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shmaptainwrites · 3 months

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𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒 [𝐉𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐒𝐎𝐍]

PAIRINGS — James Wilson x fem!Reader

SUMMARY — James has a huge crush on his labmate, the only question is how long will it take him to ask her out? (Answer: it's longer than you think)

WARNINGS — cancer mentions, patient death from cancer, drugs, alcohol (don't be mistaken this fic is tooth-rotting fluff)

NOTE — Okay this fic has come up from my compulsory need to elaborate on anything Canadian so if you ever wanted to see James at McGill, this fic is most definitely for you! Also I guess it's indirectly mentioned that reader was raised in Quebec, but obviously doesn't have to be "Quebecois" for this to work

Pronounciation — Jian = Chyehn

James chewed on the inside of his cheek as he walked up to the Stewart Biological Sciences Building on McGill campus. For some reason, it was so much more intimidating now that he was actually a student. During the tour he had his mother’s reassuring hand on his back, his father’s words of comfort that he would most definitely be accepted when he applied.

Now that he had made it, he had to prove he belonged, but it could have been worse. His friends at Harvard and the University of Toronto had told him so. He was getting the best of both worlds, a prestigious school and, hopefully, not as much pressure as the rest of them.

Without loitering any longer, he made his way inside and looked around to find the right lecture hall. It couldn’t possibly be that hard, could it?

After his first semester James had realized he’d made a few mistakes. One was living in a French speaking part of town without knowing a lick of the language, but that one was the easiest to deal with. The others were more in the realm of the amount of sleep he was getting and underestimating how much content the professors could shove down their throats in 14 weeks.

He was more than happy to return to New Jersey for the holiday break to rest and recuperate before going back to the winter wonderland hell that was Montreal, but this time he was confident he would be more prepared.

And for the most part, he was. He got enough sleep, partied responsibly (except Fridays, he partied hard then), always submitted his work on time and maintained his good GPA, making up for his poor fall semester. What he didn’t expect, however, was a distraction.

When you walked into the room James watched you curiously, he thought maybe he’d seen you somewhere before, but he couldn’t quite place it. Besides, you were much more interesting than watching his sample boil for another five minutes.

You came and took a seat next to him, taking out your safety goggles and lab notebook from your bag before shoving it under the table.

“You’re sample’s boiling over,” you said, but James didn’t register you were talking to him at first, still looking at you in a slightly dazed manner before you physically pointed to the beaker, making his eyes go wide as he frantically turned down the heat and removed it.

“It’s a wonder you passed the lab safely quiz,” you teased and James blushed.

“Good thing I don’t want to be a chemist.”

“Oh, and what do you want to be then?” you asked, preparing your own sample for boiling.

“A doctor,” he shared with a little more confidence.

“Any specialty in mind or just a doctor,” you said, doing air quotes over the word.

“I’ve been shadowing some of the researchers in the Life Sciences Research Complex and I think oncology might be a good fit for me.”

“Yeah, as long as you don’t have to boil cancer cells you should be fine,” you assured him.

“What about you?” he rolled on the balls of his feet as he continued his experiment. “Or are you all talk?”

“Pfft, you think I’d be here if I was all talk?” you asked. “No, I want to be a medical researcher.”

“Maybe you should do some shadowing in the LSRC then.”

“No thanks, I think I’ll stick to my job there.”

“Your job?” James looked at your wish surprise. “Aren’t you like 18?”

“Almost,” you smiled.

“How did you manage to get a job there? They barely let undergraduates in the labs, let alone be responsible for anything.”

“It’s nothing fancy,” you assured him. “I just do cataloguing for now, but it's a good experience.”

“Still,” he raised his brows, “you must be like a prodigy or something.”

“Again, no,” you shook your head. “Just someone who goes after what she wants.”

There was a comfortable pause where you both took down your distillation set ups and began working on the filtration portion of the experiment.

“So what’s your name, anyways?” you asked, looking over at him. “Hey, look, clamp it this way,” you demonstrated and he followed your lead, seeing how much more stable the glassware was afterwards.

“Thanks,” he smiled. “I’m James.”

You told him your name and continued your work again in silence.

Chemistry labs quickly became the favourite part of James’ week.

Ever since that lab, James began to see you in all his classes. On more than a few occasions, he’d had to steal notes from his friends on account of forgetting to pay attention. It became an easy thing to tease him about, so his friends began calling him heart-eyes, because who was he kidding, he had a crush.

“Get your head out of your ass, heart-eyes, I am not giving you my notes again,” his friend, Carlo, shoved his arm and whispered harshly as he could see him getting distracted.

“Sorry,” James shook his head and began scribbling down what he had missed, his eyes darting back and forth from the board and back to you.

“Why don’t you just ask her out?” Pierre asked him after class. “Don’t you talk all the time in the lab?”

“More like I stare at her and she says stuff to make it not awkward,” he cringed at his own actions. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Every time I’m with her I can’t string together a sentence, and– Jesus Christ you should have seen my face last week! Full on red, like I can’t even be subtle about it!”

“Yikes,” Jian grimaced.

“It’s bad, I know,” James assured.

“And this is why we call you heart-eyes,” Carlo patted James on the back.

“Yeah, say it a little louder, maybe she’ll hear you,” James said sarcastically.

“Who’ll hear you?” the group of boys heard a voice behind them and all their eyes went wide as they spun around and saw you.

“No one!” Jian was quick to answer in the least nonchalant way possible, making the rest of the group, especially James, stare daggers at him.

“It’s not no one,” Carlo attempted to save face. “Just… this girl back in uh New Jersey that James’ got the hots for,” he gained confidence with every word of the sentence before adorning a smug smile on his face and patting James yet again on the back.

“You’re afraid a girl in New Jersey will hear you?” you looked curiously at James but he just stared blankly at you. “So you call him heart-eyes?” you instead turned your attention to his friends and they nodded. “That’s cute, maybe I’ll call you that too.”

“Sure,” was all a red faced James could get out before you excused yourself to head over to work.

Pierre was trying very hard to keep a straight face while you walked away and James slapped both Carlo and Jian upside the head.

“What the hell was that! Could you not have been more obvious, Jian? And Carlo, a girl back in New Jersey? Now she thinks I’m pining for someone else!”

“On the plus side, maybe she’ll think all your blushing around her is a circulation issue,” Pierre shrugged.

“You guys are the worst,” James shook his head and shoved his hands in his pockets, continuing to walk along the path to one of the libraries.

“No, we just saved your ass,” Carlo caught up with him. “However terribly, but if we didn’t say anything you would have stared at her with your mouth open like a trout.”

“Carlo does have a point,” Jian agreed, “At least we bought you a little time to get your act together.”

James sighed, “You guys have too much faith in me.”

“You said that when I started to teach you French and you’ve come a long way with that,” Pierre said.

“Yeah, sure I went from saying nothing to being able to say Je m'appelle James et je ne parle pas français.”

“And what a handy sentence that is when you don’t speak French!” Pierre grinned and James couldn’t help but chuckle and shake his head.

“Okay, I’ll try and get my act together and ask her out…and learn more French.”

“That’s the spirit!” Carlo patted his back. “Now let’s go get a drink and relax.”

“Maybe after we study for our physics midterm?” James nudged his friend and Jian nodded his head in agreement.

“Fine, I guess if we have to,” Carlo sighed.

“Not everyone is naturally good at kinematics, Carlo. Take pity on us mere mortals who have to study,” Pierre responded, eliciting a chuckle from his buddies.

James was quiet as he thought to himself. If he could get a B on this physics test, maybe there was hope for him getting his act together after all.

—

Summer break rolled around faster than James had expected. While Jian went back to Richmond, Pierre over to Quebec City, and Carlo to Chicago, James was left alone in Montreal, working to help pay his tuition for the next year. Being an international student was no joke.

He would have gone back to New Jersey, but the positions he applied to in Montreal paid more so it wasn’t a hard decision to make.

His parents would come visit him for some time in July, but for the most part he was alone.

On late nights, he’d make his way to the McDonald’s in the neighbourhood, not knowing enough French to go anywhere else nearby. At least there, most of them spoke enough English to take his order, and if not it was really easy to point to the menu.

“It’s already done?” he asked.

“Give us some credit, hein. We knew you were coming, we had it ready.”

James chuckled and handed him the money for the order, exchanging it for the bag which he took to a table and sat down.

As he was pulling out his fries from his bag he heard the chime of the door and looked up curiously to see who was coming at this time of night.

He stopped what he was doing when he recognized you, watching as you dug through your purse and spoke to the cashier in French. You both laughed about something James couldn’t quite catch and a little while later, after you had paid they handed you a bag and an ice cream cone when James heard you say something about ‘deux cuillères’ taking the utensils they gave you and turing straight towards James’ table, pulling out the chair across from him and sitting down.

“I thought you lived in New Jersey,” you said.

James was still stunned that you had noticed him and couldn’t find the words to speak.

“Hey, heart-eyes?” you waved your hand in front of his face. “You okay?”

“Y-Yeah,” he nodded, distracting himself by pulling out his burger from his bag.

“So why aren’t you in Jersey?” you asked.

“Work. I got a job here, it paid better.”

“Hmm,” you hummed thoughtfully while eating some of your fries. “And all your friends?”

“Back with their families, unfortunately for me,” he nodded. “W-What about you?”

“Oh, I live here,” you shrugged. “In this neighbourhood actually.”

“You live here?” he asked.

“That’s what I said,” you nodded.

“And so that’s how you know French?”

“Every kid in Quebec learns French, it’s kind of a non-negotiable,” you shared. “I gather that’s why you’re eating here.”

“Yeah, Pierre didn’t manage to teach me enough before he left,” he sighed and started to eat his meal.

“I could teach you if you want. I’m taking a little break this summer so I have some spare time,” you offered.

“Oh, I don’t want to-,”

“James, you’re gonna have a shitty summer if you don’t say yes.”

He couldn’t argue with that, it would be nice to communicate more with the people who lived around him.

“Okay, sure, but I’m warning you, I’m a terrible student.”

“I used to tutor one of my siblings, trust me it can’t be worse than that,” you laughed.

You chatted a little more, finishing your meals but not before you handed James a spoon.

“So this is cuillère then?” he asked. “I-I overheard you talking to Jean.”

“Yeah, your pronunciation isn’t bad either,” you nodded. “Here.”

You pushed the ice cream cone between you and began to eat it with the spoon. James had a bit of a sweet tooth and wouldn’t be one to refuse dessert so he began to share the ice cream cone with you.

“So, are you missing your girl in New Jersey?” you asked and James cursed internally, trying to come up with a lie to tell you.

“Um, no not really,” he shook his head. “I don’t think we would have worked out anyways.”

“Oh, so are your friends still calling you heart-eyes?”

He nodded his head, thinking it was better not to say anything in case he gave himself away.

“It’s good that you recognized you wouldn’t work out before you asked her out,” you said, “Couple guys wanted to go on dates with me this year, but just didn’t seem like the right fit. Plus, I don’t really think I’m looking for anything like that right now.”

James nodded his head again, silently eating the ice cream.

“Ever been in love, James?” you asked.

“That’s a really loaded question to ask someone you cornered in a McDonald’s at 11 P.M.”

You ignored his response and continued,

“I haven’t, it seems like such a big thing, how would you even know if it was love?”

James looked up at the ceiling, silently asking God to not let him say something stupid,

“I think most of the time it comes on gradually, maybe you won’t even know it at first.”

“So you have been in love,” you confirmed and he shrugged his shoulders.

“I…I don’t know. Maybe I have.”

“That’s not a very straightforward answer.”

“Then maybe I haven’t. I feel like if it was love, you’d figure it out, eventually.”

You pursed your lips and nodded your head.

“I hope I get to fall in love,” you smiled softly to yourself. “Seems nice.”

“Yeah,” James agreed. “It does.”

—

A few years later…

“So how did it go?” Jian asked, as they sat around James’ small living room.

“It…could have been better,” James sucked in some air through his teeth, recalling a recent memory from earlier that afternoon.

“What the fuck James! You scared the shit out of me! I could have broken the hemocytometer, do you know how much that shit costs?!”

“Sorry!” James quickly apologized and dropped his books down on the nearest surface to help you clean up, making you look up again at him with disdain.

“In the BSC? Really? Now we have to resterilize and all the specimens I have in there are as good as compromised.”

“Shit,” James muttered under his breath, he was usually so much better in the lab, but the second he was with you he became a bumbling mess. “I-I’ll take care of the BSC, I’m so sorry.”

You sighed and removed your gloves, pinching the bridge of your nose.

“It’s not just boiling water we’re dealing with anymore, James,” you said a little more calmly than before. “You’ve gotta be more careful, okay? I’m not losing my job over this.”

James nodded his head and went to grab the things to sterilize the biological safety cabinet and grab the new specimen from the fridge. So much for trying to get a job at LSRC to impress you.

“I was not built to be a researcher,” James shook his head.

“I mean, it’s not that big of a screw up, you fixed it eventually, didn’t you?” Pierre asked.

“Yeah, but not until after a thorough amount of embarrassment.”

“I thought girls found clumsy guys endearing,” Carlo commented.

“Not when the girl is determined to become the leading medical researcher on the continent,” James sighed. “Maybe taking this job was a bad idea. From what I can see she hasn’t even changed her opinion on dating, she hasn’t been with anyone these past three years.”

“Do you hear that?” Carlo removed his feet from the coffee table and placed them on the ground. “You’ve been in love with her for three years and haven’t done anything about it.”

“Who said I was in love with her? And sure, maybe I haven’t made a move, but I learnt French!” James tried to defend himself, pointing to Pierre.

“That’s not as good of a comeback as you think it is,” Pierre shook his head.

“I know,” James hung his head low and sat on the couch between Pierre and Jian. “We’re gonna graduate in a year and she’s not gonna know I’m in love with her.”

“So you are in love with her?” Jian looked over at his friend sympathetically.

James leaned back and used the heels of his palms to cover his eyes.

“He’s gonna have a meltdown, don’t ask him that,” Pierre shook his head.

“God, I do love her!” he exclaimed like he was just finding it out for the first time himself.

“What did I say,” Pierre sighed.

“Can I make it stop?” James looked over at his friends who all shrugged. “I am so screwed.”

“This time, I think we agree with you,” Carlo took a sip of his drink. “Good luck, man.”

James squeezed his eyes shut, he would definitely need it.

—

The year passed to graduation and James was still sitting on his feelings. It was much too late now to say anything. You’d already been accepted to a graduate program through your work with the LSRC and James had passed his MCAT with flying colours and was on his way to medical school at Columbia.

As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he was going to miss Montreal, the city had grown on him during his time there and a part of him wished he could stay.

His friends were also ready for the next stages in their studies, all going to different places across the continent to get their other degrees, with, of course, the promise to stay in touch.

James didn’t know what the next little bit of his life had in store for him, but he hoped regardless of where he ended up, maybe he’d be able to make up for his missed opportunities.

The years of medical school, once started, passed faster than James expected them to, and by the end of it, much to his own surprise, he’d also gotten married.

You were almost all but forgotten in the back of his mind, but time continued to play its games.

Medical school turned into a specialization in oncology, and a divorce. Then residency and a marriage. Then a second divorce. Then another marriage and more recently a position at a hospital in his hometown, on the board and a well respected oncologist and a few new friends…and a third divorce.

“House, I’m not asking you to let them all sleep in your apartment, it’s just a dinner for one night, we’ll be out and about for the rest of the time that they’re here,” James sighed.

“Can’t you just cancel?” House asked. “Divorce seems like a pretty good reason to get out of a reunion.”

“See, the thing is, I’d rather not be miserable and see my friends instead, and they bought their tickets months ago. Please, House, I’ll do the dishes for a week.”

“A month,” House said.

“Two weeks,” James negotiated and House nodded, so they shook on it.

“Good, now that I’ve done you a favour, you can do me one,” House smiled, but the kind of smile that was conniving, like he had something up his sleeve all along.

“I paid you in chores for my favour, who says I owe you anything?”

“Unless you want me to call your friends and cancel for you, you’ll do it,” House continued to walk the hospital’s hallways hobbling with his cane.

“What is it?” James sighed, catching up with him.

“We have a patient and he doesn’t speak very good English, but he does speak French. You went to McGill didn’t you? Must have picked up some of the love language.”

“Unfortunately for me in this case, I did,” he nodded.

“Perfect, come with me now,” House motioned with his head to the patient’s room and James trailed behind him.

When he entered the room, House motioned for him to begin speaking. James hadn’t spoken a lot of French since his undergrad so he was definitely rusty, but he supposed it was better than nothing and began to explain that he would be helping with the translation.

“Erm, Bonjour, je suis Dr. Wilson, je vais aider Dr. House avec la traduction.”

The man looked at James strangely before saying.

“You’re an anglophone, but you speak French like you’re Quebecois.”

“I um did my undergraduate in Montreal, I learnt how to speak there,” James responded back in French.

“Hmm.”

James could tell this wasn’t going to be fun. Some of the French held quite a bit of hate towards Quebec, who knew why, but his accent definitely wasn’t going to help him in this situation.

House got James to ask some routine medical history questions and a few things about his symptoms all the while James had to filter out all the insults that were coming his way with regards to his “poor use of language” and “unintelligible accent”.

When he could finally leave the room, James let out a string of French curses under his breath, still thinking in the other language.

“House, why can’t you just get a proper translator?” he asked. “I’m terrible at this.”

“Cuddy said something about making a big purchase recently and being currently unable to do so, especially since you put that you speak French in your resume. Bet you’re regretting that one now.”

“Yeah,” James nodded his head. “Big time.”

They began to walk towards the elevator to go to the cafeteria for lunch, when James decided to inquire more about Cuddy’s big purchase.

“Oh, she said something about money this, medical research that,” House shook his head, “You know I stopped listening the second she wouldn’t give me what I wanted.”

“She hired a medical researcher,” James said aloud, chewing on the words, “I wonder who she-,”

His train of thought was cut off when he saw, near the elevator, a face he hadn’t seen since graduation day at McGill.

Quickly, unable to think of anything else to do, he ran into the administrative area and hid crouched down behind a photocopier.

House watched his friend curiously before walking over towards him and leaning against the copier asked him if he’d gone insane.

“No, I just, um, remembered I needed to copy some patient files,” he lied.

“You don’t have any with you,” House said.

“I faxed them from my office,” he lied again.

“I think I need to go get Foreman, clearly you’re having a neurological breakdown,” House said.

“Can you just stop making it obvious I’m here?!” James exclaimed in a whisper.

Unfortunately for him, as you were walking past, his harsh whisper made his location obvious, causing you to look down and see his familiar face.

“Oh my God, heart-eyes, is that you?” you asked with a smile and James pressed his lips in a thin line and nodded. “What are you doing down there?”

James became speechless and suddenly he was an eighteen-year-old back in his chemistry lab.

“He’s checking to see if we need more toner,” House said, lying for his friend, but James knew that was all he would get out of him. “Well, that’s my cue to leave, you guys have fun.”

You reached down and offered James a hand, helping him back into a standing position.

“I haven’t seen you in so long,” you commented. “Like since we were-,”

“22,” James filled in and you nodded.

“Yeah,” you bit your lip before asking him how he had been.

“Oh, you know,” he shrugged his shoulders. “I-I’m assuming you’re the medical researcher Cuddy hired?”

“That would be correct,” you smiled.

“Why did you choose to work here? I thought you were some big hotshot in Canada?”

“I am a big hotshot, which is why I wanted to come to a teaching hospital. I thought maybe it would give more opportunities to teach other people what I know. It’s a win-win. I get to do what I want to and the hospital gets grant money from my research,” you explained. “It looks like you got where you wanted to be too, Mr. Oncologist.”

“Actually it’s Dr. Oncologist,” he joked and you laughed, making his cheeks go red after hearing the sound.

“I missed having you around, James. We should catch up sometime,” you suggested.

“Yeah sure,” he nodded. “I-I’d love that.”

You excused yourself, needing to go introduce yourself to a class of medical students, waving goodbye to James, leaving him stuck in his tracks for a few moments before he could gather his senses again and head downstairs for lunch.

—

“We could have rescheduled if this was too much, man,” Carlo watched James as he brought a large roast to the table for them to eat.

“See? What did I tell you,” House rolled his eyes and James gave him a disapproving stare.

“No, I wanted you guys to come, we’ve been planning this for months. I wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of it,” he assured his friends. “Plus, we know how hard it is to nail down Pierre, I swear you are always travelling. Every time we talk you’re in a different country.”

“That’s the life of a parasitologist,” he shrugged and helped James by beginning to cut the roast.

“And Jian, how’s the wife and kids?”

“They’re good,” Jian smiled. “Mei started first grade in September. Becky and I are both up for promotions at the hospital, so I can’t really complain. Although I think Carlo can.”

“Seriously it’s not that big of a deal,” Carlo groaned, “Sure yeah, pharmaceuticals are more flashy than biophysics, but that doesn’t mean that my research wasn’t better.”

“Well if it was better why did William get the award?” James asked and Carlo just flipped him the bird.

“Didn’t we go to school with him?” Pierre asked.

“We did?” James raised a brow.

“Yeah, for a year, from Toronto, huge stoner. Hated being there and did literally no work, but still managed to get honours,” Jian explained.

“Sounds like my kinda guy,” House commented and James rolled his eyes.

Just as they continued to dish out dinner, House’s pager went off and he sighed, excusing himself from the table while practically threatening James to leave him some food.

When House left, James’ friends saw their opening and began their personal line of questioning.

“Hey, James, are you really okay?” Jian asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” James asked in return.

“You’re getting a divorce,” Pierre said. “Seems like a pretty good reason to not be okay.”

James shook his head,

“Yeah sure, it’s a shitty situation,” he admitted. “Did I imagine myself at this point in my life with three failed marriages? No, definitely not. Can I do anything to change it? Also no, and right now I really wouldn’t want to change it.”

“Can we ask what happened?” Carlo queried.

“She cheated on me, then left me,” James said simply.

“Forgive me,” Pierre said. “But you seemed a lot more upset when we talked over the phone last week. What changed?”

James looked down at his plate and cut into his roast, thinking about what Pierre had said. It was true, even earlier today he was sulking about, that was until he ran into you.

“I swear,” James started, “if you guys make a big deal about this I will murder you all,” he used his knife to point at all of them and they nodded, swearing their silence. “I’ve got heart-eyes again.”

“You met someone new?” Jian asked and Carlo shook his head.

“No, he re-met someone old. Tell me, did your hospital recently hire a medical researcher?”

James nodded his head and the table was about to erupt into a loud chorus of comments when James gave them a look and they all restrained themselves.

“James, I’m being dead serious when I say this, but you should have married her,” Pierre insisted. “I never saw you look at anyone else the way you looked at her.”

“Probably explains the three divorces then, doesn’t it? I was still in love with her the whole time,” James sighed. “It’s going to come up eventually, seems like a pretty big indicator that I’m not good at relationships.”

“Who knows, maybe she won’t care,” Jian offered.

“What was it like when you saw her again?” Carlo asked, looking for any opportunity to tease his friend.

“How do you think it was? I could barely talk, I was a nervous wreck, and blushing like crazy,” he shook his head at the thought of it. “I could literally feel the blood rushing to my cheeks. I feel like a middle school girl every time I’m near her.”

“Who knows, maybe she still thinks you have circulation issues,” Jian shrugged and the table laughed.

“What I would give to stay here and watch this play out,” Carlo sighed and leaned back in his seat.

“Knowing James, you’d have to be here for ten years before he made a move on her,” Pierre raised a brow and James threw a piece of potato at him.

“If you ever do get the guts to ask her out, call us. We’ve made bets on this,” Carlo added.

“Real comforting, guys,” James ate a bite of the roast. “I thought this was supposed to be my pity party.”

“Not anymore,” Jian shook his head. “You’ve got heart-eyes.”

This time around, James thought maybe he didn’t mind the nickname as much as he used to.

—

“I would think they’d get you your own office at this point,” James commented as he entered his office, seeing you sitting at his desk, eating a pre-packed lunch.

“Beats me,” you shrugged and continued to eat.

“So you’ve decided that invading my office is your next best bet?”

“Oh hush,” you waved him off with your fork.

“Well, excuse me for wanting to come to a safe place after being verbally assaulted by House’s patient,” he sat on the opposite side of the desk and leaned back in the chair.

“Verbally assaulted?” you asked. “By a patient who isn’t even your own?”

“He doesn’t like the way I speak French,” James rolled his eyes. “I’m translating while they’re treating him since the department used all its money hiring you.”

“What can I say, hotshots cost a lot of money.”

“You know, you could do the translation, probably much better than I can,” he noted.

“I could, but you probably need the practice more than I do, chèri,” you scrunched your nose in a cute mocking way and James could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks yet again. “You still keeping up with that posse of yours?” you asked, changing the subject.

“Yeah, they all flew in to visit a few days ago, we’re gonna go out tonight,” he said. “Do you…maybe want to join us?” he suggested.

“I don’t have plans, as long as they’re okay with it I’d love to come,” you smiled.

“Oh trust me, they will definitely be okay with it.”

—

Later that night, James was drinking deeply from his glass while he watched his friends stare blankly ahead at you. If he looked anything like they did all those times his words were caught in his throat, then he hoped to spontaneously combust right then and there.

“Heart-eyes, I thought you said they were okay with me coming?” you leaned over and whispered to him.

James put down his glass and nodded his head.

“They are okay with it, right?”

Snapping out of their daze, the three men nodded their heads and finally began professing assurances that everything was fine.

“It’s just… you said James invited you?” Jian asked with furrowed bows.

“Yeah,” you nodded. “He mentioned you guys were in town and getting together tonight and asked me if I wanted to join.”

James bit down on his tongue trying not to say anything, but also gave his friends a look to shut up before they gave anything away. He knew what was running through their minds, they were wondering how the hell he’d gotten the guts to ask you to come, but there was one fundamental difference between tonight and any other time he could have possibly asked you. This wasn’t a date, therefore, there was no pressure.

“Maybe you could tell them what you’ve been up to since they last saw you?” James suggested.

“Oh, um, well, I got my master’s degree and doctorate at McGill, both for research in cancer biology-,”

“Cancer biology?” Pierre interrupted. “I don’t remember you mentioning you were interested in that.”

“I-I wasn’t initially,” you admitted. “Just after spending more time in the LSRC and a few other irrelevant things I decided it was the best fit for me to focus on.”

“You and heart-eyes make a pretty good pair then,” Carlo raised his eyebrows suggestively and took a sip of his drink.

“I guess we do,” you chuckled. “As long as he leaves the research to me. We all know what he’s like in the lab.”

“I resent that,” James protested only before saying, “but I do deserve it.”

“It’s a miracle he hasn’t had a medical malpractice suit,” Pierre added.

You asked the boys about where their various careers had taken them and how they were each doing. The conversation stayed pretty normal until the topic changed to relationships, starting with Jian’s wife and family back in Vancouver and Pierre’s husband who was currently in Australia doing research on some massive insect.

“What about you Carlo?” you asked. “Anyone special in your life?”

“Nah,” he waved his hand.

“What about the mom of the kid who pet sits for you?” Jian asked.

“That kid charges me per animal, per size. If I were to date his mom he’d probably charge me for dating her too, and I don’t think I can afford his price,” he shook his head and the table laughed.

“James, you’ve been quiet,” you said. “Nothing to share?”

James nervously took a sip of his drink and looked over at his friends for help.

“James hasn’t had the best luck in love,” Pierre settled on.

“Oh, haven’t found anybody, that’s not a big deal,” you assured him. “I haven’t either.”

“Well,” Carlo said in a high-pitched voice. “It’s not exactly that he hasn’t found anybody.”

“So there’s someone-?”

“I’m divorced,” James blurted. “Three times. Or soon to be three anyway.”

“Oh,” you paused and tried to think of the right thing to say, but for the moment settled on nothing while Pierre changed the subject.

After the visit was over, James offered to walk you to your car and you accepted. The walk started off in silence, but you decided to break it.

“You know, I hope you find the right person eventually,” you said. “It’s unfortunate things didn’t work out three times.”

“Yeah,” James nodded in agreement. “I-um, do you ever think about that conversation we had, in the McDonald’s by my apartment?”

“Sometimes I do,” you admitted.

“Looking back on that, I wonder if we ever really loved each other. If we did this probably wouldn’t have happened. We would have fixed things, worked on ourselves instead of just…giving up.”

“So I guess you still haven’t fallen in love yet?” you asked, but he stayed silent. “Whoever it is, I’m sure things will find a way to work out for you.”

“The moment may have passed on that,” he said with his hands shoved in his pockets and looking down at the ground.

“You never know, James. Sometimes life has a funny way of surprising you.”

—

James watched as his colleagues and a few of the students from the university left the lecture hall while he continued to sit in his seat, watching you walk up towards him.

“Don’t you have patients or something?” you asked. “You’re at all of my lectures.”

“Doesn’t it seem appropriate for an oncologist to attend a cancer biology lecture?” he asked as you sat down next to him.

“I suppose so,” you sighed. “Doesn’t explain why you weren’t taking notes though.”

James looked down at his empty hands and cursed a little internally.

“It’s okay,” you assured him. “I don’t mind the staring, it reminds me of school.”

“You noticed?” he asked.

“You weren’t very subtle,” you chuckled.

“Yeah, not one of my strong suits,” he blushed, embarrassed.

“Do you wanna go grab lunch before your break is over?” you asked and James nodded, standing up and offering you a hand to get out of your seat.

You went to the cafeteria, running into his friend House who managed to get his food paid for by James, yet again, before leaving to go back up to his office and work on another differential diagnosis with his employees.

“Did all the guys get back home safe after their trip?” you asked, digging into your food.

“Carlo and Jian are back home, Pierre went to go be with Ollie in Australia.”

“It must be hard not living near them.”

James sighed and nodded his head. “It’s a balance. When they’re being annoying, it’s great that they don’t live here and when they’re not, it sucks.”

“Spoken like a true friend,” you chuckled.

“What about you? Do you still keep in touch with people from school? During any of your degrees?”

“Not really,” you shook your head. “After my undergrad I became so laser focused on my school I didn’t pay attention to relationships that much outside of my family. Starting to regret it a bit now.”

“Kind of hard to have a good conversation with cancer cells,” James said sarcastically and you shook your head. “Do you like it in New Jersey so far?”

“Not as much as back home,” you admitted, “but it is nice to have a friend here.”

“Yeah, Jersey is…an acquired taste,” he settled on, making you laugh, but your laughter was cut off by the sound of his pager, and he looked down to see what the message was before quickly standing up. “Sorry, I have to-,”

“Don’t worry,” you assured him. “I’ll pack up your food and bring it to your office.”

“Thanks,” he nodded and you waved goodbye as he ran off out of the cafeteria and to the oncology floor to go help one of his patients.

—

James didn’t find himself walking around the campus often, but when he did it was usually because he had to clear his head. With everything that was going on in his life, in addition to the circumstances of this case, he was taking it harder than normal.

He had left his coat in his office as the hot New Jersey sun was already beating down, his hands shoved in his pockets and his eyes following his feet as he took his steps forward.

He didn’t notice you sitting on a bench as he was passing by. Curious as to his state, you stood up and went to meet up with him.

“Hey James, are you okay?”

Your voice pulled him out of his thoughts almost instantly. He stopped to look up at you, seeing the concern reflecting in your eyes.

He took his hands out of his pockets and motioned for you to walk with him.

“I lost a patient today,” he explained. “He was 11.”

“Oh, James, I’m so sorry,” you said softly.

“In med school you learn pretty quickly if you don’t find a way to deal with what you face every day the result is never good,” he said and you noticed him chewing on the inside of his cheek, “but it was just too sunny outside. How could it be sunny on a day like this?”

You didn’t say anything initially, only intertwining your hand with his and giving it a light squeeze which he returned.

“You know, I think it’s probably okay, every once in a while, to let yourself mourn your patients. Just like everyone else. You have a uniquely difficult job, James, and no one would hold it against you if you need a minute to adjust.”

James stopped walking and you followed his lead, only to have him let go of your hand and pull you into a tight hug. You easily wrapped your arms around his neck while his arms were around your waist.

“You’re a good doctor, James,” you mumbled. “I know, even if you don’t quite believe it right now, you did everything you could to help that young boy and make him more comfortable.”

You could feel him nod his head, clearly not trusting himself to say anything at the moment.

Neither of you wanted to let go, but you knew that you both had work to get back to. James had other patients he was responsible for and you had some work to do in one of the hospital labs.

So silently, hand in hand, you accompanied each other back to the hospital, grateful for each other’s company.

—

“I swear, if I stay there any longer I’m going to go mad,” James whispered to you under his breath as you walked along the halls of the hospital with him to help him run some tests for a few patients.

“What was it this time?” you asked, huddling in closer, waiting for him to spill the beans on why living with his best friend was becoming unbearable.

“He keeps pranking me,” he began to explain and you could see how frustrated he was just by his hand movements. “Last night he thought of the genius idea to put my hand in warm water while I was sleeping and-,” James stopped himself, realizing he’d divulged too much, just as your eyes went wide.

“Oh my God you didn’t wet the bed did you?” you asked in a chuckle and James quickly covered your mouth saying,

“Shh! The whole hospital doesn’t need to hear you!”

You couldn’t hold in your laugh, muffled by James’ hand over your mouth and his cheeks were a bright cherry red.

Eventually you pulled his hand away and said,

“You definitely need to get out of there. That’s criminal.”

“Exactly what I’m saying,” James agreed.

“Hey, why don’t you come over to my place tonight?” you suggested. “We can watch a movie or something together.”

“That sounds like exactly what I need right now,” he nodded his head. “What time?”

“Come over at eight, it’ll give me some time to get snacks and get ready.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” he held out his hand and you took it shaking it firmly.

Later that evening while James was getting ready, House watched him curiously.

“I still don’t believe that you blowdry your hair,” he said loudly over the sound of the appliance.

“Believe it or not, I do,” James responded.

“It just seems so pointless, your hair is messy anyways,” he crossed his arms and James gave him a look.

“My hair looks fine, yours on the other hand could use a trim and about a billion other things,” James retorted.

“So, is this a date?” House asked, changing the topic.

“No, it’s not a date,” James shook his head. “It’s an opportunity for me to get away from your insanity.”

“Are you sure it’s not a date?” he asked.

“What makes you think it's a date?” he finally gave in and turned around to face his friend, turning off the blow dryer.

“Well if you asked her if you could come over, probably not a date, but if she offered…” he shrugged his shoulders.

James shook his head, he didn’t want to allow himself to believe it was true, because if it was, he’d probably overthink things and make a fool of himself.

“It’s not a date,” he reiterated and House stopped pressing, seeing as his friend would not be reasoned with.

James finished fixing his hair and grabbed his keys and a coat before stepping out of the door.

It didn’t take him long to drive to your house and when he knocked at the door he heard shuffling inside before the lock clicked and you opened it.

“Hey! You got the dress code memo,” you joked, pointing to his McGill sweater and then back at yours.

“I thought you might like a blast from the past,” he smiled and you invited him inside.

As he entered he noticed the array of pillows on the couch, blankets draped over arm chairs, and books piled on every surface possible. To top it off, the house was currently only lit by lamps allowing a warm orange hue to fall over the space. It made James’ shoulders relax and he could even feel his nervous heart rate slow.

“Do you like it?” you asked. “I am by no means an interior decorator, but I tried to make it feel cozy so it’s nice to come back to after long days at work.”

“I do like it,” James nodded. “A lot. It feels like a home.”

“Perfect, that’s exactly what I was going for,” you smiled. “You’re the first guest I’ve had here, you know?”

“Really? No fancy dinner parties with the hospital board?”

“No, not yet,” you chuckled. “Unfortunately, this guy in the oncology department keeps taking up all my time.”

You grabbed his hand and dragged him over to the couch.

“But don’t worry, I don’t mind.”

After he took off his coat, you both sat down next to each other, James extending his hand along the back of the couch and you naturally sat right up next to him, leaning forward to grab the remote and turn on the movie.

“What did you pick?” James asked.

“Just some random horror movie,” you said. “I heard it’s really cheesy.”

“We’ll see about that,” James raised his brows and grabbed the popcorn from the table, putting it in between you both.

You pressed play once you were both settled and tossed the remote to the side of the couch, curling your legs up and waiting in anticipation for the movie to begin.

It didn’t take long for the horror plot to begin, jumping right into the satanic murders and supernatural deaths. Just as you had predicted, it was cheesy, but that didn’t stop you from being startled whenever something popped up unexpectedly on the screen.

Both of you were lulled into a false sense of security during what seemed like a quiet part of the movie, then, all of a sudden, the killer jumped into the frame with a loud change in the soundtrack, causing you to shriek and move towards James, also feeling him jump slightly from being startled.

You both looked up at each other and laughed at the ridiculousness of your collective fright.

“You’re supposed to be the calm one,” you elbowed him.

“I know it just-Jesus!” James found himself inadvertently closing his eyes and wrapping his arm around you as if it would give him some protection from what was on the screen.

You laughed again and leaned closer into his side, patting his leg to assure him it was safe to open his eyes again.

“You must enjoy torturing me, that’s the only explanation for this,” James looked over at you and you shook your head.

“Come on, heart-eyes, you think that lowly of me?”

James couldn’t stop the smile that creeped past his lips, “No, of course not.”

“Good, that means I still have the upper hand,” you moved your head to look back at the TV, but not before James tickled you in retaliation for your words.

It took a moment, but you eventually surrendered and moved your focus back to the movie, still feeling a little warm from your laughter.

You grabbed some of the other candies and snacks from the table, holding a gummy bear up for James to try and he did without so much as a second thought.

“Still have a sweet tooth I see,” you offered him a different candy which he ate again and nodded.

“You don’t want to know how many cavities I’ve had.”

“Here,” you handed him a wrapped treat. “This one’s special from home.”

“Maple candies,” he smiled. “They don’t make ‘em like they do in Montreal.”

“They were your favourite, right?” you asked.

James looked over at you again curiously, “You remembered that?”

“Of course I did,” you shrugged. “Oh wait, look,” you pointed to the TV before grimacing and covering your eyes, but still peeking through your fingers. “Ew!”

James just smiled at you, finding it harder and harder to resist the urge to kiss you, the thought bringing a warm sensation to his stomach.

He settled instead on doing what he’d been doing forever: staring at you with heart-eyes.

—

James tried to fight a yawn as he grabbed one of the many books on the shelves in his office, taking it to his couch and sitting down next to you.

“You don’t have to do this, James,” you told him. “You probably have to be back tomorrow morning, you should go home and rest.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he insisted. “You look in here for that article I was telling you about and I’ll start proofreading.”

There were many papers and files strewn around the couch, you couldn’t remember when you first came in, but James never seemed to mind when you worked in his office instead of your own.

“Are you sure?” you asked. “I feel like I brought a tornado in here.”

James looked up from your paper and nodded his head.

“Now hush and let me read.”

“Sorry, sorry,” you chuckled, opening the medical journal he had handed you, flipping through the contents until you found the article title he had mentioned.

James had a pen in his hand, scribbling down annotations on the side, correcting a few typos and grammatical errors.

For the most part, he was able to follow along, but at one point, the words became so incoherent he tapped you to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.

“What does this say here?” he asked. “I-I don’t know if my eyes just stopped working, but what does stirring in sugar and eggs have to do with this trial treatment?”

“Oh my God,” you grabbed the paper and looked at it closer. “I must have accidentally copied some of my mom’s cookie recipe on here before changing documents. What in the world is going on with me?”

Maybe it was the exhaustion settling in or some other things James couldn’t quite pinpoint, but he felt himself letting out a chuckle that grew a little longer, and longer until it was a full blown laugh.

It was an honest mistake, and arguably not that funny, but you’d be hard pressed to convince him of that in that moment, and instead, seeing the silliness of the situation, you joined in.

Eventually, when the laughter died down, you and James both leaning far back against the couch, he turned to you and apologized.

“I’m sorry, I should probably read this when I have a bit more sanity.”

“Don’t be,” you patted his leg. “I can always use a good laugh.”

With your heads still turned to face each other, you suggested to pause the work and resume it another time, to which James agreed.

You both continued to sit there in silence, looking over at each other and James caught a glimmer of something in your eyes and had to blink a few times to make sure it was still there. It was a soft look, a little dazed, like you were happily daydreaming about something far off. It took him a moment to realize it, since he had been the one giving that look, he’d never really had a chance to see it for himself.

You had heart-eyes.

And more importantly, you had them while you were looking at James.

With a sudden boost of courage, fuelled by lowered inhibitions, he started by asking,

“Have I ever told you why my friends call me heart-eyes?”

You tilted your head a little, following his lead and sitting up straight.

“Wasn’t it because of that girl you had a crush on that was from here?”

James opened his mouth and then shut it, shaking his head.

“There was never a girl from Jersey,” he admitted.

“Why would they say it was a girl from Jersey if there was…” as you said the sentence you slowed down, the realization dawning on you.

“All the staring makes a bit more sense now?” he asked.

You blinked a few times, “I just thought you were really awkward,” you said.

“I was, but if the staring didn’t give it away the blushing really should have done it,” he chuckled.

“I thought you had a circulation issue!” you exclaimed and James burst out laughing, of course you did. “God, James, why didn’t you say anything?”

James shook his head, “I could barely string out a coherent sentence when I was around you. Makes it a little hard to say anything.”

“Makes me wish I had said something,” you said, feeling your own cheeks heat up at the admission.

“Y-You would’ve said something?”

Now it was James’ turn to be surprised.

“I think most of the time it comes on gradually, maybe you won’t even know it at first. That’s what you said to me, but that eventually, if it was love, I’d know it.”

You reached out and held James’ hands in your own.

“I should have said something. I could have said something. We could have had so much more-,”

“James,” you whispered, interrupting him and he stopped. “Shut up and kiss me.”

James wasn’t going to waste another second, removing his hands from your to instead gently hold your face, bringing you closer to him so he could finally do what he had been dreaming about since he was 18 years old.

The dim light of his desk lamp, the papers crumpled beneath and around you, the way you moved closer and slid into his lap, his hands now on your hips and your fingers snaking through his hair, it all melted into one and if you let yourselves imagine, just a bit, the lamp became a light in the library; the papers became unfinished homework assignments and lab write-ups, and you hadn’t missed a second of the time you could have spent together.

Your kisses soon turned slow and repetitive and neither of you wanted to pull away, living in the moment like it was your last.

“When…did you realize…you loved me?” you asked between kisses, moving away from his mouth, instead letting your lips find their way across his jaw and up to his temple.

“Our last year of school,” he paused your kisses so he could kiss you properly again. “Carlo said something and-,” he shook his head and sighed. “I realized I was going to leave without you ever knowing how I felt and even though eventually I thought maybe I’d stopped loving you and started to love other people…I just kept trying to fill that space that only you fit in.”

“First year of my master’s for me,” you rested your forehead against his. “Suddenly you weren’t there anymore and I really wished that wasn’t the case.”

He tilted his head up to meet you in another kiss that was far too easy to melt into. Neither of you had any complaints and you knew you’d never get tired looking into his heart-eyes.

@cuntyvicodin

#james wilson #james wilson x reader #james wilson x you #dr wilson #dr wilson x you #dr wilson x reader #wilson x reader #house md #hate crimes md #greg house #james wilson fanfiction #james wilson fanfic #james wilson/reader

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captainremmington-13 · 2 months

Text

A Lady Made of Snow

DISCLAIMER: I don’t own The Hunger Games franchise, the images above, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, or any of the characters in this fic other than Bellova.

SUMMARY: Bellova begins to notice how dedicated Coriolanus is to helping his tribute, which greatly displeases her. But her anger at the young Snow is temporarily forgotten about when one of her classmates dies in her arms. (i’m using a combination of the movie and book version of the events that occur in this chapter)

Warnings: spoilers for TBOSAS, death, mentions of violent urges, mentions of blood, crying, one swear word

Bellova sighed inwardly, drawing a rose with a fountain pen on her notebook where she was supposed to be writing down Dean Highbottom’s words. The lecture was pointless in her opinion. She knew everything the dean was talking about by heart, and she was alive when the events being discussed were occurring.

She would never admit it to him, but she wished Coriolanus hadn’t skipped class to accompany his tribute. It was unusual for him, the star student, to miss a lecture, even one of Highbottom’s. The competition between them made the dean’s nonsensical ramblings almost bearable.

Then, as if on cue, a breathless and sweaty Coriolanus burst into the lecture hall. All eyes turned to him, shocked at his disheveled appearance.

“Your little excursion was in violation of about five different Academy rules, Mr. Snow. Chief amongst them, endangering a Capitol student,” Dean Highbottom said, not looking up from his papers.

“What?” Coriolanus said, baffled. “Who?”

“You.” Highbottom’s response made Bellova roll her eyes. He was constantly looking for reasons to target the young Snow. “I’m moving for the Gamemakers to disqualify you as mentor immediately.”

“You said we had to get our tributes to perform, not that we had to stay away,” Coriolanus argued, standing at his seat next to Bellova but not sitting down.

“I’ll add insubordination as well,” the dean said smugly.

“Holding her hand, Coryo? Introducing her to people?” Arachne said, clearly disgusted. “You make it look as if we’re one and the same as those animals.”

Bellova couldn’t help but agree silently with her. She hated that Coriolanus had done so much to promote Lucy Gray, even going so far as to touch her. Had he forgotten that he was of the purest Capitol blood, only fit to associate with those who also held that status?

“Coriolanus didn’t show those people anything they didn’t already know.”

Bellova had to grip her textbook to refrain from throwing something at the young Plinth. He was being foolish, saying such things in the presence of the dean and the other mentors.

“I don’t need your help, Sejanus,” Coriolanus snapped.

“That the tributes are human beings. Just like us,” Sejanus continued. “That’s why nobody wants to watch the Games. It’s because people know deep down that winning a war ten years ago doesn’t justify starving people’s children, taking away their freedoms, their rights.”

“Shut up, Sejanus, please,” Bellova murmured through gritted teeth.

Suddenly, Dr. Gaul appeared, startling many of the mentors. Bellova looked at her, setting down her fountain pen.

“Snow fell down in the cage,” she began, smiling crookedly. “It fell down in the cage but it landed…”

“On stage,” Coriolanus finished.

The doctor grinned with delight. “You’re good at games. Maybe one day, you’ll be a Gamemaker like me.”

“If the Games continue at all,” Highbottom added.

“Oh, they’ll continue. With performances like young Mr. Snow’s in that zoo. And I came here to ask your star mentor a question: what are The Hunger Games for?”

This sparked an argument between Dr. Gaul, Highbottom, Coriolanus, and Sejanus. Bellova listened, intrigued. This was the most interesting thing that had happened during one of Highbottom’s lectures since the time Persephone and Arachne almost ripped each other’s heads off over a petty dispute.

Coriolanus then proposed an idea, about making the games more “personal” for Capitol citizens.

“We need them to invest,” he said. “And if we bend a few Capitol laws, we could even have them place bets. Look, I know Lucy Gray may not win in the arena. But if you give her a chance, I would bet the Plinth Prize that she can win people’s attention.”

Dr. Gaul looked at him. “I’d like you to write up a proposal of these thoughts tonight, Mr. Snow.”

“Wait,” Clemensia Dovecote spoke up. “You mean you might actually use his ideas?”

“If it’ll help the ratings, why not?” Dr. Gaul responded.

“Coriolanus and I are class partners, Dr. Gaul,” Clemensia said hastily. “We do all of our assignments together.”

‘Someone’s desperate for approval,’ Bellova thought, giving Clemensia a brief look of annoyance.

Dr. Gaul laughed, sending a visible chill through many of the mentors. “It’ll be an interesting test.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After the lecture ended, the mentors went straight to the cafeteria. They were buzzing with excitement at the idea that Dr. Gaul may listen to their suggestions. Having an idea approved by her could do wonders for their future careers.

Bellova stood in line holding a tray, eyeing the mint chocolate fudge in the dessert section. She loved mint. It reminded her of wintertime, her favorite season.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Coriolanus tapping her on the shoulder.

“What do you want?” she asked.

Coriolanus scoffed. “Your perfect manners never cease to amaze me.”

Bellova sneered. “Funny. Now get to the point.”

“I’m going to sneak some food out of here and give it to Lucy Gray at the Zoo. I was wondering if you’d like to come with me. You haven’t met your tribute yet, after all.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, putting a few slices of bread on her plate. “Breaking the rules again? After Highbottom just threatened to write you up for insubordination?”

“You were the one who told me to do anything it takes to succeed.”

“Fair enough,” she sighed. “Fine, I’ll come with you. I’ll give my tribute some bread while we’re there.”

Coriolanus smirked. “Who’s breaking rules now?”

Bellova gave him a look. “I’ll see you at the Zoo, Coryo.” With that, she grabbed a stack of mint chocolate fudge slices and walked off to join her friends.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later that afternoon, Coriolanus, Bellova, and a handful of the other mentors met up at the Capitol Zoo. They immediately made their way to the monkey exhibit, where the tributes were being held. Nodding at the Peacekeepers surrounding the area, they stood inches away from the bars keeping them separated from the district children.

Bellova scanned the exhibit and eventually spotted her tribute in the corner. “Velvereen!” she called. The girl made her way over to the bars, looking at Bellova warily.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m your mentor, Bellova. Here, I brought some bread for you.” She held out the napkin to Velvereen, who took it instantly. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to visit earlier. I have a busy schedule.”

Velvereen said nothing, focusing on wolfing down the bread.

“So,” Bellova continued. “Have you talked to any of the other tributes?”

“Not besides Facet,” she said, pointing to the male District 1 tribute. “Oh, and the singer girl. The one with the strange dress.”

Bellova glanced over at Lucy Gray, who was talking very intimately with Coriolanus. She fought back a look of irritation. Lucy Gray was certainly a spectacle, but she was clearly deranged. She couldn’t understand why Coriolanus was so fascinated with her, other than her extremely strange behavior.

“I see,” Bellova said. “Well, I promise to visit more often if I can. My advice to you is to make allies. The more that you have, the better your chance of survival is.”

Velvereen nods. “I know. That’s what my father told me.”

Bellova gave her a small smile. “It’s good to know that you have a basic understanding of strategy.”

She looked to her left, and saw Arachne taunting her tribute with a glass bottle. “Arachne!“ she hissed. “What the hell are you doing?“

“Shut up, Bellova!” Arachne snapped. “Mind your own business.”

“Fine!” Bellova snapped back. She and Velvereen continued discussing the Games. She was thankful that her tribute was willing to converse, unlike several, who refused to interact with their mentors. But as much as she tried to focus on her tribute, she felt her eyes wander to Coriolanus and Lucy Gray, who seemed to be enjoying each other’s company. It seemed as if her odd charms were beginning to rub off on the young Snow as well. If she hadn’t been surrounded by so many Capitol citizens, she would’ve been tempted to grab Lucy Gray by the hair and slam her head against the metal bars of the enclosure.

Her violent fantasy was abruptly halted by a chorus of screams.

Brandy, Arachne’s tribute, had grabbed her mentor by the neck and snatched the bottle from her. “Help!” Arachne shrieked, trying desperately to escape her grasp. Before anyone could do anything, Brandy smashed the bottle against the metal bars of the cage, and used the serrated edge to stab her in the neck.

“No, no, no!” Coriolanus screamed, rushing towards Arachne, who lay on the ground, convulsing in pain as the crowd screamed frantically around them. He gathered the girl in his arms, putting his hand to her throat, trying to stop the blood flow. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Hold on. Hold on!”

Arachne gasped for air, blood oozing from her neck. Bellova crouched down at her side, turning her head to face her. “Hey, look at me. Hey, hold on! It’s okay, you’re okay. I’ll get help, I promise.”

“Somebody help us, please!” Coriolanus yelled at the crowd.

Chaos erupted, making the whole scene a blur. Brandy was shot by Peacekeepers, falling to the ground with a thud. The other tributes were screaming wildly, ducking away to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.

Coriolanus and Bellova were eventually dragged away from Arachne, who was lifted onto a stretcher. They were escorted by Peacekeepers out of the Zoo and back onto Academy grounds. Once inside a quiet hallway, they collapsed onto the ground side by side, finally able to process what had just happened.

Bellova, who almost never showed any emotion besides smugness, anger, or contempt in Coriolanus’s presence, began to cry. Her head swam with terror and disgust, the sight of Arachne’s slit throat burned into her mind. She was never close to the girl, she found her to be shallow and hated her whining. But they had grown up together. She was part of the Capitol’s finest, meaning they had attended several events together over the years and visited each other’s homes regularly. And now, she was gone.

“I should’ve done more to stop her,” she said, voice trembling uncontrollably. “She was being stupid, and I just let her keep doing it! Her blood is on my fucking hands! It’s all my fault!”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Coriolanus spoke up. “Blame the district girl. She was the one who did it.”

“I know, I know,” Bellova cried, black mascara running down her face, ruining her perfect face of makeup. “But she’s dead too. I can’t even avenge Arachne by killing her. There’s nothing I can do.”

Coriolanus, who had finally stopped shaking, pulled Bellova into his side gently. He put his arm around her, rubbing soothing circles on her shoulder. “You’re safe now. This won’t ever happen again, the Capitol will tighten security tenfold.”

Without thinking, Bellova leaned into Coriolanus’s grasp. He patiently let her cry into his shoulder, while he tried to help steady her breathing. The two young students clung to each other, forgetting all of their past grievances in that moment.

When they finally pulled away, they looked at each other, as if they were stunned at their own actions. Neither of them were affectionate towards each other, or affectionate people in general. Yet here they were, sitting on the cold marble floor of the Academy, comforting each other.

Bellova cleared her throat. “We should probably get out of here. Let the administrators know that we’re going home early.”

Coriolanus nodded, standing up and holding out his hand to help her up. Bellova took it, smiling ever-so slightly.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“Of course,” Coriolanus replied.

They informed the staff that they’d be departing early. Nobody tried to stop them, understanding that they’d just been through a traumatic event. They walked down the steps of the Academy’s main building, standing near the curb.

Finally, Bellova broke the silence. “Let me take you back to your apartment. My driver will be here any minute.” Before Coriolanus could protest, she said, “You’re in no condition to walk that far. I know you always say you walk to and from school to clear your mind, but just let me do this for you. Please?”

“Fine,” Coriolanus said reluctantly.

As they sat in the back of Bellova’s chauffeur’s car, neither of them said a word to each other. The death of Arachne had clearly rattled them both to the core, but they couldn’t bring themselves to talk about it. It still all felt like a nightmare.

Bellova took a small compact and handkerchief out of her bag, using the cloth to wipe away the black stains her tears had left behind. She pressed some foundation over it, erasing any evidence of a breakdown.

Coriolanus watched her, realizing that he’d likely never see her this vulnerable again. He was still surprised that she didn’t slap him for embracing her. They certainly had a unique relationship. Often times they were at each other’s throats, occasionally they exchanged words of advice and encouragement. But nevertheless, he didn’t want to see her so hurt. She was…a friend? A companion? Something other than a stranger, for sure.

They pulled up outside of Coriolanus’s apartment complex, and Bellova’s driver opened the door for him.

Coriolanus turned to Bellova, who was staring down at her hands. “Thank you for the ride. I appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it,” Bellova said, looking up to give him a small smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Coryo.”

“See you tomorrow, Bellova.”

And with one last nod, Coriolanus shut the door behind him, returning to his run-down apartment where Tigris and Grandma’am were waiting.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

TAGLIST: @daenerysqueenofhearts, @squidscottjeans, @euphemiaamillais, @gracieroxzy

Author’s Note: This chapter was a lot longer than the last one lolll I really liked writing this part because things become a lot more intense. Let me know in the comments what you think and if you’d like to be tagged!

#coriolanus snow #tbosas #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #coriolanus snow x oc #original character #thg prequel #the hunger games #arachne crane #clemensia dovecote #dean highbottom #the capitol #coriolanus snow x reader #lucy gray baird

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neonacity · 6 months

Text

DEAR MR. SANDMAN | Jaemin x Reader

Summary: You're afraid you're slipping into madness. You're wrong.

You're already mad.

Warnings: depictions of mental illness, disassociation, and negative way of thinking. Hypnosis and psychiatric themes. No detailed smut but there are HEAVY hints of it. Reader is highly unstable. Please, please, PLEASE do not read if you find this theme triggering. Minors are not welcome.

"Tell me, how does it start again?"

Your lips parted slightly as you took in a half breath. In front of you, the warm lighting of the room resembled like dying flames—a sharp contrast to its supposed purpose of making the space look comfortable and welcoming. Your eyes, heavy from lack of sleep, lifted just enough to gaze at the set of hands in front of you. Blankly, you noted the pen resting patiently on the clipboard, and the long graceful fingers holding it.

"Tortoise shell. That's a new one."

"I'm sorry?"

You only realized you've said your thoughts out loud when you heard him speak. Your doctor's voice is calm as usual, unbothered despite the strangeness of your reaction. It's one of the reasons why you have decided to stick to him after going through so many shrinks who weren't able to fix you.

"Your pen. You are using a new one."

A pause. You watched quietly as his fingers started to move after to scribble some quick notes for himself. His hands have always fascinated you in a strange way; gentle, but with an odd edge you can't quite explain. You didn't dare look at his face out of fear of missing the way his fingers danced over the paper.

If only your dreams handled you the same way.

You couldn't remember anymore when it exactly started. One day, you were just a regular boring individual, slaving through your nine to five to pay for your student loans with your scrap of a salary. You go to work. Eat. Sleep. And work again. Your life is so painfully average that living it every day felt like hell. Sometimes, you're lucky enough to catch someone's eye and get a fucking. More often than not though, you're pretty much a wallflower, uninteresting and forgotten, like a piece of furniture in someone's home that hasn't been trashed yet simply because everyone has grown so familiar with it.

You've resigned yourself to a life of waste, until one day, the dreams started coming. They started subtle at first, shadows moving slowly against nothingness, too far to reach you. You didn't pay them any mind initially despite the fact that before this, you never really dreamed at all. Painfully, you noted how they were the only things that stood out from your boring existence, the only signs that told you that you were, in fact, still living.

You accepted the discomfort, just like how you have settled to take your miserable existence without a fight. But then your nightly visitors started forming shape, a peek of a curve of a shoulder here, and an elegant stripe of a throat washed by moonlight there. Then came the voices. Words whispered to the shell of your ear, or breathed against your skin. The fact that you could never remember the exact words the moment you wake up infuriates you, but your flesh… your flesh seems to remember them. As if they are seared to your very core.

"It's a gift from a friend. This pen."

Your focus snapped back to reality like a rubber band. Your eyes automatically met the dark ones of the man in front of you who obviously broke your disassociation before it went full on spiral. You were pretty sure you looked lost, but he only returned your gaze with a patient one as he sat back against his chair. Every action of his seemed pointed, silent signals telling you that you are safe and unjudged, at least in his presence.

"Let me know if you are comfortable enough to answer my question. Do you remember it?"

You gave a stiff nod.

"Do you want us to move on to other topics first?"

"N-No… I… I remember some of my dreams from last night."

If that gave him any hope for a successful session today, he didn't show it. Other than a slight dip of his head, his gaze on you stayed professional. That was another quirk about him that has also gained your trust. He seemed so calm despite your struggles.

Your madness.

You cleared your throat and unconsciously tried to rub your damp palms over your skirt. You were already wavering, so you decided to stare at your pale hands to anchor yourself.

"I slept at the same time yesterday. Around… 10pm. I made sure to take the new pill you gave me. The dreams… they didn't really come until around 3am… Just like usual…"

The sound of pen gently gliding over the paper filled the stale air of the room. You swallowed dryly to keep yourself from being distracted.

"Did you wake up as usual?"

You nodded.

"How?"

You paused. It was one word, but it was enough to drag you back into the shadowy corners of your dreams. You remember the hands tracing your body, the way their fingers curved to make sure they touched the deepest parts of you. Then there was the pain that almost seemed to split you into two, followed by the unmistakable pleasure that sets over after the white blinding scream of your flesh. It always starts like that. Sometimes you could feel teeth against your throat and nails digging painfully on your scalp. But you always wake up from your slumber one way or another. By having your breath slowly cut off by the tightening noose of fingers around your neck...

And the pleasure buzzing from your core.

Pure, unadulterated pleasure that you have never ever felt before from any man or woman. At first, you have chalked off the changing tune of your dreams as another mad but regular twist to your nightmares, but you started feeling more convinced there is something more to what's happening when you started noticing the soreness… the fullness after. As time went on, the nail marks left on your skin started looking wider, same as the welts of red on your neck that you can no longer match to the size of your hands. Every single night you find them on yourself, you wake up even more detached from reality.

"I think I'm being haunted, Sir."

The words left you before you could even realize your thoughts. The scratching of writing stopped and you felt your doctor's eyes rest on you.

"What makes you think of that?"

You burrowed your brows into a frown and pursed your lips as if you were in pain. The expression didn't come unnoticed and you saw him finally put down his pen and fold his hands in front of him.

"You know that this is a safe place for you, right?"

You didn't answer, hesitation still masking your features. You couldn't bring yourself to put into words what happened last night. If you do, then it would make the madness even more real.

"I'm scared," you mumbled as you finally lifted your eyes towards the man sitting across from you. His features, handsome and gentle, looked even more pronounced by the light and shadow that suddenly crept into the room. You didn't know if it was all in your head still, but you can definitely feel the beginnings of your consciousness slipping from reality again.

"Will the hypnosis help?"

Your heart skipped at his question. Like an addict offered a hit to stave off your edge, you gave a nod, eyes bordering on begging. You would be lying if you say that isn't the reason why you came running here. With both your waking and sleeping moments turning into your personal hell, you can only find reprieve now in moments when you relinquish your mind to him.

As if in slow motion, you watched as he lifted his hand to remove his glasses, gaze unreadable.

"Close your eyes."

You did ever so willingly, your lips parting to give a relieved sigh as your vision blurred at the edges.

And then the darkness came.

*******

Jaemin gave a low sound of approval as he stretched himself on his seat at last. Head tipping back, his lips finally curved into a slow smirk as he let the waves of pleasure flow through him in waves. He knew he could have you anytime he wants, but oh, doesn't your vulnerability taste so much better when you come here, begging for release.

What an innocent young soul, asking for help from him. Her doctor.

"They've always tasted so good like this. Maybe it's the trust," he murmured to himself as he reached to loosen his tie. He moved his fingers then to comb through his hair which fell back in dark waves over his eyes.

He was right as usual in choosing you as a host—your insecurity and loneliness is perfect fodder for him. He has to admit though, he didn't expect you to break so easily under his wiles. If only you could hear yourself beg for him every night, the way you whine for him to fill the gaps of you that only his darkness can satiate. Poor soul. He had you addicted without even knowing.

You have been perfect, but he only gives it one more month, maybe two tops, before he finally breaks you for real. Jaemin has no doubts how sweet you will taste at your ruin, but for now, he has your nightmares to stave off his hunger.

Dark eyes followed the curve of your body now lying pliantly in front of him. His gaze stopped at the beautiful strip of your neck and the necklace of red that stood starkly against your skin like jewelry.

He smiled.

If only you have looked close enough earlier, then maybe you have noticed the perfect way his fingers matched your marks.

His gift. A sign of promise for making Nightmare fall in love himself.

*******

A/N: Hi. Guess who is randomly back with a semi-proper fic after disappearing for month. I don't know where this came from but the craving to make a story for Jaemin gripped me so bad yesterday. Excuse the long-winding thoughts; I've gotten a little rusty. Anyway, enjoy and advance Happy Halloween, loves!

#jaemin x reader #nct fic #nct smut #jaemin smut #nct fanfic #nct jaemin fanfic

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the-guilty-writer · 1 year

Text

Big Biggie

Request: from @itmejado

Could you write an imagine where Rossis daughter has an asthma problem and has to go to hospital for antibiotics and stay for a few days and the team comes and spends time with her, like playing chess with Spencer, penny makes cookies, she watches sports with Derek?

David Rossi x daughter!reader, Platonic!BAU x rossi!reader

Summary: reader with asthma finds herself in the hospital while her dad is away. The team steps in to keep her company.

A/N: I don't have asthma so I did research to try to get as accurate as possible. I hope this captures everything okay. If not, I am always open to feedback in order to make the next request better. Thanks!

CW: reader has asthma, minor swearing, hospitals, IVs, reader is sassy (as I'd imagine Rossi's daughter would be)

---

You hated frat boys

No. That statement didn’t cover it all; you hated frat boys that didn’t have the decency to cover their damn mouths when they coughed. Of course, not everyone had been raised in a mansion, but sometimes the level of common sense people lacked completely baffled you. After just one class of sitting next to a guy from Sigma-Phi-Disease-Factory claiming that he “just has allergies” you ended up with pneumonia.

No biggie, right?

Yes biggie. Big biggie.

Because having athsma made treating pneumonia far more complicated than taking a trip to the student health center.

The persistance of your wet cough and the burn in your chest as you heaved air in and out of your lungs became increasingly concerning. You weren’t sure if you had so much pain in your chest because you felt like you couldn’t breathe, or if you felt like you couldn’t breathe because of the pain. When your temperature skyrocketed and your skill chilled, you had your roommate drop you off at the ER.

It didn’t take the doctors long to decide you needed to be admitted, and immediately after finding out the pneumonia was bacterial, you were glad you hadn’t waited any longer than you did. Growing up with athsma meant you had been through enough treatments, seen enough specialists, and had enough infections to know that you’d be laid up in the hospital on IV antibiotics for at least five days.

Staring at the ceiling, you found yourself craving company, but you weren’t sure who to call. Your roommates were busy working and your dad was on vacation. Well, actually he was on his book tour, but that was the closest thing David Rossi got to a vacation. You didn’t want to bother him.

The problem with that- you were still on his insurance plan. You’d have to bother him some time before you got discharged. It was probably better that you did it now rather than later.

“Ah, if it isn’t my favorite girl," he answered after the first ring. “I was just about to call and tell you about this fantastic restaurant I went to last night. I think it’s the best carbonara I’ve had since your great-grandmother was alive.”

“That’s great, dad,” you managed to choke out.

“(Y/N), what’s wrong?” Your dad said, his voice filled concern.

You wanted to sigh, but it came out as a cough. “I’m in the hospital,” you managed to say between heavy breaths. “Bacterial pneumonia. I have to be on an IV for a few days, but I’ll be okay.”

“I’ll catch the next flight home-”

“Dad, no.” You coughed, the speed at which you cut him off causing mucus to come up your throat. “There’s only one more day left of your tour. You deserve to have some fun every once in a while. I’ll be fine. Bored, but fine.”

You heard your dad hesitate. Rossi had raised you on his own. Every minute he didn’t spend working to catch the most dangerous criminals in the country, he spent taking care of you. The man deserved a break.

“Okay,” he said. “But if you need me all you have to do is call and I’ll be there.”

“Okay, dad.” Your eyes felt heavy. “I love you.”

“I love you too, kiddo.”

---

You weren’t sure how long you were asleep for, but when you woke up there was someone next to your bed.

“Who are you and why are you eating my jello?” You muttered, your eyes still only half open.

“Good morning to you too, (Y/N).” Derek chuckled. “How are you feeling?”

“Never better,” you replied, followed by a wheeze. “Why are you here? Let me guess, one of the nurses here is a serial murderer- wait no. Dr. Super Genius managed to get shot again.”

At that, Derek burst out laughing, nearlying dropping his empty jello cup on the floor. “You are your father’s daughter, aren’t you?” he said. “I’m here because I heard a certain Rossi told her dad not to come home from his book tour early and I couldn’t let the BAU’s favorite oldest kid be bored and alone.”

“I appreciate that, Derek, but you really didn’t have to. There isn’t much to do around here.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” Derek grabbed the remote for the TV. “The Commanders are playing the Bears today and there was no way I was going to miss an opportunity to watch my home team beat yours.” His smile turned cocky.

You wanted to back-talk him but you began coughing violently, mucus rising in your throat, chest heaving as you struggled for air.

“Let it out, kid,” Derek rubbed your arm softly. “Let it out.”

Just then another agent you knew all too well walked into the room, but this one was far less fun- Agent Hotchner. Though you had known him the longest of anyone on your father's team, he didn’t make for great company. Unless, of course, one considered filling out copious amounts of paperwork in silence a fun activity.

“Morgan, what did you do?” He asked.

“Nothing, Hotch!” Derek said defensively.

He was right- it wasn’t his fault your body decided that it needed to try to eject your lungs from your chest. But Hotch wasn't looking at you, instead, he walked over to the table with not one, not two, but three empty jello cups.

Your coughing subsided and Derek turned to look at his boss, who raised a suspicious eyebrow. “I might have participated in the jello.”

Hotch let out a small, rare smile and turned to you. “Your dad gave me the information to get your forms filled out so you don’t have to worry about it. I have to go, but you can call me if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” you managed to get out.

Hotch nodded. “Of course. Get some rest.” The interaction was short, brief, and to the point, but Aaron Hotchner leaving work to fill out medical forms so you didn’t have to do it later was his way of letting you know he cared.

“Now,” Derek said. “Where were we?” He turned up the volume on the TV just as the Commanders scored a touchdown.

“You’re going down.” You smirked at him.

---

“Ha! The Commanders win 14 to 7!” You cheered weakly. The antibiotics were starting to kick in, making the suffocating feeling in your chest far less painful than before.

Derek rolled his eyes. “Alright, alright, kid. But they only won because that ref made a bad call.”

“It doesn’t matter. They still won.”

“Who won what?” Penelope Garcia toddled into the room on bright pink heels. She was wearing a black and white polkadot dress with a cardigan to match her shoes. Sometimes you wondered if she had to bribe someone to get around FBI dress code.

“The Commanders beat the Bears,” you told her, smirking at Derek.

“Ooo!” Penelope squealed. She didn’t understand sports, but she understood enough to ask “So your team beat Derek’s team?”

You nodded.

“Do you know what that means?”

You shook your head.

“It means that you get to pick out your cookie before he does.” Penelope smiled and pulled a box of cookies out from her purse, offering them to you. They were the good kind- the ones that she spent hours icing and designing to look like cartoon kittens.

“Penny, you are the best,” you told her. You picked out a cookie that looked a whole lot like Sergio and took your time enjoying the delicious treat. “So good.”

Derek nodded in agreement as he finished off his first cookie and went to grab another one. Penelope swatted his hand away.

“I made one for each of us,” she said.

“But there’s one left,” Derek observed.

Before Garcia could reply, Spencer Reid made his way into the room and grabbed the last cookie. Derek looked defeated.

“Hey, (Y/N),” Reid said, putting down his satchel and taking a seat before starting on his dessert.

“Hey, Spencer,” you replied, then furrowed your brow in confusion. “You came in here without a hazmat suit on?” Spencer was known for having a slight problem with germs.

“As long as we stay five feet away we should be fine,” he countered. “Plus I want a rematch of our annual holiday game.” He pulled a chess board from his satchel and began to set it up on a small chair.

“Reid,” you started. “How are we supposed to play if I can’t even reach the board?”

“Morgan can move the pieces for you,” Spencer said with a mouthful of cookie.

“Penny can’t do it instead?” you asked, half to tease Derek and half because you were sure the guy had never played chess in his life.

“Hey, ouch!” Derek said, bringing his hand to his chest and pretending to be hurt. “But you are right. I think Penelope would be the better choice.”

“I’m on it!” Garcia got up from her seat to move closer to Reid, who had placed himself as far from your bed as possible.

The game took far longer than normal, with Spencer having to guide Garcia through what moves you were asking for, and the match ended in a stalemate. You were about to start another round when a nurse came by, letting everyone know that visiting hours were up.

You said your thank you's and goodbye's to your father's team members. After that, it wasn’t long before you fell asleep.

---

“Yes, and according to Morgan, her and Reid’s chess match ended in a stalemate. I have a feeling he might not be able to wait until the holiday party for a second rematch,” Hotch told Dave over the phone.

“Thanks for doing that, Aaron,” Rossi said. “It means a lot.”

Before Hotch had a chance to answer, a flight attendant tapped Rossi on the shoulder. “Excuse me, sir. I’m going to have to ask you to put your phone on airplane mode for the flight.”

Rossi gestured that he just needed one more minute and put the phone back up to his ear.

“What time are you getting in tomorrow?” Hotch asked.

Rossi sighed. “Not till the afternoon at least. I forgot that layovers are a huge pain in the ass.”

“Well, try not to worry too much about (Y/N). Emily and JJ have something planned to keep her occupied.”

Rossi smiled. “I’m sure she’ll love it.”

“Well,” Hotch said, taking on a bit of a playful tone. “As Garcia might say, it’s no biggie.”

“Sir.” the flight attendant came back, this time looking far more annoyed.

“I’ve gotta go. Thanks again, Aaron.” Rossi hung up the phone.

It’s no biggie.

But it was. Even when he couldn’t be there for his daughter, his team- their second family- always would be. And that was a big biggie.

#criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds x platonic!reader #criminal minds x reader #david rossi x daughter!reader #Criminal minds x y/n #criminal minds #david rossi

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gallifreyanhotfive · 5 months

Note

Do you have any recommendations on Dr. Who books/audio format things? I haven't watched the show in a bit because Moffat wasn't my thing and I can't seem to find the old stuff. (If you have any advice on where to find that too I would be very grateful) Following your blog has been a nice reminder of why I liked the show so much. Hope you have a good day!

Aw thank you! Depending on your location, you can find classic who episodes either on BBC iPlayer or Tubi (with ads).

As for books/audios, I'll try to keep this brief as I could write an essay on this.

For books, my favorite author is Kate Orman. Orman writes wonderfully, and my personal favorite is The Year of the Intelligent Tigers. I also really liked Goth Opera, Camera Obscure, History 101, Autumn Mist, Lungbarrow, Divided Loyalties, Somewhere Never etc etc etc etc (so many more but I'm forcing myself to stop here). You can often find free versions of basically every novel (at least all I've looked for) on the internet either as pdfs or epubs or whatever. The Internet Archive is particularly useful. Some examples:

And now for the audios! I personally have sold my soul to Big Finish. I have literally hundreds of recommendations. They do have some audios for free, such as those that came from the Paul Spragg Memorial Competition. You can also find a lot of them (up until Zagreus I think) for free on Spotify. There is also almost always a killer sale going on on the website on top of that too.

As for my recommendations, it's pretty dependent on what Doctor or companion you want to listen to. They even have series centered on UNIT, Romana's Gallifrey, Benny Summerfield, and a ton of other things (including a Masterful special that just had a bunch of Masters fucking around and finding out). I'll put in some of my favorites, one for each Doctor, from what I own (which is far from everything, but I do my best).

One: The Sontarans. It was the first time the Doctor had ever encountered the Sontarans, so he was unfamiliar with them. It takes place during Dalek Master Plan, so Steven and Sara are there.

Two: Lords of the Red Planet! It's a good Ice Warrior origin story and has Jamie and Zoe in it. :)

Three: Terror of the Master. I had pre-ordered it as soon as I heard about it. Three....Delgado Master....what more do you want from an audio? It's narrated by Jon Culshaw.

Four: The Wrath of the Iceni. It was a brilliant historical with Four and Leela and Boudica. Leela gets quite a lesson in this one, first being mad at Four for not helping Boudica and then at Boudica for being cruel.

Okay now we are getting into my favorite Doctors (5-8), so these decisions are going to get difficult.

Five: The Kingmaker! Shakespeare spikes Five's drink to get him absolutely wasted to sneak on the TARDIS, the TARDIS gets hiccups as a result, leading to Peri and Erimem being separated from the Doctor. Shenanigans ensue.

Six: Doctor Who and the Pirates. Six and Evelyn have a really meaningful discussion with one of her depressed students. The third part is a musical!

Seven: The Shadow of the Scourge. Benny Ace and Seven against 8th dimensional eldritch abominations. Seven gets turned into one of these insectoids, and body horror ensues.

Eight: Oh dear I can't choose. At the moment, probably the Great War from Dark Eyes 1. Eight meets Molly and is still grieving here. He is very much doomed by the narrative.

War: The Neverwhen. Lots of the War Doctor is good if you like Time War horror, but this one has a lot of time-as-a-weapon and is well written.

Nine: Battle Scars. A nice short story about that one family Nine saved from the Titanic mentioned in the episode Rose. Has a really fantastic girl in it and a Nine dripping in PTSD.

Ten: The Time Reaver. Ten and Donna! There's this gun that basically slows down time for a single person, so that a few minutes for everyone else is centuries for them. Ten is a self sacrificing dope.

Eleven: The Geronimo boxset is the best in my opinion, but I haven't been able to listen to many of these yet.

Twelve: Another one I haven't managed to buy a lot of yet, but Dead Media is amazing. It's written to sound like a podcast with adverts and everything and is set during his time at St. Luke's. And I cried at the end.

Anyway, I'll shut up now. This was so much fun! Thank you!

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ereardon · 2 years

Text

You Again [Part 3] [Hangman x Reader]

Summary: It’s been five years since you last saw your childhood best friend and first love Jake Seresin. But fate, or coincidence, has you back in Jake’s life and he’s desperate not to lose you again.

WC: 6K+

Warnings: Cursing, mentions of death

Series masterlist; Part 1, Part 2

Jake’s dog tags dangled around your neck, the ends tucked tightly inside your scrub top as you entered the OR scrub room. You felt the metal shifting against bare skin as you ripped open a sponge packet. Lost in thought, you scrubbed at your hands and forearms aggressively until you heard a voice over your shoulder.

“Doctor? Are you alright?” Tina, your favorite nurse, tilted her head to look at you. She pulled down on her mask. “I’ve been watching you scrub for five minutes now. You’ve barely blinked. Looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m fine, thanks,” you said, letting off the foot pump and watching the water come to a stop. You stepped through the automatic doors into the operating room, and Tina held out a cloth to dry your hands which you took before sliding on a fresh pair of gloves. You wiggled your fingers to make sure they were tightly fitted and nodded in acknowledgement.

“First surgery of the day,” Tina said, tossing the used towel into the laundry bin near the wall. “There’s that quiet calm.”

The room was bustling — the patient already sedated on the table, two medical students hovering in the corner with notebooks and nauseous looks on their faces, the anesthesiologist checking the ventilator, scrub nurses recounting the tools on the metal trays – but you understood what she meant. There was no blood on the floor. No damp cloud that trailed after the cases that ended with a zipped body bag. The first surgery of the day meant a clean slate.

But it would only last for a moment. And then, chaos.

Although you didn’t know it, while you were elbow deep in the chest cavity of a sixty-three year old man with a ruptured descending aorta, Jake was thousands of feet in the air, going head to head with enemy planes. As you called out for more clamps, more gauze, hang another blood bag, he’s bleeding out, Jake was traveling at nine hundred miles per hour, dodging bullets in a dog fight. You didn’t know that as the blood rained down over the table and across your shoes, as the lead surgeon called time of death, as you ripped off your gloves and slid down to the floor in despair, Jake’s plane was also descending, a wing on fire, out of bullets and out of time, a commander screaming into his headset to eject, a blinding whiteness overtaking him.

All you heard was the heart monitor flatline, the urgent beeping that often haunted your dreams during call shifts sloping into a sharp whine. And then it stopped, bringing with it the all too familiar sound of death.

Two weeks before

He was gone.

You had done this before. Pulled yourself up, rebuilt your life after Jake Seresin left. But this time was different. There were his dog tags around your neck, for one. You had slipped them on after you finished reading his note, the cold metal sending shivers down your spine. And unlike five years ago, you knew why he left this time.

Before you even realized, you were in your car flying across the Coronado bridge. It was early, the sun just barely peeking over the horizon. You had two hours until you had to scrub for your first surgery. You could make it.

When you pulled up to the gates at the base, a man in uniform stopped you.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

“Yes, I’m here to see Lieutenant Seresin.” It came out rushed. Every second mattered. “I’m not signed in, but I was here just yesterday. It’s urgent.”

He typed across his computer in the small booth outside the gated fence. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but Lieutenant Seresin’s squadron is departing this morning. I’m not allowed to let visitors enter.”

“Are they gone already?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“For fuck’s sake, is he here or not?” you screamed. The man’s face remained stoic, like concrete. Any other moment you would have felt guilty at the outburst. But the only thing that mattered was knowing whether or not Jake had gotten on the ship.

“Ma’am, that is confidential. I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Fuck,” you cursed under your breath, slamming into the driver’s seat and peeling back in reverse, throwing the car into park on the other side of the gatehouse. Your fingers trembled as you dialed Jake’s number by memory. “Please pick up, please pick up.”

It rang and rang and every time it rang your heart sped up, nearing tachycardia. You could feel your heartbeat in your ear as it pressed against the phone.

“Jake, fuck, please pick up.”

Finally, “Y/N.” You gasped a little hearing your name on his lips. His voice was strained.

A tear slipped out of your eye. “Jake, please, I’m here. I’m at the gate. They won’t let me in. They say you’re leaving today.”

You heard him cough on the receiving line. “Bunny.” Or was he choking back tears?

“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving today? I thought we had time!”

“Baby, I left this morning because I didn’t want this to happen.” He paused and you paced near the gate on shaky legs. “I meant everything I wrote. You’re the reason I’m going and you’re the reason I need to come back and I fucking promise you, Bunny, I’m coming back for you.”

Tears started to form at your lower lid, obscuring your vision. You swiped at them.

“You look so damn pretty, darlin’, even with tears down your beautiful face.”

You sucked in a breath and pressed your free hand to the metal fence, watching a figure appear in the distance next to one of the white hangars. You could just make out Jake’s tanned physique in his green jumpsuit, a pair of sunglasses planted firmly over his eyes.

“I’m coming back,” he said and you heard the gravelly voice give way to a softer, gentler Jake. Then, “Do you remember the summer after high school when we went to that party at Bobby’s house, and the cops came so we had to hide in the shed until the morning?”

You laughed despite the tears. “I had a shovel pressed into me the entire time. Pretty sure there’s still a dent in my rib cage because of it.”

“Do you remember what you said to me that night?” Jake asked. “You said that you were happiest when we were together. Didn’t matter where, didn’t matter when, didn’t matter if we were doing something or not. You said that you were happier being trapped in Bobby’s dad’s gardening shed that night with me than you would have been inside with a bunch of random people.”

His voice cracked at the end. This was the side of Jake that he didn’t let people see. The Jake that held your hand at the doctor’s appointment as they ran gene tests to make sure you wouldn’t have to go through what your mother went through. The Jake that had let you hold him in your arms the night before while he prayed to a God you weren’t sure he still believed in to bring him home safe. It was Jake, not Hangman, who needed you to need him.

“I still feel that way, Y/N,” he breathed into the phone and you tightened your fingers around the metal of the fence. “If you’ll have me.”

You slid your hand past the metal bars and made the OK sign with your fingers. There was a chuckle on the other end of the phone.

“Be safe,” you whispered. “For me.”

“Always,” he said. “I gotta go, Bun, we’re loading up. I love you.” The line went dead before you were able to respond.

***

That first night after work you drove to the Hard Deck, your fingers shaking. You weren’t sure why you went. This time you had the foresight to change out of scrubs and into regular clothes, but you chose the same bar stool as the one you had occupied the night Jake waltzed back into your life.

“What’ll you have sweetpea?” The brunette bartender from last time smiled at you across the wooden bar.

“Vodka martini,” you said quietly. “Dirty.”

She nodded and started to turn around. And then, “Y/N, right? You were here a few weeks ago, with Hangman.”

You were shocked that she was able to remember you amid the crowds of rowdy patrons. She smiled, reading your mind.

“We don’t get a lot of scrubs in here,” she laughed. “And Pete’s team is pretty small, I try to keep tabs on all of them.” You looked at her blankly, despondent, and she reached her hand out to cover yours. “I know what you’re thinking. They’re coming back safe. I made Pete promise me.”

“There’s no guarantee,” you whispered, looking up and catching her eye. “We have no idea what they’re facing right now. We have no idea if they’ll ever walk through that door again.” Penny watched your eyes shift toward the entrance.

“You’re right, we don’t know,” she said softly. “But I know Pete, and I know Hangman. And the way he looked at you, I’ve never seen him look at someone like that before.”

You shook your head, embarrassed that tears had started to split down your cheeks. Penny passed you a napkin and you lifted it to your face. “Sounds like you’ve done this before.”

She smiled sadly. “Once or twice. Trust me, it never gets any easier.”

“Do you know when they’re coming back?”

She frowned. “No. I probably know about as much as you do.”

“I literally don’t know anything,” you whispered. “We, uh, we’re not together. Before the other night, I hadn’t seen him in five years.”

Penny tilted her head. “You’re allowed to miss him. Doesn’t matter what you two are. If he means something to you, you get to be nervous.”

You bit your lower lip and Penny slid the drink over to you. “This might help,” she said, smiling. “Or not, but this is a bar after all.”

The vodka went down smooth. Too smooth. You felt light even just after one drink, and as you slid your card over to Penny to close you out, she placed her hand on your forearm. “You OK to drive?”

You nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be fine.” Your signature was sloppy, it had been since medical school, and she squinted at it briefly. “Doctor’s scrawl,” you said and Penny chuckled. “Trust me, I’m fine.”

“Come back, OK?” she said as you pulled your purse off from the hook beneath the bar. “I don’t know when they’ll be back, but I promise this will be the first place Mav comes. We’re open every night.”

You smiled at her. “Thanks.” She lifted an arm in a wave.

The apartment was cold when you got back. Less than twenty-four hours before it had been filled with candlelight and Jake’s voice and delicious food and now it was empty. Wandering into the kitchen, you expected to find it crusted with remnants of the prior night’s dinner, but to your surprise it was cleaner than when you two had arrived home the night before.

Jake. Of course he had cleaned up. That was just like him.

In the living room, you collapsed on the couch, memories of the night before flashing behind closed eyelids. Jake’s hands caressing your face, fingers digging into your hips, sliding under your shirt, pressed against your back to bring you closer to him. His lips trailing over your entire body, planting kisses in your hair, intertwining with yours. His whispers rumbling in your ear, telling you he was sorry, saying he loved you. And later, telling you how scared he was. Letting you in, showing a softer side you had never seen before.

As you stood to take a shower, wash away the reminders of the day, something caught your eye. The table next to the couch which held a small lamp and a framed photo felt off. You stepped closer and realized it was because the photo frame was empty. Picking it up, you turned the frame over in your hands. It was the same photo that Jake had on his mantel, the two of you on the beach at Kiawah. Setting it down, you reached for Jake’s note that still sat crumpled on the coffee table from where you had tossed it earlier in your rush out the door. His scrawl took up most of the first page and ended with his signature, but you turned it over just in case and gasped. There was writing on the second side.

P.S. — Hope you don’t mind, but I needed a new good luck charm. Can’t believe you still had the photo. That is how I will always remember you. Beautiful, golden, all mine. It’s always been you.

Days went by. Patients came and were discharged. You ran more ECGs and code blues and emergency bypasses than you thought were possible. At the end of every shift you drove back to the Hard Deck, often closing out the night with Penny on the beach. Sometimes after night shifts, you drove out there and sat alone on a picnic table around back, watching the sun rise over the crisp horizon, imagining Jake. What terrors was he facing? What thoughts were running through his mind?

Your fingers gripped the dog tags. They had quickly become your good luck charm, just as they were Jake’s. Since you had slipped them over your head that first morning you hadn’t lost a single patient.

Despite everything that had happened, you still didn’t know how Jake Seresin fit into your life. You finally had answers for why he walked away all those years ago, but was it enough?

***

You were seven, playing in the grassy field behind the elementary school. A group of boys playing kickball nearby were watching as you and two friends hopped around in a made up game, everyone acting out different animals.

“I’m a pig!” one of the girls yelled, down on all fours with her nose flared wide. The second girl was flapping her arms as wings, imitating a bat. You hopped in a circle with both legs pressed tightly together, your hands and wrists fused out in front of your body, palms facing down toward the ground.

Laughing, you had your head turned before you felt a bump and were knocked to the ground.

“I’m sorry!” When you opened your eyes, there he was. Sandy blond hair, green eyes, bright blue t-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts, holding out a hand. “Here, let me help you.”

You took his hand, which was caked in dirt, and let him pull you to standing.

He smiled at you, the red textured kickball that only seconds ago had decked you now tucked nearly under one arm. “I’m Jake.”

“Y/N.”

He nodded. “Sorry for knocking you over.”

You shrugged. “It’s OK, I guess.”

“What were you guys doing?” He looked out at the other girls, still in the throes of their game. But standing there with Jake, the lingering tingle of his fingers still on your hand, as well as some very real dirt, you suddenly felt embarrassed by the childish games the other girls were playing.

“Animal kingdom,” you whispered quickly, blushing.

“What animal are you?”

“A rabbit.”

He smiled and even back then it was dazzling. The other boys hollered at him from the kickball field, but he didn’t seem to be in any rush. Jake shifted his weight between his feet. Another shout from beyond made you tilt your head back at him.

“Think it’s your turn.”

Jake began to turn around and join his team, but stopped first to give you a grin. “See you later, Bunny.”

Your cheeks flamed red. Even then he was handsome and a smart ass and kind.

You fell a little in love with Jake Seresin that day.

***

You were sitting at the bar, nursing another martini, when you watched Penny’s face transform. It was a Tuesday night, quiet all around. But you were getting tired of waiting. You had lost a patient on the table earlier, a grandmother of nine. It broke you.

Witnessing her and Mav felt like a movie. You saw her smile so wide it threatened to overtake her, watched as she scurried around the bar, threw herself into his waiting arms. He was wearing a khaki uniform, his hands pressed tightly around Penny like he couldn’t believe she was real.

You stood up, watching them with an open mouth, your face turned toward the door, waiting.

After what felt like an eternity, they broke apart and Mav stepped toward you, one hand on your shoulder.

“He’s OK,” Mav said and those two words cleaved you in half. You fell back into the chair, choking back a sob, and Penny rushed to your side, patting your hair. “A little banged up, but OK. Everyone made it.”

With Mav and Penny flanking you on either side, you felt like their child and it made you momentarily long for the parents you had lost. You couldn’t afford to lose anyone else.

“You did good,” Mav said. “Whatever you said to him after our conversation, he took it to heart. He was incredible out there.”

You shook your head. “I said what you told me to say.”

“What do you mean what he told you to say?” Your heart stopped. The three of you whipped around to see Jake, followed by the rest of the dagger squad, filtering in through the side door. He looked more handsome than ever, but his mouth was drawn into a tight line. Your line of vision immediately went to his arm, which hung in a sling from his shoulder. “Y/N? What did he mean?”

You stood on wobbly legs and Jake stepped forward, closing the gap between you two. You looked up at him, acutely aware the rest of the team had taken their place near the pool table within hearing distance. “What happened to your arm?” You ran your fingers across his sharp jawline and he pulled your hand away.

He shook his head. “Answer the question, Y/N.”

“Jake, it’s nothing,” you whispered. “Mav just mentioned to me that day I came to see you at Top Gun that in order to do well on the mission, all you needed was to believe in the fact that everything would be OK when you got back. That you and I would be OK.”

You couldn’t read his expression. “Believe? So everything you said, it was just because Mav asked you to?” Then, softly, “Was it all a lie?”

“Baby, no!” You reached out to place your hands on his face, but he scooted back so he was just out of reach. “Jake, no, that’s not what I’m saying.”

He shook his head. “I tried to get past it, but there was something in the back of my head that just didn’t feel right. It felt too easy. Like why would you all of the sudden forgive me? After five years. After everything. But this,” he pointed toward Mav and Penny who were glued in place at the bar, “this makes sense. He asked you to do it so I wouldn’t fuck up the mission. He made you get in my head”

“You think I slept with you because someone asked me to?” Tears had started to form behind your eyes. “You know me better than that, Jake.”

“I used to know you.” The harshness of his voice tore you apart.

“You know me,” you insisted softly.

Jake was seething. “You didn't once say you love me,” he whispered and you felt his anger bubbling at the surface, alongside something else. Regret. “I fucking worshipped you. And you never once said you loved me back that night.”

Your voice was stuck in your throat. Thick, like biscuits and gravy. He was right. You hadn’t. You did love him, you always had. You just didn’t trust him. “Jake, let’s go outside, OK? I don’t want to do this here.” You placed your hand on his arm and he shrugged it off so hard you stumbled, Mav stepping forward to catch you.

As you looked up at Jake behind glassy eyes, you saw him looking at you, really looking, for perhaps the first time. He was angry. It radiated off of him like steam clouds in a cartoon. He was heartbroken. You could see it in the way his mouth trembled, the way his fists squeezed together at his sides. But he was also sorry. You watched him watch you stumble, watched his pupils widen and his jaw tighten as he fought his urge to save you.

Maybe he was done trying to be your savior.

All you wanted to do was step forward, gather him in your arms, try to explain everything. It wasn’t that you didn't love him. And you hadn’t spent the night with him to appease Mav or to ensure the mission’s success. You had done it for Jake. For the Jake who had pushed you through high school and stayed up late with you to study for the MCAT during college breaks. The Jake who had stood by you when everything else was falling apart and had pieced you back together. Jake who had loved you wholly, until the day he left.

He whipped around and stormed out. You started to rise to follow him and Penny whispered in your ear. “Let him cool off.”

Rooster rose from his seat. “I got him,” he said gruffly, following fifteen steps behind. Phoenix and Bob gave you looks of sympathy before standing up and joining you at the bar along with Penny and Mav.

You were embarrassed but you dissolved into tears, feeling Penny hugging you from behind, her arms wrapped around your shoulders. Someone nudged a glass of water across the bar toward you.

“The kid did good,” Mav said finally, breaking the silence. “He saved our asses and almost died in the process.”

You swallowed tightly. “What happened out there? If you can tell us.”

The team launched into a full recount of the mission. You watched their faces light up as they interrupted each other, talked over one another, finished each other’s sentences. You drank the water that Bob inched toward you and gave him a small smile, which he returned with a blush.

After a while, Rooster walked back in and all eyes turned to him. You stood. Waiting.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Y/N. He’s really upset. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like this before.” Rooster took a step forward and placed his hand on your arm. “Give him time, OK? I sent him home. He’s not really in a place to talk right now, but he’ll come around.”

You sighed. “I’m not so sure he will.”

“Can I give you a ride home?”

You shook your head. “My car is here. I’m fine to drive.”

“Let me walk you out then.” You nodded and pulled your purse out from under the bar. Penny hugged you and Mav gave you a pat on the shoulder.

Phoenix closed in and wrapped her arms around you, whispering into your ear. “He loves you. He’s going to realize that’s what matters.” You smiled at her and she smiled back.

Four weeks had changed everything. But one thing was the same: you and Jake were back to not talking.

Rooster guided you out to your car. You clicked the button weakly, lighting up the headlights. “Déjà vu,” he said. You sniffled and reached for the handle, but Rooster’s hand shot out to cover yours. “Y/N. I gotta ask. Did you do it for the team like he thinks? Or do you love him?

“Because Hangman, for all his flaws, saved our asses out there. And he loves you. I’ve never seen him care this much about anyone, not even himself. So if you did it just to save us, that’s admirable and I can’t say I don’t appreciate it. But I have to ask you to walk away. Don’t drag it out with him if you’re not in it for the long haul. He’s a mess right now. He saw his life flash before his eyes and he thought there was someone he loved that he was fighting to go home to. Only to find out maybe she was never his to have.”

Rooster looked at you, dropping his hand. You felt shaky and leaned up against the car door. Pulling the handle out, you slid into the driver’s seat, turning the key and rolling down the window. He put both hands on the open window frame and leaned in. “It’s always been Jake, for me,” you said quietly. “That was never a question. So no, I didn’t do it because Mav asked. I did it because I love him.”

Rooster breathed out a sigh of relief and smiled, standing up. “OK, good.”

“But I just don’t know if he and I have a future.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I needed him to be safe. I needed him to be OK. And I know he needed me to be here when he got back,” you exhaled. “I just don’t know if I’m ready to forgive him for everything. If I can just go back to how things were, pretending like the last five years didn’t happen. I don’t know if we can rebuild things and act like we haven’t lived different lives. Like we didn’t plan different futures for ourselves. Like he didn’t make promises to other girls that are just like me. Like he didn’t walk out of my life once without a single care in the world.”

You felt a stream of tears coming, and you gripped the gear shift tightly, yanking it back into reverse.

“Goodbye, Bradley,” you said, throwing the car into drive, the headlights piercing the darkness ahead.

In the rearview mirror, you saw him standing in the dust you had kicked up in your wake, hands on his hips, shaking his head. As the tears started to bloom in your eyes, he almost started to look like Jake.

***

You gave him three days. You had left a smattering of voicemails and texts, all unanswered. Finally, you gave into the panic and dialed Bob.

“Hello?” There was a small southern twang in there that made you smile, reminded you of Texas. But that only served to make you think of Jake, and immediately you felt a lump form in your throat.

“Bob, hi. It’s Y/N.”

“Hey there,” he said. “Let me guess, you’re looking for Jake?”

“Yeah, I uh, I left messages and voicemails but he’s not answering. Have you seen him?”

Bob hesitated and you pressed him.

“He told you guys not to talk to me.”

“Something like that.”

You sighed into the receiver. “Guess I deserve that.”

“I shouldn’t tell you this, but everyone’s going to the Hard Deck tonight for Phoenix’s birthday. He’ll be there.”

“I could kiss you Bob.”

He laughed. “Don’t make Bagman any angrier at me than he already will be.”

“I’ll see you tonight.”

“Bye, Y/N.”

Your hands shook as you pulled into the gravel parking lot later that night. Smoothing out your blue sundress, the one you wore because you knew how Jake felt about sundresses, you adjusted the gift you held in one hand. It was nearing ten o’clock – you had tried to guess a time that would guarantee Jake would have shown up, but not so late that he would have already left.

Inside, it was rowdy. Friday night in full swing, the entire bar packed to the brim with uniforms. A few heads turned as you entered alone. Immediately, you spotted the team in the back. They were wearing their khakis again, Phoenix laughing and blowing out candles over a white cake that Penny held in her arms. You made your way slowly through the throng of people before a hand reached out to grab your arm.

“Hey sweetheart, can I get you a drink?” A brunette in uniform has his thick fingers wrapped around your upper arm and despite trying to shake them off you weren’t able to. “What’s a beautiful thing like you doing here all alone?”

You opened your mouth to tell him off before a hand came around your shoulders and the brunette stepped back. “Hands off the lady, Campbell. She’s with us.” Turning to your left you saw Rooster with his arm around you, once again wearing a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned too far.

The guy held up his hands in apology. “My bad, Bradshaw. Didn’t know.”

Rooster steered you away, toward the group in the back. Bob spotted you first, smiling behind his wire frames. Your eyes landed on Jake immediately. He had one arm propped up on Phoenix’s shoulder, grinning wide. You hesitated for a split second, not wanting to make a scene on Phoenix’s night, but Rooster scooted you along.

“Don’t be nervous,” he whispered in your ear.

You almost tripped in your heeled sandals, stumbling forward and catching the group’s attention. Phoenix lit up when she saw you and rounded the corner of the table to give you a hug.

“Happy Birthday,” you said softly, handing her the gift. “I wasn’t sure if it was a presents type of thing.”

“With me it’s always a presents type of thing,” she said, looping her arm through yours and pulling you toward the group. “Come on, we were just cutting the cake. Doctors eat cake, right?”

“This doctor does,” you murmured and she laughed. Jake’s eyes were on you, his tension palpable in the already humid air of the bar. Penny slid a piece of cake over to you and you took a bite as Phoenix opened her gift, pulling out the trio of Le Labo candles and a bottle of champagne.

“Thank you!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands around your neck. “I love it.”

You smiled and hugged her back, despite Jake’s hot glares on your skin. Bob appeared at your side holding out a beer and you took it, chatting with him for a moment. Across the table, Rooster had inched up behind Jake and was whispering in his ear. Out of the corner of your eye you watched as the pair, formerly enemies, spoke in hushed tones with muted body language.

Finally, mid-conversation with Bob and Coyote, you felt a hand come around your waist. Looking up, you saw Jake standing behind you and to your left. “Can we talk?”

You nodded and Bob and Coyote shot you knowing glances. Jake offered his hand, and guided you out the back door and down the beach toward a picnic table. He sat on the top of the table, his boots planted on the bench seat and you followed suit.

“How’d you know I’d be here?” he asked quietly.

“Just a really good guess.”

“Oh yeah? You always just walk around with birthday presents for Phoenix?” he teased and you laughed. Jake’s face perked up at the sound.

“Don’t be mad at them, OK? They were just trying to help us.”

He shook his head. “I know. They’re all meddlers anyway.”

You reached out and touched his hand that was splayed on the wooden table. “What happened to the sling?”

“It was just a dislocation. Doc said I could stop wearing it after a few days.”

Your lips formed a pinched line. “Mind if I take a look?” Jake shook his head and you pushed yourself off the table, standing between his legs. Gently, your fingers circled his shoulder, lifted his arm softly, pressed against the joint. “Does that hurt?”

He looked at you, a quiet frown on his handsome face. “Yeah, it hurts.”

“I still think you should wear the sling,” you said, dropping your hands. “And ice it, twice a day. I don’t care whatever your doctor is saying, no heat. Got it?”

“It’s not the shoulder that hurts, Y/N.”

You gently rested your hands on his thighs. “Jake, I’m sorry. Things got really messed up the other night. But I need you to know that I do love you. And I didn’t try to trick you or whatever you’re thinking. I would never do that to you.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “I know, I jumped to conclusions. But the idea that you let me back in that night just to make sure I would be able to fly, that hurt, Y/N. It really hurt.”

“I let you in because I missed you,” you said, pressing your fingers harder into his muscular legs. “Why would I have come here, to this bar, every single night for two weeks waiting for you to come home if I didn’t give a shit?”

Jake raised his head. “You did that?”

You nodded. “Jake, these last few weeks have been a daze. It’s like I was on autopilot. And then I would feel these,” you yanked at the chain around your neck, pulling the dog tags out of where they had been tucked inside your bra and you felt Jake suck in a breath, “and remember what I was fighting for. I was fighting for you. For us.”

His hand slid into his front pocket, pulling out the folded up photo of the two of you that he had taken from your apartment. Jake unfolded it carefully. “I flew better in this mission than any other flight in my entire life,” he whispered. “And it’s not because I knew how important it was, or because I was just having a particularly good day. It was because of you. You’re the reason I needed to come home. You’ve always been the reason, Y/N. I just let myself forget it.”

He tucked the photo back into his pocket and pressed one hand to each side of your face.

“I’m scared,” you whispered. “I’m scared you’re going to leave me again. That I’m going to have to pick myself up in your wake. I don’t know if I can do it a second time.”

Jake paused. Then, “Do you love me? Not back then. Not when we were kids. Do you love me now?”

Lifting your gaze to Jake’s, you nodded.

A thumb grazed your cheekbone. “I’m going to need to hear you say it, darlin’. I need to know this is real.”

You pulled him to standing so the two of you were only inches apart. Jake slid an arm around your waist, and you wrapped your hands around his neck. “I love you, Jake. It’s you. It’s always been you. I just need you to promise that you’re not going to run away again.”

A small yelp left your mouth as Jake bent down and lifted you off the ground, wrapping your legs around his waist. Supported by one arm, he lifted a hand to brush the hair out of your eye and tuck it behind your ear. “I am never leaving you again, Bunny. Not if I have any say in the matter.”

You leaned down and pressed your lips to his, felt Jake’s hands tighten where they held you up. Inside, you heard a round of cheering, Rooster taking his place at the piano.

Jake pulled away and leaned his forehead against yours, smiling. “Guess you're finally going to marry me now? Just like we talked about when we were kids.”

Your hands raked through his hair, green eyes glued to yours. “Lieutenant and Doctor Seresin. That sounds pretty good to me.”

“Bunny girl, anything with you sounds good to me.”

Four years later

“Don’t let him eat so much ice cream, he’s going to get sick!”

Jake chuckled and pulled your back against him, letting you sink your weight into him as he rubbed circles on your expanding stomach. “It’s his birthday, just let him be Bunny.”

You sighed and turned around, pressing your fingers to his cheeks. “God, you are an absolute pushover, did you know that?”

He laughed again and grabbed your hands, pressing kisses to the inside of both wrists. “Only because we make really cute kids.”

“Yeah, this one better be cute, I’m sick of getting kicked in the kidney,” you muttered.

Across the yard, you spotted your son sitting on Rooster’s shoulders, playing with a toy airplane.

“I wonder who he got that from.”

“That would be me.” You both turned to see Bob, Phoenix and Fanboy approaching. They hugged you and Jake, and Phoenix’s eyes widened at your growing stomach. “What else are godmothers good for?” she asked, pressing one hand to your stomach. “Still no update on this one?”

Jake shook his head. “We’re stuck on girl names.”

“Girls are tricky,” you said, sitting down on a foldout chair, Jake coming to stand behind you, his large hands massaging your shoulders gently.

“C’mmon, you’re not going to name her Bradley, too?” Rooster appeared out of nowhere, your son giggling in his arms. You started to reach out for him, but he lept into Bob’s arms instead and the group laughed as the two-year-old began to climb the WSO like a tree.

“One Bradley in this family is enough,” Jake huffed and you squeezed his fingers.

“It’s not even his first name!” Rooster exclaimed, cracking open a beer. “Just his middle name.”

“It’s been two years, man, let it go,” Phoenix laughed. “They named him after her dad, can’t really compete with that.”

Rooster nodded slowly. “Yeah, well, I’m still rooting for Bradley for the next one.”

“It’s a girl!” you chuckled, running a hand over your belly.

“We still have three months to decide.” Jake planted a kiss on your temple and crossed over to take his son out of Bob’s arms. He lifted the little boy into the air and you watched as he laughed.

“Where’s my godson?” Everyone’s eyes turned to the edge of the fence where Mav and Penny were entering, their hands full of gifts. You sighed and watched your son light up.

“Mav!” he yelled, his tiny voice barely able to reach across the yard.

Maverick put the gifts down, crouching and holding open his arms. Jake set your son onto the ground and everyone watched as the toddler ran toward Mav, who scooped him up in a big hug.

“Hey there Hangbaby,” he said and you stifled back a laugh. The baby callsign never got old.

The song changed and everyone was on their feet. Jake held out a hand and pulled you up, one hand coming to rest on your back and the other on your stomach. You watched as Jake’s teammates who had quickly become family started to dance in the backyard. Your son sat in Mav’s arms as he bounced from foot to foot to the music.

Jake leaned down and pressed his mouth close to your ear. “I love you, Bunny.”

You smiled and leaned your head back against Jake as he shifted to cradle you from behind, swaying to the song.

All those years ago you thought you were saving him. You never once thought that he might be the one to save you.

THE END

A/N: Thank you everyone for your love on this series! I absolutely lied when I said part 3 would be short. On the hunt for my next TGM fic so if you have any requests please drop them in the comments!

Tag list: @notanordinaryprincess95 @coleishere @shanimallina87 @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @fangirling-4-ever @lgg5989 @smoothdogsgirl @kkrenae @wishfulwithwine @pariahsparadise @madslake06 @alana4610 @abaker74 @muushwrites @another-tblr-fangirl @avoirlecoupdefoudre @mrsharringtonmunson @greenteaandsagetea @thegirlnextdoorssister @n3ssm0nique @lover-of-nights @multiplefandommess

#jake hangman x you #jake hangman fic #hangman fanfiction #jake hangman x reader #hangman top gun #top gun imagine #hangman imagine #hangman angst #top gun fanfiction #top gun maverick imagine #natasha phoenix trace #bob floyd fanfiction #miniseries

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topguncortez · 1 year

Note

can i get 19 + 37 with jake from the sick prompt list? x

pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x Shy!Wifey prompts: 19. “Your fever hasn’t gone down.”, 37. “You fainted.”, and combined another request 38. “I feel like I was hit by a train. Everything hurts.” prompts list Jake & Shy Wifey Masterlist

If there was one thing about the Seresin children, is that they had their father's determination and stubbornness. Each of them were hard headed in their own way, especially Ella. She always felt like she had something to prove being the daughter of a famous naval aviator and being the only girl in a family of boys. Ella was on every committee and club chair that she could possibly be on, as well as doing sports nearly all year round. The girl didn't know what it meant to rest, which is why when she got sick, it hit her hard.

"How are you feeling, baby?" Jake asked, placing the back of his hand on his daughter's forehead and frowned. He grabbed the thermometer next to her, "Under your tongue."

"I feel like I was hit by a train," Ella mumbled, "Everything hurts."

"Well, you probably got whatever the twins had last week," Jake sighed. Both Jasper and Maxwell had the flu last week. Ella did her best to try and maintain a distance away from her younger brothers, but it seemed as though it failed. When the thermometer beeped, Jake took it out of her daughter's mouth.

"one oh two point three," Jake set the thermometer down and refolded the cool rag on Ella's forehead, "Your fever hasn't gone down. I'm gonna go get you some toast and Tylenol. If it doesn't break in an hour, I'm taking you to the hospital."

"But dad," Ella groaned. It was bad enough she had to miss school, she was not about to go to the hospital and possibly be committed and miss more school.

"Ella," Jake scolded lightly, "I know you want to go to school, but your health is more important," Ella nodded and he placed a kiss on her forehead before getting up from her bed, "I'll be back. Drink that gatorade please."

Ella nodded and watched her mom walk out of her bedroom. She sighed and checked her phone, waiting to her back from her boyfriend Luke on if he got her homework and notes from the student council meeting she was missing today. It also mad her made that her perfect attendance record since kindergarten was about to be ruined, but there was no arguing with one Jake Seresin when he gave you the "dad" look.

Y/N was sitting down in the kitchen, cutting up vegetables for a stew she was making for dinner. Jake greeted her with a kiss on her cheek before heading to the pantry and getting the bread out.

"Fever still high?" Y/N asked and Jake nodded.

"Hasn't budged," Jake said, and placed two slices of toast in the toaster, "She's worrying me. Can't believe she's still even lucid."

"Me either," Y/N said, "Val said that if it's stable that's a good thing, means her body is fighting off the illness. Just don't want it going on any longer."

Jake sighed and leaned against the counter, "I wish my kids never got sick. Remember when Alex was first born and he got really sick? I thought I was going to have a heart attack."

Y/N chuckled and set the knife down on the cutting board. Jake had always been the more empathetic parent when it came to the kids. Every bump, scrape, bruise, illness they got, Jake swore he could feel their pain. He always looked near tears whenever the kids got hurt. When Alex had been hospitalized as a baby, Jake hardly ever left his side, frightened that the worse would happen if he did. It took a doctor coming in and telling Jake that he needed to go for a walk for him to finally leave.

"Kids get sick," Y/N said, walking over to her husband and wrapping her arms around his neck, "It's a normal thing of growing up. At least we live in a place where we can drive five minutes to a hospital if we need one."

"You always find a brighter side to life," Jake smiled, "That's what I love about you," He kissed his wife quickly as the toast popped up, "That's for the princess."

Y/N giggled and moved back towards her cutting board. Jake smeared butter on the toast and grabbed two Tylenol pills and another gatorade before heading upstairs. He turned the corner into Ella's room but his eyebrows furrowed seeing her out of bed and standing in the middle of her room.

"Ella?" Jake asked.

"Dad? Why am I-" Her speech was slurred and Jake watched her knees buckle. He quickly threw down the items in his hands and ran to catch her before she could crash to the ground.

"I got you babygirl, I got you," Jake whispered running his hand over her hair, "Y/N!"

Hearing the commotion from downstairs, Y/N was already running up the stairs when Jake called. He looked like a frightened child as he held his unconscious one in his arms. Y/N kneeled down next to Ella, placing two cool rags underneath her arm pits.

"Keep her head level," Y/N said, and grabbed Ella's feet, propping them up against her bed, "Ella, sweetheart," Y/N rubbed her daughter's calf, watching as she slowly fluttered her eyes open and a whimper coming from her mouth.

"Mommy," She cried and Y/N smiled softly at her, "What-?"

"You fainted," Jake said and Ella looked up at her dad, tears in her eyes, "It's alright, babygirl."

"You got her? I'm gonna ring Val and have her come over," Y/N asked and Jake nodded, still holding his daughter in his arms.

Ella still had tears in her eyes, some threatening to spill as she looked at her dad, "I'm sorry."

"For what?" Jake asked, and wiped a tear away with his thumb, "You're sick baby, there's nothing to apologize for." Ella nodded, "How about this, I put you back to bed, get you some snacks and we wait for Aunt Val to come by?"

Ella nodded again, and Jake picked her up in his arms. He gently laid her down, and tucked her back underneath the blankets. He kept the cold icepacks under her arms and the rag around her neck. Jake never left her side as they waited for Val and Y/N to come back.

#top gun imagine #top gun fluff #top gun fan fic #top gun maverick imagine #top gun maverick fluff #top gun maverick fan fic #Jake seresin #Jake seresin fluff #Jake seresin imagine #Jake seresin fan fic #jake seresin x shy!wifey #Jake hangman seresin #hangman seresin #hangman #hangman imagine #hangman fan fic #hangman fluff

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mania-sama · 2 months

Text

with every line, a comedy (05)

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Fic Summary: The people of Sumeru had not experienced dreams for the past five hundred years. Lesser Lord Kusanali then abolished the Akasha system and returned the wonders dreaming to her people.

However, there are complications that arise with freeing the brain’s unconscious activities. Nightmares start to haunt those that had previously repressed traumatic memories in order to cope.

Kaveh, on the other hand, begins sleepwalking. Alhaitham tries to fix the problem before someone gets hurt.

Or; Kaveh has nightmares and sleepwalks. Alhaitham dreams and deals with the emotions he holds for his roommate.

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

05 - his translucent skin made shiver deep within my bones

Pale White Horse - The Oh Hellos

wc: 5,705 | Cross-posted from Archive of Our Own

Cyno was the first one to greet the two in the morning. There wasn’t a clock in the living room, but the windows showed the moon sitting on the horizon. Great. He forgot Cyno was even more punctual than Alhaitham. There wasn’t any way he was going to be allowed to stroll in late to work.

Alhaitham had been in and out for most of the night. The hearing aids coupled with previous events had kept his thoughts running, irritating him to the point that he considered it would be better if he just took them off. But of course, he didn’t. Not when he could hear Kaveh’s uneven breathing a few feet away from him at all times.

As for Kaveh’s night, the Scribe was well aware that there wasn’t a chance that he’d gotten back to sleep. If he had, they’d probably be dealing with a broken splint and a rush to Bimarstan or the student hospital against Kaveh’s will.

Tighnari soon came down afterward and examined Kaveh’s ankle. Although overall pleased that it hadn’t worsened, he insisted on them seeing a doctor together as soon as possible. Alhaitham noticed Kaveh acted overall neutral to the subject. Overcompensating — pretending his panic attack had never happened in the first place, that he had to consider if he’d trust even his oldest friend with the care of his body.

Breakfast was served by Cyno, who was easily the best cook out of the four. Collei joined them the moment plates were set on the table. Alhaitham had never been particularly close with her, but that didn’t mean they disliked each other. In fact, they’d shared conversations about the types of books they enjoyed. Though the attempt at reading one of her books, and conversely her attempt at reading one of his, went rather poorly, he recognized the merit in her choices of material.

Her demeanor was entirely different from the last time he’d seen her. Collei was a shy and soft-spoken child but wasn’t particularly skittish or weak-willed. Even if she didn’t want to do something, she pushed her way through since she understood the importance of why it had to be done. That consisted of eating, exercising, studying, interacting with others, and more. Alhaitham saw a bit of himself in her, especially in the interaction department.

The girl that sat down at the table next to Kaveh was tired. Dark circles hung like heavy weights from her red-edged violet eyes, and her posture was tense and rigid as if she felt the urge to flee at any given moment. Eye contact was held for only half a second before she went to toy with her food. She was quiet and clearly watching them from behind her eyelashes.

The meal wasn’t silent, but it was quiet in a way that let everyone recover from the night previous. Any conversations they had lacked any real substance, aside from when Tighnari asked about Alhaitham’s dreams again, to which he politely responded for Tighnari to describe his.

Collei ate very little of her food, though she tried to put more down every time either Cyno or Tighnari requested that she eat a little more. From the corner of his eye, he saw Kaveh struggling just the same, even if he was better at hiding it. Alhaitham was certain he was the only one that noticed how Kaveh would swallow twice, lick his lips, and take extra time in preparing the next bite. His eyes would glance at the Scribe’s plate before looking back at his own, seeing how much progress he should be making in comparison to Alhaitham’s slow speed.

The coffee was more bitter than Alhaitham preferred. He watched the sunrise from the window in the dining room, and he had the foreboding feeling that it was going to be a weary day.

And yet, he left before Cyno did. Tighnari accompanied him to the door, and he anticipated what he was going to say before the Forest Watcher opened his mouth.

Lips drawn into a frown, he warned, “Don’t talk about my sex life again until you can figure out yours.”

Alhaitham leveled him a blank stare, leaving the held-open door without a word. Before he could step out of earshot, however, Tighnari’s voice called after him. “I mean it, Alhaitham.”

The Scribe didn’t grant him a response. On his walk to his house, his hearing aids were held firmly in his hands, deaf to the world and forcing his mind to focus on anything else.

—

Throughout the years that Alhaitham knew Kaveh, he’d noticed one intriguing peculiarity about Kaveh:

He was a strangely private person.

It didn’t seem that way at first. Really, Kaveh didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut most of the time. When they’d first met, Kaveh had sat with Alhaitham and talked his way through the entire lunch and barely stopped enough to eat his meal. He revealed everything there was to seemingly know about him; he was raised by two scholars, he was a student of the Kshahrewar Darshan, a master of trigonometry, loved soup and anything cute, and was generally obnoxious.

He told people so much that they didn’t feel the need to look deeper. They would think, after one conversation, that there wasn’t anything more to know about him. He’d already supposedly spilled their entire life story to them, so why would they try to find out more?

It had worked on Alhaitham for about one day. After that, he began picking up on the qualities that Kaveh didn’t expect people to see, notice or comment on. He expected that his hard-looking shield would deter everyone away from actually hitting it. That way, they wouldn’t find out just how brittle the metal actually was.

Kaveh wasn’t private around Alhaitham much anymore. It was hard to be with the Scribe’s perceptibility and how often they were around each other. Aside from the nightmare situation, Kaveh had given up on hiding. He let every part of his life and personality bare their ugly teeth in the containment of their home.

However, there was one aspect of himself that he’d never revealed to Alhaitham. And for his part, Alhaitham had never cared to push on the subject. He didn’t need to see Kaveh’s bare body. Even if there were days where he found himself picking apart Kaveh’s clothes, imagining what may lay underneath, he’d never brought it up before.

But it was while he was sitting in his office, trying to work through the thick stack of post-meeting documents, that he was struck by the fact that he’d never seen Kaveh’s naked stomach before, nor his thighs.

He wouldn’t know if dark freckle marks were dotting his skin like glittering constellations. Kaveh could have birthmarks of any shape. He was likely pale, paler than the rest of his skin. Would it be smooth from underexposure, or rough from constantly rubbing against his clothes? There could be blemishes, prominent abs on his stomach, or sharp muscle lines stretching across his thighs.

He’d thought about it before. It had kept him awake at night, wondering what he may never get to learn, and how he could go about finding out without driving Kaveh away from him. Because, of course, Kaveh wouldn’t expose himself for Alhaitham's pleasure and curiosity.

Alhaitham had never before contemplated the matter the way he was now.

Scars of Kaveh’s past could be littering uncharted skin. And the shape of those scars, whether they be burnt, large, jagged, narrow, or straight, could be a clear indicator of stories Kaveh left untold about his childhood. They could be the answers to the incessant questions Alhaitham had on childhood surgeries, torture, and escapes.

And there may be nothing there at all. There could be nothing to indicate trauma, nothing to show for physical abuse. Kaveh wouldn’t be hiding anything underneath, but rather keeping what’s there away from other people.

Alhaitham recalled the taut rope, sobbing, and incoherent words, and felt a little nauseated. The paper in front of him blurred out of focus for half a second. It was worse knowing that Kaveh might be afraid of what Alhaitham would do if he ever saw what he kept hidden.

“I hope this isn’t a bad time, my Scribe,” a young voice called, and Alhaitham’s vision cleared immediately. He focused on the Archon and the slight glow she always emanated. He wondered if she was aware of it, the way that people couldn’t help but notice her presence.

The Acting Grand Sage carefully set his pen down on top of the document, a little too aware of the organ working in his chest. “Not at all. What do you need?”

She walked up to his desk with heavy feet. Her eyes were open and imploring as if she could read every emotion on his face. Alhaitham had always been told that he was impossible to read — his facial expressions rarely differed. Kaveh had once said that his eyes would go from narrow to narrower, and that would sometimes be the only indication that his emotions had flipped.

“Kaveh isn’t afraid of you,” she blurted. Immediately, her hands went up and shook them. “I wasn’t trying to read your mind! I… I do it subconsciously. Looking into people’s heads, especially Dendro Vision holders, is like breathing for me. I sincerely apologize.”

“There’s no need,” Alhaitham forgave, and really, the only reason he did was the knowledge she provided and the ease that knowledge set aside. His stomach was still coiled with the theories left untested, but at least one tight knot was set free.

The Archon nodded, though her fingers twisted together in front of her chest uncontrollably. “I didn’t come here to tell you that, anyway. I want to inform you that I’ve found the reason why I can’t help Kaveh directly.” She paused, giving time for Alhaitham to fully prepare for what she was going to say. That, and her voice was uncharacteristically tight. It appeared that it caused her great discomfort to speak aloud. “He blames me for what happened to him.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Alhaitham refuted. His mind was already piecing together the route Kusanli took to come to that conclusion. “He loves his Vision more than he loves himself most days, and he holds you in extremely high regard. I don’t see how he could blame you for something you couldn’t have taken part in.”

Then there was the matter of Collei. Alhaitham had already compared and contrasted them; Collei had even mentioned before that she had screamed for the gods to help her, angry at them for allowing her to be tormented in the first place. Out of the two Dendro wielders, it would be Collei that should be blocking Kusanali out.

“He blames me like how I read minds; it's subconscious. What happened to him occurred in Sumeru, and he thinks he survived it all alone, without any help from me or anyone else,” she mourned. “I hear the prayers he sends in his dreams. I’m not helping him there, either. And that Vision… when he looks at it, he is only reminded of all the times I’ve failed him.”

Alhaitham sat with fighting words on the tip of his tongue, ready to come back to Kaveh’s defense. Even though Alhaitham largely disagreed with his viewpoints, he knew how much Kaveh loved her. He believed that his dedication had finally been recognized by their Archon herself.

But, he couldn’t deny that her conclusion seemed correct. It was an undeniable fact that Kaveh had unattached his Vision during the night, and hadn’t bothered to reattach it that morning at Cyno’s house before Alhaitham left. Collei, on the other hand, had her's safely pinned to her sides as most Vision wielders preferred.

“He doesn't attribute a lot of the blame to me,” she continued. “His reservations are mainly held in other places, but it’s enough to block me out. The reason why this doesn’t apply to Collei,” and she looked a little sheepish as she said those words. It was clear she was still reading his mind. “Is that she has already remembered most of her time in treatment before the nightmares started. She’s had time to heal and realize that the only person she can put her anger to is the one that hurt her, not the ones that couldn’t help her.”

Alhaitham finished for her. “Kaveh hasn’t had that time to adjust.”

The Archon shook her head, her shoulders tense and eyes downcast to the floor. “I would apologize to him in person, but doing that would be the equivalent of putting a roof over a young sapling. Its growth would be stunted and deformed, twisting in order to get around the roof and towards the sun.”

In other words, Kaveh wouldn’t heal properly. “There’s more,” Alhaitham prompted.

“... Yes. I’m honestly a little ashamed,” she admitted. Her body rocked side to side. “It’s not just Kaveh, but Sumeru as a whole. My people have been suffering for the past five hundred years, and there is little I can do to help or change that fact. I feel like a tiny fish in a wide, storming sea, trying to make a ripple among raging waves. Apologizing now wouldn’t even make so much as a sound.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m certain you didn’t come here to gain sympathy from me.”

“No,” she said, and a small smile appeared on her face. “I’m saying this because I want to thank you for all the work you’ve done for me and Sumeru. I know you don’t enjoy being the Acting Grand Sage but If you hadn’t offered to hold the base, the Akademiya would have crumbled by now. You’ve done an amazing job so far.”

Alhaitham stared at the young Archon, unsure of what to do with the praise. People didn’t often acknowledge the work Alhaitham did — they seemed to think his ego was already inflated enough. It was foreign. The last person to congratulate him on a “job well done” was his grandmother, who had long been buried.

Noticing his silence, Kusanali carried on with, “And I want to express my gratitude in more than just words. The issue is that I don’t know what would suffice. My Scribe,” she said with her hands spread wide open, “what would you like from me?”

His first instinct was to bite out “a new Grand Sage,” but he knew that it simply wasn’t feasible. Kusanali had made it his responsibility to pick the next Grand Sage, and so far he hadn’t been able to find a suitable heir to the title. He hadn’t had the time, and all of the candidates were less than exemplary. His second desire was equally as unattainable. Kaveh’s nightmares were far out of Kusanali’s hands.

Why did he care enough about Kaveh to give this divine opportunity to him?

He shut down the line of thought before it could spread. He could think about it later when his Archon couldn’t read just how confused he truly was when he had the time to fall to the same frustrating conclusion he always came to.

Alhaitham didn’t need anything. He supposed the window needed to be replaced, but he already made time to fix that issue at a later date. He wanted to wake up later than six in the morning, but that couldn’t happen until there was someone to take his place in the grand chair he sat on. His life was cozy and complete; other than his occupation and Kaveh, there was nothing he wanted.

“Your dreams,” Kusanali said, interrupting Alhaitham’s vigorous search for a request. He looked at her curiously. “How do you feel about them?”

He couldn’t remember his first dream, but that didn’t surprise him. His research on the topic showed that recalling dreams, especially after an extended period of time after they originally occurred, was exceptionally hard. Unless the dream caused an extreme emotion or was vivid enough, most people go their whole lives with only being able to remember a handful of their dreams.

However, he could recall his second and third dreams relatively well. In his second dream, his house was burning down, and he went down with it in search of his roommate still trapped inside. A few of the details blurred at the edges. His third dream, a ship capsizing with Kaveh as a drowning prisoner underneath, still exceedingly clear in his mind’s eye. His heartfelt desperation to release Kaveh was as vivid as it was real in the waking world. When Alhaitham analyzed it, he wondered why he hadn’t dreamt of either his Vision or Kaveh’s.

Dreaming, as he’d learned, is a way for the brain to process information. He didn’t mind that he was having them based on that fact, but Kusanali wasn’t asking for his opinion on the objective truth of his dreams. She wanted to hear what he felt.

If she’d asked Kaveh the same question, he would’ve said that his dreams made him feel fear and out of control of his life. Alhaitham knew this because he’d observed Kaveh react to his dreams and mask his emotions in an effort to regain authority over his own mind.

“I don’t hate them,” he started. “I’m aware of their value in processing information. That doesn’t mean I appreciate what their contents are. During the day, I watch Kaveh suffer. Then at night, I relive it all over again. I can’t escape his pain or mine.”

Even in his office, far away from the architectural work Kaveh was laboring over, his mind persisted in reminding him of all that his roommate wasn’t telling him, all that he was dealing with alone in his own head. He never truthfully ceased reflecting on Kaveh and his situation, and Archons-forbid if Tighnari’s incessant voice echoed in his thoughts one more time Alhaitham might have to go the rest of the day without his hearing aids. It wasn’t like he cared to hear anyone’s voices anyway.

When he slept, it was a respite from the day he had. Since upholding the title of Acting Grand Sage, Alhaitham had craved that solace even more. Now, his dreams prevented him from receiving that break.

Lesser Lord Kusanali put a hand on her chin and stared thoughtfully at the desk in front of him. “Thank you for telling me, Alhaitham. Even if it’s just for one night, I’ll see what I can do for you and your dreams.”

Alhaitham nodded to her. “Is there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?”

“No. Please, continue your work and I will continue mine. We are making Sumeru better every day.” She smiled and winked at him. Instead of walking to the elevator, she blinked out of his sight. The only indicator that she had even been in the room was the faint green outline of the body that permeated the air.

Now that he reflected on it, she hadn’t come in through the elevator, either.

Blinking away the reflection, he returned to the document on his desk. Kusanali had cleared his head and ebbed away his growing anxiety and overstimulation. Sifting through papers wasn’t fun regardless, but it was easier to do when he wasn’t focused on Kaveh. Instead, he thought of his dreams and how Kusanali intended on influencing them. The logistics played in the background of his mind as he approved another paper.

—

Alhaitham hated being the Acting Grand Sage of the Akademiya. It was exhausting, hard work that was incredibly boring at the same time. He had chosen to be the Scribe of the Akademiya for a reason; it was easy work that rarely took up much time during his day. The title of Acting Grand Sage guaranteed the exact opposite.

Worst of all, the meeting he had scheduled later that day to further the process of choosing the next Grand Sage since two of the sages were ill with the flu. The virus had been spreading through the Akademiya during finals week, and the students that had all caught it from their weakened immune systems due to stress had spread it to their mentors.

Of course they spread it to their mentors. Alhaitham used a sparing prayer to Kusanali, silently asking her to protect Kaveh from the illness. Not because he was worried Kaveh wouldn’t make it, but because he would spread it to Alhaitham. There were few things that Alhaitham despised more than being sick.

As he walked to his house, he eyed the Matra tailing him. Then he spotted the ones lurking further up the street, finding himself disappointed that Cyno hadn’t been lying.

Cyno had dropped by his office soon after Kusanali left. The visit wasn’t overall unexpected; if he was in the city, he would make the personal trip to drop off the reports and case files that Alhaitham had to analyze and approve. The General Mahamatra acted first on reports, but they did wind their way to the Grand Sage for a second opinion. If he wanted to have a case halted or pursued, he had the authority to override the General Mahamatra’s decision.

Alhaitham knew that Cyno would do what he believed to be righteous no matter what the Grand Sage thought, so he didn’t even bother to correct his decision. The most he would do was read the first passage of the report in the instance that it was intriguing.

When Cyno had delivered the papers, he warned Alhaitham that he, Kaveh, and their shared house would be on surveillance for the next week. The General Mahamatra then showed him the report that he’d filled out. Kaveh and Tighnari’s names had been listed as the correspondents.

“We’re going to snuff out the criminals as soon as possible,” Cyno had said, his eyes narrowed and unamused. “But if they manage to catch wind of this before we get to them, Kaveh could be targeted, and you by extension. I’m keeping you both safe this way.”

Alhaitham had carefully held the paperclipped stack in his hands, flipping through the pages until he landed upon a blueprint and a sketch. They looked just like the ones that Kaveh was working on for his commission. The one that had needed it to be finished as soon as possible, and even paying extra for maximum efficiency.

Before the Acting Grand Sage could open his mouth, Cyno had said, “I advise you to talk to Kaveh about this. He wasn’t taking it well when he gave me the report. Tighnari and I convinced him not to drink, but it’s been a few hours. I don’t know how well our advice stuck.”

Alhaitham was fully expecting to open his door to either two situations:

One. Bottles strewn across the living room with the architectural drawings ripped up in a pile. Kaveh would be drunk out of conscious thought, mumbling his woes into Alhaitham’s ear.

Two. The papers would be intact, but Kaveh wouldn’t be home. He’d be at the tavern, drinking his sorrows where Alhaitham couldn’t see his pitiful state.

With a Matra staring coldly at his back from across the street, he prepared himself for either scenario. The blanket that had been re-tied over the empty window slot moved with the door. Alhaitham tugged it behind him as quickly as he could, not wanting the Matra to see the scene inside.

Kaveh was home.

There weren’t any empty bottles. There weren’t any bottles at all. The living room was spotless clean of any dust, dirt, and architectural sketches. The book that Alhaitham had left open after he’d departed that morning had been closed and tucked into its proper place. A distinct smell of cooked meat and roasted vegetables drifted through the house.

The Light of Kshahrewar sat hunched over on the center couch, a paper clenched in his hands. He didn’t react to Alhaitham’s entrance.

“Kaveh?” Alhaitham called, making his way over to his roommate. The only indication that Kaveh had heard him was a small bob in his throat as he swallowed.

When he reached his side, the Scribe didn’t pick up on any trace of scents of alcohol. His clothes were unmussed, his hair pinned back in his usual style, and his skin glistened like he’d taken a long, hot water bath. A proper splint covered his foot and ankle, meaning he’d made it to the doctor and back just fine.

His ruby eyes were blank and unseeing. The paper in his palms was crinkled from constant pressure, and the ink had been smeared in various places. It was otherwise free of variant marks and stains. It did not tremble or move in Kaveh’s grip. The architect was as still as a statue carved by his own hands.

Alhaitham sat beside his roommate on the couch slowly. He recognized this routine now. If he tried to say anything more, the results would be static and unchanging. Perhaps he wouldn’t make it worse, but he certainly wouldn’t achieve any progress.

He could violently pull Kaveh from the couch. It could startle him into the present, or he could be an emotionless doll. Under Alhaitham’s hands, he would allow himself to be pushed in any direction or touched in any way without a reaction at all. Alhaitham could tear the sketch to pieces, light his blond hair on fire, rip the earrings from his skin, and Kaveh wouldn’t make a sound.

The Scribe laid his hands on his lap and stared forward, letting himself drown in the static feedback from his hearing aids. Normally, everything had sound. The air moving, Kaveh’s breath, their house creaking — the only time he could ever escape it was when he took off his hearing aids. Now, it seemed like the world had sewn its mouth shut.

Silence was Alhaitham’s comfort. It was his blanket. He had lived without sound until his grandmother had fitted him with a pair of hearing aids. He hadn’t worn them often, then; he hadn’t cared to. It was only after he’d been a year into studying at the Akademiya that he’d crafted his own pair of hearing aids, ones that reverberated sound back to his eardrums as though he’d been born listening to the city’s bustle and the scholars’ debates.

His hearing aids weren’t made for the convenience of others. If someone wanted to converse with him, they’d find a way to do it. They’d learn sign language like they would any other ancient language they had to study in order to graduate, or they’d write what they wanted to say. Alhaitham had developed a keen eye for reading lips and understanding the words being spoken. He didn’t make them for the convenience of himself. He didn’t have any issues with his perpetually deaf world, and the occasional rough sound the old hearing aids provided.

He’d made them because, for the first time, he wanted to clearly hear someone’s voice other than his grandmother’s.

He had met Kaveh a year into his higher education career.

In the presence of Kaveh, silence was disturbing. He wore his hearing aids around his roommate for a reason. They were not meant to ring with static alone.

“They told me it was a ranch.”

Kaveh’s voice was not quiet. It was not choked. It was entirely blank, void of any of the depression, fury, or regret that Alhaitham associated with the architect. It matched his posture, the living room, his cleaned body, the scent of cooked food permeating the air, his dull ruby eyes.

“I had known they were lying. It looks nothing like a ranch.”

His voice was nothing at all.

“My first draft certainly looked like one. We talked about the modifications, and though I argued with them, I couldn’t pass up the mora they were offering. They knew what they were talking about, exactly what they wanted. If they wanted a terrible ranch, then that’s what they were getting,” Kaveh continued. His gaze was in the present, but not exactly focused on the sketch. “Cyno has already told you about this, hasn’t he?”

That was the first indicator that he’d acknowledged and recognized Alhaitham’s presence. Just because he’d been talking didn’t mean he’d known exactly who he’d been talking to. But the use of Cyno’s name showed that Kaveh was acutely aware of his surroundings, no matter how absent he had been before.

Alhaitham’s voice was toneless when he said, “Very little. I skimmed the first paragraph of the report; I want to hear the rest from you.”

His hearing aids rang with silence as he waited patiently for a response.

“The plan includes bedrooms, bathrooms, and a kitchen. At first glance it seems normal, but then you take into consideration everything you’d need in a house in general, not to mention a ranch house, and it certainly doesn’t meet the standards. Then there’s the fact that it’s in the center of the ranch, where the animals are roaming all around, and there aren’t any sheltered areas designed for animals themselves,” he monotonously explained. “But I’d explained all of the problems to them already. They didn’t care. This was the way they wanted it.”

For the first time since Alhaitham got there, Kaveh moved. It wasn’t much — he changed his grip on the paper so he had one free hand while the other prevented the paper from flopping at the edges. Kaveh lightly traced the outline of a fence on the sketch with his pointer finger. Alhaitham followed the finger intently, his attention flicking back and forth between the sketch and the architect’s face.

“It was the f…” His voice cut out, failing on the word he’d intended to say. He blinked, possibly for the first time in a while, and took a moment to regain his speech. “Fence. Ranches require specific types of fences for a list of reasons I won’t bore you with. There can be leniency for people as uneducated as the commissioners, but a palisade is obviously out of the cards for a ranch. The perimeter also wasn’t long enough for any type of ranch animal, nor the area big enough to provide enough space.”

Alhaitham had come to that conclusion on his own. He hadn’t asked Kaveh to explain it because he didn’t understand the logistics, he did it under the assumption that it would help Kaveh process the information and begin healing from it.

Looking at him then, Alhaitham realized that the issue ran deeper than he had originally thought.

“It’s meant to keep people, ” Kaveh started, and then choked on his own sentence. He let the sketch flutter softly from his hands onto the ground in front of him. His eyes were scrunched up together and his teeth were bared in a half-snarl. The usual shine that came with unshed tears was absent from his gutted face. “It’s meant to keep people in. Meant to harvest their organs and throw them out once they are emptied of anything to sell.”

When Kaveh stood, he staggered, tripping over his splint and hitting the edge of the table. The sketch crinkled and tore under Kaveh’s weight. Alhaitham stood up with him, reaching out to steady him before he fell. What he received for his efforts was a hand wildly swatting him away and a strangely level voice that said, “I don’t need your help.” Those ruby eyes, the ones that Alhaitham could never get enough of — the way they were so unique, their color descending from a deep crimson to a dusted pink, always so expressive of frustration and excitement — met Alhaitham’s with a glaring intensity. “I have never asked for it.”

And his nose was flared, and his hands were balled into fists, and he was favoring both legs as he roughly pushed past Alhaitham. His bedroom door slammed, rattling the vase settled by a set of books on the shelf beside the center couch. The sound reverberated into Alhaitham’s hearing aids, and they reminded the Scribe just how sensitive they were with an ear-piercing screech.

Fresh dust settled in the newly-cleaned house. The aroma of cooked meat and roasted vegetables filled the space where the smell of Kaveh’s shampooed hair had once been. Light streamed in from where the blanket had come slightly undone. The ever-present sound of silence wrapped around Alhaitham like the Grim Reaper’s skeleton hand.

Alhaitham tied the blanket back over the empty space where the window should be. He checked the kitchen to see a plate carefully preserved for him. It had meat and vegetables and a glass of water on the side. His footsteps were light and even as he brought the food to the dinner table. He kept his mouth closed and chewed slow as he ate alone. His mind was blank as he tried to think.

Lesser Lord Kusanali’s words bounced around in his head, reminding him constantly of their weight. It made him want to plunge his steak knife into a carotid artery. It gave him urges, not thoughts, not plans, not ideas. Only the strong urge to do something incredibly and uncharacteristically impulsive. Alhaitham prided himself on the fact that he did not do anything without consideration beforehand, and that he didn’t have compulsions since they were entirely illogical, reckless, and without cause.

Alhaitham wanted to flip the dinner table. He wanted to choke on his food. He wanted to cradle Kaveh’s head and beg to see his stomach and thighs. He wanted to shake his Archon’s little body and scream in her face.

Alhaitham did not act on his urges. Instead, he tossed his hearing aids onto the wooden table, took a deep breath, and ate the rest of his food in the complete, utterly deaf world he belonged to.

He wanted to be able to think, but the dead silence in his head was infinitely better than the uncontrollable voices scraping his brain like a dog that’s been trapped in a cage for days, making his hands shake and his heart burst. Having real thoughts would have to come later, when he calmed down and could open his mouth for anything other than eating.

#fanfic #fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #genshin impact #genshin impact fic #genshin impact fanfic #genshin fic #genshin fanfic #alhaitham #kaveh #genshin alhaitham #genshin kaveh #alhaitham x kaveh #kaveh x alhaitham #kavetham #genshin kavetham #kavetham fic

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allwaswell16 · 1 year

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A fic rec of One Direction fics with an established relationship and domestic fluff as requested in this ask. You can find all my other fic recs here. If you enjoy the fics, please leave the writers kudos and comments! Happy reading!

҉ Larry ҉

the most domestic husbands (series) by trackfive

(G, 164k, canon) little scenes of louis and harry being so ridiculously married and disgustingly in love

All About Us by LHStylinson / @lhstylinson9193

(G, 137k, kid fic) Throughout the night and protests from their daughter, Louis and Harry reminisce about how they met and overtime share their story with the boy that seems to look at their daughter the same way Louis once and still looks at Harry.

Worth the Wait by lovelarry10 / @chloehl10

(M, 117k, mpreg Harry) Louis and Harry had long ago come to terms with the fact they couldn’t have children. Rapidly approaching their forties, they’re settled at work, and more than happily married. Life, however, has other plans for the Tomlinsons.

Hands Clasped Tight by @afirethatcannotdie

(E, 44k, secret relationship) the one where Harry and Louis are high school teachers and their students have been playing matchmaker for over a year. Little do they know, Harry and Louis are already married.

So Long I've Been Waiting by kikikryslee / @flamboyantommo

(T, 14k, mpreg Harry) the one where Harry and Louis are having their first baby, and keeping it a secret until the end of the first trimester is a lot harder than they thought it would be.

Want you more than a melody by @softfonds

(E, 13k, mpreg) His band is about to release their third studio album, he's dating the hottest football star on the planet, and tour is going to start the following year. But one trip to the doctor's office changes all his plans for the future, and he wonders if Louis is ready for it as well.

Fine Lines by lsforever / @kingonafiftymetreroad

(E, 11k, mpreg) Harry gets the surprise of a lifetime and decides it’ll be the perfect Christmas present.

You Came Along And Moved Me, Honey by flowercrownfemme

(T, 8k, secrets) In which Louis thinks Harry's hiding a life of crime and Harry just really likes candles.

Secret Admirer by Jennifer_Kaid / @poetsreprieve

(E, 8k, a/b/o) It was kind of silly how their actual relationship had started, but they were just teenagers back then, a little scared of rejection and too deeply in love.

Dip you in honey by @lunarheslwt

(M, 7k, baking) Harry has been baking cornbread for seven days in a row. Louis has no idea what’s going on, but is ever the sweet and supportive husband. At least their baby, Amelia, seems placated by the bread.

To Carry Love by dimpled_halo / @comebackassholes

(M, 7k, mpreg) During One Direction's hiatus, Harry becomes unexpectedly pregnant, and Louis does his best at becoming the most supportive husband he can be.

Play Me Something Sweet by nonsensedarling / @absoloutenonsense

(E, 7k, cellist Harry) Harry's good at a lot of instruments, but his favorite one to play is Louis.

In the Heat Where You Lay by @marchessa

(T, 5k, a/b/o) the one where Louis tries to balance work life and his marriage while he also has to protect Harry from himself since the omega is danger walking on two marvellously long legs at the best of times.

tissue-thin lies by @helloamhere

(G, 5k, sick fic) Louis has a cold but he's FINE.

The Origin of Love by TeamLouis / @teamlouis2022

(E, 4k, canon) A mini break in the countryside, terrible weather and slow morning sex are the best way to recharge Louis and Harry's batteries after a long tour

lazy days and pancakes for two by @cyantific

(T, 4k, canon) What better way to spend a much-needed tour break than having a lazy day watching shit TV and having breakfast in bed with your husband.

Gonna Dress You Up In My Love by @fallinglikethis

(T, 3k, knitting) Harry decides to take up knitting. He's horrible at it. Louis wears everything anyway.

Changing Weather (For Worse or For Better) by @haztobegood

(M, 3k, vignettes) Five times it's raining and one time it stops.

catch a wave and take in the sweetness by docklands / @hershelsue

(M, 2k, canon) Harry has a hard time asking for things he needs sometimes. Gently, Louis pushes him to do it.

never just the heat of the summer by @orchidsbyjune

(T, 2k, self acceptance) A story about a bad day, a set of nail polishes, a good lover and whole identity packed in one.

If Wishes Were Dishes by LadyLondonderry / @londonfoginacup

(T, 2k, housework) Why is Harry doing his dishes? He must be mad at Louis.

Baby, Don’t Apologize by @neondiamond

(T, 1k, a/b/o) Harry being an asexual Omega means his Alpha Louis has had to spend his ruts alone for the past decade despite being mated. He’s not sure who feels most hurt by it.

҉ Rare Pairs ҉

Tie Me to You by rivers_bend / @river-b

(E, 8k, Niall/Niall Breslin) Niall’s body clearly knows he’s about to see his mate, and he’s doubtful there will even be two more days.

stuck on you by clairdeloune

(T, 2k, Louis/Nick Grimshaw) “I’m not letting you call our dog Stinky,” Louis protests.

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myveryownfanfiction · 6 months

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18+ MINORS AND THOSE WITHOUT AGE IN BIO DNI

tags: @illiana-mystery, @eclecticwildflowers, @onedirectionlovers2014

warnings: swearing, talk of death, mention of the experiment from flatliners

I leaned against the door to the classroom as I watched Dr. Wolfson teach his class on clinical death. The information he was giving them seemed awfully familiar to the writings he’d shared with me of his own experiment decades ago. I raised an eyebrow at the group of five students who were rapidly taking notes. Everyone else was taking notes but not like these five. They were hanging on his every word. When wolfson looked up from the students, he smiled at me.

“if you’ll excuse me class.” He said as he walked over. He put a hand on my arm in greeting as he led me out into the hall. “What’s up?” Nelson asked. I smiled and shook my head.

“I’m not allowed to watch you teach?” I asked with a laugh. Nelson smiled wider and shrugged.

“I mean technically you should have enrolled in the class.” I laughed. “Seriously everything ok?”

“yeah. I overheard some of the kids mentioning that you were going to talk about clinical death.” I said, a knowing look on my face. Nelson looked sheepishly at me. I lowered my voice. “Nelson, you can’t tell them…”

“I know. I’m keeping it vague.” Nelson said. He rubbed my arm as he looked down. “I…yeah alright.” He sighed as he tapped his cane against the ground. “I’ll go over the repercussions too. Talk about what can happen if done wrong or, for lack of a better term, the side effects.” I reached out and put my hand on his waist, squeezing gently.

“thank you.” I said softly. “There’s five kids in there taking notes as if they’re the Ten Commandments. Be careful.” Nelson nodded before looking over his shoulder at the class.

“I’m sorry.” He said, more to the classroom than me. I cupped his cheek and turned his head back towards me. Leaning in, I kissed him gently. Nelson smiled into the kiss before breaking away. “And they’re looking. I won’t live this one down.” He laughed, backing away from me slowly.

“so what. They’ve done worse with each other.” I laughed. Nelson shook his head and went back into the classroom where the kids immediately started to make fun of him with kissy noises among other things.

“alright alright. Settle down. Dr. (Y/L/N) was just leaving.” Nelson looked at me with a smile, shaking his head at his students antics. “Alright now. Back to work.” I walked away as Nelson continued his lecture from where I had interrupted him. Later that night, Nelson and I were sitting in his townhouse after handing out candy all night.

“Nelson?” I asked, looking over at him as the last of the kids ran down the steps, two of them dressed as doctors. He hummed as he set up another movie for us to watch. “You know what they’re doing tonight don’t you?” I looked over at him with a worried look. Nelson sighed and came over to wrap his arms around me.

“yeah I do. Same shit I did in med school.” He nodded, resting his head against mine. I reached up and ran my fingers through his hair. “They’re smart kids though. I’m sure they’ll be ok.”

“like you were ok?” I asked, eyes flicking back to Nelson’s cane. He sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s just…” Nelson broke away and pulled me away from the door.

“I know. I’m worried about them too.” He admitted. “There isn’t anything I can do except report them. And then I’d feel responsible for putting the idea in their heads. Either way.”

“and reporting them would create a double standard since they aren’t doing anything their professors haven’t done.” I continued. Nelson nodded. “And if we showed up while they were doing it, we could scare them or shock them into something even more problematic than what they’re already doing.” I leaned my head on Nelson’s shoulder as we sat down on the couch.

“I’ll check in with them tomorrow. Make sure they are ok.” Nelson promised. “I think I know who is going under too. Which makes this so much worse.” He took off his glasses, running a hand down his face and staring at the ceiling. Sighing, we sat in silence while the movie played in the background. “I should never have done that myself.” I turned my head to look at him, reaching out and hugging his arm.

“at least you didn’t publish the paper.” I pointed out. Nelson nodded.

“they’d have step by step instructions then.” He agreed. Leaning my head down on his shoulder, I bit my lip. “I feel so helpless.”

“there isn’t anything you can do. Not right now.” I murmured. “Tomorrow, we’ll pull them aside. Tell them we know.”

“I…fuck I’d hate to do it…I can see if joe still has the tape.” I pulled back and stared at him. Nelson kept his gaze on the ceiling, biting his lip and trying not to look at me. “We don’t go over anything in it but it shows how…” he swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut. “How they nearly lost me.” I bit my lip and stared at my lap.

“you never told me that.” I whispered. Nelson nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me that?” I looked over at him to find him watching me, tears pricking my eyes.

“you know why.” He said as he reached over to wipe my cheeks. “You know exactly why.” Nelson leaned in to kiss me but I pulled back.

“Nelson.” I whispered, shaking my head. He nodded and held his arm out for me. I curled against him, ear pressed to his chest. His heart beat in my ear as I took deep breaths, realizing that there was more to his little excitement than he had let on.

“I know. I’m sorry.” Nelson said as he kissed my head. “You don’t have to watch the tape. I’ll do it on my own.” I squeezed him tightly.

“thank you.” I whispered. Nelson nodded and the doorbell rang. Nelson got up, gently prying me from him.

“I got it.” He whispered, kissing me gently. I nodded as he answered the door and handed out the candy. “Come here.” He murmured as he went to sit back down. “You aren’t getting rid of me that easily.” I nodded as I curled into him. We sat in silence for a bit. “What time does trick or treating end?” I pulled Nelson’s arm towards me so I can check his watch. He started to chuckle and smiled at me. “I think it’s time for you to get a watch. Or start carrying your phone around with you like everyone else.” I rolled my eyes at him and scoffed.

“as if that’s what you do.” Nelson scoffed at me in return and waited while I checked his watch. “It ended half an hour ago.” I said, letting his hand drop. Nelson nodded, gently pushing me off him so he could turn the light off and grabbed the candy bowl.

“want some?” He asked as he held it out to me. I nodded and grabbed some. Nelson sat down next to me and put the bowl between us. “So tomorrow we’ll confront them and if they refuse to stop then I show them the video after you leave.” I nodded.

“sounds like a plan.” I dug into the bowl a bit more to grab some of the good stuff. “And thank you. For not making me…” I trailed off as I stared at the candy in my hands. Shaking my head, I looked up at Nelson again. “Thank you.” Nelson nodded and leaned across the bowl to kiss me.

“of course.” He said, cupping my cheek. Leaning his forehead against mine, Nelson rubbed my cheek. “Happy Halloween.” He smiled softly at me.

“happy Halloween Nelson.” I smiled back at him.

#kiefer sutherland #kiefer sutherland imagine #kiefer sutherland fan fiction #kiefer sutherland fanfiction #kiefer sutherland fanfic #nelson wright #nelson wright fanfic #Nelson wright fanfiction #Nelson wright imagine #Nelson wright x reader #flatliners fanfiction #flatliners fanfic #flatliners

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astriiformes · 1 year

Note

u (asexual) were not always included in the lgbt community 😭 y’all started existing in 2008 after the hard work was all done don’t lie

Usually I wouldn't reply to a message like this -- it was sent in response to a post that included plenty of examples of historical ace and aro involvement in what we now think of as the queer community, and was obviously sent just to be inflammatory and get an upset reply. I'm secure enough in my ace and aro identity -- and have more then enough allo, queer friends who consider me a part of their community -- that mean asks on tumblr aren't about deter me from my activism, both in the aro/ace sphere and the broader queer one.

But this particular anonymous ask just so happens to be one of the most astonishingly self-centered, short-sighted examples of ace hate I've ever gotten, so let's have a little talk about what's going on here.

Anon, it takes a special kind of person to claim the hard work is done and over on Trans Day of Remembrance, when we are mourning at minimum 32 people who were killed in the United States for being transgender in this last year -- and at least 327 people globally; on the heels of 2021 being the single worst year the Human Rights Campaign has recorded for trans murders on the United States, and when just yesterday night, 5 people were murdered and another 25 injured in a shooting at a queer club. When 2022 has seen the highest number of pieces of anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation filed in the United States on record -- many but not all targeted at not just trans people, but trans youth. When states like Texas and Florida are sending social workers after parents who support their children's gender transition and scaring queer and trans teachers out of schools. When there is an increasing movement to ban books featuring queer stories from schools and libraries across the United States -- including ones like Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer, which talks extensively about the author's aromantic and asexual identity as well as their gender journey. When TERF rhetoric dominates the news and political spheres in the United Kingdom, and British trans folks face horrific waits of three, four, five, and more years to access lifesaving care as the number of providers in the country who can offer it to them dwindles. When queer Ukranians are speaking out about the danger the invasion of their homeland by a country with a number of trans- and queerphobic laws in place puts them in (and when queer Russians have been living under those laws for some time now). When queer and trans people all over the world are watching all of this with worry for ourselves and the people we love.

What part of that is easy? What part of the hard work is done? Trans and queerphobic sentiments are on the rise and you seem to think you have some kind of laurels to sit on -- and worse, some kind of moral superiority. Tell me you aren't involved in the fight without telling me you aren't involved in the fight.

I (asexual) happen to have marched in a protest for trans rights in below-freezing weather this week. I had a conversation with the vice-president of my university's queer student organization about how I'd like to get involved in leadership next year. I helped talk a peer down from feeling suicidal when she came into the queer student center crying. I have also been talking a lot lately with my queerplatonic partner about how much happier she is having learned to embrace her ace identity and how much more comfortable she is in an ace relationship. I have been fighting for this community out on the streets while you decided the best use of your time was to hide behind anonymity and try to tear someone fighting for you down.

Because guess what, anon? Even if you want to pretend this fight -- that, yes, ace and aro people have been in all along -- is over, I don't think you deserve to have your right to marry taken away just because you grew complacent any more than I deserve to have a doctor make belittling comments towards me while I hold my queerplatonic partner's hand in the ER just because we're not married. (And yes, the latter actually happened to me this year, in this oh-so-easy world where all the fighting's done and where ace people were apparently never victims in the first place.) You're a bully, but you're human, and my queer advocacy doesn't exclude anyone -- even jerks.

I've been identifying as aromantic and asexual since I was 16 years old. In the last decade, I've received dozens of messages like this, and had hundreds of other horrible judgements slung at me in the reblogs of my posts. I've had people I marched with in Pride parades say insensitive things about my identities the very same day. I've watched other ace and aro friends bear similar trauma at the hands of our own community and We're. Still. Here.

My friends from the university's ace and aro club marched side-by-side with me in the snow, with handwarmers stuffed in our gloves, to protest earlier this week. Another of my aro/ace friends founded a queer affinity group in a major international charity club that has hundreds of members worldwide now, supporting each other and forging life-long friendships. Another ace friend is on a committee at my university fighting for more gender-neutral restrooms on campus. I've helped queer friends move from unsupportive homes and spoken at others' weddings when most of the rest of their family refused to show up. The queer community is my home, and it's an honor and a privilege to fight for it, even if it's a tragedy to still have to. I don't have to prove I belong here.

But you -- who seem to to think that tearing down someone different from you, in a community that's been about being different from the start, is the pinnacle of activism? You might.

#honestly just stared at this message in my inbox for five minutes like really? we're doing this today? TODAY????#like i know the people who fling this kind of thing around are not exactly considerate or stirring activists but. goddamn #going to do my best to tag diligently here but let me know if i miss anything #aroblogging #aceblogging #transphobia cw #queerphobia cw #homophobia cw

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silverfoxstole · 9 months

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Paul McGann: The latest twist in his tale

He's spent his career thinking on his feet, so it made sense to improvise his latest role, he tells James Mottram

Published: 20 October 2006 in The Independent

Every autumn, Paul McGann is given an annual reminder of his greatest role. Living in a university town like Bristol, "you can set your calendar by it," he says. "The new student intake has just come in, and they've drunk their first grant cheque and seen Withnail and I... and I know when they've seen it. They usually holler across the street." While Richard E Grant's flamboyant drunk Withnail was the character blessed with the lion's share of memorable quotes, McGann's more introspective "I" still had his moments. He grins at a recent reminder. "The other day, some kid had chalked on the pavement outside my house, 'Perfumed Ponce', with an arrow pointing to my front door!"

Now 46, it's refreshing to see McGann is not precious about the fact that his finest hour has just been commemorated this month with a 20th anniversary DVD. "It's actually very satisfying," he admits. "I can safely say, 'If I'd never done another movie, it would've been all right.'" Still handsome, with his Byronic brown curls, there's a sense of genuine gratitude in his soft Scouse accent. The son of a factory worker and a nursery school teacher, perhaps it's in the knowledge that a working-class childhood in Liverpool does not always lead to such a grand career as acting. The Catholic-raised McGann knows he's been fortunate: accepted into Rada, he got his big break in 1982 alongside his three brothers - Joe, Mark and Stephen - in the West End rock'n'roll musical Yakkety Yak.

"We all wanted to be movie stars," he recalls of his youthful days. "When I was a kid, about 11 or 12, we used to try and bunk into local cinemas to see X movies. Who doesn't do that at that age? This would've been 1972. Maybe an older kid would buy a ticket, then go and open the fire door and we'd watch this film until we were all thrown out. You'd see some hammy old thing, but now and again you'd see a great film - like Klute or Five Easy Pieces. I remember watching Jack Nicholson, maybe not understanding what he's up to but thinking I'd love to do that. He was engaging, charismatic - I was rapt!"

McGann was never going to be the next Nicholson, even if winning the lead in Alan Bleasdale's 1986 BBC drama The Monocled Mutineer boosted his profile. Unlike Grant, he never really made it in Hollywood. "What do they say? It's better to regret the things you have done than the things you haven't," he notes. When he did get cast in major productions, he spent most of his time on the cutting room floor. Almost entirely excised from Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, he saw his part for David Fincher's Alien3 truncated to an almost unintelligible degree and then he was unfortunate enough to appear in Queen of the Damned, the ill-fated follow-up to Interview with a Vampire. "Careers are what they are," he shrugs. "They don't make any sense at all when you look back. We're not in charge of them."

Fate certainly seems to have had a hand in McGann's CV. A knee injury in 1994 forced him to cede the lead in ITV's Sharpe to Sean Bean. Two years later came his one-off turn as Doctor Who, following on from Sylvester McCoy in a US pilot that was set to resurrect the series but ultimately never picked up because the ratings weren't high enough. "We made a pilot that didn't work," he says. "And it didn't work because it wasn't good enough." But given the success of the current revamped show, does he have regrets that he's likely to be remembered - in his own words - as the "George Lazenby of Doctor Who"? "It's impossible to regret. It could've been very different. I would've been there for five or six years... and I'd have earned a shit-load of dough. Life wouldn't have been the same but it didn't happen."

If there's a suspicion that McGann is not ruthless enough to play the Hollywood game, not least because Withnail and I anointed him with a cuddly image, he has set about changing that with his latest film, Gypo. An entirely improvised piece about immigration, he plays Paul, a racist father-of-three living in Margate. Trapped in a loveless marriage, Paul is the vilest character of McGann's career, beginning the film by violently objecting to his daughter bringing home a classmate who, it emerges, is a Romany Czech refugee. "I had to be prepared for him to be irredeemable," says McGann. "He is unremittingly miserable."

Fed on a diet of tabloids and Talk Sport, McGann says his character belongs with the "huge majority of these little Englanders with their easy assumptions. At one point, he talks about Africa being a big county - that's about the level of him." He adds that he didn't want to make him like some "Alf Garnett cartoon" and he doesn't - though he confesses to the fact that director Jan Dunn only came to the set with "broad notions" for the scenes. The rest was up to him. "There wasn't a script to discuss," he says. "That brought me out in a rash, to be honest. That was one of the reasons I thought I had to do this. I couldn't think of any proper, intelligent excuse to turn this kind of challenge down."

Telling the same basic story from three separate perspectives, Gypo is officially the first British film to be registered as a Dogme movie. Given that this manifesto, devised by the Danish director Lars von Trier to purify the film-making process by using only original locations, natural light and so on, is over a decade old, it might seem rather after the fact. McGann nods. "I entered it with a mixture of open-mindedness and healthy cynicism. I mean, they're having us on aren't they? Some of that stuff... c'mon! The more dubious claims for the process about truth and nebulous ideas about authenticity. I mean, what's that about? Films are artifice. We're telling stories on film. At the same time, when it works, there is a real tough immediacy and spontaneity to it, and a punch."

Both frank and funny, McGann is the perfect pub-mate - not least because he is so self-deprecating. Noting that his short-lived time playing Doctor Who has nevertheless given him a place in the show's pantheon, he recalls meeting legendary Time Lord Tom Baker. "We were in opposite voice over studios," he says. "This guy in the sound studio told me he was in, so I went and met him. He didn't have a clue who I was! I found it rather refreshing. He was very charming. He just thought I was some kid off the street. So I thought, 'Let's just leave it at that.'"

Yet as chummy as McGann is, it's doubtful if he'd ever fully open up - at least in interview. Dubbing himself "a miserable bastard at the best of times", laying bare his soul is unlikely to make him happy. Of his brothers, he says, "We get on OK. We get on fine." The last time he worked with them was in 1995's Irish famine saga The Hanging Gale, which the quartet conceived themselves. "The biggest obstacle is getting us all together," he grunts, when asked if he'd consider working with them again. He's better on his sons: 17-year-old Joseph is musically gifted, "one of those swines that can play any instrument", while 15-year-old Jake "has been making funny noises" about following his father into acting.

Such reticence can be easily traced back to the mid-1990s, when McGann had his one uncomfortable brush with the limelight. Caught in the street kissing Catherine Zeta-Jones, his co-star from period piece Catherine the Great, by a photographer, it caused a minor scandal and the press descended upon him and his family. While Joseph and Jake "were really spooked by it" - to the point that they now hate having their photograph taken - McGann admits the gossip "rattled" his relationship with his wife Annie, a former assistant stage manager turned interior designer. "I felt like a kid who was being bullied," reflects McGann.

Since Gypo, McGann has done what he's always done, and worked steadily. He recently completed the lead in Poppies, a film about a playwright who becomes obsessed with the fact his grandfather and two great uncles were killed in the Battle of the Somme that will receive its premiere in November at the Imperial War Museum. And he is currently filming a short produced by Zoë Ball entitled Always Crashing In The Same Car, reuniting with Grant for the first time since Withnail and I. "It's good when we're together," says McGann. "We're still mates. Our kids know each other. Very occasionally we're together in the same place - and then it's difficult to pay for a drink. I like that."

'Gypo' opens today

#i was looking for the tale of paul meeting tom for the first time #and found it by accident going through some old files #paul mcgann #interviews #doctor who #eighth doctor #8th doctor #tom baker #withnail and i #he told the story about the chalk on the pavement in a zoom interview a couple of years ago #it sounded as though it had happened recently but obviously not!

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bluevelvetgvf · 2 years

Text

gate & garden: one

jake kiszka x fem!reader (childhood best friends to lovers..)

MASTERLIST 3k words

A/N: I do not claim to, nor do I know Greta Van Fleet; they are all real people with real lives, this is an entirely fictional work.

She never really knew when Jake came into her life, he was just always there.

Obviously she knew he wasn’t always there, but for the most part, he was.

Her parents, freshly married and out of school had moved into old farmhouse on her paternal grandparent’s land when she was less than a year old. They had quickly made friends with the Kiszkas, and thus solidified their daughter’s lifetime friendship with the twins, and later Veronica and Sam.

Mom had gone to school to become a teacher, and Dad was in the process of going through med school to become a doctor. Their daughter was a “happy accident��, but nevertheless, they played with the cards life gave them.

She was born in the summer of 1996, quiet as a mouse. So quiet, it scared the entire hospital staff. But she was content to be alive, simply inhaling deeply, as if she was already accustomed to breathing air. Mom held her tightly to her chest, while Dad held her hand. They were happy as could be.

She was first introduced to the twins at their first birthday party. Karen and Kelly kept it to close family only, but their neighbors were special invites, considering they lived right next door. And of course the phrase “love thy neighbor” weighed heavily on the Kiszka’s consciences.

After the party, Mom and Karen became best friends. Mom would take her over to the Kiszka’s, all three toddlers secure in a play-pen, while their mothers chatted. As they grew older, they graduated from the play-pen, to the safety of the fenced-in yard.

The three children (and later Veronica), would spend hours playing games, having picnics, taking turns driving the twin’s battery-operated Jeep, and climbing trees.

During the summer, Mom and Karen took turns watching the brood of kids, each of them needing their own time to unwind and complete housework. During the other months, the Kiszkas went to daycare, and she spent her days with Grandma. But the twins would teach her everything they learned in daycare; like how to write her name, how old she was, and all the colors.

Then they started school, three peas in a pod. Karen often joked, it was like she was their triplet. She never went anywhere that a twin wasn’t close by. They stuck together throughout grade school, and into high school. And no matter what happened in life, Jake was there.

It all came back to him.

Her first memory of him, was in kindergarten. At that point, she had already known him her entire life. All five years thus far, had been filled with Jake, and Josh of course. And Veronica, and baby Sam. It was all she’d ever known.

The three of them were sat at a small round table, tucked in the corner of the classroom. It was the first week of school, and the teacher was still getting comfortable with all of the students. Naturally, Jake and Josh never separated, and where they went, she never was far behind. Like she said, the twins were all she’d ever known.

By her parents request, she was placed in the same class as the twins. They were best friends since birth. They played together, shared lunches, and sat at the same table to do classwork. School was fun, definitely not more fun than playing in the creek behind her house, but it was still fun.

Today’s assignment was one of many the teacher had culminated to help herself and the students learn more about each other. They had drawn family portraits, and talked about their birthdays and favorite colors. But today’s assignment was a tough one. One that made each student reach deep inside their young brains, and think about their future.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The teacher gave them time to think. She told them that it didn’t have to be realistic (then she told them that “realistic” meant “not pretend”.) And it didn’t have to come true.

She and Josh stared at each other from across the table. She didn’t know how she knew it was Josh, considering the twins looked exactly alike, but she always just knew. Neither of them had written anything down on their papers.

Then they both turned to Jake, who was laser-focused on his paper. Tongue poking out from behind his tiny teeth, a vice-grip on the red crayon in his hand, and he very carefully wrote, what he thought spelled out “rockstar”, but really was “roxstar”. The teacher later corrected him, but also commended him.

“What does that say?” Josh frowned, standing up from his chair to lean over his twin’s project.

Jake sighed, as if annoyed with his brother’s inquiry. “It says “rockstar”, Joshy, I just don’t know all the letters yet.”

She nodded, upon the explanation of Jake’s work. Jake loved music. Every time she was at the Kiszka’s, there was some type of music happening. Whether it be Papa K’s records, or him tuning his bass. Or the sound of baby Sam’s mobile, or Veronica’s karaoke machine, or Jake and Josh smashing away at their plastic drum kit.

“What did you write?” Jake turned fully to her, peeking at her paper.

Nervously, she pulled the blank paper away from his sight, folding it in her lap. “It’s a secret.”

Jake rolled his eyes, leaning further forward to try and pull the paper from her grasp. “Hey!“ She whined, inadvertently catching the attention of the teacher.

“Hands to ourselves please, Jacob.” She nodded, not scolding him, but giving him a gentle reminder. With her attention on them, Josh was quick to return to his seat too.

“I think I’m gonna make movies.” Josh shrugged, using his green crayon to write some version of the word “movies” onto his paper.

“So, what are you gonna write?” Jake bugged again, watching as she sat with her paper in her lap. “You could be a rockstar too, you’re really good at the piano.”

She shrugged. She had been in piano lessons for a few months, and could already play Hot-Cross-Buns from memory, twice in a row.

“Plus, if you’re a rockstar, you can be in a band with me!” Jake smiled, his tongue poking at one of the loose teeth in the front of his mouth.

“You could be in my movies!” Josh grinned, finally looking up from his paper. “You could play whatever part you want, a princess, or a bad guy, or even a dog. Movies can make anything happen.”

She shrugged again. “I dunno.”

Jake and Josh looked at each other, silently communicating. They weren’t seeing eye-to-eye with her, for the first time in their life. They couldn’t tell what the problem was.

She knew. She knew, that she didn’t know.

Maybe she did want to be in movies, especially if Josh would be there. And maybe she did want to make music with Jake, his dad was starting to teach him guitar, for real.

But maybe she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t want to do those things. Maybe she wanted to be a teacher, or a nurse, or a dancer. She was really good at dance. Or a painter, or drive cars, who knows? “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Is a really unfair and hard question to ask a five-year old.

Ignoring the stares of her best friends, she placed her paper back on the table, covering it from their view, and she wrote down her answer. And when she was finished, she folded it up, just like the teacher had said to, and without a word, got up from her chair, and took it to her.

“Don’t let anyone see it, okay?” She commanded the teacher, pressing her finger to her lips to shush her. The teacher nodded, holding tightly to the paper.

She returned to her seat. “So what did you write?” Josh asked, frowning.

“Yeah, why won’t you tell us?” Jake also whined, his expression mirroring his twin’s. “Keeping secrets isn’t nice!”

She sighed, pulling her chair in closer to the table. “It won’t be a secret forever Jakey.” She placed her crayons back in the bin in the middle of their table.

“What does that even mean?” Jake scoffed dramatically, angrily folding his paper up. “I don’t know why you can’t just share.”

Josh neatly folded his paper, holding his hand out for his twin’s. Jake handed his brother his paper. “Not all secrets are bad Jakey. Sometimes they can be fun, like remember when Mama was having baby Sam?”

Jake rolled his eyes again. “Yeah, Sam was fun for one day, and then he started crying, now he never stops.” Josh nodded at his twin’s response, maneauvering around his chair and going to hand their papers to the teacher.

Jake huffed. “Just tell me, please? I won’t tell Josh.” His hand reached out to tug at her’s, his brown eyes wide with curiosity.

She contemplated, for a second. But shook her head. “I told you Jakey, you’ll find out one day, okay? Not today.” She released her hand from his grasp, leaning across the table to clean up the crayons he and Josh used.

“That’s not fair!” Jake groaned again, throwing his head back towards the ceiling.

She ignored his fit, being used to both Jake and Josh’s tempers by now, she knew he would eventually forget why he was ever mad.

Which was true. Jake refused to share his lunch with them that day, and also sat by himself with the chalk at recess, but as soon as they returned to the classroom that afternoon, the three of them were practicing their handwriting together as if nothing was wrong.

When the day was over, Jake and Josh’s mom picked them up. She said hi to Veronica, and baby Sam, and waited for Mom to get her.

The ride home was nice. Mom let her ride with the windows down, and it was still warm, so that meant they could play in the creek when she went home.

Mom helped her with her homework, and they had sandwiches for dinner, and like clockwork, the sound of two fists banging on the door.

She ran across the house, now changed from her school clothes, into a more comfy outfit. Her socks made her slide across the floor a bit as she flung open the door, revealing Jake, Josh, and Veronica. “Hey guys.” She grinned, a bit out of breath from her sprint.

“Hey, we brought Ronnie with us, if that’s okay.” Jake smiled, stepping aside to fully reveal his little sister, who frowned at the nickname.

“Mama said it was okay.” Josh reminded his brother. Mama's rules trump all.

“Don’t call me Ronnie!” Veronica whined. “Don’t like that!”

Jake ignored his sister, waiting for an answer. “Sure, Veronica can come.” She turned, tugging on her shoes. “We’re going down to the creek, ‘kay Momma?” She called through the house.

“Just be back before dark, alright?” Mom called back.

“Okay! We’ll be careful!” She responded, practically tripping out the door as the four of them began their trek to the tree-line.

She and Jake walked ahead of Josh and Veronica. Josh liked to take his time, and make sure Veronica could keep up. Jake was just ready to play.

“You know, you shouldn’t make fun of your sister Jakey.” She frowned, looking over at him. “She doesn’t like being called Ronnie.”

Jake shrugged, kicking his foot at a particularly dry leaf. “She’ll get used to it. Ronnie’s so much easier to say than Veronica anyway.”

“That’s not nice, Jakey.” She pried, trying to prove her point.

“It’s not a big deal.” He brushed her off. “You want a nickname too?”

“No thank you!” She scoffed, nudging him away with her arm. “I like my name just the way it is!”

“I’ll find you a nickname.” Jake looked at her, raising his eyebrows. “Pinky-promise.”

She shook her head, trying to fight the urge to smack him as the creek came into view. Jake took off like a rocket, kicking off his socks and sneakers and splashing into the water. “C’mon Jakey, you’re gonna scare all the minnows!” She cried out in frustration, carefully removing her shoes.

Josh and Ronnie appeared from behind them, both looking as equally disappointed with their brother. “He always does this!” Josh sighed, bending down to help Ronnie remove her shoes.

“What’s he doing?” Ronnie asked, her hands placed on her brother’s shoulders for stability.

“He’s scaring the fish.” She replied, waiting for Ronnie and Josh to be shoe-less too.

“What!” Ronnie whined, mouth agape with shock. “Jakey, why’re you doing that? I wanna see the fish too!” She cried, holding onto Josh’s hand as they approached the creek.

Jake ignored them, and continued his splashing venture, picking up rocks and looking for creatures. And sure enough, scaring away any sign of fish for miles to come.

The four of them played in the water, and the surrounding forestry, until the sun began to set. Then, shoes in-hand, they walked back through the soft grass, towards their homes.

“See you tomorrow?” Jake asked, his voice hopeful, although they all knew, they’d be seeing each other tomorrow. And every day after that, for as long as they were alive.

“Duh.” She replied, face upturning in a goofy grin.

She watched from the steps as Jake, Josh, and Ronnie went home, leaving their shoes out on their porch. And when they were finally in their house, she went inside, ready for bed, and the promise of a new day full of adventures with her best friends.

The next day was not all sunshines and rainbows, as they had anticipated it would be.

Upon arrival to school, Jake, Josh, and Y/N were split up into different classrooms. And the consequences were catastrophic.

Jake remained in the initial classroom his brother and best friend were in. Y/N was just next door, and Josh was placed down the hall.

Y/N did not handle the separation well. It was terrifying enough to be in an entirely new and strange place, with new and strange people, doing new and strange things, when she had Jake and Josh there to make her feel safe. But now, being totally separated from them, awakened a new feeling deep inside of her. Fear.

She didn’t know a single person in her class. And the teacher was not nice, she didn’t even let them pick their seats. And there wasn’t even a colorful carpet for story time.

Y/N spent the morning alone. She ate her snack alone, which was disappointing, considering she was planning on swapping her animal crackers for Josh’s Teddy Grahams. She didn’t even eat her lunch, her stomach was so unhappy about being alone.

At recess, she sat by the door, waiting for the agonizingly slow day to end. After recess, she completed her counting, and then sat and colored quietly, until the teacher told her it was time to leave.

When they were lined up for dismissal, she all but ran to Jake and Josh, who shockingly, were not affected whatsoever by their separation. Both boys’ heads shot up at the sound of her sneakers rapidly approaching them.

Y/N tried to be brave, but she felt the tears form in her eyes before she even knew what was happening. Josh frowned, seated on the ground, his oversized backpack holding him to the ground. “What’s wrong?” He gasped, seeing the tears roll down her cheeks.

Jake reached up for her hand, practically yanking her to the ground. She sandwiched herself between the twins, pulling her knees up to her chest. “I was so scared today!” She wailed, trying to stay calm, despite her growing anxiety. “I missed you guys so much!”

Josh didn’t say anything, but he leaned over, placing his head on her shoulder. Jake didn’t speak either, but he never let go of her hand.

Mom and Karen arrived at the same time to get their kids, and were both very shocked to find them huddled together on the gymnasium floor, comforting each other.

Mom picked Y/N up, Jake’s hand still clinging to her’s. “S’okay now Jakey.” She sniffled, pulling her hand from his grasp. “My momma’s here now.”

Mom cuddled her into her chest. “What’s wrong honey? What happened to you?”

Karen frowned, replacing Y/N’s hand with her’s in an attempt to comfort him. “Boys, do you know why Y/N is crying?”

“We're not in the same class anymore Mama!” Josh answered, watching sadly as Y/N still cried into her mother’s shoulder. “They put me down the hall from Jakey.”

“I was all alone today Momma.” Y/N cried, her tiny hands fisting the material of her mother’s shirt. “I didn’t see Joshy or Jakey all day! I was so scared!”

Jake’s hand tensed up in his mother’s, tears now welling in his own eyes as he watched his best friend cry. “I was alone too Mama.” He whispered, trying to be brave for Y/N. There didn’t need to be two of them crying.

The two mothers shared a look. Karen grabbed her other son’s hand, and the five of them made their way to the administrators office. Mom calmed Y/N down enough to be able to leave her with the twins while she and Karen spoke to the principal and their teachers privately.

The three children sat in chairs in the office, Jake’s hand immediately finding Y/N’s again. “Don’t worry, our mommies will fix it.” He assured her, squeezing her hand. “I won’t let you be alone ever again, okay?”

Through teary eyes, Y/N nodded, and they patiently waited for their mothers to be finished. After what felt like forever, they reappeared from the office. “Thank goodness I decided to pick the twins up first today.” Karen was saying, as she shook her head.

“You better now baby?” Mom bent down to eye-level with her, waiting as Y/N timidly shook her head, relying on the pressure of Jake’s hand in her’s to keep her grounded.

“We came up with a fix to your problem, okay?” Karen said from over Mom’s shoulder. “Joshua, your new teacher said you were perfectly fine in your new classroom, is that right?”

From two chairs down, Josh nodded. “I’ll be okay by myself Mama.”

Karen fought a smile and nodded, turning her attention to Jake and Y/N. “Now Jacob, your teacher said you didn’t play with any of the other kids in your class today. And you didn’t do any work, is that true?”

Jake huffed, finally releasing Y/N’s hand. “I don’t need to play with anyone else Mama, that’s what I got Y/N for! And Joshy!” That statement alone seemed to answer Karen’s question.

“And honey, your teacher said you didn’t eat your lunch, and you didn’t play at recess, is that the truth?” Mom asked Y/N softly.

She nodded her head. “I don’t know anybody, I was all by myself!”

Knowingly, Karen and Mom shared another look. “Okay, Y/N, your teachers have agreed to let you go back to your original class. So you can be with Jacob again.” Mom smiled, watching as her daughter’s tears disappeared. “But you have to behave, and do all of your work, and eat your lunches.”

Jake and Y/N nodded excitedly, their hearts happy once again. “But try and make some new friends, okay?” Karen also smiled, content that the kids were feeling better.

“Pinky promise Mama!” Jake exclaimed, practically jumping out of his seat.

“Thank you Momma.” Y/N whispered, leaning forward into her mother’s embrace.

They all parted ways, Karen loading up the twins to go make a late pickup for the younger Kiszkas, and Mom taking Y/N home for a night of one-on-one time.

That day was the last day that Jake and Y/N were apart.

•

@jakesgrapejuice

#jake fics #jake gvf #jake kiszka x y/n #jake kiszka x reader #jake kiszka #greta van fic #gate & garden

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