#im not posting this on ao3. for now anyway

[rebornofstars]

really whats interesting to me is that if u stay involved in a fandom long enough u get an evolution of scrolling from: ooh! - ooh! - ooh! - OH i didn't realise this was a trope - ooh! - OH - ooh! - ooh!!

to smth more like: read that - read that - oh LOOK it's my mutual - omg that one looks SO GOOD i love the trope subversion - wrote that - read that - oh my friends have been screaming about this one - wrote that - oh LOOK it's my mutual - read that - FRESH MEAT LETS GO SAY HELLO and its

SO beautiful and joyous. being a member of a community is fun!!!!! being so familiar with a tiny corner of the internet is fascinating!!!!! seeing the connections between yourself and other people is crazy cool!!!! we're all here on the web page together!!!! i see you and i love you!!!!!!

[hewinked]

you ever have fandom drama go down with literally all the big blogs for one fandom that you love so much, and then all the blogs you follow just start throwing tomato's at each other?

yeah thats pretty much me with the danny phantom x dc crossover tag argument thing rn

also im of the opinion that, this is kinda always how crossovers worked? you tag it with both fandoms it includes? and the tag thing is not that bad? or atleast ive had not that much trouble finding only solely danny phantom content

and i mean, danny phantom is an old fandom objectively, the only new content being some comic books which alot of people didnt read because they didnt wanna or couldnt spend money on it

it makes sense that even alot of old fans would get into dp x dc, and that because dc is such a big and active fandom in comparison, that a lot of dc fans would get into the crossovers, and become new danny phantom fans via the crossovers

but ik alot of people are arguing that they shouldnt be, because they think that dc fans have never even seen danny phantom because of small details they get wrong or mix up, which is like a whole nother "if youre in this fandom you have to know everything about the media or youre not a real fan" shaped problem that I dont care for at all

the truth is most of them probably are just going off of what they remember from their childhoods because ALOT of people watched danny phantom as a kid, and just havent had time to rewatch it fully, so yeah, theyre gonna not remember some things and have to fill in the blanks themselves or go off of what other fans say

and as far as im aware anyways, this isnt really just a dc and dp thing? Im in the miraculous ladybug fandom and fic wise alot of it is now danny phantom or dc crossovers, but ive heard no complaints and given no complaints (despite not liking them myself) because thats mainly on ao3 and you can just block it

the point im going to make is actually, that alot of the fandom on tumblr is reliant on ao3 in the first place, and like on ao3 this definitely isnt a problem, because you can block a tag easily and most people on ao3 know better then to not tag something that they have in a fic

thing is? people are used to that. it is considered heavily heavily impolite on ao3 to not tag a fandom or thing you have in the fic.

and most tumblr users are or started as ao3 users. its pretty much the same etiquette on here.

but somehow when you go on tumblr with specifically danny phantom fans? somehow people are offended by it?

thing is, same as on ao3, on tumblr you can block a tag and filter.

but lets say you are blocking that and still seeing dc crossover stuff like so many people are complaing

then isnt the problem logically that alot of these people just arent tagging the dc stuff properly then? because i imagine thats what you should be trying to block so.... why be mad that theyre tagging danny phantom when thats one of the correct tags to be using? so that anyone who wants to see crossovers plus regular content can?

like im just saying thats the logic i follow

and thats not me tryna say go and blame em for that either, im just saying youre kinda angry about something that its okay to be mad about, but you have put yourself in the wrong because your mad about the wrong thing anyways.

also even if youre mad about it, maybe stop bullying and critizing literally anyone who's writing dc and dp? like encouraging people to write what they like is the name of the game, you guys know that right?

you know you can just nicely comment without being passive aggressive or rude, and tell them that they should tag their posts a little better? and not take your anger out on them because they personally obviously dont sway the whole fandom by themselves? do you know that?

you also dont have to make big ol rant posts about how much you hate dp x dc writers for writing a crossover, that will hurt those writers feelings, and that you know will make all your followers mad at all those innocent writers also, right? you know that you don't have to and shouldn't be making posts like that right?

[charaznablescanontoyota]

i'll wait, i'll wait (for the moment to pass)

did you know there's a problem on mmolb dot com that keeps your fifth starting pitcher from actually pitching their games. anyway

----

twenty-six games as a starting pitcher and karina hasn’t been on the mound once; still, she hauls herself out of the house to sit on a shitty aluminum park bench and watch hewitt try for a shutout against the love letters. she knows for a fact they’re still sore about the way their last attempt went–they let in a single, errant home run in the bottom of the ninth, and were yanked humiliatingly out of the game for the last two at-bats. it was brutal. karina has thoughts about hewitt’s fastball–not to mention their conservation of stamina–that she’s been keeping to herself ever since, notes jotted in the margin of her scorebook that she’s sure no one wants to hear from the player who spends one hundred percent of her time warming the bench.

one of the love letters bats another home to whoops and cheers from the away benches. karina sucks her teeth, and fills in the diamond on her score sheet. she can see hewitt’s eyebrow twitch from yards away; they throw two sloppy balls, and wyatt mercifully ends the inning by diving after a ground ball. this, too, karina notes down.

“brutal,” arky says under his breath, on the other side of the bench. it’s the first real comment he’s made on the game, even after hewitt beaned a love letters batter. his scorebook is perched precariously on his knees, but he’s had the easier job so far–he scores for the circles, and they’ve barely managed to put anyone on base. 

karina always scores for the away team, a habit started out of both boredom and defiance. she has to show up to games, just in case the manager finally decides to start her, so she might as well take notes on everyone else’s earned run averages. arky only just took up the hobby with her a week ago after his tommy john. he should really be exempt from coming to games, his arm still in a sling and all, but the manager’s already started him once to the chagrin of the rest of the pitching staff.

they sit in companionable silence as the inning changes over; only once travis is in the batter’s box does karina say, quietly, “they keep throwing the same fastball, straight down the middle.”

“you think nelson is giving them bad signs?” arky asks.

karina shakes her head, ponytail flapping. “i don’t think they give a fuck about nelson’s signs.”

she’s not lying. nelson is too nice to get into it with hewitt–or with anyone, for that matter–but there’s something wounded in his eyes when he looks at them, something asking are you pretending not to see me or are you doing this on purpose.

“they’re psyched out,” she adds. then, “i don’t blame them. but they won’t get better if they keep playing like this.”

“sounds a little like you blame them,” arky says. it’s not a judgemental assessment at all, which makes it worse in some respects.

“okay, well.” karina stops herself, struggles to put the rest into words. because the animosity against hewitt is there, and she’d be lying if she said it wasn’t, but it’s not in the way arky seems to think. “sue me, or whatever. if they and cisco are gonna cover all my games, the least they can do is cover them well.”

it’s the most she’s let herself say to a teammate about the strange and uneven state of the pitching rotation, though she knows all of them have noticed by now. she prefers to save that vitriol for the managers–who continue reassuring her it’s a temporary hitch in the schedule, telling her to come to games just in case.

arky laughs deep in his chest, pen dancing over his scoresheet as the love letters scramble to handle a classic r. tang bunt. “i’m telling cisco you said that.”

“don’t you dare,” karina hisses. she could care less what hewitt thinks of her; earning the disappointment of even-keeled francisco quinn, even in hypothetical, makes her want to die.

“he’ll think it’s funny,” arky says. when karina glares at him, he catches her eyes with his own. he has the beginning of crow’s feet around them, creasing gently when he smiles. “you’ll get your chance, ‘rina. hell, you can have my next game, if you want.”

“what,” karina says, “and save you from doing more one-armed innings?”

arky grimaces, fingers fluttering inside his sling. “i wish someone would.”

“i’ll think about it,” she says, and bumps her knee against his in silent thanks.

[paintedcrows]

Some Fords! (and Martin K Blackwood is also there)

[theinkquiry]

i've been looking at you so long now i only see me caleb x reader (mc)

word count: 4.5k tags: Alternative Ending to Homecoming Wings, Because we couldn't just let it end like that! “You can’t protect me forever.” You reached up with your free hand to cup his face. This was the closest you’ve really gotten to seeing him since he’s come back to you. He leans into your touch. “I can and I will.” He speaks with such conviction. The tone is familiar even if the empty stare accompanying his words is not. “But you didn’t." Things come to a head on your last day in Skyhaven. This wasn't the Caleb you knew. You weren't the same girl he left behind. You still love him anyway. (homecoming wings and it's completely different but also still homecoming wings.)

ao3 link (also in the fic title): https://archiveofourown.org/works/63833728

Three days. He said it like it was no time at all, but it was long enough to make you begin questioning your sanity. To say you were traumatized all over again by the sudden appearance of Caleb with the Farspace Fleet was an understatement. You pushed the initial concerns aside. He was here, alive. That was all that mattered, or so you thought. 

The routine was too typical. Too easy. You never dared let yourself imagine what it would be like to have him breathing in front of you again. But of all the possibilities you could have conjured, to simply keep carrying on was not one of them. Carrying on was what you did when he left. It wasn’t how he was supposed to come back to you. 

You didn’t even know if he was supposed to come back to you.

He had you down against the couch after three days of unending rain. Your petulant nature once again gets you into hot waters with him. You were pushing the same buttons, but the commands were not the same. His words simmer with a cold flame. 

“No one will ever be able to find you ever again. I’ll protect you forever.”

There it was again. His unending need to shield you from all the world’s harms. It was touching when you were children. Romantic, even. Growing up, you slowly lost the concept of what it felt like to be truly afraid. There were the thunderstorms and the usual mean kids on the block. You were comforted by the notion that Caleb would always be there. That you would never be alone, just like he promised. 

But now your heart thundered in your chest as your eyes stared into his. The purple-grey storm brewing behind his gaze pinned you down like nothing you’ve ever felt before. There was a gnawing sensation that you didn’t want to admit, a fear whose source you dare not name. 

What if I told you I was always like this?

Since he said them moments ago, you’ve been trying to make sense of the words. As much pride as Caleb took in being able to see through you, it came at the expense of you being able to peer right back at him. Those words weren’t total lies, but they weren’t the full picture either. A half-truth. The Caleb you knew could be mischievous and cheeky towards you, sure. But he never did anything as underhanded as keep you locked up for days on end. A half-explanation. Even after so many questions and days to get his side of the story, he was still keeping things from you. A half-Caleb. Something was still wrong. He never used to make you feel so… alone . 

He still had you pinned underneath him. His grip was strong, but you don’t think either of you were putting your full strength into fighting with each other. Even after looking at him so many times, here, alive , you still had to bite back tears each time.

This was the closest you’ve really gotten to seeing him since he’s come back to you. 

He leans into your touch. “I can and I will.” He speaks with such conviction. The tone is familiar even if the empty stare accompanying his words is not.

“But…” The air was so still. You hated it. In fact, you’ve hated every minute of the last three days. It wasn’t just that Caleb was lying to you. It wasn’t that he’d leave you with nothing to do but sit and try not to cry and end up crying whenever he left anyway. It was that you wanted to talk to him again. You wanted the easiness of your Caleb back. The Caleb you whispered secrets to under cover of dark. Not this half-stranger, half… 

Friend? Family? He was always just Caleb. You never had any other word to describe who he was to you. You never needed one. But whatever he was to you, it was not this. Something had to give. You were either going to get half of the past back, or you were going to confront something new. None of which would be accomplished if you kept biting back your words or if he kept avoiding you like this. 

For all of his swift acting and nonchalant attitude, you knew something was off with Caleb no matter how much he denied it. Or maybe he wasn’t “off” at all, and the person you dedicated your entire life to really was a mirage. You were never the quickest to pick up on things. You may not be the smartest. But what you did know was that, even if Caleb was entirely right and he hadn’t changed at all in the months since the explosion, you did. 

Your voice was soft. “But you didn’t protect me, Caleb.” 

You curled your hand that was still pinned down into a fist. Not to resist him, but to let him feel the tension in your muscle. He opened his mouth, ready to shut you down again. You didn’t let him. 

“You didn’t come visit me at the hospital after the fires.” 

You remembered the sterile white walls and the too-thin sheets. 

“You weren’t there when I dug through the ashes, trying to find something, anything left of you and Gran.” 

The suffocating smoke lingered in your lungs, no matter how much the doctors told you that you were clear. 

“You aren’t there when I’m out on missions fighting Wanderers.” 

Work. Heavens, did work bring a whole new layer of pain. It was one thing to be the only survivor. It was another to survive day in and day out as skittish coworkers fumbled through apologies and tip-toed around you like fragile glass. Even if that was exactly what you were. 

“You weren’t there when I couldn’t eat for days because all I wanted was your food. You weren’t there for the nightmares that I still have because every time I close my eyes I just see that day over and over again.” 

You don’t realize how much you’re shaking until Caleb’s grip finally loosens. His facade begins to crumble as you see your own heartbreak reflected back in his eyes. He was lost for a moment. The strength seemed to slip away from him as his hands hovered uneasily. Unsure of whether he ought to let go or hang on. You didn’t give him a chance to decide as you entwined your hand with his. You weren’t going to let him slip away again. You needed him to ground you. 

“You weren’t there when I had to bury the absence of you in an empty grave. So no, Caleb. You didn’t protect me.” 

Surprise flashed across his face for the first time in a long while. A sickly satisfaction took root in your gut. Caleb, who always thought he knew best about everything when it came to you, at last confronted with his own contradictions. The bitter victory went as soon as it came.  

“It was all for your own good.” His justification was so predictable you almost laughed. “It was the only way to make sure you were safe.” 

You shook your head. Caleb may think that he was doing it all to keep you safe. He may even be right that you were safer thinking that he was dead. At the same time, you never felt such raw vulnerability as you did while believing Caleb was gone from this world. Your entire perspective shifted. Who you were as a person changed. It had to. You had your own apartment in Linkon, but it wasn’t home. You had to make peace with the fact that you were the only one who could make a home for yourself. Everyone you held in relation to you was gone. You learned to define yourself apart from those who left you. 

Perhaps the reason why it was so hard to talk to Caleb now was that you were also changed. Caleb’s death rocked your very foundations, and you came out the other side by reconstructing your personhood by yourself, brick by brick. Did he notice it? All the changes you underwent because of him. For the last week or so he’d give you these stares which you found puzzling. It reminded you of whenever he misplaced his phone or forgot his thought mid-sentence. You were right there, so what was he looking for? 

From your closer vantage now, you realized that searching wasn’t the only thing about his eyes. It was almost like pleading, begging even. You may have reunited physically, but you’d hardly found each other again at all. 

“I was the one who learned to bear the thunderstorms at night, alone. I was the one who showed up to family-at-work day events, alone. I was the one who learned to live in a world without you. All alone. So don’t accuse me of trying to go back there.” 

Each word of yours left a cut in him. At last he was open, without retort. He tried to avoid your gaze. Your thumb and index fingers guided him back towards you again. “You left me to grieve you, all alone.” 

He didn’t get to look away. If he wanted you to see him, you needed him to see you as well. An unconscious resistance gripped his body, yet he couldn’t break away. You knew the feeling well. It was exactly the sensation of being in that interrogation chair the first time you came face to face with the Colonel. 

“Don’t leave me again, Caleb.” You don’t notice that you’re crying again until his thumb wipes away your tears. Your voice trembles as you say it again. “Please, don’t leave me.” 

For the first time, he seems to understand what your words meant without misconstruction. He continues to brush your tears aside even as he’s holding back his own. “I’m here. I’m here now.” He said it as if he was also trying to convince himself. 

You let go of him and, for the briefest moment neither of you are touching the other. You wonder what he sees of himself in your eyes. Two mirrors, forever destined to reflect back at each other until you couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. As you looked and looked and looked, you found what you were searching for. What you found was, frankly, a mess. Then again, so were you. And the discovery sent your heart aflutter as something in this hellscape of a world finally made sense to you again. 

You wrapped your arms around his neck and tugged him down beside you, throwing yourself into his chest. “You’re here.” A statement so obvious that it makes you laugh. But the laughter quickly devolves back into crying. You cling to him like a lifeline because you really don’t want him to go. Because for the first time since you set eyes on him again did you fully process that Caleb wasn’t just ‘not dead’, no. Regardless of the technicalities between life and death, for all intents and purposes he very much did die. 

Now you could hear his voice. Touch the tears on his cheeks. Hear his heartbeat pounding. “You’re really here.” 

Caleb brushed his hands through your hair. You wondered if it was more of a gesture to calm you, or if it was to soothe himself. “I’ve always held myself back and endured. Day, after day, after day. It was suffocating.” His breath shuddered with each sentence. While you were mourning, Caleb was facing his own struggles. You didn’t know the details. He wouldn’t tell you if you asked. At least not right now. 

He’s in a better place now , is what people would say to you in the early days of dealing with his absence. You wonder if Caleb told himself that about you, wherever he was. That even though you both possessed two different sides to the same tragic story, you both pushed forward in the hopes of reaching some semblance of a happier ending. Perhaps the reason why he put up such an aggressive front whenever you said you didn’t need him was to hide from the fact that he also needed you. 

Caleb curled himself around you, leaning closer to your ear. “All I ever wanted was to come back to you.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t.” He choked on the words like they were poison down his throat. You try to filter his words into something intelligible. I did it to protect you.

“Oh, Caleb-” You hold onto him tighter- “but who was protecting you?” 

He buried his face into your hair and let out a painful sob. His whole body shook as the rain hit the glass windows. His presence screamed, I’m tired . You held a steady hand to his back as his shoulders heaved up and down. His breath came out ragged and uneven. I’m so tired . Just as he did to you many times before, you held him through the panic and shushed away his fears. 

You would protect him, even if you didn’t know what doing so looked like yet. You could have run away, called for help, brought down the entire building if your hatred and anger were genuine. In truth, you were scared for him. You wanted to monitor him. Figure out why there was a sudden darkness emanating from his being when he thought you were turned the other way. If staying away from you was genuine protection, then returning to your arms was no coincidence. Somewhere in his subconscious, he was reaching out to you. 

You were not going to let him go. Not again. 

The two of you lay curled into each other as a single mass. The sensation was oddly familiar. You couldn’t quite place it. A far away, cold place. Someone’s warm hand in yours. A vow to never be apart. A boy whose reassurance put you at ease even if the smile never quite reached his eyes. Was there once a time just like this one when everything lay so far out of control? When there was nothing to do except hold the other as tight as you could, crying and wishing for brighter days ahead. Or simply an end to the darkness. 

A cacophony of tearful whispers and sniffles mixed with the sound of never-ending droplets pitter-pattering around your cellophane birdcage. You thought by now you would have run out of tears for Caleb. Yet it didn’t feel so much like you were crying for him so much as you were crying on his behalf. And he, yours. All the pain and regret built up to be released like a message in a bottle to the sea. The glass object containing all the apologies too late to say, all the memories you didn’t get to make, bundled up and set adrift to whatever mysterious fate the waters held in store for it. Drifting and drifting, casual and random, into the fog of your mind until it was gone entirely. 

All that’s left is you, and Caleb, and the words you get to say to him now. 

“Caleb.” His name is, at last, comfortable in your mouth again. He senses it too, eyes flitting to yours with none of the harshness that you’ve detested growing accustomed to. 

He speaks your name with the same care. As if you were giving it back to each other. 

“If I stay, would you really accept me? As I am now?”

“I already accepted every version of you. The boy from my childhood. My pretend-boyfriend who was off to college. The Farspace Fleet Colonel.” You pressed your forehead against his. “I even accepted you dead. Because you wanted me to, right?” He took a shuddered breath as you brushed stray strands of hair away from his eyes. His hand encircled your wrist again. Absent was the forcefulness from before. His grasp this time was desperate. A silent apology for all the pain he’s caused you. 

You rest your palm atop his hand, an assurance that you weren’t going anywhere. “I never wanted you to be anything other than my Caleb.” 

His eyes widened, gleaming at the sound of the last two words leaving your lips. You honestly surprised yourself with your candor. It couldn’t be helped, really. Not when he was finally his unfiltered self. Take away all the heaviness surrounding the two of you bearing in from the outside world, and you’re left with a Caleb that you only thought you could see in your dreams. Laying by your side, holding your hand, like he only wanted to pull you in closer. 

“I like you like this…” You find yourself inching closer naturally. Were you in a more teasing mood, you might have accused him of using his Evol to draw you in. “I like being with you like this.” 

“Like how?” He asks. You were both too tired for any more games. Chase the other too long, and you’d only end up going in circles. 

You run a finger down his face. How many scars were there that you couldn’t see? “Next to me. Beside me. Not pushing me back, where I can’t see you. Or leaving me behind, where I can’t reach you.” Your finger trails along down his neck, past his shoulders, towards his back. “I like… you.”

You blink. The realization landed like a feather on a still pond, but hit you like a meteor. “I like you.” You say it in a full breath. You say it to see the way Caleb’s eyes swirl with stars. You say it because it’s the thing you’ve been trying to say this whole time. 

 “Just figured that out?” He means to tease, but his voice gives away the vulnerability lurking just behind. The arm around your waist freezes. His weariness leaves him with no defenses. You see in full for the first time how his eyes search yours for something. An answer? Permission? 

You lean in and close the distance. It’s soft at first, the kiss. Hesitant. A ghost of your lips on his. A test of the waters. You lean back for his response, unprepared for the raw emotion you’re met with. 

His hold on you is a plea of the most desperate. Tears prick at his eyeline again. He opens his mouth only to close it again. A million unspoken questions, unsure which is the right to ask. “Please,” is all he can manage. “ Please. ” 

When it’s clear that you are going to kiss him again, his body takes over. He pulls you into him, fervently and entirely. You can’t form proper thoughts, as if his own weaved into your mind with each press of his lips against yours. He moves a bit clumsily, but with the surety of a man too long deprived. Little gasps leave his mouth each time he pulls away. “I can’t believe-”

Caleb kisses you before he can finish his own sentence. Delirious to the point where he didn’t even realize he was speaking aloud.

“You’re so-”

He gets drunk on it. The way you fit so easily with him. The small breaths you take in between his. Your hooded eyes as you meet him halfway each time. 

He calls your name like it’s sacred. “I’ve wanted you for so long.”

You grab at his shirt in an effort to steady yourself. You continue to kiss as you let yourself be guided underneath him. His hands know exactly where to hold to make you feel at home. You reach up to hold his face again, gently this time cradled between your hands. “You always have me.” 

Caleb keeps pushing down until you’re flush against the couch. He kisses you softer, yet with the same rush as if you were made of sand that could slip through his fingers at any moment. “Say you’re mine.”

“I’m yours.” You’ll repeat it as many times as he needs. “And you?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Yours.” 

You put your hands on his broad shoulders before he can kiss you again. The disappointment is immediate, but he waits. He always waits. There’s a softness to his features as he tilts his head a little. “What’s wrong?”

You shake your head. “Nothing, I just-” It felt silly to admit. “I just like looking at you.” 

The smile he gave you tugged at your heart. You felt tears welling again, this time from relief. If he was able to read you before, you were able to read him right back. With all his defenses lowered, it was like opening the pages of your favorite book. 

I’m here . Your whole being was reaching for him.

I’m yours . Caleb handles you with care. Not because you’re breakable, but because you’re treasured. He brushes aside your hands, guiding them back down to rest on the plush surface of his couch. 

I’ve always been yours. He presses his lips to your forehead first, then your nose. You can’t help a small laugh. His eyes crinkle in response and you know that, this time, he is asking for permission. You grant it. 

Without a word, he carries you up in his arms. Where you find yourself next is the home you had missed. It’s not entirely familiar. It isn’t the summer sun as he walks back with you on the last day of school or the first hug you gave him after he graduated from the DAA. Clumsy limbs and racing hearts. Your small gasps and the reverence with which he calls your name. 

But you know it all the same, the way he makes the entire world fade into the backdrop, taking you someplace outside of time and space. You were two halves of the same whole, split apart. Coming back together.

Between it all there is a gnawing sensation that the peace was fragile. Two split parts were bound to grow, to cover up the scars left behind by their torn half. The pieces would never fit quite right again, not without cutting back into the other. 

His hand grips your waist and you take deep breaths against his neck. 

The questions, the technicalities, they were all for tomorrow.  

For now, you let yourself be content just as you are. You and Caleb. One and two. Caleb and you. Somewhere along the way you stopped having lines of your own and let yourself bleed into him, and he into you. His hot breath fans the side of your face. You make a thousand silent promises to one another, though you both know keeping all of them is impossible. If even a handful survive, you’d take it.

If the sky clears sometime in the night, you don’t notice. 

At dawn on the fourth day, you see him off at the airfield. It’s the same as all the other times you’ve seen him off. Almost. You don’t know if you’ll ever get used to him in his Colonel’s uniform. It doesn’t look bad, few things did on Caleb, but it was another reminder that things were different now. 

He was different now. Only time would prove whether that was a good or bad thing. 

“Make sure to look after yourself. Eat three full meals a day and go to bed before dawn. You got that, pipsqueak?” Caleb ruffles your hair.

You swat away his hand in annoyance. “Caleb! As if the Skyhaven winds weren’t already bad enough for my hair.” 

Some things would never change. 

An alarm blares. Several Fleet members rush toward their ships. Caleb shouts something over to his crew, but you don’t hear it. The sun was out in full force after the storm, though the chill of the morning air prevented its full heat from blanketing where you stood. You squinted against the rays, following a particular glint of silver around Caleb’s neck. 

“Well, I guess it’s time to say goodbye.” Caleb takes a step towards you, but stops himself from going any further. There it was. That strange hesitance lingering over him like smoke. 

You used to let him walk away on his own. This time, you cross over to him. “Not a goodbye.” You smooth down his shirt before reaching up to tease out his dog tags. You look up at him, defiant. “See you next time.” 

Whatever he sees in your eyes puts him at ease. A gentle smile graces his features as he echoes your words. You hate the uncertainty in his eyes. You swear to yourself that you’d clear the cloudiness. That shade of violet which is pure, unburdened. You’ll take all that’s grey and wilting about him into yourself if that’s what it took to bring back some of his shine. 

You do what you weren’t brave enough to do before. Looping a finger through his silver chain, you tug him down and press a firm kiss to his lips. It is determinedly quick, but the full effects were felt. Caleb cupped your face and stole a second, then a third. 

The sound of spacecraft engines cuts through the air. He sighs. “You’re not making this any easier.”

“Have I ever?”

“No,” Caleb chuckles. He gives you a look. He could tell, you think, that you too have changed. “You never do.” 

You don’t know if things will ever truly go back to being easy, if they ever were in the first place. Caleb adjusts the cap on his head and gives your hand a final squeeze. A crinkle draws your attention, and you feel old paper against your palm. 

“What’s…” You smooth out the yellowed scrap and scoff once you see the old coupon. You look up to find that his remorse is genuine. You don’t ask what forgiveness he’s asking for. Nothing and everything, is what he’ll say. Instead, you slap the paper back on his chest. “Coupon denied.” 

“Excuse me?” He let out a laugh that he didn’t even expect. “It’s not expired!”

“It’s invalid.” You retort, folding your arms and giving him your sternest glare. “There’s nothing to apply the coupon to.”

“But-”

“Save it.” His hand ghosts over where yours rests, right above his heart. You feel every beat drumming underneath your fingertips. “Save it, and come back to me.” 

A kaleidoscope of emotions flits across his face. He’s holding back the truth. He wants to tell you off. He needs to kiss you again. All these confusing and wonderful things bundle up to make your Caleb. You meant what you told him yesterday. Whether he was finding a way to claw back to who he was, or whether he was entirely changed, you would be there waiting for him. Just as he’s waited for you all those years before. 

“I will.” 

[myokk]

Hi everyone🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶

I just made a wattpad account, mmyyookk (idk I just kept adding letters until the username was valid🥲). I’ve seen some people say they prefer wattpad because of accessibility features and I’ve been asked quite a few times, so I finally decided to make one! I think I’ll slowly be adding my oneshots/fic there♥️

[suegodvester]

One drink and straight to bed, he vowed to himself.

“A water?” The barman scoffed. “The poor man’s choice, I see.”

Wally chuckled. “The choice of a man who just got here from a trip longer than you can imagine. D’ya got any rooms free up in this place or?”

The barman’s face softened, and he laughed as he went to grab a glass of water. Returning, he leaned in as he handed Wally his drinks. “We do, but tell me, have you ever been here before?”

A blush rose up his cheeks as Wally shook his head. “To be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure where ‘here’ is,” he laughed awkwardly. He suddenly felt very looked at.

“Curious.” The man pulled back, then nodded to himself. “Gotham usually doesn’t show herself to people who haven’t been here before, well, unless she has plans for you. Or so they say.”

“Gotham?” Wally blurted out, eyes widened in shock. “I can’t believe I’m actually here.” He laughed, not because he was happy, but he couldn’t help himself from laughing at his own stupidity. Of course, with all the weirdness going on around here, how didn’t he realize this sooner?

He did it. He found the no-man’s-land that was particularly starting to look like an any-man’s-land to him. The place he had been looking for all along.

“You know, there’s some rumors about-” The bartender started, then stopped dead in his sentence and looked up behind Wally. Right then, Wally felt two, strong hands clasp onto his shoulders.

“You’re in my seat.” A deep, bouldering voice said, the two goons behind him snickering loudly.

Wally looked around him and noticed the two chairs besides him had indeed come up empty. Still, he shrugged and tipped his drink back. “And I was having a really good conversation.” He shot back, not getting off the chair. “Please, do continue.”

He heard a couple “Ooh”’s and “Shit”’s and snickers behind him as the saloon fell silent. All eyes fell on him, or well, them, as Wally shrugged the hands off his shoulders and leaned forward.

“Funny, kid.” The man all but growled. The bottle in his hand -some dirt cheap brand of beer, Wally guessed- came into his view as Wally skillfully -although accidentally- dodged the bottle when he turned the bar chair around. The glass made a painful shattering noise as it came into contact with the edge of the bar, sending shards everywhere.

His attacker staggered back, the intoxication visible in how he tripped rather gracefully against one of his back-up buddies. Immediately, everyone at the bar shot up from their seats and started screaming. Some people saw this as the perfect time to throw some punches around, and Wally winced as he heard the rough sound of a cracking bone right next to him.

It all happened in the blink of an eye, the way this bar fight came to be, but now everyone was in on it. Everyone, except for Wally. Shit, had he really just started this? He frantically looked around, hoping to spot a way out of this mess he had so swiftly created. Hells, he hadn’t even been here for over ten minutes and he already-

A hand slipped around his wrist, and the strong grip pulled him out of his thoughts as fast as he was pulled out of the saloon. When the cold night’s air pushed his hair out of his eyes, his mind cleared. Loud screams and thuds against the walls and floors, although a bit more muted now, made him look at one of the windows.

What just happened?

“You’re really quite something, y’know?” An amused, cocky voice startled him fully away from whatever was happening inside the saloon now, and he traced his eyes to the figure in front of him.

[sssammich]

fic: let there be another day

inspired by this fantastically angsty gifset of a supercorp AU. happy supercorp sunday yall

thanks x

---

The days transform steadily, selfishly, into weeks. Until the weeks have amounted to six months of nothing. Nothing between them but a phantom line of what they’d been to each other, once upon a time.

There is a crater in Lena’s heart, a botched excavation of the way she’d willed herself to forget Kara, to protect the two of them from the ruthlessness of her family. So she’d cored herself first, hoping to beat her brother and mother to the punch. Yet Kara had dug herself further into her heart, straight into her marrow. 

So she failed, in the end, to rid herself of the woman she’d loved with her whole being. 

But it’s gotten easier, in a way, existing in this reality where she had to deny herself the chance for happiness if it meant her happiness could live. 

Her family has continued to terrorize her, but she’s acclimated. Expected it, really. Their efforts of trying to eliminate the few people who have been able to reach the fortress of her heart have now since changed to recruiting her into the fold of the family business. 

She now only functions to keep L-Corp as an entity of good despite her family’s best attempts at compromising her work. It’s fine, because she has accepted that her work will be her life. Her love—her grief—has become the shape of late nights in front of her computer, of half-filled decanters as she oversees expense reports, of dry-cleaned power suits and a lethal red lipstick as armor worn in superfluous business meetings. 

It’s worth it, she reasons, when she catches sight of Supergirl zooming past her window to save the day once more. 

—

Lena should have known that Lex and Lillian are simply biding their time until they strike. The last couple of months of relative quiet was not a sign of reprieve. So when the glass of her office doors break and splinter into tiny crystalline pieces, her heart aches not in fear, but in disappointment. 

She’s never had a death wish and would never wish this hurt upon herself, but the amount of threats to her life has surpassed her age. She thinks that maybe if both Lex and Lillian simply just got it over with, that she can get some goddamn rest. But she knows why she fights and why she keeps going. If only to spite her family, if only so that her sacrifice isn’t in vain. 

Another explosion erupts and throws Lena partway across her office, her head hitting the corner of her desk with a thud. She opens her eyes and her vision blurs, her head throbbing with pain, her body tense and sore all at once. Distantly, she can hear the fire alarm go off just as the sprinklers start shooting off water and flooding her office. 

She attempts to stand and find an exit, but her body betrays her intentions, buckling under her weight as she’s sprayed with water all around her. She falls onto her knees and subjects herself to crawling towards the exit with only but reckless determination and an almost-extinguished hope that she will make it out of this alive. 

Before she can take another step forward, there’s a whooshing sound that fills her already ringing ears and suddenly, warmth envelopes her. 

She sighs in resignation and gratitude when she feels the familiar weight around her. Lena knows before she opens her eyes what has engulfed her so safely, so securely. It cuts her heart just as it heals it, and she is in a loop of pain and joy. 

She wants to open her eyes, truly, to look into ocean eyes and a field of golden grass. But she is in pain and she is hurting. Her only course of action is to keep her eyes closed as strong arms grab hold of her—gently, always so gently—and whisks her out of her now compromised and ruined office. 

—

When she comes to, she finds herself in a secluded and private examination room of the National City Hospital, discretion of the highest priority as a prominent public figure. It’s one she’s been in before, from a past attempt at her life. It’s almost something like a comfort, this familiar space that has seen her bruises, cuts, and scrapes. 

The door swings open and she hears Kara behind her begin to make her exit. She doesn’t look up but when she catches sight of the red cape just by the bed, she holds up a hand and stops the movement altogether. 

She only lets go when the doctor looks down from her clipboard and settles on the rolling stool, the creak of the leather as she rolls closer to Lena. 

She allows the doctor to do what she does best, intently listening to the sound of the squeaking stool and the crinkling of the paper of the examination bed as doctor works.  

A mild concussion, some cuts and bruises. It could have been worse, she’s told. It always could have been worse and she wants to yell at Dr. Shapiro that this feels pretty close to the worst. Still, she listens carefully as her doctor explains how fortunate she is for surviving after the second and third explosions completely decimating her office. 

“Third explosion?” she asks, this information brand new to her. 

“Mm,” the doctor hums. “The second blast was the reason for your concussion, but according to reports, the third blast was close to you and would have knocked you prone and done serious damage had you not found cover.” 

Lena tries very hard not to twist her aching body and look over her shoulder. 

“Thank you, Doctor.” 

The doctor looks at her meaningfully before glancing over Lena’s right shoulder and placing a hand on hers, squeezing, and then letting go. 

The door closes with a quiet click, but instead of an exhaled deep breath, she holds herself tense. She shuts her eyes and listens to the way the superhero makes just enough noise so Lena knows where she is. First, from the chair she’d been occupying, then the sound of boots against the linoleum flooring, then the swish of the cape as it catches against the corner of the examination bed and back down again. 

“Where can I take you?” 

She opens her eyes to the setting sun, to saltwater ocean, to a small smile she hasn’t allowed herself to witness in six months. 

She doesn’t know what’s safest, what her family is planning, what the total damage is. She needs her phone, she needs access to her company, she needs—

“Can I go with you?” is what she says. 

Kara studies her, like the horizon staring back, and nods. She opens her hand, the thumb loop of her suit wrapping around her palm, and offers it to Lena. 

She takes it, sliding her unsteady hand in place and breathes when Kara clasps their hands together. 

—

Kara’s apartment smells the exact same. 

She does not comment on this, though it’s the most prevalent thought in her mind. Kara lets her walk in first, speeding to the lamps and switching them on until the apartment is bathed in faint golden light. Fitting. 

“Get cleaned up. I’ll have some spare clothes for you right outside the bathroom.” Kara passes her a towel, and she hugs it to her chest. 

The water scalds her skin, stings the open scratches and cuts. And she revels in it, her alabaster skin reddening under the downpour of it. She savors it until the shower sputters a little and the hot water becomes tepid then becomes cold. She squeals and jumps away, hitting herself against the side of the shower stall and knocking half of the soaps and hair products off the shelf. 

Kara is there in an instant, opening the door and getting soaked herself, trying to protect her. 

Naked and broken, she looks up to the setting sun that is Kara’s concerned face, and then she starts laughing. 

“I—the hot water ran out.” 

Kara exhales, that cold water matting down her hair on her forehead as she protects Lena from the downpour. “Sorry, I never did call the landlord about it.” 

She turns off the water behind her and steps out of the shower stall to pick up Lena’s towel for her. She opens the towel and turns away. 

You’ve seen it all before, she wants to say, but doesn’t. Instead, she takes the towel and wraps it around herself, the cold beads of water from her hair clinging to her neck, her shoulder blades. 

Kara steps aside, offers her a shy smile, and leaves wordlessly. Lena listens to the way she walks around the apartment, the clattering of the plates on the table. 

She steps out and smiles when she finds spare clothes placed on a stool right outside the bathroom door. 

When she next steps out of the bathroom, she is wearing Kara’s oversized shirt with a faded cartoon drawing of National City State Fair on it and a spare set of her pajama pants that she didn’t realize she’d forgotten, she'd thought Kara would have gotten rid of. 

The spread of Chinese food on the coffee table is modest, but familiar. 

She takes a seat in the spot she once proclaimed as hers, and accepts the plate from Kara’s grasp. They eat in silence with only the sound of the television playing on in the background. 

Kara watches her—studying her, Lena’s sure—but doesn’t say anything. She talks about her week because Lena had asked, and so she gives it to Lena. They clear their plates, then she trails after Kara to the kitchen, parking herself on the kitchen island. Kara seems to anticipate her and passes a pint of Cherry Garcia towards her with a spoon on the lid. 

“Good for concussions, I heard,” Kara offers, a twitch of a smile on her lips.  

She laughs at that, surprised, but accepts the ice cream, opening the lid and taking a spoonful. “That’s tonsillitis.” 

Kara shrugs but takes a spoonful of her own Rocky Road on the opposite side of the kitchen island. So much of right now exists superimposed to how things had been before, how their lives had been so entwined, so integrated. It is unnerving as it is comforting, and Lena accepts that for today, at least, she has to accept the disorientation. 

Eventually, “here. I charged your phone. I’d call Sam first, then Jess.”

There is distance between them, far greater than the kitchen island in front of her, and it shows itself for the first time now, here. After everything.  

“Kara, I—” 

“I need to fill Alex in on everything. Let her know you’re alright. I’ll be right outside.”  

She nods, glances at her phone and the laptop that Kara slides across the kitchen island, and watches as Kara walks out the front door. 

For a solid hour, she works through everything she can considering her mild concussion. She touches base with her assistant, with her team, and finds that they have taken care of everything for her. She sighs in relief, shuddering into her hands when Sam and Jess let her know that they have everything handled, that all they want for her is to rest, that the investigation into her family’s attempt at assassinating her might finally have some legs with some information they’d discovered during the cleanup. 

She sighs, sniffling into the back of her hand and tells them goodnight before she closes her phone and sobs into her hands, the day finally wearing her down. 

She doesn’t startle when arms wrap around her, the press of a strong body kneeling in front of her as she cries into the crook of Kara’s neck. She grabs fistfuls of Kara’s shirt as her tears soak through the cotton. 

Kara only holds onto her, rubbing her back and gently cradling Lena in her arms. Soft shushing filters through Lena’s ears and she sobs further into Kara, hoping Kara can just absorb her entirely, as if that’s the only thing that can protect her—from her family, from the world, from herself. 

Her sobs lasts and lasts, a never ending fountain of all the tears she’d shoved back in, a dam bursting now that she’s allowed herself.

—

Kara carries her to the bed, quietly ushering her under the covers just as she sits on the edge of it. 

“You saved me,” she says, her voice coming out slightly congested.  

Kara brushes her hair behind her ear. “That promise has never changed.” 

“They’re never going to stop, are they?” 

Kara shakes her head. 

“I thought by letting you g—” she huffs, turns away. “I thought I was protecting you. I was trying to do the right thing.” 

Kara grabs hold of her hand and places it on her lap, her fingers fiddling with Lena’s palm, but doesn’t quite look at her. 

“I’m afraid that the only times I will see you, I’m trying to save your life. And I—it worsens when I think that I can’t make it.” 

Lena watches Kara’s beautiful profile, the expanse of her forehead, the slope of her nose into the curves of her lips and down her jutting chin, trembling slightly in the faint light outside the bedroom curtain. Then she sees the bob of Kara’s throat, a single tear falling into the center of her palm. 

Kara’s facing her now, and Lena brings up her other hand to wipe Kara’s cheek. 

“I missed you, Lena. And I don’t know what I will do if I can’t make it to you in time, I—” 

This time, it’s Lena who pulls her close, wrapping the arm that Kara’s been focusing on around her front as she cradles Kara in her arms. “I’m sorry, darling,” she says, voice hoarse. “I’m sorry.” 

Kara then turns in her arms and they embrace one another, both hiding in each other. 

The tears stain and soak her neck, but she lets it, welcoming Kara’s weight after months of being so untethered. 

“Please, just come back to me,” Kara says into her skin, muffled words that hold so much promise. “Let me take care of you. Let me protect you,” 

Lena pulls back slightly. “You’d still—you’d still want me?” 

“Let me love you again, Lena.” 

Unable to hold her own tears back, Lena pushes forward until their lips meet. She angles her head and Kara kisses her back, the pair of them holding each other. 

There is an ache to their reunion, but there is healing, too. And Lena remembers, unbidden, Dr. Shapiro’s words. It could have been worse, she’d heard. 

But Lena wants it to be better. She deserves at least that, for all of her troubles, and if her family will aim for her and all that she loves, then she can’t hide herself in the shadows. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love you.”

Tomorrow, she thinks, after the whispered declarations and the promises of more, of better, of a new day. Together. 

“I’m here. I’m here. I love you, too. I’m here.” 

[starsandwrites]

here's a bit of the Sonadow smut fic i'm working on for you animals

“Get. Out.” Shadow fixes Sonic with a scathing glare, but with the state he’s in he isn’t very intimidating. Sonic picks the pillow up off the ground, holding it in front of him like a shield as he approaches Shadow, trying not to let himself be distracted by that overwhelming smell. 

“Why have you been avoiding me?” Sonic ignores his angry words, cutting right to the chase. Shadow bares his teeth as Sonic gets within a couple feet, a low angry sound starting up in his throat. “I said get out! I’ve been sick, I don’t want to see you. Leave me the hell alone.” Unfortunately for Shadow, Sonic isn’t fully convinced. There’s more to it than the other hedgehog is letting on. He examines Shadow for a moment, taking in his “symptoms” and downright hostile demeanor, trying to figure out what sort of sickness the Ultimate Lifeform could possibly have. An old memory pops into his head, a conversation he had with Maddie a long time ago about the behaviour of Earth animals and their biology and…

Oh, no.

Sonic’s eyes widen in shock and horror as he takes an involuntary step back. “Shads, are you… Oh God, please tell me this isn’t what I think it is.” This has got to be the worst possible outcome, aside from like, cancer.

Shadow’s stare is withering, harsh enough to make Sonic physically recoil.

“Don’t. Don’t say it. Don’t talk about it. Don’t even look at me.” It’s clear Shadow is just as, if not more uncomfortable than Sonic in this moment. It’s got to be terrible, Sonic can’t imagine how he’s feeling. He’s heard about things like this, but he’s never had the displeasure of having to deal with it first hand. 

Despite his newfound understanding and pity, Sonic pushes on, taking another step towards Shadow. “You’re… in heat?” A growl rips out of Shadow’s chest, the sound sharp and a little frightening. Sonic hadn’t ever heard him make that noise before, even when they’d been fighting to the death. 

“I said don’t talk about it. Are you really that stupid, you can’t follow a simple instruction?” 

Shadow’s words would’ve hurt Sonic if he didn’t understand what was going on and why Shadow was behaving so poorly, but he understood full well, for better or worse. Sonic decides to take a major risk, one that might just get him strangled, and he sits down on the edge of Shadow’s bed, just out of reach. He knows that this is a horrible idea, that he should just leave, but something is spurring him on. That smell is messing with his head, clouding his judgement.

“Is there anything you can do? There’s got to be some sort of medication, or something to make it go away, right?” His words only earn another growl.

“Nothing. There’s only one thing that can make this stop, and it’s not happening.” There’s an unspoken threat behind Shadow’s words, a threat that Sonic chooses to completely ignore. The closer he gets to Shadow, the harder it is for him to think straight. He’s all he can smell now, all he can think about. He wants to make him feel better, wants to relieve him, wants to- 

He gives his head an aggressive shake, trying to clear those crazy thoughts. Shadow is his friend. He doesn’t like him like that, that’s absurd. He just hates to see him suffer, that’s all. He forces himself to take a deep, steadying breath.

“I… am really sorry to hear that. I should go, let you get some rest.”

Sonic forces himself to stand, the motion dizzying. He should never have come over, never bothered Shadow in the first place. What was he thinking? Who cares if Shadow texted him back or not, he doesn’t owe him that. Stupid, stupid…

“Sonic, wait.”

[to-rise-above-monsters]

dear bertholdt.

Summary: Reiner left his overcoat in preparation for a meeting and asked Annie to get it from his room. Begrudgingly, she agreed. Though she immediately regrets it when a box of letters falls from the top shelf. Maybe regret isn’t all there is. She found something more.

-

CW: angst, canon compliant (so major characters death,, Bertholdt is dead<3), rba centric, can be read as romantic or platonic reibert but reibert nonetheless

Takes place post-timeskip (the second one, post-war), a few years into settling into ambassador life.

Apologies for any ooc, I don’t think I’ve ever written a fic in Annie’s perspective/focus,, I also haven’t written on her before and also haven’t written and posted in general for forever

(This was meant to be a comic and is so clear in my mind but I don’t have the time nor talent to execute it 😔)

Happy Birthday Bertholdt can’t believe ur dead ♥️

-

Reiner told her to get his coat. What that asshole didn’t tell her was how ridiculously high his coat hangers were. It shouldn’t have loomed over her the way it did. It was almost taunting, mocking her with its impossible height. They had probably raised Reiner’s closet bar for his big, hulking self and possibly lowered hers as some sort of unspoken courtesy. Annie sighed deeply, already regretting being here. Sure, tell the short girl to get your big ass coat from your tall ass closet. Embarrassingly, she jumped; she jumped a few times. If a glare could kill, there'd be holes burnt into the pockets.

Fuck off.

The stupid coat was simply out of reach. She could usually manage by grabbing the shoulder and lifting it from there but even then she couldn’t manage. She kicked the closet door in frustration, hard enough to make it rattle, and looked around for reinforcements. Somewhere nearby had to be a stool or something, anything, to make this easier. 

She found a tall chair and dragged it over with a bit more force than necessary. The legs scraped against the floor and that sound annoyed her even more. 

Finally, she lined it up, climbed up with a huff, and snatched the coat off the hanger in one triumphant, final fuck you. But as she jumped off the chair with her prize, she heard something else fall. A clatter, a shuffle, the distinct sound of things spilling. She grumbled and turned around.

If I have to do one more thing, I’m killing someone.

She cringed when her eyes fell onto the mess. Her jumping and kicking and overall exasperation now had a bunch of shit spilled on the floor from the top shelf of the tall closet. An old box, the size and look of a shoe box, had lost its lid and scattered papers everywhere. She at first started to snatch them up without discretion, just trying to stuff them back in. But a name caught her eyes.

Bertholdt.

Her fingers froze. She didn’t want to snoop. She would have killed anyone who went through her stuff like this. She tried to cast out the memory of seeing the name. She quickly tried to collect them all and put the box, along with this moment, far back into the closet. But there it was again, unmistakable.

Bertholdt.

Something came over her. An overwhelming wave, pulling her under before she could even name it. It felt so sudden, so heavy, all-consuming. She held the pages in her hands, her grip tightening unconsciously. 

The small, trembling pool she had collected seemed insignificant against the sheer ocean of papers spilled out before her. They spread across the floor like a map of emotions she wasn’t sure she wanted to navigate. And each one… each one bore the same familiar name.

Dear Bertholdt,

Her chest tightened, an ache spreading in places she thought she’d long since numbed. With a breath, she carefully placed them in the box one by one. It blurred past her, the same line repeated over and over. Her eyes couldn’t help but snag on the same arrangement of letters, the same handwriting. There were a hundred, maybe even more, all addressed… and dated. She paused.  

They had an order. 

Written at the top of each of them was a date. Everything was spilled all over the floor and each one was supposed to be neatly tucked away in order. She bit the insides of her cheeks.

Forgive me.

Dates flashed by. She tried to put them in order without reading any of its contents. It felt impossible, especially when there were letters that seemed to be multiple pages long. She tried to group them to the best of her abilities, organizing them by date and putting them in piles face down when she found the correct order. But words blurred past, recognizable phrases, handwriting that got shakier, years and years and years, consistent dating on every one.

“I miss you.” “I’m sorry.” “If I could go back…” “I wish you were here.” “I can’t forgive myself.” “You deserved better.”

Her breath hitched, the edges of the pages almost cutting into her fingers as she clutched them tighter. She tried to swallow the lump forming in her throat, but it only grew heavier with every second she spent kneeling there, surrounded by years of unspoken… emotions; emotions she never knew she had.

When did I start crying?

A tear fell from her cheek and nearly hit the precious paper. An aching feeling had creeped into her body. Emotions she never really thought were there seemed to spill. She couldn’t name it. It felt like a sudden burn in her nose, the need to swallow a bitter taste, eyes blurring. She was drowning. 

30.12.854

The letter she held was dated shakily at the top. She’d seen that same date come up again and again. For a moment, she tried to remember if maybe New Years or any holiday around that time meant something to them; as warriors, they didn’t really celebrate holidays, let alone religion. 

She took a breath and put it in the 854 pile. She looked at the stack. 854. That would have been… that would have been the year of the rumbling. It would have been the year everything changed. 

And he never got to see it.

She looked at all of the piles she’d now made, how each represented a year. She tried to push any judgements or perceptions away from her mind. But some years piled higher than others. Three piles in particular. She gathered the final loose letters. 

Her mind drifted to her time in the crystal. The silence had been maddening, a suffocating void she couldn’t escape. She had been awake in that void, terrifyingly, agonizingly awake. The only light that had ever pierced through the endless dark had been Armin’s voice, Hitch’s chatter. Their persistence had saved her, kept her tethered to something beyond the emptiness. But it always puzzled her why they did it in the first place.

I know.

She placed the final letter. The paper felt different; crinkled and messy, rough and smeared. 30.12.850; old, the oldest one. She finally gathered all of them, stacking them neatly away in the box.  She stared at the box in front of her, now neatly packed, the letters arranged in quiet, solemn order. The shoebox felt heavier than it had any right to be. There was only paper within it. Something else weighed it down. 

I know.

She exited the room quietly, holding the coat tenderly in her hands. She gave it to him when they met in town without a single complaint. She never spoke about what she had found to Reiner or anyone else for that matter. 

Their now shared secret lay in a small box that once held shoes for a warrior.

[water-you-doing-bro]

Just for you, @wisegirl1448 a wip <3

The whole thing is about 3.8k and currently completely unedited. It's not my best writing, but my only thought going into it was jason, piper, leo, frank, and hazel get confirmation that the insane stories they've heard abt percy/learn about some of the insane shit that percy's done and they all proceed to have meltdowns about it while percy is confused and annabeth is crying from laughter on the floor so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ uhhhh enjoy?

~

The seven sat scattered across the galley of the Argo II during a rare moment of quiet on their journey to the Ancient Lands. Coach Hedge was keeping watch up on deck alongside Festus and Buford, which left the demigods to relax. 

They had started out in different parts of the ship, but eventually, they had all wandered into the galley. That’s not to say that they started hanging out as a group, it was more like there were several smaller groups hanging out in the same space. 

Leo was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall as he tinkered with random bits and bobs he pulled from his toolbelt. Frank and Hazel were sitting next to each other at the long table in the middle of the room, talking quietly. Annabeth was sitting tucked into the back corner of the room, her laptop balanced on one knee and Percy’s head resting on her other thigh where he lay stretched beside her as she ran her fingers through his hair. Piper honestly couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep. 

Meanwhile, she and Jason were sitting at the other end of the table, their backs to the door, as Jason ate a late lunch and Piper crossed her arms on the table to put her head down, content to quietly watch her friends relax. 

Then, Annabeth made a soft noise of frustration and drew Piper’s attention. Percy blinked open his eyes with a questioning hum. Annabeth muttered something too softly for Piper to hear and Percy craned his neck back to study whatever was on her laptop screen. He squinted at it for a moment, his brow furrowing, before wiggling around so that he was laying on his stomach rather than his back. He propped himself up with one arm, his chin now resting on Annabeth’s thigh as she turned the computer so he could see it better, and pointed at something on the screen. 

He mumbled something about it through a jaw-cracking yawn that made Annabeth’s eyes go wide in realization. She smacked a hand to her forehead with a groan. 

“Gods, I can’t believe I didn’t see that!” she said. Percy just mumbled something incoherently and flopped over onto his back, looking like he was already half-asleep again. Annabeth giggled (honest to gods giggled! Piper wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to seeing Annabeth ‘I Won’t Hesitate to Cut a Bitch’ Chase fucking giggle) and leaned down to kiss Percy’s forehead. “Thanks, Seaweed Brain. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She gazed down at him fondly, her expression impossibly tender, and despite herself, Piper couldn’t hold back her wistful sigh. 

Unfortunately, said sigh managed to draw everyone’s attention (except Percy’s, who had turned his head to bury his face in Annabeth’s sweater) and Piper felt her cheeks flame as they all looked at her. Leo and Jason looked confused, and Frank looked vaguely startled while Hazel bit her lip trying not to laugh. Annabeth just raised an eyebrow at her, making Piper blush harder. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, sitting up to begin gesturing vaguely. “It’s just—I mean—you—oh gods,” Piper cut herself off and buried her head in her hands with a groan. 

“Careful there, Beauty Queen. You having a stroke or something? Do you smell toast?” Leo said and poked her cheek, having apparently gotten up and wandered over to her. 

She lifted her head to glare at him and flipped him off. Leo just snickered and dropped into the chair on her other side. 

Jason laid a comforting hand on her back. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to gather her thoughts. When she opened them again, she found that Frank and Hazel had moved closer to her and Jason’s end of the table while Annabeth was in the process of dragging a disgruntled, bleary-eyed Percy to sit at the table as well. 

Piper sighed and reached up to fiddle with her hair, starting a small braid as she began to talk. “Look, it’s kind of silly, but, well, it’s just a little baffling to me,” she said, abandoning her braid to gesture to Annabeth. “Seeing you with Percy. It just kind of makes me realize how little I actually know about you two, about all of you. I mean, I think Leo and I were friends before peacock bitch messed with our heads, but I can’t be sure because she fucked with our memories. I feel like regardless of that, though, I at least got a few months getting to know Jason for real and, I don’t know, resettling? Reconfirming? My friendship with Leo, trying to figure out how much of what I know about him from my tampered memories is real.” She ran her hand through her hair and let out a frustrated huff. “But with you guys,” she gestured at Frank and Hazel, “I mean, I don’t really know anything about you guys. And you two!” she pointed at Percy and Annabeth, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t even get me started!” she groaned. 

Percy blinked owlishly at her, clearly at a loss as to what was going on. Annabeth, annoyingly, looked like she was barely resisting the urge to laugh. Piper glared at them. 

“Annabeth, you were so serious and angry all the time! You were almost never at Camp and if you were, you didn’t really talk to anybody. I mean, gods, you kept your emotions so locked down! But then we get to Camp Jupiter and you pretty much just straight up attack their newly minted Praetor right in front of them, something I’d have never thought you’d do. And now that you’ve got Percy back, you-you're so open all of a sudden! You giggle! From what I saw of you while Percy was missing, I never would have thought that you’d be the kind of person to giggle and make some of the sappiest, most love-sick expressions I have ever seen.” Piper waved her hands around, aghast. 

Annabeth gave up holding it in and burst into a fit of laughter. Hazel was trying to hide her quiet giggling behind her hand while the boys just gave Piper matching wide-eyed stares. She ignored them and pointed an accusatory finger at Percy. 

“And speaking of you, Percy Jackson, I cannot for the life of me figure you out! I mean, you were all anyone at Camp would talk about, and they told us all these insane stories about shit you supposedly did. If I’m being honest, I kinda expected you to be at least a little egotistical, maybe even a bit of a self-important asshole, y’know?” she said, only to get cut off by Frank, Hazel, and Annabeth bursting into roaring laughter. “Hey!” Piper sputtered indignantly. “I feel like that was a fair assumption to make! Especially about a guy who ‘supposedly’ fought the god of war at twelve and won.” Piper crossed her arms and huffed. 

Hazel and Frank’s laughter choked off and they turned to stare at Percy with horrified expressions. Annabeth howled and fell off her chair, clutching her stomach. Percy himself was too busy giving Annabeth an affronted look to notice. 

“I mean, are we really supposed to believe that he managed to kill the minotaur with his bare hands before he even made it to Camp? Or that he almost single-handedly took out a Titan? Like, come on! There’s no way any of that happened.” Piper glared at where Annabeth was still rolling on the floor. “And then we meet Percy and he acts like he’s just some guy! He doesn’t act like he’s anything special or like he’s done anything crazy. But then he and Jason get possessed by those spirit things and I mean, that was terrifying! They almost killed each other, and Jason would have died if I hadn’t managed to get that pegasus to knock Percy out. So he’s obviously pretty powerful but, again, he doesn’t act like it!” 

Annabeth had managed to pick herself up off the floor with Percy’s help, even though she was still laughing, and was now wiping tears from her eyes after laughing so hard. 

“Piper,” she said through waning laughter. “Those aren’t bs stories. He actually did those things. I was there. Plus, those aren’t even some of the craziest stunts this dipshit’s pulled.” She jabbed a thumb at her boyfriend who just rolled his eyes at her. 

Piper’s mouth dropped open in shock as she heard Leo drop whatever he was tinkering with and Jason choked on something. Hazel gasped and Frank started sputtering. 

“So that’s what that was about!” Hazel cried, pointing at Percy with wide eyes. “You didn’t even remember it, but you just knew that you didn’t like him!” 

Annabeth’s eyes narrowed and she whipped around to glare at Percy. 

“Percy,” Annabeth said, voice dangerously low. “What is she talking about? What did you do?” 

Percy blanched and started to sputter out some excuse, holding his hands up placatingly, but Frank cut in before he could manage to form any full sentences. 

“He hadn’t even been at Camp a full day and we’d just won war games because of him, and then Mars showed up in the middle of the field,” Frank said. “The rest of us immediately dropped to our knees but this guy stayed standing. He just stared Mars down and said ‘I know you. You’re Ares. We’ve met before. We fought on a beach.’ I swear, I thought Mars was going to incinerate him on the spot. I was also pretty sure that Percy might have actually tried to start a fight with him if I didn’t jump in. That’s when Mars claimed me and told us to go to Alaska. Well, he told me to go and then said that I would be bringing the ‘disrespectful punk’ along, too.” 

Annabeth smacked Percy upside the head and he just pouted at her. 

“Come on, Wise Girl,” he whined. “I was tired and stressed out and I’d just carried Juno disguised as an old hippy bag lady across the Little Tiber, which washed away the Curse of Achilles and then used said river to destroy with extreme prejudice Medusa’s sisters. I hadn’t slept or eaten properly in like, a month at least, Octavian had been a little bitch and butchered my Pillow Pet like, an hour ago, and I was just confused as fuck about literally everything going on.” 

Annabeth sighed and shook her head before turning to Frank and Hazel. “Did he get any better on the quest to Alaska?” 

Hazel let out a small laugh and shook her head. “We met Phineas, the blind seer. Dirt face had brought him back, I guess. He had information we needed. We had two vials of gorgon’s blood, and Percy made a wager. Phineas would write down the information we needed, and then he would pick a vial. He would drink one, and Percy would drink the other. One of them would die, and the other would get ‘healed.’” 

Annabeth turned furious eyes back to her boyfriend, but this time Percy crossed his arms and glared right back. 

“Phineas thought that Gaea valued him enough to guide him to the vial with the cure.” Percy shrugged. “I figured she valued me more. And I was right.” 

Annabeth shook her head and sighed again. “You, Percy Jackson, are going to give me gray hair.” 

Percy grinned. “I’ll have you know, Annabeth Chase, that you already gave me gray hair. Or did you forget?” He ran his fingers through the grey streak of hair that stood out starkly from the rest of his inky black locks. 

Annabeth groaned and let her head fall backward as she slid dramatically down in her chair. 

“I have wondered how you guys got those,” Leo pipped up, “But Jason told me it’d probably be rude to ask. Do we get the story now?” 

Piper glanced to the side and saw that he was practically bouncing in his seat. Piper had to admit she had also been curious about the twin streaks of grey hair the two older demigods sported but hadn’t wanted to ask. 

Percy’s grin widened and his eyes glinted mischievously. Annabeth just groaned again and sunk further down in her chair, covering her face with her hands. 

“Okay, so we’re like, thirteen—” 

Percy immediately launched into a crazy story that had the rest of their jaws on the floor. The more Percy talked, the more Piper felt like her head might explode. First, he just kinda glossed over the fact that he got stabbed and poisoned. Then, apparently, Annabeth tackled a monster off a cliff, the Hunters of Artemis and Artemis herself showed up, and Percy had to deal with an energetic ten-year-old asking him questions like ‘if Annabeth is so smart, why’d she fall off a cliff?’ and try not to kill him. This was then followed by Percy sneaking out of Camp to follow along on the quest Artemis’ lieutenant had received to rescue Artemis (except Percy just wanted to rescue Annabeth, which had a part of Piper that she refused to acknowledge cooing). 

When Percy mentioned killing the Nemean Lion with freeze-dried food packets stolen from a museum gift shop like it was no big deal, Piper thought her eyes might pop out of her skull. 

When he told them about how he’d wrestled Nereus, Jason choked, and they had to stop to make sure he was okay before continuing. 

By the time they made it to the part where Percy, Zoë, Thalia, and Grover had made it to Mt. Tam and discovered Artemis trapped beneath the sky, Piper had almost forgotten about the grey streak thing. 

“I knew Artemis would have a better chance against Atlas than I would, so I told her to give me the sky.” 

“You what?” Frank gasped, sounded as shocked as Piper felt. 

Percy shrugged. “I’d seen in a dream that Annabeth had taken the sky from Luke before Artemis came to take the sky from her, so I knew a demigod could do it, and I knew that I'd do it anyway out of sheer stubbornness and determination if nothing else. Artemis had a better chance of protecting my friends and getting us out of the situation alive than I did and she needed to be freed. So, I took it.” 

Piper felt a little like she’d just been punched in the gut. From beside her, Leo made a weird squeaking noise reminiscent of a dog toy. Jason looked like he’d had the air knocked out of him, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open in disbelief. Further down the table, Hazel had one hand over her mouth and the other clutching Frank’s sleeve, staring at Percy, aghast. Frank, for his part, had dropped his head back and was staring blankly at the ceiling. 

“That’s it,” he said, sounding resigned. “I’ve finally cracked. All the pressure and weirdness finally got to me, and I cracked. Hazel, I love you, you’re like, the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You’ll come visit me in the psych ward, right?” 

Hazel made a strangled kind of noise in the back of her throat and her eyes widened from shock into horror. “Frank! I would never let them lock you in an asylum! I would much rather take care of you myself, even if you really had ‘cracked’, before letting one of those . . . places get you!” 

Alright. Piper was confused. And, to be fair, Frank looked utterly bewildered as well. For a moment no one said anything, but then Percy snapped his fingers and pointed at Hazel with a wince. 

“Oof; forties asylums. Yeah, I wouldn’t want myself or a loved one to end up in one of those either. But asylums don’t really exist anymore, attitudes around mental health have changed pretty drastically and mental health problems are handled much better now,” Percy said gently. “There aren’t lobotomies anymore, and ‘electric shock therapy’ is pretty frowned upon.” 

From beside him, Annabeth made a small sound of realization before nodding and chiming in. 

“There are still people who are gonna be assholes about it, but for the most part, people are pretty understanding. Mental institutions, like psych wards, are meant to be places of healing where people who are struggling can get help and care.” 

“New Rome actually has numerous therapists available to legionnaires, current and retired, all of them retired legionnaires themselves. And I’m sure that after all this is over, they’d be more than open to helping any demigod, no matter which camp they’re from,” Jason added, smiling gently. 

Piper resisted the urge to sigh. Gods, she loved him. He was so sweet. 

They all gave Hazel a moment to absorb and process the information before Percy continued with his story. 

“So, I took the sky from Artemis. Most of the fight is pretty hazy after that, I don’t remember much of what happened while I was under there.” Percy shrugged the sentence away like it wasn’t a big deal, but Piper was struggling to remember how to breathe. “Eventually, someone punted Atlas back under the sky and I was able to let go. Man, my shoulders ached something fierce and I was pretty down for the count. But there was still fighting going on and stuff to be done, so I got up and joined the fight. We killed the monsters, Thalia kicked Luke off a cliff, Annabeth was safe, Artemis was free, Atlas was back where he belonged, and we had won. But we lost Zoë. She’d been poisoned earlier and then further injured when she fought Atlas, her father. Artemis turned her into a constellation, The Huntress, and Thalia became her new lieutenant.” 

Again, he said that like it was no big deal, but Piper couldn’t begin to imagine how painful, or even how tiring, it must have been to hold up the sky for even a few minutes. To then jump immediately into battle without a chance to recuperate or anything? Oh, yeah, and you can’t forget that Percy was only thirteen when this happened! Gods, Piper thought, Percy really is just . . . like that, huh? 

She’d heard whispers, between the stories of Percy’s impossible feats. Heard mutterings and murmurings, seen knowing glances and eyes filled with awe, felt undercurrents of fear just barely lacing someone’s voice. It had just been bits and pieces at first, and Piper had still been under the impression that everyone was just pulling her leg and making crazy shit up about the infamous Percy Jackson. 

But now . . . well. Now that she’s seen him fight, and now that she knows all the stories she’d been told were true and likely not exaggerated, those whispers and looks of awe, that hint of fear? They all made sense.  

Maybe Percy Jackson was just a bit more god than mortal. 

“Okay,” Leo piped up and startled Piper out of her spiraling thoughts. Annabeth was watching her with a knowing glint in her eyes and a small, knowing smirk twisting the corner of her mouth. “Okay, so that story was wild, I think we can all agree,” Leo said, then held his finger up when Percy went to protest. “Not you, you don’t get an opinion, you are weirdly nonchalant about doing insane shit, let the rest of us freak out about it.” 

Percy shrugged and closed his mouth. 

“But!” Leo continued. “You still haven’t told us where the grey streaks came from, dude.” 

“Oh, yeah,” Percy snorted. “Souvenirs from holding the sky. Mortal bodies aren’t built for that kind of burden. A normal mortal wouldn’t have stood a chance, but demigods can survive it because we’re half god.” he shrugged. “It puts immense strain on your body and mind, and I doubt most demigods would be able to manage anything longer than a few minutes.” 

Annabeth snorted and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and the grey hair is the least of our ‘souvenirs’,” she said blithely. “We both ended up with fucked up wrists and backs from that little adventure. Percy usually wears wrist braces on bad days, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that Hera deemed those unnecessary or something when she snatched him, because he was wearing them the last time I saw him before he went missing and now they’re gone.” she said, and narrowed her eyes at her boyfriend. 

“Hey, you haven’t been wearing yours, either, Wise Girl. What’s your excuse?” Percy huffed, pouting at her. 

“I was too worried about you,” she said quietly, ducking her head in a way that had it been anyone else would have made Piper think she was hiding a blush. “I couldn’t think about anything else while you were gone, and the pain in my wrists paled so much in comparison to the pain of not having you at my side, of not knowing if you were safe. Finding you was the only thing that mattered to me.” 

Percy reached out to gently cup Annabeth’s jaw with one hand, the other grabbing her hand and guiding it to rest over his heart. “Well, you have me now. And you’re never getting away from me again. As long as we’re together, yeah?” he said softly, lifting her chin so she would have to meet his eyes. 

Annabeth let out a light, watery laugh, leaning into the warmth of Percy’s palm. “As long as we’re together,” she repeated, voice just as soft, and matched Percy’s answering grin. They leaned their foreheads together for a quiet moment, then shared a tender kiss, and Piper thought her head might explode. 

Okay. Literally what the fuck. How were they so perfect together? Like, that had to have been one of the sweetest things Piper had ever heard. It was sickening. Leo, apparently, agreed with her. 

“Okay, there’s no way you guys are real,” he said, sounding slightly hysterical. “The pain in my wrists paled in comparison to the pain of not having you at my side’? ‘Finding you was the only thing that mattered’? ‘As long as we’re together’?” he threw his hands up in the air before thunking his head down on the table. “You’re making the rest of us look bad!” 

Percy laughed and Annabeth rolled her eyes at Leo’s dramatics, her head now tucked into the crook of Percy’s neck where she leaned back against his chest. 

Well, one thing was for sure. Piper was never going to doubt a story about Percy Jackson again, if only to save herself the heart attack that came from listening to him tell the story later. 

Oh. And she really needed to up her game.

[hyakunana]

A Steadfast Ally

Chapters: 1/1 (1408 words) Fandom: 仮面ライダーギーツ | Kamen Rider Geats Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Series: Part 1 of Geats Sponsor Swap AU

(Part 2)

(Part 0)

[septimusmoonlight]

You doing ok?

hi

[lighthouseshepard]

writing idea - john gets considerably injured and doesn't tell arthur cause he thinks arthur would judge him cause "arthurs had so much worse happen and he just got back up" and arthurs like "dude you've had a human body for like two weeks i would expect you to not be used to pain" and its like a stereotypical hiding injury thing you know

HI HI thanks for this!! again i tried to keep it under 1k but. it ended up... 4.3k.....

heres a mostly unedited first draft i might play around with more later!! (: not so much a considerable injury but this is where my brain went anyways!

As John takes the stairs up to their small apartment building, Arthur in tow with one arm wrapped loosely around his just behind him, he stumbles.

It’s a quick, clean slip of his left ankle, rolling outward at an unnatural angle just as he reaches the last step. The movement itself would have been almost unnoticeable if not for the sharp stab of pain which accompanied it, a searing pressure radiating outwards in undulating bursts. He hisses under his breath, hurriedly letting Arthur go so as not to accidentally drag him down too, and tries to casually play off the lurch.

“Sorry,” he says quickly, righting himself. Immediately he bangs it against the cement edge, eliciting another silent wince he’s immensely grateful Arthur isn’t privy to. “Lost my footing, I guess.”

Arthur hums, instinctively reaching out for John’s guidance and huffing when none was received. Cautiously he takes the remaining steps, coming to stand just beside John at the top before the door.

“It’s alright, John,” he replies, head tilted in his direction. “Thanks for not pulling me down with you.”

His smile begins to fade after a moment of silence in which John stares dizzily at his own feet, struggling to control his breathing. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” comes the hasty retort. “I just… hit it on the stone, I think.”

His brow furrows. “Hit what?”

“My ankle,” John growls, blinking away spots of light dancing across his vision. In the dying sunlight they blended in amongst the cloudless sky, shimmering specks deceptively working to trip him up again as they wavered in front of him. As soon as the words leave his lips he regrets them. 

“I mean,” he clarifies, “I barely knocked it. Nothing to worry over.”

“Oh.” Arthur frowns, searching for John’s hand in the middle distance between them. “Do you want me to take a - well, not a look, but perhaps we could patch it up? Is it bleeding?”

“No.” John pushes slightly past him, fidgeting for keys in his pocket. Arthur’s arm is left hanging at his side, fingers lightly clenched. “I said it’s fine, Arthur. Can we drop it?”

“Okay,” Arthur mutters exasperatedly under his breath, following him hesitantly inside once the door is unlocked. “Whatever you say.”

John all but limps his way into the front hall. If the shuffle makes a noticeable sound against the faded rug he attempts to ignore it, desperately gritting his teeth. With each shift of his leg the throbbing increased, sending burning jolts of agony up through his foot. Beads of cool sweat were breaking out on his temples. Irritably he wipes them away, squinting into the living room through the haze of pain clouding the forefront of his mind.

“Stupid fucking ankle,” he mumbles.

 “What was that?” Arthur calls from behind him. John struggles to turn, one flattened palm braced against the wall. He watches as Arthur unwinds the scarf from around his neck, smoothly kicking off his shoes into the corner. Shoes that he, too, needed to probably remove if bending down didn’t seem like a far impossibility.

But he doesn’t answer. Instead he slowly twists back around, hobbling towards the promise of relief found in the couch awaiting him.

“John? Did you hear me?”

His eyes shut tightly as soon as he sinks into the cushions. The pain refuses to dull despite the lack of pressure once he sits, if anything only growing stronger when he attempts to prop it up on the coffee table, as though gravity were relentlessly trying to tug it down again for his own good. He groans, the noise pulled unbidden from his throat, and hastily covers it up with an aimless cough he feels as a weak imitation of one in his chest.

“John,” he hears a second time. Arthur’s voice is closer now, somewhere directly to his left. Although he turns his head in acknowledgement, his eyelids remain closed, brow furrowed. 

“What? I heard you.”

He could practically sense the crossed arms. 

“What’s going on?” Arthur asks, his tone firm. “Why are you sitting like someone threw you there and you don’t know how to get up?”

“How do you know that?"

"Lucky guess."

"Nothing’s going on. I’m… comfortable.”

“Really? You don’t sound like it.”

“I said it’s nothing,” John snaps. The wince which pulls his lips taut lessens any blow he’d intended within his retort. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“I thought you hit your ankle on the steps?” Arthur says thinly, stepping closer. “So which is it?”

It never ceased to irritate and amaze, Arthur’s ability to weasel the truth out of him. Back when he’d just been a voice behind those deep amber eyes it was magnificently easier to conceal the truth, hiding himself in falsehoods he had ample time to conjure up while Arthur slept or moved about the world amongst others, unable to talk to him. He hadn’t been bound to a body which would betray him at the slightest inconvenience: all his emotions, he felt, were visible on his face and in the lines of his silhouette all the time. Being given away by the twitch of his mouth or the hesitancy in one look of his eyes was maddening. He couldn’t control it, hadn’t yet mastered the subtle art of physical deception. He had no reason to, he knew, but it continued to bother him regardless, being so visibly and openly seen by everyone around him. Every thought was laid bare, ripe for someone else to pluck.

These visual cues didn’t apply to Arthur, of course, but it didn’t need to. It didn’t matter when it came to him. He could sense each ripple of truths withheld in John’s voice as though they were tangible vibrations running beneath his fingers, plucking incorrect notes from a string of music. Whether this was a skill gained through time or familiarity, he didn’t want to ask. Perhaps he’d just had plenty of practice, before John came along.

“It’s… both,” he says lamely, eyes flicking open to watch as Arthur shifts from one foot to the other impatiently. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” he exclaims, a frustrated scoff behind his words. “I’m not even looking at you. I can’t.”

“Like you know exactly what I’m thinking,” John presses, willing himself not to wither beneath that sightless gaze. Like a parent, he thinks to himself, who’s just caught someone doing something they shouldn’t.

“Maybe I do.” Arthur comes to stand beside him, bumping up against the edge of the couch. “Maybe I’m just trying to help, you donkey. What is going on with you?”

“It’s-” he begins to say, but he’s quickly cut off.

“Don’t tell me it’s nothing. You’ve been like this all day: grumpy, antagonistic, walking… very oddly. Did you not sleep very well?”

“I slept fine,” John mutters. “How could you possibly know I was walking strangely?”

“Ah, so he admits something!” Arthur says with a scoff. “I can feel it along your arm when I’m holding onto you. The movement of your gait is different from anyone else - Noel, Oscar, even Marie. Your footsteps all sound unique, too. If I didn’t know any better I’d say you were trying not to limp.”

The silence stretches. John breathes in shallowly, as if the quieter he became, the more likely he was to become invisible.

“John?” Arthur asks uncertainly. “Have you been limping all day?”

“I… not all day, Arthur.”

He sighs, a ragged exhale. “Jesus fucking Christ, John, I knew it!” he says, throwing his arms up. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

John tries to prop himself farther up on the couch cushions, sliding the dead weight of his leg along the coffee table. “Because it’s not important, Arthur,” he protests angrily. “It’s just a - a sprained ankle or something! Noel says it happens to people all the time.”

“You told Noel?” Arthur’s demeanor shifts, and John can’t quite place where it was going. “Is that who you hung up on over the telephone yesterday, when I walked in?”

“I - yes, I told Noel,” John says, glancing away. “I didn’t want to… I mean, I wouldn’t-”

“But you didn’t tell me,” Arthur states, frowning. “I don’t understand, John.”

“Because I didn’t want to bother you with it, alright? Jesus fuck, Arthur! It’s just a little bit of pain!”

His shout rebounds around the living room, echoing along corners and twisting through the dark. Once it dissipates, all that nervous, fearful energy fading into thin air, John realizes the sun had already set. In the shadow of the singular lamp they’d kept on after they left earlier that day, Arthur looked smaller than John had ever seen him previously - socked feet, soft button down shirt untucked, shoulders slumped while his head was turned away from John’s direction.

Hurt, he understood after a solid minute of nothing spoken. There was hurt on his face.

“Arthur,” he says hastily, backtracking. “I didn’t…”

But Arthur was already interrupting.

“Is it bleeding?” he asks flatly. “From where you knocked it as we were coming in.”

John’s eyes widen. “What? No, no, like I said it’s probably just a sprain.”

“Don’t get up.”

“I wasn’t. Where are you going?”

He watches helplessly as Arthur begins to trod across the living room to the hallway just behind them. His left hand searches for the wall, brushing against it occasionally as he vanishes around the corner, the thin lines of his silhouette blending into the darkness. John waits with gritted teeth, listening to the faint but unmistakable sound of a drawer opening in the bathroom, before he’s rejoined in the living room.

“Give me your foot,” Arthur instructs. He comes around on the opposite side, taking a careful seat on the table in front of the couch. “Which one is it?”

“It’s… it’s this one,” John stutters, glancing at the little white box he’d placed between them. “What is that?”

“First aid kit. Came with the apartment, I think. Never thought I’d have to use it.”

There’s a bite to his tone which causes something in John to cower. Panicking at the unfamiliarity of the uneasy feeling, he thinks immediately to fight back against it. Yet no manipulation tactic in his mental catalog nor no insult he’d ever learned from Arthur was readily able to be wielded. He stares, unsettlingly dispirited, at Arthur’s hands while he begins to search through random items in the kit.

“Arthur.”

“Put your leg on my knees, John,” he says. He’s facing away, still wholly focused on determining which items were what through sensation alone. The subtle surprise when John does as asked without further complaint doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Oh. Thank you. Now tell me where it hurts.”

Stretching over as much as he was able, halfway balanced on the edge of the cushions and held now partially up by Arthur’s own legs, John indicates with one pointed finger. 

“Here,” he says, lightly touching the far side of his ankle. “Move your hand just - just there.”

As slender fingers come into contact with the swollen skin, John hisses. Arthur moves as if to draw back, but after some hesitation makes a second attempt with a touch so gentle John hardly senses the wandering examination at all.

“It’s swollen, John,” Arthur says, staring into the middle distance as he feels along the reddened skin. “You’re going to have to take your shoes off.”

“I know it’s swollen,” he grinds out, “I can feel it.”

Immediately he regrets the display of aggravation. Eyes flick worriedly to Arthur’s face, searching for any kind of reaction there, but he may as well have been surveying a blank canvas.

“I think we should try ice,” is all he says. “Before attempting any kind of compression. Wait here.”

“It’s not like I could go anywhere,” he mumbles beneath his breath as Arthur leaves him for the second time. “I’m not running a fucking race on this thing.”

When he returns, grasping a cloth wrapped bundle, John studies him curiously. Nervous muscles stiffen in preparation for another round of sharp throbbing; but as Arthur sits again opposite him, the grip which guides his foot is somehow even kinder than before, cradling the injury into position across his knees.

“Let me take your shoe off,” he murmurs. “I’ll be quick.”

"I’d rather you didn’t,” John protests. “Can’t we just - God, Arthur!”

No apology is forthcoming. It’s palpable in the tension of Arthur’s fingers regardless, the unhappy twist of his mouth. He fumbles the laces undone with one hand and slips the shoe off, dropping it unceremoniously to the floor. One black sock follows. The hem of his trousers is rolled back up to his calf, delicately smoothed along by a soothing touch.

The introduction of cold is almost worse than the prodding he’d just undergone. John jolts as the cloth touches his skin. A pang similar to shattered glass ricochets across his foot and he has to bite his tongue to keep from shouting. Arthur holds him steady, other hand firm on his calf, bent over the injury.

“Easy,” he says quietly. “It’ll hurt for a minute or two, but this will help to numb some of the pain and swelling.”

“Numb?” John gasps, “or worsen? What even is that?”

Arthur readjusts the bundle. “Peas wrapped in a washcloth. You should know, you bought all the groceries last.”

“Why the hell would I buy peas? They’re repulsive.”

“Well I didn’t, and we don’t have ice in right now, so it’ll have to do.”

True to his word, after some uncomfortable minutes of silence, the throbbing begins to lessen. John sinks back in relief, a sweet dullness overtaking pain receptors which had not let up on their constant alarm for what seemed like eons now. Thoughts broken up by the unrelenting ache finally begin to clear. From behind the haze he sighs, tilting his chin up towards the ceiling. Long hair spills over the back of the cushions.

“That’s… much better,” he says weakly. “Thank you.”

“I imagine it is, yes… John?”

“Yes?” he answers, anticipation sitting nauseatingly in his gut. “What?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you hurt your ankle?”

In the low light he steals a glance over. His vision was better than most - better than Arthur’s, when he had been able to see out of his eyes. Things came across with astonishing clarity, even when there was little illumination to help refine the world around him. John narrows in on the long pink scar across Arthur’s throat, an indelicate reminder of the Dreamlands, the incomprehensible weight of that last stand reduced to one single, jagged divide. His torn ear hid neatly enough behind reddish gold curls, but the mark across his face where those dangerous sands had scraped away the skin there was not so easy to miss. 

In the break between their conversation he rolled up his shirtsleeves and there too John could spot scars, dots and lines of invisible constellations, healed but not forgotten. The wooden pinky finger taps his ankle as he shifts the peas. John’s pinky, he thought. Or, it had been.

Everything about Arthur was a testament to some horror he’d survived, that they had survived together. And John, in this new body, had nothing to show for it.

“John?” Arthur asks. “Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay,” he argues. “It hurts.”

“Is this helping at all? We can always wrap it afterward. Hopefully it won’t need to be seen by anyone.”

There’s concern in his voice, so genuine despite the way he’d just been treated that something snaps just around John’s lungs, a sharp, bitter pull. Whatever he had been about to say dies under his tongue. Nothing comes out, although his lips part for several seconds.

“John?”

His restraint falters.

“I’m sorry, Arthur.” 

“...What?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, yanking the words agonizingly out. “It wasn’t my intention to lie to you from the start, I - I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Tell me what, John?” comes the baffled prompt. “That you injured yourself?”

“Yes,” he emphasizes. “I don’t even remember how I did it, I guess I just… stepped incorrectly? Tripped over something? I don’t fucking know, Arthur, and it’s so goddamned stupid. I can’t even control my own two legs! How am I going to keep existing in this body if I break under the slightest influence? It’s not like you get hung up over a fucking sprain, or don’t bounce back from a coma, or a car crash, or-”

“Hang on, John, wait,” Arthur interrupts. “Is that what this is about? Me?”

“Yes! No. I don’t know, Arthur. A bit of both?”

Frustration boils beneath his skin, hot and shimmering. The corners of his eyes prickle but he doesn’t move up to rub at the sting coiled there, waiting for release.

“You don’t let anything stop you,” he says, the living room blurring. “Gunshot wounds to the chest, electrocution, multiple stabbings, so many falls I’ve lost count-”

“Technically the gunshot would have killed me if not for the wraith, " Arthur offers feebly, but John doesn’t seem to hear him.

“Not even getting gutted through inside those mines in Addison! Not even my shitty job of sewing you back up.” He swallows, breathing heavily. “You’re practically fucking invincible, and meanwhile I take one wrong step and I’m incapacitated for days, can’t even take a stroll with you down the street, can’t carry you up to bed when you’ve fallen asleep on the sofa.”

Tears were flowing now, trickling in trails of shame down flushed cheeks. “It’s ridiculous. I witnessed you wade through literal nightmares, Arthur, and you did it without losing yourself. You still managed to laugh where you could, to have hope, and-”

The thought was running swiftly away from him. He twists sideways as far as he could, facing the other side of the room, held in place only by his ankle. Again wishing to disappear, again wanting to crawl back inside Arthur’s head where it was safe.

It takes Arthur far too long to respond. For some time nothing moves in their midst, save for the rapid rise and fall of John’s chest, the hitched cadence of his breathing. Eventually Arthur shifts. John listens to his clothes rustle and wonders when the floor would swallow him whole.

“John?” Arthur says softly. 

His jaw clenches. “What.”

“Look at me.”

Sniffing, he turns. The hand not keeping the frozen vegetables on his foot coaxes his chin up and over. Arthur’s touch doesn’t linger, giving him ample space. John wishes it would. Frustration continues to slip across his face, lines of damp salt.

“I didn’t react that way to all of those things because I wanted to, John,” he says gently. “I did so because I had to. I was surviving, trying to keep us both alive. What would have happened if I gave in and just laid down and let it all overtake me?”

John mulls it over. 

“Nothing,” he concludes, wiping angrily at one eye. “We wouldn’t have gotten very far.”

“Exactly. You think I didn’t struggle? You saw me, John, you saw through me!”

He laughs, the first bright sound to filter through the room since they’d come home, tinged by bittersweet memory. “You were there for every second of it. Remember me waking up from the coma? I could hardly drag myself out of the bed, much less walk. And everything else that’s happened to my body, well…”

Briefly he touches his stomach. “Sometimes I wonder how there’s any blood left in me. I feel patchy, like I’m just made up of gaps a person could see straight through. It all still aches, John. I’m aware of it all, every stupid mistake or scar or… whatever else Addison and the Dreamlands, all those monsters did to me; but if I refused to accept in some capacity, where would that get me? Fuck, I’d never leave the bed, and I’d have every right to do so. Why do you think I still sleep in some mornings?”

“You’re saying you’re hiding things too, then,” John says slowly. A flutter of remorse crosses Arthur’s smile, curving it downward. 

“Yes,” he nods. “A little bit. I didn’t want you to worry, John.”

“This is the same thing, then!” John exclaims. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry!”

“It’s not the same, but… it is similar, sure. I’m still figuring this all out, what to do now afterwards. I know we both are. I suppose we’re each guilty of something here, aren’t we?”

A mutter answers him, unintelligible. Arthur sighs, rubbing John’s leg placatingly. 

“I have experience with this kind of thing, John. You, frankly, do not. We don’t know how this body is going to react to the smallest of injuries, so when you’ve hurt yourself, or tripped, whatever, you need to tell me. I can’t help you if you’re so determined to be… stoically adamant that you can handle it.”

He winces. “No, poor choice of words. You’re more than capable of handling anything. The point here is that you don’t need to do it alone. I didn’t do it all by myself, either, even if it was our body at the time. I still had you there with me.”

“Okay,” John mumbles. The tears had stopped, drying in faintly gleaming tracks. Unable to help himself, he reaches over and directs Arthur’s free hand to his face. Arthur catches on quickly enough. One gentle thumb brushes the dampness away beneath both eyes.

“You said I didn’t lose myself in the midst of all that,” Arthur adds contemplatively, “but I did. You brought me back over and over. I won’t let you drown here, either. I guess we need to be more honest with each other in general.”

He flashes a small smile. “Works in progress, hmm?”

“Sure,” John says, wavering under that look. It was impossible not to. “Okay, Arthur. Thank you. I guess I…”

“Hmm?”

“I know it wasn’t easy, but you made it seem so effortless. I guess I wanted to be able to react the same way.”

“Nothing about being human is effortless, John. If it were easy, you’d be something else altogether.”

Neither are sure what else to say, so they choose to say nothing at all. Arthur removes the cloth, saturated with condensation. The swelling had gone down somewhat. Beneath the inflamed skin a dull ache persisted, but it was milder, simpler to deal with. Darkness shot through with distant city lights and a sliver of the rising moon sits just behind the glass window panes of the front room, enticing and comforting with its allure of endless promise. In the lamp’s glow, John watches Arthur start to slide off the table, cradling his foot until he’s able to place it down atop its surface.

“I think you should sit here for a while,” he advises, frowning. “I can help you down the hall later. If you want, that is. It’s doubtful you’ll be able to keep much weight on this over the next few days if you want it to heal properly.”

“Great,” John mutters. “Wait, where are you going?”

“To change out of these clothes? Why?”

“Can’t you,” he stutters, “stay here? I can’t reach the washcloth. What if I need it again?”

“I can place it next to you,” Arthur says wryly, catching on. “It’s only a foot away.”

“What if I have to get up?”

“You shouldn’t be moving at all.”

“Arthur, please.”

“Christ, alright,” he agrees, fondly. “Just for a while. I’m exhausted too, you know.”

He slips next to him. They fit together seamlessly after some adjusting, John avoiding old wounds, Arthur working around this new one. It’s a recently acquired habit, this circling of one another, quietly curling up until they were consoled enough in their own selves and each other. John’s head ends up across Arthur’s thighs, his foot propped up on the armrest of the other end. He was so tall his leg stretched past the edge of the sofa, halfway dangling in mid air.

“John, darling?” Arthur asks absently, untangling dark curls spread out across his lap.

“Yes?”

“You’ve… carried me up to bed before?”

John blinks. “Of course. I couldn’t leave you on the sofa like that, shivering.”

“I wasn’t shivering,” he retorts with mock affront. “Was I?”

“It was kind of pitiful. To give you credit, you had kicked off the blanket I put over you earlier.”

“I was wondering where that had come from,” Arthur mumbles. “Thanks, John.”

“You’re welcome. You sleep like you’re the prize boxer in a dream ring.”

“What does that even mean?”

“You kick,” John says meaningfully, eyes already beginning to close. “Hard.”

“Oh. Sorry. At least I don’t hog the blankets all the time,” Arthur retorts sheepishly.

“I do not hog anything. I’m much taller than you now! I need more of it.”

“Not all of it.”

“Buy a second blanket, then, if you’re so concerned.”

They bicker until John falls asleep. Sentences drop to single word responses, and soon enough he’s out, trying to get one last quip through the heavy pull of slumber. Arthur sighs as he feels his breathing even out, one palm flat on his chest. He hadn’t even gotten a chance to change clothes. 

“John?” he whispers. “John?”

He doesn’t answer. Arthur lets loose another weary exhale. There was no way he could move now.

“I think you did this on purpose,” he says softly, yawning. “You just want me to play with your hair, don’t you? Unfortunately for you, I’m probably going to fall asleep right here beneath you.”

He brushes stray strands off John’s forehead. It continued to puzzle him how someone who had once spent thousands of years inflicting agony on others now flinched beneath the prospect of bothering those closest to him with pain of his own.

Arthur drifts into unconsciousness soon after the thought dissipates like smoke, head dipping to rest sideways on one shoulder. John, clinging to the last dredges of wakefulness, peers up through heavy lidded eyes just in time to catch a glimpse of Arthur’s silent goodnight, John, on his lips. 

[doctorsiren]

Woe! Fanfiction be upon ye!

[ohmytiredheart]

It's uncanny how much the FNAF lore actually makes sense if you look at it through the eyes of TMA