#which is odd. because i didn't know i was like. ?????? that far along in this skill i guess

[pa-pa-plasma]

anyone else forget they have skills until they're actively using them

[cocklessboy]

The biggest male privilege I have so far encountered is going to the doctor.

I lived as a woman for 35 years. I have a lifetime of chronic health issues including chronic pain, chronic fatigue, respiratory issues, and neurodivergence (autistic + ADHD). There's so much wrong with my body and brain that I have never dared to make a single list of it to show a doctor because I was so sure I would be sent directly to a psychologist specializing in hypochondria (sorry, "anxiety") without getting a single test done.

And I was right. Anytime I ever tried to bring up even one of my health issues, every doctor's initial reaction was, at best, to look at me with doubt. A raised eyebrow. A seemingly casual, offhand question about whether I'd ever been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Even female doctors!

We're not talking about super rare symptoms here either. Joint pain. Chronic joint pain since I was about 19 years old. Back pain. Trouble breathing. Allergy-like reactions to things that aren't typically allergens. Headaches. Brain fog. Severe insomnia. Sensitivity to cold and heat.

There's a lot more going on than that, but those were the things I thought I might be able to at least get some acknowledgement of. Some tests, at least. But 90% of the time I was told to go home, rest, take a few days off work, take some benzos (which they'd throw at me without hesitation), just chill out a bit, you'll be fine. Anxiety can cause all kinds of odd symptoms.

Anyone female-presenting reading this is surely nodding along. Yup, that's just how doctors are.

Except...

I started transitioning about 2.5 years ago. At this point I have a beard, male pattern baldness, a deep voice, and a flat chest. All of my doctors know that I'm trans because I still haven't managed to get all the paperwork legally changed, but when they look at me, even if they knew me as female at first, they see a man.

I knew men didn't face the same hurdles when it came to health care, but I had no idea it was this different.

The last time I saw my GP (a man, fairly young, 30s or so), I mentioned chronic pain, and he was concerned to see that it wasn't represented in my file. Previous doctors hadn't even bothered to write it down. He pushed his next appointment back to spend nearly an hour with me going through my entire body while I described every type of chronic pain I had, how long I'd had it, what causes I was aware of. He asked me if I had any theories as to why I had so much pain and looked at me with concerned expectation, hoping I might have a starting point for him. He immediately drew up referrals for pain specialists (a profession I didn't even know existed till that moment) and physical therapy. He said depending on how it goes, he may need to help me get on some degree of disability assistance from the government, since I obviously shouldn't be trying to work full-time under these circumstances.

Never a glimmer of doubt in his eye. Never did he so much as mention the word "anxiety".

There's also my psychiatrist. He diagnosed me with ADHD last year (meeting me as a man from the start, though he knew I was trans). He never doubted my symptoms or medical history. He also took my pain and sleep issues seriously from the start and has been trying to help me find medications to help both those things while I go through the long process of seeing other specialists. I've had bad reactions to almost everything I've tried, because that's what always happens. Sometimes it seems like I'm allergic to the whole world.

And then, just a few days ago, the most shocking thing happened. I'd been wondering for a while if I might have a mast cell condition like MCAS, having read a lot of informative posts by @thebibliosphere which sounded a little too relatable. Another friend suggested it might explain some of my problems, so I decided to mention it to the psychiatrist, fully prepared to laugh it off. Yeah, a friend thinks I might have it, I'm not convinced though.

His response? That's an interesting theory. It would be difficult to test for especially in this country, but that's no reason not to try treatments and see if they are helpful. He adjusted his medication recommendations immediately based on this suggestion. He's researching an elimination diet to diagnose my food sensitivities.

I casually mentioned MCAS, something routinely dismissed by doctors with female patients, and he instantly took the possibility seriously.

That's it. I've reached peak male privilege. There is nothing else that could happen that could be more insane than that.

I literally keep having to hold myself back from apologizing or hedging or trying to frame my theories as someone else's idea lest I be dismissed as a hypochondriac. I told the doctor I'd like to make a big list of every health issue I have, diagnosed and undiagnosed, every theory I've been given or come up with myself, and every medication I've tried and my reactions to it - something I've never done because I knew for a fact no doctor would take me seriously if they saw such a list all at once. He said it was a good idea and could be very helpful.

Female-presenting people are of course not going to be surprised by any of this, but in my experience, male-presenting people often are. When you've never had a doctor scoff at you, laugh at you, literally say "I won't consider that possibility until you've been cleared by a psychologist" for the most mundane of health problems, it might be hard to imagine just how demoralizing it is. How scary it becomes going to the doctor. How you can internalize the idea that you're just imagining things, making a big deal out of nothing.

Now that I'm visibly a man, all of my doctors are suddenly very concerned about the fact that I've been simply living like this for nearly four decades with no help. And I know how many women will have to go their whole lives never getting that help simply because of sexism in the medical field.

If you know a doctor, show them this story. Even if they are female. Even if they consider themselves leftists and feminists and allies. Ask them to really, truly, deep down, consider whether they really treat their male and female patients the same. Suggest that the next time they hear a valid complaint from a male patient, imagine they were a woman and consider whether you'd take it seriously. The next time they hear a frivolous-sounding complaint from a female patient, imagine they were a man and consider whether it would sound more credible.

It's hard to unlearn these biases. But it simply has to be done. I've lived both sides of this issue. And every doctor insists they treat their male and female patients the same. But some of the doctors astonished that I didn't get better care in the past are the same doctors who dismissed me before.

I'm glad I'm getting the care I need, even if it is several decades late. And I'm angry that it took so long. And I'm furious that most female-presenting people will never have this chance.

[fangatic]

we need to talk about The Silence and The Song

[PLEASE READ] edit to add: i realise that this post has been reblogged far and wide and that there is not a lot i can do about it now, but this is me trying anyway.

posting examples from the fic about my issues with its repetitive structure was careless of me, and i apologise to those of you who read it and became insecure about your own writing style. as someone who has worked with ai in academic settings, it's incredibly difficult for me to explain to you how the tone and structure of ai-generated fiction works and how, after reading enough of it, you can simply just tell. i do also realise that this is an incredibly weak argument, which is why i didn't include it when i originally wrote this post.

all that to say: there is an enormous difference between "beginner's writing" and ai writing. being repetitive as a new writer (or a seasoned one who just likes using repetition) is so normal. as is flowery/purple language. i've read hundreds of books and fics and the difference between these traits in ai-text and actual works is starkly clear. please don't feel anxious over the examples i've used in this post.

again, i apologise for any distress i have caused.

as per my last post, i have received a lot of encouragement to go public with this, and the more disappointed people i have in my dms, the angrier i get. so i will.

the silence and the song is an ancient arlathan au DA fic on ao3 by luxannaslut, and it is partly, if not entirely, written by an ai. i have no wish to be involved in any kind of fandom drama or witch hunting or bullying, but as a writer myself there are few things that piss me off more than watching people steal the work of others because they can't be fucked to write. it's disrespectful to your fellow writers, it's disrespectful to your readers, and it's disrespectful to the authors of the works the ai is stealing from.

ai is a plague that has no business being in creative spaces and you must do better.

the writing pattern

there was something very odd and monotone about the sentence structure of tsats that i couldn't quite place, so i fed chatgpt a prompt along the lines of "two people in a fantasy novel hate each other, but they secretly desire one another, and they kiss", and the screenshots above are the results. the third one is an excerpt from chapter 40 of tsats. the writing pattern is identical and it doesn't seem like the "writer" has even bothered to pretend they wrote it. if you're going to use ai, at least be sneaky about it. you know, paraphrase a little.

nonsense descriptions

"her nimble fingers worked with quiet precision" (ct. 1), "his grip firm but tender" (ct. 33), "her gown pooling around her like embers" (ct. 1).

fingers don't make sound, so what does quiet precision mean? as opposed to what? her joints cracking with every movement? how is a grip firm but tender? what does that mean? since when do embers pool?

the entire fic is littered with these adjectives that contradict each other or just straight up do not make sense, because all an ai does is generate descriptive language with no understanding of what the words it's spitting out actually mean. i could spend hours picking out examples from the seven billion pages worth of text, but i quite frankly have better things to do and would simply challenge you to try getting through a chapter or two without noticing the pattern.

repetition at structure-level

all the scenes in this fic are described in pretty much the same way. they open with purple prose vomit of the surroundings; solas is standing somewhere looking "unreadable as ever"; ellana's fiery golden molten fire copper ember ginger red hair is flowing this and that way; there's some dialogue with whoever is present and it leaves ellana feeling different variations of "something she couldn't name". this is, once again, a blatantly obvious sign of ai. below is the result of me feeding chatgpt the line "write me a scene from a fantasy novel where a woman with red hair is sitting on the ground in a magical garden at night", and side by side with that is the opening scene of the fic. make your own judgement.

repetition at word-level

this one speaks for itself. we fucking get it. her dress is orange, her hair is red, mythal's presence is heavy in the room, solas looks unreadable, compassion is sitting on her head like a crown, solas' ears are betraying him and ellana's move with every thought she thinks. we get it. the issue here is that an ai remembers the info you feed it, but not necessarily the info it shits out. if it's being told to write scene after scene of an elven woman with a gown that looks like fire doing xyz, it's going to do so with no regard for how many times the reader has already been informed of these details.

lastly: the breakneck speed

359,6k words in four weeks by a person who allegedly is employed and married and hasn't pre-written anything? no. any writer will tell you that this simply isn't possible. it absolutely infuriates me to see how much praise this "writer" gets for posting up to three full chapters in a day without anyone calling bullshit. i am pulling out my hair, you guys.

why i'm not going to live and let live this one

perhaps i would be less angry if the fic was some silly bullshit court intrigue Y/A stuff, but this is a text that handles very heavy and triggering topics such as SA, coercion, domestic abuse, and other things of the same vein. to sit back and put your feet up while having a robot write these extremely sensitive and very real human experiences with words it has stolen from texts written by actual persons is fucking heinous. the "writer" should be deeply ashamed of themselves and i'm sick and tired of watching people eat up their bs.

and on that note: the amount of people in my dm's telling me that they feel stupid and naive for not clocking this has infuriated me more than anything else. you're not foolish for this. being fed ai-generated bullshit is not what is supposed to happen on any creative platform and much less a fandom-centred one, so of course no one approaches a fic through that lens. fandom and fic writing is supposed to be about passion and the only person in this situation who needs to do better and change their behaviour is luxannaslut. polluting our creative spaces, wasting the time of your readers, and minimising the effort of actual writers who are working hard to provide content for us all to share and enjoy is vile and so, so lazy. i beg of you: do better.

[ang3ltine]

𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐤 - Bucky Barnes x Maximoff freader

fluff fic & soft Bucky

a.n - Just a metal armed super soldier falling for a Maximoff. Who also happens to harbour the same feelings but is too afraid to reciprocate. Why? Because she thinks she's a freak. But Bucky convinces you otherwise.

warnings - slight mention of experiments/torture & gets kind of heated at the end but nothing too extreme

It was early morning in the Avengers tower when Steve walked in, bags in hand, and a slightly awkward Bucky trailing behind.

The kitchen counter was filled with piles of pancakes that were meticulously crafted by you.

You were quite proud of your newly found gift of baking sweet treats and wanted to make breakfast for everyone. The sound of compliments filled your ears as they dug in. They hadn't even noticed the pair standing directly behind them, until Steve cleared his throat.

"Guys, you remember Bucky," Steve gestured to the stiff man next to him. Clearly not wanting to be there.

"I know his past is... questionable. But he's not brainwashed by Hydra anymore. So I want you all to be nice and help him fit in."

The room went eerily quiet and you could see everyone's reactions were mixed. You hadn't exactly been attacked by Bucky before so you thought it was only natural for you to step in first.

"So uh Bucky was it? It's nice to finally meet you, I heard great stories about you from Steve."

Bucky was taken aback as you reached out your hand for him to shake. Your smile, no your whole presence, felt warm to him. He feels his tense shoulders relaxing as he shook your hand wordlessly with a small smile.

You introduced yourself then offered him some pancakes, which you had just taken hot off the pan. He happily obliged along with Steve as the three of them sat down to eat.

There wasn't enough space at the table with the others, so you guys opted for the couch. Steve nudged Bucky's shoulder, which made him almost choke as he mentions in a low tone. "She's single, by the way."

Steve could only laugh when he saw how annoyed yet flustered his poor friend looked.

That was 3 months ago.

Bucky was slowly starting to adjust at living with the Avengers and trying his best to make friends. So far he was close with Sam and not so surprisingly, you.

He found out that you were Wanda's sister and that you had been experimented on by Hydra just like your siblings. You had the ability to manipulate any form of light and have electricity that flows through your veins. Making you a living, breathing battery.

Hydra had also used electric shock therapy to 'tweak' your powers, which drained you both emotionally and physically.

Tony and Bruce created a suit and a pair of special gloves to help you control your powers, and with time you eventually didn't need to use them anymore. You still kept the suit though and let Tony make adjustments.

Also, who knew you'd be the perfect defibrillator in case of emergencies? You were the most relied on during missions with high risks. Which everyone was grateful for.

However, you'd constantly have night terrors and a major case of insomnia. Luckily, it's begun to die down over the years. Thanks to your friends and a certain super soldier.

No, not Stever Rogers, although he's helped you in other ways. Like easing yourself around the others when you first joined.

Bucky, of all people had been keeping a close eye on you since your first interaction. At first he would carefully observe you from a distance. But after one night when you were roaming the halls of the tower, you bumped into him.

You suggested having a movie marathon together since he couldn't sleep either. Bucky asked why you couldn't sleep and you trusted him enough to tell him about your past.

From then on, you and Bucky were inseparable. Despite the confused looks from the others, and a few teases from Natasha. You two worked well together during missions so at that point, everyone found the odd relationship to be normal.

You had just finished training and was heading to your room to take a shower. Wanda was by your side since her room is next to yours as you both made your way down the hall.

"Hmm, I can feel your mind reeling you know."

You sighed, ofcourse Wanda was going through your thoughts yet again.

"You think Bucky won't like you back? He's been giving you that look of adoration whenever you're not looking. Trust me he definitely likes you."

You wanted to believe your sister, but at the same time you were unsure. Tony sent you on multiple missions with him for a few months now but you still haven't shown Bucky the full extent of your powers.

"I'm scared wanda. Scared that he might think I'm a... freak." Your shoulders slumped as a sad look appeared on your face. "He hasn't seen how I look like when my powers are maxed out."

Wanda knows what you're talking about. Whenever you do use your full power, you start to glow from within. Making your skin look thinned out, and your hair frizz up slightly from the electricity coursing through your body.

She felt hurt knowing her baby sister felt that way about herself.

"Look at me," she stops you in your tracks and places both her hands firmly on your shoulders. "You should be proud of who you are. You're beautiful and extremely powerful, and I know that Bucky will love you regardless of what you are."

Your eyes started to glaze over as Wanda pulls you into a well deserved hug, whispering sweet nothings into your hair.

Speaking of Bucky. Sam was also determined to get his best friend to confess his feelings towards you.

They were in the kitchen preparing dinner since they came back from a mission pretty late.

Bucky already started eating his meal when you walked in. Your hair was slightly damp from the shower you had just taken. Bucky recognised the top that you were wearing and almost choked on his food.

You were wearing his tshirt that he had left behind a few nights ago. He had completely forgotten about it, and to make things worse is that you look absolutely gorgeous with it on. Not to mention, your thighs were exposed since your shorts were hidden underneath the gigantic top.

"Oh uh- hey Bucky....I didnt know you were still awake," blood rushed to your cheeks when you realised Bucky was staring directly at you with wide eyes. You had no idea he'd be here, thinking that everyone else had gone to sleep already.

Bucky cleared his throat and swiped his bowl to the side. His dinner now forgotten about and directed his attention towards you. You felt like a deer caught in headlights, you were planning on giving his shirt back but you kept on delaying up until now.

"Hey uhm...h-hi, doll."

The muscles of your cheeks began to rise as you felt yourself smile at the sweet nickname that he had given you, making you feel all giddy inside. Bucky on the other hand? Felt himself swoon whenever you gave him that smile of yours.

Sam returned from the pantry with a bottle of water in his hand with a shit eating grin on his face. Giving knowing glances between the two of you.

"It's nice to see you too Samuel."

You retorted playfully as you shook your head in amusement. Already knowing that he's going to tease the absolutely living hell out of you.

"How's your day been beautiful?"

Bucky had the sudden the urge to smack that annoying smile off of his friends face. He knows he's just trying to wind him up and it was working.

But he soon settled back down when he noticed your form taking a seat right next to him.

You fought back the urge to smile again when you noticed the tips of Bucky's turning red. He looked like a puppy begging for attention. Nonetheless you turn back to Sam to answer his question.

"My days been eventful, to say the least. I mean Tony's been doing new adjustments to my suit so it could take in more volts of energy-"

Sam nodded and promted you to carry on. You spoke about the drills you had done with wanda.

Bucky had tuned out of the conversation. He rested his head in the palm of his vibranium arm as a lovesick sigh escaped his lips.

He followed the way your mouth moved while you talked and the way your hair would bounce slightly from every gesture you'd make. Seeing the way your eyes would sparkle whenever you'd talk about something you're interested in.

Bucky considered himself lucky to be in your presence and the way the light above them gave you a warm glow. He didn't even notice the conversation dying down as you and Sam turned their heads towards him.

You looked at him with concern while Sam muffled his laugh behind his hand. He saw how smitten his best friend looked which only convinced him more to get you two together.

"Buck sweets, are you ok?" Sam let out a choked laugh at the nickname. You gave him a light glare as he calmed himself down.

Your body was fully facing the now flustered Bucky, he almost flinched out of instinct when your cold hand met his burning cheeks.

"Geez Bucky you're burning up, are you feeling ok?" You started to get worried, thinking maybe he had gotten a fever.

"Mmh I'm feelin' fine though." Bucky murmured as he looked like he was going to collapse right there in your arms. Getting absolutely drunk from the attention you were giving him.

"I'd say otherwise," Sam mumbled to himself in amusement as he excused himself, knowing that he'd teased them enough already and gave them some space.

Bucky saw the way your mouth was still moving but he couldn't focus on the words that you were saying. If this was anyone else, he wouldn't even let them touch him.

But it was you. The woman that had the ability to make his heart hurt from how lovely you were. He'd never felt so much love for someone in a long time and it kind of scares him.

You were still patting his cheek, feeling the slightly rough stuble beneath your skin. You also moved stray hairs out of his face and tucked it behind his ears. He wanted to say something but no words came out.

"Maybe we should head to the med bay to get yourself checked out." You were about to get up to leave until you felt a strong grip on your arm as Bucky made you sit back down again.

"Do you not want to go?" You asked in confusion as you tilted your head.

God you were adorable, Bucky thought to himself.

His hands reached up towards your cheeks and gently caressed them with his thumb. He was impossibly close now, his nose practically touching yours. The faint scent of your shampoo and conditioner fills his nostrils.

Your peer into his deep blue eyes, his pupils were dilated but oh so full of love.

You're not sure what to do as your breath hitches in your throat.

Bucky brushes his lips against yours, testing the waters. Not knowing if you wanted this or not. Without a second thought you pressed your lips fully against his. They molded together perfectly, you don't know why you waited so long to feel this, to feel him.

But a voice at the back of your head made you pull away. Bucky noticed the way your eyes filled with worry, knowing something was bothering you.

"C'mon doll, I'm fine," his words were slurred with a heavy accent. He swipes the bottom of your lip with his thumb. "Don't be like that."

You let out a sigh that you didn't know you was keeping in. "Would you want someone like me? I mean- don't you get freaked out whenever you see me use my powers?"

"Darlin' is that the reason why you're so hesitant?" He saw you fidget uncomfortably under his gaze as he lifts your chin up with his finger so you could look at him again.

"I didn't fall for you because of your powers. I fell for you because you're you. Besides I think you look pretty badass whenever we're assigned on a mission together."

You couldn't help but smile brightly at the compliment, all your worries leaving you in an instant. He took that as a sign to continue his previous act. His metal hand reaching back to apply a gently pressure on the lower part of your back.

The kiss was gentle yet full of desire. Head tilting the side, his hot breath mingling with yours as his tongue dragged gently across your bottom lip. Coaxing you to open your mouth. Your tongue meets his as the hand that was on your cheek slips to the back of your head, his fingers gently played with the hair at your nape.

He coerced you onto his lap, not breaking the kiss while you let out a surprised gasp. He smiled against your lips at your cute reaction as he softly grazes on your bottom lip. His kisses become more heated and full of want as he tilts your head to get better access.

The rest of the world faded around you as you both got lost in time. It was beginning to get hard to breathe as he pulls you against her to deepen the kiss. You felt a butterflies deep in your stomach that you never felt before with anyone.

Bucky could taste the slight hint of strawberry on your tongue from the candy you ate just before taking a shower. This only just fueled him to ravish you even more. He nibbled softly on your bottom lip and tugged on it pulling out a quiet moan from you.

His hands were all over you and he had a hard time keeping himself under control. Giving your hips a gentle squeeze while you sat on his lap. Literally, anyone could walk in and see you two, but clearly that wasn't on their mind at the moment.

But eventually you both had to pull away for air, your cheeks were flushed but you were content. Smiling softly down at the ravenette below you. Bucky lightly nuzzled his nose against yours and both your breaths became foggy due to the cold air in the kitchen.

"So Sunshine, can I finally call you mine?"

Before you could answer you hear the sound of muffled talking in the hallway and they were headed straight towards the kitchen.

You two quickly scrambled off eachother and tried to act casual. Bucky picked at his now cold food while you rummaged through the fridge.

"Cut the act you two. We already know what happened," a teasing voice called out.

You internally groan as you turn to see Natasha with a smirk on her face with Sam having the same amused look.

"So, are you two dating now?" Nat asks while she looks between you and Bucky.

You huffed as you made your way over to Bucky, who was already standing up from his seat. You reached up and placed a firm yet soft kiss on his cheek.

A bright faced Bucky and a shocked Natasha and Sam could only stare in disbelief at the bold action. Which only made the situation more funny.

"I guess we are," you respond with a doting smile as Bucky shared the same look he'd always have.

Lovesick.

p.s - Bucky also had to hear an earful from Wanda. He's going to have to get used to having her as a sister in law because he plans on marrying you one day.

[wholoveseggs]

Small Victories

18+ ---- {Masterlist} {Tag-List}

{Daemon Targaryen X Reader} After a tourney in which Daemon places second, he seeks solace from his loss and finds it in his little northern maid.

♡♡ Hello darlings! I'm branching out slightly and writing about a new character {Don't worry, I'm still writing Elijah} xoxo ♡♡

5.3k words - Warnings: smutt, size!kink, rough sex, dom!daemon, slight choking, virgin!reader, northern!reader, servant!reader, pre-dance Daemon, huge power imbalance...

♡♡ Hey! I didn't tag anyone because I'm unsure if you want to read Daemon content. If you wish to be tagged in future Daemon let me know ♡♡

You didn't like the Red Keep, it was too grand for your liking. Even with all of the people in it you still felt alone. At night, you could hear voices echoing throughout the halls, sometimes they were singing or laughing and other times they were screaming or moaning.

You could never tell where the sounds were coming from, it gave the place an odd feeling of being haunted. Ghosts weren't something you put your faith in, but that didn't stop the hair from standing up on the back of your neck whenever you heard a strange sound.

If it was up to you, you wouldn't live here. You would be back in the little cottage you grew up in, far into the north and as far away from King's landing as you could possibly be. It was a funny contradiction, that such a grand place in a warm environment could feel so cold, while a small house in the cold north could feel so full of warmth.

The last thing your mother said to you, was that you should be grateful. That your place in the Red Keep was the highest honor your family could ever hope to receive, and that you should do anything to stay here. To be a lady's maid to the queen, was the highest achievement a low born could achieve.

You tried to be, even though your heart yearned for the snowy landscape of your childhood. You wanted to be happy, you were thankful, but you couldn't help the way you missed the north.

So to try and capture just a bit of personal freedom, you would walk the halls at night. It was the only time you could pretend to be somewhere else, even if it was only for a moment. You would close your eyes and imagine yourself somewhere new and exciting, and when you opened them you would be reminded of where you really were.

Tonight you were in a particularly adventurous mood, there was a tourney the next day for Prince Viserys and his wife Aemma to celebrate their wedding. The Red Keep would be full of guests and it would be loud and full of life, you were sure to be very busy, and so you decided to stay up late and postpone sleep for a few more hours.

There was a room in the library that had a view of the city, one you liked to frequent often. It had a large window and a balcony that was rarely used. It was a nice place to go to clear your mind and think about home.

When you entered, nobody was around except for a cat that was perched on the windowsill. She was a lovely thing with black fur and bright green eyes, the perfect color of a dark forest at night.

"Hello, beautiful." You greeted her with a smile and a light stroke along her back. You looked out the window with her at your side, watching the moon reflect off the ocean and the waves crashing against the shore.

The sound of footsteps behind you made you look over your shoulder, your eyes landing on a man with a face that made you stand up straight and bow your head.

"Prince Daemon." You greeted him, not looking up from the floor.

"Young maidens like yourself shouldn't be out so late." He said, stepping closer to you. You didn't dare move or even breathe, his presence made you feel like you were caught doing something wrong.

"I couldn't sleep, my lord," You answered, not meeting his eyes. This was your first real meeting with the prince, but you knew the rumors that surrounded him.

He didn't respond to your answer, instead, he turned his attention towards the view. Leaning against the window, his posture was dismissive, as though you weren't there. He gave you a side glance that read, 'leave,' and so you did, not wanting to get in his way.

"I apologize, I didn't mean to intrude." You said, walking past him, heading towards the doorway.

"You are from the north," he spoke, still looking out into the water.

"Yes, my lord," You answered, stopping when he started speaking.

"How did you find yourself as a maid in the south?" He asked, looking at you, his eyes piercing through you.

The truth of the matter made you feel shameful, even though it was beyond your control. So you decided to tell him what you've been telling everyone.

"I was given as a gift for our new queen," You said, looking down at the floor.

"Is that what they call it?" Daemon laughed, his laugh was as harsh as his voice, the kind of laugh that could cut you open if you let it. "I heard you were given away as payment for a debt."

Your cheeks reddened and you looked at the ground, your throat closing up at the mention of your family's failure. Pride wasn't something you could afford anymore, but you couldn't stop the words that came out of your mouth.

"I didn't realize that princes were so fond of gossip." You said, meeting his eyes, your words were meant to cut, and they did.

He stood up straight, his expression unreadable as he closed the distance between the two of you, towering over you.

"Ahh, so they did sell you." He smirked, looking down at you. "Whoring can make you better coin… recover a debt quicker."

Your hands balled up into fists and you took a step closer, a defiant glare on your face.

He chuckled and tilted his head, he reached out and touched your chin, his hand was soft but firm as he turned your face to look at him.

"With a pretty face like yours, I'm sure you would make quite a bit of coin," His voice was a purr, a seductive growl that made your insides feel tight. "I could show you a better use for those lips."

His words were shockingly vulgar, his voice was rough and commanding and his eyes were hungry, but you didn't move away, you stayed still. You knew the dragon prince was a scandalous man, but you didn't think he would ever be so bold.

"There is no honor in a whore's coin." You answered, pushing his hand away from your face.

"Is there honor in emptying the queen's chamber pot?" He retorted, grinning slightly at how red your cheeks had become.

"Not all of us have the opportunity to choose what sort of honor we can acquire,” You said, standing your ground as best as you could.

He towered over you, his tall frame casting a shadow that almost completely covered you. He wasn't like the king or queen, who were kind and generous. There was something dark and malicious about him, as though the great beasts of his house lurked just below his skin, waiting to come out.

"You have a smart mouth, little northerner." He mused, his eyes drifting down to your lips. "It's a wonder that the queen has not put a gag in it."

"It's a poor quality I have yet to overcome." You responded, pulling away from him and putting some distance between the two of you.

He watched you move away, his eyes following your movements and the shape of your body, making you feel hot.

"I will think of you when I win the tourney tomorrow." He said, his tone smug and confident. "A sweet northern flower to bring back with me."

"You will be bringing back nothing, prince Daemon." You said, your voice a warning.

He laughed and looked at you, his eyes dancing with mischief.

"We'll see about that."

And with those final words, he left the room. You felt flustered and annoyed, a strange mixture of feelings that confused and angered you. You didn't like the prince, but he made your heart race, his voice and his eyes made you feel a strange sense of heat.

You wanted to be disgusted, and yet all you could think about was seeing him again.

It was a hectic morning, with all the knights and guests arriving, and you were late. Your tardiness had earned you a sharp reprimand from your head maid, but you were too distracted by the upcoming event to care.

The prospect of seeing the prince again was something you weren't sure you wanted, but couldn't stop thinking about.

You didn't like the way his eyes lingered on you, or how he made you feel things that shouldn't be felt. The rogue prince was indeed a fitting title, he was a scoundrel and a liar, a man of dishonor.

You thought that maybe he was the sort of person that the south created, perhaps they took people like you and turned them into someone like him. But then again, he wasn't really a southerner, no, he was a dragon.

The sound of cheers and laughter outside made your ears perk up. The queen was already seated with the other royals in their viewing box, and you were in a nearby tent, preparing more wine and food.

The tourney had just begun, and so far the knights had all performed well. You had only been paying a bit of attention, trying to do your job and keep out of the way.

The head maid was a cruel, vindictive woman, and she had been taking out her frustration on you all day. Her temper was short and her hands were rough, she was the kind of woman that would slap your hands or pull your hair if she was upset. But today she decided to simply make your life miserable with her words.

She gave you the worst jobs and the heaviest items to carry, and when she did allow you to stand and rest, she would hit your feet with her broom and tell you to get back to work.

"Once you are finished pouring wine, I want you to go to the prince's tent and serve him." She ordered, her eyes were sharp and her words were harsh.

"The prince has a squire to serve him." You protested, the idea of facing Daemon again made your cheeks turn red.

"The prince requested a woman's company,” She smiled, her eyes looking at you with an almost wicked satisfaction.

"I believe what the prince is looking for can be found on the street of silk, not among the ladies maids." You countered, hoping to change her mind.

"It's an honor to serve the prince, and he has specifically asked for a northern girl." The head maid was adamant, not willing to let this go.

You clenched your jaw and took a deep breath, biting your tongue as you looked at the floor.

"Very well, madam."

You held back tears as you climbed the stairs to the viewing box, pouring wine into the cups. Keeping your eyes low and only lifting them when absolutely necessary as you made your way down the line of royals.

Everyone began to stir and chat as the final round was announced. You turned to face the arena, watching as the prince mounted his horse, the sight of him made your heart flutter.

He was a handsome man, there was no denying that, his long blonde hair was braided and tied back, and his purple eyes were focused and determined.

His horse was a massive stallion, black as night, and he rode him as though they were one. He moved with a grace and confidence that was captivating.

The final round began, the two men charging at each other. You were nervous and excited, not knowing what to expect.

The clash of steel was the only sound in the air, it echoed throughout the entire arena. The crowd was silent, their eyes locked on the scene before them.

The two men passed each other, once, twice, three times. The tension building with each near miss, until finally the two knights clashed again.

Daemon's opponent had a slight edge over him, being bigger and stronger, but Daemon was quicker. But on the fourth pass, his opponent managed to catch him off guard, sending him flying into the dirt.

The crowd gasped, their hands covering their mouths as the prince's horse bucked and ran, leaving him in the dust.

You winced at the sight, it wasn't a good fall. He landed on his back, hard, and he lay still for a moment, his eyes squeezed shut as he caught his breath.

Only when the head maid cleared her throat did you realize you had been holding your breath.

"You are needed in the prince's tent, girl." she commanded, grabbing the jug from your hands and giving you a stern look.

You nodded, taking the tray of food and wine from the table and heading out of the box. Your heart was racing and your palms were sweaty, the thought of seeing Daemon after such a public humiliation was not something you were looking forward to.

The air was alive with the roar of the people, and the thumping of their feet sounded like thunder. They were chanting for the champion, something that would surely upset Daemon even more.

When you got to his tent, you hesitated, taking a moment to calm your nerves. You closed your eyes and took a deep breath, letting the noise of the crowd fade away.

You stepped inside, finding him sitting in a chair, his shirt was off and his squire was cleaning a nasty gash on his arm.

"I'm sorry for intruding, Prince Daemon." You said, placing the tray of food on the table and pouring a cup of wine.

"Leave," he barked at his squire, his voice was gruff and his jaw was clenched.

"But my prince-" his squire protested, looking up from the wound he was treating.

"Now."

The boy left quickly, leaving you alone with the brooding prince.

"Would you like some wine, my lord?" You asked, your voice soft and timid, the last thing you wanted was to make him even more upset.

"No," he hissed, his voice sharp as a knife. "Bring me a new shirt."

You did as he asked, walking over to the large chest in the corner. It was full of clothes, the colors and fabrics were fine and beautiful. You selected a clean white shirt and brought it over to him, your eyes focused on the ground.

"Look at me," he commanded, his voice was quiet, but it was a demand, not a request.

You lifted your eyes, meeting his gaze. His eyes were cold, the same shade of violet that had captivated you was now a glare.

You did very well, my lord," You tried to reassure him, your voice soft and comforting.

"Is that meant to be comforting?" He asked, his tone was harsh and his expression was a scowl.

"Fine. I have never seen a worse display than the one you put on today," you said, the words slipping from your mouth before you could stop them.

He smiled, then laughed, his shoulders shaking as his amusement grew. Only his brother the king would ever talk to him this way, and here you were, a young low born northerner, mocking him. He didn't know why he enjoyed it coming from you, perhaps it was because your words meant nothing. You were no one, and he was the prince, and yet he found himself intrigued.

"That was quite a show, wasn't it?" He chuckled, the sound was hollow, not at all humorous.

"It was humiliating," you answered, the words escaping before you could stop them.

"Careful," he warned, his eyes narrowing. "You're lucky I find your insolence amusing."

"I thought it was why you had asked for me," you retorted, setting the shirt on the table and taking a step back.

He stood up from the chair, closing the space between the two of you. The air was thick with tension, his eyes boring into yours, his face was inches from yours.

"I didn't lose the tourney," he stated, his voice a low growl.

"You didn't win either," you countered, your cheeks flushed red, your heart racing in your chest.

He smiled, the gesture was almost predatory, he reached out and grabbed your face, his hands were rough and his grip was tight.

"You are quite the mouthy little wench," his words were a harsh whisper, his breath hot against your skin.

You didn't answer, afraid of what he would do if you spoke. He seemed to be enjoying himself, his eyes dancing with amusement as he stared at you.

"On your knees," he ordered, his tone demanding.

"My lord, I-" you protested, trying to pull away.

"Kneel," his voice was louder this time, and you knew that he was not going to repeat himself.

You hesitated for a moment, but he was the prince, and you couldn't disobey him. So you lowered yourself onto your knees, looking up at him, waiting for him to tell you what to do next.

"Is it true that northern girls can take a cock better than southern ones?" He asked, his hand still holding onto your chin.

You didn't know how to respond, his words making your cheeks burn. You could only stare at him, your mind reeling as you tried to figure out what he wanted.

He smiled, and the look in his eyes made your heart race. "Open your mouth, little northerner."

You did as he commanded, your eyes never leaving his. He pushed his thumb past your lips and slowly pressed down onto your tongue, rubbing it in circles before slowly dragging it out.

Your lips parted and your breathing became heavier as he traced his wet thumb across your bottom lip, his eyes fixated on the movement.

"Beautiful." He whispered before sliding his thumb back into your mouth, pushing it all the way into your throat, causing you to gag.

He pulled his thumb from your mouth and wiped the spit off on your cheek before grabbing you by the arms and lifting you up, turning you around and pushing you face first into the table.

"My lord," you gasped, struggling against his strong grip.

Daemon laughed at the look of shock on your face, his cock growing harder at the sight. "See? I knew you would make a great whore," he smirked, his words bringing a flush to your face.

He pulled your dress up, exposing your ass and legs. His hands were rough as he groped you, squeezing your thighs and your cheeks.

You pushed against him, trying to free yourself, but his grip was too strong. He pushed your thighs apart, his hand trailing up to your cunt, his fingers stroking your entrance, teasing you.

He softened at your defiance, a smirk crossing his lips. "I enjoy you, little northerner. Perhaps I should keep you," he mused.

He slid his finger into your cunt, his touch gentle and slow. You whimpered, pushing against him again.

"You would be my little northern flower," he murmured, his finger moving in and out of your cunt, the pace becoming quicker. "A blue rose in my garden."

You were ashamed of how aroused you were, the prince's touch was intoxicating, and you couldn't stop yourself from grinding your hips against his hand. You had never been with a man before and the pleasure he was giving you was beyond anything you had ever felt.

He slid another finger inside of you, his movements quick and rough. You moaned, biting your lip as you felt yourself getting closer to release.

He suddenly pulled away, the sudden absence of his touch made you whimper. He spun you around, knocking objects off the table and pinning you against it. Your hands went to his chest, pushing him back, but his grip was too strong, his eyes filled with lust.

"You're a feisty one," he whispered, his lips trailing down your neck, his hands gripping your ass, lifting you up and pressing you against his hips. "I guess it's true that the fires always burn hotter in the north,"

You shivered as he sucked and bit at the skin on your neck, his teeth scraping across your sensitive flesh, leaving red marks behind. You couldn't help but moan, the feeling was so intense, and the sounds were so sinful.

"My prince... I..." You stuttered, trying to find the words, but he cut you off with a kiss.

The feel of his hands on your body, his lips on yours, his cock hard against you, was intoxicating. You had never felt this way before, this desire, this want. He made you feel like you were drowning in the fire of his touch. He was a dragon, and he would take what he wanted.

You couldn't resist, you gave in, kissing him back, letting his tongue explore your mouth. He smelled of blood, dirt and sweat, a combination that shouldn't have been appealing, but was.

You could taste his lust on your lips, and it made you hungry for more. You wrapped your legs around his waist, pressing yourself closer to him, and he moaned, the sound rumbling in his chest. He was so much larger than you, so much stronger, and you felt so small in his arms.

His hand trailed down your chest, slowly untying the strings that held up your dress, his fingers tracing over the fabric, teasing you.

"Sweet little northern girl," he teased, his voice a low growl. "Are you going to give yourself to me?"

"Yes," you whispered, your cheeks flushed pink.

He kissed you again, his lips rough and demanding, his hand pushing your dress down, exposing your breasts. "You've never touched yourself before, have you?”

"No, my Prince," you whispered, your little hands curled into his chest, your nails digging into his skin.

"That's alright, I'll show you how it's done."

His hands slid down to your thighs, his fingers trailing up, his touch light and teasing. You let out a gasp as his fingers brushed over your cunt, touching a spot that made your body tremble.

"This little spot right here," he said, rubbing his thumb against it, "is the most sensitive part of your body. The more pressure, the better."

You nodded, gasping and moaning as he pressed his thumb against it, circling it. You could feel the heat rising within you, the pleasure building.

"Feels good doesn't it?" He whispered, his voice husky, his lips brushing against your ear.

"Y-yes," you stuttered, your hips moving, grinding against his hand.

He chuckled, the sound sending shivers down your spine.

"Do you like being my little whore, hmm?" He asked, his lips trailing down your neck, his kisses hot and wet.

"N-no," you moaned, pushing him back, trying to fight against him.

He laughed, his teeth nipping at your collarbone. "Liar," he whispered, his tongue licking over the marks he'd made.

His hands reaching down to his waist, undoing his breeches and pulling them off, his cock springing free. You gasped, your eyes wide as you took in the size of him.

He took your hand and placed it on his cock, his eyes burning into yours. "Go on, feel it," he whispered.

Your fingers curled around his cock, your small hand barely able to fit around him. You moved your hand, sliding it down the length of his shaft, his cock thick and pulsing in your hand. His skin was so warm and smooth, his breathing deepening as you began to move your hand up and down, stroking him slowly.

You could see the scars from battle stretched across his chest and torso. Small claw-like marks around his pectoral and a deep line that stretched down the left side of his rib cage. He was a hardened warrior, and you could tell by his scars, he had been through much to get where he was now.

You squeezed his cock, moving your hand up and down, his breathing deepening and his eyes growing hazy. He watched you, his gaze following every movement you made. You were starting to get more comfortable, taking pleasure in watching him, in making him feel good. You found the nerve to press the pad of your thumb against the tip, feeling the moisture leaking from him.

"Good girl," he praised, his voice low and husky.

You felt a wave of pride, knowing that you were pleasing him, that he liked the way you were touching him. You continued to stroke him, squeezing and pulling at his cock, watching his face, seeing the pleasure on his features.

He groaned, his eyes closing and his head tilting back, his breath catching. You could feel his cock throbbing in your hand, and you knew that he was getting close.

He let out a low growl and grabbed your wrist, halting your movements. "If you keep that up, I'm going to spill my seed all over this pretty little dress of yours," he said, his eyes full of heat.

"Is that so, my lord?" You asked, unable to hide the hint of amusement in your voice.

He grabbed your hips and pulled you under him, his body caging you, trapping you beneath him. He was breathing hard, his face flushed, his cock hard and resting on your stomach. His eyes burned into yours, his gaze intense, his hands gripping your hips, holding you steady.

You weren't talking back anymore, he could see the fear in your eyes, the hesitance, and that only made him want you more. His hand went to your throat, applying gentle pressure, a silent warning.

He could feel you trembling beneath him, and he tightened his grip, a primal, possessive urge rising within him. Your small hands pushing into his chest, clutching at his heated flesh.

"Open for me," he growled, his eyes fixed on yours.

You parted your thighs, allowing him to press closer to you. He growled, lifting your legs and wrapping them around his waist, his cock brushing against your cunt. He felt you tighten, your eyes widening with trepidation.

He chuckled, loving how terrified and eager you were at the same time. He gave you a moment, and then he slowly pushed into you. You whimpered, your nails digging into his back, your eyes closed, your face twisted in pain.

"Breathe," he said, rubbing his thumb against your cheek, "it will hurt for a just moment and then I will make you feel good,"

You nodded, taking a deep breath as you felt his cock hit your maidenhead.

"Are you ready, little northerner?" He whispered.

You gripped his forearms and nodded.

He pushed in slowly, breaking through your barrier. You cried out, the pain was intense and immediate. He groaned, the feel of your tight cunt was intoxicating.

He stayed still, giving you time to adjust. Your nails dug into his arms, leaving deep scratches in his flesh.

"Such a pretty, tight little cunt," he growled, nipping at your neck.

You kept your eyes closed, trying to focus on his words and not the pain. He began to move with slow, deep strokes, his cock stretching you, filling you. He was bigger than he felt in your hands, and you swore you could feel him everywhere.

He moaned, his hips rocking into you, his hand still on your throat, making you feel lightheaded. You looked up at him with wide eyes, your lips parted, your cheeks flushed. You felt so full of him, stretched open, the pain and pleasure mixing into one.

He watched your reaction with a smirk, amused by your shocked, satisfied expression. He was moving slowly, enjoying your warmth and the feel of your cunt clenching around him. He knew you were enjoying it, too, your eyes half-closed, a soft moan escaping your lip. Your small frame was arched to his body, your hands holding on to his neck.

You were surprised at his gentleness. You'd heard that the dragon prince liked to rough up women, but he was being as careful as if you were made of spun sugar. You felt so small and helpless underneath him, his large body nearly engulfing yours, and yet he wasn't hurting you. His touch was delicate, reverent. The way he spoke to you, calling you pet names, made your heart skip a beat.

You arched against him, a soft cry leaving your lips as his strokes got faster, deeper, hitting a place inside you that sent a sharp, hot pleasure through you.

"Does my little northerner like her prince's cock?" He said, a laugh in his voice, he began to pick up the pace, pounding into you.

You squeaked and pushed on his chest, the sensations becoming too much. He grabbed your hips and held you still, fucking you hard and fast, his eyes full of fire.

You felt your release rising up inside you, the tension in your body winding tighter and tighter. You could feel yourself clamping down on his cock, the pleasure almost too much, the sweet pain sending you over the edge.

He groaned at the sight of you coming undone, your breath coming in short, sharp gasps as you shattered around him. He could feel the tension in your muscles as your climax tore through you. He slowed his movements, easing out the last waves of pleasure, drawing it out until you were a shuddering, moaning mess.

He was close behind, his thrusts erratic, his breathing harsh. He pulled out and spilled his seed across your stomach, his hips bucking. He pressed his forehead against yours, his eyes closed, a contented sigh leaving his lips. At least he had one victory today.

Your face was hot with shame, your mind unable to comprehend what just happened. The prince's seed was cooling on your stomach and chest, the reality of the situation finally sinking in. Your hands went to your face, covering it as tears came to your eyes, you had never felt so good and so embarrassed at once.

He moved off of you, his eyes locked on yours, a smirk crossing his lips. He looked satisfied, his gaze wandering over your body, lingering on the wetness between your legs, the mess he'd made of you. He tossed you a cloth to clean yourself with. You wiped his seed off your skin, watching him dress, his blonde hair still braided back, his purple eyes full of lust and desire. He was a warrior, a dragon, he was beauty and strength, power and masculinity. He was everything you wanted and feared, a beast who could destroy you.

He gave you a side glance, his eyes full of amusement. "You may go," he said, shooing you away with a hand.

Your cheeks flushed with embarrassment, as you took a shaky breath. You stood up, gathering the pieces of your dress and your underclothes. Your legs were wobbly, and you felt weak, sore, and full of shame.

"Yes, my prince," you said quietly, looking at the floor, unable to meet his eyes.

He chuckled, the sound of his voice making you shiver. "Don't be so timid, little northerner. This is the beginning, not the end," he said, his words sending a jolt of fear and excitement through you.

He was right, this was only the beginning. You were his servant, and he could do with you as he pleased. He would have you come to him whenever he chose, on the warmest summer nights and the coldest winter days. He would take what he wanted, when he wanted.

He was a dragon, and his will was as strong as his blood.

And deep down, you knew you would enjoy it. He was the perfect thing to distract you from the mundanity of your life, the endless monotony of serving others.

Perhaps the Red Keep wouldn't be so terrible, not if it meant serving him.

[plethorawrites]

Hey! Would you be willing to write a Jason Todd x southern!reader? Like the reader is from the southern states of America and just their cultural differences, like his thoughts on southern hospitality and the different slang and stuff? If not that's okay! Hope you have a great day/night!

Of course! I'm really leaning into some stereotypes and really dramatic features, fyi. I'm fully aware of that. (Enjoy reading this while I go bomb my midterm because I didn't study enough!!!) (Send help. I'm begging.)

---___---___---___---___---___---___---___---___---_

Everyone, even Jason Todd himself always imagined him ending up with someone a little bit more like himself—mistrusting, sarcastic, morbid. No one had foreseen him ending up with you, of all people, who were not only not hardened by the perpetually disturbing state of Gotham, but actually somehow cheerful? They chalked it up to one simple difference, though—the fact that you were from the south.

Geographically, he knew where your state was, but for whatever reason, the south seemed a lot more like an alternate dimension the more he got to know you.

Your look had, obviously, been the first thing to draw him in, seeing you from across a bar. But it was the accent that had him feeling his mouth go dry, that sweet, long drawl that made your words curve slightly at the end of every sentence. It was like his brain malfunctioned the first time he heard it.

And honestly, sometimes it still did.

Hearing you mumble his name in the morning when your voice was all sleepy, a little rasp mixed with that twang that always drew his attention no matter how much he heard it. But your accent, although stark in comparison to the typical Jersey accent that was widespread throughout Gotham, there were a number of other traits that he also found out of place in the city.

Like your odd hospitality—condolence casserole was not a thing he even thought about, let alone actually made until one of the cops Jim Gordon knew died and you made the window, a woman you've never even met, a casserole. Multiple, actually. Along with cookies.

But then again, you baked frequently.

Like making cornbread. Which, was apparently something people actually made and ate? He had no clue. It was delicious though. Most southern food, he quickly realized, was. He usually ate fast food most nights, too tired to cook for himself and too busy to go to an actual restaurant, but you had cooked so often for yourself, always making enough for an entire family (What was with all the leftovers?!) that he started trying and liking almost everything you made.

He'd eat brisket, ribs, pulled pork sliders, devouring it all. You made an incredibly good steak, too. Better than at any restaurant or catering his dad ever had. Meals were typically paired with a glass of iced tea though. Sweet iced tea, obviously. You consumed an absurd amount of it, for some reason, making it from scratch frequently, along with lemonade. And while he disliked the tea, even after trying it repeatedly to make you happy, he adored the lemonade you made, which was tart and refreshing all at once.

He found out quickly, that you were far too pure for Gotham, opening doors for people instead of letting it shut in their faces, which was typical. Or saying ma'am and sir at the end of nearly every sentence, even with friends occasionally by accident.

He loved your pet names for him, though. Instead of baby, or sweetheart like most people would use, you called him sugar or darlin', sometimes sweet pea. It seemed like it would sound cringey, but with the way it rolled off your tongue because of your accent, it was so smooth, it just fit.

You also, quite frequently and without realizing, used words like y'all, reckon, howdy which he found utterly adorable. No where near as cute as the words he didn't even recognize, though. He thought he lost his mind when you first said the toaster was acting Cattywampus. He still didn't quite understand what that meant, but got the gist.

He'd admit, he got pretty jealous when you first called another man handsome when he was barely in range to hear it. He'd been hurt and pulled you away, asking why. You'd said it was because the man was an idiot and he stared at you like you grew a second head. "It ain't right to be beautiful and smart, so when someone's as dumb as a bag of rocks, you gotta call handsome." You explained and realization dawned on him that you'd been insulting that man directly to his face without him realizing it.

That was rather funny.

As was the number of 'bless your hearts' you would mutter to people with a sweet tone, only for it to be a subtle dig. He had no idea the south was so...well, catty.

Jason also appreciated some of your more obscure talents, like your strange ability to recognize types of snakes, which he discovered when Joker released dozens of them into the city causing mass panic. You were utterly perplexed, especially when he told you they were coral snakes, which had a paralyzing bite. "Are you sure we're seeing the same snakes, sugar? Those are king snakes, they're harmless."

In his and his family's defense, Gotham has a rat problem, not a snake one, typically. Plus they looked almost identical and moved so fast it was hard to tell the difference. Except for you, who'd grown up learning to know what venomous and non venomous snakes looked like to avoid getting bit.

In addition to your weird knowledge about reptiles, you also knew an awful lot about sports, mostly football. It was sometimes difficult to tear you away from the TV and even though he could care less, he'd watch it with you if it gave him the chance to pull you into his lap on the couch.

You were often a walking contradiction in his mind, so polite and kind, a fan of boots and extremely nice leather products that were probably better than his, yet so capable of spending the entire day fishing (not that the Gotham water was safe to fish in, because it really wasn't) or going to the gun range with him. A shotgun really wasn't what he'd had in mind when inviting you along, but since your family would always partake in hunting season, he supposed he really shouldn't have been surprised when you picked it up. And used it like an expert.

He'll admit, that was extremely attractive.

Your duality, your gentle nature, your southern hospitality which he quickly realized was a very real thing, all enticed him to no end. Until he was so utterly smitten he was incorporating your slang into his vocabulary and taking your every suggestion about quality leather goods.

Yeah, it was safe to say you were the last person anyone thought Jason would like, but turned out to be the one he loved.

[awordsmith]

sit with me 𝜗𝜚 r. spencer

after having a multitude of chance encounters with Spencer–the one time he catches you crying, he obviously has to make your day better even if that merely means sitting with you in silence on a terrace.

who? spencer reid x unknown!reader when? s13 genre: fluff (comfort) content warning: designer!reader, house flooding-loss of found family-dead dad-distant mom, proofed as always, reid with warmth !! word count: 8.1k a/n: well, i honestly didn't know if i'd make it this far, but i suppose i fell in love with this short story anyway. . .enjoy !!

Nearly colliding with the security guard to your right, you checked your watch, then apologized. You were late–your boss was going to kill you. You didn’t have time to think of who you bumped into or who you pissed off. It wasn’t your fault, you’d defend, it was the idiot intern! Honestly, how did she not think the designs discarded by the head designer of your brand would still be significant?

It was the first thing you told everyone who stepped through those doors–come to you before throwing anything away. Ugh–and now you were going to be in more trouble than you’d ever been in before because no one under your supervision had ever effed up this hard!

You would have to fire her–your heart sank–would you even be able to fire people after this? Not if I don’t make it on the stupid plane! 

Your mind was running at the speed of who knew what momentum, “AH–” your head slammed into a body. You felt like crying, the sketchbook fell to the floor–you felt water pooling in your eyes. You took a breath, trying to keep it together. Your head tilted upward, and you took three deep breaths, swallowing the meltdown you wanted to have.

“Are you…okay?” You ignored whoever spoke, you just needed a second–just a second to yourself, to plan out different jobs you could apply for if you did get fired. “Uhm, hello?”

Angrily, your eyes pried open, “What? Can’t you see I’m in a midlife crisis?”

“I…” you turned away, ignoring the desperate regards of the stranger in front of you. Okay, let’s go. You spun around and meant to walk around the person who was still annoyingly in your way. You met his stare, he looked a bit uncomfortable and it took everything in you not to blow up in his face. “You dropped this…”

Your gaze dropped to the book in his hand, it hadn’t been damaged–thank God, tears sprang into your eyes again and you had to force them back into your body by fanning out your probably flustered face.

“I don’t know what’s wrong, but you seem like you’re in a hurry,” he scratched the back of his head, “do you…need some water?”

You reevaluated the situation, apologizing would be the most logical thing to do, but–you checked your wrist watch– “I’m gonna be late!”

You snatched the sketch pad out of his hand–no longer hanging on the edge of a breakdown you didn’t have time for–and gripped your suitcase handle, “Thank you, stranger, and I’m sorry!”

Spencer swallowed, flexing the hand he’d held the sketch pad in. The woman–she’d looked familiar. He couldn’t quite place her, which was odd because Spencer could typically place anyone; perhaps he was still in shock from his back getting shanked by a head.

He watched the woman disappear, her red pumps click-clacking at an increased pace as she stormed through the crowds. A little smile fell to his lips, “That was…something…”

“Hey, Spencer, you ready?” Spencer’s mom walked out of the gift shop across from him.

“Yeah,” he grabbed his own luggage and began pulling it along, “come on, we can get food on the way home.”

“That sounds nice,” she smiled, patting, then rubbing his arm.

You, on the other hand, just made it onto the plane. You wanted to cry out in relief, but your mission wasn’t done. You had a stewardess put your things at the top of your seat in first class because you had to calm yourself before facing off with your boss, though you didn’t have much time.

You–again–lifted your head and closed your eyes, trying to control your breathing. You gripped the sketch pad in your hands and held it to your chest. You had done it. You had saved the day once again, because if you weren’t fixing your problems, you were fixing someone else's. Though you supposed that it just came with your position.

You were an assistant lead designer, and right above you was the star of it all–your boss. In your world, you were at the top, or rather right below it–but you were up there–and a lot of people hated you for it. Not just because of your age, but because you were good at your job.

You had decided from the moment you were offered the position that no one would take it away from you, and for that to never happen, nothing under your watch could ever go wrong; though your team had made some minor errors in the past, they were all quickly fixable and within the time limit you had given them.

This: Losing a sketchbook–this could never happen again. It was the first year you’d taken on an intern at the urging of your boss, typically before you hired someone, you put them through trial runs for minor products, and depending on how serious they took those jobs would give you an estimate on how well they would be at a full-time position within your brand.

You were always careful and only hired a handful of people at a time; your employees had a three-strike rule, you’d developed it in your first year running things. You had your small team that worked closely with you and your boss, but you also managed a larger team of executives for different branches of the brand. It was your job to oversee everything and everyone at all hours.

Your job was to make sure everything went smoothly and for the past ten years, you’d gotten pretty damn good at it–you were just glad you hadn’t blown it all now.

You pushed passed the curtains and stepped into first class, approaching your boss. She waved, her long, sleek mousy-brown hair was pinned back with bobby pins. “I thought you weren’t going to make it.” You chuckled nervously, “I should have known you wouldn’t let me down.

“Of course not, have you met me?” You joked, taking your seat.

“What’s that in your hands?”

“This? Oh, it’s the sketches you didn’t like. The new intern threw it away by accident.” You rolled your eyes, quoting the word accident with your hands.

“No?”

“Yes! I don’t even know how it got into her hands in the first place, I’ve told them a million and one times–”

She murmured your name, “You know what, it’s fine. You solved it, like you always do–why don’t we sit back and enjoy our flight? The Lord knows it’s going to be a long one.” She accepted a glass of wine from the stewardess passing by. 

You were on your way to Paris to design outfits for a new time-period show–well your boss was, but that was the good part about knowing someone for so long, they trusted you–and your boss always gave you a bit of room to work you magic–you were hoping to become her successor.

“You know what? You’re right.” Your hands wrapped around another glass–pleased that your job was still safe and very much yours. You cheered with her, forgetting all about the man you’d crashed into just moments prior.

You unbuckled your seatbelt and stretched; your boss would stay in Paris for a few more days to relax, but your job was done, and you were set to go home–that had been yesterday. 

You collected your things with the help of the stewardess, you paused, her outfit–it crossed your mind a multitude of times that flight attendants had the most unique uniforms and their outfits had definitely been ones to which a variety of times across generations.

“Miss?” 

You dropped your hand, eyes refocusing on the eyes of the woman, “Oh, I am so sorry, but…” you bit your lip, wondering if you should ask. It’d make for one hell of a piece in a new line your boss had given you free rein on. “I’m sorry, but I have an odd question…”

“Oh…go on.” She was too nice.

“Well…do you need to fly anytime soon, or do you have some free time?”

“I’m…I think,” she glanced behind her, “I think I have some time.”

She looked young, definitely younger than you, but by how much you couldn’t be sure. “Then, would you mind modeling for me? I mean, of course you don’t have to, but your uniform…it’s… inspiring,” you knew that sounded incredibly weird, but it was the first word that came to mind.

She fiddled with her fingers, “Are you some kind of designer?”

You nearly scoffed, were you some kind of–you were one of the best designers in the world.

Okay, perhaps that was a stretch, but you worked for one of the best designers of all time and this year she was allowing you to craft your own line using all of her resources. It was the chance of a lifetime, and you couldn’t blow it.

“You could say that,” you settled for and slipped her a business card.

She stared at it, reading it over and over again. You watched realization wash over her–to say it didn’t fuel your pride would be a lie–she had a gorgeous figure and wouldn’t it just be the icing on the cake if she walked the runway with the outfit inspired by her old uniform?

You checked your watch, you needed to get home–you paused, pulling your phone out of your pocket when a notification came through–oh, this was not good. Your face soured. “Something wrong?” She frowned, tilting her head.

“Uh–just something from the office, listen,” you slipped your phone back into your pocket, “I have to go, but if you’re interested, you have my number and my email.”

You did your finest to stay composed as you exited the plane, and you were very graceful–if you do say so yourself–entering the airport, however, once inside, it was go time.

That notification hadn’t been the office, they weren’t expecting you back until tomorrow and though your employees knew they had to run everything by you, they also knew not to call you on your days off, especially when you just got back seeing as–oh there it is–you get jet lag.

You had to keep it together until you got in the cab, just as it had been last week, your right hand gripped the handle of your suitcase and hauled it down the hall. You had to find your duffle first! You headed for the baggage cart, eyes trailing the line. There! You ran for it– “OW–”

You whimpered. Why was this always happening to you? “I-I’m so sorry, but you–

“Me!?” You stepped back, angrily looking up at the man whose head you’d hit with your own.

“You…came out of nowhere!” He squeaked.

Hold on–you knew this guy. “It’s you!”

“It’s you!” His voice went up, as if he were more nervous than you were angry.

You huffed, but then your eyes caught on your dufflebag, escaping you. You ran for it, leaving your suitcase behind. The guy chased after you, “quit following me!”

“What!?” He screamed, shuddering under the gaze of the nearest security guard. You snatched up your simple, black bag, watching him reach for a very…unique bag–the one that had been sitting beside yours.

You paused, eyeing his frame, his eyebrows scrunched together, and in turn, you raised a single brow, “interesting taster….” you eyed him up and down, “didn’t take you for the type…”

He glanced down at the sparkly purple, unicorn-covered duffle. You snorted when he jumped back, “What? No–this, this isn’t–it’s…my friends.”

“Don’t be embarrassed, men in touch with their femininity is great, really…” you walked back over to your suitcase and settled the bag on top of it.

“It is!” He insisted, “I’m picking it up for her!”

“Uh huh,” you glanced at the clock on your phone again, sighing.

“Something wrong?” 

You shook your head, “It’s nothing I can’t fix.”

“Hmm.”

You made a face, “Did you just ‘hmm’ me?”

“What is that a bad thing?” He huffed a laugh.

Your eyes narrowed and for the first time, you took a moment to look–really look–at the stranger whom you seemingly kept crossing paths with. 

His hair was grown out, it looked soft to the touch, he had a bit of stubble, and his eyes–you shivered. You could get lost in those eyes. You didn’t want to think about why they seemed to hold so much and yet show so little. 

You ou forced yourself to look away, clearing your throat before saying, “I suppose it doesn’t matter. Does it, Stranger?”

You could feel the heaviness of his gaze–as if someone had dropped hot coals in your stomach. Your cheeks darken–now you really had to avoid his eyes, he would know instantly, and though he couldn’t be much older than you, you didn’t want to feel embarrassed–you let your eyes drift back to his body slightly…AH, what were you doing!?

You shifted your stance and turned away from him completely, “well, it was uhm…nice bumping into you…again.” Not by choice, but hey?

He nodded, though you couldn’t see it, “Right, good bye… Stranger.”

“Good bye, Stranger.” For good.

“Oh, uhm,” he held up the bag, “it’s really not mine.”

You tried to hold in a snicker, but your trembling body gave you away, and you couldn’t help but turn around for a split second to give him a disbelieving look.

Spencer sighed as he watched the same woman walk away from him again. His eyes were drawn to her feet–well, her shoes, she was wearing those same red pumps he’d remembered her wearing that same day. They fit her well, “It’s not!”

Spencer sighed, jumping when he heard, “Spencer, you got my bag for me!”

Penelope came flying toward him in a jumble of colors, “h-hey,” he laughed, pulling her in for a hug, “how was the trip?” 

“I’ll tell you about it in the cab, come on,” she motioned him forward with her hand, though as much as he wanted to hear about Penelope's time in Europe, his mind drifted back to the stranger in the red pumps he kept bumping into.

Against his logic, he imagined what it would be like to meet her again, preferably somewhere less crowded, with less noise–somewhere they could have a real conversation where maybe they weren’t colliding into each other at every angle.

That was crazy, he knew the percentage of meeting a stranger twice was low, so the possibility of meeting them a third time? 

He decided he wouldn’t think about it…that was the best thing to do, seeing as he’d never see her again. Spencer knew he was a genius; people often told him so and referred to him as such, but Spencer also knew no person–matter how smart they were or how hard they tried–had any control over their subconscious.

You were a ball of giddiness up until you arrived at your apartment. You let out a whine as you stepped out of the cab. The landlord and a few of your neighbors were crowded in a circle out front. You noted Old Cat Man and Mean Rich Lady, with a grimace, you approached them, your shoes clicking and clacking on the stony pavement.

“It’s true then, you weren’t messing with me?”

Your landlord turned toward you, signing, “I’m sorry, I just got the call this morning, the entire thing is flooded.”

“So there’s absolutely no way I can get my things?”

“I’m so sorry,” he shook his head.

“Speak for yourself, I’m going back in there.” Mean Rich Lady spat, you rolled your eyes.

“Always looking to pick a fight.”

“Come on, you two! Don’t argue at a time like this,” Old Cat Man intervened, holding his precious ball of fur.

You grinned at it, your voice going high, “Aww, aren’t you just a cute little thing, Claude!” Old Cat Man stretched out his arms. You took up Claude and began petting him, turning back to your landlord after Mean Rich Lady harumphed.

“Are we at least getting compensated?” One of your neighbors–she lived on the first floor with her son, who was more than likely at school right now–asked. 

A few others began agreeing with her. Your landlord tried to calm everyone down, saying he would talk to the owners about it. Of course, you wanted to know when that would be. This was insane. How does this even happen? It seemed like your days went from worse to good to amazing to good to horrible!

You felt like screaming into a black hole, and though you would settle for a pillow, you couldn’t because your things were inside the flooded complex! You began texting your right-hand assistant, you were more than likely not going to be heading into work tomorrow.

Two days later, you were exiting a cab and standing across the street from your new possible home. The owners of your old complex had assured your landlord and the rest of their inhabitants that they were going to compensate everyone with a hefty settlement.

All your things–your clothing, your furniture, your bedding, your paintings–did they know how much you’d spent at the auction in New York for that one-of-a-kind Marcel–Béronneau? You had cried several times the day before, mostly about that painting. It was beautiful, but more importantly, the most expensive thing you owned!

Needless to say, their settlement with you was well over what you had spent on Ondine. Now, you were staying at a 5-star hotel with a bit of the settlement as you scoured for a new place.

You smiled, looking up at the complex–it was more of a small neighborhood, gated and secure. You crossed the street, passing folks who looked well enough. A doorman undid a red rope and let you through the doors.

He was dressed in what at first appeared to be modest clothing–but you’d know that uniform anywhere–you’d helped design it. Your red pumps clicked across the man-made gray wood flooring. A backless couch sat in front of the doors against the matching gray walls. It took on a shade darker than everything else, though, and looked incredibly comfortable with those three small throw pillows–but that wasn’t what you were here to study.

“Hello, can I help you?” The receptionist smiled. He was dressed as well as the doorman, you admired the uniform appreciatively. 

You had to wash and rewear the clothes you’d had in your suitcase; you wouldn’t have minded if they were casual work clothes, but you worked in the fashion industry, not to mention you had packed for Spring in Paris. You looked pretty idiotic in a raincoat, but it was the only jacket you had unless you wanted to overheat in your Saint Laurent coat.

Needless to say, your outfits weren’t…tame. You’d been trying to do your best to stay up with work while trying to rebuild your life–not your best moments, oh to be sure–and it left you with no time to go shopping. You needed a permanent place now. You were trying to fix everything within a few days, and still your team needed you. So far, none of the apartments had yet grabbed your eye, you were hoping this would be your final destination and not just another pitstop.

“Yes, I have an appointment with a woman…sorry her name slips my mind at the moment…I’m looking at the latest apartment on the 4th floor?”

“Ah,” he nodded, typing into his computer, “yes, of course, she said you would be coming in–so I’ve been expecting you,” he flashed a friendly smile, “I’ll call her down right away–” he picked up a black office phone and began dialing. 

“Thank you, I can go wait over there,” you motioned toward the couch.

He nodded and covered the phone with his hand, “if theres anything you need–anythign at all, just ask me.”

Genuine happiness lifted your mood, “thank you so much!” You spun around and headed back toward the couch, deciding to answer a few emails to pass the time, then–as promised–the leasing agent you were meeting with stepped out of the elevator almost five minutes later.

You shook hands and introduced yourself, expressing how ready you were to find a home because of what had happened. “I know the feeling.” She said, clicking the 4th-floor button on the elevator.

“You’ve had your house flooded while you were on vacation before?” Your eyebrows raised.

She laughed, “Oh no, but my ex-husband had his apartment flooded just last year. I offered to let him stay with me,” she waved her hand, showing off the newly attached ring. Hmm, it looked brand new. “But he said it’d be awkward with you know...”

“No, but I wish I did,” you joked, “may I?”

“Uh, sure,” she held out her hand. You inspected the ring closely, but you didn’t have great light, though something about it–perhaps it was a gut feeling, you could tell it was real. He must have had money if he was willing to spend over 5k on an engagement ring.

You shook your head, “It’s darling.”

Her tanned face turned a bit red, “Thank you, he let me pick it out.”

And courteous, God, when were you going to find a man like that? You sighed, eyes falling to her face once more, she was around your age, you wondered how long her last marriage was, and how old she married. A soft frown fell to your lips, thinking of your situation compared to others your age, you weren’t doing too well in the love department. 

No, it doesn’t matter, marriage wasn’t for you. You knew that….but it did bother you, something heavy sat within your chest…something like… regret.

A sigh escaped you, and you shook your head. Right now, you needed to focus on getting a new place so you could begin moving things in, you missed sleeping in your own bed, though that bed was likely still incredibly soaked in some dumpyard right about now.

“Wait, so–let me get this straight–Matt held his hand up, “you keep bumping into the same gorgeous woman with these red heels and…what? You haven’t asked her out?”

“It’s not that simple,” Spencer huffed, “she’s…seems…I don’t know.”

“And you didn’t get a good look at her?” Luke turned to Penelope.

“I–I didn’t even know there was a her! Not until this one,” she smacked Spencer, who winced, “told me in the car!”

“Eh–to be fair, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.” He scratched the nape of his neck.

“Oh. My. God.” She threw her hands up, then lowered her head and whined, “You’re a lost cause.”

“This is great,” Luke laughed.

“What are we talking about?” JJ seated herself on top of Spencer’s desk. He glanced at her, but it was Matt who answered.

“Spencer met this girl at the airport–”

“–twice–” Luke added.

“And he didn’t ask her out.”

“It’s nothing,” he shook his head, seemingly trying to brush it off.

“Wha–I wouldn’t call it nothing!” Penelope squeaked.

“I’d call it fate.” Luke’s amusement didn’t escape Spencer.

“Yeah right,” he snorted, averting his gaze to the floor, the image of her red pumps coming running through his head. They drew his attention–he’d fallen asleep the past two nights at the memory of them shuffling away from him. He’d even had a miniscule daydream of meeting that woman again–but that was delusional, even for Spencer. “I don’t even know her name.”

“Well then, get her name, and then do something with it.” Matt egged.

“What like…ask her out?”

“Uh…yeah,” the group laughed at Luke’s comedic timing; Spencer was the only one who stayed silent.

“It’s unlikely I’m ever going to see her again. The probability–”

“–with the streak you have going on?” Emily walked over with her cup, her nose scrunched and her lips pressed together, “I think you’re gonna see her again… Sorry,” she shrugged, “I was eavesdropping.”

Spencer didn’t know about that. He didn’t have any plans at the airport, and it was unlikely she stayed in one place for long; if his memory served correctly, she’d been in a rush both times they’d bumped–or rather crashed–into each other.

He let out an exasperated sigh, it was bothering him a bit. She was quite the character. Slowly, a small smile developed. He wondered what he would say if he bumped into her again–preferably not in an airport with so much noise.

Though he knew wishing for something like that was dumb and that was not how the world worked–and he couldn’t very well go to the airport just to wait to bump into her. Firstly, that’d be weird. Secondly, Spencer didn’t have the time, “Alright, let’s go, we have a case.” Emily chirped.

Of course, they did–but Spencer wasn’t complaining, he just couldn’t get the thought of her out of his head, and he hoped it wouldn’t tarnish the way his brain worked.

Spencer huffed a sigh, checking the time on his phone, he was almost home–the rest of the team had gone for drinks, but he didn’t feel like it tonight. It’d been three days, and granted he’d been in another state, but he’d half-expect to bump into her even then.

He shoved his phone back into his pocket, pausing when his stomach growled. He snorted when he looked to his right, catching sight of a convenience store. It was late and a cab had dropped him off about a mile from his complex; he’d wanted to walk. The night was warmer than usual, though that was to be expected; it was Spring, and April was just next week.

He glanced once more at the convenience store, wondering if he should just brave the rest of the journey home. Spencer's breath caught in his throat–his eyes tracked red pumps through the blurry store window, he’d know those shoes anywhere.

He didn’t even think to hesitate before pulling open the door, the blue windchimes above it whistling in the slight breeze. The store was quiet and the lights were dim. There was no one at the counter, but he heard her shoes clicking across the old tile floors.

He followed the sound, rounding a large corner, and there she was, eyeing up the last chillidog, her mouth visibly watered, and Spencer had to turn around before he laughed at her outright and she took offense. She noticed him anyway, stumbling back at the sight.

“You!” She jabbed a finger toward him.

A cheeky smile tugged at his mouth, the murky glow of the shop blinding him in his tiredness, “me!” he threw his hands up in mock cheer.

She rolled her eyes, a slight smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing, he took in her fancy clothes, raising a brow at her feet, “are those the only pair of shoes you own?”

She glanced down, wincing. “It’s a long story, but I’m working on reestablishing my footwear.”

He nodded, wondering how to continue the conversation without sounding awkward. “So…you live around here?”

“Not yet,” she smiled, “but I just put a down payment on a pretty nice apartment.”

“Oh,” he nodded, “why the sudden move?” Was that a creepy thing to ask? He didn’t think so.

“Well,” she grabbed the chillidog and brought it to the counter. Spencer, on instinct, grabbed the first thing he saw, an egg salad sandwich. It wasn’t the best thing he could eat, but then again, he wasn’t in prison anymore, and anything was better than prison food. “It’s kind of the same explanation for my particular choice in shoes these days.”

Spencer’s mind went through a billion possibilities as she paid for her food with a cashier that seemed to materialize behind the counter. “Did all of your things get stolen?” He took in her appearance once more–maybe she was some super-rich lady he’d seen in one of JJ's gossip magazines.

Thanking the cashier for his change and slipping it into his satchel, Spencer turned toward the nameless woman again. “I guess you could say that,” she wagged a finger, “if you count water as the thief.”

His eyes widned, “I’m sorry, that sucks.”

“Yeah, well,” she shrugged, “what are you gonna do? On the bright side, my apartment isn’t too far from my job and it’s really nice–it was the last one on the listing, I’m glad I snatched it up.”

“Huh,” he sucked on his cheek, following her out of the store, her shoes drawing his attention as they made a sound he didn’t know how to describe other than relaxing. “What’s the name of the complex?”

She threw him a long look that said “okay stalker”, but he could tell she was definitely just teasing. “It’s actually,” she said, pointing across the street, “that one.” 

Fire lit up Spencer’s skin. “Are you sure?”

“Yep,” she nodded, “but the Airbnb I’m staying at until the flat is ready for me to move in is this way,” she jabbed a finger in the opposite direction.

Spencer frowned. It was late, and though it didn’t feel like a scary night, he felt he shouldn’t let her walk alone. “You okay walking back by yourself?”

He didn’t know why he expected her to say no; of course, she would say yes, she’d feel awkward about it. And isn’t this how the start of every serial killer flick began? Not to mention the actual stories that started like this. Spencer pursed his lips, not wanting to be pushy, but also not wanting to let her go. “Are you sure? I really don’t mind.” If she said no this time, he would accept it.

However, this time, she said, “You know what? Why not?” Relief flooded his system, “as long as you’re not a serial killer of anything.”

Spencer nearly choked on his one saliva, “No–no, of course not!” He didn’t know if he sounded or looked convincing enough, and upon thinking that, he wanted to claw his eyes out because isn’t that exactly what a serial killer would be worried about?

Spencer walked her to her Airbnb, doing his absolute best not to give off creepy-stalker-killer vibes. He went on a tangent about random facts that came to his mind. In between his thoughts and rambling, he noted the subtle way in which he found her addicting.

She was beautiful, but it was mostly the way she asked questions or asked him to specify something more rather than shutting him down.

“Uhm, I thought I should let you know,” he paused just before she unlocked the door. That complex you’re moving into: I live there.”

A small grin floated around her face, “I figured.” Spencer didn’t get much of a chance to reply as his mind went blank, “So, maybe…” She looked away, and Spencer could see the dilemma working its way around her mind.

He pretended to be patient. He didn’t want to scare her off into changing her mind. 

She took a breath and slid her phone from her pants pocket. Spencer watched as she typed in her password; his eyebrows shot up when she spun the phone toward his face. A white screen with a set of numbers at the bottom, “Do you think I could get your number…” Her hand trembled, and Spencer thought it was cute. “You know, since we’re going to be neighbors and all,” it was an excuse; he flushed at her nervousness.

Though the number of girls that approached him had grown steadily over the years, he still grew slightly awkward when someone as pretty looked nervous around him. He cleared his throat and averted his gaze, “Yeah, sure, if we’re going to see each other again anyway.”

He took her phone and typed in his number, noting the way his hands shook–gosh, was he sweating? He handed her phone back, “Uhm, I’m — by the way…”

“Spencer,” he murmured, taking a step back.

“It’s nice to officially meet you, Spencer.” Her genuine smile had Spencer’s heart leaping in his chest. “And…” she glanced away, “…sorry about the times before, I wasn’t…that isn’t me, the first time I was freaking because my intern had tossed a very important sketchbook and I aomsot missed the plane because of it–the second time–”

Spencer held up his hand, “You don’t have to explain yourself…really–I–” he stuffed his hands in his pockets and reassessed her, “I believe you.”

She let out a sigh in what seemed like relief. “Alright, then,” she stuck out her hand, “thank you for walking me home–kind of.” She glanced at the Airbnb.

“No problem,” Spencer smiled. With one last wave goodbye, she spun around, unlocked the door, and slipped inside. She’s…Spencer chuckled at himself shook his head, he didn’t want to analyze and break down her character. He felt he should get to know her like a normal person would, if they were going to be neighbors after all. 

He wondered what his welcome gift should be. Maybe a new pair of shoes?

The elevator dinged before its doors opened. Today was Move-In Day; you texted Spencer about it, but he hadn’t responded. It plagued you–being left on delivery. You tried not to let it ruin your mood, but you couldn’t help checking your phone every five minutes to see if he had responded.

You instructed two of the moving professionals you’d hired to carry the larger boxes up to your space as you took on the lighter and fragile boxes–too cautious to allow anyone else to carry them. They led you into the hallways, but you paused halfway down the floor.

They halted and glanced back questingly, “Oh, you’re fine, I just need to respond to this,” you waved your free hand in front of you.

With a tight nod, they proceeded down the hall. You crouched, setting the box beside your feet and pulling out your phone. Your heart shot through your chest, and electricity ran up your spine, which was incredibly childish considering you were nearing 30–but regardless, you clicked open the message, heat rushing to your cheeks as your eyes took in Spencer's reply.

Happy Move-In Day! I’ll be home later tonight, so I can stop by if you want.

Yes! Yes! Yes! “Eeeeeee,” your squeal bounced off the walls, and a flush darkened your cheeks. 

I’d love that, actually!

His reply was immediate, Great see you later tonight!

You slid your phone back in your pocket and stood. Your eyes fluttered shut and you took a calming breath, then you shook your body, arms flailing, an attempt to cast away all the jitters running through your nervous system.

Five minutes later, you were heading down the hall again, box in hand. You kicked the slightly ajar door further open. “There you are.” One of the movers stepped forward. You set the box on the floor, eyes drifting toward the beautiful beige box on the bar table, a small, cremé envelope tucked snugly between the red, silk bow. “This was sitting at the front door when we arrived.”

You headed for it, your lips pursing, you’d only told one person your new apartment number. The envelope was hard; it looked expensive, like the invitations your boss received for fashion shows and galas.

To: —

From: Stranger

The bold, calligraphy looked handwritten. You ripped open the box you’d been carrying and yanked out your letter opener, peeling the envelope open swiftly. The movers headed back out, saying they’d be back up with more boxes. 

You took a seat in one of the stools and pulled out the decorative paper, setting the envelope and letter opener aside.

Dear, — 

I know you’re going to laugh at this, but that’s the point, I hope it makes having to move a bit better

- S. Reid

You set the letter aside and grabbed your phone again, your fingers flying across the keyboard. You hit send, watching the message, your bottom lip between your teeth.

The ribbon came undone with a simple tug, the box lifted easily, and the glittery paper peeled back with no trouble at all. Your eyes caught on the shoes, wine red ballet flats–another, shorter note inside.

I know how much you like this color.

They were gorgeous–but you were confused. The buds of your fingers trailed over the brown leather inside the shoe, finding the size–how did he know? Stalker. You snickered at the thought. He probably estimated or something.

Spencer rushed home. He wanted to see her.

After the text she’d sent him, his stomach felt lighter, and he felt like he might throw up on the jet ride back. Rossi had said it was butterflies, but Alvez shook his head, claiming men don’t get butterflies, they get sucker-punched, but Spencer hadn’t known if either of them was right.

The best way he could describe how he felt was sick–but sick with happiness, not disease. It was illogical for someone to be so excited to see another person–a person whom they’d only had three encounters with, but something in Spencer felt a pull, a tug. He wondered if he’d never bumped into her–or rather if she’d never bulldozed him down at the airport, would they have met another way?

Perhaps, rather than noting her red heels, his hunger would have gotten the better of him, and he would have bumped into her for the first time in the convenience store, or maybe they would have met in the elevator of the complex they now both lived in. Spencer didn’t believe in soulmates; he loved the idea of it, and he could discuss theories of the red string theory just as much as he could any other philosopher's work, but this was…he didn’t know what.

He could explain scientific and mathematical equations, he could explain why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west; he could even explain the meaning behind some of the most intricate literature, but he could not explain why he felt this pull toward her.

Coconut wafted through his nostrils, but he paid the air freshener the lobby's staff had just replaced not much mind, his thoughts competing against his heart to see which could break him first. He loosened his tie, he would drop his stuff off at his apartment first, then head straight to her floor. She lived on the last floor, Room 40.

It felt like an eternity, but he wanted to look and smell his best, so doing what he’d never thought to do–ever–he unboxed the cologne Morgan had gifted him winters ago, and spritzed it around him twice. He coughed and waved his hand away, but as the smell flooded him, it was strong but subtle.

He hummed, checking the bottle, not bad, Morgan.

Seconds later, he was out the door and chasing down the elevator.

There was this sudden realization. You would no longer get into fights with the mean, old, rich lady from down the hall. You would never pet the cat, the calm old man let out every once in a while. You would never wake up in the middle of the night to classical music because the couple next door loved to relive their first dance at 3 in the morning.

As much as you bickered with he old lady and cursed the couple for choosing such an early hour, you were sad to know you’d never see them again. You thought of your downstairs neighbor's boy, whom you all took turns watching when his mother had work.

It had become somewhat of a routine for you, somewhat like a family–and the holidays you’d shared with them–even though Mean Rich Lady always nagged at your cooking, you had come to see them as family.

This was your first night in a new palace, and you were alone. No old lady to pick a fight with, no couple to force you awake, and no old man with a cat to pet. You hadn’t even said goodbye, you’d just…left.

Tears fell with a single breath. You felt enclosed, and you had to go somewhere to breathe. You thought to call one of them, but they were probably doing their own things, though it just felt wrong to be somewhere they weren’t. For years, they annoyed and loved you, despite your flaws and despite theirs, you had grown attached to their comforting smiles and manners.

You slipped on the new flats–you felt sick to your stomach, like you were going to puke. You wanted to be held, you wanted to cry until firm arms wrapped around you and hot breaths hit your neck, until a murmur whispered against your ear that it was okay and that you were an adult and could handle this.

You thought to call your mother, but she was no doubt asleep, your father had passed a few years ago–in fact that had been the last time you’d seen your mother, you texted her sometimes, but waking her up in the middle of the night seemed…foreign to the distant relationship you had grown to know.

The cool breeze hit your skin as you burst through the terrace door. City lights pulled you toward the shoulder; it was all concrete, and there were a few chairs spread out across and a single table. A new, silver barbecue sat in the corner, a charcoal bag leaned against it, the top slightly folded, indicating its use.

You perched on the shoulder of the terrace, overlooking the city, your eyes snagged on the center of the landscape, where most of the lights were brighter. You’d calmed down to a sniffle when a creak sounded, your head jerked back toward the door, hoping there were no serial killers amongst your new neighbors.

There was nothing, you shivered, another wave of sadness coming over you. Perhaps you just needed a good cry, your anxiety and frustration had been pent up for almost a week now, dealing with coming back from a wonderful trip in Paris to your apartment and almost every single belonging drenched beyond repair.

Your mind had been running at a million miles per second, trying to figure out what you were going to do within the three-day grace period you’d given yourself. Not to mention the new intern stresser right before heading to Paris–you were almost positive you weren’t going to make it on that plane–but it seemed God had bestowed his hand upon you, giving you the most unexpected angel.

Spencer freaked–he was nervous. He knew he wanted to go back out there and comfort her, but as he bit his thumb and paced back and forth in front of the door, knowing she was just on the other side had his stomach in a know. A feeling crept into his stomach; it just didn’t feel like enough.

He snatched his phone from his pocket and typed out a quick message to Penelope, and seconds later Luke was calling him.

“Go out there!” Luke shouted into Spencer's ear, which he instantly regretted positioning close to his ear.

“Be kind,” Lisa seemed to murmur over him.

“I know–” he squeaked, cheeks flushing, “but I don’t–how do I–”

“Just be yourself–what? No–” the last part sounded like it wasn’t meant for Spencer–so he chose to ignore it.

“Okay, but what should I say? She sounded really upset–?”

“Ugh,” Luke’s heavy sigh, “Lisa–”

Lisa’s voice broke through the phone, and it sounded like she was walking, “Don’t go anywhere, Spencer,” she huffed, keys jangling in the back as a door slammed shut, “ I’m bringing you flowers.”

“Flowers?” His eyebrows shot up, and he glanced back at the door as if she might have heard him.

“Trust me, flowers cheer anyone up.” She assured.

Luke took the phone back, the sound of a car starting in the background, “Meet us in front of your apartment; five minutes.”

The line went dead, and Spencer’s breath hitched. He swallowed and stuck a finger in his shirt, tugging it outward, letting the air cool his sweaty limbs. Admittedly, he should have taken a shower first, but he was too…exactic–okay, he needed to go take a shower.

Luke and Lisa raced through the city; apparently, Lisa knew this incredible 24/7 florist. “Are you sure about this?”

Luke turned toward his girlfriend, “Yes!” her voice pitched and she smacked his arm, “Come on Luke, you’re telling me you’ve never given someone flowers?”

“No–that’s not,” he coughed, rearranging his hands on the wheels, “no, look okay–I just–” he cut himself off, watching her face, her kind, caring, beautiful face. He shifted his focus back onto the road, “left or right?”

Lisa snickered, she she took his hand in hers, leaning forward to see the street sign, “straight, turn left at the next light.

You pulled out your phone, recalling how Spencer had said he’d wanted to meet with you–perhaps you could reschedule, you didn’t want to burden him with the responsibility of consoling you.

Huh, that was weird, you checked the time, Spencer had sent a message that you must’ve missed almost an hour ago, it read

On my way home, see you in a bit!

A frown tugged at your lips, your gaze drifted toward the terrace’s entrance. Hmm. 

You typed out a message, and after hesitating a moment, hit send.

I’m on the terrace 

You began wiping your tears, accepting that he might have seen you weren’t home, saw his text unanswered, and went back to his palace. He’d been gone a few days for work, he was probably tired. 

Your face scrunched together even as you tried to suppress the tears–at this point, you weren’t sure what you were crying about anymore; you were just crying.

Your body jerked, and your breath caught in your throat as the terrace door creaked open–revealing a very nervous, very handsome Spencer Reid. As he approached your posture straightened, you fully turned toward him, your knees the same height as his stomach.

“Hey,” you glanced away, trying to calm yourself. You wiped your tears, trying to remain tranquil, pretending like you weren’t just crying. “Are you okay?”

Your lip wobbled, slowly, you lifted your face. He was leaning his elbows on the wall beside you, your eyes drifted down his arms, gosh he smelled good. “I think so…at least I’m trying to be.” You murmured.

“We can talk about it, if you want?” He tried reading your eyes, but he couldn’t. For the first time, Spencer could not analyze a person even thought he so desperatley wished to. “Or we can sit in silence,” he suggested after he realized you’d turned away.

You nodded, your eyes on the lights in front of you. He smiled, nudging you with the bouquet. “What are those for?” You mumbled, palming a blossom, the petals were soft, and you noted the slight blush color of them, “pink roses?”

“The technical term for them is floribundas,” he slid them between the two of you and fingered a petal, “but because floribundas are a variety of different roses, this particular flower is referred to as the candy cane cocktail rose or rosa candy cane.”

You nodded, “They’re gorgeous, do you know what feeling they represent?”

You watched his eyes widen, he opened his mouth before his smile could fully form, “Floribundas can symbolize joy, happiness, and/or beauty. The name floribunda derives from the Latin word “floribundus,” meaning “full of flowers,” which funnily enough aptly describes their bushy growth and abundant clusters of blooms.”

“That’s so sweet,” you smiled, poking him, “thank you–I needed this, I could practically kiss you right now.” He’d taken your mind off everything that might have been plaguing your mind, and now all you could think about were floribundas and the origin of their name.

A sigh fell from your throat and you smiled up at him, frowning when you noted his flushed cheeks.

You bit your bottom lip to keep from smiling, finding the blue and red hues of nightlife before the two of you incredibly cute on him. “I’ll settle for a hug.” You held open your arms.

Spencer swallowed, his eyes tracking down your form, his eyes flashed when he caught the shoes you wore. His lips pursed, and he turned toward you completely. You held your breath as he stepped between your legs, the bouquet momentarily forgotten.

You pulled him closer when his arms tightened around your back. He smelled delectable, but of course you couldn’t just say that, so instead you said, “You smell good.” He leaned back a bit, his frame hovering above yours. Your gaze fell to his lips briefly, but for fear of making him feel weird, you turned your eyes elsewhere. “Thank you again for–”

His breath coated your mouth, you found his stare once more, your breath catching at the sudden warmth his body gave off. “Actually, I’d really like to kiss you too.”

a/n: rollercoaster [bleachers] and willow [taylor swift]

@darkmatilda @theylovemelody @kennedy-brooke @maisyyyyyy

[livin4woso]

Scarred for life (mapi x ingrid x leon!Reader)

Summary - When mapis' younger sister decides to come drop off some clothes, she had stolen off her older sister she ends up interrupting something she shouldn't have, and it leaves her slightly scarred.

You hadn't thought anything of it it was a normal day off, no special occasion or any media, just a random Thursday. You had borrowed mapis jacket a couple of days ago for a photo shoot and decided to return it. However, you had your own key to the place, and you had shown up unexpectedly to her and ingirds apartment many of times, and there had been no issues until today.

You were mapis younger sister, and she raised you to be just like her, a footballer. You had grown up idolising her, and you had captured the football world by storm as the lèon sisters a formidable pairing, some even referring to you as the brick wall of Barcelona. It was only a couple of years ago when her and ingrid got together and you wished it had happened sooner because ingrid was the balance to mapi that she needed. You and ingird got along far too well for mapis liking, even ganging up on her the odd few occasions, leaving her to fake pout with her arms crossed.

The drive from yours to mapis apartment was relatively short, but there was still roadworks that added time to your journey. You had finally reached her apartment and because you're her sister you had a spare key not for emergencies or anything just because you and mapi were close siblings and liked spending time with each other outside of football which may be for the reason yous had amazing chemistry on the field with eachother.

The key finally turned in the lock, opening the door with a satisfying click. However, unlike usual, there was no immediate sign they were home, so you thought you would just leave the jacket in her living room with a note to know that it was you. However, you wished you never showed up after what you saw.

As you stepped into the living room, it was if your life flashed before your eyes. "EURGHH OH MY GOD.. IM GONNA BE SICK, " you shouted. The sight before you was ingrid between your sisters legs on the couch, something you didn't want to see. "ON THE COUCH ASWELL UREGH IM NEVER SITTING ON THIS COUCH AGAIN NOT UNTIL YOU GET ANOTHER ONE," you continued to shout with your hands over your eyes as large amounts of scuffling happened.

It was about 5 minutes later, and it was like the scene was repeating in your head. "Im so sorry y/n ermm we weren't expecting you." mapi started this time in clothes. "Yeah no its okay im just never going to be able to come back here ever again... sooo goodbye and have a nice time just next time do it in the bedroom!!" You stated walking out the door.

Once you had left ingrid had started laughing to herself "well atleast your sister knows you're not as tough as you look and the fact you're a massive bottom" she said and mapi retaliated by smacking her arm "its not funny" "oh it really is amor".

That night, it might have seemed dramatic, but it was replaying in your head, causing a lack of sleep, which wasn't helpful for training the next morning. You trundled into the changing room, barely even noticing where you were going. "Whats wrong with you chica" said pina slinging an arm around your shoulder "i don't want to talk about it but if you want to know id ask my sister about it" you said groaning as you tried to shake off your tiredness.

You had came earlier than usual to try to avoid your sister and her girlfriend, which had worked as you were the first one on the field which had never happened before. Meanwhile pina couldn't help herself so she went and aksed mapi "sooo whats wrong with y/n the poor girl looks traumatised" "its nothing she's just being dramatic from yesterday" mapi said trying to blow the conversation over but pina had caught ingrid snickering to herself so she knew it was interesting.

"Pleaseee ingrid you have to tell me i wont say anything" she practically begged the taller girl "okay okay so basically y/n walked in on us in the living room" she said not even embarrassed "oh god no wonder the girl is traumatised" pina said through laughing.

"Well, she did shout at us that she was now scarred for life and is never coming back over until we get a new couch," ingrid said, laughing at the flashback of you shouting in pure disgust.

[lamentationsofalonelypotato]

Chapter 14: Don't Be A Bundt Cake

Pairing: Soldier Boy x f!reader, Reader POV, Soldier Boy POV

Summary:  When you decided to work with Butcher and his merry band of supe hunters to take down Homelander, you never expected to be saddled with a sullen, grumpy, jerk like Soldier Boy when the job was done. The more you're around him the more you hate him, but you can't help but wonder, is he really as big a jerk as you think? Reader is a supe with plant powers. This takes place in an AU about a month after the end of The Boys Season 3, in which Butcher has let Soldier Boy continue to work with him on his team.  (I'm real bad at summaries, please forgive me!)

Tropes: Enemies to Lovers (Not in this chapter), Slow Burn, Age Difference (Reader is in her 20s), Soft Ben/ Soldier Boy, Protective Ben/Soldier Boy, Miscommunication Trope

Word Count: 13.1K

Warnings: I'm going to label this 18+ because Soldier Boy (he's a warning and everyone knows it), Swearing, Mentions of Sex, Sexual Innuendo, Talks of Death, DENIAL, Idiots in Love, Pining by the Reader (and SB, but he won't admit it) Depressing Thoughts, Mentions of sexual assault/rape (not detailed at all, really just in passing) Talks about weed, Sexist comments, Ben makes derogatory comments, Threatening Ben/Soldier Boy might be a little bit OOC.

Note: This is told from Reader's perspective. Any references to the reader is made using you or your. There is minimal use of y/n. I tried my best to proofread, but nobody's perfect. If you don’t like, don’t read, but if you do like, you’re my favorite!

Internal monologue is in italics and is in first person.

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A/N: I am so sorry this one took me a bit longer. The writers block was fighting me the whole way, but we are very closely nearing the end of this series and the moment the reader and Ben stop being so stinkin' stubborn.

Reader POV

You lean your forehead against the cool window, watching the world flash by in a flurry of color. The wooded forests had vanished hours ago and all that was left were the yellowed sprawling fields of corn and grain and family farms that were laid sporadically along the interstate. Each one a little world that caught the flecks of golden sunlight as the sun began to peak above the horizon.

The bus rolled smooth and steady over the weathered pavement towards it's destination and was filled with an odd assortment of people young and old. There was man with a brightly colored parrot that had been singing "It's A Small World After All" since you left NYC, a woman with a little boy playing with an iPad and who refused to turn down the volume no matter how many times his mother asked him to, a group of teenagers a few seats up that continued to pass around a flask, and due to how far back you were sitting on the bus an uncomfortable smell emanated from the bathroom each time the door was opened.

But you didn't notice any of it.

The only thing on your mind were the events that happened almost twenty hours ago. They continued to circle your mind, playing over and over again like a perverted cassette tape making you sink further into the worn cloth covered seat at the back of the bus. The images were haunting, some new and some old, but all the more still horrible to re-live.

The song "Nights In White Satin" floating into the backseat of your family's car, the flash of unnatural light you knew was never lightning, the caskets at your parent's funeral covered in flowers that were much to pretty to lay on something so morbid, Elijah's body succumbing to the poppies that ripped him apart, the proud sneer on your brother's face when he admitted to killing your parents, Darren's broken and bloodied body strewn in pieces over the street with the creature standing over him with a dripping red maw, the ruined building that housed "Please Don't Die" reduced to nothing more than rubble, and the look on Ben's face when you turned your back on him and fled the scene.

For some reason that particular image seemed to cling on to you and refused to fade. You'd never seen him look that way, almost… helpless and a little fearful. In all the time you'd known him, Ben had never looked at you that way. Sure you'd seen him proud, angry, cocky, lustful, mischievous, but never fearful. And you were sure that it wasn't an emotion that he was used to feeling, but that begged the question… why?

Why was he looking at me like that? Why wouldn't he let me go? And what was he afraid of?

The creature curled in your lap snorts something in it's sleep, turning it’s head further into the cradle of your elbow to shut out the brilliant early morning sunlight. It was now the size of a toaster and had warranted several odd looks whenever you got off to change buses, but you didn't care.

You weren't sure about anything anymore. Everything your brother confessed to you made you feel like you were living a lie and the revelation of exactly what your powers could do- take life from plants to heal yourself, create whatever the hell it was on your lap, and speak to plants… it scared you.

You thought for so long that you knew everything about your powers, that you were in control, but now you weren't sure.

You felt different, as if something had unlocked deep down that you couldn't shut up again.

You'd felt different after you killed Elijah, but this was more alive, weaving and twisting in the pit of your stomach. You felt more connected to the earth, to the world outside the bus even though you were divided by glass and metal. You could feel the energy that thrummed through the body of the creature on your lap, bending to your will, the life force of the plants it was formed from molding with you, becoming a part of you.

You felt so different than the person you had been before Darren entered the shop, so uncertain, and there was only one place you wanted to be when you felt like this… home. You couldn't wait to run up the worn front steps of your grandmother's house and into her arms. She always knew what to say in times like this.

And you desperately needed the comfort of her embrace.

The phone in your pocket buzzes again and you flip the screen to see the ridiculous selfie Annie and you had taken on Halloween last year. The one that you'd both spent dressed up as the two brothers from your favorite paranormal tv show. It wasn't the first time she'd called. Annie had called and texted you more times than you could count over the past twenty hours but you didn't answer her. You didn’t want to.

It was the first time that you didn't want to talk to her, but talking to her meant that you'd have to re-live all of it again and you were clawing at the last shred of sanity you had left to keep it together.

The overwhelming waves of emotion kept pummeling you, dragging you deeper beneath the white surf. Each one brought the memories of what happened surging over you and were followed by everything that Darren said to you. Years of taking care of Darren and doing whatever he wished were tearing at your soul, years of giving up little things in your life to make him happy, and years of taking care of a man who you thought cared about you, but hated you enough to kill your parents and try to kill you too.

It made your skin crawl. Each time your brother told you that he loved you was an even bigger lie and now that you knew the truth and saw him for what he was, it felt like you were drowning. The darkness that ebbed just on the edge was begging you to leap into the abyss, but you were resisting the best you could.

The tears had stopped falling miles ago, but you couldn't stop the memories or the emotion that formed a cold ball in the pit of your stomach.

A sigh works it's way up and you pull your legs on the seat underneath you, jostling the creature on your lap that raises it's head for a moment to blink it's black eyes at you sleepily.

It was surprisingly docile right now, especially considering that twenty hours ago it had ripped your brother to shreds. In fact it seemed to understand how upset you were and had spent the better part of the last twenty hours rubbing it's head against your arm as if trying to bring you some comfort. It was settled on your lap, the weight of it a comfort, almost like a weighted plushy that gave you something to focus on.

"It's alright buddy." You whisper, scratching him under his chin. "We're almost home."

The phone in your jacket pocket buzzes again, but when you pull it out to turn it off, you catch a glimpse of the screen, and you hesitate. Because this time it's not Annie who's calling, it’s Ben.

The picture that flashes on the screen under the contact name "Gramps" is the picture of Mr. Fredrickson from Up. It always made you smile whenever he called you and you saw the picture because Ben did often remind you of him. He was certainly just as grumpy as Mr. Fredrickson and just as out of touch, but you thought it was cute.

Your thumb hovers over the answer button and you think about talking to him.

But what would I say?

You weren't sure what to say to him, or why you wanted to speak to him so badly, why you wanted him to be sitting here on the bus with you as you went home, and why you wanted him to hold you against his chest while you allowed yourself to break, but you did. You wanted to feel his awkward shoulder pat and his awkward version of hand holding and you wanted to hear him try to tell you to "buck up" or whatever he thought that a comforting word should be.

He's really not the best at that.

You smile to yourself at the memory of how he tried to comfort you back at the hospital, but the longer you sit there and look down at the picture on the screen the worse you feel.

Maybe that scared you more than your newfound powers, how much you were realizing that you needed him, how much you depended on him when things got too much for you to bear. The memory of him appearing as soon as you needed him back at the shop, another of him grabbing Darren and throwing him into the street as soon as Darren insulted you comes in a flash, and finally followed by the memory of Ben carrying you out of Elijah's office while you curled into his chest. You couldn't remember too much from that moment, in fact you'd thought that Ben had kissed you on top of your head, but you ascribed that to the haze of pain you'd been in from your broken arm.

What you did remember was how wonderfully warm he was after you'd been trapped in that damn freezer and how nice it felt to be in his arms. Another memory of Ben sleeping on the couch at the hospital bubbles up and you feel something in your chest begin to crack open. And you try your best to tell yourself the same thing that you always do when you feel like Ben might care more about you that he was letting on.

Ben doesn't want that. He's made it perfectly clear. He doesn't want a relationship. He's only wants one night, that's why he goes out with all those women-

You hesitate, thumb still hovering over the answer button as you do, the memory of the week you'd spent at the apartment with him flickering in the back of your mind. The week where he refused to leave you alone in the apartment, where he refused to do any jobs for Butcher, where he took care of you the best way he could, when he sat with you on the couch and made you laugh with his ridiculous movies, and the week where he hadn't had one date.

Your finger itched to answer the phone, but you couldn't, because you didn't want to feel this way about Ben, not when he'd told you countless times that you kept romanticizing him, not when he told you that he didn't want a relationship, and not when you could feel yourself beginning to fall for someone you thought was the wrong man.

For just a moment you tried to pretend that it was different, that he was different, but you didn't want to. It only made it hurt more.

The phone stops ringing, but the pit in your stomach still gapes open at you and for the first time in twenty hours you feel tears begin to fall. You didn't know why you were crying about this, why the thought of not picking up Ben's phone call seemed to hurt more than everything that had happened, but something made it hurt.

The bus driver announces over the overhead that you're reaching your final destination as he takes the exit for your hometown. The familiar buildings that line the streets are sheathed in a honeyed glow from the sun, the long shadow of the bus darkening them momentarily as it rumbles down the small streets to the bus station.

When it rumbles to a stop at the bus station you wait for everyone else to get off, trying to summon the strength to stand, and swipe the back of your hand across your face to rid yourself of the remaining tears.

The bus station was about a thirty minute walk from your grandmother's house, and you still hadn't called her. You didn't know what to say, didn't know how to tell her that Darren was dead and that he was the reason why your parents were dead.

The creature crawls up your body to drape it's warm body over the back of your neck as you stand. It wasn't bothering to hide, besides the people in your hometown already thought that you were odd because you were a supe and you'd always welcomed it. You give him a scratch on top of his head and his warm tongue flicks on the bottom of your earlobe as if thanking you before it curls further into the side of your neck, seeking warmth.

The first few steps on solid ground are shaky, but you find the strength while taking in a deep cleansing breath of the outside world, letting the gentle warmth of the sun and the tickle of the autumn breeze pull at your coat. You hadn't stopped at your apartment before coming here, instead you had stumbled your way to the bus station covered in dust, flecked in blood, and demanded the first ticket back to Illinois. It was lucky that the next bus was leaving immediately, because you didn’t want to spend another second in NYC, not when all you wanted was to be home.

Plus you were worried that someone had recorded what exactly happened outside the plant shop and you didn't want to get arrested.

It was self defense anyway. Maybe Jake would represent me in court.

The thought of Jake makes you twinge. You hadn't checked to see if he was alright before you ran from the scene. Not to mention you'd destroyed the shop he'd put all his life savings into after he stopped being a lawyer.

Oh fuck, what if he sues me? He can't exactly sue Darren…

You hear someone call your name and you open your eyes.

Your grandmother is standing in front of the same baby blue pickup truck that she'd had longer than you've been alive, wearing a long multicolored skirt and a pressed white blouse tucked elegantly into it. Her silver hair is loose and long, curling over her shoulders in gentle waves. She looks the same way she looked one week ago when she left, and you've never seen anything so beautiful in your life.

You're running before you can stop yourself, crumbling into her warm embrace, with more tears streaking down your face, but she doesn't mind.

"Shh. It's alright honey." She whispers, rubbing her hand over your back, her embrace steady and surprisingly strong. "Let's go home."

Her home is the same as it's always been. A two story Victorian house painted in a happy yellow shade, with a white wrap around porch and two white rocking chairs sitting empty on the front porch. You'd spent more nights than you could count rocking silently beside her with a crochet project in your lap listening to the rain fall and soak the world outside, while the plants sang praises with every gentle bend beneath the heavy droplets.

You could barely remember the home you spent in your early years with your parents, not when you'd spent most of your childhood spending the night here and after your parents died living here permanently. There was still a large oak tree were a wooden swing swung in the slight breeze on the left side of the yard, a gardenia bush that stretched as high as the second story on the right side of the house and brushed it's soft leaves against the sunshine colored outer walls, a garden filled with both flowering plants and herbs that perked up on both sides of the front yard as you walked up the path, and a cobblestone path that Annie and you had spent hours of your shared childhood covering in chalk art.

Neither of you were good, but when the rain would fall and smudge the clean lines, you'd jump in the puddles that pooled along the walkway singing the lyrics to ABBA's "Cassandra" not quite understanding what it meant.

Standing here outside your house made you miss Annie and feel worse about not calling or texting her back, but you didn't feel like talking about what happened and you were sure that Butcher filled her in. The only thing that you wanted was to collapse in your bedroom upstairs and curl under the comforters.

Despite everything the house was a welcome sight, but at the same time it was different. You could feel the plants calling out to you, asking for you, bending towards you just to touch your shoes as you walked by. You'd never felt so connected with them before, not even when you were in your apartment or working at the shop.  It was overwhelming.

And although a part of you was frightened by it, another part of you rejoiced in it. You didn't feel alone, didn't feel weak, and you knew that you never would ever again.

The creature nuzzled into the side of your neck with a sigh, soaking up the sun's healing rays as you walked up the front steps with your grandmother following behind you silently. She hadn't spoken since she picked you up at the bus station and you hadn't supplied anything in the ten minute car ride back to her house.

You didn't know where to start and you were still trying to process everything yourself.

The inside of her house was just as cozy and warm as it was the day you moved out. There were photos of your parents and you covering the walls (Darren's had been placed in the closet long ago), half-finished knitting projects sorted in different baskets on both the dining room table and the living room coffee table, spools of yarn were strewn over the couch sorted by color, and the fresh smell of gardenia wafted through the open windows on the breeze.

It was home. This was what you'd been missing the moment everything began to crash over you, but as you stood there in the familiar living room it felt like something was missing. Something tugged at the back of your mind, but you couldn't put your finger on it.

There was something or rather someone that should be here, but you didn't know what or who. And your mind supplied Annie, but you weren't sure that's who you meant.

"Let's have some tea." Your grandmother says from behind you and you feel her soft hands come down on your shoulders to steer you through the familiar creative chaos and into the large kitchen at the back of the house.

The kitchen isn't spared from the madness, it rarely was. There are boxes upon boxes of cookies in different stages of being packaged all over the counter, dirty bowls and a measuring cup stacked in the sink, and a large opened bag of chocolate chips spilling over the flour covered kitchen island.

It wasn't unusual to find the kitchen or the house in a state of chaos, your grandmother always said that a house should look lived in and that the mess was part of the fun of any major project as long as you were responsible enough to clean it up.

"Bake sale?" You ask as you sit down in the breakfast nook, uttering the first words that you'd said to another human being in twenty hours.

The next breath that you inhale was supposed to be cleansing, but you can still feel a weight pressing down on your chest, the same one that settled in the moment everything happened with Darren.

You contemplate again how you're going to tell her that Darren is dead and was the reason why your parents died.

Damn it Darren.

"Mhmm." She hums, filling the well used red kettle. "Annie's mother practically cornered me in the supermarket yesterday and begged me to make cookies. I love Annie, but her mother needs someone to pull that stick out of her ass. It's been up there for so long that I'm sure it's rotten."

The creature crawls down from your shoulders and down your arm to sniff at one of the chocolate chip cookies nearest you. It hadn't eaten since…

Darren.

You wince slightly at the thought and hope that you hadn't created something that needed and craved human flesh. The last thing you wanted to unleash on the world was Audry two especially in the wake of Homelander.

Truthfully you were waiting for the guilt at killing your brother to come, but it never had and you wondered if it ever would.

Probably not. He deserved that, he killed our parents, he tried to kill me, he tried to kill Ben.

The thought of Ben again makes a lump form in the back of your throat. You didn't know what was happening to you only that you felt guilty for leaving him like that, for yelling at him to let you go, and just vanishing on him when he probably thought that you were going back to the apartment.

He doesn't know where I am. Maybe that's why he tried to call, because he got back to the apartment and couldn't find me there and he was worried. You press your lips together. Yeah. Worried. Right.

"Honey?" Your grandmother says in a soothing voice

You look up from the box of chocolate chip cookies that you didn't remember picking up. Even the creature is looking at you with an expression that you can only explain as worry.

"Yeah?" Your voice shakes slightly.

She's leaning back against the counter, arms crossed over her chest, head tilted slightly to the side, her beautiful grayed hair pulled up in an elegant bun, but in her eyes you can see genuine concern. "Fuck." She sighs after a minute.

You blink in surprise. It was the first time that you'd ever heard her say that word in your entire life.

"I shouldn't have left." She breathes. "I told Ben to look out for you. I told him, that little bastard was bound to show up again and what did he do? He left you at that plant shop alone with no protection!"

You'd only seen her really angry a handful of times in your lifetime. Like you, your grandmother often had a gentle disposition and didn't get angry unless the situation called for it.

I mean, Darren admitted to killing our parents and then got fucking ripped apart. But how does she know about any of that? I haven't told her…

"How did you know that he left me there? Did Ben call you?" You ask putting down the box of cookies.

An odd expression crosses her face, as if she's contemplating something. "No." She hesitates again. "I saw it."

"No." Your grandmother hesitates. "I saw it."

"You saw it?" You repeat, confused.

What's going on?

"Too late of course, but I'm a little rusty. I was able to warn Ben that Darren was coming back. That's how he got there so quickly or rather-" She shrugs sheepishly. "He got there in time to make sure that Darren didn't get you to forgive him. Which you shouldn't have at all, but I know he's always had a talent for manipulating you."

"What?"

Is she saying what I think she's saying?

Instead of explaining further your grandmother walks out of the kitchen, leaving the kettle behind on the stove and you in a state of utter confusion.

Is she saying that she can see the future? Because that would mean that she's a supe and there's only one supe in history that I know of that can do that. A supe that no one has seen in over forty years.

You can hear her open the door to the closet under the stairs and the sound of her sifting through all the junk that the two of you had shoved in there over the years instead of finding the right place to put it.

When she comes back into the kitchen, she's holding a giant cardboard file box that you'd never paid attention to each time you opened the closet to find something. Your eyes shift from the box to her still not comprehending exactly what she was saying.

"I probably should have told you this a while ago, but…" She trails off and nods her head at the box before turning back to the kettle on the stove that has begun to scream. "I kept putting it off."

The box is old, worn at the edges, and theres a musty black fabric beneath a collection of yellowed photographs. You pull out the one on top to examine it.

Ben is standing there in his full Soldier Boy regalia outside of Vought tower and the woman standing next to him is Soothsayer. The outfit she wore was familiar, a black-skin tight suit with a blind fold tied over her eyes.

Soothsayer was a supe who could see the future and who was apart of Payback, a supe that had vanished a year before the mission in Nicaragua and no one knew where she went. There were rumors that she'd died and that she'd been a Russian spy, but you'd never believed them. You'd heard Butcher talk about how he tried to find her when he was trying to figure out what happened to Soldier Boy, but he never had. Said that the trail went cold.

But now you knew where she went, because she was standing directly in front of you.

She's Soothsayer? Holy fuck that's why Ben kept accusing her of cheating in the poker game because he knew that she could see the future.

"You were Soothsayer?" You gasp. "But why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you tell me?"

She continues to measure the tea leaves. "I didn't tell anyone."

"Grandpa didn't know? But he was alive when you were a supe?"

Your grandfather had never spoken about a history with supes that you remember.

"No." She turns to look at you, a hurt expression crossing over her face for a minute. "Well, I know that I said I was going to have tea, but if we're going to talk about this I'm going to need something a little bit stronger."

Your grandmother opens a cabinet under the stove an pulls out an enormous bottle of scotch. Truth be told you'd never seen her drink more than just a glass of wine, to see her like this was about as shocking as seeing a polar bear sunning itself on a Florida beach.

"Do you still want the blueberry tea or do you need something a little stronger?" She looks back over her shoulder at you as she pulls down a glass for herself.

"I think I need something stronger." You answer honestly.

Learning about everything Darren had done was one thing, but finding out that your grandmother used to be a famous supe and that she never told you about it was another thing. It was like looking at another person. You'd always loved your grandmother's gentle way, her care for her community and her family soft, but now you weren't sure you really knew who she was.

She sits down across from you and hands you a glass of the amber colored liquid. There's a heavy silence that hangs between the two of you as she tries to find a way to start. The photo of her and Ben is laying on top of what you realize is her uniform inside the box and she smiles down at the photo, just a little twitch at the corner of her lips.

"I met Ben when I was twenty three years old." She begins taking a sip from the glass. "Legend 'discovered' me. I had the injection of Compound V maybe two years before that, not when I was born, but I hadn't gotten popular. Other powers were much more flashy and by then there were so many heroes coming out of the woodwork that someone with the ability to see the future didn't seem as marketable."

There's something reflected in her blue eyes, the same eyes your father had, that you can't place. "I had just moved to New York, I had no money, and the way I was getting it was by pretending to be a fortune teller and betting on some sports events on the side. It wasn't hard to prove that I could see the future, the past was more difficult, but Legend somehow stumbled into my shop and figured out that I was a supe. And he didn't think I was too bad looking so he helped me get big."

"You pretended to be a fortune teller?"

She snorts into her glass. "Mhmm. People really will believe anything if they're desperate enough and back then there was so much turmoil going on with Russia that people were scared and wanted to feel comforted. My job provided some of that."

"But why did you walk away from it if you were such a big hero." You ask. "Everyone knew your name, you were-"

Your grandmother raises an eyebrow at you and you fall silent so she can continue. "When I got onto Payback that's when everything exploded for me, the films, the commercials, the ridiculous ads." She sighs. "That's also when I met Ben."

You take a sip from the glass in front of you, sputtering slightly. It was stronger than you were expecting. "And you two were-"

Please don't say dating, please don't say dating, please don't say…

"Friends. Just friends." Diana sits back against the back of the breakfast nook, sinking into the navy blue pillows. "But he is almost as charming now as he was then."

You cringe at the thought of Ben coming on to a younger version of your grandmother.

She taps her glass with her index finger deep in thought. "But I think that I was the only person that Ben actually talked to, the only person that he was comfortable being around."

"What do you mean?" You ask confused. "Didn't he talk to Countess and to Legend?"

Her expression hardens at the mention of Countess's name. "He didn't talk to her the way he talked to me. Ben is difficult, he always has been and I think that most of the people he meet him write him off as this asshole with a chauvinistic look on the world, but he's not. At least, not all the time. There are so many people that he's met that are never willing to take a chance on him. To trust that there is really something beneath all of that bravado."

It was what you had been thinking for the past week, that there was more to Ben than he was willing to let people see, but you were slowly realizing that Ben was letting you see those parts. In the quiet moments at your shared apartment when he sat with you while you read or made you laugh or walked you to and from work you saw another side of Ben that you never saw when he was around anyone else. The guilt rises again when you think of how you ran from him, how you turned your back and left him standing there to clean up your mess.

I shouldn’t have done that, but it was all just so overwhelming and I didn't want to talk to anyone.

"I think that Ben is the most loyal friend I ever had. No one ever seems to believe me when I say that. That we were just friends, but nothing happened between us."

"You didn't date? Or sleep together?" You ask cautiously. It was difficult to imagine Ben being friends with a woman and not having a sexual relationship with her.

Well. We're friends, but that's different.

The last thing you wanted to think about was Ben and your grandmother having sex.

I would need so much therapy after that. You sigh. Yeah, because after all the shit I've been through and found out about my life in the last twenty hours, the knowledge that Ben fucked my grandmother is what's going to push me over the edge.

"No." She shakes her head with a small smile. "About a week after I met Ben, I was running late to a movie shoot and I stepped off the crosswalk without looking. There was a car coming and I didn't see it. Ironic isn't it?" She laughs at herself. "I can see the future and I didn't see a car coming, but your grandfather did and he grabbed the back of my jacket and yanked me onto the sidewalk, saved my life. And the second my eyes locked with his I saw our future. I saw our wedding, our first house, I saw our son take his first steps and I saw how much I would love him and how much he would love me." She clears her throat for a minute, her fingers tighten on the glass, and her gaze drops to the wedding ring on her left hand. “The future is never set in stone, it’s fluid. It morphs and shapes with your decisions, but in the future I saw, I was so happy. And I didn’t want to lose that.”

Your grandfather had passed a few years ago, but you knew it weighed on her everyday. She had spent the week after he died in her room not saying anything to anyone. And sometimes she'd look out the window into the backyard with an odd expression, but you knew that meant she was thinking of him.

Growing up you'd seen how in love the two of them were, more so than your parents. Seen the flowers your grandfather always brought home just because he was thinking of her, watched him do little things around the house without being asked, saw how they never walked away angry from one another, and seen the soppy expression he'd get when he watched your grandmother move around the kitchen baking with a grace that you'd never possessed.

You reach across the table to touch her hand and she takes it gratefully.

"I didn't want to tell him that I was a supe, and at the beginning I thought I could balance it all, but then Ben started dating Countess." She takes another sip from her glass. "She hated me."

"What? Why?" You ask. The creature crawls across the table to sniff at the glass in front of you, before it snorts and falls into your lap, curling into a ball.

"Countess was a bitch." Your grandmother says mirthlessly, her expression hardening. "She wanted to possess Ben completely. Only loved how famous he was, how popular it made her, and he threw himself at her feet, in his own way, not understanding that love didn’t look that way. He’s never had a good example of it in his life. And she never understood that Ben and I were just friends. By then I had been dating your grandfather for a few months and things were getting serious. It was about a year before everything that happened in Nicaragua."

She presses her lips together as if remembering what happened to Ben there. "She was jealous, possessive, and she came to me one night. Ben was out of town for a film so she knew we wouldn’t be interrupted. She threatened to tell your grandfather who I really was and threatened to kill him.” Her jaw sets. “My powers were never really as offensive as hers were. And she said that Ben wouldn’t ever protect me over her because he loved her and would do anything to make her happy. So I left and I never looked back.”

And here I thought I couldn't hate Countess any more than I did for what she did to Ben.

“You didn’t talk to him ever again?” You wonder out loud.

She left without telling him goodbye?

“There was the occasional phone call. Sometimes Ben would ask me to see who was going to win a ball game or something so he could make a few bucks. He stopped by to say hi a few times because he was in the neighborhood. One time he brought your father a baseball glove that was way too big for a one year old.” She snorts, the memory flashing in her eyes. “I always thought Ben would be a good dad some day. But I think seeing your father was when Ben realized how much he wanted to have kids. And I think seeing the way your grandfather treated me made him start to feel conflicted about Countess. But he respected that I walked away, he saw that I was happy.”

“But what about Nicaragua?"

A dark look crosses her face followed by something that looks suspiciously like guilt. “I saw what they were going to do to him.”

“What? But why didn't you tell him what they were planning? Why didn't you-"

"I tried." She snaps, shoulders tense, but then they drop. "I called Ben, but Stan answered. By then your father was turning two, your grandfather had opened up his practice, and Stan threatened me, he knew where we were and knew everything about us. So I kept my mouth shut and I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

You could feel your heart breaking for her.

Ben was her best friend and she had to sit by and watch them do that to him. She saw what they were going to do and they were going to kill her for it, kill my family for it.

The anger that surges in your chest makes the creature in your lap stir and grow a few inches, but you tamp it down before it gets bigger than a small dog.

“Does Ben know?” You ask her to distract yourself.

You didn't want Ben to hate your grandmother for this, didn't want him to hate her for something that wasn't her fault.

She nods. “Yes. I told him everything.”

“When?”

“The moment I saw him in your hospital room. I couldn’t keep it in any longer. I wasn't expecting him to be there, but it all poured out of me. I was so surprised to see him there. I hadn't seen a future where he came back."

“Was he mad?”

I mean… he didn't seem mad when I woke up, not to mention he was upset when she left to come back to Illinois.

“Not at me.” She shakes her head. “He knew how much I wanted a normal life and how much I loved your grandfather. He doesn’t blame me for any of it.”

“Good. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

The glass in front of you is still more than half-full but you don't want to risk another sip of what you're sure is gasoline packaged to look like Scotch. Your grandmother reaches to pour herself another glass.

“I didn’t want to until you were ready.”

“And when would that be?”

Your grandmother shrugs. “Maybe on my deathbed.”

You weren't angry for her not telling you, more surprised, but now that you knew everything about her it was hard to see her the same way you had.

 You snort. “And no one knew?”

“Your dad figured it out.”

“How? When?”

“The moment you made that strawberry plant grow from your high chair.” She shakes her head with a smile. “It skipped a generation. Don’t know why, but you got it all somehow.”

“I was never injected?”

“No. That was a lie your father created. He knew that your grandfather didn't know and he knew that I didn't want your grandfather to know."

“Darren thought I was.”

“I know.”

At the mention of your brother's name, you watch her expression harden and she takes another swig from the glass in front of her, not flinching as the liquid goes down her throat.

“Did you see everything that happened?” You ask in a small voice.

You still weren't 100% sure how it was her powers worked, but you figured that she was able to see some of what Darren did and what he said.

“Yes.”

“You heard everything Darren said?"

“Yes.”

You chew the inside of your cheek for a minute hoping that she didn't take it as hard as you did. “Did you know that he killed them?”

“No.” She breathes, rolling the glass between her hands for a moment. “The night they died, I got a vision a few minutes before the car ran off the road. I was the one who called the police and who told them where to look, but I never saw that it was Darren or that it was anyone causing the accident. All I saw was the three of you in the car. I should have known.” Her voice breaks.

“It’s not your fault.” You squeeze her hand.

“And it’s not yours either.” She squeezes your hand back.

The memories are beginning to float up from the recesses of your mind and your teeth clench together as you try to keep them at bay.

“I know.” You breathe. The memory of the ruined shop flashes through your head. “I didn’t know that I could do something like that.” You gently touch your healed right arm and glance at the creature that is nibbling on the edge of the cardboard box with its sharp splinter-like teeth. “I feel so different and I don’t know how to go back to the way I was.”

“I don’t think you ever will.”

"Really?"

The thought was unwelcome. You were hoping that all of this was going to blow over, but you knew it wouldn't. Your powers had changed. There was an energy that thrummed in your veins now, stretching out of the house to the plants that grew in the garden. You could feel them all if you concentrated.

She frowns. “When you told me that you were working for Butcher I was worried about you getting involved in the supe world. I didn’t want that life for you, didn’t want you to suffer the way I did-“

“Was it really that bad?"

“Not all the time, just at the end. But I think that’s why I loved your grandfather so much. Because he was different than all the supes. He was down to earth, not just normal but-“ She shrugs. “I think Compound V does something to our minds, makes them more susceptible and when you’re surrounded by people using their powers and thinking that they’re gods it’s easy to lose who you are. I was glad I left when I did."

“Great." You huff, thinking about how your powers had grown exponentially since you killed your brother. It was scaring you to think that you would reach a point where you acted like Homelander, where you saw yourself as a god and killed anyone who stood in your way.

As tired as the stereotype of you only being able to make the flowers grow, you liked doing that. You liked healing plants, tending to them, and helping them grow. For you it had never been about using your powers the way that you had to kill Elijah and your brother and had always been about spreading a little more joy and love like your grandmother did with her kindness in her community.

Your mind flashes back to the first night that Ben stayed with you in your apartment and he'd asked you why you worked for Butcher and told you that he thought you "didn't fit."

Before you hadn't. You knew that. You weren't intimidating to look at or fueled by revenge or had a bone to pick with supes. You'd joined because you thought it was the right thing to do and because you wanted to be closer with Annie. She had been so involved in the supe world and you'd felt like you were losing your best friend. When in reality being at "Please Don't Die" was the only thing that felt natural for you.

You could feel yourself changing and you weren't sure that you wanted to and you weren't sure if you were changing for the better. Deep down you still felt like you, despite everything Darren had revealed, but your powers were greater than you'd thought they could be.

“No.” She squeezes your hand pulling you out of your head. “I don’t see you losing yourself in this.”

“You’ve seen-“ Your eyes widen.

“The future yeah.” Her lips twitch up at the ends in a smile. “It is what I do.”

“That’s so weird.”

You hadn't meant to say it, but you really didn't want to know too much about your future.

Well, not all that much. Maybe just a little.

“You of all people have no right to judge what’s weird. Not with Godzilla sitting in your lap.”

"Godzilla" yawns, flashing a mouthful of his pointy teeth, before settling back down on your thighs.

You smile for the first time in twenty hours, but then it drops. “I don’t like losing control. I thought I knew who I was but now I don’t-“ The emotions were bubbling up again, chest tightening, and lungs beginning to gasp for air. “I don’t know who I am anymore or what I am or what I can do and-“

“There’s nothing wrong with not being in control.”

“But what if I hurt someone? What if I kill-“ You body shakes as you think about all the important people in your life, Annie, Hughie, Butcher, Kimiko, MM, Frenchie- and then your mind stutters on Ben.

“Your powers are growing and there’s nothing to be afraid of or ashamed of. If you’re afraid of them it won’t get easier for you. You have to embrace the fear to see the lights that line the path through it.”

"I killed Darren, I killed Elijah-"

"Not because you lost control. You did it because you were protecting yourself and protecting your friends."

"But-"

"Who is it that you're scared of hurting? Annie?" Her expression turns sympathetic. "Annie is a supe and understands what it's like to lose control. None of us are in control all the time and it's ridiculous to believe that you won't lose control at least once."

Your throat clenches tightly, because when she asked the question you didn't see Annie's face, you saw Ben's. You knew that it was probably ridiculous to worry about hurting a guy with a nuclear reactor stuffed in his chest or a guy who'd been through every torture known to man, but you were. And you weren't entirely sure if you meant hurting him with just your powers.

Tears crest and fall down your cheeks as you sit there, throat thickening. "I don't want to hurt Ben."

"He's a little more indestructible than us sweetie." She cracks a smile, but you can't smile back and you don't answer because you're unsure how to.

She sits back against the breakfast nook and sighs, examining your face and slowly realizes what you mean. "Ben is complicated. He always has been. I like to think that most of it, is his father's fault. Has he told you anything about him?"

You shake your head.

"He was a dick. Made Ben think that he was a disappointment his whole life. I don't think that Ben has had someone love him unconditionally since his mother died. And loving Countess only made it worse for him. Her love was jealous, possessive, and I don't think that he's really come to terms with what real love should look like." She lets out a breath, tapping her index finger against the glass. "I never saw him as more than a friend, but I do love him. It's not a crime to love him."

"I don't love him." You say it immediately.

"Why not?"

"What?" You sputter. "I don't know what you're-"

"Tell me why you don't love him." Your grandma says methodically, as if she's trying to talk you through it.

"Because I-" The pressure was back in the back of your throat and you couldn't quite meet her eye. "Because-" You scramble for the answer, trying your darndest to keep your heart from clenching in your chest. "I want what you and grandpa had, what Annie and Hughie have, and what my parents had. A strong relationship with someone who sees all my flaws, the little parts, and the darkness and still choses to fall in love with me anyway. I don't want just one night I want every night. I want something real and Ben has said countless times that he-"

"So you've talked about it with Ben?" She raises an eyebrow.

"Only because he kept trying to sleep with me and I told him that I didn't want to have sex with him." You reply exasperated.

"You don't?"

"Gran!"

"What? He's attractive."

"It doesn't matter. None of it does. Because Ben has said that he doesn't have relationships, that he doesn't care about feelings, or emotions." Saying the words that Ben had told you countless times made something inside begin to shrivel up and die. "And I do. And I don't want to manipulate him into being something he's not or force him into a relationship that's doomed from the beginning. Ben is Ben. He's not changing or-"

"He has." She interrupts.

"What?"

"The Ben I saw in your hospital room is not the one I knew." She says it so matter of fact that makes it hard to breathe. "And neither was the one that I saw in your apartment when I stayed with you. I mean he is in essence Ben, but-"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"He is changing. Not completely, but he's acting differently than when he was with Countess. I mean, I saw all the things he did for her. The way he was around her."

"Why does that matter?"

"Because he loved her."

The words make your heart seize in your chest. "Ben doesn't love me. He's my roommate and my friend-" It was the same thing that you kept telling yourself on repeat to beat back the other feelings that you hadn't quite identified yet. "And he's told me that he doesn't want a relationship and that I should try to meet other people."

That last part was a lie, but you honestly didn't know where she was going with this conversation or why it was getting so hard to breathe.

"Have you thought that maybe Ben doesn't want to love you because he's scared?"

"He doesn't love me and Ben isn't afraid of anything."

"He is. It might not look the same way on him as it does on everyone else, but if you pay close enough attention you can catch it." She hesitates. "And I think if you pay attention to you, you'll see what it is that you're afraid of too."

What does she mean? What the hell am I afraid of? Ben isn't afraid of anything, he's practically shouted that from the mountaintops like Julie Andrews.

"I already told you what I'm afraid of."

"I'm not talking about you hurting someone honey. There's something else that you refuse to admit to yourself because you're scared." She smiles sadly at you. "You should though, because when you embrace it, what comes after is really beautiful." There's a far off look in her eyes and you realize that she'd seen something further ahead that she wasn't letting on.

"And it's all I want for you. To be happy." Your grandmother stands from the other side of the booth "I think you need some rest. You drove all night long and I doubt you got any sleep. And I have to package all of these before Annie's mother calls down the four horsemen of the Apocalypse on me."

"Wait-"

"Please sweetie." She lays her hand down on your arm. "I think you'll feel a little better about all of this when you've had some rest." Her fingers raise to push back some of the hair that's fallen forward into your eyes. "Hmm?"

You didn't want to rest, you wanted to talk about this, but you knew better than to argue with her. Not to mention she was right, you hadn't slept.

"And when you wake up I'll make your favorite for dinner, alright?" She smiles, but there's something behind it that you can't place.

"Okay."

And this time you don't argue with her. You go up the worn staircase that you have your entire life and collapse onto your bed, wondering exactly what it was she saw your future hold, and what it is that you won't admit to yourself.

Soldier Boy POV

There was no light in the apartment save from the burning red tip of Ben's blunt and the bluish glow emanating from the tv that caught the dips and sharp edges of his face. But it was nothing more than background noise.

His hand absentmindedly stroked along Bean's back, his eyes focused on the ceiling above the couch. He hadn't moved in hours. It had been over twenty four hours since everything that happened at the plant shop, since you'd summoned a creature from the depths of the store, since Darren had thrown Ben through the plate glass windows of the bakery, and since Ben had last seen you.

He didn't understand why you hadn't let him take you back to the apartment and why it was that you had to leave. Ben hadn't liked the feeling that stabbed him in the chest when you turned your back on him and ran away. He'd felt the urge to comfort you the way he'd watched Hughie do for Annie in the car a week ago, but you hadn't let him.

Instead all he'd done is stood there and watched you run, still covered in dust, rubble, and blood. Worse was you hadn't let him check you for injuries and Ben hated the thought that you were hurt somewhere and he didn't know where you were.

You were so much more fragile than he was. He was realizing that more every day, was acutely aware of it after everything that happened with Elijah. Honestly, sitting there in the hospital with you laying there asleep with nothing that he could do, but wait for you to wake up had been agony. Not to mention that looking at the bruises around your throat, over your eye, and the bright green cast only made him feel worse. He'd never felt so helpless in his entire life and he hated it. Because Ben wasn't some helpless damsel in distress, he was a man and a man shouldn't wait on anyone or feel out of control, or at least, that's what he told himself.

Ben hears someone walk down the hallway outside the apartment and he perks up to listen, hoping that it's you finally coming home. Ben's mind stutters on the word "home." He'd lived many places in his life, apartments that felt more like way-stations, and the drafty cold mansion back in Philadelphia where he grew up, but neither felt like home. And although he hated how small your apartment was, it was the first place that Ben liked living in. He was starting to understand the word home.

But the feet keep moving past the apartment and Ben sinks into the couch cushions. Even Bean seems to be disappointed. "It's alright buddy." Ben mutters. "She'll come back."

But he wasn't sure.

Ben also wasn't used to feeling this way. It was close to the way that he felt when he went to Boston and was sitting in that damn hotel room waiting for something to happen and he still didn't understand what it meant. He didn't understand why he couldn't stand it that you weren't back yet. It made him feel like a woman waiting for her husband to get home from work when he told her that he was "running late." He'd tried to distract himself by looking at some possible prospects on Tinder, but just like the week after you'd come home from the hospital and just like the date he had in Boston, no one held any appeal.

His mind was awake and roaming around, pacing back and forth. The blunt was supposed to help, but it hadn't.

His phone chirps and Ben picks it up to look at the screen, but it's not you, it's Jake.

Jake: I know that I'm not your favorite person, but thank you for what you did.

Ben huffs and turns his phone face down on the couch once more. "What a fucking pussy."

When you left Ben had realized that Jake was still inside the building and as much as he wanted race after you, he understood that you'd be even more upset if you'd killed Jake. So Ben had tromped back through the building and found him trapped beneath some rubble. Jake was okay, just unconscious, but Ben had carried him out and put him on the sidewalk before he high tailed it out of there. The last thing that he wanted was to be caught with a shredded body outside a ruined building.

I didn't do it for him. I did it for her. Ben thinks to himself, looking down at the text message.

As much as he hated the thought of saving your future boyfriend, he didn't want to see what it did to you if you found out that you killed Jake, so he'd done it to avoid watching you cry again.

Ben didn't understand why he hated watching you cry.

Women cry. They're damn emotional all the time. He tries to reason with himself taking a puff from the blunt pinched between his thumb and forefinger. And she fucking cries way too much.

The image of you crying outside of the shop in the wake of everything that happened pricks something under his ribcage. Fuck.

Ben didn't feel remorse for what happened, well, the only thing he regretted was not getting there sooner and getting to fuck Darren up himself. When Diana had called him to tell him that Darren was coming, Ben had practically ripped the apartment door off in his haste to get back to you. He hadn’t wanted to leave you at the plant shop, but Butcher had told Ben, that he had a possible location for Darren, but it came up empty and Ben had been at Butcher's apartment chewing him out for sending him on a fucking wild goose chase.

It only made Ben more angry to allow Darren to speak to you, but he was trying to let you handle it even though he wanted to handle him. But it had brought him an unholy amount of joy to throw Darren in front of that minivan and to watch that creature tear him apart while the final whitish blue pulses of electricity jumped and crackled down the street making the streetlights shower sparks everywhere.

But Ben was more upset that Darren had been able to land a few hits on you before you killed him.

Ben remembered the giant lizard that crawled out of what was left of "Please Don't Die" and felt his lips quirk up into a smile. As much as he hated the entire situation, Ben couldn't help but feel a little surge of pride at what you'd done to your brother. He'd never seen you look so powerful standing there in the street, your eyes glowing a brilliant green, arms outstretched, and the ground trembling around you as the world begged to be unleashed.

Of course he'd been just as surprised as you were at the fact that you'd healed your broken arm. He wasn't sure if you'd noticed it yet, but you looked different too. There weren't as many lines on your face and your hair was more springy, the few silver hairs that Ben had noticed in passing were no longer there.

He wasn't sure what that meant, but there was something that felt suspiciously like hope tingling in his stomach, hope that you weren't as fragile anymore and hope that it meant you wouldn't die.

When Diana had told Ben that her husband had died, he saw the pain in her eyes when she said it, saw her relieving the memory, and for some reason as soon as she said that he was dead, the first thing Ben thought about was you. Ben hadn't considered his inability to age as much in the past, hadn't cared about outliving anyone before. Seeing Countess as an older woman had made him more aware of it. Looking at the woman who he once thought he loved, had showed him what that was like. Not that he had a problem with daring older women, Ben always thought that women really did get better with age, but it was what came next that Ben wasn't fond of.

And for some reason thinking that one day he'd wake up and see the marks of age on your face or one day he'd wake up and he wouldn't be able to annoy you or hear you yell at him made his chest tight.

Ben takes another hit of his blunt. The longer he sat there the more then unnatural feeling stirred in the pit of his stomach, thrumming through his veins, the feeling that he was trying to avoid. He thought that the joint would calm him down, but he found himself jumping at every creak and footstep in the apartment building, perking up each time and hoping that it was you coming home.

He didn't know where you were. You hadn't answered any of his texts or calls and Ben was ashamed at how many times that he had tried to call you.

Get a fucking grip. He'd thought to himself when he typed out another text message to send you, stopping himself from sending it.

But he'd been so desperate to hear from you that he'd actually gone to talk to Annie who seemed upset that she couldn't get ahold of you either. When Hughie and Annie had seen how upset Ben had been, Hughie had laid his hand on Ben's arm and told him not to worry. Ben had yelled at him that he "wasn't fucking worried and to mind his own business" and had shaken off Hughie's comforting hand before stomping out of the shared apartment.

No one else seemed to be as concerned about finding you. Butcher, MM, and Frenchie were all deeply involved in trying to figure out the cover-up for what happened outside the plant shop. By some miracle no one had caught a picture of your face, but there was little they could do about Darren's body that had been strewn across the street. Annie was having to deal with the repercussions at work, trying to handle what the news was calling a "super villain threat."

Personally, Ben thought that since they froze Homelander, the Seven looked weak and Ben believed that the superhero team that represented America shouldn't look weak. Of course before Ben had also thought that they looked like a bunch of pussies and again felt himself sink deeper into the couch when he thought about what his supposed son had become.

He shakes off the feelings he has about it and his thoughts turn back inevitably to you.

Ben wasn't used to thinking about someone as much as he thought of you, but each time he settled back into the apartment and you weren't there he was hyperaware of how quiet it was.

Maybe I should call Diana. She might know where she is.

As soon as Ben thinks that, his phone begins to ring, but Ben doesn't bother to look at who it is before he answers it. 

"Hello?" Ben huffs out a breath of smoke that hangs in the air in front of his face, catching in the bluish light coming from the television.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" The voice on the other side of the line yells at him.

"Di?"

"Yes it's me. Who did you think it was? Santa Clause?" Your grandmother snarks.

"Why are you calling me and why the fuck are you so mad? What did I do?" Ben answers slightly annoyed.

As much as you got under his skin, your grandmother had been the same way. He actually thought that it was amusing that even before he figured out that she was your grandmother that he had often compared you to her in his mind. You had the same mannerisms, the same defiant and stubborn attitude that drove Ben up the wall, and you were just as beautiful as she was.

Ben was okay with admitting that he was attracted to you. To him that felt normal, it was the other feelings that he was conflicted about, the ones that he'd never felt before stirring in his chest that made him feel "too emotional" and "woman-like."

Truthfully, Ben was sure that if your grandmother had given him a shot that maybe he would have felt that way about her too. She was the only person that Ben actually trusted in the 80's, the only person that was brave enough to call him out on all his shit. You did that now. But he liked her husband also, so Ben was content with letting her go. He liked how happy that Henry, your grandfather, had made her. He knew that she wasn't happy as a supe and seeing her so happy and in love made Ben feel something that was close to happiness.

And it was seeing the way the two of them were together made Ben wonder if what he had with Countess was the same thing. Because he did have feelings about her that were different, but each time he went to visit Diana and saw your father playing on her lap he felt that there was something missing in his life.

It was the same way that he thought something was missing when you weren't in the apartment, but Ben hadn't realized that yet.

"Because I don't understand what the hell you're doing!" Diana replies and Ben honestly doesn't know why she's angry with him.

"About what?"

"My granddaughter."

Ben sits up the blunt in his fingertips forgotten. "Is she there with you?"

"Yes." Her voice softens for a moment.

Ben relaxes and leans back onto the couch, sighing in relief. "Good.  That's good." Relief swelled in his chest when he thought about you staying with her, safe.

That's what she meant when she said that she wanted to go home. Home is with her grandmother. Ben stopped the next thought before he could go there.

The thought that home wasn't with him.

Ben was trying not to think about that or think about you hating him. He didn't think you did, well, didn't think you did anymore. At first it really was touch and go, but now he was almost eighty percent sure after you'd told him more than once that you weren't afraid of him and didn’t hate him that you sometimes wanted him around.

"No, not good."

"What do you mean? Is she okay?" Ben's grip on the phone tightens so hard that he's sure that he hears the screen cracking.

"No."

"What happened?" Ben's voice is a growl, the feelings of relief evaporating as soon as they had begun to bloom in his chest. He mentally calculated how long it would take him to get to you.

"Her entire life fucking fell apart and where are you? Not here!"

Oh. Ben relaxed a little bit.

"I don't need to be there." He says on an exhale of smoke.

"Yes you do!" Diana presses.

"No, I don't. She a big girl she doesn't need me there, she's-" Ben takes a puff from the joint.

“If you were any denser you’d be a Bundt cake Benjamin!” She says exasperated.

"What the fuck are you talking about doll? I am not-"

“Let me guess." She interrupts and Ben can imagine her tapping her foot. He hated when she did that. "You’re moping around smoking a blunt on the couch probably with a glass of something that you're hoping to numb whatever the hell it is you're feeling."

Ben's eyes shift to the bottle of whiskey on the coffee table that he hadn't touched in a few minutes.

“I’m not fucking moping and stop spying on me!” He snaps back at Diana.

He hated how well she knew him. She was his best friend in the 80's through all the shit, she had seen him at his worst and at his best too many times to count.

“I don’t have to use my powers to know what you’re doing. I know you Ben.”

"Sorry to disappoint you sweetheart.” Ben grits his teeth, temper flaring hot. “But if you know me as well as you fucking say you do then you then you know that this is-“

“You avoiding your feelings by acting aloof and brooding like a fucked up version of Mr. Darcy.” She interrupts.

She certainly hasn't changed.

“I am not avoiding-“

“She needs you here Ben.” Diana stamps her foot, the same way you do when Ben pisses you off, and Ben can hear it.

“She doesn’t need me! She said that she wanted to go home, that she didn’t want to be here with me! I tried to-“ Ben shouts back standing up. It was the exact thing that he'd been thinking for the past twenty four hours, that you didn’t need him and that you didn't want to be any where near him.

That last thought made an uncomfortable sensation prickle in his gut when he thought it, because all it did was remind him of how you acted when the two of you first met, when you didn't want him to live with you and tried your darndest to make him go away.

He didn’t want to and he wasn't sure why that was.

“Try harder.” Diana interrupts him again and frankly it was pissing him off.

Ben clenches his jaw. “I think that you’ve confused me with someone else baby.”

“Don’t you 'baby' me Benjamin! We both know that you’re doing what you always do when things get hard for you.”

“And what’s that?”

“You pretend not to care and shut out everyone who tries to care for you. Not to mention you drown yourself in drugs, booze, and women.”

“She doesn’t care about me!” He spits.

“She does!” Diana snaps back. “And believe it or not she needs you here and she wants you here.”

"But-"

"Ben please." It was the first time that he'd heard Diana sound softer and almost pleading since the conversation started. "Don't do this to her. She's worth more than Countess and all those other women you've fallen into bed with."

"Do you really think I don't know that?" He roars. The answer surprises himself. "Do you think I don't know that she's different?"

Wait what?

"If you know that, then why aren't you here?"

He hesitates.

Everything you said to him the night of the party comes roaring back. You looking beautiful in a dress that made his throat tight, and you telling him that you just wanted to be friends and that you understood that he wasn't the type of guy to have relationships. He didn't understand why it stung a bit when you said that, but it had.

Ben thinks about the week that the two of you spent together after Diana went home, when he tried his best to take care of you, distract you from everything that happened with his movies, and would sit with you and try to make you laugh. He'd never wanted to take care of someone before.

Not to mention he kind of liked the way you laughed. He wouldn’t admit that to anyone, but each time you did, it made him want to laugh too. That had never happened to him before. But he wanted to make you laugh to forget everything that happened with Elijah. His fist clenches when he thinks of exactly what Elijah tried to do to you and it makes him feel so mad that he feels close to spontaneously combusting. Ben might not be the best role model when it came to women, but he couldn’t imagine the type of man who would force himself on someone else.

It had made him angry when he thought that you were suggesting that he would try something when he first moved in, because he wasn't that type of man.

Ben was trying to be better for you. He wasn't admitting that, but he really was trying to be better. He didn't understand why. You'd told him countless times that you didn’t want to be with him, that you wanted to be with someone else like Jake.

Ben frowns when he thinks about the man he'd pulled from the rubble of the shop. And again thinks to himself that you should be with someone different, someone who was a supe and could understand you. Ben had seen how difficult it was for Diana when she was keeping her supe life a secret from your grandfather and he didn't want you to have to do that with someone.

"Because I'm not-" Ben begins to say, but he holds his tongue. It was too honest, too raw, too unlike him to admit this to anyone.

Because I'm not this guy. Because I'm not the one she wants. Because I'm not some knight on a white horse. Because she's everything right with the world and I'm just a fucking asshole who sleeps on her couch.

"Ben." Diana breathes and he can practically hear her pinching the bridge of her nose. "In all the years I've known you, you've never done what you did for her with anyone else. You carried her out of that warehouse, you stayed with her in the hospital even after she woke up, you took care of her when she came home, you protected her from Darren. You can't ignore all those things."

"I'm not ignoring them. She's my friend." The word sours in his mouth as he says it. "And she would have done the same thing for me." He knew it was true.

She's a good person and she wouldn't let me chase her away if any of that shit happened to me and I told her to leave me alone.

"Yes she would. Because she cares about you." Diana sighs.

"She doesn't."

"Why don't you believe me?"

"Because she's told me what she wants!" Ben shouts so loudly he can feel the room shaking. "She wants to be friends-“

"Because she doesn't think that you want a relationship you nitwit!"

"I don't." Ben spits the words before he can stop them, but as he does something tightens at the base of his throat.

"How is it that it's been forty fucking years and you're still able to dance on the grave of my last nerve?"

Ben chuckles. "I missed you too sweetheart."

She sighs into the phone again making it crackle in Ben's ear. "She needs you.” Diana repeats. “And I think you need her too.”

His temper was flaring again, the thoughts that his father pressed into him surging up before he can stop the words. “I don’t need anyone. I’m Sol-“

“If you say that you’re Soldier Boy, I’m going to reach through this phone and slap you silly.” She snaps. “And you do need her, but you’re still just too stubborn to admit it.”

“I-“

“Ben I know that everything that happened with Countess was fucked up, but my granddaughter she-“ Diana pauses before she changes the thought.  “You say that you know she’s different, but right now you’re treating her the same way you treat all those other women.”

“I’m not-“

“My granddaughter has decided you’re important to her and once that’s happened it’s hard to make her let go. You saw the way she was with Darren and that guy was a manipulative asshole. Imagine what she thinks of you.”

“I-“

“Stop making excuses!”

“You didn’t even hear what I was going to say!” Ben shouts.

“And I don’t need to! Think what you want Ben but if you’d stop acting so stubborn and so ridiculously blind to what’s right in front of you. I promise that what comes next is worth the risk.”

“Don’t go all fucking mystical on me doll.”

“And don’t go all macho- no feelings asshole on me! So stop being so damn stubborn, get on a plane and get your ass here.” She retorts. “Don’t fuck this up Benjamin because if you do I’ll fuck you up.”

The line goes dead.

Ben sat there for a minute in the silence still holding the phone up to his ear, listening to what your grandmother said to him ring around in his head for a second.

No one ever spoke to him that way. In fact, Ben had never allowed anyone to speak to him the way that she did, well, not until you came along. You reminded him so much of her that it was astounding and he wasn't going to admit that maybe it's why he liked being around you so much.

Ben frowns at what Diana said, thinking about the unusual feelings that were swirling in the pit of his stomach. He felt wrong and the feelings were odd for him. He hadn't felt anything remotely like this ever in his life, not even for Countess.

And although Ben refused to be afraid of anything, the feelings he was having scared him. He didn’t understand and he wasn't sure that he wanted to. He wasn't sure that he wanted to see where this ended up. He felt like he was in too deep.

As much as he wanted to go to you like Diana ordered him to, he wasn't sure that he should. Something was holding him back, digging it's heels in and refusing to budge.

But why do I feel like-

His phone rings and he doesn't look at the caller ID when he picks up, expecting it to be Diana again, yelling at him.

"Di I-"

But it's not Diana.

"Hello Ben. It's nice to hear your voice again." The familiar voice says, sounding calm and collected.

"What the fuck do you want?" Ben snarls.

 "I thought it was time the two of us had a chat.”

A/N: At this point Diana is really just trying to give both Ben and the reader the kick in the pants they need. And yes I know another cliffhanger, but you know you love it. 🤭😉 We are quickly reaching the end of this series, but that means the confession scene is coming and I am so excited about it!!

As always thank you so much for reading! Reblogs, likes, and comments are not required, but are always appreciated. I love hearing what y'all think! If you'd like to be added to the taglist for this series let me know. 😊

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[bkgexe]

the defiance of a life spent almost in touch

geto x reader ✾ 15.7k ✾ part one of two ✾ ao3 link

info! (canon au, haibara lives and geto never defects.) Your cursed technique allows you to read people—to see into their minds—when you touch them. It's not pleasant, but to jujutsu society, it's useful. Which means you end up in close proximity to Geto Suguru, who you've been avoiding for nearly a decade since seeing just how frightening it is inside his head. Though it's something you vowed never to repeat, it seems that there are powerful people vested in having you read him once again. ✾ tw! reader is scared of geto, typical jjk gore/violence, geto is. mentally unwell. like he didn't defect but he's Wrong ✾ notes! part two should be out end of march!!!

When the jujutsu higher-ups ask you for help, they always send Kento, because you have a hard time saying no to him. 

To his credit, he always looks sorry. You have the number of every other sorcerer you know blocked. He still comes in person because he knows the blow will be softer if you can complain to him after. He drives you to the appointed location, a small town on the border of Yamanashi Prefecture. The ride is mostly silent. When the car stops in front of a small, traditional house, Kento sighs deep, a sound you got so well acquainted with in high school that you can still conjure it in your mind on command. 

A familiar look: why are you doing this. Another: you can say no.

“You know why I have to,” you say.

The sigh again. “Fair enough.”

You left jujutsu society for a few reasons.

The first: your cursed technique is useless in a fight. You had to rely on strength and agility alone, which got you to Grade B—but you saw what happened to Haibara. The higher-ups send lower grade sorcerers out as a test, a toe in the water. They misjudged the grades of so many curses that at a certain point, you started to suspect that they were making it all up. That they had no way to accurately measure the strength of a curse until it had drawn a sorcerer’s blood. You didn’t want to be a body in a hospital bed, cut so deep through the middle that you had claw marks on the inside of your spine.

Haibara lived, but not without consequences.

The second: three men wait inside the house you’ve been called to. The window that alerted the higher-ups, a non-sorcerer passed out on the ground—and him. Geto smiles warmly when he sees you. You used to like his smiles before you saw the inside of his head. Now all you see is fox teeth hidden behind a stretched mouth.

Though your cursed technique isn’t useful in a fight, it’s still useful. Skin-to-skin contact allows you a look into another person’s mind. Just flashes, and nothing specific, but it’s helpful when the only witnesses you have are comatose or otherwise indisposed. You’re allowed a normal life for these few visitations. The higher-ups don’t bother you anymore. Even Gojo stopped asking you to come back and teach somewhere along the line, distracted by things more (or less, knowing him) important than your existence.

Geto never tried. You can at least respect him for that.

He explains to you that six people have been found in the same state as the man in front of you. It’s not a normal coma—something is smothering their soul, stretching it far from their body. As if they’re standing on the sidewalk across the street from themselves, watching the inside of their head through a lit window in the middle of the night. You’d forgotten what Geto’s voice sounded like, all friendly tones and half-hidden condescension.

When you touch the unconscious man, you don’t see anything at first, which is odd. His wrist is clammy and cold, his whole body covered in sweat. You briefly wonder if his soul is so disconnected that you won’t be able to read him.

And then, memories:            noodles in warm broth,          a pair of leather shoes           with buckles,                    a live wire at the power plant,          what it would feel like          to put your hands on it?,          to feel electricity for the first time in so long?,          to take something into you                                                                  r body that was never supposed to be there?,          hands wrapped around spark-soaked copper—

Outside, you throw up behind a camellia bush. Bile burns your throat, the roof of your mouth. The flowers smell of putrid rot when you know they shouldn’t. Cold air digs needles into your cheeks, so you’re stinging inside and out. Kento hadn’t given you enough notice for you to skip breakfast, but the higher-ups hadn’t given him any notice that they’d need you.

People are predisposed to show you either wants or memories. Never both, for reasons beyond your understanding. Memories are worse than wants. They burrow deeper, which makes them harder to expel.

Instinct tells you the hand is coming before it connects, and you dodge contact—Geto at your shoulder, asking if you’re alright. He doesn’t miss that you flinch away from him. “I’d have brought a bucket inside if I knew,” he tells you. His face says: I’m sorry for overlooking this detail. He’s very good at lying with it.

“It’s at the power plant,” you say. “Whatever’s causing this.”

“Do you want to read any of the others before you go?” The question feels cruel. His face says it isn’t.

You shake your head and leave without a word. 

Kento drops you off at your building and you thank him. You could invite him up easily. The two of you have known each other for so long, have experienced so much together, that being with him feels natural. It’s possible to turn off your brain around him, to touch him and only experience the smallest flashes of memory. 

You thank him and say good night.

It would be selfish. You would give anything to be the kind of person that could be a good partner to him. He’s an easy man to love, which is exactly why you can never love him. You’re difficult, a puzzle that comes with a sizable warning.

When you fall asleep in your cramped apartment, you see soup and silver buckles, live wires and burning flesh.

✾

An unknown number calls when you’re at work. You pick up because it breaks the monotony of clicking around account records and absorbing none of the numbers on the screen.

“Are you busy?” the person on the line asks, and you realize you never blocked Geto’s number because you never had it in the first place.

You tell him you’re not, even though you have a project deadline this week. If you sit in this closet-turned-office for five more minutes you’re going to explode all over the walls. You're not sure why you entertain him—why you didn't just hang up the second you heard his voice. There's something about him that compels you. A terrible, morbid curiosity that sometimes, when you're not looking directly at him, overrides your fear.

He meets you at the same house as last time, but today there’s no window. Just you and him. Kento didn’t drive you. For some odd reason, you thought there’d be someone else here, as if jujutsu society at large should know that you always need a buffer when it comes to Geto. A witness. And you realize that despite the curiosity, despite the compulsion, you should never have entertained this man on the phone for more than ten seconds. You shouldn't be here. You keep your keys spiked between your fingers, as if you’d ever be able to stop one of the most powerful sorcerers alive from doing whatever he wanted with you.

“I didn’t find anything at the power plant,” he says, leading you down a wooded path behind the house. You emerge onto a dirt road on the other side, a near-identical house sitting before you, its sloping, tiled roof dripping with excess morning rain. “Have you had lunch?”

You shake your head. He smiles with his hidden fox teeth.

The man you read this time is just as feverish as the other, but his wrist is hot. This isn’t relevant to reading a person, but you notice these things because you touch people so infrequently. Each time you do it’s a research experience, notes taken inside your head, recorded to compare against other studies you’ve done over the years.

The memories are instant:  rough hands that have hardened from years of manual labor, watching baseball with the other construction workers after projects done in town,                     your daughter           moving to Tokyo for college, radishes that she used to grow in the backyard that she boiled and roasted every day after harvest, and           who          will you eat them with now? and who          will grow them? and who          will you make your hands rough for?  you don’t like baseball.

Pulling away from the man’s mind is like extracting yourself from honey in the process of crystallizing. His consciousness clings to you as you leave, trying its best to suck you back in. You’re the only company it’s had in a while.

“I didn’t get anything,” you say, and your voice is rough. Your throat burns even though you didn’t throw up. 

Geto sits in one of the two plastic folding chairs in the house’s main room. He plays with the piece of his hair that’s loose from his bun, twirling it between slim fingers. You haven’t seen him in a jujutsu tech uniform since high school, though you’re pretty sure Gojo still wears one daily. Geto’s always in crisp white or black button-downs, slacks, expensive oxfords. Maybe playing dress-up makes him feel less like a sorcerer and more like a human.

“I can try again,” you say, and you’re not sure why. It’s for this suffering man, you think, even though your savior complex was left behind with the jujutsu world. 

“You don’t have to,” Geto says, dropping the strand of hair and leaning forward. His language is careful. He’s not telling you no. The way he watches you, elbows on his knees, hands clasped in the middle, makes you feel like you’re being tested.

You try again. This time:  getting your wedding ring engraved,          sitting on the porch in late spring sipping on plum wine,          nearly crying when you see your daughter playing with                     the girls that have caused the town so much misfortune,          the relief when            they ’re finally gone,          the relief when your daughter brings new best friends home and          their eyes          aren’t shadowed and sharp and too old for their sockets—

Retching is your second-least favorite thing, right behind actually vomiting. Your body rejects the images you’ve seen, trying to empty your stomach before the memories can begin to digest.

You tell Geto what you saw. 

His question: “Does he remember what happened to the girls?”

“If he does, I didn’t see it,” you say. When Geto is silent, you tell him, “I can’t do it again. I can’t.”

After a tense, quiet moment, he smiles at you. You still feel nauseous, but you can’t tell if it’s because of your cursed technique or because of the bone-deep malaise that spreads into your skin like a balm when he looks at you—when you’re reminded of what you once saw lurking in the corners of his mind. “Of course,” he says. “Let’s get you home.”

✾

Kento meets you at your usual coffee shop a few weeks later. Your throat no longer feels raw every time you swallow. He has a drink waiting for you when you get there—(describing Kento as punctual would be doing the man a disservice)—and it’s your favorite, with all the little add-ons that you get too nervous to ask for at risk of being a burden to the already overworked baristas. You’re positive he tipped heavy after putting in your order.

He asks you what you think about the murder mystery you’ve both been reading. You tell him about your job, the monotony, the fantasies of exploding. He tells you about jujutsu business, even though he’s not supposed to. This has never stopped him in the past and won’t ever stop him in the future.

“The higher-ups are pleased with your work,” he tells you. He doesn’t sound pleased.

“Kento.” A warning.

He hmms at you as if actually considering your warning before speaking his mind. “Having a foot in either world is difficult. It’s impossible to keep your balance.”

Your drink suddenly disgusts you. You taste bile. The cup is hot between your hands as you roll it back and forth with your palms. “Are you saying I should come back to Jujutsu Tech?”

“I’m saying that if you want to leave entirely, you should.”

You consider this: a normal life, surrounded by normal people, with a normal job and normal friends and a normal partner, maybe, if you’re lucky. The higher-ups would never let this happen. If you wrong them, they make sure to wrong you back. “You know why I can’t.”

“I’d take care of it. You wouldn’t be bothered by anyone.” He speaks with such confidence that you could almost believe him.

You tell him you’ll think about it. The coffee stings your palms. A terrible feeling sits in your throat like a weathered rock.

There’s something other than the threat of retaliation that stops you from pulling the trigger—from fully leaving the world you grew up in, as Kento once did. Maybe you’re not as brave as him. Maybe you can’t reconcile how quickly he ended up going back. Or maybe you just feel so inextricably tied to the world in which you were raised that you need to have it in your life somehow, even if it’s in brief, unpleasant flashes of memory and want.

“You can make your decisions for yourself,” he says. He’s not disappointed with you, you’re sure—just worried. The same way you often worry about him. “They’re pleased. Geto found the curse and exorcised it the same day thanks to you. I can see why the higher-ups don’t want to let you go.”

The stone in your throat grows edges, forgets its weathering. His name always unnerves you, but Kento’s words unnerve you more. “He exorcised it—the same day we drove out there?”

Kento nods, sips his tea. “He can be vicious.”

A tremor begins in your fingers and lodges deep in your elbows, your shoulders, your very soul. “He didn’t need me to read another victim?”

Kento’s a smart man. His eyes narrow. “Not to my knowledge. Or anyone else’s.”

You wave off his concern (suspicion, really, but you love to downplay these things), and your coffee is finished, and you really should be going, anyway. “He didn’t do anything,” you lie, standing and folding your coat over your arm. “He called and asked me to come back out, but I said no.”

It’s easy to see that Kento doesn’t believe you, but he doesn’t press you either. He knows that if you tell him half-truths, once you have all of your feelings together, you’ll tell him everything. He’s done the same, and you’ve given him the grace he’s currently allowing you. He puts up with a lot—but that’s the nature of living the lives into which you both were born.

“Thank you for the coffee,” you say.

“You’ll call me soon?”

“You’re on speed dial,” you tell him—and it’s true. His contact is the only one in your phone that’s favorited.

Kento smiles—something you rarely see. You wish it didn’t call to mind the shine of fox teeth.

✾

How you ended up coming into contact with the wants of Geto Suguru: he showed up at Ieiri’s dorm with his ribs visible through his uniform.

You remember very specific things from that day. The heavy knock, the thud of him collapsing, blood soaking the tatami floors. Shockingly white bone beneath torn skin and muscle, his ink-black hair coming undone, silk-soft and slipping across your fingers as you dragged him inside. Ieiri’s hands were shaking. She smelled like cigarette smoke and metal. Pressure here, she told you, ripping away the remains of Geto’s jacket, and when you touched him everything was skin-muscle-bone-blood and: bodies.  bodies of people that have wronged you. people that haven’t.  their blood thick beneath your fingernails          like orange peel.  how easy it is to snuff out each life. to take from them what they have forgotten to value.                      you could kill more.                      you could kill everyone. 

When you pulled away from Geto, his skin was knitting together beneath Ieiri’s shaking hands—hands you knew well, her black nail polish chipped around the edges because she bit at her nails when she was somewhere she couldn’t smoke. His ribs faded from view, and then muscle, and then his skin was pink and shiny, scar-new, as if whoever had done this to him had simply taken a paint brush to his bare chest and drawn a bold X. 

Blood was underneath your fingernails. Orange peel. It’s all you remember about the aftermath. Getting back to your room and locking yourself in the washroom were voided from your memory. Your head was all bodies. All bone. An undeniable feeling of righteousness, completely sure that they hadn’t deserved what you’d taken from them. And on top of that, the most frightening thing: relief that they were dead. 

You washed your hands so much that the skin was raw, peeling, but you still couldn’t get your fingernails clean.

✾

You ignore his calls.

The frequency with which you receive them makes you uneasy. You don’t have his number saved. The first few digits become a bad omen.

In school, he and Gojo had a reputation for toying with people. Mostly women, mostly in a romantic sense. The difference between the two is that Gojo was easy to understand—a spoiled boy-prince that liked the attention. He wanted girls to fawn after him, to beg for more when he finally graced them with a kiss, to cry when he dropped them.

Geto always seemed worse, somehow. He would date girls and leave them behind like candy wrappers, charming them into giving him a taste and only revealing his true appetite when his prize had reached the inescapable vicinity of his jaws. 

It’s more insidious than simply liking attention. He liked power. Having control over someone.

Whatever he’s doing now is insidious in nature, too. You can feel it. So you ignore his calls and keep working the days away until you can’t ignore him, because he shows up at your office with the confidence of someone supposed to be there, hands in his pockets, leaning against the frame of your door.

You jump so hard that your bones creak, almost louder than the creaking plastic of your poor hand-me-down rolling chair.

“Your instincts are a little dull,” he says. “I thought you would’ve heard me coming.”

Standing up feels necessary. You don’t want to feel smaller than him, even though he towers in your doorway. “I’m not supposed to be bothered by sorcerers without advance notice.” 

He smiles. “I tried calling.”

Your heart is pounding like a rabbit at the foot of a wolf, partly torn to shreds but conscious enough to experience the abject terror of what comes next. “Who let you up here?”

“I was hoping you might be willing to humor me without advance notice.”

“I’m calling security.”

“I need your help,” he says.

“Like you needed my help last time?”

He sits with that for a moment. “Is it a crime to be curious about you? What you’re capable of?”

“You lied to me,” you reiterate. “You didn’t need me to read that man. And, what—it was so you could see more of my technique?”

“Yes,” he says plainly, as if it's a perfectly sane response.

“Why didn’t you just ask?”

He chuckles, the sound rich and deep and calm, as if you’re having a nice conversation between old friends. “Are you saying you’d have responded well if I just asked?”

You remain silent, staring at the sticky notes on your monitor with reminders and deadlines written in blue pen. Tanaka account today. Get stapler back from Yoishi!!!! You both know his question is rhetorical.

He crosses his arms, taps his long fingers against his bicep. Is it impatience, you wonder, or his inability to sit still for too long? His face belies nothing. “Would you read me if I asked?”

Your veins feel too tight, constricting muscle. It must be a leading question—he’s suspicious of your aversion to him, maybe. The exterior he’s built is charming and handsome and kind. That’s probably how he got to your office. You wouldn’t be surprised if the receptionist saw a handsome face and caved immediately. It’s not his fault you see through it. If you could go back and revoke your touch, remove the bodies from your memory, you would. But you can’t, and the things in his mind scare you. It’s part of what made you leave. The idea of working with a man like that, who held such terrors in his head, was incomprehensible to you. It still is. You would always be thinking about the ease with which you could become one of those bodies.

When you read people who project to you in wants, it’s usually easier. Makes you feel less sick. But not him. He wanted those people dead, whoever they were. He wanted blood on his hands. He was thinking, concretely, that he could have killed them all. That they deserved it.

The relief was the worst part. Seeing all those people dead, and the resounding thought that outshone everything else: finally. 

He steps forward, hand extended slightly. “If I—”

“No. Just—don’t,” you say, and you stumble a little as your legs hit your chair and push it, rattling, against the wall. Your office has never been this small. You never want to be inside his head again. You'd do anything to get him out of your space. “Tell me what you need my help with and we can go.”

He doesn’t look pleased. It seems people in your life are operating on a theme. Still, his hand retreats, and he smiles, slouches a little, as if to make himself smaller. Less intimidating. “Thank you.”

As you leave your office, you give him a wide berth, though you could swear his body goes taut, as if suppressing the urge to touch you.

The Ueno Zoo is closed during operating hours. This hasn’t happened in the entire time you’ve lived in Tokyo. The woman at the gate is a window—the look she gives Geto is one of recognition, respect. He and Gojo are the most well-respected sorcerers currently active, though you believe entirely that Kento is much more deserving of respect than they are. The window lets the both of you inside without a word.

Geto leads you to the vivarium, just to the right of the gate. It’s a beautiful glass building, the windows fogged with humidity to keep its plant and animal residents comfortable. You haven’t been to the zoo in a long time, but when you used to come with family and friends, you always visited the vivarium before you left. The air was heavy and hot, birdsong piped in through speakers, echoing off the glass walls like prism-dispersed light. Every animal inside moved slowly, heavily, and if you listened closely enough, you could hear the soft slide of scales against stone, the heavy thud of a taloned foot into packed dirt. A haven for living in calm and peace.

Inside, it’s chaos.

Display cases are smashed, plants and trees are torn up from the roots, stone walls have been dismantled and crushed. In the center of the rubble, the strewn dirt and bundled roots: jaws. Alligator jaws, crocodile jaws, all long and horrible teeth, and when you look closer—the jaws of snakes, fanged and dripping venom, and others from what you can only assume would be turtles, small and rounded. 

The skin remains perfectly intact on every jaw. Muscle, bone, blood. You see bodies. You see limbs. You remember: finally.

“Don’t look at that,” Geto says from beside you. “Look at me.”

With a deep breath, you do—though looking at him does nothing to dispel the unrest in your stomach, the pit in your chest. 

“Good.” He’s not smiling anymore. You wonder if he’s decided to drop his disguise or if the orphaned jaws are more horrifying than the wants he carries like stones. “Come this way.”

He leads you away from the viscera, into a small office next to the stairs. A man sits in the single chair, staring into the security monitors on the desk in front of him. His gaze is absent, hollow. His hands clasp and unclasp on his lap. Blood is spattered across his face and the front of his cheery yellow jumpsuit.

“He’s been like this since I got here,” Geto tells you. “I need you to read him.”

Ieiri used to tell you that if humans come into contact with curses and live, you have to monitor them closely for cardiogenic shock—stress and fear mounting to such a peak that the heart can’t handle the pressure. It’s not a peaceful death. “He needs to go to a hospital.”

“I’ll take him after.”

“How long has he been in shock?”

“Read him first,” he says, more curt than you’ve ever heard.

This is the thing lurking under the surface. The wolf peeking through the mouth of the sheepskin. It sits in him waiting to be called forth. You’ve seen it already—it’s no surprise to you that it lives in him still. It is, however, a surprise that he let his facade slip so badly.

He smiles, fox teeth a little sharper than usual. “Please.”

You put your hand on the side of the man’s neck, the only skin available to you. Touching people’s faces horrifies you. Such an intimate thing tarnished by the images that flood your brain. 

Memories on a loop:  guttural screeching,          death cries that couldn’t be conjured by a human mind,          and from the ceiling,          from the ceiling          the jaws                     falling, falling,                                          falling,  blood everywhere          and on you and you can taste it          ???          in your mouth          ???           on your tongue          ???            metal and rot,          and there is something discarding these jaws from the bodies of animals          it eats                    while clinging to the vivarium’s rafters something ???        when you met your wife you knew you were going to propose to her in the zoo in the vivarium because of the beautiful glass the beautiful plants she loves plants something           there is something          there is          something you cannot see          some          thing          ???

This time, Geto has a trash can waiting for you. You’ve gotten very good at gathering your hair up with one hand at a moment’s notice. He puts the trash next to the desk when you’re done, and you tell him everything useful that you gathered on the curse. Everything else, you keep to yourself. You’ve gotten very good at that too.

You wipe your mouth with the back of your wrist. The bile tastes more like copper than usual. “Is that everything?”

He holds his hand out to you and you hide your flinch poorly. “Gum?”

The foil-wrapped stick shimmers green, held between his fingers like a cigarette. You stare at it for a beat too long. It’s your favorite brand, spearmint flavored. 

“It won’t bite,” he says. He tilts his head to the side, eyes crinkling with mirth. As if you weren’t tasting blood just a moment ago. When you still don’t take the gum, he laughs softly and it reminds you of high school. His laughter has always been a little mean, as if it gets harder for him to hide his true nature when amused. It reminds you of a housecat playing with a bug. “I won’t either.”

A funny thing for someone with such sharp teeth to claim.

You take the gum from him, careful to grab the very end so there’s no chance of your fingers brushing his. “Thanks.”

He smiles and nods as if he’s done you a favor. You appreciate the gum, but you’d appreciate him ceasing contact with you more. “I’ll see you soon,” he tells you.

“Get him help, Geto.” 

He smiles wide in response.

✾

You lost your virginity to Kento during your graduating year at Jujutsu Tech.

Haibara was recovering, still in the hospital for the third consecutive month. He had to learn how to walk again, the implants in his spine acclimating to him at the same rate that he was acclimating to them. You and Kento were the only two students in your year that made it to graduation. The two of you felt like celebrating but when you began drinking, you realized it was more commiseration than anything celebratory.

“Do you always see things?” Kento asked. He never drank—saw it as beneath him—so when he did, he was a lightweight. “When you touch people?”

“Yeah,” you said. The both of you sat against the headboard of your bed, passing a bottle of gin back and forth—the only thing you could find in Yaga’s campus stash. It stopped tasting like liquor twenty minutes prior. “I can make it quieter. But I really have to focus. Like—I couldn’t make it quiet now, I don’t think.”

Kento turned towards you and said, “Try.”

And always, you would protest when people suggested this. It was like a party trick to people that didn’t have to deal with the fallout. They all wanted to know what you saw in their mind, whether it was wants or memories that jumped to the forefront, what their subconscious decided was important enough to broadcast.

You didn’t believe at all that Kento was asking for those reasons. It’s why you touched him.

Wedging the bottle between Kento’s thigh and yours, you turned towards him and reached for his face. This, for some reason, was your first instinct. His skin was soft, a little dry. His mouth was set in a nervous slant. 

And you got a few things from him: finishing your favorite book for the third time, going to the beach with your mother, finding out how cold the sea was. Memories, unfortunately. The feelings behind them.

But what you felt was mostly your own. 

You pushed his bangs back from his face, and you couldn’t take your eyes from the slant of his lips, and suddenly you were in Kento’s lap, kissing him, and he was kissing you back, hands on your hips, groaning softly into your mouth.

The gin tumbled off the bed and spilled all over your floor. Your dorm would smell like liquor for weeks. 

It was awkward the way a first time should be for teenagers, misplaced limbs and kisses with knocking teeth. You both tried to take care of each other the best you could while shit-faced and entirely inexperienced. You hadn’t kissed anyone before then—you hadn’t touched someone’s face since you were little. 

You’d been scared. He figured out how to make that okay. 

✾

Gojo is in your office when you come into work, reclining in your chair with his feet up on your desk. He peers at you over his glasses, eyes like jeweled robin eggs. “Running kinda late, huh?”

“I don’t have to be here until nine,” you tell him. “It’s eight forty-five.”

“Semantics.”

“You’re in my office.” You don’t even have the good grace to make it sound like a question—just an admonishment.

“Or is it syntax?”

“Can you please get out?”

“Can’t you pretend you’re happy I’m here?” He pouts, taking his feet from your desk. “I won’t even ask you to do anything. I basically just came here to say hey.”

“That would certainly be a first.” You walk behind your desk and shoo him away from your computer, waking it from its slumber. An orange post-it note on the top of your monitor reminds you that tax reports are due TODAY!!!!!!, and you try to prepare yourself for a grueling eight-to-twelve hours of tax filing, depending on how smoothly things go. Gojo Satoru showing up at your office before you is not your definition of smooth. “You said hey. Why are you still here?”

Gojo slowly spins in your chair, pushing himself in circles lazily with one long leg. Avoids looking at you. “You’ve been working with Suguru a lot lately.”

“Twice.” You open up the tiny K-Cup machine you have on your desk and start preparing the world’s smallest cup of coffee. Three times, technically, but you still don’t know what to make of the second time he called you out to Yamanashi Prefecture. When he lied to you. “That hardly constitutes a lot.”

“Enough that it got back to me.” He slows the chair, then starts spinning the other way. “You got any idea why he’s taken an interest?”

Your tiny mug clatters against the K-Cup machine. Geto is probably miles from here, dealing with important jujutsu business, but your heart beats like a prey animal nonetheless, the way it often does under his gaze.“I don’t think he’s taken an interest.”

“As much as I’d love to be flattering you, that’s not what I mean.” He stops the chair entirely, body directed at you. “You’ve been useful.”

There’s nothing you hate more than being talked about like a tool. Your coffee finishes brewing and you take a sip before you really should. It burns your lips. You lean against your desk and look at Gojo, trying to read anything from his face, his body language. As always, you glean nothing. Though you see Geto as the more insidious of the two, you’re keenly aware that Gojo is just as good at pretending. 

“I’ve been useful,” you repeat. “So what?”

“You don’t think you’ve been pretty unnecessary for the missions you’ve been asked to help with?” Though his glasses are on, it's as if you can sense the intensity of his gaze through the darkened lenses. “Suguru could’ve found and exorcised either of those curses easy. I could’ve done it even easier.”

Every meeting with Gojo requires a mandatory ego-stroking period. You decide to get it over with quickly. “Yes, you’re both very strong. What’s your point?”

“Do you know what happened that night?” he asks, taking off his glasses—and this is what really instills a fear in you that something terrible is about to happen. A full view of eyes like glittering sapphires. There’s no question what night he’s talking about. 

You don’t like thinking about that time in general. You don’t like thinking about Geto’s ribs. You don’t like thinking about the bodies. “A non-sorcerer tried to stop the merger. You guys… neutralized him.”

His gaze clouds for a moment. You’re aware that Gojo carries his burdens, despite his unbearable ego. He’s somewhere else, seeing things that you have the good fortune of never having to see. You briefly wonder whether you’d read memories or wants from him. You’re content with not knowing. “Don’t play coy,” he tells you. “You’re smarter than that.”

“You killed him.”

“I killed him.”

Gojo’s account of the day you read Geto: both he and his best friend so narrowly avoided death that they still remember its taste.

A mercenary whittled down Gojo’s endurance and attacked just as they were delivering Amanai Riko to Tengen for their merger. Gojo stayed back to deal with things. Geto escorted Amanai. Gojo was slit from throat to hip with a blade so sharp he didn’t feel the pain until his blood was already varnishing the floor. Geto was carved apart by that same blade, left alive only because of the curses he stored and their indeterminable state upon his death. Amanai, quick on her feet, made it to Tengen. The merger was successful. Things settled down and another Star Plasma Vessel wouldn’t have to be found for a long, long time.

Gojo shows you the scar on his forehead, shiny rib-white, usually hidden by his hair or his blindfold. Being so close to death changed him, he tells you—he fully understood the limits of his cursed energy and what it could do.

It changed Geto too.

“I’m not telling you all this for nothing,” he says, a disarming smile appearing on his face so suddenly after a serious conversation that the speed makes you nauseous. “I just have one tiny favor to ask you.”

It’s long into the day. The details took a while to get through. Your lunch hour is coming up and your appetite is nonexistent and tax forms sit unfiled on your desk. Gojo asking for a favor is always bad news. You can taste vomit and you wish you had a piece of gum or alternatively that you were born an entirely different person. “I don’t want any trouble—”

“No trouble. Promise.” He lifts his right hand, pinkie out, grinning—as if it’s funny that you, specifically, can’t touch him. “I just want you to read him for me.”

Your heart slams into the base of your throat. “That’s… You know that’s not a small ask.”

He drops his hand, shrugs. “C’mon—look, it’ll give you an excuse to get close to him.”

“Why would I want that?” you ask.

“As if I didn’t clock your embarrassing crush on him in high school.”

“Excuse me?”

“Excused. It won’t even be bad,” he says. “I only need you to read him one time, probably.”

“Why?”

“Just curious.”

“Gojo.”

Weighing the cost of telling you a half-truth versus keeping you in the dark seems to take a toll on him, his smile turning brittle at its corners. You think he knows that you won’t do anything for him without more information. Not that you’d read Geto ever, at all—but Gojo hasn’t always been good at believing people when they say never. Hesitantly, he tells you, “Something happened.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, something,” he says, finally a little exasperated. “I wouldn’t be asking if I already had answers.”

There are things he’s not telling you, very obviously. He’s minimizing. Jujutsu sorcerers are good at that. And he and Geto are best friends, two people so closely intertwined that they could count as one. “Why can’t you just ask him?”

For the first time in your acquaintance with him, Gojo is silent.

“He doesn’t know you’re asking me to do this,” you say. It would be a question if you weren’t already so sure.

“Oh, no, he’d kill me if he knew I was here.”

“I’ll call him and tell him to come get you.”

“I’d like to see you follow through on that.” He grins, peeks at you over his glasses. “Bet you won’t.”

Geto answers on the first ring, your name spoken in question.

“Your dog’s in my office. Come pick him up.”

He does.

Gojo could easily leave before Geto arrives, but he doesn’t even try. He sits in your chair, still reclined, surely doing immeasurable damage to the hydraulics. Asking him about his motives would be wasted breath—he’ll never tell you something he doesn’t want to, regardless of how much you wheedle him. He’ll enjoy the wheedling, though, and you don’t want to give him the ego boost of being begged. 

Instead, you shoo him out of the way of your desk and start working on submitting the tax forms, leaning awkwardly over your computer. Gojo hums and your back aches, and you refuse to be curious about this entire situation because it’s none of your business. This is what you do now. Taxes and filing.

Geto arrives at your office once again without needing your permission to come up. You wonder who’s working reception.

“Sorry about him,” Geto says, leaning in your doorway. His hair is loose, strands falling softly against his face. You forget how tall he is sometimes. How handsome. It makes your stomach turn. “Badly trained.”

“I think the fault is more the owner’s than the dog’s,” you say.

He shrugs. “If you tried training the dog in question, maybe your opinion would change.”

“Can you guys stop talking about me like I’m not here?” Gojo asks.

Geto grabs him by the back of the collar. “Walk’s over. Time to go home.” He smiles at you over his shoulder as he leaves, his hair so inky black that it almost blends into his dark dress shirt. You remember how it felt sliding through your fingers years ago. Even though you never touched his wound, you think you can remember the texture of his ribs.

You consider Gojo’s proposition long after you’ve submitted the tax forms, after you’ve arrived home late once again, after you stare out your bedroom window into the night sky and see nothing but storm-cloud gray. 

You expect Geto to be the kind of person to keep secrets. It shouldn’t worry you. But keeping secrets from the one person he views as an equal makes you uneasy. The bodies are in your head. You wonder how close you are to finally. When you sleep, it’s fitful, and you wake in the night to the feeling of silk-soft hair running through your fingers, falling so quickly that it’s impossible to grasp.

✾

Kento is antsy when he comes over for dinner. It wouldn’t bother you if he didn’t also happen to be the calmest man you know. He keeps bouncing his leg as he sits at the little two-top table in your kitchen, drumming his fingers incessantly on the tiled surface. He’s not wearing his glasses—and he usually watches your cooking like a hawk, just in case you make a grievous mistake—but instead holds them in his hand, twirling them back and forth. 

The one-sided conversation you have with him is unbearable. Did you have a nice day? Mmmhmm. No crazy assignments? Just the usual. Should I use soy sauce or sesame oil? Oil. My favorite author is doing a book signing next month. Do you want to go with me? Sure. Is something up? Not at all.

Eventually, you’ve had enough. “I’m going to burn the cabbage.”

He glances over at the pan you’re wielding. “It looks fine.”

“I’m going to do it on purpose and I’m going to make you eat it,” you say, pointing your spatula in his direction so he’s positive that it’s him who’ll have to eat the ruined meal. “I’ll spoon-feed it to you.”

Kento is bewildered by this, his eyebrows raised very slightly—shock has always been a micro-expression for him. “I’m sorry. I’ve been a little absent.”

“More than a little.” You stir the cabbage again. “You know I don’t want to pry.”

He nods. The space you offer each other is a give-and-take. If neither of you are ready to speak about something, there’s usually no pressure to do so. 

But this time is different. You’re worried that the strange things happening around you are begging to connect, veins folding over each other to become arteries, blood flowing into your life and staining the foundations. You need to tell him about everything that's happened over the past few weeks. But first, you need to ask. “Does this have something to do with Geto?”

His leg stops bouncing. His fingers quiet against the tabletop. “So you know.”

You tell him everything. Being called out to the village again, going to the vivarium, the jaws. Gojo showing up unannounced, though that's the most usual thing out of everything that's happened. “He asked me to read Geto,” you say. “There are secrets being kept.”

You told Kento about the bodies only once. The two of you had just recently graduated. You shared a studio apartment in Tokyo for three months before your Jujutsu Tech paychecks started coming in. In his arms, you saw memories of a kind-hearted blonde woman, the scent of coffee and pastries, the cool chill of the air in the mountains of Denmark, and you had to pull away from him, trying not to gag and failing.

When you returned from the bathroom, teeth minty-fresh and tongue burning, he apologized so earnestly. As if he had done anything other than hold you close and thread his fingers through yours. 

It was then you began to understand that you could never be his, though the realization didn’t settle in for a while. You told him not to apologize. You told him that nothing was his fault. And then for some reason, you told him about the bodies and the orange peel and the finally and he asked if he could comfort you and you had to say no because you didn’t want to throw up again. From then on, he was wary of Geto. Maybe not as much as you—though that’s understandable.

Knowing what’s going on in his head is one thing. Experiencing it is another.

Kento sighs, familiar. He joins you in the kitchen, in the heat that radiates from the stove. The cabbage is burning slightly even though you never meant to follow through on your threat. Your attention has been elsewhere. “Let me,” he murmurs, and his hand brushes yours as he takes the spatula from you: fresh bread from the bakery at the end of the block,          long nights at the office alone,          a deep hatred of the word ergonomic—  He begins to peel the burning cabbage from the bottom of the pan. “He’s been quiet lately.”

“Isn’t he usually?” You remember Geto being reserved, but then again, maybe that’s only because your memories of him are often in the context of Gojo.

“He can be.” Kento takes the pan to the trash and scrapes off the burnt cabbage, then returns to where you wait for him, leaning against your counter. He opens the top drawer next to the stove and pulls out the menu of the Indian restaurant nearby that you both like. “He’s exorcising Special Grade curses that he shouldn’t even attempt to take on by himself, no matter how strong he is. There are days where he’s cleared missions back-to-back without stopping to sleep.”

“You think he’s focused on work because something’s wrong.”

“Yes,” Kento says, and chews on the thought for a moment. “I don’t like it when he’s focused like this. He gets… obsessive.”

“Him and Gojo were always odd, though,” you say. Minimizing whatever is happening with Geto feels crucial. You’ve never seen Kento this worried.

He hums. “In different ways, perhaps. Gojo’s obsessive nature is more self-centered. But Geto—when he’s consumed by something, it’s like nothing else matters. He’d raze the world to ash if it meant doing what he felt needed doing.”

“Should I be worried?” you ask.

You should. You already know this.

Another sigh. He can’t quite look you in the eyes. You both think: bodies. You both think: finally . “Biryani for you?” he asks. “Or do you want something different this time?”

“Biryani’s fine.”

“Great,” he says, proceeding to order your food. And you don’t talk about it again that night.

✾

You’ve been a regular at the same coffee shop for nearly half a decade. The times you come in vary, depending on work or your weekend plans. You know the regulars and have seen thousands of faces pass through the cozy little building. Not once have you seen Geto here.

Yet he’s at the back of the line when you arrive, smiling pleasantly when he sees you walk through the door. Almost as if his arrival was timed.

If he hadn’t already seen you, you would’ve left. Even as you step into line behind him, you still consider it: bolting out the door and down the street, sprinting your way home as if he’d catch you if you stopped running. He stares at you expectantly while you think about your escape. It puts a shiver deep into your bones, his handsome face and kind eyes and warm smile, all tactics granted by genetics and lifted straight out of a manual on inviting body language. Instead of doing what your instincts tell you is right, you say, “Hi.”

“It's good to see you.” His smile widens, Cheshire in nature despite not showing teeth. “I didn’t know anyone else knew about this place.”

You almost tell him you live close by, but then think better of it. “It’s Kento’s favorite.”

“Of course,” he says. “Haibara took me here a few years ago.”

Yu is kind to a fault. Neither you or Kento have ever talked to him about what you saw in Geto’s head—mostly because you're scared to tell too many people, but also because of the blind respect Yu has for Geto. As if he's a story-book hero that could never do anything wrong. You care about Yu too much to disappoint him with the truth.

“I’ve gotten the same thing here for a long time,” Geto tells you. He gazes up at the menu, such concentration on his face, pulling at the strand of hair loose from his bun for a moment before turning back to you. You remember what Kento said about him not sleeping. His obsessiveness. Nearly imperceptible purple smudges lurk under his eyes. “Would you like to try something new with me?”

You can’t decide if you say yes out of sick curiosity or the fear of what would happen if you said no. Geto pays for both of your drinks—you insist that he shouldn’t, enough times in a row that it’s rude and very obviously makes the cashier uncomfortable, but his insistence wins out.

Waiting at the drink counter with him is torture. You hate when people buy things for you because it makes you feel like you owe them something. For Geto, it’s time. He paid for your presence, at least for however long it takes the baristas to make your drinks. He asks you about your work. You tell him about the books you’ve been balancing, hoping to bore him. Instead he asks more questions about how you like your office, whether your coworkers are nice, if your boss is treating you well.

“Are you looking for a new job?” You fail to keep vitriol from lacing the underside of your words. “We’re not hiring.”

If Geto is bothered by your attitude, he doesn’t let on. He even seems a touch amused. “I enjoy what I’m doing now, but thanks for keeping me in the loop.”

The barista calls out Geto’s name, and he grabs your drink first, hands it to you. You ordered a cappuccino with a syrup that you’ve been curious about but have never tried. The coffee smells amazing even at arm's length, creamy and strong and a little like cinnamon. 

“Thanks.” You slowly turn to leave. “I should be—”

“Wait,” he says, reaching towards you.

You flinch so hard that a slim stream of coffee shoots from the lid’s mouthpiece, burning hot when it lands on your hand. Geto never makes contact, but his arm is still outstretched, as if waiting for you to calm down so he can go through with touching you. You think of Gojo’s request, of the cases where Geto has asked for your help but hasn’t needed it. Yu might have shown him this coffee shop however long ago, but why is he here now? Why have you never seen him here before if he’s a regular?

“Get away from me,” you snap, stern and quiet enough that your words lace themselves underneath the shop’s easy-listening music. 

He does, hands raised and palms open, proclaiming innocence. Slowly, he lowers them. The barista calls his name again, his coffee still waiting on the counter.

“If you ever make me read you against my will,” you tell him, “I will never forgive you.”

Your forgiveness probably means little to him, but it’s the only thing you can threaten. You don’t know him well enough to understand what he holds dear—but you remember respect being important to him when you were at school. Respect and forgiveness.

“I wouldn’t,” he says. “Never.”

You thank him for the coffee again in lieu of a goodbye. The air outside stings against your face, your neck, the spots on your skin where the coffee burned you, steamed milk already drying to film. You’ll wash your hands when you get home. And you’ll wash them again. And again. Eventually they’ll feel clean enough.

✾

Yu calls you at 3:06 in the morning. “They’re dead because of me,” he tells you, and then he’s crying and you’re already walking down the block, heading toward his apartment in your pajamas and large winter coat.

After his injury, Yu wasn’t sent on more dangerous missions for a long time. Even when he was healed fully, despite the nasty scar that twisted and puckered the width of his chest, the higher-ups didn’t think he would be psychologically ready to take on anything too stressful.

They were right. One of the few things you’ve agreed with them about. Yu had always been the most hopeful out of all of you, the most caring. But he was also the most sensitive. Getting so close to death did nothing but make that worse. 

He’s on the couch when you get there, using your key to let yourself in. You and Kento were given copies at the housewarming party, which had consisted of four bottles of peach soju, the three of you, and Ieiri for a few hours before she was called back to the school. His eyes are red and puffy, and he’s curled into himself, laying on his side. It looks like he’s been crying for the entire evening. The worn leather of the seat is darkened beneath his face.

You’re by his side immediately, brushing hair back from his face, wiping stray tears from his cheeks: i wish i’d known i should have !!!          known how did                                         how did i not know how i wish i “Hey, it’s okay. I'm here,” you say, trying a little more pointedly to keep your fingers off his scalp. The thing he wants, simply: to have done better. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“I messed up,” he says, and you’ve never heard him sound so defeated. Even during his recovery he sounded less broken than this. “I don’t—I don’t know how I didn’t see it.” 

At seventeen, you and your classmates began to receive solo assignments. Yu always got the easier ones—still recovering from his injury, both physically and mentally. He tells you about a mission he had almost forgotten: a curse terrorizing a village on the outskirts of Yamanashi Prefecture. The curse was easily exorcized, easily forgotten—what Yu remembered well were the whispers that came after. They called him a devil, named him unnatural, said that he could see things no one else could because he was damned. Just like the two little girls that lived in the village, their late mother’s otherness somewhere in the same vein.

He thought nothing of it. He would get rid of the curse, and the village would go back to normal. Yes, they were skeptical and untrusting of anything that could be perceived as even slightly supernatural, but most non-sorcerers were. Sometimes you had to protect people that would never thank you—that could never comprehend the things you’d given up to offer said protection. Whatever oddities they attributed to other people would fade away once the curse was gone, and the village would go back to normal. Everyone would trust everyone again.

The bodies of the girls had been exhumed during a construction project aiming to bring affordable housing to prefectures outside of Tokyo. The Hasaba twins, Nanako and Mimiko, reported truant by their school over a decade ago. Their mother wasn’t alive to receive the report. Their father hadn’t been there from the beginning. The town didn’t report them missing—they knew exactly where the girls were. From the remains, bones weak and brittle, authorities determined that they died of malnutrition.

“I could’ve helped them.” Yu’s lip trembles and he bites it so hard that you see the skin around his mouth turn bone-white. “They might have been alive then. If I paid more attention, I just—how could they have done that? How can anyone justify that?”

You don’t know. How does anyone justify anything? How many times do you have to tell yourself you’re doing the right thing before you believe it? You wonder if the inhabitants of that village let out a breath when the sisters had finally passed—whether they, too, had a moment of finally.

Yu cries for a little longer and you hold him carefully. It’s all you can do. You’d call Kento if you didn’t know that Yu would be mortified to cry in front of someone he views as his superior at work, despite their friendship. After a while, he pulls his phone out and opens up a message chain. A groupchat for Jujutsu Tech staff. Ieiri’s text, attached to the official posting from the higher-ups: zen’in clan are holding a service for the girls on sunday. gakuganji wants us there to pay respects so everyone better show up. In the report, there are photos of each of the girls, from Picture Day at their school, judging by the uniforms—and you recognize them. 

You’ve seen these girls inside a man’s memories. A man that you read for Geto. 

Your heart beats so hard that you’re sure Yu can feel it through your shirt, through your skin. When you’ve reassured him as much as possible that he couldn’t possibly be at fault, when he promises you that he’ll be able to sleep without the feeling of guilt crushing him under its heavy heel, you head further into the city instead of back towards home.

The apartment building you come to is sleek, flashy, piercing the night sky like a blade. The doorman lets you in—you’ve been here before. On business only, and never of your own volition. You take the elevator to the top floor and slam your fist against the hallway’s only door, choosing to ignore the shiny golden doorbell and the even shinier knocker. After a few moments of you hitting the wood so hard that it feels like the meat of your palm is going to split, the door opens. 

A terribly annoying grin greets you. “I would’ve invited you up if you called me.”

“Why,” you say, trying your best to be calm, “do you want me to read him?”

Gojo’s expression flickers. A moment, a fleeting instant of concern. He’s without glasses or blindfold—you must have woken him up. It’s probably nearing five in the morning. The first trains will start running soon. “Hello, business,” he says. “I’ve got to admit, I’d hoped I was talking to pleasure.”

“It has to do with the girls, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t ask Suguru about what girls he’s seeing—”

“I saw them, Gojo,” you say.

This shuts him up.

“I read someone who knew them.” You’re not sure why, but it feels necessary to not tell him that you read the man because Geto asked you to. “He didn’t like them playing with his daughter because they were different.”

He stands, silent and contemplating, eyes pearlescent and glowing in the soft shadow that precedes sunrise. 

There’s a terrible phantom that lurks between your ribs, a sticky feeling that slimes along your bones. You think of Geto’s sudden reappearance in your life, you think of Gojo’s intimidating request, you think finally, finally, finally. “Did he kill them?”

His eyes snap to yours, fluorescent, flaring—you had forgotten that the hottest part of a flame is blue. “No.” 

He’s so serious that your heart rate picks up, your body going into fight-or-flight at the coldness of that single word. “Gojo—”

“He wouldn’t.” 

“Okay—it’s okay. I believe you.” You don’t, but you’ll say anything to remove the hardness from his eyes, his tone—the same hardness as when he sat in your office and told you not to sugarcoat things. I killed him. “Then why do you want me to read him?”

“I told you,” he says, and his voice is back to normal but his eyes are nowhere close. “I’m just curious.”

Your hand darts forward on instinct. You want to know what’s inside his head so bad that you can’t control yourself—until you remember exactly who you’re trying to touch and exactly what his power is. Forget being untouchable—he could physically destroy you. He could snap your arm like a matchstick. He could pull at the broken end until the limb splits completely. You step back, but the movement was too obvious to have been anything else.

He grins again. Holds his hand out. “Wanna touch?”

“Good night, Gojo.”

He watches as you get in the elevator, as you press the button for the lobby, as the doors slide shut. All the while, eyes burning.

✾

You’re at a run-down warehouse in Roppongi with a cursed weapon in your hand when you wonder where your life went wrong. Kento called you half an hour ago—cornered, bleeding, his cleaver knocked out of his grip. “I wouldn’t have called you,” he said, “but no one else is picking up.”

It didn’t matter. If he needed you, you would be there. That had been the case for the better part of a decade. 

The warehouse was a storage facility for flour and corn, most likely. The floor is covered in rancid mold. Your knife—Sound Eater, the cursed tool you’d conveniently forgotten to return to the armory when you left Jujutsu Tech—is familiar in your palm. Its handle is worn to the shape of you. 

You feel comfortable like this. More comfortable than at your job filing accounts, at your apartment reading or watching some awful reality TV show. It’s because this is how you grew up, you think. You’re remembering the person you were for twenty years before you became someone else.

At the far end of the warehouse, a stone staircase leads to the basement—where Kento is. Where the curse is. You can sense it, the same feeling as being watched. A specter’s ghostly nails tracing the ridge of your spine. 

The basement smells mustier than the warehouse. A single light blinks ahead, allowing you flashes of the series of hallways that lead deeper into the warehouse’s underground storage. The floor is wet, and the viscous liquid that coats the stone soaks through the soles of your shoes. Your socks stick coldly to your feet. You listen to your weapon to see if you can locate the curse, its energy responding to the curse’s with vibrations and muted shrieks that sing through your bones unpleasantly. The curse seems to be everywhere, spread through the basement like an even layer of butter. 

You find Kento’s cleaver before you find him. It’s deep in the tunnel system—you’ve already been walking for two or three minutes, and there’s been no sign that anyone else is down here with you.

Taking his weapon as a sign that you’re close, you even your breathing, measure your steps—stealth training from long ago functioning like a ghost limb, sending signals through your body despite not having been used for years.

You enter a large antechamber—some sort of production facility—and though it’s quiet, you hear breathing from behind a burnt-out piece of machinery. Slowly, you approach, Sound Eater singing against your skin. This is not the cursed tool’s energy responding to a curse. It can only be Kento. Your heart still beats violently against your ribs, bruising bone.

His shoulder is a mess. Dress shirt torn, blood adorning the fabric and the shiny plastic buttons, face haggard—he’s in pain, and the sight sends you back to your youth as quick as a fist to the face. Group missions, Kento’s injuries, your injuries, the way you started always wearing black because it hid bloodstains most effectively.

You’re at his side quickly, a hand gingerly against his shoulder, checking for damage. He groans. His shoulder is dislocated, but he already knows this. “Help me get it back in,” he tells you. His shirt is still intact enough that you won’t have to touch his skin, which is good. You can’t risk being weakened right now.

Shoulders always relocate with a sickening crack, as if a bone that had been broken is being rebroken and set. A badly healed bone is a liability, Ieiri has told you. Dislocation is easier to fix. You feel a little less sick when the sight of distended skin and incorrectly puzzled bone is straightened out, set right. 

“Details,” you demand.

“A semi-first grade, four-legged,” he says, taking his cleaver from you. “It’s using whatever’s on the floor—sticks you in place. Its left flank is injured.”

The one question that Kento doesn’t seem to be able to answer: where is it?

Sound Eater answers that question for you in the span of seconds, buzzing against your palm, shocks working their way down your fingers. You nod your head towards the north entrance to the production facility, where your weapon is attempting to drag you. Once it gets close enough to a curse, its energy begins to magnetize. The stronger the curse, the stronger the magnetization. You try to ignore the way your hands shake with effort to keep Sound Eater in place.

Kento is up, breathing labored. You hate this for him—that he feels like it’s his duty to deal with this, that his purpose is nothing more than being a jujutsu sorcerer. That knowing what it feels like to exorcise a curse makes it nearly impossible to want to do anything else.

You understand. This is the most alive you’ve felt in years.

In the abridged sign that you and he used to employ during group missions, he tells you, Go right. Distract.

You dart into the clearing, the curse’s eyes immediately finding you from across the large room. They’re yellow, the familiar color of bile, and they shine out from its gray body, the blob-like consistency of a snail on top of four muscled legs, identical to those of a wolf. 

Which means it’s fast.

Your shoulder takes the brunt of the pressure as you roll out of the way of the curse’s first strike. It crosses ground more quickly than you can comprehend. When you right yourself, you can see just how grotesque the creature really is. Its mouth is a wide wound stuffed with teeth. Its eyes are scared, childlike. In its twisted voice, it says hello hello hello? hello who's there hello? and Sound Killer wants to taste its skin.

As it readies its weight on its back legs to strike again, Kento comes down from above, his cleaver hitting the back of the curse’s neck with intense force—almost 7:3. You hear a crack, a hiss, but the curse backs up, head still attached to its body by a thread.

The floor is suddenly very cold. It radiates up through your feet, spiking into your calves, your thighs. You try to move and fail. Sound Eater begs you to let it get closer to its target. 

You’re not sure if the curse can only freeze one person at a time. Kento tries to move forward to strike again and his body jerks and stills, glued to its vulnerable position. The curse readies itself again to strike, its head knitting itself back onto its body. Its wound-mouth opens wide, ready for an offering. 

Sound Eater whistles as you lift it to shoulder-level, as you aim to throw it into the curse’s open mouth before it consumes Kento. 

It’s stupid, Gojo once told you, to lose your weapon on the field if your cursed technique is useless. You got very good at throwing weapons with dead aim, taking out curses with a single slice, Sound Eater a perfect match for you because of its draw to the cores of such curses. Part of you got good at this to spite him. You’ll continue to spite him, even now.

The curse lunges. Sound Eater slices through air. An echoing click fills the chamber as the cursed tool hits tooth, cracking bone but doing no more. The curse halts its attack, scared yellow eyes focused on you now.

And your cursed tool lays beneath its feet, glittering under a layer of pungent slime. You briefly try to appreciate the irony of the situation: if you hadn’t left the jujutsu world, you wouldn’t be as rusty as you are now, and maybe you would have lived. 

Your feet are unlocked so suddenly that you fall to your knees, slime coating your pants, your legs, your hands as you push yourself back up. The curse lies inert in between you and Kento—clearly breathing, but nowhere near conscious. Asleep.

It’s like you can sense him before he speaks, your blood chilling in its well-traveled arteries.

“I’m glad you’re both okay,” he says. Grins without teeth. The same way Gojo grins—confident and so hopelessly self-impressed. There’s a curse beside him, one that he controls, its energy definitely potent but not malicious towards you. It’s familiar, in a way—eyes that crackle with electricity, sparking skin, long claws. You’ve seen it before, but not personally. Geto’s gaze flits between you and Sound Eater on the ground next to the downed curse. “Did Nanami call you out of retirement? Or were you just having a little fun?”

Kento says Geto’s name—a warning. He’s injured, hurting. He doesn’t have patience for games.

“It doesn’t matter why I’m here,” you say, offering Kento help to stand. His body is a heavy weight that pulls at your shoulder, activating muscles you haven’t used since right after high school. “Ieiri still runs the clinic at school, right?”

“Of course,” Geto responds, all fox teeth. He points at the unconscious curse. “First, though.”

You’ve never seen Geto absorb a curse before. You know some details about the process, mostly from Kento and Yu telling you stories about happenings in the field, but you’d never actually witnessed it. It amazes you how the body curls up into such a compact ball of shadow, how it can be contained within the walls of Geto’s cursed energy. The expression he makes while he consumes it is familiar to you. You know that strain, that effort put into controlling every single muscle in your face, veins in the neck straining hard against skin. They must taste awful. You think about the gum he offered you at the vivarium—wonder if he carries it for purposes you hadn’t considered until now. 

He dismisses the other curse with a small movement of his hand, and the energy in the room evens out so quickly that your head feels full of falling sand. Sound Eater goes quiet, and you collect it from beneath a viscous layer of filth. “We should go,” Geto says, gesturing to one of the entrances to the production facility. Knowing him, he probably has the entire compound mapped out in his head. 

“Did you call a car?” you ask.

“I already have one waiting. Figured we might need a quick exit.”

You nod. He still unnerves you, but you’re not entirely without manners. “Thank you.”

He looks at you for a moment longer than you’re comfortable with. Everything seems calculated in his eyes. He never simply sees things—he analyzes them. “My pleasure,” he says. You can't read his tone because he always keeps it even, friendly. But you’re sure that there’s something to read in those words that you can’t quite see right now. “Shall we?”

Despite the way you feel about him, you allow enough tentative trust for him to lead you out of the darkness and back into the sun.

✾

He insists on escorting you home from the school.

There are company cars you could’ve requested rides from—the higher-ups at least owe you a free ride home for everything you’ve done today—but you don’t want to take anything from them that they haven’t already offered. They can be tricky about which of their favors require repayment.

This leaves you and Geto on the last train of the night, alone. He stands despite the long rows of empty seats, leaning back against the Do Not Lean On Doors sign, arms crossed. There’s not even a hint of him trying to hide that he’s watching you intently.

On any other day, you would stand, unwilling to give him any advantage—but you’re exhausted. You need a shower so badly. Layers of slime have dried on you and you feel more disgusting than you ever knew was possible. You sit opposite him, leaning back in the uncomfortable plasticky chair. Meeting his eyes feels foolish. Taking your attention off of him feels even more foolish. Staring at his shoes is a happy medium.

The car rolls steady across its tracks, its wheels whistling slightly when the train reaches top speed between stations. 

“Do you ever see things you don’t want to?” he asks after a three-stop stretch of silence.

All the time. It seems you’ll always be stuck in this cycle of attempting normalcy only to be tasked with experiencing the unpleasant wants and memories of people you don’t know. You’re not going to tell him that, though. Him asking you questions makes you queasy. Your knees feel weak even though you’re sitting down. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“You’re very good at avoiding my questions.”

“You don’t make it hard.”

The train rolls on, and on, and on.

He hooks his arm around the closest stanchion pole, then leans in your direction. The strand of hair that hangs loose against his face sways alongside the train's ebbs and flows. Blinding brightness from the overhead LEDs paint his face in baroque shadows. He could be a devil, or a killer, or simply a man. “Does it scare you?”

Many things about this situation scare you. You ask him to clarify.

“When you read people. I’m sure you’ve seen some… unsavory things.” You think: bodies. You think: blood and muscle and sinew and bone. “It would make sense if those things scared you.”

“They don’t,” you lie. 

He considers you for a long moment, seeming to lean even farther forward, and the idea of him getting closer pierces your stomach like a nail. But the train once again sways on its tracks and his body follows, leaning back on his heels and removing himself from what could have almost been your space. “I always wondered what it was you saw.”

“What do you mean?” you ask. You know what he means.

He smiles, almost condescending—an expression that says come now, are we really going to play this game? The way he says your name in response, so pleasant and even-keeled, makes you feel like a cold stone. Prey trapped in a small space with its most vicious predator. You go so still your blood stops flowing.

Until now, you’d never been sure whether he actually knew that you’d read him. You’re positive he doesn’t want anyone to know what’s inside his head. He paints an image of himself over what he really is, but it’s a faulty veneer. Apply enough pressure and it’ll fracture in all the little places that hold the worst rotted of the flesh beneath.

You know he would do anything to keep this image of himself spotless, whole. You’re sure of it. “Kento will know something’s wrong if I don’t talk to him in the next few days.”

His brows draw low over his dark eyes—first in confusion, and then in a sort of amused incredulity. “You think I’m going to kill you.”

“I think you want to.”

The lights flash in the car as it passes under a tunnel. “What is it that defines a good person?”

“...why are you asking me?”

He grins, and your stomach constricts. “Good and bad are large concepts in a small world. They touch and overlap in more places than any of us could ever anticipate. But we’re supposed to fit neatly into one or the other.”

You don’t respond. You’re too focused on the stretch of his lips.

“So what defines a good person?”

“The things they’ve done,” you say, more to get him to stop asking you questions than anything.

“I don’t remember doing anything particularly harmful to you,” he says—and here it is. What he really wants from you. “It can’t be my actions. So is it my desires that define me as a bad person in your eyes, or my memories?”

Your stomach constricts tighter. Painfully. You’re still four stops away from the one by your apartment. “Geto.”

“It has to be one or the other. Those are the two categories that you can read, right?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Ten years,” he says. “And you can barely look me in the eye.”

You try, as if you could prove him wrong, but you can’t maintain eye contact with him for more than a moment before you feel a terrible coldness in your gut.

“I’d always wondered if you read me that night, but I was never sure.” He wraps his loose strand of hair around a long finger, then unwraps it. Repeats these movements like a question and answer, like a catechism. “Not until I saw you again.”

“The second time you called me out to the village—you were lying to me.”

“We’ve established that.”

“You put that man in a coma,” you say. "You absorbed the curse that was at the power plant."

He nods, face calm, as if altering someone’s state of being is a normal thing to do. “But I woke him up right after you left and he was unharmed. I paid him for his time.”

“Why?”

“I needed to know what it was that scared you. The situation itself…” he says, holding out one hand flat—and then the other, his hands mimicking the sides of a scale, the second option heavier than the first. “Or me.”

“I’d have told you that if you asked,” you say, and you would have. No point in keeping it from him. “You didn’t have to lie. That was underhanded.”

“I think reading me without my consent counts as underhanded.”

Bone, muscle, blood, sinew. Bone-white beneath his uniform. And the blood, the blood, the blood, orange-peel thick. “I didn’t want to. You don’t understand, you were—I could see your ribs. It was—we didn’t think—”

“I understand,” he says.

“I know you do,” you concede. Because he was there for it all. He experienced it all. He woke up when he was healed and immediately went to search for the body of his best friend, not knowing that Gojo had already woken himself up from the brink of death. “I wish it happened differently.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” he asks, parroting your response from earlier.

Maybe they do. Maybe things could have gone much differently—worse, even. You could know more than his wants. You could have seen them realized.

“What did you see?” he asks, careful. Quiet. There's a weight to his voice you're unfamiliar with. It sounds like more than passing curiosity.

It’s what makes you answer honestly. “Blood. Bodies.” Finally. “Relief.”

“Which of those scared you the most?”

You look at him, jaw tight, because he knows which one it was.

“And that makes me a bad person?” he asks.

“I never said you were a bad person.”

“You just thought it.”

You have. You’ve thought it every day since seeing his true desires. You’re not sure that you’re a good person either, but your hidden wants will never be as gruesome as his. “It’s not that simple.”

“Of course it’s not.” Again, he smiles—but there’s something brittle to it. Gojo, in your office when you pushed too hard. A mask beginning to crack.

The train stills, doors opening. You're still a few stops away from home. No one gets on, no one gets off. It's just you and Geto on the car, filling its silence with more than words.

“If I asked you to read me now,” he asks, “would you?”

Your head jerks up, and you look past him, at the closing doors, at the windows of the train car. The whistling starts again, the train gaining speed. You’re between stops. There’s no exit. “No.”

“It could be different than last time.”

“You don’t know that,” you say, but what you really want to tell him is that it won’t be.

“What if it is?” he asks. “Maybe you have the wrong idea of me.”

You don’t think that’s the case. You’re not going to tell him this.

“I was angry. Hurt. I thought Satoru had just been murdered.” He says these things like easy facts. His tone takes the emotion out of them entirely, as if those factors didn’t contribute to what you’re sure is massive unresolved trauma. “I thought I was going to die.”

“You didn’t.”

“No,” he says—and here you get a flash of something deeper, again unfamiliar. Because he won’t look at you, even though he’s the kind of person that always makes eye contact. He leans back, distancing himself. “Have you ever experienced that? A moment where you know you’re going to die?”

“I haven’t.”

His lips twist into a muted frown. He looks young, the way he used to in high school. He stares out of the darkened window at nothing. At the walls of the underground tunnels. At blackness, pure and complete. The bags under his eyes are more prominent. Because of the lighting, maybe. “You think a lot of things. You realize a lot of things. And none of it is particularly fair.”

This has to be manipulation. He’s good at that. He always has been. But—something about this moment feels vulnerable, and you’ve never known Geto to be vulnerable. Not with anyone. Even on the brink of death, even just recovered, his chest still terribly scarred—there was nothing. He smiled at you and Ieiri before he left, that fox-teeth smile you hate so much. I’ll be back shortly, he told the two of you, as if his blood wasn’t coating the bottom of your shoes, staining the skin of your knees, clotting underneath your fingernails.

You’ve read people for long enough that you’re sure: this moment is different. “Why do you want me to read you?” you ask, so quiet that your voice is nearly swallowed by the sound of the train wheels scrolling across their metal track.

“Because I want to know,” he says, his voice a little hoarse at its core, “what you see.”

You shouldn’t. You’re too kind. Kento tells you this often. 

You shouldn’t.

When you put your hand out, palm up, Geto places his fingers atop yours so gently—a breeze of a touch. And then: bodies. bodies. bodies.           bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. suguru          should we kill these guys ? bodies. bodies.           bodies. bodies. it could’ve been different i could’ve been different bodies. bodies.                     bodies. bodies. bodies. bodies. we could do it together          no. i could do it alone bodies. bodies. bodies— You vomit onto the floor of the train.

Geto is on his knees in front of you, clear of the mess, and your fingers are tangled in his shirt, fists bunching the material at each shoulder. You want to let go so badly but you can’t—you’re heaving, sobbing, your forehead pressed against your fist, tears running hot onto the back of your hand. 

It’s just so bad. It’s so terrible. He wants this to happen. He feels like people deserve this. You never should have let him convince you to read him. You shouldn’t have been drawn in by the vulnerability. Not when—not when it’s that in his head, still, a decade later. 

You can’t stop heaving, nearly retching. You can’t stop pulling in breaths too quickly, not deep enough. Your forehead is flush against his shoulder now, and your tears are staining his shirt, and you can’t let go. You’re paralyzed.

He holds you while you cry. Only touches your back, your arms. Not your hair or face or hands. You couldn’t handle it again. You couldn’t handle it again but you can’t move right now.

As you quiet, as your breaths turn slow, heavier, you realize he’s been speaking to you. Maybe the whole time—you’re not sure. Quiet reassurance. It’s okay, you’re okay. Breathe.

You don’t feel okay. You feel more sick than you ever have. “Why would you want that?” you ask, and your words blend into tears. Into panic. 

He’s quiet, one large hand smoothing down your back over and over, as if reassuring you that you’re safe. Safe in the arms of someone with that many bodies in his head. He sighs, tired, and his breath makes your hair flutter, caresses the curve of your ear.

The shock of fear to your system from realizing just how close he is gives you the strength to pull away—to sit back in the seat again, untwine your fingers from his shirt. It’s creased on each shoulder from your vice grip. There’s vomit on the floor of the train to the right of him. He’s on both knees in front of you, hands in his lap now that you’ve freed yourself from his grasp.

Was it real? The vulnerability? The hoarseness to his voice when he told you that he wanted to know what you would see?

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Why would you want that?” you repeat.

He sighs again. Sits back on his heels, begins running his hand through his hair before remembering it’s tied up. He just leaves his hand on the top of his head, fingers curling inwards until he’s gripping his hair, and you wonder if it feels the same as it did on the night you read him for the first time. “I don’t know,” he tells you.

The train stops again. The voice says something you don't hear. You can't get up. “That’s not true.”

The doors close and there's the whistling once again, the darkness that surrounds the both of you, the speed you can just hardly feel. “Why did you decide to quit being a sorcerer?” he asks.

You don’t want to tell him. “There were a lot of reasons.”

“How is it fair?” He drops his hand. His hair is disheveled, just like his shirt. He looks so un-put together that he hardly resembles the Geto you’ve always had an image of in your head. “So many of us die. So many of us have injuries that take years to really heal. And it’s their fault. Humans.”

“You’re human.”

“I’m a sorcerer.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive.”

“I’m the one that has to deal with the consequences of their actions,” he says, as if that means something. As if that puts him in a different group from them entirely.

“So you want to kill them?”

“No,” he says, quick—because that’s what he’s supposed to say, you think. Then he quiets for a moment and seems to actually consider your question. “No. But—I do think about it.”

You both sit with the admission. Though the train car is empty, you feel cloistered, walls too tight around you.

“It makes me worry that I’m not a good person anymore,” he tells you.

“Did you want me to read you so you could decide whether you’re good or not?”

“I wanted you to read me because when I heard about those little girls that died, Satoru had to talk me down from going to that village and killing everyone.”

The conductor comes on the speakers, announcing the last few stops. It's both shocking and reassuring to have another person so close. You can't believe this conversation is happening in such close proximity to a person that couldn't even begin to understand the nature of its contents. Strangely enough, the admission quiets some of the fear inside you. Because you can understand it, on some level. Those girls were sorcerers. They were also nine.

“I had to see if there was anything inside me that didn’t want to do it,” he says. “Because—if there’s not—”

“I don’t see everything,” you tell him. There's more you could say, but you've never been comfortable revealing the true extent of what you can do. You've been a tool for long enough that you know being more effective begets more use. “I don’t think you should use me as a metric.”

“It’s obvious that what you saw wasn’t very good.”

“They starved to death,” you say. “I’d be angry too.”

And you're not angry, you realize. Not in the way that he is. Two little girls were starved to death for being somewhat different, and you can't get yourself to feel more than disgust. More than frustration. Parts of you have been quelled over time—being a jujutsu sorcerer necessitates this. You can't get angry over everything because everything is unjust, and everything is unfair, and eventually it'll all build up. Maybe into what Geto is experiencing now. If you hadn't desensitized yourself like this, maybe you would have bodies in your head.

It's unlikely. Not to the extent he does. But it's not like you're a stranger to violence.

“Maybe I’m not a good person because I’m not angry the way that you are,” you say.

“I don't think that's true,” he says, smiling, a little slight and a little sad.

It's the only time since you'd read him at the edge of death that you don't see fox teeth—but the smile is still not entirely kind. His words don't speak of reassurance. Perhaps a sort of envy. You're familiar with want. Uncomfortably so. You recognize it even when you try not to. Maybe he wants to feel the way you do. Less angry. Or maybe he does truly see you as good, in a certain context, and he wants to be there on that level with you.

“The first time I ingested a curse," he tells you, “I was so sick I couldn’t stand. I didn’t realize how awful it would taste. There’s nothing I could compare it to. After it was done, I threw up until my stomach was empty, and then kept going. The stomach acid burned my throat so badly that I had to go to the hospital. I was still young.”

You stay still and quiet. You don't want to relate to him so you try not to.

“And sometimes I wonder—would any non-sorcerer ever understand that? Could they?”

You try not to, and you fail at it. “Will you show me?”

He looks at you in askance. You don't tell people that you can do this. Only Kento knows. It's not something you should allow Geto. Not when he scares you the way he does.

“The first time,” you say, because despite knowing you shouldn't do this, it's that sick curiosity again that pushes you forward. And maybe something else—a want. A need to relate. To be sure that someone else has known what you've felt your entire life. “If you really concentrate on the memory—I want to see it.”

To show you, he touches your face: it’s so dark and i’m scared. and mom said to come home soon. but i saw this thing and i want to see if i can beat it                     no. i’m lying to you. there is a way i want this memory to go. i am a good child and i want to go home to my mother but i am so curious.           i am so curious i am so curious. i want to see what that thing looks like when i kill it. i know i can. i know i am different. i scare my mother and father and they still love me very much because it is so dark and i am so scared and i am just a child.           but i am not scared. i follow the thing into dense trees that shadow the park. i play here with my friends. i kill it.           i don’t know how i know what to do but i do and                     !!! oh                               !!! god                     !!! oh god                                                   please.                                                   please.                                                   please. don’t make me do it again don’t make me do it again don’t make me do it again i want to go home i want to see my mother i do i’m sorry it hurts it hurts oh god           oh  i want to be good. i’m sorry. i want to be good. i’m sorry. i want to be sorry. i’m           god. 

The way you come out of a reading is usually like a free-fall without a parachute. One second you’re tumbling through the air, and the next you’ve been abruptly stopped. Being shown something is different. Kento would show you his childhood when you asked, moments with his family, bad parts of missions that he didn't want to voice but still wanted to share. It’s a little easier to stomach.

Usually. 

His hand lingers near your face, resting on your shoulder. He’s so close to you and he smells like very expensive cologne and you suddenly see how tired he is. His smile hides more than you thought it did. Maybe more than you had been looking for.

“Do you have a final verdict?” he asks. “Or should I decide for myself?”

There’s a predilection in him, you think. He’s predisposed to anger, the self-righteous kind. So is every other sorcerer you’ve ever met. And yet it’s different with him—more complex. Something else is very wrong with him. Deeply.

“I don’t like it when people touch my face.”

“I can keep that in mind.”

“I want you to apologize.”

“Of course,” he says, gentle. Was his voice always this gentle? Or is it because of all he’s shared with you on this train? “I’m sorry.”

The doors of the train open and a tinny voice announces that you’ve reached the last stop of the night. You missed your station a long time ago. You’ll have to pay for a cab. “I don’t think you’re a bad person,” you tell him. “But I'm afraid of you.”

He nods. Sits back on his heels again. “Will you be okay getting home?”

“Yes,” you say. “Thank you.”

You make it home just after one in the morning and lay in your bed with your clothes on and you don’t sleep. You don’t sleep at all.

i will link part two here when it is posted!

[ckret2]

Chapter 47 of human Bill Cipher thinking that being imprisoned in the Mystery Shack is looking pretty good right now:

The Eclipse: Part 5

Bill and Ford are just... so energized and enthusiastic after their near death experience. Not to mention fashionable.

But they've got nothing on Dipper.

And, at long last, Ford and Dipper badger Bill—who's just too tired to lie—into explaining what kind of an "eclipse" involves a giant flying axolotl making gravity disappear.

####

When they reached the cave, Ford discovered that his antique lantern was too waterlogged to light.

"I'm not sure how we're getting to the top now," Ford said. The cavern directly behind the waterfall had some ambient lighting, but it wouldn't carry very far. "I know you can see, but I don't trust you to lead me through a cave system in the dark, no offense." He was surprised at himself for saying no offense.

"If I was planning to let you fall off a cliff, I could've saved myself a swim in the lake." Bill had taken off his backpack and was rummaging through it. "Didn't your lantern go out when you took four-eyes hiking through here? You should have learned your lesson."

Bill must have meant Fiddleford, though it was strange to hear him single out Fiddleford as "four-eyes" when Ford wore glasses too. "I did learn my lesson. I brought three flashlights as backup," Ford said. "Which are in Dipper's backpack."

Bill laughed weakly.

"Did you bring a flashlight?"

"Better." Bill pulled out a kazoo. He blew a stream of water from it, shook it, and then took a deep breath and played a long high note that wavered up and down.

Ford cringed at the noise. "Bill, what—?"

Bill held up a finger to silence Ford. Okay, fine. He was curious now.

It took a few moments of increasingly irritating kazoo playing, but Ford heard a soft clinking sound coming from the deeper caverns; and then several geodites—small creatures that looked like stone orbs with crystal limbs and teeth and glowing eyes—curiously emerged into the main cavern. Ford hadn't seen these creatures since he'd documented them in the eighties. He hadn't known they could be summoned via kazoo. They began making a high pitched humming along with Bill's kazooing. 

"There you are." Bill stuffed the kazoo into his backpack and crouched down, holding out a hand until a couple of geodites crept closer to inspect it; and then he scooped up the closest one. The others startled into breaking off singing, but hovered nearby, chirping and clicking. "Okay, grab a flashlight." The light the geodites' eyes gave off wasn't very bright; but it was enough for Ford to see Bill's smug smirk. They proceeded into the caves, and a dozen-odd more geodites—perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of concern for the two hostages—followed along behind them.

The climb went much slower than it had just a few hours earlier. Unsurprisingly, without low gravity on his side, Bill was the holdup this time. Not only was he not as experienced in spelunking as Ford, but between his waterlogged dress shoes and his borrowed trout slippers he didn't have any appropriate footwear, and he'd elected to carefully climb barefoot again. When Ford had climbed up this path with Fiddleford in the 80s, it had been a six hour climb. He had no idea how long it would take with Bill.

But even at that, Ford hadn't expected Bill to need to pause so often to get his energy back. It seemed like the more Ford recovered from their fall in the lake, the weaker Bill got. In any other situation, he'd suspect Bill of slowing them down on purpose, but after... well, even that aside, Ford couldn't think of any reason Bill would want to delay getting home.

"It's just this body that's dizzy," Bill said, the fourth time they had to stop for him to sit. "Probably one of those... counterproductive stress reactions human bodies get." He wiped a film of sweat off his forehead, then stopped to examine how his hand trembled when his geodite's spotlight eyes fixed on it. "That or it's because I've only had a handful of cereal for the past two days."

Ford stared at him. "You what? Why?"

Bill shrugged. "Body wouldn't let me get more down. Wasn't my idea."

"Well, for goodness's sake, eat something now."

Bill took off his backpack, pulled out a cereal box, and opened it. He grimaced. He poured out a puddle of sugary lake water and dissolved cereal.

Of course. "Here." Ford pulled a tube of astronaut meat out of his backpack and offered it over. "It's not the most nutritionally complete meal supplement, but it's something. It'll have protein."

Bill took the tube with a grimace, but squeezed out a dollop of meat paste and licked it; and then he gagged so hard he doubled over. He clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from retching and offered the tube back. "Mmmf." The geodite hopped out of his lap in alarm and retreated to the group of hangers-on traveling with them.

The meat paste wasn't great, but that was a disproportionate reaction out of the alien who liked to mix chocolate sauce and mustard. This was a bigger problem than Ford had anticipated. "Keep it. If you can get down even a tiny bit every few minutes, that's better than nothing."

Bill nodded jerkily.

"I think it's better if we reach Dipper and get out of here as soon as possible."

Bill nodded more enthusiastically.

What would they do if Bill couldn't make it the whole way? Would Ford have to leave him in the cave and come back for him later? Ford hadn't tied the infinity belt's cable to Bill like he'd meant to, he just realized. It seemed unnecessarily cruel to try now; but it might be useful if he did have to leave Bill behind. He didn't know that they had any better option, he couldn't carry Bill all the way up and down. Especially since Bill had let go of his geodite, and Ford suspected the rest might abandon them if he put down his own...

They'd have to figure that out if it came to it. For now, they kept walking—Ford glancing back regularly to check on Bill, and Bill pretending he didn't notice.

####

After another half hour and another two increasingly frequent breaks, Ford saw a faint light in the tunnels ahead—yellow-white, not like the geodites' natural blues and purples. "Bill, is that...?"

"Hm?" Bill looked in the direction Ford was pointing. His right eye twitched, and then he had to squeeze his eyes shut in pain. "Yep. Boy child at 12 o'clock."

Ford called out, "Dipper?"

"Great Uncle Ford!" Dipper's voice echoed through the caves. There was a sound of clattering rocks as Dipper scrabbled down the tunnel to join them. The geodites scattered in fear, peering out from behind stalagmites as Dipper's flashlight swept over the scene. "Grunkle Ford! Are you okay?"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. Are you—?"

Dipper collided with Ford to hug him. (Ford held his geodite out to the side so he could return a one-armed hug.) "I'm so sorry I saw you go over the cliff but I couldn't do anything I was in the mindscape the whole time something sucked my soul out of my body—"

"Not it, I'm innocent," Bill said unnecessarily, "nobody look at me." He'd taken advantage of the break to immediately sit on the ground. His abandoned geodite crept back over to check on him.

"—and—and wow, that was the Axolotl you were talking about, right?" Dipper let go of Ford to gesture like a fisherman demonstrating the size of an enormous catch, "It was huge, it had to be—I don't know, as long as the county? The whole state? How did it get so big? Is the Axolotl an alien or some kind of mutant Earth axolotl? Are all axolotls aliens—?"

"Now, hold on," Ford said, putting a hand on Dipper's shoulder, "what huge axolotl? What are you talking about?"

"You didn't see it?" Dipper paused, looked Ford up and down, and said, "What are you wearing?"

Ford grimaced, tugged his bandanna up a little higher, and turned his geodite away when it tried to aim its spotlight eyes at his neck to see what he was doing. "We had to borrow some dry clothes."

"He couldn't see the Axolotl," Bill said. "You shouldn't have, either."

"Sor-ry. Getting sucked out of my body wasn't my idea—"

"Hold on," Ford said again. "What do you mean, sucked out of your body?"

As they headed back down toward the waterfall, Dipper and Ford exchanged their versions of events. It didn't take long for them to realize Bill had saved both their lives with a swift efficiency that, had it been applied to any less altruistic a task, could have been called "ruthless." They didn't say anything, but neither one could stop from glancing back toward Bill.

"What?" he snapped, clinging to his geodite a little tighter like he thought they were planning to take it. "I don't owe you an explanation. You're not dead! Be grateful. Stop looking at me."

They stopped looking at him. Bill should be gloating about them owing him their lives. He should be convincing them they had to pay back their debt. Silence alone would have been worrying; but bristling like he wanted them to forget what he'd done was baffling.

As Dipper finished explaining his version of events, he said, "I think I remember meeting the Axolotl before—like you said." He directed this last comment back over his shoulder toward Bill.

Bill—whose entire attention had been focused for the last ten minutes on walking without collapsing, tripping, or dropping his geodite—simply muttered, "My condolences."

"Wait," Ford said, "You've... met a giant invisible axolotl before?"

"Mabel and I both did."

"When?"

Dipper opened his mouth, paused, and glanced back again at Bill for help.

It took a few seconds for Bill to register the question. "Oh—they've never met before. Not in this reality."

Exasperated, Dipper asked, "Then why do I remember it?"

"I told you—echoes," Bill said. When Dipper continued giving him an expectant look, Bill sighed deeply and said, "This is an embarrassing oversimplification, but you're at least familiar with the concept of branching timelines, right?"

"Of course I am. Every time you make a decision, the timeline splits into two paths���"

"Cute that you think it caps out at two," Bill said. "And a decision doesn't always split the timeline, sometimes the branches collapse back together depending on the gravity of the decision you made. I don't literally mean a decision 'you' made—you've never made a decision that important—but sure, you've got the basic idea."

"Fine," Dipper snapped. "So I met it on another branch, right? When?"

"Never," Bill said.

"Okay. Yes. But there is a branch where... some version of me met it. Right?"

"It depends on how you define 'is.'"

Dipper puffed out his cheeks with the effort of restraining a yell. He looked at Ford for either help or sympathy.

Ford winked surreptitiously at Dipper and said, "It's probably some complicated chronological issue. I doubt Bill can explain it in a way humans can understand." Under his breath, he loudly muttered, "Some 'teacher.'"

Bill straight-armed Ford aside to walk beside Dipper. "You humans have no sense of humor," he said. "I said you met him never because it's literally true. You had an accident that landed you in a time and space outside time and space—the meeting happened never and nowhere. It's where he prefers to take visitors. That timeline terminated after your meeting—and I don't mean you died, I mean he terminated that entire timeline."

"Really?" Dipper shivered. "With... With everyone in it? Why did he do that? Did something dangerous happen in that timeline, or was it unstable, or...?"

"That's how he usually ends casual meet-and-greets," Bill said. "Higher dimensional beings. He sees your reality from a perspective unimaginable to you. Remember when I told you you're just a movie projecting on a wall to him; he's got no problem with pulling the film out of the reel to inspect a few frames and then turning the entire projector off when he's done. What does he care if that's somebody's entire reality?" He paused to think that over. "Maybe the projector metaphor's getting strained. Imagine flipping through a book with all the pages out of order, and meeting him is like somehow flipping to a page outside the book... No, that's a little too contrived. I'll stick with the projector."

"When did we... when would we have met him?" Dipper asked. "And—when I say 'when' I mean—you know what I mean."

"You mean, when would you have made the decisions that could have led to you meeting him? Depending on your perspective, either last August or 207̃05. Time travel was involved."

"Last August..." Dipper thought back. "Was that when we were—?"

"Treasure hunting, yeah. By the by, I never asked—" Bill gestured vaguely around them at everything in general, "—which dimension did I end up in? Is this the one where you went hunting in the 1400s or 1800s?"

"Uh—1800s."

"Hm. Knew this wasn't a 207̃05 treasure hunt timeline, Questiony doesn't have a pet enslaved time pirate."

"A what?"

"So you never had a chance of meeting the Axolotl anyway," Bill said. "Hey, fun fact! Did you know there's a time pocket where twelve million alternate versions of you, your sister, and the puppet with the goggles failed at your quest and plummeted out of time? I wonder how long the last of them survived! I meant to check in after Weirdmageddon. Human flesh isn't that nutritious and doesn't have much water, but with millions of bodies and a little determination— Hey, wanna know how long you all were there before you started resorting to cannibalism—?"

"No," Ford said before Dipper had to. "And I'll thank you not to get off topic to try to give my gnephew more nightmares."

Bill shot him a sideways glance. "Remind me to tell you about the time pocket formed by all the timelines where you and Specs did your first portal test without checking your math."

"So if I wasn't even supposed to meet him—how did I see him today?" Dipper asked. "Did he pull me out of my body into the mindscape so we could talk, or...? But he didn't even tell me anything, was he just trying to get me to remember meeting him in the terminated timeline—?"

"He wasn't trying to do anything," Bill said. "He wasn't here for you, he didn't care. Shadow on the wall."

"Then what was he here for? You?"

It took Bill too long to answer. He just shrugged vaguely. "Probably not."

"Huh." Instead of questioning Bill, Dipper briefly turned introspective himself, gaze far away and thoughtful. "I think I remember a little more about meeting the Axolotl now. The first time, I mean."

"Oh, do you?" Bill asked. "Ha! Poor kid."

"Mabel and I were in some kind of rocket car?" Dipper's brows furrowed in concentration. "And the Axolotl had a... bean bag chair?"

Bill scoffed. "He still has that old thing?! Wow."

"It was really comfortable."

"It's also really tacky."

"You talked about him like he was some kind of... of big... eldritch cosmic horror thing," Dipper said. "What kind of a cosmic horror has bean bag chairs?"

"What, do you think being a vast multidimensional amphibious monstrosity with an incomprehensible mind and a body that can only been seen in lower dimensions as grotesque shapeshifting cross-sections protects you from having bad taste? He'll flay your sanity straight out of your gray matter—and you won't even have the comfort of knowing your mind-shredder had nice interior decor sensibilities!"

"I can sympathize with the experience," Ford muttered. "I was driven to the brink of paranoid madness by a nightmare demon who thinks Doric columns go with checkerboard flooring."

Bill let out a shrill "Ha!" and smacked Ford's shoulder.

"But he remembered me when we met," Dipper went on. "He told me to say hi to Mabel. And—the last time we met, we—talked. I don't remember it all yet, but... you were wrong about him. There was nothing insanity-inducing about him. He was just... nice."

"You don't think the madness sets in all at once, do you?" Bill turned back to Dipper, with an air of what Ford uncomfortably felt like was ill intent. "Go on then—what did you talk about? You can't remember it, can you? Why not? Just a harmless little conversation, right?"

Dipper frowned in thought. "There was something important, but—I can't remember what it was. What was it?" He muttered, "I know it was something important—"

"And there we go!" Bill gestured at Dipper with a flourish, triumphant. "Now you're digging for the significance of the whole thing. You're trying to comprehend the motives of something that has a state of existence your mind wasn't built to understand! You'll either go mad trying to understand his motives—or you'll go mad because you do understand. You're doomed now, kid—this is gonna haunt you for the rest of your days." He laughed. "Try to stop thinking about it now while you're ahead!"

"I'm not going insane," Dipper said. "Just shut up, I'm trying to remember."

"'I'm not obsessed, I swear! I can stop thinking about it any time I want!' Sure."

"Shut up," Dipper repeated. "It had to have been something important! Otherwise why would he dragged me out of my body and—and shown me the fourth dimension just so I could meet him?"

"Don't sound so self-important! You never saw the fourth dimension; if you had, you wouldn't think he looks like an axolotl. He visited this dimension's mindscape," Bill said. "And he didn't even mean to drag you into the mindscape! It was just a side-effect of his gravitational pull. He tugged you toward him just like everything else in town; but Earth'sgravity doesn't extend through planes like the mindscape, and his does. Yanked your spirit right out of your body."

"Then why was I the only one?" Dipper demanded. "Why didn't you or Grunkle Ford leave your bodies?"

"Your spirit's more loosely attached to your body than ours."

"Why?!"

For a moment, Bill's face twisted with displeasure; and then he sighed in resignation. "Ah, heck with it. You've been astral projecting."

Dipper's mouth worked uselessly. He croaked, "What?"

"It's when you—"

"I know what it is! I mean—what? How? When?"

"At least as long as I've been here. How long have you been having those out-of-body dreams?"

"Y—!" Dipper socked Bill's arm. Bill didn't even flinch. "You said those were nightmares!"

"And I lied," Bill said tiredly.

"Why?!"

"Thought you'd be annoying about it."

"I've been dealing with this all year, you—!" Dipper groaned in aggravation. "Why am I astral projecting! I wasn't trying to learn or anything!"

"How should I know, I wasn't around. Best guess, I think I ripped up the Velcro sticking your soul to your body when I yanked you out to puppet it," Bill said. "Oops."

Dipper gaped at him in outrage. "'Oops'?! That's all you can— I've been terrified and I thought it was a nightmare and it was real all along and it was all your fault and you won't even—"

"I knew you'd be annoying."

"I'm annoying?! How would you like it if you'd spent a year getting dragged out of your body in your sleep—!"

Bill abruptly stopped walking, turned toward Dipper, and said with an intensity that startled Dipper into silence, "You don't have the slightest idea how much I'd like it. How would you like it if you'd been trying for weeks t—" Bill cut himself off before he could get more heated; and instead, only said, "If you. Wanted to get out of your body. And couldn't. And some brat down the hall is doing it without even trying."

Dipper remained frozen, jaw locked tight in a grimace, until Bill turned away and trudged on. Dipper snapped, "But I don't want to do it. And it's your fault I am."

"Great. Nobody's satisfied." Bill sighed. "Make the most of it. Watch late night TV. Learn to meditate or something, I don't care. You've got nothing to worry about, it's harmless." He paused. "As long as nothing else crawls in your body while you're outside of it."

"WHAT?!"

"It's fine. Nothing'll get you in the shack through the unicorn hair barri... hm. Well—you're safe in the shack."

"But I have to go home at the end of summer! Will something be able to get me then?!"

Bill shrugged. "Hypothetically."

"Am I gonna die?!"

"Given my understanding of human mortality? Sure, sooner or later. Wanna hear your top five most likely causes of death?"

"No! Is it possible to—to stop? Can I control the astral projecting?"

"Yeah, sure, I guess. Ask me next time you're out of your body. I'll show you"

"Can't you show me n—"

"No. Not while you're in your body."

Dipper scowled. "Fine! Next time I'm projecting, I'm kicking you awake until you help me." He turned away from Bill; and, after a moment of fuming, mumbled to himself, "If I've been astral projecting... then that time I visited the neighbors... oh, man..." He trailed off, getting lost in his own thoughts.

Keeping silent during that discussion had been agony for Ford.

Every few seconds, he'd wanted to butt in either to eagerly ask for more information about the Axolotl or astral projection, or—far more often—to express his rage on Dipper's behalf, that Bill (of course!) had put him through this, and then not even had the decency (of course!) to try to rectify it.

But it was Dipper's conversation. It was about Dipper's problem, and anyway Dipper had been trying so long to pry some sort of useful information out of Bill—it would be cruel of Ford to snatch the conversation away from him when he was finally getting somewhere. He'd have a lot to discuss with Dipper once they were home and could get away from Bill.

But staying outside the conversation had let him observe three points he might have otherwise missed.

One: Bill really wasn't himself. Back when he'd been playing as Ford's muse, whenever he got to answer questions, he'd always done it with an air of theatricality and barely-suppressed glee; and after he'd given up that act, he'd answered questions with smug arrogance, the glee turned to sadistic delight at the bad news he could deliver. Now, he simply answered them. Even his attempts to be condescending gradually got less enthusiastic until they petered out completely.

Two: Bill was answering questions he never would have answered that morning. After telling them as little as he could about the thing coming to Gravity Falls, even trying to avoid admitting it was the Axolotl, now he was freely talking about the Axolotl's taste in furniture as though he knew the beast personally. After hiding that Dipper was astral projecting for over a month, he simply told him. Heck with it. He'd admitted it was probably his fault. He'd said the last two words Ford had ever thought he'd hear come out of Bill's mouth: I lied.

Three: this was the longest Bill had walked without needing a break all day. His voice was stronger. His steps were more steady. Ford had even seen him squeeze out a few dollops of astronaut paste between comments—and he struggled to make himself swallow, but he didn't gag.

And now that Dipper had stopped asking him about the Axolotl and about astral projection, Bill's footing was growing less certain again. He wove unsteadily on the path and had to pause to lean a hand on a stalactite, taking deep breaths. "Gimme a second."

Bill was distracting himself. He was keeping himself going through conversation, the simple ritual of receiving and answering questions. Ford understood: sometimes, in desperate circumstances, you had to burn yourself out to get somewhere safe enough to collapse and recover. When you had no choice but to push yourself, the best thing you could do was think about anything but your exhausted, failing body. It made it easier to keep moving and burn through what energy you had left.

Ford had once wondered if his "muse" was some manner of creature that was compelled to answer the questions his protégés asked him. This was perhaps the closest Bill had ever gotten to actually being such an entity: answering questions because he had to to go on, and willing to give away almost anything as long as it kept him moving.

Ford stopped next to Bill. "So. The Axolotl was the source of your 'gravitational eclipse,' I suppose."

"Astute observation," Bill said flatly.

"I take it that it isn't 'eclipsing' gravity so much as canceling it out. The Axolotl must have a mass similar to Earth's, if the force it exerts flying by above us is nearly identical to the force of Earth below us."

"More or less."

"But according to Dipper's observations, this Axolotl is only the size of Oregon at most. Did he underestimate its size? Or perhaps it's incredibly dense...?"

Bill gave Ford a sharp sideways glance. Were this any other conversation on any other day, this would be when the gloating started. Well, well, well, look who finally believes I was telling the truth, finally crawling back to me to give you all the answers you can't find yourself— But Bill only looked away again, pushed himself back upright, and kept walking. "You're the square looking at the sphere and thinking it's a circle," Bill said. "The majority of the Axolotl's mass is in dimensions you can't see. The little bit of him that's visible in the mindscape is just a... a feeler. Or an anglerfish's lure. The rest of him is close enough to exert a gravitational pull—but not in a dimension you can see."

"Which dimensions does he exist in?"

"I can't tell you because your species knows so little about them that the answer wouldn't mean anything. You haven't even decided whether or not you want to officially call the dimension that time shines from the 'fourth' dimension—I could tell you he comes from the seventeenth dimension and it wouldn't mean anything but an impressively high number to you."

Dubiously, Ford asked, "Does he come from the seventeenth?"

Bill waved a hand vaguely. "Heck if I know. The most I've ever seen at once is nine, and I was on a lot of psychedelics at the time. My eyeball popped."

"Eugh." 

"Worth it, though. If you ever wanna feel cosmically insignificant in the most breathtakingly beautiful way possible, and you don't mind going blind, let me know. I think I can remember most of what I was on."

"Pass," Ford said. "If the Axolotl is so enormous, then why was only Gravity Falls affected by its gravity? At a minimum, shouldn't have the rest of the Pacific Northwest been impacted—if not the whole planet?"

"He wasn't near the rest of the Pacific Northwest. In the third dimension, Gravity Falls is obviously connected to Oregon; but in higher dimensions, it's..." He tried unsuccessfully to pantomime something mountainlike. "Imagine if the second dimension were a flat sheet of stretchy fabric. If somebody plucked the fabric up in the middle and made a peak, a creature living on the surface of the fabric would still be able to travel across its slope like it was flat, right?"

Ford tried to visualize Bill's description. "Right."

"And so if a fly flew past the peak of the fabric, it'd cross near whatever town's at that peak without getting near the towns at the bottom of the slope."

"Rrright."

"That's what Gravity Falls looks like from the fourth dimension," Bill said. "In the third dimension you can't see anything, but to fourth dimensional beings it sticks out of the fabric of spacetime like a thousand mile high pillar in the middle of a desert. That's why Time Baby put his capitol here."

Now, Ford wasn't sure that sounded right, but he didn't know enough about the seventeenth-or-whatever dimension to dispute it. "And why you kept trying to punch through to our dimension from here?" he guessed. "I imagine stretching the fabric of spacetime that far might make it easier to tear."

Bill shot him a sour look, but didn't deny it.

"Why did the gravity go down slowly for two days and then come back all at once? Did the Axolotl just leave faster than it came?"

"You know how the Doppler effect works?"

Ford hesitated. "Yes. Obviously."

"Well, in higher dimensions, gravity works like a reverse Doppler effect. It spreads out in front of a moving object—"

"Oh, come on."

"—and compresses behind the object—"

"Now you're just making up scientific-sounding nonsense because you know I can't disprove it."

"I'm not, and as soon as you get me a pen and paper I can prove it." Loftily, Bill said, "There's a simple equation that can explain higher dimensional gravity."

Ford was pretty sure he was being made fun of. He didn't mean to laugh, but he did. Dipper looked at him like he'd lost his mind; but trying to explain what was so funny would probably just make him look more insane.

Bill looked nearly as surprised.

####

"... And the smaller axolotls, what are they—heralds, worshipers? Children?"

Bill scoffed in disgust, "I don't know, I've never asked him. I see them like the flies orbiting a cow's tail. They migrate with him, that's all I know."

"Then the Axolotl really was just 'migrating'?"

"Well. Migrating in the sense that a mayfly watching a human walk back and forth to the office thinks it must be 'migrating.' He has..." Bill gestured vaguely, "duties, that mandate he travel fixed routes through the multiverse. He just happens to have a years-long workday. His commute doesn't usually take him past 46'\."

"'Duties' as in... divine duties?"

"It depends on if you worship him for doing them. I don't."

The cavern was growing light again, and the distant waterfall was audible. Ford quietly sighed in relief. Even as oddly forthcoming as Bill had been, Ford doubted that even two-thirds of the information he'd shared was true. But it was hard to tell. It had always been hard to tell.

Dipper helped Ford deflate the raft and pack it up. As he did, he said, voice low, "Is it just me, or is Bill kinda...?"

Ford cast a sideways glance across the cavern. Bill was crouched in front of the geodite he'd carried all up and down the tunnel, backpack in his lap, pouring a pile of soggy cereal onto the ground for the geodite to eat. Ford was surprised he'd gotten so attached to the creature. "I think he's been in some state of mental shock since the fall in the lake," Ford said. "And it seems he hasn't been able to keep down a full meal since we left yesterday. I suspect he's barely on his feet. The sooner we can get him back to the shack, the better."

"Oh." Dipper frowned toward Bill. (He was now pouring cold medicine on the cereal. Ford would have to ask him about geodite diets.)

"What are you thinking?"

Dipper shook his head. "I just thought... He seems like he's thinking about something. And he's giving so much away... I don't know. I wanted him to talk, but now it makes me wonder if he's scheming something."

From what Ford had seen, at the moment he doubted Bill could so much as scheme a way to ruin a picnic. But now he was second-guessing his perception. Ford knew Bill better than anyone; but that also meant Bill knew how to manipulate Ford better than anyone. What was Dipper seeing that he didn't? "Really? Do you think so?"

Dipper hesitated. "I—thought so? Maybe not." (Well, now they were both second-guessing themselves.) "I just don't know why he'd tell us so much if he isn't up to something. It feels like a distraction."

"Ah." Ford nodded. "I think the distraction is for himself."

"Mm." (Ford wasn't sure if Dipper had heard him.) "I just feel like there's—something. I can feel it in the back of my head." He stared at Bill a moment longer; then shook his head and turned away. "Maybe it's not him, maybe it's the Axolotl. He said something I can't remember. Something about degrees."

"Degrees?"

But Dipper didn't reply. He'd returned to his work, lost in his own head, mumbling under his breath the way he did whenever he was trying to work something out. Something else for Ford to ask about later.

When they got in Tate's loaned motorboat to head back out, Dipper got a look at the rainbow trout slippers Bill had put back on, and let out a choked laugh of surprise; and then that was the last sound any of them made as they crossed the lake. Ford steered, Dipper remained lost in his own thoughts, and Bill stared at his friendship bracelet, thumb running around the glass evil eyes.

####

(Finally a few mysteries solved! I hope y'all enjoyed, and I look forward to hearing what you think. Next week is another emotionally wrenching chapter!!)

[thisapplepielife]

Written for @corrodedcoffinfest and @stobinmonth.

Lake Michigan, 1987

CCF Spring Break Prompt: Ocean & Stobin Month Prompt: Holiday | Word Count: 1000 | Rating: T | POV: Multiple | Pairing: Platonic Stobin, Pre-Steddie | CW: None | Tags: Post S4, Everybody Lives, Steve's on a Mission to Crash Corroded Coffin's Spring Break Getaway to the Beach, Robin's Along For The Ride

Robin

Robin squirms in her seat. They've been in this car for hours, and she's sweating, legs sticking to the leather. She lifts one thigh, then the other and feels them release, but also hears the little thwap it makes. It's so gross. 

She thought they were supposed to be there by now. 

"How much further?"

"Not sure," Steve says, "look at that map again."

Robin doesn't want to look at the map again. She's not interested in playing navigator. 

"Ugh. This is taking forever."

"Stop complaining, we're going to the ocean!" Steve declares, banging his fist against the steering wheel.

Robin rolls her eyes.

"Lake Michigan isn't the ocean. It's a lake. It's in the name, even."

"Same thing."

"Really not," she says, but lets it go, "How late are we? Because I'm starving and they better have food left. Good food. But I'm not optimistic."

Steve doesn't say anything. 

"Hello? Earth to Steve? Dingus, are you listening to me?"

"I'm listening."

"We're not lost, are we? What time were we supposed to be there?"

"Uh. When we get there, I guess."

"That's not an answer. Do you even know where we're going to meet them? What's the plan? You've been awfully secretive about this adventure."

Steve mumbles something under his breath.

"What?" she asks, twisting the stereo knob all the way down.

"Theydon'tknowwe'recoming," he says in a hushed rush.

Robin flops around in her seat, turning to face him fully, "Steven. Harrington. What do you mean they don't know we're coming?" 

"Surprise!" he says weakly.

Then, after a beat.

"Yeah, we might be lost."

"Steve!"

"Kidding, just don't let me miss the sign for 94 East."

She throws her hands up in the air, exasperated. 

Steve

He didn't know there were this many beaches on Lake Michigan. 

They've checked like a dozen spots, and so far, no Corroded Coffin. No Eddie. He knows they are staying in Indiana.

Well, he thinks that's right. Maybe they changed their minds? Maybe he misunderstood? It wouldn't be the first time.

"I didn't know there were this many beaches," he admits, as they're standing next to his car at a gas station. Robin's continued cooperation paid for with a big bag of snacks. 

"It's literally called the third coast, dingus! Seriously. You thought we'd just pull up to the entirety of Lake Michigan, and what, stumble across Eddie Munson and his band of bozos?! You can't be serious."

That's exactly what he thought. He is a dingus.

"So, we're stalking Eddie Munson?! That's where we are in life now?"

"Stalking is a little exaggerated," he argues. He's been dancing around this thing with Eddie for months.

"Were we invited?"

"No," he admits and she's shaking her head, unimpressed.

This was a dumb idea. 

Eddie

He hears his name being shouted, very clearly. Twice. Which is odd, because everybody he's with is still in the van. He can hear Gareth and Goodie bickering in the back, and Jeff's nose is in a book in the passenger seat. Plus, that was definitely a woman. And women, in general, aren't in the habit of screaming his name.

So, he's hearing things.

Great. This better not be a Vecna thing. 

He swallows. He was trying to get away from Hawkins.

"Psst. Ed. Eddie. Edward," Gareth hisses, and all Eddie can see is his mouth at the bottom of the pop-out window on the back of the van. Ridiculous. 

"What?" Eddie asks, clicking off the gas nozzle in the van. He can't leave it unattended. They have a very strict budget. But he takes a step closer to see what Gareth needs. He clearly crawled over the backseat for a reason.

"Your boyfriend is here," the mouth says.

"Huh? I don't have a—"

Gareth taps on the glass, cutting his thought short, "Steve Harrington. And Robin. Nine o'clock."

Eddie slowly turns his head, and sure enough, Steve and Robin are in the middle of a hand-flailing argument next to Steve's car. He just couldn't see them before, the dispenser was in the way.

So, he did hear his name. 

He turns towards them, and watches. Then, Robin makes accidental eye-contact with him, and he waves. 

She nudges Steve's shoulder, and Steve turns around. And the grin that crosses his face is transcendent.

"Told you, Rob!" Steve declares with gusto, and then he's loping over, grabbing Eddie, hugging him.

"Uh, hi," Eddie says, nose smushed into Steve's neck. Which is definitely fine. For sure.

The side door of the van swings open, and they separate.

Goodie looks them all up and down, and then just says, "No."

Eddie laughs. He's not saying no to whatever this is, "What are you doing here?"

"Stalking you, apparently," Robin says, and Gareth's disembodied mouth laughs as Steve stomps on her foot.

"Ow!" she shouts. Steve ignores her.

"We're not stalking. We were bored, and like, I remembered you said you were doing this for spring break, and I thought, why not? Sounds fun," Steve rambles, and Eddie is very charmed. 

What was Steve's plan? Wander the 1,000 plus miles of coast?

It doesn't matter. If he drove three hours to chase him down, Eddie's not gonna let him slip through his fingers.

"We're camping in the dunes, if you wanna?" Eddie offers.

Steve's nodding while Robin's shaking her head no. Eddie takes Steve's answer, because he likes it better.

Was Steve Harrington chasing him? Is that what this is? That's crazy talk. But…

"Definitely," Steve says, pushing his hair up off his forehead with his hand. "Yeah. Definitely. We'd love to. I'd love to."

He seems nervous.

Holy shit. 

Eddie knows that move. He went to high school with that move. 

Steve Harrington is flirting with him. 

And Robin is disgusted by it.

Eddie smiles, "Let me finish filling up and you two can follow."

"Cool," Steve says, "that's cool."

Eddie steps back, and squeezes Robin's shoulder. He likes Buckley. She'll get over it, and he'll definitely owe her for wing-manning.

If you want to write your own, or see more entries, check out @corrodedcoffinfest to read takes on Spring Break prompts, or to offer up your own!

For more Stobin, pop on over to @stobinmonth to follow along with the fun!

[wordsarelife]

—twenty-two

pairing: theo nott x fem!reader

summary: you try to make theo a swiftie and succeed

warnings: none

note: kinda modern au, considering reader has a phone and a working internet connection (technology works at hogwarts in this fic)

you’d always known theo was a tough nut to crack, but you were determined. if there was one mission you were set on, it was getting him to appreciate the artistry of taylor swift. he could roll his eyes all he wanted, but you weren’t giving up. not when there was so much he was missing out on.

it started with small things—playing folklore in the common room when you knew he was studying nearby, leaving your taylor swift playlist on shuffle when he happened to be sitting with you in the library. he never said anything, just raised a brow or gave you a look, but you could tell. the seed had been planted.

you started to go a bit deeper, always choosing the right song or album for theo's mood at the moment.

you would play lover or red when you were getting ready and theo was watching you sort through clothes or put on makeup with a content smile on his face.

you played folklore or evermore during quiet nights in the common room, with thick socks and fluffy blankets in front of the warm glow of the fireplace.

he was not ready to admit it yet, but you could see that theo didn't mind as much as he used to. he never actually said something, about liking her music, but he had stopped frowning when you took out your phone and opened your music app.

one time, in the middle of studying, you even saw him bop his head along to 'you belong with me', which quickly turned out to be his favorite, because his mood would rise anytime you played it.

"aren't you putting on any music?" theo asked one day while on a walk through the hogwarts grounds.

"well, do you want me to?" you retorted, a winning smile on your face.

he shrugged. "i don't care. just thought it was odd"

you didn't miss the slight smile once you had pressed play on speak now or how he took your hand in yours, connecting them to the enchanting melody of mine.

the following night both of you stayed up longer, per theo's demand, so you could explain to him the lore of taylor swift and kanye west.

theo was pretty laid back and usually not interested in any drama, but he was kind of intrigued as long as no one he closely knew was involved.

you recounted everything that had happened between your favorite singer and kim kardashians husband. theo nodded along understandingly, throwing in his own questions at the appropriate times.

"i didn't know that there was so much backstory"

"crazy, right?" you asked, wide-eyed. "but if that hadn't happened we wouldn't have reputation now"

"what?"

"it's another album" you shrugged "it's called reputation"

"did we ever listen to that one?" he asked, recounting all the times you had shown him some of her stuff, while you had always made sure to mention what album the song you were listening to was on.

"no" you shook your head.

"why? you clearly like it"

"it's one of my favourites" you nodded, deep in thought "i never showed you because i didn't want to listen it as long as it wasn't a taylor's version yet"

"a what?"

his question resulted in twenty more minutes of backstory. theo's eyes widened as you explained the lore of the rerecordings to him.

"i guess i could show you the album through youtube" you muttered, taking out your phone "fan accounts that made lyric videos should be alright to watch"

theo and you spent the better time of the rest of the night watching fan-made videos for the songs on reputation. you could tell that he was obsessed immediately, going as far as taking out his phone and screenrecording the songs he liked most.

"they are amazing" he gushed as he recorded so it goes, which seemed to be his favorite off the album.

"told you" you shrugged, a soft smile on your lips as you watched his amazement grow. "it's not embarassing to admit that i was right"

"should've listened to you, baby" he muttered, pressing his face into the pillow next to him. you moved a hand through his hair. "i like it"

"i know" you kissed his temple. you put your phone on the nightstand after searching for a playlist of calm taylor songs to fall asleep to. "now we can enjoy her together"

theo pulled you into his arms, his voice humming along to the tunes of last kiss, as both of you slowly fell asleep.

after that night, theo added a few taylor swift songs to his regular playlists (he had different ones for different moods) and made a habit to learn the lyrics to his favorites.

one time, when him and blaise were out for a smoke, theo put on one of the playlists (smoke and relax) and the shuffle promptly landed on delicate.

blaise quickly noticed who was singing, considering your simple overuse of her music during study time with your friends, making fun of theo almost immediately.

"taylor swift, really?" he puffed out the smoke through his mouth, quirking a brow at theo.

theo simply shrugged. "y/n loves her"

"you don't have to like everything your girlfriend does, you know man?" blaise muttered "you're allowed to have your own interests, taylor swift shouldn't be one of them"

"yeah? why not?"

"huh?" blaise had been a bit surprised by theo's quick and simple answer. "you're not a girl, mate"

"thank you, i'm aware"

theo's sarcasm clearly annoyed blaise, as he threw his cigarette onto the ground, stomping it out in the snow, before he turned to head inside. "don't let it change you, man" he smirked. "you're not a swiftie or whatever they're called"

"i might as well be" theo shrugged, not even bothered at this point.

"you're doing weird shit to get laid"

"yeah, maybe if you would put in the same effort you would get laid too, ever considered that?" theo smirked, clearly amused by the shocked expression that crossed blaise's face.

"so, uh..which album would you recommend?"

[penkura]

last forever [13/13]

Summary: Zoro only offered to marry you to keep you out of an arranged marriage with a man much older than you. You agreed without realizing how happy you would both become and the family you would create together.

Pairing: Zoro x Fem!reader, mentioned Sanami

Warnings: Mentions of pregnancy and having a baby, that's all

Note: I didn't initially plan this. I was going to stop this fic at twelve chapters, but I felt like ch.12 was getting to be way too long so I broke it up and put the epilogue at the end of thsi one. Do not be surprised if I ever come back to this fanfic universe for one-shots or drabbles. This is shorter than I expected, but I'm happy with how it turned out, thanks for reading this fanfic, I hope you've all enjoyed it! :)

The latter bit is set ten years after chapter 12, Zoro is 31 and Reader is 30.

Taglist:

@misfits1a | @alucardsdaddyissues | @louweasleymalfoy | @fluffybunnyu | @yerrimm09 | @eyes-ofhell | @emmaiscool22 | @xenop0p | @hank88999

[Ch. 1] ● [Ch. 2] ● [Ch. 3] ● [Ch. 4] ● [Ch. 5] ● [Ch. 6] ● [Ch. 7] ● [Ch. 8] ● [Ch. 9] ● [Ch. 10] ● [Ch. 11] ● [Ch. 12]

Your morning is quiet, despite Nami and Robin sharing knowing looks when you and Zoro entered the galley together for breakfast. Nami swears you're glowing and it grosses her out for a moment when she makes the suggestion to Robin who laughs, and says the three of you will need to have a girls night later to talk. No one asked where two had disappeared to the night before, it seemed like none of them had noticed, which you were grateful for. It kept you and Zoro from having to answer any awkward questions for the time being.

Zoro didn't notice or care, if someone had asked he would've told them, but still keep you from feeling embarrassed or anything, this is all still new to both of you of course. Breakfast goes by without anyone bringing anything up, even as Sanji gives you a smile that you return, discreetly showing him your ring and confirming that he was right, everything turned out okay so far.

Most of your day is spent doing the normal things you’ve always done, the Sunny is docked at an island for a restock, you choose to go into town with Robin and Jinbei, Zoro tried to go along but Nami pulls him back, telling you to go ahead while she takes your husband for help with other things. You don’t question it only because that’s completely normal, you don’t even question Robin in town when she tries to convince you to buy a pretty white dress you seem to be staring at. You try it on but don’t buy it, there’s no reason to.

“Are you sure, [Y/N]? It’d look lovely on you, I’m sure Zoro would think so too.”

“Nah, I don’t need it,” you laugh a bit as you go to look at something else that’s caught your eye, “Zoro doesn’t care what I wear anyway.”

“Mm…if you say so.”

You swear there’s something Robin isn’t telling you, even as you both try of different clothes and buy a few items, deciding you’ll bring Nami by later too, there’s plenty here she’ll like.

You do find it odd when Jinbei tries to get you to purchase a flower crown or a small bouquet of your favorite flowers for yourself, denying again that you really don’t need them. You’re not sure if you were imagining it or not, but you think the two share a knowing look with slight smiles as you head back to Sunny a while later.

When you make it back and see almost none of your crewmates around, you start to get suspicious something else is going on, especially seeing the way the ship deck is decorated to almost resemble a wedding, though with its own Straw Hat character, and Zoro waiting for you.

Face red, in a suit (that fits this time), and a bouquet of your favorite flower surrounded by daisies, heliotrope, and aster.

It dons on you immediately what Jinbei and Robin were doing, they were trying to get you ready for an impromptu marriage ceremony, but you didn’t catch on until now, you feel kind of stupid. Of course the white dress and small bouquet make sense now, even though Zoro hasn’t said anything. He doesn’t even notice you’re there at first, not until you say his name and he finally looks at you.

“Hey…you’re back.”

“What,” You’re trying hard not to cry but you can’t fight the smile that’s starting to creep onto your face as Zoro hands the flowers over to you, still nervous about this and maybe embarrassed over it, “What’s this about…?”

He’s quite for a moment, while you look over the flowers, a bright and happy look on your face. You know he’s had help with this, it’s what he and Nami were probably out buying while the others set things up.

“When we got married, legally, it wasn’t really a wedding,” scratching the back of his head, Zoro sighs just a bit before taking your hand and getting on one knee in front of you, returning the smile you’re giving him, “I know I was a stubborn ass about this for a long time, but you already know my thoughts on this, on us now…so I want to give you as real a wedding as I can. One you deserve.”

You have to stop yourself from laughing when it takes Zoro a minute to dig through the pockets he’s not used to find an engagement ring, one you don’t need but you figure Nami made him buy it just so you had one, even with your wedding band already on your hand.

“We’ve already got rings, and this time real witnesses,” you both can hear Luffy not so quietly asking Sanji for food before he's hushed and told to wait, everyone watching from the various places they’re hiding in, “Luffy’s ready to say whatever he needs to for us to be considered married on this crew, but I still have to ask you. So…will you marry me, for real this time, [Y/N]?”

“Of course, Zoro!” It’s not even something you can pretend to think about, not after everything you’ve gone through now. You throw your arms around him and Zoro hugs you close, there’s obvious relief like he was worried you’d changed your mind overnight while he tells you he loves you.

“Heyyy, can we do the ceremony now and eat?!”

“You idiot, she’s got to get dressed first!”

“Sanji made a great cake, it’s really sweet!”

“We were all glad when you went into town with Robin and Jinbei, we probably wouldn’t have gotten this all done if you hadn’t!”

“This is super great for both of you!”

“Yohohoho, I’ll get ready to play the wedding march then!”

“Mosshead, you better treat her right!”

“It’s wonderful to see you both happy now!”

“I may not have the full details of your circumstances, but congratulations to you both!”

You barely listen to your crewmates, your main focus being on Zoro and how this was pulled off so quickly, but you don’t bother to ask any questions, kissing your husband briefly.

“I suppose I should go get ready!”

“Yeah,” Zoro gives you a slight smirk before kissing your forehead, “I’ll be here, wife.”

Robin and Nami rush you off to your shared room to get you dressed, Robin having been sneaky and showing she’d purchased the dress she told you to buy, along with a small bouquet of flowers for you to carry. It’s nothing fancy, but that works perfectly with your relationship and how you’ve come together with Zoro.

Once they’ve got you ready the two go back to the deck to make sure everything and everyone is situated, sending Sanji after you a bit later, he’s agreed to be the one to give you away essentially, though you stop him just ad you’re about to head to the deck, he gives you a concerned look.

“Sanji, do you…do you think Zoro and I will last forever?”

Sanji takes a breath, before smiling and taking your hand as he lets it out.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a couple more destined to last than you two. Besides, I don’t think the mosshead is willing to wear a suit for just anybody.”

You laugh and agree, telling Sanji you’re ready before he leads you out to the deck.

It’s not a very long or formal ceremony, Luffy stumbles a few times trying to remember what he needs to say, he even gets choked up a few times when he thinks about how he’s seen you and Zoro go from a marriage born of convenience to now being in love and properly married. It almost gets to you as well, but you keep all your tears back, just a few slipping g out when Luffy tells Zoro to hurry up and kiss you which makes you laugh. You know Zoro hates public displays of affection, but he’s willing to look past it for you, only you he’d justify. After that Luffy shouts for the party to start, you and Zoro laughing together just a bit while he holds you close.

“Thanks for not giving up on me, wife.”

“Hmm, thanks for saving me, husband.”

Chopper is right, the cake Sanji made is sweet, you’re surprised Zoro even has some, that he mostly stays away from alcohol except when you bring him a drink later on. It prompts him to pull you to his lap, pressing a kiss to your cheek to make you giggle.

“What’s this for?”

“Nothing,” he sighs a bit, holding you closer and laying his forehead on your shoulder, “Just glad you’re my wife is all.”

“Forever, right?”

“Forever. No matter what happens.”

Nami and Sanji watch you two from the side, giving each other looks that tell more than anything they know you’ll make it. They’ve both watched you ever since they each joined, seen how Zoro treats you and how much you’ve come to love each other. Even when Luffy comes over and drags you away from your real, permanent husband to dance with your captain, the same look Sanji swore to you he’s always seen on Zoro’s face. Soft and loving, he just watches you while you and Luffy giggle together.

When everyone starts to settle down, you’re surprised by Chisa returning to you after being gone since you arrived in Wano. She stops in front of you with two letters, one you know is from Elias and the other from your parents, finally. You’re not sure what to think, even when Zoro wraps his arms around you and sets his chin on your shoulder.

“Well?”

Pursing your lips, you shrug, before tearing up the letter still in the envelope causing Zoro roll tighten his hold on you. For a minute you don’t say anything, before you sigh and lean back against him with a smile.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t want care about what they have to say…I only care about you.”

“Hmm,” Zoro kisses tour cheek which makes you giggle before you do the same to him, “That’s my wife, I’m proud of you.”

“Love you, Zoro.”

“Yeah…I love you too.”

You two are going to last forever.

+!+

~10 years later~

You have a newborn baby girl to care for now, literally minutes old as she lays next to you and cries, unhappy about her new surroundings. It’s the middle of winter and the only people you’re allowing around her at the moment are the midwives of Shimotsuki Village that had come to help you deliver your baby in the middle of the day. Every one of them praises you for doing so well, but all you care about is your daughter and Zoro getting to see her, to meet her face to face. He’d been more anxious about it as you got closer to your due date, neither of you knowing if you’d have a boy or girl until the moment you gave birth, and now you have her!

She’s perfectly chubby, her little hands trying to grasp at the air while she wails and kicks her feet at the same time, even as you take hold of one of her hands. You want to laugh seeing her hair is just a slightly darker shade of green than Zoro’s, but smile instead as you calm her down.

“Shh, shh, baby girl, everything’s okay. I’m here, sweetheart. Your daddy’s on his way.”

It’s not even five minutes later you hear Nami yelling outside your door about how someone could miss this, while Sanji starts to swoon at her for being so protective of you but asking her to calm down, stress isn’t good for her or their own baby either. You hear Luffy laugh a bit himself, saying something you can’t understand before Usopp and Robin suggest they all leave you alone, as the door to your room opens and you’re so glad to see who’s finally there.

“Zoro~”

“I’m sorry I missed it, I was asking master something,” Zoro takes your hand you reached for him with, kissing your forehead before he sits beside you, looking at your baby with nothing but pride and love on his face, “We…we have a baby…”

“We have a daughter, Zoro.”

“She’s perfect. Just like her mama.”

Rolling your eyes, you just watch for a few minutes while Zoro takes in the fact you have a daughter to raise now. Honestly, you had been expecting to have a boy, and Zoro never told you what he thought you might have, he said it didn’t matter because it was your child, you made this baby together, he’d love them no matter what. But seeing him gently stroke her hair and let her hold onto his finger, you swear you’re falling in love with him all over again.

“Did you ask your master what we talked about?”

Zoro doesn’t hear you at first, he’s too focused on your daughter and watching her settle down, starting to sleep, before he realizes you spoke to him and asks you to repeat your question. When you do so, he nods, looking back to your daughter.

“Well?”

“He said nothing would make him happier…”

Nodding, you sigh in content when Zoro kisses your forehead again, before doing the same to your daughter.

“Welcome to the world, Kuina.”

You plan to give your daughter everything you never had and more, all the love in the world and no expectations to marry rich unless she decides to. Watching Zoro with her the rest of the day makes you realize this was all you ever wanted.

To love someone and be loved the same, and give that love to your own child forever.

[dubiousanon]

GAANARU FOR ME PLS DO U HAVE SNIPPETS ✋

SOMEBODY ASKEDDDD here is a chunk of a fic in my drafts in which Gaara is insanely in love with Naruto, and Naruto somehow decides it's in the best interests of their villages' alliance that they get married:

The thing is that Gaara didn't even know the meaning of love before him.

He thought he did up until now, the mark carved into his forehead and blood on his hands. But whatever he had before— it pales in comparison to the fire lit in his chest, the one that radiates heat through each of his limbs, straight down to the very tips of his fingers and toes. He's been set ablaze, and he hopes desperately that the flame never goes out.

Naruto breathes life into everything he touches, it seems. Gaara is no exception. He thinks that if he could choose to be anywhere in the whole entire world, it would be here every single time.

He's so stuck in his blissful daze that he hardly notices that Naruto has been rambling to him this entire time. And more than that, it seems it might concern issues he should probably pay attention to. Just a little bit.

"-and that's why I feel like the political marriage between Shikamaru and Temari is stupid. Shikamaru doesn't even like her! He'd be unhappy for like, life!" Naruto threw his hands up in the air. "If they really want a strong alliance, they should just have the two of us get married. Believe it!"

Gaara very nearly chokes. His brain doesn't fully compute, but some part of him must because he's answering before he can even think about it. Like some part of his hind brain sees the in for what it is and dives to take it.

"For the sake of the villages," Gaara says in a voice far calmer than the internal screaming going on within him is, "that sounds like it would be a far better choice."

It wouldn't be better. Realistically, it would actually make things insanely complicated. Two jinchuuriki of different villages, one being a kage and the other slated to become one in the future, bound in holy matrimony? It would be nearly impossible. Unheard of.

The more Gaara thinks about it, the more he realizes he's never wanted anymore more in his entire life.

Marriage to Naruto would be a guarantee for life. Naruto does not do things in halves. He sticks to his commitments and he doesn't go back on his word, and such a philosophy seems to transfer to all facets of his life. Gaara sees no reason it wouldn't apply to this one too.

It's beyond appealing. The thought that Gaara could have Naruto, and Naruto would be his— he's giddy just thinking about it, hungry in that same odd way that drives him to stare at Naruto's lips and imagine their taste so often when they're together. In his chest, his heart races.

Next to him, Naruto makes a grand gesture with his hand.

"Right?!" He exclaims. "I mean, we get along! We're super close. I'd totally spend my life with you, believe it."

"I share the sentiment." Gaara is quick to say, feeling smitten. It's too good to be true. Surely he's not-

"In fact, we should just handle this ourselves. Right now." Naruto starts to stand. Gaara's heart nearly gives out right then and there. "Let's go find a church or something. Believe it."

Someone wake him up. Right now.

[nocreativityfornames]

THE BROTHERS AND THE CELESTIAL REALM (SPOILERS: ALL SEASONS)

Alright, let's talk about it. It's been a long time since the game started flirting with the idea of the brothers forgiving Father/God and changing their views of the Celestial Realm as a whole and it's very odd, to say the least.

The first big red flag was this moment with Lucifer back in Season 3 of NB, that was the most concerning one considering that this was recently fallen Lucifer, when the war had ended only a year ago and they had just lost Lilith, and when he and the brothers had just escaped eternal punishment being trapped at Cocytus forever for betraying Father.

The contrast of recently fallen Lucifer speaking this positively of God when even the present one (who's had who knows how many centuries to process everything that happened) has shown to despise the idea of coming back to the Celestial Realm, mostly remember his time there in a bad light, and outright fear Father is JARRING.

And these moments keep coming, and the brothers keep showing more and more positive feelings towards the Celestial Realm. Forget everything we learned about the CR and what they went through, or the feelings the characters expressed towards the Celestial Realm before Nightbringer.

You're telling me that God wanted to wipe their sister from all existence and half of the realm, angels who they thought they could trust, opposed to them when they dared to protect her, went to war with them, and had her killed (probably along other angels who sided with the brothers to save her because the whole realm was divided) and now the brothers are just going to forget all of that and be all "the Celestial Realm wasn't that bad, actually. We always loved it there and wouldn't mind going back"? Really...?

I mean, even beyond all the Lilith stuff the Celestial Realm had always been a bad place for the brothers. Remember what Lucifer said: most of his memories from that time aren't good. The brothers already didn't like the Celestial Realm before Lilith; they already felt out of place there, and they already had their doubts. Hell, the reason they grew to have such a strong bond as angels to begin with was because they were outcasts, the ones who didn't fit in and were looked down on.

Mammon was close to being cast out and no one knew how to deal with him, Lilith was too chaotic and far away from being the ideal angel, Beel couldn't control his strength and destroyed everything around him, Belphie had no interest in following tasks, had a unique fascination for humans and preferred spending time in the Human World than the Celestial Realm, etc. And Lucifer was the one who took them in and accepted them as they were because even though he was far from an outcast and looked like the perfect angel on the outside, he still had his internal conflicts and struggled under pressure just as much in secret.

All of them suffered living there. Even Simeon opened up to MC about how he thought that angels weren't allowed to have dreams and that he probably wouldn't have found out otherwise had he stayed in the Celestial Realm. And that was on Nightbringer, not an old card from the OG but a recent one, so what's going on here?

It could be Solmare's way of setting things up for Raphael & Michael to become recurring characters since they don't want them to be seen as the bad guys (shout out to @cnl0400 for being the first to talk about this), but they don't need to flip the script and change the brothers' established feelings towards the Celestial Realm and God for this to happen. Raphael and Michael are also victims of the way angels are conditioned to live and are likely just as traumatized and have as many issues as the brothers, which developed from the strict rules they have to follow to be considered "good angels", the War, etc.

And we already had moments in SWD that showed that the brothers still care for Raphael & Michael and vice versa, despite everything that happened between them (though the same can't be said about the CR and God). So why not explore that, instead of having their view of the realm as a whole change so drastically with no explanation?

The brothers not only look at the Celestial Realm fondly now but would happily visit. The place where their worst memories took place and where so many of their loved ones died, the main source of their traumas and the traumas of everyone who survived the war. I mean, just before NB Simeon was harshly punished for saving MC's life and cursed with mortality, just another reason for them resent the CR and their strict rules. And don't even get me started on Father.

Assuming that their goal is to write a redemption arc for the angels who didn't take the brothers' side during the war and paint the CR in a better light so players won't hold a grudge against Michael & Raphael, this isn't a good way to go about it. Burying everything under the rug and acting as if the brothers just came to change their minds over time is insane because we didn't see anything that could've led to that development. Yes, we were gone for months but it lasted so long in the timeline we were taken from that no one even noticed our absence. So what major event could've happened while we were gone that led to this?

Unless this is all part of an overarching plot where we find out that these aren't the brothers we know or our original timeline, the "we're cool with God and the Celestial Realm" ordeal is just frustrating and makes no sense for the characters as we know them.