#I ought to be shot for that pun | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

imagine-darksiders · 3 years

Text

A gentle touch.

[Strife/Reader]

Summary: Set three years after humanity is resurrected. Strife shows up unannounced in your bedroom in the middle of the night, which would have been rude enough without him getting blood all over your cream-coloured carpet.

Tags: Blood, injury, PTSD, knife, protective Strife, whump, hurt/comfort, fluff, angst, sharing a bed ;), bandages and cleaning wounds, how not to administer first aid.

-----

You have the apocalypse to thank for turning you into such a light-sleeper.

Even though the nights of sleeping with one eye open are far behind you and Earth is back on the road to a long and arduous recovery, you'll still jolt awake if your unconscious mind hears something scuttle beneath the floorboards of your freshly-restored home, and God forbid a tree branch should happen to scratch at the bedroom window...

Waking up with the feeling that your heart is three beats from bursting right out of your chest is exhausting, to say the least. And it isn't just you who suffers from the onset of hyper-vigilance.

It was a decidedly cruel consequence that the resurrected humans were able to recall their lives before the end of the world. Crueller still, they woke up to remember exactly how and where they eventually kicked the bucket, and of course, nobody knew that a significant chunk of time had passed at all since the end of the world and its rebirth.

They thought they were still in danger.

In one moment, all they knew was immense and excruciating pain, and then, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, they woke up again, screaming and writhing in the echoes of phantom pain that had occurred almost a century ago.

Three years down the line since ‘The Great Waking,’ and there isn’t a human alive who could claim that they’ve slept through an uninterrupted night.

------

The alarm clock on your bedside table has just ticked over to read '2:36am' when your eyes suddenly snap open and you fling yourself upright in bed, your spine ramrod straight and your ears ringing with a sharp, tinny note.

It isn’t a nightmare that wakes you. At least, not this time.

Worse.

It’s a sound.

An out-of-the-ordinary sound that isn't in keeping with the normal ambiance of your bedroom.

But where...?

....It's coming from your window.

Tired eyes swivel to the curtains whilst your hand immediately flies out to blindly fumble with the drawer of your bedside table. Once your fingers find the cold, metal handle, you rip it open and plunge your hand inside, rummaging around until you feel the reassuring grip of your most precious possession.

Your trusty bread knife. Serrated edge, nine inch blade, perfect for cutting slices of toast in the morning and for tearing through the toughened hide of a hungry demon.

Peace between the Universe’s species had been declared once humanity was fully introduced to the connected realms, a decision that suited a vast majority of Creation. Hell, however, had offered up a fair amount of opposition to the notion before eventually conceding and agreeing – albeit begrudgingly – to honour the peace treaty alongside angels, makers, undead and the rest.

Even demon-kind knew not to incur the wrath of humanity's strongest and most ferocious protectors, the Horsemen.

But... there are always exceptions to the rule. Some demons just... hadn't gotten the memo.

It wouldn’t be the first time one of them had tried to make an assassination attempt on humanity’s envoy.

Heart in your throat, you grasp the knife securely in your dominant hand and peer through the darkness towards the window.

Only a sliver of moonlight peeps through a tiny gap in the curtains. In another blink, the light suddenly disappears, and you know better than to assume that the moon has simply ducked behind a cloud.

Something is standing at your window, blocking out the light.

You think you might actually be sick when you hear the sound again, claws scraping on wood – a sound you know all too well – well enough to send your head spinning into a panic.

Swallowing back the nausea in your throat, you brace yourself, instincts flicking between running for the door and knowing never to turn your back on a demon.

Sadly, the decision is swiftly taken out of your hands. Through the darkness and the deafening roar of blood rushing through your ears, you can make out the distinct sound of your window sliding slowly open.

The knife is a comforting weight in your hand. But it’s less than useless if you don’t calm down and try to remember the lessons that Death has taught you. If the eldest Horseman were here, he’d probably have berated you seven ways to Sunday by now for freezing up and missing an opportunity to better prepare yourself for an attack.

A dark silhouette pushes the fluttering fabric of your curtains aside and pulls itself halfway into your bedroom.

Whatever it is, it’s big.

Breath catching in your throat, you clasp a handful of your duvet and get ready to fling it at the intruder as a distraction, hoping that it’ll be enough to buy you a precious few seconds to gain the upper hand. You've learned that humans are inherently weaker than demons, but if there’s one thing you’ve learned from Death, it’s that strength isn’t necessarily the deciding factor in any battle. You still have your wits. You only hope the demon has less.

Two luminous, golden eyes turn in your direction and you press yourself backwards into the headboard.

Several seconds drag by in perfect silence.

Then...

“Hey.”

And just like, that tension leaves your body like a balloon deflating of air and you heave the loudest sigh you can muster, dropping the bread knife into your lap.

“Damn it, Strife! You about gave me a heart attack!”

With a 'whump,' you flop back against your pillows and take a second to breathe whilst one of the Four Horsemen drags himself the rest of the way through your bedroom window.

Strife.

It's only Strife...

Whilst certainly a dangerous being in his own right, you know you have nothing to fear from the Horseman who had all but appointed himself as your friend three, long years ago, all in an attempt to irritate his brother, Death, of course.

At least, at first.

Death was the one who pulled you from the dying Earth and preserved your life-force as you journeyed together on a quest to resurrect humanity, but after he made the jump to introduce you to his 'little' siblings, it had been Strife who'd taken a particular shine to you, and it had everything to do with a compatible, if terrible sense of humour.

That first meeting sparked what was sure to be an interesting friendship between the pair of you.

-----

“So, my brother went and got himself a human, huh?” Strife had teased, pointedly ignoring the withering look he received from Death to add, “Gotta say, I'm impressed, Kid. Didn't think anyone would have the inclination to willingly travel with my brother. But then, I guess...” He trailed off and you could almost see the smirk growing under his mask. “Deathperate times and all that, huh?”

At once, his siblings all groaned out varying noises of disapproval. Fury, the loudest, cocked her hip and shot Strife a frosty glower. “You are singlehandedly ruining our reputation, brother."

“She's right, you know,” you spoke up, trying not to flinch when all eyes snapped onto you once more, “That pun was pretty deadful.”

The brief, startled second of silence was soon blasted apart when Strife threw his head back and barked out a triumphant laugh, while Death slowly turned to look at you, utterly betrayed.

“Ha!” Strife's eyes positively gleamed with mischief, “You're right, human. Guess I should'a considered the reapercussions of a joke like that, huh?”

“I ought to have known introducing you two would be a mistake,” the eldest Horseman grumbled, earning a sympathetic look from War.

“Sorry, Death,” you said with a perfectly straight face, “You want us to get out of your scythe so you don’t have to look at us anymore?”

Strife had howled.

Death, however, merely heaved a long-suffering sigh. Fury's eyes all but rolled into the back of her skull and War just stood there, struggling to keep his lips from twitching at their corners.

And you had looked around at all of them, a little proud and blissfully unaware of what you'd just unwittingly signed yourself up for.

You'd had Strife's attention from that day on.

-----

Shaking off the fond memory, you tiredly will your mind back to the matter at hand.

You reach across your bed and drop the knife back into the drawer before leaning down and skirting your fingers over the wall in search of a switch. The next moment, there's a 'click!' and the room is illuminated by clustered fairy lights that you've draped around your ceiling, forcing you to squint blearily against the intrusion of light as Strife hauls his leg into your room.

“Honestly. How many times have I told you to use the door?”

“S'locked,” he grunts.

You're in the midst of rubbing your eyes to try and stimulate a little life back into your bones, so you miss the way he stumbles a few steps away from the wall and presses a gauntleted hand to his abdomen.

“Yeah, it’s locked because it's-” You take a quick glance at the clock next to you. “-Two thirty in the morning! Strife, I’m supposed to be up at six to meet Ulthane! What do you need so badly that you'd-... Hey.. Are.. are you okay?”

At last taking a long, hard look, it suddenly occurs to you that the Horseman is... not entirely himself.

He's hunched over, his shoulders pulled in around his neck and his chest rising and falling in long, languid motions. The tattered cowl he wears around his neck hangs loose around his collarbones and it faces the very real threat of slipping off to the floor. At last, your eyes drop to the hand that's clamped over the left side of his abdomen and you blurt out a startled gasp.

In the paltry, pink glow of your fairy lights, you spot an unmistakably crimson liquid dribbling between his fingers, starkly contrasted against the steel-grey colour of his armour.

The next few seconds pass in a blur as you frantically begin kicking off your duvet and scramble out of bed, flying across the room to the Horseman's side.

“Strife! What'd you do!?”

“Oh, that's real sweet,” the Nephilim chuckles wryly whilst he collapses back against the wall and slides down it with a strained grunt, “Why're you – ung... assuming it's something I did?”

Without missing a beat, you snap, “This would hardly be the first time you got hurt because you're a wise-cracking jokester with a big mouth! Now tell me who you pissed off?!”

You drop onto your knees next to him and reach out, fingers hovering tentatively above his stomach. With your focus directed away from his helm, Strife doesn’t bother to hide the way his eyes dart from left to right before they settle back on the top of your head.

“Ah, it was... just some demon, caught me slackin', that's all,” he shrugs, letting you carefully grasp his wrist and lift it away from his torso.

At once, fresh blood gushes from a deep gouge cut into in the dark, leather under-skin he wears beneath his cuirass and you yelp, slapping a hand over your mouth in abject horror.

The sound draws Strife's gaze to you and once he spots the shocked despair on your face, he gives himself a mental kick.

He hadn't meant to... He... doesn't like it when you’re scared because of him.

"Hey, no, no – I'm okay!” he rushes to reassure you, “Don't worry about this. I've had worse!”

“That's not the point, Strife!” you argue, dropping his wrist and carding your hands through your hair, “You're hurt now! And I don't – there's so much blood, and you-” Cutting yourself off, you squeeze your eyes shut and inhale deeply through your nose, willing your pulse to ease so that you can rationally address this situation.

Another lesson Death had taught you - stay calm in a crisis. Panic kills.

Releasing a long, hard breath, you peel your eyes open again and nod, jaw set. “Okay. All right. I need to.. I need water. A-and I need to see the wound.”

The interrogation can come after you've dealt with... this.

“There's a bowl and flannel in my bathroom,” you announce, getting to your unsteady feet and gesturing towards Strife's cuirass, “Think you can get that off so I can have a look?”

Huffing out a breath of laughter, the Horseman winks at you suggestively and drawls, “An' here I was doin' things the hard way to get your attention. You know, you didn't have to wait till I got myself gutted before you asked me to take my armour off in your chambers.”

A wise-cracking flirt with a big mouth.

As exasperating as he is though, you don't mind it in the slightest.

This is your usual rapport, after all. A friendly back and forth interlaced with the occasional, flirtatious comment. At first, Strife had only initiated it because it drove an over-protective Death up the wall. The eldest Horseman had almost threatened to 'remove Strife's libido' until you'd up and flirted right back, distressing the old reaper even further.

It's funny. It's innocent. But right now, it's reassuring, if only somewhat, that Strife is behaving just like his shameless, old self.

Besides, you can give back as much as you get.

“Well, I had to wait for a good enough excuse,” you retort, “Couldn't come on too strong and risk scaring you off, now could I?”

In response, Strife just chuckles fondly and watches you turn and speed away to your ensuite, oblivious to the warm, soft glow radiating from his eyes.

In less than a minute, you're briskly striding back into the room, a dripping flannel in one hand and a bowl in the other, and he suddenly remembers that you'd asked him to remove his cuirass.

Mission failed.

But you don't even bat an eyelid to find it still in place, assuming that the Horseman can't get at the catches on the sides in his current state.

In one, smooth motion, you drop down beside him once more and set the cloth and bowl nearby. “Here, let me help..”

The Horseman's pulse sputters when your tiny fingers reach around his torso and fumble with the buckles and straps that keep his armour securely in place. It doesn't pass his notice that your hands are trembling.

“Hey,” he calls, catching your eye for a moment before you go right back to fiddling with the cuirass, “This is nothin’, you know that, right?”

You only press your lips together and hum, clearly skeptical.

You're working fast and in almost no time at all, the straps have been released and you carefully take the Nephilim's broad shoulder, giving it a tug, guiding him to lean away from the walls so that you can start to peel the bulky armour off.

“Nng, hang on,” he mutters.

Reluctantly, you sit back to let him tug his chest piece loose before he simply drops it onto the carpet next to his legs with a dull 'clang.'

Exposed to the soft glow of your lights, your eyes are instantly drawn to the gaping wound that stretches in a horizontal line across the left side of his abdomen. It seems that something really has tried - and nearly succeeded - to gut him. Several inches long and goodness knows how deep, even against the iron-grey colour of his skin, the gash is alarmingly obvious and the blood far, far too noticeable for your liking. It still comes as something of a shock to learn that the Horsemen, barring Death, can actually bleed.

Wordlessly, you pick up the flannel and wring it out into the bowl of water, wondering if he'll mind that you didn't wait for the tap to get warm before you soaked it. It shouldn't surprise you that the Horseman doesn't protest or even flinch when you gently press the wet cloth to the bloodied skin around his wound, nowhere near the gash itself, not until you've cleared away some of the mess around it and determined its real depth.

You don't notice that his eyelids flutter closed once you press the cloth to his skin, nor do you see when their golden light fluctuates in contentment as the fingertips of your other hand press gently to his stomach, the pressure barely enough for him to feel, but enough to keep you steady whilst you daub at his drying blood.

It takes a formidable effort to suppress the shudder that nearly races up his spine. This is the first time he's felt your skin against his without a single piece of armour standing between you.

Creator, you're so soft! Just like he always imagined you would be.

“Jeezus, Strife,” you whistle, abruptly snatching his focus away from the soothing strokes of your silky fingers,“You've made a real mess of yourself. Why on Earth didn't you just go straight to Death? I thought he was the best healer in your family.”

The warm skin underneath your fingertips jumps as the Horseman puffs out a quick laugh, gazing dopily at your temple whilst you wipe at the edges of his wound with small, careful touches.

“He is,” Strife readily agrees, “But the moody bastard wouldn't be nearly as gentle with me as you are.”

You blow an unimpressed huff from your nose and glance up at him in time to catch his lazy wink. “I can always press harder if you like?”

“Nah.” The Horseman settles himself more heavily against the wall, knocking his skull back against it and mumbling, “Just keep touchin' me all gentle like that. S'nice...”

Quite abruptly, the chatty Nephilim goes silent and the glow from his eyes that had illuminated your face only moments ago suddenly disappears.

“Strife?”

He doesn't respond.

“Hey, Cowboy! Don't you fall asleep on me, you hear?”

There's a long stretch of silence, then, “Won't,” he mumbles, cracking one eyelid open to peer down at you.

Harrumphing, you promptly turn back to the gash in his stomach and wipe the last of the dried blood off his skin, still far from clean, but at the very least, better than it had been.

“Right,” you declare, pulling away to stand up and drawing a decidedly petulant whine from the Horseman on your bedroom floor. “I'm gonna go get the first aid kit from downstairs.”

There’s a shift in his expression and something that hinges on alarm suddenly whistles through his blood.

“I won’t be long,” you promise, "Be right – Hey, woah! What're you doing!?”

Darting forwards, you hastily place your hands on each of Strife's broad shoulders, trying to push him back down as he grabs the window sill behind him and begins hauling himself up to his feet.

“What's it look like ‘m doing?” he answers gruffly, slouching forwards as if the weight of his own head is too much to keep aloft, “Comin’ with you”

Sputtering out a few, incredulous noises, you try to make him see sense. “I’ll bring the first aid kit to you! You need to rest! It's bad enough that you already climbed in through my second storey window!”

But Strife, stubborn as a mule and much, much stronger than you, isn't deterred by your protests. Grunting, he curls one arm over his stomach and takes a step forwards, ducking beneath your light fixture and standing to his full, imposing height.

Even with three years of companionship behind you, you’re still frequently taken aback at how effortlessly the Horseman can make you feel small and fragile when you stand close to him.

Knowing full well that you’ll never be able to force him down again, you allow your hands to slip from his shoulders and fall against your sides like lead weights. You aren’t sure why he’s suddenly so hellbent on following you, downstairs, of all places, but you don’t dwell on it, especially given that you’re far more preoccupied with the fresh blood that has already begun trickling out of his wound to replace the stains you’ve painstakingly cleaned away.

Puffing out your cheeks, you raise a hand and pinch the bridge of your nose. “Strife, please sit down?” You aren’t so proud that you won’t resort to begging, tired as you are and exasperated with his obstinate behaviour. “I’m worried about you...”

All at once, the Horseman stiffens. ‘Oh, now she’s fighting dirty,’ he muses to himself.

Gradually, you lift your eyes to meet his and try your very best to glare up at him, pinning him down with all the stern authority you can muster. For several, slow heartbeats, the Nephilim peers right back at you and you’re almost certain that you’ll lose this battle of wills, which is why it comes as such a shock when his fiery gaze falters, wavering slightly before it promptly drops to the floor near your feet.

It's... rare for Strife to be looked at by someone who isn't ashamed to show that they worry about him.

But the way you're looking at him now? Hell, the way you've been looking at him since he clambered through your bedroom window? You're practically broadcasting your concern.

Strife just... isn't used to seeing that. So he glances down instead, finding the fibres of your carpet particularly exhilarating tonight. Slowly, begrudgingly, he sinks down to sit on the edge of your bed, heavy enough that the frame creaks and groans under the weight of a fully grown Nephilim and he has to hold back a contented sigh at the softness beneath his legs.

From the corner of an eye, he can see that your jaw is hanging ajar and remains so until you give yourself a little shake and throw him a satisfied nod. “Thank you,” you huff before turning on your heel and striding purposefully from the room.

Strife listens raptly to your footsteps disappearing down the staircase, unaware that his hands have curled into tight fists around your duvet.

'It's fine,' he assuages the insistent voice at the back of his head, 'She's fine.'

He took care of the threat. That demon asshole isn't coming after his friend.

You’re only downstairs. He can already hear you pushing open the door to your little kitchen whilst the rest of his senses remain trained on the sounds and smells of the night.

It isn't as though something bad might happen just because his eyes aren't fixed upon you...

Frankly, he thinks he’s being more than generous to allow a full, Earth minute to pass as he taps his heel impatiently against the side of your bed.

Didn’t you say you’d be right back?

...

“Fuck it...”

-------

Perhaps, in hindsight, keeping your first aid kit on the top of the fridge hadn’t been one of your brightest ideas, given that you need a chair to reach it. Then again, securing immediate access to bandages and plasters hadn’t exactly been on the forefront of your mind when you were rebuilding your old home from the ruins it had been left in.

With a grunt, you drop your rickety kitchen chair next to the fridge and clamber up onto the seat. “I have got to find a better place for you,” you grumble at an apathetic first aid kit that sits gathering dust near the wall. Stretching your arm out, you manage to snag it by the handle and drag it towards you-

“The hell're you doing!?”

The violent jolt that shoots through you like lightening nearly sends you toppling off the chair. You let out a yelp, just barely catching yourself on the fridge with your free hand before you whip about to see none other than Strife silhouetted in the kitchen doorway.

“Wh- the hell are you doing!?” you retort, knitting your brows into a frown and clutching the first aid kit against your heaving chest, “Why aren’t you upstairs?”

The Horseman’s glowing eyes are fixed unsettlingly on the chair beneath your feet and rather than answer the question, he ducks under the doorframe and thunders towards you in a few, short strides, leaving you with no time to protest before he suddenly sweeps you up off the chair and into his arms, caging you against a solid chest.

At once, you begin to struggle. “Strife! Your wound! Put me down, you'll hurt yourself!”

But the Nephilim is hardly paying attention. His glare lingers on the flimsy, wooden chair legs for a moment before he flicks his gaze towards the large window above your sink, noting with no small degree of distaste that it isn't even shut.

It’s like you’re inviting danger in.

If you had any idea of the fate he and his siblings are currently trying to protect you from, you might just try a little harder to take better care of yourself.

“Hey!” you continue to protest against his hold but manage to refrain from jostling about too much, mindful of his injury. “For god's sake! What's gotten into you?!”

He offers little more than a noncommittal grunt in response and begins trailing back towards the staircase, casting brief glances at the french doors leading out onto your patio.

'Structural weakness,' he registers, 'Perfect point of entry for anything smaller than a Trauma...'

Shaking his head, he turns sideways to fit you through the kitchen door and takes the stairs up to your room.

After a second, he lowers his eyes to meet yours and finds himself meeting a highly unimpressed scowl. “What?” he asks, the very picture of innocence.

Raising your brows, you snap, “Don't you 'what' me! The hell is all this about? I told you to stay put!”

“You were takin' too long,” he shrugs.

“Too long!?” Indignant, you flick your wrist and rap the first aid kit against his collar bone, “I was gone a minute, max! If you were so worried about me taking too long to fix you up, then why are you moving around and making your injury worse!?”

The light of Strife's golden gaze dims and he turns his head away, staring up towards the top of the stairs and your bedroom door beyond. “S'not me m' worried about,” he mumbles.

It's such an about-face from his usual demeanour that you can do little but blink dumbly up at him and fall still against his chest, your mouth hanging agape.

In silence, the Horseman ducks through the door into your room and sidles over to the bed where, hesitantly, he lowers you down until you're sitting safely on the edge.

In the next moment however, just as Strife drops heavily onto the bed next to you, you slip away and settle on the floor instead, placing the first aid kit beside his boots and fumbling with the latches.

Despite blowing out a rough grumble of disapproval that sounds entirely too much like War for his liking, he lets you go.

Chewing on your lip, you stare at the contents for a moment before snatching up a pack of antiseptic wipes, tearing one out and bringing it up to his stomach.

“You want to tell me why you just exacerbated your injury to rescue me from my kitchen chair?” you ask him, adding as an afterthought, “This might sting a bit..”

When he doesn't reply, you glance up and quirk a brow at the underside of his chin, only to catch him peering back at you from behind heavy-lidded eyes. Then, with a weary sigh, he sags forwards and raises a hand to rub at the back of his neck, looking sheepish, of all things.

Unable to dispel your frown, you blindly begin brushing the wipe underneath his bleeding wound.

He doesn't even wince.

Strife tips his helm towards the bedroom window and slumps further backwards into your mattress, seeming so entirely out of place amidst the colourful duvet cover and frilly cushions.

“Okay,” he mutters, “I uh, I got a confession to make.”

Interest piqued, you make an acknowledging sound at the back of your throat and return your attention to his abdomen.

“Death didn't want us to tell you about this,” he continues quietly whilst you toss the now ruined wipe over your shoulder and pull out a fresh one, “And, to be honest, neither did I. We didn't want you to have to worry, y'know?”

You don't know. And you nearly ask him what you should be worrying about, but you soon let your mouth fall shut and settle for humming curiously instead, trusting that he'll tell you soon enough anyway.

There's a long pause, during which you find the courage to bring your fingers close to the edges of his wound and immediately have to withhold a gag when the motion sends another spout of blood oozing from the cut and dribbling down your wrist.

After a moment, Strife huffs and forges ahead, “Course, War and Fury did want to tell you-”

He's stalling, you realise belatedly.

“-War thinks you have every right to know. And Fury said there's nothin' for you to worry about anyway, cause we've got your back.”

“Fury said that?” you ask distractedly, dropping the wipe and rummaging around for a gauze pad. In response, Strife exhales, a tiny, hidden smile creeping onto his lips. “Fury says a lot of stuff about you that you don't know about.”

Gently, you unroll the gauze and press it against his wound. “Wow, you sure that's your sister? Sounds like she might've been body snatched.”

“Ha!” The Horseman suddenly throws his head back. “Well, if she has been replaced, I sure as shit ain't going lookin' for the original. This Fury is... she's...”

He pauses, tipping his head in thought before eventually settling on, “She's learning.”

You blow out a long, impressed whistle and he nods his agreement, adding, “Yeah, s'weird for all of us too.”

The room lapses into silence once again as you stretch the gauze across Strife's abdomen and mutter, “Hold this,” before your hands are retreating and the Horseman's slide down to keep the bandage in place.

Reaching into the box once more, you take some bandages and begin to unfurl them gingerly over the top of the gauze. “Not hurting you, am I?”

You miss the soft expression he aims at the top of your head. “Never.”

You're more than aware that he probably won't tell you you've hurt him even if you were to stick your fingers in the wound twist them.

“Sooo~....?” you prompt.

Peering down at you, Strife cocks his head to one side and echoes, “Soooo?”

“What did Fury and War think I should know?”

“Oh. Right...” His reluctance is as painfully obvious as a slap to the face but you're slightly more focused on plunging your hand back into the first aid kit and rooting around for a roll of adhesive tape.

He observes you for a moment, growing more and more certain that despite your curiosity, you aren’t actually paying a great deal of attention to his words. Quite abruptly, he asks, “You listening?”

Emitting little more than a vague hum, you finally snag the tape and run your fingernail along the smooth surface, searching for the ever-elusive end.

“You sure?” Strife grunts skeptically, “Kid, this is kind of important.”

Without missing a beat, you nod your chin towards his injury and reply, “Yeah, well, you're kind of important too, buddy.”

Oh.

Oh, that's...

Strife wracks his brain, trying to pluck an appropriate response from amidst his tumbling thoughts. Part of him wants to scoff – of course he's important! He's Strife! The best, damn marksman who ever walked the realms of existence.

But then, there's another part of him that lurks deep behind the walls of hubris and brass he's been building meticulously for centuries, and it gives a little leap at the sound of your words, delighted beyond measure.

Averting his gaze, Strife lets out a chuckle. “You're getting soft.”

“Ah, I've always been soft.”

His heart thrums. “Wasn't talkin' about you, kid.”

You shoot him a smirk as you stick a piece of tape over the bandages covering his injury. “Well, if you're talking about yourself, then you're wrong again. You aren't getting soft. You've always been soft.”

The Horseman mutters something incoherent, but it's his distinct lack of an articulate response that speaks volumes to your ears.

The slight pressure of your fingers as they prod at the tape with tentative care leaves him mourning the centuries he's gone without knowing such a gentle touch. Rolling his eyes down to you, his smile droops and he sighs, sagging forwards to rest his elbows on his knees just as you attempt to place another strip of tape.

“Strife!” you complain, leaning back, “I need to put more tape on!”

He merely blinks at you languidly and says, “Later. I want you concentratin' on me right now.”

“I've been concentrating on you all night,” you huff, though you eventually concede and sit back on your haunches, peering up at the Horseman expectantly.

Studying your face for another moment, he breathes a long sigh and gestures to his stomach. "I told you a demon did this..."

“Uh huh...”

Solemnly, Strife continues, “So more specifically, it was a Shadow Caster. Been on her trail for a couple of weeks now. Finally caught up with her on some farmlands west of the city...”

“Okay?” you nod, digesting the information, “And why were you on her trail?”

He hesitates, flicking his eyes between you and the window a few times before he quietly admits, “She was comin’ after one of my friends...”

“Who?”

The look he throws you is so pointed, you suddenly feel like a fool for missing the obvious.

“Ah.” Understanding, you slowly nod your head.

“Yup.”

“But, she's dead now, right?” You gesture to his wound. “You came straight here after killing her.”

Strife's eyes darken further and each time they try to land on your face, they seem to slide right off again and drop to the carpet. “Uh, yeah. She's dead.”

You heave a sigh. “She wasn't the only one who's after me.”

“... No..”

“I see.” Inhaling long and slow through your nose, you tip your head back and slap your hands on your thighs, rubbing at them anxiously as you gaze around the room. “So, do we know how many there are?”

The Horseman eyes you for several, silent seconds. Eventually though, he speaks up. “Got wind of a small group of about four of 'em. Demons mostly, one undead. You and I've got a mutual... uh, friend, who's been keeping his ears to the ground, and he reckons they’re aiming to provoke another war between Hell and Earth by killin' the human envoy.”

“Wow. Talk about sore losers,” you scoff humourlessly, “So, who is this mutual friend?”

Some of the tension bleeds out of Strife's posture once he notices that you haven't immediately flown into a panic. “C'mon kid,” he snorts, “You know I can't expose my source. He doesn't want you know that he cares about you. Thinks you might start askin' for discounts if you thought he was getting' soft.”

“Discounts, huh?” Your lips quirk up at their edges and Strife smacks a palm over his mask in mock distress.

“Ah, hell, I gave it away, didn't I?”

“I bet his name rhymes with Shmulgrim, doesn't it?” you laugh.

Chuckling, Strife leans back on his hands again and replies, “Hey, you came to that conclusion on your own. Technically, I never told you who my source was.”

With the atmosphere in your bedroom gradually becoming lighter and lighter, you follow the Horseman's lead and relax backwards onto your hands, stealing a surreptitious glance at the bandages adhered to his torso.

It's no longer as surprising as it used to be that Vulgrim is invested in the well-being of his 'valuable asset.' The Horsemen are perhaps his best clients, hence the vested interest in keeping himself in their good graces by looking out for their human ward.

Shaking your head with a knowing smirk, you push yourself up onto your feet and glance down at yourself, brushing off your pyjama shorts, only to grimace when your hands do nothing but smear Strife's blood all over the fabric.

“Sorry... for the mess.”

You raise your head at the sound of the Horseman's voice and find him glowering down at the stains he's dripped onto your carpet, his eyes hooded and glum.

Heaving a sigh that you hope conveys both exasperation and affection, you reach out and place your comparatively tiny hand on his shoulder to give the pauldron a reassuring squeeze, drawing his gaze back up to your face. “I don't care about the mess, Strife” you tell him matter-of-factly, “The carpet's just here to stop my feet getting cold in the morning. You're my best friend.”

Ever so slowly, his luminous eyes grow wide with wonder and he lets his jaw drop open to speak, but before he manages to utter a soft, 'what?' you give his shoulder a friendly jostle and add, “So long as you're okay, pal, that's the main thing. Now...”

Trailing off, you move back around the bed and let your fingers slide off the Horseman's arm, stepping up to the bedside table containing your pyjamas, oblivious to how swiftly and easily you've just swept the rug out from underneath Strife's feet. He twists himself around on your mattress to watch you, his eyes as wide as than dinner plates.

Did you mean to say... best?

He – well, he always knew that you considered him a friend! Hell, he'd even go so far as to say the two of you are close friends.

But best?

Best implies that there's nobody – nobody – that you hold in higher regard than him...

'How did I miss that!?' his psyche all but screams at him, 'When the Hell did I get so important!?”

You aren't even looking at him, too busy rummaging through your drawers, as if you have no idea that you've just pulled his heart right out of his chest and now you have it cradled in the palms of your hands.

You could crush the life out of him with hardly a word.

“So, you never did say!” you call out to him as you duck into your ensuite bathroom and flick the light on, hiding yourself from view whilst you change, “How does the master of marksmanship get tagged by a Shadowcaster in the first place? You’re not usually the type to get up close and personal. That’s more War’s thing, right?”

All at once, the threats that demon witch had made against you ring like klaxons in Strife’s head and he has to make a conscious effort to ignore his instinct to leap off the bed and barge into the bathroom just to be sure you’re safe. He hears the shuffling of fabric against skin as you pull off the bloodied shorts and begin to pull on the new ones.

Grinding his teeth, he spits out, “She just.. got me mad, is all. Made me wanna have the satisfaction of wringing her neck with my bare hands instead of filling her with bullets.”

“Wait, seriously?” Your silhouette suddenly appears in the bathroom doorway and and strife glances up, briefly enraptured by the halo of light glowing at your back. A fellow human might have likened you to an angel. Strife, however, knows that none of the feathery bastards could hold a candle to you.

Garbed in clean shorts that smell distinctly of you, and not copper, you step out into your bedroom. “How’d a demon manage to make you mad? You’re like, the champ of not getting mad. It’s like your superpower.”

“Yeah, well..” he mutters, turning his helm away, “This time, she went too far.”

You’re quiet as you flop down onto the bed next to him, your eyes flicking between his downturned head to the fists that are clenched like vices at his sides, metal claws gripping fistfuls of your duvet so tightly, you’re worried he might end up poking holes in the cover.

Whatever had been said to him must have been bad if he’s this riled up.

Biting your lip, you let out a pensive hum and lean backwards, your fingers brushing over a soft lump near the headboard. At once, your eyes grow wide and your lips stretch into a sly grin as your hand closes over something fluffy and familiar.

Strife is still busy stewing when he’s suddenly brought out of his thoughts by a face that’s shoved promptly into his line of sight. He blinks, drawing his head away to properly see what you’re holding up in front of him.

He can’t contain a chuckle once he realises that it’s none other than your old, toy horse, dangling in front of him with its little, black ears flopping forwards to cover a pair of button eyes.

Allowing a smile to grace the edge of his mouth, the Horseman wordlessly relaxes his grasp on your duvet in favour of reaching out to gently take the soft toy out of your hands, lowering it down into his lap.

“I thought David Hasselhoof might make you feel better,” you tell him, bumping your shoulder against his companionably.

The Nephilim simply smiles, stroking his palm over the horse’s fuzzy mane.

“Hey, Strife?”

“Mmm?”

You fiddle with your fingernail for a moment, dropping your eyes to the bed and taking a breath before you ask, “What did the demon say that made you so angry?”

It isn’t as though you want to pry. But having your friend turn up at your house in the dead of night with his stomach torn open warrants a couple of questions, in your honest opinion.

The Horseman’s brows knit together underneath his helm and he shifts slightly, twisting away from you further until you can’t even see the lights of his eyes. If you didn’t know any better, you’d almost dare to say that he looks shy. An impossibility, frankly.

When he speaks, his voice is gentle, a far cry from the normal, strident tone you’re used to hearing. “She, uh, she might’ve made a couple of threats about you.. Bad ones.”

You wait for him to elaborate, but for some time, he doesn’t utter another word, prompting you to ask, “And?”

You very nearly reel backwards into your headboard when Strife whips around to face you. “And?!” he echoes, incredulous, “The Hell d’you mean ‘and?’ Isn’t that enough of a reason?!”

Taken aback, you lift your hands in a placating gesture and stammer, “Woah! I - I just meant... Well, it’s not like I haven’t been threatened before? Just seems like a weird thing for you to get so angry about.”

Without warning, the enormous Nephilim lurches to his feet, the cuddly horse left to tumble, forgotten out of his lap. “Did you not hear me?” he snaps, “She. Threatened. You!”

“A-and that... made you mad?”

“Did - Of course it did!” he all but howls, his voice cracking as it raises in pitch, “She made me listen to all the god damn, sick things she wanted to do to you when she found you! She said - she said, I’d never see you again!” Roughly, he drags his clawed fingertips through his spiky, black hair and exclaims, “Next thing I know, I’m droppin’ Redemption and Mercy, I’ve got her heart in my fist and I’m... I’m...”

He trails off, knocked out of stride by his own admission. You remain silent, pressed up against your head board with the blankets clutched to your chest.

When he notices you staring up at him, small and wary amongst the sheets, the frustration saps from him like water circling the drain. “So... so yeah,” he huffs, his shoulders slumping and a great wave of shame crashing over him, “I got a little mad! I got a little pissed off. Cause I didn’t like hearin’ someone say they were gonna hurt my friend.”

And with that, he just... deflates, not unlike a punctured tyre. All the hot air inside him is dispelled with every heave of his mighty chest whilst he peers down at you, feeling the weight of your stare upon him.

Guilt leaves a sour taste in his mouth, rancid and acidic.

You look so..

...scared.

Sometimes Strife forgets that to you, he’s an unassailable figure from biblical legend, a bringer of the end days and an ancient gunman with a body count higher than there are grains of sand on the earth. Of course you’re going to be scared of him when he’s raising his voice at you and towering over you like this. And all because he’d had the life scared out of him in the first place.

“I’m sorry, kid. I didn’t mean to -” The words die on his lips and he sighs, defeatedly casting his eye over towards your bedroom window. He doesn’t want to leave you, not without knowing that his siblings have dealt with the remaining threats to your life. But... “I’ll just.. I’ll go.”

Turning his back on you, the Horseman bends to retrieve his discarded cuirass and takes a step towards the window, but a voice, thin as the cobwebs in the corner of your room, stops him in his tracks.

“Strife.”

The Horseman doesn’t move. he just stares at the darkness through your curtains.

Minutes pass without another word said between you. He remains stubbornly silent, hardly daring to breathe let alone respond to his name, until eventually, he hears a soft huff and rustling behind him.

Footsteps pad across the room and your scent grows stronger as you draw near, wafting over him like an intoxicating aroma before your hand places itself into his palm and he instinctively curls his fingers around it, shuddering at the feel of your soft skin pressed like silk against his roughened hide.

Your tiny, fragile hand... Creator, he really is just a beast standing next to you, isn’t he? The last time he felt this monstrous was..

No. Strife abruptly slams the shutters of his mind down around any thoughts of the Animus. Now is not the time to let dredge up old memories.

Luckily, your voice breaks through the haze and keeps him grounded. “Come on, big guy. Stay here, please?"

“You want me to stay?” he chokes out a laugh, “Even after I scared you?”

“Scared me? What?” It’s your turn to sound confused. “You didn’t scare me Strife, you shocked me. I’ve never seen you this serious before.”

The Horseman half turns to face you, giving you a glimpse of his warm, golden eyes. “And, I’ve never had a best friend before.” he admits slowly, hearing a soft intake of breath behind him.

“Wait?... I’m your best friend?”

With your hand still in his, Strife steps around slowly to face you, shooting you a quizzical glance. “Uh, yeah? I mean, I don’t exactly have a plethora of friends to choose from, so the competition isn’t that fie- Oof!”

He’s violently interrupted by a soft, squishy body colliding with his.

You fling your arms around the stunned Horseman’s waist and bury your face into his chest, momentarily forgetting about his injury. Strife, meanwhile, has to employ every molecule of willpower he owns to refrain from flinching, fearing that you’ll let go if he does. He can’t ignore how high his heart just jumped at the feeling of you pressed against him, nor the way his soul soars after realising that you still trust him enough to get this close.

It’s something that both he and his siblings are all having to get used to, these impromptu hugs.

Fury had almost flipped you over her shoulder and onto the ground the first time you came at her with your arms open wide, assuming you were going in for an attack.

War had pulled the most remarkable face, a mixture of alarm and wary delight that caused Strife to keel over in hysterics when you threw your arms around his broad stomach.

Death... Well, Strife hadn’t been around to witness your first hug with his oldest brother, but he imagines it must have been like hugging a block of cold stone.

And Strife? Well, he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the first hug you gave him. It was so tight and comfortable, and for all of a moment, the only things that existed were the two of you. Inside the binding circle of your arms, his troubles couldn’t touch him, the anguish of his sins took a backseat and he became convinced that he could live happily and peacefully until the end of time trapped in your silent embrace.

The sentiment hasn’t dulled with frequency either. Every hug he receives is as powerful and intoxicating as the last.

This one is no different.

Strife's large, thickset arms carefully raise to your delicate back and shoulders, where he simply folds himself around you, pushing the nose of his helm into your soft, messy hair and drawing in a long, deep breath, earning your snort of amusement.

“You a big fan of coconut, then?”

“Is that what that smell is?” he mumbles, feeling the world settle around him as his eyes slip shut, “S'different from last time...”

“...Setting aside the fact that you remember what my hair smelled like last time we hugged.. I ran out of apple shampoo.”

“Mmm.” He trails off, humming into your hair, a sound that rumbles straight through you and leaves the top of your head tingling.

It takes your brain another few seconds to recall the injury on his torso.

“Oh, shit,” you hiss, leaning back and instantly finding your progress blocked by the Horseman's sturdy forearms. “I'm sorry, I didn't think -”

“- Eh, s'fine,” he cuts you off.

“It's not! I forgot, you need to be resting it!”

Strife grumbles his displeasure when you suddenly become very wriggly. “Strife, let go. You should be resting, not standing.”

Cracking one eye open, he roves his gaze over towards your bed. “Resting, huh? …. Not a bad idea.”

Without warning, he stoops down, and for the second time tonight, you find yourself suddenly swept up off your feet, bleating out a garbled squawk of alarm. “Stop picking me up! You'll start bleeding again!”

Smirking to himself, the Horseman takes two, loping steps towards your bed and lowers you down amongst the folds of the duvet, taking great pleasure in crawling over the top of you to get to the other side, armour and all. It isn't the first time he's rested in your bed, usually following a long night of playing your video games and catching up on all the human things he's been missing out on, and it likely won't be the last.

The bed springs creak despondently as he lifts his corner of the duvet and flops heavily onto his side next to you, grinning at the unimpressed glare you're shooting him.

“I like your bed,” he announces, burrowing himself deeper beneath the duvet, “You got a lot of pillows. And-”

His hand rustles beneath the covers for a moment before he winks... and slowly draws out David Hasselhoof, wiggling him back and forth in front of your eyes. “There's room for a threesome.”

“Oh my god. Goodnight, Strife!” Your lips quiver until you give in and crack a genuine smile, grabbing a pillow and whapping it softly down onto his helm. You get no resistance from the Horseman at all in retaliation. He merely lays there with his head hidden, black tufts of hair sticking out from behind your pillow as his shoulders bounce around a throaty chuckle.

Leaving him where he is, you roll over, turn off the fairy lights and plunge your bedroom into cozy, unassailable darkness.

A thick silence falls over the two of you, and the back of your neck begins to prickle, sensing without a shadow of a doubt that the Horseman's eyes are open and watching you. Sure enough, you peel your eyelids apart and find that your far wall is faintly illuminated by the golden light that emanates from his gaze.

Rolling your eyes, you resign yourself to a long night of fighting for your covers and kicking a wriggling Horseman back over onto his own side of the bed. And yet... if it's him, if it's Strife, it most likely won’t bother you in the slightest.

The alarm clock on your bedside table steadily ticks over to the three o'clock mark and you finally feel sleep crawl up behind your eyes. Just as you think you might nod off, however, the bed shakes ever so slightly, and behind you, there's the sound of shuffling sheets. It stops just as suddenly as it starts and you snort, chalking it up to a certain, restless Horseman trying to get used to the human-sized bed.

Several more minutes pass.

The shuffling starts up again, then it stops.

The same thing happens again a few more minutes later and your eyes snap open when something cool and solid nudges gently into the back of your head and you hear a quiet sniff before the whole bed shudders as the enormous Horseman laying upon it releases a monstrously low rumble of contentment.

-----

Strife leaves his helm right behind you all night, not that you'd know until the morning however, when you jerk awake to your bedroom door suddenly slamming open and Death thundering inside. He takes one look at his brother laying at your back and promptly begins a lecture that you're fairly certain will be the favoured topic of neighbourhood gossip for some time to come.

#darksiders #darksiders 2 #darksiders 3 #Strife #reader #fluff #sharing a bed!#monster boyfriend #interspecies relationships #blood #injury #whump

175 notes · View notes

thefifthsister · 3 years

Text

Fictober #7: Tradition

Season Three

He swears he never means to get in so early. He was awake. And had no other plans. That’s what he’d say if she questioned him coming in so early.

He waved to the desk sergeant after he cleared security and hit the elevator button, holding tight to the cups of coffee he was holding.

He stepped out onto the homicide floor, amused with someone’s attempt to decorate for Halloween.

“You know Captain, you really ought to let me take a stab at decorating this place,” he said as he bumped into Montgomery. “No pun intended.”

“And good morning to you too Castle,” Montgomery smirked. “Ryan, Esposito and Beckett are on their way back from a crime scene. I’m sure Beckett won’t mind you waiting at her desk. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a call coming from the Commissioner any minute now.”

Castle watched as the man entered his office and he looked around the bullpen. No Beckett. No boys. He walked over to her desk and put the coffees down, checking his phone.

No messages. That was odd.

He dropped into his chair, taking in the bullpen. Maybe he could kill some time reorganising the Halloween decorations.

They needed more webs and pumpkins. The streamers he could hang differently.

He loved the skeletons that they’d put in the corners, and maybe he’d think of something fun to do with those.

He’d have to move the creepy doll someone had stuck near Beckett’s desk. She would complain about that.

“Castle!” It hissed.

Castle shot out of his chair, away from it. “Woah, did anyone else hear that?”

“What’s the matter Ricky? Scared?” It said.

“That - that doll just spoke to me!” He gulped. He looked around, realising he had knocked his coffee over and it was spilling onto the floor and all over Beckett’s desk.

“I’m gonna get you, writer boy,” it hissed. He saw Montgomery laughing in his office, watching from his desk. Knew he was in on it immediately. He lifted the doll, feeling the bulk of a radio inside it, opened it and recognised it as the ones they used with Ryan and Espo when they were on stakeouts.

The laughter he heard coming from the break room clued him into the culprits, turning to see Ryan, Espo and Beckett holding each other up.

“Crime scene? Really?” He called across to them.

“Your face was priceless,” Ryan said.

“Really Beckett?”

Kate shrugged. “What can I say? Messing with you might be my new Halloween tradition.”

He watched Ryan and Espo head to their desks.

“I spilled my coffee.” Castle complained.

Kate rolled her eyes. “I’ll make you another.”

“You working the espresso machine? Now that is scary!” Castle teased, following Beckett into the break room and sharing a look of amusement with her. She was damn proud of herself for this prank. He’d have to retaliate.

Prompt: “that - that doll just spoke to me!”

#castle fanfic #my fanfic #castle halloween bash 2021 #kate beckett #richard castle #kevin ryan #javier esposito

42 notes · View notes

dannyisdone · 2 years

Text

Patton's First Encounter With Little Logan (Scrap)

This one is kind of difficult to scrap bc I've been trying to make it work for weeks, and I really loved the premise when I first wrote the idea down, but everytime I've tried to write for it I've just disliked it more and a more 😔😔 It just wasn't feeling genuine, and I don't even think a rewrite could make it work. I might keep the idea and just write a one-shot with it in the future, but for now, I'm completely scrapping this.

It never really got to anything Agere related, but I'm still posting it anyways bc 1. It will make me feel better about essentially scrapping 2000+ words of work just bc the vibes are off, and 2. In case I ever want to come back and steal some ideas from it in the future lol

---

“Oooh, this is going to be so fun!” Patton proclaimed, adding the finishing touches to his decked out living room. He had invited over Roman and Logan for a sleepover at his place, and he wanted everything to look perfect for his friends! It had been a long time since they had had a sleepover with all three of them, probably since the two of them had decided to make their own houses to stay in the Mindscape, rather than them all living in the default Thomas one his brain seemed to supply them. Patton had been saddened, of course, but now it meant he got to do a whole bunch of fun dad stuff, like throw barbecues, host holiday parties at his house, and, of course, sleepovers with your friends!

Plus, now that they had all revealed themselves to Thomas, their workloads had gotten much heavier. They recorded youtube videos, Roman and Thomas talked lots about ideas he wanted to try and avenues of film and theatre he wanted them to pursue, and Logan was busy usually trying to ground those ideas in something a bit more logical and manageable, and of course throwing his own ideas about career avenues Thomas ought to be persuing. And Patton was perhaps doing the most important job of all, making sure everyone was happy! And he felt like he was doing a pretty good job at that! Even if there was occasional fighting, and of course the pop ins from a certain He-who-did-not-have-a-name, he was still thrilled by all the progress he and his friends had been making!

Which is why they deserved a sleepover!

It had taken quite a bit of convincing to get Logan on board, who was mostly rebutting with ‘We’ve only been moved out for a few months, and you see us all the time for work,’, but Patton didn’t care! He wanted to spend time with his friends in a not so serious setting! (Not that work got all that serious anyways, unless scaredy-bats decided to show up, then sometimes things got serious, seriously batty!!) What eventually convinced him was that Patton promised to make thumbprint cookies with Crofters, that jam being about the only bargaining tool anyone had with Logan.

Said cookies were set out already, having been given plenty of time to cool and would be ready for consumption as soon as the others arrived. Everything was perfect. There were fairy lights around the living room, way more snacks than were necessary for three people, blankets that he’d just pulled out of the dryer so they were extra warm, an array of different movies for them to watch, and a backlog of puns to go with whatever movie they picked. The only thing that could have made the scene more perfect would have been--

“Patton! We’re here!”

His friends!!

Roman walked into the living room, since the formality of doors were a foreign concept in Patton’s home, just as he preferred it! He was closely followed by Logan, who was wearing his standard outfit unlike Roman and Patton, both who had elected to wear more casual clothes. He also carried with him a small drawstring bag. Roman had his large book bag on his back, and he was carrying two sleeping bags in his arms, one red and one blue.

“Mr. ‘Always prepared’ didn’t have a sleeping bag, can you believe it?” Roman asked in fake exasperation, fondly shaking his head as he dropped both sleeping bags onto the ground, right next to Patton’s. Logan rolled his eyes.

“I didn’t think it necessary to have, considering my old room is right up the stairs.” He explained, gesturing towards the stairs. Patton chuckled, that made logical sense, he supposed. But this was a sleepover! Half the fun was sleeping on the floor right next to your friends! Unless Logan really didn’t want to, of course. But Patton couldn’t lie, he would be mighty disappointed if Logan didn’t at least sleep in the same room as them.

“Well, sleeping isn’t part of the plan tonight anyways!” Roman exclaimed as he took his book bag off as well, setting it on the couch. Patton presumed it had all of Roman’s sleepover essentials, including his clothes, and anything else he would have felt necessary to bring. “This is a sleepover! Who sleeps at a sleepover?” He added with an eye roll, before flopping down onto the couch in his normal spot.

“It’s implied in the name.” Logan responded, before sitting down on the far end of the couch as well. Patton couldn’t help but notice how stiffly Logan seemed to hold himself. Well…Logan always looked a little stiff in Patton’s opinion, but for some reason he looked uncomfortable, even though he’d said it himself, he had lived here before! And even if he hadn’t, this was Patton’s home! Logan was always welcomed to anything he wanted here! So seeing Logan looking so uncomfortable, Patton knew he needed to do something to ease his friend's nerves. And he knew just how to get that started!

“Roman, you’ll be the first to fall asleep, you always are.” Patton teased, and earned himself an offended scoff from Roman, who immediately began his rant about how he needs beauty sleep, and that you can’t hurry perfection. Patton had heard the speech time and time again, and it never failed to humor him when it came up in a totally contradictory manner to Roman’s original point. While Roman continued his speech, getting into the part where humans needed anywhere between 6 to 10 hours of sleep, an anecdote which Logan was quick to corroborate, Patton stepped over to the coffee table, which he had moved out of the middle of the room and over to the walk in order to make room for sleeping. He picked up the tray that held all of the thumbprint cookies, before walking over to Logan.

“Cookie?” Patton asked, offering them out to Logan. The offer managed to grab Roman’s attention as well, and he very hastily wrapped up his argument that no one was disagreeing on, in favor of looking over the cookies.

“You made these?” Logan asked, and Patton smiled brightly.

“Yup!” Just for you, the jam is Crofters, of course.” Patton explained. Roman scooted over on the couch so that he was within arms reach and grabbed one of the cookies off the tray, taking a crumbly bite.

“Delicious as always, Padre!” Roman declared, mouth full. Patton couldn’t help but chuckle, though Logan didn’t seem to find Roman’s antics as amusing. He did take one of the cookies off the tray though, and munched into it.

“Do you like it?” Patton asked, eager to please his friend. Logan, polite as ever, waited until he was finished chewing and swallowing, before responding.

“Your cooking has always been very satisfactory, Patton.” Logan said, a small smile pulling at his face as he took another bite. Patton beamed at the tidbit of praise, which was always rather coveted by Patton and Roman, even if Roman was hard pressed to admit it.

“Thank you!” Patton cheered, before setting the tray down within reach of everyone. Good cooking was always a quick and easy way to get an excellent get together started, and now that Logan had even just the tiniest of smiles on his face, Patton felt more and more confident about how this sleepover was going to go! Now, all they had to do was decide what other staple of sleep overs they should do next.

“Should we play a game? Watch a movie? Gossip until we’re a giggly mess?” Patton suggested, slightly teasing, at least for the last suggestion. It wasn’t like there was all that much to gossip about, except maybe the newest greyfriendo (Though there wasn’t much to say about him, since no one really seemed to know much about him).

“I don’t giggle.” Logan quickly defended, but it wasn’t like he needed to prove that statement to anyone.. Patton was pretty sure he hadn’t seen Logan giggle since childhood, and even then it had been a rather rare occurrence, he was pretty stoic as a kiddo too. The closest Patton had ever seen to Logan giggling was when he got a bit silly while wine drunk, but Patton wasn’t a fan of drinking, so he was never really around long to see that side of Logan.

“And you guys cheat everytime we play games.” Roman said with a pout, crossing his arms. Now that he had a handful of cookies, Roman had made himself comfortable on the couch, stealing Patton’s quilt and having thrown it around himself. Patton’s house always did run on the cold side, but that’s just how he liked it!

“I do not!” Patton argued back. He didn’t cheat, he was just down right rotten at most of the games he played, so he tended to just forget the rules.

“And it’s not cheating if I am using the exact rules of the games to my advantage.” Logan added. Patton chuckled, recalling the last time they had all played Monopoly together. It had been so much fun in Patton’s opinion, but it was now explicitly banned from being played by them.

“Well, I don’t want to play anyways, so movie it is!” Roman said, and Patton couldn’t be more inclined to agree. A movie sounded great! It would be a good way to get them all relaxed and into the sleepover spirit!

“Let me get it set up, anyone have any movie preferences?” Patton asked, giving Logan a pointed look. Anytime they did movies together, Roman tended to dominate the decisions. Patton didn’t mind for his own sake too much, since he always liked just about anything they watched. But if Logan had a suggestion, even though he normally didn’t, then Patton wanted to prioritize that!

“Ooooh! Patton! We should watch WALL-E!” Roman suggested, not having paid attention to the fact that Patton had clearly been gearing the question towards Logan. Patton chuckled, then looked back at Logan, who merely shrugged.

“A perfectly fine suggestion.” Logan said, and Patton was inclined to believe him. Plus, it was kind of like a space movie! And Patton was pretty sure Logan liked space! He definitely liked Star Trek, so space movies seemed like a safe bet to him!

“WALL-E it is!” Patton said, trying to do his best impression of WALL-E itself. Roman laughed and proceeded to try his hand at his own impressions from the movie while Patton searched through the cabinet to find the dvd. He knew he could just summon it into his hands, or directly onto the tv, but he always liked to enjoy the more mundane human way of doing things.

“Got it!” Patton proclaimed when he found the dvd. As he pushed the movie into the dvd player, the lights in the room suddenly dimmed, casting it into a cool darkness.

“Can’t have a movie marathon in the light.” Roman said when Patton turned around to question it. It wasn’t late enough for the sun to have gone down, but Patton’s curtains did a fine job at blocking out the light.

“After the movie, I’ll make us a pizza. Unless you guys just want to snack?” Patton asked, hurrying over to the couch and plopping down right next to Roman. It still bothered him a bit how separated Logan was from them, but he didn’t want to crowd him. If Logan was content with being on the far end of the couch, then Patton would just have to accept that.

“Sounds grand!” Roman said, scooting closer to Patton and wrapping him up in his blanket. Patton giggled and accepted the cuddle.

The beginning of the movie began to play, and the room felt quiet save for the tv. Roman’s attention was instantly captivated by the movie. It was usually a 50/50 chance on whether or not Roman was going to be quiet during a movie, or if he was going to talk through it, pointing out flaws in the plot or inaccuracies in the costume designs. Patton didn’t mind the commentary, but he would just have to wait and see which way he ended up falling.

Patton tried to get invested in the beginning.The first half of WALL-E was truly a masterpiece, and it was merely a coincidence that Roman had suggested one of Patton’s all time favorite Pixar films, but Patton was thoroughly distracted by Logan. Every few seconds he would peer over at his friend, and see just how lonely he looked. In fairness, Logan didn’t look bothered by his unintentional exclusion. Patton knew he wasn’t a big cuddler, and he liked his space. But Patton couldn’t brush aside his own feelings. He knew if it was him, he’d feel so lonely. And it was that sympathy that had him suddenly summoning one of his stuff animals from his room, a big, soft Walrus plush that Patton liked, but usually ended up sitting in the closest in favor of all his other stuffed animals.

When it appeared in his hand, Roman must have caught the action out of the corner of his eyes, because he was suddenly staring at Patton in confusion. Patton ignored him though, scooting a little bit out of the warm blanket in order to be closer to Logan.

“Psssst, Logan!” Patton whispered loudly, as if he was trying to avoid attention rather than the reality, which was that everyone was looking at him. Logan had grabbed another cookie, and looked almost embarrassed at having been caught eating another one, which Patton thought was silly. He loved that Logan loved his treats! Logan didn’t respond verbally, but was staring at Patton expectantly, encouraging him to keep going.

“Here.” Patton continued to whisper, handing the walrus plush over to Logan. Logan stared at it in confusion.

“You need a cuddle buddy too.” Patton said with a smile. Logan rolled his eyes, and Patton could hear Roman snickering behind him.

“Patton, while I appreciate that you enjoy hugging stuffed animals, it isn’t something I engage in.” Logan pointed out. Patton nodded in understanding, but shook the toy anyways.

��Humor me? Please? It would make me feel a lot better, knowing you had something to snuggle.” He gave Logan the biggest puppy dog eyes he could muster, though those only had about a 50 percent chance of working on him. Logan stared for a few more seconds, before sighing and holding out his hand for the toy. Patton had to suppress his happy squeal as he handed him the plushie.

“Enjoy!” Patton cheered as Logan sat the toy on his lap, though he made no effort to hug it or anything, which Patton found a bit disappointing, but baby steps were made! He scooted back over to Roman, who was smirking.

“What was that about?” He whispered, bending down so only Patton could hear him. He merely shrugged though as he wrapped the blanket back around him and laid his head against Roman’s shoulder.

“I thought he looked lonely,” Patton admitted, his own face heating up a bit. Roman snorted quietly, before shaking his head.

“You’re absolutely the kindest and sweetest dork this side of the Mindscape.” Roman teased, and Patton smiled brightly. Roman turned his attention back to the tv, and Patton followed suit, though would occasionally spare glances over at Logan, just to see what he might do with his new friend.

#patton sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #sanders sides #sanders sides agere #dannyiswriting

12 notes · View notes

gallavictorious · 3 years

Note

26, 27, and 28 for the either/or ask meme please!

26. First proposal or brawl proposal?

The first proposal is very interesting and certainly includes some aaaaawmoments, but on a very shallow level their ugly as hell outfits ruin it a bit for me. (Thank heavens they decide to go home and get changed before heading out to do the deed – excellent choice, boys, and glad to see you're taking this seriously!)

On a deeper level, Ian's (very well-intentioned!) dishonesty messes a bit with my appreciation of it as a romanticmoment, even though it makes for intriguing drama and excellet meta opportunities. Don't get me wrong, Ian is absolutely truthful about loving Mickey – that's why he wants to protect him and that's why marriage is even a consideration – but it does come up on this day because he wants to keep Mickey out of prison, and he should have been upfront about that. Given how he presents it, it's no wonder Mickey reacts that way he does when Ian pulls out (which doesn't excuse punching Ian in the face).

So like... I do love the first proposal because I think it sets up a conflict that's seems to me entirely realistic and firmly rooted in their past, but for triumphant romance I still prefer the brawl proposal. It's messy, it's a bit silly, and I love my Gallavich somewhat chaotic, so yeah. It's also Ian making an effort to speak Mickey's language by making a grand gesture in front of a bunch of people, which is all kinds of lovely. Also, they look som much better here than at Patsy's! ;) ”This Life” is an instant mood booster for me these days!

It does lose some small points by not lingering on the kiss. That's not justme being a thirsty old woman, by the way, that's me being a slut for well-executed paralells and well.

Sidenote: for someone who's very concerned about breaking parole in season 11, Ian is pretty quick to violently assault (mostly) innocent people. Kettle not looking all that black right now, eh, Mr. Gallagher?

---

27. “Can I go in with him”-hug or “You're gonna be a great dad”-hug?

Argh. What sort of twisted mind came up with this impossible choice? See, I think the hug of 5x06 is actually superior in every way – it's more emotional, it's beautifully shot, the boys cling to each other as if drowning and it's just a damn good hug all around. Ian accepts the hugs at the police station, from his siblings and from Mick, but this one he (no pun intended) embraces and leans into. He takes the comfort (and forgiveness). And it's not just Mickey comforting Ian, but Mickey seeking comfort in Ian, because he can't let Ian walk away without holding him, without making sure he's there, and without making sure that Ian knows that Mickey loves him.

I mean, it's perfect.

And yet. AND YET. Ian hugging Mickey and comforting Mickey just does something to me, you know? I have no defense against it. Mickey has got like maybe half a percent of the hugs he's ought to have had in his life, so. Yeah. He needs more hugs. (And fine, not everyone likes or wants hugs, but I am convinced that Mickey does, he's just not been getting them and then there's been issues with being seen as soft and whatever.)

Oh dear, I forgot to actually choose, didn't that? Well, that's embarassing.

---

28. Border kiss or city hall kiss?

The border kiss is their prettiest kiss and there is so much love there. With the exception of their very first one, the other kisses we've seen before this are heavily tinged with lust and hunger (fueled by their feelings for one another, sure, but still pretty damned sexual in nature) but this... this is just love. It's farewell for ever and sharing one last kiss and trying to just be in that moment and enjoy each second of it even as they commit every single detail to memory because this will have to sustain them a lifetime now. There's resignation and there's regret but mostly there's just accepting their love and everything it means and all the way it hurts, because – even now – the joy of it is greater than the loss.

I love the border kiss. But it's so fucking sad and it breaks me even though I know that in less than two years Ian will stare in utter disbelief and awe at his beloved once more. So sorry, beautiful border kiss, it's the city hall kiss for me.

There's something to be said for casual affection, yeah? Ian's whole demeanor here... he's nervous and his solution to that, his way of grounding and reassuring himself, is to lean in and kiss Mickey. Because maybe he's not sure about marriage – and in just a little while that (perfectly understandable) uncertainty will cause all sorts of trouble – but he knows that he loves Mickey; that being with him makes him happy and feel safe. Then there's the look on Mickey's face; he's a little surprised but so pleased and so in love and zero percent uncomfortable by being kissed in public. I don't know. To me this is a moment where it's very clear that they don't just love each other, they like each other and are each other's comfort and joy. Hearteyes, motherfucker.

---

Since it was you asking I feel especially not bad about nattering on like a loon. (Not because you natter on like a loon - you are always highly succint and eloquent and the envy of Kees everywhere! - but because I know you won't mind. <3) Thank you for ask, dear one!

Gallavich 'Either Or' Ask Meme

#vem kan stoppa mig när jag bara ramblar på #either or ask meme #asks #meta #5x06 #7x11 #10x08 #10x10 #11x12 #gallavich #my stuff

33 notes · View notes

trulyhopelessromantic · 2 years

Text

BATB 12 Days of Christmas Challenge -Glimmer

@lumiereswig kindly provided The BATB 12 Days of Christmas challenge with 12 separate writing prompts for us Beauty and the Beast lovers to participate with! ^_^

So here's my next one-shot :) It's not exactly the glimmer one might expect and it's not quite a Christmas-themed one-shot either. But I hope you enjoy!

4. Glimmer

Even as a man, Lumiere had always been an optimist. There was always a “light at the end of the tunnel” for him and he always raised others’ spirits with his demeanor and charm making their day light up a bit.

It had certainly been no wonder to anyone why he’d been turned into a candelabra. Light was necessary in such a dark castle both literally and metaphorically.

For ten years he held out hope for himself and the others in the castle. “Zere is always ’ope!” he exclaimed on more than one occasion, “Nothing is impossible! N’est pas?!” After all, they had all been incredibly transformed into sentient objects around their former home and workplace: the castle of their master, The Prince. If he could be a candelabra with never ending wax who could speak and move as though he were not made of metal, then could they not have this curse broken by love even if no one had come along for their master to fall in love with and break this spell?

So, he felt vindicated when a young woman -who they found out was called Belle- entered the castle in search of her father (who had been locked away by their prince). “She has come to break the spell!” Lumiere cried out to his constant companion, Cogsworth, without a second thought.

This fortuitous event could be nothing else. He knew it, despite arguments to the contrary by many of his fellow enchanted objects.

Even when their master locked Belle away as a “prisoner”. Lumiere knew that could not and would not be it.

But then, the young woman (spirited as she was) stole away to The Master’s rooms in the West wing of the castle and fled in terror when the owner of those rooms threw a tantrum in anger.

“Zere is a glimmer of ’ope!” Lumiere exhaled feebly as the winter winds blew out his flames upon the girl departing their castle.

“Stop this now,” Cogsworth snapped at him, “Stop all this talk of hope and joy and hanging onto our humanity! We are bloody objects, Lumiere! Our master, much as we would wish to the contrary, will not change his ways in a matter of weeks and fall in love with some poor girl and break this curse! Get used to dripping wax for the rest of your days! I can see it has already plugged up your good sense and proper judgement and I have let it go on far too long!”

“That’s a bit much,” Mrs. Potts scolded, “Lumiere is just trying to lighten the mood a little.”

Cogsworth rolled his eyes. “I did not expect you, ma’am, to resort to God-awful puns in defense of this idiot!”

“Watch your tone,” Mrs. Potts snapped back at him as steam whistled slightly through her spout, “We are all of us in this together. We will do no good resorting to name-calling and the like. Besides, not all of us…” She was forced to trail off as they all heard growling and the padding of paws on the polished floors coming closer.

It was their master, heading out of the castle after Belle.

“Master-” she tried but he had already departed out of the door without so much as a word.

“Oh I hope he’s not gone to fetch her just because he thinks she ought to remain here as a prisoner-” Mrs. Potts lamented in a whisper.

Lumiere, lighting each of his candelabrum slowly feeling a bit downtrodden for once at the events of the last minutes, wrapped a comforting twist of metal around her. “Even if he does, we will keep trying to soften him. We all know he can be, don’t we?” All flames melted that around them, in time.

Lumiere swore silently in that moment that he would be such a fire. He would keep his glimmer of hope burning until the blaze slowly but surely warmed even the most solid of hearts.

#lumiere #speedwriting #speed writing #lumiereswig #Beauty and the Beast #Mrs. Potts #Cogsworth #The Beast #Belle #hope #BATB 12 Days of Christmas Challenge

5 notes · View notes

tooncraze · 3 years

Text

Anastasia - PaTB AU

My turn to hop on this Pinky and The Brain Disney, only this time I’m using a princess that’s Disney on a technicality. Let me introduce to you: Pikastasia.

Okay let’s meet out characters shall we?

Anastasia - Pinky (Pinkastasia)

Dimitri - Brain

Vlad - Yakko

Sophie - Dot (For obvious reasons Yakko and Dots connections with each other will be based off of their sibling relationship)

Bartok - Wakko

Rasputin - Snowball (Snowputin)

The Dowager Empress Marie - Nora Rita Norita

Phlegmenkoff - Dr. Otto Scratchandsniff

So this is the list of main characters that will be mostly in the film, extras can be whomever. Now I’d also just like to clear up for those still confused about Vlad and Sophie, yes they are in a romantic relationship in the movie and that helps them get to the Dowager, so obviously that’s NOT an option, so their sibling relationship will help them in this case.

I’m not really changing the rest of their names cause frankly I don’t feel like it, so if you want to that’s fine.

Onto the story premise!

So in this version the main story stays kind of the same. Brain, with his bud Yakko are trying to take over Russia by finding someone to impersonate the long lost princess, Pinkastasia. He’s been trying to find a suitable actor for months now, once he finds the perfect person, they will learn the part, go to Paris, and convince the Dowager and get her reward money. With this they can earn her trust and with their money, take over Russia, and then with Russia’s resources, The World. It was the perfect plan.

Pinky leaves the orphanage (Scratchandsniff kicking him out) like in the film as well. He wanders around for a bit, sings his lovely song and all that Jazz.

When he makes in to Russia he realizes he doesn’t have all the correct resources to leave Russia and an old lady directs him to a man named The Brain, who might be able to help. She gives him directions to the old palace and he sets off.

When he makes it the the palace he can’t help but feel it’s familiar to him- but that’s crazy. Of course Pinky has another musical number here and it’s lovely.

The Brain and Yakko hear something from inside the palace and go to investigate. After a bit of cat and mouse, pun very much intended, they catch the intruder, another mouse. Taken aback by the uncanny resemblance of the princess Brain and Yakko are speechless for a moment. But only a moment.

Brain notices quickly that Pinky isn’t the sharpest toll in the shed, and knows he can use that to his advantage. He briefly mentions to Yakko his plan and the two of them agree. After a little persuasion Pinky agrees, after all, he had no memory of his past life- who’s to say he isn’t the princess?

The group make their way from the scene and we see Bartok- er Wakko for the first time talking to himself about the princess, with an odd green vile next to him. It becomes alive at the notion of Pinkastasia still being alive and flys him to the underworld/purgatory. We meet Snowball/Rasputin here. We learn of his curse and his pledge, I don’t exactly remember when he sings his song but that happens eventually.

Pinky, Brain, and Yakko begin their journey to Paris, teaching Pinky how to act and talk like a princess. While Brain and Yakko are giving Pinky information about Pinkastasia’s life, Pinky offers answers and details that they weren’t aware of.

They get on a train, and it goes the same as the film, wrong passports and then a lovely fire filled compartment. They jump for it and continue their journey.

After the lovely travel song they make it to their ship.

Once on Brain offers Pinky a dress he thought he might like, only because he’d been wearing the same scraps since they met of course. YES OF COURSE THEY DANCE AND IT’S BEAUTIFUL. Anyway, when getting ready for bed Pinky notices a lovely music box, wondering why Brain would own something like that he attempted to open it, only it was locked. He put it back and went to sleep.

Pinky has a night terror inflicted by Snowputin and Brain saves him from jumping overboard during the crazy storm.

They finally arrive in Paris where they are quickly greeted by Sophie/Dot. After seeing her brother the two embrace and are let inside. Pinky gives the rundown of everything he’d been told about Pinkastasia and Dot is impressed. When asked how he could’ve possibly escaped the palace during the fire Brain realized he hadn’t told Pinky anything about that and panics. Only to his surprise, Pinky gives as answer, and a correct one at that! Brain had never told anyone about “Opening a wall”. And yet... Then it struck him. He went outside to collect his thoughts.

Yakko comes out happily explaining they could find the Dowager at the ballet later that evening, only to see Brain wasn’t as excited as he ought to be. Brain tells Yakko that Pinky is truly Pinkastasia. He tells Yakko about the “opening wall” and how he was the boy who had done it. Yakko tells Brain he ought to tell Pinky but Brain refuses, this changes nothing.

Dot invites the group to a night out in Paris! They shop and go to expensive restaurants. Pinky purchases a new dress and Brain has a hard time processing his emotions, he figured they were irrelevant, but managed to compliment him anyway. Why?

The whole night Brain couldn’t stop thinking about how Pinky was really Pinkastasia. He needed to get him to the Dowager as soon as possible- for the money of course.

After the ballet Brain reassures Pinky that everything is going to be okay after noticing how he was on edge. Pinky and Brain make their way through the crowd and Dot loudly exclaims that he is not to enter, with a wink. The Dowager is not impressed however and still refuses to see anyone else about being the princess. This is when Pinky overhears how Brain was notorious for having people impersonate the princess, and how he was probably just in it for the money and it’s not the first time. Pinky’s obviously hurt that he was lied to. Brain tries to explain himself but Pinky won’t hear it and runs off.

Hurt and desperate Brain finds the Dowager’s automobile and pretends to be her driver. After speeding through the streets of Paris with the Dowager screeching at him to let her out, Brain stops in front of where they were staying. He shows the dowager the music box he has, knowing he had acquired it from the palace all those years ago. He said he was the boy that had opened the wall, and bagged her to talk to Pinky. The Dowager was surprised by this development and agreed.

Entering the room Pinky was supposedly in, she found him packing his bags. She offered to talk, but Pinky felt guilty and didn’t want to hurt her any further. However after noticing Pinky’s necklace, the Dowager pulled out the music box. Brain’s music box! The dowager asked to use the necklace and unlocked the music box that played a quiet little tune. The two sang their song and Pinky knew he was the long lost Princess. For real.

We are now in a large plush home with Pinky and the Dowager, they’re talking about the past and its lovely being able to be with each other again. There’s also a quick mention of a ball in celebration for Pinky’s return.

Pinky is getting dressed up for the event and Brain runs into him as he’s going to see the Dowager. The exchange quick conversation and Brain goes to see Nora. She offers him his money, only for him to refuse it. She’s surprised, he brought Pinky back to her and saved their lives, and yet he wants nothing? She sends him on his way and he again sees Pinky on his way out. Pinky wishes him well with his cash and Brain leaves with a heavy heart, not mentioning he refused the cash. It was easier to leave with Pinky believing he had.

During the ball Pinky feels out of wack. Why wasn’t he happy? This was probably the most important night of his life! He was with his family, there was food and music! Everything was perfect, and yet something wasn’t right. The Dowager wasn’t a fool, and explained that while they were together again, he could still make his own choices. She also mentioned Brain hadn’t taken the reward when Pinky tried to use it against him. Pinky realized Brain must’ve had a change of heart, but if so, why didn’t he say something?

Suddenly he was distracted by a little dog who had run into the palace only to run back out. He followed the dog through the large maze behind the palace. It was dark and the dog had disappeared. An evil laugh rang through the air as Pinky was officially introduced to Snowputin in all his undead glory. He introduced himself but Pinky had a lingering thought that he’d seen him before. Snowputin confirmed this and explained Pinkastasia was the only reason he was still here, and he had a job to finish.

Fearing for his life Pinky tried to run, but Snowputin used his powers to change the surrounding scenery, and Pinky realized he was on a stone bridge. Wakko who’d been doing his bidding throughout the entirety of the sketch opted out, claiming it would only end in tears, and went to find his sibs.

Snowputin began to destroy the bridge, and Pinky with it- until he heard someone call to him. Pinky recognized the voice instantly- Brain had come to save him! Oh good!

Snowputin smiled an wicked smile and shot a spark at a stone hoarse statue (Yes this can be Phar Fignewton if you’d like) Either way it came flying down to Brain, as it had been given wings, and picked him up, only to drop him from a height and come barreling down onto him, though he’d luckily rolled out of the way before he was crushed.

Snowputin had been distracted long enough for Pinky to climb up the collapsing bridge and tackle Snowputin. Pinky was unfortunately over powered and was sent off the side of the bridge- though he felt his had get caught be someone else. Brain had made his escape from the hoarse and grabbed Pinky. Snowputin was infuriated and hit Brain out of the way, he zapped some more of the bridge and sent it crumbling down on brain, knocking him unconscious, though Pinky had managed to grab onto Snowputin and hit his vile out of his hands. Enraged Snowputin yelled and Pinky to give it back, of course Pinky was furious as well at this point and began to crush the decorated glass.

Upon destroying the relic, Snowputin began to deteriorate as his soul was fused to it. He screamed and turned to dust. Pinky didn’t have time to process that of course, Brain was hurt. He ran over to him and shook him slightly, thankfully he awoke groggily. Pinky was overjoyed, as was Brain, though his whole body hurt. Brain tried to explain to Pinky how he was sorry about lying to him, but Pinky didn’t want to hear it, he was just glad he had come back and had a change of heart. The two hold on to each other a moment longer, Pinky’s large blue eyes had entranced Brain, his feelings from earlier had come surging back at full force, he felt- well he didn’t know what he felt, but he didn’t want it to go away.

Pinky lowered his face to meet Brain’s, and the two didn’t separate for several moments. Brain didn’t want to be away from Piny again. And they weren’t, Pinky decided he wanted to make a life for himself, and after finding who he was, he wanted to find out what he could become. Him and Brain decided to go their own way together, and though Brain had a change of heart from this scheme doesn’t mean he completely gave up on his lifelong conquest to take over Russia, or the world. Only this time, Pinky would accompany him, someone had to keep him honest.

So there we have it! The premise of the movie told very poorly through a Tumblr post. I like to think if this were just another sketch Yakko would point out the kiss wasn’t scripted but no one dared bring it up.

I will also be working on concept sketches with all the characters in their respected outfits, I can’t wait to draw Pinky in all those dresses, especially those pajamas Anastasia wears near the end of the film.

#PaTB AU #Pinky and the Brain #animaniacs #PaTB anastasia AU #Pinkastasia #concept #warner siblings #i spent too much time on this

60 notes · View notes

hollyand-writes · 3 years

Text

Fic Writer Meme!

I’ve been tagged by so many people over the last 2 days that I figured I really ought to do this 😂

Thanks so much to the following lovely people for tagging me, and I was delighted to read (and reblog!) your answers! @inquisitoracorn, @barbex, @another-rogue-trevelyan, @cartadwarfwithaheartofgold, @noire-pandora and @kunstpause ❤️ (I think that’s everyone, sorry if I missed anyone off!)

Name

Fandoms

Most popular multichapter

Actual worst part of writing

How you choose your titles

Do you outline

Ideas I probably won’t get around to, but wouldn’t it be nice?

Callouts @ Me

Best writing traits

Spicy Tangential Opinion

Name: Holly or Hollyand; neither is my real name.

Fandoms: I only write for Dragon Age 2, but I lurk in Frozen fandom.

Most popular one-shot: “A Growing Lack of Disgust”, my M!Hawke/Arishok crackfic. Rated Teen/Mature.

Most popular multi-chapter: “A Chance Engagement”, my Regency AU Carver/Merrill homage to Pride & Prejudice. Rated Teen.

Actual worst part of writing: The writing, LOL. Particularly when it just won’t come. Someone (Dorothy Parker, apparently!) once said “I hate writing, but I love having written” and I feel exactly the same way. Having said that, there’s nothing better than writing when you’re in the flow, and that’s when I DO love writing - but that doesn’t happen to me as often as I’d like, haha!

How do you choose your titles: I don’t have a set way as you can see:

The “does what it says on the tin” approach (A Marriage Of Convenience; A Fake Date at the De Launcet Mansion; Carver and Merrill Go On A Picnic (Along With Everyone Else); The Templar And The Blood Mage; Truth Or Dare)

A newspaper title that inspired a prompt (Local Man Returns From Trip, Discovers Boyfriend Adopted 25 Cats)

After an artwork (The Courtship of Daisy and Junior)

Shit puns or wordplay (A Shit Time To Be A Templar; Employer Relations; Open Book)

A phrase from the fic that best sums the whole thing up (A Pirate’s Touch; A Chance Engagement; You Are Cordially Invited; A Growing Lack of Disgust; To Rule Over Him; The Maker’s Will; like twine unravelled and many more)

Overall subject (Cupcakes; Poker Face; The Masquerade; Pancake Day; Table For Two; Touch; Major Arcana)

A quote from Dragon Age 2 (Hook Hands Make For Awful Penmanship)

and much more rarely, adapted from a book or song title (Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?; Sweet Like Chocolate; Bright Lights, Big City, Blind Date)

Do you outline: Not for one-shots - but I try to for longfics after coming hopelessly unstuck in the first one I attempted and having to abandon it.

Ideas I probably won’t get around to, but wouldn’t it be nice? So many, OMG. Hot Maths Professor Carver (inspired by real-life hot maths professor turned model Pietro Boselli) and University Student Merrill, maybe? I have a whole load of shit maths puns and innuendoes especially about modelling wet steam flow for that fic idea 😂

EDITED TO ADD: This, by the way, is Pietro Boselli:

Callouts @ me: Just write the fucking thing; your writing is nowhere near as bad as you think it is (and if it is? Well, then, go and improve it! Don’t sit on your arse and whine LMAO).

Best writing traits: Thanks to my job as a professional writer/editor, I have a thick skin and can take constructive criticism... although I must add that so far the very rare times I’ve had any criticism on my fanfic, it has often been so far from being constructive to be totally useless 😂 (I will forever be known as the writer who “didn’t write Fenris sexily enough” in a Carver/Merrill fic.)

Spicy Tangential Opinion: To quote @cartadwarfwithaheartofgold: ‘Every single kudos, like, reblog, or comment is special. I know it’s easy to focus on the “quantity” of them - but each one represents a real person that one of my stories has emotionally resonated with.’

Manka puts this much nicer than I would, although I gotta add that I am fed up of the entitled attitude of many writers I see on this website, who don’t take much care over their writing or don’t take much care to be kind or encouraging to their readers, and then blame and berate their readers and audience (or potential readers and audience) for not giving them the exact validation or feedback they expect. Respect goes both ways. If you shit on your audience, then don’t be surprised when you eventually don’t have one.

---

I can’t remember who has been tagged or not so I apologise in advance, but I will tag.... let’s see.... @pinkfadespirit, @varghaxa, @lesetoilesfous, @hawkeish, @in-arlathan, @uchidachi, @midnightprelude, @veorlian, @blarrghe, @natsora, @charlatron, @lauraemoriarty, @jentrevellan, @laraslandlockedblues, @kagetsukai and anyone else who wants to do this! ❤️

#fic writer meme #long post

30 notes · View notes

pluviophile-imagines · 4 years

Text

Not a Proposal

in which you've been dating dabi for long enough that you know he's not the marriage type. you've also been dating him long enough to know he likes to surprise you

dabi x reader

word count: 1.9k genre: fluff type: one-shot reader: neutral (no pronouns, neutral terms, neutral clothing) warnings: none

positioned in almost a crescent around you, his head was head propped against his hand to watch you intently.

you spoke up eventually, breaking the silence without turning to him. “you’re staring.”

“i’m gonna marry you,” was dabi’s response, said suddenly but with no less than absolute certainty.

Navigating a relationship with an A-ranked villain was, to put it simply, far easier than it really ought to be.

Though to be honest that might have been because of who you were dating. Dabi wasn’t exactly what you’d call high maintenance; the rocky part was breaking through his prickly exterior and officially beginning said relationship. Once that was done, it was surprisingly smooth sailing.

Sure, he was gone most days. Dates had to be on the down-low, at your apartment or in seedy bars that wouldn’t question your boyfriend’s infamous appearance. And though he technically lived with you, his personal effects were kept in a duffel, easy to hide or destroy in an emergency. Not to mention how difficult it was to get ahold of him; he’d contact you through burner phones, never able to keep one of his own, sometimes showing up at your apartment without notice.

Like this morning. He hadn’t texted in over a week; you weren’t very worried, though if a few more days had passed you might have begun keeping a keener ear out for reports of his arrest (or, heaven forbid, death). You were roused from your slumber by the sound of someone in your apartment, just past the closed door to your bedroom.

You swung your legs over and stood up from your bed silently, grabbing the nearest item that could vaguely be used as a weapon. Slowly opening your door, you peeled around the hallways corner to find your boyfriend in the kitchen.

The irony in how much you calmed down at the sight of Dabi, one of Japan’s most wanted criminals and member of the League of Villains, didn’t escape you. As you breathed a sigh of relief, relaxing your tense posture, Dabi paused his work and turned to you.

He set down the chopsticks in his hand, raising an arm silently to beckon you into his hold. You obliged, unable to keep the smile off your face as you ran to him and threw your arms around him. Closing your eyes, you buried your face into the crook of his neck and took a deep breath to inhale his distinct smell like wildfire—teakwood and ash and smoke.

You pressed a featherlight kiss to his shoulder, mouth quirking up into a smile as he gave a responding press of his lips to your temple.

“You weren’t supposed to wake up,” he said, voice low. “I’m not even close to being done with breakfast.”

“Mmm,” you hummed in response, “don’t scare me half to death by breaking into my apartment, then.”

“It’s my apartment too, dollface. Can’t break and enter into my own place.”

“Didn’t you lose your key three months ago? I know you jimmied the window.”

“What’s a little b and e to give my baby some b and e?”

You groaned at that, pulling back as punishment for the terrible pun. “That was awful. Just. Completely horrifying. Holy shit, why am I dating you?”

“My stunning good looks and morals.” Dabi deadpanned, raising a single eyebrow.

You leaned in to kiss him for real, locking lips for the first time in over a week and sighing happily against them. You felt him relax against you even more than when you’d hugged him, and for half a moment you almost expected him to give up on breakfast and simply carry you to your bedroom to celebrate your reunion.

He pulled back, though, and through your breathless panting you managed to gasp out, “You’re right about that first one.”

Dabi picked up his chopsticks again, using them to point back to your bedroom. “Go back to bed, dollface. I’ll bring breakfast to you.”

“What if I wanna stay out here and watch?”

A cock of his head, a raise of his eyebrow, once more setting the chopsticks on the counter—that was all the warning you got before he lunged. You yelped as you stumbled backwards, smile wide on your face, just barely avoiding his first attack. You didn’t stand a chance against the second. His arms snaked around your waist, pulling you back towards him, and you melted into his body, throwing a hand back to meet the back of his neck and pull his head down to his shoulder.

“No, no.” He shook his head and spun you around in his arms. You didn’t have a second to regain your wits before he was tossing you over his shoulder and making his way back to your bedroom. “I said you’re going back to sleep.”

You were laughing, too happy to care that the motion was jolting his bony shoulder into your stomach. When he deposited you on your bed, you reached out, intending to pull him down with you.

Dabi was too fast, though. He grabbed your hand, tugging it toward him until you cradled his cheek, then turning into it to press a kiss to the center of your palm.

It was a surprisingly sweet motion from him. Such… softness was rare, but it seemed like it came more and more often as time went on. The thought made your heart flutter.

He left you in that daze, returning to the kitchen where you couldn’t see him but heard the process. You never went back to sleep, instead remaining sitting with the covers pulled over your lap and your phone in hand.

He returned within half an hour, proudly displaying the breakfast he’d made (and it did include eggs, but did not include bacon, a fact which you smugly pointed out to him). As you ate it, he was uncharacteristically quiet—not uncomfortably, just apparently basking in the moment, lounging with his long limbs spread out on the bed. He was positioned in almost a crescent around you, head propped against his hand to watch you intently.

You spoke up eventually, breaking the silence without turning to him. “You’re staring.”

“I’m gonna marry you,” was Dabi’s response, said suddenly but with no less than absolute certainty.

You choked on the rice you’d just put in your mouth, head whipping to face him and find that his expression displayed some strange combination of devotion and resolve that you’d never before seen grace his married face.

“Not that I’m complaining,” you choked out finally, “but where the fuck is this coming from?”

He gave a toss of his shoulders, something like a very Dabi-like shrug of disregard that lacked any form of malice, and pushed himself up to sit in front of you, still boring into you with that intense electric blue stare. “You wanna get married eventually, I’m stupid in love with you, you’re hopelessly into me. It’s pretty straightforward. I’m gonna marry you.”

He made it sound so simple, like all he had to do was make the decision. It wasn’t like you hadn’t had the conversation before, in vague, no-strings-attached terms—it was how he knew you wanted to marry, eventually. But that conversation had been months ago and you’d begun to think you weren’t going to, because you soon realized that Dabi was the only person you wanted as your husband and, well, you’d long come to terms with the fact that he neither could nor wanted to get married.

Except, apparently, that wasn’t true. Because here he was, declaring not only a desire to marry you but a confident intent to do exactly that.

“People normally ask, babe,” you settled upon saying. “Yanno, pop the question, get down on one knee, usually a ring involved. I don’t think it’s a proposal if you’re not proposing.”

“I’ll get you a ring,” he responded, like that was the most important thing to take away from your statement. “I’ll buy it for you, I won’t steal it. The money might be stolen, or otherwise immorally obtained, but the ring’ll be for real. So you can actually wear it. Show it off.”

You blinked, brow furrowing. You’d been dating for two years, sleeping with him for six months before that, and not once had you ever thought he’d have actually proposed to you. Ever. He just wasn’t the type. But that didn’t mean you hadn’t fantasized about it. Sure, for many people, marriage meant very little. Devotion wasn’t defined by a ring and a legal document. It meant something to you, though, and your heart was melting at the fact that he knew how much it meant to you.

“You can’t get married,” you said finally, practicality seeping in. “You’re a wanted criminal, babe. And I’m not keen on getting legally tied to some fake identity. I wanna marry you, Dabi.”

“You will.” He nodded, so assured it made you want to laugh deliriously. “I’ll figure everything out.”

“It doesn’t have to be legal,” you pondered. “Just find someone ordained, I guess. There’s gotta be someone in your circles.”

“I think Mr. Compress is.”

You did laugh at that, visions of a full Western ceremony with his band of villains making up the wedding party. Toga as the flower girl, Spinner as the ring bearer, Twice walking you down the aisle, Shigaraki making a godawful best man speech.

“Something funny, dollface?”

You shook your head. “Think Shigaraki would take you out on a bachelor’s party?”

“That virgin?” Dabi made a face. “No. ‘Sides, I don’t think elopers get bachelor’s parties.”

“It’ll be small,” you said, moving the tray of food out of your way to pull your knees up to your chest and rest your head on them. “Just the two of us and your buddy.”

“Witness,” Dabi reminded you.

“Hmm.” You hummed. “Think my fish would work?”

“No.” Dabi snickered, shuffling closer to you until his legs brushed yours. “Maybe I’ll show up at my family home, strongarm my brother into coming. Just him.”

“Older one?”

He nodded, leaning in further to press his forehead to yours. “You always said you wanted to meet my family.”

“Kidnapping a man to witness the wedding of his long-dead brother to someone he’s never met isn’t quite what I was imagining.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers, dollface.”

You closed your eyes, sighing contently. “We’re really doing this?”

“Yeah.” The bliss in Dabi’s voice was almost palpable. “Gotta get you your ring first. How d’you feel about sapphires?”

You snorted a laugh. “He asks as if he hasn’t gotten me exclusively sapphire jewelry for two years.”

“It’s your ring.”

“Sapphire is perfect. Same color as your eyes. Nobody needs to know except me and you.”

“Our little secret.”

You kissed him, leaning in to eliminate the space between your lips, and he answered with the same level of excited, desperate passion.

He really wanted to marry you. The thought flooded you with so many emotions you weren’t sure what to do with yourself.

When you pulled back, though, the giddy adrenaline-filled feeling of knowing how much he cared ebbed down, and that dreaded practicality settled in.

“We can’t. Not right now. I’m sorry.”

Dabi sighed, resting his forehead against yours once again. “Yeah. Not now. I know. But eventually.”

“Get me that ring. I’ll wear it for as long as it takes.”

His mouth quirked up in a smirk, and this time he initiated the kiss, just as intense and lingering as the last. “Goddamn I love you. And I’m gonna marry you, dollface, even if it’s on my deathbed. That’s not a proposal. It’s a promise.”

“Not a proposal,” you repeated, smiling wide. “A promise.”

#dabi x reader #bnha imagines #dabi imagine #bnha x reader #mine.🌧#char.🌧 dabi #fic.🌧 not a proposal

815 notes · View notes

hypnoticwinter · 3 years

Text

Down the Rabbit Hole part 28

A scratchy little voice is crooning in my ear. Major Fracture Detected. Joint Dislocation Detected. Pneumothorax Detected. Blood Loss Detected. Mild Nerve Damage Detected. T. Jacksonii Spore Residue Detected. Diagnosing…acute deceleration injury. Poisoning. Spore inhalation. Begin treatment?

There’s a little friendly dinging tone. Someone near me shifts, and then I feel a warm hand slip into mine momentarily and squeeze. For a second I’m willing to let myself believe it might be Elena, but then I run my thumb lightly over the knuckles pressing against my fingers and give that up right away. This hand is much too soft to be Elena’s.

I try to crack my eyes open but it’s far too bright for that right now. I’m having a little bit of trouble thinking straight. And a little bit of trouble breathing but for whatever reason it feels as though wherever I am right now is very far away and separated from the rest of my body. I can feel a stab of pain on the right side of my chest whenever I take a breath but at the same time it’s as though I’m observing it from such a far distance that it barely is of significance. Maybe it’s happening to someone other than myself.

Begin treatment? the voice repeats and next to me the person holding my hand sighs and says my name. I recognize their voice but not who they are.

“Are you awake?” they ask, and I try to say something but my tongue is very thick and heavy. I swallow hard; my throat hurts.

“Roan,” they say again, “I don’t know if you can hear me but I’m going to have to start the treatment procedure soon, okay? You really did a number on yourself falling off that cliff, and then the spores you’d been breathing in for about three days weren’t helping any.”

I try a little harder to say something but I know it doesn’t come out right.

“This might feel a little weird,” the voice says. Now I do recognize it; it’s Makado.

Begin treatment? The tiny scratchy voice says again and this time Makado shifts next to me and hits the button. There is a hiss and a whine of moving machinery and then a sharp prick in the skin above my hand. I make a little noise, try to move my hand away, but something hard has grabbed onto it and isn’t letting me go.

Sedative administered, the voice says, and then everything fades very quickly. I have just enough consciousness left, circling the drain as it is, to feel Makado’s hand slip from mine, and then I am moving, or rather I am being drawn into something, and then something comes down over my head and cradles my neck. It’s very dark and I feel as though I ought to be afraid, but before I can open my mouth to voice my fears, to scream perhaps, I flutter out entirely.

* * *

I can hear talking. I’m laying in a bed curled over onto my side and in the other room I can hear talking.

My head is remarkably clear. I breathe in deeply and let it gust out slowly through my nose. There is a mild ache in my ribs, nothing more.

“Yes,” Makado says, “I’ve got her. No, she didn’t give me any trouble. She’s pretty beat-up, a kitten could have knocked her out and carried her up to the surface.”

A pause. I open my eyes with an anticipatory wince but the light is cool and grey and clinical, filtering down through a sheet or curtain drawn around the bed; there is a wide-paneled fluorescent set into the ceiling but it’s switched off.

“No,” Makado says, after a pause, then repeats. “No, that won’t be necessary. Just be ready to receive us, that’s all.”

There’s an IV in my hand and the jaw of a heartrate monitor clamped around my finger. I think about it for a moment and then reach down and take it off. The machine the IV feeds into gives an interrogative chirp.

“Yes, I have the handcu - hang on, she’s awake.”

I hear the screech of a chair sliding back along a hard floor and then a door opens and someone comes in.

“Hey,” Makado says softly, and I almost feel like crying. “You okay in here? You awake?”

“Makado,” I breathe, and she pushes back the curtains and sweeps her eyes over me, then blows her breath out.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m – I’m good,” I say, taking a moment to think about it. I sit up a little more fully and yawn. My jaw cracks like a gunshot. “How long was I out for? And what are you –“

Makado laughs. She motions at my legs and I scoot over a little, let her sit down at the foot of the bed. “So, um. You were out for about a day and a half. That’s how long it’s been since you fell off the cliff.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. I brought you down here,” she gestures, “put you into the autodoctor unit that they had, let it do its thing. It isn’t ideal but it uses a ton of ballast, so I figure you probably feel pretty decent, at least. When we get out of here we’ll get you to an actual doctor for a checkup.”

“Autodoctor?”

“It’s an old Anodyne thing,” she says. “DUSA has the last functioning one, they get a little use out of it. Runs off an old AD biocomputer. It was supposed to be for a military contract, put a bunch of them overseas, hard to reach places. Can do surgeries and treatments and diagnose like that,” she says, snapping her fingers. “Not a lot of flexibility, though. But plans fell through of course and the few that were left are museum pieces now. The one they’ve got here is the last working one.”

I chew on that for a moment. “DUSA?” I ask finally.

“Oh, right. This place,” she says, gesturing. “Dura Urgens Staging Area. DUSA. Some people call it Medusa. As like, a pun.”

“That doesn’t really help me understand what it is.”

Makado nods. She reaches up and runs a hand through her hair; I’m busy watching her eyes. Something about this place is important, I think; something here means something to her.

“Below us,” she says finally, “about eighty or a hundred meters down, is the largest known nerve bulbule in the Pit. There might be others someplace else, someplace deeper, someplace we haven’t explored yet, but this is the biggest one we know of. The Pit doesn’t have a brain the way you or I do. Whatever common ancestor it shared with humans, if it ever had one, was so far back that it was before the development of the central nervous system. The Pit uses a distributed nervous system instead; it has nerve bulbs all over the place and they handle reflexive and autonomous reactions for the general area that they’re in. Then, you move deeper by another five hundred meters and you find another bulb. It’s like a web, or a road network, and all of these bulbs are the cities.”

“But this one below us is the biggest.”

“Yes. That doesn’t mean it’s the main one, just that it’s…bigger. Handles more things. And DUSA – well, there’s a reason that they put it right over the big one.”

I blink at her. “Wait, is this where the - ?”

“The Contingency Plan?” she says, clearly saying the words with big important Capital Letters. “Yeah. That’s here. This is the facility for it.”

Something about the way she grins at me makes me shudder. I think back to the story Peter had told me – god, poor Peter – and his horrible descriptions of the way that the contingency had fucked their brains. I look at the woman before me, at the mottled flesh beneath her eyepatch and the hearing aids poking their heads out of her ears, at the acid burns and digestion marks lining her arms like vitiligo, and I can’t reconcile her tiny excited smile with the picture I had of her when Peter was telling me about her.

I blow out a big sigh and flop back in the hospital bed. There’s a warning twinge in my ribs and I wince; Makado picks up on it instantly. “You alright? Do you need anything?”

“No, I just – how was that thing able to fix me so fast?”

She shrugs. “Lots of ballast. The tank was still nearly full when we got here, it used a few gallons on you it looked like.”

Again I shudder. I’m trying not to think back to the horrible, terrifying crawl through the tight, sucking, fleshy tube to the ballast bulb, about the abject terror I had felt when Crookshank had crawled in there with me.

Crookshank…he’d be dead now, almost certainly. I realize that I don’t remember seeing him die, I don’t remember what happened to him. My memory of the attack down in the barrows is just streaks of gunfire sliding by my faceplate, the rhythmic, chest-squeezing thundering of the slug rifles, and the shrieks of the copepods. I wonder for a moment whether I’m going to have PTSD, whether I’ll ever be able to eat lobster again. I shake my head.

“Mak, this is fucked.”

“What is?”

“This whole – this whole thing. This is –“

“Relax,” she says, putting a hand on mine. I can feel the cool, clammy skin on the inside of her palm where the acid had burned her. It feels like something that’s been microwaved about twice as long as it needed to be and then let to cool down and I have to stop my lip from curling. “It’s not active. Not yet, anyway. Once we get that crystal back we can go about getting it carved down and –“

“I don’t think that crystal’s going to be an option any more.”

I tell her, briefly, about what happened after Erica and Marcus had ambushed us, how they had shot the Sergeant, how they had shot Elena and gotten us separated. “Do you know where she is?” I ask, realizing with a faint feeling of guilt that I hadn’t asked already.

Makado stares at me. “Who?”

I blink. “Elena. I don’t know where she is, did she – did she make it out?” The thought of Elena laying there hurting somewhere in some throbbing corridor of this place is almost too much for me to bear. Or worse, laying there dead –

I break the thought off like a plank of rotten wood. She is not dead. She can’t be.

I almost missed the calculating look that had flashed across Makado’s eye, and I realize I’ve grabbed onto her arm rather tightly. I let go but even so I can’t stop myself from biting my lip out of sheer worry. “She’s fine,” Makado says finally.

“She is?”

“Yeah. She came stumbling into Control a few days ago, they got her up to the surface, far as I know she’s still in the infirmary. That’s how I knew to come down and get you, she told us what was going on.”

“Oh thank god,” I blurt. I hug my knees to my chest and squeeze my eyes shut. She’s okay, I tell myself. I can feel the tears coming but at least this time they’re out of relief. After a moment I hear Makado sigh again and then she shifts closer to me and puts her arm around me.

“You must really like her,” Makado ventures after a moment. I laugh but it comes out as more of a sniff.

“Yeah,” I say after a moment. “Yeah, I think I – I do, yeah.”

For a short while it feels as though Makado doesn’t know what to say. Then finally she shakes her head. “I’m sorry,” she tells me.

“For what?”

“For dragging you into this,” she says. “I never thought that all of this would happen, it was going to be just routine,” she says, massaging her temples. “The copepods, they never would have done anything if it wasn’t for the damn Leechman, they never would have attacked, nobody would have had to die…”

“It isn’t something you could have predicted,” I say gently. Makado continues on as though I hadn’t spoken.

“And then Erica, goddam Erica, Christ…”

“She was doing what she thought was the right thing,” I say. “I don’t think she meant for things to go the way they did.”

“That doesn’t really make it any better,” she groans. I think about Peter again and wish fervently that he were here. I lean back and navigate my arm around so that now I’m the one holding Makado.

“I’m sorry about Peter,” I tell her.

Makado is utterly silent. She’s looking away from me, over into the other room. I can see the muscles at the base of her jaw working as she grinds her teeth. For a moment, just a moment, I get a feeling of foreboding. She seems horribly angular and purposeful and mean all of a sudden, sitting there at the foot of the bed like an axe about to fall on me. I start to say something else but she looks over at me and nods. Her eyes are very hard.

“Yeah, I’m sorry too. It sounded like a rotten way to die.” I look over at Makado, look at her carefully. She glances over at me after a moment. “What?”

“Nothing,” I say finally. I swing off of the bed, get up and stretch. “I feel good,” I observe.

“Yeah,” Makado says, rising to her feet as well. “With that much ballast in your system you’ll probably be riding pretty high for a couple of days at least. Now, be careful though, because –“

“What are we going to do about the FBI?” I ask her. I undo the hospital gown and let it fall, gaze down at myself. There’s a ragged weal of a scar along my ribs on the right side but it already looks long-healed. I put my weight down on my other foot and nearly stumble. Makado gets up and rushes to me but I caught myself on the railing around the cot.

“You alright?”

“Yeah, my leg, it –“

“I was going to tell you,” she says. “The autodoc wasn’t able to set it properly. You’d fallen on a calcium deposit and your tibia and fibula broke. It cleaned out the fragments of bone but there wasn’t enough left to just set it and let it heal, so it put in a synthetic replacement, used ballast to meld your skin and muscle around it, but that leg is going to be weak for a long time.”

I sit back on the bed, reach down and feel the leg. It doesn’t feel much different but whatever caused the weakness is still lurking inside there, maybe a muscle not connected properly, maybe something else. I can feel a dull, bone-deep throb of pain, steady and regular and hard-edged, just waiting to boil up to the surface the second I put a foot wrong. I shake my head.

“I’m going to need like, a boot or something. If we have to climb out of here –“

“We’ll figure it out, it’s okay. I just wanted to tell you before you, you know, figured that you were totally fine.”

“What about this?” I ask, turning to her, pointing to the scar across my ribcage. “I know that wasn’t there.”

“Just repair work on a rib, I think. I read the summary it spat out after it was done but I’m pretty sure it didn’t reinflate your lung by going through your rib cage.”

“Jesus Christ,” I murmur, craning my neck and squinting down at it.

“Are you breathing alright?”

With only a little trepidation I take a deep breath and hold it, then let it blow out long and slow. There’s a little pain when I hold it, in the right lung only, and then as I’m nearing the tail end of the breath it rattles somewhere deep down, but I shake my head. “A little rough but it’s okay.”

“You need to know that you’re still a little, you know, doped up. Ballast would have kept most of the pain down and kept your head pretty clear but that’s going to come back with a vengeance if you overdo it.”

I nod. “Alright, I get it. Take it easy for probably the next year or so.”

“There’s an extra jumpsuit over on that chair.”

And so I get dressed, and eat a nutrient bar and Makado shows me around DUSA. I have to hang on to her every now and then when my leg threatens to buckle beneath me but she bears it without complaint and lets me hobble around with my arm around her shoulder like we’re old friends.

DUSA looks just like all of the other ranger stations I’ve been in so far, if maybe a little cleaner. She shows me the door to the room that has the big scary capital-letter Contingency Plan inside of it, but even though I ask she won’t let me in to see it.

Outside the inch-thick windows the Pit’s flesh is squeezed tight against the walls. A few small stents hold it back here and there to let a metal gantry and corridor file through and out into a vent but otherwise it’s like this place was just cut open and the small lozenge shape of DUSA was slipped in and then the Pit grew back around it. Unlike some of the other ranger stations this one is tall rather than wide, maybe four or five floors of various facilities. There’s a dormitory, a kitchen and eating area, the small infirmary with the autodoctor, now revealed as a squat, many-legged machine a little like an MRI machine and a metal octopus had a baby, and on the fourth floor room after room of workstations with dark screens and dusty keyboards. Servers lie dark and dormant, tucked against the walls and tied down with cloth straps.

We end up sitting on the roof of the place, after Makado opens the hatch and lets a ladder telescope down from the recessed sheath it was hiding in. She helps me up it methodically and then we’re there, the fleshy wall of the ceiling barely a dozen feet above our heads. It gives me a sense of disorientation somehow, like I’ve just crawled upside down from the bottom of DUSA and am now standing with my feet glued to the ceiling, staring down at the floor. I blink hard and it passes.

Makado leans out over the railing and groans. “Everything’s fucked,” she growls. “This whole place ought to be full of people, getting things ready for when that crystal gets here. Instead it’s just me and – and you.” She’d gotten more and more pessimistic the further into our little tour we’d gone. I reach over and put my arm around her. She stiffens when I touch her and then seems to relax. I feel rather comradely, I feel like laughing. I guess I had convinced myself that I was going to die and now that I’ve received an unexpected reprieve I can’t hardly believe it.

“It’ll be okay,” I tell her. “What’s going on with the FBI?”

“Admin’s stalling them, but they’ll come back with a writ or a warrant or something and when they get their hands on our files there’ll be some shit. Right now they’re fighting with the DoI guys over jurisdiction, I think.”

“DoI?”

“Department of the Interior,” she says, waving her hand. “Normally that’d be who would handle this type of thing, they’re in charge of National Parks, but the FBI want in because this isn’t a park any more, I think technically it’s a preserve or something and that’s different…somehow. Not sure on that one.”

I nod. I start to say something else but Makado heaves a huge sigh, glances sidelong at me. “There might be some trouble but I think we’ll be able to get you out of it,” she tells me, and I laugh.

“I’m more worried about you. Klaus said they were gunning for you, that you were going to go down hard.”

She rolls her eyes. “We’ll have to see,” she says. “Especially if he’s dead, it might be a little more difficult for that to happen.”

I get a little wrench in my stomach as she says it but I swallow hard and let it pass. I did what I had to and if I hadn’t I would be dead.

I wonder for how long after this I’m going to be seeing that grin and that knife in my dreams.

“So he was a mole, then?” I ask. “That’s basically what he was saying.”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “He’s been here for a long time, Klaus has. I don’t think he ever was, you know, an undercover FBI agent or anything, I think he was just their guy on the inside. An informant. I read his personnel file, he’s an ex-con. It makes sense that there was someone giving them information but…” she trails off. “It’s hard to say,” she finishes. “It’s too bad, though. Too bad we didn’t get that crystal. We could have done a lot of good with it. If they just hadn’t shattered the first one…”

We sit there on the roof of DUSA for a long while, until Makado finally groans and gets to her feet. I glance up at her and then take the offered hand, let her pull me up. “What happens now?” I ask.

“Now?” she laughs. “Now we get out of here.”

* * *

Getting out is easier than getting in. Makado gets me into a ranger suit and we march off into the wet, tumescent depths of the Pit. Except, as Makado explains to me, we aren’t nearly as deep as I think. DUSA is far higher depth-wise than the dense fungal hell I thought I was going to die in. When I asked her how I had gotten here, then, she explained, as though it were simple, that she had just taken an IAV.

Peter had mentioned them briefly, the acronym standing for something like ‘Internal Anatomy Vehicle’ or similar. I’d even seen some, parked down below in the meager garage at the control center, what feels like ages ago, lurking like snub-nosed, aerodynamic lozenges, there in the dark. But here is one of them, its big chunky wheels soaked in gore, its prow stained red from apparent hours pushing panicked through venterial folds, rushing to DUSA with me in the passenger seat, strapped in as tightly as Makado had dared.

“It was tight,” she tells me. “I wasn’t sure you’d make it. I went as fast as I possibly could but it was still a near thing.”

“It was those fucking lizards down there,” I mutter. “I touched one, they’re covered in some kind of – poisonous goop, I don’t know what –“

“Yeah. The autodoc scrubbed your system and breathing clean air for long enough got the spores out as well, but you’re just riding on the ballast right now,” she reminds me, pressing a combination on a keypad near the low-slung waist of the vehicle and then stepping back to let the hatch open. It smells like oil and disinfectant but I clamber in eagerly. The interior is space-age, or at least it would have been in the 90s or so. The interior lights are all in red for some reason; when I ask Makado about it she explains it’s to help maintain low-light vision while still letting you see. When she grins at me her teeth reflect back cherry-stained and I have to shake my head to keep from thinking of it as blood. She looks carnivorous, hungry, frightening.

The ride is bumpy but uneventful. Once Makado flattens something that looks like an overgrown louse the size of a small pig. It shrieks as the wheels crunch over it. I glance over at her and she shrugs. “We’re in a hurry,” she explains.

After that we lapse into a comfortable silence that grows slowly more frosty the closer we get to the Control Center. I can see it approaching on the three-dimensional map readout on the dashboard, a blinking line of waypoints leading us back to the garage. Makado’s answers become shorter and shorter and eventually I just stop trying to make conversation at all. She’s just tired, I tell myself.

After we park Makado helps me out of the IAV and guides me up a set of stairs and into the Center. My leg twinges a little whenever I really put weight on it but if I limp it isn’t nearly as bad. The stairs are rough though, and I have to cling on to her and take them one step at a time just to get up them.

Over the last hour of driving or so I developed a little bit of a headache but when I mentioned it to Makado she nodded and explained it was probably just the ballast starting to wear off. It’d keep me going for a while longer but I’d need to rest and let my body heal. I had grinned. “Fine with me,” I told her, and she offered me a faint smile and then turned her attention back to the wet, bloody folds ahead of us, nudging the nose of the IAV through one muscular ribbed sphincter at a time.

The stairs take us to sort of a tool room or machine shop, and then we pass out into a hallway and then up some stairs that I recognize. Beyond the next inch-thick submarine-style door is the control room, still as messy as a few days ago, with two or three of the geeks present before still in residence. They look up when Makado enters but make no comment other than a perfunctory greeting or two; clearly we’re expected. Then I step into the room and catch nothing but eyeballs.

One of the nerds frowns. “Wait,” he asks Makado, staring at me, “is that…?”

I start to answer but Makado nods, shuffling me along with her hand in the small of my back. “Yes, it is,” she assures him, but the look he gives me after she does so is more than a little confusing. I glance at Makado but before I can say anything there is a burst of pain in my leg that forces a groan from my lips and makes me stumble. Makado catches me before I fall and then I’m good again. My leg feels like it’s made of glass, or rather that it’s two glass blocks stacked on top of each other, and if I’m not extremely careful about how and where I put my weight they slide apart and the most excruciating -

“You okay?” she asks, and I nod.

“Yeah,” I grunt. “Once I’m out of here I will be.”

“They already called the elevator down,” she tells me. “I radioed ahead for us. Twenty minutes and you’re through.”

“And I can see Elena?” I ask. I feel a little like a baby saying it but it just tumbled out when I opened my mouth to say something a little less pathetic like ‘thank goodness’ or similar. Makado stiffens next to me fractionally, and I frown. “Are you –“

“Yes, you can see Elena.”

We hobble out of the control room and down the corridor to the gondolas. I don’t even know how to feel; I don’t even know what time it is, whether or not it’ll be light out. Something about the way Makado took too long to answer has me worried, though, and I glance over at the woman as we make our halting way towards the waiting gondola car.

Her jaw is clenched tight and though I can’t see her one good eye from the side I’m on, I can see her brow is downcast and furrowed. I lick my lips and try to quell the sudden stab of fear that’s gone through me. “Mak, is Elena…is she okay?”

Makado opens the door to the gondola and helps me inside. “She’s fine,” she tells me. “Just try to rest. Sit down on the floor if you need to.”

As soon as she says it, as if on cue, a wave of exhaustion passes through me and it’s all I can do to keep myself standing. Makado shuts the door and fiddles with the controls for a moment and then with a sickening lurch we’re moving upwards, and with the motion it’s as though all the tension exits my body. Even the twinging in my calf doesn’t seem quite as bad now that we’re moving. I look at Makado and she offers me a tight smile. “See?” she says. “We’ll get you out of here soon.”

“And Elena’s alright?”

Makado doesn’t meet my eyes. “She’s fine,” she tells me again, but the way she says it just makes me worry more.

“Do you promise?” I ask her. She looks up from her wrist computer.

“Hmm?”

“Do you promise,” I say slowly, “that Elena’s alright?”

Makado stares at me and I see something dark and unnameable shifting behind her one remaining eye. After what feels like entirely too long she nods. “Say it,” I prompt her. “Please.” I know it’s irrational and stupid but the way she’s acting is like she’s hiding something from me, it’s like she’s –

“Roan, calm down,” she says. Her voice is smooth and serene. “Elena’s fine.”

“Promise me she is,” I whisper.

Makado takes what feels like a moment longer to respond than she should. “Okay,” she says finally. “I promise.”

“Okay,” I say. I try to will myself back to the relaxed, relieved state I’d been in as soon as the gondola had started moving, but I can’t find it. Makado’s put enough worry into me that I feel like a spiky ball of it, hard-edged and serrated. I eventually do take her advice and sit on the floor and rest a while.

I try to make conversation with her but the answers she gives me are flat and eventually we both let it peter out. I assume she’s nervous about the FBI and the investigation I’m sure she’ll go through. I already told her on the way up that I didn’t mind hanging around and giving a statement or whatever else they need exactly, but it barely seemed to make an impact on her. Maybe it’s Peter, and if it is, I don’t know what to say to her that could possibly make it better.

But I go ahead and stick my foot in my mouth anyway. “Mak,” I say, breaking the – well, not silence exactly, for the grinding and swaying of the gondola is far from quiet, but my words still seem overly loud inside the car, “are you okay?”

She blows a breath out and looks at me. She starts to say something, then stops. “I’m sorry,” she ends up telling me, and I frown.

“What for?” I ask. “I know it didn’t – it didn’t go how it was supposed to but none of it was your fault, you couldn’t have predicted –“

“No,” she says. Her voice has a catch to it as though she might start crying. “It isn’t that. It’s – look, can I show you something?”

“Sure.” I’ve got no clue where she’s going with this. Outside the window I can see the first hint of real sunlight that I’ve glimpsed in probably about four or five days, pouring down into the Pit like an orange cascade. It’s far-off and dim but it’s real. Looks to be somewhere around the middle of the day or so. Makado reaches down for me and with her help I manage to clamber to my feet. I’m still a little unsteady on the right leg but I think it’s getting better. I think I just needed to rest it for a while. “What is it?”

“I’ll show you,” she says. “Turn around real quick.”

“What are you –“

“Just do it,” she nods. Her eyes flick over to the window then back to me. “You’ll miss it.”

So of course I turn, not thinking anything of it. I hear her shift and then come and stand just behind me. There’s a clink of metal, a small subtle sound. I don’t see anything out the window.

I start to glance back at her and then she grabs my wrist and tugs it backwards and snaps half of a pair of handcuffs around it. “What!” I blurt, jerking away from her before she can grab my other hand. Her face is tight and calculating.

“Give me your fucking hand,” she snarls.

“Makado, what the fuck –“

She punches me. I see it coming but I don’t react in time. Her fist slams into my gut and the breath whooshes out of me in one go, folds me over like a pressed shirt. I reach for her and try to slap her back but she grabs my hand and then she’s got me by the wrist – her grip is like iron. I bring my leg up and knee her in the hip and she grunts, but then she draws her leg back and kicks me in my newly repaired calf and the explosion of pain is so intense that I scream. I draw my leg back and falter and then fall to the floor, landing heavily on my elbow, and then Makado grabs me and heaves me over onto my stomach, jarring my leg again and forcing another scream from between my teeth as she cuffs the other wrist.

“What the fuck!” I yell, as soon as I’ve caught my breath.

“I’m sorry,” she says, breathing heavily, smoothing off the front of her suit. “I’m really, really sorry.”

“You fucking bitch!” I shriek. “You fucking bitch, get me out of these fucking cuffs!”

“It wasn’t anything personal,” she says, sounding more like she’s trying to convince herself than she is trying to convince me.

“You bitch!” I say again. I apparently become rather uninventive when I get stabbed in the back. Makado growls, a low wordless snarl, and then rolls me over onto my back. The cuffs cut into my wrists, sandwiched between myself and the floor, and I cry out.

“Shut the fuck up,” she tells me. Her voice is icy calm and that scares me more than anything else she could have said. “I have to give someone to the FBI. I have to let someone take the fall.”

I open my mouth to say something and she puts her booted foot over my throat and presses down gently. I can feel the blunt cleats on the bottom dig into my neck. I try to wriggle away but she just puts a little more of her weight onto it and then I can’t breathe and so I stop, staring at her desperately, hoping she has the sense not to choke me.

“There is too much at stake right now,” she says, “for me to go down for something as fucking stupid as human trafficking. Especially when my contribution was just looking the other way. So you’re going to go down for me. That’s all. There’s still a chance I can get that crystal back but I won’t be able to if I’m rotting in a federal prison somewhere.”

She takes her foot off my throat and I heave the air in while I still can. “Tell me,” I wheeze. Makado looks down at me. “Tell me you weren’t lying about Elena. Tell me she’s okay.”

Makado is silent for a long while. “I lied,” she says finally, in a small voice. “I knew you wouldn’t come with me if you thought she was still in the Pit. I don’t know where she is or if she’s alive. The tracker in her suit is dead and nobody’s heard from her in three days.”

The gondola grinds to a halt and the doors hiss open, and sunlight and fresh air pour in. I hardly notice. Makado steps over me and walks out while I lay there, my hands cuffed behind my back, bawling my eyes out, and then three men with badges and pistols come in and pick me up and carry me off somewhere. I don’t notice where, I don’t see it. All I can see, my eyes squeezed shut in a vain attempt to keep the tears from leaking out, is Elena, poor Elena, trapped somewhere at the bottom of the Pit and calling out my name, not knowing I’ll never come.

Continue with Part 29

Back to Table of Contents

#mystery flesh pit #writing #writeblr #alt lit #spilled ink #mystery #thriller #original writing #caving #disaster #Michael Crichton

17 notes · View notes

thewritewolf · 3 years

Text

Old Ways, New Age Chapter 4

A major akuma attack hits and Ladybug has to seek out heroes to wield the miraculous if they will have any hope of stopping them.

@marinettemarch

Enjoy!

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5

Read on Ao3

“As much as I hate to say it… the best place I can hide it is in my own room for now.” Ladybug sighed and looked at her partner with a serious expression on her face. “Do you think you can hold off the akuma long enough for me to take this back?”

Chat Noir was staring off into the distance, where the head of… something… was poking over the buildings. His tail swished behind him, low and lazy. He nodded.

“I’ll do my best to keep it distracted.” His eyes landed on her. “Hurry back though, okay?”

“I promise. Now get going, and I’ll meet up with you as soon as I can.”

With a grin, Chat Noir gave her a quick salute and leapt off the roof. A moment later, he soared back into view, propelled by his extending baton. She watched him go for a few seconds longer before taking out her yoyo and swinging away.

On the way back, her mind was racing. She had been banking on hunting down Namdak to keep the miracle box safe - but now she was going to be distracted by the akuma battle for who knows how long. Would he be bold enough to try again? If she hid it somewhere else in the city, would he be able to find it? Or would she end the battle only for it to have vanished?

The thought of some random civilian - or, even worse, an agent of Hawkmoth - finding the miracle box outside during the coming battle sent shivers down her spine. No, she’d tuck it in her room and hope that the same paranoia that made the Guardians so cautious would keep the box safe for tonight. At least then if it disappeared, she could be sure it hadn’t fallen into Hawkmoth’s hands.

She’d hidden it away the best that she could and was about to leave her room when she got a call on her yoyo. Lowering her hand from its throwing position, she backed into a corner before opening the yoyo to answer the call, ensuring that the view of her room was minimal.

“Something up, Chat?”

“Uhhh yeah I don’t think-” A wall of noise from an explosion nearby on his end drowned him out. “-and we’re gonna need some help on this.”

“Help?” Ladybug blinked down at his video image. “How much help?”

“Um…” The scene behind Chat was a blur thanks to his running and even her partner was a little hard to make it with how the screen was shaking. “How about two? Someone strong—” He cut himself off to duck and the wall behind him burst into rubble. “And maybe some insurance, too. Are there any healing miraculous?”

Ladybug cupped her chin and narrowed her eyes. “I’ll see what I can do. Can you keep it busy for a little while longer?”

Even in the middle of a fight, he took a second to flash her a grin. “For you? Anything.” A shadow fell over him and his grin evaporated. “Gotta go, LB!”

His screen went dark and she put the yoyo back on her side. Her mind racing, she pulled out the miracle box from its hiding spot and looked over the miraculous at her disposal.

This was the first time they’d had to call on new miraculous heroes since the Miracle Queen fiasco - everyone she’d already brought out was out of the running for now. At least with the miraculous they’d used before.

Someone strong… The physically strongest miraculous was Stompp, the Ox kwami. Hopefully that was what Chat meant. On the bright side, since she had never called on it before, she could give it to practically anyone she wanted.

As for insurance, well… she wasn’t aware of any healing abilities outside her Ladybug Cure, but the ability of the Snake miraculous, Second Chance, was a good runner up. Although that did mean that Luka and probably Adrien, too were out of the running.

Her eyes widened with realization. The two she had in mind might not be the perfect fit for the miraculous, but they would be the best fit she had. After checking her notes for her friends’ schedules, she hid the miracle box away as best she could and hoped that she could bring down this akuma in time.

-----------

Ladybug landed at the front door of a gym. Quips and puns could just barely be heard above the explosions and maniacal laughter of the akuma of the day, none of which was all that far away from where she was standing. Even more worrying was the occasional tremor that shook the city - was it a giant amok, or a tunneling one? Practically everyone with any sense left was long gone.

Which just left those who were too caught up in their own competition to worry about something as trivial as an akuma attack.

Upon entering the building, she peered into the various exercise rooms looking for her duo of potential heroes. Despite being inside, the sounds of battle still reached her, driving her to move faster in locating them. As much as she wanted to keep them separate for identity purposes, she had no idea if Chat would be able to hold on that long.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she opened the door to a basketball court to see the two of them locked in the middle of a game. One which only had a passing resemblance to basketball, judging by Alix’s rollerskates and the obstacles set up on the court.

Alix noticed her first, giving her a double take as she tried to dribble across the court.

“Ladybug?!”

The price for her inattention came immediately when she collided with Kim. Ladybug watched the basketball bounce forlornly past her and hit the wall. Clamping down on the last minute doubts she had about them, she walked over to the pile of athletes as they were trying to get to their feet.

“Woah!” A grin spread across Kim’s face. “Did you come to coach our match, Ladybug? Pipsqueak over here could definitely use some pointers.”

Finally getting her skates under her, Alix shot a glare at him. “You wanna try that again, airhead? Cuz the scoreboard sure as hell doesn’t agree with you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Kim snorted and crossed his arms over his chest. “Not my fault you’ve got all those dirty tricks to get ahead.”

“You-!”

“Cut it out and listen to me!” Ladybug had enough of their bickering at school - she wasn’t about to tolerate it now. “There is a big fight going on and we need help. Who’s in?”

“Oo, oo, pick me!” Kim raised his hand and put the other on Alix’s head and shoved her back slightly. “I, uh… Let’s just say this isn’t my first lap around the pool.”

Kim gave an obvious and exaggerated wink to Ladybug, who could only pinch the bridge of her nose in exasperation.

Alix rolled her eyes. “She said she needs help, not someone that she’ll need to babysit. Besides,” Alix added with a knowing grin. “I’ve been hoping to hop into a fight for ages now. Know what I mean, LB?”

Ladybug put her hands together to cover her face, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. When she felt a little more composed, she looked back at them.

“I’ve got two miraculous here - the fight is going that bad. Are you still interested?”

Alix and Kim looked at each other for a moment before nodding. Ladybug gave them each her usual speech and handed them the miraculous - the Snake for Alix and the Bull for Kim. Both seemed surprised at the specific miraculous they got, but took it in stride.

With two new heroes in tow, Ladybug rushed out of the gym and hoped that she would make it in time.

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

As he examined the locking box trap that had captured his hand, Master Namdak took a moment to respect the chosen of Creation. Fire and boldness were likely pairs when dealing with those who wielded the miraculous, but deviousness and cleverness were a rare pearl.

Sadly for her, mere tricks were not sufficient to guard the miracle box - another reason why it needed to be returned to the order.

Tapping the box twice with his staff, the hinges flew open and the trap dropped to the ground, leaving the miracle box securely in his hand.

He leapt out of the room and stood on the rooftop. Deep in his bones, he knew that he needed to leave for Tibet soon. The journey was long and the return home would be equally as arduous. He stood still, quietly taking in the scenery. His eyes roved the horizon, taking in the sight of a city from two hundred years in the future.

Which was when he saw the villains that had been so helpful in acquiring the miracle box. They were locked in a desperate battle against the heroes of this city. Despite himself, Master Namdak was drawn closer to the fighting. Even setting aside his time spent removed from the world, it had been long decades since he had last seen the miraculous in action. Curiosity could not be ignored.

He watched from a rooftop as a team of four heroes battled against the puppets of the butterfly and peacock, saw the ebb and flow of the battle.

Master Namdak had long years of experience - he could see the clash of personalities apparent on the heroic team. By all rights, a lack of cohesion ought to have been enough to destroy them.

And yet... despite that, Tikki’s chosen held them firm. They followed her instructions without question, no matter how baffling they might seem. Her knowledge of the miraculous strengths was astounding as she used each power of her allies like a familiar tool in her armory. If circumstances were different, perhaps she could have been a Guardian as well. Perhaps even risen to the rank of Master, like himself.

But they fought a losing battle. Even with aid, Master Namdak knew that they were on the backfoot and edging closer and closer to defeat.

He turned to leave.

Long moments passed, but he could not take a step forward.

He looked over his shoulder at the heroes battling against evil, his heart torn between duty and compassion.

#Miraculous Ladybug #Ladybug #le chien kim #max kante #Chat Noir #Marinette March #ml fanfiction #my writing #Old Ways New Age

11 notes · View notes

writteninsunshine · 2 years

Text

Put Your Dick Into It - Fizzarolli/Asmodeus, RoboFizz/Fizzarolli - NSFW

Title: Put Your Dick Into It

Author: Keith

Fandom: Helluva Boss

Setting: Ozzie’s Home, Ozzie’s Club

Pairing: Fizzarolli/Asmodeus | Ozzie, RoboFizz/Fizzarolli, Asmodeus | Ozzie/Original Female Character(s)

Characters: Fizzarrolli, RoboFizz, Asmodeus | Ozzie, Original Female Character(s), Original Male Character(s)

Genre: Erotic/Romance/Humor

Rating: E

Chapters: 1/1

Word Count: 3103

Type Of Work: One-Shot, Day 4 Of 30 Days Of Fizzarozzie

Status: Complete

Warnings: Gay, Slash, Yaoi, MLM, AU - Omegaverse, AU - A/B/O, Teasing, Theft, Minor Violence, Minor Injury, Unsanitary, M/M/M/M/M, M/F, Ozzie Has A Dick Balls And Vagina, Fantasies, Public Sex, Exhibitionism, Macro/Micro

Disclaimer: I don’t own anything except the RoboFizzes

Summary: If nothing else, one of Ozzie's weird poems could probably be put to music.

AN: Hey guys, it’s me again! Just thought I ought to say, if you want vague updates and to talk to me more, I have a writing Tumblr, too! Twitter is Sunshinecackle, and Tumblr is Writteninsunshine! I also have a writing Discord that is currently pretty dead. xD If you want it, please contact me on Tumblr/Twitter!

I had so much fun with this, I hope y’all like it. It was meant to be so much shorter but in the end I just went where the prompt took me.

30 Days Of Fizzarozzie 2022 Fic Masterlist

Put Your Dick Into It

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

This had to have been the hardest thing he’d ever been asked to do, no pun intended.

Composing jokes and stand-up routines was something he’d always been adept at. He could improvise with the best of them, he’d made all kinds of demons and sinners alike laugh and smile with his creative prowess. Hell, he made Ozzie laugh and smile at least once every day.

And yet, here he was, incapable of a single. Fucking. Word.

Scrubbing his hands over his face, his mechanics whirred in their own form of a growl and he thought he just might combust. He’d never hit a creative block in his entire life, and here he was, struggling to put anything down on the fancy, lacy stationary he’d been staring at for the last two hours. The sides were covered in red swirls, dots, and hatched patterns that he’d laid down absently while he struggled to find words. He’d colored in the white lace against the deep red border in a few places, anything to move the pen in his hand. The pale pink lined portion in the middle remained untouched save for a scant few red dots at the top of the page.

A frustrated grunt left him and he pulled his hands down his face, snarling at the wall across from him as if it was the reason for his upset. Glaring at the ceiling of his bedroom that he didn’t usually use, he strained his ears to hear the telltale scraping of Ozzie’s couch on the wooden floor as he slammed it into the wall. Sure was easy for him to fuck whoever’s lights out while Olli was down here suffering. He didn’t think he was necessarily jealous-jealous, but man did he think a good dicking would help his mood, at least. The demon no doubt getting plowed up there was definitely having a better time than he was.

After a moment, the jester finally turned his attention back to his impromptu art project, and with another growl, he thunked his forehead into the desk. Twice, then a third time for good measure, he gave a deep whine as he turned his head to the side, staring at the bedside table across from him. Usually, the sparse decoration and lack of character in this room didn’t bother him, but he suddenly had the bright idea to look up furnishings and decorations that weren’t so generic.

Maybe ‘generic’ wasn’t the right word for the different pinks, greens, reds, and blues that covered every surface and made the room pop. The room dripped sex appeal, like any room that Ozzie graced with his creative eye, but Fizzarolli had never really made ‘his’ bedroom his. Almost from the first night he’d started staying here he’d stayed in Ozzie’s room, and that had never really changed.

The bedroom in the basement housed his clothes, as it was easier than using an Ozzie-sized closet, and he used the bathroom down here most of the time, too. Showers with Ozzie were taken in the en suite bathroom connected to the King’s room, but if he took them alone, he was down here. Most of that was due to this part of the house being, for the most part, imp-sized. Well, imps and anyone else just as small and likely delicate as an imp. Ozzie had probably seen too many demons fall into his toilet before deciding to just get one the right size for them.

The thought made Fizzarolli snicker, and he picked his head up from the desk, shaking his head. If only he could be spending his requested time sequestered away in the basement of Ozzie’s opulent home not being sequestered away to work. For a moment, he let his mind wander. Who was up there with Ozzie? Knowing his lover, it could be literally anyone, and maybe that was the welcome distraction he needed.

Verosika, maybe? Nah, he couldn’t hear her moaning. Whoever he had couldn’t be Mammon, either, because he was a shrieky thing whenever he knew Fizzarolli was still home. The power behind whoever was doing the fucking could have been Paimon, he realized, and he screwed his eyes shut to see if he couldn’t hear Ozzie begging for it. That, he was sure, would tell him everything he needed to know, but he also recognized that any number of gags could be employed here.

This was taking him nowhere. He had to have these stupid lyrics done for tonight, and he hadn’t even started. Perhaps smashing his face through the desk and putting himself out of commission for a few days was the only way to make it through this. His hands gripped the burdensome wood firmly, and he raised one lip in disgust at himself. No, no, he couldn’t hurt his dashing clown face. It was half of his ability to make money, and something that Ozzie was intensely attracted to.

Not that he didn’t think that Ozzie wouldn’t pay out the ass (even if he had to make a deal with Mammon) to get him plastic surgery to fix the damage.

Finally getting up, he figured he’d try a drink and a snack (and a peek into the living room) to see if any of those things helped. He was banking on the peek as good fuel for his work because a sandwich and some soda weren’t exactly sexy, but he didn’t really know. It all depended on the show put on for him, he supposed. If Ozzie caught him staring, it’d only get better, too. He was nothing if not a performer, too, which was why they worked so well, Olli thought. Both of them couldn’t resist putting on a show.

Taking the stairs three at a time, he figured that the faster he escaped his self-made prison the better. Maybe he was just running from it, but he wasn’t going to admit that. He’d never done this before, never had such a hard time with his work, never wanted to hide from it, and it was driving him batty. Rounding the doorway and walking into the kitchen, he closed his eyes and sniffed the air. Omega, he noted almost immediately. From the sounds they were making, he’d guess female, and she was getting absolutely ruined.

An envious pang of arousal shot through his body and he sucked in a deep breath through his teeth. The Alpha’s scent soured as he stalked to the fridge, extending his legs so he could reach the handles to get his sandwich stuff. The freezer being on the bottom was easier for him to get into, but he couldn’t be fucked with cooking right now. He had work to do and he was already distracted enough. The continued thudding, the quiet begging on her part, and the hushed purr that was leaving Ozzie had him a little more growly than he wanted to think about.

How many times did he forget his place in making a simple ham sandwich? Hell’s Gates, this was ridiculous. What was he going to see if he poked his head into the living room? Some pretty little succubus on her back? An imp on her side, one leg curled up against her side and the other up and folded back against her chest? Absently, he mused that it didn’t matter what anyone else could do for Ozzie, they couldn’t even dream of being as flexible as he was, even before his arms and legs were removed and replaced.

Fond memories crashed into him and he just about dropped the jar of mayo onto the floor. As far as he was aware, Ozzie hadn’t noticed he was in the main floor of the house, and he kind of wanted to keep it that way. He heard the thrumming hum of Ozzie’s voice but couldn’t make out his words, imagining the kinds of depraved things he was saying to the Omega no doubt writhing beneath him. He felt his cock flip against his thigh, closing his eyes for a second to relish in the music they were making. He needed a drink and to stop making a Satan-damned mess, and he had to keep moving, but it felt impossible.

Whatever Asmodeus had said brought a gagged cry out of the girl with him, and it perked Fizzarolli up a little more. If he could just get to the vaulted ceiling, and he could do it, a little peek over the wall dividing the kitchen from the living room wouldn’t hurt. Ozzie had liked the gap between the wall and ceiling enough to remodel the damn house for it, and Olli had to admit it wasn’t that bad of an idea. Walking over the center island he’d made his sandwich on, he shot up to place his hands on the wall, watching Ozzie as he moved.

Regardless of who had the reddish pink leg wrapped loosely around Ozzie’s slim hips, she was getting absolutely destroyed. Anyone Ozzie deigned to bring home, client, fling, or otherwise, typically left with jelly for legs and a dazed kind of crush. A soft chitter left him as he watched the steady pounding of his lover’s hips, and he clenched down on nothing, exhaling until his lungs burned and holding it. If he spent any longer staring, he was going to start stinking up the place, so he returned to the counter to grab his sloppy snack. Putting everything away could wait because he’d decided on going to Ozzie’s room instead.

With a soda in hand and his sandwich leaving behind a trail of mayonnaise drips behind him as he bit into it, he hung right to take the few steps up to Ozzie’s room. Not particularly into the idea of leaving them behind, he found himself hesitating up each step to the door. There was a somewhat long landing between the two sets of three stairs, and he took it with delicate, small steps like he just might decide to go and ask for a threeway. Like that would go well.

He didn’t recognize the Omega’s scent, which told him that it was most likely a client that wasn’t going to want to pay an extra wad of cash to include him. Ozzie always jacked the price up impossibly high when Fizzarolli joined them, and so many of his johns and janes just didn’t request it. That was mostly the point, really, because Ozzie knew how he felt about other demons.

Opening the door to their room (he was more than ecstatic to call it that in his head), he listened for a moment to see if he could hear them. The robotic voices he recognized as an odd extension of his own chatted away in the side room off the main bedroom, and he made a beeline to them. Maybe one of the RoboFizzes could help him out. They were made for sex, so they could do this, right?

“Hey, guys–”

“Heeeeeeeey, Fizzy~” One of them replied coyly, almost immediately dropping his arms and the toy he held in both hands. For a second, he pressed it lengthwise against his crotch, notably resting it on his dick, before drawing it up to his chest to hug it like it was a plush toy, “We weren’t doing anything.”

“Yeah,” Another added, the one that looked the oldest of the four. Ozzie had said that his were prototypes, save for one of them that had been the first finalized version off the line.

“We’re behaving.” The newest one nodded definitively as he grinned, making an attempt at looking innocent despite the way his face was moving into a devious grin.

“Don’t worry about us, we’re just schemi–” The last RoboFizz was hushed by the first three, and Olli just rolled his eyes.

“Shut it, I don’t care. I need your help with something else, though.” His hands shifted from his hips to his chest, arms crossing as he looked away, “I have to write a song to sing at the club tonight, and I can’t figure anything out. I don’t know how to do this shit, and it’s killing me. Apparently, I can’t write a Satan damned song for the life of me.”

Each of the robots glanced between each other, their smiles falling slightly as they whirred and one’s processor grumbled a little. It was something they couldn’t seem to process because they knew that Fizzarolli’s blood was performance.

“Why can’t you do it? You’re usually good at that kind of thing.” One of the older models spoke, the red stripe down his face indicating he’d been the second prototype.

“I don’t fucking know. I’ve been staring at a blank page for two hours, and I can’t get my mind wrapped around doing anything for this.”

“Your brain’s empty?” The newer model asked, taking a step forward and placing a hand on Fizzarolli’s shoulder as an act of sympathy. A green stripe in the same vein as the others reached down his nose to denote which one he was.

“It’s like all my creativity just got zapped out of me. I can compose a stand-up routine easy peasy, I’m the best at improv, I can do anything with a simple prompt, but… This isn’t working for me.” It probably had to do with his lack of interest in sex if Ozzie wasn’t involved. Maybe if he thought more about fucking Ozzie he’d get somewhere, but that felt so personal it was hard to put details into something like that. Everyone knew they fucked, there was no way they didn’t, but letting people think something and confirming the thing were two totally different animals.

The RoboFizz with a purple stripe stepped forward, handing the giant dildo over to the yellow-striped one, leaning forward to catch Fizzarolli’s fallen eyes.

“You can do it, you know. I know you have it in you somewhere.” He paused, suddenly straightening up and snapping his fingers up near his face, “Wait! I have an idea.” A chorus of ‘yeah’s and ‘what?’s filled the room as the other robots crowded around them. Purple’s grin only widened and he preened at being the center of attention, “Why don’t you borrow some of Ozzie’s dirty poetry?”

“His… His what?” Olli’s head tilted and his eyes went wide, “He doesn’t write poetry. …Does he?”

“Oh, he does, and it’s juicy, could probably turn anybody into jelly without getting touched.” All four of the robots moaned in sync and Fizzarolli snorted with amusement. Really, he didn’t get the appeal of them being such sluts, it wasn’t like he was like that. Though Ozzie had a very different opinion on that thought. It didn’t take long before his favorite lay was a begging, whining mess most of the time, Ozzie didn’t even have to try. Just being wet and hard was enough for Olli, and Ozzie couldn’t help but take advantage of that as often as he could.

“Alright, where is it?” Fizzarolli watched as all four bots left the room, some of them bouncing and Green cartwheeling excitedly to the large, heavy wooden desk against the wall with the door to the bedroom. Extending his legs and leaping up onto it, he tugged at a sizable binder, bringing it over to where Olli stood on his elongated legs.

“Here you go~ This binder has the,” He paused to make a loud kissing sound in a chef’s kiss, “Crème de la crème of his work. This’ll get anyone in the club wet and hard and if it doesn’t, they shouldn’t be there.”

The robot wasn’t even lying. Fizzarolli wasn’t usually one to use their expertise, but the four of them were happy to help him choose a poem and handle what it did to him. He had his lyrics, now all he had to do was get some music to go with it.

That night at the club, he sang his song like it was the most normal thing in the world, only citing that he had a little help with it from an anonymous ‘donor.’ During his spectacular performance, all Ozzie could do was smirk, because he knew who that ‘anonymous donor’ was. He absently stroked himself through his act, unable to find any anger inside his body. It really was hot. When his musical number was over and he’d announced the next act, the whole club reeked of horny Alphas and Omegas, and he knew he’d done a good job. Bounding up to Ozzie’s balcony, he grinned up at him like he knew what he’d done and wouldn’t be repenting for his egregious sins.

Ozzie loved that about him.

“Thought you were above plagiarism, Olli Baby.” He growled playfully, placing a hand on either side of Fizzarolli on the balcony, pinning him down against it. If nothing else, Olli knew he was hard, not just by his scent but the visual as his enormous cock bobbed right in his line of sight, dribbling onto the floor.

“Whose words are better than yours for something like this? It was a fuckin’ hit, too.” And he really wasn't wrong. Asmodeus chuckled darkly as he leaned in, nuzzling the other’s face before nipping his shoulder.

“If you wanted to use my work you should have asked. People are going to think I was the thief when I publish my collection. I’ll be forced to leave that one out.” He almost sounded pouty, and Olli purred loudly.

“You’re not mad at me, right?” Looking up his nose at the other, trying on the cutest face he had in his arsenal.

“No. But you are going to be punished for this.”

“Ooooooh, yes.”

“Turn around, pants off, and bend over Baby,” Ozzie growled, and Olli jumped to do it, whipping around and shoving his ass out with a delighted chitter. Shucking his pants, he whined as his cock slapped wetly against his stomach, no doubt staining his top.

“Good boy,” Ozzie purred into his ear, “See? You can behave. But a little good behavior won’t end your sentence.”

“I’ll accept my punishment like a mo-model citizen.” Feeling Ozzie thrusting against his stomach had his eyelids dropping to half-mast.

“Good. I’m going to ruin you right here, and you better not make a peep.”

“Y-yes, Master.”

Not that Ozzie was going to make it easy for him. No, Fizzarolli was going to struggle, he was going to have to suck on Ozzie’s fingers to keep himself quiet, and Ozzie was more than looking forward to it. If someone stared, so be it; They both loved to be the center of attention, anyway.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

AN: For a fic that was meant to be 1k or under, this became a damn monster. I still like it, though, it was so damn fun to work on.

Prompt: 30 Days Of Fizzarozzie Day 4 - Song

#Helluva Boss Fanfic #Helluva Boss Fanfiction #Fizzarozzie #Fizzmodeus #Helluva Boss Fizzarolli #Helluva Boss RoboFizz #Helluva Boss Asmodeus #Helluva Boss Ozzie #November Sierra Foxtrot Whiskey

6 notes · View notes

thanksjro · 4 years

Text

More Than Meets the Eye #18- Rung Psychologically Tortures a Man with Poor Snack Management

So, Swerve’s having a less than stellar day, and for once it isn’t linked to his deep-rooted sense of self-loathing.

Good thing he already emptied those stills, otherwise this would be just the hugest mess.

Thanks to some off-panel Whirl shenanigans that took place prior to this storyline, Swerve had Brainstorm put in a few security measures. Of course, Brainstorm being Brainstorm, never does weaponry in any half-measures.

Still, it isn’t quite enough. Looks like Swerve’s going to have to break out the big guns for this guy.

There’s a lot going on here, so let’s break it down.

On the character side of things, it would appear that Swerve is a merciful god of robot booze, as he’s not yet banned anyone from his small business, even when he probably ought to- Fort Max I get, and Whirl has the whole “is also an Autobot” thing going on, but Cyclonus has actively attempted to murder Swerve in the past, and also is the closest thing to a Decepticon they’ve got on the ship at any given time.

On the weaponry side of things, it would seem that Swerve having blown his face clean off his skull back in issue #12 got back to Brainstorm, who- because he’s married to his career and loves a project- immediately got to work on a gun that Swerve could actually handle with his funky little cartoon-man hands. Of course, that doesn’t mean Swerve’s going to get away with his dignity intact, oh heavens no! This thing has a literal smiley face slapped on the front of it. Well, you know what they say: it’s Nerf or Nothing.

Swerve blasts a hole in the Legislator with his silly, silly gun, and the bar is saved from further destruction.

I like to imagine that Brainstorm recorded that victory line himself, because he wants to support his friends, in his own, bizarre way.

Things are looking rough for the rest of the Lost Light, as the Legislators have completely flooded the ship with their forces, as the crew do their best to fight them off. Blaster’s had his titty compartment blasted open. Huffer is screaming. The medics have taken to violence. Skids has broken out the brass knuckles and is making god-awful math puns. The Legislators are still coming, without any end in sight. It’s a real shitshow.

Over on Luna 1, it would appear that Ratchet immediately passed out after seeing Pharma, which is a fair response to seeing someone who’s supposed to be very much dead, I think. Pharma calls Lockdown, they have a bit of banter, and then the scene moves on to whatever Cyclonus and Whirl are doing.

Because these two are the only ones on the away team who can actually fly, they’ve broken off from the rest. Whirl’s getting antsy, and decides he’s gonna fight something. Cyclonus, though he does mention that Rodimus told them not to do exactly what Whirl is suggesting, seems to agree with this line of thought.

Speaking of Rodimus, him and the rest of the gang are zipping around on those M.A.R.B.s, though it appears as if some of the passengers have switched drivers. Rung’s over with Chromedome now, holding on to him for dear life. Maybe they’re having an impromptu grief counseling session as they run from danger. Tailgate’s with Rodimus, and he’s just pointed out that Ratchet got left behind. Rodimus can’t deal with that right now, though, and decides that they need to get away from all these gotdang Decepticons and then figure out their next step.

Then he’s distracted by the literal lineup of dead Titans just hanging out on the moon.

Luna 1’s kinda fucked up.

Cutting back to our framing device- nope, still haven’t gotten caught up with the present yet- Ambus asks what Rodimus did next. Well, a lot happened. A lot. Chromedome jumped out of his therapy session with Rung and transforms into his alt, which I want to say is the only time he’ll do it in MTMTE. Whirl and Cyclonus are faffing about in the sky, more or less toying with the Decepticons following them. Rodimus wants to pull another Fantastic Voyage, much to Tailgate’s horror.

Rodimus zooms into the first crack he sees, but doesn’t manage to lose his attackers. Tailgate provides commentary, as Rodimus wraps the little guy around his neck like a cape, leaps from the M.A.R.B., and does some super sick gymnastics, hanging from a pipe jutting out of the ceiling as the guys who were chasing them run into… well, I assume each other, but it’s not terribly clear.

Crisis avoided, Rodimus drops down, transforming as he does. Tailgate goes with him, because gravity is still a thing on the moon, and we get a reminder that he’s only got a couple days left to live. Unfortunately, it would appear he’ll be spending his final days rotting in a prison cell, as Lockdown shows up with everyone else in handcuffs, forcing Rodimus to come quietly. Everyone seems very put out by this whole situation, especially Brainstorm. He’s downright furious, probably because he got captured by the guy with a fish butt on his head.

Oh, the indignity of it all!

Then again, maybe he’s just focused on working up the cajones to ask just what the hell is going on on this super weird moon. Lockdown obviously isn’t a bad enough dude to be running this operation- we saw what happened the last time he went against someone who actually had the time to plan something out- so our away team has deduced that there’s someone higher up on the food chain here. Also, there’s the whole issue of money clearly being a major factor in all this.

That sort of tech doesn’t just fall out of the sky.

As they’re being walked down this corridor of tension building, Chromedome spies Ultra Magnus in an adjoining hallway. He calls to him, but is very solidly ignored. But there’s no time to worry about Magnus being a rude shit, because it’s time for character reveals!

There’s an interesting little detail about Tyrest’s character, which is a little hard to see given the layout of the art for this page, but here it is, on the end of his staff:

Now, I know that the Autobot badge was appropriated from a symbol meant to represent Primus, but that was millions of years ago. So much for being a neutral party, huh Tyrest?

Rodimus is real peeved about being chased, shot at, arrested, and held against his will, and fully intends to give Tyrest a piece of his mind. Tyrest isn’t interested, however, telling him to shove a sock in it, or be “held in contempt.” While this is happening, Perceptor and Brainstorm have noticed the positively humongous and positively ancient space bridge that Tyrest just has lying around in this room.

Oh no, this is about the baby field from last issue, isn’t it? Brainstorm’s going to jail for infant arson.

Rodimus greatly dislikes this whole situation, and expresses himself through the art of verbal abuse. Smash cut to them back in the cell, Ambus not seeming terribly impressed with how Rodimus handled himself with Tyrest.

The tale is finished, we know where we were. Now how to move forward?

Chromedome asks for a bit more information on our new friend, because the whole “Ambus” thing is throwing him off, and with good reason: how do you tell your late husband’s ex that you had to blow up your mutual partner to keep him from being eaten by a lippy bastard? But this isn’t the illustrious Dominus Ambus- this is MINIMUS Ambus, the lesser known brother. Chromedome/Dominus isn’t completely taken off the table, however, as Minimus uses some awkward phrases that seems to tell me Dominus isn’t confirmed dead.

Rung wants to know what Minimus’ whole deal is, seeing as he’s also in prison with the lot of them. Minimus explains that he’d been moving a shipment of energon derivatives, when Tyrest had arrested him for having traces of space cocaine in his goods.

Was taking his eye really necessary, Tyrest?

Minimus was placed into custody years ago, and has been awaiting trial this whole time. Not exactly sure why, seeing as this moon isn’t exactly off the chain populated. Maybe Tyrest’s just been busy doing things that are absolutely NOT nefarious in any form or fashion whatsoever.

Minimus mentions that he’s lost his Autobot badge, and Rung offers to let him borrow his own- which we’ve never seen him wear because it’s apparently too big for him- but Minimus would rather he wear it himself.

Tailgate doesn’t take to this bit of information about the appeals system very well, seeing as he’s not got years to wait around. He’s beginning to panic, not trusting Cyclonus and Whirl to break them out, and starts needling the others to do something. Brainstorm reveals that his briefcase, which he’s had this entire time, as he always does, has an attention deflector built into it, making it effectively invisible to Tyrest and his goons. Rung feels a certain kinship with the briefcase in that moment.

Imagine walking up to a widower and saying “Hey there, honeybunches, how about submitting to that crippling addiction your late spouse begged you to quit so we can bust out of prison?”

Of course, Tailgate’s only told Cyclonus about his condition, so no one’s exactly raring to go busting out, since they’ve assumed everyone present is effectively immortal.

Over on another part of the moon, Ratchet’s finally waking up from his stress-induced nap to find Pharma channeling his inner Jigsaw. Ratchet gives him some constructive criticism on his new hands, but Pharma’s kind of over listening to whatever Ratchet thinks.

Oh, I hope it’s one of those gag gifts where you open it and get hit in the face with a pie. Those are always a laugh.

Back on the Lost Light, Swerve is looking for his very best friend in the whole wide world. I really hope the feeling is mutual, because there’s no way Swerve would survive that sort of rejection.

The doors to the oil reservoir open, looking like the elevator scene from The Shining, and we see what’s become of our dear, dear Skidsy.

Skids is pretty sure all this Legislator nonsense is because of him, and he’s not about to let people die for his sorry butt today, no siree. He’s gonna save the day.

Then again, this is about where Star Saber pops into existence behind him and stabs him through the spine, so maybe not.

Behold, a bastard!

Star Saber in the IDW run is well-known as being a witch-hunting zealot who can and will commit acts of violence over any perceived slight against Primus he identifies in any given living creature. This is a stark removal from his original character, who is so pure-hearted, kind, and generous, he literally adopted an orphan to raise as his own son. So, what exactly happened here?

TMUK happened.

Back in the days before Roberts was a professional scriptwriter, back before IDW had the license for Transformers, the members of the TMUK fan group decided that Victory’s Star Saber was going to be evil. Why isn’t exactly clear, only that it was a decision that was made not by Roberts on his lonesome, but more as a collaborative effort. Of course, this Star Saber isn’t a one-to-one copy of the TMUK Star Saber- that guy was much more conniving and, uh, Hitler-y, than what we have here.

Getting back to the story, Swerve tries to save/avenge Skids, firing with his custom gun, only to miss every single shot.

Looks like there’s going to need to be a rework on the My First Blaster.

Swerve gets beaned over the head with the butt of Star Saber’s sword for his troubles, his visor shattering in the process. Damn, sure hope he’s got a reading prescription, and not anything he’ll actually need to see.

Back over on the moon, Ratchet’s pretty uninterested in playing Pharma’s little game. It’s just as well though, because, as it turns out, Pharma’s an impatient guy. Must be an absolute nightmare during the holiday season and birthdays. He throws open the box, revealing what’s inside.

THAT IS NOT PIE.

But we saw Ratchet’s face over on the other side of the room. How can he be in two places at once? Well, here’s the thing about Transformers…

They’re pretty darn hard to kill.

Back in the cell, Rung’s doing his part as a member of the away team by passing out snacks. Tailgate reveals his awful garbage disposal mouth. We get the down-low on Tyrest.

Once upon a time, Tyrest was an engineer. Then the war happened, shit got crazy, and suddenly he was organizing exoduses and peace talks with genocidal maniacs, and got appointed Chief Justice by the space pope himself.

Rodimus comes over to get in on the little snack party Rung and Tailgate are having, mentioning the Aequitas Trials- the very ones that were recorded onto Ironfist’s brain back in Last Stand of the Wreckers. Minimus comes over, warning Rodimus to keep hush-hush about those, since they’re top secret and all. Kind of a weird thing for you to do, Minimus. Hell, why do YOU know about these super secret trials, Mr. Nobody Trader Guy? Those were after Dominus disappeared, so it’s not like you had an in through your cool older brother.

Rodimus gives everyone the skinny on the trials, despite Minimus being weird about the whole thing.

Perceptor knows all this already, but I suppose it’s possible Rodimus is the only son of a gun who isn’t subscribed to Wreckers: Declassified and isn’t aware of Perceptor’s whole deal.

Minimus moves the topic over to the crew of the Lost Light, latching on to Skids specifically the moment he’s mentioned. Rung does his due diligence and offers Minimus a ride on the snack train. Minimus declines, Rung insists, and the box of space pocky is dropped on the floor.

Minimus goes to help Rung pick up the snacks, as Rung actively hinders the clean up effort.

Minimus is two seconds from snapping Rung’s scrawny little wrist like a toothpick if he doesn’t quit it. Luckily Rodimus is there to break up this positively bizarre situation. And then things get really weird.

Rung’s been watching Minimus since they got here, noticing things that were very familiar- speech patterns, mannerisms, tone, inflection, OCD behaviors, things like that. Once he developed enough of a hunch, Rung started intentionally antagonizing him by making a mess and putting his Autobot badge on in a way that isn’t up to standards. Why would he do this? Why would he want to cause an outburst in someone he just met?

Well, the thing is, he hasn’t just met Minimus Ambus. He’s actually been serving under him for the last year.

That’s a rather dark use of your doctorate, Rung, forcing a man to reveal his true identity by poking at his mental health until he was about to snap your neck over some candy. You did it so well, too.

Maybe you were on Kimia for more than just psych evals. What was your career officially called again? Psyops specialist is what they have listed on the Wiki. Truth be told, I don’t even know what that entails. Let’s look it up, shall we?

...I guess therapy is his side gig?

So either Roberts meant something else entirely, or Rung is actually super fucking scary.

#transformers #jro #mtmte #remain in light #issue 18 #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #overthinking about robots #incoming analysis #comic script writing

82 notes · View notes

p1nkwitch · 3 years

Text

Originally two parts, but i want to finish the mini saga and go back to the hijinks. One last serious bit left and we are into crack territory again!!

@nonbinaryeye

YOU ARE NOW PETER LUKAS

He starts the scratch.

Using his wind powers he lifts the Quills of Echidna and starts to cut the mechanism in Oliver's land that should send the signal to skaia to start another game. It's not exactly easy and a bunch of giant imps appear to try and stop him. Most of them he can send away with forsaken the others he has to kill manually, which is rather annoying.

Still he is half way through with it when the imps start agonizing out of nowhere.

Looking around he sees something start to come out of their shapes, it looked almost like-

Well if he was being philosophical? It looked as if someone was sucking their souls out of their bodies and putting it in a bunch of small boxes that fall around him.

Their bodies remain still and empty.

Oh no.

“Oh yes” He has seconds to dodge a hit to the head with that fucking 8Ball question cane, before Elias tries to beat him up again.

Peter hides in forsaken thinking that it was strong enough to keep him out of sight of Elias, but just like his own powers got a boost, Elias did as well, because the next thing he feels is searing pain in his head and the lonely being torn apart around him pulling him out.

I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW YOU

Fine. If Jonah wants to start a strife he will accept.

Peter is done with this annoying little man.

They spend quite the long time just trying to hit and hurt each other as much as they could, Elias even attempted to use his heart powers to steal him too like he did with the imps, but Peter merely uses the air to shove him around making it impossible to focus.

In the end its merely tiredness that wins, Jonah slips and Peter who has always been bigger, and now with the other in his original body, was even more so, knocks him down keeps him in the ground while he struggles and tries to fight him off.

He merely pushes him back and grabs the stupid cane from him.

“You know, i just asked for one thing only and that was for you to leave me alone. To finally get out of my life and to never see you again. But no, you can't do that cant you? You have to come around to try and be the biggest pain in my ass to my very last moment!!” Peter doesn't feel much when he punches him in the face, beyond the indignation at him for denying him his last request.

“Go to hell!! If you think I'm letting you get the best of me you childish-” He looks at him.

A bruise is already forming on his cheek from where he hit him. Jonah was still throwing venom at him and he was exhausted, he had to focus on the fight so he left the needle still almost at the end of scratching the whole thing.

Peter's head is foggy and everything seems so pointless and loud.

This man more than anything.

Shining bright in fury and indignation and if he was right, fear too. Jonah was a fire, if you didn't watch it it would get you.

It churns his gut just seeing him.

Clutching the cane he ponders it for a second, but decides to finally do what he should have done a long time ago.

“And-”

“I don't care Jonah, I really don't. You had a shot by leaving me be, but I suppose I ought to do this if I really want to achieve peace” Taking a breath he raises the cane upwards so he can beat his head with it to finally shut him up for good, to finally make it end between them.

Peter doesn't even care if he dies.

Perhaps before he did, he recalls the actual feeling of terror when he asked him to help him die faster because it hurt so much on his quest bed, the bleeding stab wounds were making Elias dizzy and the pain was unbearable. Peter recalls the bout of fear at snapping his neck, but now? Now the fog was making it impossible to matter. To care about finishing this disgusting little man's life.

“Goodbye” He sees the terror reflected in his eyes.

“Peter- wa- wait we can talk-!” He was about to hit him when something knocked him out of the way and he slid across the floor.

Lying in his back he stares at the sky and the black roots that are moving around it, while reality starts to crumble.

“I can't believe I turned into such a bloody mess!! Did you honestly try to kill each other??!”

Ah the fake one.

“What are you doing here!” Jonah is scrambling up. Peter is measuring his chances against the two of them, but knows it would be futile. So he remains there.

Why can't he ever get what he wants? Why won't they leave??? They did before so many times!! They all have walked out from the other, why is this any different.

“Oh god you are a mess for real, aren't you Peter i can't believe this”

“Elias-”

“You can't hear him, but he is!! And he is my husband, get your own-”

He tunes them out and focuses on finishing what he came to do even while lying on the floor.

YOU ARE NOW ELIAS BOUCHARD

“And- Oh Peter fuck off!” Jonahsprite goes to grab Peter’s face while apparently the man starts again to try and finish the job.

Elias tries to not shudder at the memory of the empty expression he made when he tries to kill him. He compares it to when he asked him to help him die faster in his quest bed, because the stab wounds while waiting to bleed out hurt a lot. The stark difference between those two moments and the expressions he got were enough to make him want to hurl.

Peter had not wanted to hurt him then, he did it the fastest way possible and only because he insisted, Elias had to track him down afterwards with JonahSprite and actually reassure him, even if it was a thinly veiled effort, to not let him know he was sort of happy he was so worried about him.

He had thought at the time that he found something else to have an upper hand on him. But now he realizes that it wasn't.

“Let us finish talking first!” His double is trying his best to keep the man in place. But he hasn't realized like him that it was sort of late. Annabelle and his own weapon had been right, he was too far gone now.

“Why should i-” Dropping next to him he feels sore, hurt and tired.

“You are an idiot” Peter merely watches him and after a few seconds says the thing that really nailed the fact that it was all over.

“I really did think I loved you” Reading it was one thing, seeing him say it with such a blank expression was another. Locking his jaw in place and swallowing he tries.

“You do, you still do, you are just being dumb and letting your god get the best of you” He has to believe it.

“I dont think so” He makes a pained sound and looks down at him.

“Im- did you actually throw them away?” It takes him a second to realize he meant the rings.

“I dropped them yes” That's it, he tries to get up and go, but his double keeps him there giving him a furious look.

He is angry and now he is the one that's upset.

“You are a thief of heart and you have beholding, think” What does he even want from him?

“So what? I steal his soul? Keep it as a companion in a doll or something? what else can i do with this??”

“Oh my god, feelings! You deal with feelings too”

“But they are gone if you haven't noticed! There is nothing for me to take or use or-!” He doest understand, he didn't see him, the emptiness as he tried to kill him.

“Forsaken doesn't take them away you know this. It just… makes them dull, makes you think you don't care. He thinks- no, we made him think he had nothing else!” Peter has never needed an anchor, he could walk the perfect line between his god and their relationship.

But here? Here it was so condensed that he sank and he never noticed happen.

So just this once… JonahSprite doesn't have his memories, he remembers up until he was James, but in the amount of time he accompanied Peter the man got him to care too.

Guess they do have a type and it's lonely. He owes Simon money then.

He doesn't want to steal his feelings, but he wants to bring them forth.

But first, he grabs his face and leans down while the man tries to get him off. He rebuffs him.

“I love you, you giant sap, I do. I did not cheat! Neither of us did. So get that out of your thick head, we just had fun talking with a friend. It's been so long, but thats all, we could not ever even go back to that again. Barnabas is good but he is not that good to forgive us for it”

“Not like you, or well not good per se, but you certainly put up with me far more than anyone has before and that is something”

“So please big man just this once…dont fight me on this ok?” He kisses him. Peter goes still under him, and he can feel him start to try and slip away, but he holds him tighter and bites his lip making him go back to being solid.

Elias doesn't push further merely kissing him over and over again in little presses of their lips, one of his hands goes to caress his cheek and he lets their foreheads touch.

He just needs a spark and he can take care of the rest, afraid of opening his eyes and seeing a dull stare he can't help but to let out a small sniff, he will not cry, he refuses. Getting up he watches him and Peter looks at him with the same empty stare. His lips wobble and he shakes his head. Beholding then? He tries to shove memories of their time together, but the man looks more and more angry rather than moved.

“Peter, c'mon you have to-” Jonah is trying, but if it didn't work with him-

“I don't, really can you both please stop touching me? Its making me uncomfortable” He hits him in the chest.

“You bloody sea weaded excuse of a sailor i cant believe how much of a fucking bastard you are, i cant- I… i can't”

“Almost 30 years and you do this to me, you are the worst husband in existence, you leave me for months, make awful puns and nicknames, fight me over the petties things ever-” He doesn't stop he has to let it out, along with the tears that finally are slipping through his eyes, but now they are out of sheer indignations rather than sadness.

“You snore, you keep putting my stuff on high shelves just to make me ask you for help or get a chair to get them-” A sob breaks through.

“make me cake, buy me things you know i would like, let me sleep on top of you when i get home and let me unwind if work was hard-” His hand grips his stupid godtier hoodie.

“-Kill the spiders, because you know i actually hate them even if i pretend they don't bother me-”

A hand wipes his tears from his left cheek and he stiffens. Hoping for a small chance.

“Awfully weepy of you Lias” His voice is cracked and when he looks he has the barest hint of a flush on his otherwise pale skin. And a glint of amusement in his expression.

Oh.

He falls forward while Peter tries to catch him, but Elias merely goes to kiss him. He latches onto him and to make his point across he uses his heart powers. Peter lets out a startle and pained sound, but he doesn't relent, bringing forth all his feelings, but not actually stealing them, just letting them simmer there. He could.

Elias could just as easily steal him away to keep forever in his grasp.

But when two pair of hands grab him back and tug him closer he knows he can't.

He loves him like this.

Eventually they break apart.

“Don't ever do that again” Peter gives him a peck and nuzzles him.

“I can't believe i will say this, and if anyone asks it never happened, but- Please don't ever stop giving me a glance from time to time. It felt like i was going on autopilot, i couldn't even enjoy my own loneliness”

“I won't”

They hear a tiny mew and Jonah is looking at them with what he knows is envy in his own face.

Peter looks up at him and his face goes from entertained to guilty and then a grimace. Lifting a hand towards him the sprite hisses. His husband nods and sits up before grabbin Jonah and putting him on his lap, while he lets out a bunch of noises of protest and actually scratches his arms.

“Im sorry, i didn't mean it, i do think you are real-”

“No, you dont. Its fine, you are right i'm just a copy, now leave me be-” Peter gives him a look and then at Jonah as if asking permission.

He considers it, but...he knows that he can't say no. He nods.

The taller man lifts the chin of the sprite and kisses him, while the other freezes in place. Peter actually deepens the kiss and it was fascinating to see, like seeing a distorted mirror. He would admit it was exhilarating to see himself in that position. So sneakily he goes next to his husband and kisses his neck too making him pull apart to sigh against his doubles lips.

“Insatiable aren't you?”

“Maybe, maybe i just like to see you both”

“Narcissistic then” His husband was a little shit.

“I would say voyeur” But apparently he wasn't even better. Still JonahSprite looked at the two of them with a calculating look, that Peter stops by merely bopping his nose.

“I'm tired, and you are both the same bastard, same eyes after all. What does it matter where they are? You could both steal as many bodies as you want and i would still marry you anyways”

Funnily enough both of them blush at the comment.

“Sap”

“Idiot”

“Yours?” He is definitely exhausted if he was that soft.

“Yes… always” Elias is just as tired, so he is permitted to say it just as softly.

Before he could attempt to sneak into his lap too and start what could possibly be the best make out session in the history of paradox space involving the three of them, Peter gives him an apologetic look.

“ Elias… I already started the scratch, i can't not finish it. The game is busted beyond relief, both of you said it, by now it's impossible to win” He takes a deep breath.

“Can you finish it and make it out to where we are supposed to meet up with the rest?”

“No, we don't have the time” Before he can answer him to curse him for following Annabelle’s plan he sees Jonah press his cheek against their husbands chest and gives him a smug look.

“Finish it”

“Excuse me??” He startles at him.

“You heard me finish it”

��We can't make it in time to the others-”

“Oh i wouldn't be so sure…just trust me, both of you” Well, if anyone would want to survive is him, no matter the situation.

“Fine”

“Are you- of course you both are. Great”

“Ok, let me up then”

#tmastuck #magnusstuck #just one more and we get the catsprites hijinks #and more funny stuff

4 notes · View notes

bluebellhairpin · 4 years

Text

Fight or Flight, Rider [6]

Poe Dameron X Pilot!Reader

A/N: This took me too long to write, and it’s got the word count of Kylo Ren’s body count; so get ready for the long haul because I’ve got a bad feeling about this *evil laugh* - Nemo

Summary: (y/n) doesn’t seem to like to make things easy for herself. Her mouth might give her about as much grief as if does blessings.

Series Masterlist

Masterlist

[Gif was sourced on Pinterest. Credit to thee maker!]

“How does it feel?”

“The collar is too tight, and the fabric is itchy.” Rey tugged on the hem of the jacket, trying to make it less itchy, stepping back to observe how you looked.

“You’d ought to be thankful you’re not actually part of the First Order, and have to wear their uniform everyday.” she said, smiling at you as you moved over to the nearby mirror fragment. You mimicked her actions, tugging the jacket’s hem down, and then ran a finger around it’s collar.

“They’ll notice it’s not mine.”

“No they won't.” She came up behind you, placing her hands on your shoulders, and looking at your reflection over your shoulder. “They’ll be too stunned at the pretty new Officer to notice your pant legs at a centimeter too short.”

You looked at her, raising an eyebrow before shaking her off your shoulders.

“If they manage to see me at all.” you added, bumping Z2 lightly with your foot, before continuing, “Let’s just get this over with, huh?”

“Couldn't agree more Rider.”

__________

“- Any questions, Major?” Gareth said, stepping aside from the ship, after trying to explain whatever he thought was necessary to explain.

“Um, yes? Where on earth did you get a First Order ship from?” You were stuck between feelings of awe and confusion at the ship in front of you. How you’d never noticed it before - considering it was sleek and black and First Order all over - was beyond your thinking right now, all you did know was that you were going to be lucky enough to fly it.

“Here or there. I can’t remember.” you looked over at Gareth, now uncertain.

“You, one of the most informed people here, don’t know where this came from?”

“I said I didn’t remember. There’s a difference.” he shrugged. Running a hand along the ship’s hull, he looked over at you. “Excuse the pun, but a lot is riding on you now. Whether you’re ready for it or not, what you do in the next twelve hours will change how the war ends.”

“If you’re trying to make me feel less nervous, it’s not really working Commander.” You flicked the collar of the uniform up, keeping it un-creased as you ducked around the ship to the door. “I appreciate the sentiment though.” you said, shooting him a wink and climbed into the cockpit.

“Wait! Don’t go yet!” Poe yelled, practically sprinting out of the base and into the hanger, trying to make sure he caught you before you left.

You’d already managed to say goodbye to the greater half of the base, including Rey, Finn, and Joon. Even BB, but no Poe until now.

You had spoken to Poe again last night - after Rey rudely interrupted you - but it wasn’t for long, and it wasn’t about the almost-kiss. Honestly you couldn’t quite remember what it was about, Poe had fallen asleep not too long into the conversation, and you followed suit - leaving him in his dorm to retreat to your own.

A single once-over of Poe told you he hadn’t bothered changing out of the clothes he fell asleep in.

“Jeez, I’ve been trying to hunt you down all morning.” Poe said, climbing the side of the ship to bring his face level to yours. “You don’t like staying in one place long, huh sweetheart?”

“You just woke up Poe.” you laughed, and your chest tightened. What if this was the last time you laughed with him?

“You can’t prove that.” his said, words as soft as his smile.

Did he hear your unspoken question?

“Oh I can - whether anyone believes me or not, that’d be where the problem lies.” A beat passed before you spoke again. “What were you looking for me for?”

“I felt I had a missed opportunity last night.” You quirked an eyebrow up at that. A smile tugging at your lips.

“Really?”

“Yes. I need to clock-in that opportunity.” You learnt over to the ship’s control panel, flicking a switch and pressing a couple buttons to warm up the engine.

“Sure you do Dameron.”

“Does that mean I don’t get a kiss?” He said, his voice was joking, but one look and you could tell he was a little disappointed. He always spoke more with his eyes than his actual voice.

“Oh whatever.” you said, leaning over the space created by the ship to grab the back of his neck and pull his lips flush to yours. It was clumsy, and slightly rushed, but when you both pulled away your breath was taken away just the same.

You both waited for a moment, your fingers toying with his curls ever-so-slightly, before you pulled away further.

“Thank you.” Poe said, smiling from ear to ear. You frowned, even though your smile mirrored his.

“What’re you thanking me for?”

“Well now I know what to look forward to more of once you get back.”

____________

It wasn’t until about halfway through the hyperjump that your nerves settled in again. Z2 was no help. He kept beeping and buzzing as if he was nervous too, and that only unsettled you. You swore the day Z2 was open about his droid-feelings was the day you died.

In this situation it didn’t fill you with your much needed confidence.

Back when you were on Nephimm you almost dared to dream you’d go up against the First Order one day. As a child your parents would occasionally tell you stories about the heroics of old, and that only spurred you on.

When you were a teenager and reached the age set by your planet’s authorities to move out of your parent’s home, they gave you a book to take with you. It was filled with stories and drawings of all those stories they’d told you.

Space and the stars.

Cities and the people in them.

Life and humanity.

Death and war.

You ship jolted, and you prepared yourself to exit hyperspace. You shot a glance at Z2, looking into his camera where the Resistance was looking back.

You might’ve been going into this mission on your own, but you weren’t alone.

__________

Never in his life was Poe as anxious as he was now.

Finn had noticed by the time they saw you’d exited hyperspace, and had tried to treasure Poe by placing a hand on his shoulder. That only worked so much.

Through Z2, they could see both inside your ship, and the scraps of the one being built before you. The thing was huge, even if it was still unfictional, and Poe saw you shiver.

“Since this thing is theirs, how about we do a little recon first Zee?” your voice came through clipped and fuzzy, but at least they could still hear you. The droid beeped at you, and you pushed the ship forward into the construction.

Poe could just make out the ship’s fame though the screen, and he wouldn’t be ashamed to admit that it was a bit foreboding. Even for him.

After a lap of the ship, you pulled into a completed hanger, landing as if you’d done it a million times before, and stepped out. Poe squirmed where he stood. It was almost eerie watching you like this.

Not because it was through a droid’s perspective, but because of how easily you seemed to fit in as a First Order Officer.

Watching you go from a gittery, nervous wreck to emotionless and completely straight-faced sent a shiver through half the people that were watching. It was like you just slipped from one reality to another. Poe almost wondered if he'd been wrong to trust you, to get you into the inderworkings of the Resistance, but looking up at your friend - Joon - told him half of what he needed to know.

The real you was with the Resistance. This you that was on the projection, that was you back on Nephimm.

Each step you took, timed and precise, only made Poe remember. It made him finally piece together what you’d spoken about that night on your X-Wing’s wing - and everything after that.

Children being taught how to fly like professionals.

Teenagers being kicked out of their homes once they’d reached ‘the age’.

Being out of bed or your dorm past ‘bedtime’ wasn’t accepted.

You never having a nickname before you got here.

He concluded Nephimm wasn’t a nice place, as much as you gawked about the greenery and sunsets. It was beautiful, but only if you followed the rules.

Much like the First Order.

__________

Saying your heart was now sunken to the pits of your stomach was a slight exaggeration. It felt more like it was down in your womb with how heavy it was. You had a phrase, a mantra, running through the back of your mind.

‘Act like you belong, they won’t think any different.’

It was a new base. It had new crew and new faces. All you needed to do was find a master board, get the plans, get out and destroy the ship. It was simple. The two Star Destroyers outside would just have to wait until later. Mainly because they were much less simple.

Turning down another corridor, you were faced with a duo of Storm Trooper. You almost froze in your stride, but brushed passed them without so much as a glace. They didn’t pull you aside for it, so you figured you did something right.

As you passed another doorway, you realized you had no way to get in anywhere if it was locked. But then again, you could always pickpocket. You’d slipped cards in and out of Joon’s pockets since you met him, how different could that be?

Ahead two Officials turned into the hallway, flanked by two more Troopers. You have to make this quick. So you kept it casual, paying as little attention to Z2 as you could, and brushed past the left Officer just enough to stumble both you and him.

But the Officer caught you instead of the other way around. He fired questions at you, and your resolve cracked. It was slight, only the hesitation of a moment, but he saw it. And just like that it shattered completely.

You guessed nothing was ever really that easy.

___________

The Officers pulled you between them, and the only thing stopping you from completely lashing out at them was the bonds on your wrists and the two Troopers with their blasters behind you.

At least Z2 still wasn’t detected. He’d been behaving himself, unlike you.

Despite the Troopers behind you, it didn’t stop you from sending your worst and most venomous glares to anyone that dared look your way. It also didn’t stop you from making yourself the most inconvenient prisoner they’d ever have.

As if you’d just go with them without a fight.

Apparently a lowly Rebel was too unimportant to have the five-star treatment, and yet He had come all the way from one of the Destroyers to see you.

The Mr. Evil Overlord, and Supreme Leader of the First Order himself -

“- You. Kyline Raymond.”

“Kylo Ren.” the Officer corrected, holding onto your arm even tighter.

“Kylie Reed?”

“Kylo. Ren.” You almost considered ceasing the sass. But you would never fail Leia like that.

“Kyle Rey?”

“This rebel is defective. I don’t think she can hear you sir.” the Officer hissed, joliting your arm harshly in his grip. The Sith tiled his helmet down at you. Only slightly. It was as if you weren’t even worth that.

“She’s not defective,” he said, “Just like the rest of those Rebels, she just needs to be broken.”

The Officer looked from you back to Ren.

“Well what are you standing here for?” Ren growled. “Break her.”

__________

Series Taglist: @demigod-dragonrider-schoolidol @writefightandflightclub @robindoesntloveme @kiaralein @danicalifxrnia @americasass-romanoff @morgannope @smolpeachees @afootnoteinyourhappiness @lonelydarlings @rae-rae-patcha @oakleyves @grincheveryday @seninjakitey @fanfin-glutton

Poe Dameron Taglist: @p3nny4urth0ught5 @m1rkw00dpr1ncess

#fight or flight rider #poe dameron x reader #poe damerson one shot #poe dameron imagine #star wars x reader #star wars oneshot #star wars imagine

78 notes · View notes