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#also this is definitely going to be continued so don’t worry! it’s a little excerpt from the wip I mentioned in the wip tag game
doll-elvis · 8 months
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girl please give us your opinion on Elvis and porn🤭 i know he had some he would watch that Linda mentions in her book. I just find it funny to think about that even Elvis Presley watched porn
NSFW (18+ content)
this is now the 3rd time that I’ve looked at my inbox and my jaw dropped 😃- anyways thank you for the ask <3 !!
I’m just going to break this down by the decades because the man definitely got freakier as the years went along- also forgive me Elvis, I’m sorry to air out your business like this 😭
There is not that much info on his preferences in the 1950s and the only source I have that says something informative is from Albert Goldman's "Elvis" so take this with a grain of salt: Based on an excerpt from his book it seems Elvis was primarily interested in your standard "dirty" magazine such as Playboy. Goldman alleges (and remember Lamar Fike was his main source) that Elvis would send one of the guys, on a monthly basis, down to Hollywood Boulevard where they would purchase such magazines, spending up to 40 dollars. There is also a story in June Juanico's book where she recounts walking in on Elvis and a few of the guys watching a "skin flick". When she questioned Elvis about it he claimed he was invited into the room by Dewey Phillips, not knowing that a p*rno was being shown (do y'all believe him lmaoo?)
and don’t mind him, just casually reading Playboy in the middle of a store 💀
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His Polaroids of Priscilla and his tapes of girls wrestling were undoubtedly his preferred form of p*rn in the 1960s. This man would literally spend hundreds of dollars on film to photograph Priscilla. He also had guys in his group, primarily Alan Fortas, film women "making love" and wrestling. There were even tapes made of Priscilla and another woman (reportedly her friend) simulating s*x that Elvis personally filmed
(excerpt from “Down at the End of the Lonely street” by Peter H. Brown)
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But according to Joe Esposito and Marty Lacker, who once watched all of the tapes while Elvis was out on tour, he seldom appeared in any of them, and if he did, he was clothed
(excerpt from “Good Rockin’ Tonight” by Joe Esposito)
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Billy Smith did say, however, that he found a tape where it showed Elvis and a girl quote “going through the motions” (catch me raiding the Graceland archives to find it)
Elvis' affinity for the Polaroids he took of Priscilla continued throughout the 1970s, Linda Thompson even mentions in her book that he would show them to her. He would also carry them around in a samsonite case pictured below⬇️
(I’m sorry but the fact that he traveled with them is so funny to me 😩, he was serious about them Polaroids!!)
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And there is also the notorious story of Elvis boarding a commercial plane, narcotics badge in hand, to prevent an employee referred to as “Hamburger James” by the Memphis Mafia and “Fetchit” by Linda Thompson, from escaping with a few Polaroids of Priscilla that he snatched and a ring of Elvis’, although Linda did say Elvis only really cared about the Polaroids. Elvis dragged Hamburger James off the plane, roughed him up a little, slapped him around, before eventually he letting him go
As the adult film industry evolved in the 1970s, his preferences definitely evolved with it. I'm still shook that Linda Thompson name dropped the two p*rnos that they watched together, but of course when I initially read her book my curiosity got the best of me and I watched what she named… and I'm still scarred 💀 (iykyk)
I wish I could find the comment, but someone on another post mentioned how in the 1970s, that sort of p*rn was "in" and quite avant-garde for the time period. Although the two p*rnos Linda mentioned seemed a little outlandish to me they were actually among the top five highest grossing of the 1970s, so if your perception of Elvis changed after watching "the Devil in Miss Jones", don't worry because everybody was watching it lmaoo. If you want to get another idea of what was highly regarded in the adult film industry at that time, know that "D**p Throat" starring Linda Lovelace was the most popular film of the 1970s, and the whole plot is that she had a medical condition where her cl*toris was located in her throat... they were innovative back then with their ideas, to say the very least 👀
Elvis’ personal copy of “d**p throat” ⬇️
however I do believe that kind of p*rnography was something that Elvis only indulged in for a few years in the early to mid 70s, and I believe that based on a story that Larry Geller told about Elvis which occurred in the late 70s⬇️
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I think Elvis always tried to be a really moral person, but with his lifestyle, there were times when he went "hog-wild," as Lamar put it, like on his army furloughs to Paris and going through all the Lido, Folies Bergere, and Crazy Horse dancers, and his weekends off in Germany at clubs like the Moulin Rouge. Towards the end of the 70s, I believe he was far more focused on finding his soulmate and willing to abstain from things like s*x and p*rnography in order to do so. Basically this man was too occupied with his spiritual books and search for lasting love to be interested in watching "d**p throat” 😂
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fairytale-poll · 7 months
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ROUND 3! MATCH 2 OUT OF 4
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Propaganda Under the Cut:
Queen Red Riding Hood:
She's a girlboss who is sometimes a little vain but still loves her friends and will do anything to save her kingdom. Also she was in love with a guy since she was like 8 and he continuously rejected her, and then she found out he was in love with her archenemy. So yeah, she needs this.
She's kinda spoiled and high maintenance but gets better. I just think she's a fun character
i loved the land of stories series as a kid and i especially loved red because shes sooo full of herself and wears beautiful dresses and expensive jewelry and stuff (she became a queen lol) but also she does come to genuinely care for people and her friends and has a good heart (even if she does brag about it) she’s a very funny character x)
She’s a great example of how sudden fame and wealth at a young age can go to your head, and she gets great character development about it. She has an entire giant chamber in her castle full of baskets (it’s unfortunately quite flammable). My most favorite detail about her is when she finds a wolf pup in the woods, she assumes it’s a dog and names him Clawdius (yes, spelled like that). Everyone else knows it’s a wolf but no one wants to be the one to tell her. She learns the truth and gets over it and now Clawdius is her guard wolf. (Oh also she had the original Big Bad Wolf made into a winter coat, and that’s the original reason Clawdius came to her) I love her, she’s married to a giant frog man, she got elected queen, please vote for her.
Queen Red ftw!!!!!!
As you can see from these little excerpts [Mod's note: click on link to look at the excerpts] that I managed to gather in less than ten minutes, you should vote for Queen Red :D
YESSSS VOTE FOR QUEEN RED, SHE DESERVES THIS SO MUCH
Vote for Queen Red TLoS!!! She's a girlboss who married a frog man :D
Cerise:
She’s the child of the red riding hood and the big bad wolf. Don’t question it to okay. Also she was the first character I thought of when I saw this!
She’s the daughter of red riding hood and the big bad wolf! She’s a werewolf!
Love her design very much. She gets a lot of great outfits. Also, another version of Red Riding Hood that incorporates both the girl and the wolf together.
1: ever after high was iconic and amazing and so well written and i'm really bitter that it was cancelled so i think cerise deserves this win (i do too) 2: her design is really good. like no one else could EVER if you ask me 3: wolf girl. do i NEED to say more. ...honestly, my brain cannot bring out any more words so fingers crossed someone else submits her and she gets some ACTUAL GOOD propaganda (sorry cerise forgive me)
She’s a badass red riding hood with a secret (her dad is the big bad wolf)
She's the daughter of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, so she has wolf ears and is really strong. She's supposed to be the next Red Riding Hood so she should count.
She's the daughter of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf making her a daughter of forbidden love and thus a double representation of Little Red Riding Hood's age-old story of maturity and adolescence.
She's really cool! She was born from a forbidden romance between the wolf (don't worry he turns into a human lmao) and Little Red Riding Hood and has to hide her heritage from other people which I think is really interesting. Also her hood is really pretty.
She's the daughter of red riding hood and is meant to take over that role when it's her time
she slays so hard!! while technically shes not THE little red riding hood, she is her daughter and the FUTURE little red riding hood. shes also half wolf, which is really cool!! and yea. she slays.
idk she’s just cool & definitely gay
She’s meant to be the next Red Riding Hood but her whole bit is that not only is her mom Red Riding Hood, her father is the Big Bad Wolf and she needs to keep it a secret. The best of both worlds. The tween girls went crazy for the wolf thing. Had a pretty doll and cool outfits. Has an older sister who’s meant to be the next Big Bad Wolf (Ramona Badwolf) who she comes into conflict with. Identity crisis! She was everything to eleven year old me
She’s half wolf, she has cool white streaks in her hair, she’s a jock with super speed and I like her a lot.
she turned me lesbian.
Fan favourite, my first lesbian crush on a character
She is a daughter of previous Little Red Riding Hood and Big Bad Wolf, how cool is that
She’s a furry yeuwu
she’s the daughter of red riding hood and the big bad wolf. she’s a wolf girl. i love her
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fancifulflora · 11 months
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Jayce “Button” Wiseman
This is my Button from the Choice game made by @mindblindbard​ I’ll dunno if I can write it as well as the other IFs on my list but I’ll try after some research lol (Picrew)
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Name Meaning: Healer, Cure (It doesn’t really have much to do with why they’re named that way though lmao- the answer is a lot sillier than you’d think)
Callsign: Hemera
Aeon Program: M.I.V N.P.O - Trial
Pollard Score: Zero Five
Age: 20
Birthdate: 20XX, September 5th
Pronouns: He/They
Height: 198 cm/ 6′6
Weight: 86.3 kg
Appearance: Smooth, beige skin that tans quickly when exposed to the sun. Light blue eyes and black, shoulder-length hair that is pulled into a small ponytail and is otherwise left untamed. Very tall in stature and built like a large dorito with moderate muscle definition. Wears dark clothing but shies away from black to get out of their “loner” days in high school. Has multiple piercings in the ear and some on the face. Has a full-sleeve tattoo on their right arm and a bunch of tattoos on their back. Will grow stubble if left unchecked for a few weeks.
Noticeable Attributes: Tattoos creeping up the neck and down one arm- possibly more hidden, small cut through the right eyebrow, thick lashes.
Default Expression: Apathetic
Character Traits: Expident, Charismatic, Confident, Accepting  
Description:
An excerpt from UNITY’s Student Evaluation for Cadet Wiseman. Evaluation Instructor: Ambrose S. Kim
As the second and most recent student to enroll in the Non-Psychic Operative Program (N.P.O), Jayce Wiseman has already shown strategic promise as a MIV during their first assignment- as low risk as it was.
 Wiseman also shows physical prowess as well, demonstrating adept usage of melee weaponry and kickboxing in hand-to-hand combat. If they are able to continue their training, Wiseman could turn out to be a valuable asset in Unity’s mission.
A section from a letter sent from Nicholas “Hyacinth” Wiseman to Hope Wiseman
Alright, alright, enough going on about myself (Although I’m an admittedly pretty interesting topic). I should get on to the juicy content you’ve probably been waiting for!
Your dearest Detective Nick’s report on Button (Should I get that trademarked? I should get it trademarked.)
I know you two talk every day but Button doesn’t even think to add all the important details about themselves. Like, for example, how they stole my motorcycle for themselves a few months ago and almost immediately started working on it. 
Sure, I might not use it at all, but I’m 80% certain I’m the one still paying insurance. And before you say anything, don’t worry Mom, I always make sure that they put on their helmet before they go crazy.
Aside from calling me Saint Nick, Jayce’s also gotten into the habit of calling me “Little” brother ever since they hit their growth spurt- just because they’re a few inches taller. He’s also insistent that he’s the more attractive one out of the two of us since he’s a little bulkier and has tattoos and piercings.
“People like tattoos,” He insists.
Oh! There was also this one night I was working late at Aeon so I told Button ‘bout where the leftovers were in the fridge.
Get this though, it’s the sweetest thing ever- and most definitely something Jayce hasn’t told you- but I came home and my little bro was asleep on the couch. More importantly, he made dinner! 
I’m wiping away a fake tear as I write this, just wanted you to know, Mom.
It’s getting late though and we’ve only got a week till Button has their first day at Unity, so I should go get started on dinner and keep Jayce all fueled up, especially when they’ve been busy taking their worries out on poor punching bags at the kickboxing center downtown.
I’ll be sure to write to you soon! Take care of yourself, Mom.
- Nick
Bonus Information:
MTBI:  INTJ-A, The Architect
Temperament: Choleric 
Zodiac: Virgo Sun, Scorpio Moon, Capricorn Rising
Alignment: Neutral Good
Greatest Assets: Optimistic and Resilient
Greatest Flaws: Combative. Very Combative. And Critical.
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dendylabyrinth · 2 years
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Kyoko for your character ask
I love my red hobo, so sure!
Why I like them
Kyoko is complex, she’s basically this jaded softie who pretends as if she’s a cold-hearted asshole. But she’s also got some principles. Like she will help if someone needs it, even if she complains while doing so. Doesn’t hurt that she can be snarky like hell. Homecoming was really amazing for her character. It reminded me of all the things I like about Kyoko. Seeing her realize how much she ‘strayed’ from her principles now that she has gone through so much with everyone in the game’s story was really interesting. And how it addressed her regrets about Momo was just… (what’s the sad version of a chef’s kiss?). It even made some parallels between Kyoko and her father, how, same as he gave up and abandoned everything, she abandons anything that hurts her (Mami, her past, wish, etc) Homecoming is one those events worth checking out even if you’re not into Magia Record, it’s that good. Kyoko is complicated, but at her core, she’s definitely good.
Why I don’t
She can be really uninvested in what’s going on. But I get it, she’s the type who does her own thing and would prefer not to get involved with other people because of what happened with her family and Mami.
At least she’s way too much of a softie to leave people burning in the wreckage of whatever shit she pulls off.
Favorite scene
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Honestly? All of Homecoming was really good. If I had to pick though, I would say the parts where Kyoko starts to slowly become more and more vulnerable after she remembers that Momo is dead. Here’s an excerpt from the wiki’s summary:
Kyoko recaps her past and her wish, how she lost her magic; how Momo was so little, so innocent, someone Kyoko had to protect - and failed at doing so miserably.
After Kyoko returns to her father’s church to reflect on the foundation of her principles, she leaves just as confused as before she went. She walks in the snow with Momo. Even though she knows by that point that Momo is dead and this one is just an illusion of some kind, that Momo didn’t disappear, seemingly because Kyoko regrets not being able to save her that much, so her desire to have Momo with her makes her accept even an illusion (which is really ironic considering her lost illusion magic). Sayaka shows up and calls out to Kyoko, but she doesn’t respond, she just whispers Momo’s name and continues to walk away. Sayaka, meanwhile, starts to get worried. This scene speaks so much about Kyoko’s character, exploring new aspects alongside the stuff we have already seen. Kyoko was never seen really talking about regrets. Sure, she does talk about her wish causing her family to break, but the way she talks about it is more of in the style of ‘cause and effect’. Don’t get me wrong, she definitely is harboring regrets over it, but it’s more on brand for Kyoko to bury whatever haunts her after deciding to live for herself. So getting to see her feel so vulnerable and honest about her regrets strikes such a strong note for how I perceived her before. The setup being a dreamworld that will end in 3 days forces Kyoko to face whatever she is burying, especially now that she has Momo back.
Also, it’s pretty sweet seeing how Kyoko acts when Momo is with her: always asking her what she thinks, if she wants Kyoko to help that person, and her being generally less abrasive because she has Momo is really sad in retrospect.
Favorite line
I like this line of thought she has in Homecoming:
‘A happy ending, huh… Even though I believe there ain't no such thing... ...as a story where love and courage overcome all, does all this mean… ...that in the end, I still haven't given up on my dumbass hope that I can save people?’
Hearing her taking a good look of herself and what she’s really burying deep down is pretty heavy, knowing what she usually preaches.
Favorite outfit
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Her winter clothes are really good! The aesthetic choice of stepping away from red for once works, because this color combo looks really good. Bonus points for practicality since it looks warm.
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Gotta include her doppel alt. Those colors? She looks so cool! I really appreciate the detail that her hair is like Momo’s, adds a touch of SOB to the whole thing.
OTP
Listen, I offer Sayaka. I also will offer an explanation for all your ‘blah!’s. People who ship Kyoko and Sayaka usually skip out on Magia Record since the Sayaka there is ‘the straight one’, in which case, you people must have some weakass vision because the ship material IS there, you’re just still riding the rebellion high. Which, fair, the moment they had was sweet, but do keep in mind that that Sayaka was a Sayaka who got a bunch of other Sayakas’ memories in her, so Kyoko’s gayness had to be that obvious by that point (getting to see that gay as hell couple’s suicide numerous times might as well have awakened the bi in her). But in Magia Record? The two are really what I would imagine normal, non-ascension involved, Sayaka and Kyoko shippy moments to be: Kyoko being an ass towards Sayaka but not really at the same time, and Sayaka being suprised by whatever new side she sees in Kyoko. Want proof you non-believers? Look no further than Surfing Sayaka’s event, which is coincidentally being rerun right now: Nacht Marchen (Night Fairytale). The story is that Sayaka gets involved in a decades old tale when she finds a magical toy robot that comes to life called Ponta, who’s looking for something related to a ‘voice of the waves’ that’s been going around. When Sayaka learns that owner of the villa where they have been staying had an accident that happened to her 50 years ago reversed by her best friend making a wish, she and Kyoko have to face the dilemma of whether they should tell her about that wish (the girl died in a labyrinth long ago without anyone knowing). While Sayaka doesn’t know what to say, Kyoko, after being quiet, surprisingly jumps in and tells the villa owner that her friend wished for a miracle for the owner’s sake, even if she doesn’t believe them. But the villa owner thanks Kyoko for telling her. Later that night, Sayaka finds Kyoko awake and they talk about whether letting someone know that you made a miracle happen for their sake is okay. I really love this conversation, as it really shows how they share this common point where they understand each other, which creates a whole different vibe from their usual squabbling. Here’s a summary of said moment by MochiDDR:
Kyouko says that even if you tell someone, it doesn't mean they'll believe you, and even if they believe you, it doesn't mean they'll be happy. Just because you make a wish for someone doesn't mean they would have wanted it, and that becoming a mahou shoujo means the price you have to pay is to keep your wish a secret to them. Kyouko asks Sayaka what's wrong, she replies that she made the same wish as Misa. Kyouko asks her if she regrets her wish, Sayaka says she doesn't.
An interesting point to add is that Kyoko’s appearance in the event gets a lot of build, so much so that she only shows up in the later half of the story. There’s also this scene where Sayaka is about to go surfing with Ponta to help him find what he’s looking for when she notices that Kyoko bailed on her. And when Sayaka needs some help taking out a witch before the magic cast on Ponta fades, who shows up all decked out in her magical swimsuit?
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And I already talked about Homecoming, so the defense rests their case.
Brotp
Nagisa straight up, the two got the same ‘I would rob a bank for munchies’ vibe. Kyoko even remembers that Nagisa worships cheese and gets her a cheese-flavored snack that she likes in Valentine Nagisa’s event, The Mirror World Chocolatier (but since she was in chocolate mode, Nagisa’s like ‘Girl what?’). The two probably hang out when everyone else is at school.
Head Canon
She does some nice stuff like help old ladies cross the street but would die if anyone she knew saw her.
Unpopular opinion
I like abrasive Kyoko. I mentioned this before, but I prefer how they are in the game’s story over their characters in Rebellion, because I don’t see it as a setback at all. It’s different, more normal circumstances that don’t include rescuing your god/boss/bestie’s ex from a prison of her own making, sponsored by that one demon cat who screwed you over, like, a thousand of times…. Oh hey, that one girl who kept killing herself alongside your corrupt soul is here too, huh.
Oh wait, I was supposed to talk about Kyoko, not Sayaka. Uhh, reverse what I just said! Replace the divine stuff with that one girl you were gay for who died but now is back and is now open for business for some reason. Whew, saved it!
A wish 
Listen, I understand we just got some premium Kyoko content, like top shelf stuff. So that’s why I will direct this wish more towards the future, okay? Okay: lemme see a Kyoko and Sayaka duo soon, I need that potential realized.
An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen
I honestly don’t have much to say. I like how they have been handling her character, so nothing pops up in terms of bad turns they could take in regards to her writing.
5 words to best describe them
Lamenting, hungry, gay, softie, rough
My nickname for them
Nada.
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hargrove-mayfields · 3 years
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Harringrove April Day 24- Afterlife
tw religious themes
Neon lights, broken glass, a monster screech, searing pain, relief. Billy looked down in just enough time to see the monster pull back from where it had impaled him, the ground rushing towards his face.
There was no moment where his life flashed before his like everyone in the movies talked about, all he saw was Max. He couldn’t hear her, he could just feel himself dying, tasting blood in his mouth as he tried to form an apology.
For everything he’d done, by his own accord and by the monsters, for everything he hadn’t done and would never be able to do. He was sorry not only to Max, but to all of her friends and to his own, but mostly to himself.
It was a terrible way to die, but at least it was quick, he thinks. He was never supposed to get a happy ending anyways. You sin, you repent. You don’t repent, you go to hell, and well, Billy never knew how exactly he was supposed to earn forgiveness when his sin was being himself, simply existing, so.
Still, he tried to make sure things would be different. He went to every service, prayed every night like a good Christian was supposed to and tried to make up for being the way he was, but those things just felt just like a performance. Especially now that he was dying, he knows all of that was just futile attempts at pleasing the man upstairs that had gotten him nowhere near any closer to the pearly gates.
He’s terrified, but he thinks he deserves what’s coming all the same. As much as he’d like to see a familiar face once he goes, he knows he doesn’t have a place in paradise.
Honestly he doesn’t think he minds it so much, where he goes after it happens; he just wants to be away from all the suffering.
Not just the pain, but everything that had led up to it, what he’d seen and done, he deserved this fate. He should repent for those he’d hurt, those he’d killed.
He just feels bad he won’t get to spend all of eternity with those he cares about, watching from down below as Max exchanges her ticket with the angels. Maybe Steve at least would end up with him too, since he was a sinner all the same, at least in the dark of the night, every third night out at the quarry, but he feels like shit for even thinking that.
But, as the mall blurs to nothingness around him, just before the unseen forces could fulfill those worries and wishes, Billy wakes up.
His alarm clock goes off on the bedside table, and he startles so badly he falls out of his bed.
Frantically he searches for the gaping hole in his chest, the bleeding bite marks all along his sides, but they come back with nothing. He lets his head fall back and hit the floor, and laughs, exasperated. It had all been a dream.
He picks himself up off the floor, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and he freezes. Minutes pass as he stares at his reflection, creeping sense of dread like something was missing sending a chill up his spine.
He could imagine the blood all down his torso, the monster that had impaled him looming behind him in his reflection. His mirror image moving just a little bit in a way he hadn’t, blinking too many times, a twitch at the corner of his lip he didn’t feel.
Memories come rushing back, shattering glass and tires squealing, broken ribs and chemical burns, red hot heat, gun fire, fireworks, his blood on the tiles, agony like he’d never felt before. He wasn’t the most responsible when it came to what he put in his body, but no amount of the cheap drugs he could find at parties could make him feel all of that .
It hadn’t been a dream. He had lived through all of that and he died.
Now he was in his room, and according to his calendar it was the 27th of June, two days before he was, or would be, possessed by the shadow. He had to get to the bottom of this. Fast.
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poguesofthebau · 3 years
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paranoia
summary: meeting dylan einstein, a genius forensic scientist from indianapolis, musters up some unknown insecurities about your relationship with reid. however, morgan-- and reid, once he figures it out-- isn’t willing to let you think that way. warnings: mentions of bombings (as pertaining to the case)
word count: 3k pairing: spencer reid x female!bau!reader
a/n: set in season 10, episode 14, this one was requested by @koc-help! as per usual, it took me forever to write, so i hope you can forgive me for that and enjoy what i came up with!! 
bombing cases were stressful. it always seemed harder for you; figuring out a motive, pushing down the overwhelming sympathy for the victims, convincing yourself that all of your team members were safe. because of your unshakable paranoia in the wake of those cases, you were already on edge by the time the team was boarding the jet to indianapolis. and, of course, spencer caught on to the way you were feeling almost immediately.
with the limited information the team had at that point, conversation about the case was reasonably brief. the file was reviewed and discussed, and hotch delegated a role for everyone to take when the jet landed. when the conversation came to a lull, you slid out of your seat, tossing the manilla folder onto the leather before moving to the back of the jet to make a cup of coffee. jj and derek’s voices were audible as they continued to spitball off of each other, masking the sound of spencer approaching where you stood. “hey,” he called to you as he neared. having been enveloped in the chatter your other friends were creating, you jumped at the sound of your boyfriend’s voice. when you looked up at him, his eyebrows were raised in concern at your reaction, immediately making you recoil into yourself. “you okay?”
“yeah,” you breathed, pulling the coffee pot out of its place to pour the liquid into your empty cup. “i’m fine.”
“that’s not very convincing, you know.” you turned to face him then, sighing and internally shaking the dread away. “what is it?”
“i’m not a huge fan of bombings,” you said sarcastically. spencer scoffed a laugh at that, reaching out to tuck a stray hair behind your ear as you continued with a bit more seriousness. “just a little worried. it’s nothing, spence.”
“i’m not used to seeing you worried in this way. are you sure you’re okay? i mean, do you want to talk about it?”
the soft-spoken concern in spencer’s tone along with the expression he was looking at you with warmed your heart. if there was one thing that could take your mind off of a murderous bomber, it was spencer. your eyes flickered over to the rest of the team, making sure no one was paying any attention to you and your boyfriend huddled up in the back of the jet, before you leaned up and pressed your mouth to spencer’s. the kiss was quick, but it was also just the reassurance that you both needed. “i promise, i’ll tell you if i need to talk. for now, i just want to get this son of a bitch and go back home.”
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being present for the disarming of the second bomb only worsened your initial paranoia. the thought of an explosive device made you anxious enough; having to stand your ground and comfort an intended victim while a bomb was armed less than a foot from you was a whole new feeling. you trusted morgan to clip a wire without killing you, but the adrenaline in the heat of the moment was hard to shake. it had been a few hours since the scene had unfolded, but you still felt like your heart could possibly jump out of your chest at any moment the morning after the disarming. despite the underlying terror running through your veins, you were critically analyzing everything going on around you. your focus was completely dedicated to the case unfolding around you, because the sooner you cracked it, the sooner your thinly veiled fear would dissipate.
you were digging around in the bed of the pickup truck while einstein, the local forensic scientist, examined the bomb itself. out of your peripherals you saw reid and morgan approaching, but the bulk of your energy was going into analyzing the scene as best you could. your boyfriend’s eyes lingered on you for a few seconds as he neared, immediately gauging the nerves you were trying so hard to conceal. reid made a mental note to address that as soon as he could get you alone, but fought the urge to do so right then. spencer knew you well enough to know that, no matter how freaked out you currently were, your mind was concentrating on the scene before you, and anything else would simply be considered a distraction. he swallowed down the lump in his throat that formed at the thought of not being able to help you before tuning in to the comment einstein began to make. “he really went for a bigger boom this time.”
the short conversation that ensued between the two following that comment was something that shouldn’t have bothered you. you knew it meant nothing; reid wasn’t the only genius in the world who memorized excerpts from anarchy cookbooks or mathematical theories. just because some young, brilliant, beautiful girl knew the same book as spencer didn’t mean you had anything to worry about.
nonetheless, you became very worried about it.
you strolled around to the passenger side of the truck, sliding into the empty seat with a quizzical look on your face. “you know, it’s a wonder that he even realized he triggered the bomb.”
opening the driver’s side door as he spoke, reid slid into the truck next to you. “maybe he heard something when he stepped on the pedal.”
“and knew not to move? i mean, what’s this guy got, an ex-paramilitary background we don’t know about?”
the back and forth continued a few more times, and within a minute you and reid had developed the idea that allen archer, the bomb’s target, could potentially be your unsub. upon this conclusion, einstein spoke up again. “that’s what you guys do. you just talk a lot.” her voice was joking as the words left her lips, and a bright smile graced her face as she spoke. regardless of the playful tone you immediately identified, the words triggered something in you.
“well, there’s also a lot of kicking down doors involved,” morgan interjected from outside the passenger door, shaking you out of your internally-mortified state. you watched as einstein announced her departure then, mustering up a measly close-lipped smile in return to the courteous and friendly glance she offered you before leaving.
as she walked away, her words repeated in your mind. it was so simple for her to summarize; you just talk a lot. a woman so young and so intelligent had just condensed your entire career into a five-word sentence so simple that you couldn’t even disagree. was that truly all you were capable of? talking? bouncing ideas off of your coworkers’ ideas and hoping you’d end up catching the killer that way?
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you spent the rest of the day arguing with yourself. in all honesty, your own inner monologue was starting to get on your nerves. despite your most sincere attempts to focus on the case in front of you, you couldn’t shake the feeling that  einstein was right. and maybe she was-- maybe your job was nothing compared to hers, and maybe she was a better match for spencer than you could ever dream of being.
this new uncertainty of your career and relationship definitely didn’t help to settle your previously established fear of being blown up at any given moment.
given the circumstances, it was only a matter of time until someone on your team noticed how uneasy you were steadily growing. they knew you. you were y/n-- sometimes stubborn, oftentimes overprotective, and always capable. sure, you had off days at work, just like everyone else. you weren’t always the one to solve the case, but you were always present and attentive, engaged in the investigation with your mind and body. however, right now, your mind was in two places at once. for that reason, you weren’t surprised in the slightest when morgan approached you at the station.
as you walked toward the conference room to find hotch, you were stopped by the familiar voice calling out. “hey, hold on little lady.”
“what’s up, morgan?”
morgan shook his head at that, a knowing look crossing his features as he began to speak. “nuh-uh. what up with you, y/l/n?” you threw him a falsely quizzical look, trying (and failing) to get him off your back by playing dumb. sadly for you, morgan was too good of a profiler and friend to fall for it. “don’t play with me, girl. i know cases like this always get to you a little, but i also know how badass you are. normally you would’ve bounced back from our brush with death by now, so what’s the problem?”
you squinted at him as your face morphed into dismay. of course you couldn’t fool morgan. your mind flickered to penelope, suddenly relating to one of her more commonly made complaints: damn profilers. “my first problem is that you might know me a little too well.” derek scoffed at that, waiting for you to continue. “my second problem? well, my second problem might be that i’m not smart enough, or maybe that spencer is too good for me, or maybe that our job is too easy, or maybe--”
“woah, woah, woah. slow your roll, little missy. ‘spencer is too good for me?’ where’s that coming from?” you blinked slowly in response, not quite willing to give up any more information than you already had. “fine-- i’ll figure it out myself. let’s see: you’ve been acting weird since we got this case, but that’s not what this is about. i’ve seen you on bombing cases before, and this ain’t that. so... oh, i know. is this about a forensic scientist, maybe? maybe one who has the same name as a very smart, very famous--”
“okay, morgan. i get it. you’re a great profiler, and you know my thoughts better than i do. that doesn’t really change the way i’m feeling right now.” your tone was a little sharp, but the look in your eyes was a mixture of sadness and contempt. “and, in case you needed me to put it simply, i’m feeling like shit.”
a look of pity overtook morgan for a moment. he knew what you were going through. sure, he wasn’t dating a genius with an iq of 187, but he knew how it felt to doubt yourself, and especially how it felt to feel belittled for your work. “y/n,” he said, placing his hands on your shoulders and crouching a little to get on eye-level with you. “don’t do that to yourself, kid. don’t forget how hard what we do is, and how important it is. you save lives every day. no matter how you do it, or how much brainpower it takes, there are people all around this world who are alive because of your work. whether they admit it or not, everyone has respect for that. especially our resident pretty boy.”
“i know, morgan,” you sighed. his hands slid from your shoulders as you finally gave in, looking him straight in the eye as you spoke. “sometimes it just feels like he deserves better.”
“just because it feels that way doesn’t mean it’s true. and i can promise you, reid has never felt that way. not about you.” after giving a comforting pat on the arm to go along with his final words, morgan was walking away.
damn profilers, you thought again. why are we always right?
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before you got the chance to speak with reid, the team was off again. instead of splitting up this time, you were simply spreading out; hotch and rossi were scouring the crowd of civilians and news crews at the staged ceremony for allen archer, and the rest of you were divided into two suvs with morgan and kate in one and you, jj, and spencer in the other. your talk with morgan had lifted your spirits a bit, but there was still a tightness in the air as you sat beside your seemingly clueless boyfriend.
unbeknownst to you, spencer wasn’t all that clueless. not only had he caught on to your behavior long before anyone else on the team, but he’d also spotted you and morgan’s secretive moment from across the police station. (and, yes, morgan may have whispered “check on your girl” to spencer when you weren’t paying attention. he just wanted to help.) so, while you thought he was in the dark about your current insecurities, reid was very much aware of what was going on in your head. as much as he hated it, though, he was hesitant to acknowledge it with jj in the backseat and the rest of the team on comms. so, like the considerate boyfriend he was, he waited.
it wasn’t until you got back to the police station that spencer got the chance to catch you alone. everyone else was busy preparing to leave for the jet, the bustle of having solved yet another case causing an uplifting distraction for the team. while your friends were distracted, spencer grabbed you by the hand and pulled you into a nearby empty conference room. the surprise on your face was evident when he looked at you, and he couldn’t help but smile. you laughed nervously at his expression, not completely sure what he had taken you aside for. “hi, spence. you okay?”
“i was actually going to ask you the same thing,” he admitted. “except, i already asked you that once during this case, and you weren’t very willing to share, so i was going to approach it in a more insistent way.” although you were amused by this mysterious behavior of his, you were still confused about what exactly spencer was implying that he knew. “did you really think i wouldn’t notice that you were upset?”
“no,” you said unconvincingly.
“y/n, why won’t you just talk to me?” the desperation in his voice almost shattered your heart. the whole time that you’d been in your own head, spencer had been in his. all because you were scared to talk to the one person you trusted more than anyone in the world.
“i’m sorry,” you breathed, taking a step toward him. spencer’s right hand slid around your waist once you got close enough, and your forehead dropped onto his chest as you sighed. when you looked back up to him, spencer was already anticipating eye contact. “i’m sorry i didn’t say anything. i just didn’t want to worry you, or to make you feel like you’d done anything wrong, because it’s not your fault, i just-- i don’t ever want to feel like i’m holding you back.”
“holding me back from what? you could never hold me back.”
“i could, though! you’re this amazingly brilliant genius, and there are so many people out there who are so much smarter than me, and i--”
“is that what this is about? you think you’re not smart?” you felt his hand tense from its place on your lower back, his disbelief clear in his voice.
“no, no-- i mean, i know i’m smart enough. but sometimes when we have cases like this we meet some really, really smart people, and i can’t help but wonder if you would be better off with someone on your intellectual level. someone like einstein.”
“y/n,” spencer seemed stunned at this revelation, and you realized then that morgan had been right. the idea of you not being enough had never crossed spencer’s mind. “you are the person that i’m better off with. you. i don’t-- i’ve never even thought of anyone else as a possibility since i met you. there isn’t anyone else. i mean, before i knew you, i wasn’t even sure that i believed in love at all. the only reason that i know it’s real now is because of you. i can’t think of any statistics of mathematical theories or scientific discoveries to explain or defend it, but i have always known that there isn’t anything for me aside from you. i mean that. no matter how smart anyone else is, or how cool anyone else is, or how compatible anyone else’s intellect is with mine. i love you, y/n.”
and, just like that, your fears were gone. your inner monologue went silent, and the serenity that spencer’s words brought you washed over your entire body. spencer’s arm tightened around your waist, pulling you closer into him. his free hand moved to the side of your face, brushing back your hair as he waited for you to reply. the anticipation on his face sent another rush of absolute love through you, and you quickly closed the gap between you. as your mouth met his, your hands found their way to the sides of his neck, slowly wrapping around until they were laced together behind his head. for what could’ve been an hour, you stood there, melting into spencer as his words of reassurance replaced the chants of uncertainty that had filled your head hours prior. you were forced to pull back from him eventually, but even then your hands remained around his neck and the distance between your faces was minimal as you reopened your eyes. “i love you.”
a knock on the door suddenly interrupted the moment, causing you to release each other as a third party entered the room: morgan. “hey, lovebirds,” he grinned. “nice to see that you’re back to normal. it’s time to head home.” you smiled knowingly at the man, lacing your fingers through reid’s as you followed morgan out of the room. grabbing your belongings on the way out, the three of you headed toward your designated suv, where jj was waiting patiently in the driver’s seat. “so, you finally confessed, huh?”
“of course i did,” you laughed. “no secrets in this relationship.”
“yeah, and i would’ve figured it out eventually anyway.” at spencer’s interjection, it was morgan’s turn to laugh.
“oh, yeah, 187?”
“he is a genius, you know,” you added smugly.
“well, apparently so am i, because i figured it out before he did. oh, and by the way, pretty girl, i told you.” and with that, morgan was jogging off (in a fit of giggles) to the suv, hopping in the passenger seat before you had a chance to jokingly scold him.
damn profilers.
361 notes · View notes
amarimaryllis · 3 years
Text
I Do Not Think I Would (Bokuto x Reader)
Pairing: Bokuto/Reader
Prompt/Summary: The rational side of you tells you to leave, but for Bokuto Koutarou, you choose to stay. Alternatively, Bokuto Koutarou’s fangirls are ruthless.
Tags: Angst, Fluff, Haikyuu Timeskip Spoilers
Note: I used she/her pronouns for the reader, Bold Italicized sentences are excerpts from the poem “Love is Not All” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Warnings: Mild Swearing, Mentions of self-hate, Mentions of insecurity, Bokuto has toxic fans
Part of A Sensitivity to Ephemera
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You met Bokuto Koutarou in your 3rd year at Fukurodani, but you had known of his existence for longer. It was hard to not know of Bokuto Koutarou if you studied in Fukurodani. Hell, it was hard to not know of him if you studied in Tokyo in general. Aside from the fact that he was the embodiment of solar energy, Bokuto Koutarou also had a ton of admirers.
Fangirls
Fanboys.
And everything in between and beyond.
However, the first time you ever interacted with him was in Honda-sensei’s room. It was quick, a brief encounter that promised longer ones. Bokuto’s grades had been slipping, and you were his assigned tutor.
“Bokuto-san, this is L/N-san from Class 6.” Honda-sensei introduces you two briefly. “She’ll be tutoring you until your grades are back to… Satisfactory. I trust you to not give her a hard time.”
“Nice to meet you, L/N-san!” Bokuto bows briefly, the grin plastered on his face, unfading. However, there’s a sense of urgency in his stance, vibrating, itching to run off. Probably because he had volleyball training, and nothing in this world could keep Bokuto Koutarou from his beloved sport.
You didn’t know why, but your heart was beating a little bit faster than normal.
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
After a few weeks of tutoring, Bokuto’s grades were slowly getting better. It wasn’t “satisfactory” yet, according to Honda-sensei, but you guys were getting there. As a celebration, right after volleyball practice, Bokuto drags you to the closest cafe and tells you to choose anything you want because it was “on him” as he enthusiastically stated.
“Bokuto-san, you didn’t have to.” You mumble bashfully as Bokuto sets a tray down and seats across from you.
“Don’t worry about it!” Bokuto grins as he slides the food over to you. “It’s the least I can do since you’ve been such a great tutor.”
A small smile makes its way to your face. “I guess I’ll take it then. Thank you for the food!”
As you eat, you can see Bokuto’s eyes continuously flitting back and forth between a spot on your face and away from it. He looked hesitant, but your sudden speaking urges him to reply.
“Is there anything on my face?” You furrow your brows, raising a hand to wipe at your cheek.
“Ah yeah, wait, not there.” Bokuto reaches over the table, a large hand cupping your cheek before he presses his thumb to the corner of your mouth and swipes to remove whatever it was on your face. “You had sauce on your face.”
Fire and ice could co-exist at once, you concluded. Because if it didn’t, then you would like to present yourself as evidence. You were frozen, but inside you, there was an inferno of different emotions swirling, sparked by a single touch on your skin.
That night, after Bokuto had walked you home and you had settled in for the night, you dreamt of black and white streaks paired with the brightest golden eyes. You let yourself dream. You knew that this was the closest you could get to him. The real world wasn’t as kind to you after all.
While you slept soundly, Bokuto walked home. It was raining, but it didn’t matter to him because as the rain drops onto his skin, he wished that it was your touch that fell upon him instead. And for a second as he imagines, it almost felt like it was.
And though he so desperately wished for it as he lied in bed, slumber never came. Instead, in its place, were a hundred different stories, a hundred different futures, a hundred different lifetimes, and they all ended with the sight of a bashful smile, and the prettiest eyes.
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
You gripped at your skirt tightly, fighting back the tears that threatened to escape your eyes. Fear gripped your chest as you watched Bokuto’s sleeping figure from your place on the chair beside the bed. There had been a small accident during Fukurodani’s practice match, a small collision, but it was enough to send him to the infirmary and you running after him.
It was stupid, you think to yourself. You had rushed to the clinic the moment your break started, and by the time you reached the room, you were a mess. The nurse only gave you a cheeky smile before she patted your back and said, “Don’t worry about your boyfriend. It’s a minor injury and it was probably just an ant bite for someone like him.”
Ant bites didn’t usually require sleep for recovery.
Also, he wasn’t your boyfriend, but you’d be the biggest liar on earth if you said that you didn’t want him to be. You were just his tutor. Sure you’d been tutoring him for a long time, and that was enough to form a friendship of sorts, but that was all you’ll ever be: a friend. So why were you acting like you were something more? Friends get concerned, they’ll drop by, check on you, go off once they realize it’s minor and you’re in good hands, and then wait for you to recover. They don’t stay, fussing, practically crying, and worrying over something so small.
You’re so caught up in your thoughts that the sudden placement of a heavy palm on your head startles you.
Bokuto chuckles as he takes in your disheveled state. Your eyes are damp, your hair is slightly messed up, and your skirt is still tight in your grip, but even then, he still couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the way you looked. “Hey hey hey, did I make you worry that much?”
You can’t help it. He’s recovering, you know that, but you couldn’t stop yourself from lunging at him and enveloping him in a hug. “I hate you so much. Promise me you’ll never make me worry like that ever again.”
Bokuto chuckles and you could feel the vibrations since you two were practically chest-to-chest. “If making you worry means you’ll hug me like this, then I don’t think I can make any promises.”
“Bokuto-san…” You attempt to pull away, but find yourself unable.
Sturdy arms wrap around your waist, and your frozen figure is pulled tighter against Bokuto’s body as he engulfs you with his larger frame. “Do you like me, Y/N-chan?”
You freeze.
Oh hell no.
Out of all the conversations in this world, this one was the one you did not want to have, especially not when you were emotionally vulnerable. You didn’t know if you had enough control over yourself to give the proper answers.
“What? No! I mean yes? You’re my friend, of course I like you.” Your fight or flight response to this conversation seems to have given you ample strength to pull away. You attempt to stand straight and face this problem head on, but your feet are pointing you towards the exit.
Ready to run. From this conversation. From your feelings. From rejection.
Bokuto raises a brow, a teasing grin on his face. “Oh, really?”
Contrary to popular belief (see: Honda-sensei), Bokuto Koutarou was not stupid. Very far from it. While he’s not academically gifted, he’s definitely smart on the people side of things.
You were an open book, and Bokuto was taking his time rereading every page.
“I…” You’re unable to answer, unable to find the words that would make the impending rejection hurt less.
“Well, if it helps—“ Bokuto sits up and sets his feet on the ground, lightly grabbing you to make you stand between his legs. “—I like you a lot.”
Your heart stops. Your world stops. Everything just stops. You’re gaping at Bokuto, mouth closing and opening as you try to find the proper words. You want to reply, eloquently, confidently, to save what’s left of your dignity, but you can only blink back at him.
You weren’t expecting this. Bokuto wasn’t expecting this.
A wave of uncertainty flashes through Bokuto’s eyes, and for a second, he wonders if he misread the situation. “Hey, it’s ok if you don’t feel the same—“
“Wait, no! That’s—“ You take in a deep breath, attempting to calm your racing heart as you try to find your next words. For someone who usually kept a level head, you sure weren’t acting like it. “That’s not it at all. I just… Are you sure?”
Bokuto is confused. He could understand the words individually. He could understand the sentence too, but he couldn’t understand its relevance in this context. What did you mean by ‘are you sure?’. Would he tell you if he wasn’t? Why wouldn’t anyone be sure about you? I mean, it’s you.
“Yes? Why wouldn’t I be?” Bokuto grabs your hand, and he laces his fingers through yours.
You don’t answer as you attempt to arrange your whirlwind of insecurity into one coherent sentence that could sum it all up. You didn’t want to burden him with an entire monologue of self-deprecation, but you couldn’t find a way to express the years of insecurity into one sentence that could do that feeling justice.
Bokuto sees this, and his heart breaks for a second. He was familiar with it. He knew those feelings all too well.
Uncertainty.
Doubt.
Self-Hatred.
“Can I kiss you?” Bokuto blurts out, and as he watches you get flustered, he thinks that this is a much better look on you compared to the one you were previously wearing.
You don’t speak. You just nod.
With that, Bokuto grabs you by the waist and reaches up to press his lips against yours.
It was Bokuto who broke the kiss, breathless as he pressed his forehead to yours. It was almost as if you had taken his breath away to breathe a new life into him with a simple kiss. You can feel his warm breath against your lips, his calloused hands gripping at your waist, and at the same time, you feel nothing. Maybe this is what it felt like to know of everything and nothing all at once. Hyperaware of every feeling, every part of your body that was connected to his, but at the same time you felt weightless, floating on a plane that didn’t seem to exist on earth.
“Can I do that again?” Bokut asks with a grin.
You don’t answer, simply grabbing at his collar and smashing your lips against his.
That was how your love story with Bokuto Koutarou started.
And you wish it ended there.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Bokuto’s fans were ruthless.
Bokuto’s fans are ruthless.
The toxic fangirls? Even more so.
Not all of them are terrible to you, some are kind, but there are enough bad apples that you start wanting to run away the moment you see the tree. His fangirls during highschool only ever went as far as gossipping and making snide remarks, but now that you were older and Bokuto was part of the MSBY Black Jackals, they had gotten worse.
Facebook? You don’t spend time there anyway.
Instagram? You’ve always avoided that place.
Twitter? Ah, good luck.
People are ruthless when they hide behind a screen and a fake name. Anonymity has a way of sparking bravery in even the most sheltered souls. There wasn’t a single tweet on your account that had no comment telling you how you’re not good enough, how Bokuto probably only stayed out of pity, how he’d probably break up with you soon, how they could make him happier than someone like you ever could.
Bokuto doesn’t know. He doesn’t have to know. You don’t want to tell him.
You’re never going to tell him.
It’s pathetic, you think to yourself. You’re afraid that if Bokuto saw these comments, the rose-colored glasses he wore would shatter. You were afraid that these tweets would tip him off the edge and plunge him into the sea of realization. The realization that he could do so much better than someone like you.
You were tired. So tired that you just want to give in to the comments and leave. It’s logical, after all. Bokuto would find someone much better than you. He’d go off, marry a girl deserving of him, and she’ll give him a family, a future, and a life worthy of someone like him. And you? You’d be free. Alone, heart destroyed beyond repair, but free. You could move on, move away, move as far as you could: out of sight, out of mind. It was so easy.
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
But you couldn’t.
The only thing you could do was stare at the tweets that dissected each and every single one of your insecurities and laid it bare, waved it around freely for the world to see and judge. You could only let the tears fall as the laptop screen glared back at your face. Everything is numb and you don’t feel like yourself as you scroll through every single comment and find yourself agreeing with each and every single one.
Sobs wrack throughout your body as it all becomes too much.
You’re too weak to stay, too weak to leave. So where do you go? Where the hell are you supposed to place yourself in this world when it feels like everything is going against you? Why was the world doing this to you? Why did it have to be you? You weren’t strong enough for this. You weren’t good enough for this, you never were, never are, and never will be--
“Love?”
You immediately slam the laptop shut and throw the covers over your body as if you had been there the whole time instead of sitting at the edge of the bed and crying over comments.
“Hey…” The side of the bed sinks. “Bad day?”
The fucking worst. You thought to yourself, but you only shook your head before burying your head deeper into the covers of your shared bed.
“Don’t wanna talk about it?” You can hear the worry in Bokuto’s voice as he places his hand on your waist over the blanket, rubbing up and down to soothe you.
Some part of you finds the courage to speak, and the words tumble out of your mouth faster than your brain can process them. “Why are you still with me?”
“Because I love you.” Bokuto doesn’t hesitate as he looks at your still-covered figure.
“What if you stop?” You mumble, but it was loud enough for Bokuto to hear,
“Not possible.” Bokuto gently pries the blankets away from you, uncovering your form that was curled up into a fetal position.
“But— Just—“ You turn the other way, unable to look at him. “What if you do?”
“Like I said—” You can feel the mattress behind you dip lower, sturdy arms moving to wrap around your waist as Bokuto nuzzles his face into your nape. “—not possible.”
With that, the tears start flowing once more.
You bury your face into the pillow, not wanting to show Bokuto because you knew that the sight of you crying wasn’t something he liked. He hated seeing you in distress, and he hated that the only thing he could do was talk you through it and comfort you.
“Hey hey hey…” Bokuto pulls away and makes you sit up straight before he sits against the headboard and pulls you to sob into his chest. “Where’s this coming from? What’s wrong?”
“Everything’s wrong.” You spat angrily, your grip on his shirt tightening. Anger at yourself, anger at the universe, all summed up in a single sentence. “Nothing ever goes right anymore, and I’m just—“
Your speaking is interrupted as another wave of sobs. “I’m so tired.”
You can feel Bokuto freeze, his hand that was rubbing your back stopping as he takes in your words. “Of what?”
“Everything.” You murmur, your grip on Bokuto’s shirt loosening as you press your forehead against his neck. “Just everything.”
“Does that include me?” You can hear Bokuto’s voice waver as his grip around you gets weaker. “Are you… Are you breaking up with me?”
You’re silent for a while. Was this it? Was the universe making the choice for you?
Whatever it was, you take it.
You pull away and look down, unable to stare into Bokuto’s eyes. You didn’t know if you could pull through if you could see the look on his face as you say your next words. “If it means that it will all stop, then maybe I should.”
Bokuto’s heart shatters, and his world follows in its footsteps. He can feel the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He knew you had been acting off the past few days, but he gave you some space so that you could sort it out until you were ready to finally approach him. But this? He wasn’t prepared for this.
“Why?” There’s a painful tug at your chest as you hear Bokuto speak in such a broken tone. “Did I do something wrong?”
“It’s not you. It’s me.” You cringe inwardly at your statement. Of all the things you could’ve said, you just had to say the most overused line in all of break-up history. “Bokuto, you—“
“It’s Kou.” You can hear Bokuto’s voice crack at the end. “It’s not Bokuto to you, Y/N. It’s Kou. Whatever it is just tell me, please I can fix it—“
“I’m the problem, okay?!” You couldn’t stop yourself from raising your tone, standing up from the bed to distance yourself from Bokuto. “I’m not good enough for you. I don’t deserve you. They’re right when they say that you could do so much better than me—“
You’re cut off as a sob pulls itself from your chest. Your chest is tight, your head is throbbing. Your legs are shaky and you couldn’t stop yourself from falling to your knees as you continue to cry. “I-I just… I know I don’t, but I-I’m so tired of b-being constantly r-reminded that I’m never g-going to be enough.”
“Y/N, none of that is true. Who told you that?” Bokuto’s tone gives away the pain he was feeling, but there was a hint of anger underneath it all.
You don’t answer, shaking your head, continuing to sob as Bokuto moves from the bed to kneel in front of you.
“Love, who told you that?” Bokuto places a comforting hand on your thigh as his other hand lightly grabs you by the chin to make you look at him.
“Everyone.” You wondered how pathetic you looked in his eyes right now. “Not a single day passes by where I’m not reminded by your fans. It’s stupid to keep listening to them, but they’re right—“
Bokuto cuts you off with a brief kiss, just enough to shut you up to give him a chance to speak as he moves to cup your cheek in his palm. “No, they’re not. They never will be.”
You don’t reply. You don’t argue, but you don’t agree either.
“Don’t break up with me, please.” Bokuto cups your face with both of his hands, occasionally brushing his thumb over your cheek as he presses his forehead against yours. “You mean the world to me. You’re absolutely perfect the way you are, and I know you don't believe that.”
You sob at that, and Bokuto is quick to press a kiss against your forehead and pull you into his chest. “If I have to spend my entire life reminding you of that then I will.”
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
Bokuto hovers over you, his arms on either side of your holding him up as he looks at you with the most lovestruck look you’ve ever seen on someone.
“You’re perfect.” Bokuto whispers against your lips before he presses a searing kiss against your lips. “Absolutely perfect.”
Bokuto presses his weight against yours, pulling your bodies closer to each other as he continues to kiss you breathless. You wrap your arms around his neck, an attempt to blur the boundaries of skin, muscle, and bone that separate your soul and his. He pulls you closer against him, his fingers digging deeper into the flesh of your hips as he trails his kisses down your neck and every expanse of skin that was laid bare for him.
“I love you so much.” Bokuto whispers repeatedly against your skin between every kiss he puts on you. “So much.”
As you laid beside Bokuto, his arms wrapped around your waist and your face nuzzling into his bare chest, the thoughts of ever leaving slowly become more distant and fade away into oblivion. His chest rises and falls, and you find your breathing slowly matching his as you observe his sleeping face, peaceful, unbothered by all the troubles of the world beyond your bedroom.
You smile to yourself. All rational thought tells you to leave, but for Bokuto Koutarou...
It well may be. I do not think I would.
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A/N: That’s two parts of the collection down, and three more to go! This one was supposed to be the lightest out of the five, but my finger slipped so... Whoops? HAHAHAGDHDHSJHS Anyway, I hope you guys like this one! 💖
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writing-in-april · 3 years
Text
My Knight in Shiny Armor
Spencer Reid x Gender Neutral Reader (Spencer POV)
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Summary: Reader is a fantasy novelist and writes Spencer into their story.
A/N: Heyy heyyy- this is my entry for the SFW fic swap that @imagining-in-the-margins organized! (Can y’all tell how much I love fic swaps I might have to organize one myself one day) This is a super fluffy little fic for @thekatherinewinchester! Hope y’all enjoy and my entry for the NSFW fic swap will be coming soon! If you have any requests they are open and I’m looking for requests for my next event- 30 fics in 30 days for April 2021 (I’ll make up a better title soon I promise) thanks for reading!
Warnings: this is so fluffy there’s no warnings 🥰- unless you don’t like the secret relationship trope
Main Masterlist Word Count: 1.2k
Garcia came up to me with a giddy look on her face as I was pouring sugar into my next cup of coffee. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that she was holding a book that looked similar to a novel that I was extremely familiar with. A blush on my face immediately formed and I forgot that I was still pouring sugar into my cup, though I’m sure that I’d still like the excessive amount of sugar I put into my coffee. As Garcia had said before, it was my ‘brand’, whatever that means.
I cleared my throat in preparation for the interrogation I was about to face, “What’s up Garcia?”
Instead of point blank telling me what she was all giddy about she opened the hard covered novel in her hands with green binding that I had seen numerous copies of.
“The mysterious man was taller than the rest of us by far, with fluffy brown hair that his helmet tried in vain to hide. It wasn’t just his handsome looks that drew me to him, it was also his intellectual abilities. He was far superior in intellect to any other man I had met in the world. The rousing conversations I had with him also made me feel respected by him which was much more than I could say compared to the other men I had met. The name of the mysterious knight in the shiny armor that had invaded all my thoughts as of late was named, Spencer.”
Once she finished the excerpt of the book she shut it dramatically then raising her eyebrows, I knew exactly what she was asking with her nonverbal cues, “I’m friends with the author…”
The look on her face after I trailed off told me that she wasn’t buying my lie. I was about to say something more convincing, but Garcia was not impressed with my attempts to get out of this ‘interrogation’.
“Oh- no no no, you aren’t getting away with it that easy, boy wonder. The blush on your face isn’t fooling me.” Her calling out my blush only served to make my face an even deeper shade of red, I could tell just from how hot the room suddenly felt. She continued on despite my deepening cheek color, “I want to know how you got your New York Times Best Seller partner, tell me everything.”
I figured there was no way to deny it now, the way I fidgeted and the blush on my cheeks gave it away easily. Even though Garcia wasn’t trained to study human behavior she wasn’t stupid and I wasn’t a good liar. So, I proceeded to tell her the story of how we met.
Of course as soon as I finished the story of how we met at a coffee shop Garcia bombarded me with more questions and brought the rest of the team to ask. She even got Morgan to say he’d read the book because he wanted to know “what does pretty boy look like in shining armor?” Which Garcia of course had to correct, as she had read the rest of the book.
As I was riding the metro after work my mind decided to wander about what had happened today. At first I was excited to share with Y/N about what happened today, but then I started to worry. What if they didn’t want to tell anyone?
We hadn’t really discussed telling everyone about our relationship besides passing comments in conversation. I worried that maybe they wouldn’t want to tell everyone because maybe they’d be embarrassed to be seen with me. Maybe that’s why they hadn’t brought up me telling the team much.
Once I had gotten back to my apartment I opened the door and was immediately greeted with the smell of Y/N’s cooking. Normally, I’d be super excited that they decided to pop in my apartment, but my anxiety about what had happened today was taking over my mind. I was rooted to the floor in front of my door, not wanting to have to admit to them that I had told everyone.
“How’s my favorite genius?” Their melodic voice called out from the kitchen. There was no way I could avoid it now, they’d probably be able to immediately tell that I was anxious. They were good at being able to tell exactly what I was thinking, and it wasn’t even their job. I often joked with them that their ability to read my behavior was as good as mine.
I decided I better get this over with.
As I walked over to my small apartment kitchen I prepared my explanation in my head. When they spotted me they opened their mouth to speak and I just started to rant, “I may have told the team about you. I got cornered by Garcia in the break room and she happened to have your book and read the parts where you wrote a character based on me- and”
“Slow down, baby.” They cut my ranting off once they had gotten her bearings. Normally being cut off makes me annoyed, but in this case I could tell I was in a swirling anxious mind set that I wouldn’t break out of unless an outside force helped me stop. I took a deep breath, which did help slow down my racing thoughts. Once I had slightly refocused my thoughts I noticed that they were looking over at me from where they were standing over the pot of pasta at the stove with a look of concern, which surprised me.
“You’re not mad?”
They turned the oven off as the pasta was definitely done now, making their way over to the other side of the kitchen where I stood. Bringing their warm hands up they cupped my cheeks and then asked with sweetness, “Why would I be mad.”
I couldn’t help but start to spill my thoughts into another rant to try and explain my reasoning, “Well- I didn’t really talk about telling them with you and I know that communication is important in a relationship from what I’ve read. And it felt like I made a mistake because I wasn’t communicating properly and I’m an idiot, I’m sorry you have to date someone who doesn’t know anything about relationships.”
“Spencer, it’s ok I promise. I was going to ask if maybe you wanted to introduce me to them soon anyway and- you aren’t stupid I promise, baby. You’re a genius, remember?
After we ate the dinner they had cooked they brought out their book to read to me, specifically the part in reference where my fictional counterpart came to save the day.
“You’re my knight in shiny armor.” They said with fondness, this was my favorite line in the book.
“Shiny armor? Why not shining armor?” I had asked this question numerous times since I had seen the same line in their book. I knew the conversation in the novel like the back of my hand and every time we read the book together we enacted the conversation. They acted out the protagonist’s lines perfectly, which was not surprising since the protagonist was partially based on them from their own admission.
“I don’t know, I just think it sounds cuter,” Their words were as sweet as honey, making me want to lean in to kiss them, but they needed to finish the line, “and in my book, you’re cuter than all other knights in shining armor.”
—-
Tag list (message me if you want to be added):
All works:
@shotarosleftpinky @oreogutz @90spumkin @kyra-morningstar
Spencer Reid/CM:
@calm-and-doctor @destiny-tsukino @safertokiss @slutforthegubes
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katyamorrigan · 3 years
Text
‘A Hotel on the Board is Worth Two on the Geldstraat’ - Chp. 1!
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Gang banner by @verdiris​
A Hotel on the Board is Worth Two on the Geldstraat
A trunk of contraband items ends up in the hands of the Crows, but the item that piques their curiosity most is the large box labelled “MONOPOLY”. Kaz is out of the Slat for the time being, so of course they decide to play it. Was there ever a mission more likely to fail than six criminals with lethal skills and undeniable emotional ties all trying to build a make-believe empire without killing each other in the process? Answer: yes - all of the above while attempting to pull off a heist at the same time.
Turns out board games weren’t the only interesting items shipped into Fifth Harbour that afternoon, and now the Razorgulls are interested. It will take all of the gang’s effort to break into two buildings full of rival gang members, regain possession of the contraband, and make it back to the Slat in one piece. And that’s without the inherent strains of playing at business negotiations with a group of decidedly underhand friends.
Join the Crows as they cheat, steal, lie, and bribe each other, all before the heist has even begun.
I am so excited to finally get to share the fic that I have been working on for the @grishaversebigbang​ over the last few months - A Hotel on the Board is Worth Two on the Geldstraat! Getting to take part in the Grishaverse Big Bang 2021 has been so much fun, and I have had the honour of working with an absolutely incredible gang of artists and the loveliest beta reader. It’s been an absolute blast, and this is one of my favourite things that I’ve written. Thank you so much to everyone that I’ve worked with, and I hope that you enjoy reading and admiring the story and art that we’ve created!
Here is everyone in my gang, with links to the work that they’ve created (some art may relate to chapters of the fic that haven’t been posted yet - the fic will be posted in its entirety within the next 3 weeks and the art will be linked within the fic on the relevant lines, but also there’s nothing that will spoil the story for you, so don’t worry!):
Corporalki: @davonysus​ (who is the most wonderful beta reader, thank you for everything that you contributed to this story!)
Materialki: 
@ciph3rrr​ with hilarious Crows-minus-Kaz Monopoly shenanigans from Chapter 1
@j-wirth​ ​with this brilliant Inej and Wesper moment inspired by Chapters 2 and 7
@bloodysusher​ with a gorgeous group moment in Chapter 7
@verdiris​ with some amusing Kaz geniusness from Chapter 7
@maximumbluebirdpatrol​ (link still to come)
@emmaxtw​ (link still to come)
There are 7 chapters in total, so I shall be uploading a new one every Tuesday and Saturday until 25th September. Look below the cut for an excerpt from Chapter 1, and if you want to read the full thing (and check out the collection of all the other incredible pieces created for the GVBB) then click either of the links. I hope that you enjoy!
AHOTBIWTOTG Chapter 1 Excerpt:
The front door of the Slat opened with a loud clatter, and slammed shut on itself seconds later. It made Inej jump in her seat as she sat going over ship documentation - which, as it turned out, there was a lot of - in the front room. Nina gave her a look, and Inej wrinkled her nose back at her; the Wraith didn’t startle easily, but equally, there was usually less banging of doors while she tried to organise her finances.
“Honeys, I’m home!” Came Jesper’s voice. “And I brought treats!”
“It had better be more exciting than that time you came back from Cilla’s Fry with meat pies,” Inej called back. “That was underwhelming.”
“Speak for yourself,” Nina chimed in. “I was more than happy to finish up those.”
“We know.” Matthias gave her a knowing look, and Wylan sniggered as she raised a single finger at him in response. 
The bickering that came from everyone trying to work on separate projects at the same time was one of the many reasons that Inej hadn’t made it past the first page of her sailing license. That being said, she joined in the chuckling at Nina’s expense.
“Oh, it’s definitely better than Cilla’s pies, but you’ll have to take a look for yourself.”
Jesper rounded the corner, a large trunk tucked under one slim arm. His face was bright from the brisk, cold air of the streets, and a bead of sweat dropped from his chin as he deposited the luggage on the table beside Inej. She sighed heavily as the wad of pages in front of her jumped with the sudden extra weight.
“Sorry,” Jesper grinned. She just rolled her eyes fondly in response.“Come on, who wants to see what I’ve got?”
Nina, Matthias and Wylan all got up from the neighbouring table and crowded around Inej and Jesper. It was uncomfortable having so many significantly taller people stood behind her while she was sitting, so Inej scooped up her papers and deposited them on the floor, taking their place on the table so that she could get a good look at the trunk.
“Where did you get that?” Matthias asked.
“Well, our dearest Kaz decided to put me on shipment duty and I had to wait around at the Exchange for a boat full of contraband to come in. It took hours, so as soon as I saw something that looked interesting, I used my innumerable skills to swipe it so that we could take a look inside.”
““Innumerable” is a long word for you,” Nina quipped. 
A bubble of laughter rose up amongst the group, and Jesper stuck his tongue out childishly. “Fine, no contraband for you.”
“No, I want to look!”
“Be nice, then. I get first dibs on anything cool because I found it.”
Matthias snorted. “What happened to the ancient rule of “finder’s keepers”?”
“I found the trunk, therefore I found anything that’s inside it by proxy.”
“Can we just open it up?” Wylan said impatiently. “I feel like we’re building expectations by arguing like this – it’s probably smuggled whiskey or something.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Kaz?” Inej asked. The others gave her a look of incredulity. “Where is he, anyway?”
There was a brief moment of looking at each other for answers, before Jesper answered decisively. “If he was so worried about what came in on the boat, he would’ve gone himself. And if he isn’t here now, then he’ll just have to accept whatever is left over from the spoils.”
“We aren’t actually pirates, you know,” Inej said.
“Not yet,” Jesper stage-whispered in reply, and Inej found herself grinning, pleased. “Gather around, then.” He beckoned everyone closer like a ringmaster at the centre of a performance. 
Inej was surprised to find that her heart was actually beating faster with the thought of what might be inside. Wylan was probably right that they were getting themselves worked up over nothing, but all the same, she couldn’t help hoping that they found something rare or exciting. Perhaps it was gold? Guns? Something dangerous? You could never know when it came to the imports of Ketterdam, and for once Inej was glad for the intensity of life in the city. It could very well be something extraordinary.
The catches on the front of the trunk lifted easily, but there was a thick knot of string around the middle as well. Jesper struggled to untie it, so Inej slipped a knife from her sleeve and cut it off with one flick of her wrist. Giving her a mischievous look, Jesper dug his fingernails under the lid and with a crackle of flaking rust, the trunk opened.
On top there was a loose gauzy scarf clearly intended to keep moisture out of the trunk on the long sea voyage, which had definitely served its purpose; the red print had blotted itself onto the inside of the lid, and there were water stains on it where it had protected the rest of the cargo. Matthias and Nina went to grab it at the same time, but it ended up in Nina’s hands regardless as he passed it to her with a shy smile.
“I thought you would want it, so I was making sure no-one else got there first.”
Wylan made an exaggerated gagging noise, and Matthias’ expression quickly reverted to his familiar scowl.
“Aha!”
Jesper reached forward and pulled out two pistols, both only a little rusty and with a single blue gem stamped into the body of each. With impressive speed he turned around and mimed firing two shots at the wall before holstering them beside his favoured revolvers.
As Matthias pulled out a slim soft-covered book, Inej realised that she was far too focused on the discoveries of her friends and was going to miss out on finding her own treasures otherwise. Lifting up two more scarves – this time green and blue – she found another couple of books which she handed to Nina. Her friend’s focus was pulled away from adjusting her hair under her newly matching scarf to flicking through the pages and wrinkling her nose hard.
“I don’t recognise the language, but I can understand it well enough,” Nina mused.
“Where did the boat come in from, Jesper?” Wylan asked as he opened a small wooden keepsake box full of golden rings in varying levels of ornate decoration.
“Kaz didn’t say, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t pay much attention.”
Nina tutted and continued her reading with Matthias peering over her shoulder. With fingers now covered in rings, Wylan pulled out a long fur coat that smelt of mould. Removing its furry cuffs from the case, Inej reached into the trunk for what seemed to be the last item: a big box made of thick card, with a green cover and the word MONOPOLY emblazoned on the top. The lettering was incredibly clear, but it didn’t look as though it had been done by hand or with a printing press. It had an odd shiny feel to the outside as well, like it had been coated in order to keep out the damp.
Inej sat it on the table and lifted the lid. It came off easily, and revealed a large square of that same thick card in bright red that unfolded into a larger board with regular markings on it.
“What in the Saints’ names is that?” Nina remarked, putting down her reading material.
“I have no idea. It was at the bottom of the trunk.”
“Is it a map?” Wylan suggested.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Inej murmured as she put the board down and looked at what was left in the box. 
Underneath that map-like object was a tray divided into several compartments, with little silver tokens collected in one, some colourful playing cards of an unknown variety in another, and some appealing little houses done in an unusual material in both green and red. Beside those lay a rack of what looked like currency, in the same shape and thickness as notes of kruge. Jesper immediately started rifling through it all, mixing up the various collections and inspecting them all with irregular attention. Although Wylan slapped his hand away with a tut, it clearly wasn’t out of lack of interest.
“What is it?” Nina asked again. Taking the board in her hands, she began to stumble through the words written on it.
“Collect 200… something, looks like it could be a currency symbol because it says “salary” after that, as you pass GO... Old Kent Road, another amount of money… sixty? Community chest, Whitechapel Road, same amount of money as the other square…”
As she turned it over in her hands, a slim white booklet fell out onto the table. Inej started forward and managed to snatch it up before anyone else did, although the gesture was useless as she immediately handed it to Nina, who skimmed over the first few lines and let out a delighted noise.
“It’s a game! A board game! Seems like you play by going around the board which has place names marked out on it, and you buy up the land so that you can build houses on it. And you compete to earn the most money.”
“Who’s sending weird foreign board games to Ketterdam?” Wylan said incredulously. “Are you sure it’s not got something contraband hidden in there somehow?”
Inej laughed. “Does a game based on financial gain not strike you as the most Kerch thing in the world? I can well believe a mercher bought this to educate their children on the fun of working under Ghezen.”
Wylan cracked a grin at that, and Nina snorted. She pushed the box towards him.
“Take a look if you want.”
He lifted up the tray of items and ran his fingers along the underside, then looked inside each of the little model houses as if there might be gemstones wedged in the base like on Jesper’s guns. Wylan tapped along the top of the board, but there were no hidden compartments or secret openings. It seemed as though they had genuinely come across some kind of entertainment from another country.
“Shall we play it?” Jesper said with a broad grin at everyone. “We’ve got nothing else on, have we?”
“I’m meant to have applied for my sailing license by the end of next week,” Inej said weakly, but she wasn’t much interested in her own excuse. This bizarre-looking game they had stolen by chance had already caught her attention far more than boat permits and crew-hiring documents.
“I’m happy to,” Matthias said, and Nina and Wylan nodded fervently as well.
“Perfect! Let’s not disturb everyone’s things down here, we can take it into another room.”
“Nobody’s bedrooms are big enough,” Nina complained. “Kaz is too cheap to give us enough space to actually enjoy our stay at The House of Brekker.”
“His bedroom is, though.”
Read more here!
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jdaydreamer3 · 3 years
Text
The Bering and Wells Show
I’ve been working on a fic for some time that is my version of how I wanted Warehouse 13 to end.  I’m still working on this fic - it’s evolved into something bigger than I originally intended, including flashback scenes and an artifact that I’m still trying to figure out the logistics for, so as I’m sure is a surprise to no one, it’s not complete. I hope it will be someday, but in the meantime, this seemed like a good opportunity to share a couple separate excerpts from this story - for which I still don’t have an official title for. 
She was happy for Pete.  Like Artie, life had sought to give him a second chance at love when Kelly walked through the doors of the bed and breakfast again.
And even though he had panicked at first, seeing Kelly again, seeing everything he ever wanted right in front of him, a ready-made family considering Kelly was nearly eight months pregnant at the time, unattached and looking worried for more reasons than her grandmother succumbing to an artifact, things had eventually worked out.
Though the path to true love never did run smooth and Pete was as guilty of that as anyone.  In a last attempt to keep everything the same even though everything was changing, he made himself believe it was Myka whom he was in love with. She shakes her head at the memory, recalling the awkward conversation that had followed.
“How can you say I’m not in love with you, Mykes?  I told Steve I was in love with you, and he knew I was telling the truth.”
“You talked to Steve about this before coming to me?” she said exasperated.
“Well, yeah,” Pete said beginning to look uncertain about the affair.
“Okay,” Myka exhaled a sigh, rubbing at her forehead.  “First of all, Steve can’t tell who you’re in love with, Pete.  He can only tell if you’re lying.”
“Yeah, but he believed me when I told him I was in love with you.”
“Because you believed it!”  Gentler she continued, “And I know you love me, just as I love you, but we’re not in love with each other.  There’s a difference.”
“How can you be so sure I’m not?” Pete asked.
Myka cracked a smile.  “Because you never give me the larger piece of dessert.”
“What?  Dessert?” he startled before remembering a long-ago conversation.  “Yeah, well you don’t eat sugar,” he said half-heartedly, remembering Myka’s long ago profession on the subject but also knowing it wasn’t entirely accurate.
“We both know that isn’t true,” Myka said glancing at an opened package of Twizzlers on the table where she’d been completing paperwork before Pete interrupted her with his revelation.  “I eat sugar – just not in copious amounts the way most of the rest of you do.  And we both know you would give the woman you love the larger portion of dessert.  You said so once before, if you remember.”
Pete nodded thoughtfully.  “With Kelly.”
“With Kelly,” Myka agreed.  “You know before when we had this conversation about her, she wasn’t willing to know about the warehouse and you weren’t willing to give it up for her.  I think that’s all changed now, don’t you?  You’re ready to live a normal life.  And by some… weird coincidence, Kelly is here again, brought back to our doorstep by an artifact, no less,” Myka laughed at the irony.  “It’s as though the universe, or at least the warehouse, is handing you a second chance to have the life you want – to have the family you so desire.  All you have to do is take the first step.”
There was a moment of heavy silence that fell between them then, Myka well aware Pete was trying to get a handle on his emotions.  His voice hoarse when he asked, “What about you, Myka?  Don’t you want a chance at a normal life?”
Normal life.  The words made Myka think of Helena and she swallowed hard at the thought of the woman left behind on a suburban driveway in Boone all those months ago.  Of the way Helena had left everything she knew, everything she was to try to live a normal life.  If only Helena had been normal, Myka wouldn’t have found it so difficult, even now, to let her go.
“Who wants normal when you can have all this?” Myka tried to joke, a hand waving towards the warehouse floor.  “Aside from you apparently,” she smiled.  “I don’t want normal, Pete.  I belong here with the warehouse.”
“Yeah, you do,” Pete agreed.  “And the warehouse definitely needs you.”
That conversation took place well over fifteen years and four children ago.   She really should plan for another coffee date with Pete soon.  It’s been too long since their last meeting.  She knows he’d love to hear about this latest retrieval, joking with her about getting old but so grateful that she was actually getting old because the alternative was unacceptable.
***
They had gotten into another heated argument over nothing really.  A regular occurrence these days sadly.  Myka knew better than to let her emotions run so high - knew first-hand the havoc such emotions could wreak while on the warehouse floor.  She didn’t notice the electric currents gathering intensity and speed until a moment before she and HG were showered with goo.  Apparently, someone else in the office did notice the currents.  
She knew she should be grateful - being gooed was better than being shocked, but it had been a source of pride that she hadn’t been gooed like this since her first week working in the warehouse when she and Pete had been arguing about something.  From the look on HG’s stunned face, quickly morphing into a look of utter distaste, she had never had the pleasure.
“Don’t swallow it,” Myka warned and in a huff of frustration without another word, she spun on her heel and stalked back to Artie’s office, leaving a trail of  goo-covered footprints behind on the warehouse floor.  She could hear HG muttering under her breath as she followed behind.
The climb up the stairs to the office had been tricky at best, Myka’s boots slipping more than once from the substance that was oddly both slippery and sticky.  By the time she finally made it inside Artie’s office, only to notice the smug looks on both Claudia and Pete’s faces at the sight of she and HG covered in the purple, sticky substance, she was trembling with anger and frustration.
“Maybe a shower will cool you both down,” Pete waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Her mood only darkened.
“Which one of you miscreants turned the goo on us?” Helena seethed from beside her.
Claudia and Pete both quickly pointed a finger at the other.  
“It was a joint effort, really,” Claudia finally admitted.
Myka didn’t say a word, only glared at them both before disappearing through the umbilicus door, on the way to her SUV to drive back to the B&B for a shower and clean change of clothing.
Still, the anger had been better than the silence.  Before silence between them had always been companionable, with a pleasant sort of tension, now it was fraught with tension of another kind.
When Myka returned to her bedroom, still towel drying her hair after a long shower to remove the goo, she found Pete sprawled out on her bed, lazily throwing and catching a tennis ball.  She caught his eye briefly before changing course to her dresser to pull out a pair of clean socks.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Pete.”
“I figured you’d say that, but I think we both know you need to talk about it.  About this thing between you and HG.”
“There is no thing between me and HG.”
Pete laughed but it was devoid of humor.  “Come on, Mykes, we both know there’s been a thing between you and HG since the moment she trapped us to her ceiling in London.”
“Says the man who thought he was in love with me little more than two weeks ago.”
“Okay, okay, I was wrong about you and me, but I’m not wrong about this.”
“She left, Pete and then she stayed – with them.”
“So I am right - you do love her!”
Myka glared at him.
“She came back.  She’s here now.   It’s almost like you’re being given a second chance – something you pointed out to me little more than two weeks ago,” he repeated her words from that earlier conversation.
“She won’t stay.”
“Maybe she would if you asked her to.  Maybe you just have to take that first step.”
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moonknightly · 4 years
Text
and you keep me holding on : santiago “pope” garcia x reader (four)
Word Count: 5.3k
Excerpt: “He cries and he screams and he curses every higher power he can think of until his voice is strained with the effort. He bargains, he pleads. He prays, and then he curses again.”
Warnings: Blood, violence, gun violence, cursing, meh
[SERIES MASTERLIST] 
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OCTOBER 20TH - DAY FOUR
The precinct is busier than usual when Santi walks in the following morning. There are twice as many people, twice as many noises, twice as many reasons for Santi to be annoyed.
So many FBI agents. So many sounds. It’s complete sensory overload.
He stops after taking only a few steps off of the elevator, shaking his head, trying his hardest to push his irritation down. He’d been livid when Cameron announced that she was no longer letting the squad work on the case, and he hadn’t been the only one to let their anger show, but if Santi is being completely honest, he knew it had been coming.
It didn’t make it any easier, though. It felt like giving up in a way, even though that was the last thing he was willing to do.
Giving up would never be an option.
And fuck, the idea that it would one day be expected of him made his blood boil.
Santi takes a couple of deep breaths. He lets his eyes fall shut for just a moment, willing himself to stay calm. He shakes his head once, twice, and then starts to move towards an empty desk Cameron was letting him use. He can hear bits and pieces of the different conversations going on around him as he walks, but he can’t bring himself to actually pay attention to what’s being said.
He plops himself down into his chair, and before he has even a moment to make himself comfortable, he feels someone come up behind him and stop just a few feet away. He twists in his chair, spinning it around to face whoever has decided to sneak up on him and was surprised to notice that it wasn’t one, but two people — both agents.
“Need something?”
Santi doesn’t mean to sound so sarcastic, and while one of the agents chuckles a little bit, the other looks rather unimpressed with his attitude.
The second one — the one wearing a glare that quickly morphs into a arrogant smirk — shoves his hands into his pockets and tilts his head curiously at Santi.
“Maybe.”
Yeah, he fucking hates this guy.
Santi waits for the agent to continue, but several seconds pass in silence and he can’t stop himself from slowly raising an eyebrow in question.
“Okay…” Santi mumbles, dragging out the “y”, still waiting.
“I’m Agent Barnes, and this is Agent Graves.”
Santi glances towards the other agent, Graves, who smiles gently at him and gives him a quick nod. He definitely likes this one better.
Barnes rocks back and forth on his heels, still smirking to himself as he says her name under his breath. “We’d like to talk to you about her disappearance, if that’s alright with you.”
Santi can’t help but flinch at the cold way in which Barnes says her name. He can tell the sudden movement piqued Barnes interest, but he isn’t about to explain himself, doesn’t feel the need to.
“Sure, I’d love to talk about my wife,” Santi responds, eyes narrowed and lips upturned into something that resembles a grimace.
Barnes takes a few steps forward and comes to lean against Santi’s desk while Graves stays where he’d been standing. Pope folds his arms across his chest.
“When was the last time you saw her?” Barnes asks, looking down at Santi, his eyes staying trained on his face. Santi holds his gaze, taking it like some sort of challenge almost.
He absolutely loathes the bastard.
“On the sixteenth. She stopped by after she left the hospital and I walked her downstairs.”
“And at what time was that?”
“At about eight,” Santi answers, shrugging his shoulders gently. He hadn’t been looking at the clock, he’d been looking at her.
“And why didn’t you go home with her?”
“I had a lot of paperwork and she was tired. I needed to stay and there was no reason for her to.”
Barnes nods his head once, seeming to think over the information Santi just gave him in a way that makes him roll his eyes again.
“And what time would you say you made it home that night?”
“You know, I’m starting to feel like this is an interrogation, not an interview. Look, I’ve already told all of this to-”
“It’s just a simple question.”
Santi is frustrated, because all of the times, all of the facts, they’re all written down in her file, and he’s positive that the agents had already looked through the notes.
“About fifteen minutes after midnight.”
The passive expression Barnes is sporting quickly morphs into a smirk — one that honestly makes Santi want to deck him but also makes him so sick to his stomach at the same time.
“How long does it usually take for you to get home?”
“Twenty minutes, give or take.”
“That’s funny.”
Santi furrows his eyebrows, ready to slam his hand down onto the desk and demand Barnes just get to the fucking point, but before he can even blink the agent is continuing on with his words.
“You scanned out of your office at eleven that night. Only twenty minutes home...”
No. There’s no fucking way he’s about to-
“That leaves almost an hour that you have unaccounted for.”
Santi is completely and utterly floored at what Barnes is implying. He can only stare in shock for several seconds, jaw slack, tips of his ears turning bright red as heat flooded his body.
“You think that I killed my wife.”
It isn’t a question, but rather a statement — a statement that Santi never imagined he would find himself saying. He scoffs and shakes his head in disbelief.
“We don’t-” Graves starts to say, but his partner quickly cuts him off, silencing him with a simple wave of his hand that only pisses Santi off even further.
“I didn’t say that,” Barnes says, voice lacking any distinguishable emotion.
Santi scoffs again and quickly stands, feeling like it gave him some sort of advantage even though he was several inches shorter than the other man.
“I would never do anything to hurt my wife.”
“I’m not saying that you did, but maybe,” Barnes starts, that damn smirk returning full force. “Maybe you and Nathan...”
“Okay, now you’ve gone too far,” Santi fumes, taking a step closer to Barnes, getting ready to wind his arm back so he can just-.
“Garcia,” Cameron calls out from where she’s standing, about ten feet away.
Santi hadn’t noticed her approach.
“Do you hear this bullshit? Did you hear-”
“Santiago,” she interrupts, effectively silencing him. She rarely calls him by his full name, and when she does, it was used as a form of comfort that Santi didn’t even know he needed until just now. He swallows the lump in his throat and glances towards his feet, trying to push his anger away, giving way to the shame at the fact that someone could ever think he’d hurt her.
“I wouldn’t hurt her. You know I wouldn’t do that.”
Cameron places her hand on his shoulder, giving it a gentle yet firm squeeze like she’s done so many times recently. “I know.”
Of course she knows. Santi loves her more than any person had ever loved another. She is, and always will be, his entire world, his reason for getting out of bed in the morning and his reason for breathing, and Cameron can’t understand how someone could even insinuate that he might be involved in her kidnapping. Santi has a temper and that’s no secret to anyone, but he would never, ever do something to hurt his wife, not even in the midst of the most heated argument would he imagine laying a single finger on her.
“I wouldn’t.”
Santi looks towards Cameron with such hopelessness and desperation trapped in his irises. He’s pleading with her, begging her to just believe him. He’s convinced that she agrees with Barnes.
“We all know.”
She squeezes again, and after her words have a few seconds to settle in, it seems to be enough, at least for the moment.
Santi’s shoulders seem to relax, just a fraction, and he sucks in a sharp breath. He nods his head once, solemnly so, and mumbles something that sounds like an excuse under his breath before retreating towards the locker rooms. No one follows, he doesn’t want anyone to. He just needs a few seconds to himself, a moment to push the nausea and the nerves and the worry away, even though he knows they would only return.
What Santi really needs is for this to all just be some sort of twisted, fucked up nightmare.
What Santi really needs is her.
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OCTOBER 21ST — DAY FIVE
Cameron makes Santi take the rest of the day off. He tries to argue with her, giving her the same reasons he had before, but nothing seems to convince her to let him stay. Ideally, she didn’t even want him to leave Jay’s apartment the next day either, and this time, he decides to just shut up and listen.
She wants him to sleep in until noon, watch as many movies as he possibly can, call his mother back, and actually eat something more than a few bites of whatever fast food or microwavable meal he’d been forced to buy.
Normally, Santi wouldn’t complain about doing any of those things, but today is different. He needs something to focus on that will keep his mind quiet. He feels that he needs a distraction today more than any other day so far.
Because today is their two year wedding anniversary, and he is losing his mind by doing nothing.
It’s just after six p.m., and he’d woken up at five in the morning with no possible chance of getting back to sleep. The TV is turned off, and Santi has no desire to stand up and find the remote, and even if he does turn something on, he knows he won’t be able to properly focus on it. The bagel he’d made that morning is still sitting half eaten on the coffee table, and he didn’t even bother to make himself lunch.
Nothing Cameron wanted him to do came even close to being done, but Santi just can’t bring himself to do anything other than play a word game on his phone.
But he knows that he needs to call his mother back. He still hasn’t spoken to her, and she’s still calling him a few times each day, leaving message after message each time she’s met with the familiar “beep” of his voicemail. His father had started to do the same, even going as far as to send him a text message that read “If we didn’t know any better, we would think you’re missing too”. He deleted it right after opening it.
He just needs to get it over with
Santi sighs gently, closing out of his game and pulling up his contacts, scrolling until he found his mother’s name. He hits the call button, his stomach flipping as he waits.
She answers after the first ring, the worry in her voice sounding in Santi’s ears, the guilt of not answering any of her hundreds of calls suddenly weighing on his shoulders. He didn’t mean to cause her any sort of panic or grief, but what did he think ignoring her calls would do, especially in a situation like this?
“Hey Mamá,” he mumbles into the phone, voice hoarse from not having used it all day.
The relief in his mother’s voice after she hears him speak instantly makes that guilt grow into something that nearly swallows him whole, and his chest tightens as he listens to her cry in what he hoped was ease after finally hearing from him and not hurt because she just now heard from him.
About five minutes pass before the conversation moves from Santi’s apparent inability to answer his phone to what he knows his mother has been calling about, and what has been the only thing on his mind for the last five days.
“Have you found anything?”
Santi feels a lump form in his throat, and he suddenly loses the ability to speak properly. This has been his reality for the better part of a week — talking about her and thinking about her every second of every day, which really isn’t any different from normal except for the fact that it now made his heart ache rather than fill him with joy.
He briefly tells his mother what happened in Princeton and Allentown, though he assumes she’d already heard. If you turned on the news for even two minutes, you would see her name and her picture flash across the screen, accompanied by Nathan’s, which never failed to make Santi’s rage blossom all over again.
“At least I know she’s alive,” Santi mutters after a brief pause where neither of them could find the right words to say, thinking back to the picture from the other day. “The amount of blood...Mamá, I was so fuckin’ scared that she was de-”
Santi’s voice cracks, and he can’t bring himself to finish his words. Saying that he’s afraid out loud is probably the most candid he’s been since the start of it all. He still hasn’t let himself cry, not really, but the one tear that fell down his cheek is all it took for the dam to break loose.
He pulls the phone away from his ear, but he doesn’t hang up. He simply lets it fall to the couch beside him as he brings his other hand up to his mouth, covering it as a broken sob passes his lips. His mother continues to listen on the other end, and her heart shatters for her son as well as his wife. She recounts an almost silent prayer just as Santi curses God’s name, and she can’t even bring herself to chastise him for using such language. She would’ve done the same if she were feeling even half of what Santi is.
All of Santi’s emotions continue to pour out of him in a violent downfall, like a storm that held no mercy, leaving a gaping hole in his chest that threatens to swallow him whole. He cries and he screams and he curses every higher power he can think of until his voice is strained with the effort. He bargains, he pleads. He prays, and then he curses again. His mother listens the entire time.
Several minutes pass like this, and once he’s sure that there are no more tears left for him to cry, after he feels like he would pass out if he shed even one more, he picks the phone back up slowly, though he stays completely silent. After several seconds, his mother says his name gently.
“I’m here,” he mumbles, no emotion left in his voice at all.
His mother seems to be thinking about her words, choosing them carefully as to not upset him any further. “Maybe you should think about coming home for a few days.”
Santi doesn’t respond, and after another moment spent in silence, she speaks again. “You know, I just don’t think you should be alone tonight…”
“You remembered,” he grumbles quietly, his voice hardly audible.
“Of course I did Santiago, but regardless of whether it’s your anniversary or not, maybe you just-”
“You know what Mamá,” he interrupts, cutting her off. “I, uh — I actually have plans tonight.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, Jay just got this new video game and we were gonna order a pizza or somethin’ for dinner,” he lies, though there was absolutely nothing in his tone to give him away. “I won’t be alone, promise.”
She seems to accept his answer, and doesn’t question him any further. She even sounds slightly enthusiastic about it, saying that it sounds like the kind of distraction Santi needs. He has to physically bite his tongue in order to keep himself from scoffing.
They say their goodbyes shortly after, and Santi throws his phone onto the couch cushion beside him, a deep sigh escaping his lips as he stares at the floor for what feels like an hour when it was probably only two minutes.
He and Jay don’t have any plans.
There’s no video game, no pizza. He feels slightly bad for lying to his mother, but a larger part of him just wants to save her the worry and trouble.
He quickly stands from the couch and switches out his sweatpants for a pair of jeans, but can’t find the effort to change out of his old PT sweatshirt, the one she always stole from him. He runs his fingers through his hair, not bothering to style it. He hasn’t shaved in a few days and he’s sporting a decent beard that he knew she would love.
He grabs his wallet and the spare key Jay’d given him, picked up his phone and sent him a text, also lying to him about his location and his plans, and set out the door.
Not ten seconds pass before Jay is texting him back, telling Santi they’d caught a case and he wouldn’t be home until later that night anyways.
Santi doesn’t think twice about it, and simply shoves his phone into his pocket before heading to the subway.
Their apartment is dark when Santi arrives a half hour later. He doesn’t bother to flip on the light in the entryway, and takes a moment to just stand there, his back against the wooden door, fingers tracing each groove.
It almost feels normal, like any other day. It feels like Santi had just gotten off work for the night and he’s taking a moment to decompress before he would make his way to the bedroom, where he would find her curled up under the sheets, her head on his pillow as she waited for him to come home to her.
But she always made sure that the lamp in the living room was on for him, and she had a habit of leaving the TV running until he got in. Neither are on, and only silence and darkness and solitude surround him.
Santi kicks his shoes off by the door before pushing away from it, taking a few tentative steps into the apartment. The room is slightly illuminated from the glittering lights of Manhattan, just enough for Santi to see around the outlines and shapes of things. It’s strange — everything looks the same, smells the same, but it feels so completely different. So completely foreign.
Lifeless.
A few things are out of place, like the blanket they kept on the back of the couch, now on the floor, and the couple of books they kept stacked on the coffee table are shifted a few inches to the left. Santi folds the blanket and puts it back in its place, moves the books back, and then walks slowly into the bedroom.
The smell of her perfume instantly hits him upon entering, and he has to grip the doorframe to keep himself from stumbling backwards. He sways on his feet, and closes his eyes for just a moment, taking a deep breath to, hopefully, steady himself as he reaches to his right to flip on the light. He keeps his eyes tightly shut for another moment before slowly opening them to finally take in his surroundings.
The bedroom is far worse than the main living area. The pillows from the bed are tossed to the floor, the sheets and comforter twisted together in a knot that Santi knew he would struggle to get out. There’s a small strand of yellow police tape on the floor that Santi doesn’t understand why it’s there, as they had only blocked the front door with it. Both of their bedside drawers are still pulled open, and he can see that the bathroom light is still on.
The bathroom.
Santi moves without intending to do so, and he feels his feet carry him towards their ensuite almost as if he’s on autopilot. He reaches the threshold in just a few short seconds, and at first, his brain doesn’t exactly process what he’s seeing, doesn’t fully make the connection and he only stands there, confused and bewildered.
No one’s been by to clean up yet, and blood still covers every surface Santi chooses to set his eyes on, only now, it’s dry, and more brown than it is red. The shower curtain had been taken away by the crime scene techs, as had the bathmat and the various hand towels that had been covered in crimson. Santi is almost positive that there isn’t as much glass on the floor as there had been before, which made sense — the techs would have taken some of it as well. But the floor and the walls and the counter...it looks like the kind of murder scene one would see in a grotesque horror film.
There’s even a handprint on the side of the tub that Santi knows belonged to himself. He’d used the tub to hold himself up, to keep himself from collapsing further after falling to his knees. He looks towards the cabinet under the sink to find a second handprint, right where he knew it would be. He had caught himself there, too.
He stands in the doorway for what must have been five minutes at least, staring at the blood and the glass and the wreckage, and he feels absolutely nothing. If anything, he feels completely and utterly numb to it all. Part of him can’t believe that what he’s looking at is real, and the other part won’t allow his brain to connect the dots.
He knows it’s her blood, in their cozy little apartment in Manhattan, and yet, he still feels like he’s standing in the middle of any old crime scene, where any old victim had been murdered by their enraged boyfriend. He’d seen it so many times before, back when he was a detective. It doesn’t seem any different now.
He tries to make sense of it in his head, tries to use sound logic and the knowledge of what he’d learned in his psychology classes throughout college to figure out why he’s feeling the way that he is, but nothing made sense. He just feels so entirely disconnected.
Another few minutes pass before Santi is finally able to turn his gaze away from the carnage. A small bout of nausea hits his stomach, but he chooses to ignore it. He’s learned that if he doesn’t pay attention to it, the less likely he is to lose what little his stomach holds at any given time. He wipes a stray tear away from his cheek, one he wouldn’t have noticed if the cool air from the vent hadn’t hit his face, and steps away from the bathroom.
His next destination is the closet. Nothing in there has been touched or moved to his knowledge, and for some reason, he feels comfort in that. He sighs gently and grabs an empty bag from the corner. This time, he’s more careful when choosing what clothes he would bring with him, because he has no plans on returning to the apartment anytime soon, not without a stack of moving boxes and a U-Haul at the very least. He decides right then and there that he’s breaking the lease early and finding somewhere else to move immediately. Just having the apartment in his name makes his skin crawl and he wants out, wants nothing to do with it. And not only that, but as well as he knows his wife, he knows that if-
When they find her, she won’t want to be anywhere near the apartment.
But he also knows that there’s a part of her that will want to keep it just to prove a point, to show that she’s more than what had been done to her, and the thought of that makes him smile just a tiny bit.
“Stubborn ass,” he mumbles under his breath, a small, sad chuckle following just after.
He needs to get out of there.
Santiago gathers all of the clothes he figures he’ll need and turns to leave the closet when his eyes catch a familiar flash of gray, just like they had five nights before.
Nevada is still where Santi had dropped him, just lying on the floor, forgotten. She would’ve been so upset had she seen him just tossed aside like that, and that thought also causes Santi to grin to himself. She loves that damn wolf more than anything, would often swear that she loves him more than she loves Santi but he’s always thought it was so adorable how attached she was to the stuffed animal that he doesn’t even mind. She’d always treated Nevada as if he were a living, breathing thing.
He walks over to him, gently kneeling down to take him into his hands, his smile growing slightly as he feels the matted “fur” against his fingertips.
Santi slowly flips Nevada over, finding that her rings are still shoved onto the tail, just like they had been before. At first, he didn’t think that he would find them there, and he can’t exactly explain to himself why. He gently pulls them off, letting the cool metal settle in the palm of his hand.
All he can do is stare at them for several seconds, and it feels as if a rock settles and grows in the pit of his stomach the longer he he holds them. He closes his fist around the two rings, mumbling something that sounds like a promise — a promise that he’ll find her, and that he’ll bring her justice no matter the outcome — before shoving them into the pocket of his jeans.
He glances at his own wedding band for a moment, sitting on his ring finger, the silver glistening in the light, just like it had every single day since they said “I do”.
Two whole years to the day.
He’d planned to take her away for the weekend to celebrate their anniversary. It was supposed to be special, romantic, just the two of them alone in Boston without a care in the world. He’d had it planned for months now.
Does she know what day it is, wherever she is? Does she remember, or even realize how many days have passed?
Fuck that. Santi hates himself for even wondering, because it made him feel so completely selfish.
And he hates himself even more when he reaches to slide his wedding band off of his finger.
He failed her, he doesn’t deserve to wear it. He doesn’t deserve to call himself her husband.
When-
If they find her — which also makes Santi hate himself, because he’s beginning to pay attention to the numbers and the statistics and he’s starting to look at it as a recovery instead of a rescue — will she even want to still be married to him?
Will she still love him? Or will she hate him for letting this happen to her?
He slowly drops his hand, leaving the band on his ring finger. He’s sure he’ll never be able to take it off. Even if he never sees her again, he was sure the band will remain on his finger until he’s rotting in the ground (like he deserved, but he pushed the thought away, not wanting to wallow in his own self loathing).
He will always be her husband, unless she explicitly tells him that it’s no longer what she wants.
Santi shakes his head and tries to turn his brain off. He doesn’t want to think about that right now.
He shoves Nevada into his bag, zips it close, and makes his way out towards the foyer. He turns off every light in the apartment before leaving, locking the door behind him without looking back once. He can’t stand to be in there any longer, not liking where his mind is headed while standing in the middle of all that had once been theirs.
He arrives back at Jay’s shortly after, expecting him to still be gone on whatever case he’d been talking about, surprised when he finds the other detective standing in the middle of the living room. It looks as if he’d been pacing, his hands on his hips and a blank expression on his face that Santi can’t read.
“What’s up?” Santi asks, throwing his bag onto the floor by the door, deciding he would worry about finding a spot to put it away later.
Jay stays silent for close to a minute, seeming to be lost in thought before he finally speaks, voice low and eyes looking everywhere but at Santi. His tone sounds cold yet so full of emotion at the same time.
“Nathan emailed you a video tonight. Your account is being monitored and we intercepted it before you could see it.”
Santi’s blood runs cold, and he feels frozen in place. He wants to ask Jay what it is, but he can’t make himself speak, doesn’t remember how to use his voice. Instead, he just swallows the lump that had formed in his throat and looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to continue.
It takes Jay several seconds to speak again, and when he finally does, Santi is sure that he would’ve preferred for him to just stay fucking quiet.
“Santi, Nathan shot her.”
Jay has tears in his eyes, and Santi still can’t move. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t fucking move move. Can’t speak, can’t think, can’t process the other man’s words. He can’t do anything.
“They’re working on tracing the email but we...the FBI said they have enough reason to believe that she’s-”
Jay can’t bring himself to finish his sentence, but Santi understands. He understands perfectly, though he wished he didn’t.
Nathan shot her, and they have enough reason to believe it was fatal.
But it doesn’t sit right with Santiago.
Something about it feels off, feels wrong. He was sure he would’ve felt something in his gut, like people say they do in books and movies when someone they care about is hurt or in trouble. But then again, he hadn’t felt anything out of the ordinary when she had been taken. But if she had been killed, he was almost certain he would have felt something — some instinct in the back of his mind, anything.
“She’s not,” Santi snaps, voice hard with emotion though it broke on the last word at the same time. “She’s not dead.”
“Santi,” Jay chastises sternly, exasperation evident in his voice.
“She’s not dead.”
“You didn’t see the video!” Jay yells, sliding his hand down his face as the pain and anger takes over his entire body. “You didn’t see it and you should be thankful that you didn’t have to.”
It’s obvious that what Jay had seen in the video traumatized him, and was enough to make him think for himself that she’s dead, but Santi just can’t accept it. He doesn’t know if it’s the denial talking, or if what he’s feeling is actually real, but after repeating himself for a third time, he feels the world come crashing down around him, he feels everything stop.
Santi’s knees give out, and he crumples, eyes rolling into the back of his head. Jay catches him before he can hit the floor.
Everything is black.
Santi’s heart, his world — it’s nothing but black.
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gumnut-logic · 3 years
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Daily Dose of Thunderbirds
I absolutely adore this moment where John pulls up the EMP and zaps the Zero XL (Eos will probably never let him forget it - hence why he wasn’t immediately in the cockpit in the scene afterwards - he was checking on Eos). ::wonders if it might be lying around somewhere as a gif that could be gazed at extensively :D ::
But this moment, Virgil and John together like we’ve never seen before (though I have to say that John obviously knows Two well...what don’t we get to see????) Both professional, smart and powerful. It is just great to see them together.
Also headcanon - the EMP was installed after the episode ‘Chaos’ where it was obviously a gap in their toolkit. Brains would have been very annoyed and patched that gap asap.
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Aaaah, what am I doing? I’ve written this all in a fic. Have a excerpt of Thunderbird XL (it’s unfinished, but still has a few interesting bits in it).
-o-o-o-
Two was so familiar it hurt.
One was his daydream, but Two was his reassurance.
Virgil didn’t say anything as he helped him through the corridors. A mop of black hair was his only sight as he looked down at the big man under his arm.
The shoulders supporting him were far broader than he remembered. It slowly began to sink in exactly how much he didn’t know. The uniform was familiar. The green baldric and kit. The tools were new and Jeff frowned at them as if to accuse them of betraying his faith in his knowledge. Why Virgil felt he had to carry a screwdriver around with him everywhere, he had no doubt his son could tell him if he asked.
But he didn’t.
They arrived at the room he expected and it was with some relief that it was what he expected.
It wasn’t until Virgil velcroed him to the bed that he saw the dent in the ceiling. “How did that happen?” It was out before he could think twice.
Virgil looked up from the tray of supplies that were not designed for an antigravity environment and frowned at the bulkhead above them.
“Oh, the exo-suit.”
“What was the exo-suit doing in here?”
Virgil pulled out a palm scanner and began a methodical examination. “Got myself trapped in it. Tried to get myself out. Didn’t go well.”
Jeff stared at the side of his son’s head, but didn’t ask the obvious question as Virgil stared at the hologram of a very battered old body above the bed.
Virgil’s hitched breath was the only sound in the room.
“I-I need to give you some supplements. A painkiller would probably be a good idea.”
“No, son. I can last a little longer. Need a clear head.”
Brown eyes caught his for just a moment before looking away. “There isn’t much else I can do until we get you to a hospital.” Virgil turned away, once again fiddling with equipment, unwrapping a hypodermic needle and fussing with a small bottle of liquid. “This is a basic dose of necessary vitamins and minerals.”
Virgil’s eyes were on anything but his father and the hologram above him.
Jeff reached over to one of the many patches on his suit and unwrapped the seal on his arm. “You’ll need to secure it again.”
His son blinked but said nothing, administering the dose to his father and rebinding his suit with tape. “We need to get you a new uniform.”
“It is enough for the moment, Virgil. We need to get back up top and get out of here.”
He saw the hesitation flicker across that longed-for face. “You’re lying down on one of the medbeds in the cockpit. You’re going to let the medscan finish so when we reach home, we have enough data to know what we have to do.”
Jeff eyed him. The changes were subtle. The confidence level was much stronger, more assured, despite the situation.
“Virgil, we need you up here.”
John’s voice would forever be music to his ears.
“FAB.” A swallow, and Jeff could see his son visibly gather himself. “C’mon, Dad. We have a rescue to complete.”
Detaching him from the bed, Virgil again wrapped his arm around his father and helped him through the great green ship.
Both Gordon and John were in the cockpit. The medbed had already been deployed and was ready waiting.
It very quickly became clear that he had no say in whether he was going to lie on it or not.
Virgil’s directions stood for no argument and to be honest, Jeff didn’t really want to put up a fight, but there was so much to see! After so long alone with only rock and the same broken ship to stare at, everything was so rich in colour.
And his sons. His beloved sons.
He watched their every move, part of him still unable to believe that they were really there.
Virgil fussed, obviously fighting his own demons. Gordon chattered incessantly, but Jeff was so happy to hear and see him, he had no protest.
And John, his saviour…Jeff had never been one for the musical arts, that was always Lucy’s department, but to hear his boy’s voice free of static and interruption…
Reality threatened to fracture.
So, he obeyed his worrying sons and lay down on the medbed. Gravity, wasn’t a factor at the moment, but when they reached Earth it was going to be a definite problem.
Reached Earth?
He swallowed a lump in his throat as Virgil was finally urged to the pilot’s seat and the great ‘bird around them came to life.
He had to see this, so he sat up on the bed and watched.
John contacted the Zero XL. The name of the ship that had brought his boys here felt wrong, as if he had been aboard the Titanic and was now being saved by the Titanic II, but the moment the ship answered…
Brains.
The joy in the man’s stuttering voice had Jeff’s heart stuttering along with it. Not only had his boys come all this way, but Brains as well?
The Brains he knew wasn’t a physically active man. His specialities were academic. He had never been comfortable in space or even aboard the Thunderbirds he had designed, yet here he was, out here where literally only one man had gone before.
Jeff’s heart swelled almost to breaking.
John cut off the connection and that voice was gone. Only to be replaced by those of his sons as they coordinated the return trip.
Scott was clearly in command, but Virgil had his own responses and John was sharp and sure. Gordon sat back quietly, his stream of excited words apparently spent, but his posture was active, as if he was ready to move at a moment’s notice. He turned, looked at Jeff and smiled, his eyes glittering in the overhead lighting.
It became apparent very quickly that his boys’ skillsets had advanced considerably while he was gone.
Which really? Was to be expected, but time and memory were two different things.
The red of Thunderbird Three coasted effortlessly between spinning and colliding rocks, One and Two following best they could.
“Who taught Alan to fly like that?”
Gordon snorted. “He’s pretty much a natural.”
“Dad, you need to lie down flat and let the medscan finish.” Virgil threw it over his shoulder and Jeff got the impression that if the man didn’t have to fly his ‘bird, he would still be fussing.
“You sound like your Grandma.”
His mom.
Mom.
Virgil’s tone lightened and his voice was grinning. “Yeah. Who is always right.”
Hmmm. Perhaps some things hadn’t changed.
-o-o-o-
He did lie down eventually, if only to stop his second eldest from fretting. Gordon turned around at one point and whispered that if he didn’t do what Virgil said, things could get scary. Apparently, he was speaking from experience.
So, the medscan was completed and the nagging stopped.
But then they arrived at the Zero XL and Brains refused to respond. It appeared that his Titanic analogy may be far too possible.
Was fate really going to do this to him? Dangle rescue and then snatch it away?
And leave his boys stranded with him?
Then International Rescue responded.
Situation called, examined, orders issued, resolution found and executed.
A moment of panic to a moment of shocked stillness. The Zero XL floated silent in space, the emptiness eating it with its lack of light.
For all its nomenclature, the ship looked nothing like its predecessor.
Was that Thunderbird Five on its bow?
“Thunderbird Two, I need options. How do we get onboard?” His eldest’s son’s voice was a balm against the emptiness. “The docking ports are still closed.”
“I’m working on it, Thunderbird One.” John’s voice was ever so calm. The communications expert flicked a switch on the dash. “Eos, do you read?”
“I’m here, John. Though I would appreciate you never doing that again.”
His son sighed. “You were safe, Eos. We’ve gone over this before.”
The female voice was strident. “That is all very well for you to say, you weren’t the one being shot at.”
Jeff frowned. Who else was aboard the Zero XL? The voice was unfamiliar and sounded very young.
“We have a time limit, Eos. Do you still have access to the Zero XL’s systems?”
“Some. You did do damage with that little trick.”
“We need to dock, Eos.”
“Do you have the password?”
“Eos!”
“You did say I should work on my humour.”
Despite the playful tone, it appeared that Eos knew what she was doing as the Xero XL at least partially came to life, sections opening. He watched as Alan slid Three into a port at the rear. One settled into something similar, and then Two slipped under the ship’s belly and docked with a soft thud.
Virgil spoke briefly with Alan and his ‘bird was secured.
The moment Virgil was out of his pilot’s seat, he was beside Jeff, unstrapping him.
“Gordon, meet with Scott and secure the ship.”
“FAB.” The aquanaut’s eyes sparkled at Jeff again as Gordon briefly touched his shoulder before turning sharply and leaving through the rear door.
John was still sitting in his chair, speaking to the woman who continued to be both efficient and difficult.
“Who is she?” He said the words quietly, but Virgil heard him, his head coming up with a small smile.
“She’s Eos. John can fill you in.”
“Okay.” There was obviously a story there. “So, what’s with the EMP weaponry?” He arched an eyebrow.
Virgil’s smile vanished to be replaced with a frown and he looked down. “Brains designed it after the incident with the GDF’s rescue robots.” He cleared his throat. “A lot has happened.”
Quiet. “I’m sure it has.”
His son’s frown was targeted at the bed’s readout before Virgil reached over and lifted Jeff gently off the mattress and set him floating vertical again. “How does that feel?”
Jeff smiled just a little. “It does the job.”
Regardless, Virgil slipped his arm around his waist again and led him out of Thunderbird Two.
The difference between the interior of Two and the Zero XL was vast. He went from reassuringly familiar to alien in moments.
He missed the green immediately.
“Who built it?”
“Mostly Brains.”
“Mostly?”
Virgil didn’t answer and Alan joined them, again reaching out to hug Jeff, chattering just as happily, if not more than Gordon earlier. Virgil didn’t join in, but neither did he let go.
And then they were at the bridge of the ship. Virgil let him go and Brains was smiling up at him. It was so good to see him.
“It’s good to see you, Jeff.”
His own name forced his heart into his stomach. The man was an older version of his business partner, but his expression, his complete lack of stutter…it had been eight years, but Jeff Tracy had worked so many hours alongside this man, he knew him.
And it wasn’t him.
There was only one person it could be and for a split second, part of him wailed at the injustice that Gaat had followed his sons out here to corrupt these moments as he had corrupted everything else ever since he had met the man.
“It’s good to see you, too.” And he offered his hand.
As Gaat reached to shake, Jeff could see fear in his eyes. Perhaps that was what kept the bastard going all these years. A need to prove that he wasn’t afraid, that he wouldn’t run again when faced with the one man who had managed to prevent him from succeeding all those years ago.
The grip of his limp hand closed the deal.
Jeff spun the man around, wrenched his arm up his back and shoved him face first into the bulkhead.
-o-o-o-
Thunderbird X & Thunderbird XL
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gingit-cake · 3 years
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Therapeutic Gallavich
I’ve been wanting to write a tribute post to the Gallavich universe as a free source of therapy during the pandemic. I’m somewhat tongue in cheek here, but in a country (USA) where we have too little mental health support and too much stigma about mental health, diving into the Gallavich fandom and binging Shameless over the past 6m has been a really comforting coping mechanism for me. There is so much grief and loss in the world, so many ways our government and - for many people - our peers have failed us, that the fictional world of Ian and Mickey has been a wonderful source of comfort, in a lot of ways. It’s a retreat from the IRL shitshow. It’s got endless permutations of happy endings, to give us that serotonin boost and vicarious thrill. And given Mickey and Ian’s respective struggles - homophobic and sexual abuse, mental illness, neglect, parental death, incarceration, etc. - there are also countless fanfics that include therapy, recovery, and informal paths towards healing from past trauma. I’ve never related to a show so personally as I have Shameless, and binging it during the pandemic - when social isolation leaves way too much time for rumination, compounded by being at midlife and the reflection that triggers - it basically ripped open my heart and dredged up long buried stuff I’m finally willing to address. My husband and I watched the S7 finale on New Year’s Day, and let’s just say 2021 has been an emotional retcon of my life since. (I’m learning all the creative, literary terms.)  (And don’t worry, strangers on the internet, I am fortunate to have a therapist and the insurance to pay for it. I wish we all had this.)
There’s been a few fanfics I explicitly want to give a shoutout too as ones featuring therapy or recovery or conversations that have stayed with me in a meaningful way.  Excerpts, tributes, and links below the jump. Possible spoilers for Enemy Lines, Someone to Hold Me Up, Buy and By, and Etherized Against the Sky.
Enemy Lines, by J_Q and stars_fall_on - Ian has a therapist Dr. Lancaster, who introduces him to the concept of rumination:
“He felt a tightening in his chest. Did he even want to let go of Mickey? If not, what the hell was he still holding onto? A memory. A feeling. A belief that he’d made a real connection. But nothing substantial. Nothing real. // 'Ian, is there something hindering you from wanting to move on?" she asked then sat back, looking closely at him. “Are you familiar with the term rumination? // ... // Rumination, as opposed to worry, very often focuses on loss and an overpowering need to understand why something happened.' She continued to watch him closely as she spoke. 'While emotional processing starts out this way, healthy processing leads to acceptance and a release of negative emotions, but rumination keeps you stuck in a pattern.’”
THIS is my brain in a nutshell. As I wrote in a comment on one of the chapters to this amazing slow burn, enemies-to-lovers fic, I’ve got relationships from 20y+ ago that I still brood over. I’m working on letting go and the Gallavich universe has been a creative inspiration for doing some of that work. 
Someone to Hold Me Up, by @westernredcedar - Mickey has a conversation with an OC about forgiveness, after reconnecting with Ian in this hurt/comfort fic:
“'You ever have to forgive your guy for something?' Mickey asks. // Mel laughs. 'Of course. Daily, actually. The man’s a damn slob.' // Mickey snorts, but then he runs his hand over his mouth and tries to actually get to the point. ‘What about something big?' // Mel looks like he’s considering the question thoughtfully, and Mickey realizes that somewhere in the midst of all this madness, he’s really gotten to like this guy. 'I have lots of thoughts about forgiveness, actually,” Mel says with an eyebrow raised. “So you may not want to get me started on that theme. But it���s more about my parents and my sister than about Jeffrey, if that matters. I guess for me it all boils down to this: would it cost me more to forgive or cost me more to stay angry? And my answer to that question is not the same for everyone.’”
This conversation about forgiveness has really stayed with me. One of the reasons I’ve realted so much to the character of Ian Gallagher is I had a hothead brunet of a boyfriend in high school during that same age range (15-17) who is probably the same height as Noel Fisher and caused no shortage of DRAMA in my life, and it didn’t end well. (We were definitely NOT soulmates.) I am serious when I say Shameless and Gallavich specifically helped me let a lot of this 30y old angst go. This exchange b/w Mickey and Mel gets at it - it was costing ME a lot to hang on to this past. 
By and By, by @nowherenj - This one I’m not going to excerpt, because it was the whole story that moved me. Nowherennj draws on their experience in recovery, and this slow burn is both beautifully written and a primer on being in recovery. This was really helpful for me, as I have close friends and family who are in recovery, some with a dual diagnosis (drug use + mental health diagnosis), and this story’s generous attention to detail helped illustrate their experiences for me in a way that we don’t talk about on a regular basis. One of the reasons I identify so strongly with Shameless is because I come from a big sprawling Irish-American family with a lot of addiction and mental illness in it. This fic about Ian and Mickey in recovery makes explicit much of what I think my family hovers around because it can be so hard to talk about openly. I wept reading this one when the author brought in The Avett Brothers’ No Hard Feelings - how I want to live my life.   
Etherized against the Sky, by Snarfle - This one is less about my own therapeutic journey and more about what I hope I can be for young adults that I work with now. It has a character in it named Mr. Strickland, who is a very important father figure for Mickey. I was a professor for a decade, and still mentor young adults in my current job. I think one of the unsung roles that I experienced in academia is too be a mentor for young people. Some instructors are just about curriculum and grading, but when you cross paths with young adults at the beginning of this stage of life, figuring their sh*t out, the ability to be a kind and safe source of input and an active, non-judgemental listener is honestly the most fulfilling aspect of working with students and young professionals, in my view. Maybe it’s because the years 15-25 were such chaos for me, but I love working with people this age (and probably why I hang around on Tumblr despite my near eligibility for AARP lol). You’ve got your whole life in front of you! So many possibilities! Full of hot boyfriends and tomato plants and rescue dogs and heated pools. :) 
There are surely more, I’ve realized that “hurt/comfort” is a great tag for these kinds of stories. But this post is already too long. Thanks to all of you in the fandom who have created art and narrative that have kept me coming back for more, and not feeling so alone in the pandemic. We are a mighty little community!
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5, 12, 34! 🤗
5. What’s the fic you’re most proud of?
@thetwit asking the hard questions lol. I kind of want to say we’ll never be able to treasure life enough (yes, I know, the super sad one). But I also kinda want to say never far from home which is actually a Chicago Med story. I wrote it after we got the news that the actors playing Connor and Ava were leaving the show. I was definitely upset about it so I wrote a fix-it’s of sorts and that is where they are still happily living in my head. 
(And I will say this, there are a few stories that I have in the works that quite possibly might take first place of fic I’m most proud of!)
12. Tell us about a WIP you’re excited about.
So, I have one that I am currently writing write now that I am planning on posting here soon! It’s definitely the next thing you will see from me and I’m hoping to get it out before the show starts back up.
I started it a looooong time ago, back at the beginning of quarantine and PD left Hailey in New York. Naturally, I had to write something while we were waiting to find out what happened with that but for some reason I never finished it. BUT, I finally circled back to it and I can’t wait for you guys to read it. 
I don’t want to give too much away, but it involves Jay frantically rushing to NYC, a lot of takeout and possibly a homemade fort. 
34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of.
Okay, so this is a long excerpt, but I just love it so much. It’s cute and fluffy and I LOVED writing it. It actually might be one of my favorite fluffy scenes that I think turned out well. I generally don’t do fluff well--it tends to turn out awkward lol.
This is from a prompt I wrote for @upsteadofficial called all around the christmas tree
***
“Hailey,” he started softly, still gazing into her eyes, “Why are you so worried about this?”
She worked her lower lip again. It made him want to kiss her because he found the action incredibly sexy, but he refrained himself from doing so and waited for her to speak.
“Because I didn’t get all of this,” Hailey gestured towards the trees before continuing, “I didn’t get the live Christmas tree; I didn’t even get the fake one half the time.”
She took a deep breath, tears pricking her eyes, “I didn’t get the Christmas cookies or the holiday family traditions. No sitting on Santa’s lap or hanging up stockings or watching Christmas movies as a family or reading ‘The Night Before Christmas’ aloud.”
Hailey let out a humorless laugh, “When my brothers and I wished for everything we could think of we weren’t doing it because we wanted the presents, we were doing it in hopes that our dad would spend the money on gifts and not alcohol.”
Shaking her head, she looked down briefly before looking back at Jay with an earnest look, “Christmas at my house was a tense occasion, tiptoeing around our dad hoping that we wouldn’t say or do anything to set him off. Hoping that he wouldn’t start the drinking early. That maybe we could have somewhat of a normal Christmas.”
“So that’s why this Christmas needs to be perfect,” She squeezed his hands, “We’ve gotta get this right. For us, for our family. I want to give our kids everything that I didn’t get, Jay. Do all the corny, heart-warming things that families do around the holidays.”
He stayed silent for a few moments, taking in everything that had clearly been weighing on her heart and mind.
And he got it. He didn’t have perfect Christmas’s by any stretch of the imagination, but it was nothing compared to Hailey’s.
At least he had a mother who went to extra lengths to give him and Will a good Christmas whereas Hailey’s was probably too anxious and nervous of what her husband might do if she tried.
Not for the first time did Jay feel the need to go and deck her dad, anger bubbling up in him at the thought of how she’d been treated as a child. Of the things she had missed out on and worrying about things no child should have to worry about.
But he knew getting mad wasn’t the answer, so he thought about what Hailey said. About how she wanted to give their family the things she never got, and he found himself wanting their kids to have all the things he never got either.
Their family. Their children. The thought was almost too overwhelming.
He wanted their kids to believe in the magic of Christmas. To see him and Hailey kissing lovingly under the mistletoe. To bake cookies as a family.
To go buy the perfect live Christmas tree.
He suddenly didn’t care that they had been walking through this Christmas tree farm out in the middle of nowhere in frigid mid-west temperatures.
“I know I’ve been more than a little neurotic about finding the perfect tree,” Her slightly bashful admission drew him out of his reverie but before he could assure her that he would hike all over this field to find her the perfect tree she continued talking, “But this time next year, we’ll be married.”
Hailey took a breath, glancing down at her boots before giving him a slightly shy look, “And we might even have a baby on the way.”
Her tone was so soft. So reverent. Like it was everything she’d never dared to hope out loud.
A family. A baby. By next Christmas.
Jay felt his knees go weak.
“And that’s why this Christmas needs to be perfect,” She was back to her assertive, confident self, “To iron out the kinks before any other Halsteads join us”
Jay was ready to buy the whole damn Christmas tree farm.
He couldn’t help it anymore. He bent his head, capturing Hailey’s lips in a gentle yet passionate kiss before pulling back to look into her eyes, his arms encircling her waist. Jay reached up as hand to sweep back some loose hair from her face, “Then let’s go find that perfect tree.”
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icycream-catqueen · 3 years
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Kindling (When You’re Burning Low)
Cinder would rather burn herself out than risk a low grade; fortunately, Neo knows how to make her relax.
Rating: T
Tone: Some angst, lots of supportiveness, and a fluffy ending
Word Count: ~5,000
Important Tags: College AU, Established Relationship
I was gonna post this before now but I had problems with writing it and I was nervous about participating in a ship week especially when I only have something written for one prompt, and also my cat was sleeping on me for five whole hours earlier tonight while I was trying to finish up and as everyone knows it is a crime to disturb a snoozing kitty cat. I hope it still counts. ^_^;
Considering it’s pretty long, I only have an excerpt (the first scene I wrote for this fic, actually) on this post; the whole thing is, of course, over on AO3!
On this fine Saturday afternoon, Cinder was taking advantage of the lounge in the dorm suite. The coffee table was half-claimed by various books and notes while Cinder herself was settled at the same end of the couch, her laptop perched on the arm of it and her right side pressed closely against the suede upholstery as she struggled with the perfect phrasing for her essay. Failure was never an option for her, and even the slightest error would lead to it when it came to this class. She was running on pure caffeine by now, from a supposedly unhealthy amount of coffee. This was her third or fourth solid day of being awake. After the first night, she’d moved her setup from her room to the lounge to help her stay more alert. Winter and Emerald had both tried to tell her what was best for her wellbeing, but she’d firmly shut down their arrogance; she knew her own limits, and she needed to get this stupid project done. Neo, thankfully, had been out of town from Thursday morning to last night, and when she’d come back to the suite, she’d trudged straight to her room and shut the door. Cinder had only seen a couple brief glimpses of her since. Just as well, considering Cinder couldn’t intimidate her into letting her be like she could to Emerald and Winter.
At the moment, Emerald and Winter were both out of the building. They’d each probably told her what they were doing, but she hadn’t bothered to remember it. Neo was apparently still asleep, which was a bit odd but not enough so to risk seeing the pitiful kicked-puppy expression that appeared when her sleep was disturbed. Still, if she wasn’t up and about in two hours, it would be worth it to check on her mental and physical health.
Speak of the devil, Cinder heard a door open behind her. She didn't bother to look, though, until she realized the shuffling footsteps were approaching the couch instead of the kitchen, bathroom, or shower. She took a brief glance, then did an immediate double take because Neo looked absolutely miserable. Her hair was unbrushed and her eyes were dull. The oversized black sweatshirt (which Cinder recognized by the fiery orange phoenix on the front as one of her own that had mysteriously vanished a few weeks ago) and the brown and pink plaid pajama pants were probably what she'd worn to bed the night before, and she hadn't even bothered to put on socks. It was worrying to see her in such a state.
"You certainly look worse for wear," Cinder commented. Neo pouted at her as she slowly made her way to the couch and sank to the cushions. Before Cinder could react, Neo flopped down, squirmed to lay her head in her lap, and rolled onto her back. "I'm busy," Cinder told her sternly.
Neo's response was a soft and pitiful keening sound. She fumbled to grab Cinder's left wrist, staring up at her with pleading doe eyes.
"Neo. I'm busy," Cinder repeated. Neo whined and tugged on her wrist, so Cinder rolled her eyes and stopped resisting, curious about what she wanted. She wasn't sure what she was expecting, but she was definitely taken by surprise when Neo gently guided her hand under the hem of her sweatshirt and pressed it against her lower stomach.
What is she trying to accomplish here? Cinder raised an eyebrow at the woman in her lap. Neo let go of her wrist to sign something at her. The odd angle made it hard to translate, so it took a few seconds for Cinder to understand what she was asking for and why.
"I suppose I can take a short break, if you're really in that much pain," she relented. "You're lucky you're cute," she added as she carefully activated her Semblance.
The reaction was instant. Neo sighed with relief at the warmth, eyes full of soft gratitude and affection. Cinder rubbed slow, small circles over her stomach, feeling the smaller woman go languid under her touch. After a few more seconds, Neo's eyes fluttered closed.
"Is this warm enough?" Cinder asked. Neo nodded, a content smile playing across her lips. "Just ten minutes."
Neo opened her eyes and pouted at her.
"There is a reason I've been awake for," Cinder checked the time on her laptop, "about eighty hours now." Neo looked positively outraged.
"You need to sleep," she signed—easily decipherable now that Cinder had gotten a little more time to adjust to her current perspective. Not that the message was very appreciated.
"No, what I need is to finish this ridiculous project so I can move on to my two remaining essays, do all the work for a 'group project' because the rest of my assigned group are immature and unmotivated idiots, and study for my three exams this week," Cinder retorted.
"When are your essays due?"
Cinder elected not to answer, since admitting the due dates were two and three weeks away respectively wouldn't help her against Neo's accusatory glare.
"Your group project?"
Okay, so maybe it hadn't technically been assigned yet and was scheduled to be due in a month and a half, but all the information was in the syllabus. Cinder's class was full of imbeciles, and somehow she always got stuck in a group with some idiot or another who didn't understand what a lesbian was, so she was getting it out of the way to avoid interacting with anyone.
"Are all three of your exams actually this week?"
Two of them, and one of those barely counted more towards the final grade in the class than a small quiz. Her continued silence was answer enough; Neo knew her too well.
"You're going to burn yourself out again." Neo's eyes were unbearably sad, so Cinder looked away.
"I'm fine," she dismissed the concern. A hand grabbed her chin and yanked her head down so her eyes met Neo's again.
"I watched you collapse in the middle of campus last year, and I almost got in trouble for pulling a knife on the paramedics to make them let me stay with you. I got a scared video call from Winter four months ago because you fainted in her fancy rich-person hot tub and nearly drowned," Neo reminded her. “Do I need to go on?”
"I can handle it this time," Cinder insisted, growing agitated. Neo took a calming breath before responding.
"No you can't. You always say it but you never can. You end up in an exhausted daze. You work yourself into a frenzy. You get into fits of rage...which honestly scare me."
"I would never lay a hand on—!" Cinder was cut off when Neo pressed a finger to her lips.
"Not for myself. I'm scared you'll lose control and take it out on yourself again," Neo corrected her. "You haven't in a while, but..." Neo trailed a hand down Cinder's left arm, tracing her scars.
"I just...I need to...I have to keep working. I can't let myself fall behind. I can't..." Cinder faltered. Neo sighed.
"I know," she acknowledged. She knew about the past, knew why Cinder relapsed into these desperate attempts to excel, to stay ahead. "But it's pointless if you destroy yourself trying."
"I've only ended up being sent to the hospital three times since I started college," Cinder argued. Neo was unimpressed.
"Congratulations! And you've managed to barely avoid hospitalization how many times now?"
"I—that isn't relevant!" Cinder hissed. Neo scowled.
"Really? It's not? How many times have you ended up so exhausted that you were bedridden for days? How many times have you gone into a mental decline because you were incapacitated? And how many more times are you going to make me watch you suffer like that?"
"If you want to leave me, just get it over with!" Cinder spat bitterly. Neo's eyes widened, hurt and shocked. Cinder flinched, realizing she'd crossed a very important line. "I didn't mean...I don't know why I said that."
"An abandonment complex, emotional instability, a mess of insecurities you mask with your ego, previous girlfriends who couldn't handle you or only wanted your body...and like I've been saying, you need sleep,” Neo replied, recovering. "Also, my cramps?"
"What?" Cinder realized she'd subconsciously deactivated her Semblance at some point and quickly remedied that. "Oh. Sorry."
"I'm going to make a deal with you," Neo informed her abruptly. Cinder raised an eyebrow, intrigued.
"What kind of deal?"
"The 'ridiculous project' you're trying to finish. Tell me about it, and I'll explain," Neo replied. Cinder clenched her teeth at the mere mention of it.
"It's an assigned experiment, a five to ten-page report on it, and an oral presentation. And the professor hates me. He goes out of his way to make every class, every test, and every assignment hell for me. I have to work harder than anyone so he can't get away with failing me out of spite. If I make even one mistake..." she growled.
"When is it due?"
"The day after tomorrow. It was assigned two weeks ago, but three days ago he realized he 'accidentally' gave me the wrong experiment. In other words, he's making me do a two-week project within five days—after I'd already finished the one he previously assigned me."
"Watts," Neo guessed. Cinder had come back from his class angry enough times that it wasn't even a question.
"Yeah," she confirmed anyway. Neo wrinkled her nose.
"I already hated that guy, and I hated him more and more every time you came back from his class in a bad mood, but this shit he's pulling now is the final straw, so I'm going to get him fired," she declared. Cinder let out an amused huff.
"And how will you do that?" she asked. She didn’t expect an actual answer but Neo didn't even hesitate.
"It may include breaking and entering, small and well-placed incidents, a flat tire, some bottles of the expensive alcohol he isn't supposed to have on campus, a sedative, and if we're lucky, a little inadvertent assistance from gravity and Ironwood."
"Just how long have you been planning this?" Cinder was taken aback at the immediate response. Neo considered.
"The time you locked me out of your dorm after his class because you were so furious you wanted to hit something, and you were worried you'd see so much red you might accidentally hit me in blackout rage. You've never told me what happens in his class to make you so angry, or even if it's actually him or just another student—though I was pretty sure it was him—so I planned for both situations."
"I'm impressed," Cinder commented. Neo smirked. “Now what was that ‘deal’ you mentioned?”
"You finish the report for your project, then eat something more substantial than coffee and whatever quick snacks you've been living off of for the past few days. And then we go to my dorm and you get some damn sleep."
"How did you know I'm working on the report right now?" Cinder was taken aback. "And how do you know I haven't been eating?"
"Because I can see it on your computer. And once again, you've done this before, so I know you don't take the time for more than the minimum amount of food to keep hunger from 'distracting' you," Neo pointed out, almost accusingly.
"I haven't even started working on the oral presentation. I'll do all that after I'm completely finished."
"Nope. You can start that part when you're well-rested. If you make me physically drag you to bed while I'm on my period, I'll make damn sure you regret it," Neo threatened with a scowl.
“Fine,” Cinder gave in reluctantly. Neo smiled brightly, and dammit, it was nigh impossible for Cinder to stay bitter in the face of such genuine fondness, joy, and relief. She wondered when she’d gotten so soft—even if only a select few people got to see that soft part of her—and realized she didn’t even mind anymore.
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Pitiful Creatures
Sometimes you just need to cry it out on a shoulder.
(DazaixChuuya) (Omegaverse Au) (Alpha Chuuya and Omega Dazai) (Fic Excerpt) (Approx 2k words of hurt feels and Alphas on the verge of a breakdown)
For the past several weeks, Chuuya had taken to willingly spending his time in combat zones, taking on almost all the field assignments that Mori had to offer. It was quite frustrating on how hard it was becoming to catch the Alpha around and Dazai could recall that the last time they had even so much as had a decent conversation, was weeks ago, too far long for his liking, and now his patience was getting thinner.
Ane-san had also expressed her concern regarding Chuuya’s behavior, quietly stating that he had not once visited her establishment this month, her current disapproval in her young charge showing from her sharp tongue. She had gone on to make a quip about how it was Dazai’s own self-destructive behavior that was starting to rub on the Alpha, the accusation leaving a bitter taste in Dazai’s mouth.
He had left her place with an empty expression, immediately deciding on hunting down Chuuya and giving him a  piece of his mind about how it was <i> he</i> that was the self-destructive one of the two, or maybe put out the offer of double suicide if Chuuya really was working with the aim to kill himself.
A call from Hirotsu confirmed that Chuuya had just entered the Mafia headquarters to hand in the latest report regarding his most recent suicide mission (Dazai had thrown quite a hissy fit upon hearing the nature of this mission a week ago, because of fear and jealousy alike), the news making Dazai pick up  his pace so he could catch Chuuya before the Alpha left the building. 
He had noted it, the reason behind the whole relentless overworking, had known it was because of Corruption and the high amount of casualties that had recently eliminated half of Chuuya’s underlings, topped with the work overload he must be facing due to his newly earned position as Executive. But mostly it was due to the files on the Arahabaki case that Chuuya was finally allowed to  review because of his status, and really now, this was becoming troublesome. (Dazai has already peeked into the files.)
Rushing over and climbing the stairs in strides had gotten him to the top floor much faster than he calculated, giving him enough time to compose his rapid breathing and pull up an unperturbed face. He could hear Mori’s voice from the other side of the door, droning on about some flaw in Chuuya’s report, the defeated silence in answer stifling the air and disrupting his breathing. It sounded like Chuuya was even more disheartened then the last time Dazai had gotten a glimpse of him in the corridors.
Mori had moved on to give a little lecture on Chuuya’s carelessness and crude behavior that he used in dealing with the mission, with what must be in a disapproving tone, if Dazai ever heard one. In his mind’s eye, he could imagine Chuuya, frozen in a terse bow with his hat off, eyes fixed on the carpeted floor in a show of respect and submission, a frown marring his handsome expression. 
Dazai was still reviewing the entire one on one happening on the other side of the wall, when the door opened up to reveal Chuuya, who was wearing a look of utter surprise on finding the Omega, that did nothing in hiding the watery gleam of his eyes, making Dazai’s inbuilt instinct go on high alert mode.
It must have shown on his face, the alarm, because the next thing he knew, Chuuya was already walking away from him in hurried steps, face shadowed by the brim of his stupid hat. It hurt, just a bit, seeing his partner ignore him so openly after a month of radio silence.
His mind reeled in itself, seeing the Alpha sprinting down the corridor, wanting to ran away and shut himself in his nest and sulk about the whole situation, his mind wanting to retreat back into his shell, but without it registering, his feet had already started following after the frustrated scent left in the Alpha’s wake. Chuuya was already at the end of the passage by the time he caught up, ducking into an empty meeting room.
“Leave me alone for a bit, Dazai”. It wasn't exactly an order, body turned away from the door, waiting for the omega to clear out, his voice sounded heavy, gloved hand coming up to cover his face.
“Chuuya”. He was hurt, honestly, first time they talk in a month and Chuuya is asking him to leave him? Unbelievable.
Dazai did not pay any heed to his request (when did he ever), choosing instead to close the door behind him and stride into the center of the room, a cautious distance from the strung-up Alpha. 
“Kouyou nee-san said you're being an ass these days, and I couldn’t agree more”. This elicited no response from Chuuya. “Sulking just because of Mori’s lecture?”, Dazai asked, slowly trying to close in the distance. He lifted his hand up to rest it on his shoulder, prepared for retaliation. 
“I said LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE, DAZAI!” As soon as the contact was made, Chuuya had whirled around and shouted it on his face.
It wasn't the fresh wave of angry alpha-scent pheromones that hit Dazai, to make him stumble back a step, rather it was Chuuya’s face, tear tracks cutting clear lines into his cheeks, the colour of his eyes intensified by their glassiness.
“Chuuya!”, if Dazai wasn’t alarmed before then he was definitely shocked now, moving with purpose towards the Alpha that hadn’t seemed to realize that he was crying at all. Chuuya seemed surprised to see him advancing forward, stepping back a bit to avoid the Omega hellbent on cornering him.
Chuuya kept backing away from him, not realizing that Dazai was fully intent on getting over with whatever-this-was. The back of his knees hit the seat of a swivel chair, and Dazai wasted no time in pushing him back to sit on it, hands firmly holding his shoulders.
Chuuya made a move to stand back up, but Dazai was fast enough to straddle himself on the distressed Alpha, wrapping his arms around his lithe frame.
“Honestly if you hate being down talked by Mori so much…”, that was most definitely him skirting around the main issue because rule no. seven of surviving the underworld stated that issues that are not talked about, don't exist and right now making Chuuya calm down was top priority.
“I mean, Mori is technically right in his way…”, He continued talking, wanting to distract him with the things his mind must be thinking.
By now Chuuya had taken to hiding in his embrace (knowing it was fruitless to try and fight against Dazai), hands holding onto his waist a little too tightly for comfort, sniffling every few seconds, but Dazai doesn't mind. He had taken to hugging Chuuya back just as tightly.
After what seemed like an eternity, Chuuya’s shoulders relaxed a bit, just a bit, and the barbed wire wrapped around Dazai’s heart managed to ease it’s hold. He had his cheek resting on Chuuya’s head, waiting for the flood gates to close.
“Sorry”. The Alpha seemed sheepish, judging from his cracked voice, but Dazai just shook his head and let out an exaggerated sigh.
“Chibi, you had me worried here for a second”. This earned him a low growl from Chuuya, making him grin.
“Chuuya got all his tears and snot on my shirt!”
He missed this.
Relaxing his stance a little, he prodded further,“Oh, so it’s about your height? Quite a weird thing to sulk about.” 
“Shut up,” Chuuya groans, his face still hidden. By now the Alpha had calmed down, breathing pattern going back to notable.
Dazai started to pull back from the embrace, wanting to see Chuuya’s face properly after so long, hands coming to hold Chuuya’s red face, “Look at you”.
This situation was definitely a first for both of them.
”Chuuya looks like a little toddler”. Dazai lovingly squished his cheeks to maximize the effect. The Alpha’s face was flushed, red-rimmed heavy lidded eyes looking back at Dazai, bottom lip bitten into by his fang, but he still managed to look attractive.
Chuuya must have been tired, because he only sighed at the remark and moved his hand up to cup Dazai’s. Winding his fingers in between his, he pulled them back from his face and held them in the space between them.
 Too much distance, Dazai thought, slowly pulling his hands away and moving closer again to wrap them around Chuuya’s neck, resting his face on his shoulder, nuzzling his scent glands under his collar. A deep inhale of the Alpha’s scent had him going boneless, touch starvation making itself obvious. Chuuya seemed to have sensed it too, moving to nuzzle his face into Dazai’s neck, hands moving to his waist to pull him closer.
Dazai’s body seemed too eager for this physical touch, head tipped back to allow more access for the Alpha, as Chuuya kept kissing and nipping at his glands, hands twisted in Chuuya’s hair, exhaling soft sighs and gasps every so often. 
Perhaps, Chuuya thought, he should feel guilty for having neglected his omega for so long. 
Even at this proximity, he could barely make out the scent of Dazai, overwhelmed by blood and gunpowder. It was a soft whiff of petrichor and paper, intoxicating and ensnaring.
Dazai let out a sharp gasp when Chuuya slipped his hand under his shirt, cool leather caressing patterns on heated skin under the loose bandages. It felt like fire chasing away the frost.
“Chuuya” Dazai gasped out, to which the Alpha just hummed. Dazai was feeling too warm now,pressed up against Chuuya, heat pooling in his belly making him breathless. He tried to wiggle a bit to adjust his position on Chuuya’s lap, intent on simply rutting and making-out, but the Alpha had a very tight hold on his waist.
 Chuuya yanks a fistful of Dazai’s hair, exposing his pale neck. He starts with light kisses that turn into soft bites, the Omega shivering and spluttering out half gasps and moans.
“Chuuya.” Dazai whines, shaking hands trying to unbutton Chuuya’s shirt, mirroring Chuuya’s actions of opening his neck tie. He shivers when Chuuya bites into his collarbone and tugs down his shirt and jacket which pool behind his back. The Alpha makes quick work of the bandages winding down his neck, exposing all the rope burns, scratches and bite marks on his pale skin to the soft evening light, and Dazai shivers at the heated gaze directed at him. He doesn’t know what to make of-never knew how to process- the fact that Chuuya finds him attractive, a shiver sliding down his spine from the way Chuuya was giving him this look.
The room was already tainted with their scents running wild, mixed with the heat of arousal and want. Dazai could feel the slick sliding down his thighs, could feel Chuuya’s arousal between his legs, could feel his self-control thinning out as lust choked all coherent thoughts with desire. 
“Chuuya, please”. This was getting borderline unbearable, how Chuuya seemed so calm and collected in a situation like this, even with his hair mussed up. (The hat was knocked down somewhere on the carpeted floor) and his face looking so kissable.
Chuuya pulls him in by his nape into a slow open mouthed kiss, moving on to suck  and bite at his bottom lip, it would most likely bruise (Chuuya liked leaving evidence of his hold on his territory), tongue settling heat in his mouth as his other hand slowly trailed down Dazai’s spine.
Before the Omega could process anything, Chuuya had already scooped him up and stood up, walking towards the conference table, and Dazai paid no mind to it, too busy getting his share of kisses and fervent touches.
They only separated once, when Chuuya had deposited him on the desk surface, to take of their dress shirts, the Alpha immediately pulling himself back between his legs again to drown in the kisses. Dazai was lightly rutting against Chuuya’s obvious erection, desperate enough in his actions to make Chuuya start unbuckling their pants.
One shove and Dazai’s pants and underwear were thrown somewhere behind them, leaving him perfectly naked to the alpha’s heated gaze, safe for the bandages winding down his torso and appendages. Chuuya pulled off his gloves by the tip of his fangs, fully intent on simply staring at the ruffled Omega.
One hand moves to part Dazais legs further, as the other moves to circle around his neck, pushing him down until his back rested flat against the desk. Even now Dazai’s mind likened this action to creating distance, but he simply lay there, content on sitting back and seeing what Chuuya was willing to do. Cold fingers brushed against his flushed erection, making Dazai jump, slowly making their way to circle the tight leaking hole.
Chuuya had a perfectly expressionless face, only his eyes letting go on how interested he was, solely focused on Dazai’s lower body. One finger slid in without any sort of resistance, which showed just how aroused the Omega was. Dazai breathing stuttered.
“Sorry” Chuuya mumbled lowly, apologizing for what exactly, for having flooded out his emotions earlier or for downright ignoring him for a whole month now, Dazai wasn’t quite composed yet to try and decipher that, mind more than content at just being touched after so long.
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