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simplyholl · 6 months ago

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Desperate Measures

Summary: When you encounter a mysterious substance during a mission, it forces you and your mission partner to get closer.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avenger F. Reader

Warnings: Quinjet crash. Sex pollen. Smut. Slight choking. Brief fucking with a gun. 18+ Only. Minors DNI.

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You curse Nick Fury for what feels like the millionth time in the past three years. He had a "brilliant" idea, mission partners. When there was a world threat all of the Avengers would assemble. But when it came to smaller stuff like mobs, small Hydra threats, or robberies, he wanted just a few of you to take care of it.

Fury paired everyone based on their skills, their background, astrology, and other secret factors he wasn't willing to share. The idea came shortly after you joined the team, making an even number of people on the Avengers. You received copies of each other's files. You were supposed to spend most of your time with them at first to learn everything about them.

Fury wanted you to be able to almost read your mission partner's mind, to anticipate every move they made on the field. You should know them better than you know yourself. Which would have been great, except you got paired with Bucky Barnes, the former brainwashed assassin. He hated you, and you weren't even sure why. But the moment you met him, he was cold to you. He wasn't normally the friendliest anyways, but he had it out for you specifically.

He would smile and laugh with Steve and Sam. He was more guarded with the others, but he tolerated them, not you though. He fought with you all the time over nothing usually. So three years ago when Fury assigned you to be his mission partner, Bucky was furious. He complained to Fury, trying to switch. Fury immediately shot him down. He told him if he didn't like it, there was the door. After Steve talked to him, he begrudgingly accepted his fate.

You fought more often than not, an occurrence the other Avengers were used to. You’d argue the whole way on a mission. But when you were working together, you both could end your petty squabbles until it was completed. Then you’d be back at it the second it was over.

This time was no different. Bucky was flying the quinjet while you looked over a map of the Hydra facility you were going to. Your mission was simple. Break in, get the files, and get out. The building was located in Italy. You and Bucky both agreed once you got the files, you would part ways and explore the city. You were excited. The food, the culture, the men were all calling you. You packed a new dress just for the occasion.

You were pulled out of your thoughts when the quinjet made a noise that made a shiver run up your spine. The lights on the dash started blinking rapidly. Beeping filled the jet as you looked to Bucky. “Not a fucking word.” He barked at you, his metal fingers frantically pressing buttons.

The jet started to spin in the air. Bucky cursed as he tried to steady the wheel. It was no use, you were going down. You sat straight up in your seat holding onto your seatbelt for dear life. Of course, you would die with the person you hate most in the world. Karma was a bitch and you weren’t sure what you did to deserve this fate. The jet whipped around in the sky before plummeting to the ground.

After the initial shock wore off, you opened your eyes hesitantly. You must be dead. You hit way too hard and fell fast. The first thing you see is Bucky who quickly unbuckles himself and stands. Oh great, this must be hell. You’re gonna be stuck with him for all eternity. “Not that I’d have a problem with it, but if you don’t want to be here when the jet explodes, you better get out now.” Bucky tells you as he uses his metal hand to pry open a caved in wall and crawl out. You follow him with no hesitation.

Bucky walks a good distance away from the wreckage with you in tow. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and calls Nick Fury letting him know what happened. After a few minutes, he hangs up. “What did he say?” You ask hoping someone was on their way to get you. “Our coordinates show that we aren’t far from the Hydra facility. Fury said do the mission and he will have somewhere for us to spend the night when we are done. Someone will come get us tomorrow.”

“All our stuff is on the jet, are we not gonna get to go out like we planned?” You whined. You knew you were being selfish, but you had been dreaming of going out after the mission ever since you found out about it a month ago. Bucky shoots you a glare. “No, Princess. We aren’t going out after this.”

He rolls his eyes at you. You put your hands on your hips, pissed off at the nickname he calls you. “Princess” wouldn’t be a horrible nickname. But the way he used it made you furious. He said you were spoiled and bratty. So he had given you the nickname three years ago after you became mission partners.

He uses his phone to find the location of the Hydra facility. You followed him the whole time, flipping him off or making faces behind his back as he berated you for still wanting to go out. When you make it to your destination, Bucky turns around and gives you that signature glare. “If you don’t stop flipping me off and sticking your tongue out at me, I will break your fingers and rip out your tongue.”

Your heart dropped as you realized he knew what you had been up to the whole time. Before you could defend yourself, he grabbed your wrist, dragging you inside the building. He led the way through the dark. It was silent and it seemed like you were alone. You finally found the main computer. He stood guard as you pulled up the files and downloaded them to the device Fury gave you. When you were done, you shut down the computer and handed Bucky the device. He pocketed it and started walking toward the exit.

A loud siren started going off, blue lights flashed through the building. A chemical scent filled your nostrils. You look up to see red smoke descending from the ceiling. It was everywhere. You start to panic. It was probably some poison designed to kill whoever broke in here. Bucky was half way to the door when you finally realized you should move. You ran to him as he pulled on the door. “It’s locked.” He told you. Your heart beat faster as the red smoke slowly got closer to you.

Bucky started kicking the door until the wood splintered under his leather boots. You follow him to the front of the building, the red smoke almost face level with you now. He runs at the front door using his strength to break it down, but not before the smoke surrounded both of you. You both cough as it fills your lungs. He wraps his flesh hand around your arm, dragging you behind him.

You walk a good mile before you decide to speak up. “Was that poison?” You ask him, scared for what was to come. “How the hell should I know?” His hateful reply pissed you off. “I’m so angry that I’m gonna die with you of all people!”

“I’m not. I can’t wait to watch you take your last breath. I’ll fight to stay alive until you do. Then I can die peacefully.” You open your mouth to reply when his phone starts ringing. He answers it, telling who you presumed was Fury about the mission. He asked about the red smoke but it didn’t sound like Fury had the answers. When he hung up, he turned to you. “He sent me the location of the safe house. We are going to go there while Bruce and Tony try to figure out what the smoke was.”

When you arrive at the safe house, you’re actually impressed. Usually it would be some shack in the woods. But this was a nice house. It was clean, it smelled nice. Most importantly, the kitchen was full of ramen, canned food and water. You made dinner for the two of you, bringing him a bowl of ramen as he accepted a video call from Tony.

Tony was smiling so wide, his face looked like it might split in half. “I got good news and bad news, kiddos.” He waits a second before speaking again. “The good news is, you’re not going to die.” You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding at that revelation. “The bad news is it was a sex drug.” Bucky and you look at each other, confusion on both of your faces. Tony bursts into laughter.

“I’m gonna assume, you don’t know what I mean?” You both shake your heads as Tony continues. “Well, the sex drug enhances all your senses. You’re going to be horny if a breeze blows by. And it will be unbearable. You’ll feel like you’re going to die if you don’t have sex. And you will. The drug is designed to make your body so hot that a high fever will set in. It will boil your brain if you don’t have sex. Don’t bother touching yourselves, that won’t work. You have to sleep with someone to make the side effects go away.” Tony cackles as he looks at the shocked looks on your faces.

He looks at his watch. “You should have about an hour before it sets in. And probably four after that before it kills you. So good luck.” He laughs before hanging up. The silence between you and Bucky is filled with tension. Both of you unsure of what this situation will bring.

You finish your dinner without saying a word to each other. But you can’t take it anymore. “Do you think he’s right?” Bucky considers your question for a moment, his blue eyes focusing on you. “Yeah, he wouldn’t lie to us.” You take a deep breath. “We have about thirty minutes before we start to feel it. What are we gonna do?”

“Im going to take a shower and go to bed.” You look at him incredulously. “Bucky, he said we will die if we don’t have sex. There’s gotta be a bar around here or something. We can go out and find someone to sleep with.” You offer a reasonable solution. Bucky chuckles, “We are in the middle of nowhere. There’s no one around for miles. And I’m sure as hell not fucking you.” He spits the words at you like venom.

“I don’t want you anywhere near me. But we don’t have a choice.” You fire back, but Bucky ignores you, walking to the bathroom and slamming the door behind him. You go into the bedroom with the en-suite bathroom and take a shower too. You can feel your body start to heat up. You turn the water as cool as it can get. When you dry off, your skin is sensitive. You can feel yourself getting wet just from the towel touching you.

You look through the drawers, knowing that there was usually clothes in there just in case. You were so hot you were starting to feel like not putting any clothes on at all. But you settled on a thin, white tank top and a pair of red panties. Your hard nipples rubbed against the fabric of the tank top making you moan. You lay on the bed and check your phone. The symptoms were just now setting in, and you were already miserable.

You closed your eyes, trying to sleep. Maybe Bucky was onto something. If you could sleep through your death, it might not be so bad. But sleep never came. You tossed and turned, you touched yourself. But nothing would suppress the horrible ache between your thighs. Your panties were practically stuck to you, they were so soaked. You checked the time again, realizing you only had an hour and a half before your imminent demise.

You stand up on shaky legs and walk to the bedroom Bucky was in. Desperate times called for desperate measures. You knock on the door gently at first, but after a few minutes pass with no answer, you try the door handle. It’s locked. You beat your fists against the door. “Bucky let me in. I’ll do all the work. You can close your eyes, pretend I’m someone else. We can put bags on our heads. But I need you to fuck me right now.”

He opens the door, his long hair in a messy bun, his blue eyes dark with lust. He’s naked, his hard cock on full display. “Bucky, please. I know we hate each other, but we have to. I can’t take this.” He doesn’t say anything as he grabs you with his metal hand slinging you onto the bed. You gasp as your back hits the mattress. Bucky towers over you looking at your body hungrily. His gaze lingers on your breasts. Your nipples are so hard, you’re surprised they haven’t cut through your tank top.

“If we are doing this, we do it my way.” He grumbles. You just lay there, willing to do whatever he wants. He walks over to the nightstand, grabbing his pistol and walking back to you. “What are you doing with that?” You ask wide eyed. “Shut the fuck up.” He growls. You swallow hard as he brings the gun down over your torso.

He grips your tank top between his large hands and pulls. The rip of the fabric echoes through the silence. He moves above you, bringing his head to your breasts. He captures a nipple between his lips, pulling it with his teeth. You cry out as he soothes the pain with his tongue, lapping at it gently.

He jerks your panties down your legs, discarding them behind him. “God, Princess, you’re soaked.” He runs the muzzle of the pistol through your folds. The cold metal making you shiver. He positions it slightly, sliding the barrel into you with ease. “Bucky! What’s with the gun?” He smirks as he works the weapon in and out of you. “I don’t want to touch you yet.” He shrugs, maneuvering the barrel causing it to hit your g-spot. Your toes curl and you arch up off the bed.

Bucky grabs you back down, his vibranium arm laying across your stomach to hold you in place. He removes the pistol, looking at it in awe. It’s covered with you. His tongue darts out to lick your arousal off it. He moans as he sucks all of you off his weapon. “You taste so good, Princess.”

You gasp as he jerks your legs apart, fingers digging into your flesh. You’re dripping down your thighs, making it harder for him to keep hold of you. He lowers his head, lapping up your arousal from your thighs. When he finally makes it to where you need him most, he wastes no time. His lips and tongue feasting on you like he’s ravenous. His lips wrap around your clit, sucking harshly as he pulls a forceful orgasm out of you.

He stands, pulling you to the edge of the bed. Bucky is fully inside you with one forceful thrust. You gasp at the delicious stretch. “Fuck.” He whispers, a few loose strands of hair fall from his bun. You have to fight the urge to grab a piece between your fingers.

Bucky’s movements are erratic. He’s like a wild animal. He lifts your leg, placing it over his shoulder, the new angle causes him to hit even deeper. You’re a mess, crying out his name, watching his face as he sets a brutal pace. The heat in your stomach becoming unbearable. You move your hips with him, matching his rhythm. He brings down his vibranium hand, touching over your chest before bringing it to your neck.

He squeezes lightly at first before adding more pressure. Your eyes roll back in your head. This was all too much. The way his big body pressed you against the mattress. The way he was looking at you. The way his vibranium hand was wrapped around your throat. How he fit so perfectly, it was like you were made to take him. You clench around him, causing his movements to falter. He is getting sloppy.

You wrap the leg not on his shoulder around his waist bringing him impossibly closer. You feel him spilling inside you sending you over the edge with him. He removes his hand from your neck, bringing it to your chin forcing you to look at him. “I hate you.” He whispers as he stills inside you. Bucky removes himself and stands between your legs. He gathers the cum dripping out of you with his middle and index fingers, forcing it back inside you. “I hate you too.” You say as your legs tremble from the intensity of it all.

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safaridays · 1 year ago

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no, you don’t need to wear your mask/tail to school.

i wish young nonhumans didn’t feel compelled to be ‘out’ at school, especially when it’s a dangerous environment. i keep seeing posts along the lines of “wore my tail/mask to school! people berated/teased/put their hands on me, but it’s ok”.

no, it’s not.

like.. i understand a mask or a tail can be a very validating thing for some people. and i’m not saying NO ONE should wear them at schools. but i just keep watching this mounting trend of young therians insinuating you need some physical accessory or to do quads to be a ‘real’ nonhuman. and then it leads to things like this and it makes me incredibly sad.

i’d known i was alterhuman since late elementary school, actually. it’s a huge part of my life even now, years after graduation. there wasn’t a reason for it to be brought up, so i never did. it was a closely guarded secret to me, but it didn’t feel like a weight i was carrying. i always thought “no one needs to know i’m an animal if it jeopardizes my safety. so, oh well”.

“but, how will people know that i’m an animal?”

they probably will. they probably already do.

i was the designated ‘animal’ person my entire school career despite not ever handling animals in front of anyone. if there were pets, lost wild animals (baby rabbits, birds, lizards), or sometimes even loose livestock that got onto campus, it was always me who had to go tend to them.

everyone wanted me in their group in environmental science. if a project called for animal illustrations, the same thing would happen. it was certainly weird because i was also a ‘weird kid’ and not especially desired to be around outside of that, lol. but i was never harassed for it. it made me feel very validated, actually.

i had fun during gym running and fiercely destroying the opposing team in field hockey. i taught everyone which plants were okay to forage (and we snacked on them when we had to sit on the lower field for practice). every day i was hyperaware of the limbs i had that weren’t quite there. friends noticed my ears twitch and my nose wiggle at certain stimuli. i felt nice walking on two legs. i felt nice because i felt animal and i didn’t have to prove it to anyone.

really like… just do what makes you happy. i admire the bravery it takes to so earnestly wear your identity on your sleeve like that. that’s very impressive. however, there is NO obligation to do anything like that if you understand that there will be a reaction that poses a threat to you.

i want our kids to be safe, too. you don’t have to feel dysphoria over being discreet. sometimes it’s the safest option. and sometimes, that can be really fun, too.

study everything you can about your ‘type. wikipedia and animalia are good resources. ramble about them to anyone who will listen. jokingly refer to yourself as one in friend spaces. wear discreet clothes that remind you of your ‘type. find a nice private place outside where you can run and explore and look at plants and smell the air and feel like yourself. but by no means do you have to prove yourself. you know you.

#txt #therianthropy #therian #otherkin #alterhumanity #alterhuman #nonhuman #dogkin #wolfkin #foxkin #dragonkin #catkin #i forget what most common ‘types are LOL #quadrobics #therian mask

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nadvs · 1 year ago

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out of bounds (part one)

pairing zach maclaren and soccerplayer! female reader

rating mature 18+ for smut

summary zach has never been the type to rebel, but when he meets you at a soccer camp where you’re both working as counselors, which has a strict policy against dating between staff, he’s tempted to break the rules for the first time.

note i know most of my readers follow me for rafe fics so i hope y’all can bear with me indulging in a fluffy and angsty (and eventually spicy) summer romance with the sunshine character that is zach 🙂‍↕️ all my love to @juniebugg who inspired me to write about him ilysm 💘

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Once you’re finally sitting down in the main lodge, a massive wooden cabin nestled in the center of the campground, you feel like you can take your first real breath since you arrived.

The morning was chaos. You made it to check-in just in time and met your cabin-mate Ami, who you learned is also new to the job.

Then, you quickly changed into your new bright orange staff t-shirt and chatted with her as you rushed over for orientation.

Now, you’re settled on one of twelve wooden chairs facing the grand fireplace, set in front of floor-to-ceiling windows, which boast a cobalt blue lake under a cloudless sky.

Campers are set to arrive tomorrow morning and today is dedicated to preparation. You’ve already done countless training modules online before arriving, so today will be all about learning what’s left.

You hope you get a chance to explore the place before it starts teeming with preteens, because the photos on the camp website don’t do the grounds justice.

Your interviews were over video call and today is the first time you’re seeing the stunning campground in person. It’s stretched out on a wide expanse of greener-than-green pine trees, rustic buildings, and pristine soccer fields.

This job is your best case scenario for the summer. You can’t wait to spend seven weeks in one of the prettiest places you’ve ever seen and gain confidence in your athletic skills while coaching kids in your favorite sport.

As a center back on your college’s girls’ soccer team, you feel your best when you’re out on the pitch, but the pressure of the past school year was hard to navigate. You hope that teaching kids excited about soccer will remind you of why you like it so much.

As Zach sits in the front row, he notices the smell of this place never changes. It’s woodsy and brisk. It smells like comfort. But he’s pretty sure he’s biased. Camp Summit is sort of a haven to him and has been since he was a kid.

The chatter in the lodge has grown louder as more and more counselors settle into their seats, but once the camp directors walk up to the front, the noise wavers.

Tom and Ruby offer a kind welcome and then, like they do every year, quickly jump into training.

After two hours of going over the how-to’s on welcoming campers, facilitating activities, walkie-talkie etiquitte, and establishing rules, they announce that everyone can head to the dining hall for lunch.

“We won’t force you through any awkward icebreakers,” Tom says to the group, “so, we encourage you to get to know each other over lunch. We have a good mix of vets and newbies this year. We want you to be friends with your coworkers. But before you go…”

He looks over the room.

“We should mention,” the director continues, “that we have a strict policy against anything more. It can get unprofessional and inappropriate when counselors date each other.”

“Is that legal?” Ami whispers to you. “They can’t, like fire us for that, right?”

“You like someone already?” you amusedly ask your new friend.

“I might,” she says with a smile, her eyes on a dark-haired guy sitting ahead of you. You quietly laugh, glad you’re already so comfortable with the girl you’ll be bunking with.

“Aren’t you guys married to each other?” a girl behind you calls out.

The way that Tom and Ruby laugh tells you that they are, and that the counselor who shouted that must be a vet, already familiar enough with them to make comments like that.

“Yeah, but directors can do whatever they want,” Ruby jokes with a lighthearted shrug. You look down at their hands to see wedding rings. “In all seriousness, we hate having to enforce it, but please, no dating.”

Once counselors slowly rise out of their seats to go to lunch, your eyes land on a tall, messy-haired stranger standing at the front, who starts a conversation with the directors.

Maybe you shouldn’t tease your cabin-mate, because when you see his charming smile, you think you might have a crush of your own.

Tables are arranged in a neat grid in the dining hall, with a big buffet table prepared at the far wall.

You line up, noticing Ami a few people ahead, already striking conversation with the guy she pointed out to you.

You slowly inch forward with the line as counselors start to load their plates. You realize just how many people were in front of you when you get to the table and see one fork left.

You pick it up and turn to see only one person behind you. It’s the guy you noticed back at the lodge. His blue eyes sweep over your face. He’s even cuter up close.

“There’s only one left,” you say, holding out the fork with a small frown.

Zach stills when you look at him. You’re so pretty that it’s like he’s buffering. That’s the only way he can think to describe it.

You’re in the same orange shirt every other counselor is wearing and such a harsh color shouldn’t look this good on anyone, but it does on you. He reads your name-tag.

And then he realizes you said something. He completely missed it because he was too busy staring.

“What?” he asks.

Your eyes flit down to his name-tag hanging on his lanyard. Zach, in black marker, punctuated with a smiley face. His tag is worn and scratched up, a hard contrast to how new and shiny yours is.

“There’s only one fork left,” you clarify, a soft laugh in your tone. He looks dazed, a gentle crease between his brows, almost like he wasn’t expecting to see you even though you were standing directly ahead of him.

“Oh,” he says. He looks past you to the table, his lips screwing up. “It’s cool. You can have it.”

Zach gazes at you again, a smile on his face now that he’s feeling a bit more grounded.

“I’ll find one. I…” He crosses his arms, feigning pompousness. “I have connections around here.”

“Yeah?” you play along.

“Oh, yeah. I was a camper until I aged out,” Zach tells you. “And I’ve been working here since I was 16, so I have friends in high places.”

You laugh again. That explains why he seemed so comfortable with the directors back at the lodge. He’s clearly been here for quite a few summers.

“I can tell you’ve been here a while by the state of that name-tag,” you tease. He looks down to tilt up the worn out plastic rectangle hanging over his stomach, his bottom lip jutting out.

“Poke fun all you want, but you don’t know how impressive it is that I never lost this,” Zach replies. “Name-tags go missing all the time. I bet you’ll lose yours.”

“I thought staff were supposed to be friends,” you say. “You’re already betting against me?”

“You want some advice?” He leans just a little closer, his tone fake-serious. “It’s actually very cutthroat here.”

“So, the be friends with your coworkers stuff, that was all talk?” you say with a gasp, mirroring his playfulness.

“All talk,” he echoes with a smirk.

“Wow,” you half-whisper. “Thanks for the advice.”

You share another smile with him, already sure your crush on him isn’t going away. He’s friendly and kind of goofy and probably has all the girls after him. You wonder how seriously he takes the no dating rule.

Then, you turn back towards the table, surprised at how quickly your mind is running away from you.

After you load your plate with food, Ami calls you over to a table with a few other counselors. You get to know a decent amount of other staff, including Malcolm, the guy your cabin-mate is openly flirting with. He seems to be just as into her.

It’s a long afternoon of training and once you step out of the lodge, you feel like you can breathe again. It was a lot of information at once and the thought of wrangling nine campers on your own feels a bit overwhelming.

But at least for every activity for the first two weeks, newbies will be paired with vets. That gives you some relief.

The sounds of birds chirping and wind blowing through the trees fill your ears as you walk towards the staff cabins hidden behind the dining hall. Your shoes dig into the dirt and you breathe in the smell of pine and earth, feeling a sense of peace settle into the bones.

Despite the tinges of anxiety, you feel grounded here, like you’re right where you’re supposed to be.

As you finish unpacking with Ami, a coworker comes by to tell you that the counselors are going to have a bonfire after sunset. You set up your room and both head towards the lake once the sky starts darkening.

Zach is arranging logs in the fire-pit, kneeling on the ground while Malcolm leans close by. No other counselors have joined yet, and he’s glad because it’s taking embarrassingly long to set up the fire.

“Just let me know when you need the lighter,” Malcolm says.

”I could use some help on lining the kindling up,” Zach tells him.

“I think you’re doing great on your own.”

Zach snorts a chuckle. His cabin-mate and best friend of two years always tries to get away with doing the least amount of work.

“Is this the party?” Ami calls.

Zach turns to see you walking towards the pit. It gives him a chance to drink you in completely, the sight of your figure making his cheeks burn.

“Just getting it started,” Malcolm says. “This place would fall apart without us.”

You and Ami chuckle, settling on one of the logs.

“Us? It looks like Zach’s the only one doing any work,” you say.

“Thank you!” he says with a sarcastic sigh, looking up to smile at you. Your gazes hold a bit longer than they need to.

“Want any help?” you ask.

“All good,” he says. “I’m used to carrying the team.”

“Cold,” Malcolm says. “Strikers and their egos.”

“You’re a striker?” you ask Zach. It tracks. Strikers tend to be on the taller side, and you practically had to crane your neck to meet his eyes when you spoke to him before lunch.

“Yeah, you?” Zach asks.

“Center back,” you reply.

“Most important position,” Malcolm adds.

“Jeez, I wonder what you are,” Ami says with a laugh. “What was that you said about egos?”

The fire starts to slowly blaze and Zach stands up, exhales tiredly and scratches his forehead. It causes his shirt to ride up and expose an inch of his stomach.

Even under the dark blue sky, the flames only offering dull, flickering light, you can’t help but notice the v lines carved into his skin.

You look away. You feel like you’re practically thirsting over him at this point. You’re convinced that the fact that fraternizing between staff is forbidden is what’s making you even more tempted to stare at him.

The four of you continue to make small-talk as more counselors start to join. You learn that Zach and Malcolm share a cabin and that they play together on their college’s team, a school only an hour away from yours.

You also notice Malcolm jokingly calls Zach a nepo baby at one point, but before you can ask why, the conversation stirs in a different direction.

Soon after, a few counselors rough-house dangerously close to the fire. It’s only for a moment, but Zach perks up.

“Be careful around there, alright?” Zach says.

“Relax, dad,” one of the vets says. “We will.”

This is the only place in the world where people tell Zach to relax. He feels a sense of responsibility here. He’s sort of an unofficial babysitter, keeping everyone in check.

You notice his dimples dip into his cheeks. He’s obviously used to being teased for being the dad of the group.

You find it a good time to privately ask him about his other nickname, the staff chatter and wood crackling loud enough so only he can hear you.

“Why’d Malcolm call you a nepo baby?” you ask.

“Oh,” Zach says with a chuckle. “Ruby and Tom are my aunt and uncle. I’m not really a nepo baby, though. I don’t get any special privileges. The opposite, actually.”

“Opposite?” you ask, amused.

“They feel way more comfortable getting mad at me than any of the other staff,” he admits lightheartedly.

“Who would get mad at you?” you joke.

“I know, right? I’m adorable.”

It’s way too easy to flirt with him. This is going to be hard.

As the night goes on, you notice Ami and Malcolm slowly drift closer towards each other, laughing and talking. Eventually, they rush away into the dark.

Admittedly, the thought of sneaking off in the night with a cute guy is kind of exciting. You look over to see Zach noticed them leave, too.

“I think our cabin-mates are about to hook up,” you say quietly.

“On the first night, too.” He shakes his head, pretending to be disappointed. “It happens every year.”

“Do they actually fire people for dating?”

“I’ve seen them get close,” Zach says. “But people hide it well for the most part. Honestly, I think most do it just because it’s against the rules.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” you say with a laugh. “It’s the whole forbidden part of it. Tell people they’re not allowed to do something, and guess what they want to do?”

“Something,” he says, earning another laugh from you.

You wonder if he ever has broken this particular rule, but it’d be too forward to ask.

“I wouldn’t risk it,” he offers, looking at the fire. You’re pretty sure he’s just giving you advice, but you take it as an opening, the curiosity killing you.

“So, you never have?” you ask.

“Nope.”

Over his many summers working here, Zach’s had crushes on other counselors, and he definitely has one on you, but a fling isn’t worth losing his job and letting down his family.

He owes a lot to his aunt and uncle. He wouldn’t disrespect their rules, no matter how pretty the new girl is.

When he looks over at you again, at the way the flames are casting shadows over your features, he corrects himself. Pretty is an understatement; beautiful is more fitting.

He almost suggests you don’t take the risk of dating either, but it’d be purely selfish. He doesn’t like the idea of seeing you in a summer romance with another guy.

And he feels insane for already feeling hypothetical jealousy, but he’s never clicked with a girl this quickly before. You’re sweet and interesting and you get his humor, and he feels like he couldn’t not like you if he tried.

“So, what brought you here?” he asks.

“Interview answer or real answer?”

“Real answer,” he says with a smile. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Playing at the college level is a lot more pressure than I expected,” you admit. “I want the experience and obviously the pay with this job, but mostly, I just want to be reminded of why I like soccer so much. Honestly, I lost my confidence in my skills this past year and I’d like to get it back.”

You’re surprised at how open you’re being, but something about him makes you want to be. He gives you a sense of safety. You can tell he’s kind-hearted.

“One of the best parts of working here is that you get enough downtime to practice,” he tells you. “I’d be happy to help you on your defense if you want.”

Your stomach numbs imagining it. It’s such a sweet gesture, especially because you’d just learned that he’s on a full-ride athletic scholarship. You know he’s good.

“Thank you,” you say. “I’ll take you up on that.”

“If you’re looking for a reminder of why you like soccer, you came to the right camp,” he replies, his smile bright and sincere.

“You really like it here, huh?” you ask, kind of in awe of him.

“I owe a lot to this place,” he says.

You make a note to yourself to ask him to elaborate on that later, as another counselor takes his attention with a question about tomorrow before you can reply.

You look back at the fire and you promise yourself that you’ll just be Zach’s coworker. At most, his friend.

You won’t risk getting even close to dating. You don’t want to lose your job. And you certainly don’t want Zach to lose his, especially because it seems important to him to follow the rules.

Besides, maybe he has a girlfriend already. You can’t imagine a guy like him being single. And maybe he’s not even into you like that. He could just be very friendly.

As the fire dwindles and counselors start to retire to their cabins, Zach leaves and returns with a bucket of water to extinguish the remaining flames.

You’re not sure why, but watching him be so hands-on with no expectations to be thanked for it makes you like him even more.

“Which cabin are you in?” he asks you, looking over his shoulder. You hope he didn’t catch you staring.

“Four,” you answer.

“We’re neighbors,” he says. “I’m in five. I can walk you back, newbie.”

There’s a chance he’s just being nice, but even though it’s against the rules, you hope it’s more.

You check your phone to see it’s just past ten o’clock. The moonlight is bright as you and Zach walk towards the staff cabins.

You’re chatting about how beautiful the campground is and he grins as he looks down at his feet. He loves this place and hearing someone else appreciate it feels nice.

When he looks up, he stops in his tracks. You follow his eye-line. There’s a shirt hanging on his cabin’s doorknob.

“Oh, man,” he whispers.

“Does the shirt on the knob mean what I think it means?” you ask.

“If you think it means walking in there would make me see something I can’t ever unsee, you’re right,” Zach answers.

You chuckle. You’re definitely going to ask Ami about the details of her hook-up with Malcolm later. And you feel an obligation to also remind her that the no-dating rule is serious.

“I’ll give them ten minutes, then I’m knocking,” he says. “You don’t have to wait with me.”

You know you should go to bed and get rested before the craziness of tomorrow. But being around Zach makes you not want to.

“I can keep you company,” you offer. “I’m pretty wired anyway.”

“Thanks,” he says with a sincere smile. It makes your heart flutter that he seems just as happy to spend more time with you.

“So, what’s there to do around here at ten o’clock?” you ask.

Zach rakes his hair back, gazing out at a soccer field in the distance as crickets loudly chirp around you.

“If you’re looking to burn energy, we can do some of that practice we were talking about,” he suggests. “Now’s as good a time as any.”

“You sure you’re not too tired?” you ask.

“Nah. Let’s go,” he says. “But be warned, when I coach, I’m ruthless.”

You laugh, already well aware of how far from the truth that must be.

“Consider me warned,” you joke. “Lead the way.”

(part two)

if you want notifications on when i post my fics, follow @xorafe-library and turn on notifications 💘

#also sidenote i swear on everything that i had this idea before wildfire by hannah grace was even announced 😭#which btw i read and did not like #zach maclaren and reader #zach maclaren and you #zach maclaren and y/n #zach maclaren x y/n #zach maclaren x you #zach maclaren x reader #zach maclaren

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angelicoutcomes · 4 months ago

Text

Everyone needs a someone ୭⋆

Aaron Hotchner x fem!reader

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x fem!bau!reader

Summary: After a particularly draining case, Aaron is there to comfort you.

Warnings: Mentions of a case, talk of toxic family relationships, no use of Y/N, sad lonely reader, yummy comforting Hotch, friendly banter, first kiss hehe, blossoming friends to lovers, no existing relationship, pure fluff!

A/N: This is my third one shot of this reader/Hotch dynamic. I think I’ll leave it at this and pursue new aspects of Aaron Hotchner fics. I promise it’s a cute ending point. (Also rushed proofreading, sorry for any mistakes..)

Thank you for all the support since the start of my writing journey! I can’t to grow further and explore more characters, tropes etc..

˖ . ݁𝜗𝜚. ݁₊

It had been a weak case. A long gruelling week.

One with countless victims, grieving families and scarring hearts. All things that have unfortunately, become a normal occurrence in your field of work.

Still, this case stirred a new realisation upon you. You tried to not let it get the best of you. Hiding your emotions behind tight smiles and nods of assurance.

You masked it well, only letting it dwell in your chest like a heavy weight of pressure.

Normally when something brings you dread, guilt or utter loneliness, you feel it in your throat. Like it’s trying to burrow its way up into existence through the words you speak.

Sometimes these emotions dwell behind your eyes, as if tears are the only way you let yourself express.

To an untrained eye, your smile would be adequate, soft and bright. With a team of skilful profilers, this is not the case.

Normally, you’d find a way to keep a positive airiness to the space surrounding you. (Unless it’s a horrid crime scene, of course.) It’s a small coping mechanism you carry. There’s a void of darkness and you always push yourself with the need to be the light.

A rather simple action you carry out to achieve this would be bringing the “community comfort blanket” on the jet with you.

This is a fluffy blanket you make sure accompanies the team through every case. It’s left on the jet and funnily enough, always ends up being used by someone. Albeit, mostly yourself as you have unpredictable body temperature changes.

In your eyes, a must do to achieve this airiness is making sure everyone is heard. Even if this ends in you neglecting your own need to be heard.

Everytime the team would ask you if you were okay this case, your vague answers would never satisfy.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Sparky?” Penelope asks you on the phone.

She’s not even here with the team this case. Giving you the conclusion that her and Derek have been gossiping. Yes technically it’s more of a wellbeing check on you than gossiping, but in your books they tie hand in hand.

“Yes Pen, I promise it’s okay.” You say through the phone, balancing it between your shoulder and ear as you pack back up your go bag in the hotel.

“Well as an extra precaution how about a bit of wine in mine this weekend, oh of course it can’t be on Saturdays though…” She replies, you see exactly where this is going.

Ladies and gentlemen here comes the fierce ring of Penelope Garcia banter. “I mean it’s unfair of me to cut into your weekly Aaron and Jack ice cream slash soccer dates.” She continues in a sly manner.

You try to extinguish this conversation by dismissing her in an unamused tone. “Very funny Penelope.”

“Well we technically could do Saturday night but any day now that fine like of ‘friendship’ you have with Papa Hotch will slip into something more.” She charges back strong.

“Excuse you, Ms Garcia! What on Earth is that supposed to mean.” You reply with faux shock.

“Oh no need to act innocent Sugarplum, if I was best friends with my boss in the way you and him are, I’d be fantasising for sure.” This makes you quirk an eyebrow.

At this point, it doesn’t shock you that she could say something so out of the box.

After successfully digging yourself out of that conversation, you realised that it was the happiest you’ve let yourself feel since the beginning of this case.

˖ . ݁𝜗𝜚. ݁₊

From the drive to the airport, boarding the jet, and landing back in the office, you have been asked five times if you’re alright. Two by Emily, One by Hotch, Once by Spencer and Derek at the same time and one from JJ too.

Each time you replied with a small reassuring smile and the same sentance , “Yeah, it was just a hard case.” No one could really argue with this because it’s true. The case was exhausting on everyone.

In all honesty though, you’re not feeling alright. Shock horror.

This case just erupted something very raw in you. It hurt to see victims you relate to.

It’s even worse when you give them a listening ear in PD waiting areas with stale coffee, dying potted plants, bleach lighting and no ventilation.

Why? Because then you gain a personal connection with them and let yourself bask in the darkness of the reality they are facing.

Time was ticking slowly as you still sat at your desk, Go bag tucked neatly beside it. Others had left, as it was 6:03, time to clock out was technically an hour ago.

You’re still stuck at your desk staring into nothing. All work needing to be done was complete and up to date.

That’s not why you’re still here. It’s simply the fact you know that if you go home now, you’ll be dragging these consuming emotions with you. Normally you try leave them in the paperwork, and be content with the fact the case is solved and sorted.

“I’m heading home, I’ll see you tomorrow.” Rossi says as he rounds by your desk.

You give a passing goodbye, mind too preoccupied to manage more.

Stopping infront of you, he sighs. Pulling a chair over to sit beside you. “Whatever it is that’s got your mind tangled in this mess, you can’t bottle it up.” He says, with soft words, hoping they land gracefully and don’t crash.

“I’m fine Rossi, I promise it’s nothing.” You say with a hopeful smile, you know deep down that this is just a silly dramatic moment in the long run.

“Im sure you are, but all I urge of you is to find an outlet.” Rossi stops shortly before continuing, “I may not be able to be that outlet for you, but I think we both know someone who would be.”

He looks away from you, directing his view to a certain someone’s office. You open your mouth, ready to argue before he speaks ahead of you.

“You don’t need to say anything, just know that Aaron can be that person.” He finishes, getting up to carry on his original path of leaving the bullpen.

“Thank you.” Is all you seem to be able to say. As he nods and continues to walk.

With a weary sigh, you pull your head into your hands. Here comes the wave of unending thoughts.

A vulnerable part of you yearns for someone who understands you. After years of feeling isolated, like a drifting iceberg that seems to catch the wrong tide, maybe you do need someone.

You dismiss yourself, deflecting on how dramatic this sounds. It’s nothing more than the luteal phase blues. You’re an empathetic person by nature. You carry everyone else’s burdens on top of your own.

This is what you’re feeling. The exposure of others pain is carried through you subconsciously.

Always has been like this. When you were younger, a childhood friend would invite you to go fishing in a nearby lake with herself and her uncle. It was their weekly outing together.

You only attended once, because you bawled over the fish caught. Not because it died and would be that night’s supper.

You cried for the family of the fish, for its hypothetical children that would now have to grieve the disappearance of their mama fish.

You kept that fish family in your prayers at the next mass service you were forced to attend, one of many in your youth.

Shaking off the random thought, you found yourself nostalgic. Which is silly since your youth was home to mostly pain.

A sad, heavy sigh left your lips. Unburying your head from your hands, you look towards Aaron’s office. The light was on but blinds were closed.

With a grumble of defeat, you make way up the small set of steps to his door.

A moment of hesitation was had before you softly knocked. Hotch’s small grumble of approval could be heard.

You make your way through the door, and without looking up, Aaron says “I’m nearly finished up my work but if you need more time I can put on another pot of coffee.”

Feeling small, you don’t reply. A heavy silence weighs in the air, he finally looks up. You stand awkwardly at the door with nothing to say.

You’re not good at this whole someone as an outlet thing. Normally a tub of ice cream seems to do the trick.

Some sort of acknowledgment seems to cross him. Like a neon sign points towards you with the phrase ‘I’m not alright’ etched into it.

Must be quite obvious to be honest, with the look he’s giving you.

He’s about to say something but you jump the gun before him. “Please don’t ask me if I’m alright, Aaron.” You plead in a whisper of a voice.

“Would you like to talk about it?” He asks, dropping everything he was doing at his desk and standing up. Not one bit of this sentence sounds forceful or pushy as he voices it.

Not trusting your words in this moment, you slowly shake your head as to say yes. He approaches you, closing the door beside you swiftly before planting infront of you.

The close proximity of you two would have Penelope screaming ‘I told you so!’ in a boastful manner.

Your eyes close briefly as you push yourself to find the right words. “I’m not good at talking about stuff, and I’m not good at approaching people either..” You ramble, trying not to look up at him.

He radiates warmth, with a subtle of hint of cologne that you secretly love.

“Well, you got this far so that must be a good start.” Aaron replied, trying to lighten the mood.

In a passing moment of silence you try to reassure yourself. Aaron is a good man, he’s an excellent person, boss and dad. You can trust him.

“I like to leave my work worries and mindset in this building, I hate bringing it home with me.” You start, trying to explain your ways for him to understand. “But I can’t leave this here, I’ll bottle it and wrestle with it all night.”

Aaron nods along supportively, urging you to continue as he guides you to the couch in his office.

Sitting down comfortably beside him, he places a reassuring hand on top of yours. You’re too caught up in thoughts to realise this action.

“It’s so silly Aaron, and I know I’m just being dramatic.” You sigh in defeat, flush with embarrassment.

“Don’t downplay your emotions, it’s not silly at all.” Aaron reassures, wanting you to continue.

This is hard for you, he gets that. This is another one of your high security walls crumbling before him willingly. It takes time.

“It’s just, when I was talking to one of the victims..” you start, huffing away the sentence before Aaron gives your hand a light squeeze of encouragement. “She’s so lonely, her family have shone her out and shes in such a time need.”

You feel a build up of emotions behind your eyes, trying to manifesting into tears. “Aaron, I was in her shoes, it’s so painful.” A tear or two finally slip, that sentence making it feel real.

Aaron knows you don’t want to be fed some sort of soothing comment along the lines of , ‘it’s okay, don’t worry.’ Simply because you wouldn’t believe it.

Gently, he pads his thumb across your cheek, wiping away your soft tears.

“You feel so much for so many people, and open your heart to anyone who is hurting.” He starts, “You might not realise, but the time you took to be with that girl in such a time of need shines light on this beautiful heart of yours.” His kind words bring another tear to fall.

Cradling your cheeks in his palms, he continues, “You take on the burdens of the world, but I want you to know, that girl will be okay. She has found people who support her and will love her because of the work you done.”

This wasn’t an exaggeration, you made sure she had someone to fall back on before leaving. Turns out her godmother living up the coast was more than welcome to take her in. She wouldn’t have been contacted if you didn’t address your concerns.

“Every part of me wishes you had someone like that when you were her age.” His palms still on your cheeks, “Please let me be here now.”

The part of you, blocking the inevitable cascade of tears, breaks down. You let out a small sob as you nod in agreement, trying to say ‘I’d like that.’ Aaron wraps his arms around you, bringing you to his chest.

This was all you needed before you broke down completely. You felt safe in Aaron’s arms. It had been a while since you had a proper cry, this felt like layers and layers of bottled pain finally being set free.

Hotch whispered small words in your ear, “Its okay to cry, let it all out.” and “I’m here, I’ll always be here.”

You don’t know how long you sat there, curled into the warmth of Aaron’s chest. Eventually you calmed down, letting out nothing but small hiccups instead.

Once again, Hotch cradled your face. “Never feel hesitant to come to me, whenever, at anytime, okay?” He wore a serious expression, urging you to agree.

You give a small faint nod, he wipes away the last few stray tears as they weave a path down your face.

Whispering quietly, “Let’s go, work can wait until tomorrow, I’ll drop you home.” Nothing in you fights his request. Probably because you’re mentally at your weakest right now, or because of the ever growing crush you have on this man.

Silently, you make your way to the elevator. Aaron keeps a hand on your shoulder, guiding you gently.

˖ . ݁𝜗𝜚. ݁₊

The drive to your apartment is peaceful, no talking is needed to understand one another. The radio softly hums as you lean against the window. Hotch looks over at you a few times, making sure you’re okay.

Aaron sees the small shiver you give off, a dead giveaway that you’re cold. Silently, he turns up the heat.

“Aaron” you call out, looking towards him. He gives you a hum of acknowledgement, signalling to you that he’s listening.

“Will you..stay for a while.” You ask, not wanting to be alone right now. “Unless you have to get home to Jack or you don’t want to I understand that.” You ramble on.

“Don’t worry, Jacks in Jessica’s for the night since we are home a day earlier than expected, I’ll stay.” He says, giving you a smile.

Pulling up infront of your house, Aaron parks his car and climbs out as you do so. This would be the first time he steps foot past the entrance hallway of your home.

Walking through into the kitchen with Aaron hot on your tail, he asks “How would you feel about a bowl of ice cream right now?”

You’ve mentioned in passing in the past that you always have a tub of ice cream on hand, no matter the weather.

“Yeah, that sounds nice.” You smile lazily at him.

“Go get into something comfy and I’ll get the ice cream, sound like a plan?” Aaron asks, already edging towards the freezer.

You nod in agreement before trotting up the stairs.

When you come back down after getting into your go-to oversized worn out college T-shirt and tracksuit bottom combo, you see Aaron sitting on your couch.

He has taken off his blazer and was in the middle of rolling up his sleeves, his arms were flexing as he did so. It was so fucking hot, your brain was stuck in the gutter.

Waving off those thoughts, you plonked down beside him with a huff. Stretching out and getting comfy as you look over to him.

With no words, he hands you a bowl of gooey brownie ice cream. You give him a wide smile and a thank you.

You both fall into an amusing conversation, about anything and everything. The jokes shared are cheering you up immensely.

Some time later, seconds of ice cream are dished out as you sit on your kitchen counter. Aaron is stood beside you digging the spoon into the ice cream tub, getting every last ounce of the chocolate goodness.

You are letting out a chesty laugh from Aaron’s previous story. Once he had collected Jack from a play date, with terror as he found Jack and his friend covered in Chocolate.

Apparently they both had unsupervised fun melting left over chocolate in the microwave. Jacks friend’s mother is a baker and had just finished a big boxed order of rich double Belgium chocolate mousse.

“Safe to say he was Jack’s best friend from that day on.” He finished the story, handing you a bowl of ice cream.

Your hands touched briefly, a second longer than needed.

“I know this’ll sound cheesy Aaron, but you’re probably one of my best friends.” You slip casually.

Why on earth did you say that. Something inside of you shrivels up from embarrassment.

“Only one of them? Here I was thinking I was your ultimate best friend.” Aaron says jokingly, mocking hurt as he clutches his heart.

You let out a relieved laugh at his joke, a smile beaming on your face. He stands over closer to you now as you place your bowl back on the counter beside you.

“All jokes aside, I do treasure our friendship above most things.” He says, such simple words made a small blush creep onto your cheeks.

Not trusting your words, you stretch out your arms to give him a hug. He immediately accepts, stepping closer to you, between your legs from where they dangle off the kitchen counter.

Hugs you share with Aaron aren’t awkward or polite in any means. They hold warmth and trust. Unspoken words filter through the tight space you share when embracing each other. Hugs like these confirm that you are not alone.

You both stay like that for a long minute. Finding comfort in one and other. Finally, you both break away, still inches from eachother.

An invisible force of sorts lingers, urging you two to close the gap. Slowly Aaron tilts his head towards yours, foreheads almost touching.

Your breathing gets heavy as you can feel his hot breath. You only break eye contact when your eyes subconsciously flicker down to his lips.

Like a magnetic pull, you inch closer and closer to him. Until finally, you meet each other half way.

At first, as your lips touch, it was delicate. You both felt unsure. But as Aaron slowly took control, padding his tongue cautiously across your lower lip, you both melted into each other more.

One of his large hands tangles through your hair as he palms your cheek softly. His rough fingers cradling your jaw.

You break away gently, foreheads still touching as your breaths mingled. Looking into his eyes, you smile. “I guess best friends was an understatement.” You say with a small hearty laugh.

He laughs with you, a look of admiration in his eyes as his hand still lingers firmly on your cheek.

“I guess you could say that.” He replies before leaning back in for another kiss. You laugh into it.

The relationship between Aaron and you is growing before your very eyes, but of course, Penelope was right all along.

˖ . ݁𝜗𝜚. ݁₊

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raineyconstellations · 2 months ago

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As Long As You’d Like || Reader x Bob

“ Wow, congratulations! “

It had been decided, Robert Reynolds, Bob, would be permitted to leave the tower. Finally after almost a year of counseling and on and off training sessions he was being included in field operations.

You offered him a lopsided smile as you lowered the heat on the pan and wiped your hands on the front of your apron fully turning to take him in. You really couldn’t help the laugh that left your lips as you saw the man before you seemingly trying to fold in on himself. He looked everything but excited, more like a cat that had been harnessed and was about to be thrown out into the world for the first time.

“ I-I’m just not sure I’m…100 percent ready you know. “

He shrugged as he hid his hands in the oversized sleeves of his shirt, but even through the fabric you could already see the nervous fidgeting. His eyes darted left and right, up and down, unsure where it would be safe to rest. You noticed whenever Bob was about to say the worst things about himself he was always reluctant to look you in the eye.

“ Robert Reynolds.”

At the sound of his full name he stiffened, just like a cat that had been spooked and you swore you could hear him gulp down his negative comments. His fingers flexed but they remained at his side refusing to nervously tear at the already sensitive skin surrounding his nails.

“ Give yourself a little more credit bud, I know it’s sometimes a little hard to step back and see our accomplishments but you good sir. You have come a long way from where you started and you should be very proud of that. “

You turned away from him but not before seeing the tops of his ears burn red in embarrassment.

Your attention shifted to the dishes piled up high in the sink and with a sigh you motioned him to step forward and help you. You could have thrown them in the dishwasher, but truth be told you hated those things and washing dishes by hand was always therapeutic. It was also something mundane, something ordinary that Bob had quite taking a liking to helping you with as well.

He stumbled towards the sink , arms raised already memorizing the routine and you without skipping a beat leaned forward and rolled his sleeves up before handing him the dish towel.

“ I guess I could only play Rapunzel for so long. “

“ Bob, even Rapunzel left her tower. I’ll give you a cast iron skillet if it would make you feel better.“

“ Will you be my Pascal. “

“ Only if I’m allowed to sit on your shoulders. “

You splashed him and the both of you shared a couple laughs, while the tension hadn’t completely left him it was at least a little better and those negative words Bob had thought about throwing at himself had burst like the bubbles in the sink.

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✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　

︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹︶

After the first mission it was like a bomb had been set off. The team remained busy and poor Bob was strung along without a chance to breathe or even think for that matter. Valentina called it public exposure therapy, aka the team really needed to be seen publicly and garner good press.

For the majority of your time, there was not much you could do but cook for yourself and the furry friends that had been entrusted to your care while everyone else was away. It became quite boring quite fast and on many days you found yourself pacing Bob’s little reading nook dusting the area for what seemed to be the 50th time.

You didn’t want to admit it, but the absence of Bob was felt. While you had been around the team, they would come and go whenever they pleased, but Bob remained a constant presence and now you were missing that presence.

On days where the harsh words of your own conscious were too much to take ; normal, boring, plain - you would take yourself out to explore the city. You would immerse yourself, exploring the food scene discovering what new recipes or ingredients you could bring to the team. You thought about Bob and at the end of everyday, you would bring something back to the tower that reminded you of him.

Sometimes a book, a bookmark, or maybe some teas you thought would help Bob through his sleepless nights or lazy mornings. Sometimes you would even take cuttings from local flowers and press them into the pages of the books you brought home for him. On days you didn’t feel like wondering out, you would leave sticky notes around his nook.

‘ The ole lady said this recipe was good for sore throats . ‘

‘ This one is good for sniffles. ‘

‘ Hearty, packed with potatoes. You like potatoes. ‘

‘ I am Pascal and Pascal is me. ‘

‘ I miss Rapunzel. ‘

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︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹︶

Where he had found you had surprised him. Body curled up in the sofa chair located in his reading nook, head pressed to your chest in what looked to be an uncomfortable sleeping position. A small bubble of drool at the corner of your lips, and one of the books he had finished before leaving on these publicity missions cracked open in your lap.

The more he let his eyes wonder the more he discovered. What had been an empty coffee table beside the chair was now stacked high with a pile of books. Titles he hadn’t seen in his collection before leaving, books that had also been decorated in sticky notes. He picked one up.

‘ Spice cake, Bob likes cinnamon. ‘

‘Saw a cat, looked like Bob. ‘

‘ New shop on 5th, Bob might like. ‘

‘ Weighted blanket for Bob. ‘

Every sticky note was addressed to him and the more he read the more the warmth in his chest grew. It felt full, like at any moment it could burst and he couldn’t help the prickle at the corner of his eyes .

Cause never in his life, did Bob think that he would have someone waiting for him. Someone missing him, who wanted him around so often to do mundane things with like wash dishes, or cook. You were the most normal abnormal thing in his life and he couldn’t help the awful bad thoughts asking him “ Until when? “

“ As long as you’d like.”

He jumped not realizing that he had asked out loud and you grinned as you smacked your lips then closed your eyes and went back to blissful sleep. Your body sinking further into the couch, as if finally finding the perfect state of peace.

As long as he’d like. He smiled as he sat with his back against the couch, laying his head on the tops of your legs where you instinctively ran your fingers through his curls. His eyes closed and all the tension he had felt these past few weeks melted away.

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✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　

︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹︶︶୨୧︶︶⊹︶︶⊹︶

#thunderbolts #bob reynolds #robert reynolds #the void #marvel #robert reynolds x reader #bob reynolds x reader #x reader

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vatelixx · 3 months ago

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The cage is open, you can walk out anytime you want (Why are you still here?),

S2!Post!Hankel Spencer Reid x gn!BAU!reader

Angst (hurt/comfort). Autistic Spencer (you know the drill). Perhaps some traces of fluff if you’re like…. masochistic. Heavily implied happy ending.

— Explorations of Spencer’s (very glossed over) addiction. Love confessions? Half love confessions? Spencer admits it mentally, Reader implies it through actions. What am I saying? They’re sooooooo in love it pains me.

Warnings: *cracks knuckles,* okay…. —heavy depictions of drug addiction, mentions and allusions of suicide, previous mentions of being held hostage (Hankel). PACKED with Greek mythology references (sue me, i study classics as a degree), perhaps some light biblical imagery? Spencer being at rock-bottom. he’s kinda bitchy. he also disses hotlines (they do save lives, don’t listen to Spencer!!! he’s being a dick). mentions of childhood bullying.

w.c: 3.2k

a/n: title so long it’s basically a midwestern emo song.

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There’s intimacy in being fragile. Spencer knows firsthand, has romanticised his Glass delusion. The fear of shattering, fragmenting on impact, like jagged, sliced glass. He thinks of Charles VI, (1380’s King of France), what he felt when he refused touch. When he reinforced himself, shielding behind excess clothing, in the fallacious fear of dismantling.

Spencer does the same, hides behind fabric, shies away from human contact. Because— because being careful is better than being impetuous. If he can make himself so small he no longer takes up space then maybe they’ll be kind to him.

Monachopis. Has he always been this out of place? Has it always felt this way? Will it ever stop?

12 years old. Curling inward to shield himself from the ache of cracked fists. You’re not here, you’re not here, you’re not here. He still feels like that kid, the one bleeding across the school yard, smashed glasses, bust lip, new bruises to hide from mom.

Perhaps he should blame genetics. Find something to point the finger at. Mentally distort the truth, until it’s no longer a paling face he sees, drawing the first needle into his arm, forcing him to take what he never asked for. No longer that, but a bigger issue, a concern that cannot be personified, a larger statistic in the minefield of human psychology.

Those with ASD have a doubled risk of substance use.

He never stood a chance. Did he?

So just like Charles, he covers his arms. Veils the track marks that penetrate skin. Pretend they’re not there, pretend you’re okay. Okay? Okay, nobody has stopped to ask him if he is ‘okay’ since ‘the incident.’ When the shock wore off, and attention strayed, everyone lost interest.

He feels like an outlaw to his own team.

How do you move on from being bound, tied, degraded to something beneath human?

How did everyone else?

He understands now— the pull of addiction. The way it mimics, artificially replicates home. Something soft, in that one, life-ruinously warm moment between the first hit and the inevitable come down.

But just like everything good. It dies. Turns ugly. Disfiguring, decaying. What once was simple, a fleeting temptation, a way to starve off lonely withdrawal, has derailed into desperate, insatiable hunger. To reproduce the first time, to appease the way he palpates in the wake of something tiny—

Call it what it is. Not an analgesic agent, not a semi-synthetic, not a simple narcotic utilised in the medical field. It’s an opioid, two to eight times greater than that of morphine. Given to those dying, to help alleviate Cheyne-stokes breathing, to reduce pain before the end.

It binds to the opioid-receptions in the central nervous system.

He is no superior than those on the street. Begging for loose change to shoot up and placate the cold.

2AM. The phone connection is faint. Do you feel like killing yourself? Is the noose already tied, is the rope choking you? Do you need to breathe? Do you even want to? He wonders what it would be like, to call into those bullshit hotlines, to hear the detached, sharp-bladed sympathy of some stranger.

Instead, when the phone picks up, the blaring beep of a dial dissipating, he hears you instead.

“You know how it’s believed that Artemis killed Orion?” He starts. He cannot begin with hi, I’m scared of the dilaudid burning through my veins. Do you still love me? (Presumptuous of him to believe you loved him in the first place, he certainly wouldn’t.)

He doesn’t let you answer. Maybe he’s scared, or maybe he can try and satiate your concern by fact-dumping so extensively that you automatically revert back to oh yeah, boy genius is talking again. “Well— there’s this other interpretation, that she… y’know didn’t. Instead, they were hunting companions, and it was because of the animals he slaughtered on Crete, that Gaia. Mother ea— yeah, you know who I’m referencing. Okay.”

Even at his worst, he is conveniently a social disaster. They could poke holes in his brain, drag the sharp edge of a blade through the tissue lining of his stomach, and his mouth would still find a way to run:

‘You’re missing major arteries here, c’mon — I know you can push harder than that. Aim for my descending aorta, that will do the job correctly.’

It would be funny if he wasn’t the biggest screw up to ever exist. Social ineptitude has never looked worse.

“Anyway, um… so— disturbed by the blood-bath, and feeling repentant — she summoned this scorpion. Humans are no match for the gods, obviously. So any creation with intent will—“ he sighs, finding new ways to hate himself. “Basically he died. Yeah— dead. To… uh, sum it up?”

“And what?” Oh, there you are. He’s surprised you’re listening, that you didn’t hang up the moment his morbid rambling begun. He’s always surprised, surprised that you listen, that you stay, even when you shouldn’t. It would be romantic, if he wasn’t so flawed in believing you could never want someone like him.

“Well— Artemis gathered up the remnants of Orion and placed them in the sky. Yknow,… hence the constellation.”

There’s shuffling — a moment of uneasy silence. “Spencer—“

He keeps going. Shock-horror. “I’m not sure science would agree with that myth. It certainly counters the Big Bang theory. And the whole schtick regarding— look… it doesn’t,… it doesn’t hold any truth, of course. The gods aren’t real,” (if they are, they must spit at the flawed creation of him), “I just— it was on the forefront of my mind. Made me think of you.”

It’s innocent. If you don’t take into account the stored vials he keeps stashed in his cabinet sink. If you pretend you’re just two people, two old, weary friends, who are insomniac and restless. Then again, where Spencer is concerned, everything is innocent. He’ll bare the weight of existence with no expectation of a return favour. So willing to give give give. Always taken for granted. Tossed to the sidelines. You’ve watched the team ignore his plans, call rain check after rain check, incessant excuses for something so diminutive. Even now, they can’t see what’s right in front of them. The blunt of the truth.

The aftermath of the Hankel case.

“Bad night?” You ask. Like you don’t feel it in your ribs.

He sighs, head spilling back against the wall. Throat bared, it would be so easy for hands to wrap around the unmarred skin, to put him down. “Aren’t they all?”

You’ve both been trained to pinpoint human behaviour. Discern threat from over exaggeration. You don’t hesitate, he knows you don’t— he’s seen you behind the weight of a gun. Dominant hand curved around the grip, aligning the front and rear sight. Firing pin striking the primer of the cartridge, no recoil— he’s watched you no more than blink when the bullet penetrates.

He always anticipates a flinch that never comes.

Sometimes, he has this dream, where he’s got the same Hornady branded bullet, lodged through his chest. Sometimes he wakes up and still believes he’s bleeding out.

He can hear your keys, the clattering that fades into the grating, confirmative slam of a door. You’re out of the apartment complex, and what? He’s too busy thinking about some warped manifestation of his subconscious?

Will he ever live outside of his mind?

The call doesn’t end (5 dragging minutes of heavy breathing and awkward silence), until you’re standing right here, flesh and bone, in his kitchen.

He’s making himself small again. Sat against cold tile, he shields his face from view. As if that alone will incrimate him. He knows you know. And it’s scary; to be so raw in the face of someone you love.

When you drop to your knees, it feels like tending to a wounded animal.

“You didn’t need to come,” he mutters, obstinate.

“So what?” You brush it off, ever the hero. Spencer thinks they should marbleise you in the Vatican. “I still did.”

You came. You called. Spencer fucking hates that cliche. Except, no.. no he doesn’t. Sometimes, he wants to make himself sicker, just so you have reason to touch him.

Reaching up, he feels your calloused palm, the way it cups his jaw, coaxing his face to lift. He thinks, knows, you’re disturbed by the sight. Red-rimmed eyes, and waxen features. Skinnier, hollow. If he is Leander, then he prays you don’t suffer the same fate as Hero.

‘Geniuses are never happy,’ they told him as a child. Detailing the cyanide found in Viktor Meyer’s stomach, Wallace Carother’s affinity for Potassium Cyanide. Hans Berger, Valero Legasov, Alan Turning. Some things hurt more than can be described.

Is it really so startling that he turned out the same? When that’s all he’s ever known?

Spencer stares. He tries to look through you, but it doesn’t work. Not when you’re warm, and real, and if the come down is configuring you into reality, and you’re not really here, then so be it. He’ll take what he can get. “You’ll find Dilaudid in my bathroom. Left turn from the hallway. I suggest you call 911. Report drug possession. They’ll take it more seriously if you say my name, emphasise the doctor in the title.”

“No.”

“Yes—“ indignantly, he huffs, “Yes. You will. Otherwise you’re guilty by association. The FBI will fire you, take away your credentials. You’ll be ruined.”

“That’s if they find out.”

He can’t comprehend why you’re covering for him. There’s decency, empathy, general human kindness, and then there’s this. “You’re supposed to be an upholder of the law.”

“Pft,” you scoff, brush it off. “Yknow, in Alabama, you can’t play cards on a Sunday. Alaska, no moose on sidewalks. There’s also a ban on wearing masks in Georgia. California has—“

“I get your point.” He cuts off, “Well— no, I actually don’t. Considering they’re dumb laws that waste time. Drug paraphernalia, in contrast, is not.”

“Even high, you’re a stickler. Guess old habits die hard?” you push up, and he chases your touch. “C’mon, golden boy. You’re getting a cold shower and some water. Gonna flush that shit out of you the old fashioned way.”

“I wasn’t aware there was a modern alternative…”

He doesn’t let you see him naked. Partially because, it’s his body. This vessel that feels so alienated from the better part of him. He’s never let someone undress him before, see behind the meticulous layers. But, mostly.. well, he has a firm belief that the first time you take off his clothes, it will be in better circumstances. If that ever transpires.

You’d probably think him deranged: hi, i’m saving myself for you, because any touch that isn’t yours makes me sick.

He’d rather rot alone than string someone along who could never fill the void of you.

The shower is methodical. Skin recoiling from the harsh rivulets of water. 3 minutes spent standing there, staring outwards not in. Complete disregard for the mirror, he’s all soft features and freshly-washed pyjamas when he pads into the bedroom. Corduroy pants, thermal-wear socks, some dumb science print embellished onto the front of his shirt. (‘Never trust an atom, they MAKE UP everything’ — yeah, he hates himself.)

You don’t talk. Not until he’s consumed his body weight in water. He fights off the urge to warn you about the dilution of sodium content in blood. Hyponatremia. Fatal, with a likelihood of seizuring and long-flight comatose. You’d probably just laugh at him, considering it was two glasses, a litre at best.

He’ll use his intellect to hurt. And you’ll counter him with little regard.

Even at his ugliest, you still stay.

“I’m fine,” he protests— hating the way you look at him when he’s so raw.

It’s that gaze. That same sinking, pity-warped gaze he received when he talked about his mom, about the kids at school. Adolescent meat-heads who pushed him into lockers, and beat him between class. Its— suffocating sympathy that he no longer has room for.

“No you aren’t,” this might be the worst you’ve ever seen him.

Would you have known? If he didn’t make the call? Cassandra complex. Disambiguating. A psychological phenomenon where an accurate prediction of a crisis is dismissed. Silent concern, the intuitive awareness that he never recovered, it was only going to lead to this—

Oh fuck it. You knew. The entire team did. You’re just the only one who cared enough to help.

You’re not like the rest of them. Maybe they can blanket suspicion, play pretend, refuse to get their hands dirty. But, there’s a reason you’re better. You don’t sugar-coat reality. You act. You react.

He’ll see your name on a wall one day. An award adorning your efforts.

“You’re exhausted, lie down.”

Spencer fights the urge to scowl. Since when were you in charge? Admittedly, he knows the answer to that: since you spitballed into his apartment, better yet, since you spitballed into his life. So, like the good, propitiated loser he is, he complies. Shock horror…

“What are you gonna do? Tuck me in?”

“You wish.” Instead, you force your way onto the right side of the mattress. “Get comfy, you’ve got your own, free of charge, narcotics anonymous sponsor tonight.”

“You’re not great at the whole ‘tough love’ thing.”

“Then call someone else next time.”

Vulnerability feels like being ripped open at the seams. Like some botched Pygmalion creation — stitched wrong, still breathing. He wants to fall asleep, to just… fade into himself. But— you have this uncanny, accursed ability to make him honest.

You, draped over his bed, does little to appease the sickness in his mind.

“I never asked for this,” he starts, “I didn’t— I didn’t even want it. How is that fair? I never got to decide, I wasn’t even given the anatomy to choose. Now—“

The words rip free like Prometheus’ daily punishment: inevitable, agonizing.

He laughs. Cold. Something ugly that doesn’t belong to him. “Now, if I’m not thinking about my next hit, I’m thinking about how you see me. How the team must see me. It’s— it’s the disappointment. I just— I don’t know why you stay.”

It’s all so tentative. The moments before, when you extend your hand, run it across the curvature of his jaw. All it takes is the touch and he’s crashing into you. Like there is no feasible option but to submit to the basic human need of contact. Face pressed into your shoulder, he feels like dead-weight. Something unworthy of labour.

Stop pushing that boulder up the hill, Sisyphus. Let it fall. Let him fall.

His hand knots tighter in the fabric of your top. Like if he lets go, he’ll spiral into Tartarus itself.

Why? Why would you do this—

“You think I’m going to cut and run just because you’re inconvenient? Pft, i’m too stubborn for that. And, well…” there’s a sigh,… “I care about you too much. Alright? So be inconvenient. Fuck, call at 3AM. Call at 5AM. Make me drop everything and come over. I don’t care. I want to carry the burden. I want to carry your burden.”

His touch lingers near your lower back. Drawing soft halos there, faint and uneven. “I hate you,” comes out muttered, something muffled by skin.

“No you don’t.” you counter, immediately.

“No I don’t,” just like that, he breaks. Cease-fire. How could he ever hate you? The statement was deflective, at best. Some way to make you ache the way he aches. At least then it would be a level paying field.

“I hate who I am when I’m like this. I hate— I hate my mind. It’s not… it’s not accurate, the way people romanticise it. I can’t be what they all expect of me.”

You’re doing that thing. The one where you don’t respond. Where you just listen, without interjecting, without cutting through his incessant monologues.

Sometimes, he feels like he dreamed you up. Like you don’t even exist, a stowaway in his brain, something to re-mantle whenever he’s lonely. Real people aren’t this good — this good to him.

“I don’t get to make mistakes. I need to have the answers every single second of the day. I can’t be me. You’re the only one, how are you the only one who notices? I’ve tried so hard, I’ve been so good—“

He’s tangled into you now, tethered like Daedalus’ forgotten son trying to stitch his broken wings back together mid-fall. If he could, he’d crawl into you. Find somewhere warm to safely exist. Without hurt.

“This isn’t just, I’m not like this just because I need you. Please— please remember that. I miss you always, even when I’m sober. Even before— before everything. I’m not in some—“

“What?” you finally (mercifully) interject. “Some drug-infused decline? Where you‘ll lean on anyone that will give you the time of day?”

Spencer flinches — not because you’re wrong, but because you’ve drawn blood from a wound he didn’t know he still had.

He hates that you’ve distinguished him as some mischaracterised energy vampire. Like you could ever be nothing. Like you’re just the closest fix he can find beyond a chemical high. Designer drugs, manufactured in a lab, they say Heroin feels like a hug from God.

Until your body becomes gluttonous for a hit that never appeases.

You— you are not a hollow high. You are slow and real and catastrophic.

Oh, you’re dependable, a want that morphed into all-encompassing devotion over slow dragging time. “Yes, to the former. No— no, definitely no to the latter. You’re not just some emotional crutch to me. You’re, I don’t know, you’re just… everything.”

Spencer swallows, pulls back, feigning composure. “I should be able to do this alone,” he mutters, “Normal people can. I should be—”

“C’mon, Spence. You’re not a machine. You were never built for that.”

Another sharp laugh. It pierces— you can almost taste the blood this time.

“I’m so tired,” he says in defeat. “I’m so tired of trying to be someone worth saving.”

Pressing your forehead to his, you’re kind to not mention the tears. To just let them occur, free fall. “You don’t have to be anything,” you murmur into his hair. “You just have to be. That’s enough. That’s enough for me, and i’ve got you. Okay? I’ve got you. Always.”

“Will you stay with me?” He doesn’t mean tonight, you know that well enough. “Will you stay with me through it all?”

You’re aware of the burden it would imply, the jagged, ugly reality of withdrawal. The toll, sweat-soaked skin and cold fevers. Irrational begging, pleading for god, just one more fix. The way it would change him, change your untainted perspective of him. When you agree, it is not misguided.

You know what you’re signing up for.

“Yeah. I’ll stay. Through it all.”

If this is love, true unvarnished love, reciprocal and real, then he’s sorry he found you at a bad time. Give it, give me, a few months, he thinks, and i’ll spend the rest of my life giving you everything.

#criminal minds #spencer reid #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid angst #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x y/n #they’re so in love ur honour #they’re also traumatised #figures #criminal minds imagines #criminal minds fan fiction #bro idk i’m running out of tags

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wandasaura · 3 months ago

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LIGHTNING BOLT

summary — before there were the thunderbolts, there was a girl as fast as lightning in a small ohio town

warning(s) — platonic relationship, practically sisters, aroace!yelena, childhood friendship, kidnapping, child trafficking, mentions of the red room, red room typical violence/assaults/inhumane treatment, mention of mind control, mention of the blip, mention of endgame events, slight/potential thunderbolts spoilers, grief, trauma, alludes to depression/mental health struggle, reunion, fighting, hand-to-hand combat, russian dialogue, healing, jeff the landshark mentioned, natasha romanoff is not alive but she makes an appearance, friends to child soldiers to strangers to sisters, comfort, angst

authors note — happy birthday, @nameforthemain !! early (and not the straight fluff i promised) but alas the road led me astray on the journey. definitely needed to sleep, wrote this instead. not edited. not proofread. aura’s 2am yelena thoughts.

The elementary school playground has the fastest slide in Mount Vernon, that is a known fact amongst everyone who had grown up in the public school system. It’s yellow like a lightning bolt, or a yellow jacket, and you whirl down it like a twister every time you set your course.

Yelena hadn’t been your neighbor in preschool. Not when you’d been in Ms. Cindy’s class at the elementary school and had gotten to explore that yellow slide every day at morning and afternoon recess. But, she’d been your neighbor in Kindergarten and you made up for the lost time quickly.

It had taken three days for Yelena to realize that nothing she did could help her beat you. You had the fastest record in all of Mr. Jones’ class, let alone the fastest record on the block when summer came around and your friendly competitions carried on into the change of seasons.

When Yelena was six and you were seven, although she’d always felt like she was bigger than you, she joined a soccer team. They had practice behind the elementary school, and Natasha would walk you and Yelena there with her bike. Melina never came. You remember asking Yelena if that upset her, but at the time she’d only shrugged and said Natasha was watching from up high with the forest stars. You remember she named that soccer team the thunderbolts. A persistent little body on the field when she wasn’t at your side babbling on the sidelines; probably disappointing Natasha who was always drilling the rules of the game into her head on the walk to the practice fields.

She was. Natasha always was. Sometimes, she walked you to the playground even when your parents said you could make the journey alone, trusting fully in their almost first-graders as summer came to an end. But, Natasha was a worrier. Yelena said as much when she slept over at your house.

It was October when you slept over at her house for the very first time. It was the weekend before Halloween. Last Halloween, she hadn’t come out to trick-or-treat with you, even though you saw that she had a costume because Melina brought it inside from the grocery store outside of a shopping bag. Natasha had answered the door and given you three handfuls of candy, not looking all too glum about missing out on the thrill of the hunt. You never did understand her as a kid.

Yelena was obsessed with My Little Pony. She knew the whole theme song by heart, and she always carried around a purple Twilight Sparkle figurine that your father said you couldn’t have. She let you hold it sometimes, but that day wasn’t one of them.

Natasha had shown you how to do a backbend in their backyard after school, and Yelena had cheered you on from her own upside down position near the swingset. You scraped your knee in the crash landing, and the tears had been an immediate response to follow. Natasha rushed your left side, leaving the right for Yelena to fill as she shrieked for Melina to come outside and tend to the blood bubbling over on your kneecap.

You’d eaten two bites of the dinner Melina made with a My Little Pony bandaid on your knee when Alexei corralled you and Yelena outside without even your shoes on. Your father was just getting home from work. He was pulling into the driveway, his tie already undone around his neck. You waved at him through the window of the backseat, eye bright, hopeful. He didn’t so much as smile in return.

You never saw him again. There’s been gunshots, screaming, blood. The sun was hot wherever Natasha landed the plane. You don’t know where that was. You’ve never known where that was. Yelena had held onto you the entire time. She wasn’t a brave kid. She hated the dark. She was scared of spiders even though she told Natasha she thought they were cool. She doesn’t like the wind at night because it sound like wolves. But she’d been brave in that moment. She’d been brave when she’d held onto you, Natasha holding onto her. She’d been brave when she raised her chin, mimicking Natasha when a man reached out for you, seeing you as the weakest link. She never let go of that Twilight Sparkle toy. Not until it fell from her unconscious hand and was abandoned on whatever island you’d landed at, but her bravery didn’t waver even though it had been tethered to such childhood innocence.

Yelena’s bravery hadn’t wavered from that day forward, even when yours had. Yelena never cowered in the face of discipline and structure. She never let the lashings of a cane unmake her entirely, or the assault of a guard strip her of her autonomy. You’d been together until you were eleven. It had been some cruel joke by Madam B. The first installment of their mind control experiments that eventually led to Yelena’s undoing. Not that you knew that. No, you hadn’t known how deep Dreykov’s claws had been into her mind until you were twenty-six and suddenly free of the same prisons.

Were you ever truly free through? One minute you’re walking away from Yelena on the battlefield, one last hug from Natasha the only reason you’d lingered amongst the debris for as long as you did, and the next thing you knew you were surrounded by things you didn’t know and people you weren’t familiar with, being told that Natasha Romanoff had sacrificed her life to bring yours back after five years being just… gone.

You’d been gone before. You’d been gone in your head, in Dreykov’s mind games and his serums. You’d been lost in the traumatic replaying of your assaults and your beatings. There’s been a three week period of clarity in the red room when Madam B had weaned the dosage of your mind control. You’d been near comatose in a psychotic break. Whimpering and muttering nonsense about a closed-quarter assault that had taken place seven years ago, but only resurfaced in your memory at the ‘reward’ of conscious thinking.

After the blip, it had felt impossible to carve a path for yourself with no lead. Yelena was in the wind until she suddenly wasn’t, on your radar after an altercation with New York’s own Katherine Bishop. Eleanor Bishop’s incarceration following a scuffle on the ice rink was the news that pulled you to New York at all, chasing the only ghost that remained from your past life.

Your father had lost his life in a collision not even a year after Melina and Alexei disappeared off the face of the earth with you; a collision he caused after having one too many drinks at the bar and then insisting on driving home himself. Not an abnormal routine even when you had been around to kiss goodnight. And your mother had killed herself shortly after your tenth anniversary, unable to bear the weight of your disappearance and lack of recovery.

Natasha was dead. Gone. Not even on this planet anymore if your sources proved accurate, not that you trusted anyone enough to ever fully know the truth of Natasha’s final chapter. You hadn’t wanted to accept that it hurt you when you did find out of her passing; that it ripped something apart in you, you held onto the image of Natasha Romanoff as a big sister in Ohio, even though mind control and chemical subjugation.

Yelena didn’t fare a much better lifestyle after Natasha’s death had broken her either. She threw herself into work with Valentina when she wasn’t tending to Natasha’s grave or going on walks with Fanny. You’d tailed her to Milan once, hidden in the shadows. You’d almost been disappointed in her for not noticing you until it dawned on you that it was a sign of healing. Somehow, Yelena had healed from the traumas of the red room enough to only look over her shoulder when she felt it necessary for survival.

That’s how you ended up face to face for the first time in nine years. You’d snuck into a New York City apartment. A high level pimp in an underground sex ring operation. It wasn’t the cleanest line of work. Your hands were still bloodied at the end of every day. But it gave you peace of mind to know that you were taking out the good guys while still utilizing your skills. Melina and Alexei had taken you away from your life with no consultation, and you refused to let it be in vain. You refused to lose your way any more in life than you already have.

Yelena had been watching you. Not just Yelena, but the entire ‘New Avengers’ team that you’d seen officially deemed on nationwide television. You weren’t blind to Valentina’s objective and manipulation. You’d seen her blubbering for what it truly was, a cover up, a way to save her own ass that she’d initially never even foreseen, but even if that wasn’t her goal, you’d nodded quietly from the sidelines as you watched Yelena play her game.

She’s a lot better at this hero thing then she ever was at soccer. You know Natasha would be proud. You know you’ve healed in some capacity that you can think about Natasha at all without crying.

“Chto ty zdes' delayesh'?” Yelena questions, her cheeks flushed, her hair slicked away from her face, giving you the perfect and clearest view of her eyes and the few hundred emotions racing through her stare. Hurt, confusion, hesitation. She’s blocking every punch you throw at her, but she’s not giving any back. She was a higher level then you when she was still beneath Dreykov’s thumb. You know that she could win this fight in four minutes if she wanted to. But she doesn’t want to, because you’re still you, and she’s still Yelena, and somewhere out there in the universe there’s little six year old girls skipping to the playground together, a solemn blue haired pre-teen leading their way.

When you don’t stop fighting, your target just minutes out from returning to his apartment, Yelena grabs your wrist, spinning you into her chest until her biceps lock around you protectively, keeping you still even when you flail like a deadly catch out of water. “Ty mozhesh' ostanovit'sya? YA ne khochu prichinyat' tebe bol'.” She seethes, and while Russian is neither of your mother tongues, not like it was Natasha’s, it feels like a piece of homecoming off of her lips. It’s been over two decades since you’d been just a little American fourth-grader with neglectful parents at the best. You hardly resonate with that girl anymore, but somehow you think it’s the only thing Yelena can see right now. “Stop it! Stop it.”

“Let go of me.” It’s been almost ten years since Natasha freed you from the confines of the Red Room with Yelena’s help, but neither of you have lost even a touch of the russian accent that Dreykov and Madam B drilled into you despite wanting perfect and seamless transitions between accents and dialects. It’s one of the many reasons you know, and have come to terms with the fact, that your entire life had been a rigged system from the time that you were seven-years-old and kidnapped from right beneath your parents noses. “L-Let go!” The feeling of Yelena’s arms around you is suffocating. It brings you right back to that last day in the Red Room before she’d advanced and you’d stayed behind at the same infuriating level, only kept around by Dreykov because of the experimental serum running through your veins.

It gets harder to keep the objective of your mission clear in your head the longer Yelena keeps you wrapped up in her embrace, reminding you of how much you’d missed her over the last five years. The blip had stolen half a decade from you, but it had been your own fear of rejection that had kept you away for another four.

“Tebe bol'she ne nuzhno borot'sya. My svobodny. Natalia osvobodila nas.” There’s a thickness in Yelena’s voice, an indication that Natasha is not an easy topic to hold, even though it’s been four years since the weight of her absence had reached Yelena. It will never get easier to live without her. To know that she sacrificed the idea of everything she deserved without even getting to have a taste of it at all before she died haunts you. It haunts you enough to let you believe that this is what she would want for you. It’s not. Natasha would be horrified to know that she’d plunged head first off a cliff and you’re still fighting, still adding red to your ledger when all she’d wanted for you and her and Yelena was to wipe it out entirely.

You were good kids once. It’s not your fault that the world was so cruel.

Your knees collapse, sobs shake your form, but Yelena does not let go of you for even a second. She sinks to the floor, holds you as you cry the way Clint had held her. It’s an intentionally restrictive position, one learned in the Red Room from handlers that go on to teach other handlers. Your wrists are grasped between her tight, unwavering hold. You can’t break free and claw at her wrist no matter how many different ways you move your knuckles. Your back is pinned to her chest, giving you the disadvantage to blindness. It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t have stood a chance anyway. You needed this.

She doesn’t even bristle when your target walks through the door. She shoots him with her stun gun, a single pulse to the chest, and he crumbles to the ground like a sheet of paper. The sight sobers you, reminds you of your purpose even if it doesn’t have to be just that anymore.

Yelena helps you to your feet, and the minute her eyes fall upon you without the constant punching and scratching, she’s back in Ohio like she never left.

“Hey, lightning bolt.” She smiles coyly, and your own lips quirk into an emotional smirk. It’s easy with Yelena. Everything is. It doesn’t matter how many years pass, there will never be another person like her by your side. She’s your best friend, your sister, your thunderbolt.

“That is still stupid nickname.” You mention, and Yelena scoffs, shaking her head. Her stubborn persistence has not faded, even when it had been unmade temporarily by chemical subjugation imparted on her (and you) by her own mother.

“No. What is stupid is that… thing on your shirt. What is that? Shark with legs? Ridiculous.” She narrows her eyes on your appearance, realizing that despite surrounding yourself with the same workload and guilt, you’d grown into a version of yourself that was alike the child she’d known once. You think there are glimpses of that blonde girl in her too, even if her hair is bleached, slicked back with grease.

Your lips pout, “It is a landshark. I have read all about him. He is better than that vest you had.”

“No, no. My vest was practical. So many pockets. I put so many things in those pockets, I tell you. Should never have left it to Natasha. You know, she is very bad at keeping track of things.” Yelena’s voice strains when she remembers that Natasha will never actively be bad at keeping track of things anymore. It’s been years, but it never gets any easier to remember.

“My mission.” It dawns on you that this is a fork in the road. A clear split between what you’ve always known, and what you can remember dreaming about before you were anyone important. Your eyes trail back to the predator on the floor. You’d justified this job for four years because it was doing more good than just sitting around, and you feared letting your skills get rusty, but it wasn’t what you wanted. Not anymore.

“Come with me.” Yelena pleads, and you know that it’s the first time you’d heard her say anything like it since the last time you’d visited that yellow slide in Ohio. She’d begged to know the trick to going faster. You told her that she has to swing herself down from the bar, because there never was any secret keeping with Yelena. Not when you asked the right questions at least. “Come back to the tower. You can meet Fanny.”

“Fanny?” Your eyes crease, because you’d followed Yelena for years, but the name of the dog had never sparked your curiosity.

“Fanny Longbottom. She is named after Natasha.” Yelena nods before her face sobers, and you know that time has passed just by that level of composure and self awareness. You don’t possess it. She’s paced the path to recovery after Dreykov, but you still linger by the entrance, terrified of what awaits you when you finally accept that it’s all over and done with. You don’t know how something like that can just end and be over. It will never leave you, just like it’s never left Yelena. “You do not have to be alone. You are not alone. I am here with you. And, and I do not believe in Gods, or, or Jesus, but I believe that Natasha can see us. I have to believe that, because… because she is my sister, and if I do not believe that she is still here, then… then I do not know what to do anymore. But, we can figure it out together. Because Natasha did. And we can do anything she does, just not as good. It is infuriating.”

“I do not know how to start over.” You sniffle, stealing one last glance at the man on the floor before you decide that it’s worth it to see where freedom leads with Yelena.

“You do it with one step forward at a time.”

Chto ty zdes' delayesh' — What are you doing here?

Ty mozhesh' ostanovit'sya? YA ne khochu prichinyat' tebe bol‘ — Would you stop? I do not want to hurt you.

Tebe bol'she ne nuzhno borot'sya. My svobodny. Natasha osvobodila nas. — You don’t have to fight anymore. We are free. Natasha freed us.

#yelena belova #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x reader #yelena belova x reader #yelena belova x you #yelena belova fluff #yelena belova comfort #yelena belova angst #yelena belova hurt/comfort #yelena belova fic #yelena belova oneshot #thunderbolts

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folklovrr · 9 months ago

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nature feels spencer reid

| spencer reid x fem!reader

| hello! my first post on tumblr. inspired by frank oceans song nature feels. but also like… kind of not. idunno!! minors please dni (18+)

| content warning: religious references, munch!spencer (😁) worship?!, making out, alludes to pinv.

Spencer Reid was an endlessly curious man. It generally didn’t matter what the subject was, he already knew about, and could be classified as an expert in the field.

He like to think of himself as a specialist in all things mathematics, chemistry, engineering, and you. At times like these, that last one became more of a weakness than a strength.

Sitting on the plane home, returning from an exhausting case, hearing the bass line from Derek’s headphones and the muffled sounds of Rossi and Hotch discussing something that could be anywhere from the case to his latest interaction with wife number nth, Spencer Reid couldn’t stop thinking about sleeping with you. You hid in the buzz of the engine, the smell of coffee leaking out of the jet’s small kitchen, taking him to the four walls of your shared apartment, where the smell was omnipresent.

Many people might compare you to a warm summers day, but he found that misrepresentative. You were much more comparable to a snowy christmas evening. It’s the time of year that everyone looks forward to, cookies and cakes and freshly cooked meals, things that were constantly filling your kitchen, love leaking from their extra chocolate chips. All year round, when christmas music plays, people are filled with joy and cheer, and he thinks this phenomenon is not unlike to that of your sounds, and when his memory so unhelpfully brings those to the forefront of his mind, he is filled with that same joy.

The familiar bump of the jets landing cut this train of thought, and as the team filed back to quantico, Spencer had never been more grateful for two things:

1. the fbi’s access to efficient travel - he thinks that if he was forced to sit in the metro waiting, the personification of himeros that was sitting eagerly in his heart ( and other parts of him that he was careful not to pay attention to at this time ) would grab him by the shoulders and force him under the need that he was drowning in.

2. the invention of internet and online communication - the influx of texts from that had ceased to deliver while he was in the sky all flooded in at once, giving him the idea that this missing business was not one sided.

| spence, hope you’re ok :( penny told me that case was tough. cant wait to see you

| I have missed you so much. cant stop thinking about you. text me when you land, love.

| come find me when you get home, doctor ;) i have a surprise for you!

It was in moments like these, when people showed even the slightest romantic fondness for him, that he was taken back to his bumbling college experiences with sex. A word that people danced around, but he researched thoroughly. Not for perverse reasons, as this form of interest in the female anatomy would hit him a bit later in life, but pure curiosity. Why did people enjoy? He could understand what the appeal was for men, but what made the experience enjoyable for the other sex?

These questions still plagued him to this day, even after extensive practical elements were added to his studies, with you being a very supportive test subject. Spencer explored what it was like to feel, and to find meaning through this thing that had become so, even though it sounds silly to say, sexualised in media, and to move past the physical elements (but he still appreciated those, greatly) and to find what philosophers spent eons theorising over, which the two of you seemed to have found so easily. Connection.

In the many nights he had spent tangled in your embrace, Spencer mused thoughts of the origins of humans, and as the quiet hymns of the night sung, he worshipped Apollo for having mercy on the split humans and reconstituting their forms, allowing them to find this physical bond, and their souls other half.

As the elevator at quantico rose to the BAU’s floor, the team had a quiet understanding amongst them that small talk was not necessary, and that conversations of weekend plans were trivial in comparison to the things the victims had been through.

After finishing up the, for lack of better words, ginormous pile of paperwork, Spencer was finally free to follow the light of your twin flame home. As he sits in the metro though, he is brought back to the disdain he holds for the public transportation system, and the distain for every passenger that gets of on a stop before his, slowing his journey. He wishes that access to the fbi’s vehicles was available off the clock, for boyfriends whose need for their girlfriends was eating them alive. How inconsiderate of them.

When the autonomic voice announced the station where you resided, so close yet so far, Spencer jumped out of his seat, himeros once again took control of his body, willing his muscles all the way home.

As the loved in door to your home creaked open, Spencer was guided by the candlelight and warm lamps through to the back garden, where the leaves and flowers of the cherry trees spread through the garden fall gracefully and surround a figure, who is gently swing back and forth on a tree swing. Spencer sees you, and wonders what if this is what Adam thought when he first saw Eve, and if he too felt so compelled to caress the slopes of her neck and pray at her divine altar.

The leaves under Spencer’s converse crunched, and alerted you to his presence. As you turned around, there was barely a split second before Spencer was on you, burrowing his face in the crook of your neck with his arms planted firmly around your waist.

“hi spence”, you whispered quietly into his hair, the glasses on the bridge of his nose digging into the skin of your neck. he began to plant soft kisses there, to exhausted to formulate a response. You nudged his chin with your shoulder, and his lips landed softly on yours, gentle kisses explaining things that words do no justice to.

As the night air became more humid around you, and fireflies surrounded the two of you, Spencer’s warm hands pushed the ankle length hem of your spring dress up your thighs, closer to your core. He kisses a pathway up your calf, up your thigh, towards the need in your centre, and ponders if god had made you for him.

Spencer thinks that he is fairly devoted to a number of things, like his work, or his academia, but the way he eats you out is oh so blasphemous. He circles and flicks and plunges just right, and as the cherry flowers fall in his hair, he looks like a debauched angel, with a sole mission of making you come on his tongue. he is devoted to it, and it’s his mission.

The way that you moan his name and pulse around his fingers turns him on more than things that are seen as generally sexually conductive for the male gender, and as you pull his roots and tighten your thighs around his head, he feels the satisfaction of your pleasure travel all the way to his climax, without being touched. Truly sinful Spencer Reid, truly Sinful.

As his mouth separates from your divinity, he thinks that the string of saliva that connects you is symbolic of every single thing that connects your physical elements to the emotional unison that you share. As the dirt digs into Spencer’s knees, and the thighs around his head loosen with satisfaction, He can’t help but compare you to the delicate cherry blossoms, and he sees your kindness and ineffable gentleness bloom around the garden.

You stand, and pull Spencer to his feet, and as he pushes you against the bark of the cherry tree, ready to connect again, just as Apollo and Adam and Eve and whoever else he had to thank for this intended, he can’t wait to feel your nature, to make love.

a/n thank you for reading!!! i know it’s rough, but yet i persevered and finished it. yay me 😛.

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x you #criminal minds

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mosswiind · 8 months ago

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neve gallus isn't actually a mean lady

Heavy spoilers ahead, tread carefully if you do not want to see spoilers for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, specifically related to Neve Gallus and Lucanis Dellamorte.

Neve Gallus isn’t actually a mean lady.

Since the release of the game, it has become clear that most people have chosen to save Treviso, under the logic that there is no army or meaningful defense against a dragon. This is a fair decision. What is unfair is choosing Treviso because “Minrathous should be able to defend itself against a dragon.”

The dragon attack was never the main event with Minrathous.

It was always a Venatori takeover. This isn’t even metagaming, this is literally text presented when Neve and Lucanis are making their cases for their respective cities.

If you save Minrathous, Treviso is blighted. The Crows lose a number of key people. The market is a field hospital full of civilians with the blight. The fallout is awful. There are many, many casualties on your conscience.

If you save Treviso, Minrathous does not fall. The city is not top-down blighted. Infrastructure still functions in some places.

However, the Shadow Dragons are demolished, the sitting Archon is killed, and the well-established large Venatori presence results in hundreds of literally visible civilian corpses. There are cartloads of bodies on every corner. There are gallows erected in every neighbourhood. The number of slaver cages grows exponentially. The Viper, one of the primary symbols of hope in Dock Town, is blighted.

There is blood everywhere. Blood that is on your hands for making the choice to save Treviso.

The point of this decision is that there is no good or obvious option. Both options are devastating, especially for the companions impacted, who are both hometown heroes. Both are understandably very upset that the team they are a part of prioritized the other.

Most people choose to save Treviso. Most people have only seen Neve upset.

Neve is, understandably, a very guarded person. She has been a solo private investigator for most of her career. She lives alone in her little Dock Town apartment. She has contacts, sure, and some friends, but due to her line of work, connections are a liability that cannot go deeper than professionalism without putting people in harm’s way.

She has always, and will always, put Dock Town first, a priority that does not change based on Rook’s relationship to her. She does this because the Templar order, the Magisterium, and infrastructure of Minrathous have made it abundantly clear that they do not care about her impoverished hometown, or any of the people in it.

She is upset with you because you followed the same logical flow chart as all of the other people who should have helped.

I would be fucked up about it, too.

And after all of that, Neve is still open to repairing the relationship and tentatively exploring a romance with Rook.

Lucanis, on the other hand, is gregarious, charming, funny, and while he is a wildly different character to Zevran, for many people he seems to scratch a similar itch - a hot Antivan man who wants to hang out with you. He has strong feelings about making sure everyone is fed and cared for. He is a supportive friend. He looks out for the other members of the team. He is an objectively good man, and makes it obvious, especially if you already dig his vibe.

But, and this is a huge but, in the wake of a Minrathous prioritization, Lucanis disappears for the same amount of time.

His return is triggered by the same quest.

His comments about not being chosen are the same amount of venomous and sad.

He believes he is unable to count on Rook and the team until a similar point in the story. The second he arrives back in the Lighthouse, it becomes clear that he is no longer open to even considering a romance with Rook.

Neve feels like she is the only person looking out for the Minrathous underclasses, because based on the text, that is almost true. There are the Shadows (her affiliates), and the Threads (her contacts), and one Templar who isn’t in the Shadows (shoutout to Templar Rana). It is made clear by the text.

If you choose to support the poor and enslaved population of Dock Town, Neve still has to do damage control, just like Lucanis does. She checks in with unhoused civilians and provides instructions for those who are unsafe to connect with the Shadows.

A Neve who is not hardened by Rook’s calls is kind, sweet. She goes on a mission to track down the unpublished sequel to Bellara’s favourite serial. She then successfully tracks it down, and delivers it, complete with the author’s artistic renderings of several characters. She helps Taash with their gender identity, supporting them and providing them with other safe people to talk to about it. She and Davrin make plans to set up shop together, to solve more problems. She is brusque but professional about Emmrich’s necromancy, but also gives Manfred a nickname. She regularly gets chastised by Davrin for giving Assan too many treats.

She’s self-proclaimedly not a lover of animals besides cats, but if you pet a cat while on her personal quests, she approves. She also explains that she probably would love animals more, but if they’re “larger than a cat, they’re probably demonic.”

If romanced, Neve expresses genuine fear that Rook will get hurt. She is concerned for her heart, but not because she doesn’t love Rook. She is not afraid that Rook will leave her. She is afraid that proximity to her will get Rook killed.

Neve is, contrary to apparently popular belief, a nice fucking lady.

All of this is to say that there is an obvious, glaring difference between Neve and Lucanis, and I don’t know if you can play spot-the-difference between them, but Neve is a brown woman, and Lucanis is a white/white-adjacent man. It probably isn’t conscious on most peoples’ parts, but the Dragon Age fandom has a long history of deprioritizing women, especially women of colour, in their cast lineups. Off the top of my head, see Vivienne, Isabela, and Josephine.

I have seen Neve called a bitch, a whiner, a baby, an asshole, for being justifiably upset that her city is in the exact state she told y’all it would be, in favour of “the obvious choice,” Treviso.

The response from the community has been “but obviously Minrathous could defend against a dragon.”

Yes! You’re right! It can! As I said earlier! But not quickly or effectively enough to prevent any public emergency level confusion that can be taken advantage of! Which was literally always the point!

You can pick Treviso for whatever reason you like. Being a Crow, loving Teia and Viago, loving the Venice vacation vibe, wanting the cuntiest casual clothing, preferring Lucanis. I don’t actually care what you do.

But please, please, please, shut the entire fuck up about Neve being the only complainer in the party.

She’s just doing what she’s always done. She’s the hero Dock Town has, will always have, and the hero Dock Town deserves.

#veilguard #datv #datv spoilers #neve gallus #neve gallus is a nice lady actually #dragon age lucanis #lucanis dellamorte #dragon age neve #mossthoughts

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sourcherrybites · 4 months ago

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Till time breaks apart. (1 out of 2, probably)

Character: Dick Grayson x Tamaranian! Fem! reader

Submission by @mourakitana "Please do if you are Starfire's sister and you love Dick very much and he is her ex, (if on one of the missions Dick and y/n's son come from the future)"

Disclaimers: Sorry for the sloppy ending. I imagine Reader being black (like Kory). Sweariing. Probably two chapters cuz I want to explore this reader more. DICK IS ROMANI RAAAAGHHH!!!!!!! (This is not relevant to the story but yes)

a/n: Chapter one of legally binding affairs is almost done, babes. I post this, and maybe in one or two days I'll post the chapter one.

Word count: 1,179

Masterlist

You were never quite like your sisters (also not planned, ijbol). Of course, being the youngest meant you had traits of both of them. Komand'r had taught you her ambition and Koriand'r her curious nature, but there was also something really weird about you. You were just too quiet. You lived in your own world, unbothered by your older sisters' doings, but you still had some special spark.

But let's talk about your time on Earth, that's what matters, after all.

Earth was fascinating, in your eyes, those childish, big and curious eyes, the soft warmth of the sun, the fields of grass, the melodic sounds of the countryside your new earth friends sometimes took you and your sister to, the stupid romance movies you saw to which everyone fell asleep to halfway, but not you, you saw them from beginning to the last credit rolling in the big screen of the titans' tower... and you were also fascinated by the smiley dark-haired boy who your sister fell for, but human movies and books had told you humans only loved one person for all their life (you were so young that you just rolled with it, slowly losing the free nature of Tamaran to the human culture) so you weren't even in the picture in your head.

So you kept the smiley face, teased and laughed as Koriand'r told you about her 'boyfriend', never telling her how much you wanted to be in her place, because he was just a boy and Earth had a lot of boys, and Kory was your sister, and you loved each other more than either of you would love anyone else, your love for Dick would never overcome your love for your sister. But Kory knew, and it pained her so much to see her little sister suffer for something normal in their homeland to human taboos.

As your friends turned into adults, you slowly drifted away from the superhero lifestyle, focusing on your studies of human art and music, though you still helped the Titans from time to time. You explored your curiosity with the help of your outworld gaze and became a renowned historian half the time and a bar singer the other half, living away from the public spotlight.

It was during one of those friendly reunions, the ones in which you just talked about your lives and catched up, at Wally's place that it was brought up a weird ancient dungeon found on the outskirts of Central City by a construction group.

"That's your Major, right?" He had inquired. "Actually, it isn't; my major is in art., so I don't think I'd be of much help," You chuckled nervously, sipping on your drink.

"Out of all of us, you are the one who understands this the most, Sweetcheeks." Garfield ruffled your hair. "Touch me again and I'm burning off your hand." You raised your fist before letting out a soft laugh and looking at your sister, who had placed her warm hand on your shoulder, making you sigh. "But...I guess I can give it a look." You reluctantly gave in, making the team cheer and clap and earning you a playful nudge from Grayson, whom you had, in fact, not forgotten in all these years, not even after his breakup with Kory.

The next morning you had all gotten into a jeep and driven over the said location, a drive during which Dick had sat incredibly and uncomfortably close to you, and during which his hand seemed hesitant to touch yours, you hated it, in every single one of your partners.

Luckily, your Stanford ID came in handy to allow you and the crew in the cave once you arrived. It was a big space, with long, thick pillars made of dark stone and a big platform right at the end, pretty similar to every ritual room you had seen during your college years. It is left unsaid that you warned the group not to touch anything.

It wasn't Something you'd recognise, even when you pulled out your phone to check for similar constructions on your university's database you found absolutely nothing. The architecture and the engravings on the walls weren't Native American, not pre-hispanic, not even Nordic or anything that made sense in this specific zone!

"Any ideas in that big brain of yours?" Dick said from behind you, making you squeak and jump in surprise. "Don't- do that, Grayson." You huffed, making him chuckle as you attempted to focus back on the room ━That's when Garfield, ever so smart, shouted, 'Check this out!' While pointing at a weird artefact that looked spot on like an hourglass.

"Looks like an hourglass," Wally murmured.

"No fucking shit, Sherlock." You huffed as you bent over to look at it closely. It was made of pure stone, and the crystal looked pretty much clean, but the thing that caught your attention was not only the weird appearance of the sand, like small stardust that produced UV light just by existing.

"There's something written on the edges, but I don't know what it means..." you mumbled, looking back at the group, accidentally meeting Dick's eyes, the same pair of sapphire eyes that had haunted your life since the first time you saw them. "Sorry. As I said, my major is not in ancient caves." You smiled sheepishly before the sound of the stone turning snapped your head right back to the hourglass.

The scripture on the hourglass and the walls started glowing far too brightly, cycling through every colour under the visible spectrum. The hourglass started spinning, gaining speed with each passing second.

"Out. Out. Out, " Dick grabbed your wrist; the rest of the group followed and quickly began sprinting away from the cave as the time seemed to slow down. Why was he touching you? Why did he look so concerned? Why did your heart flutter and your stomach spin? And why did you hear a sound similar to an arrow's whistle approaching you?

And then there was pain... Like a stab on your heart.

It was hot... Like you were in a sauna for far too long

And then there was light... Flashes of scenes that seemed oddly familiar.

And then silence and quietness... Before you felt the familiar warmth of your sister's hands pressing down on your chest over and over, you turned your head slowly to look at the man next to you, his hand still tightly wrapped around your wrist and a young, black-haired teenage girl doing chest compressions on him as well until he coughed out and gasped to which the girl threw one of her arms around Dick, hugging him tightly and the other went to grab your arm.

Between the blurred sounds of the chaos and the paramedics rushing into the space, you managed to make out.

"I thought I had lost you and mom..."

Mom? Mom!? This was worse than any low-budget drama you had ever seen. You had a daughter with Dick Grayson! And the little shit looked just like her father.

©sourcherrybites 2025

#dc batfam #dc nightwing #dc dick grayson #dick grayson x reader #dick grayson #dick grayson x you #dick grayson imagine #batfam x reader #batfam #sour cherry thoughts #I did't say it on sunday but fuck you gayle rubin

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rafayelswifeyy · 3 days ago

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To you who deserves more [LADS x transgressed Y/N]

LONG FIC WITH MULTIPLE CHAPTERS NOT A ONESHOT

word count :9k+

summary:

Y/N is an astronaut—disciplined, brilliant, and lonely. Her only escape from the crushing silence of space is Love and Deepspace, a sci-fi romance game she plays obsessively, drawn to the characters she can never touch and the choices she can never undo.

But when a mission near a black hole goes horribly wrong, she wakes up not in a hospital… but inside the game itself.

Trapped in a world she thought she only knew from behind a screen, Y/N faces a quiet question pulsing beneath every heartbeat: Was she sent here to follow the story—or change it?

To You Who Deserves More is a journey through time, memory, and love across realities. will y/n be their salvation or just another cringe payer who secondly embarrasses everyone?

story will have multiple ending for all the love interests. it will explore their dynamic and its gonna be a slow paced story so i can make it as accurate to the in-game lore...Just like the game the main story delves into building their relationship while side stories will contain moments they share together romantic and all and at the end she must chose her lover (ik cliche otome game ending) and ill write an ending for each of them

CHAPTER ONE — EDGE OF THE VOID

Flight Day 21

Mission: NOCTURNE-1

Commander: Y/N [REDACTED]

Vessel: Aetheris

She had been alone in deep space for three weeks. The silence wasn’t deafening — it was clinical, managed, expected. Inside Aetheris, everything was deliberate: filtered oxygen, thermal regulation, ion drive hum, and the constant blinking of data on curved displays. It wasn’t a void. It was a machine in motion.

Beyond the capsule walls, there was nothing but starlight and shadow.

“Lucis,” she said, voice steady in her helmet. “Confirm coordinates.”

The AI chimed softly, its tone emotionless.

“We remain on course. Gravitational drift is minimal. Estimated arrival at anomaly boundary: fourteen minutes.”

Y/N adjusted her harness and reviewed the holographic data. The anomaly — catalogued officially as GRV-X92 — didn’t exist to the human eye. But telescopic arrays back on Earth had captured enough indirect data: lensing, erratic wave readings, temperature fluctuations in the vacuum. A micro black hole, they said. Possibly a fossil of some ancient cosmic collapse.

Possibly something else.

The Aetheris was never meant for deep space. It was a repurposed lunar capsule — stripped down, pressure-sealed, outfitted with metaflux shielding. A last-minute decision by a desperate agency, and a volunteer who didn’t flinch.

Y/N had volunteered before they even finished explaining the risk.

No return guarantee.

No full support team.

No long-range rescue.

Still, she signed her name.

They told her she was the best candidate — physically resilient, mathematically brilliant, emotionally… stable. That part made her laugh…not the nice kind, no. It was an internal scoff.

“Was I really the best candidate or the easiest to dispose of..? ”

Now, she just stared. It didn't matter — Not anymore. After all, this is what she wanted…

Her gloved fingers hovered above the manual throttle. She wouldn’t need it — not unless things went wrong. Lucis controlled most functions now. Y/N was just the backup system. Flesh and thought, a biological override.

The metaflux drive hissed gently as it pulsed against the increasing gravitational pull. Designed to counteract space-time warping, it worked like a tuning fork — resonating just enough to push against distortion fields.

“Lucis, status on metaflux performance?”

“Shielding at 94%. Fluctuation within acceptable margins. No instability detected.”

Yet .

She stared through the forward viewplate.

The stars ahead shimmered unnaturally, as if pulled inward — subtly bent, light smeared like paint across invisible glass.

And then —

A shift.

Her skin prickled beneath her suit.

No alarms sounded, no warnings blinked, but something changed . A pressure — not on the hull, but inside her chest. Like air folding. Like breath stalling in reverse.

“Lucis,” she said slowly, “reconfirm gravity readings.”

“Confirming… Stand by.”

Her heart rate increased.

The stars no longer held still.

They were… moving. Orbiting something she couldn’t see.

Something small, dense, and impossibly silent.

And it was close.

Too close.

Shit.shit.shit.

She couldn't move as if bound to an unknown force. Her mind was screeching yet her muscles wouldn't bulge. She needed to move and contact the base. But she couldn't…

“Anomaly detected,” Lucis said at last. “Event horizon predicted within twelve kilometers. Gravitational slope rising. Initiating shield recalibration.”

The robotic voice cut through her chaos of thought.

Y/N didn’t answer.

She knew this wasn’t just gravitational physics anymore.

It felt wrong. Unnatural .

Like something had seen her before she’d seen it.

And it was waiting.

She knew she had to act. Quick.

The gravitational pull had become unnatural — not in strength, but in precision. Like it had selected her.

Inside Aetheris, Y/N’s pulse echoed in her ears louder than the ship’s failing systems. She could feel the metaflux field flickering, unstable beneath her boots, the energy rippling like water under stress.

“Lucis,” she said again, voice low and sharp. “Reroute power to shielding. Full metaflux saturation.”

No response.

“Lucis?”

Static.

The ship’s ambient lights dimmed to a deep amber. The temperature dropped. Her breath misted inside the helmet’s visor.

And beyond the reinforced cockpit glass — the black hole.

It was no longer distant.

It filled her view now, a void so perfectly still it swallowed contrast. No motion. No glimmer. Just a smooth sphere of nothingness, pulling the light around it into an infinite spiral. Stars bent, warped, disappeared. Entire constellations blinked out like dying embers.

But at the edge — the event horizon — there was a faint shimmer.

Not light. Not radiation.

Something… else.

She reached for manual controls. Her fingers trembled. Muscle memory guided her through systems she knew by heart, but none responded.

The metaflux indicator began to spike, the digital display cycling through errors:

[FEEDBACK LOOP DETECTED]

[FIELD COLLAPSE IMMINENT]

[UNKNOWN ENERGY SIGNATURE]

Her stomach dropped as Aetheris drifted forward without authorization, pulled by forces that laughed at human engineering. The ship moved like a lover's caress—gentle, inevitable, irresistible.

And then she felt it . Penetrating her very essence.

Time slowed. Not metaphorically — physically. Her hand moved through the air like syrup. Her own thoughts became echoes, doubling back on themselves. Her heartbeat slowed to thunderous percussion: one ... two ... each beat an eternity of anticipation.

Around her, the stars twisted. Light curved. Space folded inward. And from the edge of the black hole came a soft, radiant outline — like a ripple of glass catching firelight underwater.

“It’s beautiful.”

The thought didn’t feel like hers.

The ship crossed the threshold between known and unknowable.

She couldn’t scream.

Couldn’t blink.

Couldn’t breathe.

As Aetheris breached the event horizon, all light vanished, reality itself expired . Every display winked out. Every system surrendered. Even Lucis—her constant companion through weeks of cosmic solitude—abandoned her to face infinity alone.

And then—

Vibration.

Not physical — not through metal or air.

It was deeper. Internal. Molecular.

Y/N felt her body unraveling like a tapestry pulled apart thread by thread. Not torn— not yet at least —but systematically deconstructed by forces that operated beyond physical law.

She felt her memories ripple.

Her sister’s face.

Her childhood bedroom.

Her first telescope.

A kiss she regretted.

A conversation she’d never finished.

They cascaded through her consciousness, stacking and overlapping and distorting until past and present became indistinguishable.

She tried to speak — couldn’t.

Tried to move — couldn’t.

The cockpit around her wasn’t a cockpit anymore.

It was a tunnel of stars bent into spirals, rotating faster and faster, compressing into a single point of infinite brightness.

And at the center of that point, she saw — herself.

But not quite.

Not in her suit.

Not here.

A flicker — a body.

Another Y/N.

Somewhere else.

Her mind screamed as time fractured.

The metaflux field shattered like glass. Her nerves fired wildly. Her body, still intact, was being carried by the black hole — but her consciousness… her very self was being pulled somewhere else.

As if the universe had made space for her soul — in a place far from here.

“Please…” she tried to say.

But the light engulfed her like a lover's embrace.

And she was no longer falling through space —

She was sinking through herself… layers of her own existence.

The ship groaned — not in metal, but in memory. Alarms stopped. Readings vanished. Time blinked.

Y/N felt her body lurch back against the seat restraints as if something massive and unseen had reached inside the cockpit and yanked her soul forward. The metaflux field collapsed with a soundless whimper. Lucis was gone.

Then — nothing.

No stars.

No ship.

No self.

Death.

Every living creature has to go through this inevitable experience.

To Y/N, it didn’t feel violent — not like fire or impact or the cruel physics of decompression. It felt like slipping into a dream. An endless one. A heavy pull beneath the surface of her mind.

She wasn’t falling anymore.

She was submerging .

The void was endless and quiet, yet alive — pulsing like a slow heartbeat. Her heartbeat? She wasn’t sure.

All around her was darkness. Thicker than velvet, colder than space, older than stars

Her body — was it still with her? — floated like a feather in a vacuum, or perhaps sank like a stone in oil.

The abyss was consuming her, thread by thread . Her thoughts . Her feelings. Her self.

The only thing left was her subconscious, flickering like a dying light. A few loose words rose from the silence, echoing softly in the hollow of her skull.

What was I doing...?Who was I...?What was my purpose...?

They weren’t just questions — they were eulogies. Fragments .

She had always pushed forward, focused on physics, on precision. But here… the math was useless. Physics was just another failed religion .

Here, she was just a girl who had run out of places to hide.

“What did I even accomplish?”

“A degree in astrophysics ?” she scoffed.

“A stack of loans?”

“A career that wasn’t mine to begin with?”

It all sank with her.

She thought of her parents — how they shaped her life without ever asking what she wanted.

She thought of colleagues who smiled politely while handing her the weight of their own failures.

She thought of choices she never made.

“Pointless.”

It echoed louder this time — not in her voice, but in something colder.

But… something still burned.

Even while she was dying, something in her — fragile, stubborn — refused to extinguish.

It wasn’t hope. Not exactly.

It was resistance.

“Just one more chance…”

“This can’t be it.”

“Please… just let me live.”

HHer voice trembled through the void—not as sound, for sound required air and time and space, but as pure intention crystallized into prayer.

She wasn't begging.

She was demanding.

She was fighting with every quantum of her being.

I want to live.

I have to live.

I refuse to die like this.

Please...

The silence deepened, pressing into her like velvet stone. Her final breath of consciousness started to fade. The abyss welcomed her like an old lover.

Was it over?

Then — pain. agony .

A sickening, mind-splitting agony that didn’t come from flesh, but from her very sense of self.

Her identity felt like it was being crushed into dust and reassembled molecule by molecule, memory by memory.

She felt every atom in her vibrate and split..she felt it all and felt nothing at the same time.

It hurts.

And in the back of her mind she could hear a symphony…a song too familiar. She coudnt even cry as she was being shred into pieces.

What a mockery this universe is…

[play the love and deepspace theme song here]

Some long for longevity before fading to dust.

The opening melody from that ridiculous otome game drifted through her disintegrating mind—sweet, romantic, promising love she'd never experienced. How fucking pathetic was she? Dying alone in space while clinging to the soundtrack from a game about finding fictional boyfriends. The song had been her guilty pleasure during those endless nights in her cramped apartment, headphones on, pretending digital men could fill the aching void where human connection should have been.

Now, as her body was literally being flayed at the molecular level, each nerve ending shrieking as gravitational forces tore through her flesh like invisible razors, that same childish melody was all that kept her sanity tethered. She could feel her skin stretching, her bones elongating, every cell crying out in exquisite agony as physics violated her in ways that should have been impossible.

How small she was. How utterly insignificant. A grown woman whose last comfort was a fucking love song from a game designed for lonely girls who couldn't get real relationships. She had longed to live—God, how desperately, how humiliatingly she had longed—but here, being unmade thread by thread, she was less than the dust she'd soon become. She was the pathetic memory of dust, forgotten before she'd even finished dissolving.

The irony was exquisite in its cruelty. Here she was, quite literally fading to dust, while her dying brain played a song about longing for longevity from a game she'd been too ashamed to admit she owned.

Some long for eternal sleep And eulogy chanted by stars.

The romantic promise in those digital vocals—designed to make players feel special, chosen, loved—now felt like the universe's most vicious joke. Eternal sleep. What a beautiful fucking lie. There was no peace in this dissolution, no gentle drift into dreams. This was violation of the most intimate kind—her very atoms being ripped apart like a lover's caress turned sadistic, each particle screaming as gravitational forces molested her at the quantum level.

She was so pathetic that even her final moments were soundtracked by a game about finding love. The same love she'd never experienced, never deserved, never been worthy of. The stars weren't chanting her eulogy—they were laughing at the cosmic joke of her existence. A woman so desperate for connection she'd turned to fictional characters, now dying alone in the one place lonelier than her studio apartment.

Her body stretched like taffy, skin pulling taut over bones that groaned under impossible stress. The sensation was almost erotic in its intensity—if eroticism could feel like being flayed alive from the inside out. Every nerve was on fire, every synapse exploding with sensation that transcended pain and became something almost transcendent. She was being unmade with the tenderness of a lover and the brutality of a predator.

Into that serenity their lost time forever buried.

Serenity? She would have laughed if she still had vocal cords that weren't being stretched into quantum strings. The otome game's opening had promised serenity too—a peaceful world where handsome men fought over her attention, where she mattered, where someone might actually choose her. Instead, she was choking on the bitter taste of her own inadequacy as her memories shattered like glass against concrete.

She remembered the nights she'd played that stupid game, fingers moving across her phone screen in the dark, pretending the fictional characters' sweet words were meant for her. How desperate she'd been for even digital affection, for the illusion that someone—even someone who didn't exist—might find her worth loving.

Her spine was separating vertebra by vertebra, each disc popping like bubble wrap filled with liquid fire. The sensation crawled up her nervous system like insects under her skin, intimate and invasive and wrong. She was being anatomized by physics itself, dissected with the precision of a cosmic surgeon who took sadistic pleasure in his work.

All those lost years buried beneath her shame—the time she'd wasted playing games instead of living, hiding in her apartment instead of trying to connect with real people, masturbating to fictional romance because actual intimacy felt impossible for someone as fundamentally unlovable as her.

She rambled a thousand times And million miles Searching for her light.

Her consciousness thrashed like a dying animal as the game's melody continued its cruel serenade. She had rambled through existence all right—rambled through dating apps where no one swiped right, rambled through university hallways where she walked alone, rambled through family dinners where she was the disappointing daughter who chose stars over stability.

And what light had she been searching for? The blue glow of her phone screen at 3 AM, playing otome games and pretending pixel boyfriends could fill the howling emptiness inside her chest? The harsh fluorescent lights of the lab where she buried herself in work because it was easier than admitting she had no one to go home to?

Her ribcage was expanding now, each bone pulling away from the others with wet, organic sounds that somehow reached her ears despite the vacuum. It felt obscene, like being turned inside-out by a lover who wanted to see every hidden part of her—except this lover was the universe itself, and it found her lacking. The sensation was almost sexual in its violation, each pull and stretch sending waves of impossible feeling through nerve endings that shouldn't have been able to transmit sensation anymore.

She was being unwrapped like a gift nobody wanted, her body peeled apart layer by layer to reveal the pathetic core beneath—a woman so desperate for love she'd settled for the digital approximation of it.

Free from the rule of death now seem so dull.

Free from death? The otome game's ethereal vocals mocked her with their sweetness. Death would have been mercy—clean, final, dignified. This wasn't death; this was cosmic rape, a violation so intimate it reached into her quantum structure and fondled every particle of her being. She was trapped in perpetual dissolution, suspended in an eternal orgasm of destruction that built and built but never reached completion.

Her organs were shifting inside her torso like lovers rearranging themselves in bed, except each movement sent lightning through her nervous system. Her heart—still somehow beating—felt like it was being massaged by invisible hands that knew exactly where to press to make her gasp with sensation that transcended pain and became something almost pleasurable in its intensity.

She was so fucking pathetic. Even her death was boring—drawn out, solitary, soundtracked by a game she'd been too ashamed to play with the volume on. No dramatic last words, no noble sacrifice, just a lonely woman dissolving slowly while her brain played the musical equivalent of digital comfort food.

The dullness was the worst part. At least pain would have meant something. This was just... tedious. Like her entire life had been.

Time goes by but memories rewind. There she prays again, Back when things began.

The game's melody swelled as her past crashed through her dissolving mind like shards of glass through silk. She saw herself at seven, kneeling beside her little bed with its unicorn sheets, praying desperately: Please God, make Mommy and Daddy love me more than work. Please make them see me.

Now she was praying again, her consciousness fragmenting as her molecular structure came apart like wet tissue paper. Please don't let me disappear like this. Please don't let this be all I was—a pathetic woman who died alone listening to dating sim music.

Her muscles were liquefying, fiber by fiber unweaving themselves in a symphony of dissolution that felt like being slowly digested by something vast and patient. Each memory that surfaced was another small death: her first kiss that tasted like disappointment, her college graduation where she sat alone, her thirtieth birthday spent playing Love and Deepspace until 4 AM because at least fictional men never left her on read.

The worst part wasn't the physical destruction—it was remembering how she'd gotten here. How she'd volunteered for this mission not out of scientific curiosity or noble sacrifice, but because dying in space seemed preferable to continuing to exist as the human equivalent of background noise.

Even her prayers were pathetic. She wasn't asking to be saved—she was just begging not to be forgotten, not to have lived and died without ever mattering to anyone at all.

Where to go? Where they meet to grow old? Where no rivers would flow, No woods would grow, No life would never be ceased, Or somewhere they could start again, Where they would never be the same, Where it rains everyday, Fain they would stay.

Through the static of her disintegration, she clung to the otome game's promise like a drowning woman clutching driftwood. Some impossible place where she could hide from the cosmic joke of her existence—a world of perpetual gray rain where no one expected her to be anything other than what she was: forgettable, unlovable, alone.

Her nervous system was being rewired by gravitational forces, synapses firing in patterns that sent cascades of sensation through her dissolving form. It was like being caressed and flayed simultaneously, each nerve ending singing with impossible intensity. The violation was complete—she was being known in ways that felt more intimate than sex, more invasive than surgery.

Maybe in that barren nowhere, she wouldn't have to remember how it felt to open Love and Deepspace every night, fingers trembling as she selected which fictional boyfriend would pretend to care about her today. Maybe there, she could stop feeling the crushing weight of being a thirty-something woman whose most meaningful relationships existed on a phone screen.

But even that fantasy felt hollow. She was dissolving into quantum foam while thinking about a make-believe place from a song in a game designed for lonely girls who couldn't get real dates. How much more pathetic could she possibly be?

Her pelvis was separating now, hip bones pulling apart with wet sounds that somehow conveyed more intimacy than she'd ever experienced with another human being. The universe was undressing her down to her fundamental particles, and she was facing it alone except for the digital comfort of a mobile game's soundtrack.

Some forsake longevity Then fading to dust. Some fall for eternal sleep Their eulogies turn into gleaming stars.

The final verses twisted through her consciousness like a knife made of nostalgia and regret. The otome game's opening was ending, and with it, the last pathetic anchor to her sanity. She hadn't forsaken longevity—she had begged for it with the desperation of a woman who had never truly lived, who had spent thirty-three years existing on the periphery of her own life.

Her skull was coming apart now, the sutures separating with sounds like silk tearing. She could feel her brain matter redistributing, thoughts scattering like spilled marbles as the gray matter that contained all her shame and loneliness and desperate hunger for connection was pulled into cosmic taffy.

There would be no gleaming stars to mark her passing. No eulogy written in starlight. Just the silence that followed the end of a mobile game's opening theme, and the terrible knowledge that she was disappearing completely—not just her body, but every trace that she had ever existed at all.

The cruelest irony was that the song designed to make players feel special, chosen, worthy of love, had become the soundtrack to the death of a woman who had never been any of those things. She was dying to the musical equivalent of a digital hug, dissolving into nothingness while melodies played about finding connection in a universe that had deemed her unworthy of it.

I don't want to fade, she thought as her consciousness scattered like startled birds, each neuron firing its last desperate signal. I don't want to be the kind of person who dies alone listening to dating sim music. I don't want this to be the most intimate experience I ever had.

But the black hole held her with more tenderness than any human ever had, caressing her into nonexistence with the patience of a lover who had all the time in the universe to watch her come apart.

And she did come apart, beautifully, pathetically, completely alone except for the fading echoes of a song about love she would never know.

She could feel time twist.

Could feel the shape of her name unravel.

And then —

light.

A warm, impossibly human light. It didn’t blind. It embraced.

Like arms around her.

Like comfort.

Like forgiveness for sins she couldn't remember committing.

She wanted to cry, or scream, or breathe, but she couldn’t . The light grew too bright.

Her mind too weak.

Her vision flickered out.

Her body but now was a concept rather than reality..

And in the distance — just before she lost everything —

crashing waves

Not mechanical. Not imagined. Not the product of oxygen-deprived neurons firing their last desperate signals.

Rea l waves.

As if she were… somewhere.

And then — silence.

The kind of quiet that exists before birth, after ending, between one breath and the next.

The kind of silence that contains infinite possibility.

She felt… home.

THE AWAKENING

The first sensation was wrong .

Everything was fucking wrong .

Y/N's consciousness clawed its way back from the infinite void like a drowning person surfacing from black water—gasping for air that tasted foreign on her tongue. But the tongue itself was wrong—too small, too soft, belonging to someone else entirely.

Her eyes snapped open to harsh hospital lights that should have burned retinas accustomed to the void of space. But instead of pain, there was a dull adjustment—like these eyes had seen this before. Like they belonged here.

But they weren't her fucking eyes.

What the hell—what the HELL is happening?

Voices swirled around her—soft, warm, distant, like echoes in a dream she couldn't fully grasp. A woman's voice: "She's awake! Oh, sweetheart, you're finally awake!"

Y/N tried to speak, to scream, to demand answers—but all that escaped was a small, confused whimper, higher and younger than her own voice. Innocent. Alien. Pathetic.

No no no no NO—

She tried again. Her vocal cords betrayed her, producing sounds that belonged to a child. Her thoughts scattered like broken glass, each piece cutting deeper into her sanity.

This isn't real. This CAN'T be real. I was dying—I WAS DYING—

The hospital smells crashed over her like a wave of nausea. Antiseptic. Flowers. The strange warmth of blankets she didn't remember getting under. It all felt like a sick joke, a cosmic middle finger to her suffering.

Am I in hell? Is this what hell looks like?

She looked down at her hands and wanted to vomit. Small. Soft. Unmarked by years of failure and isolation.

Whose fucking hands were these?

A face appeared above her—elderly, kind, eyes full of practiced hope that made Y/N want to scream. The name Josephine floated into her mind like poison, triggering recognition she didn't want, memories that weren't hers.

Get away from me get away GET AWAY—

But she couldn't speak. Couldn't move properly. Couldn't do anything but lie there like a broken doll while strangers touched her with familiarity that felt like violation.

"Gran?" The word slipped out without permission and Y/N mentally recoiled in horror. GRAN? Who the fuck is this gran?She'd never had a gran who gave a shit about her. Never had anyone who looked at her like she mattered….Then why does this woman feel so familiar…? Why is my mind yelling at me to hug her?

This is sick. This is so fucking sick. What kind of cruel joke—

Another voice—a boy's—echoed through her panic: "Hey there, pipsqueak."

My head snapped back to meet purple eyes

CALEB.

The name hit her like a physical blow. Not just recognition— intimate knowledge. She knew that voice, had fantasized about it, had fallen asleep to digital versions of it whispering sweet lies through her phone speakers during the loneliest nights of her pathetic existence.

But this was real . This boy was real and looking at her like she was his entire world, like her survival was the only thing standing between him and complete devastation.

I'm losing my fucking mind. I've finally snapped. This is a psychotic break.

Her head throbbed as two sets of memories crashed together like colliding trains. Her life—lonely, meaningless, ended in cosmic horror—and someone else's life, someone who had been loved .

The Chronorift. The Wanderers. She died. The real girl died and I—

The realization hit her like ice water in her veins.

I stole her life.

I'm a fucking parasite. A cosmic body snatcher. I took her body, her family, her love—everything she had and I never deserved any of it.

"The Wanderer attack in the Chronorift," Josephine was saying, her voice thick with practiced grief. "You've been unconscious for three days. Dr. Noah said your Evol resonance went haywire, but you're going to be fine."

Fine? Y/N wanted to laugh, wanted to scream, wanted to tear at this borrowed flesh until she could crawl out of it and back into the void where she belonged.

This isn't fine. This is the cruelest joke the universe has ever played. I finally get what I wanted and it's STOLEN. It's all STOLEN.

The words meant nothing to her conscious mind—Chronorift, Evol, resonance—but they settled into her stolen memories like missing puzzle pieces, making this nightmare feel more real with every passing second.

I don't deserve this. I don't deserve their love. I'm a fraud, a thief, a fucking impostor wearing a dead child's face.

She tried to speak, to confess, to tell them the truth—but her vocal cords produced only a small, broken whisper: "I... don't understand... anything."

Of course you don't understand, you worthless piece of shit. You're not supposed to be here. You're supposed to be dead, dissolved into nothing like the cosmic garbage you always were.

Tears welled in eyes that weren't hers, falling down cheeks that belonged to someone else. Even her crying was stolen, her grief parasitic.

Josephine leaned closer, smoothing hair away from Y/N's forehead with hands so gentle it felt like mockery. "It's alright, sweetheart. Memory confusion is normal after what you've been through. We don't expect you to remember us right away."

Memory confusion? hah.. If only she knew. If only any of them knew that their precious girl was gone forever, replaced by a cosmic mistake who had no right to their love.

They're being so kind to me and I'm not even their real granddaughter. I'm a stranger wearing her corpse like a fucking Halloween costume.

Caleb moved closer to the bed, his young face trying so hard to be brave. "It's okay if you don't remember me," he said quietly, though she could hear the pain he was trying to hide. "I'll help you remember the important stuff. I always do."

Always. The word was a knife twisting in her chest.

This has happened before. She's died before and come back and forgotten them before. And this little boy has had his heart broken over and over, rebuilding their friendship from nothing, only to lose her again.

And now I'm here. The wrong fucking person. The wrong soul. Taking his devotion and his pain and making it all meaningless.

The guilt was suffocating, made worse by the desperate, selfish part of her that wanted to keep it all. That wanted to pretend she deserved this love, this second chance, this life that was built on someone else's grave.

I'm so fucked up. I'm so completely, irredeemably fucked up. Even in death I can't stop taking things that aren't mine.

"I feel different," she whispered, the words scraping her throat raw. "Like I'm not... like I'm not me."

I wanted to tell her.. to tell him…

her head snapped towards the boy close to her age, looking her with the familiar longing and yearning she couldn't bear to watch

He's yearning…but not for me…Yearning for the person I'm supposed to be.

Because she wasn't. She was a ghost wearing stolen skin, a parasite feeding on borrowed love, a cosmic accident that should have been dissolved into quantum foam instead of given this impossible gift.

"That's okay," Josephine said softly, squeezing her small hand. "You don't have to be anyone but who you are right now."

Who am I?

But I don't know who I am. I'm nothing. I've always been nothing. And now I'm nothing, wearing someone else's everything.

Y/N closed her eyes and wanted to scream until her vocal cords snapped, until her borrowed lungs collapsed, until this nightmare ended and she could go back to being properly dead.

But she couldn't. She was trapped in this stolen life, surrounded by stolen love, drowning in guilt and desperate gratitude and the terrible knowledge that she would rather be a parasite than go back to being alone.

I'm the worst kind of person. I'm exactly the kind of selfish monster who would steal a dead child's life and call it a miracle.

And the most damning part of all was that she was going to keep it.

She was going to keep it all, even knowing she didn't deserve a single second of it.

God, I hate myself. I hate myself so fucking much.

The doctors, noticing the rising tremble in her breathing, the too-wide stare and clenched fists, exchanged silent glances.

“She needs space,” one murmured.

“No—no she can't be alone right now!” Caleb snapped, voice hoarse and furious. The boy practically launched himself between them and the bed, arms wide, trembling but firm. “You don’t understand—she just woke up! You can’t leave her like this!”

“Caleb, sweetheart…” Josephine’s voice was gentle but unyielding. “I know you're scared for her. I am too. But she needs a moment.”

Their eyes met—Josephine’s soft with worry, Caleb’s burning with a fury born from too many times watching this exact moment unfold.

Because he’d seen this before.

Too many fucking times.

That same blank, broken look. That same cold sweat. That same way her eyes never recognized him, not truly—not yet .

He hated this part. The part where she didn’t know him.

And Y/N…Y/N was spiraling.

What the fuck is happening.

Caleb? Caleb ? That name. That face. It was him . It was him .

Her chest rose and fell too quickly. Panic zipped up her spine. This isn't possible. This isn’t fucking possible. Caleb isn’t real. He’s a game character. He’s not real. He’s not supposed to be real.

She blinked hard, her vision swimming.

Am I dreaming…?

Her hands rose shakily in front of her face, and the size of them made her stomach churn. Small. Too small. Her fingertips brushed against her palms, then her face—soft. Rounded. A child’s.

Her breath caught.

She pinched herself. Ow. She did it again. Ow. Wrist, cheek, neck. She even held her breath till her lungs screamed—but the pain was sharp and real .

No… no, no, no, it’s not a dream. Why does it hurt so much?

Tears began to build before she even realized it. Her heartbeat thudded like thunder in her ears. She slapped herself. Hard. The sharp crack echoed in the quiet room.

Why am I alive?

Her fingers trembled. Her mind splintered. It hurt. It hurt . Her skull throbbed like something was trying to burst out from the inside. All the memories, the agony, the void, the song. The song.

I was dead.

She whispered it aloud without realizing.

“I was dead.”

And then—

A hand cupped her cheek, sudden and warm.

Y/N choked on her next breath.

Not because of the touch.

But because of the familiarity of it.

Because her body reacted before her mind could catch up. Like it knew that touch. Like it craved it.

Her eyes darted up, wild and burning.

Caleb. Standing there, lips trembling, eyes wide, cupping her face with hands far too steady for someone so young.

“Y/N,” he whispered, like her name meant something sacred.

And she realized, with horror and shame and longing tangled in her throat—

She wanted to believe this was real.

Even if it was all a cruel, twisted lie.

“I’m… so sorry…”

The words came out broken, barely a whisper, choked and cracked like glass underfoot. Her voice died halfway through the apology, as if even her vocal cords knew she didn’t deserve to say it.

She didn’t even know who she was saying it to. Caleb? Josephine? The girl whose body she’d stolen? Herself?

Maybe all of them.

Drop.

Her knees buckled. She didn’t even feel herself fall until the weight of her body collapsed into the too-clean, too-white sheets of the clinic bed.

The cold hit her first—sterile, clinical, impersonal.

But then came everything else.

A wave of heat crawled up her spine, betrayal and grief and terror boiling together under her skin. Her head throbbed like a jackhammer against her skull. Her lungs tightened as though the atmosphere here wasn’t meant for her. Her lips trembled with unsaid things she didn’t understand, couldn’t name, didn’t have time to process.

I’m sorry I existed at all. I’m sorry I survived. I’m sorry I’m still breathing when she’s not.

She curled in on herself, fetal, trembling, choking on air that wasn’t hers. Salty tears slid down her face without permission—warm, humiliating, too human .

“I’m not supposed to be here,” she tried to say, but it came out a garbled gasp into the pillow.

And Caleb just stood there.

Frozen. Watching her fall apart.

Like he always did.

Like he had, again and again and again.

And even now, even after everything—his hands reached for her.

But she was already gone.

Not physically. Not yet.

But in every other way that mattered—

She had already shattered.

Caleb didn’t hesitate.

The moment she collapsed, he rushed forward, arms wrapping around her before her small frame could even sink fully into the bed. He held her tightly, gently, the way a child might hold something precious and breakable.

“Y/N… hey… I’m here,” he whispered, his voice wobbling.

Her face was buried against his shoulder, her body trembling in a way that made his own chest hurt. She wasn’t crying out loud—but that made it worse somehow. Her quietness felt like something broken inside her.

“I’m right here, pipsqueak… You’re not alone, okay?”

He didn’t know what else to say. All the words he’d practiced in his head every time she came back—every time she forgot—vanished. She was shaking and breathing funny and not looking at him like she usually did. She wasn’t there in the way she always was before.

His throat tightened.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, resting his cheek on top of her head. “I should’ve kept you safe. I should’ve been there faster…”

He sniffled but tried not to cry. He wanted to be brave. For her. He’d promised himself he would be.

“You’re gonna be okay,” he said, even though his voice cracked a little. “Dr. Noah says you’ll get better. And I’ll help you remember. Like always.”

His hands clung to her—tiny fingers holding on tight to the girl in front of him even if she didn’t remember who he was. She didn’t have to. He remembered for both of them .

“I don’t care if you forgot me,” he whispered into the quiet. “You’re still my pipsqueak. You’ll always be my pipsqueak.”

And when she didn’t answer—when she just lay there in his arms, shaking and quiet and confused—Caleb didn’t ask for anything.

He just held her.

Because that’s what family does.

Caleb didn’t move.

Not when her body slumped forward in a mix of confusion and exhaustion.

Not when she gasped like a fish ripped from deep water, her breath rattling in her too-small chest.

He just held her tighter.

One arm wrapped protectively around her back, the other cupping the crown of her head as if he could shield her from the weight of the world with the strength of a seven-year-old heart.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered. “It’s okay now… I promise.”

Y/N couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Her body had gone limp, her throat still raw from trying to force answers through vocal cords too young, too scared.

But somewhere in the rising fog of unconsciousness, Caleb’s warmth was steady. Familiar. Real.

And then—

The ache in her head dulled.

Her lungs loosened their grip.

Her heartbeat slowed beneath her ribs, and her fingers curled weakly into the soft fabric of his sleeve as her lashes fluttered shut.

Sleep didn’t seize her—it cradled her.

And in that sleep, the nightmare didn't return.

There was no black hole swallowing her into screams, no cruel echoes of a game’s theme song haunting her like a twisted lullaby.

There was just…

Grass beneath her bare feet. The smell of rain on earth. The sky above shifting between twilight and dawn in impossible hues—purple, gold, deep ocean blue.

She looked down.

Small hands. Still not her own. Still the hands of the girl she now lived inside. But… she didn’t panic.

Not here.

The wind passed through her hair—soft, short, unfamiliar. But it didn’t suffocate her. It touched her like a lullaby, as if the world finally dared to be gentle.

Her breathing evened out.

She lifted her head and looked across the vast, dreamlike field, and for the first time since she woke up in that hospital bed, she didn’t want to claw her way out.

The confusion was still there. The grief. The stolen identity.

But in this dream, the panic was distant. Like a memory. Like something she could look at without flinching.

She let her knees sink into the grass.

Hands pressed against the earth, breathing in the scent of something realer than anything she’d known while alive.

The child’s body was still hers.

But here in this quiet, golden space—it didn’t feel wrong.

Just… different.

She sat in silence.

She had read about this before.

Late-night rabbit holes on lucid dreaming forums, articles written by insomniacs and philosophers and lonely girls trying to escape their own minds.

“In dreams, if you poke your palm and your finger passes through, you’re dreaming.”

It was one of the oldest tricks.

One she had never tried—because she had never wanted to wake up from anything before.

But now?

Her breath caught in her throat as she slowly lifted one small hand, the palm open and trembling just slightly.

Then, with the other—equally soft, equally not hers—she brought her pointer finger forward.

Don’t hope. Don’t wish. Just test.

The fingertip pressed to her palm.

And passed through.

Like air. Like fog. Like the dream welcomed the truth.

She stared, half-dazed, as her hand swallowed her finger like a whisper into water.

A breath she hadn’t known she was holding slipped from her lips.

“…oh thank God,” she exhaled, voice light and quiet, curling into the stillness like smoke.

She didn’t cry this time.

She didn’t scream.

She just sank further into the cool, soft grass, the strange child-body wrapped around her soul no longer feeling like a prison—but a vessel, floating on a quiet lake of not-pain .

Finally , a dream.

Finally, a break from reality.

And for the first time since her atoms had been flayed apart in that godless space, she let herself breathe .

The dream meadow stretched endlessly around her, bathed in that impossible twilight that shifted between purple and gold. Here, in this space between consciousness and void, her mind could finally work without the crushing weight of borrowed flesh and stolen identity.

She sat cross-legged in the soft grass, her dream-hands—still small, still not hers, but somehow less foreign here—pressed against her temples as thoughts began to crystallize with startling clarity.

Okay, she thought, her voice echoing strangely in the dream-space. It's time to think.

The panic that had clawed at her in the hospital room felt distant here, muted by the dream's merciful buffer. Here, she could approach the impossible with the cold logic of a scientist rather than the hysteria of a victim.

Focus. Think like a scientist, not like a victim.

"Fuck," she whispered into the dream-air, the curse somehow feeling more natural here where reality's rules held no sway. "Where do I even begin?"

She started with what she knew for certain: Clearly, I died. That much was undeniable, even in this ethereal space. She could still feel the echo of it—the moment her consciousness had been stretched beyond breaking, torn apart by gravitational forces that no human mind was meant to comprehend.

For some weird reason, I woke up in a hospital bed...

And then those eyes. Those impossibly familiar eyes that had burned themselves into her memory with a mixture of relief and bone-deep terror that spoke of too many similar moments. Even here in the dream, the memory made her chest tighten with recognition and dread.

The way he'd looked at her—not like she was a stranger, but like she was coming back from somewhere far away. Like this had happened before.

"There's no doubt about it," she murmured, her dream-voice carrying further than it should have in the endless meadow. "I know those eyes. And I know them too well ."

Caleb.

The name hit her like a physical blow, same as before, but here in the dream's protective embrace, she could think past the initial shock and horror. Here, she could examine the impossible without drowning in it.

But how?

Her scientific mind—the part of her that had spent years studying the impossible vastness of space—recoiled against the implications even in this dream-space. This couldn't be real. This shouldn't be real.

"Another world? Reincarnation?" She let out a bitter laugh that echoed strangely in the twilight air. "That... that sounds fucking stupid."

She pressed her palms against her eyes, and even in the dream, frustrated tears threatened to spill. I'm a woman of science. I live and breathe science, but this... Her hands dropped, revealing wide eyes staring at the impossible sky above. What the hell is this?

A scoff escaped her—harsh, disbelieving. "Is this some kind of joke? Is this some cheesy plot to a soap opera where I'm reincarnated in a game? That can't be fucking possible..."

But even as she said it, the evidence was right there, seared into her memory. Caleb's face, exactly as she'd seen it rendered in pixels and code hundreds of times. The way Josephine had called her 'sweetheart' with the exact intonation she'd heard through her phone speakers during countless late-night gaming sessions.

She leaned back in the dream-grass, frustrated beyond measure. Every logical explanation felt like grasping at smoke, even here where smoke might actually be solid. Thousands of theories crashed together in her mind—quantum mechanics, multiverse theory, consciousness transfer, digital reality—each one more impossible than the last.

Is it because of the black hole? The thought struck her like lightning, making her sit bolt upright in the meadow, the dream-grass rustling beneath her with sounds like whispered secrets.

"Wait a second..." Her voice was breathless with sudden possibility, echoing across the endless field. "I got torn apart in the black hole. Every fiber of me was ripped away, so why...?" Her eyes widened as the pieces began falling into place. "Is this what happens when you pass through a black hole?"

An almost manic energy seized her as her scientific mind finally found something to latch onto in this surreal space. She could practically feel the imaginary thinking cap settling on her dream-head as theories began cascading through her consciousness like shooting stars across the impossible sky.

"Could it be... parallel universes?"

The words seemed to hang in the dream-air, shimmering with possibility. The idea that infinite versions of reality exist side by side, each one branching off from different choices, different outcomes... But even that felt incomplete, missing some crucial element that would make the impossible possible. Her frustration mounted as she grappled with concepts that should have been purely theoretical, her hands clenching in the soft grass beneath her.

"Unless..."

Her eyes shot wide open, pupils dilating as if she'd just placed the final piece in an impossibly complex puzzle. The revelation hit her with the force of a supernova, burning away doubt and confusion in its wake.

" It was a wormhole. "

The words came out in a rush, breathless with discovery, and the dream-meadow seemed to pulse with the weight of the realization. A theoretical tunnel through spacetime itself—a shortcut that could connect distant regions of the universe, or even entirely different universes altogether. As an astronomer, she should have been terrified by the implications—wormholes were theoretical constructs that bent spacetime in ways that could tear reality apart. But instead, she found herself almost beaming at the elegance of it, her face illuminated by the shifting twilight above.

A traversable wormhole. Jesus fucking Christ, I actually went through a traversable wormhole.

The excitement was intoxicating, the pure joy of scientific discovery flooding her dream-consciousness with euphoria. For a moment, she forgot about the stolen body, the borrowed life, the moral implications of her existence here. She was just a scientist who had witnessed something unprecedented, something that would rewrite the textbooks if anyone would ever believe her.

"Wait, I should calm down," she muttered, forcing herself to take deep breaths of the sweet dream-air. "Let's not fangirl over potentially universe-breaking physics."

But her mind was already racing ahead, connecting dots with the manic precision of someone whose entire worldview had just been validated and shattered simultaneously. The dream-space around her seemed to respond to her thoughts, the colors in the sky shifting more rapidly, the grass beneath her fingers humming with possibility.

"Even if it is a parallel universe..." She paused, frowning as new questions arose, her brow furrowing in the ethereal light. "Why would a game have its own world? Unless..."

Her breath caught as another possibility emerged—one that made her stomach drop even as it explained everything, even in this weightless dream-state.

"Unless the many-worlds interpretation was right all along."

The implications were staggering, and the dream-meadow seemed to stretch infinitely in response to the magnitude of the concept. The many-worlds interpretation—the quantum physics theory that every possible outcome of every quantum measurement actually occurs, each one splitting off into its own separate universe. Every choice, every random event, every quantum possibility spinning off endless branches of reality like an infinite tree of existence. If every possible outcome existed in its own reality, then somewhere in the infinite sprawl of parallel universes, there would be one where Love and Deepspace wasn't just a game—where Caleb and Xavier and all the others existed as real people, living real lives, breathing real air, feeling real pain and joy and love.

" Interesting, " she whispered, the word carrying the weight of cosmic revelation across the impossible landscape.

She was quiet for a long moment, processing the magnitude of what she'd just theorized. The dream-grass whispered around her, and the twilight sky pulsed gently as if responding to her thoughts. If she was right—if she'd somehow been flung through a wormhole into a parallel reality where a mobile game was someone's actual life—then everything changed.

She wasn't a parasite wearing a dead girl's face.

She was an interdimensional refugee who had landed in the worst possible place at the worst possible time.

But that still doesn't explain why I'm in her body, she thought, some of the excitement fading as practical concerns reasserted themselves even in the dream's embrace.

Still, for the first time since her consciousness had been torn apart in that godless void, she had a framework for understanding it. A scientific explanation that, while unprecedented, didn't require abandoning everything she knew about physics.

She was still trapped in a stolen life, still surrounded by people who loved someone else, still carrying the weight of cosmic displacement.

But at least now she knew how she'd gotten here.

And maybe, just maybe, that knowledge could help her figure out what the hell she was supposed to do next.

The dream-meadow stretched endlessly around her, waiting patiently for her next thought, her next revelation. And as she sat there in the impossible twilight, another piece of the puzzle began to slot into place.

Wait... Her breath caught as a new realization dawned. If this is the Love and Deepspace universe, then the girl whose body I'm in...

She pressed her palms against her temples, fragments of recognition swirling in her mind—not memories, exactly, but something deeper. Muscle memory. Instincts. The way her hand had moved to her chest without conscious thought, as if her body knew things her mind didn't.

The MC.

The Main Character. The Hunter. The girl who had died in the Chronorift attack ... .well shes not a hunter yet.. shes just seven i think? Anyways– the blank slate protagonist from the game—that's who this body had belonged to. The empty vessel designed for others to inhabit, to give purpose and personality to and immerse themselves within the game..

A hollow laugh escaped her lips, echoing across the dream-field. "Of course. Of fucking course."

The guilt that had been eating her alive began to shift, transforming into something else entirely. She hadn't stolen someone's life—she'd filled a role that was meant to be filled. The MC had no real identity of her own, no backstory, no personality beyond what was needed to move the story forward. She was a shell, waiting for someone to give her substance.

I didn't kill anyone. I didn't steal anything. There was nothing there to steal. I created this character.. I designed her looks. Shaped her choices.. This is just a vessel for me…right..?

The realization was both liberating and terrifying, yet she held onto a hope that this body truly was meant for her and she didn't take any life. This body, this life, this family—they had been waiting for someone to give them meaning. Someone to make the choices, feel the emotions, live the experiences that would make the story real.

"I'm not a parasite,"

she whispered to the dream-sky, wonder creeping into her voice. "I'm... I'm what was supposed to be here all along." she reassured herself.

As if responding to her reassurance, she felt drawn to press her hand against her chest, just over her heart. The movement felt natural, instinctive—not from memories she didn't possess, but from the body's own knowledge.

The moment her palm made contact, she gasped.

There was something there. Something that pulsed with a rhythm that wasn't quite her heartbeat but synchronized with it perfectly. A warmth that spread through her ribcage like liquid starlight, foreign yet familiar, artificial yet alive.

The Aether Core.

The name came to her unbidden—not from memories she didn't have, but from the game knowledge that had consumed so many of her sleepless nights. The crystalline heart that MC carried, the source of their Resonance Evol abilities, the thing that made her more than ordinary.

She could feel it now—a gentle hum of energy beneath her sternum, woven so intimately with her cardiovascular system that it might as well have been a second heart. The boundary between organic and synthetic was so seamless she couldn't tell where her heart ended and the Core began.

It's not just in me, she realized with growing awe. It's part of me. It's been fused with my heart itself.

The Core pulsed gently against her palm, responding to her recognition like a sleeping cat acknowledging its owner. She could feel its potential thrumming beneath her skin—power waiting to be awakened, abilities yet to be discovered, a connection to forces she didn't yet understand.

For the first time since waking up in this impossible situation, she didn't feel like an intruder.

She felt like she belonged.

“Holy fuck…im the MC..”

Her face grew hotter at the implications. Her heart was racing for what she knew was to come.

ANDDDD THATS THE END OF THE CHAPTERRRR wow... im writting this fro my own entertainment but i hope you guys like it?

word count: 9043

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