#also i've started rewatching parks and leslie and ben get to make out all the time

[elsaclack]

Omg!!! I'm so glad you're doing the kiss promts!! Can you please do 10!! Or 3!! Or aaah y'know could be both combined!!! Once again I loooove your writing and you're the owner of such a wonderful mind!🌻

3. kissing so desperately that their whole body curves into the other person’s

10. staring at the other’s lips, trying not to kiss them, before giving in

ummmm heyyyyy let’s pretend like this isn’t like 4 months late shall we?

anyways i’ve been struggling to build a premise around these prompts for…oh…4 months now and today i finally landed on one that kind of works. it’s a little weird and AU BUT it’s also, like, gratuitous making out and it’s also borderline plotless so it has that going for it i guess?

basically it’s a superhero au very, VERY loosely based on tua, in that i took superpowers from that universe and applied them to jake and amy (and rosa but only vaguely in passing conversation). so understanding tua is not in any way necessary to understanding this au, i’ve just been obsessed with a superhero au lately and i decided to give it a try with this prompt and it worked out a little better than i was expecting.

SO without further ado…

She’s three paces away from his front door before the panic finally overtakes the calm and she freezes mid-step.

The hallway is quiet, only the faintest sounds of muffled televisions and clinking dishes meeting her through the series of closed doors lining either side, and she’s certain that if she strains hard enough she could probably pick out the sounds of his voice over all others.

(That’s a new ability she’s noticed about herself as of late - she can bend the fabric of space and time, and she can hone in on Jake’s voice even over the cacophony of an explosion. Nevermind the fact that neither seem related on paper, it’s fact.)

(It’s also so much easier to feed the beast of denial prowling like a lion in the back of her mind.)

She lets out a small groan and grips the straps of the tote hanging off of her right shoulder a little harder. The stiff fabric cuts into the places where her fingers curl and she closes her eyes, trying to focus on it over the rising panic in her gut. This is fine. This is normal. She’s been here close to a dozen times before, especially as of late. It’s normal.

Except, of course, for the fact that her mask is buried somewhere in the bowels of her tote and not firmly affixed to her face to cover her eyes, the way it has been every other time she’s been here before. That’s different. That’s new.

But she can still see the way his mouth had flattened in that grim, determined grimace earlier. She can still see the way he’d pointed upwards, his brows raised in an unvoiced question. She can still feel the weight of his gun - the only one not lost in the chaos of the fight - in her hands. She can still see the way he’d motioned for her to do it - to rip the fabric of space apart, to slip through, to teleport herself up high so that she could take the final kill shot on the giant bloated alien monster that had been terrorizing Brooklyn just a matter of hours ago.

And she can still see the way the earth spun in a dizzying, wobbling way, far too blurry and fast for her to get her bearings enough to teleport safely back to the ground. And she can still feel the pure fear of that realization that she was plummeting to her death alongside the alien she’d just successfully killed.

And she can still feel his body slamming into hers mid-air, his arms cinching tight around her, his recently-discovered levitating abilities working overtime to first get him up to her and then to slow their momentum enough that they hit the ground relatively unscathed.

And after the fact - after he saved her life - there was this moment. This breathtaking, heart-stopping, paralyzing moment, when he’d looked at her and she’d looked at him and his hands subconsciously gripping her waist maybe…weren’t so subconscious in the way his thumbs stroked along her ribs and his fingers rippled and tensed. And he’d leaned toward her - that much was undeniable - and she thinks she maybe, probably leaned toward him too.

But the world was still trying to settle after teetering on the brink of collapse and Rosa was howling in victory and Charles’ footsteps were pounding into the ground, growing ever closer, and his grip went from protective and just a little bit possessive to helpful and supportive in the blink of an eye.

She would have been ready to completely forget it ever happened - the way she always did when they went and had one of those moments - if not for him pulling her aside and gently adjusting her mask right as the reporters began to swarm. “I accidentally knocked it out of place earlier,” he’d explained softly as he smoothed down the corners against her temples. “No one saw anything - I didn’t see anything - it was just crooked, and - and I know how much you hate that during interviews.”

His fingertips trailed down her face, then, most assuredly not against her mask any longer, but he didn’t linger for long. Just a feather-light touch of her cheeks, a gentle brush of a thumb against her chin, and then he was stepping back and gesturing for her to lead the way toward the mob.

And that - that has been plaguing her for hours.

Because she didn’t even think to try and stop him when he reached for her mask. Because she let him adjust it - because she probably would have let him take it off of her completely.

Because no one has ever seen her take her mask off. No one knows her secret identity. Jake doesn’t even know her real name - none of them do.

And yet here she stands, maskless, heart in her throat.

Three paces down from where Jake lives.

She’s been here before - crashed on his couch and, once, in his bed after missions, worked out long and winding mysteries in his living room, tried and failed to learn how to cook in his kitchen under Charles’ watchful gaze. She’s been here before, and yet -

With a quiet, somewhat defeated sigh, she pulls her tote open and reaches for her mask. She lifts it to her face slowly, only pressing down lightly - enough that it will stay in place, but without the usual intensity as during a physical fight.

It’s much easier to take the next step forward after that.

She knocks on his door before she can convince herself not to, and from inside she hears the glass clink of a bottle hitting a hard surface, and the muffled beats of socked feet trotting against carpet. She swallows hard as the light behind his peephole flickers - and shifts her weight nervously when she hears his deadbolt slide and click.

He’s not wearing his mask. The door is only partially open and his face is mostly hidden in the shadows of his ill-lit apartment, but she can see the reflection of light glinting against deep brown set against white. It’s the first thing she notices - followed shortly by the evidence of their fight only just developing on his face, like the bruises on his jaw and the scabbed over cut on the bridge of his nose.

(She hasn’t exactly examined herself in the mirror yet, but she’s fairly certain her own face is in similar shape.)

“Hey,” he says - cautious, almost reserved, but not guarded.

Never guarded.

This is the fourth time she’s seen him without his mask on.

“Hi,” she whispers.

He takes a small, tentative step forward - and the light from the hallway illuminates his entire face for the first time. His eyes flicker as he searches her face, curious in a way that somehow quiets the panic she’d felt before. “Everything okay?”

“Um…no.”

Concern fills his gaze at once, and his body visibly tenses - weight shifting to center on his feet, the muscles of his chest and arms tightening.

“Wait, not - I mean, everything, everything is okay,” she gestures into his apartment, toward where she knows the windows are situated on the far wall, and he relaxes again - aside from the little pucker in his brow. “I just meant - I’m not okay.”

His Adam’s apple bobs and he rocks forward a degree. “Did I - did I hurt you? Earlier, when we fell -”

“What? No! No, of course not, you - you saved me, Jake. You absolutely did not hurt me.”

A tiny, minuscule wave of relief seems to wash through him, but it isn’t enough to ease the creases between his brows. “Good,” he says, nodding as he reaches up to rub his fingertips against the back of his neck. “So, then…what’s up?”

“I just…I’m not…I’m not good at this.”

He pushes his door open a little wider and leans against the doorframe, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. “That’s okay,” he says. “I’m patient. Take your time.”

She nods and drops her gaze to her feet. “I owe you,” she murmurs.

“You do not.” he says so sharply she looks up on instinct. “You don’t owe me crap. We both know I would’ve done the same thing for any of the others without hesitation. I didn’t even have to think about it, Dora,” he says the false name he gave her years earlier gently and her stomach bottoms out. “Please don’t think that I’m gonna hold this over you or something, okay? I would never do that.”

“No, I know you wouldn’t, that’s not - what I meant.” The intensity is still burning in his gaze, but curiosity is beginning to blossom there, too - she inhales deeply and sets her shoulders. “You have been nothing but open and vulnerable with me, especially over the last few weeks. And I’m - I want to do that, too. I want to be more open and more vul-…I want to be more vulnerable. Because - because I trust you. I trust you.” As she repeats the phrase, the corner of his mouth quirks up - but still, the concern persists.

“I believe you,” he says with a shrug.

“That’s - I mean, thank you, but - I still want to do this.”

He searches her face a half-moment longer before his gaze drops down to her shaking hands - now slowly moving up toward her face. “Hey,” he pushes off the doorframe, arms coming uncrossed, socked feet moving over the threshold to inch toward her. The door swings shut behind him - he doesn’t seem to hear it. “It’s okay - you don’t have to do that, Dora, really -”

“I know I don’t,” she says through grit teeth as her fingernails gently pry the stiff leather away from her skin. He pauses, hands raised between them, a half-hearted attempt at moving her own hands away from her face. “But I want to. Really, I do. Unless you don’t want me to.”

He stares a moment longer, face twisted in indecision, before his shoulders drop and his hands fall back to his sides. “I want you to,” he whispers, looking stricken by his own confession.

She shoots him a small smile before working the mask away from her face. The adhesive sticks stubbornly to her skin and she quietly hisses when it pulls at the edge of a barely-developed bruise along her cheekbone. He watches, motionless, aside from his hands rhythmically clenching and unclenching at his sides.

Finally, the mask completely separates from her face, but she holds it over her eyes for another moment. “Dora isn’t my real name,” she murmurs.

His eyes widen. “You don’t have to tell me your real name,” he says quickly. “I mean I - I want to know, but more than anything I want you to feel safe and if me not knowing your real name makes you feel safe, then -”

“Jake,” she interrupts, and he falls silent at once. “I do feel safe with you. That’s why I’m doing this.” He opens and closes his mouth, before slowly shaking his head in clear wonder. “I want you to know my real name before you - see me. The real me. Is that okay?”

He nods.

She inhales again - a short puff of air - and lifts her chin a degree. He’s chewing the inside of his cheek in anticipation, and she can’t help but to smile at the endearing sight. “Okay,” she breathes. Jake shifts his weight from one foot to the other as she slowly lowers the mask, and her eyes fall closed as the leather interrupts her view of his breathless, affectionate face. They remain closed even as her hands drop down to her sides; the silence that follows is practically deafening.

She’s looking down at their feet when her eyes flutter open again and despite the nervousness simmering in her belly, she’s genuinely surprised to see he’s moved toward her since she closed her eyes - their toes are mere inches apart. And she knows when she finally lifts her gaze up to his face, he’ll be close enough that she’ll be able to count each individual freckle where they faintly smatter against his nose and cheekbones.

“My name - my real name - is…Amy.”

He’s looking at her like he’s just discovered the secret to life when she meets his eyes; his grin is blinding, his eyes shining. “Amy,” he repeats, so carefully, so reverently, and it sounds even better in his voice than she daydreamed it would. “God, I’ve been - I’ve been imagining this moment for so long - you have the best name, I love your name. And your eyes. God, your eyes are so pretty, I don’t - I don’t even know what to do with myself -”

She laughs, and he laughs, too, but his is filtered through a shaky gasp. “Oh, my god, when you smile it’s like - like your eyes smile, too? How do they - I mean, I’ve never -” he cuts himself off with another choked laugh and she’s still smiling, even as his eyes openly rove over her face. “God, you’re so pretty,” he whispers - to himself, it seems.

She knows her smile has gone shy, that the heat from the tips of her ears is probably pouring through her whole face, but she can’t bring herself to care - his flickering eyes have landed on her lips, his own smile slowly fading, replaced by unmistakable desire.

Nerves pulse through her heart, but she shifts toward him anyways - just like before. He blinks rapidly as she makes her slow approach, lips parting in apparent surprise. The tip of his tongue darts out to wet the corner of his mouth and she feels herself swallow thickly, eyes glued to the spot even after his tongue vanishes.

He ducks his head, the tip of his nose brushing against hers seconds before his lips press tentatively against hers.

Aside from the rapid beating of her heart in her chest and his own noisy breathing, neither one of them move. It’s a little strange, almost…maybe…bad…but then -

Then he moves into her all at once, his arms rising up to haul her closer to him, bringing her up to the balls of her feet. She quickly steadies herself with her arms around his shoulders, and not a moment later her back his arching, bending, curving backwards, as Jake’s tongue sweeps into her mouth. He groans against her when she angles her head, fingertips digging a little harder into the meat of his shoulders before one travels up to lightly cup his cheek. Her tote falls from her shoulder and lands in a clatter at their feet but he doesn’t seem to notice - he groans again, louder than before, when both hands frame his face and her tongue brushes against his as she pushes into his mouth.

His hand sweeps up her spine, the arm still around her waist tightening to better stabilize her, and then his fingers are pushing up through her hair to brace the back of her neck. The crown of her head lightly bumps against something hard and solid, followed quickly by her shoulders; it’s as she feels his body stooping, arms burrowing down around her beneath her armpits, knees bending and thighs tensing, that she realizes she’s just hit the back wall of his apartment building hallway and he has every apparent intention of lifting her up and pinning her there, in plain view of his neighbors.

“Mm,” she hums against him as her feet just barely leave the ground, dropping both hands to land against his shoulders. “Mm, Ja- Jake,” she turns her head away, ripping her lips from his, and he rears back, eyes bright with alarm. “No, no, no, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s - it was good, it was really good -” She has just enough time to register his relief before he’s moving toward her again, quickly working his way down to her jaw, kissing and lightly nibbling, drawing quiet gasps from her every few seconds. “Jake we - we’re in, we’re in the hall.”

“And?” he grunts, lips now moving over her the side of her neck, experimenting with the sensitive skin around her left ear.

“We need to - to go inside,” her voice is thin and airy, borderline pathetic, and when his teeth scrape against a particularly sensitive spot she has to bite down hard on her knuckles to keep from audibly moaning.

“Been wanting to do this for years,” he mumbles between kisses. “If you think I’m gonna stop for one second -”

“Someone might see,” she gasps.

He grins against her, lips curling against her skin, and through their chests pressed together she can feel his heart hammering just as hard as her own. “I didn’t know you were into people watching you do this kinda thing, Amy,” he murmurs, voice low and teasing where it rumbles in her ear.

She swats his shoulder hard enough that the sound reverberates down the hall. “I meant someone might see,” she says, suddenly able to think clearer in the midst of a more familiar dynamic in the midst of this newly intimate setting. She nods her head down; her mask lies to the left of his foot, slipped from her grasp after being swept up in him. The sight of it seems to sober him a little, though not enough for him to move away; he extends his leg and sweeps it back toward them with his foot, his grin bright and eager as he moves it to lie in the narrow space between the heels of her feet and the wall behind her.

“There,” he says, unmistakably triumphant. “Now, where was I?”

She lets out a laugh as he lunges back toward her, hands pressed against his shoulders and head angled up so his lips only make the barest contact with her cheek. “We should go inside,” she insists as he leans away, pouting. “It’ll be more fun…”

His expression seems to light up with interest for a moment, but the pouting returns all too soon, visible even as he drops his forehead down against hers. “But I don’t wanna move.”

“I can’t show you what’s in my tote if we don’t go inside.”

He pulls back, brow furrowed. “Is that like a euphemism or something?”

“Oh, my god, no! I just - I brought, like, food and movies and stuff, in case you wanted to hang out or something -”

“I definitely want to hang out,” he says, “but the food and the movies can wait for later.”

He winks suggestively and she rolls her eyes, but before she can think of a rebuttal he shifts and his thigh presses up between hers and oh, yeah, they need to get inside his apartment now. “Fine,” she rasps - and he grins with unmistakable pride at the audible effect he has on her. “We’ll do it the hard way.”

She hooks her foot through the straps of her tote and shifts back so that the heel of her other foot presses against her mask, and then she’s tipping forward, hands ripping through the spacial fabric around them to teleport them both directly to his bedroom.

“Whoa!” he shouts as he topples backwards, the backs of his knees hitting the mattress and knocking him completely off-balance, sending them both down in a tumbling heap. His arms stay around her this time; she blinks and shakes her head to find his face just inches away, staring up at her in wonder. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” he murmurs.

“Actually, it’s sort of like getting over car sickness - after a while, you don’t even really feel it anymore -”

“Not teleporting,” he interrupts. He reaches up slowly and brushes her long hair back behind her ear, before gently ghosting his fingertips along her cheekbone, just under her left eye. “This. You. You’re just - you’re so smart and beautiful and badass -” She scoffs a little at that, and he shifts his head to the side, brows furrowing. “What?”

“I am not a badass, I mean - I’m into crossword puzzles and knitting, you make fun of me for it all the time. If anyone’s a badass, it’s Rosa, with all the knives -”

“You can be into crossword puzzles and knitting and still be a badass.” he interrupts indignantly. “Just ‘cause you don’t dress in all black and threaten everyone around you within an inch of their lives for every little thing doesn’t mean you’re not badass. I mean, who stopped that alien earlier? Who killed it? You, or Rosa?”

“Me,” she admits quietly.

“And who was brave enough to come here and be vulnerable on purpose? You, or Rosa?”

“Me.”

He nods. “Badass.”

“I just -”

He surges upward, interrupting her with a kiss, and her heart feels like it might explode or something for how many beats it seems to be skipping. “You’re a badass, Amy,” he repeats in a whisper when he lets his head slowly drop back to the mattress. “And you’re so, so beautiful.”

It’s one of the last truly coherent things either one of them says that night - aside from each other’s names.