#Maybe I should watch it for my own suffering just to see what iv been missing out smhhhh | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

meruz · 5 months

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hi im putting all my asks in one post again. these are from like the past month and a half approx? some digimon thoughts some tmnt thoughts some art musings u know the usual

@waywardistics YAYY thank you so much for ordering! I'm glad it got to you & that you are enjoying it!

this is kind of a missive to everyone who ordered but: I am very nervous about pre-orders whenever I do them... nervous that not very many people will order, nervous that there will be supply chain or production dilemmas and I won't be able to get copies out to people in a timely fashion, nervous about having people's money but having an indeterminate amt of time where i have not yet "held up my part of the bargain" etc etc SO. THANK U GUYS...FOR ORDERING and being patient and im so glad it got to y'all

@seanonthemoon (idk why i cant tag u BUT) interesting... i gotta be honest I don't think abt the crests that much. i agree that they're very much like heres the "girl" crest heres the "nerd boy" crest etc to the point that it becomes almost meaningless. but i think what makes them even more meaningless to me, and is probably the reason they kind of designated girl/boy crests etc is that i think like the digivices they're toys and merchandise more than they are actual narrative tools LOL. I wouldve loved something with cody and mimi! theyre both so deeply empathetic and sensitive.. theres a lot they share but i think because they look so different on the surface it would make it difficult to market that merch...booo capitalism boooo toy marketing its all sexist bullshit at least here in the u.s. idk if japan is that different though.

I'm actually a little frustrated with how often 02 and 02 related media squanders cody in general lol. he feels like a parallel of izzy, joe, and TK(season 1 tk) while also being kind of none of those and suffering through lackluster characterization as a result... and then once ken joins the team it feels a little redundant. there's a couple cody-centric eps of 02 I remember really liking but then i think abt how he's been used since in like post-series content and 02:the beginning where they made him type on the computer even though obviously that's yoleis thing but because he had nothing else to do and aghh... my blood boils. i feel like the youngest but most serious anime achetype even at its bare bones is actually rly interesting idk why they don't play it up. UM. Once again my opinion is that he should be taller LOL and maybe they should play up his kendo martial arts honorable training stuff more idk. tallest + youngest + most serious just seems like a recipe for success for me. well. theres still time. and theres always fanfic.

THIS IS SO NICE TO SAY and not the first time someone has said it but i appreciate it everytime because i really admire the mm art style so much. It's like part of why I got really into the movie because I really recognized my own artistic sensibilities and aspirations in the way they stylized everything.

UM And i feel like since watching the movie and looking at all the concept art and making my own art i do feel like its only become more obvious how much my own art is lacking LOL LIKE when you see something that feels so similar I think the differences only become more stark. those artists are definitely on a different level than me. But it's nice to hear people say it doesn't look so different from their pov. thank u ^^

thank u!!!!!!! i love mundanity and naturalism... there's something so beautiful abt it to me lol... I feel like my anatomy needs work actually but ive been feeling better abt it this year so it's good to hear! thank you!

DLKGDSGDLALSNDF WAS IT TOO FAR..?? firstly, yeah I was thinking late teen/young adult ages for both of them ie 18-19ish, definitely not the age the kids are in the movie lol.

but also they arent DOING anything in that pic it is literally just a confrontation + some innuendo... I think teens should be allowed some less than subtle innuendo.. its like one of the top 3 classically teen pastimes...

this is such a funny ask to get because i feel like i haven't been able to do thin lineart until like. this past year or two maybe LOL. UM having a line-centric art job helped I think. I started on craig of the creek back in 2022 and thats a show where we spend a lot of time inking so I had a job where I was constantly moderating my line weight 40 hours a week every week for over a year. disappointingly, much of improvement is simply horrendous amounts of practice.

Here's a tip though: I think a lot of thin lineart boils down to confidence. I think instinctively we read thick, bold, fast lines as confident but theres actually a lot of obscuring you can do with a thick line. if you're not sure whether the nose on the face or a browline should be a little more left or a little more down you can hide that with a thick line and pretend its a shadow. or hide it with a bunch of quick lines and the eye can kind of approximate where looks best among the mass.. whereas a thin line is rly singular and stark and hides nothing, it needs to be precise. so anytime i know i want thin lineart i spend a LOT of time sketching, making sure i know exactly where i want my lines to go. so im not second guessing by the time im inking...

ok thats kind of a broad tip lol... here's one thats more applicable: IF POSSIBLE, lower your pressure sensitivity on your device. most devices have some way to edit your pressure sensitivity curve. I use a surface pro at home and this is what my pressure curve looks like most of the time.

When I work on a wacom it looks even more like a reverse L shape LOL. I'm naturally a really heavy-handed artist and I use a "light" or "hard" pressure curve to compensate for how hard I'm always pressing on the pen lol. if you're like me and you struggle with going too hard with the ink too fast... this will probably help a lot!

SFHASLDFH I LOVE THIS ASK this is like the type of question a person gets asked when chalk drawing on the sidewalk at recess LOL. but i understand because I've been struggling also for like. months. I think I'm finally starting to nail it down though so here's some of my observations.

[feel free to save this img but **please do not re-post it or share broadly**. my biggest fear in the world is to spend 30 min on some notes and become a widely proliferated art tutorial im not even kidding. i made it low contrast and difficult to read on purpose.]

my other tip is to just look at and study a lot of reference because that's all ive been doing. the tmnt are really cartoony so its difficult to use like actual anatomical reference unless ur going for that look BUT theres been so many adaptions in so many different styles that there's a real treasure trove of stuff to look at for how to simplify, stylize, and dissect these characters while keeping the recognizable essence. so theres lots to pull from.

If you want to expand further, it's also good to have 5) something sci-fi 6)something fantasy 7)something mundane/slice of life. a bedroom is a really good go-to. And of course some bgs can be two or more of these things at once.

I've definitely answered asks abt bg tips before but here's one specifically for if you want to do bg design for a job:

Your portfolio should probably have at least one of each of the following 1) an interior 2) an exterior 3) a cityscape 4) a nature scene. Just to cover kind of the basics of what you'd be asked to draw on any given project.

I actually feel like I don't have that many cityscrapes in my portfolio... this is something I'm gonna try to work on in the coming year LOL. OH ALSO. This is a very basic tip and people will tell you it all the time but its worth repeating: look up portfolio websites of artists who have the job you want. An easy way to do this is to go onto imdb for any cartoon or movie you like and to find the names listed as "bg/background designer" or whatever then just google that name +"art" or "animation" most artists have some public facing internet presence so it's not hard. spend time studying their work and hold those images in your head! it's a good way to get a good idea of what "industry standard" looks like and comparing ur own art to it... I know people sometimes get bummed comparing their art to others but if you can keep your head up lol.. it'll help you figure out what you need to work on!

ok thats all i have to say sorry for typing so much. happy new year everybody who read this far LMAO!!!!!

#ask

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crystalsnow95z · 1 year

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Hobi was watching Taehyungs return from Mexico Airplane video and noticed how he tried to cover from head to toe. He messaged to ask if he was okay and Taehyung replied he was going to the hospital because he felt really weak and didn't feel well at all.

Hobi is too worried about his baby brother and has to go see him. The difference in weather really got to Taehyung. He got a bad cough and a fever. All he wants to do is sleep but his coughing won't let him so he's whiny and cuddly.

Interesting I've never did a story with a set timelines I just let the reader decide. I'll accept the challenge. A bit of truth mixed with fiction. This was actually a struggle to write and much shorter than intended.. I hope you like it at least!

Taehyung hears his phone ringing, digging his phone out of his bag to notice it was a video call. "Hobi-hyung, I guess you saw that I landed." His voice is soft with fatigue, feeling jet legged from the long flight.

"I wanted to see if you were okay. You looked exhausted, even with you trying to hide your face. Are you feeling okay?" J-hope worries over his dongsaeng. "Your face looks pale.."

Taehyung rests his head against the window."I don't feel right.. I know it's normal to feel tired after a long flight, but this feels different.. I couldn't even bow because I felt so dizzy.." Taehyung tries to cover up a yawn, pressing his lips tightly together, his cheeks puffing out.

"You should see a doctor." J-hope suggests. "Please go see one for me, I'm worried about you."

"Alright, I'll go, hyung.."

"Good..Tell me when you get home, okay? I hope you feel better soon. Hopefully, it's just from the different weather. I love you, bro."

"I will hyung..I love you too.."

Taehyung finally makes it home, plopping down on his bed. After two IVs, he felt a little better, yet the sick feeling wasn't going away and to make matters worse, between the time of landing and going back home, a persistent cough formed. I need to get better before tomorrow.. I'm not going to miss sending Seokjin-hyung off after rushing to get here.. Taehyung pulled out his phone, keeping his word to call J-hope when he arrived.

"What did the doctor say?" J-hope asks.

"I'll be okay after i rest.." Taehyung replied softly, pulling the phone away to cough.

"You still don't sound so good..maybe I should come over there to take care of you.."

"No, I'm okay.. really.. it's just a cold.."Taehyung tries his best for his voice to stay steady, but the end breaks off into another cough.

"I'm going over there. Do you have any medicine?" J-hope asks.

"No, but I can get some on my own. Haven't you been busy lately on your new song?"

"It doesn't matter how busy I've been.. I can't leave my little brother suffering on his own. Don't worry about me. I'll be there soon just try to rest."

"Okay, Hyung.. thank you.. I love you." Taehyung was relieved he didn't have to suffer alone. He curled up on the couch under a throw blanket, coughing into his closed fist. All this coughing is giving me a headache.. He tried to fall asleep, but his body wouldn't let him between the coughs and not making up his mind if he felt hot or cold.

As soon as he heard a knock on the door, he rushed to see who it was, opening it after confirming it was indeed J-hope. He pulls him inside and hugs him. "I missed you."

"Tete, I missed you too." J-hope smiles, wrapping his arms around his dongsaeng, then let's out a small gasp in surprise."You're sweating so much, Taehyungie.."

"Sorry, hyung.." Taehyung lets him go, trying to sniffle softly.

"I didn't mean it like that, I meant your house is cold, but you're sweating. I think you have a fever.." J-hope says worriedly.

"A fever? No.. no I can't have a fever.. Seokjin-hyung is leaving tomorrow.." Taehyung's eyes grow wide with fear. "I need to see him off, I even rushed my flight.."

"Tete, hey, you need to stay calm. We'll do what we can to get you better before then. As long as you dress warm and keep the face mask on, you can still go as long as you don't get worse.. Don't worry about it, okay?" J-hope hugs Taehyung close, rubbing his back. "You won't miss it because I'm here to take care of you." Taehyung squeezes him, coughing into J-hope's shoulder, trying to muffle the sound.

"Let's get you to bed, okay?" J-hope tries to avoid eye contact with Taehyung as he leads him back to the room. Did he get worse since the first time he called me? He wasn't coughing. I hope I didn't get his hopes up too high..

Taehyung lets J-hope lead him through his home, leaning his head on his shoulder as they walked.i feel dizzy again.. Taehyung held onto J-hope's arm, trying to ensure his feet wouldn't fall from under him.

"It's been a while since I've been to your place."J-hope says as he picks up Taehyung's tissue holder to take with him, taking a tissue and wiping the drip of snot that came from Taehyung's nose. That's when he noticed how unfocused Taehyung's eyes were, dilating to be just large black discs.

"Hyung I..." Taehyung's voice gets cut off by another fit of coughs, almost falling forward if it wasn't for J-hope putting his arm out to brace his fall, helping him move to sit on the floor.

Taehyung lays his head on J-hope's knee, waiting for the vertigo to pass. J-hope just strokes his hand through Taehyung's sweaty hair. "My poor baby, you really aren't doing well. We need to get you in bed..."J-hope gently moves Taehyung's head off his knee, gently lifting him up.

"I can walk.." Taehyung says softly.

"I want to carry you, and it'll only take a minute. Let hyung take care of you." J-hope leans to kiss Taehyung on his temple, carrying him to his bed and easing him onto it. "Stay here and rest. I'm going to go to the store, okay? I'll go as quickly as I can."

"Can you lay with me for a little bit first? At least until I don't feel as nauseous.." Taehyung uses the cutest tone he could manage with his throat being in such a bad condition.

"Alright, but just for a little bit. The faster you take meditation, the faster you'll get better." J-hope lays on the bed, laying his head on Taehyung's chest, softly rubbing Taehyung's belly.

Taehyung starts to relax, but before he could fall into a deep sleep, the persistent cough returned, him quickly covering his face with his arm to avoid coughing on J-hope.

J-hope could hear Taehyung's heart racing faster as he struggled to breathe, sitting up to help Taehyung. He helped the younger member sit up, rubbing his neck to try to give him some comfort through the pain. "I need to get you medicine.."

"Don't go.. I'm sorry.." Taehyung says through the coughs.

"I have to go. It sounds like you're getting worse. Taehyung I'm just worried about you. It's not your fault so don't be sorry.." J-hope hugs Taehyung close. "You didn't do anything wrong so don't apologize okay?"

"Don't leave too long.." Taehyung holds J-hope tight before letting go, knowing he can't hold him there forever."Can you lay with me again when you come back?'

"Of course. Anything you want, just try to sleep, okay?" J-hope covers Taehyung up with the blanket. "Do you want anything special from the store? I could buy you some ramen."

Taehyung shakes his head slightly. "I'm not hungry. I just want something warm to drink.."

"Okay, Tae. I'll bring you some hot cocoa. Does that sound good?"

Taehyung nods. "Hurry back.." He whines softly.

J-hope smiles. "Okay, I will. Go to sleep until then.." He finds Taehyung's keys so he could let himself in so he didn't have no knock and wake him up if he fell asleep, but this action wasn't needed. Taehyung could hardly even relax let alone fall asleep.

I'm so tired, but my throat hurts so much and my head is pounding. How could i be getting worse this quickly...Taehyung tried to obey his hyung's order, but each time he started to drift off, the coughing started up again. He swore in frustration, giving up on sleeping, going into the kitchen for some warm water, and adding salt, gurgling it to try to loosen the mucus to ease some of the pain.

When he tries, a cough interrupts him, the water dripping down his chin onto the floor. He accidentally swallows the rest, choking on it. Fu*k.. that hurts.. I can't catch my breath..

"Taehyung-ah are you okay?" J-hope rushes inside, running up to Taehyung.

Taehyung nods even though the coughing didn't stop, sliding down the cabinet to be able to sit, not trusting his knees to hold him.

J-hope rubs Taehyung's back until the coughing stops, then starts digging through the bags he brought, taking out some medicine and pouring it for his sick dongsaeng. "Here Tete.."

Taehyung takes it gratefully, taking it like a shot, making a face at the bitter taste. "I couldn't fall asleep..I'm sorry.."

"That's okay Taehyungie, the medicine should help you sleep. Let's get you a new shirt and back into bed.." J-hope hands him the cocoa he brought him to help wash it down.

Taehyung took a drink of the cocoa, looking down at his shirt. He didn't realize how much water he spat onto himself from his home cure method. "Okay.."

J-hope keeps an arm around Taehyung as they walk, not wanting any chance of him falling again, leading him to the bed and pulling the shirt off of the young vocalist. "I'll find you a new one, you stay put." J-hope goes into Taehyung's closet, choosing a thin t-shirt.

Taehyung takes a few more sips of his cocoa, the warmth soothing his throat enough to stop the feeling of having to cough, starting to drift off.

"Woah Taehyungah, don't fall asleep holding hot liquid.." J-hope takes the cup from him, setting it on the table. "You can sleep in a minute.."

"I'm sorry.." Taehyung says sleepily as J-hope helps him put his arms through.

"It's okay.. You're so apologetic today.. You're going to kill me with your cuteness."J-hope says soothingly, gently putting Taehyung in a laying position and covering him up.

"Will you hold me while I sleep?" Taehyung looks up at him with big, sleepy eyes.

"Hang on.. there's one more thing I need to help you." J-hope quickly leaves the room before Taehyung can stop him, going in the shopping bag to get a cooling cloth to try to bring down his fever.

"Hobi-hyung...!" Taehyung calls for him hoarsely.

"I'm coming, I'm coming.."J-hope runs back into the room, taking the cloth and gently placing it on Taehyung.

"It's cold.."Taehyung shivers. "Come keep me warm.."

"Cute.. You are such a child when you're sick.." J-hope smiles, going behind Taehyung and getting under the covers, throwing his leg cover him and tucking his arm under his neck, resting his hand on Taehyung's chest. "Are you comfortable?"

"Yes..." Taehyung replies in a soft, sleepy tone.

"Good.. I love you Tae. Rest well." J-hope lays his head on Taehyung's shoulder.

"I love you too.."

J-hope could feel Taehyung start to relax against him as he finally starts to fall asleep, only small coughs escaping. "My poor Tete.. Get better soon.."

#bts boys #bts taehyung #bts sickfic #bts sickie #bts jhope #bts fanfic #sick!fic #bts #bts v #bts vhope #btssickie #bts comfort #bts sick fic #sick Taehyung #taehyung sickie

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theeyeofinfinity · 1 year

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How a thousand lifetimes becomes one.

I think part of my process of dealing with things that bother me are to almost think them to death. I will sit and almost cauterize my spiritual wound with the hot piece of metaphorical steel that is my source of hurt, pressing it to myself until its numb and sealed. I think I’d rather it be that way than running from it. It would just follow the trail of blood i leave behind and find me over and over again. That i feel is infinitely more exhausting than a brutal week or weeks or month of just sitting with it and then moving on after but i digress. I’ve been thinking about all the beautiful moments shared. I think about the time i spent out in the woods behind your parents house. Sitting by the tree that was claimed so long ago and the many trips i took to find it. I remember the peace i felt sitting there and imagining a version of us that never stopped loving each other. Seeing how happy i was to sit with my best friend. Flowers in your hair while i gave you a piggy back ride by the river. Laughs and talks about our struggles in life and how happy we were to have this little pocket of earth to escape from our day to day. Happy to have each other, knowing we’d never leave or love anyone else. It brought me closure because the two that belonged together both died together. We are different people and in essence not them anymore. Thats why we can never have what we had before. So I’d go to pay my respects maybe once a week after work or if a storm was coming. Found the fastest ways in and out so i could watch the little movies in my head before having to race against the sun.

I remember when i felt like i couldn’t stay away anymore and started looking at your page. Seeing that you had found my coordinates and went there yourself. Part of me always hoped I’d run into you. I knew i never would because its not a place youd be in casually to begin with. I remember seeing the post about going on an adventure somewhere secluded. And then leaving an address for me to follow. I remember how conflicted i was trying to decide what i should do. How i begged myself not to go. I wanted to leave it behind like i had promised myself because there was no point in prolonging my own suffering. I unblocked your number just to see if youd say anything as the days got closer. I remember how much my heart fluttered when i saw your name come up on my screen again. I knew i had to go but i didn’t want to tell you. I wanted you to be surprised. But i told you anyway out of fear youd be asleep and i wouldnt be able to find you. Youd already expressed frustration that i wouldnt be coming so i felt compelled to. I got there after what felt like an eternity on the road. I found you. Spent the night talking, watching the stars, and eventually connected in a way that seemed impossible. We had bound ourselves together yet again. I remember laying there the day after just as confused as you were. Scared of what the future might bring. In some ways i was right to be.

I remember how we would talk so often and feel like we had so much to say. So much to catch up on. So happy to feel each other again. We started to bond so much and i felt like i was the only thing that mattered to you. So happy that we came back to each other that youd hold on so tight that I’d never be able to get away again. I started opening myself up to the idea of loving you again. One night while i was in your apartment we had another passionate night. We were so intertwined and i remember how serious you got telling me how glad you were that i was your first. How thankful you were it was me. I spent every day since wishing for another night like that. I remember going to trivia night and hearing “mirrors” come on after we talked about you telling me how much the lyrics matched us all those years ago. Hearing it again when we went for ive cream from a lady street performing. i remember taking you that train tour in the middle of nowhere. It was pretty and cool to sit and watch the scenery. We met a cool waitress there and i got the utmost satisfaction being outside the train while it went through a tunnel. Cold but memorable. What i remember most is getting our picture taken at the end and the waitress told us to look at each other like we were in love. I looked at you and you just looked straight at here pretending like you didnt hear it. It kinda hurt but looking at that picture was just a reflection of how things have been for a long time. Me loving you and you looking away. We got to go explore the old haunted asylum turned hotel that we almost stayed at, looked at some cool shops, and tried out a really tasty bakery. It was also the trip i gave you a stethoscope. I did a bunch of research to see what brands worked the best and finally found one i thought would suit you well. I was so excited to give it to you and the look on your face made it worth the wait. I wanted you to know that through it all, even if you didn’t believe in yourself, youd always have me in your corner cheering for you. I believed in you and us more than anyone ever would or could. You would also carry a piece of me and that sentiment with you for however long you kept that stethoscope in use and in a sense have me there for support whenever you were hard at work.

I remember our trip to go get your motorcycle and you telling me how good i looked on it. I was so ready to ride listening to my music but you wanted to keep talking to me and it made me smile the whole ride back. I also remember waking up at just the right moment when you had texted me late at night to ask if i was awake when you had gone to take a ride on said motorcycle. How the timing of me being there when you need me most always amazed me. I let you come crash at my place because it had started to rain and kept you warm. I was so happy to be your warmth… and to just have you there unexpectedly. I remember the first time not cooking hello fresh but making you soup and grilled cheese from scratch. Our movie marathons and watching top gun and its sequel with you for the first time. Now i’ll never see those movies without thinking about watching it late at night after your shift, cozy together in bed and falling asleep to a video of a fire place. I remember being there for you while you moved out and basically did it all with just you, while your roommate acted off and pushed you aside, i was your rock and finished it out with you. One night that we spent together and you packed my lunch and made me coffee and sent me out with a hug and a kiss. How for a split second i could imagine the happiness I’d feel being with you, coming home to you, you being my everything for the rest of my life. Or when you showed me your pill remover and i asked you to try it on my favorite shirt and it made a hole in it. The gasp and the look on your face made me laugh and all i could feel was love for you. I remember driving out to firefly on a whim to see you just because you said you wished i was there. Hell, i flew to new orleans just to see you. The whole thing was crazy from the start and even while on the plane i kept thinking to myself, “ i cant believe im really doing this…”. It was cool, new place, same girl i couldnt stop loving. From the cool stores and stands, bourbon street, “bagnets” and the aquarium we went to on our last day, i think you were my favorite part every time. Even if it ended with the worst heartache i had felt since the day you left... I remember taking you to jingle ball right after you took me because i wanted to surprise you. Not knowing that because of how eager i was i had given it away. All the small dates scattered around. All the nights i came late in the night just to spend a few hours with you. Some of those nights my nose would whistle and i wouldnt know why but it would annoy you but i thought it was kinda funny. The chemistry when we’re both at our best is truly unmatched. Its a shame the last things i’ll remember is watching it all go cold as you started to back away and in my panic holding on so tight that you flew away. My heart will always remember. What a world isnt it? Reduced to being a ghost for the rest of eternity…

#me

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itzablackcat · 2 years

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TW jeffrey dahmer, depression, mention of self-harm, poetic, dark, venting ⚠️ i sorta wonder why the "collective unconscious" / universe decided this show's having it's moment now. i can relate to the "story" on multiple levels. watching the series, something felt oddly familiar and relatable about him. i couldn't put my finger on it until i realized he reminded me of me because i'm autistic, weird and i've always struggled with relationships. i didn't have friends in grade/high school. i don't have any now. maybe he was autistic. i don't want to offend other autistic ppl but i believe sometimes you can have a sense for these things. evan peters is a great actor and the producers knew what they were doing. i don't know if they knew it would be a phenomena of people being a little too curious about what happened. it's easy to suggest that having apathy or perhaps seeing humanity in a cold-hearted person is antiempathy, antijustice but for me it's never about enjoying someone else's suffering. maybe some ppl have seen enough havoc in their own lives. maybe some ppl want to unalive themselves. maybe some ppl are born from generations of trauma. the fuckery goes beyond what words can describe. it doesn't see you as a person. the mind and heart can only take so much until it quite literally hurts and you don't know what to do with it. why would someone who's suffering even a little bit be bothered to care (or put up a front to care) when they barely have the emotional/mental capacity to reconcile their own suffering? when they can hardly care for themselves besides maybe physicality. i used to self harm and sometimes i feel like going back to it because it's one of the few ways i feel good about having a body besides just looks... i feel the same way about most true crime but i don't usually relate to the abuser as another human being, or their background. hell, it's even hard not to be attracted but that's just me. i wonder why some ppl have a sense of moral superiority simply for feeling different feelings and more empathy so they berate others who naturally feel different. of course i'm speaking for myself and i feel for the victims but i just can't. i see a reflection of myself that screams louder to me than any dramatized rehashing of the same events ever will, unfortunately. maybe it's easier for the mind to comprehend that level of psychopathy by romanticizing it. plus tbh why should anyone be defined by their suffering? by their degradation? by their abuser? i can't bring myself to read the names. ive felt degraded to an extent and ill never understand that level. i have a mix of emotions that i can only express so far but hopefully it translates. it is what it is. might delete later.

i'm in a depressed mood sometimes and thoughts create reality. it's just been hard to believe i can change it when i've been shown the same picture, the same story about myself and my place in the world. i'll get over it. i don't believe in forcing anyone's will necessarily. i don't want my family to suddenly become the ideal perfect version i want them to be, just for me. i don't want them in my life in the future. it feels selfish saying that given how much they care and stuff. i'm just tired of not belonging there.

#jeffrey dahmer #tc community #true crime

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apocalypticgargoyle · 3 years

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Ok you amazing person. Demon Sapnap, but the reader is really sick or maybe is in an accident and ends up in hospital. Sapnap and Dream both visit and get jealous of eachother. Eventually Dream leaves and Sapnap is just there like 👁👄👁 And then after a day or two the reader is finally home and Sapnap is like really pent up because he has been jealous Horny and reader has been in hospital and he just rails them, but softly because reader is still weak. Basically jealous soft-dom Demon Sapnap.

This is just an idea- by no means do you have to write it :)

I'm begrudgingly writing Dre as Mr. Steal Your Girl for obvious reasons (/ j), but also I couldn't pass down this idea for incubus 3 ;) I'm also going to include a few other requests I had about Sap's backstory and some smut. enjoy!

𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋𝐒 & 𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐒. ⛧ 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐮𝐛𝐮𝐬!𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐧𝐚𝐩 (𝟏𝟖+)

warnings: smut (18+), spanking, degradation, thigh riding, domination, literally quoting the b!ble

here's a playlist for those of you that were asking for it. i would love to see what the rest of you are listening to :)

previous part

You opened your eyes slowly, the ache in your body fully coming to your attention as you noticed the metronome of beeps coming from the machines connected to the tubes in your arm. You turned your head, squinting as your eyes struggled to focus on the figure beside you. After a few minutes, your brain pieced together his features and your heart eased when you realized it was Sapnap. For some, obviously ungodly reason, his presence brought you a sense of calm.

His feet were kicked up on the edge of your bed, his eyes scanning over a magazine as he chewed on his bottom lip absent-mindedly. He was dressed more casually than he usually was, probably an attempt at blending into the general public. You reached out a hand, fingers brushing against the soft material of his dark crewneck to get his attention. His gaze moved to look at you, a smirk painting across his pink lips.

You cleared your throat, tongue feeling like sandpaper. “What happened?” You grumbled, reaching beside him for the remote to elevate your head.

He watched your movements carefully. “You got a fever and then passed out cold,” he reminded you softly, making you groan. “Dehydration.” You couldn’t remember what he was talking about, only feeling nauseous in the middle of the night.

“How long have I been here?” You asked, rolling your head on your shoulders as your neck cracked, your limbs popping as you moved slightly. The IV pinched your arm as you moved, making you hiss quietly, making his eyes focus on where it was attached.

He hummed in thought. “A few hours. They wanna keep you until tomorrow, just in case you die or something,” he shrugged, tossing the magazine on the couch in the corner of the room.

You rubbed one of your eyes, a yawn rippling through you. “And why are you here?”

He chuckled. “Obvious reasons,” he stated, nodding towards the bite on your shoulder. “Also, Saint Dream was the first on your emergency contact list, so…” You pulled your knees to your chest as you looked at him.

“Even if it’s just because you have a quota to meet, I’m glad you’re here,” you muttered and something flickered behind his eyes, a smug expression tugging at his lips.

He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, feet planted on the ground. “You’re not part of my quota, baby.” Your cheeks flushed at his words but before you could respond, he tensed up, eyes clouding with a darkened gold. They always shifted when something was intruding. You furrowed your brows at him. “Lupus in fabula venit enim ad me,” he mumbled darkly, the venom of sarcasm dripping from his voice as a knock came at your door.

Clay stuck his head through the threshold, eyes softening at you. Sapnap watched him silently as he stepped inside, rambling off how worried he was about you. Clay seemed to ignore Sapnap’s presence as he settled a batch of roses on your nightstand. Sapnap rolled his eyes and once Clay finally acknowledged him, he made a face like he was smelling something rotten. Sapnap looked like he was ready to snap Clay in half if he approached you closer, yet his dark demeanor didn’t dissuade Clay. In fact, it seemed like Clay was hell-bent on ruffling his feathers more, pulling up a chair on the other side of you.

“I didn’t think he would be here,” Clay commented, voice dipping slightly as his sights shifted toward Sapnap, irises flashing brighter. You perked an eyebrow at him.

Sapnap scoffed, leaning back in his seat. “I’m here because she wants me here,” he commented, nearly with a boasting tone. “So, it seems like I’m in the right role to ask what the fuck you think you’re doing.” You kept silent as the two played their game of wits and egos.

Clay smirked at him as if he was in possession of some esoteric knowledge. It dawned on you that you weren’t sure how old either of them actually was. You had dated Clay for god knows how many years, yet you learned more about his past from Sapnap than you had in any of the years you were together. “It’s still in her best interest that she be given options that don’t involve your kind,” he gritted.

Sapnap laughed shortly, a cockiness settling into his appearance. “Oh yeah? In her best interest or in yours, you selfish prick.”

Clay’s jaw tensed, a sigh flooding from his nose. “We can do this more maturely, you know? Like fucking professionals.”

Sapnap shook his head. “I’m not up for negotiating,” the stated bluntly. “Go near her again and I’ll report you,” he assured, his deadpanned stare making your heartbeat quicken.

Clay swallowed, eyes glued to Sapnap’s as the pair of them flexed their dominant personalities. Clay’s eyebrow twitched as if he had thought of something, almost mockingly. “Begone, Satan, inventor and master of all deceit,” he began, making Sapnap roll his eyes again before cutting into Clay’s quote.

“-enemy of man’s salvation. Give place to Christ in Whom you have found none of your works,” he mocked. “Try and exorcise me all you want, feather boy.”

Clay’s hand moved to curl around your wrist and Sapnap leaned against the bed, as if asking Clay to make his next move. “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour-“

“Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings,” Sapnap cantered without a thought. “It’s not even the right verse for this, stupid bitch,” he grumbled.

You cleared your throat, pulling your arm away from Clay and trying not to look as if you were slinking towards Sapnap. “You should leave,” you stated, Clay’s lips pursing at your words. “I need to rest.” Out of the corner of your eye, you could see Sapnap’s sly expression cutting into Clay.

After spending another night in the hospital, you were finally unlocking your apartment door and letting Sapnap help you out of your coat. You mumbled something about getting yourself a drink and he brushed you off, already doing it himself. Your mind was racing with questions after what you had witnessed between Clay and Sapnap. You hadn’t doubted the authenticity of Sapnap, but your mind still ran with what had happened to him. He handed you a water, sitting down on your couch as you paced slightly.

He broke into your thoughts. “Go on, tell me what you’re thinking,” he stated, unbuttoning his shirt slightly. You wanted to hex him about the fact that he probably already knew what was pounding against your temples to be asked.

You chewed on the inside of your cheek, rolling over your questions to censor some of them. “The bible’s been translated and reprinted so many times, how are you still…” you gestured with your hands, unable to explain where you were going with your statement.

He chuckled, brushing a hand against his chin. “It really doesn’t matter if it’s actually God’s word or not. It’s a guide, like an outline. Rules, I guess. Think about it like the Constitution.”

“I thought demons like… burned up when someone quoted the bible at them…”

His face fell a bit at this. “No, we just can’t read it,” his tone was almost regretful, sending guilt to pulse through your body because you had asked. “It’s like it’s in a completely different language, and each time I look at it, it shifts around the page. When you get dragged into hell, something happens with your eyes.” He huffed slightly, wetting his lips. “It's kind of like an isolation thing. He wants you to be completely aside from him.”

Your mind clicked, eyeing your heirloom display case. “Can I try something?” You asked, popping open one of the doors after he hummed in response. You fished out your grandmother’s rosary, the cross feeling almost heavy in your hands. You turned on your heel, bringing it closer to him before dangling it in front of him. His eyes drifted away from it, his gaze turning up to you. “Does this bug you?” You probed, making him snort. He took it in his hand, thumb caressing over the design.

He shook his head, chewing on his lip. “It’s a shameful thing really. I feel guilty whenever I look at this kind of stuff,” he muttered; you sat on the arm of his chair and looked over his shoulder. He turned, looping it around your neck. “Does it bug you?”

You held it away from your chest. “For different reasons, I guess.” You stood again, putting it back in its spot beside a photo of your grandfather. “Why’d you get kicked out?” You queried softly, peering over your shoulder.

He was watching you. “Maybe another time.”

“What about your childhood?” You asked. “Did you have one?”

“I know more about your childhood than I do my own. Why all the questions?” He countered with a soft laugh.

You shrugged. “I want to get to know you…” You mumbled, your hand drifting up to rest on your shoulder, feeling heat coming off of his scaring bite mark. “How do you know when to show up?”

He sighed, leaning his back against the chair and stretching his legs. “I can feel when you get anxious. Angels have some kind of block though, that’s why it took me so long to realize you needed me when that bastard was over here.” He shook his head almost like a new fire about Dream had been lit. His eyes flickered up to you. “Unless you weren’t scared.” You shook your head quickly at his joke. He chuckled. “How does it make you feel that I’m in your head sometimes?”

You approached him again. “Narcissistic,” you answered plainly, sinking to your knees before him. You ran your hands up his thighs, a smirk growing on his features as he sat up to be closer to you. “What happens after I die? Eternal damnation?” You questioned, as his hand went to brush against your arms.

He pressed his lips to your neck before digging his fingers into your hair as if he’d been waiting to touch you for days. You hummed as he kissed you, the slight scruff of his unshaven face feeling soft against your cheek. “You shouldn’t have to worry about that. I think I’ll make you immortal or something. Being with me should be enough damnation,” he jeered, making you laugh. “Most of my colleagues take the souls of their targets and leave, but I enjoy your company,” he teased.

“But you already have my soul, right?” The line felt strange coming from your mouth.

His lips brushed against yours. “There’s still an innocent piece of you that I haven’t tapped into. Everyone has it; I like it in you.”

Your eyebrows perked at this, fingers digging into his thighs to make him groan. “What do you mean?”

He kissed you briefly, actions getting needier the longer you were between his legs. “It’s completely pure. Untampered by sin or desire. When a demon gets it, they go feral,” he mumbled, nose pressing into the crook of your neck, teeth dragging across your skin.

You tilted your head to the side, fingers tracing over his zipper. “Take it from me,” you breathed, leaning into his touch.

“No,” he answered blatantly.

You moaned as his tongue slipped against your collarbones. “I want you to have it,” you continued, voice uneven. His fingers tugged at your hair.

His breath was warm against your shoulders. “I’ll take it after a few years. I don’t want it now.”

You pushed him away from you, his eyes already blown with lust as you looked into them. “You just said demons want it so badly. Take mine.”

He chuckled, hands dropping to your jaw. “No,” he repeated, voice light.

You sat back on your heels, looking up at him with a tilted expression. “Is mine not good enough for you?”

He wheezed. “No, it’s perfect. I just… After I take it, it’s like you’re dead. You’re not the same. Your humanity is gone.” He pulled you back up towards him. “I’ll take it when I’m ready to escort you to hell.”

You quipped an eyebrow. “Oh, so you just don’t want me to see your place?” You joked, making him roll his eyes. “Maybe Clay was right. What’s the verse about confession?”

His eyes darkened playfully. “For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” It was mind boggling how he could probably quote the whole Bible and was as… sinful… as he was. “Bring up Dream again, and I’ll make sure you can’t walk for a week.”

Your eyelashes fluttered. “You bargain for a fun game," you quipped.

He chuckled darkly. "It was more a light-hearted threat, dove," he muttered.

You sat forward and pressed your lips against his hungrily, letting him pull you into his lap as his fingers curled into the loose ends of your hair. Your fingers ripped at the buttons of his shirt, exposing his chest to you as he tugged at your own clothing. Your teeth dragged against his lips as his hips ground up against you, needy for friction.

You pushed your tongue into his mouth, moaning as his hands moved to your thighs, his blunt nails raking against your jeans. You rolled your hips against his lap, feeling him harden beneath you. He spread his legs further, coaxing you to grind against him as his hands pushed you down to rut against his leg.

You were breathless as you pulled away from him, one of his hands fisting in your t-shirt to bring you close to him, lips and tongue pressing against your neck. "I didn't tell you to stop riding my thigh," he commented darkly, bouncing his knee to make you moan.

Your hand wrapped around the wrist of his hand holding you in place, tugging your bottom lip between your teeth as heat spread across your body. He pulled your shirt over your head, your bare chest at his mercy. Your mind blurred at the sensation and the feeling of him sucking his mark into your skin, making it clear who you belonged to.

You moaned, digging your face into his neck as he rolled his hips against your leg. "Please, Sapnap. I need you," you whimpered, voice a soft whisper in his ear. He chuckled darkly, ripping your pants down your legs as you fumbled to unzip his slacks.

He pulled you onto him without warning, a groan leaving your lips as he suddenly filled you up. "Bold of you to beg for me after associating with that bastard," he bit, thrusting up into you. "I should tie you up and let you suffer for that."

You moaned at his dark tone, grinding your hips against him. Your lips ghosted against his as your cheeks began to feel warm from the stimulation. "I might like that," you jested, your sentence breaking with your voice as he harshly grabbed your hips, driving himself into you harder.

"You're lucky you're still weak," he nipped, voice swirling with lust and power. "I'd throw you over my knee for that comment." His fingers dug into your hips, grinding against you as you bounced on top of him. You moaned at his words. His hand snaked up to wrap around your throat, threatening to apply pressure as he continued to direct your movements, thrusting into you at a deep and reserved pace. "Dirty girl. You want me to punish you, don't you?"

When all you could do was mutter a small beg, he pulled you closer to him, lips meeting yours in a mess of hair, teeth, and tongue. He moaned into your mouth, the taste of his breath was addictive and bliss-inducing.

He pulled you off of him and onto the couch beside him, slipping his shirt the rest of the way off. "I'll fuck the angel lover out of you," he joshed, a hand coming down sharply across your ass; the pain making you moan his name, hands gripping the couch as he pressed your shoulders into the cushion.

He dragged your hips into the air, pushing into you again, rocking his hips against yours with a small grunt. His teeth were sharp against your skin as he pounded into you and an animalistic pace, your mind numbing at the feeling. He pushed your knees further apart to pump himself deeper into you.

You moaned as his weight settled on the hand pinning you to the couch, your hair sticking to your sweaty face as he spanked you again, hand gripping your irritated skin. "Good girl. Take it," he nearly growled, making your skin crawl with an added layer of pleasure. While his pace and mannerisms were ruthless, he was definitely holding back, knowingly going easy on you because of your already weak body. That didn't mean he wasn't reminding you of your sour attitude as he pulled your arm behind your back, his hips snapping against your own to firmly instill his name in your mind.

You reached for the arm rest, a grounding element for you as his motions drove you over the edge in a teeth gritting orgasm, boy flushing with goosebumps under his command. You rocked your hips back against him as he pulled out, jerking himself off instead of giving you the satisfaction of finishing him off.

You groaned as you turned to look at him. "Feeling okay?" He asked, pressing his lips to your shoulder blade. You shook your head quickly and his eyebrow quipped ever so slightly. "Good," he stated, pulling you up and onto the ground in front of him again. He grabbed your cheeks. "I still don't think you've learned," he muttered, leaning back into his previous position. "Blow me," he directed, tucking an arm behind his head. "And with the mouth, one confesses and is saved, remember," he taunted.

Your eyes flashed up to his devious expression as he leered at you from his commanding spot.

It was going to be a long night.

And you were ready for it.

Taglist: (to join, follow this link :))

@karlkitten @pluto-dizzz @twist3dtinkerbell @more-like-reyna @deepestofwaters @glowstick-cafe @unstableye @tinyegg @darphobic @shroomieissmall @clubfairy @aroyaldarknessblr @camerondiaz48104 @madsbbg

#incubus!sapnap #sapnap smut #sapnap x reader #sapnap imagine #sapnap au #sapnap x y/n #mcyt fanfiction #mcyt x y/n #mcyt smut #mcyt imagine #incubus au

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relaxxattack · 3 years

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hi im asking u this bc u seem to be bee duo enthusiast so

ive been calling c! beeduos relationship platonic because i thought that was what their cc’s said, and i thought they had said that they were uncomfortable with ppl shipping the characters. But ive seen a lot of posts that say their relationship is canonically romantic? and i absolutely do not want to come across as homophobic by watering down a mlm relationship to just friends because that happens so much in media so.

what is the canon state of their relationship / ur opinions on the platonic thibg

dont worry abt answering if u dont want to!! i see a lot of differing opinions and i trust yours :)

aw it’s totally fine, im flattered you asked me about this!

let me put it simply: it’s a whole mess, lol.

first im going to talk about what’s happened fandom-wide that caused differing opinions, and then i’ll explain my own opinion/interpretation. :]

(this got really fucking long im so sorry)

ranboo and tubbo initially proclaimed the relationship was romantic, specifically in argument with the wiki editors who had set it as platonic by default. (you can see this in the vod where they decide they’re canonically married— it’s very funny. chat tells them the marriage is already on the wiki, they check, tubbo is jokingly offended that it says platonic and asks if he needs to up the romance).

tubbo also makes jokes about adultry, which sort of implies the relationship is not necessarily a platonic one.

(theres definetly more in that stream alone but it’s been a long time since i watched it so i don’t remember a lot of it.)

the wiki, because of this, suffers from going back and forth on platonic and romantic, seemingly unsure where the joke ends and the canon begins, or if its canonically a joke! a mess, as you can already tell.

this gets more complicated as the marriage bit goes on: outsiders, such as phil and scott, both at one point say “platonic marriage”, which then ranboo and tubbo agree with. however, when chat asks them if they’re platonic, they say the opposite. so there is a lot of confusion there.

there’s also the difficulty of being able to tell streamers and characters apart. ranboo and tubbo both don’t like being shipped irl, and that’s their boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed. (they’re also minors, but tbh when they’re 18 in a year i will still be following their boundaries regardless of their legal age).

due to people not wanting to be accused of minor shipping, they started adding the platonic tone indicator to most of their drawings— basically a way of saying “no homo”. meanwhile, tubbo frequently on stream flirts with ranboo and makes quite a bit of nsfw comments towards him that are frankly hilarious.

this goes on for a while with nobody really sure what’s canon, but a lot of people assuming it’s probably platonic, until: the drama of the mods night. a few mods dmed all the wiki editors telling them ranboo wanted his canon character relationship officially set to platonic.

unfortunately for those mods; the very same day, a few hours later, ranboo on stream makes fun of puffy delivering him and tubbo “friendship flowers”. because, and i quote, “bruh. we’re literally married. this must be how the ancient greeks felt.”

in case you don’t know, the internet often jokes about how historians will call ancient greeks ‘very good friends’ when they are quite obviously gay. so in this context, ranboo is joking that people will call him and c!tubbo, who are married, “close friends”, when he doesn’t think they are.

basically, ranboo canonized romantic bee duo, the very same day the mods told everyone he’d wanted a platonic one.

chaos and drama immediately erupted everywhere. on tumblr, we were talking about how weird it was of his mods to do something like that without asking him first. we ALSO talked about how weird it was of them to assume that ranboo can’t make his own decisions, or assume teenagers cannot be in relationships without it being sexual. twitter did the same thing but in the opposite direction: called ranboo mods homophobic, or said they were mad ranboo felt pressured into making a romantic relationship canon ‘just so people could have mlm rep.’

i dont want to go into detail about the drama that happened that night because apparently official people follow me and i dont want to stir it up or have them come “clarify” things. im just saying what we talked about.

ranboo in typical ranboo fashion apologized quickly and seriously. he was deeply sorry for possibly offending anyone with how he’d portrayed his rp relationship with tubbo, and he also assured everyone the mod thing was just a miscommunication.

he said he would talk to tubbo and they’d decide once and for all whether it was platonic or romantic, and then announce so everyone would know.

it’s now been a few months and we've had no word from them on that development. we still have no clue.

now, here’s my opinion:

i want to take ranboos word for it that it was a miscommunication with his mods, but... we had it on good authority from people on the wiki team and people in the discord with the mods that (while it was happening) they were really going after the wiki admins, and also made some weird comments about it. that combined with the way ranboo seemingly had no clue (considering he canonized their romance that very same day).... it’s very. sus of the mods.

then there’s the canon we’ve got since then. although occasionally adults in the room have called it a “platonic marriage” and tubbo once (back when it first started) called it a “plankton tectonic” marriage, in roleplay it’s been... kind of not that. tubbo and ranboo make nsfw jokes about each other in character, and their characters also share a master bedroom and bed in the mansion. there's also the way c!tommy really thinks it’s a romance between them as well, and they agree with and play off that— for instance confirming that they “fell in love” when he asked, or ranboo confirming that they “make out on occasion”.

people will still put platonic on their art and posts, imo, because they’re worried about breaking ranboo and tubbo’s irl boundaries by looking like they ship them. or even just being accused of shipping real life minors. and that’s a valid fear to have.

the thing is though: c!bee duo are not cc!bee duo. they’re roleplay characters. cc!bee duo are not okay with being shipped, but they made their characters get canonically married, and call each other “husbands”. so it’s okay to write the word “husband” in your comic without adding “platonic” to it, i promise.

telling the ccs that their characters have to be platonic is... weird. it comes off as not only babying them, but also as saying teens can’t date without it being gross. which isn’t true.

(this is why seeing people overuse “platonic husband” so much bothers me. like, they ARE husbands. you can just say it. what are you trying to hide...?)

do i think they’re canonically romantic? ehh, its likely. it’s still okay to interpret them as platonic, because again, it’s hard to tell where jokes end and roleplay begins. like, maybe it’s jokes in the rp too, and c!bee duo are just friends. friends can and should be allowed to make jokes like that with each other! aro & ace marriages exist!

or, maybe it’s actually part of the rp, and they’re very much romantic. we don’t know!

some people say they could be a qpr (queerplatonic romance), which i could see. (a qpr is a relationship that fluctuates between, or can’t quite be sorted into, “romantic” and “platonic”. people in a qpr can do romantic things while having platonic feelings for each other). in my opinion this is a very valid interpretation as well!

CONCLUSION (sorry this got so long omfg):

are c!bee duo romantic?

its likely, but you can still interpret them however you like!

should i put /p on bee duo content?

ehhh? i find it annoying when it’s overused (as do others), but if you’re worried you can. its up to preference. putting it too much is weird though

should i put /p on things cc! bee duo do?

no. you’re not the one saying it so you can’t decide the tone tags for that. imagine you said something to your friend and a random stranger came up and was like “haha but that was /p right...?”

can i ship c!bee duo?

mmm. i’m not sure on this one. they are canonically married and very flirtatious, but the ccs don’t like being shipped and they’re close enough to being the ccs that actively shipping might be against boundaries.

can i treat c!bee duo as romantic?

yes. literally just don’t be weird about it. it’s not that hard! you can understand that two characters are husbands without making it weird

here’s the most important thing: boundaries. cc bee duo still haven’t told us what their preferences and canon is about this whole thing.

right now, i am assuming based on what they already show us they’re comfortable with, but! the second they give us any more info! all these opinions will change!

i am only going off what they do. i would never want to cross boundaries at all. i just wish they would make theirs a little more clear.

..... i hope that helped anon, i went way off the rails... i need to go to sleep.

#it’s late im so sorry for how much i rambled and wrote #i hope this helps you #bee duo #og post #there’s probably so many spelling errors i need to go to bed #i tried to fix some spelling so reblog this one ig #and not the old one

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actualbird · 3 years

Note

my friend brought up the idea of vyn x artem (and is too much of a coward to send an ask himself), thoughts?

think of the,, comedic value,, You Cannot Hide Your Feelings From The Psychiatrist

oHOHOHOOOO!!! oh anon (and anon's friend hehe), thank you so much this ask!!!! see, ive thought a lot about vynluke and vynmarius but not much about vynartem yet tho so this ask excited me a LOT

okay i wanna go into characterization stuffs bout this pairing first. vyn and artem together are very interesting to me because since theyre in the late twenties gang, theyre both similar in the sense that theyre not as obvious about the emotions (in comparison to the early twenties gang), they both repress themselves or their emotions or desires one way or another. if these two caught feelings for each other, yes, it would be hilarious for the reason u said, artem would immediately try to hide his feelings. but like VYN WOULD TOO, LOLLLL. like yes, i know that vyn in canon is forward about his affections in a subtle elegant kind of way, but at the same time, vyn does sooooo much emotional hiding of his own. if artem hides his feelings, vyn hides himself.

i think that for peak hilarity vibes, vyn would catch feelings first. and the moment this happens hes like "well. this isnt good." and then since hes so hugely perceptive he knows that artem doesnt reciprocate (wrong, artem just hasnt realized his feelings yet, in this situation, so theres no feelings to notice from him yet because ARTEM DOESNT KNOW, ARTEM IS SO BAD AT FEELINGS, HE'S DEFINITELY GOT LAG TIME in terms of figuring things out, fight me) and then vyn is like "understood. i will be repressing these feelings forever now." and then when artem DOES realize his feelings and vyn notices this vyn is like "BUT I ALREADY WENT THROUGH ALL THE EFFORT OF HIDING MY HEART AND MYSELF IN A CONVOLUTED MAZE OF DEFLECTION CONTROL...." and we know artem has HUGE TROUBLE doing anything emotionally forward so like....

the funniest vynartem situation, for me, would be like

THAT ASIDE THO, I THINK VYNARTEM WOULD BE RLLY SOFT THOUGH LIKE......

vyn richter who is so resigned to the world the people in it being cruel growing past the need to throw shots at artem (never gonna forget "after all, i have two doctorate degrees, whereas artem only has one" iconic) and realizing that artem is...much too kind for his own good. realizing that artem isnt worried about the world being bad, hes worried about himself failing that world. as vyn falls in love with artem, he'd wonder that artem is too good for this world. maybe, artem is too good for vyn as well, vyn would think. some nights, vyn thinks about being forward with his feelings, but he stops himself so many times because he wonders just what a good person like artem wing would do if he saw who vyn really is, all those things from his past he hides, all those insecurities he keeps under lock and key.

artem wing who is so scared of not being perfect growing past the need to be defensive against vyn who seems to be the picture of perfection, completely in control of everything about himself in a way artem envies, and realizing that...vyn is doing this because hes hiding, because hes scared. artem believes vyn is good as well, but so much of that good is smothered with smokescreens by vyn himself, as if if he lets his goodness shine clear, something will come out and strike him at his weakpoints. as artem falls in love with vyn, he'd wonder that somebody like vyn shouldnt have to be scared. artem wants to reach out, shed the his own shields and be sincere, and artem doesnt care that he knows he'll be clumsy about his sincerity, because....because some nights, artem's heart yearns to be the one to make vyn never have to be scared ever again.

vynartem, to me, is a love story between two men who are so absolutely used to hiding parts of themselves they think are undesirable but then like...deciding to be brave, eventually. deciding to be sincere no matter how hard it is, because they both believe in the other so much.

BUT ALSO WATCHING THIS LOVE STORY WOULD BE FUCKING EXCRUCIATING. early twenties nxx gang tryna set them up be like

mc and marius holding a cup to the door of the room vyn and artem are in alone

mc: marius, youve been hogging the cup for forever! what are they saying!!!

marius: thats the thing, they arent saying anything!!! are they just....sitting in silence together??

luke: they are, oh my god, they are

mc and marius, looking to luke who has his smartglasses on, projecting surveillance footage of the room

mc: LUKE!! I SAID NOT TO USE SURVEILLANCE TECH FOR THIS, THIS MAKES OUR MATCHMAKING FEEL....ILLEGAL

luke: BUT IT'S SO MUCH BETTER THAN USING A CUP TO THE DOOR

marius: fuck morals, gimme the glasses, i wanna SEE

luke: WHAT, MARIUS, GET OFF OF ME, ACK

vyn and artem inside the room, playing online chess, hearing muffled noises of struggle outside the door.

artem in the chess chat: do you think we should tell them we know theyre out there? and that we already got together last week?

vyn: no, i think we should let them suffer for all the matchmaking they did. also, check.

#tears of themis #vyn richter #artem wing #zuo ran #mo yi

155 notes · View notes

jeonfiles · 3 years

Text

better left unsaid - jjk

genre: angst, rebounds

pairings: jungkook x reader (ft. namjoon)

warnings: arguing, alcohol, profanity, break ups, light smut, use of drugs, jungkook is a fucking dick, jungkook has major attachment issues, toxic relationships, oc cries a lot, namjoon has a heart of gold, unrequited love

synopsis: you knew you shouldnt have given him that second chance, not the third or the fourth either. no matter how much you try he always slithers his way underneath your sheets, arms wrapped around you.

word count: 2.7k

music: into your arms, so it ends?, you will fade, thinkin bout you, julia, my insecurities not yours, fuck u, goodluck, my dear i will think of you

note: uhh ive never written a y/n fic so bare with me, if u listen to the music you’ll be able to feel the story a lot more so yeah if u have time u should, not proof read

Light coming through the cracks of the blinds, making you squint your eyes when the daylight beams into your eyes, head resting on the kitchen island Looking up, you saw the clock ticking on the wall, 11:32 am.

You had stayed up till 5 am, waiting for him to come home, but seemingly, he never did. Reaching for your phone, you saw 4 missed calls from the one and only,

Jeon Jungkook, saved in your phone as “Koo <3″, Rows of messages too, all from the same contact.

Koo <3 [05:34 am]

baby pkck me up pleseee

im so wsated

Koo <3 [06.46am]

dont be mad at me jsut pick me up

i dont knw hewere the fuck i am

i love you

Koo <3 [07:31 am]

i got a rde home i’ll be home by 12

i need to talk to someone frsit

im sorry if i woke ypu dont be worried

You took a few moments to collect your thoughts, but there wasn’t much to collect. This whole thing, was a routine by now.

Standing up to make yourself a cup of coffee, you could literally not feel your own backside, you were so sore from the barstool you had been sitting on all night, and it made you groan in pain.

Two coffee cups right beside the kitchen sink, which you couldn’t bring yourself to clean up, because it was from the last time you had coffee together, which was 2 weeks ago.

The inside of the cup had a coffee crust at the top, and both your lip tint marks on the outside.

When you finish your cup of coffee while watching a bad telenovela, you go sit in your favorite chair and pull out a few books from the backpack hanging on the chair next to you, getting ready to get some studying done.

For a few seconds you imagine Jungkook hanging over your shoulder laughing at the way you write your A-s and R-s, or the way you always sign your homework at the bottom of the page.

And when you open them, there’s no one there. The only sound is from the refrigerator, making refrigerator noises.

You had met Jungkook 3 years ago, when you were at college orientation, senior year of high school. He also wanted to attend Yonsei, just like you.

And when he whispered to you about how bored he was, you couldn’t help but giggle, and then you got yelled at.

It was worth it though, because everyone was jealous of you afterwards,the Jeon Jungkook had talked to you.

Jungkook was an all-rounder as they called it; great physique, intelligent, charismatic and great at sports.

And god, he had a beautiful face, and such a filthy mouth, and it didn’t go long before you gave in to his seductive ways and slept with him. The morning after, he wasn’t in bed with you, and your heart sank.

Luckily, he was in the kitchen making you breakfast.

It was all bliss from there, showering you with love, gifts and kisses for two years, and you even ended up moving in together.

And now? You barely remember what he sounds like, smells like and is like.

A distant memory, just as distant as him.

Your train of thought was suddenly interrupted as you heard 3 knocks on your door. The exact same way he had always knocked when he had forgotten (or lost) his keys.

And even though you should have let him suffer a little, you rushed to the door to open it, and in front of you, was your biggest nightmare.

It was your love, crying his eyes out, bleeding from one of many cuts on his face, looking nearly dead. He collapsed into your arms, and you could only utter a few words, along the lines of:

“How could you do this to us?”

As he was laying curled up in a ball on the couch, face plastered up, ice bag on his knee, wrapped up in a blanket, you realized. this was your que to cry.

So, you did. You cried in silence, sitting across the room from him. You weren’t mad at him for coming home late, or getting in another fight, probably the 5th just these past months, you had gotten used to that by now.

There was a whole other reason that made you cry.

He smelled like Victorias Secret Bombshell, you recognized the scent because it used to be your favorite, however, now you’ve moved onto something less sweet, and more elegant, like Caroline Herrera.

He smelled like someone who wasn’t you, his girlfriend.

He smelled like another girl.

It didn’t hurt as much as you thought it would. Maybe because the Jungkook that had come home to you that morning wasn’t your Jungkook.

Your Jungkook was varsity jackets, star of the american football team (which your school was known for), selfless and humorous, and he would always take care of you.

Your Jungkook was not ungroomed hair, cigarettes and worsening grades. He was not cold and lifeless, and he would never make you cry.

Despite this, you were carding your fingers though his hair, thumb wiping away the blood on his lips while he was sound asleep as you slowly fell asleep next to him.

Maybe it was time to let him go.

Maybe.

You woke a few hours later from your phone vibrating.

Kim Namjoon (school) [07:01 pm]

Hey Y/N! Have you started working on the statistics assignment?

If you haven’t, would you be interested in meeting at the library tomorrow? You’re really smart and i’m kinda struggling ://

You [07:03 pm]

i finished it yesterday, but if you buy me coffee i’ll come help you hehe

Kim Namjoon (school) [07:04 pm]

You’re the best, I’ll bring you a machiatto!! :D

Maybe it would be nice for you to get out of the house, even though you hate the thought of it, and you would much rather just swim in your own sorrow.

But you did go out the next day, and you helped Namjoon get a decent grade, enough to pass with good margines, he thanked you by taking you out for ramen at a convenial store not too far away.

You thanked him for the ramen with a trip to the museum, and he thanked you for the museum trip with a picnic in the park at night, which led you to crying over Jungkook in his embrace, telling him every single little detail.

He made you realize it was time to let Jungkook go and make room for new people to enter your life.

You went home that night, and you found Jungkook passed out on the couch, and you could genuienly feel your chest tighten. Soft features which stood out under the moonlight glow, disheveled brown locks which hung down in his eyes.

He was gorgeous, until you saw the credit card on the table next to three bottles of soju and an empty beer can on the floor. And you knew what he had used the credit card for, though you didn’t want to say it out loud.

You cleaned everything up, and you threw the residue of the white powder right in the trash can, and you recycled his bottles and cans before finally, nudging him to wake up.

“Jungkook, wake up.” You spat coldly, or at least you attempted to.

He groaned, rubbing his eyes before opening his eyes, and s huge smile on his face. “Y/N, you’re home!” He reached to kiss you, but you backed away.

“Y/N?” Jungkook questioned, he didn’t quite understand what your intentions were.

“Don’t try anything Jungkook. This was your last chance, and you fucked it up, again.” The room turned ice cold. “I’m getting you help Jungkook, you need help. And then...”

He understood what kind of help you meant, and since he had now sobered up, he agreed, nodding. “And then...?”

“And then.” Your words were ludged in your throat. “And then I’m leaving you.”

His whole face dropped, smile turned into the frowniest frown you had ever seen, and it was all silent before his lower lip starts trembling, and his eyes start turning glassy.

“It’s alright. Sorry for burdening you.” Was all he could say before tears rushed down his cheeks, and he started shaking.

So you did what you always had done, and you wrapped your arms around him, head resting on your chest as he sobbed.

“Is there anyone else?” he cried out before another wave of sobs hit him.

This exact question made your stomach hurt, and your throat burn. You really had no idea.

Or you did, but you didn’t want to.

You loved Jungkook so much, but you couldn’t be with him in this state. So you did what every rational person would do in this situation.

“Yeah.”

You lied.

“Oh ok. I don’t have the right to be mad do I?”

You shake your head no.

“I love you Y/N. I’m sorry I’m so messed up.”

“It’s ok.” was all he said before he fell asleep in your arms again.

That night you slither your way out of his embrace and you pack your suitcase in the dark, bringing all your essentials, trying to be as quiet as possible so you didn’t wake Jungkook.

Packing enough for two weeks or so, you make the bed and leave your t-shirt “accidentally” in the bathroom, and you make sure all his clothes are folded, and then you sort his pencil case, throwing out old pens and worn out erasers.

You leave a grocery list on the counter, and you tuck him in good under the blankets after you took his jeans and socks off so he could sleep comfortably.

You placed his vitamins and medicine by the refrigerator so he’ll see it when he goes to grab something to eat.

Puffed up pillows, a pair of sweatpants, t-shirt and underwear is now placed neatly on his bed. Then you walk into the kitchen again, and you see Jungkook still sound asleep, sniffling a little still.

There’s one last thing, and it makes you cry. It makes you sob so loud you cover your mouth and muffle the sound you make. Sinking to the floor, your whole body is in contact with the cold tiles.

Only a year ago you could never imagine yourself even shedding a single tear over something as small as this, but here you were, on the edge of a panic attack.

Two worn out, matching couple mugs still placed by the counter. one if the first things you two had bought together, as well as the necklace hanging around your neck.

Finally, you stopped crying and started cleaning the mugs, lip trembling as you dried them and placed them in the back of the cabinet.

You unhooked your necklace and laid it down on the counter, and the biggest lump formed in your throat.

Actually, there’s a little detail you forget.

You kiss Jungkook on the forehead and leave a note on the coffee table.

“Dear Jungkook,

If you want to make this up to me (this does not mean a new chance!!) you call the number at the bottom of the page. No matter what happens, I’ll always have room for you in my heart. You even have your own little VIP lobby in there. And - if it’s urgent, call. I still care for you, and I always have. You were the best boyfriend I’ve had, but good things always come to and end, don’t they? Anyways, I’m tired so this letter fucking sucks, but deep down you know how much I love you. Remember to get groceries, shower, get fresh air and study. If I forgot something you can keep it, as long as you call the number and tell them you’re my friend. They’ll help you love. Try and get a part time job too, your student loan and your dad’s money won’t last forever. Good luck Koo. Hwaiting!!

-L/N Y/N <33″

You cringe when you think of the letter’s contents, before you roll out your suitcase out of the front door, whispering a faint “Goodnight Love.” as you close and lock the door behind you.

Standing by the elevator, you cry again. This time, louder, but you still reach for your phone and type out a text to the newly edited contact in your phone.

You [02:13 am]

coming outside now, im a crying mess and im super cold, is your car heated?

sorry for making you wait btw :((

Joonie <3 [02:13 am]

dont worry about the crying part, i’ll hold you. and yeah car is heated, so waiting here wasnt all that bad. you ready for this?

You [02:14 am]

i have no idea but i cant stay here any longer and i trust you sooo

lets start our new chapter. eh?

4 months later...

He had been good to you, great even.

You had been on expensive dates, picnics, had heart to heart conversations, and he’d been so understanding.

Today, it was your 2 month anniversary, and he had asked you on a magnificent date, which he had planned every second of.

At the end of the day, you told him how you don’t love him. He said it was alright. Namjoon loved you, so much, yet he understood you needed time.

You went to sleep that day, warm in Namjoon’s embrace, wondering how Jungkook was doing.

You felt bad, but you missed Jungkook.

You were both with someone new now, and you knew he was in good hands with someone stable enough to care for him.

Before your eyes closed shut, you shed a few quiet tears and hoped that you’d fall in love with Namjoon soon, and deep down you knew you would.

#jungkook x reader #jungkook angst #namjoon smut #jungkook ff #bts ff #bts imagines #bts scenarios #namjoon ff #bangtan smut #jungkook #jeon jeongguk #jeongguk ff

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queernuck · 3 years

Text

The Cleveland Browns made the playoffs. The Islanders made the Eastern Conference Finals.

And that’s enough for me.

So long, so long I have been living like this, pretending that I want to keep on living, that life feels worthwhile, that I don’t want to kill myself. Suicide is for cowards but ive been chickening out for a whole decade, to the point where getting on the subway was itself something that involved convincing myself not to jump in front of it. I remember once while working in the city, I watched and waited as two trains came in and left, trying to get the energy to jump in front of them. I had decided, if I couldn’t do it by the time a second train came and went, I would go to work and save it for another day. I came very close, my legs tense like a linebacker on 4th & Goal, but I didn’t do it. Maybe it would be better if I had, I would have saved not only myself but a lot of other people a lot of pain and suffering. I’ve been dealing with feeling suicidal for a decade, an entire ten years, and made it through. And for what? I lost a retail job at minimum wage, I’ve seen the Giants go from two-time Super Bowl kingslayers to a team that relied on the Eagles for a playoff berth, I got to see Evangelion only for the final Rebuild film to be infinitely delayed, I have a useless non-degree that allows me to eloquently describe how the Democrats and Republicans alike are driving this stolen land to Fascism while sycophants tell me Vote Blue No Matter Who. I’m so tired, I’m not even the person people think me to be, since if I were, I wouldn’t be in this mess.

My paychecks, as hard-earned as they were, never seemed to be mine in any real sense, and it made me so frustrated that something in me broke at the beginning of this year. I made some mistakes, some very stupid ones, and got myself fired. I took money from and distorted the inventory of my store to get what amounted to pocket money, less than two paychecks. I was tempted because I feel so powerless, so much like nothing I could ever say or do matters, and so I decided to lash out against a place that mattered to me, against people I cared about deeply. Chain stores, corporations, all of those things are not really high on my list of things to care about. Barnes & Noble pushed out local booksellers years ago, an irony not lost on me whenever our own competition with Amazon was made apparent. We were reaping what we had sown. But what always interested on top of this irony was how symbolic these things could be to people, how much we figured into so may memories for so many. The Manga Aisle at Barnes & Noble is a staple of 2006 scene culture, a way that kids without the pocket money to afford the newest volume of Bleach it Naruto could keep up before scams became widely available. How the store was a place where people studying for standardized tests could use the test prep guides to try and get ready for the eugenic ritual of the standardized test. And just how much a chain bookstore became a substitute, socially, for the now-absent local bookstore. We bear the guilt for that, but at the same time we were still selling books, giving people a place to get coffee and sit and read and talk, in ways that libraries may not be able to. We certainly can never replace a library, given just what a library does for people. But we did do a lot of good all the same. Before it closed, some of my fondest memories came when I was the exact sort of annoying teenage customer I grew to hate, hanging out at the Columbus Circle Borders. Working at Barnes & Noble was tiring, dehumanizing, difficult, made me feel like I would never measure up to the authors we sold, the people books were written about, that I was a failure. And I am, as my death shows. But it also made me a part of something I was proud of. And that Above & Beyond pin I earned is in my jacket still, a reminder of something.

That something was shown in so many of the coworkers I had, who were incredible in so many ways. I feel awful for what I did, I genuinely do, because of how it may have hurt people who thought so kindly of me, people who deserve so much good. I wish I had the ability to address each of them individually but this decision was hastily made, and i have a feeling it will show in the things I miss in this note. Audra, your help in finding me a way to use the company policies to my advantage as a worker was something that gave me faith even after having seen the despicable firings and cuts the company went through. Linda, I can’t quite square the circle here given my actions, but I want to say your disappointment broke my heart and that while I will not be the one who shows it, your reassurance that everyone makes mistakes was welcome.

To my (former) fellow booksellers at Store 2216, all of my love and my sincerest apologies. You all have so much good in you, your willingness to listen to my ADHD-fueled rants and to discuss so many things with an incredible frankness was always impressive, in addition to part of what I loved about all of you. I want you all to be happy, and the kinship I felt with you was a vital part of what kept me going. It was tough, as you all know. But at times, it almost felt worth it.

The same is true of my CTY friends: it was a weird, magical place that frankly, a lot of us idealized for far too long and which sk many of us eventually outgrew without being able to let go of. And that was tough, that was something we had a great deal of difficulty understanding, that what helped us once was not always going to be helping us, was not always what we needed. But in eventually finding that, we found solace, we realized how life as a whole functions and just what it is that we can take from places like it.

To my other family, my Cleo family, I know I haven’t been terribly active lately, but I can never, ever thank you enough for the belonging you gave me. I have never felt anywhere as welcoming as Cleo. As warm as Cleo (even as we struggled to pay for the oil bill) was. As kind and understanding. As tolerant. As questioning and inquisitive into what that tolerance meant to us. I am thankful, eternally, for what you all did for me. The incredible experiences I had as a Cleo make me proud of what the organization can represent, and one of my dying wishes is that the organization continues to reach out to marginalized communities on Trinity’s campus. There is much work to be done in making sure abusers cannot hide in our family, but I trust you all to do that work. Tucker Carlson is a Trinity grad and we must embody the opposite of what he stands for, no matter how difficult it may be. I could go on about how this means opposing liberals and Liberalism/Neo—Liberalism due to the truth of tolerance resulting in a Popper-esque Paradox of Tolerance that implies Popper is a worthwhile philosopher, but that’s another issue.

To my friends on that Blue Hellsite, tumblr, you made a continual presence worth it, even with all of the bullshit this place brings. It’s the reason I read so much Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Guattari, read Žižek against himself, and so on and so on, and the value of that to me can never be overstated. I learned so much from the ways in which I learned to analyze the world, and that in turn became a huge inspiration for why I should try to do what I could to make the world closer to a place of revolution, one where we could perhaps eke out a living for one another. I loved how much I could be an unrepentant nerd and still love hockey on there, and while the

NHL fans on tumblr are incredibly annoying,

I can deal with that compared to the racism of most hockey fans.

Mom, Dad? I just couldn’t live with you any longer. I’m so sorry.

Grandma, I love you.

And the things I leave behind? Donate what can be donated. Hats, please auction, or at least offer to other HatHeads at a reasonable price. I had some nice ones. As for assorted albums, clothing, and other things, sell them and donate to a Harm Reduction organization, or organizations that advocate for PWUD in a radical fashion. WE DESERVE AUTONOMY!

I am a victim of the War on Drugs. Sobriety was always hellish to me, and I could never take it. I want people to be able to live how they want, to see sobriety and being on drugs as equally valuable states, to see the two as no different from one another.

Abolish all gun laws

End the War on Terror

Decriminalize and legalize all drugs, sobriety is what killed me.

I love all of you.

LET’S GO ISLANDERS!

396 notes · View notes

theamberwriter · 3 years

Text

Always Be My Hero [Pro! Eijiro Kirishima]

A/N: I read THIS by @dreamy-writings and was inspired to write this, lol

Warning: Angst, cursing

Pair: Pro Hero! Eijiro Kirishima x gn! Reader

Word Count: 1.6k+

*~*~*~

"Oi, you need to talk to shitty hair," Katsuki snapped, throwing a bunch of flowers on your bed.

Mina sat on the edge of the mattress, took your shoulders in her hands, and gently shook you. "Please, [Name], Eijiro has gone off the deep end."

"I'm sure just Ei is just a little stressed," you tried to sound soothing. "He's been working a lot -"

"We wouldn't be here if we didn't think it was serious," Denki urged.

"He's going to hurt himself," Katsuki growled. "Don't need both you idiots out of commission."

"We know, after everything, we shouldn't be bothering your healing time. But…. Eijiro needs you." Mina hung her head in defeat.

Just what was going on? When your fiance was home, he was as cheery and bright as you'd always known him. Was he different at work? With his friends?

"Shitty Hair thinks this -" Katsuki gestured to your broken arm and leg, the bandages around your head, your sprained ankle and broken ribs, the numerous bumps and bruises, the multiple hairline fractures and surgery incisions, and the antibiotic drip the hospital sent you home with. "Is some how all his fucking fault. That damn idiot won't listen to us! He's been working the hell out of himself. Spends hours beating himself up."

You felt like you cracked in half. Like a bit of you shattered. Not the ones from being thrown into buildings and trampled on by a giant villain. But deep down in an untouchable place. You felt like you broke apart.

Knowing you caused your beloved so much anxiety and stress had boiled up in him. Maybe you should've seen it. But he was just so happy. Glued to your side, helping you bathe, helping you get to the bathroom, changing the bandages on your head - assuring that he still thought you extremely attractive, even though you were going to have a hell of a scar going from the middle of your hairline down under your left ear. He was always smiling and joking when he was with you.

"The wheelchair they gave me is in the closet," you muttered, eyes on where your hands were balled around the blankets. You had to be strong. Normally, Eijiro was your rock. Now the tables had turned.

Mina pulled out the wheelchair while Denki and Katsuki helped get you out of bed. Luckily you'd asked Eijiro to help you into sweatpants and a decent t-shirt before he left for work. You asked for one of your shoes to put on your uncasted foot (which was wrapped in an ace bandage instead). Then unhooked the IV and pinched the line. The bag was nearly done anyway.

"I'm ready when you all are," you muttered. A silent tremor passed through the room. Then you all were out the door.

In his agency training facility, Eijiro was giving all he had to a punching bag. Sweat poured from the hardened ridges in his skin. He felt the solid bag meet his fists, but none of it was satisfying. None of the hits eased the guilt.

No amount of punching had shaken away the image plaguing his mind. You lying in bed, barely seeming to hold on. The doctors said you had internal bleeding, a concussion, then listed off all the broken parts. A bit of himself broke with each word.

Eijiro had bawled hysterically when the doctors left and he was alone with your unconscious body. He gripped your hand, begging to anyone who would hear him. Asking them to let you pull through. That, in exchange, he'd get stronger. No matter the cost.

Eijiro was determined to keep your spirits up. To not let you know how much he'd been suffering. You couldn't imagine the wells that wanted to overflow the first time your eyes opened. The first kiss you gave him after waking up. He felt like bursting, you'd been returned to him.

In exchange, he'd train himself raw. He'd push himself past his limit. It didn't matter what Katsuki, or Tamaki, or even Fat Gum had to say. Eijiro was going to protect you next time. For now he'd train. Then go back to you at the end of the day with a smile, no matter how much he hurt or how tired he was. Coming home to you, hooked to an IV and barely able to move around the house - that image drove him.

Eijiro had been so excited to have you home. But every time he looked too long at your casted arm, or uncovered the puckered gouge on your head. Everything reminded him he hadn't been there to help. To save you. Deku had been, he lifted that gargantuan off you like a pillow. Eijiro didn't think he'd ever have been able to do that. So he was going to train until he could.

You hadn't complained once since you'd been home. Only grateful when you'd gone out a few days after to greet your fans. There were so many who thanked you for saving them. Each felt like a bit of a hit to him. You'd saved all those people and he didn't even manage to save you. Was he truly a hero if he couldn't protect those he cared about?

It didn't matter to him that he was a five hour plane ride away when it all happened. Eijiro had gone to do some publicity stuff with other heroes. He had to hear it from an insensitive reporter who asked how he felt knowing his fiance was in the hospital. But he hadn't. He didn't know. His fellow heroes outraged at the question and Eijiro was on a plane back to you within the hour.

He swore he'd be there next time. That he'd never let anything like this happen again. Eijiro had gone in the plane bathroom and had a good deep cry a few times. When he saw the videos, read the articles, saw all the people asking Where was Red Riot? He hadn't been there. He'd let down the one person he never wanted to. It broke his heart into a million bits. He didn't think he'd ever be able to repair himself.

Eijiro cried as he punched. No one would be able to tell through the sweat. But each and every punch got harder, and so too did his tears.

Pitying looks were passed your way as Katsuki pushed you through Eijiro's agency. You stopped in briefly to talk to Fat Gum. He looked so put out and desperate. He said he'd tried everything. But everyday, Eijiro had been in the facility's gym. Working himself until he bled or passed out.

Katsuki pushed you, Mina and Denki in tow, down the halls to the gym. You heard the blunt hits long before you saw the doors. Each one grating into your mind. You were never going to forget the hot guilt that bit at you with each thud.

Katsuki pushed you to the gym door way. It was empty, except where your beloved stood hardened to the max, shirtless. You saw a bit of blood dripping from his back. The punching bag was losing sand and stuffing. A defeated one laid in a lump on the floor already. You watched a long minute. Then you realized each grunt turned more into a cry or a wail.

You turned to Denki, and held out your hand. He gave you the crunch he'd been carrying. Luckily the arm and the leg you'd broken were on the opposite sides of your body. You hauled yourself up, your friends helped steady you. Then you limped your way across the gym. Finally, you came into view in the mirror in front of him.

A few spots on Eijiro's face were bleeding. His eyes were blown out. His features scrunched up in….there wasn't a word strong enough to explain the pain. The anguish. The despair. His eyes met yours and, all at once, he broke down.

Eijiro collapsed to his knees. His quirk finally releasing him. Sobs still wracked his shoulders, they shook violently. But his sobs were silent now. Though you didn't miss the tears that dripped onto the floor.

"Eiji," you cooed and lowered yourself to the floor.

He shook his head. "You….sh-should be-e….hom-m-me. He-healing."

"You need me more." You put a hand on his shoulder. Eijiro latched on to you. You didn't care about the blood, sweat, or tears, or how much sitting that way hurt. You just needed to get him to breathe now.

"I -" he hacked. "I'm not strong enough. I'm not….I'm not manly enough. Even now. What if you get hurt again - or worse? Because I couldn't….I can't…."

You shook your head and kissed his damp hair. "Eijiro - honey, listen to me, it wasn't your fault. Really. This was me being overconfident. It was my own fault. You're an amazing hero. Thousands of people look up to you. You have to stop beating yourself up. You're being the best hero you can be. And I love you for every bit of who you are. No matter what happens to me, you'll always be my number one hero."

Eijiro sobbed harder, gripping you closer. You didn't complain at the protesting throbs of pain screaming all over your body. You sat a while longer. When he was finally feeling better, he carried you back to your chair. Then he took a quick rinse in the shower before pushing you home. Your friends had prepared everything for a movie night when you got back; movies, drinks, takeout.

You could see the relief in their faces.

You still caught him giving you long, guilty glances. You would only lean over and kiss the look away. But you could never know the weight of what you said. He wanted to eat, sleep, live, and breathe by that creed.

You'll always be my hero.

#bnha x reader #mha x reader #bnha #mha #bnha imagines #mha imagines #bnha headcanons #bnha fanfiction #mha fanfiction #mha kirishima #kirishima #bnha kirishima #kirishima eijirou #bnha eijiro x reader #bnha angst #mha angst #angst to fluff #kirishima angst #theamberwriter

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redstainedsocks · 3 years

Text

Wrong

I've had this half-written in my docs for a long while, under the heading "doorstep collapse" so I think it was for a prompt or whump event but I don't remember which one...

Normal story this time, not the AU!

Content: sick fic, fainting, delirious whumpee, hospital setting, use of sedatives, reference to noncon drug use, mentioned death threat and manner of death, overwhelmed caretaker

[Masterlist]

One or two of the team had taken to sleeping at the office at a time so that Zach was never there alone. Archer wanted to stay every night, always eager to be nearby in case something happened, but he’d been convinced to go home at least one out of every three nights.

He’d spent last night at home, sleeping guiltily in his own soft bed, miles and miles from where his best friend was holed up in a sparse, grey room that was as far from homely as Archer could imagine. Though he knew for Zach it was probably the most comfort he’d had in years, which made Archer feel even worse.

He’d slept well at home, exhausted from late nights and stress, but he would much rather have been here. The pull out couch in the break room was lumpy and not long enough for his tall frame but he still preferred it these days. Zach was just down the hall and it soothed a tightness in Archer’s chest to be close by. To know he could walk down the corridor and lay eyes on the person he thought he’d lost.

He was still untangling his own mix of grief and disbelief, but he knew it was easier to bear the guilt of having left Zach with his kidnappers if he was at least around to make sure it didn’t happen again; if he could be there to help Zach feel safe now.

It was easier not to have to examine his emotions and thoughts at all, if he was so exhausted that he couldn’t think straight.

Zach had gone to bed a couple of hours ago and he had sat up flicking through paperwork, trying to keep busy even as his eyes itched with tiredness. His ‘bed’ was made up ready for the night but he was sprawled on top of it, putting off the moment of sleep until he could close his eyes and be instantly drawn under.

He was surprised to hear a soft knock at the door, tentative, the sound of someone off balance slumping on the other side. Maybe Zach couldn’t sleep either? Maybe he’d finally had a nightmare and come for company—something none of them had seen him do yet.

“It’s open,” he said, half sitting up.

The door swung inward and Zach teetered on the threshold. His eyes roved across the room, landing on Archer but darting away again.

“Zach?” Archer was up and off the bed in an instant, but paused a meter or so away, as Zach looked flighty and liable to flinch at any contact.

“Ar-cher.”

“Yeah?”

“I think,” Zach spoke and it was slurred and he clung to the doorframe. “I think something is wrong.”

Archer barely had time to react before Zach’s eyes rolled backward and his body crumpled underneath him. Archer caught him just before his head hit the floor.

Time was standing still and moving too fast all at once. The ambulance had taken what felt like hours to arrive, while Archer sat there cradling Zach—delirious, feverish, burning up and shaking like a leaf.

The private hospital they were in now was clean, clinical, and calm. Quiet. Discrete. It was a good place to keep Zach hidden and secure, but being there still set his teeth on edge. He paced the corridor-like waiting room back and forth, glad that no one told him to stop. The team had all been called; Sasha had been the one who turned up and stayed. She was a quiet, steady presence. And though he could tell from the line of her tense muscles that she was as worried as he was, she let him be the one to fall apart while she held it together.

Zach had a fever, something was infected. The doctors just couldn’t find where or what. They hadn’t been allowed to see him. Yet. Archer hoped that would change soon.

He rubbed his face tiredly. “I should get more coffee.”

“I think coffee is the last thing you need,” Sasha replied, calmly. “Come sit down.”

He glanced at her and shook his head. He needed to be moving, doing. “If he—” Archer couldn’t even bring himself to say it. “After everything, if this is too much for his body to handle…”

“Nothing is going to happen, the doctors are gonna fix it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Don’t I?” She levelled him with a look that could surely make a mountain bow down and grovel.

“How didn’t we notice something was wrong?”

“He doesn’t let us near him, not really.”

Finally, he slumped into a seat beside her. “I should’ve watched out for him more carefully, checked he was okay. I should’ve… I owe him. We just… we can’t let him down again, we have to do better.”

“Archer, we’re doing everything we can,” she said gently.

“It’s not enough!” He snapped. “We abandoned him! We just left him there and now we can’t even take care of him? Can’t even tell what he needs?”

“Montgomery Archer, sit. Back. Down,” she hissed.

He hadn’t even realised he was standing. He looked down at her, the unfairness still burning through him, how could she not care? Until he saw her face, eyes glistening, and realised the strength of will it was taking for her to hold it together.

“This is a goddamn hospital and this is not the time,” she said, squeezing her hands between her knees. “We thought he was dead, and there’s shit all we can do about it now. You can have a breakdown about it later, but not now, not like this.”

He took a seat, sheepishly. “Sorry. I… seeing him collapse like that has me all churned up.”

“Don’t apologise, you big oaf. Just breathe, and know they’re doing everything they can, and give yourself some damn slack while you’re at it.” She sniffed and turned away.

He scooted down in his chair and leaned against her shoulder, glad she didn't shrug him off, and relieved not to be alone.

They were finally allowed in the room once Zach was stabilised. Allowed in because, in the doctor’s words… Zach was resistant. Archer hadn’t really understood the implications of that, his mind taken up with thoughts of he’s fine, he’s alive, they’ve got it under control.

But now… he could see what they meant. Zach was fighting the sedative, semi-conscious and struggling, suffering. He couldn’t really move, but his eyes were open and he was frightened, terrified, but so obviously not-really-here, either. Whatever had happened these past two years Zach had built up some tolerance to the drugs they’d given him and it was heart-breaking; seeing him foggy but alert, unsure of where he was and unable—but so desperate—for something he couldn't name or do.

“See if you can get him to remain calm, he needs to rest,” the doctor said, arms crossed in concern as his eyes roved over Zach’s prone form. “We can’t try him on anything else until this one is out of his system but even then… He’s been asking for someone, we assumed, well, it might be you?”

Archer nodded, cleared his throat. ‘Right, yeah. He knows me, I can—I’ll do what I can. Anything I should be careful of?”

“Just mind the IV line, and call us in if he gets more agitated or anything changes.”

“Okay, I’ve got this. Thank you, Doctor.”

He did not have this. Not even a little bit. He felt completely out of his depth. He loved Zach like a brother, had loved him and mourned him, and now… felt like he barely knew him. What qualified him to take care of Zach like this? He wrung his hands and stepped closer as Sasha sidled around to the other side of the bed. Zach’s eyes tried to track her, and lost her somewhere along the way. His breathing sped up again, bloodshot eyes wide and aimlessly roving as his fingers twitched on the bed sheets.

“Please, please,” Zach murmured. Whispered, almost. It was slurred but unmistakable.

Sasha gave Archer a look, and nodded to the bed. He shook his head. She raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms and they stared each other down.

I can’t do this. He hoped she understood what his look implied.

Her answering look seemed to say you’re not even trying.

He threw his hands up in defeat and stepped closer. Zach’s eyes landed on Archer’s face and he twitched feebly, shivering in his sparse hospital bed.

“‘M good, I’ll be good, please.”

Archer leaned against the bed, trying to look reassuring, confident. “Yeah, you’re doing really well, okay? We’ve got you, nothing to worry about.”

Zach’s hand jerked and his mouth opened and closed before he whined. “Hurts.”

“I know, buddy, I know.” He looked at Sasha who nodded, so he took Zach’s hand and lightly squeezed. “It’s alright.”

“Please, you promised. Promised.”

That took Archer by surprise and he sucked in a breath, biting his tongue.” I know, I-I said nothing else bad would happen to you, I didn’t know this would happen…”

There was a frustrated look on Zach’s face and his eyes filled with tears, his head flopped a little, side to side. “You promised.”

Archer did the only thing he could think of, he squeezed Zach’s hand tighter and dragged the chair by the bed closer so he could sit and be a calming presence. He wouldn’t abandon Zach, not again, no matter how much Zach yelled and cried at him, broken-hearted though it made him to know he’d let Zach down another time.

“I’ll do whatever--ever you want. Sir, please,” Zach’s voice cracked and he mumbled into incoherence, all in a pleading, painfully placating tone.

Archer’s eyes shot up and he met Sasha’s across the bed, looking as concerned as he did as realisation dawned on them both. Zach wasn’t here.

“Where do you think you are, Zach?” she asked quietly.

Zach--who had flinched at sound of his own name--whimpered. “Can’t--don’t know.”

“You’re safe, we’re here, me and Sasha, and the team has our back. You’re in hospital,” Archer said.

Zach looked at him, clearly, finally. “Promise? Keep your word, like you promised?”

“What did I promise you?” It was a calculated risk to play into whatever Zach thought he was seeing, but he needed to know, didn’t he?

“You said… said you wouldn’t lemme die like this. Not like this. A bullet, you promised, not--not sick, not slowly.”

Archer couldn’t breathe, he blinked furiously to try to keep the tears at bay. “I promise, no-one is dying, not here. Not like this.”

Zach breathed out and tears ran down his cheeks as he closed his eyes and rested his head heavily on the pillows. “Promise. And I’ll be good.”

It seemed to be enough to make Zach settle, and he fell into a fitful doze. Sasha brushed hair back from his forehead and checked the lines in the IV on his right hand. Archer brought Zach’s left hand to his face and kissed the back of his wrist, rubbed his thumb in a circle and then laid it down on the sheets and sat back to bury his face in his own hands.

He jumped when Sasha touched his shoulder and scrubbed hastily at his eyes. “We don’t leave him, one of us stays with him until he’s himself again,” he said, voice thick. “We can’t let him get lost in his own head.”

“I’ll get us something to eat,” she said. “We’ll see him through this.” She left quietly, slipping out the door with graceful ease so they kept their privacy.

He nodded. They would. But really… what could they do in the face of all this?

“What the hell did they do to you?” he whispered to the quiet room.

Zach was too far gone to answer.

@haro-whumps @whumpthisway @hurting-fictional-people @lonesome--hunter @crowned-avery @extrabitterbrain @firewheeesky @outofangband

#sick fic #fever #delirious whumpee #hospital #drug use #referenced noncon drugging #death mention #death threat #whumpee and caretaker #fainting #sedated whumpee #sick whumpee #fevered whumpee #team whump #Zach and Archer #spy whump #referenced death threat

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aboardthehavocmarauder · 3 years

Text

Beautiful Mischief [Pt. 7]

Bad Batch x Reader • Angst/Fluff/NSFW (yknow the whole deal) • Mechanic [hidden Jedi] ! Reader • Female reader

Y/N sat alone in a clear field holding her knees close to her chest as she turns to see Obi Wan standing at a distance.

“Will I find something disappointing?”

“Painful”

•

“She can wake up at her own pace. She’ll be safe here. She said it herself. You can still take on hunts if you need to” Reylen reassures adjusting the lines for her IV and monitors so they wouldn’t be in the way. “Y/N always bounces back”

Y/N lays lifeless and pale as her chest slowly rises and falls. Hunter frowns running his index against her cold skin seeing the shift, flooding him with relief.

“We need the credits”

“You’re serious? Leaving her here”

“I trust her” Hunter turns to Reylen before back to his brothers. “And we should trust Y/N. She did lay her life down for us and we did the same. Her payment can be her recovery as we continue for ours.”

“Do you need—-“

“Don’t try to sit out Echo. We need all of us together, and watch each other’s backs so we can return safely” Hunter states stepping out of the room.

——

“You’re trusting me with this?”

“I need one to protect myself. And you have the skills to wield it. Protect yourself and your brothers while I’m out of commission”

“Y/N—“

“I’ll bounce back Hunt. Have faith in the force”

——

Six months later

Reylen stood in the empty field staring at Y/N laying in the grass from afar.

“NER VOD” my sister.

Y/N quickly shot up when the training droids did blocking most shots with the beskar arm bands running toward the forest and using the trees as her running ground getting higher and higher blocking every shot. Before eventually shooting her body out into the open feeling the wind course around her as she flips back feeling the wind in her hair reaching out feeling her lightsaber reach her. Gripping tightly, igniting it fast, she sliced into the tree sliding down before shooting through and cutting three of the training droids using the falling pieces as stepping stones in the air.

“Ke'pare!”

Wait!

As Reylen sprints through meeting Y/N as she stuck the landing quickly but didn’t feel the shot from the still standing training droid. She quickly took out a rag from her utility belt and applied it to Y/N’s upper arm.

“Sorry”

“No. Shit. You don’t have to apologize. I’m surprised you didn’t feel that” Reylen frowns tying it quickly and taking Y/N’s face into her hands. “What’s on your mind, vod?”

“I...”

“Tion'ad hukaat'kama?” Who’s watching your back? Reylen frowns as Y/N removed her hands off her face taking a hold of them in hers. “Y/N?”

“...I’m forgotten. Just like the council. I’ve been erased” Y/N pulls away taking her saber attaching it to her side before stepping into the bunker and seeing what she can do.

Cuy’val Dar

Those who no longer exist

When the night falls on the forest moon of Endor, Y/N held her saber to her chest taking in the night igniting it. She flows with the wind taking in each heated slash in the air to memory feeling a pain build in her chest. As she turns off the glowing gold, another light appears in the distance causing her to stand alert.

“Cyar’ika”

Y/N frowns relaxing when she locked eyes with an injured Hunter. She dropped her guard and quickly ran over taking him into her arms finding all of them hurt behind him.

They were hunted down. Their ship crashed on the moon planet but for obvious reasons, took them a while to find them.

“None of them have major injuries. They should be fine” Reylen reassures as Y/N ran her hand through Hunter’s hair while they were all too tired to keep awake. “They will be fine”

“Six months”

“What?”

“They were without me for six months”

“Y/N. This most likely would’ve still happened and you would’ve gotten hurt as well”

“Yes. But the damage would’ve been minimal”

“Y/N—-“

“You try falling for theses five and watching them kill themselves individuality because of your own actions. If Obi Wan finds nothing, they would’ve left for nothing”

“Leaving the republic was their decision. You didn’t influence it”

“But I did” Y/N frowns removing her hand from him. “I only do bring pain now don’t I?”

“No” Reylen frowns. “You do not. Why would you say that? Your past was unpredictable. You went through a lot. They went through a lot. Both individuality and then together. That’s how love works. As sick as it is to suffer. Together makes everything hurt much less”

“But I wasn’t there for any of them” Y/N frowns feeling the pain in her head return making her leave the medical suite as Reylen sighs sitting beside Tech’s bed and taking his datapad for a second.

Entry 235

I didn’t want to leave her. None of us did. We were following Hunter’s orders...as he was following hers. I’m used to waking up around 0300 hours to record her nightmares. She told me her droid did it for her and she’d wake up on her own, but when I suggested that I’d do it. She’d let me sleep with her afterward instead of staying up for the rest of the night. It helped her. And it helped me. Now I’m simply awake that early and can’t find a reason to go back to sleep.

Entry 268

Crosshair almost hit a child. Again. Y/N would be so infuriated if she saw that happen. But not to excuse his behavior, the kid deserved it. Being told information about us that only tears one of us down without their knowledge, we all would’ve done something about it. Just. Not to a child.

Entry 301

Planning route to come back is difficult when the Havoc had undergone a lot of damage. Really could use our Y/N. I. Mechanic. I meant mechanic. Ugh.

Reylen sets his datapad back down before getting up to go after Y/N.

But once reaching the surface, Y/N had forced the Havoc Marauder over to the base. Reylen immediately opened the hatch to enter the underground hanger to help her.

“So you’re going to work on all of this?”

“I have your team of droids. They’ll help me. But yes”

“I read Tech’s data entries. They would’ve been here sooner if the Marauder wasn’t badly damaged”

Y/N gripped onto her shirt taking a deep breath before removing their cloak and getting to work.

Sometimes

Old habits never die

Echo was first to wake out of the five as he felt more exhausted even after the hit they took. He sat up on the bed seeing his brothers comfortably in their own and Reylen propped up at her desk asleep. He got up slowly keeping in mind of his injuries as he took his blanket and covered Reylen on his way out in search of Y/N.

Y/N continued to work on the Marauder before being pulled out from under thinking it was a droid.

“You fucking tin can I’m in the middle—“ She stopped talking when she locked eyes with Echo who had his anxiety written all over him. “Oh Echo...”

“Cyar’ika...” He frowns as Y/N urgently took him into her embrace feeling him grip onto her back slotting himself in her grasp. “I thought we...we weren’t going to make it in time”

“It’s okay Echo, you’re here now. I’m here”

“You are...fuck” He held onto her not letting ago any time soon...

Not like she wanted to

A few days went by and the batch was back on their feet and doing their recovery in Reylen’s home away from home. As long as Y/N stays around a little while longer, the batch is just as much her family as Y/N.

“OI. Fuck off”

“I need to check your injuries and make sure everything is clean. Please be patient or I’ll tase you” Reylen threats Cross as Y/N came in to get herself a bandage when she saw him not cooperating.

“Rey, I’ve got this one”

“Fucking—-Thank god” Reylen got up grabbing her datapad to go get orders shipped out and received.

Y/N pushes the stool over to Crosshair taking a seat.

“Doll face—“

“She has more medical training than I do. Can’t you listen to her every now and then?”

“Hey I don’t trust many people”

“Hmm. If you can trust me, you can trust her. She doesn’t have as big of a record than I do”

“Maybe that’s why I trust you, doll face” Crosshair gently caresses Y/N’s face watching her ease into such.

“Cross. If it gets infected, I will kill you” Y/N smiles making him laugh before sighing.

“Fine. I’ll let her look”

“No she has other plans. She is a busy woman. I’ll take care of it” Y/N laughs pulling away and getting the bandages including a stim pack.

Crosshair got up to follow her and before she could even react, he took her face into his hands and pressed his lips against hers. Y/N froze for a second, setting the stim down on the table before them grabbing at his blacks and pulling him close.

He’s wanted this for a while now

I knew she felt the same way

Taglist:

@xxeiraxx @fennign @meli-that-girl @Spp2011

#the bad batch #bad batch #the bad batch x reader #bad batch x reader #crosshair bad batch #wrecker bad batch #echo bad batch #hunter bad batch #tech bad batch #aboardthehavocmarauder

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hargrove-mayfields · 3 years

Text

Just A Dream Away

Chapter 1/13 read here on ao3!

my piece for @harringrovebigbang!

Art and moodboard from my amazing team, @monochromegee and @shewritesdirty respectively, to come soon!

~~~~

Six months. Six months and twelve days.

That’s how long Billy has been in the hospital. In a coma. His health rapidly deteriorating.

After one month it was required he be put on a ventilator. Two and his wounds started getting infected. By month three, the hospital asked that a representative be chosen for him, just in case he didn’t pull through.

Neil Hargrove refused. Barked into the receiver something along the lines of, “What do I care if the boy wanted to go and get himself killed?” It was entirely defensive, his voice cracking as he finished his sentence, but the hospital still never contacted him again, not for updates or bills or anything. His wife was far too busy taking care of one grieving child and a lazy husband already to worry about an additional burden.

All of Billy’s extended family was still in California, had written him off years before they’d even left home for Indiana anyways. The moment his mother walked out the door, nobody else wanted him either, so they were off the table too.

The town of Hawkins had been turned inside out by the deaths of more than thirty community members, some of which were still being reported as missing so many months later. Nobody had the time, or in many cases the heart, to take care of the lone survivor.

That left only one person. The one who’d been taking care of him even before he’d fallen into a coma. The one who’d understood him better than anyone else, who’d given him a chance, who’d loved him more than anything.

Steve gets a call from the hospital, the way he is usually woken up these days. Every other morning, as soon as visitation opens, a nurse calls him for a quick update. The duties of a representative for someone unconscious, for his Billy in a coma.

He’s beyond exhausted, dragging himself to and from Hawkins General day in and day out, sometimes bringing Max or a few of the other kids along with him. Mostly because every day is the same thing, walking through the halls, facing the polite smiles from nurses who deal with this on the daily, don’t understand the way it feels to see the one you love on that bed.

If he does hear anything new, it’s usually not good news. He knows Billy is getting worse, but still he sits in that room for countless hours, watching and waiting for the moment he’s struck with a miracle, and he comes back to him.

The hospital is not quite as patient though, and since about month four of Billy’s hospital stay, they’d been encouraging Steve to consider his wards right to die. After so much time had passed by without signs of improvement, the nurses had started hesitating in the doorway when he was around, and offering kind little suggestions that were supposed to push him towards the decision to let Billy go.

Things like, “It’s not really him anymore, honey.” and, “He’s getting worse by the minute, poor thing.”, and Steve’s favorite, the one that made him leave the hospital in tears, “If he wanted to wake up, he would have done it by now.”

But no matter how true what they were saying may have been, Steve really did not want to hear it. The only reason the thought of letting Billy go had ever crossed the minds of doctors and nurses was because of what was on the news, all these up and coming stories about hospital ethics committees that were popping up all over the country recently.

They were being selfish, willing to let Billy die just because they were scared they wouldn’t be able to stand the heat that would come from keeping an eighteen year old boy on life support for as long as they had. Whether or not they actually thought they could save him was a question for another day.

So they would mail Steve countless papers and claims and pamphlets to try to reason with him, to persuade him that the best thing to do was to kill Billy because they didn’t want to deal with him anymore. It made him sick to his stomach, to think that people who were supposedly trained to help people were so hellbent on giving up on a patient.

He wonders sometimes, if they wouldn’t be so hasty to pull the plug had he been an easier case. If his father was more supportive and his biological mother present, or if the government hadn’t worked so hard to cover up the origin of his injuries. Maybe even if his representative was a nice young woman instead.

But there’s nothing he can do about it, so he just crumples the papers and ignores their premature condolences, and goes to visit Billy at every moment he can.

The drive to the hospital that particular morning feels like it takes a whole day instead of the 20 minutes the route actually is, Steve feeling like he’s suspended in time. It doesn’t seem real, taking the stairs up to the second floor, elevators were a no go after the free fall he took at Starcourt, and taking a visitor sticker and a bunch of papers from the woman at the reception desk.

He’s walked this route more times than he can count, but this time he can feel that something is wrong, different. On the top of the very first sheet the desk lady hands him, in bold black letters, are the printed words “Right-to-Die” and Steve already knows what is coming.

The woman gives him a half sympathetic look and reads off her scripted spiel. “The Hargrove boy has been unresponsive for six months now, with no signs of improvement in his condition. The recently instituted hospital ethics board wants you to seriously consider the contents of these forms.”

The words are so hollow, the look on her face mostly bored. Steve guesses this same speech was probably given to a thousand other people who’d come through this hospital, and it makes him feel nauseated just listening to it, her less than genuine pity as she reads off her clipboard, making it seem like she doesn’t even care what she is asking of him.

“It’s of course among your rights as representative to say no, but we want to remind you that he has no quality of life being artificially kept alive, and it might be best to let him go.”

“No, they told me he couldn’t feel anything. He’s not suffering.” Steve insists, and as much as he believes that he is right, the confidence in his voice is false. This was something he’d been thinking about every day for the last half a year. “You’ve kept him alive this long, right? That’s got to mean something.”

“Still, this is about him. We just want you to think about if keeping him alive is the right thing to do anymore when we can’t be sure what he’s going through. When he isn’t himself.”

Of course this was something he’d considered in his own mind, six months is a long time, and it was inevitable that a few times on his worst days, he’d have to think about pulling the plug. It was just so different hearing this nurse who didn’t know Billy insisting on it, it was just so impersonal, and it made him think about the hospital's greed, and how they probably just wanted to save money on ventilators and open up another bed.

Without saying another word to her, Steve walks away without the clipboard of papers, and off to room B-216. Of course he'd known this was coming. They’d been trying to drop hints since the moment Billy stopped being able to breathe on his own, but he’d been in denial. As long as Billy's heart was still beating, Steve had hope that he would recover if the doctors would just try.

Still, as he sits down in the chair next to Billy’s bed, he decides he doesn’t want to call Max today. He takes the desk woman's advice, as angry as it made him, and takes the time to truly reflect on the boy in that bed, with the feeding tube down his throat, the respirator breathing for him beside his bed, the IV in his neck, there because the veins in his arms had been so overused.

His hair is much longer now, just past his collarbones, but without maintenance, his blonde curls are knotted and dull. His skin is unnaturally pale, his freckles faded to nothing, and his whole body is littered with angry, dark red scars. The hole in the center of his chest still isn’t all the way healed, and the nurses are constantly fighting to keep it free of infection.

When he wakes up, they say he will be in immense pain and that he will have forgotten how to walk and talk and probably even breathe on his own. There was a chance too that his memory will have gaps in it, which could mean anything from forgetting what happened to him in July, to not even knowing his own name.

Basically if, no- when he wakes up, he won’t really be Billy.

Steve had always heard about and seen in the movies coma patients who twitch their fingers or moved their eyes, or who really give any signs of life, miraculously waking up and being themselves again, but Billy, he had only done the opposite.

At some point, he has to accept that Billy won’t be like one of those other patients, and, in the condition he is in, all pale skin and open wounds and zero signs of responsiveness, they were only prolonging his death. They had tried just about everything they could thanks to Steve’s willingness to cover the expenses, and, although he didn’t want to believe it, maybe just couldn’t accept it quite yet, it was, as the nurse had said, time to think about letting Billy go.

Not today though. He’d spend today with him at the very least, trying to push those thoughts to the back of his mind while he still could. The nurses used to say, when Billy had first been admitted and they still thought there was a chance of recovery, that Steve and Max, whenever she could come, should try talking to him, and Steve always did.

He never really has a whole lot to say, not since everything has been calming down recently. There were no more funerals to attend, no more grieving families to take a hot dish and his condolences to. The kids didn’t need him to watch them anymore, and Family Video had decided to lay him off until he didn’t have to make daily hospital commutes and he could work again. Basically, Steve’s entire world was Billy.

So it was only fair that Billy was what he usually talked about, reminiscing about everything they’d gotten to do together before the accident, telling him about what was happening with his sister now that she was getting older, and giving him updates on how many days it had been and how much he missed and loved him. One of the nurses had heard him say that once, seen him lean forwards and press a kiss to Billys forehead, but she had only turned away, pretending she hadn’t noticed.

Today though, it was much harder than usual to think of something to say to him. He always tried to leave all of the bad stuff at the door, didn’t think it would do Billy any good if he could even hear, to be listening to him always complaining or moping about their situation, but with death weighing heavy on his mind, what else was there to think about?

The anger and the remorse and the depression would be for when he went home tonight and downed a whole bottle of Fireball, Billy’s favorite whiskey, and called Robin drunk off his ass at two in the morning to tell her about how terrible he felt.

It was because he loved Billy with all of his heart that he wouldn’t put him through that. Even if it hurt more than anything else to see his love broken down and dying, which was, in Steve’s opinion, the worst thing that had ever happened to him, he always wore a smile on his face every day he walked into that hospital room.

As hard as that was, and as guilty as it made him feel to admit, Billy's sickness wasn’t the only thing making Steve miserable. He had also been through some unimaginable things himself while trapped in the Starcourt mall, and he didn't come out the other side the same.

Nightmares plagued him constantly, so that when he would eventually come back home from the hospital, he didn’t sleep more than fifteen minutes through the night. Being alone for too long warped his perception of reality, made him think everyone he knew and loved was gone, that he’d been abandoned or all his friends killed. He would constantly call to check on them, most of the time drunk and panicking, but they’d stopped picking up after the first few times. There were so many triggers too that could send him back to that night in an instant, where he’d just get stuck again.

And perhaps that is exactly why he can’t let Billy go so easily, because even if it is heartbreaking and makes him feel so empty inside being there with a version of his Billy who couldn’t speak to him or who he couldn’t hold, he was still alive. If he died now, Steve would have nothing. It would be no different from the losses everyone had suffered, the death of the chief of police and at least thirty other community members robbing them of their soundness of mind.

Letting go of Billy would just be another blow, to him and to the tight-knit community who had come so close together after the accident that rocked their little town. You wouldn't be able to tell from the fact that his room was always empty except for Steve or his sister, but the papers had revered him as a hero. Who he’d become after being hospitalized meant his death wouldn't just affect loved ones.

But more than any of that, he just didn’t want to give up on him. Pulling the plug meant sacrificing so many more moments they could have together, losing the chance to move on from what had happened. How could Steve ever know when it was the right time to do that?

When was it safe to say that Billy wouldn’t ever recover, and that they were just stretching out the inevitable? When could he feel right in letting his very best friend and the love of his life die? Deep down, past his initial reaction of shock and heartbreak, he knows he’ll never truly be ready to say goodbye, but that now was that time regardless.

Just like the nurses said, he wasn’t really Billy anymore. Who he’d been was a teenage boy with too much energy to burn, always getting into trouble and always in motion, bouncing his knee, twisting the ring on his middle finger or the locket around his neck, chain smoking cigarette after cigarette. It used to drive Steve insane how he wouldn’t sit still for anything, but now he would give anything just to have that back.

There was no personality left in him, no stupid jokes to cheer Steve up, no pestering his sister and her friends like a big brother does, nothing left in him at all that made him distinctly Billy. Steve wondered if maybe he had already given up.

If maybe, Billy wasn’t even in there at all anymore, and they were holding on to nothing just to feed their own selfishness. Steve wasn’t the most emotional of people, usually panicking before he got upset, but he could feel tears pricking at his eyes now, as he watched the slow rise and fall of Billy’s, or not Billy’s, chest, and listened to the beeps and hums of the machines that kept him going.

He knew what needed to be done. Just not today.

For now, he holds Billy's hand, unmoving and just warm enough that he could tell he was alive, and whispered to him anything that came to his mind.

If Billy could hear him, he knew he was probably tired of hearing the same stories over and over, thinking of Billy waking up and complaining about Steve being too boring made him chuckle to himself. An instant pang of regret tightens his chest, feeling guilty for being happy.

There was a really sweet nurse about the age of his mother who always checked in on him at the same time everyday, like he was the one with tubes and machines sticking out of his body. Her name was Dale, and she always peeked her head into the room around meal times to ask if he had been down to the cafeteria yet. Usually he hadn’t, and sometimes he still forgot to eat anyways, but it meant a lot to him.

Today though, she came all the way in the room, a sad look on her face, and he had to avoid her gaze entirely to keep himself from breaking down, choosing instead to focus on Billy’s slender fingers where he’d laced them through his own.

“Steve, honey, I know this is really hard for you, it’s hard for all of us when something like this happens, but you need to take care of yourself.” She was just being kind, but he wouldn’t hear it.

If this was going to be the last full day he’d ever spend with Billy, he was going to make it count. A soggy sandwich in the dingy old cafeteria wasn’t worth spending a single moment away from the other boy's bedside. He feels vaguely guilty about it, but he ignores the well meaning nurse, even as she says her generic condolences that all of them were trained to say.

He smooths out Billy's hair, brushing the part that always hung in his eyes to the side carefully, something Billy himself had always seemed to do when he was nervous. It reminds him of the time they tried to do each other's hair and Billy taught him how to make a braid, so he tells Billy about it.

When he hears the distant roar of a car's engine from the open window, it reminds him of the first time Billy drove him home in the now totaled beyond recognition Camaro, so he talks about that. A bird landing on the windowsill reminds him of sitting on Billy’s bed and talking about the seagulls and the beaches back in California where Billy had grown up, so he tells Billy that story too. The phone ringing at the receptionist's desk down the hallway reminds him of the time Billy had called him in the middle of the night to invite him out to the quarry, where they’d kissed for the first time and Steve clumsily asked him to make things official, so again, he told Billy all about it.

It's mostly a comfort to himself, keeping his mind off of the reality of the situation, but then the desk lady announces over the overhead system that visiting hours are over, and it’s time for him to go.

They had been giving him a lot of leeway here at Hawkins General, allowing him to visit every single day and sometimes with a 14 year old, which was strictly against the rules of the ICU. The end of visiting hours was a rule they always stood by though, and despite how much it crushed him to leave Billy by himself overnight, he always did it.

On his way out, he grabbed the stack of papers the receptionist tried to give him off of her desk. He would call Susan in the morning and ask her what she thought. He would try to involve her in the choice, since she’d technically claimed Billy as her dependent after her marriage to his father, who had given enough verbal and written agreements that he wanted nothing at all to do with his son while he was hospitalized that his wife could, and had, stepped in.

He went home that night with the thought in his head that this was the last time he’d do this, and by this time tomorrow, Billy would be dead.

#harringrove big bang 2021 #harringrove #steve harrington #billy hargrove #billy x steve #ej writer #story by ej!#so excited to start sharing!#chapter two will be on tumblr later today!#it’s up on ao3 already if you wanna get ahead!

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yesttoheaven · 3 years

Text

AMOR FATI

pairing – neil x female!reader

wc – 3.8k

warnings – mention of death, self-blame, anxious/intrusive thoughts, questioning reality, refusal of help, guns, stalking, but I swear there's a light at the end of the tunnel haha

a/n – The last time I suffered so hard for the death of a character, was when Newt died (Maze Runner) and now Neil has captured all my attention and his death has hit me in the same way 😩 I needed a happy ending so I decided to write this!

The Eternal Return and Amor Fati mentioned in this fic are one of the main ideas of Nietzsche's philosophy.

English is not my first language. I am getting help from google translator and he is not always a good ally, so I apologize for any typos or grammar errors.

Y/N – your name

She approached the painting hanging on the wall, watching the details closely. Ouroboros. A serpent eating its own tail. Months ago, when Y/N was visiting an antique store in Mumbai, she saw that same symbol. The owner of the establishment approached when she realized her interest in the piece and explained that Ouroboros represents the ideas of movement, continuity and, in consequence, Eternal Return. A concept that the universe and all existence and energy has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time or space.

"Max finally fell asleep." Kat returned to the living room, attracting Y/N's attention.

She walked away from the painting, taking back her seat on the sofa and asked:

"How is he after everything that happened?"

For a moment, Kat looked at the painting on the wall and then at the friend she won in the midst of confusion over the Algorithm. At that time, despite being fighting on the front lines to prevent a possible Third World War, Y/N seems complete. Happy. Today that happiness no longer exists in her eyes.

Letting out a sigh, the woman sat next to her, answering:

"Sator was never a present father. He was always busy... now i can see the kind of work he was involved in. Anyway, Max just got used to his absence."

"It's notable that he's happier at your side. When we first met Max was a bit of an introvert, but today he is radiant." Y/N confessed, showing a small smile and the blonde shook her head, agreeing with her words. "How's everything?"

"Perfectly well. It's weird sometimes... After years of being stuck in a failed relationship, freedom is good."

"It seems like life is good for one of us." The woman let out a bitter laugh, putting the latest events on a scale, but she didn’t want her friend to think she wasn’t happy for her. She really was. "I'm sorry, I just..." The words remain stuck in her throat, while she covers her face with her hands. In addition to physical and mental fatigue, Y/N tried to hide her grief.

Kat touched her shoulder, showing that she was here.

"I know you're hurt, but it's been three months and you never talked about what happened that day... This is not good for you."

"What do I have to say, Kat? The guy I fell in love with was a fucking time traveler! And now he's dead and I don't know what to do. My life just... stopped without him."

"I can imagine how difficult it's for you to cross that line without Neil at your side, but giving up is not an option. Grief is consuming you little by little and you are just accepting it..."

"We are trained to contain our emotions and deal with death in the best possible way. It used to be easy for me, but then he came and turned my life upside down." Y/N put her hands on her knees and stood up, walking without an exact destination. "Neil was always one step ahead of us all..." She stepped forward too and found the painting again, but her mind was lost in thoughts about him. Neil knew her so well. And he had a charming smile, but completely arrogant at the same time. "I was sent to Mumbai to help two agents and when I arrived at Priya's penthouse that night, there he was. When he saw me, that was the first and only time that he let his guard down. I'll never forget how he looked at me, it was one of those breathtaking moments... Completely cliché, I know."

On the sofa, Kat was impressed. When Y/N turned towards her, there was a bright smile on her face. The simple memory brought her a breath of happiness and Kat enjoyed seeing her friend like that, but unfortunately that moment did not last long. Memories aren't enough. Neil is dead and nothing can change that.

"I miss him so much, Kat." The smile disappeared as soon as tears appeared in her eyes, cascading down her cheeks.

"My dear..." Worried about her, the woman got up quickly and approached Y/N, wrapping her in a tight hug. "I'm really sorry."

"I spent the last three months locked up in my a-apartment because I thought I could handle this situation on my own. At times I b-believed it was just a fever dream... Maybe I was losing my mind, but this is proof that everything was real." Through tears blurring her vision, she looked at the watch on her wrist, remembering that night.

Y/N was in a private cabin on the ship. The others were with Ives and Wheeler, going over the mission in search of any loose ends. A standard procedure. Y/N knew she should be with them, but she needed a moment alone to organize her thoughts. And that moment is now. The past few weeks had been a real mess. The inversion was difficult to explain and mainly to understand. She was used to field missions, but being an inverted soldier on the battlefield was not in her plans. Either way, she agreed to be a part of it and running away with biased assumptions was not going to help. Humanity depends on them.

Three knocking on the door caught Y/N's attention, but she remained silent, waiting for the person to give up and leave, but when it didn't, she just murmured 'Come in'.

"So, here you are." The man used a surprised tone of voice and closed the door behind him. "What will our superior think when he learns that you are running away from the briefing?"

She let out a laugh before answering in the same mood:

"Don't worry, I know this mission like the back of my hand. I just needed a moment."

"There's something wrong? Are you ok?" Neil spilled the questions quickly, visibly concerned for her.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Neil." Y/N smiled at him, but looked away just seconds later, confessing: "Maybe I'm a little surprised by the situation. I have spent years dealing with terrorists, but the inversion is really not my point."

"I'm not good with advice, but someone once said to me: Don't try to understand. Certain things in the world do not need an explanation."

"It's wise advice, but I'm a methodical person. Logic has always been my ally in missions."

"A methodical person, huh?" He asked with an arrogant smile playing on his lips and she just rolled her eyes. "I know how worried you were when Sator shot Kat, but we are using the inversion to save the world and you're one of the most brilliant agents I have ever seen. Everything will be fine."

"Are you praising me?"

"What's that? Can't I praise my partner's talent?" Neil pulled up a chair to sit across from her, crossing his arms.

"In that case, thank you. Remind me to put this on my resume." Those words made him laugh and that sound could easily be compared to music in her ears.

Touching her knee, Neil added:

"We are very confident with the mission. You don't need to worry."

"Are you sure?"

"I cannot say that unforeseen events do not happen, but we are prepared for that." Y/N knew he was right, but this mission is the biggest one so far. It's not about saving a country. It's about saving the entire world. This was arousing insecurities in her and it was like walking in a minefield. Ironically, she was familiar with this, but not in such catastrophic proportions. "I want you to have this." The man took his watch off his wrist and handed it to her.

"What’s that supposed to mean?" The question came out as a whisper from between her lips.

It didn't make sense. Why does everything in this conversation look like a farewell?

"We will be on opposite sides tomorrow, but i want you to know... I will always be with you, Y/N."

"I saw the way he looked at you... That's how I used to look at Sator before he became a monster in my life." Kat started, running a hand through Y/N's hair. "When I was lying on that stretcher and partially drugged with the medicines, I saw him beside you... watching you sleep. There was so much love in his eyes. Love for a lifetime, Y/N. So don't do this to yourself. The way he left hurt us all, but there was nothing you or any other agent could do to change what happened at Stalask-12. Neil saved the world. This gave us a second chance. You cannot give up now. This organization needs you. And keeping your mind busy at that moment is the first step towards a fresh start."

"N-No, I can't..." She broke the hug, shaking her head in denial. "I left the organization."

"What? Don't you work for Tenet anymore? But when we first met you told me that you can't imagine working in another area... And that this is your life's work."

"Being an agent is my life's work. I was in Yemen when Tenet found me and assigned me to this mission. My only job is to make this world a less hostile place, but the motto of this organization is not what I believe, Kat. What's happened's happened. Really? It doesn't work for me." Y/N ended the sentence with drops of anger in her voice and Kat did not say a single word.

Through the newspapers, Max's mother followed what was happening in Yemen over the years – a real endless war – and knowing that Y/N was in the middle of it, makes the situation unquestionable. People died in front of her eyes. Friends of the corporation. And then some time later, Tenet arrived with a fresh start, but in the end everything remained the same. She lost Neil. It is as if her life's work never had a happy ending because the world will never stop being a hostile place.

"He knows?" It was easy for Y/N to identify who she was talking about. The Protagonist. Or just TP.

"Here's another problem. I worked with him and indirectly worked for him at the same time! God, that man created this organization! And his name remains a mystery to us all!" She pinched the tip of her nose, feeling frustrated with all the secrets that haunt this organization. "And answering your question, yes, he knows, but he did not argue about it. I was a complete mess and he was not doing very well either... He stayed in my apartment for the first month, probably to make sure I didn't do anything stupid." And Y/N would be forever grateful for that. She likes him. Just as friends, of course. TP was a reserved man, but it was he who held her when everything was falling apart. "But we've had a fight. I blamed him for what happened at Stalask-12 and since then we haven't spoken anymore."

It was easy to see that they carried more pain than they could actually bear. Y/N lost her great love and the man lost his best friend. The situation just turned into a conflict between them and that was the result.

Realizing the sadness reflected in Y/N's eyes, Kat decided to change the subject of the conversation. Keeping that thought, she smiled and pointed to the painting on the wall. Maybe that could help.

"You seemed interested in this one."

"Oh yes, in my spare time I am a lover of art and its meanings. It is really attractive the way Ouroboros is connected to the Eternal Return..."

"And Amor Fati too." Kat completed, piquing Y/N's curiosity. This part was new to her. "It's impossible to affirm the Eternal Return without loving life. We need to learn that things happen as they do. Sometimes seemingly good. Sometimes seemingly bad. We don’t always get it our way... Unless we choose that whatever way it is, is our way. When we choose to Amor Fati, to love everything that happens, to love our fate, then we will always get it our way. Because the way it is, is the way it is. Unchangable. And therefore it must be good, even if it sucks."

These words touched Y/N's heart. This was a contradiction to what she is experiencing right now. Love your fate. She would like to understand and accept what happened, she really wanted, but why is it so difficult to move on?

Because Neil is dead.

That was the only explanation for her. The end of a relationship would be more acceptable. If he were alive, things would be completely different now. However, grief is overwhelming. How could she just accept what happened?

"I... I gotta go." That was all she managed to say before picking up her bag and leave the penthouse, ignoring Kat's protests.

When the elevator doors closed, an exhausted sigh left her mouth and the instant she saw her reflection in the mirror, Y/N wanted to cry again. After three months alone, she thought visiting her friend would be a good idea. Kat was willing to help, but the problem was that Y/N is not allowing herself to be helped. As soon as the doors opened, she left the metal box and found the hotel lobby partially empty. Her watch showed it was 3:13 AM, this explains the absence of people on the street as well. In front of her car, she searched the bag for the key and coincidentally her cell phone started to vibrate. Probably the text messages were from Kat, but confusion hit Y/N the instant she looked at the identifier and saw that the messages did not belong to any of her contacts.

Stay away from the car

They put a bomb

I'm on my way

Her first reaction was to take a few steps back and look around, trying to understand what’s going on and find the person responsible for these texts, but Y/N was alone in the dark street. When she thought it might be an unnecessary prank, a black SUV approached at high speed. The car stopped just a few meters away from where she was, but that was enough to make her body freeze.

"Y/N, come on!" The man exclaimed, the urgency in his voice would have made her run immediately, but she didn't move. Her feet had frozen on the floor. This cannot be real. "Come on, get in the car! We don't have much time!" He tried again, it was possible to hear the sound of the other cars approaching.

Y/N watched in slow motion the moment he left the car and ran towards her, wrapping his arms around her waist.

"How is this possible?" She asked in a whisper, completely lost in his blue eyes.

"It's good to see you too." Neil admitted, feeling his heart race. She looked so fragile in his arms. Very different from the last time he saw her. "We have to go." He accompanied her to the car and as soon as Y/N took the passenger seat, he returned to his seat.

For her this moment was like a fever dream, so she just looked down and started counting her fingers. One, two, three, four, five... Neil noticed, but said nothing, just kept driving. The cars were fast approaching, but he would do everything possible and impossible to get Y/N away from these people.

"Give me your cell phone." He looked at her for a brief moment, but when Y/N didn’t react, he wasn't sure if she heard it, so he just took the phone from her hand and threw it out the window. That was enough to get her out of the numbness:

"What the fuck, Neil?!"

Despite the adrenaline rushing through his body, the man laughed.

"If I found you because of your cell phone, they can too." After that, he crossed the red light and made a risky turn, trying to end this chase. "Before you ask, no, this is not a dream. Unfortunately this is very real..." Neil didn't like what he saw when he adjusted the rearview mirror. "And now they are getting ready to shoot us."

That observation put Y/N on alert and she looked back, seeing a man with an AKS-74U and another with a Beretta M12.

"If you knew it wasn't a dream, why didn't you bring an armored car?" She ran her tongue between her lips, smiling at the man beside her. Neil tried to argue, but she just took off her seat belt and picked up the Glock 19 stuck in the vest he was wearing.

Y/N crawled out of the car and sat at the window opening. This encouraged the men in the two cars to start shooting, trying desperately to hit her. Neil shouted something that she couldn't understand and then she felt one of his hands on her thigh, giving her stability to continue with the plan. With her arm resting on the roof of the vehicle, Y/N aimed the gun at the car that was closest to them. Her intention was not to start a firefight in the middle of one of the main avenues in the city, but she had no other option. Holding her breath, she fired the first shot and the bullet hit the tire, taking the car out of circulation. Y/N celebrated while preparing for the second car, but dealing with this one was not an easy task. Now they were in a tunnel and, consequently, losing speed because of the other cars that came along the way. Neil left two pats on her leg, indicating that she had better get back in the car and that is what she did. Screams, honks and gunshots echoed through the tunnel, turning the place into a war zone. Whoever these men were, Y/N knew they weren't going to give up.

Tired of playing cat and mouse, she went to the back seat, getting on her knees. Through the broken glass above the trunk, Y/N adjusted the aim of her gun, ignoring the sniper and focusing on the driver. With another accurate shot, the bullet hit the man's chest and he lost control of the vehicle. The car overturned for a while, streaking the asphalt, but no other car was involved in the accident. Y/N sighed in relief and looked for another possible threat, just checking, but when she realized that the area was clean, she returned to the passenger seat, leaving the gun on the dashboard in front of her.

"Next time I'm going to get an armored car." Neil comments, stepping on the gas. "Nice shot, by the way."

"Anytime." Y/N smiled, trying to control her breathing.

With the adrenaline disappearing from her body, it was hard for her to believe that this was really happening. For many nights she cried, wondering what it would be like if Neil just came back to her, but now she was afraid to wake up and realize that it was just another vivid dream.

The sun was rising when they arrived in a shed away from the city. Seen from the outside, the place was a little scary, but the interior wasn't that bad. There was some equipment like trackers, walkie-talkie, bulletproof vests, weapons, ammunition; a table with a mess of papers and on the other side two beds and something that Y/N supposed to be a private bathroom.

"Where we are?"

We. That simple word echoed in her mind. Y/N thought that "we" didn't exist anymore.

"For now in a safe place. It's dangerous for you out there." He answered the question and took a bottle of water, handing it to her after taking a generous sip.

"Who are these people, Neil?" She wanted answers, lots of answers, and that frustrated the british spy because for the first time he didn't know what could happen.

Neil had a mission and that mission ended with him dying in Stalask-12, but after what TP did, everything changed.

"We have a name..." He wanted to say more, he wanted to reassure her, but that was all he had at the moment.

Y/N drank some water and left the bottle on the table, looking at some reports and photos. All photos were of the same man.

Lenard Vaher

"But apparently they don't just want you..."

It took a few seconds and when the realization hit Y/N, concern appeared on her face.

No, not him.

"Where's TP? He's safe, right?"

"He was going to see you when Lenard's men kidnapped him. This happened three weeks ago." And considering the anger in Neil's voice, finding TP was proving an almost impossible task, but in the midst of so much concern, one point attracted Y/N's attention.

"You said he was going to see me..."

"There was something he needed to tell you." Neil sighed, resting his hands on the table. A few strands of blond hair fell over his forehead, but he quickly shook his head back, as he always did. "He returned to Stalask-12, Y/N."

After that statement, the only sound that could be heard was Neil's footsteps closing the distance between them and the first thing she did was put her hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. Neil smiled. And that was not one of his famous smiles. That was a shy smile. His heart was beating like a drum and it was all because of her. Loving Y/N was something so special and pure, that Neil accepted his fate without a second thought. Saving the world, he was giving her a second chance to live, but now he is the one who received a second chance.

"I missed you every day." Before she could begin to consider the meaning behind his words, he settled his mouth upon hers, robbing her of thought.

She closed her eyes and melted against him, flattening her hands on his arms. Neil caught her bottom lip in his teeth, nibbling and licking at it until she thought she might perish from the intensity of the feeling. She whimpered at the sensation, and he rewarded the sound by deepening the kiss, giving her everything she desired. His tongue stroked hers, slow and insistent. A lush, decadent pleasure unfolded within them, snaking through their veins as though it had lain coiled in anticipation for years.

Just waiting for this moment.

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a/n – really hope you enjoy it and thank you soooo much for reading ;)

#neil tenet x reader #neil x reader #neil tenet #neil #robert pattinson #robert pattinson x reader #robert pattinson imagine #tenet fanfic #tenet imagine #ives tenet #tenet #neil tenet one shot #neil tenet imagine #robert pattinson one shot #neil tenet x y/n #x y/n #amor fati #eternal return

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hotchley · 3 years

Text

heavy is the head that wears the crown

Hey besties...

This was my first CM fic, and it was only on ao3, so I am now cross-posting it almost a whole year later because I changed my url and was redoing my masterlists so... yeah.

IT IS FROM A YEAR AGO PLEASE DO NOT COME FOR ME IT'S ALMOST EMBARRASSING JUST COPYING IT </3

Trigger Warnings: depictions of child abuse, aftermath of abuse, canon-typical violence, references to self-harm (it’s not depicted, but hotch has some unhealthy thoughts in the hardwick scene), heavily implied sexual content

read on ao3!

He remembers the last time his father laid a hand on him perfectly. He remembers it perfectly because it was the most painful. When he was feeling particularly low, he wondered if his father knew he was going to die and wanted to watch his oldest son try and hold himself together as one small act of defiance.

He remembers how each strike with the belt hurt more than the last. He remembers how he tried to keep his voice down, because Sean was sleeping, and he didn’t need to ever find out that their father was a bastard. He remembers that the pain became unbearable the moment his father pressed the still lit cigarette to the cuts and that he had screamed so loudly, he was scared the neighbours would come running. Remembers how his father had yanked his hair so hard more tears pooled in the corner of his eyes.

But they didn’t fall. Not when his father shoved him to the ground and left him to deal with his injuries himself. They didn’t fall then because he knew that for one more night, his mother and Sean would be safe from his touch. And that would have to be enough to keep him going.

They didn’t fall when the nice lady from reception asked to speak to him and told him how sorry she was but the hospital had phoned to say his father was dead after suffering a heart attack at work. He didn’t cry then because he was too busy thinking about how Sean was going to be destroyed. And his mother would likely retreat further into herself, leaving him to pick up the pieces and take over the home.

He didn’t break at the funeral. Sean was clinging to his hand, tears streaming down his face, even as he didn’t understand why daddy wasn’t coming home. He wanted to fall to his knees and scream, because despite everything that man had done to him, he had never touched Sean, not even when he had been at boarding school and unable to protect him. But he didn’t, because neither he nor his brother had access to their inheritance, and they needed to survive. His mother wouldn’t work- and he wouldn’t want her to. But it meant it was up to him.

So he looked at himself in the mirror, put the mask that transformed him from Aaron, the delightful teenager who was in the theatre club, into Mr Hotchner, the man who could provide for his family and be who they needed him to be.

It was almost too easy.

If he thought about it for too long, he would classify the whole incident with Vincent Perotta as his version of a breakdown. As the garrotte tightened around his neck, and as it became harder and harder to fill his lungs with the need to live, all he could think of was his father and Haley. His father smirking as his eldest son finally met the end he deserved- killed by someone he should have been able to defeat in the dark because he had gotten distracted- and Haley, home with a son barely old enough to hold his own head up.

Haley.

The image of her holding their son gave him the strength to shove the unsub- he didn’t deserve to be named- away. And then the flashlights came into view and he knew he was safe. They had come to get him. He wasn’t alone. The relief was quickly overshadowed by the officer they still had to find, and the confession they still needed. He should have known Gideon would know why he had refused everyone’s offers of help. Why he hadn’t even loosened his tie. The ghost of his father saying he deserved the pain still haunted him.

He hadn’t wanted to finish it. He had wanted to stay as far away from that bastard as he could. But Jason Gideon never asked questions. He phrased demands as questions. So he put back on the Unit Chief mask and said sure. But he knew as soon as he said some that he had messed up. He just hoped nobody else would notice.

The world had never been kind to him.

He didn’t know why he didn’t just walk out without responding. Why he chose to stand there and admit- or as close as he would ever get to admitting- that his father had abused him. That the shards of his words and actions still broke his skin and damaged his heart and filled his lungs with poison that he had to inhale. Maybe it was because he needed to remind himself. He was not his father, and he never would be.

Haley was awake when he got home. He felt bad, she needed all the rest she could get, but she had smiled, and said she loved him. It sounded like a reminder rather than a confession. He had managed to smile, gratefully getting in the bath she had run for him, scrubbing the hands of a murderer off of his skin.

She made love to him that night. Took her time, brushing her lips over every bruise and scar. He had wanted all the lights off, still disgusted by the sight of his father on his body, but she had asked if having the lamp on the dimmest setting was okay, and he had said okay. She said she was so proud of him- was always so proud of him. And she didn’t laugh at the tears that fell after.

He wondered what Jason had said when he phoned, but he never asked.

III

After Reid killed Tobias Hankel, he kept it together. He had to. Because as clever as Spencer thought he was being, everyone knew he was keeping information from them. And Hotch wasn’t going to let him become the next Elle. He wasn’t going to let Gideon convince him everything was fine, because it wasn’t. And it wouldn’t be. Not for a while. Maybe not ever. But that wasn’t the priority. The priority was making sure Reid would be okay at the hospital. Then to get home. Then to give his statement. It wasn’t about making him better. It was about helping him get through each stage.

He didn’t break, because his team already hated him. Reid had called him a narcissist, and whilst he knew what was really being said, he couldn’t help but worry his youngest agent thought it was true. He knew Reid had initially believed what he had said to Phillip Dowd, but they had worked to move on from that. He thought they had. Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe Reid really did think Hotch viewed himself as better than everyone. If only he knew the truth.

Morgan had called him a drill sergeant, but he could handle that. Prentiss saying he trusted men more than women wasn’t hard to understand. He could argue that in her case, it was justified. But JJ calling him a bully without any hesitation had been like a knife to the heart. Worse than that. It had been like a small paper cut on each part of his body, so the pain would never fade. Not properly, because as soon as it stopped in one place, it started in another. He had tried so hard to love all of them. Especially her. She reminded him of Haley. Not because he was attracted to her- he wasn’t, no matter what rumours flew around- but because of her spirit. Her kindness. Her warmth towards everyone. Her willingness to trust. Her ability to be good, despite all she had seen.

Jason had been the only one to not say anything. But Hotch knew he would’ve had something to say. That was why he’d cut them off, started talking about an argument he had forgotten until then.

He didn’t break that night. Or the night after. He pulled away from the team, observing from a distance. He didn’t deserve to cry. Not when it was his fault Reid was struggling with a drug addiction he thought he was hiding. His fault JJ couldn’t even look at dogs without shaking.

It was his fault. He would lock away his need to fall apart until he could look at them without guilt clouding his mind.

Deep down, he knew he would be going back to an empty house after leaving for the case. Still, it was painful to see almost every trace of Haley and Jack gone. It hurt to look around the place they were meant to raise their son together and only see his own clothes and shoes. The plates Haley had picked because they were more fun than the set from her parents. The crib he had assembled before leaving. Jack had migrated to a bed, but they had just never gotten around to getting rid of it. The photos from the case that had ended everything.

He sat on their bed, head in his hands. At some point he started crying. For everything he had done wrong, for everything he was going to still screw up.

And then the phone rang. And Spencer was speaking too quickly for him to understand everything that had happened, but he managed to grasp the most important fact: Gideon was gone. He had left them. With nothing but a letter, addressed to Spencer, that he had left at the now cleared out cabin.

Despite the weariness stamped into his bones, he told Spencer to stay where he was. He drove to pick him up, took him back to his apartment. Said Haley would understand when he started to panic about taking him away from his wife. He rocked Spencer to sleep, singing the same lullabies he heard Haley sing to Jack when he wouldn’t stop shrieking. Noted there were no new marks on his arms and breathed a sigh of relief. He had to stop pulling away from Reid now Gideon was gone.

He couldn’t believe it. Well. He could believe Gideon leaving, always knew the day would come where he would decide he couldn’t do it anymore, and he had thought that day would be when Bale blew up six of their best agents, but when it didn’t happen then, he had dared to hope that it would never happen. He couldn’t believe Gideon had left the way he had. With only a goodbye to Spencer.

And he wanted to be mad at Spencer, because he was there and it would be so easy, but he looked at his sleeping figure, and knew he couldn’t. It wasn’t his fault. But he was mad at Gideon for only saying goodbye to Spencer. Because he had been the one to step up and become Unit Chief when Gideon was placed on leave. He had sacrificed his marriage and his life to make sure the team stayed together. Him. Not Morgan, definitely not Reid. Wasn’t he worth saying goodbye to? Had he really meant that little to Gideon?

For the next few weeks, everything served as a reminder. Reid quoting something or other reminded him of a book Gideon had recommended. A smile from a stranger in the street reminded him of Haley. The silence of a too big house reminded him of how he had failed. A comment about fallen agents made him think of Jason and Elle.

He wanted to walk away as well. Beg Strauss for that transfer and go to Haley. Tell her he would do anything, if she would just come home. But his team- the team Gideon had already abandoned- were depending on him. They didn’t hate him now, but they would if he left as well. So he helped JJ with the requests, took interest in the languages Prentiss could speak, offered to listen to each and everyone of Reid’s lectures. He let Morgan take control every once in a while.

And if he became more Hotch than Aaron in doing so, then that was the price he would pay for not being better.

Chester Hardwick was- for lack of a better term- an absolute shit show. Going into a cell with a dangerous serial killer and picking a fight with him had not been the plan. The initial plan had been to get in there, do the interview as quickly as possible, drive back to Quantico in silence- Reid never spoke on the return journey (he had never fully decided if he hated or loved that)- and ignore Haley’s demands for another night.

Then JJ phoned. And he knew she was trying to keep her tone professional, to not pass judgement on his soon-to-be ex-wife, but it was impossible to miss. Haley had clearly made it into a big deal that he hadn’t answered her calls. It angered him. He didn’t want to give up his son, or only be able to see him on the weekends because it wasn’t fair. He couldn’t guarantee he would even be available on the weekends, but he could guarantee to be there after a case.

Haley didn’t want to accept that. She didn’t want to amend the custody agreement. He didn’t want to go to court and have his faults brandished, but he didn’t want to back down. Which meant they were stuck. And she knew he would eventually be forced to give in and lose.

Again.

He told himself he needed to keep it together. He wouldn’t shout at Reid, not when he was still recovering from Hankel, from Gideon, from all the other bad things that had happened to him since then. And if he was being completely honest, he probably couldn’t shout at Reid, even if he needed to. For although he knew Spencer wasn’t the same innocent, uncoordinated mess that had joined his unit five years ago, he was still so good and kind. Hotch wouldn’t take that from him by shouting because he was frustrated at himself.

Instead, he provoked a dangerous serial killer. That had been one of the few things Haley had never gotten wrong about him: he never did things half-heartedly.

So instead of asking questions to help understand why Hardwick had killed all those women, he shrugged his jacket off, loosened his tie (the memory of cold metal pressed against his neck still woke him even now) and raised his hands on a man who could very easily take any of the things in the room and kill him.

It was stupid. It was reckless. It was the kind of behaviour his father would beat him for, that Haley would shout at him for, and that Rossi would probably give him a round of applause and a drink.

But he was so angry at everything and everyone and he needed to relieve the tension but he couldn’t do it by going down the firing range and shooting a gun because it wasn’t the same. Maybe he was exactly like his father in that respect. Maybe it was the first step into becoming the monster he always knew he would be. It was unfair to say all abused children became abusers. It was fair to say profilers were just unsubs on the right side of the law. Sure, they did the right thing, but at the end of the day, they knew how serial killers and child abducters worked. Crossing the line wouldn’t be hard for any of them.

He raised his fists at a serial killer because he needed to feel something under them. He needed to release the anger and sadness and guilt that flowed beneath his veins. Needed to see the blood on his fists from punching something too hard as a reminder he was human. And he knew that wasn’t healthy, but it was the truth.

Something he had never been good with.

It was stupid. And he should have- could have, very easily- died.

But of course Reid saved him. Dr Spencer Reid, who was always rattling off statistics nobody understood, who had almost been sick at his first crime scene, who had teared up during his first solo interrogation, saved him. By playing to his strengths. He went on and on about the effects of abuse on a child, about the psychology behind finding release in murder, about what made someone into a serial killer.

He kept his audience of one captive for so long that the guards came and unlocked the door without Hardwick ever laying a hand on either of them. He managed to talk a serial killer out of murdering two federal agents. Hotch felt so proud. And disgusted with himself. Reid had talked long enough for the anger to evaporate into thin air and the shame to rain down on him like a storm.

What had he done? It wasn’t falling apart, because he knew what it was like when he fell apart, and that wasn’t it, but it was horrifying. Humiliating. He had put himself and his own issues above Reid’s safety.

He was every bit the narcissist Reid had once described him as being. The thought made him sick. Today it had been a serial killer, but how long before it became his team? Before it became his son?

He felt sick. But he forced himself to get behind the wheel, rejecting Reid’s offer to take over the driving for a little bit. He knew Reid hated driving. But when they had been on the road for a good twenty minutes, and the younger agent still hadn’t said anything about the journey back, or the sky, or the cars around them, he knew he had screwed up.

Scratch that. He had fucked up.

Which was why he told Reid the truth. He hated speaking about his personal life, had always struggled with being open with others, especially the people he worked with because he was the Unit Chief and that meant he was supposed to be there as a strong presence that couldn’t be harmed, but Reid deserved to know why Hotch had been so willing to try and get himself killed.

“I am sorry. I shouldn’t have endangered you like that. It was wrong, and if you want to say something to Rossi or Strauss, I won’t stop you,” he said, after his confession that he couldn’t get what he wanted.

“I won’t say anything Hotch. You would never purposely disregard my safety. Even if you put yourself at risk, any harm that happened to me wouldn’t be deliberate. I know you kick better than a nine year old girl, and that you were holding back with Dowd because you didn’t want to hurt me too badly. And you didn’t,” Reid replied.

His throat went dry. “Hurt you too badly? As in, I did hurt you?”

The sudden fear he radiated made Reid pause. A bad move. Hotch was a damn good profiler, and whilst he always tried to follow the no inter-team profiling rule, some things were just too obvious to miss.

“I need to pull over,” he said.

Reid nodded, face pale and terrified. Luckily, he didn’t follow when he got out the car. And when he returned, Reid handed him a bottle of water and a mint.

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he had whispered after Hotch had begrudgingly taken both.

“I hurt you,” Hotch replied. There was no point in trying to be the Unit Chief now. Reid had dismantled his shields by accident, and no suit or back-up weapon could prevent Aaron emerging and taking over from SSA Hotchner.

“But it wasn’t intentional then, and it wasn’t intentional with Hardwick. And you would never hurt Jack. Not in the way you think you may. I’m not saying you’re never going to make a mistake, you will, but you won’t hurt him the way your father did. You’re too good of a person to do it. I saw you holding Jack. The love in your eyes couldn’t be faked. And the way you rocked me to sleep after Gideon left was gentle and kind. You made a mistake with Hardwick. And that’s okay. You don’t have to be perfect. Not with us.”

Hotch stared at him. “I- how do you know about my father?” he asked, defences rising. The only members of the team who had known were Gideon who never followed the rules, and Dave, who had always had a soft spot for him.

Spencer flushed. “I didn’t profile you. We shared a room that one time, and the door to the bathroom wasn’t closed properly so I saw the scars. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been looking.”

“It’s okay,” he said, because it had to be.

The younger man didn’t seem convinced.

“Spencer.” The use of first names always drove points home. “It’s fine. I suppose everyone was going to work it out at one point or another. Thank you for not bringing it up then.”

When they pulled into the car park at Quantico, Reid did something very unexpected. He hugged Hotch. For a moment, he stood there, frozen because it had been so long since someone had done more than shake his hand that a hug felt so foreign, but then he regained control of his body and he bought his arms up and around him.

“Thank you Spencer,” he said.

“You once said to JJ that it’s okay if you lose it every once in a while. That it reminds us that we’re human. I think you should take your own advice.”

He nodded. But he didn’t.

He signed his divorce papers without contest. Haley was right: Jack deserved better than a father who could never confirm whether or not he would be there. He deserved better than a father who woke up in the middle of the night, and he definitely deserved better than a man who’s biggest fear was not that someone else would hurt their child, but that they would be the one to hurt them.

He signed the papers.

And then he got spectacularly drunk.

He used to love New York. He had never worked there, but one of the few holidays he’d had with Haley that hadn’t been cut short was spent in New York. They’d never had a case there, which was why they were both so eager to go.

It had been so nice, to be in a city, and not remember an unsub who tortured women then left their bodies in ditches, or who had preyed on vulnerable children and then manipulated them into joining their twisted cults.

He had loved New York.

And then Kate Joyner had died.

He wasn’t stupid, and his hearing wasn’t damaged when they first arrived. He heard JJ’s remark about her appearance and the tone in Emily’s voice when she had repeated his earlier statement that they had liased together.

It embarrassed him. If he had heard, then Kate definitely knew what they were saying. Not only did she have better hearing than he did, she was also pretty good at reading lips- a skill Hotch had learnt in SWAT and taught her for fun. And she had been staring at them, not him, when they spoke. It wasn’t going to be difficult for her to fill in the gaps.

They hadn’t slept together. He had been happily married at that time, still affectionately calling Haley at every opportunity. And she hadn’t been interested in him like that. They had just been friends that worked well together. He had found it easy to open up to her, and she had liked him because his Southern upbringing meant he was nothing but a gentleman to her.

Then they were both blown up, only he walked away with nothing but a ringing ear and a breaking heart. She would never do anything ever again, and it was all his fault. Everyone he cared about either left or died- his mother, Haley, Kate and Sean.

“Look man, I’m not going to pretend you’re fine because I’ve called your name twice and you haven’t even raised an eyebrow so you’re going to pull over and I’m going to drive,” Morgan shouted.

Hotch slammed the brake far too hard, and turned, glowering at his subordinate. “I could’ve crashed the car then. You don’t need to yell.”

“Yes, I do. What is going on with your ear?”

“It’s nothing.”

Morgan looked at him, the disbelief clear, but eventually rolled his eyes and turned to stare out the window. Hotch took the hint and started driving.

When they got back to Quantico, Rossi was tucked away in his office, and when Hotch looked through the paperwork he needed to fill in, he found half of it missing. JJ had left a note with her file saying she had moved his meeting with Strauss to next week. Garcia had left a batch of chocolate cupcakes with one of her many soft toys. Prentiss had already written her report, with no evidence of Reid’s input. Morgan appeared with his not too long after they returned. Reid offered to take the consults he had to do before he went home to an empty apartment.

He accepted, the impossible smile making an appearance.

His team- no, his family- were always going to be there. He realised then that he could depend on them. That they wanted him to depend on him. Because they could all trust him with their lives, and everything they had done since landing had been to show him that they understood. That he wasn’t alone.

His joy lasted till the door to his apartment swung open, and he was greeted with the impersonal furniture, boxes he hadn’t had the time to unpack. The absence of a smiling blonde and excited little boy pretending to be a superhero.

Instead of breaking, he pulled out a file about a case involving missing women. They had all been pregnant, unmarried and blonde. He hadn’t wanted JJ to see it. So he worked on a profile late into the night, only putting the file away when he was pleased the police would be able to find the unsub.

He couldn’t protect his team from a lot, but this. This he could do. It was better than them realising he wasn’t worth baking for, wasn’t worth their attempts of comfort and walked away.

Haley was dead. She had been killed in the home they were supposed to raise their son in together, all because he had wanted to be a hero and refused to take the deal. The deal she had never found out about and would never find out about because Foyet had murdered her. It was stupid, but Hotch wondered what would have happened if he had taken the transfer. It wouldn’t have been this.

Foyet was dead. He had killed a man with nothing but his bare hands. He was worse than his father. He had killed a man who said they had surrendered because he was angry. And he knew Foyet would have never surrendered. He would’ve waited for Hotch to move away and then killed him, found Jack and made good on his promise. He knew that, logically, there was no other option.

It didn’t make him feel any less like a monster. That was part of the reason why he had sent Jack away as soon as possible. He didn’t want his son to see him covered in blood long enough for it to become a proper memory. Didn’t want his son to see it and start asking if his daddy had been hurt by a bad guy because he didn’t want to explain that this time, daddy had been the one to hurt the bad guy. He had hurt him so badly that he was never coming back.

And neither was mommy.

The only real parent Jack had ever had was gone, and he didn’t know what to do. He had never prepared himself to have the conversation about death with Jack. It was morbid, but he had always assumed Haley would be the one explaining that sometimes bad things happen to good people, and because of that, dad wasn’t going to be coming home anymore, because he was going to go to heaven instead.

He’d never been particularly religious. But he wished he was. At least then he could believe himself when he finally told Jack that mommy had gone to heaven like some of the other kids’ grandparents.

Not for the first time, he wondered why he ever thought having kids was a good idea. He hadn’t wanted them at first. He hadn’t wanted to bring a child into the world when so many people were evil and malicious. Hadn’t wanted to put anyone else at risk of becoming the object of his anger. He didn’t want to repeat the actions of his father and become the monster in the closet he had always been terrified of.

Then he had met Haley, and she reminded him of the stars. For she brightened even the darkest moments, and he just knew that no matter what he became, if she had his children, they would shine like the brightest star, and they would never become irreparably damaged by his own paranoia and fear because she would be there for them.

Now she was gone. And it was all his fault.

But he managed to keep it together at work for his team, and at home for his son.

Jessica had been a lifesaver, taking Jack out when Hotch needed a break, staying with them until Jack had settled into the apartment properly. She even dug up old albums and gave them to Hotch, saying that he deserved to have them. The two of them had grown closer, and he was happy for that, but he just wished it hadn’t taken the death of Haley to let them bond. Jack had nightmares about a loud bang, and sometimes he would wake up crying for his mother, but Hotch had already started looking into therapists for children, and he also sat with Jack, stroking his hair and reading him stories till he fell asleep.

He never told Jack he too had nightmares about lots of things, and sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night, terrified and wanting someone there to comfort him. Both Jessica and the bureau psychologist he was forced to see had told him to, but there was something- pride mainly- that prevented him from ever admitting to his son that he wasn’t okay.

At work, he compartmentalized as much as was humanly possible. The team were doing their best to cope, and he knew the only reason he’d been offered the option to take his retirement package or return, as opposed to being fired without any benefits, was because of the accounts they had given Strauss. Accounts that framed him as a man desperate to bring a killer to justice and protect his son, as opposed to a man who had become obsessed with one particular case that had hindered his ability to do his job.

He never said thank you, because he knew they wouldn’t understand. In their eyes, he had been heroic. He had done what any of them would have. But Hotch knew he hadn’t. He knew his team. They were better people than he was, and they would never have killed a man who had surrendered, no matter how bad their crimes had been.

So although he wasn’t okay, he kept it together. He kept it together for as long as he could, and he ignored his own broken heart, ignored the constant replay of the final conversation he’d ever had with Haley and the sound of gunshots ringing out. He ignored the nightmares and the memories, the sick feeling that overwhelmed him every time he remembered that Foyet had won by destroying him and then moulding him into the person he’d sworn not to become.

He stayed strong because he had to be. But it was becoming harder everyday as the threads that held him together frayed with every scream from his son’s bedroom, every sympathetic smile Strauss gave him in meetings, every hand Jessica placed on his shoulder, every file his team tried to hide from him and pass to Rossi to sign off on instead.

It was three months after that the thread finally snapped clean in half. He had thought he was getting better. Jack certainly was. His twice-weekly trips to the therapist were proving to be beneficial as he was sleeping through the night more often and finding it easier to talk about his mom, even if he didn’t fully understand what was going on. Jessica had gone back to work and was slowly moving through her own grief as she tried to honour the memory of her sister by sharing her memories with her son and ex-husband.

Aaron thought he was doing the same, but maybe repressing and coping had become the same in his mind.

It was late, but Jack had gone to see his grandparents with Jessica and he didn’t fancy going home- not when the rest of his team were still there- so he got a coffee, ignored their concerned faces and started working on a consult he hadn’t got round to the previous day.

He dropped his mug the moment he opened the case file and saw who the victims were.

All blonde women. All divorcees. All of them had been the ones that filed, and all of them had filed because they felt neglected. All of them had been awarded custody of the child, without a court hearing. The police were stuck because they couldn’t find anyone in the local area who had been married to a blonde woman and had one young child.

The sight of their bodies, mutilated and bloody, made him sick. The images blurred as he tried to blink away tears. Next to the photos of their dead bodies were the pictures of their faces, genuine smiles and sparkling eyes, blissfully unaware of the evil that was about to happen.

He didn’t hear the mug shatter into nothing as hot coffee went all over the wooden flooring. All he heard was a gunshot, then another and then a third, and Foyet taunting him, saying he would find Jack and show him the bodies of his dead parents. Maybe he screamed, maybe he couldn’t make a sound, but he couldn’t see anything properly as tears streamed down his face and made everything unfocused and fuzzy.

“-you hear me?” someone asked.

He blinked. Why was he on the floor? What had happened? He looked down, saw his knees pulled to his chest, hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“What?” he managed to say, voice hoarse.

“What’s wrong?” Rossi asked, kneeling beside him.

He looked up, saw Spencer and JJ in the room, Emily and Morgan in the doorway, and Garcia behind them.

“Nothing,” he lied. He was supposed their leader, the mom of the team- he had grown to accept that title. He couldn’t fall apart in front of them. “You’re going to hurt your knees if you sit like that for much longer.”

Rossi cursed in Italian. “Kiddo, I don’t care. I want to know what’s going on with you. You’ve been pretending to be strong for these past few months, and we know how much you hate anyone interfering with your personal life, but if you’re hurting, you need to let me help.”

“It’s nothing,” he repeated.

JJ picked up the file, opened it without a word. “Oh, Hotch. Why didn’t you let one of the others deal with it?”

There was such sadness in her eyes, he couldn’t look at them. “Because I can handle it.”

The sound of Reid’s cane coming closer gave him something else to focus on. “Hey Hotch,” he greeted gently. “Do you want to know something? After Hankel, I found it almost impossible to deal with consults involving someone who was using drugs, either on themselves or the victims. I had to try and pass the files off to Morgan and Prentiss. I can do them now, but it still hurts. So it’s okay.”

“No it’s not,” he said. “It’s not because it’s my fault she’s dead. If I hadn’t rejected the deal, all those people on the bus would still be alive, Haley would be here and Jack would have a real parent, who could be there and comfort him, instead of a failure of a father who can’t guarantee to keep him safe and who wakes up shouting in the middle of the night.” He didn’t know why he suddenly opened up, but Reid just had that effect on people sometimes.

Reid blanched. Rossi pulled away, shock all over his face. Garcia pushed her way into the room, heels louder than Reid’s cane and threw her arms around Hotch in a tight hug. He felt the sleeve of his shirt start to get wet, and it was only then that he realised Garcia was crying.

“It is not your fault that Haley died. It is Foyet’s. He killed her, and you had no control over his actions. You did the right thing by not taking the deal, and don’t you ever think otherwise. You are a real parent. You’re a parent to almost everyone on this team, and you’re a wonderful father to Jack. Stop beating yourself up. You’ll never be able to protect him from everything, but that doesn’t mean you’re not good. You are the best man I know, and I know some pretty great people. So dry those eyes, and let us help you,” she said, determined.

He stared at her for a few moments.

“Sir,” she added hesitantly.

“Do you honestly believe that?” he asked, more tears threatening to spill.

Garcia nodded.

Morgan crept closer. “I know what it’s like to grow up with a dad. And Jack will never have to go through that, because even if you’re not there in person, you’re there emotionally. He won’t remember missed soccer games or forgotten parent-teacher conferences. He’ll remember how you read to him, how you always listened.”

“My father turned up to everything I ever did. But it never felt like he cared. It felt like he was just trying to keep my mother happy. When you go to Jack’s things, he knows you’re there because you love him, and that is all any child wants,” Emily added.

“You’re more of a father than my own dad ever was,” Reid declared.

“Hotch, you were the one that taught me that this job doesn’t have to take everything away from us. That we can still form meaningful relationships with others. You never doubt my choices, you just make sure I’m able to back them up, and you’re the reason I don’t go home fretting about whether or not I made the right call,” JJ said, tucking the file away.

“Aaron, I never got to meet my son. But every time I see you smile, every time I see you handcuff another unsub, or speak to a victim, I am reminded that family is not just blood. You’ve been strong for far too long. Let yourself fall and trust us to catch you,” Rossi finally spoke.

“I just couldn’t believe she was gone. And then I saw the photos, and I realised it must have been like that for someone else when she died and it finally hit me and I just couldn’t, but I thought I was moving on and-“ he couldn’t speak, the words not able to push past the lump in his throat as the emotions finally overwhelmed him and the soft cries became mournful sobs that eventually calmed into sniffles.

Rossi and Garcia never stopped hugging him. Reid kept his hand on his shoulder. JJ smoothed his hair, singing the same lullabies that Henry heard every night before he slept. Morgan and Prentiss stood to the side, having locked the door and closed the blinds.

Once he had enough awareness to realise what he had done, he tensed and waited for the hit. It never came. What came instead was a series of encouraging smiles, the option to talk, or just sit in silence. The promise to never leave. To always be there when he needed them.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“You’re our family Hotch. We’re not going to let you suffer,” Morgan said.

Everyone nodded.

It wasn’t easy, falling apart. Especially not in front of your colleagues. But Morgan was right, they were a family. So Hotch finally let himself fall, finally let himself feel all the grief he had been burying for so long, and for once in his life, he let someone else catch him. He let them in. He accepted their support, however long it took for him to actually do so was irrelevant. He let himself cry, and he let his family dry his tears.

They wouldn’t leave him. Not now. Not ever.

But soon, he would be saying goodbye to JJ, wondering how they were going to survive without her. He would be faking Emily’s death, then fleeing because he was a coward who couldn’t bear to see their grief-stricken faces. He would be forced to confront his own actions, reveal the deadly secret that had been slowly killing him. He would damage the trust that had taken so long to build, damage the friendship he had with Morgan, potentially ruin the friendship between Reid and JJ.

He would be crying himself to sleep. Having nightmares that stopped him from doing that for more than a few moments.

And then Garcia would find him rocking himself in his office, whispering I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, to himself. She would drop her request for advanced technology, and once again wrap her arms around him. She would tell him that he did the right thing, that in time, everyone would forgive him, would trust him again. He would look at her, and her heart would break, because her boss should never look that pale and broken, and ask if she was sure.

She wouldn’t be able to answer for a moment. And then she would say she forgives him. And that it was okay.

The next day, Morgan would ask him to check a file. Reid would tell him about the stars. Garcia would bring him a slice of pie. Rossi wouldn’t make any comments that undermined his authority or showed a lack of trust. Prentiss would call him Hotch again, instead of sir. He would invite them for dinner, and they would all accept.

He would confess that keeping the secret had broken him, and they would all forgive him. He would finally let himself cry, let them put him back together. And they would decide to have a very dodgy sleepover- Garcia’s suggestion- because Jack wanted to see Henry, and who could ever say no to his requests.

And that night, Spencer Reid would phone his sponsor, not because he was scared of using, but because he didn’t want to.

Jennifer Jareau would snuggle up to William LaMontagne Jr instead of pulling away from him like she had the past few months.

Derek Morgan would not blame himself for everything that had gone wrong that day.

David Rossi would not curse the God he believed in, he would thank Him for bringing Emily back safely, and for granting Aaron peace.

Emily Prentiss would sleep without a knot in her stomach, for she would finally be sure her family would be okay.

And Aaron Hotchner would watch his family with a smile, before he finally fell asleep as well, not a single tear needed to exhaust himself. He would be a little more whole, once again sure the people around him did truly love him. And he would remember his wife, just before he fell asleep, and it wouldn’t hurt, because he was happy.

#criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner #hurt hotch #sad hotch #dear lord why am i doing this #tw child abuse #sumayyah writes cm

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