#spark rupture

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Spark Rupture

Artist: Eli Minaya TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[art-of-mtg]

Spark Rupture (March of the Machine: The Aftermath) - Viko Menezes

More cards with art by Viko Menezes on Scryfall

[spark-circuit]

DOUBLE GOLD AND ONE OF THEM WAS HEATHCLIFF YIPPEE!!!!!!!

[everyforkedroad]

Why Shine Might Be Set in 1969: A Story of Resistance, Silence, and Defiance

*sorry, folks, this is a long one, based on one humble inter fan's desire to understand

As we eagerly await the release of Shine, one intriguing detail stands out: its setting in Bangkok, 1969. 

Thailand in the late 1960s was not exactly a beacon of visible queer liberation. So why choose this year, this precise moment, to set this series? The answer may lie not in what was happening in the open, but what was burning just beneath the surface in Thailand and across the globe. That "light that lingers just beneath the shadows" that would turn a spark into the flames of social unrest.

1969 was a year of rupture and revolution. Across the world, young people were taking to the streets—angry, idealistic, determined to wrest power from corrupt systems. From the anti-war protests in the United States to student-led revolts in France, Japan, and Mexico, the air was electric with resistance. Music, fashion, and film reflected these seismic shifts, capturing the spirit of rebellion in psychedelic color.

In Southeast Asia, the Vietnam War raged just across the border. American troops passed through Thailand on their way to and from the front lines, and the Thai government, under military rule, maintained close ties with the United States. The social tensions of this geopolitical alignment were palpable between the rising tide of youth culture and a government suspicious of dissent. This tension was felt as well between imported modernity and deep-rooted tradition, agrarian poverty and Bangkok's concentration of wealth. All of these serve as a pressure cooker of tensions that was ready to explode.

In Thailand, student activism was gaining momentum. The seeds that would later blossom into the mass protests of the 1970s were already being planted in 1969. University campuses, especially Thammasat and Chulalongkorn, were becoming incubators for radical thought, as young intellectuals began to question military rule, wealth inequality, and the suppression of free speech.

Though the mass protests that would shake the monarchy and the junta had not yet occurred, the sense of unease was growing. Student publications, underground gatherings, and whispered debates signaled a generation preparing to stand up. It is into this world—a world tense with possibility—that Shine may drop its characters.

Half a world away, in June of 1969, a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York sparked several nights of defiant resistance led by trans women, drag queens, and queer people of color. It became a watershed moment in LGBTQ+ history, a symbolic ignition point for the modern gay rights movement. News of Stonewall may not have reached every queer person globally in that moment, but the reverberations would be felt by an entire generation.

For closeted individuals in Thailand, especially students and intellectuals already questioning other forms of repression, Stonewall represented something radical: the refusal to hide. Even if unspoken, it stirred something. It suggested that queerness and protest were not incompatible. That the same voices raised against political injustice would teach a future generation of queer people to fight for the right to love freely.

Thailand decriminalized homosexuality in 1956, over a decade before Stonewall. On paper, it was a progressive move. But legal tolerance did not equal cultural acceptance. The 1960s remained a deeply conservative era for queer Thais, especially in professional or public life. While kathoey ("ladyboys") had long been part of Thai cultural visibility, their presence did not signify broader acceptance of queer identities—particularly not of men who loved men or women who loved women outside of comedic or marginalized roles.

There were no pride marches. No activist networks. No formal advocacy groups pushing for LGBTQ+ rights in the way that began to unfold in the West. In fact, Thailand’s first gay rights organization, Anjaree, would not be founded until 1986—seventeen years after Stonewall, and almost two decades after the year Shine is set.

So why choose 1969 for a queer Thai story?

Because it is a liminal moment. 

A time before everything cracked open, when truth still had to live in shadows, but shined just as bright. A time when love, especially queer love, had to be coded through through music, poetry, unspoken gestures and looks. It’s a rich emotional landscape for drama, for longing and repression, desire and danger, all set against the backdrop of political awakening.

If Shine follows queer characters navigating this moment, their love story is not just personal, it’s political. Their very existence becomes resistance, not through protest signs or riots, but through every act of tenderness they dare to share in a world that tells them to stay invisible.

By choosing 1969, Be On Cloud may be offering a tribute to all the queer people in Thai history whose stories were never told. The ones who danced and sang behind closed doors. Who whispered their truths in journals and poems. Who watched the world begin to burn and wondered if there would ever be space for them in its new order, until they came into the awareness that they would have to build the world they wanted themselves. One love, one protest at a time.

So that future lives could Shine in the open as well.

[phantomwithbreakfast]

DANNYMAY DAY 10: Family

Day 09 • Day 11

⟢ Did I know what to do with this prompt? Absolutely not. Thankfully, some amazing friends helped spark the idea—so huge thanks to them for the rescue! This was also the very first time I’ve ever drawn Maddie—so… that was a whole experience on its own, geeeez—(more under the cut)

Genre: Angst / Drama • TW/CW: Graphic Content — Violence — PTSD — Emotional Distress • Maddie’s POV • A moment after Scarred For Half A Life (my phic) • AU — OOC

The house was quiet again.

Too quiet.

No Jazz stomping up the stairs with textbooks cradled to her chest. No Danny thudding through the door with muddy sneakers and excuses. No laughter. No shouting. No heartbeat.

Just the whispers of a silent home that used to be full of life.

Jazz was away at college—pursuing her own future, a future Maddie once envisioned proudly for both of her children. And Danny… Danny was gone. Not gone as in missing. No. She knew where he was—out there, somewhere. Wandering. Existing. A ghost of the boy she once held in her arms.

The boy she cradled. The boy she once watched the stars with, his tiny hand wrapped in hers. The boy she whispered a future to—soft dreams beneath blanket forts and starlit ceilings. A life full of promise. Of hope. The boy she tried so desperately to save.

But it was no use.

She hadn’t saved him.

Now all that remained was silence. And the echo of everything she’d lost.

Maddie sat on the edge of the couch, back straight, hands folded politely in her lap. In her palms, she held the photograph frame that always sat on the coffee table. It was old now—edges chipped, the silver rim dulled. But the image was still crystal clear.

Her boy. Her Danny.

She studied his face, her gloved thumb brushing over the glass in a delicate motion. A mother’s caress—sterile, careful, as if even through the photo, he might vanish at her touch.

How had it come to this?

How had the sweet, smiling child in the frame become the thing that stood in front of her in the lab that day—wild-eyed, screaming, burning with ectoplasmic rage?

How had Phantom infected him so deeply? So thoroughly that Danny couldn’t see the truth anymore?

No… that wasn’t fair. She knew the truth. Knew what had to be done. All her research, all her testing, the sleepless nights… they were for him. Only for him. For his safety. For humanity’s safety.

That’s what she‘d told herself. But buried under all the logic and justifications was something far less noble.

She just wanted her little boy back.

Her Danny. Her son. Hers.

Not some half-dead, ectoplasm-saturated anomaly with Phantom’s reverberating vocal frequency and those irradiated, bio-luminescent green eyes—unnaturally aged beyond the developmental stage of an eighteen-year-old.

Maddie exhaled sharply, the breath rattling through clenched teeth. Her hand trembled as it traced the curve of her little Danny’s cheek in the photo—just for a moment—but she forced it still. Composure was key. Logic was essential. Emotions clouded judgment. Still… the memory came unbidden.

That last conversation—if it could be called that. A confrontation. A breakdown. A rupture.

“Everything I’ve ever done for you! Every time I was there for you—it was all for nothing!” she’d screamed. She remembered the pitch of her own voice cracking.

And its reply—so calculated, so… cold, laced with a dangerously elevated cortisol spike in its tone. It wasn’t the neural cadence of her son. It was something else entirely. Something Phantom.

“You’re a fucking sick, narcissistic psycho! I wish you were dead! DEAD!” it had screamed, its voice reverberating with raw ectoplasmic resonance, each word slamming into her like a shockwave. Phantom—pinning her down, overpowering on the cold lab’s floor. There was no way out. No escape. Just its fury—heavy, suffocating and absolute.

The ghostly, green ectoplasmic blade had materialized before her cortex could fully register his words—a volatile construct forged from grief, rage, and betrayal. Ectoplasm manipulated at a molecular level, shaped not for defense, but as a precise instrument of hatred.

“I tried… to be your son. I tried… to be what you wanted. I tried to be enough for you,” it said—its voice trembling, brittle with long-suppressed emotion. She watched its hands shake, still gripping the ectoplasmic blade suspended above her body. The energy shimmered, unstable, reacting to his elevated stress levels and unstable core.

Ghosts don’t feel emotions. Ghosts don’t feel pain.

She repeated it like a mantra—over and over and over again, forcing the belief into every corner of her mind until it sounded like truth. Until it had to be the truth.

But… was it?

All those years of study. All those sleepless nights in the lab, dissecting ectoplasmic signatures, charting neural echoes, cataloging behaviors and anomalies. Mapping the so-called biology of something that shouldn’t exist. She’d convinced herself—convinced the world—that ghosts were nothing more than sentient patterns. Echoes. Constructs obsessed with an idea, not real people. No real emotion. No true pain. Just manipulation coded into their being. Just psychopathic mimicry—strategic, rehearsed. They didn’t feel, they performed. They adapted to get what they wanted.

And yet…

That voice. That blade. Those dispicable eyes.

That boy.

Was it all just Phantom’s performance?

Or… had she miscalculated the truth all along?

She should’ve felt fear. But all she could process in that moment was the devastating truth—

It—he still wanted to be loved. And she had failed him. She’d failed herself. Not as a scientist. Not as protector of humanity. But as a mother. She’d failed her son. And in doing so—she had failed herself. Completely. Irrevocably.

Before her neurons could even fire in response, before cognition caught up with reality—the blade dropped, piercing straight through her sternum. A precise, calculated strike. Not reckless. Not wild. Just deliberate. Cold. Controlled. As if it—he had been holding it in for years.

She could still feel it sometimes—phantom pain in the space just beside her heart.

“And it was… it was never enough. So fine. If I’m nothing to you, then you’re nothing to me,” it—he had said—his voice flat, final. Not shouted. Not screamed. Just spoken like a verdict.

The blade stayed lodged between her ribs, pulsing faintly with unstable ectoplasmic energy. Her lungs stuttered against the pressure—sharp, shallow gasps cathing in her throat. The tissue around her sturnum burned, the spreading cold, the biological confusion as her nervous system began to misfire. Each inhale felt tighter, narrower—like the air itself was rejecting her.

She was suffocating.

Everything blurred. And for a moment, she couldn’t tell if she was looking at her son… or the thing… she’d created.

His hand had trembled when he twisted the blade—but not from regret. From fury.

“You’re not even worth killing,” he whispered—spat through clenched teeth, each word dripping with contempt.

The blade was drawn from her chest in one clean pull. Not with hesitation. Not with mercy. With disdain.

The withdrawal burned worse than the strike.

Before she could fully register the movement, his hand hovered inches above her chest—right over the open wound. A chilling cold bloomed from his palm, not the comforting kind—but the clinical, detached kind. Ice spread over her sternum, seeping into the torn tissue. The wound began to close—not fully, no. Just enough to stop the bleeding. Enough to keep her alive.

“You’re worth it to fucking suffer,” he finished, his voice low, final, echoing in the sterile silence like a death sentence.

It wasn’t kindness. It was all about control.

Maddie’s hands trembled around the photo frame now. Not from fear. No—never fear.

This piece is—a kind of aftermath of what is going to happen in my phic. I don’t even know if people are reading it lol.

Just… the aftershocks of loss. The lingering tremors of something she refused to name.

She set the frame down carefully, like it was a specimen too fragile to fracture—too sacred to break. Her expression remained composed, perfectly arranged, every muscle calculated into stillness.

But inside?

Inside was a mother’s graveyard. Unmarked. Silent. And filled with everything she’d buried just to survive.

⟢ I’ll be honest—I’ve developed a real hate for headcanon Maddie. Not just because of all the existing phics out there where she vivisects Phantom—her own son—whether she realizes it or not. But because of my own phic. I created that version of her, and now I can’t look at her without cringing. Drawing her was… uncomfortable, to say the least. And yeah, I know—it sounds weird. But it is what it is, and there’s no undoing it now.

⟢ I don’t enjoy writing Danny as a villain either. But sometimes, to really understand a story, you have to look at it through someone else’s eyes. Right?

⟢ This piece is a kind of aftermath of what’s coming in my phic. Honestly? I’m not even sure if anyone’s reading it, lol.

[under0-0s]

200th Park Avenue, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. 02:43:27 A.M - Laboratory Room. ____________________ (listen to the music to improve the reading experience.)

_____________________

Tony Stark had always thrived in chaos, but this was different. This was a kind of entropy that clung to his bones, settled into his lungs, and refused to let go. Seventeen days and fifty-two hours—long enough for the world outside to twist into something unrecognizable. The weapons division was back, and so was the backlash. The media called him a war profiteer, a fallen hero, a traitor to his own ideals. The ring from a certain someone, that once held promises now lay forgotten in some drawer, and Serena’s voice still echoed in his mind, raw with anguish. Hunter was out there, bullet chambered, mark set.

It didn’t matter.

What mattered was here, now, in the icy stillness of his lab. He’d shut out the noise, ignored the ghosts that clawed at his conscience. Instead, he stared into the heart of something unknown.

A transparent, human-sized chamber stood at the center of the room, its neon-lined edges casting eerie reflections on the steel walls. Inside, a rippling void hovered—a bright streak, like lightning frozen in time, a tear between dimensions. The air buzzed with energy, a whisper of something just beyond reach. He had calibrated every parameter to the most precise degree, pushing past theoretical impossibilities.

This wasn’t about weapons, not really. It wasn’t about escape, either. It was about the spark. The one thing that had eluded him in everything else.

“Sir, I must remind you that exposure to the anomaly beyond its current containment field presents a high probability of destabilization.”

J.A.R.V.I.S.’s voice, crisp and composed, broke through the quiet hum of machinery. The AI had been monitoring the experiment with unwavering precision, cataloging every fluctuation, every surge of energy, every anomaly.

Tony exhaled sharply, rubbing a hand over his face. “Noted, J. But if I don’t push this further, I’ll never know what’s on the other side.”

“There is a fine line between discovery and destruction, sir.”

A wry smile ghosted across Tony’s lips. “Yeah, well. I’ve never been much for fine lines.”

J.A.R.V.I.S. hesitated, as if calculating the odds of Tony actually listening to reason.

“Would you like me to prepare emergency protocols in case of—”

“No.” Tony cut him off. “We’re not failing today.”

He adjusted the temperature again, a frigid cold settling into the room. His breath ghosted in front of him, cheeks pinkening from the artificial winter. He didn’t move. He barely blinked. He only stared, waiting, hoping, needing something to break through the weight of failure that had consumed him for far too long.

And then—it happened.

The spark.

Small, fleeting, yet infinite in its implications. A shimmer that pulsed through the tear in space, dancing along the edges of the anomaly, illuminating the abyss with an unearthly glow. Maybe it was just a reaction. Maybe it was nothing at all. But for the first time in days, something worked.

His fingers twitched, as if reaching for it, for the proof that something still remained. Something untouched by betrayal, by war, by loss. Maybe it was just physics. Maybe it was just a trick of the mind.

Or maybe—just maybe—it was the proof that between every rupture, every break, every tear, there was a space where something new could exist.

And so he stared, unblinking, as the dimensions split just long enough to let the spark linger.

Because maybe—just maybe—there was still something left to salvage.

The air around him hummed as the neon streak pulsed once more, sending out thin tendrils of energy that wove through the air like living things. He exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing as he adjusted the stabilization settings on the console beside him. If he could just hold the split open long enough, he might be able to measure the properties of whatever existed within. Maybe even step inside.

The thought was reckless, but he had always lived on the edge of recklessness and genius. There was no denying the pull he felt—no denying the possibility that on the other side of that tear, something awaited. Something better. Something more.

But there were risks.

The algorithms were still incomplete, the equations still not fully understood. The chamber’s integrity was holding, but for how long? And if he lost control, what would happen to the lab? To the world?

“J.A.R.V.I.S., run a full diagnostic on the containment field.”

“Processing,”

The AI responded smoothly.

“Energy stabilization at 84%. Containment holding, but fluctuations increasing by 0.7% per second.”

Tony frowned. That wasn’t great. He had minutes at best.

He should stop. He should shut it down and walk away.

But he couldn’t.

Because for all the ways he had failed, for all the people he had let down, for all the things that had slipped through his fingers—this, this, was still in his grasp.

He clenched his fists, jaw tightening as the cold seeped deeper into his skin. The glowing fissure flickered, almost as if it, too, were waiting.

He stepped closer, the hum growing louder. The streak of light stretched and curled, forming delicate arcs that shimmered against the steel walls. His pulse quickened. He reached out, fingers hovering just inches from the anomaly, the energy tingling at his skin.

“Sir, I must reiterate—”

“J, shut up.”

The lab was silent, save for the faint vibrations of the machinery. No voices. No outside distractions. Just him, standing at the precipice of discovery—or destruction.

He took another step forward, heart pounding in his chest. The anomaly pulsed, its radiance fluctuating like the heartbeat of something alive. If he crossed the threshold, if he reached into the unknown, would he find answers? Or only more questions?

The machine hummed one last time before he exhaled and stepped back. He reached for the console, fingers hesitating over the shutdown sequence.

Then, with a final glance at the spark still flickering within the anomaly, he pressed the button.

The energy curled inward, collapsing in on itself until all that remained was the cold and the silence.

J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke first.

“Experiment concluded. Data has been logged.”

Tony turned away from the empty space, running a hand down his face.

Seventeen days and fifty-two hours. That’s how long he had been waiting for something to go right.

The weight in his chest shifted, just a little.

Maybe there was still time to make something of it.

_______________

( Tags so that this just doesn't die: @oh-to-be-a-murderer @the1-and-only-peggycarter @crazyinlovewithmarvel @thatone-midgardian @over-bi-the-wayside @its-nate-the-sharpshot @multiverse-peterbparker @clintbarton-thearrowguy @spidey-sensed-ur-follow @lunamarvels @insomniac-lifestyle @playgirlgenius @the-iron-rose @little-lost-prince )

[kefiteria]

hi! i very much returned and i come with a request. i. i would looove to see! a rivals to lovers sebek x reader thing from you!! one where they start off on the wrong foot, clash often, maybe even spar/swordfight (and maybe maybe, even other people teasing them about liking each other when they *clearly don't!*) and then oopsies, one of them starts to fall for the other... whether that's one-sided pining or mutual like with denial is up to you! idk i just. i love that trope. and i would love to see your take on something like this since you haven't written something like this before i think! maybe!

thank you in advance! :D

pairing: Sebek Zigvolt x Reader

tags : rivals to lover, mutual pining - denial, slow burn like glacial, emotional repression olympics, lyrical writing

a/n🍨: hallooo~ thank you so much for requesting🩷 i too love this trope! this one took me a while because im practicing my english and prose here by using classic literature as always for my writing style 🍎 was planning to make it into headcanon style but nah we need more Sebek written in this pov~ I hope you enjoyed this and thank you so much for reading my writing 🩵

To say that you and Sebek Zigvolt met under civil circumstances would be a falsehood so severe it could rupture the very stonework of Diasomnia’s northern battlements. No, you met in the manner of colliding storm fronts—loud, electric, and with an immediate declaration of war.

He had the gall—the bold, sun-blessed gall—to correct your grip before the match began, his voice a staccato of knightly contempt. “Your wrist lacks tension.” he had intoned, as though offering divine edict rather than unsolicited critique.

You responded the only way one should when their pride is called into question by a man whose hair defies gravity and whose decibel level could awaken the dead: With a smile sharp as a letter opener and the promise of utter ruin.

The duel was close. Too close. You won (technically). Emotionally, he declared victory by virtue of ‘allowing you an opening out of charitable disdain.’ You haven’t stopped reminding him since.

Though there was something in that first clash. The spark of metal? Yes. But something else too—an irritant that settled in the bloodstream and curdled into fascination.

You spar with Sebek far too often—egregiously, obscenely often. To the point that even Silver, slumped against a tree like a man who’s seen too much, once muttered through the velvety fog of exhaustion, “Do they think swordplay is foreplay?”

You both ignored him, of course paired with the practiced dignity of people who absolutely did not hear that. Both flushed with the kind of synchronized, thermonuclear embarrassment that would’ve triggered an evacuation drill at NRC, had anyone been paying attention. So you turned away like you were being pulled by magnetic shame. Sebek blushed in reverse—spine straighter, jaw tighter, voice louder, as if yelling could exorcise feelings.

He treats every duel like a divine inquisition—each swing of his blade a holy rebuke against your entire existence.

You, on the other hand, approach it like it’s the world’s most dramatic coping mechanism—why go to therapy when you can just emotionally bleed on a training field with swords and unresolved tension?

When your weapons clash in melodies only the repressed could compose. His hands, traitorous things, are always too gentle when shoving you back, like he’s afraid of bruising your pride more than your ribs. Yours, equally disloyal, linger a beat too long when helping him up, fingers brushing like they have their own subplot.

You fall? He catches you—with far too much concern for a man who calls you “insufferable wretch” between bouts.

He trips? You grab his arm and haul him upright with an intimacy that suggests a montage is about to start.

No one says anything about these moments.

Except everyone.

Constantly.

Lilia has popcorn. Silver has resigned himself to the background commentary role. Malleus has offered, twice now, to officiate “the inevitable marriage.” You’re not sure if he’s joking. You’re also not sure if you are.

Sebek’s inner monologue reads like a knight’s diary slowly succumbing to madness:

“They are reckless, chaotic, dazzlingly unorthodox. I loathe their insolence. I disdain their grin. Their hair is always in their eyes—do they not own a comb? Their footwork is distractingly elegant. I wish to see them humbled. I wish to see them succeed. I wish—no. I do not wish. I strategize.”

He often storms away from sparring matches and then broods by a window, narrating his internal agony in Elizabethan sonnet form.

You, on the other hand, are no better:

He’s the worst. He’s insufferable. He talks like he swallowed a thesaurus on fire. But when he blocks a strike meant for me, I feel—warm? No. That’s just combat fever. Not affection. Definitely not affection. He looked at me yesterday. For too long. I should punch a wall. Maybe two.

You wake up thinking of him—grumpy, green, and gallant, like your subconscious is hosting a crush-themed renaissance fair.

He trains harder because of you. He says it’s “to surpass a worthy rival,” but everyone knows that’s code for “I can’t stop thinking about their stupid face and I hate it here.”

Both of you pretend you don’t care.

Both of you care enough to write tragic ballads in the corners of your notebooks and then aggressively deny their existence when caught. His rhyme scheme is suspiciously good. Yours ends with “sword” forced to rhyme with “feelings I’ve ignored.”

Denial has never been this poetic.

The mission goes sideways, as missions often do when fate decides your emotional development needs a nudge. Blades clash. Smoke billows. Someone yells something unhelpful.

Sebek takes the hit.

A clean, heroic slash across his arm—not fatal, but dramatic enough to cue a slow-motion gasp. Blood blooms. So does your panic.

You sprint to him like a protagonist in a poorly-budgeted romance drama. “Sebek!” you shout, voice wobbling, heart lurching. “Why didn’t you dodge, you idiot?!”

You slapped a bandage on him like it's an insult and pressing too hard. Plus, also shaking and typical pretending it’s from battle adrenaline and not the mind-numbing fear that your favorite loudmouth knight might actually perish before you resolve whatever this... thing is between you.

Sebek (bless him), looks up at you with the hazy, noble daze of a man who thinks he’s about to be sainted.

“Because you were behind me...” he says, with the unwavering sincerity of someone who would die proudly and dramatically on your behalf and then lecture you about safety as a ghost.

The silence that follows is biblical. Not holy. Just really, really awkward.

You stare at him.

He stares back.

Somewhere in the background, Silver audibly sighs.

There is, undeniably, the atmosphere of a kiss. The entire battlefield feels it. Even the enemy pauses like, “Are they gonna—?”

But no.

Instead, Sebek winces like a main protagonist suppressing emotion and grunts, “Tactical body shielding is part of knightly protocol.” like that explains anything.

“I swear to the Seven if you say ‘duty’ one more time—” you nearly lose your mind on the spot.

He tries. He tries to say it again.

You hit him with the bandage roll again.

You both survive, tragically, still not dating.

Lilia has a blackboard with your name and Sebek’s written on it. Every day, he adds a new tally mark under “Still Not Kissing.” There are currently fifty-seven.

Silver has stopped trying to intervene. He just carries around tea for people who’ve witnessed your latest emotionally-loaded sparring match.

Malleus, who knows everything and nothing, once mused aloud: “Isn’t it remarkable how well they complement each other’s temperament? Like thunder and wildfire.”

You and Sebek: “WE’RE NOT COMPLEMENTING ANYTHING.”

It happens, as all catastrophes of the heart must, in the training yard—where moonlight bleeds like silver wine across the flagstones, and your breath comes short not from fatigue, but from something far more ruinous: possibility.

Sebek gleams—glows, really—with the sheen of noble exertion and catastrophic restraint, the kind that only men who scream about “honor” at 6 a.m. can manage. His hair is a mess. His tunic clings in ways your brain, traitorous organ that it is, files under archival memory: do not delete.

A misstep—perhaps yours, perhaps the gods’—and suddenly gravity conspires to write fanfiction.

Your faces are intolerably close—shared air close, bad decisions are whispering close. His breath ghosts across your cheek like an unfinished line of poetry. Both are no longer sparring. Both are performing the prelude to a scandal.

His hand finds your waist, firm and immediate, like he was born to catch you.

Your fingers, in a poetic act of betrayal, fist in the collar of his tunic as though you’re anchoring yourself to the last shred of common sense you possess. (Spoiler: you are not.)

Your lips part.

He says—blessedly hoarse, devastatingly sincere— “You’ve improved.”

“So have you.” you replied while blinking like someone who just got emotionally stabbed.

It is not flirting. It is courtship by blade. It is foreplay by tragedy. Your noses nearly touch. Your eyelashes brush.

This is it.

You are going to kiss him.

You are going to ruin everything gloriously.

And then—snap.

A branch. A singular, petty piece of wood.

Both your heads whip around.

Lilia hangs upside down from a tree like a particularly smug gargoyle, idly eating a pear with all the nonchalance of someone watching a telenovela.

“Fascinating,” he murmurs around a bite. “I was wondering which of you would cave first.”

Both of you did not scream.

Did not kiss.

Swiftly, you launch backward like startled cats, scramble away from each other as though struck by lightning and shame in equal measure. Fleeing the scene in opposite directions with the velocity of people running from emotional growth.

You do not speak for two days.

Not out of anger—oh no. Out of terror. The what if of it all haunts you both like a melodramatic ghost with excellent timing.

Sebek trains louder.

You train longer.

Silver watches it unfold like a war documentary. Lilia starts sending fruit daily, each pear labeled with unhelpful advice like “Try again, cowards.”

You remain professionally repressed.

But your eyelashes remember.

You are still not together.

You are still sparring, still arguing with the vehemence of two people who have never touched but think about it constantly. You parry his blows like you're trying to teach him tenderness through violence. He retorts with all the intensity of someone who knows if he loves you, he will ruin it by saying it aloud.

The space between your hands is shorter now.

Tragic, really—how your knuckles brush when you pass swords. How his breath hits your neck when he corrects your stance and you pretend not to shiver like some Victorian ghost-wife locked in a duel with decorum.

The insults have changed. Softer.

"You're reckless." he says, voice like a prayer that fears being answered.

"And you're insufferable." you whisper, like it's the most beautiful thing you've ever meant.

Sebek dreams of your grin and wakes up shouting into the forest, as if the trees might scrub it from his memory. They don’t. They never do.

You draw his face in the margins of your notes—again, and again, and again. "It’s anatomical," you claim. As if your hand hasn't memorized the shape of his jaw better than your own name.

The dorm holds its breath every time you're in the same room. It's become a sport. They're all tired. Someone bought confetti. It's in a drawer. Waiting.

And still—no kiss.

But the wind knows.

The swords know.

The gods know.

Your bones know.

It will not be planned, nor even permitted by either of your better natures—those poor, trembling things that have, until now, kept the floodgates intact with little more than denial and discipline. No. It will unfold with the slow horror of prophecy fulfilled, of stars finally drawing their long-promised alignment.

A duel, yes. Like so many before it. Steel ringing against steel, breath stolen from lungs already too full of unsaid things. The tension between you drawn tighter than a bowstring, vibrating with something ancient—something not born of rivalry, but of recognition.

So the blades lock and breath tangles, as the sky seems to hold itself mid-inhale— there will be a falter.

A slip, a stumble, some divine error in footwork, but it is not a mistake—it is the hand of the inevitable pressed gently to the small of your back. Thus when collision comes, it does not arrive as chaos, but as revelation.

Lips meet.

Not in hunger, nor haste, but in that stunned hush reserved for relics.

As if the moment itself had been sculpted, chiseled from marble and myth, ordained by hands that do not tremble. There is no hesitation, no softening of impact—only the terrible, tender exactness of contact that has been fated since first clash, since first glance, since the first cruelly barbed exchange beneath the training yard’s bruised light.

It is a kiss that unmakes. A kiss that knows.

But when it ends—when the breath returns and the sky resumes its spinning—you will part as though something sacred has been shattered between you. Not broken. No. Merely… too magnificent to remain in mortal hands.

Hands still clutch at tunics as if to steady the world.

When denial arrives with all the conviction of habit, but none of its former strength. Words fall between you like dulled blades, unable to wound now that truth has been glimpsed and briefly held.

Whatever existed before—the brittle pride, the righteous fury—no longer fits the shape of this new silence. Something has shifted. Not loudly, not visibly. Just enough to tip the axis of the world.

Sebek does not meet your gaze. Not out of shame, but reverence, like one who fears the sun might vanish if stared at too long. The moment lingers, impossible to dismiss. Beneath the scent of metal and sweat, something gentler has begun to bloom.

Not surrender—something far rarer. Recognition. And though the duel may resume, though steel may rise again, the air around you no longer belongs to war. It belongs to what comes after.

[brandwhorestarscream]

Could I get late pregnancy consort Megatron? A continuation pretty please?

Absolutely! 🥰

...

"Lord Prime!"

Optimus jumps as the doors rush open. The minibot is panting as if he'd run all the way here, and... he's wearing the telltale silver and velvety red of the Ruby Pavillion. It's the middle of the night, though technically, it's the new day already. The only ones who should be awake right now are the nightwatch.

"Are you alright?" He stands up and rounds his desk, kneeling down to help steady them. They're bent double with both servos braced on their knees. "There, try to vent, little one..."

"F... Forgive me!" The small mech wheezes. "I'm- n-not-!" He gasps. "Much of a runner!"

Optimus frowns. He sounds rattly and wheezy inside. He gently pats at his back. "It's alright, take your time."

However, the minibot shakes his helm. "S-Sorry, m'lord! The," he takes a final, heaving vent. "The Lord Concubine is in labor!"

Optimus nearly falls over. "What?!"

The twins aren't due for another 3 decacycles! Ratchet had warned them that an early delivery wasn't just possible, but likely. They were big babies, and stretching their carrier's gestation tank to the max. His seal was likely to rupture before they were fully ready to come out. That was why they had ceserean scheduled in 3 decacycles: that was early! The earliest that Ratchet had said their safety would be all but guaranteed! But if he was delivering now-!

He trips over himself in his rush to stand, and misjudges the depth of the door, clocking it with his shoulder and making sparks fly as he burst into the hallway. Taking off at a mad dash, he nearly runs over poor Ironhide and is so panicked he doesn't even remember if he shouts an apology over his shoulder.

He lets himself into the Ruby Pavillion, the villa designated for his concubine from Kaon. Rude, but there's no time for propriety! Ascending the stairs two at a time he finally makes it to the master berthroom suite. "Megatronus!" He gasps. "M-Megatronus, are you alright?! How are you-"

"Quiet!" Ratchet immediately scolds him with a withering look. He and Soundwave are in the middle of helping Megatron into a hoverchair for transportation to the medical wing. He'd been confined to extremely strict bedrest lately, much to his chagrin, but now he just looks miserable. His optics are pale and bleached out, and he glistens with a cold condensation. His belly is distended, painfully so, bursting at the seams with his protometal stretched so thin to accommodate the massive weight in his gestation tank. If Optimus looks hard enough, his midsection looks somewhat transluscent.

He doesn't smile when he sees Optimus, but some of the tension around his optics does melt off when their gazes meet. He looks dazed, and afraid, and indescribably uncomfortable. His spark aches that his precious mate has had to suffer so much for their children. The discomfort on his face suddenly morphs into pain and he grunts, wrapping both arms around his midsection.

"Another contraction," Ratchet slips a palm onto the concubine's forehelm to prop his face up, studying his expression for only a moment to make sure he wasn't about to faint. "Soundwave?"

"14 kliks."

The medic hums and secures one of the patient's legs. "Keep timing those."

Optimus feels useless, standing there in the doorway, even moreso when there's the scampering of tiny pedes and a brash voice demands he, "Move it or lose it, big guy!"

He stumbles to the side to let Rumble in, who's come with a tray and a large, steaming cup. He rushes it over to the concubine, who shakily thanks him and reaches to take it.

"Hey, don't block the doorways!"

Optimus steps to the other side, and Frenzy bolts past with a wet cloth. He climbs the hoverchair fearlessly, dabbing at Megatron's face and blotting away sticky condensation. If the way the concubine leans into the touch is any indication, it must feel nice. The Prime swallows. "Is there-"

"Alright, roll out." Ratchet gives the hoverchair one last once over, then moves behind him to grab the handles. His pace is steady but swift, shooing Optimus out of the doorway. Megatron's procession follows them closely, Rumble and Frenzy dashing ahead in the name of clearing a path. There was no one around, but the sentiment was sweet.

Arrival at the medical wing shows Ratchet snapping at, "First Aid, is the ultrasound ready? Ambulon, double disinfect the OR! Pharma, vitals on Baby-2 while I get Baby-1!"

They work like a well oiled machine, incredibly smoothly and carrying out Ratchet's orders with swift precision. Optimus draws near with ginger steps, servos clasped and subtly shaking. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Yeah, keep him calm," Ratchet doesn't even look at him as he and Soundwave lift the patient from his chair and directly onto one of the berths. "The less stress hormones in the bloodstream the better."

He can do that! Megatron still looks dazed, denta clenched but lips parted slightly, so Optimus can get a flash of his fangs. His vents are labored, heavy and rather slow, while his optics are squinting heavily against the overhead flourescent lights. His EM field radiaties a stuffy malcontent, almost reminiscent of feverish misery.

The Prime blinks, and gently brushes his fingers over Megatron's forehelm. He does feel warm...

"Frenzy?" The minicon immediately stands at attention, damp cloth from before now thrown over his shoulder and temporarily abandoned. Optimus nods at it. "May I borrow that?"

First, he gently sponges the other mech's forehelm, then takes great care to wipe his cheeks. He sweeps it in tender, loving strokes over his helm, then beneath his chin and across his neck. Megatron's systems make a soft, pleased rumble, and Optimus hopes it helps him find even an ounce of reprieve.

The silver mech yelps and grabs at his abdomen again. His whole face pulls taut, and faintly, the Prime can hear his jaw creaking. He squirms on the berth, optics squeezing shut. "GAH-! Frag!"

"12 kliks." Soundwave reports helpfully.

Within only another klik, First Aid is applying ultrasound gel to his belly. "Your tank is routinely contracting, but they could be falsies," The nurse gives them his sweetest smile. "Your seal is still in tact, and look here, Baby-2 isn't in the birthing position." Baby-1 was though, visibly upside down with their pedes in their sibling's face.

"Vitals are stable," Pharma reports. "As of now, Baby-2 is perfectly fine."

"As is Baby-1," Ratchet sounds relieved, but he's still frowning. "I don't want to take you to surgery until we're sure, Lord Concubine. There's a chance the contractions stop, but if your seal breaks, we will have to operate. Do you understand?"

Megatron's makes a gravelly, non-committal noise and raises one servo, making a gesture Optimus doesn't recognize. Soundwave clearly does, though, because he nods and says, "He understands."

Leaving Megatron under the other's care, Ratchet pulls Optimus into the hall. "This isn't good, Pax. You've puzzled that out by now?"

He swallows, whole chassis feeling tight. He can feel panic and a dozen what-ifs there, boiling just under the surface and eager to burst out. He forces it down. "Y- Yes."

His amica sighs, and drags one servo down his face. "If it comes to it, who should I prioritize?"

Optimus doesn't answer him. He can't. How could he? To choose between one of their two babies, to choose between one of them or his mate, to choose between both of them and his mate! All are horrible options, and he can't bring himself to choose. Even entertaining the idea feels like a betrayal, and he has the urge to apologize profusely to his little family.

"Pax. I need to know if you don't want me to fall back on policy."

Policies from his predecessors' times. The inner palace existed, first and foremost, to cultivate the Prime's seeds and create heirs for the next dynasty. If a staff member was tasked to choose between the safety of a concubine and the safety of a prince or a princess, they were to choose the Prime's sparkling. Every time, unless he instructed them otherwise.

Optimus makes a sparkbroken, keening noise and drops his face into his servos. What an impossible situation!

When he returns to Megatron's side at last, his concubine looks a bit more aware than before. His gaze immediately flits to his, and when their optics meet, one corner of his mouth twitches upward. He extracts one servo out from under the covers, and as he's folding to one knee at his bedside, Optimus grabs it. Cradling his servo in both of his, feeling vaguely nauseous as he looks down upon his face. Megatron... is so indescribably precious to him. Imagining a life with only a memorial he can talk to, and a sparkling or two that bear his face to forever haunt these halls... taunting them with his absence...

He sincerely can't imagine anything more miserable. Gently, he cups his concubine's face, and leans in to kiss him. Sweetly, he relishes in the touch, of the peace that washes over him and the happy rush that always seems to surge through him. "I love you," he stresses as they separate. "You're going to be alright. I won't leave your side, not for anything, I swear."

Megatron shifts minutely. "Waxing poetic so early in the morning, Prime? Such a sap."

Uncaring, Optimus kisses him again. Unable to stop himself, he rises a bit further to kiss his forehelm, over and over again. "I love you," he declares between each kiss. "You know that, don't you?"

"Of course I do."

True to his word, Optimus stays in the medical wing with him all night. He refuses to be shooed back to his room for 'proper' recharge, and in an act of defiance, drags a berth from an adjacent room into the suite where they're monitoring his concubine. He lays down beside him, holding him or rubbing his belly in an attempt to help soothe. The sparklings, at long last, are too riled up to refuse to kick at their sire, and they don't seem to enjoy having their dwelling contracting and squeezing around them. Everytime he has a contraction, their unborn twins respond in kind with punishing kicks and jabs. Optimus can't even enjoy it, though, because their poor mother looks like he's in agony.

Megatron is unable to sleep despite his exhaustion, and Optimus stays awake with him. The medical team drifts in and out, ensuring his vitals remain stable and routinely checking the status of the sparklings. Ratchet gives him something for the pain, but forbids him from eating anything. It's a long, incredibly restless night, and by the time the sun is cresting over the horizon, his seal still hasn't broken. The contractions remain steady, though, so Ratchet insists on keeping him confined for observation. Optimus has morning meetings and duties to attend to, and he doesn't feel even a shred of guilt cancelling them all. His first, second, and last priority are the safety of his mate and the uncomplicated delivery of their newsparks.

The morning drags by in an insufferable drudge. His contractions are consistently less than 10 kliks apart now, though just barely. His face is a perfect picture misery, brows pinched and jaw clenched with something frail at the edge of his expression, like he's about to scream and cry. Optimus feels useless next to him, trying fruitlessly to soothe and support him. He'd read plenty on the subject, of how best to be a supportive partner in the delivery room, but now all of his prep is falling flat. He wasn't at all prepared to do quite so much waiting, and wasn't prepared for the love of his life to be suffering right beneath his fingers and for him to be unable to do anything to aid him. It's enough to make him feel like a failure of a conjunx.

Soundwave arrives for the 6th time that morning, and with him, he carries a small, covered bowl. "Lord Megatron? I found some."

Optimus helps him to sit up, one arm wrapping around him to hold him steady while the other gently squeezes his servo. Soundwave draws nearer, and when he removes the lid from the silver bowl, a plume of white smoke rises. It smells distinctly sweet.

Looking desperate, the concubine gladly takes it from him. Drawing it close to his face he takes several deep, dragging inhalations, then slumps heavily against Optimus's shoulder. "Megatronus-?!"

"Only recharging," Soundwave explains. "An aid for laboring carriers. Lord Megatron has fetched it for me in the past."

"And it's safe?"

"Yes." Nevermind the fact that it never would've made it into the palace if it wasn't. All six of his own children had been born after he'd utilized it at least once.

Looking relieved, Optimus finally takes a moment to observe Megatron's sleeping face. The pain is gone, and replaced with a slack expression belying his sheer exhaustion. With his helm pillowed on his shoulder and cheek smooshed against him, Optimus feels his spark swell with affection. Thank goodness he was sleeping, Primus knew he deserved it. He kisses the silver mech's forehelm, then tucks his helm beneath his chin, wrapping both arms around him fully. One servo rests on his belly, and he rubs it when one of their sparklings kicks him. "Rest, my love," he murmurs. "I will be here when you wake, I promise you this."

...

You said you wanted late pregnancy? How's that for late pregnancy? ^-^

Tbh i love this AU so much I'll write you as many drabbles as you want. Please keep requesting them 💖

[supercorpkid]

If Death Has No Claim

Supergirl. Baby Danvers. Lena Luthor x BD! Reader, Alex Danvers.

Word Count: 3.7k

Notes: kinda angsty, but happy ending.

You don’t remember leaving the fight. Just pain—sharp, cold, blooming behind your ribs like something ruptured. Everything was too loud. Too bright. Then, too dark.

Somehow, you find her balcony. Barely. You land clumsy on your knees, half-conscious. Your vision swims, one eye swollen shut, blood trailing warm down your face.

You reach the glass with shaking fingers. Tap once. A wet, red print smears across the windowpane. You try to breathe. Can’t. Try to knock again. Don’t make it. Your hand slips down the glass as you collapse, leaving a trail like a signature.

You can’t believe this is how you die.

She appears in the blur of it. The door flies open. Lena stares for half a second—frozen, hand still on the handle—before she’s rushing forward.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” she breathes, her voice cracking like glass. “What happened to you?”

You don’t know if this is real or a dream. If this is the next life or still your own. But you say her name. Chant it. Like a promise, like an oath, like a last word.

“Lena…”

Your lips barely move. You taste blood. And then you're gone.

She doesn’t remember asking for help. Doesn’t remember yelling Hope to initiate the Lena Luthor Protocol. Doesn’t remember the medkits or the blacklisted Luthor tech no one knows she still has. Lena doesn’t even know how she manages to carry a Kryptonian to her couch.

The world’s gone fuzzy at the edges—except for you. You, limp and bloodied on her sofa. You, breathing shallowly. You, barely alive.

She wipes the blood off your face with trembling hands. Tells herself it’s to assess the damage, to keep you from choking on it. But the truth is: she can’t stand to see your face like this.

Not when your skin is usually warm. Not when your mouth is usually curled in that stupid smile that drives her insane.

Now it’s slack. Pale. Split open from someone’s fist.

A tear falls before she can stop it. 

“Who did this to you?” she whispers, voice shaking. “Why—why does it always have to be you?”

You don’t answer. Of course you don’t. You’re out cold. Barely holding on.

So she presses her forehead to yours and whispers it again, softer now.

“Why does it always have to be you, my love?”

She cleans your face with trembling hands. Clutches at your ruined suit. Whispers your name again and again, like she could summon you back with nothing but want.

Nothing changes. Not even as the sunlight emulator beams down at full capacity, burning both your skins.

The silence presses in like a vice.

Her hand trembles as she brushes your hair back from your face—careful, so careful not to touch the bruising blooming beneath your eye. Her fingers come away bloody. Again.

And then the memory slips in. Like bile. Like poison.

It started with laughter.

The kind that left you breathless—leaning into each other on Lena’s couch, the TV long forgotten. One of your knees was hooked over hers, your fingers toying absently with the sleeve of her cardigan like you didn’t even realize you were doing it.

And Lena—Lena had been staring at your smile like it was sunlight. Like it was something sacred. Like it belonged to her and not to you.

You turned toward her, some half-formed joke still on your lips, but it died there when you saw her face. The way her smile had softened into something else. Something closer to awe. To devotion.

Her eyes dropped to your mouth. The room stilled.

It felt like a spark. A held breath. Neither of you moved—but the air between you did.

You were so close. So achingly close.

Your fingers slipped down her sleeve until your palm settled on her tight. And hers, as if pulled by gravity, found your waist. She held you there—gentle, but sure. Like she wanted you as close as this, if not closer.

Still, no one moved. Not yet.

It felt like one of those moments that lived outside of time.

You were the one who leaned in. Just a little. Just enough for your noses to brush. For her to feel your breath on her skin like a ghost touch. Close enough that she parted her lips and shut her eyes—trusting, wanting, willing.

So ready. All yours.

But you didn’t kiss her. No.

You whispered her name. And it sounded like she owned it. Like she was the only Lena in the world. Or at least, the only one that mattered.

“Lena… I can’t,”

Her eyes opened. Confused. Soft. Her hands tightened slightly at your waist, stopping you from pulling away.

“Can’t what?”

You swallowed, trying to steady your voice.

“I can’t be your girlfriend.”

She flinched—just slightly. “Oh.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” you rushed. “God, Lena, I do. You have no idea how much I do.”

“Then why—?”

“Because what we are, what we could be, it’s more than that. More than titles and could-have-beens and almost-was. I don’t want to be something the world can name and then destroy when it gets hard.”

She didn’t look away. Didn’t interrupt. But her hands had started to shake.

You reached up. Touched her cheek.

“I want to be your person,” you said. “The one you trust when everything else falls apart. The one who stays. The one who knows you better than anyone.”

She blinked a tear.

“Lena, I—I want to be yours in a way no one can take away. Even if you fall in love with someone else someday, or your family disapproves, or the world tries to tear us apart—I want that unshakable, permanent place. The one that’s always mine.”

She closed her eyes again, breathing like she'd just been hit.

“I want to love you past the boundaries of this life,” you said, voice cracking. “I want to promise you something stronger.”

She was really crying now. Silent tears slipping down her cheeks.

And then, your voice went quiet. Reverent.

“Let my last breath be yours. Let your name be the final word on my lips. I want to give you more than just my heart, Lena—because when my body is no longer here, I want you to still hold my soul.”

That broke her. But she kissed your knuckles anyway. Touched your face like she was memorizing it.

Because worse than not having you the way she wanted… was not having you at all.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”

And for some goddamn reason, she let you walk away from that moment. From her. Because you made it sound poetic. You made it feel holy. Better than heaven itself.

But it was everything except what she needed. The soul, but not the kiss. The promise, but not the touch. You gave her everything but yourself. And somehow, that still felt better than nothing.

​​And now, as Lena kneels beside you, your blood drying on her hands, that moment claws its way back to life. She remembers what she promised not to need. But she needs it. She needs you.

Because of all the places in the world, you came here. To her.

And when she pulled open the balcony door and caught you before you could fall, the last thing you managed— The last word that had crawled from your throat, thick with blood and pain—

Was her name. Just her name.

And now she understands more clearly than ever: You're dying. And that’s why you came. To keep your promise.

Lena bites down on her lip, trying not to be sick. She wouldn't know how to explain what pain tastes like when it melts into her tongue.

She wants to scream. To beg. Instead she reaches for your hand again—threading her fingers between yours like she’s trying to re-learn how to breathe.

“Do you know what that did to me?” she asks, staring at your broken face. “That night? Having to watch you walk away, like loving me too much was some kind of mercy?”

Her voice shakes. Breaks.

“I don’t want your last breath, Y/N. I want your firsts. I want the rest. I want all of it.”

And when her tears fall this time, they hit your skin like rain.

“Don’t make me keep that promise,” she whispers. “Wake up and love me like I need you to. Like you want to.”

It’s Alex who reaches out, less than an hour later.

There’s panic trying to be buried under her calm. A watery sound crackling at the edges of her voice.

“We lost track of Y/N,” she says with not even a hello first, like the words are spilling out before she can think them. “The mission went bad. Kara—Kara’s in the med bay at the Tower. Unconscious. We got her out in time, before it got worse, but I—Lena, I don’t know where my little sister is. Please, help me—”

“She’s here.”

Lena can’t deal with Alex’s tears right now. Not when she has so many of her own—burning behind her eyes, catching in her throat, begging to be let out.

“She flew here. I’m doing everything I can, okay? She’s—”  Lena glances back at you. The word safe dances at the edge of her mind, something she wants to offer to ease your sister’s fear. But she can’t say it. Not when you look like that—raw and gone.

“I’ve got her.”

Alex exhales. Softer now. “I’ll take care of Kara. You keep her safe.”  A pause. A shift. Something like a watery smile in her voice.  “She’d want it that way anyway.”

Lena closes her eyes. That shouldn't make her cry harder. But it does.

“I know.”

“If she needs anything, you call me, okay?”

Lena nods, even though Alex can’t see her. “I will.”

She hangs up without saying goodbye.

And when she sets the phone down, she turns back to you—like she’s never going to look away again.

It takes her a while to realize her hands are shaking. That she hasn’t moved since she hung up on Alex. Just stood there, watching your chest rise and fall in that uneven, terrifying rhythm.

Lena forces herself into motion.

She tries to make you more comfortable, pillows, blankets, warmer sunlight. But it’s not enough. Not when your skin’s still cold. Not when your lips are cracked and pale.

So she lifts you, as carefully as she can, like you might shatter in her arms. You're heavier than she expects—not in weight, but in everything else. The limpness. The trust. The unbearable stillness.

She lays you in her bed.

And then she hesitates.

Your suit is clinging to you like second skin, ripped in places, soaked through in others. Lena swallows hard. Her hands hover above your chest and she peels the suit away slowly, whispering apologies like prayers, like spells to keep you here.

The first thing she notices, when she pulls back the ruined fabric, is the blood.

It’s everywhere, still tacky near the worst of it. Smearing over your skin like something possessive. And for a second she can’t breathe just from looking at it. Food threatening to come back, again.

She forces herself to keep going. Fetches warm water. A cloth. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, not sure what she's apologizing for. “I’m just— I need to see where it's bad, okay my love?”

You don’t answer. Of course you don’t. Haven't moved an inch in hours.

She cleans you in silence. It feels too sacred to speak, too fragile to break with anything less than reverence. Her hands are gentle. Shaking, yes, but steady in all the ways that count. She tends to the blood on your stomach with careful fingers, wiping away what she can, dabbing softly at broken skin.

It’s intimate in a way that terrifies her. You’re wearing nothing but silence and scars. And she hates that it feels familiar.

She dresses you in something soft. Something you kept here—because of course you did. You left pieces of yourself tucked into drawers, hidden in plain sight. Quietly scattered through her house. Nestled deep inside her soul.

Then she notices her own shirt—ruined and sticky with your blood. She takes it off with a wince, grabbing the first sweatshirt from your drawer.

It smells like you.

And for the first time since you crashed into her arms, something in her unclenches. It smells like life. Like comfort. Like all the things she used to have, when loving you in stolen glances was enough.

She slips it on. Breathes deep. Pretends the fabric is a heartbeat.

And then she climbs into the bed.

It starts with respectful space. But the longer she watches you lie there, too still, too pale, the more the tether between your heart and hers pulls taut.

She circles closer. Inch by inch. Like gravity.

Until her forehead rests against your shoulder, her nose nudging your collarbone, her hand curled between you like a secret. She whispers your name. Just once. Like a spell.

And, “I love you.”

Soft. Shaking. Terrified.

“If you make it out of this,” she breathes, “I’ll let you choose, okay? You can keep the soul and not the lips, if that’s what you want. I’ll give you anything. I’ll break in whatever shape you need. You can have me—my heart, my body, everything—any way you want.”

Her voice catches. Her lips brush the skin on your neck.

“Just stay.”

She doesn’t mean to fall asleep. But she does—right there, wrapped around your quiet body like you’re the only thing that still makes sense in this world. The night lulls her with your breath too shallow to trust, your pulse too faint to hear. 

She wakes to warmth. The soft kind. Morning light pouring through the windows like a promise she doesn’t dare believe in.

And then she sees you.

The sunlight has found you first—spilling across your skin like it remembers you. Touching your face like a benediction. There’s color in your cheeks now. The faintest flush, but unmistakable. And your lips… they aren’t blue anymore. They look almost kissable again, and the thought makes something tear in her chest.

She jolts upright. Her body floods with panic before her mind can stop it. She’s scrambling off the bed, half-tripping as she rushes for the med kit on the dresser, fingers shaking too hard to unzip it properly. She tries to remember everything—vitals, CPR counts, Kryptonian physiology—anything that might tell her how to keep you alive.

She doesn’t notice your hand move at first. Not until it catches hers. Fingers weak, but there.

And Lena freezes. Looks down.

Your eyes aren’t fully open, but they’re fluttering. Heavy with exhaustion. But you’re here. You’re here.

And then—your voice. A rasp, broken and aching and soft as prayer, “Don’t go.”

She doesn’t breathe. Just stares, wide-eyed, as if you might disappear if she blinks.

“Don’t move,” you whisper again. “Please. Just… come back. I need you.”

Lena shatters. Drops everything. Crawls back into bed with the urgency of someone who’s just been given a second chance. Her hand finds its way over your heart, slow and careful, trembling now for an entirely different reason. Her head settles back on your chest like it belongs there.

And for the first time, she lets herself believe that maybe it does.

Lena must’ve fallen asleep again—curled into you, her breath finally syncing with yours, her hand still on your heart like it’s been counting your heartbeats even in her slumber.

She hears it before she feels it. A low, impatient grumble beneath her ear. She gets up, just to watch how your eyes flutter enough to make her know you're waking up, how your breath is strong, how the colors are back into your face, and all the purples and cuts that were painting you are slowly fading. Very slowly. 

Then your voice, raspy but unmistakably yours breaks her out of her trance, “What? Is there something on my face? I know it’s not food, ’cause I’m starving.”

She doesn’t laugh. Actually, she almost hits you.

She jerks back, staring down at you, her mouth caught somewhere between a sob and a swear, because how dare you make jokes right now? How dare you be funny, be you, like she didn’t just spend a night bargaining with every god she doesn’t believe in? Like she didn’t pull blood off your skin with trembling fingers and whisper promises you were never supposed to hear?

But then you finally open your eyes, and you see her. You see it on her face. The tears, drying fresh on her cheeks. The darkness under her eyes. The way her lip trembles like she’s still stuck in the moment where she thought she'd lost you.

You reach up with hands that feel like hope and find her face. Thumb brushing just under her eye, reverent and gentle. A ghost of a smile finding your lips—just enough to soften her.

“It’s okay, Zhao” you whisper. “I’m here. I’m not leaving you.”

And she breaks all over again.

Not with panic this time. But with relief so violent, it shakes her apart. Tears streaming down unstoppable.

She kisses your palm. Nods once like she believes you. And then she presses her forehead to yours, eyes closed, heart wide open.

“You’re not allowed to scare me like that again,” she breathes. “Ever.”

She stays like that for a while. Forehead to yours, breath shared, her hand cradling your cheek like she’s still trying to convince herself you’re real. That this is real. That she didn’t dream you back to her.

You’re the one who breaks the silence again. In a way that shatters the fragility of the moment, but gives life to it at the same time.

“Hey… do you think there’s food in this apartment or am I gonna have to crawl to the nearest diner and hope they take near-death as currency?”

She lets out a noise—something between a sob and a laugh. Wipes her face with the back of her hand, still trembling.

“You’re unbelievable,” she says, voice cracking in the middle.

“What?” you rasp, smile crooked, soft, “I'm Kryptonian. You knew that about me when you chose to love me.”

She shakes her head like she can’t decide if she wants to strangle you or kiss you.

Then she gets up—reluctantly, like leaving your side might undo whatever miracle just occurred—and mutters, “Fine. Don’t move. I’ll see what I can find.”

“Bring coffee,” you call after her, voice a little stronger now, just enough to make her pause in the doorway and look back at you. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

She wants to say it. Wants to carve it into the air between you— how you’re hers, how she loves you with a depth that rewrote her, how she’d argue with death a thousand times just to keep you breathing.  But instead, she only smiles.

“Just thinking if I should let it go, or kill you myself.”

You laugh at the joke, and she can't think of a more beautiful sound she would ever want to hear in her life.

Lena moves in the kitchen, quickly, purposely. Coffee. Food. Everything you like. All arranged fast on a tray, because she refuses to waste another second away from you.

Your face lights up when she walks back into the bedroom, and she schools herself into believing it's because of the food you so desperately need, and not because of her.

“Oh, baby,” You manage, between the coughs and strangled noises you make while trying to sit up in bed. She ditches the tray on the bedside table, to help you up. “You saved my life and brought me coffee. What’d I ever do to deserve you?”

She rolls her eyes, before sitting on the edge of the bed, to help you eat. But before she can move, your hands find her wrist, and stops her at once.

“Lena, I died.” Your voice is barely a whisper. “Last night, between the fight and you finding me—I died.”

“No, you were—”

“I did.” You nod, slow and sure. “I died. In your arms. Just like I promised I would.” A breath trembles between you. “And somehow, you gave me another chance. Another life.”

Her throat bobs as your hand rises—fingers brushing against the fragile warmth of her neck. “You’re the reason I’m alive, the only reason I’m still here.”

Lena wants to speak. To protest. But nothing she could say feels worthy enough to touch this moment.

So you keep going, voice softer now, reverent like prayer.

“I gave you my soul in that last life, Lena. Gave you my final breath, my last act of devotion. But now… I want to give you more than that.” Your eyes meet hers—clear, unwavering. “Please. Let me give you even more in this one.”

Lena stares at you like she’s trying to memorize every inch of your face, every word you just said. Like she might lose you again if she blinks.

Her lips part, but no sound comes out. What could she possibly say to that? What answer could ever be enough?

So she doesn’t answer.

She leans in.

Slow, cautious—like approaching a secret. Her hand finds your cheek, cradling it gently, reverently, like she’s afraid to shatter you all over again. And you, you lean into the touch like it’s the only gravity you know.

When her lips touch yours, it’s not perfect. It’s trembling and tear-stained and full of all the things she never thought she’d get the chance to feel again. But it’s real.

It’s not hungry—it’s holy. It’s the kind of kiss people think about when they don’t believe in second chances. The kind you give someone when you’ve already mourned them, and they’ve somehow returned to you anyway.

You kiss her back like you’ve been waiting a hundred lifetimes for her to finally understand: this was always the point.

She pulls away just enough to rest her forehead against yours. Both of you are breathing hard. Eyes closed. Hearts open. Then, in a voice so quiet it barely exists:

“Okay,” she says. “You don't get to scare me like this ever again.”

You smile. Press your lips to hers again, just briefly.

“I can't promise you that, baby. What I can promise is that I'll come back to you every time. Even after I die, I'll come back to you.”

Lena kisses you one more time. Slow, lingering.

And when she pulls back, she finally says it, “I love you. I’ll always be waiting. I'll always be yours.”

[casstheasswrites]

NO SAINTS, NO SAVIOURS (14)

pairing: frank castle x reader (female)

summary: wrong place, wrong time. he saved her life, she patched him up. that should’ve been the end of it. some nights, you survive. others, you change.

trigger warnings: canon typical violence including blood and death. ptsd, trauma, eventual smut. at times, you get soft!frank. at others, he takes no prisoners. we love the duality of man <3

chapter length: 5.9k

authors note: i'm now writing in real time and will post at the same time when chapters are ready, here and on AO3. i hope you enjoy and pls pls send me a message with your feedback or thoughts, if you have any! thanks a million.

tag list: @thelastemzy

archive of our own / feedback appreciated!

“You look like shit, Frank.”

Karen’s voice sliced through the stillness, not barbed exactly, but cool— detached in that way only people who once cared deeply knew how to be. Concern cloaked in irritation, irritation built atop familiarity, and familiarity laced with the kind of history no one really wants to unpack.

Frank let out a noise that could’ve been a laugh if there’d been anything left in him to find funny. It was more of a grunt— low, hollow, and frayed at the edges.

“Feel like it, too.”

His weight sagged against you just slightly, like the words had cost him, like the last few steps toward stability were just a little farther than he could manage on his own. You shifted your stance without thinking, bracing him more firmly against your side, your fingers tightening around his waist. It felt instinctive now— catching him before the fall.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, voice sandpaper-rough and barely raised above the hum in the room. The syllables scraped their way out of his throat like they’d been dragged over concrete.

Karen didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. She crossed her arms, chin tilting a fraction of an inch upward. “Why don’t you leave the questions to me for now.”

He didn’t answer. Just stared at her, his expression unreadable, and gave his head a rough, sudden shake. There was something guarded slipping back behind his eyes like a shuttered window.

She stepped closer, her eyes scanning his face, the blood on his shirt, the weight in the way he leaned. “What happened to you?” she asked, and her tone was clipped now— too controlled to be casual. “What fight did you throw yourself into the middle of this time?”

Still, he said nothing.

But he didn’t have to. It was all there, radiating off of him in waves— pain, exhaustion, something darker humming underneath. And between them, that invisible static crackled like power lines about to snap. You felt it— the long history curling between them like smoke. All the things they’d said to each other, all the things they hadn’t. Years of proximity turned to rupture, sealed up with sharp words and stitched with silence. And here you were, caught dead center in the gap between them, strung out like a wire about to spark.

There was a part of you— small, but insistent— that stirred beneath the surface, buried deep under layers of self-preservation and silence. It lived in the quietest parts of you, the ones that still flinched at raised voices and too-long stares, the parts that understood how fragile a moment like this could be. That part begged you to step in. To shift your weight, lift your chin, meet Karen’s eyes and ask her— gently, but firmly— to stop. To ease up. To leave him be. He’d been through enough.

Not because you thought he couldn’t handle it. But because you weren’t sure how much more you could.

But you said nothing. Bit down on the words before they could leave your tongue. Because you knew better. You knew it wasn’t your place. Whatever tension lived between them— whatever history their anger was built from— it wasn’t yours to step into. You were a visitor here. A witness to something complicated and old, layered in grief and loyalty and regret you hadn’t earned the right to untangle.

So you kept your eyes forward, your hands steady, and your mouth shut. Even as the instinct twisted in your chest— protective, unreasonable, raw.

Even as some part of you hated that it wasn’t your turn to say enough.

He had left you— not her. Whatever fight he’d thrown himself into, whatever blood now soaked through his shirt, it was you who’d spent the night wondering if he was alive. You who’d wandered the streets, alone, heart in your throat. And still, you couldn’t bring yourself to question him. You didn’t ask where he’d gone, who he’d hurt, or why he hadn’t come back sooner. The anger should have been there— God, you knew it should’ve been— but it wasn’t sharp enough to reach your mouth. Not when he leaned on you like this. Not when his weight against your body felt more like surrender than burden. You couldn’t brush him off. Couldn’t make him stand on his own and carry it all without you. Because some part of you— the part that still hadn’t unclenched since the moment you saw him bleeding— was just too relieved he came back at all.

You swallowed and shifted your grip, urging Frank forward. He didn’t resist, but he moved like his bones were glass— like each step risked a fracture. His legs dragged, heavy and slow, and his arm trembled faintly as you guided it over your shoulder again.

“Come on,” you murmured. “Sit down before you fall down.”

The desk chair creaked as you helped him ease into it, the motion careful but not gentle— nothing about him felt breakable, even when he was bleeding. Still, the sound he made as he lowered himself hit something low in your chest. A sharp, guttural exhale, like the pain had cracked through all his defenses.

He brought his good hand up— slow, reluctant— and brushed the edge of his ribs. His touch was light, almost casual, but you saw the flinch before he caught it. Saw the way he tried to bury the pain behind clenched teeth.

You caught the motion. Let your eyes track it. Watched the way his chest barely rose with each breath, like even that small act cost him.

“Ribs?” you asked, already crouching slightly beside him, your voice softer now.

“Probably,” he muttered. “Maybe just bruised.”

You didn’t buy it. You didn’t need to.

“‘Just bruised,’” you echoed. “Right. You keep moving like this, and ‘just bruised’ is going to become ‘seriously broken’ really fast.”

He huffed— something dry and hollow. “You sound like Curtis.”

That name hit like a small shockwave.

Curtis.

You hadn’t expected it. Hadn’t realized how much it would mean until it landed between your ribs like a stone dropped in still water. You’d heard the way Karen had spoken of him— like he wasn’t just history, but something steadier. Someone who still showed up.

And Frank had just… said his name. Aloud. To you.

There was something startling in that. Not envy. Not exactly awe. Just the quiet knowledge that Frank didn’t hand out pieces of himself lightly. And now he’d given you one.

You bit the inside of your cheek and nodded, grounding yourself in the motion.

“Good. Means you’ve survived hearing it before.”

Your hands moved on their own now, instinct overtaking thought. It was easier this way— focusing on the damage. Counting it. Naming it. Turning him into something clinical. Something you could treat instead of something you cared about.

His knuckles were a mess— torn open, layers of skin split and curling, dried blood caking in the creases of his fingers. You gently took his wrist, rotating it with a practiced touch. Defensive wounds. Scratches and tears climbing up the length of his forearm. Whoever he’d gone up against had gotten in close. Too close. You hated thinking about what that meant.

You didn’t ask. You didn’t need to. The evidence was already written into his skin.

You moved higher, careful with the arm he kept tucked close to his side. The swelling at his shoulder was bad— round and firm and angry to the touch. You pressed gently at the joint from above his shirt, just enough to test for movement.

He flinched— sharp and breathless— and hissed between his teeth.

“Dislocated?” you asked.                                                                              

“Popped it back in,” he said, and his voice was barely more than a whisper now. “Mostly.”

“Jesus, Frank.” The words escaped before you could stop them. Quiet, but not devoid of heat.

He didn’t answer. Just watched you— steady, unflinching, like he was memorizing the way your hands moved.

You leaned back and then moved to the other side, where it seemed most of the blood that had stained his shirt was coming from. Gently, and with slow, tentative fingers, you reached for the neckline of his shirt and tugged on it just enough to see the skin beneath.

And then you saw it.

The cut arced high across the slope of his collarbone— deep and jagged, raw and angry. It looked like it had been made by something imprecise, something reckless. Torn open more than sliced. Blood still wept from the center, sluggish but steady, and the surrounding skin was already beginning to bruise— purple and blue and furious.

You froze, breath catching in your throat.

It was a bad wound. Bad enough that stitching it closed would be difficult. Bad enough that waiting too long might mean infection.

You swallowed hard and took a deep breath, trying to center yourself. This was your job— this was who you were. You could do this. You would do this.

“Where’s your medical gear?” you asked, returning to the moment around you.

He didn’t look at you. Just jerked his chin toward the back wall, towards one of the tall shelving units, his eyes dipping to the lowest point on it. 

You crossed the bunker in a few long strides, your feet silent over the concrete, and knelt beside the storage bins on the bottom shelf. The plastic creaked beneath your hands as you pulled one open— and your heart dropped like a stone into your stomach.

A near-empty bottle of antiseptic that had expired years ago. A single bent needle threaded with something stained. Gauze that looked like it had been exposed to too many humid nights. No gloves. No tape. No bandages worth using. Nothing close to sterile.

Not nearly enough to handle this.

You stood slowly, closing the bin with a snap that echoed too loudly in the stillness. A wave of helpless frustration curled in your gut.

“This isn’t enough.”

You turned back to Karen and Frank, though your attention didn’t wander to the man seated at the desk. He wasn’t looking at you, anyways; but she was.

Her brow was furrowed and she let out a low, forced exhale. Her arms lifted, crossing over her chest, and her gaze flickered in Frank’s direction.

“How bad is it?” she asked.

“Deep cut at the collarbone that definitely needs stitches. His nose is busted. Shoulder’s out of place. Ribs might be cracked. He’s covered in smaller wounds and half of them are already dirty.” You paused, teeth digging into the rounded flesh of your bottom lip. “If we don’t clean him up right, he’ll be septic in a few days.”

Karen didn’t hesitate. With a rough shake of her head, she was already pulling her phone from her coat pocket. Her fingers tapped against the screen rapidly, the light casting shadows across her face— illuminating the bags beneath her eyes, the tense edge of her jaw. “There’s a twenty-four-hour pharmacy a few blocks out. I’ll go.”

Movement in her periphery caught your attention. Frank shifted slightly in the chair, opening his mouth— probably to protest. Karen cut him off with a raised hand.

“Don’t. Let me do this.”

She moved toward you and took the half-used antiseptic out of your hand like it belonged to her. Glanced at the label. Seemed to commit to memory. Then she handed it back.

“Write me a list.”

You didn’t move right away. Your eyes lifted to hers, and for a beat— maybe two— you just looked at each other. No words. No softening. Just a kind of mutual, heavy recognition. Two women who had bled different truths for the same man. Who didn’t always understand him. Didn’t always agree. But would still do whatever he needed. Even now. Even angry. Even tired.

Then you nodded.

A few steps away, over to the desk, and you grabbed the nearest pen and scribbled across the back of an old envelop. Gauze pads, tape, more antiseptic, painkillers. Antibacterial cream, sutures, sterile gloves. Maybe some Gatorade.

You passed it to her and your fingers brushed for the briefest second. Warmth. Steady. A kind of silent exchange you didn’t try to name.

“Thank you,” you murmured.

Karen didn’t pause. She simply nodded and turned, coat flaring slightly as she moved.

“I’ll be quick.”

The door clicked behind her. The sound was soft. Still, it felt like something final.

You turned back to Frank. He hadn’t moved. Still seated, still bloody, still watching the door like it might open again and change everything. Like being here, in the bunker, with both you and Karen… took something out of him. Forced him to open a door he hadn’t been ready to see behind quite yet.

You hovered there, a breath away, unsure of what came next.

Then, quietly: “I’ll get started while she’s gone.”

You didn’t meet his eyes when you said it. Didn’t want to. Didn’t trust what might leak through if you did. Your grip on your composure was light; just a few fingers clinging to the edge of something rocky and unsteady.

You gathered what little you had— thread, the mostly used bottle of antiseptic, the last clean gauze pad, a pair of worse for ware scissors— and laid them out across the desk with slow, steady hands. As you moved, you felt Frank’s gaze on you, heavier than it had any right to be. The light overhead buzzed faintly, flickering just enough to set your nerves further on edge. You poured a bit of the antiseptic over your hands, doing your best to sanitize them. Your fingers worked mechanically, but your body… your body was tired. Deep in your bones, tired. The kind of exhaustion that didn’t just weigh you down, but hollowed you out from the inside.

He still hadn’t said a word— not since Karen had left.

He just sat there, jaw set, eyes following your every movement like they were the only thing anchoring him. When you returned to his side once more, gauze and antiseptic in hand, he moved slightly to let you in, letting his arm fall away from where it had been bracing his ribs. His thighs spread wide, with a low grunt, making space for you to step in between them, crowd his body with your own. It was the only option, though— the only way you could get close enough to reach the cut on his collarbone.

You tried to separate yourself from it, from him; but those dark eyes of his tracked your every move, searched your face for every flare or flicker. And in the depths of that deep, unendingly rich brown, were those familiar bursts of amber. Warm, soothing, welcoming. They begged for you to move closer, settle in, stay a while. You swallowed down the lump that had gathered in your throat, fingers flexing about the bottle of antiseptic.

You glanced up at him for a beat— finally, fully— and then forced your eyes settle on the torn, blood-soaked fabric clinging to his skin. Not his eyes.

The shirt was too far gone to be salvaged, and you needed to get to the wound properly. There was only one path forward and it was a familiar one. So you pressed on, though it took strength you truly didn’t feel you had within you.

“You need to take this off,” you said quietly, nodding toward his chest, eyes still on the shirt. “I can’t stitch you like this.”

Frank didn’t argue, but the sigh he let out was thick with unspoken resistance— less defiance, more the kind born from pain and weariness. Even still, the fingers of his good arm moved to the hem, slow and stiff, and you watched as he began to peel it up, his jaw tightening with every inch. His ribs protested first— he winced as the fabric dragged over them— then his shoulder, the movement forcing him to twist just enough to jolt whatever damage had been done there.

You reached up without thinking, helping ease the shirt past his elbow, careful not to pull. Your fingers brushed the bare skin of his ribs, his shoulder, his neck. And as the material finally cleared his head, the fabric clung to dried blood near his collarbone, tearing away with a soft, wet sound that made your stomach turn.

When it finally came all the way off, bunched and discarded on the floor, your breath caught. Your eyes trailed over the arch of his shoulders, down the length of his chest. The damage was worse than you thought— bruises like shadows spilled down his ribs, and the gash at his collarbone stood out in angry red relief. Blood, both fresh and dried, trailed down his torso like a path leading to the waistband of his jeans. Your gaze flickered away in a rush— and heat rippled through your body, burning across every inch of your skin with a vengeance.

You didn’t speak. Didn’t dare try. Instead, you looked away, and reached for the supplies on the desk. You dipped the gauze in the antiseptic and then returned your attention to his cut; and, without hesitation, you pressed it gently to the edge of it, your fingers quick and precise.

He flinched— more reaction than pain, you thought— but he didn’t pull away. His body tensed beneath your touch, a brief coil of muscle and breath, and you felt the ripple of restraint run through him. It wasn’t weakness. It was control— sharp-edged and bone-deep. And part of you hated how much you admired it. Hated how steady he stayed, even when every part of you was splintering.

His eyes dropped to your hands, then flicked up— quick, assessing— toward your face. But you didn’t look back. Your gaze stayed fixed on the wound, on the rhythm of your own movements. Because if you looked up, if your eyes met his, you weren’t sure you’d be able to keep your balance. The air between you had changed. Thickened. The silence wasn’t empty anymore. It had mass, shape, weight. It wrapped around you like a summer day somewhere with humidity— slow and suffocating. Exhausting.

You dabbed again, wiping away the worst of the blood. His skin was burning beneath your fingertips— fever-warm, but alive. And the scent of him— sweat, metal, the faint lingering smoke of gunpowder— filled your lungs like it had a claim on them. Like he was seeping into you without asking. Without permission. The flush that rose under your skin was sudden, uninvited. It spread down your neck, over your chest, blooming low in your belly like heat trapped there, begging to be set free. A forgotten kettle set to boil, bubbling up and threatening to overflow.

Before you could stop yourself, before you could think better of it, the words slipped out— quiet, almost embarrassed, but laced with something else, too.

“We gotta quit meeting like this.”

His head tilted toward you, just a little. His eyes found yours again— this time slower. Sharper. Like he was really seeing you now. A dry sound left his chest, somewhere between an exhale and a laugh, roughened by exhaustion but undeniably real. Familiar.

“You were elbow-deep in my thigh last time,” he rasped. His voice— God, his voice—dragged over your skin like gravel and silk all at once. You shivered. “Didn’t hear you complaining then.”

You huffed a quiet laugh— more breath than sound— but didn’t rise to the bait. Not when something warm and restless had begun to stir deep inside you, coiling slow and sure, like a fuse catching light.

Instead, a smile curled at the corner of your mouth before you could stop it— wry, instinctive. You risked a glance up at him, just for a second, your pulse a drumbeat behind your ribs. Your eyes flicked over his chest, the ragged cut, the blood drying on his skin. You hadn’t properly looked before— hadn’t let yourself. Before, it had been clinical; a checklist of trauma and treatment. Necessary distance. Protection.

But now… now you let your gaze linger.

His body was a study in contrasts— rough, ruined, and undeniably strong. Broad shoulders, heavy with muscle, chest rising slow beneath bruised skin. The curve of his collarbone pulled tight under the strain of tension, and the muscles along his arms were coiled, restrained, like even now he didn’t fully know how to rest. Scars cut across him like maps— some old, some raw— but none of them diminished him. If anything, they made him more real. More present. Like every inch of him had been earned.

You traced the shape of him with your eyes— the powerful slope of his shoulders, the hard line of his jaw, the taut stretch of his abdomen. The faint line, more a shadow than anything else, of dark hair that crept between his belly button and the waistband of his jeans.

The way his body held itself, even now, with weight and purpose. Not softness. Never softness. But solid. Unshakable.

Your breath slowed as you took him in— really took him in— and something sharp caught in your chest. Not fear. Not pity. Just that aching, heavy awareness of him. The weight of what he carried. The gravity of who he was.

And still, he sat there and let you tend to him.

“Well,” you murmured, finally, fingers brushing the edge of the wound with the gauze again, softer this time. “You can’t deny the view.”

His lips twitched— barely. But it was there. That flicker. That almost-smile. The ghost of something warm buried beneath everything broken.

You felt it sink deeper into your chest— hot and heady and dangerous. Not lust, not just that. It was something more feral, more complicated. The tension that lived in the spaces between breath and touch. The longing that slipped between cracks and curled its fingers into your spine. Held.

He was still Frank. Still him.

You leaned closer, angling your body to reach the top of the wound. But your arm didn’t quite stretch the way it needed to. You had to lean forward on one foot, risk your balance. You wobbled, bracing yourself on the edge of the desk with your free hand. A sharp ache bloomed along your spine, and you shifted again, uncomfortable, the strain pulling across your shoulders.

“You’re gonna throw your damn back out,” Frank murmured— rough, low. Barely more than a whisper. “Sit.”

You blinked, startled by the sound of his voice, by what he’d said, but before you could respond, his good hand caught your hip and tugged. His tough was strong, firm, but the movement itself was gentle. Slow.  

You let out a breath of surprise as your balance shifted— he guided you, pulled you lightly but steadily down onto one of his thighs. He was solid beneath you, the worn fabric of his jeans still damp with blood in places. Your hands fluttered for a second, unsure where to go, before instinct made you press one low on his chest to steady yourself. His skin was hot beneath your palm, heartbeat slow but strong, and the contact sent a low, warning pulse through your own.

His arm stayed curled around your waist. The warmth of his forehead burned through your back.

His hold on you wasn’t possessive, or forceful. Just… steady. Anchored.

His fingers twitched, then curled more solidly around the curve of your hip. Not tight—just enough to remind you he was still there. And as they shifted, the edge of his hand slid lower, rough fingertips brushing the bare skin just beneath your shirt. Just above the waistband of your pants.

It was barely anything. A whisper of contact. But it felt like a spark catching kindling.

The warmth of him burned into you— blunt and deliberate, even if unintentional. His skin was calloused, the pads of his fingers dragging slightly as they settled, half-tucked beneath fabric, half-stilled by hesitation. And still, he didn’t pull back. Didn’t apologize.

He just stayed there, quiet and solid, like that small point of contact was something neither of you were ready to give up. Or acknowledge. As if putting words to whatever this was— whatever had turned the air around you to pure gasoline, a moment from sparking— was simply too much. Too dangerous.

You didn’t move. Couldn’t. You were caught between the way his breath ghosted across your cheek and the heat of his palm against your bare side. Your heart pounded so hard you were afraid he’d feel it through your ribs.

But he didn’t say anything else. Didn’t let go.

So neither did you.

You refocused on the task in front of you, unsure what more you could do. You set the gauze and antiseptic aside, deeming the state of his cut good enough to proceed. Frank turned the desk chair beneath you both just so, angling himself instinctively— his movements minimal, precise. He knew what you needed before you could say it, before you could even part your lips.

You let out a soft, breathless sound, something close to a laugh— tight and involuntary. But you didn’t look at him. You couldn’t. Not with the way your heart pounded like a warning, not with how dry your lips had suddenly become. You didn’t dare wonder why; couldn’t allow your mind to wander. It was all dangerous territory.

You swallowed again— hard— trying to clear the static. Trying to reset.

The needle shook between your fingers as you brought the thread to its eye. Not a tremor of fear. Not even nerves, not exactly. Just that strange, breathless disconnect— like your body was responding to something your mind hadn’t caught up to yet. Like every inch of you had been quietly claimed by the gravity of this moment. Of him.

It took two tries. The thread slipped once, missed the mark entirely. You caught your breath, tried again. Slower. This time, it caught.

You exhaled. Murmured a soft warning, letting him know what was to come. His eyes were somewhere far away, though his chin was still turned towards you. As you leaned in, you could feel his breath brush the top of your face, musing some of the strands of your dark hair. You were leaning forward now, your knees tucked into the small space between Frank’s thighs. And with every breath, every movement, your knees would brush the opposite leg, unable to ignore the flex of his muscles against you. You anchored yourself with a hand against the curve of his shoulder, a few inches from the cut— steadying, grounding— and drew the first stitch through his skin.

He flinched. A sharp inhale through clenched teeth. His grip on your waist didn’t change, but the thigh beneath you tensed hard, every muscle drawing tight in a ripple beneath your weight. You felt it in your bones. In the throb behind your ribs.

“Sorry,” you murmured, the word barely more than a breath. Useless. Reflexive. He didn’t reply. Didn’t need to. Just gave a shake of his head. You swore you heard him swallow— thick and slow, like it took a mighty effort to achieve.

The second stitch came slower, more precise. You watched the thread pull through his skin, watched it cinch the torn edges together. Blood welled faintly along the seam, but you reached for the gaze and wiped it away before it could run. Your fingers worked in rhythm— clean, puncture, pull, tie. Again. And again.

His body was warm beneath yours, all solid muscle and restrained tension. You could feel the effort it took for him to hold still. The way he let you do this. Let you close him up. Every so often his fingers would tense and flex against your hip, holding to it like it grounded him in the moment. Like he could pull what strength he didn’t have from you. And you were happy to lend it to him; though you likely needed it more than he did.

All the while, his eyes stayed on your face.

You felt the weight of that gaze like pressure against your skin. It tracked your every movement, every breath, every furrow of your brow. You kept your head down, tried to pretend it didn’t affect you. But it did.

Every time you leaned into stitch, you were close enough to feel the drag of his breath against your forehead. Close enough to hear the quiet, uneven rhythm of it. Close enough that his scent— salt and metal, sweat and something darker— wrapped around you like a second skin. Every part of you was wrapped up within the circle of him. You weren’t sure when you ended and he began.

A third stitch. Then a fourth.

You whispered soft reassurances under your breath, more for you than him. They didn’t matter. The pain didn’t stop him. He barely moved. But you wanted him to know you saw it— what he gave you. His stillness. His trust.

Another knot tied. Another inch closed.

You’d stitched up dozens of wounds before. Maybe hundreds. But never like this. Never with your own chest pulled tight, stretched taut like your skin might split open right alongside his. Never with your breath trapped halfway between your ribs and your throat, too fragile to release. Never with this— this pulsing silence between you, thick and electric, like a storm suspended just inches from touching down. Like the room itself had forgotten how to breathe. Never with the constant thought of his eyes, his lips, just inches from your own.

You snipped the final length of thread and let it fall, your fingers brushing one last time across the bruised and broken skin near his collarbone. His shoulder rose beneath your hand, slow and shallow, as though even the small motion of breathing took effort. Or maybe he was just holding still for you. Maybe he didn’t want to break the moment either. You placed the needle aside with deliberate care, reached for the bloodied gauze and remnants of your work, and set them neatly on the desk like ritual offerings. Then you stayed there. Your eyes locked on the mess you’d made of the tools, your thoughts louder than anything else in the room. You didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just existed inside the shape of this moment— fragile, breathless, and still.

And he was still watching you.

You could feel it— the weight of his eyes on your face, steady and unflinching. Like he was trying to memorize something, or waiting for you to realize what was already circling the space between you. As if he knew. As if he had already accepted it.

The distance between your bodies had closed so slowly, so completely, that you hadn’t noticed how tightly the air had folded in around you. How intimate it had become. How dangerous. Your hands, now resting in your lap, felt foreign— useless and stained with the residue of him. Your breathing had gone shallow. Measured. Like your body understood something your mind wasn’t ready to name.

“Look at me,” he said.

His voice cut through the quiet like a flint-strike— low and rough like gravel, but steady. A tone that was more challenge than request, soft in volume but sharp at the edges.

You swallowed, pulse thundering in your ears. You didn’t move. Couldn’t. You shifted on his lap, legs tensing as if you intended to stand— but his grip on your hip tightened, held you still. Wouldn’t let you go. Not yet.

“Hey.” A beat passed— just enough to let it hang. Then the tone shifted, just slightly. Firmer. Edged. “Never took you for a coward.”

The word landed low, deep in the hollow of your chest, and it spread like heat— rising too fast, too raw to be ignored. Not cruel. Not unkind. Just Frank, all blunt honesty and unspoken weight. The kind of provocation that came from knowing exactly where your armor was thin. It burned, just a little. Because maybe it wasn’t wrong.

So you looked.

Your eyes met his— and the world stopped moving.

The room, the noise, the ache still blooming in your spine— all of it dropped away. All that remained was the impossible steadiness of his gaze. The weight of it. The gravity. Not a demand. Not even a question. Just a man stripped of everything but truth, asking you to see him.

And you did.

You saw the tension in his jaw, the faint crease between his brows, the quiet storm sitting behind his eyes— more warm amber in them than anything else. His hand shifted at your side, his fingers splaying wide across your hip. Just there, a silent tether. A reminder. You were still in his lap, still straddling the heat and weight of him. And the realization sent a new kind of pulse through you, deep and warm and so, so close to tipping into something else entirely.

You didn’t know who moved first. You weren’t sure it mattered.

Your gaze dropped— just briefly— to his mouth. Then back again. A flicker. A stutter in your breath. That was all it took. A single, shared hesitation. A breath suspended between what was and what could be.

Then his lips were on yours.

It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t hesitant. It was instinct.

Immediate. Consuming.

A collision of mouths and breath and something too heavy to name. He kissed you like he’d been holding back for days. Weeks. Longer, maybe. Like he couldn’t afford to be gentle. And you kissed him back like you didn’t know how to stop. Like something inside you had come loose and all you could do was follow where it led.

His mouth was warm, tasting faintly of blood and grit and something only Frank could taste like. His stubble scraped your skin, grounding you in the reality of this— of him. He kissed like a man who didn’t get second chances. Who didn’t believe in soft landings.

And still, his hand moved— slowly, deliberately— sliding higher along your side, dragging the hem of your sweater with it. The fabric bunched over his palm as rough fingers skimmed over soft, bare skin, and the sudden brush of cool air against your ribs made you shiver. He didn’t stop. Just kept his hand there, halfway to your chest, wide and warm and unyielding, like he was trying to memorize the shape of you. Like he couldn’t bear the thought of letting go.

Your own hands slid up his chest, palms flat and gentle, pressed over the steady thud of his heart. It beat hard beneath your touch— uneven, urgent— and you felt your own begin to match it. Every part of you tilted forward, into him. Into the fire.

You didn’t think. Couldn’t.

All you knew was the way his body anchored yours, the way your lips parted to let him in. His tongue slid against yours, hot and slow, and you gasped into his mouth— soft and startled and already gone.

There was no finesse in it. No practiced rhythm.

Just heat. Need. The sound you made when his other hand finally joined the first, settling low on your back beneath your clothes like it belonged there. The way you leaned into him fully now, every inch of you molded to every inch of him, like something inevitable.

And beneath it all, that ache returned— deep and low, pulsing through your center like it had always been there, just waiting for a spark. Just waiting to be let loose.

You didn’t stop to think.

You didn’t dare.

You just kissed him like you were drowning.

And for the first time in a long, long time— he let you breathe.

[imagineinside]

Star-Like Encounters (Hugh Jackman x Fem!Reader) Chapter 1

A/N: In between posting chapters for the Wolverine fic I'm working on, I also wanted to pick up something about Hugh Jackman. I want to first preface with the fact that this is not meant to be taken as reality and we need to be respectful of people mentioned, this is purely a work of fiction. With that being said, I hope you enjoy!

Description: You begin your first semester at a prestigious university with a mix of excitement and chaos. After a frantic start involving a late arrival due to your roommate’s Hollywood-related detour, your day takes an unexpected turn when you meet Hugh Jackman, your roommate’s boss, at a movie studio.

Hugh, intrigued by your expertise in physics, invites you to consult on a film project aiming for scientific accuracy. Balancing your new academic responsibilities with a potential Hollywood cameo, you must navigate your dual interests. As you face your own feelings, you discover that the lines between your professional and personal worlds are more intertwined than you imagined.

Currently Applicable Tags: (Future) 18+, Fluff, cocky Hugh Jackman, flirty Hugh Jackman, age gap (55 and 27) more to come.

Running through the hallways of the prestigious university you had dedicated your whole life to working at, you cursed at yourself for running so late. It wasn’t entirely your fault, however. Needing to share a car with your best friend and roommate always had its disadvantages.

And this morning, her boss had decided he needed her assistance out of absolutely nowhere, meaning you had to drop her off at a studio downtown before driving to the university.

Unfortunately, you had no idea who her boss actually was, otherwise you’d go on a rampaging smear campaign as payback for them jeopardizing your career like this. You had asked your best friend various times, with you both sober and drunk at various times, who her boss was. All you had gotten out of her was that “he is a Hollywood hot-shot, and he’s been in some of your favorite movies.” She always said that last part with a mischievous grin on her face.

You bolted into the lecture hall and all 100-some eyes turned to you, including the headmasters in the back. You took only a moment to catch your breath before fixing your appearance, smoothing out your skirt and wiping the sweat from your brow.

“Good morning, everyone,” you called in greeting as you approached your desk, throwing your briefcase on top of it and shrugging off your jacket.

You received a cacophony of “good mornings” back.

“It’s a pleasure to be here at the start of your semester, and I’m excited to guide you through the wonders of astrophysics this semester.” You heard a few groans rupture from the students, but you simply smiled to yourself. You had been that student once upon a time. “We’ll explore the life cycles of stars, the structure of galaxies, and the mysteries of dark matter. Astrophysics can seem daunting, but it’s really about understanding our place in the universe. Embrace your curiosity, ask questions, and don’t worry if things seem complex at first—every great discovery starts with a simple question. I’m here to support you, and together we’ll uncover the fascinating stories written in the stars.” You felt your heart lift up in your chest, you truly had such a fascination with this field of study.

You dared for a moment to lift your eyes and read the approval written in the headmaster's face, a spark lighting in your chest. “Now, let’s start with the Big Bang, shall we?” You smiled once again as you heard hundreds of notebooks being flipped open to the first page.

Nothing like the start of a new semester.

* * *

You drove your beat-up Volvo to the location your roommate had sent you when she texted you earlier that day. As you rolled up to it, your brakes squealing as you came to a stop, you realized it was an entire campus of movie production. There were hundreds of people mulling about on the other side of the protected gate. Some were riding around in golf carts, others sprinting from set-to-set, a whole flurry of movement.

You always had a fascination with Hollywood and the film industry. When you originally started at university yourself, you majored in theater and dance. But… after your first year, for reasons you’d rather forget, you changed to astrophysics.

“There you are!” Your best friend, Ashley, squealed and pulled you into a big hug after you stepped out of the car. “I had the best day today!”

You laughed at the excitement written all over your friend's face, “I’m glad, just don’t make it a habit of making me late to my class.”

Ashley’s smile dropped as she put her hands together in a silent prayer, “I am so sorry about that. I talked to my boss about it and he promised he would be more considerate next time.”

You sighed and crossed your arms, fauxing an upset scoff, “Fine, I suppose I can let it slide this time–”

“That’s good, I don’t need you murdering my best assistant.” A deep voice called out past the front of your car. You knew who that voice belonged to in an instant with that deep, sultry Australian accent. You had all the X-Men movies he was in on DVD and saved to your computer, as well as “The Greatest Showman” and even the series “Faraway Downs”. (You used to have a cutout of him in your room when you were younger but you don’t need to bring that up…)

Your eyes were glued to your best friend who gave you a sheepish grin, as if even she hadn’t been expecting this. You were afraid that if you looked over at him, he would just evaporate into thin air.

“I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself, I’m your friend's boss. You can call me Hugh.” Suddenly he was crossing into your line of sight, a hand held out in front you as a way of greeting.

You snapped yourself out of your trance that only his voice had put you in and went into professional mode, something that was a common necessity in your line of work, “Hugh, nice to meet you. I’m Ashley’s roommate… and oftentimes chauffeur.”

That pulled a laugh from deep inside his chest as he shook your hand. His grip was strong but still gentle so as not to crush your dainty fingers. It was incredibly hard not to notice the way his hand dwarfed yours in size, his palm calloused and rough in comparison to yours.

“I am terribly sorry about today, we got called to set at the last minute to start production for a new movie. It will not happen again.” He assured you.

You gave him a reassuring smile, “No worries, only made me late to my first lecture of my professional career, but not a big deal.” You laced your words with heavy sarcasm as you flashed a look to Ashley, who looked like she was about to combust with embarrassment. Did she really think you were going to embarrass her in front of her boss that much?

“Lecture? Are you a Professor?” Hugh asked as he leaned against the rusted hood of your Volvo.

It took you a moment to respond as you soaked in his large arms crossed over his massive chest. You wish you could be buried in there. Christ, you were acting like a schoolgirl with a crush. You cleared your throat before responding and smoothed out your skirt. You weren’t entirely sure, but you thought Hugh’s eyes followed your brief movement. “Yes, at Stanford in the Physics department. It’s where Ashley and I both studied.”

“Stanford, wow,” he said with a raise of his eyebrows, he seemed genuinely impressed. “You must be quite renowned in the Physics world to have gotten a job there. And… excuse me if this comes off as inappropriate, but you are so young too.”

“Just passionate, Mr. Jackman.” You say with a polite smile.

“I thought I told you to call me Hugh,” he replied with a teasing smirk that lifted one side of his mouth higher than the other. It felt like you were going to combust right there with how fast your heart was racing.

“Anywaaaay,” Ashley jumped in. You had almost completely forgotten she was standing there. “She and I best get going, we still need to make dinner tonight.” She rounded the small car to the passenger side door and threw her bag in the backseat.

“I guess it’s–”

Mr. Jackman cut you off with a quick step forward, “Actually, if you don’t mind me saying, you may be able to help us.”

“Us?” You asked and flicked your gaze towards your friend who looked like her world was ending right there in front of her.

“You see, some aspects of the movie we are working on happens in space. I will refrain from saying anything else since, well–if you’re a fan I don’t want to spoil anything,” he said with a hearty laugh, “But the producers and directors have been fighting about the physics of the movie. They are trying to make it as accurate as possible, I suppose. And well, I am very out of my depth when it comes to anything like this.”

You nodded at him, one hand on the door handle of the Volvo.

“If it’s not too much trouble, would you be willing to join our next meeting to teach them a thing or two about physics?” He asked and took one more step forward, a sparkle in those soft, hazel eyes.

“Well, Mr. Jackman–”

“Hugh.”

“Uh, Hugh,” You went on, “I am very flattered but I just don’t know if I will be the best suited for the job. I am sure you can find others that will be better at this sort of thing.” You said with a nervous laugh. There was no way you would survive getting looped into this movie with Hugh Jackman as a leading character.

Plus, Ashley liked having boundaries between her work and personal life, which you understood. You didn’t want to overstep without talking to her about it first. You don't know what you would do if you lost her friendship because of something like this.

Hugh smacked his lips together and patted the hood of your tiny car. “As a person who enjoys her work because you are passionate, I feel you would be the best suited for this task.” He held up his pointer finger as he reached into his back pocket to pull out an old, leather wallet. “I will give you my business card,” he said, holding up a small piece of white paper, “if you give me yours… Professor.”

You hesitated for a moment, not sure what this would all lead to, before nodding your head and reaching into a side pocket of your briefcase, producing a small manilla rectangle with your information printed on it. “Here you are, Mr. Jackman.”

He didn’t correct you this time as he reached over to retrieve your business card, before placing his own in your open hand. You didn’t want to dwell on the fact that this piece of paper smelled like him, all manly cologne and pinewood…

“I think we will be seeing each other in the future, Professor,” he said with a wink and a wave as he turned around and walked back towards the campus.

And you’d be damned if you didn’t watch his tight butt in those bootcut jeans disappear past the gate. But you didn’t notice him turn back around to get one last look at you as you climbed into your car.

* * *

You and Ashley made dinner without touching the subject of her boss who apparently now wanted to recruit you to help with the project. On one hand, you really wanted to say yes to his proposal. After all, this may be the closest you could ever achieve to the film industry after your change in major. But on the other hand, you knew Ashley took a lot of pride in her work, even as an assistant. She planned to climb the ladder of the entertainment business one rung at a time. After all, she held out throughout the entirety of her theater degree at university, when you just bailed when it got too difficult.

“I can feel you thinking about it,” Ashley said while you sat on the couch together, each with your respective bowls of ice cream and rewatching Gilmore Girls for the third–maybe fourth time?

You groaned and grabbed the remote, pausing your show. “I know… I’m really sorry.”

“Hey,” Ashley said and reached across to place her hand on yours reassuringly. “I know you care about film just as much as I do. Hell, they do need a lot of help with the physics of the movie, and I am definitely no help in that department.” You let out a small chuckle in silent agreement with your friend. As much as you loved her, math was not her strong suit.

“Are you sure you’ll be alright if I say yes? I mean, it’s not like it will be my actual job or anything. I probably won’t even interact with you and Mr. Jackman that much.”

Ashley shook her head, “No, it’ll be completely fine if you take the offer. And you’re right, usually Hugh and I are busy doing other stuff rather than being involved in the technical discussions, or at least I am.”

“So our friendship will still exist?”

It was Ashley’s turn to laugh, “Yes, dummy, our friendship will still exist.”

“Ugh, you’re the best!” You yelped and lunged across the couch for a hug, ice cream be damned.

Later that night, when you were getting ready for bed, your phone lit up with a notification from… an unknown number?

You had to let out a deep breath after his last text let a flurry of butterflies free in your stomach. You tried not to let it get to you so much, he was probably just being nice. Plus, you’ve watched enough of his interviews to know how flirty he can be without really meaning it.

Laying in bed, you opened your phone to Instagram. You snickered at the first photo that popped up on your feed. It was Hugh Jackman dressed in his yellow Wolverine uniform taken from an angle that definitely aged him, but you still found it adorable nonetheless. Without thinking, you pressed the heart button on the bottom left of the picture. After all, you’ve been liking his pictures for years by that point.

After that, you set your phone to “do not disturb”, waiting for the sun to wake you the next day. And when you finally woke to check it, a notification popped up on your phone that had your heart flying around your chest.

[loulou-land]

Hii twinsieee:)

So so proud of you!!!

okay, how about louliver?

your pick, either the handmotion (You know exactly which one)....ooooorrrr.... After Oliver pulls Lou into the other room^^

Twinsie!! My love 😘❤️ Thank you so much. I've been working on this one for a couple of days. I hope you like it! There's def a lot of hand motions in this, some steam and these two being super into each other. Warning you now tho...no actual smut. Lol so you get a louliver smut coupon to use at a later time 😂 Love you, tons 🍇💗

Where I End and You Begin

2k words | louliver | on ao3

Oliver had Lou pinned against the wall, every muscle in his body tightly coiled as he channeled Buck’s hunger, his need. He’d let instinct take over, his hands gripping Lou like the scene demanded he put his all into it. At least that's what he pretended as he grinded his hips onto Lou’s thick thighs. Just acting. He thought, almost derisively. 

The charge between them was driving him mad. He could feel it humming under his skin, buzzing louder with each take, every breath that wasn't quite his own, whispering insistently in his ear. Asking—no, demanding to be fed. 

More. More. More. 

Each time Oliver was toeing the line, leaning over the edge of slightly giving in, he forced himself to hold back. To reign it in. Chill, it’s just a scene. He would chide himself after each take as he ran his tongue between swollen kissed lips. 

But then, something shifted. 

Between one breath and another, their eyes locked, just for a fleeting moment, barely a beat. But that one glance almost knocked him over. There was something there in Lou’s deep blue eyes. A flicker, a spark, something raw and unguarded that didn’t belong to Tommy. That was all Lou. 

It sent a shiver licking down Oliver’s spine, curling low in his stomach, where the heat of their controlled performance had been simmering all night. Now, it ignited, twisting into something unrestrained and much more real. 

His breath caught, lips parted to speak, maybe rupture the spell—call out for some time, break the scene. Instead, Oliver nodded. A small, almost imperceptible movement, as if giving permission for something he couldn’t name. As though answering a silent question. He didn't know what or why. Regardless, he couldn't bring himself to stop.

Lou didn’t seem to know either. Or maybe he did. 

Because, there was a hand—strong, assured—curving around his waist, pulling him closer with a force that felt anything but staged. His other hand, heavy and warm, settled at the back of his neck, holding him there. Keeping him from pulling away, guiding him through their motions. 

Oliver would scoff and roll his eyes if he could. Lou was insane if he thought there was a chance of stopping this. Of Oliver wanting to be anywhere but right here, pressed against him, caught in this moment that felt far too real for what it was supposed to be. 

And through it all, Lou was kissing him.

Not Tommy. Lou. 

He kissed him like it meant something. bruising and insistent—like he wanted to leave a mark. To devour him.

Oliver’s mind blanked, his cues forgotten, flipping away like smoke in the wind. The room around them faded into the background. He forgot all about the cameras, the props—even as something bumped him on the head—and the crew silently watching. All he knew was the way Lou's warm lips felt pressed to his, their breaths mingling together, the hint of a tongue teasing and tempting his mouth to open up for more. 

His hand wandered up, tracing the line of Lou’s arm, until his finger brushed bare skin. The coarse drag of stubble against his skin was electric, setting his nerves alight. He wanted more. To map the curve of Lou’s cheekbone with his thumb, to memorize the shape and the texture. He wanted to bury his hand in Lou’s hair, to feel it thread through his finger, to hold on tight—only distantly remembering he needed to be mindful of Lou’s past injury. The thought warring with his need to pull him closer, deeper into himself, to lose where one began and the other ended. 

That thought struck through him like lightning. Desire surged, hot and sharp, so intense it cut through the haze hanging over him and he remembered where he was—making him stumble, just for a second. His hand faltered, hovering inches from Lou’s face, twitching, the smooth choreography stuttering under hesitation. Not Buck’s. But entirely his own. 

Fuck. What the hell was happening to him? 

This didn’t feel like a scene anymore. Nor a performance. 

Touching Lou felt different right now. And Oliver didn't know what to do with that knowledge or the fact that he was harder than he’d ever been in his life. 

He didn't have enough time to think about it. All too soon, Lou was breaking the kiss, moving his head away from Oliver’s lips. He couldn't help but protest the action.  

Lou, breathless and affected, but still more put together than Oliver moved along the script, driving the scene forward. 

It made Oliver want him even more. 

As he adjusted his clothes and he slipped back into character—into Buck—he thought, I’m so screwed. 

The rest of the scene unraveled like a fever dream—disjointed flashes of sensation and movement. Oliver was aware in fragments: the sharp clack of teeth meeting in rushed kisses, the jarring impact of hard bodies against walls, hands fumbling with each other as they wrangled pieces of clothing off, and the heat radiating off them in waves. It was chaotic, messy and perfect for the needy want that existed between Buck and Tommy. A want Oliver was currently understanding all too well. He was grateful this scene required his hands on Lou because he was having a hard time keeping them anywhere else. 

The lines were blurring in his head. Buck and Tommy. Oliver and Lou. Things twisted together so tightly he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. It didn’t seem to matter to either of them, both enjoying the scene and having fun with it. 

They broke into giggles more than once, gasping, shoving, caught up in the ridiculous energy of it. Every stumble only seemed to feed into the madness. 

Before they knew it, they reached the end of the take, still chuckling—something giddy and breathless spiralling between them. Oliver reached out, grabbed Lou by the shirt pulling him towards him as they staggered through the doorway. It was supposed to be a cheeky playful gesture but Oliver hadn’t judged the distance or the strength of his grip. He tugged, too hard, too fast, and Lou followed too easily, his legs twisting with Lou’s. 

Oliver felt it before he saw it—the sudden shift in balance, then Lou’s eyes wide with surprise, a quick helpless gasp leaving him as gravity did its job. 

“Shit—” Oliver managed before they went down, tangled limbs and momentum carrying them straight to the floor. 

Or—thankfully—the mattress that had been set for the next scene. It softened the fall, but not enough to stop the grunt from leaving his chest as Lou landed hard on top of him. 

“Oof,” Oliver wheezed, the air punched from his lungs as Lou’s weight settled over him.

Before either of them could recover, Aishas’s voice reached them from the doorway. “Boys, you good?” 

Oliver squinted up at her from his position, noting the bemused expression on her face and raised eyebrows. “What are you doing?” 

“Tripped,” he couched, still catching his breath, while Lou gave a half-hearted grunt, shifting as Oliver’s knee jabbed into his side. 

“Uh-huh. Of course, you did,” she said, sounding fond. “Well, when you two find your legs again, come out to see the playback. I think this last one was perfect.” 

Oliver managed a weak thumbs-up in her direction. She snorted, shook her head and disappeared down the hallway. His attention moved to the man on top of him. Lou was shaking, shoulders trembling with silent laughter as he tried to hold it in. 

“Not funny,” Oliver muttered, his voice low. His lips curved despite himself. “You crushed me. You’re still crushing me, actually.” 

“Sorry, totally my bad.” Lou chuckled. His tone didn’t sound sorry at all. 

“Shut up,” Oliver groaned, shoving at Lou’s shoulder playfully. Lou pushed himself up slightly, bracing on his hands, giving Oliver a bit of room to breath while still remaining close. Their eyes met, and everything seemed to slow. 

Lou’s gaze dropped and lingered on Oliver’s mouth. Something hot twisted in Oliver’s gut as his blue eyes darkened. 

He felt it again—that spark, that magnetic pull. His breath hitched. 

They’d kissed all night. Over and over. Take after take. 

Oliver should be sick of kissing by now. Should be numb to the press of Lou’s lips, the scent of him, the weight of him. 

But he wasn’t. 

His eyes tracked the slow sweep of Lou’s tongue as he wet his lips, and something inside him finally snapped. He surged up, closing the distance again, and Lou met him halfway, as though they’d both been teetering on this edge together. 

Oliver groaned into Lou's mouth, his hand curling around the back of Lou’s neck, pulling him down. He finally gave in to the need to taste the other man and pushed his tongue past Lou’s lips—greedy and hungry—just like he’d been wanting all night. He swallowed the needy sound that Lou gave him in response. Oliver wanted to pull even more sounds out of him. 

This kiss was nothing like the ones before. Those had been tame in comparison. 

Their tongues clashed, battled for dominance, neither willing to give, trying to prove their desire to one another. 

Earlier, it had been palpable. But this—this was a wildfire. Scorching hot and burning through everything in its path. 

It seared through him, left him scrambling to hold on to something for fear of completely losing himself, so he gripped Lou’s waist. 

His cock, which had flagged during the fall, throbbed back to life, hard and aching. He couldn't stop himself. His hips rolled up, grinding into Lou’s, desperately looking for relief. The friction made them both break apart, gasping as their lengths pressed together, thick and hot even through all their layers of clothes. 

Oliver’s head spun. He didnt know which way was up or down, just the feel of Lou on him, surrounding him as they humped like a bunch of horny teenagers against each other. 

Lou moaned, head dropping to the crook of Oliver’s neck. “Fuck, Oli…” The raw, rough drag of Oliver’s name through Lou’s mouth, sent shivers down his spine, had him opening his mouth to—beg, tease, praise—he didn't know. He didn’t get a chance to find out. 

Aisha’s voice cut through the haze, like a bucket of cold water. “Oliver, Lou! What is taking so long?” 

“Coming!” Oliver shouted back, breathless. 

Lou shifted, just enough to smirk, raising an eyebrow. “I mean, I know I'm good, but I didn't think I was that good.” 

“Oh, fuck off,” Oliver laughed, shoving him playfully to the side, his heart still beating fast.

Lou flopped next to him, both of them still panting and flushed. They looked at each other and laughed. Shaking loudly with the release of tension though not the one they wanted. 

When the laughter faded, Oliver watched Lou. Cataloging the way his eyes crinkled around the edge as he smiled softly at the ceiling, greedily took in the red flush still spread down his cheeks and neck. He took a deep breath and made a decision. 

“Hey,” he said, voice soft, a little hesitant. “Come to my trailer later?” 

Lou didn't hesitate. He turned to him and grinned, reaching for Oliver’s fingers and squeezing once he had a hold of them. “Sure.” 

He stood, pulling Oliver up with him, easily. His stomach burst into a million butterflies at the casual way Lou lifted him. He didnt think he'd ever find being manhandled sexy—until Lou.  

Lou leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to Oliver’s cheek—the gesture, so at odds with the heated kiss they’d shared before. His heart skipped a beat. Lou met his eyes, held them for a bit longer, then winked and stepped away, heading out the room. 

Oliver stood, rooted to the spot, heart pounding in his ears and nerves still buzzing away under his skin. Yeah. He was completely, utterly screwed, but that was okay. He’d finally found his match. 

Oliver shook his head and hurried after Lou. After all, the sooner they finished up here, the sooner he could drag the other man back to his trailer. 

[deathmetalunicorn1]

Yandere Shiva family, Buddha, Apollo, and Loki house in love with their married best friends goddess. But here is the gist, the darling is getting fed up with her husband but she hides it well, even from them. But however, it would seem as though during the holidays cracks are beginning to show because the darling is about to hit the wall. Because sweetheart is just tired of unreciprocated and underappreciated Labor that comes with marriage or just a relationship in general.

Forgetting important events, fragilent promises that hardly get fulfilled ( Ex: was asked numerous times to plan her birthday and promised he would. Darling had to cancel her invite list since he fell through on his promise. ), being emotionally and mentally detached to her health concerns ( Ex: that being her overall well-being and infertility issues ), being pissed off when you aren't informed of things when you likely don't care about it( Ex: darling had to get an emergency abortion because of how dangerous the pregnancy she had at the time was, and it emotionally and physically drained her majorly. And yes the Yandere was there for both the procedure and when her husband blew up at her ), being even more pissy when your needs aren't met but can't even do the barest of bare minimum ( Ex: was asked to go get her meds; she still healing btw, he didn't get them. But later on he did ask if they can have sex, mind you darling isn't well enough to do that and you didn't even get her medicine. The darling obviously refused and gave him the reasons, and yet says " Well, your mouth still works right. ". This sparks an argument and yes the yanderes are present for this too. ), and just many more reasons ( and even more examples... ) as to why she's over it but those are the most recent.

By the holidays she has been ran thin too the last thread, and this is secretly her husbands last chance to redeem himself and revive the magic in their marriage. But like may things he fell through just as the darling is fell into the wall too. The darling swiftly and secretly makes a quick trip to Hera, get divorce papers from and blessing from her to proceed further, and neatly wraps them up as a lovely gift for her soon to be ex. So you can imagine the surprising ( or really unsurprising.. ) ' gift ' he got at Jesus's birthday party ( he's another friend of hers but not as close as the yanderes ). So what are the the Yanderes going to do on this unFORTUNATE turn of events, how are they going to react.

P.S the darling is the Goddess of Festivities, craft, home, beauty, and magic.

I’ll be doing all of this except for the miscarriage part- that’s too sad, but I will have something to make up for that part.

-You couldn’t help but smile as your husband was holding the present from you on his lap, it looked perfect, with beautiful wrapping paper and bows, it looked like something you would see in a magazine!

-It was a Christmas party you were having with all your friends, including (Love), who your husband didn’t like because he could see how (Love) looked at you, wanting you for his own, but you were a loyal person, you wouldn’t cheat, unlike him.

-Your husband had changed over the years you had been married to him, going from a sweet and kind man to someone that nobody in their right mind would marry- he cheated on you several times, gaslit you into forgiving him, and was an absolute pig to you! Not to mention he never remembered your anniversary or your birthday, but he expected to be treated like a king on his birthday and if he didn’t get that he would pout and lament at having such a heartless wife when you did everything for him.

-It wasn’t fair that such a wonderful person like you was being treated so poorly!

-(Love) knew this well, after you had been rushed to the hospital after one of your ovaries ruptured, your husband had ignored your cries for help, telling you that you were being too noisy, and (Love) rushed to your side when you called him for help.

-While you were in the hospital your husband came, demanding to know when you were coming home to cook and clean for him, as it was your job as his wife to take care of him, while you were still recovering from surgery.

-When you were finally home, despite being on strict bed rest orders, including no sexy time, your husband just whined and complained, saying you were being so selfish for not giving him what he wanted.

-You had friends over, including (Love) who were helping around the house while you were still healing, something you were grateful for, but your husband just complained, saying you were going to get lazy and was complaining that you weren’t doing your wifely duties in pleasuring him.

-You had snapped at him, surprising him, “One of my ovaries just popped, it’s like one of your balls popping- would you want to have sex while you’re in pain?” (Love) had been surprised by your anger, but your husband dug himself even deeper, “Well you have a mouth, don’t you?”

-(Love) enjoyed punching your husband that day, putting him in his place while screaming at him for treating you in such a way and for a while your husband did treat you better, afraid of (Love’s) wrath.

-When you were finally recovered and found him in bed with yet another nymph, you decided enough was enough and you went to Hera, telling her what happened, begging for her help with getting a divorce.

-Hera knew of what happened from (Love) who had been so furious about your husband’s actions that she had your divorce ready in minutes.

-However, you didn’t give it to your husband right away, you wanted to embarrass him like how he embarrassed you and you laid your plan in motion, gift wrapping the divorce papers.

-Now it was finally the day, and you could barely contain your excitement as your husband was admiring the lovely gift as you beamed, “That’s from me- I worked really hard on it!”

-(Love) was heartbroken, seeing you doing so much for someone who doesn’t cherish you as your husband looked smug, trying to rub it in the faces of everyone, especially (Love), “That’s my Y/N- always treating her husband how she should!”

-He opened the gift in front of everyone and instead of seeing a wonderful gift, his face fell as he picked up the divorce papers, which were already processed and signed by Hera.

-He looked over at you and you beamed brightly, standing up with your hands on your hips, “That’s right- I’m no longer your wife- you selfish, arrogant, stuck-up, pathetic excuse of a man! Merry Christmas! Enjoy your divorce papers!”

-Jaws dropped all around, eyes wide as they all realized what you did, but instead of feeling embarrassed of seeing something like this, your friends all immediately cheered, embarrassing your ex-husband even more as they all congratulated you for dropping a loser like him.

-You felt proud and happy, but also still a bit nervous as he looked up at you, trying to get your pity, “Y/N why are you doing this? How could you be so cruel?!”

-Your eyes were sharp and cold, “I’m cruel? You never remember my birthday, you ignore my concerns, you ignored me when I was in the hospital then embarrassed me in front of my friends, you never help out, you constantly cheat on me then act like it was my fault that you cheated- plus you’re a pig and you can’t take care of yourself! So why do you think I’m doing this?!”

-(Love) was on cloud nine, about ready to swoop in to snatch you away to love you until the end of eternity when your ex shot up, going to threaten you again when a new voice spoke up, “Sit down.” He turned, going to yell only to meet the sharp eyes of Hera who immediately had him melting into his seat, terrified of her.

-Hera turned to you, her icy façade melting as she beamed at you, “Congratulations on your divorce Y/N!” you thanked her warmly as she turned back to your ex, threatening him to never go near you again.

-(Love) quickly slid up to you, beaming brightly, “Are you okay Y/N? Do you need anything?” you saw that he looked elated, and you couldn’t help but smile, taking his arm in yours, “Yes actually- I am in need of a date to the Christmas ball tonight. I wonder who I should take?”

-(Love) grinned down at you, hearing your tease as you and your friends all left your ex’s house, as you had already moved out without your ex realizing, mainly because he wasn’t paying attention as (Love) escorted you to your temporary home, as he was going to wife you yesterday, but he needed to be patient, at least until the end of the party to ask you, he was hoping that you will say yes!

-Your ex was left on the couch, alone, completely stunned that he had lost you- it was all his fault for the way he treated you- he was to blame as he cried bitterly into his hands. He had to win you back!

-It was going to be impossible however, seeing as (Love) wasn’t going to let him ever approach you again, he was never going to hurt you again, (Love) made this silent promise to you.

[darklydeliciousdesires]

Dreams of Arcadia - Chapter Four.

Giggling and kicking my feet at the little group of people out there who are vibing with this! So thankful to you for your interaction :)

Summary: Everyone harbours their own ghosts, the lingering pains that shadow them through life. For Dr. Marla Krane, an accomplished trauma surgeon, these burdens have grown almost insurmountable, the emotional toll compounding with each passing day. One evening, following the loss of a patient and reeling from turmoil in her personal life, the mounting pressure becomes overwhelming. 

On this pivotal night, as Marla wanders the streets of New York barefoot and in despair, she finds herself the victim of a tragic accident. This event transports her to Arcadia, a mystical and verdant realm whose tranquil beauty stands in stark contrast to the chaos she has left behind. 

Within Arcadia, Marla encounters an enigmatic figure known as the dark god, who extends solace and understanding in her moment of deepest confusion. With her fate delicately poised between two worlds, she must confront a profound choice: to return and fight for the life she knows, or to surrender to the mysterious embrace of Arcadia’s guardian, where perhaps, at last, she may find peace. 

Words - 2,964

Warnings - AU!Vessel, mentions of death and injury, eventual smut, 18+ only. Minors DNI!

Previous Chapters - One Two Three

Awaking from perhaps the soundest slumber she’d ever experienced, it took Marla a few moments to realise where she was upon opening her eyes. The noises of New York’s rhythmic hum were instead replaced by birdsong, free-flowing water, and the sound of grass being nibbled upon. 

“Hello, Celeste,” she called, carefully peering over the edge of her tree-bound bed, seeing the unicorn mare grazing contentedly beneath. “I’m guessing your friend brought me up here, right?” 

“Correct.” 

Turning to her left, there sitting on the next branch over was Vessel, the morning sun casting soft glints across his bare, ebony chest where his robe hung open. Peculiarly, it sent a spark of heat crackling through her belly.  

Was it permitted, to find a deity whose face she couldn’t even see attractive?  

“Hi, Ves,” she spoke, clearing her throat and looking to his mask. He dropped his head a little, and she knew in that moment that he’d noticed her appreciating him.  

“Good morning, Marla,” he eventually offered pleasantly, watching as her cheeks pinked a little, the reaction sitting at slight ill-ease with him. Women gazing in his direction with appreciation was an entirely alien concept for the dark god. “Are you well rested?”  

“I am,” she chirped, “I didn’t think I’d get tired, being dead. Or whatever the heck it is I am presently.” 

“It is not uncommon for those who have passed on to the next plane of existence to become weary.” He lifted his hand, motioning towards her. “Or ones who may only be visiting temporarily.” 

“Can you see, back down on earth? How am I doing?” she asked, turning to face him, her dress rucking up her legs as she bent her knees.  

Beneath his mask, Vessel’s eyes immediately flittered, taking in the supple flesh of her thighs. He was quite used to people roaming through Arcadia unclothed by that point, the sights leaving him completely unmoved. How a mere hint of thigh affected him into accelerated heartbeat, he wasn’t altogether sure.  

“Following a surgery that lasted into the early morning, you remain in a medically induced, comatose state.” Seeing all meant of course, witnessing the current state of her mortal form.  

“And my injuries?” she persisted. He remained quiet. “Ves, come on. It’d be helpful for me, to know what my chances of survival are, at least.” 

He looked at her for a long moment. “A fractured skull, broken neck, two fractured lower vertebrae, damage to your liver, two collapsed lungs, a ruptured spleen, multiple facial fractures and skin grafts needed to your arms and stomach.”  

“Which of my vertebrae?” 

Of course, she would request further details. “C4, C5, L1 and L3, all of which have been fused by an orthopaedic surgeon.”  

“Nerve damage?” 

“None lasting, so attests the tall man with auburn hair who worked upon you.” 

Jack Grace. The chief orthopaedic surgeon, whom she recognised from Ves’s description alone. Ruminating on the information objectively, as if she wasn’t the patient in question, Marla had to conclude that if she’d come through surgery, it was a positive sign.  

The skull fracture likely meant a hematoma and progressive swelling to her brain, further evidenced by her currently being kept in a medically induced coma. It was commonplace with such an injury. All things considered, she thought herself quite lucky to have come away with nothing further on her itinerary of injuries.  

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she breathed, shaking her head in bewilderment. “I’m lucky to be alive at all.” 

She didn’t sound grateful for that whatsoever. “You appear unmoved by such fortunateness,” Vessel observed, stretching out his long legs before him upon the sturdy branch.  

“My surviving it, should I awake from my coma once they bring me around – sometimes patients remain comatose indefinitely – will only bring about more pain to my already miserable life,” she scoffed, wrapping her arms around her legs and resting her chin to her knees.  

The dark god viewed her shrewdly beneath his mask, wanting to suggest perhaps she strive for something other than self-pity, and maybe her life might turn in upswing once more. The part of him who was truly empathic to the pain of others prevented such blunt candour, though. 

Her heart was brimming with the memory of the pain he had taken from her, still. While he could remove the physical ache of it, his power could not extend to removing the memory of how much she had faced, her unending emotional attrition.  

If Vessel understood anything with such acuteness, it was wounds of the heart.  

“You’re quiet,” she observed, cocking her head a little. 

“Contemplative,” he stated, “Unsure over the advice I should offer forth.” 

She chuckled softly, picking up a fallen leaf and twirling it in a gentle grasp between her fingers. “You’re a god, Ves. Try.” 

“Consider this,” he began, opening his hands in gesture, “perhaps the physical healing you will endure, should you survive, will steer your focus away from the emotional turmoil that has taken precedence in your life of late.” 

“One pain replaces the other,” she muttered, sighing. “I don’t think I want to return, you know. I mean shit, I had good things in my life, I see that.” 

“Your charming mother, your hilarious father. Ellie, her boys, your career, wonderful friendships with your peers,” he interjected with.  

“But it all seemed so meaningless.”  

If it hadn’t been for his mask, Marla would have witnessed his eyebrow arching high. “All because you did not have a romantic partner to share it with? That seems like an awful waste.” 

He was right. She knew it, his truth was one she had uttered to herself countless times over the past eight months. Hearing it repeated by her other worldly guide only solidified it for her. “I know, and I’m aware I’m being pathetic and wallowing. I suppose it’s a fault of mine when I’m under emotional pressure.”  

She looked at him, her lips thinning. “I should be enough on my own. I know. My value isn’t measured by the success of my love life. I’m just lonely.” She paused, those thinned lips curling into a smile. “Marginally less so now.”  

If jet black skin could have flushed. Still, Vessel felt the little tingle at his cheeks all the same.  He was stumped for a response yet again, an awkwardness he wasn’t familiar with. Or particularly fond of.  

“I shall leave you for now, allow you to rise in your own time,” he spoke, standing up. 

“I’m risen,” she replied, taking to her feet. “Can you help me get down?” 

“My assistance is not required.” Jumping from the branches, he landed sure footedly upon the grass below, the still nearby Celeste lifting her head with a start to snort through her mouthful of grass. “Jump. You’ll land neatly.” 

“In a neat heap of broken legs!” she exclaimed, peering down over the edge of her nested bed. 

His shrug was casual, reaching to pull his staff from the ground. “Your body is a mere manifestation. Broken bones are of no consequence here.” 

“Okay,” she called, “give me a minute.”  

While neither she nor her clothing smelled, she wanted to change out of the dress. Back in her real life, her career meant her choices of daily attire extended only to smart or scrubs, her choices away from work lending more to smart casual. Asking of Arcadia, she was presented with a pair of white linen pants and a simple grey vest she changed into, standing on the edge of the branch and gulping.  

One brave leap later and she had landed just as neatly as Vessel had promised, the pair beginning to walk at a steady pace.  

“So,” she asked, quickly seeing if Arcadia would honour a wish she made silently in her head. When a toasted poppyseed bagel with butter appeared in her hand, she realised it would. “Who is the most interesting person you’ve welcomed into Arcadia?” 

“In which millennia?” 

Her eyes widened a little. “Shit, I suppose this one, but any notables from the previous you’ve been here I’d be just as interested to hear.” 

He ruminated on his reply for a few moments. “Socrates is perhaps one of the most remarkable people I have ever welcomed here. A true intellectual genius. Funny too, so I found,” he began, Marla’s eyes widening in wonder as he continued.  

“In recent times, I found Professor Stephen Hawkin to be an incredibly fascinating gentleman. It was a joyful experience to see him arrive unincumbered by his illness, able to move unassisted and speak again. Aside from him, her majesty Queen Elizabeth II is an awfully lovely lady. Completely fascinated by Celeste, I remember, being that she is a keen lover of horses. She called me Mr. Vessel, too, which I found quite entertaining.”  

“Do they ever come and see you, these notable people?” 

“No,” he lamented, “they remain sequestered within the halls and the gardens found beyond them. All soaking up the sunshine of their loved one's presence in their glorious reunion.” She shouldn’t help but notice the faint trace of bitterness in his voice, his tone soon turning to that of soft grief. “People are few and far between out here.”  

“Do you have friendships with any of those people?” 

He took a moment to answer. “I thought we had previously established that I do not.”  

“I had a lot to take in yesterday,” she replied, unmoved by the slight coolness of his answer. “Sorry I didn’t remember. You’re also not big on talking about you, though.” He made no attempt to respond. “I hope you will tell me, one day. At least who you were as a person. I’d like to know.” 

“Why?” 

Shrugging, she gesturing to herself. “You know more about me than I’m entirely comfortable with. Seems only fair.” 

She made quite the valid point. “In life, I was much as I am now. A guardian, warrior, a man of great candour and strength.” 

Wondering exactly how much he would reveal, she chose her next question with care. “Who did you guard? A king of some kind?” 

“The chieftain of my tribe. I was an ancient version of a bodyguard, I suppose one could assume. To him and his family.”  

“And what about your family? Did you have one, wife, kids?” Looking up at him, she saw even in spite of the mask that he was visibly wincing at those words. Regret immediately pricked in her belly, coming to a stop and touching a hand to his arm. “I’m sorry, shit. That’s obviously a scab I shouldn’t have picked at.” 

He nodded, his jaw tightening. “Almost. There was almost an offspring. But no wife.”  

Closing his eyes, he saw her, his mind the only place she existed now, Vessel having no idea what had become of the woman he had longed for and loved in secret. She had never arrived in Arcadia, as he had held hope for in the years following his own ascent.  

He wasn’t even aware of his tears until one slid to the corner of his lip, Marla reaching to gently stop its trickle with her thumb. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.” 

Covering her hand with his, he nodded. “I know.”  

Without hesitation, she reached to wrap her arms around him, tightening his ancient form in a hug. She wasn’t to know, but it was the first time he’d been embraced since his reincarnation as a god. He stiffened for a second before his body became accepting to the offered comfort, the little slice of solace granted, his old bones breathing a sigh of relief as he reciprocated.  

Time seemed to slip by unnoticed as they stood together, the silence between them thick with the weight of memories unspoken and pains unhealed. For a fleeting moment, the boundaries of their two worlds blurred, her arms around him, his ancient grief thundering quietly beneath the shell of stoicism he had carried for over four millennia. When Marla finally stepped back, she reached again, her fingers touching against his intricately decorated mask. 

“Let me see your face,” she whispered, the impulse fluttering from her tongue with little forethought.  

“No,” he gulped, his voice quiet, yet staunch. “I am horrific.” 

“I know horror,” she began, resting her hands to his thick shoulders. “I’m a trauma surgeon; I see it regularly. People with their faces ripped off from accidents, limbs missing, bodies impaled, bent in ways the human body shouldn’t bend. I doubt what you hide is anything close to the sights I’ve seen.” 

He remained hesitant, weighing it up. He had only seen himself once, his reflection in the water making him never, ever wish to experience the sight again. There was something powerfully earnest in her eyes, though, something extending to him in waves of trust that moved his hands to push his hood from his head, elegant fingers unfastening the mask and letting it fall into his hand.  

There, revealed to her long before she assumed her would, was the face of a truly handsome man. Chiselled features, his skin smooth and inky, but his perceived disfigurement was evident.  

His eyes, while a hypnotic hue of bright blue, were those of a serpent, two mere blackened slits for pupils. Still, they did not detract.  

“Oh, my god,” she breathed, her hand cupping his cheek. 

“You cannot say you weren’t warned,” he spoke, a deep line setting between his furrowed brows. 

“No.” She shook her head rapidly. “You’re beautiful.” 

He scoffed darkly, frown lines deepening. “My skin bears the besmirching of human poison, and I have the eyes of a viper. I fail to see how anybody could possibly find any hint of beauty in that.” 

“Beauty goes beyond what the eye can see, Ves,” she reminded him, resting her hands to his upper arms, thumbs stroking softly. “But what my eyes see? A truly, truly beautiful being.” 

He stared down at her for a long moment, unable to speak, because he knew she meant it. And it terrified him. So much so that within the space of a blink and a tear, he vanished, leaving her bewildered for a moment before she realised that their interaction had probably been the first of its kind for him.  

“I didn’t mean to spook you,” she called into the nothingness of his departure. “I’m sorry.”  

Waiting for a few moments, she got the impression he was hesitant to appear again, Marla sighing and turning to a still nearby Celeste. “Is he always like this?” The ethereal mare let out a soft whinny. “I’ll take that as a yes.”  

While she continued with her walk around her new surroundings, the unicorn eventually ambling along at her side, back in the realm of mortals her body lay still, overseen by the woman who had saved her life.  

“My good goddamn, sweetie.” It must have been about the hundredth time Faith Walker had uttered that statement since her friend had arrived, barely clinging to life, her injuries horrific. Placing the iPad she was reading her vitals upon down, she took a seat on the edge of her bed, her brilliant, kind hands reaching to gently stroke her swollen face. “What a mess you got yourself in.” 

Covering her eyes with her hand, she allowed herself the tears she’d forbade the arrival of during the preceding hours. All the way through the eight and a half hours of surgery to save her, she’d built an indomitable wall between her emotions at seeing her friend so severely injured and the poise of the accomplished surgeon she was. Her life had been in her hands, and it was only then that the enormity of it hit her squarely in the chest.  

“Darling, if you were that sad, why didn’t you come to me? You can tell me anything, you know that,” she cried, removing one of her handkerchiefs from her coat pocket and dabbing her eyes. “The levels of booze in your blood? Holy Moses, sweetie. That isn’t you!” 

It truly wasn’t either. Marla had never been that much of a drinker. True, she enjoyed a couple of dry vodka martinis at the end of a long day, but she would always then switch to a simple club soda with ice and lime before inebriation could take hold. Faith could count on one hand the number of times she’d witnessed her friend drunk in the last eleven years of their friendship.  

“And I know,” she continued, her voice still a little choked, “I know I tell you constantly to take more time for yourself, to rest, but this ain’t exactly what I envisioned!” She laughed then, but it wasn’t joyful at all. “Gone and left me here without you. How am I supposed to keep everyone on their damned toes without my sidekick, huh?” Her smile widened. “The nerve of you.” 

Standing, she took a deep, fortifying breath. “Just you hurry up back to me, to us all. Wherever you are now, it can’t be as good as it is right here. With the people who love you.” 

Up in Arcadia, where Marla had heard every single word, she paused in her walk, reaching out to stroke Celeste’s sparkling coat. “No, Faith. It’s about a hundred times better.”  

Her tears fell then, crying for the anguish of her friend, of the fear of waking up into the shattered remains of her life in an equally splintered body. She expected Vessel to materialise again, yet he could only watch from afar, not trusting himself in his own compromised emotional state to return to the woman who had captivated him so completely.  

Gods were not destined to deal with such trifles, yet there he found himself, completely paralysed by it. 

Did you enjoy what you just read? If so, please help your author out by commenting/reblogging. If you want to be added to the taglist, please do let me know, too!

[thearchivistsletterbox]

teletē

WELCOME, THE THRICE HAPPY! A REFUGE OF SHORTER DAYS FOR LONGER NIGHTS. GONE ARE THE DAYS OF LIVING TO SUFFER—NOW WE SUFFER TO LIVE.

graffiti is scrawled underneath the final part of the inscription:

THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN?

and its reply:

            DO NOT DISRESPECT OUR SANCTUARY!

And thus followed sanctuary, as far as the eye can see. Lights. Lights underscoring this scene of pure bliss, a dizzy beautiful haze of movement and rhythm and dance and wild, unadulterated joy. A vibrant scene of colours—purple, red, gold, blue, green—otherwise discordant in rigid singularity, are beauty incarnate once washed together.

The sanctuary is coated in ribbons and robes, winding to fit the aviary-like roof dressed in floating lights, flashing neon. The floors, the walls, they are stagnant, yet they feel ever-moving in a swaying ebb and flow. Enough to make non-initiates nauseous.

Cries of song burst forth from within. Ecstatic screams celebrate each breath taken in their sanctuary as drunken dancers interlock arms and spin ‘til vertigo takes them. Women of every cloth shout praises, never stopping even when their throats run dry. Men and other parties comprise a smaller faction, though no less virile and wildly enthusiastic as their female counterparts. Falling is all too common, but all those who fall stand again, and they stand to the cheers of their friends as they return to the unflinching, maddening reverie. 

Clear golden liquid spills from followers mouths, onto the red marble floor, in and out of orifices the polite public would rather die than name. The liquor stains add to the ambience, they say; it’s a party to die for!

Amongst it, a girl with an Orphic poet’s heart beating strong in her chest, imbued by the ambitions alcohol so gracelessly grants, stands as straight as she can atop a stage altar. She scratches her fingertips along the strings of her guitar, the instrument almost crackling with lightning. Sparks the colour of the sun itself fly out as she plays. Arms—peach, olive, brown, all sticky with gold—outstretch in awe of the muse before them.

  “Then a hornèd God was found,

    And a God with serpents crowned;

    And for that are serpents wound

        In the wands his maidens bear,

    And the songs of serpents sound

        In the mazes of their hair!”

She sings like it hurts her throat to speak, in a language none but the pit could understand, but she sings like a goddamn goddess. Freemen would sell their arms for her voice any day, and she’s racked up a lot of adoring fans with her electric style and music that melded minds into something listless and sick with passion. Her symphonic story rang throughout the whole building, inspiring festivity upon festivity, drink upon drink.

Gold leaves and metal pinecone scraps fall to the floor, lost in the motions above. Everyone is one and nothing is no more, fear long since drowned in rivers of wine. The speakers pulse like heartbeats and lights dazzle like neon eyes. If the partiers choke on stardust, they thank the night sky as its radiance looks down on them all.

  “And sets them leaping as he sings,

    His tresses rippling to the sky,

    And deep beneath the Maenad cry

        His proud voice rings:

          ‘Come, O Bacchae, come!’”

Something breaks the mist. The bursts of colour, sound, emotion, swells and hits a wall of difference once something new arrives. A person, you, brandishing an orange uniform like it’s anything to be proud of, pushes past a transparent veil, then into the central hall. 

The lights are an assault on your senses. The music threatens to rupture your eardrums. The alcohol stains everywhere are sickness incarnate. Only the mad would enjoy this, you snark.

You move across the scene, an intruder in paradise. Nobody pays you any mind, why should they? One sour mood doesn’t dull an entire celebration of ecstasy itself! Fate is beautiful because it has its own ways of weaving the world. Death and life, rising and falling, celebrating and mourning, such is the way of the world. In the partiers’ frenetic stupor, they don’t find themselves noticing the other that had crawled into their sacred banquet. Dancers let their limbs twist and interlock ‘til they have no distinguishing features between them, laughing like stuffed hyenas, singers screaming their melodies between swigs of liquor, all to the newcomer’s abject disgust. O, but judgement is wise and fierce.

the Orphic girl continues her song;

“Smite till the throat shall bleed!”

as you crest the middle of the hall, weaving in and out of the thrills of the elated. together, they drag a half-shorn goat to the top of an altar.

         “Smite till the heart shall bleed!”

the gold-plated glint of a badge flickers upon your waist as your eyes dart in search of their target. the mass of merriment scream some more, adding their pile of voices to the song. a different melody, the cry of the goat.

  “Him the tyrannous, lawless, Godless, 

Echîon’s earth-born seed!”

so fixated that you fail to notice a silk-gloved hand seize your shoulder.

A smile meets you, the intruder. A friendly inclination, perhaps, but not much else. An older man, he stands taller than everyone else, even with his gait misaligned from excessive drink. Clad in beauty itself—grand animal skins, leather jackets and belts, shimmering gold that puts the sun to shame—his meagre smile doesn’t meet his eyes; a previous passive, cloudy look of subtle joy now so sharp.

His grip tightens, his smile a thin line.

“I didn’t know we had a pig for slaughter tonight,” he says, with a voice smoother than the wine in his free hand. 

If you were to have a weaker will, you may find yourself completely taken by this man. A soft-spoken beauty was about him; a flowing brown-grey beard with hair to match; a sharp, stocky frame; and well-groomed with such a commanding air. You struggle not to take a knee at the mere sight of him.

“Ah! Mr Caduceus, I–er…” you sputter in his holy presence.

The man, Caduceus, focuses his gaze. Gone is any prior jubilant display. He does not move his hand.

“Is it me you seek?”

you go to reply, but the horns of the bull pierce deep, and you have no time to—

“I thought the police knew better than to impede on sanctuary.” Caduceus spares a glance across the floor, meeting eyes with another—too far away for you to see—who then darts to a corner, out of sight.

“Yes, well, I, um…”

you also run your eyes around the room. nobody stands out, but your search’s fruition is within their grasp.

“There’s–there’s no better place to find you, sir. You and…”

you search for someone who is no longer there.

“Well,” you continue, “my precinct is interested in the whereabouts of a missing person.”

Caduceus quirks an eyebrow, and takes a swig. “You mean to tell me you think anyone you’ll find here wants to be found?”

“My captain has reason to suspect they’ve ended up a part of your…”

You regard him closely, the unforgivable trace of alcohol and quietly brazen certainty lingering like a wound upon him. There is a guitar pick nursed between two golden hoops on his side. Your eyes skirt around once more.

“... organisation,” you say.

Caduceus lets out a laugh at this. The sound is deep and rolls like waves of crimson wine, he grasps his stomach. A honey smell trapses among dancers, moving from corner to corner.

“Oh!” he catches his breath, “What a word! I would call it surprising, but, well… that’s just the sort of thing your people say, isn’t it? That’s cute…”

“Yea, the wild ivy lapt him, and the doomed

Wild Bull of Sacrifice before him loomed!”

and that gloved hand winds its way to your throat.

“Who is it you seek? Amalia? Heilyn? Elisavet? Charis? Are any of those people people to you, or are they names? Faces in a crowd? Writing on the wall, and a photo for the coroners?”

the dancers do not yield. you choke. Caduceus pauses in reflection, his voice low with the rasp of wine.

“It’s Ori, isn’t it? The little singer.”

her melody is relentless.

   “O hounds raging and blind,

            Up by the mountain road,

          Sprites of the maddened mind,

            To the wild Maids of God;

          Fill with your rage their eyes,

            Rage at the rage unblest,

          Watching in woman’s guise,

         The spy upon God’s Possessed!”

You are released. Breath escapes you still, but you swallow deep, eyes fixed on the singer. Ori has to be some nickname the flock had given her, but yes, this is her. She had been pronounced missing after her perfect romance turned sour; the death of one, the disappearance of the other. And artists are always dramatic like that, so only the gods could know what the heartbroken songbird ran off to do.

Her knuckles bleed across guitar strings. As you look closer, you see scars that run up and down her arms like dripping stains. She’s slurring, but only when she speaks normally—her song is a grounding sensation.

“She came to us, hands bloody, face wet with tears, wracked with sights of her lost beloved, and nowhere else to go. No other god heeded her prayers once her songs turned to melancholy.” Caduceus sighs, a unique hatred passing him when he regards you once more. “They didn’t see how tragic her loss was, because, I think, they have never had what she lost. That love; tender and absolute, the hot taste of flesh in embrace, a song gilded by romance’s warmth… the rest of this world is deaf to it.”

The goat cries. 

Blood fills its lungs, caressing the sides of its inner tissue just as a painter coats a canvas in crimson. 

The goat writhes in agony abject. They slit its throat.

Caduceus turns his head to it. No god answers the animal’s pleas. The acme of its pain is not silenced, it is embraced. At the centre of it, a young man—dressed finely in silk and blood, laced with purple flowers, smelling of honey and speaking in tongues with a devilish grin—locks eyes with Caduceus. Then you. He rolls his eyes, smile tapering. With a sweeping bow parallel to a dance, he rises, leaving the rest of the crowd to rend the goat limb from limb, everyone tearing, splitting, dismembering, and finally feasting. Between the sound of a thousand frenzied mouths indulging themselves, the song does not pause.

         “A strait pitiless mind

            Is death unto godliness;

          And to feel in human kind

            Life, and a pain the less!”

Caduceus grips his drink and takes a swig so deep you are certain the alcohol has invaded his lungs. He does not flinch however, letting his drunken swaying appear more graceful rather than the usual junkie display, as you would usually call it.

“You know,” he grabs you by the shoulder, leading you away from the crowds and into a corner, “I don’t understand your type.”

You squirm. “You needn’t understand. Just do as I say.”

“Oh, you’ve decided to be bold now?” He snorts, then lets his voice drop lower, “I’d like that more if the uniform didn’t come attached.”

You quite nearly jump out of their skin. A gasp escapes you as you maneuver out of his grasp, pulling away from his hand; unsteady but horribly tight. He doesn’t put up much a fight, until you drop the pretenses, pulling out your gun—

and something cold and sharp pierces something else.

a blade that spins and spins and spins within itself, three spiral edges, serrated and glowing in a vein-like pattern.

that knife meets flesh. through the back, scratching against bones as it settles within a body.

you find yourself knowing only pain. the kind of pain you don’t recover from. never.

“Got ‘em.” a voice echoes from behind. “Someone thinks they’re so slick, don’t they?”

the guitar silences.

“Now it’s a party!” the Orphic singer slurs. “What, lookin’ for me?”

“They are,” Caduceus answers, “but don’t fear, Ori.”

“We’ll deal wit’ them. Keep the music going, girl! Play that new one!” the hidden voice says.

Ori smiles with a sun’s brightness and begins her song again, letting the crowd—who hadn’t cared to notice the scuffle—jump right back into their celebration. The guitar whistles ‘til it screeches—she offers no pause. You feel wine-laden breath on the back of their neck. That young man at the altar. He rips the knife away, leaving you to give half a scream as the music picks up once more.

“Now I come to Hellas—having taught

All the world else my dances and my rite

Of mysteries, to show me in men’s sight

Manifest God.

                And first of Hellene lands,

I cry thus Thebes to waken; set her hands

To clasp my wand, mine ivied javelin,

And round her shoulders hang my wild fawn-skin.”

She doesn’t sing the reverence of a god any longer. She sings as if it is her who is god. Her presence steals away all attention, and the partygoers care not for the assault that plagues their halls. You are a coiled mess on the floor, choking on your own pain.

“Officer, this is Calixte,” Caduceus says, “I take it you wanted the both of us?”

Of course, you grimace, this cult isn’t run by just one person.

“I’m the face of the show!” Though you cannot see them, you can hear the smirk in his voice. Calixte’s voice is sweeter than his counterpart, if twice as conniving. “And I’ve been told someone’s tryna kidnap our performers?”

You wince, squeezing out words of defence, 

not kidnap, save.

you abducted them, not us.

i’m arresting the both of you.

sick freaks.

yet no words escape you.

“Am I so terrifying you can’t talk?” Calixte grins, holding the back of one hand over his mouth in case he laughs. “Or are you so weak one measly stab wound is enough to wreck your shit?”

there is blood where no blood should be. it replaces oxygen. it is everywhere.

everything.

Calixte seizes you. His frame is wire-thin and his hold on you is ever-tight, yet lingering with the stick and smell of ambrosia.

“We are the children, the daughters and sons of revelry.”

Hatred’s look glimmers between the eyes of both men as Caduceus speaks. You are knocked to the floor again, and Calixte presses the cold leather of his boot into your back.

He catches light. Caduceus steps away.

“We hafta protect our sisters, our brothers. It’s people like you that come between it. And Cad and I?”

the boot presses deeper.

“We don’t fuck around with pigskin.”

drawn again, you feel the tip of the knife press into the back of your neck.

No words are needed for what comes next—their reputation is known wide and close, far and brief. And so, it happens. The music underscores the scream that escapes you again. You feel skin being torn, pulled taught, and there is nothing else you can do to stay alive, as a swarm of drunken parasites pick you clean.

this story is not about you. you, some police officer, guided by the long arm of the law, crushed under the short fingertips of madness.

this story is about the halls, so tall the roofs kiss the sky; it is about the songs she sings that hurt her throat and heart; it is about the wine classes two men clink together as their disciples lay at rest; it is about those disciples, fearing the hateful world, turning to the place where they may pretend they have excess. further still, this story is not about the people within. it’s about the ambrosia. the escape.

you had a family. this story is not about them either.

“There be many shapes of mystery.

    And many things God makes to be,

        Past hope or fear.

    And the end men looked for cometh not,

    And a path is there where no man thought.

        So hath it fallen here.”

you will not be reborn. your flesh is eaten raw. omophagia.

you

will not be

reborn.

[forthebrokenheartedthings]

Pt 2 - I Hope They Eat You

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x fem!reader, maybe Clark Kent x fem!reader (you'll have to wait and see) TW: Violence, PTSD/ dissociation (Bucky), blood + physical trauma, emotional trauma. Summary: You fight through an alien invasion in downtown New York — but the battlefield isn't the hardest part

The sky above downtown New York splits open like a wound.

A purple rift. Veins of lightning. A massive, writhing breach that screams static down into the airwaves and pours monsters through like a plague. Six-legged things with metal hides and curved, translucent fangs. Creatures built from tech and bone, screaming in pitches that bend steel and rupture eardrums.

And in the middle of it all — chaos.

Civilian evacuation? A fantasy. There’s no time. No order. Just roars, explosions, crumbling buildings, and the sick crack of broken bodies.

You’re already bleeding by the time you hit the plaza.

Concrete explodes behind you as one of the things lunges from a rooftop and misses by inches. You roll, come up on one knee, and fire two rounds directly into its jaw.

The bullets do nothing.

Figures.

You slide under a collapsed beam, switch to blades, and keep moving.

To your left, Sam is airborne, wings glitching from EMP bursts. To your right, Nat and Clint are in a back-to-back formation that looks more like ballet than battle. Thor lands three blocks over with a crack of thunder that blows out half a parking garage.

But your eyes aren’t on any of them.

They’re on him.

Bucky.

He’s ahead by twenty feet, already tearing through the creatures like they owe him money. His vibranium arm gleams. He moves like muscle memory. Precise. Silent. Cold.

Too cold.

You charge forward, duck under a thrashing tail, and shoulder-check one of the smaller beasts into a pile of wreckage.

“Barnes!” you shout, voice raw.

He doesn’t respond.

Another creature leaps from the side — fast, ugly, snarling. He doesn’t see it in time.

And then — he freezes.

Dead still.

His arm halfway raised, but his face is blank. Not focused. Not afraid.

Blank.

Like he isn’t even in the same time zone anymore.

You don’t hesitate.

You launch yourself over the rubble, slam your shoulder into his chest, and tackle him out of the way just as the creature slams down where he stood.

Your blades are in your hands before you hit the ground.

Two slashes.

The creature drops — screaming, twitching, dead.

You roll off Bucky, land in a crouch, and turn back.

He’s still on the ground. Still staring at nothing.

The cold in your chest finally cracks into something worse.

“Hey,” you snap, grabbing his jacket. “Snap out of it.”

His eyes blink, slow. He looks up at you like you’re an unfamiliar weapon.

And says nothing.

The silence between you buzzes louder than the breach in the sky.

You stand up. Back away.

The taste in your mouth is metallic. Not blood.

Rage.

“Next time,” you say, voice flat, “I let it eat you.”

Then you turn and run into the smoke.

And this time — for the first time — you don’t look back.

The northern quarter of the city is folding in on itself.

The largest alien craft hovers above the skyline like a dying god — thick black limbs rooted into buildings, feeding on steel and energy. One tower groans as its foundation cracks. The screams coming from the upper floors are very human.

The Avengers are regrouping at the south perimeter.

You don’t wait.

“(Y/N)—!” Steve’s voice rings behind you, but you’re already sprinting toward the skyscraper’s base, dodging falling debris, blade still slick from your last kill.

A piece of the building peels away above you — a steel support beam longer than a subway car — and crashes into the street twenty feet behind.

You don’t flinch.

You throw your shoulder into the emergency entrance. Metal bends. Sparks fly.

Inside, the air is smoke and chaos. Office lights flicker. The hallway tilts at a nauseating angle.

You move fast.

You find a mother with two kids trapped under a support beam — blood on her face, the youngest sobbing.

“Don’t move,” you say, already wedging your shoulder under the debris. “You hear that? That sound?”

The child blinks, confused.

“Exactly. That’s the sound of me not letting you die today.”

You shove. The beam rolls off with a sickening creak.

“Out the back stairwell. Go now.”

You don’t watch them run. You’re already moving.

Room by room. Floor by floor.

Your lungs burn. Your hand is slick again — the knuckles from earlier have reopened.

The building groans louder.

You feel the moment the north wall begins to give.

A deep, primal tremor under your boots.

Too late. Too deep.

Your eyes snap upward as a wave of debris — ceiling, ductwork, full concrete slabs — collapses toward you.

You don’t brace. Don’t scream.

You just blink.

And the world stops moving.

A rush of air. A deep, sonic boom like God exhaling directly into the building’s bones.

And then — arms.

Arms around you, like steel wrapped in sunlight. You don’t register the flight until you see the floor disappearing beneath your feet. Then the side of the building. Then the entire skyline.

You’re hovering.

You don’t understand until you look up.

And see him.

Clark Kent.

Eyes like storm clouds ready to break. Jaw tight. Hair mussed by wind and ash. The red of his cape rippling behind him, battered by heat and ruin.

He doesn’t say anything.

Neither do you.

He flies you down — slow, deliberate, as if afraid you might shatter on contact.

When your boots touch concrete again, you don’t move.

Just stare at him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” you say finally, voice low, shaking from adrenaline.

“Bruce said you called,” Clark says. “I’m here.”

Like it’s that simple.

Like it’s not the first time someone’s actually come when you needed them.

The building above you cracks in half and falls — a thunderous, ugly sound — but Clark doesn’t look away from you.

“You okay?” he asks.

You mean to say yes.

What comes out is, “Don’t fucking lie to me.”

He doesn’t flinch.

“I wouldn’t.”

The moment holds.

Then Sam’s voice crackles over comms. “(Y/N)? You still breathing, or do I gotta come scrape you off the pavement?”

You hit your earpiece. “Still breathing.”

“Who’s the caped glass of milk?”

Clark raises a brow. You ignore him.

“Long story,” you mutter, brushing plaster dust off your shoulder.

Then, to Clark: “Come on, Boy Scout. You wanna be useful? Don’t hover. Fight.”

You stalk off toward the next breach.

He follows.

The second wave hits harder.

Whatever tech the aliens are bleeding into the atmosphere is tearing through the city’s infrastructure. Static trembles in every wall. Gravity feels like a suggestion. Metal bends in wrong directions.

You and Clark are sweeping what remains of a converted shelter near the river when the building above you snaps — loud, final, impossible to dodge.

Clark moves first.

You barely have time to curse before he wraps one arm around your waist and shields you both as the ceiling comes down in a screech of steel and drywall. The hallway darkens. Rubble blocks the exits. The floor twists, then stills.

Then silence.

You exhale, slow and sharp. You’re pinned between Clark’s chest and a crumpled wall. Dust floats like smoke in a shaft of angled light.

“Don’t say it,” you mutter.

“Say what?”

“That you saved me again.”

Clark tilts his head with a smirk. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

You both stand there, breathing, caught in a pause that doesn’t belong to war. It feels stolen. Too still.

You push off him, brushing yourself down. “You could’ve let it hit me. I’ve had worse.”

“Maybe,” he says, watching you carefully. “But I haven’t.”

You pause. Look at him.

The man is too clean. Too open. There isn’t a single edge on him — just a solid, steady center that doesn’t make sense. Not in this world. Not in your life.

“You’re not like him,” you say quietly.

Clark doesn’t ask who you mean. He just says, “I know.”

You cross your arms. “You don’t know shit.”

“I know he broke something,” Clark says. “And you’re carrying the sharp parts.”

Your jaw clenches. “And who did you hear that from? Bruce?”

He steps forward — not too close, not threatening — just enough to look you in the eye. “I’m not asking you to put it down. I just don’t think you should have to bleed for it alone.”

That stops you.

The way he says it — like he’s not trying to fix you. Like he just sees you. Not as a soldier. Not as a problem. As a person. One who’s tired.

No pity. No push.

Just presence.

You scoff, soft. “You always this insufferably noble, or is it just around damaged women with combat knives?”

Clark’s mouth twitches. “I have a type.”

You look away.

For a long moment, you both stand in the quiet ruin of the building, not speaking.

Then: “You ever kill someone?”

Clark’s eyes flicker. “Yes.”

“How many?”

“Enough that I remember each one.”

That surprises you.

He doesn’t look like someone who carries names. But maybe that’s the point.

“You regret it?”

Clark doesn’t answer right away.

“I regret why it was necessary,” he says. “But not that I did it.”

Your mouth parts slightly. The answer isn’t what you expected. Or maybe it is. Maybe you just hadn’t believed anyone else knew what that kind of guilt felt like.

Outside, thunder cracks again.

Clark glances at the exit. “We should move.”

You nod once.

But before he turns, you say — quieter than before — “You’re wrong, by the way.”

He raises a brow.

“I am like him.”

Clark looks at you for a long moment.

“No,” he says. “He left. You’re still here.” Part 3