#while i sit powerless to help them

[softieacademia]

bittersweet musings

its so sad and so painful.. but i find myself missing life from one, two, three years ago.. i was so so innocent and naive back then and i HATED IT... I wanted to be smart and capable of seeing through everything, i didnt want to be blind and take peoples words at face value because i had been hurt by them so much, i really though being able to see through them would make me stronger... and here i am now... the ability to see through evil words and actions is almost completely mine... and so is despair... that this is my world, that these are my people... that this is where i was born and am to live... that the people around me may look different when i move to a different place but in nature they will remain the same... its so bitter... and so sorrowful.. because when you open your eyes to the realities of this world, you can never close them again... the ability to see through things will never go away now, it will be forever mine...

[seraphicsentences]

hlllo can you pleas do football!ellie ina rush and really needing her sport shirt that reader is wearing, but since reader is so unbothered to change she takes it off right there n it gets ellie thinking if she should even go!!!!!! maybe a little smutty smut ‼️‼️inluv with yur writinggg

hi baby yes i can thank you for the request sweet girl. sorry this took a little while i appreciate your patience. also yes i know i said i was going on a break yesterday and then proceeded to bang out this entire thing, my bipolar ass got bored. enjoy! <3

“BABE?”

“BAAAABE?” ellie calls louder as you hear her stumbling through your shared apartment, clearly in a rush.

“babe, have you seen my-oh there it is,” she swings into the room abruptly, stopping in her tracks when she sees her much needed football jersey, adorned by yours truly.

“hey els, what’s up?” you ask, propping yourself up on the bed, and shooting her a look so sickly sweet, savage starlight comic in hand.

ellie’s existence can be found in all aspects of you at the moment, from the clothes you’ve “borrowed” and your choice of fine literature, to the purpled bruises littering your jaw and collarbone.

ellie can’t help but let her buzzing pre-game thoughts slow at the sight of you, and fester around thinking mine, mine, mine.

“hey pretty girl, i just really need my jersey for practice. do you mind changing, pretty please? i’m late,” she says softly, leaning over the mattress to press a warm kiss against your forehead.

“aw, fine, i’ll just wear nothing then,” you joke, reaching over your head to pull off the top in one swift move, revealing your bare chest with marks to match your neck.

you watch knowingly as ellie quite literally shutters: caught up in the sight of what’s literally a physical manifestation of the guilty pleasure that is her possessiveness.

—and you revel in the power trip that this is. because how is it that mere nakedness, something that’s more you than anything else you could put on your skin, is enough to make ellie fucking williams crumble.

and so all you do is smirk when, without sparing even a glance away, ellie tosses the held-out jersey lazily over one shoulder and leans in to indulge herself with another kiss; this time a proper, messy one on your parted lips.

“on second thought,” she says, in between breaths, before diving down to swirl her tongue around your hardened nipples, greedily sucking and licking at them like your own fucking baby.

you’re nothing but powerless to her hypnotic ministrations, as much of a fool for her as she is for you, letting low moans out freely from the back of your throat.

moving back up to kiss you like she wants to consume your sounds, the aggressiveness of ellie’s actions leave you nowhere to go but fall backwards onto the bed, chest pressing up to brush your pointed nipples lush against ellie’s chest.

“fuck, baby,” she rasps into your mouth, slipping her hand between the two of you to knead at your breast, calloused fingers thumbing over your nipples. she watches in awe as you shudder at the sensation, hooded eyes begging for more.

“fuckin’ tease,” she mumbles with a smile, mouthing over her previously left bruises with a hot, flat-tongued lick. feeling the vibrations on your throat as you laugh at her, she gently nips at your skin, letting out a laugh of her own as she feigns annoyance.

“shut up,” she chuckles, suffocating your laughs with the press of her mouth, continuing to make out with you in the delicious way that it is to make out with her.

ellie pries a knee between your squeezed thighs, nudging it upwards in such kind offerance to your burning heat— to which you take, hips immediately grinding up in desperation.

but just as quickly as it was given to you is it taken away.

ellie sits up with a jolt, mussing with your hair as she replaces her shirt with the jersey hurriedly. she stumbles towards the door with a guilty look in her eyes, pausing only to ramble, “coach is gonna kill me, sorry babe. that’s what you get for being such a tease! i’ll make it up to you, you fuckin’ minx. i love you!" before sprinting out the door, shoelaces undone.

you lay there, frozen and topless with your panties soaked, and you curse ellie out, that little bitch.

[writing-fanics]

Playful Banter ‘Stayed Gone’

Alastor x Reader

[a/n: I’m not a song writer don’t be mean if the lyrics don’t match up I’m sorry I tried! I haven’t written for Alastor since I think 2020. The entire song isn’t here in lyrics it opens when Alastor and you are walking down the stairs]

Song

Alastor and You, walked down the stairs and noticed sinners gathers around the Voxtech television. You glanced up at him knowingly, and you couldn’t help put clip your heels together. As you made you swiftly made your way, to the radio tower.

‘While they’ve hid in radio, we've pivoted to video’

‘Now their medium is getting bloody rare.’

‘Hell's been better since they’ve split’

You grinned dusting off your clothes; bringing the cup of tea taking a sip. As you glanced ver at Alastor smiling, “Let’s have some fun shall we, darling?” He asked, and you lifted your head with an upturned smile. “We shall.” You chuckle, as you turned on the broadcast. Leaning in closer into the mic.

‘Where's they’ve been? Who gives a shit?!’

You had a devilish smile plastered on your face, “Salutations!” You and Alastor said into the microphone, grinning ear to ear. “Good to be back on the air,” You smiled, holding your cup of tea in hand.

You were ready for some fun, excited, Vox didn’t know what he was getting into with you two.“Yes, we know it's been a while.” You two sang, into the microphone.

“Since someone with style treated Hell to a broadcast” You two said into the mic, “Sinners, rejoice!” Alastor and You exclaimed, as the crowd seemed to gather around the old timey radio.

The sinners gathered in front of both, glancing back and forth between the two. “What a dated voice!” Vox spat, and You could only chuckle as you brought the mic closer.

“Instead of a clout-chasing mediocre video podcast.” You and Alastor sang, smiling

“Come on!” Vox shouted, angrily annoyed. As the two went on, “Is Vox insecure, pursuing allure?” Alastor sang, and making fun of Vox.

“Fitting between this fad and that, is nothing working?” You sang, smirking and standing beside Alastor.

“Ignore their chirping!” Vox spat.

“Every day, he's got a new format!” Alastor sang, grinning. Vox groaned in annoyance.

‘You're looking at the future, he's the shit that comes before that!’

Alastor sang, “Is Vox as strong as he purports?” as other sinners listened in the feud, “Or is it based on his support?” You sang.

“He'd be powerless without the other Vees,” Alastor sang, then leaning closer into your respective microphones. You couldn’t help but chuckle.

“And here's the sugar on the cream,”Alastor sang, leaning closer into his microphone a a devilish smile on his face.

“He asked us to join his team!” Alastor sang, revealing the truth. “H-hold on!” Vox stammered, nervously. You smiled grinning ear to ear leaning closer holding; your microphone close to you.

A devilish grin grew across your face, “A jealous one he surely is!” You sang, stifling back a laugh. Remembering when Vox asked if you wanted to go out. As in start a relationship with you. You couldn’t help but laugh back then. And still laugh even now.

You chuckled slightly,“years ago he asked if we could court!” You sang, into the microphone. You could only imagine the horrified and embarrassed looked, on Vox’s face right now and thought alone. Made your grin wider.

“I said no, and now he's pissy.” You say down in your chair, next to Alastor and smiled. “That's the tea!” Alastor and You sang, sitting back into your respective chairs smiling. Leaning back in them kicking your legs back, as you two sang.

“You two old-timey pricks, I'll show you suf-ffering,” Vox stammered, as his screen started to buffer. “Uh oh, the TV is buffering!” You and Alastor sang into the microphone, with you adding slight coo at the end.

Vox stammered as he started to shorting out, his screen buffering continuously as he was about to lose single. “I'll destroy you, yo-ou lit-tle—” He stammered, suddenly all power across Pentagram City went out. The only source of power coming from the radio tower, attached to the Hazbin Hotel.

Alastor chuckled statically, “I'm afraid you've lost your signal,” You said, grinning. You looked down for a moment before looking up. Your eyes glowing a bright red.

“Let's begin.” Alastor sang into staff, as he slowly transformed into his demon form. Placing down bis staff as his eyes glowed bright red, and his antlers grew bigger. His form slowly started to resemble that of a wendigo.

“We’re gonna make you wish that we’d stayed gone, tune on in,” you two sang, as you slowly transformed. Your body stretching and neck becoming longer.

As your body stretched, into its demonic form. An ‘X’ revealed itself on the side of your neck. As your nails became sharp claws, as you gripped the control board. “When I'm done, your status quo will know its race is run,” You two sang leaning closer, as your eyes and body grew longer.

“Oh, this will be fun,” You and Alastor sang, smiling. Vox stared at the screen in disbelief, as it went blank and fell back into his seat, “Fuck!” he whined, their laughter continuing to taunt him. Leaning back into your chair you smiled, “We still got it.” You said, smiling of course the two of you would. Nothing beats, radio. “I couldn’t ask for a better co-host.” said Alastor, as he smiled at you. “And I couldn’t ask for a better husband,” You said, blowing a kiss his way a smile on your face.

Wonder what Vox’s reaction would be since he still hasn’t moved on, from you rejecting him. To him noticing a ring on your finger.. hmm I’d imagine he’d be buffering

a/n: I did my best with this.

[pomefioredove]

Hi hi! I have a request

Could I ask for romantic headcanons of dorm leaders(expect melleus) with a so whos melleus's younger sibling and when their on a date all they see is the disamona gang is spying on their date

AHHH help this is such a fun request!! diasomnia stakeout that lasts 5 minutes because sebek starts yelling the second he sees you holding hands with someone

summary: malleus' younger sibling type of post: headcanons characters: riddle, leona, azul, kalim, vil, idia additional info: romantic, reader is gender neutral, reader is not yuu

𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬

so we all agree that Riddle is probably the best choice? right?

as in, the least likely to get in trouble with the Diasomnia fam

Riddle, as a partner, is a perfect gentleman. won't even hold hands with you until a certain point in the relationship

(I mean, we're talking about Victorian England-level courting here)

out of everyone, he's the least likely to raise concern

...and yet.

it's probably Lilia that gets everyone worried

Riddle is a little... uptight for his tastes, after all, and Lils doesn't want you squandering your youth on rules and expectations

and so, he leads the great date stake-out

...for a completely inconspicuous mid-afternoon walk through the Heartslabyul rose gardens

you, of course, find all of them peeking at you from over a hedge almost right away

and just barely manage to shoo them off before Riddle sees and dies of embarrassment

𝐋𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐚 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫

GOOD LUCK

it's honestly a miracle that there even is a Leona Kingcholar left to date, rather than a pile of ashes on the ground

(Malleus is a terribly overprotective older brother)

...and he's quite convinced that Leona is dragging you around just to annoy him, specifically

so, what's he gonna do? not spy on you with the whole entourage?

he just needs to make sure you're okay, that's all

you, of course, knew that he didn't like the arrangement from the start, so you've already got an eye out on your dates

by the second or third, both you and Leona can tell you're being followed

...much to his annoyance

it takes a lot of "family meetings" with Lilia mediating before Malleus makes his peace with it

for now, anyway

so help him, if that oversized house cat hurts you...

𝐀𝐳𝐮𝐥 𝐀𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐨

everyone is... a little concerned that this is some kind of power play on Azul's behalf

Silver is probably the most worried, being in the same grade as him and knowing how tricky he can be

the original plan was to sit you down and express his concerns to you, and somehow that got turned into Lilia convincing everyone to wear fake mustaches and fedoras and spy on one of your dates in the lounge

(Malleus agrees because he thinks it's funny. Sebek agrees because Malleus does. poor Silver is powerless to stop it)

of course, you notice them right away

that's like... a given

besides the terrible disguises, Lilia and Malleus keep laughing and Sebek is white-knuckling the menu while trying to stay quiet

after that, you have a nice sit-down with everyone to discuss your personal boundaries

Silver gets his talk, after all :)

𝐊𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐦 𝐚𝐥-𝐀𝐬𝐢𝐦

Lilia's failed attempts at convincing everyone that Kalim is a totally great boyfriend (wingman of the year, everyone) obviously don't work well

listen, Kalim is great. it could be a lot worse!

but also, uh...

his life tends to be a little hectic

the last thing the Diasomnia fam needs is for you to get poisoned

...or assassinated in some other grotesque fashion

so, of course, they tag along to a few parties, some dinners here and there...

they get caught pretty quickly, but lucky for them, Kalim is a great host, and so he invites them to just. join the dates

(much to your horror)

Sebek and Silver argue about who's going to taste your food for poison first

which Lilia ends up doing, anyway

(even if it is poisoned, it won't have any effect on him. he might even like it more)

𝐕𝐢𝐥 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐞𝐧𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐭

Vil is probably the second safest option on this list

...and, of course, he gets scoped out for the same reason number one does

Lilia considers him just... too strict. I mean, he's young! you're young! you shouldn't be acting like grown-ups, you should be frolicking

or whatever it is kids these days are doing

when the four follow you on one of your way-too-nice dates, Vil is the first to notice

he's definitely annoyed at first, but comes to find the situation really funny

it's like paparazzi, but if the paparazzi were your extremely strange found-family, who are also wearing fake mustaches and pretending to be tourists at the table behind you

he'll let it slide, just this once

...but maybe you'll have more indoors dates for a while

𝐈𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐒𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐝

Idia has already taken the necessary preventative measures

i.e., never actually going out for dates

if you want to eat something together, you can just come to his room for ramen and anime. what's so great about cafes and restaurants, anyway?

if you need some new scenery, he'll design a VR room for the two of you

it's pretty hard to spy on Idia- he's got a hell of a custom-coded security system on all of his devices

and besides that, Lilia was the one who set you two up in the first place. why would he be worried?

...okay, maybe the rest of the Diasomnia fam is a little concerned that you're dating someone who hasn't seen the sun in years

but you can handle yourself!

(he may still be receiving hundreds of very strongly worded and untitled emails from Sebek, though)

[frownyalfred]

I came across a post where someone mentioned that Martha Wayne’s pearls were actually her teeth, but Bruce misremembered or blocked it out…

This has to be one of the most heartbreaking and gut-wrenching headcanons I’ve ever encountered about Martha and Bruce. Just imagine the scene—her teeth falling out instead of the pearls, either from the impact of the bullet or from the way she fell and hit her mouth.

The imagery is so disturbing and visceral. It adds a whole new layer of trauma to Bruce’s memory, making his recollection of that night even more tragic.

Also— I feel like we don’t talk enough about what the Waynes’ deaths must have really been like…

The thought that Bruce might have been splattered with his parents’ blood, or even brain matter, from the impact. .. I feel like the writers never really specified where exactly they were shot or what kind of gun was used, which could have made the injuries even more horrifying depending on the weapon. The unease in his father’s voice—something foreign that Bruce had probably never heard before—from a man who was usually so optimistic and confident, might have been the first time Bruce saw his father truly scared. And then there’s his mother’s screams. In Christopher Nolan’s movies, Martha’s screams still haunt me to this day. The actress did an incredible job capturing that raw terror.

But what really gets me is the time. How long did Bruce stand there, in the pool of his parents’ blood, waiting for someone to come and help him? Did he try to pick up his mother’s pearls, or maybe try to stop the blood from pouring out of their wounds? That time must have felt like an eternity for him—standing there, powerless, with his parents’ blood on his hands, the smell of rot from the nearby trash, the powder of the gunshot lingering in the air, the city’s humidity, and the iron tang of blood.

And another chilling thought: what if his parents died with their eyes open? The idea of Thomas Wayne’s lifeless eyes staring up at his now-traumatized, orphaned son is just devastating.

Anyways, sorry for the ramble… I would love to hear your thoughts !!!

oh my god. yeah…..I mean, yeah. I’m getting smacked speechless by some of these anons today.

I actually saw someone knock all their teeth out once like you’re describing and it is gruesome. seeing teeth where they aren’t supposed to be is horrifying.

I think comics and movie adaptations letting the Waynes get shot somewhere in center mass, away from their faces, by low caliber bullets so they bleed out with last words is a mercy, in some ways.

modern guns could make that scene could look very, very different. I won’t go into them here but…yeah. there’s a reason they die with their faces intact in the comics and most movies, in my opinion. and with a few words or screams, maybe, before they fully die.

but yeah. there’s a world where they both get hit point blank in the head, brain and blood go everywhere, and Bruce has to sit there caked in for a while. until the cops show up, and even then, he probably doesn’t get clean for a while, since he’s covered in the decade’s most haunting crime scene.

[circeyoru]

Collection of Overlords _ Part 6 = Requested

[Alastor x Soul Owner of All Overlords!Reader]

Part 1 — Part 1.5 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4 — Part 5 — Part 6 (here) — Part 7 — Part 8 — Part 9  — Part 10 — Part 11 — Part 12 — Part 13

Alastor nearly dropped the tray containing your food when he felt your darkening aura. He immediately got over and set the tray of food in front of you while explaining what was cooked for you. Ignoring the obvious death glare you were sending across the table at Lucifer who was still proudly introducing you

It was amazing for Alastor to see you silently seething with annoyance yet do nothing. Perhaps it was because Lucifer has yet to step out of line? Or because you had your dose of terror because of the Vees?

You were introduced as the mentor of Lucifer when he came to Hell all those years ago, meaning you were older than ancient. A hellborn, so you were able to travel throughout all of Hell, basically to other Rings that’s why you weren’t around for so long

Now the ‘Collector’ title was an interesting one. They didn’t know you hold the souls of the Overlords, they only know you hold a number of souls at your command. How you can do so while being a hellborn was beyond them. But they were aware that there were hellborn nobles, and that’s what they chalked it up to

Still though, it doesn’t help the fact that your cover was blown

“Dear student of mine.” You spoke softly with a smile. Alastor got a chill at the gentleness and eerie feeling of an incoming scolding.

“Yes, Teach?” That got Lucifer’s attention as he stopped with his flattery and turned to you with a brighter smile.

“Do shut up now.”

Your disguise dropped, revealing your true form to the others. Your eyes now closed, and an aura of authority and power radiated from you that commanded control and pressure

You politely asked Lucifer to leave the seat and continue with the hotel tour with his daughter. You had Alastor sit down while you two enjoyed a meal together. Alastor took the liberty of casting a barrier around the two of you to ensure privacy and uninterrupted moments

Peacefully, you listened to Alastor as he told you tales of what happened during his 7 years absence. The poor deer was gone looking for you after he realized your absence was a bit uncalled for, even going as far as to submit to demonic summoning in the human world to see if you would call him back to your services

It was amusing and you chuckled at the silly stuff humans had your deer do, Alastor’s cute ears pinned back at your mocking laugh, but returned to their position with joy when you said you meant to offense

So Alastor continued to share his stories to entertain you, all while you listened and enjoyed his cooking with a content smile gracing your lips

Never has he asked question about you, for you’ll never tell. You have your secrets and sacred knowledge and information that is only for your knowing. He knew, everyone else in your elite  collection knew. All they ask for was your presence and support in their time in this Hell realm

It was obvious how while you have all this power to squash them like mere insects, you never did so and instead supported them and given them a title that would be feared. You established a system for them that will be recognized by all of Hell

“I was afraid you’d be gone forever, My Liege.” Alastor’s ears drooped down.

You smiled, “Forever’s a long time. I should know. I’ll never be gone, no need to fret.”

Alastor remembers that day well, when he was approached by you. The shadows he controlled ran rampened, out of his control. He was suddenly brought to a forest, he saw the city buildings over the treelines, but he couldn’t leave this forest no matter what. Even when he tried to use his powers and his more demonic form, nothing worked. Something kept him there by force

For the first time since his descent to Hell, he felt powerless and caged. There was no one in that forest to exploit or ask questions. It was truly just him

It felt like he was held prisoner yet not since he was free to do as he pleased. He could conjure things, so his daily necessities were met. Then there were the deers that were nothing like the hell creatures, it was one he was familiar to back when he was alive. So he enjoyed the game of hunting

It felt like he was well-provided. All but his freedom to leave

He didn’t know how long he stayed there, but there were whispers here and there. Creatures that were a blend of ravens and crows were in the trees watching him, Cages as they introduced themselves

The Cages whispered ideas into him, he ignored them. Then they continued to repeating the same thing to him. He had enough and tried what was suggested to him. For some odd reason, it worked. It was like a power upgrade from what he was capable of, a boost if you will. The Cages spoke words of praise that felt oddly pleasant

From then on, he looked forward to the Cages’ suggestions. Everytime he accomplished what they proposed, compliments came to him with a wash of comfort, then another tip came. He found himself growing more and more reliant on the connection he had with the Cages and anticipated their presence every time his eyes opened from a nap or long rest

Yet the time came when all the Cages seemingly disappeared from the forest. He searched high and low, turning desperate for their presence again. He long forgotten his goal of escape since this place made his entertainment worthwhile and his power was growing

At the sight of that one Cage, he followed it. He knew then, it was on purpose, everything that happened had a purpose. The Cage led him to you. You who sat in the clearing tending to a number of Cages that were around you

When he materialized out of the shadows and saw your form, he felt like he was in a trance. That presence he was feeling through the Cages, it was all so strong around you, passing by those winged creatures, he confirmed it was all you. Everything that happened here was all your doing

Instead of rage and bloodlust like he had in the beginning of his time here, there was a longing of passion and an urge to stay by your side so he wouldn’t be separated from you. He didn’t understand it, but he knew you were the key to his pillar. No, you are his pillar

“Radio Demon, Alastor. Overlords before you has met me one way or another.” Your voice was so angelic that it felt like a crime that you’d be in Hell. Wait. He was in Hell? It felt like paradise. “I have a collection of souls at my disposal and I control the Overlords I have picked to be in my collection.”

“I wish to join.” He spoke so urgently as he fell to a kneeling position with his eyes staring at your form, he felt like if he delayed, it was life or death. 

A melodiously chuckle came from your curved lips that was a small smile. Your hand that had a Cage perched on it flicked and the Cage was airborn. You offered your hand to him, “If you do, you’ll be giving me your soul. I’m sure you know what that means.”

“I don’t care.” Alastor spoke with confidence firmly. “As long as I am by your side.”

Alastor held his heart stop when your eyes opened, it was captivating that his eyes focused on that the moment your eyelids revealed them to him. It felt it it was his birthday present and Christmas gift all wrapped in one. He saw his reflection from your eyes, the softness of your hand broke him from his trance, and the joyous tone from your voice got him melting into you, “As you wish. My Dear Alastor.”

Over the next few days, you have been observing the hotel residence after you little reveal

Lucifer was acting like a kicked puppy but soon recovered after you joined him in making breakfast for the others. He happily started singing and skipping around to make your smile last. Of course, he apologized for not realizing you were trying to hide your identity

You brushed it off since what’s done is done. Better now than later since no bonds were formed just yet. It was similar to how you gave Alastor a taste of what was to happen after he gave you his soul that day. The entire situation in the forest was to show him that he was free yet caged in your hold, he knew what he was getting into

Well, Alastor did seem to be the type of soul that wanted dominance so you did that to test and see if he can obey commands before offering him your contract. You expected him to fight for control longer and more fiercely, yet that wasn’t the case since he committing to you and proving himself the moment he saw you

Charlie was an interesting case. There was some time where she was more careful with her words around you, perhaps scared that you’d snap at her like you did with her father. And the fact that you were his father’s teacher that he respects and prides himself with associating with you. But then when Alastor gave her a word of caution that you weren’t as scary as you seem, then she took her chance

You got it through to her that she could act the same with you as before. She did not hesitate after that, of course, still keeping in mind some boundaries. She was back to her cheerful and fun self around you. Even enjoying feeling like a grandparent was taking care of her and spoiling her. Though that didn’t mean you were lenient with her that you’ll overlook things

You offer advice from time to time when Charlie was busy planning activities. You advised her on how to use her authority and power when necessary, her kindness is her strength and weakness. More on the latter since this was Hell, a number of demons will take advantage of her and push her down. Sure she can fight back, but it wouldn’t be enough when they are perfectly aware of what buttons to push

Vaggie showed obvious suspicion and caution around you. She went as far as to avoid you and not stand in your path. When it was obvious Alastor listens to you without another word, it raised even more red flags in her mind because you were that powerful. Lucifer speaking highly of you was even worse

She heard of ‘The Collector’, some demons she killed when she was still an exterminator screamed that The Collector will reign supreme or that a terrible death will be passed down as judgement to them. Hellborns move to other circles when it’s extermination day, some might be unlucky to escaped but exterminators weren’t taught to tell the difference between hellborn and sinners

When she was abandoned in Hell, she learned that The Collector holds a vast ocean of souls at your command. It was a terrifying thought to know that if you wanted, war can beginning at the drop of your command

Hell has 7 Rings, each represents a sin and only the Pride Ring has sinners of human souls. But Heaven was just that one. A paradise on top of the clouds. Now that angels can be killed, if you so wished, can’t you take over Heaven as well?

You were aware of all Vaggie’s little fears. You didn’t mind it at first, but her paranoia was getting out of head when she tried to deter the others to stay clear of you. Namely Charlie since you have been caring for her since you was too young to even remember. Though being the sweet princess she is, tried to have Vaggie under you weren’t a threat

A duel, you offered Vaggie. If she won, you’d leave the hotel and never step near any of them under any circumstances. Alastor nearly snapped when Vaggie pushed you to offer since an absurd wager, you own all of Hell, why would such a rule even apply to you? But you raised your hand to Alastor so he’d calm down. If you win, well, Vaggie will stop with all this ‘you’re the bad guy’ talk

Everyone came to watch. Charlie tried to persuade Vaggie to call it off but failed. Meanwhile, Lucifer urged you to hold back since this was his daughter’s beloved girlfriend. You planned to do so anyways and everyone stayed on the sidelines

Vaggie readied her spear and summoned her wings. You smiled, your form changing to a familiar one. Carmilla. You skillfully dodged all the attacks Vaggie launched at you as though you were dancing. While the duel was still ongoing, you pointed out Vaggie’s flaws and weak points before you attacked once and the winner of the fight was decided

Afterwards, Vaggie was persistant in asking for your fighting lessons and techniques. It got to the point where Alastor would try to move you to another spot so that his time with you wouldn’t get continuously interrupted. To his dismay, you found amusement in the entirety of the situation

“How dare you try to steal what precious time I have from me!” Alastor glared at Vaggie.

“This is a connection between warriors! You butt out of this edge lord!” Vaggie remarked back.

You merely chuckled at the exchange and never said anything to side with either. 

Angel hid his discomfortable of you from the others and acted as his usual self, as much as he can. The only ones that noticed his awkwardness was probably Husk and you. You had a hunch it was due to the fact that you own too many souls to count, he was under contract with Valentino. The poor soul

Pity as though it may be, it was his choice to be under that sorry excuse of an Overlord in the first place. He’s merely living the life he signed himself for. The same for Husk

Now Husk had the best reaction. He was the latest Overlord to be rejected from your collection, but not the fastest. He didn’t get anything guidance like how your current Elites (excluding the Vees) had, certainly never having Alastor’s treatment as well. For you saw gambling as a dangerous bet to support in. Where there’s a win, there’s always an even bigger lost

This was something you warned Husk after accepting him as an Overlord among your ranks. It certainly didn’t help when he was hosting more and more gambling parties and inviting other Overlords to join in. They participated but were quick to give him their input and warn to change a domain since you’ll be more supportive of it

Husk didn’t listen. He was winning and was blinded by that. So the other Overlords counted down till Husk was removed from the collection. It didn’t take long for your Overlords to realize they had a chance to pin down the former Overlord Husk to their command and show you their ability. Alastor took the job and the role of relying that he was abandoned

He didn’t know, he never knew. He reflected on that and found times when his fellow Overlords tried to help him and teach him the ropes, since these things aren’t something you’ll tell them. You like it when your Overlords are independent when they need to

So he shifted his focus like you advised so long ago. He gained the ability to read demons like a book as time gone by, so much so that he’d love to show it to you, but Alastor would never let that happen

When he saw you near, he tried offering you a drink or two. He wanted to talk, to say that he was sorry and that he was wrong. It’s always when he got to a suitable time to tell you that you were pulled away by one thing or another

He thought he lost his chance again until you met him in the hallway when he was retreating to his room to get some shuteye

“Husk, my former soul.” Your words made him freeze and turn to you, there was that small smile on your face that made you look so serene and neutral to everything. “I hope you continue your time here in service to the dear Princess and the hotel as Alastor has assigned you.”

“But I…”

“Until I call for you.” You cut him off as your smile widened, “Don’t worry about anything and try to build your power back, I see that you have learned your lesson.” You snapped your fingers and a card with an eye design on it appeared, you passed it to him, “Alastor knows my thoughts on the matter, so I hope you won’t disappoint me again.”

Husk bowed deeply, his wings relaxed that they touched the floor almost entirely, “Yes, I will, Master.”

You chuckled and showed him a hologram of him protecting and caring for Angel. “Do you know?” Husk looked up, unsure of why you showed him something like this. “That an Overlord can challenge another to gain the soul contract that’s signed?”

Husk’s eyes widened at the message you conveyed.

You made a hush motion over your lips as your eyes peeked open, “Let’s keep this between us. If you manage to prove yourself, there’s more to come and more to receive. Though that all depends on your willingness. Husk.”

Note: I'm so curious on your thoughts for this one~ There's Alastor's little backstory to how he became the way he is and then the little ending here~ Hehe

Well~ Like I said before, the next uploads are for {Unwanted Soul}

Circe Y. 

My Works: MASTERLIST

Taglist: (those that don't specify to being in all the works' taglist will automatically be assumed to be in whichever series they comment on)

@aconfusedwonderland @crowleysthings @donustellaron @mistpurpl3 @lucifers-silhouette @fluffy-koalala @plutobots @ray-rook @thealienartist @serenity-songbird @galaxydreamer468 @raynerrold @wen01203@hikari-michiko @colecreo @myromanempiree @xsamkuro @yourdoorisunlocked @clavelina @jono723 @cursedcattalastor @an-idyllic-novelist @flamiohotman2024 @rea-grace @myromanempiree @veroneverleft @lousypotatoes @crazysuityouth @jellyedkazoo @wat4r @kiraisastay @thealienartist @chefysawesomeideas @wtvbabes

[nico-di-genova]

Parts of Blue Beetle I cannot stop thinking about

Jaime’s Gotham U hoodie. I need it. I must buy it immediately. @ DC pls give it to me.

Milagro and Jaime sitting on the roof sharing a drink and just talking. It’s familiar for them, something they’ve probably been doing since they were kids

Milagro drinking too, which feels like SUCH a big brother move on Jaime’s part. Like yeah, sure you can drink, but only where I can keep an eye on you so you don’t do anything stupid.

The way Jaime feels like an adult in some ways and like a little kid still in others. They really nailed the early/mid twenties feeling of being a child trapped in an adults body.

No one pressuring Jaime to get a job and save the house/help his dad. It’s a pressure he’s solely placed upon himself, this sense of responsibility that he’s meant to pull them up and out, even though they never asked anything more from him then to be their Jaime.

The beetle merging scene, horrifying. Looked like something straight out of the exorcist.

When Jaime and Jenny almost kissed, and Jaime was left like half hard and embarrassed. So real of him. It was also another moment that just felt real, even if it was played for laughs.

Milagro during the entire Reyes house attack scene. Like Jesus she had me sobbing so hard. The way she was so visibly scared and crying for her mom, looking at Jaime and practically begging for his help. She was just a scared little kid who wanted her family, who wanted her big brother to come make everything better.

When Rudy was talking about Alberto bringing him over the border when he was ten and Alberto was 19. It’s such a short but emotional scene, and it really adds to the character dynamics. You see Alberto as more than Jaime’s dad, but this kid who also was once scared and overwhelmed by his responsibilities, but still shouldered them because it’s all he could do.

Milagro wearing her dads jacket for the rest of the movie :(. I love her, she deserves the world.

The absolute rage and fear on Jaime’s face as he was forcibly ripped away from his family, unable to do anything, as his father suffered a heart attack right in front of him. The sheer amount of terror he must have felt to realize in that moment that he was powerless and to see his sister sobbing over their father’s body while he couldn’t get to her. Jaime Reyes is a better man than I will ever be, because if I’d gotten my hands on Victoria or Carapax it would have been over for them. Also the way he just kept screaming dad/papa like a little kid calling for their parent after waking up from a nightmare :(. He’s just a kid, he thought he would come home and fix everything and instead he has to watch it all fall apart in front of him.

Jaime and Milagro in general, best siblings. I’d die for them :)

[iamtired10]

warped in your warmth

— ★ fluffy headcanons!

pairing - newjeans x female reader

synopsis - how each member reacts when you come home after a tough day and just silently hug them, seeking comfort.

genre - fluff, slight angst (but very soft)

warning - nothing to worry about ig

a/n - school has been wearing me out and im feeling more tired than usual these days. writing this brought me some comfort, so i hope it does the same for u! :)

minji (kim minji)

minji always senses when something is wrong, even if you don’t say a word.

the second you approach her, and wrap your arms around her without a sound, she immediately knows that you’re carrying a heavy burden.

her arms instinctively envelop you, pulling you into her chest as if she could shield you from all the bad in the world.

but she feels the tension in your body, the way your fingers tighten around her shirt, and her heart sinks.

“baby.. what’s wrong..?” she whispers, her voice full of concern.

but when you don’t answer, minji doesn’t push.

instead, she pulls you down onto the couch, cradling you in her lap, resting her chin gently on your head.

the silence is deafening, but she knows that’s what you need right now. she strokes your back softly, a steady rhythm in sync with your breath, trying to calm the storm inside you.

it breaks her heart not knowing how to fix it, but she’s willing to stay like this as long as you need.

“i’m here,” she’d finally say, her voice cracking slightly. “you don’t have to say anything.. i’m just here..”

and that’s when you start to cry.

minji’s grip tightens, and for a moment, it’s hard to tell who’s comforting who, because her heart aches just as much seeing you like this.

she’d hold you until your tears stop, whispering reassurances between every sob, promising that no matter how hard the world gets, she’s not going anywhere.

hanni (pham hanni)

when you hug hanni out of nowhere, burying your face in her neck without a word, she feels a weight in her chest she can’t explain.

her usual bright, bubbly energy dims as she pulls you even closer, her arms wrapped tightly around you like she’s afraid you might slip away.

“hey.. hey, what’s going on..?” she’d whisper.

but when you don’t respond, she doesn’t ask again. instead, she sways with you gently, her cheek resting against your hair.

hanni can’t stand seeing you sad, but she knows sometimes all you need is for her to be there, holding you as the world falls apart around you.

still, it eats at her, the silence.

she hates not knowing how to help, feeling powerless to lift the weight off your shoulders.

after a while, she’ll try to break the tension with something light, “you know.. i’m pretty sure hugging me like this is illegal... because i’m already on the verge of stealing your heart, and now it’s a done deal.”

it’s a lame joke, but that’s hanni—trying to make you smile, even if it’s through tears.

when she feels you relax slightly, she breathes a sigh of relief, knowing she’s gotten through to you just a little.

she’ll keep hugging you, peppering soft kisses on your forehead until you’re ready to talk, or maybe just stay in her arms a little longer.

danielle (danielle marsh)

danielle’s heart practically shatters the moment you cling to her without a word.

she’s so in tune with your emotions that she almost feels your sadness as her own.

“oh.. y/n/n...” she murmurs, wrapping you in her arms so tightly that it’s like she’s trying to fuse your hearts together.

she doesn’t ask what’s wrong right away because she knows that sometimes the weight of the world is too much to put into words.

she’ll sit you down gently, her fingers playing with your hair as she whispers soothing words in your ear, “i’m here.. i’m right here, okay...?”

danielle would probably start humming a soft tune, trying to calm your racing thoughts, her voice warm and gentle.

but underneath that calm exterior, her heart is aching, wishing she could take your pain away.

“i hate seeing you like this.. it’s okay to cry, you know..” she’d say softly, and that’s when the tears would come.

her thumb would wipe away every tear, her gaze never leaving your face, eyes full of love and concern.

she listens when you’re finally ready to talk, holding your hand, squeezing it softly as if to say, i’m not letting go.

danielle will reassure you endlessly, “we’ll get through this, you and me..”

her words are like a soft lullaby, and in that moment, you realize she’s not just comforting you—she’s your safe place, the one who makes the pain feel a little less heavy.

haerin (kang haerin)

haerin’s quiet, observant nature is her greatest strength when it comes to moments like these.

the second you wrap your arms around her without explanation, she knows you need comfort.

she doesn’t say anything at first, just holds you tightly, her arms a protective shell around you.

her fingers gently run up and down your back, a silent gesture of reassurance, and she rests her head against yours, breathing you in.

there’s a deep sadness in her cat-eyes that you can’t see because haerin feels your pain as if it’s her own.

she stays silent, offering you her quiet strength instead of words.

but the way you’re holding on so tightly, like you’re afraid to let go, makes her chest tighten.

she wishes she could take the weight off your shoulders, but all she can do is stay with you, offering the warmth of her embrace.

after a while, she’d whisper, “i’m here.. i’m not going anywhere.”

haerin’s quiet presence is all you need, and even though she’s not asking questions, she’s listening in her own way.

she’d guide you to sit down, pulling you onto her lap if you’d let her, her hands still running through your hair.

she doesn’t push you to talk, but when you do, she listens with her whole heart, nodding quietly, her fingers never leaving your skin.

“we’ll get through this... together” she’d finally say, her voice soft but firm as if the world could fall apart.

but she’d still be there, holding you together.

hyein (lee hyein)

hyein is playful by nature, but when you silently hug her, she knows instantly that something’s wrong.

she’s a little taken aback at first, her arms stiff as she tries to figure out what to do.

but once she realizes you’re seeking comfort, she softens, pulling you closer.

“hey.. what’s going on?” she asks softly.

she’d hold you tightly, though it’s not as natural for her to stay still in moments like these.

but she tries, for you.

hyein might fumble a bit at first, unsure how to comfort you, but she’d quickly figure it out.

“you’re scaring me, you know..” she’d whisper, trying to coax a response out of you.

but when you stay silent, she presses her cheek against yours, her hands running up and down your arms in a soothing motion.

she hates seeing you like this, and it makes her anxious not knowing how to fix it.

so she does the only thing she knows how—she tries to lighten the mood.

“okay, so.. we’re just gonna sit here like this forever? i’m cool with that if you are,” she’d say, her voice teasing, though there’s a slight tremor in it.

eventually, she’d coax a small laugh out of you, and that’s when she feels like she’s done her job.

but she doesn’t let go—not yet.

instead, she keeps holding you, because she knows that right now, all you need is to be held.

[declareqenius]

all the ashes in my wake

summary: part two of "some would sing and some would scream". wanda and natasha have several heated conversations while they wait for you to wake up. it's been days and both of them miss hearing your voice, and they know the last thing you would want to see is them fighting, but wanda can't help tearing into natasha for everything that happened. natasha's guilt eats away at her.

warnings: mentions of the violence in pt 1, coma

a/n: guys i really just wanted to get this one out. i haven't read through it/edited it so any mistakes are... well, mistakes. but hey! we get wanda in this one! i feel like i could have gone a little darker as far as wandanat are concerned, but we do what we can! i hope you enjoy!

The infirmary room is cold and sterile and a heaviness settles over the exhausted woman. Wanda keeps hold of your hand as if letting it go means that you'll slip away for good. She's careful of the IV stuck in the back of your hand giving you fluids. In a way, it serves as a reminder that blood still flows through your veins and your heart still beats, and that even though your bright smile and musical laugh don't fill the room, you're still alive.

Wanda brushes a stray strand of hair behind your ear. She doesn't know how many times she has done that in the past three days, but the gesture comforts her. Tucking your hair behind your ear so she can see your beautiful face better and looking into your sparkling eyes is one of her favorite things to do. Your gaze holds so much love and adoration and it always makes her wish she would never have to live without it.

Your eyes are closed now.

Wanda hates every second of it.

Bruce said that even if you don't respond that you can still hear everything. Wanda trusts that he's telling the truth and it wasn't something he said just to make her feel better.

So she talks to you. About anything and everything she can think of. Your favorite TV show that is on the air right now or the book that you recommended and she finally read. How much she loves you and how she can't wait for you to wake up. How sorry she is that she wasn't there sooner. She makes promises that she intends to uphold. Ones about revenge and torture and everything you would hate and tell her not to worry about were you conscious. Wanda smiles at the thought. She won't listen, though. The Celestials hurt her family. Hurt the love of her life. She can't let that go unanswered for.

Right now, though, you are her priority.

The door handle clicks and Wanda doesn't need to look up. She knows it's Natasha coming back from telling Steve and Yelena what happened. Can feel the exhaustion and guilt dripping from her without having to so much as glance in her direction.

"Wands-"

"I don't want to talk to you right now, Natalia. Sit."

Wanda nods to the unoccupied chair on the other side of the bed without taking her eyes off of you. She's being harsh and she knows it. Natasha was there with you. Right by your side. Made to watch as the leader of their enemies hurt you in the most sloppily calculated way. She was powerless against Najma and Wanda knows this, but all rationality left her when she burst into the cell and laid eyes on your bleeding body, slumped over, barely an ounce of life in you, and her anger nearly consumed her.

She almost leveled the entire block.

The only thing that stopped her was Natasha, carrying you in her arms, reminding her that time was scarce.

So yes, perhaps she is being too harsh with her wife, but somehow you had become their entire lives. Their reason for being. Neither of them would know what to do without you, and they came very close to losing you under Natasha's watch.

They will be okay eventually. They survived many fights and many arguments before you came along.

Tears form in Wanda's eyes.

"Yelena is wondering when she'll be able to see Y/N." Natasha's voice breaks the silence. It's rough and scratchy.

"After she wakes up."

Four words and Wanda can feel how they form on her tongue. Her Sokovian accent is thick with her anger and distress despite the words being spoken soft and firm.

"Wanda," Natasha starts to protest but the finality in her wife's tone makes her go quite.

"Nat."

It's then that Wanda decides to look up at Natasha. Decides to let her wife see her and every emotion that makes its way onto her face and every thought that swirls around in her mind.

Natasha pauses for a moment, taken aback by everything she sees her wife going through. The made-up scenarios. The what-ifs. She knows because she went through every last one of them when she was in that cell with you. To see the same thoughts cluttering Wanda's mind, well, it only makes her guilt worse.

She clears her throat, "Yelena is her best friend."

It comes out as more of a fact than an argument.

At that, Wanda turns her attention back to you, "I don't want anyone except for us and Bruce to see her like this. They don't need to."

"They want to know that she's okay, Wands."

"Tell them that she is. That she will be. That's all they need to know for right now. They need to focus on getting the jump on Najma and the Celestials. Our focus is Y/N. I think our family is capable enough to come up with a plan by themselves, don't you?"

Wanda's calmness is starting to make Natasha uncomfortable and she shifts in her chair. She refuses to touch you, though, afraid of what might happen if she did. Would your body crumble under her fingertips? If you were conscious would your body recoil at her touch? For letting you get hurt. For not protecting you like she should have.

Suddenly streams of tears silently make their way down Natasha's cheeks.

"I'm sorry I let this happen."

Wanda's eyes meet hers again and Natasha feels like she can breathe a little easier. It isn't perfect and she guesses it won't be perfect for a long time, but time will help. The fear will linger within both of them because Natasha knows Wanda almost as well as she knows herself, and she knows that neither of them will be letting you out of their sight for a while after you wake up. Until Najma is taken care of, at least.

Wanda tilts her head as she tries to get a better read on Natasha without using her powers. Even if they would help in the moment she has rules for herself: never on Natasha and never on you.

"They caught you off guard. It is a hard position to be in, radnaja."

Darling. The pet name helps Natasha relax a little more, but her hands stay folded in her lap.

"We needed- I needed to protect her better. We promised to keep her safe and I couldn't do that, Wands. I failed her and I disappointed you and... and what if she decides to leave when she wakes up? I would be the reason we came so close to losing her... and then to actually lose her? I don't know if we could survive it."

"Nat... Y/N loves us with everything she is. Just as we love her. I need you to be confident in that."

Natasha wants to scoff but instead she fidgets with her hands, "Confident? In what, Wanda? That she'll wake up and we'll pretend everything is fine and that we're not the reason she almost fucking died?! That the two people she loves most in the world couldn't protect her like they promised they would? I was powerless Wanda! I couldn't stop them! I-" Natasha's tears flow freely and although the tension in the room is building, she feels safe enough to let herself go in the presence of her wife, "I couldn't save her!"

"Natalia Romanova-Maximoff!" Wanda stands for the first time in hours but she does not drop your hand. It's the only thing grounding her right now. "This is not entirely your fault, radnaja. Maybe if you would have kicked and punched more when they took you then we would be in a different position. Maybe if you had given Najma the answers she was looking for then Y/N wouldn't have been injured as badly as she is but these are all what-ifs, Natasha! What if I had been there with her instead? What if I had been with both of you that night? What if I would have gotten to you sooner? What if she had died!"

Finally, the question that has been on both of their minds since Bruce had walked into the meeting room with your blood all over his neatly ironed button up and jeans- he didn't have time to even think about putting his lab coat on- and told them that you would eventually be okay.

"I have been asking myself that question every day for the past three days," Wanda finishes, salt on her tongue, nose red, and her scarlet hoodie stained with tears.

Natasha cannot find it within herself to tell her wife the new information Bruce gave her in the meeting. While he operated and stitched until he could barely stand any longer; you flatlined once. Your heart decided to give up for a minute and Natasha hasn't had the proper amount of time to process something like that, but the time would never come for Wanda to be able to process the reality of such a thing.

Both women stare down at you with puffy eyes and red noses. You are the most precious thing in the world to them. They hate seeing you so lifeless, and the only wave of hope keeping them afloat is your steady breaths.

The fight has left both of them, but an air of tension remains. They are nowhere near finished with their conversation. With taking their frustrations out. Hopefully they'll have everything figured out before you wake up. Natasha knows how much you hate playing peacemaker when they actually have fights and really get going at each other, but she also knows that her wife can hold a grudge.

She doesn't think Wanda will actually hold a grudge after you wake up, but for now her anger and grief towards Natasha are the only things emotionally anchoring her to reality.

"I miss her, Wands," Natasha sniffs and wipes the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand.

"Me too, Natalia. Me too."

They sit in silence for a minute, taking everything in. There are no windows in the room and during the day that means zero sunlight. You always say that time in the sun is one of the most important parts of your daily routine, and it always helps you cool down when you're stressed out or in a bad mood.

Natasha is the first to break the silence, speaking directly to you.

"You are going to hate this room so much when you wake up, detka," she muses with the smallest smile.

Wanda only glances at her before turning her attention back to you and sitting down in her chair, trapped in her mind just as Natasha is, but not all hope is lost and for that, the older woman is grateful.

"Believe it or not, she was the calm one. During everything."

"Natasha."

Her name is said softly although there is still a warning behind it, but she needs this and she believes that Wanda does too. Even if she doesn't know it yet.

"Please, Wanda."

Wanda just sighs and nods, never taking her eyes off of you.

"Najma had me struggling within ten minutes. Begged her to take me instead and to let Y/N go. I don't know why I thought it would work, but I think I just wanted Y/N to know that even if I couldn't get us out of there in that moment... I was trying. I would keep trying."

Natasha's voice is still scratchy as her exhaustion slowly catches up with her.

"Y/N was so firm with me. She said not to tell Najma anything and she meant it. I don't think I've ever heard her be that direct before, but she left no room for argument. She knew what the information would do to the family because she... she sees us as her family, Wands." The redhead sniffs and wipes at her eyes when her tears return, making a prominent trail down her cheeks.

"We are all she has left and she means the world to us! And... and I let her down so much. So, so much, Wanda. She stayed so calm! She did so good! She talked to Najma. She had a conversation with the woman who had a knife to her cheek!" Natasha's laugh is reserved, but her features are shock-ridden and amazed, bordering on flabbergasted and anxiety-filled.

Wanda finally looks up at her wife. Natasha is starting to spiral and there is no way to stop it other than just letting her get it all out, so the Sokovian keeps listening to and watching her wife. The recount of events is told with animated hand gestures and tears gliding down Natasha's cheeks, and Wanda's heart clenches.

"We were doing so well. She was doing so well. Then, Najma stabbed her and my heart dropped. I thought it was over. I thought we had lost her for good." The hand gestures come to an abrupt halt and the tension in the room is once again palpable, but not so much as before.

Natasha looks down at you with pleading eyes, "Please forgive me, malyshka," she drops to both knees and finally takes your hand in hers and whispers, "please."

She kisses the back of your hand delicately and you can feel each tear drop as they land in the exact spot she kissed. There is no need to wonder why your girlfriend is crying. You remember everything.

Your eyes slowly blink open to see Natasha's own eyes closed and Wanda staring at her wife with a thoughtful expression. The love they have for each other makes you want to smile, but the urge to reassure your sobbing mob boss girlfriend wins.

"I..." talking hurts but you need to say the words. Natasha needs to know! "Forgive... you. Always... Natty."

[kaybreezy3000]

(F-Reader, smut w/story, soft Five + our usual cocky Five, S4 fix-it)

Broken but breathing. Longing for something that always felt just out of his reach, Five was not okay.

With fates forever intertwined, a train, and a smile he would never forget, once again, the impossible became his reality, but like always, not without tragedy.

In the end, all that mattered are the people Five loved. For them, he would do anything.

Note ~I originally started this pre-s4 release as anon request for another headcanon like my last one, but after watching the show I decided this needed to more than that because Five deserved it. This is a full story, with each letter representing a chapter with something that relates back to Five, only with a new twist, you (female reader insert). For those concerned about the Five and Lila narrative, fear not, this story is not going that route.

~mature content so if not your thing, please stay away. TY.

Warnings and Tags: Rated R for sexually explicit content, Hurt Number Five, Alternate S4, Whump, Mental Break Down, Self-Doubt, Angst-humor-love, Uncle Five, The Deli Fives, Starts with Five in a very dark place, Not the end the show gave us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Amor Fati is a Latin phrase that may be translated as "love of fate" or "love of one's fate." It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary.

It's an idea that everything recurs infinitely over an infinite period of time.

A-Aim

Whether Five was setting his sights on saving his family, or when he was focusing all his attention on the crosshairs of his scope, his focus was always impressive. 

From a very young age he took on every challenge with a ruthless level of determination, but that unfortunately made him come off disturbingly detached, and now, even though Five no longer needed to be that feral creature, his behaviors from the past were alienating him from his family, and the rest of the world.

It's not that Five didn’t have a very good reason for letting himself become so removed, but now, gone were the days when he had glorious purpose.

Sitting alone in a powerless world that Reginald had dumped them in while biding his time at the end of a bar with his face curtained by the dark fringe of his shaggy hair, Five was feeling exceptionally defeated.

He hypnotically swirled the amber liquid in his fingerprint smudged glass.

Over and over, he repeated your name in his head.

He liked the sound of it, but he liked the way you smiled at him even more.

Five saw you nearly every day on his way to work, but as much as he may have wanted to, he never said a word to you. When you’d look his way, and catch him staring, your eyes would come alive as your lips perked up just a little, as if daring him to crack.

He didn’t.

He couldn’t. 

That was the way Five thought it had to be.

But then, something happened.

He could still feel that...

That...

He didn't know what it was.

Shutting his eyes, Five raked a hand through his snarls while disappointedly shaking his head. He knew he shouldn’t let himself do this but he couldn’t help it.

It was just another day, mundane as all the rest. All the seats had been taken by the time you entered the train. You were stuck in the middle, standing in front of him with nothing to hold on to. Less than thirty seconds into the ride, the air between you filled with static.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

The train unexpectedly shifted.

You started to fall, and the next thing Five knew, he had you in his arms so fast it was as if he had his powers to blink again.

With the warmth of your butt pressed against him and your hair catching in the light stubble shadowing his chin, Five inhaled deeply, trying to ignore how oddly alive he felt as he discreetly as possible savored how good you smelled.

Before he could put together why he felt so amazing, or before you could tell him off for being too handsy, the train shifted again, only sharper this time, forcing him to hold onto you even tighter or you would have tumbled into the man in front of you.

“Oh, my god! I am sorry,” you’d gasped as you clung to him, your fingernails digging into the thick wool suit coat covering his forearms.

Realizing you weren’t mad, Five let his hands slide a little further around your midsection, firming his grip.

“Thank you,” you embarrassingly gasped as the train continued to aggressively rock your body against his.

“It’s my pleasure,” Five breathily chuckled into the fluff of your hair.

A second later, the train switched tracks, and everyone was flung forward again and your computer bag swung backwards, violently jabbing him in the dick.

Still at the mercy of the wild train, with Five doing his best to widen his stance to gain more balance so you both didn’t fall, you sheepishly cocked your head back at him.

“Are you ahh -"

“I-I am good,” he coughed, cutting you off.

Then, to your surprise and his, though still visibly in pain, he started laughing.

By the time everyone stopped getting thrown around, you were laughing too. As you turned to face him, Five reluctantly let his hands slip from the narrowest point of your waist, his fingers gliding along the fabric of your shirt a little slower than necessary.

Face flushed, you quickly introduced yourself, but he said nothing as he smiled at you with a dreamy look in his eyes.

“I am pretty sure we just took a detour to the moon back there, but I still can’t believe I just did that,” you joked.

At a loss for words, other than things he knew he shouldn’t say, Five’s amused smile began to fade.

“Thank you for saving me from a nosedive. Let me at least buy you a coffee or something… It’s the least I can do after stomping on your foot and nailing you in the-” 

You looked down.

“Shit… That big scuff wasn’t there before, was it?” you asked, anxiously referring to the mark on Five’s shoe, not something notable going on in the dick region of his expensive looking dress pants.

When the handsome stranger staring at you still said nothing, you began to worry your bottom lip, sucking it in on one side.

Feeling so many things he’d never let himself feel, Five wanted nothing more than run his thumb over the alluring pink flesh and tell you that getting his dick assaulted and having his shoes ruined was well worth it because of the way you were looking at him with your face more beautifully flustered than he’d ever seen anyone’s.

He wanted to say that, but he didn’t.

The train slowed to a stop.

The doors opened, and without another word, Five took off. Stepping into the crowd of commuters that were rushing out the doors as they elbowed their way through the busy subway station, he'd never felt more spineless.

That morning, when it came to his unbreakable determination and legendary aim, he didn’t even shoot for it with you, so he could hardly call it a missed target. Still, he felt awful. Almost as soon as he’d hit the street above and he was inundated with the less than savory smells of the city, he knew he’d missed something huge.

Racing back down the stairs, heart racing, the rush of air blew past him as the train with you on it pulled away.

B-Boners (AKA Mistakes)

At this point in his life, as much as Five hated it, he still had boner issues. Your overactive dick in your pants kind of boner issues, and the other kind, such as when committing social blunders, like rudely blowing you off when you were simply trying to be polite.

Being young again, with hormones what they were, the first boner problem was an unavoidable way of life, and speaking of which, his thoughts about you once again drifted back to how good it felt when your body melted into his, your ass perfectly molding against the crotch of his pants as he held you steady.

Feeling things he shouldn’t be while perched on a barstool at a bar filled with other people, Five subtly shifted his legs apart. Willing his over eager cock to calm down, he looked up at the mirrored wall behind the bottles of liquor displayed along the back wall.

The young man looking back at him frowned, but his body remained aroused despite his sorrowful reflection.

Unable to hold his own hateful glare, Five looked back down at his almost empty glass.

Hopelessly horny, and far past slightly buzzed, he muttered a slurred sounding, “ Grrrrrr- ate . ”

With an irritated huff of air blowing his hair out of his face, Five yanked his tie even looser and tipped back his head, swallowing the rest of his drink. Feeling like he could breathe a little easier, he threw down an overly generous tip, assuring that even though he technically wasn't 21 yet, his ID said he was, and combined, he’d be served again.

Ready to go, his hot palms gliding down his tensed thighs, Five’s eyes fluttered closed for just a second.

His head spun, but not with the sickness of too much drink.

In his whirl of thoughts, he was back on the train with you.

He could practically feel your ass in his hands, his fingers groping greedily as he shamelessly ground his shaft between your legs from behind.

Sadly, at this point, Five still had never been with anyone real. Yet, the disconnect of not knowing what this would really feel like, or how he should be going about doing it, was doing nothing to ruin his bizarrely timed fantasy of animalistically fucking his rock-hard erection into the warmth of your curvy body in any way he could.

God, he wanted to touch his dick!

Opening his eyes, the room spun even more and not in a good way, but still Five refrained from doing that and instead clung to the pleasant visions in his head.

Over the years, with little to give him the feeling of satisfaction he so desperately longed for, Five had unwittingly become addicted to self-stimulation, and it was not just the thrill of that chase that tormented him. Five craved anything that gave him that all-consuming high, though when it came to bloodshed, he refused to admit how great it felt being so good at his job back when he was the Commission’s most celebrated assassin.

Feet hitting the sticky floor, Five’s thoughts blurred with an endless reel of bad ideas, only one of them being the idea of hunting you down so he could re-start your conversation from the train, this time pushing past his reservations for why getting to know you wasn’t an option. 

Screw that!

This time Five was going to charm you, wine and dine you, and take you home so he could do all sorts of naughty things to you- if you’d let him, of course . He was a monster, but not that kind of monster .

A few seconds later, hand pushing the bar’s grungy advertisement-covered door open, the cool night air hit Five’s overheated face, but it did nothing to get his head on straight or make him realize he had no idea how to treat a real woman who could talk back or think on her own.

Yes, in this body and one that was much younger, Number Five Hargreeves hit on strippers and waitresses to get a rise out of them, but having an actual two-way conversation with them, followed by any form of true intimacy, no.

No, he’d never done that, but today, with you, he wanted to, so damn badly.

No matter how drunk he was, Five knew that letting himself think like this about you wasn’t right or helping the tent in his pants get any less prominent and he hated himself for it. With his bloodshot eyes struggling to focus, he dizzily turned towards the staggering reflection in the store window next to him, taking in the sad face looking back.

“Pathetic,” he grumbled, before trudging away with his chin lowered to his chest.

C-Cycle of Loneliness

Stumbling along the sidewalks while on his way home, Five felt trapped. He was finally free of all the death and endless killing, but that didn’t mean he felt like he could live, or that he even knew how to.

With his past what it was, he was unable to let anyone other than his family know who he really was and like before ending up powerless in Reginald’s new world, they were failing to see that he wasn’t as okay as he was pretending to be.

Like always, despite what Five felt about this, in most situations, he managed to keep his composure. He acted like he was fine. Putting on a stoic face of impassivity, he attended most family functions when asked. He’d gotten his PHD in record time and handled his work within the CIA professionally, but at the end of the day, he was merely existing and the reasons for it were becoming harder and harder for him to justify.

D- Distance and Diffidence-the opposite of confidence

When it came to shyness and a lack of confidence, most of the time Five Hargreeves would be the last person you would think of, but self-doubt had always plagued him. Growing up with a father that never thought he was good enough was the trigger that inflamed his insecurities, but even worse, after the trials of his youth and his lifetime alone in the apocalypse, he believed that if he’d never left and messed up the way he did, his family never would have died.

Never a day passed that Five didn’t tell himself, If I hadn’t lost it and jumped to the future and got myself stuck, none of this would have happened.

Knowing that none of his siblings were exactly thrilled with how things had gone for them over the last five years, nearly every time Five was around them, he couldn’t help but feel like that was all his fault too.  

Ironically and tragically, long ago, Five was the one that initially distanced himself from his family, but in typical Five Hargreeves fashion, now he’d been overcompensating for his feelings of inferiority by lashing out on those he loved, only further complicating his problems.

Only twenty minutes from the suburbs where Allison and his niece Claire lived with Klaus, who was dealing with the aftermath of his sobriety in their bubble wrapped basement, since they’d been there, Five had only been to their house once.

Looking up at the four-story brownstone looming over him, no less drunk after walking the twelve blocks it took to get home, Five realized that not one of his family members even knew where he lived, and he was surer than ever that they didn’t care to.

They didn’t need him anymore.

E-Egotistical

Five knew he could become preoccupied with his own affairs, often showing others contempt by rolling his eyes at them in annoyance and boredom, or both, but his smug behavior wasn’t as simple as him having an exaggerated perception of his own worth.

Five never meant to become so estranged from his family. They were everything to him, and in addition to that, he never meant to treat you as coldly as he did by running off when you were merely trying to treat him like any other normal person would treat someone else.

No one would have believed it, but the truth was, Five was scared of rejection more than anything. All along he had been trying to protect himself with a mask of indifference as his mighty shield.

F-Fumbling, Fuck It

Fumbling with his keys, Five was confused by his own behavior, and even more bothered by his inappropriate thoughts about you when he didn’t even know you. He was hardly what anyone would call a brainless idiot, but the title seemed to fit as he tripped over his own feet while talking to himself like a total nutcase.

“Hi. Sure… No problem, it’s all good. My shoe and my dick are fine, really. Oh, and what a lovely name. My name is Five. Yeah, that’s right. It’s a fucking number,” he sardonically laughed, then dropped his keys when after several tries, he couldn’t get them to align with the keyhole.

Swooping down to get them, he tipped over, his head banging into the door, swinging the flimsy panel of wood wide with the force of his skull until it slammed into the wall inside his apartment.

“It wasn’t even locked, you dipshit!” he cursed himself as glass skittered across his shoes from the picture frame that just smashed to the floor, the one with a picture of him holding his newborn niece, Grace.

“Fucking, FUCK!” he cried, picking up the picture. 

He started brushing off the tiny shards of glass sticking to it.

When a white line tore right over the bundle in his arms, ruining her little face that was staring up at him as if he were worthy of her look of wonderment, instead of angrily throwing a fist into his already crumbling plaster, Dolores’s familiar voice started to filter into Five’s mind, proving he was doing particularly awful that evening.

As his once beloved mannequin, the one who wasn’t even there, encouraged him to move towards this kitchen and set down the photograph before his bloodied fingers damaged it even more, the suggestiveness he’d created in her calming words had Five’s lips turning up in a drunken smirk of craziness.

You need to sober up, Five… You can’t keep doing this to yourself. Come to bed with me…’

Dripping blood in his cast-iron sink basin, thoughts of a totally different kind of self-absorption filled Five’s head, and with them, a renewed rush of blood went places that had hardly let him forget they were dying for his attention.

Acting in an alcohol induced form of autopilot, obeying Dolores, Five poured himself a glass of water from the tap, drank it, then clumsily navigated the darkness of his one room flat, heading towards his bed, where he fell like a ton of bricks into the rumpled bedding, still fully clothed.

With his knees digging into the bed, lifting him, hands racing to unfasten the buttons on his waist coat and shirt, this was one of Five’s many, many fuck it moments, not that he had much of a choice in how he landed with his head smashed into his pillows.

But…

As he rolled onto his back, his dick twitching from the mere pressure of being pressed into the bed, his hand slipped over his pants, and that was another matter at hand that was all him.

The dips and valley of Five’s abs flexed as he lay there, his youthful body bleached and pale in the slivers of light streaming in from between his blinds. As he let his hands wander and he began to stroke his cock through the layers covering him, the languid motion of his hand was weak in contrast to the sharp angles of pleasure contorting his face.

With the cool air in his room hitting his exposed chest, Five shivered. His eyes narrowed, locking in on the long shadow of his erection that was making a mockery of his pants.

It felt so fucking good to touch himself. He whimpered, as he dug his hand into himself harder, then let up again.

He didn’t mean to, but he lived for this.

In the apocalypse this was all he had. 

Now, going at it at his desk, having spent a long day at work, the papers in front of him hardly stimulating enough to hold his interest, jerking off was just another part of his daily routine.

Lying in bed, in the shower, or even sometimes in the bathroom at work if he found himself unable to reign in his body’s needs, Five would stroke his dick, hard and fast, and before he knew it, he would be biting back guttural moans, head leaned up against a bathroom stall, coming all over a wad of toilet paper, or at his desk, dispensing his load in an already used shirt or anything else that he could reach that was expendable.

It was juvenile, and perverted as all hell, and he knew it, but just thinking about it, the wrongness, and about you, Five was getting harder, his balls filling with that delicious ache that made him feel alive.

“You can touch it, sweetheart” he whispered as he began to unzip his pants, trying to concentrate on the illusion that Dolores was there with him.

He teased himself, brushing his fingers lightly over the cotton still covering his cock.

As if watching it from outside himself, the resin covered peachiness of his beloved’s hand merged with the fleshiness of your real hand.

Palming himself with growing need, the face Five had been seeing looking down at him suddenly smiled the way you smiled at him as the visions in his head became a muddling array of unquenchable desire.

“Fuck, I want you,” Five groaned as his fingers snuck inside the fly of his underwear for just a second before pulling out again.

Acting out your part, he tightened his grip on his girth, making pre-cum begin to leak through his underwear, forming a darkened spot where the head of his cock was begging to be let free.

“Yeah, just like that. Go slow,” he moaned, his fingers wrapping around his length, moving over the stretched fabric as he began to pump, still gently as he possibly could.

Pictures flashed through his mind. His lips on your jaw, your eyelids heavy and expressive as his lips slightly parted, his hair flowing away from his face, tickling your silky skin as he held you from behind like a trusted lover.

At the phantom like sounds of your little laughs filling his ears, Five’s dick pulsed in his hand, blood flowing full and fast.

Unable to take it, he reached inside his underwear, giving in to touching himself more directly.

Five twirled his finger around the end of his cock.

Lowering your head, the heat of your mouth began to slip over the thickness of his leaking tip, tonguing the pool of stickiness gathered there. 

“I knew the second you looked at me, you wanted me,” he arrogantly huffed as you went down on him.

Though Dolores had heard it all before, glaring at him on the sidelines of his mind, she suddenly looked appalled.

You can’t say things like that! she chastised him.

Determined to shake her, Five put all his attention on the feel of his cock entering your throat.

Snuffing out any remaining thoughts of Dolores out of his head, Five quickened his pace, drowning out the sound of her panicky warnings that were trying to make him see that this kind of fantasy was even worse than his others with her.

Five! You are only hurting yourself with this!

“I don’t care!” he growled.

He bit down on his lip and closed his eyes, only to be greeted by the memory of your hair falling over your shoulders as it brushed against his face when you were both back on the train.

He breathed in and he could smell you.

Then his brain trying to piece together what really happened, he saw your look of shock as he rushed away from you like you were the plague or worse. 

“What’s wrong with you?” he heard you angrily yell, even though you had said nothing when he did that.

“Please don’t stop. I’m sorry,” he panted, mad at himself for hurting you, and even more panicked by his own madness.

Fighting back, he kept his pace, and just like that, you just as quickly forgave him, taking him to the hilt, your nose hitting his pubic bone.

Dark hair in his eyes as he watched his entire cock repeatedly drive down your throat, Five hissed, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes-"

Dolores’s voice cried out. Five! You’re losing it again!

‘Go away!’ Five’s mind screamed at itself, proving she wasn’t wrong-he was losing it .

For the next few minutes, the sounds of Five sadistically berating himself as he violently masturbated were absorbed in the quiet of his dark, empty room.

Shame filling him, his stomach twisted.

He was so fucking close. 

His shoulder blades flushed as small beads of sweat formed on the back of his neck. The muscles in his back and arms tensed harder and harder as he quickly moved his hand.

Angling his face to the ceiling, his eyes scrunched shut and his right arm dropped lazily to the side.

His butt cheeks clenched over and over as his bed springs creaked, his thrusts enough to make his headboard bang into the wall as he frantically pumped his body upwards into his hand.

“You-ff-fu-ah-cking lov-vvve my cock-fuck-you’re amazing,” he grunted and writhed, his sweat covered legs burning under the wool of his rumpled pants that were trapped around his ankles as he bent his knees up and his heels dug into the bed.

Already putting on an impressive one-man show of insanity, wanting more of your mouth’s wet heaven, Five let go of his dick, spitting in his hand. Returning to the length of flesh waiting for him, he thrusted up into his fist with louder and louder noises of slicked ecstasy.

Panting and moaning your name, sweat dripped down the curves of Five’s back. Through sharp propulsions of his hips, he cursed. Throwing his other hand back, he clutched and pulled at his own hair.

He held his breath as his mind screamed and his come poured over his fingers.

Lost in what he was pretending was the feel of your mouth accepting him, yet still wanting to spare his sheets, Five aimed his dick inwards, letting his seed pour out over the fine trail of hair leading up his abdomen, the white beads flinging across his otherwise unmarked skin.

Pulses of pleasure took him as he watched the eroticism of defiling himself.

His broken gasps got quieter and quieter. “FFFUUCC-ffff fff-mmmff."

His balls tightening as hips jerked more and more erratically, Five felt the betraying warmth of his tears pooling in the corners of his eyes as he rode out wave upon wave of the orgasm he’d longed more than anything for you to be part of, the defeated voice of his own creation ruminating in his head so loud he couldn’t ignore it anymore.

She doesn’t even know you.

“I know,” he whimpered back with the hand not on his cock, coming up, covering his red face.

G-Grief

Most of Five’s life was filled with intense mourning. He’d witnessed the death of everyone he’d ever loved, more than once. His anguish over having to bury his family left him in a state of ruin, not unlike the burning world he’d found himself in at the ripe age of thirteen.

Hours after he’d drunkenly cleaned up the mess that he’d made of himself, sucking in, mind adrift, Five suddenly couldn’t breathe.

There was too much ash.

So thirsty he could barely swallow, he ran his tongue over his cracked lips, only getting more of the bitter taste of powered cinders and the tang of his own blood.

The smell of burning flesh made him gag into the suffocating white of his pillowcase.

His stomach turned even as it growled with hunger.

Five was asleep, but the horrors he couldn’t outrun were creeping in like the maggots on the thousands of corpses he could see laying all around him, the sickness of it all wiggling into his periphery as he kicked out his legs and tangled himself in his blankets.

I'm going to die here!

It’s too hot!

I can’t get out.

He was being crushed.

Fingers clenching, hands shaking as his chest became tighter and tighter, it was as if he was the one that was dying even though it was the lifeless faces of his siblings flashing in front of his terror filled eyes that were darting around his dark bedroom, seeing nothing but the endless nightmare of his past.

H-Happiness

In another timeline, while not having a nightmare of the panic attack inducing kind, along a sunny roadside, Five had a very revealing conversation with the woman that had plucked him out of hell, only to throw him into a new one.

Ice cream truck stuck motionless, a bullet seconds away from rearranging Luther’s brain, Five stood there in his schoolboy shorts, his pistol pointed at The Handler as he said, “I'm not looking for happy.”

Like so many times, he watched her perfectly painted lips curl with a certain brand of mischievous cruelty that was all her own. “We're all looking for happy, Five,” she coolly corrected.

Looking away, Five tried in vain to hide his panic.

He did want happiness! That was the problem, only he’d given up on it for himself long ago and the Handler knew that pointing out his lie was the perfect way to break him all over again.

Not about to let her win, Five ground his teeth together and defiantly looked back up at her, not bothering to show is venomous disdain as she towered over him in her shiny red heels.

The world never cared what he wanted, but he’d be damned if he’d give up fighting to save it, but now, as he rushed from his bed to his bathroom sink, helplessly sobbing as he filled his hands with scoop after scoop of cold water, trying in vain to bring himself back to reality, who was going to save him?

I-Ignored

It was the day of his niece’s birthday.

Leaving work, after another day of reporting back to his superiors about The Keepers’s activity and them not giving a shit how far he’d gotten infiltrating their cult like secret society, Five looked down at the colorful invitation in his hand, then the package he’d wrapped the best he could in the other.

The shiny paper was lopsided, revealing an electronic toy puppy’s face peeking out from inside.

The last time Five ran into Diego and his family while out at the same store, his goddaughter had told him how much she wanted a very specific chunk of robotic plastic that was over in the nearby toy section.

“I know its the next Tickle Me Elmo or some shit, but we don’t have the money for that. You know that, Grace! Why do you always have to push and push this stuff,” Diego said, scowling at her.

Lila rolled her eyes at that, then unfazed by her look of disapproval, Diego kept moving, throwing more important items in their cart.

The twins, covered in groceries, fussed and cried in their car seats as their parents moved on, not saying anything else to Five other than a flippant, ‘see you later.’  

Like always, they weren’t happy to see him and the little girl looking up at him shared his same look of disappointment.

Hating how let down she looked, Five smiled. “What do you think his name is?” Five asked, pointing to the barking box just down the aisle that said, ‘Makes chocolate poopies you can eat!’ in bold letters.

“I don’t know, Uncle Five,” Grace said, shyly looking down at her shoes. “What do you think he wants to be called?”

Turning back, looking even more irritated as she put back a box of sugar filled kids cereal that Diego was trying to sneak into the cart, Lila yelled, “Grace! Come on!”

The little girl ran off, but Five answered her question after purchasing the toy puppy, programming it to wag its tail as his voice came out through its recorder, saying, “I’m Mr. Pennycrumb and you are my best friend. You should listen to me even though I am a toy dog. Your parents are idiots, but I am still smarter than them.”

A few hours later, after his daughter excitedly tore open her favorite gift of the day, and he heard Five’s special message and Grace’s squeals of delight over it, as he envisioned karate kicking Mr. Pennycrumb into the rafters, Diego’s eyes damn near bugged out of his head as he yelled,  “Really, Five!”

“What,” he said, shrugging.

Clearly Diego and Lila weren't happy with him, but it wasn't like it mattered. They were never happy with him.

Even while in the presence of his family, as Five leaned back against the rainbow ball pit’s netting, it felt like he might as well still be rotting away in the apocalypses still. While at the birthday party with Luther bashing the shit out of the pinata, their bickering and problems with each other never seemed to end. He tried his best, talking to Ben and the others, but once the small talk was done, it was as if he wasn’t even there unless he said something shitty.

Five was just a figure on the sideline, someone who his own family didn’t want to know.

All he wanted his entire life was to get back to them, but when he did, they had moved on. They didn’t understand him, and he couldn’t blame them for that, he didn’t even like who he was, but at least he was owning that. Jerks act like jerks.

If not for the sound of Gracie calling out to him as he was about to leave, Five would have ended up at a bar again, alone and miserable.

“Thank you so much for coming. I love you, Uncle Five,” she said after she ran over to him.

“I love you too,” he quietly replied, trying not to let her hear the crack in his voice as she put her arms up, silently asking him to come down to her level so she could hug him.

That little hug was all it took, and not much after that, Five found himself out in the parking lot with the rest of them, meeting a very strange man named Sy Grossman.

J-Judgement

Most of Five’s life was defined by punishment. He often mused that all the bad things had been inflicted on him as retribution for his many wrongdoings. As for which of his crimes he was paying for now, after finding Viktor, then having a night out at dinner with his family that went all sorts of wrong, the world was set to end again in twenty-four hours, so it didn’t really matter.

No matter how remorseful Five was, or how much he’d already suffered, or how he tried to make things right and move on without hurting anyone else but himself, it seemed that the sentence of this endless destruction would always be his penance.

K-Keepers

Five should have seen it. Both that Ben had tricked them with his sake toast, and long before that obvious con.

Sitting there dressed like an idiot, his fake mustache thicker than it had ever been when he’d been 19 years old the first time around, he had chatted it up in the therapeutic round circle of crazy people, going on and on about how he was walking around in a body not his own.

He was a 65-year-old man for Christ’s sake! This shouldn’t be where he was!

He told those weirdos that he’d lived through things people couldn’t even begin to imagine!

He lived off all kinds of nasty creepy crawlies, his teeth breaking through the crusts of their exoskeletons, the ooze of their insides almost impossible to swallow, but he did it anyway.

He’d brought on so much suffering to others as he traveled through time, briefcase in hand, murdering anyone he was ordered to eliminate.

Some days Five would look in the mirror and get so confused that he’d forget where or who he was. He didn’t know what was real or not anymore.

He didn’t have to pretend that he was nuts, that was why The Keepers let him get closer. That was why he had run into Lila out skipping book club, trying to feel the danger and excitement she’d once lived for before becoming a tired mother who felt like she was drowning in the monotony of her marriage.

Looking away as Diego fumed about catching his wife with her creepy little Greek boyfriend, Five angled his face towards the window.

His mind reeled. Diego was asking for his help! Him of all people!

Everything was falling apart.

After a van ride covered in puke, listening to Baby Shark on repeat, they were all being shot at.

Heart racing, he blinked, just as a shotgun shell was going to split his skull in two.

Only just then realizing he had his powers back, Five landed in a subway station that had not been under the street he was standing on when they got there.

L-Love

Narrowly fleeing from the set-up in psycho Christmas Town, The Hargreeves had escaped unscathed once more, only they didn’t. The marigold in their bodies proved they weren’t who they were before, and the mangled bodies lying all around at the farm they’d come to while looking for Ben verified that once again, they were way in over their heads.

Reginald couldn’t or wouldn’t help them anymore than he already did, and they couldn’t help themselves. Ben was going to die all over again and his love for Jennifer was a curse not meant to be broken.

Watching his brother doing his best cop impersonation, all Five could think about was they were never going to win; they weren’t meant to, even if that was what they were brought up to believe.

The Keepers and their purpose proved Five’s life new life was a shame. He failed to see that his direct report was one of them. He failed to listen to the things inside him that were telling him none of this was real.

No matter how much Five loved his family, it was never going to be enough to fix this.

Later, as Diego tore open filing cabinets in the abandoned office of Dr. Jean and Gene Thibedeau, Lila pursed her lips at Five for about the hundredth time that day, signaling again that she wasn’t happy with him. Hitting his arm, she quietly said, “I say we go off on our own and try to figure out what is going on with this new power of yours. Pull your big girl panties up and stop being a baby.”

Ignoring her, Five watched as Diego entered the next room, then feeling as if he was having an outer body experience he looked down at his hands. They tingled with energy.

He slowly walked to the window, looking down at the street below.

It felt like his heart stopped and he’d been sucked into a vacuum. 

Everything went quiet.

There you were, walking down the street, the sun lighting up your face like a spotlight just for him. Stopping to tie your shoe, you stepped aside, excusing yourself to the person behind you.

You smiled apologetically. 

Something inside Five broke.

It was the same smile you’d given him.

It meant nothing.

The feeling of something special happening when he’d touched you was as fake as the rest of this!

Of all the people he would see in a time like this, it was you! The one person he’d been dying to see since he’d first laid eyes on you.

It was like some cruel fate, same as the one always chasing him, nipping at his heels with imminent death. Everything was just another reminder that no matter how much he wanted things to be different, he had nothing, and he never would.

He wanted to know what it was like to be loved by anyone even a little, but good things weren’t meant for him.

“Five!” Lila loudly whispered, getting even more upset. “We need to try something other than digging around in garbage cans, like that idiot in there! Give me your damn hand and let’s do this already!”

She began to come his way, hand outstretched.

Lila’s voice cracked with emotion when he looked down at it. “Five, I need you…your family needs you.”

Knowing full well that they had no idea what they were going to do about the impending Cleanse, Five’s brows pulled together, and he shook his head, no.

In a daze, still looking at Lila’s hand, the sight of it filled him with memories from the night before, all of them laced with the same sickness and regret he couldn’t escape. 

After a chance run in at the secret Keepers meeting, when a woman wearing a name tag saying Nancy, ran those same reaching fingers across a man named Jerome’s upper lip, tenderly wiping off the powdered sugar from his pastry, Five had thought of you and the one small chance he’d let go to have even a few hours of happiness by your side, just getting to know you.

Eyes moving to his brother, pain in his chest, in a flash of violet hued light, Five was gone, seconds before Lila could reach him.

M-Martyr

Five’s entire life was an example of sacrifice. So many times, he could have given up, or put himself first, but he didn’t.

Thinking of his family and their kids, stuck feeling like he had no other option, he stumbled out of his portal, his eyes scanning the musty subway platform and the train waiting for him.

N-Naïve

Five missed out on so many things that anyone should have the chance to experience during a life as long as his, and because of that, he struggled when navigating the nuances of anything normal.

There was no doubt that Five was full of wisdom, and he didn’t hesitate to pass that on or place judgment on others he saw as beneath him, but there was also an unmistakable childlike innocence behind his eyes, and an explosive immaturity in his outbursts and in his thinking that he could do this alone.

"How long do I have to suffer!" he screamed, his voice echoing down the subway tunnel, then out into the sky above as the light from the day and another apocalyptic world shone down on the filth covered subway steps in front of him.

Rubbing his grimy hands down the front of his tattered waist coat, he pulled out his journal.

It had been seven years, and he had been traveling the labyrinth of tracks, shooting from one timeline to another, each time trying to jump back to before Ben had been killed the first time.

He’d thought if he could just prevent that, it would finally fix everything.

Five knew his power didn’t work the same as before, but he thought it wouldn’t matter.

It did. It mattered big time, and he’d fucked up big time.

Most of the time, he couldn’t even jump backwards. Most of the time he’d climb the stairs, pull his hands together, trying to draw in the strength to do it, and he’d end up right back at the bottom of the steps, staring up at a world that was no more.

Some days, he’d prove he wasn’t a completely impotent imbecile. He’d reach out at the hands of time, yanking them backwards and he’d be thrown into the unimaginable ether that had always been his domain.

He’d find himself standing in a world with living breathing people again!

Racing to the academy, grabbing anything he could steal and stuff in his pockets or his mouth along the way, he’d feel a flicker of hope.

That never lasted long.

Never finding their real timeline, Five had been attacked, over and over once inside what had been his home, but clearly wasn’t anymore. Sometimes he wouldn’t even get that far, having found himself in a place that was at first glance not where he had meant to be based on floating cars or other bizarre things dotting the skyline.

Out of his mind with hunger and more mentally ruined than he’d ever been, he noted the marks on the floor, a long skid mark from something dragging and that there were three light bulbs out overhead. Fairly certain he hadn’t been there before, looking like a scraggly haired bum that was wearing some guy’s trashed business suit, Five jammed the notebook back in his pocket. Reaching in the other, he pulled out his pistol. Started talking to himself again, his feet stomped up the tiled stairs to the street.

“If I see that little fucker again, and he shoots at me, I swear this time I am going to go over there and choke the shit out of him,” he growled, referring to the fun of being shot at by another version of himself so many times before this that he couldn’t even remember how many times it had happened to him anymore.

His voice was cracked and hoarse, only adding to the pained sound in it as he cursed himself out. He was beginning to feel lightheaded again from lack of food and from how much his lungs were struggling to match up to the blood that rushed around his body from the mere effort of carrying himself out of the darkness.

When the first piercing sound of the other him’s rifle reverberated across the barren landscape, Five flinched, the full metal jacket projectile missing him by only a fraction of an inch as it blasted apart an already crumbling piece of concrete next to him instead.

Stepping forward, arm shaking as he held up his gun, Five screamed, "Just kill me, for fuck's sake, you asshole! I don't want to live like this anymore!"

Eye narrowed on his scope, the other Five, trying to survive, just like he had done when it was him, with no one but Dolores by his side to keep him sane, pulled the trigger like all the other Fives he'd come across did, for some reason, not even thinking twice about killing the first living person he’d seen in twelve years.

O-Oh, Shit!

“OH, Shit!” Five’s voice shrilly rang out as the solid copper tipped point of the projectile ripped through his left arm, tearing the muscle in his bicep clean through as it flew out behind him, zipping down the stairwell.

Refreshed clarity of the life and death kind hitting him hard and fast as the warmth of his blood drenched the inside of his sleeve, Five got down as far as he could, spinning towards the safety of the subway entrance. 

“At least I fucking hesitated when I saw the Handler!” he breathed, just as another bullet ripped through him, this time nicking bone in his right thigh.

He dropped to his knees.

“Fuck you, you crazy fucker!” he screamed.

He’d asked for it.

It was dumb, but he did.

He knew that he was also a crazy fucker in this situation but that did nothing to make him want to kill the other him any less.

Bleeding out in two different places, Five’s fingers clawed at the ground, and he growled in anger, forcing his body to get back up.

Half falling, half running down the steps, the soft tissue in his upper left shoulder suddenly felt like he’d been stabbed with a zillion fiery needles as the spinning force of the next bullet went straight through his back and out his chest.

Lunging for the doors of the train, Five fell into the closest seat, his eyes wide as he looked down at the crimson bloom spreading across his dress shirt.

P-Pain

As a murky curtain of darkness moved into Five’s narrowing field of vision, he clung to the metal support rail attached to his seat. He knew that feeling the rocking motion of the train as it raced to the next station was a good thing because it meant his powers hadn’t failed him yet, but it wasn’t much to hold onto. Each tiny shift in the track felt like it might kill him.

It hurt to breathe.

Even if he made it to the next stop, there was no way he’d be able to jump back to a time when there may have been a hospital and someone living and breathing to get him there. 

This was it, the end.

 ~~~

As you were disappointingly tossing another aluminum can with a broken seal, this one that had at one time held the syrupy sweetness of what you determined might have been peaches, the pile of rubble you were sorting through started to shift, the smaller chunks of debris skittering down the slope of junk.

“What the-”

Even more odd, you started to feel the ground vibrating under your feet, followed by the sound of a train screeching down the subway tunnel located in the subterranean level of your search area.

Your bag slipped off your arm, scattering your finds on the ground as you turned toward the subway entrance a few yards away.

This made no sense, so naturally you tried to rationalize what you were feeling and hearing.

There was no train.

There was no electricity.

There was no anyone, or anything anymore.

All around you, there was nothing but the remains of long ago destroyed buildings and the sun-bleached bones of the dead.

You lived in a world with no voices but your own, no horns honking, no smells of food carts wafting past.

“Impossible…” you breathed.

By the time you made it down the subway station’s cobweb infested stairs, the doors on the train that shouldn’t be there were opening. Hesitantly coming closer to what you were sure was evidence that you’d lost your mind, the humming of the train’s powerful engine slowed.

There was a feeling of static that shouldn’t be there in the dank air.

The hair on your arms prickled in warning.

Still, you came forward, your boots kicking up thick layers of dust. The fluorescent lights hanging above illuminated the tiny particles slowly swirling in front of you, making everything seem even more surreal than it already was.

The lights inside the train flickered as you came towards it.

You could see a pool of red liquid on the long fiberglass bench just inside the threshold. Even more ominous, there was an array of bloody handprints leading to the motionless blood covered body on the floor.

Creeping around to get a better look at the young man lying there, you kept your guard up, but other than him, the train looked empty. 

Looking down at him again, your breath hitched. 

He whispered your name just as his eyes fluttered closed.

You gasped his name back, then the lights went out.

Q-Quiet

“Oh, my God! Five!” you repeated, not believing your eyes as you dropped to the floor next to him.

He was conscious, but you could hardly see his eyes under his slitted lids, and his words came out so weak you almost didn’t hear them as he said, “You’re not supposed to know me.”

“What are you talking about!” you frantically cried.

His reply to that came as the quietest whimper.

“Five?”

He said nothing.

You lowered your ear to his slightly parted lips.

Thankfully, you heard the softest breaths coming out of him even though he was breathing so shallowly his chest didn’t appear to be moving at all.

Terrified, you did what you could to tighten the necktie that was already pinching the blood flow to his arm, and then you checked the belt he’d already tried to secure to his leg to stem the worst of that bleeding. Rolling him so you could lift the back side of his jacket, you saw the blood-soaked exit wound in his upper left shoulder blade. Having nothing but the scarf you had on to use as a bandage, you pressed it over the hole, wrapping it around him tight, then tucking the ends under his shirt and vest to add pressure. 

Five remained unconscious as you readied him, and he stayed that way as you began hauling him up the stairs, then outside where you loaded him on your cart.

With his legs dangling and his feet nearly touching the ground, it wasn’t the ideal form of transport, but he wasn’t going to make it if you stayed there, or if you left him and then came back with something bigger.

“Stay with me,” you begged, checking one more time to see if he was still with you, then you shoved forward, pulling him along as you thought about what he just said.

Of course, you knew Five. It all started after the war that ended it all.

Dressed in his Umbrella Academy uniform, Five had been wandering for the third day straight, looking for anything he could use to help him survive the apocalyptic hell he’d found himself in. Exhausted, he was about to give up and go back to his blanketed shelter, but then he spotted what he thought was another person sitting over in the toppled mess that was left of one of the city’s shopping centers.

The person was waving at him with the only arm they had left, but as Five came closer, disappointment filling him as he looked down at the lifeless face of a female mannequin, he heard something.

Tap! Tap! Tap! Tapppppp-Tappppp-Tappppp. Tap! Tap! Tap!

The air around him swirled, ruffling his hair as it covered his young face in cinders. 

He stopped and listened, but as everything became still again the eerie quiet of mass death was all he heard.

He started to walk away.

Tap, tap, tap. Tapppppp-Tappppp-Tappppp. Tap, tap, tap.

“Shit,” he breathed, stopping short as his mind processed the pattern. That wasn’t the sound of some random piece of metal flapping in the smoky wind.

Racing towards where he’d thought he heard the repetition of morse code, trapped in the darkness, under layers and layers of broken concrete, you started your distress call again, rhythmically moving a chuck of rock against one of the building's mangled trusses.

You were sure that you were going to die down there, just like everyone else that survived the initial blast only to find themselves buried, but then you hear something break through the quiet.

Someone was calling down to you through the cracks left in the massive pile of building material. You cried back, but it felt way too muffled for it to matter, but it did.

He kept calling out, telling you to look for anywhere you might see light, asking you all sorts of questions that at the time made no sense, like if there was room behind you or in front of you and how much, if you were pinned down, or if you could determine which way was up.

Then, one second you were alone in the darkness, dehydrated to the point of dangerously low blood pressure, your legs hardly having more than a few feet to move, and the next, you were blinded by a burst of light, something solid and warm was behind you and then you were weightless.

When your feet hit the ground back on level ground, your legs felt like jelly and your stomach flipped. 

Dizzily trying to adjust as you looked at the boy holding onto you upright, your eyes slowly moved from his, to the famous Umbrella Academy crest embroidered on his blazer. 

It couldn’t be…

The superpowered boy the world had known as Number Five Hargreeves had been missing your entire life, but there he was, looking about the same age as you even though that was way younger than he should have been.

R-Rain

Looking back at this older Five, his limp body rocking with each rotation of your cart’s wheels, your eyes blurred as tears streaked down your cold cheeks.

As if you didn’t know you had to hurry, the clouds in the west were moving in fast, meaning another storm was coming.

With the strap at your waist digging in hard enough that you could feel your skin rubbing raw, you forced your body to move faster. “Come on!” you roared, gritting your teeth with the effort of moving the weighted down cart over another deep washout in the road.

Years ago, Five had taken you down that same road. 

You could still see it that morning, Five running back to your campsite, his straight white teeth flashing in the sun as he smiled with boyish excitement that made your cheeks feel warm.

Talking about a mile a minute, he told you that he’d found a structure that wasn’t completely ruined, and by some miracle, attached to it, there was even a greenhouse that still had most of the glass hanging in its windows. Even better, inside it there were all kinds of bags filled with unspoiled seed.

After years of fighting the elements and starvation together, you had found your first break from the burdens of the apocalyptic world you were stranded in. 

If you could just get him back there now, it would be okay. 

It had to be.

Your breaths were becoming more and more labored as you went, only becoming worse as you thought about the last day you were with Five. 

That was over five years ago.

It was midsummer. You had been with him at the home with the greenhouse attached to it for several years at that point.

That night, like he always did, Five was sitting at the kitchen table, running over his numbers. He was getting close; he was sure of it. You were both going back very soon, and he was going to stop this all from ever happening. 

Scratching his face as he concentrated, Five unknowingly smeared a smudge of black ink from his fingers down the narrow bridge of his nose.

“Fucking, fuck, mother fucker,” he mumbled as he angrily scratched out nearly half a page of his equations.

Even though you knew he was mad, you couldn’t help it, your breath started coming out of you in little puffs of amusement.

With the heel of his palm dug into his forehead, Five looked up at you through the fringe of dark hair hanging in his eyes.

“A genius with your captivating use of the word fuck, along with you being the savior of the world is sure to drop some panties when we get back,” you’d teased. “I hope you don’t forget me when you have all those other people to glare at.” 

Not waiting for him to verbally retaliate, you turned and raised up on your tippy toes to put your dinner dishes up where the mice wouldn't walk all over them.

Within seconds, you felt the comforting currents of energy building in the air around you as Five blinked. The warmth of his mouth pressed against the back of your neck. 

Brushing your hair aside with his face, his arms wrapped around your midsection, possessively locking you in his high voltage embrace.

“Forget you? Not a chance,” he said, letting his lips tickle the shell of your ear. 

You wriggled and laughed as his fingers started crawling under your shirt. Hot palms claiming your breasts, he began a soothing circular motion, threading his fingers over your nipples until they were hard, and of course it all felt so good being taken over by him that soon he had you moaning his name.

“That’s right. I am all yours,” Five smugly hummed as he continued to pluck and pinch.

Your head dropped back against this shoulder as he kissed along your neck. Moving his awakening manhood against your butt, his fingers slid around your hip, going right between your legs.

“When it comes to panty dropping, your delicious cunt is the only one I’ll ever be interested in devouring, sweetheart,” he promised as his fingers moved faster. “I just need to get us back and then I am going to really destroy you with this thing.” 

To punctuate which thing he was referring to, Five he rammed his cock into your ass.

Mind going bananas over the dirty things Five was saying and doing, your body clenched around his fingers and your legs starting to tremble. 

So much had changed over the years.

You were no longer just two people walking the Earth, fighting to survive.

In that place together, you became each other’s everything.

The sun’s setting rays coming in from the window above the sink reflected Five’s beautiful face next to yours as he burrowed his face into your neck.

“As long as you’ll have me, I’ll never let you go,” he lovingly whispered.

And he didn’t let you go, not until hours later, when a rush of cool air coming in from the window replaced where he’d had his body warmly snuggled up behind you.

Rolling over, in the dim light of the bedroom, you could see Five bouncing around as he tugged on his discarded underwear. 

Hard droplets of rain started pelting the floor next to the bed, but before you could move to do something about it, Five blinked over, shutting the window. Just then, something outside loudly crashed into the side of the house.

When he quickly started to head out the room, your eyes widened with worry. “Where are you going?” you asked.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right back,” he chuckled. “I need to crank the windows closed in the greenhouse before it gets too windy. I just fixed the levers on the upper awnings, and I don’t want to have to go back to watering everything by hand out there when normally the lighter rains do such a nice job of it for me.”

You could hardly argue with that, or with what Five said next.

“Since you finally decided to let me hump the sweet fuck out of you, I have way better things to do with my free time then lugging around tiny watering cans,” he added, while shamelessly taking in the sight of you laying there naked, except for the thin blanket you’d started to modestly to tug in front of you. 

Already getting to you by being ridiculously sexy, standing there with his hair sticking up everywhere, Five gave you a cocky grin that would make the devil blush. 

“Don’t go anywhere,” he taunted. 

Still wiping the sleep from your eyes, you dreamily replied, “I won’t.”

Looking as wild and handsome as ever, hardly dressed, Five disappeared through the bedroom door, heading out through the townhouse’s back kitchen.

Suddenly, lightning flashed, and the entire room shook so hard you were sure the roof over the less habitable parts of the house might collapse.

You sprung out of bed to the sound of glass smashing.

Running after him, at first, all you could see were darkened plants carpeting the raised garden beds. 

Coming around the small table in the center of the greenhouse, fragments from the broken window above embedded in the soles of your feet, but you didn’t even feel it because Five was lying there on the cement floor, the rain drops dancing in the puddles of red all around him. 

The long shard of glass that had sliced his neck clean open was still laying in the palm of his hand as his empty eyes looked up, staring off at nothing.

Nearly falling down as your foot got stuck in a rut in the road, you knew you needed to keep your mind in the present, but you couldn’t. 

There was blood everywhere! 

That was just like this Five! With him dying as he lay there on the floor of that train!

A cry that was part anger, part anguish crawled out of your throat as you turned, looking back at him on your cart.

“Please say something,” you begged, not sure if he was dead or not because he hadn’t moved or made a noise. “Five!” you screamed, when he didn’t respond. 

The first icy drops of rain began to hit your face.

Then, just as you were going to run back there, Five quietly moaned your name as he slowly lifted his arm, pointing a finger at the sky. “You and the moon in the same timeline, makes sense…both always just out of reach for guys like me,” he said, choking on what sounded like a laugh.

On the verge of full hysterics, trying not to think about the horrors of what happened before, or what that moon and timeline stuff was all about, you dug the toes of your boots in, pushing off the broken blacktop as the deep purples of twilight disappeared in the blanket of angry clouds.

It was raining hard by the time you got back. By then you were both soaked, and Five’s complexion was cast in a deathly gray that made your stomach sink with bottomless dread.

S-Stitches

Other than that odd comment, Five remained mostly out of it as the cart bumped and bounced along on the debris-filled road, but as you lugged him inside almost an hour later, he woke up, full alert.

“FFFFUUCK!” he growled as you pulled him upright with his right shoulder under yours, lifting him.

Dragging his bad leg, you both staggered the few feet it took to get to the front door.

“I am sorry,” you breathed as you lugged him inside, kicking the door behind you to a continuous chorus of his breathy ‘fucks.’

A few seconds later, moving across what at one time had been the home's parlor but now served as the bedroom as well, collapsing on the bed, Five’s wet hair fanned out on the pillows.

Rushing over to place a fresh pile of wood on top of the dying embers in the hearth, Five’s face rolled to the side, watching you as he listlessly took in his shadowy surroundings.

Turning towards the adjacent kitchen area to get the medical supplies you needed, his eyes followed you again.

“Dolores?” he croaked. 

Not done washing your hands yet, you turned. As you figured, he was looking at the mannequin sitting at the kitchen table, but for some reason Five looked oddly confused by the sight of her.

“I am sorry, Dolores,” he said, his voice quivering. “I tried. I really did, but it had been so long, and before that, it was- You know I was try- I was so fucked up. And I- I just couldn’t move on and I- They needed me and I-"

“It’s okay, everything is going to be okay,” you said, trying to calm him as you rushed back, setting your supplies on the bedside table. 

Not stopping, your hands quickly moved over him, undoing the necktie on his left bicep so you could work his jacket off and remove his soiled dress shirt and vest. 

Replacing his makeshift tourniquet, you lifted his right hand, placing a wad of gauze in it before pushing it down over the bullet hole just below his left clavicle. “Try to keep pressure on that if you can. You lucked out. That one missed your lung, but I need to pull these down to see what’s going on with your leg,” you said, having already unzipped his fly, your hands on his hips waiting for his consent.

Five nodded, so you undid the belt cinched around his upper thigh.

Carefully pulling down his blood-soaked pants, not far down you gasped, and not because he wasn’t wearing any underwear.

“Who did this to you?!” you asked, slipping the leather strap back around his leg to pinch off the blood flow again.

“An even more fucked up version of me did it back in the wrong timeline I landed in before this one.” 

Something in your already tense expression must have changed to something much worse because Five’s dazed looking eyes moved away, looking at Dolores again.

“I’m my own worst enemy,” he said, deliriously trying to laugh about it before he continued to ramble things that made no sense. “That day you fell into me on the train, you were being so nice. I felt… I was- I don’t know… I wish I had at least had the courage to accept your offer to buy me a coffee. I wanted to, but I didn’t think I should. All I ever wanted was to have something like that in my life. Someone to talk to, someone to be even just my friend.”

His eyes misted over.

“I blew it, but it didn’t matter anyway. Everything went to shit. My powers don’t work right! I have been trying to get back for seven fucking years and I can’t, and that timeline is ending in a few hours anyway. Everyone was counting on me, and I failed them again.”

Before he said all that, you knew in any normal circumstance it would have been impossible for the Five laying on your bed to be the same one that was buried out in the yard, but your heart wanted to believe differently so badly. 

He looked exactly like him.

He’d known your name. 

He knew the mannequin neither of you were willing to leave behind, because if not for her, he’d have spent a life alone and you would have died.

But he wasn’t your Five. 

Looking even more upset than you were getting about all this, he kept on trying to explain things, telling you about this other world he had been in, and something called ‘The Cleanse.’ 

Wiping the mess of blood off his cold skin, you smeared antiseptic around the jagged edge of the hole in his thigh. Not knowing what else to do to prepare him, you soothingly shushed him. “It’s okay, everything is going to be okay, Five. We will figure it out.”

You wanted to believe that, but you didn’t even know if he’d make it through the night.

Popping some long-ago expired pain pills in his mouth, then lifting a glass to his lips, Five swallowed your offering with no question, half the water going in, and the other half running down his chin.

As you pulled on a pair of sterile gloves, his fingers brushed against the side of your leg. "How do you know me?” he quietly asked. “I never told you my name and you aren’t supposed to be here.”

“Bite down,” you ordered, ignoring that question as you placed a rolled towel in front of his mouth. 

Again, he listened, biting down. 

“You are lucky the bullets that hit your arm and chest went right through you and didn’t hit anything important, but the one in your leg is still in there. I need to get it out before I stitch this one closed, and if you think it hurt when that other you filled you with lead, get ready, because something tells me this is going to be much, much worse.”

Lifting your sanitized surgical tweezer, you lowered the long-pointed ends to the seeping wound in his leg.

Not even close to the casing you needed to reach, Five was forcing air through his nose at a panicked pace and his legs were starting to shake.

Pressing down on his knees, you held him as still as possible as you dug deeper.

As the tweezers sunk into his flayed skin, kicking out, Five howled through the cloth in his mouth, “Ffff-rrrrrrrr-ffffuuuuCCCCCKKK!” 

“Almost there,” you breathed as you felt the end of your tweezers tapping against something hard. 

A few painful seconds later, after pulling the lump of metal back through Five’s torn muscle tissue, you dropped the bloody chunk of metal in the bowl on the table, then went for the needle and thread you’d already prepped. 

“This is the worst one. The others won’t be as bad,” you assured, moving along gently as possible, with the point of your needle pulling through the mangled edge of his broken skin.

After the third stitch, as you began to pull Five’s skin together, his entire body started to quake so hard you had to move over, sitting yourself on top of his knees to keep his legs down.

“Just a few more,” you said, determinedly biting down on your lower lip as he brought both arms up, grasping the rungs on the headboard with a white knuckled grip. 

Two more stitches, and one more pull, and Five’s sweat covered chest was heaving. The faintest sound, like the squeak of a small animal crept out from between his clenched teeth. One more pull and his eyes rolled back in his head, and he went completely limp.

T-Touch

Fevered nights turned into long worry filled days and you never left Five’s side unless you had to. Cleaning his wounds, and then his entire body, no modesty allowed in the state he was in.

Five was entirely at your mercy just like once, long ago, you were at his. 

As he lay there with no shirt, and no pants on, covered in a mound of heavy blankets that smelled cleaner than anything he’d slept on in seven years, unable to avoid it any longer, you explained why you knew him. 

You didn’t even come close to telling him all of it, but still, you could see that what you did say didn’t settle well.

Brining another spoon of thin soup to his lips, stopping you short, Five shook his head. “I don’t deserve this,” he quietly whispered as the shutters rattled against the windowpanes in the cold wind that blew outside.

Moving closer, you set the bowl down. Gently as possible, you pressed a cool cloth to Five’s sweat covered brow. He leaned his face into your hand, whimpering.

Five may not have been starving from hunger like he was the last time he’d found himself stuck in the apocalypse, but the things he’d told you happened to him proved that for his entire life, he’d been starved of almost any kind of touch from someone other than people who wanted to hurt him.

After he’d laid it all out there, you realized helping him wasn’t going to be as easy as closing his wounds. His life started the same as the Five’s you had known, only his took many different turns, all of them bad, leaving him a broken man in the body of a boy again. Then, him saying that he'd lived nearly a lifetime alone with no one there for him but Dolores wasn’t even the worst of it.

That wasn’t what killed his spirit.

In his own words, even before that, he had all but given up, and he regretted that part of his life more than anything. He’d mistakenly pushed his family away. He said that there wasn’t a day as he rode his time travel train to nowhere that he didn’t think of them, and you, all the while wishing so badly he was able to go back and do everything differently. 

Laying down next to him, curling your body around his as much as you could without hurting him more, Five’s body trembled, trying to heat itself as the infection gnawing at him raged.

“None of this was your fault, Five,” you whispered as you watched his face twist with pain.

The fire crackled, the only sound filling the room as you felt for his hand, your fingers slowly running across his torso until you found it at his side. 

You threaded your fingers around his. “Just keep fighting, okay?”  

Shivering, he squeezed your hand back.

U-Unexpected

It was the start of summer, and the sun was shining in from above as Five sat at one of the chairs pulled up to the table in the greenhouse. Breathing in, his lungs filled with the sweet smell of hundreds of ripening strawberries.

It had been months since those first pain-filled nights, and as the days passed it was becoming harder and harder for him not to lose himself to the growing contentment he was feeling.

It was entirely unexpected, but then again, so were you.

Like the twist of fate that made you stumble into him that day on the train, like something out of a dream, there he was listening to you obnoxiously singing along to the CD boombox sitting in the next room. 

‘Y o, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want-’

The selection laying around was slim when it came to CDs that weren’t too warped to play, but watching you shake your booty as you danced around the kitchen made Five totally forget that he didn’t like pop songs.

‘If only I could keep finding batteries that fit the radio… ’ he silently mused while fighting the urge to start belting out the girl empowered lyrics with you. 

Five had an endless supply of scenarios running around in his head of how this morning could go, only one of them was him coming in there, sweeping you off your feet while he sang the blaring lines about making it last forever as he also slammed his body down and wound it all around on yours.

‘You gotta, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta!’ you sang, waving at him as you reached for another handful of green beans to snap.

Thinking about how just a smile from you made him feel hot, and how much he wanted to be your lover, and how he sounded nothing like you or the Spice Girls when he sang, Five stretched his bad leg under the drape of the tablecloth. His muscles still complained but the dull ache was nowhere near what it had been, and even better, he could walk without needing you to help him, or without needing a cane.

Looking over at Dolores who was sitting across from him, Five’s smile soured. “I hated that cane,” he quietly grumbled. “All I needed was a monocle to go with it and I’d have looked like some younger alternate universe jackass version of that monster.”

‘Reginald was many things, an alien included, but in the end, he did try to help you, and you in no way looked anything like him with your cane,’ Dolores reminded him.

Averting his eyes from hers, Five decided it was not worth arguing with her. If he kept it up, you were for sure going to hear it and he didn’t need that happening again. You’d been very understanding when he’d feverishly admitted way too many things about his relationship with Dolores, but…

Yeah. 

Sipping the herbal concoction you’d so sweetly brewed him that morning, Five looked down at the old notebook sitting there. It was filled with equations that were very close to getting the math right for getting back, only he was not the one that had done them.

No. He was not that Five, and at the age of 20, like that Five had been when he almost figured it out, he himself at that same age was nowhere near it. At that age, he almost died of dysentery. 

Five looked down at his own journal filled with scribbled notes about stains on floors, broken vending machines and burnt-out light bulbs. 

Spreading his fingers, palms warming in the sun, just the thought of blinking filled him with that familiar buzz of energy he used to live for. But no matter how many times he tried to blink himself even a short distance across the room, he’d still find that it didn’t work that way anymore, and then he’d be flung out of his purple-colored portal into the subway tunnel where you’d found him.

Five pulled his hands back in his lap and slipped the strap back around the leather journal, closing it as he tucked it away.

He couldn’t get back on that train. 

“The only thing I can promise you if we get on there, is that we will be lost,” he’d told you when trying to explain it. He could do that to himself again, but he couldn’t do that to you.

He felt horrible about it, but you never pushed him on it. You never blamed him. You always said it was okay.

He didn’t get it.

Then, after coming back to the house a week ago from another failed jump, something happened. Hearing him kicking stones along the road as he cursed like a maniac, you dropped your garden trowel, ran over, and hugged him.

Smiling up at him, you said, “Five, you need to stop this. You are breaking my heart all over again by looking so pouty all the time.”

Five knew you cared about him. He knew you cared about the other him, but past your caring about either of them in a way that was more than survival based and simply supportive and platonic in nature, that he couldn't figure out. 

You’d told him so many things about the years you were with the other him, but when it came to the details, he could tell you were holding back.

Not sure what to do about it, but knowing exactly how he felt about you, that afternoon in the yard, not more than a few feet away from his own grave, Five had hesitantly let his hand move up your back, hugging you back. He’d never done that before.

He figured, even if you didn’t feel the same way, it wasn’t like you weren’t already intimately familiar.

You’d held him before…

You’d seen him at his worst, fully exposed, laying there in a bloody mess of tears.

He’d told himself that desperately clinging to the person that meant everything to him, even if he’d fallen hopelessly in love with them was normal. Right?

Fuck, he knew it wasn’t… and neither was having to roll himself out of bed almost every night, taking off like a creeper in the night under the pretense that he needed to take a piss, when really he needed to take care of other personal business involving him grasping his dick.

Worried about him, you’d come outside to check on him more than once, and you’d come very close to busting him beating his meat, but Five wasn’t about to stop sleeping by you if you were willing to keep letting him, even if that meant he was constantly waking up hard with his hands on parts of your body that they shouldn’t be touching.

Trying not to think about that, and if you noticed him accidentally doing that or not, instead, as the sunny sky shown down on you holding him like he was a big man baby, Five tried to focus on the feel of your head resting on his chest and how you were soothingly playing with the hair dangling at the nape of his neck. 

Of course that wasn’t really helping, and because of that, he totally missed that you were up to something more than indulging him like you usually did.

Seemingly totally unaware of what you were doing to him, other than that you were turning him into a worthless puddle of goo, sneakily reaching up, you aggressively started ruffling his hair into a chocolatey nest of fuzzy tangles and unruly waves.

Shocked by the unprovoked attack, as you pivoted away from him, looking about as tickled as you could be over how easy it was to get him, Five’s mouth opened, but nothing came out, and that got you really laughing.  

“Oh my God, Five, I love you!” you breathlessly teased.

“Whhh-ahh…?” 

Taken by either his inarticulate reply, or at how ridiculous he looked, Five wasn’t sure, you came back to him, looking up at him sympathetically. “Five, beating yourself up over this isn’t going to change anything.” You gently brushed a piece of hair out of his eyes. “Maybe let it go for a while and just try to live a little. You deserve that.”

With that, you leaned in, your lips feather soft as they pressed against his cheek, then you walked away, leaving him dying to kiss you back.

V-Voracious, a wanting, devouring, feeling emotions to an intense degree

After that day, and the many others that came after your spicy Spice Girls kitchen bean snapping show of cuteness, Five did let himself live a little more, and you teased him even more, oftentimes tickling him into submission, and to him, it seemed like you might be doing it for nothing other than the joy of watching him squirm. But maybe not.

As you smiled at him from the other room, Five felt what had become his normal feeling of butterflies in his stomach and that pitiful aching in his chest. Doing the daily domestic things, like watching you change the bedding as he busied himself in the greenhouse, he could almost forget about all the bad things that had happened.

His family were out there, yet not. They were frozen in time as far as the space time continuum and his fucked subway time travel loop were concerned. It had been almost eight years since he’d left them, only hours from facing their demise, but to them, if he could get back, they wouldn't even know that he wasn't there to begin with.

In many ways, they were gone, not him, and it had been that way for so long.

If Five could have gotten back, it would start all over. He’d have hours to figure all this out, but he had nothing figured out in the way of helping them. That should have tormented him incessantly like it had before, but now, feeling like he had no other choice but to accept this fate, the last thing on his mind when he looked at you was the Cleanse, or other timelines that were about to be destroyed.

Even more crazy, he didn’t hate himself the way he used to and that was because you didn’t hate him for any of it.

Also, crazy, if he didn’t think you might knee him in the nards, he had half a mind to come over there and toss you on that mattress and show you that you weren’t the only one who knew how to play dirty.

He may not have been able to do anything to help his family or the rest of the world, but fuck did he want to show you he still had some fight left in him by putting those old bed springs to the test, rocking his hips into you to the beat pumping out of the tiny speakers sitting on the table behind him.

Watching you bend over to pick up your growing pile of linens, Five’s smile grew. When you disappeared from view, he called out your name. “Hey, why don’t we leave this work for later? Come out here and join me. I’ll let you beat me at a game of chess, and you can even use the unicorn charm as your queen this time.”

Coming around the corner, you dropped the laundry on the floor and shook your head at him. “I’m the one that lets you win, and we both know you are the magical unicorn around here,” you said, pelting him in the chest with a large berry you just picked from one of the bushier plants near the door.

“Sure,” he mockingly drawled, as he began to water the plants again. “You know I love magically fooling around with this cute little watering can all day because I aim to please the lady of the house.” 

Five grinned. 

“You know…with me being pretty much worthless otherwise," he added, not even looking as he pegged you in the boob with a berry.

The song playing ended and another 80’s song about rains in Africa started. Using the music to cover your footsteps, from the corner of his eye, Five still saw you coming. Just as you were about to come up behind him to rumble up his hair until he looked like an asshole, he turned, tipping the watering can over your head.

The dribbles he let escape ran down the length of your hair, a few of them raining down on your perfectly stunned face.

“Oops,” he said, grinning even wider. 

“Was that necessarily?” you asked, trying to scowl at him, but clearly having trouble doing it.

“Yes,” he smugly replied as he casually set the watering can down.

“Why?” you challenged, your eyes following his every move.

“Because,” He reached out, slowly running a finger across your wet cheek as he leaned in, whispering in your ear. “Maybe I just wanted to see if I could get you wet.”

You no longer looked like you were about to burst out laughing.

Five knew he was playing with fire, but he couldn’t take it anymore. He had to know.

He glanced up at the boarded-up window above, then his eyes met yours again as he quietly said, “I’ll never stop being sorry that I am not him, but-”

“Five-” you started to argue, no doubt planning to tell him it wasn’t his fault that he died and that now he couldn’t get you out of there.

“Shhhh,” he uninterrupted, pressing a finger to your lips to silence you. “I’m not done.” His smirk softened. “I know he loved you, and that’s because I love you. The question is, do you love me too? Like this?” he clarified, lowering his chin, the tip of his nose brushing against yours.

“Five,” your voice cracked with emotion. 

Your lips pressed against his. 

The softest sound crawled out of his throat, moving up through his nose as Five kissed you back, innocent, and beautiful in his not knowing exactly how to do it but doing it anyway. His hand moved behind your head as he parted his lips, letting his mouth move against yours, his tongue just starting to play along your teeth, pushing for more.

From there, with your hands reactively moving up into his hair, pulling him to you even more, his kiss grew deeper and more desperate.

Coming up for air several minutes later, you breathlessly whimpered, “I love you so much, Five. I always will. I just didn’t know if you wanted this with me. You kept saying things that made me think maybe, but then you-”

Hearing that, he frantically started pressing kisses down your neck, then down to your shoulder. “Fuck yeah, I wanted this,” he said as he took your breath away. His trembling hands played at the hem of your shirt before he suddenly stopped and broke away, peering at you.

“Is this okay?” he asked, his hands tentatively sliding up over the cotton covering your back as his excited smile exposed more of his charmingly boyish dimple.

Your reply came with you suddenly lifting the material in his way all the way up over your head. 

Speechless, Five’s intense gaze fell over your naked upper body.

“Holy shit, I was not expecting that,” he breathed. Recapturing your lips a few seconds later, he kissed you two more times, then, still trying to kiss you, he mumbled, "I have imagined doing this for so long, just ask the flowers by the front door that have been watching me jerking off every night. They know just how badly I wanted to see these perky tits.”

You started to giggle over that new piece of information, but that quickly turned into you moaning into Five’s mouth from the feeling of him sliding his fingers over your nipples. Encouraged by that, he continued with his ministrations, slowly and softly caressing you until you moaned even more.

When he released your lips, you let out a small whine at the loss, but you were quickly placated as Five moved his kisses along your jawline, stopping for just a moment to nibble on your ear.

“Gah- ahhh,” you gasped, it felt so good, and to that, Five bit down on your lobe, his teeth stinging your flesh as he pinched your nipples at the same time.

You squeaked, your legs clenching together even tighter.

Five let out a breathy laugh as his lips moved over your ear, seductively whispering, "Was that good?"

“You really are still the same cocky little shit you always were, aren’t you?” you shot back.

Nodding his head yes, Five leveled his lopsided grin at you. “Probably worse,” he admitted

“Take your shirt off, “ you demanded, hardly able to believe how silly and hot he was being.

Happily obeying, Five tore off his emerald green sweater that matched his eyes, tossing it over with your shirt on the floor.

“Better?” he questioned.

“Much,” you replied as your fingers began to graze his skin, exploring the hard expanse of his toned chest, down his stomach, delighting in the lean ‘V’ of muscle leading towards his hips.

As your fingers played along the dark, almost jet black trail of hair leading into his pants, dipping below his waistband, then coming back up so you could rub your hand over his crotch, Five shuddered under your touch, so you increased the pressure. 

“So sensitive,” you teased.

Ignoring that taunt, his left hand quickly found your breast again and his other clamped onto your ass, giving it a hard smack before he suddenly yanked your skirt up.

“You have really been enjoying fucking with me,” he laughed, then said, “and what the fuck is this song talking about!”

With his hand under your skirt, his fingers moved slowly, massaging his burning handprint, and he didn’t stop punishing you there. Five’s fingers stopped just shy of the heat between your legs. There, he rubbed the elastic panty line lying along your groin as he smiled like a fucking jerk.

“This song is talking about a man and his love for a girl, but he’s torn between her and the continent he loves, and please, Five! Please don’t stop!” you begged.

“There we go!” he laughed. “Just what I needed to hear. Keep it coming, honey.”

With that, memories of another Five being ridiculously obsessed with you getting you to cry out his name, blended with this one and his equally interesting quirks and many miss understandings about things that to you seemed obvious. 

Before you could come up with an appropriate comeback, your brain gave out on you because Five’s fingers slid under the thin panty barrier he’d been toying with, moving between your folds, determinedly pressing into your clit.

“Fuck, you are wet. I guess watering you worked,” Five mockingly groaned as he gently kissed the side of your neck, letting the smallest scrap of his light facial hair tickle you. 

Giggling and squirming even more, he gave your neck a little nip. 

“Hold still, damn it, I am trying to finger fuck you to this stupid song,” he laughed.

Hand still jammed in your underwear, Five drew you back with him, the backs of his legs bumping one of the chairs next to the small garden table.

Taking your hand off the hard bulge in his pants, you moved it with your other, shoving him down in the chair with enough momentum to make the legs cry out in complaint as they slid across the concrete. Not stopping, you crawled over him, wrapping your legs around his waist.

“I missed you acting all adorable like this,” you said as cheekily as possible, while laughing at his lustful expression of bewilderment.

Not about to be out done, guiding you up against him even tighter, Five wrapped your lips in a warm kiss that quickly escalated into a heady, deep kiss. It didn’t take long just doing that, and you were both breathing much harder than normal again.

Seductively pulling at your lower lip with his upper teeth, Five looked up at you with his mossy eyes softer than you’d ever seen them. 

“From that first day I was with you on the train, you were all I wanted. I didn’t even know what I’d missed until then. I thought I did, but not really,” he said. “I don’t know why or how this is happening to us over and over, but I know one thing for sure and that’s I am never letting you go again.” 

That was almost exactly what Five said to you the night he died. 

Jolting you from the moment, a near paralyzing fear hit you like another slap in the ass, but then, just like so many times when Five touched you, the next time he brought his lips to yours, your entire body tingled with a whole different kind of all-encompassing feeling.

The air felt alive. 

As you eased your body back into his hand that was tracing lines up and down your spine, Five’s lips closed around one of your taut nipples and his hand lowered between your legs, moving again.

“Yesssss,” you moaned, rocking your hips against his, driving your bottom down against his erection.

Pinned under your weight, Five whimpered and his cock throbbed with so much need he felt like he might come in his pants. Not wanting that, his fingers moved faster, slipping up and down in the cramped space of your panties, and that got you to let up on him, which was both a good and bad thing.

You arched your back as he flicked one of your tits with his tongue. Scraping his teeth along your peeked flesh, he sucked it back inside the heat of his mouth and you ground down on him harder than before. 

Unable to take it, Five’s mouth popped off. “Fuck. Keep. Doing. That!” he groaned as he started with your neck and earlobes again, trailing sloppy kisses down to your collarbone.

Flipping your skirt completely out of the way with a whip of his wrists, Five slid your panties to the side with a quick tug, then the tip of his index finger gently started pushing into your hole.

“Mmmm fff, Five,” you whined, as he moved deeper inside you.

“So…fah-king tight,” he breathed, equally taken by the feel of your body fighting him. He looked up at you with adoring eyes, his worry coming out in his soft words. “You okay?”

“Yes,” you said, your body opening for him more and more each second a part of him was becoming a part of you.

Once he was past knuckle deep, you started to work your body over the hard length of his trapped cock again, totally destroying his pants as his finger started to fuck into you, in and out, hooking and pulling, doing anything and everything he could to get you moving faster.

“Oh, ffff,” you cried as Five, with no warning, added a second finger and then started to dip in and out at the same punishing rate as his thumb circling around your clit.

You pushed yourself against his hand, biting your lip as your body quickly coiled and tightened around him. “Fff-vvvv!” you cried. 

When your orgasm hit a moment or two later, your wet gasps filling the greenhouse, he couldn’t believe it.

Your forehead fell against his. You slowly unclenched your fingers, your fingernails leaving half-moon marks all over his shoulders.

“Did I do it?” Five excitedly asked.

Still hardly able to open your eyes, you nodded, panting, “Fuck yes you did. Fuck, Five…”

With his cock about to rip through his pants, Five pulled his fingers from your quivering cunt, bringing them to his mouth. Smiling as he tasted you, slowly licking a few more times for effect, he said, “I can confidently say that I have never done anything as amazing as that, and you taste so delicious I might never eat anything else ever again.”

Laughing at the absurdity of that considering you knew just how much Five liked to eat actual food, and he could in fact do the unimaginable by traveling through time, even if he couldn't do it the way he wanted to anymore, on doe like legs, you climbed off of him, letting your panties slip to the floor.

“Your turn,” you said, straddling your magical unicorn, your hands already starting to unzip his pants to the sight of his approving gaze of god-like sexiness staring back at you.

Carefully pulling him from the confines of his pants, you’d only given Five’s cock a few gentle tugs and his smug expression was gone. 

“Thank you for this, fuck, thank you,” he quietly repeated, his eyes about rolling back in his head as you lazily pumped him, making him leak even more glistening fluid from the tip of his cock.

Lost in what you were doing to him, Five fingers dug into the seat on the wooden chair.

“That feels so fucking good,” he groaned as you twirled your finger over him, spreading his precum to make your hand move faster as it dropped down over the long veins feeding his impressive length.

When you moved forward, guiding the thick head of his cock through the swollen valley between your legs, Five couldn’t take it anymore. Frantically pushing his heels into the floor, he reactively tried to thrust upwards, but it did him little good because he wasn’t inside of you like his mind was telling him he was.

“Ah-ah-ah,” you warned. “Slow down, old man. I’ll get you there, I promise. I want your first time to be special,” you lovingly cooed.

“This is pretty fucking special. I have waited over 70 years for this,” he growled, trying to hump up into you again but clearly only doing it that time to watch your tits bounce.

Shaking your head at the craziness of it all because Five looked nothing like his real age despite him being that old, with one hand on the back of his neck, your feet fell flat on the floor, allowing you the leverage you needed to ride him. With his drizzling tip pushing all the way up to the height of your belly button, you lined him up, then started frotting, pressing the hot length of his cock against your swollen clit in a sinful game of slip and slide.

“That’s right, baby. Let me fuck you,” you praised, already feeling that lustfully addicting pleasure rising in you again. Yanking his hair to further the fun, Five moaned, but he didn’t fight it, and that only turned you on even more, because you knew how badly he wanted to.

Five Looked like a broken angel fallen from heaven. His beautiful eyes were cutely drowsy as he watched you fucking him, the sweet feel of your sex, your body rocking in his lap, all of it felt like nothing he had ever felt before.

The fall sun was shining down.

The heat building.

The strangest choice for a fuck song was playing on the CD player, the band Todo singing their topical ballad as your bodies worked together to the inspiring rhythm of the drums.

♫  I bless the rains down in Affff-ri-cAAA! 

Five shut his eyes.

The pure love and acceptance he was feeling made the shadow of doubt hanging over him from his own death and from his horrible past feel like it couldn’t touch him.

“Five, look at me,” you ordered.

He did.

One look at you as you rode, unable to fight it, he let out a guttural groan of unrestrained pleasure. Unclasping his fingers from the chair, he ran his hands down, under your ass, lifting and pulling with you, making you move your hips and hand pinning his cock down even faster as you fucked him against you.

He was trapped and so were you, but Five felt anything but trapped as your thighs quivered and the tension built more and more with each pass of his cock thrusting up through your pussy lips.

“Kiss me. Please. I need you to kiss me,” you begged, your words breathless as you worked hard to give him the ride of his life while he sat there like the king of the world, watching you buck and pant.

The second Five’s lips touched yours, you locked your fingers on him tighter, pulling him as close as possible. 

Your nails scratched along his scalp making him fuck up into you harder. 

The chair groaned in protest.

You brokenly whimpered into his kiss, and again, Five felt that strangely familiar burst of energy in the air. 

Your head flung back. You’d reached the edge and tumbled over it again; this time he knew it and he’d never felt closer to you.

He cursed a breathy gasp, his lips parted against your chest as he pushed his pelvis up and down at the same faltering pace as yours. Pulses of his release, a creamy white heat of pent-up pain and love started to spread against the silky expanse of your body as Five moved his cheek next to yours. 

Mouth against your moistened skin, he groaned and hissed. “Ahhhffuuuuucccccckkkkk-ffffff-”

A sticky mess between you as his balls twitched under him, still out of breath, Five peered up at, grinning like a fool.

Just when he thought he couldn’t possibly deserve more, you brought your hands to his face, running your fingers over his flushed cheeks as you tilted his chin up. “I love you, Five. It will always be you.”

You placed the softest kiss along his jaw, then down his sweaty neck. Five’s entire body trembled, as much from the gentle sensation of you showing how much you loved him with the touch of your lips, as in what it meant to him hearing you say that.

You said it again. “I love you, Five.”

Tiny shivers danced up his spine as a low moan resonated deep in his throat. Your mouth continued to move over him. 

“I love you too.” He exhaled your name slowly as you moved your way back up to his lips, your fingers soothingly playing with his hair. 

Right then, no matter how many times you let him have this with you, Five knew he’d never get enough of it. 

As he told you, you were all he wanted.

Now, nothing else mattered. 

W-Why

Autumn days of sunlit leaves floating down from above passed by, and with them, Five’s mind and heart were at peace for the first time in his life. 

Nights with you in bed, hot breaths against each other’s skin as you explored new ways to love each other were everything to him. 

Laying on a blanket, under the stars as the white plumes of your breath made clouds of heat above you, Five was in heaven even if he was in a world of crumbling foundations.

He even had the moon this time.

It was perfect.

You had the greenhouse and a roof over your heads, but you still needed to scout for other food options. Just like the last time he was in the apocalypse, Five spent hours on end each day, searching for anything he could use to help get through the harder times. But now, as he wandered down the stairway into the old subway station he hadn’t been to in months, the pressure of getting back felt almost non-existent. 

Maybe he could trap something alive down there, he’d thought. Rats were awful but you weren’t picky, and neither was he, and rabbits had been hard to come by lately with the colder turn in the weather.

Just thinking about bringing a rodent in the house and acting like he slayed a dragon for you made him smile. 

You loved when he acted stupid, and he loved doing it for you.

Feet quietly moving across the debris filled landing, just then, when it felt like nothing was more important than finding new ways to make you smile, of course that was when fate decided to prove he was wrong.

Noticing a strange mark on the floor at the edge of the subway platform, one he’d never noticed before because the light down there was so bad, Five pointed his flashlight down. 

There was something scratched into the tile, and it was done so poorly he could hardly see it, but it was there, and it was no accident.

Bending down, he slowly traced the intricate circles and paralleling lines done in an interlocking pattern that suggested a mathematical projection of infinite sums, or better put, infinite outcomes. 

His heart sank as his finger cleared the grim from the interdimensional map, or that was what he’d suspected it was the first time he’d seen it tattooed on the chest of the ancient version of him that was dying in the paradox proof chamber back in the Sparrow’s timeline.

Looking around, he saw nothing else. Jumping down to the tracks, Five ducked his head below the small lip where the electrical lines were hung. There was a box that some of the larger lines fed into, and it was directly underneath where the sigil was placed. 

Reaching his hand up, blinding feeling around in the cobwebs and dead bugs, he felt something. 

“No,” he breathed, looking down at the leather-bound journal, his eyes rapidly moving over the pages. 

All of them were filled in, unlike the one he had back at the house. And even more shocking, this one showed the way to get back.

“Five?” you called out, coming down the stairs. 

“Yeah, down here,” he replied, quickly shoving the book inside his shoulder bag.

~~~

Stretching his toes under the sheets as his body came down from the feel of having his dick pushing down your throat, Five dreamily looked down at you nestled between his legs

“I love your hair, honey, but I like it best when it’s like that,” he teased as you looked back at him, stretching your jaw, your hair a total ball of fuzz ball from you romping around under the blankets.

You smiled. “Fuck you, Five.” 

“Fuck me, you say… Sure.  I am game to do that again, only it has to be roles reversed until I can get it up again.”

You rolled out of bed, escaping before he could pounce on you and throw his face between your legs. 

“Aww, come on. It won’t take long,” he whined, watching you trot away.

“I know,” you called back, blanket dragging as you tiptoed the cold floor out to the kitchen to get a glass of water from the cooled boiling pot on the wood stove. 

Coming back, you passed by the fireplace, tossing a few logs Five had brought in the night before. Moving on, you stopped at the bookshelf, eyeing up the selection that had grown substantially since Five had gotten there. 

Still lazily lying in bed, he smiled, knowing you were going to pick something and ask him to read it to you while you snuggled on him in bed until mid-day. He loved the bitter temperatures that had settled in because it meant time outside was limited and there was more time for this.

While crossing his arms over his head, looking around the little home that he shared with you, Five started to smile again. The shelves in the kitchen were covered with canning jars filled with the evidence of how hard you had both worked to prepare for the winter. While he was thinking about how the massive amount of work involved in living this way did nothing to diminish how happy he was, something over by you hit the floor with a thump.

Five hadn’t noticed you stepping up on a chair to reach the highest shelf, but you had. Now you were getting down, looking at what had fallen.

His heart was suddenly beating so hard it felt like it might rip out of his chest. Too late, he threw himself out of bed, snatching his pajama pants off the floor as he rushed over, one leg in, and one out of the cold flannel.

“What is this?” you questioned, rapidly turning the pages in your hands. “Five?” you said again, waving the notes you’d just found wedged behind the other books.

“It’s my journal,” Five said, still pulling up his pants as the worried line between his brows grew deeper.

“I know it is, but it’s not that one,” you said, pointing to the other on the table beside the bed. “This one is…It looks like you figured it out…. The key to the subway map is all filled in.” 

You quickly turned to the pages that Five already knew were there, the colorful triangles and circles and squares and numbers that had made no sense were all noted with his handwriting, explaining what they meant and how to navigate them. Trying to make help sense of it, you’d looked at it so many times, but like him, you’d gotten nowhere.

Five reached for the book, and as if you’d lost all your strength, the journal fell into his hands. Your voice tremored. “Where did this come from?”

“I found it under the edge of the subway platform, next to the tracks.”

“When?”

“Months ago,” Five flatly replied, his voice coming out steady, even if he wasn’t.

Your eyes glossed over. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

As he looked into your hurt filled eyes, he felt like he was dying as he said, “You know why.”

“Five,” we can’t stay here pretending there isn’t something we can do,” you said, saying exactly what he knew you’d say.

“What can I do!” Five all but screamed, making you jump back, and that only made him look even more upset.

Ashamed that he’d just done that, his entire body shaking, Five’s hands came up, covering his face, the journal falling to the floor as he started to ramble, “I can’t lose you! I can't help them! I-” 

He breathed your name, much quieter before starting again. 

“If we go, there’s no telling what we’ll find back there. My family and I didn’t know what to do before I left, and I don’t know what to do now. Having you with me is the last thing I want if I go back to that place. Don’t you get it!” he cried, losing it again. “That timeline is just another like this one that will be destroyed, only this time, nobody is going to survive!”

“So this is it?” you quietly asked.

Five looked up and only then did he see the tears rolling down your cheeks. 

“Isn’t this enough?” he asked, his voice cracking.

You came closer. “Five, you will always be enough for me, but-”

When you didn’t finish the ‘but’ and instead chose to wrap your arms around him, Five sucked in a panicked breath, his entire body shuttering. 

Feeling worse, but slowly getting a handle on himself and what this meant, eventually Five forced himself away from the safety of your embrace. His voice lacked any signs of weakness from his melt down when he looked at you and said, “We are going back.”

X- X-factor, as in an exceptional quality or talent that sets someone or something apart. Not so much what the gang is displaying here.

Escorting you along the snow-covered sidewalk leading up to Diego and Lila’s house, trying to be optimistic, Five said, “Maybe they figured it out after all. Everything looks normal.”

Opening the door, Diego’s eyes widened as they moved from you to his brother. “What do you know? Five finally decided to join us and he’s not alone!” he called out just as Klaus came to join him in the entryway, shoving a handful of trail mix in his mouth.

“And who’s this,” he questioned, wiggling an eyebrow at you.

Five was still trying to introduce you when Lila came over interrupting. “Awwww,” she said, scowling at Five. “It looks like hell really did freeze over because you brought a real live, non-plastic date. You’ve clearly been busy, though not surprisingly busy doing nothing to help us figure this stuff out with Ben.”

“We don’t know where Viktor is, or Benny and his Jenny,” Klaus chimed in, “but that doesn’t mean this Cleanse stuff is happening. Dad lies all the time.” Looking puzzled, he looked down at the floor. “Actually, I don’t know what’s going on. Allison and Claire Bear just dug me up from a pet cemetery. I’m still feeling a little shaky about all that and for other reasons too, so I haven’t really been much help either.” 

He glanced at Claire, and she smiled. “It’s okay Uncle Klaus. One step at a time We’ve got your back.”

Coming your way, dressed in a track suit that way too small for him, Luther said, “Hi, I am Luther. Not sure if Five told you about me.”

“Five, told me all about you. It’s so nice to finally meet all of you,” you said, smiling at Luther, then Five, who was already looking like his head might explode.

Luther turned his goofy grin at Five, giving him a not at all discrete thumbs up as he whispered, but not quite enough that everyone else didn’t hear it. “Nice job!” Suddenly looking confused, he added, “Are you together, like together-together? Not that it matters, it’s just Lila is right. You don’t date, and we’ve never seen you with anyone other than Dolor-”

“Woopsie,” Allison said, walking past, smacking Luther on the back of the head.

Letting out the breath he’d been holding, Five angrily spat, “She already knows about me and Dolores! And not that any of you give a shit about my life, but yes, we are together! I am madly in love with her and for some reason, she loves me back!”

“Ohhhh. I love this… When did all this happen?” Klaus excitedly asked, totally engrossed in the drama unfolding as he sat down on the couch with his bowl of trail mix on his lap.

“Recently.” Five heatedly replied. “And that wasn’t all I was doing, Lila!”

Five raised his voice as he glared at his sister-in-law but that only made her challenging smile even brighter.

“I have been gone for almost eight years,” Five raged at her. “I tried to use my powers to go back in time to save Ben but instead got myself trapped in the apocalypse again where I topped off that series of epic mistakes by getting shot by another me. I would have died if not for her being trapped in one of the apocalypses I ended up in, and believe it or not, that one was on me too! So go ahead, start lying into me about how this is all my fault! Sloane! Your discontent in marriages and your fucked up lives! The Cleanse! Everything! Let me have it. I have heard it all before!”

“I told you that you needed my help,” Lila irritatedly huffed, as she pulled a sticky chunk of red licorice off the front of her shirt.

As Five moved his bitter gaze to Luther, the big guy frowned. “I never meant to blame Sloane on you,” he said very sheepishly. He looked at the others for help but wasn’t getting any. “I am sorry… I was so… And I didn’t mean to-”

“Wait. Hold up…” Claire interjected from the sidelines where she’d been quietly watching the showdown. “You tried to save us, all by yourself?” She looked from her angry Uncle to her mom, clearly confused. 

Allison smiled at her daughter. “Believe it or not, you Uncle Five is the most selfless jerk you’ll ever meet, and he’s right. We have been pretty awful about things since he’s been back, and that’s because like him, we are jerks whose lives are a mess, but that is not his fault.” Turning to Five, she said, “We love you, Five, and I couldn’t be happier that you finally found someone, even if it was in a place you never should have been to begin with. Funny how that shit works. I can tell you all about it and Ray would too if he were still around, but…he’s NOT.” 

She raised her drink, pounding all of it as she flopped down on the couch next to Luther.

“I am sorry, buddy. I didn’t even know you were gone. We love you; you know that right?” Klaus said, coming in for a hug. 

Just then, totally taken off guard because he was looking at you grinning at him with that, I told you so look he knew was because you’d told him time and time again that his family love him, Five was ambushed by his ghost whispering brother’s smothering affections, double cheek kisses and all.

“I am so glad your apocalyptic badass woman saved you, little guy,” Klaus gushed as you started to giggle over what Klaus had just called you, and at Five trying to get away from Klaus’s impressively strong clutches.

Ducking out of his grip, just then, Grace came running in. “Uncle Five! You have to see what Mr. Pennycrumb can do! He can blink just like you.”

“Hey, kid,” Five breathed, coming down to her level to watch as she excitedly flew her electronic dog around extra fast, hiding him behind the Christmas tree before popping him back out again.

As soon as his daughter was done showing off, looking serious, Diego pulled Five to the side. Just as fast, you were surrounded by the rest of his siblings, having gotten pulled down between Luther and Allsion on the couch, with Klaus on the floor at your feet, all of them firing questions at you about your time with their brother.

Scrunching his lips in a way that made his dad mustache look extra dorky, Diego said, “That sounded bad, minus the badass chick saving you part. You okay?”

“Perfect,” Five shot back, trying to smooth the rumbles out of his suit. Giving up, he muttered a few curses, then hearing something about if you were married or not, he looked over at you, tensely flattening his lips as the muscles in his jaw tensed. 

He was about to angrily spout off on all of them again, but looking flushed by amused, you shook your head, warning him not to do it. 

About to lose his mind and not sure what to say about the marriage thing anyway, Five’s mouth snapped shut.

“Oh, my God!” Lila cackled. “I think I love her already,” she laughed, nudging Five in the shoulder before coming over to you, asking, “Do you have superpowers too, because the way you shut down that little ankle biter without saying a word was bloody brilliant. You have to teach me that trick!”

“Ahhh. No powers here,” you laughed. “I think Five and I just have a good understanding of each other.” You looked at Five, widening your eyes comically at him because you could totally see why he maintained that his family were a hard pill to swallow.

“So... I did the CIA thing,” Diego said, moving right along.

“And how did that go?” Five breathed, overwhelmed, but trying to dial it back for the kid’s sake and yours.

“It didn’t. Turns out, it’s not for me. Lila and I had a talk, and we are doing better. My life with them means everything, I just needed a reminder. Thanks for giving it to me,” he said, looking down at his oldest, who was sitting on the floor in front of the TV. Slapping Five on the back a second later, he asked, “So, are you still the oldest virgin alive, or did you guys S-K-R-E-W?” 

“That is not how you spell screw, dad,” Grace corrected as Diego pulled a condom package out of his wallet, then pulled open Five’s back pant pocket, stuffing it in.

“Just in case you need it, man,” he clarified as if Five didn’t get it. “Kids are great, but not sure you're ready for all that complicated stuff yet with you being a scrawny teenager still.”

“I am not a teenager!” Five raged, “I’m 26 for the 2nd fucking time, so that makes me 71! I shouldn’t be surprised by any of this, or you not getting that, but I am! And that means for a room full of people given powers not typically seen in any other humans, all any of us can claim is that we’ve excelled at being extraordinarily stupid! There is nothing exceptional about any of us! The world could still be ending in a few hours and Luther is over there shoving whole popcorn balls in his mouth!”

“Thaaairr-rrealleeegoo,” he mumbly defended

Unfazed by her dad being stupid or her favorite Uncle flipping out on everyone, Grace pointed at the TV screen, asking, “Is that Uncle Viktor hanging out with all those weirdos surrounding the mall?”

~~~

Hours later, blinking out of the way of the gigantic blob monster Ben-Jen thing, portal violently crackling, Five reappeared in the subway station, his back slamming back down on the cement as you landed on top of him, knocking the air out of him.

Heart racing as he choked on the air fighting to get back inside his lungs, with his useless gun still in his free hand, Five rolled over, pulling you up.

“I’m sorry,” you needlessly apologized, hardly able to walk as you clung to him. 

Your head was spinning from the jump, and from getting thrown out over the second-floor mezzanine by Luther just before an arm like appendage of the Ben-Jen Cleanse blob latched on to Five, who had just wrapped his arm around you to blink you out of there.

Not stopping, Five helped you inside the waiting train, the doors closing as he sat you down, and then he joined you, staring at the ground as he gently ran his hand up and down your back.

“I am not abandoning them,” he said, almost a whole minute later, finally looking up. 

“I know.” Feeling less green, you moved closer, lowering your head to his shoulder. 

“I can’t save them in any other way but by leaving. I need to buy us some time,” he explained even though he didn’t need to, you were there. You saw it all.

Viktor tried to pull the marigold from Ben, but it was too late. They all had fought back, but they were losing badly. Like Five had told you in the first days he was with you, they were never meant to win.

His head dropped back against the side of the train as it swayed, aimlessly moving through the tunnels.

Five couldn’t even begin to pay attention to the stops as they came and went, another gloomy station of nothingness, and then another, and then another. 

With no clue what to do, he sat in silence with your hand in his.

At some point, your mental exhaustion got the best of you. Slumping against him, you drifted off to the feel of his shallow breaths against your temple.

Y-You

“Five, what is this place?” you asked as your sleep filled eyes followed his towards the glowing sign that said, “Max’s Delicatessen.”

“I have no idea,” he breathed, cautiously stepping out of the train. 

At the unexpected sound of someone saying your name, Five pivoted, protectively throwing you behind him.

The dark-haired young man you hadn’t noticed was sitting on one of the benches near the tracks laughed, then he said, “Don’t worry. I mean neither of you harm, and to answer your question since he can’t. This is the place all of us end up at some point when our time is up. That’s if we make it this far. Most don’t.” 

Getting up, the suit-wearing stranger who was a mirror image of Five, folded his newspaper under his arm and strode your way, extending his hand. 

“Hello again.” He gave you a charming grin, his eyes mischievously sparkling. “It’s been a long time, but I see that your pretty smile hasn’t changed.”

You hadn’t been smiling, but now you were, and that only made the Five at your side look even more hostile.

Unbothered by that, the other Five turned on the heel of his shiny dress shoe, casually waving you along as he said, “Come inside. We need to have a chat.”

A second later the steel bell hanging above the door rang and at least a dozen more Fives inside the deli looked your way, all of them eyeing you with open interest.

The Five you were following sat down in one of the open booths in the middle, gesturing for you to join him. Still shocked into a silence that was making you all the more nervous, Five moved into the opposite seat, pulling you in next to him on the inside of the booth.

The Five that had greeted you flagged over a waiter version of himself as he rushed by, and he swiftly leaned in, filling the cups in front of everyone.

No sooner was it poured, than next to you, Five picked up his white porcelain cup, tipping the entire contents back in one long slug. 

“It’s been a long time since you’ve had coffee this marvelously shitty, I take it?” The Five across from you chuckled as the still hovering waiter came back around. As he refilled your Five’s cup, his fingers brushed past yours on the handle of your mug.

“Need some sugar or some cream in that, sweetheart?” he asked, as the dimple in his cheek deepened.

Your Five turned his glare at the Waiter Five. “She can get her own cream, so fuck off, and yes…” he hissed at the Greeter, “It’s been a while since I had coffee.” 

Five was looking at the Waiter like he might kill him, so you squeezed his leg from under the table. After that, he took a much more civilized sip of his drink, but the warning in his eyes remained as they darted around the diner, meeting the curious eyes of all the other Fives.

“I am betting the lack of caffeine wasn’t nearly as awful this time around when you had such a lovely companion there with you in the apocalypse. She was with you, I presume…? That’s if your story parallels that of some of these other lost boys in here.”

To that, your exceedingly twitchy Five glanced at a very young looking Five wearing his Umbrella Academy uniform. He was sitting next to the door with Dolores. Staring back at the kid version of him’s baby face, Five’s own features pinched with confusion.

Seeing that they weren’t going to get any juicy details on his relationship with you, the Greeter said, “Okay, cutting to the chase then…?”

“Please,” Five cooly replied.

Obliging, the Greeter said, “Every one of us here tried to fix this mess and couldn’t. Now we are here doing anything we can to help the other Fives who still have skin in the game. Which are the lucky bastards like you. So, how can we help?”

Flipping his hair out of his eyes, Five asked, “Will going back to our first timeline and then jumping back to prevent Ben’s death change any of this?”

“No,” the Greeter Five replied.

“Would stopping the original Reginald from releasing the marigold in the first place be enough to fix this?”

“It would be, but we can’t do that. He didn't release the marigold on Earth. He did it on his home planet and then it got here many years later. We don’t have the ability to jump from one plant to another, and Reginald’s ticket here was one way. Doing that also means we will never be born. So again. No.”

With his foot agitatedly tapping under the table, Five shook his head. “What else is there that we can work with?”

The Greeter laughed. “Us. We are the problem.”

“Explain,” Five shot back.

Tiling his head to the side, the Greeter grinned at you then looked back at your Five and sighed. “The marigold that caused our births was the catalyst, and we were the by-product that never should have been. We set it all in motion by existing. Our births are what caused a ripple effect that split the timelines. They never should have happened, and because of that, we get an endless cycle of nature trying to correct itself.”

Five’s hand tightened around yours. “The apocalypse and the Cleanse.”

The Greeter nodded. “Exactly. Every one of them, and on and on it goes. We are at one million five hundred thousand, eighty-two tries to stop it at this point and we haven’t, but we are still going strong.” 

He laughed at that, his eyes moving to the Five in the corner booth who was tipping back a bottle of whiskey with about half of it running down his chin. 

“Well, most of us are still trying. Drunk Five, not so much,” the Greeter cynically added.

Not happy about that, the Drunk Five, sloshing his bottle all over his table started in. “You are missing shit as usual! There are things bigger in this world than new elements that can spontaneously create superpowered assholes and then later devour them for no good fucking reason other than an arrogant alien asshole named Reginald had zero foresight!” he shouted.

“It was Abigail who created it,” one of the Fives playing cards flatly corrected, while dealing another hand to the Five across from him. 

“Whatever! Still an asshole!” Drunk Five insisted, getting even more worked up. “Real power has nothing to do with what they gave us! It’s in here, only all you self absorbed morons have no idea what it means to feel it!” he declared while trying to point a finger at his heart, but when he almost dropped his bottle, he ended up dumping booze on his crotch instead.

Looking like he was about to cry, the very drunk Five looked over at you. “I- I’m,” 

He said your name, proving the Greeter Five wasn’t the only one who knew your name.

“I tried to save you. I tried to save all of them, but I didn’t see the right way to do it until it was too late,” he sobbed. He set his bottle down, ringing his hand through his hair as he looked down at the table. “I would have done it. I would have sacri-”

A Five wearing an apron stepped out of the kitchen, slapping a hand over his drunk doppelganger’s mouth as he said, “Zip it before you fuck this up royal, nob shine.” 

Looking at you with a gleam in his eye, the kitchen Five bent down, whispering something in his captive’s ear, then having quieted the Drunk Five, that Five came over, placing his elbows on the back of your seat, joining the party, and again you were greeted with a smile and excited green eyes.

Reaching over to playfully twirl a piece of your hair around one of his fingers, the Five from kitchen looked to the Greeter Five then to your Five, saying, “Perhaps while you boys continue this conversation, it would be best if I take the lady in back to show her how I tenderize my meat?”

“Not a fucking chance,” your Five snapped back as you let out a small but very hysterical sounding laugh.

“Actually, that might not be a bad idea,” the Greeter agreed.

“She isn’t going anywhere with any of you!” Five fumed, standing up to get in the face of the kitchen Five that was invading the booth.

Someone in the kitchen who sounded like Five laughed, yelling something about soup and sore his meatballs, and just then, the bell above the door chimed.

A much older, white-haired gentleman with a mustache came in, throwing his hat on the coat rack as he took in the scene. “Jesus fucking Christ, why does it always have to be a freak show in here,” he grumbled.

The very young Five at the booth with Dolores tipped his margarita at him in agreement as your Five opened his mouth, starting to flip out again, but right then, the Waiter Five appeared from the kitchen, plate in hand, swinging by your table to drop a thick sandwich stacked with pastrami in front of the Greeter. “Here you go, extra sauerkraut, as you requested.” 

The Waiter looked over at you, his wicked grin grew. 

“Why do you always have to fuck shit up, Briket Five?” the Greeter snapped at the Five still playing with your hair. “Nobody wants to eat this shit covered in fermented slop but you!” 

“Shut up and just eat it,” he replied while giving you a naughty looking wink.

“Brisket Five?” you asked.

The Five in question nodded. “Yes, but you can call me whatever you want, love.” 

He got up and walked towards the kitchen, after your Five swatted his hand away, but getting him off of you made Five look no less pissed by the exchange. “We need to get you out of here,” he said as he started to slip out of the booth, but coming past your table, the old mustached Five nearly plowed down the Waiter, who then rammed into your Five blocking his path.

As he looked at the commotion going on at your table and all the Five’s sizing each other up, the older Five gruffly said, “Not sure what these morons have been telling you, but I am so sick of their shit that I am about ready to shove that mop up someone’s ass. Nobody is going to enjoy that other than Janitor Five, so I’ll give you some straightforward advice that might help us all out of this mess instead. Don’t try to save the world this time.”

The Five with the mop laughed. “True on both accounts! I’m down with an anal mop fucking as long as you go gentle on me, and when it comes to fucked up shit I haven’t tried, not saving our asses is the only thing I haven’t done, so I say yes to that too,” he shouted, then went back to moping the mess under Drunk Five’s table.

Mentally on overload, next to you, in his head, ignoring what the weird mop fucking stuff was all about with the Janitor Five, your Five repeated the words that had been haunting him since the first time he’d heard them coming from another much older permutation of himself who was dying in a paradox proof bunker.

Don’t try to save the world…

As if that wasn’t enough to shake him, still reeling with deja vu, the Drunk Five called over, “We need to destroy the marigold!”

“Please shut him up before he really scares her even more than h already has!” Greeter Five shouted.

With all the other Five’s too busy glaring at each other, the Drunk Five went on even louder, this time declaring his love for you, and because of it, you looked even more rattled by the chaos of all the versions of Five scattered around you, mostly all of them losing their shit or making lovey dovey eyes at you.

Coming out of the kitchen with a frying pan in hand, Brisket Five said, “Holy shit, someone should have thrown him outside hours ago.” A second later, he pulled back to swing, and a second after that, DONG! Drunk Five was lying face down, drooling on his placemat.

“To that, we agree,” the Greeter said, looking at you worriedly.

As if Brisket Five hadn’t just potentially concussed or killed the inebriated version of himself, the Waiter Five shimmied back into the mob around your table, refilling all the coffee cups, acting like all this was all totally normal.

Next to you, Five looked like he was about to blow a gasket. Unable to get out of the booth, he was about to vault the back of your seat and start stabbing out the eyeballs of the other Fives with his sugar spoon.

Coming over, Brisket Five said, “As you’ve noticed some of these lesser evolved douche bags in here aren’t that well-mannered, and Old Five is not much of a socialite, but he’s not wrong, and neither is Drunk Five over there. They are onto something, but our gracious Greeter here, and some of the others like to think there still has to be another way that doesn’t involve our way of thinking.”

“It makes sense that statistically, there is!” the Greeter Five growled, to the dickish brush off wave of the frying pan that Brisket Five just gave him.

After threatening the Greeter, Brisket Five, looking at you in a way that made you feel all sorts of warm, he said, “Did you know that there is a quantum entanglement thing going on between us?”  

“There is nothing going on between you two,” your Five snarled.

“Sure, there is,” he reaffirmed, giving the Greeter a pointed look that made your Five and the Greeter suddenly look much less sure of themselves. 

Coming too, looking even more upset now that he just got his head bashed in, looking at you, Drunk Five started rambling. “We have something that binds people through time in ways that no one will ever understand. It’s why we ran into each other in the first place, and it was why you were there to save me, and I was there to save you! It’s an inevitability… It’s as simple as that! We just need to believe in that this time and maybe-”

“It’s wishful thinking and we need more than that,” the Greeter interrupted.

Looking very annoyed, Brisket Five said, “There are some of us that like to pretend it’s horse shit based on fairy tales and lovesick delusional nonsense, but the concept of a love-based entanglement is very real.” He looked at you again. “No matter how far or how we get pulled apart in the mess of time, we will always remain connected. It’s like that with a love as strong as ours.”

“You don’t know her and you don’t love her! I do!!” your Five snapped

Brisket Five looked at the Greeter, both of them smiling knowingly, no longer looking like they might kill each other.

“Five, what is he talking about?” you asked.

“I don’t know,” he shot back, clearly so upset that he didn’t know what to say anymore.

“Sure, you do,” Brisket Five confidently replied. "Let me ask you this…have you ever felt things you can’t explain?”

Five nodded, yes.

Brisket Five reached across the table, placing his hand over yours as he smugly smiled at your Five while asking, “Have you felt it with her?” 

Heat flooded your face.

Your Five said nothing, but he didn’t need to, the other him’s smile turned into a full-on smirk. “Has she told you that she feels it too?”

Five glanced at you, and the other Five’s all trying their best to charm you with their bullshit smiles that made him want to punch himself.

“Ahhhh-haaa,” Brisket Five laughed. “I suppose she might not have told you she has felt that invisible tether that pulls at her heart when you're there and even when you’re not, but Drunk Five’s stories can’t all be bullshit, and I can attest to it because I feel it right now. Something tells me that she’s the special one here, not us, and it has nothing to do with marigold.”

Pulling his lips to the side, looking upset, Greeter Five said your name, pulling your attention his way again. “Hey, why don’t we let them talk about all this crap alone? I am sick of the fighting, and I bet you are hungry for something that is actually edible.” 

Getting up, he offered you a hand. When you got nothing from your Five other than silence, the warmth of the Greeter’s fingers curled around yours, sliding you out of the booth to join him. 

Directing you towards the display case filled with pies, Greeter Five said, “It really is a lucky day. There’s one more piece of strawberry fluff with your name on it.”

Behind you, Brisket Five leaned into your Five’s ear, talking extra quietly. “Look, you’re the first to ever come in together, and I think that means it’s time to end this the only way we can. Our family doesn’t have to make it to the end to get what you want, just the people we love do. We are linked to them, and them to us by something none of us can explain but it is real. Maybe that matters, and maybe it won’t, but at least they will live, and this will stop,” he said, eyeing you as the other Five’s intentionally dominated your attention so you didn’t hear that part. 

Your Five’s eyes widened as he realized what the other him meant.

“All your numbers and asshole logic aren’t getting you anywhere but here again, buddy. You need to let go,” Brisket Five added, trying to smile again but the sadness in his eyes and the pain he felt about it was impossible to hide.

Getting up, he left your Five alone at the booth.

“Just do as that old dipshit said to do this time,” the Five with Dolores yelled out, loudly slurping his margarita to the bottom of the glass.

“Why don’t you give me Dolores and you got stick your dick the pickle jar again and fuck it,” a particularly grumbly looking Five interjected before going back to scowling at his crossword puzzle.

“Five, what do they mean, don’t try to save the world this time?” you said, breaking away from Greeter Five as you came rushing back.

Just then, Drunk Five started in again, this time getting up from his booth, heading your way, cutting you off. “Don’t worry. We can help. We will come with you this time. Then-” 

He almost fell, his hand swinging out to catch him on the divider between booths.

Dizzily looking at all the others, then you again, he said, “We will keep the Cleanse busy, distracting it, and we will get Ben and Jennifer out of it.” He looked at your Five, a silent understanding happening between him as he lied. “You get everyone back to the academy. Viktor will have time to pull this shit out of you, dump it, and then you get the hell out of there. If you win, we all do.”

Reaching down, instead of vomiting, which he looked like he might do, Drunk Five pulled up two heavy double barrel shotguns that you had no idea were sitting next to the mostly quiet CrossWord Five who was now also suddenly getting up, pulling two guns from his shoulder straps.

“I’m in,” the Waiter Five said, dropping his coffee carafe in favor of the potato peeler he just pulled out of the bin full of dirty dishes sitting on the next table.

Greeter Five walked over to the fire box, smashing open the case, pulling out the ax. “Fine, Let’s fuck that blob up,” he said while giving you an extra cute grin that left you even more speechless over how quickly they’d all came together.

Almost all the Fives were suddenly packing, Brisket Five included, grinning at you from over by the check-in desk as he twirled a large butcher knife around, pointing it at his head, trying to get you to laugh over how crazy they all were.

Drunk Five swooped in, wobblily kneeling at your feet, his puppy dog eyes imploring you to believe him. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.” Feeling drawn to him, as you shakily wiped a tear from his cheek, he said, “I won’t let you down this time.” Letting your fingers gently run across his temple, Drunk Five’s eyes fluttered closed, his long lashes fanning his cheeks. “I still feel it,” he whispered as that spark of something lit up inside you, his eyes opening to meet yours, his focus entirely on you, unwavering as he was in his heart. “We’ve got this, sweetheart, we always did. Just hold on to me, okay? In here. Don’t forget how much I love you and we will always be together.”

He reached up, placing his hand over yours so he could pull it over his heart.

As your Five slowly, almost hypnotically moved in, looking down at the other him with a heartsick look in his eyes, Drunk Five handed the much older, very resolute looking Five who’d also came over his other shotgun. 

“Enough fucking around! Time to end this, boys!” the white-haired patriarch said. 

~~~

“See you on the other side,” Brisket Five said, while giving you both a look that was nothing like his haughty expressions he’d been maintaining for most of the conversation inside the deli. To you, his small smile seemed to be saying something by saying nothing at all, then he ducked into the other train car that the other Five’s had chosen to ride in.

Stepping in the doors you had come out of when you got there, you watched them a car over from yours, all the different versions of the man you loved as they found their places to either sit or stand, none of them saying a word. 

They looked like they meant business, like the violent ax swinging, hell bent on retribution kind of business, and it was a stark contrast to how out of control they’d been acting inside the deli.

“I promise, we can do this,” Five said, his eyes not leaving yours even though he was aware he had an audience in the next train over.

His heart was beating so hard. He felt like he could jump out of his skin but there was no way he was going to tell you that.

He knew all of the Fives felt it. It was in the air all around them, permeating every fiber of their being. It was the accumulation of all of it. The weight of their endless devotion to the people they loved, the pain of enduring so much for so long, and it was the bitter taste of so much loss and the loss that had yet to come.

You let your fingers trail down the gully between Five’s ab muscles until they touched his waist. “Five, I am so scared.”

He wasn’t anymore.

He looked over at the other car, then back at you, shaking his head. “We have about five minutes, give or take. What should we do with it?”

You said nothing, and tears started to run down your cheeks.

Five kissed you.

His eyes met yours right as you grabbed at his leather belt, pulling his hips against you.

“I need you,” he said, his voice breaking.

The smallest noise escaped his mouth as you snaked your body against his. The warmth of your body flooded his senses, tingling from his toes all the way back to his groin.

The rapid rise and fall of your chest matched his as you kissed him with equal desperation, shaking him to the core.

With a suppressed moan, Five took you by the shoulders, pushing you down on the seat. Coming down to his knees in front of you, making is where some of the others couldn’t see you, he settled his body between your legs. 

He pushed your knees apart even more, then locked his mouth on yours again, his tongue thrusting inside urgently.

Clutching his shirt, you slid closer to him, until your hips met his.

Reaching for his pocket, Five closed his eyes and swallowed.

He pulled out the condom Diego gave him. Realizing what he was about to do, you snatched it and chucked it over his head, then immediately started unlatching his belt, sliding his zipper down to gather him in your palm.

“There is nothing that can ever come between us,” you said, nearly repeating what all the other Five’s had been saying but saying it meaning so much more than that. 

Five’s body involuntarily fell forward as you stroked him.

“I love you,” he breathed. It came out unsteady, a streak of hot liquid slipping from his eye no matter how much he willed it not to.

You fisted the back of his pants, drawing him closer, the deed earning you a low mewl emanating from deep within his throat.

You kissed him and brought your legs up around his waist.

His pants, already undone, slipped down his thighs, catching in a bunch of material above his knees as his cock bobbed between your bodies, fully erect.

Five moved his forehead against yours. He lifted the bottom of your dress up as you swept a finger over his leaking slit, spreading the liquid gathering down his shaft.

He hissed with pleasure.

Unable to stop himself even though he saw Brisket Five peeking over his shoulder for a second, Five took his cock in hand, and getting ready, your hands moved down behind you on the seat to keep you from slipping backwards. You arched your back, letting out a broken whimper the first time Five’s cock slid up against you.

“Holy shit,” Five breathed in on shaky air as he rubbed his tip across your clit a few times, then he positioned his cock lower, his slicked thickness gently pushing and prodding as he worked it over your hole like he’d never allowed himself to do before.

“Fuck,” he cursed, because that was exactly what it felt like as he tried to sink into your warmth but the tightness starting to surround him instantly fought back.

Gripping his length with more determination, his hand trembling, Five pushed harder. Sweat breaking out all over his body, he felt the pressure surrounding the sensitive bulb of his swollen flesh as your body started to let him inside. He felt your body clenching repeatedly around him as it adjusted and even that was almost enough to do him in.

“Tell me if I’m hurting you,” he anxiously breathed.

Biting your lip as you tried to relax, looking up at him staring back through the dark strands of hair dangling over his eyes, you nodded, encouraging him along with one of your hands winding around his neck and your other sliding around his hip, gently but firmly pushing him to take more.

Five’s lower lip quivered as he did, his hand gripping his base moved out of the way as he opened you, moving so cautiously, as he forced your body to take him.

You sucked in a breath as his hips jerked forward just a little, then back again.

“Oh, fuck, that felt- Fuck,” he groaned.

He drove in, kissing you for just a moment before breathlessly breaking away again.

“We stay together until the end,” you frantically said, “You and me. If you go, I go.”

Five knew why you were saying this. He knew your heart was breaking, just like his. They were all trying to hide the truth, but you saw right through him. 

You always did.

There was only a fraction of space between your faces. With your breathy words on his lips, Five whispered back, “You and me, always, love.”

He slipped out and then back in, bottoming out in one swift motion.

You gasped and he pulled back, then completely stilled until you quickly moved your hands down his back, pulling at his waistcoat so he was forced to dig himself inside you again.

“Don’t stop,” you begged.

One more small thrust in and out and again he buried himself full deep, jolting your body as his fingers dug into your ass, locking you to him as much as he could.

Like he needed air to breathe, Five needed to be a part of you in every way he could in the minutes he had left. Audience of horny Fives be damned. Your heart and your soul was his.

He had to bury his face in your neck to stem the flow of his breathy curses over what his body was feeling as it took yours, claiming it completely.

“You feel amazing,” he puffed against your skin. It took him a few seconds to regain himself, but when he did, you brought your hand up to his hair, slowly carding it through your fingers as you drew his lip to yours. Your kiss was soft and soothing. After a moment, his body reactively started moving again, and your kiss deepened, letting him know he should keep going.

Five pulled his hips back, withdrawing halfway before pushing back into your perfect warmth as slowly as he could manage. But as you started to lift your hips to meet his, his pace got faster, and more confident, and again it felt so fucking good that he had to pull back from your lips to breathe. He went for the skin at your neck instead, tasting it, licking you as he nipped and sucked and wildly drove himself into you with his hips rocking and his thighs thrusting forward, the tips of his dress shoes digging into the floor as he wildly plowed you.

Fighting the urge to let himself come, Five growled, “Fuck this world, and fuck all of them, you are mine!”

The cheers of the other Five’s hearing that, all of them unable not to notice the show he was putting on, only made your Five get louder, increasing the madness of it all.

“You are mine!” he said again, getting angrier, but also not, because his diabolically cute grin said something else entirely.

“Five!” you cried out as he fucked into you harder and harder, shaking your brains loose.

Out of his mind, but somehow still in control enough to bite back the pressure building, Five suddenly started to move in slow, deep thrusts that were sweet and intense, and at first, very calculated. That abrupt change got you moaning like he was slowly killing you, your fingers clawing at his ass as he undulated his cock in and out, deliberately dragging his tip back and forth where it made you cry out his name the loudest.

Despite Five’s valiant efforts to control himself and prolong the thing you’d both been denied for so long, he could no longer hold back when your heels dug into his back.

When he dipped forward, laying over you as much as he could while fucking you on edge of the bench, you kissed the hollow of his throat, your hot tongue slick against his skin.

Just like he finally knew what he needed to do, Five knew that no matter what, he would always have this, even if you didn’t remember it. 

A weight lifting that he’d been crushed by for so long, wrapping his arms around your waist, Five lifted you forward with animal-like passion, bucking into you.

Like free falling, the heat of your release caressed his length as he continued to swiftly move in and out. You were lost, eyes closed, your mouth wide against his shoulder, silently crying out as your walls trembled around him, the feeling of ecstasy not letting up because he wasn’t.

Not until his rhythm began to break and Five could no longer hold back the rising tide did he tell you to look at him.

He locked eyes with you, his hips shunting forward in a stutter of broken motion he could no longer control. “You are the best part of me,” he panted as he started spilling deep inside you.

The whisper of his name on your lips served to move his hips once more, then as you cried his name, another spasm came to close his eyes as his body weakened and his face dropped to the side of your neck.

For almost a minute, Five stayed in that spot, waiting for his heart to slow. But all too quickly he had to withdraw.

As you were both righting your clothes, one of the Fives banged on the glass between the cars. “Button it up! Time to go!”

The train was slowing.

Placing your hand on his cheek as you fought back the start of more tears, you gave Five that beautiful smile that would forever touch his soul. 

~~~

Before setting out of the train, Brisket Five put a hand on Drunk Five’s back as he said, “It’s been an honor watching you slowly trying to drown yourself.”

Pulling his eyes from the floor, Drunk Five looked at the other him who was holding the butcher knife and smiled. “It’s been awful eating that shit you call food.”

Swinging his ax to his shoulder, Greeter Five kicked the Five with Dolores on his lap in the ankle. “You watched the whole thing, didn’t you? Just look at your pants,” he said pointing to his crotch and the boner that he was trying to use their beloved mannequin to hide.

“What,” he questioned innocently while turning Dolores towards him, looking for support. “Can’t blame a guy for being curious… If you fuckers wouldn’t have gotten jealous and started beating off like a bunch of pervs over it, Dolores was game to join in the fun. Weren’t you, honey?”

Smirking as he pushed his back off the side of the train, one of the Card playing Fives let out a little laugh. “He’s got a point.”

“I am not going to miss you fuckers,” Old Five said, smirking at he rolled his eyes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Big Damnit here guys...

Okay so readers, I am so sorry, but Tumblr cut me off here and won't let me post more, and all we have left is Z!!!! It's so frustrating because it almost all fit on here. The end is worth it I promise, so please read it, it's not that long. I am not doing a separate post on here to end it because those get lost in the ether. So, please forgive me and head over to A03 to this link (Chapter 26, Z-Zion) to go directly to the final part of this story.

Long live the Umbrella Academy and its awesome fans. ❤️

Share your thoughts if you like but just know one way or another, thank you for reading this. It means so much to me.

Link to my MasterList

Link to all my Tumblr story and art Posts

Link to visit me on A03

[anxious-witch]

Okay, so this is likely be long so buckle up. Let's talk about how the height and position of characters affects the story and shows us where they are emotionally or in regards to characters they interact with.

This is the most prominent with three characters, which are Edwin, Charles and the Cat King. But! I will do my best to touch upon the rest as well if anyone finds this interesting.

Considering I briefly touched upon how Charles and his dad have a similar hunched stance, let's start with Charles.

Also TW for talk of abuse and violence, since I do touch upon his relationship with his dad and abuse in general.

Charles is fascinating because he is one character that seems to constantly make himself smaller, either on the same level as the other character he is next to, or sometimes even make himself smaller than them.

This is especially visible next to Edwin, who always holds himself perfect straight and poised. Even in the above picture, where he is slightly leaning back for the dramatic effect, Charles is still hunched down more. With Crystal, yes, he is generally taller, but anytime he can, he does his best to lean down so they are on the eye-level.

This has dual purpose-both because Charles wants to be as non threatning as possible and because he often tries to sympathize with people, to quite literally understand their point of view.

Charles is the tallest character in the series, which I think has a weight on it's own. At first, I was under the impression Edwin was taller, bc of Charles' hunching, but Charled is just slightly taller. He is a protector, he is a brawn, and he tries his best to make himself as small as possible.

We also see that in scenes where he is "beanth" the person he is interacting with, usually happens when is emotionally distressed and/or feels powerless in a situation

The first time it happens in Devlin's house, when he is sitting on the stairs while Edwin and Crystal are standing. This is also right before he snaps and tries to hit the murderous father of the family, actively showing the turmoil he has been going through. Because that's what Charles does. He can't stand being helpless. His feeling below the problems he is facing is symbolized through him sitting on the stairs and he can't stand it any longer so he acts, quite rashly, just to disperse that feeling.

But then, what happens? He gets knocked to the floor, even lower than he was before. And he remains there, frozen.

Stuck in a loop of feeling helpless while being on the stairs, trying to take action and being knocked down even lower. What a metaphor for being stuck in an abusive loophole! Feeling like any time you try to stand up for yourself, any time you try to take action to not feel so helpless, you get into an even worse position. And then, in the end, it's Edwin and Crystal who have to help him out of the loop and who help him back on his feet.

We see him again in a position where amother character is not only above him, but actively lookming over him in a scene with his dad. Moreso, this is one instance where Charles doesn't take this position willingly, but rather, his dad literally knocks him down to the floor and starts beating him.

I think it's also sooo interesting how Charles' mom and the Night Nurse are positioned here. The Night Nurse stands above both Charles and his dad, all prim and proper. Completely unfeeling and separate from the whole picture.

Meanwhile, Charles' mom is above all of them, barely seen in the doorway, but still watching and she is crying. And while I know Charles loves his mom and understands she was likely also abused, I do wonder if this represents his view on both his parents. His dad, who is close but hurts him, who Charles would be on the same level with, if he wasn't constabtly knocked down. And his mom, who is above all that, almost like some sort of holy figure, but still suffering on Charles behaf.

Third time I noticed Charles being in a position where someone is above him was in a scene where Crystal is packing to go back to London, after getting her memories back.

Charles feels both emotionally vulnerable and helpless to stop her. Because he wants her to do what's best for her, but he also clearly doesn't want her to leave. The important part is that here, despite his clear emotional turmoil, Charles doesn't react directly. I believe he offers her his help, to come with her, but he doesn't insist. Which is a big change to the previous instance where we seem him in such position.

I am sure there are more scenes like these, these are just the ones I noticed. But! Shall we look at when does Charles stand full upright and shows how tall he really is?

Spoiler-When he is feelings brave

Framing is also very important and very deliberate. I'll touch more on this in Edwin's analysis, but you'll notice how most of the time, Edwin is always framed as the taller and biggest, either by height or because he is the closest to the camera. But no in the scene where he and Charles talk about Edwin's supposed feelings about Monty. No-it's Charles who is closer to the camera, because Edwin is the one being emotionally vulnerable. Charles holds the power to either lift up or crush Edwin here. And he is very aware of it.

And fulled by that power, by the fact Edwin opened up to him, Charles stands up tall. And when he reaches Edwin, they are practically the same height. Perfectly balanced, in the wake of Charles' acceptance.

In the scene with the Night Nurse, we see Charles practically flaunting his height. Which is in line with him essentially telling her to take him, but to leave Edwin alone. The point is, not only is he fully showing off his power and consciously or not, trying to intimidate the Night Nurse, but he is also shielding Edwin that way. Look at me, not him. I am the one you should feel threatened by, not him.

And of course. Of course. One scene, where Charles is actively above someone else, where he is higher, both in height and positioning?

In hell, during, Edwin's confession.

In an interview from the actors in this post, they actually touched upon this scene and how Charles being above Edwin on the starway was intentional, because Edwin is feeling very emotionally vulnerable.

He is in an submissive position(do not make the sex joke) to Charles here. He is opening himself up for a rejection and Charles is the one with all the power here. Which in and off itself is powerful, but for Charles? The character who constantly shrinks himself down as not to make anyone uncomfortable and threatened, who constantly gets knocked down in a fight by others?

Charles is terrified of being in a more powerful position due to his dad, because what if he turns out to be the same when he is in such a position?

But instead, he uses that power to be kind. He can't return Edwin's feelings, but he can reassure him he cares for him and that they have time to figure this out. And that is what turns Charles' shirt red again. Not only the fact that he is loved, despite all his flaws, but also the fact that proved to himself that he would never knock down the person being vulnerable, even when he hold all the power.

I exceeded picture limit on mobile, but in a scene on the rooftop wjere Edwin tries to apologize if him confessing created any tension between them and Charles reassure him that it did not, they are on the same height again.

Charles is sitting on an wall, so he is elevated, but he all curled up, so he comes on around the same hight as Edwin who is standing. Equals, once again, despite completely different stances.

I believe that's all I have to say on the topic of Charles in this context, lmk if I forgot smth or if anyone has anything to add, I love hearing other ppl's takes too!

[nadvs]

i’m ugh i love your take on angst. but twins are usually born early, so when you’re in labor rafes on an away game and you’re going through most of it by yourself

aaa thank you!! omg exactly what i was picturing 🤭

based on this fic

» au masterlist

rafe’s stomach sinks when he gets the phone call.

he’s boarding his team’s jet after an away game. it was the last away game he told management he could do until the birth of his twins, refusing to be out of town when they arrive.

especially because he was traded at the start of the season, moving them even farther away from their hometown. she doesn’t have anyone else close by to help her if she goes into labor.

she’s seven months and three weeks along. the doctors told them multiple births tend to come early. he agreed to do this one last away game, confident he’d make it.

but now, he’s an hour flight away when he gets the call from his girlfriend that she’s having contractions and on her way to the hospital in an ambulance.

he feels like an idiot for taking this risk. for assuming it’d be fine. because now he’s completely and utterly powerless, having to sit on a plane and wait and hope he makes it there before his babies do.

he calls her the second they land, but she doesn’t answer. the call goes straight to voicemail. in the cab, he calls her a few more times. nothing. her phone must have died.

when he runs up to the hospital desk asking where she is, he realizes he’s nearly heaving while the woman at the front desk searches through the system.

finally, he gets a floor and a room number, and he runs up the stairs and through the hallways until he gets to the door he’s been dreaming about coming through for the last two hours.

she looks up when she hears the door creak open. rafe drops the duffel bag strewn over his shoulder and rushes to her. it hasn’t happened yet.

“i’m not too late?” he says, panting.

“no,” she says, looking utterly miserable. she winces as another contraction hits her, squeezing her eyes shut.

“is it hurting?” he grips her hand, her fingers digging into the back of his hand.

she can’t even speak through the pain, trying to breathe through it.

rafe has never felt worse in his life. she’s been here, without him, in pain, all because he made a bad call.

“i’m so sorry,” he whispers. “squeeze my hand as hard as you need to. i deserve it.”

she climbs over the harshest spike of pain, then starts to breathe more evenly as the contraction fades away.

“they keep checking, but i’m not dilated enough,” she tells him. “it’s like my body won’t cooperate.”

“can i get you anything?” he asks anxiously.

“i’m just so glad you made it,” he says.

“i’m so fucking sorry that you’ve been alone.” rafe dips his forehead against her fist closed around his hand.

she bites her lip, her head resting on her pillow. it’s been a nightmare, dealing with the agony and anxiety that she’d be surrounded by strangers during the scariest thing she thinks she’s ever gone through.

her obgyn isn’t on shift, so somebody she doesn’t know will be delivering the babies. she was terrified she’d have to do this without rafe. she looks over at her boyfriend as he kisses her knuckles over and over.

“is this dad?” the nurse says as she comes in.

“yes,” she breathes.

“amazing,” she says cheerfully. “mom is doing great. she’s tough.”

rafe nods, glancing over at his girl, wondering if there’s anything he can do to make up for not being here.

“i’m going to have the doctor on call come in to check up on you again in a few minutes. you still okay without the epidural?”

“yes,” she says.

“just give us a ring if you need us, okay?”

rafe kisses the back of her hand again as the nurse scurries out of the room.

“you seeing how long you can go without it?” he asks, remembering her telling him she was going to only go for the epidural when she was desperate.

“yeah, but i don’t know how much…” she says. “distract me. how was the game?”

“106-88,” he tells her. “easy. they were weak.”

“then why���d you let them get 88 points?” she teases with a small smile.

he stares at her, his gaze heartbroken.

“i’m so sorry i wasn’t here,” he tells her.

“the nurses and doctors have been great,” she says. “they gave me food and water and all the ice chips i could ask for. i’m okay. i was just so scared you wouldn’t make it.”

“i bribed the cab driver to speed,” he admits.

she laughs for the first time in hours.

when the doctor comes to check on her, he tells her she’s still not dilated enough but her blood pressure is getting high, but they’ll keep monitoring.

fifteen minutes later, the doctor checks again and tells her they have no choice but to do a c-section.

it’s all a blur, being rushed to the operating room, prepped for surgery, administered the epidural, feeling the twins kicking her.

once rafe can hold her hand again, he doesn’t let go of her. strangers in scrubs surround her, speaking their jargon, while her strokes her hand with his thumb, whispering to her how much he loves her and how he’ll never leave her side.

their son is born first. they clean him up while delivering their daughter, and when she feels her children resting on her bare chest, she cries in pure disbelief.

rafe kisses her forehead, calling her perfect, their babies perfect, promising that he’ll never leave their side. he can’t believe how close he was to missing this. he’d never forgive himself if he did.

they move to a recovery room. rafe feels helpless watching the hospital staff move through the motions, but once she can rest, the twins swaddled next to each other in a bassinet, he feels like he can breathe again.

in that small moment of quiet, he stands by the bed, seeing the love of his life’s eyelids slowly fluttering after living through such a hard process, seeing the two most perfect babies in the world sleeping next to each other, and tears of awe and happiness well in his eyes.

this is wealth. whatever he thought made him feel fortunate and rich before doesn’t compare to this. the three beautiful beings he’s gazing at right now are all that will ever truly matter to him.

[mr-ys-phantasma]

🌙 Moon Phases 🌙

Agatha Harkness X Fem!Reader

Word Count: 1538

Chapter 25:

The teenager opened the package, and while you were busy placing the board on the low coffee table, he grabbed the instruction book.

He started to flip the pages, searching for the instructions on your language. "Uh, Spanish, Chinese...Ah, English." You all focused on him. "Okay... Number one, do not use the Ouija board alone. Number two, do not speak over each other... three! Do not taunt the spirits. "

Everyone looked at Agatha.

"What?" She exclaimed, feeling offended by the common assumption that she would be foolish enough to actually taunt spirits.

Well, it depended on which spirit would be unlucky enough to be chosen for this trial.

"I repeat, do not taunt the spirits. Fourth, do not ask about death. Five, always end your session with goodbye. Six, do not, under any circumstances, remove your hand from the planchette. If you do so, a spirit will be released."

Silence enveloped the group, none sure what to say or when to start. Sure, the clock was ticking but contacting spirits... spirits that can easily escape if they mess it up...

Lilia noticed that there was something written on the back of the book as well. "What does it say on the back?"

Teen flipped it over. "For ages three and up."

"Helpful," you commented, and everyone moved to grab pillows since you had to sit on the floor around the low coffee table.

You dropped a pillow on the space by Agatha's right, but as you went to sit, your lover pulled it even closer to her.

You glanced at her, seeing the faint fear and hesitaton in her blue eyes. She was scared, hesitating, and you did not blame her; considering she was now a powerless woman with a lot of angry dead enemies.

You said nothing as you took your seat, your folded legs brushing against her bare thigh. You placed your leg on her skin beneath the table, offering a comforting squeeze as everyone joined; Rio sitting by youth right left, leaving you trapped between the two witches.

With some hesitation, you all placed your hands on the pendulum.

"Mother, Maiden, Crone," Agatha started, making you glance at her since she voiced the three fates at the wrong order. She ignored you as she continued. "Spirits be known."

Suddenly, the pendulum started to move on it's own; freaking out Alice and Jen in the process, though something was telling you that someone alive was moving it.

"Is someone here with us during this Witching Hour?" Agatha asked as the pendulum was dragged across the board towards one word.

"Yes." Jen read, surprised.

"All right. And who, may I ask, do we have the pleasure of communing with?"

The pendulum moved again, moving from letter to the other; dragging you all with it as everyone did their best not to remove their fingers from it, aware of the warning.

"M, R, S, H, A, R, T." Teen spelt.

Jen gasped. "Mrs. Hart?" She then started to look around and up, feeling worried and still guilty that maybe she was mostly at fault for her death. "Hey, girl, feeling better? How's your face?"

Lilia glared at them. "No taunting."

Suddenly, the pendulum was pulled sharply, and fingers were removed from it, breaking one of the rules.

Seconds later, Agatha started to act odd, spinning her head and ponytail in an overdramatic fashion.

By instinct alone, you moved faintly away just as Agatha stopped; subconsciously pressing your body closer to Rio's. Agatha, then, stood up, a creepy odd smile on her face that was unlike her.

"Oh, my." Agatha started, speaking in a voice that was not hers. This one was rather squeaky. "What a journey." She sighed. "There I was, living my tiny life in the burbs, baking casseroles, linking in to conspiracy theories on Facebook, drinking before noon, and there you were bringing chills and thrills and bringing on my own early demise!"

Jen shallowed hard.

"Listen, Mrs. Hart..." she started, only to be interrupted by Alice.

"She's not Mrs. Hart." She corrected her fellow witch.

"She's Sharon Davis." Teen reminded everyone.

You frowned, seeing right through the act. First, the wrong beginning and now, the human woman spelling a different name on the Ouija board than her actual name.

"I am. I'm Sharon Davis." A 'possessed,' Agatga said.

In the end, you let out a heavy sigh. "She is not Mrs. Davis, she is Agatha. "

To your surprise, Lilia backed you up. "Yeah." She agreed.

"What?" Agatha questioned and faked giggle.

"She's just scared." Rio pointed out, making Agatha lose that creepy smile.

She cleared her throat. "Okay. I thought that was pretty good."

"The clock is ticking." Jen reminded her in her usual not so friendly tone.

Rio tapped Agatha's empty space, silently telling her to sit down and get over it.

In the end, Agatha obeyed and defeated placed her hands on the pendulum along with the others.

"Maiden, Mother, Crone," she started, this time using the correct order. "Spirits be known." Suddenly, there was a rustling sound coming from the ceiling. "Who is here with us tonight?"

The pendulum started to move above the letters, and everyone started to read the letters out loud.

D, E, A, T, H.

"Death." Teen exclaimed as Rio started to laugh like a maniac, earning different looks from the others around her.

You only rolled your eyes at the drama but quickly focused on the board as the spirit awaited its next question.

"What do you want?" Agatha asked, trying to remain calm, but her nerves were slowly getting the best of her.

The pendulum started to move again.

P U, N, I, S, H.

"Who do you wanna punish?"

Everyone started to read the letters out loud. "A, G, A...T, H...A... A, G, A, T, H, A..."

The same name was repeated again and again, each time the pendulum being dragged with even more force, almost making you fall on Alice and her on you as it continued.

Despite the begs, no one could stop it, and in the end; fear won over Agatha... and she pulled back.

"Agatha!" The Witches exclaimed as she had fallen and crawled away from the table, fear evident in her blue eyes.

"Fuck" you exclaimed as you were the first to stand up, the others following suit.

Agatha had pulled her hands back, meaning that whatever spirit was contacting them was now loose and clearly having a vendetta against Agatha.

You looked around in alarm, waiting for anything that might warn you of an incoming attack; though you were not sure what to expect.

You had never participated in any kind of spirit communication ritual or anything related to spirits. Not to mention, you had never fought any spirit or ghost before; thus, you were unsure if there was something you could actually do.

Unless someone knew how to exorcise them and maybe have confidently enough salt with them for any kind of ritual that might offer you the upper hand.

"What do they want?" Alice questioned as the witches gathered close by while Agatha remained on the floor, trying to hide the fact that she looked like a frightened little girl in front of them just a second ago.

Jen placed a hand on her waist. "They already told us. Punish Agatha!"

You immediately glared at her. Your hard stare continued and even went to the rest of the coven as they all started to suggest ways of punishing Agatha physically and emotionally.

Ropes, wounds, humiliations...

You almost snapped and attacked them at their words.

"Are you listening to yourselves?!" You exclaimed, your voice coming out louder than normal and drawing their attention.

"Come on, Y/N. The spirit told us what to do. It's how we pass the trial, " Jen argued.

To their surprise and not, you moved to stand between them and the fallen Agatha. "Fuck the spirit. This is not how we pass the trial"

"It's not like we will hurt her," Alice argued, trying to find the middle ground.

"I still think we should slit her throat," Rio commented, holding her knife, which had been changed into a box cutter to fit with the theme.

"I am still up for the rope and humiliation part," Jen voiced.

"When people ask me why I don't have female friends.." Agatha commented, trying not to show how affected she was by the fact that she was about to be betrayed by a coven, her coven, for a second time.

"No one will be harming Agatha in any way" you put your foot down, your temper flaring faintly and your magic was slowly coming alive in your hands; making the witches to look at you in surprise and slight fear.

Thankfully, there was one more person in the group who did not wish for the punishment to take place... Teen.

"But we were getting along, weren't we? We were clicking. There was unity." He argued.

Jen lifted a finger. "Familiars don't get a vote." She commented, earning a dark look that was unlike him.

Suddenly, the power went out, and the cabin was filled with darkness. It was then that Lilia noticed something.

"Where did she go?" Lilia asked, making everyone realise that Agatha had disappeared into thin air.

Chapter 26

[ox1-lovesick]

✶ ─── TOMORROW X TOGETHER AND WHEN YOU LOOK MOST BEAUTIFUL TO THEM

pairing(s). txt x gn reader genre fluff warnings. none(?) wc. 100-200 each

type. headcannon , reaction

a/n. guess who wrote something *everyone applaud* please enjoy this I forced myself to write it because I haven't posted anything since queen elizabeth graduated high school 🥰

★ YEONJUN could already stare at you for hours on end — you always looked so effortlessly beautiful in his eyes, they can't help but wander back to take you in every now and then. You're the prettiest thing he's ever seen, but there's something different about you right now. About your furrowed eyebrows and small pout, about your fleeting gaze, stuck between your laptop screen and notebook as you read over the problem for the nth time hoping it will all magically make sense soon. You look outrageously adorable to him right now, laser focused on solving this equation of letters and numbers so you can move onto your next set of notes. He'd pull out a chair and sit next to you every time, resting his head against the palm of his hand as he watched while you busied yourself with whatever you needed to get done. Sometimes he'd sit and stare in silence, others he'd fondly brush the stray strands of hair away from your eyes so you don't have to, but every time without fail, his eyes would be trained on nothing but you.

★ SOOBIN loved taking care of his skin. It felt like a checkmark in his day, the last task at hand before he could melt into his bed and forget his worries until morning. He instantly felt lighter after taking all his make-up off and gently applying his moisturiser, but doing it with his favourite person makes just that much better. He especially loves when he doesn't have the energy to do it himself, leaving you to do it for him. Fingers gently tapping the products into skin with care, with the occasional kiss on his nose, but what he loves most of all is the sight of you, bare faced and sleepy. Some days he'd feign exhaustion just to stare into your eyes and hold your waist while you massage serum into his skin. He loves you no matter how you look of course, you're always beautiful to him. But being barefaced with each other is intimate, especially when he has to look his best everyday

★ BEOMGYU was never fearful about the sun exploding in 70 something million years, why would he be when he had the replacement right in his arms. Your smile was more than enough to sustain life and light up the solar system. His theory may not be scientifically correct, but in his eyes, it was simply the truth. What a heinous crime it is that you don't own multiple peace prizes for this sight alone—it never failed to make his heart beat out of his chest every time you graced him with its presence. He gets teased to no end by the guys for being horrendously down bad and staring at you with 'goo goo' eyes whenever your lips curl upwards, but how could he help himself? He's sick in the head, mind stuffed full of you and that pretty smile. It's his kryptonite, his one and only weakness, and no one knew it better than you after walking home hand in hand with your brand new jigglypuff plushie and -62837 won in Beomgyu's wallet.

★ TAEHYUN was so weak for things like this. Even under all those muscles he spends hours perfecting at the gym, he's rendered completely and utterly powerless. Weak for holding you closer, weak for pressing a kiss to your forehead, weak for you nuzzling your head further into his chest, weak for falling asleep with the person he adores more than anything next to him, safe and sound in his arms. He always fell asleep much later than you, because he has no self control and can't help but stare. Ever since he'd met you, he's become a morning person. Not because he enjoys starting his day early to be more productive (or to spend another 86 years in the gym) but because he gets to wake up like this. Your limbs tangled in each other, soft breaths against his neck, covered in the warmth of his duvet and comfort of each other. And if you'd allow him to, he'd spend every morning like this for the rest of his life, and die a happy man.

★ HUENINGKAI is a fan-favourite. And while his band mates make it well known who their favourite maknae is, for the sake of their feelings he tells them he loves them all equally, and keeps his favourite a secret. A secret from everyone but you, who just so happens to be said favourite. And his favourite sight on his favourite person? The face you made when he revealed his secret to you. The way your eyes widened, the knowing smile that crept its way onto your face, your nose scrunching in delight, if he could have that moment tattooed on the inside of his eyelids, he'd probably forget what the world looks like from having his eyes closed all the time. He loves this look on you, how excited you get when talking about the drama going on with your classmates or your masterplan to take over the world. Your eyes twinkling and hands flying all over the show because your emotions are just too strong to keep them confined. It might just be his favourite sight of all time, and while he's itching to screech about how adorable you are, he'll keep it his little secret for now

★ OX1-LOVESICK all rights reserved. do not copy, distribute, translate, alter or repost my work without my explicit permission.

[writing0305]

Hi, may I request something with Butcher? Prompts #5 and #15. Maybe the electricity goes out in the place where the boys are crushing for the night, and it's cold and windy so they're all freezing. Reader had to share a room with butcher, and when he sees her shivering he offers her his coat. It's still freezing though so they end up having to cuddle for warmth which makes reader anxious since they have a massive crush on butcher. Maybe butcher thinks he's making them uncomfortable, which leads to an unexpected confession and then to them falling asleep entangled in each other's arms :)

thank you in advance and feel free to change anything you want on my request 🙏💕

Heartbeat.

Pairing: Billy Butcher x F!Reader.

Summary: You've had a crush on Butcher for a long time and one powerless and cold night pushed you two closer together and made confessions come out.

Warning: Swearing. That's it, I think?

Prompt: Fluff - 5. "I can hear your heart beating, relax."

15. "Your jacket smells like you." - "Is that a good a good thing?" - "It’s… It’s comforting."

----

Thank you for this request!! I enjoyed writing it so much!! I hope I did your request justice and you like it!!

It had been weeks since you, along with the boys, had to go into hiding. All your covers had been blown and you were all burned. Grace Mallory had been kind enough to help you with a hideout. The place was shitty and falling apart and the neighborhood was sketchy.

It was only three bedrooms between the six of you and everyone had to room up together. Frenchy had insisted that Kimiko and him share, and before you could intervene, Hughie had already claimed MM as his roommate.

Hughie was one of the only people who knew about the crush you have on Butcher. The second he joined the boys, you and Hughie grew close and one night after sharing a bottle of wine, you confessed to Hughie that you liked Butcher. And since that very fucking day, Hughie has done everything in his power to push you and Butcher closer together.

Butcher didn’t mind sharing a room with you, but for you, it was a living hell. You were extremely aware and self-conscious of everything you did around Butcher. You two had a close relationship and that only made it harder for you. Because you couldn’t pull away from him without him getting suspicious but pretending to only want to be close friends with him was torture.

One night you were in the living room, sitting on a crappy couch with Butcher and Frenchy. While they watched a movie, your attention was running around the dimly lit room. You always tried to keep noise and lights to a minimum in the house, so as to not draw any attention. Right now, the room was only illuminated by the small TV screen.

Suddenly the TV went off and the place felt ten times darker and colder in the absence of power. MM came out of the room he shared with Hughie, who was already sleeping. “Is the power out?” He asked as he glanced around.

Butcher stared at the turned off tv for a second before tilting his head to look over at MM.“No, can’t ya see the TV is on? Look, they’re showing those fuckin’ rich sisters with the ginormous asses.” He snarkily replied as he pointed towards the TV and Frenchy let out a chuckle.

MM rolled his eyes as he crossed his arms over his chest. “You gotta be a dick all the time?” He questioned as he raised his eyebrows at Butcher.

Butcher offered him a lopsided smirk as he spread out his arms by his sides. “It’s my trademark.” He replied and MM rolled his eyes again as he shook his head.

You got up from the couch, patting your feet through the dark. You made your way over towards one of the windows that had been plastered over one of the many busted windows in the place. You shivered at the cold breeze blowing over your face as you peeled a piece of the newspaper back and glanced outside at the pitch-black streets. “Look’s like the whole street is out.” You informed them as you pulled away from the window and Frenchy turned on the flashlight of his phone, lighting the room up a little.  “Fuck, it’s freezing in here.” You muttered as you wrapped your arms around yourself.

“Maybe we can start a fire, no?” Frenchy asked as he looked between you, Butcher, and MM with raised eyebrows.

MM slowly turned around to face Frenchy, raising his eyebrows. “On the fucking floor?” He asked as he pointed his hands down at the floor before shrugging his shoulders. “Where the fuck are you going to make a fire, Frenchy?” He asked, seeing as the shitty place didn’t have a fireplace.

“It was just a suggestion,” Frenchy muttered softly as his lips slightly pouted out and his arms crossed over his chest.

“Yeah well, it was a dumb fucking suggestion.” MM huffed as he shook his head at Frenchy, a frown tugging at his lips that nearly made him look disappointed and it made you smile.

“I’m going to bed.” You muttered with a soft sigh as you stretched your back and the three men said their goodnights as you sauntered off to your room. Two mattresses lay on the floor, both on opposite sides of the room. You sighed as you glanced at your mattress with only one blanket lying across it.

You pulled on a sweater to warm yourself up a little in the cold. The only window in the room was busted as well and it allowed for a cold breeze. You kicked off your shoes, keeping your socks and even your jeans on. You all had grown used to keeping your day clothes on for when you had to leave through the night in a hurry.

You climbed underneath your blanket and pulled your knees up to your chest as you lay on your side. Your body trembled every time you shivered and your teeth began to clatter. Your muscles quickly grew sore as your shivers grew more frequent.

The door to the room opened and Butcher looked down at you, eyebrows deeply furrowing. “Jesus, I can hear ya fucking teeth clatter all the way down the hall.” He grunted with a huff as he made his way through the room, kicking a bag of clothes out of his way.

You scoffed as you sat up on your mattress, lips pouting as you rested your chin on your knees, wrapping your arms around your legs. “As if this place wasn’t cold  enough to begin with.” You muttered softly. “Why don’t we have more blankets?” You asked with a sigh.

Butcher turned to you, quirking an eyebrow. “Sorry luv, wasn’t on the fuckin ‘running from every law in this country’, bucket list.” He replied as he shrugged his shoulders and spread his arms out by his sides.

You stared up at him, pursing your lips. “You know, MM is right.” You muttered softly, but there was a lighthearted tone to your voice.

Butcher hummed as his head cocked to the side. “About?” He questioned as he raised his eyebrows.

“You being a dick.” You replied softly as a teasing smile tugged at your lips. A shiver ran down your back and you wrapped your arms tighter around your legs.

Butcher scoffed in amusement at your words and he nodded in agreement. "Thank you, luv.” He muttered with a grin. He stared at you as you shivered again and he pursed his lips and pulled off his long black trench coat. “Here, take my coat.” He insisted.

Your eyes slightly widened in the dark room and your lips parted. Your heart began to beat with loud thuds in your chest. “No, I can’t do that.” You replied softly as you shook your head. You couldn’t have Butcher be cold just for you. Even though you were sure the temp V warmed him right up.

“Take it.” He insisted as he dropped the coat down on your mattress. “Can’t listen to your teeth chattering the whole bloody night.” He muttered as he climbed down on his mattress, pulling a blanket over his legs and resting with his back against the wall.

“Thank you.” You spoke up softly as you sat up on your knees and grabbed his coat. You shrugged it on and tensed up when you smelled his lingering scent on the fabric. You softly cleared your throat as you sat back.

Butcher watched you, his eyebrows furrowing. “What is it?” He questioned as his head tilted to the side.

You pursed your lips as you shrugged your shoulders. “Your coat smells like you." You muttered softly as you wrapped your arms around your waist, leaning into the warmth of his coat.

Butcher was silent for a few seconds as he stared at you, admiring the way you looked completely engulfed in his coat that was a little just too big for you. "Is that a good thing?" He asked after a while as he raised his eyebrows.

Now it was your turn to be silent for a few seconds. You stared into the darkness in front of you as you pursed your lips again. Butcher hummed questionally and that snapped your attention back to him. You turned your head to face him. “It’s… It’s comforting."��You whispered and your whole body grew so warm that you almost stopped shivering.

“Yeah?” He asked, his voice oddly soft as his eyes remained on you. “And why is that?” He asked curiously as he shifted on his mattress so that most of his focus could be on you.

Again you remained silent for a second before shrugging your shoulders again. “I don’t know…it just is.” You muttered softly as you shifted to lie down, pulling your blanket tightly over yourself as you curled up. You began shivering again and your teeth clattered.

Butcher watched you for a while, sighing when all that filled the silence, was your teeth clattering together. “Bloody hell, I can still hear your teeth, Y/n.” He muttered.

“I can’t help it.” You replied with a sigh as you curled up even more, trying to stop your teeth from clattering but failing completely. “It’s a normal bodily function.” You huffed at him.

Butcher stared at you for a while again before he flipped back his blanket. “Come over here.” He softly called out to you as his lips pulled into a thin line.

Your heart nearly skipped a beat right there. Your eyebrows furrowed as you stared at  Butcher through the darkness surrounding you. “What?” You asked in confusion.

“Bring ya blanket and come here.” He insisted as he patted the spot directly next to him on his mattress.

This time, you could have sworn your heart did skip a beat. Your lips parted as you stared at Butcher, your stomach knotting. “You…you mean-” You muttered softly, letting your sentence drift into nothingness.

“Yes,” Butcher replied as he patted the spot again. “Body heat will warm ya up faster than that flimsy fuckin’ blanket.” He said as he nodded his head at the blanket that covered you.

“O-okay.” You muttered, hesitantly getting up from your mattress and patting your way toward Butcher’s. your heartbeat picked up with every step you took. You hesitantly lay down next to Butcher as he shifted, pulling his blanket over your body before wrapping an arm around you.

You ever so slightly tensed as you were pulled against his chest, your head naturally coming to rest on his shoulder. Butcher was warm, extremely warm. The lasting effects of the last of the temp V in his system. You were one of the few that was aware he had been shooting the shit up into his veins. What you didn’t know was, that your crying when you found out about it, was what made Butcher stop taking it. He swore to find another way to kill Homelander. He couldn’t be the cause of your heartache or tears.

Another lasting effect that still lingered was his enhanced senses. He could so clearly smell the mixture of both your scent and his scent combined on you. He could also hear how loud and fast your heart beated. The thudding nearly hurt his ears.

“Bloody hell, I can hear your heart beating, relax, will ya?” He spoke up in a grumbling voice as he gave your arm a gentle but firm squeeze. It was an attempt to calm you but his touch only made your heart beat so much faster.

“I can’t help it.” You whispered as you squeezed your eyes shut, feeling embarrassed of the fact that he could so vividly hear your heart. You were surprised he didn’t notice the way your heartbeat always picked up when he was around.

“Yeah?” He hummed softly as he raised his eyebrows.  “Is sounding like ya heart’s about to fuckin’ give out, a normal bodily function as well?” He questioned sarcastically, with a hint of teasing in his gruff voice.

“In this situation, yeah.” You muttered underneath your breath but the temporary supe next to you heard every single word.

“This situation?” He questioned as his eyebrows furrowed and you sighed softly at the knowladge that he had heard your words.

“Can we just sleep, please?” You pleaded softly with him as your eyes remained closed and you almost let out a breath of relief when the room went silent. Butcher didn’t say a word for a few seconds and you started to wonder if he had fallen asleep.

But he didn’t, and he spoke up once again. “You know…we’ll warm up faster naked.” He commented as a smirk tugged at his lips. He always enjoyed making comments like that. Especially when he was on temp V because then he could hear the way your heartbeat picked up and he could feel the heat of embarrassment and shyness radiate off you.

Your eyes widened and you tensed for a second. “What?” You questioned softly as your heartbeat thudded so loud, it pounded in your eardrum.

“Skin on skin, they say it warms ya right up.” He explained, and while you couldn’t look up at him in the darkness, you could nearly hear the smirk in his voice.

“Yeah, when you’re wet.” You muttered softly as you sighed, slowly shaking your head.

“Well, I bet ya are.” He commented playfully as he chuckled softly.

Your eyes shot open and you gasped. “Butcher.” You scolded him as you slapped his chest and he could hear your heartbeat picking up once again.

He cleared his throat, shifting in his spot. “Sorry luv, didn’t mean to make ya uncomfortable.” he apologized softly as he gave your arm another squeeze. “Just kiddin’ with ya.” He assured. Usually, you weren’t this affected by his filthy mouth. Other times you would have laughed.

“You can’t say things like that when you’re this close.” You muttered softly as your lips slightly pouted out and your eyebrows furrowed.

Butcher was silent for a second, his eyebrows knitting together. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He asked softly as he looked down at you.

Your eyes slightly widened and you gulped down the lump forming in the back of your throat. “Nothing.” You whispered as you shook your head.

Butcher shifted, sitting up and forcing you to sit up as well. “No luv, you can’t say things like that with ya heart fuckin beatin’ like this.” He said as he reached out to place a hand against your chest, feeling the thuds of your heart beneath his palm. His eyebrows furrowed as your heartbeat picked up at his touch. He moved his hand from your chest and cupped your cheek. “Tell me what’s goin’ on in that head of yours.” He insisted.

You stared at him through the darkness, taking a deep breath before you spoke up. It was no or fucking never. “It’s you…it’s you that makes my heart beat like this.” You admitted softly and his head tilted to the side.  “It’s like I can’t fucking think straight with you around and I get this warm feeling in my chest, and my heart beats like crazy, and it feels like…I don’t know how to explain it.” You sighed as you lowered your head.

Butcher stared at you as a look of realization crossed his face. He lifted your head so that you could face him. “Ya don’t have to luv.” He replied softly as he shook his head. “I know the feelin’.” He admitted as his thumb brushed over your skin.

Your eyes widened and your lips parted. “You do?” You asked softly as your eyebrows slightly furrowed.

“Yes.” He admitted with a nod of his head before leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss to your forehead and then he moved down to kiss the tip of your nose and then down to press a feather-light kiss to your lips. You inhaled softly at the touch of his lips against yours. He smiled when your heartbeat picked up for a second again. “Get some sleep.” He insisted.

He shifted to lie down again and pulled you with him. His arms wrapped around you, pulling you snuggly against his chest. His warmth engulfed you completely. Your head was nuzzled into the crook of his neck and his head rested against yours. That’s how you fell asleep that night and every other night that followed. Sometimes with fewer clothes or no clothes, but always in each other’s arms.

[jromanoff]

Nightmare II R. George

Pairing: Regina George (2024) x Reader

Warning(s): bus accident, mentions of trauma and therapy

Authors note: something short and cute for you all :)

Summary: Regina has a nightmare about the accident.

Word count: 1.1k

Regina and Cady burst through the doors of the school’s main entrance, their voices echoing through the hallways. The other students followed them outside, eager to witness the encounter between two of the popular girls at North Shore (and film it, of course). Regina stormed away from the school, still shouting at Cady, when suddenly, a vivid yellow blur hurtled towards her from the periphery of her vision.

Regina shot awake as the bus was about to hit her. She immediately shot upright in bed, breathing heavily. Her forehead covered in a small layer of sweat. Who knew Regina George could sweat?

As Regina felt the weight of the blanket on her lap she knew she was safe, in bed. It was a nightmare- it wasn’t real. Not again.

“Gina?” you spoke sleepily as you woke up due to all the movement from Regina’s side.

“Go back to sleep,” Regina said, her voice slightly trembling. She quickly used the blanket to rid herself of the sweat on her forehead. Tears threatened to fall from her eyes, but Regina wouldn’t let them. She didn’t want to worry her girlfriend.

Rubbing the sleep from your eyes, you turned around in bed to face your girlfriend. Due to the darkness, you could only make out her form sitting upright on the bed as her face was turned away from you. Regina then looked over at you and spoke, “It’s nothing, baby. Just a stupid nightmare. Nothing to worry about.”

You, however, could sense that Regina was more affected by this ‘stupid’ nightmare than she let on. You knew she was trying to keep it together instead of breaking in front of you.

"I know it isn’t nothing, Regina. It's okay to admit when something’s wrong, you know?” you said softly while sitting up and placing a gentle hand on Regina's shoulder. As you looked into Regina's eyes, you could see the tears she was holding back.

Regina's facade cracked for just a moment, her eyes betraying a flicker of uncertainty before she quickly regained her composure. "It was a moment of weakness," Regina spoke dismissively, her tone firm as she tried to reclaim her usual confidence.

Her sudden change of tone left you even more confused. It was suspicious. You wondered what could be bothering Regina so much. Determined to find out, you didn't want to pressure her into telling you. Instead, you hoped she would explain once she calmed down. Her body language suggested she was on high alert at the moment.

“You don’t have to pretend with me, baby. Please tell me what’s wrong.” you said as you rubbed Regina’s shoulder, hoping it would help to ground her.

Regina's dismissive facade crumbled at your words, revealing the vulnerability she was trying so hard to conceal as a single tear fell from her eye. “Okay, maybe my dream did freak me out a little." Regina admitted and sighed. Your heart broke at the sight of your sad and crying girlfriend. She didn’t deserve this.

You wrapped your arms around Regina, pulling her close in a comforting embrace. “It's okay, Regina," you murmured softly. "You don't always have to be tough, or whatever. Everyone has moments when they’re not okay. Even the queen bee. And that’s perfectly fine." you reassured your girlfriend as you felt her tears wetting your shirt.

Regina leaned into the embrace, allowing herself to be vulnerable for just a moment. “I just... I don't like feeling powerless and weak," she confessed, her voice barely above a whisper as you gently wiped away some stray tears from her cheeks.

“You're not powerless or weak, Regina. You're a strong, intelligent and powerful woman. Being vulnerable doesn’t invalidate those qualities." you offered words of reassurance and empowerment to your girlfriend.

Regina let out a shaky breath, grateful for the support of her girlfriend. Right now, she allowed herself to let go of the facade and embrace the comfort of being vulnerable with the person she trusted the most.

Silence engulfed the room as the two of you hugged, Regina’s head resting on your shoulder. Allowing herself to relax in your arms, Regina’s breathing slowly got back to normal.

“I dreamed about the accident,” Regina admitted quietly, breaking the silence. This made you frown, the accident was months ago.

“Is this the first time you had a nightmare about the accident?” you questioned.

Silence followed your question. That gave you everything you needed to know. “It’s not, is it?” you sighed “You need to tell me when these things happen, Regina.” you told her, hugging her a little tighter at this confession. Now that you knew about your girlfriend's nightmares, you were rightfully worried about her.

Regina nodded against your shoulder, a weight lifting from her chest as she finally shared her burden with you. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to worry you and be a burden to you,” she murmured.

“It’s okay, Gina,” you whispered, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead. “I’m here for you, always. You’ll never be a burden to me.”

Regina squeezed you tightly, her gratitude evident in the way she clung onto you like a koala. “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice barely audible in the quiet of the room.

“We should try and get some more sleep, don’t you agree?” you asked Regina, pulling away from the embrace, causing Regina to whine at the loss of contact.

“Will you hold me?” Regina asked, her voice hopeful. As if you’d ever deny her.

“Of course, my love,” you smiled and laid back down on the bed. “C’mon, lay down,” you said, patting your chest.

Regina didn’t hesitate to lay down, snuggling into your chest. She sighed in content as she found a comfortable position on your chest.

“Goodnight, my love,” you murmured softly, feeling her relax against you as you rubbed small circles on her back.

“Goodnight, baby,” Regina replied, her voice laced with warmth and affection.

As you thought about your girlfriend, you realized she probably needed to go to therapy to deal with the trauma of the accident. However, you decided that it was something you'd discuss with her tomorrow. She’d probably refuse, but you were determined to try nonetheless. Until then, you’d try to support her to the best of your ability. Now it was time to get some rest.

It didn’t take long before the two of you dozed off. This time, Regina slept peacefully and dreamed about her girlfriend- and so did you.