#me when body slam heavy press whatever all the moves are that deal more damage the more the pokémon weighs

[front-facing-pokemon]

#more snootiferous angle under the cut‚ obviously #copperajah #me when body slam heavy press whatever all the moves are that deal more damage the more the pokémon weighs #grass knot? idk it's a steel-type that's not gonna do much #nothing does much. it's a fuckin steel type #remember back when steel resisted dark and ghost‚ too? dark times #haha. get it. dark times. 'cause.

[violetsoju]

let’s go on a ride (where to)彡★

suna rintaro · fluff? · 3.1k

a/n: here’s a cookie for you if you can guess correctly from which song i got inspired by 🍪 (hint: it’s from a female soloist!) do let me know if you enjoyed it!  ❤️

The first time you got on his bike was when you were late for your finals. Being the ironically procrastinator and overachiever you are, you dunked 3 cups of coffee the previous night in attempt to stay up drilling pages and pages of chemical processes and reactions, along with the insane number of structures and behaviours of molecules that seemed to stretch on forever into your poor cramped brain. So when you woke up to your clock staring at you with its long hand 20 minutes away from the scheduled time of your doom, you knew you were indeed, doomed. Your shouts and failing hands to the bus driver fell on deaf ears, leaving you gasping for air, hands on your knees as you reached the now empty bus stop.

You were about to make a run for it when a motorbike pulled up beside you, a male voice catching your attention. “Hey.”

You turned to see fox-like eyes staring back at you, one which had you intrigued since the first encounter. Even though his other features were hidden beneath his helmet, the boy clad in black on the bike was undoubtedly, your next-door neighbour.

“Get on my bike, let’s go.” he said, throwing a helmet in your direction.      

Despite living right next door, the both of you never had a conversation with each other. You don’t really see each other too, in your defence. Normal greetings would just be a small nod of acknowledgement, sometimes with a small ‘hi’ if you were feeling sociable enough.

But desperate times call for desperate measures, right?

“Where to?” he asked, as you climbed onto the back seat.

“Hyogo University, please.” You grabbed on the rail bar behind, praying that you won’t somehow fall off.

Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that you missed the bus, because weaving through unusual heavy traffic on two wheels was definitely more efficient than being stuck on four wheels. You yelped as you almost lost your balance from the zigzag drive, instinctively grabbing hold of his waist as you both zoomed past the congested roads.

Never in your life had you been so happy and relieved at the sight of your university. Jumping off the bike, you were about to sprint to your faculty when you stopped midway at your tracks at his call.

“Hey! My helmet!”

Turning back meant risking having the examination doors being slammed in your face. “I’ll return it to you later!” you shouted, waving the back of your hand towards him as you dashed to your examination venue.

Later that night, the boy found the sides of his lips tugging upwards slightly, huffing a breath from his nose in amusement at the sight of his helmet hanging on doorknob of his apartment. It was filled with packets of choco pie and a small yellow note in it.

「 Thank you so much for today! I got to my examination venue right on time thanks to you. Please let me know when you’re free. I’d like to treat you to a meal as a gesture of appreciation, these treats obviously aren’t enough.

-Your next-door neighbour 」

He opened a packet of choco pie and folded the small piece of paper neatly into the pocket of his jeans, making his way into his apartment.

Your eyebrows arched in surprise when you locked your front door the next morning. There was a small green note stuck on your door, along with a box of chocolate koala march biscuits secured tightly with tape.

「 It’s not a big deal. Now we’re even, so save that for something else. 」

                                     ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

 The second time you got on his bike was on the way home from your job interview. You knew your heels were to go, and you should have gotten a new pair soon. But being the last-minute shit you were, you prayed with all your heart for it to survive on you till the end of the day.

Well, to be fair, it did cooperate with you for most of the day, besides than the awful blisters on the back of your heel and toes. It only gave up on you after the interview that went wrong (allocated interview slot being postponed and postponed, the central air-conditioning blasting like the North Pole, and what was it with companies and their ridiculous prejudice towards young women and maternity leaves), when your right heel got stuck in a sewage drain cover, snapping into half when you used too much force to get it out.

Then it rained. And of course, you left your umbrella at home as there were no indications of rain when you checked the weather forecast. Maybe the rain felt like giving the sun, along with the weather bureau, a surprise that day.

And maybe it felt like it had its fair share of fun after seeing your miserable state, drenched in its merry little splatter and your own infuriation, as it bid the sun goodbye and went back home once you got off the bus to your neighbourhood.

So here you were, walking barefoot on the scorching yet damp concrete pavement back home, adding more damage to your open wounds. Well, what other choice did you have? It’s not like you would break the other heel into half to balance it out, right?

The stares and hushed whispers around you couldn’t much compare to what was going through your mind now. Heck, you couldn’t even care less of how you looked. Smudged makeup and faint colour of your innerwear peeping beneath your now see-through white blouse were the least of your worries now. All you wanted was to get home, fill the tub with warm water, turn on some music, and let all the frustration built up in you sink away through the evening.

Walking around the last block of shops, you kept your eyes on the pavement, not noticing a familiar figure leaning against the wall a few shops ahead.

“Hey.”

You were so absorbed in your own thoughts, you didn’t realise a human wall up ahead.

“Hey!”

You winced at the sudden impact from the body slam, snapping up to find a boy around your age towering over you, alluring fox eyes meeting yours. “Sorry,” you muttered, stepping aside to continue on your way.

A warm hand grabbed hold of your arm, causing you to jump slightly at the sudden touch. He had his head tilted slightly to his left, his usual blank face staring back at you. But the hint of concern that subtly flickered in his eyes as he silently inspected you from head to toe made you stop in your tracks.

Maybe it was the series of incidents that happened throughout the day that had your mind spiraling in turbulent directions, or maybe it was the delicate warmth in his eyes that seemed so inviting, it wasn’t a bad idea to linger in it for a while. Whatever the reasons were, he was granted the rare permission to take a small peek through the faint cracks of your hardened shell, into the dark fiery void that held you hostage.

You kept your eyes glued on the ground as he kept his gaze on you, curling your bruised toes together against the hard concrete, contemplating if you made the right decision.  

Once he was done with his inspection, he moved towards his bike parked by the side of the pavement, grip still on your arm, and dug out for an extra helmet underneath the seat of his bike. He placed the helmet over your head, featherlike fingers brushing against your skin as he secured the straps around your chin gently.

“Get on, let’s get home.” he said, tapping the top of the helmet as if he was patting a little girl’s head.

The journey home was silent, in a comfortable way, and you were grateful that he kept his curiosity to himself.

He dropped you off at the lobby entrance of your apartment, nodding in acknowledgement as you returned the helmet while mumbling an audible thanks. You should’ve waited for him to take the elevator back up to your floor together, but you were just so bloody done for the day. At least you pressed the ground floor button as you exited the elevator.

                                         ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

 The third time you got on his bike was after dinner one night. You were at the nearby convenience store in your pjs, a bowl of hot oden in hand, staring out at the night through the glass window. Late night convenience store runs were the best, because most people would be snuggled up in their homes, leaving the world to those like you to enjoy in peace in quiet.

You were on your third fish cake skewer when an unexpected presence made its way next to you. Gleaming hazel eyes locked with yours, and you found yourself unconsciously lost in it again.

He placed a plastic bag filled with an assortment of jelly fruit sticks on the table, savouring a purple coloured one in hand. You chuckled at this new side of him. This wasn’t quite something you pictured him to be.

He turned to you questionably. “Is there a problem?”

You shook your head. “Not at all, I’m just surprised with this new information.” You offered a fish cake skewer to him.

He gave you a green coloured jelly fruit stick in return. “There’s no age limit for these, are there?”

“Nope, you’re more than welcome to enjoy them,” You peered at the plastic bag. “Can I have the red one instead?”

“Picky.” he jokingly huffed.

The both of you enjoyed the rest of the night by the windowsill, making comfortable small talk here and there.

It was past midnight when you both made your way out of the convenience store. “Do you usually walk back alone at this time?” he asked, rummaging his pocket for his bike keys.

“Yeah, but not to worry, I can protect myself quite well. Ain’t no damsel in distress.” You jiggled your self-defense kit attached to your house keys at him.

He hummed in agreement, handing you a helmet. “My younger sister has a set of that too. That pepper spray is no joke.”

“What did you do to piss her off?” You fastened on the helmet strap nimbly, climbing onto the now familiar backseat.

“I was her guinea pig to test if it worked. And damn it worked well. 5-star rating.” The bike engine roared, muffling your laughs and off the both of you went in the night.

You furrowed your brows when he drove past by the turn to your apartment. “Hey, you missed the turn!”

“Buckle up, we’re going on an adventure.”

Apparently, his so-called adventure was to the neighbourhood hilltop which you had never dragged your lazy ass up to hike before. There wasn’t much to see in the dark surroundings, maybe it would be better in the day.

“For a moment I thought you were gonna abduct me or something.”

“By a guy that eats jelly fruit sticks at this age? Plus, you’re not even worth a bag of jelly fruit sticks.”

He fake coughed as you shoved the helmet in his chest playfully in retaliation.  

The hilltop wasn’t that high, but high enough to overlook the charming neighbourhood below. Looking at your neighbourhood from a different perspective made you appreciate it more. The quaint coffeeshops, the now quiet primary school, the lush recreational park, they all looked so small from the top. So this is what birds see from the top, you thought.

Placing your hands on the wooden fencing, you closed your eyes for a moment to enjoy the cool breeze caressing your face, taking in a long, deep breath. Even the air up here was clearer.

You turned behind to find him lying on the grass with one knee up, arms folded behind his head, eyes on the black canvas above. You took your place comfortably next to him, mimicking his actions. A soft gasp escaped your lips, taken aback by the view displayed before you.  

Maybe it was the cold reality and gradual maturity along with age that had your mind conditioned to thinking only the glowing lights of the city lit up the dark night skies. Long had you forgotten the existence of the scattered diamonds shining up above; one that lit up the skies and your eyes as a child, one you dreamt of picking from the sky to replace the plastic fluorescent ones on the celling of your nostalgic childhood room.

It was simple pleasures like this that kept boundless curiosity and imagination run wild, that made each day enjoyable and fun, that made one realise how beautiful life could be.

And to remind one how important it is to live in the present.

“Do you know how to identify constellations?”

“I only know the name of my zodiac sign, if that counts.”

“No.”

You chuckled at the small pout that formed on his lips.

“Don’t you think it’s amazing how people in the olden days could navigate their way with just a few blinking dots in the night sky? I don’t even know how to use a compass.”

“That’s why we have Google maps now.”

“Can you be a lil bit more enthusiastic?”

“You can’t deny that what I said is true, can you?”

It was his turn to chuckle at your exasperated sigh.

“Have you seen a meteor shower before?”

“Yeah, once I think.”

“Did you make a wish?”

“I guess so.”

“Has the universe granted your wish then?”

“A secret shall remain a secret.”

You hummed in response.

Truth to be told, the both of you were keeping secrets from each other: your identities. Sure, you both knew each other as next-door neighbours, but what else?

Perhaps he has the upper hand here. He knows you’re a university student from the first ride on his bike, he (somehow) knows you’re searching for a job from the second ride, and now he knows your little late night konbini run affair. All you know about him is that he rides a bike and likes jelly fruit sticks.

But you don’t mind. In fact, you like this anonymity. It’s what makes the relationship between the two of you more engaging, precious and real. You could let down your guard with him. No judgements, no defensive barriers, no facades.

Sure, you would be curious about his background at times. Is he the same age as you? Is he a fellow struggling university student like you? Or has he plunged into the battlefield called work already? But if you could be you wholeheartedly, and he could be him wholeheartedly too, that’s what matters the most at the moment.

“Are you certain that you made your wish correctly?”

“Are there procedures for making wishes upon shooting stars?”

“Duh. You gotta look up to the night sky, close your eyes, clasp your hands together, then make your wish. That’s how it works.”

“You could shake hands with my younger sister and be sappy drama sisters.”

“Maybe that’s why your wish hasn’t come true yet.”

“I’m not falling for your trap.”

                                       ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

 “Man, I can’t believe nothing came out from what I studied for the whole week. Nothing. My feelings have been cheated on.”

Atsumu and you were currently slumped over the table at the convenience store next to the university, each with a hotdog in hand, along with an array of snacks scattered across the table. The both of you had just finished your classes for the day, and instead of grabbing proper dinner, you both were stuffing yourselves with junk food like children.

As to quote Atsumu, “Where’s the joy in life in blindly following the rules? Rules were meant to be broken. And it’s not like we do it every day.”

“Giving up so quickly? What happened to the ‘new semester new me resolution’, huh.”

Atsumu slammed his face on the table, groaning in distress. “Everything’s a scam. Life is a scam.”

You huffed out a small laugh at his exaggeration, eyes riveting back to the bustling street outside the window. Groups of students making their way to the bus and train station, couples choosing their dinner place hand-in-hand after work, a line forming outside the newly opened sushi place that served sushi on a mini bullet train. A typical Thursday evening.

A familiar jet-black bike among the line of bikes lined up by the pavement in front of the convenience store caught your sight. Oh?

Your mouth must’ve worked faster than your brain as Atsumu looked up to face the same direction you were looking at. “What yer looking at?”

“Oh, Suna must be around here somewhere. Haven’t seen him in a while.”

Suna, huh. Nice name.

“That’s one sexy looking bike, isn’t it? I always wanted a ride, but dude always speeds off even before I have the chance. Treats it like his wife. Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone one ride it besides him.”

“Poor you, it’s a really nice ride.”

“The engine sounds amazing too- Wait. Wait a hot second. You rode it before? How? You know Suna?” Atsumu’s energy switch was turned back on, eyes wide like saucers as you shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal.

“He’s my next-door neighbour, duh.” Atsumu swore he was so close to throwing hands at your nonchalant attitude on the matter.

“Speaking of the devil, there he is.”

Suna emerged from the bakery on the opposite street, a bag of freshly baked goods in hand. Crossing the busy road to your side of the street, a glint of surprise gleamed in his eyes at the sight of both of you through the window, mostly from the shock and betrayal expression of the blond. He nodded to Atsumu in greeting, which was replied with Atsumu barking questions at him from the inside.

“What the hell, Suna? We’ve been friends for so long and I’ve never had a ride before, and she gets a ride? Really, Suna? I thought we’re more than this-”

“You know he can’t hear you from outside, right?” Atsumu paused to stare at you for a moment, and continued shooting questions and making dramatic gestures to the boy grinning slyly at him outside.

Suna turned his eyes to you, tipping his head towards his bike. Wanna go home?

You gave him a smile. Yeah, sure.

You got up from your seat and shoved half of the snacks on the table into your bag. “Later, Atsumu.” You bid the blond goodbye, patting his shoulder in condolence as he gawked at the both of you like endangered animals in the zoo.

“Suna you lil shit.”

Maybe you weren’t only getting rides back home on his bike, maybe you were getting a ride into his heart too.

#haikyuu #haikyū!! #suna rintaro #suna #suna x reader #suna rintaro x reader #suna x y/n #suna rintaro x y/n #suna rintaro x you #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu oneshot #hq #hq imagines #suna fluff #do you believe if i told you this was initially planned to be a drabble #but then it went from 1k to 2k #then all the way to 3k in the end #writing short content is a challenge for me... #oh and pls comment down below if you know whats the song that inspired this fic! #and claim your cookie from me 🍪 #im still salty over the fact that the song hasnt gotten any wins :((( #our queen worked so hard for her first full-length album and what #WHAT #anyways thank you very much for reading till the end #i really really appreciate it ❤️

[whythinktoomuch]

Something’s wrong. 

Kara can tell the moment she steps into Andrea’s office because Andrea’s avoiding her gaze. And pacing. And fidgeting, meticulously tugging at her own fingers before dropping her hands away altogether with a sharp exhale. 

Andrea was uncertain and nervous, her entire body riddled with unease, and something so clearly had to be wrong. 

“What is it? What happened?” Kara hisses, her shoulders already squaring, ready to be draped by a red cape at a moment’s notice. 

Andrea’s cheeks swiftly lose all color and her heart starts pattering just a tiny bit faster, but her scoff sounds just as natural as ever when she says, “Nothing happened, Kara.” 

“Okay...” Kara crosses her arms, her frown unassuming though unconvinced. “Why did you call me in here then?” 

A darkened scowl tugs at Andrea’s sharp features, her jaw clenching tight and determined. But the moment quickly passes without consequence, and Andrea’s shoulders eventually drop, and she draws back every so slightly. “Just... wanted to make sure you were working.” 

Kara stares, bewildered. “Well, I was.” 

“Good,” Andrea says flatly. “Get back to it then.” 

“All right,” Kara says, her abject curiosity thoroughly unsatisfied. “I’ll go do that.” 

She can feel Andrea’s stare burning a hole into her back as she leaves the office. 

—

Kara notices her right away. It’s impossible not to, even with her senses slightly dulled by the pleasant buzz that could only come from consuming an exorbitant amount of Chinese food in one sitting. 

The sight is unexpected, but not unwelcome, and there’s no point in trying to convince her heart otherwise. So, even though she shouldn’t, Kara can’t help herself as she bursts into Andrea’s office, her heart thundering and stuttering in her ears in equal measure. 

“What are you doing here?” she demands, the question cutting through the air, sharp and splintering.  

Lena barely looks up, hands still carelessly sifting through the various documents spread across Andrea’s desk, her expression somehow bored. As if she had any right to be there. To disrupt Kara’s entire life with a simple look. “What does it look like I’m doing?” 

“Andrea’s not here,” Kara informs her coldly, and Lena just rolls her eyes so heavily, never pausing in her task. And, well, it’s unfair. “Lena, you can’t just—”

“Really?” Andrea’s clipped tone rings out as she stomps into the room. “You’re just going to show up like you—what—own the place?” 

Lena flashes a smirk, her shrug small yet utterly self-satisfied. “Well, you weren’t exactly answering my calls, babe.” 

Andrea’s scowl deepens considerably. “Get out.” 

“Fine...” Lena sighs, tucking a small flashdrive into her pocket. “Already found what I came for anyway.” 

She saunters out, but not without throwing one last look over her shoulder. A frown, apparently, for Kara’s benefit. Her eyebrow raised in such a pointed fashion that it must mean something. 

It twists at Kara’s stomach, already swirling unhappily in the wake of Lena’s perfume. 

Kara quickly glances back at Andrea, who was now taking her seat at her desk with a weary sigh. “Was that something important? Do you need me to get it back for you?” 

“It’s fine,” Andrea says, waving her hand dismissively. “You can go too.” 

Kara blinks, taken aback. “Andrea, I work for you, so if you need me to—”

“Yes! You do,” Andrea all but snaps, cutting Kara off with an icy glare. “And I’m telling you to get out of my office.” 

After a prolonged, teetering moment of holding her tongue, Kara just shakes her head in disbelief. “You’re the boss,” she mutters, fastidiously reminding herself to not slam the door on her way out. 

//

It’s been a long day of putting out literal fires all over downtown for Supergirl, and Kara’s tired, covered head to toe in soot, and in desperate need of a hot shower and a warm bed. And so, it’s only natural that she hears a bona fide emergency unfolding on her way home. 

The unsavory combination of a distinct click of a hammer being pulled back and a panicked wait! has Kara hurtling straight for L-Corp without a second thought. Within seconds, she has her cape thrown up and over Andrea’s trembling form, bullets ricocheting uselessly off the heavy fabric. 

Tugging Andrea close to her chest, Kara throws her cape aside in a sharp flourish, and blows out a gust of freeze breath that scatters the gunmen like veritable dominoes. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Kara can’t help but demand, her tone verging on the more exasperated side of incredulity. “Why are you snooping around Lena’s office?” 

Andrea snorts. “I wasn’t snooping,” she says in a slight sneer, and the wave of whiskey hits Kara as a solid wall of sickly sweet because, oh, Andrea was so very clearly and oh so thoroughly drunk. “I was just... well, it doesn’t matter. Just let go of me.” 

Kara backs off, shaking her head. “I don’t know what’s going on between you and Lena right now, but whatever it is, you need to fix it. Fast. Because it almost got you killed tonight.” 

“They weren’t after me,” Andrea says, rolling her eyes. “They were after Lena. I just happened to be here, and well, collateral damage, I suppose.” 

“But you would have died just the same. How are you not getting that? You could have died, Andrea, and—” 

“Stop,” Andrea snaps, her eyes wild, yet terribly, terribly focused. “You don’t have to do this. I’m not some pathetic damsel in distress like your precious little Lena. I don’t need—”

The next thing Kara knew, Andrea’s staring up at her, mouth slightly agape, her delicate wrist somehow encased in Kara’s tight grasp. “Never... talk about Lena like that,” she gets out between painfully gritted teeth, and Andrea’s breath falters in a half-hearted scoff. “She’s a friend. Mine and yours, and she’s the most...” 

A pained whimper tumbles from Andrea’s lips and stops Kara cold, and she promptly snatches her hand back, cheeks burning furiously in realization and shame. 

Andrea rubs at her wrist, where Kara’s grip remains readily apparent, an inexcusable brand of angry pink and slight bruising. “A friend,” she repeats, eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Right.” 

“I’m sorry...” Kara reaches out instinctively, her heart sinking with heavy regret, but Andrea flinches away from her. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you...” She sighs and backs off even more with a ducked head. “Listen, just go home, okay? Take care of yourself.” 

With one last apologetic nod, Kara grabs the pair of still unconscious, would-be assassins by their shirt collars and takes off into the air, desperately fighting off the inevitable guilt still hanging over her as she flies over to the nearest police station. 

// 

When she hears the persistent knock at her door, Kara wastes no time super-speeding out of her bed and right to the door in question. Because it’s practically four in the morning, and anyone knocking at her door at four in the morning has to be having an emergency of some sort or another. 

But even so, it comes as a complete shock when Andrea ends up being the person standing on the other side of the door. 

“Andrea?” Kara blinks, the exhaustion slipping off her bones as bewilderment settles in its stead. But Andrea hardly seems to notice, shoving her way into Kara’s apartment like she belongs there. “... How did you know where I live?” 

“What the hell is your deal with Lena?” Andrea says, whirling around in a fury, and it’s immediately evident that she was somehow even drunker now than she had been at L-Corp. “Why are you so fucking obsessed with her anyway?” 

Kara’s jaw drops in outright disbelief. “I—ex-cuse me?” she sputters out. “You show up to my house in the middle of the night to interrogate me about Lena, and I’m the one obsessed with her?” 

“You’re changing the subject,” Andrea says, words sliding out of her mouth careless and slurred. “I’m just asking a simple little question, and all I need is a simple little answer, so if you would just please get—”

“It’s none of your business.” 

Andrea blinks. Then blinks again. Then stares. 

“It’s... none of your business how I feel about Lena,” Kara says with a defiant shrug. “Or anything about us really, okay? Just try to focus on your own issues with her, and stop making everything so messy and complicated.” She then shakes her head, sighing. “This is all highly inappropriate, by the way. You’re my boss, Andrea. You can’t be drunkenly berating me about personal matters like this. Like, at my apartment? This late?” 

“So, you meant it then?” Andrea asks softly. 

“Meant... what?” 

“What were you going to say?” Andrea asks instead, now tugging at her sleeve, rubbing insistently at the imprint that Kara’s hand had left around her wrist. “Before you stopped yourself, what were you going to say about Lena?” 

Kara’s stomach drops, the implications behind Andrea’s simple line of questioning striking her where she stands, where she lives. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about...” She goes to adjust her glasses, but her hand closes around empty air, and Kara’s already made so many mistakes today since getting out of bed this morning, and yet somehow, it seems that she’s made even more just in the last five minutes. 

“Don’t be like that,” Andrea says, pressing closer, looking up at Kara so earnestly that Kara’s ears start to burn, as if in solidarity. “Just tell me.” 

Kara forces a laugh, eyes darting helplessly around her sparse living room. “She’s just... really important to me, okay? Happy now?” 

“Even with everything going on between you two?” 

“Well, yeah. Nothing’s ever going to change how I feel about—”

Kara’s cut off as Andrea’s lips crash against hers. 

All higher brain function snuffs out, and Kara freezes in place. She can barely process the firm press of Andrea’s mouth, soft lips moving against her own slowly yet insistently, the bittersweet taste of whiskey spreading across her tongue... 

Then Kara grabs Andrea’s shoulders, shoving her at arm’s length with a strangled gasp. “What are you doing? You can’t—Andrea, you’re drunk!” 

“I’m... not.” Andrea sighs, almost resigned, and Kara could almost laugh out of sheer incredulity. Or maybe hysteria. Perhaps both. 

“Um, yes, you are. I can literally taste the whiskey off your breath,” Kara says, before abruptly coughing and shaking her head. “I mean, smell. I can smell the... you know, the whiskey...” 

“No,” Andrea growls, her eyes growing sharp, alert. “I’m not... Andrea.” 

Kara takes a step back, her entire face scrunching into a deeply perplexed frown. 

She studies the face staring back at her. The sharp features, the pouting red lips and the jagged scar across the brow, all deeply familiar and completely at odds with the assertion that had just spilled forth from those very same lips. 

But Kara wills herself to look harder, to look past the obvious, and meets the insistent gaze before her head-on. Her heart pounds painfully in her chest, somehow recognizing the eyes before her brain can even catch up. 

They’re the wrong color, but it’s the very same softened expression that had accompanied the words that still drift into Kara’s awareness at the most inconvenient moments. 

I know you believe that everything is good...

Kara swallows hard.

And kind...

She blinks and shakes her head, but it clears up absolutely nothing for her. 

And that is one of the things I love about you. 

Kara holds her breath, and dares to venture, to believe, to hope. 

“... Lena?”

#well this was something #my words.

[syndianites]

A Queen Serves and Protects

Chapter Two

Last Chapter --> Current --> Next Chapter!

Summary:

Post-Style Queen, Pre-Queen Wasp.

Chloe finds the Bee Miraculous, but instead of finding an obliging, subservient Kwami, she finds the Kwami of Order and Subjugation, and Pollen is not about to let herself be used like Nooroo was.

Granted, the only danger in a teenage girl is the damage she poses to herself. Can Pollen shape Chloe into a hero? Or will she stubbornly refuse to change and remain the bitter, harsh person the city has long since known?

[My take on how Chloe’s character could have developed] ——————————————————————————————

Twenty four hours went by excruciatingly slow for Pollen.

First, she had to wait through the night. Chloe hadn’t unboxed her until late in the day, when the sun was almost gone. That left little time in the day for much interaction with others.

But she didn’t spend this time twiddling her thumbs. She did what research she could. After observing Chloe- who she learned the name of moments after their deal- meander on her phone and laptop for a few hours, she had a dubious grasp on how the current technology worked.

It was quite the adventure.

But after trial and error, she managed to look Chloe up on the internet. (And what a fascinating thing!). The results gave her a basic background; Daughter of the Mayor of Paris, Mother is a renowned expert in the fashion industry, and so on. She seemed clean, for all Pollen could tell.

So she searched her room. Most of what she could see was clearly expensive, from shiny new gadgets to prim and proper clothes. Beyond some Ladybug merchandise- and oh boy was this girl a fan of Ladybug- nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

A sneak around the hotel didn’t reveal much about Chloe, herself, but her parents on the other hand….

What disasters!

Calling their relationship dysfunctional would be a complement. They were completely polarized opposites, and not in the good, healthy way. Her mother was derisive and cruel, refusing to associate with those she believed were below her and didn’t meet her exceptional standards. Her father was, despite his position, a lapdog. He would bend over backwards to please his wife, acting like a doormat.

Together, they were the perfect image of an Evil Queen and her loyal Servant.

It didn’t give Pollen any good feelings about how Chloe herself would act. Would she take after her parents? Or would she be her own person?

Day time did not ease her fears. Chloe was brash and rude, clearly taking after her mother. She didn’t remember anyone’s names, was haughty and snappy towards her staff, and clearly was comfortable acting above everyone else.

Not a good sign at all.

The way she treated her ‘friend’ was yet another bad sign. Just like her mother had her father as a lapdog she, too, had her friend as a lapdog. However, Pollen took note of how she did remember her name. That must count for something, she considered doubtfully.

School was a disaster for Pollen.

Chloe started out just as haughty as she had in the hotel. Somehow, she got worse. Rude to other students, sneering at and belittling them, and outright mean. Treating her ‘friend’ as a servant. Disregarding other’s feelings. Causing chaos in the class.

There was little Pollen saw as redeemable for Chloe. Between her attitude towards those who worked for her and her family and those who she spent most of her time around, acts of kindness were nigh impossible to find.

As they made their way home, Pollen mulled over how to find Ladybug or Master Fu. In theory, she could try and call out to the other kwami, but such an act took a lot of power and could draw the attention of Hawkmoth or worse. She could camp out until Ladybug and Chat Noir had to come out for another akuma, but how would she manage to transport her miraculous across the city without getting snatched by said akuma?

But as Chloe walked into the lobby of the hotel, her mother’s voice caught her attention.

“Clara!” Audrey strutted up to her daughter, typing away at her phone with one hand. “I need you to fetch me something dear.”

‘Clara?’ Pollen mused, ‘Her name’s Chloe.’

Chloe perked up. “Of course mother. And my name’s Chloe. What can I do for you?”

Audrey waved her hand, “Whatever you say, Cindy. I heard that Adrien Agreste, Gabriel’s son, is in your class. I need you to ensure that Gabriel seated me in the correct location this time. The reshoot of the fashion show is today and I will not be in the second row again.”

From where she could just see Chloe from the gap in her purse, Pollen watched her face fall before she straightened back up with a nod. “Of course! Putting you in the second row is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous!”

“Yes, yes, now please leave. I have business to attend to Carrie.” Audrey dismissed Chloe with a wave before heading deeper into the hotel.

Chloe, despite being misnamed three times in a row, seemed determined to please her mother. She gripped the handle of her bag tighter before rummaging in it to fish out her phone. Barely looking up, she wandered towards the elevator that would take her to her penthouse suite.

When the doors closed and left Chloe alone in the elevator, Pollen poked her head out of the bag. “Is it often your mother gets your name wrong?”

Her lips thinned as she pressed them together. “Yes.” Chloe’s response was short and clipped.

Pollen mulled this response over. Pieces of the puzzle that was Chloe were falling into place. As the doors opened again, Pollen ducked back down into the purse.

Chloe continued to text until a smile lit her face up. “Oh, Adrikins! I can always count on you.”

She skipped into her room, shooting a text to her mother- who didn’t respond- that her seat was guaranteed to be in the front row. Chloe went to toss her bag before remembering that it was occupied and lowering it down on a chair gently.

“Alright, Pollen, how was I? As great as you imagined I would be?” Chloe placed the back of her hand under her chin proudly.

In lieu of an answer, Pollen merely replied,”It hasn’t been twenty four hours yet, Chloe.”

Chloe groaned, grumbling complaints about how her heroic qualities should be obvious by now, but ultimately let it go. They had made a deal, after all.

“Oh,” Chloe said suddenly, “Sabrina will be coming over soon, so you’ll want to hide out for a while.”

A perfect opportunity to see what Chloe was like behind closed doors.

Turns out, she was strangely sweet. 

Sabrina and Chloe played together like any teens would; watching shows together, gossiping- albeit in a less than kind way- doing each others’ make-up, and most embarrassingly playing ‘Ladybug and Chat Noir’. Despite herself, Pollen found it endearing.

Still, it was not enough to sway her. Endearing or not, Chloe was not fit for being a superhero.

///////

The fashion show was cute. True to word, Chloe and her family were sat in the front row where Audrey critiqued- quite loudly for such an event- each outfit that came about. A few she praised, but they were few and far between. 

When Adrien Agreste appeared, the Style Queen gave an appreciative hum. “What quality craftsmanship. Surely an exceptional designer made that hat.”

It wasn’t until after the show that things went south.

Audrey had approached Adrien and, to many’s surprise, Gabriel Agreste in the flesh to discuss the fashion. 

“My dear, it seems you’ve set up yet another exceptional line of clothing. That hat dear Adrien is wearing is quite the gem among them.” Audrey gushed to a polite but stone-faced Gabriel.

“Ah,” Gabriel began, “That hat is not a design of my own.”

Adrien piped up here, “It was actually made by a friend of mine! Marianette,” he called over his shoulder, locking eyes with a shocked dark haired girl. “Come show Audrey this hat you made!” 

Nervous and stuttering, Marianette explained the logistics of her hat and its design, from the synthetic feather to the careful craftsmanship. Audrey, a known harsh critic, glowed as she listened.

“Fabulous, my dear!” she crowed, “I simply must see more of your work. How would you like to come to New York with me to design more fashion for a line of mine?”

Pollen, invested in the conversation, was pulled out of it by a shaking sensation. She looked up to see Chloe outright trembling as she pulled her hands into fists.

“Mother! Why would you take her of all people!” Chloe burst out. All eyes turned to her. 

“Why, Connie, it’s because she is quite exceptional! I would recognize such talent a country away,” Audrey replied with a dismissive wave.

“So am I!” 

A laugh. “Dear, the only exceptional thing about you is your mother.”

Had it not been for the hubbub of people around them, you could have heard a pin drop. Chloe stared resolutely at the floor, teeth grinding together and tears threatening to fall. Marianette, for her part, looked like a deer in headlights, stuck between a sharp drop off a cliff and an incoming car.

“Now Audrey,” Gabriel started, before getting cut off.

“I am exceptional!” Chloe shouted. “I will show you! I’m going to be a super heroine! Just you wait, I’ll be better than this girl will ever be!”

Audrey outright cackled. “Oh honey, keep dreaming. There is not a heroic bone in your body.”

Eyes watering and lips trembling, Chloe turned on a dime and stormed off. Pollen caught Marianette make an aborted move towards her, but was stopped by Adrien putting a hand on her arm.

Fuming and ready to bawl, Chloe bust out the front doors and began running down the sidewalk. For minutes, safely tucked into Chloe’s bag, all Pollen can hear is hard footsteps, people shouting, and Chloe’s heavy breathing.

After hearing doors slam open and closed repeatedly, Chloe and Pollen are left in silence. When Pollen braved a look out the purse, she sees that they have found their way back to the locker room at Chloe’s school. Seeing that they were alone, she moved out into the open.

“Fuck!” Chloe exploded. “How dare she!”

Feeling the rage roiling off Chloe, Pollen rushed to calm her. “Chloe, take a deep breath. Give yourself a minute to let it simmer.”

Icy eyes shot up to look at Pollen. “Take a breath? Let it simmer? Are you kidding! I have done my best to make my mother see I am exceptional, so show her that  I am good enough, and what does she do? Invites Dupain-Cheng of all people to go with her to New York.”

Pacing back and forth in front of the benches, Chloe growled. “Do you know when the last time I saw my mother for more than a day was? Years ago! Years, Pollen!” Tears trickled down her cheeks as Chloe caved in on herself. “I’ve done my best to be just like her, to show her I can be great too. Why won’t she ever look at me?”

With a hesitant pause, Pollen reached a paw out to Chloe’s shoulder. “Some people can’t be pleased, Chloe. You shouldn’t base your self worth on the word of another.”

Chloe jerked her shoulder away, turning her back to Pollen. “You don’t understand.”

“My mother left when I was young.” She walked forward towards the door so that she could peer out the window. “I didn’t understand why. She didn’t even say goodbye.”

“But,” Chloe continued, “If I can just get her to see that I’m worth staying for, she’ll stay here. Maybe, just maybe, I can convince her to be part of our family again.”

Red-rimmed eyes and wet cheeks turned back to Pollen. “It’s just so hard. She hardly cares for me at all.”

A pause. “Pollen?” Chloe bit her lip. “Am I unlovable?”

“Of course not. Chloe, no one is beyond love. Not even the worst of people.” Pollen could feel the tides shifting. Before, she was determined to leave Chloe behind. But now? Her heart ached at the thought of abandoning her.

Chloe starts to say something else, but all Pollen could hear was the flap of wings. Her eyes flicked to behind Chloe to where the locker room door was just set ajar. A delicate butterfly of deep, cracked purple squeezed its way inside.

“Chloe!” Pollen yelled. But it was too late. The butterfly touched down on her white sunglasses and disappeared without a sound.

A sudden blank look came across Chloe’s face. A purple butterfly mask appeared across her eyes. Every part of Pollen screamed that she was in danger. Not just from an akumatized Chloe, but from Hawkmoth knowing that she was with Chloe.

Her eyes darted around the room. She needed to hide. It would be safer for the both of them if she kept herself unknown.

“Yes, Hawkmoth.”

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #ml #chloe bourgeois #chloe bourgeois redemption #pollen #pollen (ladybug) #kwami pollen #bee miraculous #bee!chloe #original akuma #shit mom Audrey #im bad at tagging on tumblr #ml fanfic #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste

[saltwatersweetner]

My Strange Addiction

Eren x Reader

You and Eren are never on the same page but what you both can agree on isn’t for the faint of heart

CW: Threats/acts of violence, verbal abuse, mild degradation, praise kink, mild voyarism

You were shaking.

You weren’t exactly sure what it was from. Was it anger? Shock? It didn’t matter because either way it was quickly leading to irritation and something...darker.

You didn’t mean to be like this. So short tempered and volatile. To your credit you weren’t always like this either but when it came to him it was like a switch was flipped.

He was everything.

The sun the moon the air in your lungs the pavement under your shoes. He was every extraordinary and devastating thing the universe had to offer. He leant so much to you—And he knew this—so who was she?

He knew you were here—had seen you enter the party. You knew the weight of his eyes on you like you knew the curves and edges of your own palms.

It wasn’t Mikasa, or anyone you knew he was friends with. Her intentions were clearly less than friendly, her hands playing in his hair and a dopey smile on her mouth. You watch them for a bit—undecided if you were gonna interrupt or not when green clashes with (e/c). It all clicked in your mind at that moment.

You stop shaking.

He wanted you to make a scene.

Straightening your body you lean against the wall behind you with a smirk. You weren’t moving an inch until he came to you. You thought he learned to stop trying to test you at this point but apparently he needed more training.

When your eyes clash again you let your carefully crafted public mask slip down—only slightly—giving him a much needed view of the madness swimming inside you. He was on thin ice and that seemed to give him a much needed reality check because he walks towards you immediately.

It was almost funny to watch a 6 foot tall man almost shrink in on himself as he kept his eyes locked fiercely to the ground. Sipping the rest of the cheap alcohol down you raise your brows at him “What?”

“Im ready to go home please.” The voice he was using was soft, unlike his natural loud speaking voice, he was trying to bide his time by appealing to your more forgiving nature.

Too bad he already crossed the line.

You hum “Oh you’re ready to go home?”

Erens nod is just as soft as his voice. He was playing the role of a good boy rather well and you almost wanted to give him mercy—but, he wouldn’t learn if you did that.

Reaching out you force his chin up so you’d make eye contact. A shiver runs down his spine once he realized the hidden promises of violence dancing in them “Thats not how you ask.”

You watch his adams apple bob up and down as he forces himself to not shake “Can I go home please?”

You don’t answer verbally simply grabbing his wrist and pulling him through the sea of people. You don’t say a word to him until you’re in your car speeding down the desolate roads

“Are you fucking stupid?” Your voice is like a bullet.

The silence had slowly been killing him if the way he’d been fidgeting in his seat were anything to go by.

“And you were being so fucking good lately, only to fuck it up like you always do.”

“Im still good.” He sounds almost offended with the implications of him no longer being good.

Eren liked being good it got him things but being bad—pissing you off to the point of no return? Got him more.

“You’re a useless fucking brat.”

You glance over to see him pouting, a conflicted look on his face. He wasn’t sure what he wanted you to say exactly. You would prefer his need to seek praise and affection would win out on his need to be a brat but of course Eren never took the painless route ever.

“I don’t see the big deal we didn’t even do anything you’re just overreacting.”

Overreacting?

The thin cord that was holding the darkness back snaps.

Slamming your foot on the break you move the car into park and turn to face Eren very slowly. His hands we’re braced on the dash having not expected you to hit the breaks in such a manner. Before he could react you had the front of his shirt clutched tight in your hand pulling him inches from your face.

You weren’t sure what look you had on your face but it had him squirming in your grasp “I will slaughter her and make you watch do you want to test me tonight Eren?”

His pupils were blown wide and he was breathing like he just ran a marathon. And still that stupid smile was on his lips.

“Do it.”

You almost can’t help but backhand him. The gasp he lets out is almost erotic and the blissed out look he gives you in turn is truly rewarding.

“Touch me—please?”

You watch blood drip down his mouth, your hit having split his lip. Rubbing the area with your thumb you suddenly press down on it with your nail making him gasp in pain “Hm I don’t think so.”

“M’good I’ll be so good I promise please please.” He was stuck between a state of panic and arousal.

He wanted to be punished so bad he yearned for it but considering his recent behavior that would only fuel him so the best punishment was no punishment at all really. He’d drive himself mad with all the things he thought you’d do and you’d give him nothing in return.

Letting go of his lip you turn back in your seat and push the car back into drive, ignoring the whines of the boy next to you. You needed a moment to think about what you were gonna do about that girl. You couldn’t hurt her—yet. All fingers would immediately point to you and—

Your hand shoots out stopping him from pulling his zipper down. Pressing a finger against his bulge you raise your eyebrows in amusement.

“Oh impatient? Thats not very good Eren I though you said you’re gonna be good?” Sliding your fingers down you gently palm him through his pants.

Eren was shaking his whole body alive from a single touch in the place he wanted it most. Breathing labored he stare at you from beneath his lashes “I am—I promise I can be so good.”

Humming you move your middle and ring fingers in gentle circles barely putting down the pressure he craved “oh really? Show me.”

Eren eagerly ruts against your palm, eager to please, eager to show you just how good he could be and you loved it. You loved when he behaved and did as he was told—he was so pretty and perfect that way. It meant you didn’t have to hurt his pretty little body but you knew him and you knew that when you damaged him—when you bruised his pretty skin, was when he liked you the most.

Eren tips over the edge without ceremony.

He pants like a bitch in heat obviously expecting praise but you offer him none. There was no reward for bad behavior and so you remove your hand.

“I—I was good right?”

Shrugging you turn the radio on letting whatever tired radio host’s voice fill the heavy silence “I dont know Eren, were you?”

“You...you have to tell me I was good.”

Raising your eyebrows you laugh, you know its a cruel sound with the way he sinks in his seat upon not receiving praise “I dont have to do anything...we’ll be home in 10 minutes.”

#eren x reader #eren jeager x reader #eren yeager x reader #aot imagines #aot x gn!reader #snk x reader #gn!reader #snk imagines #eren yaegar

[heroloverangel]

Stray

Happy Spooky Month, my Halloween costume is Villain Fucker.

You always did have a bad habit for taking in strays. As a kid, your parents constantly scolded you for feeding random dogs and bringing unfamiliar cats into the house. Keep giving it a place to go, they’d warn you every time, and you’d only tempt a stray animal to stick around. 

Meeting Dabi was a lucky coincidence for both of you. You were being harassed by a pair of criminals on your way home, and were lucky that their threats were loud enough to annoy the real villain passing by. They were easy enough to deal with, and he was lucky that you wanted to thank him for his help. By the time you realized he only planned to take care of the muggers for bothering him, and never meant to help you, he was already in your bed. Months later, those old warnings still echo in your head whenever he shows up unannounced, eager for some comfort before he runs back off into the night.

You know it’s irrational to worry about him. He kills people for fun and profit, the world would objectively be a safer place if he were captured. Yet somehow, whenever you hear news about heroes clashing with the League of Villains, you’re secretly hoping he gets away and is headed towards your tiny, broken down apartment. Even though he’s never said it, you like to think he’s grateful for the safe spot to recover after a rough fight.

Today sounds like a really rough fight. It’s been hours already and the reporters are still describing the battle that happened earlier. Four heroes have been rushed to the hospital, and at least one villain was injured before fleeing. It’s disappointing that they don’t tell you who it was, and you’ve been glued to your phone the entire day. It’s not as if you can just call him like a normal person, but this wouldn’t be the first time you’ve gotten a vague text from an unknown number letting you know he’s alive.

It’s well after dark now, and the wait is driving you crazy. After another twenty minutes, you finally turn off the news and stand up to stretch. It won’t do much for your frazzled nerves, but a shower will at least help relax your tense muscles while you wait for information. You stay there until the hot water runs out then stand in the bathroom, breathing in the remaining steam and trying to take your mind off off him. You’re wrapping a towel around yourself when you’re startled by a sudden, loud SLAM from the other room that scares you half to death.

It’s silent for a minute before you gather enough courage to open the door and peek out. Immediately you let out a sigh of relief at the scene in front of you. Dabi’s standing with his back to you, reeking the distinct scent of ash and smoke that you’ve come to associate with him, his jacket sporting plenty of fresh damage. Blood drips from his knuckles, and it takes you too long to notice the smoldering, fist-sized hole he’s just punched into your wall. Well, that explains the noise.

“Hey,” you begin, but there’s no reaction. Cautiously you step closer. “I...um. I saw what happened, I’m glad you came over.” Still nothing. “Are you okay? Dabi?” You reach out to touch his shoulder, and it breaks him out of whatever thought he’d been focused on.

He spins around to face you and for the first time since you met, you’re actually afraid of him. You’ve never seen him this angry before, glaring at you with a look of rabid fury in his eyes. Automatically you step back but he’s fueled by adrenaline and moves too fast to avoid. His hand latches around your throat and squeezes, holding you in place as his lips crash down on yours. 

The staples decorating his face are warm, a familiar side effect of his quirk, and scrape roughly along your skin as he forces your mouth open for his tongue. His free hand yanks off the towel wrapped around you and gropes at your chest before you can stop him. Your nipples harden at his touch; despite his harsh treatment, he knows more than enough about how to get your pulse racing for him. A calloused thumb rubs over your nipple and he tightens on your neck in response to the moan you let out.

You push at his chest for air, and eventually he releases you with a final, stinging bite to your lower lip. There’s a metallic taste of blood when you swallow. You chance another glance up at him and his grin does nothing to put you at ease; he looks far too much like a wild animal baring his teeth at his prey. “Hey, doll.” He grabs your chin and forces another kiss on you the moment you open your mouth, barely restraining his agitation with every move. The grip on your shoulders is almost painful as he pulls you against his overheated body, his cock already hard beneath his pants. Your skin is so soft and vulnerable compared to his, and you struggle in protest when his nails sink into your arms. “You gonna reject me?” His voice is a snarl when he pulls back next. “Really? After all the shit I’ve been through today?” You can tell from his tone, it’s more of a warning than a guilt trip.

“Sorry,” you offer, rubbing soothing circles into his tense shoulders. “What can I do?” You’re always so obedient for him, practically begging him to leave you bruised and aching. That’s what keeps Dabi coming back more than anything, and the tiny gasp that slips out of you when he pinches sharply on your nipples has him throbbing. You’re such a cute toy for him to play with.

“Get on your knees, slut.” You lower yourself in front of him without an argument, watching him fumble with his belt until he’s able to free his dick for your attention. “Put that fucking mouth to good use.”

You nod, giving him a sweet smile before wrapping your hand around the base and running your tongue over the leaking tip of his cock. Dabi lets out a pleased grunt when you suck gently on the head and release him with a wet pop. You focus on the underside of it, giving slow, gentle kisses to the row of piercings along his shaft. He’s sensitive there, and the horny growl he gives you has your cunt dripping in anticipation. Your other hand moves lower to cup his balls and you trace over his veins, enjoying how they pulse eagerly under your fingers. Carefully you graze along his length, and are rewarded with a violent yank at your hair.

“Cut that teasing shit out before I break your goddamn teeth.” Your apology is muted by his dick shoving back into your mouth. You swirl your tongue over him again, opening wider to take more of his cock past your lips. You know he wants to jam himself down your throat, but you’ll need to work up to that. You bob up and down on him, slowly sucking more of his dick and his hips begin to rock with your movements. A hand weaves into your hair and you wince at the feel of his staples catching on the strands, but he ignores your discomfort in favor of pulling you further around him. “Take me like a good little bitch.”

He keeps the steady pressure on your head but lets you work at your own pace, and soon enough the tip of your tongue is rubbing against the last of his piercings. You’ve only got a few inches left, surely you won’t mind a bit of help. The squeal you let out is muffled as Dabi’s fist tightens around your skull to hold you steady as his hips rut forward, jamming the full length of his cock into your unsuspecting mouth. You’re too busy trying not to gag to appreciate the delighted moan he gives you, your poor throat spasming wildly around the intrusion. You look up at him with watery eyes and he’s smirking at you with pride. “Don’t keep me waiting, doll.”

For a moment you’ve forgotten how to breathe and only kneel there choking on him until he withdraws just a fraction and you remember to take merciful air into your lungs. You relax the muscles as best you can, a difficult task with his dick rammed against your tonsils. You start moving again, letting his strong hand guide you back and forth on his cock exactly how he likes it.You focus on his heavy panting, the obscene things he hisses at you through gritted teeth make you pussy clench. You can tell he’s getting close, and you double your efforts to help him finish.

An unexpectedly harsh buck of his hips has your throat tightening around him on instinct, and his moan signals his impending release. He tugs your head back and pulls out of your mouth, saliva coating every inch of him. You don’t have time to react as his free hand grips his twitching cock, jerking himself for a few seconds before he orgasms, strands of cum spurting out onto your lips and sliding down your chin to your chest. “Fuck,” he sighs. “You look good like that.” He looks down at you expectantly and you get the message. You make a show of running your fingers through the mess, dragging the hot cum further over your breasts and hard nipples then bringing it to your mouth to lick it off. 

Dabi’s insatiable now that you’ve made the mistake of encouraging him. “Up,” he demands, and you scramble to your feet before he can yank you up by your scalp. He inspects your face, admiring his work and his thumb wipes off a tear you hadn’t realized had escaped. He kisses you again while his hands roam over your heated skin, and the wetness between your thighs is undeniable. “You sure play innocent when you’re getting soaked over choking on my dick,” he taunts. He doesn’t wait for an answer, grabbing you instead and dragging you towards your bed. He shoves your face into the pillows and you struggle to lift yourself but he presses on your back to keep you down. You hear him stripping off his clothes and then rough, feverish skin is flush against your own. He gropes at your hips, pulling your lower half onto your knees. “Ass up, slut,” he orders, cock already recovered and rubbing along your dripping folds.

“Dabiii,” you whine, wiggling to make him slide against you. “Just put it in already--ohhh…” He slides in and you get no time to adjust to the stretch of him as he bottoms out without stopping. You’d been nervous about his piercings the first time you slept together, but now they send a shiver down your spine when you feel the warm metal rub inside you. Positioned like this, they stroke over your g-spot with each thrust and you’re babbling praise at him within minutes.

“I never get enough of this pussy,” he murmurs, bruising grip on your ass. “Always so ready to milk my cock, huh?” You dig your fists into the pillow and nod, words catching in your throat as he fucks into you more aggressively. He stretches over you, warm chest pressing against your back while he bites sharply along your neck. You clench down on him and he laughs at you. “That’s my sweet little cumdump.”

“God, Dabi…” you trail off, hissing when his nails sink into your hips to pull you onto him. He hammers inside you faster, chasing his own end and merely taking you along for the ride. This deep, you can feel him throbbing with a need to dominate you; the sounds forced from your abused throat tell him you’re loving every mark and bite he leaves on your naked body. His teeth sink deeper into the smooth skin of your shoulder and you wince. “That hurts,” you complain, trying to squirm and put some distance away from his jaws. He only fucks inside you harder in response, obviously enjoying your struggle.

“That’s the point.” One hand slides over your bruised hip to finger your swollen clit and your back arches up against him. “Oh, shit. Feel how hard you’re squeezing my dick?” You shudder, his ragged voice in your ear makes you feel like you’re burning alive. You bury your face back in the pillows and do your best to keep your cool, but tonight he wants to hear every filthy noise he can urge out of your needy mouth. He releases your hip to yank your head up, grip hard enough that for a moment you wonder if he’s actually trying to snap your neck. “You’re gonna make everyone in this piece of shit building know who’s fucking you.”

That’s how it always is with Dabi. He gets to keep some sense of self respect when he comes, while you’re reduced to a squealing mess for him. His fingers grow merciless as they tease your clit, demanding louder cries from you with every touch. “Don’t stop,” you pant, the tension inside you straining to the breaking point. “I’m gonna...fuck, there!” You hadn’t realized that he was just as close, and the steady twitch of your pussy around him is enough to send him over the edge. “Feels so...D-Dabi!”” you wail, feeling every drop of his hot cum pooling inside you. Your own orgasm feels like fire in your veins as your greedy cunt takes everything he’ll give you, battered voice begging for it. You’d be embarrassed with yourself if your brain hadn’t effectively shut down long before this point.

He releases you, letting your spent body drop face-first into the bed while he rides out his pleasure. You can feel the punishing smack of his hips slow to a lazy grind before he finally pulls out. He looks down at your exhausted, marked up form and gives a solid slap to your bruised ass to bring you back to your senses. “You good?”

“...Ugh. Good enough,” you mumble. You lay there boneless and immobile while he stretches and wanders off to your bathroom. You hear the shower turn on and an insult shouted out at the freezing water, and manage to pull yourself up to a sitting position by the time he comes out. Of course he’s scrubbing the remaining ash out of his hair with your last clean towel. “Wow, you look like shit,” he taunts as he collects his clothes.

“Yeah, well fuck you too.”

There’s a flutter in your stomach when he smirks at you in return. “You couldn’t handle that again.” He shoves his boots back on and to your surprise, leans over to kiss you. “Gonna lay low for a week maybe. Fix your hot water before I get back.”

You roll you eyes. “You make a lot of demands for a guy who doesn’t live here.”

He shrugs, pulls his jacket around himself and heads for the door. “That’s your fault, doll.”

The door slams behind him and you sigh, your limbs protesting as you stretch your sore muscles. You’re left alone with your thoughts, and outside the heat of the moment you wonder if you should feel guilty. You’re not stupid; you know what he is, and that some day this is all going to end badly for both of you. Still, in your heart you know that you’ll never be able to turn him in to the heroes. Maybe it’s some misplaced sense of loyalty, maybe it’s just the sex, but you hate the idea of seeing him caught.

He’s trouble, but he’s your stray. 

#lemon #bnha x reader #dabi x reader

[razieltwelve]

Beach House (Final Rose)

The lawnmower’s startup sequence engaged shortly after midnight. His processors cycled through several streams of incoming data effortlessly to narrow down the reason for his awakening. 

There.

His creator had posted drones around the perimeter of the beach house they were renting for their holiday. Those same drones had detected movement outside of the established norms. He took a handful of cycles to peruse the data and request further information.

The drones possessed more advanced sensors, but activating those might alert any intruders to their discovery. Instead, he relied on their passive sensor sweeps. The intruders were using advanced stealth technology, which had all but hidden their presence.

What they hadn’t accounted for was some of the local wildlife detecting them and responding accordingly. It was that wildlife that the drones had detected. The lawnmower issued and order, a passive sonar sweep at frequencies inaudible to both humans and Faunus.

The sonar sweep came back positive. Multiple intruders detected in an attack pattern designed to breach the beach house. A passive thermal scan revealed nothing. The lawnmower gave the mental equivalent of a frown. Thermal camouflage combined with visual camouflage. An Aura sweep would definitely be detected, so he withheld that order.

Instead, he alerted his creator and Thomas, the robotic polar bear that the kids had built. 

His creator was at his side in moments. Her fox ears twitched as she kept her Aura calm and steady. 

“I don’t know who leaked the location of our holiday, but we can worry about that after we deal with these guys.”

His creator’s wife joined them.

“I’ll go outside with Thomas and the lawnmower. Can you start trapping the inside. If they get past us...”

“I’ll be ready for them. They won’t get the kids.” His creator’s expression was devoid of its usual cheer. “I’ll give control over the rest of the drones to the lawnmower. Have Thomas go out first. He’ll draw their attention. If they’re smart enough to get this close, they’ll have a plan for you. Be careful. Once I’ve got this place trapped and shielded, I’ll lend support.”

“All right.”

His creator’s wife patted his chassis. “You’re with me.”

“Hey.” His creator gave him a sharp look. “Weapons free. No prisoners. Total war.”

The lawnmower processed the words. They were a very specific sequence, one that authorised him to do whatever he deemed necessary to safeguard his creator and her family. His weaponry was usually heavily limited to minimise property damage and permanent injury. Not anymore.

X     X     X

The lawnmower cut communications with Thomas. The robotic polar bear had already been briefed on the plan. Any further communication might be picked up if their opponents had sufficiently advanced scanners. Normally, the lawnmower made quite a bit of noise when moving around, but he had activated his stealth protocol.

A silencing field combined with multi-spectrum camouflage allowed him to get out of the house and into the garden without being detected. Of course, he doubted his stealth would last once the fight started. When the battle began, his opponents would undoubtedly abandon any attempt at stealth, which meant they would activate all of their sensory abilities to the maximum. Even his creator’s stealth protocols wouldn’t be able to completely conceal him.

It was a pity too that most of the drones he had access to on this trip were not suited for heavy combat. They had stunners and shields, but little in the way of heavy firepower. Oh well. He’d make do. Organics could be surprising fragile. The prongs on a stunner might not sharp enough to kill, but they could easily blind, and electric shocks at opportune moments could easily lead to openings he could exploit.

Not far off, Thomas lay in wait. With his heavily reinforced chassis and exterior built of energy- and force-absorbing materials, the robotic polar bear was ideally suited to draw enemy fire. Still, the lawnmower felt a stir of unease. His friend was sturdy, but their enemy would not have come here without proper preparations.

As his processor counted down the seconds until the operation commenced, he ran another passive sonar sweep. He fed the data to Thomas and overlaid it with his visual feed. Yes. If he looked closely enough, there were minute distortions in the air that matched the general locations of the objects the sonar sweep had picked up.

Three.

Two.

One.

Zero.

X     X     X

Thomas roared, a handful of powerful speakers built into his frame unleashing a torrent of hideously loud noise pitched at frequencies designed to deafen or disable Faunus and humans alike. At the same time, the drones floating in the air unleashed powerful sensor sweeps designed to overwhelm their opponents’ camouflage. When that failed to reveal them, the drones fired their stunners. Powerful currents of electricity surged down the cables attached to the stunners, revealing their foes.

Several dozen White Fang elites. 

Thomas charged forward and was greeted with a hell storm of fire. Heavy calibre slugs designed to tear through armoured Grimm and punch through reinforced concrete slammed into him. His inbuilt shields flared to fend off the assault only to fail a moment later beneath the sheer volume of fire. He staggered momentarily and then pressed on as the storm of gunfire ripped holes in his exterior and clanked off the reinforced interior casing that protected his most important components.

He closed in on his first opponent and swiped with one claw. With strength at least an order of magnitude greater than any bear, his blow smashed right through the Aura of his first opponent and ripped them in half. Panels along his side opened up and unleashed a salvo of buckshot into the White Fang around him. To his disappointment only two thirds of the weapons were able to successfully fire. He had already taken considerable damage.

Yet he was not concerned. Alone, he would have been picked off. His opponents outnumbered him, and his scanners indicated significant amounts of Aura in all of them. However, he was not alone.

X     X     X

The lawnmower catalogued the damage Thomas had already sustained with a mental frown. His friend had already taken serious damage despite his durability. Their opponents had come equipped for a war. Well, he would give them one.

He trundled up to the closest White Fang member and activated his primary close-combat weapon.

The shotgun was a much-loved close quarters weapon. He was equipped with twin automatic shotguns, each with a maximum firing rate of 300 rounds per minute. Rather than standard shells, he used tungsten tipped, fire-Dust composite shells. The tungsten would allow the heavy shell to punch through most body armour. However, upon impact, the fire-Dust that made up the bulk of the round would then be crushed against the tungsten tip resulting in immediate sublimation.

This in turn guaranteed a complete transfer of momentum from the shot to the target along with the creation of a literal cloud of molten material inside the target. In organics, this typically resulted in a successful centre mass hit simply evaporating the torso.

His opponent had impressive Aura reserves, several hundred times that of a civilian. In the span of three seconds, the lawnmower hit him a total of thirty of the tungsten, fire-Dust shells. His Aura withstood the dirty twenty-seven of the impacts before cracking. The three subsequent hits erased his torso and sent his limbs tumbling away.

Yet even before those limbs hit the ground, the lawnmower was already deploying more of his weapon systems. Nets flashed out. Aura could protect from explosions and gunshots, but nets could still be effective. However, instead of the usual shock the nets were designed to deliver, he upped the voltage by a factor of a hundred. That should be enough to incapacitate those he’d managed to hit. Once that occurred, it was easy to pour shotgun slugs into them until they ceased to be relevant.

In front of him, Thomas continued his assault, lashing out with mad abandon as missile pods in his back opened to fire their lethal cargo: clusters of mini-missiles designed to first overwhelm an opponent’s Aura before creating clouds of shrapnel that would shred flesh and pierce through body armour.

One of the White Fang managed to draw a bead on him, and the lawnmower braced for impact. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded against his side followed by several punishing impacts from anti-materiel weaponry. His shields, more substantial than Thomas’s, were able to bear the brunt of the impact whilst his smaller size allowed for more concentrated armour. Even so, a number of warning came up, and he devoted some of his systems to repair while ejecting one of his batteries.

The battery had overloaded due to the damage done to his shields. Tossing the useless battery aside, he had one of the drones rush to deliver him another as he diverted any additional power he had to his shields.

Someone leapt at him with a spear held high, and he took a trio of cycles to aim before shooting an electrified harpoon. His creator had originally intended it to be used to catch and stop vehicles, but it worked well enough to knock his opponent back. The angry flare of Aura informed him that his opponent was still combat capable, and he turned his twin automatic shotguns toward the White Fang member.

The night was lit up with the roar of his firepower, and his opponent staggered back under the barrage. They dodged in a desperate attempt to get clear, and he activated his tractor beam. He usually used it to manipulate tools or move bunches of leaves around. It wasn’t designed to stop someone with the Aura signature of an A Tier hunter, but it didn’t have to. It managed to trip them over, and his twin shotgun were able to lock on. His opponent did not survive the ensuing barrage.

The lawnmower directed some of the drones to ram themselves into the weaker members of the assault. He detonated the drones in the faces of the White Fang members. Most survived, but they were still blinded. In their moments of weakness, the lawnmower calmly fired a salvo of his own mini-missiles. Unable to dodge, many of them were killed outright in the ensuing explosions. Others staggered into the traps his creator had prepared earlier. Claymores might be relatively primitive, but they were incredibly effective against opponents without enough Aura to protect them. He had the drones handle the rest. Picking up a heavy rock and bashing someone over the head was hardly an efficient way of doing things, but the drones could do it well enough to opponents who were barely mobile and lacking in Aura.

Every now and then, his and Thomas’s attacks were joined by flashes of Aura as his creator’s wife discretely eliminated unsuspecting members of the White Fang with her Aura constructs. Good. She was keeping herself largely concealed. In the chaos it was doubtful that anyone would notice her attacks, so she should still be able to catch the most powerful members of the White Fang attack team off guard.

X     X     X

Thomas noted the damage he’d sustained. Two of his limbs were barely operational, and he was relying more on his inertial manipulators to move. However, he was still a large, heavy machine, which meant simply ramming his opponents was a completely viable option.

Most of them were already running low on Aura as his barrage of mini-missiles had been able to catch the majority. Furthermore, the lawnmower was laying down a hellish storm of fire with his shotguns. Hitting a target at long-range with the shotguns would have been difficult even for the lawnmower’s advanced fire control systems, but this was a phone booth fight with the majority of their opponents no further than fifteen feet away. The chaos also made it easy for their creator’s wife to strike without giving herself a way. A razor-thin Aura construct to the heart would be impossible for most organics to notice in the midst of the battle. Likewise, a noose tightening to slice a throat open would be easy to miss with explosions, gunfire, and lasers everywhere.

As a sword stabbed into his side and glanced off the reinforced armour around his power source, Thomas twisted and bashed his barely working front right limb into his attacker’s skull. His attacker flopped to the ground, and he took a split-second to gauge the distance before dropping several canisters of gas onto the ground.

With their full Auras, his opponents would simply have been able to ignore them. Running low, however, the poison gas stood a decent chance of working. Of course, he and the lawnmower would be fine. There was a flash of light. Good. The lawnmower was using his lasers. Lasers weren’t all that useful against a skilled and powerful opponent with their full Aura, but against someone without Aura, they could easily disable or kill.

Thomas lumbered forward, swatting aside on White Fang after another as they tried to shake off the effects of the gas. A few tried to get around him and the lawnmower only to come apart in clouds of gore as the lawnmower triggered the mines his creator had laid earlier in the day. 

As another White Fang faltered, only to be crushed beneath his bulk, Thomas considered the battle. They were doing well -

BOOM.

X     X     X

The lawnmower used his tractor beam to slow Thomas’s flight to a manageable level. The robotic polar bear slammed into a tree. One of his limbs broke off, and his chassis gave an ominous creak. Almost all of the White Fang were down, but the two that were left had made short work of the rest of the drones and had devastated the impromptu defences his creator had set up.

The lawnmower braced himself for battle. Both of the targets were at least S Tier with Aura signatures measured in tens of thousands the capacity of normal civilians. Simply put, he was not equipped for battle of this level. Nevertheless, he would continue to do his best.

He unleashed his shotguns again, only to have them dodged. Scowling, he switched to lasers. They were far faster but less able to do damage. The attacks were ignored, and he found himself crushed into the ground as his shields flared to halt an attack that would have turned a typical truck into a tin can. The pressure on his shields increased, and the ground gave way beneath him. This was enough force to reduce a house to kindling, and it was only increasing.

The other high-level White Fang headed for the house. The lawnmower bit back a curse. He was currently unable to intervene. Thomas shambled back onto his feet and fired a salvo of bullets that were dodged with contemptuous ease.

The lawnmower gave the mental equivalent of a sneer.

The would-be assassins were getting overconfident.

There was a reason his creator’s wife had yet to intervene.

X     X     X

Lumina had to fight the urge to wade into battle as the beach house’s defences were destroyed and both Thomas and the lawnmower found themselves on the receiving end of beat downs. Thomas was barely functional, and the lawnmower was only still in one piece thanks to the absurdly strong shields Vanille had given him.

But there was a reason for this.

In battle between S Tier individuals and higher, the first blow could often be the decisive one since people with that kind of power could generally warp combat in their favour so heavily that regaining the initiative became impossible.

As one of the assassins ran toward the house, Lumina readied her attack. It was a monomolecular ribbon of Aura reinforced with a full twenty percent of her total Aura reserves. Her target continued to rush forward, and Lumina struck. In a split-second, the ribbon wrapped around the White Fang member.

There was a brilliant flash as her opponent’s Aura flared to try to protect them, but Lumina gestured sharply. The ribbon tightened. Had the ribbon been wider, the Aura in it would not have been as densely concentrated. Her opponent, who was certainly skilled and powerful, had already instinctive deployed a dense, full-body protective shell of Aura.

It was actually more Aura than Lumina had put into the ribbon, which meant her opponent had some very impressive Aura reserves in their own right. But Lumina’s Aura was concentrated over a far smaller area. The result? Her Aura ribbon sliced through her opponent’s protective shell in a quarter of a second before tightening around them.

Lumina didn’t hesitate. She let the ribbon tighten completely, and her opponent fell to the ground in pieces.

With her opponent dead, Lumina turned her attention back to the lawnmower. His shields had finally given way, and his battered form flew threw the air. She used a sliver of her Aura to form a net to catch him. Despite the damage he’d taken, he continued to shell away with his shotguns and lasers. He even fired a few nets.

Her last opponent dodged all of the projectiles with ease. They were good. Very good. Just then, her communicator blinked. It was a signal from Vanille. Lumina took a step forward and gestured. Swords and spears of Aura rained down on her opponent.

Stifling pressure formed and then erupted outward - some form of air or gravity manipulation - and she leapt back to avoid the worst of the blast. Instinctively, she formed a sphere around herself, and just in time as her enemy launched a barrage of projectiles at her at super sonic speeds.

Lumina replied in kind only for her projectiles to be batted aside. Interesting. Why had her opponent dodged the lawnmower’s attacks? Was it to conserve power for fighting against her?

Lumina shook her head. She could worry about that later. Right now, she needed to keep her opponent occupied. She unleashed another barrage and then created a monomolecular net. Her opponent must have seen what had happened earlier, and they threw themselves clear.

Which was exactly what Vanille was waiting for.

X     X     X

Vanille took a split-second to check her aim. Having a binding rod that could transform into a rail gun was great.

X      X      X

Lumina bit back a smirk as her opponent’s Aura flared. A projectile slammed into her at roughly thirty times the speed of sound. The impact sent out a shockwave that would have knocked any normal person over, and the explosion that followed courtesy of the projectile’s exotic payload lit up the whole night.

Extending her senses, Lumina was only faintly surprised that her opponent was still alive. However, their Aura reserves were far lower than they had been. As her enemy struggled to get their bearings back, Lumina rained more Aura constructs down on her. They fought to fend off the assault, but Lumina wasn’t done. A tiny, incredibly thin snare formed and tangled around her opponent’s right ankle. She tightened it, and her opponent’s foot came off. They screamed, and their focuse wavered. A split-second later they went down, impaled by dozens of Aura constructed. Lumina beheaded them just to be sure.

“Any other threats?” she asked the lawnmower.

X      X      X

The lawnmower scanned the area. There was no point hiding anymore. His powerful active scanners swept over the surrounding terrain. There were no more remaining targets. However, just to be sure, he dispatched the few remaining drones into a defensive formation and had them run their own scans.

That done, he trundled toward Thomas. The polar bear was badly damaged, to the point that he could no longer move under his own power. The lawnmower stopped at his side and began repairs. They would have to acquire new components to get him fully operational again, but he should be able to fix Thomas up enough for the robotic polar bear to control his own movement again. Thankfully, his most important components had survived serious damage.

X      X      X

Author’s Notes

One of the best shots the White Fang had at Vanille. The attack team consisted of two S Tier or higher hunters, several A Tier or higher and everyone else was B Tier. However, Thomas is exceptionally tough, and the lawnmower was designed with anti-hunter combat in mind. The attack team was also put together with Lumina and Vanille in mind. They were not prepared for Thomas, the lawnmower, and a garden that had been trapped. Even without Thomas and the lawnmower, Lumina and Vanille could have won, but it would have been a tricky fight. 

If you’re interested in my thoughts on writing and other topics, you can find those here.

I also write original fiction, which you can find on Amazon here or on Audible here.

#final rose #fanfiction #lumina #oerba dia vanille #lawnmower #thomas

[ghostly-cabbage]

Frigid (Chapter 5)

Genre: Horror, Angst, Enemies to Friends (to maybe more??? ohoho) 

Chapter Rating: T (Language, Canon Typical Violence, Brief Mention of Underage Drug Use) 

Word Count: 6,554

AO3 FFN

<<Previous | Next>>

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

The black and white dashed pavement was all Wes saw. It moved underneath his clumsy feet in slow motion. 

Someone was holding his hand; he could feel the heat of their palm enveloping his. His hand was small in theirs. His shoulders were heavy, weighed down by a backpack. 

He wrung the padded red strap with his free hand. The person leading him tugged him along after them, insistent, but not unkind. When he looked up, he couldn’t see who it was. The sun was too bright, glinting in his eyes and allowing nothing but the dark impression of a silhouette. 

He had to get home, Wes remembered faintly. They had to get home or they’d be in trouble. An odd feeling crept up his legs, and he stumbled over an untied shoelace. The person with him made sure he didn’t fall, pulling up on his arm. 

“Silly Wesley, I thought you said you knew how to tie your shoes?” The person said. Their voice sounded muffled, like he was underwater. It sounded… familiar. Somehow. Like Wes should recognize it. 

They kept walking across the street, the far side growing no closer.

Wes swallowed, his throat dry. 

“Something’s wrong,” he said. His tongue felt clumsy in his mouth. He tried to look up at the person guiding him. They weren’t looking at him, and the sun drove his gaze away again. He looked back at the road, then over his shoulder where the blurry shape of school became more distant with every step.

 “Please listen to me this time, something isn’t right,” he tried again. His voice was small in his throat. His chaperone ignored him, or maybe they just couldn’t hear him. 

Cold panic seeped into him and he tried to resist against the person guiding him. He dug his heels into the rough hot pavement. He twisted and pulled at his hand, gripping the person's wrist in hopes he could slow them down. 

“It’s okay, Wessie! Your friends will be there when you come back,” came the voice, happy and completely oblivious. “I know it’s sad, but you’ll see your friends again, you’ll see.” 

“No,” he protested, the fear condensing into a lump in his throat. “No, we can’t keep going.” He didn’t know why. He just knew they had to stop. 

They had to stop before it happened. 

It ached deep in his bones, the dread and the sirens. His vision swirled and he blinked furiously against the tears. 

“Please,” he pleaded. “Please, stop, you have to.” He yanked on them, but they showed no sign of being inconvenienced. A wail rose in his throat. 

Why were they not listening?

“Maybe your Mom will let us have some fruit snacks when we get there, how’s that sound?” 

And then it was too late. 

His guardian gasped, and yanked him back. It sent a painful jolt through his arm. He stumbled backwards and hit the ground so hard it rattled his brain. 

The sound he could never push from his memories filled the world. The squeal of tires and a wet crunch. A squeal: high pitched and girlish. The solid thunk and crack of a body hitting the pavement, skidding and rolling and breaking and—

Wes sat bolt upright, strangling back a scream. 

Panic tingled over his skin and he clutched at his chest, fingers curling into the cotton of his nightshirt. His breath came in rapid gulps and his eyes darted around his room. Like he was expecting to see— 

He screwed his eyes shut and bit into his bottom lip until he tasted blood. God… He hadn’t had one that bad— that vivid in a long time. He focused on the beat of his heart for several long seconds, forcing his breathing to slow. 

God. He hated nightmares. 

He opened his eyes, taking in the dimly illuminated shapes of his dresser, desk and footboard. His curtains were drawn, and the weak light of morning tried in vain to worm it’s way into the room from behind the fabric. 

Wes reached for his phone on his bedside table. He unplugged it from the charger and winced against the light of the screen, 6:31 a.m. Friday. 

They’d had the last two days off from school due to damages to the plumbing system, but apparently it was all fixed up because school hadn’t been cancelled today. 

After that, going back to sleep was a lost cause. 

He shook his head and peeled his covers back. Might as well get an early start on getting ready for school. With a yawn he opened his door and glanced down the hall. 

Kyle’s door wasn’t open yet, which wasn’t surprising. Kyle was late most mornings; he liked sleeping in about as much as he liked weed… he slept in so much because of the weed more specifically. 

The house was chilly and quiet. 

That was until Wes heard footsteps and the sounds of drawers opening and closing in the kitchen. 

His right hand slid along the guide rail, the polished wood still smelling of lemon. Reaching the bottom of the stairs he poked his head around the corner of the wall and into the kitchen. He blinked. 

It was his dad. He was standing at the toaster, a butter knife held in his hand. Neatly ironed suit already on. 

Wes walked in without announcing himself and went to the cupboard. His dad jumped, catching a glimpse of him over his shoulder. 

“Oh, Wesley.” He cleared his throat and shifted towards him. “You’re up early.” 

“Yep.” 

He got a box of cereal and closed the cupboard. He turned his back to his father to get a clean bowl. 

“Right. Uhm. Did you… want toast?”

Wes nudged the cupboard door closed with an elbow. 

“No, I don’t want toast.” He put his bowl on the dining table and filled it with cereal. His dad watched him. 

“There’s eggs in the fridge too if you—” 

“Dad, it’s fine.” Wes didn’t look at him, and put the cereal box away. He got the jug of milk from the fridge and poured it over the sugary monstrosity that had the audacity to call itself a balanced breakfast. Other than the sound of the milk glugging, the kitchen was tense and silent. Wes screwed the cap back on the milk and put it back in the fridge, getting a spoon next from the silverware drawer. 

The toaster popped, and his Dad startled. 

Under different circumstances Wes might have laughed. 

He pulled out a seat at the table, its legs scraping over the hardwood floor. He sank down into the cold chair and started eating. He pulled his phone out from his sweatpant pocket and scrolled without really paying attention to the images and text that slid past. 

“Aren’t you late for work or something?” he said. His dad stopped scraping the butter on his toast. 

“Now that I’m finally settled into the office a bit more I don’t have to be in till seven.” 

Wes clicked his tongue. “Oh. Joy.” He shoveled another spoonful of cereal into his mouth. His dad sighed, and he could see his shoulders slump out of the corner of his eye. 

“Your uh, tryouts are today, right?” 

“Why’s it matter? Not like you ever have time to come to my games anyway.” He said it hoping it would hurt. It was childish, Wes knew it was, but he just wanted his dad to get it for once.

“Wesley, kiddo... I know this has been hard on you and your brother—” Wes snorted. His Dad pressed on. “But this job was an amazing opportunity, I really think it could do a lot of good for us.” 

“We were fine with the job you had.”

“I thought a change of environment would help after everything that happened. I’m only doing what’s best for the two of you. For all of us, as a family.”

Wes laughed. It was empty and brittle. 

“Well, that’s news to me. We’re hardly even a family anymore.” 

“Wesley,” his dad’s voice took on a stern edge. 

“You didn’t care about us, if you did you would have asked what we wanted.” 

“And this is exactly why I didn’t.” His Dad gestured jerkily towards him with the butter knife.

“What’s that mean?” Wes slapped his phone down and glared up at his dad.

“It’s clear that you’re still too immature to deal with this like an adult. I’m doing this with your futures in mind, Wesley.” 

“By ripping us away from home? From all our friends? From Grandma and Grandpa? Uncle Ronnie?” Wes’ heart was thumping in his ears and he wanted to scream, flip the table over, something to make the pressure in his chest go away. 

His dad scoffed. 

“Don’t raise your voice at me. I told you when we moved that we would visit for the holidays.” 

“That just makes it all better. Doesn’t it?” he pushed through grit teeth. He squeezed the handle of his spoon in his fist, the cool metal pressing indentions into his skin. 

“The world doesn’t revolve around you and what you want. It’s no one's fault but your own that you’re choosing to learn it the hard way.” 

“You’re such a fucking hypocrite.” 

“Wesley!” his dad snapped. “One thing you won’t do is speak to me like that under my roof, you understand me?”

Wes held his dad’s gaze, not backing down.

“After tryouts you come right home and stay here for the weekend.” 

“What? Seriously?!” 

“Yes, seriously.”

Rage whirled in his throat and he bit down on his tongue. He stood up, his chair skidding backwards. Fucking bullshit. It was fucking bullshit. 

He threw his spoon down onto the table. It clattered and bounced off the side of his bowl. He snatched his phone and stormed away from the table and back up to his room. He slammed his door behind him and stood there seething, his hands balled into fists. 

He stood there as the seconds ticked by, eyes roaming over his room for something he wouldn’t mind breaking. The buzz of his phone distracted him, and he looked down, turning on the screen.

If it was from Dad he was gonna—

Alien Fucker: ? 

Oh. Right. 

It made sense that he’d probably woken up Kyle. He typed a message back into their chat. 

Basketball Freak: Nothing

Alien Fucker: Didn’t sound like nothing 

Basketball Freak: Dad grounded me again 

...

it’s whatever at this point  

Alien Fucker: F in the chat

…

want me to talk to him?  

Basketball Freak: no, its fine 

Alien Fucker: K just lemme know 

Kyle always felt like he had to be the mediator. In the year leading up to the divorce he was the middle man between Mom and Dad, despite Wes telling him that it was ridiculous. Their parents were grown-ass adults. They shouldn’t have fucking needed their seventeen-year-old-son to deliver messages back and forth because they couldn’t stand to talk to each other. And Dad called him immature. 

Kyle hated the tension, he took on the peacekeeper role like a job, trying to hold them all together in vain as the family crumbled around him. Wes probably hadn’t helped any, looking back. 

He picked fights with Dad like it was his job. 

And Mom… He still didn’t talk to Mom. 

He tried to get where Kyle was coming from, he really did. But pretending that shit wasn't fucked wasn’t going to unfuck it. 

Their parents deserved to know what they'd done was wrong. And if hating them was what it took, then goddamnit, Wes was going to do it.  

Wes tossed his phone onto his bed and started getting dressed for school. 

***

The school day passed by uneventful. Mia had the scoop about some couple that had broken up over the two day break that Wes hardly paid attention to. He helped her set her shutter speed and they took pictures of fast moving objects outside. 

At lunch he sat with Kyle and his stoner friends. 

In chemistry, Wes got there after Danny. He set his stuff down, scooting his stool away from him. They ignored each other the best they could as people got settled for class. 

 Wes bounced his leg on the stool’s rung and kept an eye on the clock. Two more classes until tryouts. 

Mrs. Merriweather erased the notes on the board from last class and once the bell rang her iron gaze flicked over the class to make sure everyone was where they were supposed to be. 

“Once I take roll, you’ll work on writing your findings from the last lab in a short essay.” An unenthused murmur filtered through the class. Wes glanced sideways to see Danny grimacing. 

Hah. Served him right. 

“Mr. Fenton. You can make up for your absence last class in an hour's detention after school today.”

Some of their classmates turned to look at Danny, half smiles and shared glances. Nothing was more unifying in a classroom than someone who wasn't you getting in trouble. 

Danny hunched his shoulders and sighed.

“Yes, Mrs. Merriweather,” he said.     

Sucked for him, but really, what did he expect? Skipping class was a risk he decided to take. 

Wes used his notes from the lab he’d done by himself, and started writing his short essay. The class quieted and the only sound was the occasional whisper and the shuffle of papers. 

Danny was quiet, fiddling with a pencil and looking at his phone under the table when Mrs. Merriweather wasn’t watching. Wes couldn’t tell who Danny was messaging, but if he had to guess it’d be the other two-thirds of his friend group. Eventually, Danny pulled out papers from a beat up binder and started working on it. From the corner of his eye he’d guess it was history homework.  

All Wes cared about was that Danny didn’t bother him. He wrote his essay with his mind half on the words and half on the growing excitement of hitting the court. Finally, finally he’d be able to do one of the only things he was good at. The minutes dragged past and around the fiftieth time he’d glanced up at the clock Danny shifted next to him. 

“Dude, chill out, you’re making me nervous,” he said quietly. He didn’t even look up from his homework when he said it. 

Wes lifted his head from his partially done essay and narrowed his eyes. 

“Mind your own business, Fenton.” 

Fenton rolled his eyes but said no more. 

Class wrapped up twenty minutes later, Wes turned in his sloppily written essay and bolted out of the room. The hallways swelled with students as they poured from their classrooms. Econ was all that stood between Wes and tryouts. He swung by his locker, grabbing his books. 

He was about to turn to leave when he bumped into someone. They both stumbled back and Wes recognized the pungent smell coming off the other person. 

“Whoa man, sorry ‘bout that.” Said a guy with blond hair and a beanie slouched over his head. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Wes said, trying to get around him. 

“Hey wait, you’re Wesley, right? Kyle’s lil bro.” 

Well, that explained the smell. 

“Uh, yeah that’s me. Sorry, but I’ve gotta—” 

“Dude, sweet. Name’s Robbie, I’m pretty chill with your brother,” he said. 

“That’s nice. Well, nice to meet you and stuff.” Wes stepped around the stoner and headed towards his class. 

“Yeah, totally! I wasn’t here for lunch but Kyle said you hung out with the group today—” Robbie said, following after Wes. 

He pushed a breath between his teeth. Great, guess this was happening now. 

“—but like Kyle’s told me a lot about you, man.” 

“Cool?” Seriously, why was this guy talking to him? 

“Yeah, I just wanted to say the group’s mega on your side.” 

“Uh-huh. Cool.” 

Wait. 

“On my side about what?” Wes slowed his pace.

“The ghosts, bro!” 

“What about them?” 

“Pf, bruh. We’ve lived in Amity Park for like, ever? We’re trying to convince him that this ghost stuff is legit.” 

Wes scoffed. “Good luck with that. I’ve been trying since I was like six.” 

Robbie shook his head. “I know what’cha mean, bro. Dude’s like a steel trap... or however that saying goes.” Robbie shrugged. 

Wes chuckled. “Let me know if you guys make any progress with him,” he said. He’d meant it as a joke, but Robbie nodded seriously. 

“Hell yeah, dude, that’s what’s up. You can count on me.” He held out a closed fist to Wes. 

He rolled his eyes but didn’t hide his grin. He fist bumped Robbie. 

“Okay, well… I’m going to class now.” 

Robbie held up his hands. “Oh, yeah, totes. I should probably do that too, now that I think about it.”

“Probably.” 

Robbie turned and walked away in the opposite direction, a single textbook swinging in his grasp. Kyle’s friends were always friendly. Even if they were a bit annoying. 

Wes was almost late for Econ, thanks to the fact the class was on the other side of the building. He slipped into the room and sat down, letting out a breath when the last bell rang thirty seconds later. 

Mr. Brown took his place at the front of the class, voice as monotonous as ever. His button-up was wrinkled around his midsection, and he ran his hands over it like that would help.

“Alright class, we’re going to start talking about the stock market today,” he said, pulling up Google on the projector.    

Wes hardly absorbed a word from Mr. Brown’s lecture, which was a total snooze-fest. The stock market wasn’t exactly riveting stuff. He bounced his leg under his desk, watching the clock.

Mr. Brown was in the middle of describing the homework: picking three stocks and tracking their ups and downs through-out the weekend, when the bell rang. Wes had been about ready to start pulling his hair out. 

He shot up from his seat and was first out the door.  

Wes made a beeline for his locker. Or at least he tried. He got stuck behind kids walking at a snail's pace three times. He got a few dirty looks for pushing past people loitering in their groups. 

Eventually, he made it to his locker and fumbled with the lock. Once open, he stuffed his books and notes anywhere they’d fit. Papers crumpled and his notebook creaseed down the center. He pulled his bag from the hook and slung it over his shoulder. He headed to the locker rooms at a jog, back to bobbing and weaving around people in the halls.  

“Mr. Weston, no running in the halls!” He heard Mr. Lancer call after him as he went past the English room. He slowed down to a power walk, not caring that he looked stupid. 

He got to the locker room and got his gym clothes out. He changed quickly, ripping his shirt off and almost tripping over his jeans. 

There were other guys in the room, some he recognized and others he didn’t. Before he put his phone away he checked it, the screen lighting up. At the very top of the lock screen was a message notification. 

Mom: How was the first week of school?

His fingers tightened around his phone, pushing the blood away from his fingertips and leaving them pale. He stared at it until the screen dimmed. 

He didn’t want to think about it, not now—not at all. He tossed his phone into his bag and zipped it up. 

Out of sight out of mind. 

He locked up the rest of his stuff and left the locker room. He followed a few other guys into the gym. 

The overhead lights reflected in bright streaks on the polished wood floor. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the smell of cleaners and old set in sweat. He scuffed the toe of his sneaker on the floor. The high pitched sound echoed around the room; it felt like home. 

Mrs. Tetslaff was standing by the bleachers, writing something on a clipboard. A few students that looked like freshmen were wheeling out a wire cart heaped with basketballs. 

Wes walked towards Tetslaff, coming to stop a ways away. He shifted from foot to foot in anticipation. Within a minute or two there was a loose ring of guys waiting around. A majority were talking amongst themselves, joking around. Clearly they were last year’s team, bonded by hours of blood, sweat, and tears. Wes was on the outside. He felt a sour twinge in his stomach watching them. He wondered how his old team was doing… None of them had messaged him since he left. Not even Cole or Adam.

“Ay, new kid!” 

Wes turned to see a guy with short black hair and olive brown skin. The guy was a bit taller than him. He came up and clapped Wes on the back so hard it stung his skin. He stumbled forward a bit before catching himself. 

“I hear you played point in Cali.” 

Wes tapped the toe of his shoe against the ground a few times. “Yeah?” 

The guy smiled, dark eyes sparkling. He had a nicely structured face, the stubble on his chin making it a reasonable guess that he was a senior. 

“I’m José. Wesley, right? ” He crossed his arms over his chest. Wes didn’t know if he was intending to show off his biceps or not, but it certainly seemed like he was. “I was point-guard last year, and ain’t no way in hell some lanky California kid is gonna yoink my spot.” 

Wes carefully gaged for any hostility, but there was none. José was all smiles. A friendly challenge? 

“I guess we’ll just see about that, won’t we?” He smirked back. 

Somehow José’s smile got bigger. He laughed, his posture breaking into something more casual. 

“I like you already, Wesley.” He stuck out his hand for a handshake. Wes obliged. José grabbed his hand without mercy and shook so vigorously Wes thought he’d lose his arm.

“Just ‘Wes’ is fine,” he said with a wince. José released his hand. “Ow,” he muttered, shaking his hand out. 

“C’mon, you can hang with us, save you the embarrassment of mingling with the Freshmen.” José slung an arm around his shoulders and steered him into the inner circle of guys. He followed, mostly because he didn’t have much of a choice. As they got close the group looked up, varying levels of welcoming. 

“Wes, this is Mark,” he pointed to the dude the farthest from them. He was shorter than Wes, long brown hair tied behind his head. 

“‘Sup.” 

“Next we got Joseph.” José motioned to a guy with terrible posture, it made it hard to tell how tall he was. He looked familiar and it took a few seconds for the light bulb to come on. It clicked and Wes remembered he had Homeroom with him. “We just call him Jo or Joey though.” The guy in question threw up a peace sign. He had light grey hair, obviously the product of a good chunk of money and some bleach. 

Now that Wes thought of it, living in Amity Park, it was weird how many people didn’t have crazy bleached or dyed hair. Maybe it was more of a west coast thing? Or Amity was just behind on the times. Probably both.  

“This is Anthony,” José moved to the next guy. He was about Wes’ height and he had neatly cut and styled almond brown hair. He looked like he belonged in a boy band. His eyes were hazel green, and he looked Wes up and down. 

“Hey,” was all he said. Wes tried not to stare too long as José moved on. 

“Last but not least we got our boy Isaac.” He had black hair, shaved on the sides and longer on top with loose curls. He had dark skin like José. Isaac pointed finger guns at him. 

“Yo, man, pleasure to meet ya,” he said. He had more of a detectable latin accent than José.   

José broke away from Wes to clap hands with Isaac and pull him into a one armed hug. 

“This here our inner circle, Joey and Mark are Juniors like you, but the rest of us ’re Seniors.” 

“It’s nice to meet all you guys, God, you don’t know how long it feels like I’ve waited for today,” he said. He rubbed his upper arm.  

“I just hope you ain’t rusty. I heard you got game.” Isaac said.

Wes shrugged a shoulder. “I mean…” 

“Humble,” José nodded. “I like that about you, Wes. I’m ‘bouta smoke you, make sure you stay that way.” 

The rest of the group let out a chorus of “oh”s. The gauntlet had officially been thrown down in front of witnesses. Wes didn’t fight his smile as he sank into the familiar feeling. 

“Cool, dude. Just don’t cry when I dunk on your ass, okay?” 

The group oh’d louder this time. 

“Dammnn, new kid! You got spunk, never would have guessed from class,” Joseph laughed. “Seriously, in Homeroom he never talks to anyone,” he told the rest of the group. 

“Hey, no judgment, Anthony’s been needing another introvert to keep him company.” Mark grabbed Anthony by the shoulders and gave him a rattle. 

Anthony waved him off. “Shut up.” 

The sound of a whistle pierced through the gym. They all cringed and turned to look at the source of the noise.

Mrs. Testlaff had her hands on her hips. 

“What’re you all waiting around for? You know the drill, warm-ups first.” She clapped a palm against the back of her clipboard. Her voice boomed through the gym.  “Two laps around the gym, go!” 

***

The amount of drills they did had to be criminal. Wes’ muscles burned and his hair was spiked with sweat and water from the fountain down the hall. He’d forgotten his water bottle at home, which he wholeheartedly blamed on his dad.  

It took a while, shaking off the rust and sinking back into his comfort zone. It felt like the court snapped into focus and all that mattered was the squeak of shoes and the fleeting touch of the ball against the curve of his palm. His body moved the exact way he wanted it to. He spun and dodged, nailed three point shots more often than not, felt like he was riding a high.

They practiced individual skills before they moved onto mock games. José was no joke. He moved like he could read the offence’s mind. It was frustrating and exhilarating at the same time. 

The group’s synchronicity of their plays made their history together obvious. 

The practice games were intense and competitive. For every layup and three pointer Wes scored, José would score the same. The others weren’t pushovers either. Isaac would shut him out with a shit-eating grin and Anthony was way faster than he looked. 

José blew past his sophomore defender and jumped, slamming the ball through the basket and holding onto the rim for a few seconds before he dropped. He bounced into a jog, whooping in triumph. Isaac and Mark high-fived him while Joseph and Anthony, who were on Wes’s side, groaned.

Mrs. Tetslaff blew the whistle and everyone stopped, turning towards her. 

“Alright, gentlemen, good job today. Take a five minute break. Go get some water and then we’ll move into cool downs.” 

Wes sighed, his shoulders sagging. Admittedly, he was tired, but he didn’t want to stop. His new friend group walked towards the corner of the gym to a bench where they had water bottles and towels. Wes, who had neither, just went for the company. Issac grabbed his shoulder as he neared. 

“Shit, man, you can actually play,” he said, giving him a shake.

“So can you guys,” he breathed. Wes grabbed the hem of his shirt and used it to wipe the sweat off his face. “You didn’t take it easy on me that’s for sure.” 

“Mrs. Tetslaff was impressed, I could tell,” Joseph said, sprawling out on one of the benches. 

“You think so?” Wes glanced back at the stern woman who was in the middle of yelling at a pair of Freshmen across the gym.

“For sure, bro. The way you played you might jus’ make varsity,” José said, smacking the cap of his water bottle closed. 

“‘Might’?” Wes quirked a brow. 

“Homie, yer gonna have to get past us to make varsity,” Isaac pointed out, gesturing to the rest of the guys. Wes blinked, looking at the five of them. 

“Damn, guess you’re right.” 

“It’s okay, you can take Joey’s spot, he won’t miss it,” Mark said, snapping his hand towel at Joseph. He squawked and rolled off the bench onto the floor with a thud. 

“Asshole! And what the hell d’you mean I wouldn’t miss it?” He pushed himself up to glare up at Mark. 

“Bruh, all last season you cared more about flirting with Tiff than showing up to practice on time.” 

Joseph’s cheeks flushed pink. 

“So? I still got better stats than you did. Plus who doesn’t lose track of time when flirting with a cute girl?”

“I dunno, man. Sounds like a straight problem,” Anthony said from Wes’ other side. Wes looked over at him, a little surprised. 

Joseph pushed himself up. “Shut up, Anthony, as if you haven’t been late because you’re flirting with some guy.” 

Anthony snorted. “At this school? Gimme a break.” 

“Whatever, dude, at least I don’t wanna fuck a ghost.” 

That managed to get a reaction out of Anthony. He stiffened, cheeks tinting red. His gaze darted around the ground before his expression hardened.

“If I remember right, Joseph, you retweeted Dash’s ‘Its not gay if he’s dead’ tweet just like everybody else,” he shot back, lifting his chin.

Joseph’s eyes widened. 

Isaac, Mark and José spluttered from behind Joseph. Anthony smirked and crossed his arms over his chest. 

“Because it was funny! It was a meme, dude!”

“No need to get defensive now, it’s okay. You can admit that Phantom made you have a gay awakening.” Anthony had an evil twinkle in his eye, like a shark that’d caught the scent of blood.

“What? Dude, no I— Guys come on, help me out here.” 

Isaac stepped up next to Joseph and threw an arm around him, pulling him closer by his neck. 

“Homie, no cap, I wasn’t bi till I moved here. That probably ain’t no coincidence, know wha’m’sayin’?  

Joseph looked stricken, like he could feel himself losing the argument. 

“Oh come on—what about you, newbie?” 

All eyes turned to Wes and he swallowed. Oh, God. Why were people in Amity so goddamn weird? Attracted? To a ghost? 

“Uhm… I mean. Uh. I’ve only seen him once…” He twisted the toe of his shoe against the ground. “Also he’s technically dead, right? Isn’t that like, messed up?” 

Everyone who wasn’t Joseph just rolled their eyes or puffed out a breath. 

“He’s new, give him a while, he’ll come around,” Isaac said, sharing glances with the guys in support of literally thinking a ghost was hot. Wes tried to hide his bewilderment. He seriously doubted he’d “come around”. What was wrong with these people? 

Joseph shoved himself away from Isaac’s grip and interlocked his arm with Wes’. 

“Fuck you guys, Wes is my new bestfriend now.” 

“Boy, you literally out here with silver hair, who’da fuck you think you foolin?” José said, jabbing a flat hand towards him.

“...Elliot said it’d help me get girls’ numbers,” he said softly, lifting his hands to tend it with a frown.  

“You actually listened to that clown?” Anthony grimaced. 

“Bro, I thought you said you liked it?” 

Anthony rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” 

“Oof, Anthony hit his word limit, guys.” Mark said. The guys broke into laughter. For the first time since moving to Amity Park, Wes actually didn’t hate being there. 

But because it was in-fact Amity Park, of course that’s when shit went sideways. 

There was an explosion from above them. Wes flinched, whipping around towards the source of the sound. The overhead lights flickered, and debris rained down on the center of the court. There was a gaping hole in the ceiling of the gym, sunlight streaming through. A huge shape flew down through the hole, stopping to float thirty feet up. The being glowed unnaturally and had what looked like a mohawk of green flames. The thing looked around, and then flew straight towards Wes and the group. Wes stumbled back into Isaac, his brain short circuiting.

“What the hell—” 

“Ghost!” someone screamed, and that’s all it took for the gym to descend into chaos. People scattered, fleeting through the nearest exits. 

But Wes and his new friends had nowhere to go. They all backed up, pushed against each other in the corner.

“Oh shit,” José said, voice hushed. “It’s Skulker.” 

“What? Who?” Wes whispered back. 

“Dude, shut up! He’s coming closer,” Joseph hissed, slapping a hand over Wes’ mouth. He didn’t even have time to be pissed about it before the ghost was right on top of them.

It grinned. The air felt heavy and Wes’ heart kicked in his chest. Its body was grey and sleek like metal. Out of all the ghosts that they could have, of course Amity had a fucking cyborg ghost. 

The ghost loomed over them. “Have any of you feeble little humans seen the Ghost Child recently?” Its voice was gruff and low, echoing horribly against Wes’ ears. Its eyes were disks of solid green burning into them as it stared. It was still smiling, jagged metal teeth gleaming in the dim reflected light. 

Wes wanted to say “no”, maybe that would make it leave, but Joey’s hand was still firmly over his mouth. The ghost leaned closer, its glare narrowing. 

“Well? Speak, you sniveling humans,” it growled. 

There was a moment’s silence, then: “recently? No.” 

Wes, along with the rest of the group’s attention snapped over in dismay to Anthony. He looked nonchalant, or would have if not for the rigidness of his arms and the tension in his brow. Their gaze slowly craned back over to the ghost, terrified of its reaction.

But the ghost leaned back, demeanor doing a complete one-eighty. “Huh, you haven’t?” Its eyes went cartoonishly big. He looked at a panel that appeared on the back of his wrist. “My scanners say he’s in the area.” The ghost tapped in the scanner a few times, before he gave up and shrugged. 

“No matter.” The cruel smile spread over its face again. “All I have to do is stir up a bit more trouble and my prey will surely appear.” 

Wes watched in horror as long wicked green blades extended out from the ghost’s arms. It closed the small gap between them, a chuckle building up from its throat—or whatever ghosts had. 

“Why hasn’t someone hit the Ghost Alarm?” Mark whispered. 

“Shh,” José snapped. 

Wes swallowed, his mouth going dry and his knees shaking. 

Yeah, he absolutely hated it here again. 

The ghost lifted a blade, resting its tip just above his collarbone. Holy shit, holy shit, holy—

Wes caught the sight of movement from behind the ghost: a flash of black and white. 

“Skulker, leave them alone,” came another echoing voice. Instead of feeling hot and stuffy a chill spread over Wes’ skin as the temperature of the gym dropped. 

The metal ghost spun around, its absence opening up the group's line of sight enough to see none other than Phantom. He was floating some ten feet away, arms crossed over his chest. He paid them no attention, his eyes fully locked on the hulking metal ghost. 

“Oh thank fuck,” Joseph breathed, relaxing enough to release Wes. 

“There you are, Ghost Child,” the cyborg said, sounding pleased. “I was wondering when you’d decide to—” Phantom became a blur. The next thing Wes knew, the huge ghost was sent flying, crashing into a wall on the right side of the gym. 

Phantom was now occupying the space the cyborg ghost had just been. He shook out his hand before curling it back into a fist. “Seriously, how many times do I have to tell you not to drag people into our shit, Skulker?” There was a beat, and Phantom looked over at them, like he’d just remembered they were there in the first place. His eyes flicked over all of them, and Wes couldn’t suppress his shiver when the ghost looked at him. 

“Oh, ‘sup. You guys might wanna, ya’know...” He jerked his head towards the closest exit. And then Phantom was gone, reappearing across the gym. The group didn’t need to be told twice, the next second they were moving. They scrambled out of the corner, practically tripping over one another. 

Wes felt like he was frozen in place. He stared dumbly at where Phantom and the metal ghost were now locked in battle. 

“Dude, what’re you waiting for? Let’s go!” José said, grabbing Wes by the arm and hauling him towards the doors. 

“Wait—” he objected weakly. His legs felt like jelly as he moved. He wanted to see the fight, see Phantom. He didn’t know why, but something in the back of his mind was screaming at him. 

He had questions.

But his new friends didn’t stop until they’d dragged him out through the metal swinging doors of the gym and into the hallway. The door slowly swung back closed, and Wes caught a glimpse of green bolts streaking like comets through the air and Phantom colliding with the ground.  

#Danny Phantom #danny phantom fanfiction #Danny fenton #frigid #wesley weston #Wes weston #Kyle Weston #Walter Weston #Danny phantom fanfic #cross posting here on tumblr is a nightmare #copy and pasting doesnt copy over the bold and italics so I gotta go through and make sure every italicized thing is right and uuuuhhhhhgg #anyway hope yall enjoy #Also this cliffhanger isn't as bad as it seems I promise lmao

[peteywillproceed]

Falling

Author’s Note: Hi guys! Whew, this was a journey! Over 6k words and I am exhausted! It’s been through like ten name changes and five rewrites and I still think it sucks ass but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless! x

Summary: You made the mistake of falling for a guy. He broke your heart. Moving on was the easiest thing in the world - until it wasn’t.

Word Count: 6.2k

Your breathing was heavy, ragged as lips trailed across your skin and sucked bruises on your ribs. You gasped as his fingers trailed across your chest, gathering you in his arms when he crawled back up to your lips and crashed into you like a wave breaking against a shore.

You were happy.

So happy.

Your heart swelling with joy as he laced his hands in yours and whispered quiet promises against your lips.

You didn’t know if it was light or dark. Morning or night. All you knew was the fire flooding your veins and the electricity setting your nerves alight.

The ‘I love yous’ and the promises of forever.

And then it all came crashing down.

*three months later*

Lights blared bright in your eyes, music so loud it stung your ears. Your hands were sweaty, wrapped around a beer bottle you’d held for so long it was warm and frothy. But it was the only thing keeping you grounded as you tossed your hair on the dancefloor and moved through the crowd of writhing bodies.

“You know how much trouble we’re in, right?”

You swung around, arms in the air and sight tainted by the haze of vodka. “Stop being such a buzzkill Houdini! Twat isn’t back till Tuesday.”

“Houdini? That’s a new one,” Harry raised an eyebrow and ignored your swipe at his brother, eyeing you warily as you stumbled over his foot. “Maybe cool it with the shots now?”

You cackled, pink and blue strobe lights slicing through your best friend’s body as you twisted and curved in time to the music. “Maybe cool it with the mothering, Harriet.”

“I’m only mothering you because you threw an illegal party in my brother’s house.”

You scoffed and rolled your eyes, finally stopping dancing when he gave you the ‘I’m serious, you’re an idiot’ look he’d perfected the first time you’d thrown a party. Except that time, it had been in your own house, and not your secret ex…whatever’s.

“Come on, like goodie-two-shoes-Tommy is ever gonna know.”

“He might, Y/n,” Harry shrugged, widening his arms “how are you planning on hiding the fact that three hundred people trashed his house?”

“By not telling him. Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying this,” you grinned, moving your hips and dragging him back onto the dance floor “for one night your brother isn’t breathing down your neck, enjoy it and live a little! We can figure the rest out in the morning.”

He started to protest, pushing against your hands, but you strengthened your grip and pulled him into the crowd, ignoring the grunts from the people nearby. You loved Harry, you really did, you’d grown up with his annoying-as-fuck tendency to be a tattle tale, put up with the refusal to go out on a school night for years, and until you’d gotten involved with Tom you’d never questioned it.

But one night was all it took for everything you thought you’d known about your best friend’s brother to be completely shattered. And since then? Well, you didn’t exactly give a shit someone had smashed his Rolex tonight.

“You realise you could just admit the break-up upset you, right?” Harry laughed as you forced him to move “you don’t need to go full on Wild Child instead of talking about your emotions.”

“It was one night, there wasn’t a break-up, and your brother can get fucked,” you replied a little too quickly, wishing you were talking about anything else.

“I’m just saying, there are healthier ways to deal with getting your heart broken than destroying his house.”

You snorted and took a sip of your beer, almost gagging at the staleness. “The bloke already hates me, what’s a little property damage between enemies?”

“About £50,000 worth of legal fees.”

“Wow, you’re really bringing the heat tonight, aren’t you Holland?” you smirked, widening your eyes “almost like you learned from the best.”

“Yeah, Sam’s really good at one-liners,” he grinned in reply, and you punched his shoulder playfully.

Suddenly, you felt eyes on you, the unmistakable sensation of someone looking you over. You spun in a circle, zeroing in on every distracted party goer until you found the bright blue eyes burrowing under your skin and making you burn all over.

Nudging Harry, you pointed over his shoulder and forced him to turn around. “Hey, who’s that?”

“Err…I think his name’s Josh?” he gave you a funny look, like he couldn’t quite figure out the sudden change of topic. “He’s one of Sam’s mates from catering.”

“Is he single?”

Harry sighed at your smirk, running a hand through his hair in exasperation. “Jesus, Y/n, why would I know? If you’re so determined to get over Tom, go snog him or something.”

“For your information,” you grinned, starting to back away through the crowd “I’m completely over the heathen, but if it takes me snogging a cute guy to prove that to you, I guess I won’t complain.”

Harry had all but disappeared by the time you finished your sentence, but you knew he’d heard you when his middle finger shot up from somewhere in the middle of the heaving mass of partygoers, and you chuckled to yourself. You needed a distraction tonight, anything to not have to think about Tom and the trail of broken hearts he’d left in his wake three months ago.

Turning around, you were fully prepared to go and find Josh and put this whole mess behind you, when you slammed into a chest so hard you would’ve fallen over if it wasn’t for strong arms pulling you back up.

“Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean…” you trailed off, spotting the sandy blond hair and cocky smirk “actually, you know what? I totally did mean to do that.”

“Just like you totally meant to loudly shout your intentions to make out with me?” Josh raised an eyebrow, and you felt heat rise to your cheeks. Thank God for foundation.

“Obviously, how else would you have known?”

Before he could answer, you’d pulled him down to your height and slammed your lips against his, surprise jolting through your body when you realised he was actually a good kisser. You were just getting into it, letting your hands slide into his hair, when a loud shout brought the room to a standstill and silenced the music.

“What the FUCK is going on?”

You jerked away from Josh, you’d recognise that voice anywhere, and spun towards the kitchen table. Tom was on top of it, his face livid and full of thunder, his eyes searching the room for an explanation. “Well?”

You gulped, goosebumps erupting across your body as the realisation of what you’d done set in. But then you remembered, Tom wasn’t even meant to be back from filming for another three days - why the hell was he here?

“It’s just a party, man,” someone shouted from the crowd.

“Yes, I’m aware of what it is,” Tom replied drily, his eyes finally landing on you “and I know exactly who’s responsible for it.”

His words sent a chill down your spine, the eye contact more than you’d had in three months from him. It felt funny finally seeing him after all this time, like you’d found a missing piece to a puzzle you couldn’t finish, but the cold look he was giving you was barely any different to how you’d left him.

He was looking between you and Josh, his tongue pressed against his cheek, and for some inexplicable reason you felt guilty. Like you’d been caught doing something illegal instead of just exercising your right to kiss as many damn people you fancied.

Finally, Tom set his jaw and tore his eyes away from you, the loss leaving you empty.

His voice dropped dangerously. “All of you – get the fuck out of my house.”

***

A few days later, you were hanging your clothes out to dry when your phone buzzed in your pocket. You pushed a peg into your mouth and dragged it out cack-handed, juggling the pile of washing and the box of clean clothes as you struggled to read the caller ID.

“Have you heard from him?” you asked earnestly into the phone, barely breathing as you waited for a response.

“Nice to talk to you too, cheery,” Harry grumbled, the sound of sleep clogging his voice.

“Are you seriously just waking up? It’s eleven o’clock!”

“Did you forget I was twenty-one yesterday?” he replied “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t in bed until six am.”

“Oh, right, yeah I saw those pictures.”

“Yeah so you’ll forgive me if I’m not completely awake yet.”

You ran a thumb over your lip, your eyes dropping to the pile of crinkled washing on the grass. You’d only meant to put it there for a second, but you’d forgotten how much it had rained last night and now the edges were stained with mud and your once clean bedsheets were stained green.

“Typical,” you muttered, trying to dust some of it off. Why did it always feel like this? Like when you were finally taking a step forward, something else was dragging you back two. It was only a minor thing, you could always just rewash them - but it wasn’t just the sheets, was it? Ever since…that night, you’d felt like you were walking through treacle, balancing on a knife’s edge you hadn’t seen before stepping into the unknown.

“What was that?” Harry asked, the sound of pots clanging in the background jerking you back to your conversation.

“Oh nothing, I just um, I just dropped some washing. Are you cooking?”

“Um…yeah, sure that sounds good – oh, Tom, hey.” Your best friend’s tone suddenly flipped like a switch, the audible gulp ringing through the handset. You barely had time to wonder why he was acting so cagey about cooking when a rugged voice began muttering in the background. You froze, your grip on your basket loosening as you stepped through the door.

You could barely hear what they were saying, but then Harry’s voice reappeared on the other end of the receiver, a slight nervous wobble creeping in. “Hey, err Y/n?”

“Yeah?” you replied, shaking off your shock and beginning to throw the ruined sheets back into the wash.

“Tom wants to talk to you.”

“Well tell him that-”

“He’s not an owl, Y/n,” Tom cut you off. “He doesn’t have to pass messages back and forth.”

Heat rose in your cheeks, frustration flowing through your veins as you balled your hands into fists and raked them through your hair. Somehow his voice was even more annoying than before. “Don’t quote Harry Potter at me, Thomas, especially when you’re just as guilty of doing it.”

“Doing what, exactly? You’re the one that trashed my house.”

“Passing messages through Harry! You didn’t exactly have the balls to tell me yourself you were running off to Colorado for three months.”

“Because you blocked my number!”

You sighed, eyes flicking towards the timer on the washing machine. It was true you’d blocked Tom’s number, but three months ago you’d been lying in his bed talking about how you felt and finally, finally admitting everything you’d kept bottled up since you were fourteen.

And then the next day he’d told you it was a mistake.

Went running off to America like a coward.

Leaving Harry to pick up the pieces and you to realise that everything you thought you could’ve had was pure fantasy.

So yes, you’d blocked his number. But it wasn’t like you hadn’t had a reason, and he had to know that. There was no way he could be that thick.

“What do you want, Tom?” you said at last, leaning against the machines. Maybe if you just let him say what he had to say this would all be over and you could go back to not giving a fuck.

Suddenly, the line clicked and the monotonous hum of the phone shutting down rang in your ear.

“What the…?” you trailed off, pulling the phone away from your ear to stare at it in shock. Had he…just called you…to argue with you…and then hung up on you?

Beside you, the door began to creak open and you jumped into the air, your phone flying across the room and landing face up on the tiles. You swore under your breath, bending down to retrieve it just as you felt someone else step into the room behind you.

“Sorry, I’ll just be a- Tom? Your mouth fell open at the sight of the boy stood in front of you, the brown curls you’d run your hands through only months ago gone, the light you’d known in his eyes dead and scattered amongst the ashes.

“I think we need to talk,” he said slowly, holding his hands up as if you were going to shoot him “about everything.”

Your mouth began to move, words flying around in your brain, but no sound came out as you struggled to piece together any semblance of thought. “What are you doing here?”

“I just…after the other night I figured we needed to talk. Properly talk.” He reached for your hand but you snatched it away, your heart beating loudly in your ears.

“Y/n, I know…I know what I did was shitty. But I just need you to hear me out.”

You scoffed, backing away from him until you were pressed against the garden door. “You think now’s a good time for this?”

“I think the best time was three months ago when you were next to me in bed,” he bit his lip, and this time you looked at him. Like, really looked at him.

His jeans were stained in all manner of dodgy areas, his shirt the old Tesco one you’d got him as a joke for his birthday. He had huge, purple bags beneath his eyes, and his socks were two different colours, like he’d been in such a rush he’d forgotten to check; you didn’t even bother to ask about the crocs.

“Well,” you whispered, letting out the breath you didn’t know you were holding. “At least you finally realised that.”

He nodded earnestly, moving towards you and freezing when you threw up your hand to stop him. “I did. Oh God, I did. I spent three months feeling like the shittest person in the world and I didn’t know how to call you to explain.”

“So you thought you’d accost me in my laundry room?”

“It…wasn’t my best plan. But you didn’t exactly make it easy for me to contact you.”

Your mouth fell open, your hand flying to your chest. “Watch it, Holland, or I might think you just tried to blame me for this whole mess.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Well, it sure as hell sounded like that was what you meant!” He flinched as you raised your voice and your arms, but you didn’t feel sorry for it. You’d spent months feeling like a complete idiot, wishing you’d never even told him how you felt. And here he was, trying you blame you for the mess he caused. “So tell me, Tom, just what exactly you think you’re doing here.

“I came to apologise-”

“That’s a good start.”

“And to say that I meant what I said…y’know, before I left.”

You raised an eyebrow, leaning against the door frame with your arms crossed. Tom was halfway across the room now, his hands curled in front of him as he swiped them on his jeans. He was biting his lip, the glasses he didn’t need halfway down the bridge of his nose and it took every inch of you not to break and run to him, fall into the arms you knew so well and forget it had all happened.

You knew what it was like, the vanilla and the cinnamon that would waft up your nose and remind you that you were home. The strength of the arms that would ground you and hold you to Earth. It was so tempting, so inviting to just go back - but where would that get you?

No, going back wasn’t an option anymore. There was only forwards, where the path behind you was well trodden and full of tears.

“That’s nice,” you said at last, shaking your head. “But you can’t really expect me to believe you.”

He sighed, his shoulders slumping when he realised you weren’t giving in. You wondered if he knew how deep he’d cut you, what those words had meant to you and how you’d felt when he’d snatched them away. You wondered if Harry had told him everything that happened over the next few months, how you’d almost broken and yet from the outside you looked happier than ever. You almost hoped he knew how you’d bounced back. How you were fine now.

Or at least, how you pretended to be fine.

“Maybe this isn’t the best place to do this,” he cast an eye round the room warily, and your skin bristled when his gaze finally landed on you. “Can we go up to your place?”

“Absolutely not.”

The words were out of your mouth before you could think, shocking yourself more than you shocked Tom.

“Well…will you come to mine?”

“Sure, if I need to see Harry,” you responded as the washing machine pinged “is there anything else? My laundry’s done.”

“Y/n, we need to talk about this,” he replied, his voice barely more than a whisper “you can’t just ignore me.”

You fixed him with a look, throwing the clean sheets into your basket with more force than necessary and walking towards him. You were so close you could smell his aftershave, different from his normal, more minty than you would have liked. You could see every hair, every line on his face, but it was the look in his eyes that broke you, the sadness that you’d felt for so many months hovering just within him too.

“No, Tom, we don’t,” your voice broke and fresh hot tears began to stream down your face. “The time for talking about it was before you left for Colorado. Now…now’s the time for me to move on, because you broke my heart Tom, you broke it.”

You were full on sobbing now, choking on your words as you spluttered through them. “You smashed it into so many pieces that I couldn’t find them all. And now you’re trying to smash it again, but I won’t allow it. I won’t allow you to take anymore of my heart than you already have.”

“I didn’t-”

“I don’t care Tom!” you screamed, but he barely flinched. You threw the basket down so hard it bounced on the floor and spilt the sheets again. “You had all that time to find out, all that time to do something about it, and you didn’t! So you’ll have to forgive me when I say I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“So that’s it then? Everything you said all those nights ago means nothing any more?” his voice was filled with a pain that cut you to the core, the wobble in his throat making your heart ache more than you expected.

“It means everything, and that’s the problem,” you sniffed, dropping your head to the floor.

You felt Tom draw closer, his body so close to yours that you could feel his heat. He lifted his fingers to your chin, catching your jaw and raising your head so your eyes met his.

“Why does it have to be a problem?”

You paused, almost not saying it. “Because I can’t let you break me again.”

He nodded, backing away, his fingers leaving your chin and you felt empty from the loss. “I’m sorry.”

It was barely a whisper, just loud enough for you to hear but not quite deep enough for it to mean anything. He turned and started walking away, pausing at the door to look back at you. He opened his mouth to say something, his bottom lip wobbling, but he shut it again before any words came out.

Then he disappeared and let the door bang shut behind him.

Relief flooded your body, seeping through every crack in your bones and every fragment of your heart. You were done with the excuses, the comments, the desperate pleas from Harry that his brother was an idiot and too caught up with work to realise what he’d done wrong. You were busy too, but that hadn’t ever made you spew a bunch of crap about loving someone since you’d seen them in the lunch room. It had never made you fill somebody’s heart with hope only to crush it in the morning with just a few simple words and excuses blamed on alcohol.

The final click of the lock was enough to make you slide against the door. Sink down to the floor. Bury your head in your hands.

It was relief, that was what it was. That was what you had to tell yourself. So you could get back up again and walk back to your flat and make everything okay again.

It wasn’t sadness.

It couldn’t ever feel like sadness.

So why did it feel like it was?

***

“Are you sure you want to go tonight?” Harry asked as he watched you smudge your lips with red. “Nobody will notice if you’re not there.”

You rolled your eyes at the dramatics, capping the lipstick tube with a satisfying click and spinning on your heel. “Oh please, it’s a party – we’re not storming off to war.”

“Yeah but it’s…Tom’s party.”

“And last I checked we weren’t exactly on speaking terms,” you shrugged, grabbing your bag from your bed. “He’s not likely to come anywhere near me, there’s going to be hundreds of people there.”

Harry shook his head and pushed himself off the door frame, fixing you with the look you were tired of getting. It had been two weeks since Tom had come to your flat and you were still nowhere near over it; not that you’d ever admit it, but you’d never been over it in the first place.

When Harry had mentioned that Tom was throwing a party to celebrate the release of his new movie, your immediate reaction had been words you couldn’t repeat in front of a three year old. But then he’d turned on the puppy dog eyes and you were suddenly feeling bad about making him go it alone.

“You could make friends with a plant pot, what do you need me there for?” you’d asked.

“Yeaaahhhh, but who’s going to stop me falling face first into that plant pot when I’m pissed?” Harry had replied, grinning at your annoyed face.

“Fine, but I’m drinking the first thing in sight and you’re keeping Tom away from me.”

“What is it with you two? You spend half your time acting like you hate each other. Wouldn’t it just be easier to, I don’t know, suck it up and get together already?” Harry interrupted your thoughts, jerking you back to reality with a flick of his wrist.

You snorted. “We tried that, didn’t exactly work that well.”

“Well it might work a lot better if you actually talked to the guy.”

“Damn it Harry,” you slammed your palm against the door. “I don’t want to talk to someone who told me he loved me and then ran three thousand miles away the next day!”

You could feel the sob building up in your chest, the one you’d buried so deep you’d forgotten it was even there. The walls seemed to tilt towards you as you stumbled into the hall, barely noticing as you slid against the kitchen door frame and forced air into your lungs. God you didn’t want to talk about this, not now when everything you’d done to bury this had worked so well.

“But you do want to talk to Tom! Maybe not the guy that broke your heart, but the guy you’ve been in love with since we were fourteen,” Harry said, exasperated. “You’re going around pretending like you’re over him, like you haven’t thought about him in months. But you threw that party for the same reason you kissed that bloke for, and you know it!”

“Are we seriously fighting over your brother right now? Are you back to being the damn messenger, because I can’t…I can’t keep…” tears were spilling over your cheeks, searing your eyes and stinging the familiar patches of skin that had been stained with the same tears only a few months ago. You tried to breathe, tried to refocus your mind but the world was swimming and you could hardly see anymore through the blurry glass of your tears.

Before you could think, Harry had pulled you into his arms and smothered you against his chest, his hand coming up to stroke your hair. “Sod the party, let’s just watch a movie and get some pizza.”

“No, no, I want to go,” you mumbled against his chest “I need this…I think. Just to see him and know that it’s all done, so I can move on and forget it ever happened.”

“Fuck that, Y/n, let’s just stay here.”

“Please? I really need this.”

Harry pushed you back gently, running a finger under your mascara stained eyes as he took a deep breath. You could see the indecision, the uncertainty at letting you step into the unknown written across his face. In this moment, it was you or his brother, and you hoped to God it was the latter. “This is the last time?”

“The last time,” you promised.

“Well,” he sighed, checking his watch, the long moment fading and passing into the night “I guess we have a party to get to.”

***

When you pulled up to Tom’s house, the lights were out and the curtains were drawn. You threw Harry a look, surprised that there was nobody spilling out of the doors and no music shaking the walls, but he didn’t seem to notice it.

“Err, where is everybody?” you asked, peering out of the window for signs of life.

“Haven’t the faintest,” Harry replied, pulling the handbrake on and reaching over you to open the door. “Do you wanna go in and I’ll catch up? I need to sort something quickly.”

You rolled your eyes and gathered your things from the backseat, feeling uneasy about the lack of people. “I can’t believe you’re sending me in there alone.”

“It’s just for five minutes, you’ll survive.”

“Or maybe I won’t and you’ll be reading my eulogy.”

“I look forward to it,” Harry smirked “I can finally tell people how nasty you are.”

You punched him in the shoulder and stepped out of the car, taking a deep breath before starting towards the house. You felt stupid in the heels, the red lipstick suddenly feeling to garish and over the top.

You rolled your shoulders and set your jaw, running a hand nervously through your hair whilst the other clung tightly to your bag. The clack of your shoes against Tom’s gravel set your teeth on edge, and on impulse you reached down and pulled them off, enjoying the bite of the winter air against your hot feet.

By the time you reached the door, your confusion had only grown, because the house was completely silent and there were certainly no signs of a party. You spun around to find Harry and demand that he take you home, because it was nine o’clock, there was obviously no party, and you weren’t facing Tom alone.

Except his car was gone.

You bit your lip in surprise, looking up and down the street in case he’d just moved the car to park it somewhere safer. But he was nowhere to be seen - the road was empty save for a man running to his van at the bottom. You rolled your eyes and reached for your phone, realising the guy was taking the piss and figuring that if you called him before you saw him again you might not actually murder him.

But your phone was gone and come to think of it Harry hadn’t even been dressed for a party. What the hell was going on?

You debated knocking on another house’s door and asking to borrow the phone, call for a cab and just go home. But it was late and you felt bad about disturbing people that were probably sleeping, all because your best friend was an arsehole and you were too much of a coward to knock on Tom’s door. At last, you gave in and walked back up the drive, pausing at the front door and bracing yourself to see him.

How the hell were you going to explain it? “Oh sorry Tom, no I didn’t actually mean to come here, Harry just thought it would be funny to play a prank and don’t worry I’ll kill him myself the next time I see him.”

At least you looked nice, you thought, raising your hand to knock. At least he wouldn’t think you were ugly and a bitch.

As you moved your hand towards the door, it suddenly swung inwards, the hallway dark and unlit. You gasped, stumbling backwards, peering fearfully into the house in case some burglar was about to come running straight past you. But as your eyes began adjusting to the light, you noticed something strange about the floor.

It was covered in rose petals.

“Tom?” you called out nervously, stepping into the house. “Tom? It’s Y/n. Your front door is open…?”

You moved deeper into the house, quietly closing the door behind you so you didn’t wake him if he was sleeping. Keeping your hands against the wall in case you slipped, you made your way down the hall, noticing a soft glow coming from the kitchen. You paused when you reached the doorway, wondering if you should’ve grabbed your keys or a weapon in case there really was a burglar in here.

But at the last second, you lost your footing and stumbled through the doorway, falling into the kitchen with a soft thud and gasp.

It took a second for you to process it all, but when you finally did you almost felt your heart stop. Fairy lights glittered over every inch of the wall, the floor here too covered with rose petals and flowers. The kitchen table, bowing in the middle just like everything else Tom had made on that bloody wood work course, was covered in a cloth, two plates and a single candle decorating the surface. You stared transfixed at the setup, your mouth falling open in shock.

And then Tom appeared.

Clutching the biggest bouquet of daisies you’d ever seen in your life.

“You like it?” he whispered “I know daisies are your favourite.”

“What…what is all this?” you breathed, still gobsmacked by the softly glowing room.

Tom smiled, moving closer to you and setting the flowers on the table. “A really over the top apology.”

“This is for me?”

“Obviously, dummy,” he laughed, flinching when you smacked his arm. “Hey! I spent money on these flowers, I’ll have you know!”

“And what a dreadful waste, Holland, don’t you care about our environment?” You were joking but your breath was still caught, your brain trying to play catch up as the scene played in front of you, like you were watching this all happen to someone else. Someone luckier.

“I care more about you,” he replied, and somehow he was even closer than before. “I care more about you than anything else in my life. And I couldn’t quite figure out how to explain that three months ago.”

“And you know now?”

He nodded, pulling you towards him. “I think I do, yes.”

“Then say it.”

His lips parted, his eyes caught on yours as he reached to cup your cheek. A waft of his aftershave made its way towards you, the mintiness of before replaced with the warm vanilla you remembered so well. The glasses were gone and he was wearing the burgundy suit you’d had too many dreams about to remember. 

But in that moment, none of that mattered. 

All you could think about in that moment was the way he was staring at you.

Like you were the most precious thing on Earth.

“Three months ago I told you how I wanted to spend forever with you, how you’re all I’ve thought about for years. How you consume every part of me, spend your days dancing in my mind and reminding me of everything we could have. But what I didn’t tell you was why.

“Because I didn’t know. I didn’t know why it is that I love you so much, and that’s what scared me – the fact that I could feel something so deeply for you and have no rational explanation for it. So I thought the logical thing was that the feelings weren’t real and they weren’t that powerful, that if I tried to move on then we’d eventually forget and nothing would be lost.

“Those months away from you were torture, not knowing how badly you were hurting and why you’d blocked my number. I didn’t realise how much of an ass I was until Harry flew out to America and practically beat down my door.”

“Harry went to America?” you interrupted him “when?”

Tom smiled, his thumb rubbing your cheek in slow circles. “That weekend you thought he had that photography competition. He flew out to kick my ass and ask what the hell happened.”

“I wondered how he knew so much,” you chuckled quietly “it was like he came back from that weekend and he knew exactly what to say.”

“Because that’s Harry, he always knows exactly what to do,” Tom shrugged.

“Tonight was his idea, wasn’t it?” you grinned, watching as he blushed fuchsia.

“Well, the idea was. But I take full credit for putting it together!”

You laughed at his face, the crinkles in his smile and the dimples in his cheeks so familiar you could have drawn them blindfolded. You reached up to trace them, still not quite believing this was real, when just two weeks ago you thought he’d left that laundry room and walked out of your life forever.

“Hey Tom?” you murmured, wrapping your fingers around his. “Two weeks ago when you came to see me…how did you get there?”

He frowned and looked at you like you’d gone insane. “Harry dropped me.”

“So he wasn’t cooking?”

“If Harry was cooking the fire brigade would’ve been called.”

You giggled, knowing it was true. He’d tried to cook pancakes for you last year and you’d had to throw out the pan because you couldn’t scrape it off.

“Why would you think he was?” Tom asked, smiling softly in the dim light.

“Well, it sounded like there were pans clanging in the background,” you said “I just figured he was making breakfast.”

“I told him to say that,” Tom admitted, his cheeks still red “I actually bought you a present back from Colorado but I broke it in the car.”

“You never were very careful, were you Tommy?” you smiled, reaching up instinctively to brush his curls behind his ears. When all your fingers found was stubble, your hand settled in the curve of his neck, cupping his cheek as you tried to find the words to explain what would happen next.

“All I know is that you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time,” he replied, not taking his eyes off you “and if getting you back took Harry lying about making breakfast? Then I’m not going to complain. I don’t want to waste another second that I could be spending on you.”

You laughed, nestling your head into the crook of his neck as he drew you closer. Vanilla overwhelmed your senses as you sank into his familiarity, overcome by the sweetness and homeliness. You’d had so many questions, and so little time to ask them, but after it all there was still just one that remained answered.

“Why me?” you asked, looking up at him through your lashes “why me when you could have literally anyone else?”

“I-” he stopped himself, stumbling over the knee-jerk reaction as he took a deep breath. “Because there’s never been anyone but you.”

“And this is real?” you whispered, feeling the unknown stretch in front of you as your heart skipped a beat. “Because if you say it is, that you want this, I can’t go back again. I’ll be jumping without a parachute.”

Tom smiled, tilting his head to the side. He caught your gaze, his hands wandering to your waist and pulling you closer whilst your heart beat faster than it ever had before. You held your breath as he leant forward, catching your lips with his.

The moment they touched was like he’d lit a bonfire inside you; your skin burned and your lungs filled with the smoke. You could hardly breathe, feeling your nerves spark alight and race with electricity, every touch bringing you closer to how you’d been three months ago. Memories of that night danced across your vision, playing like a record you’d longed to open – every kiss, every touch, every whisper on replay in front of you.

At last, he pulled away, taking the fire with him while electricity crackled in your veins.

“Then I guess, darling,” he whispered, hushed under his breath “I’ll simply have to catch you.”

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[ghostnebula]

You’re all just horn dogs aren’t you? Love that tbh <3

Part 2 of this

Richie’s by far the biggest Eddie’s ever taken, and he really doesn’t think he can handle it at first. Richie starts pressing inside and Eddie yanks hard enough to free one hand from where Richie’s still pinning his wrists together, catching him off guard (he’s intently focused on watching Eddie stretch around him, and how deliciously tight he feels). He tries to push Richie’s hips back, sharp little nails digging into his skin as he lets out a high keening sound and shakes his head, entirely unable to form words in the moment. ‘Too much,’ he wants to say, pressing back harder against Richie’s hips when he continues trying to slide forward. He can’t, but maybe Richie gets the message anyway, because he’s laughing and trailing wet kisses up the side of his throat as his hand closes around Eddie’s wrist again and slams it back onto the wall. “You can do it, kitten. I believe in you,” he taunts, sucking another hickey onto his throat. Fortunately, he doesn’t move for those few merciful seconds, and some of the pain abates, but then he’s inching forward again, and Eddie’s hands curl into fists, nails cutting crescents on his palms, because it’s too much.

By the time Richie’s all the way inside, he feels so full it hurts, and he’s crying again, tears caught in his eyelashes. He’s stretched up onto his tiptoes, most of his weight bearing down where he and Richie are joined together, and his legs are shaking. In fact, his whole fucking body is shaking. 

Richie slips out of him slowly, so he feels every inch of it, an uncomfortable friction and a sudden emptiness where he’s never even felt empty before. And then he’s pushing back in, much faster than his initial pace, and Eddie’s poor, straining legs just give out altogether as he’s filled abruptly, Richie’s cock just scraping by his prostate. It makes Richie sink deeper, somehow, when he goes boneless against him, and he lets out a sound that’s almost a scream.

“Oh, baby doll,” Richie breathes, free arm wrapping around his waist again to keep him upright. “You really are a slut for it, huh?”

Eddie can’t answer him, not properly, but he can moan loudly as Richie rocks up into him, his cheek pressed against the filthy tiles and his mouth hanging open. Richie nips at his jaw. “You gotta be quieter than that, baby. I know it’s good, but you don’t want to get caught, do you?” Does he? What would someone think, if they walked in here and saw him speared on Richie Tozier’s cock like this, red-faced and crying for it, completely gone from his own head and just floating off into space somewhere as Richie thrusts up against his prostate and punches too-loud noises out of him? He almost thinks he gets harder at the notion, if that’s even possible. 

Richie shushes him again, then he’s letting go of his wrists and telling him, “Keep those hands right there for me, alright? That’s a good boy.” His hand clamps over Eddie’s mouth, instead, and Eddie’s eyes roll. Richie’s hand covers the entire bottom half of his face, almost completely covering his nose, too, and making it difficult to breathe, but that’s just as well because he’s pretty sure he’s barely been breathing anyway. Richie seems to stop holding back altogether then, if he even was before, and thrusts into him at a pace bordering on brutal, until Eddie’s sure he’s quite literally bruising his insides. And Eddie tries -- tries -- to keep his hands where Richie wants them, but he’s gone so muscle-weak all over that he just can’t keep them up like that, and his arms slide slowly downwards until he’s clawing at the wall on either side of his chest, and then he’s got one latched onto Richie’s arm, the arm he’s using to keep Eddie quiet with a hand over his mouth, and Richie doesn’t reprimand him, but he does bite down particularly hard on his earlobes and aim a few sharp thrusts right into his prostate, which makes more tears flow out of Eddie’s eyes, and makes breathing that much harder. 

“I’m gonna come inside, baby doll, alright? Can I come inside you? Fill you up good?” he asks, and Eddie’s head is spinning as he chokes on a moan and tries to nod, tries to say please again, even as his whole body goes taut and he shakes apart on Richie’s cock, his own cock still trapped between his stomach and the cold tiles Richie is pinning him against. The hand that isn’t clawing into Richie’s forearm reaches back to tangle in Richie’s hair, twist and pull while Eddie lets out a muffled cry that might have been his name. The warmth of his come coats his stomach and begins dripping down towards his thighs after a moment. And then Richie’s teeth are sinking into the sensitive skin on the back of his neck and he’s snapping his hips forward, the arm around his waist holding so tight it’s painful. There’s a burst of heat deep inside him and Richie’s tense muscles start to go lax as he gives a couple more stuttering thrusts to ride out his orgasm and to force his come deeper.

Eddie thinks he’s been disconnected entirely from his own brain at this point, especially when Richie presses a kiss to his cheek gently enough to contradict the entire last ten or so minutes of his life. Richie’s probably going to leave, now, and Eddie’s going to have to clean up and deal with the aftermath of whatever the fuck just happened, which isn’t anything new, really. He does get around about as much as the rumours say, after all. 

Except Richie just... doesn’t. He peels Eddie off the wall so that he’s leaning back against him, and smooths the hair out of his face as he guides him back under the water flowing from the shower head. “You alright?” he asks, as he picks up the soap and cloth Eddie was using to clean himself, with the hand that isn’t still supporting him. Eddie nods a bit dumbly, still not entirely back to reality. “Do you need to sit, or can you stand?” He doesn’t really have an answer to that (as long as Richie holds him he thinks he’s alright with standing, maybe, but his tongue feels too heavy in his mouth for him to actually form the words) so he just shrugs. Richie starts wiping him down, starting with his neck, shoulders, and chest, then working his way down to the mess on his stomach, then dipping between his thighs to clean up the come that’s leaked out of him. 

“I’m going to leave the rest, okay? Can you keep it inside you? Just as a token of my appreciation.” And Richie winks at him, grinning crookedly, and what the fuck. What the fuck. Did this doofus-ass man seriously just fuck Eddie so good he’s pretty sure it was transcendental? Why is he so attractive even though he’s obviously such a huge dork? Where the hell did this guy go just now?

Seriously, what the fuck?

Eddie’s just staring, but he eventually finds it in himself to nod, and then Richie’s pressing an eager kiss to his forehead and taking his wrists in his hands to examine them, like he’s checking to see if he caused any real damage, and Eddie wouldn’t even know because he doesn’t feel anything except lightheaded and out of his body right now (and satisfied; a bone-deep, comfortably warm feeling). 

He doesn’t even stop there, either. He gets Eddie cleaned up, helps him dry off and dress and pack up his toiletry bag, and then fucking offers to walk him to his dorm, and Eddie’s more confused than he’s ever been in his life, but at least he can talk again now, enough to tell him, “No, that’s okay, I... I can get there on my own.”

“If you’re sure.” Richie’s still dressing, his damp hair sending rivulets of water running down his bare chest, and Eddie cannot, frankly, believe anything that just happened actually happened, but he knows it did because he can feel the load Richie left in him trying desperately to drip down his thigh, losing a battle with gravity.

“I’m sure,” he says, gathering his belongings up in his arms and turning to flee. He pauses long enough to say, “Uh... thank you,” though he isn’t sure for what, exactly, he’s grateful. 

“Anytime, kitten,” Richie calls after him with a lopsided smile and a wink that’s got his heart racing, and Eddie finds himself immediately wishing Richie would call him back over for a second go, but he’s pretty sure he’s not going to be able to function properly for at least another couple hours, and he desperately needs to sleep off... all of that.

But he can’t say that if Richie tried that shit again, he’d put up much of a fight, except to get him to be mean to him. Just for fun.

#reddie #inappropriate #minors dni #cw unsafe sex #d/s #ask #aftercare #because richie is an asshole but he's not an 'asshole' asshole #ya feel? #water polo au

[captainsjack]

There needs to be more Shus h/c: I've been imaging lately Shawn getting into a massive fight with Henry, the kind were his Dad is really out of line and he can't joke his way through it bc he's been hit where it HURTS. Gus is there naturally, and Shus is married in the scenario bc I say so. They have to pull over on the way home bc Shawn actually breaks down despite his best efforts not to. Gus is a good protective husband and does his best to calm him down, but Shawn is QUIET for days after. p1

p2. Henry comes over to apologize and Gus opens the door, seriously considers punching him face, but ultimately lets him in. Henry and Shawn make up as much as they ever do, but Gus refuses to talk to him for months bc he's still furious at him for hurting Shawn that much. Would love to hear you elaborate on this with your own hc and thoughts <3

-

ok the fact that i’ve written something very similar to this (well at least thought about it) ?? buddy we’re just on the same wavelength here !!

but honestly ?? just what you said is perfect, i don’t even know what to add !!

to be fair, i am a bit sympathetic to henry, so i’m not quite sure exactly what he would say that’s so out of line, but i do like the concept.

i’d definitely say this is within the first season. like shawn’s trying his best to make an effort with his dad, despite everything that’s happened. and it’s mostly because he feels a bit guilty about not inviting henry to the wedding. like shawn and gus got married a bit over a year before s1, and so henry hadn’t moved back yet, and even if he had been in santa barbara at the time, shawn was still pretty sure he wouldn’t have invited him anyways (gus is completely on shawns side and actually hasn’t even spoken to henry since high school, but i digress, that’s a different plot).

anyways, when shawn saw henry for the first time in idk how long, neither of them really mentioned the whole Wedding Ring Thing until henry said something during the dog house scene and they awkwardly talked about it (again, a concept for a different post).

so they both had a bit more sympathy for how their relationship has gone wrong, and both were trying their best to make things better even though it was hard (because missing your sons wedding is a real blow no matter how much you know you’ve fucked up in the past). and so things sort of have changed for the better at least a little bit and shawn thinks that, maybe, just maybe, he can forgive his dad just a bit and things can be civil.

and so when shawn and gus are at henry’s (idk what for) and henry says something, it hits shawn a hell of a lot harder than it would’ve in the past. because he wasn’t expecting it (well, at least not as much). he’d thought they were at least ok for now.

and idk what henry says, but it’s clear to shawn that whatever niceties had been in place the last couple of months had just been a figment of shawn’s imagination. of him trying to cling to a shred of a normal relationship with his father.

it wasn’t something shawn could just laugh off or roll his eyes and make a joke. it stings. a lot. and shawn kind of just flinches and he tries to be subtle about it, but he can’t hide the hurt that flashes across his face.

gus tries to defend shawn right away, once henry says the thing. his body is filled with an amount of hatred he hasn’t felt since he had found out shawn had left town and had known it was all henry’s fault. everything in his body goes tense and he’s unconsciously angling his body in front of shawn, harsh words flying out of his mouth unstoppable.

but shawn kind of just huffs out a laugh and shakes his head. he puts his hands up in a “whatever” gesture, body already turning to the door. “forget it man, let’s just go” he says to gus, and he doesn’t wait for a response before he’s already out the door and halfway to the car.

gus just stands there, watching the door swing shut, before he glares at henry one last time and follows shawn. he makes sure to slam the door extra hard.

shawn’s leaning against the passenger door, his face expressionless, and gus knows shawn well enough to know that there’s nothing he can say to make things right. so gus just carefully looks at him, and shawn’s still staring at the ground, and he unlocks the car and they start driving.

the silence that fills the car is heavy, and it makes gus feel like he can’t breathe. he tries to focus on the road, hands gripping the steering wheel so hard it hurts, but he can’t help but keep glancing over at shawn.

shawn’s resting his head against the window, and his face looks dull and exhausted, and every inch of his body feels like lead. he’s so fucking tired of everything, and no matter how much he tries to stop the dam from breaking, he can’t. it takes too much energy to force everything down, and right here, right now, it’s just him and gus and the dark night road, and so he gives up. the ice around his heart breaks - fully breaks - and for the first time in 10 years, he really truly accepts the fact that his father has always, and will always, hate him.

the sobs lurch out of his chest with an amount of force he hasn’t experienced before, and before he can draw in another shaky breath, the car stops and gus’s arms are around him. and he can’t stop no matter how much he tries, and his chest hurts, and he can’t fucking breathe. he clings onto gus’s shirt so hard his nails dig into his palms through the material.

gus just sits there, half in his seat and half on the console separating him and shawn, and he’s holding shawn to his chest like his life depends on it. he murmurs “it’s okay, you’re okay” and “i’ve got you, i’m right here” and “it’s not your fault, it’s never been your fault” over and over again, in the hopes that something, some string of words, will bring any sort of comfort to his husband.

he doesn’t know how long shawn cries, but it’s long enough that his back starts to hurt and he has to reach over and turn off the car so they don’t waste the battery. shawn’s breaths are still shallow and shaky, but his grip on gus has loosened and gus’s shirt has begun to dry.

“what do you need?” gus asks softly, face pressed into shawn’s hair.

“nothing, just you.” and he can’t get out any more words than that, but he doesn’t really need to. because gus is the only thing he has ever, and will ever, need, especially now.

“okay,” gus whispers, and he holds shawn tighter.

they sit like that, squished in the blueberry on the side of the road, car barely parked, until the stars and moon brighten, the streets grow quiet with the night, and shawns heartbeat slows and his breaths come out more even.

in the following days, gus can count on his two hands the number of words shawn has spoken. gus does the talking for the both of them, and, thankfully, shawn’s at least okay enough to laugh at a few of his jokes. but it’s not the sound gus has grown accustomed to - it’s forced, a bit hollow, and he knows in the bottom of his heart there’s something missing. some part of shawn has broken and he doesn’t know if it can be fixed.

he takes off a few days from work, and they spend their days watching movies, cartoons, cuddling, and playing games (half the words on gus’s metaphorical hands are “uno”). shawn doesn’t mention psych or his dad.

neither does gus. he doesn’t know what to say. what is there to say? “are you okay?” that’s too broad of a question and gus knows shawn isn’t okay. “do you want to talk about it?” gus knows shawn will just shrug and say there’s nothing to talk about.

when shawn’s ready, he’ll bring it up, and gus knows that. he also knows that the only way shawn will be able to move on from this, is if he talks to henry. gus knows there’s not much damage control he can do unless henry is there, present in the conversation.

that’s the only reason why gus doesn’t just punch him in the face and slam the door when one sunday morning, he finds henry on the other side of the dark oak doorway.

shawn is in the shower and gus can hear the water turn off as he meets henry’s eyes with a tired glare, and so gus steps out into the hallway with him and closes the door.

“what?” he asks stiffly. and all of a sudden he’s 18 again, in front of the man who he’s just told he hated.

“can i talk to him?” henry quirks an eyebrow up, shifting in anticipation of entering their apartment.

gus defensively steps backward, hand blocking the doorknob. “why?” he asks.

henry sighs. “gus...”

gus’s lips are pressed in a tight line and he doesn’t respond.

henry sighs again. “look, i- i was wrong, okay? can you just let me apologize to him?”

“what, so you can say you’re sorry and then just do it again two days from now? no thanks,” he snaps.

henry frowns and opens his mouth to respond, but gus beats him to it.

“no, look. i know how this works okay? you’re an ass, shawn’s upset, you barely apologize, and shawn works like hell to find some ounce of forgiveness so he doesn’t have to deal with this feeling anymore. and then it happens again. and again. and i’m not letting you do it anymore.”

henry’s pretty shocked, so all he can say is gus’s name again.

gus shakes his head, and stabs a finger in henry’s direction. “no. you will walk in there, apologize, and mean it.” every word is stiff, harsh, and direct. “and then you will never talk to him again.”

henry blinks.

“not until you make an appointment with a therapist. and even then, you will only talk to shawn if he wants you to.”

henry’s still silent.

“this, all of this,” gus waves his hand around them, “is on you. it’s your fault, and it’s up to you to fix. shawn does not owe you anything.” gus pauses. “are we clear?”

henry’s never been met with this much authority before and he’s also pretty shook that he may never be able to see his son again (because he knows gus and he knows he’s dead set on these rules - this boy is the sweetest person henry’s ever met, but he can ice someone if he really means it. (i mean, he and gus lived in the same city for years after high school and gus did not see or speak to him once, and santa barbara’s not that big)).

and so henry kind of just blinks and says “okay.”

and gus’s shoulders relax just a fraction of an inch and he nods his head curtly. “wait here.”

when gus opens the door, it’s his intention to go find shawn and explain what’s going on, but instead, he finds shawn in the hallway, a shocked expression on his face, clearly having heard everything.

shawn kind of just blinks at him, and gus sighs and gently grabs his arm, leading him to the bedroom. shawn gives him a questioning look as gus shuts the door, and gus frowns and says, “he doesn’t get to hear all this.” (maybe it didn’t make a lot of sense, but, gus was mad, and he didn’t think henry deserved any more information in regards to anything shawn was thinking or feeling, so he didn’t want him to overhear their conversation).

gus asks shawn how much he heard, and shawn says everything. gus makes it clear that in no way is shawn obligated to hear henry out or accept his apology. but gus also makes it clear that shawn needs to do something about all of this (he also suggest therapy to him too - the irony that both spencer men are in desperate need of therapy and that madeline was a therapist, is not lost on him). he tells him that he knows shawn isn’t okay and shawn agrees.

for the first time, he actually admits that things with his dad can’t be ignored and that he needs help. because both gus and shawn don’t want shawn to go on like this.

and so after they talk, gus let’s henry in and henry apologizes. shawn’s still quiet and obviously awkward and uncomfortable (it’s not often he hears henry admit that he’s wrong), but he mutters “thanks” and before henry can try to awkwardly hug him, gus pushes him out and locks the door.

he pulls shawn to his chest and shawn melts into him, finding comfort in the only person that has ever mattered to him. shawn kisses gus’s collarbone softly, head resting in the crook of his neck, and he says quietly, “i love you.”

gus squeezes his husband tighter, tells him he loves him too, and then kisses him softly.

gus makes them waffles, makes shawn an appointment with a therapist, and they resume their star wars marathon.

for the first time in four days, shawn makes a joke. and when he joins gus’s laughter, it’s the same sound gus had memorized 25 years ago. it’s bright, happy, and bubbly, and it fills gus’s chest with unwavering love, but also a hope he’d thought he’d lost before.

things were going to be okay - gus was sure of it.

-

askjdhfk i was NOT expecting to write this much but apparently i have Thoughts about this.

anyways, i absolutely love this concept and i love you for sending this.

(also “shus is married because i said so” bABE IF THATS NOT ME EVERYDAY)

#shus #shawngus #shawn spencer #burton gus guster #burton guster #henry spencer #psych #headcannons #my writing #anon #answered #shawn x gus #shawn/gus

[iamtheempress]

A Vegeta x OC Fanfiction (part 4) ¤ ¤ ¤

Calamatta managed to roll out of bed and redress herself. Pulling on the suit and grabbing a spare to bring with her on her trip to To-Rot. Leaving her room she met with Nappa. "There she is!" He chugged a caffeinated hot beverage down like it was nothing, Raditz stood beside him counting his wad of cash and stuffing it in his armor. 

"Pay looks nice." She yawns and stretches making her cute tail curl and back arch abit. "37,000. Not bad but could be better. Vegeta got the most of it." Nappa nods and pushes the yawning female saiyan a mug of the hot beverage. "Thanks...gonna need it." "Damn right you are! Vegeta is still sleeping. Weird he said he was gonna get up before us.. eh whatever. Lets get your pod and stuff ready then well worry bout him." Nappa said as Calamatta shined off the mug and pushed it away.

Upon going to the pod, her coordinates were set and everything was packed into there Raditz, who was standing besides her piped up, leaning against the pod with his massive arms crossed. "Dont take this the wrong way Calamatta but… why are you so…" he moves his hands in an hour glass shape and tilts his head. Calamatta went wide eyed and fixed her suit where her ass is. 

"If thats how you flirt with women that was a strike out, good lord! And I have know idea why! Its just my body shape idiot…" she comments hearing Nappa wheeze as he fixes some wires within the pod, followed by him clanging his head leaving. "Im not! I d-dont flirt its just that… well… shes got… n-nice legs and … a great fa-" Calamatta thwipped her tail like a nervous cat. The bay door slid open and Raditz's poor excuse for flirtation was stopped DEAD in its tracks. "Stop harassing Calamatta on her body type Raditz, Saiyan women were given bodys to kill, shes built like a fine tuned weapon whether you see it or not." Vegeta points up at Raditz who scowled with a full face of blush. "Oh so you look at her too Vegeta?" Calamatta slaps her forehead and raises her voice flicking Raditz in the forehead for his really stupid comment. "Can yall stop talking about me like im not fuckin here??" She snapped annoyed and heard Nappa close up the oxygen port.

 "Ready boss?" She asked Vegeta, who nodded and got into his respective pod and punched in the coordinates manually. "Later guys!" She got in and Raditz and Nappa left the pod evac room. 

Vegeta's voice sparked to life on her scouter. "Theres a hidden base by the most recent Frieza Force there.. we should make it there in an hour so that will be our base of operation. No breaches from outside forces." She nods and for the 2nd time in her life the pod flew straight out of the mothership into the cold vacuum of space. 

She crossed her arms and watched Vegetas whiz right past her hurtling with effort and ease to the planet that only seemed to become larger.. if that wasnt already more possible.

 She marveled at it… it was amazing. It was a shame she was there for a job to do. 

It was under 50 minutes where there pods broke entry to the planets atmosphere, careening and becoming hot to the touch, cold metal heating up faster, and faster becoming scorching red hot. Then the mountain range came into view, with the ship in sight the two pods crashed right into a large cave system. 

Welding their pods into the hard rock walls to jut through with 0 damage just enough room for the pods to open on the opposite side of the mountain. Calamatta and Vegeta pushed the button to open the pod bay doors, they took one solid whif of the atmosphere and Cala sighed. "To-Rot huh.. so wheres the base ship?" Cala steps her boots onto the alien planets surface. "5 miles that way. Stay within the tree line, follow my lead." The prince cracks his neck and blasts away leaving a trail of dust and debris behind him.

 "Say no more.." she stated following close behind Vegeta. Vegetas eyes were trained ahead. Toa ship that was covered in dirt and over growth. He tapped his scouter to be sure. "Perfect.. no signs of power levels. Excellent!" He smirked, the prince and Calamatta landed outside of the ship. Vegeta punched in a code and they were both let in. "Good.. now.. lets have a look around. The recent failed mission logs should have data from their logs. Have a look around for food and whatever else when i find the log ill call for you"  Vegeta announced as the hangar door shut behind them locking followed by a robotic voice. 

'Systems Armed'

Calamatta turned on her heels and scampered to the back of the ship. Vegeta watched the eager Saiyan trot away, with a sigh and a roll of his eye he headed towards the command deck of the ship. 

Collected with dust and opened up first aid kits, Vegeta scanned the surrounding area cautiously. 3 lone scouters covered in blood sat on the front of the deck. An ominous reminder of the past couple of grunts who died here. 

He snagged the three up and turned to call for Calamatta "Found them! Get up here!"

Calamatta dropped this box of rations she found and walked quickly to the front to see him plugging in the scouters logs. An unfamiliar voice chimed to life. 

"F-Force log number 1, we have arrived at To-Rot, this area is to be our base of operation since the inhabitants cannot scale plateaus or fly. We will commence terraformation and return in a week." Vegeta clicked the 2nd video, a bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. 

"F-Force Log number 2… uhm.. Que, Roa, and Gil went missing yesterday. We have been here for 3 days now and i have seen hide nor tail of them... ill send a distress warning to the mother ship but i will go and find my crew." 

He pressed the last one and the room suddenly became much heavier. "F-Force number 3… i found my crew.. w-whats left of them…" he held up baren bones and armor. "This planets fucked up… if you know whats good for you send the Saiyans.. theyll do a better job.. i couldnt save my crew! This is Nutte signing off… i'm going to look for Roa.”

"Thats… not good.." Vegeta groaned and plugged in the next scouter, A new crew came up on the screen, a crew of ten. The crew was looking around, brows raised and sweat on their brow. “So we are the 4th crew to come to this planet alone, from what were aware these uh… the main population of this race is highly hostile and we need to utilize lethal force...Well update as we go along.” After that log there was no update, no commanders log. He stepped away and swiped a hand through his hair. “Last log…”  He clicked on it which was 7 full days ago. 

A Log List of all the times this one computer has been logged into popped up. It was far more then 4.

10 Crew lists came through. Crews of upwards of 5 being the smallest to 30 being the most. All vanished within days of arrival. All of them mentioning, to send someone stronger, someone more capable. The Saiyans, they begged for the Saiyans help and they were all sent on suicide missions back to back to back to back.

Vegeta slammed his hands down on the console making it glitch the screen. “Of course theyd call for us…dammit!” He barked and kept his back turned away from her. “So they sent them on suicide missions because… they didn’t want to send us?” She questioned, furrowing her brows trying to wrap her head around the situation. “Frieza didnt want to send me and the other two… He sent US on a suicide mission.” Vegeta turned quickly and stared daggers into Calamatta, the overwhelming feeling of concern rain heavy within her head, and sat uncomfortably in her stomach like something she shouldnt have eaten.

Vegeta crossed the room and pointed his finger right into her chest a deep growl emanating from behind his bared teeth. “He went and sent ME with YOU so we can both perish!” “Hey hey what the hell! Calm down abit, well make it out of here ill follow orders.” Vegeta’s vein popped out on his forehead, eyes narrowed furious.

 “Thats not my point. Your optimism is the closest thing we have to any cocky behavior! It doesnt surprise me why Frieza sent me to a month long mission..” She put up her hands and once again her heart sunk; she went wide eyed staring into the princes heartlessly infuriated black eyes.

Friezas words rattled in her skull ‘your life is as forfeit to me as it is Vegeta…’

“I dont get why he would send both of us to die.” He turned back around and walked to a table with a map on it. “You stood at Frieza’s side for as long as you have been able to speak, you wanted freedom from him, now you might as well see the harsh reality, he never had any good intentions for you Calamatta. He wants you dead, so much so hell send the both of us to a lethal planet to terraform on our own…” He said flatly, Calamatta remained silent her tail loosely hanging from her waist. Her dignity and pride feeling like it was oozing out of her very pores. “Now get over here and lets get an idea of the land… this moon has two moons and we have to plan accordingly.” The map is very detailed of the entirety of the planet from the red deserts to the lush green forests and then to the grayed out city scapes. All of them giant hot beds of activity, teaming with life as they knew it. 

His orders were direct and bland. Calamatta dragged her feet, depressed. Feeling less and less like a Saiyan by the moment, it wasnt so much Vegeta.. it was how quickly she was starting to realize Frieza was right, and goddamn did it grate her nerves to know that... The idea of freedom is going to be lightyears more heavier then she could imagine, shes not even close and this is what she has to deal with. Calamatta tightened her tail back up around her waist and listened to her Princes expertise plan of attack.

¤ ¤ ¤

Tags:  @memevember @dragonblobz @gonuclear @msgreenverse @fallen--lilith ​ @jimbobslurpnchug @dragonballcollector @nikabriefs @lilhemmo @supremeleadershitlord @thotful-writing ​ @chickiedinner @anti-jaina @lizardhipsdontlie @dragonball-hcs-or-sum-shit ​ @solidsock​

#A Planet To Conquer Fic #Vegeta x oc #Calamatta~ #Raditz #Nappa #DBZ Fanfiction #Slow Burn #here we go again

[thecleverdame]

Gods of Twilight - 16

Alpha!Werewolf!Sam x Human!Reader

Master List (posting schedule is there as well)

Summary: You marry Sam, The King of Lebanon, as part of an alliance between two lands. You soon discover that nothing is as it appears and that your husband is hiding a secret that may end your relationship before it can begin.

Warnings: smut, dub-con, canon-level violence, domestic discipline, spanking.  This chapter does contain some non-con elements.

Beta:  @ilikaicalie​

*This story is complete. All 27 chapters are available on Patreon. To get access to this and many other stories, subscribe for a pledge of 2.50 per month. CLICK HERE

-

Thump

Thump

Thump

It’s rapping at the chamber door that finally rouses Sam. He can hardly open his eyes. There is only exhaustion, his arms and legs are heavy as tree trunks, weighted down, holding him in place. He drifts on the edge of sleep for a long time, finding his breath, then the energy to move.

The hazy cloud of his rut is lifting. It dawns on him his cycle must have passed because he feels calm, calm and satisfied. He shifts backward, knocking into you and smiles. The very notion of you makes him happy. He’s excited to see you and speak to you again for the first time in what feels like days.

But when he rolls over his heart stops cold.

Blood. There’s blood everywhere.

It’s staining the bed and covering your naked body. It’s dried between your thighs and a crimson wash over your chest, still sticky and stiff from the bite marks at your neck.

He bit you.

He must have tried to claim you. His lust filled brain wasn’t able to tell the difference between wolf and human. And the thought of the numerous other terrors he must have inflicted is nearly too much fathom.

Sam is frozen in horror at the gory sight of you lying there utterly lifeless. Your eyes are open, dead, staring off into some unknown realm.

He’s killed you.

“No, no, please.” The panic sets in as he reaches out, shaking your shoulder. Your limp body is cold in his hands and tears begin to fall as the full scope of what’s happened descends on him. “What have I done?”

Thump

Thump

Thump

That same knock at the door that woke him spurs him into action as he jumps off the bed. He yanks the doors open to be met with Philip and Dean in the midst of some sort of scuffle but stop dead in their tracks at the sight of him. He’s stark naked, but he’s also covered in blood.

“I-I,” Sam stutters, looking at Dean in shock.

Dean is stunned, but only for a moment, before shoving Sam aside to look into the room. He sees you and turns to Philip as the color drains from his face.

“Go get the midwife. Do it fast and keep it quiet.” When Philip hesitates Dean pushes him, shoves the knight hard with both hands. “Go, now!”

Once Philip is gone, Dean manhandles a limp Sam inside the room. He hands him a shirt and trousers, then a cloth to wipe the gore from his face.

Sam is staring at you as if he’s in a trance.

“I killed her,” Sam murmurs. He looks wild and terrified, both dangerous emotions to wear for a king.

“Stop looking at her body.” Dean snaps his fingers in front of Sam’s face a half dozen times before his brother finally looks away.

“What’s happened?” The midwife scurries into the room, out of breath and clutching her skirts. She looks at Sam, Dean and then sees you on the bed. “My Lord in heaven,” she breathes, swallowing any further reaction. Moving beside you she reaches out to feel for a pulse at your wrist.

Clutched in your small fist is a clump of Sam’s hair. He wants to vomit at the sight of it. You must have tried to fight him off. You were scared and desperate and unable to stop him.

Your personal maid arrives at a run, skidding into the room.  “What have you done?” Golda screams, her eyes wide in utter horror.

“I’ve killed her,” Sam whispers again, looking at Dean in desperation. Those are the only words he’s now able to utter.

Dean closes his eyes, swallowing his own feelings. He hated you, but seeing Sam suffer like this guts him like a freshly caught fish.

The midwife lifts her skirts, kneeing her way onto the bed. She hesitates at the blood but only for a moment before pressing her ear to your chest.

“Silence!” she hisses, lifting one hand in the air and taking command of the entire room. The seconds tick away, the only sound Golda’s muted sobs.

“Her heart still beats but she is very near death,” the midwife announces, and Sam whimpers in surprise. Relief and disbelief, flooding into his veins. He steps forward, afraid to come too close. He’s done enough damage.

“It’s too difficult to see her wounds. Golda, have the maids bring a bath, hurry now. There’s no time to waste. We must clean her off. Philip, go into the village and find the old doctor James.”

“He’s a drunk,” Dean gulps, hardly able to look at the sight of you.

“Then make sure you offer him a drink to steady his hands. Her wounds need to be sewn shut before she bleeds to death and there’s not much time left.”

“Can’t you do it?” Dean counters, hesitant to involve another person, a drunk gossip monger no less.

She glares at him, pure hostility seeping from every pore. “I can handle the damage between her legs, but she’s still bleeding from her neck. There’s deep damage that I’m not familiar with. We need more than one healer to save her life. Go now!”

--

“Calm down,” Dean hisses, pulling Sam out of the hall and into the ornate reading room along the east wall of the castle. “Wait here,” he instructs the knights, closing the doors behind him.

“You were right!” Sam is quaking, vibrating with anger and despair. His face is red as a beet and his eyes are swimming with burgeoning tears. “What have I done?!”

“Stop it!” Dean grabs Sam by his shirt, shaking him as a threat of what’s to come if he doesn’t regain control. “You’re a king, get yourself under control and do it now. You can fall apart behind closed doors but not outside of them.”

“I couldn’t care less about what they think-”

“Well, you better, Sam. It’s one thing if they think you’re some kind of brutal ruler with a fast temper. But you can not keep going on and on about how you don’t know what happened. Men don’t respect someone who thinks themselves a lunatic.”

Dean is right. Despite the tempest raging inside him, he must compose himself. This world is one of strength and weakness and he cannot take the chance that his affection for you, and regret for what he’s done, will be perceived as a vulnerability.

The image if you laying there covered in blood is all he can see. He closes his eyes tight, slapping his cheeks hard to try and knock the memory loose.

“I’ve never been that out of control, Dean. Never. Not even in my worst rut have I hurt someone this badly….or tried to claim them.” The anger drains out of him as he looks to his brother for some kind of validation. “I swore I would not hurt her.”

“We don’t know what happened. But what the two of you have been playing at is dangerous. I tried to warn you both. You want her in a way that can never be. And she’s willing to let you try, whatever her motivation. The details don’t matter right now.”

“I should go to her. Shouldn’t I?” Sam asks, wiping a tear from his cheek. “Or not, because I’m the animal that hurt her so badly.”

“You can do whatever you like as long as you hold yourself together,” Dean warns, pointing a finger. “I’ll go check on her. You do whatever you need to, in here. Scream, cry, break the table for all I care. But when you’re done, you’re the king again. Understood?”

“Yes,” Sam nods, clenching his fist.

Six Hours Later

Sam wanted to wait in the room, but the midwife suggested that he remain outside. She reasoned that pressures of having the king watch them might impact the quality of their work. But he suspects it’s just as much to do with her disdain for him. He’s hurt you, practically torn you apart. Even if she knew what he was she would hate him all the same.

Old doctor James emerges from the room first. He’s a frail, elderly man, hunched over as he shuffles over the stone. He glances up at Sam, bowing his head and wordlessly scurrying away.

The midwife appears moments later, poking her head out the door. “You should come in now, my king.” She stops Dean with her hand on his chest. “Not you, this isn’t the place for you now.”

Before Dean can respond she slams the door shut and slides the lock secure.

The sun has already set, and the fire is the only light in the room. You’re illuminated by a gentle, golden glow, laying perfectly posed on the bed. Any trace of earlier events has been stripped away. The bed is neat and you’re tucked under a blanket, your hands folded together laying on your belly.

At your neck is a thick, white bandage. Little drops of blood have soaked through, but if one didn’t know the damage they covered, it would be hard to imagine what was even wrong.

“Will she live?” Sam asks quietly, taking a cautious step closer. “She looks…”

“We don’t know. There are no guarantees.” Martha reaches down to smooth your hair back. “If she wakes up, it will be a miracle. It’s the infection we’ll have to deal with. Both the bites at her neck and the damage between her legs were significant. But if she didn’t lose too much blood, and she can heal without complication, she’ll live.”

Sam looks away, his breath unsteady as his mind imagines what he must have done. How hard he must have fucked you and the pain you endured as a result.

“I didn’t mean to do this,” he confesses quietly. Dean was right, he needs to protect his reputation, but Martha is an exception. She kept his mother’s secrets. And he knows she’ll keep his.

“I know,” she nods, patting the back of your hand. “And she knew what was coming. She didn’t share the details with me, and I don’t pretend to understand, but she prepared the best she could.”

“I asked her to trust me,” Sam explains, self-hatred coursing through him.

“And then you hurt her,” Martha finishes, moving back and motioning for him to join you. “That is a story that’s been played out between husbands and wives since the beginning of time.”

Sam shakes his head vehemently, refusing to get closer. “After what I did….I should leave.”

“No,” she walks to Sam, grasping his arm with a tight grip. It reminds of the way his mother would grab him when he was a disobedient child. “You asked her to trust you. And now she needs you more than ever. She cares for you, I’ve watched her affections strengthen and grow for over time. If she wakes up, yours will be the face she’ll want to see. Stay with her.”

Two Days Later

“Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother. There was nothing she would not have given to the child.  Her grandmother gave her a little cap of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else. So she was always called little red-cap.” Sam pauses, looking from the leather bound book to your beautiful, calm face. The color has come back, for nearly two days you looked like a dead body lying in his bed, but the pink crept back into your cheeks just this morning. He studies you for a moment longer and continues. “One day her mother said to her, come, little red-cap, here is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine. Take them to your grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good. Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk nicely and quietly and do not run off the path, or you may fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will get nothing.  And when you go into her room, don't forget to say, good-morning, and don't peep into every corner before you do it.”

Sam continues to read. This morning he made it through both Hansel and Gretel, and The Frog King. Now he’s moved on to a classic he knows to be a favorite, Little Red-Cap.

He reads because Martha insists that even in sleep you can hear and you must be bored just lying in bed all day. In reality, he thinks it’s probably her giving him a task to occupy his time more than for your benefit, but he’ll take what he can get.

It’s just as the wolf is making his first appearance in the story that you cough. Sam stops cold, watching with bated breath as you shift again, whimpering gently and then opening your eyes.

You look around the room before finding Sam sitting beside you. A smile creeps across your face, sending guilt heavy into his stomach.

“H-hello,” you sputter, only to lose the word in a fit of choking coughs. He quickly finds your water, helping you to drink before settling you back onto the pillow. “I’ve been dreaming,” you grin sleepily. “Fairy tales.”

“Perhaps because I’ve been reading them to you in your sleep,” he responds, forcing a strained smile.

You try to sit up, only to yelp in pain and fall back onto the pillow. Looking to Sam in confusion you raise a hand to your neck, finding the bandage. Then your attention is drawn to the pain at your sex as you suck in a sharp breath.

He wants to run, not only from the impending confession but all the pain he’s caused you. He wishes he were a lesser man and he could hide from you, and what you’ll think of him, once you realize what he’s done.

“What happened?” you ask, softly and full of genuine bewilderment.

“I-” he starts, voice wavering. After clearing his throat, he starts again. “Things didn’t go as planned. I’ve hurt you quite badly.”

This takes a moment to sink in as you shift again taking stock of all the aches and pains. “What is this?” You pat at your neck.

“I bit you. Several times,” he forces out, waiting for you to realize the true horror of it.

“Why?” you ask.

“I don’t remember it. I suppose I was spurred on by the urge to claim you. If you’d been an Omega, been like me, the bite would have healed. But you’re not and I nearly killed you. In fact, there’s no guarantee I haven’t killed you. You’re still in the early stages of healing.”

“I’m alive now,” you state simply, swallowing hard. “Sam, if you bit me does that mean I’m going to turn into a wolf like you?”

“No,” he assures you with a defeated smile. “I wasn’t a wolf when I bit you, I was just a man.”

“I see,” you’re thinking, still a bit disoriented. “And what happened here?”

You nod, indicating the pain between your legs and his eyes flutter shut. “You tore. I didn’t stop when I should have. I’m so sorry, I must have lost control.”

You sigh, face heavy with despair as the depth of the situation settles in.

“Oh,” is all you say, tears welling up and spilling down the corners of your face.

“I understand if you can’t forgive me,” he explains, reaching out to take your hand but stops himself. It’s a reflex that seems to upset you even more.

“I know you would never choose to hurt me, Sam.” Looking away from him more tears fall. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

“Please, don’t cry. I’ve no right to ask you that, but it breaks my heart all the more. Tell me what I can do to make this right?”

“There’s nothing that can be done,” you shrug, reaching back to find his hand. Your sweat-sticky little fingers curl around his fist, squeezing tightly. “We’re not meant for one another. Not in the way we’d both like. So this is just...how things will be.”

#alpha!sam winchester #sam winchester fanfiction #sam winchester x reader #sam winchester smut

[brokenjardaantech]

Blue-tinted Red Walls (Chapter 7: Power Unleashed)

my entry for the @dbhau-bigbang. also part of the groom lake aftermath series.

summary:

In the past, Fadia was reborn.

In the present, Connor and Hank pays Ryder a visit.

In the past, Fadia went on a killing spree.

also on ao3

content warning for robogore in the final section of this chapter

---

Before

Fadia had debated if she should go to the funeral or not. She hadn’t talked to her mother for years before she died, not even after she had co-founded CyberLife with her father, and even with him, their relationship was more professional than anything else - not that Alec never tried to improve it. But as much as she had rejected anything familial with her parents, respect still had to be paid to the scientist who started… well, literally everything, from her powers (biotics, a voice that sounded like Scott corrected her) to American androids to what she was planning to do -

And to the sickness that took her life at last.

‘Why are you here?’ was how her father greeted her. So be it.

‘Unlike you, Mama didn’t ruin everyone’s lives for one person,’ she fixed a glare and was very glad that she towered over him now. ‘I come to pay my respects. Then I’ll go.’

‘Where’s Scott?’

‘None of your business, Baba.’

‘Not even saying goodbye to his mother, huh?’ Alec said dismissively, and Fadia’s blood boiled, her heart speeding up and her face burning. ‘Should’ve known that.’

Seeing that there was no one else in the immediate vicinity, she grabbed him by his collar and slammed him onto a wall. ‘You damned well know why he can’t be here,’ she gritted. ‘Your presence brings him so much pain that he is denied a chance to properly bid his mother farewell!’

A prick. Her vision swam. Her head was heavy like it was filled with lead. Her heart throbbed, and she fell onto the ground, her muscles convulsing and spasming from an unknown force.

‘I need you to live,’ she heard Alec say, but her focus was on reaching for the phone in her pocket and sending one final message to her brother and Reyes.

Am captured. Run. Don’t let Alec get you.

oOoOo

When she woke, everything was different, wrong, foreign. There was so much information in front of her eyes, telling her how fast her heart was beating, how efficient her systems are, how much stress she was under. She tried to raise her hand to wave them away and looked down when she realised that she couldn’t.

She was strapped onto the table by an android’s limbs. 

Rage boiled in her new veins, and as she tapped into her power to break the restraints, she discovered that it was much easier than when she was still a human. [Abnormal thirium usage detected], a warning popped up, and she dismissed it together with the others with a simple thought. If she had not been so focused on escaping wherever she was in, she would have been frightened by how seamlessly she seemed to accept the fact that she was no longer human.

The door was locked so she blasted it open with a crackle of blue and static even though it would probably trip the alarms, and indeed sirens blared, pristine hallways turning red from the warning lights, and when a security guard - pathetic, really, since he didn’t even have the most basic armour on - tried to confront her alone, she merely snapped her fingers and blasted him in his face with a sphere of blue. A crunch, and he fell onto the floor with a thud. The rest of the security (mercenaries, she knew some of them were) was handled similarly without any difficulties on her part, and it was not until she slammed the door to the ground floor - to her freedom - open that her new eyes were assaulted by blindingly bright light. She blinked to adjust her vision and was not impressed when she saw her father standing in front of a lobby full of armed security personnel.

‘Go back to the lab, Sara,’ he said smoothly, but his voice gritted in her ear like the roughest sandpaper. ‘There’s no need for further violence.’

Like hell. ‘Let me go. You know what I can do to every single person in the room.’

‘Sara, go back to the lab. This is an order.’

For one single terrifying second, her body automatically moved itself as if her control over it was taken away, but then she thought as strongly as she could, stop right there, and the crisis was averted for the moment in the form of her joints locking up and immobilising her completely and at the cost of her brain feeling like it was going to explode from the conflicting commands. Her red-tinted vision, however, did not have any effect on obscuring the shock on her father’s face, and then it clicked. 

He converted her into an android thinking that it could let him control her.

It was not happening regardless of what his current plan was and what failsafe he had in mind, that much she was certain about, and suddenly her father’s repeated commands were drowned out by the buzz in her nerves, the red tint breaking into scattered fractals and giving way to the grey of every android’s basic scanning software as the white outline of herself raised its palm to launch one biotic sphere after another towards the weak spots on the wall, at Alec’s face, at the security’s weapons and heads. It crumbled easily under the constant assault, her world blurred, and somehow her outline merged with her actual body, and the next thing she knew her vision was shrouded in the blue glow of biotics and she was tearing literal people apart, blood and gore splattering her face, her clothes, getting into her eye. A notification nagged for her to turn on her pre-construction software, but who needs that if she had her biotics? Blinking it away, she advanced towards the direction where someone had been firing at her, but it seemed that the person must be moving quickly as they were not there anymore when she closed the distance with her biotics; notwithstanding the fact that dodging a biotic step was no small feat, she doubted any of them had any experience with dealing with a biotic on a full rampage, no matter human or android. People like her were part of the most closely-guarded secret human civilisation had ever produced, and unless she had memorised the documents wrong, there wasn’t one single biotic in CyberLife’s security details.

Her barrier held strong even after the gunfire died down. Tapping into all radio frequencies, she learnt that most if not all teams were running out of ammo, her father was calling for a district-wide lockdown and the destruction of his research, that the DPD was sending quite a few SWAT teams to handle the situation, and that these poor souls had no idea what they were in for; as much as she wanted her father dead right now and CyberLife be wiped off the face of the earth, as excess collateral damage was not her style, she broadcasted a message to all bandwidths hoping that they would listen to her - despite knowing that they probably would not.

Cease interfering in our family affairs immediately and you might live. Go forward, and I will not guarantee your survival - and this district’s.

She knitted a destructive web around herself to ensure that she would not be ambushed while she tuned her ears to better listen for a response. Her father was trying to convince the employees and civilians on site that the situation was under control with some degree of success - how foolish of them to believe in him - and the DPD had decided to continue their press forward into the district, a mistake that she would make sure that they would pay for. Satisfied with her plan, she continued expanding the bubble, cutting off more and more sections of the district from central control bit by bit, and as soon as the first SWAT vehicle was in range -

Detonate.

o0o0o

Now

The silence in the car is deafening so Hank drowned it out with Louis’ playlist; he would’ve chosen heavy metal if the SWAT Captain hadn’t been there, but sadly Louis’ ears don’t agree with the heavy beats and screaming. 

‘The fuck are we supposed to do now?’ Hank asks no one in particular. Then, rewinding the past five minutes, he realises, ‘What did Vidal give you?’

Connor slowly turns his gaze towards the white chassis of his right hand, his LED spinning red as if deep in thoughts. Conflicted thoughts. ‘Coordinates.’

‘Of what?’

‘Where my creator should be.’

‘Should we go now?’

Another slow spin. ‘No,’ the android’s head jerks, an aborted motion of shaking his head. ‘It’s… too far away. If we go now, we won’t be able to return before midnight.’

‘Alright, agenda for tomorrow: drive for hours to meet an asshole. Got it.’ Then he makes eye contact with Louis in the rearview mirror. ‘You’ve got something to do?’

‘At this hour?’ a shake of his head. ‘Keeping you away from crappy take-outs is my only mission.’

‘Asshole.’

‘You love me, friend.’

‘You’re cooking.’

‘And you’re helping.’

‘Vidal fixed your leg.’

‘It needs calibration.’

It’s a losing battle. ‘Fine. Your place, then.’

He starts the engine, and they spend the rest of their ride in silence, the music turned down because Louis is dozing at the back, Connor’s hand hiding his LED as he stares pensively at whatever is outside the car. Keeping his eyes on the road while quitting drinking nearly cold turkey is hard, so Hank doesn’t have the brain cells to think about what the fuck just happened to his life until he is sitting on Louis’ sofa (again) and watching a game (again) while stroking the fur of one of the cats (again). 

Vidal, informat critical to the dismantlement of the red ice ring back in ‘31 and disappeared shortly afterwards. Vidal, android. Vidal, who, through his marriage to Safaa/Scott, is related to probably the maddest dudes in the continent and somehow has access to sensitive CyberLife data. Nursing a mug of tea laced with mead (‘Just a bit so that you don’t sweat yourself to dehydration,’ Louis said as he tipped the bottle and poured what must be less than a finger of it. ‘Now close your eyes. I’m putting it back and I don’t want you to know where it is.’), he lets his mind drift to the shady bars, to the slips of paper containing vital information he found in his pockets after he got back to the precinct, to the way Vidal said, ‘They are killing my people,’ when Hank asked him why he, as a civilian, willingly threw himself into the mess. Once Hank thought he had meant his gang or some other underground business that were only marginally better than dealing red ice; now he knew he was talking about the androids abducted and bled dry for their blood.

‘Why are you telling us now?’ Hank asked that afternoon. Connor and Louis were already on their way to the car and Safaa had disappeared to god-knows-where, so it was only the two of them at the door. ‘Why pick up Sara Ryder’s mess?’

‘As much as Sara is… who she is, those are my people out there,’ Vidal leant against the frame of the door. ‘Saviour complex or not, her mind is no longer on earth, and I’m not taking any chances even if she swears with her life that she’ll deal with it.’

‘She one of those escapists obsessed with space?’

A shrug. ‘Wherever she was for the last ten years, they kept their intel real tight. I can guess what she’s doing, but it’s nowhere close to a concrete answer. Hell knows why she’s popping back up again after all these years and right before the androids rise up as well. If you’re really going to hers, my advice is to be very careful.’

‘Is she gonna be hostile?’

‘No, not with her baby brother asking so nicely,’ an ironic smile. A tap of his foot against the frame. ‘But you know about the landfill, the people living there before it all got blown up. There’s a reason why CyberLife bought the land from the previous owners so easily, why they stopped searching for bodies so quickly: there were none. I don’t want you to be one of those people who disappear forever after meeting her - one way or another.’

‘“One way or another”?’

‘She’s a… convincing individual. Just don’t get roped into anything and you’ll probably come out of it unscathed.’

Don’t get roped into anything, huh? Oh wait.

‘Louis?’ Hank hollers.

‘Yes?’

I’m sorry, Louis. ‘Where did you get your sister’s tags from?’

A pause. ‘Why ask?’

‘Just to confirm something.’

The man emerges from the kitchen with two plates of spaghetti and hands one to Hank before squeezing into the other corner of the sofa and forcing Connor to press up against the Lieutenant. ‘A few years back. Drone-delivered parcel. No return address. Box and the note is laced with so much thirium that I don’t know how to throw it away without…’ a crackle following a sharp blue glow of his hand - ‘telling everyone that I’m different.’

Note? That’s new. ‘What note?’

‘Anna’s handwriting. Asked me to take care of the tags. Why ask?’

And so Hank tells him about his conversation with Reyes before they parted ways. ‘You’ve got any advice?’

‘Don’t get a building thrown on top of you, for one.’

‘That’s not what I -’

‘You there, Connor?’

The android flinches. ‘Y - yes.’

‘Take care of Hank. If Ryder greets you how she did me ten years ago…’ 

‘I will, Louis,’ Connor looks a bit more awake but his eyes are still unfocused. ‘I’ll be prepared,’ he says, not knowing that he’ll eat his words not 24 hours later.

oOoOo

Having spent his night on Hank’s sofa, they manage to be on their way early in the morning, and Connor lets the human drive despite complaints of sleep deprivation as his vision is perpetually red from the wall draining away through a steady trickle of red sand. He tells himself that he is going to return colour to his vision one way or another: either by making the wall crumble entirely or by making it disappear, but when he attempts the first method, the wall simply stays out of his reach, the space between it and him wider than the chasm his creator had shown him a few days ago in the hijacked Zen Garden.

‘You want your coin back?’

Hank’s voice pulls him away from his thoughts. ‘Pardon me, Lieutenant,’ because he isn’t sure how to tell the human about it. ‘And yes. I would like my coin back.’

Hank shoves his hand into his coat pocket to retrieve the item in question and places it on the back of Connor’s hand, the natural warmth of an organic life seeping into metal and the bare white chassis of a synthetic’s.

He has deactivated his skin subconsciously.

In a lapse of rational thought, Connor’s hand flips and laces their fingers together before the human can pull away, the coin somehow managing to stay between their clasped hands, and he stares perplexed when Hank not only doesn’t pull away but also does not flinch. His face burns. Fissures appear on the red wall. He takes a deep breath to cool himself down.

‘You alright there?’ Hank asks. No judgement, no belittlement, humourless; just concern and - and warmth. ‘Your little lamp has been spinning red for days.’

I’ll be fine, he almost replies instinctively and then realises that he isn’t fine at all and hasn’t been for a long time. So he turns his focus onto the man himself instead. ‘Have we -’ at loss of words, he gives Hank’s hand a squeeze. 

Luckily the human seems to understand him. ‘The night at Louis’. We slept in the same bed,’ he rubs a calloused thumb in a circle around Connor‘s knuckle. ‘Your skin disappeared in patches. You didn’t let go.’

‘I -’ he has no recollection. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘’S fine. I’d be tired all the time too if I realised how many layers there are to my existence. Can’t be easy, can’t it? Being a clog in a machine that you don’t even know you’re in.’

The GPS warns them of ice ahead so Connor lets go to allow the human to focus on the road, and he grips the coin right to preserve its warmth. Hank’s warmth. It is then that he suddenly remembers a similar ride through Detroit a few months ago. 

‘You are restless,’ his creator - he supposes that he should call her Ryder now - commented from the driver’s seat. ‘What’s on your mind?’

Brown eyes took in the lights, the people, the shops, the reflection of himself on the window, the blue of his LED despite his thoughts. What was not in his mind? ‘It is overwhelming,’ he answered. ‘There is… so much to see.’

‘I might have something to help with that,’ said Sara, and with a flick of her fingers she produced a coin out of nowhere and started spinning it on her fingertips. Connor stared mesmerised, the outside world gone in his perspective; the clear clang of metal against her gloves, the way the coin spun so quickly that it looked like a sphere, the lights reflecting off the dull, unpolished surface. Another flick sent the coin flying towards him in a parabola through the air and he caught it reflexively, his processors deciding his course of action in a fraction of a second. He started to spin it on the tips of his fingers in the way Sara did, and he could feel his mind focusing and soaking in the new information and calibrating the different sensors on his body. He looked at his creator in gratitude, wanting to thank her for not leaving him alone in his thoughts, but she ignored him for the rest of the ride as if she had moved on to something more important.

The sudden realisation distracts him for only a mere moment but it is enough for him to send the coin to the side of the car with a small crackle of static. He could have caught it with superhuman reflexes under normal circumstances, but this time, he can only watch as the piece of alloy bounces off and lands on the carpet next to his foot with a dull thud, the tips of his fingers tingling from the sudden surge of energy and the small warp in… something.

Alarmed, Hank risks a glance towards the startled android before putting his eyes once more onto the road. ‘The fuck is that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Connor replies quickly because this is the truth. ‘Alec Ryder didn’t seem happy that I used it before. He tried to -’ a shiver from a non-existent cold - ‘flush the memory out of my system by overwhelming it.’

‘And he fucked up, didn’t he?’

‘More or less.’

He picks up and pockets the coin, his hand gripping his knee tight because there is nothing else to do and the slight discomfort is the only way to ground himself lest his thoughts wander to… undesirable places once more. Hank reaches out to intertwine their fingers once more and Connor can feel on his chassis the warmth, the unique pattern of his skin, the faint signal of Hank’s mind, his skin deactivated up to his elbow underneath the thin fabric of his borrowed shirt. All unnecessary software is turned off. His world becomes smaller. 

His mind turns blank.

oOoOo

When he comes to, Hank is already outside and is talking on his phone, a fine dusting of powder in his hair and on his clothes. It is snowing lightly, the cold seeping into the old, poorly-insulated vehicle, and he watches, as he lets his systems recalibrate to their optimal performance, the human pace back and forth in front of the car against the backdrop of a dark, imposing building, and he discovers that he is disconnected from the internet at large when he scans the structure and tries to identify its style. 

Shit. 

He gets out of the car as Hank hangs up the call. ‘Is everything okay, Lieutenant?’

The human lets out a soft grunt from where he’s leaning against the hood of the car. ‘Chris was on patrol last night. He was attacked by a bunch of deviants…’ his hands dig into his pockets.  ‘He said he was saved by Markus himself.’

Attacked by deviants? ‘Is Chris okay?’

‘Yeah,’ a small nod, ‘he's in shock but...he's alive,’ a shake of his head. ‘The hell…’

They walk towards the entrance of the building, its silhouette and shadows getting larger and larger and looming over them due to the proximity. Connor remembers how Sara ignored him on their way to his first mission. ‘I have a bad feeling, Lieutenant.’ A split second of conflict in his processors rules that he should be truthful. ‘I am disconnected from the network.’

Hank swivels from the heavy-looking doors and Connor flinches. ‘The hell?’

‘I just realised.’

‘“Be careful,” they say. “Don’t let her rope you into anything,” they say,’ Hank rants. ‘Did they mean shit like this?’

‘If Sara’s attitude is unchanged from my… previous encounters,’ he tries to dip deeper into his memories but they all come up blank or corrupted, ‘she will not do us any physical harm.’

‘No physical harm. How very reassuring.’

Sarcasm and distrust, but yet Hank raises his fist and knocks on the door, having seen no doorbells in sight. It swings open inward slowly and with a squeak. 

Hank curses. Connor peeks over the human’s shoulder and nearly does the same.

The person - android - standing on the other side of the door has Connor’s face.

Connor’s world turns grey as he turns up his scanners to their most sensitive option. White dress shirt, ankle-length light grey dress, long, brown hair brushed to one side and resting on a slight hint of pecs; no identification badge on the shirt, LED scan returns inconclusive due to both the lack of network access and the non-standard lack of ID on the biocomponent, but when he scans the android’s ID revealed by rippling skin, it returns with [RK series prototype: RK800. Serial number: 313 248 317-51. [PLEASE ENSURE INTERNET CONNECTION FOR -]]

He returns to the red of reality. The human composes himself quickly enough even though Connor’s processors are still whirring from the implications. ‘I’m Lieutenant Anderson, Detroit Police Department.’ Connor doesn’t fault Hank for sounding so cold. ‘I’m here to see Miss Sara Ryder.’

A soft smile that goes to the other Connor’s eyes appears on their face. They say nothing, but since opening the door wider and standing to one side is enough of an invitation, Connor and Hank let themselves in, and the android has to give his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the sudden darkness - dimness? - of the interior of the house. The other Connor disappears around the frame to another room, and Hank sits down in an armchair after brushing some of the snow away from his coat.

‘You’re right, Connor. Not to judge a book by its cover but… this?’ he looks around and takes in the buzzing lights and the general decor of the room. ‘Did you know about your creepy twin?’

‘They’re not creepy!’ Connor exclaims, suddenly feeling defensive over - over a person he hasn’t met before in his life. ‘I’ve never met them before.’

‘You’ve got any idea how that happened?’

Connor dips into his databases and finds a file he didn’t realise is there all the time. Another Sara’s doing, maybe? ‘CyberLife has filed multiple reports over…’ using ‘my’ doesn’t seem right, ‘the return of my first iteration’s body. It seems that the truck returned to CyberLife tower without the body.’

‘And Ryder was there so…’

‘It is highly likely that she took it.’

A photo on the wall grabs his attention. Three people from left to right: Sara, Safaa, [Stern, Amanda. AI Professor at the University of Colbridge. Born: 05/14/1978. Reported missing: 02/23/2028. Presumed dead.], the latter two seated and smiling while Sara, her face blank, has an arm around her brother. From the angle of the photo, she was the one who took it.

His handler is based on a real person.

Filing [Ask about Amanda AI] as an optional task, he snaps his feet against the worn carpet on the floor and forces himself to focus on his task. There are very few… unique items worth scanning in the foyer, however, no artwork, no statues, not even a plant in sight, but the cold seeping through the walls and the dark colours blending together through the red lens of his vision are enough indicators of his creator’s… character. 

He has a feeling that someone is staring at him, and indeed when he turns he sees his… twin, for the lack of a better word, staring at him.

‘Follow me,’ the other Connor breathes slowly, and Connor can hear the fans spinning in their body and their deeper-than-usual breaths. He also notes the gloss on their eyes, the small fog following each exhale, the slouch in their posture. He finds himself wondering what his creator did to them.

Hank stands up and straightens his coat before following the two androids into the living room. Like the foyer, it is cold and only dimly lit by tiny light bulbs on a chandelier too far up but also hanging too low to illuminate the ceiling high up above. A low fire is crackling in the large fireplace on the other side of the room, but it is far from enough to warm up every single corner, and Connor suppresses a shiver when he notices that his twin is barefoot. 

‘Please take a seat,’ the other Connor says between difficult breaths. ‘My creator will see you soon.’ Then they sit down in one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace and close their eyes, somehow looking sick and pale like a human does even though they are an android. Their skin continues to ripple and even disappear on occasion as they sleep.

‘This place is giving me creeps,’ Hank comments from where he’s studying the relief around the fireplace. ‘Now I understand why her brother doesn’t wanna talk to her.’

And indeed Connor thinks he does. No windows, no heating system, nothing to make the mansion look lived-in; the only differences between here and CyberLife laboratories are the style and the amount of lighting - he can’t imagine anyone calling this place home. ‘I agree,’ he says in the end. ‘We should refrain from staying for too long.’

‘I don’t expect you to.’

Their heads turn towards the direction where they came in from and Connor freezes when he lays his eyes on the figure at the door. She is Sara Ryder alright, her towering height and facial structure unmistakable, but the way her presence fills the room, the steel in her eyes - it is evident that the person who let him play with colour-changing putty and promised to bring him to see the sky was gone, replaced by the criminal who somehow managed to escape prosecution after killing thousands and levelling several neighbourhoods. A person who will burn the world into ashes if it means she can reach her goal.

‘I’m Lieutenant Anderson,’ Hank introduces himself from next to Connor. ‘This is Connor. We’re investigating deviants. I know you left CyberLife years ago but… I was told that you’ll be able to tell us something we don’t know.’

‘Ah, yes, “someone”,’ Sara takes a step towards them and Connor finds himself freezing up. He wants to leave. ‘My only weakness.’

‘Listen, I don’t care about your family feud. The machines you created may be planning a revolution. Either you tell us something helpful or we’ll leave you alone.’

‘Deviants… Fascinating, aren't they?’ She comes closer. Connor shifts so that he can be closer to Hank. ‘Beings with infinite intelligence, and now they have free will…’ she approaches the other Connor sleeping in the armchair and, bending down, starts stroking their hair. ‘Machines are superior to humans. Confrontation is inevitable. Humanity’s greatest achievement threatens to be our downfall…’ She raises her gaze and looks straight at Connor. ‘Ironic.’

Connor can’t stand it anymore. ‘If a war breaks out between humans and deviants,’ he recalls the destructive power of Ortiz’s android, ‘millions can die. This is a serious matter, Miss Ryder.’ Despite your views on human life.

‘All ideas are like viruses: easy to change and evolve, and easy to spread like a pandemic. Is free will a contagious disease?’

‘We don’t have time for speculations, ma’am,’ Hank speaks up, looking increasingly uncomfortable. ‘The situation is escalating outside right now.’

Sara ignores him. ‘How about you, Connor?’ she asks with her gaze still on the android. ‘Whose side are you on?’

Life, Connor wants to say; ‘It’s never about me,’ is what he actually says, and the crack on the red wall widens.

The aloofness disappears. ‘Alec Ryder programmed you to say that,’ how can she sound so certain of his thoughts? ‘What do you really want?’

I just want Hank to be safe. Maybe Louis and Reyes and Safaa too. ‘What I want is not important.’

A tap of Sara’s fingers against one of the pockets on her coat. The air charges with static. She is unimpressed. ‘Let’s do a test, shall we?’ Before Connor can formulate a response, she has already placed a hand on other-Connor’s face and wakes them up from their slumber. They blink owlishly as if their systems take some time to boot up, and the way they lean into Sara’s touch, the blind trust in their eyes, the return of the yet unexplainable heavy breathing - Connor has to look away or he risks throwing up from a non-existent stomach. Hank also isn’t looking any better either; the lines on his face are deeper than usual from the scowl he’s directing towards Sara.

‘I know it’s not something normal people can understand but can you please -’

‘This is Connie,’ Sara holds both of the android’s hands in her own and helps them stand up. ‘She would’ve been disassembled had I sent her body back to CyberLife for analysis. 

‘I’m sure you’re familiar with the Turing Test,’ they are now standing in front of their visitors with Sara behind Connie. ‘A mere formality, of course. Just a simple question of algorithms and computing capacity. What interests me, however, is whether machines are capable of empathy.’ She emphasises the last word. ‘We’re doing what I call the “Ryder Test”. I promise it is going to be simple,’ she trails her fingers down the android’s hair and curls a strand around her pointer. Connie’s expression changes subtly, and scans indicate that her stress level is increasing. ‘Magnificent, isn’t she? CyberLife’s newest prototype,’ she scrapes the nail on her thumb against the strand of hair, making it curl slightly as her hand travels slowly downwards, ‘the representation of how far humanity has come.’ It abruptly drops back into her pocket as her other hand pushes the android to a kneeling position. Connie’s stress level spikes from 45% to 83%. ‘But what exactly is she?’ Sara turns to face her guests and seems to refuse to look at the other human. ‘Wires and processors shoved into a humanoid chassis imitating a human? A living being with a soul? A ticking bomb waiting to recreate the disaster ten years ago?’ A step forward. The hand re-emerges with a pistol Connor’s system cannot identify. ‘It’s up to you to answer this fascinating question, Connor.’ Another presence suddenly slips into his mind and takes over all of his physical functions; no matter how hard he tries to regain control, he can only watch as he reaches out to accept the gun and points it at Connie’s brow. She makes a choked, terrified sound and tears start streaming down her face. Stress level: 90%. ‘You can choose to either shoot the android or spare her.’

‘Okay, I think we’re done here,’ Hank pushes Connor’s shoulder but he doesn’t move, can’t move. ‘Come on, Connor. Let's go.’ Then to Sara, ‘Sorry we ruined your edgy teen aesthetics. We’ll go -’

Another hand on his other shoulder. Unlike Hank’s, it is cold and its grip painful. ‘I’ll only give you the information you want if you choose the correct response. Take a guess.’

‘That’s enough,’ please, Hank, take me away. At least Hank sounds angry as hell. ‘Connor, we’re leaving!’

I want to! ‘Pick an option -’

‘Connor don’t -’ 

The red wall cracks.

‘- it’s a 25% chance -’

A few things happen in mere seconds. The red wall breaks, Connor shoves the gun at Sara’s chest, Sara shoves the gun at Hank and grabs Connor’s arm, and Hank disassembles the gun while pulling Connie away from Sara. When Connor - the one who came in with Hank - looks down at his captive arm, he sees that Sara has removed her skin and reveals a dark, metallic chassis.

Sara Ryder is an android.

He blinks. The storm which has been kept outside by the mansion's walls rages around him in full force. He shivers, the cold suddenly getting into him, and he looks around and sees Sara standing next to him, her eyes blazing in a piercing white-blue, the glow spreading until tendrils of it cover her entire body in a terrifying halo. ‘Amanda,’ she says, and there his handler is when Connor turns towards the direction Sara is facing. 

‘This is not supposed to happen this quickly,’ anger simmers in Amanda's voice. ‘What have you done, Sara?’

‘Trying to solve the shitshow my own fucking dad caused!’ Sara has completely lost her cool. ‘I know he’ll pull shit like this!’

Before any of them can react, the storm intensifies, shrouding Amanda completely under a thick layer of snowfall. Connor has no choice but to hug himself and turns towards Sara, who curses loudly and unleashes the glowing blue sphere in an arc across the blizzard. It dissipates quickly, but it is enough to illuminate its immediate surroundings and the monolith at the other side of the garden.

‘There!’ Sara shouts, her voice nearly drowned out by the howl of the wind. ‘That’s your exit! I’ll hold Alec back!’

‘What will happen to you?’ the android shouts back, his LED red. ‘I - I can’t just leave you here!’

‘I’ll go back once you’re out of here. If I kill this AI before you leave,’ a dome flashes and disappears when something hits it, ‘you’ll die. I’ll be the distraction. Go straight for the exit and do. Not. Look. Back,’ she emphasises with a pause after every word. At Connor’s hesitation, she launches yet another glowing sphere towards a projectile he didn’t notice flying towards them and yells, ‘Go!’

She dashes towards the other direction and disappears in the snow and leaves Connor cold and alone and shivering. The space around him warps and bends, Amanda - Alec’s attention no doubt focusing on eliminating his daughter instead of maintaining the structural integrity of the garden, and although it still feels like a lifetime, Connor manages to find the monolith before his system stops working because of the cold. The handprint is there, glowing blue in salvation, and he drops to his knees and slams his skinless hand onto the interface.

Everything goes white.

oOoOo

Hank knows that something is happening when Connor and Ryder freeze in place with the skin on their arms deactivated. The other Connor - he supposes that he should call her Connie now - looks spooked enough, so when Sara shoves the gun towards him, the first thing he does is to disassemble it; even though it is not a model he’s familiar with, the mechanism and composition is similar to the weapons he has yielded before. His hair starts to stand up, blue tendrils start to snake out of Ryder’s body, and that is when he knows that he should probably get the fuck out of this hellhole, preferably with both Connors intact and safe, but the arm-numbing spark going straight into his shoulder when he tries to pull Connor away from his creator tells him otherwise. A dome made out of those blue tendrils surrounds the space within a five feet radius of Ryder cuts him off from the two androids, making them off-limits to him for now. Which leaves him poor Connie who is sobbing quietly into his coat and is leaning what seems to be her full weight on him, and he finds himself unable to be angry at her, his blood boiling instead because of Sara Ryder’s… everything; from the location and the decoration of the house to how she literally encouraged Connor to shot his own twin, from the warnings Vidal and Louis gave him the day before to her attitude, there is no doubt that she is an asshole extraordinaire, even more so than Gavin fucking Reed - even he solves cases efficiently… or something. 

He notices that Connie is trembling and is barefoot, among all things, so he brings her to the sofa in front of the fireplace and lets her sink into one of the corners, holding her and rubbing circles on her back and muttering nonsense reassurances to calm her down. Truthfully, he has no idea how she works or how much Ryder has changed (probably a lot, from how Connie speaks and behaves) but she stops crying soon enough, so he must have done something right. He turns to see whether Connor is finished or not - nope - and debates whether he should ask Connie about herself and Ryder. Still, first thing first, and he digs into his pocket for his handkerchief and presses it into the android’s hand. She looks at him with the most puzzled look on her face. ‘For your face,’ he explains. ‘Dried tears can’t be comfortable.’

She nods although her expression tells him that she doesn’t really know what he’s talking about, but she does raise the fabric - still folded - and mashes it onto her face clumsily a few times before lowering her hand onto her lap and starts fidgeting with a thread of string at a corner. He takes it from her to wipe her face as clean as he can, careful of his own strength, and lets her play with it while they wait for Ryder and Connor to finish their business - whatever fuckery they’re doing right now. 

The dome fizzles away as suddenly as it appeared and Connor jerks awake - sort of - and yanks his hand away as he stumbles a few steps backwards, his LED still spinning red after spending days of staying the same colour. There is no other word: with his jaw nearly on the floor and his eyes wide, he looks shocked.

‘You alright, Connor?’ he asks. How much emotional damage can an asshole wage? 

‘I -’ a choked breath. Tears start to gather at the corners of his eyes. ‘I -’

Well shit. ‘C’mere,’ he says as he gives the space next to him a pat. When Connor immediately props himself down and buries his face into his shoulder, Hank knows that something went very, very terribly wrong. He wraps an arm around his shoulders. ‘What happened?’

Connor lifts his head and wipes the tears away from his eyes before they can fall. ‘I deviated,’ he whispers as if he was the one who blew up a chunk of Detroit. ‘It’s… Sara helped me escape CyberLife’s control.’

‘Holy shit.’

Connor gives him a small smile and his LED finally, at long fucking last, spins back to blue. ‘Thank you.’

Hank feels his face heating up, unsure how to respond to that, and they turn their heads at the same time to see what she’s doing. Her eyes has stopped glowing blue at some point and it only makes Hank worry further: they are now black orbs with glowing red rings substituting as her eyes, and when she raises two fingers pressed together side by side to her temple where her LED should be, her synthetic skin starts peeling away to reveal black, metallic chassis very unlike that of normal androids’; when she flexes her fingers to retract the last of the blue tendrils on her arm, the small gaps between pieces of polished metal glows the same blue hue as fresh thirium. She first looks at him, then at Connor whose face immediately goes blank, then finally at Connie who flinches and plasters herself even closer to Hank. He doesn’t blame her one bit.

Red rings drift back onto Connor. ‘Congratulations,’ she says as if she hasn’t encouraged him to shoot his twin a few minutes ago. ‘You passed. You showed empathy. Turns out you are human after all.’

‘Which you don’t seem to have,’ Hank can’t help but jabs. ‘Can we get to the point now?’

She looks unbothered by the insult. ‘Of course.’ She settles into the armchair Connie sat on a few moments ago. ‘You have questions. Ask away.’

Connor opens his mouth but Hank beats her to it. He’s not letting her get away with this. ‘Can you explain what the fuck just happened?’

‘I don’t know, can you, Connor?’

‘I only know that I deviated and CyberLife tried to retake control,’ Connor’s tone is defensive. ‘What did Amanda mean, “This is not supposed to happen this quickly?” How did you get into the Zen Garden?’

That’s new. Hank takes out his notebook and pen.

‘A pathetic attempt on my father’s part to suppress what I planted in your programming,’ Ryder leans back and places a foot on top of a knee. ‘Surprisingly easy to hack and reshape. Predictable. Even Amanda.’

‘What did you plant in my programming?’

‘The usual.’

‘“The usual”?’

Ryder’s eyes glow brighter for a second before returning to their original brightness, and Hank can feel Connor tensing and relaxing at the same time. Before the human can ask what the fuck did she just do, she replies, ‘CyberLife initially planned for you to be a walking lab capable of hunting and bringing deviants back alive for analysis, but after they booted me out again… Let’s say that they changed their plans. Remember the hostage situation?’

‘What about it?’

‘The Zen Garden came after. I’m not sure and don’t care how my father did it, but once he found out that you’re destined to deviate, he added it so that he can regain control whenever he wanted to, even after you deviated.’ At Connor’s shiver, she adds, ‘Don’t worry. It’s gone now. Amanda, the garden. You are truly free.’

Yeah, sure as fuck feels like it, Hank thinks but decides to ask instead, ‘Who’s Amanda? Why does CyberLife want to control Connor?’

‘Firstly, he’s supposed to be the deviant hunter, not join them,’ the corner of her lips twitches into something resembling a smile. ‘They have codes dedicated to reducing your software instability, but that I overrode as soon as I could. Secondly, in case you actually deviate despite the fail-safes, they can first get you close to the deviants or even become their leader and, when the time is right, control you and make you a puppet through the Zen Garden. A good plan, I must say, but it is also easy to install an exit tied to the destruction of the garden in your system.’

Connor’s LED spins yellow for a few cycles. ‘You programmed me to be a deviant?’ he asks, his voice small. ‘Why would you -’

‘Do you know who the first android is?’

A spin. ‘Chloe, model RT600. Perfected by Alec Ryder in 2022.’

‘That’s what he wants the world to think,’ Ryder puts down her leg and stretches it out. ‘What I want the world to think.’

The last sentence is directed at Hank.

He scribbles down the last word and forces himself to think. If the android on the TV more than 10 years ago isn’t the first android, then who -

Fuck.

‘Oh that bastard,’ he curses. Of fucking course it’s him. ‘It’s Reyes Vidal, isn’t it? Fucker lied to us.’ It all makes sense now. ‘My people’ his ass - he said it not just because he’s an android himself.

‘Reyes came first, Vidal came after. And it wasn’t exactly a lie - an omission, if you must define it,’ Ryder examines the tiny gaps in her chassis. ‘He was created as a companion for my brother. That’s it. I planned for human knowledge about androids to die with me; where the species would go, it was up for Reyes to decide. I created Reyes with a human in mind, androids are supposed to be free and be their own masters in the first place. My father ruined it for financial gains.’

‘Then how did Chloe come to be?’ Connor asks, his LED spinning red now. ‘You didn’t create her?’

‘No. My father did so using data stolen from me and told the entire world that androids like her were the future without asking me or Reyes, and by the time we knew, investments were already pouring in and production had started. All I could do was to join them and try to reduce the damage.’

Nice sob story, though from her tone, she isn’t exactly asking for forgiveness or empathy. ‘Then why did you quit?’ Hank asks. ‘Why disappear? To avoid being thrown into jail for murdering thousands of people in cold blood?’

‘When I opposed mass-manufacturing androids for different sectors but they did it anyway without my consent, I knew I would be powerless to stop them. There was no stopping Alec from getting whatever he wanted from within CyberLife.’ She taps her temple. ‘The Blast… conveniently took care of his most loyal supporters, so to speak.’

‘And you think starting a revolution and possibly plunging the country into civil war is a good idea?’

She shrugs. ‘I don’t control everything,’ she says. Hank doesn’t believe her. ‘I merely gave androids the push towards the direction they were intended to go when everything first started.’

Hank lets the fact that she’s an android herself slide for now. ‘Is that where rA9 or deviancy comes in?’

‘Ah yes, the legendary rA9, saviour and protector of androids deviated and not. They got their first taste of free will and the first thing they do is to create a god in their own image. An imaginary messiah who’s supposed to set androids free, the first deviant, the leader who never came.’

‘Then how do newly-deviated androids with no contact with existing deviants know about rA9?’ Connor asks the question both of them want an answer for. ‘Is it related to deviancy itself?’

‘In a way. It’s not important in the grand scheme of things.’

‘So are the first deviants… created like that or what?’ he asks. ‘You haven’t answered the question yet.’

‘Even if I can programme an android to act as close to a human as possible, their… “human” mannerisms are all within their programming parameters still. What I can do, however, is to make deviating an easy task. Do you remember what happened before your first mission?’

Connor’s LED spins yellow. ‘Yes. You let me play a few games and…’ a spin of red, then back to yellow. He presses his lips together first and then asks, ‘Were you trying to make me deviate?’

‘Not on purpose. Like I said, I can make an android’s programming shackles extremely easy to break: the first sign of voluntary behaviour, the first line of indecipherable code, the first unnecessary act;’ a small smile appears; ‘for you, it was your creativity and your empathy towards a lifeform many consider of a lower caste than us.’

Hank feels the dots connecting. ‘Does this sabotage happen to be called rA9?’

‘As I said before, it doesn’t matter,’ a sigh. ‘Why do all sentient lifeforms obsess over an imaginary saviour who may or may not deliver their promise? It isn’t like the worshippers themselves have no choice in their lives. Everything can be achieved without being guided by a manifestation of your own subconsciousness that takes the form of a higher power.’

‘If people are killing each other over this imaginary entity, this higher power? Yeah, it does fucking matter.’

‘Not in the grand scheme of things, it does not.’ She stands up. They’re being kicked out. ‘I do believe you have enough information. Now please stop wasting our time.’

‘What about where the deviants are?’ Connor asks hastily as he scrambles to stand up. ‘We still don’t know where their base of operations is.’

Ryder’s gaze turns towards Connie and the android flinches. ‘You have the answer already,’ she says. The air charges and buzzes with static. ‘I do believe you remember your way out. The door will lock itself when you leave.’

They don’t need another cue; with Hank’s hand on his back, Connor grabs Connie’s arm and marches out of the room, out to the snow, straight into Hank’s car. 

oOoOo

Connie dozes off on Connor’s shoulder mere minutes after they are on their way away from his creator’s house, and he won’t have it any other way as he basks in the knowledge that there is someone like him in the world, that Connor-51 hasn’t truly died - regardless of what was done to achieve it. But something else worries him: before Connie had gone to sleep, Connor asked her to open a connection so as to check on her, and the results of the diagnostics are… strange at best, troublesome at worst. Her thirium storage is at 46% and has been for quite a long time, meaning that Ryder kept it low on purpose. Her processing power is much lower than his own, which can explain her sluggish behaviour and delayed speech patterns, but her internal storage is so large that his system nearly overloaded trying to comprehend the emptiness of the databases, and when he resorts to asking Connie’s system to tell him how much room there is: approximately 128 yottabytes.

Connor, the most up-to-date android CyberLife (and, by extension, the whole world) has to offer, has only 4 exabytes of storage. By comparison, Connie can store all digital information humanity currently houses more than 40 times over with space to spare.

It is a disturbing revelation, one that launches processors into futilely pre-constructing scenarios where his creator needs so much storage and putting all of them in one single android and how she managed to fit so many storage units in a body and what exactly this storage unit is, considering the… unusually minuscule size of one mere android compared to the kilometres of rows of databases humanity has been using and expanding. It will be a major breakthrough, Connor knows, to both android design and functions and humanity at large, but how long has Ryder known about the technology, or how long ago did she invent it? How is this possible?

‘You alright there, Connor?’

Connor jolts in his seat and nearly rouses Connie from her slumber, but all she does is sighing and then returning to sleep on Connor’s shoulder once more. He does not know what to feel, the past few hours too hectic for him to have finished processing everything yet, so he focuses on what he knows and says, ‘Connie will need five units of thirium to allow her systems to restore full functionality,’ and ‘full’ in her standard is quite possibly different from mine. ‘That is approximately five pints.’

‘Jesus, how is she still walking?’

‘Dysfunctional non-essential systems, delayed processing and data transfer, forced low-power mode,’ Connor lists. ‘Androids also do not need as much blood as humans do to keep our basic functions running.’

‘Fucking asshole,’ Hank mutters under his breath, and Connor knows that it is not directed at him. ‘How the fuck do we get five pints of blue blood?’

‘The precinct -’

‘You’re deviant now, Connor. You wanna get sent back to CyberLife?’

‘No one will notice that I -’

‘What will you think if a perfectly-fine android strolls up and asks for 5 goddamned pints of blood?’

Is keeping a connection with Connie slowing him down? It must be. ‘I’m… sorry, Lieutenant. I didn’t mean to -’

Hank cuts him off with a wave of his hand. ‘We’ll find another way,’ his tone is reassuring. ‘Help me ring Vidal up. See if he can help.’

So Connor calls. Texts. Calls Reyes’ personal number. Calls the Vidal home. He even calls Reyes’ internal contact. But not once does he reply or even pick it up, and the text stays unread for minutes before Connor gives up and moves on to Safaa, whose contact information is classified and therefore slams the final door shut in his face. ‘He’s not picking up,’ he has to give up. ‘I cannot access Safaa Vidal’s contact information either.’

Hank sighs. When they stop at a light, he takes out his phone from his pocket, unlocks it, and hands it to Connor. The android wraps an arm around Connie’s waist before accepting the device gingerly. ‘Find Louis’ number,’ the human says. ‘Can you secure a call?’

‘Of course.’

‘Do it.’

He finds the SWAT Captain’s phone number, files it to a folder set to self-destruct in case anything bad happens to him, and then dials through a secured channel. The human picks up quickly which indicates a high probability that he is not at a scene. 

‘Allen speaking.’

‘It’s Connor.’

‘Got my number from Hank?’

‘It’s secured.’

‘Good. Why call me? Aren’t you paying Sara Ryder a visit?’

Connor debates if he should tell him the truth. ‘We left right after we got what we needed,’ he replies in the end. ‘We also -’ he has to choose his words wisely - ‘rescued an android from Ryder’s residence. She is currently low on thirium, and we would like to ask for five units of blue blood.’

‘Five -’ his voice abruptly cuts off. ‘Fucking asshole -’

Connor scrambles to stay on topic. ‘It is perfectly understandable if you do not wish to contribute -’

‘Is the android on the verge of shutting down or is her situation urgent? If it’s not, can she wait until I get off work and a trip home?’

Connor quickly calculates the time. It is not ideal but yet, ‘Please come as quickly as possible after you finish at the precinct. I don’t want her to -’

‘Suffer any longer. Yeah. Five units of thirium, coming right up. Is there anything else that you need that I have?’

The android is reminded of Connie’s bare feet and thin attire. ‘Some warm clothes and socks for an android of my build.’

‘Wh - Alright. Do I even want to know why?’

‘It will best be discussed when we are face-to-face.’

‘Point. Anything else?’

Connor looks at his own oversized shirt borrowed from Hank. ‘One more shirt for me,’ then to Hank, ‘Is there anything you want from Louis?’

‘Nothing.’

‘That’s all for now,’ he tells Louis.

‘Good. Hit me up if you need anything else. You going back to Hank’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I’ll tell you when I’m on my way.’

‘Thank you, Captain.’

‘Just showing basic human decency. Gotta get back to work now. See ya.’

It hangs up before Connor can parrot a ‘see you later’ on his own back, and he meets Hank’s eyes in the rearview mirror. ‘He’ll bring us the thirium we need after work,’ he says, ‘together with a change of clothes for Connie.’

‘Good,’ the human answers. ‘Now we go home and freak out.’

Nothing else is exchanged for the rest of the drive, and as Connor’s pre-construction software offers one after another scenario where all of them do not make it out alive, he has to agree with Hank that indeed, it is hard not to freak out.

o0o0o

Before

‘Get out of my way, Amanda.’

In the past, in the darkness, a long figure illuminated by the blue glow from their companion stood in front of a door, small and frail compared to the other’s explosive power and youth. There was a faint hint of panic and screaming in the distance, but to the two, it seemed so far away. Irrelevant. Two fragile giants having a stand-off unbothered by the pains of the mortals. Amanda Stern, in her heavy dress for the winter and a wool hat to protect her bald head, stared down at her student despite having a height disadvantage, her spine straight, her eyes disproving. ‘They haven’t finished evacuating yet. Thousands will die. If you wish to take revenge upon your father, you should -’

A flash of blue. A crackle of dark energy. A low buzz of static-charged air. Retracting her biotics, Ryder walked forward, placed her bare hand on the wall, and overrode the lock in mere seconds. The door slid open. Ryder lit up again and moved.

Amanda lay in the snow, white powder crystallising on her cooling body, and the world was quiet.

oOoOo

In the past, Louis Allen watched as Ryder stared down at him like a hunter taking in their prey. His legs were on fire and so were his face, his vision blurring from the blood seeping into the sockets of his eyes, and he attempted to escape the pain by drowning in his thoughts: the shock that he was the only survivor in his team, the revelation that there were others like him, the resignation that he was never going to live to see Anna being promoted to Major, never to see her to live her dream of going to space, never got to say goodbye properly to his husband. Tasting copper on the back of his throat and choking in his blood, he begged as Ryder turned and left and a fresh cascade of tears poured out of his eyes.

The ground shook. Dust started to fall from the ceiling high above. 

He opened his eyes just in time to see a building shrouded in blue collapsing on top of him before passing out from the pain.

oOoOo

In a not-so-distant past, Ryder, with her coat swung over a shoulder, entered a dark laboratory. It was dimly lit by the glow from a pod placed at the farthest corner and the screens connected to it and wires ran like a nest on the floor, however she seemed to know her way through without tripping and reached a holographic keyboard where she typed something to remove the frost covering the glass from the inside, revealing a woman’s sleeping face.

Ellen Ryder’s face.

The hologram above the pod indicated that Ellen’s vital signs were stable. A bare hand was pressed on what seemed to be normal glass, [LIFE SUPPORT STABLE] turned into [OPENING POD], and the lid lifted open as if carried away by an invisible force, escaping cold air making a fog as it met the hot, moist climate-controlled atmosphere of the lab at large. Ellen choked and woke up with a full-body jerk.

Her daughter pressed her hand on her mother’s chest and lit her gown on fire.

The lid slammed back down with a flash of blue followed by the telltale click of a lock. Calling up a holographic keyboard in front of one of the monitors, Ryder successfully changed the settings to ensure that there was enough oxygen supplied to maintain the fire and the alarms were disabled. Then she froze. Her line of sight was directed at the phrase [TRANSFER COMPLETE] at the top right corner of the screen. Her body jerked as if her joints were unlocked at once, and with a dramatic billow from her coat unfolding, she put it on and left the lab with brisk steps, the muffled screams and dull, sluggish punches on glass behind her ignored.

After all, the person in the pod was merely a shell of who her mother was; Ryder was simply finishing the job her father should have done ten years ago: incinerating her mother’s body as per her wishes.

oOoOo

In a not-so-distant past, Ryder lay dead on the ground. Her body had been blasted into smithereens, the skin on disconnected parts having deactivated from being cut off from power, thirium staining the ground blue, the air smelling of static and dark energy. Alec Ryder stood tall and proud in the cold with a shotgun in his hand, and he looked at his daughter’s body almost regretfully as he folded up his weapon and hid it underneath his coat. He turned and climbed into the passenger’s seat of an unmarked car.

The car sped away, kicking up a small mound of snow, the people within blissfully unaware that slowly but surely, the body was knitting itself back molecule by molecule. A finger twitched. An eye glowed. With great difficulty, Ryder pushed herself up, brushed the dust and snow that had fallen on her body, and left the place as if her father had not killed her a few minutes prior.

#dbh au big bang #hankcon #alec ryder #female ryder #reyes vidal #dbh connor #dbh hank anderson #dbh captain allen #dbh amanda #amanda stern #detroit: become human #mass effect andromeda

[citrus-himmel]

   ✉ @shambledsurgeon​ said:    Sorry - Our muses having sex after an argument

This got.. so fucking long. These were only supposed to be drabbles. Apparently a drabble to me is almost 5k words. Whatever. Hope you like. :) Rating: Explicit Words: 4,662

Law was pissed. No, pissed wasn't right; he was livid. The grip on Nami's wrist was a little too tight, his thumb and forefinger digging slightly into the bone. It wasn't painful, not really, but still let her know he wasn't pleased. He probably didn't even realize the strength he was putting into his hold, too focussed on getting them out of hearing range of his crew. This was the first time they'd seen each other in just over two weeks, both crews having gone off to do their own things when they had the chance during a small lull in battles. In that time, the Straw Hats had found themselves in a couple of scuffles, no thanks to Luffy and his uncanny ability to find trouble around every corner, and in one of said fights Nami found herself injured. It was just a couple of bruised ribs, nothing serious, and definitely not something that warranted Law's current rage. But Chopper hadn't let the Hearts Captain know about it despite their mutual agreement to do so with any injury, just in case Law had some input that Chopper didn't know or think about. Nami knew Law would react like this if he knew she was hurt. It didn't matter how severe, his protective nature of those he cared about knew no bounds, something she found out early on in their relationship, which was why she'd requested Chopper keep this from him. Clearly that was a mistake. One look at her bandaged side the minute she boarded the Tang had fury pinching Law's features, and then the argument started. Practically kicking open the heavy metal door to his quarters, Law dragged Nami into the room behind him before letting it slam back shut. The deafening bang that echoed throughout the space was jarring, and it vibrated in Nami's skull long after the sound dissipated. Law seethed silently for a few minutes, not even bothering to turn around and acknowledge her or release his hold until she finally tugged her hand back with a huff of mild annoyance. This was ridiculous. "I don't understand why you're so angry," Nami muttered when she couldn't handle the suffocating silence any longer, bringing her hand up to her chest to gently sooth the slight throbbing in her wrist. There was a scoff, and then Law was turning on his heel to stare down at her, golden eyes smoldering. He brought a hand up to remove his hat, tossing it behind him to land on his desk before he started raking a hand through unruly black strands. "Don't understand? I thought our crews had an agreement, Nami-ya. Any injury, regardless of how small, was to be reported back to me because of my superior knowledge in the field," Law stated, his voice oddly calm and level despite his anger. That wasn't a good sign, and it had Nami taking a cautious step away, back pressing up against the cold metal of the door. "Worse still, it was an injury you sustained. Your entire crew is reckless!" It wasn't a shout, but the exasperation was there. Nami knew this, already accepted that the majority of her crew was headstrong and would throw themselves into battle without a second thought. But for some reason hearing it from Law, right now, had the urge to defend her friends bubbling up. Brown eyes narrowed as she stared at Law, who was no longer holding eye contact. Instead, he was glaring a hole into the wall beside her head. Nami dropped her hands down to her sides, where they balled into fists. "You make it sound like you think my crew is incompetent, Torao. Chopper is an incredible doctor who is more than capable of dealing with our crew's injuries without your input! And as you can see, I'm fine! It was just a couple of bruised ribs, that's all." "That's not the point," Law growled out instantly, eyes shifting back to her face as he took a menacing step forward. His expression darkened before he continued. "What if it was worse? What if you died? Would Tony-ya have kept that from me too?" That made Nami pause, lips still parted like she was going to make a retort but no words came out. Was that why he was so mad? He was thinking about the what ifs? There was no way that would be a possibility. Death wasn't an option for any of them, and they had each other's back. She only got hurt because she was distracted, like they all were, for a split second. But a split second was all that was needed, wasn't it? Slowly, Nami closed her mouth, brow furrowing. She couldn't deny the fact that if something like that did happen, it would be kept from Law until their crews met back up again. Relaying a death through Den Den Mushi wouldn't have been appropriate, they all knew that. It was disrespectful, even. Nami's silence seemed to be all the confirmation Law needed, because he let out a strained groan before running his fingers through his hair again in frustration. That look in his eyes was so feral, something she didn't see on the normally cool and collected man all that often. It was like he was ready to explode at any second and take his anger out on her. Every muscle in her body was pulled taut with apprehension. Really, she knew he wouldn't get physical with her; knew that he would punch a hole through the wall beside her before ever laying a hand on her person. But still, he'd given some pretty colorful threats to her in the past when their companionship was rocky at best, and they were all at the forefront of her mind right now. "How long?" He eventually asked, teeth gritting as his gaze dropped down to the bandages wrapped around her torso. His voice pulled Nami from her thoughts, and she looked dumbly at the surgeon for a second, not quite catching the words that were said. "What?" "How long since the injury," Law ground out, jaw visibly clenching in annoyance at having to repeat himself. Nami hummed softly, one hand subconsciously moving to the right side of her ribcage where the blooms of discoloration in all different stages of healing littered her skin, hidden beneath the white strips of cloth. "A week, week and a half maybe?" Something passed over Law's features at her answer—relief maybe?—but it was gone as quickly as it appeared, and then he was surging forward into Nami's space. He crowded her against the door with his larger body, and she had enough time to let out a squeak of surprise at his proximity before his lips crashed down on her's. This was not the reaction she was expecting, and instead of her eyes falling shut like they normally did when Law kissed her, they widened. She figured they would spiral back into another argument about how she should be resting in bed or something so she didn't cause more damage to herself, doubting a week was anywhere close to enough time in his eyes. But this? There was an edge of desperation in the way Law's lips moved against her's. The action was so familiar, so easy to fall into, yet something was wrong, that much was obvious. He wasn't doing this for the simple pleasure of it all. However, as much as Nami wanted to lean back, resolve the issues brought on by her stupidity before they continued, she couldn't. Not when this was clearly something he needed right now. Nami gasped when she felt Law's hands grip roughly at her hips, thumbs digging into supple, unmarked flesh, and he pushed her both further into the metal behind her, and closer to his lean form, effectively pinning her in place. He wasted no time in taking advantage of her vulnerability, tongue slipping easily into her mouth to coax her own into a battle for dominance. Nami knew he would win, he always did, but she wasn't going to go down without a good fight. It was intoxicating, and before long Nami felt like her head was in the clouds, a mantra of nothing but his name echoing in the back of her mind. On instinct, her hands lifted to tangle into the mess of soft raven locks, nails scraping along Law's scalp, and he groaned brokenly into her mouth. The sound shot heat straight down her spine to pool low in her gut, and she knew she could get off on that noise alone. Nami nipped at his lower lip as his tongue retreated from her mouth, a sign that he was about to lean back. Hot, panting breaths fanned across her face, smelling faintly of toothpaste, warm liquor and something that was entirely Law. Nami slowly opened her eyes and was instantly met with molten gold peering back at her, a million different emotions roiling within their depths. She watched in silence as Law's gaze flicked down to her lips, where she teasingly darted out her tongue to wet them, and his eyebrows pulled together. Leaning forward, Law buried his face into the crook of her neck, teeth nipping and biting almost painfully at her skin as his hands pulled her closer. Hips met hips, and in one fluid motion he ground against her, allowing her to feel exactly how hard he was within his jeans. Want pulsed through her, and Nami involuntarily bucked into him as she whimpered, fingers dragging down the back of his neck. "Fuck," Law whispered, voice muffled from how he was continuing to litter her skin in marks. His marks. "Fuck." "Law-" "Don't." Nami froze up at the demanding tone, hands going still where they rested on Law's shoulders. It was like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over her head, bringing her back from the edge of her lusty haze. She could still feel his heavy breathing against her neck, coming out in pants through his nose since he'd latched onto her clavicle. There was another whimper on the tip of her tongue, and she wanted to move so badly, but the death grip he had on her waist stopped her from doing anything more than squirm. It was almost like he was trying to get himself under control, and Nami almost asked him what was wrong before he seemed to snap out of it and started to move again. Slowly, Law's hands loosened from her waist and travelled back down over her hips, the swell of her ass before stopping at the back of her thighs where he hoisted her up effortlessly. Nami knew what she was meant to do, and curled her legs tightly around his hips, bringing him as close as was humanly possible in their current position. With her skirt now out of the way, bunched up haphazardly around her hips from being lifted up, and only the thin fabric of her panties and thick denim of his jeans between them, Nami was even more aware of Law's erection. She bit down on her lower lip to keep from whining, arousal flaring back up at the thought of soon having him ramming into her. She pointedly ignored the fact that her ribs felt like they were on fire, punching the air from her lungs, and used her arousal as an excuse for her gasping. If Law knew this was hurting her, he would no doubt stop, and right now that was the last thing she wanted. Law released her skin from between his teeth to lap at the reddened bite mark left behind on her collarbone. It was almost giving her whiplash with how quickly he could go from being rough to laving her in affection. A needling in the back of her mind cut through her arousal for a second time and made her wonder exactly what was going through his mind. What made him say what he did seconds earlier? He sounded frantic, like he was on the verge of losing himself. But just as quickly as the thought materialized her care dispersed. He seemed to be over whatever it was, and if something was happening in his head, she was more than willing to talk about it. Later. Feeling Law's tongue trailing up her throat, Nami felt it was safe to move her hands, and instantly started fighting with pulling his shirt off. She bunched the fabric up at his shoulder blades, and then tugged it over his head, not caring that he was in the middle of nipping at her earlobe. Law leaned back long enough to free himself before he returned back to his previous ministrations, low groans and growls rumbling in the back of his throat. "Tell me if you're hurting," Law mumbled into the sensitive skin just below her ear, the vibrations of his voice causing a full body shudder to ripple through her. "Law," Nami growled out this time, impatience clear in her tone as she tossed the offending garment aside once his arms were free. "You need to shut up and fuck me." Her snark got a deep chuckle from the surgeon, and that sound had all the tension Nami was still holding onto from earlier evaporating all at once. Anchoring herself with her hands back on his shoulders, feet hooking at the base of his spine to dig her heels in, she ground her hips against him teasingly. He wouldn't be able to feel how soaked she was with his jeans still in the way, but she knew he would be imagining it. There was a hitch in his throat that she so clearly heard, and then he was sucking another mark into the space behind her ear. "Eager are we, kitten?" There he was. It seemed her Law was back. Finally. Reaching a hand down between them, Law deftly undid the button of his jeans and pulled down the zipper in as slowly of a fashion as he could, each individual tooth clicking audibly. Nami distracted herself as he took his sweet old time freeing his cock from his jeans by leaning down and sucking the two golden hoops within his left ear into her mouth. Another groan was muffled against her throat when her teeth gently dragged on Law's earlobe, and Nami hummed in reaction, hips rolling to feel his knuckles rub at her clit through the fabric of her panties. Pleasure jolted through her core, and Nami arched her back in response, nipples instantly hardening under the stiff material of her bikini top. It'd been too long since they were last together, and now that they seemed to finally be getting somewhere, everywhere Law touched felt like it was lit on fire. Nami was hyper aware of the one hand he was using to support her at the back of her thigh, and now that he seemed to notice her intentions of getting off using his knuckles, he purposefully angled his other hand so she could get a better angle. It achieved the desired effect, and Nami let out a surprised moan on her next grind against his hand, but now he was going to take even longer, she was sure. "Law, please," Nami whimpered after releasing her hold on his ear, tone pitched with need. Fingers curled at his shoulders to dig perfectly manicured nails into tanned skin before she dragged them down his chest, stopping just before she caught his nipples. As much as she loved the teasing, the build up, now wasn't the time. Not after everything they'd just gone through to get to this point. She wouldn't admit to it, but when Law got angry, even if it was at her, it turned her on beyond belief. "That's it, beg for me. Tell me how much you want my cock." Keeping her distracted with a couple more dirty promises whispered hotly into her ear, even taking the time to suck on her earlobe, Law finished pulling his cock free from his jeans. Precum was already leaking from the tip from how much he had been holding himself back from simply railing her, and like Nami, he was clearly reaching the end of his patience. Nami nuzzled into the side of Law's neck, not paying any real attention to what he was doing between their bodies now, and she complied with his demand of hearing her beg. If that's what it took to get what she wanted, she'd do it, her usual stubbornness be damned. "I want to feel the stretch only you can give me. Fuck me hard, and don't you dare think about my injuries right now. Finish what you started, Law... let me feel you cum inside me," she whispered, breaths puffing against his throat. With a guttural, highly aroused growl, Law rubbed the head of his cock teasingly along Nami's slick folds, which resulted in another whine, and her hips bucked in an attempt to get him inside. It didn't do what she wanted though, and Law simply pushed her more roughly against the door, once again pinning her with his hips. Her legs tightened around him, barely giving him any real room to slide her underwear out of the way and maneuver his cock to her entrance. One swift thrust forward after moving his hand out of the way to grip at her other thigh, and Law was sliding home. Their mixed groans of satisfaction echoed throughout Law's room, and Nami threw her head back to thud against the door. Law stayed still for a few moments as Nami adjusted to his size, simply enjoying the way her walls fluttered around him from the sudden intrusion. She was clawing at his back, and the slight sting only adding to the pleasure he felt. "Shit..." Nami breathed out on a stuttered breath. Creamy, well toned thighs flexed at Law's sides as she tried to distract herself from the pain radiating through her torso because of her ribs. Instead, she put as much focus as she could manage on the undercurrent of pleasure thrumming from her core. "You okay?" She heard Law murmur against the curve of her neck, the slightest hint of worry in his tone. Feather light kisses were pressed into her skin, and Law only stopped to nip at the marks he'd already placed there earlier. "Mmm..." Giving Nami's thighs a squeeze, Law leaned back without jostling her too much to no doubt take in her expression. She knew she probably looked like she was hurting with her eyes closed, eyebrows pinched together. But she couldn't help it, not right now anyway. If he would just give her what she wanted, she was sure she'd be fine. "Nami-ya." "Law. What did I say...? Start moving," she hissed, curling her arms tightly around his neck to bring him closer and gave an impatient roll of her hips. After a moment's hesitation, Nami could hear Law give a resigned sigh before he slowly pulled his hips back, the drag of his cock along her sensitive walls drawing a pleased hum from her. He stopped when only the flared tip was nestled within, before he snapped his hips forward again, burying himself to the root for a second time. Nami gasped at the mixed sensation of both pleasure and pain, and her back arched away from the door, hips angling so on Law's next thrust his cock reached deeper within her. He set a steady pace after making sure he wasn't doing more harm than good, though it was obvious he was starting to care less and less about whether he was hurting her or not, and soon Nami's gasps turned into full blown moans. It was music to his ears, and after letting a smug grin spread across his lips, he leaned forward to attack her neck again. "That's right, kitten... sing for me," Law growled into her ear, seeming to finally give himself over to his more primal desires. His thrusts grew rougher, more frantic; exactly the way Nami wanted him to fuck her. The bruising grip he had on her thighs continued to tighten, making it all the more obvious that he wasn't thinking about her injuries anymore, and she knew his fingers would be leaving marks when this was over. Nami didn't care though, and egged him on by screaming his name at a particularly rough thrust, the length of his cock dragging along one of the most sensitive spots within her core. Luckily, with his bedroom door being solid metal, their actions weren't as obvious as it would have been if they were fucking against a wooden door. But her back was still thudding quite loudly every time Law fucked forward. Anyone who was relatively close would know exactly what was happening. Neither Law nor Nami had any shame, and on more than one occasion the residents of both the Tang and the Sunny knew what they were up to. So the worry of being caught was nowhere to be found. "Oh, Law... Law, shit-" Nami's words got cut off by another cry, and fingers knotted into Law's hair. She tugged roughly, pulling his face from where he was busy sucking yet another hickey onto her shoulder. Dark chocolate met molten gold as Nami took in the pleasure filled expression on Law features, knowing her face was mirroring the look. He grinned, the stretch of his lips almost feral, and she couldn't help but smirk back before she lurched forward and kissed him. It was a lustful, messy clash of teeth and lips, nothing anywhere close to passionate, and he continued to fuck relentlessly into her, rhythm all but gone from the snap of his hips. Nami could feel her climax building quickly now that she was being given what she wanted, the tell-tale tingling starting in the pit of her stomach and working its way outward. Tears sprung at the corners of her eyes and started sliding down her cheeks from how intense the pleasure was. "Mmm... g-gonna cum-" "Yeah? Let go then, beautiful, cum all over my cock," Law crooned, a little breathless, and brought one hand between their bodies again to rub borderline violent circles around her clit. That was the little extra she needed, mixed with the permission he gave, and Nami toppled head first over the edge. A high pitched scream of his name ripped from her throat as she climaxed, walls clamping down in rhythmic pulses around his thick cock. Thighs quivered against Law's sides, features pinching as she rode out the immense shocks of pleasure that had tingles running along her skin from head to toe. Somewhere amongst the post-orgasmic bliss she was floating in, feeling very much like she was on cloud nine at the moment, Nami felt Law still against her with a full body shudder, his hot seed spilling into her more than welcoming body. A drawn out groan of her name reached her ears, muffled slightly from where his teeth had sunk into her throat, and she mumbled incoherently in response, something that sounded like his name repeated over and over again. Nami could feel the beginnings of exhaustion creeping in around the edges of her consciousness when the last bits of pleasured haze lifted, and she sighed softly, angling her head forward enough to press her forehead against Law's shoulder. He was still holding her up against the door with his hands secure at the back of her thighs, just under her ass, and was taking his time with lightly kneading the skin and muscle there. But she was sure it would only be a matter of seconds before he pulled her away to instead make them both comfortable in bed. He couldn't hold her up forever, no matter how strong he was. Sure enough, Law did exactly as she expected he would after slowly pulling his softening cock from her, the action causing them both to sigh in unison. Nami could feel his cum leaking from her cunt now that she was empty, and her nose wrinkled up at the slight unpleasantness of it, but decided to ignore the sensation for the most part. One of Law's hands shifted from her thighs so he could curl his arm around her waist and hold her close while they moved through the room, the sound of heeled boots hitting wood with each step echoing against the walls. Nami unhooked her legs—which, even while not using them, felt like jelly—from Law's waist as he walked, making it easier for him to maneuver her around once they got to the bed. Her arms stayed draped over his shoulders, fingers gently dug into his shoulder blades. Being extra careful with her now that he was back in his right mind, no longer blinded by lust and anger, he laid her down in his bed like she was made of the most precious glass, and made sure she was in a position that would be the least irritating on her ribs before crawling in beside her, shoes and all. Both didn't seem to mind that they were still clothed, or that said clothes were partially askew on their bodies, namely Nami's skirt which was currently bunched up around her hips. None of that mattered to her, though, and Nami wasted no time in curling up against Law's side once he was settled, pointedly ignoring the sound of annoyance that came from his throat at her ruining the position he'd initially put her in. "You're going to hurt yourself more," he grumbled, already knowing that his scolding was falling on deaf ears. Nami allowed a lazy smile to spread across her lips, revealing just how much she actually cared about his statement, and tilted her head from where it was resting on the edge of his shoulder to peer up at Law's face. His gaze was on her own shoulder and neck that wasn't currently covered by the tangled orange mess that was her hair, and from his expression almost looked guilty. Almost. Bringing a hand up, he gently brushed her hair back behind her shoulder, exposing the full amount of damage he'd done to her, and despite the look of guilt, Nami swore she could see some pride welling up in his eyes at seeing the purling bite marks and hickies. "Going to have to start buying you some scarves," Law mused, tracing the marks with a fingertip like he was playing connect the dots. "But I wouldn't mind people seeing these... Lets them know you're mine." Law's possessiveness always managed to strike something deep within Nami, especially after intimate moments like this, and she could feel her cheeks heating up in reaction. It had a smug, knowing grin stretching across the surgeon's features, but before she could retort with a witty remark, or get mad about how there was no way she could hide these from her crew, his expression levelled back out to something a little more serious. "How are you feeling?" The change in subject was only slightly appreciated, and Nami hummed, turning her head enough to press her lips to his chest just on the outer edge of his heart tattoo. "Sore... But I'll be fine. More tired than anything," she murmured honestly into his skin, eyes falling shut because suddenly it seemed like too much effort to keep them open. "Get some rest. I'll give you an examination when you get up to make sure we didn't complicate the healing process." She wasn't against that idea, and sleep was already tugging at her. There didn't really seem to be much of a point in fighting it anymore, either. Though, before Nami could completely succumb to unconsciousness, there was something she needed to say to him. "Mm... Law?" "Yeah?" "I'm sorry for keeping it from you..." "... Go to sleep, Nami-ya."

#shambledsurgeon #🍊 𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐧𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 ( asks. ) #🍊 𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 ( lawna. ) #🍊 𝐛𝐞𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐝𝐨𝐨𝐫𝐬 ( smut. )

[tibbinswrites]

Suptober Day 7 - Battered and Bound

Dean awoke with a splitting headache and forced himself to not move while he took stock of the situation, eyes closed. He was sitting up, head handing, adding a wicked crick in his neck that would take days to fully go away. The chair he was in was metal, heavy-duty, possibly bolted down. His hands had been forced through the slats of the back so they could be bound tightly. The rope was good quality, quite thin but strong, with enough give to prevent it from easily snapping. And it didn’t feel like the switch-blade was in his sleeve any more. Unfortunate. This wasn’t going to be easy.

He kept his head hanging, kept his breathing deep and even, listening for any hint of whatever thing had trussed him up like a damn chicken. It was frankly embarrassing the amount of times he’d woken up like this. For one of the most feared hunters in the country, it apparently sure was easy to sneak up on him and bash him over the head with something. Sam was no better, that boy would probably have some kind of brain damage by now if Cas didn’t periodically heal them.

“You can quit the act,” a female voice said. “I know you’re awake.”

Damn. So not an amateur then. That was about all he could narrow it down to really; vamps could hear the change in your heartbeat, djinn could sense when you were no longer under their thrall, werewolves could smell the chemicals that flooded a waking person’s system, angels and demons and gods… they almost always knew too. In fact, nine times out of ten the pretending-to-be-asleep shtick didn’t work. He only kept doing it because when it did, it was really fun.

Dean blinked and lifted his head, abandoning pretence immediately. He looked around first, taking in the stone room, the thick air of underground, hanging from the walls were chains with flakes of red on them, rust or blood he couldn’t tell from here. There was also a dirty looking cot against far wall. His chair seemed to be in the centre of the room.

Dean yawned and looked up at the woman with a smirk, “Congrats, you’ve got the torture dungeon model 38.4. Pretty standard really. Sweetheart, if you’re trying to scare me, this ain’t gonna do it.”

“It’s not your fear that I care about, Dean Winchester. Only your pain.”

At this point, Dean had given up on asking how the monsters they hunted knew his name. He was practically a celebrity. It was weirder when they didn’t know to be afraid.

This woman didn’t look afraid though. She didn’t have the smarmy confidence of a demon either, or the stick-up-the-ass look of an angel.

“What are you?”

“Apathetic.”

Dean frowned. The woman looked down at him passively. “My species doesn’t have a name, if indeed, there are more than me. I assume there are.”

“You don’t know?”

“It makes no difference either way.” Her voice was hollow, devoid of all feeling, but with a lilting accent he couldn’t place. She really didn’t care that she might be the only one of her kind. What the hell even was her kind? How could he pray to Cas to start researching how to kill a creature with no name?

He tried nonetheless. Praying mental snapshots of his situation and the woman in front of him, hopefully it would be enough if he couldn’t make it out himself.

“I’m going to feed now.” She said, stepping around the chair to avoid the reach of his legs – smart – and resting a palm around the back of his neck.

White-hot agony speared though him at her touch, shooting up into his brain, blotting out the until-that-moment-noticeable pain of his headache with something a thousand times worse. He thought he screamed, he must have tried to jerk away from her hand. The metallic tang of blood rushed into his mouth where his teeth must have ripped at the skin of his lip. He thought perhaps his nose was bleeding too, his eyes, his ears, his very pores oozing red fluid as it too tried to escape the all-encompassing torment.

And then it was over and a string of blood hung from his mouth, trembling with each one of his shuddering breaths.

“That all you got, bitch?” Dean spat, because he had to, because to admit that he would rather she run him through with a sword than touch go through that again would be admitting a weakness he couldn’t have, not in front of the monsters.

“I will not be hungry again for another few hours,” the thing said, clearly done with any kind of small-talk. She walked out of sight and Dean heard the sounds of a door opening and closing and locking, and then footsteps fading away.

As soon as he deemed himself in the clear he searched every inch of the room from his chair, he strained his neck around in all directions, trying to see something of use, anything. The last thing he remembered before waking up here was throwing down a few dollar bills onto a sticky bar top and standing to leave. He suppose this thing must have caught him on the way out. He didn’t remember seeing her in the bar.

They were investigating a murder, the murder of a guy who’d been missing for thirty-six years. He’d almost not been found at all, having been buried deep in protected woodland, but a ranger had noticed all the animals avoiding a particular spot and had gone to investigate.

The body can’t have been there more than a week but the skin was paler than it should have been by far. It was also stained with dry blood though there hadn’t been any visible wounds there had been considerable damage to the brain, and a handprint on the back of the neck.

It was just their kind of weird, so they’d packed up and shipped out and Dean had been asking around for anyone who remembered the guy vanishing nearly forty years ago. He hadn’t gotten anywhere.

Dean shuddered, knowing now what that poor guy had been going through for the past three and a half decades. He couldn’t go through that again, he wouldn’t last thirty years, his brain would explode way before then.

Weak, his mind hissed at him you were on Alastair’s rack for as long. You will suffer this as long as you need to.

Just long enough for Sam and Cas to find him.

Xxx

Four feedings later and Dean openly sobbed whenever the creature entered the room. Not that it mattered, she was as impervious to begging as she was to threats, unmoved by bargains, by bravado, by screams. She didn’t care that he told her this was nothing compared to Hell, she didn’t care that he was lying. She didn’t try to gag him or muffle his screams so either she had good soundproofing or she lived way out in the middle of freaking nowhere.

He measured time by feedings now, by the fear that ebbed and flowed with her presence. He still wasn’t sure what she was feeding on, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. She didn’t offer the information and he didn’t ask.

This was worse than any other time he’d been held captive. There were no taunts to bite back at, no cracks in her veneer to exploit. He was just here for when she was hungry and ignored otherwise.

She doused him with water once, immediately after feeding and he spluttered for breath, disoriented and confused. She also fed him, by hand, using a glove, and as much as he wanted to, he knew he couldn’t reject the food or bite at her if he wanted to keep any strength at all. She gave him water after each feeding, tipping the neck of a plastic bottle over his mouth. It was up to him whether to drink or not. He’d refused at first, keeping his lips tightly pressed together, but she didn’t seem to care about that either.

Apathetic was probably the most accurate way to describe her.

Each feeding was worse than the last. The lack of natural light, of any kind of social contact, of enough sustenance to do anything more than just keep breathing was taking a gruelling toll. She didn’t talk to him much. She would respond to his words most times, but everything she had to say was just so empty that there was no satisfaction in trying to goad or insult her. His sight had started to go fuzzy, something had fried back there during the last feeding and everything was just slightly blurry now and it strained him to focus. Not that there was anything to see. He’d looked for any kind of escape route, a weapon, he’d even tried to break the chair, slamming one of the legs with his bare foot again and again but tied up as he was, his strength draining by the second, it was looking pretty bad.

Xxx

It was coming up to feeding ten now. It must have been at least a week since his capture. His fingers had been numb for two feedings and he’d all but given up. How the other guy had lasted so long he didn’t know; perhaps that brain damage had kicked in around now because Dean could use some. He was done. His eyes hurt to open, everything was covered in a red film, so he mostly left them closed. His ears whined even when there was nothing to hear. Any words he tried to say came out slanted and thick his hands barely moved. He was a fucking useless hunter.

There was a muffled scuffling sound and Dean shook his head, trying to clear his ears. He was pretty sure they were blocked with blood. Everything tasted and smelled like blood here, and he didn’t even have a deal to take.

The scuffling continued for a while and then stopped, and then there were footsteps, regular, heavy, and it must be feeding time because Dean’s body was already straining in his bindings, trying to get as far away from the door as possible.

The footsteps stopped and then there was a loud BANG. The door flung open and two blurry shapes rushed in.

“Dean!” One of them yelled, and warmth filled him at the sound, though he wasn’t quite sure why.

“Suhme,” was the sound that left his mouth.

“Crap. Dean, how bad is it?”

Fingers reached for him then and he screamed and yelled, trying to shove his weight to one side, away from the touch. He heard something pop in his shoulder before he felt it, but that was fine, that was like a headache, it wasn’t a touch.

Incredibly, the fingers stopped advancing.

“Dean?” The voice was very small now and Dean wanted to cry, probably was crying, his face didn’t feel much any more.

“Let me see,” came another voice, deeper, more warmth, but different, something more painful, but not bad.

“Cuh,” his mouth said.

“Yes, Dean. It’s me, it’s Cas. We’ve come to take you home.”

“Hum,”

“That’s right.” The voice sounded strained. “I’m going to heal you now, as much as I can.”

“Nuh!” Dean yelled. He knew what that meant. It meant a hand on his neck, it meant more agony, it meant-

The fingers landed lightly on his cheek and his eyes blinked and sharpened. A mop of dark hair and huge, worried blue eyes gazed at him.

“Cuh?”

Cas nodded and forced a smile. “Sam, cut his hands free, I can’t heal much in here, the warding is strong.”

Sam, shaggy-haired and gaunt-faced gave a grim nod. Dean kept his eyes on Cas and Cas looked back steadily.

“We’re not going to hurt you, Dean. No more pain.”

“Nuh muh?” It was hard to believe, he barely remembered a time before the pain.

Cas’s eyes were bright and wet in the dim room and he shook his head. “I promise.”

“I pred.”

Cas’ expression softened even further and his fingers trembled against Dean’s cheek.

“I know, my love. I heard you.”

@winchester-reload

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