#cutting trees really took my life

[xveenusx]

And Yet..

Paring(s): jj maybank x fem!reader

Summary: two people who should be together simply can't find their way. In other words, JJ can't let himself be loved and can't let her go.

Author's note: This one is brutal so prepare yourselves. Realistically, JJ would totally self sabotage any chance of happiness because he can't handle how it makes him feel so that's exactly what this is. Thank you for all the feedback on 3 seconds! If you like when it hurts, then this is for you!

Part 1: Three Seconds

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

He left.

It’d been hours and none of us knew where JJ went, only that he left. While JJ storming off was a normal feat, he always came back.

Now normally, I would have been looking for him, knowing exactly where to look. I’d find him and we’d avoid everyone until he felt like he was ready. This time was different. He never looked at me the way he did today.

A look of pure betrayal.

John B had gone MIA with Sarah while Pope and Kie were handling everything we needed to look for the gold. Me? I was trying to find a way to cope with the sudden JJ sized gap in my life.

It was brutal trying to get through the entire day without collapsing. Everything felt dull. I decided going home and hiding out in my room was the only option. It spared me the looks of concern from our friends and gave me the freedom to cry.

My room felt abnormally empty and cold. My stomach rolled as JJ’s words played in a brutal loop. I crawled into my bed where I curled into myself tightly, hugging my knees to my chest to create some type of pressure.

He’ll come back. He always comes back.

I jolted awake to pounding on my window.

“-wake up. He needs you. It’s bad oh my god it’s really bad.”

Scrambling off the bed, I pushed the curtains aside to see Kie’s panicked face. “Kie, what’s going on?”

Her face filled with relief as she pulled me into her. “We need to get to the chateau now. He’s not making any sense and bought all of this stuff.”

Nausea rolled in my stomach.

“JJ-“

She cuts me off. “He needs you.”

I left the house in seconds, hopped into the Hayward truck and we took off. I nibbled on my nails, glancing at Kiara in the drivers seat. Her face was painted with worry and her leg bopped up and down displaying her nervous energy.

Kie moved one hand from the steering wheel and threaded our hands together, squeezing tightly.

Pulling up to the chateau, I see LED lights tangled up on the trees, shining lights reflecting on the yard. How was there power? The hurricane had taken everything out.

Before I could figure it out, I heard a commotion that drifted up the drive way.

“Where is she? You said Kie was getting her.”

My heart jumped to my throat. I hold onto Kiara tighter as we move toward the raised voices.

Something twisted in my chest as I took in the hot tub and lights suddenly decorating John B’s yard.

JJ is shouting at Pope now, slurring his words slightly, before taking a pull of the champagne he clutched in his hand.

“Look man, she’s here. She’s here, JJ. Calm down.” Pope announced, pointing in our direction, before placing his hands around his head and taking a deep breath.

Awareness ran through me. JJ turned his body to face me, his gaze flicked to mine.

He said nothing yet his eyes said everything. There was an openness that seemed to make him vulnerable.

“You came.”

A tug deep in my chest urged me to move closer. “You asked.”

“Okay, now that she’s here. What did you do, JJ? Where did all this come from?” Pope asked, but we all knew the answer.

“I got a jet going straight in my butt right now. Y’all should get in immediately, ya hear?” JJ laughed, the aviator sunglasses slipping down slightly. His blonde hair slick with water stuck to his forehead as he messily poured champagne into a glass. “Salud!”

Pope let out a noise of disbelief, “How much did this cost?”

“Uh, pretty much all of it.”

I moved around, taking in the inflatable floaties that filled up the yard, while biting the inside of my cheek. He spent all of the money.

“Kie, what? Can’t a man have a little luxury in life?”

I tuned out their arguing. There was a reason he acted out and bought all of this pointless shit but I couldn’t figure out what it was. He knew. He knew he needed to pay for restitution.

A blanket of dread covered my body like an old blanket as the consequences of JJ’s actions finally settled in. Another sense of dread hit when I knew I wouldn’t leave him.

“You could have paid for restitution or better yet, helped us buy supplies.” Pope said, shaking his head in clear frustration.

They weren’t seeing this for what it was. Something was wrong. Yes, he was reckless and rash but like I said before, most of the time he does those things because something happened.

“Okay Pope. Well, I didn’t do that. I got a hot tub for my friends,” JJ choked out, “I got a hot tub for my friends. Screw that, I got a hot tub for my family.”

“JJ, what the hell?” Kie whispered.

Something in her voice made me turn back around quickly and that’s when I saw it.

JJ stood at the center of the hot tub, one hand clutching the champagne bottle while the other hung loosely at his side. His gold necklace moving back and forth shining under the lights, but that’s not what caught my eye.

What caught my eye was the purple and blue bruises that littered his chest and ribs. A high pitched ringing filled my ears as my body felt like it began to float.

This. This was the reason he spent all the money.

My hand covers my mouth as I let out a choked sound.

Hearing the noise, JJ turns to me, his face entirely shattered, tears causing the crystal blue orbs to shine.

“Do you see what I did? Look what I did for you,” He cried out as he held out his arms, staring at me with such vulnerability I could feel my knees start to buckle.

Tears freely began to fall from my face as I took inventory of just how many bruises covered his body.

“No, stop being so emotional. It’s fine, everything’s fine.”

My feet moved on their own accord. Fully dressed, I threw one leg over then the other ignoring the burning from the heat of the water.

He reached for me the moment my body hit the water just as my arms circled around his neck. JJ curled his body into me, the champagne bottle forgotten, his arms circling around my waist digging into my lower back, clutching me like a life line.

My legs knocked together as the adrenaline and helplessness kicked in. I began counting in my head my breaths because I knew in this moment, I couldn’t afford to break down.

Not when he was broken beyond belief.

My fingers threaded themselves into his sun-kissed locks, brushing from the nape of his neck to the top of his head and back again. I pressed my lips onto his head, not letting my grip loosen for one second.

“I love you.” I murmured over and over again as sobs wracked his body, his head in my chest soaking my shirt with his tears. “I got you, it’s okay. I’m here, Jayj.”

I glanced up helplessly and see Pope and Kie staring at us, both of them clearly distraught.

I beckon them over with a nod in my head and instantly JJ and I are covered in warmth. Their arms wrapping around us both, whispering words of love to him.

We stayed like that until our skin got pruny, not wanting to move until he was ready.

When the time did come, I could tell by the way his grip on my waist loosened and his sobs quieted down. Brushing the hair out of his face, I brought my face close to his, “You ready to get out now?”

JJ nodded.

“Kie, can you set out some of John b’s clothes?” I asked her, moving to get out. She nodded and pope followed her inside.

JJ followed closely behind me. His fingers laced with mine, trembling slightly as the night air bit at our soaked bodies.

Shuffling into the chateau, our friends were sprawled out on the couch with Kie strumming away at the ukulele.

“I left the clothes in the spare.” Pope said, his eyes locked on JJ.

I shot him a thankful smile, “Thanks, Pope.”

Once we were in the room, I shut the door as JJ shimmed out of his shorts. Ignoring the heat in my cheeks, I grabbed the towel from the bed and began to dry him.

I could feel his intense gaze on my face the entire time. Biting back a smile, I whispered, “Can I tell you something?”

“Please.”

“I really like the hot tub.”

JJ tilted his head back and let out a surprised laugh. The sound of his familiar laugh caused a wave of warmth to crash over me, causing a zoo of butterflies to swarm my stomach.

“It is a pretty sick tub, isn’t it?” He smiled.

“It is. Very kooky of you.”

He narrowed his red rimmed eyes at me, “Take that back.”

I couldn’t have his my grin even if I tried.

“JJ the kook? I could see that.”

He sends me a cheeky smile in return. Bringing my attention back to the task at hand, I drag the towel along his shoulders before heading towards his chest. My hand stalled slightly as I saw how angry the bruises were, the hue of the purple and blue causing my stomach to churn.

My head moved carefully as I pressed my lips softly along each bruise, fluttering my eyes shut. I feel familiar rough hands tangling themselves in my hair and he lets out a sharp breath.

Opening my eyes, he tilted my head back with his fingers gripped the nape of my neck. A storm brewed in the crystal blue eyes, flicking between every emotion.

His thumb slowly drew my bottom lip down causing his eyes to darken with each passing second,” Thank you.”

Tremors wracked my body at how close we were, our breaths intertwined filtering into my bloodstream.

JJ shifted forward allowing his lips to softly brush mine. The moment my lips parted, he pressed his again almost like he was inhaling my every breath.

Pulling back, he rested his forehead on mine and repeated, “Thank you.”

“I got you. I’ll let you change-“ My words got cut off as he grabbed my arm to stop me in my tracks.

“Stay.”

And so I did.

_______________

I blinked at the alarm clock that read 3 a.m and slowly rubbed the sleepiness from my eyes. I could hear the sound of the skeeters buzzing outside the chateau and felt a strange sense of calm at the quiet.

Reaching toward the other side of the bed , my hands were met with empty cold sheets. He was gone.

I closed my eyes tightly and took in a deep breath as I willed for this nightmare to go away. We still had a lot to work through, but I thought after last night, he finally understood how fucking in deep I was. I was all in, completely and utterly in love with him. It’s always been him.

Pushing my body up, I slowly bring the sheet up to my chest covering my naked body from the cold. A sharp tinge of fear hit my chest as I noticed a presence at the end of the bed that was quickly replaced with an immense sense of relief.

JJ sat on the edge of the bed with his bare back facing me, his elbows on his knees, and head in his hands. A small smile played my lips as I shuffled over, my hands slowly trailing themselves over his shoulders and pressed my lips softly against his shoulder blade.

“Can’t sleep?”

His shoulders tensed the minute my lips touched his body. “I didn’t think you’d still be here.”

Confusion filled every fiber of my being as I finally took him in. I could feel the weak stitches that held my heart together suddenly begin to tear.

I opened my mouth and closed it. The backs of my eyes burned as I stared at the side of his face, the face that I spent hours admiring, that refused to even look at me.

“I thought after last night-“

JJ shook his head in disgust and let out a dry breath, roughly tugging at the messy strands on his head.

“We fucked. It’s not like that’s something we’ve never done before. It doesn’t change anything.”

Like I said before, I understand him. I know him and I know exactly what he’s doing. That doesn’t stop every part of me from feeling like I had just gotten kicked in the chest.

“JJ, please don’t do this.” I inhaled a shaky breath as I clutched the sheer tighter to my chest, almost like it was an armor against his cruel words, words that I knew came from a place of panic. Yet, it hurt just the same.

“Do what,” JJ said, getting up from the bed to face me, arms crossed tightly against his chest. “You made it clear what side you were on and it wasn’t mine.”

“Stop twisting what happened. You forget that I know you, JJ. I know you,” I stood on my shaky feet, the sheets wrapped around my body. “You think I dont know why your treating me this way. You’re dad doesn’t decide who you are.”

Desperation burned in my blood as I once again tried to grasp at straws. He was always finding excuses to run from me and each and every time, JJ took a piece of me with him.

“Shut up. I’m not doing this shit with you.”

“You have no idea how special you are do you? How easy you are to love?” It was an honest question, one that seemed to anger him if the clenching of his fists was any indication.

“Stop-“

I cut him off. “Because you are. Special, I mean.”

JJ said nothing. His gaze met mine, and the blue eyes I thought matched the ocean perfectly, showed a battle of emotions.

I took the opportunity to move closer to him, fighting the urge to curl up and cry at the look of utter confusion on his face.

Luke had successfully beat it into him that he was worthless, useless, and would never amount to anything. This, this look on his face was why I stayed.

He didn’t know. He really didn’t know the effect he had on people, on me.

My fingers trembled slightly as I reached to touch the bracelets that decorated his wrist. All of them being gifts from me.

“You’re fiercely loyal to the people you love. The family that you chose for yourself. It’s almost frustrating how you don’t see it,” I muttered, tilting my head up to search his eyes. “I mean, fuck JJ, you took the fall for Pope because you didn’t want his future to be ruined. You went to jail and now you’re on probation.”

“Please, stop.” His plead was weak at best.

My fingers danced along his jaw, my voice wavering slightly at the tightness in my chest. “You sat with my everyday during summer school so I wouldn’t be myself. No one does that, JJ. Especially not here.”

He had to know I was telling the truth.

“So please, listen to me when I tell you that loving you has been the easy thing I’ve ever done.”

Despite the immense beating my poor heart has taken, it still beats with a naive sense of hope.

Hope that sky rocketed when JJ reached forward to twirl a strand of my hair in between his fingers, almost as though he was memorizing how it felt.

“Such pretty little words.” He hummed. “How many other guys have you told that too?”

I recoiled back in shock.

“Pretty little words won’t get you anywhere. You wanna fuck, I’m down. But that’s not gonna stop me from mackin’ on other chicks.”

Then he dropped the strand of my hair, along with every hope that he could love me.

I chose to then focus on my anger that slowly began to bubble to the surface.

“Like who? Your gonna start mackin’ on Kie?” I launched the question at him, my voice raising an octave in disbelief.

“Maybe. At least she knows when to leave.”

“Stop talking to me like that,” My voice broke at the end, the burning in my eyes getting too hard to ignore. “You’re hurting me.”

All I could do was stare.

Here I stood, heart bleeding, begging a broken boy to love me back. And maybe that wasn’t fair for me to ask, maybe it was too much but a large part of me thought he felt something. Even if it was a fraction of what I felt for him because at least it was something.

Anything.

“You’re never going to let me love you, are you?” I ignored the sharp stab in my stomach as I finally said the question I already knew the answer to.

JJ’s head snapped up in shock at my question. “I never asked for you to love me.”

“You showed up to my window every night because you didn’t want to go home. You hold my hand, you kiss me, you fuck me. You come to me when you can’t fucking sleep. You sleep in my bed. You teach me to surf and take me everywhere with you. You ask for my advice and god forbid I don’t answer the phone, you have a melt down.” I was shouting at that point, my voice loud enough to wake up our friends who were sleeping in the living room but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

“You need me, I’m there. You got arrested, I bail you out. You get in a fight, I clean you up. JJ, you showed up in my life and surrounded me. You’re fucking everywhere. How could you not expect me to fall in love with you when you do these things?”

The laugh I let out was one of a broken girl, one who had completely lost herself in a wave of chaos known as JJ Maybank.

The door was right there. And yet, I couldn't get my feet to move.

“Because I don’t fucking understand it, okay? Because I’ve never had the luxury of someone looking at me the way you do and it makes me physically fucking sick.” JJ took several strides until he was pressed up firmly against me, his fingers threading themselves into the nape of my neck.

“The way you look at me makes me feel like I’m suffocating, don’t you get that? And yet, I can’t fucking thinking straight when you’re not by me.” He choked out, his face was white with panic.

I could feel myself start to crumble at his words. Welcome to the club. “Yesterday, you said I wasn't enough for you.”

JJ nodded, his eyes staring straight into me with such intensity I had to swallow.

“You know why I said it. You know how I get. The way you look at me,” He swears pounding his hand against the wall,” Fuck the way you look at me. You make me feel like I can be a better person, that I have the potential to do something great.”

“Because you can-“

“No I fucking can’t. You give me this hope that I can be better and then something happens to remind me that I can’t and it crushes me. It fucking wrecks me.”

I roughly wiped the tears that blurred my vision and asked, “So what are you saying?”

The silence caused the anticipation of his answer to intensify, making breathing almost impossible.

“Sometimes, being with you is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Can you hear that? It’s the sound of my heart shattering for the last time.

“Then you have to let me go.”

He shook his head,”Thats not what I want.”

“Let me go, JJ. If not for you, then for me because loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done. You haven’t even been able to say it back. You completely own me, every thought I have is about you.”

“You own ME.” JJ shouted, his hands in his hair tugging it in anger. “And it completely terrifies me and then I say the first thing I can to make the fear go away just so I can get a moment of peace. I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

In a way, I couldn’t really be angry with him.

No one’s every really described just how dangerous loving someone can be. How they consume every part of you until there’s nothing left. Until suddenly, you can only breathe when you’re around them. When your very mood depends on the expression of their face. The pure feeling of ecstasy that covers your body in a layer of electricity the moment you’re around them and they look at you.

“You love me,” At my words, JJ looked almost relieved, like he finally understood why he felt so many things at once,” but you can’t let yourself love me.”

And yet, despite this revelation, I still couldn’t bring myself to leave.

A tortured look passed his face as he pressed his back against the wall and slowly slid down.

“You need to let me go because I love you to the point that I cant bring myself to leave. So if you don’t want me, if you can’t be with me then do this for me. If you don’t, I’m going to keep giving you every piece of me until there’s nothing left. “

I guess you never truly understand until it happens. Until you get physically ill when they’re upset or filled with warmth when you see them tilt their head back and laugh. When you see them and suddenly the world is just a little less overwhelming, bearable even.

When every fiber of your being is tuned into one person.

Gripping the sheet tighter, I moved in between his legs and settle myself on the floor. The moment I did, JJ engulfed me in his embrace. His presence soaked through my skin leaving the intoxicated feeling in its wake.

“I can’t,” He shook his head fervently, “ I can’t do that.”

I understood him, because I couldn’t either.

“What are we going to do, Jayj?”

JJ pressed his face against my throat, “I don’t know.”

We weren’t okay, it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. Nothing had been solved and yet, we sat on the floor wrapped in each others embrace.

So I said the only thing I knew to be true and give him yet another piece of me, “I love you.”

“I know.”

There we were. Two souls irrevocably intertwined in a mass of love and hate that were broken beyond recognition. Neither of us being able to leave the other.

And yet, all I could focus on was his inability to say he loved me back.

_____________________

Tags for all those who requested: @trickylittlewitch @maybankslover @bcon24 @chaoticbisous @ifilwtmfc @dullsocietyy @mad-die45 @stuffyownswrld @kaylinfayezink @theywantedplayer

#jj maybank #jj maybank fanfiction #jj maybank x reader #jj maybank smut #jj maybank angst #rudy pankow #rudy pankow smut #obx #obx smut #obx fanfiction #outer banks #outer banks fanfiction #outerbanks imagine #jj maybank imagine #outer banks smut #jj maybank masterlist #obx3 #outerbanks imagines

[miserycanary]

PLEASE PAINT OVER MY BRUISES ᡣ𐭩

synopsis: pairing: early 30s!Ghost & 20s!reader (can be read as platonic)

synopsis: Ghost as your refuge from your abusive father

tags: angst, verbal abuse, physical abuse, hurt/comfort

| The first meeting was a coincidence. 

Shivering from the midnight breeze, you huddled your flimsy sweater close with one hand out to hold your cigarette. One inhale of nicotine got you throwing your head back, forgetting the situation back home that led you to wander the streets at midnight. Busy peering up at the stars in the sky, you didn't notice someone's presence there until you felt your cigarette pulled from your lips and stomped on the ground. 

"Dude! Not cool. That was my last," you angrily mumbled, squatting down to see if you could still use it. "Leave it." The voice took you by surprise, tilting your head up to see a hunk of a man, carrying some beers, looking down on you. You took notice of the calloused hand gripping the paper bag, meaning he was probably a lot older than you. Say early 30s? "Easy for you to say," a retort you throw at him. "I don't have money to buy more—" "then don't buy more," he plainly states, looking at you. Standing up, you finally noticed the mask on his face. With a roll of your eyes, you flip him off, grumbling under your breath, “fucking weirdo”.

| The second time was fate's joke. 

Groaning and yelling, you kick an empty soda can, cursing out your good-for-nothing father. You ran your fingers through your hair, tears slipping on the corner of your eyes as every part of your body ached in pain. Sniffles turn to sobs, muttering about ending it all as everything seemed to never go your way. The oversized shirt barely concealed the bruises, recent and old, making you wince. “Fuck, I hate this shit,” your eyes got hazy, breathing almost cut short. With minimal effort, you sit by the store’s wall to steady yourself. Face buried in your arms, you— once again— don’t notice his presence. 

The first time Ghost met you, he thought you were another rebellious teenager trying to act cool. You didn’t have a job, so he assumed you were a student. When he got home from that first meeting, he could only sigh and hope you’d gone back to your parents. Imagine his surprise when he sees you again, huddling by the store, sobbing. He was not one to manage emotions, so he thought of leaving you alone when a sudden gust of wind caught his attention. Blowing the flimsy fabric on your body, Ghost could see the marks on your body; marks he was too familiar with. Without hesitation, he walked over, pulled you up, and led you to his car. You didn’t even protest. How far gone are you to not even try to fight to live? 

The silence on the way to his house was uncomfortable, with your occasional sniffles which turned to hiccups. His eyes glanced at you from the side. With one hand on the steering wheel, he reaches at the back to grab one bottle of water from his bag and hands it to you. “It’s not drugged,” he tried to joke. “I wouldn’t mind if it was,” you mumbled, silencing Ghost from awkwardness.  At the end of the night, you found refuge. You were offered a place to stay, some food, clothes, and.. peace and safety. You found something rare that you never want to let go of.

| The rest are blessings.

Opening up to Ghost was relatively easy. Was it because you guys shared the same experience? Was it because he was the first to ask? All you know was you had him now. You would always come to his house when you needed to escape, and he never seemed to push. But the day you finally told him was a time you’d love to keep but forget. 

Coming to the place that seemed to be hell on Earth, you were immediately greeted by a chokehold, pressed against the wall. “Fucking brat. What took you so long? Are you out there spreading legs for people, bitch? The apple doesn’t really fall far from the tree. Your bitch mother was also a whore” ‘Ah, it smells like liquor. He’s drunk again’ you thought, eyes drained of life. Next thing you felt was yourself slumping down on the floor with an ache on your face. ‘This motherfucker really punched me’ “If you ever think of following that bitch’s footsteps and leaving me, I’ll fucking kill you.”

Sighing, you pull your legs closer to your chest while your father repeatedly stomps his foot on your legs, then your back. He eventually got tired, leaving after spitting on your face. It took everything in you to force yourself to stand and make your way to your room.

Dread immediately poured in when you noticed every drawer was pulled. “No, no, no, no, no'' you sobbed, rushing to look at the place where you hid your safety money. Feeling nothing, you started to cry, rushing out the door and ignoring the yells from your father. You didn’t know where you were going. Using the only 10 dollars you had left, you took a cab to the only place you know is heaven on Earth.

As soon as the cab pulls up to the familiar house, you storm out of the vehicle. You rush to the door, opening it using a spare key and yelling his name.

“SIMON,” you cried. Footsteps thundered and you see his figure pop up from the kitchen, eyes widening as he takes in your state. It was like all the weight on your shoulders was lifted, your knees buckled. Before you could collapse on the floor, Simon was already by your side.

One arm holding you by your knees and another across your shoulder, he carries to the living room. Sitting down and letting you embrace him from his lap. His warmth calmed you down, your face buried in the crook of his neck. Holding on his shoulders, begging him to keep you safe with tears staining his shirt. He shakes his leg, softly cradling you closer to his chest. “I’m here, I’m here. I won’t let you go, okay?” he mutters, turning your head to him and placing a firm kiss on your forehead. “I will keep you safe. This is the last time you’ll be in pain. I’ll protect you from whatever scares you,” he sighs, wiping away your tears as his other hand rubs soothing circles on your shoulders.

You look at him with a broken smile and profound peace, like he's a savior— a god. For the first time in years, you let yourself succumb to sleep without any worries for your safety. 

Maybe this is indeed heaven. You would love that— to be in Simon's safe embrace forever, away from the horrors of the world.

꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱: my first ask by anonymous. 📩

dividers by @cafekitsune

Please reblog!! Ask is open! 

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[lila-went-missing]

Saw you want to write Clarisse x Reader and I NEED more clarisee x reader fics SO!

Can you a Clarisse x reader of when Percy broke her spear and just like readers reaction to the her scream and just very angsty but very fully at the same time! Pls and thank u!

I swear on my life reverse hurt/comfort is one of my favorite things to write on this planet. Also, I feel like it’s worth mentioning that Dior said she literally BLEW OUT HER VOICE when she did that scream?!?! She never fails to amaze me.

This got a bit sadder than intended but it's not too bad. Also, sorry this took so long, I had a math test, two essays, and a debate, on top of personal shit. But I FINALLY got it finished.

My Love is Waiting For You to Come Home

Warnings: Slight violence, mild angst, hurt/comfort, cursing, small amounts of blood, mentions of wounds, lmk if I left anything out.

Pair: Clarisse La Rue x Fem!Apollo!Reader

For the first time in what felt like forever, capture the flag was going great. It had been a long time since the red team had won, but you were actually doing really well. You were up in a tree close to the flag, shooting anyone who got too close with your arrows. They weren't sharp, but they had enough of a point to hurt.

Clarisse was hunting in the woods below you. You'd occasionally catch sight of her from the place you were perched on your branch. She always looked amazing like this. Hair pulled back, armor on, spear in hand. She was in her element, and you'd be lying if you said it wasn't extremely attractive. The way she looked so tough, her lucky red bandanna tied around her bicep.

Anyone else would say she looked terrifying. But to you, she was the most beautiful person you'd ever laid eyes on. You were the only one who got that side of her.

It wasn't long before she disappeared again, hunting down anyone who dared to get close to the flag or your tree. She had mentioned something before the game. Something about revenge on the new kid. She didn't go into detail about said revenge, but you new it wouldn't end well for someone.

You didn't move from your tree, assuming her and her siblings had everything handled. And they did, for a while at least. You had shot down another four people by the time you heard your girlfriend scream in a way that genuinely terrified you.

Jumping down from the tree, you raced to the sound as the conch horn blue. You made it in time to see her storm off as the blue team carried the flag over. Just before she made it out of sight, you saw the spear in her hand. Or rather, what was left of it.

Oh gods. You thought.

You tipped your head back, letting out a breath before turning in the direction she went. You found her in the arena, tearing dummy after dummy into shreds. You let her go at it for a while, watching from the doorway.

Eventually, you slowly walked towards her, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"Clar.." You whisper.

She jumps, turning quickly, ready to knock you into the ground before relaxing. All of the tension disappears from her face, her bottom lip trembling. You reach forward, taking the sword from her hand and tossing it into the rack haphazardly.

"I- fuck.." She drops her head forward, breathing hard.

"Come on.. it'll be okay." You lead her towards your cabin, knowing all of your siblings would be in the infirmary tending to peoples wounds. You can see cuts and bruises on her arms, giving you a feeling that her back will be even worse. You make sure to grab the pieces of her spear on your way out.

On the way to your cabin, her eyes don't leave the ground. Your hand stays on her back the the whole walk, not leaving even as you open the door for her.

She sits on your bed, putting her head in her hands. The broken weapon lays on the foot of your bed as you sit next to her. Her breath shakes with her body.

"Let me clean you up, okay?" She nods, at your words.

"Okay.." Her voice is smaller than you've ever heard it before. You lean forward and pull her shirt over her head, confirming your suspicions about her back. An angry red covers almost the entirety of her tan skin, small amounts of blood leaking from a few spots.

You hover a hand over the scrapes and cuts, a warm glow emanating from your palm. Her wounds slowly heal as her muscles relax. Your heart breaks for her every time you hear her wince or feel her breath hitch. Your free hand reaches forward, grasping hers. A few small scars form over the area, but nothing that won't fade.

You lean your chin on her shoulder when you finish, wrapping your arm around her front. Her other hand reaches up to hold your wrist.

"I love you.." You whisper into her ear.

She hesitates, not speaking for a few moments. When she does her voice is as shaky as her body.

"That was the only thing- the only proof he-" She can't finish either sentence. You can feel her holding her breath as if she's trying not to cry.

"I know, my love. I know." Your lips press into her shoulder. "I'm gonna talk to some Hephaestus kids, I think there's a couple of Hecate kids in the Hermes cabin. I'll do everything I can to fix it."

Her whole body shudders. She's never had the best relationship with her dad. He'd always said that she should've been a son. That spear was the only acknowledgement she'd ever gotten from him. And now it was broken.

A few tears slip down her cheek that you pretend not to see.

"It'll be okay, Clar'." Your arms tighten around her as her head leans into you.

"Thank you." She mutters. If it wasn't for your close proximity you probably wouldn't have heard it at all.

"You deserve someone to care about you.. I'll be damned if I don't do everything I can to be that person."

"I love you. So much." Her voices is so soft, so gentle.

"I love you more." You're not sure how long you sit like that, but it's long enough for your legs to go numb. You can bring yourself to care as she looks so comfortable. She's always had to fight for her dad's love. It gets tiring after you do everything you can to get no recognition. It was nice to know she had someone. If she didn't have anyone else, she would have you.

Eventually you moved positions to her laying on your chest. Your hand rubs up and down her back as her wrap around your waist. She traces patterns across your skin with her finger tips. It's not long before you're both sound asleep in each other's arms. She would never have to fight for your love, it was just there, ready for her when she came home.

#percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson #clarisse la rue #dior goodjohn #clarisse la rue x reader #x reader #percy series #percy jackson disney+ #clarisse pjo #hurt/comfort #light angst #fluff #one shot #clarisse x reader #clarisse is bae

[tatoda]

Guitar Pick | college!conrad x fem!reader

request

masterlist

part 2

summary: you go to Brown and maybe you don’t exactly fit in, but one brown haired boy makes you feel as if you do

pairing: college!conrad fisher x fem!reader

warnings: just fluff <3

wc: 800 (sorry it's short im getting back into things)

first con fic since last year :) a little rusty on the writing i apologize. sorry it’s not so long :(

It was the smell in the air that brought you comfort. The casual people-watching you would do as you walked down to the music store closest to campus— it wasn’t the best place to shop but it will do for the times you’re in Providence.

The ding of the door sounded as you walked through the store. The red interior with wood floors reminded you of back home, so that is why you kept coming back to the same spot every weekend. No one tried to bother you when shopping. Of course some boys would walk by and you’d glance their way, but they would never glance back at you the same way.

Picking up a guitar from one of the stands you sat down at the small corner couch. You have always loved playing any instrument, you would run around the house singing and hitting any object around the house to make drums until your aunt got you a ukulele at the age of 6 which took your dreams and desires for music to grow. Being at Brown surprised your family. They really thought you would just go to a music school, but you wanted to explore other career paths. Sometimes your parents weren’t proud of it but they supported your decision.

After a few minutes of strumming the instrument, you stood back up to get a new guitar pick. It was time for a new one— well that’s what you told yourself but you just loved shopping for new things. Reaching for a red and green one, another pair of hands reached for the same one.

“sorry.” glancing up at the voice, you see a boy maybe around your age, with brown eyes and brown hair as his cheeks turned a little red at the intersection

“no that’s my fault sorry, go ahead it’s all yours.” you gestured towards the pick.

“no, my mom raised me to be a gentleman. please take it.”

“i-“ but the tall figure cut you off

“please i was looking at another one anyways.” he looked down at you

“thanks, sorry again.” you softly grabbed it as he smiled gently at you before picking up a solid navy blue one

You didn’t think twice before you went to go pay for it and took off out of the store carrying on with your day.

The next day, you sat under a tree strumming your guitar just letting the nice weather hit for once. The shade of the tree helped you relax not being blinded by the sun. You were so busy strumming the instrument you didn’t realize the figure walking towards you.

“guitar pick girl.” the familiar voice called out making you stop in movement, the boy from yesterday. he was walking towards you wearing a Brown sweatshirt and sweatpants

“hi.” you softly introduced not knowing you would be seeing this boy again

“I’m sorry, i know it’s weird for me just to walk up like that and rude for me to not know your name. you left too quickly yesterday i tried to-to get your name but you were gone.” he played with his fingernails as he spoke

“sorry.” you smiled apologetically not knowing why this boy who you totally thought was cute was suddenly approaching you

“no worries,” he rocked on his feet “i-im Conrad, Conrad Fisher” he stuck his hand out to you and you lifted yours off the guitar

“y/n y/l/n” his eyes seemed to immediately remember the future

“how long have you been playing?”

“my whole life basically. you play?” he nods

“yeah just not too long ago maybe like a summer or 2, my mom wanted me to learn a song for her.”

“that’s sweet of you. you must be a mamas boy for the two times you have mentioned her talking to me.” you grinned at him

“yeah.” he sadly smiled and you didn’t feel like pushing him to ask about what it was all about “do you mind if i sit? you look like you need some company.” he gestured to the grass next to you

“all yours.” conrad then sat down next to you criss-cross

“what year are you?” he played with the grass that was in front of him

“junior, what about you?”

“sophomore.” you nodded and you both went silent but it wasn’t a bad silence, it was comfortable

“could i take you out sometime?” your eyes drifted over to conrad and his eyes went wide “sorry! i didn’t mean to come off so strong, i’d just like to get to know you better.” you looked down at his hands as they played with the grass faster and you put a hand over his to stop his movements

“i’d love that.” his eyes went to your hands and his visible relaxed

“i just thought you were really pretty yesterday.” that sentence made you blush and look down biting your lip

“i thought you were pretty cute too, conrad.”

#the summer i turned pretty #tsitp #conrad fisher #prime video #the summer i turned pretty season 2 #college!conrad fisher #belly x conrad #conrad fisher imagine #conrad fisher one shot #conrad fisher smut #conrad fisher x y/n #conrad fisher x reader #conrad fisher x fem!reader

[spankinganthologies]

Stepmoms from Spankingwomen

"Is there any way we can not tell my dad about this?"

On Christmas Eve, Andrea cuts a deal with her new stepmother, a woman she barely knows when you get right down to it, in order to keep her father in the dark when it comes to a few winter break transgressions. The only thing Andrea didn't realize was that her stepmother, who was only 13 years older than her, was a firm believer in old school discipline. 

When she agreed to take a spanking in exchange for secrecy, Andrea didn't realize she was going to be put over the knee to take a panties down, bare ass beating with a big nasty brush. By the time her eyes were blurry with tears, staring directly into the lights on the Christmas tree as she got her bottom blistered, she had already realized that maybe the smarter play would have been trying to charm her way out of punishment with her daddy.

(this should have happened to me fairly regularly, but it didn't)

It turned out, that despite her youthful appearance, Mary's new stepmother was rather old school when it came to matters of discipline. She knew how to handle a brat efficiently and effectively - even a brat well into her college years. Over the knee, skirt up and panties down - there was nothing Mary could say to talk her way out of it. 

And it was as if her new stepmother was making up for lost time, for all those years that Mary had gone unspanked. When she took Mary across her knees, the spanking would seem to last forever, until Mary's poor bottom was red and swollen and her throat was sore from hollering.

It's an embarrassing routine but one that Trisha knows well.

Before being taken across her mother's lap and spanked, she is required to stand naked in the corner and think about the reasons she is not being permitted to wear clothes, about why she is going to be getting a spanking, how her bottom will be burning before too long and what exactly she needs to change in her behavior to avoid a scene like this playing out again in the future. Trisha knows she will be asked about these things both while getting her butt blistered and then in the immediate aftermath as well, so she knows that she had better have some good answers.

And then, the spanking itself.

Two sessions. First, her mother's hand, which is plenty bad enough. But then a humiliating naked trek down the hall and into her mother's bedroom, crying and bottom very much reddened already, to retrieve the hairbrush and bring it back to the living room. Then back over the knee for the finale which will leave Trisha squealing as her mother spanks some much needed sense into her with that evil brush. Face covered in snot and tears, Trisha will be stood back up (not allowed to rub her bottom at all) and the lecture will continue.

Finally, it's back to the corner, still naked, while she tries to catch her breath and stop boohooing. Now, her little backside is fire engine red. Shamefully, she's very damp between her legs - something that happens whenever she gets a damn good spanking. She can't help but think about how she'll masturbate for hours later before falling asleep. Her nipples are hard and ache. But the lesson is learned. If she can be a good girl in the corner, she will be allowed to get dressed and go upstairs before her father or brother get home.

She's going to spank that defiance right out of her spoiled step-daughter. All toughness will soon melt away and the tears will come. It's quite humbling to be crying like a baby with your jeans and panties around your knees and your bum rapidly turning bright red. A good spanking can really take a brat down a peg or two!

***

If Candy's monster of a stepdaughter refused to listen to reason and continued down this path, then you can be damn sure Candy was going to do something about it.

Candy may have only been 14 years older than the bitch, but she knew in her heart she could teach her lesson. The little brat had never been spanked in her entire life and she also didn't have the guts to fight back. Even if she did, Candy could overpower her easily. She was 100% confident about that!

There was no faster path to a real and meaningful attitude adjustment than the path of a crimson behind and that was exactly the path Candy intended to take her stepdaughter down. She intended to take her over her knee, pull down her panties and give her the spanking of all spankings. Things were going to change. There was a new law of the land. 

And after she blistered that nightmare's bare bottom, Candy intended to go to the store and find a suitable hairbrush - just like the one Candy's mother had used on Candy's behind years ago - and then she was going to put that hairbrush to good use going forward. The little brat may never love her, but she was damn sure going to respect her.

(okay, I wasn't a full-blown 'monster' or 'nightmare' but I'm sure she wanted to spank me plenty hard more than a few times!)

There were plenty of lessons learned with her butt bare and her panties down around her knees. Sometimes the cane, sometimes the strap - her mother was a resourceful woman who could punish a naughty bottom with the best of them. A countless number of their "little chats" ended in tears.

Mary's new stepmother has her own ideas about how to deal with errant young ladies, no matter how old they are or how mature they think they might be. It seems like Mary is in for a rather rude awakening.

***

***

Jenny was always punished in the living room.  This sometimes proved to be awkward as there were times when her stepmother sent her to her room to wait for a spanking.  Then, when her stepmother decided she was ready, Jenny would have to come back downstairs where a chair would then be waiting in the center of the room.  It was always the same: over-the-knee, panties down and one very sorry girl.  The awkward (and most humiliating) part was the walk of shame back upstairs.  Jenny would be trying not trip over her underwear, shuffling and still crying hard as she marched her fire engine red ass to bed. 

Her stepmother was a cold, calm and firm disciplinarian. She was strict and knew how to spank.  Jenny begged her father for reprieve, claiming she was far too old to be spanked, but he just shrugged. "If you don't want to be punished, then you need to learn how to behave," he would tell her and the matter would close.

The spankings themselves were long and painful.  Both of Jenny's cheeks would be sore and swollen for days making sitting uncomfortable.  But it wasn't just her ass that her stepmother would target. Oh, no. Jenny's stepmother spanked the backs of her thighs too. Hard smacks over and over causing Jenny to shriek and kick.  Jenny would be left raw from the top of her bottom nearly to her knees.  The rest of the girls on the swim team always knew when Jenny had earned herself another spanking.

#spankingwomen #stepmom spanks #mom spanks #college

[shadowdaddies]

Heyyyy I feel like we’re besties at this point😭 could I request, yet again, an Azriel story. Maybe one where they’re best friends and they get into a serious argument and maybe it ends with a confession and the bond snaps into place but one of them panics and leaves. And ends up having a panic attack while the other one is super worried and is searching for them. When they find them they calm them down and have some cute fluff with like “look at me” or “breathe with Me” something cute idk and then it ends with smut of them finally being mated and it’s all sweet and stuff. (Maybe with some wing play because holy- that’s hot) THANK YOUUUU

hey bestie! love this request, it's been a hectic week to say the least so I'm catching up on requests but I've been so excited about this one. Love your prompts, hope you love this story as much as I do💜

Laid Bare

Azriel x Reader

Warnings: this is angst, fluff, and eventually smut below the cut, wing play, shadow play, p in v sex, minors dni

You followed Azriel through the door to the House of Wind, slamming it behind you as you yelled at him. The two of you never raised your voices at each other, but your emotions got the better of you as you held back tears, shaking with anger and fear for your mate. 

You had known that Azriel was your mate for a long time now, but you knew that he had so much he needed to work through, and you’d decided it would be better to be there for him as a friend while he worked through his trauma, without the added complication of the mating bond. 

Tonight, however, you had hit your limit with Azriel’s refusal to accept help and love from others. It wasn’t only you - Azriel had always kept even his brothers at an arm’s length, only opening up to Cass and Rhys when he deemed it necessary. While others were willing to accept his distance, the bond pulled you closer to him, and day-by-day your love and desire to be there for him grew. 

Azriel stopped in the kitchen, sipping on tea in his faux-stoic manner that drove you crazy as you stormed over to him. “What the Hel, Az? You put yourself in so much danger, so much unnecessary hurt, and for what? You think you’re a burden to people by letting them be there for you, but it’s a burden.... it really hurts me, Azriel, when you won’t let me be there for you. I love you, all I want to do for the rest of my life is love you, and I just wish you would let me.” 

The words poured out before you even realized what you were saying, tears streaming down your face as you dared to make eye contact with Azriel. The moment those hazel eyes locked with yours, Azriel dropped the cup from which he’d been drinking, his steely expression shattering into one of shock, and you knew what had happened. The mating bond snapped for him - at the worst time, when you were yelling at him over something that now felt so trivial. 

You began sobbing so hard you were shaking, hyperventilating as you began to panic. Before Azriel could say anything else, you winnowed away. You appeared on the outskirts of Velaris - a quiet place where the mountains met the sea - and vomited everything from your system. You heaved for breath, trying to ground yourself in your surroundings. You went to a nearby brook, splashing water on your face and cleansing your mouth with the fresh water. 

The sun had nearly set at this point, and you leaned against a tree as you took in the various shades of the sky, the bright Night Court stars already visible at dusk. Mind reeling with how to address the situation with Azriel, you didn’t hear him approach.

You startled at first, watching him carefully as he sat down to lean against the tree beside you. It was no surprise that he would know where to find you. Azriel let out a long sigh, staring down at his hands folded in his lap. “How long have you known about the bond?” he asked quietly. Chewing your lip, you murmured back, “Some time now, almost a year.” He nodded, taking a moment before he said anything.

He at last turned to you, taking one of your hands in his as he gave it a squeeze, as though he was finding his own strength through that touch. “You were right. Everything you said back there... I’ve always felt like a burden if I were to show weakness or ask for help. But you are always there for me, even when I don’t know what I need, you do.”

Azriel pulled you into his lap at this point, you straddling his hips as he wiped his thumb across your cheek, observing you as he confessed, “I love you, too, by the way. I have for a long time. If there’s anyone I trust, that I feel I can open up to, it’s you. I am damaged, and it will take time, but I want to love you, and be loved by you, if you’ll have me.”

You smiled, turning your face to kiss Azriel’s palm, holding it against your face. “Azriel, I have waited my entire life for you, and I would wait one hundred more lifetimes for you. We will grow and learn how to love and be loved together. That’s what this is.” At that, Azriel pulled you in, your lips barely brushing each other as he looked to you for consent. You smiled, throwing yourself into him as you kissed him how you’d been longing to for so long.

Azriel squeezed your backside, causing you to gasp so he could slip his tongue in your mouth. You ground against him, drawing a groan while you ran your hands through his inky black hair, tugging at the strands. When he thrust his tongue into your mouth next, you sucked on it, earning a surprised gasp and a groan from him as he gripped your hips, grinding his own against you.

You mewled at the contact, desperate for more from him. You pulled back, gasping as you opened your mouth to tell Azriel you needed more, only for him to say so first. A thought occurred to you as you noticed his desperation, and you leaned back, studying Azriel as you ran a finger down his chest. With as much confidence as you could muster, you tilted your head, giving Azriel a mischievous smile as you proposed your deal. “I’ll give you more tonight, Azriel, if you let me take care of you. I want to make love to you, how I’ve been waiting to for so long now.” 

At your words, Azriel’s cheeks blushed in that way that you loved as he nodded. You leaned forward, giving him a chaste kiss as you promised in a whisper, “we’ll take this slow - nothing you are uncomfortable with.” With that, you began removing his shirt, guiding him to lay down in the grass as you admired his body in what was now bright moonlight. You removed your own dress, now bare above him, feeling no shyness or shame in your body as your mate gazed at you in awe, running his hands along your sides, palming your breasts as he toyed with your nipples.

You let out a high-pitched moan at the contact, writhing against his touch as you struggled to maintain dominance in the situation. You forced yourself to look down at Azriel, feeling how your own appearance must mirror his own, pupils blown out, cheeks flushed, hair wild as you ravished each other under the stars. You leaned down, rolling your naked body against Azriel’s bare chest as you kissed down his neck to his collarbone, moving one hand to the side for support. 

Your finger accidentally touched the edge of his wing, causing Azriel to let out a hiss as he bucked wildly up into you. Immediately pulling back, you frantically searching Azriel’s face for discomfort. “I’m so sorry, Az. I didn’t mean to touch your wing without permission. Please tell me I didn’t hurt you.” 

To your surprise, Azriel laughed. It was a loud, joyous laugh like bells, louder than you’d ever heard from him. He looked up at you with a beautiful, full smile as he shook his head and grabbed your hand, guiding it back to his wing. You looked at him questioningly, “are you sure you are okay with this? You want me to touch your wings?” Azriel nodded, kissing your palm before guiding it back to his wing. “Yes, I want you. Only you. All of you.”

Your heart melted at his words, eyes never leaving his as you experimentally traced your fingers lightly across the veins of his wing, watching as he groaned and panted beneath you at your touch. “Fuck,” Az finally huffed out, “if you keep doing that, I’m going to finish in my pants.” You smirked, taking that as your cue to pull away, kissing down his chest and stomach, giving extra attention to each scar as you worshipped Azriel.

You were working your way down to the waistband of his pants when Azriel gracefully flipped you over, laid on your back against the grass with your hair splayed out. The two of you simply admired each other for a moment, memorizing the feeling of an intimacy you’d never felt before. You helped Azriel remove his pants, eager to have him inside of you, fully one with your mate.

He leaned down, kissing you sweetly as he pushed into you, your eyes rolling and back arching as he entered you, his large size a stretch for you. Azriel kissed all over your face and neck as he settled inside of you, only moving once you had given him permission. Every thrust hit a perfect spot within you, the sex like nothing you had felt before - it was apparent, Azriel was made for you, and you for him. 

You could sense that you were nearing your high, stomach tightening as you attempted to mumble to Az that you were close. He understood, licking his thumb before bringing it down to your clit, rubbing circles in tandem with shadows that appeared around your nipples. The sudden stimulation sent you barreling over the edge with a scream, Azriel following closely behind. 

He hung his head, resting his nose in your neck as the two of you caught your breath. After several moments, Azriel collapsed into the grass beside you, pulling you into his side as the two of you watched the night sky, laid bare to each other in every sense.

#acotar #acotar x reader #azriel acotar #azriel x reader #a court of thorns and roses #acomaf #azriel imagine #azriel x you #acotar fanfiction #acotar smut #acotar fanfic #acotar fic #azriel fanfic #rhys acotar #cassian acotar #azriel shadowsinger #azriel x y/n #azriel fluff #azriel angst #azriel smut #azriel x reader fluff #azriel x reader smut #azriel acotar x reader #acotar azriel #acotar fluff #acotar angst #acotar reader fic #acotar reader imagine #acosf #azriel

[no-droids]

Another Rough Day

gif credit @chrishemsworht

Part Twenty of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 13.7K

Warnings: Angst, violence, canon-typical blood and gore, language, hurt/comfort

A/N: i wanna thank yall for sticking around during my hermit era, in the time ive been gone i am now officially a junior at a university majoring in aerospace and it’s a fuckin nightmare and i hate everything and god help us all literally kill me and I will be posting INCREDIBLY slowly because of that (I’m talkin weeks or months in between updates yall, im sorry I can’t dedicate more time to this but I am going to finish this fic within the next handful of chapters idk maybe 5 or 6 so you shouldn’t have to wait too too long).  As a heads up there will be hard angst as we enter the final arc, there will be hurt and it’ll get dark but everything is gonna turn out alright so thanks for sticking with me and continuing to stick with me. im sorry if you dont like it or your expectations were subverted or if this isn’t what you’d hoped it would be after following and waiting around for so long but this was planned a long time ago and it took me a good year or two to recognize that I started writing this fic for me and now I’m going to end it writing for me and I hope yall can respect that

ALSO I asked my best BEST FRIEND in the entire world @cptnbvcks to collaborate with me for this after we both took a very long break from creating and she drew some GORGEOUS artwork for this chapter so it will be posted at the end, everyone please go follow her and say hello

ps brittany girl you’re a fuckin menace i had to use my own two ears and listen to ethan literally say the words “the mandalorian cums, hard” what the fuck was that im actually suing

anyways chapter below the cut lets get serious yall

---

You take two of them down before they even realize they’re being attacked.

Your aim is as swift and steady as if Din were behind your shoulder right now, calmly pointing out which stationary tree to hit next in rapid succession.  You’re positioned perfectly at the bottom of the ramp to take full advantage of the ambush, the only thing running through your mind is strategy and the constant calculating of angles and ricochets.  The other three troopers are trapped inside the open Crest and you’re right next to a large boulder that you can step behind for cover, but it proves unnecessary as the rumors were apparently true.

They’re… awful.

Not a single blaster is even fired in your direction—you think you see maybe one panicked red shot bounce around in the hull, but that’s it.  The troopers fumble for their guns and trip over each other at the unexpected attack—a few scream like children through the modulators, but you’re temporarily deaf to anything besides the screech of your weapon hitting its target and the crumpling of armored bodies.

Later on, if someone were to ask you to describe exactly what happened—who died first, who ran for cover, who cried out for help—you don’t think you’d be able to.  You don’t even really feel like a person right now.  The entire thing is cold, robotic survival instinct, pure ruthlessness rising in your soul for the first time in your life.  It feels sick.  Wrong in your bones.  Born from preemptive defense in fear of your life, but that doesn’t mean you stop.  Not until all of them stop moving.

You empty the entire fucking canister for a handful of stormtroopers, firing plasma and char marks across every square inch of the pristine hull even after the last one drops.  Your heart is beating too fast, your finger keeps pulling the trigger multiple times even after the blaster clicks uselessly, completely empty and beeping a warning that it must’ve begun emitting ages ago.  Being out of ammo scares you—you suddenly feel vulnerable, even though the very far away logical part of your mind reminds you that they have to all be dead at this point and no physical threat was ever able to graze you.

Regardless, you quickly spin behind the boulder and grab another canister from your belt, giving it a spare check for leaks while the empty one slides and drops to the rocky ground.  It’s the first time you’ve ever had to reload this weapon instead of just pointing and shooting, but the mechanics are relatively simple and your brain makes up for your lack of coherent thoughts with lightning fast perception.  What's difficult is that your hands are starting to shake now that you’re not aiming, you’re not breathing correctly because you’re not really breathing at all.  You can’t tell the difference between the adrenaline-fueled dissociative silence that muffles everything around you or if it really is just that quiet now.  No more clatter of armor, no modulated voices or terrified screams.  No blasters, no footsteps along the ramp, no birds singing.

You quickly pause to lift your elbow and check the enormous eyes blinking up at you, tiny claws still holding tight to the fabric of your tunic and completely unharmed, and then you force yourself to move.  The blaster is held out in front of you while you walk forward and your finger rests on the trigger, begging to be pulled again.  It’s suspenseful and terrifying in a different way than before—now it’s less about psyching yourself up for confrontation and more about the fact that any sudden movement could mean your very swift end.

Silence.  Silence.  You’re numb and raw at the same time, walking up the ramp as your eyes fly everywhere, not even registering the blood or gore, just searching for movement.  You don’t know if you feel like a predator or prey, you’re that much more brutal and inhuman because of how fucking terrified you are.  You count four stormtroopers in the hull laying crumpled and still on the metal floor, but the one in the far corner only has blood on his shoulder.  You quickly swing the blaster around to remedy that, but then—

“P-Please don’t kill me!”

His words remind you of something.  Reality, maybe.  A world outside yourself and the kid’s survival, the living beings behind the bloody armor your enemies wear.

It’s a miracle your finger stays hovering over the trigger, and you watch him throw the blaster at your feet with a clang and scramble to show you his empty hands.  “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—I’m not loyal to the Empire, I don’t want to be here, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die—”

Behind the mask, your expression furrows.  Stormtroopers are loyal to the bitter end, what is he saying?  They embrace their expendiality, it’s the only thing that makes them any sort of a real threat.  Kuiil told you horror stories about them during your childhood, the cloning facilities and the propaganda they’re force fed since infancy.  It’s nearly impossible to find one who hasn’t been raised from birth to serve the Empire, no matter how crumbled and trace its remaining authority may be.

No, this is a trap, it has to be.  Your expression twists with dread after hearing him speak, readjusting your aim with the blaster and preparing yourself for the years of nightmares that’ll follow—but then he cries out, “Wait!” and then removes his helmet with trembling hands.

You pause, staring down at him in shock.

It’s him, you recognize him immediately.  It’s the same face from a hologram puck you bore into your memory, spent multiple days staring at so you’d be able to spot him under any disguise or circumstances.  Oshua Ryler.  Your quarry, the fifth puck, the one Din was out Maker knows where searching for before this entire mess happened.  A stormtrooper?  His puck said nothing about the Empire, this doesn’t make any sense.  What is he doing here?  Stormtroopers don’t have pucks, they don’t have bounties or relatives or loved ones searching for them.  They’re brainwashed, replaceable, faceless soldiers in suits of armor and they don’t even have names.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begs again, staring at you with wide eyes even as he cowers.  “I have a family, I-I just want to go home, please—”

“Shut up.”  You can’t think straight with him crying like that and you’re wasting so much time just standing here trying to process when your brain had to literally shut itself down to even do the things you’ve already done.  You have to kill him and escape, you have to—you can’t trust this complication, not with the tiny claws currently digging into your back and reminding you of your purpose, but it was so much easier when he had on a helmet.  You hate looking at his face.  It’s going to haunt your dreams now, just like the man you stabbed on Corellia.

“Please don’t kill me—please don’t kill me,” he screws his eyes up and breathes over and over instead, and your stomach wrenches with disgust.  His posture and expression are so fucking pitiful, you can barely keep your eyes on him through the overwhelming nausea and aversion that climbs up your throat.  He’s with the Empire, and they’re looking for the baby.  You know what needs to be done.  Pull the trigger, just one small movement from you and it’ll be all over.  It would be the easiest thing in the world, it would be so easy.

But then instead, you ask, “Why are you a stormtrooper?”

“I’m n-not—I hate the Empire—”

“The Empire is ashes.”  You don’t know if you’re yelling or whispering with how much blood is roaring through your ears.  “They hold no power anymore.  Why are you with them?”

“Because the one thing they have left is money!”  The quarry shrills the words at you, ghostly pale to the point of turning green.  “Th-They buy troopers now—they opened up a whole new market for the smugglers, there’s a base nearby that’s used for training and…”  He stares wide eyed at you and gulps.  “C-Conditioning.”

Your brain is already going a trillion lightyears an hour and it doesn’t have the capacity to empathize or understand anything beyond the child’s survival and the relevant details right now.  “Were they expecting the baby?”

“W-What?”  He squeaks up at you.

“Was the bounty put out on you a trap set by the Empire?”  You ask him, lifting your free arm just enough to flash him the tiny child clinging to your side.  “He said they’re coming after the baby, so tell me if this was planned from the beginning.”

“Who is ‘he’?”  The stormtrooper asks, furrowing his eyebrows and looking around.  “What are you talki—”

“Tell me if the bounty on you was a trap to take this baby!”  You roar, your blaster shaking as you aim it down at him.  Your mind is acutely focused on the tiny claws hanging onto your tunic, the continued safety of the kid and the life or death situation facing him that you were given absolutely no information about.  “Now—”

“If it was I didn’t know!”  He quickly cries out, pleading with you and clamping his eyes shut in terror under the barrel sight.  “I don’t know anything about a b-baby, or a bounty!  They just put blasters in our hands and told us to search for a ship and to bring back anyone we find alive, I swear!”

You’re silent for a moment, biting your lip under the mask and caught halfway between discerning and stalling.  You could still kill him.  You should still kill him, time is ticking down and more troopers could be heading this way any second.

Shit.  “Who put the bounty out on you?”  You ask sharply.  It might not be a completely fair question, but he can’t exactly blame you for not feeling completely fair right now.

“I—I don’t know,” he gasps, clutching his bleeding shoulder.  “Could’ve been anyone—my mother, Cyra, o-or my dad, Obediah, or Thia, or Benja, or S—”

“Thia,” you interrupt his rambling, catching the slurred word and repeating it back to him.

“Yes!”  Oshua jerks his head up, tears and hope immediately filling his eyes at the sound of her name, “Yes, Thiadura Celi Ryler, that’s my sister!”

Maker, if he’s lying, then he’s fucking brilliant at it.  You look towards the cockpit of the ship, biting your lip under the mask.  Get to Nevarro, tell Karga and he’ll… something.  Din was cut off before he finished.  Help?  Know what to do?  You’re lost, but you have a clear directive and the precious seconds are sliding by.  The controls are right up there, two steps to the ladder and less than a minute until you’re rising into the atmosphere.

But then you think back to the terror in Din’s voice.  The blistering panic that made him speak faster and with more urgency than you’ve ever heard from him.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.

You look back at the quarry.  “How many of you are there?”

“At the base?  Around three hundred,” he immediately spills.  “Half of us are in the hole right now getting brainwashed, they do it in shifts, but they can be mobilized in a few hours.  There were a lot of bodies outside when we were ordered to split off, maybe a third of our squadron, but the rest were still shooting at whatever was—”

“So around a hundred left,”  You finish breathlessly, almost wanting him to speak faster and cut to the chase so you can calculate quicker.  “How many were dispatched on the search?”

“Uh, there were eight groups of five sent in each major direction,” he informs you, still trembling on the ground.  “Told us not to come back until we covered the entire sector.”

Of which, four you’ve already taken care of.  In other circumstances, you’d be nauseated at the thought, but right now, it’s just another number to subtract, just more panicked math in Din’s frightening absence.  That leaves at least sixty troopers left wherever the base is, minimum, and likely a couple more hours before they’ve combed the sector.  If this wasn’t a preconceived trap purposefully set for the kid, then that means reinforcements haven’t arrived yet but likely will soon.  And if this is a base meant for training and conditioning, then that also means there’s a chance not all of them will be loyal yet.

You make the decision immediately.

“Okay,” you announce, clicking the blaster’s safety switch and holstering it, sounding lightyears more certain than you feel.  “Then you’re going to help me carry out a rescue mission, and I’ll take you back to your sister.”

“You…”  He looks uncertain, blinking at your blaster and slowly lowering his hands.  “You want to rescue the men?”

Ideally?  Sure.  Realistically?  You don’t say anything in response.  Instead, you kick his regulation firearm at your feet further away from the quarry just in case your judgment is flawed, and then turn around and grab one of the bodies behind you.

Your adrenaline is still blaring so fast that you only just barely note the severity of what you’ve just done and what you’re continuing to do.  The corpses aren’t real to you right now, they’re inanimate things that you need out of your ship before you can close the doors to it.  They are, however, heavy as fuck, but the only other adult here has a wound in his arm from the gun on your hip.  Regardless, you have experience with lifting dead weight without a big, strong, capable man to do it for you.

“Help me out here, kid,” you mutter over your shoulder, and in response, you feel his claws dig in and climb up just a little bit until he can peek out in front of you.  Thankfully, the burden is suddenly lifted and you can quickly slide the dead troopers down the ramp with ease.  It takes hardly any time at all—you just yank and haul and release and all four of them tumble the rest of the way all by themselves.

When you stand back up, Oshua hasn’t moved and he’s looking at you with a pale, queasy expression.  Glancing down, you see that your white robe is now stained with streaks and patches of rusty blood.  Instead of swallowing back bile at the sight and bolting to the shower to scrub off every last remaining trace, you breeze past it, noting nothing more than a change of color.  Dirtying your white, pristine clothing with the consequences of protecting this baby—you’d rather have blood-soaked fabric with an unharmed kid clinging to you than any other combination of those things.

“Can you make it up to the cockpit?”  You ask the quarry, kicking his rifle off the ship before closing the ramp and then gesturing up the ladder.  Your voice is calm and steady but your hands are beginning to shake again.  “I need as much information as possible about the base.”  You know that’s where Din is, judging from the wall of blaster screeches that drowned him out through the comm.  Logically, you know you could be headed right into a trap, and every instinct inside you wants to find safety, but… you just cannot imagine flying the ship away from this planet without Din onboard.  It isn’t fucking happening, you’ve made your choice.

Without waiting for a response, you climb the ladder and plop down in the pilot’s seat of the Crest.  While Oshua finds some way to clamber up the steps behind you in bulky stormtrooper armor with one good arm, you hold the kid closer on your lap and begin flight checking.  Din will be fucking furious, but the scolding you’ll be sure to get is the least of your worries right now.  Following his instructions and going back to Nevarro is just making shit infinitely more dangerous for him, turning what could be a potential rescue mission into an undeniable suicide mission.  Even if Karga somehow decides to send a few guild members along to infiltrate the base, it’ll be a war you want to avoid.

Besides.  What did you always tell him about running away from him, even when he instructs you to?

It’s just… not really your thing.

---

They’re everywhere.

They crawl like flies out of the base, and for every single body that falls, three more spill from the open doors.  Rapid fire plasma beams launch from the end of Din’s blaster, melting white armor with every twitch of his gloved finger.  Their aim is terrible, as is to be expected, but the sheer number of them more than makes up for it, as is by design.

Din’s heart pounds with exertion, his breath comes in ragged huffs through the modulator as his helmet identifies and isolates which body is closest to him, which body he needs to bring down next.  His blaster is so hot it nearly burns his hand, even through the thick gloves he wears.  When he runs out of ammo, he holsters the pistol and swings his rifle from around his shoulder, spinning to catch a handful of troopers behind him in the obliterating blast.

He’s not thinking much.  He can’t think, even though your safety and that of his son is currently dangling by a thread.  If he focuses on that, he’ll be dead before he can even picture your faces.  He just reacts, he maims and kills without a single thought in his mind.  Blood splatters, screams and sirens blare as he becomes surrounded by more and more troopers.  Din can hear the sound of plasma colliding and ricocheting off his armor; every single one of them is a potential injury he could currently have but might not even be able to feel right now.

His helmet starts beeping rapidly and he turns just enough to see, highlighted in bright red on the screen, two enormous artillery turrets slowly rising up out of the roof of the imperial base.  He feels a fierce flash of anger burn in his chest, it’s like a lightning strike to his veins.

Din needs to go.

And yet… if he was another man.  If he wasn’t a father, or a husband, if he had no family and no attachments like the creed declared he should, he would go.  With just a twitch of his fingers, he could be launching into the sky and retreating as far away from this battlefield as he could reasonably get.  He’s never been the type to run from a threat, but this isn’t just a threat.  Dozens of troopers are gaining on him, they’re trampling their own dead to get within range.  Plasma pings off his shoulder, another one hits his back as they flank from behind.  He can feel the heat through the sizzling beskar, he can see them surrounding him on all sides, and the propulsion trigger for his jetpack is right there under his wrist.

Din holds his ground and continues firing, he plants his feet firmly to the dirt with only one thought in his mind.

Run, sweet girl.  Run.

---

You type in commands to scan for Din’s signal, quickly locating it through the Crest’s computer onboard.  Not far from here, three minutes or less.  The ship rumbles to life beneath you, slowly lifting off the rocky ground and rotating in place as it hovers.  It’s not on autopilot but you feel like you are, you can barely feel your hands as they move the yoke forward and the Crest takes off in the direction of Din’s blinking frequency.

“Tell me about defenses,” you instruct Oshua, restlessly bouncing your leg while the baby coos.

“Two plasma turrets on top of the base,” the quarry quickly answers.  “There’s usually guards stationed around the perimeter, but everyone who’s capable will be outside right now.”

Your mouth twists downwards under the mask.  Blasters don’t scare you much from this high up, but Din’s armor doesn’t cover every inch of his body, he’s not completely invincible.  Doubt churns in your stomach, but you have to stay focused on one task at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed.  The turrets, then.  “Are they automatic?”

“Manual,” he corrects with a shake of his head.

“Radar?”

“Old.  Only engages above fifty meters.”

You eye your altitude and dip the Crest considerably, beginning to weave through the rocky canyons and dodging crumbling cliffs while you travel.  “What about ships?”

“None,” Oshua says, “except for a passenger shuttle used for transport.  TIEs are flown in the Vesta sector, this base is remote and used for basic training only.”

“Anything else?”  You ask, stomach twisting with the knowledge that barely four questions is all you’ve got.  You’re planning to drop into an imperial base to save the man you love and you can’t think of a single other question?  

The quarry shrugs, and your heart slams, does somersaults in your chest at the mere notion that you could fucking die here.  Today, in two minutes or less, you could die here.  The child in your lap looking over the ship’s front panel with a quiet determination in his eyes could die here.  Din could already be dead—that signal broadcasts his location to this computer regardless of whether he’s still breathing or not.  He could already be gone and you’d be flying the baby right into a trap without knowing any differently.

Whelp, you think while taking a deep breath, some strangely calm existential acceptance beginning to flood your soul.  If he isn’t dead, he will be soon if you don’t make it to him on time.

You immediately lift your wrist and speak into the communicator.  “Mando?”  You have no idea if he can hear you, but you need to try anyway.  Your voice is still firm, there’s a strength to it you don’t feel in your chest, but it certainly sounds convincing.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Try to figure something else out.”

That’s it.  That’s it, improvise until you don’t have to.  Even if you’re lacking confidence, you can at least scrounge up some conviction.  Your arms gain feeling again while you veer the Crest through the stony terrain, the familiar reverberations under your feet begin to fill your body with a powerful sense of purpose.  Your breaths begin to come steady, every falling rock you see through the transparisteel feels like it drops in slow motion, allowing you to evade them easily.  It would normally be stupidly dangerous to fly this low with so many unexpected obstacles and hazards narrowly missing the ship, but considering what you’re flying into, a few boulders seems comical.

“Where’s your helmet?”  Oshua asks out of nowhere, and for a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.

But then it strikes you all at once what he’s attempting to imply, and the sheer lunacy of the thought is enough to make you laugh while you clutch the controls.  “I’m not a Mandalorian.”

“You wear the armor of one,” he points out… rather fairly, you have to admit.  “You cover your face like one.  You have a blaster that fires Philithiorium, a rare and expensive gas native to Mandalore’s stratosphere, and you’re a bounty hunter—”

“I’m not a Mandalorian.”  Your words are short and cutting, you have a daunting task to focus on and don’t feel like having small talk right now.  “I’m not a bounty hunter, either.”

But then again, Karga made you a member of the Guild, didn’t he?  He handed you Oshua’s puck and said this one is for you to find, and you are technically part of a Mandalorian clan.  All of this seems like it happened without your knowledge.  You may be marrying a Mandalorian, you may wear his armor and mother his child and shoot a blaster with his signet branded into it, but war isn’t in your blood.  This robe was a costume when you first made it, this armor was a relic that was restored as a hobby.  In a sense, it still feels that way.  The mask covering your face lended itself to a temporary surge of bravery earlier, but beyond that, the only thing that’s keeping you moving forward now is your family.  The man you love that may or may not be alive right now, the baby holding tight to your leg while the ship sways and weaves through the stony landscape.

Your eyes quickly flick down to the child in your lap, both of his three fingered hands clutching onto the stained fabric of your knee without moving a single inch.  He’d know, you tell yourself.  If his father is gone, he’d already know somehow.  Din is still alive, and he’s counting on you.

---

There’s too many for Din to handle.

They swarmed him, overpowered his endless artillery with massive numbers and there’s nothing he can do anymore.  The backs of his knees are kicked from behind and he slams down to the ground with a clatter, his sizzling hot blasters are ripped from him, and Din folds his hands calmly behind his back even as one of the stormtroopers barks out, “Binders,” to another one, who disappears quickly in response.  In the meantime, a few of them apparently decide to just attempt holding his arms in place, and their measly combined grip is almost enough to make him roll his eyes under the helmet.  These imperial soldiers are even more pitiful than they usually are, but his silent resolve to stall to ensure your escape is enough to keep him stationary and compliant for the time being.

Eventually, a few voices call out from beyond the crowd and there’s some movement from the back.  Dozens of troopers with their blasters all pointed at him begin to shuffle to make way, careful to keep their barrels aimed at him while a path slowly forms.  The crowd of white parts and a stormtrooper with a singular red pauldron on his right shoulder saunters confidently towards Din as he kneels on the ground.

An officer, he assumes.  Conveniently missing from the firefight, the scanner inside his helmet would’ve caught the change in color and Din would’ve made sure to kill him first.

“Well now, what do we have here?”  Comes his thin metallic voice through the tinny filter.  The officer studies him curiously for a few moments, before slowly looking down by his feet, reaching out one cheap, plastic covered foot to gently nudge the body of a dead trooper on the ground with a sigh.  “What a shame.”

Coward, he thinks, his lip curling with disgust under the helmet.

“This is an imperial training base,” he turns his attention back to Din to inform him when he doesn’t immediately respond, rather stupidly he might add.  “How were you able to find us?”

Silence.  The grip on hands held behind his back is even looser now.  He just tilts his chin up slightly in defiance, the scanner inside his helmet locating each weapon strapped to the man’s body and highlighting it red.  Small text boxes blink into existence under each one with a manufacturer and classification—a BlasTech E-11 rifle, a Merr-Sonn thermal detonator, a Kolvo vibroblade—and Din is severely unimpressed with the quality.  The detonator is the only weapon that even catches his eye, and that’s only because the chamber inside that houses the explosive baradium has a release mechanism that’s completely dead.  Useless, then.  Good to know.

After a long moment of quiet tension where Din refuses to speak and the officer continues to confidently scrutinize him, in some strange sort of silent battle of egos that only one seems to have a genuine interest in, another stormtrooper makes his way to the front, shoving past his fellow soldiers to address the superior in charge.

“Commander, we’ve sent out an alert for an intruder,” he tells him, slightly out of breath from running through the crowd in the lightweight armor.  Din wants to roll his eyes, but what he says next makes him snap to immediate attention.  “The fleet informed us that Moff Gideon is currently on route.”

Gideon.  The last time someone spoke that name, it was a quarry on Coruscant and you just barely managed to stop Din from suffocating the bastard for even saying it aloud before freezing him in carbonite.  It would’ve meant half the return on a hunt that lasted nearly a month but he saw red and his hand was crushing his windpipe before he realized what happened.  But he’s dead, Din thinks with a clenched jaw and fists tightening behind his back, he watched that TIE fighter explode and slam into the ground, crushing the man inside it.  The wreck was unsurvivable, he can’t be alive.

“For what?  This Mandalorian?”  The trooper in charge scoffs in response, and Din remains completely mute.

“Yes, sir,” the other one confirms.  “Orders were to capture him, alive.”

“Hm.”  The officer turns his attention back to him, less analyzing and more musing while he tilts his head.  “I see,” he eventually says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, before strolling slightly closer as Din stays completely still on his knees.  “He must want the beskar.  I’m sure it’s worth more than this entire battalion combined.”

All of a sudden, a gloved hand carelessly catches the rim of his helmet and tugs, and Din’s movement is explosive.  He launches off the ground, arms easily slipping from the pathetic grip they were being held in and his fist colliding with the side of the officer’s flimsy white helmet, the plastic making a deafening crack against his face.

Multiple hands immediately rush forward to grab him and yank him back down again while the commanding trooper stumbles backwards in shock, and Din amicably drops to his knees and folds his hands behind his back once more like nothing happened at all.

“Binders!”  A trooper behind him roars loudly once more, and a few men surrounding him begin trotting away this time.

The officer in red stands a few feet away from him now, grabbing his helmet and twisting it back to its proper position on his head where it was skewed.  There’s a shattered hole near his jaw where the material splintered and busted like the cheap piece of banthashit it is, and while he might normally feel pleased with himself for being able to see his skin peeking through, it just fills him with more righteous fury.  It’s such a punchable jaw.

After a few awkward moments of silence, the other one clears his throat and continues.  “He… has inquired about the location and status of a child that should be accompanying him.”

Din inhales deeply through his nose and grinds his teeth.  He wants to snap their necks one by one for even just mentioning his son, but there are just too many, more than even his whistling birds can neutralize.  Still, he gave you as much of a head start as physically possible.  You should be rising into the atmosphere right now, making the jump into hyperspace towards safety.  Karga will know what to do—he’ll protect his family, separate you and the boy so the threat is evenly dispersed instead of collected all in one place, and arm dozens of trained hunters to keep watch over you both individually.  It’s the best Din can do, and it’s the only thing keeping his knees planted on the ground and his body completely motionless while they continue speaking.

“We are combing the sector for a ship with as many men as we can afford to lose,” the trooper in red says, but his voice filter is shattered and now sounds like a puny little droid with a broken voice box, “but our numbers are unimpressive.  Assistance may be required.”

It’s too late, Din thinks, mouth twitching under the beskar with a satisfied smirk.  They’re wasting their time, looking for a ghost.  You’re both long gone by now.  They’ve got no idea you even exist—

“He also spoke of a girl.”

And then he feels his heart stop in his chest.  Every single cell in his body turns to fire, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t move a muscle in response.  His sweet girl, the one so far removed from the nightmare of the Empire that she made best friends with the orphans of it.  How the fuck did he know?  He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone gathering information about you, how did he know?

But then Din thinks back, remembering your makeshift bed on the floor, your panicked eyes and heaving chest as the quarry taunted him with a sick little smile.  Who’s this, Mando?  She’s just darling, isn’t she?  Does Gideon know your crew has a lovely new addition?

“A girl?”

The trooper nods.  “Moff Gideon insisted that if the Mandalorian did not have a child with him, then a girl would likely be protecting him instead.”

He’s going to kill them, Din decides.  Every single one of these imperial pigs, every single soldier standing right now is a dead fucking man.  The blood pumping through his body suddenly turns to acid, deadly black hate poisoning his soul.  His heartbeat morphs into a war drum, the armor strapped to his limbs is the barrel of a gun.  He’s going to fucking kill them and leave an imperial base full of bodies to greet his old nemesis upon his return, and he’s going to enjoy every single second of it.

Except, then—

“Mando?”  The sweetest voice in existence suddenly crackles through the earpiece under his helmet.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Figure something else out.”

And, as Din kneels there in surrender, surrounded by a crowd of enemies he thought he destroyed long ago, all the anger—all the fury and defiance and murder surging through his veins—suddenly morphs to fear.

The emotion is so foreign and old to him, it feels like a face he barely recognizes and a name he can’t remember.  He’s panicked before.  He’s been in situations where a threat has made him blind with rage, he knows what it’s like to look death straight in the eyes and say that he’s busy and to come back another time.  This is different.  This is ice cold that freezes over beskar.

He can’t speak out loud to warn you—he can’t move his hands to press the button on the back of his helmet and allow him to talk without detection.  There’s plasma turrets on the roof of the base, he can see them right now.  The helmet’s scanners say they’re manned and engaged, and though he is outside and this is how you retrieved him before whenever he needed a quick escape, he has fifty fucking imperial blasters trained on him and you know absolutely nothing about this threat.  You’re flying right into a war zone and if either you or his son dies, he won’t ever be able to forgive himself.

Behind the helmet, his eyes fly to each and every trooper, wondering which blaster will be the one to do it.  Which weapon is going to be the one he can’t block in time when you descend, the one that’ll kill him right in front of you.  Which turret will be the one to obliterate the Crest with you and his son inside of it.

“Maker, where are those fucking binders—” he hears someone behind him snarl, but the white noise of pure terror roaring through his ears drowns them out.  His chest starts heaving against his will, sheer panic begins to blur his vision.  For the first time in his life, his armor feels too heavy, his lungs feel like one of these boulders are sitting on them instead of beskar.

All too soon, his helmet starts making a familiar sound that signals quietly in his ear, alerting him of an incoming ship, and the only thing he can physically do is count down the seconds to prepare himself for what is to come.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

Like lightning, Din breaks the grip of multiple troopers and surges up, tackling the officer in red to the ground.  There’s a clatter as they both slam into the rocky floor, but in the ensuing scuffle, he easily snatches the thermal detonator from his side holster and holds it up for everyone to see, before pressing the red button on the front and hearing it begin to beep rapidly.

---

You’re right on time.

The Crest rises up through the rocky cliffs surrounding the base and you spot the turrets you were warned about.  Weapons controls are already engaged and you’re too low to be detected by radar—you fire once, twice, and blast both of them to smithereens from behind before they can even rotate around to target you.

Alarms start wailing but the guns are destroyed.  It’s not comforting, though; blasters won’t touch you up here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fire at Din on the ground.  Your eyes dart across the sea of white, looking for a flash of silver anywhere, and then you spot him instantly in the chaos.

For some reason, the troopers in his vicinity all seem to be bolting away from him.  Their rifles are down, clutched in their hands while they nearly fall over each other to run away as fast as possible, and your heart soars when you spot his jetpack firing up.  Din launches into the sky while another trooper is revealed underneath him, seeming to juggle something in his hands and then throw it into the crowd of retreating soldiers, but the sight of the man you love rising into the air while a flurry of blaster shots from the far edges of the imperial structure follow him gives you the confidence to immediately turn the guns down towards the horde of troopers.

“Which ones are in charge?”  You ask Oshua breathlessly, who leans forward and points out the transparisteel.

“Red pauldrons—” he barely has time to say it before you aim and fire at one of the troopers wearing red that was closest to Din, the plasma beam launching from the Crest so powerful and devastating that it outright obliterates the surface he’s laying on.  Pieces of shattered armor fly and a smoking crater of rubble is all that’s left behind, but your mind is whirling and you’re already onto someone else wearing red at the edges of the complex, and then two more near the doors, and then another—

To their credit, you think the sixty or so soldiers in training seem to figure out that you’re not aiming into the enormous collection of them.  If you were, the damage would be catastrophic and spraying everywhere, but you’re precise and meticulous with your shots, and the only ones who are loyal enough to the cause to hold still and raise their blasters at the incoming threat tend to be the ones you need to mow down anyways.  The rest of them scatter in all directions, scrambling over each other to escape and then disappearing into the distant boulders surrounding the base—but you notice that not a single one of them runs back inside the safety of its open doors.

The hull dips with the weight of Din dropping in, and relief floods your soul even as you continue raining hell down on the superiors in charge.  Any flash of color you see is a target, your eyes lose focus of everything, your vision blurs and turns monochrome as you just search for red.

“Lift up!”  You hear Din’s voice roar from the hull.  You can hear his rifle unloading through the open door.  “Now!  We have to go now!”

You press the button to shut the hull door with Din inside and punch it, rising so fast that the shove of gravity makes it difficult to keep your head up.  Through the sudden surge of downward force, you just barely manage to raise your incredibly heavy arm to push the button that pressurizes the Crest and ignites the launch boosters, preparing the vessel for space travel.  Outside the transparisteel, the gray sky begins darkening as the atmosphere eventually disappears.  The ship’s engines roar, burning so much fuel at once that you’re actually accelerating through the climb, you’re boosting through the gradual ease of gravity as the planet’s curvature and glow becomes softer and softer below you.

As soon as the blackness of space begins to fill the windows, the slight subsiding of force allows you to plug in the coordinates for Nevarro with less difficulty, but you’re still moving, still rising, still escaping.  You can’t find it within yourself to slow down, but then something catches your attention.

Claws suddenly dig sharp into your thigh, sharp enough to sting and cause you to wince, and you look down to see that the kid has gone incredibly tense.  Deadly tense.  Your heart is still pounding even though you’re away from danger, you’ve got Din in the hull, everyone is safe, and yet—

It flickers into existence all at once.  One second it’s just space, just the endless depths of nothingness spread out for light years in front of you, and within the blink of an eye it’s suddenly there.

A star destroyer.

Your body freezes in horrified awe, having never seen a ship so fucking big in your entire life.  It looks like a massive satellite, the size of an enormous asteroid instantly appearing in your vision and dwarfing the vastness of space around it.  All the stars you used to dream about are suddenly blotted out within a fraction of a second, terror so immense seizes your soul that you stop thinking.  You stop calculating, you stop being yourself for a split second that lasts an entire lifetime.

Before you can move a single muscle, the computer beeps quickly and lurches the Crest into hyperspace.

---

The stars streak across the transparisteel like so many times before.  Utter silence nearly deafens you with how abrupt it is after so much noise, but the peace it used to bring does nothing to quell your fear.  Everything is the same as it always was, same bursts of light as you hurdle faster than it towards Nevarro, same quiet, same rumbling hum of the ship.  But now, everything has changed.

You hear the quarry next to you suddenly inhale and exhale loudly, and it shocks you a little bit, reminds you that there’s a person next to you and another is on your lap.  Other people exist outside of the vision of death that just flickered out of existence just as quickly as it appeared.  They’re breathing, Oshua is shakily unbuckling his seatbelt, life is continuing on in the quiet cockpit but you can’t seem to move like he is.  You can’t seem to breathe like he is.  It’s only when the baby slowly maneuvers himself around on your thigh and blinks up at you, placing a tiny hand on your stomach that you finally feel air enter your lungs.

After a moment, you reach down and click open your seatbelt with trembling fingers, scooping the kid up in your arms and slowly attempting to stand.  Everything feels wobbly and dreamlike, you have to brace yourself on the headrest to prevent yourself from falling back into the chair again.

“That was…” Ryler mutters, his voice sounding foggy and distant, “uh.  A close one.”

You look over at him, recognizing that he’s speaking but not quite able to understand the words right now.  Red catches in your vision, and you blink down at the way he’s clutching his left shoulder, the smear of blood darkening the white armor he’s wearing.  You blink a few more times at the sight of it, and though it feels like you normally would be sickened at the wound, somehow shocked out of your state of shock, it does nothing to you.  When you look back up at his face, his expression seems strangely grateful, even when it’s screwed up in what you know must be excruciating pain.    You did that, a quiet voice whispers in your mind, even though the rest of it seems incredibly blank.

Instead of responding, you stumble a few steps over to the ladder, spinning around and hesitating for a moment.  You’re severely lacking in coherent thought, but one thing seems to break through.  You’re not sure if you have enough coordination to do this safely right now.  However, when there’s movement in your peripheral and you look to see Oshua gently offering his right arm to you, seeming to understand you’d like to use both hands for this, you snap back to your senses just the slightest bit and hug the baby tighter to your chest.  Carefully, you begin making the slow climb down the ladder with the kid, still trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline.  Your limbs feel extra heavy, but eventually the floor meets your feet.

Din is standing there when you slowly turn around, armor gleaming and still as a statue, but he has his back to you.  His helmet is tilted down at the ground, and when you follow his gaze, you’re met with the sight of the bloodstains of dragged bodies that leave dark red streaks all the way up the ramp.

You feel something this time.  It’s… cold.  A burning, searing cold that creeps into your skin.  Like your heart decides to pump nitrogen through your chest instead of warm blood.  You did that.

There’s a sudden urge inside of you to speak, to address him and inform him of your presence, tell him everything is okay, everything worked out, but you can’t find it in yourself to say a single word.  You can’t find a single word to say.  The kid twists as best he can in your clutch, his ears drag against your chest to greet his father, but for some reason, there’s still a strange sense of fear in your bones.  It’s enough to wake you up slightly, it’s enough to tell you it’s not over yet.  There’s a terror in your heart that hasn’t left since he first called over the comm and begged you to run, a crippling dread that you thought climaxed after seeing that star destroyer appear, but it’s somehow only increased after laying eyes on him like this.

You watch as his helmet turns, slowly meeting the pauldron on his shoulder, and for some reason, you feel yourself harden.  Your feet brace against the metal floor like this is another threat you have to face, you let its unyielding metallic strength transfer up through the souls of your boots to your heart in your chest.

But the second you hear cheap white armor clatter as the quarry steps down the ladder behind you, Din bursts into movement.  He suddenly spins and storms up to you in one single step while catching your holstered blaster on your hip.  It’s out and aimed in the blink of an eye, and it’s a miracle you remember how to speak before he remembers how to kill.

“Mando—” you warn, just in time for the quarry to land on the floor of the hull and turn around to reveal his face.

Din holds there for a second, his helmet locked on Oshua’s features.  His gloved fingers twitch wildly on the trigger of your gun held over your shoulder, like he has to remind himself multiple times not to.  You hear Oshua’s armor clack while he likely raises one good arm in surrender, but then Din’s helmet moves a fraction of a millimeter to your face and holds there.  He just stares down at you, and the air feels heavy, your body feels heavy, the feather light child in your arms feels heavy.

Slowly, he lowers his arm, lets it fall while he continues looking at you from behind the visor.  You look back at him, unblinking, unfeeling, and there’s a few seconds that last an utter eternity where nobody moves.  Nobody speaks, nothing happens, but then a soft coo comes from your arms before you can finally break eye contact, knowing there are still some things that need to be done.

You eventually turn around and lift your chin to address Oshua.

“You have to go into carbonite,” you inform him quietly.  Your voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from outside of yourself.  “We’re taking you to Nevarro, and then you’ll be transported to your home planet. When they unfreeze you, your sister will be there to collect you.”

He looks uncertain, one hand still raised while the other hangs uselessly at his side, and you don’t blame him.

But you also don’t feel like saying anymore, not unless he decides he doesn’t want to go in willingly.  Normally you might’ve tried to empathize, offer him further reassurance beyond just a couple short sentences, but you don’t.  Speaking feels difficult, thinking feels difficult.  You’re still in survival mode, not active but reactive.  There’s also no reason for you to lie to him about this, and you can see him glance at Din standing silently behind you, who hasn’t moved a muscle.

He eventually nods and you walk him over to the chamber without another word, watch him turn to face you as he backs into the opening while you reach up towards the control panel.

But then there’s a moment.  One where you hesitate slightly, one where your vision flashes back to the sight of those bloodstains on the floor, and that burning cold fills you again, so cold it feels completely numb.

“I’m… sorry,” you whisper quietly to him, though your voice sounds so empty.  There’s so much emotion that should be there but isn’t, so much regret and pain that should break through but can’t.  “I’m sorry I… killed your friends.”

Later, you’ll think about how you felt absolutely nothing saying it.  Your heart doesn’t constrict with remorse at the mere words leaving your mouth, guilt doesn’t flood into your soul, pain doesn’t wrack through your bones.  You could’ve been saying anything at all and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

He blinks at you, flicking his eyes between yours for a second or two, but then you press the proper button and watch the gas quickly freeze him where he stands.  He’ll be conscious the entire time, but Karga will send him to the correct location and you have no doubt that this elemental purgatory is leagues better than where he just escaped from.  It’s a benefit being the last quarry to be retrieved—he’ll only have to spend a few days trapped in here before being reunited with his family.

When that’s done and Oshua is a complete statue in front of you, bulky white armor now colored a dull metallic gray and frozen in time, you will yourself to finally turn around to face the enormous mountain of a presence behind you.  The baby gently reaches out for him, but Din doesn’t move from where he’s stood.  Your blaster is still clutched tightly in his hand, and he isn’t looking at you.

Slowly, you walk over and stop directly in front of him in the middle of the hull, blinking at him while the helmet subtly moves to lock onto your face.  The kid begins wiggling in your arms, making soft impatient noises while you both stand in complete silence across from each other.

After a few moments, you hear him flick your blaster’s safety on by his side and then toss it carelessly to the ground.  It skids along the floor, light enough to be mostly quiet.  Gloves reach out as he carefully takes the kid from you and settles him in the crook of one arm, and then he looks you up and down, still not saying anything.

Your eyes follow his movement, watching his arm slowly reaching out to you, and you think he’s going to cup your jaw, or brush your hair back.  Give you some sort of physical reassurance since he hasn’t spoken a single word of it.

Instead, Din suddenly grabs the armor clinging to your chest and starts ripping it off you with one hand.  It clangs to the floor so loudly in the silence of hyperspace, the kid’s ears twitch and flutter with each shattering bang.  You hold still while he does it, you barely respond except the unavoidable movement your body experiences as the pauldron is yanked from your shoulder and thrown against the ground.  The ammo belt is tugged over your head and hurled away, the thigh braces are snatched from your legs and they clang to the floor, and the pearly, opalescent fabric revealed underneath is stained in dead man’s blood, rusty and in such great quantities that it shows up as brown instead of red.

“Are you hurt?”

He sounds… dead.  So monotonic that you can’t possibly gauge his emotional state.  He doesn’t move.   His fists don’t clench, he says every single word like it means the same exact thing as the last.  If nothing at all was a person who could speak, they’d use his tone of voice.

“No,” you eventually whisper.

The helmet nods once, and then he spins around and walks away without anything else.  Without saying anything, without touching you, or double checking you for injuries in case you were lying.  You stand utterly still while Din climbs the ladder with the kid cradled in one arm, and you don’t even flinch when the door to the cockpit slides shut behind him.  You have no idea how long you stand there in the splitting silence afterwards, numb and unmoving.

You feel… nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

The hard defenses you strapped to yourself today to reconcile the things you had to do are still high and strong, guarding your soul even if he stripped away your physical armor.  Self preservation is still animating your body, and your facial expression barely changes.  Your first thought, as soon as you remember that you can have one, is that there are things that still need to be done.  Tasks to complete.

Alone, you shower the lingering traces of blood off your body, the normally clear and refreshing water running a sickly, toxic brown.  Alone, your stomach rolls and suddenly decides to empty itself of the very little that was in it as the scalding drops rain down over you—mostly liquid and bile that easily rinses down the drain.  The water is too warm, it beats down on you like blazing hot sand pelting your skin in the desert.  You feel like you did those first few months with Din, where the silence was suffocating, where you’d only interact with the baby if he was on a hunt or if you could tell he didn’t know how to calm him when he was fussy.  If you were in hyperspace, you usually spent time by yourself in the hull while he lived in the cockpit, and if he decided he needed to be in the hull for whatever reason, then you’d trade places with him.  It was… isolating.  Lonely by yourself.  The quiet used to haunt you before it became your cherished friend, but now it’s a betrayer, a ghost that whispers memories and nightmares in your ears.

When you finally finish rinsing the blood from your skin and get dressed, you see the sheets that used to make up your bed now have fried holes in them from your charred plasma marks, the inside of the hull is covered in them and the trails of dried blood where you dragged the bodies down the ramp.  Your armor is still strewn about the hull, the kid’s hovering shield lays dead in the corner.  Everything you meticulously cleaned and organized and collected and created, now the scene of a bloodbath.  One committed by your hand, your blaster still laying uselessly on the floor forever linked to this atrocity.

You spare a glance towards the ladder, but you don’t want to come face to face with Din yet.  You already knew he’d be furious, but… you had hoped that he’d at least…

What?  At least what?  Comfort you?  Coddle you after you deliberately ignored his instructions?  What exactly, in the past year or so of learning Din’s inner workings and intricacies, would ever give you the impression that he’d come give you a big hug after you purposefully defied him?  You flew the kid directly into an imperial base after being told to protect him, you ignored every order he gave to you in the moments he thought would be his last, and though you did it to save his life, you have a feeling that Din has never valued his life even a fraction of what you do.

The misery stabs at your soul, but your mind is finally beginning to process things logically.  He’s alive, the kid is alive, the quarry is secure, and you’re all onboard the safety of this ship hurtling through hyperspace where nobody, not even the Empire, can touch you.  You weighed the consequences before making your decision, you did what you had to do.  If he wants to be mad, then he can fucking well be mad and you’ll find some way to comfort yourself.  At least he’s here being mad, at least he’s alive and safe and breathing and mad, and your rare act of disobedience is to thank for that.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize it’s probably easier than it should be to reconcile the punishment.  Right now, you welcome the exclusion, the negativity and sorrow beating itself into your soul.  Four innocent people died today on this ship, gunned down under your blaster while they panicked and ran for cover.  You keep hearing their screams.

So you start to clean up the hull, needing another task to focus your thoughts on.  You work to erase every inch of the evidence of your deeds, make it disappear like the pool of blood Din once cleaned up while you were sleeping and never acknowledged again.  You only allow the bloodstains to fuck with your head for a single moment, and then you swallow back the nausea until you’re a blank slate again and sink to your knees with a rag in your hand.  After that, your vision stops focusing and it just becomes red contrasting against gunmetal gray, and you work tirelessly to get rid of all remaining traces of it.

Then you start on the blaster marks, you need them gone.  After a few informed attempts at mixing cleaning chemicals, you find one concoction that allows you to wipe them away like they’re nothing more than dirt that got tracked in.  The Crest’s oxygen recycling system works overdrive to constantly purify the air so you don’t get high or pass out, but your nose still stings.  It’s fine, it’s sterile, it burns a bit but it smells sharp and metallic and keeps you hyper focused on the task at hand.

After that’s done, you pick up the charred blankets and ball them up to throw into the trash vent.  You don’t feel anything as you do it.  You don’t think about how long it took you to collect these over months and months of being stuck on this ship, how comfortable they were when everything else was industrial and rigid, how many nights you spent with Din curled up in their softness while he breathed easy and warm.  Sheets are just luxuries, they can afford to be lost.

Next, you gather your armor and wipe it down with the rag, put it away along with your blaster.  The stained robe goes in the trash, along with the sheets and the blood soaked cloth you used to clean everything.  They’re all ruined, you’ll never be able to make them right again.

The hull is sparkling clean when you decide to take another shower.  Nothing on you is dirty except your hands, but you feel filthy.  Wrong, cold, numb, cold, stained, cold.

After scrubbing your skin raw under the water and changing clothes again, since you don’t really know what to do with yourself anymore, you slowly climb the ladder to the cockpit, keeping perfectly silent.  When you reach the upper platform and come face to face with the closed door, you can just barely hear Din’s whispered voice speaking quietly to the baby beyond it.

You raise your hand for a moment, hovering your knuckles over the metal, but then it eventually falls.  Instead, you look over and spot the corner, the same corner Din bunched himself into when he snapped at you for even suggesting going on a hunt with him, blew up at you for the mere notion of something happening like what happened today.  You back yourself into it in defeat and slowly sink down on the floor, resting your head against the metal and hugging your knees to your chest since you don’t have a tiny baby to take their place.

You can’t sleep.  You don’t even try, it’s pointless.  The concept feels foreign the longer you sit here by yourself.  You don’t hear Din or the baby anymore, but you feel… so fucking awful that it’s fitting that you don’t knock or go looking.  You don’t want to hold that sweet child with hands that were covered in blood just a few hours ago.  You killed more people than you can count on your fingers today, and of the ones who had done nothing wrong…  They screamed like younglings, ducked for cover and were able to fire off one single useless shot in the mayhem before you closed their eyes forever and left their bodies to rot in armor that wasn’t ever their choice to wear.

You didn’t know they were kidnapped and smuggled and forced into that situation.  You couldn’t have known, but that isn’t the point.  In this case, knowing doesn’t make one bit of difference.

You also can’t face Din yet, not like this.  You don’t want him to see you cowering, shattered with guilt over the decisions you made under pressure.  How will you ever get him to forgive you for not listening to him when you can’t even forgive yourself for the result of your choices?  Din is a hardened man who grew up in blasterfire and bloodshed, just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s going to magically become someone he isn’t.  You’re here letting guilt sink sharp claws into your chest over four dead men when he had a good fifty or more corpses scattered on the battlefield around him.  You decided to wear that armor, you decided to fly into an imperial base with the kid on your lap, and this is now your penance.  You’ll accept it with your back straight and your chin held high.

Figuratively, of course.  Physically, you’re smaller than you’ve ever been.  Crumpled up into a ball, taking up as little space as possible, curling up as tight as you can like an animal protecting all your vulnerable parts during a brutal attack.

So, since he isn’t here to comfort you himself, you just try to think about what he would tell you.  A long time ago, what would he tell you?

Din would tell you… that you killed someone.  Multiple people, this time.  He’d also tell you that it doesn’t matter what he tells you, what you could have reasonably foreseen or what you should have done.  The end result won’t change.  You own this now.  You’ll carry their deaths with you.

You take a few deep breaths, self-soothing with the undeniable truth that would be murmured matter of factly from his quiet voice.  He wouldn’t argue with you.  He wouldn’t deny the decisions you made or the consequences of them.  It happened, and at the end of the day, you either learn how to handle that, or you don’t.

And, for the four you did shoot, you were responsible for freeing ten times that amount.  You’re responsible for reuniting Oshua Ryler with his family, even if your place in yours is momentarily shunned.  You’d rather be out here alone than in there with the kid, wondering where his dad is or if he’s even still alive.  You rescued Din and now he gets to be here to shut this door on you, hold his son, and whisper calm reassurances to him.  If you listen really hard and imagine, you can pretend they’re for you, too.

That’s it.  Focus on them both, alive and well together.  Focus on the bodies wearing white armor that were moving, the ones that were bolting away from the imperial training base as fast as they could, free from the torture of imprisonment and conditioning.

Finally, you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness.  It’s not a testament to your exhaustion, but rather just how long you’ve been left to sit here by yourself.  Hours, maybe.  Time is strange in hyperspace.

You dream of a faceless man ringing bells.

---

When you wake up, a small baby has been placed in your arms, and you’re being dragged into a strong, secure beskar hold on the floor.

“Din,” you suddenly lift your head as soon as you’re conscious and nearly bonk it into solid metal, apologies rising in your throat before you even remember where you are.  You did what needed to be done to keep your family alive and together and you’d do it a thousand times again if necessary, but that doesn’t mean you won’t apologize anyways.  After the deeds you’ve committed today, regret feels as natural on your lips as speaking your own name.  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know you’re mad at me but I—”

“Shh,” he whispers, running his gloves through your hair.  He’s still wearing his helmet, he hasn’t taken anything off yet.  “Don’t say anything.  Just… stay here, stay right here with me.”

“I tried to save you,” you croak, tears instantly flooding your eyes.  You did save him.  You saved him and the baby and yourself but you’re so physically and emotionally exhausted that all you can recall is your intent.  “I tried.  Wasn’t gonna leave you there by yourself.  I tried to be brave, like you—y-you wouldn’t have left without me.”

His arms tighten around you, cradling you in such a strong embrace that you burrow into him, you find a place for your head on the hard metal strapped to him and bury yourself there, wishing that you had shovels of dirt being piled on you to justify the death you still feel staining your soul.  Your heart is starting to pound now that you’re remembering, your body is starting to shake with tremors of shock now that you’re aware of your own skin again.

“I was so sc-scared, Din, I didn’t—didn’t know what was happening,” you lament through watery eyes, gasping it out in hopes that it’ll relieve the slightest bit of the gut wrenching guilt just mercilessly crushing you.  It caught you before you could protect yourself against it, that armor you built around yourself isn’t on when you first wake up.  “I-I didn’t want to kill them, but they were already on the ship and y-you said—you said they were coming after the kid s-so I had to, I had to—”

“Stop,” Din whispers, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him.

“I-I cleaned up the blood,” you turn your face against the cold beskar to let all the positives you listed for yourself before scrape across your throat.  They don’t sound comforting anymore, they just sound like excuses.  “It’s gone, it’s like it never happened, everything is okay now, I got the quarry, I protected the baby, I saved a bunch of people, you’re both safe—”

“Stop,” he chokes out.  The modulator cuts off before you can hear his next breath, but you feel it shudder under your body.  “St-Stop it, please.”

Your eyes clench shut so tightly you feel like the streaking stars outside are behind them, tears drop down against his pauldron and you press your face tighter to it like it’s a wound, like the pressure will somehow ease the bleeding.

“Listen to me,” he says very quietly, and you instantly brace yourself.  The walls you just let down shoot right back up, your body physically tightens in preparation for another pain, another trauma, another scar you’ll carry, and you stop shaking.  You stop breathing, even when his hand comes up to ease your face away from his armor.

“You,” he whispers, holding your chin so you’re staring right at him, and your eyes flick fearfully in between his behind the visor, “are a sweet girl.”  Din’s leather thumb brushes along your skin, dragging over the tears below your puffy eyes.  “Not,” his voice catches, “a Mandalorian.”

Your heart goes cold.  Again, everything turns numb.  It doesn’t matter that you already said this yourself out loud earlier today.  It doesn’t matter that you acknowledged this fact, verbally insisted it more than once to hammer home the truth and felt some sense of comfort in it.  For some reason, hearing the words from his mouth is a fucking knife to your chest.

“I taught you how to fight, how to shoot a blaster,” he murmurs, thumb catching every single tear that continues to fall as he speaks.  “I taught you everything I know, everything that’s been taught to me.  I taught you how to defend yourself, how to protect yourself when you’re in danger.  I gave you your blaster, I gave you my armor, I gave you everything I could give you to keep you safe.  And when I thought you were ready, I let you loose on Sanctuary II.  Do you know why I did that?”  The helmet tips forward the slightest bit at the question, probing deep into the most shattered part of your heart.  “After all those months of fighting, and shooting, and training, do you know why I told you to run?”

You blink silently at him, a shaky breath quaking through you, and your expression wants to crumple under the reprimand.  You’re so fragile right now, taking hit after hit after hit to the softest parts inside you, and you want to just give up.  Let the guilt and remorse take you, let it wash you away.  But then, instead…

There’s a flicker of something inside you.  Something strong, endlessly strong, and it makes you want to revolt against what he’s saying.  It replaces the hurt and fear and desperation for comfort with a strange sense of insurgence, like it did earlier when you were hiding behind a boulder, cowering and trembling and not wanting to die.  You’re filled with a quiet urge to defend yourself in the face of this, stand up for yourself and refuse to be beaten down any longer.

“Because you needed to know how to escape danger,” he answers himself when you don’t.  “You needed to know how to disappear, how to outsmart any pursuer and find safety, even the trained ones.  Especially the trained ones.  Anything else was meant to be your last resort.  Not your choice.  Not something you chose.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” you admit to him quietly, voice shaky and tears still coming even as you try to speak up for yourself.  The regret you carry has nothing to do with this, and you decide right now that you won’t feel bad for saving him.  Your hurt comes from the meaningless things, the ones without any need whatsoever, not the necessary ones, and you tried.  You repeated his words to yourself over and over again, told yourself to run, told yourself to get to Nevarro, and it wasn’t going to happen.  “I couldn’t do it.  It wasn’t a choice.”

“It was,” he tells you.  He says it softly, whispers it like it’s the gentlest thing in the world, but the power and inherent distance of the armor strapped to his body finds its way into the words.  “And it was the wrong one.”

“What was I supposed to do?”  You ask, just a hint of that rebellion swimming to the surface now, rising out of the waves of self doubt, the one that feels like a spine growing in your back, an energy coursing through your veins that makes your heart start to beat faster.  Din’s hand slowly drops from your cheek but you don’t care.  “Was I supposed to run away and just let you die?”

“Yes.”  It’s quick and blunt and completely emotionless.  Delivered like a punch to the vulnerable parts of yourself he taught you how to protect, and the utter silence following this single word is comparable to the physical pain you learned to defend against.  It jabs hard against everything good and sweet and tender inside of you, and you’re left speechless even as he continues impassively.  “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”

It takes a second, but then that unfamiliar feeling suddenly surges up, breaches with the power of an entire ocean.  Your voices may be nothing more than whispers in the dark, you may be clinging to each other, holding each other with the softest, gentlest love in your hearts, but the strength of your conviction on this would rip metal apart.

“No.”  The word holds the might of your entire being, and it stands alone and defiant in the face of everything you fear, everything that threatens you, him, and this child.  Never.  You’ll die before that happens.  “I love you, and there’s nothing in this galaxy that would ever make me do that.  Not fear, not danger, not the Empire, nothing.  Not even you.”

Din stares at you.  His visor reflects your hardened expression back to you, the force in your soul and the purpose in your eyes, and you don’t even realize the gravity of what you just said because like your love for him, gravity is a constant.  It’s a fundamental truth cemented into the rules that govern your actions and it stays true no matter where you are, no matter what terror you face, or how scared you become.  You have him, you have this little boy in your arms, and if that’s all you have, then you have everything.

After an eternity of this, of feeling his eyes pierce deep into you from behind the helmet while you refuse to wither under his stare, you watch him slowly turn and look down, landing on the sleepy child tucked between you both.  He holds there for a long time, before finally whispering, so quiet that the modulator barely picks it up, “It was the wrong choice.”

You stay quiet.  It happened.  What’s done is done, you can’t change the past.  He can scold and reprimand you about this as much as he wants, but you did the right thing and that decision is the only reason he’s even here to be able to do so.  This exhausted child was reunited with his father because of your choices, and this exhausted father was reunited with his child.  You won’t argue anymore, but it’s a certitude that lives deep in your heart now, builds a home there right alongside the both of them.  Din eventually looks up, his eyes find yours again behind the visor, and his hand rises once more to gently cup your jaw.

“I… thought I’d enjoy seeing you in my armor,” Din finally whispers.  It’s not what you expected, but his voice sounds… weak.  Broken.  “You wore mine once before, and it was…”  He brushes his thumb along your cheek, and then his head shakes slightly, pushing the thought away.  “It wasn’t real.  It didn’t fit.  It dwarfed you, it made you look out of place, it made everything soft and innocent about you stand out.  I liked it because it wasn’t real.”

“Was it… really that bad?”  You whisper back, partially to ease the tension just slightly but quickly breaking eye contact with him when you realize it doesn’t land correctly, it just sounds self conscious and sad.  You try to find that conviction again, that strength and assurance that propped you up so sturdily before, but…  Not a Mandalorian, he’d said.  Of course not.  Of course not.

“It wasn’t the armor.”  Din gently tugs up on your face so that you look at him again.  “It was you covered in blood.  It was you purposefully putting yourself in danger.  You killed multiple armed soldiers of the Empire, you dragged their bodies off the ship.  And then you flew into an imperial base, where you killed the officers, too.  You…”  He shakes his head slowly at you while speaking, and although you can’t see his face, you don’t need to in order to hear the horror in his voice.   “You… collected a quarry… in the middle of a massacre, sweet girl.”

Not a Mandalorian.

“You don’t chase down bounties,” he tells you.  “You don’t fly into war zones.  You don’t kill imperials, you don’t collect quarries, you don’t sacrifice yourself, or our son, to save me.  You said you tried to be brave… like me.”  His fingers tighten against your cheek, he dips his helmet to make sure you understand.  “I’ll never ask you to be brave.  I’ll ask you to survive.”

“I’m… sorry,” you finally whisper, and his arm drops from your cheek to join the other in wrapping around you and holding tight.  They hug you and squeeze, encasing you and the baby in a beskar shield and staying there for a long time.  Long enough for you to tuck your head back into its proper place under his helmet, long enough to start to feel okay with the silence again.  It brutalized you the last time you were surrounded by it, it made you feel alone and desolate and barren inside.  You greet it warily now, settling into it for an unknown amount of time until it’s forgiven once more.

After a while, Din quietly breaks it.

“How many?”  He murmurs to you.  You already know exactly what he’s asking, there's no more clarification necessary on his behalf.

You slowly close your eyes and think back to the smoldering craters, the blood soaked ramp, the fear in Oshua Ryler’s eyes as he begged you not to kill him.

“That didn’t deserve it?”  You ask, clenching your eyes tighter at the memory.  “Four.”

And maybe, maybe six or eight months ago, you would’ve begged for some guidance on how to reconcile that.  Hell, maybe a few hours ago, you could’ve used his arms around you exactly like this, his low voice repeating the same things he’s already told you before, over and over again, if only for some semblance of stability when everything feels turbulent and uncertain.  You’ll never be able to change it, though.  This belongs to you now.

This time, all Din says is, “I’m sorry, too.”

And that covers everything.

The silence envelops you both again, but… there’s something else.  Something that still sits deep in your worries, an image that isn’t a scar of what’s happened but a dread of what’s to come.  You need to tell him.  You don’t feel like saying it, you don’t want to speak it aloud for fear of bringing it into existence, but you need to tell him.

“Din?”  You breathe out, and he makes a soft noise in his throat while cuddling you on the floor.  “I saw…,” you whisper, every word sitting tight and reluctant in your throat.  “Right when we made the jump, I was looking through the window and I-I saw…”

“A star destroyer.”  He says it like… like it’s the worst thing in the world and also completely expected at the same time.  He says it like he already knew, yet can’t even imagine.  You lean every bit of your weight against him since you can’t hold him in return, squish him as best you can against the small corner and curl up even tighter in his arms for comfort.

He takes a deep breath, a shuddery sound you don’t think you’ve ever heard him make before.  It holds untold anxiety, unsaid conflict, uncertain action, an unknown path forward.

“I don’t know what to do,” Din eventually whispers to himself, to you, to the baby in your arms.  His voice is barely a breath through the modulator, his fingers digging into your skin with how many emotions he’s repressing.  “What do I do?”

He sounds so distressed that you automatically feel your soul find the floor—instantly, you become steady and calm and you locate all that rationality that kept you going today.  All your worries still twist deep down, all the guilt and the turmoil wrestles with your soft, easy nature until you can only find bits and pieces of it in the most vulnerable places inside you, but if he’s struggling this terribly, then the least you can do is offer some good, true, unwavering faith in times of uncertainty.  You’re in hyperspace, everything worked out, and it’s going to stay that way for right now.  If he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet, then you trust him enough to wait for him.

“It’ll be okay,” you tell him with a newfound confidence and purpose, carefully easing the baby into one arm so that the other can find its way to the other side of his helmet and pull him closer.  Din tucks his head and allows you to brush your lips against the metal, whisper the words soft and steady to him.  “We’ll figure it out together.”

---

@cptnbvcks thank you so much for the incredible art!

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #mando x reader #mando x you #reader insert #fanfic #star wars #rough day #no-droids

[pigcowboys]

part 3 where percy confesses plss😭

pairing: percy jackson x gn! reader

summary: percy finally explains the reason he's been acting so weird.

warning(s): awkward conversations, mutual pining (pls they're very slow..), cursing, love confessions, kisses.

a/n: UGHH THIS TOOK FOREVER IM SO SORRY. tysm for all the notes on both parts !! :) i finally managed to pop out the final part even if it took a minute.. truly trying my best to clear up all the requests in my inbox, just give me a minute!!

part 1 part 2

school was slow - as always.

you watched out the window intently, trying your best to tune out the teacher's nonsensical chatting as you focused on the small robin that was seated outside on the arm of a tree.

you were so bored you were watching a bird.

seriously, school had to be some kind of legal torture method.

the bird flapped around like he was looking for something, tweeting eagerly when he seemed to get his hands onto a random stick.

hmm..must've been building a nest.

he rushed forward to place it, the twig dropping from his mouth as he hopped around, trying to find it almost nervously.

you watched with amused eyes, bracing your head in the palm of your hand as your mind started to wander. school was back in session and because of that, you had made the crushing decision to leave camp half-blood in order to pursue an education.

of course, as per request of your mother. she cared about you - a bit too much you'd guessed because for whatever reason she'd decided to put you in a school that was so strict they cut down on students if their shoelaces were so much as a tad bit too eye-catching.

you tore your eyes away from the bird to focus on your teacher who was still very much into the lesson she was teaching.

only a few more minutes till class had ended - you just had to hang in there..

“and so..” the loud ring of the bell cut your teacher off, simultaneously alerting your body to make the swift action to pull your backpack into your lap, sweeping all your things inside as you hauled yourself up, rushing out the classroom door.

one more day here and you might just throw yourself out the window, you thought.

your scruffy shoes dragged against the polished and shiny marble floor of the hallway as you pushed past the sea of people that were flooding out of each classroom.

you didn't hate this school - well, it was the only school you hadn't accidentally destroyed so, there was no room to complain. it wasn't any camp half-blood though, as bitter as you were about being a demi-god, you still missed being in a community where you all had at least one thing to relate to.

at this school you'd be lucky to find a person who had the same music taste as you..

you pushed past the last person, stomping down the stairs as you spotted a figure in the distance standing just a few ways near the front entrance of your school. you quirked an eyebrow at the fellow, a smile pulling onto your lips as you approached the person closer.

“so, are you stalking me now?” you asked, slightly amused.

percy smiled back at you. “yeah, sure, you wish.”

you pulled him into a gentle hug despite the emotions inside of you being anything but things of that nature, pulling away to exhale dramatically. “gods, if i stay one more second here i might end up maiming my english teacher.”

"between me and you, i can't tell who has a worse school - i got like, 6 pages of math homework today."

you stifled a laugh, causing percy's face to shift to one of unamusement. “thanks for that, makes my life seem a lot less horrible.”

percy stared right ahead at you, expression not changing.

you'd be a goddamned liar if you said you hadn't thought about percy every second you spent away from camp half-blood. i mean, how could you not? this summer was so..weird.. for no reason too. not that you hated it - it was amazing! suuper fun. well, spending like 4 days in the infirmary wasn't very fun but - you digress.

you hadn't seen percy or honestly, really anyone for a few months since summer ended. despite all the phone calls and texting, you'd never had the pleasure of seeing him in real life. you were both so busy too the idea of planning a hangout was completely out of picture.

it was until now, at least.

so, seeing percy jackson parked outside of your school on his beaten blue bike with slightly rusty handle bars on this random autumn afternoon was not apart of your plan. in fact, you were thinking of passing out when you got home and sleeping like a log.

he looked the same, for the most part except his hair was a bit more grown out now, bangs slightly overgrown on his face. you were sure he hadn't gotten a proper haircut in a minute or two. he looked more mature now too - to you at least. his shoulder were broader and his awkward voice that cracked unexpectedly was replaced a more..raspy and warm voice that tickled your ears whenever he spoke.

“what're you doing here?” you asked, offering him a confused smile. he tucked his hand into his pocket

“i wanted to take you out,” he replied, avoiding eye contact.

you eyed him curiously, grabbing the straps of your backpack. “like...on a date?” you joked.

“do you want it to be?”

you paused, slightly stunned by his newfound confidence. a smile unknowingly made it’s way onto your face as you snorted, pushing him playfully as you hid your burning face.

“are we riding over?”

percy smiled, hopping onto the bike as he slid his helmet onto his head. he scooted over to make space for you. “if you're not too scared..”

you smiled back at him, laughing as you threw your bag into the small basket in front of the bike, plopping down behind him. you hesitated to wrap your arms around him, goosebumps growing on your upper arm as you braced against his back.

“you alright back there?”

“mhm..” you mumbled out. “let's go.”

"how'd you get the money to pay for all this stuff?"

you tried your best to keep as much good inside your mouth as you could as you and percy walked side by side. you hadn’t had a proper unhealthy meal in weeks — all thanks to your mom’s newfound obsession with kale and all things vegetarian.

“saved up,” he replied nonchalantly. “nothing too important.” you hummed in response as you tended to the oversized slushee cup that was clutched in your right hand.

“so, what’s the real reason you decided to come find me?” you asked suddenly, catching Percy off guard.

“you’re not a very good listener.”

“and you’re not a good liar,” you quipped, a suspicious look on yo ur face. “why’d you suddenly decide you wanted to hang out?” you didn’t mind that percy had came to visit you — really. it’s just, you two didn’t live near each other at all.

so, for him to suddenly appear outside of your school on a whim seemed too peculiar to just be as simple as “wanting to hang”. percy analyzed you silently before shrugging. “well..i guess I just missed you then?”

you offered him a teasing smile. “is that so?”

“so.”

you laughed to cover up the hard pattering of your heart as your stomach fluttered. was Percy..flirting with you? like..flirting, flirting. you sneaked a glance at him as you continued to work on your slush, jumping when you felt Percy’s hand interlock with yours.

he didn’t look at you, only continued to walk at a neutral pace beside you. moments like these made you question your status with him, like isn’t it slightly weird for friends to be walking hand and hand down the street? is that..normal? well, it is for you two.

“where are we going?”

percy glanced at you. “somewhere..”

you quirked an eyebrow at him. you trusted his judgement — of course but it was starting to get late, that sentiment being heightened by the dimmer sky and the fact you were starting to see more and more street lights power off.

your mother was sure to worry about where you were in a few hours. just what did Percy have to show you? your head was telling you to leave and catch a bus home while the rest of your body told you to shut up and go wherever this sea eyed boy led you.

“just through here, okay?” percy reassured as he stepped to the side, allowing you to go ahead of him. he seemed to of led you to some secluded forest area that was a few ways away from civilization. it was beautiful — amazingly so considering this was New York you two were talking about.

“percy what is this pla—”

your questions was cut off as percy placed his hands over your eyes, earning a nervous giggle from you.

“shh,” he cooed in your ear. “just follow my lead.”

“kind of hard to when I can’t see anything..” you replied, tripping over something that was seated on the floor of the forest. percy was quick to steady you, slowly walking you deeper into the forest.

you mind went numb as the sensation of his own warm skin against yours overtook your receptors. his skin seemed just as warm as it was that summer he spent in the infirmary with you. almost as warm as his hand that clasped your own as you sat on his bed, watching in confusion as he attempted to tell you something.

whatever that something was..

percy stilled behind you as he exhaled shakily. “okay, i’m gonna remove my hands now.” he said, slightly nervous. “don’t like..scream or anything, alright?”

“no promises.” you joked, earning a nervous chuckle from him. you waited expectantly as percy slowly removed his hands from your eyes.

you blinked your eyes open as you admired the scene in-front of you. the heart of the forest was decorated with various different fairy lights and other small lights, and at the center there was a small picnic basket with a picture of you seated next to it.

you recognized the picture from the first day you and Percy had met. you were attending the same school at the time and that day the school had planned a trip to six flags, one that you both attended.

seated knee to knee, you two ascended the tracks and despite all your mutterings about rollercoasters being boring — you still felt your heart jumping as you made your way up. then, right at the drop, your throat closed and you started to grow sick.

yeah..it wasn’t hard to imagine what happened next. percy was nice enough to check up on you after the trip despite being traumatized himself. held all your stuff for you while you threw up the rest of the your breakfast into the six flags public trash bin.

and your teacher, oh, your sweet caring teacher, caught the whole thing in a image that consisted of your sickly looking face attempting to throw up a peace sign and percy’s terrified looking face that was stained with your throw up who hugged you awkwardly, shooting a weak looking thumbs up.

you hated that photo — he knew that. it was probably why he used it.

your breath caught in your throat as you turned to face percy. he looked back at you with a warm smile on his face as he approached you hesitantly. you stood in place, watching him approach you. what should you say? what could you say?

“i’ve.. not been the best with my words..recently..” percy said, slightly embarrassed. “but, um..i don’t think i’d really forgive myself if I didn’t tell you this..” his face was flushed to capacity as he stood in-front of you. your lips trembled as you opened your mouth to say something to no avail.

Percy exhaled, stepping forward as he clasped your hand in his, bringing it to rest against his chest. your eyes casted down to look at your hand which rested there, the pattering beat of his heart loud as ever.

“i really like you.” percy admitted. “more than..more than i’ve ever liked someone in my life.” he stared into your eyes intensely as he tightened his grip on your hand. “and..i want to know if you feel the same way..” he paused. “please?”

you were at a loss for words. i mean, how could you have gaged this was what Percy had planned for so long? and how stupid were you for not seeing it all? everything that happened between the two of you at camp half blood..was he..? no, he was. he was trying to confess to you.

he felt the same way as you.

you slithered your hand out of his touch, bringing it to your side. percy’s face grew slightly alarmed, sadness growing on his face.

your stomach fluttered as you leaned in slightly, tongue darting out to lick your lips before you closed the gap between the two of you, pressing a kiss to percy’s lips. his eyes widened at the contact, freezing before kissing back hesitantly.

Percy wrapped his arms around your neck, holding you tightly as you pulled back from the kiss, a embarrassed look on your face.

“i couldn’t find anything to say.”

percy blinked at you, slightly shaken up. “you’ve said plenty.”

“clearly not enough since you genuinely thought I wasn’t going to like you back.” you huffed. “gosh, and while we’re on the topic — can we talk about how stupid I am?”

“let’s not,” percy mumbled. “we’d be stuck on it for hours.” you nudged him playfully. silence fell over you two again as you stayed still in each other’s arms, having an unspoken staring contest.

“i like you too, percy.” you mumbled. “i always have.”

a smile formed on Percy’s face as he nodded slightly. “yeah, okay..I’m glad.” he cleared his throat. “…do you have like, a specific amount of time you have?”

“shut up and kiss me again.” you replied with a smile, pulling Percy into you as your lips pressed against each other again. for a moment you almost forgot all about where you were and how late it was. all that mattered at the moment was the fact that you and percy were finally together.

well, it was for a moment.

you jumped as percy’s phone went off in his pocket, causing you to pull away from Percy immediately as he searched through his pocket for his cell. You eyed percy curiously as he brought the phone to your ear.

“mom! what’s..going on?.” he replied into the phone with a hushed tone. “yeah..they’re here..” he turned to face you to which you waved at him with a lopsided smile.

“uh, okay — we will..yeah we’ll be there.” he said before ending the call. Percy turned to you with a frown. you titled your head in confusion.

“are you up for dinner at my place? my mom wants to meet my new girlfriend.” he said, wars growing red.

huh. dinner sounded good right about now.

#percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson fluff #percy jackson x reader #percy jackson x y/n #percy jackson x you #x reader #x reader fluff #pjo fluff

[hecateslore]

💌

supervisor!Simon

“That could’ve gone any better,” You speed walk behind a very pissed off Simon, “Get in the car.” He opens the car door, waiting for you to get in, “You can’t just fire him.” You point.

“ You defend him so much,” He pushes the door closed, “It’s like you have some affinity to people who fuck you over,” He barks, You took a step back, getting a good look at Him. “Don’t yell at me because you’re some hot head who can’t regulate his emotions.” You shoot, “Opposed to who? Certainly not the girl who quit her job because of criticism.” He crossed his arms. 

You narrow your eyes at him, “There’s so much I can say,” You shake your head, “Then say it!” He snaps, "it’s not like we’re in this position because you speak your mind.”

The sentence alone made your eye twitch, “God, you are sick.” You look at him, Simon’s tongue plays with the side of his cheek in annoyance, not even phased by you or your attempts at insulting him. "You’re a sick human Simon,” Your throat going dry from holding back your frustrated tears.

“No wonder Johnny warned me, because he knew what a sick person you are and how selfish and prideful you can be.” You spit, “You have no friends, no life; you don’t talk to anyone and no one wants to talk to you.” You hit below the belt, hoping and crossing your toes and fingers, praying, it was pulling at any strings in his chest. He only nods, “You finished?”

And there it was, right in front of you. He was only a man, It’s what he’s only ever been. No matter the circumstance, he’s only seen you where he felt you needed to be seen. 

“Go fuck yourself Simon.” 

-

Of course you shitted right all over your plate, your food and your life. You felt like you had one of those plushie poop hats on top of your head.

You sat on your dinner table, typing away on your computer getting paperwork filled out. It had been one week into teleworking, and a week since you last spoke to Simon. You did miss him and his stupidly expensive cologne. But your pride couldn’t move on from the “conversation” in the parking lot. You decided to text Johnny to see how he was doing; for no response in return.

When you finish your work, you get up and make yourself something to eat, scrolling on your phone while you stand by the stove. That’s until Simon’s contact photo pops up on your screen making you want to throw a spoon across the room. You answer the phone begrudgingly, mumbling a hello, “How have you been?” 

“How do you think?” You stir the noodles, and roll your eyes. Simon lets out a sigh, “Look,” He starts, “Simon I’m busy.” You cut him off, “Busy doing?” 

“Busy making food? Busy ignoring you maybe?” You say pouring the sauce packets in, “Well I called to apologize.” He says. “Really? That’s so cool, oh my gosh!” You say sarcastically.

“So you don’t want the apology?” You can see the brow raise right from your kitchen, “I don’t want shit thrown in my face-that’s what.” You’re quick,  not missing a beat when it comes to avoiding him or his advances.

“I was mad, Obviously I didn’t mean anything by it,” He explains, “and You said I had no life.” He points. “Because you don’t.” You shrug, licking the remnants of sauce off the spoon. Simon lets out a laugh and then covers it quickly with a fake cough, “Can I see you later?” He speaks lowly. “How about no?” 

Simon laughs again, “I’ll make it up to you.” He whines, “No, Simon.” You scold, “I want to be alone, So... leave me alone.” You finish, feelings still obviously hurt. “Fine.” He mumbles, the phone beeps signaling he ended the call.

“Am I wrong?” You say aloud, looking at your reflection in the microwave. “Exactly, exactly.” You nod at yourself.

-

The weekend finally comes, still no response from Johnny and Constant phone calls from Simon that end with you and him bickering like children. You wait for him outside of the doctor's office. You had your glasses on, standing under a tree with your arms crossed. 

You spotted his black car pulling into the parking lot, Once he got out of the car you looked over his large frame, he had jeans on with a plain t-shirt (C’mon fred durst). A wide smile on his face as he walked towards you, Your big bump poking out more than ever.

“Hey there lady.” he says, His dimple poking, an unamused look on your face, He goes in for a peck on the lips, You turn your head and his lips land on your cheek. He pulls back and purses his lips from embarrassment.

“So how’re you feeling?” Simon asks, placing his hand on your belly, his warmth making your heart skip a beat. “I’m fine,” You adjust the strap on your purse. “You look pretty.” He comments while you two walk to the office door. You do a sarcastic hum, not wanting to play into any of his tricks.

When you get inside you both sit in the waiting room, that's super empty besides you guys  and some other older couple, “So how long are you?” Simon reads the small pamphlet. “Twenty one weeks, I had to move my appointment cause this one’s too important for you to miss.” You say casually scrolling on your phone, “What does that mean,” Simon looks at you, “Gender reveal,” you mumble, “No party?” 

“Did you want me to get a canon and shoot confetti in the air?” You set your phone down. Simon chuckles making you bite the side of your cheek, holding in your smile. “Why don’t you ever ask me to come to these?” He lowers his voice, “Half the time you’re on my nerves,” You whisper to him and it makes him grin, “And now you’re having my baby.” He taunts quietly, “Don’t flatter yourself.” You push his face away from you.

“I would’ve eighty-sixed it if I really didn’t want you or it.” 

Simon snorts, “Stop calling it, It.” He scolds you, “You don’t tell me what to do,” You bite playfully, “You told me to go fuck myself.” He crosses his arms leaning his body into yours. “Well did you?” You raise a brow, “Yeah, Hard and fast, just like how you got pregnant.” 

“I bet it was quick and underwhelming, exactly like that night.” You nod pretending to recollect the exact night you did the horizontal tango. “Quicker, better, and a lot more wette-'' Simon's cut off from one of the triage nurses calling your name. “Gotta be quicker than that.” You say handing him your purse while you two walk to the examination room. 

-

You lay on the bed with your shirt hiked up over your bump, Your doctor and the Sonographer looking over the video monitor. Simon stood with his arms crossed, watching the baby wiggle around each time the tech moved the transducer.

“This is the father?” Your doctor asks, You nod, hearing the loud thumping sound coming from your baby. “I didn’t want to assume but now I see where the size comes from,” She jokes, making you grin a little. “Do we want to find out the gender today or are we doing a reveal?” She looks between you two. Simon looks at you, “We’re doing it today.” You nod.

“Alrighty,” She claps her hands together, “You see that right there, That’s the leg, and if we can get  baby to wiggle a little bit more," She says mostly mumbling to herself, rubbing your stomach, Her eyes trained on the screen, “You can see that healthy, Baby Boy.” She smiles at you.

Simon’s eyes widen, and your mouth opens in shock. 

-

Once you two leave the examination room and get your prescription for some stool softeners, You and Simon are both quiet, sitting in his car, “I thought he was a girl.” You break the silence. Simon’s hands are on the wheels but the car is still off. “Are you okay?” You look at Simon concerned by his state, “I guess it's more real now, for you at least,” You reach out to him, rubbing the nape of his neck.

“Now you don’t have an excuse to be an ass anymore.” You chuckle. 

“That’s not funny,” he mumbles, “Wasn’t trying to be.” Your hand runs down his neck to his back. “I was being serious, Pretty soon someone is going to be following you around and wanting to be exactly like you.” You tell him, “There won’t be enough time for you to be so angry, so whatever it is, that's in there,” You move your hand to his jaw making him look at you.

“You take care of it, because I will do everything to keep my baby safe and happy.” You look in his eyes.

-

“How’d you get to the doctors?” Simon takes a sip from his drink, “Mia dropped me off.” You say, inspecting your plate, “I smell tomatoes.” You narrow your eyes, taking a long sniff. “How can you smell vegetables?” Simon's face contorts with confusion, “I just can, Like I can smell that you got a new cologne.” You shrug, “Does it smell good?” He smells his own shirt.

“No.” You take a bite, “The other one’s better, it’s more sweet.” You cover your mouth not trying to show your chewed food. 

You both finish your food, “I miss you at the office,” Simon tosses his napkin on your plate instead of his. You hum at him, mixing the chocolate syrup with your ice cream, “I guess that’s more interesting?” 

“Ice cream is always more interesting,” You look at him through your lashes, “I don’t want this anymore, actually.” You push the little bowl away from you, “Want some?” You offer it to him, He lifts a hand silently declining.

“Guess we can get out of here.” You sigh, rubbing your belly. “Where am I taking you?” He takes out his wallet, getting ready to get his card out. “Yours.” You say, taking the spoon out of the bowl, licking the ice cream off it. “I thought you didn't want that,” He looks at you with furrowed brows, “I don’t.” You put the spoon back down. 

“So why are you eating it?” He chuckles, “because it’s good.” You look at him if it was obvious, He sighs, “So you’re coming over,” He asks again, “Mhm.” You hum again. Simon leans in, “I thought you were mad at me?” He smirks, “Still am.”

-

You were laying in his bed, watching tv looking at him through your peripheral, “Stop staring,” He mumbles. “You look handsome.” You say, Simon snorts, “And you stare at me.” You push his arm.

You and Simon sit in silence for a beat. “You know I had a really big crush on you before you became supervisor.” You blurt, reaching for the bag of peach rings on the nightstand. Simon laughs and sticks his hand in the candy bag. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” He places the sweet between his teeth, the sight alone makes your mouth water. “Yeah right,” You scoff, Simon laughs even louder than before. “I missed you this week,” You admit, your guy’s laughter is quiet. “I thought I had no friends, or no life, no hobbies.” He rattles on while moving his body closer. “Because you don’t,” You smile as he inches his face closer to yours, “I know,” he mumbles, placing his lips on yours.

A soft sigh escapes him as your lips meet, the sound of contentment and desire blending together. “I love you,” You say mid kiss into his mouth, he pulls away slightly, “That’s not good.” He chuckles, leaning back in his kiss deeper and more urgent now. 

You break the kiss again, “Tell me you love me,” You breathe (GET UP), He gazes into your eyes, Looking for a response, “I do.” You feel a pang of confusion and hurt. You scoot out of his grasp, He looks away for a moment, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his face. “What’s wrong,” He asks, “I don’t feel good,” You lie. 

Simon’s brow furrows in concern as he reaches out to touch your hand "Do we need to go to hospital?" The room feels heavy with the weight of unspoken words as silence stretches between you both. “I’m just gonna take a shower.” You lift off the bed, Humiliation hot on your tracks, and that overwhelming feeling creeping back into your system.

It was only for a moment. 

taglist:@darkravenqueen98. @shunoodles. @lovely-giggles @imjustmes @definitelynotaclown @oreo-cream. @whos-fran @ilovehyperfixating @idkbbyx3 @pieckyghost @mareiasereia @emmalandry @aylaveyou @w00lgathering @sugartits-123 @thesinsoflust @yuujuice

#officeRomance #Supervisor!Simon #simon ghost riley #simon riley x reader #simon riley x you #simon ghost x reader #simon riley #ghost cod #ghost headcanons

[mkkk12345]

Divus Crewel x Wife Reader How they met

Sorry this took so long to write, I was once again procrastinating lol Feel free to request situations (I write slowly and I’ll be pretty busy for the next while sadly, but please do request if you would like to! I'll do anyone in twst for the most part with your usual restrictions) (side note I got the names for the dogs from the 101 Dalmatians)

1.2K words

------

Oh how Crewel would come to regret what he had done that day, he really should have seen it coming. “Hey! Professor Crewel, tell us how you met your wife!”

This had all started when Crowley had approached him with a challenge. “If you manage to raise the class average of the first years to let's say~ 80 percent? I'll give you a raise! Am I not so incredibly generous? Hahahhahaaaa” He cawed to himself as Crewel walked away absolutely done with the crow mans shenanigans

Rolling his eyes he responds “I guess there is no harm in attempting it”

As an encouragement to study harder he had told his students that if they were able to raise the class average to 80 percent by the next semester he would allow them to ask one question about his personal life. Of course all of the students had jumped at the chance to glance into the oh so mysterious and strict teachers personal life.

And that is why we are here now.

Professor Divus Crewel, now being forced to tell the oh so embarrassing story of how he had met his lovely wife.

“Well it's not the worst question you lot could have asked. I would rather not share this story but if I must I will do so…”

—----

Divus was around 17 when he first met Y/N It was a bright and sunny day, the weather was perfect and it just so happened to be a long weekend, a rare opportunity to visit home in the Queendom of Roses.

It was also a perfect day to take his beloved pet dalmatian Perdita for a nice long walk in the nearby park for some long deserved bonding time.

When Crewel was home from NRC he would often take Perdita to the park. Whether it was actual exercise or for some relaxing time outside to sketch new fashion designs, Perdita never really minded. But today was different, the minute the pair stepped out of the door the spotted dog went bolting in the direction of the park. “Hey! Slow down girl, why on earth are you in such a rush today?!” he said, trying to keep all his sketching supplies from falling to the ground.

Luckily for young Divus, the dalmatian did eventually slow down once they reached the park. “You act as if no one has been bringing you to the park since I left for school.” he said exasperated from the impromptu run.

Soon after catching his breath Divus and his companion walked over to a nearby bench so the boy could start sketching, but right as he put his sketching equipment down there was another sudden tug on the lead and once again they were off “hey! Slow down! What has gotten into you toda-” CRASH he had been cut off suddenly, crashing into another person as Perdita and what seemed to be another dalmatian were running circles around the two very effectively tying the two together.

When he finally pried his eyes away from the dogs he finally realized the full situation he was in, tied up with a very beautiful young lady. “Oh my god I'm so sorry he doesn't usually act like this, Pongo would you stop that already?”

“Don't worry it was neither of our faults really, I guess these two have taken quite the interest in one another” he said as he pulled his arm out of the leashes to awkwardly scratch the back of his neck a blush forming on his face as he looked at a very interesting tree behind her.

“They've actually been like this for weeks!” she laughed as she finally met his eyes, “Oh you must be Divus! Your mother talks about you very often.” He was surprised, not only was this girl absolutely stunning but she already knew him. Although he would never admit it, he practically fell in love with her right then and there, the way she beamed with joy, the slight blush on her cheeks, her laugh even in the strangest of situations.

In an attempt to calm himself he averted his gaze again and began to untie him and his new developing crush from the entanglement of leashes they were trapped in “Oh you must have met mother while she was walking Perdita I do hope she didn't tell you anything embarrassing” a strained smirk appeared on his face, knowing how his mother liked to tell the most embarrassing stories of his childhood.

“Well I cant say she didn't say anything” she laughed softly again drawing Divus’s attention for a moment the blush on his face growing ever brighter.

Snapping out of his short trance he asked “Might I ask for your name then since you already know mine?” With blush remaining on the tips of ears he held out his hand like a gentleman, both with the intention to give her, her dogs leash back but also to lead her over to a bench so they could hopefully continue their conversation.

“Oh my apologies how rude of me, My name is Y/N nice to finally meet you.” She bashfully took both the leash and his hand, walking over to the bench.

“The pleasure is mine”

—-

“And whilst that was all happening I looked over to our dogs, only to find them looking at each other with what seemed to be a grin on their faces like they planned that all out.” Crewel sighed as he recalled how proud those little devils looked. “After quite a long conversation that ended up in me never actually starting a new sketch, we traded contact information and left the park.” he looked up at his students now regretting all his life decisions.

“And that is how I met my wife, now it seems like class is over, please leave quickly so I can question why I ever became a teacher in the first place.”

“But prof how did you ask her out?” “Yeah yeah! Who was the first one to confess!” “How did you propose????”

Frustrated crewel quickly answered “If I recall correctly you were all only given the privilege of asking one question, now if you don't stop pestering me I will be giving you even more homework.” a completely very unnoticable blush began to form on his face.

“Sorry sir!” Everyone shouted in unison, but on their way out the students did not miss the slightest hint of red that dusted their professor's cheeks as he pretended to sort through papers.

Once everyone had left and silence had fallen through the classroom a laughter could be heard coming from the Professors phone. “Awwwww darling, you retell that story so fondly~” Crewel sighed as he finally looked over at his phone

“I honestly can not believe I let you talk me into letting you listen to that.” he said with a hand firmly planted on his face covering any sign of pink that appeared.

“Consider it as repaying me for when I dropped those papers off for you. Now hurry home our two rascals of dogs are looking at me like I should thank them for getting us together.” she laughed nervously

“Yes yes honey see you soon” ending the call with a small smirk as he muttered “I should buy some more dog treats on the way back.”

#twst #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #crewel x reader #divus crewel #divus crewel x reader #divus crewel x yuu #twisted wonderland headcanons

[brodieland]

.˚ 𓈒 ࣪.𝝑𝝔 Secret Artist ?? ´ˎ˗

Leo Valdez x Fem!Apollo!Reader Synopsis: Leo found the secrets drawings you made of him, leading into some confessions !! Warning(s): some cursing and a little blood, nun to crazy Word Count: 2202

You loved art. Painting, drawing, pottery, you name it. You loved creating things, making things that last. That's how you first began to get close to your now best friend, Leo Valdez.

During a sword lesson, you couldn't have been more bored. When it came to fighting you were already remarkable with a bow and arrow, though given your Apollo lineage, you supposed that was a given for you. But moving on. You had found yourself drawing on your hand with a pen you always kept in your pocket (sucks it didn't turn into a sword😒), and when you looked to your side, you saw the Hephaestus boy, whose name you had previously learned was Leo, was pulling random things from his tool belt and started fidgeting with them. What truly confused you about this, the belt was empty.

"Where are those coming from?" You asked, curiosity getting the better of you.

"What-" Leo turned to you, looking wide-eyed for a split second before answering. "Oh um, it's a magic tool belt I found. I can ask for whatever little pieces and it gives them to me."

"Wow, really? Can you ask for a pen, mine ran out mid drawing." You pouted while holding your arm out to Leo, showing the dragon you were drawing around your arm, and showing how the pen ran out before you got to the top.

"Wow, that's so cool, you just did that right now?" Leo grabbed your arm to get a better look.

"Yeah, I was using Ladon as my inspiration." You smiled as you pointed to the tree that used to be Thalia, that is now wrapped with the golding fleece being protected by said dragon.

"I didn't know that dragon had a name. Does he breathe fire like my Festus?"

"Wait you were the one who repaired Beckendorf's dragon that went rouge? WAIT! You're the fire proof kid?" You gushed, you had heard about the fire proof kid, but you didn't know who it was.

"Oh, you've heard?" Leo grinned. "I hope it was all good things you've heard, like how I'm really cool and funny and ripped."

"Oh... yeah!" You said in a joking tone. "But seriously, I heard some kid went out to find the dragon so I got all the burn stuff ready. Then I got bored and took a nap and slept through, well you, flying into camp on your dragon."

"Trust me its a sight you wish you wish you could've seen. God I looked so awesooommeee." Leo started flexing his 'muscles.' You just started laughing before suddenly you interrupted by Luke, the one leading the sword lesson, clearly his throat to get he both of your attentions.

"Well, if you guys are finished we can continue?" You both quickly nodded. You two were already trying not to laugh, so you refused to look at each other with the fear of bursting out in laughter.

After that lesson, you and Leo continued to hang out. Despite both agreeing that sometime artificial life is easier to be around than human life, you found it easy to spend time together. You guys also made a good team, you made him drawings that he turned into 3D machines, and you patched him up from time to time when he gets his hands all cut up.

After a few months of the two you hanging out everyday, you slowly started developing a little crush towards the fire boy. You loved the way when he got excited he started to set himself on fire, you loved his stupid jokes, you loved his stupid grin, and honestly the list went on. When there were times you weren't hanging out with him, you were drawing. Not just drawing anything, but drawing pictures of Leo, or ones of you and Leo together. Of course, since you never wanted to weird Leo out, you never told him of the drawings, and hid them in a shoebox under your bed.

One day, you were hanging out with your half-brother Lee Fletcher. You both were at the archery range, shooting shot after shot, always on target. Bless Apollo genes for this.

"Why couldn't you just tell him that you like him?" Lee said while aiming toward his target.

"Because, it'll make stuff awkward between us."

"There's no way you don't think he likes you back." Lee side-eyed you.

"We're just friends and we're gonna stay like that. He's just girl-crazy, that's what your seeing, not him genuinely liking me."

"Gods, I'll never understand how you live in such an ignorantly bliss bubble." Did that even make sense?

"Now what if I used you as my next target?" You chuckled as you aimed toward Lee.

"Oh of course, now what if got an apple to place on my head?" Lee said sarcastically as he used his hands to make a circle shape above his head, making you both laugh harder. Suddenly, in your peripheral vision, you saw another one of your brothers running toward you with a slightly worried look on his face.

"Hey Austin what's wrong?" You asked him as your laughter died down.

"You and your healing abilities needed back at the infirmary. It's Leo." Austin stated causing your eyes to go wide.

"What? Is he okay?" You asked quickly.

"Well, he's not dying, but he still needs some of your healing." And with that you were off making your way back to the infirmary. When you finally got there, you quickly swung the door open and saw Leo and blood dripping from his hand, more than what he usually comes in with.

"Oh hey there Y/N" Leo said as he threw a playful wink, not really working because his face showed he was clearly in pain.

"Leo, how does this even happen." You scolding as you walked toward him grabbing his hand in yours. You couldn't even bother getting flustered while looking at his hand.

"Oh I-um" Leo looked around for a second, he looked like his face was getting hot (he was always hot but this time in a different way). You raised your eyebrow at him before he finally spoke up. "I just fell into a bunch of screws, their sharper than you think."

"You're such a klutz you know that." You laughed at the boy, who was suddenly more quiet than usual. "Hey, you good there?"

"Huh, oh yeah. Perfect and dandy."

"Uh, okay. Anyways I can't give you nectar and ambrosia for this, but it shouldn't take too long to heal." You said as you smiled and out your hands on your hips.

"Thanks to you and your magic hands."

"My magic hands?"

"Yeah your- never mind." You started laughing while Leo was rolling was rolling his eyes saying that it wasn't even that funny. It was pretty funny.

"Anyways, wanna hang out at my cabin later, I got the delivery guys to bring me back some gummy bears and jolly ranchers." You asked.

"Um, obviously? Who do you think I am?" You just chuckled as you both started walking toward the Apollo cabin. "How do you convince the saytrs to pick stuff up for you when they head out? I've tried so many times and they just tell me no every time."

"You're not as charming and amazing and gorgeous and humble as I am." You joked as you flipped your hair.

"Well... humble might be a little stretch but I'll let you have it."

"Are you just using me for my free candy?" You gasped.

"Ooohhhh I would neverrrrrrr." Leo laughed you opened the doors to your cabin. Leo took the chance to run and jump on your bed like he does every time he comes over. Except this time, Leo jumped a little to far and fell from the side of your bed landing on the floor.

"Leo how do you even manage, your supposed to be taking it easy you know."

"I'm for the workshop not the battle field" he joked as he laid on the ground.

"Excuses is all I'm hearing from here. Anyways I stuffed the candy in Lee's stuff so gimme a sec." You walked toward Lee's nightstand to retrieve your stash.

As you did so you had your back turned away from Leo, not realizing he was still on the floor. What you also didn't know, was that he had in fact, noticed the shoe box that resided under your bed. And with out saying anything he decided to take a peak at what's inside. To say it shocked him was putting it mildly. He stared at them in awe, not realizing you turned around till he heard you drop the bags of candy you were holding.

"Leo.." You whispered out. Your heart literally, just shot outta your ass. These were the last drawings you never wanted him to see. And there were enough to make you look like a total stalker.

"Y/N.. how come you hid these from me. I look so cool. But I do think you made my muscles a little underwhelming though." Leo commented. You continued to stand there with your mouth slightly agape, not knowing what to say and he continued to look through them. You desperately wanted to rip from his hands but you were frozen with embarrassment. Finally you snapped out of your haze.

"Leo.. can you like, put those away.." You said as you sat down in from of him.

"What why, these are so cool." Why is he so obliviousssss??

"Because you weren't supposed to see those." Will he get the hint this time?

"Wh-" He stopped himself. It clicked in Leo's head. It was quiet for a second. You wanted to crawl in a hole and die before he finally spoke up.

"Y/N, do you want to know how I actually messed up my hand?" You nodded and Leo continued. "Well, I was working on random stuff with Charles and Nyssa, when they kept bringing up this one girl. They kept telling me to just man up and ask her out, but I was sure she didn't like me. I got so bothered by them and slammed my hands as hard as I could on my workbench to make a point, but of course it was covered in the screws and they all went through my hand. And well, you know the rest." You sat there in silence. "The girl is you by the way, just in case you didn't get it.

You stared at him in disbelief, to think the both of you were having the same kind of conversations on different ends of the camps made you laugh. The fact he actually liked you back was endearing of course but still, the drawings he found were kind of embarrassing.

"Wow, sounds like you have anger issues really, might wanna get that checked out." You joked. Leo just rolled his eyes.

"Haha, can I kiss you now?" You jumped forward and kissed him. You both continued to make out until Lee and Austin can back into the cabin, standing over the two of you. Lee cleared his throat and got the both of your attentions.

"Do you mind?" Leo asked.

"Yeah, we do actually. Get a room that isn't about to get filled with a bunch of little Apollo campers getting ready for dinner." Austin said. You and Leo groaned as you both stared getting up.

"Yeah take your candy and stalker drawings with you please." Lee joked and you wanted to take the drawings and give him a paper cut in between his index finger and his thumb. Yeah, that'll show him. You didn't though, you choose peace as you put the drawings back and left with Leo and the candy.

"Y/N, can you follow me I want to show you something." Before you even had the chance to respond Leo grabbed your wrist and dragged you away.

"Are you kidnapping me?"

"Of course."

And finally you both made it to Bunker 9. You've actually never been in here before. Most people haven't even heard of it, it's normally kept between Hephaestus campers and a few others. It was empty at the moment with everyone heading out for dinner.

"Leo, what are we doing here?" You saw Leo looking through drawers and cabinets.

"Well, I was making something yesterday and I left it here before the whole hand thing happened. It's somewhere- AH! Here it is." Leo ran up to you and handed you his little creation. "It's just something I did in my free time, you know." It was a mini bouquet of metal flowers. You always got sad when the flowers you had always ended up dying and at some point you mentioned it to Leo.

"Aw Leo, these are so cute." They were in he shape of sunflowers, your favorite flowers. You don't even remember telling him these were your favorites

"Glad you like them, it sucked seeing you upset over dead flowers. So I made ones that would last." Leo grinned, you just walked up to him and kissed him once more.

"This is really sweet, but we should probably rush to dinner."

"Yeah probably."

#percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson #percy jackson pjo #percy pjo #leo valdez x reader #leo valdez x y/n #leo valdez x you #leo valdez fluff #leo valdez #leo valdez pjo

[fanfictionvibesworld]

(A/n: sorry for the late updating my little warriors. You see I am working on some books on my new Wattpad profile. That's where most my one shots and stories are. If curious about where I am and Wattpad my username is @fanficvibs16)

Words: 1.4k

Were the story lies

Summery:Human Alastor x child reader

⚠️Warning: Some cruising, Arguments 

________________________

The date was 1910 in Louisiana, New Orleans. In this decade it was all about change. Everything was changing. The technology, communication, transportation, and of course society. But that doesn't mean it's always a good thing at times. This day was Normal though as the bir—

" God, You're just being just...so difficult to deal with let alone be married to!"

A woman exclaimed loud as it came from a cozy small cabin that was surrounded by lovely trees and plants. Isolated from the outside world. Let's see what's happening shall we?

The man and woman was in the living room of there vintage cozy cabin as the fireplace was roaring behind them. The woman was standing up in the middle of the living room with arms crossed and eyebrows furrowed looking at the man that was sitting down on a leather comfortable recliner chair as he looked like he didn't give "zero fuckes" about what the woman was on about this time. The lanky tall man replied

"If you think I'm so difficult to deal with then you should be looking at a mirror, you're no better then I "

The man stated calmly as he didn't raise his voice at her like she did to him but his words at most times cuts deeper under other people's skin more. Even without the intention. The woman looked more pissed with his response. These arguments back and forward were becoming more of a reoccurring thing these days. All of this started to be more frequent when....SHE was finally here.

" You know what, I'm so sick and tired of this just.... Chose! It's either me or them!"

The woman now in rage said as it hit a boiling point for her. She was giving him suddenly a choice that he had to make.

He was caught off guard instantly as for the first time in his life.... He was speechless. He didn't expect that it would come to this. He abruptly got up from his chair, His signature brown suit followed with him as he looked at her dead in the eyes. The woman took a step back out of reflex and her eyes held some fear since she knew what he could DO and what he WAS. He was now losing his cool a bit as the man's voice became deeper as his usual permanent SMILE was still on display as always

" have you lost your mind, choice. What kind a choice is that? What kind of MOTHER does that."

The man finally exclaimed to the woman more so now we can tell wife. It was the first time that he acted like this and with actual emotion, he always filled with personality was most of it was cold like ice. In reality why he responded like that was because.... She sounded just like... Father ....... He HATED his Father and refuses to talk about what really happened to this day even if he was now in his mid 20's. His permanent smile  was stretched across his face as one of his dark brown eyes twitched in  irritation.

The woman was silent as a mouse. She knew what she said was wrong and probably messed up in someway but she can't take it anymore not with him or anyone. The woman was now looking down at the floor at her feet as the fireplace behind them roared higher than before. She should be ashamed but at the same time she could really care less, she spoke up in a low tone that sounded like a whisper

" Chose ALASTOR "

.

.

.

" Get out of MY house "

The man said but now known as Alastor. His tone was dark and cold.  He looked down at the woman as she was still looking at the ground as his predatory eyes are watching her every move. He was incredibly pissed. But still he had  that permanent and unsettling SMILE. He should just kill her, here and now but...... didn't want to waste any more of his time.

The woman was so glad that she was still even standing and not dead as then she kept looking at the ground. She just decide to turn around and start to walk to the front door away from him in the living room. She opened the front door as before she even took a step outside  spoke without turning back to him

" You'll regret this "

The woman uttered out as then she didn't even care to stay to hear his response as she then walked out the front door and slammed the door shut as  she left the man standing in the middle living room as the fire was dialing down a bit from the lack of firewood being put in the fireplace.

Long silence filled the cabin as there was unsettledness to it, as it was too quiet. Alastor, after a while of all that  let out a very deep, sigh as he was processing everything him and his (problem no more) wife fought about and her actually leaving

He moved from his spot for what seemed like ages he was standing there, even though that wasn't true.  He walked down the hall outside the living room down to the bedrooms of the house, his brown polished shoes clicked on the ground as he walked. He then stoped in front of one in particular room as it was just like the rest the doors as  it was oak wood but the inside was definitely different from the rest. He turned the old gold color knob as he turned the knob to open the door

In the room was a sight many would think was either a bold face joke or a disbelief sight even for him. The walls were an emerald green with a white ceiling and even a painted forest on one of the walls. Against that forest painted wall had a beige color crib with white small mattress and a blanket. Hanging above the crib was  hanging down as it was baby deers play spiny toy

Alastor walked in the room more as he walked in the room as he actually made an effort to not make his presence known. He walked up to the crib as he looked down. In there was a small red bundle in the middle of crib. Alastor paused for a moment as he hesitated. He then just went for it as he bend down and took the red bundle in his skinny but muscular arms as he hold the red bundle,  it was clear that he didn't really know what he was doing but at least was making an effort

Alastor looked down at the bundle as he took one of his hands as he moved some of that fabric away from the bundles face is what came into view was a precious baby as it had the same mix skin that he had but also had natural rosy cheeks. The baby was though awake as it was looking up at Alastor with there colored eyes with a somewhat chubby face

Alastor just looked down at the baby's with a non readable expression. Alastor never was one to think of to be a father to anyone and even to himself. He to be honest hated children and thought they were just a bunch of germ infested animals that the parents had to deal with until they were adults. It was that but this probably came from his past trauma that was unresolved that he had from his own childhood. By those descriptions one can tell by just that he doesn't like kids. He also was a busy person that didn't like his time passing by  like a waste of time

But

This was different. Something that he can't quite put his finger on  what emotion that was emotion or won that he ever used. Doesn't know why he didn't hesitate to pick this baby instead of his own wife but it was done and over with. It's just..... ever since he saw that babies face..... was like a flashlight in his dark cave that he calls his own. He never thought that he would be a father actually scared that he would end up like his Father

Alastor then suddenly smiled down at the baby. This smile was different though. It was more.... comforting and genuine which he hasn't shown in a long time while not even to that wife of his

" Well, I guess it's just you and me now. My little  Fawn"

The baby in his hold of course Didn't know what he said, since he was adult and they were just a child but that didn't stop them from giving him a gummy small back at him. Oh how alike they are already huh?

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

(A/n: if wanted to see the full story on this as it is a part of a story that I am actually making go check out my Wattpad is wished. I hope you all have a good night/afternoon/morning. Bye! 

#everyone #fypage #lucifer morningstar x reader #alastor x reader #alastor x reader smut #human alastor #x y/n #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin alastor #hazbin hotel #alastor #dad alastor #fupシ #tumbler #foryourpage

[suuuupernovaaa]

‘awlie [ʔaw.ˈli.ɛ] adv. once (in the past)

Anonymous Request: Maybe one with reader who was an avatar that did the consciousness transfer and while moving some of her stuff from the lab to stay with the clan, Neteyam finds a picture of her with an ex boyfriend that she's kept and thinks that maybe she still likes human men or that maybe he's unattractive/ugly to her?

1,680 words

Even though I was used to being in this body, I was only used to being in it in a temporary sense. There was always a deadline, and when I closed my eyes, I would wake up in my human body.

Now, when I close my eyes, I stay here, in this avatar, as one of the Na'vi. I know I'm lucky to be one of the few who even has an avatar, and one of the even fewer to pass through the eye of Ewya and return.

Watching my human form be lowered into the ground and buried was... weird. It was exactly like attending my own funeral, and it felt like I should be mourning, but instead, I was rejoicing.

I was ready to be one of The People, to live in Home Tree, to learn everything I possibly could with the new hours in the day I'd been given. To spend every spare moment with Neteyam.

There were just a few things I needed from the lab first, and Neteyam had graciously offered to come along.

I couldn't bring much with me, but there was a journal I wanted, and a small photo album with pictures my parents had brought from earth.

It was a quick trip, in and out, and as we exited the lab, Neteyam flipped carefully through the photo book that was dwarfed by his hands. He asked me questions about my parents, our family back on earth, and as he turned near the last page, a picture fell on the ground.

It was of me and David, years ago as teenagers together in the lab, our arms around each other's shoulders, smiling at the camera.

He stopped walking, and handed it to me.

I took it and smiled. David and I hadn't spoken in a while, especially since I'd met Neteyam, but it was nice to see the picture; he'd been my only friend for a long time, and something more than that for a little while, but we'd been better off as friends in the end.

"This is David. We grew up together, in the lab. We sort of dated for a while, too. He's really nice, you'd like him."

Neteyam handed me the photo album, and I tucked it away in the back.

I extended my hand to him, and he took it. "Ready?"

He smiled at me. "Ready."

--

Though it was an evening of celebration, welcoming Y/N as one of the people with food, drink, music and dancing, Neteyam had something weighing on him.

He could not get the picture of Y/N and David out of his mind. He tried to remember if she had ever mentioned him before, but it didn't seem that she had.

Why had she smiled so fondly at that picture? Where was David now? Did she miss her human life, was she having regrets about leaving her human body behind?

If David was still in the picture, would she have chosen differently? Was Neteyam a second choice behind someone he didn't even know?

He knew he was being foolish, but there wasn't anything he could do to stop it. Y/N had given up an entire human life for him, and for his people, but he could not shake the feeling he got when she had taken that picture gently into her hands and smiled.

She pulled him away from his thoughts to join in on a dance together, but he still felt uneasy.

--

Eventually, I felt a little overwhelmed with the celebration. It had been going on for hours, and even though it was in my honor, I still needed to get away - just for a few minutes.

I pulled Neteyam from the dancing, up through home tree, to the large, embroidered hammock we were now sharing together. Even though we were not mated yet, there was really no need for us to live separately, not when we would be finding our way to each other every night anyway.

Sitting down, I pulled Neteyam down with me, and took his hands into mine.

"Tell me what's bothering you, and I swear to god, if you say nothing-"

Neteyam cut me off, "David."

I leaned back, wrinkling my brow. "David? My ex-boyfriend David?"

He leaned over, grabbing the photo album where it lay. He flipped right to the back, and pulled out the photo of me and David, handing it over to me.

Holding it tightly in my hand, I looked up at him.

"Did this upset you? That I have this?"

He shook his head. "No, I... wonder if you feel like you made a mistake."

A little jealously, I could understand - after all, a lot of men would be bothered if their woman kept a picture of herself and an ex around. But he thought I was regretting my life choices?

That was absurd.

"You mean, choosing to stay as one of The People?"

He looked to the side, clearly a little embarrassed. "Choosing us. Choosing, um, me."

I tried my very hardest not to laugh. It started as a small smile, and then it spread, and even though I was trying my best not to laugh, a little bit of a chuckle escaped.

"Oh, Neteyam, I'm sorry!" I got onto my knees, crawling forward towards him, putting my hands on his shoulders. "It's just, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard! You don't realize that I fell in love with you the first time we met? And I thought I was being ridiculous, that you could never love me, you could never choose some Sky Person to be your mate and... and the first time you held my hand. Well, hold on."

Along with the photo album, I'd brought a journal of my last few years on Pandora. I flipped through until I found the page I was looking for, and began to read aloud.

"I went on a hunt today, for the first time. I didn't catch anything but, it was still really fun, and Neteyam was really patient with me. On the way back, he held my hand. I can't describe how happy it made me. I never thought he would think of me that way, but he squeezed my hand before we said goodbye, and it almost seemed like he wanted to kiss me."

I flipped a few pages forward.

"I told Neteyam I love him today, and he said it back! I can't believe it. I don't understand what I could have done to deserve this. I feel happy all the time. I dream about him at night, and I think about him first thing when I wake up. I have never felt like this before. Holy shit, I'm so in love."

A few more pages. I was too nervous to look up at Neteyam now.

"Tonight, I'm going to ask Ewya to allow me to live out the rest of my days in my Avatar. It feels really strange, knowing this could be my last day as a human. I feel sad, in a way. I think I'd feel more sad if mom and dad were alive, but it feels like Neteyam and his family are my family now. He hasn't asked me to be his mate but, I think he might want that. Either way, I know I belong with The People. I hope I don't fucking die."

I closed the book, and handed it to him, finally finding the courage to look into his eyes. "It's all in here, Neteyam. David was a friend, but I certainly wouldn't have given my life up for him. And, to be honest, I didn't do it just for you. I feel like I belong here. I feel really happy. And I can't imagine my life any other way."

Neteyam stared at me, his mouth hanging open slightly, his eyes a little misty. Finally, he reached out and put his hand on my cheek, and I leaned into his touch.

"I do want you to be my mate, Y/N. I didn't want to... overwhelm you, by asking too soon."

This time, I didn't have to try and stifle the laugh that rose quickly in my throat and out past my lips. "Neteyam! If you had asked me the day we met, I might have said yes." I grabbed the journal from his hands, and opened it to one of the first pages. I handed it back to him. "Read it. Out loud."

He rolled his eyes, but brought the small journal close to his face. "I met the Sully family today. Neytiri and Jake are intense, but the kids are all so nice. Kiri is my age, Neteyam just a few months older, and I hope I get to see them again. Especially Neteyam. He's so handsome, and so strong... I have a massive crush on him. Obviously nothing could ever happen, with me being human but, wow. I've never met anyone so incredible."

I took it from his hands before he could read anything more embarrassing than that. He playfully tried to get it back, but I held it behind my back and as he leaned over, captured him in a kiss.

He relaxed, giving up chase, and wrapped his arms around me.

"Do you see now, how much I have always loved you?" I whispered when I pulled away.

He pressed another quick, chaste kiss to my lips. "I should never have doubted you. If I had a... what do you call this?"

With no word in his language for it, I told him, "Journal."

"If I had a journal, and I had written about the day we'd met... I would have written that my life changed that day. That I met the most beautiful woman on the planet, and my brother had teased me that night that I was going to try to mate with a Sky Woman. And he was right."

I sighed. "I wish you had a journal."

He laughed. "Me too."

#neteyam #neteyam x reader #neteyam fic #avatar 2 #avatar twow #neteyam sully #avatar the way of water

[starryeyedjanai]

All things end and all things change.

Steddie | 23k | Explicit | Read on ao3

written for @patchworkgargoyle for the server gift exchange! 🥰 this is also a fill for @thefreakandthehair's winter challenge

Summary: 

When Eddie took over Robin's room, Steve made a promise to himself that he wouldn't scare Eddie off, that he wouldn't do anything to let him know that he’s still carrying a torch for him this many years later—because Steve feels like Eddie had to have known in college.

He had to have seen it every time Steve looked at him for a beat too long, every time he looked to Eddie first when told a joke, every time he wore his feelings so loudly because he’s never had to reign them in before.

And now he’s doomed to spend more than a week letting Eddie show him glimpses of his life that he’s never seen before, parts of him that he’s kept to himself up until now.

Steve feels like the more he gets to know Eddie, the more ingrained these feelings for him become.

But, you know, other than all of that, what could possibly go wrong?

Or, Steve was planning to spend the holidays alone, but there's no way Eddie's going to let that happen.

-

excerpt under the cut!

“Hey, are you going to be in town for New Year’s Eve?” Eddie asks as Steve walks out of his room, bleary eyed and barely awake. “I told you I’m visiting my uncle Wayne for Christmas, but I can be back in time for New Year’s Eve if you’ll be here.”

“I’ll, uh, I’ll be here,” Steve says, his voice still scratchy from sleep.

“What are your plans for Christmas now that Birdie’s gone home with Chrissy?” Eddie asks, dropping the curious act and getting to what he really wants to know.

It’s too early for this.

Eddie knows he has less of a filter when he’s just woken up, so this is a targeted attack.

He’s been avoiding answering the question when Eddie’s asked what his plans were before, but Christmas is in a few days and it looks like his hemming and hawing around an answer—‘I might go with Robin and Chrissy,’ and ‘I’m not sure yet’—won't suffice anymore.

Robin left yesterday with Chrissy to spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve with her family, her first time taking Chrissy home to her parents, and Steve obviously didn't go with them.

He hums and takes the cup of coffee Eddie pushes into his hands when he takes a seat at their kitchen table. He takes a sip, trying to formulate a way to not say outright that he’s staying here alone.

He shrugs his shoulders and says, "I’m not doing much. I’ll be in town for New Year’s Eve though,” because his brain is still mostly offline and he’s hoping Eddie will leave it alone. (He knows that he won't, but it’s a nice thought.)

Eddie asks, “How are you getting to your parents’ place? Or are they coming to town?”

Eddie knows Steve isn’t super close with his parents just like he knows that he hasn't spent Christmas with them since he graduated college—he and Robin have spent it together since she and her parents aren't big on Christmas as a whole.

They did visit Robin’s parents the first year after college and spent the holidays there, but since then, they’ve just had Christmases at their apartment, getting each other a couple gag gifts and a couple real ones and opening them in front of their comically small Christmas tree. The only reason they aren't spending it together this year is because Robin’s parents want to finally meet Chrissy.

He gulps down more coffee before saying, “I’m not going to Hawkins.”

“Steve, work with me here. Are you or are you not spending Christmas with your parents?” Eddie asks, leaving no room for ambiguity or ‘misinterpretations’ of his question.

So he just sighs and comes clean.

“My parents are in France for Christmas, so I’m just hanging out here for the holidays,” he says, not looking Eddie in the eyes. His parents did invite him to come along, but his passport is expired and he didn't want to stress about getting it renewed in time for the trip.

“Hanging out here alone?” Eddie asks.

Steve nods, still not looking at him, fiddling with the handle of his coffee mug.

“And how’d you get Robin to leave without you?” Eddie asks, suspicion in his voice.

“What do you mean?” Steve asks, playing dumb.

“I mean there’s no fucking way she’d let you spend the holidays alone, first Christmas taking her girlfriend home or not. So what did you tell her you were doing for the holidays?”

Steve sighs, so worn out all of a sudden. He wishes they weren't having this conversation at 8 in the morning—well, he wishes they weren't having it at all, wishes Eddie’s ADHD would have let him forget to ask what his plans were before he left for his uncle’s place.

“I may have said I was spending the holidays with you,” he says sheepishly, finally looking up at Eddie.

Eddie levels him an unimpressed look and then, in an even voice, he says, “Okay. So you’re coming home with me.”

“No,” Steve says. “No. I swear I’ll be fine. It’ll be nice even. Relaxing, having some time to myself.” It sounds weak even to his own ears, so he’s not surprised when Eddie doesn't let up.

“Uh huh, sure. You come sit by me when I’m doing my virtual D&D sessions even though you don’t play because you hate being alone for that many hours, but you want me to believe you’ll be alright being alone for more than a week over the holidays?”

God, it's so not fair bringing up how needy Steve is right now. Steve only pretty recently realized how codependent he and Robin were. They spent almost all of their free time together before she started dating Chrissy and when she moved in with Chrissy and Eddie took her bedroom in their apartment, he had to actively stop himself from monopolizing all of Eddie's time because he doesn't deal well with being alone.

He keeps finding himself almost meandering into Eddie’s room first thing in the morning because spending any amount of time without someone’s voice filling his ears is unbearable to him. Even just having someone in his presence, even if they weren't talking, is better than being alone.

He tries to save face by saying, “I swear I’m fine being alone—“

“Nope, you’re coming home with me,” Eddie says, cutting Steve off, his voice final. “It’ll be a tight squeeze since my uncle’s place is pretty small, but he’ll be glad to have someone to talk sports with, so—you’re coming.”

And this is why Steve has been trying to avoid this conversation so hard for weeks now, skirting around the truth with half-answers and changing the subject because he knew Eddie wasn't going to drop it once he knew.

He really has no choice but to accept or else Eddie won't shut up about it. Or worse, he’ll tell Robin and she’s definitely not going to drop it. And she’ll be disappointed that he lied and she’ll make him drive to her parents’ house and threaten to come get him if he refuses and it’ll spoil her Christmas with Chrissy and her parents. And he doesn't want that, obviously.

This is the first time Robin’s been serious about someone and all he wants is for her to spend her Christmas in love and happy and not worrying about him.

So he says, “Fine. Fine, I’ll go home with you.”

As much as he doesn't want to insert himself into someone else’s holiday plans, he doubly doesn't want to ruin Robin’s Christmas.

“Great. We leave tomorrow afternoon.”

The triumphant smile on Eddie’s face doesn't lessen the growing guilt and unease in stomach.

He really was going to be fine, spending the holidays alone. It would have been quiet and he would have hated every second of the silence, but he could have handled it.

His parents were never super into the Christmas spirit part of Christmas anyway. They never had traditions or decorated the house or anything. Growing up, Christmas was mostly about the gifts—not that he was complaining. He always had the newest toys or video game consoles, so for the most part, he was happy enough to skip the rest of it.

It was only when he was dating Nancy and saw how her family gathered for the holidays and spent time together that he realized that his Christmases were always kind of lonely even when his parents were around.

So after college, when he and Robin moved in together, they started to make their own traditions for the holidays, decorating their apartment and wearing matching pajamas and FaceTiming Robin’s parents on Christmas morning.

This would have been the first Christmas since he started having actual Christmas traditions that he’d be spending it alone. So yeah, it would have sucked, but it would have been worth it if it meant Robin got to have her Hallmark Christmas movie moment.

And now he’s apparently going to the Munson’s for Christmas.

At least now Robin won't actually kill him when she gets back and finds out what he did for the holidays.

read the rest on ao3

#steddie #stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #SpicySixWinterFanworksChallenge #stuadholidayexchange #janai.doc

[just-mint-to-be]

Wrote this over like a week to keep myself ‘sane’ between commissions (thanks for your continued patience lovelies!), work and ironically, my pre testing app for reserves.

Trying really hard not to think of a yandere! Phillip Graves (and failing at it) slowly moulding a recruit that caught his eye into the perfect little, all American housewife. This ended up waaaay longer than intended oops but I hope you enjoy my sleep deprived ramblings under the cut.

TW: sexism, dub/noncon, nsfw, typical yandere stuff, I am beyond redemption etc, men ain’t shit and i don’t condone this irl.

- You always tried so damn hard; always over exerted yourself during drills or let every passing jab from a stupid, dim witted bolo taint your sweet little face with worry.

- On more than one occasion he’d spotted you trying desperately to will away any evidence of tears from your cheeks before returning to training or the commons. But, you were persistent; that alone was commendable.

- Every time you’d stride back out, eager to prove them (and perhaps, yourself) wrong. You wanted so desperately to become a passable soldier, when you already had the capability to be a perfect lover for him.

- He found it endearing, like a little spark burning in the wrong place. A candle, lit at daytime or the moon peaking forth from blue sky.

- Military life was not for the faint hearted. It was gritty, unclean, and more often than not, unforgiving and unrewarding.

- You were better off at home, protected and adored for the way you were in your pure, soft glory than barely appreciated under the guise of potential.

- ‘Look y/n,’ he’ll rise from his chair, ‘you’re clever, you’re a hard worker and god damn...’ the way his gaze trailed you up and down was like a jeweller inspecting a mere rock for its worth, ‘you’re gorgeous.’

- Graves sighed, ‘But you’re no soldier sweetpea. The army... war... it’s dirty business; wouldn’t want a darling thing like you wasted here.’

- So he took you. He had connections, power, money and a cosy little estate in rural Texas complete with a white picket fence and apple tree out the front. But now, best of all, he had you.

- Phillip is aware you won’t take to it immediately. You were a delicate little thing in his eyes; moving home, marriage... the prospects of what awaited were all awfully exciting but overwhelming.

- He’ll be a soothing, condescending anchor during your initial breakdown adjustment period.

- Your wardrobe will be replaced, any military insignia tossed aside and your fatigues burnt before you can even protest. It’ll all be replaced with sweet, feminine day dresses and jewellery to match. Gone are any practical shoes that might make running away easier; you’ll live in heels and court shoes until he permits you to take them off.

- Don’t like it? Maybe you’d rather be naked- that option always keeps you quiet.

- Graves can be patient, earnestly so, but even he has a limit.

- You talk back, cry and say you hate him? Insinuate that keeping the house he lovingly provided for you is beneath you? That’s no way for a lady to treat her husband or her duties.

- An evening bent over his knee will set you straight. By the end of it, your ass will be sore, your spirit dampened and you’ll be coddled as if it never happened.

- ‘Now ‘ya know I don’t like punishing ‘ya sweetheart, but a man’s got to set rules an’ keep ‘em in check’. Now what do you say?’

- ‘Sorry...’ you murmur, voice still shaky.

- ‘Sorry what pretty girl?’

- ‘Sorry sir,’ a kiss preludes a confirming ‘atta girl.’ It’s terrifying how your heart instinctively lurches at the praise.

- Eventually, by desperation or instinct, you’ll fall into a rhythm. The house is spotless, everything is ready well and truly by the time he comes home and you’ve mastered the art of baking apple pies using his grandmother’s gifted recipe.

- It’s then, true to his profession, he drops a bomb. You’ll be scrubbing the dishes after dinner one night enjoying the temporary peace the sound of crickets outside awards.

- Footsteps sound, and the darkness of the outdoors allows for a daunting reflection on the windows. Phillip, with a soft, smug smile and intensive gaze parks behind you. You feel the serpentine sensation of a hand snaking it’s way around your waist and pulling you close, ‘I love you.’

- You swallow, weakly trying to will up a response but he cuts you off.

- ‘I think it’s time we took the next step, this house is too darn b’ig for just the two o’ us,’ he applies a breathy kiss to your temple, his hands descending lower until they reach your midsection, ‘we’re gonna start a family.’

- You gasp, the dish collapsing into the sink below with a thud, ‘P...Phil.. I’m not ready I can’t... please.’

- He’ll hush you, a hasty ‘shhhhhh’ preluding haunting words wrapped in an airy tone of adoration, ‘Easy sweetheart easy, you’ll be fine I’ll make sure ‘o it, just settle down now. You’ll be an amazing mother. It’s what you’re meant for.’

- He senses a final streak of rebellion in you; a fight or flight response comparable to a soldier being cornered on the battle field. Alas, you were no warrior- not really. It was an endearing little farce, he’d remind you of that.

- You’ll be swept over his shoulder, legs kicking and adorable little pleas spilling from your lips. The male merely continues his route to the bedroom, every sound fulling on deaf ears as he gently kneads what were intended to be soothing circles into your thigh.

- He’ll fuck you every night (and if time permits, day) until there’s absolutely no chance you aren’t pregnant.

- Almost methodical about it. You’ll switching from doggy to missionary in a cycle and trying every trick he’s ever read anywhere that allegedly increase the chances of it taking.

- If you squirm too much, he might just cuff you to the bed with your ass in the air. Watching as his cum seeps from your sweet little pussy.

- ‘Oh darlin,’ he’ll moan, ‘you look so fuckin’ perfect like this, all docile. All mine.’ Between thrusts he’ll knead your breasts from behind, commenting how he can’t wait to see them grow and peak from the dresses he’s bought you.

- ‘Cant wait to see you all swollen. Gonna fill ya’ up over and over, we’ll have a big beautiful family’.

- Makes you take a pregnancy test every morning and night, even going as far as embarrassingly supervising you whilst you’re peeing on a stick. You might reason that its irrational to except a change in a few short hours, but he insists.

- In fact, he’ll probably just fuck you again for your audacity to question him.

- Definitely brings you on base at least once, parading you in front of your former battalion members. He’ll stride past, a cunning, self satisfied grin lacing his features as one hand softly cups your ever growing bump.

- Many approach, fawning over your glowing skin and the way Phillip seems absolutely smitten with you and the life inside already.

- ‘ Every one here knows you’re where you belong...’ a chaste kiss was applied to your temple, his digits coming to stroke the place it marked ‘and who you belong to...’

- ‘So dollface, there ain’t no point trying to be anywhere or anyone else, is there?’

#minty’s writing #yandere x reader #yandere headcanons #yandere imagines #Yandere lemon #Yandere Phillip Graves #Phillip Graves x reader #Yandere call of duty #Yandere modern warfare II #minty’s COD #dark Phillip Graves #cod smut

[flowersforjude]

𝐌𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐌𝐞 𝐈𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐬

𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 | Joel Miller x Fem!Reader

𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 | It’s just a job, nothing more. Until it isn’t.

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 | 3,008

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 | Canon typical violence, Injuries, Mutual pining, Joel is like the reader’s personal bodyguard.

𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞 | Reluctantly protective Joel sure is something. Something I need in my be-

masterlist | read on ao3

This was supposed to be an easy one. Get you from place to place, unharmed and alive; get paid; and then that was that. Easy. 

Except it was anything but. 

Joel’s first impression of you was that you were meek and quiet. He was honestly pleased, thinking this made his job a lot easier. He thought you would follow his orders and just let him take the lead. Cut and dry, right? 

How wrong he was.

He certainly wasn’t expecting your hidden fiery spirit. It only took a few days for your soft-spoken nature to disappear. He got used to your sharp tongue real quick, and while you knew when to really listen to him, he got used to your defiance as well. 

Things started to go wrong as soon as you left the Q.Z. His original plan went to hell, and you were forced to take the long way around. Infected swarmed the short path, and the thought of making this trip even longer set Joel on edge. Bad luck already setting the precedent for the whole trip made him regret taking the damn job in the first place. 

Before the trek even began, he put his walls up with you. He makes it clear he doesn’t do small talk, but that didn’t stop you from asking him a million questions. He answers some of them that he deems logical, but he shuts you down when you ask anything too personal. He doesn’t want you to know him. Doesn’t want to know you. 

But then the inevitable happens. 

You take a hammer to his walls and make the first crack. He’s unable to put his finger on the exact moment you began chipping away at his resolve. 

Maybe it was the night under the stars when he actually allowed himself to hold a conversation with you. The first real one you guys had, nothing like your endless questions and his short, clipped answers. He learned that night that you had a real good sense of humor. 

But then again, it just as well may have been the day you came upon a deer in the woods. He wanted to keep moving, but you were adamant about staying and watching the animal. Joel supposed he understood. He didn’t know how long it’d been since you’d left the Q.Z., so it’d been an eternity since you laid eyes upon anything other than a rat. The longing in your expression hit something in him. He didn’t know why. The world was the way it was. And it wasn’t changing, so why waste your time missing something you could never have again?

Though Joel ate his own words when he realized he wanted to give you what you yearned for. A scene of normalcy, something to ease the sting of your lost life. He couldn’t give you the life you had before the outbreak, but some part of him wanted to try his hardest to give you something close to it. 

That’s why, even when you both had a close call with a few Clickers, he fought his hardest to get you out of there and to the place you were headed. His only hope was to deliver you to something close to normal. 

The Clicker comes out of nowhere; it tackles Joel and slams him to the ground. He goes down with a crack and knows his back will be screaming later. The thing claws at him, ripping the shoulder of his shirt. He’s holding it back as best he can while trying to reach for his knife. Before he can grip the handle, though, a shot rings out. 

Birds fly from the trees, the sound of their wings meeting his ears over the rushing of blood. He shoves the creature off him and pulls himself to his feet. The first thing he sees is you. You stand a few yards away with your gun still held up. Your arms seem to be trembling, and Joel is momentarily stunned. He knew you carried a gun, obviously, but he didn’t know you were such a good shot. He’d never seen you use it, always letting him take care of any threat.  

He’s about to call to you, to say something like, ‘good shooting.” But before he can even open his mouth, another Clicker springs from the treeline. You go down with a shriek, but you're fighting to get free. Joel doesn’t think as he pulls out his gun and starts running. As soon as he’s close enough to guarantee a kill shot, he fires. A second shot rings out, and this time the only sound to be heard are your terrified gasps. 

He’s next to you quicker than he realizes and pulls you up. Your eyes are frantic, zooming around until they land on his face. Relief floods them, and all of a sudden your hands are gripping at him. You take his jaw and turn his head back and forth, your eyes searching him for injuries. 

“Are you okay?” You ask, your voice holds a slight panic. Your hands leave his jaw and trail down his neck, checking there for any bites too. “Did it get you? Are you hurt?” Your worry and the feeling of your hands still on him send tingles through his skin. 

“I’m fine.” He assures you, trying to keep his voice from sounding too gruff. He peels your hands from him but doesn’t let go of them. He conducts his own search of you, checking for any bites or injuries from your fall. “Are you alright?” 

“I think so.” You answer breathlessly. 

He goes to retrieve his pack, which had fallen off in his struggle with the Clicker. You're hot on his heels, putting barely any space between your bodies. When he bends down to pick up the bag, his back screams at him. He winces as he straightens up, a hand going to his lower back. 

You're worrying over him again in an instant. “What’s wrong?” You fret, putting your hand over his. He brushes you off and assures you once again that he’s fine. Your quick-witted attitude comes out in full force as you put on a stern expression. “Well, we should find a place to hunker down for the night. Something’s clearly wrong with your back.” 

He can’t argue with that. It’s easy enough to find a suitable place, barricading yourselves in an old garage of some house. It’s a cold night, though, and even the closed-off garage doesn’t provide enough warmth to keep you from shivering. Joel contemplates moving outside just so he can build a fire, but the threat of more Clickers being in the area stops him. Being cold is better than being dead. 

You're sitting on your bed roll, wrapped up in your blanket, blowing on your hands and rubbing them together. The slight tremble of your form doesn’t go unnoticed by him. 

“Here,” he offers, motioning for you to slide over a little. He lays his own bed roll right next to yours and sits down. He brings his blanket up over him. “Come under here.” He held the edge of it up. You don’t have to be told twice as you press yourself to his side. With both blankets covering you, and your shared body heat, that should do for the night. 

You fall asleep with your back facing him, your hands tucked under your chin. Joel finds himself staying awake, rationalizing it as keeping watch. He watches you as you breathe in and out. You hum every now and then, like you're talking in your dreams. Soon those peaceful hums turn into frightened gasps. He leans over you, watching your face. You don’t wake up, though your brows are furrowed and your lashes flutter, but your eyes don’t open. 

After a moment, you roll over, facing him. Your hand shoots out, gripping the fabric of his shirt in your fist tightly. Joel doesn’t dare move as you shuffle closer to him, like you’re seeking him out in your dreams. Your face presses itself to his chest, your hand losing some of its tension but still keeping a hold on his shirt. 

That’s when he hears it. 

“Joel.” 

Everything he thought he knew came crashing down with the barely there mumble of his name from your unconscious lips. It’s just his name, it shouldn’t startle him so much. But it came from you, whispered from the deepest recesses of your sleeping mind. 

“Joel.” 

There it is again. A murmured confession that you're looking for him. Searching for him in your rest for a reason Joel can’t decipher. It’s laced with yearning, so much so that he can’t stop himself from winding his arms around you. 

“I’m here, sweetheart.” He quietly answers when you call his name once more. His voice must have reached some deep part of your mind because you finally settled down fully. Sighing a little as you burrow yourself further into his warmth. 

He doesn’t say anything the next morning. Even though you woke with your head resting in the crook of his neck and his arm still caging you to him. He doesn’t say anything about your nighttime hunt for him. He can’t even imagine how that conversation would go. He pictures your flushed cheeks as you stammer your way around an explanation, and he almost changes his mind. But he decides it’s better this way. 

This is just a job.

He doesn’t even believe himself at this point. 

For the rest of the journey, it’s clear something has shifted. Some unknown knowledge hangs between you, but neither of you brings it up. Content with just letting it simmer until it eventually bubbles over and you're forced to deal with it. 

You still glue yourself to him, never leaving more than a few inches between you both. If it had been anyone else, Joel would’ve already barked at them to back up. But it was you, and he found himself relishing in your closeness. He knew soon enough you would reach your destination and be forced to part ways. So, he was going to soak up as much of this as he could. He lets himself indulge in you and your endless sunlight. 

On the last night of the trip, you and he sit across from each other with a fire between you. It was silent as you busied yourselves with eating decades-old canned fruit. The sound of the spoons clinking against the cans drove him crazy. He tried to think of something to say, something meaningful. After all, it is your last night together. But he can’t come up with a damn thing. He’s seriously about to comment on the weather just to fill the silence when you save him. 

“What do you remember the most from before?” 

This is breaking his rule of no small talk. He already knows that if he answers this, things are going to get personal. He answers anyway. “Football games on Sunday. Summer barbecues. My brother and I swimming in our grandfather’s lake.” 

“I didn’t know you had a brother.” You're surprised, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be. Joel hasn’t exactly been open with you about anything regarding himself. 

He nods. “Yeah, a younger one. Tommy.” 

You seem to peer closer at him over the fire. The orange glow of the flames enveloping your features. “Is he back in Boston?” 

Another question that he wouldn't have answered before. “No, we haven’t talked in a while actually. I don’t know where he is.” He can see the sympathy taking over your face, so he directs the attention away from him. Not ready to open that door with you yet. “What about you? What do you remember the most?”

This brings a smile out of you. “My family going to this cabin by the lake every Fourth of July. Me and my grandma going apple picking.” 

“I was never a big apple fan,” he remarks. 

Your smile grows, and he thinks he’d keep talking all night if you smiled like that again. “Oh, I was. Especially apple pie, my grandma and I would make one every time we went picking.” The light in your face fades a little. You take on this faraway look as you gaze into the flames. Joel gives you time to speak again because he can tell something is on your mind. “Do you think the world will ever be somewhat the same again?” 

That’s one question he absolutely knows the answer to. No. The world is the way it is now, and there’s no going back to what was before. Your only choice was to adapt. But the sorrowful expression on your face made him answer something completely different. 

“I sure hope so.” 

When you finally reach your destination the next day, you find out the person you were meeting was a no-show. You were still welcomed with open arms, though. The people even gave Joel somewhere to stay for the night. Offering him a room to rest his head and supplies for his trip back. He plans on leaving at first light, not wanting to chance seeing you in the morning. If he saw you, it would make things harder than they needed to be. He let himself enjoy your warmth for a while, but the job was done. It was time to get back on track, he told himself. 

He’s stocking his bag when there’s a knock at the door. He’s not expecting to see you standing on the other side, but he’s not surprised. He steps back to allow you to come in, closing the door once you pass him. 

“You need something, sweetheart?” He questions, kicking himself for the nickname. He hadn’t meant for it to slip out. Then again, he hadn't meant for this whole trip to go the way it did. 

“I don’t want you to leave,” you say quietly. 

“What?” Joel demands. 

“I don’t want you to go.” You repeat, your face is alight with that fire that surprised him so much. 

He can’t help but laugh. He falls short when your face drops. “You know that’s not possible,” he sighed. 

“Why not?” Your voice cracks. He wants to bring you to his chest and make your sadness go away. But he was the cause of your despair, so the sooner he was gone, the better. “Why can’t you stay and just be with me?” You look down at your hands, now knotted together in a nervous tangle. 

“You don’t want me, sweetheart.” He rubs his hand over the back of his neck. “I’m not good for you.” 

“Don’t you think I should be able to decide what’s good for me?” You roll your eyes, your face challenging him. His fierce, spirited girl. His girl. He shoves the thought away. You weren’t his, and you never would be. 

“I’ve got too much—I’m too screwed up.” He crosses his arms over his chest. He doesn’t know whether or not he does it to protect himself, but it’s something he does when in a confrontation. 

You laugh outright at this. “We’ve all got baggage, Joel.” 

Hearing you voice his name again takes him back to the night you called for him in your sleep. This was harder than he expected, harder than he wanted it to be. He didn’t want to cause you pain. 

He’s about to disagree when you reach for him. Your fingers curl into the flannel he’s wearing, just like when you clutched his shirt that fateful night. He lets you bring him closer to you, letting your eyes bore into his without looking away. His hands take on a mind of their own and plant themselves on your waist. 

“Stay, Joel.” You're so close he can feel your breath hit his lips. It makes his head spin. “Please.” 

He can’t find his words; he can’t find it in himself to argue with you. He knows he’s no good for you. He knows he doesn’t deserve you, but everything screams at him to agree. To stay and keep you close to him for the rest of your lives. 

“Y/N.” He whispers as a final stance against your magnetism. 

“We don’t have to stay here. We can go wherever we want.” You offer, your nose brushing across his. Everything feels warm, and it's almost intoxicating in its intensity. 

“Went through hell just to get here.” He points outs, trying to give you a small grin. 

“I don’t care.” Your hands move up his face to hold his cheeks, forcing him to look at you. As if he wants to look anywhere else. “I’ll follow you anywhere, as long as we’re together.”

“Sweetheart-” 

His protest is lost to your mouth. You kiss him with the same fire that burns inside you. Joel lets the flames consume him, and he thinks as long as you keep kissing him, he’d happily let himself burn in you forever. His hands tighten on your waist as he returns your kiss with equal fervor. He feels himself falling deeper and deeper, like he’s spiraling down the depths of something he’s blocked off for so long. When your arms throw themselves around his shoulders to pull him closer to you, clinging to him like he’s your lifeline, he’s positive that he’d follow you to the ends of the earth. He pulls his mouth from yours to trail his lips over your neck. 

“Please don’t go,” you breathe as he presses a kiss to your pulse point. “Please, Joel.”

He nods against the column of your neck, nipping at the sensitive skin behind your ear. “I’m here, sweetheart,” he sighs out. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.” 

This was just meant to be a simple job, but it turned out to be something so much more than that. It was like an expedition to discover something you both had lost a long time ago. Peace. Companionship. Call it what you will, but he felt damn lucky to have found it again. 

First Joel imagine! I honestly didn't mean for it to be over 3k, but here we are.

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