#like when it starts it sounds like a tinnitus kind of ringing but it never stops and never changes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

grayintogreen · 8 months

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WIP WEDNESDAY

I'm about halfway done with this chapter since, again, it's a long one and it's taking a bit more time than expected to finish due to length and the fact that I'm in the middle of inventory prep, SO here's a nice chunky WIP Wednesday.

It's also a very sad one, so you know. Happy Wednesday, have some Jester sadness.

When Nott- no Veth, no but she was Nott then, but she was also always Veth oh whatever- was first learning how to shoot firearms, Jester had been curious about them. She’d seen them worn on the hips of travelers coming into the Chateau and knew the exact sound they made when the belts containing them hit the polished wooden floor of her mother’s quarters. Once, from the secret place she watched all manner of exploits, she’d observed an old man from Tal’Dorei, who bragged about being a rifleman to anyone who would listen before going up, show off his collection. She had to stifle a giggle as her mother suggestively dragged her fingers down each polished barrel and spoke in clever innuendo all while praising him for considerable talents he’d only spoken about but never proven. He wouldn’t need to- the beauty of being in the Ruby of the Sea’s sights is that no matter what you told her, she would believe with her whole heart until the second you were no longer within those walls.

So with that in mind, it meant that Jester had never seen one used until she started watching Nott firing off round after round and, of course, she wanted to see up close now that she could. The resulting tinnitus had lasted for hours until Caduceus took pity on her and used a restoration spell to restore her hearing. The memory of that feeling never really went away and she went from being curious about guns to wanting to be as far from the field from them as possible.

Right now it felt like someone had fired a gun right next to her ear, leaving everything ringing like someone had hit a bell inside her head. Toll the dead, laughed some kneejerk little thought that didn’t belong here. It was the only series of words that made any sense to her at this moment- everything else was far away.

Her eyes hadn’t moved from Fjord’s crumpled form. If she took a step closer, his blood would touch her boots from where it was still pooling out beneath him. His skin was ashen, his eyes wide open and unfocused and staring right at her- oh gods.

But if she didn’t look at his eyes, she would have to look at the gory mess of his ripped open stomach, and if she turned around, she would run to the other side of the ship and start crying and throwing up and she couldn’t afford to do that. Heal him! Another voice, this one livid, shouted at her. You’re running out of time!

I didn’t bring any diamonds.

No one had. Cree and Caduceus were two feet from her, whispering frantically, their words sounding warped like she was hearing them from underwater. “My bag is in the officer’s quarters, but I will not make it back within a minute. And I burned all of my bigger spells on the fucking dragon turtle.”

“I did too. We can… We can try in the morning.”

The ringing still wouldn’t subside, like it was trying to keep her distant from reality by providing some kind of buffer, so when Jester choked, she thought it was softer than it actually was, because she could barely hear it. Cree and Caduceus jerked their heads to look directly at her for the first time since she’d screamed and she backed away from everyone’s desperate, comforting hands, because she didn’t want to be touched, she didn’t deserve it, because if she had been with Fjord, then this wouldn’t be happening.

She’d just wanted to sleep in the mansion, that was all. It wasn’t like they were fighting. Fjord preferred the captain’s quarters and when Jester shared his bed, she never got to cuddle with the mansion cats, so it felt like a fine compromise. She’d kissed him good-night as they both limped away and she’d fallen into a deep, exhausted slumber in a pile of cats until she was woken barely an hour later by Cree sounding an alarm.

She’d just grabbed her sickle because she didn’t have any spells left. She hadn’t thought anyone was going to die. And now Fjord was dead and they were going to have to leave him like this and she couldn’t, she couldn’t-

“We have to do something,” she said, because choking wasn’t conducive to actually explaining her feelings. Her voice didn’t sound like her own even beyond the distortion. It was like someone else was speaking and that person was on the verge of a panic attack. That was strange. Everything felt so numb and yet… was she shaking? Was that her heart thudding like that? “We can’t leave him like this.”

Caduceus started talking the way he did when there was grief to be consoled and she slapped her hands over her ears to block out the garbled noise of it, childishly. Now everything was muted but the ringing and the thud, thud, thud of her heart that she felt strangely distanced from. She shut her eyes so she wouldn’t see his lips move or the offended way he would look at her when he realized she was shutting him out.

She counted to ten and opened her eyes. Caduceus, shoulders drooped in something akin to defeat, had knelt down beside Fjord and was casting magic on him- gentle repose and a small healing spell to close up the wound on his stomach and keep his insides in place.

The urge to vomit came again and this time it wouldn’t be ignored simply because she was disassociating. She ran to the rail and threw up so hard that she was yanked back into her body and felt everything tenfold- every ache and pain from the battle, every bruise left by the weight of her grief. She cried and choked and hyperventilated and mumbled it’s all my fault between heaves and didn’t stop until she was pulled against a soft furry chest and a rumbling purr began to vibrate through her entire body.

“It is not your fault, Jester,” Cree murmured.

“I should have been with h-him,” she hiccuped. She couldn’t admit that to anyone else- just Cree. Cree understood what it was like to be a cleric and let someone you loved slip through your hands.

“Do not blame yourself- blame me, if you must blame anyone aside from the ones who hurt him. I was close by and I sensed nothing. They got by us all.”

She wasn’t going to blame Cree any more than she was going to blame Yasha, feet away and being held up by Molly and Beau. The look on her face said she would break if anyone came close to blaming her and proving what she likely already believed and Jester would have fought anyone who tried. It was easier to blame herself for being selfish and choosing a bunch of cats over Fjord.

“I don’t wanna wait,” Jester whimpered into Cree’s chest. “What if he doesn’t come back? What if Uk’otoa has his soul or something and the ritual doesn’t work?”

“We do not have any other choice.”

She could argue for hours and get nowhere and only make it that much harder. If the three of them didn’t sleep, then there wouldn’t be any bringing Fjord back at all, but how was she supposed to sleep knowing Fjord was dead? Shouldn’t someone watch him in case Malachi came back?

“Th-they were after that crystal inside of him,” she sniffed. “We can’t leave him alone. I’ll stay up with him.”

“You will not be able to do the ritual.”

Jester laughed pathetically. “I can’t be the one to do it. I’ll fuck it up. You gotta do it, Cree. I’ll… I’ll help, but…”

But Cree worshiped a demigod of death. She had sway there. The only ritual she’d ever successfully helmed was the one that saved Yasha back in Eiselcross, and that was because no one else was willing to try it until Artie told her she should. She trusted Cree’s spellwork more right now.

“I will perform the ritual, then,” Cree sighed. “But please, Jester, I will not sleep well unless I know you are not causing yourself any harm.”

Of course she was causing herself harm- she’d decided to lock herself up in the captain’s quarters with Fjord’s body and would hear absolutely nothing else about it. That was going to fuck with her and leave her haunted. There was no sugarcoating it, no pretending that she could make a game of it. It was just going to happen and the consequences of it would be compartmentalized until she could deal with them properly, just like always.

“I have to stay with him,” she repeated, simply, and then pulled away from the comfort of Cree’s arms to go and collect Fjord- no, Fjord’s body. He was so much heavier now that he’d gained some muscle, but he still felt too light when she lifted him up in a bridal carry, his head lolling against her shoulder. It was like the absence of his soul was something felt all the way down into his bones.

Orly played a soft dirge of inspiration for her because he couldn’t offer anything else. She held the spark of it in her heart not knowing if she would have any use for it tonight, but grateful all the same for the gift. Marius held the door to the captain’s quarters open for her and then shut it behind her, leaving her alone to lay Fjord’s limp form down on his bed.

There was blood on the sheets and, in desperation to be rid of the sign, she tore them out from under him, only to find that he’d bled straight through to the mattress. Furious, she balled the sheets up in her hands, and threw them out into the ocean where she watched them sink beneath the waves as the Ball-Eater continued its course towards Rumblecusp.

She looked over her shoulder. She’d left the doors leading back into the quarter’s thrown open and she could see a bit of ashen green in the corner. If she really put her mind to it, she could believe he was just sleeping and she’d just stepped out here to get some air.

Her breath hitched. What good was it to pretend? For another eight hours, Fjord was gone and getting farther and farther away. She dropped to the floor and pressed herself into a corner of the balcony with her knees drawn up to her chin. Yeah, you’re gonna do so good watching for danger out here, Jester. You’re so stupid and selfish. First you leave him alone to sleep with a bunch of spectral cats and now you can’t even sit next to his body.

“You’re being awfully hard on yourself, my dear.”

Her head shot up. Leaning against the wall in the space between the balcony and Fjord’s quarters was Artagan, hood down and the lion’s mane of his hair falling freely across his shoulders and down his back. His arms were crossed over his chest and the long tapered fingers of his left hand tapped a steady rhythm on his right bicep. He was staring a spot across from him where nothing was suggesting he was looking beyond what was physically present.

Slowly, Jester got to her feet, catching herself on the railing when she lost her footing- how long had she been sitting there spiraling? Long enough for her foot to go to sleep. She hissed and shook it out, trying to get the tingles to go away. “What are you doing here, Artie?”

She didn’t mean for it to sound accusatory, but it came out that way, regardless. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth and took an unsteady step forward. “I mean… I figured you’d be…” Where? On Rumblecusp watching his big plan spiral out of his control? Keeping an eye on Twiggy so they could find her easily when they finally got there? Drinking cocktails on some other island and absolutely ignoring any responsibilities he might have?

Right. It was no more fair for her to be hard on him than it was for her to be hard on herself. She took a step back and pressed herself against the rail again. “Sorry.”

“What do you have to be sorry about, Jester? You didn’t gut him where he stood. I didn’t either, of course.” Maybe with anyone else that would have been shouted defensively, but to her ears, it barely sounded like a statement of fact. Or maybe she was just too used to defending everything he did and said without considering context.

Shut up. Shut up. Artie’s my friend. He’s done so much for me. There’s no fucking reason for you to be mean. The you here being the shitty little voice that had taken up residence in her brain and decided to be a dick instead of helpful. When there was nothing else left to hit, you punched at yourself and everyone around you.

Artagan took his eyes off of whatever faraway place he’d trained them on. “That was going to happen the next time he set foot on the ocean, regardless of why and when.”

That bitter little voice said could’ve warned me and she bit it off before she could let it slip out loud. What would it have done to know? Made them more careful, sure, but would that have been enough? Maybe Fjord went willingly instead of having to be ripped apart to save them all. Maybe there was no body to preserve and resurrect in that version.

She blew a raspberry. “Is there any way to make it stop?”

“I think you know exactly what they were after and how much trouble they went through to try and get it. Your purple friend pulled out a gambit that won’t work twice.”

Because they only had one more of those stupid crystals and it was in Fjord. That explained why they were trying to open him up like a fish. Malachi might have made off with the one Molly threw away to take it to the temple they’d avoided with Avantika, but now there was one left and once they had that one…

Fjord could get rid of it somewhere far from the sea like they talked about doing, but that was the only way that would work. The other option was that he never went back to the sea and if she were going to ask him to do that, she might as well not bring him back. The oaths he swore to the Wildmother were out on the waves- part of his soul was out here. Land would be a cage and a prison for him no matter how far they walked if he knew that he would never sail again.

“Maybe we just kill Uk’otoa then,” she grumbled, petulantly.

Artagan laughed. “I have no doubt you could, my dear, but you have enough gods and monsters on your dance card as it stands.” He lifted an arm and gestured her closer and no bitter voices or dark thoughts could make her stay still and stand alone when given the opportunity to burrow into the folds of his cloak and curl against his side. She inhaled deeply until her nose burned with the crisp, spicy scent of evergreen that conjured images of thick forests of pine trees like arrows pointing towards candy pink skies.

It took barely a minute for her joy to become sorrow again as she wept into his side like someone had punctured a hole in her heart and this was all she had to bleed out. She was frustrated and tired and angry and confused and this whole journey had barely started and even if it wasn’t her fault, it all felt like her fault. She bit her tongue until she tasted her own blood and clung tighter to Artagan’s body like she could hold him here and refuse to let him go.

Artagan had clearly never suffered a young woman bawling on him like this and did nothing but stand still like a statue with his arm around her shoulders and mumble awkward, desperate pleas for her to stop crying, that it would be all right, and that it would all seem less like an absolute disaster in the morning. It was shockingly mortal of him, like he was trying to figure out how to mimic compassion by what he’d observed from others, because he otherwise had no context for it. It was enough to make her laugh through the least of her sobs.

“Promise me something, Artie?” She finally forced out when she could form a sentence that wasn’t some stumbling, stuttering mess. “Promise me when this is over, you won’t leave me.”

His tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth as he hissed like he’d been scalded. She was afraid to look up into his face, afraid of what she’d see there. “I’ll do my best.”

She made the decision not to ruin the only comfort she had for this long, agonizing eight hour wait by pointing out how that wasn’t a promise. Like many things that troubled her that she didn’t have the energy to be upset about or analyze, she pushed it aside to be forgotten in order to simply take joy in what she had currently.

#wip wednesday #cr fic #you can't deny high noon #my writing

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art-of-manliness · 5 months

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Silencing the Ring: Proven Strategies for Tinnitus Relief

Back in January of this year, I was sitting on the couch with my family, watching a movie. Suddenly, my ears popped, and I heard a loud ringing, like the ear ringing you might experience after leaving a loud rock show. I wasn’t alarmed by this. Random ear rings like this had hit me before. They usually went away entirely in a few seconds. The loudness of the ear ring faded away, but instead of silence, there was a faint, tinny buzzing sound between my ears that stuck around. I could even kind of feel the buzz of the sound inside my head. A few hours later, the buzzing sound was still there. Instead of drifting off to sleep in silence, I could only think about the electrical hum inside my head as I lay in bed. I didn’t sleep very well that night. When I woke up in the morning, the buzz was still there. With a sinking feeling, I recognized what it meant: I had tinnitus. I also knew that tinnitus isn’t curable. Once you get it, you have it for life. No surgery or pill can make it go away. I made an appointment with an audiologist here in town just to confirm my self-diagnosis. At the end of the consultation, she told me, “Well, you have tinnitus. It’s not dangerous. There’s not much you can do about it except learn to live with it.” Over the next few days, the electric buzzing sound in my head kept on buzzing. During the day, it wasn’t much of a problem. Being busy with work and life distracted me from it. However, when I was working in silence like I often do while writing, the buzzing noise would be a nuisance. I started working with classical music playing. The buzzing became a real problem at night when I was trying to sleep. There was no escaping it as I lay quietly in my bed. It drove me absolutely bonkers. My sleep really took a hit there for a while. I started spending hours every day online researching what to do about my tinnitus. In addition to webpages of medical advice, there are also a lot of forums out there where people lament the way tinnitus has ruined their lives and the seeming hopelessness of the situation. Reading these threads would just depress me. “Well,” I told Kate after gorging on some of these forum postings, “I’m doomed to being distracted while working and never sleeping well again for the rest of my life.” Then, one day, I came across a YouTube channel run by audiologist Ben Thompson that’s all about helping people manage their tinnitus. Ben’s videos were straightforward but, more importantly, hopeful. While he acknowledges that there’s no cure for tinnitus, he hits home the fact that it is treatable. You can do things to reduce the perception of tinnitus in your head. I started using some of Ben’s tips. After a month or so, I started noticing my tinnitus less and less. It’s still there; my brain has just learned to ignore it. I rarely notice it during the day and can work in silence again, and it doesn’t bother me anymore when I’m trying to sleep at night. I’ll have the occasional flare-up where the tinnitus becomes really noticeable for a day or two, but then it quiets back down. I know I’m not the only guy out there who’s struggling with tinnitus. Men who work in loud environments like factories and construction sites are prone to developing tinnitus. Tinnitus is the number one service-oriented disability amongst U.S. military veterans, a large percentage of whom are men. I hopped on the horn with Dr. Ben Thompson to discuss tinnitus and what to do about it. His approach helped me with my tinnitus. Maybe it will help yours, too. What Exactly Is Tinnitus and What Causes It? “Tinnitus is a phantom sound that only the individual experiencing it can hear,” Ben told me. “It is the perception of an internal noise, such as ringing, buzzing, or electrical noise, that seems to originate from within the ear or the auditory brain. This perception occurs even when there is no external sound present.” So tinnitus is a subjective experience. The loudness and sound of tinnitus will vary from person to person. In some individuals, like… http://dlvr.it/Szl1Md

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pirefyrelight · 2 months

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guess I finally found a band my dad approves of cause he got us tickets to a Flogging Molly concert :) it's also my first one if you don't count the one I don't count (the outdoor Gaelic fest where I didn't know any of the bands at all) so this is my First Real Band Concert and it was so much fun! Here are my thoughts in no particular order:

Thank god I got concert earbuds beforehand I could feel the tinnitus forming even with them in but now just after there's no ringing so that's good.

Shout out to the stage hand with the shirt that had nothing but the giant numbers 9:30 who started doing sound checks right about at 9:30. I imagine your closet full of nothing but grey shirts with different time stamps on them to signal the openers when they need to be off the fucking stage.

Shout out also to the guy with the generic green leprechaun hat who immediately got called out by Mr Molly Man "I love your hat, sir. You know the last time I saw one of those in Ireland? Uh, never." Also props to the guy in the most blazing orange beanie who somehow flew under the radar. Both sides really came out strong tonight.

shout out also to the group of lads in the center of the crowd who took their shirts off at some point and also immediately as if planned, sat on the floor and started rowing as soon as Float started playing, I hold you in my heart. You got like a third of the crowd to join in and Mr Molly Man was def holding back laughter, I love you.

also during devils dance floor (easily their best song don't @ me) they really wanted to hammer home the devil part and bathed the stage in red. It was over the top and I love it.

I would also like to take this moment to formally apologize to whistles the wind. I slandered you during the drive to the concert. You are an amazing song to hear live and I'm glad to have.

This is kind of a general concert thing, but I loved the way the crowd surfers were dealt with. They got to the front and they were just picked up and set down by the bouncers, then were sent on their way like npcs which were picked up and placed outside bounds. Loved it, endlessly amusing. I didn't expect so many for some reason. Also the Tactical Blinding to people obviously recording. Get their asses.

#Pire.txt #flogging molly #Concerts #live performance #There was more like Mr Molly Man giving the guy with a Jameson shirt on a beer #But im eepy #Irish music

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tinnitusdiaries · 6 months

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10/29/2023 Pt. 2

Today, I spent time looking through my Tumblr that I created back in 2013. Inevitably, I cringed. Then, I felt sad for her. After deleting a load of words that I didn't know the meaning of when I wrote them (luckily nothing worth losing my job or being canceled over), I deleted the account altogether.

I thought it would show progress and growth to continue using that account, and then I realized it shows progress and growth to start a new one.

I felt the same way looking back at my journal entries. Specifically, the ones from mid-September. I've been journaling for over a year now, though I started in a much more distressing way on September 19th, 2023. This was 40 days ago. Just two days after Riot Fest in Chicago, Illinois.

I feel sad for her, too.

After Riot Fest this year, nearly 24 hours later, I sat in "silence" in my bed. I heard a high pitched ringing in my left ear that sounded like a poorly tuned, soprano singing bowl. I sobbed. I was devastated. I was alone. I think I have always had very mild tinnitus. I would rest my head on my pillow, hear a ringing or dial tone of sorts, go, "Hmm, that's neat," then fall asleep. This ringing, though, she was relentless.

For the next two weeks, my OCD and tinnitus would join together to create an absolute hurricane of emotions. There is nothing a doctor could tell me because I already Googled it ten times. I did, though, still see a doctor. More than one doctor. I saw two Urgent Care doctors, an ENT, my PCP, an Audiologist, my ENT again, then my PCP again.

No one could tell me anything, and no one cared to. My audiologist had a casual conversation about hearing loss with me despite me not having any, then asked what my tinnitus sounded like. When I told her I hear three tones simultaneously, she started vigorously writing and said, "You should see your ENT again." I did just that. When he noticed I didn't have hearing loss and my inner ear function was well, he said, "I don't want to talk about the tinnitus anymore. But, your ALLERGIES." This was disappointing, for sure. My PCP was less cold about this all, but still couldn't do anything for me.

I wasn't kind to myself at all throughout this. The words I said to myself, I wrote in my journal, and thought were so, so unkind. I blamed myself. I still do, but the difference now is that I forgive myself and take responsibility for my emotions. No one gets to tell me how to react to this situation but me.

After placing a sticker in my journal every time I wanted to Google a symptom, "processing" when I was really digging myself a deeper hole, and indulging in tinnitus forums (I would not recommend doing this), I have decided to be soft. I've decided to be gentle and kind to myself.

This isn't to say I'm perfect. It's only been 40 days of ear ringing and my OCD has latched onto it like an opossum to its mother. I still Google spiral, I check in with my tinnitus, I check in with environmental sounds, I flinch when someone laughs too hard, and a slew of other unhelpful activities.

I do, though, take care of myself. Since the tinnitus has become chronic and noticeable, I have loved myself like I never had before. I don't drink alcohol anymore, I haven't had any caffeine, I'm taking care of my allergies (though I did consider doing the opposite to spite my shitty ENT), I drink more water, I sleep for 8 hours a night, I walk, I meditate, I do yoga, I don't skip therapy, etc.

I hate silver linings, but there it is. It's the glare of the passenger's phone blinding you for a second while you're driving. It's there even if I want to act like it's not.

#tinnitus #ear ringing #self love #mental health #ocd #hearing loss #riot fest

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hessellundlauridsen30 · 1 year

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Plumbing - Drain Pipe Installation

Two knives with exactly the same size and shape can be hugely different depending on the type of steel used to make people. And there are hundreds of various kinds of steel. Are usually designated with series of numbers and letters, other people are given a brand name. Encapsulate the tape over-the-counter outflow and on in the pipe up until you reach about two inches after the area which has the trickle out. Then begin covering up the tape in the alternative direction, not stopping till you have reached the places you started on. Do this several times to generate a tight, although temporary, seal around the pipe to restore the downside. The second aspect of their tube amp, why acquire crave them, is the dynamic. erw pipe is capacity of the tube amp to sound clean so when you're hitting the strings softly, and distorted when you're hitting them hard. This allows a large number of words. You're going to in order to be listen to an amp to see if look at this best. You must first gain access to the broken sewer pipe. If may be found beneath a concrete floor, use a saw made to cut through leading of road. Create a square pattern as you cute. After doing so, smash location with a sledgehammer. Tiny bits of broken parts must then be removed using a prying watering hole. Use a shovel to get rid of any unwanted particles or dirt. Task quite the first step to sewer pipe healing. steel attached to pocket knives and fixed blade knives have a variety of different alloys. Steel, in general, is associated with iron and carbon. Additional elements are added set up steel permits work to secure a particular application. If the building a 40 or 50 foot sailboat, the saving with aluminum over steel get considerable - in every case this allows the designer to set the weight where it is necessary for the perfect motion on the ocean - all of the keel. Like a result, aluminum sailboats typically will house a sea-kindly motion. Having a racing boat, the reduced weight is an advantage, although a hull made directly from carbon fiber will be the bit lighter, but is brittle. Commonly, disorder in the Eustachian tube is noted by muffled or dulled hearing. Other additional symptoms, however, may exist. A patient with the issue may also suffer from ear pain, the feeling of fullness inside of ear, ringing sensation their ear (tinnitus), and light headedness. The dysfunction may affect a single ear or both ears at exactly the time. If are generally invited take a look at a weld test for a pipeline company or platform explosion rig outfit, and you pass, they still won't let you weld pipe if an individual never field welded pipe before. They will put upon as a helper to a pipe welder. With api 5l seamless pipe , that pipe welder will slowly work you in to welding television. Once it is evident that you just aren't going pertaining to being blowing joints, they'll along with weld fulltime.

#erw pipe #seamless pipe #spiral steel pipe #lsaw pipe #square pipe

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eggs-love-loki · 3 years

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Fire alarm got set off, had to go outside in my pjs and fuzzy pink robe with my teddy bear 🙃

#okay I didn’t have to bring teddy but if there’s a chance an alarm isn’t a drill teddy comes with #she’s my 21 year long best friend and she is absolutely the one thing I’m prioritizing #someone said ‘you look cozy.’ I was before I was driven out into the cold #also most bedrooms and living rooms/bathrooms don’t have flashing lights #so the alternative that’s designed to wake us up in the event that you’re sleeping #is a modified alarm. instead of the loud ‘beep beep’ of normal fire alarms #it’s a non stop ear piercing pitch that’s about six times louder than the traditional alarms (I can compare since those are in the hallway)#like when it starts it sounds like a tinnitus kind of ringing but it never stops and never changes #just screams at you #and it hurts and makes me shake cause it’s so bad #and like I need shoes and a mask and my keys it takes a minute to follow protocol and get out and the noise is so bad 😭#some rooms on the first floor do have the flashing lights for accessibility purposes #I wish they just all had them

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slightlymore · 3 years

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hardest to love

part of the ‘soulmates collection’

surgeon!doyoung x surgeon!fem reader

others: haechan, jaemin, jeno

genre: medical au (but the medical part is not heavy), romance, angst, smut, fantasy elements, “enemies” to lovers, mutual pining

warnings: +18, esplicit sexual content: doyoung is a hard dom and a soft dom in different scenes, short instances of sub doyoung, finger sucking (I know, I have a hand kink), spanking, raw, ice play, fingering, dry humping, thigh riding, choking, use of "sir", orgasm control and denial, edging, overstimulation, light degradation, oral f, brat taming, safe word, wine play?; lots of teasing; swearing; discussion around death; doyoung is a jerk but gets better

words: 13k

note: you can read this as a stand alone without having read the other works in the soulmate collection. what you need to know: haechan, jeno and jaemin travel different universes with the purpose of getting doyoung and yn be together. mark is trying to do the opposite. sometimes doyoung can remember past lives and sometimes he can't. this life takes place in a hospital. if you're confused by the three boys’ story everything will be explained in their backstory fics coming soon.

__________

Haechan let out a single deep sigh.

“Damn it. Doyoung is a fucking jerk in this life.”

The three young men were standing in the corner of the room watching two students trembling mortified in front of a pissed off Doyoung before he could turn around on his heels.

“I thought he was a jerk in all lives,” Jeno commented while dusting off imaginary lice off his jacket.

"I’ll be honest. When you said 'hell' I didn't expect the ER."

“Well have you ever been to-” Haechan continued but stopped when noticing Jeno not listening to him anymore but observing their third friend instead.

“Hey, Jaemin?” Jeno put one hand on his shoulder.

Jaemin was weak and paler than usual, eyes wide and with a slightly trembling chin. He then followed the direction of the younger gaze and gasped himself.

“Yeah,” Haechan grated the back of his head. “I’m sorry. I told you this one is going to be hard.”

Jaemin gulped, looking at himself walking around the bed and checking on the patients.

That Jaemin looked exactly like him.

The only difference was the clothes. That doppelganger had a doctor gown instead of a sweatshirt.

“How is this possible? I don’t understand how I can be here and there at the same time.”

Haechan sighed at Jaemin’s comment.

“You could consider it time travel. Now, listen to me.”

Jaemin let himself be grabbed by Haechan’s hands, pressing on both of his arms and looked at the other’s intense eyes.

“You have to avoid yourself while we work and-,” he stopped as if making sure to have Jaemin’s whole attention, “-you can’t talk to her.”

As if Haechan’s voice was a spell that summons people, Jaemin raised his gaze from him to look behind Haechan’s shoulder where a woman was slowly walking the corridor, eyebrows furrowed trying to understand the medical records she was carrying.

“Shit,” Haechan silently cursed and, placing one hand on Jaemin’s cheek, he indicated to keep quiet by putting one finger on his own lips.

If Jaemin weren’t so weak in the limbs upon seeing her, he would have felt the tingle on his skin coming from Haechan’s palm, or he would have realized that the woman walked past them as if they were all invisible.

Jeno, arms crossed on his chest, followed the woman with his eyes then nodded once as to indicate that the path was clear.

“Why can’t I talk to her?”

Jaemin’s head wanted to turn around and catch another glimpse but Haechan didn’t move his hand from his face yet.

“You might, I promise. But only when I say so.”

“Haechan and I can shapeshift and become invisible but you can’t and we won’t be around to babysit you all the time. Do your part and stay out of trouble.”

"You look mean,” Jaemin mumbled.

"I am. Now move."

__________

A breath.

A deep and heavy breath.

He was hearing it inside his skull. His own irregular breath inside his own skull.

Then a loud ringing suffocated every other sound in Doyoung’s ears. Like tinnitus, he thought, so used to elaborate information by classifying it into boxes.

The man was looking at his hands as if they were not his, fingers gripping the defibrillator pads, watching how the chest underneath them rose and fell.

Again.

And again.

A machine. The defibrillator and Doyoung.

And that body as well.

But it was too broken to be fixed.

And when he barely heard the nurse’s question he straightened his back. “Time of death,” he inhaled, his hands now uncovering the wristwatch, “2:41 am,” he exhaled.

__________

Doyoung felt it inside his hands, under the skin.

It was uncomfortable.

He looked at his left palm and wished it trembled.

"A surgeon," the announcement came in the form of a hard pat on the shoulders.

Doyoung blinked surprised and put his glasses back up on the nose.

"Great hands," the professor shook them with vigour, his eyes wide open and intense. "Steady," the old man continued his litany of compliments.

Doyoung let him wiggle his arms for a few more seconds before sighing as another student grabbed the professor's attention.

The young boy looked down at his hands as well after the man turned his back.

His eyes scanned every line in his palms as if seeing them for the first time.

"Those hands will do big things in the future" and Doyoung now, shoulders heavy, moist fringe patted on his forehead in the humidity of the terrace, felt like cutting his hands off.

Yes. Big things.

Like playing with life and death.

Didn't you just kill a man? he asked his hands, lower lip trembling instead of his steady fingers. Huh? and you're fine?

Doyoung tightened his fists with disgust and punched the air while letting them fall with force to his sides.

The rain intensified and he stepped in the front further until feeling the cold and heavy drops hit his face. Their sound was chaotic and it calmed Doyoung's heart.

Again.

I can do it again. I've done it before.

I do it again.

I can get over it.

He opened up his hands under the rain until he started to not feel his fingertips anymore.

Then he walked back inside the hospital.

__________

When you had to deal with the first dying patient, you were paralyzed.

It was very early in the morning. Your head was still full of the dreams you had just a while ago. Your heart was full of life and excitement for finally being able to work in the field.

"Get your shit together."

That voice startled you.

Doctor Kim, the most ruthless and cold person you've ever met, was your supervisor as an intern.

You looked up at him and caught his dark eyes on that spectrally pale face.

You just moved. You had no idea what you were doing. Terrified, you let your body work automatically.

Doctor Kim was calm and efficient while your whole mind felt out of place.

Oh, God. Oh God, please.

And when his voice finally reached your ears as if from far away you sunk down on your knees.

"Good job everyone."

The kindest thing he has ever said to his interns.

The other vaguely kind thing was his introductory discourse.

"I know that interning at the ER is dreadful, but that's life."

He was staring you all down, a short line of fresh out of med school trembling kids, no one having the courage to meet his eyes.

"You have to be ready to see all sorts of things here. Okay, let's go."

And that was it.

The encouragement of his introductory discourse.

You'll feel like shit here, welcome.

You hated him and you swore to yourself that you won’t behave the same.

Ever.

He was like a souless machine, walking around and tending to his duties. Lost in thoughts as your eyes scanned his figure walking busily around the hospital, you actually wondered if he had feelings at all.

The first time you saw Doctor Kim actually show some type of sentiment, was when he exited the surgery room one day.

You were walking around with the others and checking on the patients when he walked through the corridor like a storm. It was unclear what type of feeling that was but it made you unable to stop staring at his side of the face and back as he entered his office.

The anaesthetist came out soon after, slowly and sighing deeply.

And then you understood.

You've lived many of those days afterwards until you had to welcome your own row of interns.

You smiled and did a nice short welcoming discourse.

And at that moment you, unfortunately, got what Doctor Kim meant when he was brusque with you in the beginning.

It took you all three years of residency to finally get it: there were no actual right words to tell the students and there was no point in giving fake hope that everything is going to be alright.

Still, there was no point in being a rude ass like him. So you at least smiled kindly and encouraged your students.

God knew they needed it even more now.

You've never spoken much to Doctor Kim besides what was needed or the routine good morning sir and the short morning he would answer with.

So it was strange that on the first day of your career as a real surgeon, after your hands and those of Doctor Kim near each other worked, barely moving, his muffled voice ordering the tools, your muffled voice doing the same, you hugged him.

You hugged him that day for no reason besides the overwhelming feeling of being alive.

Doctor Kim, after every surgery, good or bad, would always walk out on the terrace.

You followed him that night and stopped behind his frame. You had to talk to someone about what just happened and he was the only one who might understand.

He was facing the city lights and the wind breeze ruffled his hair. He didn’t care to push it off his forehead.

"You did well today," he said quietly without looking at you.

Oh, you blinked fast.

Your first surgery was a success but your heart was beating so fast that you couldn't understand your feelings.

Were you happy? Were you about to cry? Did you want to scream and jump? What did you want?

But Doyoung just complimented you.

So again, you let your body work automatically and you looked at yourself, as if going through depersonalization, timid feet filling the space between you and Doctor Kim, your hands touching his waist and going around it until meeting each other on his stomach. You placed your head on his shoulders and closed your eyes.

"I was so scared," you whispered.

Doctor Kim's body was stiff, no reaction from his posture, no words coming from his mouth.

Was he shocked? Was he wondering what the hell were you doing? Was he about to tell you to get your shit together again like that first time three years prior?

But he didn’t do any of these things.

He sighed once and you imagined him closing his eyes and enjoying the warmth of your body.

Even if for a moment. Even if it was all in your head and he actually hated it.

Then he took a step forward and you had to let him go.

And when he turned around and placed one palm on your shoulder without looking at you in the face, you remained alone on the terrace, breathing the cold air deeply and longing for his hands to hold you a little longer.

__________

Doyoung didn't speak to you again after that night.

Nor did he look at you once.

While you found yourself staring at his nape every time he walked around. Or turning your head as if following the trail he left behind.

You couldn’t wear perfume in the hospital but it was as if Doyoung did because he’d pull your senses towards him by something invisible.

As if that first touch you shared connected you to him in obscure ways.

“Here’s the coffee that you asked for, sir.” You entered his office after his dry “come in”.

His expression was priceless and for a moment you felt the urge to look behind you and see if there were a ghost scaring him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Bringing you the coffee?”

“I asked a student to do it, not you. You’re a surgeon.”

Your lips were dangerously trying to form a smile while you placed the coffee on his desk.

“Why does it matter? I am free while those students are busy learning how to be doctors.”

“You think that just because you hugged me once when you were emotionally unstable, now we’re friends?”

That question was so sudden and cold to make you snap your head upwards.

His eyes were darker than usual and you almost gulped.

“No, sir.”

Your voice came out as a tiny exhale and if he felt sorry for his sudden and out of place tone, you couldn't see it on his face at all.

"I was just being friendly as all colleagues would," you added a new note to your own tone, trying to perhaps make him feel guilty.

"You can give me up."

His reply shut you up and you furrowed your eyebrows. “What?”

"I'm saying," he spoke slowly, "that I don't want to be friendly with you. Now, please leave."

________

"I'm going to fucking kill him!" you threw your head back to drink your espresso shot as if it was alcohol and slammed the paper cup back on the counter.

Jaemin sighed pouring sugar into his coffee.

"Why did you even try? He's a jerk."

The man sipped on his drink slowly, the warmth of it misting his glasses.

“I just-” you huffed, crossing your arms on your chest. “We’re colleagues. It made sense for him to be a piece of shit with us when we were interns but now? ‘I don’t want to be friendly with you’” you mocked his deep voice. “Who the fuck does he think he is? I swear I’ll accidentally stab him with a knife!”

“Hm. Do you like him?” Jaemin asked with an unimpressed tone.

You almost grabbed the coffee from Jaemin’s hands and threw it in his face.

“Are you insane? What does that mean? Why would I like him? Kim Doyoung? Me-” you pressed your index on your chest, “liking that asshole? I hate his guts! I can’t believe you said something like this! What’s to like about him?”

Jaemin felt his fringe move around his forehead at your intense voice as if it were wind.

“No need to get so worked up about it. You’re just talking so often about him lately. Also, he’s objectively good looking. He’s also smart. I understand.”

“He’s the ugliest man I’ve ever laid my eyes on! And he’s an idiot! And I don’t talk about him! I have no idea what you’re all about.”

Jaemin rolled his eyes and finished the drink.

“Talking of ugly. What’s that shirt you’re wearing?” you asked.

The man’s head snapped down to look at it. “What’s wrong with it?”

You chuckled once. “Where did you buy it?”

“It’s a normal Polo.”

You laughed even harder. “A Polo you say? And what’s that? A knock off Holo?”

“What’s Holo?”

Jaemin’s face was genuinely confused and it amused you even more.

“Are you getting enough sleep? You’ve been acting weird lately.”

“Or,” he relaxed his expression, lifting one index up, “I come from an alternate universe.”

You chuckled once and hit his shoulder lightly as a greeting, liking his new joking side. “See you later then, alternate universe Jaemin.”

__________

Doyoung wanted to hit his head on the desk.

Your expression, hurt and shocked because of his stupid remarks made his heart tingle in a very uncomfortable way.

One thing was being severe and one thing was being rude for no reason at all.

But the thing is that you were everywhere and he hated it.

Doyoung hated that you were trying to get under his skin.

Like a scent. Like some kind of drug.

He’d scrub his hands and forearms even harder before going inside the surgery room as if with the water and soap he could get rid of the feeling of your arms around his torso under the rain too.

What were you even thinking? Asking for reassurance? From him? Reassurance from the most hated man in the whole hospital? What did you even expect? Why would you even try?

What a reckless person.

He noticed it the first time he saw you as well.

Eyes wide with curiosity and surprise, looking around the ER like it was the best place in the world. Doyoung hated your happiness but he also hated the fact that he would have to assist that light slowly die out with time.

Or at least he thought that would happen.

Days after days, months after months, he paid attention like a scientist looking at his object of study, taking mental notes and registering results. Doyoung would jolt with secret joy when his theories would reveal themselves to be true but then, like a rollercoaster, he’d feel weighed down with grief seeing you in the same state as his one.

Until he didn’t know what to desire to see anymore.

Until one day he lifted his eyes, head full of a soliloquy towards you. “How are you today? Tell me you got better. Tell me you still have your light because no one needs too many black holes in here.”

Until he realized that he couldn’t remember anything about his life before you.

And when you hugged him that day, he felt proud. For your success and your light.

You were a star and he bathed into that warmth for a little before remembering he was still a black hole and black holes attract stars until engulfing them whole with no turning back.

_________

“Why are you always around?” he blinked annoyed.

You straightened your gown that shifted after bumping into him and sighed loudly.

“In case you forgot, I work here.”

Doyoung sighed.

“This is the farthest yard from where you’re always playing with your friends.”

“I had business coming here.”

“What business?”

“That’s my business.”

Doyoung’s corner of the mouth twitched.

“It’s our business.”

“Are you a communist?” you placed your hands on your hips, tilting your head to the side.

“I’m your superior. What are you doing here?”

A few nurses whispered passing you by and you cleared your throat, trying to relax your face muscles. Doyoung rolled his eyes once upon seeing your new fake cordial expression.

“Apparently I’m doing such a good job that Mr Jung wanted to compliment me,” you raised your chin.

“Mr Jung?”

“Yes.”

His nostrils widened as if he had too much air to inhale and didn’t have time to get it little by little.

“He doesn’t just summon people to compliment them. Stay away from him.”

You scoffed incredulously at his innuendo.

“Are you hearing yourself?”

“Very well. Get back to work now.”

“Are you perhaps jealous?” the words slipped from your mouth before you could stop yourself.

But Doyoung, to your biggest surprise, smirked a little, lifting his eyebrows once.

“And if I were?” he asked, then walked around you, leaving you still for long moments in the corner of the corridor before being able to walk again.

_________

“And then he said, “and if I were?”

Jaemin gulped his food and chuckled. “I can’t imagine that.”

“I know right? Was he crazy?” you asked with your mouth full, swinging your knife.

“Maybe the director does have eyes on you. And-” he leaned in mischievously, avoiding your cutlery, “that’s why he acts as if he hates you. Because he has feelings for you.”

You chuckled nervously.

“He hates you too!”

“He doesn’t even know I exist,” Jaemin shrugged.

“Hey, Jaemin.”

“Like once I asked him something and he thought I was a patient and when I said that I’m actually-”

“Jaemin! I’m pretty sure I’ve just seen someone looking like you pass that door just now.”

The young man turned around quickly, right in time to see himself exit the food hall.

“Damn,” he laughed for a few moments. “Someone else copied my hairstyle. I guess I’m not that unnoticeable as I thought.”

You opened your mouth to comment on that since you were pretty sure it wasn’t only the hairstyle that the man copied when Doyoung approached your table like a storm scaring the shit out of you.

“What is it now?” he asked, eyes piercing through you.

You let out a long “uhhh” before talking, staring him up and down.

“Are you talking to me?”

Doyoung scoffed then sighed. “A doctor told me you were urgently looking for me.”

You furrowed your eyebrows. “Who?”

“Do I look like someone who knows people’s names?”

Jaemin shook his head.

“Well, I don’t need you,” you let him know.

Doyoung sighed again and the long look you exchanged made Jaemin awkwardly chuckle once.

“You can sit down with us for lunch, sir,” he offered and you inhaled sharply, kicking his leg under the table.

Doyoung looked firstly at you then at Jaemin then at you again as if not believing he was actually talking to people like you.

But the tray in his hands was getting heavy and there were no other empty tables.

He walked around Jaemin and sat down near him.

Then he rolled his sleeves and started to eat in silence.

But only for a moment.

“What?” he asked as you were both staring at him with hanging open mouths.

“It’s our first time seeing you eat,” you whispered.

Doyoung gulped the food. “I’m putting on a show for you guys. I’m a vampire that doesn’t need food.”

“See!” you hit Jaemin’s hand as if catching his attention. “He’s making jokes!”

Jaemin leaned back in his chair as if a little afraid.

“So you talk about me instead of working,” Doyoung commented.

His eyes were on you and you suddenly realized what you’ve just said.

“No,” you quickly grabbed your glass and sipped the water.

Doyoung looked at Jaemin and the young man secretly nodded a little.

And for the first time in years, you saw Doyoung smile.

Like a full-on smile. A big open smile with all the teeth out.

You blinked fast and before realizing your own lips were stretched in a smile too.

He was breathtaking.

You wanted to run away but also crash into him. You were at the top of the world and down in the dumps.

__________

The grunt you let out after hitting a hard surface resonated in the whole hallway.

For the second time.

"You are always where you shouldn't be."

You lifted your pained eyes while massaging your shoulder just to see Doyoung do the same.

"Where am I and where am I supposed to be then?" you asked.

"Around me and you should be far away from me."

"And if I say that I'm doing it on purpose?"

Doyoung's pupils trembled.

"To make you mad," you explained, the little smile creeping on your lips making him tighten his.

“You’re trying to make me mad?”

In your head, all of the conversations you would have with Doyoung sounded fun and risky in a good way.

In reality, you realized, it was so overwhelming that you felt your limbs shake.

“I’m joking, sir.” His intense eyes made you look over the windows.

“You don’t like to look at me in the eyes?” his voice was mellifluous just as his movements, getting slowly closer to you.

“Your eyes make me uneasy,” you replied honestly.

Doyoung tilted his head to the side, curious, inviting you to say more. You looked at him again.

“As if they don’t know fear,” your voice was tiny.

A little smile curved the man’s lips. “Oh, but they know what fear is.”

“And what is that?”

“What you’re feeling right now.”

"I am not afraid," you whispered.

"Then why are you stepping back?"

“I am not stepping back.”

Yet the air got softly knocked out of your lungs as you felt the wall on your shoulder blades.

Doyoung didn't reply and just got as close as to lightly brush your lower lip with his knuckle.

"You're cute when you pout," he whispered, eyes smiley under the strands fallen from his styled fringe.

You opened your mouth to talk but he walked away, leaving you alone and with an abnormally beating heart.

Again.

__________

If Doyoung’s newly humorous side was something interesting to share with Jaemin, his newly flirtatious side was something you felt the need to keep a secret.

Heated up, you walked the corridors like a storm.

Kim Doyoung?

Did your body really react that way towards Kim Doyoung?

Pulse throbbing in places you didn’t want to think of?

Because of Kim Doyoung?

Face buried in your wet hands, the cold water running in the sink, you imagined telling this to your younger self.

Then you lifted your head and turned it off, raising your gaze to look at your dilated pupils in the bathroom mirror.

_________

Doyoung didn’t care about people much.

Hours upon hours of surgery, he only needed to see his colleagues’ hands and hear their breaths while desperately trying to save yet another life. How they looked without the caps and masks was not something of interest to him, especially knowing superfluous details like their names.

Yet, when he briefly noticed the eyes of the second surgeon entering the room, Doyoung furrowed his eyebrows.

Those were not your eyes and those were definitely not your hands in the latex gloves.

And for the first time, he needed to know who that person was.

“I’m Lee,” the man whispered.

“I didn’t know you were on schedule today.”

“Yeah, heard about it last minute as well.”

Were you avoiding him?

If Doyoung’s body could show tremor, he’d had trembling legs under the desk he sat at after the surgery, and if he’d had the habit to bite his nails, he’d be ferociously eating them by now.

Unfortunately, he was stoically sitting in his office, elbows pressed into the hard iron surface, veins missing adrenaline but aggravated eyes.

Walking the corridors while people took a step back to make him pass, looking away when he’d look at them and whispering angrily behind his back, was a bliss.

The protection shielded Doyoung like a fuzzy blanket even if it sometimes felt itchy at night when he found himself the most lonely.

So when you did the same, passing him by as if hating him, he surprised himself at the sudden discomfort. Especially after

well,

after that.

He wasn’t sure himself what it was but it must have been something if it made you uncomfortable enough to not show up to a surgery.

He lifted the corner of his blanket for a moment and he fucked up.

__________

“Y/N.”

You stopped in place.

And so did most people around you.

Many found Doyoung scary but also interesting to observe when his spite wasn’t directed at them.

What did she do? you could almost hear the whispery words passing from ear to ear, amused voices, grateful for not being in your place.

“See me in my office,” Doyoung ordered after you slowly turned around.

His voice was low and no one could have heard it if the whole yard didn’t just collectively hold its breath.

“Yes, sir.”

“You all are surely not working enough if you have time to be useless,” his voice sounded louder and clean all of a sudden. “Do you want some hours assigned?”

Like a spell, everyone looked around and the buzz filled your ears back, leaving yourself and Doyoung the only still figures.

Then he moved as well, the swoosh of his cloak touching your hand when he passed near you.

You inhaled deeply and followed him.

_________

“I am sorry.”

You wished you’d accepted his offer to sit down because that single sentence floored you.

“For what?” you asked with a tiny voice.

“I know I often say things that I don’t mean. And I know that I might have made you feel uncomfortable. So I apologize.”

His eyes were round and filled to the brim with such sincerity to make you swallow hard.

“You don’t have to apologize. It was necessary to make me who I am,” you minimized.

Doyoung looked away for a brief moment. “I mean the corridor incident.”

You blinked at him.

“I made a mistake,” he added.

The first thing that came to mind was the urge to use that to your advantage.

Scold him. Make him feel guilty.

Kim Doyoung making a mistake.

Exhilarating.

The power suddenly surging in your veins went to your head so you suppressed the smile that so desperately wanted to bloom on your lips.

“Yes.”

His expression darkened even more at your reply and his adam apple moved as he swallowed. He actually hoped it wasn’t the case.

“I’ll make sure to keep the surgery schedules separated so you won’t feel uncomfortable working with me. You could have asked me first though before changing it yourself.”

The excitement died out with these words.

“What are you talking about?”

“Thursday’s surgery.”

“I was told you appointed another person yourself.”

“I did not.”

“Well, I didn’t either.”

“So-”

“It’s not like I’m trying to avoid you, no. But if you-”

“I’m not trying to avoid you either. But you said I made you uncomfortable, so-”

“I was messing with you.”

He finally went silent.

“You looked so guilty that I wanted to get a little revenge,” your voice came out a timid whisper.

Doyoung sighed, closing his eyes a little, then he stood up.

“Did I seriously cause you that much pain all of this time?” he walked towards you as if actually concerned.

“You made me cry almost every day.”

He opened his mouth like a fish before closing it. The shocking confession made him lift one hand to cup your face.

You both looked at it with fluttering eyes as if it wasn’t his.

He tried to put it away quickly but you pressed your palm on it to keep it in place.

“I’m joking. I only cried a few times.”

Doyoung’s pupils danced around just like his brain trying to process the information you were giving him. His face, confused and not knowing anymore what was a joke and what wasn’t, amused you a lot.

“I’m sorry I’ve been harsh. I’ve been-”

“A jerk.”

He gulped, his thumb slowly brushing your cheekbone.

That little gesture made you close your eyes for a moment. And when you opened them, you just leaned in and placed a quick and chaste kiss on his closed lips.

“If the corridor thing was a mistake for you, I just did one too. Don’t be too hard on yourself. We can pretend nothing of this happened."

You let his hand go and moved to take a step back just to feel his hold on your face tighten.

Pulling you towards him again, he added the second hand.

His lips were not closed anymore, but very much open to welcome your lower lip between them.

Your hands flew to his hair and pulled him towards you too. He hummed and you whined. And when you both needed air, you let yourselves go, panting against each other’s lips.

A little smile curved your lips, eyes unable to look up. Fingers on his neck, you let them slowly descend to his chest and you took a step back.

You took your lower lip inside your mouth for a moment, as if still trying to taste him and walked a few steps back.

Doyoung followed you, unable to let your body go until you touched the door. His eyes were blown out and he kissed the corner of your mouth again, and again, and again, until kissing you fully on the lips for the second time. Hands on the glass behind your head, you heard his nails grating at it slowly as you let your tongue twirl with his. Then you breathed out and he couldn’t do anything else than just moving his arms away for you to slowly open the door and leave in silence.

After the door closed, Doyoung pressed his forehead on the cold window.

“Fuck,” he whispered to himself, the fuzzy blanket he carefully wrapped himself with all of those years slowly slipping away to his feet.

__________

It didn't surprise you to see Doyoung pretend nothing happened between you as you passed each other in the corridors.

But his avoidance felt weirder than usual, even to external eyes, as if something happened indeed and he tried so hard to conceal it.

"Perhaps it's the 5th coffee talking right now, but doesn't Doyoung look weird?"

Jaemin asked lazily as he rested his body on one elbow placed on the little resting room counter. Said man passed in front of the open door and the furtive look he took of you was interesting enough for someone bored like Jaemin to notice.

You shrugged, quickly stirring the sugar in your own coffee.

"Hm?" your friend smiled at your silence, getting closer.

You sipped the drink.

"Hmmm?" Jaemin put his face into yours.

"Oh my God, get away," you tried to push him away.

"You had sex."

You spat the little coffee you still had on your mouth. Jaemin giggled and took a step back before it could land on his own.

"We did not have sex! What's wrong with you?"

"Okay. So you at least kissed," he looked up to you under his wiggly eyebrows as he handed you a few napkins.

"We-," you wanted to deny but your lips formed a frustrated smile instead. "Shit. I can't believe it either."

"Wow."

"He was- so delicate," you murmured.

Jaemin winced amused.

"But also intense you know? Like it felt-"

"Okay wait. I didn't ask for a full-on description," he made a puking expression at you.

You lightly hit his arm.

"I was just so surprised. I've never seen this side of him."

"Him liking people?" Jaemin giggled. “Yeah. That’s weird.”

__________

"So it's done. We're done. Let’s get the fuck out of here. Seeing myself around is creeping me out."

Haechan sighed, rolling around in his chair. "Not so quickly. They only kissed."

Jaemin furrowed his eyebrows.

"They have to confess," Jeno explained with a sleepy voice, sprawled on his own chair.

"But they love each other."

"They have to say the words."

Jaemin put his hands on the hips. "That's so stupid."

“Tell this to Doyoung. This is what he wrote in the contract,” Haechan mumbled amused, patting his chest where the Book was snuggly packed near his heart.

Jaemin grabbed another chair and sat backwards on it, resting his chin on the folded arms.

“So you know the job is done when they confess? What if they break up afterwards?”

“It has never happened before.”

“And what if it does happen?”

Jeno opened one eye. “Don’t manifest doom.”

“I’d probably have to come back and get them together again,” Haechan replied.

“I still don’t know why you’re doing this. Can’t you just recede from that contract?”

Haechan sat up properly and grabbed his water bottle. “And do what? Go back to the pits of hell?”

His eyes twinkled with mischief.

“I’ve never had this much fun in a very long time.”

__________

He brought it upon himself, he could admit that.

Ignoring you was more difficult than he anticipated and the first reaction he managed to put out when you talked back to him in front of all of the other surgeons was his usual skin cutting one.

You didn’t like it, he could see it.

You’ve never liked it and, honestly, Doyoung could not think of a single person that enjoyed being on the other side of his table.

Perhaps you were getting a little comfortable with him though because you leaned back in your chair and smiled. As if for once he couldn’t get to you.

It made him even more eager to scratch that nonchalance.

So he did.

Until the meeting was over and he got back to his office with a weird sensation on his shoulders. It somehow tasted like defeat.

And when you opened his door with a loud bang and got in, he inhaled and took a few steps back, imitating the steps you took forward.

You pushed him down on the chair, your gazes mixed together just like your breaths as you leaned down.

Only the sheer anticipation of you touching him made him lose his mind a little.

One hand on his thigh and the other going down from his lips to his extended neck and chest, dragging your nail on his shirt until reaching his stomach and belt.

Then you hit one of his feet to the side with yours, making him open his legs even wider.

He jolted and you could visibly see the way his breath stopped for a moment.

"I don't think someone else tried to put you in your place before."

Your voice was dark and his eyelids fluttered before his pupils could fall on the way your palm brushed his crotch. It twitched under his dress pants and he inhaled deeply.

"Unfortunately, it has to be me."

"We're at work-," he tried to speak but the words died in his throat as you cupped his balls.

"Sorry? Didn't hear that."

"Shit Y/N-," Doyoung closed his eyes, jaw muscles tightening as you gently massaged him.

"Hmm, Doctor Kim is at a loss of words?"

You cooed, leaning down even more until almost brushing his lips with yours.

"So cold and composed while you spit venom all day. I really want to see you lose your mind for once."

He opened his eyes right when he started to pant lightly and you gulped upon seeing his dark gaze.

"You'll regret this."

"Can't wait to feel regretful."

"Be careful."

"Don't want to."

His smile grew suddenly wicked and it threw you off as he suddenly stood up, grabbing your wrists and pushing you gently backwards.

"You’ve been loving fighting with me lately. I think that you just need to get laid."

You smiled. "Do you want to help me with that?"

Doyoung scoffed once. "I can't stand you."

"Then sit down."

He put his tongue inside the cheek, staring at your raised chin.

Then his hands suddenly crept around you and grabbed your ass. They squeezed, pulling your hips towards his, making you pant and palm his chest in the meantime. Body pressing on his and his low voice buzzing into your ear made you light headed.

"Arguing with you turns me on so fucking much."

You gulped and noticed the way Doyoung’s eyes fell on your open mouth.

“This is a very pretty shade of lipstick. Makes me want to ruin it.”

His thumb opened up your shocked lips even more by tugging at the lower one, your eyes getting hazy from his expression cutting you in half.

“Suck.”

The order made your legs buckle a little. Your pupils trembled when you slowly let your tongue touch his fingertip. Doyoung got impatient and pushed it until it was all in. You fought the urge to gag and just whimpered, grabbing his shirt into your fists as he watched you hollow your cheeks on it.

“I’ve always wanted to make a mess out of you,” he murmured, his other hand cupping your face and feeling your jaw, going down to your neck and wrapping it into its warmth. You raised your face to give him more space and your hooded eyes trying to look at him as he pressed around your throat made him smirk.

“You like that?” he watched your squirming body trying to get closer to him. He took a step back and rested his hips on his desk, pulling at you until you felt his thigh between your legs.

“What a slut,” he took out his thumb and spread the saliva on it on your lips. “Bet you wanted to suck me off under the desk, didn’t you? Fuck your superior?”

You started to breathe through your mouth, the hand wrapped around your throat making it difficult for you to form any thoughts.

“Or you wanted me to bend you over it?” he murmured, eyes glazing over your breast, his free hand painting one line from your collarbones to the cleavage of it. And when he suddenly squeezed one, feeling its softness in his palm, you almost cried out and dug your fingers into his shoulders.

“Yes, sir.”

Doyoung’s corner of the lips lifted as if curiously surprised.

“And if I don’t do any of those things?” his eyes were on your face now and it made you want to hide away or just beg him to just please do all of those things.

“What are you going to do?” he asked again.

The pool of wetness inside your panties was so embarrassing that you pressed your forehead on his shoulder.

"Then just let me go," you whispered in a tiny voice.

"You're free to g-" he caressed your jaw with one thumb.

"No. I hate it," you went on, lifting your gaze on him, and he exchanged the look, slightly taken aback.

"I dream about you every night. It's not about sex, it has never been just about it. Everything about you makes me go crazy. I hate it and I want you to just let me go.”

Doyoung blinked and cupped your face with both hands.

You just breathed out, ignoring the little voice screaming inside your mind to shut up, palming the back of his hands with yours, suddenly unable to raise your eyes on him.

"I just can't understand and I hate being like this," you added after a quick gulp.

The man opened his lips and you noticed the way you started to breathe in unison.

"There's something so darkly attractive about you," the tiny sigh coming out of your lips made their way on Doyoung ones and he licked them once, his own breath warm on your skin.

"No matter how much I try to know you, there's something that escapes me. I can't pinpoint you and it keeps me up at night."

Doyoung gulped and his hands twitched as they palmed your arms, going down to your hips and pushing you down, gently.

You gasped silently, your core so swollen that the feeling of the friction of your bodies as you rubbed on him could have been enough to make you orgasm.

"Sir-," you found the force to talk but he took his tongue out and you just dove in, catching it inside your mouth and sucking on it the way you sucked on his finger. Your eagerness made his hold even tighter, guiding your body rolls, loving the way you squirmed in his arms.

When you pulled away to whine he raised one hand to bury in your hair.

"You haunt me too," he confessed. "Sometimes I feel so pulled towards you to make me question everything I know about myself."

Your eyes fluttered and your exposed throat looked so vulnerable in Doyoung's eyes to make him lean in and bite on it.

The little moans escaping your lips caressed his ears and when he licked the spots you shivered, your hips not stopping for a second.

It was intoxicating and you didn't dare to speak again but your thoughts were seeping through all of your pores.

"I want you to tell me what you want me to do," you whispered, words broken.

"Don't cum," Doyoung ordered and it snapped something in you.

Your breath grew irregular and he chuckled.

With a little groan, you forced your hips to still but he looked down and clicked his tongue, pushing his thigh upwards and making you bounce on it a few times.

"Don't stop."

"But you said-"

"Don't cum and don't stop."

"I can't last," you mewled, twitching against his body and he pouted.

"Baby girl can't keep that in?"

You shook your head, feeling all dizzy as his hands squeezed your asscheeks, making you rub against his leg again.

"But I said what I said. Are you going to be a bad girl?" he accompanied his last word with a harsh slap on your ass that made you inhale through your teeth.

"Sir- I am begging you."

His hand dropped under your skirt that moved to your thighs in a single movement, the coldness of it on your hot clit making you cry out.

He hummed amused, slowly pressing into you and circling your sensitive bud until your legs started to twitch.

"If you want to cum," he stopped, "you'll have to do whatever I say. Is this an agreement?"

You nodded quickly, so close to orgasm that you started to ride his fingers by yourself.

He retrieved his hand and pressed it on your stomach, making you step back until you barely could keep your balance.

"You know where I live, right?"

You nodded confused.

"See you later then," he smirked and gestured to leave the office.

You inhaled deeply, the arousal so high that you considered just finger fucking yourself in front of him.

"Cruel," you whispered.

"And you love it," was his amused reply.

__________

Timid feet in front of Doyoung's entrance door, you questioned if you actually lost your mind.

Were you really willing to go this far for a single orgasm?

Or multiple, you considered.

Okay. Well, perhaps it was all worth it in the end.

Your eyes darted upwards to take in the view of his house.

The windows were lit on the first floor and it looked like a place you'd love to spend your life in. It was too huge for a single person anyway.

When he opened the door after the ring announcing your arrival you didn't expect to see him in casual clothing. It looked so off that for a moment you couldn't speak, eyeing his feet in warm socks instead of rubber shoes.

Then you hit yourself in your mind. Of course, he won't wear his doctor gown at home.

"Good evening," you finally smiled and he eyed your body with a relaxed gaze, stopping when noticing the bottle of wine you carried in your hands.

“Good evening,” he gestured to you to come in and you walked the distance from the doorstep to the hallway. His hands draped your shoulders and you sighed when he took your wet coat away.

You put in a lot of effort in your appearance, choosing the right clothing and accessories.

And he put a lot of effort into arranging his house for you, lighting up the right candles, you noticed after he indicated a room to the left.

Yet all you wanted to see was him.

And all he wanted was to see was you naked.

Venturing in slowly, you turned around looking at what you figured out was the living room. With the corner of your eyes, you saw the grey of Doyoung’s sweatpants disappear upstairs and it suddenly got silent, safe for the crackle coming from the chimney and the hard rain hitting the windows. You took off your shoes and cautiously walked on the dark wine-coloured rug, close enough to warm yourself. A black glassy mirror was hung on the wall in front of you showcasing the pitiful state you were in because of the storm. Then you looked at the piles of books scattered around your feet placed down in a chaotic path leading to the velvet couches behind you as if someone read them while circling the room and suddenly let them fall on the ground when bored. You followed the spines with your gaze trying to figure out the language they were written in when two feet made their appearance in your peripheral vision, making you snap your head up.

He approached you with a little smile, getting closer and closer like a black cat.

New thick energy made it difficult for you to breathe too deeply so you resorted to short inhales and exhales especially after he stopped so close to you.

Doyoung's hands wrapped yours as he took the wine away and placed it on the coffee table on his left. Then he sighed and you found yourself shivering under his gaze.

"Take this off," he lightly felt your shirt's material with his fingertips.

What? You inhaled, mind buzzing at how easy it was this time. No dinner and fancy courtship?

He did look like someone that'd rather take you into seclusion and have you for himself as quickly as possible though.

With slightly trembling fingers that you'd never get in the surgery room, you started to unbutton your top. Doyoung tilted his head to the side with a little smirk as if enjoying the show.

And when you actually found yourself with only your bra on he smiled, even more, eyes grazing your skin slowly until you felt a heatwave shake your limbs.

“This too.”

He slowly touched the bra fabric and you gulped.

“Take it off yourself.”

Doyoung chuckled once and went around your torso, unclasping it with quick and expert fingers.

You jolted and you felt your eyelids flutter as it slowly fell down your arms.

Doyoung grabbed the front part of it and dragged it down to the floor, adding it to the weird maze of books making the eccentric design of his living room.

His eyes caressed your perked nipples and you tried hard to resist the urge to cover yourself.

“Pants,” he ordered and his voice was deeper than usual.

You wavered a moment and he lifted his eyebrows once. Do it.

You inhaled and slowly opened the zip.

He bit his lower lip when you bent down to discard the piece of clothing and when you straightened your back he hummed.

“Wear this,” he gently threw a piece of fabric towards you which you caught quickly. It was soft and it smelled like him.

He looked at it, then slowly raised his eyes to meet yours, not moving a single muscle.

You inhaled in again, trying to calm your nerves, desperately wanting to ignore the way he was dressed himself. A white and see-through shirt with the deepest neck you’ve ever seen, barely covering any of his chest. You barely could see his sweatpants as well, but his bare ankles were fully on display, just like his forearms that you could catch glimpses of as he absentmindedly revived the locks blocking his pupils with one hand.

A raw playfulness made his features even scarier in the dim lighting.

“I want you wet. But not from the rain,” he explained, eyeing your confusion.

“You could have just told me to change into it and end it there,” you mumbled, buttoning the shirt up. It was deep blue and oversized, short on your thighs but hiding whatever you had to hide.

“Why? Did you hate that I made you undress in front of me?”

“It was embarrassing to stand naked like that.”

You wanted to sound offended but the pout your lips formed on its own betrayed your secret amusement.

“Nothing that I won’t see up close soon.”

His voice was a whisper that forced you to look away. You wanted to reply but he turned around walking towards the kitchen.

"Besides, I made some spicy sauce. You don't want to spill it on your nice clothes."

“Who said I was going to spill food on myself? I have steady hands.”

You walked over him, taking the plates from his hold and placing them down on the dining table yourself.

You wanted to look unbothered by him just like he looked unbothered by you, but the truth was that you just had to do something to not feel that overwhelmed.

“You don’t,” he argued following you near the table.

You scoffed lifting your head to look at him. “Excuse you? I’m a surgeon.”

“Your hands don’t look like the hands of a surgeon when you’re around me.”

You scoffed.

“I think that the biggest thing in the world is your ego.”

“You haven't seen my-”

“Don’t say it.”

He closed his mouth as the little smile he had on kept lingering on his lips.

Domestic and flirty. It was getting to your head and you hadn’t had the opportunity to sip a single drop of alcohol yet.

As if reading your mind, he grabbed the bottle of wine you brought and fumbled slowly with the cap.

"That's my favourite shirt. And I want to fuck you in it."

The shivers that travelled down your spine almost made your body twitch and your hands stopped in mid-air as you were placing the cutlery.

He smiled at you when you looked at his expression.

His lips. His eyes and cheekbones. His skin under the lights.

Fuck. You really needed a drink.

And after he popped the bottle open with a loud sound that disrupted the silence, the red wine erupted out of it, dripping off his hand up to the wrist you had your drink right off his fingers.

Doyoung’s pupils trembled as you leaned in like a cat and his lips opened to breathe better seeing you lick the drops off his fingertips. Rested with his hips on the table, it creaked when you came forward, even more, hands pressed on his open thighs and reaching for his face. You finally caught his lips in yours and you let him taste the wine on your tongue.

It was rich and slightly sour, then it became sweet as only Doyoung’s taste remained lingering on his lips.

“Delicious,” he commented after the slow kiss. “You have good taste in wine.”

“And men.”

His expression was hidden under his long fringe but you could sense that he was smirking.

Then he raised his head a bit and had a gulp out of the bottle himself.

You had the first row to the show that his adam apple moving up and down gave you. Then your eyes naturally fell to his collarbones and bare chest, his white shirt barely covering anything.

Your fingers gently darted to his skin and you palmed it, then to his prominent collar bones, feeling the warmth of his chain around his neck.

He hummed, letting his head down to catch your hand with his lips. They kissed your fingertips then he finally dove in and let you taste his tongue again, hands quick to let the bottle go and grab your body instead.

Closer closer closer you needed him more and more.

“I need to feed you dinner first,” he grabbed your wrists as your hands tried to unbutton his shirt.

“If you won’t fuck me, I can find someone else to do it,” you whispered.

His eyes tightened and he exhaled once.

The movement was so quick that your head spun and the spank that arrived at your ass made you jolt on your toes before you could lean down on the table, fingers trying to grip the tablecloth.

“Yeah? I want to see you get fucked by someone else while my name spills out of your filthy mouth.”

His voice was raspy and it made you bite your lower lip, ass eager to push back and to rub against Doyoung's crotch. He hummed at your movements and lifted the shirt up to your waist, palming your skin and looking down at the way your ass cheeks engulfed your pretty lingerie. You strained your neck upwards at the feeling of his fingers slowly caressing your lower back, feeling the lace of your panties, then you whimpered as he grabbed the material and stretched it towards him before letting it go.

"You want this little hole all filled up, don't you?" he murmured, hand sliding between your thighs to rub on the soft and thin fabric. Your legs shifted in place at the sensation and you arched your back for more. The little 'Doyoung' making him exhale.

"And I thought you'd keep calling me sir."

You tried to turn your head towards him, wondering if his suddenly absent hand meant that he wanted you to actually call him that.

But then you saw that hand around you, reaching for the bucket of ice prepared for the wine on the table in front of you. And at that moment you realized that it was for you instead - his drink for the night.

The ice cube wetted his fingers when he took it out and he first placed it on your open lips. You sucked on it for a moment, the warmth of your skin already melting it, strands of water slowly descending on your chin and inside your cleavage.

"Say 'blue' and I'll stop," his voice was deep near your ear.

You nodded breathlessly and you shivered feeling his hand hover over your back.

And when you first felt it on your spine, your fingers independently grabbed the edge of the table. Then it went down and down, forcing goosebumps out of you.

Doyoung’s palm soothed your skin, warming it up before reaching to the front to grab at your hard nipples poking through the fabric. And when the cube reached your clothed core you mewled, lifting yourself on the tiptoes.

“Shit-shit-,” you curled your neck down, jolting under his touch, wanting more of it and running away at the same time.

Your panties were all wet and you were unsure if for the ice or your own body and when Doyoung took away the cube, giving you a break by gently pressing his own wet fingers between your lips you wished for the fabric to not be there anymore.

“More?” you whined, chest rising and falling at a crazy speed.

Doyoung snickered once, his hands grabbing your sides and turning you around.

Mind hazy, you didn’t have the time to wonder where the ice cube went, the only thought roaming your head being the need to pull him closer to you.

And you did just that, wrapping his waist with your thighs after he lifted you on the table with a thud, making all the cutlery and glasses jingle.

And you clasped your fingers into his hair while his hands roamed your naked body under his shirt.

It was when he pressed his cold, open lips on yours that you finally mewled, feeling the ice cube travel from his tongue to yours.

It got smaller and you sucked on it, giving it back, hearing him hum deeply into the kiss.

Then he broke it suddenly as if unable to control himself from kissing your neck instead, biting and sucking on your skin as hard as he did on the ice cube. You rolled it on your tongue until it became nothing, finally opening your lips to moan, feeling his cold touch on your breasts as his quick fingers unbuttoned the shirt.

The material of your panties grazed your legs at Doyoung’s rough pull. You watched them fly and land on the lamp behind him.

Then you felt his fingers finally rubbing your clit and you inhaled deeply. You were so horny that you were embarrassed to admit that just a few rubs would be able to throw you over the edge.

Doyoung saw it and from his expression, he was enjoying himself maybe too much.

“Come on love, cum for me,” he murmured on your open lips. You whined, nail digging into his shoulders and you shook your head.

“You’ve been begging me for an orgasm and now you want to be a brat about it?”

His hand worked quicker and when he inserted one of his long and slender fingers inside, you actually moaned loudly.

“Sir-” the title slipped from your shaking lips and he chuckled against your cheek, pushing another one and curling them both, pressing into you and trying to find the sweetest spots you had.

“Right here?” he whispered amused.

You start swearing, moulding his biceps under your tight grip, the table and everything on it shaking at the fast pace of Doyoung’s pumping.

And then it was too much and it overflowed.

The gasp you emitted made you fall forwards. Your arms wrapped Doyoung’s body tightly as you came in spasms, legs trying hard to meet each other around his wrist but pressing into his sides instead.

Doyoung let you whine a little bit more, hand slowing down but never stopping, fucking you through your orgasms as long as he could. Then your jaw got grabbed by his other hand and he lifted your face to meet his gaze. His eyes caressed your fucked up expression before kissing your lips.

"Good girl. I know you can give me another one."

You gripped his shoulders for dear life as Doyoung's fingers came back outside to desperately rub at your over-sensitive clit.

“Doyoung-Doyoung-” you writhed in his hold before he could slip away from your arms and fall on his knees.

You’ve gotten head before, but this time, maybe for the overstimulation or your secret feelings for that man, it felt like the first time ever.

Not knowing what to grab to steady yourself as his tongue danced in circles around your engorged clit, you buried your hands in his hair. His hands pressed into the softness of your thighs just as hard and when he raised his gaze up to look at you from underneath his messy fringe, you felt like falling.

And you almost fell when he resorted to quick short licks that drove you insane, making you cum for the second time in such a short time to make you lightheaded.

The single fuck got prolonged as much as the orgasm Doyoung gave you and when he started to kiss your inner thighs, coming up towards you, on your stomach, pressing his wet open lips on your skin until meeting your breasts, you were ready to admit that you were madly in love with him.

His kiss felt as if you were underwater, unable to breathe and understand space. You felt his arms around you and suddenly you felt weightless and he carried you around until you felt the velvet of the couches underneath you and his body pressed flushed on yours. His waist got automatically wrapped by your legs again as if that were their place and they weren’t aware of it before.

He slipped his hands on your hips, grabbing your ass hard as he murmured against your lips. “Are you going to be a brat with me again?”

His voice was calm but deep as if a storm was incoming, making your knees feel weak.

“Words,” he spoke again, pressing himself a little more between your legs.

You breathed out.

“I don’t know,” you managed to say before pushing him away. He fell to the side, grip softened mostly for the surprise than your strength.

“Are you going to be a brat to me?” you asked, straddling his lap and pressing your palms on his stomach, going up on his hot skin and lifting his shirt until he couldn’t do anything else than take it off.

Then his hands found their way on your skin too, unmercifully squeezing your soft breasts. He didn’t care to be gentle and lifting himself up he sucked on your skin so hard until it was almost painful. You wrapped your arms around his torso and threw your head back, stretching out your neck. He left bites all over it, travelling down, tightening his teeth grip around your nipples, making you pant softly.

“I don’t know,” he finally replied.

He looked at you from underneath his fringe and you smiled at each other. You caressed his stomach from below his belly button and going up until reaching his collarbones and he leaned back on his elbows to support his weight. He followed your hand going down on him then his eyes shifted their focus to watch how your pelvis started to move back and forth on his sweatpants, right on top of his hard cock.

“Mm,” he exhaled as finally getting some relief and you imitated him. You placed your hands on his shoulders and closed your eyes and Doyoung flexed his thigh muscles.

He was enjoying seeing you like that, vulnerable and whiny, needy and horny, while he did nothing to help you with it and leaving you desperate.

His eyes caressed your whole body, his lips parted slightly at the sight of your breasts bouncing softly, at how you were spreading yourself on him. You felt hot and plump, your thoughts were blurry and foggy.

"Look at you," he talked. “What a cute little slut.”

You replied with a whine, locking eyes with him but not being able to do that for a long time as his gaze pierced through you, adding to the sensation his pants gave to your raw clit.

So you kissed his lips, messily and sloppily, breathing on his mouth and he finally caressed your thighs and ass, pressing you down even more and closer to him.

Your arms got tighter around his neck and he buried his face into your chest. His hair tickled your chin and you intertwined your fingers into his locks.

So close to cum, you closed your eyes and just let yourself go, your rhythm lost, your muscles aching, without expecting Doyoung's fingers to suddenly get inside of you.

You squeezed yourself onto him with a cry.

"I repeat. Are you going to behave again as you did today?" you heard him ask as his fingers pumped fast into you.

"No, no, oh fuck, please, no," you managed to answer while gasping for air.

"I'm going to-" you whimpered about to orgasm and Doyoung at that moment got you off of him, pushing you down on your back and lifting your legs around him, edging you.

"You're going to cum when I say so," he commented. "You're lucky I'm even giving it to you at all today," he added.

You bit your lower lip frustrated.

"Babe, please-" you begged.

He smiled brightly at the sudden pet name, shushing you as he began to kiss your legs from the knees down, going lightly on the inside of your thigh, making you twitch as he approached your dripping pussy. But he passed over, nudging at it with his nose just to make you jolt and kissed your lower stomach, passing his tongue on the spots he bit before and continued until reaching your lips.

Then, getting on his knees he finally got rid of his pants and underwear.

You felt your core pulsing at the sight and breathed heavily. He tugged at your legs, dragging you until the back of your thighs touched his hips and holding himself he nudged at your entrance. You let your arms fall around your head and bit down on your hand as his tip caressed your clit.

"Doyoung," you whined as your muscles jolted intermittently. You then felt his fingers drag on your leg until grabbing your knee and putting it on his shoulders he humped your folds.

You let your head fall back into the couch, exposing your neck and making your breasts tighten.

It was too much. You just wanted him to penetrate you and to make you scream.

"I want to cum so badly, please," you begged again.

But he acted as if not being able to hear from you.

Your muscles twitched in pain and you lifted yourself to meet him. He pushed you down and distanced himself.

"Behave," he warned.

You looked at his half-closed eyes and plump lips as he bit it with his teeth.

He was suffering as well. He couldn't take it anymore, you could tell.

And when you took your hand to your mouth and licked two fingers, slowly, without breaking eye contact he gasped.

You were about to suck on them, you wanted to see him going crazy, but you didn't manage to as he penetrated you right at that moment, quick and deep, with a grunt.

"Fuck," he swore picking up the pace until the wet sounds overwhelmed the storm.

_________

It was dark. The only light came from the fireplace bathing the living room with a red and yellow hue.

You were both sprawled on the rug under fuzzy blankets.

"Come sit on my face. Show me where I belong."

Doyoung’s voice was a low buzz, imitating the storm still going on as it has been the whole night.

You rolled your eyes to the side amused, ignoring his warm hand palming your knee, nudging you to come closer.

“You still want to go? I can’t cum again,” you pouted.

“But I want you to cum,” he pouted as well.

You sighed and gently got on top of him with the intent of ignoring him and finally fall asleep.

But his expression changed when you were near enough. “I want you to be completely fucked up when I’m done with you.”

You lifted one hand to cup his cheek and kissed his nose.

He blinked at you amused.

“I love it when you smile like this,” you whispered.

The dying flames danced on his face as he stared at you for a few moments.

Then you clicked your tongue.

“Don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t get all dark and distant.”

Doyoung exhaled. “I am not.”

“There’s so much to be proud of, don’t you think?” Your fingers gently started to draw patters on his forehead, going down on his eyes as he closed them, then on his cheeks. He opened his eyelids again after the touch and you talked again.

“Like striving to do good. Trying. Surviving.”

His lips opened to let out a small puff of warm air. Then he hugged you tighter and hid his face in the crook of your neck.

You exhaled too, closing your eyes and lulling his exhausted soul.

“I am so proud of you,” you whispered but you didn’t know if he heard you.

_________

You woke up in Doyoung's bed.

It was huge, warm and it smelled like his laundry detergent. The sheets were soft and luscious, caressing your naked body as you shifted underneath them to look to the side.

Your eyelids fluttered and your lips turned their corners up.

Fighting the urge to squeal and hide your face inside the pillow, you resorted to admire Doyoung's sleeping face.

Resting on his stomach with raised arms thrown around his head, only his eyes and ruffled hair poked out behind his bicep and shoulder. And when he slowly opened one puffy eye you giggled and it curved, showing that he was smiling too.

"Good morning," you whispered.

Doyoung sighed once first. "It's probably afternoon."

His sleepy voice made your body heat up and without thinking you just got closer. He turned on his side and wrapped your body with his arms, pulling you closer to his chest.

"Did you sleep well?" he murmured.

"Like a baby. You exhausted me enough."

The little kiss he placed on top of your head was so unexpected to make you lift your face.

He smiled.

"You inspire so much tenderness in me,” he explained timidly.

You smiled back, resting your chest on his. His hands automatically wrapped your sides as if they've always belonged there.

"I'm glad I'm softening your edges. Now you need to behave like this with everyone else too."

"You want me to kiss the whole hospital on the forehead?"

"Metaphorically."

"Also, I thought you loved my hard edges," he purred, shifting your body to fully rest on top of his.

His hard cock deliciously poked your clit with its tip as his hands slowly made you roll on it.

You exhaled and leaned down, rubbing your lips on his as you whispered. "I do."

His smirk was lazy just like your movements.

"So you want me just like this?"

“I want you. I want everything you are. I want everything that you hide.”

Your hands caressed his chest and came to cup his face. His expression wavered and you found him so vulnerable all of a sudden to make your guts twist.

“Unleash the darkness that you have inside. Engulf me with it. I am not afraid. I want it.”

Doyoung wrapped your body tightly and pressed you down on himself even more.

"There's no darkness inside of me anymore. Not when you're around me."

__________

From “I will not vanish” - Haechan’s backstory

The heavy door opened and closed.

Doyoung looked over his shoulder to see a stranger approach him with slow feet. He raised his eyes and gave Doyoung a small nod.

The other did the same and when the stranger aligned himself with Doyoung, looking over the cold city, they both exhaled.

The silence was so deep, safe for the ambulances screaming in the distance that Doyoung found himself restless.

The stranger leaned on the rail, resting his weight on the elbows and sighed again.

“You know,” he started.

Doyoung looked at him with the corner of his eyes.

“What I like about life,” he paused, “is that you can die.”

The stranger bit his lower lip for a moment then looked over to the other. His gaze felt so heavy that Doyoung’s arms skin got goosebumps.

“Imagine being immortal,” the man continued before letting out a dry snicker.

“Around forever. A pathetic being with no reason to exist besides existence itself. Forever and forever and forever. With no purpose. Until you’d beg someone to kill you but they can’t.”

Doyoung’s fingers twitched on the cold metal of the terrace rail and for a moment his rational mind wanted to ask that stranger just what nonsense he was talking about.

But lately, Doyoung and rationality didn’t match well so he didn’t.

“Immortality sucks only if you’re the only immortal one.”

The stranger smiled bitterly. “Do you want to be immortal?”

Doyoung put his hands inside the gown’s pockets. “I’d die tomorrow.”

“But you wish immortality was a thing.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t have a job anymore,” Doyoung smiled. “But yes. I wish people didn’t die.”

“You’re very selfish.”

That remark made Doyoung frown. “How’s that selfish?”

The stranger turned around and rested his back on the rail instead.

“Why do you want people to not die?”

“Because-,” Doyoung started but didn’t know what to add. “Because it’s painful.”

“For them or you?”

Doyoung sighed. “Okay. I see what you’re doing here.”

The stranger smiled a little.

“It’s not like I think only of myself when others die. I think how unfair it is when I know they didn’t have the chance to do everything they wanted to do first.”

“And what’s that?”

Doyoung thought about it for a moment. “Just- living. Experiences. And most of them actually had enough time to do it. They just took it for granted. And it’s so- painful.”

“And what about you? If you said that you’d be ready to die tomorrow, I guess you’ve been living your life to the fullest with no regrets.”

“Actually, I don’t know if I’ve been living all of this time.”

The stranger shrugged. “Just start now.”

“You make it seem so easy.”

“Living? Hell yeah. You just need to give less fucks.”

Doyoung didn’t reply.

“If you’re ready to die tomorrow, then you should not be afraid of living.”

The stranger’s tone deepened and Doyoung looked his way.

“Who are you by the way?”

“Oh,” the stranger straightened his back and extended his hand. “I’m Haechan. Nice to meet you.”

Doyoung imitated him and shook his hand.

It was warm and in a moment so many thoughts came to Doyoung’s mind to make him breathless.

"I thought I had my life figured out and yet after meeting you I got shocked into awareness."

"You inspire so much tenderness in me."

“I became obsessed with you and it scares me.”

“You could have just told me. You could have told me that you fell apart. Instead, you acted like it didn't bother you at all.”

“You are worth the wait.”

“I can't let go of you.”

Doyoung took away his hand so quickly to almost fall backwards.

He took a few steps on the concrete of the terrace as if trying to get as far from Haechan as possible.

“You good?” the other asked but his face wasn’t mirroring his question.

Instead, a plain expression was adorning his feline features and for an instant, Doyoung felt terror.

“You’re not Haechan,” he found himself whispering.

The man in front of him cracked his knuckles once. “And who’s Haechan?”

“My friend.”

“Friend? Is someone that uses somebody else a friend?”

“He’s not using me.”

“Isn’t he now?”

The man started to walk towards Doyoung slowly, one finger on the rail, grating at the metal with his nail.

“Do you believe in soulmates, Doyoung?”

Doyoung flinched at his name on that man’s lips and started to retreat slowly.

“I do.”

“Soulmates are people that always find each other regardless of everything, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“And are you and Y/N soulmates if Haechan is always there forcing you together like some sort of cheap mismatcher?” the man spit out the last words.

Doyoung gulped and his brain tried to remember how he punched him in some past life and actually win. His surgeon hands would definitely get broken in a second.

“Don’t you want to break this cycle? Find your true soulmate?”

“That’s Y/N.”

“Because you say so.”

“I don’t give a fuck about your orthodox theory, Archangel.”

The man stretched his neck to the side and Doyoung didn't have the time to run away.

#doyoung #doyoung smut #neosmutcollective #nct-writers #nct smut #doyoung angst #nct angst #nct fanfiction #doyoung fanfiction #nct doyoung #doyoung scenarios #nct scenarios #soulmates collection #doyoung doctor au #nct doctor au

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seachanqe · 3 years

Text

No right way

JonGeorgie, set during uni, pre-relationship(ish), rated G, 1130 words

For @aspecarchivesweek, with ace (kiss-averse) Jon and aro Georgie

Inspired by a prompt by the lovely @hundred-separate-lines, who asked for “kiss neutral-to-averse Jon feeling like he won’t be able to have a real relationship if he can’t make himself kiss someone, and then a non-kiss-averse partner being cool with it”. I almost always write JonMartin, and since you seemed open to other ships, I decided to try my hand at JonGeorgie. Hope that’s okay! Thank you so so much for the prompt and your kind words. :)

________

Jon was doing his best trying to keep up with Georgie. The band had just finished the last song of the night, and the large crowd of people were milling about, slowly making their way out of the venue.

Georgie, as Jon was finding out, was an expert at moving through a crowd. She twisted around people stepping in front of her and slipped past those ahead who were walking too slow, all the while tugging Jon along. It had become swelteringly hot stuck in the middle of the crowd, so he was all too happy when they broke free of the pack to reach outside. The crisp air nipped at Jon, and he watched as his sigh of relief crystalized in front of him.

Georgie turned to face him, still holding his hand. The overlapping voices of everyone around them was distracting, but Jon tried to focus on Georgie instead. She was smiling so wide her eyes crinkled, and there was a flush to her cheeks.

"Band was decent," Georgie said, a little too loud, Jon supposed from not only having to talk over the crowd, but also the muffled ringing in their ears from being a little too close to the speakers.

"I'm just not a fan of--" Jon gestured to his ears. "I forget how long it takes to wear off, but did you know that this is actually tinnitus? The loud music actually damaged the hair cells in our ears. These sorts of concerts are approximately 115 decibels, and it only takes prolonged exposure of 85 decibels or greater to cause hearing loss…"

"I was pleasantly surprised," Jon said as dryly as he could with his voice raised.

Georgie barked out a laugh, before punching him lightly on the arm. "I told you you'd like them!"

"Jonathan Sims, are you trying to scare me off from future concerts?" Georgie's face pinched in an exaggerated grumpy face. She pulled Jon a little closer to her, Jon assumed so they could hear each other better.

Jon laughed. "No, of course not. I think it would take quite a few concerts to really have any effect. It's interesting though. Apparently damage to the hair cells in our ears causes our brains to misinterpret the signal it receives, so our brains make up a sound instead! That's the ringing we're hearing right now."

"It's too bad our brains couldn't have made up a more interesting sound."

As Jon started to consider this, Georgie reached up to cup his cheek, and Jon immediately froze at her touch, eyes wide.

"You're so cute when you share this stuff," Georgie said fondly, with a soft smile, leaning up on her tiptoes, her eyes dropping to his lips, clearly about to give Jon a kiss.

A jolt of panic, his heart sped up, and he quickly pulled back. "Georgie, I--"

Georgie didn't look hurt, Jon thought, thank god. She actually looked worried, her head tilted slightly in confusion.

Jon bit his lip. Well. This was it. "Georgie, sorry, I don't-- um. I can't--"

Georgie's brow furrowed as she tried to parse what was going on. "No, no, this was my bad, I never actually called this a date anyway, I never asked if you were interested--"

"But--Georgie," Jon interjected in a panic. "I am interested in dating. Dating you. I like you, Georgie, I do. I just." Jon internally cringed. It felt like a death blow. And he hadn't even mentioned his asexuality yet. "Don't-like-kissing," Jon said in a rush. "It's uncomfortable? I actually haven't tried it, but any time I see characters on screen making out---it looks…" Jon bit his lip. "Gross? I don't want to try it, it's not for me, sorry," Jon said with finality, trying to project more confidence than he felt.

When Georgie didn't say anything for a moment, Jon decided it would be best to say his good-byes and leave her an easy out to get back home, not have to worry about mistakenly dating him anymore. He was already mourning how such a lovely evening had been wrecked so quickly. Jon ran a hand through his hair as he sighed. "I had a fun time tonight, really. I'm-- I'm sorry if it looked like I led you on or anything. And I understand if you're not interested in me anymore if--"

Georgie pulled a face. "Don't be silly, Jon."

"I-- what?"

"That's a completely valid boundary to set, Jon, I get it--" Jon started to respond but Georgie held up a hand. "Really, I do. Or I think I do. And if we're being honest with each other, before we date, if we decide to date-- I'm aro."

"Oh," Jon responded eloquently as he tried to process this. "I'm sort of like that? But. Uh. Not like that exactly. We can, uh, talk about it later?" Jon suggested, glancing around at the people loitering nearby, self-consciously rubbing the back of his neck.

Georgie laughed, not unkindly. "Of course Jon. I--honestly, I was starting to guess that." Georgie held out her hand, and Jon took it, and she squeezed reassuringly. "Listen, if you want, we can try this, whatever this turns out to be. See what happens. I don't like romantic stuff, but I like hanging out with you. Kissing can be fun, but I don't need it. You're fun, interesting. Cute. Good concert buddy. I'd like to try something out, if you still want to. What do you say?"

"You're... really okay with the no kissing?" Jon asked incredulously, his mind still solidly hung up in disbelief.

Georgie rolled her eyes with a huff. "Yes, Jon. Like I said, I'm interested in this for you. We had fun tonight, didn't we?"

"Yes, yes, Georgie. Fine." Jon let out a sigh, throwing up his hands. "We should probably head to The White Horse if we still want to grab something to eat, we can talk more there about this?"

"Perfect! I'm starving." Georgie beamed, before turning thoughtful.

"Georgie, what is it?" Jon asked suspiciously.

"Thinking about what we could do instead of kissing. Squeeze your hand? Big hug? Gotta show my affection somehow."

It was a wonderful, cozy sort of feeling, one that was almost alien to Jon, that someone would try to thoughtfully look for alternatives, instead of rejecting him for it or trying their best to ignore it. "I, uh, both would work," he stammered. "I don't mind a cheek kiss… I-- I think. We could try it out at least."

"Don't worry, I'll warn you next time," she said a little sheepishly with a slight grin, before holding out her arms. Jon let himself be folded into a hug; Georgie was warm against the cool evening air, her hands solid and steadying against his back.

#aspecarchives #the magnus archives #jongeorgie #my writing

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whump-town · 4 years

Text

Deaf!Hotch

In AU in which I make Hotch deaf and hope that my research paid off and I do the deaf community right in my writing of Hotch. So, obviously, there’s the disclaimer that I know ASL but I am not deaf

Warning for language

Word Count: 2,902

It was touch and smell that Aaron Hotchner knew first upon awareness. The heavy scent of antiseptic hovering in the air. He frequents the hospital enough to know that the smell will linger on his clothes, skin, and hair for days. A ghost with its fingers dug into his skin. The touch he feels is familiar. Fingers wrapped around his own in a light hold. There’s a light pressure around his bicep and the sting of a needle in his elbow.

It’s with that last thought that it occurs to him that he can’t hear any of the sounds he commonly associated with a hospital. No hiss of the oxygen canal wrapped around the back of his head or beeping machines as they dump the numbing painkillers into his arm.

Just silence.

“Can you hear me?”

Through slivers, Hotch looks up at his old mentor. He can feel Dave squeeze his hand, attempting to ground him through his blinding pain but… he can’t hear Dave. He doesn't hear the older man call his name or shushing him softly when the pain brings him to tears--- his own pain-filled cries falling deaf to his ears.

Mercifully, he falls unconscious once again.

The team comes in a moment later. The easy smiles on their lips falling. Together, they’d managed to shake some of their fear after seeing him collapse in the field. Emily had caved and told them about Hotch’s reaction to being so close to the backhoe. Reid had told them that while he and Hotch had been sharing a hotel room this trip, he hadn’t seen Hotch sleep. Any naps he may have been getting were rudely interrupted by pain or nightmares.

They’d shaken their mixed feelings with the reminder that nothing can keep Aaron Hotchner down. At least… nothing yet.

Knowing what they did, they still had a false sense of hope walking into his hospital room. Expecting their boss to greet them like he always does. Maybe he would let them have their moment. Giving in to the hugs and worried complaints they have but…

He’s curled onto his side, pain etched into the grimace he has even in his sleep, and they can see the drying tears from the door.

“Hey, kiddos.” Dave stands from the only visitor’s chair offered and smiles wearily. “Did you eat something?”

A nurse steps past them and they allow her through without mumbled complaints. She works quickly and they watch with curiosity and fierce protectiveness. When Hotch whimpers as she touches him, Morgan steps forward, stopped only by the hand that JJ grabs him with. He settles back against the wall, shifting nervously until the nurse can give Hotch the painkillers he needs and sends him into a painless, drug-induced slumber.

“He’s not alright,” Morgan mumbles, shaking his head. “What are we going to do?”

Dave shakes his head, rubbing at his goatee. His eyes are glued to Hotch and the nurse, smiling and nodding as she makes her way back out of the room. With the room cleared, he lets his shoulders fall and his resolve crumbles --- for only a moment.

Emily steps closer to the bed. Her arms are wrapped tightly to her chest. She has a complicated relationship with the man in question. A challenging friendship blossoming but… "We'll do what we always do, " she says, steadying herself with a deep breath. "We'll remind him what we're fighting for and we won't let him fall behind."

Dave starts to add on but Hotch shifts on the bed. A soft grunt leaving his mouth as he tenses in pain. He pulls his leg up towards his body, kicking out.

Morgan grows frustrated--- are they not giving him enough painkillers? He shouldn't be in pain.

"Aaron, " Dave calls. He catches Hotch's hand as he raises it to his ear--- the doctor had warned he was only aggravating the eardrum by pressing into it with his palm. "Can you hear me, son?"

Hotch opens his eyes but still tries to weakly pull away.

"Alright, " Dave mumbles, rubbing his shoulder and caving. Giving up on getting an answer. "Easy now." He holds Hotch's hand and steadies him when Hotch's panic-filled eyes find him. "It's alright."

Hotch turns his head away. "No, " he rasps. "No, " his chest heaves as he sobs. Ragged breaths leaving in heart-wrenching wheeze's.

"It's alright, " Dave tries but Hotch vehemently denies it.

With a soft, broken voice Hotch whispers, "I can't hear you, Dave." Tears falling down his face, got stinging tears. "I can't hear."

They should have seen it coming within the weeks leading up to the accident.

New York had left them all shaky but if anything that should have made them more aware of his vulnerability, right?

Hotch had stayed with Dave the weekend following the explosion. Dave had seen Hotch grappling with the pain and the buzzing. He’d forced his old protege to eat whatever meager bites of sandwiches he could manage but he was only drinking enough water to swallow the fistful of pills he’d been given by his doctor.

But Dave isn’t the only one who’d seen.

Derek had driven Hotch home and then to Dave’s. He’d watched as Hotch sat in agony in the front seat. Trembling hands rubbing at his temple or covering his hurt ear but Derek hadn’t stopped. He’d asked if Hotch wanted him to but he knew Hotch would never agree. Not until it was too late and that’s exactly what had happened. Hotch had pushed himself too far and his body had made the decision to stop.

When the Sheriff fired the bullet that finally killed Chloe and ended the horror she brought back to the Angel Maker and his disgusting legacy, Hotch had collapsed.

And now…

“Stop hitting me!” As if losing his hearing wasn’t bad enough--- he’s got to have Emily fucking Prentiss teach him American Sign Language. She’s an awful teacher but he’s learning quickly. As much as he hates it, he’s getting really good at signing.

Within two weeks he’s picked up a strong enough vocabulary that Emily no longer brings a notepad to visit him. It’s a wonder to him how she picks up ASL so easily but he also knows she's a very mysterious woman. He’s probably safer not knowing. Even if he can profile his way into understanding her time spent being thrown about the world in her youth made her adaptable to quick change.

She raises an eyebrow, “sign the word right, and I wouldn’t have to hit you.”

He frowns back at her, “you enjoy it.”

She smirks and he shakes his head. As aggravating as this all can be, he knows it’s brought him closer to his team. To his family.

JJ had taught Jack and Henry some common signs and Jack had taken to them incredibly well. Children, Reid would later tell him, are good at this kind of stuff. Rapid change. Reid… not so much. The best part of his week is their updates. Each one taking the time to come to his apartment and show him what they’ve learned this week.

They’re trying. They care.

But they’re all terrified for his return to duty.

The Bureau is always working against Hotch and the very idea of what losing this job will do to him--- the thought is sickening. And to lose it over something as silly as an accident? Over something that he can’t control? Especially, when he’s fought to learn ASL and to use the hearing aids that don’t help but are necessary for his return… It’s not fair.

If he can come back, if the Bureau sticks to their vow of inclusivity, then he can suck up dealing with the hearing aids.

“Are you alright?”

He hasn’t been cleared to drive yet. Hearing isn’t the issue. In fact, deaf drivers have a great reputation. Emily’s been steadily supplying him with books on deaf culture and even a program in Georgetown for deaf people in the community. The tinnitus is holding him back from driving. The hearing aids help with the buzzing of the tinnitus but they don’t improve his hearing quality enough to really matter. Which is fine, Emily doesn’t mind carpooling.

“No.” He rubs just under his right ear, breathing through the wave of pain. It’s a bad day and hearing aids or not, his hearing is at nearly zero and his pain intense. “Hurts.” The Bureau has decided he needs the hearing aids for his return. They improve his hearing by a fraction but he’s not going to put up a fight if they help the tinnitus. The problem is, if he does leave them in for too long he gets a headache.

It doesn’t get better as the day progresses...

His stomach lurches dangerously. Standing on shaky legs, he makes a jerky but quick pace out his office door. He can’t get any further than the stairs at the catwalk. It’s a stumbling crash that he can’t hear as his body hits the metal. He feels the cold bar pressing against his temple. Closing his eyes, he pulls in a deep breath and waits for the relief. Prays for the ringing and pain to settle with the soft, muffled pace of the bullpen. With sound other than the keys of his laptop and emails chiming.

Lavender-- Emily. The soft scent of her customary perfume is the first thing to greet him. She must be hovering in front of him, deciding whether or not he’s better left alone. Giving him a chance to collect himself for a moment before pressing on.

A hand squeezes his shoulder and he peels his left eye open, leveling it on her. He knows it’s bloodshot and surrounded by the heavy bags that are cemented proof of the fact that he hasn’t slept well in days. He also knows, she’s not here to judge him.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs, crouched right in front of him she signs the word help. He’s likely to never tell her but this is what he appreciates most about her. He’s in pain and she’s not going to waste her time if he doesn’t want her near him. He does want her near but… he doesn’t know how to say that.

He can feel the catwalk shake as someone steps out, heavy, solid steps coming his way. The low vibrations of a voice--Dave-- says something but he can’t hear it as he presses his head harder into the bars and digs his palms into his aching ears. A hand is placed between his shoulder blades and Dave sits down beside him-- the familiar scent of cigars and books washing over them.

Dave.

A hand comes between them and cups his jaw, tilting Hotch’s head away from where he’s painfully pressing it into the bar. “Hurts,” he feels his mouth form the words. He can feel his vocal cords moving but he can’t be certain he’s made a tangible sound.

“One to ten,” Dave asks and Hotch is thankful the older man is much better at sign language than Reid because he can’t focus on his lips. Even if he were good at lip-reading, he’s not sure he could manage right now.

He holds up a shaky hand-- six.

“Liar,” Emily says as she comes to squat down next to them. He hadn’t even noticed her leave. She’s got a cold press of paper towels and presses it to the back of his neck. It does wonders for his stomach but nothing for his pounding head.

Derek offers a water bottle with a straw wordlessly as he passes with a cup of coffee.

It takes ten minutes for the ringing to start to die down. The pain doesn’t go anywhere but he can hear the faintest mumbling coming from Morgan and Reid’s rowdy conversation. It doesn’t matter how many times his ears flare up like this, each time he’s waiting for the noises to never come back.

He knows that one day the world will fall completely silent. He’ll never hear Jack’s voice or the deep rumble of the team all trying to talk over one another. The progression of the loss of his hearing is slow but even with hearing aids now, he can’t make out the distinct sounds of words when someone is talking directly beside him.

To the team's credit, he seems to be the only person bothered by this.

“It’s only a two-hour drive,” Reid observes with a smile. “We can drive!”

One of the preventive measures for his hearing that the team had taken is cutting back on the use of the jet. If it’s not enough watching Hotch suffer through the buzzing amplifying each time they take off, then for the ecosystem (Garcia had sent a very lengthy and inclusive PowerPoint and email into the director to persuade him using the SUVs would be helpful in many ways). He’d agreed to fend off any more of her emails.

The downside is they always have to stop for snacks.

“He’s a grown man,” Hotch signs down the aisle from Dave and Emily. “He should know PopTarts are not a meal.” Reid is, what, nearly thirty years old now and Hotch is still watching that kid eat these overly-sugared, processed things every day. It worries him. What does Reid eat when Hotch isn’t around to cut him off?

Emily holds up a power bar and the red Gatorade Morgan had requested, “do you remember if JJ said she wanted chocolate milk or not?”

“No,” Hotch says from behind the shelf he’s scanning. “She wanted a Snapple.” He points her over the refrigerator he’d just come from. He would have gotten the Snapple if he’d been thinking about it. “What are you getting,” he asks, unsure of what he wants for himself.

“Hey,” Dave has to shout to get Emily’s attention and she points over Hotch’s shoulder to Dave. Hotch turns, eyebrows furrowed. With both of them looking Dave motions that he’s heading back to the car. “I will leave you,” he threatens, stepping out.

“No, he won’t.” They both agree.

They agree to split a bag of trail mix--- intends to pick out the pretzels and he knows she’ll eat the M&Ms out. It’s this intimate knowledge of his team that makes up for their shaky ability to sign. He’s not actually that good at lip-reading but he knows them and that covers his ass pretty well.

That and JJ has gotten really good at jotting what she wants to say rather than struggling to understand and use sign language. He appreciates it--- she’s really bad. It doesn't help that Emily is way nicer to JJ when she teaches her signs than she was with him.

When she takes her time, though--- when they have the time--- it’s all good.

Morgan is surprisingly good at ASL. He didn’t just take to it like Emily but he didn’t blink. It brings them closer together. Sign language is also insanely helpful in the field. Even if Hotch can’t join them in the field. Running point means that Morgan and Hotch have to work closely. The shift in power between the field and the precinct is barely discernible.

He enjoys talking to Garcia the most.

She’s quick to adapt to slang. He has no idea where she’s getting these words from (she made internet friends so she could immerse herself better and support him). She also carries her very unique way of speaking and being into her signing and he really enjoys that. Even when it confuses him.

It takes some getting used to for all of them.

Lots of flashing alarm clocks and Garcia showing Hotch there’s a program on his phone to make his phone flash when he gets a message. They all have things they learn to adjust. It’s safer to stand to Hotch’s left, it’s his better ear. Before talking, they have to actually make sure he’s paying attention. JJ signs as she gives her messages to the media that way he can keep up. They remind him to take the hearing aids out before he gets headaches and offer advil when he forgets.

Slow and steady and, to them, it’s no different than the ways he looks out for them. Because he’s still the same hard ass who work long hours and doesn’t sleep enough.

Jack takes is way easier than all of them. The kid doesn’t even stumble.

There’s a sing for chicken nuggets and Hotch didn’t even know that until one day Jack out right refused to just verbally speak. Of course, he’d heard Aunt Emily and Hotch arguing about Hotch’s reliance on what’s left of his hearing. Siding with his aunt, as he has the aggravating tendency to do, he’d decided the only way for himself and good old dad to communicate was sign language.

Later, he’ll use the story of his father’s accident on a college application. They’ll tear up a little as they proof read it. Jack might have been young when it happened but he saw the way his family shifted. He learned a valuable skill, ASL, and he also learned a very important lesson about family.

Family adapts for those they love.

And that’s what they’d done. When it would have been easier to let him go, they fought, because that’s what family is supposed to do.

Shout out to @softcabrera for looking over this!!

#criminal minds #criminal minds headcanons #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner #deaf!hotch #hearing loss #deaf #hearing aids #emily prentiss #david rossi #derek morgan #spencer reid #jennifer jareau #jennifer jareua #penelope garcia #jack hotchner #bau #they're a family

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romiithebirdie · 3 years

Text

Epilogue for the Lost - Chapter 3

"Never fear, for I am here!"

That was the cheerful catchphrase of the children's television icon, All Might. When anything bad happened, All Might would arrive and save the day. He always won with a bright beam worn proudly across his face, radiating pure joy not only in the show but for children all over the nation who tuned in to watch him.

But for Toshinori Yagi it was a part of his past that he'd rather move on from. Living in solitude as a wealthy retired actor with only a few friends and family members made it difficult for him to genuinely smile nowadays.

Something he could still not grasp to this day;

He had everything.

Money, fame, properties and adoring fans all around the world.

Yet, his heart felt so hollow. Like somebody had reached in and torn in from his chest, discarding it like the useless piece of flesh it was.

If you asked him, he'd be surprised if he even still had a heart under his paper-thin skin.

During the last few years of his starring role as the smiling superhero, he had been involved in a major car collision that damaged his internal organs beyond repair. After months of surgeries and other frequent visits to the hospital, he had retired due to his declining health.

His adoptive father-figure Sorahiko Torino always made it a habit to visit frequently, though Toshinori himself preferred to stay in isolation. Far, far away from the prying eyes of his stern and no-nonsense father and his constant lectures about bad habits and whatnot.

Though he knew it was deeply childish, Toshinori still felt a rebellious thrill from aggravating Sorahiko just as he had done in his youth.

While Torino had always been known for his grumpy attitude, he took up to eleven after the incident involving his closest friend, Nana Shimura. Like Sorahiko, she had worked as a high-ranking member of the Police Force and had taken a squad to raid the hideout of a dangerous wanted criminal.

The notorious A.F.O killer.

He had been given that name due to the fact that all of his victims had the three initials carved into parts of their bodies.

However, it hadn't gone as planned and the entire building went up in flames. The majority of the squad had escaped with minor injuries, but Nana inhaled far too much smoke during her attempts at fleeing to safety which caused her to fall unconscious. Several hours later, she had passed away in the ER department.

It was a massive shock to everybody. Nobody could have seen it coming.

The criminal's body was never found or recovered, the authorities eventually pegging it down to have burned into nothing during the inferno due to the fact nobody had come forward with grievous burns in any of the hospitals in Japan.

A fitting way to end the life of such a cruel and evil man. Scorched into a smudge on the ground, leaving nothing but joy to the civilians who had feared for their lives during his spree.

While many would call it a horrifying end, Toshinori called it justice.

Losing Nana was truly a tragedy and both Toshinori and Sorahiko suffered badly with mourning the kind woman's death. While Sorahiko took to his study and spent many days and nights alone, Toshinori's behaviour grew more challenging and he had started fighting at school and in public.

He wasn't a bad kid.

He just hadn't known how to deal with his own grief. It made him feel hollow inside, like his heart was devoid of anything.

Nana Shimura was like a secondary parental figure to Toshinori. She would watch movies with him, take him and Torino out for long drives in the city and countryside while always proudly wearing a smile on her face.

The television hero All Might's constant beam was a complete homage to Shimura in every way.

If only she had been around to see him in his hayday…

Would she still be proud of him now?

Knowing how far he'd fallen.

Turning to drinking and not taking care of his health properly… Every time he'd cough up the coppery taste of blood from the back of his throat, he truly felt as if the Grim Reaper himself was slowly approaching, waiting for his final breath before tearing his soul and taking his spirit to the afterlife.

No. What he'd thought about Nana...

That wasn't true.

Nana would have never judged him. Back then and even now.

She was kind-hearted and had so much empathy, especially for somebody who worked in the field that she did. It was something Toshinori truly admired about the woman, other than her fierce passion for her work.

Glancing at the IV cord that was attached to his arm, he let out a deep sigh before heaving himself from his own hospital bed and beginning to hobble out of his private room. A coffee from the café downstairs sounded pretty good right about now…

Whisky would have been better but beggars couldn't be choosers.

.-.-.-.-.

Izuku rushed through the hospital entrance, clutching the leather straps of his backpack as his crimson shoes squeaked along the polished floor. He'd been given the brief details of what had happened at his apartment by the police officers after his mother had been taken away in an ambulance.

The kind officers had then given the teen a ride to the hospital where they had accompanied Izuku with getting the name of the ward where his mother had been taken. After giving a quick bow of thanks, Izuku had shot across the car park and towards the building at lightning fast speed.

From the looks of the ward names, it seemed his mother was on one of the higher floors so Izuku decided to take the elevator up; only to almost crash into a tall, blond haired man holding a steaming paper cup who was also waiting for the elevator doors to open.

"I'm so sorry!" the boy yelped, ducking his head while the blond chuckled, fondly shaking his head at the teen. Izuku noted the IV drip and was stricken with more guilt, so much so that he ignored an unpleasant feeling wash over him while being in close range of the stranger.

You nearly knocked a patient over, you complete idiot.

Ding!

As sweet as mercy, the elevator doors opened and the two entered with Izuku allowing the older man to go in first out of respect. It was the least he could do after almost barrelling into him.

"Why thank you, young man," Toshinori smiled, taking a sip of his coffee while watching Izuku fidget around the elevator buttons. He chose to step in, "I'm going to the fifth floor, my boy."

"Ah, that's great, I'm going up to the ninth."

Izuku pressed the buttons and stepped back, feeling the weight of the floor lift underneath his feet. For a few awkward seconds, nobody said a word until a familiar, unwanted chill blew into the boy's face.

He knew it all too well.

They wanted to communicate with him again.

The tiny space of the elevator only did more to trigger an overwhelming feeling of utter claustrophobia, it felt like the silver reflective walls were closing in on him. Izuku suddenly wanted nothing more than to shrink into himself and cower away with his face covered.

Please go away.

Izuku's desperate emeralds met with Toshinori's dull blue, the two immediately connected as the teen bit back a choked gasp that he tried to fight. Foggy imagery immediately began taking over his senses as the familiar raven-haired lady held onto the blond's shoulders like she was embracing him.

No, no, no.

Izuku was seeing them once again, just like all the other times.

Usually he'd see them in short-timed wisps like the smoke of a dead candle flame. A few whispers in his ears and cold spots but nothing as humanoid as what he was seeing now.

He immediately reached for his bag and fumbled around for the zipper, shakily trying to fight against the fabric trapping his zip in the same position. Upon ripping it open, not caring whether or not he'd broken the lining, he began frantically raking through the contents inside.

Where was that damned medication?!

Various whispers combined into one ghostly chorus entered his ears, making them ring like a loud case of tinnitus as he stepped back, trying to compose himself.

"Tell him. Please. Tell him."

"Please," Izuku pleaded as he squirmed, hand darting out and snatching the blond stranger's striped pyjama sleeve. They wouldn't leave until he did what they asked, "She says she's proud. N-never think otherwise."

Toshinori's mind screeched to a complete halt as he whirled around completely on the teen holding onto him, "What?" he spluttered, not quite sure he'd heard what had just come out of the kid's mouth properly. Surely he'd misheard?

"She's proud," Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, as if speaking the words pained him. "Nana says she'll always be proud of you."

Toshinori turned his head around so fast, Izuku's own neck ached at the sight.

Finally, he spoke; "How do you know Nana?"

"I don't," Izuku wavered, glancing at the ghostly hands clutching the thin fabric covering Toshinori's shoulders. "But she said you knows you."

Knows? The older male frowned, unsure of what that even meant.

"Let me rephrase," Toshinori's grip on his IV tightened, a small wave of nausea threatening his weak body as he tried to steady himself. "How could you know something like that?"

The words that had come out of the kid's mouth were enough for him to pray for the doors to open;

"Because she's standing behind you and telling me what to say."

As if by magic, the elevator doors opened and allowed the blond to shuffle out of the small space at the fasted speed he could. In silence, Toshinori dragged his IV along with him while keeping his gaze fixed on the boy.

As the doors began to close, he finally chose to speak again suddenly finding his voice, though it was barely coherent;

"What's your name, kid?"

"Izuku," the greenette answered immediately, "Izuku Midoriya."

"Toshinori Yagi," the blond responded, just as the twin doors shut and cut off their sight of one another.

Toshinori set his cup down and covered his mouth, muffled exhales echoing down the empty corridor as he attempted to compose himself.

Did that really just happen?

.-.-.-.-.

"Mum!"

Previous issues with his unwelcome undead buddies immediately dropped the moment he saw her. The teen dropped everything and launched himself forward, sliding to a halt beside his eerily still mother. The heart monitor beeped slowly, duetting with Inko's raspy gasps for air from her oxygen mask.

"Izuku?" Inko croaked, her face ghostly pale as she shakily attempted to lift her head from the pillows supporting her. Izuku immediately grabbed her hand tightly, fearful of letting her go.

"What happened?" he stressed, trying to force down the hard lump in his throat. He couldn't cry in front of her. She needed him to be strong.

"A man," she whispered, gently giving his hand a squeeze, "red eyes. He knew about Mitsuki, said I deserved it."

"Deserved it?" Izuku repeated, dumbfounded. Deserved what? His mother had nothing to do with the Bakugou tragedy…

"He knocked me down a-and did this," she used her free hand to shakily imitate stabbing motions. Her eyes welled up and Izuku fought back his own tears at seeing his mother so broken. "Tried to start a fire in the lounge b-but couldn't, the neighbours heard the commotion and he ran away."

Inko heaved out roughly, each breath sounding painful as she shifted slightly, wincing every now and again while the monitor beeped beside her.

"I'm sorry, Izuku," she whispered, mother and son's eyes meeting before she began closing them slowly. "I'm so sorry."

"Mum?" Izuku released her hand and gave her a few gentle nudges. She moaned softly, streaks of tears lined down her cheeks as her chest slowly rose and fell.

She was alive. Injured but alive.

The teen pushed himself away and slowly made his way out of the ward, feeling like his head was filled with cotton wool. The second the doors to the ward shut behind him, he allowed himself to break down, sobbing quietly against one of the off-white walls of the long and empty hospital corridor.

Who could have done this?

His mother was the most gentle soul he had ever known, rarely raising her voice or getting angry. Why had somebody attacked her?

The mystery person was wrong; his mother didn't deserve what had happened to her.

Izuku thought back to what the police had explained to him, about the attacker. According to the report made, he had mentioned Mitsuki Bakugou. Which was not only confusing but odd too.

Then there was that weird guy with the unusual red eyes back in his neighbourhood, he was wearing a hoodie so his hair was completely concealed. His mother had mentioned red eyes hadn't she?

Izuku only knew one person with that rare eye colour and then there was another thought playing on his mind;

Who truly knew Mitsuki Bakugou besides the Midoriya Family?

Aside from…

"Kacchan?"

#my writing #epilogue for the lost #bnha fanfiction #mha fanfiction #my hero academia fanfiction #bnha #izuku midoriya #all might #dfo #afo is hisashi midoriya #inko midoriya #dad for one

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beangods · 2 years

Text

The Nadir of Dave pt. 1

part 2 | part 3

when the timeline was doomed, dave noticed. it was a kind of exhale, a release of responsibility and an almost comforting sense of oblivion just around the corner.

that, and a mild case of tinnitus.

the doomed daves of his timeline had complained about it, but LOHAC was so damn noisy that he didn't really notice until he stopped seeing the other daves and was left alone, the clicking of his meticulously polished oxfords echoing on the concrete.

step-click, step-click, step-click.

it almost sounded like a clock with the pace he was keeping. tick, tick, tick.

eventually, he stopped seeing nakkodiles. now that he was doomed, the trolls weren't blowing up his phone, and he'd broken the news to the rest of his timeline first thing: we're fucked. they hadn't needed elaboration. dave strider was completely alone with his thoughts.

a lot of things could doom a timeline. most of the time, it wasn't even his fault, just a misfire of a sylladex, a slightly too-tough ogre, or any number of scrapes, bumps, and falls that could happen on precariously high buildings. usually it was something he could prevent, but sometimes the timeline was doomed before they even entered the game. a different prototyping, a hiccup in the code, or the starting conditions of the medium being just slightly different for no reason. something something analogue for cell mitosis or whatever.

the ticking was growing louder, drowning out the high-pitched tone that had been ringing in his ears. it wasn't just the sound of his shoes---the metallic clang and groan that had long-since blended into the background of his brain was completely drowned out by the tick, tock of the inexorable clock.

he's headed toward the beat mesa, away from the temples to hephaestus and the stock exchange. it feels right, to be headed in this direction, but the ticking is getting louder and the heat is getting more oppressive. the smell---iron and sulphur and god knows what else---is becoming unbearable.

then dave notices it. out of the corner of his eye, one of the steel towers disappears. he turns to look, and it's still gone. takes a step backward, and there it is again. forward, gone. back, here.

and then he can't stop noticing it. the further he walks the more the landscape changes, latticework towering out of the lava and blipping out of existence with every step. it's when he passes the statue of himself in bronze, dressed like a roman emperor and holding scales heaped with boondollars, that he thinks it.

dave is drifting sideways through time. the ringing in his ears has morphed into a dull roar, second only to the tick, tock of the clock that he can feel in his teeth at this point. more than the beat mesa, dave is heading towards something. or being drawn to it, as though pushed along by an inexorable current. the apex of time, he thinks, somewhat deliriously. whatever ultimate fate awaits doomed time players, this is it.

he began climbing a staircase---to the beat mesa, or one of the platforms leading up to it. the climb was inexolerable, the heat radiating from the magma below and making his suit cling to his skin like a wet paper towel, with none of the relief of a real wet paper towel. a bead of sweat rolled down his temple, but dave trudged on, climbing up and up as though motivated by a will other than his own. he had to see it.

tock, tock, tock. the timbre of the ticking deepened, growing sononorous and almost painfully loud, rattling dave's teeth with its register. the dull roaring, which moments (hours?) ago had been a high-pitched ringing, now seemed not a product of his own mind but an external thing, a malevolent something. the sound had a source. dave imagined something shapeless and dark, made mostly of static. skaia shone above him with its distant blue spark, and dave had never felt more distant from what it represented.

this wasn't creation. this was oppression.

the stairs seemed to go on forever, and as dave clicked through LOHAC after LOHAC, each more hellish than the last, he felt certain that the noise---the tick-tock and the roar---shared the same source, and waited for him at the top of the stairs.

as a knight, he was bound to serve---to serve his space player through time, and to serve time itself. he felt that one way or another he was going to meet his master, when whatever doom awaiting his timeline found him.

jade, john, and rose had never seemed to have the unease about their aspects that dave always felt. time was a living thing, an active beast, not a substance waiting to be molded or released. on LOFAF jade had said something along the lines of time being just motion through space, but what was moving? what was the pusher of the cosmos? what was pulling dave ever higher, like a fish hook caught under his sternum? what waited for him at the apex of time?

part of dave wanted to continue, to face whatever perched on the apex---whatever hulking gargoyle could rest atop time itself---but the rest of him does not want to die like this, alone and drowned by noise and scent, the heat making him sweat like a sinner in church and his shoes beginning to uncomfortably chafe his feet.

the dave in the clot x nike 1world air force 1 supremes had the right idea, he thinks. maybe not about the shoe choice---dave had been ogling the nike lunar racers for over half a year at this point---but dave was seriously craving some comfortable kicks.

he turned around, turned his back on the beat mesa and the apex of time, and started heading down toward his apartment. toward safety, toward his alchemizer, and towards whatever the opposite of the apex of time was. the nadir of dave.

it had been a long time since he'd seen any sign of life, and longer still since he'd seen any sign of dave. the statue had been . . . weird, but no live daves. he was getting a headache from the smell, and the noise was not helping matters.

step-click, step-click, step-click.

he had a feeling it was going to be a long walk.

#homestuck #dave strider #bean's writing #homestuck dave #dave homestuck #homestuck fanfic #the nadir of dave

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monitorsscrawlings · 2 years

Text

Shock It To Ya! Chapter One

Chapter One: Zap! Goes the Powerline.

In my modest opinion there’ s just one thing that sucks more than ending a long slogging week of work in customer-service slinging coffee and dealing with a conga-line of self-entitled yuppies and skeevy weirdos by having to walk to work in the pouring rain on that final day before I could finally take a couple of well-deserved days off.

Just one thing mind you, just one!

And that one thing would be ending the mostly metaphorical slog with a much more literal one home from work through a rainstorm that had somehow managed to upgrade itself from ‘drenching, heavy rain’ when I had stomped through it on my way to work that morning, to ‘absolutely relentless downpour with a side-order of thunder and lightning’. I already knew all too well that it would take a literal act of divine intervention, or at the very least a timely power-outrage to get the owners to close the shop down early, but this was just fucking ridiculous. The rain made a mockery of my sad little umbrella, the wind whipping it this way and that, water dripping down my face, every inch of me drenched, with another slow, miserable ten minutes of squelching, dirty water squishing between my toes and feeling like the kind of drowned rat that other drowned rats would stick their noses up at, I couldn’t muster the emotion to feel more than a low, simmering resignation as I squinted through the rain and kept on slogging through muddy puddles, having long given up on being able to see much of anything more than a couple of feet in front of me, even with my glasses on.

Or on staying dry for that matter.

I was just happy to be alive, and for my week to be over. God, I was so ready to just shower, flop in to bed and pass out. Sleep had never sounded so good. Praise be to a hot shower, a warm bed, and a full nights rest!

The storm had other ideas. As I discovered not five fucking minutes from my house, as an errant lightning bolt slammed into the power-lines over my head, and a live-wire came down right on top of me. I never heard or saw it coming of course, the thunderous boom and flash of the lightning strike had rendered me blind, deaf and dumb, ears ringing and spots of light exploding in my eyes. Oh, but for one split second of searing, electrical agony I sure did feel it. Everything went black after that, and I’m quite sure I was dead before my body hit the ground.

I don’t remember anything much after that. Blackness, then a sort of hazy gray-white, with a background noise a little like the rush and gurgle of water filling your ears when you dive under the surface of a lake, a little like the dull background hum of a bad case of persistent tinnitus, and a lot like neither of those things. I’d been some kind of lackadaisical Christian as a kid, because my family had been Christian, and agnostic for most of my life after that besides, so I wasn’t exactly surprised by this...thisness. This non-existence that felt like the spiritual equivalent of being left on hold for six hours with nothing but an all-you-could-stomach stream of never-ending smooth-jazz and elevator music to distract from the tedium.

I guess I hadn’t been good and religiously devote enough to schmooze my way through the pearly gates, but not enough of an evil little shit to end up spending eternity in hell as Satan’s personal toilet-scrubber. Damn. This whole situation really sucked.

And then it was like blinking awake from a very strange yet immersive day-dream, the kind where the dream feels realer than reality, and I woke up.

I woke up, blinked the sleep from my eyes, and half-pushed, half-stumbled until I managed to drag myself upright, my body feeling leaden, head groggy, mouth coated in yuck. Well, I was up, so I guess it was time to start the day. Leaning down to splash some water into my face from the pond I’d fallen asleep beside, it wasn’t until I’d finished scrubbing my face that I was caught by a strangeness, a wrongness in the distorted reflection that stared back at me from the pool of water. It took a solid five seconds as my brain caught up with itself and I lurched into full wakefulness with a sensation like falling up. But then everything clicked in to place and I screamed. Oh how I screamed: first in panicked confusion, than in horror, then once the shock wore off, in rage.

I’d been frustrated, pissed off, stressed out, and ready to throw down before; usually after customers had worn through my last nerve or after an unusually shitty week with too much stress and too little sleep. I was usually a pretty upbeat and calm person, at least until I couldn’t put up with any more and just needed to scream bloody murder somewhere discrete and away from other people. But this, oh this took the stages of grief and made them explode as anger took everything and swept it away in a tide of red.

‘I was a motherfucking Abra. I had died—could remember every detail leading up to my demise and the sensation of my heart stopping as I jittered like a cockroach trapped in a microwave—because of random chance and shitty weather and I’d been close enough to turning on to my street and dragging my carcass in to my house that if I’d been just a little bit faster I wouldn’t have died and lost everything and I was a motherfucking Abra! My friends and family, my writing, my house and my job and every last scrap of my old life and everything I had slowly worked towards, grinding my life away just surviving with my shitty job working for a better tomorrow gone in an instant and now for whatever reason I was stuck in the Pokemon universe as a stumpy little psychic fox-shrew-looking rip-off muppet Abra and oh god I died what the fuck everything's gone, everything's gone everything's gone oh you motherfucker why the fuck was I an Abra?!’

Everything became a blur of seething rage and desperate panicked flailing after that, as I vented my emotions in one massive explosion, screaming and cursing until I was hoarse. I can remember with distinct clarity kicking and punching and clawing furiously at a tree until my hands throbbed with pain and bled and my rage was spent, fatigue swiftly taking it’s place. My body had felt so heavy, and I had felt so, so tired, like every corner of my being was filled to the brim with cold lead relentlessly weighing me down. Before I knew it I was slumping over to sleep in the wreckage my physic-empowered tantrum had created, my weak little Abra body’s power spent as I curled up into a little ball, arms cradling my head and tail curled up under my feet. I yawned, and then I was out. I didn’t fall asleep so much as sleep clubbed me over the head and threw me ass over heels face-first in to dreamland.

It was quite possibly the best nap I had ever had.

Unfortunately it also lasted for almost twenty-four hours, which as I would find out soon after, was going to be a really annoying part of my new normal.

The days seem to run like water when you’re out there in the wild all by your lonesome, with nothing for company except the few scant wild pokemon ranging the area and your own thoughts, and precious little to entertain yourself with besides. Seventeen to eighteen hours of mandatory sleep with a body that absolutely won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, or else; followed by roughly six hours of wide-awake scurrying around like a hyperactive five year old dosed up on snicker-doodles and cola as I thought and thought and thought without end, about everything and nothing, mind constantly at work. I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t stop. Frankly I didn’t know how to stop. Not when I was foraging for food or water, not when I ran and climbed and did somersaults and back-flips and front-flips and experimented with what little psychic power I had at my disposal just to take the edge off my boredom, which in my case meant figuring out what I could do with ‘Teleport’, and little else. Certainly not when I punched and kicked trees or forced myself to do squats and push-ups and sit-ups and stretches, no matter how much I loathed the repetitive movements or how little it did to distract me from my thoughts, my day-dreams, or all of my many, many, many questions.

To some people Hell is other people, or Hell is simply Hell in a more literal fire and brimstone and sadistic blood-thirsty demons sort of way.

To me, in that first dull week of being reborn in the wonderful world of Pokemon, with all that it entailed, Hell was isolation and boredom without end.

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

But that was a week ago. Or maybe it was two weeks ago, or three, or five? Time’s funny like that, it’s hard to pin down and keep a hold of when you have no way to keep track of it except for the rising and setting of the sun and moon and your own finicky internal clock. All I knew was that I’d landed in a temperate forest, the weather had been cool but comfortable, and there was plenty to eat and little to do.

But that had been then, and this was now. And now, as was fast becoming an annoying new custom with me I was woken up by the sensation of someone tickling my nose with their tail until I was forced to teleport away. I enjoyed a moments peace while it lasted, only for them to track me down and start bothering me again, repeating the cycle until I was finally annoyed enough to snap into wakefulness and threaten to feed them their own feet, only to find a chubby yellow, stripped electric-mouse grinning cheekily at me. One that I happened to recognize, since the chubby little bastard loved pulling pranks on me, no matter how often I teleport-juggled them through the air until they were too dizzy to stand upright. Or threatened to use them as target practice for my amateur-hour close-quarters attacks.

Honestly I think they liked it. Serves me right for getting too friendly with the locals and spending so much time napping in apple-trees. Just like last time I was tempted to give them the ol’ Thunder Punch to the gut as a pulse of irritation ran through me at having my slumber interrupted again. But that would have been a poor way to say ‘thank you’, when their elder had been the one to help me learn the move in the first place.

Besides, I had I worrying suspicion that the little masochist would have enjoyed getting smacked around too. I didn’t want to think about it, or risk finding out, so I didn’t. Instead I took my sweet time, making a show of it as I stretched and yawned wide, flexing my fingers and toes and luxuriating in the warm lazy sensation of slowly waking up from my daily nap. It didn’t take long at all for Pikachu to start poking me gently in the side to chivy me along, practically dancing an impatient little jig when I made a show of twisting around to turn by back towards him and going back to sleep sitting up. Heh, messing with them was just too easy sometimes. Served ‘em right for interrupting my sleep, too.

“Aww jeeze, come on sleepy-head, quite being such a Slowpoke and get up already! Tree-berries are back on the menu Jabra! There’s apples and pears ripe for the taking, if we don’t hurry they’re gonna be all gone, come on, wake up!” Pikachu pikachu’d at me eagerly, as their little paws poked and prodded me in the side some more, before they switched to lightly drumming out a little beat on the top of my head, to the tune of Merv Griffins ‘I’ve Got A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts’. On reflection, humming and singing songs from my old world where other ‘mons could hear might have been a mistake. Just a little one.

But I couldn’t find it in myself to feel much regret over it now. That train had already left the station ages ago, and there wasn’t anything I could do to drag it back. But what I was feeling was another sting of irritation over having my sleep interrupted by spring apples and what was probably going to be some very sad green pears, which however tasty, weren’t worth the grogginess and headaches I could now look forward to until I went back to my nap and completed the mandatory Abra sleep-cycle. And just like that, I was back to contemplating the virtues of giving Pikachu a taste of my thunder-punch

I twisted around to yawn again, even louder and wider than before right in Pikachu’s face to let them know exactly what I thought of that, before I flopped on to my side with a sleepy tongue-blep, ears flicking as I cupped my head in the palm of my right hand, the claws of my left lazily tap-tap-tapping out ‘shave and a haircut—two bits’ over and over again into the bed of moss growing on one of the massive boughs of the ancient dead tree this conversation was currently taking place on. They sure didn’t make ‘em like this back home. Probably a pokemons doing come to think, but that was a worry for another time. “Mmmrph, you woke me up early just for that? I’ll pass, thanks.” I mumbled, quickly cutting off the tune to stifle another yawn.

Undeterred, Pikachu scampered to stand by my feet before flopping on to his side next to me, mirroring my pose as he smiled in his usual happy-go-lucky way. “Come on man, it won’t be the same without you there to teleport to the juiciest ones,” he said, before leaning down to whisper the magic words in to my ear with a sly lilt, “I’ll even roast your half of the haul for you, just the way you like ‘em. I don’t think you’ve tried these apples yet either, they’re different, softer and juicier! They’re really good, I promise, so let’s go already!” He added pleadingly, injecting a wheedling note in to his voice.

Heh, well, I rather did like roasted sweet apples...and as I’d learned the hard way a couple of days ago, thunder-punch was great for smacking a little sense in to other ‘mons, or knocking stubborn fruit out of trees, but absolutely rubbish for cooking and baking. Unless you liked apple-sauce or hot mixed-berry jam of course. In which case it was just perfect!

...As long as you didn’t mind having your apple-sauce ending up with a bit here, a bit there, and the rest of it crop-dusted all over yourself, your friends, and the female Scyther nesting way over in the bushes off to your left but unfortunately still somehow well within the splash-zone. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, and sheer boredom had played no small part in the decision. But while what little apple-sauce I’d managed to lick off my mitts while running and teleporting hither and yon around the forest for my life from the homicidal, flying hack-n-slash bug-woman had been delicious, it hadn’t been enough to be worth the bother I had gone through to make it. Or the stabbing headache I’d been left with afterwards for overexerting myself while my danger-sense had been pinging left and right, going completely ballistic the entire time. I certainly hadn't needed any extra-sensory abilities or psychic powers to know that particular Scyther had wanted to gut me like a Magikarp and then shred the remains into Abra-tartar. On the bright side my little jaunt had provided me with some excellent cardio, so I was still counting it as a partial win all around.

But yeah. No more punching fruit with electricity until it exploded. At least not until I could find a better way to harvest the results.

“You had me at toasted apples,” I said, perking up before grabbing one of Pikachu’s paws without ceremony. “Alright then, lets go. Teleporting in three, two, one, take off is now.” And then I teleported us out of the massive old oak tree and down into the tall grass growing around its base in the blink of an eye, with a little mid-teleport twist to swing us both from laying on our sides to standing more or less upright before we both landed facing each other with only a little bit of a stumble on either of our parts.

It took us both a second to reorient as Pikachu moved to stand by my side, his left paw held firmly in my right, before he started feeding me directions to where we were heading, gesturing enthusiastically with his free hand the entire time, ears perked and his eyes sparkling with shameless gluttony and no little excitement at being taken teleport-hopping through the forest.

I took a moment to raise my head and let my gaze drift up in to the sky above. The day was clear, sunny, and pleasantly cool with a light breeze and only a few fluffy white clouds slowly drifting across the sky. Good weather for travel and picnicking.

“Right then, off we go. All you can eat apple and pear cornucopia, here we come!” I said laconically, and faster than two shakes of a Taurus’ tails, we were off, Pikachu whooping and giggling excitedly beside me the entire way as we blinked in and out with a twist of teleportation, skipping from one place to another with only a few seconds spared each time to reorient and take the next jump. The scenery around us went by in a series of blips, like watching a slideshow of nature snap-shots or the highlights reel of a wilderness documentary as we teleported through the forest in a generally westerly direction, navigating primarily based off of Pikachu’s directions and using easily identifiable forest landmarks to help keep us moving in the right direction.

Oh the sights you’ll see when you teleport-spam: big rock that kind of looked like a sleeping Gengar situated at the mouth of a mossy cave; lightning-forked tree; Beedrill nest; the massive river that bisected the forest into it’s east and west halves; gravelly hiking path with an old tree-stump carved to resemble a Hoothoot; three Rookidee nesting in the window of an abandoned log-cabin—I immediately teleported back to pull one eyelid down and stick out my tongue at the trio of little brats for keeping me up with every child's favorite game, the ‘Why’ game several nights ago, before teleporting myself and my passenger away before they stopped squawking and started pecking—and soon we were by the hiking trails and webway of roads used by the humans of this world, especially the trainers. A journey that from start to end would have probably taken us about two hours to make going at a steady pace on foot. But using Teleport? It only took us five, maybe six minutes tops until we finally arrived at where the fruit-trees Pikachu had been talking about were supposed to be.

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Before, when I had said ‘all you can eat’, I’d been entirely joking. I hadn’t realized how prophetic my words would turn out to be until I let Pikachu’s paw go and we ambled our way across the road and through the brush and scraggly tree-line to reach our destination, Pikachu rushing ahead of me so he could perform a little bow and flourish, waving his paws as if he had personally pulled what awaited us out of his hat like a magician performing their final and grandest trick of the night.

I had been expecting one or two young trees starting to fruit prematurely at best, maybe some berry bushes that hadn’t already been picked through by other pokemon and traveling humans.

What I hadn’t been expecting to find was something that combined a Poke’Stop campsite with a small albeit seedy-looking fruit-orchard.

A ring of thirteen rock slabs and old logs had been evenly spaced out in a circle around at what one point must have been a fire-pit with a brick basin set in to the ground, and a good sized one at that, surrounded by a mix of old ash, sand and gravel in the center of the camp. To the left of the path was a long stretch of packed down sandy earth pockmarked with a few patches of stubborn grass that looked like it had been the designated spot for travelers to pitch tents. The grass here was short and patchy, and aside from a few boulders that had been set at the borders of the clearing in what looked like a rough rectangle there wasn’t much else to see. A dirt path led from what must have been the intended entrance, through the camp, and to the right, where it led to a shallow stream being fed from the river back the way we’d come, and beyond that? A weed-riddled orchard with several tidy rows of apple trees, and even a couple of pear-trees off in their own corner. There was also what looked liked an attempt at a vegetable garden that had gotten completely overrun with wild-mint and blackberries, both vying aggressively for the rich black soil that might have once grown potatoes and carrots or the like.

Overall, the place felt like it hadn’t been seriously used or properly tended to in, well, months at least. Not abandoned exactly, so much as dormant, and maybe a little neglected. It didn’t stop either of us from strolling on in of course, but it still struck me as just a little odd.

‘Maybe the nearest local pokemon-gym’s gotten it’s funding slashed, or its the off-season or something?’ I pondered to myself as I cautiously poked around, curiosity aroused. If I hadn’t already had two close encounters with wannabe pokemon-trainers poking their noses around my favorite napping tree, keen on adding a shiny new Abra to their teams, who wouldn’t take a hint to go away without a little gentle persuasion, seeing something like this might have made me start to worry about the state of the world and human-kind.

As it was though, I had better things to focus on: like following Pikachu in to the orchard before he either ate everything or kicked off a brawl with an Ursaring or something. Not even the first hints of drowsiness and fatigue, or the burgeoning headache beginning to throb and squeeze at the front of my skull and temples could keep me from feasting on fruit or making sure the electric rodent didn’t get us both into some nutty new situation. Just had to soldier through, and once we’d both eaten our fill I could beg off and find some place to take a well-deserved nap.

In the mean time, there were trees to punch and fruit to collect.

“Thuuundeeer Puuunnnch~!” I roared, striking a super-sentai pose and hamming it up just a bit for Pikachu’s benefit, before going at it on one especially stubborn trees trunk with a series of rapid jabs and a few kicks, all empowered with just the mildest burst of electricity. I wanted to see if I could knock down some fruit before I had to start resorting to latching on to apples with teleport and letting gravity do the work. Preferably without killing the poor tree dead with lightning if I could help it.

Unfortunately I did my job a little too well, as several apples finally fell from the boughs above.

To bounce rapid-fire one after the other right off the top of my already sore head with a loud sort of ‘donk donk plonk’ noise, making white and yellow stars burst in my vision before I blinked them away, and escalating my headache from ‘low burgeoning tenderness’ to ‘moderate but persistent throb’ in a heartbeat.

Naturally the electric furball found it just so damn funny he immediately sprayed bits of chewed-up pear everywhere, choking on his own spit and flailing around on the ground as he rocked with helpless laughter at my misfortune, his half-eaten pear momentarily forgotten.

I could feel a vein in my head pulse, lightning dragging itself through my limbs to arc between my clenched fists as I slowly pivoted away from the apple tree with as much dignity as I could muster and glared. “I meant to do that,” I ground out.

That only seemed to set him off even harder, the choking getting worse as he squealed with laughter, before he swallowed wrong, started choking in truth and turning blue in the face. If the overfed flea-bag died laughing right now, it would have only served him right, fondness for the little glutton be damned. On the other paw...if he died and came back as a ghost pokemon over something as dumb as this, then I would never get a moments peace or sleep again.

Never ever again.

Flesh and blood beings like me had to sleep regularly. Ghost-pokemon? As far as I knew, not so much.

With a growl I flash-teleported right next to him and let Pikachu have it with a solid punch to the gut, a chunk of pear that the little glutton must have been struggling to swallow narrowly missing clipping my right ear as they let out a gasp, before curling on to their side with a weak panting groan, still chuckling occasionally.

“You gonna live?” I sighed sarcastically, rubbing at my aching temples.

And just like that Pikachu went right back to giggling as they straightened up and gave me two big thumbs up, before they pressed their paws against their muzzle as they tried and failed spectacularly to hide their cheeky grin, none the worse for wear even after almost choking to death and then taking a direct hit to the stomach.

We spent a few minutes in companionable silence after that, sitting down next to each other as Pikachu roasted my share of the fruit for me and we both ate our fill with gusto. Although I left eating the apple-cores to the one ‘mon garbage disposal, and thankfully this time he remembered to take his time and chew, instead of trying to swallow things whole like an Arbok.

Just as I was about to get up and help myself to some berries and mint chased down with fresh rive-water to finish my meal, a fresh stab of pain lancing through my skull made me pause and flinch, followed by the sensation of a chill racing up my spine. Right, right, read you loud and clear body: nap time was now, food time would have to be put on hold until later. Oh, and apparently something was setting off my danger-sense in a big way, but something was muddling it.

Time to go.

“Right, I think we should wrap things up and head back for now while I still have the juice for some teleports still left in me. We got what we came for, yeah?” I said, clapping my hands together to get Pikachu’s attention, while trying not to panic or let on how much my head hurt show.

Guess I was a better psychic than an actor though, because Pikachu seemed to immediately sense something other than my usual ‘I’m sleepy-tired’, ‘I’m bored’, or ‘I’m sleepy, bored and cranky’ modes was going on from the way their eyes snapped to me and they froze mid-bite into what must have been their upteenth’d apple. I hadn’t really been paying attention but he must have been starting to get full now, surely?

I mean, just how much fruit could one Pikachu eat?

“Ah Awweddy?” He mumbled around a mouth full of chewed up apple and pear, before swallowing thickly. “What’s the rush though? We just got here didn’t we? Besides, there’s plenty of food and water, its a beautiful day, and there’s plenty of places to take a nap in, right?” Pikachu chirped licking his chops, before he frowned, his face clouding up with concern, brow beetling up and ears drooping as he hopped to his feet.

“Are you not feeling good? You didn’t accidentally eat some Caterpie eggs did you? Or some of those funky mushrooms that make you see things?” I blinked in confused-surprise at that and suddenly Pikachu was standing in front of me, paws on my shoulders as they peered intently in to my face to make sure I wasn’t suffering from acute food-poisoning, or tripping out on those damn speckled blue hallucinogenic mushrooms. Again. Even after gorging on fruit they’d moved so fast they’d almost left after-images, cool air washing over me from their use of ‘Agility’.

“Whu—no nothing like that! I’m just tired and headach-y, figured I’d go back to my tree and sleep it off. I didn’t want to leave you to take the long way back on a full stomach, that’s all.” I said, resisting the urge to just grab Pikachu and teleport them out with me now, permission be damned.

“Oh? Oooh. okay! Had me worried for a second! Well, why don’t we just hang out here until you feel better then silly? I mean, what’s the worse that could happen?” They chirped, waving one paw about negligently as they leaned against me, the very picture of lazy devil-may-care confidence.

And that’s when my danger-sense pinged even harder than before, sending a fresh burst of pain through my skull, followed by a chill that seemed to start from my ears and flow all the way down my body to my tail. I didn’t need psychic powers to know that invoking Murphy’s Law was bad, bad, really really bad.

“Well, I mean...” I started weakly, trying not to start clutching at my head in both frustration and pain, when, as if to prove my concerns completely valid while simultaneously laughing directly in to my face, the sound of a tree-branch snapping under-foot went off like a gun-shot in the relative quiet of the clearing and both of us swiveled around in a snap of motion to stare at a boxy-faced, sandy-haired, white lab-coat wearing human intruder standing by the path leading out of the clearing, watching us both with transparent interest and a faintly indulgent yet crooked smile, face lightly seamed with laugh and frown lines both.

“We could be cornered by some random middle-aged science-nerd out on a hike, for a start.” I pointed out in a voice dryer than your average Murowaks sense of humor. This was what my danger-sense had been basically flipping tables and screaming in to my ear for? This? Something must have been up. My extra-sensory abilities were a pain in the skull both literally and figuratively, and annoyingly vague most of the time besides, but they didn’t start going off over nothing.

I returned my attention back to who I was guessing was either a Pokemon-researcher, or someone who’s job it was to survey and maintain areas like this rest-stop and the orchard, noting the battered old walking-stick resting in their left hand, and what looked like a fully expanded poke-ball with a weird glittering pink hand doing the ‘V for victory’ sign imprinted on the red half of the poke-ball, in pride of place roughly above the button and clasp portion.

“Well, this human seems nice?” Pikachu offered tentatively, before they smiled widely, perking up as something seemed to occur to them. “Oooh! Maybe they’ve got snacks on them; human snacks! Or maybe they’re just out here to help themselves to some fruit too? I mean, what’s the worst that could happen right dude? It just some old human, like Granpa Zippy! I bet he’s nice, he looks nice! Doesn’t he look nice Jabra?”

“Yeah, he sure looks nice, real swell guy! Maybe we should go and leave him to it, eh?” I agreed with more good cheer than I was currently feeling, ignoring the stab of pain followed by the cold shiver Pikachu’s continued taunting of Murphy elicited as I tried to nudge Pikachu into backing up, and Pikachu failed to notice that I was trying to back us both up and just leaned in to me, their attention on the ‘nice-looking human’ and the possibility of pets and snacks. Oh Pikachu, forever the optimist.

While we’d been chatting between each other, the old man had been thinking out loud, leaning against his walking cane as he seemed to study us intently, gaze friendly but piercing. I could make out most of what he was saying, though parts of it were swallowed up by Pikachu’s relentlessly cheerful and optimistic chatter.

“Well...a treat and, quite the stroke of luck to boot: a Pikachu and an Abra, both wild, and.…at that…could prove useful for my research...hmmm, but there’s been a larger intake of new trainers seeking their licenses than...and that Abra looks ready to collapse, the poor...will need to get it treated and checked over...yes, I think that would be best.” They mumbled to themselves, idly tossing and catching the poke-ball they held in their right hand, before with a casual wrist-flick and the press of a button, the poke-ball opened up, and in a rush of pink-tinted white light something flew out to re-materialize and coalesce in front of the human.

A...Wigglytuff? A really big Wigglytuff with battle-scars up and down its arms and its little hair-poof styled into a cute pink little pompadour.

“Mr. Wiggles, you’re up champ! Focus your Disable on the Abra’s teleport and tag the Pikachu too if you can. Follow up with ‘Play Rough’, but not too rough if you please, we need to bring them back to the lab.” The human ordered, the relaxed air of before replaced by the sudden tension of a looming fight as I tried to grab Pikachu and teleport us out and Pikachu instinctively tried to jump away and launch into an attack to stop the fluffy pink pokemon from wrecking our whole day.

Neither of us managed to do more than twitch before ‘Mr. Wiggles’ eyes glowed an ominous electric-blue and I felt them reach out with their power in a split second, waves of crackling energy forming into tendrils and loops that crossed the distance and started suffusing us both, rooting me to the spot as I felt something slam down over the aspect of my powers devoted to using teleport. Though it was less like a gate slamming shut and more like a favorite radio-station suddenly dissolving into shrieking static and then glommed up in a mass of white elmers glue for good measure.

“Run.” I snapped as we both managed to split up and rush in opposite directions, Pikachu skidding to a stop in a burst of speed, while I was forced to scamper across the clearing as fast as my legs could carry me, which compared to someone like Pikachu wasn’t very fast at all.

Not having access to teleport until the pink marshmallows disable wore off was going to suck massive lemons.

“I’m not going to just ditch you! Come on Jabra, we can totally take ‘em!” Pikachu growled, tensing up as they squared up and started sparking madly, glaring at Mr. Wiggles for all they were worth, teeth bared.

“Nothing personal guys, but orders are orders. Why don’t you two just make this easy on yourselves and come along quietly. Sammy’s good people, he ain’t gonna hurt yous, I promise.” The Wigglytuff called out to us, arms raised and tense in a loose defensive stance, their voice warm and mellow, with a little bit of a twang that put me in mind of someone trying to do their best Italian mafia wise-guy impersonation.

Frankly, I didn’t care if they started crooning ‘Dream A Little Dream of Me’ and ‘Mister Sandman’, I wasn’t about to roll over and surrender on some random ‘mons say-so. Now, I wanted to run, but without access to teleport I figured I was pretty useless aside from maybe being able to get in a few lucky shots. Pikachu clearly had his pride too, because the little glutton just sparked electricity harder, and leaned forward, raring to go.

“I’ll pass!” I called out.

“Yea, me too.” Pikachu snapped. ”Let’s hit the big pink jerk on three!”

Well, I guess we were really doing this, huh? I didn’t much like my chances of escape as is, but I wasn’t about to just run away on Pikachu like that. At this point I was resisting capture simply because my head hurt, I was now officially in a very very bad mood, and I was feeling extra petty after that little ultimatum. No idea what Pikachu was thinking though, given that unlike me he still had his gramps to consider, though I got the impression Senior Zippy was no stranger to pokemon trainers or fighting from what I’d observed of them.

“Three!” I barked out, already running for all I was worth, arms and legs pumping as I swept in from the left, while Pikachu zig-zagged in like an adorable little yellow rocket from the right.

This was such an incredibly stupid and terrible idea, and I didn’t need the added stabs of pain as my danger-sense kept yapping at me again to know that. But I guess I was fast becoming the king of bad decisions, because I threw myself into the fight while Mr Wiggles had my teleportation on lock-down anyways.

And then the two on one scrum began.

#Shock It To Ya!#Pokemon SI/AU Fanfic #Yep it's me; or at least an alt version of me #and a bit of a caricature at that #Jabra #Abra #Pikachu #Mr. Wiggles #Prof. Oak #Chapter One: Zap! Goes The Powerline #pokemon

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