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kikufuku01 · 1 year

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I Love You, Always

Sukuna X Reader

Part 13 Confrontation ♡♡♡ Part 14 Three Brats series m. list

Reblogs, comments and likes are appreciated!

A/N: Hey guys~ sorry that I haven’t posted in the last 2 weeks! Something came up and it was really hard for me to update anything, so to make up for it, I combined 2 chapters into 1, so it’s a little longer than usual. Please remember that this is a work of fiction and that all actions done by any characters are based on realistic human emotion. With that said, enjoy!

Sukuna’s eyelids flick and flinch which causes him to wake up. The reason as to why is simply because the bed felt too warm, and that’s when he remembered all the events from last night. His heavy eyelids blink a few times when he realizes you’re also in his arms. A tiny smile pulls onto the corners of his lips as he stares down at you, and you just look so beautiful with the early blue hue of 7am shining down on your skin. His heart pounds slightly harder when he leans down to place a soft kiss on your forehead, and if anyone were to ask him what he thinks of you, well, he’d hate to admit it but his ears would burn red while his dimples would appear. The man might not be in love yet, but he’s surely to fall, if a god would let him.

“Mmm…”

You stir in your sleep, unconsciously snuggling closer to his chest. He wonders if you’re aware of how cute you are.

“Hey,” he starts to shake you gently, “wake up.”

This time you wake up and look up at him with wide eyes. The moment you see his smiling face, yours turns hot and you quickly break free from his hold and turn your back towards him. Shit! There’s a lot of embarrassment going through your mind and you can’t believe what happened last night. Your arms come up to cover your clothed breasts while you curse at yourself silently.

Sukuna thinks it’s cute that you’re feeling shy. It’s been a long time since he’s seen you like this, but he’ll have to savor this moment another time. For now, he plans to try and confirm loose ends with you. He reaches over and draws a long line up your spine with one finger, “you’re gonna hide from me now? Don’t tell me you plan to hide forever.”

“Ugh,” you groan but a smile still crawls onto your face. With no other choice, you slowly turn back around to face him, but right as you do, he leans over and begins to attack you with soft kisses.

“Stop,” you whisper.

A string of laughter blends together and it lightens the mood drastically. Still, you back away from him and plug your nose as a joke, “I said, stop. We haven’t brushed our teeth.”

Sukuna’s mouth falls agape, but he lunges at you again, however, instead of kissing you, he snatches your hands away from your face and blows his breath into your face.

“Gross!”

You screech and grimace, though you haven’t actually smelt it. When you can no longer avoid him, you finally breathe in and smell what he’s blowing at you. Now, you’re not a weirdo, okay?! You aren’t! But… It’s actually not bad at all. His breath doesn’t smell bad, in fact, it doesn’t really smell like much.

“Oh,” you let out. You sniff even harder while there’s a disappointed look on your face. You playfully shove your nose into Sukuna’s mouth, “it doesn’t smell bad at all.”

He backs up from you and nods cockily, “maybe you’re just attracted to me. I think your pheromones say ‘yes’ to me, don’t you think?”

You immediately furrow your eyebrows at him, “uh, I don’t think that’s how it works… maybe it’s just brain chemistry?”

You choose to lay flat on your back as you stare at the ceiling and ponder. When you’re done thinking, you lol your head to the side and pout, “so, are you telling me that when I smell your natural scent and like it, I’m also releasing oxytocin or?”

Sukuna shrugs at you, “crap, I don’t know about all that shit. I didn’t exactly pay attention in school.” He lays back down and sighs, “all I can say is that I feel the same way. Your skin smells intoxicating and I like everything about you. You’re comforting.”

Your heart is doing somersaults and there’s a stupid grin on your face again, but you’re not sure if it’s appropriate for you to feel this way. You and Sukuna aren’t together, yet you’ve slept with each other. It’s natural to have some doubts, is it not? What if that whole thing was a spur of the moment due to you guys just exploding at each other? The both of you could be blind by lust and sexual attraction, but who is to say there’s more?

You may not realize it, but Sukuna can see your face visibly drop. He decides it’s best if he reassures you now, even if this stupid shit is new to him too. His big hand comes to grab yours and then he nibbles on your fingertips, “I like you. I hope you believe me.”

It’s really hard to say it back to him, because there’s still uncertainty in you, but you manage to smile just a little. Sukuna’s throat bobs up and down when you don’t respond, so you sit up in bed and avoid looking at him, “I think…” your voice trails off but you continue to speak, “I should talk to Kaede before anything goes further.”

“That’s fine with me.”

Sukuna follows your action by sitting up as well but the cool air makes his nipples perk, so you laugh at him, “you cold?”

He deadpans, “obviously. Got a shirt I can borrow?”

“None that’ll fit you,” you say as you get off the bed. You go towards the door and open it slowly to peek outside. Since no one else is awake yet, you turn back at him and offer another small smile, “I'll sneak one of my dad’s shirts for you. Is that good enough for you?”

He blinks a couple of times but then hums, “sure.”

Once you close the door behind you, you walk up the stairs with light steps. But uh… the scene is one you wish you never witnessed because their clothes are scattered on the ground… I know, it’s gross to imagine! But it’s no wonder they didn’t hear you! Your mom was getting it in as well! Ew! Seriously?! At their big age?! Ugh… You take a deep breath and hold it as you creep inside on your toes. You reach their walk-in closet with success and go in to swiftly take a shirt before running out.

By the time you make it towards the stairs, you’re back to breathing normally and you walk down with ease. “Here,” you toss the shirt at him and watch as he holds it up. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed as he checks the sizing of the shirt. After staring for a few seconds, he huffs and then puts it on. The shirt is a bit tight on him, but it compliments his muscles! You try to walk past him, but Sukuna manages to grab at your waist and pulls you towards him.

“Yes?”

You’re looking down at him with confusion but all Sukuna does is rest his chin on your abdomen while staring up at you with doe eyes. Your initial instinct is to cradle his head, but the stubborn in you fights back and you quickly step away from him to break contact.

“Sorry,” you mutter. “I got flustered.”

Sukuna just grins to himself before standing up, “it’s okay if you wanna play hard to get. I’m good at playing along, remember?”

“I wasn’t–”

You cut yourself off, since it’ll be useless to argue back. You puff up your cheeks before walking towards the window, “you should probably go before they wake up.”

Sukuna won’t let his disappointment show. He puts on a proud smile and partially sticks his lower half out the window. He turns back at you with puckered lips, “could I get a kiss, at least?”

Yeah, it seriously feels like everything is moving at the speed of light, and you understand that you’re partly to blame for that, but it’s all moving too fast. Not too long ago, you and Kazuya stopped seeing each other, just yesterday you and Sukuna talked it out, fucked and now he’s acting like everything is all sunshines and rainbows when it’s not. You’ve still got to talk to Kaede about this first and see how she feels before you continue or start anything with him. Yes, it’s hypocritical of you of all people to feel this way since you practically begged Sukuna to fuck you, but still! Now that you’re in your right mind, you want to slow things down and figure this shit out.

Regardless of these thoughts flying past your mind, you pucker your lips and lay a soft kiss against his. It’s a sweet kiss, and it makes your heart flutter like crazy, but it still feels wrong. Sukuna pulls away first and grumbles something you can’t understand before he speaks to you again, “should I tell Kaede instead?”

“No.” Your head snaps up in an instant, “no, I’ll talk to her. She’s my friend.”

Sukuna pulls at one of your cheeks, “you sure? She’s my friend too.”

“I’d like it if you refrained from saying anything. You can still meet up with Kaede, but don’t speak of this yet. I want to tell her myself, but I’m not sure when I want to do it. I want to mentally prep myself first, ya know?”

Sukuna tilts his head a bit, releases your cheek and then gives you a gentle slap. When you glare at him with seriousness, he lets out a soft laugh, “you’re cute.” His hands surrender in the air and he leans back, “alright, I won’t say a thing until you tell her.”

He gives you another quick kiss and hops out the window. As you watch him climb over the gate, it amuses you how a man like him can act so cute at times. There’s a possibility that Sukuna could be a really great actor, so…

♡ ♡ ♡

You’ve been stalling. You’ve been stalling really bad! It’s been four days and you haven’t spoken to Kaede yet. Oh, you’ve also avoided meeting Sukuna in person. One of the reasons why you’re ignoring Sukuna is because you’re just straight up embarrassed. He’s messaged you to hang out, but you keep telling him to wait. Whenever Kaede texts you, you tell her you’re busy. From your knowledge, they both hung out and ate lunch together, but Sukuna left early.

You’re actually on your way to meet up with Kaede, but you continue to pace back and forth. She wanted to meet at the mall so you could do some shopping, so you finally agreed. You see her in the distance, which makes your guilty little heartbeat quicken. She’s dressed up and looks beautiful like always while you’re dressed down. If she knew what you were going to tell her, would she still have dressed up?

You hate to say it but is this really worth losing a friendship over? Is Sukuna worth losing a friend? There’s a possibility that Kaede might not even care but the better half of you already knows the outcome. All there’s left to do is accept the pain and hurt that you’ll receive in the long run because going back to Sukuna means opening a bandaged wound. Even if you yourself think it’s ridiculous to choose love over friendship, your mind becomes hazy with the memory of Sukuna’s rare loving red hues, which makes the selfish side of you want to tune out all of your morals.

“Y/n!”

Kaede strops brushing her fingers through her hair and quickly waves you down while she steps towards you, “good, you’re here! I’ve been trying to get a one-on-one with you for forever now.”

She eagerly loops her arm through yours and tries to drag you forward with her but your feet stay planted to the ground, making it hard for her. Her lips form into a small frown at your resistance and right as she’s about to question you, you speak up.

“Kaede, before we do anything, I have something to say.” You shut your eyes, since you can already feel the impending doom that’s to come. “You might not want to see me after I tell you this, though…”

She changes her stance but still has her arm looped through yours. When she stares at you a little longer, her smile falters, “why do you look like that?”

“Like what?”

“Guilty.” The curiosity in her voice settles into something more stern, “did something happen?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Based on your seriousness and the gloomy aura emitting from you, Kaede figures she should be a bit more serious. She slips her phone into her back pocket and decides to focus on you, “oh no, did you and Kazuya break up?”

Shit, she still hasn’t gotten the hint. You stand taller, “we never started, but that’s a part of it.”

“Don’t let Sukuna know.” She exhales dramatically with wide eyes, “he’ll go berserk.”

Your voice wavers with anticipation, but you speak anyway.

“That’s the thing, Kaede. Sukuna knows.”

Kaede’s body immediately stiffens, and she finally unloops her arm from you. She takes a couple of steps back as her eyebrows pull down, “what? Why am I the last to find out?”

“Kaede,” you clear your throat and avoid her eyes, choosing to look down, “this is about Sukuna.”

“What about him?” There’s a horrible feeling that’s brewing in the pit of Kaede’s stomach based on your body language, but she decides to turn a blind eye to her intuition. She forces on a smile, “I noticed that you two weren’t getting along well. Don’t tell me you guys stopped being friends. I really like him.” She makes sure that the end of her statement sounds firm, almost like a warning.

Boom. There’s the first pang in your chest. You lift your head to look at her, “you really like him?”

“Yes, I do.” Kaede confirms everything with a sweet stone look on her face. “I like him a lot, so I’m really hoping that you two are still on good terms.”

Shit. What the fuck are you supposed to do now? This would’ve been solved if you weren’t so stupid all the time, but you can’t help who you are. While you’re searching for the most appropriate words, Kaede’s eyes narrow on you.

“Why are you so quiet?”

“You’re making it really hard for me to say this,” you admit in a cowardly tone.

Kaede waits for the bunch of people walking by to get past you guys before continuing the conversation. When there aren’t a bunch of strangers to listen in, she opens her mouth.

“Say what? Just spit it out.” Her smile towards you is becoming more and more artificial, “you’re making me nervous.”

Due to nervousness, you begin to fiddle with your phone, “I like Sukuna, too. I didn’t realize it until–”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She cuts you off before you can finish and scoffs, “you like him?”

Her usual friendly eyes are now staring daggers at you and you swallow your pride, choosing to stand tall. You speak with a clear voice, “please don’t look at me like that.”

“How could I not? I’ve asked you time and time again if you liked him and all you ever did was deny. Now you’re telling me that you like him?” Another scoff comes from her mouth, but this time it’s more sarcastic, “this better be some kind of joke.”

“It’s not a joke, Kaede. I’m serious.”

She waves her arms in the air out of frustration, “how did this happen?”

“I started realizing my feelings a little after we kissed.”

Her head snaps towards you instantly, “you two kissed?!” She points her finger at herself, “behind my back?”

You already knew how this would play out, so why does it still hurt? You step towards her, maybe as a way to feel closer to her again, “it wasn’t my intention to kiss him that night. I– I asked him to take me to a party so I could meet someone.”

When you see her judgmental eyes, you speak quicker, “I wasn’t sure about Kazuya, so I wanted to test something out. After a few drinks, we were both drunk and ended up kissing.”

“Wow, you’re such a sneak,” Kaede laughs at you while fanning herself, “doing this behind both mine and Kazuya’s back. Tell me, why wasn’t I invited?”

“I–”

“You planned this all along, that’s why I wasn’t aware.”

The way she speaks about you to your face hurts like hell. You understand why she’s hurt, but how could she speak to you like this? It was never your intention.

“You act like I meant to do it!” You snap, now glaring at her as well. “I felt horrible the next day because I knew that you liked Sukuna, and I thought he liked you back, so I asked him to keep quiet about it. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, Kaede. I really didn’t think I’d like someone like him.”

By now there are tears welling in Kaede’s eyes. She sniffles softly, “no, you were trying to save face. I never thought you’d be this kind of person, y/n.”

“I’m not!”

“But you are!”

Kaede steps up to you and continues to glare with all her might, even if the tears are falling down her face. And gosh, you look like the worst kind of person right now because there are no tears coming from you. She must be questioning whether you were ever really her friend. Another tear falls, “what else happened, huh?”

Oh shit. How long have you been holding your breath for? You only realized now because you finally let out a breath to breathe, “why are you so upset? Did you two do anything?”

The way she’s reacting has you doubting everything Sukuna’s ever told you. Why else would she be so upset?

Kaede shoves you back weakly, “no, but you knew I liked him! What else happened between you two?” She quickly glances around to make sure there are no prying eyes and then resumes, “he liked me, I was sure of it.”

There you go again, not knowing what to say. The truth is you’re a bad person for sleeping with him when you knew it wasn’t right.

She releases you, “stop getting quiet on me. You seduced him, didn’t you? You seduced him!”

Fine, you’ll just suck it up. This time you swallow down the lump in your throat and look right into her eyes, “I didn’t do anything. He came to me, Kaede. All those times when he and I almost parted, he always came back to me.”

She begins to wipe her eyes with her slender fingers and finally backs away from you, “you two had sex, didn’t you? Don’t lie to me.”

Kaede sees how your jaw tightens at her accusation and it’s enough to confirm everything. You turn away because you can’t bear to see her reaction.

“Yes, we did…”

Her breathing hitches, “and was he satisfied? Did he say he was?”

Why would she bother asking these kinds of questions? It’s only going to add fuel to the fire. There’s such a heavy weight in your chest that it feels almost impossible to breathe. How the hell are you supposed to answer her? As if possessed, you speak without thinking.

“He didn’t need to, Kaede.”

Like a ticking time bomb finally exploding, her face turns red and she shouts.

“You’re a whore! I hate you! How could you, y/n? How could you do this to me?”

You reach out for her hands, “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Just leave. I don’t want to see you anymore.” She snatches her hand back from you, “if you thought I’d give you my blessing, you thought wrong. I hope your relationship is fickle and shallow.”

“Kaede.”

“Fuck off.”

She storms past you, not giving you a chance at saying any more. Fortunately, she asked to meet up at a time when there aren’t a lot of people, so no one saw or heard your argument just now, but it still made you feel like shit. As soon as she’s gone, the waterworks decide to start and now you’re full on crying. Because you’re still in public, you’re trying your hardest to hide your face, but it doesn’t stop the fact that you’re crying. Kaede was one of your longest friendships and now it’s all gone because of what. Did you seriously just let a man ruin your friendship? Should you crawl back and beg for forgiveness? But something about Sukuna keeps you captivated… You’re really just a dumbass that’s blinded, aren’t you?

The ride back home isn’t a pleasant one. Your mind is clouded with thoughts and concerns of what to do and what’s to come afterwards. You haven’t replied back to Sukuna either. The only thing you told him was that you were meeting with Kaede and that’s all.

♡ ♡ ♡

Sukuna clicks the power button on his phone for the nth time and groans when he doesn’t see any text notifications. Just how long are you going to sulk over having to fess up? He’s 100% sure you’ll back out today and will just end up shopping with Kaede. Sukuna glances over at Satoru and clicks his tongue, “quit checking for scratches on your bike.”

They’re both sitting outside in the front yard of his place with the gate left open. Satoru’s motorcycle is parked on the stone ground while the white bag filled with a variety of snacks and drinks lay on the freshly cut grass.

Satoru whines softly and circles his motorcycle once more, “you don’t understand, man. Once you get a bike, you’ll be just as paranoid as me.”

“That’s your seventh time checking though.” Sukuna kneels down and his fingers graze over the smoothness of the motorcycle’s paint, “why did you come to my place anyway?”

“I don’t know. I was bored.” He gently pokes at Sukuna’s cheek, “how are you and y/n?”

Sukuna smacks Satoru’s hand away from his face and shrugs, “we’re alright, so stop asking.”

Satoru shuts up and studies Sukuna’s expression. He looks at his body language and then his eyes go wide; so wide that his eyeballs might roll out. His mouth falls open while an exaggerated sound comes out and then he slaps his hand over his own mouth.

Sukuna sneers at him, “what?”

“You guys fucked.”

When Sukuna looks away, Satoru lets out an excited squeal and playfully rolls his eyes, “how long have you both had this kind of relationship, hm?” He continues to poke fun at Sukuna, “why are you quiet? Oh! Don’t tell me… since that night?! That party, the one she got wasted at.”

“No,” Sukuna grumpily answers back. He groans to himself and pulls out a cigarette, “we kissed that night, but she felt bad about it, so it caused us to drift apart.”

Satoru nods his head along like this is the first he’s hearing of it. I mean, he already knew. He’s a genius at reading people and he knows how to read a room. If anything, he’s always known, because he isn’t stupid. It’s just more fun to pretend like you’re clueless, so he plays along and hums softly, acting like all of this is shocking news.

“Wow, I had no idea at all,” he lies.

“Yeah well, I went to return her necklace a few days ago and we just exploded at each other. After getting everything out, we kind of just… fell into each other.”

Satoru snickers, “so, you fucked.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s great! I was wondering when you’d make a move.” Satoru draws out a sigh and decides it’ll be fun to keep playing around, so he taunts Sukuna a little more, “if the both of you were gonna keep ignoring one another, I was just gonna say ‘fuck it’ and make a move on her first, since you weren’t.”

Sukuna’s red orbs stab into Satoru while his fingers flick the ash off his cigarette, “the fuck did you just say? You like y/n or what?”

Satoru’s grin grows more sinister as Sukuna continuously falls into his trap, “not at all. Y/n isn’t my type, but I was willing to make an exception.”

Sukuna’s hand raises and he holds his cigarette towards Satoru’s neck, a silent little threat, “don’t get any funny ideas.”

The taller man sighs at his grumpy friend because he’s truly a dummy. The guys in love and he doesn’t even see it. He doesn’t even have to bet anything to know that Sukuna most likely thinks he only has a crush on you. It’s just so fucking obvious. Regardless, he won’t press any further.

“I’m just kidding, jeez! You’re always so serious!” Satoru sticks out his tongue and stands straight from squatting. His long arms stretch out and flex, “can you go inside and ask your chef to make me something yummy?”

His nose scrunches in annoyance, “just eat the junk you brought over.”

“But I want real food right now,” he sulks.

“Then go ask her yourself, dumbass. I ain’t your fucking slave.”

“Gosh, you’re so mean to me.” Satoru sticks his nose up high and turns his head away from Sukuna, “I’ll be right back.”

Sukuna doesn’t bother to watch Satoru go inside. Instead, he pulls his phone back out and checks for any texts again. Still nothing, damn. His eyes flick onto the motorcycle and he begins to touch the motorcycle with a blank face. He’s always wanted one, but he thought it’d be no use to him. The reason is because he likes traveling on foot, by train, bus etc. It helps him feel connected to the world because that way, he’s still surrounded by people.

Out of nowhere, a hand slaps down onto his shoulder and it makes him flinch. Sukuna’s hand quickly retracts from the bike and he looks up at the intruder with viscous eyes. They soften the moment he recognizes who it is.

“Oh shit, you scared me.”

Kaede chuckles sweetly at him and pulls her hand back, “that’s a first.”

He watches her dust off her skirt before squatting down to sit beside him. Sukuna raises a concerned brow at her, “did you need something? You should’ve called me beforehand.”

“Sukuna–”

Ah, that’s when he remembers. He cocks his head a bit, “weren’t you supposed to be with y/n?”

The mention of your name leaves a bitter taste in Kaede’s mouth. It makes her feel gray inside and her hands clench into a small first, “would you let me talk?”

“My bad, go on.”

She wastes no time on getting to the point, “did y/n seduce you?”

Sukuna rubs the tip of his cigarette into the ground, “would you be more specific?”

“I like you, Sukuna.” Kaede’s smile drops and scoots closer to Sukuna with a look of sadness, “I thought our feelings were mutual, with all those moments that we flirted. We’ve gone to places and eaten together on multiple occasions all without y/n, Sukuna. We’ve held hands at times and…” her voice breaks down as she loses the last of her confidence, “don’t you like me?”

Sukuna removes his gaze from her and turns back to look at his house. When it’s clear that Satoru won’t be back for a while, he nods, “as a friend, yes.”

She shakes her head at him, “couldn’t it be possible that you’re mistaking your feelings towards y/n for lust?” Kaede notes how Sukuna’s expression changes and she scoffs softly, “you both had sex, right?”

So, she knows. You fessed up. That’s great, actually.

Sukuna smiles in a not so obvious way, “we did.” Gosh, it feels so fucking good to finally get it out. His head bobs up and down like he’s confirming it still, “I like her, Kaede. I’ve always liked her.”

Fat, thick tears roll down her pale cheeks, “so why did you string me along? Did I wrong you in any way?”

“Not at all.” Sukuna wipes her fallen tears with one of his thumbs, “at the time, y/n told me that she was into Kazuya, and she didn’t want to hurt you, so she told me to give you a chance. I tried, Kaede, but I couldn’t forget about her.”

“You never gave me a chance.”

Sukuna’s sparing tone becomes more stern, “Kaede.”

She chooses to ignore him and grabs his hand, “give me a fair chance. Forget about y/n today and give me all of your attention.”

Sukuna uses his other hand to grab Kaede’s and he gently pulls her off of him, “Kaede, I think you should leave before you do something stupid. You’re better than this, come on.”

Kaede’s lips continue to tremble as she tries to calm herself, “why are you doing this to me? You know that I like you.”

Disappointment runs through Sukuna’s veins through and through. He knows where this is headed, he’s not dumb. It sucks because he does think Kaede is a great friend, she’s a different kind of fun, but he knows he’ll lose her as a friend after today. His head falls forward because a part of him does feel bad, even with his shallow little heart, but he has to do what’s needed. After letting a couple of seconds pass, he grabs her by the side of her upper arms and pulls her up with him to stand on her feet.

“Respect yourself and don’t stoop so low,” Sukuna says carefully. He doesn’t like to see pretty girls cry, it doesn’t make him feel all that great, but he wishes she could respect herself a little more because she’s a great person that’s just a little blinded by love, that’s all. Kaede begins to hiccup as she cries and he gently rubs her head to help sooth her, “I’m a trash guy, Kaede. You’ll find someone better.”

Kaede sniffles her nose and looks up at him again with new tears, “but I don’t care about that stuff. That fact is that I like you.”

“I think you should go, sweetheart. If that’s all you came here for, then you should leave.”

He stays firm with himself and it completely shatters Kaede’s heart. She knows the pet name he used is just to cushion the rejection, but it hurts like hell. And honestly, she has every right to be upset and heartbroken, because for months he strung her along. Sukuna played with her feelings and then crushed her heart right in front of her, so of course she’d feel this way.

Kaede stumbles back a few steps and glares at him with pure hatred, “you’re jerks. All of you.”

Sukuna’s lips twitch to say something but she aggressively wipes her tears and spins around to stomp through the gates. His vision stays on her figure until she completely disappears. “Fucking hell,” Sukuna silently mutters to himself. What a headache.

“That was quite the confrontation.”

Satoru’s voice sings out from behind and he’s carrying a plate of fresh food with him. Sukuna’s previous expression morphs into confusion while his stomach growls from the savory smell, “how did she make nikujaga so quick?”

Satoru grins like a child, “when I went inside, she was already preparing lunch so I guess I got lucky.” He gently glares at Sukuna and holds the plate closer to his chest, “I’m not getting you a plate, so go get one yourself.”

“Can’t I just pick off your plate?”

“No!”

A subtle breeze blows past the two as they sit on the bench outside and feast. One of his employees had followed them to the yard so he could collect the dishes when they were done, but Sukuna waved him off and told them to leave for the day after cleaning. Since it’s usually just Sukuna home, he’d usually just send them back home after they did some chores and then he’d go and venture outside carelessly.

Satoru pats his bloated stomach and burps out loud, “that was delish!” He shimmies his shoulders to express his happiness and then pouts, “anyway, back to Kaede. How dare she say we’re all jerks!” His head violently whips towards Sukuna, “what did I do to her?!”

Sukuna plops his plate down on top of Satoru’s, “you’re just a bystander caught up in the drama, I guess.” He lets out a loud, obnoxious laugh at Satoru’s offended expression and hooks his arm around his neck and pulls him closer, “what’s it matter to ya anyway, hmm?”

Satoru’s feelings are not hurt by any means. He’s just a little bummed that he now has one less person to bother, so he uses his forearm to shove Sukuna off of him and copies what you always do. He holds his nose up high and mighty with an over-the-top snobby frown, “you’ve taken away another one of my joys. I’ll have to come bother you more often since you chased Kaede away.”

“I’m sure she’ll come around once she gets over this.”

“Doubt that.”

“Damn, you think so?”

Satoru raises his eyebrows, “oh my god, you’re helpless…”

♡ ♡ ♡

It’s already dark now. He sent Satoru home a long time ago yet there’s still no response from you. He only sent you two messages all day but you haven’t read them. It’s really making him worry, even when he knows you’ll be fine, so he puts on his shoes and gets in the car that’s waiting for him.

When he pulls up in front of your house, he waves his chauffeur off and then jumps up to climb over the gate after making sure the coast is clear. He sees that your bedroom lights are off, so he’s a bit concerned if you’re even home. If you aren’t, then he’ll just wait for you in your room. With impatient fingers, he checks to see if your window is unlocked. Fortunately it is.

He shuts the window behind him and examines everything in your room all while listening for your parents. It’s faint, but he can hear them watching tv in the living room. At first he thinks you might be with them, but then he sees the lump that is you under the blanket.

“Y/n?” he quietly calls out. “I’m here. I hope you don’t mind that I’m here.”

You’re unresponsive, just like your texts. Despite the serious and gloomy situation, he finds you cute. His lips twitch into a soft grin and he crosses his arms over his chest, “that’s you under the sheets, right? Are you just not going to answer me?”

Still no answer.

“Fine, be that way.”

With that said, Sukuna removes his shoes, grabs the blanket and jumps right under with you. He pulls the blanket over both of your heads and lets his eyes adjust to the darkness.

You frown at the sight of him, “why did you crawl under?”

“To see you.”

His tone of voice is way too cute for this kind of setting. In fact, he doesn’t sound fazed at all.

You furrow your eyebrows at him, “for what?”

Sukuna shuffles closer towards you and flutters his eyes, even though you can’t really see it well, “because I missed you and wanted to see your pretty face.” His hands come up to cup your face but he’s taken back when your cheeks are damp. His smile drops slightly, “are you crying?”

You don’t mean to laugh but it comes out softly anyway because he’s so stupid, “no, my eyes are sweating.”

“That’s funny.” His thumbs continue to wipe at your cheeks, “never heard that excuse before.”

You turn your face slightly to avoid his touch, “why are you wiping them?”

“I always do.” Sukuna’s voice is even gentler as he speaks to you. “I’ll always wipe your tears away, y/n, so cry all you want.”

While the wounds in your chest ache, those shameless butterflies in your stomach begin to flutter at his corny words. Despite wanting to cry more, another reluctant fit of giggles came out, “you’re so unoriginal. Now no tears are coming out.”

Sukuna nods, “good, I hoped that would happen. I’ll always be here to stop your tears, too. When you’re ready to come out and face me in the light, let me know. I’ll come out with you.”

“You don’t have to stay under.”

His smile drops, but he’s still in a playful mood, “I want to, stupid.” He gently knocks the top of your head with his knuckles.

“Okay,” you whisper.

You have to admit that it feels nice having him by your side. There’s just something so comforting about Sukuna, even with all the red alarms that go off around him. You don’t fully understand what it is about him that has you so wrapped around his fingers, but it’s making you cherish all the wrong things; and even when you know that, you can’t seem to care about anything other than him as of lately. Of course, there’s still that guilty feeling that looms over you, but a part of you just wants to be selfish. You want to be with him all alone. You want him all to yourself. Does that make you bad or are you just human?

As you lay there and drown in your thoughts, your mind runs through every scenario that you and Sukuna could’ve been. If you had just been honest with yourself from the beginning then you’d probably have happier moments than now. A good fifteen-twenty minutes pass before you finally tap his arm. When you do, Sukuna lifts the blanket off of both your heads and desperately breathes the fresh air.

“Finally. It was getting stuffy under there.”

You feign annoyance and scowl at him, “you didn’t have to, asshole.”

“I wanted to, for you.” When he’s done breathing in all the air he needs, he tilts his head back towards you, “Kaede came to talk to me.”

You’re not in the mood to talk about it much, but it’s better to face things head on so it’s over faster. You flip onto your back and look up at the ceiling, “I figured.”

“She was very upset. Was it hard for you?”

Is he seriously asking you this? You blow raspberries at no one in general, “well, it didn’t feel good to crush her feelings. It sucks losing a friend.”

Sukuna snuggles into your bed and gets comfortable while asking, “want to throw me away instead and get her back?”

“No…” you say without much thought. When you realize your answer, you quickly try to back yourself up, “even if I dumped you and went crawling back to her, she’d never take me back.”

You recall your previous text messages to your other friends today and your heart stings all over again. You messaged them hours ago and the reason why was because you wanted to get in touch with Kaede after she stormed off on you, but no one has responded. It’s obvious that they’ve read your messages though. Your chin trembles with your lips, “none of my other friends have responded to me, so I assume she told them that I snatched you away from her.”

He wants to be serious about this, he really does but… his priority is cheering you up. Sukuna holds his chin and acts like he’s in thought, “she isn’t exactly wrong…”

A loud scoff comes from you after hearing him and you can’t believe your ears. You already know that you’re in the wrong, does he have to rub it in?

“Way to make me feel like shit.” You smack his arm, “get out, I don’t want to see your face.”

Once you begin to push him away, he firmly grabs your wrists with a smug grin, “I’m kidding, y/n.” With one swift move, he pulls you on top of him and then releases you. With one hand, he pushes your hair out of your face and smiles up at you with crescent eyes, “you’re cute when you’re sulking. I’ll hold you until you feel better.”

He pinches one of your cheeks and then you scoot down lower to lay your head on his chest, “it really sucks. I understand why she’s hurt, but it’s not like I intended for this to happen.” You clench a fist and lightly but violently pound down onto his shoulder, “you’re such a curse, Sukuna.”

Your statement makes him laugh out loud and you really enjoy the sound of it. You love how you can feel the vibration of his laughter through his chest.

Sukuna places his left hand over the back of your head and pretends like he’s holding his heart, “ouch, I’m wounded by your words.” When you’re finally laughing with him, he pats your head affectionately, “you’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, yeah.” You lift your head up from his chest and stare at him, “you think I’ll be slandered online?”

Sukuna shakes his head at you, “nah, she’s not that kind of person. We know her, halfie. I think she’s just hurt, but she’ll get over it. She and I never did anything, so I don’t understand why she’s so hurt about it.”

“You strung her along,” you say in a dead tone.

“Because you wanted me to,” he replies in the same way.

You cannot help the fact that you roll your eyes at Sukuna for his smart answers. “Fuck,” you groan, “everything is because of me. I’m a horrible person. Look at me, I’m laying here with you while she’s out there crying her heart out.”

His warm hands come up to hold your face once more and he gently boops your nose, “you’re my horrible person.”

Ugh, he’s so fucking cringy. You scowl at him for the nth time and lay back down on his chest, “can you shut the fuck up and just hold me?”

“Anything you want, doll.”

Without any hesitation, he wraps his arms around you and holds you close to his heart. Initially, he wanted to come here to check on you and confirm what you were and where you both stood, but he thinks he can wait until you feel better. Until you’re ready, because he can tell that you’re not ready to speak about it. Sukuna’s patience will always be lenient with you and only you.

His long fingers run through your hair at a set rhythm as a way to continue soothing you while his right arm stays wrapped around your waist. His way of soothing you is probably working because you’ve been so quiet. If anything, he thinks you might’ve fallen asleep. To test the theory, he halts all movement and waits for you to say something or complain. Oh, nothing.

Sukuna gently shakes you and speaks in a hushed tone, “Eunwoo? You fall asleep on me or something?”

Wow, you just hate responding to him today, don’t you? It’s obvious that you fell asleep, so he carefully lifts you off of him and lays you down on your side. Sukuna slowly lifts the blanket from him and goes towards your door with light footsteps. He locks the door to ensure he won’t be found out about just in case your parents ever decide to try and come in and then moves to lock your window.

He gives your head a soft caress, “sweet dreams, doll.”

Sukuna crawls under the blanket again and gives your cheek a quick kiss before he holds you again.

♡ ♡ ♡

It’s really tough when you lose all contact with your friends. Everyone is either making excuses to not hang out with you or they’re just straight up ignoring you whenever you text them. It’s clearly obvious that Kaede spilled the beans about you to them, so you’re being shunned. Yes, you knew this was coming the second you kissed Sukuna that night, but you just can’t stop. The only one by your side is Sukuna, but you’re not dating. You’re too nervous to make things official with him so he hasn’t pestered you about it. You’re still kissing… still fucking. Yeah, yeah, you know! It’s another bad way to start something but you’re still ashamed of what you did to Kaede, so getting into a relationship with him right away is like you bragging while stomping all over her. It’s practically you dangling him in front of her face, even though she’s blocked you on everything. The friends that no longer hang out with you still follow you on all of your socials, so word would still get around. That’s another reason why you haven’t updated or posted anything. You’ve just been rolling around with Sukuna and you hope he’s not hurt that you don’t want to be in an official relationship yet.

Today is another one of those days. He’s been sneaking over and spending the night more frequently, even when you tell him he can’t. Well, it’s not like you’re really trying to kick him out either, so you can’t complain. Anyway, you’re trying to enjoy your sleep but it’s kind of hard with Sukuna breathing down your neck. From the way he’s breathing, you know he’s awake.

Sukuna shoves his head into the crook of your neck and takes another whiff. He woke up earlier but he wasn’t sure if he should wake you or not. He has a morning issue right now but it feels a bit wrong to touch you in your sleep, so he’ll just have to deal with blue balls. His eyes close again so he can focus on falling back to sleep, but he just can’t. He loves the way your skin smells, so he nuzzles his nose into your neck and inhales slowly.

“That tickles.” You finally give up the act and turn to face him, “just how long are you going to sniff me for? I can’t possibly smell that good.”

“Oh, but you do.” A low chuckle rumbles from Sukuna, “I tell you this all the time, doll.”

“Whatever,” you move your hand and go to graze his hardened dick, “I woke up because something hard was pressing up against me. Can’t you learn how to control your hormones?”

Sukuna’s face leans closer to yours while a sinister smile curves onto his lips, “how could I, when you’re right in front of me?”

Your mouth gapes at him, “Sukuna, it’s like five in the morning.”

“All the better. They’re still asleep.”

Anyone in their right minds would know not to do these kinds of things while other people are in the house. You shouldn’t even be going this far with Sukuna because you’re not together; also because it’s too early in general to do this with him. You should still be mourning over your lost friendship, but the greed in you has taken over. Yes, you do feel bad for Kaede, but for some reason that you can’t help, all that matters to you in this world right now are you and Sukuna.

Sukuna’s lips collide against yours and you instantly melt into the kiss like a fool. You fall for his kisses every time and they always feel so good, even when you say they don’t. You enjoy the thrill of the rush, the excitement and the way your heart pounds so fast. You want to bask in it all.

He pulls you on top of him and groans when you automatically straddle him. He can feel the warmth of your cunt resting on his crotch and he thinks you’re such a fucking bitch. You were wet this whole time, fucking minx. You’re still fighting for dominance in the kiss while trying to keep quiet, but the blood is rushing to your brain. You can’t really think straight, if you’re being honest.

“Don’t break my heart,” you whisper against his mouth.

“It’s my heart we should be worrying about,” Sukuna rasps. “I think I’m going into cardiac arrest, doll.”

You click your tongue and give his chest a gentle slap, “you’re always so dramatic,” you murmur fondly.

He shakes his head and holds your gaze, “I mean it.”

Reluctantly, you place your hand over Sukuna’s chest and gasp. “Holy shit.”

The way his heart beats so fast would have you concerned if you didn’t know any better. You retract your hand from him and try to fall over to the side but his arms hold you in place. He shows you a crooked grin, “where ya’ going?”

“Don’t want you dying on me,” you say with a playful attitude.

Sukuna visibly frowns at you but he’s not about to beg you for some sex, so he just sighs for a loss and shrugs, “alright, alright, I’ll leave you alone.”

“You can touch yourself if you want.”

He titters to himself at that, “nah, I just might pounce on you if I do.” Sukuna sticks his tongue out at you as you turn your back towards him. Once he’s made sure that you’ve fallen back asleep, he searches for his phone and scrolls through social media. At first he’s on youtube watching god knows what, then he ends up on tiktok. Since he doesn’t want to disturb your sleep, he makes sure that the volume is barely on but sometimes he can’t contain his cackling. Each time he laughs a bit too loud, he peeks over at you to make sure you’re still asleep. He’s already starting to feel sleepy again when his phone suddenly dings.

Kaede: Hey, Sukuna. I know you probably don’t want to see me right now and that it’s been a while, but I was wondering if we could talk. -6:42am

Shit. Sukuna pushes himself off the bed with his forearms and leans over to check if you’re really still asleep. Based on the way you’re breathing so lightly and the subtle snores, he knows you’re in a deep slumber. What time is it? He checks the time and it’s almost seven.

Sukuna: It’s early. Couldn’t we talk at a later time? It’s cold right now and nothing is open. -6:44am

Kaede: I don’t have time later today. Just meet me at my house, if you will. -6:44am

Sukuna: Can’t promise we can talk for long, then. You cool with that? -6:45am

Kaede: That’s fine. -6:47am

Sukuna carefully lifts the blanket off of himself and lazily slips his shoes on. After he’s done, he shuffles around the bed and places an innocent kiss on your temple, “sweet dreams, doll.”

He doubts you’ll even notice he’s gone but whatever. He’s trying to be as quiet as ever when lifting your window, and he’s holding his breath the whole time he’s doing it. The second he makes it out of your house, he exhales and slides the window down, making sure it’s not closed all the way so he can sneak back in later. The way he’s acting makes him feel like a criminal, which is kind of funny, but that’s also whatever.

The walk to Kaede’s house is a long one, so he whips out his phone and calls Yuuma and tells him where to meet up. Gosh, why the hell are mornings so fucking cold for? Sukuna swears his balls have shriveled up by now. He rubs his hands together for warmth but the moment he sees Yuuma’s car, he speed walks towards it and gets in.

“Good morning, Sukuna.” Yuuma’s speech is broken and awkward as it’s wrong for him to call on Sukuna informally, but the man has ordered him to do so, so what else can he do. “Will I be taking you home?”

Sukuna yawns for like, the hundredth time, and shakes his head firmly, “no, you remember where Yamamoto Kaede resides, correct?”

“Yes, sir– Sukuna…”

The older man is tripping over his tongue at the mistake he’s made but it earns him the low rumble of laughter from Sukuna, which eases his mind. He laughs along with Sukuna as he begins to drive to said destination.

“Will I be taking you home as well? If so, I can wait outside until your affairs are done.”

Hmm… Sukuna has no clue what else Kaede might want to talk about, so he’s unsure of how long it’ll actually take. While it’d be useful for Yuuma to wait outside her house, he’d feel bad for the older man if he had to wait a while. Usually, Sukuna wouldn’t give a flying shit, but deep inside, he’s got a soft spot for Yuuma, so… He shakes his head yet again, “no, it’s fine, thank you. If I need a ride, I’ll call for someone else.”

Yuuma’s groggy eyes widen with surprise and he takes his eyes off the road for a split second, “are you sure? I don’t mind waiting.”

“Eyes on the road,” Sukuna says sternly. “I know your wife is waiting for you at home. She’s almost due, is she not?”

“Uh, yes… about that–”

“I’m not an idiot, Yuuma. I understand that you’ll need time off when the baby is born, so I shall grant you that. It’s not something that concerns me much, that’s why I haven’t called for you as often. If that was your concern, then rest easy.”

Lowkey, it eases Sukuna’s mind that his most tense employee’s shoulders finally relax when he’s told that he can. It makes him feel like less of a villain. Yeah, they’ve come a long way. Feels like yesterday he was beating on Yuuma, demanding him to buy cigarettes and liquor while he was still underage… But after Yuuma would buy it, Sukuna would patch him right back up! So it’s kind of okay, right? Right???

♡ ♡ ♡

Knock knock knock…

Sukuna’s knuckles tap the cold glass and he waits a couple of seconds before he eventually sees the curtains slide open. The bedroom lights are off, but the outside has lightened up a lot from when he first came out, so he can see her clearly. She’s barefaced, as expected, and she’s got a vintage themed nightgown on. There’s not a smile on her face and she doesn’t greet him with friendly eyes like she used to. Completely understandable.

Kaede slowly reaches her hands out and she presses the pads of her fingers against the glass to slowly lift the window up. She steps aside so Sukuna can crawl in and then shuts it again.

Fucking shit… it’s awkward as hell. That’s how she feels. For all she knows, Sukuna probably doesn’t sense anything at all. He might not even feel weirded out about the whole thing, since he didn’t mind meeting up.

“You can sit on the bed if you want.”

Kaede’s head follows him as he makes his way to the bed. While she chooses to stand, he sits on the edge comfortably but still hasn’t said anything. She chews on her bottom lip as she contemplates what to say.

“You called me here, so talk.”

“I’m sorry for lashing out at you the way I did.”

Why is she apologizing to him? One of Sukuna’s eyes twitched, “you have nothing to be sorry for, Kaede.”

Part of her wants to ask about you because she’s genuinely curious, but seeing Sukuna in the flesh again makes her mind go blurry. She grips the fabric of her nightgown with a tight fist and decides to give up all of her pride. Every little thing about Sukuna drives her over the edge and she just can’t seem to stop liking him, even after he so coldly rejected her heart. She tried to delete all of the photos and videos they’ve taken together but her fingers just kept hovering above the delete button. It was too hard to erase such joyful memories… if anything, she’s the true victim of it all. You both played her like she was a fool, but she only has herself to blame for wearing her heart on her sleeves.

It’s been a while since she’s looked at them, so Kaede holds her phone and stares at the gallery again whilst Sukuna sits quietly by himself. There are lots without you, since you were so busy stringing Kazuya along all those months ago. An unstable smile is all she can give as she scrolls higher and higher.

Kaede’s personal favorite photo is this one. She can’t remember why you weren’t there, but she and Sukuna went back to the amusement park. The same one they first met at. They spent all day waiting in long lines and eating either overly sweet or savory foods, and not once were you mentioned. It must’ve been around the time you started distancing yourself, then. Back to the photo… It’s one that she took on her own phone while they sat in the cramped photobooth, so her phone is also reflected in the picture screen. She cherishes this photo so much because he seems so relaxed. It’s candid photos of him, but they’re still cute regardless. They’re sitting shoulder to shoulder while her phone is positioned next to her face. She’s smiling and making cute faces in each of the photos while he’s smiling from ear to ear as he messes with the provided filters. Like always, Sukuna’s hair is loosely gelled back in a messy manner but that’s what makes him so sexy, along with his charisma.

It’s different today. Soft, fluffy and down; a rare sight indeed. It’s not like she’s never seen this side of him, but his duality is also his allure. It keeps you on your toes; makes you wonder what else there is to discover about him.

Kaede lays her phone down and stares at him again. Her voice is low, almost inaudible. “My parents aren’t here.”

Sukuna lifts his head slowly and raises an eyebrow at her, “what?”

He heard her, he has good ears. Just, what? The hell would she say that for? Sukuna scowls, “if they weren’t here, then you should have said I could use the front door.”

She ignores him. Instead, she grabs the fabric of her dress and tightens her fists while she swallows another large lump. Kaede pushes herself off the wall and strides towards Sukuna with a look of determination. When his head is fully lifted to look at her properly, she pulls the dress up and off over her head, revealing her own full nudity.

The moment Sukuna sees her, he turns his head away, though it’s too late. He’s seen it all. The rejection causes another painful sting to Kaede’s heart, but she continues her action by coming closer. He’s still seated on the bed, so she stands taller than him. Her delicate fingers grab hold of his cheeks and she turns his head so he can see her.

The fact that his eyes only stay locked on hers bugs her. It makes her feel like she’s not worth it. Like she isn’t beautiful. Why can’t he look? Why won’t he look? Hot tears begin to well in her eyes as her heart crumbles and falls.

“Why won’t you give me a chance, Sukuna? Please, give me a chance.”

Sukuna automatically frowns. He doesn’t understand why Kaede likes him so much. He hasn’t done much, only the bare minimum. Of course, there were moments when he genuinely enjoyed spending time with her, but that’s because she felt like a good friend. Perhaps if you weren’t in the picture then the outcome would be different; but even if that were the case, like he said before, he and Kaede wouldn’t match well in the long run. They’d clash. Either way, the tears he caused leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

He sighs at her, “why are you going to such lengths?”

“You make my heart beat faster every time. Just thinking about you makes me feel giddy, Sukuna.” Kaede whimpers softly as her shoulders begin to shake, “you’re a great person to me Sukuna. You protect me when I get catcalled, you make sure I’m never cold and that I’m full.”

She gently wipes away her own tears, “you keep saying that you’re bad, but I’ve yet to see a single bad thing about you, Sukuna.”

Sukuna finally removes his eyes from hers and lets his eyes trail down her naked body. He looks her up and down, getting a good look before meeting her eyes again. With a cold voice he says, “you don’t know the first thing about me.”

She sniffles at him, “then let me in and tell me everything from the start. I don’t care who you are or what you do.”

He stands up from sitting and looms over her smaller frame, a permanent scowl on his face, “I told you to respect yourself, Kaede. You’re beautiful all around, so it’s a waste that you’d stoop this low.” Sukuna walks past her a few steps and bends down to pick up her nightgown. After doing so, he walks back in front of her and grabs hold of her arms, placing them into the loose sleeves. After he successfully does so, he properly puts the dress back on her.

“I hate that the most, Kaede. I hate when women make advances on me, even when they know I don’t want it.”

His words grate harshly against her ears and all she can do is cry silently at her own humiliation. Sukuna wipes her tears away but she slaps his hand away from her face.

“I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hate you…” she mutters in a raspy voice.

All Sukuna can do at this point is sigh. He holds his hand out at her, “if you don’t have the guts to erase me, then I’ll do it for you.”

Kaede’s head snaps up at him with wide shot eyes, “what?”

He stares back at her with a blank and bored expression. She’s never seen this kind of face on him before… she’s never felt this kind of intimidating aura from him. It’s like she’s staring at a stranger. How dare he look at her with such strange and uninterested eyes.

Sukuna smirks down at her, “you heard me.”

“I’ll do it myself, asshole…”

Her heart stutters when she hears him suddenly laughing. He’s laughing? No, this isn’t just any laugh… she can’t explain it, but it makes her feel smaller than she already is. He’s being cruel. Is this the real Ryomen Sukuna? Has he been putting up a facade this whole time? No way… she can’t tell.

Sukuna shows her a cheeky smirk and taps her shoulder, “good.”

Just like that, he walks away, without pausing to look back at her who had gone very still. In less than a few seconds, he’s already out of her room and all she can do is fall to the ground and sob. It’s stupid that even after he’s been so cruel, she can’t seem to let go. Her left hand pounds at her chest while she wails softly at her own embarrassment. It took everything in her to do this. To message him… to show herself bare. Sukuna always tells her that she’s beautiful, so why doesn’t she feel like it? He made her feel so cheap with the way he looked her up and down, but what made it worse was how he went to the extent of dressing her.

♡ ♡ ♡

“Phew,” Sukuna groans when he’s finally in front of your bedroom window again. He walked the whole way back to really clear out his mind yet he still has a bitter taste in his mouth with the way things went earlier. He’s never really had many friends in his life, so if he were to be true to himself, it is a shame that Kaede couldn’t give up. However, he doesn’t have time to linger on such useless matters, so he throws her out of his head and lifts the window to crawl back in.

Thank the lords! He’s been gone for about an hour or something and you’re still asleep, so that means he can squeeze right back in. As soon as he spoons you he can feel himself loosen up. Yes, this is it. This is what he wants. He wants to lay down with you every night and wake up with you in his arms every morning. He wants to have every one of his meals with you by his side and he’d love it if you felt the same way too.

Knock knock knock!

“Y/n? Y/n, wake up.”

Holy shit! You shoot up in bed at the sound of your mom’s voice and turn to look at Sukuna. He’s clearly unbothered since he’s still asleep but right now you kind of need to wake him. You begin to shake him back and forth, but he won’t budge.

“Y/n? Are you still asleep? It’s almost ten in the morning.” She begins to knock and shake the knob, “Y/n?”

“I’m awake.”

You glare at Sukuna and jump off the bed. Since he won’t hide, you’ll just have to pull the blanket over him and hope for the best. You unlock your door and poke your head out, “did something happen?”

“Yes, actually.” She’s busy texting on her phone, but continues, “Ayumi and Asa need you to look over Haru and Ren. Your father and I will be away for the rest of the day due to business, so we can’t do it.”

You take a good look at her with big eyes, “I have to watch them today?”

She glances up from her phone and cocks her head to the side, “yes, so if you have plans, cancel them.”

“Well what about Hotaru? He won’t be here?”

“No, something happened so they said they’re going to take him to the hospital to get checked out. She’ll let you know when she’s here, so get ready for the day.”

Jeez, why do you feel like today is going to be a hectic one? A seven year old and five year old… that’s gonna be one hell of a ride. It was easy with Hotaru because he wasn’t as mobile, but these two boys are energetic and run around a lot. Are you ready to watch over such naughty kids? Oh! Right! Sukuna too! That’s a whole other problem, and he needs to leave asap. You cannot risk the possibility of these kids blabbering their mouths about some weird man with pink hair being here, so he needs to go as soon as your parents leave.

Taglist: @luckyrocks86 @mykyoon @hxlalokidottir @wo-ming-bai @adoraspace @yourusernames @raviolixxx @blackjanexx

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justhere4kpop · 1 year

Text

Chapter 10: Part 2

w/c: 1114

(+18!!! Smut Warning)

I showed up at their dorms, it was probably about 2am. Yes I know I’m crazy for still being awake but I work long hours editing photos and things. I have a lot to do for these crazy guys. I made sure to text Yunho I was here so I didn’t knock too loud and wake someone up, not that they would mind but I didn’t need to disturb anyone’s sleep schedule. The dark brown door opened up and Yunho stood there a shy smile on his face, typical hair, you know….what wasn’t typical was the fact that there was absolutely no shirt in sight, the only thing this man had on was his black sweatpants hanging loosely on his hips.

“Uh…hi.” I whispered staring at my shirtless boyfriend.

“Thank you for coming over.” he pulled me in with a quick hug and inhaled deeply.

“Did you just sniff my hair?” I poked him lightly.

“No, just…I’m sorry………..Movie?” he changed the subject and moved us to the couch.

He turned on a Harry Potter movie, but he also kept fidgeting and he was getting touchy, his hand was on my inner thigh, he was leaning on my shoulder giving it light pecks when he could.

“Yun? You gonna actually tell me why I’m here? I know I didn’t come over here to watch a Harry Potter movie at 2am because you definitely wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t important.”

“It’s not important.”

“Yunho…rule number one?” I shifted so I was facing him and he just leaned in and kissed me.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you baby.” he sighed holding my face. “I just wanted to see you.”

“Yu, are you telling me you had a wet dream?” I chuckled aware of him pressing into me slightly.

“I’m sorry.” he sighed.

“Honestly I’m flattered.” I smiled. “I uh…didn’t know you thought about me like that.”

“This….isn’t the first time.” he blushed. “But I couldn’t….No matter what I did I couldn’t help it.”

“That bad huh? Maybe you shouldn’t have worn those sweatpants.”

“Huh? What’s wrong with my sweatpants?” he frowned.

“Absolutely nothing.” I kissed him and leaned forward, he pulled my leg over his lap so I was straddling him, he practically moaned at just the pressure. It wasn’t until now I could gauge how hard he was, he was definitely having a good dream.

“Fuck.” he whimpered and dragged my hips lightly across his lap. “Baby.”

“Yu” I looked at him and held his wrist. “Everyone’s here…we can’t…they don’t want to hear it.”

“I really don’t care.” he groaned. “About them listening…I care about your opinion please don’t get the wrong idea baby.”

“I got it Goober.” I carded my fingers through his hair. “It’s late Yunho, as much as I want to-” I picked his head up from where it hung. “And trust me I do. It’s late, you have work at 7am.”

“I’ll be okay.” he nodded.

“Let me just help you, after all, I owe you part 2.” I smiled and kissed him. “Besides you don’t want our real first time to be some booty call on the couch to a movie we aren’t even watching. Let me take care of you again.”

“You always do.” he smiled and let go of my hips.

I slid off his lap and onto my knees in front of him. I untied those cursed sweatpants that were now taunting me. He lifted his hips up and I slid down the waistband to his calves. Holy Fuck….I don’t know whether to be concerned he wasn’t wearing underwear or worry about how badly my jaw is gonna hurt tomorrow.

“Cat got your tongue pretty girl?” he smirked suddenly full of confidence.

“Shit maybe it’s my birthday too.” I leaned forward bringing my hand up to wrap around the base of his hard cock. I gave it a few pumps watching his head fall back and the tip stand up straighter. “Damn you still growing big boy?”

“All for you baby.” he hissed feeling my hand squeeze him gently. “Fuck your hand feels so much better than mine.” he whispered trying desperately to not let anyone else know.

I tilted my head to let out a few kitten licks on his tip, the way he jerked forward when I did so tells me he’s been pent up for a while. I finally opened my mouth to bring him in, oh yeah my jaw is so gonna be sore tomorrow, I’ve gotten just past the tip and I can feel my lips stretching around him, okay breathe through your nose and relax. I slid down further until he almost hit the back of my throat.

“Mingi know you’re so good at this?” he chuckled. “God.”

I pulled off him with a lewd pop. “Trust me I know how to take care of my baby.” I winked. “He lets out the sweetest little noises trying to be quiet sometimes.”

“Show me how you take care of him then.” he pushed my head slightly, he was testing a boundary, his jealousy was showing.

Yunho was jealous, he’d never hurt me and he knows how much I care about him, but in this moment I was his, no one else.

“That’s it baby.” he rasped and pushed my head lightly. “Come on good girl, you can take it, I know you can.”

I relaxed my jaw further and he finally entered my throat, I initially had gagged around him fuck he’s big, he and Mingi both. Damn…What have I gotten myself into.

“Fuck just like that.” he smiled and snapped a few photos when I looked up at him. “Shit you’re gonna make me cum.”

I swallowed around him and sank as far down as I comfortably could. My jaw burned at this point but I couldn’t stop, the look on his face, it said “You’re mine.” in the best way possible. I didn’t know he was this vocal either. He rubbed the side of my jaw and helped me relax it just as his hips began to buck up slightly chasing his own high.

“Baby, right there.” he groaned and held me still as he came hotly down the back of my throat. “Fuck fuck fuck.” he stilled and finally let go of my hair. I swallowed around him one last time making him jump and yelp a little at the sensitivity. I pulled off and helped him pull up his pants.

“You okay?” he reached over and rubbed my cheek.

“Mmhmm.” I nodded still catching my breath. “I don’t usually swallow.” I rasped out, my throat sore.

“Happy Birthday to me.” he chuckled.

~~~~~~~

~Prev

a/n: I got a little carried away while writing....I promise there is already a Mingi focus chapter brewing, also I hope I implied it correctly that this isn't the first time they've fooled around, any of them. My story isn't meant to be a step by step timeline, it'll jump around and through their relationship.

taglist: @legohwas, @gxlden-bxbyy

#ateez #ateez x reader #ateez fanfic #yunho #yunho x reader #my writing #yunho smut #ateez fic #ateez fanfiction #ateez smau

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tanoraqui · 1 year

Text

S&D Tier fic inspired by this video. unedited.

“Kiddo, we need to talk about something,” Alex said, and thought, Oh god, I’m turning onto my father. Parenthood was a mistake. I should scrap this all right now and pretend it never happened.

But Hawk was already abandoning its legos and scurrying over to where Alex stood in its bedroom doorway, looking up at them all expectant and a little nervous. (It didn’t project except deliberately; Alex had given themself zeranid-specific telepathy during the space war, for army-directing purposes, and only ever partly turned it off because being able to read your kid’s moods was really helpful in parenting, especially when your kid was an insectoid war machine that didn’t visibly emote like a human).

(Yeah, it was way too late to scrap this all and pretend it’d never happened. It’d pretty much been too late since Morgan first phrased “keep an eye on my core hivemind war machine” as “babysitting.”)

Hawk had scrambled up their body to perch on their head and peer down at them through bent eyestalks. It loved doing that with Alex, because most people couldn’t hold forty pounds of chitin and lethal claws on their head without wobbling.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re adorable.”

Alex patted it on the shell, then walked over to its bed, gently pried its claws out of their hair, and set it on the skateboard-patterned duvet beside them.

“Now, I know you were eavesdropping on my call with Diego earlier—”

I wasn’t! Hawk insisted, projecting innocence and injury.

“I’m an expert eavesdropper and I saw one of your spy drones in the vent,” Alex retorted. “Learn to spy better if you don’t want to get caught!”

Hawk drew its limbs in a couple inches, sulking. Alex scratched the base of its eyestalks reassuringly. This was why they planned on leaving this sort of Real Conversation With Our Kid mostly to Morgan—Morgan was better at reassuring! But obviously, Morgan couldn’t take this Real Conversation…

“I’m guessing you didn’t hear what Diego was saying too much, though?”

They kept scratching as Hawk begrudgingly shook its head.

I could hear her being angry. Do I still get to play with Ducky today?

Alright, time rip off the bandaid.

“Yes,” Alex promised. “But— Listen, you know how Morgan woke up screaming in the middle of the night last…7am today?” Which was like midnight for Morgan; even parenthood hadn’t changed that.

Uh-huh, said Hawk.

“And you know how you showed them that cool trick with the squirrel a couple days ago, you know, the one you told me about over dinner?” While Morgan looked faintly queasy and didn’t finish their food, man, Alex was kicking themself now; at the time they’d been too busy laughing and enthusing at the gory details and the little dance Hawk did to show how it had puppetted the squirrel corpse.

Yeah! Hawk’s limbs stretched back out and its eyestalks waved excitedly. I’m going to show Ducky at our playdate! I’m going to make one do the Macarena. That’s Ducky’s favorite dance.

“That’s hysterical,” Alex informed it. “Okay, but here’s the thing: you can’t let Ducky’s parents know, and you need to pay attention to if Ducky is getting scared while you show him—you remember what people are like when they’re scared?”

Hawk rolled their eyes both internally and externally. They smell nicer and I want to kill them more slowly.

“Hel– heck yeah,” said Alex. “So, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if Ducky is getting scared, you should stop your super cool squirrel trick. Even if you haven’t made it dance yet. Because otherwise, Ducky might be the next one waking up with screaming nightmares, and then Diego really would cancel your next playdate, instead of just talking sh– trash.”

What?! Hawk reared up in dismay and affront, hissing in the way quadrillions of people on thousands of worlds had learned to fear. Why?

But it was a smart kid, so it immediately connected the dots—the really important dots in this conversation; no offense, Ducky. It curled back in on itself unhappily. Did I make Morgan have a nightmare?

“Yeah,” Alex said bluntly. “And Morgan is never, ever going to admit it, because they love you so, so much, and they’d literally rather die rather than make you feel bad about anything you can do or want to do.”

Don’t kill Morgan’s parents, they reminded themself reflexively, to counter the other reflexive thoughts. Do not kill Morgan’s parents, do not kill Morgan’s parents, do not—

They gathered Hawk onto their lap and booped it just above the mandibles, to remind it that it was cute and loveable and to make sure they had its full attention.

“Morgan is stubborn like that, but Morgan is also squeamish,” they explained, in terms suited to a six-year-old. “Literally and morally. That means that when they see too much blood or wiggling internal organs or corpses used as toys or…any sort of killing, really… If they see that stuff up close, they start to feel sick. It’s very lame, I know it’s very lame, but that’s just how they are. So, because we love Morgan, there are rules of thumb—rules of claw, for you, I guess.”

Hawk projected rapt attention. Alex had noticed at some point years ago that every random monster they manifested now—not a power they used often, but it could be fun, eg, for space armies—instinctively adored Morgan as a default feature of their existence. It wasn’t a feature they felt any need to change.

They enumerated on their fingers.

“One, try not to take more than about fifteen seconds to kill a single living creature in front of Morgan, and no more than a minute for a group. If you want to take longer than that, or if it seems like you need to take longer than that, either drag your victim out of sight or drag Morgan away and come back later.

“Two, don’t play with or otherwise weaponize corpses for more than, like, casually throwing them at your enemies, in front of Morgan. Otherwise it’s fine! And Morgan doesn’t even mind if they’re watching you fight on tv. It’s just when they have to see it up close that they start to feel sick.”

I don’t want to make Morgan feel sick. Hawk wasn’t quite at the stage where a human child would be in tears—they were a ruthless killing machine, albeit one who was functionally a six-year-old with an increasingly healthy upbringing with loving parents. But it radiated distress, and hid its face in Alex’s midriff like Alex could shield it from every possible bad thing in the world. Which Alex could, obviously.

Can’t you just make them not get sick?

“Believe me, I’ve thought about it.” Alex sighed, and scratched it gently between the eyestalks again. “But then they wouldn’t be Morgan, you know?”

No! said Hawk, confused and annoyed.

“You will when you’re older,” Alex promised, with another mark on the Turning Into My Parents list.

Hawk critter-grumbled against Alex’s stomach. And Ducky will get sick, too?

“He might, he might not,” Alex said truthfully. “He’s pretty young, so he probably can’t conceptualize that you’re killing people yet, defiling their corpses, all that stuff. In which case, it’s way better to show him now, so he’ll get used to it early!”

Hawk sat back on Alex’s lap with a thoughtful twist of its eyestalks. And I can still show you, right?

“Oh fuck yeah!” said Alex. “I can’t believe you haven’t shown me yet! I love flesh puppets! No matter how your playdate with Ducky goes, you and I are going to the park again tomorrow so you can kill as many squirrels as you want.”

Hawk brightened even to the non–zeranid-telepathic eye. It mentally ran through the list of people who were in on the secret of their identity.

Can I show Barnaby and Ohio?

“Totally,” said Alex. “I want to watch you show Barnaby and Ohio. Please let me be there.”

Okay.

“Okay!” said Alex. He scratched the base of Hawk’s eyestalks again, briskly. “Good talk, champ.” Oh god, that was a pure Mom-ism. “By the way, Rule Three is all bets are off if you or Morgan, or Ducky, is in real danger. Then you should kill whoever and however you want until you’re safe—and full! No skipping meals!”

Hawk both telepathically projected and physically dramatized the rolling of eyes again. Alex and Morgan were raising one sarcastic kid. To be fair, the idea of skipping and not skipping meals did come up a lot in their household.

Speaking of…

“Speaking of, you’d better eat lunch before you go to Ducky’s, or Diego won’t get you guys ice cream at the park.” Alex scooped Hawk up in their arms and headed toward the kitchen. “How’s raw hamburger sound?”

Hawk chittered. With the blood of my enemies!

“Absolutely not,” said Alex. “And don’t try to tell me Morgan lets you drink that stuff—even they wouldn’t give Red Bull to a six-year-old.” Plain coffee, maybe, but not that monstrosity.

Yes they do! Hawk insisted.

“No they don’t.”

Yes they do!

“No they— This is a stupid argument.” They planted Hawk on the kitchen counter and spoke firmly. “You can have chocolate sauce on your hamburger, but no caffeine until you’re older.”

Okay! Hawk wasn’t the least bit dismayed by this result. In fact, it was outright satisfied.

Alex hid their proud grin by turning toward the fridge, wherein lay meat and chocolate sauce both. Their intuitive talent for slaughter and Morgan’s cunning—even if its best friend was a baby hero, their kid was going to fuck up so much shit!

#S&D tier #alex stewart #alex s tier #hawk the zeranid #fanfiction #my fic

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abigail · 8 months

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hi have you ever told your ghost stories? can i hear your ghost stories

hiiii !!! sorry I just got to replying to this now, I must had missed it lol but yeah I’m assuming you mean when I said recently that I’ve seen two ghosts? :-) I didn’t think I’ve posted about seeing them before but I’ll tell ya !!! kind of long so sorry about that lol ok so

the first one I saw I didn’t realise it was a ghost until after.. and tbh this one might not had been a ghost but I have no other explanation for it.. so context first - to get to the train station where I live I have to walk along a road with huge trees on either side of it (like a mini woodland area), inbetween all these trees on the other side of the road is a huge house, it’s very very old and abandoned, broken windows, mould, everything is overgrown etc. anyway I was heading to the station one early autumn morning, it was around 6:45am ish and it was raining and still a little dark out like the sun was just then rising. I don’t really know why but when walking past the house I had a the urge to look over at it from across the road, I usually don’t because I see it every day and idk it’s not something I think about I guess ?? anyway I do look over and I see an old man in the garden, first time I’ve ever seen someone there, he’s cutting the grass with one of those really big, old lawnmowers. he looks directly at me as I’m passing by and I kinda wave and shout a ‘morning!’ to him (it’s very common and normal for people to say morning/hello to each other like this where I live lol) he doesn’t respond, just keeps watching me as I walk by, whatever ok that’s fine, I think he probably just had not heard me over the sound of the lawnmower. I keep walking and when the house it way out of sight I think hang on, I didn’t even hear the lawnmower on.. and it’s still kinda dark out…. and it’s raining. who cuts the grass in the rain at nearly 7am in autumn when it’s still kinda dark out like… huh?? I really wanted to go back and see if he was still there but I needed to get the train so I didn’t. when I got back later that day though and walked by I looked over at the house and it looked the exact same as always, broken windows and stuff, the grass was still overgrown and hadn’t been cut. so uh yeah.. I really don’t know what to think of it and all I can really think is he just had been a ghost like.. no one’s ever lived there like I’ve never even seen a light on and the place is wrecked so uhhhh yeah ! lawnmower ghost !

the other one I’m certain was a ghost because there’s literally no other way I can explain what I saw and I kind of got it confirmed for me. lots of context to begin with sorry this one will be a longer story. ok so ! I used to work at a cinema, it was a really big one, I’m not kidding it had 20 screens, all the fancy screens too like imax etc. all the staff there (who weren’t supervisors/management) did everything too like, one shift you’d be serving popcorn and tickets and another shift you’d be cleaning screens etc. one of the jobs was ‘screen checking’ where basically you have to go into each screen 3 times during each showing, once during the ads/trailers - this is just to make sure the sound is ok and there’s no one in the audience who shouldn’t be there (like kids sneaking into 18 rated movies or whatever). once just as the movie is about to begin - this was just to make sure the movie actually came on okay and that it was playing fine, if it had subtitles that they were on and for the right film, that the audience weren’t on phones and that no one was recording the screen to pirate it etc. then you’d go in one last time half way through the movie, this one was always easy because it was just to make sure things were ok again and that no one was filming the screen or whatever, it was super easy because if there ever was anything wrong at this point then usually one of the customers would’ve already come out and complained about it lol anyway !!

I was doing that job one shift, it was a very quiet morning in the middle of the week, not many new movies out and all that. I go into one of the screens to do the first check, I write down the time and look around the screen (from where I’m stood at the bottom of the stairs/aisle), the lights are still on but dimmed during the ads so I don’t need to use the night vision goggles yet (yeah that’s a thing too, makes it easier to check on the audience when it’s dark and you can zoom in so it helps in bigger screens, sometimes you won’t need them though like if the movie is playing a bright scene you can usually just see without the goggles), there’s just one couple sat at the back, I looked at how many tickets were sold and it just said two so I guess that’s them. I leave and come back 20 minutes later, the lights go down and the title card comes up, movie plays fine, I get the night vision goggles out and scan the seats for if anyone else was in there, nope! I keep looking and get to the couple at the back, they’re fine and don’t seem like they’re gonna do anything bothersome so alright, I write it down and leave. so far it’s a very easy shift, lots of screens with no one in them or very few people, it’s during school hours in the morning so no kids or teenagers are about (they’re usually the ones causing trouble lol), I keep going to chat with one of my coworkers about whatever tv show we was watching, like.. I’m having a really nice and easy shift tbh

I go to do the final check in this one screen; it’s about 30 minutes until the end of the movie, I go in and yeah, everything on screen looks normal, everything is fine. I get the night vision goggles out and knowing it’s just that couple at the back I just look directly at them, the guy had fallen asleep and the girl looked bored, whatever. I state at them a little longer than needed because in the moment I suddenly felt really off, like something just felt.. different. I wouldn’t usually during the third check but I decided to look through the goggles and scan over the rest of the screen, I don’t know why because I know it’s just that couple in there, I don’t need to do that. I get to about half way up the seats and on the aisle closest to my side where I’m stood, I see an old man.. I think it’s weird but maybe he was just running late and missed the first 10 minutes of the movie or something and that’s why I didn’t see him before (even though only two tickets had sold). I zoom in on him so I can see him better, the goggles are very good quality ones and I can see him clear as day, he was just staring at the screen watching the movie and not a bother or anything. the movie is playing a particularly bright scene at this point and I knew I didn’t need the goggles to see the audience, so without blinking or looking away from where the man sat, I put the goggles down. and he was just.. not there. he was gone.. like he vanished in front of me after I put the goggles down. my heart began to beat like crazy and I started sweating like.. the screen was bright, so bright I could even see the couple sat the back, and there was no one else in the screen, like.. the man was just not there. I got super freaked out and speed walked out the screen and went to my coworker in a panic, he went up to the screen with the goggles and he couldn’t see anyone other than the couple.. he was in there for 15 minutes just looking to see if anyone else was there but no. I then go to my supervisor and tell him, we check on the cameras and no one other than the couple (and me) went into that screen.. but I saw him clear as day, I remember his face and outfit and everything. insane shit honestly.. but it doesn’t end there..

a week or so passed by and staff were all gossiping about me seeing the ghost, half of them saying I was making it up of course (what would I gain from lying about it though ??? lol). one of my managers asks to see me in the office, we sit down and it’s just us in the room, he gets very serious and tells me he’d rather I didn’t ‘make up stories’ about seeing a ghost of a man in that screen.. he continues to tell me that like 5 years before I worked there an elderly couple went to see a movie in that screen and during it the man fell asleep and passed away in his sleep, I vaguely knew this happened but I didn’t know any details, I just knew someone died in the cinema during a movie years ago, but even then I thought it was just a rumour staff spread to freak out new staff. he continues and says he doesn’t want to hear about it because it was very traumatic for him because he was the one who had to try and resuscitate the man until an ambulance showed up and then deal with it all etc. he told me he didn’t want to relive it. I told him I can understand that and I’m truly sorry he had to deal with that etc but I knew what I saw and wasn’t making it up. at this point I can tell he’s fed up and he kinda huffs and says ‘fine ok!’ and tells me to tell him exactly what I saw, every detail I remember of his face/outfit, where he was sitting etc, so I do. as I’m telling him his face just drops. once I’m finished he quietly tells me that yeah, that actually does sound like the man he had to deal with that day who passed away, even down to where he was sitting.. we kinda didn’t know what to say to each other at this point but I tell him I won’t bring it up to any other coworkers again and then I leave.. so uh yeah... he basically confirmed I saw a man who had died 5 years before …. I didn’t like doing screen checks after that and I stopped using the night vision goggles, and I didn’t like to go back into that screen because I was just so freaked out about it.. I’ve been in since though and I even went in on my own to watch a movie in there but I try to avoid looking around it too much.. so yeah, movie ghost !

hmm so yeah this was a lot I’m sorry !! but there’s the ghosties I’ve seen :-) thank you for asking me about it, I love telling people lol

#sorry if there’s any typos or whatever I didn’t check this after writing it because there’s uuhhhh a lot lol #i

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bythehearts · 1 year

Note

Love this idea!!!! 33 and Jegulus

I think you might’ve accidentally created the perfect combo actually

‘cause now i’m even more lost

When Regulus steps into the apartment, he immediately finds four pair of eyes staring at him. He sighs and makes his way over to the counter, sprawling himself over it.

“Coffee, aspirin, questions,” he orders to whoever is willing to oblige, “in that order”

“Well that is either a great sign or a terrible one,” comments Barty sliding him a cup of coffee as Pandora passes him a blister of aspirins from one of the drawers.

“I was stood up,” Regulus then states flatly, as he swallowed the aspirin and hugged his cup of coffee.

This seem to confuse the others immensely, and they shot each other questioning looks that Regulus pretends not to see. He takes a few sips of his coffee, and just waits until one of them speaks again.

“Right, so, uh—“ Dorcas starts carefully, “how does that end with you coming home at 7am covered in hickeys?”

“I met James,” he says simply, not looking at any of them.

“Oh,” Dorcas comments against their better judgment, and looks up to silently plead the others for assistance.

“Yeah,” Regulus sighs, “I know.”

“Well, umh—“ Pandora jumps in tentatively, “and how do we feel about this?”

“I don’t know,” Regulus laments, stretching himself over on the counter and finally looking up to meet Pandora’s gaze, “bad?”

“Bad or you don’t know?”

“Bad because I don’t know,” Regulus clarifies, rather unhelpfully, “cause now I’m even more lost”

“Lost how?” Barty asks, trying to push him to figure out his feelings.

“I don’t know, I felt like I was finally moving on from him,” he says, “and now it’s just— I don’t even know where that leaves us.”

“Well, how did you two part?” chimes in Evan.

“Um, well, you know,” Regulus starts, looking away from them guiltily, “we fell asleep, and then uh— I woke up, and he— well, he still wasn’t up when I left”

This causes a few disgruntled noises, and a general feeling of disbelief, which cause Regulus to go red and hide his face once again.

“You fled?!” yells Barty, “you fucked your ex and then you fled?”

“I know okay?” Regulus tries to justify himself, “I realize it was a bad idea”

“Bad doesn’t even begin to cover it, Black,” Evan teases lightheartedly

However, Regulus seemed to be hit harder than Evan intended to, as tears form down his cheeks, “I know,” he chokes out, repressing a sob, “I know, I just— I miss him so much, all the time”

“Aw, Reggie,” he hears one of them say, before he gets smothered in a group hug and he lets the tears flow free.

bad idea! by girl in red: jegulus

#yul answers asks #spotify wrapped game #marauders #regulus black #james potter #jegulus #does this count as jegulus?#I mean it is off-screen but like #it’s there yaknow?#and they’re the main topic anyway no?#idk I’m counting it

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snowdice · 2 years

Text

Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 123]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. Feel free to send in asks about anything at any point, even if it’s not for the part of the story I’m currently on.

If you aren’t interested and don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.”

See the Folds in Time Universe Master Post for edited chapters. Not yet edited chapters are under the cut. I also have a playlist on youtube for this story.

My hope is to do a good amount today. (Though every time I say that...) Anyway, we’re about to get into the complicated part of this story and I’m so excited! Pay close attention in the next few days I write this. See if you can spot my machinations.

Chapter 44 (Escape from French Toast)

Logan was woken up earlier than he would have liked the next morning by chaos in the kitchen. He’d stayed up late on his laptop running through various programs he’d designed to track time related metrics. So far, he’d run the programs to scan the last 48 hours and had synthesized all of the data, putting it into an Excel document for easy viewing.

At some point he didn’t recall, he’d fallen asleep on the couch. (He’d given up his bed to Virgil.) Of course, both of his roommates tended to rise with the sun and were incapable of being quiet ever, so Logan had gotten a maximum of 3 hours of sleep depending on when he’d actually lost consciousness.

Logan glared at Patton as he shuffled into the kitchen to get a cup of tea, but the other man didn’t notice. He was too busy trying to figure out the right flavor profile for making asiago cheese bread into palatable French toast.

Roman was hovering over him making loud, likely inane suggestions while also vehemently defending his bakery choices. Patton was agreeing wholeheartedly with everything he said and adding his own ridiculous suggestions about how to make the French toast edible while blatantly not following any of his own or Roman’s suggestions.

Logan pushed past Roman to get to the tea shelf without a word.

“Uh oh, he’s grumpy,” Roman said.

“I have not even said a word,” Logan replied, swatting him away as he began picking at Logan’s sweatshirt to remove a few fabric pills near the shoulder.

“Exactly,” Roman replied. “You didn’t sleep last night.”

“I did,” Logan replied.

“And for how long?”

Logan did not respond.

“You know, sleeping can be very helpful for your mental and physical health.”

“So can you keeping your mouth shut,” Logan grumbled back.

“I’ll have you know people love when I talk. You are just being a grouchy old nerd. Isn’t that right, Patton?”

Patton hummed. “Yes, your voice is great, sweetie,” he replied.

“See,” Roman said. “Two against one.”

“Two against two actually, a voice even more tired sounding that Logan’s spoke up from the door to the kitchen, “and since you’re the subject of the vote, your opinion’s too biased to count. So, Logan wins.”

Virgil was standing in the doorway looking as though he’d never heard of the concept of mornings and did not like the new information he was being given on them right now. He was leaning against the doorframe as though at any moment he might slump over and fall back asleep while still standing. The yellow bottom of the slightly too wide nightshirt Patton had given him the night before stuck out from the black hoodie he’d came in.

Roman was sputtering. “Excuse me?!” he squawked.

Virgil made a show of wincing. “My point exactly,” he muttered.

“You’re rude!” Roman exclaimed. He turned to Patton. “Patton, he’s being rude to me!”

“You woke me up,” Virgil hissed. He pulled up the hood of the hoodie and pulled on the strings to tighten it around his face.

“It’s 7am!”

Virgil grumbled something that sounded more like an animal growling than any words.

Patton and Logan shared a look. Patton frowned scoldingly at Logan’s amused smirk as though he wasn’t also finding this argument amusing.

“Well,” Patton interrupted the two’s quickly developing staring contest. “I’m making French toast for breakfast, Virgil, but it’ll be a few minutes yet. I’m sure Logan has something to show you on his computer since he was working on stuff so late last night.”

Logan did not actually have much to show for his efforts yet. It was all just numbers at the moment, but the look in Patton’s eyes said, ‘We’re separating the children.’ Logan half wanted to shrug him off and see where this went as the look on Roman’s face was amusing, but then Logan looked at the tea bags in his hands, the disaster in the making that was the French toast ingredients, and the man tiredly rubbing his eyes.

“Of course,” Logan said evenly. “We will just be in the living room.” He walked over and shoved Virgil gently through the door. “Go get dressed,” he said under his breath.

“Wha?” Virgil asked with a squint.

“We’re fleeing the morning people.”

Virgil just gave him a confused look.

“Unless, of course, you want to be forced to eat French toast made from asiago cheese bread.”

Virgil’s expression darkened and he nodded before turning towards Logan’s bedroom. Logan had grabbed nightclothes and an outfit for the morning for himself before Virgil had gone to bed the night before (not that he’d actually changed into the nightclothes). He grabbed the outfit for today and quickly changed in the bathroom.

Virgil was already fully dressed and waiting in the living room by the time he’d finished. He’d changed into one of Logan’s grey hoodies. It was an older thing that Logan rarely wore, but it seemed to fit him. It had the vibes of a very tired college professor going to work on his research in a coffee shop on the weekends. He was also wearing blue jeans from an unknown source (they had appeared in the laundry one day and no one in the apartment claimed them) that were just a touch too large and thus held up by a belt.

Virgil raised an eyebrow at him without saying a word. Logan gestured with his head towards the front door. He grabbed his keys and wallet from the table near the entrance, being careful not to let the keys clang together and make noise.

He swiftly unlocked and opened the door before gesturing Virgil through. Virgil made less noise than Logan had thought possible as he walked outside of the apartment, but then again, Logan’s own experiences with sneaking out of anywhere were with one or two of the loudest people that had ever existed.

“Where exactly are we going?” Virgil asked once the door had closed behind Logan.

“We’re going to get coffee,” Logan said.

“And we can’t just tell your roommates about that?” Virgil asked.

“I’m not allowed to drink anything more caffeinated than tea since the hamster incident of 2011.”

Virgil’s lips quirked up into a half smile. “Do I even want to know?”

Logan hummed. “Did you notice the hamster cage in our apartment with seemingly no hamster?” he asked.

“…Yes?”

“Once a few years ago, I did not sleep for 72 hours and my caffeine addled brain accidently invented a device that turns things invisible,” Logan told him. “It’s temporary on plants and inanimate objects, but it’s seemingly permanent on animals or perhaps just on rodents. We haven’t tested it on any other animals.”

“W-what?” Virgil sputtered.

“To be fair, I thought I was making the rocks and flowers I’d tested the device on first travel through time. It was a bit of confirmation bias on my part as I was attempted to invent time travel and I did not properly observe the experiment before moving on in my testing.”

“How do you accidently invent an invisibility ray or whatever when trying to invent time travel?”

“It’s a spray,” Logan told him, “and I missed a negative sign.” They’d been walking side by side but needed to make a sharp left turn to get to their destination, and Logan found himself grabbing Virgil’s upper arm in order to guide him.

“Uh,” Virgil said which is when Logan realized it might be odd for a practical stranger to grab someone like that. “Er, where is the coffee shop?”

It’s just a couple of blocks north,” Logan answered, letting him go after they finished the turn and flashing him a small smile. Virgil smiled back. The concept of invisible hamsters seemed to have left his mind. “It’s a smaller place, but gets fewer actual college students, not that it matters since it’s summer break for them.”

“So, do you frequently perform coffee acquiring heists?” Virgil asked.

“Sometimes I drink tea there,” Logan replied, “but yes. How else am I meant to get my work done?”

Virgil laughed. “That’s probably not healthy. I don’t disagree, but it’s probably not healthy.”

Logan found himself chuckling as well as he led him down the path to the shop. “You’re probably correct,” he said, “but they have very good coffee.”

Chapter 45

Logan did end up ordering himself more caffeine than a man who was banded from caffeine probably should have, but honestly, who was Virgil to judge. They also ordered pastries to eat for breakfast which Virgil could already tell were way too sweet, but he wasn’t complaining.

Logan got a text from one of his roommates as they were waiting for their drinks to be finished. He probably didn’t notice the fond smile he sent the phone as he answered.

“I told them I’m showing you the town a bit,” he informed Virgil. “Which isn’t technically a lie.”

“Not, technically, no,” Virgil replied. He took a bite of the cinnamon roll in front of him and grimaced slightly. “Your time has a thing for artificial sweeteners,” he said, keeping his voice down. They were in a far back corner and it wasn’t busy at this hour, so he didn’t see too much of an issue.

“Apologizes, would you like something else?” Logan asked.

Virgil waved him off. “I’ll acclimate. If I could get used to 1950s post war, society is getting used to instant gelatin, recipes during my post-doc, I can figure out how to stomach an overly sweet pastry or two.

“You spent time in the 1950s?”

“Mmm, not my favorite, but seeing the direct results of World War II are important.”

“In the United States?”

“For a bit, but I hopped around a lot and also went to the 60s and 70s. I was basically tracing the evolution of different social issues in the wake of World War II for both the Axis and Allied Powers.”

“An interesting topic,” Logan replied. “I imagine even in the 21st century, I would not have perspective especially on different countries.”

“Oh, you definitely don’t,” Virgil confirmed.

“Perhaps I’ll take a look at your work sometime.”

“Oh, uh,” Virgil said, and he really shouldn’t be flustered about that. He’s gone to conferences and presented his work before. “Yeah, if you want.”

The barista called their drink names then, and Logan got up to go grab them. Get it together, Virgil, he begged himself while shoving another piece of too sweet pastry into his mouth.

Logan set the coffees down on the table in front of them and Virgil took his with a closed mouth smile of thanks, while still chewing on his cinnamon roll.

“So,” Logan began. “More than just escaping the disaster breakfast my roommates had in mind, I would like to perhaps return to the location you arrived at and see if there is anything there physically that wasn’t picked up on my devices. Do you think you’ll be able to find the location if I get you in the general vicinity of the farmer’s market?”

“I don’t always have the best memory,” Virgil said, “but I’ve had a deep-seated fear of being kidnapped since I was a small child, so I could probably lead you to the farmers market, let alone to where I came from.

“Ah.”

“My mom let me watch a horror movie when I was too young about a boy my age being kidnapped and taken out to the middle of the desert to be hunted like an animal, and he had no idea how to get back home. So, then I would spend any ride in any vehicle trying to memorize the path we took with my eyes closed.”

“I see.”

“And I’m really oversharing for having met you in person less than 24 hours ago, aren’t I?”

Logan crinkled his eyebrows. “Are you?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah, I think so,” Virgil said. “Traumatic childhood memories might be a bit much this soon.”

“I have never been the best at knowing social norms,” Logan said. “Would you like me to share a traumatic childhood memory with you, so we are even?”

“I…” Virgil said. “Can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“I am a bit,” Logan said with a small smile, “but if it would make you feel more comfortable, I am willing. We might not have known each other in person for very long, but we aren’t exactly strangers.”

And that was true. Lo had been emailing him for months at this point. They’d argued about the correct order to watch a television show in, they’d watched videos together with Lo logging onto his desktop (promising not to dive into his search history and private files), and Lo had somehow attended all of his publicly streamed lectures without getting caught by the university’s firewall. He’d even managed to make Virgil feel better when he’d had one of his bad days by ranting for hours about airplanes.

He hadn’t known Logan’s face for long, but they did know each other pretty well in spite of that.

“I got distracted on a fieldtrip once,” Logan said, and oops, Virgil had taken too long to say ‘you don’t have to be emotionally vulnerable in a coffee shop to make me feel better’ and now it was too late.

“Somehow, despite the fact that my teacher really should have been taking attendance before allowing the bus to leave the orchard we were visiting, they managed to overlook my absence. I had no friends in the class, and I was so quiet at that age no one noticed me not being there. I couldn’t find my way back to the entrance or find any workers. No one was aware I was gone until my parents came to pick me up and no one could find me. My parents were very unhappy with the teacher once they managed to find me.”

“That experience along with others in my formative years gave me a dislike of being ignored, which combined with my innate desire to have time alone has made friendships difficult to sustain.”

“Oh,” Virgil said, unsure how to respond. “Er, well, that sucks.”

“Luckily Patton is hyperempathetic and Roman cannot be removed from a person he deems his friend with a crowbar,” he said, “which helped me at a younger age. As an adult, I am aware of the issue and am able to work through it with logic most of the time.”

“What do you think about someone who is so anxious he can’t ignore anything, especially a person?”

“I think that would be someone worth knowing,” Logan said. He paused. “Though I would not wish social anxiety onto a person to be clear.”

“Thanks for the clarification,” said Virgil, amused.

They lapsed into silence for a few minutes then. It was still a bit awkward but not completely uncomfortable.

Logan took a bite of his pastry and spoke once he’d swallowed it. “Tell me more about what your plans were with your research before they were disrupted,” he requested, breaking the silence. “Why 2005 in particular? What had you planned to do? How long were you going to stay?”

Virgil smiled and drank his coffee as he did a short rundown of what his plans had been before they were interrupted by time travel. Logan listened careful and even though it sucked that he’d been stranded in a time he hadn’t even meant to visit, he wasn’t all too upset about it for the moment.

Chapter 46

Virgil was correct about his ability to find the location of the farmer’s market. After they ate and finished their coffee, they set out to investigate the location of the time anomaly. “I ended up under the stage,” Virgil informed him. The stage had already been taken down, but it was easy to see where it had once been based on the depressions on the ground.

Logan had brought a few of his tools when they had left that morning and he pulled out a modified iPad.

“You hide your time travel tech as an iPad?” Virgil asked curiously.

Logan glanced at him and said nothing.

“…You made your time travel tech out of an iPad!” Virgil exclaimed.

“It is one of the most easily accessible technologies of this time that is also portable,” Logan shrugged. “I use what I can get.”

“How did you manage to invent time travel with 21st century technology?” Virgil asked.

“It took me a couple of decades,” Logan replied.

“It took them literal centuries.”

“Well, I knew it could happen, so I simply made it happen.”

“You’re terrifying,” Virgil stated.

Logan just hummed and set the iPad scrolling through its diagnostic programs. It scanned the area around them for anything that might indicate time travel.

“Well,” Logan said. “There is definitely an anomaly, but we already knew that. It’s a strange one, however.”

“What do you mean?” Virgil asked.

“I’d assumed whatever had caused you to end up here had dragged you here, but what I’m finding doesn’t seem to be remnants of something to cause time travel. On the contrary, it seems to be similar readings to what stopped Janus time travel to stop working in previous circumstances. I don’t know a lot about the time travel technology from your time, but I have noted they tend to briefly ping off of times near to your destination in order to recalibrate when going a certain amount of time. Perhaps your device did a brief landing here at the wrong time and then was deactivated much like TPI devices have been deactivated beforehand and you got stuck.”

“What does that mean for me?”

“Well, it means your device isn’t broken,” Logan said.

“Then why isn’t it working?” Virgil asked.

“Because,” Logan said. “whatever is deactivating it is still here.”

Virgil looked at his feet as though expecting to see the device sitting on the ground somewhere.

“Not here here,” Logan clarified, “but close by. They have a limited range from what I understand, though I don’t know precisely how far. It’s definitely in this time however. But it’s strange,” Logan tapped out a few things on his device, double checking that he hadn’t missed anything with his regular monitoring.

“It’s not causing any other problems.” Logan continued. “We’ve only ran into them once or twice before and we’ve never managed to get our hands on one too actually study it, but each time we’ve seen them, they created some sort of issue in the environment, but there are no obvious time abnormalities or weather problems. In fact, if I wasn’t looking for it, I wouldn’t have noticed.”

“Okay, well then, can’t we just find it and shut it off?” Virgil asked. “That’s what I know Janus did when he ran into them.”

“It is,” Logan confirmed. “The only issue is without the obvious environmental clues I have no idea where it actually is to turn it off.”

“How the hell do we find it then?” Virgil asked.

“I’m not sure,” Logan said. “It definitely was here when it switched on, but it’s definitely not here anymore.” He looked around. “Perhaps it was attached to the stage or put in the musician’s instrument cases. Then again, by that logic, it could have been put in anyone’s bags or in a since emptied trashcan.”

“So, it could basically be anywhere?”

“Basically,” Logan agreed. “We will check the easiest possibilities to track down and if that produces no results, I’ll… figure out something.”

Virgil grimaced. “That sounds promising.”

“I will do my best,” Logan promised. “I just wish I knew more about these things.”

Virgil seemed to hesitate. “How would you go about learning more about it?”

“Well,” Logan said, “if I can get my hands on a similar device, I could probably figure out a more reliable way to track it.”

“You do,” Virgil said.

“I do what?”

“You do have one.”

Logan frowned. “I assure you, I do not.”

“But you do,” Virgil said. “Eventually.”

“…Oh, I see.” Logan replied. “Do you perhaps know where we do eventually find it?”

Virgil pressed his lips together. “I think I might already be saying too much,” he said. “It’s stuff you shouldn’t know about yet in your personal future. People aren’t supposed to…”

“Time is not nearly as sensitive as the TPI seems to believe,” Logan said with an eyeroll. “In fact, most of Janus and Patton’s interactions so far involve accidently giving more information than necessary.”

“I don’t know…”

“I’m a time traveler from the 21st century who lives with a French man from the 1800s,” Logan said. “I’m not asking for a run down of every part of the event, just a time and place to point us in the correct direction.”

Virgil still didn’t seem convinced.

“It would really only be a time saver,” Logan argued. “I could just blindly look for time distortions, but it’d take a while…”

“Fine,” Virgil said after a moment. “This is probably entirely stupid, but fine. Give me a moment to think about what exactly I can tell you, so I don’t mess everything up.”

Logan smiled slightly at his overly cautious behavior but waited patiently.

“Janus met Pat once in Cuba. There was a time distortion during Camaguey Carnival of 1755. Pat took the device that had been causing the disturbance and left before Janus could catch him.”

“Camaguey 1755,” Logan repeated. “Got it. I’ll look into it, and we can see what we can do. It’ll still take a few days to prep however.”

Logan would need to find exact coordinates and he’d have to talk to Patton considering he’d just recently gotten back from an unwillingly long trip to pre-history. He’d probably be willing to go, but he’d mentioned Logan making him a “time survival pack” before he was willing to go back into the timestream. They’d need to talk about what exactly that entailed and get the supplies for it. His mind was already making plans about what he needed to do.

Virgil nodded. “Should we head back to the apartment then?” he asked, interrupting Logan’s thoughts. Logan glanced at him. He had actually planned to show the man around a bit today instead of spending all of their time thinking about time travel.

“I cannot be sure that my roommates will have cleaned up their French toast nonsense by now,” he said. “We should likely wait to return until at least the lunch hour. It is not as though we could do anything about it today. We will need to plan.”

“Okay,” said Virgil, “then what are we going to do for the next 3-4 hours?”

“Well,” Logan said. “Perhaps I can show you around the town a bit more so as to not make more of a liar of myself than I already have.”

“Sure,” Virgil agreed with a smile. “What will you be showing me.”

“I was thinking we could visit the local museum. We can compare notes about how wildly inaccurate the exhibits present history.”

Virgil rolled his eyes at Logan, but there was something warm underneath his expression. “Fine,” he said, “but I bet I know more than you.”

Chapter 47

The museum was interesting, not because it taught him any more about the events behind the exhibits on display, but more that learning what people in the 21st century cared about and how they presented past events was an anthropological lesson in its own right. Their conversation became a game of not only finding the mistakes made in the exhibits, but also Virgil hypothesizing why those mistakes were made: prejudice, missing information, and unreliable secondary sources all contributed, and Virgil spent a lot of time talking through the possibilities.

They spent a few hours there before heading back to Logan’s apartment.

Not without stopping at a small, hole in the wall, bar inhabited only by day drinkers. When Virgil gave Logan a weird look, he explained, “I have to bring back a peace offering for running off this morning if I want Patton to agree to a time travel mission for me.”

“…And Patton likes… vodka?” he guessed.

“No,” Logan replied, amused. “This establishment serves cheeseburgers which are apparently the ‘best in the city.’ They do not, however, cook anything else. Not even fries.”

When Logan handed him an unlabeled brown paper bag that looked as though it had been dipped in hot oil instead of just it’s contents, Virgil shot him a raised eyebrow. “Ah, yes,” he said, “the quintessential 21st century American meal.”

“You once ate only bagged pepperoni meant for pizzas for breakfast for a week once.”

“I told you that in confidence,” Virgil said, smacking him lightly with the bag of grease.

“And I have told no one,” Logan responded. “Therefore, I have not violated any part of our agreement.”

“You’re making fun of me. That’s definitely a part of the agreement,” Virgil said.

“I don’t remember there being any clause like that in our verbal contract,” Logan replied with a slight smirk. Virgil rolled his eyes. “Besides, I’m not truly making fun of you. The decision to fuel your body solely with pepperoni is, while not the best strategy and one that would certainly prove detrimental in the long run, it is better to eat that then nothing.”

“Oh,” Virgil said. “Uh, good.”

“I’m simply citing another example where not as healthy food in the long term can be good in the short term.”

“But in this case instead of depression eating to stay alive, the purpose is bribery.”

“Exactly,” Logan said. “Bribery to end the time distortion and get you back to the proper time.”

“Alright, fair enough.”

“You don’t have to eat any if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, no, I’m going to.”

“Then why are you complaining?” Logan asked amused.

“I just thought you should know your time has way too greasy food,” Virgil said.

“Thank you for the information,” Logan said dryly. They’d made it back to the apartment by then, and Logan stuffed the bag he was carrying under his arm to unlock the door.

“And where have the two of you been?” Patton asked when they walked into the kitchen.

“I have cheeseburgers for you,” was how Logan answered.

Patton rolled his eyes as Logan set the bag down in front of him. He was sitting at the kitchen table typing on a laptop. “The French toast wasn’t that bad,” he said.

“I will take your word for it,” Logan said pleasantly.

Patton just shook his head and reached into the bag for a cheeseburger. Logan kept looking at him, and that obviously meant something Virgil didn’t know, because Patton glanced up at him after eating a couple of bites. “What?” he asked suspiciously.

“Virgil and I went back to where he arrived,” Logan said. “There are signs that one of the devices that cause time distortions is present.”

“There aren’t any weather disturbances though,” Patton pointed out.

“It seems to be a more advanced version,” Logan answered. “Which will make much more difficult to track.”

“Okay,” Patton said, “then what are we going to do?”

“Well,” Logan said, “if we could get our hands on an older version, we could probably use it to narrow down the current one’s location.”

“And how exactly are we going to get an older version?” Patton asked, eyebrow raised.

“I understand that you have only been back from your last trip for a little over a week and that your last trip through time was a bit difficult, but,” he nodded towards Virgil, “we do know of the time and place one exists that you would have a good chance of being able to find, deactivate, and bring home.”

Patton groaned. “And judging by the source of this information, steal off of the TPI.”

“Yes.”

“Excellent.”

“At least, in this case, you will go into it knowing there will be no major disasters.”

…

Should Virgil… say something. It’d be rude not to mention the whole time shredding almost drowning bullshit, wouldn’t it? Then again… giving him foreknowledge could be a danger to the timestream. He debated with himself whether general social courtesy should outrank the possible destruction of time or not.

…

Maybe he’d just suggest a boat if they didn’t plan to take one? Just in case?

“Fine,” Patton said, “but you’re finishing your tech updates and making me a survival pack before I make any jump. I’m not making the same mistake again.”

Logan nodded. “I can do that,” he agreed. “Just tell me what you want in your survival pack.”

“I’ve already been working on a list,” Patton said. “I’ll email it to you.” He turned back to the computer he’d been working on and typed a few things. “You can add to it if you think of anything.”

Logan looked at his phone as it dinged. “…Do you really need all of this?”

“Yes,” Patton said, taking another bite of his cheeseburger.

“…I’ll do my best?”

“You’ll do it,” Patton returned.

“Right.”

“I’ll start researching Cuba in the 1700’s,” he said.

Virgil saw him pull up google on his computer. He looked at the 21st century computer and then back to Patton. He couldn’t help but think of the museum he and Logan had been to earlier that day. “Do you want help?”

Chapter 48

It took a little over two weeks to get everything set up. Logan had already been in the process of updating their equipment for quite some time, and this situation only spurned him on. He also then had to figure out a way to meet all of Patton’s demands for his new survival kit. His list had already been quite long before he’d started to add to it. He’d even slipped in a request for a boat at some point despite Logan’s protests that Camaguey Cuba was nowhere near the sea.

Thankfully, Virgil didn’t seem to mind the delays too much.

In fact, he may have had a hand in the delays as his natural inclination towards anxiety seemed to infect Patton and cause him to add and add to his list of safeguards for Logan to make. He and Patton were spending a good amount of time together, actually. Patton was fairly good at researching the places he planned to go at this point, but Virgil was undeniably more experienced with that sort of thing considering he worked with the TPI. Patton seemed to appreciate his input.

Roman, on the other hand, decidedly did not. The two of them were prone to arguments about clothing which had gone beyond talking about Cuban clothing to arguments about clothing from pretty much all of time.

Logan could not tell if they were friendly debates or not. He’d even asked Patton who had claimed he also could not tell. Neither Roman nor Virgil’s responses when asked directly about the nature of their relationship were helpful either. Logan did notice that Roman changed the fabric of the outfit he made for Patton after one of their conversations.

Virgil was not much help to Logan unless you counted the intel, he’d given that helped Logan choose the correct time and place. At least, not in the sense that he was able to help with the mathematics and physics Logan was dealing with.

He was, however, good for company. Especially as his sleep schedule much more closely resembled Logan’s own in those weeks. Typically Roman and Patton went to sleep at a much earlier hour than he did himself and Logan would work alone in the living room, but with Virgil living in the apartment, there was constant companionship while he worked, and less volatile company than he was used to working with (assuming, of course, Roman had gone to sleep by that time). It was nice.

He seemed to fit into their little group in a way Logan had not anticipated. Or at least, socially he did. Physically, there were simply not enough beds and Logan had been sleeping on the couch for two weeks.

Eventually, with all of their combined efforts, everything was ready to go. Patton had three different time appropriate outfits, a good amount of knowledge about the festivities he was about to attend, new time travel equipment, and a survival pack that could help him survive an apocalypse. Patton was planning to arrive in Cuba two days earlier than the TPI protocol would send agents like Janus. That way, he would have time to set up and get acclimated before the TPI sent in their surveillance and touchdown agents.

“This is cool,” Patton said, flexing his fingers to see the hidden screen on his palms light up with a map of the area.

“It’s organized the same as your previous device, except for, of course, the control panel to control the cloaking technology and the access to the survival kit.

“Looks great, Lo,” Patton said, still fiddling with it. He changed it to its default state of a metal band projecting the screen and then back to the time appropriate bracelet Roman had designed. There weren’t many possibilities programed for hiding the device yet, but more could be designed in the future. For now, it only had the default band, the bracelet, and a wristwatch.

“I’ve already tested it a good number of times, but you should familiarize yourself with it anyway before leaving.”

Patton nodded, flicked his fingers and disappeared for a moment before reappearing in the same place. Then, he did it again and reappeared directly next to where he’d been standing. He did similar things a few times before predictably getting bored and starting to do ‘tricks’ which mostly involved landing in ridiculous poses and also accidently jump scaring everyone in the apartment at least twice. Eventually, Logan confiscated it for the evening so they could have dinner in peace.

Patton went to bed early, planning on leaving the next day. Roman quickly retired to his room shortly after leaving Logan and Virgil alone in the living room.

Despite knowing already his calculations were perfect, Logan still sat on the couch checking over them one more time just to make sure. Virgil sat on the floor with his back against the couch watching videos on Logan’s cell phone with headphones borrowed from Patton’s collection.

He glanced up when Logan shifted positions and Logan flashed him a smile.

Virgil removed the headphones to speak. “Thanks by the way,” he said, “I already said it to Patton and will again in the morning, but thanks for helping me out with all of this.”

“It wouldn’t have been particularly kind of us to leave you stranded,” Logan pointed out.

“Yeah, but still, you’ve all been working really hard. Right now you’re up at 3am working on it.”

Logan shrugged. “I’d likely be up working at 3am on something anyway,” he said.

“Sure,” Virgil said, “but this time it’s for me so, yeah, thanks.”

“You’re welcome then,” Logan said. “Any time.”

Virgil tilted his head back to grin at him. “Was that a time travel pun.”

Logan scowled. “No.”

“It sounded like a time travel pun.”

“It was not intentional. I will never intentionally say a pun.”

“You’re telling me you live with Patton and never make puns?” Virgil asked.

“I, unlike my roommates, am a responsible adult,” Logan insisted.

Virgil seemed skeptical. “Is that why you’re drinking forbidden coffee out of an orange juice carton at 3am.”

“Not so loud,” he hissed, leaning forward to put Virgil’s mouth and glancing back towards the hallway to see if anyone was about to come storming into the living room with another intervention.

His hand was bit.

“Ow!” Logan exclaimed, taking his hand back. “How do you know?” he hissed. The ruse had been working on Roman and Patton for years because neither liked orange juice.

Virgil rolled his eyes. “I can smell it,” he said. “I’m not dumb.”

“It’s worked on everyone else.”

“No,” Virgil said. “It’s worked on one dramatic idiot and one man who trusts people not to lie to him way too much. I, however, am a paranoid asshole with a doctorate. You can’t fool me.”

Logan couldn’t help but smiled. “I suppose I have met my match,” he said.

He tilted his head all the way back, so his skull rested on the couch cushion and he was staring straight up at Logan with his piercing hazel eyes. “Heck yeah you have,” Virgil said, and Logan was not much more sentimentality, especially not romantic sentimentality, but there was something about the shadows making the room seem cozier and the almost golden glint in his eyes from the lit lamp beside Logan that made it more difficult to breath.

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He was relaxed here in Logan’s apartment at 3 in the morning, looking up at him with warm eyes. He fit, slotting into place with an ease Logan had not expect. He’d found Professor Virgil Eran interesting from the moment he’d first heard him speak and had glanced through his university profile for information on whoever had plugged his virus into their computer. He had found him endearing when they’d corresponded through emails and occasionally one sided video chats. It was different with him right in front of Logan, within arm’s reach. He could reach down barely a few inches and brush his slightly unruly hair out of his eyes.

“You good man?” Virgil asked.

“I am perfectly well,” Logan said, clearing his throat. He glanced away from Virgil. “I think perhaps my roommates have a bit of a point when it comes to caffeine.”

“Maybe at 3am,” Virgil said in good humor. “You’re not a college kid.”

Logan glanced at the college professor on his living room floor. “Well, thank goodness for that,” he mumbled

“I think your calculations are fine anyway,” Virgil said, gently taking the papers out of his grip. “Why don’t we do something else?”

“Like sleep?” Logan asked.

“You think you’ll be sleeping anytime soon?” Virgil inquired with a raised eyebrow.

“Fair point.”

Virgil grabbed the television remote from side table. “Why don’t we watch a bit of that time inappropriate copy of the Epithet File I know you have.”

“Sure,” Logan agreed. “You can come onto the couch if you would like.”

“Nah. You can come to the floor.”

“…Fine.”

Chapter 49

Patton left in the morning and from there it was just a waiting game. Which, was Virgil’s least favorite type of game. He tried to keep his anxiety on the down low considering it was Logan and Roman’s lifelong friend who was running around some other century, and they were both obviously nervous as well, since the last trip had ended in disaster.

…

This trip was going to end in disaster a little bit too, but Virgil was going to ignore that. At least he wouldn’t be gone for months.

The point was, Roman was constantly going to the gym which was, reportedly not normal behavior and Logan spent his days re-checking calculations that were too late to correct and had worked considering Patton had been in contact occasionally.

Yet, despite the fact that he was clearly an anxious wreck as well, Logan eventually forced himself to put his lined notebook paper away for a bit. Roman was out once again when he did so and Virgil was doom scrolling on his phone.

“We should go out to dinner,” he declared suddenly.

Virgil glanced at the pile of take-out containers stacked near the kitchen trashcan. “Sure,” he agreed.

Which was why Virgil was leaving the apartment for the first time in the last three or so days. Logan had asked him if he wanted anything in particular, but he didn’t care and also didn’t know what restaurants were around, so he was just letting Logan lead him wherever he wanted.

He should not have trusted him.

He glared at Logan, but the man only seemed entertained by his ire. “Really?” Virgil asked.

“I wanted to see for myself if you were really that bad with chopsticks.”

“I’m not,” Virgil said, crossing his arms. “It was just the anxiety about the social situation, and I resent this.”

Logan just laughed, knowing well enough that Virgil wasn’t actually irritated. Honestly, he felt fonder than anything that Logan had chosen to take him here. “It’s actually pretty good sushi.”

“21st century American Midwest sushi,” Virgil drawled. “I’m simply quivering with anticipation for that authenticity.”

“It’s unanimously considered the best sushi in town by my friend group,” Logan said as if the fact that Mr. Asiago Cheese Bread For French Toast and Mr. Went Along With Cooking Asiago Cheese Bread French Toast approved of the restaurant would inspire any confidence in Virgil. If he could even call the place a ‘restaurant.’

“It’s. In. A. Mall.”

“So?” Logan asked.

“It’s a sushi stand in a mall. There isn’t even seating.”

“There is seating,” Logan argued nodding at the five chairs sitting in front of the counter. The seating was completely empty which could be because their eating schedule was off and they were eating dinner at 3pm, but more likely meant everyone else in the time had more sense than the man in front of him.

“Where is your sense of adventure for trying new things?” Logan asked. “Are you not an anthropologist. Don’t you want to experience the culture of the time first hand.”

Virgil glared at him.

“Please try it,” Logan said sill amused. “It really is good.”

“If I get food poisoning, I’m blaming you,” he warned.

“Noted,” Logan said, inclining his head. Then, Virgil reluctantly allowed him to lead him over to the sushi stand from where they’d been hiding behind a trash can so as not to be in the direct line of sight of the man standing behind the counter.

The man greeted them as they approached. He obviously recognized Logan and even asked about Patton and Roman as they took a seat. Virgil did have to admit, despite his instinctual misgivings about mall sushi, what he could glimpse of his set up seemed legit. It looked like a real sushi bar if a bit smaller than usual. Where they had sat, there was a glass case in front of them with chilled fish on display and Virgil could see a large rice cooker behind the man along with a normal refrigerator.

Laminated menus were handed to them. They were only one page front and back, but honestly that was probably a good thing. If it had a bunch of complicated or fancy stuff, Virgil might have been worried.

Well, he was still worried, but he wasn’t running screaming. At least his setup looked like it probably wouldn’t give him too much food poisoning. Logan suggested a rainbow and a snake roll and they got some different types of nigiri.

The chef was nice, and he assembled the sushi fully in Virgil’s view which made him a whole lot less leery about the meal. He seemed to know what he was doing at least. Of course, the fish was not as fresh as it would have been in a coastal area, but it was clearly properly handled. When he was finished, he handed it to them all on one big plate.

He had to admit, when correcting for ingredient availability, it was actually pretty good sushi. He would not say it was the best sushi he’d ever had, but it was worlds better than he’d expected. Logan could obviously tell what his opinion was and was overly smug about it.

“Yeah, yeah,” Virgil said when they were finished. “You’re good at picking restaurants.”

“I’m sure you are also when in a place you are familiar with.”

“I’m not actually,” Virgil said with a laugh. “I always panic choose the worst option.”

“Well, I tend to be quite decisive about such things,” Logan said. “I guess we make a good match.”

“Yeah,” Virgil said. “Uh, what are we going to do when we get home? Because sitting there drowning in anxiety like we have been for the past couple of days isn’t the greatest.”

“Do you have anything in mind?”

“You guys have Blockbuster still?”

“No,” Logan said. He paused. “We do have a Family Video store I think.”

“Is it close? Let’s go there.”

“And why are we not just using a streaming service?” Logan asked. “Or using my… library of movies.”

Virgil shrugged. “It’s the charm of it,” he said.

“The charm of a business already made obsolete and on the brink of collapse?”

“Exactly,” said Virgil with a smile.

“Very well,” Logan said. “If that is what you’d like to do I will look up its location on my phone.”

They were in a building that would look abandoned if there wasn’t a light on inside within 15 minutes. The video rental store had clearly seen better days. Its carpet’s pattern was clearly from another decade and had been trampled over so often it was basically like walking on the linoleum beneath. There was a door on the sign asking patrons to close it behind them because the spring used to close it had long since ceased working.

There was only one person working, a guy in his 30s who glanced at them briefly and then went back to looking at his phone. Ah, yes, Virgil’s favorite type of employee.

“What movie would you like to watch?” Logan asked. He glanced at one small, but still surprisingly present section filled with DVDs.

“I don’t know,” Virgil said. “Isn’t that the point? Stop by a movie rental place on a Friday night, grab a more than likely crappy movie and some Milk Duds and proceed to sit and watch the stupid thing anyway because you already paid for it.”

“Virgil, I grew up in the 90s. This isn’t exactly exciting for me. There is a reason streaming sites took over the market,” Logan replied. “Also, it is Tuesday.”

Virgil rolled his eyes. “Just panic choose a movie with me, nerd.”

“I don’t ‘panic choose’ anything,” Logan said. “I-”

“You do today,” Virgil interrupted.

“I��”

“Choose a letter.”

“…S?”

“Great!” Virgil dragged him off in the direction of the movies that started with ‘S’.

“This is just… gross,” Virgil said a little under an hour and a half later and about an hour into the film.”

“It is a random romantic comedy from 2002,” Logan responded. “What did you expect?”

“Yeah, but there’s weird sex jokes and actors that are probably from Mars and then there’s actual on screen physical abuse between the romantic couple.”

“I will concede that point,” Logan said, “but I will remind that this could have all been avoided if you had allowed me to do proper investigation of the movie choices before renting it.”

“Ugh, yeah, yeah,” Vigil replied, leaning back to stare at the ceiling. “Just turn it off.”

Logan complied, reaching over to eject the DVD from his computer. The three roommates didn’t actually have a DVD player connected to their TV, so they’d chosen to use the desktop computer in Logan’s room.

Virgil was laying on Logan’s bed with Logan sat propped up against the headboard. Logan leaned over to peer down at him. “Thanks for helping distract me,” he said. “Despite the fact that we now know more about what we’re doing, I still get worried about sending Patton through time. His last time travel experience didn’t improve my confidence. I have been… rather nervous.”

“Well, I’m glad I could help, at least a little,” Virgil replied.

“You did,” Logan replied. “A lot.” His hand reached down to touch pat his shoulder, but then lingered there for a moment too long.

Virgil sat up suddenly and Logan had to jerk back to keep their heads from colliding. “I…” Virgil choked out once he was sitting up. “Um…”

Logan’s mouth curled into a half smile. He offered a hand and Virgil took it.

Virgil glanced at the hand. “I, uh, I am an anthropologist.”

“I am aware,” Logan said with a raised eyebrow.

“And, uh, you were born in this time, so technically I’m studying you…”

“I’m a time traveler, Virgil,” he said amused. “I doubt I am a pure specimen for any studies you may be doing.”

“Right,” Virgil said. “That’s a good point. You’re right.”

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There was a pause. “So then,” Virgil said. “No moral quandaries. Just two people sharing a bed and watching a romance movie.”

“It was a bad one.”

“It really, really was,” Virgil said with a grin and then Logan was leaning forward and Virgil’s hand was on Logan’s shoulder.

And then the door was flinging open. “I’m home!” Roman declared as Virgil scrambled back, banging his head on the bed’s headboard.

“Fuck,” Virgil hissed.

“Roman! You need to knock!”

“Since when?” Roman asked, plopping down on Logan’s bed between them.

“Since we have a guest,” Logan said meaningfully. Virgil hid his reddening face in his hands, curling into as tight of a ball as he could.

“You were both in here, it’s not like one of you were naked,” Roman said flippantly. Virgil debated the merits of staying curled up in a ball for the rest of his life. There was a second of silence, and Virgil was glad he couldn’t see the expressions on their faces from his ball when Roman said, “Oh my god!”

Chapter 50

The breakfast table was silent the next morning. Though if one could call it a breakfast table when Logan was only drinking a cup of tea, Roman was chewing on a slice of unbuttered, untoasted bread, and Virgil was still either asleep or avoiding them both in Logan’s bedroom was debatable.

“…Look,” Roman said.

“We aren’t talking about it.”

“How was I supposed to know the two of you were getting it on?! Put a sock on the door next time or something. It’s common courtesy!”

“We weren’t having sex,” Logan hissed. Roman opened his mouth. “Shut up and learn to knock,” Logan said, pointing his spoon at him threateningly.

Yet, still, because it was Roman, the other man opened his mouth again. Luckily, before he could say anything else on the matter, there was a loud crack from the living room.

“I’m going to need a towel please!” Patton called.

“I’ve got it,” Roman said instantly, jumping to his feet, leaving Logan to walk to the living room.

“Why are you wet?” Logan asked immediately upon taking in the sight of his roommate. He was soaked, water dripping from his form like he’d just gotten out of a pool seconds before.

“There was an ocean in the church,” Patton said.

“What?” Logan asked.

Patton pushed his sopping wet hair out of his eyes. “The time distortions were a lot more intense than ones we’ve seen before,” he said. He held out a small innocuous appearing device whose only mechanism appeared to be a switch to him. “Be really careful with that. It’s unstable and we might have damaged it getting out.” Patton winced and removed his timepiece. “Actually, speaking of that. This might need a checkup too.”

“Were there issues with the tech?” Logan asked taking both devices in his hand.

“…No,” Patton said looking a bit sheepish. “We just… may have turned off all of the safety protocols.”

“Patton I just made this for you!” Logan said, horrified.

“And you did a really good job!” was Patton’s reply, “but we didn’t really want to drown in a church.”

Logan took a slow breath. “I’ll make sure it wasn’t damaged,” he said.

“Thanks, Lo!”

Roman entered the living room then, bright blue towel in hand. “I have returned bearing gifts!” he declared.

“My hero,” Patton said with a laugh, taking the towel and using it to wipe off his face and then start to dry his hair.

“So, an ocean in a church?” Logan asked.

Patton nodded. “I’ll have to thank Virgil for suggesting the inflatable raft.”

He paused as he finished running the towel through his hair and started to dab at his clothing. “I saw Remus,” he said.

Roman froze. “You did?”

“Uh huh,” Patton replied. “He was with Janus. I didn’t think I should say anything to him since that trip was way out of sync though, sorry.”

“Yeah, no, that make sense. That’s fine.” Roman hesitated. “How was he?”

“He seemed good,” Patton said. He flashed them a smile. “Happy. He’s quite the character actually. He and Janus seem like they’re good friends.”

“Oh,” Roman said. “That’s… that’s good.”

Patton’s face screwed up slightly. “He did flirt with me though, so that was weird.”

“He what?!” Roman practically screeched.

“It wasn’t particularly innocent flirting either,” Patton said, grimacing.

Roman took a moment to think about it before pulling a face that one would expect to see on a small child trying a lemon for the first time. “That’s disgusting! That’s like… that’s like my brother flirting with my brother. Gross!”

“It was… it was weird,” Patton said.

“What did he even say?” Roman asked.

“Mostly it was comments on my…” he made a motion with his head that apparently Roman could interpret.

“He talked about your butt!”

“…Well, he didn’t exactly use that word.”

“That sounds about like Remus,” Virgil said, poking his head into the hall.

“Oh, you’ve finally decided to join the land of the living, Emo?” Roman asked.

“Shut up,” both Logan and Virgil said at the same time.

Of course, he did not. “You know, Pat-pat, speaking of posteriors…”

“One more word out of you and I will actually kill you,” Virgil threatened.

“Um, what’s going on?” Patton asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” Roman promised.

“You will not,” Logan said. “Keep your gossiping tendencies under control.”

“Okay, but now I want to know,” Patton said with a pout.

“You go take a shower,” Logan ordered.

Patton shared a look with Roman that told Logan there was no way he wouldn’t have the whole story along with a good number of embellishments by the end of the night. Then he shrugged. “Yes, boss,” he said. Logan rolled his eyes as he turned towards the bathroom, the towel still on his shoulders. He was dry enough that he wasn’t dripping anymore, and he slipped off his waterlogged shoes and socks so he wouldn’t track water to the bathroom.

“Put that in the biohazard hamper,” Logan called after him.

“I know!” he called back.

“And you,” Logan said to Roman, “clean up all of the water he got on the carpet in the off chance there are any pathogens in it.”

“Why do I have to do it?!”

“Because you’ve annoyed me,” Logan said, “and I need to insure these two devices do not explode.”

“Ugh, fiiiine,” Roman said, dipping back into the hall.

Virgil glanced over at him, the picture of awkwardness. “Uh,” he said. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Logan said.

“…Are those things really at risk of exploding right now?” he asked.

Logan glanced at him. “Technically they are always at least slightly at risk of exploding, but admittedly the chance is further from 0 than I would like it to be at this point.”

“Great,” Virgil said. “One more thing to be anxious about.”

“You don’t need to be anxious about it, Virgil,” Logan said.

“Uh, I think I do need to be anxious about the maybe bomb in your hands.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” Virgil said with a sigh.

“We are two mutually consenting adults. There isn’t any shame to it.”

“Can we please talk about our very embarrassingly interrupted kiss after you’ve dealt with the explosives?”

“Very well,” Logan said. He walked to the other side of the room to grab a statis chamber from a cabinet drawer.

“What’s that?” Virgil asked as the cube shaped device popped up.

“It’s a stasis cube,” Logan said as he put the two devices in his hand into it and activated. “It will allow them to cool down completely from their earlier use in a safe environment. It will be less dangerous to work with them later.”

“If it just takes 5 seconds to deal with them, why are you making Roman clean up?” Virgil asked amused.

“Like I said,” Logan said. “He annoyed me. Speaking of,” he glanced into the hallway where Roman currently was. “How do you feel about leaving before he gets back to get coffee.”

Virgil smiled at him. “Sure,” he said. “Escape the apartment for coffee part two.”

Chapter 51

It took a few days after Patton got home for Logan to first make sure the timepiece and the distortion device were not at a risk of exploding and then to study the distortion device.

“It’s similar to what little we’ve seen of TPI technology,” Logan had mused, sitting on the couch while studying the information he’d managed to get off of it. “It’s definitely derived from the same technology unlike my time travel device, but it looks a bit different, and this version at least is rather shoddily made. Of course, creating disorder and almost ripping apart time is easier than seamlessly moving through it.”

“So, they’re probably from my time then?” Virgil asked.

“Most likely,” Logan agreed. “Though it could always be a Remus situation where they were from another time originally but accidently ended up in the TPI time. Either way, the origin of their purposeful time travel was certainly around your time.”

Virgil glanced at the device he’d set on the table in front of them all. It looked innocent sitting there, but it had the power to destroy so much, and they didn’t even know why. “Do you think whoever made this trapped me here on purpose?” Virgil asked.

“It would be a big coincidence if you in particular got trapped in this time in particular,” Roman said.

“I was thinking the same thing actually,” Logan said. “You do work with the TPI and with Janus, a time agent who both often is caught in the middle of devices similar to this being used and who runs into Patton frequently. Plus you know Remus, Roman’s brother even if we didn’t know that connection before you were trapped here and we already had a correspondence before you landed here. It would be strange for you to have ended up here on accident.”

“But why?” Virgil asked. “I am somehow connected to all of you, but I’m still not a time agent myself.”

“All I am to the TPI is a walking history book. I’m not actually involved.”

“Well,” Logan said. “Perhaps someone knows something we don’t.”

“Or maybe it’s just a happy accident!” Patton said. Virgil highly doubted that and it made anxiety churn in his gut.

“Well,” Logan said, “accident or not, we do now have a solution to the issue. I’ve managed to use this device to recalibrate my calculations and we’ve gotten a ping. I know where the signal blocking Virgil’s time device is coming from.”

“Where?” Roman asked.

“It looks like a local trash dump,” Logan replied. “It must have just ended up in a trashcan that day and was emptied before we checked.”

“Well, that should be easy enough to get,” Patton said. “Give Roman and I the exact coordinates and we can go and get it now.”

“Wait, why are we the only ones who have to dig through a garbage dump?” Roman asked.

Patton gave him a look.

“Oh,” Roman said, eyes lighting up. “Oh right!” Then, he scowled remembering he was going to be going through a garbage dump. “Fine,” he sighed.

“Think of it as an adventure!” Patton said.

“We’re time travelers. We have so many more exciting adventuring opportunities than dumpster diving, Pat-Pat,” he whined, but he still got up. “I’ll go get changed.”

Patton stood up and handed Logan his phone, so Logan could program the location of the distortion device into it while he changed as well. “We’ll text you when we’re heading back! I’ll give you a 15- and 5-minute warning,” Patton said with a wink. Virgil immediately hid his face in his hands.

“Do you think the TPI is hiring?” Logan asked as the door closed. “I’d love to move to a different century without those two.”

“Time agents don’t usually live in 4500s,” Virgil said, face still hidden behind his hands. “They’d probably still place you in this century, especially since you’re comfortable here.”

“No escaping them then,” Logan sighed.

“Mmm,” was Virgil’s response.

He felt Logan shift on the couch next to him and a warm palm touched his wrist, gently tugging his hand away from his face in a way that Virgil could resist if he really wanted. Virgil let the hand fall with a sigh. Logan smiled at him when he could see his face and Virgil smiled back despite how he could still feel heat in his cheeks.

“You will be going home this evening, I’d imagine,” Logan said.

“Yeah,” Virgil agreed softly.

“I would like to give you a gift before you go, if you’ll allow it.”

“Uh, okay,” Virgil agreed.

Logan nodded and leaned back to grab something out of the pocket of a jacket that was currently hanging over the side of the couch. “Ah,” he said when he found whatever he was looking for. He glanced at Virgil. “It is a ring, by the way, but this is not a proposal.”

“Well, I’d certainly hope not,” said Virgil dryly. “An impulse elopement would be a little off brand for us both.”

Logan smiled at him. “Very true,” he agreed. Then, he opened his palm revealing a small ring.

“So, then, what is it?” Virgil asked.

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“It is an emergency time travel device,” Logan explained. “It’s not particularly complex. It can only take you here to this room between 2 weeks and one year from now, but if you ever need something from me, you can use it.”

He offered the ring and Virgil opened his palm to let him put it in his hand. He studied the ring for a moment. It was a rose gold and very light.

“It also has some security measures,” Logan said. “It wouldn’t do to make an emergency time travel device that someone else might easily try to take from you. It’ll disappear when you put it on. You’ll still be able to feel it and take it off whenever you wish. It’ll become visible again if you take it off.”

“An invisible ring?” Virgil asked, curious.

“Yes,” Logan said with a smile. “It is designed to store your space time coordinates for up to 48 hours just so you’re aware, but as I said you can take it off whenever you wish and… I won’t use it against you.”

Virgil looked at him. “Okay,” he said. “Can I put it on?” Logan nodded, and Virgil slipped it on his finger. As promised it disappeared from view as soon as he did. He could still feel the weight of it on his finger though.

“You turn it three times counterclockwise to activate it,” Logan said, making Virgil look up from the seemingly empty space on his finger he’d been staring at.

“It would drop you right about where you are sitting.”

“Thanks,” Virgil said. It wasn’t nearly enough to say how much he appreciated the gift, but he hoped his tone said enough.

“Don’t use it against me?” Logan asked with a half-smile, and Virgil realized just how much trust was being put onto him by giving him a device that was directly linked to their base of operations despite knowing Virgil worked with the TPI.

Virgil shook his head. “I won’t,” he said. Deciding to throw out his nervousness and embarrassment over last time he shot forward to kiss Logan quickly on the lips. They bumped noses and Logan’s glasses ended up askew in the process, but Logan didn’t seem to mind judging by his delighted laugh when they parted.

“Thank you,” Virgil said again.

“Of course,” Logan replied.

Virgil could still feel the ring on his finger even after Patton and Roman got back from the dump with the device that had caused this whole mess. He could still feel it when Logan turned it off and his time piece reactivated. He could still feel it there when he made it home and gave an excuse as to why he’d left his trip early. He could still feel it when he got an email from an unknown sender making sure he got home okay.

Arc IV: (To Be Named)

Chapter 52

“What’s this?” Janus asked when a giant bowl was set on the coffee table in front of him.

“We’re eating on the couch tonight,” Emile said cheerfully.

Janus raised an eyebrow and switched off the tablet he’d been using to look at him. “Why?” he asked.

Emile shrugged and set a second huge bowl down next to Janus’s. “For fun,” Emile said. He turned back towards the kitchen and Janus leaned forward to look in the bowl. It was spaghetti with some sort of creamy sauce and a few different vegetables mixed in along with some shrimp.

“I made green tea,” Emile said, coming back into the room with two mugs.

“Thanks,” Janus said, taking one of the mugs with a small smile.

“What were you doing?” Emile asked as he took a seat beside Janus. He nodded at the deactivated screen now sitting on the end table.

“Just doing some puzzle games,” Janus said.

“That sounds fun,” Emile said with a smile.

“Head doctor said they might be a good thing to do to pass the time when I told him to fuck off after suggesting reading.”

Emile sighed. “Dr. Figueroa is my colleague. You could try to be polite.”

“I thought I was supposed to be my authentic self in therapy,” Janus replied.

Emile just huffed and rolled his eyes. Janus couldn’t help but smile as he picked up his mug of green tea.

The last few months had been…different. In a lot of ways, Janus’s life had become harder than it had been before. It had been easy to do nothing but eat pre-prepared meals, go to work, and pass out in his empty house every day. It wasn’t good for him. He’d known it even then, but it had been easy. This was not.

Emile had offered, insisted really, that Janus move into his house for a bit just to get back on his feet.

He’d taken time off of the TPI which would have been given to him anyway since he’d spent so trapped in the past. He’d had to give a report of what had happened, and he’d mentioned Patton, but he hadn’t mentioned everything. They’d offered him a shrink when he’d asked.

Janus had told Emile he needed to tell him something about why he’d been distant, so he wouldn’t end up chickening out, but he’d asked for a bit of time to figure out what to say. He’d finally worked up the courage to talk about it with Dr. Figueroa two weeks ago. Much like with Patton, it was easier to talk to someone who hadn’t been involved in Janus’s mistake, but it still wasn’t easy.

He was running up on the deadline he’d given for having that talk with him. It had to happen soon, and they both knew it, but Emile was just patiently waiting for him to suck it up. It felt… wrong to use his kindness without him knowing, but it was also nice to get to spend time with his brother. He didn’t even dare to hope that he’d still have the chance once he told him.

He was moving back into his own house in less than a week. He’d tell him then so if Emile ended up kicking him out of his life, he wouldn’t have to kick him out of his home too.

For now, though everything was fine. Harder, more complicated, and in threat of exploding at any moment, but fine. Fine wasn’t something he’d really felt in a long time. Or at least, fine while in his own time wasn’t something he’d felt in a long time. There’d been a few moments with Patton sitting next to the fire outside the hole in the ground they’d slept in for those few months where the man would turn to look at him and he’d felt fine. Yet, Patton had been right. Those moments were unsustainable with how Janus was actually feeling deep down.

“This is good,” Janus said, after taking a couple of bites of the pasta in front of him.

“Well, I always was the only one in the house that could cook,” Emile said, and that was true. “It was either learn to defend for myself or eat a cheeseburger for every meal.”

“Hey, I had a good burger seasoning.”

“Not for every meal, Janus.”

“Meat, dairy, bread. What more could you want?”

“Vegetables, Janus.”

“You could have put pickles on!”

“I don’t like pickles.”

“That sounds like your problem, not mine,” Janus argued.

Emile shook his head, turning his eyes to the ceiling. “How have you been surviving on your own?”

“Well, I mean,” Janus said. “Badly.”

“Right…” Emile said. He leaned over to bump their shoulders together. Janus flashed him a smile.

“Speaking of,” said Janus. “Could you physically force me to pack tonight? I meant to do it today and instead I ended up playing puzzles games.”

Emile chucked. “Sure, I’ll help you after dinner.”

“You don’t have to help me,” said Janus. “Just make me do it.”

“Maybe I want to help,” said Emile.

“Oh, yes, packing. The most entertaining of Thursday night activities.”

Emile hummed and then glanced at him. “Remember when you helped me pack for college?” he asked.

“Mmm, I do,” Janus replied.

“I was so stressed about going somewhere new,” Emile said, “that I avoided packing for weeks. Every time Mom would ask me how packing was going, I’d tell her it was going fine but in reality, I hadn’t even started. You’d come home two days before I had to leave because you were going to help me move into my dorm. It’s like you could sense no packing had been done the moment you stepped through the front door.”

“You were doing your ‘hiding the broken horse statue from mom’ shuffle,” Janus said with a smirk.

“Well, you walked me straight to my room and we packed everything up in those two days,” Emile said. “You made it so much easier.”

“Yeah, because I hovered over you until you did it and did half of it for you,” Janus snorted.

“It wasn’t just that,” Emile said. “You also found the music streaming station run by the university and put that on and talked about what your freshman year was like. You also had tips on what things I should and shouldn’t pack when moving into the dorm.”

“You still took all of the cartoon stuffed animals despite my advice.”

“I thought there’d be more space on the bed,” Emile frowned.

Janus snorted.

“But anyway, just having someone else around made me happier. It wasn’t just about the workload being halved either. You being there made me feel less lonely and reminded me I’d always have someone to come back to.”

Janus internally winced. He was sure Emile hadn’t meant to make him feel guilty in any way. In fact, he probably was trying to do the opposite, but him saying that just reminded Janus that it hadn’t been true. Janus had abandoned him for literal years and hadn’t been someone he could always come back to.

Emile had proven himself to be at least close to who he was before Janus messed with time the few last months. There were a couple of differences here and there, and Janus could not be sure if they were from him changing time or from him avoiding his brother for the past three years and him naturally changing. Most memories they shared that Janus cautiously brought up or Emile mentioned on his own were consistent with what Janus remembered, but he hadn’t pushed too hard or dug too deep. It just made him feel more guilty about avoiding the man for so long.

It made him want to ignore the man more, because it seemed every choice Janus ever made only hurt him.

…

Well, perhaps not the college radio station when helping an anxious 18-year-old pack up his childhood bedroom.

He should probably tell Emile that his words made him feel guilty because that was obviously not the intention and he’d want to know. He should probably apologize properly for leaving him alone for three years without an explanation. He should probably provide an explanation for those three years.

He should probably go see the head doctor again soon.

(He should probably stop calling Emile’s colleague who was in the same field as him a head doctor derogatorily in his head.)

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For now, he just glanced at Emile. “You’re trying to bully me into letting you help pack with logic, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Emile confirmed without remorse.

“Fine,” Janus sighed, “but only if you let me do the dishes for you.”

Emile took a long moment to consider the offer. “You drive a hard bargain,” he said, “but okay.”

“And no doing anything sneaky like getting bags ready for me on your own while I’m doing it or the deal is off,” Janus said.

“You always think of all possible loopholes, Janus,” Emile sighed.

There was a long silence.

“Agree, you prick,” said Janus.

“No promises,” Emile replied cheekily with laughter in his eyes, and things were good for a moment more.

Chapter 53

Today Janus was moving into his house in 24th century for the second time in his life, and honestly, the house wasn’t going to look much different than it had when he’d first moved in. Janus had unpacked his things more at Emile’s house in the past almost 6 months than he had in the two and a half years he’d liven in his house. His house held clothes, bare bone furniture, and exactly one skillet from when he’d decided to be daring and tried to cook himself an egg. All he’d really customized for himself was the setting on the LXC device which controlled the lights, media across the home, and prepackaged food ordering and prepare.

He almost felt embarrassed that his house was so empty. Emile, of course, knew that his mental health had been fucked, but the blankness of his house was a physical reminder of this fact especially considering how he used to keep house before all of this. He’d warned Emile about the fact that his house was empty, and he had said he understood, but still.

They gathered all of the luggage in a pile in Emile’s guest room. They’d had to get permissions from the TPI to allow Emile to travel to his house, and Janus went ahead and filed to give him permanent permission to travel there.

The decision felt far too hopeful for someone who hadn’t had that conversation with his brother yet, but it had made Emile smile in the moment.

Emile took three of the bags and Janus took the rest. He waved his arm and selected the third saved location on the device. In a moment, he was standing in the living room of his dark, empty house.

…

His supposed to be dark and empty house. More of the lights were on than Janus had ever switched on himself, and half of the windows were open. (He didn’t even know some of those windows opened.)

They were letting in the sounds of birds that made the lakeside their home as well as cool late fall breeze. There was also a racket coming from the kitchen. Emile was beside him a second after he himself had appeared. He looked around for a moment. “Did you leave it like this?”

“No,” Janus replied.

“Do you have squatters?” He had a security system from 2 millennia in the future on his house. He highly doubted it.

“I’m going to go check the kitchen,” Janus said, moving towards the noises coming from the other room.

He stopped in the doorway to his kitchen only to see Patton standing at his kitchen counter cutting up a carrot on a cutting board Janus didn’t think he owned, and if he did, it was buried in a box somewhere.

“What are you doing?” Janus asked.

“Cooking!” was the immediate reply.

“In my house?” Janus asked. “How do you even know where my house is?”

“I may be just a little bit ahead of you,” Patton said with a wink while tapping the side of his nose.

Janus sputtered. “This is my house!”

“I know!” He said it so cheerfully while being a purposefully obtuse asshole that Janus could help but crack a smile and shake his head. He’d missed him after spending so long alone with him though he wasn’t go to admit that to him when he’d broken into Janus’s house to…

“Again, what are you doing?”

“I’m making you soup.”

“Why?” Janus asked.

“Well,” Patton said. “I know it’s a bit of a rough time for you, so I thought I’d give you a nice welcome home present and what better present than food!” He smiled at him widely.

Janus looked closer at what he was making. “You’re trying to prove to me you can cook.” Patton frowned at him. “Have you considered I have had enough fish stew for a lifetime?”

“Nope!” he said. “It’s entirely different this time anyway. I have carrots!”

“I don’t like carrots,” Janus lied blandly.

“Liar!” Patton declared.

“No, I’m not,” Janus continued to lie.

“I mean, that was definitely a lie,” Emile interjected from behind Janus. He was looking at them curiously. “Er, hello, who are you?”

“This is Pat,” Janus said.

“The illegal time traveler you’ve been tracking?” Emile asked with a questioning lilt to his tone.

“Ah, yes, well,” Janus said with a cough. “We came to an understanding when stuck in pre-history.”

“And now he is cooking you soup in your house?” Emile asked.

“I’ve long since stopped trying to make sense of him,” Janus grumbled.

“Well,” Emile said. “Hello Pat.”

“You can call me Patton,” he said easily. “I hope it’s nice to meet me, because I’ve already met you.”

“We haven’t been meeting in the correct order,” Janus informed Emile. “So, he’s apparently already met you which will happen in your future. It is also something he shouldn’t be talking about,” he scolded. Patton took that with a shrug.

“I hate time travel,” Emile said, his nose scrunching up. “Isn’t life already confusing enough.”

Janus winced, not relishing the upcoming conversation with him about how confusing his life was now because of time travel.

“Don’t you work with the TPI too?” Patton asked.

“That doesn’t mean I like time travel,” Emile said. “I’m a stationary agent and I like that just fine.”

“Time travel can be a bit complicated sometimes,” Patton acknowledged, “but I don’t think it’s all bad.” He finished chopping up the carrot and turned to put it in the self-regulating soup pot. Janus squinted at it. It was certainly not something Patton had in the 21st century. So, the question was. Had he gone out and bought time appropriate cookware before breaking into Janus’s house or had he gone through Janus’s storage to find it?

“You’re a free agent time traveler, right?” Emile asked.

“Depends on what you mean by free agent,” Patton said. “I have always worked with a group of people, and we have rules and procedures. It’s basically a time agency itself, just not the TPI.”

“And you’ve met me before?”

“I have,” Patton confirmed, “but Janus is right in that I can’t say much more than that about it. In fact,” he said wiping off his hands on a towel hanging from his apron. (The apron was covered in cartoon squirrels and totted the phrase ‘I’m a nut for baking.’) “I should probably be getting out of here.”

“You’ve never been worried about us meeting out of order before,” Janus pointed out with a frown. He didn’t particularly want Patton to go even though the man had broken into his house and possibly went through his boxes of kitchen equipment.

“Well,” Patton said. “There’s meeting wildly out of order, there’s meeting in order, and then there’s what I’m doing.”

“What are you doing?” Janus asked alarmed.

Patton just shrugged with a smile.

“No, Patton, what are you doing?”

“Soup should be done in about an hour, but you can leave it on all day. I got a pot that’s fridge safe, so just shut it off and stick it in there before going to sleep.”

“Patton.”

“See you later! Bye!” He said and disappeared into thin air.

Janus sighed and rubbed the bridge of his brow. “Why is he like this?”

“Janus,” Emile asked. “Why did your self-declared mortal enemy make you soup?”

“Because he’s an asshole, that’s why.”

“Uh huh,” Emile said, looking at him oddly.

“What?” Janus asked.

“What exactly happened when you were stuck in the past?” Emile asked.

Janus sighed. “A lot happened. A lot.” He glanced at the soup pot happily performing its function on his kitchen counter. ‘I hope it’s nice to meet me, because I’ve already met you,’ rang in his ears. Fucking Patton with his little hints about the future. It gave Janus just a bit of courage though knowing that Emile at least didn’t flee the continent after the conversation they had to have. He was at least around enough to meet Patton. “In fact,” Janus said. “It’s probably time I told you what happened. Everything that happened.”

Chapter 54

They sat down in the living room. Janus let Emile have the couch and sat on one of the matching armchairs. There was a squeaky sound when he sat. The plastic covering the chair had been delivered in was still on it.

Emile had a pleasant, open but curious expression on his face and Janus suddenly had an idea what it felt like to be his patient.

“I,” Janus began after a moment, shifting uncomfortably on the squeaky chair. “I don’t know how to start this conversation. I talked about what I wanted to say and possible ways to say it with Dr. Figueroa, but I… I still don’t know.”

“I guess I should start by saying that I did something horrible that I need to apologize for and I’m not sure if apologizing will even be enough. The problem is you don’t even know what that horrible thing is.” Janus stared at his feet. “So, first, I should probably explain what I did. I just don’t know where to start.”

“Maybe start with what happened before it,” Emile suggested. “Just lead up to it. It might help explain why whatever it was happened too.”

Janus took a breath. “Okay,” he said. “That day was just like most that I remember. We both woke up early. I was going to the TPI and you were going to where you worked your residency. We ate leftover pizza for breakfast because both of us were exhausted. You because it sucks to be a resident and me because I’d been working on a big case.”

“I was getting frustrated with the case. That was my first mistake: being impatient and angry. It was just a thief, but a slippery one. She’d stolen a half-broken time piece and was using it to rob banks within about a 50-year time frame. I had an idea of where she might go, but no one would listen to me. Or at least,” Janus quirked a half smile, “that’s how I interpreted it. They said they’d look into my idea, but they were being extra cautious because of how close in the timestream her actions were to most of the agents’ lives.”

“I was so tired of the case and so egotistical. I decided to check it out on my own without being cleared by the TPI. I went back in time without thinking of the consequences and that was the worst thing I’ve ever done.” Janus took a breath. “I’m not sure how, but somewhere in the course of my self-appointed mission…” He trailed off. He didn’t know how to say it. He really didn’t.

“What happened?” Emile asked when he didn’t continue.

“I…” and his next words probably sounded like crackly nonsense to Emile’s ears because he couldn’t get his thoughts straight and his tongue wouldn’t make the words right.

“I don’t even remember living in that town or the fact that Mom used to work at that bank,” he choked out. “I didn’t think and I didn’t check and…” There was a long silence. “I erased you,” he finally managed to say in a whisper, but in the quiet of his barely lived in house, the words were loud.

There was more silence. “But I…” Emile said after a moment.

“I went back and fixed it,” Janus said, “but I… didn’t do a perfect job. I don’t even know how much I messed things up. It would have been one thing if it’d just been me. If it had just impacted my life, but I did it to you and I don’t even know how to start to apologize.”

Nothing was said for a long moment. Janus didn’t look at him.

“…Huh,” Emile finally said.

Janus risked a glance at him. He didn’t look irate, but he did still look confused which was probably the reason for that.

“I’m sorry,” Janus said. It was really the only thing he could say at this point.

Emile tilted his head to the side. He took off his glasses and cleaned them with the edge of his shirt with slow circles. Since he was 15, Emile only cleaned his glasses with specially designed wipes, but he’d held onto the habit of cleaning his glasses with his shirt anytime he needed a moment to think. Janus wasn’t sure if Emile even realized he was doing it, but he knew it was a signal for Janus to be quiet for a few seconds.

The glasses were perched back on Emile’s nose after a few seconds. “I think I remember that,” he said contemplatively.

“…What?” Janus asked, and he was no longer avoiding looking at Emile. He was now blatantly staring at him.

“Well, I didn’t know what it was,” Emile said, “but I did have a very odd dream on the day you mentioned and suspiciously I had said dream in the middle of the day and woke standing up.”

“A dream?” Janus asked.

“A very vivid dream,” Emile said. “I don’t believe you actually erased me completely from existence. My life was simply shifted slightly. I was working as a social worker for about 5 hours and then I was back in my appropriate place.”

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“Why didn’t you tell me about that?” Janus asked, but then immediately wince at his own hypocrisy. “Er… never mind.”

“I didn’t know it was possibly real,” Emile said. “Honestly, I thought I was just really tired. I’d been overworking myself a lot. I took the rest of the day off after that.”

“You shifted reality for a few hours, and you didn’t realize it?” Janus asked.

“Like I said, I was really tired and nothing seemed to be wrong…”

“Wait, but things were different,” Janus said. “Didn’t you notice things were different.”

“Not… really,” Emile said. “Like what?”

“Like…” Janus said. “Like a whole bunch of things!”

“Like…?”

“Like you had a different job title and you worked different hours.”

“I thought I’d fallen asleep standing up or had a vivid audio-visual hallucination at work from stress. I asked for a switch a couple of weeks later.”

“You used to hate time travel, but then you took a job at the TPI.”

Emile gave him a drawl look. “I still hate time travel,” he said. “I literally just said that not 5 minutes ago.”

“Well then why would you work for the TPI.”

“Because time travel is so confusing and distressing that people doing it on a regular basis as a career need psychological support.”

“Plus, Lia asked for my consultation when developing the mental health part of the Agent Management Office,” Emile continued. “Considering I already knew quite a bit about time travel from being around you, she knew me personally, and I’d finished my residency, she decided to give me a job offer when my advice panned out.”

“W-well,” Janus said. “You were allergic to pineapples.”

“You mean my childhood allergy?” Emile asked. “That has since resolved itself in my adult life?”

“It has?” Janus asked.

“Janus have you considered,” Emile said, “that some if not all of the inconsistencies you were seeing in my life have to do with the fact that you hadn’t spoken to me in 3 years?”

“I… uh… hadn’t considered that,” Janus admitted honestly.

“You were looking for information to support your incorrect world view,” Emile said sounding very much like a head doctor and not like a brother, “and you found some.” He sighed. “It makes sense after having faced a traumatic event where you effectively thought you’d killed a loved one that you weren’t thinking clearly.” The head doctor analysis voice slipped just a bit. “I just wish you’d talked about it with someone.”

“Sorry,” Janus said, because no matter which way this conversation had gone and no matter the revelations, the point was an apology. “I’m sorry.”

Emile sighed. “I would have forgiven you even if you had erased me,” Emile said. “You didn’t mean to, and you did your best to fix it. You did fix it even if you were an idiot about it.”

“What about for being an idiot and not talking to you for three years?” Janus asked.

“I already did forgive you for that Janus,” Emile said pointedly. “What did you think the last 6 months were?”

“Pity?”

Emile gave him his disappointed and exasperated head shake. “Promise to never do anything like that to me again,” he said, “and I’ll forgive you.”

“I promise,” Janus said immediately.

“And in the future, you’ll talk to me if you have any issue even if you think it’s horrible.”

“I think I’ve learned by lesson on that one.”

“And that goes for other people too,” Emile said. “If anything goes wrong with someone, you talk to them or if that’s too hard you talk to someone so they can convince you to talk to that person.”

Janus nodded.

“Great!” Emile said. “Then you’re officially forgiven for everything. Though I expect you to go to therapy and keep working on making yourself feel better, so these things don’t happen again.”

And Janus… didn’t know how to feel about that. He should probably feel happy and thankful or at least relieved, but if he was being honest, he just felt kind of empty in that moment like an old well that had finally run dry. Fuck his head doctor and fuck Patton. Wasn’t this supposed to make him feel better? Everything was fine. He hadn’t actually erased Emile permanently from the timeline, in fact, he’d apparently still existed in some form in the alternate timeline Janus had temporarily made. Emile had forgiven him both for erasing him and ignoring him even though that was far more than Janus deserved. This was something he’d never even dared dream would happen, but it had been exactly what he’d wanted.

Yet, he still didn’t feel good, not really, not like how he remembered feeling before all of this happened.

Though was that really a surprise? Things were not like how they were before. He and Emile were no longer close. There was love and affection there, but they didn’t really know each other. The last six months had been nice. He’d been able to pretend for a bit that everything was back to normal, but in the moments he hadn’t been able to pretend that, it’d been a bit stilted and awkward speaking to his brother especially at the start.

Beyond that, Janus was just used to misery at this point. It was his default state. Not being miserable took effort and energy he didn’t always have. He felt himself slipping into sadness or numbness even during times he should be feeling good. He’d noticed himself experiencing a sense of desolation when Emile cooked his favorite meal or in the middle of watching a ballet performance Emile had suggested they go to and he’d been looking forward to in the days before or even now when he should be so happy, so ecstatic. Everything should be okay, but it wasn’t.

“You doing alright over there?” Emile asked, and Janus didn’t know how long he’d been silent.

Instinct said to say yes and force himself to move on, but he wasn’t going to break his promise that fast. “Not really, no,” he admitted.

“That’s okay,” Emile said. “Anything I can do to help?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Why don’t we go taste the soup your arch nemesis,” there was a light teasing tone to his voice, “made for you. Some of the vegetables won’t be completely cooked yet, but I’m sure it’s already good.”

“Yeah,” Janus agreed. “Yeah, okay,” he got to his feet, the chair making that plastic squeaking sound again. “Maybe we could unwrap the furniture in here before you go home.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Emile said with a smile.

Chapter 55

Somehow, the strangest thing about his life right now was a picture on the wall. It was one that he’d gotten after college when he moved into his first actual house. It wasn’t anything special. It was just something that had caught his eye when he was specifically looking for something classier to put on his wall than the posters he’d hung in his college dorm and apartment with Virgil. It was a tall painting of a tree, but segmented into four parts, each representing the state of a tree in different seasons. In the top left, the three had small leaves and little buds, on the top right it had full leaves bathed in sunlight, in the bottom left the leaves had changed colors and started to fall off, and in the bottom right the tree was devest of leaves but covered in snow.

It was on the wall near Janus’s bed. It was one of the first things he saw when he opened his eyes in the morning and was usually what reminded him that everything was different now when he woke.

The picture had been in a box in the houses garage up until the Saturday before the last. Saturdays had become his and Emile’s unofficial unpacking Janus’s house day. They would usually pick one or maybe two boxes that had been sitting untouched for years, unpack it, talk, and eat dinner together.

Notably, dinner was usually not provided by either of them.

Patton had gotten into the habit of breaking into Janus’s house. Janus would sometimes catch him doing it briefly, but often Patton managed to avoid him. This was quite the feat considering Janus was not currently working and thus stayed at home a lot of the time. Patton had repeatedly reprogrammed Janus’s kitchen taking away the option for pop tarts entirely and replacing the option with real food. Janus’s kitchen was constantly stocked with something to eat that wasn’t trash. He also liked to leave around different smelling hand soaps, flowers, and paper cranes. Janus had an entire drawer in his nightstand dedicated to storing paper cranes now.

The newest one was still on his nightstand from the night before, sitting cheerfully in the way of his view of the tree paining when his alarm woke up that morning. He sighed. He had not missed getting up early for work.

He was finally going back to working at the TPI this morning. His therapist had signed off on it last week, saying his was fit for duty. Considering they were apparently still understaffed at the TPI and Janus was a senior agent, this was met with much relief. Janus himself still wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

He turned off the alarm and stood. Dr. Figueroa had him write out a morning schedule to follow when he’d expressed his struggle to get the day started. Either Patton or Emile had taken it upon themselves to copy the schedule on virtual sticky notes that appeared in every location necessary for getting ready in the morning.

First, he took a shower. He threw his nightclothes in the laundry chute. There were currently dozens of different scented soaps in his shower all in small bottles that had about 2 or 3 uses. Janus presumed they were curtesy of Patton. He decided to use one at random and it ended up being cotton candy scented.

Next, he got dressed. That was easy enough since he always wore the same outfit to work every day. It didn’t matter what he wore much since missions would force him to redress anyway.

Then he went to his kitchen and sat down at the counter. He pushed the pop tart button. As expected at this point, he did not get a pop tart for breakfast. Instead, he got two eggs, toast, a sliced apple, and a few cherry tomatoes with green tea. He ate his breakfast while finishing one of the puzzles he’d been working on the night before.

Once he finished, it was time to finally face going back to the office. He sighed, stood up and pulled up the screen on his timepiece. He selected his office as his destination and was off.

The first thing that happened upon appearing in his office was he got a face full of… something.

He sputtered, smacking the things fluttering about his face out of the air. “What is wrong with you?” was the first thing out of his mouth before he’d even really confirmed that the culprit of this attack was who he’d automatically assumed he was.

Remus, as anticipated was standing not 2 feet away from him.

Remus had apparently gotten into the prop department again because he had some type of softly glowing glittery confetti was no all over Janus as well as their entire office.

“Remus, I told you no!” Lena snapped. “You know it’s impossible to clean up 3150s sparkle nukes.”

“Welcome back!” Remus crowed.

“I hate you,” Janus replied. “I just took a shower.”

“You’re fine,” Remus said with an eye roll.

“This shit doesn’t come off in decontamination,” Janus spat. “If my first mission back sends me to a time where I’ll be tried as a witch for glowing, I’m blaming you.”

“We’re going to 2510,” Remus informed him. “You’ll fit right in.”

Janus grimaced. “Ugh, that decade.”

“It’s my favorite decade!” Remus exclaimed.

“Of course, it is,” Lena grumbled. “Just don’t bring anything gross back this time.”

“No promises,” Remus replied.

Janus chose to disengage from the conversation as Remus and Lena argued about was and what wasn’t allowed to be brought back to their shared office from what was well known as the least tasteful decade in history. It was also one of the least turbulent decades in history. The population was too busy making shitty ice cream flavors to wage war.

At least they were giving him an easier assignment for his first time back. He turned to his desk and pulled up the files on his next mission, glancing through them. It was just a small blip that the TPI had noticed in a small town in 2510. It probably wasn’t much of anything, but they had no record of what had caused it, so they were going to send someone to look. Honestly, they’d usually just send in a surveillance agent and be done with it, but they’d probably handpicked this one for Janus in particular. He’d be insulted if he didn’t honestly still feel a bit off kilter being in the office.

To his surprise, he didn’t have a scheduled meeting with Rhi. It wasn’t particularly important to see a mission coordinator for something this small, but it still wasn’t the usual protocol. Instead, he was just instructed to pick up his costume at the costuming department and leave in about an hour.

“Do we really not have an appointment with Rhi?” Janus asked.

“Senior agents haven’t really been meeting with Rhi unless it’s a high priority mission,” Lena told him. “We have too many newbies running around and there’s not time.

“That’s concerning…” Janus said.

“It’s better than trying to rush the inexperienced ones through. We at least have a general idea of what we’re doing. They’re trying to train up more mission coordinators, but that’s taking a while.”

Janus still frowned, but he glanced back at the mission instructions. He’d have to make sure he thoroughly understood what was being asked of him before leaving if he wasn’t meeting with Rhi. “We should go get changed,” he told Remus. “2510s clothing is notoriously difficult to put on.”

“Five minutes back and he’s already dying to get my clothes off,” Remus said cheekily.

“I would rather tear my own eyeballs out of my socket than see you without your pants on again.”

Remus just wiggled his eyebrows.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” said Lena when Janus looked at her in exasperation. “He’s finally not Fred’s and my problem anymore.”

Chapter 56

Getting ready for the mission was a bit of a mess honestly. The costume department barely even spared them a glance before sending them on their way. Remy at least was still there to give them one last debrief before sending them off into 2510, though he looked exhausted.

“Are you sleeping?” asked Janus.

“I’m drinking coffee,” was the reply as he shooed them out onto the streets.

The timeline disturbance that had been picked up was somewhere in one of the shops on that street.

“Do you want the bakery or the karaoke/stripper bar?” Remus asked.

Janus raised an eyebrow at him, and Remus clapped him on the back.

“This is why we’re partners,” he said.

He plodded off towards the building to their right, and Janus turned to the building on the left. It was a small bakery and coffee shop painted in bright colors and sporting the Brazilian and Albanian flags.

There was a soft tinkling bell sound when he entered the shop, and the person behind the counter glanced over at him briefly before finishing putting a pastry in bag for a customer.

Unfortunately, their attention meant Janus wasn’t going to get away with snooping around the store without buying anything. He glanced around the interior of the shop as he walked up to the till.

He glanced into the bakery display case the worker was standing behind. Oh… oh that all looked disgusting. He was not depressed enough anymore to willingly eat any of that.

“Uh,” Janus said when the worker looked at him. He glanced up at the wide selection of drinks over their head and winced at the ways the letters moved on the screen. He was pretty sure his dyslexia wasn’t quite that bad. Why did anyone choose to make letters move around and shake on purpose? As someone who had to deal with that on a daily basis, it wasn’t exactly entertaining.

“Is it possible to get a banana and chocolate potato chip smoothie, but without the potato chip part?” he asked.

“Sure,” the worker replied. “Anything else?”

Janus shook his head.

“Can I have a name for that?”

“Jay,” Janus replied.

“Alright. It’ll be out in a minute.”

Janus nodded and turned, able to take in the rest of the establishment now that there weren’t eyes on him. It was as colorful on the inside as it was on the outside and seemed to have a retro cowboy-space theme mixed with posters from a contemporary werewolf romance movie. Janus had actually seen that movie one. It was surprisingly tolerable.

The seats at least looked comfortable. There were a good number of tables and three couches. All of them were mix-matched. A few of the tables were outfitted with holographic chess and checkers, but most were normal tables. There were even a few physical boardgames and some bookshelves full of books, though he thought some of the bookshelves might just be there for decoration. He wasn’t sure which were and which weren’t.

He pretended to be very interested in the decorations as he waited on his drink, using that as an excuse to look around the entire shop. He was turned away when the door chimed again.

“Hello,” a familiar voice said, making Janus turn around instantly. Janus could immediately tell that the man hesitantly lingering in front of the bakery display was not the Patton that he’d spent months holed up with or who had broken into Janus’s house repeatedly to replace his soaps and cook him meals. He seemed out of place which was saying something in 2510. He had the air about him that he was an 80-year-old grandpa trying to embrace youth culture, but not quite getting it. He also spoke in an accent that people around him would probably assume was him just not being fluent in Spanish but was actually him not being completely comfortable speaking Spanish from half a century ago.

“Uh…” said Patton looking at the menu, a crease between his eyes.

“I’d suggest the banana and chocolate potato chip smoothie without the potato chips,” Janus said. Patton startled, whipping around to face him in surprise. “That’s what I got, though I would leave out the potato chips.”

Patton’s eyes narrowed on him. It was not, of course, the first time that Patton hadn’t been thrilled to see him, but it was the first time Janus had been happy to see him and he hadn’t been happy to see him in turn. Janus had gotten used to a Patton that liked him and he found himself not quite prepared for the way he pursed his lips in annoyance at the sight of Janus.

“I’ll do the banana and chocolate potato chip smoothie, but with the potato chips,” he said in a way that made it sound like he thought he was getting one up on Janus for some reason.

“What flavor of chips?” the worker asked.

“Er, what flavors do you have?”

“Uh, I think drywall, oak wood, and limestone.”

Janus almost laughed at his expression. “Uh, do you have any naturally edible flavors?” he asked.

“We might have grass.”

Patton squinted as the worker bent to look under the cabinet. “Oh, wait, no, it’s glass. Is that alright?”

“…Maybe just no on the chips.”

Janus did his best to school his features, so it wasn’t obvious he was laughing at him. He didn’t think he did a very good job considering Patton was glaring at him after turning around. That or he was just already pissed at Janus by default. It could go either way honestly.

“So,” Janus said when the worker turned away to start making Patton’s drink. “What are you doing here.”

“It’s none of your business,” Patton said with narrowed eyes.

“I mean, we could both be here for the same reason,” Janus pointed out. “We could share intel.”

“I doubt we’re here for the same reason.”

“How would you know?” asked Janus.

Patton just looked away from him. He immediately looked confused at the movie poster his eyes landed on.

“Unless,” Janus said curiously, you aren’t here for a reason, reason.” Patton said nothing. “It was a pretty small disturbance, so it would make sense that your equipment might not pick up on it.” At least at this point. “Acting the tourist, Pat?”

“I’m just doing research,” Patton said, crossing his arms.

“Research?” Janus asked.

“I’ve never been here before,” Patton admitted. “I wanted to get a feel for it and other places just in case there ever was an issue.”

“You just did France, didn’t you?” Janus asked.

Patton frowned and Janus smiled slightly. “It was recent,” he admitted.

“Well,” Janus said. “If you want some advice. I’d start with figuring out accents when you’re in different times.”

“I don’t need your advice,” Patton said and then smugly, “Janus.”

It took a bit for Janus to scan back through his memories and remember that Patton hadn’t known Janus’s name in France. He would have only figured it out after his friend Lo hacked into Silver Mountains University’s system and figured out Virgil had an appointment with him. Janus raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that, Patton?”

He frowned, pouting like whenever Janus told him he wasn’t allowed to try to catch a bird and make it their pet. It was strange to meet a version of Patton who had not lived in a hole in the ground with him for months when Janus had already done that. Patton was on the back foot for once throughout this conversation. Every time before this, he’d managed to somehow twist it around even when he’d been younger than he was right now. When Janus had arrested him at the University, he’d managed to figure out his equipment wouldn’t be stopped by the TPI’s despite having no idea what the TPI was.

In France, even when Janus had thought he’d been winning by taking his phone, he ended up getting access to a University in Janus’s time with information on the TPI, a situation that still had not been resolved.

Today, however, Janus knew far more about Patton than Patton expected. He still didn’t know exactly what his agency or whatever it should actually be called did, but he knew some things about it. He knew Patton was from the 21st century which explained the anachronisms in his speech in different times.

“You could help me look if you’d like,” Janus offered casually.

“Why?” Patton asked suspiciously.

Janus shrugged. It was not because he missed him, he insisted to himself. It wasn’t because after spending so much time with him, not getting to talk with him all day was strange. It had nothing to do with the fact that the few times he’d ran into a farther along version of Patton since he’d moved back home, their interactions had been brief and tinged with something. No, the only reason Janus was inviting him along was so he could teach this younger version a few things, so he hopefully didn’t go about messing up time. “We worked well together in France, didn’t we?” he asked. “Besides, it’s just a small mission without much danger to the timeline.”

“Pat,” the person at the counter called. Patton turned to him to go grab his smoothie, thanking the worker before turning back around and walking over to Janus.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll help, but you have to answer my questions.”

“I’ll answer the questions that won’t endanger any timelines or secrets of my agency.”

Patton considered it for a moment, taking a sip of his drink. “Fine,” he agreed.

“Good,” Janus replied. “We’ll start by looking around the coffee shop for anything unusual. Did you have any questions now. It’d look more natural to be walking around if we were having a conversation.”

“Does the glitter in your hair have to do with the style of the time or…?”

Janus sighed.

Chapter 57

Luckily, the cashier didn’t seem to think them snooping around was very odd. To be fair, the shop had quite a few odd decorations to look at. So, perhaps employees were just used to people walking around and looking at all of the different things. It helped that Janus and Patton were talking as they searched. They just looked like a couple… of friends… casually chatting and exploring the coffee shop together.

“So,” Patton said, keeping his voice quiet, though luckily the few patrons were on the other side of the shop. “What exactly is it that you do working for the TPI?”

“Well,” Janus said. “I’m a senior field agent. That means I am the person who actually goes on missions in different times. These missions can range from tracking down people who are committing crimes using time travel, stopping anything or anyone that could damage the timestream, and helping waylaid time travelers.”

“So, there are different types of agents?” Patton asked, curiously.

“Yes,” Janus replied. “There are a lot, but only four type time travel on a regular basis.” Should he be telling a very young version of Patton this? Probably not, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care too much.

“There are surveillance, touchdown, field, and cleanup agents,” he explained. “Surveillance agents do a bunch of things including research about the exact time field agents are going to and figuring out the best places for them to enter the timestream. Touchdown agents come slightly before field agents to do last second checks and stay when field agents are out. They mostly are just there to intervene if there are any unforeseen issues. Field agents actually interact with people from other times on a daily basis as they slip into the timestream and find whatever person or object they’re looking for. Cleanup agents come in afterwards and tie up any loose ends as well as observe the area for a few days to make sure nothing happened that no one caught.”

“Everyone else who works at the TPI is mostly in research and management. They don’t usually travel, though everyone who works there is licensed to travel if necessary.”

“That’s a lot of people,” Patton commented.

“What we do is important. We want to make sure we are doing it correctly.” It was honestly not meant to be a jab, but Janus could see Patton frown. He decided to change the subject. “Right now, we’re looking for something that’s causing a small disturbance.”

“What type of thing could cause a disturbance? Is it always a machine like the one in France?”

“No,” Janus replied. “That was actually unusual.” He thought for a second. “At least that used to be unusual, but lately we’ve seen more and more of that sort of thing.”

They were currently standing at a bookshelf, but nothing pinged Janus’s interest or time piece, so they moved on to look at a few of the movie posters. Patton seemed to grow more and more concerned the longer he looked at the posters.

“So, what is it usually?”

“Well,” said Janus. “Some things are natural events. No one’s really sure what causes those. There are theories, but I’m not really involved in that. We leave those alone for the most part if we find those. They’re usually small things, though on occasion they’re a bit bigger. Usually, time disturbances are caused by someone messing up. They say something wrong that gets someone curious and creates a butterfly or they leave an object that doesn’t exist in the time.”

“So, what do you think this one is?” Patton asked curiously.

“Well,” Janus said. “It’s a rather small disturbance, so it won’t be anything too major. Probably just an object out of place.”

“Hmm,” Patton replied. “Well, I’ve always been good at those find the difference games.”

“Have you now?” Janus said, unable to stop a slight grin from ghosting over his face.”

“Mhmm,” replied Patton. He drained the rest of his smoothie and then turned around, facing away from the wall of posters they’d been looking at. He slowly scanned the room, an action a lot less inconspicuous than what Janus had them doing, but he didn’t protest for now.

“That’s weird,” Patton declared, pointing rather obviously at a shelf. Janus noticed a woman looking at him funny. “Well,” Patton continued. “More like it isn’t weird, which is weird for here.”

Janus glanced at the shelf full of small figurines. Most of them were of mythical creatures: werewolves, dragons, and even one not even Janus recognized. Janus would guess, especially judging by the plethora of movie posters that they were all from movies or something of the like. However, Patton was correct there was one that stuck out from the rest. It was still a figurine, but unlike the rest, it was of a real animal: a cow.

“That is odd,” Janus agreed, peering at the cow. Figuring Patton had already been obvious enough, Janus stepped over to the shelf to study it more closely. When looking at it more closely, it became obvious that the cow was very unlike everything else on the shelf. It wasn’t even really a figurine like the ones around it. It looked more like a children’s toy. It’s fur was made out of a soft looking material instead of the stiff plastic of the werewolf next to it.

“It doesn’t really fit in with the collection, does it?” a voice asked from behind Janus.

Janus winced internally at the fact that a civilian had just noticed him acting oddly, but kept his face smooth externally as he turned to face the woman standing behind him.

“My friend and I were wondering what it was from,” Janus said evenly. “We recognized the rest of the figures, but I’m not sure where this one came from.”

“Well, that’s because it didn’t come from anything,” the woman said. “At least that I know of. I just didn’t know where to put the thing, so I put it on my movie figurine shelf.”

“Ah,” said Janus, a politely interested crinkle to his brow. “Where did you get it then?”

“A young kid came by about, oh, a week ago. He looked like a high school kid or maybe college. He seemed right confused and upset. He said he didn’t have any money on him, and got weird when I tried to ask him about his parents. I ended up giving him a free drink and let him sit here for a couple’a hours. We got to talking about my collections. See, I have a deal that if someone brings me back something of interest for my displays, they get a free drink. He insisted on giving me that in exchange for the drink even though I told him I’d given him the drink ‘cause he seemed upset.”

“I don’t even particularly want the thing, but he said he didn’t want it anyway, and he insisted, so I took it.”

“Interesting,” Janus said. “Do you mind if I touch it?”

“Go ahead,” she said with a shrug.

He reached forward to pick up the cow and felt the softest of fizzles that only someone who regularly time traveled would feel. Despite already knowing this must be what he’d come for, he still subtlety set his timepiece to scan it.

Patton was peering over her shoulder now. “If both you and the person who gave it to you don’t care much about it, do you think we could buy it off of you?” he asked. “I’m a big fan of cows.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess,” she agreed. “If you really like it. I don’t know what else I’d do with it.”

“How much?” Janus asked.

“Well it only cost me a Lemon CastelWalk and a scone, so about 12.”

“Sure,” Janus agreed, pulling out his wallet and forking over the currency. “Thanks,” he said.

“No problem,” she replied. “Hope you can find some use for it.”

Janus gave her a smile and then looked at Patton. “I think it’s about time to go, don’t you think.”

Patton nodded. “Thank you for the cow statue,” he told the woman as they left the shop. They walked a bit down the street. Patton turned to him once they were out of sight of the shop window. “So, that’s it?” he asked.

Janus nodded and checked his time piece which had finished it’s scan. “The fabric is from the late 43rd century,” he confirmed, “but that’s not all. It’s stranger than that.”

“Stranger how?” Patton asked.

“The materials are definitely from the 43rd century,” Janus said, “but it’s not from the 43rd century.”

“What do you mean?”

“This,” Janus said, looking at the cow. “This doesn’t exist. Every object has traces of where it’s been no matter how much you clean it. My timepiece can register debris sticking to an object down to the microscopic level and give a general idea where and when they came from. There’s no time travel residue implying it came from the 43rd century or even just dust or dirt from that time period. There isn’t even anything on it from this time period from more than the week the shop owner said it was in her possession. My scans seem to be saying, this thing popped into existence a week ago and didn’t exist in any time or place before that.

Patton frowned. “Well then, what does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” answered Janus frowning down at it. “I have absolutely no idea.”

Chapter 58

Janus didn’t know what to make of the cow he’d gotten in 2510. He’d said goodbye to the young version of Patton and grabbed Remus before heading back to the TPI. He’d immediately handed the time anomaly over to the labs, but even after a few weeks, he hadn’t heard anything back yet. The labs seemed just as stumped as he was.

The older version of Patton still drifted in and out of his life, usually unseen, like a ghost in the night. Well, a ghost that cooked him plenty of healthy food.

It felt odd slipping back into his old routine of missions.

Sometimes it felt like no time had passed, but then he’d see the faces of new recruits or get a mission where he didn’t see Rhi and remember that things were different now. The TPI was strained, constantly running after time distortions with no idea what or who was causing them. The new recruits were stumbling to catch up to the agents who knew what they were doing but were still needed to fill the gaps. It made Janus grimace, but he didn’t know what the solution was.

It was nice to be able to talk to Emile about these things.

If Patton made sure he was taking care of himself at home with nice meals and an ever-changing option of soaps and shampoos, Emile made sure he was taking care of himself at work. Janus was now forced to have a water bottle at his desk to make sure he wasn’t spending the day dehydrated and, assuming he was not on a mission, Emile would either drag him away to eat lunch or bring lunch too him if he was too busy. Today was the later kind of day. Emile had messaged him about 45 minutes ago asking if he was free and then had taken his order for a local restaurant when Janus said he had too much to do.

There was a knock on the door and both Fred and Janus, the only two occupants of the office at the moment looked up.

“I’ll get it,” Janus said, getting up before Fred did. He knew Fred was currently in the middle of a report on a trip to 2000B.C. he and Lena went to. They’d let a new recruit tag alone for training purposes. It had gone badly to say the least. Fred looked exhausted and stressed which was unlike the usually cheery man.

Janus shuffled to the door and opened it. A man in his early 30s that Janus didn’t recognize was standing there.

“Hi,” he said. “I, uh, moved into the office next door. My name is Dave.”

There was a moment of silence. “Did you need something Dave.”

“Right,” he said. “Yeah, I was just wondering if your integrator is running, because mine isn’t.”

Janus glanced back at the report he’d been working on. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

“Well, is it, like, connecting to the TPI system?”

“I don’t know,” said Janus, “I was working locally.”

“Yeah, well that’s the problem with mine. I was wondering if anyone else was having the same problem.”

“Let me check,” said Janus, walking over to his desk. He went to open his email and an error message popped up.

That was… odd to say the least. The TPI had very, very reliable technology. If it was just Janus who could not access the system, he’d assume it was just a local problem, but if the next door neighbor also was having an issue, that could smell trouble.

“Fred,” Janus called. “Are you connected to the internet?”

Fred glanced down at his computer and clicked a couple of buttons. “No,” he said.

“Hmm,” Janus said. He pulled up his timepiece. That at least connected to the TPI servers, so the servers themselves weren’t down, just the offices’ connection to them. “Well, I can still connect with my timepiece.”

“Same,” said Fred.

“So, what’s wrong?” Dave asked. “How do we fix it?”

“We don’t fix it,” Janus said. “We submit a tech support request.”

“Oh,” said Dave. “…How do you do that?”

Janus sighed and flicked his wrist to project a screen. “If you go to the web on your timepiece, it’s literally on the page that automatically pops up,” he said pointing.

“We can connect to the internet through our timepieces?” Dave asked.

“…Did you have any training?” Janus asked.

“Don’t be rude,” Fred said absently, still typing on his report.

Janus just rolled his eyes.

“Not on… that part. They did give me a handbook.”

“Have you read it?” Janus asked.

Dave shrugged which told Janus everything he needed to know.

“Just go back to your office,” Janus told Dave. “I’ll submit the tech support request this time since it’s affecting me as well but read your handbook and familiarize yourself with your timepiece for goodness’s sake.”

“Okay,” Dave said, turning around and wandering back to his office with no thoughts in his eyes.

“I’m not your fucking preschool teacher,” Janus muttered under his breath as he returned to his desk. “It’s not my job to hold your hand and wipe your ass.”

Fred glanced up at him. “Thanks for not saying that when he was still in the room,” he said.

Janus shot him a thumbs up.

He sat down at his desk and quickly submitted a tech support request. By the time he finished that, Emile was knocking on the door with a bag of food.

“Come in,” Janus said to him, and he did, pulling over Remus’s chair and plopping down the food on Janus’s desk.

“You look stressed,” Emile commented.

Janus sighed, already reaching into the bag to look at what Emile had bought. “Everything’s disorganized, everything’s broken, and no one knows how to do anything.”

“Yeah,” Emile said. “I’ve noticed the TPI is understaffed. Even with all of the new recruits, there never seems to be enough people to go around.”

“Yeah,” Janus said, pulling out a burger on a pretzel bun and going to unwrap it. “How about you? This all been messing up your job too?”

“In general, for the AMO, yes, because they have to get all of the new agents houses and everything. For my department, not as much, but we are seeing some agents getting stressed because they’re overworked. Mostly the more senior agents.”

“Honestly, I’m lucky stress makes me throw myself into work to avoid thinking about it. I shudder to think how all of the mentally healthy people are holding up.”

“Janus,” Emile scolded.

“Plus, I’m already set up to have an appointment with a head doctor at least twice a week, so I’m good on that front.”

“I guess that’s true. Just don’t overwork yourself,” Emile said.

“I’m fine Emile. Plus, they need me. I seem to be one of the few people around here who actually know what they’re doing.”

“I just worry…” he said.

“I can handle it well enough,” Janus promised. “I’ve got the toolkit or whatever the head doctor calls it. Plus… work wasn’t ever actually the problem.”

“I know. I know…Just…you aren’t even taking lunch.”

“I have a bit more time free in the afternoon,” Janus said.

“I was just in the middle of something today. If you’re free for a half hour or something, we could get a cup of coffee. How about that? Would that assuage your worry about me a least a bit?”

“Yeah,” Emile said. “Yeah, it would a bit. I have a break at 2, would that work?”

“Sure,” Janus said. He technically had a good amount of stuff to do, but Emile was right in the end. He should try to take breaks. It wasn’t his duty to do everything at the TPI. “A quick lunch now and coffee at 2.”

#study break stories #not writing

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killerandhealerqueen · 2 years

Note

Its 7am. You just finish with some tests on a body that's nearly too damaged to know the gender.

Shen Yi and Du Cheng has been looking for a suspect for three months and has been frustrated. Du jiejie teases that Du Cheng has grown grey hairs. It's not until you visit, which is out of blue cuz you have no reason to visit, that they know where to find the suspect. One look at the portrait, after some tea cuz yeah that's what you're here for (Du jiejie got you some expensive tea.) and you realizes that the man's been in the fridge for 2 months, never IDed until a few hours ago when a 'relative' comes in to claim it. Suspicious of him too.

Your reaction?

It’s 7 am…it’s 7 am and there’s already a case. Just my fucking luck too

Not that I’m ungrateful, of course, cuz I love my job but why at 7 am?!

As I looked over the body, I frowned; it’s far too decomposed to tell the gender of the body, so I’ll have to wait for an anthropologist or the medical examiner to tell me what to put on the death certificate

‘Great…they’re too decomposed which means I can’t get fingerprints…and there was no ID on them either…gonna have to get DNA from their teeth’

Just then, my phone rang, causing me to frown before I reached into my pocket and pulled it out, looking at the caller ID before I smiled and placed the phone to my ear

“Du Jiejie”

“Sun Tian Li. How are you?”

“Oh you know, busy. The usual. But what’s up?”

“Think you can swing by the department? Shen Yi and Du Cheng have been stressing over this case for the past few months and they’re nowhere close to finding a suspect”

“Yeah, sure, I can swing by, see if I can help”

“Thank you. Du Cheng’s grown grey hairs because of this case”

I laughed

“I’ll make sure to tease him about it”

I then hung up before I looked at my body and sighed

‘Alright bud, let’s get you into the freezer before you start decomposing on me more’

After I put the body in the freezer, I headed down to the Beijiang Sub Bureau, stepping inside before heading to the Crime Division, much to everyone’s shock

“Ah! Ms. Sun! What are you doing here?”

“Helping. Now where’s Captain Du and Professor Shen?”

Jiang Feng frowned

“Uh, they’re in Captain Du’s office right now”

I nodded before I headed to the office, knocking on the door before stepping inside

“So, heard you boys were in a bit of a slump”

Du Cheng and Shen Yi looked up at me in surprise before Du Cheng huffed

“Jie called you, didn’t she?”

“Yup. Now, what are we dealing with here?”

Shen Yi tilted his head

“Do you want some tea?”

I smiled

“I think there’s some white tea in the break room labeled “Sun – Don’t Touch”. If you could brew that for me, that’d be great”

Shen Yi nodded and headed out to make it as Du Cheng sighed

“You didn’t have to come all the way down here”

I smiled

“I was promised fancy, expensive tea if I help. I don’t turn down fancy, expensive tea”

Du Cheng rolled his eyes, just as Shen Yi came back with the cup of tea, holding it out to me

“Here, Ms. Sun”

I smiled and took the tea, blowing on it before I looked at him and Du Cheng

“So, what’ve we got? We got a body or something for me to look at?”

Du Cheng shook his head

“Nope. All we’ve got is Shen Yi’s drawing of the victim”

“Ha? No body?”

Shen Yi shook his head

“Apparently the person was reported missing but there’s no missing person’s report filed…all we got was a description”

I hummed

“I see…well, can I see the drawing?”

Shen Yi nodded and headed to his office to get the drawing as I took a sip of the slightly cooled (but still pretty hot) tea

He then came back and handed me the drawing and the minute I saw it, I sat up straight, eyes widening as tea sloshed onto my legs

“Ah, fuck, shit, that’s hot!”

I then placed the cup down as I looked at the drawing

“The hell, this is my vic!”

Du Cheng and Shen Yi looked at me in confusion

“Huh?”

I looked up at them

“I had a vic this morning brough in, super decomposed, like, I’m going to have to get dental records kind…HOW THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE A DRAWING OF MY VICTIM?!”

Du Cheng and Shen Yi looked at me in shock

“It’s your victim?!”

I nodded as I looked at the drawing

“Yeah…yup, no doubt about it, that’s my vic”

Shen Yi looked at me

“Can we see the body?”

I nodded

“Yeah, come on”

However, before we left, I picked up the cup of tea and chugged it, Du Cheng and Shen Yi looking at me with wide eyes

“Wasn’t that tea hot?!”

I smiled

“Yeah, but it’s fine. It cooled enough for me to drink it. Now come on”

We then rushed out of the bureau and headed for my car, driving back to the medical examiner’s office, heading downstairs to the morgue freezers

I then slipped on a mask before I opened the freezer and stepped inside, searching the bodies before I found the one I was looking for and pulled it out, dragging it into the morgue for Shen Yi and Du Cheng to look at

At the sight of the victim, Du Cheng and Shen Yi’s eyes widened before Du Cheng covered his mouth, looking at little green

“I suggest going home and showering after this, you two. The smell of decomp kind of sticks to you and your clothing”

I then grabbed some gloves and masks, handing it to both of them before we all looked at the body

“I’ve never seen decomposition like this…”

I nodded

“Yeah…bodies don’t decompose this fast unless…”

My eyes then widened in realization

“Oh…I get it now”

Du Cheng frowned

“Get what?”

“This body was probably stuffed in a freezer and then dumped. You know, the rapid change in temperatures and environments probably caused the body to deteriorate a lot quicker than normal”

Shen Yi raised an eyebrow

“How long do you think the body was in the freezer?”

I shrugged

“Depends on the freezer. But I’m gonna go with a deep freezer, like the kind you can keep meat in at your house…I’d say probably a month or two”

Du Cheng frowned

“Where was the body found?”

“Hmm…if I remember correctly, it was found on the side of the road. Someone thought it was like a deer carcass or something”

Just then, one of the other investigators stepped into the office

“Hey, Tian Li, someone’s here for you”

Shen Yi, Du Cheng, and I looked up in surprise before I quickly put the body back in the freezer before the three of us headed out of the morgue and upstairs to see a man waiting for us

“Can I help you?”

The man turned to look at us and smiled weakly

“Um…I had heard that a body had just recently come in…and I was wondering if I could see it”

I frowned and glanced at Du Cheng and Shen Yi; how the fuck did this dude know about the body…oh wait. There was a news crew that morning when the body was being picked up…

“Yes, sir. This way”

I then guided him, Shen Yi, and Du Cheng over to the viewing window before I headed back downstairs and got the body ready, quickly pushing it into the viewing area before opening the blinds to reveal the body

The man stared at the body before he shook his head

“I was so careless…I thought…I thought you would be gone by now…but you’re still here! You’re still here! Damn it, why didn’t I dump you farther!”

Shen Yi and Du Cheng looked at each other before they both grabbed the man, much to my confusion

I then headed out of the viewing area, leaving the body with the other nurses, before I headed back outside to see Du Cheng and Shen Yi dragging the man away

“Yah! Where are you going?!”

“We caught our suspect! Thanks!”

I blinked in confusion before I sighed

“Well…at least that solves both of our cases…but fuck now I gotta write the report. Damn it!”

#sass answers #jiejie edition #Under the Skin #du cheng #shen yi #Under the Skin headcanons

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dreamy625 · 1 year

Text

This rockstar life - 3.17 Freelance

Words: 1343

Content: The occasional swearword

—-----------------------------

“You know you said you’d always wanted to go on a proper tour, in a bus?”

“Uh huh.”

“So it turns out, we’re going to do the Australia dates by bus. Something about the insurance for a jet being astronomical, according to Peter. So do you think you could get more time off? It’d be about a month. Then there’s a bit of a break before the next lot, so we could do a bit of travelling around too.”

“Oh wow, that does sound cool. Aw, but I don’t think I can. I’m already taking three weeks for Europe and that month unpaid to come to America. I’m seriously stretching their goodwill as it is.”

“But this is a once in a lifetime thing. My last one, remember? I want you to see it too.”

“I know, and I will, the European leg and a bunch of the American dates, and maybe some more later if it keeps going like last time.”

“It could be months and months away. I’ll miss you, won’t you miss me?”

“Of course. It’s going to be awful. I’m trying not to think about it. But I can’t take all that time off.”

“You could just quit, it’s not like we need the money.”

“I do. I don’t want to sponge off you for everything.”

He makes an impatient shrugging gesture, “But you know I don’t care. It’s just stuff.”

“It matters to me. And it’s not just about money, I like my job. It makes me feel… useful… functional. Like a proper person, not a total waste of space.”

“But you complain about it all the time.”

“Okay, yeah, it’s not the best job ever. But one day, if I don’t fuck it up, I’ll be able to get another one, a better one, that’s just mine and nothing to do with my father. And then I’ll be free, not beholden to them anymore.”

“You could be free now, just leave. You can get another job later if you want, after the tour.”

“Oh can I? Thanks.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant, it doesn’t stop you going back to it later.”

“But then I’d have a big gap. I’d probably have to start right at the bottom again. You don’t know what publishing’s like. Who’s going to want to employ someone who just up and quits to swan off round the world?”

“You could do whatever you wanted, you don’t ever have to work again, I’ll look after you.”

Alice’s frown softens.

“That’s very sweet of you, but I don’t want to be kept.”

Steve opens his mouth to protest but Alice holds up a finger to shush him, “And besides, what if we break up?”

“You don’t trust me.”

“No, it’s not that at all, I’m just not naive enough to believe that things will necessarily last forever just because you want them to. And what if you…” She stops and blinks her eyes shut at the sudden painful thought, “what if you died?”

“I’ll leave you everything.”

“What if we’ve already spent it?”

“Oh you’re just making things up now.”

“I’m just trying to make you understand. This matters to me. Not just for the paycheque but for security, and for making me feel like a person in my own right, not just Martin’s daughter or Steve’s girlfriend.”

“Okay, I get it. I really do.” He walks back to Alice and wraps his arms around her. “I just… miss you when I’m away.” He kisses the top of her head and then plaintively adds “Why doesn’t anyone just want to be with me?”

“Oh baby, we do, I do. You just pick stroppy, independent women that want their own life too. If you want someone who follows you everywhere and caters to your every whim you’d better find some… dippy girl who just likes… shoes and Dynasty.”

Steve scrunches his face up.

“Exactly.”

—-----------------------------

When the taxi at last drops Steve home just before 7am, he is met by the highly unusual sight of Alice awake and up and dressed in outdoor clothes. She is scurrying from the dining room to the hall to the living room and back again in a frantic manner, muttering to herself.

Spotting him in the doorway, she pauses for as long as it takes to say, ‘Oh hi. Hello. You’re back. Right.’ before scooting back to the dining room again.

Slightly disappointed with this less than ecstatic welcome after more than a week apart, Steve shuts the front door behind him, drops his bag down, and waits to see if there will be some sort of explanation for this uncharacteristic early morning activity.

A few moments later, after some thumping and rattling noises, Alice reemerges carrying her capacious work handbag with a folder clutched under one arm and starts vigorously attacking her hair with a brush in front of the hall mirror.

“Everything alright, love?”

“Mm? Yes. No. I have to… do a thing. A really stressful thing. It’s… argh, I’ve got to go. Are you here tonight?”

“Think so.”

“Excellent, I’ll tell you later.”

With a final hurried glance in the mirror, muttered ‘oh god’, and last desperate smoothing of wayward tendrils of hair, she dashes out the door, banging it behind her.

Steve blinks, befuddled, at the closed door before turning to the mirror and shrugging at his similarly confused reflection.

—-----------------------------

Steve wakes to someone stroking his cheek and he opens his eyes to find Alice’s face just inches from his own. She is radiating outdoor chill, but none of the tension that was crackling off her that morning. In the orangey glow from the streetlight outside the window he can see that she is smiling.

“Hey.”

“Hey. Have you been asleep all day?”

“No, just since it started to get dark. Couldn’t keep my eyes open. What time is it?”

“About half six.”

Steve swings his legs round and sits up rubbing his eyes. He pats the cushion next to him and Alice shucks off her coat and sits down. He leans sideways until his head rests on her shoulder.

“I fucking hate jetlag.”

Alice yawns, “I think I have it too, from waking up at five-thirty.”

“Oh yeah, your stressful thing. How’d it go? What was it?”

“I think, I hope, I’ve fixed it so I can come to Australia!”

Steve’s head jerks up, “You did? How?”

“I’m going freelance.”

“What’s that?”

“Where you don’t work all the time for a company but they just hire you for particular projects. There’s a couple of people at the office that aren’t employees, they just come in when we’ve got a job on that needs their area of expertise. So I talked to them and found out how they did it and then just asked. So yeah, I’ve got to stay until the series we’re working on now is finished, but then I can be their on-call translator for art and architecture, which is mostly what I’ve been doing the past year anyway. And I can work for other people as well, if I want.”

“Wow, that’s amazing!” He looks genuinely impressed.

“It’s a bit scary. No security. And I’ll have to do taxes.”

“No problem, I’ve got an accountant.”

“And I’m going to need a better word processor.”

“I’ll buy you a supercomputer if it means you can come on tour!”

“I don’t think that’d fit in my suitcase.”

“Oh love, that really is brilliant.” He wraps his arms around her and presses a kiss to her temple.

“And I do actually have to do work, not just follow you around like a live-in groupie!” Steve laughs. “And I’ll need access to a fax machine, and a modem, whatever that is, and…”

Steve can tell from the rising pitch of her voice that she’s starting to stress about the details. “It’s fine, all the big hotels have that stuff. For businessmen and journalists and grumpy band managers. Speaking of which, I’ll phone Menschy and tell him there’s one more passenger for the bus.”

#Steve Clark #steve clark fanfic #steve clark fanfiction #def leppard fanfic #def leppard fanfiction #This rockstar life fic

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svnhos · 2 years

Text

Diary - Vernon (A)

Genre: Angst

Warnings : suicide , self harm , bullying

Choi y/n that’s a girl who always walks around with a diary in her hands , when you hear diary it’s not the gushy cute stuff where the diary is about boys makeup girls no her diary is very special , it holds secrets that nobody knows . Let’s go threw a few notes

Day one 1

Dear diary

Wow this feels kinda weird writing in this erm uh hi I’m Choi y/n and this is day 1 of my diary

Erm today of all days was quiet which is unusual I also got to hang out with my amazing best friend Vernon.

But all he did was talk about his ‘amazing’ girlfriend which is not so amazing she’s actually really toxic and not a nice person.

School was alright no one disturbed me

But home ,home was different it was to noisy

My parents are always shouting and arguing with each other but when their not arguing they are hitting me and abusing me

You are probably thinking why don’t you stick up for yourself, we’ll I’ve tried but it resulted in me getting the worse beating of my life.

As you can see y/n isn’t living the bestest life lets skip to day 25

Today was the worse of all days vernon Ignored me and kept on glaring at me

I don’t know what I’ve done to receive this treatment, I feel so alone and depressed lately.

Looks like y/n has been going through and even tougher time today

Let’s see what she’s been up to

Y/n pov:

I just finished writing in my diary I feel so lonely vernon doesn’t want to speak to me anymore and he’s seems mad at me.

Maybe I can try and catch him tomorrow to ask what the problem is.

~time skip to tomorrow ~

It is 7am now I got dressed and ready to go to school as I am making my way through the gate I see vernon walking in

“Vernon vernon !!”

But he just started walking faster

“Please vernon can we talk?” I asked out of breathe

“What do you want to talk about freak” he said angrily

“Freak?” I said lowly “erm why have you been ignoring me ?” I said softly while looking at my shoes

“ OH don’t pretend like you don’t know what you have done I know you pushed Hannah ( his gf)and called her a whore” vernon said harshly

“What I never said any of tha-” I said but was cut off

“Stop pretending to be innocent Hannah told me everything y/n” vernon said

“Please vernon you have to believe me” I said almost on the verge of crying

“Save it y/n you betrayed me” Vernon said in an angry tone and left.

I fell down to my knees crying Hannah lied and … vernon believed her

Third person pov:

Y/n walked through the school door with fear

Everyone turned to look at her

Some turned in disgust, some turned to see whom it was, some turned to whisper to their friends about her, some just outright just glared at her

“Wow Hannah must have lied to everyone” y/n thought

She sighed holding the tears that desperately wanted to fall, she made her way to her locker as she heard the insults they were saying about her

Weirdo , nerd , freak , fake , and so on it continued

But one sentence crushed her heart so bad

“Ugh she should just end it to be totally honest. It’s not like she’s needed anyways she’s just a pain in the ass tbh” take a guess who said that yep Hannah and guess who was beside her laughing and agreeing with her while she said vernon

That crushed y/n even more, the thought that everyone would be better off without her has crossed her mind so many times.

Skip to a few weeks later:

The bullying got harsher and harsher y/n became even more depressed, harsher words where thrown at her

Y/n continued to write in her diary everyday.

But today something was different, today it would all stop, while insulted were being thrown at her she didn’t cry of flinch she simply nodded her head taking it all in

She didn’t cry when her parents hurt her she simply nodded her head

Her diary didn’t have day 90 written in it no it had

The End written

Dear the end

The time has finally come no more tears no more insults and no more people, you know I dead a long time ago, only difference now is that they’ll notice.

Thank you for being with me till the very end, The end has finally come.

Truth is I never did any of those things she said I’ve done but nobody believed me.

To everyone who bullied me, thank you

That’s all I have for you guys thank you

And to the people who brought me into this world, I am sorry for whatever pain I have caused you but now there won’t be a need to remind me how useless I am because I am going I’m sorry and thank you.

Good bye everyone.

Y/n closes her diary after finishing writing she looks at the bottle of pills next to her and takes a handful of them and swallows every single one of them taking a big gulp of water,

She starts to feel dizzy but she just invites the feeling in as her world turns black Choi y/n is finally gone.

#vernon #seventeen angst #kpop angst #vernon seventeen

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iwishiwasbatman · 2 years

Text

Masked Love (Part 3)

Pairing- Jason Todd x OC; Dick Grayson X Platonic!OC

Warnings- death, violence, major angst

Summary- After making a shocking discovery with the help of Scarecrow, Elana confronts her demons. She’s forced to fight against people she loves in order protect her teammates. But can she say no when her demon comes to her for help?

Word Count- 6,935

I hate getting up early. I’ll get up for early morning training or an early gymnastics meet. But an early meeting? If I had any control over it, no. Don’t get me wrong, being CEO is better than any of the other jobs at Queen Consolidated and it made me filthy rich, but it required 7am meetings. Not my thing.

“So, we’ve got the funding for the police gala squared away?” I asked over the Zoom call.

“We should,” my CFO, Michael Bridges, answered. I noticed Dick walk in, but stay off camera to the right.

“That covers catering, venue, entertainment, and staff?” I checked.

“Yes,” he replied. “Our donation and the cost of our gift will be a separate total we should have by the end of the month, but it should fit our budget.”

“Perfect. Thank you guys so much for putting extra effort into this,” I addressed everyone who was dialed in. “With all you’re doing, this should be the best SCPD gala we’ve had in a while. If no one has any further questions, we should be all wrapped up.” When no one spoke, I smiled. “Great! Thank you guys!” With that I ended the meeting. I took off my headphones, closed my computer, and turned to Dick.

“Do you ever rest?” he laughed.

“Yes, when I sleep,” I said.

“Oh, you mean the three hours of sleep you get every night?”

“Hey, usually it’s three and a half,” I defended.

“Look, I, uh, just wanted to apologize for yesterday,” he started.

“Whatever could you mean by that?” I asked sarcastically.

“Ha, ha. You’re not funny.”

“I think I am,” I mumbled as he went to keep talking.

“I shouldn’t have lashed out on you like I did. I guess I didn’t realize how stressed I was,” he apologized.

“You are right about that.” I smirked.

“Are we good then?” he asked cautiously.

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“Would it kill you to say “I accept your apology”?”

“What if I reject your apology?”

“Well, then, we’d have some issues.” Dick shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Is that even allowed? Like, can you actually walk up to someone and say you reject their apology?” I asked.

“You’re… weird,” Dick said.

“Old news, man,” I smiled. “Tell you what, if you tell me what had you so riled up last night, I’ll let it go.”

He sighed. “I saw the guy we’ve been after. Wears a red helmet. Calls himself “Red Hood”. He got away, but he’s a good fighter. He’s gonna be a problem.”

“Red Hood? How creative,” I scoffed.

“Are we good now?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Good, because if we weren’t, it would make asking for a favor awkward.”

“Of course,” I scoffed, leaning back in my chair. “Men, they always want something.”

“Real funny. Barbara and I are working on a lead for our guy, Red Hood. We need you to talk to Scarecrow about knowing anything about him. Are you cool with that?”

“Yup. I do need to get out of the house,” I said. “Er, apartment.”

“Good. I’ll call you if we need you.” Dick nodded.

“Why didn’t you just call me instead of coming all the way over here?” I asked.

“I-uh, felt like I needed to apologize to you in person,” Dick answered. That was super believable.

“‘K…” I said. “I’m just gonna take your word for it.” I stood up.

“If you can meet up at the Manor at, like, 10, would that work?”

“I should be done about then.” I nodded.

“Great, see you then.” I watched him walk out, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t telling me something.

—————————

I walked down the dimly lit halls of Arkham for a third time in three days. Unlike last time, Crane stood at the bars, ready to talk to me.

“Ms. Queen, as much as I enjoy having you visit me, must you do it so early? Are you an insomniac or something like that?” he asked as I got to the bars.

“Yes, I am an insomniac, but also, when you run a multimillion dollar company that insists on early meetings, you get up early,” I sighed.

“I see. So, to what, then, do I owe the pleasure?”

“New information showed up from the case you helped us with yesterday. We have a name now. Red Hood,” I told him.

“Like the Joker?” he asked, putting his hands behind his back.

“No, this guy’s new. The Titans fought him last night at the Hobbs Powder Plant building. Nightwing and him had a showdown, but he got away. I have a feeling there might have been more, but I wasn’t told.”

“Interesting. You think they were leaving something out?” he asked.

“Is that what you focused on in that sentence?” I raised an eyebrow.

“I simply find it curious.” He shrugged.

“Is there anything that you can come up with that would connect in a different way now that we have our guy?” I asked. I handed him the file and he began flipping through it with one hand while using the other to pull out other files.

“The red hoods that his people all wore is the only obvious one, which I assume you’ve already noticed.” I nodded. “Aside from that, I can’t see anything else.” I sighed in disappointment.

“This was a waste of time,” I mumbled.

“Precisely,” Crane smiled.

“Why do you say it like that?” I tilted my head in confusion.

“You did mention that you feel like these Titans are keeping something from you.” I cocked my eyebrow and crossed my arms. “I have a mind-bender for you. If you wanted to tell someone something you didn’t want someone else to know, when would you do it?”

“When that someone else isn’t around,” I said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Wait…” I trailed off. That little- Dick lied to me.

“Exactly,” Crane smirked.

“Well, thank you for the talk. You were very helpful. I’ll be sure to tell Barbara.” I smiled, trying to hide my anger.

“Glad to be of service.” He bowed. I turned and headed back down the halls to show Dick Grayson just how scary I can be when you get on my bad side.

—————————

I parked my motorcycle in the Manor’s driveway, threw off my helmet, not even bothering to put it on my bike handle, and stomped up to the door. Taking a deep breath, I swung open the door and headed in. From further in the Manor, I heard Hank’s raised voice. I laughed to myself. So he’s telling them about whatever this is, but not me? I got to the door of one of the living rooms and stood on the side of the doorframe.

“Everyone’s just trying to figure out what the heck happened,” Dawn said. I listened intently.

“Right. We figure out the how and why later,” Dick said. “Jason’s out there and we need to stop him.” I froze. What did he just say? Jason was dead. Unless… No. There was no way he could be back. As much as I tried to convince myself this, I knew he wouldn’t mean anyone else. The pieces slowly fell into place. The reason Dick was so shaken up yesterday was because he had fought Red Hood. Jason. Jason was Red Hood and he was back from the dead. I was a mess of mixed emotions.

“You know, you guys do what you want, but if it ends up him verses me, kid’s going down,” I heard Hank say angrily.

“So now we’re killing Jason?” Dawn asked. Not on my watch, they weren’t.

“He wrote his own ticket. He starts taking people out, game’s over.” I heard footsteps fade out. I assumed they were Hank’s.

“What do we tell Elana?” I heard Dawn ask. At least someone thought of me.

“Nothing,” Dick answered. My blood boiled. That was it.

“That doesn’t seem like a good idea,” I said, walking in with dangerously powerful steps that made all of them stand up straighter.

“Elana-” Dawn came toward me.

“Out, both of you,” I said cooly to her and Kory. When they didn’t move, I flashed my eyes. “Now.” They looked at Dick before hurrying out.

“Elana, let me explain-“ Dick started.

“What? That my dead boyfriend’s alive and you forgot to tell me?” I asked sarcastically.

“I didn’t want to have you with conflicting feelings,” Dick tried to tell me. “We still have a mission to complete.”

“A mission?! I can’t be successful on a mission if I don’t have the full details!” I raised my voice.

“That’s not true at all. I’ve seen you do it before. Jason means a lot to you and I can’t have you compromised!” Dick matched my tone.

“Oh, you can’t have me compromised?! My bad if the fact that I’m human and have feelings could “compromise” our mission, but you’ve been with me since the start of my hero days. Have I ever let feelings get in the way of a mission?”

“Talia al Ghul.” He crossed his arms over his chest, all proud of himself.

“The woman ruined my life, she doesn’t count!” I narrowed my eyes. “But my point stands. The mission comes first and I’ve never forgotten that,” I hissed.

“Okay, Elana, but tell me this! Tell me, honestly, that you could look Jason in the eye and do the hard thing if it came down to it!”

“You know I don’t believe in killing!”

“Clearly not, you killed people for three years like a sport!” I blinked a couple times. That was a step too far. Dick knew it, too. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” Without regret, I punched him square in the face. His head flew back and his body followed. He clutched his nose that was now dripping blood.

“You’re right, you shouldn’t have.” I turned around and headed back to the entrance and Dick spoke up.

“Where are you going?”

“To clear my head. Follow me and you’ll see how mean I can get.”

—————————

I was sitting in front of my mom and dad’s tombstones, trying to quiet myself. This was my go-to place for just that. I always felt a sense of calm when I was here. It was the same calm I felt when they were around. I guess it just made me feel like I had something familiar. Not even fifteen minutes into sitting there, I felt a presence behind me and I knew exactly who it was.

“When I lost them,” I started, “it felt like I had lost a piece of myself. I was convinced there was no way to get it back. But then you showed up and I finally felt like myself again. Then, I lost you.” He came and sat down beside me. “And now… you’re back?” I looked over and had to keep my breath from hitching. There was nothing different about his appearance, but his eyes looked haunted. He looked back at me with a guilty expression and then down at the ground. “Oh, god, Jay, you scared me.” I ran a hand through my hair.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said quietly. “I didn’t expect Joker to beat me to death.”

“What did you expect? You went after a psychopath who’s had Batman wrapped around his finger since forever.” He kept looking down, not saying a word. I shook my head and stood up. If he didn’t want to talk, then I didn’t want to talk to him. I turned to walk away, but a hand around my wrist stopped me and spun me back around.

“Elana, please. I’m sorry,” Jason said. He intertwined both his hands with mine. “I just… I wanted to see you. I-I’m just trying to figure out what to say.”

“Maybe you can start with why you chose to name your new persona after the man that killed you?” He laughed.

“It’s called irony.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked.

“I doubt you like what I’ve done. I didn’t want you to have to worry about me.” His voice got small. “And I didn’t want you to hate me.” I grabbed the sides of his jacket collar and pulled him into a kiss. He didn’t expect it, I could tell, but he melted into it, his hands resting on my hips. As our lips parted, we touched foreheads and I laughed as he smiled. “I missed that,” he said.

“I couldn’t hate you if I tried,” I told him.

“I love you,” he chuckled.

“Who doesn’t?” I said with a smirk.

“Give me a pen and paper and I could come up with fifty names at least.” I playfully shoved him off of me. “I’m kidding.”

“You better be,” I laughed.

“You know that movie night I promised you? Tonight. You and me, your apartment, an unhealthy amount of junk food. How does that sound?” Jason offered.

“That sounds amazing,” I smiled.

“How about midnight?”

“Perfect.” I gave him a quick peck on the lips.

“Two things. Here’s my new number in case you need me,” he handed me a slip of paper with the phone number on it. “And you can’t tell anyone that we’re talking, especially Dick. If someone finds out, you could get in trouble and I don’t want you to.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Great. I’ll see you tonight then.”

“You better. If you die again, there’s no refunds this time,” I joked. He laughed, kissed my forehead, and walked away. I smiled as I watched him leave, the butterflies in my stomach going wild. I couldn’t believe he was back. A part of me wondered why I didn’t punch him in the face for what he’s done, but I knew. The Jason I just saw was the Jason that I knew, the Jason that he really was. If I didn’t push him, maybe he’d come back to all of us. Maybe, I thought, smiling.

—————————

I had gone back to the Manor, successfully cooled off. The others were confused as to how it happened in under an hour, but I refused to tell them. I had even talked to Dick about our little shouting match. We agreed I earned punching him and he was just being stubborn. I loved winning.

Flash forward three hours to the present; Dawn, Dick, Conner, and I were in the cave looking for Hank who had mysteriously disappeared.

“Where the heck did he go?” Dawn asked as we watched the security footage of him out and about.

“A couple minutes later, he leaves and gets in as cab,” Conner said. “Now his phone’s off the grid.” We watched on the monitor as Hank got into a cab.

“Can you pull the plate?” Dick asked.

“I’ll try,” Conner answered, though he didn’t sound too sure if himself. He zoomed in on the license plate.

“We talked in the kitchen. Everything was fine,” Dawn said. “I told him to dial it down a notch.”

“Present and accounted for.” We all spun around to see Hank walking toward us, clearly hurt. He fell to his knees before he could reach us.

“Hank,” Dawn gasped. We hurried toward him. “What happened?” He unbuttoned his shirt, showing us a device attached to his chest, blood around it. My eyes widened slightly in surprise.

“Get it out of me,” he panted.

“Oh my gosh,” Dawn breathed. “Is that a bomb?”

“It’s a gift,” Hank said, “from our pal, Jason.” I shot backwards, inhaling sharply. Everyone’s eyes were on me, but I didn’t care. There was no way Jason would do this. He would never do this to anyone, especially Hank. Right? I had just talked to him.

“Oh, good. You found him.” Gar walked in with a sigh of relief. Kory was right behind him. “Or not?” He could tell something was wrong. Dawn and Dick helped Hank over to the med-bay while I kept to the back, biting my nails.

“You went to talk to Jason by yourself?” Dawn asked.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Hank groaned, laying down. “Just get me a shot of whiskey and get the dang thing out.”

“I’m all for not touching that thing until we figure out how it works,” Kory spoke up.

“Conner, take a look inside and tell us what we’re dealing with,” Dick instructed.

“Yeah,” Conner sighed. His eyes lit up blue as he looked at Hank. “Wow,” he breathed. “This is pretty crazy.”

“Conner,” Dawn said sternly.

“Um, it has anti-retraction barbs that hold the device in place. Looks like it’s embedded in the pectoralis major right through to the aortic arch.”

“No part of that sounded good,” Hank commented.

“The engineering is incredibly nuanced. Bomb’s designed to tolerate insertion, not retraction,” Conner explained, writing something down. He held up a drawing of what I assumed was the bomb. “These barbs are in Hank’s chest.” I cringed. It looked painful. “They have sensors. If those sensors detect too much force, it’ll explode.”

“What if we remove it surgically?” Dick asked.

“Same outcome,” Conner answered. I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “Once activated, it’s designed to kill.” No. I lost two people in a row, I refused to lose the man who had played a brotherly role in my life. What was Jason thinking?

“That stupid little jerk,” Hank growled.

“This whole thing is engineered to read EKG signals,” Conner told us. “The countdown isn’t seconds, it’s-“

“The number of heartbeats he has left,” I finished.

“What do you mean countdown?” Dawn asked. Conner removed the top piece from the bomb to reveal a countdown.

“When it gets down to zero-“

“Jason can’t actually want Hank to die, right?” Gar cut Conner off. Out of nowhere, Dick’s phone began to ring.

“I have a feeling we’re about to find out,” Kory sighed. We all were thinking it, she just said it. Dick walked off in what I assume was an attempt to get out of earshot, but it didn’t work. For me, at least.

“I’m listening,” he answered the phone. He paused. “Whatever you want, killing Hank isn’t the way to get it.” He paused again. “Enough of the games. Tell me how we end this.” There was a longer wait this time. “This isn’t about the money for you. I could wire that right now and this would be all over.” Money? Why would Jason want money? “Never gonna happen,” Dick sighed. “What would she think of you doing this?” I knew exactly who “she” was. And “she” was not particularly happy that Dick was using her as a negotiation tactic. Seconds later, Dick hung up the phone. I realized my heart rate had quickened and my breathing became shallower. I tried to calm myself by using my breathing techniques, but it wasn’t working.

“He wants 50 million dollars in gold bars in return for deactivating the bomb,” Dick sighed, walking back over. My panic grew.

“Gold bars?” Hank echoed. “Did he have a white cat on his lap, too?”

“What did you tell him?” Dawn asked.

“Freaking N-O, I hope,” Hank said. “No way we negotiate with terrorists.” I closed my eyes and tried to will myself to get grounded. There was no way I was gonna have a full blown panic attack in front of people who didn’t even know I suffered from them. Besides, we had worse issues.

“So we’re just gonna call his bluff?” Dawn sighed. “Jason’s crazy!” My mind was racing.

“Where I come from, you come after family, we show no mercy,” Kory added. I felt like the conversation around me was a mile away and underwater.

“How much time do we have left?” Dick asked. I clutched my necklace and reminded myself of the breathing patterns my mom had taught me specifically for my panic attacks.

“The average resting heart rate is eighty beats per minute,” Dawn answered. I became more aware of my surroundings and took one last deep breath, thankful that was over.

“Mine’s a little closer to seventy-two,”Hank commented.

“Forty-three hundred beats per hour.” Dawn did the math.

“That’s less than four hours,” Kory sighed.

“Get him on a beta blocker drip,” I spoke up for the first time since figuring out the bomb’s countdown. Everyone looked at me, surprised I said anything. “It’ll slow down his heart rate and buy some more time.”

“Elana’s right,” Dick sighed before walking off. Dawn followed him. I exhaled sharply and put a reassuring hand on Hank’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry about this, Hank. You don’t deserve it,” I said.

“Don’t apologize. It’s not in any way your fault,” he told me. I nodded, but I guess I still looked a little unwell. “Hey, are you okay, kid?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. You’re the one that’s not. Try to get some rest, okay?” I covered.

“Got it.” Hank offered a smile that I returned halfheartedly before walking out. I headed upstairs to the kitchen where Bruce kept his medicine. I dug through the cabinets in search of Librium, the anxiety pill Dad had said I should take whenever I had an attack.

“Looking for this?” I turned around to see Dick holding my medicine.

“No, I have a headache. I’m looking for Tylenol,” I lied.

“Don’t lie, Elana. I know what an anxiety attack looks like,” he sighed.

“How could you tell?” I crossed my arms.

“Your eyes and your breathing. If I didn’t look as close as I did, I wouldn’t have noticed. You’re really good at hiding it.”

“I’ve been doing it for a while. It’s called practice,” I mumbled.

“How long?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because I’m trying to help. And I have something you need in my hand.”

I sighed and pursed my lips. “Once every two months for eight years,” I looked down.

“What?!” Dick exclaimed.

“It’s fine! It doesn’t happen a lot!” I defended.

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” he sighed, throwing me the pills. I popped one in my mouth and swallowed it.

“I’m not feeling like a lecture right now, thanks,” I said, walking past him. He grabbed my bicep and pulled me back a step.

“If you need to talk about this, I’m here,” he offered, calmer than he was a second ago.

“Yep.” I pulled out of his grip and headed upstairs. I got to my room and slammed the door shut. I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and dialed Jason’s number. It rang… and rang… and rang. He wasn’t picking up. Not because he didn’t see it, because he didn’t want to answer. I muttered a curse under my breath, running a hand through my hair.

I texted him with the words “we need to talk now”, but I doubted I’d get a response. I threw my phone down on the bed and grabbed a pillow. Bringing it to my face, I let out an frustrated scream. I chucked the pillow across the room and flopped, face down, onto my bed.

—————————

The others had moved Hank into a bedroom in the Manor to try to keep him calm and comfortable. I felt, in a way, that it was partially my fault. If I would’ve just brought Jason in or talked him down, this could’ve been avoided. To try to ease my guilty conscience, I went to talk to Hank.

“Hey,” I greeted, walking in.

“Hey yourself.” He smiled tiredly.

“How you feeling?” I asked, sitting down next to him on the bed.

“Top of my game,” he said.

“That is a lie.”

“Eh, I’ve been in worse situations.”

“Worse than having a bomb strapped to your chest?” I raised an eyebrow. “I doubt it.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he sighed.

“But hey, we’ll figure something out. We always do,” I tried to convince him.

“Elana, we both know how this is gonna end.”

“Hank,” I groaned, “don’t talk like that. I lost Donna and Jason, I can’t lose you.”

“You know this isn’t your fault, right?”

“What? I didn’t say-“

“You didn’t have to. I know you, Lanes. You think everything is your fault.”

“This one might be.” I looked down. “I saw him, Jason, before he got to you and I didn’t do anything. We talked, but not about what he’s done. If I would’ve just-“

“Were you the one who put this bomb on my chest?” he cut me off. I shook my head. “Right. So this is not on you. Got it?”

“Yeah.” I gave a weak smile.

“I need you to do me a favor,” he said.

“Anything.”

“If I don’t make it-“

“Hank,” I cut him off.

“No, listen to me. I need you to do this.” He took a deep breath. “If I don’t make it, I need you to look after Dawn for me. Keep her in check. Don’t let this ruin her. The world needs Dove.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” I nodded. “But you’re gonna make it.”

“One more thing. Don’t beat yourself up too bad if this goes the wrong way. You’re a good kid with a whole life in front of you.”

“That might be a little harder, but I’ll try.” I smiled.

“Promise?”

“Pinky promise.” I held out my pinky and he laughed, but connected our pinkies.

“Do you remember when we snuck off to go after Liam Nells? Dick didn’t let us out of his sight for days,” Hank recalled.

“I believe he tried to get Bruce to ground me,” I laughed. “Dawn chewed us out for an hour straight.”

“He deserved it, though,” Hank pointed out. “You don’t get to screw up a relationship and then go after the other person for it.”

“I still don’t understand why we got in so much trouble. He was a jerk,” I sighed.

“Ah, the golden days.” Hank closed his eyes and smiled. We sat in silence as I willed myself not to break down.

“Well, I won’t keep you any longer.” I stood up and put a hand on his shoulder. “You should get some rest.”

“Come here, kid.” He opened his arms for a hug and I embraced him. I began to tear up, but squeezed my eyes shut as to not let any tears fall. I wouldn’t admit it, but the chances of him surviving were very slim. “Thanks for everything.” We let go. I looked at him one more time and smiled.

“Thank you, Hank.” I turned and headed out the door, a single tear streaming down my face. I kept walking down the hallway until I ran into Dick.

“Hey, Elana,” he greeted, but stopped upon seeing my face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I shook my head.

“You went to talk to Hank, didn’t you?”

I sighed. “I figured I better say something to him just in case, but I’m not giving up yet.” Dick looked down at his watch. “We’re running out of time.”

“We’ll figure this out, we will,” Dick said. “I talked to Crane. He thinks Jason is doing this because of the fact that he wants a father figure. It wasn’t really that helpful, but I have Conner working on deactivating the bomb.”

“You put that on him? Dick, that’s a lot of pressure.” I crossed my arms.

“I’m also working on a way to fix this, so it’s not only on him.”

“Did you tell him that?”

His expression said it all. “No,” he said, trying to fake that he was sure of himself. I smirked and shook my head.

“I’m gonna go check on him,” I said. “No stupid decisions until I’m back.”

“Your the one that makes those kinds of decisions,” he said.

“I can name a whole lot of stupid decisions you’ve made. When I find time, I’ll write them down.” I smiled, walking backwards toward the clock room.

“Mhmm, come back when you’ve finished that,” he called after me.

After getting into the Cave, I found Conner working on the deactivator. “Hey, Conner,” I greeted.

“Hey, Elana,” he sighed, but smiled.

“Not going so well?” I asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Not really, no.”

“Don’t stress too much over it, you’re pretty brave for doing this. There’s not a lot of people that would. And this is a backup plan if all else fails. The rest of us are trying to figure something out.”

“I’ve been at it forever and I can’t figure this out.” Conner looked at me with sad eyes.

“Hey,” I put a hand on his shoulder, “you are incredibly smart, more so than, don’t tell anyone I said this, everyone else in this building. If anyone’s gonna figure this out, it’s gonna be you.”

“Thanks.” He smiled. “I, uh, was wondering if you’d look over the specs to see if you find anything that can help.”

“Sure.” I nodded. I sat down at the monitor and pulled up the schematics. I flipped through them as Conner continued to work. “Woah, these are pretty advanced,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, I’ve been trying tons of different combinations, but the success rate’s been all over the place,” Conner commented.

“It looks like there could be five possibilities for the central piece.” I set those three parts off to the side. “If you try out the same combinations around the five pieces, you might figure it out.”

“How did I not see that before? Thanks, Elana. That helps a ton.” He smiled, looking less defeated. “Oh, by the way, Dawn was looking for you.”

“Got it. I’ll go find her. Good luck Conner, I believe in you.”

“Thank you again, Lana.” I headed back up the stairs to try to find Dawn. Walking the hallways, I finally found her walking out of the room Hank was in. I noticed her teary eyes. Without saying anything, I pulled her into a hug. After a few bittersweet seconds, she pulled away.

“We can’t let him die,” she said quietly, drying her eyes.

“We won’t,” I said confidently.

“There’s only one thing we can do to stop it. We need that gold. Dick won’t do it and I don’t want to do it alone, but I will. Are you in?”

I nodded. “Yeah, without a doubt.”

—————————

Dawn and I crouched in the rafters of the Central Bank of Gotham’s parking garage. We watched as the van pulled in and the guards got out. There were five of them, armed with submachine guns. I looked at Dawn and she nodded. We dropped from the rafters, taking the guards by surprise.

I took the three to the left, Dawn had the two to the right. I grabbed the barrel of the first guy’s gun and threw it downward, then driving it up to hit the man in the chin for a knockout blow. The other two began shooting at me, so I had to duck for cover behind the van. Once their rounds had finished, I jumped out and threw a throwing star shallowly into each man’s leg. They groaned in pain. I took the opportunity to kick the back of one’s knees and swing him by the arm into the other guy. Their heads collided and they were both out cold.

I looked over at Dawn, who had finished off both of her guys, too. She nodded to me and I nodded back. We both walked over to the truck, seeing the keys to it laying there. Dawn pulled out her flip phone she used to contact Jason and dialed.

“Now what?” she asked into the phone. I tried to divert my attention elsewhere to try to forget who was on the other side of that call, but it didn’t work. “Just tell me where to meet,” Dawn sighed. After a few more seconds, she put the phone away. “He wants to meet alone.”

“No way! I’m not letting you go after him alone!” I exclaimed.

“If I don’t go alone, he could kill Hank,” she said.

“I guarantee you I’m smarter than him. I’ll just hide. He won’t know that I’m there,” I told her. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.” She considered this for a second before sighing.

“Fine.”

“You won’t regret it, Dawn, I promise.”

—————————

Dawn went inside the alley space to meet Jason while I hung back on the outside of the building, out of view from anyone else, but able to see inside. It only took a minute of us being there for Jason to walk in. He was fully dressed in his Red Hood suit. I hadn’t seen it before. It looked pretty good to be honest.

“Where’s the deactivator?” Dawn demanded.

“In front of you.” I winced at his robotic voice. Dawn looked around and I did, too. She found something but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. “You’re wasting precious time.” I watched Dawn walk over to a box and tentatively pull out a small handgun.

“What the heck is this?” Dawn asked.

“I’ve got the deactivator as promised.” Jason held up that very item. “It engages as soon as I release my finger from the trigger.” I ran a hand through my hair in anxiousness. “You want to save Hank?” He took off his helmet. “All you have to do is kill me.” What the heck is he doing?

“What happened to you?” Dawn asked, exasperated.

“Same thing that happens to everybody- I grew up. You can, too. You just have to face your fear,” Jason said. “Batman did it. It’s easier than you think. Just pull the trigger and you’ll be free.” I moved to get ready to go in.

“You’re a jerk, Jason,” Dawn sighed.

“Yeah, well, we all get there eventually,” Jason said. “Oh, Hank’s gonna blow soon.” Not cool. “So who’s it gonna be, babe? Me or him?” Dawn pointed the gun up. I didn’t even think twice. I ran right in there.

Jason sighed and looked down upon seeing me. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“What has to be done,” he responded. I looked into his eyes, but there was something missing. They were duller than earlier.

“Dawn,” I said warningly.

“You did this, not me,” Dawn said, ignoring me.

“Don’t,” I tried again. A bird-a-rang came out of nowhere and knocked the gun from Dawn’s hands and stuck in a post.

“Dawn,” Dick’s voice came from behind, “Don’t.”

“Who invited that guy?” Jason groaned.

“What did you do?” Dick asked. Dawn and Dick looked at each other for a couple more seconds before jumping for the gun. I watched, unsure of what to do, as they grappled for the weapon. I looked at Jason who had an amused smirk on his face and scoffed in disgust, shaking my head. The next thing I knew, Dawn was holding the gun at Jason.

“Dawn, don’t,” Dick warned. “This is what he wants.”

“Let him have it,” Dawn growled.

“You don’t want to do this,” I tried.

“Don’t tell me what I want! You’re just trying to protect him!” she accused. I was taken aback.

“I’m trying to protect you from making a mistake you can’t come back from,” I told her.

“She’s right. You can’t come back from this. We can save Hank another way,” Dick said.

“He’s lying, Dawn,” Jason said. I glared at him and he made eye contact with me. Those eyes weren’t the same eyes as earlier.

“Gar, talk to me,” Dick said into his comms. He paused. “Dawn, we’re almost there.” Dawn checked her wrist for Hank’s heartbeats left. I could guess it wasn’t too high.

“I can’t wait anymore,” Dawn breathed.

“This won’t fix anything,” I said.

“If you do this, he wins,” Dick added. “He won’t save Hank, he’s lying.”

“Hey, batboy, she’s a grown woman. Let her make her own decision,” Jason sneered. Dawn checked her watch again.

“Dawn,” I said softly. She didn’t listen. “Dawn, if you kill him, you’ll never be the same and you’ll have to live with that guilt forever. That’s not fun, believe me. Look, it doesn’t matter if it’s him you kill or some random person off the street, you’ll never be the same.” She began to breathe heavily. After a few seconds, Dick seemed to be hearing something through the comms.

“Dawn!” he shouted. But it was too late.

She pulled the trigger and I heard the click, expecting the worst. But a bullet never came out. She examined the gun as the deactivator in Jason’s started beeping. Then it dawned on me what he’d done.

“Oops, my bad. Looks like I gave you the detonator,” Jason laughed. I took a step back in shock, my mouth dropping open.

“No,” Dick breathed. We all looked down at the gun in astonishment, and the second we looked back at Jason, he was gone. Dick took the gun from Dawn.

“What happened?” she asked breathlessly. We looked at her sympathetically. “No. No, no, no,” she cried. My heart broke for her and for Hank. He was my family and she and him were always together. Sure they’d gone through a rough patch, but they’d always love each other. Everyone knew that. But now he was gone. I had to stop the tear in my eye from escaping as I put my hand comfortingly on Dawn’s shoulder after Dick had pulled her into a hug. What just happened?

—————————

I sat on the floor of my apartment bedroom against the bed, head down, hands gripping my hair. My eyes were red and my face was tear-stained. How could’ve I let this happen? kept echoing in my head. There was now a hole in the wall that I’d have to fix from my fist. The only reason there weren’t more is because I had switched to punching a pillow. My grief was like a roller coaster. First I was in denial, then I was furious, and now? I couldn’t put words to my sadness. Maybe if I had just turned Jason in, this wouldn’t have happened.

The soft creek of my bedroom window pulled me out of my thoughts. I didn’t even have to look to know who it was.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right here, right now,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Elana-“ Jason started.

“No.” I stood abruptly. “Don’t “Elana” me. You killed Hank today. What makes you think that you can walk in here and have everything magically be okay.”

“Elana, please,” he begged, “let me explain.” He took a step closer and reached out.

“Don’t touch me,” I growled, taking a step back and putting my hand up to distance him from me.

“I’m sorry, Elana. I-I don’t know what came over me. I shouldn’t have done that, I know,” he swallowed. His demeanor was completely different and his eyes had their brightness back. He wasn’t the sadistic, cocky villain that was in the alley four hours ago. “I just came to say that I’m sorry.”

Without a second thought, my hand flew to his face with a loud slapping sound. His head flew back, but he never retaliated. “You should be!” I snapped. “You murdered the man I consider family by strapping a freaking bomb to his chest! Are you insane?! That is Joker-level stuff!” I couldn’t help the tears that fell down my face. “He died painfully and alone and now I wonder if I had just taken you in before this whole thing started if he would still be alive,” my voice died down. “Oh, god.” By back hit the wall as I used it for support. I sank back down to the floor. “Why did you do it?” I asked quietly, raising my puffy eyes to look at his.

“I-I don’t know,” he said honestly, looking at the floor. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back. I felt a hand touch my own. I knew I should brush it off, but something about Jason’s touch made me feel safer. I couldn’t help the silent tears the rolled down my face. I hated crying. I was told when I was with the League that only the weak cry. I especially hated crying in front of other people.

Jason hesitantly wrapped his arms around me in a hug. I didn’t return it, but I didn’t stop it. I knew I should’ve pushed him away, told him to leave, but I just couldn’t. Like before, I felt safer when he was right there. He put a hand on the back of my head in a comforting way and I let my head dropped down on his shoulder. He gently stroked my hair as I tried to calm my breathing. Pulling away from him, I wiped my eyes.

“One more chance. Please, Elana, give me one more chance,” Jason said. I closed my eyes and dropped my head. “I swear, I will make it up to you. If I don’t, I’ll let you take me in. I promise.”

“Jay…”

“No, just hear me out. I want to change. I want to be better. If I mess up, you can throw me in Arkham. Just please, let me try,” he begged, grabbing my hands. “Please.” His eyes shone bright and desperate. I met his gaze and sighed.

“Fine, but if you mess this up, we’re done and I’ll personally escort you to prison,” I warned.

“Thank you. You won’t regret it,” Jason said excitedly.

“But for tonight, I need to be alone,” I said. He nodded.

“Yeah, I- I assumed. I’ll see you later then?” This time, I was the one that nodded. He gave a weak smile, disappearing out the window.

I curled back into myself and reburied my head in my hands. I should’ve said no. I should’ve taken him in right then. I just couldn’t bring myself to. What did I just do?

#batfam #batman #dick grayson #jason todd #jason todd x oc #scarecrow #hawk and dove #superboy #beast boy #red hood #red hood x oc #gotham #starfire

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