#But one day Leo convinces him to go to some horror house | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

unknownjpegs · 3 months

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terror

After her contract is forcibly extended, she starts avoiding her mother. For one, because the threat had been incredibly clear.

Matilda hears a lot of things, in her position. A lot of sensitive information. But the difference between them, she and her mom, is that she doesn’t know how to wield that intel. Dr. Rhoades has files, has knowledge, has secrets; she swings them expertly, as if they’re sharp. Cloisters it all tucked away until it’s a knife ready to be buried deep.

Matilda can’t think about the intel she has in her head, because it’s a weapon turned towards her. Awful shit that bounces around up there no matter how much she pulls inward or zooms out to avoid it.

She learns things about the people around her. What they sound like squeezing a trigger, laughing over bodies, grunting as they bludgeon, joking about vile shit. Sometimes she learns things even worse, like how they sound when they die.

And Matilda doesn’t know what to do with that intel. So she avoids — because that’s weakness, isn’t it? Her mother will look at her in disappointment. She’s been raised to be strong, to be confident. Begged to be allowed to do this. Convinced her that it was something she could handle, that she wanted it.

Now all Matilda wants to do is cower. If she hides in her room, locked away, maybe she’ll wither and not have to face it all. How tragic.

She’s scared. Except she doesn't think of it like that. She thinks: Matilda is scared.

Makes a spectacle of it, offers a version of her as sacrifice in the hopes that the fear goes away. It’s easier to deal with if it’s happening to someone else.

But that doesn’t make it go away. As the contract stretches on, the fear yawns huge. Spreads.

She begins to have nightmares. Really awful ones. As a kid, she knew monsters and teeth dropping out and coming home to an empty house and Leo’s urn falling off the mantle with a force that scatters him everywhere. The horror of these is bone-deep, and they are reoccurring sometimes, but she always wakes up.

These new nightmares are worse. They’re not fear, but terror. Night terrors. Ones that sometimes dig into her so deep that it’s hard to wake up.

They always start the same. Her, looking off into the distance, standing on some great flat plain. A crack in the earth appears out there on the horizon. Far away. Ignorable. Would be, at least, except it starts to grow. Little crack off in the distance until the chasm widens. The crack splits and widens. All that darkness crawls closer and closer.

On occasion she’s able to turn and run in that sluggish, dream-like fashion where the landscape is the only thing that moves.

Most of the time, she can’t run. Can’t move. Stuck in place, locked in, while the panic rises so real and shaky in her chest that it wakes her brain — you’re dreaming. Run. You’re dreaming. Run. But she stands still, the chasm draws closer, and she tumbles into it. Rush as she falls, sounds of static and the snap of gunfire and commands and screams. Occasionally, the descent is noisy with silence. That’s worse.

And worse still is that she starts to fear the end of the nightmare. Because waking up is worse. Accompanied by the sensation of falling, of landing, Matilda will jolt in her bed and scream. Either she’s crying already, wet spot on the pillow as she slept, or the sudden awareness is enough to shock her into tears anyway.

She hates waking because it makes her feel weak. It is not the pretty kind of weak, and it is not pretty crying. She hates that even more.

Matilda knows things about these soldiers — mercenaries. And the fear is only part of the reason she looks towards Tanaka for the solution. Because she’s heard them kill, sneer, scream, torture; she’s also heard them die, cry, joke.

Tanaka is the only one she’s heard sing.

Maybe finding a line of humanity there makes her a bad judge of character. She wanted to be here, and now she wants to rid herself of the fear, determined to find the day where she can look one of them in the eye without freezing.

And singing feels human. A cowlick from under the brim of a hat feels human. If she looks at all that, avoids glancing across the rest, he can be human.

She decides on Tanaka because he looks relatively sane.

Well. Relative to how most of them do. And despite what Nomi says, she’s set on the decision. The fear is overwhelming, and if she’s going to get over it, might as well be relatively safe. Relatively sane.

And he’s not, she finds herself thinking during a shift, not bad to look at.

They’ve never interacted, except for that passing moment. She replays it in her head so often because she’s trying to get a read on him, is all. Not because he had been as pretty as she’d ever seen a boy look, gazing up at her through his lashes.

So Matilda decides on him, like thumbing a quarter into a claw machine and snatching least peculiar stuffed animal in a sea of them. She starts daydreaming on the clock.

Strategizing. Strategizing on the clock.

He’s not subtle. Men never are, even when they think they’ve mastered it. So the next time she spots him alone (and it takes forever, because the terrifying fucking corporal is always at his back like a guard dog) she steels herself and takes the plunge.

It’s an empty hall, her strolling down towards engineering for a shift, until suddenly it’s not. Tanaka and the corporal at the far end. They spot her, and suddenly it’s just Tanaka — his companion swings back around the corner, voice loud and echoing: ah, oops, forgot that thing, man, I’ll catch up.

If she was playing the long game, she’d smile and incline her head a little. Keep walking. But the patience isn’t in her. So Matilda pauses. Slides a hand under the strap of the computer bag across her chest, drawing attention to it.

“So,” she says when he stops walking too. A solid four feet away, hands in his pockets and expression…unreadable. He’s definitely staring. That’s a good sign.

“So is this—” Matilda tilts her chin, indicating the corner, about as much of an acknowledgement of the giant mercenary as she ever wants to experience, “—a thing for you, then?”

“Huh?” Lark glances behind him, then back at her. His dark eyes are shiny, aware and entirely focused on her.

Matilda is calculated about it, but careful. Pulls up that mental checklist in her head, imaginary pink pen in hand hovering over the first box. Men are easy.

She takes a step closer. Meets his eye, even if it’s challenging, fear bubbling up. It helps, though. That skittish effect. And — he looks away again. Which is cute, so she does the same to mirror it like she’s shy instead of anxious. She’s not shy. But men like that, when they’re copied; when she acts innocent, demure.

“I mean. This?” A long lock of hair coiled around her finger, the end (God, she needs to cut the ragged bits off) caught between index and middle.

She laughs. Brushes the tip of it against his vest. Watches his cheeks pink a little bit and lets that sit for a second.

“Red heads.” Brings her voice down a little, a whisper meant only for him. When he leans in to catch it — got you, she thinks — Matilda withdraws just a few inches. Keeps the space between them even, tantalizing.

“Because I have to tell you, it’s dye.” Still just as quiet; a playful admission. Secretive and just a little suggestive. Not too much. Don’t want to overdo it — she won’t need to work hard for this one, anyway. She can already tell by the way his gaze seems to waver in the center of her face, like he’s trying not to look around. Hooked. So too much more and it would just as likely go wrong.

Don’t want to spook him, she thinks, and then something else immediately screams: Have you lost your mind? He’s a mercenary.

Except he doesn’t take the bait. Or does, kinda, because he’s hanging on the words as they drip from her, and then…

He pulls a disgusted face, eyes rolling as if she’s just severely offended him. He looks cute with his nose wrinkled like that.

“Eugh. That’s my — no, that’s my…Xavier— that’s Xavier.”

She’s still giggling about it when she slips the headphones on and shuts herself off.

A week later, after a fucking awful graveyard shift, Matilda opens the engineering room door and shrieks.

There is someone shrouded in shadow, detail-fuzzed by the darkened hallway. No lights on at two in the morning, usually, and it’s like a scene from a fucking movie. Like watching the camera pan slow, realize there’s a figure is in the background unbeknownst to the protagonist.

So Matilda offers a real scream, steps backward, and slams the door shut. Locks it with shaking hands, and debates on calling Happy. He’ll be so mad about being woken up, but —

“Shit, I’m sorry.”

She barely hears the voice through the door, over her ragged breathing and the pound of her heart and blood-rushed ears.

“I should have…aw, man. Yeah, fuck. That was probably not the best idea. Sorry.”

Matilda presses a hand to her chest. “W-who —”

“Private Tanaka,” says the voice. “Uh. Lark.”

Oh.

Matila slides up the door a little straighter. “Hi,” she whispers, and then realizes that’s not gonna be heard and speaks up: “Hi.”

“Hey.” He’s got a laugh in his voice. “I just. Listen, I get it’s kinda weird waiting for you to finish up but —” he trails off, quiet for so long that Matilda wonders if he’s walked away. “Just wanted to say thanks. It was you, the file?”

She feels herself get warm. Skittering up her arms, tingling, until it settles in her cheeks. Glances over at the dark monitors. Can’t see herself in them, right now. It’s all dark, and she can’t see how red she might be.

“Yeah, it was.” She admits. Matilda turns and puts her forehead against the cool metal, hoping for a little relief from the heat crawling across her face. The heat spreading everywhere, really

Her strategy unravels a bit, and she finds herself honest instead of coy: “That was weird of me to do.”

“No,” Lark says quickly. “No. I mean. Yeah, kinda, but I…I appreciate it.” There’s a rhythmic tap against metal, and she smiles. Imagines him fidgeting. “I’m bein’ weird too, so we’re even.”

We’re even. We’re weird.

Matilda’s fingers slip down the door, flick the lock. She pulls it open a few inches. He stumbles back. He stumbles back, careful poised Lark, eyes wide in the darkness of the hall. He puts his hands up so she can see them.

Nothing, see? Empty.

The fear fluttering in her chest, tapping in her skull, quiets a little. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does.

“Do you need…want some company to get back to your room?”

The offer makes her smile. It’s disarmingly sweet. Seems sincere, but a lot of people have seemed sincere here, and she’s heard them do other things with sincerity. Worse things than offer to walk her home, so to speak.

“I think I can find my way back,” she teases. “Alone. Thanks, though.”

“Okay. That’s fine. Uh,” Lark’s eyes move away from the slit in the door. She can see the pale expanse of his cheek. “If you go down the east hall past the optics lab, you can get around everybody that wakes up early.”

Matilda sucks in a breath. It’s like he knows she hates that part of graveyard shifts — having to dart past and around soldiers. She’s not sure what makes them act up in the little hours, but it always makes her feel like she’s a mouse skittering around in the teal whisper of dawn, avoiding the nocturnal predators that linger at first sun.

“Thanks,” Matilda says. For a second their eyes meet, stick. And then his dip away, a gentle shuffle of fabric when he shrugs.

“Yeah,” Lark nods once, twice. Hands into his pockets. “Yeah, you too. Thanks.”

They part in opposite directions. She’s smiling for the entire walk across base.

From then on every time she sees him, there’s something like a debate flickering across his face. Like he’s pulled incredibly inwards, thinking.

Soon, she starts to catch him around the corner of the engineering wing every late shift. He might think he’s being sneaky. And usually he is.

She begins to toss out a “hey, Lark” over her shoulder as she locks up the office for the next engineer. Every time, on cue, he melts out of the darkness like it’s coughed him up.

“Hey, Lark,” she says this time, and moves towards that corner before he slips out of it.

“Hi.” He taps a toe against the tile, glances away and back — repeats this twice. Then smiles. “Okay shift?”

She shrugs. She doesn’t like thinking about them once she’s left the room; barely thinks of them in there. “It was okay.” Matilda smiles, and brushes her fingers over his sleeve. “You ever gonna do anything besides say hi and goodnight to me, Tanaka?”

His eyes widen a little, eyebrows up. She laughs when he gapes at her like a fish, but then:

“That one closet,” he blurts. “In engineering? They never lock it.”

Matilda blinks. Stunned by the forwardness. Up until this point he’d been…letting her lead the dance. Not shy, she wouldn’t say, and not quite awkward. Certainly not inexperienced. Sometimes his smile curled in a way that boys’ always did, when they knew exactly how good it made them look.

And maybe it isn’t a smart decision to drag her fingers down and take his hand. But maybe the fear is what she needs to lean into to get rid of it. Because she doesn’t know him, after all, and if he’s here it means he has more capability than she fully understands.

“No,” Matilda says. “Show me?”

Matilda means to drag it out, take it slow. To be careful about addressing the fear, work up to it.

Really, she does.

Except it’s only the second time that she catches one of those now? glances, the second time she checks around the corner and then pulls him inside. The second time they kiss frantically, her arms around his neck and his hands clutching her hips. The second time is the first time she staggers back with a whine, Lark’s mouth chasing after, and yanks her shirt over her head.

When she frees her hair from the tangles of the shirt, he’s paused completely. Back against the door, his palms flattened to it. He’s staring very pointedly at her face; pretty, those heavy-lashed eyes do not waver.

Which is kind of…insulting, actually.

Matilda frowns, hands framing her hips in a way that betrays more than a bit of that annoyance.

“Shit. Did I misread this?”

“No.” Lark says immediately. Eager, but…he finds interest in the mop propped in the corner. “No, I just — uh.” He looks at her for a brief moment, eyes darting around her face and then down. Then away again, throat working on a swallow. Her mouth pulls even more severely in a pout. “Fuck, uh. Okay. Yikes.”

“Yikes.” She repeats. Her shirt’s draped over her hands still, hides the nervous way she pulls at her knuckles. “Thank you. Very much, like, absolutely the first thing I want to hear in this situation.”

He huffs. “Am I fucking myself over?”

She frees a hand to lift it, squeeze two fingers together in front of his face, eyebrows up. Little bit.

That earns a nice laugh — really nice one, even if some of the breathy nerves still stick gluey to the sound. He’s flushed sweetly, has been since they started kissing, and now she feels a generous wash of warmth to her own cheeks.

Because she’s just thinking about how pretty he sounds. Speaking voice, singing voice, laughing. Even the soft, intimate sighs he’d let out into her mouths. She hadn’t been expecting that, the softness. She’d been expecting —

An arm around her waist, tugging her forward until she stumbles into him.

Oh. Yeah, she’d been expecting more of that.

He’s got a big jacket on that slips under her palms, lapels pushed to the side from when she’d slid her arms around his torso to explore deceptively firm muscle under that black turtleneck with significant, slightly shocked interest.

“I didn’t mean yikes, like, negatively —“

“Hope not.” She quips as she winds her arms around him again, chests pressed together. The dragging brush of fabric on her skin makes her shiver, bite hard at her lip. This is more along the expectant lines of quick frantic make-out with dangerous mercenary, half-clothed while he’s dressed.

Oops. That realization has heat dropping right into her stomach, leaded. She’d roll her eyes at herself, if she could peel them away from his kissed-reddened mouth.

“It was more of a, oh fuck yikes.” He’s still got a pair of black gloves on, and as they coast around her waist she shudders.

“‘Oh fuck’ yikes,” she repeats breathlessly. “Explain.”

“You,” he interrupts himself with a rapid press of his soft mouth to her collarbone, muffling his next word. As if the urge is overwhelming the desire to talk. Typical. At least he tries again: “Matilda, you’re like…” He laughs, shakes his head. Hair bouncing around his face all cute. “So pretty. Couldn’t believe you even looked at me.”

You’re the only one I can look at, is what she thinks, but what comes out is: “You’re the only one I want to look at.”

And it feels cruel, to do that. To twist it breathy, to pretend. She’d been so fine with following that checklist, but now that she’s here it….feels wrong. Lark doesn’t seem to think that way. Doesn’t seem to notice.

The closet is cramped and dark. If their faces weren’t so close, she wouldn’t be able to see the way his pupils get big — not just from lack of light.

“Oh,” he says, and then darts forward and gathers her up. A warm hand fits around the back of her neck to pull her down, entwining into the short hairs. He kisses her with a new sort of heat, tongue on hers and teeth edging teasingly over her bottom lip. Matilda makes a noise into his open mouth, and he chases after it to drag another from her.

This one whines high, questioning, as he pulls away, kisses glancing off her jaw and lower. She thinks he’s going to go to his knees — and it would be good, no complaints there — but instead he crouches enough to swing his arms under her thighs.

She’s hoisted up suddenly, gasping. He lifts with a strength she didn’t expect from his lithe figure, and spins them with a fluidity that she had. Her back would hit the door hard with the momentum but he catches them with a palm against it. The brief pause of movement before he’s tasting at her again, hands finding her waist and skating up her sides.

“F-fuck—” she gasps, head tilted back. Hard to focus with he’s trailing wet, sucking kisses down the center of her chest, adding that feral scrape of teeth, but somehow she manages. Needs to hold onto coherency just a second more. “Hold on.”

He does. Stops immediately where his tongue is flat against the curve of a breast, closes his mouth and straightens up. Matilda shuts her eyes against a sinewy twist of warmth that winds a coil down her spine. It feels a bit too…

And she means to find that thought and offer it, but he’s staring up at her like that, hair messy from where she’d held on, and then their mouths are coming together again.

Focus, focus, focus.

“Is — I mean, if we’re doing this, w-what — what do I call you?”

It’s incredibly difficult to get words out when he keeps darting in for more. Hungry kisses, like he’d found something in that first press of their mouths and is searching it out again.

Men usually annoy her when they make out; that they don’t care to, or that they’re bad at it. But he’s not. He’s really, really not. He kisses like he actually enjoys it; offers the perfect amount of tongue against hers that drags sounds from her that she’s helpless to prevent. He swallows them up.

He leans back to look at her, eyes glinting sharp and that cool stare thick as if it’s a real thing shivering over her face, a spot on her neck he’d sucked at, and down further.

“Holy shit,” he says, words hissing and drawn out under his breath — like he’s saying it to himself, in disbelief. Matilda decides then and there she likes his voices that way the best so far, insatiable and dark. His jaw works and a thumb brushes over her lower lip, pulling it down. Just a moment of deliberation, and he leans in slow to kiss there, over his finger.

She makes a needy sound, fingers slipping into his hair. Then she’s left dizzy with another eagerly delivered kiss. It’s an onslaught. Deeper, messy, frenzied — like he wants more.

Of course he fucking wants more. She does, too. That’s the whole point of this. More. To feel good. To feel normal, to fuck the fear. She smiles into the next kiss at that: to fuck the fear. All things considering, it might be more effective than she thought. Because:

Oh God, he’s good at this, a voice notes distantly when her back arches away the door. Oh fuck, he’s gonna be good at the rest too, isn’t he? This might not be a one-time thing.

Matilda blushes at that, chides herself for the winding, hopeful sappiness. Maybe it’s better he didn’t answer about the name—

He pulls away with an audible wet noise that would make her pink if she wasn’t already. “Fuck, sorry.” He doesn’t stare at her mouth or lower, but finds her eye. Has to look up slightly, even propped up as she is. “Sorry. Name, uh, doesn’t matter. Whatever you want.”

That makes her frown. Not that he says it, but the way he does. Dismissive, almost.

“No, it’s whatever you want. Names matter.” Brow furrowed, she insists this. “Do you want me to call you Lark?”

He frowns too. Shrugs. But the slip of his eyes off to the side makes her press on.

“I will, if that’s what you want. But —” Hand resting on his shoulder, thumb swiping over his pulse. Intimate, but maybe not as intimate as: “Look, if there’s something you prefer, I want to know. First name, maybe?”

He shuffles, swaying them both. “…Got two. Nobody uses them.”

“Because?” You don’t like them, or neither is you? She understands both.

Now he looks actually uncomfortable. Matilda feels bad for pressing, but…but she wants to know. Needs to know, now that she’s found a little gap in the armor. Human. Hair poking out of the hat, singing over comms. Name makes him human.

“Nobody…uses them.” He repeats haltingly. His hands, one on her waist and one under her thigh, squeeze. It seems less like appreciation and more like a reflex. After a deliberate silence: “Daisuke. Or Elias.”

Matilda hums and squirms in his arms bit, getting more comfortable with her ankles crossed at his tailbone. Squeezes twice, a coaxing giddy-up: “Well? Which one do you prefer?”

Debate flutters across his face again while he regards her. Remains a little distant, but a degree closer to the surface now. He’s thoughtful with the hint of a smile that makes her feel weak at the knee. “Elias, I guess.”

She’ll take I guess. Better than doesn’t matter or whatever you want.

“Okay…” Matilda breathes, mirroring that with a grin of her own. It’s still on her lips as finds his, dips into his mouth with “Elias” on her tongue.

Feels human, that next kiss. Not a solution to a problem she’s got, but…kissing. It’s good. Very fucking good. Becomes purposeful instead of lazy. He tugs at her waistband and she pushes the jacket off broad shoulders and he winds tight fingers in her hair guide to guide her face and she scratches nails down his chest through his shirt and he shivers and —

And she fears a little bit, even now. Different kind than what’s been giving her the nightmares, keeping her from looking black-clad phantoms in the eye. Same sort of wariness, because she’s thinking about having to have that conversation. The one that’s usually meant for men she doesn’t know, when they have questions. They always do.

Capital q Questions, is how she thinks of them.

Matilda tries to consider it more of a frustrating necessity rather than anything else, because even that fear makes her want to slip away into observance. It’s not her — it’s someone else with an ever-present weight in their stomach, the pressure of self-preservation equally heavy in the back of their skull.

She’s got a lot of fears, but this one feels the most palpable, in a lot of ways: yeah, I am. Yeah, I do. Yeah, it’s about the same as you’re used to. Yeah, I can feel it. Yeah, you can feel it. No, you can’t get me pregnant are you fucking stupid?

Except he doesn’t ask anything. Doesn’t pause or flinch or pull away or crack a joke or treat her like she’s fragile, special. He helps her out of the swishy black cargo pants she paid too much money for, presses her up against the door, and fucks her.

He fucks her so well and thoroughly that later, when she’s meant to meet up with Nomi for a movie, Matilda refuses to talk about it at all. Because if she does, she’ll admit something incredibly embarrassing yet spectacularly true like it was actually the best sex of my life. And Nomi won’t let her hear the end of that.

So Matilda shakes her head and refuses to spare any shred of detail. Watches the movie and retains absolutely fucking nothing. She’s thinking about the almost-painful gloved grip on her body and the paradoxically gentle moan he’d let out into her neck at the end. She’s thinking about his exhausted laugh. How easy it had been for him to hold her up…and how easy it had been to look him in the eye.

While it’d be nice if her solution worked, the fear barely ebbs. The nightmares don’t stop. They won’t, not ever — she doesn’t know that yet.

What she does know is that the next time one comes, the next time she feels that cold wash of terror and sick-sweet sense of I’m dreaming, there is a presence at her side. She always tumbles into that chasm; still wakes up with tears in her eyes and trembling. But occasionally, on that stomach-lurching descent into darkness just before she wakes, through the dreamy echoing din of gunfire and screams, she hears humming, too.

#writing #ua #mmr #lt #mmr x lt #core au

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perseusjackson-jasongrace · 4 years

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Okay hear me out.............. vampire jercy AU????

#Ciara has ✨ideas✨#Like Percy has been a vamp for 200 years #And Jason is this clueless college student just trying to earn his aeronautical engineer degree to make his father proud #But one day Leo convinces him to go to some horror house #Even though Jase has to study #But he goes #And he gets lost inside #And he stumbles into what's supposed to be a prop #But it's actually Percy who takes great pleasure in having 👀realistic👀 vampires costumes #And volunteers for as many haunted houses as he can while he's in the area #Anyway logistics logistics logistics Jason is indebted to Percy and they fall in love OBVIOUSLY #And this will end with Jason becoming a vampire because I don't give two shits about human morality #And Percy losing his vamp status because he doesn't want to be separated from Jason #I want them to be chaotic bisexual vampires causing havoc on the city's they frequent #HOW DO WE FEEL????#Big Brian energy Ciara is out

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incorrect-ikevamp-quotes · 3 years

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i saw your post about Charles and what his personality past and part in the story line so i was wondering if u could do the same for vlad? :)

Ah, well, I can at least let you know what I’ve seen so far? I haven’t delved too far into Vlad, and some of his general impressions can be confusing, so I’ll do my best to make it sensible and unbiased! Here you go lovely <33333

Fair warning, there will be mentions of a lot of JPN app content since Vlad and his boys aren’t around much in the ENG app yet.

My general sense of Vlad is basically discount vampire Sasuke Uchiha.

What I mean by this is to say–according to what I’ve read so far–his clan/family were murdered by vampire hunters in cold blood when he was just a young boy. Presumably as a result of that traumatic event, he harbors a sizable enmity towards humanity and kind of lashes out on them in weirdly specific moments of violence. Another aspect of his motivation is something that’s mentioned within Comte’s route; which is that Vlad went through the timespace door on his own one day and allegedly saw a devastated future, where nothing remains of life on earth more or less.

I guess the reason I find him to be so perplexing is that he speaks about his actions in terms of efficiency, while most of the things he does just feel like unhappy outbursts (v often a product of unresolved trauma symptoms, I’d wager.) I also say this because he appears to have no larger pattern to his fury beyond the original event of his loss. Most of the human beings he attacks aren’t much of a threat to him and hurting them really doesn’t bring him any dividends beyond revenge.

For instance, he insists his disdain for humanity and insistence on controlling them is for the sake of ensuring they do not destroy the future–the horrifying wasteland he witnessed when he traveled through the timespace door. However, I’m not really sure how his current movements really speak to that goal? I mean sure, maybe he’s relying on Faust to create an immortal human so that humans will be forced to care because it will be their future too, but he doesn’t allow Faust to draw his pureblood blood for experimenting. (One can most certainly argue this was more about a lack of trust, and perhaps for plenty reason: Faust is vindictive enough to try to turn the tables and exert control over Vlad, or act on his own whims with his findings.) But if that’s the solution he’s waiting on, turning the rivals of the men in the mansion doesn’t really bring him any closer to that vision either? I mean, what good does it do to bring back Gilles de Rais–a prominent French serial killer? How would unleashing him on the populace help humanity “realize the error of it’s short-sighted and wasteful ways” and move to a brighter future?

Can’t help it, I ask these questions as I read.

In Comte’s main story, Comte hammers home that Vlad is not somebody to be taken lightly. One day when MC goes out to buy flowers, Vlad poses as a human florist to sell them to her–which is how Comte finds out he’s in France, and that he’s made contact with MC. When prompted, Comte describes him in a very particular way; and I think people really overlook this when they talk about their relationship. He says that Vlad is frighteningly pure in terms of the way he thinks and acts. The way I understood his description (given what I’ve seen of Vlad) is that Comte really does mean it point blank: Vlad is very simple in terms of why and how he does things. The issue with this is that nuance and context are lost on Vlad as well–and that’s where the problems start to flood in. Vlad is angry at humanity for what they’ve done to him. Baseline? That’s fair, they killed his damn family. However, Vlad thinks that by extension he has the right to decimate the general public and attack people completely uninvolved in his hurt.

And that isn’t right either–it’s ignoring so many factors here. He’s ignoring how much vampires use and toy with humans as pawns, it’s ignoring the massive power imbalance between him and his victims (this really isn’t a case of self-defense most of the time, nobody but Comte/Leo is a sizable threat to him), and he’s ignoring whether or not a person even did anything to deserve his retributive violence. While murder is never okay, it is perhaps more understandable when we see Jeanne’s frenzied and violent belligerence in response to a man who murders a boy’s mother for the sake of his own amusement/convenience. Vlad literally sees almost every single one of the rivals he created begin to heal/improve and murders them in cold blood because they are no longer of any use to him. That’s uh……..that’s a little messed, not gonna lie to you chief.

While part of me understands the efficiency here–he doesn’t want to leave any traces of his involvement, he doesn’t want any loose ends–it’s also just kind of foolish and cruel ultimately. From my understanding of the narrative, all the people he turned had some visible sign that indicated their origin to Comte. So even if he claims it was for the sake of concealment, it was more likely about his personal convenience. Which…..also yikes.

[Comte clearly does not trust Vlad to be reasonable, and I think there’s plenty of good reason enumerated above, but I actually don’t sense quite so much hatred? I think he’s just given up on the idea of Vlad growing up, even if he doesn’t like giving up on people. And considering Vlad’s behavior, I think it’s overkill to say that Comte just abandons him because he doesn’t care lmao. Even when Comte expresses real anger at the end of his own route, it was more because Vlad was fine with endangering MC’s life just to get back at him. I think Comte’s unhappiness with Vlad has more to do with Vlad’s treatment of human life as meaningless and worthless. It’s fascinating but also kind of sad? Vlad’s traumatic experience results in behavior that is a direct exacerbation of Comte’s trauma, and as such--no matter their potentially fond history--they can’t stomach each other.]

In Comte’s route, Vlad also has Shakespeare abduct MC and take her to the cathedral. Later on in the castle, we see an immediate display of Vlad’s shocking powers: he has the ability to manipulate people’s desires/thoughts. I’m not exactly sure how this works, but he is able to give MC visions of the mansion and Comte coming on to her–which shocks her into realizing it’s all just a dream. It’s not reality; it’s all manufactured by Vlad.

After that...weird introductory note...Vlad gives MC the rundown on his life together with Comte, which as always is subject to a question of bias. My assumption is that he did not lie, only because he was trying to convince MC that he was “right.” Furthermore, he does not omit the most damning evidence of his erroneous judgement, which suggests a continued inability for him to see where he went wrong.

We get a series of three flashbacks. The first is them as young kids. I don’t know if Vlad had already experienced the horrors of his family being destroyed, but this particular flashback focuses on Comte. His parents, in an effort to teach him that vampires and humans have no ability to co-exist, send away all of his teachers/mentors/nannies/the servants--pretty much everyone and anyone he was closely bonded to. Think about it this way: we can see that Comte is very sociable and affectionate by nature. He was living in a house full of people, all of whom cared about him and looked after him in their own way. Now the house is entirely empty. Naturally Comte is very very upset, and Vlad appears to try to cheer him up with little success.

[When I look back on this scene I don’t think I initially registered the sheer dissonance of Vlad’s reaction, versus Comte’s catatonic misery. There was a very solemn feeling to that memory, and the correct choice in terms of extending comfort is to hold his hand believe it or not. There is a sense that he feels very alone. When young boy Vlad enters one can argue that it was the proper thing to do; he was trying to cheer up his playmate and friend. But at the same time, I think I need to double check. Because I’m beginning to wonder if I was wrong. What if Vlad was happy to see someone as alone as him, and that joy is accordingly dissonant for that reason? He can’t see what Comte needs or how he’s hurting because he’s so glad he isn’t alone anymore in a way.]

The second flashback is the war nurse scene that I have spoken at length about. The important thing to focus on here is Vlad’s surprise that Comte would opt out of turning her out of respect for her wishes. The way Vlad frames the situation is starkly different from Comte’s. Comte sees himself as an outsider, somebody who invaded her life as a result of the timespace door and therefore has no right to suddenly change the course of her fate. He had no idea if she even wanted to live (considering the horrors she’d have to cope with and remember) or leave that time period at all, for that matter (considering the only thing keeping her going was helping the wounded/victims). Comte really was listening to everything she had to say, and he was taking her concerns and motivations seriously.

Vlad simply says: if you want her, take her. It’s as simple as that for him. And in one way that’s not entirely wrong--assuming Comte would have every intention of looking after her and actually cares a lot about her. But what’s being ignored here is her agency and the fact that they really don’t know each other that well? Something like that could begin and be rocky, if it doesn’t end in complete disaster. Worse, I get the feeling Vlad is perfectly fine with the notion of turning her and if things don’t work out, just kill her or get rid of her. Again, the simplistic thinking comes into play here: it ultimately comes down to Vlad being self-centered. He’s thinking only in terms of satisfying his needs, he doesn’t seem to have any concept of a larger pair or group feeling. There’s an inability to bend/be flexible for the sake of maintaining a greater harmonious feeling.

[For the record, I don’t think this makes him irredeemable? Only that it makes it very hard to live with him or love him, probably. There’s an inability to live at a joint pace? It’s always answering to what he wants without room for anything else most of the time, which to me is not living and it’s not love ;;;;]

Following their escape back to their own time, Vlad explains how he wants to use the door to turn geniuses and control humanity. He eventually wants to create a surveillance state, which would mean everyone is forced to move with his explicit approval, more or less. (He almost reminds me of Louis XIV, can’t tell if that’s what they were going for.) I have my doubts that his abilities could extend that far, but human history shows us that we are plenty susceptible to fascist and totalitarian rhetoric. In a shocking display of anger, Comte draws the line at controlling humanity and forcing them into a regime in which, and this is Vlad’s description not mine, “we (purebloods) would be like kings.” There’s definitely a concept of evolutionary superiority at play here, which echoes what I mentioned earlier; vampires seem to have this awareness that they’re apex predators in a sense, and enjoy the power that comes with that. Unfortunately, that probably makes for a fairly toxic/uncomfortable larger species culture, which is exactly what Comte and Leo hate lmao.

Vlad does not seem to find any issue with this sort of outlook, and asks MC to decide which of them--Vlad or Comte--is right. Who is more realistic, who best understands the future? As expected the MC replies that it's Comte, and Vlad goes from beseeching to big mad at record speed. He's p much that gif of the teddy bear that smacks its head down on the tables and then has the angry eyebrows.

This is where Comte intervenes, firing a warning shot that grazes Vlad's cheek and demanding he let MC go. In response, Vlad shoves MC into the turbulent timespace door--p much guaranteeing MC's death. (Essentially timespace is a void of sorts, a human being could never survive in that environment for long. Vlad fully knew this, and yeeted her anyway.)

So uh, yeah. Disagreement? Death. Moving on? Death. Nuanced approach to reality? Death. Beginning to think he doesn't really have a lot of patience or open-mindedness or any other kind of problem-solving approach.

He raises flowers and gardens like a fiend, and he openly plucks any single flower with a blemished leaf. Even if a single petal is slightly damaged, it will be removed and destroyed. So one could argue his extremism reflects a kind of perfectionism as well. No room for errors or troublesome dissent. No ugliness of any kind. I mean in all of his interactions with Faust and Charles this is the overt undertone. Don't ask more of me than I'm willing to give. Behave like good children, mommy's busy. Is that insubordination? boss music begins

One thing I actually don't understand very well is his decision making in Dazai's route. Dazai finds out about what Vlad's doing in a nanosecond when he senses MC is in danger, and yet Vlad makes absolutely no move to eliminate Dazai? He just watches from the shadows. Even when Dazai grills Charles about his loyalty to Vlad, no retribution.

My best guess for this specific situation is that Vlad does derive some level of satisfaction thwarting the future of human beings/former humans. Dazai--being somebody with no great desire to live, no rivals to speak of as far as we can tell, and no larger aspirations--is a life that is easily extinguished. There's no satisfaction in it. When Vlad's clan was murdered and he saw the future decimated, it could be that he felt humans had invaded and eradicated every potentiality that was important to him. Where he might have lived happily with his family, that future was ripped from his grasp. Where he might enjoy his flowers and the creation of an immortal for the rest of conceivable time, that too was ripped from his grasp with a desolate future.

So much about who Vlad is is about control, so it's very possible his lashing out is an extension of that. Dazai does not awaken any of the disdain he feels, and he does not succeed in overthrowing Vlad's control over Charles, so Vlad simply lurks in silence.

And last but not least, I've seen the preview to Vlad's newest birthday event story. The contents are incredibly revealing, in that MC wishing him a happy birthday and offering him a gift has him saying that it was "the best birthday ever." Granted idk if that’s sweet or just...beyond sad, but here we are. It’s only compounding my curiosity about the wound on his chest--I really do wonder if he was attacked and locked away by vampire hunters or hostile human beings or something. I say that only because that line speaks to a lot of isolation, and given how little he seems to care about turning people/subjecting them to his whims it feels odd. Why the isolation or lack of people who care about him? Is it a perceived lack where his actions alienated all the people who wanted to be close to him, or is it a more involuntary lack?

When she says let’s celebrate again next year, he seems a pleasantly shocked by the notion, and remarks “Ah yes, it’s a promise c:”. The preview was also mega horny: “You make me feel so loved, I don’t think I can be gentle with you tonight. If you enjoy it so much, then I won’t stop. I want to see you completely lost for me. I’ll teach your body what it means to be loved by a pureblood.” Aaaaaand pretty sure the CG was alluding to him licking the good stuff from her basement, though not entirely sure given it was only the preview.

The brief POV they give us is also very revealing:

“You always keep your promises, and I think I underestimate all the time how much you saved me. You are good, only you are good in this world.”

“Will we continue to make promises to each other in the future? Well in that case--you will always, always be mine, my vampire.”

Tbh he’s...v sweet? In his own way? Honestly he feels like a crabapple that is just so sick of the world and wants softe wife to take comfort in. While granted that’s not really my thing, I know a fanbase appeal exists for these types--so if that’s your thing, have at it!

So now that we have reached the end of my ridiculously long analysis (when am I ever brief, I’m so sorry. If you made it all the way here you deserve a cookie at the very least, if not the right to chase me with a bat) perhaps it’s more clear why I said discount vampire Sasuke Uchiha? “My clan is gone, every other second I’m going to be in retraumatization insanity, when I’m not I’ll be seeking power/hobbies, planning the demise of people who wanted the best for me, building a team to my advantage and unquestioned control, and eventually settling for a lifelong love who sees the best in me despite my more difficult moments and perceived hollowing loneliness. Not the most ideal comparison, but I will say if Vlad was not already named the historical figure, would have pointed and yelled Uchiha.

That’s all from me folks, hopefully this was a fun way to get introduced to him? And again, hope I didn’t alienate--I fully respect what people do and don’t enjoy o7

#asks #ikevamp #ikemen vampire #ikevamp meta #ikevamp vlad #ikevamp comte #ikevamp saint germain #ikevamp leonardo #ikevamp faust #ikevamp charles #ikevamp dazai #i hope this was helpful!#i had too much fun writing it jkahlgkjhgdf i love meta #but thank you for submitting <33333 #oh discount vampire sasuke uchiha we really in it now #rambles #not incorrect quotes

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fleetingpieces · 3 years

Text

My One in a Million Chapter 3

Well, this took longer than anticipated! Somehow I kept rewriting this cause it wasn’t turning out how I wanted it to, but it’s here! And to compensate for the wait, it’s slightly longer than the other chapters :D

Thank you Nayla and @inloveoknutzy for proof reading and your help, I love you guys 😊

And thanks again @lumosinlove for your amazing characters and universe, quite a few of them make an appearance today!

Wether you celebrate christmas or not, I hope you all had a wonderful day ❤️ Enjoy!

CW: Mention of past hospital stay and mild panic attack. Please look after yourself ❤️ (If you want to skip that part stop reading at the end when it says “Remus trailed off, his voice dying down.” and start again when it says “He stood up suddenly.”)

Chapter 3 - Halloween

The slap of Remus' feet against the ground was a steady beat in the morning air. The cool breeze fanning his face felt refreshing, fully waking him up as he and Lily made their way between the trees in the park.

Remus had always been used to jogging alone, but since Lily had started going to his clases she was quickly becoming a very good friend, and spending time with her was something he really enjoyed. They liked going out for coffee and talking a lot, and Remus had already learned quite a bit about her: she wasn't really dating Sirius, but a guy named James, who was Sirius' best friend. She lived just a few blocks from his apartment building, worked in a bookshop not too far from there, and was one of the most kind and cool people Remus had met so far. She reminded him a bit of Leo in that aspect.

She was also incredibly stubborn.

"You are coming to the party tonight, right?"

Remus groaned. He'd hoped Lily would have forgotten about it in the past two weeks, but clearly he'd underestimated Lily Evans' will power when she got something in her mind.

"I told you already Lils, he and I don't get along very well."

Contrary to Lily’s, his relationship with Sirius was only getting worse. They’d run into each other a couple of times, and it was always a very tense affair; Remus ignored him as best he could, and Black had not teased him again but had gone back to being a grumpy jerk. After Lily's insistence, he'd told her why he was against being anywhere near her friend, all the annoying things he did, but he didn't add that he had made a complete fool of himself in front of Black and that there was no way he would willingly show his face into his home.

Lily sighed, "I know, but it's not been a good month for Sirius. I'm sure you guys would get along great if you met under different circumstances."

"Maybe," Remus conceded, although he wasn't so sure about that, "but I have plans with Leo already, and I haven't seen him since he helped me move in."

That was longer than they usually spent apart, but it couldn't be helped. Leo was studying and he lived a bit far away, which made everything more complicated. But he would be arriving in a few hours to stay over for the weekend; they were gonna walk around, grab pizza at Sid's and then they would do a horror movie marathon. And even if Remus enjoyed Lily's company deeply, he'd much rather spend Halloween in the comfort of his own house with his best friend, than in a party full of strangers and with a man that made him feel embarrassed and on edge all at once. Remus wasn't used to having his emotions all over the place like this, not since his last boyfriend. He didn't like being reminded of how he’d felt then.

Raising her hands in surrender, Lily dropped the subject without another word, which surprised but pleased Remus greatly. He didn’t think he could have kept giving her excuses without explaining the whole situation to her.

He should have known better than to think it would be that easy.

That evening, he was coming back home with Leo after stuffing their mouths with the best pizza ever, pineapple of course, still catching up to what he’d missed in the past few weeks.

"How’s your mum, Leo?"

"Oh God, I swear since you left both our mums have gotten worse. They get together all the time, gossiping and baking. It’s like they are our age again. And your mum’s convinced you’re seeing someone," Leo said with a smirk.

"You and I both know that my dog is the only one around here that I’m seeing," Remus rolled his eyes.

They stepped into the entrance hall, saying hi to the concierge at the front desk with a smile. The man smiled back, but he looked tired. More so than usual, and it wasn’t even that late, which struck Remus as weird, but he figured working night shifts must take its toll on someone.

It wasn’t long before they were on the lift going up, but it was only when the doors opened on Remus’ floor that they heard the deep bass notes coming from the end of the corridor.

“What the…” Leo muttered in surprise.

Remus frowned as they walked into the hall, passing by a few people in costumes with drinks in their hands who were chatting excitedly, and a couple making out next to Remus’ door.

“I can’t believe this. What’s the deal with that guy, how did he manage to get the administration on board with this?”

“What the hell is going on?” Leo asked, clearly confused.

“Halloween party,” Remus replied, trying to keep his blood from boiling. He hadn’t thought it would be such a big party, he wasn’t even sure they were allowed to do something like this. He was pretty positive the building’s rules were against it. Maybe Black had bribed someone. “He could have at least warned me that it would be this bad,” Remus said grumpily, eyeing the couple by his door like he was ready to shove them aside.

Leo must have noticed this, ‘cause a second later he patted Remus’ back and fetched the spare keys Remus had given him.

“C’mon, let’s go inside.”

Using his smile, and patience that Remus didn’t have right then, Leo got rid of the lovebirds and was about to put the key in when Remus glanced around and saw Lily leaning against the wall at the end. She looked amazing in her Rosie the Riveter costume that exposed her lean arms and legs, and was talking with one of the guys that Remus had seen wandering around the building. She was making big gestures with her hands when she looked up and locked eyes with Remus.

“Fuck.”

Leo turned around to look at him quizzically just as Lily screamed “Remus!” and started making her way over to them.

The man next to her followed behind. He was wearing a white and gold toga that barely covered his thighs and showed a lot of his broad chest, with golden bands on his forearms and sandals.

Remus heard the sound of keys crashing against the floor, and looked up to see Leo’s slightly wide eyes and open mouth as he stared at the two people getting closer to them. He coughed pointedly and Leo blinked again and bent down to pick up his keys as a flush started creeping up his neck. Oh, how he would tease him for this.

But that was for later, right now he had to deal with a grinning Lily Evans.

For half a second he considered just going inside and avoiding all of this, but he couldn’t do that to Lily, and it was already way too late to pretend he hadn’t seen her.

“Hey, you’re here! How was your dinner?”

Remus wondered if she’d been waiting outside just to catch him, but she seemed genuinely happy to see him, and he couldn’t help smiling back at her.

“It was great, thank you. Leo and I were just gonna go chill for a bit, so…” he threw a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at his flat, but Lily tilted her head up to focus on Leo and her eyes got a knowing look that couldn’t be good.

“Hi, I’m Lily, and this is Logan,” she smiled coyly as she placed a hand on the man’s shoulder who, Remus noticed, was alternating between staring at Leo and down at the floor; but he smiled warmly when Leo gave him a shy wave.

“Salut! Are you guys joining the party?” he said with eager eyes, and it was then that Remus managed to place Black’s accent, as it was so similar to Logan’s. French. He had to fight not to groan.

“Ah, sorry, but well,” Remus said vaguely, “we don’t really have costumes.” It was a lame excuse and he knew it, but it was the first thing he could think of. Leo snapped his eyes to him, a conflicted scowl settling on his face.

As expected, Lily waved a dismissive hand, “costumes are not mandatory. C’mon, I promise you’ll have fun.”

It felt like all three of them were staring at him with pleading eyes now, and Remus had no idea why. Well, he had an idea in Leo’s case, but still. Remus glanced at his best friend and could read his face as if it had subtitles. Please, Remus, just for a bit? Remus raised an eyebrow in response, and Leo turned on the puppy eyes. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Logan almost choking on his drink.

“Ugh, fine, I guess we could stop by for a bit.”

Clapping her hands happily, Lily guided them over to the front door and opened it for them. Meanwhile, Remus was taking a deep breath, wondering how the fuck he could keep a straight face and not die from embarrassment.

Inside, there were more people going about, a table full of cups and all sorts of bottles where Lily immediately fixed them with drinks, and some music on the background that a few people were dancing to. Overall, it wasn’t as wild as it seemed from the outside.

The main crowd appeared to be gathered around an entertainment center in the living room, where there was a huge TV surrounded by a big and comfy looking couch, and a few too-huge armchairs. There were people sitting on them, on the floor, and perched on the arm and backrests; and among all of them Remus saw everyone he’d ran into in the previous weeks. Logan went straight to sit next to the redhead, who had a controller in his hands that he was tapping furiously, as he was taking part in a fighting game.

Remus didn’t pay much attention to them though, ‘cause he’d spotted Sirius in the room and stopped short at what he saw.

Sirius' costume was simple but effective. He was wearing jeans that seemed barely able to contain his powerful thighs, a white tank top splashed with blood, dog tags hanging around his neck, a cigar between his pink lips and fake blades sprouting from his knuckles. It went without saying, he made a very enticing Wolverine.

But that was not why Remus couldn’t tear his eyes away —at least not the main reason why. Black was sitting right next to the guy in glasses, who was leaning into him, whispering something in his ear as he played the game, with his eyes still on the tv screen and his fingers flying over the controller. Sirius was laughing freely at whatever the guy was saying, head thrown back and eyes crinkled, which was something Remus had not seen before.

And it took his fucking breath away.

Black was always so serious, barely any expression on his face, but now he was shaking his head, looking at the other guy with such unmasked fondness, that Remus felt a spark of curiosity light inside of him.

But then Sirius looked up, frowned, and the spark died.

He watched as Sirius’ eyes travelled down his body and then slowly all the way up, and Remus swore he saw something in his face before his scowl deepened. Suddenly feeling extremely self conscious of his big comfy jumper and fitted jeans, Remus bunched the sleeves to hide his hands, worrying the hem. He started turning around to go somewhere else, already thinking of ways to escape from the party, but Lily put a hand on both his back and Leo’s and guided them exactly to where Sirius was sitting on one of the armrests.

“What’s this, Lily?” the man said in an accusing tone, setting the cigar down on the table in front of him.

Lily just rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, don’t be such a party pooper. Remus lives next door, I just thought it would be good if you two actually got to know each other like two civilized people. And y’know, introduce him to the gang, so he doesn’t freak out every time they invade your home.”

“Wait, how do you know him?” the guy in glasses suddenly looked up.

“Oh, he’s the teacher in my new yoga class.”

“Why is this the first time I’m hearing about this?” he pouted, and Remus figured this must be James. He was proven right when Lily smiled at him, going over and sitting in his lap. The game was suddenly forgotten; James didn’t seem to mind that he was now losing very quickly.

“Pots, focus!” someone yelled, but James only had eyes for Lily as she leaned in and kissed him.

“Are you worried?” she teased.

James scoffed. “Of course not. I trust you with my life Lils, but it’s such a weird coincidence.”

“Wait, no no no! Oh, come on!” There were laughs all around as the redhead next to Logan threw the controller down and turned to mock glare at Lily and James. “Lily, what did I tell you? Don’t distract him when he plays on my team!”

“Stop crying and pay up, O’Hara!” a guy from the other team yelled, before giving a high-five to his partner.

Between all the ruckus and bickering that followed, a tall girl with curly blond hair came to stand next to them with a curious look.

“Who’s this?”

“Oh yeah,” Lily sat up, getting the attention of the whole room. “Everyone, these are Remus and Leo. Remus is Sirius' new neighbor, so be nice to them!”

Remus laughed awkwardly at the motherly introduction and pulled at a loose thread on his sleeve. “Thanks Lily. It’s nice to meet you all.”

"Hello," Leo smiled brightly, earning himself a dopey smile from the boy next to Logan.

The blond girl that had approached them smiled a wicked grin, “you guys just stepped into the lion’s den. I’m Marlene, by the way. These are Talker and Kasey,” she said pointing to the pair that had just won. The guy named Talker smiled broadly, but didn’t wink at Remus like he had the first time they had seen each other. “And the sore loser over there is Finn.”

“Hey! It’s not my fault Pots has the attention span of a two year old!”

There were a lot more people sitting around, whose introductions were lost under the chirping war that ensued as the guys put in a new game. Remus’ face lit up when he looked up at the screen.

“Is that the new NHL game?”

Most heads turned his way, and the guy that was changing games even stopped in the middle of the action as if Remus had just announced to the whole room that he wanted to dance around naked.

“Yeah, do you play?”

It was Sirius that had asked, which surprised Remus since it was the first thing he’d said directly to him since he’d entered the room. Black looked surprised, his body completely turned to face Remus as opposed to the sideway glances he’d been throwing his way.

“I’ve been thinking about buying it for a while, but I’ve never tried it before. I loved the previous version though.” At Sirius’ shocked expression, Remus raised an eyebrow, “Is it so weird that I enjoy playing video games?”

“No,” Sirius choked out, and then cleared his throat. “No. It’s just that we don’t usually meet people that seem so eager to play with us rather than getting buzzed out of their minds.”

Remus scoffed, “I very much prefer this type of party to be honest.” His thought was echoed by laughs and nods of agreement all around.

Settling more comfortably on the couch, Sirius removed the fake claws and bent down to grab a controller, turning to offer it to Remus. “Play with me?”

The guys in the room looked at each other in a way that Remus thought was a bit suspicious, which made him narrow his eyes at Black, who rolled his and waved the remote between them. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I don’t bite y’know.”

Remus stared into those silver eyes and was lost for a second. There was a fire burning in his gaze, he seemed more earnest than he’d ever seen him before. In that moment, Remus forgot that this was the guy he was trying to avoid, the one that got his emotions in complete disarray, and he absentmindedly took the control in his hands before sitting down next to Sirius. Leo sat at his other side, slapping him on the back.

“Kick his ass, Loops.”

Finn’s head lifted at the same time that Remus turned to grin at Leo, and Remus had to keep in a chuckle. Boy, Leo was really getting some attention tonight.

Sirius chose to play with Pittsburgh, while Remus chose Dallas, and before Remus could properly think about what he was doing, the game had started.

For the first few minutes, Sirius controlled the pace and took the lead with a smug expression on his face, punching the buttons almost lazily. The corner of Remus’ mouth quirked up. Sirius was good, really good, but he was too conceited, and soon he would regret that.

Indeed, right after that, Remus scored a goal and Sirius’ face dropped. Leo whooped, giving him a high-five while Sirius sat forward and leant on his elbows, his eyes set on the TV. It was a very heated deal after that.

Both of them fought like it was a life or death sort of situation, bumping their shoulders occasionally and chirping each other as if they were actually on the ice.

“Don’t you think Sirius looks an awful lot like Letang?” a shocked James whispered into Lily’s ear, but everyone around heard him.

“Oh wow, that’s terrifying,” Finn was looking from the screen to Sirius’ face with wide eyes.

Remus snorted, and he was surprised to realize he was actually enjoying himself. If he was being completely honest, he hadn’t had so much fun with anyone other than Leo in a really long time; it was hard to keep the wide grin from his face as he started catching up to Sirius.

“C’mon Rem, you almost have it,” Leo encouraged when they were tied.

Sirius threw a side glance their way with a frown, just as Remus shot the puck and scored another goal. The game finished not too long after with a scream of “Yes!” from both Remus and Leo, who laughed together and hugged each other, Remus giggling when Leo ruffled his hair.

“Finn...dimples,” Remus heard the whisper from somewhere in the room and looked up to see who’d said it, but was instead met by a disbelieving gaze. Sirius was almost gawking at him, his eyebrows raised and mouth slightly open, but his eyes were bright and Remus ducked his head when he felt the heat rise in his cheeks.

Then he glanced around and realized that other people in the room were staring at him in different states of wide eyes.

“What?”

Finn was the one to break the short silence, “Just...bitch ass moves, Remus.”

That prompted an onslaught of questions.

“How did you do that?”

“None of us has ever beaten Sirius in that game before.”

“What do you do again?”

Remus looked at Talker, rubbing the back of his neck, “Um. I’m a PT and a yoga instructor.”

"Well, shit," Talker nodded approvingly. Remus supposed he didn’t really look like a gamer, but he didn’t get what the fuss was all about.

“He’s pretty famous too, a lot of people are waiting in line for his classes,” Leo added with a note of pride in his voice.

“Oh!” Remus turned to look at Kasey, who had his eyes trained on him. “That’s where I know you from! My girlfriend Natalie is obsessed with your videos. She says you’re a great teacher, and not at all bad to look at,” he said with a straight face.

Remus’ cheeks flushed a deeper red in a matter of seconds and he looked down to avoid everyone’s gazes. Especially those grey eyes that seemed to look into his soul.

“Mon dieu, il y a des vidéos?” Sirius muttered, making Leo laugh. Sirius’ head snapped towards him, his eyes widening as Leo replied something in french with a smirk etched on his soft features, something that Remus didn’t understand but it made Sirius choke on his words.

“What’s that?” Remus asked, but Leo only shook his head, still laughing, before his eyes drifted off and found Finn and Logan staring at him. A blush appeared on his cheeks, and Remus could practically hear the other two boys swooning.

There was a deep scowl on Sirius’ face again, who was still very much staring at Remus. Was it because he didn’t like Remus? Or because he didn't like losing? What a sore loser, Remus thought, but he felt squirmish under that gaze. Why is he still staring at me?

But then he saw Black glancing at Leo’s pride bracelet, his expression going harder. Oh God, that would be the cherry on top if he was a homophobic, wouldn’t it? He was about to ask if he had a problem, but someone spoke first.

“I believe the word used was hot,” Natalie’s voice drifted in as she suddenly appeared in the doorway. Remus pulled a face at her.

“Nat, you can’t just go saying those things!”

“What? It’s true,” she shrugged. “I mean, I won’t if it bothers you, but that aside, you’re definitely better than half the people out there.”

James threw his hands in the air impatiently. “I still can’t believe you beat Pa-” he started, but was interrupted by a death glare and he cleared his throat, “Sirius. I can’t believe you won against Sirius.” Then a mischievous smile slowly spread on his face. “I mean, Remus, you could probably beat that Padfoot guy, and he does that for a living.”

Remus snorted, “as if. There’s no way I could ever beat Pads.”

He saw eyebrows being raised, and the scowl completely disappearing from Sirius’ features, to be replaced by a perplexed expression.

“You...you know about him?” he asked, with such awe in his voice that Remus frowned.

“I...yes? I’ve followed his channel since before he got famous,” he shrugged.

“Isn’t that interesting?” James said with a smirk, turning to look at Sirius, who punched him in the arm. James’ smile just widened and Remus’ frown deepened as he continued, "I wonder what you could possibly like about him."

“I personally think that Padfoot is a stuck-up,” Logan said off-handedly, ignoring the daggers Sirius was shooting his way.

“Yeah, he thinks he’s all that, but he’s a bit annoying really,” Finn added, barely keeping in the laughter.

Leo raised his eyebrows, glancing sideways at Remus when he noticed him tensing up, his fists clenching.

“That’s a load of bullshit,” he finally said, causing the laughter to die down. “Padfoot built himself from the ground up, he didn’t have any outside help. And he’s not a stuck-up! Even in the face of all the nonsense criticism he gets, he helps a lot of people in all sorts of situations without even...” Remus trailed off, his voice dying down. He felt like he’d been thrown underwater. He stared off at nothing, his eyes getting slightly unfocused as he tried to think solely of breathing, but he couldn’t avoid being suddenly thrown into a memory.

The cold bed with rumpled sheets. The beeping of his own heart in the hospital machine. His mum’s painting on the nightstand. The smell of antiseptics and dull walls closing in on him. Not being able to get air into his lungs. A retreating back, walking away from him. Being left alone, alone alone al–

He stood up suddenly, finally taking a shaky breath in.

“I should go check on my dog.” Leo glanced his way, and Remus gave him a reassuring smile, “You can stay if you want to. You have the keys.” He gave him a little nod to convey the answer to Leo’s unspoken question. I’m fine, don’t worry.

Remus turned around and exited the room with a dull ‘bye’, completely unaware of Sirius’ utterly soft expression as he watched him go.

#wolfstar #wolfstar fic #My One in a Million #Sweater Weather #sweater weather lumosinlove #Remus Lupin #Sirius Black #sirius x remus

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cherienymphe · 4 years

Text

Daddy Dearest (Steve Rogers x Reader)

This is my entry for @kellyn1604 5K Writing Challenge. I chose quote #3: “You complete me” (Jerry Maguire, 1996).

WARNINGS: NON-CON! {IF THIS OFFENDS YOU PLEASE DNI! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED}

Summary: You’re a single mother who’s new to town. Steve Rogers has convinced himself that he’s exactly what you and your son need.

You set the heavy plant down with a groan, doing your best not to crack the ceramic pot it was in. You straightened, brushing your fingers along your hairline, frowning when they came back damp. You glanced up at the sky and noticed that the sun was beginning to make its way over your head. You were thankful that you’d gotten up as early as you did, relieved that you would beat the heat after all.

It was always so hot here, and while your last place of residence was definitely no Alaska or anything, the heat you’d endured before was at least bearable. You sighed, brushing your hands along your white sundress just as a soft gurgle sounded from beside you. You glanced at your son, familiar eyes staring back at you as he watched you attempt to organize something akin to a greenhouse together.

“Mommy’s almost done,” you assured him.

He beat his tiny hands against the stroller with a smile, and you returned it. You turned to grab the last potted plant when you heard voices near the front of your house. You frowned, briefly squinting over your shoulder before continuing your task. Your son cooed again, beating his hands against the stroller with a laugh, but you brushed it off. However, when you straightened, plant in hand, you were met with the sight of a tall broad figure standing before you.

With a shriek, your hands lost their grip, but before the pot could fall and break, the stranger exhibited some impressive reflexes and caught it. You stumbled away in fear, closer to your son, when you paused. Your eyes met his and you tilted your head in confusion. Awe filled you as you realized that you knew that face. Practically everyone in America did.

“Ma’am,” he greeted, as polite as his reputation preceded.

“C-Captain,” you responded, immediately cursing yourself. “Captain America.”

He cracked a small, almost bashful, smile at your correction.

“You can just call me Steve,” he replied, and you nodded.

There was a brief awkward silence in which you just stared at him, unsure of what to say or even how to act. He was taller than you’d thought he’d be, and it took you by surprise as you found yourself struggling hold his gaze. Why was he here?

“You want this here?” he asked, gesturing to the table you were trying to lift the plant onto.

“Please,” you breathed, and he paused for the briefest of moments at your response before placing it down.

When he turned back around you were standing closer to your son, a hand placed on his stroller. The blond Avenger’s smile widened as his eyes landed on him, and it blinded you. He took a step forward.

“…and who’s this little man?”

“This is my son, Leo. He just turned 1,” you replied, in disbelief that you were introducing Steve Rogers to your son.

“He’s beautiful,” he said and the sincerity there took you by surprise.

He tore his eyes away from him only to rest them on you as he placed his hands on his hips.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m here…”

You nodded, squinting up at him.

“A few members of our team and I are doing some reconnaissance in the next city over. We’re laying low here in the meantime,” he explained.

That made sense. The next city over was big and lively, full of people attracted to that kind of lifestyle, and you were sure every single person there would learn of the presence of Captain America in no time. It would make their job a lot harder, no doubt. The town you lived in was small, only about 1,000 people residing in it, but everyone kind of kept to themselves. It was a town people came to when they wanted to hide.

“I’m here with you because of an incident that took place some weeks ago.”

You frowned, fingers clenching around the handle of your son’s stroller as you processed his words. His eyebrows were furrowed, eyes apologetic as if the last thing he wanted to do was discuss this with you. You cleared your throat, a chill passing through you.

“Is it…is it related? To what you’re doing,” you clarified.

He nodded.

“We think it is, ma’am.”

You swallowed, pushing your son along as you glanced over your shoulder at your visitor.

“Why don’t you come inside?”

“Do you want anything to drink?”

“No, thank you,” he answered with a shake of his head.

You closed the fridge, leaning against your counter with your son on your hip. Steve Rogers was sitting at your little kitchen table, his large frame making it, and your kitchen, look so much smaller. You could hardly believe it. You glanced around with a grimace.

“I’m sorry the place is such a mess,” you apologized.

“No need to be sorry. Your neighbor told me that you just moved here,” Steve said, arms folded over his chest.

“We’ve been here for a few weeks. That’s more than enough time to get this place together. I just…”

He sighed when you trailed off, straightening in the chair as he rested his hands in his lap.

“You were kidnapped when you first got to the area, about fifteen minutes away from here,” he gently began.

You nodded, clutching Leo to you. It was the scariest day of your life, and the entire time all you could think about was Leo.

“One of my tires blew, and I had gotten out to change it when it happened. Leo was in the car, and they…they left him. The police found my car and him on the side of the road not too long after. They told me that aside from some mild thirst, Leo was fine. It took two days for them to find me, and I guess my kidnappers had gotten a tip or something, because they cleared out in a hurry only minutes before the police broke into wherever they were keeping me,” you explained, talking about the incident for the first time in weeks.

Steve looked at you sadly, leaning forward now.

“…and you didn’t see a face? Recognize a voice?”

“Nothing,” you shook your head. “I wasn’t of much help to the police either when they asked these questions.”

He stood, nearing you as you looked up at him.

“Don’t be sorry about that. It isn’t your fault. I just wanted to compare your story to some others.”

Horror struck you.

“Others? There are other girls who…?”

“There are. I can’t disclose any details, but I just wanted to hear your experience from you,” he confirmed, keeping his voice low.

Leo was dozing now, and you placed your hand on the back of his head, trembling.

“Do you think I should leave?”

Steve shook his head.

“No. You’re perfectly safe with us here. We won’t leave without taking care of this. I promise,” he assured.

You sighed in relief, smiling at him as he gazed at you.

“Thank you. I feel like I can finally start resting easy, now. I haven’t gotten much sleep since it happened, and raising a 1 year old doesn’t exactly help,” you confessed, walking him to the door.

“You’ll have nothing to worry about from now on. It was nice meeting you…”

You chuckled and resisted the urge to roll your eyes.

“I’m positive you already know my name.”

Steve smiled.

“I do, but it wasn’t given with your permission.”

You felt your face get hot at not only how gentlemanly he was being, but at the way he looked at you. He was giving you his undivided attention, and you hadn’t been looked at like that in a while.

“(Y/N),” you introduced yourself.

“(Y/N),” he repeated, with a nod. “Nice to meet you.”

There was a knock on your door, and your heart skipped a beat as you almost dropped the picture frame you were holding. You glanced at Leo, sleeping peacefully in his playpen before standing and making your way to the door. You were hesitant as you unlocked the door. Since you came to town the only visitors you had had been the police, and that was only twice.

You cracked it open, blinking in surprise before smiling.

“Steve,” you greeted, opening the door and unlocking the screen. “What are you doing here?”

He looked around, almost worriedly, as he stepped past you. His blue eyes were cold.

“I just wanted to check in on you.”

You frowned, not liking the way he said that.

“Is something happening?”

You always thought it was irrational, but you could never help but to fear that your kidnappers would come back for you. You knew that sex trafficking was becoming more and more common, and you were an easy target. A single mother with no relatives in a small town. It was why you hardly left the house.

He looked at you, taking in your stricken expression before briefly rubbing his hand along your arm, face softening.

“No. I told you, you won’t have anything to worry about anymore,” he replied, taking in the mess.

You chuckled, stepping over some toys.

“I finally decided to start putting all of this stuff away. Sorry-.”

“Stop apologizing,” he gently replied. “Let me help you…”

Your eyes widened.

“No, I can’t ask that of you. I should’ve had all of this done weeks ago and…,” you trailed off when he brushed his hand along your shoulder.

You watched him sit down on the floor beside an unopened box.

“You’re going to keep apologizing,” he said with a chuckle. “Besides, I want to help.”

You hesitated, before dropping to your knees with a small sigh.

“Okay,” you relented, and he smirked, because you both knew that you didn’t have much choice in the matter anyway.

You should have found it odd that Steve Rogers was on your living room floor, helping you unpack and tidy up your house, but you didn’t. He was a good man, a hero. It was quiet but not uncomfortable, and you were sure it was because of who he was. After all, he was still a stranger, Captain America or not, but he didn’t feel like a stranger.

“What is it?” you asked, catching him glancing at you once in a while.

He pursed his lips, a thoughtful expression on his face that you’d seen on the news plenty of times.

“It was just you and your son during the incident, and it was just you and your son the other day…,” he trailed off, and you looked down.

You knew what he was getting at, and he probably didn’t want to be rude and come out and ask. You set down the dishes you’d just unwrapped before sighing.

“I don’t know where his father is,” you confessed.

Steve frowned, rearing back a bit before you continued.

“We were happy. At least…I thought that we were,” you began with a shrug. “When I told him about the pregnancy, he was ecstatic to be a father and then when I was four months along, I woke up one morning and he was gone. All of his stuff was gone, and his phone kept going straight to voicemail. I never saw him again.”

Steve’s face was taught, jaw clenched as he stared at you with wide eyes. He didn’t respond at first, turning his head away as he heaved a heavy sigh.

“That’s horrible,” he eventually said, and you noticed the way his hands clenched into fists.

“Hey,” you said, placing your hand on his arm, drawing his attention back to you. “I know that things were very different in your day, but it happens.”

“Is that supposed to make it okay?” he thundered, and you were taken aback by his anger.

You heard Leo stir a bit before going back to sleep.

“No, it doesn’t,” you sighed. “…but I made my peace with it a long time ago.”

“You had to have been terrified…,” he wondered, his hand coming up to graze your own.

“I was,” you confirmed. “Especially since I had burned so many bridges to be with him. My family didn’t exactly approve, and in the end, I guess they saw something I was blinded to.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t blame yourself,” he angrily replied, shaking his head. “You’re…wonderful.”

“You don’t even know me,” you nervously chuckled. “I could be the world’s worst mother-.”

“You raised him all on your own, (Y/N). He’s beautiful and healthy and you did that by yourself for a year. You shouldn’t have had to.”

You didn’t know what to say, especially with how he was looking at you. It had just been you and Leo for so long, and while you knew you always did the best you could, it felt nice to have someone acknowledge it. It had been hard, harder than it should have been due to your ex’s abrupt absence.

“Thank you,” you whispered, surprised at how hoarse you sounded.

Steve reached out to brush his hand along your cheek, and you were embarrassed. You hadn’t realized you’d started crying.

“God, I’m sorry,” you sniffed. “I shouldn’t have dumped all of that on you.”

You stood with a chuckle just as Leo began to stir again, and this time you knew he was awake for good. You crossed the room, leaning over to pick him up just as he began to cry. You shushed him as you turned back to Steve, finding his intense gaze already on you.

“He’s probably hungry. That’s the only time he ever wakes up in a bad mood,” you explained.

You approached him, eyebrows raised.

“Do you want to hold him while I fix his food?”

You held in a laugh as Steve blanched.

“Are you sure?”

“You’re Captain America. I’d probably trust him more in your hands than I do my own,” you joked, handing him over.

You sharply inhaled as you watched him cradle Leo, your son looking so small in his big arms.

“He looks…so much like you,” he murmured, distracted.

“Yeah, that is one thing I’m grateful for. I can’t see his father in him, at all, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think I conceived him all by myself.”

You walked past him, hearing his light steps behind you as he followed you into the kitchen. His presence was calming as you moved about, and you looked over your shoulder to see him looking around with a frown.

“What is it?” you asked, pausing in your task, tilting your head at him.

He shook his head.

“Nothing,” he murmured, turning back to your son.

You furrowed your brows but brushed it off before turning back around. It wasn’t long before you heard a low humming sound, the familiar coos of your son reaching your ears soon after.

“Steve…I can’t take this,” you refused, shaking your head.

He rolled his eyes, brushing past you and into your home, and you sighed.

“Steve,” you protested, but to no avail.

You watched as he began emptying the grocery bags, filling your cabinets and refrigerator with food. You opted to choose your battles, and simply set about helping him. You glanced at him with a small frown.

For the past week or so he’d stopped by almost every day. The two of you would talk as he helped you unpack, and you were grateful because you only had a couple of more boxes left. He’d always play with Leo, occupying him while you made his food, and then you’d talk some more.

It was only recently when he started…broadening his help. He’d bring groceries by and work on things around the house that needed fixing. Hell, thanks to him your greenhouse was actually a functioning greenhouse, now. You were grateful, so grateful, but sometimes…

He turned to look at you as he out the last of the groceries away, and you swallowed.

Sometimes he looked at you in a way that confused you. It was a look that was so intense, you didn’t know how to feel about it. Your ex hadn’t even looked at you that way before.

“Steve, you…you’re doing more than enough for me. Really…”

You’d had this conversation before, and every time it was the same thing.

“I want to help you,” was his simple response every time.

You frowned, crossing your arms over your chest with a huff.

“Do you…do you pity me?”

It was a thought that constantly plagued you, and you hated it. He blinked, and you would have found his reaction adorable if you weren’t under the impression that you were just a charity case.

“No,” he said, sounding almost offended.

“Leo and I have been doing fine, and I don’t want your help if it’s just-.”

You cut yourself off as he took your hands in his, staring down at you with a small sad smile.

“I see a young woman who was left in a difficult situation, and I want to help her. Not because I pity her, but because she’s a wonderful mother who I think deserves the world,” he explained.

There was so much conviction there, and while anyone else probably would have swooned, it just made you slightly uncomfortable. You slowly tore your hands away, glancing away as he frowned.

“Steve…you aren’t Leo’s father, and you don’t have to try and make up for what he did. We’re fine,” you assured him. “Besides, Leo is…he adores you, and what’s going to happen a few weeks from now when you have to leave?”

He exhaled, crossing his arms over his chest, almost like a child.

“I could stick around for a while,” he offered.

You gave him a reproachful look.

“Steve…”

“I might be here longer than you think. Don’t think about that, right now,” he said with a small smile.

You didn’t return it, instead watching him as he began checking your windows and doors.

“I have to leave for a few days, maybe four at the most,” he told you.

“Oh,” you said, hoping the relief in your voice wasn’t too obvious.

“I might send someone to look out for you, so don’t be alarmed if you see an Avenger in your front lawn at night.”

You opened your mouth to protest but decided against it. You simply nodded, watching him grab a pan before turning on your stove. You bit your lip, swallowing a complaint.

He was right. During the days that he was gone, you would look out of your window at night to find an unfamiliar figure standing in front of your house. There were no lights near your house, and it was always too dark to see who it could be. You pursed your lips, shaking your head as you let the curtain fall back into place before taking Leo upstairs.

Steve Rogers was just being Steve Rogers. That was what you told yourself. He was Captain America, the poster boy for good Samaritans and every parents’ wet dream everywhere. He was only trying to help, and you just weren’t used to help. You weren’t used to people like him, and because of that, you were just acting like a bitch. That had to be it.

What sane person would be annoyed by all that he was doing for you?

It was the third day without him when your cell phone rang. You answered it without thinking, only for your mouth to fall open in shock as the other person on the line began to speak. They confirmed your name and you responded that it was indeed you. Thus, began the explanation for the call.

Your ex, Leo’s father, had been found dead. He had never told you much about his family, and the woman on the phone confirmed they weren’t able to get in touch with any relatives. It seemed that he hadn’t updated his emergency contact after leaving you, and so you were who they had to call. You swallowed as you hung up the phone, unsure of how to feel.

That was how Steve found you when he knocked on your door two hours later. You answered it in a daze, barely acknowledging him as you let him in.

“(Y/N),” he called in a firm voice that startled you from your trance.

You blinked at him, realizing that he’d probably been calling you for a minute. His face was wrought with confusion and worry as he gazed at you.

“My ex is…dead. Nathan. That was his name,” you mumbled, slowing sinking onto your couch.

Steve crossed the room to lift Leo into his arms, the infant placing a hand on the man’s cheek.

“How do you know?” he asked, almost demanded.

You look up at him.

“Apparently I was still listed as his emergency contact. They weren’t able to get in touch with any relatives either.”

He studied you with a frown, eyes roaming over your frozen form.

“You seem upset by the news,” he observed.

Was it just you…or did he sound almost disapproving?

“Well, we had been together for nearly two years before… No matter how things ended between us, when we were together, he wasn’t just my boyfriend. He was also my friend.”

“Friends don’t do what he did to you.”

You huffed, getting a bit irritated by his callous tone.

“I know that, but I never got closure. I was forced to move on and make peace with everything, because I was given no other choice, and now I’ll never get it. I’ll never know why he just up and left-.”

“Why do you want to? He was a coward. He didn’t want to take responsibility for his actions,” he argued.

“I know that, but-.”

“If you know that then why are you bothered by this news?”

“Steve, I loved him…for years. Can I not grieve over this?” you asked him, genuinely confused and taken aback by his behavior.

He simply looked away from you, rocking Leo as he smiled at him.

“So, who’s going to deal with arrangements?”

“I…I don’t know. I suppose that would fall to me, but the phone call came all the way from California. I don’t know what to do,” you murmured. “They didn’t even say how he died.”

Steve ignored you, walking into the kitchen. You frowned as you heard him fiddling around in there, and you surmised that he was going to start cooking. There was that feeling again, that feeling that made you feel like a bitch. This wasn’t his house…

You slammed the door shut behind you with an irritated sigh. Leo was quiet, simply resting on your hip as you locked the door. You had just set him down, barely getting your jacket off when a knock sounded on your door. You swallowed another sigh, resisting the urge to groan, because you already knew who was on the other side.

Since he’d been back, a day hadn’t gone by when Steve didn’t show up to help around the house and play with your son. The conversations that followed after the one about your ex were filled with…tension. Maybe that wasn’t the right word for it. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but you just felt like you’d disappointed Steve in some way. He’d been borderline short with you, only genuinely smiling when he interacted with Leo.

Steve knocked again, and this time you did sigh.

You weren’t in the mood to deal with him. Far from it, in fact.

You’d finally decided to see what you could do about the arrangements for your ex. You’d been prepared to drive to the next city over and see if you could get a plane ticket or something. You had money saved up, and with Steve helping out around the house as of late, there was no need to dip into your savings. However, your car wouldn’t start. You turned the key until your fingers ached, but nothing would give. You always took care of your car if you didn’t take care of anything else. Now, you would have to spend money to get it looked at.

You were brought out of your reverie by the sound of your door opening. You frowned, realizing that while you hadn’t locked the screen, you’d most definitely locked the other door. Your mouth parted as Steve let himself in, a key in hand as he shut the door behind him. He looked worried as he approached you.

“Why didn’t you answer the door?” he asked, reaching for your face.

You swallowed and took a step back, eyeing him.

“Where did you get that?” you asked, gesturing to the key in his hand as you ignored his question.

His mouth fell into a straight line as he walked over to Leo.

“I had one made,” was his simple response.

Your frown deepened, and you strode over to him, taking Leo from him. You looked him up and down before taking a step back. You briefly closed your eyes, realizing that you were indeed about to be the ungrateful bitch who was about to tell Captain America to stop helping her.

“Steve...we need to talk…”

He straightened, looking down his nose at you as he waited for you to continue.

“First of all, I want you to know that I do appreciate all of your help. You have been an absolute saint, you have no idea, but…”

You looked away, unable to hold his intense gaze as you kept going.

“You’re suffocating me. I know that you’ve taken a liking to Leo and you feel like I deserve everything you’ve been doing for me and more, but it’s starting to make me uncomfortable. Steve, you had a key made without my permission,” you said, gesturing to it. “You’re temporary. You’ve been here for nearly a month and I’m sure whatever you and your team are working on has to be ending sooner rather than later.”

Steve said nothing, simply watching you as you ranted.

“Leo is going to start expecting your company. Hell, even I might start expecting you to be around all the time and that’s not something I want to get used to, because it isn’t true. You’re sweet, really you are, but Leo and I are fine. You don’t need to come around all the time.”

He didn’t immediately respond, simply staring at you with an unreadable expression. His eyebrows suddenly furrowed before nodding.

“I see,” was all he said.

“I know I’m coming off as ungrateful-.”

“No, no,” he said, placing his hand on your shoulder. “If I’m making you uncomfortable, then maybe I am overstepping.”

He placed the key in your hand, almost reluctantly.

“You’re right. We won’t be here much longer, and I guess I never thought about the affect it would have on the two of you when I’m no longer around. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you murmured.

He reached up, brushing his fingers along your cheek. You flinched, involuntarily, but he noticed, and his eyes hardened for the briefest of moments before sighing. He stepped away.

“I’ll go.”

Your heart sank, and part of you felt like maybe you were being too harsh. You followed him to the door, Leo cooing in your ear.

“Steve, I… I really am thankful for everything. I promise I am,” you assured him.

He looked at you with a small smile, halfway out of the door.

“I know you are.”

You pressed your hand to the door as it shut behind him, staring at it for a moment before taking Leo upstairs for a bath.

It was sometime in the night when you were woken up by a procession of knocks on your front door. You stumbled down the stairs, half asleep, realizing too late that you weren’t exactly dressed to answer the door. However, considering how late it was, you were sure it was either a case of mistaken identity so to speak or someone needing to use a phone. It was a small town, after all.

You opened the door, surprised to discover who was on the other side. Although, maybe you shouldn’t have been. You’d seen more of him than you had anyone else since you first moved to town. You grimaced, half of your frame hidden behind the door as you pressed your chest against it, hand clutching the side of it.

“Steve,” you breathed. “What are you doing here? It’s late.”

You would be lying if you said you weren’t a bit nervous.

Steve Rogers may have been America’s golden boy, holding true to that the past month or so, but his suffocating presence had been starting to wear on you. It was what had sparked the conversation you’d had with him hours earlier. The conversation where you had to find a gentle way to convey to him that you needed him to back off.

You knew that he meant well, and it was why you were so reluctant to have that talk with him, but… Part of you believed that Steve was getting a bit too attached. That maybe he thought there was something going on here, more than what really was.

“I know. I was in the area, doing some recon when I thought about our talk. Can I come in?”

The question was innocent enough, especially coming from Captain America of all people, but you didn’t feel right about letting him in. You didn’t know why.

“Steve, it’s late. I’ve already put Leo to bed and-.”

“I didn’t want to leave here without talking this out. I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable, that was never my intentions,” he softly replied.

You pursed your lips, studying him.

You believed him.

After all, you’d only known him to always try and do the right thing, and while you never wanted to say it aloud, you and your son did need help. Steve had been nothing but a saint to you. Maybe it was your own issues and trauma that made you hesitant. Maybe you were reading too much into things and Steve just genuinely wanted to help you in any way he could. He was from a different time, and maybe he didn’t view his behavior the way you did. Maybe you were just being a bitch.

You gazed at him and sighed. His eyebrows were furrowed, blue eyes focused on you with a look of concern that was oh so familiar. Why oh why were you always pushing people away?

“Okay,” you relented.

The corners of his mouth lifted into a small smile as you reached over and unlocked the screen door. You moved out of the way as he came inside, shutting the door behind him with a resounding click. You pulled on your t-shirt, the end of it brushing the top of your knees as you turned to face him.

“I only ever wanted to look out for you…”

You sighed, sitting down.

“I know that,” you quietly replied.

He sat down beside you, facing you as he continued.

“You were right. I was trying to make up for what Leo’s father did to you. It…it tormented me, (Y/N).”

He scooted closer to you, his clothed knees brushing your bare ones.

“I know that I woke up in a completely different world than the one I left when I went into the ice. I know that, but sometimes I still come across things that disgust me. That make me angry enough to kill, and hearing how he just up and left you and your son like that…”

He looked away with a sigh.

“I understand, Steve. It made me angry too, and I get how you got a little carried away, but you don’t need to make up for anything.”

He shook his head.

“I was raised to take care of my girl. That’s how it was… If you were blessed enough to get a beautiful girl you’d do anything for, you looked out for her.”

You chuckled with a shake of your head, brushing his words off.

“That’s really sweet, Steve, but I’m not your girl and you aren’t Leo’s father. You don’t owe us anything…”

He suddenly took your hands into his own, and you frowned. He leaned in, tightening his grip as he smiled at you.

“…but you could be. You could be my girl, and I could be Leo’s father,” he proposed.

Your eyes widened and you reared back.

“Steve…”

“You need me. You said it yourself that you were so thankful for all of my help…”

“Yes, but-!”

“I could be around all the time. You need a man around the house to take care of you and Leo,” he continued, bringing one hand up to rest on your neck, thumb brushing along your jaw.

You heart felt like it was going to burst from your chest. You felt sick.

“No, I-. Steve. You barely even know me, and I hardly know you. Besides, I don’t think I’ll be ready for another relationship for a long time. I just want to focus on Leo, right now.”

“I do know you, (Y/N). You’re so sweet…and polite…and beautiful. You’re a wonderful mother to him, a perfect mother. You’re perfect for me,” he pressed, scooting closer as you moved back.

“No-.”

“You are. You are,” he murmured, leaning in and pressing his lips against yours.

You turned your head away with a frown, pushing against him.

“From the first moment I saw you, I thought to myself that you looked like an angel in that white dress, feet bare and dirt on your forehead. You were so adorable, and Leo was right there with you. He laughed when he first saw me, you know. He loved me,” he whispered, turning you to face him.

You beat your fists against his chest, but you might as well had been hitting a brick wall for all the good it did you.

“When I came out of the ice, I thought I’d never find a girl who was so right for me in this day and age. A sweet girl who wanted a family… I thought I’d spend so much of my time on this earth alone. I was wrong. You complete me,” he said in between fierce kisses.

You finally pulled away with a gasp, slipping from in between him before sprinting to the other side of the room. He frowned up at you, and you frantically looked around the room.

“(Y/N), you can focus on Leo. I can take care of everything, and you and Leo can spend all day with each other. You can devote all of your time to him just like you do now,” he said, standing.

Your legs were shaking as you backed away from him, hand sliding along the wall as you eyed him with tears in your eyes. You’d always noticed how big he was, but it was never more glaring than it was in this moment. He could do anything to you, and you’d be powerless to stop him.

“Steve, p-please. You’re scaring me,” you whispered.

“I can love you the way Nathan never did. I will never abandon you like he did,” he whispered, approaching you like a lion would prey.

“Steve…Steve, I thought you were my friend,” you pleaded, stumbling back towards the kitchen.

His frown deepened.

“I am. I am your friend…and I’m in love with you…”

“No,” you denied, shaking your head as the room began to spin.

“I am. I will always protect you and Leo. You’ll want for nothing. I’ll protect you both from anyone who wants to harm you. You’ll be completely safe with me.”

“Steve…stop,” you begged. “Please.”

“We finished our mission a week ago. We found those men who took you, and I made it so they’d never harm you again,” he confessed.

Your eyes widened at that.

“What?”

“I took care of Nathan too. He got what he deserved for abandoning you like that…”

You halted all movement, staring at him as your stomach twisted into knots. A chill passed down your spine, and you were certain that you were going to throw up.

“Do you know that he was married? He abandoned you so easily and moved on like it was nothing only to give someone else what he should have given you,” he spat, eyes hardening.

A few tears skipped down your cheeks, and then you turned. You ran into the kitchen, almost tripping over the chair as you sprinted past the table. You faced him, hand reaching for a knife as he walked into the kitchen. There was only a table between you, and you released a shaky breath as you raised your arm.

“Please don’t make me do this,” you cried.

Steve looked at you with pity, as if you needed help.

“Just leave. I won’t tell anyone about what you did, I swear,” you promised.

Steve huffed, arms flexing, and you looked between him and the kitchen doorway.

“(Y/N),” he warned.

You ran around the other side of the table, shoving it against his legs before turning the corner. You slid and landed on your side, immediately pushing yourself to your knees as you climbed the stairs. You’d only made it halfway up when his hand closed around your ankle. You shrieked as your chin harshly met one of the steps, kicking out at him as he began to pull you down.

You slammed the knife into the wood, hanging on with an iron grip as one of his hands dug into your waist.

“Steve, please,” you shrieked, screaming when he successfully pulled you down.

The two of you landed at the bottom in a heap, and he wasted no time in pinning you beneath him.

Just then the two of you heard a faint noise, and you knew the commotion had stirred Leo. You struggled beneath Steve, fighting to get to your son, but he wouldn’t let up. A few more moments passed by before it was quiet again, and you knew Leo had fallen back asleep. Steve turned his head to face you, and the tears spilled over all over again.

His chest was heaving against yours, jaw clenched as he ran his eyes over you. You flinched as he reached up to brush his fingers down the side of your face, blue eyes drinking you in.

“We need to be quiet,” he softly said, one of his hands trailing down your body.

You started to buck against him, so much fear coursing through you it made your head spin. His fingers danced along your exposed thigh.

“No, no, no,” you murmured.

He pressed his face into your neck, shushing you.

“We have to be quiet. We don’t want to wake him up, do we?”

You let your head fall back to the floor with a soft thud, defeated. How did you not see it? How did things escalate so far without you noticing? Where did you go wrong?

A loud tearing sound pulled you back to reality, and you cried when the cool air hit your naked core. His fingers were suddenly there, working against you and spreading heat through your stomach.

“Steve,” you begged, reaching down to grip his wrist.

“Let me take care of you,” he said just before sliding down your shaking frame.

Your mouth opened in a silent scream when his mouth descended over the most sensitive part of you. Your hand gripped his head for leverage, digging into his scalp in an attempt to get him off. He simply grabbed your hands and intertwined his fingers with your own. You bit your lip at the pleasure that coursed through you, unsurprised when you tasted blood.

You hadn’t been touched like this in two years, and the abruptness of it all was messing with your mind. You squeezed Steve’s hand, vision blurring as you were positive you were crushing his head with your thighs. Your back arched off of the floor, chest heaving and feet flailing as he thrust his tongue inside of you with vigor. You were almost there, breath hitching as you climbed, but right before you hit the peak, he pulled away.

You fell back to the floor with a groan, turning to get away from him just as his hands lowered to his pants. You crawled across the floor on shaky legs as you reached out to your phone on the couch. Your fingers just barely brushed against it when his hands were on your hips, pushing them to the floor. You gasped as his chest pressed against your back, pinning you between him and the hard floor.

“Steve…Steve, please,” you panted.

You twisted beneath him, legs kicking as he forced himself between your legs. One of his hands pressed into the side of your head, preventing you from moving while the other dragged the tip of his cock along your entrance.

“Let me take care of you, (Y/N),” he almost begged. “Let me take care of you.”

You squeaked when he slid inside of you, hands reaching out to claw against the floor. You sobbed as he thrust inside of you, hand fisted into your hair as soft grunts escaped his lips. You tried to push yourself up onto your elbows, but he was there, leaning down and pushing you back down in the process.

“You’re going to be so happy with me,” he whispered, lips brushing along your ear. “I’m going to be so good to Leo, and when you’re ready, we’ll have another. We’ll give him someone to play with.”

“No,” you moaned, reaching up to dig your nails into his arm.

“Yes,” he hissed, one of his hands coming around to grip your throat, holding you in place as he fucked you. “Can’t you see it?”

You frantically shook your head.

“You’ll be so beautiful, big and round, outside in your bare feet. I’ll build you the biggest greenhouse you want, ten times the size of the one you have, now. I’m going to give you everything you want,” he murmured, dragging his cock in and out of your slick walls.

You gasped, realizing that spots were appearing in your vision. You hit his hand, but he paid you no mind.

“You need me. You need me to take care of you…”

His voice was fading, and you squeaked, attempting to speak his name, but nothing came out. You clenched around him, the sounds of his grunts getting louder reached your ears just as you lost consciousness.

When you came to, Leo was crying. The familiar sound cracked through your subconscious, and you woke with a start. You were still on the living room floor, prone in front of the couch, but there was a thick quilt thrown over you. You blinked, taking note of your sore throat as you realized that Steve was nowhere to be found.

Leo quieted, and you struggled to sit up, bringing the quilt with you as you clutched it to your chest. You heard footsteps on the stairs and looked up to gaze at Steve as he descended them, Leo in his arms as Steve crooned at him. Your fingers tightened on the cover, staring at the Avenger in fear.

“It’s okay,” he shushed, pressing his lips to your son’s forehead. “Daddy’s got you.”

Tags: @naee-twice @captainchrisstan @xoxabs88xox @mcudarklibrary

#steve rogers x reader #steve rogers #dark fic

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thiswasinevitableid · 3 years

Text

Gift (Indruck)

A second fill for @crepuscularlives

16. we didn’t read the invitation that said this party was formal so we’re in our ugly christmas sweaters. SFW

Duck’s fully prepared for Aubrey, and maybe even Mama, to tease him for his Newton family christmas sweater. When he gets to the Lodge to find everyone dressed swanky, he thinks it’s some sort of elaborate prank. He decides to ask Barclay, since he tends to be less invested in pranks than the others.

“Uhhh” Barclay points to a stray invite, “it said formal, see? We thought a change of pace would be fun.”

“Fuck. I just came straight from a family thing, didn’t think it’d matter.”

Barclay pats his shoulder with a warm smile, “Don’t worry about it, man, it’s not like anyone’s gonna toss you out for it.”

Duck grumbles something about not wanting to stick out as he turns, and spies an even uglier sweater across the room. It’s bright green and fire-engine red with, covered in old-school colored bulb christmas lights, blinking like fireflies.

Somehow, it suits Indrid perfectly.

The Sylph waves when we spots Duck, coming over to join him by the drinks table.

“Hello Duck, I’m glad this is the future where you’re here.” He ladles himself a mug from one of the two crockpots of eggnog.

“Howdy, ‘Drid. Glad I ain’t the only one who went for the ugly sweater vibe.”

Indrid cocks his head, “This is the nicest thing I own.”

Duck groans, reaches up to hide behind a hat that isn’t there.

Indrids smile widens, “I’m joking. It was a, ah, what do always call it...ah yes, a goof.”

He laughs, relieved, “Jesus, you got me good.”

“It’s payback for the time you convinced me that squirrels were carnivorous.”

Duck snickers at the memory of Indrid, in his moth form in the woods, eyeing the squirrels warily.

He joins Aubrey, Thacker, and Dani by the fire, and Indrid wanders over to oin them, taking a seat next to Duck when the human scoots over to offer him it. Thacker talks about the library and the regrowing cities, and Indrid’s face turns wistful. Duck suspects only he can see it, Indrid’s glasses showing enough of his eyes from the side to make emotions clearer.

(Indrid always sits across from people. The last few times they’ve met up, he sits next to Duck).

In spite of only some gentle ribbing about his clothes, he keeps picking at the sleeve of the sweater. It’s a little itchy, and he could have worn that nice green shirt with the pine tree tie that he likes. And every time he catches a glimpse of himself in a window, he’s back in space, watching an evil hivemind recreate it’s pattern on a mimic of his sister.

“Is it bothering you a lot?” Indrid murmurs.

“N-no, uh, I, uh, just, fuck, it’s nothin,” He stops talking, flees Indrid’s red stare to refill his cider. He pauses to talk with Kirby and Ned, is looking around the room for a new spot to sit (and for Indrid), only for a tan hand to wave him into a hallway.

“Here, try this.” Indrid ties a discarded gift ribbon around his wrist, and he’s no longer looking down at the wool sweater and jeans. He’s in a deep gray suit, with a green shirt and a silver tie.

“Holy shit. Wait, do I look-”

“-different? No, I left your physical form intact. I can make disguises of different magnitudes. A simple clothing swap is easily done. And I, ah, I did not want you to spend a night with friends lost in frightening memories.”

Duck’s about to thank him when the words sink in.

“There was a future where you told me. I, ah, you’ve mentioned what you saw at Reconciliation before, but not that detail.”

“Wasn’t scared so much as pissed.” Duck glances at his shoes, now well-shined loafers.

“Understandable. And useful; the odds were not in your favor, believe me. But well-timed anger can change the course of fate. Just as choosing mercy--even when others urge for violence--can. Punching me also reset fate rather dramatically.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

Indrid’s smile is small, and stunningly fake, “It was for the best. I’m going to get some more nog. Would you like some?”

“Nah, still gotta finish this. But I do wanna try some of that salmon dip.”

“In true bear fashion.” Indrid’s smile turns genuine when Duck snorts and elbows him.

They talk and mingle with their friends, Indrid making frequent returns to the nog bowl. Duck steps outside for air, comes back and spends a moment watching Indrid by the fire. Stern notices him, steps away from an animated conversation with a ghostly Boyd about art forgery to join him.

“Quite the dapper costume change.”

“Thanks. ‘Drid did it for me.”

Stern follows Duck’s gaze, then casually sip his wine, “Have you told him yet?”

“Told, uh, told him what?”

“Duck, you spend more time with him than almost anyone else.”

“Half my friends live on another planet now.”

“And every time you look at him, your smile changes. His does too. According to Barclay, he talks about you like you’re the most fascinating thing on earth. Right, love?” He kisses Barclay’s cheek as the cook joins them.

“Yep.”

There’s a crash as Indrid loses his balance and knocks over a lamp, which Aubrey freezes mid-air.

“Shit, he’s hammered.” Barclay sounds surprised.

“How much rum did you put in the nog?” Duck doesn’t remember the sip he had from Indrid’s cup tasting that strong.

“I made two batches, one with booze and one without. Indrid was drinking the non-spiked one earlier. Wonder when he switched.”

“About the time Duck changed clothes.”

“...How did you not catch us durin the Pine Guard days again?”

Stern smiles, “Barclay can be very distracting when he wants to be. And none of you have ever asked exactly how much I worked out.”

He has a point. As does Barclay when he points out that Indrid should have someone take him home after the party.

When Duck offers him a ride, Indrid chirps excitedly, bonks his forehead on the roof of the car, and climbs in. By the time they get back to the ‘Bago, Duck knows he can’t just leave Indrid here.

“You’re staying?” Indrid bounces on the bed as Duck turns on the space heaters.

“Just ‘til you sober up. I’ll stay out in the main cab so you can sleep.”

Indrid lets out a chirr that intensifies when Duck slips the ribbon from his wrist. It almost sounds perturbed.

“I mean, uh, I can go if you really need me to.”

Indrid shakes his head, barely managing to get his shoes off before burrowing under to covers, “Please stay as long as you want.”

Duck nods, excuses himself to use the bathroom, and comes back to Indrid chirp-snoring into the pillows. He’s such a cute, weird man. Duck will just sit down a second to make sure he doesn’t wake up and need something.

The one small seat is taken up by a binder, which opens when Duck lifts it. Instead of the expected paper avalanche, he finds drawings, each in their own plastic slip. He flips through it as he settles in the chair. Interspersed with the drawings are papers labeled in one or two two words of Sylph, and Duck reverse engineers their likely meanings from the images that follow them. The section with all the plants and animals must be “nature,” the one with parties and state fairs “events.” There’s even a section that’s all elements of winter holidays; the Rockefeller tree with decorations that suggest the 1930s, a menorah in a window, candles on the table of a house that’s seen better days. Towards the back is a section that has to be “friends.” There are one or two people who appear in images with Indrid. Including the kind that make Duck quickly turn the page. The further he gets in that section, the more familiar faces he sees; Barclay, Aubrey, Jake, Ned.

He sees himself, returning from saving the world, battered but alive.

“The odds were not good”

Tucked at the very back of the section, between the final empty pages and the binder, is a folded paper. Curious, Duck opens it.

It’s him. With Indrid. They’re on Indrid’s tiny bed, kissing.

God that looks nice.

Startled by his own thoughts, he tucks the picture back into the binder and sets the whole thing on the floor. Decides one of the paperbacks strewn on the floor is a better way to occupy himself then accidentally finding more personal images.

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

The world is ending, everything is ripping away into the sky, everything he’s fought for is gone. He failed. He didn’t want a destiny, and he’s failed the fucking thing anyway and it’s all gone and there’s no future for him now but to be torn into ash-

“Duck, Duck wake up”

He jolts, whams his head into the wall of the very intact Winnebago at the edge of the still standing Monongahela while a very alive, now-sober Indrid leans over him.

“Owfuck.”

“Oh, oh no, I’m sorry, you were very clearly having a nightmare and I figured you’d like it to stop.”

“Yeah” He rubs his head, “yeah I did. Thanks. Sorry if I woke you up.”

“Given that in many futures our positions were reversed, I don’t have a lot of room to complain about someone shouting in their sleep.” Indrid sits down on the floor next to the chair, stays silent as Duck coaxes his breathing to even out. A hand hesitates in the air, then touches his arm, rubbing it reassuringly.

No one else saw it. Not even Minerva or Leo, the only people who could understand the horror of seeing a thing unfold with scant chances of stopping it.

Indrid’s hand brush lightly over his own before returning to his arm.

No, not the only people.

“Indrid, can I ask you somethin?”

“Of course.”

“The day we let The Quell through and saved the worlds did you, uh, did you see what woulda happened if Aubrey hadn’t blown the gate apart?”

“Yes.” The reply is quiet.

“Do you, uh, still see it sometimes?”

“Now and then, but I have far more bad timelines in my mind, and more failures in my past, for my nightmares to draw upon than you do. That is half the reason I drank so much tonight. Around the time of the winter solstice, my nightmares increase in frequency and intensity, Sylvain only knows why. Sometimes substances dull that.”

“Oh, ‘Drid.” Duck turns in the chair. Indrid’s gaze stays straight ahead, but his fingers shred a nearby scrap of paper.

“The irony is, I love this time of year on Earth, in spite of the chill. I love the winter holidays, the gathering of warmth and light to hold one over until the spring returns. But my enjoyment of it is dampened by the workings of my powers and mind.”

“Fuck, guess I oughta count myself lucky I only got a few bad visions to remember.” The joke falls flat, and Indrid glances at him.

“That vision is nothing to laugh at. I’m glad you had it all the same, glad you triumphed and survived.”

“Woulda really sucked to accept my destiny only to fail at the last fuckin second.”

He shuts his mouth to stop the next thought from escaping; Indrid doesn’t need to know that he sometimes fears that everything he’s done and wants to do now that fate is no longer hanging a talking sword over his head will somehow be hollow.

“You were so much more than your destiny, Duck Newton. You still are.”

The sincerity, half-obscured in shadow and red lens, is too much. He doesn’t know what to say, or if he should say anything at all.

“Guess, uh, guess you likin the holidays explains that section in the binder.”

“Yes. Wait. Did, ah, did you look through the whole thing?” Fear slips into his voice.

“Uhhuh.”

“Even the, ah, the last page?”

“Yep. Some real beautiful drawin’s in there. Some mighty interestin ones too.”

Indrid nervously taps his fingers together, “Since you are about to ask, that future took place shortly after the cottonwood. You, you came by to apologize for punching me and to tell me you were glad I was alright and, and ask me to stay in Kepler and when I asked why, you did that. Just one little kiss. That’s as far as I got before the timelines changed. It’s, it’s alright, of course, that’s how timelines work, and you did eventually apologize.”

He did, two or three separate times, and each time Indrid brushed it off, insisting it was what needed to be done.

Duck sinks to the floor, turns on his knees to bring them face to face.

“What are you-” Indrid stiffens as Duck gingerly pushes up his glasses. He’s never seen Indrid’s face like this, uncovered but still human, and it takes all the air from his lungs.

“Which eye did I hit?”

Indrid touches the right side of his face. Duck tips forward, balancing his fingers on Indrids thighs, and kisses the corner of his right eye.

“There. Now it’s a real apology.” He whispers in Indrid’s ear, close enough that faint, hopeful chirps reach him. He moves a few inches down and over, lips the barest strip of air away from Indrid’s own.

“You, you don’t have to. Just because something appears in a future doesn’t mean it’s fated to happen.”

“What if I want it to happen?”

Indrid surges forward, cupping Duck’s face. His kisses re feather-light and sweeter than nectar, and Duck wants to drink them down, knows that after this taste he’ll never be full.

“Duck I, h, I want” Indrid clings to him, his words turning to chirps nd clicks, as he’s so overwhelmed by a little kissing.

“Want me to keep, uh, ‘apologizin?”

“So very much.”

“Then take me to bed, darlin.”

The instant they hit the bed Indrid pulls Duck atop him, fingers fawning over his body as he kisses him over and over. When they stop to catch their breath, Duck remembers something,

“‘Drid, what was the other half of the reason you got drunk?”

“A problem of my own making. I did not foresee just how you would look in your suit, and I was trying to avoid an, ah, embarrassing bodily response. Alcohol helps my kind of Sylph in that regard.”

Duck chuckles, nips Indrid’s lower lip, “want me to put it back on?”

“Not just yet.”

“Want me to kiss you ‘til we fall asleep?”

“More than I’ve wanted anything for Christmas in a long time.”

Duck kisses him, keeps teasing their lips together as he murmurs, “then consider me your resent, darlin.”

#indrid cold/duck newton #indruck #winter fills #taz amnesty

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luluxa · 4 years

Text

Upon request, re-posting an old au minific I appear to have deleted.

It was caused by this Signs bit:

Knights: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius (Jeremy, Andy, Richard)

Dragons: Capricorn (James)

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James really does hate filming high up on shit mountain roads, driving a shit broken car. He feels highly uncomfortable there in his feeble human body, wanting to just rip off the mask and fly. Flight is natural, flight is safe, while being trapped in a flimsy metal box clamps his throat with panic. James’s wings ache for a fly when he’s so high up, and in the same time, he’s scared shitless he will lose control and give himself away. He tells everyone it’s a phobia to explain his nervousness. Then again, he’s also got his very own light aircraft, and has no problem driving on good mountain roads in supercars – options he deems safe, since he’s entirely in control then, and while it renders his claim a bit suspicious, it’s written off to his general weirdness, thankfully.

He tells Jeremy and Richard to stay away from him on that insane Bolivian road, knowing he’ll be concentrating too much on driving his shit car and maintaining the mask to react in a camera-friendly way to the usual bugging. James is pretty certain he won’t give himself away completely, but he can’t be positive he won’t do something stupid, like shoving his machete down Jeremy’s throat.

It appears, though, that annoyance isn’t his worst enemy.

“I have no brakes!” Richard yells over the radio, sounding panicky. “I can’t fucking – I’m going to drive into the fucking cliff on purpose because it’s the only way I can stop!”

“Quit yelling,” James tells him. “Just stay away from the edge.”

Richard swears at him, and then a huge truck materialises out of nowhere in a cloud of dust and Richard veers away from it sharply towards the abyss.

“Fuck!”

It’s the last thing Richard gets to say before his brake-less car tips over the brim and disappears.

James stops breathing, braking on autopilot and jumping out of the car in the same time. He can’t quite control himself afterwards. The rational human thinking vanishes between one heartbeat and another, replacing with the ancient and instinctive knowledge. He can save Richard.

He jumps after the Toyota, spreading his wings mid-dive. It takes another second to grab the toy-like tin can and then Richard, who falls out of it. He’s alive but has hit his head and is unconscious, James realises immediately, already gliding along the narrow canyon. He’s crushed the Toyota, he notes absently, and drops it down, since it’s useless now.

And then the reality kicks in.

Yeah, he’s managed to save Richard. But he also fucked everything up beyond repair.

James turns around and flies back to the spot he took off from. The traffic has stopped and there is a growing crowd on the road – locals, the camera crew and Jeremy, all of them staring up in astonishment and horror. James doesn’t want to land there, but Richard needs medical help, probably having a concussion, and James needs to explain himself. Or he can just run away. Well, fly away, now when he’s blown his cover.

It’s dead silent on the road when he touches the ground and puts Richard on it gently. He seems impossibly tiny compared to James’s clawed dragon paws. He edges away, glancing up to meet Jeremy’s eyes, white with shock.

James almost puts the mask back on, wanting to shrink down and hide, but that won’t improve anything now, will it? He’s ruined everything. His only consolation is that Richard’s alive and more or less okay, but that won’t improve anything either, in the end. James is still a dragon who has lied to his closest friends and the whole fucking world. He’s lied to a bunch of Knights’ descendants, more to the point, who hate Dragons not only on principle or tradition, but because they have it in their very blood.

James imagines the reaction he’s about to face and runs away, and then even farther so, ripping a portal to the Other Side and diving into the white light. He will have to apologise anyway, but not right now. He can’t do it right now.

Jeremy’s so shocked he can’t speak for the whole ten minutes. He watches the Dragon – James, for fuck’s… how can it be James? – fly away and then disappear entirely in a bright flash. He just fucking vanishes, without a word, leaving Richard lying lifeless in the dirt.

It’s when he finally snaps out of his stupor and moves, checking Richard’s pulse – it’s there, and he stirs when Jeremy squeezes his wrist tightly with relief. Jeremy still can’t speak, though, just watching helplessly as some locals and their own doctor fuss over him.

James has saved his life. James has fucking turned into a Dragon out of nowhere and saved his life. It doesn’t make any bloody sense!

“What happened?” Richard asks with confusion when he’s finally seated up and declared all right. “I can’t remember anything. Again.” He adds, sounding scared. “Where’s my Toyota? Where’s James? He was right behind me.” He glances around, eyes large.

Jeremy sniffs. “The weirdest shit has happened,” he says, finding his voice at last. “It’s all on tape, I hope, because I need to watch it.”

The locals discuss the incident loudly in Spanish, repeating ‘Dragón’ over and over again, until even Richard catches up.

“Dragon?” he says, scowling. “Would someone explain me what the hell is going on?”

Jeremy glances at Andy helplessly, hoping he would do it for him, but Andy looks just as lost as Jeremy feels.

He sighs. “Well, I haven’t seen it, but I think your brakes gave up entirely and you fell over the edge. James was right behind you, and he – and I can’t believe I’m saying it – turned into a Dragon and went right after you. He flew away when he brought you back.”

Richard stares at him blankly, then snorts. “Very funny. Now, seriously, what happened?”

It takes half an hour and Iain showing him the actual tape to convince him. Jeremy watches too, because he begins to doubt himself. But nope. Here he is, fucking James May, a hairy idiot in a bandana, jumping out of his ridiculous Suzuki and suddenly turning into a huge, glowing fucking beast with silver wings. His scaly tail swipes Iain’s camera car as he jumps off, making it fly a few feet backwards – the image shakes and wobbles and then stabilises again.

Jeremy can’t help but stare in awe once more at the Dragon gliding easily and gracefully down the canyon, the Toyota in one paw and Richard invisible in the other.

“I feel faint again,” Richard complains, watching James lower him on the ground. “That’s impossible!”

It is, but it’s happened anyway.

James takes most of the road in his dragon form, people scattering away from his tail and his wings. His eyes are electric blue and Jeremy can recall the heat emanating from his hide. It was a breath-taking fucking picture. And a pretty exciting one.

It was hella exciting picture, Jeremy has to admit, watching James turn around and leap right up into the air, spreading his wings, all in one smooth motion. There is no odd awkwardness in the Dragon that human James possesses, no visible pudginess, just streamline muscle and silver, bright on his wings and dusty on his tail. Jeremy might have always hated Dragons for their nature, but deep down inside he also has always found them quite magnificent visually, and James is no ugly specimen, both in human and Dragon form. As for the nature…

“Lying fuck,” Jeremy growls, when the tape ends. “Sneaky, lying, deceiving fucking bastard!”

Richard takes a breath but doesn’t say anything, scowling.

James is gone for a month.

He doesn’t appear in his house and Richard has to take Fusker to Wales. Richard checks his phone surreptitiously for messages, while Jeremy fumes and refuses to talk about the incident. It’s a pretty huge elephant of a subject and no one knows what to do about it.

The tabloids can’t fucking calm down, the Beeb can’t calm down, they are constantly bothered by the paps, the fans, the management, friends, and also, alarmingly, the Dragons. Jeremy tells them all to fuck off.

“He’s saved my life,” Richard says one night to him, when he has consumed a sufficient amount of wine to at least not walk right away. “I don’t bloody care if he ate people before Top Gear, he’s saved my life and he’s my friend. I’m not dismissing him. If he ever turns up, that is.”

Jeremy snorts. “A lying fuck and a coward.”

Just like that, Richard is angry. “Well, with your brilliant attitude, I don’t blame him! I wouldn’t want to put up with your ungratefulness either!”

Jeremy pours himself more wine sulkily. “I don’t so much care he’s a Dragon as that he’s a deceiving fucking Dragon. We were friends. He could’ve just said something.”

“Oh yeah?” Richard winces. “I have a wall in my house covered in Knight portraits and weaponry. I’ve got a Dragon skull in my backyard. So do you. So does Andy. I suppose he didn’t want to find out how rusty is that spear over your desk if you suddenly decided to shove it through his gut.”

Jeremy pouts. “I would never do anything like that!”

Richard shrugs. “Yeah, but neither of us was ever reserved about hating the fuck out of the ‘flying geckos’. I imagine it wasn’t nice to listen to, day after day.”

“Well, he should’ve chosen a better company to hang out, then!” Jeremy retorts testily. “He knew who we are, no one was twisting his arm or begging to stay with us.”

“So you don’t want him to come back, in that case?” Richard asks bitterly. He doesn’t want to choose between Jeremy and James. They are both his friends, they are both a bit annoying and a bit great. How is he supposed to choose?

Jeremy seems to deflate, though, sighing. “Don’t be stupid, of course I want him to come back. He’s not in a hurry, though, is he? Maybe he decided he’s had enough,” he mutters morosely into his wine.

Ah. Richard huffs. He has two hurt and scared idiots on his hands, then, and the only thing he can do is wait helplessly until James decides to resurface from the Other Side or wherever it was he’d fucked off to.

Maybe he should locate a psychic, or something, who could at least send a message?

Or maybe James senses something on his own, being a Magical bastard, because on the next day after the conversation, he comes back.

The track is quiet, the portakabin is quiet. There are few people hanging about and they all stare as James drives through the gates and parks by the porch.

He waves at them, upon climbing out, receiving uncertain wry smiles and hesitant nods.

For fuck’s sake. He never was anything other than civilised and it’s not like he’s about to fry someone’s head off now, all of a sudden.

The portakabin is half-empty but those present fall completely silent as he passes by. It’s getting annoying, James decides. He pauses in front of the presenters room’s closed door, glancing back and meeting spooked stares. Would they faint if he growled at them?

James doesn’t do anything of sorts, of course. He opens the door and walks in.

Jeremy is busy typing something angrily into his laptop, facing away. Richard glances up, though, and kicks Jeremy’s chair to get his attention.

“Hello,” James says, stuffing his hands in the pockets, not moving anywhere from the door. He’ll need that to put between himself and Jeremy who looks like he’s about to hurl a table into his face.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Jeremy asks, voice almost a growl. “I don’t recall sending you on a leave.”

James blinks, expecting a rather different kind of abuse.

“Wanker,” Richard adds, grinning, and then walks over to hug James, which is another form of abuse James didn’t expect.

He swallows, waiting the hug out. “Sorry,” he says in the end, confused and not sure how to proceed.

He expected anger and accusations, he expected to be fired and told to never show up again, ever. He was evidently mistaken and also being a bit of a twat.

“Yeah, you should be sorry,” Jeremy points out. He’s put the laptop aside to lean forward in the chair and stare at James sharply over his glasses. “You should’ve told us years ago.”

James shifts uncomfortably. He should’ve, but he was never too courageous, or too open, or trusting enough. He shrugs. “I prefer having a human life,” he says guiltily. “I’d rather be human. I hoped if I pretended hard enough –“ he halts, confronted by two bemused frowns. “You’re right about the Dragons, you know,” he tries again. “We’re a vile, bad-tempered, arrogant bunch. I don’t really like being any of that and spending more time around humans helps.” He sighs at the bewilderment both Richard and Jeremy are emanating. “I have always been a rather shit Dragon,” he says with a wry smirk. “So I decided to see if I can be a less shit human. It’s not that I’ve succeeded, evidently,” he mutters to himself, when no spark of understanding crosses his mates’ faces.

He almost steps away when Jeremy gets up and walks towards him, but then he realises there’s no threat in the set of Jeremy’s shoulders, but something fragile about his face –

“You’re a bloody idiot,” Jeremy tells him and hugs him as well.

Frankly, that’s too much hugging in one day, James thinks faintly. He certainly didn’t deserve any of it.

“I never noticed you were so hot,” Jeremy mutters into James’s hair then, holding him tight.

Richard snorts.

“Hot?” James asks cautiously.

Jeremy stills for a second and straightens up hastily, pushing him away. He appears to be blushing. “To the touch! Temperature-wise!” he squeaks.

James squints at him, finding the blush very interesting. “You should’ve touched me more,” he says wryly, making Jeremy’s embarrassment more pronounced. “I tend to get hotter when people get up close,” he adds, smirking. “Can’t help it.”

Jeremy rubs his neck, finally grinning too.

Richard looks like he doesn’t know whether to laugh at them or roll his eyes. “Yeah, maybe leave the experimentation in that area until I’m not in the room. In the meanwhile, can we finally agree that James is staying so we can go film some more of Top Gear?”

When Jeremy nods, James allows himself to relax at last. “Seriously, I’m sorry. If you have any questions I’ll try to get over myself and answer them. Maybe not all of them, though,” he adds, upon a second thought. “Gotta maintain some mystery.”

Jeremy scoffs and Richard gets to have his eye-roll, at last, which puts the end to the reunion.

They summon Andy and Porter, request more tea and candy bars, and then argue for the rest of the day about the pressing matter of how to present James’s sudden non-humanness to the audience. It’s odd and familiar in the same time, and makes James believe that more things remained the same rather than changed irrevocably.

Maybe he was right about his choice, after all.

And he’s certainly chose right people to befriend.

#j/j #minific

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maverickbowie · 3 years

Text

Simba || Maverick Bowie Moore Self Para #003

Maverick was twelve years old when he first met Leo back in Seattle. He could still remember their first interaction as if it just happened that morning. Midway through the seventh grade and he was placed with the Griffon’s. Still struggling to get used to a new placement, he was late to school, escorted into his English class they were working on some project and Leo’s partner had been out sick, so they got stuck together. At first it was a friendship built off of insulting each other. Maverick made fun of Leo’s name, saying he might as well be named Simba. Leo made fun of Maverick’s lisp. By the time class was over, they were laughing as if they had always been friends. The rest was more or less history. They hung out after school in the park, the arcade, and the music shop. Rarely did they spend time at each other’s house, both making up weak lies about strict parents or not being allowed to have company before dinner.

As time went on, Maverick realized he wanted to spend so much time with the other because he had a small crush on him. But being thirteen and not understanding his sexuality, he simply buried those feelings, finding excuses that seemed viable to convince Leo to sneak out so they could go skateboarding around town in the middle of the night. Anything to get him away from the foster home that he hated so much. Those were nights that seemed so heavy while they avoided talking about anything serious, making each other laugh as they did simple tricks on the curbs and complained about homework they hadn’t finished yet. There was always a tension between them that neither of them talked about. If only they knew back then that those times would be easy compared with what was to come.

The McEachren House was a residential facility for unaccompanied youths providing assistance for those who were separated from their parents, were transitioning from detention centers, or for mental health reasons could no long be living with their families. Or that’s what the mission statement said. When Maverick arrived in the middle of the night, with nothing except some borrowed clothes from Silas and a haphazardly packed backpack from his social worker, it might as well have been purgatory. It was dark and unwelcoming. The entire house smelled a little musty, like unwashed sports gear and old furniture. He had been shown to a small room, already darkened since his new roommate was already supposed to be asleep and told that he would get a proper tour in the morning. After the night he had had, he couldn’t help but cry alone in the dark until the person in the bunk above his started moving. When the boy climbed down, he was more than prepared for a fight but he felt nothing but relief when he saw Leo’s familiar face staring back at him.

For the months that Maverick was in the group home, he leaned heavily on Leo for support and did the best to support his friend as well. Most nights involved one of them climbing into the other’s bunk, seeking comfort or offering comfort. In those private moments, they shared secrets and fears, things at least on Maverick’s part that he never shared with anybody else. Within those darkened hours they also shared a first in the ways of a few stolen kisses. Never anything more, never discussed, never even hinted at once the sun started to rise. It was just another secret that stayed within that darkened room, as was everything they talked about.

Just as quickly as he was put into the house, Maverick was snatched out of it. A new placement was waiting for him in Chicago. The moment he left, he regretting never telling Leo how he felt. His first crush, his first kiss, gone without any possibility of coming in contact with him again. By then he was almost fifteen and he knew the drill of being moved to a new placement. Say goodbye to your old friends, you old life, and a lot of the time your old possessions. This was one move that really effected Maverick in a million negative ways. He had been in Seattle for almost two years, building friendships with Leo, as well as Avery and Silas and Silas’s family. For a while he was even convinced that Silas’s family was going to try to adopt him but that’s a story for another time.

The months ticked by, morphing into years but there was never a day that went by that Maverick didn’t miss Leo. When he woke up in the middle of the night, filled with panic and tears, he only wanted Leo’s comfort and the safety of that darkened room back in the group home. But he knew better to hold on to hope that he might run into anybody from his past. Even after he was adopted and given permission to get social media, even encouraged to reach out to his old friends, he made no effort to do so. That was something he was scared of doing. All those memories weren’t something he wanted to fuck with. Things were safe in his memories. There was no telling what had changed with his Seattle friends in the almost three years since he had been gone.

Luxor Academy seemed like a fever dream with so many people from Maverick’s past. But he was happy to see every single one of them. Sure a lot of his biggest fears came true as his past relationships, once he held so close to his heart fell apart by his own hand. It was still something he never thought he would ever get. Reunions with those he held so dearly to his heart. Rooming with Leo in France was both a blessing and a curse. No more strangers beside him but things were rocky with Leo still after what seemed like endless fights. The odd bit was whenever they needed each other in the middle of the night, it was as if nothing ever changed.

Sharing a room with Leo again gave Maverick a front row ticket to whatever downward spiral the other was on. No matter how hard he tired, he notice almost every little change that happened, watching in concern as Leo slipped back to the condescending, hypocritical asshole that he had always been. It killed him inside knowing that he couldn’t do anything to help anymore. Although he did begin to question the legitimacy of their ability to help each other. It was more likely that they found comfort in the familiar faces in a scary new place after whatever trauma had landed them both there. Without the shared suffering, maybe they had grown too much in different directions.

Whatever the reason, it didn’t deter Maverick from still worrying and carrying for Leo, especially as he fell deeper and deeper. The weekend that he left, while it took him too long to notice that his roommate was gone, he took noticed of how distraught he was when he returned. As much as he wanted to, he didn’t know how to ask what was going on or how to begin to help. The best he could do was try. And try he did, offering help when he could, hanging out with him so he wasn’t alone. But all that did was give Maverick a closer look at how bad off Leo was and get even more concerned.

When the campus exchange to New Zealand happened, Maverick wanted to be happy. Less than 1000 miles from where they were staying was the actual Shire from Lord of the Rings, complete with Hobbit holes that he could visit. But between everything going on with him and worrying about Leo and the massive hangover, the flight from France to New Zealand was anything but enjoyable. The entire first day, he spent in his room, nursing his hangover.

The next day, he figured he should start unpacking some of his haphazardly packed bags. Everything had simply been shoved into bags and boxes with no rhyme or reason as to where they were put. The only things that were packed with care were his guitars. He was just starting to dig through his bags when he heard a crash coming from the other room. He exited his room just in time to see Leo bolting from the room, blood dripping from his hand. Panic and concern filled his chest and he raced after his friend. For a while he managed to keep pace behind Leo as he raced off campus as if the mafia was after him. But the further he ran, the harder it got for Maverick to keep up the chase. Once he realized how lost and exhausted he was, he also noticed that he had lost Leo. Trying to catch his breath, he continued to walk on tired legs in the direction that seemed right. But how would he knew for sure. At least the street signs were in English as well as the words that the patrons on the street spoke. Although they might as well have been speaking another language, thick accents with strange words muddled by the pounding in his ears from the run and the hangover that still lingered from the day before.

How long he continued to walk, he couldn’t be sure. He wanted to find Leo, scared of what the other might do or what might happen to him in this new place. He was cursing the boy and himself for following him, already preparing to tear strips into Leo when he found him, when the sounds of car horns filled the air. At first it was easy to ignore, just a random beep rather than someone angrily holding the horn down in a fit of road rage. The further he walked, the more frequent they got. When he finally decided to look into the street he saw why but he saw too late to react. Leo--his Leo--in the middle of the road as a large vehicle slammed into him. It was like a scene from a horror movie happening in slow motion while he stood frozen to the ground.

Everything was silent as the world reacted around him. Cars stopped, people screamed and talked loudly, calling for emergency responders and rushed forward to help. But Maverick was glued to the ground, his mouth open in a silent scream as he watched someone he loved crumple to the ground like a rag doll. It seemed like an eternity before he had control over his body again, but in reality it was only a matter of second. He pushed through the crowd, kneeling beside a crash test dummy version of his best friend. Bloodied and bruised and torn apart, he was almost sure this wasn’t his Leo.

Everything moved in a blur around them. EMTs arrived and asked question after question. Strangers tried to answer but nobody knew anything. It was a single question directed at him that brought him back to reality for a moment. Does anyone know his name? His name. His name. His name is so stupid. That’s why he called him Simba. It was just as stupid.

“Leo.” He spoke up, unsure if he would even be heard over the commotion. But the EMT’s used his name as they tried to get a response out of the unconscious boy. As he was loaded into the ambulance, Maverick didn’t hesitate to follow, telling them he was his brother. He sat in the corner of the ambulance, his hand into Leo’s hair as he watched them work on him, flying through the streets of whatever city this was.

At the hospital, he waited, sitting in the waiting room outside the surgery room, clothes soaked with Leo’s blood, trying to think of something to do. Who to call. But everything came up empty. He didn’t want to leave the waiting room the nurses had taken him to, just in case a doctor came out and needed something. He filled out paperwork the best he could and waited some more. The moment he was out of surgery, he was demanding to be taken back to him. Leo wasn’t awake yet, which was probably a good thing since he broke down into sobs the second he laid eyes on him, dropping to his knees beside the bed, filled with relief and anger that Leo was okay.

#para: self #simba #tw: suicide #tw: blood #tw: hospital #TW: car crash

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solange-lol · 4 years

Text

not so typical love song - ch. 7/13

Chapter Title: Love Me

Words: 3,332

Art by @lizzybizzyo! <3

read on ao3

—

Thanksgiving came and went, and soon Bianca was on her train back to college, leaving a quiet house in her absence.

They talked, of course, more than they had talked over the phone. But they never went in deep about anything. Nico never brought up his secret, and Bianca dropped asking about homecoming all together.

It felt like she already knew. Nico came so close to telling her just to get that weight off his chest, but every time he was about to bring it up, he didn’t.

It felt so dangerous with the circumstance he was already under. Technically, he had already come out to two people, but something about telling someone face to face out of his own will terrified him.

Deep down, he knew Bianca wouldn’t care. So why was he so scared?

The same reason he was scared to tell any of his friends, probably. He didn’t want anything to change, didn’t want their view on him to change. And if word got out, the best thing to ever happen to him would slip away. He couldn’t lose Blue, not now.

Not ever.

Drew’s voice cut through his thoughts, as she finished her long list of plans for Christmas break, before asking “Anybody else going somewhere for Christmas?” they had been folding programs for the show at this rehearsal as people were getting fitted for costumes.

Nico shrugged as if he had been listening to what she had been saying the entire time. “Staying here. We have a classic di Angelo gingerbread decorating contest.” He said as he folded the program in his hand that he realized he had been clutching, unfolded for a few minutes now.

Piper grinned next to him. “I was the judge last year with Jason. You should have seen Nico’s house! Covered it with red frosting to look like blood with dead gingerbread men and ghosts! Called it his gingerdead house”

Nico tried to ignore the sound of Will laughing across from him, blue eyes squinting as his smile grew. He was there helping out backstage, mainly just to bother Lou Ellen and Cecil. (And to not let Nico get over his crush, apparently.) His gaze moved quickly from Octavian (ew) to Drew, who was rolling her eyes.

“What about you, Piper?” she asked, switching focus.

Piper shifted uncomfortably. “My dad will probably be away on a shoot, so either I’ll fly out to be with him, or I’ll be home alone,” she said, trying to shrug it off, but Nco could see the sadness in her eyes.

He patted her knee. “Come over to my house if you need to. I’m sure my parents would love to have you as a judge again.”

When he looked up, Will was smiling at him again, making Nico’s chest clench.

“I’m going to a cabin with my mom,” Percy grinned from where he was sitting, not helping them at all. “No WiFi, just me and my mom and the lake.”

“In the middle of the winter?” Piper asked. “Won’t it be frozen?”

“Yup. Prime ice skating conditions.”

Nico rolled his eyes. “I hope you fall in,” her muttered, earning another laugh from Will, making his chest even tighter.

“We don’t usually go anywhere, but I think my mom is planning a trip for me and my siblings this year. Bonding, or something,” Will says after a moment.

“You have siblings?” Nico asked, surprised. He never recalled Will ever mentioning them. “Do they go here?”

Now it was Will’s turn to look uncomfortable. “Oh, um, yeah. I have a sister and a brother. Kayla and Austin.” His smile was still there, but there was an emotion in his eyes that Nico couldn’t quite read.

“Cool,” he said, softly, not wanting to push Will any further, although it left him with more questions than answers.

Next to Will, Octavian suddenly sucked in air through his teeth, dramatically dropping the program he had been folding. If that weren’t enough to convince Nico that he wasn’t actually hurt, he grabbed his finger with a dramatic “Owww.”

Nico sighed. Wherever Octavian was going with this, he didn’t like it. “You good?”

“Yeah, paper cut,” he responded, giving Nico a look saying come with me. Nico could see that perfectly clear, but he chose to ignore it. When he did, Octavian continued. “Nico, do you know where the bandages are?”

“Yeah, they’re right back there in the supply closet,” Nico said, still not giving in.

“You mind showing me?”

Nico had to stop himself from groaning. He wanted to scream at Octavian to just leave him alone for once, but there was no way out of this situation he was stuck in. Octavian, always concerned about himself, didn’t know how to take a hint either. He nodded his head towards the closet, and Nico just sighed as he stood up. Worried glances from both Piper and Will followed him, but he shook it off.

“Be right back,” he assured them, which only seemed to settle Piper as he followed Octavian to the back.

When they walked into the closet, Octavian spun on his heel. “I don’t actually have a paper cut.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Nico muttered.

“I don’t want to have to leak your emails, di Angelo, but-”

“Look, you can’t bring Blue into this,” Nico cut him off angrily. “If he found out my emails got leaked, he would disappear. He’d never talk to me again.” Just the idea of it made tears prick at his eyes.

One of these days, Octavian is going to push too far, and Nico is going to break.

Octavian just shrugged. “Yeah, he probably would. Internet’s a freaky place to meet people.”

Just as Nico was about to argue back at him, Piper walked through the door, causing them both to panic.

“..Freaky Friday!” Nico said suddenly, trying to recover from anything she might have overheard.

Octavian nodded along. “Fun movie.” It wasn’t great acting (better than his fake paper cut bit) but Nico appreciated the coverup. Octavian was still far from a decent human being, but at least he didn’t out Nico. Yet.

Piper looked between the two of them, a confused smile growing on her face. “You guys are weird,” he states, before moving to look around the closet. “I just came to get a band-aid. You were right, those programs are a bitch.”

Octavian elbowed him, signaling Nico to say something. He quickly thought of an idea, bracing himself as he began to talk. Please don’t hate me, Piper.

“So, um, Octavian was having some trouble with his lines, so we were thinking of going to the Waffle House tonight and go over them, run a few scenes, if you wanna come,” he said quickly, trying his best to seem natural about it. Please don’t hate me, Piper. Please don’t hate me.

For a moment, Piper’s face dropped, as did Nico’s stomach. Please don’t hate him. He messed up. Please don’t hate him.

Then, the smile was back. “Really?” she asked earnestly. “That would be great, actually!” Both relief and guilt flooded Nico.

Octavian patted him on the back the moment Piper was out of sight again. “Good work di Angelo.”

“Go to hell, Octavian.”

—

Nico slipped out of the Waffle House the moment he noticed Leo standing outside, most likely on his break.

Actually, he was escaping the hell that was his booth with Piper and Octavian, as well as Octavian’s multiple attempts of flirting. He was hurting Piper, not that she realized, and it was hurting him in the process. Leo just happened to be the perfect excuse to get him away from all that.

Leo Valdez is a junior, though Nico’s never really talked to him that much before. They’ve had a few classes together over the years, and Nico knows he’s good friends with Piper and Jason, but for some reason, he’s never really seen him around. He’s also a waiter at Waffle House, apparently, and something about him is setting off bells in Nico’s head.

Nico doesn’t think he’s Blue. Leo is like a ball of fire, while Blue is a calming wave. And yet, there’s more than one side to a person, so he hasn’t ruled him out yet. And besides, maybe he’ll at least be interesting to get to know.

He shivered, pulling his jacket tighter as he walked over to Leo, who was typing something on his phone. “Were you in my Bio class last year?” Nico asked, and Leo looked up from his phone, surprised.

“I think so, yeah.”

“Were you there last year when some kid ate the flower we were experimenting on while we had a sub, and she emailed our teacher who had to email the class because it turned out the flower was poisonous?”

Leo grinned. “Yep. That was me, actually, who ate the flower.”

Not the response Nico was expecting, but he’ll take it. “Wait, really? What happened?”

“Called poison control, got it all sorted out.” Leo was still grinning, sort of mischievously like he was planning it all over again. “Somehow I lived through.”

Nico smiled. “Somehow.”

Leo glanced back at the restaurant. “Nancy’s glaring, that’s my cue to go. See ya, di Angelo,” he said, tapping one last thing on his phone before he walked back inside while Nico just stood there and watched.

He wasn’t completely sure if Leo was Blue or not. Sure, he wouldn’t mind if Leo was Blue. He was funny and charismatic, which was helpful to have in social situations. And he was pretty good looking. (Or maybe Nico just had a thing for curly hair.) At the same time, though, it felt like maybe their personalities were completely different. So was Nico just making it up because he liked the idea of it, or did he actually believe it? He wasn’t really sure.

Until his phone buzzed in his pocket.

Only a second ago had Leo been typing something on his phone. That last tap before he went inside could have been him hitting the send button. If it was that perfectly lined up, could it really be a coincidence?

Leo’s voice echoed in his head as he read the email.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: Nov 30 at 5:57 PM

Subject: Holiday Horrors

My mom is currently planning a trip for Hanukkah, which I don’t think we’ve ever done before, but I think she just wants my siblings (still weird to say) to feel okay coming into this family. Obviously, I still don’t really know that much about them, but I really hope they like me and feel as safe here as I do.

It’s also sort of scary because I imagine when I tell my mom, I’ll probably have to tell them too. I just hope that doesn’t change anything/

My dad wanted me to see him, spend a day with him over the holidays, but I passed up. He’s already shown me all that he can give me, I don’t need anything more. On the other hand, though, my mom told me he’s bisexual, so maybe I could get my first real coming out over with him. Or not, I don’t know. Do I trade up my first experience just for it to be easy? I feel like I need to get used to it not being easy.

Maybe I’m just going crazy.

Love, Blue

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: Nov 30 at 6:01

Subject: re: Holiday Horrors

I don’t think you’re going crazy Blue. Crazy brave, if that’s what you meant. And crazy caring and compassionate at that. I’m sure your siblings love you for all your efforts. If they haven’t yet, they will. Take it from experience.

Love, Angel.

Nico grinned to himself all the way through Blue’s email, as well as his own. He might not know who Blue is, but he knows what kind of person he is. Maybe it’s better that way. And something about that email made him consider maybe, maybe coming out to Hazel. She’s the one person Nico knows would love him through anything.

Oh, and Leo isn’t completely ruled out yet either.

Nico’s got a lot to think about now as he heads back inside to the table from hell.

When he slid back into the booth, Octavian was dramatically leaning over the table, pointing his finger at a smiling Piper. “You, Piper McLean, deserve a goddamn superhero.” Immediately, his good mood is gone as he rolls his eyes.

Ugh, give him a break.

—

“Octavian used to annoy the crap outta me, but he’s actually kind of...” Piper shrugged, looking out the window. “I don’t know. Not as bad.”

Nico sighed, gripping the steering wheel. There was a pit in his stomach that was weighing him down with guilt. He so desperately wanted to do the right thing, but honestly, he didn’t even know what that would be anymore. Tricking Piper like this, though, he knew that wasn’t right. He wasn’t sure what would make it better by this point, so he brought up something that could distract him.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about your parents,” he said quietly as if he might be waking a monster. He found out pretty quick what was happening inside the restaurant when he got back. Octavian had pushed her, maybe a little too far, about her past. While it sort of hurt that she easily told him over Nico, he assumed it was his fault for never asking. “I just never wanted to make you uncomfortable.”

Piper shrugs, turning away from the window but still not looking at him. “Yeah, I don’t mention them that much. Kind of messes with my image.”

“What image?”

She shrugs again. “The girl who's only been at this school for a year and doesn’t want to be known as the one with the famous dad, or the mom that left them. The girl who's angry and sad all the time and has a history of being a kleptomaniac. A girl who still believes in love.”

Oh. “I didn’t know that.”

“I didn’t know if you wanted to.”

Nico cleared his throat. “You still believe in love?” he attempted to scoff, but his heart was beating so fast he just sounded nervous.

“I don’t know, maybe.” Piper glanced over at him. “Have you ever been in love?”

Nico didn’t say anything for a moment. He didn’t know what to say. What could he say right now? Anything, really. He could tell her everything. But at what cost?

“I think so,” he said, before he pulled the car over.

Nico could see Piper glancing around in confusion, maybe almost nervous as they slowed to a stop. God, what if she thinks he’s in love with her? There’s no way he’s getting out of this without telling her.

“Piper?” Nico asks, not really sure what he’s asking. He takes a breath.

Piper gave him a look he couldn't read. “Yeah?”

“I’m gay.”

It came out almost like a question like he’s asking for acceptance. The words hung in the air for just a moment, then-

“Oh,” she smiled, and the tension broke. “Okay.”

“You can’t tell anyone though. Nobody really knows, and I don’t really want people to find out yet-”

She shook her head. “I won’t, I promise.”

“Okay,” he whispered. His heart was still beating fast, but warmth filled his chest.

He did it.

They sat in silence for a moment, not making eye contact, before Nico asked, “You surprised?”

“No.”

“So, you knew?” he asked, fearfully glancing over at her. How many other people knew?

“No,” she assured him.

“But you’re not surprised?”

Piper smiled again, and any nerves he had left completely drained from his body. “Do you want me to be surprised?” she asked genuinely.

For the first time, Nico smiled softly too. “I don’t know,” he said almost laughing as he looked back out the window.

“Okay,” she was still looking at him; he could see her smile out of the corner of his eye. “Well, I love you, so…”

He let himself glance over at her, trying to ignore the pegging thoughts in his brain reminding him how much he would be hurting her right now if she knew. The warmth in his chest was gone, and now it was just tight with all the love and the hurt. Maybe he didn’t believe in romantic love (he honestly didn’t know yet) but there was some kind of love in this world, and he was so lucky to have it.

But what if she knew? “I love you too.”

Her smile, softer than before, hurt more than anything else.

Nico let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, turning on his blinker as he began to drive again.

“There’s no one behind us you don’t need to-” Piper started and Nico almost laughed. The moment was over, maybe he could stop thinking about it.

“I know, just being safe.”

“Okay,” she whispered, and Nico could tell she was still smiling at him.

He tried to ignore the tightness that still remained in his chest as they drove away.

—

When Nico got home that night, he went straight to his room. He opened the window that led to a small balcony and climbed through. He sat down, leaning his head against the fence and looked up at the stars.

When he was younger, so much younger that the memories were faint, his mom would take him out here before she died every time he was scared or upset. He could hear her voice in his ear as he stared up at the sky.

“If things are changing-” she would tell him. “Just remember the stars are still there. Even if it's cloudy at night or if the sun is out, they’re still there. Find peace in that.”

What would she think of him now?

He pulled his phone out, wiping away a stray tear that tried to escape, and opened his email.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: Nov 30 at 9:05 PM

Subject: You inspired me

You inspired me tonight, Blue. I came out to one of my friends and it went really well, so thank you.

I hope everything goes okay with your mom and your siblings, but I’m pretty sure it will.

Maybe afterward we can ride this bravery train and come out to each other for real? I’m dying to know who you are.

Love, Angel

He sent the email before he could overthink it, and went back inside to do homework, giving the stars one last glance.

Right before he was about to fall asleep later that night, he got a response.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: Dec 1 at 12:11 AM

Subject: re: You inspired me

I actually came out to everyone tonight. I thought it would be easier to just air it out now and let them think before we were stuck together with no escape on whatever vacation we’re going on.

Everything went surprisingly okay. My mom of course was supportive, saying she would make me flag cookies for pride month and everything which was very sweet (literally). And my siblings were also nice about it. I really don’t think they care as much as I thought they would. (I almost made a joke about how I got it from my dad, but I didn’t want to push things.)

And you’ve got it all wrong. It’s you who inspires me.

I’m really glad everything went well with your friend. I’m just not ready yet for you to tell me. The real me. I’m sorry.

Love, Blue

(P.S- if it helps, I can’t stop thinking about who you are either. Someday soon I’ll tell you. Just not yet).

(P.P.S- Happy December! Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits and all that)

Sure, Nico was disappointed, but it was okay. Blue had said someday soon, and all Nico had to do was hold onto that promise.

#solangelo #nico di angelo #will solace #pjo #heros of olympus #nstls #pjo hoo big bang 2019 #liz writes.com

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charmedtheselfproclaimedking · 3 years

Text

Charmed Children

Warnings: I do not own or claim to own any rights to the television show “Charmed” or the characters created within said show, this is purely fanfiction written from a devoted fan of the series. 15+ Mild to strong language, moderate to strong violence, witchcraft, sexual innuendos, and scenes of a sexual nature. F/F, F/M, M/M, Gen, Other +

CHAPTER ONE HERE

Chapter 3 - Legacy

PJ Thorne and her newly found, long lost, half sister Peyton Price were in the main foyer of the Halliwell Manor, each of them sorting through a separate pile of unopened mail address to the likes of Phoebe Halliwell, Piper Halliwell, Leo Wyatt, Wyatt Halliwell, Chris Halliwell, Melinda Halliwell, Paige Mitchell, etc.…both of them snooping in a bid to learn more about their birth mother when suddenly the grand Victorian chandelier placed right above them both, which hang from the ceiling, began to shake viciously before omitting a strange blue light that almost blinded the two women but as soon as they had noticed it, it was gone just like that. “I am going to put that one down to some old school dodgy electrics which makes complete sense given the age of this house.” Peyton guessed, trying not to let on that she was slightly spooked. “I have never seen any kind of messed up wiring cause a chandelier to omit that kind of strange light…then again it is not like I see fancy chandelier’s every day in my line of work.” PJ replied to her sister, as the two began looking towards the stairs, wondering why Percy had been upstairs for so long. “I should check on Mr Ford in case he’s found himself electrocuted or something…” “I’ll check on Percy with you,” Peyton said happily, as the two sisters made their way for the stairs. “Nothing like a creepy old house to make strangers who happen to be siblings get to the bonding.” “Look you seem nice enough and everything, but I am not looking for a sister.” PJ told Peyton, making it clear where she stood with her, as the two of them began walking up the stairs of the Halliwell Manor. “I’m down to get answers about the woman who gave us up, but I am not looking for long lost family…” “Oh, okay!” Peyton responded, attempting to hide her disappointment. “Well lucky for you I already have a family whom I love so yep, just wanting answers too and pending on how haunted this place is I may potentially want to live here…” “This place is too big for one person I say we sell it and share the money three ways, that way you can get yourself a nice little flat, Percy can have walking around money and I can put some money aside for a rainy day.” PJ advised Peyton, as they continued walking upstairs until they walked into the upstairs hallway. “I mean some money is the least we can get out of all this!” “Well actually, I am not big on the idea of selling our family home especially since it has been in our family for generations.” Peyton disagreed with Peyton, as Percy walked down the attic stairs to meet them in the hallway. “I think we should keep it in the family.” “You are talking about strangers who threw us out of this very house who gives a damn about their traditions!” PJ argued with her half-sister, making her fury towards her birth mother abundantly clear. “Oh, calm down detective dastardly if you need the cash so badly, I’ll buy your share of this place.” Percy interrupted, attempting to stop a potential argument, before turning to Peyton. “Then I will give you both of our shares and you can live your perfect family home lifestyle…that is if you still want to live here considering it could be haunted by the ghosts of real life witches!” “Witches? Really? Did you get electrocuted by any chance?” PJ responded to Percy. “We should get you checked out at the hospital maybe a psychiatric one…” “Trust me I am no believer in hocus pocus although I did love the movie,” Percy began to explain to both PJ and Peyton. “However, it seems like our birth mother sure believed in witchcraft considering the grimoire in the attic full of spells and potions.” “Wait, so our mother was a witch?” Peyton asked her half-brother, with a sense of excitement in her voice. “That is so cool!” “Well I guess that explains you and your whole attitude,” PJ told Peyton. “Clearly our mother was somewhat unhinged…in which case she did the right thing by giving us up.” “Or maybe our mum was a witch.” Peyton continued to argue with PJ. “You cannot tell me you do not want to see this spell book?” “It is a pretty cool book to be fair…way more convincing than the kind you buy online that is for sure!” Percy chimed in, tempting to entice PJ’s curiosity at the same time. “And the spells are so well written like poetry for wiccans.” “Are you listening to yourself? You are one of this city’s most eligible bachelors and you are up in a stranger’s attic reading spells!” PJ snapped at Percy, before taking a deep sigh, trying to calm herself. “This day just keeps getting crazier!” “When you read said spell…did you read it with your head’s voice or did you read it out aloud because everyone knows when you read a spell out loud you’re casting said spell whereas when you read it in your mind it is just reading.” Peyton wondered, revealing some knowledge of witchcraft. “No, I do not think everybody knows that Peyton!” PJ told her sister. “I bet you read up all about UFO’s, ghost sightings and truly believe there are actual witches out there.” “Stevie Nicks is a witch!” Percy argued with the cynical detective. “She said so on American Horror Story…” “I love American Horror Story, what is your favorite season?” Peyton asked her brother. “Okay I am getting out of this madhouse right now!” PJ declared, as she began walking back towards the stairs. “Sell it, do not sell it, burn it to the ground for all I care!” Despite PJ’s urge to not admit it, these three newly found siblings’ lives had changed forever that day because not only were they no longer strangers but as they were yet to discover they were fully active witches now, with powers just waiting to be discovered.

A few hours had passed since PJ’s abrupt exit from the Halliwell Manor and yet for some reason neither Peyton or Percy could bring themselves to leave their biological family’s home, as Peyton had migrated upstairs to the attic, eager to examine the book of shadows and all its contents, Percy decided to give the home a second look over, as he stripped the kitchen cupboards to find all kinds of ingredients which he believed was used to make potions, although most of it was just store bought food he did not recognize. Percy’s strip search of the family kitchen was cut short when he heard the doorbell ringing and decided to walk out of the kitchen, through the dining room and towards the front door eager to find out who would be knocking, as he wondered if they could be a friend or neighbor of the mother who gave him up for adoption. “Holy moly this neighborhood just got a whole lot better.” Percy mumbled in shock after opening the front door to find Luke Star stood on the front porch, a tall dark haired man with a Californian tan and a smart buzzcut wearing a suit that looked almost as expensive as Percy’s. “I live next door and I could not help but notice people coming in and out, so I thought I’d introduce myself to the new neighbors…you are my new neighbor, right?” Luke stated to Percy, as the socialite found himself lost in Luke’s mesmerizing smile. “Well me and my…sisters just inherited the place and we’re not quite sure what we are going to do with it yet…” Percy attempted to explain the situation, before holding his hand out. “Hi, I am Percy Ford.” “Of the Ford dynasty?” Luke asked as he shook Percy’s hand. “Your family is very well known in this city…I am Luke Star, I’m a senior partner at Murphy and Star Law.” “A lawyer,” Percy responded as he broke off their handshake. “I am actually looking for some new representation, mostly because my parents’ lawyers are as old as dirt and I am looking to expand the family empire in new directions.” “Well I’d truly be honored to represent you anytime!” Luke confessed, as he pulled out his business card and handed it to Percy. “I’d also be truly honored to have you as a neighbor.” “I guess I’ll have to give this place a seriously contemplation then.” Percy flirted with Luke, before hearing a loud screaming noise coming from within the house, a scream that sounded like Peyton’s. “I should probably go check on my…sister!” “I am more than willing to come with you, it sounded pretty serious.” Luke suggested. “It is probably just a spider or something knowing her,” Percy lied, trying to get rid of the lawyer in case Peyton had found something even more peculiar about their biological family. “I’ll give you a call some time…” “If your sure,” Luke replied. “Feel free to call me anytime.”

Peyton was stood behind the bookstand within the attic of the Halliwell Manor, flicking through the pages of the book of shadows taking it the entirety of what the book had inside its pages: name of ancestors who were also witches, family trees, names of demons with information about them and how to defeat them, spells, potions, information on other magical beings like elves, fairies, nymphs and most importantly the charmed ones. As Peyton continued reading from the pages of the book of shadows she quickly learned that her birth mother Phoebe Halliwell was one of the charmed ones, an all powerful power of three which somehow consisted of four not three sisters and as she continued to read about the charmed legacy she quickly learned just how important they were, believing every word to be true and relieved to finally understand the world in which her birth mother lived, knowing that she was not given up over not being wanted. “That thing has not been touched by a Halliwell’s hands in far too long!” Gareth revealed, after orbing into the attic, leaving Peyton horrified, as she let out a scream of shock. “Do not worry I mean you no harm Peyton…” “Yeah I bet you say that to all your victim’s demon.” Peyton replied as she quickly picked up a nearby antique vase from a cabinet not far from her and threw it in Gareth’s direction, only for him to orb out of dodge, to then reappear in front of Gareth, to which a further shocked Peyton responded to him by punching him across the face, causing Gareth to fall to the floor in pain. “Not today, Satan, not today!” “What the bloody hell are you doing assaulting my butler?” Percy asked, as he walked into the attic, stunned by what he saw. “You have a butler, just how rich are you…wait never mind your butler is a demon!” Peyton replied to Percy, only to be met by a laugh from her half-brother. “I think someone has been reading too much from the family grimoire and not remember the reality in which we live in.” Percy dismissed his sister, as he walked over to Gareth and helped him back to his feet. “The only thing magical about my butler is the fact he manages to put up with me all the time.” “Yeah well your butler who is also my neighbor just appeared here from out of nowhere like some teleportative magic was used.” Peyton explained herself. “Do not be ridiculous.” Percy laughed once again. “How can he be your neighbor when he lives in the Ford Manor?” “Peyton’s not being ridiculous Mr. Ford,” Gareth confessed to Percy, before turning to Peyton. “But I am not a demon…I am a white lighter…specifically yours, your brother’s, and your sister’s.” “Okay now I am completely and utterly confused.” Percy admitted to them both. “A white lighter is a guardian to witches, their bodyguard so to speak as well as being their mediator to the elders.” Peyton revealed to Percy. “I kind of got carried away with the reading a little bit.” “I was all for the possibility of witches, heck even ghosts but this is just too much!” Percy confessed, struggling to take it all in. “I mean I just came here to look at an old house and now I am just supposed to take this all in…” “I know that it is a lot to get your head around but the sooner the do the safer you will be.” Gareth tried to explain to the wealthy socialite. “Everything in the book of shadows is real especially the demons and now that you’ve unbound yours and your sisters’ powers, they are going to start coming for you all.”

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jess-rewatches-prodigalson · 4 years

Text

Episode 8: Family Friend

Things are getting intense.

SPOILERS

0:16 - Martin has a nameplate that reads “Dr Martin Whitly” in his home office. That is maybe the most egotistical, narcissistic thing I have ever seen. Seriously. WTF Martin.

1:14 - So this phone in the basement has a different phone number than the rest of the landlines in the house? Seems odd. I guess Martin set it up as a business phone so it needed to have a different number?

1:21 - This conversation is really cool. Malcolm is scared - you tell by the way his voice cracks a little at 1:22 and by his eyes in the beginning of the conversation. However, you can also see that Malcolm has been trained by the FBI to be an investigator. Listen to his interview skills. He’s calm, professional, and he’s speaking in careful, calculated sentences. It’s impressive. I’d really like to see him in this position more often. Another really interesting part of this scene is Jessica’s reactions in the background she looks positively terrified. She’s hugging herself and looking around in horror. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen her this frightened.

1:23 - So Watkins has been watching Malcolm right? For how long? Because he recognizes Malcolm’s voice. And presumably he recognized Malcolm’s face at the junkyard? Creepy.

3:35 - Ainsley is going through the interview footage with a disturbing amount of admiration and joy in her eyes - while her bf in unconscious because her dad orchestrated a stabbing during her interview. Also though, is she editing the video footage? Seems like that’s not in her job description?

4:40 - I love everything about the initial moments when we see Gil, JT, and Dani enter the Whitly house. First of all - Jessica is clearly still shaken and terrified. Secondly, Gil (even though he does look concerned for Jessica) looks so comfortable in that house. It really makes you wonder how many times he’s been there over the years because honestly, the house Gil was almost murdered in shouldn’t be a place he feels comfortable in. Finally - JT and Dani. hahaha they walk into the room with faces that are clearly trying to hide how awestruck they are by how rich the house is. JT actually has an expression that I’m interpreting as “Damn. Rich people have a lot of weird useless crap.” AND look how Jessica’s demeanour immediately changes from terrified to welcoming, considerate hostess the moment she sees JT and Dani. That is the result of years of rich people manners being drilled into her as a child. I’m sure of it.

5:12 - Look at the way Malcolm looks at his Mom as she pours a drink. He’s a mixture of exasperated, concerned, and embarrassed that her alcoholism is being so blatantly exposed.

5:24 - Malcolm giving the abridged house tour to Dani and JT is awesome. He’s clearly trying to make them feel a little more comfortable in a world they aren’t used to while simultaneously trying to make clear that he doesn’t love the fancy house - it holds bad memories and he’d trade it in for a life without trauma. Also - Dani’s reaction is perfect. She’s trying to make Malcolm just as comfortable as he’s trying to make her. I love it.

5:50 - How come this bald, black, police officer dude doesn’t have a name yet? He’s had speaking parts in most of the episodes. At this point he’s practically part of the team.

6:15 - Gil checking up on Jessica is super sweet. ALSO the irony of keeping a gun in a hollowed out copy of War and Peace is hilarious.

6:50 - Another Gil and Malcolm moment to fuel my heart. Also - Gil looks exhausted. Can someone please give this man a vacation? He does nothing but worry about our shaky-handed boy, Jessica, the Team, and Ainsley. Seriously - Gil needs some time off.

7:21 - So it’s the next day. Am I to believe that Gil somehow convinced everyone to go home, shower, and come back in a few hours? Because it’s daylight now and everyone is in a fresh outfit. Something tells me Malcolm would not have done that willingly.

7:22 - Something about the fact that Gil is the only one who ever drinks coffee during the case briefings is hilarious to me.

8:22 - You know I’ve always laughed at this seen because JT says, “I can’t with this.” but I’ve been missing the best part of the scene!! Look at Gil’s face. hahaha it’s an expression of total disbelief. He’s so done with working with these children.

9:29 - Just how many jackets does Malcolm have?!? I know he’s rich but I really want to see his closet. He doesn’t strike me as a rich person who cares about appearances or the money itself. So - what does his closet look like and who is buying him all of these jackets?!?

10:15 - Anyone else wonder how the hell someone managed to bury a winnebago without anyone noticing? It just seems like it would’ve drawn a lot of attention?

10:47 - *sigh* Gil is so resigned to the fact that he can’t control Malcolm. Poor guy looks exhausted. Trying to save Malcolm from himself is not an easy job. This particular case is also probably really hard for Gil too. I mean, Gil caught the Surgeon. If this killer worked with the Surgeon, Gil is probably questioning his detective skills. Questioning whether or not he missed something all those years ago that would’ve had this killer behind bars years ago. Also Malcolm has gone manic again. Yikes.

13:25 - Ainsley. Ugh. Girl - your bf is in the hospital with a stab wound. Stop trying to find a story to further your career and worry about him. Honestly. Why is she even dating this guy? She clearly doesn’t care much about him.

14:24 - Katcha? Another one of the Whitly family employees. WHY ARE THERE SO MANY OF THEM?!? We’re up to 4 now (Louisa, Katherine, Alfonso, and Katcha).

15:51 - Look at Eve in this scene. Initially she is annoyed, then concerned, then curious but by the end of the conversation you can tell that Eve is scared of what Jessica tells her.

18:40 - haha look at Gil’s face here. He’s so pleased and amused that JT is teasing Malcolm. It’s precious.

18:57 - Malcolm’s comment about how the Junkyard Killer has been killing for over 20 years, which is longer than the Surgeon, has me curious. How long did the Surgeon kill for? Did Martin start killing before he got married? Before Malcolm was born? After Malcolm was born? After Ainsley was born? I really want to know. ALSO Gil looks so concerned after Malcolm makes that little comment. Generally Gil shoots Malcolm a concerned look whenever Martin is brought up. I love it.

19:02 - How long did the front desk have that box? No one noticed it was bleeding? AND that blood is seeping out really fast. There’s no way JT could’ve gotten it to Malcolm before it started bleeding. Ugh. The things I excuse/ignore because I understand episodes have a time constraint and things need to happen a certain way to forward the plot.

19:43 - I don’t know a lot about how quickly the human body decomposes or anything BUT father Leo’s hands did not look that beat up a few minutes ago. Check out the severed hand’s finger nails? They’re in terrible shape. Biology nerds: does this kind of stuff happen to severed limbs? I’m curious but too scared to google (I don’t want pictures).

21:00 - This is another instance where we can see how good Malcolm is at interviewing....well until Watkins brings up the girl in the box and Malcolm kind of loses his mind. I love this.

21:36 - Gil looks scared here. A rare look for him. Also - really makes me wish I could’ve seen the moment when the story behind the girl in the box was explained to Dani and JT.

22:30 - Look at Malcolm’s eyes. He looks haunted. Broken. Scared. I’m genuinely surprised he didn’t descend into a full blown panic attack. He looked really close to one.

22:50 - This conversation between Malcolm and Gil is everything. You can tell that Gil feels guilty - like he might’ve worsened Malcolm’s trauma. You can tell that Gil is also concerned about Malcolm. But check out the way Gil is speaking to Malcolm. Gil is so honest with Malcolm yet simultaneously reassuring. I respect that.

24:38 - The moment Malcolm decides that his need for answers is greater than his wellbeing. He could’ve called Gil right here. He could’ve walked away and waited for backup. But he didn’t because knowing the truth is more important to him than his physical health. That’s genuinely concerning. This is a passively suicidal act.

25:34 - “You even smell like him.” This line has always struck me as bizarre. What exactly is John referring to? Does Malcolm smell like fear? Or like desperation mixed with determination? Is that how he smells like Martin? Because I promise you Jessica Whitly would lose her mind if Malcolm was wearing the same cologne his father used to wear. If Malcolm smelled like Martin due to his personal hygiene products I’m sure Jessica would’ve put a stop to it. And I’m sure Malcolm would’ve listened to his mother in this instance because he’s so desperate to be nothing like Martin Whitly.

26:21 - This is sad. Malcolm is being honest here. He really believes that he is like his father even though he desperately doesn’t want to be like him.

27:22 - Gil is pissed. This is peak Dad behaviour. I’m shocked that he didn’t punish Malcolm himself or call Jessica because he knew that her overbearing presence would be punishment for Malcolm.

28:23 - Malcolm is spiralling. Look how manic he is. How desperate he is for answers. Look at how much pain he’s in. This whump is thawing my cold, dead soul (also semi-shirtless Tom Payne is attractive).

29:05 - Jin has the appropriate reaction to this. Ainsley does not. If a murder is on the loose you should be at lest mildly concerned for yourself and sympathetic for the victims and their families. Not excited at the prospect of a story.

30:02 - 1. Tom Payne without a shirt is...wow. and 2. He’s using frozen peas as an ice pack...so he does have food in the house?

30:25 - Yep. When he opens the fridge here you can see he has some other frozen vegetables in the door.

30:27 - This is interesting to me. Malcolm is clearly attracted to Eve and he doesn’t want her to think he’s crazy (even though their first conversation was about how he got high at work) so he hides his pill bottles. When Dani’s come over Malcolm has never hidden his pill bottles from her. Because Malcolm is comfortable with Dani. Just something to think about.

31:00 - Eve said she got Malcolm’s address under “false pretences”. The only false pretence I can see Jessica giving out Malcolm’s address to Eve is because Eve told her she was going to ask Malcolm out. But the false pretence implies that Eve has no intention of ever dating Malcolm. Huh. Either way, I would’ve really liked to hear that conversation. The one where a drunk Jessica Whitly gives a woman her son’s address because she thinks he’s going to get laid. It’s both upsetting and hilarious that this happened.

32:15 - Gil looks like exhausted. Holy crap. Why is everyone so worried about Malcolm when Gil is looking like this?!?

33:25 - The acting throughout this entire phone conversation is phenomenal. Tom Payne’s facial expressions really convey Malcolm’s desperation, fear, and determination to get answers. Lou’s tone of voice really conveys Gil’s worry over Malcolm and tired, desperation to solve this case. And Michael Raymond-James’ confident, controlling voice is just the perfect amount of creepy to be a believable killer.

34:40 - Are you telling me that Gil wasn’t hearing this conversation in real time? Why wasn’t the police recording this conversation for evidence? Also how is Malcolm’s cell phone connecting to Gil’s radio?

35:53 - “Damn it. Ainsley’s there.” This line is beautifully delivered. That is believable big brother concern. This whole sibling conversation is great. I love how they interact.

36:30 - Can no know in this family follow orders?!? Honestly. Ainsley stay in your room. These Whitly’s really need to learn to listen to the people who want to keep themselves safe. BUT SIDE NOTE: Malcolm’s desperate cries to Ainsley as she runs from the Junkyard Killer are haunting.

38:21 - THANK YOU JIN. SOMEONE WHO SEES IT MY WAY. AINSLEY DID YOU DIRTY BROTHER.

39:15 - “How’s Ainsley doing?” Love this. I’m so desperate to know the extent of Gil’s relationship with Ainsley. We know that Gil was a big part of Malcolm’s childhood. I want to know how much contact he’s had with Ainsley through the years.

40:35 - hahaha I love this scene between Jessica and Malcolm. It’s honest, sweet, and sad. You can really see the role that Malcolm put himself in. He’s the self-appointed family protector. He’s probably felt that way most of his life. You can see Jessica’s determination, guilt, and fear. It’s beautiful.

Ahhhhhh I love this show. Thanks for hanging out Prodigies.

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kat-writes-haikyuu · 4 years

Text

Matchup Exchange!

This is a matchup exchange with the lovely @herakosmos <3

sexuality: straight

zodiacs: sun;capricorn moon;leo rising;cancer

enneagram: 4w7

mbti: infj

height: 5’2-5’3 (ppl say i look taller than my actual height bc of my long legs)

(idk if this is necessary but) looks: straight waist length black hair+middle parted, dark brown orbs, tanned skin, im japanese&filipino, slightly plump lips, a sharp jawline, button nose, a slightly noticeable dimple on my right cheek and pierced ears w/ a cartilage on my right ear :)

body: curvier waist/bottom but flatter/slimmer on the top <\3

likes: popcorn & thai tea hehe, kpop & anime, reading, going to the beach (i live in hawaii+by a beach so i’ve grown to love the beach lmao) sometimes working out when i feel like it

dislikes: ESCALATORS, ppl who chew loudly and very gruesome stuff (i tend to shake a lot at the sight of it😭) and white sauce pasta

personality: i’d say im very shy and more awkward w/ strangers, but w/ friends im very playful & goofy! even though i hate it, most of my friends have told me i looked like a b*tch at first sight, but once they’ve actually hung out w/ me im very much the opposite. my sense of humor is dry and sarcastic. i tend to bottle up my feelings until i explode, but im working on that. im very caring for the ppl i love and can be quite stubborn when it comes to whos right & whos wrong (i always want to be right😭) im also a creative soul who has a passion for editing and fashion! i tend to work on spontaneous bursts of energies which i HATE bc i do want to get things done but never do at the end. overall i feel like im more of an introvert since i love staying in lmao

some more fun facts abt me is i want to become a fashion stylist in the future and want to become a good one. my love lang is words of affirmation! a guy who could make me blush and flustered is definitely my ideal type and ofc loyal!!

I match you with

Bokuto!

So, I didn’t even have to think about this

This goof ball would absolutely ADORE you!

For starters, Capricorns and Virgos are really compatible!

He would absolutely love your height! Constantly using you as an armrest and calling you Shorty, Short Stuff, or Tiny

He would think that you cartilage piercing is awesome, and would consider getting one as well!

Bokuto loves seeing you smile and thinks your dimple is ADORABLE!

He cannot stop stop booping your nose! It just a cute little button!

When he learns how you like to workout on occasions, he will insist on taking you to the gym with him everyday...

Bokuto always makes sure the house is stocked up on popcorn

1. For you guys’ movie nights

and

2. For your love of popcorn

You guys don’t really watch horror movies, but he will try to convince you!

He may not be the biggest fan of reading, but he will definitely read some of your favorites if they’re not to long

He loves that you feel comfortable around him to be playful and goofy, but that doesn’t mean his disliked when you were shy!

Bokuto wasn’t intimidated by you in the slightest, he didn’t really notice that you looked like a b*tch he’s kind of dense

He would go straight to emo mode after the first time you explode around him

He is so confused as to why you won’t talk to him about it, though he is happy that you are working on it! He just wants you to be happy!

Bokuto needs someone caring to help him when he gets hurt after doing something stupid

He understands you want to always be right! Its just like his want to win!

He admires your creativity and supports you 1000% in becoming a Fashion Stylist, and he thinks you will be the greatest one ever!

He probably would be the reason you can’t get anything done when you have a burst of energy he’s gonna drag into his dumb stuff

He doesn’t mind staying home, but he will try and get you come out more often

He will try his best to use words of affirmation, but he’s not the best with words, but he tries!

He would be extremely loyal to you, and would probably fluster you all the time, whether its on accident or on purpose depends on the situation

Thank you so much for doing this with me! I hope this was okay! Have a wonderful day! <3

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luluwquidprocrow · 3 years

Text

i will get there

part 1 of 2

originally posted: september 4th, 2017

word count: 6,097 words

rated: not rated

laura palmer, donna hayward, dale cooper

alternate universe, alternate universe – canon divergence, depression, eventual happy ending, demons, your general twin peaks level of existential dread, because laura palmer’s life is anything but easy, I wrote this before the finale and weirdly enough it’s applicable, 2020 edit – there’s a few lines in here about leland and sarah in the second half of the fic and lines about the ring and coop is i think too self-aware all of which (especially the lines about leland and sarah in the second half) I do not agree with anymore because I did not totally understand all the vibes when I wrote this in may 2017 and I intend to fix that in the still-being-written second part of this

summary: Laura Palmer lived.

opening notes:

so funnily enough, I really did write this back in may when s3 first started, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but after last night’s finale, you know what????? who cares!! who knows anything!!! so here it is. there's some references to the Missing Pieces in here, specifically the muffin scene, and also the idea that the ring prevents possession instead of drawing someone back into the lodge/denoting possession/the million other things the freaking ring does title from 'what you know' by two door cinema club, for some reason

who even knows what happened that night? laura palmer doesn't. she guesses she should know. but she doesn't. sheriff truman asks her over and over again what happened that night and laura doesn't know. ronette hasn't woken up yet, truman tells her. her father is barely alive. her mother is in shock. you have to tell me what happened, laura, he says.

she tells him she doesn't know. she can't remember and she doesn't know if she wants to.

(and if she has vague flashes of her hands tearing apart a man in a denim jacket, and her screams sometimes ring in her ears, then that's for her to think about, and no one else.)

laura doesn't sleep for days. she stares at the ceiling of the hospital room and pinches herself when her vision blurs, because it can't have been that easy. he can't just be gone, just like that. if laura knows anything, it's that nothing is that easy. she doesn't want to be responsible for bringing him back and hurting someone else. if she's awake then she's her. then everyone else is okay. she still has the ring, and she twists it around her finger and shakes and shakes and shakes and never takes it off, but she doesn't know if it's enough, if she trusts it.

she drifts off sometime on the fifth day, and jerks awake with a gasp. she's still in the hospital. the windows aren't open. she looks at herself in a mirror and sees her face. she's all there. everyone else is all there.

bob is not there.

laura starts sobbing, and she doesn't stop for a long time.

she spends weeks and weeks getting the taste of blood and cocaine out of her. and then it just feels like there’s nothing left at all.

donna wants to talk, and james just wants to hold her, and they don't understand that all laura wants to do is sit and stare at her hands and try to convince herself that she must be lucky to be alive, because all she thinks about is how much less effort it would be to just be anything else.

she thought she wouldn't have to pretend anymore, that no one would expect all that much of her now, but everyone still wants so much from her, and she hates it, or she thinks she would if she could feel anything. you were such a brave girl, everyone tells her, and she wants them all to get that smile off their faces, because she wasn't. she's not. she doesn't want to be touched and she doesn't want to be looked at and she just wants to try and figure out what she's supposed to do now. she can't wrap her head around anything. everything she used to do feels stupid and fake or hurts too much to think about.

she doesn't go to the roadhouse, so jacques renault doesn't try to catch her eye. she barely leaves her house, so she doesn't have to worry about running into leo johnson, or anyone, really. she stays home and donna brings over her homework for a while until she realizes laura's not doing it. bobby doesn't want to see her, which is good, because she shouldn't see him. she doesn't hear from josie packard. she thinks for a long time about johnny horne. ben horne sends audrey to see her, and they just look at each other until audrey gets up and leaves. james tries to call her, and she lets the phone ring and ring and ring.

someone asks her to talk to jacoby, says it'd be good for her. laura thinks she could laugh at that, but she doesn't.

ronette wakes up. laura goes to visit and sits beside her. it's the only thing she willingly leaves the house for.

"what did you do?" ronette asks, wide-eyed. "how did we get out? how—"

"i don't know," laura says. "i don't know."

ronette looks at her, but it's not that piercing stare james gives her, it's ronette's soft, doe-eyed gaze, so it doesn't feel bad. ronette was there, ronette gets it, a little. laura still can't forgive herself for the fact that ronette was there, but at least someone almost gets it. she's grateful all the same.

"who was that man, laura?" ronette says.

laura shakes her head. "he wasn't a man," she says. "he was something else."

her brown shoes are soft and silent against the hospital hallway when she leaves, and she wants to run so she can hear herself and then curl up and never move again so she doesn't have to think about herself either. it's hard to figure out which one sounds better.

bobby is at the end of the hallway. "laura," he says, a little breathless. he can’t be here for her, laura isn’t even here anymore, and she doesn’t even want to know why he’s at the hospital.

bobby briggs, she'd say, she'd sing it with a short grin, if she was a different person, if she was the girl of a few weeks ago instead of the shell of this one. she doesn't even know what to do with bobby anymore, what to say, how to pretend.

"i didn't know you'd left," he says. "here. the hospital, i mean." he clears his throat and looks her over carefully. "you—you okay, laura?" like he almost doesn't want to ask.

what a stupid question, laura thinks, and she'd say it, but she shouldn't. she should apologize, is what she should do, do something, say anything, but laura is so tired. it drags at her bones.

she doesn't say anything.

her parents are not the same people. laura knows that, at least. her family has never been perfect but it's maybe not even a family now. it's three people, three ghosts, haunting the same house. they aren't pretending they can go back to what they had before, at least. at least there's that. they all know something happened, even if they aren't sure what.

it still hurts somewhere. it stings hard in her chest because she just wanted her life back, she wanted her family back, she wanted to look at her parents and her father without feeling sick, and she can't, she still can't. her father won't look at her and her mother doesn't look at anything. she doesn't see much of them at all. she'll catch the smell of her mother's cigarettes, hear the long shuffle of her father's footsteps down the hall, but she rarely sees them, like they don't want to be near her.

did i do the right thing, she asks herself, and she doesn't know the answer to that question. she thought she was alive but she doesn't know if this is living. it's something. she just doesn't know what it is.

laura feels trapped in twin peaks.

"i don't get it," donna says, when laura tells her she's leaving.

laura looks out the window. "what's there to get," she says. "i'm leaving. it's not rocket science, donna."

"where are you gonna go?"

"i don't know," laura says. "somewhere else."

"you're not gonna tell me?"

"i probably wouldn't tell you even if i did know."

"i'd come with you," donna says quietly.

laura scoffs. "and do what? follow me around like you do here? wish you were me? a fucked-up girl who can't do anything right?" she doesn't know what makes her say it, why she lets herself take the empty anger and frustration inside her out on donna.

donna starts to cry, that soft sniffle where her face falls and she stares at the floor of the hayward living room.

laura closes her eyes. "don't be like that, donna," she says, but there's no venom behind it. it comes out hoarse and quiet. laura's tired of hurting her.

"i'm—i'm sorry," donna says, wiping her face on the edge of her sleeve.

"don't be sorry," laura whispers.

are you my—are you my best friend? laura had asked her. she remembers that, vivid and sharp in her mind, the horror that had crawled over her skin.

of course, donna had said, because she was. she had been. when they thought they could pretend things were okay. laura's not in the business of pretending anymore, and donna shouldn't be either, and she'll miss donna like an ache in her chest but she thinks it'll be better for both of them if they don't see each other anymore.

she couldn't stand it, if donna asked her that question again. why do you do it?

why had she done it? because it was fun, laura thinks, because she wanted it and had it and then everyone told her she was wrong and warped and shouldn't want, because she wanted to try and to know and someone cut her open instead, and then she couldn't separate it out from what she wanted to do and what she'd felt she had to do, what she deserved, what people gave her and she forced herself to take because okay, that was how it worked, she guessed. the world pushed her down and told her what it did to people like her. then she'd tried to take it back and now she has nothing.

i don't want you to be like me, laura had told her. she still doesn't. donna should live a quiet life, one that doesn't involve demons or trouble or laura. especially laura.

"what i wanted," donna says softly, "was your strength, laura."

and i wanted yours, laura thinks. all your strength, all your kindness. she looks back at donna. "i'll miss you," she says. "i really will." laura owes her that much.

"i'll miss you too. more than anything." donna sighs, twists her fingers together. "before you go," she says, "you want a muffin?"

laura wants so badly to smile. she tries, but she can't do it. "seven whole huckleberries, donna?"

"and counting."

laura shakes her head. she wants to hug donna, just like she used to, but she doesn't think she has it in her. she just gets up and shrugs instead. "bye, muffin," she says.

donna smiles, her mouth trembling. "bye, muffin."

her mother always seems to be shaking. not just now, laura thinks, but she always was. sarah palmer's hands, her mouth, her head, her shoulders, her eyes. she leans against the doorway to the living room and pulls the cigarette out of her mouth.

"are you—" sarah begins, and then she stops. her eyes dart around the room, like she's looking for something. "do you need anything? anything at all, laura?"

"no," laura says.

sarah's lips tremble again. "will you come back?" she asks, with a helpless little smile.

"i don't know."

sarah sighs, and then she takes a long, long drag from the cigarette. laura watches the edges of her mother's fingers shake. it's like her mother's going to blur out of existence one of these days, just rattle apart.

"you should—you should write," sarah says. she says the words slowly, her lined mouth curling around them awkwardly. "let me know you're okay."

laura knows her mother is five seconds from shouting that at her, or she would've shouted it, if laura had tried to do this before. let me know you're okay, laura thinks. just tell me i'll be okay.

"maybe," laura says. "maybe i will. maybe i will be."

laura leaves twin peaks. she takes trains and buses at night, in the darkness where no one else can watch her. she leaves washington state and heads east, stopping when she runs out of money.

laura doesn't know why she applies for a job at a bar, but she does. the atmosphere isn't comforting but it's familiar, and she hopes she can just disappear there, just try to scrape something for herself out of whatever this is.

the owner looks her up and down. "what do you have to offer?" he asks.

laura thinks about when she would've charmed her way straight into the bar, straight into the job, straight into the owner, how she would've played every single person she could get her hands on, but she doesn't have the energy or the will for it anymore. and then she thinks, nothing. i have nothing to offer. because what are her skills, now? what can she do? what did she even do before? who are you, laura palmer?

"i don't know," laura says.

"least you're honest," the owner says. "alright, fine."

she works nights. she gets a small hotel room and spends a whole afternoon channel surfing and letting the noise wash over her, the curtains drawn tight and the lights off and the tv glowing blue against her skin, just to see what it feels like, if it feels like anything.

laura's washing out glasses behind the bar when a man sits down in front of her. he doesn't order anything. he just stares at her, traces the curve of her hair against her shoulder.

her whole body tenses. she gnaws on the inside of her mouth and looks at her hands, grips the towel tight so her nails dig into it and the fabric rubs into her skin.

the man looks at her, eyes glazed and his mouth a lopsided grin. he smells like other bars and glistens with sweat. "i've seen you around a lot," he says.

"i work here," laura says, her teeth grinding together. he sounds like leo johnson and looks like jacques renault. she knows how he works, what he wants, what he has. there’s a rushing in her head and her whole body aches. she wants to kill him with her bare hands.

"what's your name, cutie?"

she quits, right on the spot.

laura cuts her hair so it swings short around her chin, and buys the longest sweaters and wraps herself up in them. she gets another job at a convenience store where no one looks twice at her, and she hopes it's enough.

she still hangs out at bars, just because they're everywhere, they're nowhere, and most of the time no one ever notices she's there. she sits in the back with the shadows and just watches and tries to figure out how people do it, how they want to live when everything around them is so—whatever this is.

it comes in handy one night.

there's a girl not much younger than laura, sitting in a booth, being held by a friend.

"you've gotta tell someone," the friend says.

"i told you."

"besides me. you've gotta—this isn't right, we should do something—"

"do what? who's going to believe me? it's—it's not like i can explain it. like, this thing's after me, this horrible thing in the woods and it watches me and i can't—and why me, huh? why me?"

laura's heart races, her chest heaving as she tries to breathe.

it shouldn't surprise her, that there are horrible things out there, everywhere, not just in twin peaks. every place has history. every place has demons. literal demons. but she's still shocked to hear it's real, there's something else, there's someone else living her life.

laura holds herself tight and closes her eyes. she doesn't remember what she did before, what she did to him, but she'll be damned if she doesn't try it again.

she haunts the local bars and clubs, staying in the back, in the shadows, where no one can touch her, and she listens to people talk. she watches their faces when they talk about it, when someone brings it up—the demon in the woods. it makes her skin crawl and her heart slam in her throat but she stays there and makes herself listen.

it takes her a few weeks, but she figures out where it is, how it operates, and she has herself and that's all when she walks into the forest to find it.

she kills it, and she remembers every single second this time. her bare hands and her willpower and the ring glinting in the darkness when she takes the thing in her hands and pulls it apart like she did with bob. she doesn't know how it works. maybe it's because she has the ring. maybe it's because she's been there, and came out on the other side just as twisted as them. but she really doesn't care. she just does it.

laura doesn't know how they know it was her, but a group of girls—two of them the ones from the bar—find her before she leaves town and thank her. they look like her, a little, or she just sees herself in them, lost and alone.

if laura was a different person she'd tell them it's not a big deal. but it is, because she knows it is, and she just tells them to watch out for themselves.

"what's your name?" one of them asks.

laura thinks about it, because she doesn't know if she wants to say it, and she finds herself remembering what she'd said to donna that one time. and the angels wouldn't help you, because they've all gone away, she'd said. alright, then, laura thought. that'd have to be her. she just wouldn't go away. she would not go away. she grits her teeth and clenches her hands into fists and thinks i will not go away.

"laura," she says, louder than she has in months. "laura palmer."

she does it again, and again, in different towns and different places, and it doesn't hurt her anymore to do it.

laura doesn't know what this feels like. it's not what she thinks life is supposed to feel like, but it's not the gaping emptiness that had stabbed at her every single moment she was in twin peaks.

they start to know her name. demons, humans, all of them. they whisper it in the darkness, in the woods, like a curse, like a prayer. laura doesn't hear it, but she knows it's there. it makes her feel a little real.

things still scare her. it's been a year, and things still scare her. laura doesn't know if that's okay. she can't stand long hair, denim jackets, the color red, certain men, certain smells. sometimes she sees a picture of a mountain or too many trees and her heart speeds up, even. it all makes her hands shake and she finds herself crying over her lunch that she barely eats sometimes.

sometimes she wants to feel her hands against someone else's skin but then the thought of it is simultaneously too horrifying for her to handle, after everything. laura wonders if she'll ever—love again sounds stupid and like something donna would say, for goodness sake. and she doesn't have time for that right now, anyway. she doesn't have time to try to figure out how to handle all of that.

be okay enough, is what she settles on, early one morning, wiping the tears off her cheeks. i want to be okay enough. good enough.

she still tries not to think about twin peaks.

laura finds herself in philadelphia. she's on the trail of a demon with a darkness around it that worries her, and she doesn't like it.

she gets the hotel room and seeks out some low-key diner, because sometimes she honestly wants to eat and this is one of those times. she still feels uncomfortable ordering too much. she doesn't know what she wants, what she'd like, what she thinks would be okay.

she sips at her water and looks around the diner. it's small and quiet and there's only two other people in there, two men sitting across from each other, wearing crisp black suits and arguing over what looks like the three slices of pie that one of them ordered. then she looks at their faces. one of them looks not so much angry but fondly irritated, as if this happens all the time, and the other one, eating the pie with a calm, peaceful expression—

i know him, laura thinks, gripping her glass tighter so her hands won't shake. i know that face. she'd seen it in her dreams, the night before she what she did in twin peaks. he was in a red room with a jagged floor, which means he can't be real, he can't be right, he has to be another one. she's going to scream, right there, in the diner, she's going to fall apart.

his eyes meet hers, and he puts his fork down.

laura bites down hard on the inside of her mouth as her whole body trembles.

federal bureau of investigation special agent dale cooper, meanwhile, immediately understands everything, because that's the kind of person he is. he's seen that woman's face before, in a strange dream that wasn't much stranger than any other dream he's had, really. but it stood out to him, her face and her quiet smile and the heavy, startling weight of the air in the room. he knew and could feel the darkness of that weight.

(and if he had another dream, where he was trapped in that horror for year upon year and her face was the only thing he knew for sure in the midst of an almost-constant, almost gnawing laughter, a laughter he also heard in dreams as a child, well, he's certainly never told anyone.)

he'd had a thought at the time, that maybe she was the victim he'd envisioned after teresa banks died, but he looked through every single file in the bureau and hadn't found her face. until now, across the diner, looking at him with wild eyes. cooper is so relieved she's alive but he doesn't want to frighten her. she's overcome so much, so much he doesn't know, but he has to talk to her.

"you have that look on your face again," albert rosenfield says, in a tone of long-suffering. "the one you get when you're about to do something stupid."

"i know," cooper says.

"well, at least you're becoming self-aware."

cooper stands. "please wait for me outside, albert."

the man gets up and walks over to laura. she breathes fast through her nose, her eyes darting back and forth between his. he doesn't feel like any of the others. he doesn't look like them either. he looks kind and worried, but that doesn't mean he isn't just as bad. there's a cold horror spreading down her spine that she doesn't like, so she doesn't like him.

he extends his hand. "special agent dale cooper," he says. he smiles, just a little bit.

laura doesn't shake it.

"may i sit down?" he asks, lowering his hand.

laura frowns up at him, gripping her glass again. she can feel her shoulders shaking. she grinds her teeth together. "why?"

"i'd like to buy you breakfast," agent cooper says. "if that's alright with you."

"you don't know me," she says.

agent cooper smiles. "may i ask your name?"

"laura palmer," she says, and she wants to scream it so everyone hears, she's laura palmer and she's going to tear everyone apart if they're not careful, if they don't stay away from her, she didn't go through hell to get pulled back in because she wasn't on her guard.

"miss palmer—"

"laura."

"laura." he sits down across from her. "do you think it's possible for two people to know each other, even though they've never met before? to have an acute understanding of the other's life because, perhaps, in another, they would have met for certain, one way or another, and helped each other? and that in this lifetime, if they happen to meet, something strange but wonderful could happen?"

there is the tiniest of creases between his eyes when he talks to her, a tension laura has seen in her own eyes. he doesn't feel wrong. he doesn't look at her with anger or lust. she doesn't get that twist in her throat she feels when she looks at a monster. a regular guy. that's all he is, just a regular guy, not a demon or a joke, just someone who looks and sounds like he's seen what laura has and more. she feels sorry for him, a pity that makes her want to cry, but she also wants him to keep talking.

she twists her hands together in her lap, the line of her shoulders still pulled tight. "i don't know," she says.

"i think it's an interesting possibility to think about," agent cooper continues. "the infinity of space, the relationships of individuals. the multitude of possibilities, and their intersections. what we take from one part of our lives to the next."

"what have you taken?" laura asks.

agent cooper looks startled for a moment, as if he hadn't expected her to ask. then he smiles. "the knowledge that there is so much more that i can do, that i will do, to help," he says. "and you, laura?"

"i don't know," she says quickly. "or—i don't know, yet."

his smile widens. "how about that breakfast?" he picks up the menu to look it over again, even though laura knows he's already looked at it. "the cherry pie is particularly excellent," agent cooper says. "i'm afraid that's the most experience that i have with the food here, but i think it works as a good baseline for anything else."

laura swallows. she still doesn't know what she wants. all this time, and she still can't order something in a diner? damn, laura, she thinks. what would donna say?

but she knows exactly what donna would say.

"a muffin," laura says. "i want a muffin."

agent cooper's smile is almost blinding this time. "a muffin it is, then." he calls the waitress over and tells her with much more enthusiasm than is really necessary what laura wants.

"we only have huckleberry today," the waitress says. "that okay?"

"that's fine," laura says.

agent cooper orders another slice of pie. the waitress comes back a little later and sets down the pie and the muffin. laura stares down at it. then she frowns and picks the whole muffin apart.

she finds the remains of eight whole huckleberries.

laura really almost laughs, this time, and she eats them all, one by one.

agent cooper and agent rosenfield are tracking the same demon. agent cooper doesn't come right out and say it—laura thinks he can't—but she knows they're after it, and agent cooper knows she's after it too.

"the fbi does things like that?" laura asks. "fight demons?"

"from time to time," agent cooper says. "i get the feeling it's something you do as well." he gives her a knowing look.

the corner of laura's mouth twitches up, just for a second. "from time to time," she says.

agent cooper takes a bite of his third slice of pie. "if it's not too personal a question," he begins, "can i ask how you do it?"

laura looks down at her hands, her fingers still sticky from the muffin. she rubs them along the condensation on her water glass. "i don't know," she says. "i just—i don't even know how i did it the first time." she closes her eyes and immediately sees his face, the way his jaw would move and crack as he laughed, and she forces her eyes open wide. "i grabbed hold of him," she whispers, "and tore him apart." she frowns and pulls her sleeves of her sweater down over her knuckles. "what about you?"

agent cooper looks at her with a quiet curiosity. "there are other ways of doing it," he says. "to destroy darkness with darkness is to feed into it. to help it become something lighter is to overcome it. if these things are the evil that men do, then that evil has to go somewhere.”

laura digs her nails into her palms, and she feels afraid, truly afraid, for the first time in a while. "there are some things you can't," she says. "what if there are some things you can't overcome?"

he doesn’t have an answer for her. if anything, he looks a little afraid too.

laura swallows hard and changes the subject. “so do you want my help or not?”

agent cooper clears his throat. "laura, while i respect you and your abilities and your knowledge, at the end of the day you are still considered a civilian and i would be remiss if i put you in any danger. however, i would appreciate any general assistance you could—”

"you won't get to that demon without me," laura says. "you won't be able to stop it without me." it's the one thing, the only thing she feels confident in.

“if something happened to you—”

“i can take care of myself,” she insists. she twists the ring hard around her finger and stares him down.

he looks like he wants to say no. he’s going to say no, laura knows it. her heart pounds in her chest, a frantic rhythm that reminds her she’s here, and she won’t let anyone take that from her.

something pinches in his face and then softens. he sighs.

agent cooper likes to talk to her. he likes to take her out to breakfast and talk. laura doesn't do much talking, but she doesn't mind listening to him. she enjoys it.

sometimes they talk about the case, the demon. it's slow-going, this one, and neither of them have found anything concrete yet. mostly, agent cooper likes to talk about ducks. he pulls polaroids of ducks out of his wallet. agent rosenfield joins them reluctantly for breakfast one morning and tells her about the numerous times agent cooper has braked for a family of geese. laura almost smiles. she wonders how agent cooper does it. how he's seen so much darkness and hasn't let it touch him, how he can still smile like he does. he's okay enough. what has he done that laura hasn't?

"tell me about where you're from," agent cooper says one day.

laura shrugs, uncomfortable. "it's a small town in washington, near the canadian border." she shoves her hands into her pockets. she thinks without wanting to of jacques renault's cabin in the woods, and chews hard on the inside of her mouth. "lots of trees," she mutters.

"what kind of trees?" agent cooper asks, sounding interested.

"i don't know," laura says, quicker than she wants. "they're just trees." but they weren't just trees to her, they were eyes and secrets and she didn't feel safe in them, and she doesn't want to think about it now. she ran away so she wouldn't have to. "i don't want to talk about it."

agent cooper is quiet for a long time. "fear is a powerful thing," he says. "it's unwise to let it consume you."

"i know!" laura shouts. there's still so much she doesn't know, but she knows that for sure, she stared fear right in the face and didn't let it kill her. she killed it instead, and she'll keep killing it, tearing it apart, over and over, as long as it takes until it's all gone and she's safe.

agent cooper is still calm, still quiet, and laura suddenly hates that look on his face.

"i'm not afraid of it," she whispers.

"what are you afraid of?" agent cooper asks gently.

laura glares at him. "what are you afraid of?"

agent cooper answers with only minimal pausing. "that i will be consumed by my own fear. that what i do, and what i am, is not enough, and will never be enough."

and what is she afraid of? that i'll never be okay, laura thinks. i'll never be enough, either. i'll never hold something i can call my own. i'll be alone forever because no one will love me, no one could, even i couldn't. and she could do it, she could survive. but she's done that all her life. she's come so close to living, and she wants it, she wants it more than anything else.

"how do you do it?" she asks.

"i am under no illusion that it is easy," agent cooper says, "and if i gave you that impression at all, then i'm sorry, laura." he looks sad. it's a strange look on him. "there are some things i wish i hadn't taken with me. but i'm stuck with them. i try to do what i can, and at times it is harder than others."

"how do you know it's worth it?"

"i don't." he smiles slowly. "but i like to believe it is."

laura lets herself think about twin peaks. it's a scary thing, her memories of that town, but it's what she has, like it or not.

she thinks about donna, and wonders how she is. if donna's with james or not, and laura sort of hopes she isn't. what james is even doing, if he's grown up at all. how bobby's doing with shelly, if he's okay, if shelly's okay. what ronette is up to, if she still sees leo and jacques. laura hopes not, because there are better people out there for ronette. if audrey's sorted out her problems. if her parents—

there aren't that many memories of her parents that haven't been tainted and twisted and pulled apart. but she digs through them all and remembers them dancing, the way her mother would laugh and how her father would smile.

she hopes her parents still dance.

agent cooper finds the demon.

laura tells him that she'll handle it. agent cooper insists they handle it together, which laura immediately refuses. they go back and forth for longer than the average breakfast as laura tries to get him to let her do it alone. she has to do it alone. this one, for sure. she's been thinking about what agent cooper said and she needs to do something, and this is how she's going to do it.

ultimately, agent cooper tells agent rosenfield that he and laura will handle it, and agent rosenfield looks less than pleased about it. he spends what laura thinks is longer than necessary glaring at her while he lights a cigarette. she gets the impression that he doesn't like much of anything, except agent cooper, because he lets them do it.

then agent cooper, who says it's against his better judgment but understands why laura wants to do it, lets her do it alone.

"wait for me," laura tells him, before she walks into the woods. everything is washed in cool red from the sunset, and she twists the ring around her finger again.

"without a doubt," agent cooper replies.

laura thinks all of them, all the demons, look like bob, a little. in some way or another. they all do. they're all different, but they're all sharp and horrifying and she still sees his face, every time. she holds it tight and closes her eyes. the darkness is heavy on her skin, in her mouth. she knows that weight, that darkness.

don't be afraid.

she's been that darkness. she is that darkness, maybe, twisted up and hurt and wrong. she still hurts so much. it's hard to get up and it's hard to fight and it's hard to do anything.

but it's enough.

laura opens her eyes and stares it down and tells herself she is stronger than it, than anything, and she starts to believe herself. there is a darkness, and there will always be a darkness, but she and her presence are enough and she will live every day staring it down until it's so small it doesn't even matter. there will always be monsters, but there will always be laura palmer.

i will not go away.

the ring sparkles bright on her hand, and the demon bursts into nothing. its screams echo and laura’s don’t.

agent cooper looks ridiculously pleased, and agent rosenfield just looks like he wants to leave town as quickly as possible. it's a nice sight, the two of them. laura will miss them.

"laura palmer," agent cooper says, "it has been an honor to work with you."

laura smiles and lets herself be pulled into a genuine hug for the first time in a long time. agent cooper smells like pine trees and laundry detergent, and she buries her face into his jacket and holds on.

"what are you going to do now?" he asks.

laura picks up a postcard.

donna—

had a muffin with eight whole huckleberries. and counting.

love, laura

#twin peaks

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master-sass-blast · 4 years

Text

Tricks, Tricks, Tricks!

I hate doing intros when I’m tired bc it feels like it takes forever.

Summary: You and Wade set up a haunted house for the kids at Xavier’s --and prank Scott Summers, of course.

Pairings: Piotr Rasputin x Reader.

Rating: G. Just ignore the swear words. Pls.

Set before “Questions and Answers” but after “THIS IS HALLOWEEN.”

Taglist: @marvel-is-perfection, @chromecutie, @super-darkcloudstudent, @girl-obsessed-with-things, @nebulous-leo

It’s not every day that you and Wade stumble onto a legitimately, objectively good idea.

Granted, you guys have tons of great ideas. The fallback of nearly all of them, however, is that they usually involve some sort of destruction and-slash-or generally deviant behavior.

Which, in yours and Wade’s opinions, makes the entire shebang that much more fun, but dealing with the “post brilliant idea clean-up” and the temporary social fallout among your peers –depending on who you target and piss off—isn’t quite as fun.

However.

It’s Halloween season. And the teachers at Xavier’s tend to do some sort of Halloween-y thing for the students there because a lot of places that host seasonal events –surprise, surprise—won’t admit mutants.

Plus, Piotr loves Halloween, which means the two of you have a “non-deviant” spokesperson to advocate for your plan.

And, the cherry on top of it all, is that Scott has been an absolute asshat as of late, meaning that he needs to get the shit pranked out of him to whack his massive ego back down to a more manageable size.

You and Wade grin at each other as you look up various “how to make a haunted house” tutorials. This is gonna be awesome.

***

Convincing Piotr to back your idea is easy.

First, you convince him without Wade around. You’ve learned that Piotr doesn’t necessarily mind if you and Wade come up with ideas, but that Wade’s manner of “selling them” completely frustrates your darling boyfriend and puts him off even the most benign suggestions.

Second, you present the idea as something fun and seasonal for the students at Xavier’s; Piotr, essentially, is a massive mother hen that loves nothing more than making his “kids” happy, which means that he’s on board for just about anything that involves doing special stuff for the students.

Third, you’re his girlfriend and he thinks you’re cute, which means all you have to really do is bat your eyelashes at him and say please.

(And, granted, you’d had other tricks up your sleeve if he’d hesitated, but sometimes life just lets you knock one out of the park. It’s a great feeling.)

***

With Piotr’s seal of approval, you wind up selling the idea to the rest of the X-Men with no problem –and, since Jean’s out of town visiting family, she’s not here to rat you out to Scott, either.

Granted, Xavier still could, but you’re starting to think he’s less of a “lawful good” and more of a “neutral” or “chaotic good” type than he lets on. There’s been plenty of times he could’ve sold you or Wade out on any of your pranks, but he usually keeps his mouth shut.

Ah, well. Best not to question the freebies life sends your way.

Better yet, you and Wade already have a list of ideas and necessary supplies, thanks to your “haunted house research binge” that you two did earlier. Granted, Piotr outright naysays half of the suggestions due to them being too expensive, too destructive to the building, or too gross –Wade—but all in all it’s a success.

Hell yeah.

***

The official set up goes as such: on the designated “haunted house day,” you, Wade, and a few volunteers get to spend the morning and part of the afternoon setting up the haunted house in a sectioned off part of the mansion –except it’s for the elementary aged students, so it’s technically “Haunted House Lite,” but that’s fine. Then, at four in the afternoon, the elementary aged students will get to walk through, enjoy some G-rated spooks, and get little bags of candy at the end to enjoy.

Lovely. Wonderful. Wholesome.

And then the fun comes in.

Because, beknownst to Piotr only because he caught you and Wade conspiring with everyone else, you and Wade managed to get all the middle school and high school students in the room and fill them in on your idea to scare the everliving shit out of one Scott Summers.

And, because teenagers are basically little shits that run on caffeine and entropy, they’re all super down to watch Scott get pranked.

So, once the little students have had their seasonal fun and have been ushered off for dinner with everyone else, you and Wade and your volunteers have five paltry hours to beef up your haunted house with some higher grade spooks and also set up your prank for Scott.

Granted, it’s not a lot of time to work with, but the two of you have worked with less before.

***

The prank itself, compared to yours and Wade’s usual fare, is… unremarkable, actually.

“Go figure,” Wade grumbles under his breath while he wrestles with one of the several smoke machines he’d purchased for the prank. “Captain Vanilla-Save-For-the-Pole-Up-His-Ass doesn’t watch horror movies. Leave it to a fucking jumpscare. Fucking stupid. He’s literally the single most boring person to exist!”

“Hey, at least it makes it easy for us,” you reason as you work on dying a bunch of cheesecloth with a massive mixing bowl of tea. “Why go through the extra effort for a dill-hole like him?”

“Fair enough. Hey, I think I got this working!” Wade tries turning on the smoke machine, then pulls a scowl when it makes an alarming grinding noise, turns it back off with a disgusted huff, and turns in his chair to shout down the hall. “Nathan! Get your ass in here and talk to your cousin! This fucking thing won’t work!”

You snort and shake your head.

(Nathan does, in fact, get the smoke machine to work, but only because he bothers to read the instructions first.

Wade calls bullshit anyway.)

***

The day of is nothing short of busy.

The two of you –and your volunteers—set up shop in one of the unfinished wings meant to be proper classrooms. You’ve got the entryway, the flight of stairs going up to the second floor, the hallway, and a few of the rooms of the rooms to set up your little “house of horrors” in (along with the back stair case that leads back down to the main hallway on the first floor, but that’s only for an easy exit for everyone).

The main order of business is such: put up the most labor intensive props –curtains to black out the windows, a curtain to block off the first floor hallway from view, spiderwebs, anything hanging from the ceiling or the walls that isn’t going to be switched out—first so that the bulk of the work is done for the day, since you won’t have much time between the littler students and the older students (and, most importantly, Scott).

The smoke machines get put in next, along with any special lights –including some cool black lights you and Wade had gotten their hands on, which go next to a mirror at the end of the walkthrough so the students can see what their costumes look like under the effects of the lights.

After that is the rest of the props, which are all switch out stuff. The younger students get some relatively innocuous skeletons, some cartoonish looking zombies, a couple mummies, and a bunch of pumpkins, black cats, and otherwise tame Halloween fare. The older students get much gnarlier, gorier stuff, including a demonic clown statue that actually gives you the creeps.

You grin as Wade sings “Spooky Scary Skeletons” –the dubstep remix, no less—while the two of you fill up goody bags for the students. This is going to be great.

***

Piotr stops by after lunch with a bag of costumes –yours and his—and some extra supplies Wade had asked for.

You kiss his cheek as he hands off the bag of decorations to Wade. “Hey, babe. Had a good day?”

He nods. “Students are very excited to go through haunted house. Especially younger ones.”

“Well, here’s hoping we can give them some good, old-fashioned, spooky fun,” you say with a grin. “Ready to get changed and transform into creatures of the night?”

He does a scarily perfect Dracula laugh and winks at you. “But of course, moya lyubov’.”

Your costumes –for today and also for this year’s Halloween—are Dracula and the bride of Dracula. Piotr made nearly all of it, save for his shirt and slacks (and your two’s shoes, obviously), and between the costumes, the makeup, and some fake fangs, the two of you actually look the part.

(And Piotr sounds the part, what with his Russian accent and all. It’s almost like he was born for the role of Dracula.)

The two of you get to set up in one of the rooms with two doors, which also boasts a cauldron with a smoke machine in it, a bunch of fake spiderwebs, a couple of fake coffins, and some skeletons hanging on the walls. You get dressed, do each other’s make up, and then Piotr helps you put on your fangs before doing his own.

“So, tell me how to do a good Russian accent,” you say, lisping slightly around your fangs. “I gotta match what you’re selling.”

“I think you do just fine,” Piotr replies as he puts a glob of denture cream into one of his fangs and sticks it to his upper canine tooth. “Just try to avoid cheesy mobster accent, and you will do great.”

“Are we gonna do the whole ‘I want to suck your blood’ thing?” you ask. “I think we probably should.”

“If you want to.”

“Okay. I’m gonna practice, you tell me how I sound.” You clear your throat, get into your mental zone, then let out an accented, ominous, “I want to suck your blood!”

Piotr chuckles as he tests the fang’s hold on his tooth. “Very nice, myshka.”

You preen, then practice a few more times at varying pitches and speeds. Then, once you’re certain Piotr’s adjusted to your fooling around, you lean in and murmur, “I want to suck your dick.”

Piotr sputters, cheeks flushing –even under the pale make up you’d put on him—and looks around for anyone that might’ve overheard you. Once he’s certain that no one heard you –especially Wade—he exhales and shakes his head. “Later.”

You giggle and kiss his cheek.

***

Right at four, the elementary aged students are ushered into the haunted house.

You can hear them from the room where you and Piotr are set up, giggling and gasping as Ellie and Yukio –who had volunteered to walk the younger students through—escort them along.

“Alright, before we enter this room, we all need to practice our brave faces,” Yukio says outside the door furthest away from you and Piotr. “Because in this room are Dracula and his wife!”

There’s some gasps and “oohs” from the kids, along with a couple expected “Dracula isn’t real”s.

“Don’t get too close,” Ellie says warningly. “Or else they might try to suck your blood!”

You grin at Piotr as the kids gasp again –he grins back and winks at you—then put on your “game face” as Ellie opens the door so the kids can enter the room.

It’s hard to keep a straight face, though, in the presence of the elementary students. It’s easy to tell that they’re really enjoying the mini haunted house, what with how they’re bouncing and grinning, and that combined with their adorable costumes –skeletons, princesses, pirates, pumpkins, there’s even one of the kids dressed as Iron Man—makes the entire thing downright heart-melting.

The kids all gasp, giggle, and whisper amongst themselves as they approach you and Piotr, flocking together like a bunch of baby birds—

And then one of the kids in the back shouts, “That’s not Dracula! That’s Mr. Piotr!”

Ellie, Yukio, and you all snort, while Piotr just winks at the kid in question.

“What do we have here, my love?” you ask, slipping into your “vampire accent” as you make a show of looking over all the kids, which prompts another slew of gasps and giggles from them. “It seems someone has brought us a bunch of tiny treats to eat!”

Piotr “hmms” as he stands, looming over the students in his long, flowing black cloak. “So it does, moya Koroleva. I must say, I am feeling peckish. Perhaps we should have afternoon snack.”

“Oh no!” Yukio exclaims. “Do you guys think they should be able to do that?”

“No!” the group of students all shout at once (which, admittedly, is a little rough on the ears).

“Well, I think we can do whatever we want,” you retort, looking over at Piotr to make sure the two of you time everything properly. “And…”

“We want to suck your blood!” you and Piotr declare while simultaneously fake-lunging at the group of students.

The students shriek, then run out the other door at Ellie and Yukio’s encouragement.

You and Piotr “pursue” the students –which is less of an actual pursuit and more just angling yourselves in their direction—until the last of the kids “escape” into the hall, then stop and grin at each other.

“I think that went well,” you say –quietly, so as not to disrupt the students’ experience.

“I agree.” Piotr holds out his arm to you. “Shall we, moya Koroleva?”

You giggle and place your hand on his arm. “Absolutely, my love.”

The two of you head out the door at the far end of the room –the door the students had originally entered in—and into the hall. Fortunately, there are a couple curtains blocking the rest of the hall from view, meaning that there’s no risk of anyone seeing the two of you sneaking through the hallway and down the stairs to the main floor.

Piotr ducks into one of the storage closets by the staircase and pulls out a box with various goody-bags stashed in it. “These looks very nice, moya lyubov’.”

“Thank you. I tried to make sure everyone got one of everything –oh, wait a second.” You reach into the closet and pull out a bag you’d stashed separately from everyone else’s. “This one’s Timothy’s. I wanted to make sure it didn’t get mixed up and he get peanuts by accident.”

“Good thinking.” Piotr sets the main box of treats on a nearby table, then turns back to you and kisses the top of your head. “How are you feeling, dorogoy?”

“I’m feeling good; I’m really looking forward to the big prank tonight!” The corner of your mouth turns up when he makes a “hmmm” of disapproval. “I take it you’re not a fan?”

“I just… I am concerned about how you and Wade target Scott,” Piotr says diplomatically. “The two of you seem to ignore everyone else.”

“Well, there’s not really a need to prank everyone else,” you reason. “And it’s not like we prank Scott all the time, either.”

“I would just worry about team dynamics.”

“He already fucks that up by being an asshole, honey,” you argue, careful to keep your voice down so the kids don’t hear you swearing. “Scott’s a total dick! He’s objectively horrible to Wade; he’s also a jerk to Russell. Like, massively.”

Piotr sighs. “I… I do not think pranking helps the situation.”

“Look, sometimes when people refuse to listen to polite conversation, you have to smack them around a little to keep them from letting their asshole behavior ooze all over everyone.” You grin. “Wade and I are just the smacking team.”

Piotr glances towards the door where the back staircase opens onto the main floor; there’s sounds of little voices and footsteps, meaning the kids are almost done. “Just… be considerate. That is all I ask.”

“Already done, baby,” you reassure him. “It’s a super basic jumpscare prank. Nothing about him, nothing about being a mutant, all Halloween themed. I made sure Wade didn’t get too crazy or destructive this time around.”

Piotr relaxes a little at that and kisses your temple—

And then the door opens, and the group of students rush into the main hallway.

“I told you it was them!” one of the students shouts, prompting everyone else to laugh.

“It was,” you admit, foregoing the vampire accent. “Did you guys like the haunted house?”

“Yeah!” the group choruses at once.

You and Piotr both grin, then work on handing out bags of candy to the students –and make sure that Timothy gets his special bag, no allergy episodes today, no sir—

And it’s good. Life is good.

***

Once the younger students exit for dinner, everything switches to a mad scramble to flip the space for the second walkthrough.

Granted, it doesn’t sound like much, until you realize that it involves taking down basically all the props and putting new ones in.

It’s sweaty work, and by the time you’re done you have to reapply all your vampire make-up –because you and Piotr are still doing the vampire bit. And then—

And then.

Once the older teams exit the “vampire room,” you’ll sneak out the “entry” door and down the hall, then hover over the door everyone exits out into the main floor hall at the end of the walkthrough, and when they do, you’ll drop down next to Scott and scare the everliving shit out of him.

Simple. Stress-free. Borderline stupid.

It’s gonna be great.

***

The second walkthrough is just as much of a success as the first one. The older students aren’t as giggly or excitable as the younger group, but it’s still easy to tell they’re enjoying the haunted house –at least, if the occasional screams and comments about “how cool” everything looks is anything to go by.

Better yet is that Scott is jumping and gasping at, like, everything. He’s so easily scared that you won’t even have to try when you drop down next to him. He’s so easily scared that the prank almost isn’t fun.

Keyword being: almost.

You and Piotr do your vampire schtick again –which, unlike what you did for the elementary students, this round involves the two of you lunging out of dark corners and acting, objectively, much scarier—and when the older teens and Scott run out, you grin, give Piotr a kiss, then dart out the other door.

It takes basically zero time to get positioned over the door everyone exits out of. You tuck yourself up into the corner where the walls and ceiling meet, then resign yourself to being bored while the older students finish their haunted house walkthrough.

Scott, predictably, is the first one out of the door. He looks annoyed by the entire situation, and is trying to brush fake cobwebs off his shirt.

Perfect.

You wait until there are a couple of students in the hall as well –you can’t have the prank go unwitnessed—then count down from five before dropping down next to Scott while screaming “Trick or treat!” at the top of your lungs.

He jumps five feet into the air and shrieks like a teenage girl in a horror movie, and the students laugh.

Mission: accomplished.

#sass writes #piotr rasputin x reader #colossus x reader #note: the author is not a scott summers fan #it's fine if you are #i'm just #no #x men fanfiction #deadpool fanfiction

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aurora-the-kunoichi · 5 years

Text

A Year Without - Part Two

Warnings: Mention of alleged killings and rape

The back of your skull was throbbing as you slowly became aware of your surroundings. Your hands immobile outstretched and your feet anchored to the floor. By the soft tug of rope against your wrists you had been tied not shackled. A small silver lining to the shit show that was no doubt about to happen. The light was turned down low thankfully, you didn’t know if you could handle anything brighter then what the lights were set at right now.

Testing the strength of your bonds you found them cinch tighter as you struggled. If you worked them too much they would cut off the circulation to your hands and feet, not good. Your mind began to catch up with the rest of your body and the last moments you remembered were blurry at best. Karai had talked about her fun and a reunion. Then like a bolt of lightning it hit you, the green skin and enormous physique of the blurry mass converging on you. It couldn’t be Leonardo, he wouldn’t be helping the foot, wouldn’t be serving Karai. You had to have been hallucinating from the tranquilizer dart you were dosed with.

After what seemed like hours the lights in the room finally snapped on illuminating your prison. The walls were stark white, with one obvious large two way mirror near the door to your left.A hefty arm less grey upholstered chair sat in the far left corner of the room and a large metal table in the center, fucking cozy. The size of the room was rather large, maybe twenty feet by twenty feet and the smell reminded you of a hospital, sterile but sour.

“It’s rude to leave your guest waiting!” you hollered dryly to your captures eyeing the window with contempt. It was true, you had been sitting in this awful room for at least two hours unattended, let’s get this show on the road.

The sound of the handle turning gave way to your host as she sauntered into the space like she was the queen of fucking England. Her hips swung with gusto and her smile was honey sweet. No longer in her kunoichi garb Karai was dressed in dark sapphire skirt that hit just below her knees with a slit on the side that rode up nearly to her cunt. Her white quarter sleeve blouse was partially unbuttoned leaving her small yet perky breasts visible from the low V. The long black tresses of her hair were tied loosely up above her head while the black high heels that adorned her feet clicked sinfully on the cement floor as she made her way over to you. The cherry on top that completed her arrogant demeanor was a blue lollipop stuck playfully in her mouth and a large tablet in her right hand.

“Calm down my sweet, I wanted you fully awake for this next part.” Karai cooed stepping up to you her breasts pressing up against yours. Her breath was sweet from her treat and she leaned in close, “I have something I want you to watch.” Her wet sugary tongue darted out and took a quick lick of your cheek and jumped back as you tried to head butt the offending woman.

“Don’t you fucking touch me.”

“Tsk, tsk, what a dirty mouth you have. I have a gift for you Y/N, a gift of knowledge that only I can give you. Knowledge you’ve been searching for, for a year’s time.”

Your defiance slammed to a halt as Karai’s wicked smile grew to a terrifying level. Popping the treat make in her mouth her slender fingers drummed on the tablet as she leaned in again her lips brushing up against your ear. “Have you been searching for someone, someone special? Someone who went missing abruptly a year ago today?”

Your blood ran cold, she was talking about Leonardo. The foot has had Leo all this time. Anger bubbled quickly to the surface your limbs trembling as it consumed you. You were going to rip her fucking face off. “Where is he?! Where are you keeping Leonardo?!”

“How long did you look for him?” she ignored your question stepping back turning on the tablet. Her fingers flew over the smooth surface searching for something. “How far did you search, the island of Manhattan, New Jersey perhaps? Maine? Either way it wasn’t going to be far enough, after we subdued him, which took quite a few of my men I might add. God he is strong and talented, by the gods is he talented.” You didn’t like the dreamy look in her eyes. “We didn’t keep him here, oh no, we didn’t want you to find him, what fun would that have been? So, the first thing we did was sedate big bad Leonardo and tossed him on a plane to Japan. He was sent to a very special facility where we house some of our most exceptional doctors and people we have acquired over the years with special gifts, gifts of persuasion if you know what I mean? Let me tell you, he was a hard nut to crack. But we knew this from the start so a process had to be started and it began with sociological warfare when poor ol Leo came too.”

Karai flipped the tablet to show you what she had been searching for, a security tape and the main focal point was Leonardo. His battered green body was shackled to the wall covered in blood. You could see the damage they had done to him on the roof. Cuts and gouges littered his once lustrous green skin making your rage boil hotter. His person was stripped of all his belongings except his boxer briefs leaving him unprotected and vulnerable. He was obviously sans his mask with a long deep cut that ran up the back of his skull. He struggled yanking at his metal restraints demanding to know where he was being held and to be released but he was going nowhere.

A man in a grey suit slowly approached the leader in blue and held out a picture. You watched Leo’s eyes widen in shock and shake his head vigorously, “No!” he bellowed. “You’re lying!”

“They’re all dead Leonardo. When they came to save you they were slaughtered by Karai’s men one by one. The orange one, Michelangelo I believe his name was, fell first, he was the easiest to kill, a dagger to the throat was his end. I heard he begged for his life before Karai stomped on his neck effectively finishing him off. The purple, Donatello, was second; a katana between his shell angled up through his ribs did him in. A painful way to go if you ask me drowning in his own blood. Oh how I would have loved to have gotten a hold of his brilliant mind for study. Raphael the red brute was the most difficult to kill, took nearly 20 men to get him to the ground where they slit his throat. You should have heard him gurgle and grunt as he struggled to take his last breath. Your father was the easiest to find once we hacked Donatello’s computer system. It gave us a map right to his location and was slaughtered right in his bed.”

You couldn’t be 100% sure of what the man in grey was showing Leonardo but you were pretty sure it was a photo shopped picture of his dead brothers and father. But you knew it was a lie; all three of his brothers including Splinter were alive and well no doubt oblivious to your disappearance. But the photo must have been convincing enough, even through the poor video feed you could see the tears well up in his blue eyes. You wanted to call out to him, to tell him not to listen but that would be stupid and useless, just like you were feeling right now.

Leo shook his head angrily blinking away the tears the threatened to spill. “No, you couldn’t have. My brothers are well trained and able to defeat your inadequate soldiers. Always have and always will.”

The doctor smiled and flipped another photo forward and the look on Leo’s face made your heart wretch inside your chest. “Your girlfriend was next, of course not before the men had some fun with her. You know when she cums she made the most beautiful sounds, like an angel. She cried out for you of course, but you weren’t there to save her. What a hero you turned out to be, couldn’t save your brothers or your love. Her end was swift if that pleases you, you can tell by the angle of her neck, quick and painless yet effective. Now you’re alone in this facility with no family and no lover. No one to save you, no one who cares.”

Karai’s finger came up and paused the video with Leo mid scream, his face contorted in horror and fury in the last frame.

“Luckily we have a very good photo shop artist on hand that created several rather convincing death photos of all of you. It took a few days but as his body weakened from the lack of food and water he gave in to the plausible story. He was inconsolable for over a month hanging listless from his confines. We let that sink in before we started in on the physical torture.” Karai turned the tablet back around ignoring the horrified look on your face. “He cried out your name for several days after that. It was heart wrenching really, and I took pleasure in each agonizing syllable he cried out.” Her green eyes rose to meet yours and her free hand reached out wiping away the tears that were staining your cheeks.

“I’m going to kill you.” You whispered with venom uncaring that the wretched woman had her hands on you. At this point you didn’t care; you had already killed her three times in your head.

“Oh I would love to see you try my dear.” Karai giggled returning her attention back to the tablet. A few more finger swipes and she turned it back around pressing play once again. The date on the time stamp said it was a month after his abduction, his eyes hollow and uncaring still hanging from his shackles. You could tell he had lost weight, in mass and in muscle. They must not been feeding him much.

Three men came into view all holding tazer sticks, their smiles wild with amusement. The first touched the hot end to the exposed side of Leo’s body between his plastron and carapace but Leo only shifted in his shackles groaning softly. Angered by the lack of his response, the other two men followed suit going in tandem shocking different parts of his skin. This time Leo arched crying out in pain. Over and over they attacked him all at once, Leo’s howls of anguish echoing in the empty room.

You wished the video didn’t have sound; the unnatural bellow of his agony would haunt you for however long they allowed you to live. The sight of his body recoiling from the current made you sick to your stomach. He had been here for a year enduring this torture, day in and day out. You weren’t there to help him, none of you were. He suffered alone with these animals, these heartless demons.

Again Karai stopped the feed and dropped the tablet back to her side and chomped down on the lollipop in her mouth finishing it off quickly. “You get the idea right? We put him through hell and broke him; we broke the legendary Leonardo; the man with the plan, the untouchable mutant. He was ours to mold, to retrain as we sought fit. It took longer than we expected, he was strong willed but no one can resist the charm of Dr. Langston for long. But Leo does hold the record for withstanding his treatments the longest. Dr. Langston was impressed to say the least.” The kunoichi laughed swinging away from you to walk back over to the door and knock twice. “He’s an obedient foot soldier now, and my favorite if I might add. But I’ll let you be the judge of that.” As the last words fell from her cherry red lips the door opened slowly.

Out of the darkened doorway he came, each step he took was of power and arrogance. Gone was his usual wear, replaced with jet black pants and specially made foot wear. Wide black leather wraps encompassed his thick forearms traveling up to intertwine with his three fingered hands. His blue katanas given to him by his father were absent replaced by two loosely hung red twin katana tied to his hip. Each shoulder had metal plates over them stamped with the Foot’s emblem and to complete the sinister look a black mask was worn where the blue once laid.

“Leonardo please don’t be rude, please go greet our new guest.”

As he closed in you saw his once brilliant cerulean blue eyes dulled to a grayish blue, the life once aflame in his stare was gone. There was no honor in his gaze as he looked you over like a piece of meat. No empathy and certainly no love for you. What had they done to him?

The last video you were forced to endure Leo looked frail and broken but that look was long gone. His muscle mass had returned leaving him looking toned and threatening. With each move of his body the muscle flexed and pulsed under his scaled skin making your body start to ache. If you had seen him in any other circumstance you would have though he looked good, good enough to eat.

“Leo?” you called tentatively tugging slightly on your bonds. Would he remember you at all?

As he neared you could tell the change in his smell. The hint of tea and incense was long gone overpowered by the stench of death and steel. His dull eyes narrowed in on you getting too close for comfort. His hand reached up cupping your chin tilting your head to and fro examining your face before his lips parted gifting you with the first sweet sound of his voice in a year.

“What a pretty little toy you’ve got Karai. Is she one of the reasons I was summoned to this country?”

The sound of Karai’s heals echoed throughout the room as she crossed over to the both of you. Her hands ran seductively down the dense muscles in his arms and pressed her lips to the tattoo there.

“Yes my love, she is a gift to you from me. This sweet little creature stole the other three of your kind from our master brainwashing them. And if she knows what’s good for her, she will tell us where they hide. But first I think it would be prudent to play with your gift. After all what good is a toy if you can’t play with it?”

“What do you think we should do first?” Leo clipped sinisterly squeezing your chin painfully tight in his massive grasp.

Karai’s ivory hand snaked up and around his thick neck tilting his head towards hers, “This one will lie and tell you that you once loved her, but let’s show her who you really belong too.” Her fingers twirled around the tails of his black mask and Leo leaned into her, his mouth slanted enthusiastically over hers. She immediately opened her mouth giving his tongue access making a show of it leaving you helpless to watch the love of your life kiss another woman.

Part One

@southernblossoms @blossom-skies @imthegreenfairy88

#tmnt #tmnt leonardo #foot leo #a year without #part two

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