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klausysworld · 4 months

Note

Hiii I was wondering if you could write a klaus oneshot where the reader is enemies with klaus but klaus finds out she has cancer and is all alone and begins to fall in love with her or something like that.

I totally understand if you don’t want to do or you’re uncomfortable with it.

I’ve Got You

(This is on a very sensitive subject, please don’t read if it will upset you too much and know that if you are suffering or know someone who is, nobody is alone)

Cancer was something that had torn up Y/n’s life. It caused her to push people away all of the time. She didn’t want to be too close to anyone, not when the doctors couldn’t tell her how long she had left.

For a while they thought that the cancer had gone but she didn’t want to risk anything only for it to come back.

So she continued to be closed off, even from her own family.

Being Elena and Jeremy’s sister was hard enough, let alone growing up having cancer. Having two parents who were involved in medical care was both a dream and a nightmare. They made her live according to their timetable and their rules as to what would ‘help’. She knew, even as a child, that her family struggled much like any family would struggle to afford treatment and research and she hated herself for costing them so much.

She was kept separate from her siblings, built little to no bond with them. When her parents died, there was nobody to care for her or at least give her hope. She couldn’t afford hospital bills on her own, she had to seek out other family, like Uncle John and he did help however when he lost his life, she lost the chance of hers.

The people at the hospital knew Y/n well, they wanted to help best they could. She was supplied with medication in the form of pills to at least somewhat control the cancer and they had hope that she would be able to take part in a chemotherapy treatment program that would take place within the next year. That was as much hope as she could have to go on.

And she tried to hold onto that, she would imagine the day that they told her she would be able to live her life full without so much risk.

But at the same time, she didn’t really believe it would happen for her. Not anymore.

Sometimes she wished that a vampire would just kill her, out her out of her misery. Other times she wanted to survive everything her dreadful life threw at her and live a long healthy life to its fullest.

It was why she was so up and down with how she behaved. It was why the way she was around certain people changed so drastically, like Klaus.

Sometimes she wanted to see how many buttons she could push, she wanted to make him kill her so at least it wasn’t cancer that took her out. Other times, she just wish he’d disappear and leave both her and her family alone.

She would wonder if, had no vampires ever turned up to Mystic falls, if she would have been able to connect with her siblings some more, if Jenna would have given her some hope.

Those thoughts made her mad, but also sad. That’s when she would get snappy. Sometimes she didn’t mean to annoy him but she couldn’t help herself.

But unfortunately it made people dislike her which in some cases was a good thing because it meant people wouldn’t miss her if she did die but it also meant that she was even more alone.

Y/n was too young to deal with something so big, it was no surprise she didn’t know how to manage it. The problem was that nobody else knew how to either and so she was forced to try do it herself.

The medication she had been on since young caused an imbalance of hormones and had stunted her growth in areas. It made her hair thin and caused her to become feeble and delicate to an extent. Of course she tried her hardest to build up her strength but she wasn’t stupid, she knew it was much easier for her to become out of breath, to become exhausted or hurt. It was because of this that people like Damon would dismiss her and why she would be cast aside without any explanation. Not that she needed a reason, she already knew.

In some ways, she liked that Klaus didn’t know that she had cancer. He would be boisterous around her, tease and taunt her like he would anyone else. Because to him, she was like everyone else. She wasn’t a delicate little thing that needed to be avoided and fixed.

Sometimes he could go a little far, once he had her by the throat, cutting off her airways as he threatened her. He didn’t know that after he left she was spluttering blood all over the floor as she coughed and wheezed for air. She struggled for it anyway, she didn’t like someone taking it from her. But she never said anything to him, of course she was a little more cautious but she enjoyed pissing him off when she could.

When she was little, kids were cruel. If she wanted to play, they would give her funny looks and say they didn’t want to play with her. They acted like she was contagious, or an alien. She hated it.

So even if Klaus’s attention was ill intended, at least it was directed at her.

————————————————————————

Klaus originally saw her as another inconvenience. He met her when he was in Alarics body, when he went over to the Gilbert’s house to harass Jenna and frightened the others. Turns out their sister Y/n also hadn’t been clued in on who he really was. She had wondered down the stairs still in her pyjamas, smiling subtly at him and going to the cupboard to grab some biscuits. Once she had sat down and began munching, Stefan was storming in and telling her and Jenna to run. At that point Y/n just looked tired and begrudgingly got dragged out the house by a hysterical Jenna.

The next time was at a hospital after he had taken Elena from senior prank night. She was sat in the waiting room, lead across the seats as though she had been there hours. He came and sat beside her, spoke to her and told her to tell Damon to never threaten him again. She agreed without compulsion and kept her trap shut about anything else.

The following few times he saw her, she was less tired and more firey. That’s when he began to take a strange liking to her. She always had something to snap back at him no matter how dark the last thing he said was.

Somehow she seemed to know exactly how to make him tick. Knew how to tease him enough to make him want her to shut up but not enough to physically make her. Though occasionally she went too far and he would break.

Sometimes he felt a weird sensation of guilt swirling inside him, he never knew what to do about that. He didn’t enjoy that.

When she became tired, she was moody and would say things to purposely make him angry. And klaus’s anger management had never been great. He didn’t always mean to react to quick and harshly but he couldn’t help it. Especially when he didn’t understand why she was so angry sometimes.

He knew that she was very much seen as irrelevant when it came to her siblings and the Salvatore’s etc. He couldn’t understand why exactly, she was not less useful than Elena was as far as he could see. Still he didn’t ask or dig on it, it didn’t matter to him if she was apart of the little gang or not. She seemed to hang around him anyway.

He took an amount of joy in their playful banter and teasing nature when around each other. He also liked to push at her buttons the same way she did his. But he wasn’t as good at knowing how far he could go, often she would end up storming off and he’d be left feeling guilty and there’d frustrate which lead to annoyance and anger.

————————————————————————

Klaus hadn’t once guessed that the reason for her mood swings or her pushed to the side nature was due to cancer.

He hadn’t been expecting to see her name on labels of samples of blood.

He was in the hospital for blood obviously, even though he drank mostly straight from the vein, with all his hybrids and his busy schedule sometimes blood bag was easier.

He happened to come across the samples and spotted a familiar name. His curiosity peeked. Of course he originally guessed that it was just normal things like she had given blood or that she had low iron. But something within him told him to look further.

So he began to compel people to get him her files and information. But turns out he didn’t need to, as soon as he said her name the receptionist was yapping on.

“Oh the poor girl, in and out of here since she was just a toddler” she began, sighing and clicking for Y/n’s name on the computer.

“Really?” He questioned, his brows furrowed.

“Uhuh, next appointment is…oh! Tomorrow” she smiled and Klaus nodded pretending to know

“Right for..”

“Collection and a check up” she smiled and turned around to find something, a bag. She placed the paper back infront of him with contained the prescription pills that would control the cancer to some level. He smiled back at her though it didn’t reach his eyes and picked up the packet, reading what they were and what they did.

His heart dropped a little and he hesitantly handed them back to the receptionist. “Thank you, I’d take them to her but if she has a check up tomorrow anyway then I expect it’s easier if she get them herself” he muttered, his voice quiet as he felt a strange sadness forming somewhere inside him.

“Of course” the woman answered “Will you be with her tomorrow?” She asks with the tilt of her head.

“I might be” he replied, unsure and she nodded slightly back

“I’m sure she’d like it if you did, nobodies been with her for a scan for over a year now” she sighed and his heart ached.

He left shortly after and tried to find her. Eventually he found her, much to his surprise, at his house. She was sat on his sofa with a glass of wine and one of his hybrids, chatting about whatever. Without caring he made his way over and grabbed her by the arm.

“Klaus!” She yelped as he began to pull her away from the hybrid.

“He just wants to drain you love, come on upstairs” he murmured, pushing her up the stairs and grabbing the bottle of wine from the table.

“Well he might just be nice” she muttered

“Perhaps but I don’t like the odds” he replied as he pulled her into his room

“Right, because you care if he kills me” she grumbled and his stomach turned uncomfortably. No longer did the joking of her death amuse him like it once did.

When she noticed his silence and the look he had in his eyes, she knew that he knew. It was stupid look of pity that everyone had and that slightly uncomfortable stance because they don’t know how to act around her anymore.

She sighed and glanced to the floor and then him. “Can you not?” She whispered and he frowned confused

“Not what-“

“Oh don’t do that. I know you know. Its fine. I’ve had it forever you don’t have to be weird” she mumbled as she sat on his bed, laying back and staring up at the ceiling tiredly.

“I don’t know what-“

“Cancer Klaus. It’s not a scary word, it’s not Voldemort” she grumbled

“What-?” He questioned confused

“Doesn’t matter it’s not the point” she whispered and he frowned

“You never said anything about it” he muttered as he sat beside her.

“It’s not really the best conversation topic. Plus we’re not that close” she mumbled

“Well…you’re in my bed so I’ve done something right” he joked lightly and she smiled

“I guess so” she whispered.

Klaus laid down beside Y/n quietly. It was a little odd to be so close to her without either of them having ill intentions. He did feel bad though that he made her uncomfortable but he couldn’t help but act a little off. His mind had been replaying every time he had hurt her, he wondered how much it had endangered her life.

It confused him as to why he had this care for her. He couldn’t have cared less about week ago if she had been killed but knowing that she actually, most likely, would die much sooner than expected made him feel something. To know that she was living in pain and fear of when it would catch up to her.

Klaus was a man who liked control, he couldn’t imagine having something like cancer hanging over his life everyday acting as a threat ever time she breathed.

“So you-“

“I don’t wanna talk about it” she mumbled, cutting him off. He fell into silence and sighed softly.

Y/n stared at the ceiling, wishing it would fall on her in this moment. She hated that he knew. Of course she didn’t exactly hide it from him but she also didn’t want him to know. Not because it was something she was embarrassed of, or because she feared he would used it against her. Simply because it meant there was one more person who would look at her like she was incapable and weak. She didn’t want to be stared at like an animal at a zoo by anyone else.

She’d rather he be cruel to her and tell her how pathetic she was just for being a human. She’d rather he scare her and hurt her like he did everyone else in town than look at her like he was now.

She felt her eyes drain of the life that they usually held when around Klaus. With a lump forming in her throat and a heavy weight of disappointment on top of her, she pushed herself up and got off his bed.

“I’m gonna go home” she muttered, ignoring the way he sat up and looked after her with worry.

“Love-“ he called, standing up to follow her as she made her way down his stairs.

“I don’t want to talk, I want to go home” she huffed.

“Sweetheart-“

“Shut up Klaus” she snapped “stop calling me cute little names and looking at me like I’m a three-legged puppy! You don’t like me, I’m annoying and useless to you” she sighed, her voice becoming desperate and she hated how pathetic she sounded.

“You’re dying” he whispered

“Everyone’s dying” she mumbled “I’m just doing it faster” before leaving his house, closing the door behind her.

Klaus left her alone for a little while, and she avoided him also.

He did however go back to the hospital after she had her most recent scan. He compelled the surgeon to show he what was happening, where it was and what that meant. He wanted to know why she wasn’t getting more help, they told him there was very little chance of her surviving even with chemotherapy. Klaus argued they should still try and they informed him of the treatment trial coming up in two months time. Demands were made, he would pay for everything and they would tell her that she qualified to have it free. He didn’t really care what lie they told her just so long as she accepted it.

And she did, Klaus received a phone call telling him so.

Klaus still had no explanation for his sudden change of heart, why he wanted her to get better so badly. He didn’t know why, he just did.

He felt a little sad that she wouldn’t hang around him anymore. Not many people willingly spoke to him, even if it was just some teasing and playful banter. He missed it.

When she had her first dosage of chemo, he found himself in her hospital room. It upset him that nobody had come with her or shown any care at all.

Klaus quietly wondered through the hospital, it was halfway into the night and quiet as he searched for her room. His expression softened when he saw her curled up in a bed, the machine beside her beeping quietly. A singular rose was placed beside her bed as he pulled a chair over to her and leaned down to kiss her cheek softly. It was an odd gesture coming from the hybrid but he tried not to dwell on it as he sat beside her for a while.

Klaus came back during the night as her treatment continued, he would leave her a rose and often a note. He would never know how much it meant to her.

One night he ran his fingers through her hair, only for a handful of strands to come out with his hand. His eyes had enlarged as he quickly put it in the bin and gently lifted to her head to find a clump of hair on her pillow. He didn’t want her to find it in the morning and be upset and so removed it himself.

He didn’t mean to wake her up. She knew it was him without a doubt when she felt her face against someone’s chest. She could hear his soft muttering and the sound of his hand behind her head. It took her a minute to figure out what he was doing and when the realisation hit her she just stared at his chest exhausted. Y/n could remember when all her hair fell out the first time, when she was little and the other kids would poke fun while the parents would tell her how brave she was while staring at her with that helpless, pitiful face. She didn’t want to see it on Klaus’s face as well so she pretended to stay asleep.

After a moment he laid her back down and pulled the blanket back up. “There we go” he murmured softly as he smoothed it over “it’s all going to be just fine” he whispered, stroking her arm gently. She kept her eyes closed and her breathing steady until he left, she couldn’t stop the tears rolling after he was gone. She hated feeling sorry for herself all of the time but it seemed she could never catch a break.

It wasn’t long before she was back home, still on chemo but home. Jeremy was living in Denver and Elena basically lived at the Salvatores so Y/n had the house to herself. She didn’t go out much, she never really had. She only did recently to annoy Klaus but she didn’t want to be around him anymore either so she found that staying inside was better.

However Klaus had different ideas and so wound up on her doorstep, nocking incessantly until she answered.

“Finally love, you and me worried” he sighed and she narrowed her eyes

“What do you want?” She snapped, she was wrapped up in a blanket and wore a hat on her head. Klaud wasn’t sure if it was because she was cold or because she had given in and shaved her head.

“It’s lovely to see you too” he smiled sarcasticly and she glared. “I wanted to see how you were doing” he answered.

“I’m doing fine. How are you doing?” She replied stiffly

“Ah you know…family troubles” he mumbled and she hummed

“Elijah?” She question

“All of them” Klaus muttered “three brothers, a sister and a mother. I can only be glad I’ve already killed my father…though that didn’t stop mother”

Y/n let out a breathy laugh and glance down “I’ll grab my shoes and we’ll talk and walk.” She told him before closing the door. Klaus smiled to himself as he waited a second before she came out ready. She was completely wrapped up, hat gloves coat. Still he didn’t ask, just remained happy to be with her.

They spoke about the sudden arrival of his family and the ball. He said he hoped she would come but her silence wasn’t convincing.

“You don’t have to” he told her “I know you don’t like people and you barely like me enough” he smiled and she returned it weakly.

“I don’t really think it’s a good idea” she mumbled and he nodded, of course he was a little disappointed but he wasn’t exactly surprised either.

“Then perhaps you’ll have to give me a dance another time?” He offered and she shrugged playfully with a smile

“I might be able to come for just one dance, but I go home straight after?” She compromised and he grinned

“Perfect” he whispered and cupped her face. The smile soon vanished from his lips as he felt how hot her skin was to touch “you’re burning” he mumbled before unzipping her coat and pulling her hat off. Immediately she made a sound of upset and grabbed for the hat. His eyes softened as she stared at him with a mixture of emotions.

She wanted to die. That was it. She wanted the cancer to take her in that moment. Stupid Klaus. She wasn’t sure why having no hair made her feel so bad, she had a nice shaped head but her past experience with peoples reactions caused her to hate it.

“Put it back” she whimpered but he shook his head. His hands gently pulled her coat off and then her gloves.

“You have a fever, you’re boiling, I’m taking you home” he told her as he leant down and lifted her up. She looked at him like he was crazy, she didn’t understand what kind of bond they had or what feelings they held for eachother. She didn’t why he would like her of all people. Was it pity? She hoped not, she’d be so pissed off it was.

“Fevers are normal” she mumbled “you don’t gotta worry”

“Normal or not, it’s best we get rid of it so that it doesn’t hurt you” he answered as he carried her towards her house. She couldn’t help but smile a little when he said ‘we’. In a way it reminded her of how her parents would care her and tell her that it was something they would all get through.

He felt her relax a little in his hold and glanced down to see her looking up at him with a lost look in her eye as he approached her door.

“I can’t come in but I trust that you’ll know how to cool off? I can take you to my house otherwise” he told her as he placed her down and passed her things back to her as she got inside.

“I’ll be fine, thank you” she told him with a small smile before closing the door.

Later that day she received a package containing a dress, shoes that matched and a silver necklace with her birthstone hanging from it. She smiled a little and put it somewhere safe ready for the next evening.

Then she continued to settle her fever and take a nap. She woke back up, watched a few films, messaged Klaus to let him know she was okay now, and finally took her meds when she ate her dinner before going to sleep.

In the morning she continued her everyday routine and lounging around until it was only a couple hours before the ball that the mikaelsons were throwing. She had argued with herself all day whether she should go. She knew people would talk, seeing the cancer kid with Klaus Mikaelson. Not that it was date. No no. That would be weird…

Eventually she decided she would go, dance the first dance and then go home. She just hoped that the exhaustion wouldn’t hit her too hard while she was out or that she wouldn’t fall sick until she got back home.

Y/n never got to go to events like Elena and Jeremy did when she was little, but her mother would dress her up when she was in the house sometimes to make her feel happy and pretty for a day. That was the only way she knew what she was doing when it came to her face. She had stolen some from Elena’s room as she only had the basics for herself.

She put on everything he had given her and looked in the mirror. Her hands touched her head with a small sigh before she called a cab that took her to the mansion.

She stood outside it for a few minutes, unsure whether she should just turn around and walk in. Klaud didn’t give her that option when he came wondering outside, his eyes looking around for her hopefully. She smiled a little to herself and began to walk towards him, his gaze met hers halfway and he quickly flashed beside her.

“You came” he whispered, pulling her in for an unexpected hug. He pulled back and cleared his throat “sorry” he muttered awkwardly before grabbing her hand and leading her inside. “You look gorgeous by the way, you always look gorgeous but…not that- “

“Thank you” she cut him off with a smile and squeezed his hand in appreciation. “Am I late? I didn’t mean to stand there for so long” she asked quietly, glancing around and seeing the entire town moving around his home.

“It’s okay, the first dance only just started” he told her, leading her further inside.

“I never really learned to dance” she whispered nervously

“That’s alright” he murmured “I’ve got you” he told her and she believed him.

She let him guide her throughout the dance, she kept her eyes on him and tried to ignore any stares. Klaus kept her close and offered a death glare to anyone who even glanced their way. Time flew, they danced for nearly six full songs before he felt her body go momentarily limp to his. Thankfully his arm was around her waist already so he kept her up. She regained her balance in seconds but it was clear that something was wrong.

“I’m going to take you upstairs, alright love?” He murmured to her but she shook her head

“I can’t do the stairs…I’m dizzy” she whispered and he nodded

“I know, I didn’t expect you to walk up them” he told her before gently tugging her away from the people. They walked straight past Elijah and Elena talking, both turned to face them with looked of confusion and surprise as Klaus told her to let him help her. He kept upright so that nobody would know she was being carried as he supported her weight up each step. Once at the top they walked past Finn and Esther, his mother eyed the girl with that same pity as most and shook her head at Finn in a way that told him to leave them alone as Klaus lead her into his room carefully.

He laid her down on his bed, propping her up with pillows and cupping her face gently. Her eyes focused on his as his cool hands soothed her skin.

“You feel okay love?” He asked softly

“Yeah I’m ok” she nodded as her head began to settle. She felt a little nauseous but less faint. “I should go home” she mumbled, pushing herself up but he shook his head and laid her back down.

“Stay here tonight love, I’ll look after you” he told her

“Can’t, gotta have my meds” she muttered and he nodded

“I’ll go get them okay? You stay in here, find a shirt of mine to wear to bed and I’ll go get your pills.” He decided, standing up

“Klaus…you’re not invited in” she whispered and he sighed

“Then I’ll go to the hospital and get some, I know what you need”

“It’s easier if I go home” she argued

“I want you here” he told her seriously and with a sigh she nodded.He nodded in return and stroked her face, and her smooth head gently. “You can wear whatever you like okay?” He smiled and she nodded, watching as he left.

Klaus quickly made his way out the room, rushing down the stairs and out the house. Stopping for only a second to tell Elijah to keep people downstairs.

Once he was back from the hospital with her medication she was wrapped in his duvet, dressed in his shirt and her panties with no makeup left on her face while scrolling through Netflix on his TV. He smiled at the sight and close the door behind him with a click. Her head lifted to see him and he made his way over with the bottle in one hand and a glass of water in the other.

“Thank you Klaus” she whispered gratefully as she swallowed a pill before handing back the glass which he placed on a coaster on his bedside table.

He grabbed a shirt and some plaid pants before disappearing into his conjoined bathroom. He remerged from the room in a couple minutes ready for sleep. He had a sofa in his room, a mini fridge and everything. Y/n wandered if he ever actually had to leave his room.

Klaus opened a cabinet filled with blankets and pillows and pulled a couple out and setting up a bed on the couch making Y/n frown a little, guilt and confusion swirling.

“You done have to sleep there” she told him “You could sleep here if you want…or I could go on the sofa, I don’t mind” she offered, slipping out of the bed and making her way to the couch but he spun her straight back around and lead her back to bed.

“Under no circumstances will you not be in that bed” he told her, a level of authority in his tone as he put her to bed. “I don’t want to disturb your sleep by stealing half the bed” he teased.

“No it’s okay, I like sharing” she smiled and he raised a brow as he sat down infront of her.

“Oh? Do you share beds often?” He teased with narrowed eyes. Klaus didn’t like the thought of Y/n sleeping with anyone but himself. Even if it was just a nap.

“No” she whispered, her cheeks bushing pink “sometimes when I was sick my mom would sleep with me” she shrugged and he smiled.

“I doubt I’ll be anything like your mother sweetheart” he chuckled and she rolled her eyes

“Oh just come lay down, you know that’s not-“

“I know, I know” he murmured playfully as he laid beside her. She huffed out a breath dramatically and he grinned, pulling her against him. It was strange to be so close to him, teasing and laughing again. She liked it though, and so did he.

Klaus shifted himself under the duvet and pulled it around them. He hadn’t had a girl in his bed for a while, especially the past few months. All he could think of was her so why would he want some other woman? It had been even longer since he had a girl in his bed with no expectations of sex. That hadn’t happened in decades.

Something about it was nice, innocent.

Y/n on the other hand had never shared a bed with a man, never been touched or ever really thought that a guy would want to touch her. She didn’t think Klaus would either, especially not when she looked like she did. She’d lost a lot of weight from the chemo, her stamina was low, she bruised easy and she had no hair which threw most boys off. Boys her own age at least. Not Klaus.

He couldn’t have cared less about something so simplistic. Sure, she had pretty hair at one point but it didn’t define her. He liked her as she was, of course he wanted her to be cancer free and happy but he’d still love her while she wasn’t.

Love. Was it too strong of a word? He wasn’t sure.

Especially not when he was looking at her like he was now. Seeing her so openly vulnerable and curled up against him, sleepy eyes set on the tv and her body hidden under the quilt though he could feel her legs touching his.

It wasn’t long before they were snuggled up and half asleep. She was barely conscious when Elijah’s head popped into the room to check on Niklaus. The brothers had a brief conversation on how the night went, Elijah expressed his caution around their mother Klaus said he couldn’t be bothered with it anymore. Elijah left when Y/n began to stir and Klaus’s focus became her.

He slept with her throughout the night, he woke to find her missing and his heart sank. Thankfully she wondered back in from the bathroom a few minutes later and crawled back to bed with a yawn. Klaus’s lips upturned and he pulled her close again. She looked up at him with a small smile which grew when their eyes met.

“Hi” she whispered and he smiled

“Hi” he uttered back, pulling her as close to his side as he could before she was under him. She glanced to the time, seeing it was still really early. She groaned softly and closed her eyes. Klaus hummed softly and brushed the backs of his fingers across her cheek bones softly. “You look so pretty” he whispered.

Her cheeks tinted red and she rolled onto her side to hide her face from him but it only resulted in him spooning her. He kissed the back of her head making her go redder and her fingers to hold onto the sheets beneath. Klaus pressed close to her, too close. The second she felt something hard against her backside her body went tense and she panicked. Klaus felt her fear and quickly pulled himself away from her but she was already getting out of bed.

“I have to go, I’m sorry” she whispered, heading for the door but he sped infront of her.

“Love-“

“I gotta go”

“Let me drive you, and at least give you something to wear” he mumbled, disappointed with himself for scaring her. She nodded when she realised she was still in just her underwear and his shirt. He sped into Rebekah’s room which was unsurprisingly empty as she had ended up staying the night in Damon Salvatores bed.

He came back and she pulled the jeans on before he drove her home. It was quiet and he hated that he’d ruined the night. He should have thought about it and known she wouldn’t want that, he hadn’t intended to do anything other than sleep but she was so close and he couldn’t help but want. His desire always won though in this case it made him lose big time.

He apologised quietly when she got out the car and she told him it was okay and that she overreacted. Neither of them were particularly pleased with how they responded.

Y/n thought about how the moment could have played out a hundred times over and kicked herself for not just letting him have her. But she knew she would have regretted it.

They both decided to pretend the incident didn’t happen when they saw eachother next. Klaus had turned up on her doorstep that same night, it was clear he had been crying but she mention it. She wrapped her arms around him as he told her that his family had left again and that his mother wanted him dead. She ended up back in his bed, using his chest as a pillow once more.

In fact she ended up in his house, his bed a lot. Especially as her chemo treatment continued, when she wasn’t in hospital he managed to coax her to his house.

“I enjoy our sleepovers” he teased making her bite back a smile and glare playfully.

“Technically you don’t even need sleep” she reminded and he rolled his eyes.

“Well I like sleeping with you” he murmured with a wink and she laughed.

For a little while, things seemed to be getting better. She felt happier and somewhat healthier. She was more confident in herself when Klaus was around, he helped her see her beauty and her worth. For a moment she truly believed that everything would be better.

But things could never just be so simple.

At the end of her chemotherapeutic treatment, she went into the hospital as expected. Klaus didn’t go with her this time, Y/n had told him that the appointment wasn’t for another week because she wanted good news as a surprise.

How she wished it was good news.

She knew as soon as she saw the nurses face. When she told her that the treatment hadn’t worked the way they hoped, she just nodded and asked how much she owed. They shook their heads and reminded her that it was ‘free’ and she went home.

All this had done was just confirm that she wouldn’t live even half of what everyone else would. A quarter if she was lucky.

Vampire blood couldn’t save her, magic couldn’t save her. She just had to accept it and live with it for however long.

That wasn’t even the hard part for her, the hard part was telling Klaus.

After her appointment she went back to his home. He wasn’t in but she went up to his room anyway, besides it was basically her soon now too.

She stared at the bed, god she loved that bed. It was like a cloud and when she had Klaus holding her tight aswell? She only hoped heaven would be similar.

She tapped her fingers against her arm as she thought. With a sigh she went and had a shower, got back out and stared at herself in the full length mirror that Klaus had in his bathroom for whatever reason. She smiled and laughed through her nose at the thought.

Y/n had a lot of clothes at Klaus’s now, she pulled on one of the only actual sets of underwear she owned and sat down on the bed. She adjusted the straps on her bra for a few minutes and fiddled with her panties so they sat how she wanted them to.

Klaus was home shortly after and made his way upstairs to his room. His breath got caught in his throat the second he saw her.

They teased eachother and made little jokes about sex, they both entertained the idea in their heads but he never actually thought she would be the one to make the move.

He didn’t know what the final push was that made her give in but he wouldn’t push it away.

Within seconds he was on that bed, gently pushing her down onto her back and hovering over her. His lips met hers in a deep passion that heated them both. Her legs were nudged apart so he could lay between them. She kissed him back with as much love as should had in an effort to make him understand how much he meant to her.

His hands stroked up her sides gently, holding her waist perfectly. His mouth pressed to hers repeatedly before moving down to her neck. Y/n’s eyes kept shut as she felt the soft tingle of every touch, her hands slid down and unbuckled his belt. She pulled it through the loops with a tug and pushed it aside.

Klaus pulled back and looked down at her hands, he gently took them in his hands and lifted them to his lips, kissing the backs of them. “We don’t need to rush, we have all the time in the world” he whispered, the words made her eyes prick with tears but she held them back.

“I know…I just need you now” she told him quietly making him smile. He leant back down and kissed from her collarbone down. Y/n watched as goosebumps lined her skin and his hands slid her panties down her legs slowly so that she had the option to stop him.

He pressed soft kisses to her knees and then up along her thighs. His hands caressed her legs gently as he pressed an open mouthed kiss to her pussy. Y/n’s body jerked away from his mouth at the unfamiliar feeling and he smiled.

“It’s alright love, I’ve got you” he told her before running his tongue through her folds and up to her clit. Her legs went over his shoulder as her hands went to his hair, feeling the soft curls as her body filled with heat. Klaus rest his head against one of her thighs so he could look up at her as his tongue flicked gently at her little button. Her brows pulled together and a soft sound escaped her as she felt his teasing.

“Klaus” she whispered softly, a slightly tremble in her voice as his fingers made their way up and gently traced her pussy lips. He hummed quietly in response, letting the gentle vibrations tickle her nerves pleasantly. The words ‘I love you’ were on the tip of her tongue but she didn’t utter them, not yet. She worried that he would want to know why she chose now to tell him, why now to give herself to him. And if he did find out why, everything would be ruined.

A shaky breath left her and she put her focus back on him. She pulled at his soft hair gently, telling him to give her more and he eagerly obliged. He slipped a finger into her halfway, moving it slowly to help ease the foreign feeling upon her. His tongue still licked at her clit, though now with a little more pressure.

Her back arched a little and a breathy moan left her lips making him push his finger in so it was knuckle deep before pulling it out with a slight curve. He watched her tighten around nothing as her hips rolled a little to try get his touch back inside her.

“Do you like how it feels love?” He murmured with a kiss to her clit. She nodded and pulled at his curls gently.

“I do” she whispered “I love it” she confirmed and he smirked a little.

“I love it too” he smiled and sucked her clit into his mouth making her squirm and moan his name. She inhaled deeply and leant her head back against the pillows and two fingers began to stretch her open as they pushed in as far as they could’ve.

She took soft but long breaths as her body filled with heat and her hips ground her pussy against his fingers as they curled into her and found her spot. Her back curved off the bed and he smiled to himself, happy to bring her pleasure.

His fingers met the thrusts of her hips and his tongue lay flat against her clit, letting her rub against it as quick as she needed. A soft cry left her and her pussy squeezed his fingers tightly, her thighs squished his head making him chuckle and suck on her softly. He pulled away before she could come undone and pulled her down the bed so her legs were at his hips instead.

He leant down to kiss her lips making her wrinkle her nose and dodge him.

“Sweetheart, you can’t deny my kisses now” he murmured as she wriggled.

“You can’t kiss me after that” she whined and he laughed

“You taste lovely” he teased

“I’m good not knowing” she laughed and he narrowed his eyes before attacking her with kisses all over her face making her squeal and push at his chest playfully. Eventually he caught her lips and had her succumb to the kiss. A soft moan escaped her and he smiled.

“Can I keep going love?” He asked softly as he used one of his hands to undo his jeans. She nodded kissed his jaw softly, her eyes fluttering as she felt his bare legs against hers. Her body tensed for a moment as his cock rest against her thigh and her hand gripped his shoulder. “I’ll be slow” he whispered, “don’t worry Y/n”.

She nodded again and tightened her legs round his waist. Klaus cupped the back of her head with one hand while the other guided his tip into her weeping hole. She whimpered at the stretch and he kissed her cheek, holding her close.

She nuzzled close and clung to him as he pushed another two inches into her and gently rocked in and out of her, getting another inch into her with each thrust until eventually she took all of him. He stayed they for a while, stroking away the little tears that gathered in the corners of her eyes and kissing her lips softly.

“It’s okay love” he told her gently, “you know I’ve got you”

She nodded weakly and kept her face in the crook of his neck as he began to move again. Soft little moans slipped past her lips and vibrated against his throat as he thrust into her slowly. His hips moved perfectly to stroke all the right places inside her.

Y/n’s hands held onto him tightly, so did her pussy.

Klaus kissed her skin gently as he rocked into her, his hand slid down between their bodies and he began to stroke her swollen clit. She let out a little cry and he grunted as his cock was squeezed.

“You’re doing so good sweetheart” he murmured as he began to speed up. His eyes closed as he focused on pleasing her body, he could hear the repeated sound of his skin meeting hers along with the whimpers that tumbled past her mouth. He could feel her body growing tired and knew she wouldn’t be able to go on much more. He stroked her skin soothingly while his other hand rubbed quick circles on her pretty clit.

Her body tensed and she cried his name as her body let go around his. Klaus hugged her close as he thrust into her slowly, his hips came to a stop and she panted softly for air. He kissed her lips softly and pulled out. His hand stroked his cock quickly and he squeezed it tightly until he came onto her stomach. She moaned softly and tugged at him for a kiss.

His lips pressed to hers lovingly and rolled onto his back, pulling her ontop of him. Y/n smiled down at him and caressed his chest gently.

“I love you” she whispered and his heart warmed even more

“I love you too” he told her, wrapping his arms around her waist and sitting up. He stood up with her in his arms and carried her to the bathroom. He turned the shower on and brought them both under the warm water.

“I can stand” she mumbled and he hummed but didn’t put her down. Instead he kept ahold of her as he helped clean them both off. She leant against him, her head in his neck as he wrapped a towel big enough to be a double duvet. He kissed her head and dried them off before setting her back on his bed. He pulled one of his shirts over her head and pulled some panties up her legs. “Thank you” Y/n whispered with a smile.

“Of course” he smiled back and laid beside her in his sleep pants. Klaus held her to him, his lips pulled up in contentment and he closed his eyes. He held her close they slept and woke up early to prepare breakfast.

Klaus wanted this relationship to be right. He wanted to treat her like he knew he could and show that he meant his love for her. So he went downstairs and cooked up some pancakes and bacon for his girl. He plated it up and poured them both drinks, he set the table for them and made his way back upstairs.

His movements faltered for a moment as he heard the sound of gagging. Hurriedly he made his way to the bathroom to see her heaving over the toilet. Quickly he kneeled beside her and caressed her back, her hand reached for tissue as she wiped her mouth, dumping the tissue ontop of her sock and flushing the toilet. He helped her up and wrapped his arms around her waits from behind as she brushed her teeth. She apologised quietly but he shook his head and kissed her cheek.

“I got you something love” he told Y/n softly before leading her downstairs. She looked up at him with a soft look in her eyes as he pulled out her seat at the table. She sat down and smiled as he pushed her in and sat opposite her with his food also.

“You know you didn’t have to?” She whispered softly and Klaus hummed

“Of course I did” he answered “I’ll always look after you”

Y/n’s smile wavered a little but she pulled back together. They ate their food and she helped him clean up. After they got dressed and he started to talk. When Klaus starts talking he doesn’t tend to stop until he absolutely has to.

Usually Y/n didn’t mind his rants and rambles but this time it was about them. He started going on about all the things they could do together and how once her cancer was gone then they would go wherever she wanted and he went on and on. After a while however, Y/n just couldn’t help it.

Her eyes had been watering for a full twenty minutes and as soon as the first tear fell, well it was like a waterfall. Klaus’s face dropped within seconds and his heart sunk. Panic flooded him and he quickly pulled her into his lap. He tried to calm her but had no idea what was wrong to begin with. Well not at first.

She tried to leave, push him away like she knew she should have at the start. He wouldn’t let her though. Not now. He had to block the exit, ended up yelling for her to tell him what was wrong. Instead of an actual answer she told him that she didn’t want to be with him, she began to say hurtful things. She needed him to not love her. Not if there was no hope of living. She didn’t want to leave him missing her, she would rather he hated her and was glad she was gone. Or at least that’s how she thought in that moment.

Klaus was never good when it came to emotions. He didn’t understand the sudden change of heart, the hatred that suddenly blossomed. But he knew something was wrong, she didn’t look angry or disgusted by him like she tried to claim she was. She just looked scared and borderline devastated.

He stared at her for a while and she didn’t dare say anything else. Klaud didn’t want to believe it to begin with. But it was the only thing that made sense. With slight hesitation he stepped to her, he overpowered her shoving hands and forced her into a hug. It only took a moment for her to collapse into it, cries shaking through her without a break.

“I’m gonna take you everywhere” he mumbled softly, kissing her smooth head continuously. She made a sound of distress and she shushed her gently “anywhere you want sweetheart. It doesn’t matter how long we have, I will not have you live it alone and in self-pity” he argued and she shook.

He picked her up and sat down with her on the sofa, he grabbed a world map and brought it over to her. “Come on love, you choose somewhere and I’ll get us in a plane, have you ever flown?” He asked, swallowing any tears or sadness down. Right now he just needed to keep her with him. He would go anywhere, do anything to ensure that she was happy for however long she had to live.

“We can’t just-“

“Yes we can. We will. We don’t even have to pack, I’ll buy you everything new from wherever we go. Just pick a continent, we’ll do a country from each and see how you’re feeling before we go again” he whispered, desperation seeping into his tone.

“You’re making it worse for yourself” she uttered, wiping her tears.

“It’ll be a hundred times worse if I’m not with you” he argued, a tear dropping from his lashes.

They both went quiet and let the situation fully dawn on them for a little while. Finally Y/n glanced to the map. “I’ve always heard Europe was pretty” she mused quietly and Klaus wiped his eyes, pulling a smile onto his face as he pulled her close and kissed the side of her head.

“It’s beautiful. I’ll call for a private jet and we shall leave in a few hours. Would you like to tell your family that you’ll be away?” He asked but she shook her head no. “Then please, just trust me my love?”

“I do…and I’m sorry for-“

“Don’t be. Just know that I love you and that I will always have you no matter what” he told her, a kiss to her lips to seal the promise.

“I love you” she uttered, they repeated it back to one another as she made her way into his lap and rest her face in his neck.

Everything else was forgotten.

The doppelgänger, hybrids, Salvatore’s, Mikaelsons. They would all have to wait.

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loveindefinitely · 3 months

Text

༊*·˚ FOREVER WINTER (IF YOU GO) — task force 141 x reader

05 — THESE THINGS EAT AT YOUR BONES

featuring. simon 'ghost' riley + johnny 'soap' mactavish + kyle 'gaz' garrick + john 'bravo six' price + (non-endgame phillip graves)

warnings. nsfw, fem!reader, fmmmm, enemies to lovers, slow burn, polyamory, ghostsoap, pricegaz, alerudy, heavy angst, requited unrequited love, graphic violence

series masterlist. read on ao3. fanfic playlist.

<- previous part | next part ->

You were seventeen when you enlisted.

Obviously, you had to lie about your age – just a year off, not a drastic difference. The recruiters wouldn’t care enough to double check, anyways. Anyone willing to join their forces was good enough in their books.

You’d been desperate, desperate for a sense of community, for a home, for something to occupy your time with.

Things hadn’t been easy after your mother had passed.

She’d raised you on her own; having taken you from your father before you could realise what a father was. Said he was a bad man, didn’t deserve an angel like yourself. Sometimes, you wished that you’d known him, or at least had a father figure to look up to.

That was rare, however. Your mother had done a great job in raising you – making sure you had morals and looked out for others. Always had a roof over your head, food made with love in your tummy.

It was only three months prior to your enlistment that she passed.

While you were at school, she was shot and killed in your childhood home. The day you walked through that front door, backpack a hefty weight on your shoulders, and saw her wide-eyed corpse on the living room carpet, was the day that a piece of you died.

That night, with the cool fabric of the paramedic’s shock blanket around your frame, you looked up what happens after you die with shaky, blood-stained hands. A question you hadn’t had to consider. Not until then.

The police wrote down your stilted words in their government-issued notepads, attempts of sympathy on their faces.

All you could focus on was the tap tap tap of your foot against the carpet, the chewed up flesh of your inner cheek, and the burning of your eyes.

You had, thankfully, managed a choked up explanation of what you’d seen.

“I came home. From school. She was just. There. On the carpet. Her eyes were open,” you managed to whisper, eyes remaining in your lap.

“How did you feel when you saw her?” The officer asked.

You had half the mind to ask him that very same question. You didn’t, of course.

“I felt that she deserved a better death than this. Sir.”

The time after that passed in quick, blurry memories. A hand on your shoulder here, a trauma nurse there, all the while your mind could only supply you with the image of the one person you had. Gone.

“Here.”

You’d looked up with bloodshot eyes and chapped lips. The man looked to be in his late forties, with greying hair and saggy features. In his hands was a steaming cup of tea – extended towards you. With trembling fingers, you took it from the man.

“Thank you,” you’d murmured, before blowing across the liquid with a soft breath. It rippled with the flowing air, tea leaves simmering on the bottom. If you looked hard enough, you could make out a tree.

“Is it alright if I join you?” He asked, gesturing to the chair in front of you. You nodded, and he moved to get comfortable in his seat, eyes remaining on you. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

That was, funnily enough, the first time you’d heard those words said to you.

“I’m Herschel Shepherd,” the man supplied, with a small, comforting smile. He extended a weathered hand to you, and after a moment, you accepted it with a light shake. “I think I might know who’s responsible for your mother’s death.”

You swallowed. “What? Are you,” you worked your heavy tongue, “Are you in the FBI?”

He loosed a hearty chuckle at that, before shaking his head. “No, kid. I’m a bit higher up than that.”

You didn’t have it in you to push. Not then, not with the smell of blood a consistent rot in your nose. You just nodded, accepting that explanation, squeezing your hands together for comfort.

“There’s been some rumours,” Shepherd leaned his elbows against his knees, lowering himself to meet you at eye level. “Of a secret organisation, searching and killing those affiliated with the army. Especially those who served, and then ran.”

Your brows furrowed, mouth opening and closing around nothing. “What does this have to do. With anything – my mum, she wasn’t –”

“She was, kid,” Shepherd interrupted with a raised hand. “She was a renowned Lieutenant. Served for ten years.”

Tap tap tap, your foot goes.

“She would’ve told me,” you managed out, throat choking up and nostrils flaring. “She wouldn’t have hid that from me. I’d know. You’re lying.”

“She didn’t tell you to keep you safe,” he urged, resting his hand on your bouncing knee in comfort. “But… This is more than just her. This is an attack on our country, on you, kid. I’m investigating this group, their ideals, their plans. You can help.”

You shook your head adamantly. “No. This has nothing to do with me.”

“It has everything to do with you,” Shepherd immediately retorted, and you felt your chest caving in, your shoulders deflating. “It’s up to you. I hope to see you in my regiment, kid.”

Then, he’d stood, and dropped a card onto your lap. Without another word, he left.

It was later that night, when you found yourself near passing out, that you’d read his business card. It had his name, his title – Lieutenant General – and a regiment. You weren’t sure how any of it worked, if you could do this, if you were made for something like the army. That night, you’d studied and watched and learned everything you could about his regiment.

Three months later, you’d stood before him, gun in hand.

He just smiled, knowingly, and clapped a hand on your shoulder. He leaned down and whispered, “Together, we’ll avenge her.”

And you did, under his wing. You set things right.

Your ears ring, the bumps of the vehicle doing nothing to snap you out of your daze. It’s like your insides have turned inside out, every molecule of liquid evaporated with a single name.

“He’s a good man,” you manage to say, breaking the stunned silence of the 141. You don’t dare to look up, to see their expressions, their apprehension. “He saved me. Multiple times. He wouldn’t hurt anyone without a reason, he wouldn’t.”

Even as you say the words, try and plead, you find yourself losing faith. It’s a devastating thing, one that has you wanting to wretch your near-empty stomach.

“We did some digging,” Price murmurs, sounding sorrowful and almost guilty. “We found the truth.”

The entire time that Price retells the intel he and ‘Laswell’ found, you find yourself falling deeper and deeper into your pit of despair. Like you’re clawing with your nails to get out, yet all you’re finding is unrelenting stone, breaking the keratin with every scratch.

By the time that all the information has been told, your body feels as though it’s frozen.

It isn’t until you feel a thumb wipe against your cheek that you realise you’re crying. Finally, finally, you look up, and meet Soap’s mirthful eyes. His thumb is rough where it wipes away your tears, gathering the salty liquid against the ridges of his fingertips.

Could it get worse than this? Worse than being told that the only other man in your life – the only other person you’d trusted – was a bad man? Working with Graves? How hadn’t you known? Why hadn’t Graves told you –

Why. Why. Why?

“He was the closest thing I had to a father,” you manage, feeling almost manic with it. “He – he and Graves, they’re all I have, I can’t, you can’t–”

You barely manage to open the small window before you’re hurling your empty guts, nothing coming out but air and some bile burning the back of your throat. Your throat, eyes, your entire body aches.

Two large hands rub at your back, and you can hear words being said, but you can’t understand them, can’t hear anything but a low buzz in the back of your mind. Your breath comes out in loud, sharp pants, and you can’t help but sniffle as tears roll down your cheeks and drip from your chin.

Your entire life has just been flipped on its head, and you can’t handle it. You are a Colonel, you’re supposed to be impenetrable, but this, this is everything you ever had. Gone with a few words, a single mission.

“It’s okay, lass, fuck,” you can finally make out Soap saying, recognising one of the hands as his. It’s an, admittedly, comforting weight, one that you find yourself leaning back into. “Steamin’ Jesus.”

“Kyle, do you have water?” Price calls out to the front, and soon, a hand directs your head to enter the van once more, an opened water bottle being pressed to your lips. Price holds it, his hand stroking the back of your neck in support. “Have a drink, darlin’,” he encourages, tilting your head back as you swallow the ice-cold water. “There we go,”he murmurs, his touch unrelenting.

“You good, love?” Gaz calls from the front, brows furrowed where he’s half-watching in the rearview mirror.

All you can give him is a small, weak nod, but he seems to accept it.

Your mind is spinning at a mile per minute, shuddering when Price pulls the bottle away and Soap continues to rub your back in calming circles. This is, you think, the one time you’ll allow yourself to be comforted by them. This was already crossing too many of the boundaries you’d put up in your head, a clear violation of the separation you’d planned out.

Ghost, true to his name, remains still where he sits in front of you, calculating as he stares you down.

“What are the chances,” he begins, focus remaining on you even if everyone else’s is suddenly on him, “That General’s personal pet is also Graves’ girl who had a change of heart?”

“Si–” Soap begins, before Ghost cuts him off.

“How do we know she’s not a fuckin’ spy,” he spits out, glaring at you with everything he has, “And we’ve been too fuckin’ stupid to figure it out!”

You’re not in control of your body, at this point. Your emotions are.

With one breath, you pull out the blade hooked to your hollister, grip it in a fist, and grab the scruff of Ghost’s uniform and pull him close. Grabbing his hand, you slide the knife into it, grabbing his wrist, pulling it forward so the knife is pressed against your neck.

“Kill me,” you breathe, chest heaving, eyes burning with rage, “Kill me if you think I’m a spy. Slice the knife through my fucking throat, Lieutenant, do it.”

His irises are blown black, the white of his eyes stark against the grease paint smeared over his visible skin. You can feel his heavy breaths through his mask, brushing against your snarled lips. You pull him even closer, your fist unrelenting against the fabric of his uniform.

There’s an uproar around you, Soap yelling something to you both, Price trying to tug you away by his grip on your upper arm, Gaz trying to both focus on not crashing and whatever the hell is happening behind him.

You’re strong, however. Trained and built for hand-to-hand battle, and you don’t move an inch. Not when you’re so determined, so stubborn.

“Kill. Me.” You hiss, the words quiet enough to only be heard by the man holding a knife to your throat. You lean in closer, and you can feel a small trickle of blood fall down your bared neck, but it’s a thrilling type of pain.

“You’re a crazy bastard,” he spits back, but he notably eases the knife away from your skin. You just lean into it further, more blood being let. “If you keep tryna call bluffs like this, you’ll be sent home in a casket.”

“What home, Lieutenant?” You ask, almost desperate for his answer, a demand. You narrow your gaze, refusing to break eye contact. “If you can find where the fuck I belong, I’ll be happy to die within its walls.”

The two of you standoff, your eyes doing all the speaking, before Ghost allows the blade to fall from his grip, hitting the floor of the van with a clunk. “You win, Sweetheart,” he taunts, the words being breathed against your own mouth, mere millimetres apart. “Congratulations.”

You finally allow yourself to be pulled back, Soap shooting you a shell-shocked look, his jaw clenching as he looks between you both. Price finally eases his grip around your arm, barking, “Don’t pull that shit! One wrong move and –”

“My whole life has been one wrong move,” you grit out, falling back into your seat with shallow breaths. You drag your hand down your face, before resting against the sticky heat of your blood, pooling at the dip of your neck. “What’s one more?”

There’s no response. You don’t hope for one, don’t expect one, but it still leaves you unsteady. Unsure. Even when everyone just sits in an odd sort of limbo for a few minutes, you struggle to come down from that high, that overwhelming need for control.

“Here.”

When you look up, it’s to see Soap, a medkit in his lap. Price is sitting on the other side next to Ghost, talking quietly to him, stern expressions displayed on them both. They seem lost in conversation – a serious one, considering your current situation.

“What’re you doing?” You find yourself asking, watching as he rips open an alcoholic wipe and takes it out, your leg bouncing. He gives you a friendly smile, this side of hopeful.

“Patchin’ ye up, Sweetheart. Goes both ways,” he explains, and your eyes go glassy once more. “Can aye fix ye up?”

You don’t trust your words, so you simply nod, tilting your head back. You find yourself rocked by the rhythm of Gaz’s driving, finding solace in the comfort of semi-safety. Although not as safe as you would’ve been at Graves’ base, there was a sense of… protectiveness that came with being with the 141.

Wincing, you grit your teeth as Soap cleans up the blood from your throat, his gentle ministrations so at odds with his bumbling, charismatic character. He’s precise, careful to not hurt you too much, delicate movements made by harsh hands.

“You sure do like playin’ with fire, lass,” he murmurs, swiping the last bits of drying blood from the hollow of your throat, the tip of his tongue peeking out from between his lips. “Can respect that.”

“I’m sorry for… that,” you sigh, watching as he deposits the used wipe into a hazard bag. Good practice, you think, prioritising avoiding any bloodborne diseases. You’re silently impressed. “Didn’t mean to lose my shit. Just. A lot.”

“I know,” he returns, earnest, opening a bottle of sanitary cream and swiping some onto his finger, bringing it to soothe over your small wound.

“I don’t know who to trust.”

Those words aren’t exactly good ones to say, not to a borderline enemy with his hands on your neck. But it feels like an otherworldly force makes you say them, makes you expose yourself even further to this man. Maybe a taunt, maybe a small punishment for saving his life.

He pauses, but quickly covers up his hesitation with returned fervour. “I don’t envy ya, hen. It’s an absolute shitshow. But…” he grabs some medical tape, cutting it to length to put over your wound. Apparently it’s worse than you’d thought. “Ye heard what happened. Shepherd, Graves, they’re not worthy of ya.”

That gives you pause. Worthy. What made someone worthy? What kind of clarifications?

Did he think he was worthy? Ghost? Price? Gaz?

“You think I’m better than the General?” You raise a brow, attempting to goad him, spark that flame of banter that always seemed to haunt the Scot.

“I know ye are. Seen it with my own eyes.”

Your heart skips a beat.

“We’re nearly back at the safehouse,” Gaz calls from the front, tapping his hands against the steering wheel to a silent rhythm. Price grunts out a reply, and Ghost remains silent, watching. Always watching.

Finishing up his quick first aid job, Soap tilts your head back down with a grip on your chin, his thumb stroking along your bottom lip. “There we go, Sweetheart. Good as new,” he whispers, the corner of his lips tilting into a kind grin.

“How’s the arm?” You find yourself asking, looking to the bandaged ligament. “Feeling alright?”

“Definitely better than if aye’d let it get infected,” he hums, looking down to his arm. “Once this blows over, nurses on base will sort it out.”

You hadn’t noticed before, but you realise that his thigh is pressed against yours, and your leg has stopped bouncing. No more tap tap tap. Just… the feel of fabric against your own, heated by the flesh underneath. The comforting touch of another human, not sexual, not for any reason but to simply… exist.

Ten minutes pass of comfortable silence between you both, before the vehicle comes to a stop, Gaz turning off the engine with a turn of his keys, unbuckling his seat belt and hopping out of the car.

“Out we get,” Price says to you all, gentler than he’d been before. The doors burst open, Gaz flinging the keys back to his Captain, urging the four of you to hop out and head in.

You’re the last to get out, Gaz extending a calloused hand for you to take, ever the gentleman. Accepting it, you jump down, looking to the awaiting men. The Los Vaqueros are rushing inside, talking amongst themselves, relief thick in their words, hands being slapped against each other’s backs.

Price is looking at you as he says, “I think we have a call to make.”

As it turns out, the call is to the last person on Earth you want to talk to right now. In the middle of the same table you’d stood beside Rudy at, mere hours ago, is a computer.

One with General Shepherd’s face on it.

Price had given you the mercy in deciding whether you’d show yourself or not. You still hadn’t made the choice, instead standing off to the side, Gaz and Soap at either side of you. Alejandro stands at the right of the table, and Ghost has his arms folded over his chest at the left.

“You hid this,” Price grips the table, livid, “Why.”

Not a question, not really, more of a command than anything. An order from a Captain.

Shepherd’s response has your blood running cold, reality finally cementing inside of yourself. You claw at your palms when he responds, drily, “We all keep secrets, Captain.”

And, oh, what a slap in the face that is.

“Why the hell wasn’t I informed?” Price snaps, his shoulders rising and falling with each barely restrained breath. He seems to fill out his uniform more than he had before, in the dim light of the room.

The boarded up window allows for a small sliver of sunset to cast against all of you, a small joy in the darkness of the safehouse. And the situation at hand.

“Consider yourself well informed now, John,” Shepherd’s tone lowers, more grating, forceful.

“Oh, that's really fuckin' helpful, General. Thank you. But you're a day late and a missile short. There's three of them – we only found two.”

“Then point yourself in that direction, and fix it,” Shepherd booms, and you can’t help the instinctual flinch of your body. You’d grown up being frightened of his raised voice, the threat that came along with it. Even in the safety of this house, you can’t help your response.

Price scoffs a laugh with no humour, his mouth falling into a grim, dangerous line. “And who fixes you, eh?”

You can hear, more than see, Shepherd’s returning snarl. “I don’t need fixing. I’m a patriot protecting my country.”

Gaz and Soap share a look above your head, but you don’t care, not now. Not when Price stands up, slamming his hand against the table, not when Alejandro curses under his breath.

Not when all you can think about is the empty promises Shepherd made.

“You’re protecting your own ass,” Price cusses, turning back to glare at the man on the screen.

“I do what needs to be done, and no one holds me down with a roll of red tape. I know what's best for the cause.”

Price chuckles, eyes a fire of fury, leaning down once more to the laptop. “You’ve lost your mind, General.”

“And you've forgotten what you're fighting for, John. To do good, you gotta do some bad. When we shit, we bury it, that's how it works,” Shepherd replies, hard and strong in his belief.

You’re at the verge of losing it.

“Yeah,” Price begins, before pointing his finger to the camera, “But we don’t bury each other with it, do we?”

“You need to turn off that side o' your head and face down the real enemy,” Shepherd warns, and it’s the final straw.

“Isn’t that what you told me, Herschel? That the organisation was the real enemy?” You quip, and for a minute, you wonder if he’s ended the call.

That is, until, a choked off voice filters in, “Kid?”

Rushing forward, you turn the laptop to face you, and your entire system seems to revolt as you see the man you once cared for like a father.

“Tell me that you didn’t betray them,” you hiss, leaning in closer, your entire face filling the screen. “Tell me that you didn’t ruin lives – tell me you didn’t make a deal with my Commander behind my back. Tell me, Herschel.”

“You wouldn’t understand –” he begins, but that’s all you needed to know.

Stepping away, you give him a final, cold smile. “Was it worth it?”

“What –” he starts once more, before you grab the handle of your gun, pulling it up to rest as a comforting weight in your hand.

“Was it worth ruining my life? Was it worth ruining this mission?”

“You’re just a kid.”

“I am a Colonel!” You shout, emotions bubbling over as you slam the gun onto the table, eyes blazing. “And when I find you, you’re going to wish you never fucked me over. What was your favourite method? Flaying? Dismemberment?”

“You’ve always been too soft and easy to manipulate,” Shepherd snaps back, voice booming through the speakers.

Your voice is as dangerous as you’ve ever heard it.

“Immolation? That was your favourite, wasn’t it?”

His eyes widen on the screen, seeming to understand, to seemingly take you seriously. Too late. Too fucking late.

“Let’s see if it’s still your favourite when it’s your turn to be the victim,” you slowly say, annunciating every word with clear speech. “Thank you for your teachings, General.”

With that, you slam the laptop screen shut, and prepare to face the fire.

taglist. @lilpothoscuttings @jng-yuan @iruzias @insatiablekittie @1wh4re1nova @kaoyamamegami @supernaturalstilinski @inthemiddle0feverywhere @msecho19 @nogood-boyo @alfa-jor @lalashhyl @letmeapologise @honeybeeznutz @1mawh0re @oreo-cream @lalashhyl @someonepleasedateme @letmeapologise @uhhellnogetoffpleasenowty @inarabee

author's note. im so hyped for all of the future plot points. and romance. ohmygod. yes, ghost does eventually come around. yes, he's the longest slow burn. yes, he's the most intense enemies to lovers. wbk. i also got covid so i have a lot of time to rot in bed and suffer while writing!! ALSOOO there is so much fire symbolism... ;)

your comments mean soso much to me, every time iread one i squeal and feel all excited!! thank u for ur support commenters, i DO read all of them. more than once. <3

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fantasylandloser · 3 months

Text

Prude

Summary: Very awkward conversation with JJ and the gang

Warning: mentions of sex/ jj being fucking annoying/ reader slut shaming JJ

A/N: Found this in the vault

*******

JJ knew the rules. He knew he couldn’t touch you. No pogue on pogue macking. That didn’t make it easier though, especially not now. Not now that you were curious.

You were the worst prude he knew. He wished you were faking it, but you truly were lost when it came to anything that had a sexual nature. It made it worse for him. You could be a real priss when it came to talking about it too. Like you were just a few minutes ago when you called JJ a slut. Granted he started the argument per usual, but you had never actually taken a real jab at him. You usually would just mock him, or ignore him. You’ve never called him a name, but you were in a mood today and JJ just wouldn’t take the hint.

“Ya know, I don’t appreciate that.” JJ states. “Someone has to be giving to the tourons, and as we all know.” He puts his arms out shrugging. “I’m a giver.” You roll your eyes at him, trying to continue on with your book, mad at yourself for even engaging.

“If you let someone give to you, then maybe you wouldn’t be acting so pissy right now.” JJ continued trying to get you to say something back, and missing your usual banter instead of this mood you were in.

“JJ leave her alone.” Pope steps in, knowing that you hadn’t had the best day and that JJ was just further irritating you.

JJ ignores him continuing to egg you on. “You know if you ever need to rub one out, I know this excellent technique-” JJ cuts himself off when he sees your eyebrows scrunch in confusion. “I’m talking about for when you… well you know.” JJ smirks, only to stop promptly when Kie smacks him on the back of his head.

“Leave her alone, idiot.” And JJ would have maybe left you alone then if you weren’t still making that adorable stupid confused face.

“Ow! I’m just saying Kie. You do touch yourself don’t you?” He asks directly the wheels in his head spinning as the stupid little confused look on your face deepens. Now even John B was looking up from his map, awaiting your answer and Pope and Kie also seemed to be.

“What are you even-” You start to ask, because everyone touches themself, to put on lotion, to do their hair, to take baths-

“Between your legs.” He clarifies for you immediately making the words die in your throat and a heat rise on your face.

“Oh…” The awkward silence that settles in the group seems to intensify by the second. “No, not really.”

“Not really?! What does that mean? You don’t ever just… get the urge.” JJ presses, leaning towards you in anticipation.

“JJ leave me aloneee.” You draw out in a groan. Uncomfortable with the topic of conversation, which somehow always gets to topics like this one when you’re talking to JJ.

“That’s my last question. I swear. Then you can go back to reading and calling me a slut.” He pleads, curious eyes digging into you.

You huff in irritation. “I tried once and it didn’t really feel-” You huff again at your inability to find the right words, but also knowing JJ wouldn’t leave you alone until his curiosity was satisfied. “I didn’t like it.” You answer simply, wanting the conversation to end.

“That’s gotta be the most bullshit thing I ever heard.” JJ tried to continue even though he said he’d leave you alone. Kie smacked his arm, making him put his arms up in surrender. “Fine, I'll leave it alone.” JJ finally let a now very awkward silence settle over everyone, knowing that wouldn’t be the last of that conversation.

#jj maybank #jj maybank x reader #obx x reader #obx pogues #fantasylandloserfic #jj mayback imagine #outer banks

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sprout-fics · 9 months

Text

(Gif originally by @shadow0-1)

Today. Yesterday. Tomorrow. Again.

(Soap x GN! Reader)

Rating: Mature Wordcount: 5400 Tags: Doomed Narrative, Time Loop AU, Heavy Angst, Blood and Injury, Self-Sacrifice, Whump, Hurt Very Little Comfort, Happy Ending, (I PROMISE THERE'S A HAPPY ENDING!!) Warnings: Major character death. That's...literally the plot A/N: Hi here's the doomed timelines AU nobody asked for

Call of Duty Masterlist

Summary:

The 23rd time you meet Soap, you don’t bother to smile. You know how this ends.

“Nice to meet you, Soap.” You say for the 23rd time, words that have passed your lips in more lifetimes that you wish you didn’t remember. “I look forward to working with you.”

And I don’t look forward to watching you die.

The first time you meet Soap, it’s how you expect.

It’s a warm spring day, the kind where you need to shed layers in the brightness of afternoon, only to don them again come sunset. He stands just beyond the shade of the barracks, awash in sunlight that seems to catch the blue of his eyes. You blink as you take him in, and it’s the only barest indication you give at the instant impression that he’s handsome.

“Sergeant John MacTavish, at your service.” He tells you with a grin, leaning forward to extend his hand to you. You reach for it automatically, remember yourself and offer a pleasant smile in return, along with your name.

“Looking forward to working with you, John.” You reply, and John- Johnny, as you’d come to call him in the tender moments between you, chuckles.

“Call me ‘Soap’.” He tells you easily, and you smile a bit wryly, tilting your head at him.

“The hell kind of name is ‘Soap’?”

- - - - -

It’s easy to work with Soap. He has a cheery, bright demeanor to him that is immediately endearing. He’s friendly, outgoing. His smile is contagious, and the bark of his laughter becomes familiar to you. You listen and guffaw at his jokes over the comms, try vainly to hide your smile when he says them before you.

It only makes his eyes twinkle to see you try and conceal your amusement, and that becomes familiar too- the sparkle of his irises with endless mirth.

He catches you during your duties, sidles up beside you during weapons training, becomes the first to suggest himself as your partner during drills. The company he offers is warm, welcome, lifting the dusky heaviness of your heart into something more tender, fragile. You hold it for him, feel his grin bleed into yours, lay awake at night and sometimes think about the shake of his shoulders when you get him to laugh.

You feel endlessly special when he devotes his time to you, feel as if Soap treats you like you’re the only person in the world. Even in the presence of others he finds ways to indulge himself in you. A nudge of his boot against yours under the table of the briefing room, tossing you an extra round of ammo as you gear up for a mission, finding an excuse to sit next to you on the chopper ride home. Soap feels like a breath of fresh air, the first taste of a cool breeze during summer, a respite from the weight of the world.

Like two stars in orbit, you circle each other, drawing closer into the gravity of each other’s gazes. You try at first to resist, to hold yourself away from the feelings of the other sergeant, knowing at any moment that he could be taken from you. It’s written in the wheels of fate, your destinies as soldiers. If you’re lucky, if you stay alert, if you train hard enough, if chance smiles upon you, maybe you’ll both live to a day where the sound of rockets and bullet-fire doesn’t haunt your waking dreams.

Yet you can’t resist him. When you fall asleep against his shoulder after a days long mission with hardly any sleep, when he playfully grapples with you over the last slice of pizza during movie night, when he gives you that smile during a rare night off-base at the pub- how can you resist?

Gravity pulses between you when you at last fall into him, feel his breath against your lips as your fingers comb through his mohawk. He breathes the blessing of your name against the corner of your mouth in a panting gasp, flexes his fingers across the small of your back when he drags you even closer. The taste of him is honey and ale, a sweetness with a beloved bitter aftertaste, one you drink down greedily in the form of his moans against your flesh.

When you lay in bed together after, sweaty limbs tangled together, you watch the tender, soulful smile form across the handsome planes of his face, and you know.

He’s yours.

There’s kisses stolen in the hangar before take off, moments hidden in the shadows of safehouses. He cups your face and lifts it to him in the aftermath of battle, smears ash against your cheek with his gloved thumb. You try to carve each moment into your heart, never fail to try and memorize the glint of his eyes, the soft slope of his smile. You know the shape of him in the darkness of his bedroom, know the sound of his voice even blinded by the brightness of his mere presence.

Johnny is the sun- emanating a gentle, beckoning warmth from afar. Yet when you get closer you see the glory of his inferno, see the flashing burn of his eyes in the midst of battle. The solar flare of his battle cry seems to carry you like soar of Helios's chariot upwards into the heavens of his devotion. When you touch him, you’re seared, branded by his fingers as they trace sentimental sketches across the dip of your waist. You want to bask in him, feel the ember of his stare as he gazes at you silently across the table of the restaurant he takes you to for your official first date.

“What?” You ask him, averting your eyes a little bashfully, catching his shrug in your periphery.

“Just lookin’.” He replies with a grin, his cheek smushed as he balances on his hand. “Just seeing how pretty you are.”

You kiss him for that, and when he laughs you kiss him again.

You kiss him a thousand times, each as sweet and passionate as the last, know the curve of his smile on your lips. You kiss him before your next mission, when he holds you against the wall of the armory and tells you how he can’t wait until you both get back.

He doesn’t. He doesn’t come back.

He’s looking at you in the chopper when you hear the sound of the RPG. The explosion has him backlit for all of a moment before the world is spinning, the roar of the dying engine in your ears and Price’s holler to “BAIL BAIL BAIL-!!”

You reach for the rope, glance behind you to see Soap not out of his seat- a breed of panic in his eyes unlike that you’ve ever seen from him. The jammed clasp of his strap is caught in his hands as he tugs at it desperately, and you meet his gaze for all of a moment, seeing the imminent knowledge of what comes next in his beautiful blue eyes.

You fall, without him, are caught by the canopy of trees where the snap of branches under you muffles the distant sound of the helicopter exploding as it lands.

You ignore Price’s orders, run desperately for the wreckage, only to be greeted by an inferno that stretches towards the sky.

Johnny is on fire, and this time when you reach for the burn of him the flames are real. They scorch your flesh and you shout his name even as you try to reach him, already knowing it’s too late. When Ghost and the others haul you back you fall to your knees, grip the scorched earth beneath your fingers and scream.

And then you wake up.

Warm springtime.

“Sergeant John MacTavish, at your service.” He tells you with a grin, leaning forward to extend his hand to you.

You blink, heart still hammering in your chest, feeling the warmth of flames chase you even as songbirds sing in the trees. Yet Johnny is alive before you, whole, smiling, looking so much like the man he was when you met him for the very first time.

“Was it a nightmare?” You ask him breathlessly, and Johnny- Soap- merely arches a bewildered eyebrow at you.

“What?”

Nightmares, you come to learn, are so much more kind.

It happens all as it did before. The jokes over comms, the glancing gazes over drills, the bump of elbows in the mess hall. It’s familiar, sweet, amorous…

And you know something is terribly, terribly wrong.

Back to the start, somehow. You don’t know how, you don’t know why- but there’s no denying what has happened. Johnny died. You went back, and now you have a chance to save him.

It’s months before the helicopter crash. You replay the scene over and over again in your mind, and you keep arriving back to the look in Johnny’s eyes as realization washed across them. Everyone who dies a sudden death is confused, scared, not ready, and the knowledge and horror you saw in his stare haunts your waking dreams.

Yet Johnny falls in love with you just as he did before, and you fall into him so readily, desperate to accept his warmth in the wake of his death. Orpheus embracing Eurydice, you try to trace him into your skin, imbue the memory of him into the marrow of your bones and pray that you can reverse his fate. The gears of destiny tick in the back of your mind even as he stares at you over the restaurant table on the evening before your departure.

“Just lookin’.” He tells you when you return his stare, mistaking your concern for confusion. “Just seeing how pretty you are.”

When you kiss him, you try to swallow the sob in your throat.

When you get on the helicopter, you point out his jammed strap with shaking fingers, and he blinks in astonishment.

“Hell’s bells.” He huffs, fiddling with it before it comes loose, and it stays that way for the remainder of your journey. “That coulda been terrible, ey bonnie?”

He makes it out this time, and when he rises from the forest floor he rushes to you, cups your face in his hands and stares down with eyes glinting in concern.

“Sweetheart.” He breathes, chest heaving with exhilaration. “Are you hur-”

He jerks back at the sound of a gunshot, and you drop automatically, crawl to him just in time to catch his hand as he reaches for you. The bullet wound at his collarbone gushes red, red, red, and your hands are coated in it as you plead, tell him he’s going to be okay-

The light fades from his eyes, still staring up at you, the last thing he sees.

You still feel his heartbeat on your hands when you wake up.

“Sergeant John MacTavish, at your service.” He tells you with a grin, leaning forward to extend his hand to you. You tremble, take it and see him blink in surprise when he feels the uncontrollable shake of your palm against his.

The second time, you think it’s a fluke, a horrible prank.

He steps on a landmine, scattered to the four winds.

The third time, you’re petrified.

A man hidden in the darkness, he lunges for you. Johnny pushes him aside. The blade wedges between his ribs.

The fourth time, you beg destiny for answers.

You make it to the compound, the fence lights him up like a firework.

The fifth time, you try to tell him, only to find your throat clogged, unable to speak. You try to tell him a hundred more times in the months that follow, and each time the words are stolen from your breath, as if fate forbids you to inform him of his doomed destiny.

“...Nothing.” You tell him when he asks after you’ve tried to speak over the restaurant table, your food barely touched.

Johnny shrugs. “Doesna matter, too busy looking at how pretty you are.”

You cry silently that night in his bed, while he dozes gently next to you, unaware of what awaits him.

You can’t tell him. You don’t know how to save him. You still love him.

He’ll forget he knows you, forget he loves you by the time he wakes up

You’ve found eight ways for Soap to die, and have taken years to defy all of them. You have to write them down everytime you wake up unless you somehow forget. The notebook is filled with scribbled reminders, ever present in your pocket even as he steals the last slice of pizza out from under you.

He doesn’t have enough ammo. Remind him to take extra clips

He put his knife on the wrong strap that he usually does, fix it for him.

He steps on the landmine fourteen steps after the creek. Stop him.

You can’t stop trying. Not when it’s him.

Yet each time you find a way to outsmart the latest execution of him, fate finds one more thing to steal him out from under you. Unstoppable, imminent, condemned to wake up and see his smiling face mere moments after his heartbeat slows to nothingness.

“I love you.” You whisper as you cradle his head in your lap, knowing he already can’t hear you, glassy eyes staring up at the sky. “I’ll see you soon.”

You burst into tears by the 19th time, buckling in on yourself much to the shock of the men around you, relaying startled looks of confusion between them. You excuse yourself, find a dark corner to fold into and sob, knowing this time you’ll fail too.

It’s Soap who finds you, sits beside you, says barely a word when you cry into his shoulder even though he doesn’t know you. Not yet.

Falling in love with him each time is painful. Your heart beats for him and him alone, but you know it’s only a matter of time before you lose him again. You’ll go right back to the start, to him having just met you, not yet falling into gravity with you, even as you hear the tick of gears turning ever closer to the moment you’ll watch him die.

“Don’t you know me?” You want to ask him, want to bunch his shirt between your fists and let tears stream down your face. “Don’t you know you loved me?”

His smile doesn’t waver. He jokes and laughs and playfully teases you and it hurts. It’s a balm that burns, heals your heart and yet doesn’t erase the scar. He’s your only comfort, the only thing you have as you feel your soul chipped a little further each time he leaves you. You can’t tell him why you cry into his arms, can’t confess to him that you’ve seen him die more ways than you care to remember, that you’ve tried to save him in dozens of lifetimes and he doesn’t even know.

He holds you even though he doesn’t understand, hushes sweet endearments into your hair and comforts you, not knowing how this will end.

“I love you.” He tells you softly as you hiccup against his chest, not knowing what else to say. “Ever since the moment I first saw you, I’ve loved you.”

Your tears drip into the fancy china at the restaurant he takes you to and Johnny looks afraid.

The 23rd time you meet Soap, you don’t bother to smile. You know how this ends.

“Nice to meet you, Soap.” You say for the 23rd time, words that have passed your lips in more lifetimes that you wish you didn’t remember. “I look forward to working with you.”

And I don’t look forward to watching you die.

He looks at you, blinks. His brow furrows.

“How’d you know my name?”

This time, you forget to warn him about the rigged doorway, and he vanishes in a flash and puff of smoke.

“Don’t cry.” He wheezes when you bend over him, words pouring from your lips in a ceaseless mantra. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. “I always hated watching ye cry.”

You wake up. Everything happens as it did before. You meet him, you listen to the sound of his laugh, you finish one of his jokes over the comms and he groans.

“Don’t tell me ye know that one too!” He grouses, and when you smile your chest aches with the force of thirty lifetimes.

You place a palm against his back, unable to help yourself as you enter the compound, wanting to feel the frame of his body just one more time before destiny finds a new way to kill him. He looks at you over his shoulder, smiles even as uncertainty colors the blueness of his gaze.

“Yer like my guardian angel.” He tells you, still smiling even after all this time. “Dannea what I’d do w’out ye.”

A grenade at the staircase. He pushes you out of the way. He doesn’t duck out of the way in time.

You close your eyes when you wake up. You can’t bear to look at him, knowing you’ll just lose him again.

You try to keep him from loving you, thinking perhaps that is the crime to warrant this eternal punishment. You can’t stop loving him, but maybe, maybe you can stop him from loving you. Maybe if you never have him to begin with, maybe you can save him.

Yet Johnny is drawn to you anyways, sucked in by the way your smile doesn’t reach your eyes, like a moth to an infant flame. He hovers at the fringes of your soul, tries desperately to find his way inside, and you can’t help but let him. He comforts you when you cry against the futility of it all, and there’s nothing you can say to him to explain. You wet his shirt with your tears, knowing it’ll be the one he dies in.

The next time, you force yourself to not speak to him, to try and avoid him at all costs, try everything to drive him away. If he never loved you to start, then maybe he’ll live. He seems pre-ordained to find a way to confess to you, ask why you hate him so, look at you through glistening eyes and ask “What did I do?”

You wonder if maybe that’s destiny too, if it’s truly Soap falling in love with you, or his strings being pulled by the same machinations that inscribe his death.

When he asks you again, tries to approach you with flowers and apologies, and offers to take you to dinner on the eve of his death, you wheel on him in desperate fury.

“You don’t actually love me!” You cry, face hot with tears. “Can’t you see that?! All this time it’s just- it’s just the story we’re in. Just because you’re supposed to love me doesn’t mean you do. It’s all just a fucking lie.”

Soap is stunned, too shocked to speak. In all the dozens of lives you’d lived, you’ve never ever yelled at him before.

Hurt flashes across his eyes. His eyes drop along with his hands, the bouquet limp in his grip. The bitterness of his smile as he refuses to look at you threatens to shatter your heart like glass.

“You hate me.” He murmurs, as if to himself. “I’m…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean tae…”

He falls silent, and eventually he walks away.

You don’t get on the chopper this time. You can’t stand to watch him die again.

You try to tell him again, ask him why. Why does he have to torture you like this? Why love you, why allow you to love him so deeply, only for him to leave at the end of this doomed story bound to repeat? Why would he love you?

He looks torn. He’s hurt. He wants to comfort you. He doesn’t know what to say

“Why wouldn’t I love you?” He asks in a whisper, devastated by your outburst.

You can’t speak. You’re forbidden to tell him. You want to. You can’t.

“Bonnie-” He tries, stepping forward, trying to embrace you as if that will somehow solve everything.

“No.” You manage, pressing backwards as he reaches for you, wrapping your arms around yourself protectively. Pain dances across his eyes. “Go away, Johnny.”

He leaves.

He dies anyway.

When you wake up, your body feels weighed down with the passage of a hundred lifetimes, and your legs fall out from under you without warning. Johnny hauls you into his arms, his blue stare flickering with concern.

You forgot how much you love being held by him.

This time, you don’t push him away. In fact, you never do again.

Yet things are different now. It’s subtle at first, things you take for granted. Something in this story has changed, and in turn it’s changed him. Johnny walks into rooms and seems to forget why he’s there. He asks what day it is and frowns in confusion when Ghost replies blandly for the second time that day.

“Didn’t you already tell us this?” He asks of Price during a meeting, and Gaz’s head snaps to him, to the smartness of his tone towards your captain.

“No.” Price responds gruffly, succinctly, and continues on. You watch Soap, see the way he doesn’t seem to understand. His fingers tap on the table, and it’s a small gesture meant to conceal the worry in his eyes- the knowledge that maybe, maybe he’s been here before.

“I saw you in a dream, once.” He tells you one night as you both clamber onto the roof of the barracks to stare at the stars. “Before I even met you.”

You stare at him, and he laughs a little nervously, rubbing at his nape. “A bit crazy, eh? Sounds like am’ off ma heid.”

You shake your head, slide your hand over his, feel your heart thump when he looks at you in surprise. “Tell me.” You whisper, and when he smiles you shudder, feel the weight of destiny press heavy on your shoulders.

“I saw you crying.” He murmurs, and his eyes are a little distant, like he’s looking back at a life that no longer exists. “I told you not to cry.”

“Don’t cry.” He wheezes when you bend over him, words pouring from your lips in a ceaseless mantra. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. “I always hated watching ye cry.”

This time, you nearly die beside him, and almost wish fate would take you too.

He has nightmares now. He thrashes in his bed, a cold sweat dampening his skin when he wakes. You ask him what it was, what vision plagues him, and he only shakes his head, eyes distant and terrified. He clings to you like he’s a little boy frightened by shadows, gazes at something you can’t see but know all the same. He doesn’t have the words, but he doesn’t need them.

You roll over one night, startled to find him wide awake, eyes unblinking as he stares at you. His voice sounds like an echo of himself, a dark magic winding through his words that sound like an all too familiar prophecy.

“I saw myself die.” He tells you, in a voice you’ve never heard- one you’ll never forget. “You were there- and then you weren’t.”

He finds bruises on himself the next morning, in the same places you watched him become riddled with bullet holes.

You’re running out of time. You don’t know when you’ll wake up and he won’t be there. You don’t know if this will be the last time you ever see him.

“Please.” You beg him, tugging on the straps of his vest as he steps towards the chopper. “Johnny please, don’t. Stay here. Don’t go.”

His eyes shine with worry at the sudden, fervent desperation in your words, and he opens his mouth to respond-

Only for his eyes to take on that foreign, distant stare once more.

“Why wouldn’t I?” He asks, and once more you’re forbidden to tell him.

Because you’ll die. Because I’ll be forced to watch. Because I have no way to stop it. Because I’ve seen it happen a hundred times and I can’t do it anymore.

Inevitably, you arrive here, and this singular moment in time, at the place where you’ve yet to find the part in which he survives.

It always ends like this.

You survive the crash, fend off the ensuing ambush, weave past the landmines and the soldiers patrolling the perimeter, disable the electric fence and disarm the rigged door. You make it inside, stop him before he triggers the tripwire, disarm the pressure plate, lob the grenade back up the stairs, open fire on the door to his left before he passes it. You anticipate the reinforcements at your back, fix the radio when you signal for ex-fil, remember to give him your extra ammo. You know when the roof collapses and drag him to safety, point out the missed charge in his demolitions package, take out the turret before he even spots it-

Then you arrive here.

“The detonator doesn’t work.” He tells you for the thirty sixth time, out of a hundred and forty eight lifetimes. You know what comes next. The chopper will get here, you will be overrun, and Johnny will kiss you one last time with an apology, push you into Gaz’s arms even as you scream. Then he’ll make his way to the control room without you all, will stay behind and make it his final, valiant act.

Then you’ll watch the facility explode with him still inside, hear the gears of fate click and send you hurtling back to the beginning.

If you stop him, you’ll all be shot down. You’ll be the only survivor of the crash, and will see the broken bodies of your teammates join him. Or someone else will take his place, and your rescue chopper will be shot down anyways.

There’s no escape. This is always the moment that you can’t save him from. Thirty six lifetimes and you know in just a few minutes you’ll wake up, will hear his voice begin it all again, over and over until one day you wake up and he isn’t there.

“Sergeant John MacTavish, at your service.” He tells you with a grin, leaning forward to extend his hand to you.

You had a dream last time. You were both sitting at the restaurant table, and you spoke before he could.

“Are you going to tell me how pretty I am?” You asked him, swallowing down grief, feeling it bloom like a macabre bouquet when the sound of his joyous laughter tickled your soul.

“Stole the words right from mah mouth.” He chuckled.

You blinked, and the seat across from you was suddenly empty.

You close your eyes, in this moment, try once more to find the part where you all make it out alive. You try to find the part where you don’t lose him. Where you’ll go back to that restaurant and it’ll be the last time.

You’ve had enough.

“I’m going to stay.” Soap declares, eyes grim with resolve.

He turns to you.

You close the distance, reach up and kiss him. You tangle your fingers in his mohawk like you did the very first time, listen to his shocked gasp as you try and drink in the taste of him just one more time. Just one more time.

Honey and ale. A bittersweet goodbye.

You snatch the detonator from his hands, raise your hands to his shoulders and push.

He topples backwards, nearly colliding with Price, and it gives you just enough time to bolt for the door leading towards the control room, locking it behind you.

Soap screams your name, hurls himself at the door, frantic desperation coloring his beautiful blue eyes. The color of a sky in summer time, of a fresh breeze that reminds you so much of him.

There’s a nervous smile on his lips, one that doesn’t reach his eyes. He thinks it’s a prank, another joke between you two, and he says just as much, voice wavering when he asks you to unlock the door.

“I’m sorry, Johnny.” You whisper, tears warming your eyes. “I can’t lose you again.”

Confusion makes him pause, but it’s only for a moment.

“Open the door.” He demands then, jiggling the lock uselessly as his voice rises. “OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!!”

“I love you.” You whisper, raising your hand to the glass pane, your splayed palm against his closed fist and the world between them. “In this lifetime, and the one before. Ever since the day I met you, I’ve loved you, Johnny.”

He calls your name, voice cracking in desperation and he begs you to come back. You take a few more moments, and think to yourself how unkind it is that the last time you see him will be like this. Afraid, broken, desperate.

Terrified.

Just like how he was all that time ago, the first time you failed to save him.

Not this time.

“Don’t cry.” You tell him quietly. “I always hated watching you cry.”

You leave him even as he screams after you, running in the direction of the control room.

You don’t know this part. You’ve only ever watched Johnny or one of them vanish in this direction. You aren’t prepared for this the way you are with the rest of this story. You’re not ready for the hail of gunfire that greets you, the bullets ripping through flesh. Your blood drips red onto the floor, you run low on ammo, and yet somehow you press on.

Not this time. You think. Not ever again. You can’t take him from me any longer. I won’t allow it.

You’re limping, heavily wounded, riddled with bullet holes, chest seizing and smearing an abstract of crimson behind you as you finally make it to the control room. By the time you dispatch the remaining soldiers you’re on the floor, feeling the corners of your vision pulse red and black as the gears turn, as the clock ticks down.

The timer has just enough time to make it out once you start it. You know you won’t be able to.

So you watch the numbers click on the countdown, flop onto your back and cry.

You didn’t want this.

You wanted just a little more time. Maybe you should have let him go, let him finish this if only he can wake up and not know you. Maybe you should have let him die one more time, if only to get the chance to fall asleep in his arms months into the future and past, knowing he was going to die.

It’s too late now, and as the numbers click down, as your heartbeat thrums in your ears and your vision pulses red, you can only try to remember the feeling of his smile against your lips, the sound of his laughter, your name breathed into your skin as he wraps his arms around you, safe from destiny in his embrace.

“Ever since the moment I first saw you, I’ve loved you.”

You love him. You’ve always loved him. In this lifetime, in the hundred lifetimes before. In a thousand lifetimes to come you will still love him. Even if you go back, wake up again to that warm spring day, you know you will only love him once more.

You wish he was here, at the end, and wish that even if he was he’d find a way to live without you.

When you exhale, it’s the sound of his name, the memory of his eyes as they stare across you from the restaurant table, full of endless devotion.

The world goes dark.

And then you wake up.

It’s bright.

You don’t expect what comes next.

There’s no birdsong. No springtime warmth. Only the beep of a heart monitor, the feeling of cottony sheets tucked into a hospital bed, the fluorescent glow of overhead lights.

And the sound of a voice.

Johnny is holding your hand, head bowed, tears falling freely down his face.

“I did it.” He sobs, words choking his throat, shoulders trembling.

Whole. Alive. Just like you.

“I did it.” He cries again, looking up and finding your eyes with his that swim with emotion. When he speaks, it sounds like the weight of a hundred lifetimes presses down on him.

“This time. This time, I saved you.”

Taglist: @soapskneebrace @guyfieriii @writeforfandoms @alicesfracturedmirror

#john soap mactavish #johnny soap mactavish #john soap mctavish x reader #Soap x reader #soap mactavish x reader #my writing #my fic #to add to masterlist #Alex play Dumb Ways to Die

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strrwbrrryjam · 30 days

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either treat abigail, molly, mary, with respect or die looking down the barrel of my gun

i'm being one hundred percent serious when i say i'm tired of people disregarding and disrespecting them to uplift their queer ships. it's bad and it needs to stop.

like i just read a jovier post where they have john cheat on abigail?what the fuck man.

his love for her is unwavering and he is incredibly committed to abigail, he's so devoted to her, working so hard to create a life for the three of them. john is willing to lay down his life to protect his family, and he does so, rescuing them is his whole motive for seeking redemption in the first game. he would never disrespect abigail like that, he's learned and grown, he's no longer the shithead deadbeat dad when jack was young, he loves her.

arthur still so clearly loves mary, his love remaining steadfast and unwavering even years after their broken engagement, it's so obvious on his face when he looks at her. his heart still yearns for her that when she calls, he comes, even if he's a little miffed at the start, he still goes. honestly, i believe if arthur didn't have other commitments in the gang, he would have run away with her when she asked him.

and while molly and dutch's relationship is tumultuous and dutch absolutely does not deserve her, molly is so important to dutch's character and the story as a whole. molly's loyalty to dutch highlights dutch's charisma and the ways dutch inspires loyalty throughout the gang. her existence also depicts the internal conflicts dutch has and the moral uncertainty of dutch's actions. her presence within the gang and relationship with dutch represents the internal strife and conflicts within the gang, highlighting the human cost of their choices and the sacrifices that are made in pursuit of a false freedom in the old west.

and let's not even mention the treatment eliza, annabelle, bessie and even susan receive, which is hardly any mention at all.

eliza, annabelle and bessie each play small but significant parts to not just their respective partners, but to the story as a whole.

eliza shapes arthu’rs past and motivations. her tragic death, along with their son, isaac, has a large impact on arthur and his present relationships, such as abigail and jack. their memory serves as a driving force of arthurs path to redemption.

annabelles fate fuels dutch's vendetta against colm and the o'driscolls, and adds personal stakes to the gang as a reminder of the consequences of their life as an outlaw.

and bessie, oh bessie, not only does she add depth to hosea and represents hosea's wishes for a more peaceful life, but hosea loves her so much that when coming to terms with his inevitable death, whether by gunshot or sickness, the mere chance of reuniting with bessie brings him so much comfort, despite the fact that he fears that bessie lives above, while hosea will be traveling down below.

susan is a very controversial character due to her treatment of the women in the gang and her murdering molly, who did not betray the gang, both of which i do not condone, but it is impossible to deny her importance to the story. not only was, from what we know, dutch's first woman, coming before annabelle and molly, she also served an important role in the gang, acting as an authority figure, maintaining order and discipline within the gang where tensions often rise. she serves as an emotional anchor, which is incredibly important when death is constantly looming over you and adds so much depth and complexity to the story of rdr2.

when you ignore and disregard these characters you are undermining the depth and the richness of the story, each of these characters are important to the story. if you wish to truly appreciate the storytelling of rdr2, it is important to recognize and respect each of these characters.

#i know i've said this before. several times in fact but this keeps happening and people are not learning #listen i love charthur so so much. i have written multiple posts about my love for charthur.#i have studied every interaction every compliment every argument and yet. and yet. i still respect mary because i know how important she is #to not just arthur but to the story of rdr2 itself. representing hope and redemption and personal growth #im not as big as a vandermatthews fan. like i ship it sure - but god please learn to respect molly annabelle and bessie. especially bessie #the characters importance does not disappear because you want them too #respect them like you would any male character #rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 abigail roberts #abigail roberts #rdr2 molly o'shea #molly o'shea #rdr2 mary gillis #mary gillis #rdr2 susan grimshaw #susan grimshaw #rdr2 bessie matthews #bessie matthews #rdr2 annabelle #rdr2 eliza #rdr2 isaac #rdr2 hosea matthews #hosea matthews #rdr2 dutch van der linde #dutch van der linde #rdr2 arthur morgan #arthur morgan #rdr2 john marston #john marston

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precious-little-scoundrel · 2 months

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Friends in the Crucible

MOTA PACIFIC THEATRE || FLIGHT SURGERY AU

1: Welcome to Hell Island

Requested by the sweet @forsythiagalt

AU NOTE: due to a long-standing crush on real life heroine Ensign Jane Kendeigh and her work on Iwo Jima, the current ongoing anniversary of the battle and a hope to not step on the toes of any existing Nurse!xBuck pairings -I’ve gone with what excited my imagination the most and created an entire Pacific AU with our MOTA boys. If this AU ends up being as interesting and stimulating to y’all as it was for me in writing it, I’d be terribly down for exploring more scenarios with everyone in their new and varied roles.

Main paring: Gale Cleven and OC Flight Nurse Ensign Maureen Kendeigh…cameos by “Doc” Egan, John Brady, Ken Lemmons, Harry Crosby and Benny Demarco…and maybe a nod to a certain Marine Captain named “Andy” who I refused to let die, even though he was never on this island. You neither need to have seen HBO’s Pacific or know about the history for this to make sense, in fact it might help my ignorant writing go down better without it 😏

Warnings: WAR?! Graphic descriptions of wounds, battlefields, gore, foul language, period typical language: use of the word “Jap” and a joking insult of “fish eater” for a Catholic. Hints that John Egan is a terror to his nurses, Cleven having to take his pants off for a wound to be examined, brief mentions and emphasis on his never having been touched by a woman intimately, a nurse positioning a man’s member out of the way to his surprise, strictly professional tho. No joke, really. But they’re having a bit of a moment.

Only proof read once. So many thanks to Bee, Christi and Ashley who all enabled me into going this rogue with a simple request and for giving edits and assurances. Hope y’all enjoy!

There were a whole lotta jolts in the descent. Of course there were. Why, there were jolts and bumps even coming down to the runway at Pearl or San Diego, and there had been far more than jolts on the training tarmacs in Kentucky. She had been in enough planes, experienced enough banging about, and had enough wheels up landings that Maureen felt somewhat entitled to her opinion on the necessity of jolts or none.

So far, Major Gale Cleven had piloted this monstrous tin can like a limo, smooth, steady and with full warning for each bank and turn. Maureen had not even had to catch a single falling bottle so far and the rows of empty bunks lining each side of the plane had hardly rattled except in the same low humming frequency of the ever thrumming engine.

But now there were jolts. And of course there were, they were flying straight into a warzone. Cleven had gotten them to Iwo Jima two hours ago, and since that time he’d been circling the island in a wide arc, casually waiting for a pesky air battle between fighters to calm down enough for him to land. Sure, the beaches had been wiped clean and a landing strip had been carved out of volcanic ash and marine corps blood -cleared for their use. But still, there were Jap bunkers, Jap planes, Japs themselves and Jap equipment in that smoldering mountain and so far, no word had come down definitely as to when the island might be considered secure.

It was all very historic, Maureen has been assured -allowing a woman into a combat zone. First time ever, so they kept erroneously insisting. That’s why there was a man armed with a camera and not plasma sitting a few lines down from her on the cold metal bench. Maureen had once had plenty of time to ponder the historicity of her mission and that of her fellow nurses back in Guam, right now she wished she could focus solely on her training and ignore the ominous crack-pop of something hazardous in the air and the resulting wobble of Major Cleven’s steering.

Stupidly she wished the Major’s low voice would come back on through the near radio system and soothe them all back down like frightened livestock. Gale Cleven had a way of managing that even with his face obscured, and while it made Maureen blush to admit she needed any calming, the facts were she was 24 years old, practically untried and desperate to be brave enough to be of use. Rattling on the bench seat between equally nervous girls and a hawk-eyed journalist was no match for the cuticle picking anxiety.

Maureen chose to forcefully look up from said bloody cuticles and was met by Major Egan’s gum smacking grin across from her. How many carriers had he been on when they went down? Kamikaze planes jutting out the side of them, ocean water pouring in, sharks abounding and hundreds of patients under his care, in his charge to tow to shore?

Mild, scattered, poor-man’s flack wasn’t remotely disturbing to their flight surgeon. “He’s great, isn’t he?” Egan yelled to her cheerfully, the jerk of his head suggested his praise was directed towards someone in the cockpit.

Maureen knew well enough that much as Egan respected the co-pilot Demarco, it was no match for the love affair between him and Cleven, an appreciation that had Egan’s special request yanking his friend from Air Force to Navy to Transit. Such a series of bounces in a man’s otherwise distinguished career, all to chauffeur one charmingly entitled flight surgeon, was enough to put anyone into a bad mood -it would explain Major Cleven’s initial coolness on meeting them all at the departure tarmac.

Or maybe he was just businesslike. Maureen couldn’t fault anyone for that. He had been prepped, perhaps not as much as she had, but he didn’t act entitled in any way, and he kept the plane steady. Except for this mounting series of jolts.

“Yes,” she had chosen to holler back to Doctor -Lieutenant Commander? Bucky No Shits? Johnny? Doc “Smirky”?- Egan, knowing he’d want a favorable report on his friend, “it’s been remarkably smooth.”

Maureen was glad truth aligned with diplomacy in this instant. Although if any man could handle the outright truth it was John Egan, no matter what they all said. And “they” said a lot, he had once had two marine squadrons under his care and to them he was a Marine, simultaneously he’d had three navy squadrons to take care of and to them he was a Navy man. He’d even switched uniforms thrice in a day before. And now he was being flown about by his best friend to tend carcasses on a foreign strand, oddly suited to terrible conditions and bad scenarios, offering medical aviation expertise and poorly timed jokes wherever he went.

He’d trained her group of specialized Evacuation Flight Nurses the last three weeks of aquatic conditioning in the states, and he’d culled eighteen out of the group for getting winded after towing full grown men seven laps in the San Diego surf -all while puffing on a cigarette himself, seated with sunglasses on in an motorized dinghy. Maureen had come to hate him that day, and every day after she’d come to want to be like him. Kathleen Martin got her wings pinned first and Maureen right after, “well done, Candy!” Egan had praised while his fist drove in the tack.

“It’s Kendeigh, sir.” Maureen had dared correct for the hundredth time that training week, “Pronounced like: Ken-Day.”

“Cand-ay. Got it!” he repeated with jovial affirmation and that was that.

Major Cleven had given her the respect of calling her ‘Ensign’ as he shook her hand, a quick and firm squeeze and on to her next companion, she’d have judged him as too pristine in everything from mannerisms to features were his war record not ample justification for his bearing. The low cadence of his voice over the coms came in as a slight pitch to the plane and a swoop of decline in altitude became apparent under her—

“All personnel prepare for landing.”

Cleven was nothing like those pilots during training, barking orders laced with frantic warning in their voices. It was a cow pasture back in Kentucky and there they’d had no good reason for alarm. Here where there was real reason, Gale Cleven crooned to them and John Egan smiled opposite her as he took in the effect his chosen pilot had on his nurses.

“Like soothin’ a baby,” Egan sighed as he lounged a little deeper on his bench, long legs deceptively braced for impact, Maureen had long ago learned the man was nothing but smoke and mirrors of his actual intentions, “isn’t he great? In danger of fallin’ asleep with that guy at the wheel.”

To emphasize his point -or more likely to distract “his girls” from the imminent prospect of landing on a battleground, Egan leaned back all the way and tipped his cover over his eyes, pretending to fall asleep. Maureen caught him as he cocked one sharp eye open to see if she was still watching. She gave him a hopeless smile of recognition of his disguised kindness before forcefully suppressing a gasp of shock as the plane hit Amtrak smoothed gravel and ground its way down the beach. Egan hadn't budged by the time the momentum ceased and the plane became bizarrely still after hours of vibrating travel.

“Right. That’s us.” He straightened up, his cover and his posture, rising up in his seat and slapping at the metal ceiling of the plane, “Good job Buck.” he hollered and got no reply. “He’s still crabby about flying a C-47.” he divulged to no one in particular as they all rose and prepared to disembark, drilled for ages in this routine and finally let loose to practice it. Egan’s nonchalance was almost disorienting for such a momentous occasion.

The large cargo door was opened and a irreverently pleasant tropical breeze funneled through the plane, bearing with it the sounds of crashing waves and popping, far off gunnery. There was also a smell that came with it, sulfur and sweet. It was sickening from the first, and Maureen dreadedly wondered if it was from volcanic fumes and rotting vegetation or something more heartbreaking. With her kit on her back she followed her companions out the cargo door, finding Major Cleven blank faced and unphased on the tarmac beside it. Nothing but a smidge of sweat around his hairline to suggest the hours of flight he’d just clocked and the wacky landing he’d managed so well.

“Welcome to hell island, ladies.” he greeted in a droll monotone and Maureen’s gait stiffened without her permission.

There was no true tarmac, as they had been warned, just a strip of cleared back sand churned up by Cleven’s wheels. Lapping waves were on the left side and then a field of sheets to the right. It was the oddest sight. Rows and rows of camo tarp and white sheets blotted pink, hardly a spot of sand to be seen between. They’d been warned it was havoc here, the situation so bad that they’d finally allowed for this exception, allowed the sending in of specialized units to evacuate by air as the boats could hardly ferry enough of the wounded out in time to save them. But this -this beach of corpses was so daunting a task it seemed impossible to choose where to start.

“John,” she heard Major Cleven address Lieutenant Commander Egan as he dropped down beside her, “you’ve only got so many births, do what ya need to do to fill them, but I’ve got my orders. You’re not settin’ up a hospital. When we get the supplies off, get this plane full -we’re takin’ off. Full stop. I’m not gonna have us here like sittin’ ducks for the mortars while you fuss.”

“I hear ya.” Egan assured him in that remarkably unassuring way of his and lit a cigarette. “Alright nurses, gather round.”

Triage was crucial for such a mission, the prioritizing of wounds and necessary services essential for prolonging the lives of those in imminent peril, versus those with the likelihood of surviving on only the essentials found in a corpsman or medic’s arsenal. They’d be back tomorrow with another flight, and the day after that. Cleven was right that they weren’t here to establish a hospital, yet still the idea of how many would perish from being left behind, even by this first flight, was a sickening probability Maureen has been trained to ignore.

“Where are all the corpsmen?” Egan asked one pharmacist's mate who came to greet them, picking his way through the rows of groaning men. The boy couldn’t have been a day over seventeen.

“Up there,” the kid had nodded up to Mount Suribachi and its ominous veil of smoke, “or dead. Lost so many in the first week they started sending us in to substitute. We’ve done what we can. Sure glad to see you guys.”

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Lemons, sir.”

“Hell I can’t call someone a lemon, now can I?” Egan’s grin was infectious and the boy grinned back like he was seeing his first friend in ages.

“Then it’s Kenny. Sir.”

“Yeah alright Kenny, let’s get to it.” Egan had drilled you all so thoroughly you could have performed even without the aid of the grounded pharmacists and their mates, yet still it was odd to see such a mass of wounded and so few to tend them. The desperation and chaos was tangible.

Maureen had barely set off out from under the plane wing when Gale Cleven’s brusque reprimand arrested her steps as forcefully as a tug to her flight suit would have, “That bunch don’t need your help.”

The terse judgment in his tone gave her sharper eyes to notice that the particular section she was headed towards all had sheets pulled over their faces. Her own face blanched at both the misstep and the sensory overload of so much sorting to do. She wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself, not here, not when faced with the easy part of all this, and she wasn’t going to be crippled by criticism while enduring her first trial by fire. “Right, thank you, Major.” she agreed with him as stoically as possible and ground her heel back around on the sand and tromped off towards the direction of sheets that were visibly alive and writhing in misery.

That changed as soon as they saw her girlish form walking amongst them. Sounds of dying anguish changed to cheerful wolf whistles and happy greetings. It made Maureen’s heart swell with pride at the unbreakable spirit in each of them.

She spent the next hour and a half amongst those men.

Gruesome was a word that Maureen swore to herself that she would never use lightly again. She wasn’t one given to hyperbole anyway, and her years apprenticing in the hospital in Manilla and her most recent training for exactly such wounds as these, understandably led her to believe she knew the mettle of such a word.

But no.

Gruesome, she decided as she began her task again and again, applied only to this: the way the tiniest slip of her hand on any part of this poor boy took skin with it, charred and soupy flesh squishing off meat and sinew like the flaky crust on a prime bit of brisket. It was the only comparison fitting. His own flamethrower had bitten him as he tried to take a countless next pillbox. He’d said it like a joke even as his teeth chattered too hard from pain to deliver the punchline.

Maureen wasn’t here to contemplate ironies, or the unfairness of war, she was here to find some intact vein through which to stab her needle and begin giving him back the blood that was slowly leaching into the black sand beneath him. Ensign Smith was holding up the bottle, throwing a shadow over his charred form that helped Maureen discern a bit better, giving the boy a kind word or ten of reassurance about home and pain relief. Maureen bit through her own tongue when she finally slid the needle home, deep and pulpy, she could only pray it would hold the blood they gave back.

“Alright, bandages, Smith.” Maureen decided and did her best not to jump as a mortar thumped on the sand, hundreds of yards away, but still, they were getting ever closer, proving Major Cleven’s grim prognostication to not be unfounded. He was confirmed that the Japanese didn’t give two shits about red crosses, much less cargo planes carrying in supplies and taking away wounded. Maureen tried not to dwell on it as she and Smith began cutting away filthy uniforms and wrapping their patients' flesh in the Vaseline soaked bandages. It was a terrible business for the first few minutes before the interlaced numbing agents in the gauze took affect and made their care something less like torture for the poor men.

Some of them could walk, a missing leg being a mild injury comparatively, they just needed the helpful shoulder of a technician and off they went to amble into Cleven’s plane. There the Major met them despite it being beyond his purview, handing out cigarettes even though he himself abstained and kept an eye on the Navy mechanic refueling his plane from a bullet riddled jeep. When he wasn’t doing that he was scanning the sky, aviators turned up and reflecting a cloudless sky. Maureen’s mouth grew chalky at the thought of what he was looking out for.

Once wrapped and tended, the men were ready to be hoisted on stretchers and taken to the plane. But those men were select ones, ones that Egan had decided upon. He had a particularly odd way of triaging, one that upon initial observation appeared rather callous and aloof to his nurses who had been trained as much in medical practice as in solicitous decorum.

Doc Egan moseyed through the ranks of wounded, keenly aware he was not as popular as his pretty faced nurses, but making up for it with such easy-going banter that chuckles followed him wherever he went, making the men forget that he was deciding who got relief and who did not. Who were to be permitted the cooling sheets of Elysium by nightfall and who were to be left burning on the sand. Puffing a cigarette and making small talk, he clocked each injury and each likelihood of recovery without giving a bit of it away.

Nearing Maureen’s own patient of the moment, she felt him crouch down beside her and take in the hopeless gut wound she was ineffectually trying to stuff with bandages. A sturner superior would tell her not to bother, to move on, save such determination for someone with a longer life expectancy than five minutes. Maureen found it hard to make that call herself when met with the pleading eyes of someone’s dying son.

“C’mon Candy, move over, lemme try.” Egan murmured and his hip knocked hers gently as he crouched over the boy, perfectly aware of the futility. “Hey bud, breathe for me, breathe. You wanna smoke?”

Egan’s now bloody fingers reached up to his own lips and plucked his fresh and third cigarette of the hour and brought it down to the boy’s chapped mouth, shifting until he was fully seated on the sand, arms around the kid’s shoulders, gently taking the refreshment away when he puffed out, then replacing it for another inhale.

Maureen knew better than to linger. Beside this scene of brotherly last rites was another dying man and a hundred more beside him, so she moved on, seeing only vaguely the way the kid coughed blood as he laughed at Egan’s conversation. The topic seemed to be on the boy’s dog back home. The Sergeant she was tending added in a bit of teasing over the name -who names their dog “puppy”?!

Maureen had barely managed a tourniquet on the sergeant's arm before she could suddenly hear Egan’s gentle chatter turn to low shushing.

The sergeant looked away to the other side.

Maureen noticed the discarded cigarette laying on the sand, it had been smoked to a stub.

The heaving rattle of panicked breath beside them stopped.

Egan shifted onto his knees again and his long, bloody fingers dragged those sightless eyes closed. There was the brittle clink of dog tags being checked.

The sheet was tugged up all the way.

That triage was over.

Maureen politely ignored Doc Egan’s harsh sniff beside her -it was dusty here- but clocked the way he rose to his feet, a rough brushing off of his flight suit and his brusque inquiry regarding her morphine distribution in sector 2.

“All tended-“ she had begun when a shout from the far off plane rang out-

“-JOHN!” That was Cleven’s unmistakable bellow and Egan, despite being in a human sea of potential Johns- responded like he’d been made to hear that one voice alone. “Incoming, west!”

“Shit.” Egan spun westward and sure enough there were fighters with a blazing red sun, rushing straight down at them.

They were such a distance away still, Maureen doubted Cleven’s sight for all of fifteen seconds before horror set in. “They wouldn’t-?” she looked up at Egan whose bitten lip suggested that they would indeed strafe these poor men given the chance.

“Stretchers!” Cleven yelled again, “Get ‘em under the wings!”

There was a callous logic to it. Those men already prepped to be saved might as well be prioritized this much more. Fairness wasn’t something promised in war and Maureen chose to hate Gale Cleven instead of some ephemeral “war” for verbalizing the awfulness of that necessary.

“Do it.” came Egan’s agreeing order and Maureen and Smith took their respective sergeant down near the waterline at a run, fifteen other nurses and the various techs mimicking them. They deposited their men under the relative safety of the flimsy wings and dashed back out for more, leaving two techs behind to hoist the poor fellas into the cargo hold and deposit them in their respective bunks.

“Come onnnnn.” Cleven’s warning yell was drowned by the commencement of allied anti aircraft higher up the beach, trying to pick off the fighters before they reached the landing strip.

Maureen hardly noticed the closing drone of the fighter’s approach, nothing but her heart beat and memorized lines of her training on repeat in her ears. She’d been trained to fight hand to hand if necessary, her folks knew the risks of their daughter volunteering for such service but there was a sour dampening of resolve at the idea of being picked off from the air, not even allowed a bit of struggle to go out with.

All she could do was lift, hoist, run, deposit, do it all again.

They were getting near to full. On one pass through she saw Cleven counting berths and scolding poor Ensign Courter for her rushed method of securing her charge- “five feet drop to the floor on my first bank, oughta be just what that chest wound needs. For God’s sake, I’ll do it!”

He had a cold sort of fury to him Maureen found obnoxiously potent, and she felt a judgment rise in her for his obvious haste in wanting to get out of there. To his credit, when the planes did go by and everyone hit the ground, he was still standing yanking on the straps to secure the top bunk. Bullets punctured the side of the plane and riddled it, tiny specks of light flooding into the dark hold. One man was grazed as he lay in there.

“John!” Cleven warned again after they’d gone by.

“I know, I know damnit.” Egan snapped back from yards away, “There’s just not enough corpsmen -let me finish my damn job.”

“By the time you finish yours I won’t be able to finish mine.” Cleven retorted and the obvious finally occurred to Maureen -perhaps it was not his own safety that preoccupied him but the fragile capability of his riddled plane being able to evacuate once full. That, was indeed, his job. Still, such sentiments expressed as they were from the shelter of the cockpit and from a man who favored a silk blue neck scarf identical to the shade of his eyes, rankled Maureen.

The returning buzz of the Japanese fighters coming back around only cemented her futile rage. Her arms were aching and the sand caught at her boots and her mouth was dry with dust and there were so many, so, so many more left to help. Ensign Smith had been called away to assist with lifting another, and Maureen was knelt beside the man they’d managed onto a stretcher, doing her damndest to find how many bullets were embedded in his left leg and how deep the shrapnel was on his right. There was so much blood and filth it was impossible to tell and Andy, as his name was, couldn’t give her much help besides informing her it hurt like hell and she sure was a sight for sore eyes.

“Egan! At your three o’clock!” There was Cleven again.

Maureen grinned back at Andy and forced it to stay on her face as the buzz of the approaching fighters grew imminent and the dreadful thwump of machine gun fire thudded into the earth yards up the beach. It hit the section of the dead first, a further injury and dishonor. Maureen felt a lump in her throat at the realization she had no one near to help her lift this stretcher and that Andy himself hadn’t a usable leg to spare.

“Go.” her patient told her with a clear look of realization on his face as the leaden spatter of strafing began to elicit responses from those wounded men still alive enough to react.

“No.” The refusal came out of her mouth about as naturally as taking the next breath.

A shadow threw over them for a second and Andy’s facial expression grew surprised, but, stubbornly focused on her patient’s face, Maureen assumed it was the plane passing by at last and chose not to spend her last seconds watching what was going to kill her. “Ensign Kendeigh, lift.” Major Cleven’s voice was so close so suddenly it spooked her flat on her backside until she saw him, squatting down and casting a shadow at the head of the stretcher, poles gripped in both hands, ready to hoist. She scrambled to the foot and took the wood in hand, lifting for the twentieth time that day and running towards the plane.

Time was slow and fast all at once. Cleven’s shadow had come before even the first fighter. But as they ran it zipped by, bullets flinging up sand into their eyes, a near miss. The second one was close behind and as they ran near to the wings, they saw no room was left under them, as crowded as an awning at Coney Island during the height of summer.

Maureen squatted fast and lowered the foot of the stretcher, feeling Cleven mimick her movements behind her. Before she could turn ‘round and enact her training, there their pilot was, body draped over the battered Marine captain, his back as stalwart and protective as the wings of his plane. Maureen threw herself to the ground as well, propping herself over Andy’s battered legs. Together they made a turtle shell of sorts and, damned to be caught cringing when death took her, Maureen kept her eyes open and stared back at Gale Cleven’s gentle face as the -thud-thud-thud- passed them, a micro expression of assurance twitching his mouth and eyes as death passed over.

Who needed to look at the sky when you could find God in those eyes his mother gave him?

For as long as she lived, Maureen would never forget the gust of his spearmint scented breath on her face, the first sensation she registered as soon as the planes were past and they yet remained, alive, locked together above a man they’d both risked dying for.

“Major, you shouldn’t’ve.” Andy’s rough voice spoke Maureen’s own dazed sentiments as they straightened up, Cleven picking up his fallen aviators from the sand, “You gotta fly us outta here, you die an’we’re all sitting ducks.”

“Eh, that’s why we have co-pilots, Skipper.” Cleven grinned before glancing back at the sky, his face morphing into anything but carefree.

“Is that how Lt. DeMarco feels?” Maureen teased wearily.

“I’d never presume to know how Benny Demarco feels.” Cleven replied levelly but the corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement, “Ensign Kendeigh, give me a task.” he demanded.

“Sir-“

“I want us outta here in ten.” His tone held no room for argument, “What’s somethin’ even a dumb pilot can manage? Egan!” He yelled as the Lieutenant Commander approached them at a jog, his dark face the picture of rage for the men in his care being further hurt. “Out in ten.”

“Not gonna happen, still got supplies to distribute-“ Egan was visibly inscenced.

“-one more pass on my plane and we’re not gettin’ up. Look at that back wheel” Cleven replied, nodding at the deflating tire. “Hand me your shit, what’re we supplyin?”

“Aren’t you queasy for needles?” Egan balked, finding time for teasing despite himself.

“Hand me the damn syrettes.” Cleven stuck his hand out.

“You're under Candy’s orders.” Egan stipulated, pointing to Maureen and Cleven nodded.

“Yup, and we leave in ten.”

“Okey Buck, go, go, go.”

The nurses that had gone before them had tagged and labeled each, making it easy for Maureen and Major Cleven to squat along the rows and complete what help could be given. Her other companions were doing the same, each staggered at a few yards and assisted by Corpsmen and pharmacists. And despite the tension from the strafing and the dismal prospect of having to leave so many behind, the hum of chatter soon picked up again on the beach.

“Shit, shit, shit, no-I hate needles!” Marty, eighteen years old but with eyes that had seen a little too much, bore his dressing with tired stoicism until Cleven pulled out the morphine syrette.

“Son,” Gale murmured with barely concealed amusement, “your side looks like a bear cub teethed on it, you’ll be fine. And this’ll help.”

“Don’t ‘son me’ you baby faced glamor boy.” Marty spat back, marine corps superiority coursing through his admittedly impressive veins.

Gale was midway through a good natured snicker at Marty’s venom when the heavy shock of lobbed mortars began to thud the beach again. “Jesus.” the Major sounded more annoyed than surprised and had the wherewithal to place a restraining hand on Marty’s chest as the kid began to scramble up in panic, displacing Maureen’s dressing on his ribs.

“Cleven, they’re chewin’ up our strip!” Demarco yelled to them from the cockpit and sure enough, craters were beginning to form at the end of their taxi-able stretch of beach.

“Don’t leave me! Don’t leave Major!” Marty suddenly clutched at Cleven and the Major had to wrench his arm free. “Calm down, private, you’re on a stretcher.” he then ducked his head as he moved round to seize the poles, “And if there’s one thing you should know,” he went on in a low murmur just for Marty’s benefit, “it’s that Doc Egan doesn’t waste his stretchers on dead men.”

Carrying Marty’s stretcher to the plane was Maureen’s last jog down the beach. She ran up the cargo ramp and Cleven was after her, handing over the task of racking the private into a bunk to one of the nurses before sternly ordering a path for himself through the crowded belly up to his cockpit. Demarco had the full radio system on, the better to communicate with the nursing personnel as they prepared for take off, and everyone aboard could hear his exasperated greeting as his reckless officer took his seat.

“You really game enough to try to get this Goony off the ground with less than a thousand feet of strip?” Benny’s broadcasted doubt made most nurses pause in their work and Maureen met Andy’s eye from the third bunk halfway along the plane wall.

“I thought he said that’s why they have co-pilots.” Andy joked to her quietly.

“Mm,” she agreed mischievously, “I guess co-pilots are one thing, co-Clevens are another.”

“Should find a way to mass produce.” Andy sighed, “War would be over in five seconds.”

Gale Cleven hadn’t even refuted Demarco’s concern verbally and already the crew shrugged it off, if Major Cleven couldn’t get them off Hell Island then no one could, and that was that.

“John Egan, get your ass onboard, it’s wheels up.” Cleven’s yell out the window blasted through the radio, too, and the girls grinned at each other -Major Egan wasn’t one to get bossed about. But, as if to challenge everything they knew about life and their own superior, mere seconds later, John Egan was hopping up into the belly of Cleven’s plane with his empty sack dangling and sweaty hair in disarray. “We’ll be back Kenny!” he yelled to the young pharmacist’s mate left on the sand as the cargo door was hastily wrenched shut by Brady.

“Honey I’m home.” Egan yelled up to the front and Demarco’s snicker echoed along the walls of the tin belly.

“Everybody stow your gear,” Cleven’s order came through, the pounding vibration of nearby mortars shuddering the plane even more than the engine’s revving, “we’re gettin’ outta here now. S’gonna be bumpy.”

“That’ll be one word for it.” Demarco snarked, “Death by bumps.”

The human cargo in the plane, those not groaning or insensible, let up a unanimous chuckle. It helped to have been to hell and back, a quick death as a plane failed to get air and plowed instead into a sand bank was hardly the worst prospect these men had faced.

“Believe, Benny, believe.” Maureen could hear Cleven’s soft smile in his voice as the wheels began to roll.

Brady, their engineer, navigator and the lone crewman besides the pilots aboard this transport, kindly manhandled Maureen to a seat between his legs on the rattling floor beside Egan’s built-in desk, his hand fisted in the back of her jumpsuit collar like she was a kitten. They kicked their legs out together and braced as they gained speed and the plane began to jostle into the milder craters at an ever more intense pace.

Shell fragments made a series of charming bangs off the side of the wing nearest her and Maureen could hear Brady whispering behind her in repetition “God spare the oxygen, God spare the oxygen, God spare-“

“50-“ Demarco’s countdown was unfortunately broadcasting like some morbid game announcer and Maureen could see Egan’s jaw ticking in stress under the harsh overhead lights.

There was a terrible blast in front, the sound of shattering glass or metal and a jarring shudder went through the plane, “Damnnit.” Cleven hissed but the acceleration remained.

“You hit?”

“No. Read me, Benny-“

“80-“ Demarco obligingly resumed counting.

“C’mon Buck.” breath gusting on Maureen’s neck behind her, as Brady had begun to direct his prayers to the Major now and as if in answer, the stomach swooping feeling of flight took over them seconds later as the cargo plane let out a mighty roar of strained endurance and lifted with a wobble that had more than a few bunks puking their guts out. There’d be over five hours to clean the plane floor and attend to housekeeping if they could just level out and stay up long enough to get out of range.

Down the way from them Egan was still seated, one hand holding aloft a not yet hung plasma bottle and the other gripping a support bar. But his head was starting to nod like a dancer keeping pace with the band’s ever growing tempo. The engines had a beat, if you’d been personal with a plane long enough to pick it up, and Maureen paid attention to Egan’s stippling fingers on the cross bar as they mounted and mounted, little bursts of enemy gunnery causing a comparatively mild wobble to the plane body every few seconds. She figured a veteran like Brady would know when it was safe to let her go; judging by the grip on her collar he was still highly dubious of their lasting success.

“Fighters, -everyone brace.” Cleven’s voice warned about as cooly as if he was pointing out the drip of ice cream slipping down a cone.

“Ice man.” Andy praised from his bunk to the agreement of his companions as the fighter zipped by without so much as a shudder from Cleven’s steering.

Plenty of the passing bullets had punctured the belly and one man got a direct hit. “Candy!” Egan commanded from his place checking the unfortunate man’s pulse, “Go remind Buck that we haven’t got the oxygen to go full bomber, he’s gotta keep low and -Candy! When ya come back, time to start throwin’ on blankets. Brady, get our pumps going. This is as steady as it’ll get.”

“You got it, commander.”

More than a little sure her mission was more provoking than necessary, Maureen still obeyed and followed Brady up the length of the plane and towards his electrical station, then past it to poke her head between the pilot’s seats.

“Well, well, this is a pleasant surprise, getting car sick, kiddo?” Demarco joked, “Hey, I get it, I’d find it hell back there with no windows to look out.”

Their front window was partially shattered and the metal on Cleven’s side was gnarled.

“Those mortars obligingly made a few.” Maureen joked back.

“Anybody hurt?” Cleven asked, and to her surprise, he turned from his panel to look at her with unmasked concern.

A joke was ready made there about everyone quite literally being shot to hell but she sensed he’d not appreciate it and following some uninterpreted impulse of desiring his good opinion, she hardly wished to repay his earnestness with flippancy. “Only one.”

“How bad?”

“He looked -dead.” Maureen admitted. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the man moving past him but she’d seen Egan’s treatment of the body and it wasn’t promising.

Cleven’s jaw worked overtime at the news and something snapped in his mouth, followed by a soft curse from lips too full and soft to always be so stern. Maureen thought he may have broken a tooth with all that tension but he spit out two halves of a blooded toothpick instead. It fell to his pant leg.

“Major Cleven, sir, you’re bleeding.” It had drawn Maureen’s attention to his wet lap.

“That’s what I said.” Demarco agreed.

“It’s somebody else’s.” Cleven shook his head.

“You know if you pass out on me-“ Demarco warned, completely ignoring Cleven’s denial.

“-that’s why we’ve got co-pilots.” Cleven finished for him with a maddening smirk that made Benny Demarco throw his hands up.

“Can you check him?” he asked, “I mean -you are a nurse!”

“What? Hell no!” Major Cleven spooked for the first time all day at the suggestion, glancing quickly from his reddened trousers, behind him to Maureen Kendeigh, and back again. “I’m fine.” he declared in a firm tone that dettered her almost as much as the challenge of getting over the instruments and a steering column to pull down his pants and look. “Ensign Kendeigh, was there a purpose to your visit?” He redirected, resolutely ignoring Demarco’s unabated concerns.

“Yes sir,” she replied, meekly as she could, “Doc Egan asked me to remind you that you’re not flying a bomber. To mind the oxygen, sir. And that it’s cold.”

Cleven let out a mirthless little laugh. “We’re full of holes Ensign, of course it’s cold.”

“I know sir.”

“Yeah, ‘course you know,” his eyes lightened for a moment and Maureen almost deluded herself he was being chummy when he murmured next, “you’re smart like that. Tell the Lieutenant Commander I’ll keep her nice and low, so low the Jap navy gunners can blow the floor out without a sweat.”

“Much obliged, Major.” Maureen chirped, pleased to have been trusted with a bit of morbid humor -it was the truest test of being taken seriously a woman could hope for in the service.

“Thank you, Ensign.” And with that she was dismissed.

By the time she got to the belly again her assigned job of doling out blankets had long been accomplished by her fellows. Brady had the place lit up like an operating theater and there was the added drone of medical equipment added to Cleven’s engines. She liked to think of them as his now, Maureen realized, a tiredness seeping in now that the rush was over, now there was just six hours of the same until they touched down again in safety. His engines stayed with them, consistent, steady, dependable yet a little absent, just like the man himself.

“Major Cleven said he’ll keep her low, Doc.” Maureen reported dutifully but whatever humor Egan once held when sending her to the cockpit was now gone, a bloody mess on his hands as he and Ensign Dormer worked over a head wound.

“Good.” Egan gritted out, “I need a monitor on vitals and I need new gloves, c’mon Candy, c’mon!”

The hours passed like this, no way of telling time in the artificially lit tube of metal. Some men needed a cup of water and a kind smile, others required every bit of grit and intelligence to keep even the faintest pulse discernible above the hum. When one of them passed away in the anonymity of the top bunk, Egan didn’t bother to cover his face, the man looked to be sleeping and it suited the morale better if his fellows were not disillusioned on that score.

It was impossible not to think for a split second on the unfairness of it all -live to be finally evacuated and only die before getting safe. To think how someone else less tore up might’ve been given that bunk and survived the trip.

“Can’t dwell on it.” Ida Brady, their headmistress back in Manila, had said -and she had been right. But seeing her brother Lt. Brady cross himself now in recognition of a soul passed did something to Maureen’s own spirit, a grieving sort of fury possessed her which matched Egan’s own as they worked on the next unsalvageable man until he became a likely contender for seeing his wife and kids again.

She had been up for nineteen hours, flying for ten of those, nursing for four. She was bone tired and yet there was always someone to be tended and the thought of leaving one of these poor men without even the slightest of their needs met felt impossible. Maureen didn’t even think to pause or lag in her expertise, neither did the nurses around her and up there at the front somewhere, Cleven’s eyes were sharp and focused as ever, she knew it, and knowing it brought a calm over her that made her sympathize with Egan’s own superstitious preference for the man.

Brady came through with coffee, an abnormal duty he picked up as a result of trusting no one else with the process or the electrical requirements to make it. “Figured our pilots could use it.” he explained before passing out a passel of paper cups to the girls filled with the peppy stuff, belying his practical excuse, before taking two to the cockpit.

He came back out with a funny look on his face- “Benny says he needs a pan.”

“What the hell for?” Egan balked.

“Or a condom.” Brady dutifully amended the petition.

“I repeat -what the hell for?”

“They’ve drank a lotta coffee sir.”

“Any of you fellas got condoms?” Egan asked his patients with a laugh and got a series of predictable replies. “Gale Cleven sure as hell don’t.”

There were light hearted moments like that, many of them in fact, but six hours of flying with wounds as bad as the ones they were tending was no joke, there were bits of laughter and there were times of quiet and there were restless sleepers whose terrors not even morphine could dim.

“Forty minutes out.” Major Cleven had gone quiet over the coms for so long it was like hearing from God again when he came on, gentle and steady.

Those they couldn’t get comfortable were at the height of their groaning as the cold and the endless buzz got to them. Helplessly the nurses offered pillows and water and irrigated the burns with saline and checked needle positioning. Maureen had taken to charting, something too often neglected in high stress environments but something that proved terribly crucial as soon as they landed and handed over their charges to a new set of professionals. On the left side of the plane she held one man’s wrist after another and noted their pulse. On the right side she did the same, one man’s left hand after another, wedding band or sans wedding band, in her notes it was only ever:

“94, 57, 88, 91, 63, 82”

The lights had been dimmed, hopes were some rest could be gotten by those in any shape to manage sleep. It made for a drowsy atmosphere, only the flashlight in her teeth illuminating the veins under her fingers and her co-workers faces, Egan’s face was a shiny mess of freckles in the torch light despite the chill, exhaustion seeping out of him but not a hint shown in his workmanship. It made the dull chorus of groans in the dark all the more ominous and Brady remarked to Smith on one pass that maybe they should have brought a record player.

“Twenty minutes out.” Maureen and every other soul on board was living for those little updates from Cleven.

Men told to hang in there and not die before they could be gotten to surgery suddenly had a goal in mind and the suspense was growing brutal. Stashed and stowed, secured and checked, landing preparations were already done and it was last minute tending before taking seats. Maureen found herself nearly piddling by one young private, trying to soothe him with a washcloth as sepsis fever wracked him when over the intercom came the oddest lulling hum, like a far off jazz intro.

It was too soft initially to be recognized but the surety picked up, something about the tone unmistakably belonging to their pilot, his hums about as characteristic of him as his laconic speech.

“Is that whadda friend we have in Jesus?” Demarco’s voice overtopped the gentle melody.

John Egan was wheezing in a chuckle beside her as Maureen shook her own head in disbelief.

“No,” Gale murmured, humming paused only briefly, “it’s ‘Leaning on the everlasting arms’ -you fish eater.”

“You gotta be jokin’.” Benny was wheezing too but Cleven was back to his gentle humming, words actually forming this time and filling the tired plane with a timbre that could put Bing Crosby out of a job.

“What have I to dread, what have I to fear

Leaning on the everlasting arms?

I have blessed peace with my Lord so near

Leaning on the everlasting arms”

It worked, the sickening drop in elevation was -if not noticed- bravely pushed aside for a hymn sing, Brady leading from the back and Cleven from the front. And for a brief moment, men from Kansas to Florida, Oregan to Rhode Island, strapped in a flying coffin of flickering souls, were seated back in the pews of their childhood, trusting something larger than themselves. Even if that something was Gale Cleven’s steady hands or the justness of a cause worth dying for or God Almighty, it was something big and above the pain of right now.

“Leaning, leaning

Safe and secure from all alarms

Leaning, leaning

Leaning on the everlasting arms”

The Navy station at Gaum had a runway, in fact there were five Cleven could have picked at whim, and there was no feeling so beautifully civilized and sure as the smooth roll of plane tires on asphalt after what they’d just left. “Flaps at quarter!” and they were slowing, the deflated back wheel only causing some slight disturbance, and then they were stopped.

That bizarre stillness settled again as the engines were cut. Egan gave Maureen a smile so soft and telling that her heart about seized in realization -they’d managed it. “Well that’s us.” he repeated for the second time that day, voice gone raspy with cigarettes and fatigue. “Welcome to American soil, boys.”

There were so many lights outside the cargo door, searing white flashes in the nighttime, jeeps and ambulances and all manner of medical personnel at the ready, it was overwhelming in the exact opposite way the beach at Iwo had been. Maureen hopped down onto the tarmac with Ensign Mann, ready and prepared to stay with her charges until the transition could be made. Clipboard in hand and kit on her back, she’d go in with her select five until they’d been admitted and charted meticulously in the various wards.

“How’s it feel to make history, Miss?!” -some of those lights, Maureen realized with a dull throb behind her eyes, were flashbulbs. Journalists were thick as thieves, snapping and hollering, others respectfully keeping a distance, “You're the first woman to step foot in a combat zone-“ Maureen kept her hand on her stretcher even as she watched Cleven limping over to a jeep and piling in after Demarco. Her mouth set in a sour line of suspicion regarding his claims of being unscathed. He’d be in interrogation and she in the wards for the next hour, she’d have to find out later.

A couple of hours later John Egan was sat with Captain Crosby in the administration office, nothing but a small alcove at the front of the ward, his legs spread wide in his chair and good scotch whisky being slurped from a cleverly injected orange while reviewing the charts. Croz was a whizz at this, meticulous and careful to a fault and John adored him for it because men who gave a damn were scarce after this many years of grueling loss and, also, because it allowed himself to wind down sooner than he was technically free to do so.

“Two men lost, that’s -that’s still good odds.” Crosby couldn’t manage an upbeat tone, he felt those two lives as deeply as Egan did, but facts were facts and over all, this experimental mission had proven beyond successful. Now to tell that to the families of the two men now being carted to the morgue instead of surgery and salt baths.

“Yeah, my girls were Trojans out there.” Bucky sucked his teeth, the squint in his eyes beginning to relax with a boozy sort of calmness. “Speakin’ of Trojans! —Candy!”

Maureen approached the little alcove at a tired gait, not above reprimanding Egan for his loud voice with all those occupied beds just feet away. “It’s late, Commander.” she reminded with hinting softness that only made him crane his head back and grin sloppily at her.

“It is, it is.” he agreed, reaching up to pat her arm and she squinted at the smell of whiskey, Crosby’s sudden and transparent busyness with the charts confirmed her suspicions. “You should get some shut eye, Candy! Back at it tomorrow.”

“So should you.” she hinted kindly.

“Mm,” he hummed in negative, “apparently my ‘specialty’ is needed elsewhere before then.”

“And so the booze?” she struck back and Crosby’s pen briefly dragged along his tidy line in shock at her daring.

“Steady hands, Candy darlin.” Egan responded, lifting two sticky palms up and showing, indeed, not a tremor. “I’ve got a surgery in less than an hour -working with Brady’s old sister, of all people, the one who snuck out of Manila after?- anyways, she’s 90 pounds of spit and vinegar. Starved for two years, but she takes three weeks off and a round of anti-parasitics and she’s all ‘let me back at ‘em.’ Hell of a dame. Anyway, surgery with her. I need this.”

“Well,” Maureen Kendeigh knew when to let go of a fight with a man who’d as yet never failed her or anyone else, despite his habits, “I can confirm it does nothing for your eyes bags.”

“Kiss ‘em better?”

“Not in my purview, sir.” she couldn’t help but smile, “Perhaps lieutenant Brady will be obliging?”

“She scares me.” he objected.

“And I don’t?”

“Only in the ways I like, Candy Darlin’.” he insited.

“Ah Major!” Crosby’s strained greeting drew their attention away from this over rehearsed banter and Egan straightened up fast upon sight of his friend.

“Buck!”

“John.” Gale Cleven was in the same uniform he’d been in for hours, flight jacket undone and scarf hanging loose. He must have come straight from interrogation and standing in front of the administrator's desk he was turning his cover over and over in his hands. Maureen was certain that were she to devote two hours a day to brushing her hair she could never bernish it to the golden brilliance that twelve hours of flight-sweat gave his. On a more concerning note, his was pale as death except for those lips. “I came to check in on everybody. Load of journalists out there.” He thumbed back behind him at the public area, “Mostly curious about you, Ensign.”

“Historical.” Egan affirmed and sent Maureen a sly look as she sighed over the fuss being made of her mission.

“I’m one of twenty.” she reminded.

“I hope you were nice about her.” Egan goaded his buddy and to her confusion, Gale flinched as if that were a remarkably successful mode of attack.

“O-of course.” he frowned severely and Maureen had a desperate urge to thumb those lines away. “I told them the truth.” he defended, mildly heated.

“Which is?” Egan was enjoying this and neither Maureen nor Harry Crosby could seem to puzzle out why.

“They did remarkably.” Cleven didn’t budge.

“Better than you thought.” Egan prodded.

“Yeah. Admittedly, far better than I thought. Jeeze, John.”

“But were you nice about her?” Egan insisted.

“What?”

“You said they were particular about Candy.” Egan said, “So what did you say?”

Maureen grew concerned that with such a level of fluster in the Major’s face not a stitch of blood seemed able to raise a blush.

“How ‘bout you read it in the paper.” Gale replied, coolly mean before clearing his throat and straightening up, back in possession of himself. “I came to see how many -how’d we do?”

“Twenty eight.” Egan confirmed.

“Outta thirty?” Cleven asked for confirmation.

“Yes sir.” Crosby answered him.

“Alright.” The Major accepted that, hat still whirling in his hands, a strange contrast to his perfectly contained posture. It drew Maureen’s eye to his hips and that deep red stain running down his pant leg.

“How’s your hip Major?” she asked, seeking to break the silence before Egan did so with some new and regrettable subject.

That did bring a flush and a sheen of sweat broke out on a face Maureen knew would be feverishly hot were she to touch it. He looked peeky, truth be told. “It’s fine, ma’am.”

“Hold up,” Egan stood from his chair and leaned over the desk to glare blearily at Gale’s trousers. “You're hit.”

“It’s a scratch.”

“Scratches don’t keep bleedin’ like that.“

“Well, mine do.”

“Hey, I don’t go tellin’ you how to fly your planes-“

“-you do though.”

“-so you don’t go tellin’ me what’s a scratch and what’s a wound. It’s still drippin’, that makes it a wound.”

Cleven moved his boot to the side impatiently and only succeeded in proving his friend’s point as a line of fresh blood smeared the white tile. “I was gonna just -“

“-What?”

“-Clean it in the shower.” Cleven sighed, defeated but with an edge that suggested he might yet do it .

“Oh, just gonna rinse mortar fragments outta of your thigh, yeah?”

“It’s not that bad. Dunno if it really got hit.” He protested, “Might be scratched.”

“Or you might have a piece of your instrument panel snuggled up to an artery.” John affirmed sarcastically. “We’re goin’ up again tomorrow. I need you fit, I need you good.”

“I am.”

“You’re gonna get checked.” Egan commanded and Gale looked back at the double doors leading to freedom and a pack of journalists and sighed. “You’re on the ground now, flyboy, I call the shots.”

“Ok.” Cleven mumbled, “If you’re so goddamn eager to pants me, do it.”

“I am, I am but I’ve got even better things to do.” Egan rounded the desk and flung an arm around Gale in parting, bringing him in close despite Cleven’s stiff necked antipathy that hid only the deepest seated endearment, “Like putting a left lung back where it should be and trying to get Lt. Brady to smile at me.” Egan expounded, letting go and beginning to actually leave, much to Cleven's sudden concern, “Which is, naturally, on the left -the left lung, that’s where it goes.” Egan went on.

“Wait, aren’t you gonna-?” Cleven called after him.

“Pantsing is more of Ensign Kendeigh’s purview.” John replied cheerfully. “Don’t look so appalled, I'm sure she’s seen smaller.”

“John!” Major Cleven and Maureen both inflected his name like twin, scandalized parrots.

“You deserve each other.” John laughed, “Ensign, do your duty.”

“This is the kinda behavior that has you gettin’ write ups for bein’ a terror to your nurses!” Gale growled after him in remonstrance but it did nothing to slow Egan’s tactical withdrawal.

“Bulshit, everybody on this ward loves me!” John dared to claim even as he was berated on his way out by more than a few wounded marines for being a little too jovial at two in the morning.

Cleven didn’t wait for the doors to fully close on Egan or for Maureen to collect her professional demeanor and clipboard before he was leaning over Captain Crosby at his desk, large hands splayed on the fresh paperwork, assuming the pose of a supplicant before a lawyer. “Harry, Captain, do me a favor this once and take a look fo-“

“-Major Cleven sir,” Harry Crosby interjected levelly and with the utmost respect, “I’m an administrator.”

Maureen composed herself, the sight of this stoic man losing a grip on himself due to the prospect of lost modesty was surprising, it was also motivating to find her own professionalism and put him at ease. “Major, if you’d follow me?” she nodded her head towards the ward and started clopping down the dim aisle toward one of the last empty beds. He didn’t need to lay down for it but she needed her instrument tray, an isolated light and, if his shyness was so severe, drawing the sectioned curtains would hardly be amiss.

When she arrived and turned round to instruct him, he was obediently there to obey. Something about that dogged respect for authority he possessed and his compliance with her own profession filled her with an odd protectiveness and she motioned him into the space gently, tugging the curtain closed behind him. He was taller than she realized, made more apparent as he took the initiative and tugged off the bulky weight of his flight jacket, methodically laying it out in a half fold on the bed, nothing but a lean line of him left in olive green.

Lanky, her mother would call him, a long drink of water. He looked all of twenty four, suddenly, soft and in need of a meal. “Your leg, yes?” she reaffirmed, jotting it down in the chart. She had found that men found it easier to talk of injuries when she wasn’t making eye contact.

“Yes.” His voice was low as the grave and hushed too, “And -I think maybe my hip.”

Maureen’s eyes flicked to the place in question, recalling how she had suspected his lap in general on the plane. “Right.” she made the customary jot down of the detail and then an arguably unnecessary note beside it, the longer to give him a chance to cool himself. “Your pants Major, if you would.” she filled in the date and the time, cursory information so as not to be idle while he undid his belt, the clank of the flat uniform clasp deafening in the space where he seemed to hold his breath.

She was used to discerning the moment when it was safe to look up. Often there was a brief period after the sound of pants hitting the floor where one might have the misfortune of catching a man adjusting himself to a preferred side. She was prepared to give him that moment in peace but his voice called her to attention.

“Is this?-“ he didn’t finish his sentence and she looked up to see his vague gesture as he stood in briefs and boots, jacket hung open, too.

“Yes I think we can manage with those on.” she smiled reassuringly, discerning his query. His skivvies were blood stained on the right and clinging to him but the wounds appeared to be above and below their coverage, “I’ve always got scissors if need be.”

“Scissors.” He repeated with a nod, teeth savagely dug into his lip.

“Jacket off, this could get messy.” She ordered and something about her decisiveness seemed to soothe him like she knew it would, he shrugged it off gracefully and laid it beside the sheepskin, and yanked at his tie to relive his bobbing throat. “Please, sit Major.”

He sat down on the bed, a little stiffly, and she reached above her to turn on the large overhead lamp, shining it down on them both and in the harsh glow of it she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen something so beautiful as Gale Cleven’s blushing face fixed upturned towards her own.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood, looks like.” she attempted to make conversation and got a mere nod instead, once she stepped nearer, his eyes devoutly focused themselves somewhere to the right of them, on the floor.

She rinsed the area first, wiping away the crusted blood until his smooth, lightly haired skin came into view, little jagged tears visible in it with small fragments embedded. It wasn’t bad at all, but deep enough to keep it bleeding.

The touch of cool water made him jolt in surprise. What it didn’t do was make him shrink. She saw his hands curl, white knuckled around the mattress pad beside him as she gently dug out the metal, and she had a suspicion it wasn’t from the pain.

As unabashedly as her profession had taught her, Maureen tugged up his boxer leg until she was satisfied she’d uncovered the last little shard and did what was necessary, reaching atop the wet fabric and moving his heavy member up and away. He about bucked off the table at that mere touch of positioning and Maureen backed away out of pure animal instinct to avoid getting reflexively kneed.

“I'm sorry!“ he rushed out, his chest suddenly tight like an elephant were sat on it and his blood thudded in his ears, “Ensign, I apologize, I don’t know why-“

“It’s fine.” she insisted, stunned and pitying at the realization she probably was the first woman to touch him this way. To touch him at all. “I’m sorry this requires it.” she admitted.

“Please don’t -“ he took a large breath and began again, actually managing to meet her eyes out of sheer willpower, “-I’m the one who’s sorry. You’re doing your job, i don’t know why I get- it’s unprofessional of me, I'm sorry.” he repeated firmly and straightened his spine as if he could discipline a most human reaction away.

“It’s not at all uncommon.” She whispered, feeling compelled to be unprofessional herself if only to make him stop berating himself, “We nurses deal with this all the time, quite normal after combat, particularly.” Maureen paused for a moment and weighed the joke on the tip of her tongue as she dabbed iodine on a cotton ball and prepared to go back into the dreaded zone of his thigh crease, “It’s to be expected, the manual says; your blood is quite literally UP.”

Stood there in suspense between his legs with the iodine swab waiting mid air, Maureen waited until she saw a flicker of amusement twinkle his sad expression and a snicker escape that sober mouth. “Tell me about it.” he rasped, exasperated at his own body. “Every damn time.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” she teased, bringing the swab down and ignoring the sizable jolt his whole body and appendage gave at this dab to his thigh or the way his belly caved in with his deep intake of breath, “I’m telling you it’s normal.”

“Damn, you are sweet.” He declared suddenly with gut wrenching emphaticism that finally broke Mauren’s own precarious composure. “Not just to me,” he hastened to add in response to her melting expression so close to him, “to everybody out there. You were incredible today.” He paused and Maureen swallowed hard and tried with great difficulty to find the capability to thank him for the compliment. Before she could, he added with youthful honesty, “But you are -sweet to me.”

“Right back at you. Major.” she insisted, daring to stay that close and look back into those eyes she thought would be her last sight on earth for a second there on the beach earlier. His shuddering breath suggested he was recalling it, too.

“It’s nice to have friends in the crucible with ya.” he explained and Maureen felt her heart glow.

“Your poor hands.” she whispered, dropping her swab to gather his shaky hands in hers, the large palms engulfed her own even as she tried to cradle them. Never a hint of this anxiety while flying them, yet here he was shivering with it afterwards. “Probably blood loss.” she gave him an out, some men weren’t ready for talk of flight exhaustion or strained nerves.

“Then why’s it wasting all I’ve got to spare on…that?” He actually managed to joke back and Maureen actually allowed herself to laugh -god help her, she laughed at a man’s joke about an ill timed erection.

“John would say something about hope springing eternal, right about now.” she wheezed even as he groaned, his hands still placidly jittering in her grip, “I enjoyed your singing, by the way.”

“Mm, yeah, well,” he cleared his throat, “you didn’t see the hole in the wing or the busted flaps all the way home. That landing didn’t promise to be as pretty as it was.”

“But it was pretty.”

“Yeah. Not too bad.”

“A gorgeous landing.” she insisted and his eyes started to water under the harsh light. Impulsively, and in an act of unprofessionalism she would have never recognized before today, Maureen Kendeigh drew his hands close to her chest and pressed a kiss to his lined forehead. The way he sagged against her in a shuddering lunge suggested her impulse was a good one. “Doc Egan insists whiskey is good for this.” she whispered into hair that smelled so strongly of his musk and the wool of his cap she about buckled from it.

“Mm, but is it g—good for him?” he responded rhetorically, a gust of moist breath against the open throat of her flight jacket, his usual irony still remained with only a hiccup of nerves interrupting his speech. Maureen wasn’t sure anymore, what saved a life, well, it had saved a life, so why demonize it? She was here to force things to keep living in environments so hostile wildflowers gave up. Some men needed their booze and some men needed to be held in the hospital ward at two in the morning until their shakes calmed. As if he could read her mind, she felt Gale turn his head to the side a little for breath, face still pressed to her chest as he uttered quietly, “This is working. For me.”

“Good.” Nose buried in his hair she took a few measured breaths herself, feeling that odd calm still radiating off him, even as his body was shot to hell and giving off the overtaxed jitters. “You bring people calm, you know that, Major? It’s why Egan picked you for this, deep down, you make a plane load of dying men hang in there. That’s a gift. But when you’ve got a cup you keep pouring out of, it’s bound to go empty. Gotta refill yourself, sometimes, yes?”

“I thought this was blood loss.” Gale replied softly and it took Maureen a beat to recognize the sad mischief in his blue eyes.

“Alright. I’ll speak for myself.”She conceded with a huff.

“You must be exhausted.” he noted, suddenly as sober as they come.

“A little tired.” she admitted, questioning the way she instinctively tightened her hold on the back of his neck as he stiffened to pull away. Entirely unprofessional, she wasn’t a medicine spoon or a needle, he had every right to pull away.

“So what would fill your cup back up?” he asked in that low voice that sent a million varied undertones crashing through her, whether he intended it or not.

Too tired to be much more than plainly honest, or as honest as a woman should be with a half undressed patient cradled to her chest, Maureen admitted the half of it, which in many ways was the whole, “This is working for me.”she repeated his own words to him and watched them take effect.

Like a sudden reanimation had occurred, Gale Cleven untangled their hands with emphatic surety and then, in an act of kindness Maureen never expected, brought them to her shoulders and tugged her down for a solid embrace. “A hug and a nap then.” He prescribed, his solid shoulder beneath her cheek and his legs parted for her to step between. Only the bandages kept him from bleeding further on her.

“Not a nap,” she smiled, an inexplicable warmth and calmness flooding through her in his hold, his back was broad and lean under her hands, “we should go to sleep.”

“No such thing as going to sleep in the military, Ensign.” Gale murmured, “Sleep -that’s what happens when your mama tucks you in and you’ve got a whole night to waste. Naps. That’s what we take.”

“Alright, a nap, and a hug.”

“Alright.”

“You know,” Maureen dared with a little smile as some part of her slotted back in place and gave her the boldness to be a little too much, “there’s this thing people came up with ages ago where you hug and take naps at the same time.”

Pink cheeked but with a jaw clench that had defeated warzones, Gale Cleven pulled his head away and gave her a heavy look of admonishment, “Marriage.” he stated unamused.

Well, she had meant sex, and she wanted it, always had after danger -but Cleven had a point too.

“Uh, yes, that’s the most common-“

“-If I were to marry you, Maureen Kendeigh,” his voice took on a teasing lilt that was somehow more devastating than all his commanding earnestness, “there’d be no nap taking.”

“Oh.” A single utterance was about all she could articulate in the face of that smirk and gentle refusal. Both flattering and painful all at once. “Well, that’s not for us then.”

“No.” he pondered, full lips twitching downwards in disappointment, “At least, sounds like a decidedly post-war endeavor. No naps.” he clarified.

“Oh -yes.” she caught on, well used to the code of superstition all around her that didn’t allow men to spell out any sort of lasting, long term hope. “A postwar endeavor.” she agreed, never having heard marriage so smartly categorized.

“Uhuh,” his hands trailed up from her ribs to squeeze the sore muscles of her deltoid, “for now -naps. Back up tomorrow.”

“Alright.” she agreed, stepping a small distance back and looking him over, this time his presence didn’t shrink, in fact if anything he expended in the small room and it made her chest ache, “You're alright?” she made sure one last time.

He held his palms flat up and Maureen could attest they were indeed steady, terribly large, too, and his watch on his wrist was careening towards three o’clock. “Looks like it.” he rasped. “But you’re in charge here. Can I go, Ensign?”

Regretfully Maureen nodded, “You’re dismissed, Major.”

When he stood up from the bed he was by necessity in her space, looking down at her rather fearlessly as he yanked up the waist of his trousers and gathered the belt closed around his lean waist. Maureen felt her cheeks burn but couldn’t look away, if she were to glance away from those eyes she might see something even more tempting before he’d secured the fabric.

“Got any more duties after this?” he asked, breaking the moment as he bent to arrange his trouser hems over his boots.

“No.”

“Then I’ll walk you to your billet.”

“For naps.” she clarified cheekily.

“For naps.” he agreed with mirthful vehemence, finger pointed at her with almost paternal caution to not push his patience.

“Do you want your shell fragments?” she rattled them in their dish, the pieces she'd pried from the shallow muscle of his hip.

Cleven paused with his hand on the dividing curtain, shaking his head in amusement, “Give ‘em to Egan,” he suggested with a wicked little smirk, “knowing him he’ll make a talisman out of them or something equally useful.”

Hope y’all enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s life blood, lemme head your thots or screams! Xoxo

Taglist (let me know if you’d like to be added for my MOTA fics)

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@steph-speaks

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#mota fanfiction #mine #archive #friends in the crucible #Gale Cleven x OC #Buck Cleven x OC #Buck Cleven #austin butler #austin butler fanfiction #austin butler imagine #masters of the air #Bucky Egan #doc Egan #Maureen Kendeigh #iwo jima #hbo war #john egan #callum turner #Callum Turner fanfiction

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princecharmingwinks · 4 months

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Sterek Fic Rec - June-December 2023.

Can you believe we are almost at the end of 2023? These last six months have been quite busy for me so sadly haven't been able to read as much fic as I would have liked. But I am still here and will continue to create rec lists whenever I get the chance to read more fics. I am also rounding the word counts so please click on the links for the exact word count. :)

it doesn't have to be a snowman by triggeringthehealing (froggydarren) (1/1 | 4K | General)

The Beacon Beans coffee shop is what Stiles would refer to as a lifesaver. They supply his dose of sugar whenever he needs it, they don't ask questions, and their hot chocolate is delicious. And now they're running a snowman building competition where the grand prize would get him an entire year's worth of drinks. Really, all he needs is a partner to team up with. Only everyone else from the pack already seems to have paired up.

Bravery is a Loaded Gun by DefNotForWork (1/1 | 17K | Explicit)

“No, I’m not asexual, Stiles,” Derek said shortly. The teen’s heart sank in his chest, his palms going clammy and his neck prickling with the familiar feeling of rejection. “So then it’s,” Stiles swallowed, throat clogging, unable to give voice to the facts he would much rather ignore. The silence grew between them, growing tense the longer it was left. For the first time in years, Stiles couldn’t speak. The weight of inadequacy held down his typical stream of useless banter. What does one say in this sort of situation? ‘I’m sorry you don’t find me attractive?’ In which the boys speak in half sentences and have two totally different conversations. What they can agree on, eventually, is that they love each other. And that Derek should jerk off more.

Undertow by entanglednow (1/1 | 4K | Mature)

"I don't want you to die because my swirls weren't swirly enough."

Fire and Water by GreyHaven (1/1 | 2K | General)

Derek is full of unspoken words and unexpressed emotions that sear him from the inside out until finally, finally, he allows them to escape into dark ash stains that smear across the harsh white of his notebook. Or, the one in which Derek is compelled to write a story. Turns out, he's writing about Stiles. What will happen when Stiles reads it? Angst and healing and two people finding safety in each other.

eli's parents are so gross (read: in love) by ash_mcj (1/1 | 1K | Teen)

"I would’ve been here earlier, but nobody thought it would be smart to call the one person who’s intimately dealt with the Nogitsune before, so,” Stiles said bitterly as he threw his hands up. "Now I have a list of asses I gotta kick over this very avoidable fiasco. Scott’s first, since he’s the Alpha—I’m pretty sure that’s how that works. His responsibility, or whatever.” The familiar sound of Derek’s car pulling into the driveway caught Eli's attention, and he grinned. “Is Dad on your list?” “Hell yeah, Dad is on my list! Right under Scott.” “Well, he just got home, so—” Stiles didn’t wait to hear the rest of the sentence before stomping off in the direction of the living room—and Eli quickly scrambled to follow him, ready to eavesdrop on what was likely going to be a rather impressive and amusing lecture. [or: eli is glad that stiles is home, since derek has nearly died several times in his absence, but he really wishes they were a little less glad to see each other] -- prompt | a reunion kiss

Ashes, Ashes by ShanaStoryteller (1/1 | 2K | Teen)

The Sheriff gets a call at work - someone's tried to burn down his home with his son inside. "I thought of you coming here, and finding me dead, of another burnt out husk of a body, something else fire has stolen from you, of you having nothing left to grasp but ashes," John can't even call that a whimper, it's clearly a whine as Derek's hands tighten against Stile's hips, as if his boy will shudder to dust at the mere mention of the possibility unless Derek's hands can hold him into one piece, "and that thought was worse than dying."

Love Runs Wild by DevilDoll (1/1 | 9K | Explicit)

"You've got a hickey on the back of your neck!" A Neckz 'n Throats story.

So When Do I Get To Pledge My Loyalty To The Mob? by RedRidingStiles (1/1 | 10K | Mature)

“Are you my sugar daddy?” Stiles blurts out, slapping a hand over his mouth when his brain catches up to his mouth. The man lets out a soft laugh, making his way around the couch till he’s standing just feet away from Stiles. Stiles can smell his cologne from here, it smells heavenly, Stiles kinda wants to bury his face into the guy's chest so he can figure out exactly what it is. “If that’s what you’d like to call it.” The man smiles. Stiles doesn’t think he should be allowed to smile like that. All soft and gorgeous and way too pretty to be legal. He’s still not convinced any of this is real. Stiles loses his wallet, someone returns it along with $5,000. Shit keeps coming, Stiles life doesn't make any sense anymore, he's just going with it. Edited in October 2022

Stiles is My Safe Place by Star_crossed02 (5/5 | 10K | Mature)

Stiles gets bitten by Kali, and after a brief adjustment period, proceeds to co-lead the Hale Pack to defeat the Alpha Pack once and for all. OR What happens when a sassy spark-werefox starts courting an alpha sourwolf?

It feels like a perfect night (for breakfast at midnight) by princecharmingwinks (1/1 | 1K | General)

Stiles is floating on cloud nine. He is absolutely living his best life. It's a Saturday night, he's out with his friends and he's dancing like it's his birthday. Because it is! (Or it will be in 20 minutes, once midnight ticks around). And what better way to celebrate the respectful age of 22 than a night out?

princecharmingwinks special mention (My plane flying companion - I read a new chapter every time I took a new flight)

First Son, Last Chance by orphan_account (12/12 | 60K | Mature)

When First Son Stiles Stilinski, beloved public figure and the bane of his private security team, goes missing without a trace, ex-security officer Derek Hale finds himself tangled up in the world of Argent Security, a world he was forced out of when rumours abounded that he was sleeping with his charges. There's no leads, no time and no way Derek is going to rest until Stiles has been brought home safely. (Inspired by this post.)

That is all folks for 2023! Sorry again for a late addition. See you in the new year. Remember to leave kudos and comments for our wonderful writers.

#sterek #sterek fanfiction #fic rec #teen wolf #stiles stilinski #derek hale #princecharminglists

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honeybleed · 5 months

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— ★ SOFTEST PLACE ON EARTH // ONYANKOPON

content & warnings: female reader, black-coded reader, ony is black british here cos i said so (think john boyega), reader is a postgrad student, hange is referred using they/them pronouns, hange is reader’s professor, ony is hange’s teaching assistant, reader & ony late twenties, hange early thirties, smut (shower sex) so mdni

author’s note: alas, my entry to my event. this song suits ony so bad hehe.

word count: 2.4k

To call your professor Dr. Hange Zoë kooky would probably be an understatement. They were an enigma.

You still enjoyed their lectures. It was clear as day they lived and breathed anthropology.

They would bustle in about five or ten minutes late, gabbling apologies.

It was endearing almost, knowing they’d apologise regardless considering the fact the students took advantage of Hange’s tardiness.

Hange’s lectures were always full to the brim. If you wanted to attend something that wasn’t a snoozefest like Erwin’s or be told to do the reading and get lost like Levi’s, Hange’s hall was where to go.

Always thought-provoking insights and discussions, Hange had this allure and aura about them that enthralled people. It was magnetic.

You were thankful to have been in their classes since your undergrad, in a way you’d grown up with Hange.

They had a soft spot for you, always letting you know they’d be more than welcome to read drafts of your essays and give feedback despite how hectic their schedule was.

Hange had watched you go from an anxious student, always second guessing yourself and afraid of getting something wrong to an assured and confident young woman, willing to take risks and striving to better understand the world.

Seeing you flourish filled Hange’s heart with admiration and pride.

In the upcoming weeks of Christmas, Hange introduced their new assistant. There were a few murmurs, mainly because he was so handsome.

He was towering over Hange, as the two walked to the front of the lecture hall.

“Alright, alright! Simmer down.” Hange called out as they clapped. “This is Onyankopon. I never really had the need for a teaching assistant since I’m just soooo amazing at multitasking-”

There were some titters and uneasy laughs at Hange considering how all over the place they were sometimes when it came to grading and replying to questions.

“Cut me some slack!” Hange gasped, faux offended as their hand was on their chest. “Anyways, Onyankopon will be here since I’ll have my hands full with my research proposal. That all good?”

Onyankopon’s eyes scanned the vast lecture hall. You swallowed a little thickly as your eyes met.

He had a commanding figure in a way. He seemed so nonchalant as he smiled while Hange had introduced him.

Weeks passed, and as your deadlines approached Onyankopon took the reins Hange had previously had on your learning.

You were growing very close. So much so, you struggled to repress the physical attraction you had to him.

He was fun to talk to. You’d been so busy with your studies, and you can’t even remember the last time you felt this way about somebody.

Wanting to see them every day. Wishing them good morning and good night. Spending hours on the phone talking about anything and everything in your free time.

But the thing you adored the most about Onyankopon is that he always pushed you to focus on yourself. You’d die before you’d admit to Hange that Onyakopon’s feedback was a lot more insightful than theirs.

On a Thursday afternoon, you had a step in your walk as you made your way to Hange’s office. Lately, Hange was away since they were busy with the research proposal they mentioned.

“Oh!” You gasped, a bit surprised at Onyankopon’s absence when you were meant to meet him. “Hey, Professor. What are you doing here?”

“Why wouldn’t I be in my own office?” Hange snorted, their legs on their desk as they had files in their hands.

“It’s just that Ony is supposed to meet with me.”

“Ony?” Hange echoed, amused at the nickname.

When you realised Hange had caught on, there was a slight unease stirring within you.

“You think I haven’t noticed you eyeing up my assistant?” Hange chuckled, causing your eyes to blow wide with alarm as your cheeks heated up.

You weren’t being that obvious, were you?!

“I haven’t-”

“Oh relax, Y/N.” They snorted. “I think it’s cute. Been a long time since there’s been some puppy love brewing in this office.”

“Huh?”

You were thinking too much into it. But did Hange insinuate it was mutual? Onyankopon liked you too?

“My girlie’s all grown up, huh?” Hange cooed. They threw their legs off the desk to stand up and pat your back.

You both turned to see the door open again, where Onyankopon was standing.

“Did I keep you waiting?” He chuckled.

“Oh no, it’s fine. Don’t worry.” You said coming across a little stiff since you felt exposed under Hange’s knowing gaze.

“What’s with you, huh?” They chuckled as they slapped your back. “I take it back. Acting like a blushing schoolgirl cos I caught on.”

“Hange!” You hissed.

You let Onyankopon in. He dragged his tongue over his bottom lip as he took in her appearance.

"Aren’t I lucky?” He remarked.

“Better count your blessings, hm?” You remarked as you shut the door behind you and linked arms with him.

You were invited to a faculty office party, but things quickly went awry with a mishap after you got out of Onyankopon’s car.

“For FUCK’S SAKE!” You screamed as the double-decker bus splashed water on both you and Onyankopon.

It sank in that he had out of reflex yanked you behind him in an attempt to shield you, but the water drenched you both.

Onyankopon attempted to hold back his laughter at your reaction but it was no use. Laughter overtook his body.

“It’s not FUNNY, ONY!” You barked whining as the water began to seep into your suede heels and your shimmery dress clung uncomfortably to your skin.

“Nah but you make it funny.” He guffawed as he tried to catch his breath. “I’m the one who took most of the hit.”

“May TFL perish.” You seethed.

“Come here.” He said, pulling you close against him. Your heart began to pound at the sudden closeness of you up against him.

You looked up at him through your lashes as his index finger stroked your cheek gently.

“Ony…” You said breathlessly as he gazed at you. The look in his eyes stirred something in your gut.

“Let’s just ditch the party.” He snickered as he gave you a smile. “All love to Hange but I’m not too thrilled on the idea of being cooped up with the faculty staff with Christmas music.”

“Yeah…that sounds kinda hellish. Don’t know what I was thinking.” You chuckled. “Got dressed up for nothing.”

“Not true. Spin around for me.” He grinned as he took your hand and you took a step back.

“I’ll look dumb, Ony.” You said a little bashfully.

“We both already look dumb.” He chided. “Do it for me. Please?”

His voice was so smooth, and the tug at the corner of his lips was just so irresistible. You couldn’t turn him down.

“…Fine.”

And you followed his request, the streetlights gleaming off the sequins as he spun you around and then pulled you back against him.

“That’s my girl.” He said tenderly as he gazed at you. “Would I be jumping the gun if I took you back to my place?”

You had to be dreaming. All those moments you’d shared culminated in this very moment. His eyes were raking over you hungrily, his voice had a hint of lust.

“I guess. But I like to live life on the edge.” You quipped, trying to recompose yourself with how flustered he got you.

As Onyankopon ushered you into his apartment after he had driven you home to collect some things since you were staying overnight at his (which was more ideal since the last thing you wanted was your roommates to relentlessly bully you the next morning) you were antsy.

He was being polite, offering to make you tea to warm you up, wash and dry your soaked clothes, and telling you to shower but quite frankly him inviting you over gave you other ideas.

But you suppose it wasn’t in his nature. He was a very gentle person under all the teasing. He always puts your comfort and well-being first. And if anything that makes you want him more.

“Is Hange mad we ditched?” You giggled as you saw Onyankopon stare at his screen after he told you he shot them a text saying the two of you weren’t coming.

“Nah, but they threatened to kick my ass if I broke your heart.” He chuckled as he shook his head. “I’ll just put your clothes here.”

“…Ony.” You said, voice low as you shifted your weight from one foot to the other. Panicking deep down. You were going to cross the line tonight. But you had to.

You had to jump for what you wanted. And you wanted him.

“Yeah?”

“Join me.”

Onyankopon’s mouth went dry. He couldn’t believe what just came out of your mouth.

“W-what?”

“I mean, if you wanna.” You stuttered, instantly regretting it.

“Are you sure?” He cut you off, and you simply nodded. Not wanting to have your foot in your mouth again.

He made his way towards you, closer and closer. You held your breath in suspense, pupils dilated as your back was pressed against the wall.

It felt like years as he edged closer to lean in but his lips finally touched yours, very gently and softly. As if he was testing the waters almost. This was the first kiss the two of you shared, after all.

He tilted your chin up with an index finger and sucked on your lips, your mind went completely blank. His lips were so plump, his toned body pressed against yours, and the breathy sighs in the air made it seem as if it was going faster and faster.

Only in a towel, there was a coil beginning to form in your stomach, a pang of need. You gasped when you felt his large hand settle on the bare skin of your hip bone.

“Ony…let’s…shower…” You said between kisses. He nodded as he pulled away completely breathless and nudged his forehead against your own.

You unbuttoned his shirt and pulled off his belt as he pushed the towel, leaving you exposed.

You pushed him backwards until he slammed into the bathroom's door causing the two of you to dissolve into laughter.

“You’re a maneater, huh?” He chuckled. “Go easy on me.”

“I’ll try.” You replied.

You pulled away from his grip, as he shrugged off what was left until he was fully nude. It was your turn to shamelessly eye him, just like Hange said you did which made him smirk. You switched the hot water on and the shower head shot a jet of water.

You looked at the steam tentatively. He slid his hands onto your bare waist and began to suckle on your neck unexpectedly which made you let out a groan.

It was slightly cramped because of Onyankopon’s towering figure. You began to soak your hair and turned to face him as he was slotted behind you and the wall.

His face nestled into the crook of your neck and you felt his large hand cup your breast, then pinch your nipple which made you jolt, swatting him away.

Within an instant, you felt him trail his plump lips from your neck, and he took your earlobe between his teeth.

He spent the next minutes, which felt like hours, kissing every part of your body, you had goosebumps everywhere and were truly a mess, you felt your inner thighs becoming sticky. He left no place untouched.

Blooming love bites and marks, he instantly hauled you up, lifting you up the tub and pressing you against the wall. You wrapped your legs around his lower back and your arms around his neck as the water pattered down on their skin.

“Ony…please.” You mewled almost pathetically.

“What, baby?” He asked, almost tauntingly.

“Please fuck me..” You gasped out.

“You’ve got it, baby.” He brushed his lips against your skin as he lined himself up with your wet heat. “Gonna make you feel every inch of me.”

You felt yourself going dizzy almost as he slid into you effortlessly. He couldn’t help the low guttural grunts. You were so soft.

He thrusted himself inside you in one swift motion, burying himself deep as he began to pound into you with abandon.

"You're so wet, so fucking tight...wish I could stay inside you forever." He grunted as his hands roamed over your body.

“Ony!” You cried out. “You feel so good, mhm!”

“You feel good too, baby.” He panted, the slick and wet sounds from the two, skin slapping together and your moans and whining bounced off the bathroom walls.

You began to scratch his back and accidentally drew blood which emitted a groan deep from his chest.

It was almost as if the two were in your own universe, but soon enough his movements began to become jerky and sloppy as he was approaching his high.

He blurted out your name. Your eyes widened at how raw and hoarse it sounded. You cradled the back of his neck and head, with a tired smile.

"I’m here baby, let yourself go." You said soothingly, as he let out a groan, as he spilled inside of you. You gasped at the warmness filling your womb, biting your lip, eyes rolling to the back of your head.

He shut his eyes, plump lips bitten and swollen and blood trickled down his skin from your scratches as well as bite marks.

You both slumped against the tiles.

“Better than Hange’s dancing and crappy punch…am I right?” He chuckled, a little out of breath as his chest heaved.

He draped an arm around you, pulling you against him as you nestled into his side. He planted a few kisses on the top of your head as you let out a content sigh.

“Yeah. But it’d be funny to see Levi and Erwin drunk and dance.” You chortled at the imagery.

“Can I see you again?” He asked, a little lowly as he tucked a strand of wet hair behind your ear as he gazed into your eyes.

“Well…I’m not dropping out anytime soon.” You snorted.

“You know what I meant.” He chuckled as he leaned in to kiss your chin and trace along your jawline which made you squirm and giggle.

“Okay, okay! A little out of my usual dating protocol but you can be an exception.”

“I’m honored.” He said with a wry laugh.

author’s note: TY FOR READING IF U GOT DIS FAR HEHE REBLOGS N INTERACTIONS ALWAYS APPRECIATED 🙏🏽

#aot x reader #onyankopon x reader #aot onyankopon #onyankopon smut #onyankopon snk #aot x black reader #aot x y/n #aot x female reader #onyankopon x black reader #onyankopon x black y/n #onyankopon fluff #⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡ nara scribbles

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spiral-man · 6 months

Text

Hey dudes,

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy-

Hello Jon,

Apologies for the deception, but I wanted to make sure you started reading, so I thought it best not to announce myself.

I’m assuming you’re alone; you always did prefer to read your statements in private. (slightly strained) I wouldn’t try too hard to stop reading; there’s every likelihood you’ll just hurt yourself. So just listen.

Now, shall we turn the page and try again?

Statement of Jonah Magnus regarding Jonathan Sims, The Archivist.

Statement begins.

I hope you’ll forgive me the self-indulgence, but I have worked so very hard for this moment, a culmination of two centuries of work. It’s rare that you get the chance to monologue through another, and you can’t tell me you’re not curious.

Why does a man seek to destroy the world?

It’s a simple enough answer: for immortality and power. Uninspired, perhaps, but – my god. The discovery, not simply of the dark and horrible reality of the world in which you live, but that you would quite willingly doom that world and confine the billions in it to an eternity of terror and suffering, all to ensure your own happiness, to place yourself beyond pain and death and fear.

It is an awful thing to know about yourself, but the freedom, John, the freedom of it all. I have dedicated my life to handing the world to these Dread Powers all for my own gain, and I feel… nothing but satisfaction in that choice.

I am to be a king of a ruined world, and I shall never die.

I believe there are far more people in this world that would take that bargain than you would ever guess. And I have beaten all of them.

Of course, this desire did not manifest overnight. When Smirke first gathered our little band – Lukas, Scott, and the rest – to discuss and hypothesize on the nature of the things he had learned from Rayner, I felt what I believe we all felt: curiosity, and fear.

But as he compiled his taxonomy and codified his theories on the grand rituals, I began to develop a very specific concern. Smirke was so obsessed with his ideas on balance, even as our fellows began to experiment and fall to the service of our patrons.

I began to worry that if one of them successfully attempted their ritual, then I would be as much a victim as any, trapped in the nightmare landscape of a twisted world.

At first, I attempted prevention, but the cause seemed hopeless. The only way to ensure I did not suffer the tribulations of what I believed to be an inevitable transformation was to bring it about myself. So what began as an experiment soon became a race.

Beyond that, I was getting older, and mortality began to weigh more heavily on my mind. How much in this world is done because we fear death, the last and greatest terror?

I convinced Smirke to work on Millbank, leading him to design it as a temple to all the Fears in equilibrium, such that my own modifications to the design of the Panopticon went… unremarked.

It. Took. Years, for the dread of the prisoners to fully suffuse the place, and I was an old man before I made my first attempt at the Watcher’s Crown, sat in the center of that colossal eye, the great ring of cells encircling me like a coronet.

It was… flawed, of course, as all Smirke’s rituals were, and none of the inmates survived as the power I attempted to harness shook the building almost to pieces, and the murky swamp upon which the prison was built consumed it.

But it left me a gift: For sat in that watchtower, I could see everything I turned my mind to.

It was a dizzying power, and one I discovered I maintained even as I found vessels to extend my life. Of course, I had to make sure the location was kept under my control while I worked on revising my plans, and so I moved the organization I had founded to assist in my research down to London, and the Institute as you know it was born.

I’ll not bore you with details of my bodies and failures through those intervening years. Suffice to say I kept busy, both planning my own next attempt, and doing my best to stymie those others who tried versions of their own.

Surely my interpretation of the Watcher’s Crown had been incomplete; there had been some element of the ritual I had overlooked.

It was not until I met Gertrude Robinson that things began to really come into focus.

You see, the role of Archivist has been part of the Beholding for as far back as my research can go. This isn’t uncommon for the Powers; most of the beliefs around them are guesswork and fallible human interpretation, but there are certain throughlines and consistencies that can be spotted, regardless of the trappings.

But Gertrude was unlike any other Archivist. She simply did not care about compiling experiences or collecting the fears of others. She was driven to stop those who served the Powers.

More than once I thought she must secretly be of the Hunt – but there was never that sick joy in her, that thrill of predator and prey. She had simply decided that this was her position in life, and went about it with a practicality that even I found disconcerting at times.

I once asked her what drove her, what had started her down that path. She told me the Desolation had killed her cat.

I don’t know if she was joking, and, to be honest, I could never bring myself to look into her mind and find out for sure.

In any case, Gertrude’s ruthless efficiency in derailing and collapsing rituals threw into stark relief a question that had been bothering me for almost a hundred and fifty years: In the whole span of humanity, why had nobody ever succeeded?

Perhaps there were a long line of Gertrude Robinsons throughout history, but I found that hard to credit. Could it be, then, that there was something in the very concept of the rituals that meant they couldn’t succeed?

She was clearly having similar thoughts in that last year, all of which culminated with the People’s Church.

When I saw that she was making no preparations whatsoever to stop it, I realized she was putting into practice a theory, and one she couldn’t afford to be wrong. She was going to wait, and see if the unopposed ritual succeeded, or if it collapsed under its own strain as mine had all those years ago.

Knowing Gertrude, I’m sure she had a backup plan if she had miscalculated – but she had not. The ritual failed. And all at once, I realized what had to be done.

You see, the thing about the Fears is that they can never be truly separated from each other. When does the fear of sudden violence transition into the fear of hunted prey? When does the mask of the Stranger become the deception of the Spiral?

Even those that seem to exist in direct opposition rely on each other for their definition as much as up relies on down.

To try and create a world with only the Buried makes as much sense as trying to conceive a world with only down.

Every ritual tied itself so closely to a single power as to render itself impossible. They could bring their patron close, but never sever it from the others, and eventually it would be violently pulled back into the place next to reality where they dwell.

The solution, then, is simple: A new ritual must be devised which will bring through all the Powers at once. All fourteen, as I had hoped I could complete it before any new powers such as Extinction were able to fully emerge. All under the Eye’s auspices, of course. We mustn’t forget our roots.

And there was only one being that could possibly serve as a lynchpin for this new ritual: The Archivist. A position that had so recently become vacant, thanks to Gertrude’s ill-timed retirement plans.

Because the thing about the Archivist is that – well, it’s a bit of a misnomer.-

It might, perhaps, be better named: The Archive.

Because you do not administer and preserve the records of fear, John. You are a record of fear, both in mind as you walk the shuddering record of each statement, and in body as the Powers each leave their mark upon you.

You are a living chronicle of terror.

Perhaps, then, if I could find an Archivist and have each Power mark them, have them confront each one and each in turn instill in them a powerful and acute fear for their life, they could be turned into a conduit for the coming of this – nightmare kingdom.

Do you see where I’m going, John?

It does tickle me, that in this world of would-be occult dynasties and ageless monsters, the Chosen One is simply that – someone I chose. It’s not in your blood, or your soul, or your destiny. It’s just in your own, rotten luck.

I’ll admit, my options were somewhat limited, but My God, when you came to me already marked by the Web, I knew it had to be you. I even held out some small hope you had been sent by the Spider as some sort of implicit blessing on the whole project, and, do you know what, I think it was.

Of course, I had to bide my time, get a measure of you before I began to push, learn how you worked – So I decided I would wait until something came for you, and see how you reacted. Attacks upon the Archives were not uncommon during Gertrude’s tenure, and, while she was always prepared, I made sure you would not be.

I reasoned if you couldn’t survive a single encounter, you were unlikely to make it through all fourteen. So, when Jane Prentiss attacked, I watched eagerly, one hand on the gas release from the start.

You acquitted yourself well enough, so I decided to see how far you would get, though I waited until the worms were in you before I pulled the lever. I needed to make sure you felt that fear all the way to your bones.

The discovery that one of the Stranger’s minions had infiltrated the Institute in the aftermath was certainly a pleasant bonus. Even if that sliver of paranoia, that vague wrongness you couldn’t quite place wouldn’t count as a mark, it was only a matter of time before it confronted you in a far more direct and affecting matter.

Admittedly, given the advent of the Unknowing, I needn’t have bothered. But what’s the old saying about hindsight?

More important to me was Sasha’s encounter with the Distortion. If it had taken an interest, then I very much wanted it to cross your path.

So I found one of its current victims and convinced her to make a statement.

Poor Helen. I actually had to put her in a taxi myself, she was getting so lost in those narrow London side streets.

It worked, though.

Between the stabbing and at least two desperate flights into its doors – you’re marked very deeply by the Spiral.

Jurgen Leitner was a surprise, of course, and I was forced to improvise. I had no idea how much Gertrude would have told him, and he could very easily have derailed everything if you learned too much too fast.

I… justified it to myself saying I was going to have to send you out into the world anyway, if you were to encounter more of the Powers, but I can’t honestly pretend it wasn’t a… rather rash move.

Still. I’d requested Detective Tonner be assigned to the case when they found Gertrude’s body in the hope that having a Hunter in the mix would eventually lead to a confrontation, and setting you up as a killer certainly hastened that.

Then it was just a matter of feeding you statements to lead you to a few Avatars I thought were likely to harm you – but probably would stop short of actually killing you.

Jude served her purpose exactly as I had hoped, as did our dearly departed Mr. Crew, marking you for the Desolation and the Vast.

Honestly, I had – nothing to do with Melanie and her Slaughter adventure, but when I saw the situation, I made sure to trap her here, so when her rage bubbled over you would be right there, a ready target.

I didn’t foresee the mark coming from surgery gone wrong, but it was a very pleasant surprise.

The Unknowing was a distraction, but not an unwelcome one. For this to work, you needed more than just the marks; you needed power. And that was something the Unknowing served to test, though it posed no actual danger in the grand scheme of things.

And it did serve another purpose, of course. It inadvertently pushed you to confront death, a mark I had been very worried about trying to orchestrate. If I tried too early, you’d just die. Too late, and you might be powerful enough to see the attempt coming, and maybe even understand why.

As it was, it was just right, and once again, you came through with flying colors.

By this point, your abilities were coming along in leaps and bounds, and I was concerned that meeting face-to-face might end up with you – (sigh) – Knowing something you shouldn’t.

I had initially planned to go into hiding, but when your colleagues surprised me with the police, well. It was simple enough to cut a deal.

All that remained, then, were the Dark, the Flesh, the Buried, and the Lonely.

I was a little put out when that idiot Jared Hopworth misinterpreted my letters and attacked the Institute too soon, before you were even out of the hospital, but then – Ho, you should have see my face when you voluntarily went to him.

I couldn’t see what happened in there, of course, but given how you came out, I’m very sure it counts as a mark.

I suspected the coffin might turn up again, and once it did, it was simply a matter of getting any, uh… restraining factors you might have had flying off on a wild goose chase, and waiting.

Honestly, Detective Tonner has been proving invaluable through this process. I’d been racking my brains for months about what I could use to lure you in.

And, of course, I knew the Dark Sun was just sitting there waiting. So when it came time, I just whipped up another apocalypse and sent you on your merry way.

Then all that remained was the Lonely.

Poor Peter. He really should have left well enough alone. (cruel laugh) Or just done what I’d asked in the first place.

Ah well. He knew what I was attempting, and was very unwilling to cooperate until I made him a little wager about Martin.

Of course, he had no way of knowing that, in addition to setting you up for the final mark, he was giving you all the tools you needed to escape from it.

How is Martin, by the way? He looks well. You will keep an eye on him when all this is over, won’t you? He’s earned that.

And there, I think, we are brought just about up to date. I have enjoyed our little trip down memory lane, but past here lies only impatience.

You are prepared. You are ready. You are marked. The power of the Ceaseless Watcher flows through you, and the time of our victory is here.

Don’t worry, John. You’ll get used to it here, in the world that we have made.

Now. (cruel, cruel laugh) Repeat after me.

You who watch and know and understand none. You who listen and hear and will not comprehend. You who wait and wait and drink in all that is not yours by right.

Come to us in your wholeness.

Come to us in your perfection.

Bring all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and dies!

Come to us.

I – OPEN – THE DOOR!

#the magnus archives #jonathan sims #jonah magnus #elias bouchard #tma #martin blackwood #jonmartin #mag 160 #the watcher #the watchers crown #the eye #the eye opens

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obxone · 11 months

Text

Everything

Edited-ish. ~2.5k words.

A broken sob fills the space as you rest your head on Kiara’s lap. Her fingers thread through your hair in soothing strokes. Your tears have dried on your cheeks now. The only sound coming from you are faint hiccups from how hard you have cried this afternoon.

Sarah frowns from her spot on the floor. Her sad brown eyes focus on you while her hand gently strokes your thigh. A heavy throw blanket is over your curled frame.

“What did you even see in him?” Kiara asks, her voice has a hateful edge to it. Rightfully so, after you called her in tears begging her to come home. She had shown up within minutes and had brought Sarah along too. Both of them had been concerned and are now venomous at your state. A hollow ache now fills you, and you wish it did not. He did not deserve another second of you.

You whisper, “Everything you didn’t.”

“Oh, Sweetheart.” Sarah frowns.

Her head jerks up when the remaining group stumbles into the room. Their laughter and conversation die between them as soon as all three pairs of eyes land on you.

“What happened?” JJ asks first, his face shifting from happy to concern in a millisecond. His eyebrows drawing together, blue eyes darkening with worry.

“Rafe broke up with her,” Kiara says, her gaze not leaving you.

“What the fuck?” JJ’s voice shows anger now. “Why?”

“Technically, I broke up with him,” you mumble and lift your head, ignoring the lines from Kiara’s shorts that are now imprinted on your face.

“What happened?” Pope asks, his shoulders dropping as he moves further into the room and takes a seat in the overstuffed chair opposite you.

JJ takes Kiara’s place after she tells you she is getting you water on her way to the kitchen. JJ smells warm and comforting, and you sink into his chest. Your eyes close, and you sigh, snuggling further into him.

“What happened?” He asks, his voice faint enough to give you some semblance of privacy.

You exhale, eyes shifting to the floor. “He was cheating on me.”

“I’m going to kill him,” John B spits out, not missing the conversation at all. Pope swears under his breath.

“She may have taken him down a few pegs already,” Sarah offers as her boyfriend takes a seat behind her.

“Did you?” JJ asks, tucking the blanket around your shoulders. A faint smile of pride tugs at his lips.

You nod, but Pope speaks before you can explain.

“Who with?” Pope leans forward, and you frown, looking at Kiara when she returns with a tall glass of cold water.

Your heart aches as the image and sounds flash through your head. “Another pogue.”

“I’m really going to kick his ass now,” JJ threatens.

John B stares at you, and you cannot take the burn of his gaze anymore, so you let your gaze shift to meet his. The concern is there, and you offer him a half smile.

“Did he hurt you?” He asks.

“Physically? No.”

He nods, looking down at the floor as his forearms rest on his knees.

“JB,” you lean over and ruffle his hair. “You’re a good guy.”

He smiles then, chin lifting to meet your gaze.

----

A week has passed, and you have pushed down the ache of your broken heart as you focus on day-to-day tasks. The local market bustles around you as you examine the fruit selection in your favorite vendor's booth. Mr. Walter grins at you as you select one of his personal favorites, strawberries.

“Picked yesterday,” he offers, and you flash a grin at him. “Mainland team got them on the last boat yesterday.”

“They are perfect,” you beam at him as you pass him a pint and then another. “I’ll take two.”

“Perfect, it’s BOGO. The second one is free.”

“Mr. Walter,” you chide, very aware that is not the case.

He waves you off before he starts to wrap the pints in cellophane to keep them protected on your bike ride back to the Chateau.

“Kildare’s best fruit vendor,” you compliment, and he winks at you before dropping them into your satchel with ease.

“Anything else?” He asks, looking over the selections with you. “I have a few seedless watermelons left.”

“One of those would be perfect. You are making my sister and our friends very happy.”

“I’ll get Alan to put it in your basket.”

“Thanks,” you grin and hand over a few bills. He takes them before passing back a five.

“I said BOGO.”

You roll your eyes and take the five back before moving down the aisle after a quick goodbye.

A few booths down, you spot a candle maker. A nice candle for your bath tonight sounds perfect. It would be a splurge, but a good one. You had the five dollar bill leftover from Mr. Walter’s booth along with a ten in cash still. Your cards are forgotten at home by mistake.

“Hey, Cheyenne!” You grin at the younger woman. Her eccentric nature is in full flourish today with her bohemian style dress.

“Hey!” She grins and leans over the table to give you a quick squeeze. “Are you getting a candle today?”

“I think so.”

She beams. “I have a new one. Want to smell it?”

“Yes, please.” You reach out for the candle as she spins the top of the jar off before offering it. You take it and bring it to your nose. A bright smile paints your lips as you take a deep inhale. “This is fabulous! Ooh, I’m in heaven.”

“Perfect! I thought you’d like it.” She smiles, taking it back and screwing the cap back on. “Should I wrap it up for you?”

“How much?”

“$20.”

“Oh,” you frown, before looking over the table. “My budget is $15. Do you have a smaller one?”

“Not in this scent, sold out already,” she frowns with you. “But I have plenty of the Summer Bliss that you like.”

“I’ll take that one.”

“She’ll take both,” Rafe’s voice comes from behind you, and you inhale sharply, body tightening at his voice before the heat of him pushes against your back. His arm extends over your shoulder to hand Chey a fifty. “The big ones.”

“Of course,” Chey smiles, oblivious to your reaction to his presence. As far as she knew you were both still together.

“That’s too much Rafe,” you start.

“Nonsense,” he murmurs, leaning against the tent pole. “Have you been through the market already?”

You nod. “This was my last stop.”

“Perfect,” he flashes a smile. “We’ll put your bike in the truck, and I’ll take you home.”

You start to shake your head but pause when you hear your name. You turn to see Alan moving through the crowd with a decent-sized watermelon in his arms.

“Where’s your bike?”

“Out by the parking lot. The pink one.”

“Great, rear basket okay to put it in?”

You nod a grateful smile on your face.

Rafe steps forward, his large body taking up the space between you and Alan. “I’ll take it. I’m taking her home.”

“Oh,” Alan murmurs. His green gaze flickering to you. “I didn’t know you guys had made up.”

“Well, we did,” Rafe mutters while taking the watermelon from Alan with ease. “Thanks, Alan.”

“Yeah, anytime,” he nods, and you frown, watching him go before you turn to Rafe. “Really?”

“He’s always had a thing for you.”

“Shouldn’t matter to you. We aren’t together.”

“Here you go!” Cheyenne’s cheery nature pops the tension bubble as she holds out a brown paper bag. You grasp it with a grateful smile in her direction. “Here’s your change.” She offers a ten back to Rafe.

“Keep it.”

“Oh,” she blushes, folding her fingers tightly around it. “Thanks.”

“Yep,” he responds while still staring at you. “Let’s go, Babe.”

You glare at him, but he ignores you and starts to steer you out of the mass of canopies for the different vendor's booths.

“We broke up, what do you think you are doing?”

He smirks, before tipping his head as he watches you. “We did not break up.”

“Yes, we did. I caught you cheating, Rafe.”

“She came onto me.”

“It takes two,” you mutter, getting to your bike as you drop the two bags into the front basket. You reach for the watermelon despite his protests. “Rafe…”

“It’s too heavy.”

“It’s not,” you argue and reach for it again, but he takes another step back. You groan loudly. “Fine! Keep it.”

You get on your bike, ignoring him as he tries to change your mind. You pedal away, ignoring his shouts of your name and pleas to come back. You ignore the sting of tears and the watchful gazes of both pogues and kooks alike.

----

You unloaded your items, tucking them away where they belonged. The house is silent with Kiara and the pogues out on the dock. You had promised them a quick lunch once you had everything put away.

Footsteps on the porch echo out as you open the bread bag after rinsing some of the fruit off.

“I’m just starting,” you say without looking up.

“I brought your watermelon.”

Your head snaps up as Rafe enters the house. The screen door slammed behind him as he stands there holding your watermelon. He looks so out of place in the living room. His pressed collared polo and oxford shorts are a stark contrast compared to the old paneled wooden walls and dusty outdated furniture.

“Kiara will be happy until she sees you are the one bringing it.”

He crosses the room silently before placing it on the counter. “Can we talk?”

“I have to get them fed. They won’t eat if I don’t.”

He frowns, reaching for you, but you move your hand away from his. The knife gripped tightly in your hand.

“Don’t touch me.”

“I want to talk.”

“No.”

He sighs, hand running through his hair. “Please.”

You stare at him, knife paused over slicing the sandwiches in half. He shrugs, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“What do you want to talk about?” You ask, turning your eyes back to your work. “Want me to hear all your practiced excuses.”

He frowns before shaking his head once. “No. I fucked up. I know I did. But she kissed me first. I did not pursue her.”

“No,” you huff, plating the sandwiches before rolling the melon onto your cutting board. “You just fucked her.”

He groans, before trying to reach for you again.

“Rafe, don’t!” You point the knife at him in a warning. “I scream, and they’ll come running, so don’t.”

He groans loudly and turns, pacing away. “I fucked up, okay! Yes, I fucked her, but it did not mean anything, okay?!”

You stare at him before shaking your head and going back to cutting. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“What do you want me to say? I’m admitting my fault.”

“You’re admitting you threw away our relationship for a meaningless fuck,” you clarify as you slice the half melon into quarters. “It meant nothing doesn’t help your case.” You start to work on cutting away the rind.

“Tell me what to do.”

“Leave.”

“No.”

You sigh and lift your head to meet his gaze. “Why not?”

“Because I can’t be without you.”

“You have to.”

“No.”

You groan with a shake of your head as you start to slice again. A sharp pain rips through your hand a moment later, and you gasp, jerking your left hand back to see a deep cut running across your index, pointer, and ring finger. Watery blood runs down your palm, and you wince immediately turning for the sink.

He is there, his body warm as he presses against you to help. His arms around you as he turns the water on.

“Rafe, I’ve got it.” You mutter.

“Just let me take a look.”

You huff but let him rinse the tips of your fingers before pulling your hand closer to his chest. His dark blue eyes focus on your fingers as he inspects the cuts. They were not deep but still pooled with blood.

“Does this place have a first aid kit?”

“Bathroom sink.”

“Here,” he folds a kitchen towel around your fingers. “Hold pressure.”

You watch him go before he is back with the red plastic case. He places it on the counter before turning to lift you with ease to be sitting next to it. You stare at him as his eyebrows knit together in concentration once he has the kit open. You stay silent, watching him work until the last bandage is on your finger.

“What do you want from me?” You whisper, his body still nestled between your knees.

“To be with me, to be my girl again.”

“I can’t do that anymore,” you lift your head to look at him. “I can’t be the girl who was hopelessly devoted to you again. You broke my heart.”

Rafe frowns, his hands plant on the counter on either side of your hips. His face inches from yours.

“The best I can be is your friend.”

“Friends then,” he agrees, retracting as he steps back. “Friends.”

The creak of the screen door has you both looking to see the pogues stepping inside. A shared confused look between them all aside from your sister, who is angry.

“He’s leaving. He brought the watermelon I forgot,” you offer and slip down to the ground. You push Rafe back to create distance. “You should go,” you say to him so only he hears.

He nods, squeezing your good hand before going without another word. You watch him go before turning back to the five pogues.

“Food is almost ready. I’ll finish prepping the food if someone wants to get drinks.”

“Got it,” Sarah moves forward, and you smile at her gratefully. The tension is thick, but no one says a word.

“What happened?” Kiara asks, pointing to the first aid kit. “Did he hurt you?”

“I cut myself slicing the watermelon,” you explain with a frown as you lift your bandaged fingers. “JJ?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you finish slicing it, please?”

“Sure!” He darts forward, shouldering past your sister to take over. Kie continues to watch you, reading you as you plate the food before taking everything to the kitchen table.

“Lunch is served,” you say, gesturing to the various plates. “John B?”

“Hmm?” He jerks his head to look at you now.

“Paper plates?”

“Pantry,” he goes to the little door and opens it before digging around and coming back with a small stack.

“Kie, eat,” you gesture, and she rolls her eyes but takes a plate and begins to grab her lunch. You squeeze her arm. “I’m fine, promise. He asked to get back together, and I said no.”

She nods, offering you a sympathetic smile before you peck her cheek.

“Relax, I’m the older one remember?”

She laughs and squeezes you in a tight hug before taking her plate and water outside. The others follow in her steps, and you are last as you let the screen door slam behind you. A sunny picnic lunch is just the ticket for you all.

#outer banks #obx #rafe cameron #obx rafe cameron #rafe cameron x reader #outer banks rafe cameron #rafe cameron x you

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ossifer-bones · 8 months

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Canaan House is The Tower, Silas Octakiseron is the Hole

Let me explain.

How is Canaan House described in Gideon the Ninth?

Large, imposing, made of white and shining dirty white stone, sitting on the water. Gideon couldn't see over it, or around it. An awe-inspiring sight.

How is Canaan House described in Harrow the Ninth?

Among other things, it is said to be a tower. The tower. The bottom of the tower is the lower levels of Canaan.

How is the Tower described in Nona the Ninth?

Large, imposing, made of dirty-white grey stone, sitting on the River. Nona can't see how high it is, or around it. A terror-inspiring sight; a sight recognised by her top thoughts and bottom thoughts.

What happens when Nona/Alecto nears her 'original' body?

Her middle thoughts crawled into her top and bottom thoughts. For a moment she thought she’d die of it. “There’s a box,” she said, “and … there’s someone in the box who isn’t me. I’m me. I don’t know who’s in that box, not really, only—when you open it—I’ll be gone, because I can’t survive … knowing. And I think—inside that box—there’s something that looks like a girl…”

She starts to remember who she was. Nona's top and bottom thoughts correspond to one or more people who recall Canaan House/The Tower.

May we remember for a moment who died in Harrow's body? Who, at the end of Harrow the Ninth, witnessed Alecto's face as she drowned? Who was incompletely eaten, and may persist in said body as dredges, who had seen Canaan House and died there? Gideon Nav.

Top and bottom thoughts recognise it, middle thoughts do not. Alecto remembers the Tower, Gideon remembers Canaan; Alecto remembers Canaan, Gideon remembers the Tower; Nona knows fear.

What does Varuun say of the Tower?

Varuun, using Judith as his mouthpiece, says nothing of the Tower. He says speaks of their tower.

“They concoct their own vengeance,” said the Captain. “Their justice is not my justice. Their water is not my water. I came to help. I am made a mockery. The danger is upon you, and you do not even know … they are coming out of their tower, salt thing. There is a hole at the bottom of their tower. I will pull their teeth. I will make it blank for you.”

Who are they? They seek vengeance, justice, and lie in a water that does not belong to Varuun. It is their tower.

The realisaiton I had here is one I have to attribute to @the-sword-lesbian, who pointed out how the ten billion, unresurrected, are likely vengeful; They is humanity: their tower is Canaan House, their water is the River, and the vengeance they concoct is against the one who presides over the tower, who placed them in those waters.

The justice they seek is for themselves, the ten billion victims of Emperor John Gaius. The justice Varuun seeks is for the salt thing, the victim of Emperor John Gaius, Alecto.

What is the hole in the bottom of the Tower?

If the Tower is Canaan House, then Teacher's warning to Harrow was more prescient than we could have ever known:

Ten thousand million, a long-winded way of saying ten billion.

“You’ve been trying to commit suicide by cop ever since I found you, Wake. I know when someone’s trying to get me to do something, and you’re acting like a woman who very much wants me to end her life.” “Telepathy,” she said. “Did the ten billion give you that too?” “Wish they had,” said the Emperor.

He said, None of us wanted to actually nuke anything. But a nuke’s good blackmail, right? A nuke adds a lot of pressure, right? The people who knew it was there, they knew that if we talked about having a nuke everyone would find out who gave us a fucking nuke. So we said to our client, Pan-Euro cannot be allowed to let these people through. They’re cutting and running. They’re leaving ten billion people behind to die, having stolen financing and support and materials. They’re leaving us to drown. And we said, We don’t want to make a scene, but … He said, None of us wanted to actually nuke anything. But a nuke’s good blackmail, right? A nuke adds a lot of pressure, right? The people who knew it was there, they knew that if we talked about having a nuke everyone would find out who gave us a fucking nuke. So we said to our client, Pan-Euro cannot be allowed to let these people through. They’re cutting and running. They’re leaving ten billion people behind to die, having stolen financing and support and materials. They’re leaving us to drown. And we said, We don’t want to make a scene, but …

Ten billion unfed ghosts: never resurrected, never reclaimed from the River, left to sink into the abyssal depths. How do we see ghosts outside the River? As Revenants.

How do the devils work?

“They bit him,” said the corpse prince, as though nobody had spoken. “I mean, they hit him—they don’t have to bite. It’s revenant magic. They’re waiting for him to die so they don’t have to work so hard. Heal him up now, and they’ll still ride that wound all the way into his hideous old body and I’ll get to kill him myself.”

The first victim of devil possession we see is Colum Asht. In Canaan; In the Tower. He kills Silas, albeit with his sword, but we know that weapons can act as a thanergetic link for a revenant. The devil in Colum was purged by Ianthe.

But what of the one in Silas?

Silas' corpse is the hole

“Those were dead already,” Kiriona interrupted. “The dead ones move differently. You realise the ones you shoved off the tier probably just got back up again?” “Can the living ones be cured?” asked Paul. “You can’t cure this,” said the Prince. “It’s spirit shit … possession. You can ward people so they don’t get grabbed—if you’re really good—but otherwise, chop them up and burn the bits. That’s the cure. Civilian or Edenite or House, it makes no difference.”

Nobody warded Silas. Nobody chopped him up, burnt the bits. He was left, as a dead thing, at the bottom of Canaan, the Tower. Left in a haunted place, filled to bursting with the sedimental dead of the Resurrection, the sum of all necromantic transgression: the hole through which the dredged devils may flow.

Canaan House is the Tower, Silas Octakiseron is the hole.

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth spoilers #tlt theories #tlt meta #nona the ninth

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ghcstao3 · 8 months

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for @dhampiravidi — the curse of wanting to kiss your lieutenant who is never without his mask

God, I want to kiss him, is Soap’s very first thought upon seeing Ghost’s face in that dimly-lit safe house.

It’s highly possible I might die before I ever get the chance, is his very second as Ghost is slipping on a new balaclava.

Of course, Soap has wanted to kiss the man for a while, now—could probably pick the exact moment that thought settled into his mind—but it doesn’t quite dawn on him until he’s faced with the prospect of putting his life in peril again, not moments after finally catching a glimpse of thin, pink lips.

It’s cruel timing, is what it is. It’s evil and unfortunate and unfair, and Soap is already thinking up all the ways he’s going to stick it to those Shadow bastards for messing with his opportunities to kiss handsome (and strong and witty and oddly charming and—) men.

First, however, he comes up with a plan to scratch off the only thing on his current bucket list, if only to make his revenge that much sweeter—because he is John “Soap” Mac-Fucking-Tavish, and he never leaves important business unfinished.

But Ghost is making it really fucking difficult to follow through on that promise.

So difficult, in fact, that Soap ends up living through Graves and Hassan and every other stupid thing all to never once succeed. Because asides from that apparent blue-moon occasion, Ghost is never without a stupid mask.

Soap hates him. He wants to kiss him so, so bad.

But he can’t. It’s impossible, Soap thinks, barring asking Ghost outright—as if he’d ever agree. The lieutenant eats alone in his office, showers in his own personal bathroom, suffers through heat and dirt and blood until he can hole himself up somewhere in private for a reprieve from that damn mask.

So much for that kiss. Maybe Soap should set his ambitions a little lower.

Except, maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe instead he should just state his ambitions aloud when they come to mind, because apparently Ghost had been on his own similar track.

They’re the last two in the briefing room when Soap gets what he’s been wishing for for months. He’s just getting ready to stand and leave when a hand falls on his shoulder and urges him to stay put, before the muted rustle of fabric and chapped lips crashing into Soap’s at an awkward angle.

It lasts only a second. So quick Soap blinks and it seems like Ghost is out the door. For a moment he thinks he might have imagined it—but he catches a glimpse of Ghost tugging his balaclava back under his chin, and he feels the tingle of warmth on his skin left behind from the chaste contact, and Soap just smiles. Smiles like an idiot to himself as he chases after the lieutenant, not thinking twice whether he’d be allowed to ask for more.

God, I want to kiss him ends up being a thought that never fades.

#prompt #john soap mactavish #simon ghost riley #ghost mw2 #soap mw2 #soapghost #ghostsoap #writing

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imagine-lcorp · 5 months

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Bullet for My Valentine (Part I)

A/N: Hi my little darings, well as promised (a bit late, I know...) here's one fic of the ones I wrote as a thank you, to all of you who helped my friend by liking their little FB post, and even if you didn't have the chance to support them, I hope you enjoy this little piece. This has been in my WIPS for ages. Let me know what you think!

Lena Luthor x R/John Wick AU //Word Count:2,759

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

Lena's lunch time started with a bang.

She didn't think too much of it at first as she was sitting at her desk and about to enjoy her food. But then another couple of bangs followed and she knew it hadn't been just loud sounds. She called Jess immediately but even her amazing assistant was unaware of what was happening.

"I don't know, Miss Luthor, I'm trying to call security but it seems-" A louder bang interrupted Jess, and she yelped in response.

"Jess!" Lena called, but she could hear nothing on the other side.

She left the phone, making a run for her purse, which she had left on the couch of her office. Inside, she recalled with regret, she had left the watch Supergirl had given her in case of emergency, and this one was very much it. Lena reached her it and rummaged frantically on her bag until she found the watch, but her office doors burst open before she could press the button.

You had kicked them open, keeping your gun raised as you entered and pointed at each corner of the room until your eyes found her.

"Don't move." You ordered, keeping your eyes on her to take in every single detail available to you. You noticed the watch and quickly understood what she was trying to do. You cursed mentally as you tried to catch your breath.

This wasn't how you had planned your day.

It had started as a quiet morning. You had been sitting in the kitchen table of your apartment, sipping from your cup while you read the newspaper.

The headlines praised the Girl of Steel once more, for keeping National City safe after fighting another group of rouge aliens and for helping locate several warehouses that participated in shady business. You had scoffed a bit at it. If only the Girl of Steel knew the intricate system that truly ruled over the cities she protected, she would have needed ten more like herself to barely grasp its surface.

You kept reading the news, dwelling for those moments of peace that life conceded you before you had to travel again, looking for your next target, unaware that your day was about to change drastically.

The bell of your apartment door had rung a couple of times before you answered and were surprised to find no one at the door. Instead, as you looked outside you noticed an envelope on the floor with a red wax seal you recognized instantly. You reached for it and opened it.

Inside you only found one thing. A little note that read: Quod Debitum Sanguine, you have one hour (Y/N). That was all you need to know to get ready. There was a debt you had to repay.

"Miss Luthor, if you appreciate your life and that of your friends, you will not press that button." You raised a brow at her and green defiant eyes looked back at you.

"And why is that?"

"Because they will die, and you too, if you don't listen to me." You kept the gun up and pointed at her hand. You were ready to risk a piece of her if that meant at least she would remain alive.

"Lower the gun and I might consider it."

She was trying to bargain and although you didn't have time for that, you felt like you had to play your cards as best as you could.

"Your father sent me, Miss Luthor." You said, and that seemed to confuse her enough that her attention was completely on you. "I wish I could explain further but we're running out of time."

"Where's Jess? My assistant?"

"I told her to leave. All your security has been compromised." You lowered your gun slowly, raising the hand that didn't hold the gun to show her you had nothing else on your hands. "I mean no harm. I know it doesn't look like it but you can trust me."

She seemed to ponder it for a moment even against all logic and reason of what she shouldn't. What finally convinced her you meant no harm was the way you handed two men as they entered her office with guns raised at her. Lena saw them come after you first but your reflexes were faster. You dodged one coming right after you as you shoot the other in the chest. The latter fell right to the ground as the bullet hit him. The one that remained tried to point his gun at you but you were faster and shot him twice, once in the foot and once in the stomach, leaving him too to agonize on the floor.

"There's more coming." You said regaining your composure, unfazed by the splatters of blood around you, and looked at her. "We have to go."

"Where are we going?" It was all Lena said before following you.

Whatever was happening, she figured it was best to have someone like you by her side, although she had preferred for you to use a less violent method. However, she quickly understood that wouldn't have been possible as more and more men keep coming for you while you were on your way down to the building. You took down a dozen before taking the elevator that lead to the underground parking lot and she didn't know if to be impressed or fear for her life, this time for real. But you had had many chances to end her and yet, you were doing the opposite, keeping her alive.

"You said my father sent you. How? Who are you?" She asked while you waited for the elevator to go down and open its doors.

"My name is (Y/N), (Y/L/N), I met your father years ago, I owe him." You kept yourself a bit busy counting the bullets left on the cartridge of your gun.

"Well, he passed away quite a few years ago too. I doubt he would care for you to pay him back." She said and you smiled, shaking your head.

"It's a bit more complicated than that." You said without adding more.

"I still don't know why I can't call for help."

"I know you have very powerful friends, Miss Luthor, but they are no match for this." You said as you changed the cartridge of your gun, getting ready. "Your head is worth a lot of money at the moment, all the people coming after you, they won't stop at anything until they put a bullet through your head."

"Some of my friends are bulletproof." She replied crossing her arms. "They could help us a little."

You scoffed. "If you mean the almighty Girl of Steel, they have Kryptonite bullets already in store for her."

Lena frowned and looked at you with suspicion. "How do you know about Kryptonite?"

"I have a lot of explaining to do, I know, but now is not the time or place." You looked at the elevator panel, there were only a couple of floors before you reached the parking lot. "I have to take you somewhere safe first."

"Where, exactly?" Lena watched as you raised your gun. The elevator had arrived and it was a moment before the doors opened.

"You'll see. Now, find cover." You said and as soon as the doors parted you lunched forward, essentially shooting everything that moved your way.

After managing to leave a little trail of bodies in the parking lot, you decided you had to hurry up. You had been hit by a bullet on your left arm, nothing too serious, a scratch for you really, but you still felt yourself losing energy. More assassins were on their way, no doubt, and you had little time to carry out your plan. Lena didn't ask more questions as you broke the window of a car and opened it. You both needed a ride and you didn't care what the options were. You and Lena got inside the car and you drove to the only place you knew was safe enough for the both of you.

"Welcome to the Continental. How may I help you?" The receptionist smiled as you approached her desk, looking you up and down discreetly.

"Good morning." You said with a little smile. "One room please." You took something from one of your jacket pockets, placing the object on the counter, sliding it to the receptionist.

Lena, who was standing a step behind you, looked at the exchange with curiosity and amazement. If she had seen you entering her hotel lobby looking like that, full of sweat and with bloodstains all over your clothes, with a car almost destroyed outside due to the mortal chase you had barely managed to escape, she would have called the police immediately.

Instead, she saw the receptionist take a thick golden coin from your fingers and slide it under her desk and look at you both with the most charming smile.

"A double room would be alright?" The receptionist asked and silently hoped you wouldn't call the laundry service. The big stains of blood on your clothes wouldn't come off easily.

"That would be nice, thank you." You nodded. "The doctor?"

"I'll send him to your room." The woman said and handed you a key. "Enjoy your stay."

You thanked her once more and walked to the elevators, with Lena following behind as she had done since she left her office with you.

The world had changed around her in a darker shade she didn't think was possible. You were a cold blood assassin protecting her and the people around you, the people there in the hotel, that she guessed was a fancy facade, barely batted an eye at your appearance, as if they were used to seeing people in that state all the time. A million questions were swirling in her mind, but she decided it was best to ask once you had been attended by the medic, that arrived shortly after you reached your assigned room.

She got checked first, and you were glad she hadn't been hurt too badly, only a few bruises and little cuts from all the debris you had left behind.

"Are you ready to tell me what's going on?" Lena pulled the chair where the doctor had been stitching you up and sat with her arms crossed. Her determined expression told you she was quite done with everything going around.

You grunted, feeling still sore from the chasing and the fight of the morning, and poured yourself a glass of bourbon the reception had so kindly sent for your pains. You poured some in another glass for her, placing the glass in front of her.

"Long story short, someone has put a price on your head. A bounty of 30 million dollars to the first mercenary that puts a bullet through your head." You took a mouthful of your drink and looked at her, waiting for her reply. She didn't touch her glass.

She raised a brow at you. "Who?"

"I don't know...yet." You shrugged. "But I'm sure we'll find who soon."

Lena looked at you with very inquisitive eyes. "And why are you protecting me?"

You sighed. It was time for explanations. "We are both here because of Lionel..."

You started in the criminal underworld as a young and reckless amateur but full of ambition. You had been always good at it, managing to survive in this ruthless world since you were a child. You had been lucky one of the crime bosses that ruled over National City got an interest in you.

You had raised quickly to the ranks and when you were old enough to fend for yourself you realized you wanted to be a bit more independent. Your boss didn't like the idea that much but decided to give you the change, not believing you could make it outside his business and he had been quite right once you left his side. Trying to get a contract, a killing order, was difficult even if it was open for everyone. You needed contacts and a chance, and it came in the form of Lionel Luthor.

There was a moment, years ago when his business started to struggle. Government officials were on his tail, trying to take him to the court over inconsistencies in his security protocols, trying to accuse him of espionage and such. It was all nonsense. Behind it all there was one person moving the strings, a very high official also involved in some shady business, and Lionel hated them enough to want them dead.

"I went to your father and offered my services." You poured yourself another finger of bourbon. "He refused, but I made him an offer of my own. If he put the contract and allowed me to take it, I would offer him a Marker. A sort of promise, sealed with blood, that would allow him to ask of me anything in the future. I would do it, with no questions asked, with no refusal, to repay his kindness."

"So he did." She finally took the glass you have poured for her and looked at the bottom of it.

"Yep." You took a sip of your glass and shifted in your seat.

"So what? Did he ask you to protect me before his death?" She tilted her head and took a sip of her drink. "How considerate."

You scoffed. "Believe it or not, he kind of did. Apparently he included his assets from all of this in his last will. He left you my Marker and a last request for me." You sighed. "If there was ever a contract opened for you, I was to protect you from everyone that came after you until they pulled it off, or in its defect, kill the idiot that opened the contract in the first place. That would automatically cancel it, unless there is another person to push it forward."

You downed the last of your bourbon, placing your glass back on the table, and looked at her.

"And you're doing this just in good faith? Because you have a debt with my father?"

"I am." You frowned slightly. "Look, miss Luthor, I sure all this seems a bit surreal but here's something you have to understand. This world has its own rules, and those rules must be obeyed. Some of those rules are, one, no business within Continental grounds, and two, that every Marker must be honored."

You explained raising two fingers at her.

"The first rule is very simple, and it will explain why I brought you here. This hotel is a sort of save haven for people like me, the golden rule demands that everyone who stays here must not participate in any contract, no matter how tempting. So it means you're kind of untouchable right now. No one will dare to kill you unless they have a death wish of their own."

"You can do that?" She said surprised. "Bringing a target here?"

"Honestly, I don't know but so far it seems it's working for us." You leaned back in your chair. "Now, about the Marker...I have to complete your father's request so you, if you'll be so kind, can seal the other part of the Marker and finally free me of it. Otherwise, I'll be considered excommunicado, meaning I'll lose all kind of privileges and protection and be killed on sight. If I don't get killed first, of course."

"Well, I would very much like to help you and free myself of this." She put her glass on the table too and looked at you with the most unimpressed expression. "Unfortunately, I don't have your Marker. My father never mentioned such thing, and I don't think I've seen it."

"I know." You nodded slowly. "You must claim it first, with management."

"I have to call the Manager?"

At that moment, the black landline phone in your room started to ring. You both turned to look at it and you grunted as you pulled yourself from your chair to answer, you were barely feeling better. You raised the speaker to your ear and listened. Lena observed you hum and reply, some times with a yes or a no, and end the call shortly after.

"Well, you won't have to call him. We are booked for dinner with him tonight, at seven." You returned to your chair and sighed. "Let's make sure to wear something nice."

She scoffed and downed the last of her drink. It was turning to be a very interesting day.

#lena luthor #lena luthor imagine #lena luthor x reader #lena x reader #lena luthor x you #lena luthor imagines #bullet for my valentine #part i #john wick au #continental au #lena x you

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