#you know they are the first married and force Peter to pay for it

[mmoosen]

[ahfrickenfrick]

buzzfeed unsolved: The disappearance of Jason Todd

Ryan

Shane

—

This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved we will be discussing the disappearance of Jason Todd-Wayne, which has had updates as recently as last week.

Wait last week? Ryan, if we disappear because of this episode imagine how cool it would be. Maybe we hang with our good pal Jason.

I don’t have time for you being stupid. I have to get this right, because let me be honest. I have a man crush on Bruce Wayne, and if he ends up watching this and you’re being stupid I’ll never forgive you.

Okay, sure. Cause Bruce Wayne is searching the internet for every little thing posted about his dead son.

(wheeze)

We don’t know if he’s dead! And that’s what I’m here to talk about today.

-

Jason Peter Todd was born August 16th, 2000 in Gotham City, New Jersey, to his mother Dr. Sheila Haywood and his father Willis Todd. However only a few months later did Willis Todd marry Catherine Johnson, forcing Dr. Haywood to have to relinquish custody.

If I ever have a kid-

-they would all have your big head and I’d feel sorry for them.

Ryan. I listen to you ramble about murderers and ghosts. Let me tell my spiel.

(wheeze)

Right, sorry.

If I ever have a kid with someone, I think I’d be really upset if they just kinda made me give my kid to a stranger.

Here’s the thing to that! No one has heard or seen from Dr. Sheila Haywood since, like after her son was born. The only thing that might link back to her is an illegal botched surgery, but most of it was sealed off, and I don’t feel like having the Gotham City Police Department call me up

(ring ring)

Hi yes, are you that idiot from that show? You will be arrested immediately! Batman and his group of… misfits?? I don’t know, but they are on their way!

Moving on from your weird role play, like all the families that live in Park Row, what is deemed “Crime Alley”, the Todd family did not have money.

You could not pay me to go to a place called Crime Alley.

We were actually going to Gotham, scope around, maybe get a selfie with Robin-

-Which one?

I need to do an episode trying to figure out how many Robin’s there actually are… I think there have been five?? Six?? I don’t know… stop distracting me with Batman! We ended up scraping the visitation part because apparently this time of year Arkham breakouts are common, and I don’t want to get fear gassed.

-

Jason did decent at school, until he stopped showing up, school records are really spotty after third grade. Apparently he was reading and understanding college level stuff, but that’s really all we got on it.

Not a lot on this guys younger life it looks like.

No there isn’t, not any social media posts, or news articles, or anything if that sort about Jason until a few years later in 2012, when Jason became the ward to the one and only, Bruce Wayne.

Ah, Bruce Wayne, you love him, I love him, uhm- I actually don’t know much about Bruce Wayne other than the fact he’s one of the few rich people who give away a shit ton of money.

Bruce Wayne is a billionaire CEO, with a heart of gold, and some say he sleeps around, but as long as he’s not hurting anyone. Also! He’s a dad! Bruce Wayne is a trusted person within the Foster Care over in Gotham. He takes in the extreme cases that would probably leave the kid with a bunch of trauma.

Well, with what I’ve heard about Gotham, he must have like a billion kids with just a bunch of trauma

Let’s see what I remember from research, cause I did not write anything down for this. His first ward was Richard Grayson, who goes by Dick, was taken in after he watched his whole family fall and die on the trapeze.

As I said before, Jason was brought into Mr. Wayne’s custody after the death of both his father and his step mother. His father’s death was unknown, and his step mother died from a drug overdose… in front of Jason.

Uhm- Tim Drake? His was more interesting to watch unfold because there’s a whole other multimillion almost billion dollar company that Tim’s parents owned, and there was a lot covered up by lawyers and stuff, but Tim ended up with the Waynes

Then there’s the only female in the place, Cassandra Wayne, she is selectively mute, and overly protected by her adoptive family, nothing was shared with the media about where she came from.

Damian Wayne is the only blood son to Bruce Wayne, he didn’t even know about the kid until… like last year? Two years ago? Again, not a lot that I remember.

And then there’s been rumors of him taking in another kid, but nothing for sure yet.

Jesus, Ryan take a breath, and go back to Jason, because now I’m hoping I believe your theories about him being alive cause what this family didn’t need is another death.

Look, Shane. I’m going to be straight with you here. There are three possible theories I think could be plausible. So let’s jump right into them.

-

Theory one, is that Jason Todd is alive and in hiding from The Joker. This is the second most popular idea, and one I hope is true. There really isn’t anything else to this theory, besides a picture of someone that looks a little like Jason in the middle of Asia.

Doppelgänger, probably. Lemme see. I don’t know… this kinda looks like someone edited it.

Yeah, like it looks really distorted. I don’t know if I think it’s real, but it’s what people online were talking about.

Crazy, that people online would doctor fake photos of a kid who had died.

Exactly, which is why people think he’s alive, cause who would do that?

—

Theory two is that Jason Todd died as his family said he did, looking for his birth mother. Apparently he was in the Middle East, found his mother, but then both were found dead in an explosion caused by the Joker.

So the Joker, who is Gotham’s Prince of Crime, was somehow in the Middle East? I don’t buy it

I didn’t either, until I looked just a little deeper, and found that the next week Superman and Batman stopped the Joker from murdering the United Nations. So he was in the area.

Oh my god. If.. I know on this show I try to goof off, but it’s hard when it’s a kid. How old was Jason?

Only 15. He just got back into the swing of things at school, getting all A’s, he was in the Drama program and the Poetry club. If you scroll down a on Dick Grayson’s Instagram you can find a selfie of Dick and Jason, Jason being in his school uniform only a week before he died. The two seemed to be really close, with how much Grayson posted of the two of them, and then it was radio silence from the man until a year after Jason’s death, where he made a memorial post, along with Bruce Wayne, who made the Jason Peter Todd Memorial Foundation, which helps families in Crime Alley.

Look, not okay with the kid dying, but it makes me kinda smile to see that his family got together to do something like this in his name.

I don’t think you understand the length of what this fund does. It provides special housing for single mothers, has opened up two clinics that help with drug abuse and addiction, and keeps kids in warm clothes and in school.

That’s- wow. Okay, you are making this “he’s dead” thing seem like it’s the only thing that happened.

Well, theory 3, is that he died-

Wait what?

He died, and came back to life.

This, I think, is worse than you saying ghosts are real.

We live in a world where someone can run at the speed of light! Yet you draw the line at ghosts and maybe hopefully someone who isn’t dead.

Yeah, but that’s science. Okay whatever where’s the proof of him being alive.

Okay, looking at the timeline. Jason Todd died at 15, in 2015. And the Wayne’s kinda were quiet for a year and a half, besides the foundation they set up, even with Tim, nothing really new was happening.

And then things seemed to go back to normal, they all frequented gala’s again, and all the other social stuff they did-

Yeah, nice choice of wording there

Shut up, anyways, in 2018 a picture appears, not even the front page, of Dick Grayson walking and laughing with someone who looks a lot like if Jason Todd grew up for a few years, and then decided to dye his hair.

Listen, Ryan. People have doppelgängers. We just saw the other picture and it’s clearly fake- Jesus Christ that looks exactly like Jason.

Exactly! And I started looking around more, finding pictures of the Wayne family around Gotham from news sites, and every once in a while, that guy pops up. Never in the picture, but always somewhere in the background like he wasn’t wanting to be seen. Like i mentioned in the beginning, there was a picture from a week ago that looks exactly like him.

Wait, is this a theory from the internet or something you came up with?

Both, kind of? I saw someone make a bad joke about it, and then it kinda stuck in my head as I looked for more information. Apparently there is a mythical pit that could bring someone from the dead.

Okay, yeah. Mythical revival pit. As if any living person wouldn’t be all over that.

Look man, that’s just the information I found. But I really really hope that Jason is alive somewhere safe, or resting peacefully.

The most believable for me is that he did pass away. But I’d love to be wrong.

That being said, I got really sad looking through all of Jason’s life, I felt like I was being more invasive than usual. So I talked with the crew and Buzzfeed, and we are donating all revenue from this video to the Jason Memorial fund in Gotham.

But the mystery of Jason Todd, still remains….

Unsolved

[sesamie]

i would like to hear about the aubreyad 👍

okay so!!!! the aubreyad is our affectionate fandom term for the aubrey/maturin series by patrick o'brian - a 20.5-book series about the adventures of captain jack aubrey and doctor stephen maturin who are two best friends in the napoleonic wars. it's pretty critically acclaimed in terms of being like A+ historical fiction and beloved by napoleonic nerds worldwide, well-researched and well-written and all around Technically Good! i'm only on the fourth book (i took a huge break to get into house md sjdfhsdf) but it's my favorite series of all time and i hope in my life to own all 21 books (as well as every companion glossary, directory, map, and thinkpiece i can find!!) (also my goal is to own all the books with the same series of covers (the newest ones) cause they're GORGEOUS and i like them to be all the same)

so basically the story is - jack aubrey is an english navy captain (or rather, becomes one, over the course of the first two books) and another guy nearly fights him because he was being an annoying audience member during a concert and tapping his hands offtime and everything. the next day he and this other guy meet up and discover they have a lot in common (particularly the music they like to play!) and jack, after learning this guy is a physician, invites him to be his ship's surgeon on his new ship!! the physician is one stephen maturin, extremely Character Of All Time. he's a naturalist and a doctor, he's addicted to laudanum, he's so autistic, he's bisexual-coded, he knows absolutely nothing about sailing or being in the navy. he was a revolutionary and is extremely political and frequently gets into fights with jack about the nature of authority and the way he runs his ship! ALSO HE IS LITERALLY AN INTELLIGENCE SPY.

jack aubrey himself is a force of nature, he's universally beloved by almost everybody, he's tall and fat and strong and red-faced and blond and makes the most horrible puns and thinks they are so funny. they call him goldilocks, or lucky jack. he's the love of my life. way smarter than he gives himself credit for, extremely lucky, and also a dolt in the most endearing moments. jack and stephen are, for all intents and purposes, smart when apart and stupid when together. they also love eachother very very much and are best friends - pretty sure you have to be best friends to travel on foot across spain with one of you inside the skinned hide of a bear and the other pretending to be his bear-leader. in order to get away from the people to whom you owe money that you definitely can't pay.

also, in the second book, while taking some time away from war (cause they thought it was over sdjfhsdf), stephen and jack spend some time in the countryside and meet cousins sophia williams and diana villiers and they all four become friends then!! and jack ends up marrying sophie and from where i'm standing i still can't see any horizon end to diana and stephen's messiness. he tried to duel her husband. among other things.

that's kind of where i'm at at the moment - each book is technically able to be read standalone but i would never.

OH ALSO THE FILM!!!! in 2003 they released a peter weir (my fav director) film called master and commander: the far side of the world, starring russell crowe as jack and paul bettany as stephen. the film tosses together a couple elements from a few of the books but it is widely regarded as a loving if not faithful adaptation and a lot of care was put into it!!! if you're ever into film production i highly recommend looking into the making of m&c cause it's REALLY interesting. they kept the officers and crewmen in separate places so the actors would naturally develop a sense of separation. the film is also widely regarded as an example of great use of musical score and sound in film!! we watched it in my junior year film class when we were studying score. even if you don't care about the napoleonic wars or about naval battle or even about the blorboable stephen maturin i HIGHLY recommend giving it a watch - it's just a really damn well-made film, and i'm grateful that they did us such justice with the adaptation.

any more questions i'd be happy to answer :)

[stevetonyweekly]

SteveTony Weekly - Holiday Edition

 Happy Christmas Eve!! Today we’ve got a list of Christmas Stevetony fic to enjoy this holiday weekend! Check it out and be sure to leave your fic author kudos or comments--or make it a Christmas miracle and leave both! 

I'll Give You Gifts Until You Know My Name by Amuly

Mr. Stark is an extravagant gift-giver: he has the money for it, after all. As Iron Man, Tony has the opportunity to gift Steve even more presents that, while less expensive, are more heartfelt. Having a secret identity means Tony gets to have his cake and eat it too when it comes to showering Steve with presents.

Until Steve starts developing feelings for his armored companion, and all the benefits of living a double life are turned on their head for Tony Stark.

If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now by vorkosigan 

"Hold that thought," Tony said into his phone. "I apparently just got hit by a hitchhiker."

"You hit a hitchhiker?" Happy sounded horrified.

"What? Am I talking to a wall? I got hit by a hitchhiker."

Having just broken up with Pepper, Tony is driving to California on Christmas Eve. When he picks up a hitchhiker, he hardly expects him to be the former Captain America, defrosted and on the run from SHIELD.

New Traditions by nightwalker for truthiness_aura

Tony's starting to think that tackling the whole teamwork thing, the sobriety thing and the holidays thing all at once might have been overly ambitious. AKA: Steve and Tony throw the first Annual Avengers Non-Denominational Winter Holiday Party.

Unwrapped by nightwalker

Tony and Steve each have a surprise for the other. Turns out they were thinking along similar lines.

Happy (Christmas) Lights by ladyshadowdrake

The colony pays a visit to earth just in time for Christmas.

A Budapest Christmas by shetlandowl

A Housesitter AU where Tony moves into Steve's place, charms his parents, befriends his life-long friends, and repairs the relationships Steve ruined in the aftermath of his own heartbreak. Their relationship is a happy, loving, and supportive one; or, at least it was so until Steve showed up unannounced and was congratulated on a marriage he'd never heard of.

I Saw Cap Kissing Santa Claus by Mizzy 

When Tony dressed as Santa for Queen County Hospital's annual toy drive, he wasn't expecting Steve to recognize him...as Iron Man.

Ex-traordinary Christmas by FestiveFerret

Tony is still good friends with his ex, Steve, even after four years apart, even though he's with Ty now. Until Christmas comes around, and suddenly that feels completely backwards.

All I Want For Christmas Is You by missbecky

In the space of a single moment, Steve has fallen in love with Tony. He's declared his love and it should be a magical Christmas to remember. The only problem is, Tony refuses to believe he means it.

A King For Christmas by iam93percentstardust

In 1867, Tony Stark flees New York after refusing to marry the alpha his parents chose for him. His money runs out in the small kingdom of Dacia, ruled over by King Steven of the Rogers line. Somehow, and he’s not entirely sure how, he ends up accepting the position of nanny to the king’s four children: Harley, Peter, Sarah, and Morgan.

Tony bonds with the children easily but their father is harder to get to know. Steve is still grieving his wife’s death four years earlier. His continued mourning has turned the once bright halls into dark and somber shadows of their former glory. Tony isn’t entirely certain what he can do but he knows that he has to do something or else the whole country, so attuned to their leader, will sink into despair. He begins by reconciling the king with his young children.

Meanwhile, the children have decided that it’s high time their father fall in love again—and Tony is the obvious choice. They concoct elaborate plans to force the two together, hardly realizing that Steve and Tony are falling in love, not through their shenanigans but through the quiet moments they share bonding over the love they have for the children.

[everygame]

Alter Ego (Apple Macintosh)

Developed/Published by: Peter J. Favaro / Activision Released: 27/04/1986 Completed: 21/11/2023 Completion: Died of old age in my bed, single, but a millionaire. Little Richard’s “Thinkin’ About My Mother” was playing on the radio as I played. “I swear I'm gonna love her… Yes, until the day I die.”

Alter Ego is a dated, sexist mess that basically doesn’t work at all.

I am so fond of it.

One of those games I found in my earliest forays on the internet, digging around for “abandonware” Alter Ego was immediately interesting to my teenage self–a game that let you live an entire life! Sure, it did it in a text-only, choose-your-own-adventure style, but I was already fiddling around with Infocom games and it wasn’t that many years out from owning an Amstrad CPC; the limitations had no effect upon the promise I imagined.

The interesting thing about when I played it then is that I remember playing it into Young Adulthood and never further. Until now I couldn’t remember why. Did I get bored? Was I overwhelmed with options?

Well, here’s a hint. Alter Ego was designed in 1986 by Peter J. Favaro, a psychologist who at the time was just 28 years old (which I am forced to admit is younger than I am now.) It becomes very quickly clear that past a certain point he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

But let’s take a step back here and discuss how Alter Ego actually works. Really it’s one of the earliest examples of a hypertext game (it actually predates Hypercard, if you can believe it.) You progress through seven stages of life from infancy to old age, and in each, you progress through a kind of… card map? choosing cards which each contain a vignette where you have to make a few decisions–if you’re a toddler, do you share your toys? If you’re a teenager, do you act sulky to your parents when they won’t let you do what you want? And then have that effect your stats and have time pass as a result.

As the game progresses, it adds several cards that you can flip over whenever you feel like it. A card that lets you try and meet people, or have experiences with your current partner, for example. A card that lets you make big purchases that you might have to pay off with a loan. 

The goal in Alter Ego is, simply, to… see what happens, and it’s here that the game’s highest pleasures and greatest mistakes are found. I decided to play this via a classic Mac emulator (as I believe that Favaro created this on a Mac) and although I originally played this on PC, the convergence of playing this via a system that I haven’t touched since I was at high school made the early sequences of this game a brush with nostalgia I haven’t felt before. The game is at its highest when you get to in some ways relive, but not quite, the past.

Like most people who play this (at least the first time) I chose to play it making the kind of decision I would make, as best I could, at the time I’d make them, and each experience was a moment of–oh, remember when something like this happened? 

It’s not perfect. Designed in 1986 by a young, white American, there’s this strange sense of re-living your life by way of “Leave It To Beaver” even if, like me, you only know the reference second or third hand. Personally I looked at it as asking: what if I’d gone to an American high school and lived my John Hughes dreams? The game was developed in the same era, I watched The Breakfast Club as a teenager around the same time I was messing around with abandonware and using classic Macs at school... it all intertwines.

And really, if the game had stayed there, I think it could have worked. A kind of… growing up simulator. Add lots of different vignettes, not all which play every time, and then the player plays until they leave college and the game goes “congratulations! You became a CORN FARMER. You married ONE wife and had SIX children. Your dog is called JEFF.”

Sadly, it does not do that, and it becomes pretty clear that Favaro didn’t really have a clear plan or concept for how adulthood was going to work. Childhood and Adolescence, after all, are fairly clear cut. You have to go to school, your parents take care of most other responsibilities. From a western, middle-class perspective, you’ll mostly have the same kind of experiences. As an adult however, all kinds of things can happen at all stages of life. 

It goes wrong immediately. You can go to college, but there’s no clear pay-off, you never seem to graduate! Jobs are just… something you have. Purchases and money quickly turn out to be totally meaningless (there may be a fail-state if you run out of money with huge debts, but I didn’t see it.)

The problem is that Favaro is forced to flatten everything into the most generic experiences once he reaches adulthood as the biggest decisions we make in our lives–who to partner with, our careers–cannot really interact with the canned vignettes of the main path. The box art is like “become a baseball player or a nun!” but even if you could the actual experience is “what if you were a white collar worker in the 1980s” as your nun deals with getting chewed out by their boss and refused a promotion or whatever.

In many ways it’s simply a fault of coming so early. A modern game in even just Twine can far more easily modify its text based on the information you’ve given it, and more easily offer events that either relate to your stats and relationships. In many other ways, it’s the fault of the culture that Favaro lived in and which, sadly, he could not see beyond. I played the “Male” version, and attitudes to women are beyond poor; many later vignettes are basically Penthouse letters (actually, another American reference I only know second hand, I swear) and one vignette featuring your discovery that a friend is gay is… er… not good.

It’s made even weirder by how… judgemental the game’s “narrator” (read: Favaro) is when it comments on your decisions. He definitely has an idea how you should be living your life, and hell mend you for not following it.

All that said, however, there’s still some amusement and possibly revealing moments to be had in the later stages of the game. I for one was surprised by my complete inability to maintain a steady relationship and how borderline panicked I got as I aged about it! It seems like it might be fairly random, which makes how unforgiving it is almost hilarious: I had been living with a woman for years, we’d invested in a company and became millionaires, at least according to one vignette I got on amazing with her son from another marriage… I popped the question and she said no because I was “untrustworthy.” Relationship over.

I probably should have indulged less in those Penthouse letters vignettes… It was… research. For this article. Yeah. Not just because playing this made me feel like a teenager again and the teenager I was would have made all those decisions.

Anyway. As much as Alter Ego doesn’t work, what stands out about it is what stands out about, say, an Infocom game. The text-based nature of it draws you in as deeply as a book, and it simply engages the imagination to make the game something more than it is. I can see Floyd in Planetfall, and I can see my weird picket-fences middle-America alternate life here. For weaving that sort of magic, it does deserve some respect. Just don’t take it too seriously.

Will I ever play it again? As I expressed above, I’ve only ever played the Male version, and the Female version is supposed to have a series of bug-fixes and less instant-death situations, but far, far more sexism. I might take a look at it, but even if I don’t I can imagine noodling on this again, at least as a mirror into memory.

Final Thought: Worth noting that you don’t have to take my word on this game, it can easily be played in-browser, which is probably fine if you don’t have a dense, multi-layered nostalgia attached to it. Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up a digital copy of exp. 2600, a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

[nonbinaryeye]

All the empty promises

Written for @lonelyeyesweek

Day 3 - Promise

Peter is not very good at keeping his promises. Elias is not surprised by that. At least usually he is not...

Read on AO3

…

Peter Lukas was not a man of his word. Which was quite unfortunate considering how willing he was to agree with anything anyone suggested. Especially things that would quickly get him out of conversations he tended to be unwilling participant of.

Above mentioned ‘anyone’ was mostly his husband. That was given by the fact that only very rarely someone was able to get Peter Lukas to the point of conversation where some kind of promise might had been demanded of him. That might had been due to several factors. No one was brave enough, no one had enough time or they simply knew better.

One would assume that said husband, Elias Bouchard, ought to know better by now as well. After all, it was not the first nor probably the last time he decided to marry Peter Lukas. However, one would have to wrongly assume that Elias had any hopes Peter would be able to uphold his promises in the first place.

Elias Bouchard considered himself a reasonable man and so he knew expecting Peter to do what he was told was quite unreasonable expectations. That did not stop his demands. It was never the point. It was all just a part of their complicated and pointless game of marital life.

 ...

For example, one early morning Elias awoke just as Peter was trying to disappear unnoticed on another several month journey away from him. And so he would more half asleep murmured than ask:

“Could you take the trash since you’re leaving anyway?”

“Uh-huh,” Peter would just make a sound, annoyed that the darkness of night apparently once again failed to hide his departure. (Probably since nights in London were anything but dark. One of Elias’ favourite parts about the city.)

“And also wash a mug after you use it.”

“Sure, I will,” Peter would not, promising to do just that.

To the surprise of no one, when Elias woke up properly none of the tasks had been performed. He nodded and started filling divorce papers.

 ...

At some times Elias more wished than actually hoped Peter would by some accident managed to uphold his word:

“Could you return from your voyage till September?” Elias made a  request in Peter’s direction mid-January. “I will need you to sign some paperwork.”

“Yes, sure,” his fiancé does not even raise his eyes from almost empty crosswords which he is pretending to solve.

“Won’t you forget?”

“No,” Peter hesitantly writes one lonely letter in one of many free boxes, trying his luck. “Of course, I won’t.”

It would be a really quite unfortunate situation, if Elias could not forge Peter’s signature so well.

 ...

Other times, Peter’s failure to do what he is requested to, was quite embarrassing for both of them.

“Peter, and I am serious this time, you have to be present at your own wedding. So don’t forget!” Elias asked with a serious voice as he finished examining their suits.

“I would never!” Peter answered in the same dead serious tone and it did not feel honest at all. And so Elias turned to his fiancé and grabbed his chin, forcing him to actually look at him and pay attention. Peter looked like fish freshly pulled out of water.

“Promise me that you will be there!”

“Sure I promise,” Peter nodded much less certainly, somehow still managing to avoid eye contact even in such a close proximity.

Elias released him and gave him a pat to his chest. “Good.”

Of course, Peter failed to show up. What a luck that Elias did not give him the real date. He liked to test him once in a while.

 ...  

However, Elias was sure that there are situations where Peter could not be so stubborn would see the benefit of upholding his word. To be exact it was exactly one. He could not be that determined to ignore what is asked of him for once. As much as Elias did not believe in the competence of his occasional husband, there must exist at least one specific scenario when Peter would do what he is made to promise.

“And if he doesn’t kill you I will throw him in the Lonely?" Peter asked as if he was still considering saying no. He never could say no to a bet.

“And keep the way open so Jon can follow him, yes." Elias nodded.

"Easy enough..." he said smiling. He is not smiling anymore when they are in panopticon and all things went exactly as Elias has predicted.

“Don’t die there on my behalf," Elias grins when Peter decides to follow Martin, ready to stand in the way of his Archivist.

“Oh, I can promise you that one for sure.”

Peter Lukas was not a man of his word. And he was very determined in proving that to Elias. How could he not use that incredibly rare occasion when his husband did actually trust him to do something and not fail him?

Elias Bouchard is standing in the Panopticon, his gaze aimed at the impenetrable wall of the Forsaken, trying to track the presence of three people. He cannot See anything but he Knows they are there. And then two of them get out. And one does not.

He is probably sulking… He probably just retreated deeper into the Lonely… are thoughts Elias might be tempted to have if he did not know… Know better. There is no point to continue waiting.

“Liar,” he sighs to no one in particular as his company was only his former body he left there about one hundred and fifty years ago.

He is really starting to think that Peter is not just incompetent but he is not listening to him just to spite him…

Well, too late to ask now.

[koolkat9]

👀

AU Ask Game

GerEng + Peter Farm AU!

So basically. Arthur's mum dies a year or two before the main events of the au. So Arthur agrees to take custody of his 4/5 year old half brother Peter. That could probably be it's own au but I'm not going to get into the whole messiness of Arthur learning to be a dad. But just know Sufin were Peter's foster parents and Arthur actually became really good friends with them so Peter still gets to see them.

Anyway, a year or two later, Arthur learns that his estranged father has died and has given Arthur his farm. Arthur, who has just lost his job decides to accept the inheritance and perhaps give Peter a better life outside of the city.

The farm comes with two farm hands: Ludwig and his older brother Gilbert. Gilbert is friendly and a hard work and a huge help to getting Arthur settled in. But Ludwig is intimidating, keeps to himself, kind of cold which off puts Arthur. He's a hard worker though, built for manual labour so he can't complain.

Peter is actually the one to approach Ludwig first. Because yes, Ludwig is big and kind of scary, but so was Berwald and he turned out to be one of the sweetest men Peter had ever met. He was just a little socially awkward and maybe it's the same thing with Ludwig. So he sneaks off and starts following Ludwig around the farm, chatting with him. At first Ludwig doesn't know how to reply, but when they start talking about animals and tractors Ludwig finally comes out of his shell.

Peter babbles all about his time with Ludwig to Arthur who's kind of confused. Turns out Ludwig just isn't great with communicating with new people. He and Arthur eventually come to an understanding and develop a friendship.

And eventually a bit more than that. Arthur finds himself with a massive crush on Ludwig. He can't stop watching him work (staring at his muscles), gets flustered when Ludwig compliments him, dreams of kissing him, etc.

Some lovely gay moments I've brainstormed with the GerEng server:

Ludwig taking his shirt off on a hot day thinking he's alone, but Arthur is right there and sees it all.

Arthur us super pale and the sun is his enemy so the first summer on the farm, he gets burnt to a crisp. He refuses to put anything on the burn until Ludwig is like: "Fine I'll put it on you myself." And Arthur challenges him like "Do it." Cue them being in very close quarters, Ludwig's hands on Arthur's bare skin. At least the sunburn hides Arthur's blush. Both are having a gay meltdown. It's so deliciously awkward.

There is a storm forcing Ludwig to stay with Arthur and Peter. Once Peter is asleep on the couch, finally able to relax after the thunder kept spooking him, Arthur and Ludwig sit near the fire place (one of the only sources of light because the power has gone out). They chat for a bit and end up cuddling, and holding hands a bit. A wordless confession from both parties.

Arthur getting sick and can't be out of bed. Peter immediately runs to the German bros (specifically Ludwig for help). Ludwig taking initiative to take care of Arthur. Gilbert knowing that Ludwig actually just wants and excuse to pamper and dote on Arthur teases him a bit but lets him go. Peter and Lud making soup for Arthur together. Ludwig making sure Arthur stays in bed and also caring for Peter.

Arthur feels so guilty because this is way above Lud's pay grade. But it's also kind of nice to be fretted over and cared for by his crush.

Peter trying to getting GerEng together:

Peter: Do you like my brother?

Ludwig: (blushing) Uh.. W-Well... Of course. He's my boss and--

Peter: Not like that. Like do you like him like him?

Ludwig: N-No (blushes even more)

Peter: Because I like you. I'd be happy if you marry him. He needs someone like you.

Moving past the romance to other plot points. Arthur being way in over his head, not realizing how unprepared he is for farming. There's some money troubles. And Arthur is so terrified and stressed because he needs to care for Peter, Peter is his priority, but he's struggling to provide.

But don't worry, it ends happily. Ludwig and Arthur get married. Arthur finds his footing running a farm and it's all good.

[themculibrary]

Fics With Titles That Start With A Masterlist 2

Links Last Checked: May 13th, 2024

part one

A Clean Cut (ao3) - Brucenorris007 mj/peter T, 25k

Summary: Peter ended up outside Peter Pan Donuts without conscious effort. He convinced himself he could keep this much of the two people he loved the most.

Meanwhile, Michelle found herself wondering about a brown-eyed boy who left a mediocre donut shop looking like he'd lost something.

Adagio (ao3) - Lurkz pepper/natasha, pepper/tony, implied steve/tony T, 31k

Summary: It was supposed to be just an assignment. Falling for the person she was supposed to protect wasn’t really in the plan. But when do plans ever stay the same?

a different hue (ao3) - choi_kimmy steve/natasha G, 4k

Summary: "There will never come a day where he will forget the colours of Natasha’s eyes - they were every hue of the forest, gentle shades of green that reminded him of hope and home."

Or in other words; The law of the universe. Soulmates. You begin to see colours the moment your soulmate is born; that was the first half of the equation. You lose sight of colours the moment your soulmate dies; that was the second half of the equation.

Adjectives Assemble (ao3) - SugarFey maria/steve, carol/jessica, clint/natasha, kate/cassia M, 26k

Summary: Natasha wants to find that rare edition of The Master and Margarita before her rival at the Russian language bookstore does. Kate is distracted by the cute barista next door. Carol and Jessica dance around each other. Maria just wants to keep her business afloat without being bothered by pesky police officers or high school art teachers, no matter how polite they may be.

Another average day at Adjectives Assemble.

A Gram of Gold (ao3) - aftersoon (notboldly) clint/phil T, 11k

Summary: Pretending he was in love with his husband was easy. Pretending he wasn't in love with Clint was somewhat harder, however.

ah, but it’s cold outside (ao3) - Merideath darcy/steve T, 4k

Summary: Snow is falling thick and heavy in the fading daylight and Darcy presses closer to the glass to watch through the small patch not covered in a thick lacework of ice. She scrapes her nails on the ice, and shivers at the cold seeping into her fingertips.

AKA Bucky Barnes (ao3) - boombangbing bucky/jessica jones T, 8k

Summary: People don’t see what they’re not looking for.

A Little Favor (ao3) - NatRogers steve/natasha E, 138k

Summary: When Natasha decides she's ready to take on the next chapter of her life, she turns to a friend to ask for a little favor. It can't possibly get that complicated, can it?

All things being equal, I'd rather be in Philadelphia (ao3) - shinykari (meinterrupted) M, 8k

Summary: Darcy didn't sign on with SHIELD to be a hero. Too bad a group of bank robbers didn't give her a choice.

Along Came Two (ao3) - justanexercise maria/pepper/natasha E, 6k

Summary: Pepper Potts has been waiting a long time to meet her soul mates and of course they come with a lot of baggage and complications.

Alphas Initiative (ao3) - YukiRiikus_Reading_Room peggy/bucky, clint/steve, steve/bucky, pepper/rhodey/tony E, 10k

Summary: Steve's had a crush on the most popular Alpha at his university for as long as he can remember. But when Clint starts paying attention to him, Steve can't help but wonder if it's really love, or if it's just because he's an unknotted Omega...

A Marriage of Inconvenience (ao3) - WhinyWingedWinchester loki/tony, natasha/thor, odin/frigga M, 80k

Summary: Forced into an arranged marriage with Prince Loki of Aysgarth, Tony knows that he is not the ideal husband to the son of a king, but he still hopes that he might find true love with his husband like the stories he loves to read of adventures and happily-ever-afters.

Prince Loki, however, does not wish to be married, and he makes this clear to Tony even after their vows have been said before the priest. Life is no better for Tony in Castle Aysgarth than it was back in Iron Reach - he is as unwanted by Loki as he was by his father.

But slowly, things change. There is a steadily growing affection between them, something that might, perhaps, grow into more and Tony can only hope his love for Loki might one day be returned.

But then an assassin strikes unexpectedly, pirates attack, and Tony very well might be living an adventure from one of his books, but it looks like happily-ever-after might be too much to hope for.

A Minor Distraction (ao3) - orphan_account peggy/natasha E, 3k

Summary: Rumors about an organization experimenting with the super soldier serum bring Peggy Carter to Russia, where she meets a young factory worker named Natalia.

An Avenger and the Wasp (ao3) - bi_furious1 maria/hope, natasha/hope, ava/hope E, 9k

Summary: The Wasp wants something from the Black Widow. The Ghost wants the same thing from the Wasp. A brief interlude after the major events of ‘Infinity Whore’.

and the river flows beneath your skin (ao3) - Deisderium steve/bucky E, 114k

Summary: In which Steve and Bucky are forced to room together their senior year at boarding school, and accidentally soul bond to each other even though they kind of hate each other. All they have to do to get out of it is not kiss each other for a year so the accidental bond will fade. How hard could it be?

Anew. (ao3) - IViv tony/stephen M, 130k

Summary: In death, there was no glory, no redemption, no salvation.

Only darkness and ice—or that was what Tony thought. He closed his eyes in a Siberian bunker and opened them again on his 41st birthday, with War Machine flying into the distance.

A Shot Across The Bow (ao3) - Becassine, Call_Me_Kayyyyy (Cheeky9274) steve/bucky E, 18k

Summary: Bucky Barnes is a Pirate Captain, and one accustomed to getting his own way. When fate drops Steve Rogers in his path one lonely evening in Tortuga, his life is forever turned upside down.

Aunt Patty (ao3) - baloobird ned/peter G, 6k

Summary: One of Ned's judgmental relatives, his great Aunt Patty, is coming over for dinner so Ned has his boyfriend, Peter, stick around in the hopes that she won't ask him any embarrassing or offensive questions.

Too bad that doesn't work.

a wizard falls in love with a muggle (ao3) - haveufoundwhaturlookingfor draco/peter T, 3k

Summary: Draco decides to go to the muggle world when things get too much in the wizarding world after the Battle Of Hogwarts. There, he meets a boy named Peter Parker. A one night stand between them turns into something much more.

Awkward. (ao3) - boombangbing bruce/jane E, 48k

Summary: The accidental dating life of two awkward scientists.

[calciseptinefic]

then out of nowhere, somebody comes and hits you with an ooh la la la, ooh la la la, ooh la la la, ooh

Marvel || Wade Wilson/Peter Parker || Part 7 notes: Title from 'Mad Sounds' by Arctic Monkeys. Many thanks to babygato for her beta on this chapter. this fic is also available on ao3 warnings: none

.

← previous: Part 6

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It's easy to find a nearby taqueria. Wade gets tacos al pastor and a couple bottles of cerveza, while Peter gets chicken and a mango Jarritos. Wade tacks on a bag of chips with guac and queso, plántanos fritos, and two orders of churros, as it has been several hours since they last ate and Wade remembers Peter telling him he needs approximately six thousand calories a day.

After paying, they make the five minute walk to Central Park, find a patch of shaded grass beneath a tree, and dig in. Wade's tacos are delicious, studded with bright flashes of cilantro, pineapple, and onion against the rich fattiness of the marinated pork, and he makes Peter take one. The chips and fried plantains are also very good, if not a little greasy and quickly going cold. Wade doesn't mind. He went hungry a lot as a kid and, when he was special forces, he sometimes spent weeks eating the same three meals out of a pouch; a little extra oil isn't going to bother him.

"You know it's illegal to drink in a public park, right?" Peter says when Wade cracks open his first beer with his keys.

"Technically glass bottles aren't allowed in Central Park either," Wade answers, nodding at Peter's choice of soda. "So if the cops come to heckle us, I'm going to put on my strongest Canadian accent—" which Wade says with his strongest Canadian accent, "—and say sorry until they let us go just to escape the politeness. They wouldn't want any of my impeccable manners to rub off on them, ya know?"

Peter grins at the exaggerated vowels around a mouthful of shredded chicken, one of his cheeks rounded with food like a half-full chipmunk. It draws Wade's attention to the freckles that live there. If he could, Wade would give them a quick, greasy kiss—but he can't, because Peter's a married man, and Wade isn't that kind of asshole.

Once they've finished their tacos and chips and fried plantains—an early dinner or midday snack, depending on one's point of view—Wade hands Peter one of the small pastry bags with several churros stuffed in it and a plastic take-away cup filled with chocolate dipping sauce. The cinnamon sugar coating gets all over Wade's hands and the front of his hoodie, but the sweetness of it goes a long way in soothing Wade's lingering stress from the hospital.

"Well," Wade says as he chews. "That was a bust."

"Yeah," Peter mutters in agreement as he dunks one of his churros into the sauce cup resting on his knee. Brings it to his mouth, eats it, then says frustratedly, "Two leads down. One to go."

Stark and Strange led nowhere, and now the only person who Peter believes can possibly help him is Reed Richards, the quantum information scientist at MIT. The way Peter talked about him made him sound like an unwanted last option, a potential candidate slash headache.

"So what do you want to do?" Wade asks, finishing his churros. He crumples all his trash and puts it into the plastic bag that carried their takeout, then opens his second beer. "Amtrak has a train that goes right up to Boston."

Peter doesn't respond. Wade thinks about what they talked about on the subway: strings through decks of cards, long-shots, mathematical parameters and super calculators. Even if Richards himself can't help Peter, then at least he has the tools. Peter's silence might be from lingering disappointment—he had said that Strange was the best chance he had at getting back to his home universe—or it might be for another reason.

"You don't like him." Wade fills in the blank, remembering the way Peter grinned wryly when Wade called Richards 'Dr. Douchebag'. "Do you think he's going to be a problem?"

"It's not that Richards is a bad guy," Peter says, his tone worn thin by the number of times the same sentiment has been expressed. "But in my experience, he's blinded by the discoveries of science. He'll push and push and push until he has his answer, and not consider the consequences. He thinks science is... pure, I guess, and doesn't realize how easily it can be corrupted by powers that be. Not that Tony was any better, not with the whole Ultron thing, but at least Tony learned from that."

"Ultron?" Wade repeats, holding the syllables of it for a split second longer than Peter. "Do I wanna know?"

"Probably not. It was a big fucking mess." Peter rubs at his eyes, scrubbing an old exhaustion from them, and sighs. "You have the Terminator movies here?"

"All six movies and one flopped television series."

"Ultron was like Skynet. An artificial intelligence meant to protect humanity. Tony and Bruce—another scientist on the Avengers—created it as a peacekeeping protocol, but of course, it backfired when Ultron decided that the only way to protect humanity was to destroy it."

"Isn't that like the plot of every AI movie ever?" Wade says incredulously. "Let me guess: they put in failsafes if it did go south, but the AI overrode them and it went south."

"Ding ding ding," Peter says flatly. "You've won the jackpot."

"Superpowers, magic, and robots with malevolent god complexes," Wade lists off the things Peter has told him about his universe that Wade has only seen in fiction. "Seriously, how do civilians cope in your reality? Next thing you're going to tell me is that aliens exist."

Peter does not respond. Instead, he turns the empty bottle of Jarritos in his hands and begins to pick at the label. Wade immediately understands that Peter is trying to hide the real answer by not answering at all, which is an answer in of itself.

"I am going to pretend that your silence on the matter is not an affirmation because, honestly, I don't think I can handle that much sci-fi within a twenty-four hour period." Earlier, Peter told Wade that he had been Spiderman for roughly ten years and, in that time, he had gotten involved in weird stuff and big stuff. A robot wanting to kill all humans definitely sounds like both, but aliens? That's even weirder and bigger. "So let's go back to Richards before my brain explodes."

Peter hums and peels the label off the bottle, leaving behind a tacky residue. Wade watches as he rolls it between his palms, the leftover glue sticking to his palms and his ring occasionally hitting the glass with a soft clink.

"My problem with Richards is the circumstance," Peter explains. "The quantum computer is going to need parameters that would be almost impossible for me to obtain without the right equipment, and the right equipment will be hard to access. Quantum mechanics isn't my forte either, so I would absolutely need someone with the specialization to help me—and that someone would be Richards, assuming he believed me and assuming that he would dedicate the time and resources needed to help me."

"You could just crawl on the ceiling for him," Wade suggests. "Worked for me."

Peter smiles thinly at Wade and points out, "That just proves I can crawl on the ceiling, Wade, not that I'm from an alternate reality."

Even if it's the same thought Wade had this morning, he says nothing as he lays down on the grass and shifts his face away from Peter. Outwardly, Wade's been playing along with Peter's 'I am a superhero from another universe'; inwardly, he's been giving more weight to the possibility that Peter's proclamation might be a delusion brought on by trauma, yet not discounting the first possibility completely. Wade doesn't want to be caught by surprise if either circumstance is proven true, especially not when Peter's safety and well-being might be at risk.

"You think he'll rat you out?" Wade asks.

"Not intentionally, or with bad intention, but... yes. He would."

"I could threaten him and his loved ones," Wade offers.

"Thank you, Wade, but I have to humbly decline. I would prefer to get back home with minimal extortion," Peter says flatly.

Wade knew Peter would refuse. Though he had surprised Wade earlier when he talked about trespassing, it is not shocking to know he draws his moral line in the sand when people are involved. He seems like the type of person to believe in the inherent goodness of strangers and the redemption of second chances, and neither of these philosophies are ones that Wade subscribes to. Wade has hard limits—everyone does—but he learned that most people are shitty, especially the people who end up in his literal and metaphorical crosshairs. The fact that Reed Richards is now on Wade's radar means he probably deserves at least one sucker punch to the face.

"You're still thinking about it, aren't you," Peter says.

"He had an extremely punchable face!" Wade whines, propping himself up on his elbows. "You can't tell me you haven't thought about it."

"Thought about it, yes. Done it? No."

"Well then you can live vicariously through me."

Whatever Peter was about to say—probably some lie about how he doesn't actually want to feed Richards a knuckle sandwich—is halted by the blare of Wade's ringtone. The only person who calls Wade on his personal phone nowadays is Weasel which means that either a) Weasel has finished compiling a dossier on Peter or b) Weasel has a new job for him.Wade can't ignore it either way, so he sighs and gets to his feet.

"I have to take this," Wade says to Peter as he pulls his phone out of his pocket. When Peter nods, Wade begins to walk briskly away. He doesn't know if Peter's superpowers extend to super-hearing, but he's not taking any chances.

"Sup, Jack," Wade answers as he moves out of earshot.

"I told you to stop fucking calling me that," Weasel snaps.

"Old habits die hard," Wade singsongs even though in the seven or so years since they've known each other, Weasel has never once gone by his birth name. More seriously, Wade then says, "Whatcha got for me?"

"Everything and anything there is to know about one Peter Benjamin Parker," Weasel answers. "Did a quick background check and pulled all the relevant shit. Some irrelevant shit too. I sent the files to your email."

Wade takes a deep breath in through the nose and lets it out through his mouth. So. Peter Parker exists in this world. Which can mean one of two things:

In scenario number one, it means that the man who just inhaled five street tacos and an ungodly amount of Mexican side dishes is a super-powered individual with a messed up head. How he got those super powers, how he found himself in Wade's care, and how much of his backstory is real are all mysteries that Wade needs to unravel as quickly as possible so he can keep Peter safe from whatever might be after him. It isn't an ideal situation, of course, but mental illness and the military is much more Wade's wheelhouse than the multiverse.

And then there's scenario number two, in which Peter actually is a spider-themed superhero from another universe who accidentally broke into Wade's apartment, and the Peter Benjamin Parker that Weasel was able to find is his analog from Wade's universe.

Another Peter.

A Peter that belongs here.

A Peter that won't have to go back.

A Peter that might be single and ready to mingle—

Keep dreaming, the Debbie Downer part of Wade's mind scoffs. This isn't some elaborate, inter-dimensional matchmaking scheme. There is no other Peter. Just this one.

Wade knows that Peter is most likely not from another reality. The shock of seeing Peter on his ceiling had made the 'I'm from an alternate universe' routine temporarily believable but—since the moment he woke up—Wade began to slowly doubt the possibility, a tickle in the back of his brain that he could not ignore. Occam's razor or some shit, not that either situation is devoid of convolution.

"And?" Wade asks, dragging his mind back on track and looking back at Peter. Peter has flopped down on the grass and spread his rangy limbs akimbo, more skinny starfish than spider. Wade's boots look comically large on him.

"And what?" Weasel says.

"Anything unusual?"

"Fucking nada." Weasel snorts. On the edge of his hearing, Wade can hear the tiny clacks of keys on a keyboard being hit. "Records show he was orphaned around six. Went to live with his aunt and uncle, who legally adopted him, and the uncle was fatally shot when he was fifteen. Went to Midtown for high school, then to MIT as both an undergrad and for his doctorate in biochemistry. He's currently employed at some swanky place as a biochemical engineer and—according to his tax records—makes a decent chunk of change."

Aunt and uncle, Weasel said. Aunt May, Peter said. She was the only other person besides other Wade and MJ that Peter recounted when they were talking about loved ones. Given his vaguely tragic backstory, it makes sense that Peter didn't mention anyone else, as 'anyone else' appears to be dead. That information falls in line with what tidbits Peter has given him; it's the second half of Weasel's report that doesn't make sense. Peter had told Wade that he was currently a grad student at NYU, not a biochemical engineer who graduated MIT.

MIT, where Reed Richards works. MIT, where Peter needs to go next. It feels like a very suspicious coincidence. When they eventually go, Wade will have to handle that excursion with extreme caution.

"Anything on the company?" Wade asks, pursuing another line of thought.

"Nothing particularly shady, though I didn't dig deep," Weasel tells him. "It's small and private and doesn't receive any contracts from the military—at least according to public record."

"Look into it," Wade tells Weasel.

"Okay, sure, just a little light hacking into DARPA's servers to spice up my week." Weasel scoffs, a rough sound that Wade knows is paired with a particularly exaggerated eye roll. "Though if you want my honest opinion—"

"Your honest opinion is like a bag of dog shit that's been set on fire, but go on."

"I don't think this poindexter ever got detention, much less somehow became involved in a top secret government experiment. Or came from an alternate universe. Are you sure you saw him crawling on the ceiling? It might have been... I don't know, one of your post-traumatic stresses."

"My hallucinations are auditory only, thank you for bringing that up." Wade sometimes gets a loud, persistent ringing in his ears but he's never seen things that weren't real. He's crazy, but he's not that brand of crazy. "What else?"

"What, suddenly you can't fucking read?"

"I'll be Jared, nineteen, and you can be Spark Notes." Wade shifts his phone to his other ear and demands, "What. Else."

"Well, other than a squeaky clean criminal record, a quality education, and a good job, your man shares an apartment in Queens with one Mary Jane Watson."

Mary Jane. MJ must be a nickname.

"His wife," Weasel stresses.

Wade says nothing. Hearing about her existence from Peter had been an abstraction, an amorphous idea of a person; hearing it from Weasel makes her more real, as though she will suddenly appear on the path and leap into Peter's arms. It makes that sick, gnawing feeling of jealousy return to the pit of Wade's stomach. It's just his luck that, of all the details to match up, this is the one without any holes.

"Seriously?" Weasel groans loudly. "You mean to tell me you already knew he was married?"

"He has a ring." Wade's tongue feels formless in his mouth, making the words stiff and difficult to spit out. "He mentioned her. Called her MJ."

"Jesus Christ," Weasel swears. A moment of silence stretches between them as Weasel processes Wade's admission. "Look, it's not like I give a fuck or am going to moral grandstand you or whatever. I know you wanna bang this twink despite the red flags—hell, you're charging in like a bull, who are we kidding—but I thought you weren't into that home-wrecking shit?"

"I'm not," Wade answers because he isn't. Flirting and wanting are completely different from doing, and being a piece of stale bread in the shit sandwich of adultery has always left Wade with a bad taste in his mouth. He has never—and would never—knowingly help another person cheat, especially when threesomes are so much more fun for everyone involved. "He's just... Peter."

Just Peter. As though saying his name could convey the hundreds of details Wade's been hoarding since Peter crashed into his life, from the way his nose wrinkles to the thickness of his New York accent on certain words. Wade once again looks over at him lying in the grass, sunshine dappled on his borrowed clothes through the canopy.

"In any case, the wife hasn't reported him missing," Weasel says. "You think she's... involved?"

"It's only been about twelve hours," Wade murmurs, thinking. The whole 'you have to wait twenty-four hours to report someone missing' idea is a false assumption: missing people can be reported as soon as their absence becomes worrisome. Since MJ hasn't filed a report, Peter's absence is therefore expected or a regular occurrence. Any guesses at culpability are just that: guesses.

"And you're sure this whole thing isn't an incredibly detailed hallucination?"

"Trust me, Jack, if I went full throttle into Crazy Town, you would not be making commentary in the back seat, nor would the literal man of my dreams be married to someone else. So no. I am reasonably sure that I am sound of mind at this moment."

"Well, if you're sure you haven't finally cracked, then either there's nothing going on, or this is so well covered up that everything is airtight." Weasel pauses before saying, "I can't believe I'm about to say this—because I really, really, really don't want to be caught up in whatever bullshit you might be neck deep in—but Parker is a dead end."

Wade can't help but grin at the unspoken question. He's known Weasel long enough to know that the mystery of the situation has wormed its way into the oily man's over-analyzing brain and now he's curious. He wants to know why Peter Parker ended up in Wade's apartment, why he has superpowers, and perhaps most importantly, who is responsible.

"Peter's given me a few names, though I don't know if there's a connection between them or if they're viable leads," Wade tells Weasel. "We spent all morning looking for a wizard named Stephen Strange and came up with nothing. His ex didn't know anything either."

Incredulously, Weasel repeats, "Wizard?"

"Likely just a Buddhist monk living in Kathmandu."

"Right." Weasel clears his throat. "Who else? Wizard, monk, or Muggle."

Christine Palmer. Reed Richards. Tony Stark and his husband, Steve. Peter has mentioned all of them at one point or another, and Wade doesn't know if they're random people Peter's built into his delusion or if they're all somehow connected. Wade doesn't want to take any chances.

"Do you want me to look into the wife?" Weasel asks once he has the names down. "The aunt?"

"No stone unturned, or whatever the fuck the saying is," Wade says. He knows that Peter would probably be furious with him if he found out that Wade was asking Weasel to dig into the lives of his loved ones, but Wade is willing to risk such ire. He would rather Peter be angry with him and safe, than in danger."And Weasel?"

"Yeah?" Weasel asks distractedly. Wade can once again hear the clack of his keyboard as he types.

"Thank you."

It isn't often that they exchange genuine pleasantries—usually, it's insults and gruff IOUs—but this thanks is sincere enough that Weasel hears it through the beginning of a research induced fugue state.

"I'm still putting this on your tab, Deadpool," Weasel drawls after a moment, using the nickname he came up with when Wade was diagnosed with cancer. Back then, when the chemo looked like it might kill Wade instead of cure him, Weasel told Wade that if he died, he'd feel guilty collecting his winnings from Sister Margaret's betting pool about which patron would kick it first. It's one of the few running jokes between them that has more fondness behind it than sarcasm. "So try not to get killed until you pay me back."

"Aye aye, captain." Wade gives a jaunty salute that Weasel cannot see and, without goodbye, Weasel hangs up.

Putting his phone back in his pocket, Wade allows himself a moment to be unsteady. He closes his eyes, tilts his head back, and lets the sunshine warm his face. It's frustrating that the information Weasel gave him wasn't more revealing, that it left Wade with more questions than answers. He knows that he should go home and immediately look at the files Weasel's sent him. Maybe he will find a clue buried in the quotidian, be able to recognize some obscure piece of the puzzle that Weasel couldn't because of his lack of context.

It would be the smart thing to do.

It would be the right thing to do.

But truthfully, Wade doesn't want to open that email. He doesn't want to read those files. Now that he's mostly certain that Peter isn't from another universe, he knows how to better handle the situation. He also knows that he needs to tread carefully. There's a lot that needs to be uncovered and Wade must operate within the parameters of Peter's delusion. Nothing good will come from it being forcefully broken.

Tomorrow, Wade decides, opening his eyes and rolling the soreness out of his neck. I'll look at everything tomorrow.

Wade walks back over to Peter, hands in his pockets. Peter squints at Wade when Wade stands above him.

"Weasel?" Peter asks.

"Weasel," Wade confirms. Wade isn't at all surprised that Peter made such a guess; Wade had mentioned him previously, so it makes sense. Wade still doesn't know how Peter knows so much about him; maybe Peter's exceptionally empathetic, able to play off other people's responses, or maybe Wade's unknowingly involved, considering his own military history. The idea that he might be partially responsible makes Wade shiver.

"New job?"

"Yep." Wade holds a hand out for Peter to grab. Peter takes it and Wade hauls him up to his feet. "Sent me some boring stuff to go over. Big snooze fest. I don't wanna do it at all." Wade tilts his head to the side and grins. "Do you maybe wanna help me procrastinate?

"Sure." Peter smiles and grabs the plastic bag with all their trash off the ground. "What are you thinking?"

"Well, I know we just ate, but I was thinking I'd cook a late dinner and we could binge watch all of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, since your universe is savage and uncultured." Wade reaches up and adjusts Peter's baseball cap, which sat crooked on his head. He shoves his hands back into his pockets immediately afterwards.

"Tempting," Peter says, pretending to think about it. "Will our movie marathon include candy and popcorn?"

"Will there be candy and popcorn," Wade repeats with a snort. "Uh, duh?"

Peter nods sagely and replies, "Then I am convinced, Mr. Wilson. Let's go home, and rot our teeth and brains."

And if Wade feels a twinge of guilt when Peter says 'home', he tells himself that he'll deal with it—along with everything else—tomorrow.

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next → : Part 8

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[subtletruamadumping]

A Pitch Black Room, A Velvet Ribbon, A Secret Box

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This was my first year doing NaNoWriMo. It started as a writing prompt (the title is literally just the prompt) and it's a collection of short stories from many different peoples' perspectives linked by various objects. I won this year but never looked back at it. In fact, I am kind of embarrassed by it but I try to remind myself I was literally a child. Instead of being broken up into chapters, it's broken into characters.

Written in November 2016

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Part 2, Martin

The secret box had been sitting in the pitch black room for longer than Martin could remember. He had first seen it when he had gone in to fix some of the wiring through the house. He hadn’t paid much attention to it, sitting there in the dust and the dark. It had belonged to his mother, he knew that. He didn’t know what was inside it, though. He was little more concerned with not getting electrocuted. When he had come down from the attic that day, he had forgotten to ask his mom what was in it. Probably nothing but spiders. It was probably just a family heirloom. He soon forgot about it.

Martin grew up. It took many years, but soon he was an adult. His parents had given him the house after they decided to move a few states away. They wanted to start over, leaving everything in the house. They even their furniture. Martin was alright with this deal and even helped his parents pay for their new house. The house he had grown up in was now his. He didn’t go into the attic again, even though he cleaned out many of the other rooms.

Life continued, as it usually does, and Martin fell in love. After a little while, he was married and the house he had been raised in was no going to be used to raise his kids. He had a boy, a girl, then another boy. Darian, Vivian, then Peter. They were quite a rowdy bunch and had a hard time sitting still for a long time. They loved their grandmother and greatly enjoyed going on trips to visit her. But they learned the most about her one day when Martin decided they should clean out the attic.

“Make sure you take some flashlights if you want to come.” He said to Darian “It’s pitch black up there.”

“I want to come, too!” Vivian whined.

“Oh, me too! Me too!” Peter joined in.

“Alright, alright.” Martin laughed “Go find some flashlights.” The three scrambled away, looking high and low. After a small fiasco with batteries, they each had their own and were ready to ascend into the attic.

“Alright, are you guys ready?” Martin asked. The kids all cheered in the affirmative, making Martin smile.

“Okay, then,” he said “let's go exploring.” The kids squeezed in delight, chattering amongst themselves. Martin continued to smile to himself as he pulled down the rickety ladder that lead to the attic. The kids suddenly grew quiet as they peered up into the darkness. Martin tried to imagine what it would be like to be a kid again and tried to think about what they saw. They probably saw something much more than an attic. The child's imagination was truly an amazing thing.

“Come on, guys.” he said, taking the first step up the ladder. It creaked a little and the kids all gasped. The old wood held, though, and he was able to take another step.

“Me next!” Donivan cried, jumping up on the ladder.

“Hey, I wanted to go next!” Vivian yelled, trying to push him off the ladder.

“What about me?” Peter whined, joining the throng.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Martin said over them all, coming down the ladder and forcing them all to move back to break up he fight.

“Vi started it.” Donivan accused.

“I did not!”

“It doesn't matter who started it.” Martin said sternly, “If you're going to fight, you can't come up. It might be dangerous up there and I need you guys to pay attention to what I say to you.”

“Okay,” they all said, a little dejeced.

“Now, Donivan will go first.” Martin dictated.

“Oh, yeah!” Donivan cheered.

“Then Vi.”

“Aww,” Peter whined.

“Sorry, but that's just what happens when you're the youngest, buddy.” Martin said, patting him on the shoulder.

“It can't wait until I'm older than them.” Peter grumbled.

“It doesn't work like that.” Martin said “Now, let's go.” He mounted the ladder, making sure the kids weren't going to break out in another fight.

“Donivan, don't come up until I tell you, okay?” He called down, looking over his shoulder.

“Okay,” Donivan replied. Martin looked back up and slowly made his way up the ladder, testing each step to make sure it wouldn't break under his weight. There were plenty of creaks, but no cracks. He made it to the top without incident and clicked on his flashlight to fight the pitch blackness. The room was smaller than he remembered, more crammed with stuff. There was a thick layer of dust on everything, making it look like a grey mold had been growing for a long time. Martin turned back go the ladder and looked down.

“Alright, Donivan, come on up.” He called. The boy grabbed the ladder eagerly, but with each step he grew more and more hesitant. When he was at the top step, he looked back down at his siblings.

“Come on, Don.” Martin said, holding down his hand to him. Donivan looked back up and took his hand. Martin helped pull him into the attic. Donivan clicked on his flashlight and looked around the room.

“Yetch.” He said, wrinkling his nose “There's so much dust.”

“That's what happens when you leave things alone for years.” Martin said, then turned back to the hole in the floor.

“Vi, you're next.” he called.

“Yay!” she cheered. She happily scrambled up the ladder, not even hesitating once.

“Wow, look at you!” Martin said, helping her into the dark room “You must be part monkey or something.” Vivian laughed, then sneezed.

“Eww, it's really dusty up here.” She said, turning on her flashlight “It looks like Peter's room.”

“I heard that!” Peter called up the ladder.

“Come on up, it's your turn.” Martin replied. Peter tried to go up the ladder as quickly as possible, but he hesitated halfway up.

“Come on, you're almost there.” Martin encouraged him. He tentatively made his way up the remainder and Martin hauled him into the room.

“How are we not going to fall down that hole?” Peter asked, looking down the way he had just come up.

“We'll just have to be extra careful.” Martin said “Turn on your flashlight.” Peter did as he was told and looked around the room. The other two had separated and were exploring the corners of the room. Peter ran to join Donivan and Martin stood up. He immediately hit his head on the ceiling.

“You okay, Dad?” Vivian called back.

“Yeah, I'm fine.” he replied, rubbing his head. He was going to have to stoop the entire time.

“Alright, guys.” he called, getting their attention “We need to sort through all this stuff.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” Donivan asked.

“Well, everyone can make three piles.” Martin said “One for things we know we need to keep, one for things we know we need to get rid of, and one for things we're not sure about.”

“I'll look through this side!” Vivian yelled from across the room.

“I'll be over here!” Donivan cried.

“I'll do the middle!” Peter joined in.

“I'll supervise.” Martin said.

~*~

The kids has seemed to forget about sorting. It had lasted about five minutes before Donivan had found something exciting and distracted the others from their work. After a while, they remembered they were supposed to be doing and went back to their own corners. Not even a minute later, though, Peter called for his siblings to come and see what he had found in his pile of junk. The kids ran back and forth across the attic, showing each other their newfound treasures. Martin let them play and busied himself with putting things into his sorting piles. The biggest pile, so far, was the things he wasn't sure about. There were a few things that were definitely junk; some blankets that had moth holes in them, a bucket of rusty nails, an old paint can. However, there were things like photo albums and nice looking furniture. Those he put in his keep pile. Almost everything else was placed in his pile of uncertainty. He didn’t remember ever having this much stuff.

“Look at this!” Peter called out, causing the other two to rush over. They chattered excitedly over the compass Peter had found, each taking a turn to hold and inspect it. They wondered where it came from, what it had been used for, how it had gotten into the attic, and who it had belonged to before them. They dreamed about a lost explorer, trying to find mythical beasts out in the wilderness, with only the compass as his guide. They imagined what it would be like trying to find their way back to civilization after being lost in the woods.

“Put it in the keep pile.” Donivan commanded. Peter obeyed and the others went back to their part of the room. There was quiet, only interrupted by the sound of things being placed into piles of moved as the family looked through all the stuff that now belonged to them. Martin added an antique globe to his keep pile.

“Guys, come look at this old kite I found!” Donivan called across the room. The two other kids went over and marveled at it. Martin remembered when he had used to pay with the kite when he was a kid. Maybe he would take them all out and show them how to fly it when they were done with the attic. That is, if they ever finished the attic. It might not happen for a while. Maybe he could just throw out everything. It would certainly make things easier.

“It’s going in the keep pile.” Donivan said authoritatively. Martin smiled to himself.

One man’s trash is a kid’s treasure. He thought to himself. They would never let him get rid of all this stuff. It was great fuel for imagination. They could turn almost anything up here into a toy for one of their games. There was no reason to take that away from them.

They each went back to their piles, again, and continued their treasure hunts. They weighed each new item to see if they would be able to use it in one of their games. They tried to see how many purposes any one thing could have. They tried to imagine the article in as many different situations as possible. Martin missed the unexplored creativity of childhood. Now-a-days, he had a hard time seeing things for more than they actually were. A screwdriver was just a screwdriver, not a sword or fairy wand. It was hard to even remember when he had been able to imagine such things. It had been so long since he had been able to use his imagination like his kids could.

“I found a secret box!” Vivian cried. Even Martin grew interested at this and came over. Vivian had pulled an old, wooden box out from a stack of other things. Martin didn’t remember seeing this box before. It looked like a jewelry box, though, so it must have belonged to his mother. It was a very nice box.

“How do you know it’s a secret box?” He asked Vivian, kneeling next to her.

“Look, it has a clasp.” She said, pointing to it “It’s there to keep people out. You only need to keep people out of a secret box.”

“And it was hidden in the attic.” Donivan added.

“What do you think’s in it?” Peter asked.

“I don’t know.” Donivan replied “It looks too small to be a treasure chest or something like that.”

“I bet it’s a jewelry box.” Vivian said haughtily.

“Why would you need to keep jewelry in a secret box?”

“Just because,” Vivian said, rolling her eyes “You’re a boy. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Whatever.” Donivan sighed.

“Well, let’s stop speculating and open it.” Martin said.

“What’s ‘speculating’ mean?” Peter asked.

“It means thinking about it.” Martin answered, reaching down and undoing the clasp. The kids held their breath as he opened the lis, but were disappointed when they saw what was inside.

“It’s just a bunch of papers.” Donivan said unhappily.

“What good are papers?” Peter whined.

“Nothing, that’s what.” Donivan answered.

“Hey, now, you don’t know that.” Martin said, picking up the box “This was your grandma’s box, so there might be a few interesting things in here.”

“Oh, I bet they’re love letters!” Vivian gasped in delight.

“Bleh,” Peter groaned.

“Maybe it’s some kind of diary.” Donivan said “Do you think we could turn them into a history textbook?”

“Your grandma’s not that old.” Martin said flatly. He dumped the contents of the box into his hand. The papers were all folded together, so he gently unfolded the first layer. When he was able to see what was written on the inside, his eyes scanned over the words. It took him a minute to realize what he was reading.

“What is it, Daddy?” Vivian asked, tugging at his arm.

“It’s a poem.” He answered.

“What?”

“It looks like Grandma was a poet when she was younger.” He said, unfolding another one.

“Could we turn these into a book?” Donivan asked.

“We’ll have to ask your grandma about that.” Martin replied, carefully putting the papers back into the box.

“Aww, why?”

“Because they were secret. Duh.” Vivian said.

“What makes you so sure about that?”

“They were in a secret box.”

“She’s got a point.” Martin said “We need to ask Grandma’s permission before we do anything with them.”

“Oh, alright.” Donivan said unhappily.

“Will Grandma become famous?” Peter asked.

“I don’t know,” Martin answered truthfully “but I do know that we still have to get this attic cleaned.”

~*~

“Your mom called today.” Mary, Martin’s wife, said when he came home from work.

“Oh?” He queried “Did she want to talk about the poems?”

“The topic did come up, yes.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she didn’t want them published until after her death.”

“I wonder why.” Marin said with a frown.

“She said you could read them to the kids, though.” Mary said “It seems like she wants them to stay within the family, for now.”

“I’m sure the kids will love that.” Martin said “Even if Peter doesn’t really know what’s going on.”

“I have a feeling that will make it even better for him, actually.”

“I’ll go get the box down after dinner.” Martin announced.

“The secret box.” Mary corrected “Vivian is making sure everyone’s calling it by it’s proper title.”

“Right, right,” Martin laughed “Well, it won’t be secret for much longer. It will come to light when I get it out of that pitch black room.”

[cherienymphe]

Bloodied Crowns (Peter Parker x Reader)

WARNINGS: NON-CON, STEPCEST, murder, violence, abusive realtionships, Tony x reader, prince!Peter, king!Tony, queen!Reader

➥ divider by @firefly-graphics

➥ based off of this ask

summary:  When your husband, King Anthony, is killed in a coup staged by his son from his previous marriage, Peter, you are forced to marry the young man who no longer feels the need to hide his feelings.

~

Peter was only eighteen when you married the king, the stern monarch losing his wife only a few months prior. The engagement and the wedding happened so quickly, and before you knew it, you were married to King Anthony Stark. Truth be told, you’d feared that you’d never marry at all, and that you’d bring shame to your name, but a stroke of luck, or perhaps misfortune, had put you directly into the king’s path.

Your family had attended the queen’s funeral to pay your respects. It had been drilled into you to catch the eye of an available suitor, as it had been many times before, and while you were disgusted that you could not even properly pay your respects to the royal family, you understood your parents’ desperation. You were twenty-eight with no prospects on the horizon. They had no other children, no sons, your mother unable to conceive after yourself, and so the weight of carrying on the family name was solely on your shoulders.

Your family was not poor by any means, but you were far from wealthy. That being said, your mother spent an outrageous amount to get you the most captivating black dress money could buy. It was not something that would draw too much attention, but enough so that you did not look like a grieving widow yourself. When it was your turn to pay your respects, you recalled bowing to the young prince, the brunette barely acknowledging anyone’s presence. It was rumored that he and his mother were close, that he’d taken her death very hard, and the way he seemed to stare right through you confirmed as much.

When you bowed to the king, apologizing for his loss, you could feel his eyes on you. This was nothing you concerned yourself with. After all, you were speaking to him and he you, but when you rose, you were taken aback by the intensity you found in his dark eyes. Where his son seemed to look through you, the king could not seem to take his eyes off of you. No one else seemed to notice, and, brushing it off, by the time you returned home, you had forgotten all about it.

Until a few days later when a royal guard was at your door. You were being invited to dine with the king, the invitation extending to your family as well, and although you were confused, you knew you could not refuse. Even if you wanted to. The dinner was nice, and you were a bit surprised at how easy it was to get along with the king. You never thought him cruel, but you’d heard that he was a rather stern man. After supper, he extended the invitation to staying at the castle so that you would not have to travel back so late in the evening. Your mother answered before you had the chance to, and it was no surprise to you that the answer was yes.

The castle was so different during the night. It seemed less welcoming and more ominous, and you found it hard to sleep that night. Convinced that the corridors would be empty, you quietly slipped from your chambers and made your way down to the kitchens. There were still a few servants lingering about, cleaning or preparing for the next day. You felt guilty for bothering them for something to drink.

“Nonsense, my lady. I would be more than happy to get that for you,” a younger girl by the name of Guinevere told you.

“Oh...please,” you waved her off. “No one is around. Call me Y/N.”

Her eyes seemed to sparkle as you told her your name, but she said nothing more as she gave you your water. The dark corridors did not scare you, but the eerie silence was a bit off putting, especially in such a grand structure. You had turned the corner to make your way back to your room when you bumped into none other than the prince. You had almost dropped the drink, and you placed your hand on your chest in an attempt to still your heart.

“Your highness. My apologies, I did not see…”

Your words died in your throat as the prince fixed you with a look that made your stomach churn. You snapped your mouth shut, swallowing as he simply glared at you, brown eyes looking so much darker. You had not seen him since the queen’s burial, and he did not look much better than he did then. Before you had a chance to say anything else, he had shoved past you, almost making you drop the goblet in your hand, and a low gasp escaped you as your other shoulder harshly met the wall. You turned to watch him go, shock and confusion pouring through you, wondering what you had done to offend him so.

It was only a few weeks later did you get your answer.

“I...I beg your pardon?”

The king reached for your hand, a soft breeze ruffling his dark hair as he brought it to his lips. They were soft as they brushed over your skin, and the corner of them curved upwards into a smile.

“Everything is already being arranged, but...this is my formal proposal. I need a queen, Peter needs a mother, and you are everything I could have hoped for,” he told you.

You stared at him in shock, feeling as if the world had been ripped out from beneath your feet. Your mind whirled as you tried to make sense of this and where this had come from, and suddenly, the puzzle started to piece together. The countless dinner invitations, the gleam in your parents’ eyes, the hushed conversations...the prince’s animosity. You were being courted by the king this whole time...and you’d been none the wiser. His chuckle pulled you from your thoughts.

“When your mother told me that you could be quite oblivious, I thought that it was a simple exaggeration.”

He found humor in your distress, you realized, and you swallowed.

“I do not know what to say,” you slowly breathed, and you watched him tilt his head at you, a frown beginning to form.

“You say yes,” he said with a scoffing laugh as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

You realized that to anyone else, it would be.

“Your majesty...I feel as if we’ve only just met. Surely, you would allow me time to think-.”

“Think about what?”

His hand tightened on yours, and you winced. He leaned in, genuine confusion in his dark eyes as he stared into your own.

“I am a king telling you that you are to be my queen...and you are hesitant?”

The severity of the situation suddenly dawned on you. Anthony was a king. You were a mere lady attempting to refuse his proposal for marriage, and your heart sank to your stomach. You blinked at him, and his face suddenly smoothed over as he sighed.

“Ah. I understand what this is about…”

“You do…?”

He softly smiled at you, reaching up to brush his thumb along your chin.

“You come from an acceptable background. You are beautiful and smart and kind. I assure you, this is genuine. This is not some poor attempt to cope with my grief. In all honesty, my marriage to the queen was over long before she died,” he told you.

You looked away, realizing that you were not getting out of this. Whether you liked it or not, you would be marrying the king, and with reluctance and a shaky voice, you accepted his proposal. He straightened when you did, a look of satisfaction on his features, and he looked as if he wanted to kiss you. You were thankful that he did not.

The wedding took place only a couple of months later, every nearby royal, and even some across the water, in attendance. It was a grand and beautiful affair, no expense spared, and it was days later that you found out it far outshined his first wedding. You remembered feeling sick as you walked down the aisle, the feeling only getting worse as your gaze met that of the prince.

In the time since the official engagement, you had interacted with the prince only a handful of times. Each time more disastrous than the last. You told yourself that he was grieving. His mother’s death was sudden and had hit him hard and here his father was, marrying again so soon. You did not fault him for his cold behavior. He was young, after all. You would expect nothing less, to be honest, but you could not lie and say that it did not hurt.

Unfortunately, even after the marriage, he did not soften towards you. Every attempt to get to know him was met with nothing short of loathing, and you finally accepted that he would come around in his own time. The last thing you wanted Peter to think was that you were trying to replace his mother. You did not know how long this would go on, but you did not expect it to be more than a year. 

You were wrong.

“I throw that kid the best birthday celebration a nineteen year old could ask for and this is how he shows his appreciation? By not even having the decency to show up?”

Tony was angry as he sipped from his goblet, glaring down at the attendees dancing below. A wonderful number was being played by a string quartet, several single princesses in attendance, and an hour into the celebration, Peter was still absent. You placed your hand on your husband’s arm with a sigh.

“I am sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, Tony. He will show,” you tried to assure him.

His shoulders sagged as he slammed his drink down, and his eyes softened as he turned to you. He reached for you, and you flinched, but he paid it no mind as he brushed his finger along your cheek.

“You are far too nice to him...and he hardly deserves it,” he whispered.

“He’s your son,” you reminded him with a frown. “Do not talk about him like that.”

“He’s ungrateful,” he spat.

“He’s grieving,” you argued.

“It’s been a year,” Tony sneered. “How much time does he need?”

You sharply turned away, swallowing a sigh as anger flared within you. Sometimes Tony could be so insensitive, amongst other things, and it baffled you. Peter lost the only mother he ever knew, and Tony was treating it as if it was something minor. After a few more moments, you excused yourself under the guise of needing some air. In truth, you were determined to track down the prince.

It was not a hard task. He tended to frequent the same places when he called himself hiding. You found him deep within the grounds, lounging on a branch high up in the tree. It was getting late, the sun currently setting, and you held up the skirts of your dress as you trudged towards him. You knew that he heard you, and you resisted the urge to sigh as you stood below him. Your heart ached for him as you could not even begin to imagine what he was going through. After all, you still had both of your parents.

“Peter,” you eventually called.

He yet again pretended as if he had not heard you, a hurtful habit of his, and this time you did sigh.

“Peter, please come down. Your father is concerned about your whereabouts, and...and I am concerned about you. I-.”

“Why have you deluded yourself into thinking I care about how you feel?”

His tone was cold, venom coating every word, and your heart clenched. He rarely spoke to you, every time he did as cold as today, but this was different. You were unsure of what to say, and before you had the chance to remedy that, he was hopping down. It was a bit cool out, and his coat flared behind him as he strode towards you, face hard and nostrils flared.

“Why have you deluded yourself into thinking that I care about you at all?”

You reared back, staring at him with wide eyes. His words hurt, that you would not deny, and as much as you fought against it, you could feel a familiar burn behind your eyes. You swallowed, briefly glancing down as you took a step back.

“Peter-.”

“My mother was not even in the ground properly before you came sniffing around my father like a bitch in heat,” he sneered.

Your lips parted, wide eyes staring at him in shock at his words. You had never seen him look so hateful, borderline murderous, and you suddenly realized that this was about more than grief.

“P-Peter...that… That is not what happened-.”

“Isn’t it?” he wondered, taking another step towards you. “Do you think me stupid? Blind? You think I have never known of the way so many women prayed on my mother’s downfall?”

“I never-.”

“Do you think that I do not know that you all came to her funeral not as mourners, but as vultures? As desperate snakes trying to slip your way into my father’s bed so that you may take her place?”

“No! That is not what happened-!”

“You are no different from the rest!”

He was practically upon you now, glaring down his nose at you with so much disgust it finally made the tears spill over.

“I always knew that you were a desperate and conniving whore…”

You gasped, more tears falling at his insult. He raised one dark eyebrow at you.

“...but I never took you for a liar too.”

You were frozen as he looked you over one last time before breezing past you. You shook, unable to stop the tears, and you felt like you were going to be sick. You had no idea that Peter’s disdain was in fact not misplaced due to grief, but was instead as genuine as could be because he thought you to be something you were not. This knowledge made your heart hurt, and it turned out that you were not as adept at hiding your feelings as you thought.

“What troubles you so?” Tony wondered later that night, his hand on your shoulder as you sat at your vanity.

“Whatever do you mean?” you asked with a small smile.

His gaze met yours in the mirror, and the way his jaw clenched told you that he did not have much patience tonight. His fingers pressed into your skin, and you swallowed. You looked away, eyes blurring a bit as you recalled Peter’s cruel words.

“Peter hates me,” you confessed.

You heard Tony heave a sigh, and you turned to look up at him. He ran his hand through his hair as he rolled his eyes.

“That kid hates everyone and everything,” he replied.

“No, Tony. You do not understand. He believes me to be something I am not. He thinks that I schemed my way into marrying you, that I am trying to replace his mother-.”

“Peter will be just fine. He will grow to get over it in time,” was his enlightening reply, and you stood.

“But it is not true. Tony, does this not bother you? Because it bothers me! He should be like a son to me. He should be looking to me for guidance and care, and he curses the very ground I walk on. It hurts,” you spat, wrapping your arms around yourself. 

Tony’s entire demeanor softened, and he pulled you into his arms. He pressed his lips to your cheek, and you winced at the soreness before he took your chin in between his fingers. He tilted his head at you.

“I love that you’ve grown to really care about him. It warms my cold heart…”

You forced a chuckle at that.

“...but Peter has always been a bit difficult when it comes to me and anything in relation to me. His mother is really the only person he ever really connected with. This will pass, I assure you.”

You reluctantly accepted that Tony just did not care about this as much as you did, and likely never would. Against your better judgement, you opted to let it go, and softly exhaled when Tony pressed his lips to your jaw. He trailed kisses down your neck, tightening his arms around you.

“As much as I enjoy your big heart, I would rather not spend the rest of the night discussing my troubled son,” he murmured, lips finally finding yours.

You did not know if you would ever grow used to making love to Tony. The only time he had ever been anything close to gentle was on your wedding night, and you had still cried, waking up sore and bruised. It eventually dawned on you that this was simply how Tony was, but it did not mean that you had to like it. 

The years that passed did not improve things as you’d hoped they would. Tony was still the same as ever, and Peter was no different. Your conversations with the prince were rare, but every one was brief and left you with a paralyzing chill. When he was not speaking to you, his animosity was enough to force you to keep your distance. The hurt that his behavior caused never got any easier. 

“When you have a child of your own, this will mean nothing to you,” Tony would assure you.

However, it only did the opposite. Even though Peter was not your own, it did not mean that you viewed him any less, and you knew that would not change when you finally did have a child. Whenever that happened. You and Tony had been trying for years, and there was still nothing to show for it. It was a great source of stress for you both, but Tony was taking it much harder than you.

“They say that it took many tries before they were finally able to have Peter, and even afterwards...the queen was never able to conceive again,” Guinevere had whispered to you one night.

“Oh,” you sadly said. “How awful…”

The blonde girl had glanced around the busy kitchen before leaning in.

“The king will never admit it, but many believe that he was the problem, and considering he is experiencing the same thing with you…”

Your heart sank as she trailed off, and despite everything, you found yourself feeling sorry for your husband. Many would argue that you should feel sorry for yourself. After all, it was a popular opinion that the woman’s womb was always at fault, and kings have gotten rid of their wives for less, but you knew that Tony was far too possessive of you to ever do such a thing.

It was a subject you wished you could talk to Peter about. He knew his father far better than you did, and sometimes you wished you could get some insight on how to make this better for him, but Peter was disgusted by your very presence. There came a time when you reluctantly accepted that it might always be this way, but everything changed when Peter was only a few weeks shy of his twenty-third birthday.

Tony, ever the showoff, was having a ball every week for five weeks straight leading up to the night. It was the second gathering when he had dragged you out of the great hall. His hold had been tight, steps hurried, and you forced yourself to swallow down the pain. The corridor was dimly lit and equally as empty, and tears of frustration were kissing your eyes.

“Tony-.”

“I saw you,” he spat.

“Saw me what? Saw me greet one of your friends? Because that is exactly what King Steven is to me and nothing more!”

His dark eyes were hard as he pressed his fingers into your arms, lip curled over his teeth as he sneered at you.

“He desires you. It is plain as day, and he has never been subtle,” he bit out.

“Somehow I am at fault for that? Steven is a bachelor in every sense of the word. That is how he is, and you know it-.”

“Yes, but I thought to myself, surely my loving wife would have the sense not to entertain his antics!”

“I was being polite,” you told him, wincing at his tight grip. “Just because you are only ever nice to people when you want something-.”

You swallowed your words with a sharp shriek, pressing your hand to your hot cheek as the tears finally spilled over. Your eyes were on the floor as Tony shook you, a scathing remark on his tongue, no doubt, when he suddenly stilled, swallowing whatever he was about to say. His sudden change confused you, and you hesitantly looked up only to realize that his gaze was not on you. You turned to find Peter standing just at the entrance of the corridor, his wide eyes on the two of you. 

Tony was quick in straightening you up, and you hurriedly looked away as he acknowledged Peter.

“Why are you not enjoying your celebration with your friends?”

It was a while before Peter responded.

“I noticed that you had slipped out, so I came to find you. I had hoped to continue our...conversation from earlier,” the prince answered.

When you turned back around, you avoided Peter’s eye, but you could still feel the weight of his gaze. Tony’s hand was rubbing into your back as he responded.

“Of course. Sweetheart, you will excuse us, won’t you? Peter and I have much to discuss, and I am sure the other wives are missing your presence,” he said, turning to you.

He threw you a tense and threatening smile, and you shakily returned it with a forced one.

“Of course. I shall see you in there when you return. Peter,” you acknowledged as you hurried past him, avoiding his gaze still.

You did not return to the hall though, but instead made your way down to the kitchen. It was filled with servants, and Mary Jane gasped when she saw you. She and Guinevere were always joined at the hip, but the other girl had been ill for the last few days. The redhead dropped what she was doing, shooing another servant off of a stool before grabbing your arm.

“My God,” she breathed.

The other occupants tended to the food and drinks, much too used to seeing you down here twice a week or so. Mary Jane pressed a cold piece of steak to your face, and you hissed.

“Is it that bad?”

“It is swelling already, your majesty,” she said.

You shifted on the seat, holding the cold meat to your face as you shooed her off.

“I hardly notice how hard he hits anymore. It still manages to shock me every time though, and I have no idea as to why,” you whispered.

She was just about to reply when another voice rang throughout the kitchen.

“Everyone out.”

You turned with wide eyes, confusion tearing through you at the sight of Peter just at the bottom of the stairs. Everyone seemed to hesitate for a moment, worrying about the food, no doubt, before eventually heeding his order. Mary Jane, no stranger to your relationship with the prince, threw you a worrying look before being the last one out. Peter seemed to hesitate as well before huffing, quickly approaching you.

You moved to stop him, but he was already pulling the red meat from your cheek before you had the chance. He stared at your skin for a while before putting it back in place. You held it there as he leaned against the counter, a familiar look of anger on his boyish features.

“This is not the first time this has happened,” he murmured.

There was no need to respond. It was a statement, not an answer. The silence was heavy, thick with tension and filled with words unspoken. Outside of that night, this was the longest you had ever been alone with Peter, and the first time you did not feel uncomfortable in his presence.

“You did not want to marry my father...did you?”

You looked at him with wide eyes, lips parting to refute such a blasphemous statement, but no words came out. Words failed you. Peter was a smart young man, always had been, and you were sure that he would see through whatever lie you pieced together.

“Of course, it was not like you could refuse if you wanted to. He is a king, and you were a mere lady,” he said more to himself than you.

You sighed, putting the steak down as you stood.

“My father has never been kind to anyone in his life. I do not know why I thought you were an exception…”

“Peter… I do not want this to affect how you view your father, do you understand?”

He simply frowned at you, and you continued.

“He is not without his flaws, this is true,” you slowly said. “...but he is still your father. In his own way, he loves you and only wants what is best.”

Peter stared at you for a while before scoffing, a humorless laugh not far behind. He pressed his hand to the counter as he stared at you with a look of shock.

“My father does not deserve you,” he said, almost as if he could not believe it.

He chuckled again, pressing his hand to his forehead.

“All this time, I thought that the two of you deserved each other. I hated you...and now...now I just feel sorry for you. For both my father...and me…,” he quietly finished.

“Peter-.”

“I have been nothing but cruel to you, and for that I am sorry. I am sorry for the things that I have done...and the things that I have said.”

You blinked, convinced that you would never hear those words. They warmed your heart, and you looked away.

“It’s alright. You believed what you believed, and if I were in your shoes, I might have believed the same. Your feelings were valid, Peter,” you told him.

He blinked at you.

“I never wanted to replace your mother. That is still not what I desire...but I am here. I know that there is only a decade between us, but I have come to love you like a son despite everything.”

Peter’s eyes softened, and you could see the guilt there.

“I never wanted to rush you, even now, but I hope that you will view me the same one day. Tony is no longer your only parent, and I am always here.”

Peter looked as if he wanted to say something else, but he held off.

“I should get back before your father comes looking for me,” you said, heading for the stairs. “Oh...and please refrain from provoking him.”

You looked to Peter.

“I may dislike him at times, but I do not want to send him to an early grave.”

Peter simply hummed, sending you a strained smile before you left him to find your husband.

You remained in the corridor as the angry voices bled through the door. Both Tony and Peter assured you countless times that their strained relationship was none of your concern, but it could not be helped. They had never had the best relationship, but if possible, it had soured even more over the years, and you were unsure of who to blame.

The minute Tony started to get more serious about grooming Peter for the throne, things had gone from tense and strained to borderline violent at times. Not only did the two have such opposing views when it came to how to run the kingdom, but your husband had been pushing the idea of marriage more and more lately. It had only gotten worse when Peter neared his twenty-fifth birthday, the party on that fateful day ending abruptly when Peter had stormed out.

You were pulled from your reverie when the door swung open. Peter was the first one out, and he held up a hand as you moved to approach him.

“Not now, Y/N,” he huffed, quickly striding down the corridor with a frustrated sigh.

Tony emerged not long after, and you moved to kiss him, knowing that it would soothe him for the time being.

“That boy will be the death of me,” he complained.

“You both provoke each other, and I do not know why,” you told him. 

“He has duties! He is twenty-five and nowhere near taking them seriously. It seems that he is determined to ruin me,” he spat.

You sighed.

“Would you like for me to talk to him?”

“You seem to be the only one he actually listens to, so by all means,” he gestured down the hall, face cloudy.

You patted his chest before leaving him, wondering if a day would come where you would be a functional family. You and Peter were nowhere near what you used to be, and for that you were eternally grateful, but his relationship with Tony was far worse than it had ever been, and you did not know how to even begin to fix it.

You found Peter sparring with his dueling instructor. The sound of clashing swords was loud, and you rounded the corner, wincing when Peter just narrowly missed a rather dangerous blow. He motioned for the other gentleman to stop once he spotted you.

“Come on his behalf, have you?”

“Peter,” you sighed.

He snapped at the other man.

“Give your queen a sword, will you? Come,” he was talking to you now. “Spar with me.”

You reluctantly accepted the other man’s sword, a grimace on your face as you stepped forward.

“I am a horrible dueling partner,” you complained.

“Nonsense, Y/N. You are far better than what you were a year ago,” Peter said with a chuckle.

Your heart sank a bit at the sound of your name, but it did not distract you from blocking the swing of his sword with your own. Peter smirked at you.

“See?”

“Peter, this is not why I am here,” you told him.

“Of course not,” he calmly said. “My father knows that between the two of you, you are the only one I actually respect. He believes that you have some sway over me...and I am not reluctant to admit that he is right.”

He blocked your blow, quick to do so again when you swung your sword down towards his legs. He eyed you, a bit of pride in his gaze.

“Very good,” he praised.

“I was hoping to talk you into agreeing to some sort of compromise with him. Any compromise, really.”

Peter let out a humorless laugh, spinning before bringing his sword down over his head. Your eyes were wide as you lifted your sword, the sound of them clashing meeting your ears.

“There is no compromising with that man. He is determined to bring this kingdom and all of its subjects to ruin, and he wishes for me to just stand back and watch. He does not hear a word I say,” he spat.

He swiped his sword at you, several times and in several different successions. Unable to keep up, you were not surprised when your sword was knocked from your hands. You did not flinch when the tip of his blade found your throat, confident that Peter would never hurt you. He pressed the tip further, eyes locked on yours, and you swallowed.

“Do you agree with him?”

“Of course not,” you honestly answered.

Peter lightly dragged his blade down your neck and towards the top of your dress, his eyes following its movement before he quickly snatched it away. He tilted his head at you, raising an eyebrow as he waited for you to continue.

“You know I do not agree with how your father runs this kingdom, but I have no say. I never did. Believe it or not, Peter, you have much more influence than I do.”

He turned away with a disbelieving laugh.

“Somehow, I doubt that…”

“Look, I am going to say something that I know you are not going to like,” you suddenly said.

Peter did not respond, so you continued.

“I think that you should consider marriage.”

You saw him straighten at that, back tense, and you rushed to say something else.

“If Tony feels that you are taking your future seriously, then he will be more inclined to take you seriously.”

He turned to you with a withering look, and you rolled your eyes.

“Do not look at me that way. I am not saying that you have to marry some poor girl right away, but at least make an effort to look around, and show Tony that you are attempting to meet him halfway,” you advised.

Peter gave you a hard stare for the longest time before eventually rolling his eyes and looking away.

“Very well. You always do get your way, don’t you, Y/N?”

Your mouth parted for a moment before you snapped it shut, looking down. This did not go unnoticed by Peter, and he neared you.

“What is it, now?”

Your eyes met his, and you tried to hide your hurt, but it must have been clear as day. Peter’s entire demeanor softened, and he stuck his sword in the dirt, reaching for you.

“What is it?”

You exhaled.

“That...is another thing I had hoped to discuss with you.”

He frowned in confusion.

“You still refer to me by my name…” you watched as his face fell. “And I do not wish to rush you, I never have, but when you say my name...it makes me feel as if I am doing something wrong here.”

“You are not,” he rushed to assure you. “Believe me…”

“I do not want to replace your mother, but if I am doing something-.”

“It is merely a force of habit. That is all,” he interrupted. 

“You are sure…?”

“Positive,” he said with a small smile.

“...okay,” you said with a nod. “...and what will you be doing after this...?”

“I will be speaking with my father,” he reluctantly told you.

“Good,” you said, Peter bending to allow you to quickly peck his forehead. “...and please be polite. I hate the way you two provoke each other.”

He roughly exhaled.

“Yes...mother…,” he seemed to bite out, eyes on you.

You looked to him with wide eyes, heart swelling as your smile grew. You chuckled, kissing his forehead one last time before leaving him to finish his instruction.

Contrary to what you had hoped, your advice did not improve things. Now that Peter had agreed to at least looking for a wife, it just gave him and Tony one more thing to disagree on, and disagreements about the smallest of things only gave room for disagreements about more serious matters. Peter hated the way Tony ran the kingdom, and you could not fault him for that.

Meals were more tense than ever, and it soon became suffocating to be in the same room as father and son. You did your best to keep the peace between them but there was only so much you could do. Especially when the arguments would get so intense that you feared for them. Tony could get so angry, and while you had never known him to put his hands on Peter as he did you, it still worried you that he might one day. And Peter…

Sometimes Peter would get a look in his eye that chilled you to the bone. He would get so fed up with his father, lips pressed together as Tony tore into him, and you would see the younger man’s eyes flash with something you could not name. It was a look that terrified you and made him look like someone that was not Peter, at all. 

Tensions only mounted as your birthday neared. You did not want either of them involved in the party planning process, convinced this would be the final nail in the coffin. Truth be told, it was also for yourself as well. It allowed you to breathe better.

“The party is tomorrow night, and Peter has yet to have the last fitting for his attire,” you told Mary Jane as you stood.

“I can finish this up, your majesty, while you go find Peter,” she replied.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely! I am almost finished, anyway.”

“Wonderful! I shall return shortly. There are only so many places he could be at this hour…”

The corridors were scarcely occupied as you decided to check Peter’s chambers first, making your way to his wing of the castle. You were unsurprised to find them empty, and you quickly made your way outside. He had a habit of frequenting the grounds, the maze especially, and you were confident that you would find him there then. 

You had not been inside the maze for a while, but you remembered how to navigate it vividly. You were deep within it, somewhere in the middle perfectly between the beginning and the end when you stumbled upon a sight you were not prepared for.

At the other end of a long stretch, were a couple, far too wrapped up in each other to notice your presence. You felt your face heat up as you stumbled upon the lovers, and you were prepared to turn back when the young man lifted his head, familiar eyes meeting yours. A gasp escaped you, and you were frozen on the spot as Peter simply stared at you.

He did not break his gaze as he continued to thrust into the woman beneath him, who you absentmindedly recognized as Guinevere. Her eyes were closed, clinging to Peter as moans tumbled from her lips, and even though Peter was silent as he stared at you, the heat in his eyes was undeniable. Finally coming to your senses, you willed your feet to move, but you did not escape in time to miss the way Peter’s deep moan rang throughout the air.

Upon your return, you told Mary Jane that you were unable to find Peter. You did not want to think of the awkward encounter, and told yourself that the tailor had never been wrong before. You were positive that Peter’s attire would fit. You did not see the young man again until the following day, your birthday, and it was only an hour or so until your party. Tony was meeting with a few of his Lords when there was a knock on your chamber door.

You were quick to answer it, surprised to find Peter on the other side. You only felt uncomfortable for a moment before you took in his attire. You beamed, widening the door to allow him in.

“Oh, Peter, you look positively dashing!”

“Did you doubt that I would?” he smugly wondered.

You threw him a look.

“I swear, you are getting more and more like your father every day,” you told him with a chuckle.

“I got you something,” he suddenly said, and it was only then did you notice the box in his hand.

You blinked in surprise, eyes widening when he opened it to reveal the most beautiful necklace you had ever seen. The ruby heart in the middle was positively blinding, standing out against the rest of the diamonds that made up the band. You pressed your hand to your chest, mouth parting.

“Happy Birthday.”

“Oh my… Peter, this is so sweet of you,” you told him.

“Well,” he started, setting the box aside as he took the piece of jewelry into his hands. “It is not every day that one turns thirty-six.”

He motioned for you to spin around, and you obliged.

“This might also double as an apology for yesterday. I regret that you had to see that,” he chuckled.

You joined him, waving him off.

“Nonsense, Peter. It was a bit of a shock, but nothing more. You are a young man, after all, and I could never fault you for doing what young men do. You are treating Guinevere well, I hope? She is a sweet girl.”

Peter groaned.

“Yes, Y/N.”

Your heart sank at the sound of your name, and you frowned a bit.

“I am treating her just fine,” he assured you.

You chose not to comment on his use of your name, wondering if you had done something wrong.

“Would you ever consider marrying her?” you pushed.

Peter was quiet as he brought his hands over to lower the necklace at your neck. It was not one that rested at your décolletage, but at your throat instead, and your eyes widened a bit when he pulled it back. You reached up to your neck, forced to stumble back into his chest to keep from choking, relaxing a bit when he finally clasped it together.

“No,” was his simple answer. “It is not like that.”

He rested his hands on your shoulder, turning you around to admire you. His dark eyes took you in before finally focusing on the necklace, the corner of his lips lifting a bit. He pressed his finger to the ruby heart, drawing patterns over it before eventually stepping away.

“It looks great,” he told you.

“Thank you. We should track down your father before they start my own celebration without me,” you replied.

It was not long after that the three of you were entering the great hall, a smile on your face as everyone greeted you. Tony and Peter were at your sides, and both of their hands rested at the small of your back as they guided you to the royal table at the head of the room. Everyone only quieted down when you took your seats, and you looked down at the familiar faces with a smile.

Your attention was drawn to Peter as he stood, raising his glass as a servant came by to fill them. He only filled yours and Peters, but another quickly came to fill Tony’s. Once everyone’s glasses were filled, that was when Peter spoke.

“I would like to propose a toast…”

He turned to look down at you, dark eyes unreadable as he swallowed.

“...to the woman who loved me even when I did not deserve it.”

Your heart swelled as you smiled at Peter, so happy that you two had come this far.

“No one could ever replace my mother...and I would not want them to, but you, Y/N, you are the next best thing.”

Your eyes softened, realizing that while maybe Peter did not see you as something akin to a mother just yet, he still loved you, and that gave you hope. You could live with that for now. Peter’s eyes fell onto his father, and he suddenly smiled.

“...and to my father, the king. If it were not for you, Y/N would never have come into our lives.”

His voice was even, but his eyes glinted before he turned to the rest of the royal court, his glass held high.

“To the king and queen. Long may they reign,” his voice traveled over the room.

Everyone else repeated his words before taking a drink, you and Tony following suit. As you set your glass down, you watched, a bit concerned, as Peter swallowed all of his wine, a look of satisfaction on his face as he lowered his glass. You turned to Tony, prepared to ask him if he wished to say anything, just as he let out that first cough.

It sounded nasty, and you frowned, prepared to ask him if he drank too fast when he coughed again, blood staining his bottom lip. Your heart fell to your stomach, eyes widening as you reached for him, hands trembling. You were prepared to call for help when you noted the sound of several coughs reaching your ears, followed by screams.

When you turned towards the rest of the room, you saw every single one of the royal court coughing up blood, and you stood on unsteady legs as understanding dawned on you. You reached for Peter, your hand gripping his arm as fear and horror clung to you.

“P-Peter…”

You looked to him, but his face was stony as he looked down at everyone. The only people who were okay were you, Peter, the servants, and the few guards. You watched as Peter waved his hand, confusion filling you as two guards opened the door to let more in. You were frozen as they all drew their swords, stomach churning as you realized what was about to happen. You turned back to Peter, but he was already moving past you.

“Peter, what- what is happening? What are you doing?”

You lunged for him as he drew a dagger, hand fisted into his fathers hair to pull the struggling man’s head back.

“Peter, no!”

He shoved you away, right into the arms of a waiting guard, and you did not turn your head in time to miss the way he dragged the blade across his father’s neck. A scream left you, belonging to a voice that you did not recognize, and you continued to scream and cry as the guard backed up. Peter pointed at you, his father’s blood coating his hand, his face unrecognizable to you.

“Get her out of here…”

His eyes met yours, dark with a harmful intent that terrified you. Who was this man? He ran his eyes over you.

“...and do not let her get away.”

You fought against the guard as he dragged you away, kicking and screaming all the way. Your efforts did not even cease as you made it into the corridor, having been forced past the dead bodies of your friends and acquaintances. The guard towered over you and was easily double your size, so all of your efforts were useless. 

He only let you go when you reached Peter’s chambers, dragging you through the receiving chamber to toss you onto the floor of his bedchamber. The impact made your head spin, and by the time you pushed yourself to your feet, he was already pulling the door shut. You slammed your hands against it just as you heard it lock, and another sob threatened to escape you.

You had only ever been in Peter’s room a handful of times, and you wrapped your arms around yourself as you looked around. Your chest hurt, heart breaking as you recalled the way Peter had so callously taken his father’s life. Your husband was dead, and it was no secret that the man was far from perfect, but his absence scared you. What would become of you now? Why did Peter not poison you like the rest? God, had his feelings never changed, at all? Had he still secretly hated you this whole time and wanted to get some sick satisfaction out of killing you here?

You lost count of how many times you tried the door before moving to the balcony doors. They too did not budge, and you kicked them in frustration. You could barely form a coherent thought, and more tears spilled over as you realized just how alone you were. You did not understand anything. Why would Peter do this?

As you heard someone enter his receiving chamber, it occurred to you that you might get your answer.

Your eyes met Peter’s as he entered his chambers, and you stumbled back, afraid to take your eyes off of him. You watched as he locked the door behind him, and the sight of that made your face crumble.

“What have you done?” you shakily asked.

The room was quiet save for your soft sobs, and you flinched when Peter took a step forward. He did not look like the young man you knew. He stood there in the dark attire he had picked out for your birthday, looking every bit like the murderous man you now knew him to be. A dark strand of hair kissed his forehead, jaw clenched as he eyed you. It started to lightly rain outside, and your eyes fell to the blood on his hands.

His father’s blood.

“Have you come to kill me too?”

Finally, his face shifted, and he frowned at you.

“Kill you?”

Peter scoffed, laughing to himself as he tilted his head at you.

“You could not be farther from the truth…”

“Then what do you plan to do? What are you doing, Peter? I do not understand…”

“My father was going to run this kingdom into the ground. We both know it…”

You started shaking your head before he was even done.

“Something had to be done.”

“Not like this! You killed him- you killed everyone,” you cried.

“...and here I thought you would be thanking me,” he sneered.

“Thanking you?”

“Unless I was wrong, and you enjoy being slapped around,” he threw at you.

You felt as if you were just slapped then, and you pressed your back into the wall, tightening your arms around yourself.

“Not like this, Peter. Not like this,” you tearfully murmured.

The rain got louder, filling the otherwise silent room with some noise, and you flinched when lightning flashed, shedding light on the room and on Peter’s dark gaze.

“What will become of me? Did you ever think about that? I am the widow of a murdered king. A king murdered by his own son in a coup!”

“...and the future wife of the next one,” Peter calmly stated.

You froze, his words failing to make sense despite the fact that you heard him just fine. Something about them did not sound right, and your lips parted, a shaky breath escaping you.

“What...what did you just say?” you hesitantly questioned. 

Peter took another step towards you, and you slid along the wall...away from him.

“Do you have any idea how much it pained me to watch you with him?”

“Peter…”

You shook your head, still moving away as he moved closer.

“Do know what it was like to watch him mistreat you again and again only to turn around and reap the spoils of his marriage as if he had not just caused you harm only moments before?”

His voice was low, thick with something you were too disgusted to name. Your eyes were wide, filled with tears as the reality of the situation dawned on you. Peter’s feelings, his father’s murder...the two of you alone in a castle full of people that have proven their loyalty to him. Peter was only eighteen when you married the king, standing face to face with you, but now, eight years later, the young man towered over you.

He suddenly chuckled, and the sound terrified you more than anything now.

“I find it funny… My father was always telling me that royals take. We take what is ours. We take what we believe we should have. That is what we do, son,” he mocked. “We take.”

His cold eyes bore into yours as you stumbled away from him. In a circle the two of you went, and you pulled on the handle of the door as you pressed your back to it. Fresh tears spilled as it refused to budge.

“Now look. I have taken his life, I have taken his kingdom, and I have taken the woman he thought belonged to him-.”

He swallowed the rest of his words as you suddenly dived to the other side of the room. Peter followed, and you reached up to pull the portrait from the wall, tossing it at him only for Peter to evade it. You frantically crawled across the bed, kicking Peter in the chest as he reached for your ankle. You fell to your knees on the other side, running to the balcony doors with tears in your eyes.

Again, the doors would not budge, and you were prepared to throw yourself through the glass when Peter was suddenly there at your back. He enclosed you in his arms, and you reached back to fight against him and push him away, but he only pinned you between him and the glass. The sound of the thunder drowned out your screams, and you yelped in shock when he fisted a hand in your hair, yanking your head to the side.

Peter was determined to taste you, tongue and teeth brushing your skin as he ground himself against you. Nothing you did seemed to deter him, and it suddenly felt hard to breathe. The storm raged outside, wind pushing rain against the window. One of Peter’s hands dragged up your leg, pushing the skirts of your dress with it, and you slammed your hands against the window, attempting to push back.

This only egged him on, and he moaned in your ear.

“Peter, please,” you begged

You could feel the air against you, and your efforts to get away only increased when you felt him moving to release himself. The hand in your hair moved to your neck, cutting off your airway as he pulled your head back to rest against him. You struggled to breathe, nails scraping against the glass. He leaned down to cover your lips with his own, kissing you for the first time, and you sharply inhaled.

He moaned at the taste of you, his tongue meeting yours, tasting the wine that you wish had killed you too. You both struggled against the window, your hands turning into fists when he pushed his leg between yours, quickly followed by the other. You turned your head away, your small victory overshadowed by your ultimate defeat as he thrust into you. You yelped just as Peter shuddered against your back, a long sigh escaping him as he pressed a hand into the glass beside your head.

He pressed his face into your hair, grinding against you, the sound of him breathing you in reaching your ears. Your own forehead was pressed to the glass now, tearful eyes taking in the storm as Peter dragged his cock in and out of your unwilling core. Your body shook from both your sobs and his ministrations, and again, you pushed against the glass in hopes to push him away.

He merely shoved his chest into your back, forcing you back against the glass before wrapping his arms around you again. One hand pulled at the neckline of your dress, ripping it straight down, and your lashes fluttered when he slipped his hand beneath the fabric to roll his fingers over you. His other arm came across your middle, pinning your own at your sides.

“You are finally mine,” he breathed after a while.

You shook your head in denial, another lightning strike bathing the room in a glow. It was gone as quickly as it came, and you were forced to focus on Peter’s reflection in the window. He was lost in the euphoria of you, the feel of you wrapped around him, sucking him back in again and again.

“Finally,” he groaned. “At my side and in my bed as my queen…”

His hand slipped from beneath the torn fabric of your dress, dancing along your skin before his fingers brushed over the diamond choker at your neck.

“I have all night to claim you as mine, and no one is around to stop me.”

“Peter, this is not you-.”

“Oh, but it is,” he sighed. “This is the man you loved when he did not deserve it. This is the man you will marry, bear children with…’

You let out a choked sob, fresh tears falling at his words.

“Oh, please. Everyone knew that my father was the problem. He was the only one in denial about it, and I have a feeling that by the time I am done with you, you shall be with child by tomorrow.”

“Peter, please,” you screamed.

His hand tightened on your throat, pulling your head back so you were forced to stare at the ceiling, back arched to take his slow and purposeful thrusts. He kissed the corner of your eye before doing the same to your cheek. His breathing was choppy, heart pounding in his chest, and the way his hips stuttered told you that he was close.

“Oh God,” he moaned, stilling against your back as he spilled himself into you.

You froze against him at the feel, realizing that there was no turning back. You shook in his hold, feeling the urge to be sick when he suddenly pulled out of you, replacing his cock with his fingers. You gasped, reaching down to grab his wrist as he shoved a second finger inside of you, the wet sound of it reaching your ears even with the rain outside. He pressed you to his chest as he curled his fingers into you.

You bucked your hips, ashamed with your actions as he pulled pleasure from you like it was nothing. LIke he somehow knew your body better than you did. His lips were at your ear, brushing against your skin before he trailed them to your neck again, pressing kisses there. Your nails dug into his wrist, but he paid your efforts no mind as he thrust his fingers into you, setting a pace that had your legs shaking. You knew that if it were not for his hold, you would have collapsed already.

Peter hummed when your breath hitched.

“You are close...aren’t you?”

“Peter...stop,” you shakily begged.

“I shall stop when I feel your arousal dripping down my hand,” he purred.

His words had you clenching around him, and he moaned against your neck.

“I suppose I cannot blame my father for being so possessive of you. Your walls feel like heaven…”

“Peter…”

“I do not know how I will ever allow you to leave our bed-.”

“Peter-.”

“I guess I shall just have to keep you tired…”

“Please-!”

“Come for me, Y/N. Fall apart for your king,” he whispered.

And you did. You seized in his arms, walls clenching around him, your arousal coating his fingers and dripping down his hand. Your nails drew blood, but he only moaned with you, cursing as you rode yourself on his fingers, your other hand reaching back to twist into his shirt. That was the hardest you ever came, and shame filled you.  As you came down from your high, Peter lowered the both of you to the floor.

It was only then did you notice the bloody handprints on the glass. The same blood on you, no doubt. More tears sprung forth as it all seemed to hit you, and Peter forced your head onto his shoulder as he shushed you. You obliged, and he leaned down to press his lips to your forehead, rocking you as you sobbed in his tightening arms.

~

tags:   @xoxabs88xox @harryspet @readermia @opheliadawnwalker3 @nickyl316h @captainchrisstan @sebabestianstan101 @villanellevi @lokislastlove @notyourtypicalrose @coconutqueen21 @hurricanerin @hyoyeoniie  @cocoamoonmalfoy @mandiiblanche @gotnofucks @oneoftheprettynerds @doozywoozy @mcudarklibrary @melli0112 @buckybarnesplumwhore @dramaholic18​

[lovedrunkheadcanons]

Chapter Contents

(Arranged Marriage Fic) Read on AO3

Rated M

There ought to be a law limiting the amount of sugar one could add to a cup of coffee.

When Fr. O’Malley assured Hannah that Satoru would come find her when he was ready to talk, she hadn’t imagined he’d show up at her doorstep the following morning, looking stunningly handsome in a black bomber jacket and stone washed jeans, white Chuck Taylor’s tapping the floor impatiently.

“You’ve got ten minutes,” he said, Six Eyes glittering behind dark sunglasses. “Get dressed.”

Hannah was ready for him in six.

Next thing she knew, she was standing outside a random street corner in Tokyo, herded into a coffee shop far too commercialized to be authentic, and made to watch the world’s strongest Sorcerer alter the chemical composition of his drink. Hannah couldn’t say how sweet a “A Venti Doppio Espresso, with 20 shots of espresso, 10 pumps of white mocha and 7 pumps of cinnamon dolce, topped with a heavy dollop of whip cream and chocolate drizzle,” was, but she doubted it lacked sugar. The espresso alone was enough to put a toddler under cardiac arrest. Whatever Satoru was drinking, it wasn’t coffee.

Dunking his fifth packet of sweetener into the mix, Satoru glanced at the woman, fidgeting uncomfortably in her chair, refusing to make eye contact. She wore a lilac blouse tucked neatly inside her patched jeans, the worn out denim thinning white around the kneecaps and bottom hems fraying. Her long hair was plaited in braids crowning her head, revealing the ivory streamline of her neck, enticing his eyes to roam farther south, past the arch of her collarbone. He caught whiff of lilies hiding amidst the roasted coffee beans and felt a tingling in his crotch. Satoru crossed his legs, cursing himself for it. No. He couldn’t afford to get carried away. Not here. There’d be time for fun and games later. Right now he had questions in need of answering, if he could just draw them out of her first.

“I don’t know how they do things where you’re from,” he said, stirring in the sweetner with a straw. “But I’m pretty sure it’s rude to turn down a fresh cup of coffee when someone else is paying. Starbucks ain’t cheap nowadays.”

Hannah looked at him and then looked down at the green siren printed on the paper cup in her hands. Satoru was “nice” enough to order her some coffee while simultaneously flirting with the barista like he wasn’t a married man and “obliging” Hannah to take a seat near a window, whereupon he shoved the hot drink in her hands. The twin-tailed siren’s grin appeared conniving. A sickening feeling roiled in the pit of her stomach. She knew then that this choice in venue wasn’t accidental.

Satoru snapped a finger in her face.

“Oi, am I gonna have to force words outta you again like last time?” he said. “Cause you’re becoming a real buzzkill, Princess.”

Their eyes latched onto each other. Nervously, the Hannah bit her lip and said something too soft for his ears to catch. The Starbucks was in the middle of its morning rush.

“Louder.” Her behavior irked him. “Speak up.”

A deep breath. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked, peering up at him through wary hazel eyes.

Finally. At least she wasn’t stuttering.

“Whatya mean?” Satoru said, feigning ignorance. “Can’t a guy treat a girl to some coffee?”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“Eh?”

The color in her cheeks flushed a delicate pink. Her gaze dropped to her lap submissively. He felt his crotch betray him again. Fuck. Quickly, so as not to arouse suspicion and avoid disaster, Satoru slipped his hands underneath the table and squeezed the inside of his wrist, twisting the skin hard enough to leave a bruise. The tingling petered out.

“I’m sensitive to caffeine,” he heard her confess. “It gives me anxiety.”

“Oh.” Satoru tugged his jacket sleeve down to hide what he’d done, acting like her words hadn’t offended him. “Well, in that case, maybe I could use the company.” He raised his espresso to his lips and took a sip.

“M-Meaning?”

Uh-oh. There’s that stutter again.

“Meaning,” Satoru stressed, placing his cup back on the table. “I think it’s time we have a good honest chat. You and me. Man to woman.”

A student to their right, typing furiously on his laptop, released a dreadful sneeze; a bad omen.

“Sorry,” Hannah’s brows narrowed. “I’m confused.”

“How so?”

She gave him a cynical look. “Weren’t you the one who said you wanted nothing to do with me? That you wanted me to stay away? That you didn’t give two — ’”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’m an asshole,” whined Satoru, rolling his eyes with a wave of his hand. “Just forget I said any of that crap. I’ve changed my mind. After all, I’m a human being with free will and can do that, right? Isn’t that something you Christians also believe in? Free will? — Speaking of which, you better not cram any of that Jesus hocus-pocus down my throat like Yaga's friend always does. I’m not looking for a savior, thank you very much.”

She winced at “hocus-pocus.” Though by no means ashamed of her Christianity, Hannah preferred to live out her faith through the quiet example of Thérèse of Lisieux, rather than the fiery zeal of St. Paul. Religion was a deeply personal thing. It felt like breaking an entry when cramming proselytisms down people’s throats. Either way, there’d be no evangelizing on her part. That was already agreed upon in her marriage dispensation from the archbishop.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” she said dryly.

Satoru looked pleased. “Good.” He propped an elbow on the table. “So…what’s it like?”

She blinked. “What’s what like?”

“You know,” he goaded. “The Sight? Being able to see Curse attacks before they happen? What’s that like?” Hannah said nothing and stared forlornly at the table. Satoru whistled lowly. “That bad, huh?”

The seer nursed the coffee in her hands, sad reflection gazing back at her. “I watch people die when I go to sleep,” she murmured. “Of course it’s bad.”

“How long have you had it, you think?”

She watched the reflection shrug. “Since I was six years old. Maybe five? I can’t remember very well. At first, I thought they were just nightmares; mere figments of my imagination.” She forced a strained smile. “I wish that were the truth.”

“Do you know how it works?”

Hannah shook her head. “Aside from its strange relationship to Cursed Energy, not really. What I do know is that it's terrible and I wish I never had it.” She didn’t like where the conversation was headed. “Can we talk about something else…please?”

Satoru felt the awkwardness creep in. This is why he hated small talk. “Listen,” he sighed, combing a hand through his hair out of habit. “I imagine this must be rough, being far from home and not having Daddy Warbucks to look after you anymore, but — ”

“Lord Thames is not my father,” Hannah said at once, a vehemence knifed in her tone.

Satoru’s eyes widened, mildly surprised by her little outburst and raised his hands in appeasement, the sarcasm having flown over her head.

“Alright. No need to get pissy. I was only joking.” He lowered his hands. “Who the hell is he then?” Unbeknownst to her, Satoru already conducted research on the fat bastard after his trip to England. A company called Thames & Sons, S.E. was the first thing to pop up on his radar. From the onset, it appeared to be a holdings company, primarily in the business of producing and selling luxury goods, including yachts and other seafaring machinery. The company logo was the same heraldic shield he saw bedeck the gilded halls at Wasserton; two sirens on either side, one brandishing a harp, the other a trident. However, Hannah added a new piece of knowledge to the puzzle.

“He’s my uncle,” she said, her grip tightening around her coffee cup. “Though, I was nothing more than an inconvenience to him, a blight in need of swift removal.” Her voice rang hollow. “Like mother, like daughter, I suppose.”

At this, the lines on Satoru’s face outwardly softened. There was an emotion submerged in his blue eyes Hannah couldn’t quite fish out. Like a wave it rippled across the surface and then stilled.

“What happened to her?” he said. “Your mom?”

Hannah remained affixed on him. Best to pull the dagger out, she thought. While she’s got him here. The short version will do. For her sake more than anyone’s.

“She killed herself.” Hannah said it cleanly, her voice flat. “They found her lying face-down in her room one morning, lungs corroded, heart ruptured. They said it was cyanide poisoning. God only knows how she managed to get it. Probably through one of the servants.” She looked away as if ashamed. “My uncle disowned her shortly after I was born. That’s probably what drove her to commit suicide. She was barely twenty-two.”

Tragic? Yes. Entirely unforeseeable? No.

At this point in history, it was commonly assumed that Thames women were cursed, be it mental illness, abuse, bad luck, or in wake of Hannah’s mother, a deadly combination of all three. Shoddy nursery rhymes were even sung about it to ward off young girls: “Beware the House of Thames, who hasten maidens to their ends...” If indeed beautiful women lived tragic lives, the Thames could’ve written the book. They amassed enough scandals to rival that of the Tudors, making them prone to conspiracies and vulnerable to gossip; Particularly regarding the Countesses of Graivmor, who allegedly existed, but for some peculiar reason were never seen in public, leaving many to speculate there were no countesses and all Thames children were secretly bastards or adopted. Of course if these rumors were true, it wouldn’t explain how their magic was so excellently preserved. And were it not for this magic, and immense wealth (which was also suspect), the Thames wouldn’t receive so much as an invitation to tea. But Hannah, an illegitimate, wasn’t to be received anywhere besides the usual calls to morning Mass.

Satoru sat vigil, listening intently. “Why’d your uncle disown her?”

A fragile snort escaped her lips. “Why else? My mother was a peeress under one of the last existing Sorcery families in Europe. It’s dishonorable for a lady of her rank to bear a child out of wedlock, especially with a non-Sorcerer. It also meant she couldn’t terminate the pregnancy in case the child wielded magic, which unfortunately didn’t happen with me.”

Satoru shifted in his seat. “Sounds like you regret being born.”

Hannah turned to look at him. She’d never voiced the quiet part out loud. The question that’d been haunting her all her life. “I don’t think it matters one way or the other,” she said. “But seeing how my mother is dead, I’ll let you be the judge.”

The two relapsed into silence, broken only by the sound of construction outside, the chime at the front door alerting staff to new customers. Keyboards. Page turning. Quiet chit-chat.

“I’m sorry,” Satoru said, wondering whether she could tell how much he meant it. “That must’ve sucked.”

Hannah shrugged her shoulders. “I was a baby. I hardly knew her.”

“What of your old man? What became of him?”

Her taut smile lacked humor. “Abandoned my mother when she became pregnant with me and hightailed it back to New York, so I’m told. On top of an unplanned pregnancy and destitution, my mother also suffered a broken heart.” Her eyes appeared distant. “Sad isn’t it? When the people who are supposed to love us... don’t.”

Satoru’s expression was unreadable. “Do you know where the deadbeat is now?”

“My father?” she asked. Satoru nodded. “No, and with any luck, it’ll stay that way.” Her eyes flicked up at him. “What about you?”

He cocked a brow. “What about me?”

She could already hear Fr. O’Malley’s voice protesting in her ears, “Don’t do it, lass. I’m warning you.” She nudged the priest aside. “Well, I never.”

“Your parents?” Hannah said, feeling a bit braver. “I figure there’s a reason we haven’t been introduced?”

She waited for a stretching, agonizing moment, thought for sure she had him, but when Satoru opened his mouth to speak, he unceremoniously clamped it shut and let out an airy chuckle. “Yeah, no. I don’t think so. Nice try.”

…

…

…

“Sorry. Perhaps, you misunderstood. I’m asking whether I'll get the chance to meet your — ”

“I understood you perfectly fine, Princess. You’re the one with the hearing problem. Ask me again and see what happens.”

“But,” Hannah was honestly quite baffled by this veiled threat. “But I revealed my entire past to you just now. I’ve never done that with anyone outside of a confessional.”

“Okay.” Satoru looked as though he could care less. “And?”

She set her jaw, anger rising to her defense. “The least you could do is be polite and reciprocate the sentiment.”

Satoru pressed his lips in a hard line. He leaned forward across the table, Six Eyes wildly close, and said. “I know this may come as a bit of a shock, Princess, but politeness isn’t really my forte. You’re free to ask questions, as many as you like, but that doesn’t mean I’m obligated to answer them. In other words,” he switched to English, “you’re S.O.L.”

S.O.L.

Shit out of luck.

Hannah could no longer feel the coffee in her hands, nor its warmth. Her whole body went numb, as though someone had taken a rusty pair of scissors and snipped off the last shred of hope she’d been clinging on to. “So, let me get this straight,” she said, voice even-keel. “You brought me here to this place. Said you wanted to have a ‘good honest chat.’ I answer your questions honestly and truthfully, yet you refuse to do the same?”

The Six Eyes wielder gasped and struck a hand to his chest in mock hurt. “Hey, now. I’m not being untruthful. I’m simply choosing not to answer. There’s a difference.”

She breathed through her nose. Her eyes burned, but she dared not blink. “Well, then…that’s awfully disingenuous. Thinking you could lead me on like that.”

“Oh, cry me a river, sweetheart.” Satoru said waspishly. His voice held none of the savage humor from before. “All I did was ask a few questions. I wasn’t lawding over you, forcing you to say those things. And I don't have to tell you certain shit if I don’t want to.” He sneered into his coffee before taking another swig. “Disingenuous.”

Wind knocked from her sails and spirits dampened, the seer slumped in her chair, accosted by his harsh reticence. Two steps forward, five steps back. They’d returned to square one. This man was impossible.

“Patience, Hannah,” Fr. O’Malley urged. “Patience.”

She inhaled deeply, bridling her anger and consternation. “At the very least, will you answer my next question?” she asked. “Truthfully this time?”

His smirk was too handsome and smug for his own good. “Depends on the question, but go ahead.”

Swallowing hard, Hannah said, “Why did you consent to the marriage.” She couldn’t meet his gaze as she spoke. “You’re obviously not interested in a wife, so why take one if it’s not what you wanted? You don’t have to lie. I can tell you’re unhappy.”

Satoru clicked his tongue at her bald accusation. Not as unhappy as I should be, he wanted to say, but thought better of it. His Six Eyes scrutinized the little seer for a moment, face impassive, calculating. He stacked both elbows on the table and wove his fingers together.

“Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the Sorcery world were different?” he said, breaking their short-lived silence. Hannah didn’t answer. Satoru inclined his head to look out the window, watching an old woman on a bench scatter sunflower seeds to a flock of hungry pigeons, commuters walking past her. “I can’t speak for The Association, but our higher-ups are trash.” He rested a palm to his cheek. “They think because they’re older it makes them wiser, but anyone with half a brain could tell you that’s a load of horseshit. Those feeble minded idiots don’t care how many civilians die, or how many young people they brainwash into becoming martyrs. All while spouting some stupid nonsense about ‘world order’ and ‘tradition.’” He balled his fist. “Pisses me off just thinking about it.”

Hannah didn’t know what to make of this information. “W-What is it you’re implying?” she said tentatively.

His eyes never wavered. Had Hannah been standing upright instead of sitting in a chair, she would’ve faltered from their harshness. “I want to reset this shitty Jujutsu world,” he stated firmly. “To undo the damage those trash heaps have wrought upon society.”

Hannah's heart stopped. She could feel the blood drain from her face. “You want a revolution?”

His eyes were like smoldering blue flames. “I want change,” he emphasized, heatedly turning to glare out the window once more. The old lady on the bench was gone. He swished his coffee cup. “The higher-ups are still wallowing in their own shit after what happened in San’ya. Rumor has it there’ll be a ‘no-confidence’ vote soon."

Hannah gnawed her bottom lip. “Isn’t that a good thing?” Satoru’s eyes flashed at her. She bowed her head. “I-I mean, based on what you’ve told me, it sounds like the issue is resolving itself; The current regime will disband and a new one will take its place. Why interfere?”

He sighed loudly at how little she grasped the situation. “Because, Princess, the ‘no-confidence' vote is just for show. These people aren’t serious about issuing a new regime. They’ll just reshuffle the same deck of cards, and if you cry foul or raise a stink, they’ll either demote you, or put your head on a chopping block.”

Hannah slid him a caustic glance. “Don’t you fear execution?”

Satoru released an incredulous snort, “Hell no. You kidding? I’m the one holding this shit-show together. They can’t afford to get rid of me. Not that they could. I’d kill them all, before they’d get the chance.”

Hannah’s throat felt knotted. It was worse than she thought. “Then what’s stopping you?” She tried not to waver when his eyes coined into slits. “It’s not that I condone mass murder or anything, but if what you say is true, why not set fire to everything and declare yourself king?”

The Sorcerer helped himself to another swig of coffee, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “King, eh?” he murmured, pausing as if to mull it over with himself. “Nah, I have no intention of becoming anyone’s king,” he admitted. “Sure, for a while I contemplated killing everybody off and starting over from scratch. Only problem is it would be counterintuitive. You can't demolish an institution if you’ve got nothing better to replace it with. And it’s not like people approve of massacres anyway. I don’t want to become the very thing I sought to destroy." He turned to look at her. “Which is why I plan to use a more - shall we say - diplomatic approach.” He twirled a long finger at her, smiling at some private joke. “You.”

Hannah stared blankly. “Me?”

The Sorcerer nodded. "The bargain was simple: I be a good little Boy Scout and get married, thus fulfilling my ‘sacred duty’ to the clan or whatever, and as my reward, they offer me a teaching position at Jujutsu High. Voila. Easy peasy.”

Hannah tilted her head. “A teaching position? You want to be a teacher?”

“Yup,” he said in English, punctuating the “p” with his lips. “I plan to rebuild the system from within. That way I can foster the next generation and gain strong, loyal allies in the process. Plus, ‘Gojō-sensei’ has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Admit it, you’re impressed by my genius. I knew you would be.”

Despite herself, Hannah heaved an inward sigh of relief. “Then a reformation is your goal? Not a revolution?”

He shrugged. “I was kinda going with ‘nonviolent coup,’ but yeah. Whatever floats your boat.”

“Have you revealed this plan to anyone else?”

“Sorta,” He examined his fingernails like he’d lost interest. “Though, technically, you’re the first.”

“And you're able to do this because of the Limitless?”

Six Eyes honed on her like a falcon about to swoop in on its prey. Her heart ratcheted. His shift from carefree to serious frightened her. The man who saved her life was nowhere to be found. No, this man was formidable. This man was dangerous.

“You know about that?” he said cooly, the fire in his eyes now a glacial frost. He was a remarkable contradiction; both fire and ice.

Hannah shivered. “I know of it, yes,” she conceded. “But Fr. O’Malley didn’t elaborate.”

The Jujutsu Sorcerer’s mouth quirked. “Yeah, bet he didn’t. Just as well. It’s better to show in person anyway. Here…” He spread his left palm out as if to give her a high-five, but in the midst of unfurling his hand Hannah gripped the table and flinched, afraid he might do something…regrettable. Satoru’s face twisted into a scowl. “Chill. I’m not gonna hurt you. Now, be a nice girl and place your hand on mine, okay?”

Hannah froze. “W-What?”

Satoru bore a wide smirk.

“Oh, you heard me, Princess.” He wiggled his fingers suggestively. “Come on. Don’t be shy. Promise I won't bite.”

She didn’t budge. “You actually want me to…”

"Ugh." He rolled his eyes, "Why do women have to be so stubborn all the time? Hurry up. My hand's getting tired."

Hannah swallowed the huge lump in her throat. Hesitantly, with shaky hands, she lifted her left palm to his as instructed. Closer and closer she crept, nearly making it, could practically feel it, but instead of touching callused skin like she anticipated, her forearm went no further, halted by an invisible wall keeping their hands squarely apart.

What on earth? She commanded her hand forward. Nothing. Not an inch more.

“Surprised?” spoke Satoru, amused by her trial and error. “Don’t be. What you’re witnessing is no trick. This is the resting state of the Limitless; Infinity.”

“Infinity?” she repeated, remembering Fr. O’Malley used the term in Principle Yaga’s office.

He nodded, gossamer bangs over his eyes. “With this Curse Technique, I’m able to manipulate the flow of space and time at will, making the theoretical concept of ‘Infinity’ fully realized. You can try all you want, but so long as this Technique remains active, your hand will never reach mine.”

Hannah was troubled by this. “I’m not sure I follow,” she said. “It’s a force field of some kind?”

“Hmm, not quite. You familiar with Achilles and the Tortoise?”

“Zeno’s Paradox, you mean?”

…

Okay.

He wasn’t expecting her to know that.

Kudos to her.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Well, that’s basically what’s going on here.” He pointed to his open hand. “In retrospect, I’m breaking down motion so acutely to the point it’s stopped in toto, or at least it appears that way.”

“I see,” replied Hannah, still piecing it together. “But Fr. O’Malley said the Limitless gave you the ability to repel and attract? He mentioned nothing of stopping.”

“Oh?” Satoru's grin turned Machievellian. “You mean this?”

The invisible gulf between their hands suddenly widened. Hannah could do nothing but watch as her palm was gently “pushed” back to her shoulder, fully outstretched. A red aura haloed around her arm.

“Reversal…”

Then Hannah’s hand was returned to his as if pulled by threads, her fingers barely touching the pads of his fingertips. Her pulse ran rampant in her chest, anxious by their close proximity and the blueness of his eyes concentrated solely on her. The red aura became a deep azure.

“Attraction,” he purred.

She heard her breath gasp. In the course of a single heartbeat, their fingertips at last met each other, then their palms, and then finally his fingers began to slip teasingly between her own, pinching the skin where their wedding rings collided. His hand felt massive, rough calluses and scar tissue grazing against her flesh, eliciting the hairs on her forearm to raise approvingly. He chuckled at the rosy hue dappling her cheeks.

A rush of excitement coursed through him at how easy she was to seduce. He didn't impede the tingling in his crotch this time, but rather kept it at bay, wondering how much longer would it be until she was in his bed, naked, writhing, pleading for him to make her his. He’d give her a solid week, tops. “See? Told you I don’t bite,” he said flirtatiously, his voice velvet smooth, stroking his thumb atop their clasped knuckles for extra measure.

Meanwhile the blood in Hannah’s veins felt as though it were boiling inside a kettle. His hold was gentle yet firm and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t like it; Lucifer and his good looks. She couldn’t bring herself to let go, so she tried for a diversion. “I h-haven’t thanked you for saving my life,” she squeaked, wishing she had a fan to cool herself, or a block of ice to press to her cheeks.

This must’ve been the last thing Satoru expected her to say because the tips of his ears also warmed a faint pink. “Whatever, don’t mention it,” he said, quickly looking away, hubris forgotten. “No big deal.”

He released her hand.

But Hannah was adamant. “I’m serious. If you hadn’t arrived when you did I would’ve been — ”

“You would've been Curse meat,” he snorted. “Again, it's no big deal.” He didn’t think she’d thank him. Few people did.

“Only it is a big deal.” She reached across the table and grabbed hold of his hand, feeling the muscles tense up. “Please, Fr. O’Malley said you’d retrieve the Sukuna fingers for us. I may not be a Sorcerer, nor the wife you wanted — In fact, I’d go so far as to say there’s nothing extraordinary about me at all — but for once in my life I could save people. Actually save people instead of watching them suffer and die. I can’t tell you how that makes me feel. I — ” She stopped, fearing she’d taken it a bridge too far, her cheeks blazing. “Anyway, I’m glad you changed your mind. Truly.”

Satoru’s mouth thinned, not impressed, not underwhelmed.

“That’s cute, Princess. I’m touched.” He deftly slid his hand from underneath her’s to pour a sixth packet of sugar into his half-empty drink. “However, there’s something you should know. While I’d love to say I agreed to help outta the kindness of my own heart, I very much adhere to the philosophy, ‘you scratch my back, I scratch yours.’ That being said, what will you give me in return to sweeten the deal?”

“You get an ally.” For all her shyness, for all her foibles, the rebuttal was immediate. “A loyal one. I can’t say whether I agree with your coup, but if it means you’ll help me find the Sukuna fingers, then I’ll support you in your mission. That’s something you said you wanted, right? Loyal allies?”

The Sorcerer pretended to weigh his options, rubbing his chin. “Hmm. My help in exchange for your unwavering loyalty.” He was messing with her really, having made his decision last night, standing outside that bathhouse, ogling her naked body like an old lech. He clapped his hands together. “Alrighty then, I’ll agree to your terms. On one other condition.”

Hannah beamed. “Of course. Anything.”

He internally grimaced. Her enthusiasm reminded him of a puppy, naive and trusting. She shouldn't be so quick to make promises like that, proof she was inexperienced and easy to take advantage of. That needed to be corrected. Asap.

“You learn how to fight.”

He watched her elation flatten into sheer disappointment.

“I can’t control Cursed Energy,” she said.

Satoru could've laughed. “Who said anything about Cursed Energy? I know brats half your age who can fight plenty without it. I don’t care whether you’re a non-Sorcerer, or what level that Curse was. You gave up the second it had its greasy paws. I’ll see to it personally that doesn't happen again. You may be weak, but that’s not an excuse to forfeit your life like that. Capeesh?”

The hint wasn’t lost on her. “I’ll see to it personally…”

“You’ll be my instructor?” she asked.

“Why not?” he replied, shrugging. “How else am I to teach a couple of angsty teenagers, if I can’t teach a smallfry like you how to defend herself? So, there. Congrats. Try not to let it go to your — Huh? What the heck is this?”

Hannah was holding some kind of twig out to him.

“It’s for you.” She presented it with both hands. “It’s part of an olive branch.”

Satoru blinked. Where the hell did she find an olive tree in the middle of frickin’ Tokyo? They primarily grew in Shodoshima where it was drier.

“Right,” he said unsuredly. “Uh, am I supposed to do something with it?” He silently prayed she wasn’t encouraging him to eat this thing.

“Extending an olive branch symbolizes peace and new beginnings.” She nervously tucked a loose strand of auburn hair behind her ear. “I was hoping we could start over…if that’s alright with you?”

Following her escape from Jujutsu High, and a stern talking to from Principle Yaga that she was to stay on campus at all times (Mr. Ijichi bore the brunt of Yaga’s ire), Hannah changed into suitable clothing and went into the greenhouse in search of garden shears, where she noticed a young olive tree rooted in a pot. Either someone placed it there that morning, or she hadn’t been paying close attention, but after finding the garden shears, she clipped off a sample and gingerly placed it in her pocket for safekeeping, planning to gift it to Satoru when the opportunity arose, which came sooner rather than later.

Fascinated, Satoru plucked the little sprig from her hold and lifted it towards the Starbucks window, examining its waxy oblong leaves and cellulosic properties. He noted the color was similar to the green in her eyes and he could smell its smoky perfume wafting from the tiny branches. Hannah interpreted this as a good sign and offered him her hand in friendship.

“I’m Hannah,” she said with a timid smile. “Hannah Thames - er - was Hannah Thames, but you already knew that.”

A perfectly cordial introduction.

Honestly speaking, she was prettier when she wasn’t sad.

Satoru stared at her proffered greeting, peered into her eyes, testing to make sure it was safe, then enclosed his palm around her’s without teasing.

“Satoru,” he replied, shaking her hand. She reminded him of a doll. A little hina doll. Too forceful and she’d snap in two. “By the way,” he added, “You might want to start packing your stuff when we get back.”

Her brows rushed downward. “How come?”

Ooo, she's gonna love this.

“There’s been a slight hick-up,” Satoru said. “After Wednesday night’s fiasco, the powers that be no longer think it safe for you to reside in the dormitories. I told them no, but they wouldn’t listen. So it looks like you’re moving in with me. Soon as it’s convenient.” His voice lowered. "Oh yes, we’re gonna get nice and cozy with each other, aren’t we, Princess?”

Hannah gulped.

New beginnings, indeed.

Chapter Contents

[tom-holland-parker]

Lets get Married

Summary: On a class trip to Vegas, Peter is determined to make this trip a memorable one, even if it means doing something crazy. 

Pairing: Peter Parker x Stark!Reader

Word count: 2911

Masterlist

Note: If you’ve never heard Lets get married by bleachers you are missing out.

Taking a bunch of 17/18 year olds to vegas probably wasn't the best idea. Between Flash's constant suggestions on going to a strip club and being stuck on a crowded bus in 90 degree weather, it was already turning out to be terrible.

"Well someone doesn't look too happy" Peter joked as you rested your head on his shoulder. You could feel a headache forming in your head and the heat was only making things worse. "If Flash doesn't stop talking I'm going to stab him" you groaned trying to block out his loud voice.

Peter chuckled, giving you a kiss on your forehead, "sorry to burst your bubble but it's my job as Spiderman to make sure you don't do that"

You rolled your eyes, "but it's your job as Peter AKA my boyfriend to let me get away with it"

"You do realize you're joking about murder" Mj interrupt as she poked her head above her seat in front of you. "I know you're thinking the same thing Mj". She shrugged before returning to the book.

"I’m very glad we finally got a peaceful field trip I don’t think I can handle another Europe or Washington" You joked looking up at Peter. He chuckled, “Don’t jinx it. I don’t want any sort of trouble to happen”

"Well we could always cause some trouble" you smirked, "I've been researching some casinos"

"Since when do you know how to gamble" He laughed. "I'm Tony Stark's daughter doing risky stuff is in my blood. Plus my dad left me with his credit card" you opened your wallet showing Peter the shiny black amex that was tucked in the pocket.

“I don’t know about this,” He said nervously. You scoffed, “You’re telling me that I made all of us get fake IDs and you’re not even going to let me gamble” 

Peter rolled his eyes, remembering the exact day you were talking about. It was almost a month ago when you tricked him and your friends into taking photos that they thought were for the yearbook but turned out to be fake IDs that you needed to get into a party. “I never wanted that fake ID” 

“Yeah but you’re beautiful girlfriend got you one anyway” You leaned over placing a soft kiss on his neck, “Please baby let have some fun. You know what they say What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”

"If you guys are planning on sneaking out, count me in" Mj interrupted, not bothering to wait for a reply before ducking her head back over the seat.

Peter sighed as he shook his head, "Fine but only because Ned has been studying the art of poker for weeks". He pointed to the row next to you where Ned sat reading The Poker Players Bible

“He’s learning poker from a book?” You shook your head in amusement, “He’s gonna lose” 

Peter chuckled, “Have some faith in him. I think he’d make an excellent poker player”. You rolled your eyes, glancing at Ned again before looking back at Peter. 

"Wanna make a bet?" You smirked sitting up from your slouched position. Peter smiled and nodded. "We'll let Ned play three games of poker. If he wins at least twice I'll do whatever you want but is he loses twice then you have to do whatever I want"

He hesitated trying to figure out whether or not you were joking. He rolled his eyes when he realized you were serious, "deal". He shook your hand, "I need to talk to Ned''. You rolled your eyes and put on your headphones as Peter got up and walked to the row besides you.

You didn't notice but Peter had been nervous ever since the plane had landed in Vegas. He knew you'd always wanted to come here and he wanted to make your first trip here a memorable one. "Hey Ned" he whispered, glancing towards you to make sure you weren't paying attention, "I need your help"

"I thought you said you wouldn't have to do Spiderman things on this trip" he replied in a worried tone.

Peter shook his head, "no it's not that" he reassured, "Y/N and Mj are going to come with us tonight to the Casino, but I've made a bet with Y/N and I need you to win two of three poker games tonight"

Ned smiled, "don't worry I've got this I spent the whole plane ride playing in small online competitions and I've won a few games so I'm pretty much a pro"

"great" Peter chuckled nervously, "I'm just nervous. I still don't know what I'm going to do to make this trip memorable for her" he glanced at you watching as you stared out the window.

"Why don't you just cross out number 4 on her bucket list" Ned said as he looked at his book again.

"What are you talking about?" Peter questioned. Ned sighed putting down his book again, "do you remember last summer when we all hung out at her place and she stole a bottle of her dads tequila and she started talking about her bucket list"

Peter nodded waiting for Ned to explain, "well number 4 was get married in Vegas even if it's just a joke"

A burst of laughter exploded from Peter, "are you insane? I can't do that. Her father will kill me" he whispered trying to avoid the strange looks he was getting from his sudden outburst.

"Oh come on I'm sure he'll find it funny" Ned smiled.

Peter nodded, “Ok yeah I’m gonna do it. I'm gonna marry her”. Ned chuckled, "Great. Now I need to study or else you’re going to lose this bet” He returned back to his book as Peter, who was now lost in his thoughts returned back to his seat, letting you rest your head on his shoulder for the rest of the bus ride. 

///

“Ned if you don’t quiet down we’re going to get caught” You whispered as you and your friend piled out the hotel room. It was nearing 11 and all the teachers had forced the students to stay in the rooms for the rest of the night. “Your heels are making more noise than me” Ned joked as you all entered the elevator. 

You rolled your eyes grabbing Peter wrist to look at the time on his watch, “Alright we all need to be back by 4:30” 

To your surprise the casino wasn’t crowded, then again who is going to a casino on a Monday night. “Ok babe, me and Mj are gonna play craps. I'll leave Ned to practice before you lose this bet” You kissed his cheek before grabbing Mj’s hand and guiding her to the dice table. 

“Don’t you think your father is going to question why there are charges to a Vegas casino on his credit card?” Mj asked as you took money out of the ATM. You shrugged, “That’s a problem for another day”. She chuckled as you moved to the table and placed your bets on the game. The dealer handed you your chips as well as the dice signaling to you that the game had started.

It was only an hour later when Peter met up with you and Mj. He wrapped his arms around your waist as you placed your betting chips in their spots, “Are you winning?” He whispered as you grabbed the dice from the table. 

“I’ve done pretty good so far. I need a 7” You shook the dice in your hand before turning to him, “Kiss for good luck?”

He chuckled and gave you a quick kiss, watching as you threw the dice. He could sense your nervousness as the dice moved down the table hitting the wall before landing on the lucky number 7. 

Everyone at the table shouted cheerfully, happy that they had won the round. You gather your chips from the dealer, “Alright Jerry it's been nice playing with you I hope to do it again sometime” you waved goodbye as you all walked to the poker table where Ned sat waiting for the group to join him before he started another game. 

“Alright Ned three games I betting on two loses but Peter thinks differently” You teased as he rolled his eyes, “Prove me right”

If you were being honest you didn’t exactly know what was going on. You’d seen you father and the other avengers play poker before but they never let you in on the game so you hardly knew anything about it, but so far you could tell that you were losing the bet. 

Ned was in the middle of the second game and according to Mj, who didn’t have a biased opinion on this bet, things were looking good for Peter. Ned had won the first game and it looked like he was going to win this one. You sighed in annoyance, hating that you had to admit you were wrong. 

Peter smiled, wrapping his arms around you, “Don’t worry babe I think you’ll actually like that i have planned”. You rolled your eyes watching as Ned cheered clearly happy that he won the game. You sighed, “Ok what do you want” 

“Give me 3 minutes. Stay here” He smiled, grabbing Mj’s arm, leaving you alone at the table with Ned. 

“Ned what does he have planned?” You smirked hoping to wean out whatever Peter was going to do. He shook his head, “Y/N I love you but Peter’s my best friend and I can’t just give away the surprise” You rolled your eyes, turning around at watch as Peter talked to Mj. 

“Please Mj” Peter begged, “I want to make this trip memorable and i'm only asking you because her father doesn’t know” 

“You’re insane” her eyes widened at the thought of you and Peter getting married this young, “You guys are 18 do you seriously think getting married is the best idea” 

“It’s been on her bucket list for years” He pointed out trying to justify his plans. “Please Mj if not for me then do it for the happiness of your best friend” 

She took a deep breath, “Fine I will walk Y/N down the aisle”. Peter smiled pulling Mj into a tight hug. “You’re the best” 

///

“Guys I don’t appreciate surprises” You joked as Ned guided you through the crowded sidewalk. “Don’t worry we’re almost there” He reassured you. You sighed and kept walking as all your friends laughed. 

You came to a sudden stop as Peter grabbed your hand, “Ok Ned you can uncover her eyes” he chuckled. Ned took his hands off your eyes stepping back as you looked around in confusion. Peter was on one knee with a nervous smile plastered on his face. “Y/N I love you”

“Peter what are you doing?” You looked up noticing the small chapel you all stood in front of, “Please don’t tell me-”

“I love you and I know this is on your bucket list so” he kissed you hand, “Will you marry me?”

You stood silent for a moment, shock taking over your body, “Peter-” His face dropping, thinking maybe this was completely ridiculous. You smiled through as sigh, “Yes I will marry you” 

He stood up quickly, pulling you into a hug. “Alright well we better hurry because it’s already 3 and we need to be back at the hotel soon” 

You nodded your head as everyone walked into the small chapel, “Hi I made an appointment online” Peter said nervously as you walked to the front desk hand in hand, Mj and Ned trailing close behind you.

“Peter?” The short lady said. He nodded, grabbing his ID and handing it to her. You did the same as she typed the information in the computer. “Ok boys you can go through there and stand at the altar, girls you can come with me” 

She smiled guiding you and Mj into a separate room, “Ok so we have different dress and veil options for you to pick from but you don’t seem like an extremely flashy girl so I'm going to suggest the little white dress option” 

She handed you a hanger that held a body con white dress with glitter details, it actually looked like something you had in your closet at home. You nodded your head moving to the dressing room to put in on. You locked the door behind you taking this time as a moment for you to take everything in. You were about to get married. Even if it was just a joke it was still a crazy thing to do. You weren’t nervous that you’d regret it, you loved Peter with all your heart, but you were nervous about everyone else's reactions. I can do this, You whispered to yourself putting the dress on before walking out the small room.

“Alright here goes nothing” You smiled nervously and you grabbed Mj’s arm. The song over the speaker began to play as you slowly walked down the aisle. Peter turned to look at you, shocked at how good you looked in all white, a color you rarely ever wore. 

"Wow" he muttered as you stood in front of him, handing your bouquet of fake flowers to Mj as she stood behind you. "You look amazing" You smiled grabbing his hand. 

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness and celebrate the union of Peter Benjamin Parker and Y/N Y/M/N Stark, in marriage. In the years they have been together, their love and understanding of each other has grown and matured, and now they have decided to live their lives together as husband and wife" the short lady read from the thin book in her hands. "Do you Peter Parker, take Y/N Stark to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?"

Peter smiled, looking you in the eyes, "I do"

"Do you Y/N Stark take Peter Parker to be you lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part"

You nodded your head enthusiastically, "I do"

"Then I now pronounce you husband and wife you may now kiss the bride" the room filled the applause as you pulled Peter into a quick passionate kiss. Only pulling apart when you realized your empty fingers, "wait we don't have rings"

"Oh i got that covered" Ned said cheerfully as he pulled out two contained of rings, the ones you usually get from the quarter machines, "they were the only ones I could find on short notice"

"they're perfect Ned", you chuckled, pulling out the pink and purple rings, "Dibs on pink"

Peter rolled his eyes forcing the small ring onto his finger, "I don't think I'll ever be able to take this off" he joked

"That's the point of a wedding ring" you grabbed his hand, "you can't get rid of me that easily"

"Alright time for pictures and then certificate" the short lady appeared with a Polaroid Camera snapping pictures of you and Peter.

"Are you happy?" You looked up and smiled. "I'm married to my favorite girl in the whole world. Why wouldn't I be happy?" Peter smirked before giving you a quick kiss.

Time flew by so fast. After the certificate was signed, a bottle of champagne was popped leading you to get extremely tipsy. By the time you all got back to the hotel it was already 5. Peter carried you up the stair bridal style watching as you moved sleepily in his arms.

"What the hell" Flash said loudly startling everyone. You all turned around watching as Flash stood in the hallway in his bathrobe surrounded by two girls who definitely weren't students. "Go to bed Flash" you mumbled, cuddling further into Peter's arms.

"You guys snuck out?" He said in a shocked voice, "Oh I can't wait until you guys to get caught"

Mj chuckled opening the door to the hotel room you shared with her, "Flash do those girls know that you're 16" she lied. The girls gasped quickly walking away from the angered boy. He took a deep breath before stomping back into his room. "Gosh I hate that dude" Ned said as you all walked into the hotel room.

Peter placed you in bed, taking off your shoes before tucking you in, "I'll see you tomorrow morning Mrs. Parker"

You smile tiredly, "I love you Mr. Parker"

///

"Well well well if it isn't the newly weds" Your father said angrily as you walked through the elevator doors. You kept your composure not wanting to give you and peter away

"What are you talking about?" You said through a smile

"Don't act dumb" you father said as he pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket, "I'm the one who gave Peter the emergency credit card I can see everything he buys"

Your eyes widened, Peter took a deep breath, "Mr. Stark-"

"Im gonna give you ten seconds to run" Your father said as he threw down the paper. 

"I'll talk to you later babe" Peter quickly kissed your cheek before rushing out the room. You father quickly trailing behind

[randominagines]

Pairing: Edmund Pevensie X neutral reader

Setting: golden age, Ed is not a child anymore btw

Warning: smut

GIFs belong to the creators

Reblog, if you can, it helps a lot, thank you💕

Falling in love with Edmund would include:

-- you finding yourself wondering what possibly you could do to draw his attention since he always seems so immersed in his own world;

-- you actually liking his being shy and pensive;

-- you and him confronting about history, geography, philosophy because he is so curious and interested about almost everything;

-- you admiring him as a person and as a King;

-- Susan keeping telling you that you should confess your feelings because it's reciprocal and you being sceptical about it;

-- you finally summing up your courage and showing him that you like him;

-- "wait, y/n, are you flirting with me?"

-- "Edmund, has been for the past two years but thanks for noticing"

-- he laughing and blushing but asking you on a date;

-- he organising a picnic for you and bringing some of his favourite books for you to read them;

-- "I want to share what I like with you, y/n"

-- you confessing him that you are a bit worried about the fact that is royalty and you're not;

-- he reassuring you every time you come up with this nonsense idea;

-- kisses with him always being different but giving you butterflies all the time;

-- he being passionate when he talks about you to his siblings and Peter fooling him around;

-- he telling you what happened with Jadis when he was a child and being worried about all of his insicurities and the fact that they could make him a bad King;

-- you reminding him how much of a good sovereign he is and proving it by taking him for a walk in the kingdom, where everyone just cheers seeing him and loves him;

-- "see? Your people love you, Ed. You are a great king";

-- he being super moved and holding you tight;

-- Susan absolutely adoring the fact that you managed to make him more confident about himself;

-- he always giving you small presents: flowers, books, anything he knows you would love;

-- he complimenting you rarely because he is shy but always looking at you with all the love in his eyes;

-- he being the first one between the two of you to say "I love you";

-- "I'm never gonna stop blushing from now on but I feel that this is the right moment: I love you deeply, y/n, you make me a better man and I want you to know this";

-- his eyes getting watery when you tell him you feel the same;

-- he tending to isolate himself when he feels in a bad mood but letting you and only you in;

-- he whispering "I really need you, y/n" while you gently caress his head and hold him close to you;

-- he being a bit clumsy when you make love the first time but totally adorable;

-- he reassuring you when you feel insicure about your body;

-- "you are absolutely perfect, y/n";

-- he being the sweetest person ever when it comes about sex but also kinda surprising for how open minded he is about new styles;

-- you teasing him during preliminaries because you like when he loses a bit of his usual control but always making him feel good in the end;

-- he always paying attention to every single dettail about you, what you like and what you don't, because he wants to give pleasure to you in the best way possible;

-- he kissing every inch of your body when you are naked while whispering how much he loves you;

-- he liking it a lot when you take control;

-- he always making sure that you find breakfast near his bed when you wake up in it, especially when his duties force him to leave your side early in the morning;

-- he kissing your forehead before leaving you and smiling while looking at you sleeping;

-- he teaching you how to ride a horse and how to use the sword;

-- he asking you if you want to marry him in the library, his hands shaking;

-- he picking you up and making you twirl when you accept;

-- he presenting you to the kingdom as his future consort and being absolutely filled with pride.

[wisewidow]

Hello, Your Parents Want Me To Have Your Babies

PAIRING: Natasha Romanoff x Reader

SUMMARY: Melina, my workplace’s neighbour, wants to set me up with her daughter.

I'd only ever hear about Natasha every couple of weeks, when her adoptive father, the mechanic that owned the garage workshop beside my father's cafe slash bar, met up with my uncle for beers one day last year. Ever since then, our families have been loosely intertwined, friendly but not too close. Alexei fixed my mom's wrecked car for a cheap price, in return I let his youngest daughter Yelena have free coffees whenever she pops over.

From what my father told me, Alexei's entire family, including his wife, were all involved in the family business of repairing cars, except for his eldest daughter: Natasha, who turned out to be an FBI agent living in Quantico. Dad says they're proud of her but they miss her.

"(Y/N)," my brother calls from the kitchen. I put down my phone and find him balancing three plates of sandwiches and a salad in his spindly arms.

He opens his mouth to explain the orders, but I cut him off.

"Alexei," I say, pointing to the bacon and egg sandwich. "A salad for Melina. The tuna and tomato roll is Yelena's. Did they want drinks?"

Peter nods. "Four coffees and a large bottle of water, they already have them."

I ruffle his hair to thank him and grab the plates, balancing the third on my forearm until I can place it on a tray. I carry it outside, years of waitressing practice keeping it balanced, and head towards the garage.

"Melina?" I call. Moments later the raven haired woman slips out of the office and smiles. She yells something in Russian that causes Yelena to slide out from under a silver BMW, covered in black grease. Alexei appears moments later wielding a spanner.

They hound me for their orders, gratefully patting my shoulder and carrying their food away to their separate stations. Yelena disappears into the shadows with her sandwich, and her father to his desk, but Melina simply brightens and says, "(Y/N), have you heard? Natalia is visiting."

"Yes!" Alexei yells around a mouthful of bread. "Family, reunion! Grandbabies!"

Melina hisses something in their mother tongue. I laugh, and then ask if Natasha was bringing her kids, though I wasn't aware she had any.

"He means nothing of it, Natalia is focused on work at the moment. Too focused, I think. No babies. No partner."

"Tell her about her penthouse!" Alexei encourages.

Melina flaps a hand at him in irritation. "Yes, well, she has broken up with Bruce, the shy scientist from work. And then Sharon, charming field operative, also from work. And now she refuses to date. Because of work."

I chuckle nervously. "Where are you going with this?"

Melina smiles innocently. "Nowhere. What happened to your last girlfriend, again? Your father mentioned something about . . ."  The look in her eyes is enough to egg me on, though the subject is one I rarely speak of these days.

Rubbing the back of my neck, I say, "Carol left to travel Europe."

"Shame," she nods sympathetically. "You don't seem bothered. Are you not looking for a relationship?"

"Not actively, but I'm sure another troublemaker will find me. I don't have a good track record of steady relationships," I admit.

"Neither does Natalia!" Alexei shouts.

"Oh!" I say. "Does she want Carol's number? Or my friend Harley, she's not looking for commitment."

Yelena snickers. Alexei frowns. Melina chuckles. "No, no, Natalia needs someone she doesn't work with, and you need someone serious, and we need grandbabies before we die, since Yelena neglects it."

I flush a bright red. "Grandb— I'm— okay, first of all, neither of us have the equipment for that—"

"Neither did Dad," Yelena pipes up, referring to the fact that she and her sister were adopted.

"Hey!"

"(Y/N)!" Peter calls, rounding the corner. "Ned's coming over to pick me up, we need to finish our physics project. Uncle Ben should be here soon, can you manage the bar until he gets here?"

I jump onto the excuse and yell back affirmation, say a quick goodbye to Melina before speed-walking back to the cafe.

Peter leaves with Ned soon after, and Ben arrives at around the same time. I move to the kitchens while he takes over serving our regulars, as he's friendlier with them than me.

I work on making more sandwiches and tapas meals until four, when my shift ends. I kiss Uncle Ben on the cheek and head home.

The smell of paprikash greets me as I unlock the door to my apartment, which I guess means that my roommate is home. I call out a hello to her and head to the shower.

I groan happily as the hot water rains down on my front. I close my eyes and lean my head back, thinking over how strange the day had been, and lose myself in a trance of relaxation.

"(Y/N/N)!" Wanda barges in. I jump and almost slip grabbing the shower curtain to cover my body as I peek out at her.

"I'm naked," I hiss.

She ignores me and holds up two clothes hangers. "Pantsuit or dress?"

I push my wet hair out of my face. "Uh, are you bar-hopping with Vision or going to a family dinner?"

"Get together with some friends," she explains. "Vis, Sam, Steve and some guy named Bucky who I'm informed we're supposed to be pretending Steve isn't in love with, do you know him?"

"Nope."

"Okay, well, he's bringing some friends, so I'm bringing you. Don't make that face, you know almost everyone."

"I don't feel like getting drunk," I complain.

"Good! You can be the designated driver. Pantsuit or dress?"

Grumbling, I tell her, "Dress."

"Okay, thanks, you wear the pantsuit, be ready by seven. May the Force be with you!"

She ducks as I throw my shampoo bottle at her. We bicker and mock and tease as I pat myself dry and she changes into the scarlet dress.  While she braids her hair, I carefully slip into the navy and white striped pantsuit, and we move into her bedroom to make use of her vanity, since the sun's lowering position in the sky shone straight into the window while my room would be encased in dimness by now. I sit in the chair and she leans over me, brushing her eyelashes with delicate mascara.  We fall into our normal going-out-getting-ready rhythm, periodically handing each other different brushes, comparing lipstick shades, and commenting on our days. She tells me about her brother's latest shenanigans and I make the grave mistake of commenting on Melina's attempted set-up earlier today, much to Wanda's entertainment. The two had never met but they both shared the pure ecstasy that came with matchmaking involving me.

"Do you think she's pretty?" Wanda wonders.

"I've seen photos," I shrug. "She's a redhead. Yelena says she changes hairstyles often."

"That doesn't answer my question! Pretty redhead or no?"

"They were baby photos, Wanda! I didn't have an opinion on her looks past the Wonder Woman pajamas."

She hums, and turns to draw a small heart under my left eye with her gel liner pen. "It would be nice if you wound up with her, but if you do fall madly in love with her beautiful red locks and decide to move to Washington to marry her and have her babies, I will murder you. You pay your rent on time and you're fun and please, please do not make me move back in with my brother."

"Why does everyone keep bringing up babies?" I yell.

An hour later we're pulling up to the bar in the back of  a cab arguing about getting a cat. The debate of whose bathroom would host the litter tray is interrupted by Wanda spotting Vision through the window and quickly smacking my arm and hissing at me to hurry up and pay so she can sneak in and scare him. Unfortunately, I can't locate my purse inside my bag.

"(Y/N), (Y/N), go, go, go . . ."

"Wanda, Wanda, going, going, going . . . Aha!" I pay the driver and find myself being ushered inside before I can put my purse back in my bag.

Sam, a friend of Wanda's from college, ends up foiling her evil master plan by pointing her out as soon as she walks in the door. Vision, being a good sport, pretends to be startled when she yells "BOO!" in his ear. As she cackles manically before sliding into the chair beside him, I notice the only free space is by the pretty blonde woman beside a man with brown hair pulled into a bun.

"Oh, look who I dragged out with me!" Wanda exclaims, taking a sip of Vision's drink and making a grand gesture with her hands. "(Y/N)!"

I'm greeted with a chorus of hello's. I bow and grin as I sit by the woman and offer a polite smile. Steve leans over points to the brunet man. "This is Bucky, we were close as friends. As kids. We were close as friends, when we were kids."

Sam snorts into his beer.

Steve clears his throat awkwardly. "And this is his partner from work, Nat."

I get a closer inspection and my eyes widen in shock. "Natalia?"

"Her name is Natasha." Steve corrects.

"I thought her name was Natalie?" Vision frowns.

"She goes by Nat, who cares?" Sam shrugs.

"Natalia Alianovna Romanova?" Wanda yelps. "(Y/N)! You didn't tell me this was the Natalia!"

"The what? I— Do I know you two?" Natasha asks, bewildered.

"Not me!" Wanda says, and then makes a motion for zipping her lips shut.

Everyone turns to me. I chuckle nervously. "I should probably explain. Hi, I'm (Y/N), your parents want me to have your babies."

[roonilwazlibimagines]

What are some of your scenarios to fall asleep to? 👀

Ahhhh I’m glad you asked !! Also please feel free to share some of yours they can be specific or vague idc I’m in desperate need

I will be going into heavy detail because I can’t help myself I’m sorry and I will put in both normal ones and Harry Potter ones

Also this is just like one big ramble I’m sorry I got too excited I literally turned into that Tik tok sound where it’s like ‘you’re asking me about my theories? I’ve waited years for someone to ask me about my theories’

Update - I think I’m just going to keep updating this as well when I think of new ones because I keep forgetting some

My most recent one is a royalty one where they’re like royalty but in their really prestigious and royal school they were academic rivals and did not get along and after school they like try to go their separate ways until a couple years later their parents force them into an arranged marriage for like the good of the country or whatever I don’t really care!! You can take it wherever you want from there but in case you were interested in mine he fell for her first and kinda gave up on the enemies thing pretty early on but she still made it clear he wasn’t her favourite person and she despised the situation and there is still constant teasing until she meets his sister or friend or whoever who says that they can’t believe how happy he is with them and she feels so bad because she thinks he deserves better and ends up being much meaner to him because she’s an idiot who can’t express her emotions and he gets angry at her because she’s being super mean after they were just starting to get along and they have a big argument and are forced to talk about their feelings and then I can never decide whether they actually like each other when they get married, I feel like either way is fun

I have a thing for royalty so my other one is literally just princess x stable boy and you can honestly take that wherever you want but I will tell you where I took it for some ✨inspiration✨ so I don’t have my drivers license and get really bad driving anxiety so I self projected and made her terrified of riding horses right (I’m so smart I know) and he is like trying to help her ride the horse and feel comfortable and like obviously they end up in love but I created drama because she sneaks out to his birthday party (!!) but his friends don’t like her because they just think she’ll be a snob but he obviously defends her but like it’s a perfect opportunity for a bit of an innocent princess as well

My personal favourite is the two co stars falling in love and like thinking about doing all those stupid interviews from like buzzfeed and all that and I personally love the trying foods from different places thing (like making them try fairy bread - because I’m from Australia and we aren’t that cultured and being mad when they don’t like it because it is my favourite food) and it’s great because i can make the guy any actor I am currently obsessed with 😭 but also like the red carpet opportunities and interviews and fan reactions and it’s very fun also this keeps my brain very busy because I like making it as realistic as possible and figuring out the actors timeline so I can match the story up with it, it’s always really intense, also if you want inspiration for what moving they’re staring in I always go for the live action version of tangled even if I don’t look anything like rapunzel

Another fun one is where one of them is in a band and you have a friend who is dating one of the other members but you don’t like the band and you’re not shy in letting the other members know that and it turns into an enemies to lovers thing but I haven’t really developed it because halfway through I ended up changing it with the fact that they befriend one of the members and like fall for them but the band member like ‘gets around’ and it makes them jealous until they drunkingly confess it made them jealous this one’s a bit of a mess and is tipping into a 2012 wattpad story but it was how I got back into my 5sos phase two years ago because I felt icky about them but I’m still a slut for Calum 😭

Another one I love is moving abroad to study or whatever (idk I just always need a reason to be in America/Uk because there’s no one here in australia) and you make friends with someone who turns out to be related to someone really famous (insert whoever you want) and you meet them and you think they’re the hottest person you’ve ever seen and you get drunk to gain confidence to talk to them and you’re like unashamedly flirting with them and they think it’s cute and you’re funny but the whole little plot twist is that you don’t know they’re famous (famous people love that, trust me, I have about 10 wattpad stories in my library that can prove this) !! And the don’t believe you don’t know they’re famous !! Anyways I took it in a sugar daddy direction but each to their own!

Specifically for Harry Potter though, you ask?

Currently I am obsessed with Regulus Black and for about the past two weeks I’ve been obsessed with the idea of James potter sibling x regulus black enemies to lovers story and then about a week ago I found an actually good wattpad story about it?!?! (I have recommended it here with warnings but I really encourage you to read it if you’re not a minor) but you can also do your own version because I am still doing my own version and will continue to do my own version tonight even if I am obsessed with the wattpad one !! Currently I am up to post Hogwarts and her and regulus are trying to defeat Voldemort and regulus tells her that Peter is going to betray James and so ofc she tells James but James is like ‘how to do you even know this??’ And he is so afraid and gets angry at her and it’s really dramatic and she tells him she’s dating regulus and then he gets super mad at her because she’s dating like one of the most well known and loyal death eaters (even if regulus is sneakily trying to destroy Voldemort) and because he didn’t tell her and it’s very dramatic

My favourite Sirius black idea is also a James potters sibling one, but I never have any good ideas for it and just end up self projecting so if anyone has any ideas, I am begging you, please tell me !!!

My other Sirius black one is one I’ve been working on for like the last 4 years of my life and I probably should write it but who knows, but basically it’s a 10 things I hate about you x Harry Potter story where reader is about a year or so older than the marauders and she is like Kat Stratford (for people who haven’t watched it the best way to describe her is just an angry early 2000s feminist who is like anti dating and fun (kinda)) but she is Lily Evans sister!! And so Lily gets fed up of James constantly asking her out and makes an offhand comment that she’ll date him when her sister goes on a date with someone and James is like really?!? And Lily is like ‘sure’ because she knows her sister will never date anyone at Hogwarts so James tells the marauders and Remus is like ‘if anyone can take her on a date, it’s Sirius’ and Sirius is like ‘no, I’m stupid but not that stupid’ and James is like ‘please I’ll pay you’ and Sirius is easily bribed so he tries to get her to go on a date with him and like she doesn’t until she does and then finds out he only did it because James paid him but then they fall in love? Basically just 10 things I hate about you lol

My next one is with Draco Malfoy and all it is is that reader comes from a pure blood family and they’ve known each other since they were babies and it’s like basically destined they get married but she gets like really upset when he gets the mark which makes for a good cuddling and crying scene and like idk people are probably more creative than me but I just like reimagining scenes from hp but with this new character so like Poa when she gets angry at him about buckbeak or the bathroom scene (maybe she duels Harry?) and she’s so upset about Draco and comforts him, or helping him in sixth year and comforting him or the quidditch scene in the fifth book (weird note, but I’ve always headcannoned that my original character finds out about dumbledores army but doesn’t say anything and like the da knows she knows but she doesn’t tell Draco or maybe Draco finds out and gets angry at her?)

My other one is another Draco malfoy one where James and Lily live and she’s Harry’s younger sister (and Voldemort isn’t a thing) but like there’s still stereotypes and beliefs and such and like it’s obviously enemies to lovers and maybe they get prefect duties together ? (I am a sucker for this trope in Harry Potter) but then when they do date they try to hide it but Harry finds out but doesn’t say anything until they get into a fight at home and he is like ‘well at least I’m not fucking Draco malfoy behind everyone’s back) (in my head they aren’t fucking because they’re still in Hogwarts but you get the idea) and James and Lily are just like ‘WHAT?!’ Like idk I just think it’s funny imagining James and Lily finding out their kid is dating Draco and Lucius and narcissus finding out Draco is dating a potter - so many possibilities!

Update 6.10.21

I also have one for Charlie Weasley !! And basically you’re friends with the twins and like you go your whole Hogwarts life with the biggest crush on Charlie but like he low key doesn’t even know who you are and you want to become a healer and then after Hogwarts there is a position in Romania and you take it because you know Charlie’s there and at first he is like hmmm I think I know you and you explain you’re friends with the twins and obviously he falls in love with you I also took it in a nsfw direction where it’s like major innocence kink because Charlie is just such a dom to me and he like teaches you everything but he makes sure you’re happy and safe and it’s not really like serious sex you’re both just having fun and he kinda introduces you to dom/sub dynamics but you can do whatever is most comfortable