#without a trace of irony. and them my mom is like ‘I think you can talk this out’

[lightblueminecraftorchid]

mini rant under cut, warning for cursing.

how many more times does someone close to me have to traumatize me before it stops. how many more times. I am sick of this shit.

[redbuddi]

(part 2)

Let me start with some tallies I had been taking along with the notes I was scribbling onto the back of the deals cheatsheet I was given:

Times people ignored me or cut me off with a curt "Thank You" whenever I said "Hi how can I help you" and gave them the stupid GameStop Shoppers handout (not counting people who probably didnt hear me): 35

Times People deliberately snuck past me to avoid the stupid handout: 36

Times people shoved the stupid handout into random parts of the store instead of throwing it out or giving it back or just not taking it: 18

Times people just gave it back: 8

Times people made messes that would be easy to fix and did not fix them, or crammed items they didn't want anymore into random parts of the store instead of putting it back where they found it: 65

Good Samaritans who picked up other people's messes: 3

Visibly Sick and Coughing people: 12

Two were children. None were wearing masks.

Bigots who I witnessed buying or expressing interest in buying Hogwarts Legacy: 19

11 of those bigots were also people who made messes and didn't pick up after themselves

And now, my notes.

Forgot to mention in part 1, but the "sweater" I was worried about turned out to just be a sweater-themed t-shirt. Still sucks, and it's too big, and I'm never wearing it again even as pajamas, but at least it's not sweaty.

I was kept from working the register because "I'm inexperienced." But the thing is is that if I don't know something at the register, I can look it up or ask the guy next to me. But since I'm on the floor and I don't know things, I have to send people to the register to ask, making the line longer and the crowding worse.

A delivery man carried two large and heavy boxes over his head as he weaved through the crowd. Right in front of me, he dropped one of the boxes, making a loud thump. If I or a customer had been just a few feet closer, it would have fallen on our heads. This is the second time heavy objects almost fell on my head and it's only my third day.

The store would get so full at times that I couldn't move anywhere.

During one of these times, my manager tells me to try harder to make sales. I tell him that I can barely even get anywhere. He emphasizes that I need to "work the floor" and then disappears from the store for the rest of my shift. Fuck him, I'm not selling shit.

A phone with a Harry Potter ringtone goes off, activating my fight-or-flight response

A guy walks in wearing those Astro Boy boots. I am delighted.

Nobody wants a Ganondorf Amiibo :'(

People keep asking me "Do you have deals?" Yes we have deals

Someone took the soundbox out of the Mario plushie. This keeps happening.

A little girl cutely tries to articulate that there is a new Barbie game she wants. She is overcome with delight when her mom sees the Bluey game and hands it to her

Someone shoved a wall hanger into the shirts. Why.

More people asked about the Grinch video game than I could have ever imagined.

Someone broke a ceramic Pikachu and just left it there

Someone leaves their three small kids outside the entrance of the store, in the middle of a crowded mall. They cry until their mom comes back ten minutes later

Someone just left their bags in the corner of the store while they shopped. Either they got them back later or someone stole them, I would have no way of knowing.

A man picks up a set of Attack on Titan Pop figures and, without a trace of irony, goes "Brooooo, this is fuckin' sick!" I wish I had the energy to laugh at him.

At this point time was beginning to pass slower. The first four hours of my shift went by like a breeze, but ever since I got back from my lunch things have started to drag

I ended up explaining things that weren't on sale more than things that were, through no effort of my own. We simply did not have the deals people wanted. At least 50% of the people who walked in walked back out without buying anything

People keep grabbing the fake display games, thinking that they are actual games you can buy. This is unsurprising since there are games in the "Coming Soon" section that have already come out, and there is no clear signage.

I feel like we should have a separate area for people who are just coming to pick up orders, so we can have them in and out as fast as possible. We do not, and so the crowd is even worse than it could have been.

Another person pulled the soundbox out of the plushie. When I asked them to stop they said they were just checking to see if it was a piggybank. I don't understand.

I have run out of the stupid handouts.

A co-worker has shown up 30 minutes early and is just meandering around doing nothing

People keep moving things around after taking them off the shelves to look for price stickers. There are stickers on some things but not all, and I don't know how much they are, adding to the confusion.

A kid asked me how much a switch case was. I told him I didn't know. The kid's dad came up and asked me how much it is. I told him I didn't know. He asked why I couldn't just ring it up and check, apparently not seeing the register behind me, which is clearly occupied. I tell him I can't do that because the register is occupied. He gets angry at me and leaves.

A guy shouts "GameStop lady!" at me to get my attention. I have to fight through the crowd to get to him while he waits in line. He asks me a question I do not know the answer to. He looks at me like I'm an idiot, because nobody told me anything I needed to know. I looked at him like I wanted to die, because I wanted to die.

My co-worker clocks in, telling me "Your back-up is here!" He then proceeds to continue meandering around the store, doing nothing, not wearing the shirt we were supposed to wear, making it harder for people to identify him as an employee they can talk to.

There are so many people bringing their babies and tiny children. Why are they doing that. What is wrong with these people. And why won't they leave when their babies start crying.

I find out that my shift ends 30 minutes earlier than I thought it was going to.

I tell my co-worker to go ring people up, since one of the people at the register has vanished. He goes up to the register and does nothing. The other person comes back and continues ringing people up.

My Day at GameStop ~(Black Friday Edition!)~

(Part 1)

I had to work on the sales floor all day, the manager still has not put me in the system so I still can't ring customers up

A kid like a decade younger than me haughtily explained the PlayStation Portal to me because I got confused when someone asked me about the "Portal PlayStation" (I thought they were talking about the video game "Portal")

A wide-eyed white woman tried to give me tips on managing the sales lines like I was a toddler

A different wide-eyed white woman lurked outside the store while her children shopped, often by peering through the glass or staring at the doorway from a distance. She talked to her kids through the windows

My manager and a separate higher up openly talked about how Best Buy has better deals than us, right in front of the door, potentially scaring off customers by accident

I was asked how much controllers cost by a third wide-eyed white woman. When I said I didn't know she asked again.

A delivery man jumpscared me on purpose for no reason

I didn't clock out for my lunch break and everyone was too busy to notice

I found out my charger was unplugged so my phone did not charge overnight, it was at 21%

I bought a portable charger during my lunch break out of hope to charge phone. Was charged $60 for the tiny charger and a USB-C cable. I was probably scammed

I found out that the portable charger has no battery. Fuck.

The mall had ports I could plug the USB-C into while I ate, crisis averted

But now I'm certain I wasted $60

[lebenspurpur]

AN: Helloo, wrote this because I spent today suffering through my post-drunk-vandalism hangover. Guess it's deserved but still, it sucks. After eating chicken broth my dad made, unsalted if I may add, for an hour straight I am now ready to be creative. I really don't know what this is.

Have the link to my Larry playlist while we're at it:

Pairing: Larry Johnson x reader

Warnings: Swearing, mentions of alcohol

Wordcount: 1744 words

🤍🧷💀⛓🔪🏁🕷🤍🧷💀⛓🔪🏁🕷🤍🧷💀⛓🔪🏁🕷🤍🧷💀⛓

Larry looks really, really stupid right now. Stupid and sick.

His tall form slumped over in defeat, big blanket wrapped around him but not too tight, otherwise he'd feel too hot, too feverish, he still needs some air. There are tissues scattered across the couch as well. Fucking hell.

Usually, this would disgust you but it's Larry, you think you've seen worse.

Small sniffles come from where he's laying, whenever he clears his throat hoarse croaking leaves his mouth and he cringes every time he hears it. He can feel your judging gaze on his body, hear your arched eyebrow without even lifting his head.

His radio is blaring some kind of metal music, you don't recognize the band. Technically, the music is useless since the TV in front of Larry's bed is playing an old horror movie, bloody screams only adding to the grimy ambiance in the room.

"I-", you start but Larry lifts his hand before you can even consider continuing.

On any other occasion, you would've noticed the rings adorning his slender fingers, the metal accessories leaving a trail of dark smudge on his hands. Damn, did he have some nice hands.

Thankfully today wasn't a normal occasion. The metalhead in front of you had worse problems than you drooling over his fingers right now, one of them being the sickness he caught.

"Don't you dare say 'I told you so.'", he croaks out while he finally lifts his head, bloodshot eyes meeting yours. He looks immensely tired. You can sense his annoyance at this sickness, this hellish treatment he's in and can't seem to escape.

You take a deep breath in and drop your bag next to his opened front door.

"Alright. I won't."

You close the door quietly and deposit your jacket as well as boots next to it.

His mom always screams at Larry to finally get something for visitor's shoes and bags but he never does. Too busy, too lazy, he figures his visitors get it. Who even visits him, anyway?

The floor is, as usual, covered in stuff he hasn't cleaned yet. Unfinished drawings, sketchbooks, take-out cartons, empty booze bottles, you keep wondering how he manages to create that kind of mess in a timespan of not even two days.

You tiptoe over them, careful as to not to step into something. Earlier experiences have taught you to never mistake one of these seemingly empty cartons as really empty. Just last week you stepped into a fucking pizza the man in front of you didn't finish.

You sigh as you sit down next to him and Larry tiredly raises an eyebrow.

"Dude, I know you don't want to move but Jesus, we really need to get you to bed.", you then state, voice comforting yet firm. You use the moment to stare into his eyes, adore the brown, thick, deepness of them.

Larry groans loudly, voice breaking from how raw his throat is. His head falls back and he closes his eyes, a pained expression on his features.

"Don't wanna.", he grumbles quietly and you involuntarily crack a smile. Larry always managed to do that, even in the most unbelievable moments.

"I'll join you if you do."

One of his eyes slowly creaks open, observing your face to look for any kind of sarcasm or irony. As soon as he doesn't find any, the other eye opens as well and he leans forward again, blanket clutched tightly in his fists.

"Alright."

You grin at his quiet answer, hand reaching over to pull him with you. He obliges, warm, slightly clammy hand tightly grabbing yours. He follows you through the messy room, his blanket leaving a trail of destruction behind the two of you.

You kick open the door leading to his bedroom. Immediately, the familiar images of various album covers greet you. The air in his room is colder and less damp and you hear him take a deep breath.

Turning around, you mention for him to wait while you walk over, grabbing the blanket on his bed. You shake it a bit, readjust the sheets as well the pillow, all while Larry's eyes never leave your back.

"There you go, sweets.", you add as you finish, quickly turning around to see Larry standing the same way you've left him. Tired, slumped, and emotional. The need to hug him starts boiling inside of you but you try and hold yourself back. First, you have to make sure he gets into bed.

Larry slowly stumbles past you. During the last few baby steps, he drops the blanket around his shoulder, faceplanting right into the freshly made sheets. He's not even wearing a shirt and you huff at his stubbornness.

Larry's back looks strong like this, muscles contracting beneath his skin as he tries to get more comfortable. Your eyes glide over his spine, his wide shoulders, the small bumps where his ribs encase his organs. His olive skin is sweaty and long, brown hairs cling to it.

You cringe at that, knowing the feeling all too well.

Softly placing a hand on his back, you move closer, forehead scrunched together.

"Larry, darling."

He grunts into his pillow, a muffled questioning sound.

"I got a hair tie here. Mind lifting your head real quick?"

Larry obliges and lifts his head quickly, taking a deep breath while he does so.

Your fingers find his scalp and start collecting all the strands, securing them afterward with the tie around your wrist.

The man beneath you hums in appreciation as the cold air hits his neck, sweaty skin finally being able to breathe. You kiss the small space beneath his neck real quick, a short sign of comfort before you stand up again, hands leaving his skin.

Larry whines the second you do so, all while quickly turning around, sending you a pleading look.

"You said you'd stay.", the whiny tone only makes his voice sound more hoarse and you can't help the small grin from appearing on your features.

"In a second, sweetie. You need some water and medicine first, alright?"

He whines again but the thought of something fresh and cold going down his throat is enough to soften the pleading look in his eye. You blow him a kiss and then quickly walk into the kitchen, which is right across from the brunette's room.

It's surprisingly clean but what did you expect? Larry never uses his kitchen unless he has to. Which isn't all too often.

Grabbing a water bottle and placing it on the counter, you keep searching for the small broth packets you'd bought exactly for this kind of scenario. You find them in the fridge, the only thing in this room that Larry actually uses.

Chuckling you get some water cooking, all while pouring the powder into one of the giant cups Sal has gifted Larry a while ago. According to the masked man, everything tastes better if it's being eaten out of a cup and so, everyone has their own sets of cups, a premium gift from Sal Fisher.

Soon, everything's done and you maneuver your way back into Larry's room. Said man is awaiting you, eyes still opened as he watches you creep towards his bed, hands full with water, soup, and medicine.

First, you feed him the medicine. Normally he'd do this himself but you know that he'll just ignore the bitter juice unless you force it down his throat. Stubborn motherfucker.

Larry's sitting up now, back propped up against one of the many big pillows he has. You hand him the broth and he inhales it in less than two minutes, apparently, this is the first thing he's eaten today. Shaking your head at the thought, you tug a few strands of hair out of his face, smiling at your lover's appetite.

Finally, after gulping down half of the water bottle, the brunette leans back and smiles, for the first time this evening.

"Thank you.", he croaks out and you touch his arm as an appreciative gesture, "Does that mean you're allowed to join me now?"

You're about to nod as you notice the faint traces of eyeliner on his skin.

"Did you take off your makeup when you got home?", you ask, throwing a teasing smile his way.

Larry clears his throat, embarrassed that you caught him. A faint blush raises on his cheeks and you feel your heart swell at the sight.

"I might have forgotten about it.", he answers, gaze slowly meeting yours again, "But please, let's just do this later, dude. I am so fucking tired."

Huffing, you roll your eyes at his answer but you nod anyway. He'd be fine with the makeup for a few more hours. You just have to remember taking it off tomorrow.

"You're lucky I love you."

Larry grins at that, the usual wide, blinding grin, that makes your stomach tingle with fuzzy feelings inside of it. His fingers find your arm and he tenderly pulls you down to join him. Soon, your head is placed on his chest, and his arms cradle your shoulders, pulling you into his body.

You can hear his relaxed breathing as he finally settles down, nuzzling his face into your hair.

His skin is warm against your cheek and you smile into it. It doesn't matter how often you've done it, laying on his nude chest always makes you flustered.

Larry's fingers start to draw stuff on your back, the feeling more than a delight for you. Humming, you snuggle closer and the metalhead next to you smiles.

His eyes already start to close slowly, lack of sleep finally catching up to him. The quiet sound of the ongoing movie in his living room, as well as the metal music, make for a great background sound and you both listen intently.

You notice the way his heart beats, slow and steady, beneath the tanned skin. Unknowingly, you start to synchronize your breaths with his. In and out. In. And out.

Soon, your eyes close as well. Damn it, you don't want to fall asleep. Though, you suppose it doesn't matter as the man next to you pulls you closer, his breath warm against your ear. He wouldn't let you leave anyway.

The thought makes you feel giddy, excited, in love. Smiling widely, you try to press yourself closer into him, and soon, you too, fall asleep, enveloped by the arms of the boy you love most. Your favorite boy.

[music-as-a-haunting]

ok i KNOW the ask game said specify a character but i think all ur pronoun/sexuality takes on all the mash guys would be very cool :3

M*x im fucking love you thank you for the precious gift youve given me…

ALRIGHT M*A*S*H BOYS NIGHT PRIDE EDITION

Hawkeye- is malewife a gender nah but weirdly enough i think Hawk is a he/him but in a “Harry Styles wearing a skirt and nail polish in 2018 while everyone on the internet collectively lost their shit” way. He is, as if I even had to say it, a disaster bisexual.

Trapper- all around red blooded american man, he/him, not exactly disaster bisexual but bisexual with a sunglasses emoji infusion 😎. he WOULD find it funny/endearing if you used she/her pronouns like yes I am that bitch hello how may I help you.

B.J. HUNNICUT IS THE WHOLE FRUIT SALAD. Idk this is just my hc but I feel like he is definitely in a lavender marriage with Peg like they definitely are best friends and they do love eachother but holy fuck Bea Jay Hunnicut is a funny little mlm he/they I want to see him in pain

Frank Burns- he fucking sucks i dislike talking about him but I really wish they fleshed out the “secret repressed homosexual that hates himself” idea so yeah he/him passably straight on the outside little fruit tart on the inside

Charles Emerson Winchester III- Secret Repressed Homosexual that Hates Himself Prime. I am a gay Charles purist and I can and absolutely will die on this hill. who the fuck is Donna He/Him and sometimes the royal “we” just cause hes my special little guy and he can.

Henry Blake- his pronouns are they/them! actually though? I feel like Henry could pretty solidly slot into the non-binary identity. Is this based on fact? No! Its based entirely on vibes (which is arguably more accurate) unrelated but they would also wear the “Women want me fish fear me” hat without a trace of irony

Sherman Potter- now THERE is a trans man who wouldve fuckin thrown down at stonewall. he/him StraightGuy tm who just loves his wife and his horses Very Much. arent there a lot of stories of AFAB ppl dressing as men to join the army? also i hc all of his buds in Old Soldiers to be trans guys too.

Radar- whats that post that goes like “I think Radar is autistic with massive amounts of t boy swag” its really funny but I would like to tweak the narrative n this one. I think Radars mom has the type of rural homegrown wisdom where she thinks the severity of her morning sickness would determine the babies gender so she assumed Radar would be a girl so everyone got her little dresses and painted the Radars room pink but after Radar was born she just. raised her as a girl anyway? you cant exactly scrap a 1-10 year female wardrobe and buy new in Ottumwa so out of convenience he was raised as a girl but recognized as a boy. so i feel by the time he gets drafted in korea and has spent plenty of time performing as both genders he really doesnt care anymore and only prefers mens clothing because he personally finds it more comfortable. i think he would accept he/she/they pronouns and be demisexual.

Klinger- said you were a lesbian girl me too I really dont know how to explain is but Klinger is both a straight man and a lesbian at the same time. definitely he/they/she and demisexual like Radar… i feel like Klinger is your dads older sibling and Radar is your moms younger sibling. same vibes for sure but different auras.

Father Mulchahy- ive been waiting for this one (and another thank you to M*x for letting me on my soapbox) FATHER! MULCHAHY! IS! NOT! ASEXUAL! HE! TOOK! A VOW! OF! CHASTITY! TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS! Please dont feel like im coming for your neck specifically if this is your hc its totally valid to want ace representation and it would only feel natural to assign it to the character who doesnt have any relationships as a part of their backstory or characterization but I feel like only assigning Mulchahy with this role is not only some pretty upsetting ace tokenism but harmful to the sanctity of his faith and vows he took on as a priest. That being said! I think Mulchahy is bisexual (and would probably think Jesus was too) and I think you could address him with he/they pronouns but has a slight preference towards he.

Sidney Freedman- It seems like almost everyone in my post has come down with a case of the bisexual he/theys 🤒 but yeah besides Hawkeye I think Sidney would be the vocal about his identity? He could run circles around homophobes and transphobes who try to claim gay/transness to be a disease and I think his wife probably knows and supports his identity although they remain monogamous (Sidney is NOT a cheater >:( )

Thanks so much for the ask!! I hope I answered thouroughly enough and if I forgot anyone please let me know so I can hit myself really hard with a cast iron pan

[onmykneesforhotdilfs]

Oooh i'm gonna with #3 please! And Valtor as a bartender.

He truly loathed his job.

The disgusting smell of cheap drinks spilled on the bar mixed with the stench of sweat and cheap perfume, from grinding bodies on the dancefloor and humping barely-legals in the corner, made him nauseous. The music was loud to the point his heartbeat developed arrhythmia whenever a bass boosted song played through the obnoxious sound system. To make matters worse, one of the speakers was set directly above the bar and Valtor was sick of buying earplugs every week, because if he didn’t use any protection, he’s pretty sure he would go deaf before he hit 40 and he once again cursed himself for forgetting them at home.

A particularly high note came on, and the crowd cheered while Valtor cringed as he felt the microscopic hairs in his ears, sensitive to high notes, shrivel up and die. He rolled his eyes as he spotted a tall blonde dragging taller brunette towards the restroom. Apparently, couples basically dry humping each other on the dancefloor and sucking their faces off in the corners wasn’t enough, so universe also decided to throw in a couple about to commit an indecent act in a public bathroom?

He was just about to call one of the bouncers when it hit him – he doesn’t care. Oh well. What can you do?

A woman, wearing something Valtor could only describe as lingerie, came to the bar and ordered a fruity cocktail and for the umpteenth time, he wondered how his life turned into this? How did he go from graduating on a prestigious college, having a stable job and a fiancée, to wiping down spit from the counter top on a Saturday night.

He used to be a successful attorney, his yearly salary reaching up to five-zero figure, a stable relationships, loving girlfriend and more, and yet, all of that collapsed under the enormous weight couple of words held.

His hands worked on autopilot, mixing the necessary drinks while his thoughts were miles away.

Now, whatever’s left of his past life lives in a small condo across the town and Valtor chuckled at the irony of life giving him lemons while he chopped one to mix it into the cocktail. He squeezed the juice out of the poor fruit, with probably more force than was necessary, getting some of it on his shirt in the process.

“What are you chuckling about?” The woman was leaning over the counter, her chest basically spilling out of her dress as she played with the ends of her dark hair.

Valtor raised an eyebrow as he bent down to retrieve one of the decorative umbrellas. “Nothing that would be of interest to you.” He saw her flinch in surprise at the rather sharp tone he unintentionally used. “Miss.” He added as an afterthought, hoping it would make him look less abrasive. Unhappy customers don’t tip well after all.

“Oh. Well maybe it does interest me. You’ll never know unless you try.” The woman smiled flirtatiously while her fingers continued twirling the strands of her hair. “I’m Mitzi, by the way.” She offered her hand to him.

Valtor only quirked an unamused eyebrow. “I don’t remember asking for your name.” The smile was quick to disappear from her face and she snatched her hand back like it’s been burned.

He closed his eyes as his tongue, once again, proved to be faster than his brain. It’s what got him into trouble a lot of times and this one might’ve just taken a cake because if the girl went to complain to his boss, he’d be in a world of shit. “I was trying to be nice, but it seems to me you’re too much of an asshole to appreciate it.” Mitzi gritted out with obvious false confidence because a fierce blush was very much present on her face. This obviously didn’t happen to her a lot.

First time for everything, Valtor thought.

“What I would really appreciate, Mitzi,” Don’t do it, “is if you could stop your 36C's, that you stuffed into a 34B bra, from spilling all over my counter.” You absolute moron! “I have to wipe it.”

Now you’ve done it.

Mitzi turned even reader, and Valtor wondered if he should start dialing an ambulance just in case, but she only snatched the drink he placed in front of her and threw a 5$ bill in his face. “Jerk!” And just like that, she was gone.

“Have a nice evening!” Drop dead.

He rolled his eyes and took a glass that needed wiping just to occupy his hands for a minute because he felt like a coiled string, just about to snap and burn everything in its path.

“I have to say,” girl’s voice reached him, “you just fixed my evening.” Valtor lowered the glass to the solid surface and turned to face the owner.

His brain short circuited.

Though her body was mostly obstructed by the counter, he could see that the navy blue slip dress she wore draped beautifully across her slender figure. She was also incredibly short that even standing up straight, in what Valtor assumed were ridiculously high heels, she was at least head and a half shorten than him. But the most obvious, and striking thing about her, was her red hair. Valtor never even thought that hair could be as vibrant as hers.

In his almost 35 years of life, Valtor has never seen someone as interesting as the girl standing in front of him.

When he finally shook himself out of his stupor, and when it became painfully obvious he was making her uncomfortable with his gawking (really, there was no other word for it), he smiled and spoke. “Well, I’m pleased to hear that because it will undoubtedly ruin my life.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about her reporting you.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Her ego is too big for her to accept she just got rejected.”

“You know her?”

There was something nostalgic in her smile. “I used to know her… or maybe I just thought I know her.”

Valtor observed the unusual girl in front of him. In his several years as a bartender and even before, he developed quite a knack for reading people. She seemed, to him at least, like one of those lost souls that recently had their world turned upside down but tried despite to appear normal. You and me both. “Would you like something to drink?”

Her head snapped up and her electric blue eyes met his. “Oh! Yes, um,” she fidgeted slightly, her hands wringing together and picking at her nails, “anything with vodka.”

He nodded and turned his back on her to find a bottle of the best vodka the club had to offer. He didn’t know why he suddenly paid so much attention to what he’s mixing into drinks but something pulled him towards this girl like gravity and he was too weak to resist it. “Straight?” He asked without turning around.

“Ummm, that’s a bit personal don’t you think? I mean, I just met you.” Valtor stopped what he was doing and turned his head so she could see the confused frown on his face. “I don’t even know your name. As far as I know you could be a serial killer.”

It downed on Valtor what she was talking about and he chuckled at her adorable rant. “I meant the Vodka.”

Her lips shaped into a silent “O" and he saw how her neck and face turned red from embarrassed. She moaned and buried her face into her hands. “Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He picked the bottle and turned back around so he was facing her. He extended his unoccupied hand across the counter top. “I’m Valtor.”

She shook his hand, her hand incredibly small in his huge one, blush still present on her cheeks. “Bloom. And yes, straight vodka is fine.”

“I’ve only seen Russians drink vodka by itself.”

“I’m quarter Russian. My mom’s dad is from Russia.” Valtor nodded along as he fixed her a drink.

“Impressive.”

“it’s really not. It only made me the laughing stock of the entire class.” She took the glass filled with clear liquid, their fingers brushing together on accident, and Valtor felt a spark rushing up his nerve endings. “But, I can drink most people under the table so I guess I should be grateful.”

Humor was obviously one of the things she used to deflect the pain and trauma bullying inevitably caused. “Your hair is very… unusual. Natural?”

She nodded. “Yup. This is one of the things I inherited from grandpa.”

“Sorry if that made you uncomfortable, it wasn’t my intention.”

“No no, don’t worry.” Her lips wrapped around the edge of the glass as she took a sip and closed her eyes to savor the feeling of burning liquid sliding down her throat. “It’s actually one of the nicest things someone has said to me about my hair.”

Valtor looked at her with a small smirk on his face. “That bad, huh?”

“You don’t want to know.” Bloom tilted the glass and took a large swing of the drink, only a small amount remaining at the bottom. “What about you?”

Valtor shrugged. “What about me?”

“You have an unusual hair too.”

Indeed. His long strawberry blond hair was tied in a ponytail, but unlike herself, he loved his hair and didn’t particularly give a damn what anybody else thought about it. “I don’t really care about somebody else’s opinion and neither should you.”

“I’ve stopped that long time ago.” Valtor nodded towards her almost empty glass and she slid it towards him for a refill. “But you know, scars remain.”

He nodded. “That I do know.” Valtor saw another guy coming up to the bar so he excused himself. As soon as he moved away from her, the unpleasant sensations that accompany prolonged presence in a loud room came rushing back like a rogue train and Valtor felt the onsets of a headache forming. He served the guy and returned to Bloom who was now nursing her drink instead of knocking it back like the first time.

“So what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

She quirked one eyebrow. “A girl like me?”

“Not to be rude, but this doesn’t seem like your cup of tea.”

She laughed. “It’s my friend’s birthday. She dragged me here against my will while promising she’ll stay with me the entire time. It took me turning around for her to vanish without a trace with her boyfriend.”

“That friend of yours,” he started, “wouldn’t happen to be a tall blonde dragging a brunette with her?”

“That’s her.”

Valtor made a face. “I don’t think you’ll be seeing a lot of her tonight.” His eyes slid to the direction of the restroom.

Bloom followed his gaze and she groaned when she saw where her friend went to. “Not this again.”

“Again? This happens a lot?”

“Unfortunately, it happens more than I would like to.” She rubbed her forehead.

“Right,” he drawled, “because who doesn’t like seeing their friends going at it.” Sarcasm was dripping from his words.

“How long have they been in there?” She asked while looking at her wrist watch.

“Fifteen minutes or so.”

“Damn animals. I’m never coming to the club with her again.”

An amused chuckle escaped him. “That’s not the first time you’ve said that, am I right?”

She smiled and took a sip of vodka. “Nope.”

Just as he opened his mouth to ask her another question, her blonde friend wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Valtor’s eyebrow did a backflip. How she managed to avoid detection while leaving the bathroom was beyond him.

“Damn Bloom, I leave you alone for five minutes and you’re already seducing hot bartenders!”

“Stella! First of all, I am not seducing anybody,” Maybe not intentionally, “secondly, it’s been almost twenty minutes and thirdly, what happened to your promise of not ditching me? And the moment I turn around, you’re already gone?”

Stella, if Valtor heeard correctly, giggled. “Oh live a little Bloom. Besides, it’s not like you were in a bad company.” Her eyes ran over Valtor’s form. “In fact, I wouldn’t mind taking a bite out of that.” She ogled Valtor like a piece of chocolate cake.

“I’m standing right here.”

“Okay, that’s enough for today! We’re going home.” Bloom grabbed her purse and was about to pull out her wallet when Valtor raised his arm to stop her.

“It’s on the house.”

“But Blooooom,” There was really no words to describe the sound that exited blonde’s mouth, “we just got here.”

“The fact that you're talking about having a threesome with a stranger says enough about your state.”

“I’m pretty sure Brandon wouldn’t mind.”

“Okay, time out. Let’s go.” She turned towards Valtor, a small card between her fingers. She leaned over the counter while one of her arms stayed behind, supporting her friend. “Thank you.” She slipped the card into his hand. “Call me if you wanna talk sometimes.” And with that, she spun on her heel and dragged Stella towards the exit.

Valtor stood in shock, not knowing how to react for a few minutes, staring at the business card in his hands.

Bloom Peters MD.

He shook his head, hand safely pocketing the precious cargo before he picked up the glass she’s been drinking from and turning around to wash it. The sound of retching caused him to turn around in time to see some wasted man empty the content of his stomach on an obnoxious red carpet. The stench of vomit mixed with other delightful aromas and Valtor was once again reminded how much he hated his job.

[ex-vengeancedemon]

Hey Jealousy

One shot btvs fanfic inspired by this post by @trulyanenchantedrose

Summary: A what-if scenario where in episode 2x01 When She Was Bad, Buffy dances with Spike instead of Xander to make Angel jealous.

Edit: I wrote another version of this fic from Spike's POV called "Payback and Performances"

Read below or on ao3

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

Buffy stood in front of her mirror examining the little black dress she had purchased over the summer with something like indifference. It would do for a night out at the Bronze with Xander and Willow. A real head turner. She caught herself wondering briefly if Angel might be there. Not that it mattered. He was just another vampire. And she was the slayer. A match made by some god with a sick sense of irony.

Without bothering to tell her mom where she was going, she grabbed her coat and marched out of the house towards the Bronze. It was a nice night for a walk. As she walked passed the cemetery, she pointedly avoided looking in the direction of the Master's grave. Out of sight, out of mind. Tonight was for letting loose and living life to the fullest. She had to enjoy it while it lasted. It probably wouldn't last long. She had already cheated death once and wasn't expecting any more freebies.

She was surprised when she found herself standing in front of the Bronze with its characteristic illuminated sign. The walk had gone quicker than she had anticipated. She barely even remembered it. It was difficult to stay grounded lately. She often caught herself drifting... and she wasn't sure if returning to Sunnydale had improved the situation. Seeing everyone again, it was a lot to handle all at once. They all wanted her to be fine, to act normal. As if she didn't want that too.

Buffy steeled herself and took a deep breath. She could do this. Whatever fresh hell was thrown her way, she could handle it. She opened the door and entered the Bronze with her head held high and a bravado she found suited to the occasion. Cibo Matto had just started up a new song and the Bronze was packed with people swaying and dancing to the beat. Buffy shrugged off her coat and began to sway in time with the music as she started towards Willow and Xander's table. Of course, they were just sitting there. They never seemed able to make a move without her.

Before she could make it more than five steps through the door, she was intercepted by none other than her old flame, Angel. If he wasn't a centuries old vampire with seemingly constant ominous warnings, she might think he was stalking her. Despite her outward apathy, her mind flashed back to the previous night when he had visited her room. He had said he missed her. She pushed the thought down.

"Hi," Buffy said, raising her eyebrows at him in a sort of question.

"Hi," Angel replied.

He seemed a bit nervous, looking down at the ground. Looking anywhere but her eyes. Figures.

"So, is there danger at the Bronze?" she drawled. "Should I beware?"

Angel sighed and shook his head. "I can't help thinking I've done something to make you angry. And that bothers me more than I'd like."

Was he talking about last night? Or right now? She wasn't angry, but if he carried on like this she might start to be. What did he mean by 'bothers me more than I'd like'? As if liking her was some kind of travesty that he wished he could have avoided.

Buffy shrugged. "I'm not angry. I don't know where that comes from."

Angel seemed unconvinced. Why was it so difficult to get people to take you at your word?

"What are you afraid of?" he persisted. "Me? Us?"

Buffy scoffed. "Could you contemplate getting over yourself for a second? There is no us." She shook her head and gave an exasperated laugh. "Look, Angel, I'm sorry if I was supposed to spend the summer mooning over you, but I didn't."

She thought she could see something like hurt on his face, but she didn't let up.

"I moved on," Buffy continued. Then, as she brushed passed him, she added for good measure, "To the living."

As if to prove her point, Buffy abruptly changed course, heading away from Xander and Willow and towards the dance floor. She caught her friends' puzzled expressions, but she ignored them. She could talk to them later. Or not. If not tonight, then tomorrow. They always seemed to be around. As unavoidable as Angel. Angel who was still watching her every move. What was the saying? We always want what we can't have?

Buffy felt multiple pairs of eyes on her as she scanned the dance floor. The dress was a success then. File that away for later. Finally she settled on a pair of eyes that had been watching her curiously from the edge of the dance floor. He was perfect. Bleached hair with a long black leather jacket, all he was missing was the studs for the punk-rock vibe. He looked like she felt: dangerous and out for trouble. It didn't hurt that he had a face that screamed "if looks could kill". That was important. But this wasn't retaliation, Buffy told herself, it was fun. It wasn't about Angel. It was about having a good time, and forgetting about-

Buffy strode up to the stranger as a bemused expression flickered across his features. Or maybe it was alarm? She couldn't really be sure. The lighting was dim.

"And just what can I do for you?" the stranger asked, raising an eyebrow with a smirk.

He had a British accent. Kind of like Giles. Only not like Giles. God, she really didn't want to be comparing him to Giles right now. She didn't want to be thinking of Giles at all. Or of vampires. Or slaying or any of it.

Buffy tilted her head in her best attempt at looking flirtatious. "Well this is a dance floor. Dance with me."

The stranger's eyes widened slightly and he let out a low chuckle. "Who am I to refuse a lady?"

Buffy took his hand and pulled him out into the center of the dance floor. No point in having fun if no one could see it. She spotted Angel still standing at the back out of her peripheral vision. Good. Maybe this would be what he needed to move on. She shoved down the sharp pain that thought caused.

Spinning around to face her new dance partner, Buffy slowly raised her hands above her head and began swaying her hips to the music. It was a slow, sultry song, which was perfect for all intents and purposes. Her partner placed his hands on her waist and pulled her closer as he moved along with her.

He leaned in closer to her ear and said, "Name's Spike."

"I don't remember asking," Buffy replied, moving her arms down over his head.

What kind of name was Spike anyway? Guess it matched his general vibe.

Spike just grinned back and pulled her flush against him. "Oh you're a fiery one. I like it. Got to appreciate a girl with flair."

Buffy locked eyes with him, holding his gaze just a bit too long. She suddenly felt very exposed. Like she had been caught doing something she shouldn't. She hastily turned around with her back facing Spike, wrapping his arms back around her waist as she did so.

He leaned down next to her ear and asked, "Is that your beau over there?"

"What?" Buffy asked, startled out of an almost trace-like state.

Even though she had asked who he was referring to, she knew he meant Angel. She had been watching him discreetly, sneaking glances here and there. At the moment, Angel's face was pale - even more so than usual - and drawn. If she had wanted to get under his skin, it looked like she was succeeding.

"The git you've been eyeing," Spike replied. She could feel him smirk against her ear. "What'd he do to merit this little show?"

Buffy reached up and put her hand behind his head, moving slowly down and then back up again. Spike's hands traced lightly along the curves of her body, barely concealed under the thin layer of fabric. She was keenly aware of his every move. Just as she was keenly aware of their observers. Even Willow and Xander had begun to gape.

As she moved his head back down to her neck, she answered, "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Spike turned her around and placed his arms on her shoulders, locking his hands behind her. "Bloody right I would. But, I'll settle for evening the score. Want to give him a real show?"

He took her chin between his thumb and index finger and lifted her head up slightly. This time when they locked eyes, Buffy didn't look away. Taking that as an invitation, Spike leaned down and kissed her. The kiss started out slow but quickly deepened in a way familiar to the desperate and afraid. She shivered slightly as his hand traced up her spine. She hoped Angel was watching. She hoped they all were. She was fine. Perfectly fine.

Buffy pulled away, her skin slightly flushed, as the song came to an end. "Guess that's curtains."

"A gentleman would walk a lady home," Spike replied, still holding onto her waist.

"Are you a gentleman?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" he replied, mimicking her earlier line.

He raised an eyebrow at her and offered her his arm. She hesitated for a moment before accepting it. It was only a walk. And leaving with Spike was sure to get a reaction out of- Nobody. It didn't matter.

She caught Spike winking at Angel as they walked to the door. Now that might be a bit much, but she elected to ignore it for now. She glanced back at Angel one last time, and was startled to find him glowering after her. She had expected some emotion from him, yes. But she hadn't thought it'd be anger. Why wouldn't it be? a little voice in her head whispered. He was a vampire. Anger was kind of the default.

Buffy and Spike had only gotten maybe 10 yards outside the Bronze when Buffy heard the metal door slam open.

Angel came rushing out and yelled after her. "Buffy!"

Spike took his hand back from Buffy and gave her a charming smile. "Well, I think that's my cue."

With that, he walked off - in no apparent hurry - with his hands in his pockets, leaving a bewildered Buffy behind him. Angel had broken out into a sprint and was barreling toward her and the whole situation seemed almost comical.

"Angel?" Buffy asked, giving him an irritated look. "What the hell?"

Spike raised an arm up and waved without looking back. "I'm sure I'll be seeing you around, Slayer!"

The blood rushed out of Buffy's face and her jaw clenched. How could he know that?

"Oh, and Angel?" Spike said, turning around and continuing to walk away backwards. "Your girl? Delicious."

He gave one last satisfied grin before disappearing around the corner.

Angel ran up next to her and stopped. Buffy wasn't sure she knew what to say. Angel wasn't saying anything. He was just glaring after Spike.

"Who the hell was that?" Buffy finally asked him.

-----

Note: Had to write it a bit out of character since the timing is so early in the seasons. My excuse for Angel not doing anything immediately is that Spike was threatening Buffy when she couldn't see and so Angel didn't do anything then. But since its written from Buffy's pov she wouldn't have known. Anyway, enjoy!

[mintmatcha]

9 months, 28 days

Chapter 3 of 10 Months

CW: discussions of death

A/N: this is the end of the beginning! im not sure exactly how long this stories going to be but yolo

The cafe is almost empty, just like always. That’s why they loved this place so much as kids. No one they knew was ever here, sitting in the mothball scented booths- only the occasional elderly couple who didn’t give a fuck that the place hadn’t updated it’s decor since 1995. Clouds rolled in overnight, painting the town a somber grey. Mattsun feels like it should match his mood, but it doesn’t. He’s not sad, he just… is. There’s this weird, turbulent void in his chest where his despair should lie.

Hanamaki’s in the corner when he arrives, nestled into the booth with a mug. He watches the rain trickle down the window, tracing the paths of the drops with his finger tips. It’s very ‘white girl protagonist’ Mattsun decides. Like he’s the star of a Hallmark movie. The void in his chest pulses and he swears, just for a flash, it was warm.

“Hanamaki.” Mattsun slides in across from him.

“Well, lookie here at the big boy in his big boy suit.” Hanamaki taps his nails against the glass, not even looking at his friend. “Did your mom help you pick that out?”

“This is technically a business meeting, so I had to wear something nice.” he explains. “Or else my boss is going to think I’m just screwing around.”

That’s what it feels like. It feels like work. He’s just putting all of this into his little box, so he can file it away in the storage files of his mind. He’ll process it later, when the moment’s right.

Or never.

Makki tents his fingers together, like he’s some sort of super villain. He’s always had this casual, uncaring air about him, but it seems to have developed further into a chaotic mess. “Ah, so you’ve decided to plan my fun-eral.”

The black haired man sighs. “Only if you stop calling it that.”

The waitress wanders up, expecting orders in her typical, unfriendly way. If he didn’t know better, he’d assume it was the same woman from years ago, still equally sick of her job.

Neither of the men look at the menu. Mattsun orders a cheeseburger omelette and a coffee with six sugars, the same horrible thing he’s been getting since high school. ‘The American Experience’, they called it. Makki orders plain toast, notably not the same thing he’s been getting since high school.

“You should eat more,” Mattsun says, “You’re too thin.”

“Who are you? My mom?” he takes a long swip from his mug,

“If I was, I wouldn’t be-” Mattsun stops himself, much to Makki’s delight.

“Oh, please make a dead mom joke. Please.” Makki’s on the edge of his seat, leaning halfway across the table, “My mom would have loved you making a joke about her.”

Mattsun slinks down so far that his knees pump against the booth across from him. “That’s… yeah, you’re right. She would have loved it.”

Mattsun wants to say he misses her, but it doesn't seem fair. To miss Hanamaki Hana would be to miss Hanamaki Takahiro, and he certainly wasn’t allowed to miss Hiro.

Makki looks exactly like his father. He's there in the too thin nose, the gap between his canines and molars, and the clubbed way their fingernails grew.

but his mom's in his idiosyncrasies. She's in the laughter, the winks, the tiny things that make Takahiro himself. Truly a mama's boy, Makki taps his cup against his front teeth the same way she did. It's their thinking face.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Mattsun regains control. His notebook and reading materials jut out against his stomach from their spot in his coat.

“Are you really sick?” It surprises both of them. Maybe it was the thought sitting at the top of his head, maybe he meant to say it. All of this just feels too sudden, too random, Mattsun just can’t quiet his doubts.

This is why the time apart was good; Makki made him do stupid things, made his brain stop working.

“I- uh. Yeah.” Makki's face doesn't change, but his shoulders fall. The tension in his body deflates as he goes back to looking out the window. "You're such a dick."

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You really think I’d lie about all of this?” he laughs, but it's flat, "To do what? To crawl back into your life?"

"That's not what-"

"Newsflash, asshole- I've been doing great without you.” the mug slams against the table, “I've been really, truly, wonderfully happy since-"

The other man picks up one of the pieces of toast and examines it, before carefully ripping the crust off. It’s a delicate procedure, carefully peeling off the edge on one, long piece. Makki opens his mouth to continue, then closes it with a low, thoughtful hum as he rolls the crust into a little ball.

"Makki." Mattsun holds up a finger, pausing the conversation for a moment as the waitress approaches. They sit in silence, mumbling only a quiet thank you as she

drops off the plates. She doesn't seem to notice the tension in the air or if she does, she doesn't care. She pours the coffee carefully, counts out the sugar packets like she's rationing them. As soon as she turns, he sighs and curls his hand into a tight fist, holding it in the air for a second before letting it fall. "Continue."

“This was a dumb idea. Forget I even asked you to do this.” he tosses the bread ball into his mouth and chews, “I’m just gonna go.” Standing suddenly, he grabs his coat from the booth beside him.

This would be the third time he let Makki leave and, according to the time left, the last. Life is fickle, an unpredictable lace pattern made by the people in your life coming and going. Mattsun was used to dealing with the final goodbyes and usually found comfort in it. No more chapters to write, all secrets buried and forgotten- truly, nothing left but what you can see in rose colored glasses.

And yet some part of him- the stupid part, the crazy part, the self loathing part- panics at the thought of seeing this end.

"I know you're better without me." Mattsun sighs, "But I want to help you, if you'll still let me."

“Stop.” Mattsun’s heart pounds so hard, dancing across his skin, that he can barely recognize he’s touching Makki, holding his wrist down against the table. “Sit. Eat."

Makki just raises a brow.

Reluctantly, he complies, but not before he tugs his hand out of his friend's grasp, the corner of his mouth twitching up in a sneer. A boundary has been set- no touching.

"I'll let you." he turns his attention back to the mangled food on his plate, "But only because I want to finish my toast."

"We good?" They are not, but Mattsun prays for a lie.

"For now. But watch yourself." It's a win, albeit a half hearted one. Mattsun pulls a tiny notebook from an inner pocket of his coat and flips through the pages until he reaches the last page; it's the farthest out thing he's planning, of course. It’s marked ‘The Hanamaki Service.’

They let the silence sit between them as they pick at what’s in front of them. The terrain of this relationship is uneven, constantly changing. It’s like hiking a mountain in the winter, Mattsun decides, one wrong move, one noise too loud, and the whole thing will come crashing down,

Why does he even care?

Makki’s happy without him, he’s fine without Makki.

He shouldn’t care, and yet he stays.

The black haired man stabs a hunk of egg and watches the half melted cheese try to stretch. “So, to put it all simply: what our home does for you is the basics: Legal procurement, transportation, preparation, and disposition- you don't have to worry about any of it. We also offer a location for interment and service, depending on the type of service you require, of course."

"Location?"

Mattsun takes a bite. "For the service and for you to, um, rest."

"You mean rot."

Maybe eating wasn’t the right choice for this conversation. The texture of egg now feels wrong in his mouth.

"Don't say it like that." The preservatives slow that down, so the rot won't happen for a long time, he brain reminds him. It doesn't help.

"I already have those places picked out though." Mattsun waits for a joke to follow, but he’s surprised when his friend says, "Bury me near my mom and hold the service here."

"Here?" Mattsun asks, “There’s nicer places.”

"Save a dying business with a dead guy. It's irony."

"Okay, well. That's-" he sighs and scribbles into his notebook. This wasn’t going to be a traditional job, was it? "At least the catering is done then."

"Perfect." Makki pushes away his empty plate, "I'm a natural at this. You should hire me.”

"Long term positions only, sorry." It slips out before Mattsun can censor himself, but Makki just snorts into his tea.

It’s frustrating that they click together so well, especially because nothing’s been resolved between them. One minute everything threatens to break, the next they can sit here and joke with each other. The issues sit there, waiting in the corner of the room, cocked and ready to fire. If they just didn’t look, maybe it wouldn’t hurt when it finally attacked.

If they didn’t look, maybe they can pretend nothing happened.

Mattsun reminds himself that he doesn’t care. There's still that blank space inside him.

“Next step would be flowers.”

It’s not. They should discuss embalming versus cremation, but the words stick to his throat. He’s asked so many times before, stared forward as loved ones debated what to do without a care in the world. This time shouldn’t be different.

“I’ll think about it. Can’t say I know too many flowers off the top of my head.” Makki digs his phone from his front pocket and scrolls, looking through everything before tapping out a quick question. There's a twitch of his brow, barely furrow, but it's gone in a flash. Before Mattsun can even ask, Makki's gathered his coat in his hands. “Gotta go.”

“What? We just started-” The whiplash is what hurts. Just as Mattsun feels like he's found his footing, it's gone again, slipping out from under him. This must be some level of hell

"Something came up." he shrugs, "Don't worry about it."

"I won't."

"You're such an asshole." he says, "You're supposed to at least pretend to care."

Yeah, he knows. That's how life works. But he can't just pretend; it's a gateway to actually feeling.

"I'll try." Mattsun offers, "It was nice to see you."

Makki rolls his left shoulder over and over again, like he's trying to work out a kink. "Was it? Was it really?"

"Kind of."

"Thanks," there's a hint of sarcasm in his voice, "We'll do this again."

And like that, with no formal goodbye, he just starts to leave. Mattsun wants to protest, but he’s grateful. He hadn’t realized how tense he had been, how hard he'd been digging his fingers into his thigh. The void in his stomach somehow feels smaller and larger all at once. He kind of wishes it would just swallow him up and this would all be done with.

It's so easy not to care.

“Oh, and Mattsun?” Makki pauses by the door and picks out a familiar black umbrella that was leaning against the doorframe. He twirls in in his fingers like a baton before pressing the button and letting it unfold. It's bad luck to open an umbrella inside. “Thanks for breakfast.”

Mattsun just looks down at the table. His food is barely touched but he doesn't plan to eat anymore. With his heart in his throat for no good reason, he feels nauseous. Despite himself, he wonders if Makki still smells like cedar aftershave and the discount brand laundry detergent.

“That fucker didn’t pay.”

[chronictonsillitis]

no pain so exquisite as to be bound (to you)

“Gon nau,” the officiant says, slipping her hand into the man’s. From now—

Their skin is hot against each other's, palms sweaty as their fingers lace together.

“Tu ste glong raun kom won.” Two are joined as one. 

Clarke swallows hard, and looks up. Two pairs of eyes widen simultaneously, two sets of hackles instantly rising.

**** Forced to stand alone by the departure of her sort-of almost co-leader, Clarke does her damndest to hold the Dropship camp together. The thanks she gets when the Ark comes down? Her camp shuttered and her authority stripped. For her people, she agrees to marry a stranger, dashing any hope of finding her soulmate. Clarke is told nothing of her Grounder betrothed; yet the man waiting at the altar she knows all too well. In exchange for keeping his identity secret, an agreement is made, and the clock starts counting down: to the arrival of her soulmark, and the dissolution of this sham marriage.

Written for The t100 Fic for BLM Initiative Donation Celebration with beautiful artwork by Bri ( @underbellamy​)! The Initiative is still accepting prompts and going strong, hitting $4000 in donations as of this week!

Chapter 1/?

(Ao3) or

She probably should’ve expected something like this.

After all, if her mom had been willing to send her down to Earth with the rest of them for the sake of the Ark, why would she balk at a simple marriage?

And of course Clarke goes along with it, because if not her, then who? Wells is dead, Bellamy is long gone; there’s no one else of the right age visible enough, no one else important enough to the Council to be a worthy prize for the Grounders.

Clarke scoffs internally. A worthy hostage is more like it.

The irony of it is not lost on her. She was forced into leadership by the actions of the Council, sending her to the ground, and forced to stand alone in charge of the delinquents by the unceremonious departure of her sort-of, almost co-leader. It was her who faced down the Trikru leader, her who held the Dropship camp together as they were besieged, and her who ultimately negotiated for peace.

And what was the thanks she got when the Ark came down? Her camp shuttered, her authority stripped, her role limited to a purely honorary seat on the Council with no real power, an empty concession as a reward for all her hard work. She’s spent the last year more or less stagnant, being spoken over in meetings and condescended to by people who kept her around purely because the Trikru representatives refuse to speak to anyone else. She wonders how they’ll deal with that particular problem now that they’ve shipped her off to Trishanakru.

Clarke expected to feel relief when she wasn’t in charge anymore, but instead she’s felt useless, like a child who’s long outgrown the kid’s table. Useless and flat.

Still, she didn’t expect her return to usefulness to be as a bargaining chip.

“You understand what you’re asking me to give up?” Clarke asks her mother behind closed doors after the offer of marriage is first put forth. “The home I’ve made, the relationships I’ve built?”

Abby wrings her hands, eyes full of guilt. “It’s not forever, you’ll be able to come back. To visit, at least.”

Clarke laughs harshly. “It is forever, that’s the point!” She paces back and forth, her heart clenching almost painfully. “It’s not a job, Mom, it’s a marriage. I’ll be one of them, bound to one of them, for life. I’ll never get a chance—” She breaks off, stopping facing the wall. “I’ll never have the opportunity to have what you and dad had. I’ll never get to have a true partner.”

She’s still too young to have her mark, just a hair past nineteen. They say it happens when you turn twenty, but that’s just an estimate. She’s likely got nine months or so until it starts to form, the lines beginning to weave their way across the skin below her collarbones in bits and pieces, slowly darkening until it’s all there, her own unique pattern branded black into her flesh.

An outward marker of genetic compatibility, her mom had called it during Clarke’s medical training, but Clarke prefers the traditional term: soulmark.

Matches on the Ark were not universal, but they were common enough. Her parents had been matched, and it had been easy for Clarke even as a child to see the difference between their relationship and that of the non-matched couples. There was a reason nobody took relationships seriously until they both were marked.

“I know that, honey,” Abby says, her voice soft. Clarke hates it, hates when she combines politics with acting like her mom. Abby puts her hand on Clarke’s arm, her touch innately comforting in a way that is wholly unfair given the situation. “But with Wells gone…”

Her words trail off, but the implication is clear. Abby thinks Clarke won’t match anyways. She thinks her daughter’s intended match is lying dead in a grave beside the dropship, buried beneath six feet of dirt, so what is she really being asked to give up? Only a dream, only a fairytale. Nothing of substance.

Clarke isn’t so sure.

She loved Wells, she still does, but it was never— like that, for them. She knows growing up everyone expected them to match, the prince and princess of the Ark, and maybe when she was little she believed it. But when he died it was her best friend that she grieved, not her soulmate.

And maybe she’s being foolish and romantic, but she still has hope. She thinks her match is out there somewhere, still breathing. But if she accepts this deal, this marriage, that hope is dead.

Clarke remembers the girls at the dropship camp tittering beside the fire, speculating about their marks and their matches. She remembers the way Octavia stared intently at Lincoln’s soulmark, memorizing it, confident in three years she’d be marked with its twin. She remembers tracing a pattern across Finn’s skin in the bunker, imagining he could be hers.

None of the delinquents were old enough to have a mark, save Bellamy of course. Raven’s started blooming a few weeks in, but Bellamy’s soulmark was fully fledged well before they came down, winding black and proud across his chest as he strutted about the camp shirtless. From his prolific activities with the camp girls, Clarke assumes he didn’t have a match that he knew of. On the Ark, at least, it was unheard of to have a matching soulmark and not act on it. To be given a gift like that and to turn it away— no one is that stupid.

Then again, it’s Bellamy, so who knows.

He was stupid enough to leave his sister, stupid enough to leave Clarke to fend for herself as leader of a bunch of kids barely younger than herself, with nothing but a half-hearted shooting lesson and a suggestion to keep Miller close. And yeah, she’d survived, but it would have been a hell of a lot easier with a partner.

“If we had any other options, Clarke,” Abby begs. “I wouldn’t ask. But we need this alliance. Without Trishanakru, Azgeda will wipe us out before the end of the summer.”

Clarke stiffens, her nose pointing upwards, because she knows this. Of course she knows this. She’s been in every goddamn Council meeting, even if nobody had bothered to listen to what she had to say. Maybe if they had, they wouldn’t be in this position.

But they didn’t, and now they don’t. It’s this or nothing.

So fine. If this is all she can do for her people, she’ll do it. She’ll give up her family, give up her friends, give up her chance to be with her soulmate even before her mark begins to darken on her skin.

It’s better that way, her Trishanakru attendants say as they bathe her in milk and drape her in silk, prettying her up like a lamb for slaughter. Better not to know, so she can go into the marriage free of tethers, unbound by her own expectations. Clean of skin and pure of heart, they say.

“And what of my husband-to-be?” Clarke asks dryly. “Is he still unmarked?”

The question is only half sarcasm, the other half genuine curiosity. She knows nothing of the man she is to marry except his status amongst the clan: second to the Chief, a warrior. In negotiations they never mentioned his name, temperament, age, nothing. He could be an old man for all Clarke knows; even a child, if Trishanakru shares the same customs as Trikru.

The woman braiding her hair purses her lips, not meeting Clarke’s eyes. “No,” she admits. “But he will show you the same respect you show him. He has not found his match, and after today, he will have no match but you.”

How romantic, Clarke thinks, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

She has no pretensions about this marriage. She does not expect love, nor even happiness. All she expects is the treaty with Skaikru to be honored. If that happens, it will be enough.

She stands still as they drape her with beads and gems, lace strings of pearls into her hair. Absentmindedly, she wonders where exactly all the jewelry came from. Maybe an old museum, or a jewelry store.

They pat around her eyes with oil, pressing gold leaf to it so it peels off on her skin. Her dress is long and heavy, layers of fabrics darned with intricate embroidery. She almost laughs, thinking of what everyone back in Arkadia would say. She imagines the Princess jokes would come on pretty strong.

For all the bangles they slide up her arms, all the jewels the hang from her ears, her ankles, her hips, her hair, they put no necklaces on her. It’s confusing, at least until it isn’t.

Clarke balks at the monstrosity they pull out, because it’s a collar.

There’s no better word for it really. Not a collar like a dog would wear, not a thin strip of leather, no: this is a bridle, a harness, an anchor. It’s gold and bejeweled and if Clarke wasn’t the one wearing it she’d call it beautiful, but she is.

It’s thick and heavy, settling on her shoulders like a weight, making them sag. It covers her chest from the hollow of her throat to the middle of her sternum, covers her shoulders from clavicle to acromion.

It’s choking her.

It clasps behind her back with some complicated mechanism she cannot see, and Clarke thinks she spots one of the attendants pocket a key. Her throat goes dry, hands fighting the urge to scrabble at her throat.

“What is this?” Her voice is shaky, her anxiety leaching into her tone.

Her attendants are polite enough to ignore it, reaching out to adjust her hair so it falls over the hammered metal, gold on gold. “It is traditional in weddings like this. To cover your mark.” The woman hums, her finger tracing over the jewels, a wistful look on her face. “They are normally leather. You must be very important to the clan.”

Oh joy, Clarke thinks.

“I don’t have a mark yet,” she grits. “Why do I have to wear it?”

“But you will. It’s tradition, but besides, it’ll be easier for you to start now. So there’s no temptation.”

Clarke isn’t sure what kind of fucked up weird conservatism she’s marrying into, but she’s not thrilled. “When can I take it off?” Her attendants go quiet, their eyes not meeting hers. “Hello?”

The youngest one, a kind looking girl who’d smiled when Clarke had asked her name, gives her an apologetic look. “You can’t. The key will go to your husband, as a sign of your trust.” She shrugs. “You will get used to it.”

Clarke highly doubts that, but she also doubts that these women have any say in whether she stays permanently collared.

It’s moments like these she thinks she probably should have insisted on meeting her husband before the day of the wedding, or insisted on having some of her own people here with her to advocate on her behalf. Besides the inherent powerlessness of this marriage, she didn’t expect to actually be locked into anything.

Not physically at least.

The last piece of her outfit that they add is a gold beaded vail, hanging over her face and eyes like a curtain. She joked about being lamb for slaughter, but seriously. The collar, the blinders: she feels like livestock.

Clarke frowns. She will put up with the indignity for her people, of course she will, but fuck if she can’t show her displeasure.

The first part of the wedding is small, intimate, and Clarke is grateful. The nice attendant tells her it will last a half hour, in which her husband-to-be and her will be bound temporarily. After that, they will have time to meet privately.

By the downcast eyes of the attendant, Clarke thinks that this is a polite way of saying he will have time to sample the goods before committing to her permanently. Her skin crawls at the thought. She knew there was likely to be some sort of required consummation, but she’s sort of blocked it out. She hasn’t had sex since Finn, hasn’t had any sort of romantic or sexual interactions in the interim. She hasn’t wanted to.

She’s both embarrassed by her inexperience and furious at herself for being anything other than angry.

They lead her into the ceremonial hall, an open room with a vaulted ceiling. Light shines in through broken stained glass windows, and she thinks maybe, before the bombs, this used to be a church. Fitting, she supposes.

She’s directed to a cushion at the end of the room, in front of some sort of altar. She sweeps the silks away from her ankles and kneels, sitting back on her bare feet.

Clarke would think someone would tell her husband-to-be she’s already there, or that this was to be a formal event, but nevertheless she can hear him arguing with someone as he approaches the door. Her attendants stand at her back, waiting calmly.

“—ridiculous for them to just expect I would have no problem with it,” a man says, his rasp deep in a familiar way that she cannot seem to place. “I have duties to the clan, to you, and your ambassadors just expect me to drop everything and marry a stranger, just because she’s related to some backwoods Seya. Is she supposed to come with me into battle?”

Another man speaks softly in response, his voice low enough it doesn’t quite reach Clarke’s ears.

“Why should it matter to me whether she’s marked or not? If she’s not a warrior I have no use for her. What am I supposed to do with some— some spoiled child bride?”

His last hiss echoes through the room as he enters, striking her like a slap to the face.

Clarke bristles, her teeth clenching, and lifts her shoulders. She doesn’t want to be in this marriage either, thank you very much, especially not to a man who’s clearly too arrogant to see past his own nose.

She’s not a warrior, fine, but she fights in different ways. She’s a politician, and a healer, and a strategist. Clarke is useful, and not just as some diplomatic trophy.

The reply is too quiet for her to hear, but she’s sure it wouldn’t calm her down.

Her intended apologizes to her attendants, and Clarke hears them shuffle to the side, letting him past. She’s not sure why he bothers, clearly he has no care for propriety. He drops unceremoniously to his knees beside her without a glance in her direction, the man to whom he was speaking coming around to stand in front of them. The officiant, she guesses.

Clarke keeps her gaze straight ahead, glaring at the paneled wall in front of her.

The ceremony is conducted wholly in Trig, the words unfamiliar and spoken so quickly Clarke misses most of the actual content. She’s okay at Trig, but with her unofficial house arrest leaving only Lincoln to practice with, she’s still far from fluent, and none of this is anything she would have even thought to learn.

At some point she’s directed to raise her right hand, and the man beside her his left. The officiant continues, “—ogeda. Nomfa kom Trishanakru, Seken kom Seya, yu na teik dis?”

The bone of her wrist brushes against his skin. The contact is disconcerting, and her eyes flicker involuntarily to the man’s hand.

His skin is tan, several shades darker than her own, his hand broad. His nails are short but clean, and she wonders if he too had to take a milk bath before this.

“Sha,” he says, his voice a low rumble, and the officiant hands him one end of a red ribbon, wrapping it once around his wrist. Clarke shivers.

Probably not.

Her eyes come back up as she realizes the officiant is speaking directly to her now, his words slow and careful. He gives her a serious look, something almost fatherly, his eyebrows pulling together. “Nomfri kom Skaikru,” he asks. Daughter of Skaikru. “Yu na teik dis?” Will you allow this?

In the corner of her eye, she sees the man at her side stiffen, his spine snapping straight, but she doesn’t have time to puzzle through that. She meets the officiant’s eyes with a resolute stare, and nods. “Yes.”

His lips curl into a half grin, as though he is proud of her answer, and he loops the ribbon around her wrist, placing the end softly into her hand. Clarke closes her fist around it.

The officiant bids them to stand, and they do, rising as one to their feet, wrists bound between them. The officiant takes both their unbound hands and gestures for them to face one another.

Clarke closes her eyes and opens them again, releasing a steadying breath through her nose. She forces her feet to turn, keeping her gaze pointed downward. She will not let this man see doubt in her eyes, won’t let him catch a hint of fear.

“Gon nau,” the officiant says, slipping her hand into the man’s.

From now—

Their skin is hot against each other's, palms sweaty as their fingers lace together.

“Tu ste glong raun kom won.”

Two are joined as one.

Clarke swallows hard, and looks up. Two pairs of eyes widen simultaneously, two sets of hackles instantly rising.

Because even though her husband is a stranger, she knows his eyes: deep brown staring out now from unfamiliar charcoal black; the same way she knows the curl of his hair, the line of his shoulders, the pattern that lies beneath the paint on his chest.

She knows these things the same way he knows the slope of her nose, the curve of her breasts, the mark above her lip, the weight of her body clinging to his.

Clarke’s heart races.

Bellamy.

[helahades]

The Goddess and the Grocer

(Steve Rogers x Fem!Reader)

Summary: Sappy and hopelessly romantic, the part time art student, part time grocery bagger, and full time fantasy creator Steve Rogers lives in his head, with you as his muse. Making puzzles out of your groceries, and portraits of your every curve and edge, he fears and craves every interaction, while living with you as a lover in his mind.

A/N: Well. I have struggled with motivation for the longest. Something hit me though, and by something I mean other supportive writers and great friends. Hugest shoutout to @threeminutesoflife for being a darling and @imanuglywombat for making TWO beautiful mood boards I stare at more than Steve stares at the Peggy compass.

Warnings: creepy, obsessive Steve. ideation of creepy thoughts. food focused talk. mention of overeating. dub-con concepts. two mentions of alcohol consumption.

New blog, new me! I’ll take this moment to say I’m taking requests, and I love feedback even more than Steve loves you! hope you enjoy

Word Count: about 3k

-

Now rain slicked, the sheen of oil and water twists the reflections of the tonights red, red, green—-“can I make the turn, no too late” on yellow—now red traffic lights into a twisted rainbow on the city streets.

Down those streets, and across a barren parking lot, parents, lovers, businesspeople and more squeak and clack and slap their rainy shoes on the old speckled tile at the entrance (that Steve had just mopped) as they do every week.

At the Potts Grocery Store, nothing ever changes. And never in the night.

It isn’t just night though, it’s dead night. The odd time after things have slowed for sleep, after the rush in between when people bumble in (promising themselves promises they won’t keep about doing the shopping sooner next month), after the ten minute period within which Dr. Banner wordlessly picks up the same array of bland teas.

The night has crawled beyond all the events that happen as they do, and entered the dead night.

Maybe Steve is too poetic—like his dad says he is—too tied up in fate, and hope in life’s mystique, but he holds hope for what happens where the night is dead.

When the night dies, and most are asleep, with it, facades die too. The only people to come in the dead of night, are drunks, doctors, various night shifters, and… you.

He hasn’t yet questioned your reason for showing up so late. Hasn’t really, technically, spoken to you at all, really.

Some part of Steve thinks, maybe if he startles you, says something that clangs too loud or awkward, all your pieces will blow away, like some agitated dandelion, and he will never know you again, if he ever even knew you at all.

No, Steve’s job isn’t to startle you, or to take up your space. It’s to try and meet your eyes as you hand him the reusable bags. It’s to try and figure out what meal you’re planning from what he’s bagging, and what he already knows lies unused in your kitchen. It’s to put the bags in your cart if you’ll let him.

He hasn’t seen you yet. It’s getting late, where are you?

Somewhere between cold fluorescent and neutral warm desk lamps, the lights of the grocery store seem to exist both to chase shadows on tired shoppers' faces, and to mock him, like a candle finally blown out by a stood up date.

Had he done something wrong the last time? If he had, that couldn’t be helped. You were wearing those shorts and looked like you had just gotten ready for bed and you had your hair pulled back, but just a little fell into your face anyway.

And your scent. It always wraps around him like the saccharine spice of pastries when he swings open the bakery door for his morning shift.

The moment you breezed by him after checkout was almost too much to bear. He caught the fresh damp scent of your tied up and deep conditioned hair. You smelled like fresh linens and a life he can only imagine having when he’s chasing orgasms alone and twisting up his sheets.

He could have devoured you.

But he didn’t.

Not even when your shoulder accidentally grazed him while you were rushing out in a frenzy.

“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry,” came your frantic whisper.

He dreams of making you that delicate again. He thinks he could shape your unsure apologies in his hands like clay, or spread you thin on a canvas when you whisper so soft. But he didn’t do those things at all.

Steve being Steve, he tried to make his large frame slouch, your aura wrapping him up into a double life Clark Kent shyness, despite your gentleness.

He didn’t say a word.

A wordless, mirthless stretch of his lips. An “It’s okay, walk all over me” grin. You regarded him with a flicker of an odd glance, and then you were out the door.

As he finishes up with the last shopper in his lane, his worn Converse squeak as he leans his frame against the bagging station at checkout.

-

Last class, last week, his art teacher dropped a big assignment. Stuffy and sadistic, the man seemed to only eat the pain of lovers kept from expression, so of course, he relished in the moment he told the class to try a new medium, with a subject they hadn’t previously captured.

He seemed to look directly at Steve as he delivered the blow.

Steve's problem certainly isn’t creativity. It isn’t talent or lack of effort. He surely is adaptable, he rarely tells on his love!

For the still life project, he captured the tree that blocks your kitchen window. Heavy strokes in his sketchbook.

He even painted the park in blooms on a paper towel—yes a paper towel—when you justified to a cashier one day that all the crackers and deli meats were for a picnic.

So he has a muse. But he’s not a fool. Sometimes he spends so much time trying not to look like a fool, and paints so much around you instead of you, that it’s a self portrait of his own obsession.

Your face. Your curves. The many separated sections where he tried to master the texture of your hair. All those traces of you live in his sketchbook. Only twice has he turned in a portrait of you.

Being told he can’t have you makes Steve feel like he’s been too obvious. You’re his little secret. And he is no fool. He’ll have to be more careful. So here he is.

The canvas is as bare as the walls of his studio apartment.

Three jobs and a potted plant from his mom just aren’t enough to decorate life. He wishes he could capture sleep in a picture frame and hang it on the wall. When he got too tired and caffeine stopped working, he thinks he’d pick up those frames and absorb the sleep in the way he can absorb nostalgia when looking at a real picture.

Then, he thinks, that’s the sort of thing art majors say when they haven’t slept in three weeks.

The canvas is still bare. It isn’t like Steve. He always knows where to go, what he feels, what he wants.

His teacher told him to try something different. Had the nerve to clap Steve on the back after class and say something about stretching creative wings and finding a new muse.

He thinks the guy should have punched him in the face instead.

There’s nothing stuck about Steve. He knows what he wants and how to get there.

He also knows that schooling ruins the intent of art, he knows how to put love into colors, that art teachers know the least about expression out of everyone on earth, and that he works two night jobs a week to barely afford to be taught by that man anyway.

Life is full of oddities.

-

Some of life’s oddities are right there in your cart as you approach. Steve notices the rain has frizzed your hair, the lovely heart shaped curve of your lips as they stretch into a smile, and the way you yawn before you say hello to the cashier.

He makes a mental note that your hair might have a warmer tinge when illuminated by the sun. You’re already his sun. His stars too. Maybe even his whole universe.

You’re always warm in his paintings. Anything to separate you from the dreadful scheme of this commercial death trap.

What’s for dinner this week?

Your groceries thump onto the counter in practiced succession. Perishables together at the front, and non perishables as neatly as possible following behind.

So thoughtful, my sweet darling.

Your produce today mostly consists of fruit. It reminds Steve of how practiced he is with a knife. How he’d slice up your apples just right for you. He has the practiced skills of an artist. He’d take care of you.

Bucky likes to tell him that cooking is the art and baking is the science. That’s meant to mean that it’s no surprise that Buckys got a perfect little life with a perfect little baker who smiles like the sun and only trusts Bucky in her kitchen.

...And it’s no surprise that Steve’s artsy streak has led him here. Thinking about folding mandarin slices between your perfect lips and letting the flavor explode across your tongue.

He thinks about kissing you. How you would taste tangy and sweet as you try not so hard to push him off so he gets back to cooking and doesn’t burn the house down.

The house. A house with you. A home.

He sees you’re wearing a sundress, and tries not to pity you for the irony. In the closet of some cookie cutter three bedroom, you might ask him how you look in it. He would beg you to wear it just for him a little longer, but ultimately, he would have been able to warn you about the rain.

You wouldn’t have listened though, my stubborn angel.

He thinks about your thighs beneath your dress, and the heat between them.

Sometimes, his dreams betray him, and he steps through the threshold to your shared home, not an artist, but a “Honey, I'm home” suit wearing prisoner.

He fears the simple life, but with you, he believes simplicity could be enough. Maybe he would be rich enough to buy you a million sundresses.

But without his art, he’d be powerless to show you how rich you look, bathed in color, divine from his perspective.

Without his art, he has no outlet for imagination. The only thing that gets him off these days is imagining what you look like under your clothes, and how it might sound if you spoke his name.

When you buy lotion, or a candle, he makes a mental note of the scent, and uses it to color his experience later. You like warm sugary scents, or natural outdoorsy ones, with no in between.

As you small talk with the cashier, your card slips from between your fingers and clatters onto the unswept floor. Finishing a thought, you delay in retrieving it, but by the time you’re leaning down, Steve’s already handing it back.

Eyes flitting up to meet the baggage boy standing up at full height, you melt into an easier smile.

You notice first that his eyes are incredibly blue behind the dark window frames, and second that his hands are incredibly warm as he hands your card back.

Frazzled, and just a bit smitten, you smile kindly.

“Thank you,” you say sweetly, regarding him fully, perhaps for the first time, and pausing only to let your eyes drift to the knitted cotton polo stretched across his broad chest—no, to the name tag resting on it…

“Steve,” you finish with a smile that makes it ring like an exclamation point. To hear you finally pronounce his name… it’s like church bells. But they’re muted because now he can only consider your eyes locked on his.

He’s never wanted to escape somewhere and go home with someone so badly. And would it be so wrong?

He could slice up fruit for you. He could bring sausages and deli meats and blocks of cheeses whole from the market where they slipped him things free. He’d slice them up nice and wrap them in cloth and surprise you with an old fashioned wicker basket picnic in the mountains.

He’d let you eat yourself round. And after you were full, he’d still offer to feed you grapes, to pour you more wine.

Steve never understood why the rich ate bread with olive oil, but God he wanted to be rich enough to give you that. All the things that sound ridiculous to people who work to live. He wanted to work so hard you’d never work again.

He wanted to kiss you dizzy, bunch up the fabric of your dress on your hip and tell you he loves you while you’re wine drunk. He’d carry you back to the car and surprise you with wildflowers in a bunch.

Later, he’d paint you nude with them in your hair, and he’d feed you more grapes.

He would tuck you in and wrap you up for later when you woke up missing him. Maybe he wouldn’t leave at all. Maybe you would want to spend the whole day with him too.

He’s got a twinkle of charm in his eye and just a bit of sadness that looks every bit like the starving artist people believe him to be. Bucky hasn’t stopped bringing him the leftover rolls at closing since he found out Steve spends more money on paint than meals.

And is it so wrong? As Steve looks into your eyes, he musters all that charm his mom said he was born with. He blinks brighter the twinkle in his eye.

“You’re welcome,” comes Steve’s gentle, but sure reply.

You pause at that, because really it’s nothing... But people always seem to say “Don’t worry about it!”, “It’s nothing”, or maybe nothing at all.

You pause at how the reaction seemed genuine, in a world of practiced replies, and on a day that you’re feeling shitty because the rain ruined your hair and happiness.

You smile at him again, grateful for a pocket of truthful kindness, and turn back to the cashier, effectively ending the interaction.

Steve’s mind is spinning in ways he just can’t bring himself to understand. So he bags your groceries. You forgot the reusable bags, he doesn’t pause to wonder why.

Click. Click. Click. Beep!

Tomatoes. He bags them with the apples. Double bags for good measure.

Beep.

Spaghetti. The good kind that most people overlook in favor of a more common brand. New bag.

Beep.

Frozen garlic bread. He adores you. You’ve got garlic and basil and more herbs than you’ll ever need at home. You’d probably make the spaghetti noodles and parmesan yourself if you could. But you love five minutes at 400 garlic bread.

He imagines your pretty little kitchen, with all its various knick knacks, smelling like garlic and tomato sauce. He can’t help thinking you’d be impressed with his chopping skills too. Just how his mom taught him.

He imagines cooking with you in the dead of night, instead of being here. He imagines you bending over with your legs straight and your back curved and the oven mitts on to get garlic bread out of the oven. You put the tray on the cold burners Steve’s not using.

Maybe he would ask you to try the sauce, he’d hold the spoon to your lips after blowing off for you. Your eyes always flutter closed to process the taste of things, and sometimes he swears he could read your mind.

Then they would open. Wide. The same way they did when you tasted the new product double chocolate brownie sample last Tuesday. You would tell him how perfect it is and praise how he finally isn’t shy about using garlic anymore. Turning off the burners, he’d pull you into his arms, he’d kiss you til you saw stars…

-

Walking you backwards, still entangled in the breathless kiss, he wouldn’t stop until you bumped the padded kitchen bench. Then he’d fall to his knees.

“Steve, honey”—

You’d cut yourself off with a breathy moan because he’d already be under your skirt.

Kissing up your thighs, flattening his tongue against you, kissing you gently, before sucking your clit, while working it with the tip of his tongue, he’d show you again, like always, how passionate of a lover he is.

You’d moan like heaven, because you are.

You’d lean back, propping yourself up on an arm and pushing the other hand through his golden hair. You just can’t stop your hips from rolling against his tongue that’s still worshipping you.

He won’t use his fingers. It wouldn’t be proper, he’s just been cooking. So instead, he uses those hands to pull your thighs up onto his shoulders.

Still swirling his tongue around your clit, Steve is drawing you closer, your body seeming to know it’s own ways to pull him to you too.

It’s electric. You can’t stop and you’d never want to. He’d make love to you every single—

-

That’s not where he is though. He grabs the paper bags he’s bagged up with your ingredients and some other oddities, and he places them in the cart you’ve pushed forward.

He tries not to think about the fact that you’re going home alone. He tries not to think about how he’ll be sleeping alone, and in cold colors. Tries to skip forward to later when he has all the time in the world to imagine the way things should be.

A quiet goodnight and you’re on your way. You’re careful not to graze him as you walk away, and he’s careful not to be obvious watching.

The cashier leaves the station, and Steve puts his head down as he passes, before looking up in your direction as he always does.

Except… when he looks up to see your sundress swishing, it isn’t. And you’re turned back looking at him with this funny little look.

You smile. A twinkle of embarrassment, nervous to have been caught looking. He tries not to chuckle for all the irony.

He watches you as you watch him just a bit longer, before your sundress swishes out the door, and the light of your halo fades into the distance, consumed by the rain.

-

By the time his shift is up, the rain has stopped and the sky is colored like a bruise. The sun knocks at a threshold unseen, just slightly feathering light through the sky.

Steve is dead tired, but he won’t sleep a wink. Once he arrives at his apartment, he begins the project.

A mixed medium piece. Acrylic paint, charcoal shadowed details. It’s a wicker basket, full of apples, grapes, and wildflowers.

-

Later, as the sun rises, and the painting is half done, he flops into bed, finishing up a stale roll from the bakery, and dreams about waking up to you.

He pretends there’s no job to be at in three and a half hours, but instead, that it’s a quiet Sunday, and he’s waking up to you in his arms...

Soft and ethereal.

-

Thank you for reading!

Whether or not this is your type of writing, or you liked it at all, I just want to tag some authors who generally inspire me and helped in some way to motivate me posting my first piece: @threeminutesoflife @imanuglywombat @sherrybaby14 @jtargaryen18 @heavenbarnes @tropicalcap @allaboardthereadingrailroad @thotty-tatertot @sapphirescrolls

[krillin-fanfic]

Revelations

Here we go, my humble submission for K18 Day 2020! The prompt was “Relationship Reveal”*, I believe, so I went with a version of how I think it might have unfolded.   If you prefer to read it on the fic sites, here’s the links:  https://archiveofourown.org/works/12092562/chapters/64659265  https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12652303/15/The-Chestnut-Festival And now, on with the show! 

The first time they told someone, it was an accident. 

Krillin and 18 had been visiting Chi-Chi and her boys that day. It'd been nothing unusual for them; 18 had long ago gotten over her shyness around the other woman due to Krillin's insistence he spend time helping her with her home and her son and 18's reluctance to be left alone anywhere within fifty feet of the old man and the pig. (And being honest? Most humans were just dull or annoyed her) and thus 18 found herself typically in the company of the woman she'd only really known as "Goku's wife". Much to 18's surprise, she was quite outgoing... and surprisingly forgiving of the whole "an evil doctor kidnapped me and turned me into a cyborg to kill your husband" thing. She'd even started inviting 18 to come visit her even without Krillin and had come to greatly enjoy her company. In fact, 18 found herself considering the rather friendly-but-feisty woman to be one of the only two friends she really had. 

A loud whoop and a giggling taunt could be heard from the side yard, and she smiled. The two kids Chi-Chi had certainly didn't hurt, either.18 had been apprehensive around the older boy, Gohan, at first; between not being the most sociable of people and the strangeness of the little bookworm being able to crush a monster as powerful as Cell, one couldn't exactly blame her. But over the past year, she'd found him to be quite friendly and accepting of her, a trait, Krillin had told her, he inherited from his father. 18 found herself enjoying spending time with the lad too, listening along with Krillin and his mother as the boy would ramble on and on about some fascinating new factoid he'd rad, or playing baseball with the boy outside. (She noted with pride that, despite the boy's fearsome strength and blinding speed, he could still never manage to hit her changeup.) 

A tiny squeak and a yawn emanated from the tiny, spiky-haired bundle in 18's arms caught her attention. 18 remembered the day they'd gone to visit after little Goten had been born and being petrified. Being around a kid was something she was just getting used to, but a baby? 18 had been stiff and standoffish for nearly that whole night. And for Chi-Chi to actually ask her to hold him barely a week later? Babies were loud, smelly, delicate, and uncomfortable, there was no way she'd even consider it! 

Until finally, one day, out of necessity... she caved. Chi-Chi had been trying to juggle cooking and caring for a fussy baby, and 18 being unwilling to see this much struggling, took the baby for a moment. And she immediately fell in love with the little bundle. The poofy hair, the tiny hands and feet, that adorable smile and giggle... The little Saiyan had 18 enamored with him in no time flat, and whenever Chi-Chi or Gohan weren't holding him, it seemed 18 or Krillin were. She smiled at the little one as he smacked his lips and drifted back to sleep. 

"You really are so good with him." 18 looked up to see Chi-Chi with a tray of steaming hot tea, smiling. "I haven't seen him sleep this soundly in a little while. He seems to find you quite comforting." 

18 couldn't help but allow herself an amused smirk at the irony. "He's a good little guy," she replied. "Almost hard to believe he's such a loud ball of energy when he's awake." 

Chi-Chi set down her tray and chuckled, taking a seat on the sofa next to her. "He's very much like his father that way." 18 handed the baby over to her and she kissed his forehead gently before laying him in the rocking bed by her feet. "I tell you, that man would sleep like a baby, dead to the world, calm and peaceful as can be. Then the next thing ya know, he's up and bouncing around and eating anything I didn't nail down to the table." She sweatdropped. "That was when I learned wax fruit was a no-no on the decoratin' front." 

18 blew on her cup of tea and raised a brow. "He ate wax fruit Did he not stop when he realized?" 

Chi-Chi picked up her cup and chuckled. "Nope. Just complained they were bitter. Told him it was wax fruit and he said not to pick fruit from the wax trees anymore." She smiled. "But then every morning, it was right over to little Gohan's crib. He was joined at the hip to that baby, I swear." 

18 sipped her tea and smiled. "Had him wrapped around his finger, huh?" 

"Oh gosh, you got no idea, hon. When Gohan was born, he was fascinated by him. Sometimes he'd just sit there staring at him like he was trying to figure him out. But before long, he was holding him constantly, taking naps with him..." her eyes widened "and I can't tell you how many times I had ta stop him from tryin' to share his food with him long before he was ready. Those were some hair-raising moments, I can tell you that." 

Her face softened again. "Even when he'd go trainin' though, he always stayed closer to home, and started taking Gohan on trips with him so he could study the wildlife in the area while he did his workout." She put down her tea and smiled at her sleeping infant. "I'm sure he'd be the same way with Goten too. He wasn't always the best traditional father, but my Goku was a good papa." 

18 traced the rim of her cup with a finger and smiled. "Sounds like it to me. I know my Krillin can be the same way. Absolutely loves kids, especially your boys."  

Chi-Chi raised a brow for a moment, shocked. "O-oh!" she grinned. " Yes! He's been a very big help with Gohan. Can't think of anyone I'd rather have as a role model, ahaha!" 

Now it was 18's turn to raise a brow as she sipped nervously. "Hmm." 

"Jeez, kid, did you really have to throw the ball that hard? I think my hand might be numb for like a week." 

The ladies glanced over in the direction of the opening front door to see Krillin enter the house, shirt and pants covered in grass stains, with an apologetic Gohan in tow, carrying a now-deflated football. 

"I'm sorry, Krillin! Is your hand ok?"

Krillin laughed. "Yeah, I'm fine, relax." He held up a finger. "Your next assignment though: work on your control. Can't be tossing balls so hard they break in people's hands." He looked at Chi-Chi and 18 and smiled. "Sorry we took so long out there. Time kinda got away from us."

Chi-Chi waved her hand dismissively. "Oh, you're fine. We were just having a little girl talk, and I was just about to start making lunch anyhow." She gestured toward the sleeping bundle at her feet. "Gohan, would you please take your brother to his bed and get cleaned up? Seems he's out for the long haul."

"Sure thing, mom." Gohan gently scooped up his baby brother and started down the short hallway as Krillin took a seat on the arm of the sofa by 18.

Chi-Chi smoothed her dress. "Now then," she grinned at the two, "is there anything you'd like to tell me?"

Krillin scratched his head in bewilderment. "Uh... you mean about Gohan? Well, he's at that age, so we did sort of have a puberty talk, but-"

Chi-Chi giggled ."I mean about you two, sillies!" She looked at 18. "I mean, how long have you two been a couple and you didn't even tell me?!"

18 visibly tensed but her face remained set in stone. "I'm sorry... what are you talking abo-"

"Ah-ah! Nope!" Chi-Chi held up a finger. "No playing dumb with me, miss! I'd been wondering for a little while now. The looks you two shoot each other," she gestured at their seating arrangement. "The way you always have to be close to each other." She winked at 18. "And just now you called him your Krillin. That's not something that 'just happens' when talking about a friend."

Krillin's jaw dropped a little as 18's face flushed a deep red. He put a hand on 18's shoulder. "18... babe, did you tell her?"

18, still tense and red-faced, nodded slowly. "Y-yeah. So what? Maybe I'm just tired of pretending, huh? Maybe I wanna talk to my only other friend about stuff too..."

Krillin hopped off the couch and kneeled in front of her. "Nono, hon, you don't have to defend that decision to me. We discussed this, 'member? Whenever you're ready, right?" 18 nodded and he smiled, his own face flushing as well.

"Uhm... Chi-Chi," he turned to her. "Please, can you just... keep this between us for now? Please." He took 18's hand in his and she gripped it tightly. "18's never really had much privacy in her life, and she was super worried about people trying to pry and being nosy... we agreed to keep this a secret until she was ready to tell people herself. So please, especially not Bulma. You know how she can be..."

Chi-Chi put both hands up. "Oh, of course, of course! I completely understand. Secret's safe with me, honest." She shifted forward and rested her chin in her hand. "But uh... how long? When did it happen?"

"A few weeks ago..." 18 spoke up, finally shifting her gaze from the floor to her friend again, cheeks still red. "We... we were stargazing on the roof when the old man was gone. Like we usually do, and... I dunno what it was, but something just felt different. Like... I felt really happy, y'know? And.. weirdly safe. Like there was nothing in the world that could have touched me in that moment." 18 smiled softly. "And he... told me I looked really pretty in the moonlight. In this way that felt so sincere and honest... I asked to hear it again. And again. And then..."

"She kissed me," Krillin interrupted, a big dopey grin on his face. "Ow!" he rubbed his shoulder where 18 slugged him. "What?"

"Don't interrupt, goon." 18 scowled, but there was a playfulness to her eyes that betrayed her.

"Apologies, miss. I shan't interrupt again." he kissed her hand softly, and 18 blushed even harder, hiding her face behind a shirt sleeve.

Chi-Chi squealed. "Oh my gosh, you two are just too adorable!" She planted a hand on both their shoulders. "Congratulations, you two! Honestly, it was about time you finally pulled the trigger on this. I think I knew before either of you did." She laughed as the two nervously looked away.

"H-how?"

Chi-Chi smirked slyly. "Well it's not as if Krillin kept his feelings a secret, I've known him for years and his emotions are easy to read as a book. But you..." she shook a finger at 18. "You took a bit longer, but it wasn't hard to see he was more than just a friend to you. I'd say it was probably around the time you started asking me to teach you how to cook that I knew for sure." She winked. "These boys are all the same, the way to the heart is through the stomach."

As if on cue, Krillin's stomach growled and 18 chuckled. "Well it was either that or give him food poisoning, I suppose."

Chi-Chi stood and pumped a fist. "Right! Well, I better get lunch going. Gohan's no doubt close to done cleaning up, and I'm sure he'll be starved too." She cast a side-eye at 18. "Be glad you're not cooking for Saiyans, dear. Lemme tell you, it's a full-time job."

She trotted to the kitchen, pulled out a big pot, and started filling it with water, sparing the occasional glance up to see the two lovebirds in their own little world, holding hands, talking happily, and stealing the occasional kiss. She smiled. 'They look so happy.'

18 gripped Krillin's hand just a tiny bit tighter The initial nerves had subsided. She was glad she'd told, to be honest, and happier still that Chi-Chi agreed to keep it a secret, but there was still that lingering sense of paranoia she couldn't quite shake. Her privacy and autonomy were things she highly valued, and the idea of certain people prying and wanting to grill her for information on her personal life still scared her. But...

She smiled.

But now she had Krillin. Her Krillin. Her best friend, her support... and now more.

And somehow, she knew, everything would be alright.

[zoryany]

Hey! Not sure if you’re still taking request for ficlet prompts but 67 with Luke + Padmé pleaseeeee!!! ❤️

send me ficlet prompts – optionally include characters67 –  My father may look like the scary one, but it’s my mother you need to be afraid of.(you sent me this SO LONG AGO and I’ve been wanting to answer it SO BADLY but lacked the inspiration until now. it kinda got away from me, ended up being more skysolo than I intended, and I accidentally created a new AU but ahh, I hope it was worth the wait!)

Gripping the controls of the speeder tight enough for his knuckles to turn white, Han Solo shifted nervously in the pilot’s seat. His passenger, looking incredible as always in his simple yet finely made black tunic and trousers, had the audacity to appear completely casual and not at all bothered. How in all the hells was Luke so calm?

Han licked his lips and furrowed his brow. Was he sweating? Why was he so nervous? He could out-shoot any bounty hunter, out-fly just about any pilot and charm the slime off a Hutt – he could do this, too. It was just meeting someone’s parents. He was good with people, so this should be no exception, right? Why should this time be any different?

Oh, right, that’s why, Han thought to himself as the Palace came into view. This time, the parents I’m meeting just so happen to be in charge of the entire kriffin’ galaxy!

He really did seem to have a particular kind of luck with his romantic interests, didn’t he?

“Relax, Han,” his companion soothed, resting a hand on his shoulder and tracing gentle circles there with his thumb. “They’re really not as scary as everyone makes out. Trust me. They don’t bite.”

“Nah, but I’ve seen what your old man is capable of,” he replied without thinking, instantly regretting it when the hand on his shoulder tensed, slightly.

“Yeah.” Han could practically feel the conflict and guilt radiating from the seat next to him, and he was ready to cut in with profuse apologies and lay himself down at the mercy of the court, but a wry laugh from Luke stopped him. “He makes a point not to do anything… to enforce the will of the Empire at home, so you should be good.”

Han didn’t miss the hesitation or the irony in those words, but Luke was smiling, at least, so he relaxed a little bit.

“Besides,” Luke continued, shrugging, “Father’s not the one you need to worry about. My father may look like the scary one, but it’s really my mother you need to be afraid of. And, well, my sister too, probably. Father’s protective, definitely a force to be reckoned with, but it’s no match for the bond between a mother and her child, or the one between twins.” A pause. Then, almost as an afterthought, “They’re also both politicians. Nothing is more dangerous than words.”

The grin on Luke’s face had taken on a wicked quality, a slight level of menace in his voice, and Han suddenly found himself sweating profusely. “Tell me again why this was a good idea?”

Bright peals of laughter filled the speeder as Luke had a good chortle at his expense. Han grumbled as the kid nudged him playfully and moved his hand to the back of Han’s neck, fingers snaking their way into his hair. “Relax. I’m just messing with you. Mostly. It’s gonna be fine. I promise. I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

Oh. That boded well.

***

As Luke approached the private entrance at the back of the palace, he had to admit to himself that he shared at least some of Han’s trepidation. Not quite to the same extent, but a hint of dread prickled at the back of his neck nonetheless. 

“Look, Han, I – I know I said I had a good feeling about this. And I know I assured you everything would be fine, but…” He hesitated. While he wasn’t nearly as eloquent as his mother or sister, he was unaccustomed to being as at a loss for words as he often found himself when he was around Han. Something about this smuggler made him feel more like a farmboy than the prince he’d been raised as. Normally, he didn’t mind, but this… this was important. “My family can be a lot. And, well, we’ve only known each other a few weeks, and all. So, I mean, if you’re not ready – ”

“Hey,” Han cut in, resting a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “I know how much this means to you – how much your family means to you. You think it’s time we all meet then I trust you.” He grinned, cheekily. “Don’t go thinkin’ you can get rid of me that easily, Your Worship.”

Rolling his eyes, Luke returned Han’s grin before nudging him with his elbow. “Alright, alright. Let’s get going, then. No point in putting it off.” He could still feel a healthy level of anxiety rolling off of Han, but his good-natured ribbing and confident stride made Luke feel a bit more at ease.

At least, it did until they stepped into his family’s sitting room and saw the look Leia was giving them.

“Y’know,” she said slowly, her voice smooth and silky, “I was sure I’d seen the height of your stupidity already.” She wore a dangerous smile on her face, one Luke knew far too well, and it only grew wider when he scowled at her. “I was sure you couldn’t do anything more idiotic than the time you took Father’s speeder out for a joy ride and thought he wouldn’t notice. But I think you’ve really outdone yourself this time, well done.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The look of delight on Leia’s face had quickly become the most accurate impression of an anooba playing with its meal before devouring it that Luke had ever seen. “Disappearing for weeks on end, leaving us nothing but a cryptic note, no hint of where you’ve gone and hardly a word from you over holocall, then showing back up here with this scruffy-looking scoundrel in tow?” Behind him, Han bristled, which really only served to feed into Leia’s amusement. “Honestly, Luke, I’m impressed. I mean it! The fit Father threw when he found out was spectacular, I haven’t seen anything like it since – well, the speeder incident, actually.”

Despite how entertained Leia seemed by all of this – and there was a vein of genuine amusement in her words – Luke could also sense her underlying worry. Nobody else would be able to detect the tension in her body, the shadow of concern in her eyes, the minute tremor in her voice… She was his twin, and he suddenly felt incredibly guilty for leaving her, even temporarily.

I’m sorry, Leia, he muttered through their bond.

Don’t you dare pull anything like that again, or I might have to strangle you.

With Han oblivious to their silent exchange, Luke decided to mirror Leia’s outward attitude as he raised a brow at her then turned to his “scruffy-looking scoundrel,” who looked like he was trying to decide whether to be terrified or irate. He ended up landing somewhere in the middle. “Han, it is my pleasure to introduce to you Her Royal Imperial Highness, Princess Leia Naberrie-Skywalker, my dear, lovely sister and twin. Leia, this is Captain Han Solo, my – ” He hesitated a moment, glancing at Han as the word caught in his throat. They never did decide what they were going to label their relationship as to his family. Han just gave him a small shrug and a short nod, prompting Luke to just pick something, for now. “He’s my companion.”

“Believe me,” Leia drawled, the delight on her face melting into a much colder, calculating look, “the pleasure is all mine.” Her eyes were piercing as she looked Han up and down, causing him to shift under her gaze. They lingered for a moment as she came to whatever conclusion she had about him before flicking them to meet Luke’s. “Mother’s expecting you in her parlour. Better not keep her waiting.”

All the warmth had left his sister’s voice, by now, but he could still feel her quiet concern. Leia sent him a silent Good luck as Luke led Han towards his mother’s chambers, a fresh knot of anxiety tying his stomach into knots as they went.

***

“Well,” the kid said quietly next to him, “that’s one down.”

Han rubbed the back of his neck, wondering if maybe he should’ve turned back when Luke gave him the chance, but tried to cling to a shred of optimism nevertheless. “If your mom’s anything like your sister, maybe I would’ve had more luck meeting your dad, first. Wasn’t expecting to get eaten alive like this.”

Luke chuckled darkly and shook his head. “No, trust me, it’s for the best that Father’s off-world until tonight. Leia’s all bark and no bite and Mother… you do have to earn her respect, but she’ll give you a fair chance to do so. Father, on the other hand…” Pausing a moment, he bit his lip while searching for the right words. “Well. You said yourself. You’ve seen what he can do.”

He knew full well how much Luke idolized his father. Pure admiration flooded his baby blues any time he brought him up, especially when he’d neglected to share with Han the little detail of his true line of work. It was unnerving, now, to see the discomfort in his face as he discussed Vader, but Han did have to admit to the relief he felt in knowing Luke’s devotion didn’t overshadow his moral code.

They reached the door to the Empress’ parlour before Han had a chance to say anything in response, so he just sighed and glanced down at Luke. “Well, I s’pose it’s now or never.”

Nodding in response, the kid gave the door two sharp raps before pushing it open and leading Han into a large, pleasantly decorated room. The floor was covered in a plush, bright crimson carpet except for directly in front of the fireplace at the far end of the room, which was lined with dark, smooth stones. Artwork lined the walls, from lavish paintings of lush worlds to intricately woven tapestries to complicated abstract works Han would never understand even if he dedicated the rest of his life to interpreting them. The room was furnished with two large, gold-trimmed sofas and a matching armchair that resembled a throne, all encircling an ornate golden table. Han felt entirely out of place, surrounded by this much luxury; even Luke didn’t look quite at home in his surroundings.

The woman before them, however, matched the decor perfectly. Dressed in a flowing, deep blue gown and a sheer, silvery cape, with a golden circlet perched atop the chestnut curls that cascaded past her shoulders and down her back, she stood regally in the centre of the room, awaiting their approach. Trying to keep himself from staring, Han fell into a kneeling position next to Luke, who was the picture of contrition.

“Mother. I have returned home, and I beg your forgiveness for my unannounced absence.” 

Having spent the first several weeks of their relationship unaware of his royal status, Han had never imagined Luke’s voice could sound so regal. It sure was a far cry from the naive, chattering kid who’d struck up conversation with him in a run-down shipyard on Ord Mantell. He had to admit, the change was a little spooky.

A few moments passed, feeling like hours, considering how nervous he was, but it wasn’t long before the woman strode forward and wrapped her arms around Luke, pulling him up. “Luke!” she breathed, pulling him into an embrace. Han suddenly felt like he was intruding on something very private. “My son, it’s so good to have you home.” She pulled out of the hug and gripped his shoulders, a stern look etched in her features. “Don’t you ever do anything like that again! If something had happened to you – What in the stars possessed you to do something so rash?”

Luke never did tell Han why he’d run in the first place. Sure, he’d asked, but the kid would get evasive every time he did so eventually he dropped the subject. Under his mother’s gaze, now, it was a lot more difficult to dodge the question, but Luke still seemed determined to do so.

“Oh, sweetheart,” the Empress sighed, brushing her fingers through his hair. “We can discuss this later, when your father returns.” Luke stiffened but bowed his head in acknowledgement. “Now! Are you going to introduce me to your guest, or were you planning on leaving him to kneel at our feet all day?”

Han’s head snapped up and he met Luke’s eyes, who nodded at him to rise. “Mother, this is Captain Han Solo of The Millennium Falcon. I’ve spent the last several weeks in his company, and the two of us have grown… close.”

He could practically feel the kid’s cheeks flush at his own choice of words. Thankfully, the Empress herself appeared to be plenty amused, and she offered Han a brilliant smile that left him somewhat weak in the knees. He could see what Luke meant about her being the dangerous one. There was something so very disarming about this woman and her charm, and he’d met enough charming women to know to be on his guard.

“Truly, I’m charmed, Captain,” she said, voice ringing like a bell as she slipped into formality. “Luke has a gift for befriending the most… fascinating of people.” After offering him another bright smile, she turned to face her son. “Luke, go prepare the guest room, please? If he’s to be staying with us, he’ll need proper accommodations.”

“Oh, that’s really not necessary, Majesty,” Han sputtered, “I got my ship, and – ”

“Nonsense!” The word was light and pleasant, but she somehow infused enough authority into it that he knew there was no point in arguing. “As a friend of my son’s, you are welcome in our home.” 

Han was sure they had servants or droids who could set up the bedroom, and even if they didn’t, he was more than capable of doing it himself. He didn’t see why she was sending the Prince to do it. “Well, alright, if you insist, but Luke doesn’t have to set up for me, I’m happy to get it myself.”

“No, no, you are our guest, and we your hosts.” Her deep eyes glimmered with something dangerous. “My son has brought you here, and it is proper etiquette for him to see to your comfort here. Luke? If you will?”

Luke wore a somewhat confused expression that he turned from his mother to Han, but his hesitation was brief as he bowed slightly and muttered “Yes, Mother,” before he set off towards the parlour door. 

Turning to follow, Han was frozen in place by a sharp tut from the Empress. “Not yet, Captain Solo. Sit. Relax. I’ll have some tea brought, and you and I can get acquainted.”

From the doorway, Luke shot an alarmed glance in their direction and looked, for a second, as though he was about to protest and insist on staying, but his mother’s expression brooked no argument. Pressing his lips together in a thin line and putting as much reassurance into his eyes, Luke gave Han a final nod before disappearing from sight.

Now alone with the Empress, in her domain, the smuggler couldn’t help but feel he’d landed in a krayt’s den and was about to find out just how dangerous this woman could really be.

After gliding towards the lavish armchair and perching on it, she indicated one of the sofas and stared at him with a pleasant yet sharp look. “Sit,” she repeated, and Han’s legs complied, of their own accord. As he did so, a protocol droid filed in and set down a tray carrying a steaming teapot, a bowl of sugar, cream, and four teacups. “How do you take your tea, Captain?”

With a lot of alcohol, he thought.

“Black,” he said, and she poured him a cup. He muttered an awkward thanks as she handed it to him.

When she’d fixed her own cup and taken a sip, she zeroed in on him, expression growing hard. “Now, Captain, I will be blunt.” Her voice was cold in a way it hadn’t been before, bearing an edge to it that caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand at attention. “My son has a heart the size of the galaxy itself, and he’s prone to giving it away far too easily. That isn’t to say I do not trust his choices, nor do I believe him to be a poor judge of character. He has faith in people, believes in their strengths and capabilities and their capacity to do good.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen that part of him,” Han agreed, thinking back to all the down-on-their-luck Mantellians whose lives were just a bit more comfortable now, thanks to Luke.

The Empress nodded gravely. “Then I’m sure you know how easily he places that trust in those who may not deserve it. In the past he has been drawn to… the wrong sorts of people, and it’s gotten him into trouble more than once.”

Those words were pointed, they referred to him, Han knew, and he found himself scowling at the most powerful woman in the galaxy. “I can assure you, Your Majesty,” he ground out, “that I have no intentions of being the wrong sort of person for your son.” That would cost him, he was sure, but he felt the need to defend his – and Luke’s – honour, even if it meant snapping at the kriffin Empress herself.

Raising a single brow, she regarded him with an appraising stare, dark eyes seeming to burrow right into his soul. “See that you aren’t,” she said evenly. “There are precious few things in this galaxy, Captain, that I treasure more than my children and their wellbeing. So long as you are in Luke’s favour, you will be treated well, I assure you, but if you bring him to harm…” The threat lingered in the air for a moment. He got the message.

He maintained her gaze and held his ground. “Look, lady,” he said, far braver than he had any right to be, “I ain’t suicidal, I’m not about to go messing with your family, and I’m definitely not gonna hurt Luke. Don’t think I could handle his face if I did – looks too much like a kicked puppy when he’s just a bit disappointed, can’t imagine it when he’s genuinely hurt. Besides, seems to me he’s got enough pain in his life without me contributing to it. Now, I may not be some high and mighty noble or anything, and what the kid actually sees in me is anybody’s guess, but, dammit, he’s got me carin’ about him, and anyone who can do that is worth protecting, in my books.”

Well, Solo, you had a good run. Always knew that mouth of yours would be the end of you, just never expected to go quite as dramatic as running it in front of the Empress and getting executed. If only Lando could see you now…

Silence echoed deafeningly in the chamber, which now felt far larger than it actually was, ready to swallow him up. The Empress was staring at him, eyebrows raised, gaze flicking over him again. After what felt like an eternity, the barest shade of a smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “Very well, Captain Solo. Perhaps you will do well here, after all.” For the first time she’d spoken to him, her voice carried genuine warmth. 

All of a sudden, he could breathe again, a wave of relief crashing over him as he sank into the sofa and sighed. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I’ll do my best.”

“See that you do.” A pause. “Now!” she chirped, “Luke should be finished with your accommodations by now. I’ll send Threepio to fetch him and my daughter, and we can all get acquainted properly over some tea. Yes, I think that sounds lovely.”

There was no way anyone he knew was going to believe this. He wasn’t sure he even believed it himself. But, sitting here in the Imperial Palace having tea with the Empress and her children, he couldn’t help but wonder just what he’d gotten himself into this time…

[lookimtryingmybest]

“How to accidentally die, meet a shady ghost and become a half demon” A story by Logan Freud.

Part 1 Part 2

It was a quiet Sunday morning. Logan had left a note for his parents on the kitchen counter, grabbed his keys, and left the house. He played some music in his headphones as he made his way to the location where he had agreed to meet the others. The street noise was something he’d rather not deal with this early in the morning.

He knew the way. He knew which crossroads were dangerous. He knew to be more aware of his surroundings. Logan wasn’t going to be completely deaf to the world. He knew what he was doing.

Logan spotted Virgil on the meeting point, just across the street. Early as always, he noted.

He was going to cross safely. He swore to himself over and over that he was going to do it. Wait for the speeding cars to pass and then cross. 

But he couldn’t ignore the kid he spotted, standing in the middle of the road. 

Without thinking twice, something Logan didn’t have the tendency to do, he started running. He moved to grab the kid’s arm and pull him away.

He passed right through him.

The kid stared at him, and Logan stared back.

“You can see me?” The kid asked.

And before Logan could respond, he got hit by a car.

Virgil cursed when he saw Logan run and just stop. In the middle of the road. 

He screamed when he got hit.

He doesn’t remember much of what happened later. His legs moved for him, and someone called an ambulance.

The ambulance wasn’t fast enough.

Virgil’s memories started becoming more vivid after his parents got him home. He explained that they just wanted to meet and go have fun in the park. They just wanted to enjoy the swings and the slide without being looked at weird by the little kid’s mothers.

He stayed in his room for the rest of the day. His friends called. He ignored every one of those calls. 

His mind kept repeating the accident. How Logan ran. 

He never thought Logan could do something so careless. So stupid.

Virgil curled up in his bed, buried under blankets. He didn’t try to stop the tears.

“What the fuck has just happened.” Logan said, as he opened his eyes again. He remembered a kid, with golden eyes, and being on the road. Then everything became blurry. He thought he might’ve heard Virgil screaming over twenty one pilots’s ride. 

He looked around him. He was standing up. And dressed up in a suit. How did he wake up this way?

He saw Virgil from a distance, along their mutual friends. Logan smiled. 

He ran to them.

“Virgil!” He shouted. Virgil didn’t react. “Virgil?” 

Logan moved to grab his shoulder. He passed through him. He tried again. “Virgil? Virgil, listen to me!” He kept trying to grab him, failing.

He turned to the others. Patton was holding back tears, as he held Remus’s hand. Remus was a mess, not even trying to hold back on his sobbing. Roman kept drying away his own tears, smudging his eyeliner beyond recognition. 

“Guys?” Logan said, trying to get their attention. “Remus? Patton?” He tried to grab them. He passed through them. “Roman?”

He turned again, trying to understand what they were so upset about.

Oh. That made sense.

Logan saw himself, wearing the same tux he was wearing now, laid down in a coffin. Lilacs on his hands. Lilacs were always his favourites.

He gulped. No, this couldn’t be real, right? He couldn’t be dead, he was still here. He just needed for the others to see him.

Logan didn’t believe in ghosts.

Oh, the irony, he thought, once he had calmed down. After the funeral, his funeral, ended, not knowing which of his friends to follow. 

Something on the back of his mind told him to follow Virgil. And so he did.

Virgil’s house was old. Very old. Remus liked to joke it was haunted. It was a running gag now, Virgil had even made up Dennis, the ghost that lived in his house and that liked pushing his stuff to the ground like a bastard cat.

That joke didn’t seem so funny now to Logan.

He followed Virgil to his room and watched him burry himself in homework as a distraction. Logan could hear the music blasting from the headphones.

He looked around his room, not knowing what to do. He tried touching things. Anything. Nothing worked.

Logan looked around the house. He saw Virgil’s parents. They were talking. Logan decided it wasn’t his business. 

He went to the living room. 

And there was the kid from before, watching the TV.

Logan stared at the kid. They should be around his age, probably younger. He was dressed in dirty pajamas, no shoes on. His hair was a mess of brown curls and his skin was dark.

The kid turned to face him, and Logan saw the other half of his face.

He screamed. 

The kid jumped to his feet, startled by Logan’s presence. 

“Virgil, did you leave the TV on again?” Virgil’s father asked, entering the room. Both ghosts watched him as he turned off the TV and left.

Then they went back to staring at each other.

“Aw, man, I was watching that…” The kid complained, turning to the TV. He avoided Logan’s gaze. 

“What happened to your face?” Logan asked, trying not to look to half part of the kid’s face.

The kid grimaced. “Rude.” He said, sitting on the carpet again. “Why are you still here?”

“My apologies.” Logan said. He considered sitting next to the kid. “I was simply… surprised.” 

The kid scoffed. “You mean disgusted? Yeah, I get that a lot. Why are you still here?”

“What do you mean?” Logan said, sitting next to the kid. The kid moved away from him. 

“Move on, continue your business, however you wish to call it.” He said. “Why haven’t you done that already?”

“I can do that?” Logan asked.

“Yes.” The kid said. “Everyone does so. So just do it and leave me alone.”

Logan stared at the kid. He tried to do what he was doing. Move on. But he didn’t know how to do that. 

“I’m afraid I can’t.” Logan said. “Who are you?”

The kid turned to face him again, frowning. Logan made an effort not to stare at the burned flesh. “What do you mean you can’t? Everyone can!” He said, gesturing widely. 

“Well, if everyone can, why haven’t you moved on?” Logan asked.

The kid dropped his arms, staring at nothing for a few moments. “Almost everyone can. I can’t.” 

“Well, then, I suppose I’m in the same situation as you.” Logan said. He held out his hand for the kid. “I’m Logan Freud. And you?”

The kid stared at his hand before shaking it. Logan noticed how his hands were dirty with blood and ashes. “Janus.” He said. “Although Virgil calls me Dennis. He got the idea of that weird show about vampires. I really like that show.” 

“Buffy the vampire slayer, yes, I know that sho–wait you’re who?” Logan said.

“Janus. Yeah, I’ve been bothering Virgil for a while now. He’s fun to mess with.” He said, trying to sound causal. He failed, being far too awkward for this. 

“Oh my fucking god.” Logan said. “I thought you were a joke”

“Yeah, Virgil thinks so too.” Janus said, scratching the burn tissue on his hands, avoiding Logan’s gaze.

“I’ve laughed at the mere idea of you existing.” Logan said.

“Yeah, I know.” Janus said, getting tired of the topic. “I was there.”

“I… god, fuck…” Logan said, laughing. He didn’t even know why he was laughing. “I’m dead. Fuck, I’m dead.”

“Yep.” Janus said. “Welcome to the club.” He stood up. “Imma leave ya to your existential crisis and go bother Virgil.” 

Logan stared at the TV, as he heard Janus left. He stood up after a few moments. 

He didn’t notice he was heading to his home until he passed through the door. He heard their parents talking in the kitchen.

Logan couldn’t decipher what his parents were saying. He heard the words, but he couldn’t just figure them out. 

His parents weren’t crying. They weren’t grieving.

They didn’t care. 

Logan went back to the living room. He traced his fingers through his old piano. He should’ve played it more often when he was alive. It’s not like he loved doing so, but it was a good de-stressing method.

He pressed his hands against the keys. He jumped back when sound came out. After a few seconds of staring at the piano, he tried to grab the pillows on the sofa. Nothing. He passed through them.

He hesitated before placing his hands against the keys. He started playing a melody he knew from back when he was five.

He stopped when his mother entered the room, looking paler than usually. Logan moved away from the piano, smiling. 

“Mom, I–” He dropped his smile when his mother walked straight through him. 

He watched her close the piano’s lid and push the stall under it. She didn’t even bother putting the protective cloth on the keys before slamming the lid close.

Logan bit back tears as he tried to get the lid to open. It didn’t. He screamed in frustration and tried to hit something. He just kept passing through the furniture, which didn’t help calming him down.

He crumbled to the ground, hugging his knees. He let the tears ran down.

He was dead, he no longer cared. 

No one could see him. 

Not even his parents cared.

Roman had thrown himself into sewing. He grabbed his latest project right after breakfast and spent hours on it. 

He didn’t notice how thirsty he was until Remus forced him to go eat lunch. He almost didn’t believe how much time he’d spent focused on his dress. His hands hurt.

Remus didn’t look better either. He had stayed in bed until three o’clock, ignoring Roman. And the world. He hadn’t even bothered changing clothes since the funeral. 

They sat at the kitchen, as Remus forced his twin to eat some fruit. 

“Logan’s parents called” Remus said, peeling an orange with numb fingers. “They’re leaving for the month.”

“Oh.” Roman said, watching Remus struggle with the peel. He’d usually bit into the orange like an apple and spit out the peel later. “Ok.” 

“They’re asking us to watch over the house while they’re gone.” Remus said leaving the peeled orange on the counter. He wasn’t hungry anyways.

“Ok” Roman said again. “Jerk move. But ok.” He gulped down his chocolate milk. “You should eat as well.”

“I know.” Remus said. “I will.” He took the orange and contemplated it.

“Are they asking us to go inside?” Roman asked, watching his brother munch on the orange as if it was an apple, juice dripping down his arm. 

“Yeah.” Remus said, his mouth full. “Once per day, to check for squatters.”

“As if people were dumb enough for choosing an obviously occupied house.” Roman said, bitterness slipping into his tongue. He had never liked Logan’s parents much. “Let’s get this over with for today.” He stood up, leaving his mug on the sink. “I want to finish the dress today.”

“You said it would take you a few weeks to finish…” Remus said, following him. Orange juice dripped to the floor. None of the twins mentioned it.

“Did I fucking stutter?” Roman asked. 

Remus just shrugged. “They left the keys under the doormat.”

“Stupid decision.” Roman pointed out. Remus hummed in agreement.

Roman contemplated the option of changing clothes. The pajamas were comfortable, though, and he wanted to get this over with as fast as he could. Get into the house, check the rooms and go back to sewing until his hands fell off.

Remus opened the door and clicked the lights on. Neither of the twins made any attempts to move inside the house. 

Roman grimaced. “Let’s get this over with.” He said, brushing his brother as he entered. 

They passed through the kitchen, the living room and Logan’s parents’s room. 

If Remus noticed how Roman purposely ignored Logan’s room, he didn’t dare to mention it.

Remus looked at the old piano. It was closed. Logan hated it when people closed his piano.

Without thinking twice, he opens the lid and brushed his fingers against the keys.

He jumped away, falling to the ground, when the piano played on its own.

He heard Roman approaching. 

“Remus, stop playing the piano, we have to–” He stopped, staring at Remus in the ground. He blinked twice before looking at the piano, that kept playing.

Then he fainted.

Remus felt like screaming. Instead, he crawled to his side, trying to ignore the piano as it kept playing. He poked his brother in the face. 

“Please don’t be dead.” He said, barely above a whisper. “Roman, please, don’t be dead.”

The piano music stopped. Remus felt a breeze pass through, sending shivers through his body. 

Then Roman opened his eyes, and stared at the ceiling. 

“Remus, what the fuck?” He said, sitting up. He rubbed the back of his head, feeling a numb headache coming.

“Ah, thanks, I thought you just died.” Remus said, trying to smile. 

“What has just happened?” He asked, getting up.

Remus looked at the piano and then at Roman. 

“Bold of you to assume I have any idea.” He said. “The piano is automatic, or something.”

A chord interrupted him.

“Never mind, it’s haunted.” Remus said, smiling nervously. “Let’s fucking leave.”

“Wait.” Roman said. He approached the piano. “Ok, eh… can you hear us?”

“What are you doing?” Remus said. “It’s a piano it can’t respond you, let’s just fucking lea–”

A single note interrupted him. A ti. 

“Ok, B. What does a B mean?” Roman said.

“Why are you asking questions to a piano?!” Remus said. He was starting to lose his composure. “Roman, please let’s just go home, I’m seriously freaking out.”

“B meant ti, right?” Roman said, ignoring his brother’s panic. “In like, the British English?”

“Yes, Roman, B means ti or si.” Remus said. “Congratulations, you remember music lessons, can we now go away?”

“Si. Sí. Yes. He’s saying yes.” Roman said. The piano played a few other tis, as if it wanted to confirm it. 

Remus ran his hands through his hair. “It’s a piano! Not a person!” He said, voice filled with desperation. “Please, Roman, I really need to leave.”

“You leave.” Roman said. “I’m going to…” He sighted, looking at the piano. “I’m going to talk to Logan.”

“You what?” Remus exclaimed. “Are you out of your mind? That’s not Logan!” He gestured to the piano like a maniac. “It’s a piano!”

“His piano.” Roman said. “He could be playing it.”

“He’s not. Logan’s dead, there’s no way.” Remus said. His voice cracked. “There’s no way. He’s dead.”

Roman looked down, guilt pooling in his stomach. He inhaled deeply before turning to the piano. “Are you Logan?” 

A ti note played again.

“Roman, quit it, it’s not funny” Remus pleaded.

“Ok, Do for no, ti for yes.” Roman continued, trying to ignore the tears that went down Remus’s face. “If you are Logan, did you like peaches?” 

A do. Logan hated peaches. 

“It’s not Logan, it’s just tricking us.” Remus said, drying his tears. “I’m leaving. Stay with the damn piano all you want.” 

“Wait.” Roman said, reaching out to grab Remus arm. “Please?”

Remus hesitated, before pulling his arm from Roman’s grip.

“You have one more question.” He said. “Choose wisely.”

Roman sighted. He turned to the piano again. “If you really are Logan, play Remus’s favourite song. You know the one.”

There was silence for a few seconds. Remus scoffed, turning away.

Then Pop goes the Weasel started playing. And Remus froze, not knowing what to do.

“Ok…” He said. “Ok, stop!” He snapped, and the melody stopped. 

“…Remus?” Roman asked, reaching out to him.

“We need a notebook.” Remus said. “I have an idea.”

Logan watched Remus and Roman leave his house. He stared at the half eaten orange that had been abandoned in the floor. Gross.

He stayed by the piano, playing soft tunes. He hadn’t meant to scare anyone, he just wanted to talk to his friends. He didn’t want to make Remus cry ever again.

He stopped playing when the main door opened again. How long had he been playing?

The Twins rushed into the living room. Remus was holding a stack of cut out post-it notes. Without hesitation, he started sticking them to the piano’s keys. 

Logan was almost mortified by such thing done to his beautiful piano, until he noticed the letters written on the notes. 

Remus was smart, he noted. 

In fact, he had also added a comma, a point, interrogation and exclamation points. And numbers.

Remus was very smart.

“Ok!” He said. “If you’re Logan, –I’m still not sure about that one– talk to us! Say anything, whatever you want!”

Logan eyed both twins. Roman held his notebook, waiting to write down whatever Logan played. He was shaking slightly. Logan couldn’t blame him.

He placed his hands on the piano and thought. What should he say?

An idea clicked on his mind and he started playing, slowly enough so Roman could write everything down.

“The birds work for the bourgeoisie.” Roman said. He stared at the piano. “Really? Out of all the things you can say?”

Logan didn’t even bother holding back his laughter. “It was the first thing Remus told me in history class.” He said, as he started playing the sequence of keys. 

Roman read the sentence out loud and looked at his brother. “How am I not surprised?”

“So it is him.” Remus said. 

‘Of course it’s me’ Logan played out. Roman read it out loud again.

“Should we call the others?” Roman asked. “I think we should tell them.” 

‘Dennis is real, btw. His name is Janus’ Logan played. 

Roman frowned. “Repeat that slower, I didn’t copy it right.”

Logan sighted, doing so. 

“What did he say?” Remus asked. “I got lost after the second n.” 

Roman stared at the sentence he had written. “Dennis is real. The fucker in Virgil’s house is real.” 

“I knew it!” Remus said, bouncing up and down. “I fucking knew it!”

“Ok, that’s it, Imma go call the others.” Roman said, handling the notebook to Remus. “You keep Logan company, I’ll try explain this without causing them to freak out.”

Logan watched as Roman left. Remus grabbed the notebook and sat on the piano stool. He passed right through Logan. It was a weird feeling.

“So… how is it being dead?” Remus asked.

Logan thought about what to answer for a few seconds. ‘Lonely’

“What about Dennis? Can’t he keep you company?” Remus said.

‘His name isn’t Dennis. And he wasn’t sociable.’ Logan played.

“Lol.” Remus said. Logan sighted. He hated when Remus said text slang out loud. “So… do you know how to get you back?”

Logan smiled fondly. He sighted, before playing. ‘There’s no way, Remus, I’m dead.’

Remus’s smile dropped. He stood from the stool. “Right” he muttered, getting away from the piano. “I’m going to check on Roman”

Having said that, he left.

Janus floated behind Virgil as he made his way to meet the twins. Janus liked the twins. They were funny. 

He frowned when they passed the twin’s house, walking straight towards Logan’s. 

Logan wouldn’t have been able of communicating with them, right?

If Janus hadn’t managed a single thing after fifty three years of trying, it was imposible for Logan to have communicated in just a few days.

They entered the house, and went straight into the living room. Janus ignored the twin’s explanations of what they were doing in Logan’s house and went to the living room.

Someone had filled the piano with stick notes.

He looked at Logan, who was standing there. With his hands over the piano keys.

“How the fuck did you manage that?” Janus asked. 

Logan shrugged. “I don’t know. How did I see you when you were a ghost?”

“I dunno, I didn’t do shit that time.” Janus said. “I was just waiting to see what the fuck you five had planned, and if it was worth it to watch.”

“We were planning on… well, vandalizing the park sounds a bit too crude, doesn’t it?” Logan said. “We just wanted to paint on the ground with chalk.” 

“Meh, probably worth it.” Janus said, shrugging. “Anyways, what did you do?”

“Oh, right!” Logan said, turning to the piano. “I managed to do this:”

He placed his hands on the keys again and started playing a soft melody. Janus heard Virgil and Patton curse, and yelp in surprise. 

Logan stopped. 

“How the fuck?” Janus said.

“Language” Logan reprimanded. “And I have as little idea as you.” 

“Logan?” Remus called. “You’re still there, right?”

Logan played a series of three notes. Janus noticed the papers sticked to them spelled ‘yes’. 

“I’m going to tell them about you.” Logan said. “It’s that alright?”

Janus thought it for a moment. “Yeah… It’s ok…” He could work this into his favour. He could actually make this work.

Logan started playing a series of notes. Janus got lost after the third note. He was never a fast reader.

“Yes. Janus is here as well.” Roman read out loud. “Who’s Janus? It sounds like a middle school librarian name.” 

“Another ghost?” Patton asked. “I thought ghosts weren’t real…” 

Virgil shrunk back into his hoodie, sitting on top of the couch. “If this is a sick prank, I’m murdering you two.” 

“It’s not!” Remus said. He grabbed Roman’s notebook and gave it to Virgil. “Copy the messages and watch for yourself.” He turned to the piano. “Look, Logan, can you tell us who Janus is?” 

Logan sighted and started playing again. 

After a few seconds, Virgil spoke, with a shaky voice. “The ghost that lives with Virgil. Dennis.” 

Everyone stared at Virgil for a few seconds. He looked moments away from fainting. 

“Holy fuck, I’ve been living with a ghost.” He said. Patton rubbed his arm, trying to calm him down. “For how long?”

“How long?” Logan asked. 

“Eh, I’ve been dead for fifty three years, so since always.” Janus said. 

Logan sighted. “How am I not surprised?” He said, as he started playing again.

“Fifty three years.” Virgil read. “Oh, god, he saw me as a stupid little kid.” He blushed, hiding his face with his hoodie. “God, why?”

“Tell them to get a fucking ouija. I’ve been waiting years for Virgil to get one, but the damn emo won’t do it.” Janus said.

“Virgil is too scared to do so. And so is Remus, no matter what he might say.” Logan said. “I’ll ask them for one.”

Virgil scribbled down Logan’s message. 

“He wants us to get an ouija.�� He explained. 

“But we already got the piano.” Roman said. 

Logan played again. Janus didn’t even bother trying to decipher it. 

“He says Janus can’t use the piano.” Virgil said. “God, getting used to an actual ghost being in my house is going to take a while.”

“Yeah, I think getting used to all this is just… not going to be easy.” Patton said. “I think my cousin Remy has a ouija. I can go ask him to lend it to me, and we’ll meet here tomorrow?”

“That sounds like a good idea, padre.” Roman said. “At the same hour?”

“Yeah, sure, I don’t have anything to do on Sundays anyways. Except apparently talk to a ghost. Oh, god, he heard me sing” Virgil said.

“He sings well when he isn’t trying to hard to hit the high notes.” Janus commented. “Who are you going to follow?” 

“I’ll stick to Patton.” Logan said. “I want to see Remy. He’s a cool guy.” 

“Yeah, I know, I was with Virgil when y’all met him, remember?” Janus said.

“Right. I tend to forget you actually existed.” Logan said. He turned to the piano and played a message. 

Virgil groaned as he struggled to write everything down. 

“He says he’s gonna follow Patton. And he wishes us good luck.” He said. 

“Aw, thanks Logan!” Patton said. “It’s so nice to be able of talking to you!” 

“Ok, let’s get the fuck out of here, I can’t handle this shit more.” Remus said. “My heart is going to fucking explote.”

“You ok?” Roman asked.

“Ha. No.” Remus said. “Too much adrenaline for today. I’m going to go back to bed now.”

“You’ve been out of bed less than an hour today.” Roman said. “It’s not healthy.”

“Fuck healthy, I do what I want.” 

“Gays, don’t fight.” Patton said. “Let’s just go out now, I’ll call Remy when I get home.” 

“…fine.” Roman said. 

“See ya, Lobot” Janus said, following Virgil. He floated right through the door.

“How the fuck does he float?” Logan wondered to himself, walking behind Patton.

It took Virgil a lot not to panic when he was alone on his room again.

Dennis, or should Virgil call him Janus, was real. He had been watching him.

God, that was so messed up.

Virgil groaned, throwing himself to bed. 

“If you’re still there, fuck off.” He told the ghost. “I don’t want to live with a ghost.”

There was no response. Seconds later, Virgil’s pencil case fell to the ground, scattering its contents. 

“Jerk.” Muttered Virgil, getting up to pick it up.

He couldn’t help to smirk, though. There was finally an explanation to all the weird falling things in his house.

As fucked up as it was.

Remy had a ouija board. He hadn’t used it twice, after almost dying of a heart attack when Emile decided to prank him and his friends while they were playing. Shutting down the lights was not a pleasant experience for neither of them.

Remy knew about Patton’s friends. He had met a few. 

He knew about Logan’s accident.

And that’s why he didn’t think it was a good idea giving Patton the Ouija board.

“Remy, please, just for one night” Patton pleaded. “One night. And I’ll give it back.”

“This shit doesn’t work.” Remy said. “Patton, I know you’re hurt, but this is not way to cope.”

“I know.” Patton said. “But I need it. Just one night. Promise.”

Remy looked at his cousin, who was giving him the best puppy eyes performance Remy had ever seen. 

He sighted. “You promise not to tell our parents and to be careful?” 

“Yes!” Patton said. “I do!”

Remy looked at Patton. He shook his head as he went over to his closet, were he kept the ouija board, under dozens of other board games.

He blew the dust of it.

“Here.” Remy said. “Have fun. Ghosts aren’t real, and I don’t know what you’re attempting to do, but be careful.”

“Thank you!” Patton said, pulling the ouija board close to his chest. “Thank you thank you thank you!” 

Remy was left alone, watching as Patton left his house. He was lucky his parents weren’t there. They would’ve been more strict, yet Remy had always had a soft spot for Patton. 

He shivered when he heard a thank you. Patton was nowhere close. He was home alone.

“Ghosts aren’t real.” He said to himself, bracing himself and trying to believe his words. “Ghosts aren’t real.”

Remus drew the curtains closed, not for the ambient, but because he didn’t want anyone to see what they were about to do.

It was Sunday. Their parents had left for work, leaving the twins alone at home. 

Roman had called the others, asking them to come over. Remus started making space on the living room, moving the table away and getting enough pillows for everyone to sit down.

He contemplated getting a pillow for Logan. He was a ghost, ghost wouldn’t be able of sitting, right? He got a pillow nonetheless.

He sat down and waited for the others to arrive. 

Roman entered the room, followed by the others. Patton had a cardboard box under his arm. 

“Ya got it?” Remus asked.

Patton nodded, sitting down in between the twins. “I had to disguise it so my parents didn’t notice.” He explained, taking the ouija board out and setting it on the middle of the ground.

“You’re sure about this?” Virgil said, fidgeting with the ends of his hoodie. “It always ends poorly in movies.”

“We’re not a movie.” Roman said. “And it’s Logan, Logan wouldn’t hurt us.”

“Janus could try…” Virgil said. “I mean, he’s been living with me and hasn’t tried anything, but still…”

Patton placed the wooden triangle on top of the board. “How does one use a ouija board?”

“Oh, it’s easy” Remus said. “We ask questions, put one hand each on the triangular thingie and wait for an answer.” 

“Oh, ok, Logan?” Patton said, looking at the empty pillow in front of him. “Are you there?”

“You forgot about the hands on tri–” Roman started saying, only to be left speechless when the triangle moved on it’s own. 

It slid through the board, towards the ‘yes’.

Everyone stared at it for a few seconds. 

“Ok, is Janus here as well?” Virgil asked, biting his lip.

The triangule raised on the air and fell to the ‘yes’ once more.

“Do any of you two want to hurt us?” Remus asked. “Whether it’s killing us, torturing us physically or psychologically, mutilating us, sewing our li–”

“Remus, please don’t give them any ideas.” Roman said, interrupting him.

The triangle moved to the ‘no’. Then it continued moving.

Roman struggled to scribble down the message. 

“I’m not letting you get hurt.” He read aloud. 

“Aw, thanks,”–Patton said, bouncing on his pillow–“but if Janus turns out to be an evil poltergeist, you won’t stand a chance.”

The triangle moved again. “Rude.” Roman read. 

Remus laughed. Virgil hid a laughter as a cough. Patton pouted.

“I’m not rude!” He said, childishly crossing his arms. 

The triangle moved to the ‘yes’ space. Patton pouted even more, before breaking into laughter.

“I wanna say something too.” Janus said, trying to grab the wooden triangle. Logan pushed him away.

“Wait for your turn.” He said, answering another dumb question from his friends.

Janus tried to grab the triangle again. “You’ve been at it for long enough, my turn.”

He grabbed the wood piece, snatching it from Logan’s hands.

“Hey!” Logan exclaimed, trying to get it back. 

Janus held it away. “It’s my turn, fuck off!”

“They’re my friends, fuck off!” Logan said, grabbing the triangle and pulling. Janus didn’t let go of it.

“I’ve been dead longer, fuck off!” Janus said, trying desperately not to let go of the triangle.

“Well I’m dead because of you!” Logan yelled, pushing Janus away.

Janus fell through Roman, who couldn’t help a shiver. He turned in the air as if failing with no gravity. 

Logan dropped the triangle, his hands flying to his mouth.

Janus straightened himself, standing up as if he was alive.

“Janus, I’m so sorry.” Logan said. “I didn’t–”

“I’ll be going now.” Janus said, bitterness dripping into his voice. “Have fun with your friends.”

“Logan?” Remus called, gaining his attention. “Is everything alright?”

Logan sighted, grabbing the triangle. He kneeled next to the board and placed it on the ‘yes’. 

‘Janus wanted control over the board. We argued. He left.’

He waited as Roman read aloud the sentence. 

“I have an idea.” Virgil said. “It might be stupid.” 

‘Go ahead’

Roman read it aloud once more. Virgil nodded, shifting on his pillow. He reached out and grabbed the triangle. He raised it to his face, peering over the hole.

Logan scoffed. “Like that’s gonna work…” He muttered to himself.

Virgil drew in a shaky breath, his hands shaking. “It does, though.” He said.

[raywritesthings]

Bird in a Storm 11/17

My Writing Fandom: Arrow Characters: Laurel Lance, Oliver Queen, Tommy Merlyn, Quentin Lance, Ted Grant, Captain Stein, Athena Pairing: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen Summary: The confrontation between the Hood and SWAT on the roof of the Winick Building goes differently, altering the course of Laurel’s career, relationships and efforts to save her city forever, the shockwaves of such an altered path making themselves felt throughout her family and friends. *Can be read on my AO3, link is in bio*

No matter what he seemed to do at night to counteract the problems plaguing Starling City, Oliver always seemed to end up with a whole host more of them the next day. The unexpected call he had received last night from Detective Lance was only the latest proof of that.

The man had a point. What was Oliver’s plan once he had deciphered the true purpose of the Undertaking and put a stop to it? He didn’t want to be doing this forever, not while it kept him away from the people he loved most or hurt them the ways it had done to Laurel or Tommy.

But Laurel and her father were both right that there was more than just the Undertaking troubling this city. Right now, the police couldn’t handle it, maybe because they were corrupted like Lance said. Maybe that was where he needed to direct his focus next.

Or perhaps it would better serve his time to go after this Woman that Lance had mentioned and Raisa had described. Contrary to what the police or the public might think, he did not wish for the city to be overrun with vigilantes like him. He did want the traditional institutions to be able to do their jobs on their own, and well, someday. Stopping others from following in his footsteps was therefore necessary.

But at this moment, the Woman did not pose the same sort of threat that the Savior had to law and order. She had no known body count, made very little noise and these murmured rumors were the first he was hearing of her. And in some ways, she only represented a symptom of the problem Lance was asking for help with regarding the corruption in law enforcement.

It wouldn’t be easy to back trace every single cop in this city. He would need to ask Felicity very nicely for help, assuming that she would be willing since this had little to nothing to do with finding Walter. Though perhaps he should use that as an angle; Walter had been captured and held this long, in part, because law enforcement wasn’t able to do their jobs. He’d run it by John first to see if he thought it might work.

The irony of Lance asking for his help wasn’t lost on him, especially when the detective showed up at the Verdant the next night to accuse his club of giving Vertigo to people. A young woman had been found dead after leaving it last night, and Lance thought, as usual, that he was onto something.

“Her last text was to your good pal Merlyn.”

“Tommy left the club earlier in the month to take over running his father’s company,” Oliver countered with a frown. “Even if he was still the manager, I can’t believe he would have given her anything. We both agreed to a strict no narcotics policy.”

“Then I guess I’ll go see how he still feels about that,” Lance said, marching back out the doors. 

Oliver let out a breath. He was sure Lance would be back once he’d finished questioning Tommy and probably want a look around the place as well. He could tell the detective to go get a warrant, but he didn’t doubt Lance would do just that. So how did he let him look around without him discovering anything?

First thing first, however, Oliver needed to send Tommy a little heads up notice that Lance was on his way. He winced when looking back through his recent contacts and realizing just how long it had been since he’d spoken to his friend.

Tommy picked up after the third ring. “Hello?”

“Tommy, it’s me. Listen, I wanted to let you know that Detective Lance might be over your way soon.”

“What about?”

“They found a young woman dead from Vertigo after she visited the club last night. Did you get a text from her?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve been blocking unfamiliar numbers. I’m thinking of changing my own,” Tommy said. His voice turned sardonic as he added, “I guess Lance thinks that’s a good enough reason to give us the third degree?”

“He’s doing his job,” Oliver replied. Even if Lance was wrong, it wasn’t like he could stop pursuing a possible lead based on Oliver’s word.

“He’s pushing his agenda is what he’s doing, against the both of us, and I’m sick of letting him get away with it. It doesn’t matter that he’s Laurel’s father — especially now.”

“I don’t think she meant to hurt you,” he couldn’t help saying, guilt churning in his gut. If he’d never come back, never involved Laurel in the Hood’s mission, would his friends be happy now?

“Yeah, well she didn’t mean to be with me, either. Look, I don’t really have the time to talk about this. I’m going to have to make a few calls before the boys in blue come sniffing around. I’ll take care of this, Ollie — but I’d get in touch with Jean just in case.”

Oliver hadn’t even been thinking of his family’s lawyer. If anything, he’d thought to call Laurel for her advice, but it was clear he shouldn’t mention that to Tommy. “Okay. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

Oliver tried not to worry about Lance the next day, focused as he and Diggle needed to be on tracing this new supply of Vertigo. Therefore he was surprised and a little nervous to receive a call from none other than Captain Stein, the de facto leader of the SCPD since Nudocerdo’s ouster over the holidays.

“Mr. Queen, I’ll do my best to keep this brief,” the other man said. “I’ve received a complaint from Mr. Thomas Merlyn that one of my detectives has been harassing the pair of you.”

Oliver’s eyebrows raised. What was Tommy doing? “Harassing is a strong word, Captain. I understand that Detective Lance has a job to do.”

“Detective Lance always thinks he has a job to do, and frankly I happen to agree that he’s got blinders when it comes to certain issues.” Stein didn’t seem to mind making it perfectly clear just what his feelings on the man were. “Now, I value what you and Mr. Merlyn have done with the Verdant to gentrify the Glades neighborhood, and if there’s anything jeopardizing that, you just have to say the word.”

“I…” Oliver found himself unsure of what to say. It was clear what Stein was implying: disciplinary action, perhaps even termination, of the man who was leading the task force against the Hood. For one selfish moment, he could picture just how much easier it might make his mission.

But Lance was right. The SCPD was suffering from corruption, and if that was ever going to change so that the city didn’t need the Hood, he needed people like Lance to stay on the force. Not chased off because he was making those upstairs uncomfortable.

And if he lost his job because of Oliver? Not only would his own guilt eat at him, but he couldn’t imagine what Laurel would say. How betrayed she would feel after everything she’d willingly given up for his cause. After everything he had done wrong by the Lance family, how could he even entertain the idea?

“Thank you, Captain,” he finally managed. “But I’m sure that’s not necessary. I’m confident the SCPD will be able to track down the real distributor of this terrible drug that’s caused so much suffering to so many.”

“I’m hopeful they will now that this case has been transferred to narcotics. I’m also barring Detective Lance from any police matters involving you or Mr. Merlyn from now on.”

“I see,” was all Oliver could come up with. “Thank you, Captain Stein.”

“Just making sure we’re taking care of our citizens, Mr. Queen. If you’ll excuse me, I need to be getting to other matters.”

“Of course.” Oliver hung up, his mouth twisting into a frown as he digested this latest development. Just as Lance had reached out to the Hood for help in fighting corruption in law enforcement, his own influence and latitude to act was curtailed. It seemed a coincidence, but it also seemed to him a bad omen.

He didn’t know much about Captain Stein, though his overly-eager tone on the phone made him suspicious. He would need to start with looking in to him, and the best place to start would be with the person Oliver knew had talked to him last: Tommy.

He found his friend still in the CEO’s office at Merlyn Global. It was strange being here in light of what had happened the last time.

“Just got a call from Captain Stein,” he said in greeting. Tommy looked up and nodded once, hardly seeming surprised. Instead, his friend walked over to a small mini bar tucked in one corner of the office and got out two glasses and a bottle. “What exactly did you say to him to get him to go after Lance like that?”

“The truth. He’s had it out for us ever since you tangled with his daughters, but we’re not a couple of bad boys anymore, Ollie. We have businesses, employees who count on us. We can’t let him throw his weight around.”

“So we throw our own? What’s Stein getting out of all this?”

“Nothing.” Tommy narrowed his eyes. “You think I bribed him?”

“No,” Oliver said immediately. It sounded weak even to his own ears.

Tommy scoffed and shook his head as he finished pouring. “I didn’t need to bribe him. The special election to replace Nudocerdo is coming up in late spring.”

“So you offered your support,” he guessed.

“Hey, the guy’s clean from everything I know. Why shouldn’t he be commissioner?” Tommy crossed the room with both glasses in hand, holding one out that Oliver took out of social nicety more than wanting it. “And if he feels inclined to keep annoyances like Lance off our backs, what’s the harm?”

“The harm is if it doesn’t stop with voluntarily warding off ‘annoyances’,” Oliver answered. “The problem is that once the favors start rolling in, guys like Stein might find it hard to stay clean.”

Tommy sipped at his drink. “I didn’t hear you complaining when your mom and Walter had Nudocerdo over for their dinners.”

“That wasn’t really my choice.” Oliver set his drink aside, looking his friend squarely in the eye. “Come on, Tommy. I thought we weren’t trying to be our parents. I mean, you always said you never wanted to be your dad.”

“Well, I was wrong. My dad might have had trouble being there for me after mom died, but he understood how the world worked. I should have made better use of the time we had.”

The use of past tense alarmed him. “He���s not—”

“His condition’s the same. But even if they revive him, can he really be the same?” Tommy knocked the rest of his drink back, though Oliver doubted it was the sting of alcohol causing his eyes to brighten with a wet sheen. “He’s all I really have.”

“That’s not true.” Oliver stepped forward, but the hand he’d intended to lay on Tommy’s shoulder was brushed off.

“You’re not the same, Oliver. We both know it. And dating Laurel… it was a mistake. I thought I’d be happy without you as a friend if I had her, but I never did, did I?” His gaze seemed to rest heavier on Oliver for just a moment. “And now I have neither.”

His friend turned and walked towards the large windows, the same windows Deadshot had fired through to strike Tommy’s father and leave him fighting for his life in Starling General.

“You can decide how to deal with Lance in the future if you really want. I just thought I could help my friend.”

“Tommy…” How did he explain that he appreciated it, but that it just wasn’t the right way?

Breakup or no, it troubled him that Tommy would do something like this. He had very nearly ended Detective Lance’s career with a single phone call. Yet he couldn’t explain why it was so vital that Lance remain on the force without revealing his interest in helping the city and possibly tying himself to the Hood. Something he could never let Tommy know.

So Oliver swallowed down the words and left, hating himself for it. No matter what he did, he just ended up with more problems at the end of the day.

He didn’t know how much damage had been caused to Lance’s position in the precinct. He didn’t know how to fix things with Tommy, or how to make things okay for them to be friends again the way they’d once been. He didn’t know how to restore the balance between the two of them and Laurel. Maybe there had never been a balance; maybe he’d only been fooling himself trying to keep them all happy.

He wanted so badly to see her whether it was against the cover or not, but as he exited the lobby of Merlyn Global his phone buzzed. Diggle had the answers they’d been looking for about the location of the Vertigo. After heading to the psychiatric facility and being force-fed an overdose only his own injected antidote saved him from, Oliver decided that the cover could go to hell.

The only problem was, when he reached Laurel’s apartment and slipped in through the back door, no one was home. In the middle of the night.

The exhaustion from the fight with Dr. Webb and his orderly assistant left him instantly upon realizing this. Where was she? What could have happened?

---

Laurel frowned as she drew up to the front doors of the Wildcat Gym that afternoon only to find a sign taped to the front that read Closed Till Next Week. When she tried the handle, it was unlocked, so she let herself in.

“Ted?”

She spotted him gathering some kind of supplies in a couple duffle bags. He glanced up at her once in acknowledgement “I’m pretty sure you can read.”

“Is everything okay? You kind of look like you’re packing there,” she remarked, walking further into the space.

“It’s not for me.”

“Then what?”

“Some girl OD’d last night while she was out partying.” Ted shrugged. “When a white girl dies, people wanna look like they’re doing something. And then it’s the less fortunate who suffer.”

Of course. The more she learned about the ways their systems kept cutting the residents here down, the more ridiculous her ideals about justice in the courtrooms seemed. “Because she was out in the Glades, they’re going to crack down on the people who live here,” Laurel summarized. When her teacher nodded, she asked, “How can I help?”

He straightened up and looked her over as if assessing her for a moment. “We’re going into the crackhouses, getting the people out before the cops can round them up. I’ll be keeping some of them here, some friends that run a shelter are gonna take more. By the end of the week, everything should be calmed down.”

Laurel nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

Ted drove them around to different rundown tenements in the neighborhood. She’d seen one or two like this on her visits to clients in the past, though never set foot inside. That was changing today.

The smell was what hit most strongly. Sweat, piss, bile. The very air seemed stale, trapped as it was behind windows covered in dust and grime.

There were a few people slumped around on couches with broken springs or up against walls. Most of them were young, she was dismayed to see. Laurel supposed this wasn’t the kind of life that allowed a person to grow old.

“Come on,” Ted said gently, gripping the shoulder of a boy around Thea’s age. His dreads were practically plastered to one side of his face where he leaned on his friend. Or maybe they were strangers. “You’ve gotta get up. Cops are coming.”

“Man…” the kid groaned and blindly reached out. Ted helped him to stand.

“You have anyone to take you in?”

“Nah.”

“Alright, come on.”

Laurel watched Ted help him outside, then approached one of the girls on the couch. “Hey.”

“Mmph.”

“I know moving is probably the last thing you want to do right now, but I promise it’s better than jail. Do you need somewhere to stay?”

That got a head turning in her direction and eyes blinking at her blearily. “I stay here.”

“Not anymore. Come on.”

Calling on the approach she’d sometimes used with her father, Laurel lifted the young woman’s arm around her shoulder and helped her to shakily stand. The girl was barely supporting any of her own weight as she marched her out to the van.

Some of them were barely conscious. Some of them couldn’t move until they had water or food from the bags Ted had brought. Some of them were missing shoes or couldn’t remember where they’d left their own belongings.

It was slow work, especially since they could only take so many people at a time. They briefly crossed paths with Ted’s friends who ran the shelter in one of the other houses. They passed off some more supplies, food and blankets and the like.

It was dark by the time they called it quits, and Laurel stood with Ted looking at the people lying or sitting around on the gym floor. They looked just as lost here as where they’d brought them from.

“Do you think we got everyone?”

Ted shrugged. “No way to know. But probably not.”

“Where will they go after the gym reopens?”

“Right back where we found them.” He sighed when she turned to him with crossed arms. “Not like that. I couldn’t keep them here if I tried. Those houses are where they’ve found their escape, and they’re the only ones who can choose to stay away for themselves.” Ted took a number of cards for Narcotics Anonymous out of his pocket. “I make them take one when they leave. Sometimes it works. Sometimes only for a little. But what can you do?”

“It’s hard when people have lost hope,” Laurel agreed softly. 

Only several weeks ago, Thea had been refusing to listen to any of her brother’s pleas or demands to stop using. Only once it had nearly cost her her life had she gotten herself off the drugs. And not everyone found it so easy to go cold turkey like that. She’d have to let Thea know how strong she was, even if she had certain advantages and privileges these people certainly didn’t.

“Thanks for helping out,” Ted remarked. 

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“Does it feel better than dressing up and beating on people in the middle of the night?”

Laurel froze and stared at him. “How—”

“Let’s just say you remind me of someone.” Her teacher looked her square in the eyes. “I know what you’re thinking because I’ve had those thoughts, too. That someone ought to do something about all the crap going on in this world. That that someone might as well be me.”

“You’ve… you were a vigilante?” She wondered how she had never heard — but then, she was mostly flying under the radar so far herself, wasn’t she? Not all of them could afford the high-budget theatrics of the Hood.

“They called me Wildcat. But I was a thug,” Ted said. “Beating up on other thugs. It didn’t change anything in this town. Things just kept getting worse. That’s why I’m asking you to hang this up now, before you really get going, Laurel. It’s only going to end with you getting hurt.”

She shook her head. “You didn’t fail because of what you were doing, Ted. And you weren’t fighting a losing battle. You just didn’t know who you were fighting.”

Laurel walked around to keep him facing her when he turned away. “I’ve spoken to the Hood. He has evidence that a group of the wealthiest people in this city and their associates conspired to make the Glades worse off than ever over the last five years. He doesn’t know why yet. But that’s why things have become so bad. It’s not some statement on the people living here or some failure on your part. It was planned.”

She could see that this hit him somewhere inside. For a moment, his eyes widened, a dozen different emotions passing across his face. But at last, he settled on resignation. “All that means is I was never going to make a difference at all.”

“But we can now,” she insisted. “With the Hood taking on people at the top, it’s up to us to change things on the ground.”

“Maybe. But I’m doing what I can here, Laurel.” A frown creased his brow as he admitted, “I’m not in the shape I was, and I have things to lose. Maybe not a family, but this place.”

Ted walked to the nearest heavyweight bag and took it down off the hook. “You keep practicing, keep fighting. But it can’t be here. I’m sorry, but if they trace you back here and shut me down, that’s a lot of people back out on the street with nowhere to let out their hurt and their anger.”

Laurel nodded in hopes of disguising the lump that rose in her throat, especially as she didn’t trust her voice at the moment. She knew intellectually she hadn’t known Ted or the gym all that long, but it felt like yet another door being shut in her face. Another person walking out. Even if he explained, even if he had a good reason.

“Okay.”

“You take care of yourself, alright? And if you need me, I’ll do my best to be there,” he told her. “I hope you do make a difference. I hope you’re right. But I’ve found where I need to be.”

“Good.” She hauled the bag up from the ground by its straps. “Cause I’ve found the same thing. And I’ll be there, too.” Laurel turned and left the gym, her heart hurting more than the strain on her shoulders.

The more time went on, the more people she seemed to lose. Sara, her mother, her father, Tommy, Oliver more than once and now Ted. Was this just the way things ended for people on this kind of path, or was this just her?

She dropped the bag on her front stoop in order to get out her keys. Laurel froze as she placed the key in the lock. Was that the creaking of floorboards inside?

Drawing in a breath, she turned the knob and threw the door open, launching forward with her key pointing straight out of her clenched fist. An arm in dark leather took the brunt of it, and someone else’s hand grabbed towards her. She dropped and kicked one leg out, catching him in the shin.

There was a grunt, though he didn’t fall, and then he called out, “Laurel, stop!”

“Ollie?”

Laurel scrambled back up and their fingers tangled as they both reached for the light switch. Oliver’s face looked pale and drawn, though he still smiled weakly at her.

“Guess I should call ahead.”

“Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you, did I?” She reached for his arm. The leather of his jacket now bore a scratch, but it had protected him.

“Believe me, I’ve had much worse. That was a hard kick, though. Where’d you learn that one?”

“Uh… my neighbor.” It was strange; she hadn’t thought about what to tell Oliver or when in more than the abstract. Their limited ability to see each other meant that she hadn’t necessarily felt obligated to disclose her nighttime activities. But now that he was here, what should she say?

As she looked at him, how worn and tired he seemed, would he even want to know?

“What was that thud I heard outside?”

“What? Oh, my punching bag.” Laurel stepped backwards out into the night to grab the straps again, but felt Oliver’s warmth and presence behind her as he reached around her to take hold. She could admit with some chagrin that he had an easier time carrying it inside. “My trainer is using his gym for something else for a week or so, so he lent it to me.”

“Is that why you were out so late?”

“Yes and no.” She could at least open up a little, right? “I was helping him get some people help. With the latest Vertigo scare, the police are going to be renewing the war on drugs, and that means a lot of people would suffer.”

Oliver opened his mouth for a moment, stopped, then said, “They’d only find the victims and not the ones dealing.”

She nodded. “Ted was the one who pointed it out to me. He’s a good guy.” She was really going to miss him, even if he was doing what he felt he needed to protect the gym.

“Well, the scrutiny over Vertigo should end soon. I took care of the new distributor tonight.” The way he said it, the slump of his shoulders, she thought she knew what must have happened to the distributor.

“Thank you.” Laurel crossed to the couch, gesturing to the open space on the other end. Oliver sat, and though he looked better for no longer having to hold himself up, he still wore a troubled frown. “What really brought you over this way?”

“I don’t know.” He sat forward, staring at his hands in his lap. “It feels like lately I can’t find the answers to the problems I’m facing. Or this city’s facing. I’m no closer to figuring out what my father was trying to stop except that his list has a map of the old subway tunnel system on it, which has nothing to do with the names. I don’t know what happens once the mission is complete. And Tommy… he’s lost, and I don’t know how to help him.”

Laurel bit her lip and looked down. “Is he still hurting over his father?” She hoped it wasn’t still the breakup.

“It’s more than that. Some of the things he’s saying, how he’s been acting since he took over Merlyn Global. And I think he knows I’m hiding things from him.” Oliver’s eyes searched hers. “I can’t be the friend he needs when I’m keeping all of this from him.”

She looked down. Just how good of a friend was she being to Oliver when she was keeping things from him?

“I wish we could all just go back sometimes,” he said wistfully.

“So do I. But we can’t go back, Ollie.” She looked up then. “We can’t change the past. We just move forward and hope that we’re acting for the best now.” Laurel leaned across the space towards him, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Whatever comes of your friendship with Tommy, I think most of the people of this city would agree that you have been doing your best by them. I know that doesn’t make it any easier to let go.”

“No, but it helped me realize what I can and can’t let go of,” he said. Oliver turned his head toward her. “I need you in my life, Laurel. Whatever story we have to make up, whatever excuse. Friends have differences of opinion all the time, and whatever else people have to believe of me as Oliver Queen, I want them to know that I am someone that sticks by my friends. No matter what. I miss you. Please.”

She had never been good at resisting those begging eyes. Laurel leaned across the couch space, her arms circling around him. He held her, his face turned into her neck, breath washing over her skin without her hair to act as a curtain between them. She wished they could simply stay like this forever, but they couldn’t cause time to stop any more than they could turn it back. And there was something he needed to know.

“Ollie—”

A sharp rapping on her front door caused them both to tense up and pull back. It repeated, and Laurel stood. Oliver grabbed for her hand but she pulled free, going to the door and checking through the peephole.

“Dad,” she said aloud out of surprise. She thought she heard Oliver scramble to stand up as she pulled open the door. “Dad?”

“Hey, uh. I wasn’t gonna stop if it looked like you were sleeping, but I saw your light on. I guess I just needed someone to talk to, cause of—” He froze upon spotting Oliver, who Laurel noticed looked stricken as he watched them. “What the hell is he doing here?”

“We were just talking,” she began.

“Detective, I’m so sorry,” Oliver spoke at the same time, throwing her completely. “I never meant to cause you trouble at work.”

“Never meant to, huh? So you gave your buddy Merlyn a call so he’d, what, cooperate with the law?”

“I didn’t know that he’d go to Stein, I only—”

“Okay, hang on, both of you,” Laurel said, holding her hands up like stop signs. “Before you keep arguing in my home, I need to know just what is going on.”

“There was a girl who died of an overdose after visiting his club,” her dad said, throwing a glare in Oliver’s direction. “Had a text on her phone to Merlyn asking for a fix. I was following the lead.”

“I called Tommy to tell him the situation,” Oliver admitted. “He’s been out of the club management for weeks. I just didn’t want him caught off guard. I didn’t ask him to call your boss, I swear.”

Laurel believed him, but she had her father to worry about. “Daddy, what did Stein say? Did he suspend you, did he—?”

“I still have my job,” he clarified, then scowled in Oliver’s direction. “No thanks to him.”

“Detective, if there’s anything I can do—”

“Yeah, there is something. You stay the hell away from my daughter. You and Merlyn.”

“Dad!”

Oliver bowed his head. “I understand that you’re angry with me, Detective Lance, but Laurel is my friend.”

“Really? You have a funny way of showing it!”

“That’s enough,” Laurel snapped. “Oliver was not intending to hurt you, and whatever strings Tommy pulled with Stein doesn’t change that Oliver is my friend. I know you’re upset, but you cannot keep blaming him for every single thing that goes wrong in your life.”

Her father was breathing harshly through his nose but remained silent.

“I should let you two talk,” Oliver said quietly. He made his way to the door, skirting around her father. “I’ll see you…?”

Laurel nodded. “Yeah.” Even if she didn’t know when. Between her work — both the kind she was paid for and the kind she wasn’t — and needing to pull her father out of this latest funk, it wasn’t going to be easy.

He glowered at Oliver until the door was closed behind him. Then, predictably, he rounded on her. “What are you doing, letting him back in your life? Where exactly was he when you lost everything this winter?”

“He offered to help me find work, actually,” Laurel revealed, perhaps rashly, but she was getting tired of remembering which conversations were a public or private matter. “But after the Hood visited Mrs. Queen to question her, I told him he shouldn’t have to choose between him and his family. I was keeping my distance from him, not the other way around.”

Her father opened his mouth, closed it, then frowned as she watched the wind deflate from his metaphorical sails. “I still think it was a bad idea for you to get mixed up with these billionaires.”

“I will agree that it got complicated,” she replied. Especially with Tommy. That really hadn’t been one of her better decisions. But then, she wasn’t the only Lance who had made bad decisions in the wake of the Queen’s Gambit sinking.

Was her past decision part of why her father was having such trouble at work? Was Tommy taking his anger out on her father? Maybe she should confront him — or would that only make everything worse? It was hard to know. She felt like she’d taken Tommy’s snark and devil may care approach to life for granted, not realizing the deep anger and hurt that lurked underneath. Could she have done more to be there for him? Would he have even let her?

“What’s this?” Her father was prodding the heavy bag with his toe.

“Gift from Ted. Uh, he’s a trainer at the local gym. I started going,” she told him. It was hard to remember what he did and didn’t know thanks to the time they had spent not talking. “I know you worry about me taking care of myself out here.”

“I do, yeah.” He glanced around. “How are you gonna hang it?”

“I’ll probably ask Jerome for some help. He’s next door with Anita.”

“You’ve really made a home for yourself out of this place, huh?” Her dad shook his head. “I didn’t used to believe you, but… I think you were right.”

It was rare enough that he said so that she sorely wished she knew what he thought she was right about. Laurel crossed her arms and raised both brows. “Oh?”

“What I was trying to make you do. Stay safe, keep your head down, all that. It wasn’t living.” He took a step towards her. “I was too hands off with Sara, so I doubled down on you and it wasn’t fair. You needed to find your own way.”

Laurel bit her lip. It was the last thing she’d been expecting to hear, and she had no idea what to say to it.

He waved a hand, like he knew exactly what she was thinking. “I just needed to tell you that. Now I think we both could do with some sleep.” He saw himself to the door, but paused as he opened it. “Look, about Queen.”

Laurel watched her father as he stared at the ground, obviously warring with himself.

“You do whatever you think is best. I trust you to know what that is. Just want you safe and happy, okay?”

“Okay,” Laurel agreed quietly. “Goodnight, daddy.”

“Goodnight sweetheart.”

Laurel slowly sank back down onto her couch when she heard the door of his cruiser shut outside and the motor start. She hoped he really was going home and not back to work, especially if he was on thin ice with his superiors at the moment. That didn’t lend well to his temper.

Laurel placed her face in her hands. What she thought was best. There were just so many moving parts in her life, it was hard to know what that was anymore. Was she really doing right by the people in her life and in her city?

She thought of a gym full of people sleeping and safe from being thrown in prison. She thought of the things she had achieved so far out in the streets.

Maybe she couldn’t know for sure, but she was the daughter of a cop, and her gut was saying that in at least one regard she was right on the money.

---

Tommy didn’t used to like drinking alone. In a way, it felt like admitting that he was alone. But it really was time to stop pretending.

He left Oliver’s untouched drink on the table for the janitors to clean up and locked up for the night. It made him uncomfortable staying here too late; too easy to recall the night his father had been shot and poisoned. So he made the long drive home, out of the city and into the peace and quiet of the surrounding countryside with its rolling hills and family homes.

He’d regrettably had to cancel the lease on his new bachelor pad so that someone was living in the Manor to give the staff reason to be paid. Being here made him feel closer not just to his father, but also his mother. If he closed his eyes and thought hard, he thought he could still picture the better times. The times they were a family, before the violence in this city had taken his parents away from him.

His footsteps carried him towards his father’s study. He hadn’t entered it since before the attack that had left him comatose, but Tommy did so now.

Papers sat on his father’s desk, correspondence and notes forever paused with no way of knowing when they would be picked up again. Tommy circled around the desk, standing where his father might have stood. His hands rested palms flat on the wood as he drew in a breath and closed his eyes.

He missed his dad. But Oliver’s question did make him wonder, was this truly what he wanted to be?

There was so much he felt he didn’t know. How had his father been able to fight those men that had attacked them? And what was behind that sliding wall his father had started to open in the panic room that night? A part of him was afraid to find out.

The other part of him, that part that truly did sound like his father, told him to stop being such a coward about it. Without his father’s unexpected skills, they would have both died that night, rather than him living and his father being in hospice. Strength was something good, something people respected. If Tommy had been strong, maybe Laurel wouldn’t have left him for the Hood.

His hands curled into fists against the cool surface of the wood. The Hood was an example of strength gone too far, strength that took what it wanted and bullied everyone else into submission. He was a product of the very neighborhood he seemed to slink out of every night to conduct his one-man crusade against the wealthy and successful in this city. And he needed to be stopped before more families were ripped apart.

“I’m beginning to see the resemblance.”

Tommy straightened up and turned towards the door. An unfamiliar woman stood there. She was beautiful in an exotic way, and not just because of the scar on her face.

“Who let you in here?” He would need to know which member of the staff to have words with.

“No one. You are the only one who knows I’m here.” She stepped forward, and Tommy took in the strange clothes she wore and the quiver of black arrows strapped to her back.

“If you’re some new girlfriend of the Hood’s—”

“I have no association with him. I belong to a much older order. A higher calling than this Hood aspires to in a vain attempt to salvage the ruin your city has become.” She reached a hand out, fingertips brushing a photo of his mother that sat on the desk. “A calling your father dedicated himself to in service of the one you both lost.”

He removes the photograph from her reach. “What do you know about my father?”

“Everything.” Her gaze was hypnotic in some ways. He didn’t doubt she was dangerous, lethal even. But did she really hold the answers to all the questions he had? “And I can heal him. With your help.”

After so many weeks of despairing, this stranger offered him hope. “What’s your name?”

She smiled, though like his father’s own smile, it held little warmth. “Athena.”

[dylanrauhl]

Anchor (Peter Parker x Reader)

(WEREWOLF!AU)

Summary ↦  You left three years ago to keep Peter safe but an unexpected death has caused you to come back.

Warnings ↦ Angst, mentions of death, the over used best friends fall in love trope

A/N ↦ This is for @sincerelyfan Halloween writing challenge! I know it seems a little choppy but the word limit had me for a spin, lol. Please don’t be too mean, I haven’t written much yet.

.o0O0o.

“I can’t stay Peter.” You choked out. Bags were packed and slung over your shoulder, your room bare. Everything that you couldn’t carry was either thrown or given away. Being emancipated made it simple to leave, no guardian to tell you no. 

“Giz..” He trailed off. The nickname he had for you already sounding foreign in his mouth. The expression on his face was one you knew well, eyes wild, face scrunched, trying to come up with anything to fix the situation at hand. How to get you to stay. His shoulders slumped, defeated. “Please.” 

You walked passed him afraid that if you looked at him you wouldn’t leave. The doorknob was cold in your hand as you turned it slowly, pausing to say one last thing. “I love you.” The words were low, barely audible, but you knew he could hear them. 

.o0O0o.

Every drop of condensation that ran down your glass kept your attention as you sat at the bar. There wasn’t much to do besides drink in Utah which is why you found yourself here at least five days a week. You heard someone sit down beside you but chose to ignore them.

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing at a bar all by herself?” You sighed, looking up to find the man behind the gruff voice. He was attractive, trimmed facial hair, bright smile, dark hair, but he wasn’t him.

In all three years you have lived here you haven’t uttered more than five words total to anyone besides the bartender. You didn’t care to make friends or memories, you were living in your own personal hell and you would rather do it alone. You turned back to your glass without saying a word.

“Oh c’mon. A pretty little thing like you shouldn’t be all alone at the bar. There are creepy people out there.” He laid his hand on your bare thigh. Oh the irony.

“Don’t touch me.” You seethed, pushing his hand away but keeping your gaze forward. “And please leave me alone.”

“Ooh feisty, I like feisty.” His hand was back and your patience was running thin.

“I said leave.” A growl rumbled low in your chest as you glanced his way with glowing blue eyes. 

His heartbeat quickened as he stumbled back off the stool, unable to keep the fear off his face. You chuckled, rolling your eyes and taking another sip of your martini. Most people in town knew not to approach you. That was easily distinguished within the first month of moving here. You knew the looks they gave you as you walked down the street, but you can't bring yourself to care. 

You calmed yourself by looking around the bar at the Halloween decorations, the stuffed gremlin catching your eye.

.o0O0o.

“Wow, I love that movie.” An eleven year old Peter sat on the couch, stealing the bowl of popcorn from your lap. You had just got done watching his favorite childhood movie, The Gremlins.

“Hey! That’s mine!” You reached across the couch slapping his arm before trying to grab the bowl but he lifted it away from you.

“Calm down you little gremlin. I just wanted a couple pieces.” Your eyes narrowed at him at the name and he laughed. “Actually, you and Gizmo have a lot in common, maybe I’ll start calling you that.” He cheesed at you, letting you grasp the bowl from his hand.

.o0O0o.

The phone vibrated in your pocket pulling you back from the memory and causing your eyebrows to furrow in confusion. No one has called you in years and then it was only a telemarketer. You don't know why you kept the damn thing, the first year was filled with dodging his constant calls but even those drifted off into silence.  

You took the device out of your pocket, and checked the caller ID, breath catching in your throat. With shaking hands your thumb slid across the screen, bringing the phone up to your ear. 

“Ned?” You whispered, not intending for your voice to sound so weak. 

“May’s dead.” His voice had no emotion to it, saying the words like he was telling the weather. You squeezed the phone, breaths coming out quicker as you felt your eyes flicker between colors. Squeezing your eyes shut and taking a second to breath in gradually you got yourself under control like you had taught yourself how to do before the phone ended up broken. Ned spoke again before you had the chance to. “You probably don’t care but I thought I’d try anyway. He’s not doing well, you know? Was never able to fully get over the last dropped bomb before another one hit.” 

You knew he was talking about when you left. He was very vocal in the first couple months after your disappearance, leaving angry voicemails about how you were a piece of shit for leaving. You saw the news, saw what Spider-Man was doing, how broken he was because of you and Ned’s reminders of that just pushed the knife deeper. 

“Funeral is the day after tomorrow.” He hung up.

.o0O0o.

“I can’t believe we graduate tomorrow, Giz. We’re adults now.” Peter smiled down at you as your legs were dangling off the rooftop. He had dragged you out of bed to join him on his nightly watch of the city, claiming this was the last night you guys could take chances and blame it on being young. He had his suit on with his mask laying on the roof somewhere behind you.

“I don’t know about adults, don’t get ahead of yourself there Spidey.” You laughed, taking in the calmness of it all. You both had made it. Years of watching him fight against the bad guys, finals, the blip; you were finally graduating tomorrow. 

“I can’t wait for college. Have I told you how excited and proud I am that my best friend is going to NYU?” He smiled down at you, beautiful brown eyes glistening with the street lights. 

“You’re going to Columbia, Pete, that’s a little bit more impressive than NYU. I should be the one telling you how proud I am.” You countered, leaning into his side as his arm came around your shoulders.

“Don’t downplay your accomplishments Gizmo.” His thumb was rubbing your shoulder, never allowing you to think anything but highly of yourself. “We’re only going to be thirty minutes away from each other. I’m going to come visit you so much you’re going to get sick of me.” He teased.

“Impossible.” You said, no joke in your tone, you couldn’t imagine a life without him in it. “You’ll probably get sick of me.”

His breath faltered, moving over slightly to fully look at you, the comfort of his arm leaving. You worried he caught the undertone of your statement, the feelings for him you were happy to leave buried under years of acceptance that he’d never feel the same way back. 

“Y/N.” His voice came out uneven, worrying you more at the use of your real name instead of the more common nickname he had given you. “I could never get sick of you, I love you.”

His hands were cupping your face and his lips were on yours before you had the chance to register what he said. It took you a couple seconds to kiss back, the shock of getting something you imagined many times before taking effect. The kiss was gentle like he was testing the waters, lips brushing over yours. It was over faster than you wanted, his face pulled back enough to look at your eyes but his hands stayed cupping your face. 

“Is this okay?” He asked, uncertainty in his eyes. 

“God, yes.” You whimpered. 

He grinned, lips finding yours again. There was no hesitation this time, every emotion both of you had kept in for years were pouring into the kiss. His one hand moved to the back of your neck as the other laid on your hip pulling you impossibly closer. A moan left you as he slid his tongue into your mouth to trace every crevice. 

A blood curdling scream had both of you jumping back, chests heaving from the previous lack of oxygen. Before you had the chance to blink Peter was up and pulling down his mask shooting a web to the next building. 

“Stay here.” It was a command but he should have known better.

.o0O0o.

You stepped out of the cab at the cemetery, backpack with your things slung on your shoulder and black dress hanging down to mid thigh. There was no need to get a hotel room, you were coming in for the funeral and leaving tonight. 

The first person to notice you was Ned, he caught your eyes with a shocked expression as he was turned in his chair. Honestly, you could barely believe you ended up flying in for it. Peter turned to Ned in confusion, straining his neck to follow his gaze. The second you saw his brown doe eyes rimmed red from crying your feet froze and your breath got caught in your throat. Your eye flickered their bright blue color for half a second but you knew he noticed by the gasp that rang through your hypersensitive ears. 

Getting yourself under control you continued up the hill, stopping to stand beside him. “Is it okay if I sit here?” You mentally slapped yourself at the first words to Peter in three years was a question about seating. 

“Uhm, yea. Yea.” He cleared his throat, picking up the obituary that was laying down in the seat. Ned scoffed, obviously annoyed. Peter kept his face poised, barely any emotion showing but you could hear the rise in his heartbeat as soon as he saw you. 

The ceremony was beautiful, some people talking about how May was and telling memories. Peter never did get up to talk in front of everyone, but you knew it would have been too hard for him. It was hard for you, May was the mom you never had growing up. 

As soon as everyone got done watching the casket lower and Peter shoveled in the first pile of dirt they started dispersing. 

“Can we talk?” You found yourself asking as the crowd dwindled out. 

“Sure. But, not here. Let’s go back to my apartment.” He looked around like a lost puppy, hands in his pockets. “I’m assuming you took a cab here?” You nodded. “You can ride back with me and Ned.” 

.o0O0o.

Even you could tell the scream wasn’t far away. You ran to the edge of the building right as Peter disappeared down an alley. You hurriedly climbed down the fire escape ladder and ran to where you last saw him, your feet stumbling over one another as you caught sight of Peter being held up against a wall by his neck.

“Giz,” A choked out sound of your nickname brought you back from the shock. A hairy man let his grasp of Peter up as he fell to the ground in a heap, gasping for air. The assaulter turned to you and you froze at the fangs and claws you saw, his eyes an inhuman blue. He lunged toward you before Peter had the chance to regain his step, a sharp pain on your shoulder causing you to scream in pain and fall to your knees.

Peter was by your side in seconds, the man long gone. You clutched your shoulder, fingers being coated in your own blood from a bite mark. “No, no, no. Stay with me Giz, you’re going to be okay.” Before he was able to pick you up, you arched your back in agony and roared, eyes glowing a bright yellow and fangs glistening in the moon’s light.

.o0O0o.

The car ride to their place was awkward and that’s saying it lightly. It was filled with constant glares from Ned in the rear-view mirror and Peter clearing his throat like he was going to say something but nothing came out.

He pulled into a parking lot out front of a nice looking apartment building in Manhattan.

“You both live here?” You only got a nod in return as they both got out of  the car.The apartment was small, but nice. A bed laid where the living room should be and another in the room adjacent. It was cleaner than you would have thought with two boys living their. 

“What are you doing here Y/N?” The words left Peter in a rush, like he’s been holding them back since he saw you. 

“Ned called me and told me about May and,” Peter deadpanned at Ned who shrugged unbothered. “And, well, I don’t know really. I just - I needed to see you.” You scratched your cheek sheepishly at your explanation.

“What? You didn’t feel like you needed to see me for three years but as soon as someone dies of course you’re here.” He scoffed, loosening his tie. “Unbelievable Y/N. You left me. I told you I loved you and then you left me.” He was pulling at his curls, the style that it held before loosening. Ned left to go into the other room, giving the two of you privacy.

“I could have killed you, Pete! I needed to leave so you would be safe.”

He scoffed, “I don’t need someone to protect me. I’m Spider-man, remember?”

“I couldn't risk it. I’ve done,” You faltered on your words, choosing them wisely, “things.” Your blue eyes flashing slightly. “And I love you too much.” You mumbled.

“IF YOU LOVED ME YOU WOULDN’T HAVE LEFT ME.” The words shook the apartment with anger.

.o0O0o.

It had only been a week of being a werewolf and the full moon was here. The research you and Peter did wasn’t much but everyone knew werewolves lost control on the night of a full moon. You could already feel it, your blood boiling with anger you didn’t even realize you had. 

Peter was currently chaining you up in an abandoned wine cellar he found on the outskirts of the city. You were breathing heavy, trying to keep yourself calm but you couldn’t help the claws and fangs that grew. 

“C’mon Giz, do what that one book said online. You have to find yourself an anchor, something to keep the anger at bay, something that keeps you grounded.” He tightened the last chain around your neck, both your arms and legs were immobile as well.

“I can’t.” It came out as a growl, despite your efforts. He didn’t say anything, sitting back on the wall across from you. “You have to leave, I could hurt you.”

He scoffed, “Spider-man.” He pointed to himself, waiving off your warning. He went on to gloat about his abilities, saying how no one, not even a werewolf could hurt him. 

“Shut the fuck up or I’ll cut your tongue off.” You seethed causing him to close his mouth in a tight line.

The moon was at its peak and you struggled to get out of the restraints. Every ounce of control you thought you had was gone. Your brain was clouded with anger, wanting nothing more than to run and tear something apart. The chain on your left arm broke first, making it unbelievable easy to get off the rest

Peter stood wearily, watching you rip off each chain. “Giz-Gizmo,” He hands lifted in front of him, trembling. “You can’t do this. You need to find an anchor and hold on to that.”

He kept talking but you didn’t bother to listen as you snapped the last chain, slamming him against the wall, clawed hand deep in his abdomen. You snapped out of it as you heard his pained moan, retracting your claws and running. 

You ran for hours, never letting yourself slow down. The image of Peter’s glassed over eyes the only thing playing in your mind. 

.o0O0o.

He broke down, a sob escaping his trembling lips as he fell to his knees. 

You sunk down to the ground next to him, cradling him in your arms. The tears you tried so hard to keep in escaped. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I had to do this to you, but Peter I couldn’t risk hurting  you again. You mean everything to me.”

“It’s all my fault.” He clutched onto your dress, face pressed against your chest. You felt the tears soaking through, but you didn’t care. “If I would have stopped that guy Uncle Ben would still be here. I could have moved the gauntlet away from Thanos faster so Tony didn’t have to sacrifice himself. If I just answered the phone when May called then she wouldn’t have been murdered. I’m Spider-man for god’s sake but I can’t save anyone. If I would of just let you sleep that night than none of this would be happening.” Another sob left his throat as you ran your fingers through his hair to try and calm him.

“Is that what you think? That Ben, Tony, May are your fault?” You can't wrap your head around what he was saying. “That I’m your fault?” You cupped his face, pulling him away from so you could see his face.

“You listen to me Peter, none of this is your fault. I don’t blame you for that night. And I can guarantee if you could ask May, Tony and Ben they would say the same thing. They were all so proud of you and loved you so much. So do I.” His tears slowed as he leaned into the warmth of your embrace. “Besides, I would get bitten a hundred times just to be able to kiss you like I did that night.”

“Giz, I kissed you that night. You’re too much of a coward to take that chance.” He smiled and you mirrored it. 

It had been a couple hours since the breakdown on the floor. You were sitting out on the small balcony curled into Peter’s chest watching the sun set. After you both had calm down it was obvious you couldn’t leave again, you both needed each other way too much. You knew there was a lot that had to be talked through, all the pain that was caused through the years, before it could be like before you were bitten.

“So what got you to finally learn how to control it? What’s your anchor?” He mumbled into your hair, resting his chin on the top of your head. You smiled.

“You.”

[hey-you-i-just]

oh how sweet it is (to be loved by you)

For  @adrinetteapril 2020 -  Posted to AO3 & FFN - Chapter 1 here

This is a continuing story, but it can stand alone if you don’t want to read the whole thing. Also get ready for some adrinette cuddles

Rated G

Chapter 14: Movie Night

Summary: Movie night with our favorite friend group.

How Adrien had been convinced to lie to his father about his whereabouts, he wasn’t entirely sure. But here he was sitting next to Marinette at Alya’s house watching a random superhero movie.

The movie Nino had chosen was incredibly slow paced and, if he was being honest, it was so dreadfully boring. Everything the characters were doing made absolutely no sense. He chalked his disinterest up to the fact that he was a superhero and was therefore disillusioned by the way the movies portrayed everything about it.

He eventually stopped paying attention to the screen altogether to favor the girl sitting next to him on the couch. In fact, he was hyperaware of how close he was to his new love and couldn’t help sneaking a few lingering glances her way. She only caught him once and the light dusting of pink across her cheeks made his heart soar.

He had noticed that after his conversation with Ladybug a few days ago, being around Marinette was a lot less nerve racking. Sure, he was nervous she would reject him, but the fear of being unfaithful to Ladybug or unfair to Marinette was gone.

He had realized that there would always be a piece of his heart that belonged to his lady love, but he knew in his heart that there wasn’t much hope for a future with her since they had to keep their identities a secret.

With that in mind, he decided to explore his feelings towards Marinette and he began to realize just how much he cared about her. And now that he knew she probably felt the same way, he was starting to get bolder in his flirtations.

Although, he still got flustered at the prospect of her returning his feelings, though. After all, he’d been turned down by Ladybug for over a year so he wasn’t used to the idea of someone wanting him as much as he wanted them.

Nino’s snoring brought him out of his reverie. He looked over and saw the couple passed out on their couch.

“I didn’t know Alya was dating a lawn mower,” Marinette whispered.

Adrien chuckled. “I think weed better follow suit.”

Marinette rolled her eyes in annoyance, but her smile gave her away. “Oh, stop. You’re almost as bad as-” She cut herself off abruptly.

“As bad as who?” He asked, curiously.

She hesitated. “Promise me you won’t laugh?”

“I’ll do no such thing,” he teased.

“Then I won’t tell you.” She stuck her tongue out at him before turning back towards the movie.

He was really enjoying this silly, comfortable side of Marinette. “Ok, ok. I promise.”

She eyed him suspiciously before letting out a long sigh. “You can’t tell anyone this, not even Alya.”

His eyebrows shot up. She was trusting him with something she hadn’t even told her best friend.

“Actually, why am I even telling you this? It’s embarrassing.”

Adrien grabbed her hand gently. “Hey, I promise I won’t tell. But you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to, ok?”

“I went on a date Chat Noir once,” she hissed, her face turning a brilliant shade of red. “And your puns reminded me of him.”

Adrien blinked. Of course he remembered their date, but he couldn’t let her know that. “You dated Chat Noir?”

Marinette buried her face in her hands. “Yeah. But he turned me down for Ladybug, which I expected,” she muttered. “Anyway, you act kind of like him sometimes.”

Adrien swallowed. He hadn’t planned for her to bring this up and he wasn’t sure how to handle this. He settled on playing dumb. “I do?”

“A little. And not just the jokes,” she took a deep breath before meeting his eyes. “You… you almost called me a nickname he used for me the other day.”

So she had noticed. He had chided himself for that slip-up when it happened. “What name?”

“Princess,” she said quietly.

His heart was racing. She was too close to discovering his identity and he had no idea what to do. All he knew was that he needed to get her mind away from connecting the dots. He looked away from her curious gaze.  “Well, at least you got to date your superhero crush.”

Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I used to have a huge crush on Ladybug,” he confessed, trying his best to diffuse the situation.

“You did?”

“Yeah.”

“So you don’t anymore?”

He met her eyes again and willed her to see how he truly felt about her. “Not anymore.”

“What changed?” she asked, her voice small.

“I realized something,” he held her gaze. He wasn’t ready to confess to her. Not yet. He still hadn’t completely let go of Ladybug. But he could feel himself falling hard and fast for the girl in front of him. He really didn’t want to screw this up.

She cleared her throat and became very interested in her fingernails. “I can’t believe your dad let you spend the night at Alya’s.”

He smiled, both grateful and disappointed in the change of subject. “Technically, he didn’t.”

She gaped at him. “Did you sneak out?”

“No, I would never,” He said, the irony not lost on him. “I may have told him there was an important project I had to work on with Nino. He thinks I’m at Nino’s house for the night.”

“You’re not going to get in trouble with him, are you?”

“Not if I’m at Nino’s house by the time the car comes to pick me up.”

Marinette hummed in response.

“What about you? Your parents let you have a sleepover with boys?”

She grimaced. “Not exactly. My parents think it’s just me and Alya. My maman would be scandalized if she knew Alya’s mom let Nino stay the night.”

Adrien nodded his understanding, letting a comfortable silence settle between them.

“Looks like it’s over,” she said after a few minutes.

He looked up to see the credits rolling across the screen. “Yeah.”

“Do you want to sleep on the couch or the floor?”

He flashed her a mischievous grin. “I’m sure we could both fit.”

“What?” Her eyes went wide.  

He chuckled. Man, he loved seeing her get flustered. “I’m just kidding. I’ll take the floor.” He moved to get up and grab some blankets but was stopped by her hand on his wrist.

“Wait.”

He turned and took in the sight of her flushed face, messy hair. She was truly a sight to behold. His mouth went dry.  

“You can sleep on the couch if you want.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

He shook his head. “I can’t make a lady sleep on the floor.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “That’s not what I meant.”

His head tilted to the side as he tried to understand. How could he sleep on the couch if she wasn’t sleeping on the floor?

Oh.

Oh.  

“Okay,” he said dumbfounded as he sat back down on the couch. His heart was pounding as he made himself comfortable under his blanket before beckoning her to lay next to him. She hesitated momentarily before laying down between his body and the back of the couch, resting her head and hand on his chest.

“Comfy?” She squeaked.

“Yep,” He replied breathlessly. “You?”

“Yeah.”

He knew without a shadow of a doubt she could feel his erratic heartbeat beneath her fingertips. “Goodnight, Marinette.”

“Night.”

His skin was electric under her touch and the heady aroma of her shampoo flooded his senses until everything was her; her figure pressed flush against his side, her hair tickling his chin. It took everything in him to keep his breathing under control. He tried to keep his mind occupied by tracing shapes where his hand rested on her upper arm.

After a while, he heard her breathing slow and felt her relax fully into him. He smiled and grabbed the hand resting on his chest with his free hand. Sure she was asleep, he pressed a chaste kiss to the top of her head.

“Goodnight, Princess,” he murmured as he let sleep overtake him.

[ageofevermore]

Who We Are Chapter 10 - Iliad and Odyssey

summery: a hundred years ago earth was destroyed by nuclear warfare. those who could escape did, and those who couldn’t we’re thought to have been burned with the rest of earth. those who escaped primfaya traveled to space, living to tell stories of what earth once was to generations that hoped to see it’s beauty one day. nearly three generations later it’s time. oxygen is running low and life support can’t be fixed. a hundred teenagers are sent to the ground, but is it every really that simple?

Pairings: Olivia Kane x Bellamy Blake

Words: 2.5k

Warnings: hallucinations, mentions of blood, mentions of death, mentions of guns and gun violence, bellivia fluff ! 

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                                                     When Olivia finally managed to pull herself up off the floor, her mind was immediately brought to Bellamy Blake and the fate of his situation. Her mind was working fast to compensate for a reasoning beside what had just occurred, yet the only somewhat bearable explanation Olivia could fathom was that the beans she'd eaten were mutilated with hallucinogenic properties. Earth skills had been very vague when addressing which foods were edible on earth, and Olivia was beginning to despise that irony.

Grabbing the bag of necessities from the floor, Olivia darted up the stairs with itching desperation to confirm that Bellamy was both alive and alright. The very opposite of Micheal Hayes. Olivia's body was visibly trembling as she exited the military base, shoulders barely stable enough to support the lightweight duffle bag of med-kits and blankets. Selfishly, Olivia had already shoved aside three of the softest for her, Octavia and Raven.

Olivia didn't call out for Bellamy in fear of alerting hostile grounders of her presence, so instead she crept through the trees and bushes with hesitation clear across her features. Olivia analyzed hundreds of possibilities within her mind, however she hadn't expected to see Bellamy laid out across a tree, beaten and bloodied with a lifeless body only a few inches from his feet. His chest heaved up and down heavily, his horror etched visibly across his pale complexion.

"Bellamy!" Olivia gasped in pure panic, her feet moving despite the desperate ache to curl up in a ball and just collapse. The world had been against her for so long, she figured it was her time to surrender. Her day had been filled with nothing but soft spoken confrontational battles, and her injures had just been pronounced terminal. "Are you alright, Bell?"

Bellamy broke down into a quiet sob of bleeding pain. The sharp intakes of breath he begged for broke Olivia's heart in two. His pain was so great and yet he put up a facade that could fool them all. She thought she knew Bellamy Blake, and yet she was so wrong. Olivia understood his motives, she could see his perspective, but she knew nothing of the tragedies that made him who he is.

"My mother," Bellamy began with aching breaths that all too closely resembled sobs, "if she knew what I've done, who I am — she raised me to be better, to be good, and all I do is hurt people. I'm a monster." Bellamy's voice trembled as he tried to remain somewhat intact before the completely shattered girl.

Olivia's breath pickup as her mind was brought back to the nightmare she'd been forced to relive just moments ago. Her own actions; attempts to do good and be better, had led her down a path of misery and grey colored grief. She'd lost apart of herself at twelve years old, a part of her that Marcus Kane missed deeply.

"Doing good and being good are two different things, Bell." Olivia whispered, her hands finding his with a desperate need to comfort the both of them simultaneously. "For what it's worth, I didn't know your mother very well, but I saw the way she looked at you, the way she talked about Octavia even. You could be the worst person in the world Bellamy, and as long as you recognized that, she would be proud. It meant you listened to something she said. That's the funny thing about parents, they don't really care about what you do, they only care that you lived and you learned."

Bellamy's hand twitched beneath Olivia's when he realized just how her hands trembled. Her face had lost off its color, her eyes somehow even dimmer then they had been when he left. Bellamy's gut coiled in guilt for not having noticed sooner, his worry immediately drawn to Olivia rather then himself.

"Are you okay?" Bellamy pondered, his voice thick with a blend of emotions that only humanized him more. His eyes were drawn to Olivia's, his thumb absentmindedly tracing circles on her hand when he felt her body flinch at the question.

"Those nuts, they must have expired. It's a common thing for hallucinogenic properties to secrete from beans and berries; especially on a radiation soaked planet." Olivia rambled shyly, her voice soft as she tried to recoil into herself. Her cheeks flushed at the attention, her hands growing clammy in Bellamy's as tears filled her eyes for the third time that day.

"What did you see?" Bellamy gently brought his hand up to cup Olivia's head, allowing her to melt into his side. He'd never vocalize his needs, but all Bellamy Blake craved was to feel like he was needed, and Olivia gave him that clarity. "Ollie, it's okay." Bellamy panicked when he noticed the way her breath drew in sharply and her eyes squeezed shut. A tear fell down her cheek, burning her skin as it fell.

Olivia's lip trembled, but she figured their was no harm in revealing even more of herself to Bellamy Blake. She had nothing to loose anymore, her will to thrive dwindling as the minutes passed. "Their was a reason why I was accepted into the cadet program nearly three years early, and it wasn't just because of my fathers position on the council."

Bellamy frowned, picking up on the fact that Olivia didn't want to talk about it any more. Olivia squirmed as her eyes landed on the dead body, her hands clenching around Bellamy's as if that would somehow provide her with comfort for not only Dax's death, but Michael's.

"Whenever your ready, you can tell me." Bellamy offered up the advice gently, hating the way his confidence crumbled whilst in the sole presence of Olivia Kane.

The girl had the ability to make even the most guarded person feel as though she could see right through them. Olivia could expose all of Bellamy's weaknesses without hesitation, he's given her enough reason to, and yet time and time again she proved that she wouldn't.

Olivia Kane would be the very reason that the remaining hundred would live long healthy lives on the ground. The hundred wouldn't be happy, but they'd at least have peace. Eventually.

——

                                                Olivia and Bellamy had sat beneath that tree for hours, allowing the dirt to stain their palms and the breeze to wash away their guilt as best it could. The both of them overwhelmed by the memories they'd reencountered. Bellamy gripped multiple bags of guns, Olivia heaving behind him as she carried along her own necessities of med-kits and blankets. Both Bellamy and Olivia had different standards of surviving, yet they weren't opposed to the rightfulness of the other.

Olivia sighed softly as she looked up towards Bellamy, her green eyes clouded dread. Her freckles were a maze in the glistening moonlight, the pure overstimulation of recent events and injuries corrupting her ability to think with a level-head. Despite the facade Bellamy was attempting to rebuild, he bent down, softly squaring his eyes with Olivia's with hopes to connect their unspoken humanity.

"Are you ever going to calm down, Bambi?" Bellamy teased, his words meant to reassure Olivia, and they did just that, her lips twisting upwards into a small smile.

"I like it better when you call me, Ollie." She huffed. Never once had she pictured herself being comforted by Bellamy Blake and his obscene nicknames, though something about the way Bellamy uttered Ollie sounded right. "Humor me for a minute, okay?" She asked, anxiety clear in her tone despite her attempts to try and calm herself. Bellamy noticed this, smiling softly to himself before nodding, giving Olivia confirmation to ask her question.

"Any particular meaning behind Octavia?" Olivia shyly pondered, her fingertips tangling within the fraying edges of the duffles. "The only reason I asked is because my father used to read me a book about a King—"

"—A King named Augustus, and his fierce sister Octavia." Bellamy cut in with a large smile, his eyes shinning beneath the stars that had once bought them both so much misery. "My mom and I would spend our nights reading old stories, mythology mostly, Augustus was always my favorite to learn about."

Olivia frowned softly as she looked down. Despite the warmth that spread in her chest at Bellamy's revelations, her guilt became unbearable as his words struck a chord within her chest. "My dad told me all about how my mother loved Greek Mythology. She had an entire collection of stories, her favorite was the Odyssey."

Bellamy's smile fell into place with a sad smirk, his eyes drifting downwards to the guns in his hands. His mother would be horrified by what he's become, though talking about Aurora with someone other then Octavia was liberating. The darkness had reigned within him for far to long. "My mother's was the Iliad."

Olivia finally mustered up enough courage to show Bellamy the tears streaming down her face, her lip trembling for the umpteenth time that day. "My names the only true thing she ever gave to me." Olivia laughed through tears, her own gratitude for Bellamy's understanding presence immense. "She found it in some stupid baby book, but she though it sounded like Olympus."

"It's beautiful." Bellamy offered a genuine smile, nudging his shoulder against Olivia's before he stood tall, the makeshift walls of the camp not far from sight. "Alright, suck it up, Bambi. We've got delinquents to arm."

Olivia rolled her eyes at Bellamy's heavy handed assertion of dominance. His love for order stemmed from an unruly upbringing, one that still haunted him despite the arrogant smirks and mindless gunfires. Bellamy Blake wasn't half the man he portrayed himself as, rather a man who had been broken one to many times. Olivia enjoyed being one of the few people that knew that, finding it even more heartwarming.

"Let the grounders come!" Bellamy announced arrogantly, laying the guns at his feet. Kids crowded around him, naturally drawn to his authoritative presence, though the added essence of guns only added to their captivation.

Olivia spotted Octavia in the crowd, her lips twitching upwards in relief for the familiar face. Despite Bellamy's comfort, she'd missed the feminine touch of his younger sister, who always seemed to know what to say, especially when it came to the heavy hold of pasts. Slipping away from Bellamy, Olivia attached herself to Octavia's side. A gentle smile pulled at her lips, comfort visibly seeping through Olivia's posture as she relaxed into the familiarity.

"You okay?" Octavia whispered, ignoring her brothers speech about surviving against the grounders. Olivia had always been important to Octavia, though seeing the visible affect the grounds had on her, it was as if she grew even more protective for the younger girl who'd never shown her anything but kindness.

"Those nuts were not my friend." Olivia groaned, her head falling to Octavia's shoulder in pure defeat. The day had gotten the best of her, and shamefully she had let it. "It's my birthday." She added noticing the way Octavia inevitably tensed at the reminder of what had happened to Elliott Greyson seventeen years ago. "Everything's just been so messed up today, O."

Octavia sighed, tightening her hold on Olivia's trembling hand. The skin was clammy and cold, the only true signs of Olivia's rising panic. "Just another day on the ground then isn't it?"

Olivia nodded tightly, her eyes avoiding Bellamy's despite his clear gaze on her. Octavia noticed the tense exchange of deep emotion between the two, frowning up at Bellamy before she looked down at Olivia who was clearly fighting back tears. As if a protective switch had been flipped with her, Octavia wrapped her arms around Olivia before leading her away from the crowd.

Olivia Kane was just a broken girl trying to act like she had everything perfectly put together.

——

Just as Octavia had coaxed a very disoriented Olivia to sleep, Clarke came barreling into the drop ship with worry etched across her features. Her hands were trembling at her side, her face pale as she tried to spot out a specific person in the crowd. Octavia stood from the chair she was once sat in, instead moving to meet Clarke in the middle.

"Have you seen Olivia? I just spoke with Kane and Jaha." Clarke asked, her eyes widening as she realized that for the first time in days, Olivia was peacefully sleeping tucked away into the corner. Despite the many long days the junior cadet had spent on the ground, the only time she got any rest was when consciousness physically failed her. It was beginning to grow worrisome, especially for Clarke who'd bore witness to her obscene patterns of grief beforehand.

"She's pushing herself to hard, Clarke." Octavia breathed out deeply. The Blake girl didn't show her emotions often, especially not to people like Clarke, though her genuine worry for Olivia only intensified with every glance down to her bandaged hands. "She's going to end up dead before the Ark can even come down here if she keeps pushing herself so hard."

Clarke frowned at Octavia's observation. The blonde had been so wrapped up in perpetual boy drama, negligence overcame her thoughts when it came to Olivia and her health concerns. "Has she eaten anything? She looks pale." Clarke noted, looking towards Octavia for a moment before stepping closer to Olivia. Her small body was curled up beneath a multitude of blankets, the heavy heat providing her with a feeling of safety.

"She had some of the nuts, but Clarke I think something happened when she was out with Bellamy. The both of them aren't acting right." Octavia muttered feeling less then heard as she stood beside Clarke, wincing when the stubborn blonde pressed the back of her hand to Olivia's forehead. The last thing either girl wanted was to wake Olivia before her body was ready.

"Bellamy just got pardoned for his crimes. He said Olivia talked him into facing Jaha, something about the Iliad, I don't really know what he was saying. Between the guns and the pounding headache I have, everything's a bit fuzzy." The blonde was never one to complain about her own health, but she was too busy fussing over Olivia to notice the words falling from her own mouth, or small smile that overcame Octavia's features. It was something as little as a book title, however it meant so much more to the Blake's, especially Bellamy who carried the words against his heart with everything he did.

"She's a little warm, it's probably just from the blankets though, god knows she never used to be able to have enough. We'd have sleepovers and my mom would worry about her suffocating beneath the duvet's." Clarke's frown broke into a small smile at the memory, though her reminiscing didn't last much longer then a few mere seconds. "Do me a favor, keep an eye on her? I don't want her in here alone."

Octavia nodded, hardly bothered by the task of watching over her friend. They'd grown distant since their time on the ground, an empty ache filling Octavia's stomach with guilt. Olivia Kane had always been gentle as a summer breeze, though the ground was nothing but a brutal midnight hurricane. She put up a strong fight to maintain her peaceful mantra, though it was easy to see surrender was creeping up beside her.