#but dawn can get like scary for no fucking reason her hair suddenly covers one of her eyes and she starts talking about summoning demons

[cassioppenny]

cheren is "im so evil and fucked up" in a cartoon villain way

dawn is "im so evil and fucked up" in a weird little girl in a horror movie way

#milesverse #dawn only had one friend (barry) when she was little because both of them were the “weirdos” #dawn used to be a really quiet kid that everyone was kinda scared of and just thought of as weird (undiagnosed autism) #and barry was thought of as annoying (undiagnosed adhd) #dawn is more silly nowadays because barry rubbed off his silly energy on her and now they're silly together :3 #but dawn can get like scary for no fucking reason her hair suddenly covers one of her eyes and she starts talking about summoning demons #to barry she's normal though she's not weird in the slightest to him #dawn is like obsessed with ghost stories and spooky things and summons giratina in her bathroom for fun #she didn't even noticd that it even worked until the end of dppt basically lmao #she also has like mirror symbolism going on idk i want to draw her eventually #you guys will never guess who her dad is

[xxx-cat-xxx]

all the things we never said

Summary: Five times Nat and Tony watch over each other and the one time they don't need to any longer.

Word Count: 10k

Tags: Nat & Tony’s Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Blood and Injury, Sickfic, Recreational Drug Use, Angst and Banter and Humour, MCU canon compliant, Team as Family, Feelings

A/N: The tumblr version is out! Huge thanks to @whumphoarder​ for being the world's best beta reader and my personal punctuation fairy. And thank you to @quietlyimplode​ for all your continuing support.

Link to read on AO3

1. Trust Issues

It’s their third mission together, but the first one they have to tackle alone. Cap, Hawkeye and the Hulk are off defending Bulgaria from a sudden invasion of slimy goo monsters, but Nat has been planning this mission for months. She fought Fury tooth and nail to go through with the original plan until he begrudgingly agreed and sent Tony along for backup. 

So now it’s her, alone, inside the Hydra base instead of a team of two, and Tony is waiting outside in the forest with the quinjet, growing more restless every minute. 

“JARVIS, how long?” he asks, twirling a box of Tic Tacs between his thumb and index finger. He opens the cockpit window, sticking his head out and searching the forest for what must be the hundredth time in the last few hours.

“Agent Romanov was supposed to return to the meeting point seventeen minutes ago,” the AI replies matter-of-factly. 

“Twenty and I’ll go in,” Tony decides, letting out a long breath. “I told her she shouldn’t have gone alone.”

“Sir, the whole point of an undercover mission is for your identities to stay hidden. No offense, but neither your face nor your suit would contribute to that aim.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” Tony sasses back. “But I’m not gonna wait outside while our resident Scary Redheaded Assassin is getting murdered by a group of neo-nazis.”

“That is quite an honorable sentiment, sir. However,―” 

The AI doesn’t get a chance to continue, because at that very moment Tony makes out a familiar black-and-red shape emerging out of the green of the forest. She’s moving quickly―though not as quickly as he would have liked her to. Even from this distance he can see that Nat’s acquired a limp at some point during the three hours she was inside the base.

“Jet!” he thinks he can hear her shout even before he can clearly make out her face. 

“What?” he calls back. 

“Start – the fucking – jet!” 

Tony, of course, doesn’t listen. The suit is open next to him, already waiting, and he doesn’t hesitate a second before he gets inside and fires up the thrusters. There is no chance in hell anyone would mistake the red-and-gold armour for anything other than Iron Man, but something about the fact that Nat is currently being followed by at least a dozen Hydra agents tells Tony that their cover was blown long ago. 

He dials up to top speed, rushes over Natasha’s head and fires a round at the agents behind her―not enough to kill, but enough to hold them off for a while. Then he swoops down, and, for once glad about the lack of comms and his inability to hear her protests, scoops Nat up under her arms and flies her directly onto the quinjet. 

The landing through the half-open door is less elegant than he had hoped for. Nat ends up more or less crashing onto the ground while Tony quickly curbs the speed. When he opens the suit, the assassin is still lying there like a heap of bones, making no attempt to move—which, given her usual alertness, is frankly alarming. 

“Nat? You alive over there?” he inquires. 

The heap moves and her face becomes visible, paler than fresh snow against the dark red of her hair. “Get us out of here.”

“How bad are you―” 

“I’m fine,” she snaps with obvious strain in her voice.

“I thought you were better at lying.” 

“Stark. Start the fucking jet.” She glares at him, which is much less scary now that she’s practically lying on the ground, but still enough to make Tony turn on his heels and get into the pilot seat.

It’s a good thing he does, because the Hydra agents have apparently recovered and are less than half a mile away from the jet now, carrying heavy artillery. Tony lifts them up just in time and, resisting the urge to fly a victory lap over their heads since time is a priority now, evades the guns with an elegant loop. 

Maybe not the best idea, because the plane swerves and Nat’s body hits the jet’s opposite wall with an audible thump. She doesn’t cry out, but he knows she wants to from the way she gasps sharply before cutting herself off. Tony curses himself and concentrates on pulling the quinjet up at a gentler angle. The moment they reach flight level, he puts it on autopilot and heads back to check on his teammate.

Nat has maneuvered herself into a half-sitting position, leaning against the wall, but that’s about it. There’s blood on the ground around her, and more is marking the path she slid across the floor. Her breaths are coming out in small gasps of barely concealed pain. 

“That’s not looking too good, Widow,” Tony remarks while retrieving the first-aid-kit out from its storage unit in the wall. 

“Neither is your face.” She delivers the prepubescent insult with an expression so straight that it’s almost comical, before weakly stretching out one arm towards him. The left is curling around her stomach, blood spilling out in between her fingers in small gushes in rhythm with each breath. “Here, take this.” 

There’s a pen drive in her opened palm. Tony has to grin, and there’s a weak smile on her sweaty face too, because this means she was successful after all. He stores the pen drive in the pocket of his track pants, then crouches down and starts to remove Nat’s jacket. 

“What was the problem, huh?” he asks conversationally, mostly to distract her from the pain the movement must be causing her. “Someone recognised your phenomenally inconspicuous hair colour?”

“Fury’s fucking bullshit intel,” she says hoarsely, voice tense. “Gonna have a word with him when we get back.”

“I’ll be sure to clear out before that happens,” Tony remarks. He carefully helps her lie down on the ground, using her jacket as a makeshift pillow. “But I’d pay a fortune for the video.” 

Nat weakly flips him off, but Tony is suddenly too distracted trying to find the bullet hole in all the blood to continue the sass. “We need to take off your shirt,” he assesses, his voice sober now. 

There’s a beat where she just looks at him before clumsily starting to peel it off. There’s a lot in that look—doubt, calculation, resignation—and in the end he’s not sure whether it’s trust that’s winning her over or the knowledge that she doesn’t have any other choice. And that hurts a little, somewhere deep inside, because he couldn’t care less about Nat’s boobs while she is bleeding out in front of him. But then again, the circumstances in which they met probably put him in a less than favourable position. 

Nat is visibly having difficulty lifting her arms, so he helps her pull the shirt over the head, careful not to touch any more skin than necessary. There’s so much blood underneath the fabric that he wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else even if he’d wanted to. Tony knows first aid in theory, but he’s never had to use it on someone with a bullet wound, never really had much contact with blood apart from his own. The last time he was in a similar position, it was Yinsen taking his last breaths under Tony’s hands in a cave in Afghanistan, and no, he’s so not going there now. 

“Okay,” he says, taking a deep and measured breath. “What do I do?”

With muttered instructions, Nat guides him through assessing the wound. They decide that the bullet has to stay in for now. The next friendly hospital is only half an hour out, but she’s fading fast, lost way too much blood, and putting pressure on it has priority until they arrive. 

“You could have just waited a few weeks and gone in with backup, you know," he comments while ripping open a packet of gauze, mostly to keep her talking; he doesn’t honestly expect anything he says would alter her stubbornness.

“Now where's the fun in that?" She slurs the words a little around the edges, but the sass is enough to reassure him that she’ll be alright.

Nat talks Tony through applying a pressure bandage, her body shaking more and more underneath his fingers, revealing just how much willpower it’s taking her not to pass out. Sometime around the point when Tony applies the last of the bandages, Nat’s eyes slip closed and her body goes limp in his grasp. She’s pulled through—through the procedure just as the mission—and Tony feels the weirdest swell of pride well up in him at being part of her team. 

Nat stays mostly unconscious when he contacts the hospital and starts the landing sequence. Tony carefully dresses her in one of Cap’s spare shirts, because you never know what kind of pervert will be filming their arrival. It makes her look a bit like a child wearing her father’s clothes. 

She wakes with a gasp when the paramedics enter and lift her onto a gurney, and Tony makes sure to stay in her field of vision to give her a familiar face to look at all the while until they enter surgery. 

As soon as the doors have closed behind her, Tony pulls out his phone. He’s gonna have that word with Fury himself. 

*

Three months later, when he reads a report about Natasha being shot on a solo mission and refusing anesthesia during the surgery at the local hospital, it dawns on him that the reason she let herself give into unconsciousness this time is because somehow, somewhere, there had to be a glimpse of trust.

2. Red Wine Stains

There was a time in his life when Tony used to like galas. Or maybe like is a bit of a strong term―he used to enjoy looking at dressed-up people and being looked at, flirting a little here and there, and, most importantly, the drinks. He definitely used to like the drinks.

Today, he wishes he could have some of that glamorous feeling back, just to get his adrenaline pumping a bit. The past week held a Doom Bots attack and a sewage robot gone wild and the launch of the new Stark phone and a fight with Pepper and a Dum-E malfunction, and it’s only Thursday. The wine is cheap, the food tasteless, the people boring, and Tony is tired. Fall-asleep-under-the-car-he-is-repairing kind of tired, because yes, that has happened before, much to Pepper’s dismay. 

But exhaustion is not something he admits to people, so sunglasses and make-up are his beloved companions this evening, closely followed by the group of misfits that moved into his tower not too long ago and are currently gathered around him, answering the questions of at least a dozen TV crews enclosing them in a semi-circle.

Thor, in a suit that seems to be from the 19th century and nevertheless look stylish on him, is telling a story about a gigantic wolf he once taught to play fetch, with Bruce nodding along, looking awkward as ever. Nat is wearing a stunning high-slit white gown, red curls made up in a fancy bun. She has been having her fun this evening introducing Steve to an endless number of pretty admirers, just to leave him alone in the middle of the conversation, much to his embarrassment. 

“And now a question for Iron Man,” the aritificially cheerful reporter announces, turning away from Thor and towards Tony. “Mr Stark, there were rumours that you underwent a heart surgery at the end of last year. While I’m pleased to see that you’re back in action,  I’m curious to know whether you’re concerned that your health issues affect the Avengers’ capability to defend us in case of another attack like the one of New York?”

Tony steps forward while the crowd of onlookers falls silent. The reporter pushes the microphone into Tony’s face, but the motion seems to slow down as it happens, the world coming to a screeching halt around him. 

Breathe, he thinks. Just breathe, you got this. And then: What if they come back? What if you aren’t strong enough? What if you can’t defend anyone this time? 

“Mr Stark?” the reporter asks again. 

Breathe. In, out, Tony tells himself. Come on, it’s not that hard.

“I, uhm…” He licks his lips, dimly aware of the cloud of reporters around him, the journalist in question regarding him with a frown. More aware though of his shaky hands, the sweat gathering on his forehead, his speeding heartbeat. “I think…”

In, out. In out. Inoutinoutinoutin― 

“I think I can answer this for him,” Natasha takes two steps towards him, reaching for the microphone, and the next thing he knows, she stumbles on her high heels and knocks her glass of cheap Burgundy all over his extremely expensive suit jacket. There’s ohhs and oh my gods coming from the crowd of reporters. Nat pretends to apologise and then all he can hear is his own ragged breathing while she is pulling him away towards a side door. 

“Tony―” she starts, a hand on his arm. He takes a step back, reflexively, his back hitting the wall behind him. 

“I’m f-fine,” he gasps, trying in vain to get his breathing under control, “Just a sec.” 

“I know, Tony,” she says calmly, not judging, not freaking out. He knows he shouldn’t, either. And he wants to calm down, god does he want to, but he’s past that point now, his heart galloping in his chest and his breaths turning into wheezes.

“I can’t―” 

Fight or flight kicks in and he stumbles away from her without caring where he is going, aware only of his racing heart and the ever-tightening grip around his chest until she pushes him through yet another door into a bathroom and Tony’s legs go weak under him. He sinks to the floor, wheezing. Hugs himself, clutching a hand to his chest. 

There’s no oxygen, no fucking oxygen in this room, and Tony needs to get out, needs some fresh air, but he can’t even get up right now. He’s going to die for sure, weeks before his 43rd birthday, on the floor of a men’s bathroom with red wine soaking through his shirt, and what a headline this will be. 

“You’re not dying,” Nat says, fierce and still almost annoyingly calm, and god, did he really say that out loud? Tony has just enough wherewithal left to feel a surge of embarrassment. “You’ve been through this before,” she continues. “You’re gonna be okay.”

The room is getting blurry around the edges and he knows that he really needs to breathe, but he’s got no idea how to get there. And then Nat kneels down in front of him, removes his tie and opens his shirt buttons with quick fingers, and there’s just the slightest bit more air getting into him with each wheeze.

Suddenly, his mouth is watering. Tony hunches over and Nat can just slide out of the way before he heaves up two mouthfuls of wine, coffee, and bile, coughing and choking as he does so. This is bad, he thinks dimly. He hasn’t been sick from a panic attack in a while now. He draws in a choking breath and then another and another before retching again. 

He really doesn’t want Black Widow out of everyone to witness him like this, but at least Nat doesn’t say anything stupid like “just breathe” or “calm down” or try to hug him, and that’s a marginal relief. What she does is cower down next to the puddle of sick and take Tony’s hands in hers, almost gently, and then presses them rhythmically. “Focus on that,” she orders, and, left with no other option, he does.

After minutes that feel like years, it finally becomes a little easier to draw in air. Panting, Tony rests his head back against the wall, his whole body bathed in sweat. Just breathes, in and out, while the bathroom slowly comes back into focus. He holds on to Nat’s hand for another minute or so, almost afraid he’s going to lose his tentative grasp of his mind if he lets go. It takes a while until he gathers himself enough to pull away from her. 

“Now you’ve got something for the paparazzi,” he says halfheartedly, trying to calm the trembling in his body.

She looks at him, not missing a beat. “Nah. Panic attacks are way less sexy than drug orgies. No coke, no headlines.”

Tony lets out a breath. “No luck for me then.” 

Nat gets up and starts pulling paper towels from the dispenser to clean up the mess on the ground. Her dress, Tony realises only now, also suffered in the red wine stunt. 

After a few more breaths, he makes it unsteadily to his feet to help her. She stops him midway, takes the sleeve of her suit jacket and wipes tears he didn’t notice before from his cheeks, a sober, almost kind look on her face that he’s not seen before. It confirms his suspicion that this wasn’t her first time seeing someone panic, and something makes him wonder whether she’s been on the other side as well. 

“Let’s get back to the action,” he tries to sound convincing as he makes for the door, then remembers the palm-sized red wine stain on his own shirt. “Or maybe I’ll get this cleaned first.”

“Like hell you’re going anywhere right now.”

“But―” 

“Nope.” With a movement faster than he can blink, she fishes his phone out of his suit jacket (purely showing off, because he knows she’s got her own communication device hidden away somewhere in that fancy long dress). 

Tony makes a weak attempt to snatch the phone back, which she doesn’t even acknowledge. The screen lights up upon receiving her fingerprint and she seems almost disappointed that there’s nothing to hack into.  

“Nat here,” she says into the speaker. “Meet us at the back entry.”

Tony can make out Happy grumpily giving an answer.

“Yes, the back entry. No, nobody’s hurt.” She raises an eyebrow at Tony. “No, Happy, you don’t need a gun. Meet you outside.”

They keep silent until they’re in the car. Tony is used to being the one to start conversations around Nat―around almost all the Avengers, actually―but the panic attack left him completely drained and somehow he doesn’t feel the need to pretend otherwise.

“You know,” she speaks up once they are halfway through Manhattan. “Steve had a breakdown when it was snowing last winter. Full-on flashbacks and all. Took me an hour and a bucket of tea to calm him down.”

Tony turns his head towards her, trying to keep his face neutral while she goes on. “Bruce sees a therapist once a week.” She hesitates, as if weighing whether to disclose anything else or not. “Clint and I… let’s say we’ve been there, too. We all know what it’s like.”

He swallows. “This… doesn’t make it any easier.” 

“I know that. But it means you’re not alone with it. It’s not a weakness, Tony.” 

“I never said it was.”

She regards him knowingly. “Do me a favour and get some sleep tonight, okay?”

Tony thinks of the laundry list of things he has to finish and of the talk he and Pepper have to have before he can ask her to stay with him when he goes to sleep, both of which―talking and sleeping―he’s been putting off for reasons. But Nat’s right―it has to happen at some point. 

“Yeah, okay.” Then, after a moment, “Thanks, Nat.”

"Thanking me?" Nat raises an eyebrow. "You sure you didn’t have too much to drink?”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get used to it,” Tony grumbles. 

“You owe me a new dress and another chance to set up a date for Steve,” she states. But when she looks at him, her eyes are warm.

*

The next day Nat convinces JARVIS―with help of some useful computer skills she picked up over the years―to disable all alarms and let Tony sleep in. At the breakfast table, she regards the newspaper Steve left lying around after coming back from his jog. The headline talks of the Black Widow’s inability to walk in high heels, and Nat, who did a roundhouse kick on four-inch stilettos just the other week, quietly smiles to herself.

3. Matchmaker

“Hey, Big Guy.” Tony rests an arm on Bruce’s shoulder, startling the scientist out of his chair by the hospital bed. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s finally asleep, I think,” Bruce answers quietly, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes.

“Damn.” Tony shuffles closer to the bed and looks at Nat, all frail and small in between a nest of blankets. She is deathly pale, except for the red fever spots on her cheeks, and her eyes are almost vanishing in the dark rings below them. There’s an oxygen cannula under her nose, and despite theoretically knowing that it had been bad, that pneumonia is something that regularly kills people, the seriousness of the situation hits him only now. “Damn, Bruce, she looks so young.” 

Too young for all of this, he doesn’t say.

“I know,” Bruce sighs. “Trust me, Tony, I know.” 

“‘m not asleep,” Nat protests belatedly, blinking an eye open and slowly turning over to them. “Hi.” She raises an eyebrow at Tony.

“Hi, disease monkey.”

“Fuck you, Tony.” Her voice catches on the last word and she tries to clear her throat, but ends up coughing, and then hacking, hunched forward over herself, until Bruce helps her to a half-upright position and holds her there until the fit subsides. No one mentions the flecks of blood on her hand when she pulls it away.

Bruce hands her a tissue and frowns down at her. “You know, this wouldn't have happened if you'd taken proper care of yourself.”

“Well,” she croaks, “Next time I infiltrate a Hydra prison, I’ll make sure to take a fluffy blanket and a hot water bottle along with me.”

Tony chuckles even while Bruce throws up his hands. “Why am I doing this job again?” the scientist complains. “I should just get a LinkedIn profile and be with people who don’t actively try to get themselves killed once a week.”

“You should get a nap,” Tony interjects. “You look like you’re about to join her.”

“I’m just tired,” he retorts.

“Which is why you should sleep, Big Green. Clint will be here in a couple hours and I’ll stay with her till then.” Tony nudges Bruce aside and settles down on the plastic chair next to the bed. “I got this.”

“You got what?” Nat croaks, but then redirects her gaze at Bruce. “Really, go sleep.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Bruce fidgets with the monitors. “You should take something before I leave—your temp’s almost up to 103 again.”

Nat rolls her eyes while Tony comments, “He’s terrible, isn’t he? How come you haven’t killed him yet?” He leaves a dramatic pause. “Oh, right, immortality and so on.”

“You’re so funny, Tony,” Bruce retorts, without any heat.

He hands Nat a fever reducer and helps her sit up enough that she can swallow it with a sip of water. Then he leaves, emphasizing again to call him in case anything happens.

“He likes you, you know that?” Tony drops casually once he’s gone.

“What are you doing here again?” Nat just gives him a look that’s probably supposed to be threatening but is mostly just tired, and doesn’t reveal any surprise at Tony’s observation. Tony might be good at reading people if he concentrates on it, but Nat is a natural.  

“Before you murder me with one of the knives I know you’re hiding somewhere in this bed, I’ve come bearing gifts.” Tony looks around to make sure Bruce is gone before pulling Nat’s tablet out of his leather jacket. 

“Ah.” She doesn’t say thanks, but her face lights up a little. While she texts Clint and probably hacks into some country’s police reports to make sure the aftermath of her mission was handled successfully, Tony goes to get a big mug of coffee and his own toy to fiddle with. 

The tablet has disappeared once he returns, undoubtedly hidden in the same place as her knives. Nat, meanwhile, is trying hard to hide the shivers now wracking her frame. A glance at the stats shows that her temp has ignored the fever reducers and hit 103, so it’s probably a good thing she put the tablet down on her own; Tony is not the person who’d like to try and convince her to rest. 

“You can leave,” she tries once more. “I’m fine on my own, and Bruce must be asleep by now.” 

Tony really wishes he could read her, just to know whether she actually believes he would go if she just asked him enough. 

“I would,” he says lightly. “Buuut, Pep kicked me out of the lab and this is the best pretense to keep upgrading my new gauntlet watch design.” He nods down to his own tablet he just produced.

It’s not true, strictly speaking; before coming here he’d been immersed deeply in SHIELD’s classified video feeds, observing Clint conduct the evacuation of the prison Nat managed to open for them the previous night. But that’s nothing she needs to know for now. 

Nat doesn’t seem entirely convinced, but gives up arguing. She flaps her hand tiredly. “Knock yourself out.”

A few minutes of silence and she’s coughing again, her whole body shaking under the strain of it. This time, she hacks up strings of red-tinged mucus into a small basin that was waiting on her bedside table. Tony isn’t one to comfort sick people and Nat isn’t one to accept comfort from anyone but a select few, so instead of putting a hand on her back and telling her she’ll be alright, he goes to grab another pillow that she can put behind her back to prop her up. 

“Water?” she asks when she can catch her breath again. 

Tony hands her a glass, then takes the basin with a barely concealed look of disgust and disposes of it in the sink in the adjacent room. “Try and catch some shuteye?” he suggests when he returns. 

Nat just shakes her head and clenches her teeth when another round of chills passes through her body. 

He recognises the look on her face. Bone-deep exhaustion, but still fighting against sleep, most likely because of the fever dreams. Been there, done that. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the Hydra goons wouldn’t touch Nat in the almost two weeks she spent in the prison until she gave the rest of the team a go for the mission. 

She’ll eventually have to talk to someone about whatever was done to her, but Tony isn’t that person. Neither of them is good with talking, not the serious type, anyway. She maybe―hopefully―has Barton for that, and Tony… has his bots. Well, and sometimes, when he’s drunk and tired or drunk from tiredness, he might have confessed a thought or two to Pepper. Most of it she figured out by herself. 

He shakes himself out of his thoughts. “So what are we gonna do then?” he asks.

“You’re the genius. Figure it out.”

She’s definitely too weak for video games and Tony’s not going to read to her, which leaves the TV. They’re in the tower’s medbay, so of course there’s plenty of streaming services to choose from, which only leaves what to choose. He knows that Nat hates cheap romances and likes Tarantino, but maybe a bloodbath is not the best after what she’s just been through. They both enjoy intelligent movies, but he probably shouldn’t do anything too taxing with her fever through the roof. 

“JARVIS, play Sherlock. The BBC series.” 

The corners of her mouth lift a little and he knows it was the right decision. 

If it had been Pepper or Bruce or even Clint, Tony wouldn’t have hesitated to crawl into the bed next to them. He craves touch when he’s ill, even if he doesn’t admit it, but he’s learned long ago that Nat’s different. So he just settles in the plastic chair next to the bed, makes sure the corners of the room are well lit, and increases the temperature enough for her shivers to finally ease down. 

She fights it, but finally falls asleep half an hour into the first episode, snoring ever so slightly through the congestion in her chest. Tony knows that not everyone’s nightmares are as visible on their faces as his own, but he thinks that despite the exhaustion and sickness, she looks a little bit more relaxed than before. 

After another ten minutes, Nat slides down the pillows and her nasal cannula slips out of place a little, so Tony bends over her to put it back. Her eyes snap open the moment he touches her face, alert and wary despite being bright from fever. 

“Easy tiger, just putting this back where it belongs.”

She nods minutely and her eyes slip back closed, her ragged breathing still a bit faster than before. He thinks she’s maybe fallen back asleep, but then she blinks again and mumbles something indiscernible.

“Huh?” Tony asks.

She doesn’t open her eyes when she mumbles, “I’m gonna die anyway.”

Tony swallows. “Come on, don’t be so dramatic.” 

“Not...now. But the thing with Bruce...this isn’t going to work. Either I’m gonna die or I’m gonna disappoint him. Don’t even know what’s worse.”

The thing is, Tony knows how it feels to have someone who is too good for you love you nevertheless. And he wishes he could tell her that she’s wrong without feeling like he’s lying. 

By the time he’s finally found his reply, she is already asleep again. 

“But you deserve to be happy,” he whispers into the air anyway.

*

Three hours later, Tony will be interrupted in designing his watch gauntlet by a very disheveled looking Bruce coming to check on Nat. Tony will follow him outside when he searches for his stethoscope, and, with a smirk on his face and a bittersweet feeling in his stomach, will tell him, “She likes you, you know? You should ask her out some time.”

4. Stoners

Nat extricates herself from the blankets with an agility acquired through years of experience in sneaking out of crowded dorm rooms without waking anyone. Bruce is asleep on the couch in Lila’s bedroom, curled a little into himself, looking rumpled and exhausted after today’s hulk-out. He passed out the moment his head touched the pillow, and Nat is honestly surprised he even made it through dinner. 

But there is no sleep for her tonight. Closing her eyes means going back to the places that the witch summoned up in her mind, and that’s something she really, really doesn’t want to do. 

Nat tiptoes down the wooden staircase, avoiding the legos littering her path and the creaky third step from the top. Clint would be her go-to person, if any, on nights when she feels like this. But Laura just got him back and it would be unfair to steal him away for something nobody can fix anyway. 

She commandeers the heavy booze in the highest cupboard behind the digital kitchen scale Laura never uses. She is in the process of filling a glass when, through the screen door, she sees the light coming from the garden. 

Nat finds Tony in the shed where he’s actually repairing the goddamn tractor. She isn’t particularly quiet while entering, but Tony still flinches when she taps him on the shoulder, raising the wrench in a gesture of defense. There’s something dark on his face, a feeling exactly matching hers. Nat hasn’t asked whether the witch has shown him something, too, but she thinks she can read the answer in his eyes.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks, a little more casually after lowering the wrench, but his breathing is still too quick. 

“You’re one to talk.”

He snorts. “Cap’s snoring like a steam engine. No wonder he doesn’t have a girlfriend.” Nat grins, but she knows of course that’s not the real reason.  

She’s never told him, but once or twice she’s witnessed Tony waking from his nightmares on the couch in the common room or in the jet after a mission, whimpering, almost crying, barely able to catch his breath. His reason to not fall asleep in a room he shares with his teammate is the same as hers. 

She takes another sip from her Whiskey and then refills the glass before handing it to him. He downs it in one smooth motion and sets it on the dirty ground nearby, gesturing at her to refill before turning back to the tractor. 

“Can you fix it?” she asks, genuinely curious. The tractor has been in the garage for as long as she can remember, never working, so still that it's almost become part of the building itself. 

“I can fix anything.” It’s his go-to reply, and it’s a lie, but tonight she wishes it was the truth. 

Nat settles on a rusty paint can nearby while watching him work, taking sips from the bottle intermittently. His hands are moving over the vehicle like a doctor’s over a patient, both professional and intimate. There’s motor oil on his bare arms and dust coating his forehead and as much as she knows Tony loves his good looks and classy suits, now he doesn’t seem to register the dirt at all. There’s something cathartic about the way he completely immerses himself in the task. 

Nat does that sometimes when she has a bad night, or the few times Clint was laid up in medical with no visitors allowed. Goes to Tony’s lab and watches him fix things, build things, neither of them talking as is their way. Sometimes she finds herself waking up hours later on the lab bench with a stiff neck and a blanket over her shoulders to Tony proudly showcasing whatever he has finished.

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he’d say and present her with a new set of Widow’s Bites or a more explosive arrow or a thicker uniform for Clint to keep him safe next time. 

He doesn’t look as satisfied now when the tractor finally starts tucking, and she suspects he wished for it to take longer, for more distraction in a night where the dark thoughts hang between them like thick clouds. 

“So, should we take this thing and drive it up to Clint’s window right now?” he asks while turning on the tap in the corner of the barn and washing his hands and face with cold water. 

“Sounds tempting,” Nat admits. “But I got a better idea. I know where Clint keeps the pot.” 

“That, Miss Romanov”―Tony spins around and points at her with a screwdriver―“is the best idea I’ve heard in days.”

They smoke on the old canopy swing on the porch, and Nat would like to say that it makes her feel better, but sometimes sadness is just a part of you that doesn’t go away. They share the silence like they share the joint, each contemplating their own ghosts. 

Nat’s thoughts circle back to the Red Room again and again. And she wonders: Why does it still hurt, after such a long time? Maybe because it illuminates what went wrong, where it went wrong, and because it makes all the other possibilities so clear. The alternatives she never got to live. What it would have been like to have a happy childhood. Parents who cared. No blood on her palms. How it would feel to live without the crushing weight of debt and death on her shoulders. 

The funny thing is that Tony might be the one who understands the feeling best. Clint knows her, knows more of her story than anyone, but he also knows―or at least, thinks he knows―where she is wrongly blaming herself, where her mistakes are not her fault anymore. For him it’s a battle she fought against the powers who wanted to make her someone else, someone horrible, and eventually she won. But on nights like this one, Nat doesn’t feel like a winner. 

And Tony, below his cocky arrogance and narcissism, still carries the guilt from his previous life around with him. They don’t talk, but as the bottle and the smoke circle back and forth between them, she gets the feeling that he has an idea of what’s going on in her head.

The night air grows colder around them and at some point Tony takes off the rough button-down he’d borrowed from Clint and wraps it around her shoulders, and tonight, just tonight, she lets him. Allows him this single gesture of chivalry because he does it out of kindness, and kindness is not something found in the memories that lurk beneath the surface, and because she knows it will make him feel like he did something right.  

When the smoke has turned to ash and the bottle is empty, Tony slides down a bit and leans his head on Natasha’s shoulder. If he’d done this when they first met, after her cover was blown, she would have punched him. Now, it feels almost good. His head grows heavy against her skin after a while and his breaths even out, the drugs and the many days without sleep finally catching up with him. 

Dawn breaks and brings with it an aura of finality, of something big drawing to its close. Nat has lived through so many endings and beginnings that it doesn’t scare her anymore. But she’s still human enough to feel sad. 

She thinks of a little red-headed girl in a huge hall with glass mirrors, turning and twisting under the ever-critical gaze of people who should have never been her replacement parents. Thinks of her, years later, taking lives without second thoughts. So many lives along the way. 

And if there’s a tear or two running down her cheek and dripping into the collar of Clint’s shirt that night, nobody will ever know. 

*

An hour later, when Tony has woken up in her lap and squinted at her and asked, “So, what do we do about the murder bot?” and Nat has mustered all her strength to store the memories away for the time being and fire up her brain cells, Laura will step out to hang clothes on the line in the yard. She will find them like this, frozen-through, exhausted, and more than slightly hungover, but with a battle plan.

4.5. Blueberry Muffin (the time they didn’t)

Natasha is not good with kids—never has been—so she is not surprised when Tony looks a bit wary as he hands his sleeping daughter over to her. She is even less surprised when the baby wakes up, regards Nat through her dark, thick eyelashes, and immediately starts to cry. 

“Here. Give her here,” Tony says, and Nat is happy enough to comply. Morgan’s sobs turn into hitching breaths and she brings her tiny fingers to her face, making discontented sounds at the back of her throat. 

Tony shushes her, almost automatically, and Nat feels a strange mixture of affection and sadness bloom in her chest. He looks at Morgan with a warmth in his eyes she recognises from the first time they met. It’s the same way he’s looked at Pepper for as long as Nat’s known him. Nat knows what it means: he’d do anything for the tiny person in his arms. It’s not something she’s ever felt for anyone, and certainly nothing anyone has ever felt for her.

“So.” He clears his throat. “How’s life at the compound? More interesting than changing diapers, I suppose?” 

Empty and lonely, she doesn’t say. “It’s a lot of work.”

He scoffs. “You and Captain Righteous against the rest of the world?” 

“Steve’s staying in the city,” she replies briskly. She knows Tony is just trying to provoke her, since Rhodey is surely keeping him updated about everything there is to know about the remnants of the team. “He’s running counselling groups, actually. I don’t see him that often.”

“Therapy with Captain America.” Tony snorts, bitterly. “Lesson One: Be honest with your friends. Lesson Two: Choose your side wisely.”

In a life before Thanos, Nat might have started an argument upon this sideblow, but losing half the world’s population put things into perspective. She’s simply too tired to react. 

Tony seems to realise that too, because he gives her a defiant glance and loses steam. Morgan makes a fussy noise and he softly runs his fingers over her head until she quiets again, burying her forehead in his t-shirt. It’s some kind of nerdy shirt with triangles and geometry equations on it, and the baby is drooling onto the Pythagorean theorem. 

The silence grows from uncomfortable to oppressive while Nat tries to think up what else to say about a kid that only sleeps and eats and cries.

“So, have you enrolled her in MIT yet?” she finally asks.

Tony musters a laugh that’s probably mostly meant to humour her. “Thought we might potty train her first.”

Nat smirks.

Pepper enters the room, saving them. “Have some blueberry muffins.” She sets a plate on the table in front of her. She is as neat and pretty as ever, even with an infant to take care of, making Nat acutely aware of her own unwashed hair, the worn-out leggings she didn’t bother to change before coming here, and the deep circles below her eyes. 

A phone rings somewhere in the other room and Pepper is on her feet again before even properly sitting down, but not before adding, “Tony made them.”

Nat stops dead in the middle of reaching for the muffin. Then she slowly turns towards the man in question. “You bake now,” she states, and it almost sounds like an accusation. 

And here’s the thing: Nat and Tony used to be founding members of the ‘Why Do I Even Own a Kitchen’ clubt. Nat is good at cooking because she had to learn it for undercover missions (nothing like chocolate mousse and a low-cut dress to seduce a target), but she’s never, ever done it for herself. Or for the team, or for anyone who doesn’t require her to. Tony considered it superfluous since he had enough money for takeout at any time of the day, which he never ceased to mention when asked. Their hate for this particular activity is one thing they had in common, along with flexible moral standards and their love for fast cars. 

“I dabble.” Tony shrugs lightly. “It helps, you know, to distract yourself. You would be surprised how cathartic it can be sometimes to watch an apple pie turn brown in the oven.” There’s a dark shadow on his face that makes her realise just how bad these sometimes get. 

Guilt—oh yeah, here’s another thing they both share. 

She takes the muffin and bites into it. It tastes horrible, which makes the whole situation only slightly more bearable. She understands now that when Tony pushed the arc reactor into Steve’s hands the day he returned from space, it wasn’t just Iron Man he said goodbye to. He renounced a whole way of life, and with it, all those who were a part of it. The one he leads now makes space for superheroes only in crayon drawings and bedtime stories.

Nat glances around in search of a new topic to start in on, but all she sees are baby photos, throw blankets, and handmade toys—all in soft, matching colours. Wooden walls and bamboo boxes, the opposite of the cutting edge interior design that used to be Tony’s preferred choice for the tower and compound. The lakehouse reminds Nat of the Barton farm, of Laura’s attention to make the smallest details homely. 

Suddenly, the domesticity of it all feels suffocating. 

“I―” she breathes out. “I need to go.” She sets down the muffin and takes a last look at the baby in Tony’s arms before getting to her feet in a rush. His halfhearted protests are lost in the sound of her heartbeat drumming in her ears. She passes Pepper in the hallway, who regards her with confusion and a bit of hurt. Nat’s throat is too tight to talk, but she sends a mental apology her way because none of the bad things that keep happening in her life have ever been the fault of Pepper Potts. 

Tony catches her when she is just about to close the car door. There’s honest surprise on his face when he glimpses the tears on her cheek. She wipes them away, angrily, silently dares him to say anything. 

“Look, this is the best possible way for me to deal with everything,” he explains, and his face looks almost like he’s in pain. “To get over what happened. Maybe you should try that some day.”

And here’s the final difference, Nat thinks as she closes the door and starts the engine. The thing he has to get over with was what made her life worthwhile.

“I’m happy for you, Tony,” she says honestly, and drives away.

*

10 years later, Morgan will scroll through old news footage in her holographic projection on the ceiling and find a photo of Nat and Tony, dressed up for one of the official Avengers events, sharing a laugh over something that’s lost to history. She’ll show it to Pepper and will listen disbelievingly to a story, told with wet eyes, about an assassin masquerading as a PA, who eventually became a friend masquerading as a teammate.

5. Time Travel

None of them sleep the night before the time heist, but at some point, sharing the anxiety makes things worse instead of better. They break up the group, pretending to go to bed. Nat hasn’t been in her own room since everyone moved back in; she’s been sleeping in Clint’s quarters or occasionally on the couch in the common room when the planning and plotting went on late into the night.

Years of going rogue have left their trace on Clint, and despite having lost none of the familiarity—that wordless understanding that has been between them forever—there are more and more times now when she senses his need to be alone. Tonight is one of them. So, instead of trying to sleep, she wanders aimlessly through the compound until she finds Tony sitting in the dimly-lit common room, staring out of the window in a rare moment of stillness. The helmet of his Iron Man suit is lying next to him on the table, blinking silently.

“Don’t turn the lights up,” he says hoarsely when she enters. Even without that warning, she would have recognised the crease in between his brows and the gesture with which he is pressing two fingers to his temple. Bad headache. Maybe even a migraine.

She doesn’t say anything, just steps near the chair and gives his shoulder a squeeze. They stay silent for a while until he shifts stiffly and turns toward her. 

“What would you do?” He looks up, really looks at her. “What would you do if this was potentially the last night of your life?”

Something in her heart clenches, although she can’t pretend that she wasn’t thinking the same. She settles on the arm of his chair before replying. “I’d spend it with my family.”

Tony looks at her wistfully. “I talked to Morgan earlier,” he says in a neutral voice. “Told her a bit about you all. She wanted to know every Avenger’s favourite ice cream flavour.” He shakes his head in disbelief, then winces at the pain it must be causing. “You know, before her, I’d forgotten how good humans can be. Literally innocent, before the world takes all that away.”

Nat huffs. “I don’t believe in innocence.”

“Well, she did try to trick me into bringing her back a ninja star.” Tony smirks.

Nat grins. “Now that sounds more like she’s related to you.”

“So…” he sighs. “In the improbable case that this goes down well and we don’t end up with Jack the Ripper or in the middle ages, I wouldn’t mind coming up here more often. And you should meet Morgan again―I mean it. Never too early for female role models.”

He squints up at her in the challenging way that is meant to hide his insecurity, and she knows what he is really asking for.

And Nat doesn’t say ‘You really think so?’, doesn’t admit to her surprise or the warm feeling welling up in her chest. But she preserves it, somewhere in her heart. 

“Sure,” she agrees instead. “But I can’t guarantee that I won’t give her a ninja star or two.”

“I think I can deal with that.” Tony rubs his hand over his eyes in a tired gesture. “So, tomorrow’s the big day. I’m gonna try and catch some shut-eye.” He gets upright, all colour draining from his face like it just flowed down into his feet. Nat’s hand shoots out to steady him, but he’s already caught himself on the armchair. “Or maybe I’ll go and puke first.”

She frowns, trying to judge whether he’s serious or not―it’s a 50-50 chance with almost anything he says―but then he gulps heavily and starts walking towards the toilet, supporting himself against the wall. 

Nat sighs as she gets to her feet, and, of course, follows him. 

He flinches against the bright bathroom lights and then opens the cabinet, squinting at the labels of the different medications lined up there until Nat takes pity in him and picks the right one. They've been there before, spent a whole night in this very bathroom once when one of Tony’s migraines hit so hard he didn’t want to move for hours. There's a reason Nat always kept up his stock of Imitrex—same with Clint’s Neosporin, and Steve's Zantac.

(Maybe she never really stopped hoping they’d come back.)

Nat shakes a pill out onto her palm and hands it to him along with a glass of water. He swallows and then lowers himself down next to the toilet, face in his hands, breathing carefully through his nose to keep himself from being sick. 

When the immediate danger seems to have passed, Tony leans his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. Nat can’t stop thinking how much he has aged, all the lines in his face turned into valleys and the gray and black in his hair balancing each other out. He’s got 15 years on her, but Nat was never as aware of the age difference as she is today. 

He looks old and tired, but also... Nat would have never thought that soft would be a word she'd one day use to describe Tony Stark, but, looking at him in worn-out jeans and a wrinkled hoodie with a few sprinkles of glitter on them (undoubtedly courtesy to Morgan), that's the only word coming to her mind right now. It’s a different kind of softness than what he displayed during her one and only visit to the lakehouse. It doesn’t feel like a desperate escape strategy now, more like something he has grown to be without being aware of it himself.

Nat gets quietly to her feet, wets a washcloth and drapes it over his eyes, blocking out the lights. He grunts gratefully. She hesitates for a second, but then reaches down and starts kneading the tense muscles between his shoulders and neck. Tony makes a low sound in his throat somewhere between pain and pleasure. But he lets her be, and she feels a smile spread on her face. 

“I forgot how good that feels,” he sighs when she’s done, squinting up at her. “Pepper never really gets the pressure right.” He swallows. “I missed this,” he adds, and she knows he doesn’t just mean her massage skills. 

“Me too,” she quietly admits what she’s been thinking for days. 

“I’ll just”―he weakly waves his hand―“enjoy this bathroom for a bit longer. Feel free to leave.”

“Nah, I’m good here,” Nat assures. She settles down next to him with her legs crossed, not too close, not too far. “Remember that one time we all got food poisoning from that burger joint Steve insisted was the best in Brooklyn? And Bruce was the only one who didn’t eat them, and then he just ran between different bathrooms the whole night?”

“Hell, don’t remind me.” Tony groans. “Clint puked on my Prada pajamas. Had to incinerate them.”

“Your own fault for buying branded nightwear,” she retorts. 

They keep sitting and talking in low voices, and Nat doesn’t feel the desire to move, doesn’t feel the urge to let this night pass. It’s stolen time, all of it, a few days of glimpses into the life they had and that they always knew would never last. They all are aware that it’s going to end tomorrow, in one way or another. But just for now, she allows herself the illusion that it could last forever. 

*

Less than 12 hours later, Natasha has turned into a martyr, and Tony finally understands that she did get to spend her last day with her family after all.

+1. The Passage

Waking up without pain anywhere in his body is a feeling so unfamiliar to Tony that it immediately puts him on edge. His eyes snap open, his heart beating hard and fast in his throat, and there’s something important that’s slipping his mind, something vital, and he–

He looks around himself, and he’s in his Malibu mansion. The one that Killian Aldrich bombed to the ground almost ten years ago.

It doesn’t make sense.

There’s a boxing ring set up in the middle of the room, and on it, sitting cross-legged, her long braid in red and gold hanging over her shoulder, is a familiar figure.  

It can’t be. 

“Natasha?” Tony asks, and she looks up at him. 

And then Tony remembers. 

By the time he gets his wits back enough to come up with a joke, Nat has slipped out of the ring between the ropes and is holding him in her arms. She’s young as ever, but something in her eyes makes Tony feel like she’s aged years since the last time he’s seen her. 

“So this is Hell, huh? Less gargoyles than I imagined,” he quips. “And I was hoping for a better view of the Lake of Fire.” 

“Oh, we’re not in Hell,” she replies calmly, pulling back. “At least not yet.”

“Where –” Tony breathes, “Where are we then?”

“It’s like a passage,” she replies. “Neither here, nor there.”

“Okay. Fine. Great.” He runs his fingers through his hair, trying to get his speeding breaths under control. “Run me through the whole thing.”

“After I jumped from the cliff at Vormir, I came to an agreement with Red Skull,” she explains. “He’s...he’s like a guard to whatever comes after. He let me wait here until… well, until someone came to let me know.”

“Let you know?” Tony echos. 

“If it was worth it.” She looks up at him, for the first time seeming as scared as Tony feels. “Was it, Tony?”

“Yes.” He nods, trying to pull himself together. He thinks of Peter and his heart jumps in triumph. “Yes, it worked, Nat. We got them back. All of them.”

“But something went wrong, didn’t it?”

He sighs. “Something always goes wrong. ” He walks her through what happened after the time heist, replaying the memories and almost unable to believe them himself. “I just― I snapped. And Pep-Pepper. Rhodey. They all were there, and―”

“Breathe, Tony.” Looking at him with both sadness and pride, she stretches out her hand to wipe something from his cheek, and Tony realises then that he is crying. 

“I,” he mumbles, his breath hitching. “I need to sit.” 

She leads him to the boxing mat and sits him down. Then it hits Tony, really hits him what this all means. 

Because he will never teach Morgan how to fly the suit he secretly designed to give her on  her eighth birthday. He will never ruin Pepper’s cooking again. He will never watch over Peter when he goes patrolling, will never snatch away Rhodey’s ice cream, will never share a late-night highway drive with Happy again. It’s gone, all of it. He’s gone. 

He’s crying like a child, unable to stop himself, and Nat hugs him without hesitation, holds him close. “S-Sorry,” he manages between sobs. She shushes him and strokes his back.

“It’s alright. I’ve been there too,” she whispers. 

“There are so many things I wanted to do,” he chokes out after a while. “S-So many things I didn’t get to share with them.” 

“I know, Tony.” She hesitates. “But they know too. Tony, you saved them. You saved them all.”

And he thinks back to Yinsen, to Don’t waste your life, Stark. To everyone he lost, everyone he outlived, everyone he killed. And he thinks, perhaps I didn’t do so bad after all.

Nat must have been having similar thoughts, because, in a quiet voice, she says, “Maybe I finally cleared my ledger.”

“Nat, what are you talking about?” he sniffs, wipes his face, and then takes her fingers into his hands, holds onto her tightly, sincerely, “None of this would have been possible if you hadn’t gotten the soul stone. We owe you. The whole universe owes you.” 

And here’s the final thing they share; they have both eventually settled their debts.

The waves are hitting at the shore outside in an endless rhythm of clapping and splashing. It’s a long time until either of them speaks again.

“So,” Tony asks eventually, and the tears have dried on his cheeks, leaving only salt behind, “you chose the setting?”

She offers the tiniest of smiles. “I thought you might appreciate the touch.” 

He knows that they are both thinking the same. Who would have thought, the first time they met each other, on a day when Tony was drinking chlorophyll and Nat pinned Happy onto the mat, that three-and-a-half potential apocalypses later they would end up here again?  

“We can’t stay,” he says. It’s not a question. 

“No,” she confirms, nodding towards the opposite wall. 

There is a door at the end of the room, heavy and wooden and ancient, that doesn’t belong with the mansion―neither in Tony’s memory nor from the looks of it.  

“What’s behind it?” he asks, although he already knows the answer. 

“Whatever comes next.”

“Maybe it’s nothing,” he says.

Nat swallows. “Would that even be so bad?”

He turns towards her. She looks ready, at peace, but also sad. And besides knowing it’s worth it, besides knowing that they both wouldn’t hesitate a moment to make that very same choice over and over again, he wishes that they’d had more time. 

They get to their feet and walk to the other end of the room. The gate seems to grow taller as they approach it until it takes up almost all of Tony’s vision. Next to him, Nat stretches out her hand and lets her fingers glide over the carvings in the wood that form patterns of leaves of a tree he doesn’t know the name of. He follows suit. The wood feels soft and warm under his touch. Alive. 

“Are you scared?” she asks. 

He shakes his head. “Not anymore.” And it’s true. Tony has been afraid for so many years of his life—ever since the sky above New York was torn apart. And now, he seems to be feeling everything all at once: grief, gratitude, and acceptance, wonder, loss, and love. But the fear is gone.

“Let’s go?” Nat squeezes his fingers and then lets go of his hand. And he knows, this is a step they must take on their own. 

He breathes in deeply. Takes a last look around. The sea, the house, the light reflecting in the red of Natasha’s hair. The calmness in her wide green eyes. He reaches for the handle of the door. “Okay.”

And they step through.

_______________

all my fics

#the tumblr version is out #my fic #nat & tony #5+1 #give it a try?

[obsidianfr3sk]

The Origins (Chapter 5)

Summary: Before the Renegades put an end to the Age of Anarchy, they were six kids trying to survive day by day in a city ruled by chaos and desolation. Is there a space for hope and kindness somewhere in Gatlon City? Maybe.

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25123756/chapters/62643247

Evander chapter took me a little bit longer than expected, ngl. I think this one is a little more action-y than my previous work??? Or maybe I’m just fucking allucinating lol. 

Also, speaking of Evander, how do you guys pronunce his name? Because I was having Word to read this chapter out loud for me so I could recognize mistakes without having to read (?) and it pronunced it as Ee-vander, but I’ve always pronunced it as /E/vander, probably for the same reason I say “Simón” instead of “Simon” or “Hugo” instead of “Hugh”. Fellow spanish-speakers, back me up (? 

BUT REALLY I NEED TO KNOW IS THERE A CANON PRONUNCIATION FOR EVANDER’S NAME???? PLS HELP

Tag list (tell me if you want in or out): @nodrianbcyes @blueraspberry-official @healing-winston-pratt @itsalittlebitchilly @callumtreadwell @plain-jane-mclain

Bring me along to the world you see

Age of Anarchy

Year 9

The night is warm and windless. He looks up and tries to beg the moon for help, but he has lost his voice. A mysterious force holds his arms and legs. The only thing he can move is his head.

The sky is full of stars, red and big as rubies.

"Vandy ..."

He looked to his right. His father's green eyes meet his. He used to say that seeing his son was like looking in the most flattering mirror. They both had red hair, the same eyes, their teeth slightly apart… they were identical. But his father didn't have freckles. His mother did.

"Are you okay?"

On the left, he sees his mother. Her blonde hair covers her face, but he can notice her painted lips and perfect liner. She has always been very protective of her makeup. It makes her feel beautiful.

Evander doesn't understand. His mom is beautiful, even without makeup.

His mom is beautiful, even when she’s dead.

" Evander ..."

An ownerless hand puts the barrel of the gun to his forehead. The metal feels hot. The stranger puts his finger on the trigger and is about to shoot when Kasumi shakes him and whispers:

"Evander, wake up."

Evander woke up screaming and with his heart racing. A layer of cold sweat covered his entire body. Tears began to flow from his eyes and instinctively, he reached for Kasumi's arms and hugged her with all the strength of his body.

"The same nightmare?"

"The same nightmare," he replied.

Kasumi stroked his red locks, while the silence in the room was interrupted by the exasperated moans of the other girls who slept there. Alix approached them with disdain and deep dark circles under her eyes.

He hated Alix. She could look through walls, had just turned seventeen last week, and believed herself to be the leader of the whole place just because she was the oldest.

"You said he wasn’t going to have nightmares anymore, Kasumi," she told her accusingly.

Kasumi shrugged. Evander stuck his tongue out at her.

Three years ago, some Jackals broke into his home during dinner, pointing guns at his parents' heads and demanding answers they didn't have. The first thing his mother did was run at him to protect him, but suddenly, the youngest of the Jackals grabbed him by the collar of his dirty shirt and tried to snatch him away.

However, Samantha Wade was not going to let anyone separate her from her son. She clung to him as if her life depended on it. Evander was too scared and deafened by all the yelling, that he didn't feel his mother's nails digging into his skin. "Don't take my son, please don't kill my baby."

After struggling for a while the boy was able to yank Evander from his mother's arms. The woman let out a brutal scream and that was enough for his father to jump on the Jackal, ready to do everything he could to rescue his son.

The tallest man broke his neck.

He gave a low, hoarse laugh. Evander would never forget it.

"We just need the girl," he explained to the younger jackal. "You take care of the child."

Evander couldn't see his father's body for more than two seconds, because the Jackal took him out to the backyard, sat him on the grass, and ordered him severely:

"Stay still. Unless you want to end up like your dad."

Those words were enough for Evander to overcome his urge to disobey.

He took out of his pocket three fireworks and a lighter.

"Today is Fourth of July, Evander Jr,” he said. "Let’s celebrate.”

Those fireworks were the only thing that lit up that starless night. However, neither their outburst nor their beauty could hide the words that the jackal whispered in his ear:

"Listen to me carefully, kid. You are going to drop to the ground and you aren't going to get up until dawn. In the morning, you'll walk five blocks to the home for child prodigies and you'll tell Bertha that Tom Freud sent you. Now, you will be surrounded by prodigies. Some may be powerful, but you must never to kneel before them. Do you understand?"

How ironic that Evander turned out to be a prodigy. Although no one had knelt before him. Yet.

Tom Freud did not wait for him to respond. As soon as the last spark disappeared, he pushed him to the ground, put his foot on his back, and shouted:

"Stay still!"

The bullet whizzed past his ear. Evander didn't scream, he just obeyed. He stayed still when Freud took his foot off his back. He stayed still when the Jackals left. And he even stayed still when the first ray of the sun illuminated his face.

When he saw the corpses on the kitchen floor, he could only ask himself what would have happened if he had not stayed still.

Every time that nightmare woke him up, he would ask Kasumi the same question. She would only tell him to look out the window.

"Your parents greet you from the stars," she assured. "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Wade, hello."

Evander always responded with, “Look, your parents are there too. Hello, Mrs. Kasumi's mom, hello, Mr. Kasumi's dad. How do you say mom and dad in Japanese? "

Then, Kasumi proceeded to teach him some new words and expressions in Japanese. They both liked to put on solemn faces and start saying random phrases in Japanese when they were in public. They knew it was annoying for a lot of people, including Mom Bertha. She said Kasumi's mom used to do the same thing when they were younger when she was mad at her. Mom Bertha seemed sad after telling them this, so they decided not to do it in front of her anymore. Seeing Mom Bertha sad wasn't as fun as watching the older children get angry at them when they refused to explain what they were saying.

"You wouldn't understand," Evander told them, shaking his head with mock seriousness.

"That's right, you wouldn't understand," Kasumi agreed.

If others knew it was just random words and phrases, the game would be over, so they had to keep it a secret. Kasumi confessed that she regretted not being able to learn her parents' first language. However, she made an effort to learn how to say a very specific question. 

Unfortunately, it was a question she had to make very often.

"Vandy, did you wet the bed?"

Evander hugged her tighter. Kasumi nodded and began to remove the covers. The girls immediately noticed what happened and started complaining, especially Alix. Evander sat on the corner of the bed, feeling dirty, and humiliated. They all looked at him with disgust and mockery, secreting each other.

Yeah, they didn’t like the idea of Evander sleeping in the same room as them. They said there was a room for boys and a room for girls for a reason. But Mom Bertha wouldn’t hear a word about it. Evander was going to sleep there, whether they liked it or not. 

Why? Because he was a bed wetter and the boys weren’t very nice about it. Neither were the girls, but at least they didn’t start a fight with him when they realize Evander had wet the bed again. 

He looked out the window. Mom Bertha was outside, talking to some men. He couldn't see their faces.

Evander had seen these men before. Sometimes when nightmares woke him up, he would listen to Mom Bertha talking to them. There were times when they yelled at each other, but there were other times when they gave her boxes filled with food and medicine. Kasumi made up the story that they were the guardians of the shadows, protecting the kingdom of the night.

"They look scary," Evander said to her when she told him the story.

"Don't worry, they won't hurt us."

But lately, Evander heard more screams and saw fewer boxes.

She dropped the wet sheets on the floor and handed him some clean underwear. Evander crawled under a blanket to change. Although he had a lot of privacy that way, Kasumi still turned her back on him so as not to make him uncomfortable.

"Kasumi, don't you listen to what we're saying?" Alix asked.

"I’m listening, Alix," she replied shyly.

“Then stop ignoring us. Evander is getting too old to sleep with the girls, he has to go with the boys. "

"But they are going to hit him again," Kasumi said.

“Well, better for him,” Alix replied. "Maybe he’ll finally learn wetting the bed is a horrible habit.”

Evander pulled the blanket off, pointed his finger at Alix, and yelled:

"You are horrible!"

Alix opened her mouth to respond and Evander threw his dirty underwear at her face. Kasumi burst out laughing along with the rest of the girls. Alix squealed as Evander started bouncing on the bed yelling  "Horrible, horrible, horrible girl!"  in Japanese.

He would do anything to annoy Alix and to keep Kasumi laughing. 

When Alix recovered from the shock, she screamed:

"I'm going to kill you, Evander!"

A gunshot. Two gunshots.

Evander put a hand to his chest. Alix hadn't shot him.

Then who shot who?

Alix pushed Evander off the bed and leaned out the window. The shots had come from outside. Her face twisted in horror.

"Mom Bertha..."

All the other girls leaned over to look. Evander tried to push his way through them, but Kasumi quickly caught on and took him away from the scandal.

"Don't look," she whispered. "Please don't look."

"What happened?" he asked innocently. "Who’s shooting?"

"The guardians of the shadows," she replied, taking him by the shoulders, "have turned against us, Vandy."

As if she had summoned them, the guardians of the shadows knocked down the door to the girls' room pointing their guns at them. He and Kasumi hid under the bed, while the other girls screamed and raised their hands. The guardians of the shadows started holding them by their nightgowns and kicking them out into the corridor, not even giving them time to put on their shoes. The same scandal did not take long to begin in the men's room. A few more shots were heard.

And laughs. Low, hoarse laughs.

It can’t be…

The room was almost empty when a huge hand grabbed Kasumi by the wrist. Both screamed at the same time. Another hand grabbed Evander's arm and dragged them out of there.

The man was tall, muscular, and bald. A red bandanna covered his face.

Jackals.

"What are your powers!?" he yelled at Kasumi. His friend froze, staring at him with wide eyes and a sealed mouth. "What are your powers!?" he asked again.

More screaming. More demands. More questions they couldn't answer.

Evander tried to free himself from the man's grasp. All he wanted was to hug Kasumi once more. Maybe if he did it hard enough and for the right amount of time, he would be able to wake up.

The jackal growled and tossed Evander onto the bed as if ridding himself of an irritating mosquito. If he had done it harder, Evander would have been thrown out the open window.

The cold breeze gave him chills.

He looked at the window, then looked at his friend. She was still paralyzed and unable to answer the man's question. Kasumi, Evander, and the jackal were the only ones left in the room. Everyone else had gone to the common room.

He looked at the window. Then he looked at his friend.

The jackal drew his pistol and held it to Kasumi's head.

"WHAT ARE YOUR POWERS, LITTLE SLUT?!"

"She doesn’t understand you!" Evander yelled.

The jackal fell silent. Now the gun was pointed at him.

But Evander was not afraid.

"What are you talking about?"

“She doesn't speak English,” Evander explained, looking down. "That’s why she doesn't understand a single word of what you’re saying."

He looked at Kasumi curiously and threw Kasumi onto the bed, laughing. Evander hugged her.

Wake up, Vandy, wake up…

"What powers does the little slut have?" he asked Evander.

"I don't know," he replied, "she’s never used them."

"But she’s a prodigy."

"Yes, Mr. Jackal."

Another laugh. "I'm glad. If she wasn’t, I would have to kill her. And it would be a shame to kill such a pretty girl. "

Kasumi hugged him tighter. Perhaps she was also begging that it was all a dream. Or maybe she was more scared than he was.

Evander had to be brave for both of them.

"Do you want me to ask her for you?"

"Huh, now you happen to know Chinese," the jackal sneered.

"No, I know Japanese," Evander corrected.

He gave the loudest laugh of the night. Evander could perfectly visualize him breaking his dad's neck, laughing in the same way...

"Prove it."

Kasumi held his face in her hands. Her gaze seemed to scream at him:  "What are you doing?"  He had never seen her so confused.

He wished he could tell her what he was thinking.  Kasumi, don't be afraid. Think of this as a story. You know the best stories. Let's make our way out of this. Have a little bit of imagination.

But how could one have imagination at this moment?

"I... distraction... you window... we escape."

He saw his friend's gears moving inside her head. "Water... waterfall... escape," Kasumi stammered.

"Window, waterfall, escape" Evander repeated with a nod.

Kasumi smiled at him almost imperceptibly. She had understood. Those afternoons of annoying others had helped.

"What's she saying?" the jackal interrupted.

"She says she can heal trees," Evander replied.

"And what do you do?"

"I can control light."

It wasn't entirely a lie.

"And why aren't you wearing pants?"

Evander hadn't realized he was still in his boxers.

"I- I wetted the bed.”

The jackal's laughter echoed in his head. "How old are you? Six?"

"I’m eight, Mr. Jackal.”

The jackal pointed the gun at the old closet in the corner of the room. “Put on clothes, kid. And then go downstairs with the rest. "

Evander hurried to the closet. He grabbed the first pair of pants he could find. They were green and had strange spots on the knees. But he didn't have time to think about that. 

"What are you waiting, bitch? Move,” he yelled at Kasumi.

Kasumi didn’t move.

The pants were too big for him.

"I said move!" and hit her with the pistol’s grip.

Evander ran to get between the jackal and his friend. "Leave her alone!" he screamed.

The jackal raised his hand for a second blow. Both children closed their eyes, preparing for the beating they were about to receive. However, the blow did not come. Something had stopped the jackal.

Evander opened one eye. The jackal stared at him incredulously, his mouth slightly open.

He laughed. "I'm going to kill Freud..."

Then, he loaded his gun, put in on Evander's forehead, and said:

"Hello, Evander Jr. Stay still."

At that moment, Evander knew he couldn't stay still this time. 

He placed both of his hands over the jackal's eyes and fired the most powerful and explosive fireworks he could. The jackal's laugh became a cry of pain so loud that all of Gatlon City could hear it.

Kasumi carried him and created a waterfall that ran down to the fence door of the building. As Kasumi slid both of them to their freedom, Evander looked up at the stars.

He didn't know what would have happened if he hadn't stayed still four years ago. But if he had obeyed this particular jackal tonight, the sky would have one star more.

He loved his parents. But he didn't want to be a star just yet.

#renegades #archenemies #supernova #fanfic #the origins #evaner wade #kasumi hasegawa #renegades trilogy #ao3

[crystalninjaphoenix]

Scary Stories

A Horror Septics Short

“...and all that was left were the bones! Ooooo!” The teenage storyteller lowered the flashlight, looking around at his audience—three other teens, all of whom looked very unimpressed. “Well? Not even a ‘oh no’?”

“I saw that coming from a mile away, Derrick,” said one of the others, adjusting her pointed glasses.

“Oh come on.” Derrick frowned. “You could’ve at least pretended to like it.”

“Your voice isn’t really cut out for horror, anyway,” said another, poking the campfire with a stick. 

“Well, can any of you do better?” Derrick looked around at the circle. The four friends were sitting on chairs, set around the central fire pit. There was a picnic table nearby with a kerosene lamp providing extra light, and a large tent big enough to fit all four of them. The campsite was a bit isolated, surrounded by large trees that hid the light of other fires lit by other campers. 

“Honestly, I don’t think any scary stories can get to me anymore,” one said.

“Oh really?” Asked the one in the glasses. “Why’s that, Winston?”

“Don’t say my name like that,” Winston scowled underneath the brim of his baseball cap. “And it’s because, Lilah, I know it’s all not real. I mean, yeah, if the story’s good it’ll come back to haunt me late at night, but that’s when all judgement has been abandoned. I can’t find a story anymore that’s good enough to freak me out as it’s happening.”

“Creepypasta has ruined you,” the last one muttered.

“That it has, Charlie. That it has.”

“Okay, I got an idea. Derrick, pass me the torch.” Lilah reached over and the flashlight, shining it under her face as was typical of scary-storytelling, though the illusion was a bit ruined by the sparkly pink ribbon in her hair. “Let me tell you an actual, real-life scary story. Let’s see if that rustles your jimmies, Win.”

“Let’s see if it does.” Winston smiled, settling back into his chair.

“So. You all know my cousin Eve, right?” Lilah started.

“The journalist one, right?” Derrick asked.

“Well, kinda. What she does is she writes articles for a travel magazine. So she goes around Europe, finding cities that don’t have much of a tourist industry and looking for things about them that would, like, draw people to the place. Also she had a partner, Kyle, who she had to write articles with.”

“Ugh, Kyle,” Charlie commented. “What a name.”

“Oh yeah, Kyle sucked. Whenever the family met up, Eve would always complain about him.” Lilah shook her head. “He was like, the kind of guy who always thought he knew best, and when people contradicted him he’d be all like, ‘yeah, sure.’ Then he went ahead and talked shit about them. She always had to double-check their articles before they went up to make sure he didn’t add any bullshit. Needless to say, he didn’t like her much either.”

All the teens muttered among themselves. The disapproval was clear. “Anyway, Eve and Kyle get assigned to go to this city in Germany,” Lilah continued. “And it’s like, a nice place. Clean, has some neat museums, the hotel they’re staying in is pretty swanky. So far, Eve is taking some favorable notes for the article. Kyle is annoyed at everything, though, bitching about how the service is terrible even though there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Okay, so that’s the set up, what happened to change it?” Charlie asked.

“So, end of the first day, dawn of the second. Eve’s taken notes of everything they could do in town, and she goes down to the hotel desk to get advice on what’s best. The hotel clerk is friendly, answers all the questions. It all goes normally, until right at the end of the conversation, when the clerk said, ‘oh yes, you und your frund vould do vell to be off ze ztreets by nightfull.”

Winston suddenly burst out laughing. “Is that supposed to be a German accent?!”

“Yeah, what’s that supposed to mean?” Lilah said defensively.

“I’ve heard more realistic accents from children’s shows!”

“What, can you do better?” Lilah muttered.

“Ah, in fact, I can!” Winston said, putting on an accent. “And I say your accent is simply terrible, Fraulein!” 

“Hey, we’re not here to judge by the quality of the accent, only the spookiness of the story,” Derrick said. “Keep on keepin’ on, Lilah.”

“Thanks, Derr,” Lilah said, grinning. “Anyway, the clerk says not to be on the streets after nightfall. Eve asks why, and the clerk says, ‘it gets very dangerus out zere, zat iz all. I vould hate for anyzing to happen to—’”

“Oh my god, stop, it’s hard to hear!” Winston groaned.

Lilah made a face in his direction, but obliged. “ The clerk says, ‘I would hate for anything to happen to you and your friend.’ Which is a bit sketch, and Eve knows it. She mentions this to Kyle, because even though Kyle’s a bitch she doesn’t want him to get physically hurt, and he’s just like, ‘This clerk was a girl, right? Of course she doesn’t want to walk out late at night.’”

“Ohhh, fuck this dude,” Derrick said.

“Fuck it sooo muuuch,” Charlie added.

“Right?!” Lilah nodded furiously. “Like, at this point with Eve telling this story, I was like, ‘I hope this dude gets eaten by a wolf.’”

“Wait, where did the wolf come from?” Winston asked.

“Shit, I forgot about that. Anyway,” Lilah continued. “They go throughout the city, visiting restaurants and these museums and looking around at the local architecture. At dinnertime, they go to this seafood place, and get chatting with the waiter. They mention they’re from out of town, and that they’re writing an article on the city to hopefully help out tourism. The waiter says, “Vell—sorry, well, if you are from out of town, you should know not to stay out after dark.’ Eve, having heard this for the second time, asks, ‘Why, what happens?’ And the waiter says, ‘Uh, well, we have some problems with wild dogs. They hunt at night.’ And Kyle says, ‘Well, that’s not gonna bring in the tourists.’” Lilah paused while all the others groaned. “So, after dinner, Eve notices it’s getting late, and convinces Kyle to go back to the hotel with her. But of course, he complains about it, and says that they have to check out the nightlife in town and see if there are any after dark specials running.”

“Well, from a business standpoint, he’s got a point,” Winston said. “I mean, he doesn’t have to be an asshole about it, but that is their job.”

“And I’m sure Eve would’ve agreed with you,” Lilah nodded. “But she’s noticing something weird. Most of the local shops and businesses are closing up. Not any of the chains, like McDonald’s or...I don’t know, chain clothing businesses. But the businesses unique to the city, that she’d usually be checking out and putting in the article? Closed. So she thinks there might be something to this. And, in the morning, she goes down to the lobby and there’s a local woman there. Eve starts chatting with her, and eventually the woman says ‘Oh, you are a visitor? Make sure to not go out after sunset, there are some gangs in the area that roam around after dark.’”

“Wait, what?” Charlie perked up, at attention. “Two different excuses? Ohhh that’s not a good sign.”

“Eve thought the same thing,” Lilah said gravely. “And she drew two conclusions. Either there are both wild dogs and street gangs, or the real reason why you shouldn’t go out at night is much worse than either of those. So it’s the third day they’re there, and it goes generally normally, but Eve and Kyle keep getting the same sort of thing whenever locals find out they’re not from around town: don’t go out after nightfall. So, most people would decide not to go out that night, right? Wrong!” Lilah jabbed her finger in the air. “Because here’s Kyle, an asshole who thinks he knows better than anyone else who’s ever lived. He starts to leave the hotel room, and Eve tries to stop him. Instead of doing literally anything sensible, Kyle blows up that she’s always been jealous of him and has always tried to stop him from succeeding, then storms off.”

Winston let out a long, low whistle. “Let me guess, he died?”

“Hmmm I didn’t say that,” Lilah said slowly. “So, Eve goes down and tries to stop him, but he’s already left, and it’s after sunset at this point. The clerk is like, ‘I saw your friend run off. Poor guy. Anyway, would you like some room service?’ Clearly trying to bribe her into staying in the hotel. Eve’s a bit nervous about Kyle, but she really doesn’t want to go out, so she stays in the room. Kyle doesn’t show up the next day, and she calls the local police, worried something happened. They say they’ll get on it, but in that tone of voice that suggests there’s nothing that can be done about this.”

“So, the Kyle guy just disappeared?” Derrick asked.

“Oh, no, not at all.” Lilah’s voice turned low and serious. “About a month later, she’s back home, she gets a call from this out-of-country number. And it’s a police officer from this German city. They need her to come in real quick so she can identify this head they found.”

There was a sharp inhale throughout the circle. “Just the head?” Charlie asked.

“So, Eve goes down to Germany,” Lilah continued. “She sees the head, and yeah, it’s Kyle. Missing his eyes and teeth and with a big hole in the back of the head. She asks the police what happened, and they found the head in a dumpster, along with a bunch of...flesh. And itty bitty pieces of shattered bones.”

Charlie covered their mouth. “Oh my god…”

“That is so fucked,” Derrick muttered.

Lilah looked over at Winston. “Well? What d’you think, Mr. Horror Aficionado?”

Winston adjusted his cap. “Pretty good.”

“‘Pretty good’?!” Lilah repeated. “This guy disappears, and the next month, he’s in pieces!”

“I’ve heard it before,” Winston said, a little smugly.

“Yeah, in stories, I have too!” Lilah put down the flashlight, and put her head in her hands. “This is something that actually happened to a guy my cousin knew, worked with a lot! And they never caught whoever did it, apparently!”

“Wait, how do you know they never caught them?” Derrick asked. “Do you just go down to—what’s the city name again?”

“Ah, I don’t remember,” Lilah shrugged. “Something that started with an A.”

“Do you just go down there regularly?”

“Well, no, but most serial killers don’t get caught, and given how everyone knew about this shit happening in the city, I’m assuming that’s what it is.”

“Where’d you hear that, Buzzfeed Unsolved?” Winston asked.

“Oh, speaking of which,” Charlie jumped in. “Did you guys see the last one? Of the last True Crime season? The finale?” The other three made various negative noises. “Oh.” Charlie shrugged. “I just thought it was funny.”

“What’s the case?” Winston asked.

“Oh, a recent one. I mean, like, two years ago. A YouTuber disappeared. And the boys went on this whole tangent about what if they disappeared.”

Lilah frowned. “How do YouTubers just...disappear? Wouldn’t people notice if they stopped uploading?”

“Not if it was a kinda small one,” Derrick pointed out.

“Well, this guy wasn’t small,” Charlie said. “He had like...ten million subscribers. But a few months before he disappeared he said he was gonna take a break from uploading and other media, so I don’t think the community noticed when he actually disappeared. Though, I guess they started wondering eventually...and that’s why it’s a famous case. Dude straight-up left. Why? The case remains...unsolved.”

“Maybe he just got tired of YouTube drama,” Winston muttered.

Charlie frowned. “I don’t think so. Personally, I think he went kinda crazy. Like...actually had problems or something. After watching the Unsolved episode, I went to look at his last uploaded videos and they were...weird. I’d link you the episode and the video, but y’know. No wifi.”

“Feel free to send it later, sounds interesting,” Winston said. “Anyway—”

“Do you guys hear that?” Derrick interrupted.

“Hear what?” Lilah asked.

The group fell silent. After a few seconds, Charlie said, “I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly.” Derrick frowned. “There were, like, crickets. But they just stopped.”

“...huh,” Winston said. “That’s weird. Why—”

“Oh my god!” Lilah pointed at something. “What’s that?!”

The group all turned, and saw a shadow, flickering against a tree in the light caused by the campfire. It got bigger, and shifted, and a large man rounded out from behind one of the nearby pine trees. “Sorry, did I frighten you?” he asked in a low, rumbling voice.

“Uh…” Derrick looked around the group, then back at the man. He looked a bit like a lumberjack, with a big bushy beard and a flannel, but the illusion was ruined a bit by the patterned pajama pants. “A little bit, sir.”

“Hmm.” The man nodded slowly. “It wasn’t my intention. I heard you kids discussing...scary stories?”

“Um, yeah,” Charlie said, picking up the stick they’d been using to poke the fire. “I mean, not exactly stories. True stories, I guess.”

“True stories,” the man repeated, nodding again. “I see.” He walked over to the picnic bench and sat down, stumbling on the last few steps. “Well, I have a few true stories of my own. Would you like to hear one?”

The teens exchanged looks, clearly uneasy. Lilah slowly reached into her pocket, seeming to grab something. “Uh...sure, mister,” she said.

“Excellent.” The man leaned forward, the firelight casting deep shadows on his face. “This is a true story, as well. It took place over a hundred years ago. There was a...person.”

“You don’t sound too sure about that,” Winston muttered. All the others instantly made shushing sounds at him.

“There was a person,” the man repeated, unphased. “They were a dollmaker.” Winston rolled his eyes quietly. Of all the group, he was the only one who was unphased by the appearance of a tall, burly man in the middle of the woods. He seemed more interested in critiquing the story’s cliches. “What did they do with these dolls? Which one became evil?”

“This is not a story about dollmaking,” the man said, suddenly stern. “I’m telling you what they do so that you can better understand. The dollmaker puts—put pride and care in their creations, trying to make them last as long as possible. Their life was average, for what they were. Until one day. The dollmaker was home, just about considering going out and starting on another doll, when the phone rang. Now, this was odd. This was long before phones could be carried about in your pocket, and in fact, phones were a new device. A phone had to be wired to a house, and the house the dollmaker was in had no phone wires connecting it. But they were curious, and thinking a friend had found a way to call them, they picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’ they said. But there was no answer. Just the vague crackling of static before it was called so. And after a moment, the dollmaker heard their own voice repeated back to them. ‘H-he-he-hello-o-o?’ Strange. Though the dollmaker said more, the other end never said anything else. So they thought it was a mistake, and dropped it.

“But the next day, the phone rang again. The dollmaker answered it again. And there was indeed a voice on the other end this time, but it was breaking, barely able to be understood as a voice and not just some strange noises. The dollmaker was not dull, it—they knew something strange was happening, knew something was behind it. But they were overconfident. They believed that whatever was calling could not touch them. The phone rang three more times over the following week, and they didn’t answer it at all.

“Then, one day. The dollmaker returned, having been out all night making a doll. And the lights of the house were flickering. Strange. The dollmaker went inside, and the phone started ringing once more. This time, they picked it up. The same voice was on the other end, though they still couldn’t understand what it was saying. Uneasy, the dollmaker dropped the phone. And then they looked out the window.

“There was something there. A many-eyed something, pressed against the glass, smearing blood across it. And it smiled at the dollmaker, and said something that was utterly incomprehensible, but somehow—somehow understandable. ‘I will make you mine,’ it said. ‘I will take what is yours and use it.’ And the dollmaker was frightened for the first time in m—in their long life. So they ran.

“They ran for three years. No matter where they went, the many-eyed thing was always right on their trail. Sometimes it caught up, and they had to fight it, and barely got away. After every conflict, they grew weaker. And the next time it caught up, they were not prepared. They were hiding in a house up north, alone with a single doll who they eventually lost. And when the many-eyed thing showed up, they couldn’t run fast enough. It took...them.

“It was nineteen years before they could find their way out. By then, they could not speak. They could not walk. They could not do half the things they once could, and spent one year with their friend in the wilds, finding new ways to do what they needed. And the many-eyed thing was still out there. Decades passed, and they heard of similar things happening to others, including a doctor who is very like themselves. Nobody and nothing is safe. The eyes continue to lurk.”

Complete and total silence fell. The group of four stared, wide-eyed, at the man. Even Winston, so cocky and unafraid before, was speechless, looking around as a chill ran down his spine.

The man stood up, the movement so quick it caused the four teens to jump. “Well, I’d best be going. You kids here for any longer?”

After a moment, Derrick cleared his throat and answered, “We’re going to leave in the morning.”

Suddenly, Charlie shrieked. Everyone tensed and looked over at them. “S...sorry,” they said. “I just thought I saw something...there.” They pointed at the tree behind the man—or rather, above the man, at the branches above his head.

“Don’t worry about it,” the man said dismissively. “There’s all sorts of wildlife out here.”

“It looked...big,” Charlie said hesitantly.

“Then it was your imagination.” The man tilted his head, and turned on his heel. Without another word, he left.

The total silence continued for a few moments more. Then Charlie jabbed their stick at the fire, and it started crackling again, the crickets chirping once more. “Should we...go to bed?” Lilah asked.

“Maybe some of us...but not all of us,” Winston said slowly. “Just to be...safe.”

Nobody said what they were trying to be “safe” about. Maybe none of them knew. But slowly, the group dispersed, and over time, fell asleep.

When they were leaving in the morning, they passed by a woman talking to one of the rangers, practically frantic. Her husband had disappeared last night. Nobody had heard anything. Anything at all.

#jacksepticeye #jacksepticeye fanfiction #jacksepticegos #septic egos #septic egos au #horrorseptics

[bellsybuilds]

[Part 2 of the Truck Stops and Tribulations series (link)]

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The way home - chapter 4 (T rating and warnings will change)

Din Djarin, Paz Viz(s)la, Baby Yoda, Jack “Agent Whiskey” Daniels, Agent Ginger Ale (modern AU, all human, road trips, found family, family reunions)

Jack claps, bringing the child’s attention back to him. He smiles indulgently. “Come to Papi.”

“Don’t do that,” Din growls.

Ginger stares at the lines of text spilling down the length of her monitor and releases a heavy, trembling sigh. Her hands hover at the keyboard. Her vision is blurring and she's starting to feel light-headed from all the missed sleep of the night before.

After helping Jack with his after-hours family emergency, she had some personal things to address. And these things had a deadline.

A glance to the clock in the bottom right of her monitor has her heart jump with a shot of adrenaline. 6:50AM. Already? Sucking in another quick breath, she forces herself to release it over the count of four slow breaths. Again, in and out, even slower this time, counting to six. By the third slow exhale, she’s drawing air without the feeling of invisible weight on her collar.

The application is almost complete. She just needs to write the concluding remarks on her cover letter… and then get Jack to endorse her nomination to field agent.

Swallowing thickly, her fingers curl to loose fists.

"Ginger?"

She jumps from her chair and whirls, monitor shielded with her back, hands splayed wide.

From the doorway, Jack has poked his head through, an eyebrow raised in question. Ginger didn't hear the latch open. Freshly shaven and bare of his customary moustache, Jack doesn't look like himself. That's the point, though it's unsettling. Jack hasn’t been without it the entire time she’s known him.

This Fall will mark her seventh anniversary with Statesman as an analyst.

He frowns at her suspiciously. "What are you doing?"

"Just--" Ginger waves a dismissive hand and hopes she's angling herself to block her work. Her cheeks heat with embarrassment. "Some personal admin."

"Well, finish it later and get moving. These halls will be busy soon and I don't want an audience."

Her heart skips a beat, chastised. "Right. Right, I'll--" She turns to quickly save and close her work, locking down her station.

Out in the hallway, they fall in step, Ginger moving quickly to keep up with Jack's longer stride. From the corner of her eye, she watches him draw the back of a self-conscious hand across his upper lip.

"It looks all right," she tries to encourage him, voice light.

His lip curls, grumbling. "I feel naked as a fresh baby's bottom."

"You look younger." Like a fresh recruit, but with broader shoulders.

Jack seems to agree because he sighs, pushing through a tight jaw, “That ain't a good thing, Ginger."

Leaving the secure wing and emerging onto the grounds, Ginger sharply inhales the cool blast of the dawn, eyes watering. Datapad clutched to her chest, she looks to the pale grey sky and sucks in a deeper breath, willing herself awake. The fresh air tastes cold and clean. She'll need all her senses for the task ahead.

Just a little bit of conceit: like a preliminary mission to demonstrate what she's capable of.

Entering the public buildings of the estate, she waits for Jack as he draws the door shut behind them. He always tried to be a gentleman… it’d be nice if he also didn’t yell so much.

Continuing on, Ginger has to clear her throat twice before she trusts her voice won't crack. The heated, recycled air feels almost too warm after the brief passage outside. "W-when we're done here, I could use your help with something."

Jack raises an eyebrow at her, the expression quickly slipping into his genial charm when they’re spotted by the front guards at reception. They both nod back in greeting. "All right," Jack's tone is dubious.

"Your endorsement, actually," she clarifies, throat tightening with sudden nervousness, and she keeps her eyes ahead as they turn the corridor to guest accommodation.

Up ahead, she can hear the tinkle of dishes and the soft murmur of chatter from the cafeteria.

Beside her, Jack has straightened his shoulders, expression drawn tight. After a long moment, he finally speaks, halting, "Look, darlin'--"

The flip of her stomach makes Ginger rush to interrupt, turning on him with a bright smile. "Just think about it! Wait here." She gestures to the storage closet as they approach. "And I'll go get him."

Marching away with the datapad tight against her side, she willfully blocks out any sigh or stray comment that might reach her ears. She doesn’t want to hear it right now. She can’t afford to. It's probably unbecoming of Statesman agents to run from potential criticism considering all the other things they would face in the field… but first, she has to get into the field. Right now, Jack is the only thing standing between her and a re-classification.

Nobody else at this site could possibly compete with her training or hours invested in the lab and as mission support. She knows this branch inside and out. She is the next best person equipped to protect its interests from the front lines. And she can do the job just as well as Jack.

One hurdle at a time.

Thankfully, none of the sparse crowd in the cafeteria give her a second glance. True to Jack’s assumption, the men she’s looking for are awake. Ginger spots them seated by the far wall, affording one of the best vantages of all the tables and counter of food assembly.

The two men are seated across from each other, emptied plates of breakfast before them, though she can see Din occupied with a smaller plate, pushing something around with his fork. On the chair beside him, the child sits with his legs splayed, blinking up at Din with more patience and curiosity than she has ever witnessed in a toddler not falling asleep. Barely eye level with the table in its over-large onesie, his tiny fingertips barely peek beyond his thick, padded sleeves and the brown collar bunching around his shoulders. These men either don’t know how to dress this child or are low on options.

Ginger has no place to judge.

Drawing closer, she catches the end of Din’s terse, “What the fuck are fairy lights?”

The taller man, Paz, turns his phone and, over Din’s shoulder, Ginger sees the portrait of a car’s front interior at night: small lights thread across the cloud grey roof of the cabin like softly haloed stars. One of the cords trails down the open passenger side window like a lead back to the real world from the dream of the whimsical refuge. At the photo’s lower end, someone is holding an unfolded map open to the camera’s eye: an invitation to adventure on the open road.

Din frowns, shaking his head and decisively spears another small portion of waffle. On the chair beside him, the child snaps to attention and bounces, gasping with excitement, small arms waving at the fork’s approach.

Despite Ginger’s exhaustion from the long night, a smile tugs at her mouth. What a beautiful child.

“Sit still,” Din orders, holding the fork hostage until the kid looks back into his face and splits into a pure, bright laugh at whatever he sees there.

Paz glances up from his phone, looking between them. A slow smile curves his mouth, small and private. His relaxed slouch is a far leap from the hostile bodyguard who towered over Ginger last night, shoulders squared, suspicious and domineering. He only cracked in the moment the baby cried at the sight of the needle. If they had met under different circumstances, Ginger would have even called him handsome with his plaid lumberjack sense of style.

“I think he would like them,” Paz is encouraging, appraising the photo again.

“We don’t need it.”

“They’re free.”

“From where?”

Ginger finally clears her throat and holds her datapad against her side, smiling with an apologetic shrug when they both sit back, looking up at her. Jack’s brother nods politely in greeting. Under his worn cap, Din’s eyes look heavy and red-rimmed, shadowed with the faint bruise of exhaustion. Maybe Ginger isn’t the only one who lost sleep last night.

Across from him, Paz looks spry by comparison. He’s not wearing his cap this morning, and his dark hair gleams wet from a recent shower. But something subtle has shifted in his expression. The soft smile has slipped away. His gaze narrows and he straightens in his chair. This one will be watching her.

At their mutual, undivided attention, her mouth is suddenly dry.

“Good morning,” she says.

The kid catches the neck of Din’s fork and hums when he retreats with his prize of waffles, eyes crinkled happily. A drip of maple syrup escapes from the corner of his mouth.

Ginger has to resist the impulse to lean over and wipe it away.

Paz does it for her, reaching across the table to thumb it from the kid’s cheek and wipe his finger on the napkin by Din’s plate. The kid doesn’t miss a beat, already rising in his seat to reach for more of the dissected waffle from Din’s plate.

“Morning,” Din says it like a sigh, and Ginger feels that weary sentiment in her bones. She doesn’t take it personally. “Ginger, right?”

“Agent Ginger Ale,” she corrects, then nodding, “Ginger is fine.” At least she hasn’t left an impression as the scary woman with the needle.

“Good morning,” Paz echoes, tone surprisingly bright. For some reason, Din frowns at him.

“I hope you both had a chance to try their hash browns,” Ginger says, glancing back at the food counter and the few staff milling around this early in the morning, easily distinguishable by the IDs dangling from their lapels. “They’re my favourite.”

Din’s arms fold on the table before him, gently closing around his elbows. The child frowns when the gesture pushes the waffle plate farther from his reach. Stepping carefully along his seat and holding onto the table’s edge for balance, the child tries again, eyes narrowed in intense concentration. From across the table, Paz watches, mouth curving with a fond, amused quirk.

With a glance at the counter, Din nods. “The food was fine.”

She flashes a quick smile at him again and hopes it doesn’t tremble. Small talk isn’t her strongest suit. “We’re ready for you two.”

Din straightens in his seat. “Now?”

The kid stills with a tiny handful of waffle like he’s been caught. “Beh?”

She nods, stepping back to give him space. “You and him.” She looks at Paz and finds him already watching her. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to wait out here.”

Paz looks from her to Din, slow and considering. “How long will you be?”

Ginger tilts her head, scanning the room as she considers the time it will take them to get back. Do the swap. Get in the lab. Hope nobody stops them and then get the kid on that table... “An hour. Maybe less.”

Paz looks back to Din. “I’ll go check on Missy.”

Din just shrugs a shoulder, seeming noncommittal.

Ginger blinks. “Missy?”

“It’s his cat,” Din rises and scoops the kid up under his armpits, then blinks wide, startled at the squawk of indignation in his ear because the motion made the kid drop his waffle.

“Cat?” Ginger hasn’t seen a cat in person in so long. She misses cats.

“She’s waiting,” Paz explains, also rising to his feet. “In the car.”

Oh. All by herself? No, it’s not her business. Focus.

“When you come back, tell the front desk you’re here for me and Jack,” she tells Paz.

Din hands the child another portion of waffle, syrup-free, and watches him shovel it into his mouth with an expression between judging and amused, shaking his head quietly. Wiping his hand on his worn jeans, Din meets Paz’s gaze, and his smile fades slightly. It could be Ginger’s imagination but in that space of a heartbeat, the air seems to thicken with a strange tension.

And then Din looks to her. “Give us a minute?”

“Of course,” she shakes her head, palms raised. No problem. “I’ll be right out front. But please be quick.”

///

Din waits until Ginger is out of hearing range, white coat rippling behind her. When he looks to Paz, he finds the man smiling at the kid, gently pinching his cheek.

“You don’t have to,” Din says.

Paz’s gaze flicks to him, frowning slightly. “What?”

“Come back. If you want to head on your way now. You got us this far. That’s enough.”

Paz pauses, glancing to the child wiping his mouth against Din’s shoulder. Paz is hard to read, but Din is pretty sure the rapid blinking, searching gaze means ‘kind of stunned’, yet he still arrives at, “Yeah. Okay.”

A fist inexplicably closes around Din’s lungs. “Yeah?”

Paz nods, hands coming to a rest on his hips. “I mean. I’m in no rush, but... we got you back to your brother.”

Din almost snorts a laugh. The reunion with Jack is not something he’s celebrating.

“And if you feel safe here….”

Din frowns, but doesn’t correct him. Safe? Getting here wasn’t about safety. Jack had resources they needed. There are too many bad memories wound up in this place and Din will be out of here as soon as they’re done. But he won’t need Paz for that.

“We’ll be fine,” Din says, rather than dispute him. Paz has done more than enough for them, and Din doesn’t like being indebted to people. He shuffles the kid higher against his side, freeing his right hand. He offers it to Paz. “Thank you.”

Paz has many different smiles. Din wonders if the man knows that about himself. This one is… difficult to name. Paz considers the hand Din has offered him and chuckles under his breath. The hand that clasps Din back is firm and powerful, but unlike their first handshake, doesn’t pretend to crush him in his grip.

That was only funny the first time.

They had just met. Paz had emerged from the dark of the Waffle House’s lot like some kind of hellish spectre, spewing fire and barking at Din to get down. He’d placed the flamethrower in Din’s hands so he could take the wheel once aboard his truck. Din promptly turned it on him. And Paz had just put up his hands, fearless, gaze serious.

“You can roast me later, but I can get you far from here.”

Paz hadn’t held it against him. Trust was earned. Everyone and their dog had been chasing this child. And Paz was the only one laying cover fire; well-equipped for a private citizen. Din might have been more suspicious if Paz wasn’t clearly just from the country and living on the open road. If Din had space and means, he would be doing the same.

“The honour was mine,” Paz insists with that rare, quiet gravity that always made Din feel like the air was clearing, like he was peeling a shade of the world back on something significant but could never hold it long enough to understand what he was seeing. Paz releases him and gently cups the back of the kid’s head. The little one twists around for a better look at him. “Look after him, kiddo.”

The kid frowns, lips parting in a soft shape of confusion. Din wonders if he’ll even remember Paz in a week’s time.

Belatedly, Din realises they still have the mess of their breakfast on the table before them. As though reading his mind, Paz shakes his head, waving him off.

“I’ll clean this up. You go. That woman sounds like you're in a hurry.”

Din’s heart thuds in his chest. They’re never going to see him again and it feels… abrupt. Seven days of sharing meals, of waking to the rock and sway of the road beneath him and Paz at the truck’s wheel, that darned cat nuzzling against him for space on the cabin’s small bed. It’s been so long since he travelled with anyone. Did saying goodbye always feel this heavy? And unfairly easy?

“Are you sure?”

Paz is already turning away, collecting their plates. He waves Din off. “Go on. I’ve got this.”

They’re just ships passing in the night. That has always been his life. Din nods mechanically and feels the child’s small hand clutch at his collar.

“Thank you.”

Thank you for taking a risk for us. Until our paths cross again. Be safe.

Arms tight around the child, Din turns and leaves. The child yawns in his ear and Din takes the reminder to take a deep breath, putting their new friend behind them. Maybe some goodbyes just have to be understated, no matter how big they feel.

"Din."

His heart thumps hard and his breath catches in his throat. When he looks back, Paz nods with a two-fingered salute. His smile is kind.

"Good luck."

"Ehn," the kid complains, twisting in Din's arms and flopping overbackwards, almost falling right out of his hold, what the hell, kid?

Heart leaping, Din catches the kid just in time, mentally cursing and wondering why-- what is wrong with this kid-- but he shoves those thoughts to the side and gives Paz a tight nod of thanks. The guy’s smile widens, and Din rushes from the cafeteria before he can embarrass himself further.

"Hey," Din commands, bouncing the whining kid to get his attention. "Settle."

The kid sags in his arms, and his head hangs with a pout.

Ginger smiles when she sees him (what does he do to keep earning that from people? Must be the kid) and leads them to a storage closet of all places.

It's larger than it looks from the outside: several shelves deep full of industrial cleaning supplies and equipment. It smells of bleach and dust. Overhead, a fan whirs noisily from the air vent. In the clear walking space before them, Jack stands by an empty steel chair set on a small square of tarpaulin. He smiles brightly upon seeing the kid, arms spread wide in welcome.

“There he is!”

Meeting Jack’s eye, the kid bursts into delighted giggles and curls away, hiding his face against Din’s chest. Kids are weird.

Jack catches Din’s eye and nods. "Sit. You can hold him.”

The door clicks shut behind them, and Din glances back to see Ginger standing guard.

Din frowns, eyeing the familiar tool in Jack's hand. "What's going on?"

"We're taking care of that tracker," Jack slaps the seat's back as though it's a prized ride. He brandishes the hair trimmer. "But first you need a haircut. Time is short. Sit and I'll explain.”

Ten minutes later, Din is freshly shorn (uncomfortably so), and testing the give in the shoulders of his new outfit. Jack’s clothes are heavier than they look, warmer, too, but loose.

“Did you gain weight?” he frowns at his brother.

Jack sneers at him, lacing up his boots. “Or did you just lose too much muscle?”

“Why��d you have to shave your moustache?”

Jack straightens like a shot and glares at him, offended. “Hey, I thought you shaved yours, too, all right! It’s been a long night.”

“Feel naked,” Din grumbles, mournfully rubbing his bare upper lip. It doesn’t feel right.

Straightening side-by-side, the two brothers size each other up, clothes exchanged, groomed to match, a near perfect mirror image. Din stares at the beaver blend cowboy hat and slowly puts it on with a groan.

“You’re not standing right,” Jack says.

“We don’t all have a stick up our ass,” Din mutters.

Jack points at him accusingly. “Fix your stance, or we’re goin’ to get nowhere real fast!”

“Shh!” Ginger hushes, looking specifically at Jack with alarm. “Keep it down!”

“Fine,” Din mutters and cocks a hip out, hands on his waist in his most insulting impression of his brother’s dumb bravado at rest. “How’s this?”

Not at all deterred, Jack takes a different tact. “Well, let’s find out.” He turns to the child waddling through the short tufts of hair strewn from Din’s haircut on the tarpaulin. “Hey, Green Bean.”

The child looks up with a questioning sound, a small hand wrapped around the chair’s leg.

Jack smiles. “C’mere.”

And something in Din rails watching his brother in his clothes, holding out his arms, smiling as Din never would (or could); and his heart kicks in his chest when the child totters towards him with a happy noise, arms lifting up.

No, Jack hasn’t earned that.

"Kid,” Din orders in the same voice he always has, irrationally hoping the kid will recognise him: the one who has watched over him these past days, fed and washed him, let him drool against his shoulder, and kept him from gnawing on their weapons.

The kid halts halfway to Jack, and looks back at him, searching his face. He squints adorably.

Din almost smiles, but thinks better of it, imagining how unnatural it would look. Instead, he points at himself. “Who’s this?”

“Ehn?” The kid blinks, turning more fully to look at him. Din knows he’s only a child, but something in his expression is more aware, more articulated and mature than any child has a right to be. Is that what people mean when they say they see an old soul?

Jack claps, bringing the child’s attention back to him. He smiles indulgently. “Come to Papi.”

“Don’t do that,” Din growls.

Thankfully, Ginger chooses that moment to step back in. “Jack, it’s almost eight. Come on.”

Sighing with disappointment as though he’s been deprived of his game, Jack rises back to his feet and unclips his ID, offering it to his brother. Just as Din is about to take it, Jack holds it back, and makes sure he has his brother’s undivided attention.

“Din’ika, I’m trusting you not to commit crimes against the state in my name while you wear this. It’s a big responsibility which I know you know ‘cause you couldn’t run from it fast enough.”

Scowling, Din snatches the ID and clips it to the chest pocket of his suit jacket. It’s a different set of clothes from what Jack wore yesterday, but he doesn’t think either of these two went home. The thought that they worked through the night for the kid is the only thing staying his tongue, and discomfort squirms again in his chest. Jack will hold this debt over him for a while to come.

“Need to go over the plan again?” Jack asks, looking between Ginger and Din.

“We get in the lab, Ginger removes the chip, we come back, swap, and we’re out of your lives,” Din says. He watches the child around Jack’s knee, the little one sliding down to his bottom, grabbing a fistfull of short, brown hair and throwing it to the side in a full body motion. Giggling, the child does it again, watching the strands scatter and flutter like grass.

“Sweet and simple,” Jack smirks, but claps a hand round his brother’s shoulder, focuses on Ginger with intent. “You do everything this woman tells you, all right? You don’t speak to anyone. You don’t go anywhere or touch anything ‘less she tells you to.”

Din meets Ginger’s slightly startled look and cocks his head with a shrug. “You’re the boss.”

Jack fixes him with a raised finger in warning. “I would never say that.”

“It’s okay,” Ginger assures Din, as though she’s brushing Jack aside. “I’ll take care of you.”

But as his brother is turning away, something else occurs to Din. He doesn’t know why he thinks of it.

“Wait.”

Jack gives him an arched look. Din gestures between the two of them and thumbs the thin necklace of leather at his neck. “Should we….?”

Should they swap this, too?

Jack’s sober look wipes all other emotion from his face. He hesitates, eyes falling to Din’s neck. Something hardens behind his gaze. “Ni trikari, ni ne'lise.”

Din shouldn’t have asked in the first place. He nods, palming the shape of the steel amulet beneath his shirt. He can’t see any impression of Jack’s through his, but Din knows his twin must still wear its counterpart. No matter what else has passed between them, this one thing would not have changed. “Gar serim.”

“Hey.” Jack clasps his shoulder firmly, voice quiet. “No one will look that far. Trust me.”

Gratitude warms through the tight feeling that had briefly clenched his chest. Even the thought of parting with his own makes him tense. He doesn’t have many personal effects, but the pendant….

Ginger is watching them with a curious frown. “What language is that?” she asks gently.

Din’s stomach swoops. He glances at his brother, but sees none of his own wariness reflected back. It makes him feel better.

“An old one,” is all Jack says, then claps his hands together. “Okay. Let’s get this show on the road.”

#truck stops and tribulations series #the mandalorian #Kingsman: the golden circle #din djarin #paz vizsla #paz vizla #baby yoda #jack daniels #agent whiskey #agent ginger ale #paz/din #din/paz #found family #family reunions #road trip #all human AU

[hey-hamlet]

BNHA AU Ideas : The villain’s little hero

Also on AO3! 

TL;DR:  All Might, Japan's number 1 villain has a successor. The problem? His successor is a hero hopeful. All Might will stop at nothing to make sure his kid gets to live his dream.

au where all might is a villain raising izuku to be a hero!

quirkless izuku, his backstory is mostly the same

all might decided that hero work had too much red tape. if he was going to take down afo, he needed the freedom to do whatever he had to and he wasnt getting that working within the law

so hes a,,, viilllaaaiinnn?? like. stain. but less murdery, would also save civilians if they were in danger

he has 0 qualms about crippling fake heroes but hes not a fan of murder

nighteye is still his sidekick, he doesnt use his quirk on allmight bc all might h a t e s it

hes kinda on board with "the future is only set in stone because you've seen it now" so he wants the freedom to break fate. but its very useful to get info, so nighteye just uses it on other people

hero to the people villain to literally everyone else

allmights villain costume is reallll similar to his hero costume. just less eye bleeding

he has longer grey hair too.

all mights bronze age costume is basically his villain costume thanks for listening

david shield is still in this story

david agrees w all might and like,,, sneaks him stuff on the downlow

all might told him ab. his quirk because who on earth is gonna believe that one america man about japans worst supervillain?

also melissa is a Soft Young Woman and she is all mights favourite person on this fucking planet until he meets izuku

all might went to ua, only defected after completing his hero training because he wanted to be trained by the people he was going to screw over

izuku has always kinda been a big fan of all might. not openly because hes legally a villain and very much paints himself as one, but his quirk is one of the most amazing things izuku has ever seen

when he looks closer, all might has never let a civilian get hurt once hes been on scene. hes taken hits to protect housing, hes pulled heroes from the line of fire

izuku watches his sports festivals and wonders why? why did all might, the man who happily told the world he'd stop at nothing to keep them safe, suddenly flip sides like that for no reason?

izuku doesnt buy it

izuku's big yellow backpack is a big red one in this universe, hes had it so long its gone pink but he still loves it

the sludge villain

all might saves him and izuku is crying. allmight thinks its because hes scared but izuku just turns to him with this big weepy eye smile and gives him the most genuine thanks he thinks hes ever been given

(its honestly the shock of that that makes him deflate into small might, which has izuku scrambling to find tissues and called an ambulance before he thinks better of calling emergency services for All Might)

izuku is like "Im SO SORRY SIR ARE YOU oK"

and all might is like ",,, b  oy"

izuku softly asking

"can,, can i still be someone with out a quirk? can i still make a difference?"

all might doesnt get the chance to anser because there is a massive explosion in the distance

its bakugo!! hes dying

the sludge villain got away bc izuku and all might were chatting a little

izuku hears it and he feels this terrible realization, because its probably not bakugo? but its definitely bakugo because izuku's life is falling to pieces

he sprints towards him and katsuki will n e v e r admit it but he feels hope in that moment because some one is trying to help. even if its just izuku, he wasnt totally left for dead

all might sees this tiny, nervous, quirkless kid run straight up to a villain that almost killed him seconds before to save someone what looks like they'd rather die

and he thinks

"no one deserves one for all more than him"

and allmight, the most wanted villain in japan, maybe the world, jumps in

the heroes look at him and they are scared. if they couldnt take the sludge villain, what is all might going to do to them? but the scariest man in japan, the person parents tell their kids about to stop them from going out at night, blows the sludge villain to tiny pieces and carefully, gently, places the two boys by the heroes

before he vanishes before they can call for backup or even ask why

izuku gets yelled at by the heroes because the heroes are scared and angry they couldnt stop either of the villains and izuku is so overwhelmed that hes crying and he can hardly breathe

bakugo doesnt even yell at him because hes so dazed about everything that happened and he cant make himself yell at this sobbing kid that used to be his friend

(bakugo is holding izukus hand like hes going to crush it but its the only thing keeping izuku present)

izuku is walking home and hes still hicuping and crying because he almost died and the heroes hate him and he feels a hand on his shoulder, and a soft :"its ok now my boy"

he knows its all might but he cant help but hide his face in his shirt and sob

all might gets down so he can look izuku in the eye

"you asked me if you could be someone with out a quirk and i didnt get the chance to answer. my answer? you already are someone. you are someone that inspired me, a villain, to save the day. you are going to be amazing"

and looks him dead in the eye "you'll do amazing things, even with out a quirk. but, you of all people deserve one, and no matter what you chose to do with it, it can be yours. hero, villain or someone in between"

izuku looks at this villain

this painfully thin villain, who just saved his life and who has unimaginable strength

and he throws his arms around his waist and sobs

inko isnt a great mum in this au and she likes to basically pretend izuku doesnt exist

izuku trains a lot and has to make his own food bc his mum just ignores him

he sneaks out at night to clear trash and sneaks back in before dawn to clean the sand from his hair

he smells like saltwater and rust, and he hasnt slept more than 4 hours a night in weeks and katsuki is worried

all might sees him crumbling with a smile stuck on his face and he wants to stop him from self-destructing, but the kid will never learn his lesson until he feels his body give up under what hes doing to it. if all might steps in he'll do it again and again until no one stops him and hes never learnt his limit.

so he waits and he watches while he pretends he cant see the bags under his eyes and pretends that everytime izuku sways on his feet he doesnt feel a jolt of deep panic

did he do this? if he the reason izuku looks like hes falling apart before his eyes?

the kid passes the fuck out and all might tells him off in a soft dad way and izuku cries bc why does this villain care more than his mum does

and all might catches the end of that little mumble, and feels terrible so he pretends he didnt hear and takes him for lunch

they go to a cafe and all might buys izuku the cutest slice of cake and a big ass bowl of katsudon and some fancy fucking tea and covers the kids eyes every time he tries to look at the prices

izuku looks at all might and asks

"are you buying me katsudon with crime money"

and all might looks sheepish and izuku giggles like an idiot and says "dont tell me ill feel bad!!!"

all might grins bc this kid is honestly the only reason he hasnt stabbed a pro hero in a few months bc hes so fucking sweet

he has to carry izuku half the way home bc the kid could barely lift his chopsticks and almost fell asleep in the booth after he finished eating

and allmight, skinny and kinda scary is giving his 15 year old a piggy back and someone says "you're such a good dad!" and he almost coughs up his last lung

izuku mumbles sleepily and hes has the biggest warm and fuzzy feeling and hes going to yell bc hes All Might the No. 1 Villain and this fucking kid is drooling on his sweater but he would die for him

some random stranger on the street commenting on how it was rly fortunate that izuku inherited his adorable smile from his father

all might, abt to burst into tears: whack

allmight is easily flustered even when hes killed a man

he comes home and inko isnt there so he has to like, wake up izuku to get him to open the door and he feels bad bc izuku is a Sleepy Man

izuku mumbles that he cant ever tell if shes at home or not because nothing changes and all might feels a wave of "wait my son isnt being parented enough"

so he makes izuku a cup of tea and tucks him into bed after he has a shower because izuku is His Son Now Inko

hes like

sitting in the living room reading the paper and he hears inko's car and hes like ",,, fuck it im walking out the front door im no coward"

she doesnt even notice and hes going to scream because does she have a brain

inko, spaced out, tired and terrible: oh is the tall man here for izuku :))) thats great :)))

all might is screaming bc"" do you get let weird men into see your tiny son>???? what the fuck???

hes so small inko??? and you?? let random men in?????

all might would yeet her into the sun if he could but his boy needs an actual family member to make going to ua easier

inko is kinda mentally ill. she is depressed and often forgets she has izuku. like shes not always being terrible she just sometimes forget to do basic things

one time she locked izuku out of the house for 10 hours and he had to sleep next to the front door

one month she didnt buy any food so by the end of it he was starving and out of his own money and there was n o t h i n g in the house, but inko would go out to eat every night and lunch and not take her son

allmight is upset bc izuku didnt tell him but izuku is embarrassed. embarrassed that he was forgotten by his own mum, that he couldnt do anything to help her or himself and honestly mad he was so hungry all might noticed bc he didnt want to bug him

it was getting to the point that katsuki actually slipped some change into his bag with a candy bar

#bnha au #bnha #villains hero au #villain all might #all might #midoriya izuku #midoriya #deku #katsuki bakugou #toshinori yagi #yagi #midoriya inko #dadmight #david shield #melissa shield #mha #boku no hero

[peachximagines]

Princess Five (One)

warning: underage drinking

word count: 1.9k

pairing: OCxBilly Hargrove, platonic: StevexOC

a/n: as a poc, I am not excusing Billy’s racist undertones/his bad behavior. Also instead of El at this point, it’s the OC. This takes place after the events of Season 2. 

  I lift the apple in front of my eyes, glimpsing over the curves and the way the lights hit it so gently. Hopper smiles at me, “Don’t play with your food kid. You should be getting some nutrients in before Steve takes you out.” I shrug, letting the apple bounce onto the table in front of me. Hopper sits in front of me, leveling us.    “You don’t have to go if you really don’t want to. I’ll tell him I changed my mind.” I shake my head, dismissing the idea. “Kids aren’t as nice as the kids you know are. Will, Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and Max are different. You understand that right?” I nod. “If anyone gives you grief, DON’T use your powers. Just walk away.” I huff in disdain. He shoves my shoulder, standing up. I shouldn’t let anyone walk over me. I deserve the respect that everyone else gets. I can’t use my words so I’ll use my actions instead.    “Eat the apple or you’re not going Fee.” I frown, biting into the tart fruit. “You’re going to have to introduce yourself as Fee, I don’t think Five is a socially acceptable name.” I roll my eyes. “I saw that, brat.” I smile, swallowing another chunk of the fruit down.    “My name is Five. Badass name.” I scribe on a piece of discarded mail. I slide it over to Hopper. He assesses the words.    “Introduce yourself like that if you really want to, but be wary.” I click my tongue, giving him the thumbs up. A honk outside shifts the attention from the half-eaten apple to my only age-appropriate friend. “Okay kid, no drinking, no kissing, home before midnight.” Hopper kisses my forehead, following me to the front door. I tap his hand three times. I love you.    “Love you more.” I scrunch up my nose. One tap. Impossible. Hopper waves to Steve. Steve waves enthusiastically at Hopper as I slide into the seat next to him.    “Home at a reasonable hour. I own guns, son.”    “Of course, Hop. She’s in good hands with me.” I shoot Hopper the thumbs up. He watches us pull out from the driveway and Steve peels off into the night. Rick Astley sings gently in the background, Steve humming along.    “I know this is your first party. I promise I won’t leave you okay?” There was a certainty in his voice I knew I could trust. I nod. “If anyone gives you a hard time, let me know and I’m there.” I look away from his soft face. I know he couldn’t win a fight. Someone scary already destroyed his face once. The memory of the bruises and the cuts sends shivers down my spine. I vow to hurt whoever hurt my friend, I will never let it happen again. I open his glove compartment searching for a pen. I find a stubby pencil instead. I pull my notepad out of my purse. Steve watches out of the corner of his eye as I scribble words on the paper. I shove his arm to get his attention and he briefly takes his eyes off the road.    “‘Mute not disabled’. Well shit, Fee I know that. I just worry okay.” He faces forward, focusing on the road. “People can be mean alright?” I watch as the scenery outside changes from only woods to an expansion of rock. The quarry. I scribble more words. I wait until Steve parks a few ways from the rest of the cars before shoving the pad into his hand.    “ ‘I know mean. Papa.’” Steve sighs, turning fully to me. “I know you know mean. This is just different alright? Please just take my word for it.” Steve smiles at me, his voice gentle and kind.  I nod, getting out of the car. The chilly air nips at my nose. The excitement and screech of loud teens almost drown out the crackle of the bonfire. The fire towers over everything, casting a warm glow over the surrounding area. The burnt embers release a smell making me nostalgic. Hopper’s cabin. There’s only one place the fire fails to illuminate. The pit of the quarry looks almost bottomless and I feel suddenly overwhelmed. I turn to Steve, his eyes already on me.    “Three taps to my left hand and we’re out of here alright? We’ll go to a diner and drive around until your curfew. Three taps.” I nod. As we walk into the crowd of teens, I feel out of place. They are all kids my age but yet they know so little. They don’t know the expansive dimensions or the monsters that could lurk in bottomless pits that they like to party around. Steve grabs two glass bottles from a cooler, placing one in my hand.    “It’s beer, tastes like piss but we act like it tastes good.” I open the bottles without touching and Steve sputters. “Fee! We’re in public.” he hisses. The realization dawns on me. The ignorant teens wouldn’t even begin to grasp the concept of telekinesis. I shrug, drinking the cold piss, as Steve had called it. I scrunch my nose up.    “King Steve! Your new princess can’t handle her liquor. Not like the old one at least.” A gruff voice calls. A tan boy steps into my line of sight and I feel all air leave me. His hair was blond and long, longer than Steve’s. He smirks around the bottle pressed to his lips. “Want some, princess? It’s what these cow fuckers here call ‘fuel’.” Steve steps between me and the offered bottle.    “She’s fine, Hargrove.” Hargrove presses two fingers into Steve’s chest, pushing him out the way. The bottle’s still outstretched. I allow my eyes to travel up from the base of the bottle to the tan strong arms holding it. The strong arms connected to a strong chest that was barely covered.    “Take a sip, sweet girl.” I grip the bottle and take a huge swig. Hargrove whoops loudly as I swallow it down. The burn in my mouth is almost unbearable. He laughs, pulling me from the rock and next to him. “Shit, princess!” I wish I  could scrub the burning feeling from my mouth. Hargrove throws an arm over my shoulder, pressing me into his side. He smells like the cigarettes Hopper smokes and a little bit of the liquor I just drank.    “Alright Billy, that’s enough,” Steve growls, pulling me back to him. I scramble back to the rock, returning to my original position.    “Aw Stevie, never any fun. I saw your old princess cuddled up with Byers by the fire, maybe you should say hi.” Billy says. It sounds like a nice suggestion but the intent doesn’t seem too nice. This mean is just different, alright? This was the new mean. Nice words but mean definitions. I look over to the fire and saw them. Nancy was tucked under Jonathan’s arm. One arm with Nancy, one arm with his camera. I peak over at Steve and I can tell he can see it too.    “I need another beer,” he grumbles. “C’mon, Fee.”    “I’ll keep her company, you don’t need to have a leash on her.” Steve rolls his eye, setting his hands on his hips.    “I’m grabbing a beer and saying hi. Will you be fine over here?” I nod. “She doesn’t talk dipshit so have fun with that.” I wish he hadn’t said that. The intent wasn’t harsh but the words were. Mean was different than Papa Mean and I wish I didn’t have to learn it.    “You don’t talk?” I shrug. I pull my knees to my chest, allowing myself to hide just a little. “That’s cool. I talk enough for the both of us.” I look over my knees. Billy got himself comfortable on the rock. “I’m Billy Hargrove. A sip?” I sip from the outstretched bottle, keeping eye contact with Billy. The look in his eye put a fire in my belly that I didn’t know I could feel. Maybe it was the alcohol. Just a hi from Steve turned into a full conversation with Nancy and Jonathan. Billy stayed, keeping me company and full of fire. The bottle was empty by the time Steve hustled over.    “Shit, Five. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk for so long.” I giggle, shrugging my shoulders. I lean my head fully against Billy’s shoulder. He had wrapped his jacket around the both of us when he noticed I began to shiver.    “Are you drunk?” Steve looks at the empty bottle. “You’ve got to be shitting me!” he exclaimed. All the happiness in me dissipated. I sat up straighter, letting the jacket fall from my shoulders.    “Come down, it’s a fucking party.” Billy tries to defend me, sitting up haphazardly. “C’mon princess, it’s chilly out here.” I shook my head, wrapping my arms tighter around myself. He gazes at me and then at the angry Steve. “And you, Mr. Mature, don’t yell at her like that again alright?” Billy slides off the rock, allowing his legs to have a much-needed stretch. He shimmies out of his jacket, offering it out to me. Steve pushes himself between us.    “Keep the fucking jacket. Five, let’s go. Now.” I slide off the rock, bowing my head.    “Who the shit do you think you are? I’ll knock that crown off your head so quick your head will spin, King Steve.” Billy sneers,  clenching his leather jacket so tight his knuckles show strain.    “Take your jacket, and fuck off.” Steve plants his feet in the dirt, squaring himself off like he was ready for a fight. I will never let it happen again. I clench my jaw and focus on anything in the vicinity that could avert attention. I look at Billy, his eyes aflame. I step forward, pressing my hand on his bare chest. I stare at him, willing him to calm down. The flame flickers before dying out. Calm. I urge. I keep my eyes on him. I rub the skin beneath my hand gently with my thumb. Calm. I offer Billy an awkward smile.    “Put this on, Fee,” he says gently, offering his jacket. I take it from him. He smiles. His eyes flicker to Steve real quick before he turns away, walking back to his group.    “Car, now.” I rush to keep up with Steve as he takes the largest steps to get to the car.    “What were you fucking thinking? You got drunk, you draped yourself like some harmless over Hargrove and you took the jacket?” I squish into the seats, willing the angry to go away. “Don’t hide now. Now you have to fucking deal with Hopper.” I squeeze my eyes shut. Hopper won’t let me leave again. I’ll have to go back to the cabin. I tap three times. “I’m glad you’re ready to go because that’s exactly where I’m dropping you.” Steve cranks up the music Rick Astley filling the car. I wish I could feel guilt for what I did. Maybe feel bad for drinking with someone Steve obviously doesn’t like. But I couldn’t. Nothing in me told me what I did was wrong. I had fun. I was happy. I deserve to be happy.

#billy hargrove x reader #billy hargrove imagines #billy hargrove x oc #stranger things imagine #steve harrington

[kittae]

The Naked Truth

pairing: Shownu x reader

genre: crack, comedy, a little sexual tension

word count: 1829

prompt: Werewolf!Shownu + “Is that…Is that my bra?” + “I’m too sober for this.”

⟶ Halloween prompts masterlist

⟶ Halloween prompts WIPs

“Ow- fuck!”

climbing through windows was nothing new, nothing difficult. Except when the walls were covered with thorns and climber plants which, despite the name, were not for climbing but instead hid the brick wall behind them, making it hard to get a grip.

He finally clambered inside the only room where the window had been left open, falling to the laminate floor with a hard ‘thud’ when his foot got stuck half way and cringing at the volume of the sound out of reflex. Still, he was confident no one had heard him considering the music blasting from downstairs, everyone attending the Halloween home party probably too engrossed in drinking and dancing. Perfect.

Scurrying to his feet, he cursed under his breath as he took in his surroundings. He’d ended up in someone’s bedroom, most likely a girl’s going off on the vanity that was stacked with makeup in the corner and inspirational quotes in a curly font on the walls. That and the series of lacy and non-lacy bras hanging off the dresser’s doorknob.

The dresser.

He’d almost forgotten his mission and the fact he was standing butt naked in a stranger’s bedroom, not even a leaf to cover his bare bits. But that’s what he was here for.

Having had the misfortune to have landed in a girl’s room, it made it harder for him to find clothes that fit his tall and broad physique, but it had to do. He had to get out of here before anyone came in, even if it was in a hopefully stretchy dress or something. It was Halloween, he could make something up if necessary.

Those damn bras were in the way of opening the closet, though, so he just opted for swinging them over his shoulder while he peered into the small and dark space, looking for something that could possibly fit him. The mirror on the inside of the door showed his reflection, his disheveled, dark hair, the dirt staining his face, the girl standing behind him…

The girl standing behind him?!

‘Oh my- Shit!” he stumbled back, so startled he almost fell into the closet, his hands groping for something to cover himself with and pulling a dozen of clothes from the rack in the process. “Who-who are you?!”

He shifted back and forth on his feet uncomfortably, watching you gape at his crotch he barely managed to hide with one of your crop tops as you were still standing in your doorway with the doorknob in one hand and a red cup in the other.

“I-I am the owner of this- this is my bedroom! Who are you?” you managed to stutter out, feeling a heat climbing up to your cheeks you didn’t know was caused by the alcohol or finding a completely nude man in your bedroom. “Did Tessa do this? Look, i- i appreciate it but just because i’ve been going through a dry spell for over a year doesn’t mean i’m gonna- gonna jump on the first hot, naked guy i see. I mean, you’re really hot, like really, but-”

“Tessa? Who’s Tessa?” the nude dude asked in confusion, his eyebrows knitted while he awkwardly fumbled with the piece of fabric in front of his private parts and it quickly started to dawn on you that your best friend didn’t set this up for you to get laid. This was a stranger. Who was naked. In your bedroom.

“Who are you?!” you asked him again, this time more alarmed as the gravity of the situation started to seep through your alcohol-intoxicated mind. ”How did you get in here?”

“I- through the window but please lower your voice, i can expl-”

“Through my window?!” you whisper-shouted and you weren’t sure why you were even listening to him. “Are you one of those perverts who break into girls’ rooms to steal their clothes and underwear?!”

“No, it’s not like that! I’m-”

You gasped loudly, covering your mouth with your hand and pointing an accusing finger at him, “Were you going to jack off with my crop top?! Seriously, dude, that’s sick!”

A low growl erupted from deep inside his chest before he threw your crop top to the side, taking four long strides until he reached you, wrapping one hand around your waist and the other covering your lips, ignoring the way your eyes widened in surprise and the sounds of indignation that were being muffled against his hand.

“Can’t you shut up for one second? Listen, you need to keep it down before anyone else finds me here. It’s not what you think and i’m sorry for breaking into your room. I’m not a burglar or a pervert, but i am gonna get mad if you keep yelling ridiculous accusations at me!”

You barely heard a thing he said, with his searing skin pressed against your skimpy Halloween outfit. You didn’t even know what your costume was supposed to be, but it was a slutty something. It’d been a long time since a man stood so close to you, and naked at that. He smelled incredible, a musky scent mixed with that of wood and earth reminding you of pure, raw nature. You wanted to get high on it, the haze in your head intensifying and making you feel like you were floating in the air.

You nodded silently with hooded eyes before he gently released you, surprisingly to your disappointment. You didn’t know what that said about you.

After a few silent seconds, you cleared your throat and finally gathered the courage to look him in the eyes, when you noticed the garments hanging off his shoulder. “Is that...Is that my bra?”

He glanced down, seemingly almost forgotten they were there, before he sighed and took them off, “Yes. Yes it is.”

You pursed your lips as you watched him clumsily trying to hang them back on the doorknob of your dresser and decided he couldn’t be dangerous. Whatever explanation there was for...whatever was going on here, you didn’t think he had bad intentions. Despite the way too intimate and slightly scary intermezzo that had just occured between the two of you, it didn't feel like he was going to hurt you.

“I’m- my name is Shownu, by the way.” he smiled sheepishly as he finally introduced himself, not bothering to cover himself anymore and making you blush furiously.

You’d think the alcohol would make you more daring, more brave, but you just couldn’t look at him while he had his dick out like this. Suddenly the lamp on your nightstand became incredibly interesting as you waited for him to put his clothes back on. Except he didn’t.

“Um...c-can you please put your clothes back on?”

“That’s...kind of the reason why i’m here.” he chuckled quietly, scratching at the back of his neck as he got the hint and wrapped one of your scarves around his hips like a towel. Well, you couldn't even be mad at that. "I don't have any...The only reason i broke into your room was because i needed clothes...I just didn't know the room belonged to a girl, unfortunately."

"Are you an exhibitionist?" you asked, genuinely curious.

"Wha-no of course not!"

"A nudist?"

"Will you stop that?!"

"Then why are you naked in my bedroom and in need of my clothes! I'm running out of possibilities here, Shownu! Even the weird ones!"

He didn't immediately answer, very obviously trying to come up with an excuse as his facial features twisted and turned while he racked his brain.

"You're a crossdresser aren't you? Hey, i'm not judging but you might want to invest in your own wardrobe instead of stealing them from-"

"I'm a werewolf! I'm a fucking werewolf, okay?!" the volume of his voice finally went above that of a whisper, throwing his hands in the air in defeat, exasperation written all over his handsome face. He seemed dead serious. Well, this certainly wasn't in your list of possible explanations.

"I'm too sober for this." you deadpanned, quickly swinging a big gulp of liquor from your red cup down your throat.

"Really? You seem pretty hammered already, though."

"Exactly. Now let's get you some clothes so you can go back to your...den and i can lay down in my bed and get ready for my hangover without...you know." you gestured vaguely at his nether regions before digging into your closet to find the baggiest clothes you owned. You didn't care anymore, you just desperately needed sleep.

"Um, thanks...I guess." Shownu muttered as he stepped aside to give you more room.

After a while, you found your old university sweater that had always been three sizes too big and a pair of sweats that belonged to your ex boyfriend. You wouldn't miss these clothes and you'd figured they'd fit him well enough to be on his way.

"Here, try this."

He accepted the clothes with a genuinely thankful smile and despite the fact that he was a naked stranger who broke into your house and believed he was a werewolf, you couldn't stop your heart from stuttering a little. Have you always been so weak for a pretty face? The poor guy was obviously bat shit crazy.

You just remembered your ex might've left a pair of flip flops behind as well, but the second you turned around, he was gone. You didn't even notice him leaving.

sprinting to the window and looking down, you'd expected to see him running away, or better yet limping considering your room was on the second floor, but there was nothing except for your usual backyard. He couldn't have gone through the door because you would've seen him leave.

With your head spinning more than ever before that night, you decided to crawl under the covers and trust your best friend to end the party in your stead as you texted her you weren't feeling well and went to sleep. As long as your house didn't get egged or TP'd, you were good.

When you woke up from dreams of werewolves and hot, naked men the next morning, nourishing a pretty massive hangover, your drowsy eyes fell onto a heap of fabric on your windowsill that you couldn't remember was there before. You hauled yourself out of bed, your head pounding like a jackhammer, and recognized the clothes that were neatly folded as the ones you gave to the guy in your dreams.

Confused and disoriented, you noticed a small piece of paper attached to the grey university hoodie with a safety pin. By closer inspection, there were a few lines of words scribbled with blue ballpoint pen.

Thank you for the clothes.

I'm very sorry for the inconvenience i caused last night. I hope your hangover isn't too bad.

I'm also sorry you had to see me naked like that, i would've preferred it to be under different circumstances.

Take care

X Shownu

#shownu scenarios #monsta x scenarios #monsta x #shownu #halloween monsta x #monsta x au #werewolf!shownu #werewolf!monsta x #werewolf au #halloween prompts #monsta x drabble #shownu drabble #monsta x fanfic #monbebe #monsta x fanfiction

[themockingcrows]

Whisper Just For Me: Ch. 11 - Surfacing

Being apart is tough, but having dawning realizations of just how far apart you may be, potentially forever, is even harder. With new information about Dave coming to light, but no sign of the ghostly man himself, what options do you even have?

This chapter is SFW AO3 Mirror: [X]

-------

    If you weren't certain you were already dead, you would have thought you'd died and gone to some kind of strange afterlife. One minute you were in the car listening to distorted screaming and alternating between being able to feel the stabbing pain of injury and the vague sensation of being near something alive.. and the next you were in a quiet place you did not recognize at all. The pendant you were bound to did not rest around John's neck or anywhere near him that you could detect, but was resting in an open box instead. It looked shinier than before, looked like it had been buffed carefully, polished. The chain looked new as well, sturdy leather cord slick and freshly maintained, stark and dark against the intricate design of the pendant's face.

    This was not John's home. ..Was it Jade's home? Had she taken you there? Where was John? The car accident.. was he even okay? Was he still alive? The accident didn't feel like a death bringing one, but.. maybe it became that way after you lost focus and returned to the pendant. The need to find John was intense, but you needed to know for sure where the fuck you were first. If this was Jade's home, there would probably be a way to signal her or alert her to take you where you needed to go. She seemed to be in good humor lately about your closeness with John so.. surely that wouldn't be too big of an issue, right? There had been no aggression from her lately, no major questioning of your intentions or framing you as some evil being.

    Shouldn't be too hard, right?

    It would be more than hard. This was not Jade's home. Not in the slightest. For one thing, it was far too pink for what you'd assume of her. For another there was a nearly uncomfortable number of cat items around, spindly legs and reaching tails, curved mouth motif left and right. It was cozy but.. strange. Very much not what you pictured possible for Jade's room and very, very much not John's room. Not your own home. Nowhere you needed to be.

    Piles of books lay stacked on and around bookshelves, and the familiar shape of systems for games were settled in different positions near a television and another tall shelf. Some were familiar from John's house, the station and the box, but others were familiar because you knew them specifically from your own life. A proudly displayed NES and an SNES were very easy to spot, but it looked like they'd been heavily customized, altered, and repainted. Somehow, you felt they probably were sturdier and less prone to freezing and glitching than you remember.

    You had to nod in approval at the customized Zapper gun as well. The adjustment to the sight would probably make it a bit more accurate, and while pink wasn't really your color, you found yourself wishing you could grasp solid objects for a chance to make that fucking laughing dog eat your dirt in style.

    You form a more humanoid shape and drift beyond the immediate range of your pendant to continue poking around, rustling papers as you go, looking over information. ...Nope. DEFINITELY not Jade. The letters you rustle on a solid white desk are all addressed to someone named Roxy LaLonde. The address doesn't sound familiar anymore with how much things had changed, but judging from the city at least, you weren't that far from home. A town over from where you had been living and un-living for so long, unless things had changed even more drastically than you'd realized.

    Good that it wasn't another state.. but bad because that was so far out of range of where you needed to be.

    Maybe this person would be able to see you too, could be reasoned with, could help you go home. It wouldn't be too hard to bribe someone right? You recalled stories of ghosts when you were growing up, all bent on finishing some kind of business they had left undone while alive while going about their haunting duties. ...It wasn't business left from while you were alive, but.. business from your afterlife was just as important. Right?

    There had to be some kind of clause in the big book of ghost bullshit, some loophole you could exploit.

    This Roxy person wasn't home from the sound of it, so you decided to drift around some more. A laptop half taken apart was resting on a coffee table, unfinished chips in a bowl off to the side and two empty soda cans on the floor. Some kind of work station in range of the television. Were they taking it apart or putting it back together..? You make two small screws roll off the tabletop and slip beneath the couch, while a third is flung with reckless abandon to fall with a soft tink of contact with the metal cover of a floor vent. There. Feeling a little better already.

    Couldn't immediately get home and check on John and go back to normal? Nothing a little destructive and disruptive tendencies couldn't cure. Temporarily yes, but it was still a cure enough at the time.

    Another computer was sitting near the corner, glowing soft, but much larger than the others. A desktop was what John called it, right? Didn't make that much sense, if the only reason it was called that was because it sat on top of a desk, but you probably just weren't understanding it clearly. There was probably some big distinction you just missed out on, but that was a worry for another time.

    You passed your hand over the keyboard, watched your transparent fingers slide right through them without so much as a second of hesitation, and let your head roll back in frustration. Computers could do anything. It could probably even find John if you could just figure out some way to make it work for you. ..Computers couldn't be bribed, right? Right.

    …. Right?

    A loud, demanding meow cuts the near silence that inhabited the room outside of your rustling and mischief. Rising up and turning in a surprised flip, you hand halfway upside down for a moment to take in the interloper. Fur black as pitch and wide bright eyes, twitchy tail, normal cat behavior. The twin spots above those eyes sure looked funny though, like extra eyes or some form of dotted eyebrow, and the fact they wiggled when the creature meowed loudly again at you didn't help them be any less amusing.

    You move a hand one way, then another, watching the attentive stare of the cat follow with laser precision. Curious, you drop your hand away and revert back to an orb, gently hovering and putting off red light. Much lower energy to do this, but the results were the exact same. No. The results were more pronounced. After a few energetic bobs and swirls in place, the cat suddenly chattered, wiggled its hind end and tried to launch into you. A dart away, and the cat was in hot pursuit, chasing and jumping and trying to swat you out of the air, not able to understand why it could get so close and feel the chill but not hit anything solid.

    The chattering soon turned to distressed, frustrated yowling and circling, pupils wide as dinner plates. ..Was it okay? Did you play with it too much? How much could cats play before they got sick or something? Shit, why didn't you know this, was this Roxy person going to come back to a suddenly dead cat?

    Luckily, the cat was still doing its distressed yowling sounds when the front door rattled gently from a key being turned, opening a bit faster than you first assumed a door could be flung open by one person. She was likely Roxy. This woman was attractive and seemed to have her own style, dark lipstick and bright shades of pink on her shirt and bag mixed with dark accessories in the form of dangling earrings and a cluster of busy looking bracelets on either wrist. The look on her face was one of concern, and she walked right through you to get to her cat after hurriedly shutting the door and dropping her bag. Her heels came loose from the back of her shoes, weight shifted forward to curl protectively around her pet after picking it up from the ground.

    “Ohhh, baby what's wrong? Mutie~. You feelin' alright..?” she crooned, voice a bit huskier than you had imagined upon first spotting her, but still pleasant to listen to. Roxy lifted a hand away from her riled up cat to slip a strand of pale hair behind her ear, shifting where the tight curl was ever so slightly but not loosening it at all.

    The cat meowed softly a few times in response, talkative, before it locked eyes on where you were drifting over its mother's shoulder and hissed. Roxy whipped around to look, face inches away from where you were resting, and looked right through you. You could see the chill run down her spine and the gentle lift of goose flesh as she rocked her heels back and stood with the cat safely in her arms.

    She was blind to you, but she could definitely tell something was there. Not perfect, but you'd take it. Maybe there was a way to perform a subtle haunting sufficiently enough to be returned to John specifically instead of just having the pendant tossed in the trash for being the source of something scary.

    ….. damn it …..

    Another loud hiss came from the cat, swatting your direction before scrambling to kick free from its owner's arms, earning a quiet curse and a confused huff from Roxy.

    “Hey, HEY! What's gotten into you? Mutie! … Ugh. Maybe he's getting sick,” she mumbled in a tone that belied her attempts at calm. Her gaze was slightly furtive now, cautious, paranoid. Something was in her home now. Something was different somehow.. but she couldn't quite put her finger on it yet.

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

    “Dad, I don't think I could eat any more if I tried,” you say with a tired sigh. You'd eaten a good deal because you were half starved and loved your father's breakfast foods, but the concern was messing with how your meal was settling. You were stuck hoping it would stop soon. Couldn't exactly do a great job of literal ghost hunting if you felt sick AND had a messed up leg.

    “You tucked away plenty, I'll consider that a success,” your father chuckled, spearing a piece of waffle and chasing some syrup around on his plate to soak it up before lifting it to his mouth to devour. “I'd have been more worried if you couldn't eat at all, but after what you've been through and the medicine they have you on? This is more than enough. Good job.”

    “Oh. Right, I should probably take my medicine now that I've eaten, huh,” you murmured, realizing belatedly that Jade was already getting up to fetch it and keep you off your crutches as long as possible. Seems she really was serious about that whole 'as much rest as possible' thing. You took a moment to count out the two tablets you needed from one bottle, and the single tablet from another before downing them with the remnants of your orange juice. “Man, I'm gonna be a zombie later now.”

    “Hey, I'd rather you be a zombie and play the same section of a video game for a few hours or make stupid posts online than have you running around hurting yourself more,” Jade said.

    “Running around?” your dad asked, looking a bit confused. “I know it's probably just a turn of phrase, but I also know how impatient you can be. You're not planning on getting up and moving around a good deal already, are you son?”

    “Well. Yes and no? I'm not planning on going anywhere for fun, I just need to run a few important errands.”

    “If it's important, I'm sure I could help out. You're never too old to have your dad help you out, you know,” he said, rising to go take care of the dishes so they wouldn't pile up. “People tend to be rather forgiving after car accidents, injuries, and when faced with parents saying they're helping their children. It would be no problem.”

    “I. Well. I mean, I appreciate it a lot Dad, and if it were anything else I'd ask for help but..” you said, hesitating a bit. “I think it's something I'll need to do mostly alone.”

    “Oh? What's so important that it can't wait?”

    “I lost something really important, but I don't know if it was from during the crash or afterward, and I need it back immediately,” you tried to explain. “It's really -really- important, I need to be sure it gets back to me and back in place fast. I still don't know how it went missing in the first place.”

    “Is it something expensive? Or something that's not yours?” he continued.

    “No, no, it's mine. And it's.. not expensive I don't think? Not very at least. But it's really important to me.”

    “Sentimental value turned good luck charm,” Jade piped up, trying to save you from starting to explain that, no Dad, it's a necklace that's magically holding my ghostly boyfriend tethered to this mortal plane of existence and I promise I'm not losing my grip on reality, would you like to see him rattle the papers on my shelf when he gets back home?

    “..If it went missing AFTER your accident, I can't imagine it was doing a very good job of being lucky before that,” he pointed out. “But if it means that much to you, just try your best to be careful and rest when you need to, I'd have for you to have to be stuck in that cast even longer.”

    You could clearly detect the fathery disapproval in his voice, but knew it wasn't the worst it could be. He knew you were an adult who made occasionally silly decisions, but as it wasn't one that could hurt you, there wasn't much for him to wrack his brain over or stress himself with. Just frown and shake his head because it wasn't what he himself would do in the same situation.

    “Thanks, Dad. How long can you stick around?”

    “Not long. I'd much prefer to stick around all day, but there's so many things that only I can manage to get done on the job, I can't stay gone forever. Would you like me to come visit again tomorrow?” he hummed. “I can see about making some other things for you, maybe we can watch some movies. Jade, you're doing great at keeping things running so far, but you be sure to rest too. Keep on top of your own affairs.”

    “I am, don't worry. Most of what I need day to day is on my laptop and I keep that in my bag anyway,” Jade said, rising to go help clean up the waffle iron so it could be put back into your father's car without making a mess.

    He remained for another half hour before he finally wound up leaving, kissing your cheek and giving Jade a hug before donning his hat and heading outside. You sighed and leaned back to watch the ceiling when you were finally alone with Jade again, glancing over.

    “...So. Do you have any ideas where we could start looking?”

    “Where -I- could start looking,” she said, pulling out her laptop to check a few things. “You're going to rest here. I'm going to take my non-cast-wearing ass out and check the hospital, see if I can check with your car. Maybe the ambulance, even, if there's some way to get in contact with the one that brought you in to the hospital.”

    A moment or two of scrolling and humming later, Jade was taking her phone out to snap a few pictures for easier access later on, tapping out a memo along with it before she was satisfied.

    “There.. That should do it. I don't think I'm forgetting anything. If we can't find it THIS way then..”

    “Then?” you ask worriedly. “Then what.”

    “Then.. we put up an ad or something, maybe. There's.. John, there's not much we CAN do if I can't find that thing. Maybe we'll just drive around a lot and you can see if you feel him. I'm not sure what else to really do aside from checking out mentions of hauntings that turn up.”

    “Check what out?”

    “Yeah, like, listening for rumors about ghosts and investigating? See if it's Dave or not?” Jade said, flipping to her email and casually scrolling down on her laptop. “If it was a sudden haunting it would probably wind up on some forum or another, or some local newspaper. People love to talk or ask questions about things. Keep an eye out for the description of him you know and his normal actions, we might strike gold and know where to volunteer our 'services'.”

    You couldn't help but look starstruck enough that Jade finally noticed and frowned in confusion.

    “What? Why are you looking at me like that? There's no way your medicine's knocked you flat that fast, right?”

    “Jade. JADE. Jade, I know we'd be doing it all just to find Dave but. Jade. Jade, do you realize the implications of that?!” you asked, bouncing a little in place, feeling your mood lifting like a balloon. “We'd basically just be a low budget version of Ghostbusters! I know all about paranormal things already, you've learned too, and we both have practice with Dave, and we know the equipment. ..Ohhh what if we tried to do that even after Dave gets home? Maybe he's able to talk to other ghosts. Jade, we could learn so much!”

    She sighed and removed her glasses to rub at the bridge of her nose for a moment.

    “I was wondering why you suddenly looked so hyped up. Yes, yes, I guess that is pretty similar. Let's save the busting hype for after we find the one person we're really hunting for though, okay? It'd be kind of dumb to plan a lot of fun things out and not have our mascot back.”

    “Mascot? ...Heh. I guess he kind of is at this point, huh,” you admitted, tipping your head to the side when Jade got a funny look on her face, looking at her screen once more. “What's up? Already get some kind of lead?”

    “..Not quite. I don't think at least. Remember how I was looking up more things on Dave? Tried to get in contact with someone that might be family?” she asked, clicking a few times to open the email up, and then another few times to open an attachment. Jade held her breath for a moment, then released it out her nose in a sigh. “I think we definitely got a hit.”

    You sat up straighter to be able to see even as she brought the laptop to you for a look, and the image she displayed was enough to leave you feeling like you'd been punched in the gut. The colors were a bit off, older cameras not being the utmost quality, but the face was unmistakable: Dave. Dave, when he was still living and breathing. Dave in a long sleeve shirt and tousled hair, loose dark jeans and the faintest curl of a grin. He was lounging on a sofa with a big bowl of chips beside him and a can of coke in one hand, and you felt the chill run down your spine when you realized you recognized the crown molding and window placement.

    That picture had been taken here. Dave had been in this apartment, probably where you were sitting, years and years ago, and there was photographic proof.

    “Print it,” you said without even thinking.“What else did the email say?”

    “His brother said he'd be alright with meeting up sometime to talk, but his schedule's packed. I'll see when he's open. ..that sound good?”

    “Yeah,” you said quietly, still a bit stunned. Your printer started to whir to life in the distance, bringing the copy of the photo to life, and Jade set her computer down to go collect it when it was finished. “Yeah, that sounds fine. I get that this probably wouldn't be something to talk about over email or the phone.”

    With the picture held in your hands, the ache in your chest returned with a vengeance. How would Dave react when he saw this? Would he react positively? Or would he destroy the entire apartment and start learning how to light fires? You'd finally know how he died. ..You just hoped that him learning what happened wouldn't be some key to make him move on to the afterlife forcibly.

    “I'm going to get going, see if I can find the pendant in a lost and found bin or hear if anyone's seen it,” she said, tucking her computer away for now into her bag. “I'll keep an ear out for rattling papers and stuff, too. My phone will be on, try to rest up. Order some takeout if you want, don't make yourself stand and cook if you don't want to. If I come back and you're even more hurt, I'm gonna be grumpy,” Jade warned.

    “Yeah,” you said, distracted, staring at the picture still. You'd seen Dave clearly, you thought, but never THIS clear. Never without the red tint or the faint glow. He really was cute, even in this form, and you couldn't help but wonder what he was like personality-wise when he was alive. Just as snarky and excitable as he was now?

    “...Don't worry, John. We'll find him somehow,” Jade said, coming close once more to hug you around the shoulders. “We'll get Dave home one way or another.”

    “I hope so, Jade. I really hope so.”

#homestuck #my fic #johndave

[littlespoonevan]

Hey :) I love your hc, you are really talented 😊. Ok so the other day i was rewatching Skam (again) and I was thinking about what would've happened if Isak and Even did have that pre-game for the Halloween party alone so I was wondering what are your thoughts about that? I don't know if there is something about this out there somewhere already but anyway. Thanks

asjdfhdjsafhas anon, i honestly can’t believe i never considered this before omg my thoughts went to some wILD places when i was planning this.there’s so many poSSIBILITIES!!!! i hope u like it

*

Isak feels uncomfortable.

And awkward.

Even’s been here for ten minutes and the conversationhas been about as stilted as it had that day on the tram.

Fuck, Isak never realised before how the majority oftheir previous conversations had had the crutch of a joint to loosen him up. Hestares down at his beer can and takes another swig, hoping it’ll start kickingin soon.

He draws his gaze up after a moment and it flits toEven sitting on the opposite couch. He looks ridiculous, dressed up as God in awhite tunic with a white, bushy wig and beard to complete the look.

(It might actually be more ridiculous that Isak stillwants to kiss him even dressed like that.)

(And he probably shouldn’t think about kissing Evenconsidering all that does is remind him of the kitchen and what almost happenedlast week before Noora showed up.)

“So, where’s Emma tonight?” Even asks, breaking Isak outof his reverie.

He opens his mouth and closes it again, nosewrinkling as he thinks back to his awkward rejection when she’d cornered him inschool to ask if he wanted to do something tonight. “Uh, I think she might begoing to that party?”

Even’s eyebrows quirk and there’s the hint of a smilebehind his eyes. “Thinking you might get lucky?”

Isak’s laugh lasts about three seconds and falls flateven to his own ears. “I’m not- I mean, I don’t really think it’s gonna workbetween us.”

He half expects Even to voice the same complaints hisfriends have been throwing at him for weeks.

“What’swrong with you, Isak? She’s hot.”

“Somegirl a million miles out of your league likes you and you’re- what? Trying toplay hard to get?”

“Whatthe fuck, are you gay?”

Isak grimaces and shakes his head but when he finallylooks over to gauge Even’s reaction there’s something like hope hidden in his expression.

“How come?” he asks quietly, unassumingly.

Isak shrugs, dropping his gaze to his lap again. “Idon’t know, I’m just- I guess I’m not really that into her.”

The longer Even stays silent, the more Isak can feelhimself start to panic. He keeps his eyes steadfastly downcast because he’sconvinced if he looks at Even now he’ll completely give himself away. He hearsrustling that tells him Even’s after standing up and it’s only the irrationalfear that he might leave that causes Isak’s head to snap up at the sound.

He watches, dumbfounded, as Even shuffles around thecoffee table and plops down on the couch beside him. Suddenly close enough forIsak to smell his aftershave, close enough Isak can feel the heat coming off himas he angles his body to face Isak.

“What are you doing?�� he asks blankly.

“I was sitting too far away for such a seriousconversation,” Even responds blithely, mouth turned up at the corners when hemeets Isak’s gaze. “So,” he starts, resting his elbow against the back of thecouch and leaning his head on his hand. “Why isn’t Emma your type?”

“I can’t take you seriously when you’ve got thatwhite monstrosity on your head,” Isak says to deflect.

It works. Even makes an offended noise, reeling backwith his hand over his heart. “Excuse me, I put an effort into this costume,” he protests indignantly. “Which is morethan I can say for you. Is your toga made out of a hoodie?”

“Wh- I- Shut up,”Isak sputters, feeling his lips curve up involuntarily when Even’s laugh ringsout in the quiet of the room.

Even pulls the wig off his head, running a handthrough his flattened hair to muss it up. There’s something terribly endearingabout seeing it unstyled. “There. Happy?” Even asks with a pointed raise of hiseyebrows as if he still doesn’t have the beard covering half his face.

Isak bites his lip to hold back a laugh and shakeshis head. He doesn’t know what possesses him to do it – either the alcohol hasfinally kicked in or he’s just feeling brave – but he reaches over and carefullyunhooks the elastic band that’s still holding the beard in place from behindEven’s ears. Even stays completely motionless as Isak lifts the beard up overhis head but he can feel Even’s gaze heavy on him. He carefully avoids it ashis fingers brush over the sides of Even’s cheeks, dropping the beard on thefloor beside the couch.

There’s a moment where they sit too close, a teasingglint still dancing behind Even’s eyes and a faint blush still heating Isak’scheeks, and Isak thinks if he had the guts to do it he might close the distancebetween them. Instead he looks away and lets his eyes land on Eskild’s speakerssitting on the cabinet behind the couch.

“I’m gonna put on some music,” he mumbles, pushing himselfup off the couch and officially breaking the moment.

He plugs his phone in and picks the first playlist hesees when he opens Spotify. He doesn’t even really care what they listen to; he’djust needed a second to breathe. Nas filters out through the speakers and Isakfreezes on his way back to the couch when he hears Even’s delighted laugh.

“Ah so you’ve heard of him now?” Even teases.

“I’d heard of him before,” Isak huffs as he sits backdown, shoving Even’s shoulder for good measure.

“Uh huh,” Even smirks. The I don’t believe you implicit in his grin.

Isak rolls his eyes and reaches for his beer again.Even’s teasing always feels different to his friends teasing him. Even’steasing feels a lot like flirting.

“Anyway back to Emma.”

Fuck.

“Why isn’t she your type?”

Isak considers his options, considers a singleconceivable reason why a straight seventeen-year-old boy wouldn’t like a girllike Emma. He can’t fucking think of a reason and it makes him panic but he’salso just- tired. So fucking tired of having to constantly lie about why hefeels the way he does. So he settles on as close to the truth as he can get. “Shejust- I guess it’s never felt right.”

Even nods, silently gesturing for him to continue.

Isak swallows hard and looks away from Even’ssearching gaze. “Like when we first hooked up, she tried to, y’know- go down onme and it just wasn’t-“

“You didn’t feel comfortable,” Even fills in for himand Isak finally looks at him.

Silently, he nods. “Yeah,” he mutters after a moment.

“That’s okay, you know,” Even continues, voice andexpression completely devoid of judgement. “You don’t have to be ready for thatyet if you’re not.”

Isak shakes his head. “That’s not really it…”

Even nods and Isak can see dawning realisation in hisexpression. Or confirmation, maybe. He’s not sure.

“Honestly, I don’t even really want to go this stupidparty,” Isak admits with a half-hearted laugh closing his eyes and rubbing hishands over his face. He needs to get a grip.

“We don’t have to,” Even says immediately and Isak’s gazesnaps to him again.

“We don’t,” Even repeats. “If you don’t want to seeher. We can just hang out here.”

Isak furrows his brow. “Don’t you wanna go outthough?”

“Not if you’re not,” Even replies simply.

Isak’s mouth tugs up in a grin, some of the lightnessfrom before seeping back into the moment. “Would you miss me that much?”

“Something like that,” Even answers softly. And there’sa flicker of something in his eyes that Isak can’t decipher. Something he’s notsure he’s ready to confront yet.

So he looks away again and starts fiddling with thelid of his beer can. “Why can’t you really dump Sonja?”

The question surprises even him. He hadn’t planned onasking it but he can’t deny he’s curious. Because last week Isak had learnedthree things:

1.    Evensaid he and Sonja have been growing apart.

2.    Evensaid he can’t break up with her.

3.    Eventried to kiss him.

And he thinks, in order for number 3 to make sense,he needs to figure out number 2 first.

Even’s prolonged silence makes Isak look up. He’s gota distant expression on his face as he rolls his beer can from one hand to theother. “It’s complicated,” he sighs finally.

Isak frowns, thinking that’s all he’s going to getbut then Even continues.

“We’ve been together for so long- Sonja’s been therefor me through some shitty things. She’s…familiar. The thought of being on myown after so long is kind of scary.” He finishes it off with an uncertain shrugand Isak doesn’t think he’s ever seen Even look so…vulnerable.

He feels like he’s peeking behind a mask. Even hasalways seemed so put together, so cool and in control. The Even sitting infront of him seems…nervous.

“So it’s like a safety thing?” Isak asks.

“I guess so.” Even sets his can on the table but Isakthinks it might be more so he has something to do than because he actuallywants to put it down. “I’m not sure I’m brave enough to be on my own.”

Isak nods because he doesn’t know what else he cansay. He’s never been in a real relationship before and his desire to tell Evento break up with Sonja is purely selfish. He’s not exactly an objectiveadvisor.

“I’m starting to think I might want to risk itthough,” Even says quietly.

Isak meets his gaze and the intensity with which Evenis looking at him is almost stifling. The air is so heavy around them, Isakfeels dizzy. Feels like, if he’s not careful, he might fall into Even.

(He’s probably in danger of that anyway, though.)

“Why?” he whispers and he doesn’t even know how hemanages to force the word out but it leaves his mouth and then Even’s knee issuddenly touching his.

“I’ve just got a feeling it might be worth it,” Evenwhispers back. He’s got the same look on his face he’d had in the kitchen. Thelook Isak had seen right before he’d ducked his head and lowered his gaze, tooafraid of what that look might mean.

He doesn’t duck his head now though. Instead, he shiftshis body a little where he’s sitting so he’s turned more toward Even. He letshis body sway closer when the arm Even had been resting on the back of thecouch slowly reaches up to slide around his neck. Even’s fingers twist in thehair at the nape of his neck and Isak shivers, eyes drifting closed at thesensation.

“Isak,” Even murmurs and Isak opens his eyes again.Even’s closer, so much closer than he’d been a second ago, and there’s aquestion in his gaze.

Isak puts his hand on Even’s thigh and hopes that’sanswer enough.

Even’s throat bobs and Isak tracks the movement withhis eyes until the tip of Even’s nose is brushing his and Isak’s breath ishitching at the proximity. Their foreheads rolls together and the breathbetween their mouths is shaky and, with his eyes falling shut, Isak feels thefirst tentative brush of Even’s lips against his.

It’s barely a touch but Isak feels it like anelectric shock to the heart.

They don’t really pull away far enough to separate.Instead Even uses the hand on the back of Isak’s neck to guide him in again andslot their mouths together properly.

Within seconds it becomes frantic.

Isak’s fingers dig into Even’s thigh while his other handclutches at Even’s shirt and he can’t tell which one of them is pulling theother closer or if it’s a joint effort. Isak’s used to being the initiator withkisses because he has to be. Because he needs it on his terms. Because it’snormally all for show.

But right now- he’s the one being kissed.

And it’s fucking exhilarating.

Even’s lips are insistent against his own as theywork to pry his mouth open while his hands focus on tugging Isak closer andcloser until he’s practically in Even’s lap. And then Even’s nipping at his lipand slipping his tongue into his mouth and Isak is gone.

Metaphorically. Mentally. Physically.

He feels himself go pliant, feels himself melt alittle against Even and it just feels so right.The way he can feel Even’s mouth curve up at the sides every few seconds likehe’s trying not to smile. The way his lips are already starting to feel tinglyfrom the bruising weight of their kisses. The way his breath keeps exhaling asuneven puffs of air during the milliseconds where their lips are detached.

Even’s body is solid and real underneath his handsand it’s scary but it also makes him want to dig his fingers in harder, makeshim want to leave bruises to say he was here and they did this, makes him wantEven to leave bruises on him to provehe’s not imagining this.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to dothat,” Even mumbles at some point, the words half lost to Isak’s mouth.

Isak turns his head to the side to release a breath,forehead leaning heavily against Even’s as he flicks his gaze up so their eyesmeet. “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

Even smiles that brilliant, beaming smile at him andIsak is helpless, tipping his head forward to connect their lips again.

Even’s hands move when they kiss this time,gravitating to Isak’s shoulders to gently push him back toward the armrest.Isak takes the hint and lies back even though he can hear his pulse thunderingin his ears. Because suddenly Even is leaning over him – on top of him – and his brain short-circuits.

He’s got a boy lying on top of him. He’s making out with a boy.  And it’s not just any boy; it’s Even. He’s finally, finally kissing Evenand just the thought is enough to make him light-headed.

Even’s lips are just as soft as he imagined they’dbe, his hands just as strong where they squeeze his waist. They’re both toolong for the couch and that fact alone – that slight imperfection – is enoughto put Isak’s mind at ease and take some of the pressure off. Because kissingEven is intense but it’s also fun and maybe he’s still a little awkward andunsure but that’s okay because that’s what makes it actually feel real.

“So we’re not going to that Halloween party, right?”Isak asks breathlessly as Even’s mouth gravitates towards his jaw.

Even pauses and Isak can feel his laugh reverberateagainst his skin. Even pushes himself up on his elbows, reaching out with onehand to pull the gold wreath – that Isak had definitely forgotten about and that’sdefinitely askew on top of his head right now – out of his hair to toss on thefloor beside the couch.

“I think I’d rather stay here,” Even whispers as hesmiles down at Isak and there’s a playfulness in his gaze that makes Isak’sstomach erupt with butterflies.

Isak licks his lips, bravely threads his fingersthrough Even’s hair like he’s been wanting to do since the day he met him andsays, “We can do that.”

*

#evak #even bech næsheim #isak valtersen #evenbechnet #skam #asks #Anon #my fics #i may continue this if ppl are interested!!! #i had some more ideas but that felt like a natural cut off point #but yeah if u want more i may be inclined to write more js ;)