropes began as products of their time. Not only products of their time, but they also introduced people to ideas in a way that made it easier to ask for help. It opened up the doorways to relating. - Even in a world where censorship isn't quite as pervasive, we need narrative metaphors for the shit that bothers us because it's padding. I don't want to fucking doomscroll my entertainment. Not all the time, but sometimes I'd rather watch the android get up and put his arm back on after being gang-beat for being a freak than seeing a realistically bruised-up girl be helped home by a friend because it reminds me of shit that's happeend to me. Not shitting on the real thing but sometimes I want the metaphorical thing, thanks. - I actually love the audience capacity for sympathy. To some people it might be sympathy for the devil. To other people the 'robot-overlords' feels like when you're accused of being part of the 'woke mind-virus' and being villainized, or vampire hate is like, 'wow I have an impulse problem and I can never ask for help'.

the reason "robot racism" is often a really stupid metaphor is the same reason that like. discrimination against demons or vampires or whatever doesn't work, is because there's often a pretty justified reasons humans are scared of vampires or robots or whatever, in a way that doesn't apply to real life minorities, like a fantasy author will be like "the reason vampires are discriminated against is because most of them and kill and eat people for fun and pleasure, and so humans respond by trying to kill them, isn't that so sad" and like no that's a perfectly fine reason to not trust vampires i think.

[xiaberryy]

“Pip-squeak..” Caleb cooed softly, warm large hand sneaking quietly to rest atop of her thigh. his calloused palm sent shivers down her spine, rushing blood to her soft cheeks.

steady, observant gaze relentlessly conveyed fondness and understanding. meanwhile, the object of his attention was stubbornly looking away with jutted out lips.

Caleb let out a soft chuckle before he gently wrapped his arm around her waist. in a swift movement, she found herself sat on his lap.

“Caleb, you—!” her protests died down in front of Caleb’s teasing and satisfied grin.

with easy familiarity, he ruffled the crown of her head, “finally feeling like talking to me, princess?”

her eyebrows twitched. creases formed on her forehead owing to how hard she was frowning, “don’t think you can princess me and get away with everything, Caleb.”

the rapid thumping inside her ribs betrayed her words. she absolutely knew how embarrassingly easy she crumbles at mere crumbs of his affection.

Caleb smiled apologetically. his hand which still has receptors sensitive enough to feel her skin, rubbed her arm.

“i’m all yours now, princess. i promise no more impromptu fleet businesses that takes me away from my sweet girl,”

she stayed silent, lips jutted out further as she fidgeted with the hands she rested on her lap. a few seconds passed by and she hasn’t made an effort to move the muscles of her mouth to speak.

Caleb began to worry. he worried that this time he might’ve done an irreparable damage to the fragile little heart of this girl he’s coddled since childhood.

“Pip—“ his words got caught in his throat when fat blobs of tears trickled down her reddened cheeks.

“hic..stupid Caleb..” choked sobs escaped her. those sounds formed into arrows that shot him right in the heart. guilt consumed him. however, the pain of guilt wasn’t the only cause of his erratic heartbeat.

he swallowed his saliva. his hands trembled slightly before pulling her into his arms.

“you’re right, i’m stupid. i’m a big dummy that left my princess all alone. you were lonely, weren’t you, pretty girl?“ he cooed softly as he tightened the embrace he had her in.

his head was spinning. the girl sobbing in his arms was too adorable with those watery eyes, tear stricken face, and wet eyelashes. he knows it’s fucked up to make his beloved cry and enjoy it so much, but who could blame him when she’s such a pretty crier?

“Caleb is so sorry, hm? you can hit him if you want, princess,” he guided her hand to his chest.

however, instead of hitting him, she cried harder. “don’t wanna! why would i hurt you? you’re so annoying!!” screamed her while she snatched her hand away from his momentarily loose grip.

he forcefully tucked his lips in to stop himself from grinning like a maniac. she loves him enough to refuse hurting him even after the pain and loneliness he put her through? what a sweetheart.

abruptly, he stood up and carried her in his arms. a loud yelp left her as she immediately latched onto his neck for support.

“what the hell are you doing?!” she tried her best to glare at him despite the tears clouding her vision.

Caleb grinned, “you used to love being carried around. you’d always calm down when i rock you in my arms like this,” said him as he began rocking her like a baby and spinning her around.

a loud, high-pitched squeal left her when he began spinning around faster, “Caleb, put me down!”

her yells and his laughter blended together that evening. the windows of his current house is larger than the ones in their old house. the orange sun rays which casted its warm glow across the house interior was brighter, being on a floating island nearer to the sky and all. the person in his arms has now matured, only the familiar warmth in his chest remained unchanged. so, he’ll bask in the feeling of being 12, holding 10 year old her in his embrace again.

[randominchident]

slim pickins! (part 2)

max verstappen x popstar!reader -> social media au

max has been a silent fan of popstar!reader for years, it's a running joke in the fandom at this point. a chance meeting changes everything and he doesn't intended to let her down like past guys have... it's time for y/n to come to a race. (part one)

-> fc: sabrina carpenter (other pinterest finds when necessary)

private message with max verstappen

redbullracing has made a post

liked by y/n.chronicles, 🎀user and more

Tom Holland. Neymar Jr. A last-minute chart-topping surprise. The only thing more packed than the grandstands is the garage guest list 👀🔥 #RedBullGarageThings #SilverstoneGP

comments

user7 Y/N IN MAX'S MERCH? OH WE'VE WON.

speedandceleb the VIP list was longer than the straight at Baku 😩

champagneandchoruses she’s writing “pole position” as we speak

↪ taylorinturn1 when he wins the race and she drops a love song next week? poetic cinema.

toomanyplaylists TRYING TO STAY CALM AND FAILING

↪ betterbest they really thought they could casually post y/n as if we haven't spent the past week freaking out over her and max

y/nuseryeah soft launch? hard laugh? IDK BUT IM AM LAUNCHING MYSELF INTO THE SUN IF WE DON'T GET A PHOTO OF THEM TOGETHER TODAY. 4K QUALITY. IN EACH OTHERS ARMS

↪ betterbest hey redbullracing admin this is our hour of need. you know what must be done.

newuser don’t play with me… is that Y/N?! AT SILVERSTONE?? speediest hard launch ever???

y/n.chronicles caught in 4K huh

↪ redbullracing our candid queen

comment liked by max.verstappen

↪ y/nfanatic OMG MAX LIKED

↪ deluluera SIR get off instagram and get into YOUR CAR.

↪ lunalove he's got his priorities straight. his girl > his car

comment liked by y/n.chronicles and max.verstappen

user5 the way the comments only care about y/n being there 😭✌️

charles.leclerc y/n.chronicles come visit ferrari next!

↪ max.verstappen she's fine here, thanks.

↪ y/nfanatic he really said "no❤️" 😭

max.verstappen has made a post

liked by y/n.chronicles, 🎀user and more

Simply lovely 👊 Great to get some points for the team and had some extra motivation this week to end up on top.

comments

user1 "extra motivation" man is whipped.

y/n.chronicles i was cheering the loudest. probably.

↪ max.verstappen confirmed. heard you over the engine. ❤️

↪ f1teaqueen oh we’re LOUD-launching now huh

↪ readingwriting yeah ok max you win. you always win but like YOU WIN

pensburner THE KISS.

↪ readingwriting wait WHAT KISS.

↪ pensburner he got out of the car and ran straight to her! jumped the fucking barricade and lifted her up! and KISSED. its all over tiktok rn

↪ pensburner completely ignored his team but i don't think they cared because they were the ones cheering and clapping the hardest at the kiss... like i think they've heard max talk about y/n for a while...

↪ redbullracing we have.

↪ readingwriting GIGGLING AND KICKING MY FEET FR OMG. I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS IS REAL.

↪ y/n.chronicles yeah honestly neither girl

↪ readingwriting 📸 Y/N. 📸

hotgirlupdates saw a tweet of someone who bumped into y/n in the paddock and got a photo, apparently she was wearing one of the max merch hats and laughed about max giving it to her so he's with her throughout the whole race GOD I'VE SEEN WHAT YOU'VE DONE FOR OTHERS.

y/n.chronicles has posted to her story

max.verstappen yours ❤️

↪ y/n.chronicles ☺️💋

max.verstappen has posted to his story

y/n.news has made a post

liked by f1fangirl, 🎀user and more

congrats to y/n's boyfriend (?) for driving fast! yay! (sorry guys I don't know anything about f1 I'm just trying to be supportive but I’m so lost!)

comments

y/nfansunite i just spat out my tea reading this 😭 the fucking photo choices 😭😭😭 not a single photo from the win

user31 so glad we are all collectively going insane this weekend cause that is the only explaination for this post

max.verstappen thanks

↪ y/n.news UM YOURE WELCOME???

user1 didn't realise liking someones music would lead me to having to learn how a car sport works. but here we are.

y/nstan two weeks ago we were clowning max for liking y/n's posts and never saying anything. now he's going home with her and commenting on her fan account posts. lets this be a lesson to never give up on your dreams ig

private message with max verstappen

y/n.chronicles has made a post

liked by max.verstappen, 🎀user and more

london you have my heart 💌 thanks for all the shared tears and all the love you gave me. sad to leave but excited for what's to come 💋

comments

lunalove GUYS THE PIANO. Y/N ONLY EVER POSTS WITH THE PIANO BEFORE NEW MUSIC COMES OUT. "excited for what's to come 💋" MAX ALBUM INCOMING!

comment liked by y/n.chronicles

hope you enjoyed <3 comments are loved <3

(ps. the story photo max posted is one y/n sent him pre show… it’s his lockscreen now)

[13tinysocks]

My Dead Girlfriend

Days pass. Patience grows thin. Deathbed talk begins. You pull the last straw and are taken somewhere new.

[Invincible Varients X Reader]

[Part one]  [Ao3]  [11]

12 * Two Inches? [9.2k]

"Nice, nice!

Are you a virgin?

Nice, nice!

What color are your panties?"

Nice Nice - Dazey and the Scouts

        "We need to tell everybody." He couldn't look away from that massive white thing. Hard-shelled with soft, crabby flesh underneath. His mouth watered just looking at its twitching mandibles.

        From behind him, "No."

        Baldie turned, brows pressed together. "Why not?"

        Phantom watched him, feet away, keeping eyes and ears out for approaching company. No one was coming.

        "(Y/n) likes you." He says instead of answering directly. "If you ask her to come with you alone, she will." 

        Baldie's mouth fell open. Now he was starting to get it. "But... You just said all that stuff about not splitting up."

        "Because I had to." Phantom said, modulator softly echoing off the cave walls, "To keep the peace until we could talk. This is the safest way to do it."

        "We can't just keep this from every-"

        "You saw what those two did to her." Phantom cut him off, surprising even himself, "How easily they took her from you. I had to get her out of that situation. We only survived because they decided they were done playing. Do you really want her to be around people like that?" His throat itched. Vocal cords thin and raw after ten seconds of jabbering. 

        "Then we tell everyone but them." Baldie reasoned, though the voice in the back of his mind agreed. To take the hoard that was you and run.

        "If we're all together, they'll find us. It has to be just us." Phantom finishes, cards splayed across the table, hoping Baldie would fold.

        Baldie's mouth opened, closed, opened, closed. He knew he should do the right thing. Refuse. Tell everybody. Band together, kill Lensless and Scars with everybody else. Establish peace. Live with and eat bugs forever. Find friendship and understanding in the only person who could really understand what he went through- the other versions of himself.

        But he just couldn't. 

        He'd waited four years in hell only to find your bones. Watched you be civil to the others, Viltrumite loyalists and enforcers and leaders. It made him sick, the idea of you with them. Any of them but him. Phantom must feel that way too. 

        He was no fool. Alternate motives were guaranteed in a situation as suspicious as this. "How long have you known about this place?" Was double-speak for, 'Did you find this before or after we ate a guy?'

        "Not long." Phantom lies, "Three days." 

        Baldie nods shallow before spinning, neck cracking like a whip. "You're only telling me this now because, what? You think I'm stupid? You think I'm easy to kill?" 

        Phantom backed up, hands raised defensively. "No." He says, shaking his head, voice small, hunched over, feigning doe-ishness. 

        "What's stopping you from killing me when I bring her here?" Baldie's prowling closer now, fists clenching, "What's stopping you from just taking her yourself? Why are you telling me this?" Veins pop out on his scarred neck, pulse throbbing in his clenched fists. He's still angry about you letting Lensless and Scars go. He doesn't want, he needs to hit something hard as he can.

        "Because you can make her happy." Phantom says, "And I can't." That makes Baldie pause. "I wish she liked me the way she likes you, but I know it won't happen. I'm okay with that. I just want her safe." It's a lie but a well-told one.

        Baldie relaxes but not fully. "If you ever fucking try to touch her, I will kill you." He only says it because you're not here to hear him say it, because he couldn't say it to the ones that hurt you. Then and now. He had dreaded coming home from prison and you being scared of him, his appearance and the scars that festered underneath. But the you now wasn't scared, you were starting to cherish him. He was afraid now, of fucking it up a second time. 

        "Understood," Phantom said because this is exactly what he wanted.

        "I-" Baldie took a breath, squared his shoulders, "I also need some time to figure this out. This," the bug queen, the cathedral, the never ending cache of food, "is a lot." But most of all, he needed to figure out how to tell you.

        ***

        Your phone was gone. Off the rock you'd left it on to play music and die on. You'd asked around unhurriedly. Not like it'd be any help but the comfort of something not from this shithole was alluring. Something to hold and know you had existed before this and would hopefully exist after. But nobody knows where it went. Though Lensless (when you saw him next) claimed he took it and tried to get you to force him to tell the truth. You didn't even try.

        Gray was dodgy, not about the phone, but about you. He couldn't seem to hold conversation with you for more than two seconds at a time before flying off somewhere with something better to do. He'd always been that way, but he'd been shorter with his words and was staring at you a whole lot more. Despite this, he wasn't a suspect. You doubted he'd want anything to do with your phone, even if it was working.

        You were rotting and they all saw it. You couldn't explore long. The torches you'd been making out of soaked, then slightly dried wood and cloth never last longer than a half hour. You couldn't go to the surface, ceiling too high to even consider scaling out of. Not like any of them would let you anyway, not with Scars and Lensless roaming the wastes during the day. Hiding out somewhere hidden so those who wanted them dead couldn't even kill them in the daylight. Or maybe they were hiding, waiting to pick them off one by one. No one knew what they were planning. 

        Scars and Lensless always came at night because they'd yet to find another source of food. The peace was paper thin. They ate and didn't attack or kidnap you. Your horde of bodyguards let them stay in the shade for a few hours. We don't hurt you and we get to eat. Not exactly an even exchange.

        Personal agendas were always thick in the air now. It was only a matter of days until the food was gone. They could go without awhile, but as soon as you began to starve, there'd be another death and another. Everyone was planning to be the last one standing, to die in the desert with you. The truce wouldn't last much longer but for tonight, nobody mentioned it.

        Gray marked day twenty on the wall. He kept count for the sake of rationing. Meager scraps of what hadn't rotted remained. Only you would eat tonight, the small hard pieces of Emperor jerky that always got caught in your teeth a reminder. 

        Hopelessness isn't in the air, it's already sunken in, become a part of each of you. People were starting to think about dying or finding a way to make this all work long term. But without food? It would not. 

        The deathbed talk started lightly, a reprieve from their thoughts and the empty expanse around them. 

        "I could really go for mom's chicken parm." Maskless says, watching you nibble on small pieces of Emperor meat.

        Tracksuit's mask fluttered when he laughed, "Your mom cooked?"

        "Yours didn't?"

        So began talk of Debbie Grayson. Another universal constant, but she was dynamic through the multiverse. Tracksuit talked about a distant figure he never liked much. Maskless implied kind acceptance, the love some of them yearned for. She stood up to Nolan and died for it. Mohawk laughed in his face. Bragged about how he came to your world partly to kill her himself again. 

        "Did you?" Omni asked, sounding suspiciously interested. Like he'd had a similar idea.

        "Nah." Mohawk kicked at the ground. "Wasn't home. Any of you dicks find 'er?"

        Nobody had. 

        Lensless claimed a weak, once loving mother who stepped aside when the Viltrum Empire came to Earth. Struck by grief at the death of her husband at her child's hand. They lived together through the change Viltrum brought to Earth. What was left of it after the slaughter Lensless brought down. She was a ghost. Wasting away as the world was rebuilt into a utopia. The last time he saw her, she was hanging in her closet. He said this lightly, with the same smile he always wore.

        Scars grinned at the story, told them that Debbie Grayson's body would never be found in his world. Left it at that. No one wanted to know.

        Gray was confused by all of this. The death. The alien versions of his, "Mother raised me on Viltrum." Turned heads. "She likes it there."

        Baldie stirred, agitated by the idea. Mom was good, she was just. She was taken from Earth just like he was. Brought to Viltrum, not in a cell, but still imprisoned. Dad gave him updates in between beat-downs on his cell floor. She had stopped talking, stopped eating, had to be put on life support to stay alive. Nolan refused to pull the plug. He kept his wife unwillingly alive as a self-inflicted vegetable. Baldie wished he could've escaped another way. Seen mom one last time, taken her off that horrid life support and let her rest in peace.

        But he kept his mouth shut. He felt if he opened his mouth at all, the cave secret would come spilling out. He hadn't figured out how to tell you. Where to tell you. When. How you'd react.

        Phantom hadn't spoken at all since he'd talked with Baldie those days ago. Something about Mom and Viltrum made him spark, contempt thick in his voice. "As breeding stock?"

        Gray turned to him, "That's not what I said."

        "Dad said that's all humans were good for," Phantom said.

        ***

        "Is she with child?" The Viltrumite doctor asked as they all stepped into the sterile room. White on white on white. Technically, only Mark needed to be in attendance for his physical. There had been plenty of appointments since he was the first human-Viltrumite hybrid and the Empire desperately wanted to know how he was developing. But his parents came, they always came because they cared. Humanity's customs had rubbed a dent into Nolan's character. The other Viltrumites didn't approve but he still conquered planets, if not more effectively than before- excited to return to his family.

        "No." Debbie said firm. "We've already told you, we're not-"

        "You brought the human woman to breed did you not?" The doctor looked square at Nolan. Debbie was beneath him. 

        "I feel it's better to focus on Mark until he develops his powers." Nolan said as Mark climbed onto the table for a full body scan. He was seven, small for a Viltrumite boy his age but Debbie was sure he'd hit a growth spurt soon. 

        The doctor watched numbers flash on a screen. Mark's vitals, muscle and bone density. Hardly different from a full blooded Viltrumite. "He will soon, Nolan. It would be prudent to begin procreation immediately."

        "I said no." Debbie snapped. 

        The Viltrumite doesn't turn to address her. "You should consider your mission on Earth a great success, Nolan. We were unsure of human-Viltrumite compatibility before, but by the time he's developed his powers- he'll be strong as a full-blood. The Empire thanks you for this knowledge."

        "Uh, yeah sure." Nolan internally wilted at his wife's hard stare. "But you don't need me to have more children do you? There's so many Viltrumites and humans to do that for me."

        The doctor's hands balled to fists. "You know?"

        It's a secret Mark isn't privy to. Debbie isn't privy to. Nolan knows. There are only fifty full-blooded Viltrumites left in the galaxy. Their bloodline thinning in other mixed races. The Empire is weak, desperate. Mark the greatest success yet. 

        "Yes," Nolan said.

        "Then you know what you must do."

        ***

        "There are other humans to do it for him." He says, the parallel is like a hammer to head. The population of Viltrum had thinned further since then, but there were still others to carry the mission. He could just... No. No, he couldn't defect like that, it wasn't like mother. The Empire wouldn't even allow you to be considered if you couldn't procreate. Even if he wanted to, he was stuck in the desert. No way of returning to his Empire. Still, he looks to you and finds a cringe he feels the need to reset. "The parents of our hybrid children are not forced into what they do. It is bad for the child's physical health if some human practices are not done during pregnancy and early development." Only in hybrids. Viltrumite babies weren't so needy. Remembering himself, a tiny, keening and a desperate thing, made him embarrassed to not be full blooded. 

        Your expression only worsens. You did not like that. He is confused, what he said was very humane. He left out the part that humans were selected by health and fertility, that many did not meet their qualifications. Some did not wish to serve the empire, so they would be killed until another was found. Rinse, repeat. After awhile, all participants are willing.

        "Wait." Tracksuit's accent cut the tension. "You were on Viltrum from day one, yeah?"

        "I was born there." Gray said, proud. It was like a badge among the lesser versions of him. 

        Tracksuit's fingers snapped. "That makes so much sense!" Gray doesn't ask, so Tracksuit continues, "You know, why you're taller than the rest of us!"

        Looks were shared. "He's not-" Then. "Wait- Hey! Stop hovering for a second!"

        Gray, who perpetually seemed to hover above the ground except for when he slept, did as requested. Gasps rang through the cave. Marks stood beside him. Hands going from the top of their heads to the middle of Gray's chin. All of them were the same height, except for Gray. Two, maybe three inches taller than the rest.

        There was outrage from some. Gray did not care. Height did not matter on Viltrum, through he suspected his difference was due to a different level of gravity throughout his lifetime. Odd, yes, but he can only focus on you and your faraway expression. What were you thinking about? Were you not impressed with his height? Didn't Earth women like taller mates?

        He is so focused on you he nearly doesn't catch Phantom's quiet words.

        "She'd rather die than live on Viltrum." The whole time he'd been simmering, building up the strength in his throat.

        Gray looked to him. Saw past his modulator and mask, and knew he was a hurt, aching, little boy on the inside. One he could've been, had he not been raised to be strong on Viltrum. Gray pities him, but feels no compassion. A bleeding heart was just that, a bleeding heart. Weak, soon to die.

        "Your mother is dead, yes?" He says more than asks. It's a guess, an educated one. The human-raised among his ilk were too transparent with their feelings. 

        Phantom jerks as if struck, voice a growl like what he says will hurt him. "Dad killed her." 

        Weakness. "If she resisted, then it had to be done. She was not strong enough for The Empire or your father. My mother was, and she still serves The Empire." He says as if his mother didn't only have one child. As if he didn't cherish growing up surrounded by his parents love and attention. She had not done everything she should have for The Empire and he still loved her, his father loved her. He too was weak, but unlike Phantom, would not show it.

        Phantom bristled under the mask. Tense. Ready to strike. But he looks at you. Remembers what's at stake. Forces himself to relax.

        Mohawk's cackle hurts his ears, "Maaaaan! You can't be sayin' that shit to this dude!" His thumb jerked toward Phantom, "Dude looks like a school shooter!"

        Phantom took the abuse on the chin. He'd take all he needed to because soon enough, he'd show them all.

        ***

        Scars and Lensless touched down, made their gross, sexual commentary. Toed the line. Maskless built the fire, Gray marked day twenty-two. 

        You eat beside Tracksuit. Friendship an undercurrent you keep hidden at these fireside. The others would be weird, territorial. Scars and Lensless might fucking kill him. You hoped they didn't hear you pour your heart out to him about Mark. Knowing your luck? They probably had.

        Another night of tension. Conversational scraps. No one had found anything in the caves or the desert. Until.

        "Alright, I'm bored." Mohawk shot a pointed finger your way. "I gotta know, how was he in bed?"

        You almost drop your jerky. "Excuse me?"

        "You heard me. How was fuckin' Daddy's little clone?" 

        You'd been avoiding the topic for days. Avoiding Omni for days. He had his own cot now, had for days, but he pushed it right up next to yours. Sleeping next to one another, ignoring his chatter, trying to get him to sleep on his cot and not roll onto yours in the night. All you cared about was if he would kill you or not. Since he wasn't trying, you didn't need to talk to him. Still, he tried. Over and over to catch you out alone and you continued to dodge. Using your powers to get someone else to be around. He was smart and knew the others shouldn't know. Liked keeping a secret between you both, until he didn't. 

        "I told you twelve times already, we didn't have sex." Your lies sting him. The first time you denied it, he didn't mind. It was survival. But now? You sounded grossed out by the idea of him inside you. As if your body hadn't been begging for more. As if he hasn't tasted you on his fingers. 

        "Sure you didn't." Mohawk snickers. "Yelling at him for that long?"

        "Dude," Tracksuit swallows a wad of meat, "I'd tell you if she was fuckin' some guy. It's like, bro code man."

        Mohawk snorted, "I'm just sayin', if we were alone for that long? You would not be yelling at me." His brows do a stupid jig on his forehead. You want to throw your jerky at him but you needed it. You'd used your reserves for the day on shutting Scars and Lensless up for an extended period. They seemed to come to the fireside just for your control. Work it out until your nose bled or you passed out, then leave into the night.

        "If we were alone that long, I'd kill you." You say.

        He bit his pierced lip in a grin. "I'd like to see you try."

        "Say that stupid shit again and I will."

        Omni had had enough. The secret was doing no good for your relationship. He said loud and clear for the whole desert to hear, "Is it so bad that I made love to my wife?"

        Your jerky finally drops out your hand as you stood. "You-"

        Mohawk slapped his knee. "Knew it! I knew it!"

        "We didn't!" You glare at him, trying to stop him with your eyes. 

        Omni levels you with a too-serious glare. "We did and it was beautiful."

        "No!" You hands go to your head. You do not have the energy to deal with this.

        Mohawk clutched his chest, laughing so hard he may vomit. "Him! Him first?! Ain't no way!"

        Your control on Lensless and Scars snapped. Lensless shot up, arm raised, "Me next! Me! Pick me!" While Scars watched you with a small, knowing smile. He'd already known. Guessed or heard somehow. You could never tell with this freak.

        "Oh God." Tracksuit ran a hand under his mask. 

        "Wait." Mohawk stopped. "What about bro code? Were you in that pussy too!?"

        "No." Omni said at the same time as you.

        The unity made Mohawk stop laughing. Taking stock of the situation, the way you stood in front of him, trying to mask your anger in a way you wouldn't if he was lying. If he was lying you'd make him jump into the fire, but you just looked anxious now, barely contained. 

        "You actually fucked her." It's not a question. Omni didn't joke. "I should cut your dick off." Mohawk wanted to say little but considering they were the same person? Definitely not little.

        "You will not." Omni says, smile cocky enough to make them all bristle, "But I didn't need it."

        Mohawk's hands go to the shaved sides of his head. "Fucking-!" He'd done plenty of that in his day, especially since your death to fill the void. If anyone knew about meaningless sex it was him but you fucked him, another version of him, and not him him. It was a total betrayal, a slap in the face, a Coalition of Planets data pad under the mattress. 

        Nothing seemed more healing to him then being buried in your pussy. Negging you was flirting for him. He was just trying to get in your pants, then your heart. He'd thought the teasing would bring you closer together. He'd had a plan but now all he wanted to do was kick Omni's ass for existing. 

        He stood. Omni stayed seated. "Do you really plan to attack me, Little Man?" Mohawk doesn't see but feels his eyes flick up and down. It was obvious who the scrawniest was out of all of them, Mohawk himself. Nothing to sneeze at in terms of physique but compared to Omni's brick wall body? He stood no fucking chance.

        But he knew his physique didn't matter, that he was more durable, better than all of them combined. And he wouldn't take such a insult in front of you. 

        "Yea-"

        "Take a breather." You say. Mohawk shoots hard into the night. You hold control long as you can. 

        "I appreciate the assist, my love but l-"

        You hold up a hand shutting him up. "I'm not your love or your wife. That was the whole fucking point of what we did." You turn to the rest, the official news hitting them all at once. "And if any of you assholes have a problem, I'll send you out until you can act like adults. Jesus Christ." 

         Gray felt strangely disappointed. You couldn't help the repopulation effort but you'd still had sex just to have sex. Why? He never understood why his parents did what they did. Never got to lay his version of you down himself. Baldie tells himself you're only human. Needed to let off steam, but he angsts anyway. Lensless and Scars look to each other. Seeming to physically brew up punishing ideas. Maskless didn't care. Tracksuit hoped Mohawk wouldn't come back and murder him over an assumption.

        Phantom sat content. Upset, yes, but content knowing this information would push Baldie further to his side. All evidence of Omni's mark on you could be erased anyway- once Baldie was out of the picture. If everything went his way no one else would touch you ever again.

        ***       

        You sat on the ground in total quiet. Alone for the first time in forever in the central cave. You couldn't remember who was on babysitting duty or where they'd gone. You continued knitting garbage together on your bare arms. Everyone had a cot now, but you wanted a blanket that wasn't Omni's cape after that shit he pulled last night. You'd slept against a carved bench by the fire while he tried to call you to bed. You ignored him until the only sounds you could hear were the fire and your teeth chattering.

        You were exhausted and your whole body ached, and every time you fucked up the technique, you swore. It'd been getting harder to keep your emotions in check. You were always partly starving, bored, afraid for your life. You were fraying at the edges and didn't know how much more you could take. 

        "Hi."

        You nearly jumped out of your skin. Falling forward, scraping your elbows on the cave floor, garbage fabric falling to useless shreds on the ground. You twisted, ready to bark out a kill order.

        Phantom stood. Hand poised like he was going to touch your shoulder but thought better of it. 

        "What?" You gathered your limbs under yourself, trying to look more composed. 

        He notices you're slow to do so. You were not as afraid of him as the others. Unsure, reasonably so, but not enraged by his closeness. This was a good sign. 

        He reached into his belt. You'd never seen him turn out his pockets, had no idea what was inside. Mind racing that he was going to pull out a weapon, superhero murder gas or something of the like. Instead, he holds a small flat disc. No larger than the center of his palm.

        "For you." He held his hand out, palm open, waiting for you to take it.

        You ogle the thing with a frown. "It's not going to cuff around my wrists right?" You remembered the thing he'd thrown at you in Sydney. What you guessed it was but it was never confirmed to be. Remember what Scars had brought with him to subdue you. You suppress a shiver.

        "No." He says, smile soft in his voice. "I used this when I knew I didn't have the time to follow a suspect." His thumb pressed on the disc's center and out popped a suction cup. Another press and it was smooth once more. "I did a lot more work for the GDA than the others."

        He assumes anyway. Those lazy, immoral rats didn't care about the planet most of them grew up on. Not like Phantom did. He did everything he could to protect it. He still remembers what Dad said to him that horrible day. A sneer as he said  "his hobby was cute," right after leveling their family home, after killing you. Just remembering spiked his heart rate. 

        He forced himself to breathe. Be level, calm. He held his arm out a little further but didn't dare touch you. Careful not to set you off, the poor, scared little mouse that you were.

        "Or," he started, nervous under your attention, "to keep covert operatives safe." He flipped the disc on its side, slid a hidden track down to reveal a slim red button. "Press this and I'll be alerted. I'll come right away." He slid the hidden compartment shut and waited.

        He wanted to keep an eye on you. Keep you in the palm of his creepy hand. He wanted to...

        You were always in the same place. Always under threat of Scars and Lensless suddenly swooping down and snatching you up. This wasn't about stalking, it was about protecting. After all, he had saved your life from them, and your own stupid mistake. 

        You took the thing, slow, like you were scared if you moved too quick his predator instinct would spring and he'd grab your arm. But he holds himself perfectly still. Feeling the euphoric thrill that is your fingers grazing over his palm through kevlar. When your touch leaves, the sensation lingers.

        You turn the thing over and over in your palm. Testing the weight and muttering, "Where was this a few days ago?" Before sliding into the pocket of your soldier pants. Its weight is near imperceptible but you feel it tugging at your hip. A real, solid comfort. A promise.

        You realize you're being an asshole.

        "Thank you." You say. Hoping he doesn't take it and his promise of protection back. Machine Head was always so quick to take privileges like that away. You worried but a lightning speed pick-pocketing doesn't occur. You relax. "For this and the other day. Those guys are uhm..." You look up through the porthole as if they'd be there waiting. They aren't. You don't want to jinx it. "It's good to have someone like you on my side."

        He nods. All talked out for the day. Chest ablaze with the praise. 

        "It's good to have someone like you on my side."

        He picked up your trash and re-knit it before you could think about doing it.

        "It's good to have someone like you on my side."

        He brought Gray's cache of trash to weave closer. Sat by your side and passed you pieces as you went along. Quietly enjoying your company.

        "It's good to have someone like you on my side."

        ***

         Dinner tonight was a broth of Emperor's bones to be sipped out of cups of dry clay Gray baked in the sun. He only made bowls for those two because if he didn't, they'd have an excuse to drink from yours. It was not that he cared for your comfort, why should he if you couldn't help him complete his mission but... There was no mission in this wasteland. He tells himself he's trying to keep the peace, to do the most rational thing in a hopeless situation. You were needed for morale, the others and not his of course.

        You tilted the bowl to your lips and let the poor excuse for hot soup slide down your throat. Scars watched your throat bob. Wanting nothing more than to drink the liquid out of your mouth after a long day of desert dwelling with Seven. He settles for drinking his own share.

        Scars is watched himself. Nobody trusts him not to try and take you to the sky again. Maybe even take you away for good. He hadn't made his move yet, but it was expected soon. For tonight, he did the same thing he had for the last week.

        "Stop avoiding the question, Dregs." Piss you off on purpose, asking personal questions and making assumptions about your previous life. You didn't understand why he did it. You always shut him up and he was too pussy to attack even with Lensless in a room full of your personal bodyguards. Sometimes you thought he was getting off on bothering you, on not letting you have any sense of peace. But he barely fought back, letting you shut him up and bite back.       

        "Be quiet." And he was. Thank God.

        Your nose hadn't started to bleed yet. Your powers should be weaker from eating less and less these last few days but you were on a roll tonight. 

        "Why are you getting so defensive?" Lensless baited. "We've been plenty vulnerable with you about our lives. Why can't you do the same thing for us? Just tell us who came up with the name!"

        "Leave."

        The cave whooshes with a rush of air. The kindling scattered to the floor. Regathered by Omni before they can burn themselves out. You nod thanks. The cave was insulated from desert night chills but it was no camping trip, you needed the fire. 

        You feel your control on Scars start to slip. "Stay quiet." You close your eyes. Feeling power loosen on Lensless, even at a miles distance. By now, his mind is free but his body is not. You focus. Try to keep them both evenly controlled. You'd never had a workout quite like this. Regular human beings were so easy to control you were unused to challenge. Hadn't even had any resistance from non-psychics until that day on the roof. You wouldn't say it but the exercise was welcome but you almost started looking forward to making fools of them over the nightly bonfires- showing them all you had something they couldn't control. You.

        While you were focused, Mohawk hits you where it hurts. "By all means, leave those dickheads in the dark but why not tell the rest of us? We're buddies by now, yeah babe?" He knows your hold would break if you added another Mark to the roster. You can shut those assholes up, but not him.

        "None of your business." You grit out through ground teeth. Feeling Lensless's mind wriggle in your hold. You clamp the mental prongs down.

        He really shouldn't agitate you but you'd been avoiding him for days now. He just needed you to look at him again after that moment of union in the caves. "I think it is," Omni says. 

        Mohawks brows shoot up in surprise but he takes the advantage, willing to work with anyone if it meant getting under your skin. "See, babe? Everyone wants to know, even this shithead."

        You scowl at Omni, concentration waning. Scars mentally slashing at your power with steely claws. 

        "Shut up." 

        "Think of it like a campfire story, ya'know. You can even change the names around if ya want." You don't budge. Mohawk pouts, "Come oooonnn, I showed you mine, you show me yours isn't that how the sayin' goes?"

        "I said," your eyes snap open, control gone from the others, "shut up."

        It's Mohawk's turn to go quiet. Lensless returned to the fire in a snap that again, scatters the wood. The fire is restacked before you notice a change in light. 

        "Idiot." You tsk at a finally shut up Mohawk. 

        "Did I miss anything?" Lensless asked.

        "Just our dear Dregs getting defensive over the tiniest of questions." Scars said.

        "I'm not defensive." You say, defensively. 

        "Then tell us." Mohawk goaded. Your hold already gone with your concentration.

        "Yeah, I wanna know why you're so hot and evil and stuff." Lensless said.

        You scowled. None of them were stopping this line of questioning. Why the hell was Mohawk working with Scars, who he tried to kill last week, to get information out of you? Why the hell weren't Phantom or Gray stopping this?

        On the flip side, Phantom wanted to know. He knew you'd be upset if he asked. But the cool-headed image of him in your head wouldn't crack if he stayed quiet. When you stopped being angry you'd think it was survival move to stay quiet. Not speak against the majority.

        Gray shouldn't let the tensions rise, he knew, but you were so vexing. All he needed to do was let the others crack your brain open for him.

        Baldie tried to stop it, weakly. "She doesn't want to talk." Said as a mutter because he craved knowing all of you, but knew if he said nothing, you'd be pissed.

        "Stop white-knighting, dude, she's not gonna fuck you." Mohawk said and that shut him up. Fighting all of them was a stupid idea. But leaving in a huff, leaving you alone, was a stupider idea. The best thing he could do was sit by your side as silent moral support. Back your play.

        "I'm not fucking any of you." You say.

        Mohawk scoffed. "You fucked Wonder Boy over there."

        You lean forward, elbows to knees, "Yeah, and not you." That made his smirk crumple.

        He forced it to bounce back. "Not yet."        

        "Mmm, no." You say, a lilt in your voice, "Thing is, I just don't think you're all that attractive." It's a lie but one you try to sell. Happy to bruise an ego. "I never thought the Mark in my timeline was either. With him," you jerk your head toward Omni, "I just needed stress relief and we were in the dark, so who really cares?"

        Mohawk's lips purse like he'd sucked a lemon. "Funny you say that." He shifted, pulling something out of his back pocket. 

        Your phone. Caligula's belly flashing on the lock screen, fully charged.

        "Give me that." You don't want to waste what power you have left, not yet. "How is that even working?"

        "No shot." His shit-eating grin returns, "You could'a been explorin' the caves all this time, playing your stupid music-" Your eyes shift around, wondering who told. "We got crazy tech in these suits, babe. I had Art put a phone charger in mine cuz I kept missing your calls while I was workin' and you'd get pissed!" He slid the phone into a seam on his bicep, surly enough the charging sound dinged. He pulled it out. "-But you didn't think to ask cuz you're such a prissy bitch."

        "You want to call me that again?" It's a dare. 

        One he doesn't take because he has the upper hand. "So I started goin' through ya phone." He flips it to himself and unlocks it with a swipe of the thumb. "Can't believe your passcode's the same." He laughs, tapping at the screen. 

        "Oh no, you beat my Tetris Lite high score." You say, because there's nothing incriminating on your phone. Aside from vague text chats with Machine Head and Isotope. "What's your point?"

        "I'm so glad you asked." A few more taps and he where he wanted to be. An old photo album automatically downloaded to your phone from the cloud. You never looked at it, never cared to. Images carried over from your old phone before Machine Head issued you a new one, decked out with all sorts of encryption tech for secure messaging and calls. You didn't need pictures of your old work schedule or study notes from high school. But you never found the time or energy to delete them.

         He flipped the phone over, stretched out his arm and panned the image around the circle. Letting everybody take in the truth. You, five years ago, kissing Mark's cheek, him grinning stupid at the screen. Your third or fourth date, the best so far. It had been your lock screen for months. 

        "Still think I'm unattractive?" Mohawk smirked.

        Caught red handed. Your words catch in your throat. All of them processing what you had been to Mark. Even in the vaguest terms. Their hopeful puppy dog eyes. The memory of being happy and younger. 

        Mohawk started swiping through the pictures. One after another, in the short moments after the first. A cheek kiss to a lip kiss, the both of you blushing and smiling. "Doesn't this bring back memories, babe?"

        Phantom feels his heart melt. He'd taken those same photos with you. Lensless had too, though with a lot more tongue. Baldie had too, but he'd been too shy to go in for a kiss on the lips. Omni was never one for selfies, thought they were a waste of time. But that didn't stop him from collecting photos, asking friends or strangers to snap some when you were out. He remembers you making fun of him for how serious he always took it. Mohawk had plenty pictures of you on his phone that he hadn't brought along. Mostly of your eyes looking up at him pleadingly, lips stretched over his cock, tears messy on red cheeks. He was deeply disappointed not to find anything similar on your phone. Scars didn't know you young, but liked where this was going. The look on your face, the rage, the humiliation- oh so sweet. 

        Gray did not have any photos of you. Photos for fun weren't a thing on Viltrum. Tracksuit had plenty of nudes on his phone, mostly of himself. Now, he was glad he hadn't brought his phone. A little glad he was witnessing true reality TV trash in real time but still, he felt bad for you but- come on, drama like this doesn't come around every day. Maskless watched on less enthused. Here we go, more het-slop drama. Fantastic. 

        "Give me that," you warn low, "give me that right now." You're saving your power now. Strategizing how to hurt him best in one big burst. 

        "Or what? You'll tell me to shut up?" He swipes through another photo. Mark's back to the camera, your head over his shoulder, locked in a hug. "Man," he whistles through his teeth, "you've got a lot of these. Wanna know the best part?" He asks the others, not you. "These are years old and she still has 'em-"

        "I meant to delete them!" You can't help the outburst. 

        "And I went through 'em all, we stop showing up right around..." He stopped at your last photo of Mark. "Here. 'Bout five years ago," according to the photo app metadata. Mark sat across from the camera at a fancy dinner table. He was late to his own reservation, leaving you embarrassed and feeling like an inconsiderate dickhead. But when he came with roses in hand and you forgave him right away. You'd never been on a date like that again because not long after- you were through. 

        "Shit," Lensless took the phone, Mohawk let him have it, "We rock a suit, huh?"

        Scars leaned over his shoulder. Frankly disgusted by how sweet his own face could look. "Rocked her right after this picture was taken I wager."

        "No!" You should kill them all. Like, actually. You couldn't do them all at once though, you were deciding who to hurt.

        "Why haven't you taken any pictures with him in that long, huh?" Mohawk went on. "Trouble in paradise, babe? You know, you'd never have any with me." Bullshit. 

        Omni took the phone out of Lensless's hand. Swiped through the photos himself. You looked so sweet, so happy, and alive. Nothing like you did now, with your dead-tired eyes and permanent scowl. He knew what happened to you in vague terms, the jail sentence and the subsequent assassin position. He jumped to the conclusion that this dimensions version of him was a stupid fuck up who didn't put a ring on it, and couldn't protect you from the world. He'd given up on you like a fool. But it was lucky for him, he supposed. He knew for sure now, despite your denials of his love, you could and would love him back. One day.

        "We were friends." You lie back, "He was just affectionate-"

        "Friends?" Mohawk cackles, "Yeah, cuz I tongue-fuck all my homies. Really, babe? I thought you'd come up with something better than that. What? Are you embarrassed?" Clearly, you were. "Cuz you kept alllll these pictures after he broke up with you?" It's a guess but dead on. 

        The quiet rage is confirmation enough. 

        There is a collective internal glow of pride in everyone. You were in love with him at some point. Some part of you kept the evidence. You could love him back, the collective thought. Save for Tracksuit and Maskless, who were both thinking this was a little much. Who both felt bad for you. Who both knew they'd rip Mohawk's skin off if they were in your shoes, but make no move to do so.

        Mohawk didn't know when to stop, slinking forward to get in your face. "Aww, baby... Are you still in love with him? That's so stupid and sad."

        "Punch yourself in the balls. Hard as you can."

        You feel a rush of air and he's on the floor, writhing, clutching his family jewels, tears pricking the edges of his eyes before you can process your nose starting to bleed. You wobble on your feet, avoiding Baldie's balancing touch. You turn to Omni with Gray hovering behind him. Feeling things he couldn't truly explain.

        You say, "Crush it." Before you consider that you'd need the flashlight.

        Glass and metal splinter to the ground. Omni opened his hand, impressed you controlled him like that, but he doesn't think it'll happen again. Blood is coming out your nose in thick drops now. You wipe them away with the back of your hand. Head starting to throb as you walk slow, purposeful back to Mohawk. Still groaning. 

        You kneel. Everyone falling away but the two of you. Him in sweet, glorious pain, and you high off his agony. "You wanna know who gave me that name so bad?" His face is to the ground, trying to hide how much it hurts like the tough guy he is. You grab his hair in your fist, pulling his head up easily because despite everything, he'd always melt in to your touch. "You did." 

        They want answers so bad- they'll get 'em. 

        "My boss Machine Head, that robo-dick I murdered- he took it and ran with it because it upset me. You said I was the dregs of society- something stupid like that- and left me to rot. He thought it was so funny Dregs, his de facto murder-torture guy, isn't that nice? I was his favorite, you know? Machine Head always had these fucked up requests and I'd do it because I didn't care. I knew he wouldn't check, not because he trusted me, but because he knew I had nothing else. One guy, I made him skin himself alive with a potato peeler. Got pretty far before his body shut down. Another, I made him choose who to shoot first, his wife or his mistress- they both died, yeah, but man, him turning on his wife like that? Crazy." You didn't mean to ramble but you were. You were just so pent-up and angry, that a reminder of your Mark, the life you could've had, had you unwinding yard by yard. It was easy letting their flawed logic win for once, and it felt damn good. They had hurt you. 

        "I could've been something. When I met Cecil, he wanted me to work for him. Mark could've made that happen, but he let me fuck around New York murdering people for some drug-running robot dickhead." Mohawk's eyes began to clear of pain. Were rapt on you and your anger and how transparently awful you were. "I loved him so much, and now-" He's looking at you like he loves you and you hate it; say the nastiest thing you can think of, "If I ever get back, I'm killing his family, starting with that dumb bitch Eve. So no, you stupid motherfucker, I'm never going to love you and I'm never letting you fuck me." 

        You stand, emboldened by the silence. "Any more questions?" You only look at Mohawk. Curled, clutching his balls, but slowly, purposefully smiling at you.        

        "I think that about covers it." He says, voice weedy. 

        "Can you do me next?" Lensless asked.

        You were sapped of power. Couldn't if you wanted to. You also shouldn't, he'd cum but still, he'd hurt and you wanted them all to hurt. You say nothing, gather up a premade torch. Held it out to Tracksuit to light with friction- much quicker than the fire that didn't much like damp-ish cloth. He does, no questions asked. He'd also want to take a hike after all that. 

        You picked a cave and started. Not before saying, "Fuck you all."

        Then you were off. You don't let yourself stop and cry until you were triple sure you were out of hearing range. Even then, you go further, further, until your torch burnt down to the quick and singed your hand. You drop it, clasping the skin, crumbling to the ground as the first angry tears sprang forth. 

        You hated them. You wanted them to die but you needed them to survive. Why couldn't they just be normal? Couldn't they understand you were a different person? And now they knew your dirty secret. Sure to hold it over your neck like a guillotine.  

        You'd scream but they'd hear. Come running. Come mocking. So you sob as quietly as you can into your hands. 

        "I'm sorry he did that to you." He says. 

        You jump. Grab the smoldering remains of the torch off the ground and throw it at the voice, despite how it burns your hand. "Go away!"

        The torch bounced off Baldie's chest, fell to the ground, all light dead on impact. 

        "I know you're upset but..." He knows Phantom is near. Lurking. Can hear his mostly disguised breathing. He'd left after you when the bickering fizzled and Lensless and Scars left out of boredom. Phantom followed because he knew- Baldie had made up his mind.

        "Upset? I'm not upset!" You forcefully rub at your cheeks. "This is nothing."

        He frowns, though you can't see it. "I have something to show you."

        "I don't care." You say. "I don't want to see anything that isn't Mark's dead body. Okay? Just-" You take a wobbly breath, "Fuck off. I can't do this anymore."

        The admission almost pulls a sob out of you, and you have to fight to hold it in.

        "I know," it's soft, "I know, that's why I need to show you. You don't have to see any of them."

        You're fighting to hold in sobs, barely processing what he says, "Please. Just go." 

        "(Y/n) I-"

        "Die." You splutter without power, "Just drop dead or go away. I'm done." Soon as the words come out your hands go to your head. You almost did it again. You didn't want him to die, not really. 

        The sobs come harder. You're hysterical. Soon to crack and scream and then he wouldn't be alone with you anymore.

        He scoops you up in his arms. Apologizing, keeping his grip gentle as possible as he flew deeper into the caves. Back to the hidden entrance he'd visited and re-visited since Phantom told him of its existence. You beat your fists against his chest, his neck, his face, but he couldn't be angry at you. He was angry at them for making you feel so low.

        He doesn't speak as he moves the rock, floating inside, and sealing the tomb behind you both. He sees Phantom's silhouette as the rock slid flush to the wall. An agreement passed quietly between them.

        You heard movement, unable to place the exact sound. Like Styrofoam peanuts squeaking past one another. But there was no way there'd be Styrofoam peanuts here. You blink, looking around but seeing nothing in the absolute dark. The air felt different here, wetter, smelling of sod and sulfur. 

        "One sec." He said, floating down to the ground with the least amount of creepy-crawlies. In the times he'd come back, he started the beginnings of a camp. Stole away supplies from Gray's material cache to make your own cots. Picked a spot a few feet up from the bug rivers where you could watch but be in no danger if you decided to hop down and explore.

        He clacked two rocks together. Sparks rained as the fire pit he'd built lit. He blew, added more kindling from the pile he'd prepared, nurtured the fire in a matter of milliseconds. The light illuminated the cavern around you, but your eyes could barely process what you were seeing. 

        You were beside her, yards away. Sat in a high chair at her bug court. The massive white thing that was some mutated sand-mite-termite-whatever-the-fuck queen. She did not notice or care about the fire. Did not mind your sudden presence. Her mandibles twitched as her children flitted in and out of her mouth. 

        "What the fuck?"

        Your brain doesn't even think of food. Water. Too stuck on the giant bug. But you know what it means, these are the first living creatures you'd seen since arriving over three weeks ago. 

        "We can stay here." He says soft behind you, sure to give plenty of space for you to process. "We have everything we need." You don't reply, jaw dropped open, taking in the sight. The bugs skittering in and out of their dens set into the walls. "You don't have to go back and deal with them ever again."

        It's like a dream come true. Too good to be true.

        You don't feel yourself speak. "They'll come looking."

        "They haven't found this place yet and if we stay quiet, they won't. But I'll be honest, I didn't find this place myself. Someone else did."

        You turn, eyes wide, "Who?" God, don't say Scars. Don't say Lensless.

        "He wants to tell you himself." He knew it'd matter to you who it was, but Phantom asked him not to tell. He was cagey about why. "But he's helping us. I think tomorrow he'll stage your disappearance and join us. It's nobody bad, I promise." 

        "I-" You look back to the bugs, undulating below. None of them cared you existed. Minding their own buggy business, not begging you for sex or love or attention. If Baldie brought you here they were likely not venomous. They didn't attack or swarm or even run away. "We'll really be safe here?"

        "I'll make sure of it." He said.

        Something in you breaks. Resolve or dignity.

        Because you lunge at Baldie, tears returning. Stuff your face to his chest, arms going tight around his forearms and middle. The hopelessness that'd become a part of your everyday slowing leaching out in his hold. 

        "Thank you, thank you, thank you," it's muffled against his chest. His arms wriggle easily out of your hold and drape over your back. He pulls you closer, inhaling your scent, feeling your skin, and is at peace.

        "It's alright, I've got you."

[violetrainbow412-blog]

Let them see [B. R.]

Bob Reynolds x fem!reader

wc: 3.3k

summary: you and Bob are forced to attend an event hosted by Valentina, where more is revealed than you would have liked.

masterlist

warnings: established relationship (kinda) mentions of comic characters like Norman Osborn (Green Goblin), Wilson Fisk (Kingpin) and Danny Rand (Iron Fist), some kissing and I think that's it!

Now that you were The heroes who would protect the earth and Valentina held a high position in the government, it was a prerequisite for the team to appear in public. You all knew it was like a huge, manipulative, and fake publicity campaign, but if it saved your ass, you didn't really care much.

Strangely, you had the most experience speaking to the press and with political figures, from whom Miss de Fontaine wanted to profit. So it wasn't a surprise when she said she wanted all of you at a charity dinner, where, at the same time, she would try to convince various businessmen to finance some of your projects.

You had to cover as much ground as possible, so she would arrange for you to be seated at different tables and, in addition, assign you a partner for that. She didn't ask your opinion, she never did, and you knew where you'd be until she handed you a small map with your assigned seats.

"I had to sit down with the owner of Oscorp Industries."

"Wilson Grant Fisk. Sounds important, doesn't it?"

Your friends were arguing and bragging about who they'd been assigned to sit with at dinner. You glanced at the names on your map, realizing none of them really interested you. Only one was familiar.

"Hey, Bob, we'll sit together."

The boy checked his own piece of paper, frowning to read it, and smiled widely when he checked what you said. You two had been trying to be a thing for a few months, though no one knew it yet. While they suspected it, you had been careful enough to make sure there weren't any incidents. So the coincidence made both of you happy.

"Huh, that's right. Valentina told me to tell you that you can't change your partners because every fire has its extinguisher, whatever that means."

“What are you talking about?”

"Every couple has one person who could break political relations if they don't keep their mouth shut, and another who turns out to be more cautious or diplomatic."

"No surprise my partner is Ava," Walker murmured, suddenly "No offense."

"No, it's okay. I'm used to hearing your bullshit, I'll probably know how to help you avoid it."

While they argued, you tried to guess the other combinations. Bucky and Yelena went together, obviously. They were like the team leaders, after all. Only Alexei remained, whom Valentina had probably paired with herself to prevent any mishaps.

"So you're the fire or the extinguisher?"

"Oh, I don't think that applies to us," you laughed, looking softly at Bob. "I think he just put us together so you don't have to interact too much. You know, the shyest one on the team whom I could talk myself into."

Your partner—would boyfriend be the correct term? No, perhaps lover, in any case—and you shared an amused expression, more pleased than the others with the arrangement your boss had made.

Bucky announced that Valentina would send some stylists who would take care of getting you suitable clothes, makeup, and a good hairdo—yes, the event was that important—and then the matter was settled.

At night, you could see that they had done a good job. Yelena was radiant, Ava looked like a supermodel, and the men didn't look ugly at all. Although, of course, for you, the most pretty was Bob. He was wearing a brown suit, with a nice striped tie, and shoes that gleamed in the light. His hair had been trimmed and was slicked back, but it didn't look stiff, just sleek; a wavy lock fell over his forehead, as if it had been intentional.

"I want all of you to rave about this project," Valentina warned you before walking through the door into the living room. "Make friends, chat with businessmen, tell them jokes, just be yourselves! Okay, a little more charming and less psycho, okay? Have fun!"

The entire group looked like a school classroom that had been forced to go on a field trip, but most of them managed to hide it. As you were entering and the camera spotlights began to flash, you took advantage of the chaos to approach Bob and grab his arm.

"You look handsome," you whispered to him. With your heels, it was easier to reach his ear.

"I feel weird. I was never a big fan of formal wear."

"Well, I say it looks great on you, darling."

A shy smile spread across his face, and although you couldn't see it, your eyes radiated tenderness and love; as if you were bewitched by him. Once you found your table, you took your place and were disappointed to see that you were at opposite ends of the circular table. You would have liked to sit next to him, but the seats were already labeled with each name.

You didn't know how the rest of your friends were doing, but apparently at yours, all the businessmen seemed pleased. It was probably because you were pretty—and wore a tight dress—or because their wives were smitten with Bob, pestering him with questions like seagulls around bread crumbs.

At one point in the evening, billionaire Danny Rand demanded your full attention. He wanted to talk to you about other charitable efforts his company was involved in that The New Avengers could join. He didn't seem as flirtatious or pushy as the regular millionaires, but you knew that if he tried to cross a line, you'd have to hold yourself back to avoid dislocating his shoulder or breaking his wrist.

"You know, now that I'm CEO of Rand Enterprises, I want us to be a more… how should I put it? Humanitarian, maybe. I want to help people, just like you."

"You're quite the philanthropist, I see."

"I'm trying to use my family's fortune to do more than build glass towers. Many people don't have a voice. I want Rand Enterprises to amplify it, not drown it out."

"And you repeat that idealistic speech at every gala?" you asked, raising an eyebrow.

Danny laughed softly, not offended.

"You know," Danny said, turning the glass between his fingers, "all this… the galas, the donations, the campaigns… it's all good. But if people don't reconnect with themselves, it's all a band-aid. You can't heal a broken system if you don't first heal those within it."

You crossed your arms, listening to him with a barely raised eyebrow. He spoke calmly, without a trace of ego. There was something genuine in his voice, though it wasn't exactly the kind of speech you expected to hear from someone with such an obscene bank account.

"Are you telling me that what the world needs is... meditation?"

"I'm saying we need silence. Inner silence. That people are afraid to be alone with themselves because they don't like what they're going to find. And if they don't confront that, no social change will be sustainable."

"Deep," you murmured, taking a short sip from your glass. "Maybe even a little depressing."

"Not if you think of it as an opportunity. The internal work is the most difficult, but also the most necessary. If every entrepreneur in this room took half the time they spend planning tax evasion and took an honest look at themselves, the world would be different."

"You have surprising faith in these people's capacity for introspection," you replied, amused.

Danny smiled at you. Not like someone trying to win you over, but like someone who truly believed what he was saying.

And then you felt it. That look. Subtle but piercing. You barely turned your face and saw him. He didn't do anything, he didn't say anything, but his expression was enough to understand. It wasn't explosive jealousy, but that kind of sad insecurity, as if he were afraid he wasn't in the same league as a man like Daniel Rand.

Without missing a beat or a smile, you looked him in the eye and winked graciously. A quick, playful gesture, like a secret password: I'm in control. This is all for the cause.

Bob looked away, but the tense line around his mouth softened. You tried to ignore the fact that his cheeks had turned red.

"Did I lose your attention for a second?" Danny asked calmly, following your gaze, though without reproach in his tone.

"Just for a moment," you replied with a light smile, settling in naturally. "But don't worry, I'm still listening."

Danny held your gaze for a moment longer... and then followed. His attention slid naturally to the other side of the table, right where Bob Reynolds was pretending to pay attention to an elderly woman chatting. He didn't seem to be looking at you at the moment, but his body betrayed him: his chin tense, his back slightly rigid, his thumb pressing restlessly against the glass of his drink.

"He's part of your team, right?" Danny asked, without malice. It was a simple question, but loaded with insight.

"Yes. It's... complicated," you replied, staying on neutral ground.

Danny nodded slowly, with that calm that always surrounded him.

"He has the look of someone holding something very heavy," she commented, without looking away. "As if he were standing in the middle of a chaos he doesn't know how to calm."

"Your reading is not bad," you murmured, somewhat surprised by the clarity of his perception.

"I don't judge," Danny added, finally looking back at you. "Some have to survive here, amidst the noise of the world”

There was a moment of comfortable silence between the two of you. He didn't press. He didn't probe. He just offered you a sincere, almost compassionate, unpretentious look.

"Sometimes," he added gently, "the true act of spirituality isn't meditating or helping others. Sometimes it's knowing when not to take someone else's place."

You looked at him, this time without pretense. Because in that moment, you understood that Danny wasn't trying to steal attention or gain your sympathy. He was speaking honestly. And he'd also seen more than you expected.

"You are much more perceptive than you seem."

He smiled barely.

"I try"

You remained silent for a few seconds, observing Bob more closely. His shoulders were still somewhat tense, but now he was pretending to be engrossed in a conversation with a woman who was talking more than he seemed to want to listen.

"He doesn't like these places," you commented, your voice barely above a whisper. "He's not exactly a fan of galas. He barely tolerates protocol, and the idea of having to smile for strangers seems like torture. He's… shy. It's hard for him. Much more than people imagine."

Danny nodded gently, without a hint of mockery. Only understanding.

"But he's here," he said. "For you, isn't he?"

"For the team, actually."

"He seems like a nice guy," Danny added honestly. "If you want, I can go talk to him for a while. That way he won't feel so out of place... and I'd have the perfect excuse to stop talking to businessmen who only want photo ops and tax breaks."

You let out a short, grateful laugh as you looked back at Bob. This time, you gave him a clear signal, a gesture with your fingers that said, "Come here."

Bob seemed to hesitate. Not because he didn't want to, but because he seemed unsure about interrupting. But you held his gaze pointedly, and that was enough. He apologized to whoever he was talking to, then walked toward you with a measured stride, as if trying not to inconvenience you.

When he reached your side, you smiled.

"Daniel, meet Robert Reynolds," you said naturally. "He's a fundamental part of our team."

Danny calmly extended his hand.

"Nice to meet you, Robert. I've heard good things."

Bob nodded as he shook hands, a little tense, but polite.

"Nice to meet you"

"How about you two chat for a while? I can sit where you were before and deal with the ladies for you."

Bob tried to stifle a laugh, but he couldn't. He was amused to think that his annoyance had been so obvious.

"Alright"

You took advantage of the moment to lean toward Bob and place a soft kiss on his cheek, taking him by surprise. Nothing exaggerated. Nothing over the top—just a brief, deliberate show of affection. Enough to calm him… and claim him.

"Be nice to him, Mr. Rand. Besides being a key part of the team, I'd say he's also the most handsome male member"

Both men laughed at your joke and then Bob sat down, a little calmer than before.

The gala continued with the calculated elegance of any event funded by millionaires with a socially responsible attitude. The glasses kept refilling, the music became a constant background, and you did what you did best: reading the room, smiling intelligently, leading conversations without seeming to. Bob, after his conversation with Danny, seemed more relaxed. Not extroverted, of course. But at least he wasn't on the verge of collapse anymore.

A couple of hours passed. You exchanged greetings with politicians, activists, and heirs. Until then, amidst the hustle and bustle, you felt a familiar presence at your side. Bob.

"Do you have a moment?"

You nodded at his request and then excused yourself to the guests. Bob took your hand in a gesture so casual it almost seemed unconscious, but there was a restrained urgency in his movements. He gently led you to a secluded corner of the room, a refuge between columns and shadows where the noise and curious glances couldn't reach you.

He stopped and looked at you, his deep, dark eyes filled with a mixture of nervousness and a determination that made your pulse race.

"Are you okay? Did something happen?" you asked, trying to soften the moment, searching for a connection that went beyond words.

Bob inhaled deeply, his chest rising and falling slowly.

"I'm fine," he replied sincerely. "But I needed a break… a moment away from all of this. Being with you helps me catch my breath."

You smiled, almost without thinking, and reached out to gently straighten his tie. Your fingers brushed the skin of his neck and you felt that invisible electricity that connected you, like a silent magnet that couldn't be avoided.

"Sometimes everything is so overwhelming, right?"

"I've wanted to leave since we got here," he confessed, making you smile.

One of his hands went to your waist, holding you gently and moving his thumb up and down, as if with that he could calm your anxiety.

"Hold on a little longer, just a little bit."

"And you? Are you okay?"

"Wonderful"

"I haven't told you that you look beautiful, have I?"

"I don't think so."

"Well, you look gorgeous."

At his compliment you smiled softly, and caught his gaze slipping to your lips. You knew what he wanted. Or what would make him feel better, anyway.

"Do you think they'll notice we've been gone for a few minutes?" you asked, tilting your head. Bob smiled back, the sweet, mischievous glint in his eyes only deepening what you already felt for him.

"Maybe," he said in a low voice, "but what does it matter?"

Without further warning, Bob brought his face closer to yours with restrained patience, as if he wanted to record every second before giving in. His other hand rested firmly on your cheek, while his lips sought yours with an intensity that took your breath away.

The kiss started slow and uncertain, but within seconds, passion erupted. His lips pressed against yours with a mixture of desire and tenderness that left you speechless. The hand that had previously been on your waist slid purposefully down your back, pulling you closer, melting into that small space that was now yours.

The world disappeared. Nothing mattered more than that burning touch, that electric brush that made you feel alive and yearned for. At some point, he lowered his hand to your thigh, and you lifted your leg, letting him caress your skin.

You continued for a while, and when you finally broke apart, Bob leaned his forehead against yours, breathing heavily, a satisfied smile curling his lips.

"I guess you feel more relaxed now, huh?"

"Definitely," he exclaimed.

His hand gently released your leg until it was back in place, and then you both took a step back. You tried to smooth your dress, and Bob tried to fix his suit, hoping to look as natural as possible. A giggle escaped you when you noticed Bob had traces of your lipstick on, which you tried your best to remove.

To avoid suspicion, you left first, and a few minutes later he did. Just in case.

That was the calm. And then—the storm.

The next morning, well into the day, you woke up intending to find something for breakfast. The sight of all your friends gathered at the bar made you frown, thinking the worst. Most of them looked shocked. Bob, on the other hand, was completely pale.

"Good morning, young lady."

"Is something wrong?"

"Haven't you seen your phone?"

Everyone was focused on you while you tried to remember where you'd left off. You were barely awake yet, and you already had to deal with them.

"It's dead. I couldn't find my charger last night," you explained simply.

Yelena, still in her pajamas, reached out to give you hers. On the screen, there was a conversation, apparently from your group chat.

Mel: Valentina wants to know what this means.

Accompanying the message was a link to a compilation of headlines and photos from various digital media outlets. They all featured the same images: Bob and you arriving at the gala together, walking arm in arm with the ease of a long-established couple. But not only that: someone had captured on camera the fleeting, secret moment when you were secretly kissing in a corner, the intimacy of the moment glimmering in the shadows. The most scandalous outlets had added the obscene moment when you had your leg raised against his side.

"Fuck…"

"At least now we'll talk about the gala, right? That's what Valentina wanted."

"I think that you were more like firewood and fire than an extinguisher and fire."

"Yelena, will you shut the fuck up?"

"What? I'm just saying. Some articles say you look like you were about to take off your clothes…"

Overcome by anger, the embarrassment of the moment, you reached out to push your friend off the stool she was sitting on. There were two problems: you didn't measure your strength, and when she fell, Yelena made sure to grab your arm to pull you with her.

Bob was the first to spring up, approaching you to help you up, worried that either of you had hurt yourselves. You expected her to lunge at you and start hitting you, but that didn't happen. Instead, the loudest laughter you'd ever heard burst from her throat.

"Why did you do that?!"

"Lena, I'm so sorry…"

"You threw me out! What's my fault if you two decided to make out last night?"

"Shut up, for God's sake…"

While Bob tried to lift her, you reached out to cover her mouth, completely in vain. He gave up helping you when he saw you struggling, more out of pride than because you were actually upset.

"Who would have thought it, Bob? You've tamed the beast."

"Shut your mouth, Walker, you're next!"

Walker joined in the chorus of laughter. Soon, everyone else followed suit.

You thought that now that your affair was a matter of public interest, at least you wouldn't have to think about how to tell your friends. Valentina could go to hell.

In a strange, yet pleasant way, the revelation of the secret felt like a weight had been lifted from your chest. When you looked at him, smiling shyly, you suspected it was a shared feeling.

[firelilyfox]

In your skin

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader

Summary: After a mission the two of you have to share a room & at first Bucky gets really mad about it but ... he means well.

Words: 2,3k

Warnings: mention of trauma, weapons, sharing a bed, fluff, heart to heart talk, real sad Bucky

Note: english isn't my mother tongue so sorry in advance :)

____________________________________

It got late real fast after the successful mission in Nairobi. 

The African heat gave way to the cool night, making it way more pleasant to find some sleep soon. Part of the Thunderbolts found shelter in a luxury hotel in the middle of the lively city, but there were almost fully booked so the only two rooms left had to be evenly shared. Yelena, Alexei, Bucky and me. 

„I will not let my daughter sleep in a room with another man“, Alexei barked. „No offense Winter Soldier, I have deeply respect for you. But my daughter will be protected from you manly charme by myself.“ His strong russian accent marking the importance of his protectiveness about Yelena. 

„Alexei I’m a grown woman and can protect myself from stupid men“ Yelena says unimpressed. The four of us were standing in the empty hallway, on each side a closed door and fitting keycards in my hands. I look at them and then up at Bucky. He was easily two heads taller than me with a strong disapproval look on his face, but he kept quiet. He was always the quiet one of the group (besides one or two snarky comments from time to time). „You can sleep with him then if you want“, Yelena adds. 

„Don’t be ridiculous. I will not let you out of my sight with this nasty wound. You are my daughter and I will protect-…“ but Alexei couldn’t finish the sentence because Yelena shut his mouth with her own hand. 

„Got it old man. So its the two of us and the two of you then.“ She pointed at me and at Bucky afterwards. I opened my mouth for approval but got interrupted immediately. 

„No fucking way“, Bucky grumbles.  

Okay. Ouch. That was unnecessary and a bit rude. 

Even the farther-daughter duo frowned in confusion. It was true that Bucky and had a …complicated way of acting around each other for the last couple of months. At first I thought we would be good co-workers. He always kept an eye out for me when I started to train with the Thunderbolts because I didn’t knew my way around and had a tendency to stumble into very unfortunate situations. For example that one time in Norway … ugh I rather not think about that. Nonetheless with time passing by he had become more like … a friend I think. Bucky was always there if I needed him - but never too close. Even a little part of me, that I desperately try to suffocate, wants him to be just … closer sometimes. 

„Do I get to tell my opinion in this?“ I ask a bit annoyed by his sudden rudeness. „I have no problem to stay with you in a room.“ He shoots me a deadly look but that doesn’t scare me off. Not the tiniest bit. No clue what his problem his, but I won’t let him push me away like that. If he has something to say, then he can tell me whilst sharing a god damn room. 

„Great! Its settled then. You two get to - ...“ 

„This isn’t an option“, Bucky interrupts Alexei again and this time he almost exploded. His voice had a much deeper and darker ring to it now. But it didn’t made me flinch. It made me mad. 

„Why does everybody interrupts Alexei all the ti-…“ 

„Well I don’t care. Here.“ I handed Yelena and her father one keycard and kept the other one for Bucky and myself. „I’m done with this conversation. Get in here.“ I tell him and opened the door with a soft clicking sound. 

„Have a pleasant night“, Yelena chuckles and disappeared with Alexei in the room across the hallway. Bucky stands still as a stone without any muscle moving. My rage was overflood by hurt. Was it really that awful to share a room with me?  

„I have no idea why its such a problem for you to stay in a room with me. If it’s because I am a woman then I can assure you it’s more than common in this century for a man and a woman to …“ 

„It’s not because of that. I shared a room with a woman before.“ He says and stepped around me into the hotel room. Paying close attention to our arms not touching by accident. 

I closed the door behind me. „Well good for you I guess.“ A little stab of jealousy hit me. „But if it aint that then why -…“ 

„We should get some sleep.“ And just like that there was another sentence that won’t be finished this evening. Great fucking fun. 

We got changed into our nightgowns and by that i mean that Bucky was still wearing his black shirt and boxer. While i got rid of almost every piece of clothing. In my underwear and a simple tanktop I sat down on the bed beside him. His metal arm flexing a few times he looked lost in thoughts. 

„How does it feel?“ I ask before I could stop myself. 

He frowns. „What do you mean?“ 

„I mean do you really feel everything? Like heat when you burn yourself while cooking or the fabric of a blanket?“ No clue why I was bubbling with stupid questions like that out of the blue. Might be the sight of him in boxers that fried my brain a little bit. I’m thankful he isn’t a mindreader. 

A soft smile lays down on his lips. The first since we entered this room. „Yeah. In Wakanda they have some very advanced techniques and great minds who work on stuff like that. I have not the slightest idea how this works.“ He holds his metal hand with the palm up and looks at me. „But it works.“ 

Without any thoughts I lay my hand in his. I expected the metal to be cold and hard. But somehow it felt warm and … real. Like it is more than just a piece of dead materiel. I moved my fingers along the palm and up to his wrist. It was formed exactly like his other arm. Strong and even the muscles were mirrored to the tiniest detail. Something comes over me and out of pure curiosity my other hand finds his real arm to compare the two of them. 

For a moment Bucky stayed completely still. He was not moving at all and I doubt that he was even breathing normal anymore. „Does it feel the same?“ 

He cleared his throat. „No.“ 

„What’s the difference?“ I look up and almost drown in his blue eyes. His face must’ve come closer. Or did I move in his direction? I don’t recall. All I know is that his nose was only inches away from mine, wich means that his lips were… 

„You should get some sleep. Now.“ Bucky rumbles with a husky voice. Within a second he stood up from the bed and moved to the other side of the room. 

There it was. The hurt from before hits me like a truck. 

„You really find me that repulsive?“ 

He opened his mouth. Stopped. Closed it and opened it again. All without saying a single word. Understood. „Will you come back?“ I ask instead. 

He has one hand on the doorknob. „Yes. When you are asleep.“ 

And so I did. I cried myself into a dreamless sleep. Drowning in my own self-pity because the guy I like would rather run away in the middle of the night, than share a bed with me. 

A bright crack tore me out of my slumber and I was wide awake in the matter of seconds. But not because of the thunderstorm outside the window. My fingers were curled around something cold and hard. The silhouette of Bucky was calmly sleeping beside me. My senses knew the feeling of this heavy metal and it wasn’t the arm I felt earlier tonight. 

It was a gun. 

A fucking gun in my hand. 

What? 

„Bucky?“, I whisper. „Bucky wake up!“ My voice pitched high, wich made him wake up instantly. 

„What is it? What happened?“ He asks breathlessly, eyes wide in shock, head snapping from side to side to make out any danger. But the only thing what would fall in that category appeared magically in my hand while I was asleep. 

I hold the gun up and waved it slightly. „Hello? Why do i have your gun in my hand?“ 

„Why are you so certain it’s mine, doll?“ His eyes narrow. I try to pull myself together because I didn’t expect him to call me by his pet name for me. He only used it a couple of times before and only when we were alone. 

„Oh please Bucky! I know your guns by heart. So why is it in this god damn bed?“ I shriek. 

He broke the eye contact and shuffled himself into a sitting position. The thin blanket that we both shared shifted down to his lap. Bucky leaned his back against the headboard and let out a deep sigh. „Just in case.“ 

„I beg you pardon?“ 

„Just in case you need it.“ He still has his eyes closed but I could hear in his voice that he wasn’t telling the whole truth. 

„James Buchanan Barnes you better cut that shitshow and tell me why you put that thing in my hand“, I say as I sit up, not caring that the blanket completely vanished from my body. 

Bucky turned to finally look at me. His expression were serious at first, but then his eyes dart down to my naked legs and at the waistband of my top that slipped up a bit, showing a small gap of my hips and stomach. I could swear to see his throat move as if he had to swallow … hard. And his face transformed from serious to something much more intense. Was it longing or am I now completely loosing my mind? 

„You are the only person I allow to call me like that“, he says with a tight voice. 

„Cut the crap. Now.“ 

Bucky sighs again. „Fuck. Okay fine. The gun is for emergency. In case you have to take me out.“ 

My heart stops beating for a painfully moment. With widened eyes I look at him. He sits there looking so broken, so serious about what he just confessed to me. His sad sad blue eyes studying me, waiting for a response. I know what his reasons are. He has terrible nightmares. Bad ones from his past and even darker ones made from his guilt. 

„The fuck I will.“ With two quick moves I dissemble the gun in its individual parts. Bucky watches me with disbelieve in his eyes. „I refuse to let you think I would ever do that.“ 

„Maybe you will not have a choice when it becomes bad!“ He tries to grab the metal pieces but I throw them away without a second thought. „When the Winter Soldier takes over I can’t guarantee for anything. He could do …“ 

„I don’t give a shit!“ I bark. „You would never hurt me. I know that in my bones.“ 

He lets his hand sink and land on my knee. It needs a lot of self control to not follow it with my eyes. „You’re right. I would never. But he could.“ 

I lean forward, just a little to make my point clear. „I trust you.“ 

„You shouldn’t.“ His voice was nothing more than a whisper. I could feel it brushing over my cheeks. „I’m a threat.“ 

I cock my head to the side. „Is that the reason why you didn’t want to share a room with me? Because you were scared that you might attack me in your sleep?“ 

He nods. And my heart shatters into a million tiny pieces. His hair falls in strains into his face making him look even more exhausted than ever. I've come to thinking about the fact that his mind had to be constantly in stay alert mode. 

„Do you ever let yourself catch a break, Bucky?“ 

At first he stays completely still. Then a deep, tired sigh. And when he finally looks up to answer he da the saddest smile on his face that I’ve ever laid eyes on. „I don’t think so, doll. Can’t remember.“ 

I reach forward to place my palm above his heart. It beats slow but a little uneven - as if my touch had an effect on him too. „You deserve to feel safe for at least one night. You deserve so much more than that.“ I leaned in his direction, let my body sink against his and gave him the chance to slowly get used to so much skin to skin contact. But he didn’t hesitate as I thought he would do. Instead Bucky pulled me so close that I imagined to morph fully into him. Melt together and finally feel complete. 

His metal arm laid wrapped around me and gave me the support I needed. His other hand placed at the back of my head - fingers tangled up into my hair. I feel his body relax beneath me and a little smile appeared on my lips. 

„Nothing I could do would ever made me deserve you, doll.“ His words rushed my system like a big tidal wave and i shook my head up from his chest to look at him. 

„You don’t have to do anything. Bucky you already own my heart. And you truly deserve it.“ 

He smiled softly. I could feel his hand on my head pulling me closer up to him. I obey happily. „I will take good care of it, doll. I promise to be worthy for you.“ 

„I know because you already are.“ 

Bucky kissed me. His lips were touching mine with such softness I almost cried. Hands so tender and carefully holding me while his mouth claiming my whole consciousness. I leaned into him to feel as much of him as I could. He deepened the kiss and I let out a sigh of relief. I swear I could feel him smile against my lips.

I know I will never get tired of this. Ever. 

[beifong-brainrot]

Ok, so this is very overdue, but in my defence, I have had a lot on my plate and this is a mildly heavy topic for me lol. This is the continuation of a post about Zuko's scar from the perspective of a burn victim, which I made almost a year ago. I've wanted to make another post, concerning Aang's scar and its handling in the show, from the perspective of a burn victim.

This post will heavily build off the previous one, so I do recommend giving it a read, if you haven't. In that post, I asserted that Zuko's scar, in a way, symbolises his failure to adhere to the Fire Nation's standards and his "imperfection" through their skewed perspective. This is an interesting subversion of the trope of a scar symbolising an "objective" imperfection, failure or moral flaw.

Now, Aang's scar does fall into this trope, as his scar is a testament to his defeat in Ba Sing Se at the hands of Azula, and the world percieving him as dead and, therefore, having failed in his mission. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as I believe that atla handles this trope with much grace and sensitivity.

The immediate parallels between Zuko and Aang in the Awakening are obvious. Of course, there is a scar present, and a shameful exile upon a fire nation ship. Aang grows his hair out, which is against his own cultural beliefs, which mirrors how Zuko cut his hair, which denotes shame in his culture. And, of course, the I need my honour back quote.

To both of them, in these stages of life, their scar acts as a brand, and a mark of failure. They both act out, and push away those who try to help them.

Zuko and Aang are already presented as strong parallels, and placing a comparison between Aang's shame and Zuko's redemption is an excellent way to tie that aspect of the show tighter.

Of course, there are differences and this parallel makes them even more obvious. While Zuko has a scar on his face, Aang's is more concealable, on his back.

Now, in fiction, back scars are usually mostly hidden, often to be displayed as a character disrobes for the first time. Usually, it's old scars, and they serve as a testament of a past life of violence. Aang's scar flips this trope on its head, as it is fresh and it is not a testament of a violence filled past, but of a violenece filled present.

In my previous post, I said that atla veers away from the very shitty "scarred villain" trope, by making scars the trademark of victims, rather than villains. However, it also avoids veering into another extreme of scars denoting a level of brokenness.

This trope often touches side characters, sometimes showing us a scarred, often hysterical, victim of the antagonist, just to drive home how evil the big bad is. Atla does this too, however, when we are shown side characters physically scarred by the Fire Nation, they are more than just their "damage", but decently fleshed out characters.

Notably, Song is shown to live a rather happy and peaceful life, despite the show not downplaying the severity of what had been done to her. The reveal of her scar is an important part of Zuko's own journey, but it is stressed that she is not just defined by it. Even moreso, Bato is a severely scarred individual who not only distinguishes himself as a valuable character, but also one who maintains his integrity and drive to fight the fire nation.

Now you'd assume this is a very low bar to cross, but too often we see characters defined purely by their scars, rather than by who they actually are as characters. Song and Bato are important, because they add a level of normalcy to characters with physical scarring by simply existing with their scars instead of being The Main Character with a Scar™️.

Now, with main characters, we see this trope of scars overtaking a character play out in a different manner. A scar can also define a main character, albeit in a different way. When a hero is scarred, often it marks a change in their character. It often marks a "fall grom grace" or a moment when the character becomes more cynical, ruthless. In essence, a scar becomes a signifier of a cruel world "breaking" a previously innocent or idealistic character.

You can argue that such a trope occurred with Zuko, though, it is handled with enough nuance and creativity that I give it a pass.

This is not the case with Aang. While Aang compromises on pretending he is dead and hiding his identity, he is not fundamentally changed by his experience. He does not forego his Air Nomad ways to be more efficient, and a huge part of his arc after this event is trying to maintain his integrity in his beliefs with his role and mission to stop the fire lord. He does not seek out revenge against Azula, he treats her just like any adversary and is even friendly towards her post canon.

This is not to say Aang doesn't struggle due to his injury, but rather the fact that the physical change of aqquiring a scar didn't come packaged with a automatic internal change. I find that often we conflate physical appearances with personality. Ergo why the scar=villain trope exists and why protagonists of media are most often conventionally attractive.

And yes, scars are often tied to traumatic events which can have massive effects on one's psyche. But the trope of tying such effects to a scar is a slippery slope to people placing too much weight on scars, and allowing physical scars to define the person who bears them.

That being said, Aang's struggles with his fresh scar nicely cover my only major dissatisfaction with Zuko's scars portrayal. Recovery or rather, lack thereof.

Now, I don't really blame the creators for skipping this step. When we meet Zuko, his scar was around 3 years old, and probably mostly healed (although I had physical therapy and weekly burn cream applications at least for like 5 years i think), therefore not needing any sort of maintenance. And while we have hints of Zuko potentially having some damage to his sight/hearing, sleeping on his burnt side and the like, we have no reall proof of that. In a practical sense, the scar is less a healed wound and more a birthmark that just appeared after a traumatic and painful event. The closest we get to seeing his scar get any kind of maintenance is the flashback of him wearing an eyepatch, which I admit is a nice touch.

In "the Awakening" we see Katara give Aang a "healing seasion". This adds to the idea that Aang's scar needs maintenance, especially as it is still rather fresh. I enjoy it because I too needed a lot of maintenance and care put into my scars for the first few months and even years after I aqquired them.

I also do love that Katara unintentionally working with Aang's scar leads to him going through a flashback. Having someone "mess" with your scars (even if it is necessary and for the best) especially when they're still sensitive can be violating and painful. I would often disscociate when people would take care of my burns.

While my scars don't cause me much issue these days, they did restrict mobility for me and I had to get physical therapy for them, as well as having creams and oils applied to them so they don't dry out. The scar tissue on my hand doesn't allow me to extend my fingers fully, and the scar on my side makes bending over/moving my torso difficult and painful.

It was even worse, of course, when I was a child and that's why i felt so seen by Aang struggling physically after his scarring. This also manifests in his chakra being blocked throughout most of B3.

And while I understand why people have an issue with Aang being more irritable during this state, I can't help but find catharsis in seeing a character be this way. It sucks when you can't do something your body should be capable of doing, something it once was capable of doing. It's frustrating, painful and downright humiliating.

Aang's frustration in "the Awakening" specifically hits close to home. While everyone around him has his best interest in mind, he is, more or less, cut out of the plans concerning his own future, having choices being made for him and having to even compromise his cultural beliefs. He is literally dead to the world, and so is his input into his own life.

Aang: I just can't stand by and do nothing! [Runs out.] Sokka: [Following.] Aang, no! [Grabs the staff.] You're still hurt, and you have to stay secret! Just let us handle this. Aang: Fine. [Grabs his staff and walks away.]

Furthermore, he struggles with relying on those he cares about, percieving it as a burden. Now, contrary to popular opinion, Aang is a decently independent character, one who us probably accustomed to fending for himself being a nomad, in tandem with his responsibility as Avatar weighing heavily on him. It leads to a heavy push for independence from him, not unlike what we've seen from Toph in "the Chase".

Aang: And I hate the invasion plan, too! [Rips down the Fire Nation flag covering his staff.] I don't want you or anyone else risking your lives to fix my mistakes! I've always known that I would have to face the Fire Lord. But now I know I need to do it alone.

Aang is also dealing with a heavy serving of guilt, as he percieves his defeat in Ba Sing Se as a personal failing. We see him take this to a dangerous extreme by leaving in the middle of the night. This is Aang's lowest moment as the Avatar. But Yue is the one who helps him find his faith in himself again (which, my little YuAang heart 🥺). I find this especially moving, since Yue is also a character who has gone through her own type of death and subsequent rebirth, which fits Aang's storyline in this episode.

Yue: You already saved the world. And you'll save the world again, but you can't give up. Aang: You're right. I won't give up.

The plot of "the Awakening" focuses heavily on Aang's initial recovery and him finding his footing and himself after a traumatic event that changed a lot in his life. But he remains himself and pulls through.

This episode, and the subsequent narrative it spins around Aang's scar as a result revolves strongly around the past, specifically failures not definining oneself. It therefore also leads to Aang's scars not defining him.

A lot of Aang's appearances in B3 do a lot to make his scars seem mundane, as we watch his recovery, his scar shrinking and no one makes comments about his scar being exposed.

Zuko and Aang as characters do a lot to normalise scars and make them seem more a part of someone, rather than a defining trait, which is something I find important to keep going in media.

Scars in media are often used as a visual shorthand, a way to quickly define a character. They overwhelm the character, rather than add to them. But Zuko, while his scar is a big part of him, is not just defined by his scar, and neither is Aang. Neither of them is just "the one with the scar on [insert body part]" but fleshed out individuals.

Their scars exist to serve their characters and enhance their storylines, rather than for other characters to simply gawk at and react to, which is something I see in many stories. It's a personal ick, as it feels like an aspect of another character exists to further the stories of others, and it furthers the idea that its ok to build one's perception about someone around their scar.

I do, however, want to note that this entire pist is from my perspective as somone who grew up with prominent burn scars. I do not hold the monopoly on scars. Its very likely there is someone with scars out there with a different perception on how atla handled scars. We all have different experiences, and we are not a monolith, so I encourage different perspectives on the matter.

I also wanted to take a moment to address the deus ex rock moment, as its a pretty crucial part of the story surrounding Aang's injury.

I know a lot of people are confused by this scene, or see it as a copout/undeserved victory. And I absolutely understand where those people come from. But looking at this moment from less of a storydriven perspective, and more through Aang's character, it does make some sense, in a rather metaphorical manner.

There is a pattern of Aang entering the Avatar State through something touching on sensitive subjects to Aang. Finding Gyatso's corpse, Katara being "killed", Appa being taken. We've seen Aang's frustration and upset due to his inability to enter the Avatar state due to his injury grow through B4, extradited by the many other factors pressing on his mental health.

The way I see it, the rock was a physical replication of said process. Physically striking Aang where he was vulnerable, and unleashing the pain and anger he had been tamping down. Like one thing about Aang in the avatar state, especially here? He looks absolutely fucking pissed.

And that is by design. I've given my thoughts on the Avatar state. It is a defence mechanism, and especially in Aang's case, it turns Aang's pain to anger and destruction. And Ozai is certainly a deserving target of otherwordly wrath. Aang would've been fully in his right to brutally kill him.

But he doesn't, he actively stops himself, he pulls himself out of the Avatar State, which was established previously to have been incredibly difficult for him.

And he choses to not kill Ozai, maintaining his own integrity and the values of his people. This is especially poignant to me after Ozai yelled to him that the Air Nomads were weak, and didn't deserve to live. At that point, in Aang's eyes at least, compromising his morals would be a quiet agreement with that statement.

I wouldn't say that the rock was necessarily even a deus ex machina, even though I joked about it being so. Aang didn't even technically need the rock to kill Ozai the whole fight could've ended right here. Aang had that man dead to fucking rights.

But he chose not to end things this way. Aang could've ended things as the Avatar, everything and everyone was pushing him towards it, he almost did it twice in the fight. But he could not. I know there are people dissapointed in him for this. But Iove that Aang chose to end this conflict not as Avatar Aang, but as Aang the Last Airbender, the last representant of the Fire Nation's first and most prominent victims.

There's something deeply poetic and beautiful about that, even if we needed a heavyhanded metaphor in the form of a conveniently placed rock to get there.

Aang and Zuko go through the most visible and highlighted character arcs in the show, and their respective scars highlight said arcs. Zuko's scar is part of his arc of finding his identity outside the strict roles and standards he was forced into. His scar symbolises his failure to fit into these standards, and a huge part of his arc is demystifying the power the scar holds over him, the power he himself ascribed to it. Only once he demystified the scar and the act of violence it came from, was he able to begin to unravel the power Ozai and the Fire Nation held over him.

For Aang, his scar was, in a way a manifestation of the pain, pressure and change he was under. But he didn't let it define him, he persevered, and, despite everything he was going through, he maintained his culture and his own integrity by choosing to spare Ozai's life.

I enjoyed this two parter, even if it was a little tough to get through. I might make some extra posts in the scar series lol. Particularly about Lin Beifong's scar (which might touch on general fandom weirdness around scars) and maybe about why the concept of Katara keeping her burned hands from the Deserter makes me feel icky (also about general fandom weirdness around scaras)

[tobiasdrake]

Here we are at the end of Andor. And my opinion of it is pretty simple. I think the show is really good at talking about the politics of fascism and insurrection.

Where this season excels is in the big moments and the political speeches. It's things like the Ghorman Massacre or Luthen teaching Kleya how to be an operative. It's moments like Mon Mothma's speech to the Senate, where she addresses the Senate and says, "Donald Trump is plunging this country into a fascistic hellscape while FOX News erodes the very concept of an objective reality. You, the person sitting here watching Star Wars: Andor, you have to be responsible for pushing back against this."

The show has a lot to say, and what it has to say is extremely relevant to this moment in history. It is a very good at being a powerful political manifesto that wears its themes on its sleeve.

What it's not so good at is... doing things with the characters it has. Holy shit, do I need to vent because when the show wasn't giving political screeds that I like and agree with, it was such a fucking mess.

Here, at the end of the line, I feel confident saying that they have utterly failed to make Cassian seem like the character from Rogue One. The show is too enchanted by that moment when he decided to defy orders and follow his heart, which was supposed to be a moment of character development.

But they've backwritten it into the show as his defining character trait. The Cassian of Andor is a loose canon who undermines everyone all the time. He hates the Rebel Alliance and is only here because his girlfriend dumped him, and all he does is play cards with his buddies, steal ships, and get in arguments over whether or not Tony Gilroy's OC is the greatest character ever introduced to Star Wars.

He has two separate arguments about that. It's crazy how much the last three episodes are just about what an amazing character Luthen was. Like, the parts with Luthen and Kleya's backstory were actually really good but then the next two episodes just will not stop talking about how Luthen is a Great Man of History, singularly responsible for the very existence of the Rebel Alliance.

Everything good that ever happened in the Star Wars Trilogy, they owe it all to Luthen Thunderdick who descended from on high and made the Empire tremble with his mighty footsteps. It was all him and nobody else. For decades, he was the guy, and there was nothing he couldn't do. Except kill himself effectively.

At the same time that the show can't shut up about how great Luthen is, I was genuinely stunned that Luthen's big confrontation with Dedra consisted of him passively slitting his own gut and hoping for the best. Luthen really struck me as a "Killing myself in a giant explosion to try and take you with me" sort of character, but apparently the big 'out' he had decades to plan for himself was to just quietly die in front of Dedra and hope the Empire will let him.

Cassian and Bail later talk about how Bail being a "Go down swinging" sort of guy makes him like Luthen. And. Like. Yeah, I would have thought Luthen would go down swinging too. So weird that he didn't.

Honestly, it would have been fine if Dedra was killed like that, too. Because the show had nothing else for her to do. She was just sort of fired from the plot right after that. This is another place where the politics are strong but the character work sucks.

Dedra's ultimate comeuppance for everything she's done this season comes in the form of Lonni stealing her access codes offscreen somehow. That's it. That is what undoes her. At some point between episodes 9 and 10, Lonni somehow acquired the ability to access her files. We never saw it happen, only heard him talk about it to Luthen afterward, but that offscreen occurrence so minor that it wasn't worth showing is the moment that seals Dedra's fate.

Dedra going to the prison from season 1 is a strong political point about the way the cruel and unforgiving systems of fascism will devour and destroy their own without hesitation or remorse. She is ultimately crushed under the very machine she worked so hard to help build.

But as a final resolution for arguably the central antagonist of the entire series, it has the same energy as if she were just suddenly dragged away by mountain lions. A bad thing happens to her because the show is over but it doesn't really connect to anything the principal characters are actively doing.

Luthen should have just blown them both up and saved us all a lot of screentime that could have been spent writing a satisfying conclusion to the character journeys we've been following.

I also found it unsatisfying when Syril, horrified by what he's contributed to, exited out into the crowd of Ghormans during the massacre... Only to suddenly spot Cassian and suddenly just turn into a Physical Threat Boss Fight. A violent orc who overpowers Cassian with his incredible accountant might.

But at least they had the Ghorman dad be the one who shot him. Dedra didn't even get that much. She was just dragged away by mountain lions because Lonni did things offscreen between episodes.

It's kind of amazing how this show is supposed to be the prequel for Cassian Andor, a ruthless killer first introduced executing his own informant for the "greater good" of the Alliance, and the most involved he is with the ultimate fate of any of the show's antagonists is getting his ass beaten down by Syril Karn just before someone else shoots him.

Cinta Kaz is the character most poorly served, of course. They brought her back just so they could bury the gays and, by Tony Gilroy's admission, give her girlfriend Vel some emotional baggage. Vel then does not do anything for the rest of the show. That's basically where her character ends.

Bix also got hit pretty hard. Allegedly, she does missions for Luthen and then is dedicated to the Rebel Alliance. She's in it for the cause. But she only gets to go on one mission and that's to get direct revenge on the guy who traumatized her. Apart from that, all she does onscreen is mope around about Cassian and then dump him because a random Force seer told her that he needs to be single for Rogue One.

Literally wrote a fucking psychic into the show to walk up to her and go, "Whoooo the Force tells me that Cassian has a GLORIOUS DESTINY that you can watch on Disney Plus, and you aren't part of it. Get out of here before they fridge you, girl!"

I'm not even going to touch that final scene of her with a ten-foot-pole. I will say that it's kind of gross that she "chooses the Rebel Alliance over Cassian" not by dedicating herself to the cause but by dedicating him to the cause while she retires to go raise his kid. It's kind of gross that they wrote "choosing the Alliance over Cassian" to mean that.

Not like the Rebel Alliance themselves are good for anything. Disney's been assassinating the Rebels for years due to a fondness for renegade protagonists screaming "SCREW YOU, MOM, I'M DOING WHAT'S RIGHT!!!"

Star Wars: Rebels depicts the Alliance fingerwagging at the Ghost crew and telling them, "DO NOT go try to liberate Lothal! Liberating worlds from Imperial control is NOT what the Rebel Alliance is about!" But then the Ghost crew do it anyway because fuck those useless cowards.

Rogue One depicts the Alliance fingerwagging at Jyn Erso and telling her, "DO NOT go try to steal the Death Star plans! Resisting the Empire is NOT what the Rebel Alliance is about!" But then the Rogue One crew do it anyway and drag those useless cowards reluctantly into helping.

With that in mind, Andor is at least consistent when it has Rebel leadership making a big stink about how Luthen sucked and the Death Star intel is wrong and we should just shove our thumbs up our asses and do nothing.

Until Draven realizes that the plot of Rogue One has to start somehow so he does a complete 180 and gives Cassian an important mission, even though they all hate Cassian for being a loose canon renegade who doesn't play by the rules.

Disney just does not like the Rebel Alliance as an organized resistance movement.

Oh, and let's talk about Wilmon. Wilmon gets an amazing moment in episode 6 when Saw Gerrera radicalizes him to the cause. Again showing the political strengths of the show, Saw gets to deliver an amazing speech about how you have to be a little crazy to be a revolutionary, and it gets Wilmon so fired up he exposes himself to gases to join Saw in the madness. He is IN IT now, ready to GET CRAZY AND DO SOMETHING.

The rest of Wilmon's story for the season is that he gets a girlfriend. She seems nice.

That's it. Wilmon's done. Nothing more for Wilmon to do.

Kleya, a character who gets to eat so well in episode 10, then suddenly gets written bewilderingly in 11. She sends out a signal for evacuation because she has vital intel she had to endanger in order to make up for Luthen's random bout of incompetence. Then, when evac arrives, she inexplicably starts an argument with Cassian over whether Luthen is the greatest character ever to grace the face of Star Wars and refuses to be evacuated.

Fortunately, she wastes so much time that the Imperials show up and knock her out with a stun grenade, which also hits Cassian but he shrugs it off with his raw manliness. This allows Cassian and K-2S0 to have a kickass fight scene and then drag Kleya to evac before she can wake up and start weirdly resisting again.

K-2SO's really just here to make witty banter (which he succeeds at) and to have a fight scene where he storms the safehouse to rescue Cassian from Kleya's random bout of stupidity. I honestly don't know which is my favorite bit of choreography.

One Imperial raises a gun at the identifiably hostile droid but doesn't pull the trigger while K advances into grappling range and kills him. The other Imperial, watching this, raises his gun and doesn't pull the trigger until K advances into grappling range and kills him too.

K-2SO, famously killed by blaster fire, slowly advances into grappling range on a guy who shoots him in the chest. The blaster shots glance harmlessly off of K-2SO's invulnerable chassis.

K then uses that guy as a human shield to block enemy blaster bolts, even though it was just established that he's invulnerable to them. So I guess that part was just for shits and giggles.

Either way, at least K did get to be funny. I do feel like this is the same character from Rogue One. So there's that, at least.

But overall... yeah. Andor makes for a really good manifesto that really captures the moment in history in which we are living in, but is not very good at telling a story.

[hitlikehammers]

🧋That One Time It Went Soulmate v. Soulmate, Double-or-Nothing Between 🍦Robin and Eddie🎸, Because No One Could Deserve Robin’s Plantonic Soulmate EVER, but Eddie Can (and WILL) Count The Ways That He’ll Fucking ✨TRY✨

☕️OR: 5/5 times Steve/Eddie talk to anyone but each other about their feelings (for each other), +1 (other time they turn around and talk to one another)

Robin’s staring openly at him after he places their order with an extra shake to go—to take home with him for when Steve gets off work.

“You sure that’s what he wants?”

Eddie turns to her slowly.

“He’s my favorite person in the world,” Eddie says simply; “I know what his favorite flavor is.”

In fairness: it does change. He has a baseline that’s good always but, this time of year, the chill in the air? After a shift, especially one without Robin? Here, from this diner, with its stupidly weird-ass menu?

Caramel Waffle. No question.

“Hmm,” Robin hums around her straw as they go to take a seat—he’ll grab Steve’s when they’re done so it’s not melted to fuck before he can get it in a freezer.

“So,” she pops her lips together as he slides in across from her—he was waiting for this tone. She’d been cagey all afternoon. They hang out enough on their own for him to have clocked it when he picked her up: she had a mission. An agenda.

Eddie was pretty sure from the jump that both of those things were just…him.

He just wasn’t sure yet about the why.

“I want you to know that it is not out of a lesser opinion of you, or our friendship, that I am asking you this,” she starts, almost businesslike but he also sees how earnestly she means it; “and honestly I am cautiously optimistic on all fronts, but,” she bites her lip before straightening up a bit and tilting her chin, full-on resolute.

“He’s too important,” she says it, uncompromising. “And cautious optimism is not sufficient.” She nods to herself, takes what looks like a fortifying drink of her milkshake and then forges into…something not wholly unlike battle:

“What are your intentions toward my Platonic Soulmate?”

Eddie’d figured it was Steve; the mission. The agenda.

Even when they hang out on their own, Steve’s too big a part of both of them for him to ever be absent. Not for real.

But, this particular mission? Like…

“We exchanged rings, Birdie,” Eddie says, kinda at a loss; “you were there.”

She was the witness-they-didn’t-technically-need and the best-woman-that-counted-for-everything when they very-not-legally threw a barbecue to pledge for always out loud with the people they loved, when as many of those people as possible could gather and see it and know it—make it feel a fraction as big as it is in Eddie’s chest, for some slice of the world to know it explicitly, out loud.

And see it.

Robin purses her lips and stares him down, unimpressed.

“You know what I mean.”

And…yeah. If he thinks on it, he…probably does.

He doesn’t agree that it’s necessary by any means but: he can agree that Steve is too important for anything to be left to assumptions; to just ‘cautious’ anything.

Steve deserves only whole-hearts. All-in. Absolute certainty for always, when it comes to loving. To keeping and cherishing.

To having and holding.

So what she means is more than the rings. Goes beyond the so-called honeymoon period everyone’s got a comment about, which Eddie refuses to call as such, or acknowledge as anything like that at all, because like…okay, look.

His heart feels easy in his chest, now, in a way it never had before Steve. It felt that way on the worst days of PT, through the worst of the pain. It felt that way sometimes even that first time trudging through hell, without even knowing the man. Eddie hadn’t even realized his heart was all sludged up and calcified until he looked at Steve and it shivered so hard that all of that gunk sloughed off and he was made brand new.

That’s not a honeymoon period. That’s the start of the rest of his whole fucking life, where a certain vibrant level of joy is the baseline. Is their rule.

But, for someone outside Eddie’s chest: he understands. Robin means past that thing she thinks she’s seeing. She means…past Hawkins. Past the Upside Down and all the heartache. Past…forever.

What are his…

“I don’t think I believed people had souls, in like, the sense that people say it?” Eddie starts, because Robin of all people deserves the fullest truth he can offer.

Also—and fuck if he ever admits it out loud—but it’s also because if she’s gonna question his heart, in this, no matter how entitled she is to make sure?

She can damn well be subjected to the full extent of his capacity to wax poetic upon just how overwhelmingly, impossibly, marrow-deep in love he is.

“Definitely not the churchy sense,” he clarifies with a wave of the hand; “I thought they were abstract, just a word for an idea, y’know?”

She knows—she’s told him that she felt something of the same.

Before Steve.

“But he made me believe in them,” Eddie says, and fuck you, maybe his voice is already a little shaky, but he wants her to know how honest he is, how committed he is, how deep his runs—just like how she learned what it was to be Steve’s soulmate, too.

“Because it’s the very real thing that makes me feel alive like I never knew I could feel,” and his left hand reaches up a little awkward to his chest to feel what it is to be alive that big with his own palm, and the sensation of it against the ring on his previously so-long-empty finger there, now the safe-keeper of Steve’s Grandad’s ring, the one he paid some fancy jeweller with his own paycheck—we will use my family’s money, together, he’d told Eddie later, days into what actually was their literal honeymoon; this is from me, like, from my heart to yours and if Eddie’d cried a little about it, naked between rounds in their hotel bed, and if he’d kissed Steve senseless about it a lot at the same time? Damn right he should have—but pressing his hand to his chest with the now-familiar weight and warmth of that ring?

Fuck, but does he feel alive. And as far as his soul goes?

“He is where mine lives.”

It’s Steve. It’s all Steve.

“Or how mine lives. How it came to be,” Eddie still hasn’t puzzled it out entirely, the specifics; isn’t sure if he ever will. “Or both.”

Not that it matters, really. It might be the only puzzle in his whole fucking life that his brain’s willing to let lie not-wholly solved, because again: whatever the details could possibly be, they’d just lead back to a piece or part of a single entity.

The singular love of his life.

“I will kill you if you hurt him,” Robin jolts him back into the now, where he thinks maybe more silence has gathered than he thought, between the last words he did say and now.

She looks at him…not mean, not like daggers: more just really honest. Wide-eyed and more serious than he’s ever watched her be, even when they were almost certainly walking toward their own deaths in battle.

“Please do,” Eddie answers her, automatic. That is, like, not a hard thing to figure out a response to.

“Like, they’ll never find the body,” Robin leans forward over the table, almost knocks her milkshake over and frowns as she slides it aside further out of her way and takes her position again: “I’m serious.”

“Me too,” Eddie says simply before taking a long suck of his milkshake. “If I hurt him, the way you’re talking?” He spreads his arms and gestures wide to himself, all his most vulnerable parts on display because, like:

“Do me the favor. Please.”

He hopes it’d still be easy, splayed with all his squishy vital parts to hit, just bone in the way; hopes all the scar tissue wouldn’t make the job too difficult.

“Why?” Robin asks, a little…not sharp exactly.

Pointed.

But Eddie doesn’t understand why the question of whyeven needs to be asked, especially from her. It’s fucking obvious.

“If I hurt him?” Eddie shrugs, takes a sip again of his shake to keep his throat from getting too thick with any emotions at…entertaining an impossible thing.

“If I did that, I wouldn’t deserve him anymore, even if I didn’t automatically drive him away by default, for the hurting. I’d lose him either way,” and the shake doesn’t even taste right for how wrong those words feel, the bile underneath them, but it’s still mostly making the horrible words…easier.

Given the topic.

Because Eddie doesn’t care really for himself like that—though Steve, outside this unnerving and frankly fucking stomach-churning hypothetical and instead in the blissful beautiful now: Steve would get all frowny at him and scold him like one of his no-longer-little-nuggets for making idiotic choices or saying dumbass things—but Steve isn’t here.

And Eddie means this shit.

“I don’t really know if I’d even want to,” he swallows hard, thankful for the cold of the shake to keep his wits somewhat together; keep him on task to the fucking point: “to be a person, without a soul,” he leans back in the seat and crosses his arms over the squishy bits of him now, because in the now he hasn’t done anything to jeopardize the best thing that’s every fucking happened to him; that ever will.

“Not now that I know what it’s like to live with one, like this.”

And Eddie feels his lips curving at…well. Basically it’s kind of unavoidable, trying to keep a smile off his face when he thinks on Steve:

“Like this. With him.”

Robin matches him, leaning back and crossing her arms, eyeing him oddly.

“It’s not healthy to base your life around whether another person’s in it.”

“Says the platonic soulmate,” Eddie literally snorts, glad he’s not drinking for it—ice cream up the nose fucking sucks; “sounds like those codependency talks your parents were sneaking in took root somewhere, if you’re spouting them back at me.”

Eddie may not have been present for the months post-Starcourt where the Buckleys had struggled with whether Steve was a suitor or a playboy, for how often he and their daughter dogged each other’s steps, but he’s heard the stories. He knows it took them a while to…if not entirely understand it, at least to accept it.

Steve’s been known to watch the game with her dad when Wayne’s not home. Steve plies her mom with baked goods that she used to signal her acceptance of him, her welcome even, after breaking down to ask for recipes.

He gave them to her, or most of them, but won her fully over by promising he’d never be so far away not to make them for her himself.

“I never said I believed it,” Robin grouses, a little defensive; “let alone agreed with it. It was just a statement.”

Eddie expected as much. But he’s not above wanting to poke holes in her flimsy-ass attempt to set him off-balance. To…test him, however she’s trying to.

“But that’s not what I meant.”

He knew that, too. But he’s not absolutely sure what she meant instead.

Despite his myriad suspicions. He does have a formidable knack for imagining potential scenarios.

“I would have answered the same way, so,” Robin huffs; “I didn’t need that ‘why’.”

Eddie bites back a little smirk at her streak of indignation—not the time.

He’s actually getting better at that. Appropriate timing. It helps, appreciating what it means to have so many people he loves.

And then, one person who defines all that love is, all on his own. Every breath he breathes.

“I meant,” Robin finally leans in again, pins him with her stare, with meaning; “why do you love him?”

He doesn’t…expect that. Not from Robin.

But her tone doesn’t question it. Doesn’t question her dearest friend, her closest confidant, her Captial-P soulmate.

She’s…not testing him. But she is weighing him.

And somehow that’s very different.

“Why?” he still can’t help but huff a laugh. “How does anyone not?”

She squares her shoulders, but as formidable as she makes herself, as formidable as she is, her eyes are all heartbreak. But the protective kind.

“A lot of people are stupid,” she spits; “have been so goddamn stupid.”

Eddie knows she doesn’t mean him. It’s not directed his way. He agrees with her, and appreciates that if the time ever comes, he has the best second in command at his side to stand guard for the heart he loves more than his own.

He gets what she means, why she’s asking—why any of this is happening, today.

She’s seen more than him, but not even half, betweenthem, of the people so stupid, so reckless as to trample his beautiful husband’s heart.

Their soulmate’s heart.

And now that he gets it, he has so many ways to ease whatever fears she has, concerns that aren’t about him, but linger because she cares that much.

He can easily give her what she’s looking for.

“I love his smile,” Eddie says with his own, because it’s not about the way it looks, so much as the lights that glow through in him for it. “I love when he hugs me,” he’s so good at it, it makes a man feel safe as much as cherished, protected with strength and cradled with care. He feels Steve’s heartbeat against his sometimes like that, held close enough, pressed tight enough.

“And then when he < I>holds me,” when it’s all of that, but more. Longer. Sustained and Eddie can drown in it. In him.

“He kisses like it’s an Olympic sport where he’s the reigning gold medalist for always,” because sure, Eddie hadn’t had a vast amount of experience but he’d been kissed, even if only dirty and sloppy and never any further, but he’d thought they been at least decent.

Little did he fucking know.

“But then, at the same time he treats it like it’s his favorite pastime.”

Because Steve doesn’t just deal in the breathtaking, world-rewriting approach; he also dives in thorough, devoted down to his cells.

Breathtaking, world-rewriting all in its own unfathomable way.

“His laugh,” and Eddie’s smile grows as his chest feels like it expands, like it always finds a way to do just when Eddie thinks it can’t swell any more, like, for the laws of physics.

He did eventually pass physics, but. They never covered anything to do with love.

And even if they had, it couldn’t have been the kind of love Eddie feels, now.

“The way his brow furrows when he’s confused, or frustrated, like he,” and Eddie sees it, the little crinkles, the soft sparkling behind his eyes as he tries to sort something out behind them, like the fires of his mind at work, and it’s a beautiful thing.

“But mostly so I get to smooth it out,” Eddie admits because: it’s a beautiful thing. And it’s likewise a temptation.

All of Steve is kind of both at the same time, always.

“I love that he lets me take care of him,” and not just for the way it makes him feel proud of being trusted that much, where so few have ever passed the bar for entry into the magic of who Steve is, in his wholeness.

“Not least because taking care if him is one if the best things in the whole world,” because Steve doesn’t hide anything anymore, and he’s so open, so honest with every vulnerable piece, and Eddie feels like he could conquer the world with the might of that confidence, that faith; “like when your heart and your mind and your body all align right and agree, this is what you were made for,” and he believes that. He was built to meet Steve Harrington, and to be bound to every part of him. To be his partner in all things. To love and to honor and to cherish. For all of time.

“I love him for seeing me,” because it works both ways, and the feeling of having Steve is only rivalled in perfect measure by what it feels like to be had and held by Steve in kind: “and letting me see him.”

Always together. It still steals Eddie’s breath almost painful, but too sweet to ever try and tamp it down.

“I love falling asleep on his chest,” Eddie’s eyes close of their own accord, can feel it like that’s where he is, here and now, the bed of curls between those delectable nipples, the softness of his skin. “He runs so warm, like just, like when his heart beats, it’s pumping safety and comfort as a rule and when you’re pressed against him, it just emanates into you,” and that’s it, that’s exactly it.

“I love his heartbeat,” not just because he’d sought it out with desperate need after their last fight with the monsters, when it’d been Steve they almost lost. “Like the sound, when I’m against him,” because now, it’s a lullaby, an embrace, a declaration, every assurance Eddie doesn’t strictly need anymore but never passes up an opportunity to listen to and bask in, every opportunity he gets.

“I love how it feels when,” he starts, pauses when Robin’s face scrunches a little, like she’s bracing for a blow and it clicks, what she’s expecting.

He…wasn’t not going to at least skirt the edges of that part of their relationship. What often comes before he sleeps on Steve’s chest. But.

“Don’t worry, Birdie,” he assures her, dramatically folding his hands over hers with cloying sincerity; “I won’t defile your virgin ears.”

“If I have to listen to the retelling of your sexploits from him,” Robin smacks his hands away with a grimace; “I think once is enough.”

Eddie cackles as Robin groans.

“More than.”

He waves her off as he catches her breath; he won’t make her relive it herself. He’d love to, for his own sake and enjoyment but, he does love Robin. He doesn’t want to orchestrate her torture.

At least not today.

“I love how he eats his breakfast,” how he starts with a rich boy’s manners and ends like a starving man, with bits of egg on his cheek.

“I love how he brushes his teeth,” smearing toothpaste around first then going back to brush in tiny circles all around.

“I love how weirdly and, like, inhumanly quick he does his hair?” It’s record setting, seriously, like how can you get that height and that coif so perfect so fast. “But then how what always makes him almost late is picking the right shoes.”

Robin laughs, then reins herself back; it’s true though. How the clearly color-coded collections of the same fucking tennis shoes befuddle him for choice is hilarious, but so fucking endearing as hell.

“I love how I can tell him that I love him,” because for one, and the least of it all: Eddie never thought he’d find himself in a future where that was even the slightest possibility. But when it’s Steve? When it’s…when it’s this, with Steve?

When Steve lets Eddie love him? And flushes and smiles and melts for it, every goddamn time? Because of Eddie, and the size of Eddie’s love, or however much of it can be conveyed in the dearly limited medium of puny words?

“It’s him, but it’s,” Eddie shakes his head, beaming stupidly he knows, feels it in his cheeks, tugging his scars—he knows, but see, he couldn’t possibly give one single shit about it because his heart is so full, because he gets to love Steve Harrington, and—

“Loving him has been the greatest thing I’ve ever known. It’s not a privilege. It’s not a joy. It’s not a blessing,” Eddie laughs, just once: the limits of language are…offensive, almost. Because no.

It’s none of those things.

“It’s like I said, loving him?”

He waits for Robin to meet his eyes so she sees what the words can’t hold, never could, and while he’s not banking on his gaze carrying the whole of it, he’s more confident it can weave together at least some of the gaps.

“It’s what lives in me now and tells me I’m alive,” and that’s honest, that’s honest to all and every god, and all that surpasses them in the whole of being. “Maybe reminds me there are things to be alive for,” Eddie licks his lips, lets himself feel the way his heartbeat’s ramped up simply because he…he loves.

Because he loves.

“It is meaning, and it is light, and it is purpose and it’s what makes you open your eyes and feel that soft settled gratefulness that you get to do any of it, because he’s next to you,” Eddie’s words come without needing to think, or plan, for all he once scripted speeches on tabletops, or in notebooks to guide a narrative: this is his life. And more importantly: his love. His heart and his soul.

He wouldn’t want a script for any of it.

But more than wanting: he doesn’t have a single fucking need for it.

It is in his cells. He is made of all this, now. Of course it comes out of its own accord.

As blinding and as certain as it damn well should.

“He’s the reason for all of it,” Eddie finally says, voice a little shaky but it’s just because his breath’s a little shaky first, with the vastness of it all. “What would be the point, without it? Without him?”

He doesn’t need an answer, and Robin doesn’t try to give one. But he will ask, just as much without any need of a response:

“If that isn’t the same thing as a soul, then what the fuck is?”

It rings kinda quiet for a few seconds. Then minutes. Robin glances at her now melted remnants of milkshake.

Eddie looks to his own almost-full glass of wholly-unfrozen chocolate malt, and the condensation pooled underneath.

When he looks up, Robin’s eyes are on him. Shining and much less confrontational than they’d been.

“What?” Eddie asks, mostly confused but still a little suspicious. He’s been as flayed-wide as he can be, and is proud to be, and he trusts Robin implicitly but…he was being weighed and measured in order to be judged somehow.

So, he thinks it’s only smart to be at least a little bit cautious.

“Just glad,” she says, and smiles honest, no agenda left now. “You’re one of my favorite people,” and Eddie knew that in theory, at least by implication—still feels very nice to hear it.

“But you’re not my Platonic Soulmate.”

Eddie knew that, too. More than in theory. He respects the fuck out of it.

He appreciates that people beyond Eddie love Steve as fierce as this. Just as he deserves.

“It would have sucked to have had to take you out if you didn’t deserve him.”

Eddie snorts, because he knows she fucking means it. He’s almost honored that she thinks the idea of having to gut him in Steve’s defense would have been paired with any level of remorse.

“Mind you,” Robin goes a little serious again, but not…not like before.

“I don’t know if anyone deserves him,” and she says that more like I don’t think anyone could. Eddie doesn’t disagree.

But he thinks that’s the end of it, and decides he’s not going to let good ice cream go to waste just because it’s more an…extra cold Yoo-hoo slushie.

And how could he even consider letting that go to waste? Who would he even be if he did that, he wouldn’t even recognize himself—

“But you.”

Eddie looks up to meet her gaze with his lips still on the straw, mouth full of creamy chocolate. It’s not his most dignified look.

And she’s…she’s still kind of assessing, but…more like she’s made up her mind, by now. Finished her mission, fulfilled her agenda. Has the weight of him.

Possibly approves, even.

“You’re close enough.”

And goddamn, that is some glowing praise from Robin Buckley.

Especially when it comes to her Platonic Soulmate.

And yeah, maybe Eddie does drink the rest of his Yoo-hoo slushie with a little bit of pride for it.

He knows it tastes sweeter to the last obnoxious half-air-filled sip, either way.

1: Gareth // 2: Mrs. Harrington // 3: Wayne // 4: Chrissy // 5: Robin // +1: ???

🍦💚 📼

✨also on ao3

💫for @penny00dreadful—happiest of happy birthdays, my lovely 🖤

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @allmyfavoritethingsinoneblog @anthrobrat @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @disrespectedgoatman @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @eternal-sunflowers @friendlyneighborhoodgaycousin @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @madigoround @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here

divider credit here, and oddly: me, too 🖤

[kinardsevan]

Ohhhhh you wanted angst? Our blorbos in peril?

How about a bucktommy mpreg story where buck have complications from a long labor and giving birth and tommy is rushed out of the hospital room to be with their newborn in the nursery. Maybe buck lives, maybe he dies. Dealers choice of how badly you want to hurt tommy and me.

you and me, always choosing violence together 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

cw: NDE, birth trauma (for Evan), under the cut

Evan is exhausted. They’ve been at this for nearly thirty-six hours—sixteen of them in active labor—and his body is tapped out. 

He certainly doesn’t blame any one specific person. He’d been determined to labor naturally, get their daughter out into the world the way the universe intended. As he’d said to Tommy for the better half of the past seven and a half months, ‘people have been laboring and birthing babies for millennia. My bodies knows what to do, Tommy. She’ll be here when she’s ready.’ 

The thing is, he stands behind all of that. When he’d arrived at the hospital, his contractions were only ten minutes apart, but he was still sitting at two centimeters dilated, as he had been for the better half of the past few weeks. And for as much as he’d pushed for Hen and Bobby to let him do just a little bit of heavy duty work—nothing too risky, of course, just enough to kickstart labor—his request had effectively done the opposite. Bobby had all but benched him, sending him home early on his already-shortened shifts, and teling him to take it easy. Which, granted, Evan was exhausted, so of course he appreciated being able to get a few extra hours of sleep….except that he wasn’t sleeping. Even with his pregnancy pillow, he was still tossing and turning from the ache in his lower back. Plus, he couldn’t stop nesting. He’d washed every item Maddie had gifted he and Tommy out of Jee-Yun’s closet at least three times, scrubbed every inch of their home, triple-checked all of the safety locks and ensured all of the fire alarms were working properly along with ensuring they had an extinguisher for each floor of their home, one designated for the kitchen, and in the safe in their bedroom. He didn’t expect to actually have to use it, but one could never be too safe, even if their baby girl would be sleeping in a sidecar crib for the foreseeable future. 

And so, weeks had gone by. Labor didn’t progress, but his blood pressure rose from it’s typical just-above-low-normal of 98/65 up to 110/70, and then 122/83. At that, while his physician hadn’t been acutely worried, given that his blood pressure tended to trend lower and being in the normal range wasn’t a major problem. However, as it continued to come up, she wasn’t blind to his anxiety, and even admitted that it was worrying her that it had risen as much. And so they’d made plans to induce. 

Except, two days before he was set to go in, his water finally broke at 3 AM, in the middle of a sleepless night. Ellery Rae seemed to have plans to make her grand entrance at last, and her fathers couldn’t wait. 

Except, contractions were slow. It took more than twelve hours for them to reach a point at which Evan’s doctor felt that he needed to be monitored. As she’d stated, his body was working its way through labor naturally, and they didn’t need to push it any harder at that point. 

But twelve hours at home turned into another eight in the hospital with little change. Only at that point had his body started progressing toward the possibility of a baby being born, reaching five centimeters as they neared the twenty-four-hour mark. He was offered Pitocin, but with the newly forward progress, he hadn’t been worried about the need for it. After two hours, when he’d gained another centimeter, his doctor had offered an epidural, and once again he’d turned it down. He was determined to labor through the pain. 

Except that had been six hours ago. He’s been stalled at seven and a half centimeters for the past three hours, and has long since lost his energy to pace or rock on the birthing ball, let alone actually get up and move around. 

“I know, baby,” Tommy murmurs to him as Evan curls toward him on the side of the bed, his knuckles white as he clings to the railing intended to keep him safe from falling off. Tommy swipes a cool wash cloth across his forehead and then offers Evan the straw to the cup he’s been sipping water out of for over a day now. He’s exhausted and he wants to yell, to grab the cup and throw it across the room, but he’s also zapped of energy, and so he closes his lips around the straw instead and sucks in a sip, relishing in the cold water as it slides through his mouth and down his throat. Tommy returns the cup to the overbed table as another contraction hits, and Evan whines softly, too tired to even get near anything close to shouting or screaming at this point. Tommy slides his free hand between the bars of the bed and finds Evan’s hand that isn’t clinging to the rail, and the younger man squeezes, doing his best to breathe the way he’s talked so many laboring mothers through in the past. 

Except this time it’s him, and his body is tired, and he can’t exactly remember the right order, he only remembers that he needs to breathe and keep getting oxygen to his baby girl. 

The contraction finally passes, and he closes his eyes, breathing wearily. 

“Baby, are you sure you don’t want-..” 

“I can do it,” Evan states, trying to sound more insistent than he actually is. Truth be told, if Dr. Lincoln came in and offered a c-section again, he’s not sure he’d be able to turn it down. 

Tommy frowns at him, and as much as Evan has half a mind to growl at him about it, he knows it’s only out of concern, and that for every hour he’s been awake since this all started, Tommy has been as well. Neither of them have slept in well over forty hours, and even at that, the sleep they had gotten was a restless nap, if anything. 

He’s in the process of fighting to roll back over onto his back in the bed when Dr. Lincoln reenters the room, already reaching for the hand sanitizer and fresh gloves. 

“How’re we doing?” She asks, concern clear in her voice. “Ready to get this show on the road?” 

“Please,” Evan answers her with exhaustion. She nods, moving toward the bed. Tommy helps him shift down, and Evan winces as pain shreds through his abdomen. Still, when they ask if he’s okay, he dismisses it, sure that it must mean it’s go time. 

Dr. Lincoln finishes her check and stands up, removing her gloves. Evan’s expression falls at he sight of that. 

“Well, you’re stationed at zero,” she tells him cheerfully. “And fully effaced and dilated. I’m going to check in on our team to get this moving, unless you’ve got another coach we’re waiting on?” 

Evan and Tommy both shake their head as the younger man breathes a sigh of relief that things are finally moving along. Dr. Lincoln nods as she tosses her used gloves into the hazardous waste and takes another pump of sanitizer. 

“Let me grab a few helping hands, then, and we’ll get this going,” she states. “Hold tight for me for just a few more minutes, okay?” 

Evan nods, leaning back into his pillows as sweat drips down his brow. Tommy is quick at refreshing the cold water on the cloth he’s been using on him, wiping Evan down once more before returning to his side.

“You ready,” he asks, placing a kiss to the younger man’s forehead a moment later. 

Evan nods, glancing up at him. “For this to be done? Yeah. Maybe she’ll even sleep a little.” 

They both laugh, and Evan winces, resettling after a few seconds. 

Dr. Lincoln returns quickly—quicker than he expected, honestly—and announces for them to get into position. Tommy joins at Evan’s side and takes his hand while a nurse is on the other and they shift him down on the bed as Dr. Lincoln moves the bottom half away and starts giving instructions.

Little happens in the first few rounds. Although she tells him that he’s doing good, not much is said beyond that, and he continues to only really feel more pain, but he’s unsure of how much of that is normal versus what he should know to expect. The most he can recall a difference in feeling from what he’d read, was the ring of fire, but that’s supposed to be as the baby is crowning.

“Alright, Evan, it’s time to push,” Dr. Lincoln tells him after several more contraction. “When this next contraction comes, I want you to give it everything you’ve got, okay?” 

He nods, closing his eyes and breathing heavy breaths wearily as Tommy wipes at his forehead. 

“Almost there, gorgeous,” his husband tells him. “She’s so close.” 

“Mhm,”Evan hums, inhaling and exhaling. He can feel Dr. Lincoln doing…something. Stretching exercises, she’d mentioned  earlier but he can’t remember now. But she keeps working, and when the contraction hits, he curls forward, clenching Tommy’s hand tightly in one, and a nurse’s in the other as he tucks his chin into his chest. 

“Alright, Evan, good,” Dr. Lincoln coaches. “Keep going. Two. Three. Four. Good good, her head is crowning.” 

“I need-..” 

“No, now’s not the time to need,” she tells him. “I think we can get her through on this contraction. Don’t talk, just keep- yeah, yes! Good! One more solid- yeah,” she laughs a cheerful response as Ellery’s had pops free, as the contraction ends. “That was so good, Evan. I’m gonna have you wait on the next one, and then we’ll go after and she’ll be out.” 

He lets out a weary whimper, looking up at Tommy and shaking his head. “I ca..ba…” 

“Just a little bit longer,” Tommy tells him, coaxing gently. He leans down and kisses Evan’s forehead. “She’s right there, gorgeous. Right there waiting for you.” 

Evan whimpers again, nodding anyway. The contraction comes, and it’s painful, but it’s been painful for hours. He can’t remember a time right now when he wasn’t in pain. 

Tommy gets him a sip of water, wipes his forehead down again and Evan makes him tug at the gown, freeing the top of his chest and his shoulders so he can have skin-to-skin as soon as Ellery’s out. 

“Alright,” Dr. Lincoln states, watching the clock. “A few more seconds. When it hits, give me the biggest push you can, Evan. You ready?” 

He manages a weary ‘uh-huh’, and when the pain starts, he curls forward as best he can and gives it everything he’s got. 

It feels like hours and nanoseconds all at once. One second she’s still only half-birthed, and the next, she’s wailing in Dr. Lincoln’s arms as the physician cleans her mouth and nose out and then settles her up on Evan’s chest. He lets out a weary, grateful laugh as he looks down at Ellery, and then up at Tommy. The absolute look of love and complete enrapture on his husband’s face is one he’s only seen a few times in their five years together. Once when they’d stood at the altar, the first time they’d made love with the intent of trying for a baby, and the day Evan had told him he was pregnant with Ellery. And the thing is, for as much as Evan has seen that expression given in his direction from his husband, his heart swells with the knowledge now that it’s not for him, but for their daughter. 

“She’s…” His eyes drift shut, and it just feels so nice, knowing there isn’t more work to do, that Ellery is out and safe, and he can rest now. 

“Evan? Evan?!” 

“Get a crash cart in here, call for code blue, send dad and baby down to the NICU, mass transfusion protocol for a severe hemorrhage…” 

. . . 

“She’s doing very well right now, Mr. Kinard,” the nurse tells him as she settles Ellery into his arms, wrapped up tightly in a warm blanket. “High apgar, very responsive. Six pounds, twelve ounces, nineteen inches long.” 

“She’s got her dad’s legs,” he chokes out, his vision so blurry that he almost can make out Ellery’s face. 

“Come here,” the nurse coaxes him gently, almost in the exact same tone as he’d used with Evan during Ellery’s birth. “Why don’t you sit for a little bit? It’s been a rough day for your family.” 

He lets out a mirthless laugh as tears fall down his face. “It’s been more than a day. It’s been over thirty-six hours.” 

She looks up at him sympathetically, squeezing his wrist lightly in an attempt to comfort. Ellery wiggles in his arms, chirps up at him. He sniffles, brushing his thumb over the curve of her cheek, swallowing past the knot in his throat that comes as it fully dawns on him that she has the same port wine stain on her eyebrow, though it’s fully connected, unlike Evan’s. 

“He wanted her so badly,” Tommy continues. He’s not sure if he’s still talking for his own sake, or Ellery’s, or the nurse, or someone else entirely. He just can’t stop thinking about it all. Either way, the nurse keeps working around him, checking on other infants, occasionally checking monitors that Ellery is attached to, and so forth. 

After about half an hour, Ellery starts to fuss, and the nurse offers Tommy a bottle of formula. It takes everything in him not to crack when he takes it and starts to feed their daughter. Evan was supposed to be able to give her the first feeding. They’d had so many talks about his wish to give colostrum and ensure that she got all the extra nutrients she would need in the coming weeks. The very fact that he didn’t know if Evan would be okay, let alone if he would survive, was not something he was handling well. 

Hours pass. He gives Ellery her first diaper change, watches as the nurse continues to monitor, and keeps her close as they wait. He knows the entire time that he needs to call Maddie and apprise her, but he can’t fathom calling any of their family without knowing the outcome first. 

As much as he wants to sleep, it’s still a fight keeping his eyes open because his brain won’t shut off. They snap open each time the door does, and when he finally sees Dr. Lincoln coming through the door, he bolts upright in the chair he’s been in for the past few hours, holding Ellery close. 

“Mr. Kinard,” she says softly as she walks toward him. She looks exhausted. “I’m so sorry.” 

His eyes grow wide as she nears him, and he gulps. Sorry about what? Is Evan-? Because he can’t, and-..

“I tried to get here sooner,” she continues, pulling up a seat in front of him. “First and foremost, Evan is stable.” 

He chokes on a breath, uncaring of the tears that flood across his vision as he digests the knowledge that his husband is still alive, still breathing. 

“From what I’ve gathered, sometime before birth, there was a placental abruption, which led to excessive bleeding, but we didn’t know because-..” 

“Ellery,” Tommy states, understanding. 

“Exactly. That led to the DIC, which was what caused the bleeding from his nose and ears. We managed to stop the bleeding from the abruption and administered anticoagulants, and have been monitoring his levels since. He’s been on a transfusion as well, and from everything I’ve gathered so far, he’s on the upswing,” she explains. 

“Is he… I- I mean, will he be?” 

“We can only know so much right now, in terms of how he’ll heal, but right now I’m cautiously optimistic. We’ve gotten him settled into a new room, if you’d like to head back down. I know that this little one needs af few more tests done, and then we can have her brought down to both of you,” Dr. Lincoln offers. 

Tommy sniffles, glancing back down at Ellery. He’s not above admitting that he’s held onto her with prejudice. It wasn’t because he didn’t trust the nurses so much as the fear of losing Evan causing his anxiety to ebb through to any idea of letting go of their daughter for fear of losing her too. He gulps nervously, but after a few seconds, he nods and then passes her over to Dr. Lincoln. She smiles sympathetically at him. 

“He’s down in 3035,” she explains. “You can find him there.” 

He passes by her and heads out of the NICU, back down into the birthing ward. Evan’s room is much closer than the first one they’d been directed to, and thankfully in a different hallway, so they don’t have to see it. He pauses outside of the room briefly, letting himself take a breath before he pushes the door open and heads in. 

His stomach knots at the sight of his husband. His skin is pale, and his lips still have a slightly blue tinge to them, but when Tommy reaches him and takes Evan’s hand in his, it’s warmer than he expects. It calms some of the anxiety in him as he pulls Evan’s hand to his lips and kisses it. 

“I’m so mad at you right now,” he murmurs, fresh tears coming down his face as he settles into the chair beside Evan. “I need you to speak up more. If you were in pain, you should’ve said something. I almost lost you.” 

Evan doesn’t answer—not that Tommy expects him to—and he continues to sit beside the younger man, keeping a vigil over him as he strokes his fingers through the younger man’s curls. Still, whether he intends it or not, eventually the exhaustion of being awake for nearly two days straight and knowing that Evan is stable starts to get to him, and he nods off, hovers somewhere between awake and asleep. 

His eyes snap open again when he feels pressure squeezing around his fingers. He glances up at Evan, and the younger man lets out a quiet groan as his eyes flutter, fingers twitch against Tommy’s palm. 

“Oh thank God,” the pilot murmurs, leaning forward in his seat and brushing a hand down Evan’s curls again. “Come on, baby. Wake up for me.” 

Evan groans again, wincing this time, and his eyes ease open, floating around the room briefly before his gaze finally falls on Tommy. The older man gulps down the rush of emotion that floods across his chest, staring back at Evan. Half of him is grateful to see his husband’s eyes open again, while the other half of him feels the weight of the day at the sight of missed spots of dried blood around Evan’s nostrils.

“Happened?” Evan rasps. 

“Placental abruption,” Tommy answers gruffly. “DIC.” 

Evan’s eyes widen, and he tries to sit up, but Tommy nudges him back down with both hands. 

“She’s okay,” Tommy tells him. He turns his head toward the space near the end of the bed on the side he’s on. The clear bassinet is settled there, and Ellery is fast asleep under blue light therapy. 

“She’s-..” Evan’s voice is tight, higher than normal. “She’s?” 

Tommy nods as he moves to the bassinet and picks Ellery up. He moves back toward the bed after a moment and turns toward Evan, perching on the edge of the bed. 

“She’s perfectly fine. Great apgar scores. She’s already had a bottle and a diaper change,” he explains. 

Evan nods, blinking away tears as he looks back down at their daughter. He lifts a hand up toward the blanket and rests it on Ellery’s chest, tracing his index finger over all of hers. Her light brown hair already has some semblance of curl to it. She makes a quiet coo in her sleep, and Evan looks up at Tommy. 

“C-can I..?” 

Tommy glances up at him skeptically, considers the question. He reaches for the call button instead. 

“Once Dr. Lincoln says you can,” he answers. Evan nods, and a minute later, a nurse enters the room, followed quickly by Dr. Lincoln. 

“Evan,” she says cheerfully, though clearly subdued. “Glad to see you back with us. Mind if we check you over a little bit?” 

“As long as I can have my baby after,” he replies. 

Dr. Lincoln smiles at him. “Let’s get you checked over and then see about that.” 

While Evan doesn’t love her answer, he doesn’t argue. Tommy watches all of them as they check Evan’s vitals and reflexes. When they’re finished, Dr. Lincoln steps back. 

“Well, I’m inclined to say yes,” she tells them. “But with the caveat that dad stays nearby. You’re probably going to feel weak for a while, so don’t overdo it. This is just day one of a lifetime.” 

Evan nods before turning back to Tommy. He glances up at Dr. Lincoln, and she nods at the pilot. Although mildly apprehensive, Tommy shifts forward, adjusting Ellery around and settling her into Evan’s waiting arms as Dr. Lincoln settles an extra pillow in Evan’s lap to help with any fatigue in his arms. Evan smiles gratefully at her before turning his full attention on Ellery. 

“Hi, baby girl,” he murmurs to her. She wiggles in his arms and sighs, and his heart clenches. He looks up at Tommy and his husband stares back at him as he reaches up and brushes his thumb over Evan’s cheek. 

“She’s been waiting for you,” Tommy tells him. Quietly, Dr. Lincoln and the nurse exit the room, letting them have their time together as a family. 

“I love you, Ellery Rae Kinard,” Evan whispers, lifting her up and kissing her forehead. Tommy keeps his hands close beneath Evan’s arms, ready to take on the weight if Evan needs, but he manages. He settles Ellery back against the pillow a few moments later, and looks up at Tommy once more. “She’s here.” 

Tommy nods, leaning in and pecking Evan softly. Evan kisses him back, just as quick and lightly, before they separate and turn their attention back to their daughter. 

“Yeah,” Tommy whispers back. “She is.” 

[crazysnor1ax]

I can FINALLY show off my design for Callie in my Defeated AU! Meet Defeated Callie, or Titless Callie lmao

Text in first image is from this song

AU lore undercut (which you can also find on her Artfight page):

The premise is, more-or-less, exactly what it sounds like: the story follows the events of Splatoon 2 after Agent 4 is killed by Callie in Hero Mode's final boss fight, and Agent 8 is successfully blended during Octo Expansion. After successfully killing Agent 4, both sides retreat; Marie, hopeless on her own, flees to grieve Agent 4 and losing Callie again, and DJ Octavio and Callie flee to continue preparations to take back Inkopolis. Not long after this does Octavio decide he wants to make the effects of the Hypnoshades more permanent. What this results in is Callie undergoing a procedure that completely alters her memories and perception of the NSS. Her memories are tampered with to make her believe she's an octoling who fought her way to being Octavio's number two. To her, there never was an Agent 1, or a pop star in Inkopolis named Callie. Octavio also figured he could put Callie's agent skills and physical prowess to use, too; what this resulted in is, during the same procedure, Callie being turned into a living bioweapon. Her strength was increased tenfold, to the point where she can pick up and throw a car if she wants to. Her knowledge of how to wield a weapon is honed and perfected. She essentially becomes a walking Great Octoweapon. Her physical appearance and genetics are altered too: her tentacles, mask, and beak are changed to that of an Octoling's, and she's given top surgery and tattoos. For fun. Callie's personality is drastically different after this procedure. She is cruel. She's stern, wild, and dead-set on taking back Inkopolis. Fragments of her original personality remain, but they're twisted into something new and almost unrecognizable (for example, her hyper, energetic self translates into Defeated Callie being loud, boisterous, stubborn, and sometimes violent). After Agent 8's defeat, Tartar inserts itself into Agent 3, taking complete control of her body and using her as a vessel to make movement and world-destroying preparations much easier (in this AU, Tartar is the sludge on the telephone, not the telephone itself). Important information for the plot I'm going to explain right now: After her procedure, Callie and Octavio begin to get into disagreements about how preparations are going. Octavio is focused on tuning and improving the Great Octoweapons, but Callie thinks focusing on building up the army itself would save a lot of time and be more efficient. This disagreement gets so heated that eventually Callie...overthrows Octavio and makes herself leader of the Octarian Army.

Not long after this does Callie meet Tartar. Realizing they both have the same goal of messing with Inkopolis, they team up-Callie helping Tartar with its machines and weaponry, and Tartar assisting Callie with building her army. It doesn't take long for Callie to find out that Tartar has been stealing and sanitizing Octarians under her nose and wants to kill everyone in Inkopolis (she had only wanted to overtake it and "put inklings in their place"). She immediately breaks the deal they had, making Tartar vow to kill her, too. Callie is now set on stopping Tartar's plan, but realizes she can't do it without help. Not without the help of a familiar, grey-tentacled inkling. She goes to Marie, hesitantly asking for an alliance. Normally she would never stoop so low as to ask an inkling for help, but Tartar's plan threatens both of them. Marie is horrified at what the Octarians have done to Callie and how different she is, but she shoves it down and agrees to help, believing that, maybe, she can figure out how to reverse what's happened to her. From here, they work together to research, plan, and train to stop Tartar. They even enlist Pearl and Marina along the way, who have much more knowledge on the Deepsea Metro than either of them. As time progresses Callie begins to realize that Marie is having some kind of strange effect on her. She grows affectionate for her in a way that she hasn't ever been with anyone else. She starts to become familiar in a way that isn't simply recognizing her face. Thoughts seem to enter her head that aren't hers, and fake, dreamlike memories come to her of a version of herself that is so unrealistic. Perhaps most concerning is the fact that her body begins to feel so, so incorrect, and when she looks in the mirror she doesn't quite recognize herself sometimes.

[medievalharlot]

An Eventful Evening 彡 Geta x f!reader x Caracalla

find my masterlist here!

Pairing: Geta x f!reader x Caracalla

Synopsis: You finally give into them, so they reward you by teaching you how to please an emperor

Wordcount: 2,7k

Tags: Smut 18+ minors DNI, threesome, oral (both m and f receiving), implied breeding kink, degrading kink, praise kink, fingering, male masturbation, hint of deepthroathing, cuckolding (?), dirty talk, nipple play, Caracalla has mommy issues its canon

A/N: The long awaited smut! I have decided to make it a little serie since y’all love it so much. Decided to make Geta and Calla a bit of polar opposites. I love pathetic mommy’s boy Calla and dom teasing Geta sm. If you wished to get tagged in the next part please join the taglist here!

While sitting at your vanity desk, you let your maid brush your hair, in your hands you nervously play with the coral bracelet that Geta had gifted you a while back. The night air swept through the room, making the silk curtains dance ever so slightly. It was a calm night, the calmest night since you had gotten to Rome so far. Usually, you could hear a banquet from one of the senators, one of the emperors’ orgies or a mewling cat on the streets. But not tonight. It was eerily quiet on Palantine Hill. You had promised the twins you would join them for dinner and you knew where that was going to lead. You wanted to make sure you looked presentable and to their liking. Since noon you had been busy. Your maid, Alba, knew exactly what the two emperor’s would like. She had soaked you in donkey milk bath, scrubbing you squeaky clean. Then she insisted on rubbing beeswax with saffron on your skin. Alba knew exactly what she was doing. Deep down you had no idea what to expect. Of course, you knew how everything worked. You just had never done it.

“You will make a fine empress, my lady.” Alba spoke as she applied some rouge on your cheeks. You looked at yourself in the mirror. She had applied some paste to make your skin more even, erasing any blemish you might have. You didn’t look like yourself, but if this is what the twins would want you to look like you were going to have to get used to it.

“I am no empress yet, Alba.” You nervously roll the beads of red coral between your fingers. “What if I am not to their liking? They will throw me away like a used toy.” You couldn’t help but confess your worries to her.

“They would not have vouched for your attention this long if they do not want to keep you around.” Alba helps you into your gown. It was a sheer silken stola that had a slight purple tint to it and gold trimmings. Your nipples harden because of the cold air, perking through the sheer fabric. You had decided to keep your hair down, an intimate gesture. Despite the simple look, you thought you looked beautiful.

Alba smiles at you. “Trust me, my lady, they seem to be fond of you.” She continued to brush your hair, letting the shiny locks fall into her caring hands. “They have not been interested in a noble lady before, they must intend to marry you.”

The thought was exciting to you. To be the empress of the greatess nation on the planet. Not only that, you would have both the emperors’ attention and love. It also made you nervous, you grew up on the country side. How would you manage to actually survive in a city like Rome for the rest of your life. Surely, there were people here that would want you dead. It was a threat you rarely faced back home.

Home. You did miss home a lot. Your family, the animals and most definitely the peace and quiet. Almost every night in Syracuse was as quiet as this night in Rome. But Rome was your new home now, you knew the emperors would not let you leave after tonight. Not that you minded, you came to enjoy the idea of living with them over time. Besides, Clemens would come to the city soon. You would have your family close again.

A knock on the door made both of you turn your head. It was soldier. He had told you the twins were ready to receive you. You inhale and exhale deeply, pushing down your nerves. After bidding Alba farewell you followed the soldier. Alba had given you a sympethetic look as you left, She knew your faith, as did you.

The soldier announces your name and titles as you entered their chambers. You took a good look around. The room was twice as big as your own. The dining table was already filled with all sorts of food. You followed the marble pillars in the room to a bed. They were making you have dinner in one of their bedrooms.

“Please have a seat, my lady.” Geta’s voice made you flinch. Caracalla was already seated at the table, slouched in his seat. He did not say a word, biting the nail of his thumb as he watched you. Geta offers his hand for you to take, leading you to your seat. He was at the head of the table, Caracalla was across from you. “I hope the food is to your liking, it would be a waste to throw it all away because of your lack of appetite.” There was a certain threat in his voice. They did not want you to wither away as you have been these last few weeks.

“The food looks divine, Ceres has truly given us her blessing this year.” You smile politely while grabbing a fig. The juice was dripping down your chin after you bit into the ripe fruit.

Caracalla had been watching you the entire time. First just your face, then he noticed your gown. Without any shame he had been staring at your chest, then back at your face, and then your chest again. Still, not a word came out of his mouth.

“I assume your brother has received our invite?” Geta spoke again, his voice echoed through the room. “You see, our citizens get rewarded if they are compliant, my lady.” A grin spreads onto his features. Suddenly, Caracalla was watching his brother. Geta gets up to walk to the side of the bed, he never was a patient man. “Come.” He basically commands you.

“But your majesty, the food-”

“I said come.” His tone was harsher. There was no room for debate. You get up, your hands folded infront of you as you walk to Geta. Like a cat, Caracalla maneuvered around you as he followed you to the bed.

“That wasn’t that hard, now was it.” He reached out to touch your body, his hand landing on your hips. It trailed up to your breast, brushing softly over your nipple. Geta watches your reaction like a predator watching its prey. “You have been so good to me, to Caracalla. Haven’t you?” He whispers as his thumb circled over your hard nipple, he got a small moan in return. You could feel the heat rise between your legs.

You look around, trying to find Caracalla. He had managed to sit down on the bed without you noticing. There was a big smile on his face as he watches his brother take what he wanted to have for weeks now, the look on his face mirroring that of when he was watching the games in the Colosseum.

After brushing over your nipple one more time, Geta’s hand travelled up to wrap around your neck. He wasn’t squeezing your throat hard, it was probably to test your reaction. When he noticed you did not protest he moved to slip his fingers under the straps of your stola. Gently, he pushes them off your shoulders, making the gown pool around your ankles. The sight alone of you, bare, in front of him made his loins stir.

There you stood, naked. The cold night air hit your skin, making you shiver. Geta’s smile only grew when he finally got see what he had been dreaming about all this time. He places a finger under your chin, making you look up him. “You have been hiding this beauty under those clothes all this time.” Geta brushed his thumb over your bottom lip, moving his hand to cup your cheek. “You want this, don’t you?” He was coaxing the right answer out of you.

You couldn’t even speak, your desire clouding your moan. Not trusting your voice to do the talking, you just merely nodded. In return you got a hum of approval from Geta. “Let me show you how to please your emperor.” He turned to Caracalla, who was still sitting in silence on the bed.

Geta leads you to the bed and within the blink of an eye, Caracalla was all over you. His lips were attached to your breast, his hands softly kneeding the other. He sucked them like a man dying of thirst. ”You are so divine, my love. The Gods should hide in shame because of your beauty.” He muttered between his kisses.

You lean back against Geta’s firm chest, who was drinking up every sound you made. His large hands find your thighs, slowly spreading them for his brother. Caracalla latched off your breast and smiled at the sight of your wet cunt. He couldn’t help himself as he lowered himself between your thighs, leaving a trail of kisses on your stomach. “So beautiful.” He spoke before diving between your legs, lapping at your core.

You couldn’t control the moans that left your lips. With the way Caracalla was eating you out and the way he was looking up at you, you felt like you were up in the clouds with the Gods. “You like that don’t you? Not so innocent now hmm?” Geta started to whisper all sorts of filth in your ear. “Can’t wait to fuck you pregnant, would you like that my lady?” You could feel his hardness against your lower back, he was getting off on watching his brother eat you out.

“Yea — ah, Yes please.” You moan as Caracalla sticks two fingers into your sopping cunt, he was going to have to prepare your virgin hole to take either one of them. He slowly pumps them into you as you started whining. “You sound almost like a whore, my love. Are you sure that we are you are not a whore?” Geta bit your earlobe as he continued to speak depravities into your ear. “Well?”

“No! Y-You’re my first.” You couldn’t even think straight any more. This was unlike anything you had ever felt before. Of course you had tried pleasuring yourself, but in the fear of your father finding out you always stopped your attempts before you got anywhere. This was all extremely overwhelming.

Caracalla removes his mouth from your core. He sucks on your breast again, his fingers still pumping into you. It leaves you feeling needy so you turn to look at Geta. He smiled, kissing your cheek. “Is the lady needy?” He says as his hand travels to your clit, his finger softly rubbing the sensetive bud while his brother still had his fingers inside you.

It was all a bit too much. They’re hands were everywhere, turning you into a moaning mess. The combination of Caracalla moaning sweet nothingness’ and Geta whispering absolute filth into your ear made your head do summersaults.

With the way you were clenching around his fingers Caracalla knew you were going to orgasm soon. He dove between your legs again. “Wanna taste you cum.” He mumbles, pushing Geta’s hands away so he could suck on your clit again.

Geta was smirked, you could feel it against your ear. “You’re gonna cum already? Go on, cum on your emperor’s tongue.” His hands strays upwards to play with your tits. Just as you were about to cum, Geta kissed you, swallowing up all your soft moans. Your orgasm washed over you, painting Caracalla’s tongue with your juices.

You laid against Geta’s chest for a moment, catching your breath. Caracalla gave your pussy another kiss before sitting up straight and giggling at your blissful face. “We should have that painted, hang it up for the senate to see.” He grins as he sits on his knees, his cock painfully hard through his blue robes.

“Such a good girl.” Geta wiped his spit of your lips. “We have been awfully generous, how about you return the favor, hmm sweetheart?” He nodded toward Caracalla.

“I don’t— I’ve never done that before.” You stumble over your words after you understand what he was getting at.

“Don’t worry, I told you I would teach you wouldn’t I?” He said, gently placing a hand on the beak of your head and pushing it down. You followed his lead, hovering your face above Caracalla’s dick. It was larger than you expected, bright red and standing proud.

“Spit.” He told you. You opened your mouth and let the spit fall onto Caracalla’s cock. “Now give it a few pumps.” Like a dog you obeyed his command, wrapping your hand around his member. It felt heavy in your hands. “And now you suck it like the good little whore you are.” Geta pushed your head a little again.

You followed his lead once more, wrapping your lips around the tip. Caracalla threw his head slightly back at the feeling of your warm lips. He replaces Geta’s hands on your head, burrying his hands into your hair. “You gotta—” He helps you bop you head on a comfortable pace. “Just like that, so pretty. Taking me so well.”

You could feel Geta move around on the bed, you nearly choked on Caracalla’s dick when you felt Geta drag his tip along your wet slit. Instictively, you moved your hips back. Geta clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Tch, you would like that wouldn’t you? Want me to fuck you full of cum.” He collected your slick with his dick, giving himself a few strokes before he sat down next to his brother.

“Such a nasty girl. Not tonight tho. Wouldn’t want to upset Juno by giving you my child before we are wed.” Geta knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted you to crave this as much as he craved you. And as far as he could tell from the way your pussy was drooling for him, it was working.

“Can you stop it. She is supposed to be paying attention to me.” Caracalla sneered at his brother, giving your head a harder push. He tried his luck, pushing your head all the way down so your nose touched his red hair. When he noticed you struggling he quickly let you go.

“As long as you don’t break her, she isn’t one of your whores.” Geta retorted, jacking off to the sight of you sucking dick. The tears in your eyes only spurring him on more

Carcalla was a little gentler, but his grip on your hair was still rough. The sounds he made went from groans to desperate whines and moans. Once again, he melted under your touch. He was petting your head, mumbling incoherent sentences. His cock hit the back of your throat when he started bucking his hips.

“Can I cum in your mouth? Please?” Geta had never seen Caracalla ask, but something in you brought that side out of him. It was beautifull display, watching his future empress naked on all fours sucking cock. He didn’t care that it was his brothers’.

Before you could even try to reply, Caracalla pushed your head down again. With a breathy moan he came in your mouth, shooting rope after rope of hot seed into your throat. He let you stay there for a moment, before letting you go.

When your mouth popped off, Geta quickly moved his finger under your chin. “Not yet. Just hold it in there a little longer.” He kneels, furiously pumping his cock infront of your lips. “Open up sweetheart.” With his fingers he pried open your mouth, shooting his cum into your mouth aswell.

He sits down in front of you when he was done, both their seed mixed in your mouth. Geta placed a hand on your throat. “Now swallow.” He could feel both their loads get swallowed, a smirk on his face as he watched.

Gently, Caracalla crawls to kiss you everywhere. Your neck, your cheek, your lips. “You’re so good to me. So sweet.” He mumbles as his hands kneed at your flesh again. Like a needy child he pulls you close to lay with him in the bed, revelling in your warmth. He latched onto one of your nipples again, sucking it softly. Though this time it seemed he did it for comfort, not as a sexual act.

Geta sits next to you. He looks at you, a gentle look on his face. “Are you alright?” He asks, cupping your cheek.

“I am fine.” You smile, your voice was a bit hoarse. “That was fun.”

He kisses your forehead, also laying down besides you. He leans in close, his hands around your waist. “Can’t wait to pump you full of my children, my empress.”

taglist: @Robinbuckleywife , @punkrockmlchael , @yearsbecomingcool , @samslvrgirl , @doves1120 , @frensiswithnogun , @fandomgirl1999 , @fariecherry , @eddiesguitarskills , @nicestgirlonline , @jeangeniex , @happysparklingshadows , @emxxblog , @littlemissholy , @duckyhowls

[ihaznoclue]

Nicole demara, Anby demara, and Nekomiya mana with a boyfriend who's clumsy and kinda shy or is hyperactive. Except when it'd comes either fighting or keeping his girlfriend safe. Them he's weirdly hyper competent and dangerously fast. The thing is, he doesn't really notice that he switches up like that and thinks it's normal

Pairings -> Nicole Demara x Male Reader, Anby Demara x Male Reader, Nekomiya Mana x Male Reader

Warnings -> None

Note -> Reader is very clumsy and very hyperactive though except when it comes to fighting or keeping his girlfriend safe

Genre -> Fluff

NICOLE DEMARA

Nicole low-key thougt you were just another chaotic himbo when she met you, literally tripping over nothing or just your own feet, getting stuck somewhere or calling someone by someone elses name

Your hyperactive matches her energy in the most worse and best ways possible

You talk too fast, interrupt your own thoughts out loud and somehow manage to start three conversation at once if you were hyper enough

She has multiple videos of you attempting to do a sick parkour move in between some park playground which ends up faceplanting on your face

They're basically her favourite thing to laugh at

BUt for the first time when you guys were in a hollow, you dropped into a combat stance which shocked Nicole a bit

You took out three enemies with movements so fast it made Anby and Nicole do a double take, even Billy was shocked

After that, you cheerily asked Nicole is she wanted to grab bublle tea, as you were completely unaware that you just went into fill anime protagonist mode

Nicole lives for this now as she calls you her 'adorable disaster'

ANBY DEMARA

Anby just watches you stumble over your own feet again and sighs and calmly says 'Your awareness is concerning me'

You bounce around the room, knocking into furniture and rambling about the hollow outbreak you read about

Not noticing you just kicked over her burger, you were.. dead..

She also finds your energy.. exhausting but somehow comforting to her

You're the only one who gets to drag her out of her head sometimes

Even the first time she your 'combat switch mode' it was during a mission where a Ethereal lunged at her

You basically teleported, one second you were fumbling over a thing and the next you'd slashed the ethereal with your weapon in two

Anby stood there for a while, trying to process what just happened in front of her

Then you went back to talking about your snacks and how excited you were to eat them once your done

Anby's fascinated to say the least and slightly unnerved

NEKOMIYA MANA

Nekomiya finds you hilarious, you;re the only person she met who managed to get stuck inside a trash can while chasing a butterfly

You two are pure chaos together, she throws things at you to see if you'll drop them

She thought you were a funny little gremlin guy with too much energy with nothing stopping you at first

And then she changed her option as you saw a criminal guy threatening her during a hollow raid mission

You were dead silent, slipping in front of her and too the enemy down

Then when you turned around with your usual goofy grin and said to her "Did you see that flip I did earlier? I think I bruised my elbow"

Then she realized you had no clue how terrifyingly good you were at switching moods

Like a cat with two mood, one knocking cup off the table or two killing with your claws

She loves that you're not aware of your power you hold but it means you're protecting her naturally

Its just instinct

-A<3

[galaxy-fleur]

✦ Strange Happenings ✦

Pairing: RE4 Albert Wesker/oc Jordan Manalang (belongs to @feng-shui71!).

Summary: Once the heat of battle has faded, cold reality and old feelings unresolved take its place. Stuck between her own unraveling emotions and a crushing sense of obligation, Jordan is struggling to do the right thing once and for all. (Intended as a direct continuation to this comic right here!)

Notes: It's finally done! A gift to @feng-shui71 that was supposed to go along with my DTIS entry, but I'm sharing it as a separate thing entirely. I really hope I did this messy pair justice. Written mostly from Jordan's pov, but some small glimpses into Wesker's head are still present. Additional notes at the end of the piece!

Word count: ~ 6.5k words (insane, I know).

Credits: dividers by @/saradika-graphics, additional art in the header belongs to @feng-shui71 .

Jordan's breaths came out as uneven, short puffs of air as she stared down at the now defeated creature that must have been a normal human once upon a time. Her heart was racing wildly in her chest, each dull thump echoing in her temples with its intensity, her hands quivering around her reliable handgun in a manner that was utterly atypical for her usual composure on the field.

Fear wasn't the cause of her shaken state, however. No, the dead, huge monstrosity of a man had absolutely nothing to do with her unraveling state of mind. In fact, it was completely insignificant. Although it was dangerous. Used to be, at least.

She was fully aware that it was the man standing beside her that was the true cause of her non-fading agitation.

There wasn't anything she could say once the fight was over. What was she supposed to do now, exactly? Seeing Wesker alive and well - and apparently fully willing to pretend like nothing had ever even happened - was too much for her already frazzled mind to handle.

Like everything was normal and just how it was before.

This was planned to be a mission with very few surprising obstacles to deal with. Come in, track and rescue the president's daughter alongside Leon Kennedy, and get to the extraction point. No extra distractions or feelings involved.

But instead, they discovered an utterly deranged mess of insane cultists, mind-controlling parasites, and unwelcome ghosts from the past who had their own unknown objectives to accomplish in this strange place.

To be honest, she wasn't sure how she felt about fighting alongside him again, even if it was technically accidental. She could have sworn he moved just a tad bit quicker than would be natural to the human eye. However, she dismissed her observations on some supposed training he had received during these past six years. After all, she was a much better opponent now as well, despite her age.

Even if the thought of him honing his skills for what she could only assume was an immoral purpose made her feel queasy.

She wanted to feel angry. No, she did feel angry. She just wished her hands wouldn't tremble so furiously. She wished she could look as if she didn't care. Like he did. Even if it hurt to see.

"...I didn't need your help," she finally breaks the charged silence with a quiet angry mutter, lowering her handgun at last as she turns away to pick up some valuables she landed her eyes on prior. Somehow, this silence between them felt so much more oppressive than the loud bangs and grunts of battle before it.

...What the hell was she doing, anyway? She should probably be trying to apprehend him. Catch him by surprise and do her absolute damnest to get the upper hand, even if it would be a losing battle. That would be the right thing to do. She didn't think he was here for a good reason. A thought that felt extremely bitter in her mouth.

Nonetheless, her urge to get away from him triumphs over her moral compass for whatever reason.

Wesker pressed the palm of his hand to his chest, feigning offense, although he appeared more amused than anything else. It was honestly a bit humiliating. As if he didn't value her feelings at all. Either way, she didn't give him the satisfaction of seeing the tense look painted across face, instead crouching down to pick up some scattered note laying on the floor. However, she was not afforded the luxury of actually reading it.

"Is that all you have to say to me after all this time, dear?" His smooth voice hit her ears with a seductive tilt, yet it also carried a distinct sharpness to it, too. As if he had any right to be upset with her for anything. Then again, he always had a habit of getting on people's nerves. Especifically on hers. "You certainly looked like you needed the help."

She straightened herself and tightened her hold on her handgun as she heard him take a few measured steps closer to her. When she whirled to face him, she found him looking back at her, a bit too close for comfort, and apparently studying her like you would an ant in a glass jar. There was no doubt that her shoulders were too stiff to seem composed. And she wasn't composed. She never truly was, was she? It was borderline cruel.

Almost as a visual mockery of it all, his completely laid-back posture challenged her to do something she probably wouldn't do, even if she should.

A part of her wished she could have a look into that brain of his right now. She would have liked to say she would use such an opportunity to fish out some vital intel... but, instead, she really just wanted to know if he cared at all.

"I wouldn't be distracted in the first place, if it wasn't for you showing up."

In addition to being irrelevant, her defense was not very strong, either. But it was a familiar one. In some ways, this tugged at her heart, too.

...They would always bicker like this back in the day.

Was she trembling because of him or the adrenaline of the fight? When Wesker was only a few feet away from her, he ceased his approach. His gaze moved up and down for a moment before he spoke.

"...You look like you've seen better days," he said bluntly, raising a hand and touching her cheek before she could tear herself away. The touch of his rough palm was firm enough to indicate that he was still angry, but gentle enough to show there was something else there.

Anyway, that's what her stupid heart whispered to her, frustratingly so.

Jordan wasn't sure whether she wanted to punch him square in the jaw right then and there, kiss him to shut him up for good, or do anything in between. His touch still did something to her in spite of everything, whether it was her genuine mourning for him for all these years, some lingering feelings of affection, or something else entirely. And she knew that he knew so, too.

It was not fair.

But she wouldn't allow him get close to her. This time, it was not going to work for him. So, without looking him in the eyes, she grabbed at his wrist and ripped it from her face. Some part of her was grateful that he was still wearing those shades of his for whatever reason. She was unsure about her capacity to look him in the eyes right now.

But all her angry action really did was simply make Wesker smile at her knowingly. The real truth was that he almost craved this. To be the center of her attention once again, even if it was her being furious with him. Still, he swiftly adjusted his expression to one of coolness and nonchalance, his gaze fixed on her despite her refusal to reciprocate the gesture. He was always better than her at keeping his emotions in check. That's what he wanted to think, anyway. Oh, he fully understood that she was angry with him, enraged even, and he enjoyed it.

"No thanks to you," she retorted dryly, her voice tight and guarded. She was now finally looking up at him, her dark eyes intense and filled with a mixture of anger, frustration, and something else that she desperately tried to repress. "You did not answer my question. What the hell are you even doing here?"

He didn't respond to her inquiry right away, instead allowing a brief quiet to settle between them.

"...That's a bit of a complicated question to answer, Jords," he chuckled at last, the words almost mocking with the use of that nickname. He was obviously not planning on giving out any useful information to her at all. It seemed as though he had only come to toy with her or something.

Her grip on his wrist tightened slightly, her jaw clenching. Of course he wouldn't tell her. Most likely, the answer wasn't even remotely positive. Old frustrations and hurt were now steadily bubbling up in her chest like a boiling cauldron, threatening to overflow and scald them both at any moment.

How long did he spend lying to her face in this way? Was it from the start? Did he show her anything sincere in the years of that life they've built together?

"Save the bullshit. I know you're up to something," she said gruffly. She had a fairly good understanding of him. Too good. At least that's what she hoped to believe. Now, however, she did not know what to believe. So, her focus was on the practicalities. That was easier. "Who do you work for?"

With her free hand raised to put the handgun's barrel right to his forehead, she suddenly yanked him closer in the hopes of catching him off-guard. Her eyes narrowed as she studied him. This time, she will not hesitate or fold. She will not.

Because what will it mean for her if she does...?

Wesker's eyebrows raised just slightly in response to her hasty actions, the only sign of his potential surprise, but he still appeared infuriatingly unconcerned about the potential danger she entailed. He even appeared to be almost impressed. And maybe a little aroused, but he was certainly covering that one up well.

It was almost as if she was pointing a plastic toy-gun at him, rather than a real, fully loaded firearm that could take his life with a single movement of her finger.

She was obviously unaware that he could easily break free from her hold in less than a second if he so desired, but he knowingly didn't. It was almost like he was tempting her to do something, anything. Instead of raising his hands in surrender or even just finally taking her seriously, he simply smirked, revealing his canines, and looked down at her with a tiny tilt of his brow.

...Were his teeth always so sharp-looking-?

"Still as feisty as ever I see," he remarked, his voice low and even. Much to her startlement, he boldly took a step closer to her, his body almost crowding her in now. "Always wanting to get your way. But I'll humor you, just this once."

Her heart thudded loudly in her chest as her jaw tightened further. He shifted his attention up to the handgun pressed to his head.

She knew Albert was self-assured, but surely even he was conscious of his own mortality, right?

"What are you-" she started, unable to hide the bewilderment in her tone, but he cut her off before she could even utter her question.

"-You know you won't pull the trigger," he said, now fully serious. Before she could add anything else, he visibly pressed his head further into the barrel of her handgun, almost daring her to do it. "You never could."

It was a little frustrating how certain he was in his remark. Then again, his confidence has always been a huge source of annoyance to her. But things felt... different now. He was more assured, more factual. It was almost as if he was stating the most apparent and ultimate truth to her. Like saying that the sky is blue.

But, as far as she was concerned, this was not a simple black-and-white issue.

"You don't know that," she growled, but even she didn't sound so sure anymore. She swallowed heavily, straightening up. She didn't like the way their physical closeness was affecting her. Not one bit. She had no desire to be impacted by him in this way.

Not anymore.

She tightened her hold on his wrist once more and forced him back into the closest stone wall, pushing him up against it with her body. Wesker merely let out another soft, amused chuckle as his back hit the wall, the sound of it sending an unwanted shiver down her spine. Even though the handgun was still pushed right against his forehead, her eyes betrayed her distress plain for him to behold.

The longer he displayed his indifference, the more she cracked.

"-I hate you."

Her voice was low and gruff, those three words coming out as a sharp hiss. While she did wish she could be as detached as he was, there was something liberating in finally getting to express all these festering emotions she pushed down for all these years. Even if it put her in a bad situation.

Nevertheless, she could still see his enjoyment, the manner in which his eyes unabashedly traversed her figure up and down, conveying more than any verbal response could articulate. He didn't speak, simply allowing her to hold him against the wall with no attempts to push back against her. Yet. Somehow, he still seemed amused despite his situation, as though he enjoyed being pinned by her in this way.

"...Do you?" He asked. His tone was both challenging and almost... teasing. "Because there was a time when you loved me."

Her chest ached from his words in a way that no physical injury could ever match.

She did love him, once.

Profoundly.

With every atom of her goddamn being.

And he destroyed it all in a single night.

She grit her teeth so hard that she thought she could feel them chipping. This close, she could smell his subtle cologne - something woodsy and tangy in a way that would make her head spin if she was to get too close - a familiar scent she'd once found intoxicating. Comforting.

But at this point, it was only making her feel nauseous.

"Don't you fucking dare-" she started, but got cut off by her own shaky breath. One that sounded more like a gasp. Her hands began to tremble again. She was so torn between anger, grief, and old feelings alike. It was time for her to pull the trigger. He was not the man she thought he was, possibly never was. He must be here for something equally twisted as it was back in that cursed mansion. Or worse. If not for her own sake, she must do it for those innocent lives that will undoubtedly be impacted by his actions here. But instead, what came out of her was:"You lied!"

She didn't like how loud and hoarse it came out. Though she found it increasingly hard to care.

"...Sometimes we must tell a lie for the greater good. You know, I thought you were smart enough to understand such things by now... But you still cling to the first explanation there is, I see. Pity, I'd say."

Oh that set her off.

"You lied, and you betrayed me. You betrayed all of us, you backstabbing, lying- Do you have any idea what I felt-" she broke herself off again, her breathing heavy, yet her lungs feeling painfully empty no matter how much air she took in. Now there was too much to say, too many emotions filling up her mind, each one demanding to be thrown back in his face. She was unraveling at the seams.

Wesker's smile finally diminished somewhat in response. Just a smidge, just the tiniest of changes, but noticeable regardless. For a moment, he almost looked... a bit guilty. But that expression disappeared in a flash, replaced by one of indifference. He's always been good at hiding his feelings.

But he also recognized that she was technically correct. It was true that he lied. He did betray her. He did leave her behind.

However, he had no regrets about it.

"I did what I had to do," he said, his voice cool and steady. Still, there was a small hint of remorse carefully threaded through his words, albeit it was twisted. "It was necessary. You wouldn't understand."

Oh, he was well aware of her anger and hurt. But he was also well aware that she didn't understand. She simply could not understand his rationale even if he tried. It was very probable that she'd never understand, even if he'd like to believe otherwise.

Still, from Jordan's point of view, his response didn't give him any more grace, if any.

"How convenient for you," she spat out, words feeling like venom on her tongue, painful and bitter. "But you're right. I won't understand. I will never understand how you 'had' to stab us in the back and leave our partners to be torn apart and die like your 'little piggies'. I will never understand you tearing our family apart with your own bloodied hands."

"...You never could," he repeated, his gaze roaming over her face, taking in every little aspect of her rage. "You were always too naive for the truth. Too soft. That's why I kept you in the dark."

His words made her jaw clench. It didn't even sound like an insult this time around, but it still felt like one, anyways. She was not fond of being referred to as soft or naive. Her entire goddamn life was spent training to be anything but those things.

Yet here he was, using those exact words to mock her.

"Naive?" She snapped in disbelief, "I trusted you. Because I loved you. That's what you're supposed to do with people you love, with family! And you played me like a fool."

She pressed the handgun harder to his forehead, but she still didn't squeeze at the trigger. In fact, her finger wasn't even on the trigger now. Though, neither of them addressed this detail.

Wesker held her gaze, his expression unreadable. He didn't flinch, but his jaw clenched, his muscles tensing ever so slightly under her heated stare. "Yes... You did. And your trust meant a lot to me. Whether you believe that or not."

That didn't help at all.

"I loved you," she breathed out. Something she wanted to say with a snarl, but instead it sounded more like a broken plea. She wanted him to show her anything, any sign that he still cared, that he always cared. "And you lied to me. God knows for how long. Maybe from the very beginning. Hell, maybe none of it was real."

She shook her head, the words leaving the tip of her tongue before she could stop them. This had nothing to do with this. She should focus on getting information from him and apprehending him. Her fallen teammates wouldn't have wanted her to do this. And yet-

"You were the one fucking person I let in like that," she said, her voice dropping to a hoarse whisper, "And you stabbed me right in the back. Or, well, should I say 'shot me right in the face'? And don't even give me that 'I knew you'd survive it' bullshit."

Those final words were more bitter than anything else prior, reminding them both of the blood-stained memories that had tortured her ever since.

And when that was brought up, Wesker's face visibly darkened on the spot. Something that made her feel just a tiny bit of twisted victory in her chest, knowing she finally got to him, hit him where it hurts, maybe. He appeared angry with her, yes, yet there was something else going on, too. Regret? Perhaps. Guilt? Who the hell knows.

Her words did make his heart churn in his chest, even if he appeared to be almost completely unaffected on the surface. He knew he hurt her and he knew he betrayed her in the way that he probably wouldn't have forgiven, either. Even now, despite his own feelings on the matter, he could tell that she was sincerely and deeply hurt.

That was never truly his objective, ironic as it was.

"...You know it wasn't personal," he started, his voice low and measured. "It wasn't about you. It was bigger than us. Bigger than anything we could've had together."

He was still attempting to excuse it. Despite everything, he remained stubborn as ever in his beliefs. Indeed, that has consistently been his nature. He was battling to persuade himself that he made the correct decision. And that irritated her even more.

"You have to understand that-"

"-That makes it worse, you fucking idiot!"

Jordan cried out, interrupting him right in the middle of the sentence, throwing all attempts to appear unaffected out the window. For all these years, there had been far too much that had been simmering and decaying within her. She has exhausted herself so far beyond her limit by keeping it all inside under an iron lock. And his words weren't helping. Not at all.

Her face showed a combination of frustration, pain, and confusion. She was having a hard time understanding, comprehending what he was even saying, and why he thought it would somehow make her feel better about it all.

"I loved you," she repeated, her voice cracking with emotion, "And you threw it all away for... whatever secret bullshit you were chasing! 'Bigger than us' my ass! You know, I hope your children never learn how little they apparently mean to you."

Although hidden under the thick shades of his shades, the vertical pupils in Wesker's eyes narrowed at that, making him finally show a mixture of steadily simmering rage and his own frustration flashing across his sharp features. Oh, that one struck a nerve, she could tell. Well, good. The bastard deserved to feel shitty for once in his life.

Of course, Wesker knew she loved him, hell, he probably still loved her now, although that was a sentiment that remained unspoken. But the complexity of it all was beyond her comprehension. And he doubted she'd understand. Not yet. She was far too emotional, far too fiery, far too raw to truly understand right now.

He will help her to understand in time. But it was still... frustrating right now.

"It wasn't just some 'bullshit I was chasing'," he growled, his voice low and dangerous. "It was something bigger, something important."

"Oh yeah? Try me," Jordan snorted, the sound more angry than humorous. "Try and tell me what is more important than your own fucking family, Albert. I'd love to hear it."

The more she pushed, the more his own rage began to surface and the more defensive he became.

"You don't get it. You never could-" He was disappointed and angry. At her, for not understanding. At himself, for caring. As he pressed himself off the wall, she stumbled a few steps backwards, still pointing the handgun at him but predictably not doing a thing to properly threaten him. Somehow, it only frustrated him further. The answer was staring her right in the face, and she refused to acknowledge it due to her own stubbornness. "You see life too simply."

Jordan's eyes widened, her prior anger replaced by a sense of danger that radiated from him in waves. "Stand down-"

He completely disregarded her warning and simply kept moving forward, now being the one to crowd her in.

...Damn it, she forgot how big he was.

"You see everything in black and white. Good and bad. But the world doesn't work like that. It's about power. It's about winning. I did what I had to do to win. I had to make sacrifices. And you just happened to be one of them."

Her grip on the handgun began to slip, and her hand shook slightly.

"A sacrifice...?" She sputtered in pure disbelief, her voice a mix of shock and anger. Somehow, despite everything, that still came as a complete surprise to her. And not a good one. "Is that what I was to you? What, just another... pawn on your game or something? A sacrifice?"

She was still unable to comprehend what she was hearing in spite of everything that had transpired.

All those feelings they'd shared, all the countless precious moments they so carefully created together, big and small...

The pain in her voice was more clear than ever before. It was proving difficult for her to understand his words and reconcile the person she once loved with the man standing in front of her now.

He scoffed, seemingly only frustrated with her hurt response: "That's not what I said, Jordan. Stop putting words in my mouth and listen for once in your damn life."

With the handgun still aimed at his head, she lifted it a little.

"You left me," she repeated, "You left me there to die. And now you want me to listen to you? To understand why you 'had' to betray me? What, did you have to shoot me in the face, too?"

"That's not-"

Her rage and hurt were spilling over as she shook, refusing to let him finish. "Was it all just a lie then? Everything we had together. Was any of it real? Anything at all?"

Wesker's face went dark again. He was still standing there, close, and she could see the visible tension coiling in his muscles under his dress-shirt as he tried to hold himself back from whatever it was he wanted to do.

Perhaps from killing her.

She didn't know anymore.

But the truth was that, if words couldn't penetrate her thick skull, Wesker yearned to reach out and touch her, to grasp at her and make her understand via touch alone. He realized that it was not the appropriate moment for that, though. Not when she looked up at him with such rage and betrayal in her eyes.

She'd probably just punch him, anyways.

"It wasn't a lie," he said instead, the words forced out through gritted teeth. He was struggling, she thinks. "None of it was a lie. I did care. I still care. Why do you think I'm here exactly?"

He took another step forward, reaching out to touch her cheek again. His touch caused Jordan to recoil, as though it had burned her. However, she refused to distance herself or avert her gaze from him. Whether out of pride or something else.

"Don't," she whispered, her eyes pained, all previous fire long fizzled out and crumbling into ash now. "Don't fucking touch me. You don't get to touch me now."

She could sense herself shaking, though, even as she mouthed the words. Her feelings for him persisted, even now, despite all she was aware of. All she was not aware of. Even after all this time, even after everything he has done to her. She was utterly torn between anger and grief because of how she felt for this cursed man. She was angry at him, she hated him, yet she also wanted him. Equally intense was her want to reach out and touch him.

Despite the painful revelations she's faced in their last encounter, she mourned him in the years she believed he was dead. In a way a broken lover would. She mourned him in shame, in secret, unable to even share her grief with a single soul. Murderers and villains aren't mourned, after all. What would Chris think of her if she revealed just how much her heart has bled for Albert all these years? How would Jill feel? How would Barry feel?

She could only imagine the disgust that all the deceased S.T.A.R.S. felt for her from beyond their graves.

Her anguish was a concealed secret, repressed and relegated to the deepest corners of her soul. But, God, did it fester. Like a rotting wound, it gradually spread its repulsive decay over her body and soul, until it threatened to consume her whole.

However, she was too proud, too stubborn, and far too angry to concede.

So, she shook her head, attempting to remove his touch, but she remained there, trapped in place. She could sense the warmth of his skin against hers and the subtle pressure of his fingers on her cheek. So familiar yet so foreign now.

"...Why are you doing this?" She asked, her voice cracking, "Why are you tormenting me like this?"

Wesker's heart clenched as he watched the stormy emotions play out on her face so clear for him to see. Whether she believed it or not, he truly had no desire to do this to her, this wasn't the way he had wanted things to go. She had a habit of ruining his meticulously crafted plans, it seemed. Still, he'd forgive her every time.

However, he was also a man who enjoyed having full control. He was a man who always got what he wanted in the end. And he wanted her.

He drew nearer till their bodies were nearly touching. He silently observed the way she was reacting to him, the way she was resisting her own emotions. It was admirable how determined she was to stay strong, no matter the odds stacked against her. He's gotta give her that. He always liked that in her. That stubborn spirit of hers. Even if it caused him trouble, time and time again.

He knew perfectly well that it was wrong, of course. From her standpoint, that is.

It was cruel.

But he was unable to stop himself. He didn't want to.

So, he grasped her chin, tilting it up to ensure she met his gaze directly. She looked beautiful, even now, he thought to himself.

"Why am I doing this?" He echoed back to her, his voice softer now, almost apologetic. Almost. "Because I can't stop myself around you. Because I can't resist you. Because I need you. I always did. Against my better judgement."

His thumb swept over her lower lip as his fingers started to trace her jawline, refamiliarizing himself with the contours of her face he hadn't touched in so long. She couldn't help but shiver at the subtle touch.

Her resolve began to crumble. The way he was touching her and speaking to her was just... too much. She wished he would keep being that self-absorbed jerk to her. That would be easier to deal with than this. It was a bit ironic, how nothing he did would make her feel satisfied.

Still, her body dutifully responded to his touch. Her heart started to race, her breathing becoming shallow.

Everything about him right now felt too familiar: his words, touch, presence.

Too soothing.

Too right.

And so wrong.

"Albert..." she whispered. Her weak heart betrayed her, and she hated herself for it. Hated that she still reacted so well to his touch after all these years. "You can't... say things like that..."

Her words have completely lost all semblance of a protest to them. They were just a weak plea now. It was absolutely pitiful. She was pitiful.

"You can't just... you can't just come back into my life and... and act like we're fine. Like nothing ever happened between us."

But her willpower was weakening. He was pressing so close to her now that she could feel the warmth radiating off his body. Alive. Real. And she felt the growing want to lean in, to melt into his body as she always has, to feel his arms enveloping her, and to temporarily forget about everything else, even if for a single, blissful moment.

Now, though, she couldn't do that, could she? He stole that comfort from her. And she hated him for it.

Wesker was also able to see it. The way she was steadily weakening against him, the way her body responded to his touch. Not that she was even trying that hard to hide it now.

Finally, she was under his control. She always is, after a little bit of effort on his part, after all.

He leaned forward, the warmth of his breath ghosting over her skin.

"I can say whatever I want," he murmured, his other hand reaching out to rest on her hip, pulling her ever so slightly closer. "And I am aware that we're not fine. But I still want you."

He knew that, with this, he was torturing her mercilessly. But he was powerless to stop it. He has missed her, dear God, he has missed her more than he was willing to acknowledge, and this human weakness of his was seeping into his touch. He didn't want to let go of her after getting to feel her again.

Hid hand gripping her hip in such a way made her gasp lightly. She was steadily losing herself in his touch, his scent, him. She ought not to. But she was.

She did make an effort to put up a fight against it, to the best of her ability. She made an effort to stay angry and resentful, but his touch was breaking down her walls. It has always been this way. He was the only one who had ever seen this side of her. Beneath all of the bravado and carefully crafted independence, there lied a weaker, lonely woman who just wanted to be embraced as she was and soothed from all of her worries.

Because of that, she used to adore him wholeheartedly. Now it just felt humiliating.

"-Stop it," she gasped, her voice strained. "You can't just... you can't just come back and expect me to just... forgive you. Not after everything. I can't."

However, her free hand has grasped the collar of his shirt, her fingers squeezing the fabric with underlying urgency. It was a subtle indication that she was slipping. It thrilled him as much as tugged at his heart. Her other hand that was still holding onto the handgun was also slackening as it lowered slightly from his forehead. Although her mind was urging her to push him away, she wasn't doing so. She should do the right thing and take action. Chris would have made that decision. Jill would have made that decision. Barry would have made that decision. Even Rebecca would. For all the teammates who were killed so cruelly and unfairly. But despite everything that has happened, she still wanted his touch. Despite all the suffering and betrayal.

When she said her final, real words, her voice was nothing but a raspy whisper: "...I hate you. I hate what you did to me."

Finally, he had her exactly where he wanted her.

His own voice was somehow kind yet firm, and as he leaned in closer, his lips lightly brushed her cheek.

"Hate me or not, you still want me. I can tell. You can't resist me any more than I can resist you. We're two sides of the same coin, my dear." His hand tightened around her hip, indicating a possessive grip. "All those years apart, and look at us now... You could call it fate. A rather intriguing concept. What do you say?"

His lips were now steadily traveling down her jaw in quick, sickeningly soft kisses before she could say anything. Jordan was shaken, utterly speechless at the onslaught of sensations that were so subtle, they could almost be written off as figments of her imagination. A taste of something he knew she wanted.

He was quite cruel.

"You act like you can't stand the mere sight of me, and yet you're shaking in my arms. The way you're holding onto me... I think you know why."

Before he could go any farther however, he pulled away after giving her a single, almost tantalizing kiss on the corner of her lips.

She despised the way she reacted to him. She felt completely helpless now as her handgun lowered from his forehead against her will, no longer even pointed in his direction. She was utterly helpless to stop it. Or maybe she just didn't want to, and that was the ugliest truth of it all.

He was correct. Her hatred for him was overwhelming. But with just one push, hatred is readily able to slip into love, much as a pendulum swings back and forth. And right now, her hatred was being overtaken by an even more powerful emotion.Yearning.

With her eyes closed tightly and lips pressed together, she tried very hard to stop the sound that was steadily coming up her throat. A sound of need and longing.

She was fighting a vicious internal battle, using all her willpower to stiffle her desire. However, it was a futile struggle. In addition, she has already failed to act in the appropriate manner the very second she couldn't bring herself to pull the trigger. Maybe she was just not as good of a person as she thought she was.

Maybe none of it even mattered.

She has never been able to stop him from getting what he wants. He had her under his control, and he was very cognizant of it. It's like trying to escape out of a cobweb, only to get tangled up more the harder you try. It was hopeless. She was hopeless.

"...What do you want from me?" She asked, her voice hoarse, the words pushed out past her clenched teeth. It was an implied admittance of defeat, one that certainly did not go unnoticed by him.

He was definitely more that aware of having almost won this wordless battle between them. He was confident that he had her right where he needed her now.

He drew her closer as his hand tightened around her hip. His body was now pressed up against hers, his touch both possessive and demanding, no longer trying to conceal his intentions.

"I want you," he said bluntly, his voice low and rough. "I want all of you. Your anger, your hatred, your pain. Your love. Your need. I want you to give me all of it."

And before she could respond, he closed the space left between them and kissed her, snatching what little breath she had.

He didn't really give her much time to ease into it. His kiss was forceful, controlling, possessive. He was taking what he wanted, what he's been craving for all these years. It was nearly too much. Like she was drowning in him, with his presence actively cutting off all her senses with its stiffling intensity.

She heard the muted sound of her handgun striking the ground, the metal bouncing off the hard rock and reverberating through the walls, as if from underwater. Like a loud declaration of her failure. He did not make her do that. Or did he? She wanted to say he did. Hell, there was still a big, raging part of her wanting to push at his chest as hard as she could and scream her lungs out at him. But now, did she even have the right to do that? Wouldn't that make her a hypocrite? Wasn't the line already crossed?

His words were scathing, penetrating deep into the darkest corners of her soul and eroding all of what was left of her determination. Maybe he was right. Maybe they really were just two sides of the same coin. She didn't know anymore. And it was getting harder and harder to see herself as anything but a failure.

His hand went from her hip and slid up her side, firm and demanding. As he pulled her further against him, he deepened the kiss with practiced ease, making her let out a small, choked noise that instantly got swallowed by him with a sharp breath. His touch was hungry, punishing. In a way that made her knees buckle. She hadn't been touched like this in years, and the familiarity of his scent, his warmth, his everything was just too much for her to bear.

Ah... fuck it.

She pushed all of her reservations away with a single sarcastic thought flashing through her mind, roughly dragging him in by his shirt collar and returning his kiss with a desperate one of her own. Not in any way similar to her heated kisses of the past long lost. She was angry with him, with herself, and with the world at large, and she wanted him to know it, as evidenced by her teeth harshly sinking into his bottom lip with such severity that he sucked in an involuntary gasp against her.

However, he didn't appear to mind it too much. If his small, rumbling groan that followed suit was anything to go by. It certainly sent a sharp shiver up her spine.

The way he held her felt familiar. But it was also different. It had a new edge to it, an intensity that wasn't there before. He was different. Perhaps it's who he has always been. She didn't know.

A tiny, foolish part of her wanted to think that, like in dumb fairy tales with their happily-ever-after's, she could somehow make everything alright again with a single magic kiss. Fix it all with power of love alone. Of course, that was not going to happen. And the sudden piercing sound of her receiver going off felt like a lightning strike on a sunny day, shattering the already frail illusion into a million broken pieces before it could even take its proper shape.

Breathing shakily after the entire experience, she broke away from him with a single gasp. She tried not to think too much about the thin string of saliva that was connecting their lips before breaking off. A good visual reminder of the stupidest choice she could have made. For a moment, she was just frozen, completely unable to bring herself to act.

What the hell should she even do at this point?

It was probably Leon... Or maybe Luis.

Before she could do anything, though, she noticed Wesker smirking to himself, the usual smugness returning to his sharp features. Without any further cocky comments from his side, he merely reached over and swiped his thumb over her bottom lip, cleaning off the remainders of their messy kiss from mere moments prior. It was difficult to avoid shivering at the touch.

"What are you-"

"-You should take it, my love. It could be important. I have some... unfinished business to take care of myself. But, believe me..." She blinked as she felt him sweep a lock of hair behind her ear before stepping back. A gesture that felt both sickeningly affectionate and somehow mocking. "I'll be keeping an eye on you. And I will be back for you. When the time comes."

He disappeared in an instant, leaving her with a raging receiver and a flurry of panicked thoughts flying through her mind at the speed of light. She didn't answer. Instead, she simply slid down the nearest wall till she reached the cold stone floor, her body curling up on itself and her head hidden between her knees.

What the hell does she do now...?

Additional notes:

• I wanted to explore Jordan's state of mind and how it could tie into her future mental decline in RE5. While she is deeply independent and strong-willed, it seems that Wesker is definitely one of those few people she's fully vulnerable with (based on what interactions they had in re1 comics!). And, well, of course she is! He is her husband! He is her family! Delving into her inner struggle between her usual independence vs the familiar pull of someone she never got to get over was very fun.

• I based Wesker's mannerisms mostly off of Jordsker comics/stuff! Not gonna lie, I tend to lean more into a cold, measured type of Wesker, so sprinkling in some sassiness and charm that he seems to share in his interactions with Jordan was a very interesting change (and good practice!)

• My interpretation of Jordan's entire mental decline (both presented here and one that would follow later in re5) is heavily tied to feelings of guilt and inner shame more than anything else. I definitely wanted to incorporate that here. She feels shame for mourning him as much as she did, when she should have mourned all the innocent that were affected by his involvement instead. She feels guilt for her feelings towards him - thus never properly opening up about them and working through them in a healthy manner. She feels shame for her inability to do the right thing and bring him to justice when she had the chance. And her giving in to him here, while unknowingly to her, stemming from these feelings of inner shame and guilt, is just yet another piece falling into place.

• Wesker is never really dishonest with her in the latter part. Even his earlier words were more just teasing fun on his part. You could call it flirting (horrible attempt at it, really). I actually find that really fun with him here. He's not really being manipulative or cruel with her on purpose, he means everything he says. It is just twisted. Does that make the whole thing better or worse for poor Jordan? Who knows.