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siconetribal · 2 years

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Put It On My Tab: Chapter 5

Pairing: Jason Todd x Fem!reader

Tag: @vbecker10 @wordsfromshona @harlequin-hangout

Warning: Cursing, The universe strikes again, Luck so bad...it's good?, Jason does good

Summary:

Everyone deserves time off, and the vigilantes of Gotham are no exception to the rule. The boys decide to take a weekend to let loose. Who knew a few drinks would lead to a stranger in bed?

Author Note:

I'm back with part 5! So, I was trying really hard to close this on part 5 and keep to my plan. However, no matter what I did I just couldn't get it to tie up nicely and that just led to a plethora of other ideas coming in. So...I don't have a clue how long this is going to be anymore. (^_^;)

If you're new to the story, here is a link to the other parts:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

PLEASE READ WARNING ALWAYS.

Of fucking course, Jason stared at the building in front of him. He had followed Dick's advice and managed to find her IP address. From there it was a simple tracing, converting to GPS coordinates, and following directions. There was no way this plan would fail. And yet, here I am…again, at the intersection of "what the hell" and "you've got to be kidding me". He squeezed his eyes shut. Maybe if he closed them hard and long enough, his surroundings would change, and magically he would not be standing here. Where was here exactly? Here was a small, dated strip mall that had brown brick with chipped and weathered awnings and pillars. Here was a bowling alley that looked like it was closed down and an old dry cleaner's. Here was a vacant parking lot aside from his motorcycle and a few cars. His golden ticket, the IP address, led him to a shabby looking gamer's lounge in the middle of what looked to be a dying strip mall, if not dead already.

How, how is it so hard to find this chick?! I just want to pay her for the bill! Why is it so fucking hard to do something nice ?! He glared up at the poorly working lit up sign, hearing the buzz of a dying bulb. All sense of accomplishment crashed and burned to the ground the moment he parked. Ruffling his hair, he ducked his head and let out a heavy sigh. His frustration was at an all-time high in ways he never thought possible for him. Normally, he would be able to quickly release this pent-up feeling through the cathartic action of smashing some goons face in or squeezing the information out of someone who was scared out of his mind and in over his head. Normally, Jason did not have to deal with this heavy feeling for too long. However, it was noon, and he was out in Gotham not as Red Hood but as Jason Todd.

What was the point in all this? It was increasingly clear that the universe was doing its very best to keep him from finding her and paying his dues. They met, they happened to be online gaming buddies, and that was all there was to it. He should throw in the towel and move on. Why should he care so much about this? She was not searching for him. He was the one going out of his way to find her. Yeah, I shouldn't care. This is bullshit. I didn't ask to be taken to some hotel. He was aware he insisted she let him walk her back home that night. Plus, she clearly doesn't give a crap. He glared at his leather jacket that she had taken the time to hook onto the chair that night. He also recalled how she tried to get him to stop screaming with his hangover. "She cares about the wrong things, there's something screwy in her brain."

It was moments like these that made him want to quit. Throw his hands up in the air like he just did not care in his usual cavalier fashion. Who was she to him to warrant such dedication to repayment? What leverage did she have over him? Nothing and none. She was some stranger he tried to help, and he had done just that. A very attractive stranger who was pretty mouthy and fresh with him, who happened to be his online gaming buddy. Who, he was not keen being left to foot a hefty bill because he wanted coffee in the morning.

"Dammit, just you wait, I'll find you and give you that money IAmBatman!" He shouted into the parking lot, his chest puffed with renewed motivation. I've officially gone insane, I'm shouting Batman in broad daylight in an empty parking lot. Pushing his momentary lose of reason aside, Jason surveyed the surroundimg area once more. There was a newer and larger shopping center next door with a filled lot, a few nice restaurants in the area, and the famous coffee chain Barbara and Richard like so much and Damien kept insisting he deserved espresso from.

She complains about customers, so she's definitely in the service industry. This place looks like it's upscaling quite a bit, it isn't hard to see the type of clientele she talks about being here. But where? She works multiple shifts and possibly multiple jobs. The building has CCTV cameras, but who knows what the quality is like. " Fuck, if I knew this was a gaming lounge I would've stopped by in the evening!" He kicked an unsuspecting rock and sent it flying into the parking lot, he was back at square one.

___________________________________

Y/N loudly sneezed for the third time in a row, and Citlalli quickly handed her a tissue. "Damn, are you sure you aren't getting sick? I told you before, I'll say it again, my ass ain't cheap. If you're expecting me to go swinging on a pole, estás loca! Do you think I'll just settle for anyone. The president himself couldn't afford me!" She pointed her nose up to the sky and flipped her hair over her hair shoulder.

"I'm not sick, it's just a sneeze!" Y/N rolled her eyes and wiped her mouth. "There's probably a lot of dust or some shit."

"You said that last time as well. You know, maybe your fancy date is thinking about you? Don't they say one is saying something good about you, two is someone is taking shit, three of someone in love with you, and four is a calamity?"

"Yeah, where were those four sneezes when I met wonder boy? 4k sounds like a pretty big calamity to me." Y/N scowled.

"Don't look at me, you're the one who didn't sneeze!" Citlalli put her hands in the air. "Take it up with your nose!" She turned and started to clean the espresso machine, wiping down everything.

"Right, because the sneeze manager decided to snooze on me. I'll be sure to file my complaints through the proper channels."

"Don't you get smart with me! If you aren't sick, get to wiping the tables, it's your turn this time!"

"Y'know, now that you mention it," Y/N cleared out her throat and forced a slight rasp on her voice, earning a glare from Citlalli who threw the damp table rag at her.

"Tables. Now." Citlalli pointed to the front of the café. "Don't make me come over there," She warned, and Y/N laughed.

"Or what, you'll throw your shoe at me? You can't, you're wearing laced up sneakers today!" Y/N pointed down in triumph, which only angered her best friend.

"You think I won't untie, then to throw 'em?"

"You'll get fired if you do." Citlalli took a step forward, and Y/N quickly ducked under the counter gate and popped up on the other side. "Alright, alright, I'm going! No need to be so violent, just stating facts. Pass me the spray, and I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Those tables better be spotless, ya hear me? I wanna be able to see my reflection on those tables!”’ Citlalli firmly placed the plastic bottle on the counter top, making sure she made eye contact with her friend. “If they don’t shine, I’m making you do it all over again!”

“Excuse you, what did I ever do to you get the rough treatment?”

“Come home with a bill that’s worth more than two of us combined! I told you, I’m no-”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re not doing tricks! Keep that up, and I might start to think you actually want to from how often you’re bringing it up!” Y/N turned and made her way to the first table. She could feel Citlalli glaring a hole in the back of her head. With a bit of elbow grease, she began to scrub the surface in circles to clear away the residue of the last customer. It was slow progress, but she was making progress towards her paying off the large bill that weighed over head. It’s a miracle the manager agreed to my payment plan option instead of demanding it all in one go. I guess they realized I’m not lying about not knowing, and I’m willing to cover the costs…though they didn’t give me a choice on that matter. I swear, if I ever see that jerk again, it’ll be too soon! Her eyebrows scrunched together as she scrubbed harder at a hard ring stain, imagining it was the handsome price tag who got her in this mess. “Life couldn’t get any better,” she muttered to herself as she sprayed the somewhat sticky surface.

The electronic chime of the front door being opened rang behind her followed by Cici’s chipper voice greeting the new customer. The heavy steps of the boots stopped and Y/N knew they were at the counter looking over the menu. The lengthy pause was clue enough for her to know they were new.

Not many newcomers here, but there are the occasional pop ins that are driving through. They’ll probably ask for Cici to help suggest something. She shrugged it off and moved to the next table, the chairs left scattered out. “Would it kill people to push in their chairs?” She muttered under her breath, slipping between two to get to the table first.

“Damn, I don’t know what half this shit is. Just a large coffee with some cream and sugar and whatever this is.” He had a deep voice that had a hint of rasp to it. The girls nearby were giggling at the sight of the rugged man, while Y/N was frozen in place. There was no way, right? There were plenty of guys with that kind of voice, and those girls could be giggling for other reasons. Maybe he’s dressed in a hot dog suit and had a bad cold? There’s no way he would be here, right?

There’s only one way to find out. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to continue wiping the table, slowly moving around while keeping her head down. Tugging the bill of her hat to cover her face more, she moved until she had a good view of him. Ok, ok, just a tall guy with broad shoulders wearing leather. That isn’t anything special. I’m overeating, she let out a sigh of relief and was about to get back to her cleaning when something caught her eyes. Something so very distinct that only he would have. The flash of white hair right at the front of his head. It was him.

#jason todd x reader #jason todd fic #jason todd x y/n #jason todd x fem!reader #jason todd x you #red hood x you #red hood x fem!reader #red hood x reader #red hood fic #red hood #batman #batfam #batman fic #batman fanfiction #batfamily #dc fanfic #dc comics #jason todd

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cdyssey · 1 year

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Safe

Summary: On the night before Natalie's funeral, Tai finds herself on Shauna's doorstep.

Tags: Death/Drug Mentions

AO3 Link

On the evening before Natalie’s funeral, Taissa knocks on Shauna’s door, shivering from seven sleepless nights that feel like seven thousand, from fear, from aching grief, from the rain and November cold. She’s not here about forgiveness exactly—giving it, receiving it, talking about if either of them have ever once deserved it.

It’s just about being in her presence.

About finding comfort in one of the few people who has ever made her feel safe.

It’s to her visceral relief that Shauna’s the one who opens the door. She’s fairly sure she would have clawed Jeff’s pretty boy eyes out on sight. (Fucking asshole. Their goddamn blackmailer apparently.) And, well, she still feels ashamed that the first time she laid eyes on Callie, it was on the verge of being mere footfalls and moments away from successfully hunting her mother down.

She hadn’t wanted it to happen like that.

Had maybe wanted their two kids to meet someday, and she and her best friend could look each other in the eye and revel in the fact that they’d produced one damn good thing in this world.

They hadn’t fucked something up.

But she supposes that plan went like a brick through a window when she recently scared the living shit out of her own child and almost killed his other mother.

Simone’s going to take her to court for full custody whenever she gets out of the hospital, and Taissa is going to fight it, of course—(she never knows when to quit)—but somewhere, beneath the thousands of crusted layers of outrage, denial, inflexible pride, and reflexive fear, it’s entirely possible that she understands that it’ll be justice if her soon-to-be-ex-wife wins. She’s spent an entire lifetime inadvertently hurting the people she has loved. Simone’s probably helping out by making it that much harder for her to do it to their beautiful son.

Indeed, another of her would-have-been-victims stands in the threshold of the doorway with a flannel pajama set on, her hair hanging in limp waves around her face, dark shadows engulfing those big, brown eyes like sickly bruises.

She seems exasperated by Taissa’s presence, one hand cocked on her hip, mouth pressed into a thin, pink line.

Fair enough.

Warranted even.

But she also looks so goddamn broken.

“You look like shit,” Taissa blurts out and just as immediately regrets it—not because she didn’t mean it exactly—but because Nat had said the same thing to Shauna mere weeks ago, and she knows, just from clocking her friend’s black expression, that the connection isn’t lost on her.

“Oh, fuck off,” she snarls and tries to slam the door in her face, but Taissa gets her foot in before it completely closes. The ensuing force might have been enough to break something had she not been wearing boots.

“Wait, Shauna! Fuck—“ She hisses through the pain ricocheting all the way up her leg. “I don’t know why I said that. I mean, just look at me. I look like shit too. Haven’t slept much since—“

But she stops short, can’t quite bring herself to finish the awful sentence. It’s unbearable.

She can’t fucking bear it.

It’s only been a little over a week since paramedics carted Natalie’s body away in a belted black bag. She had always been tiny, but she was utterly insubstantial in death, just an arrangement of hollow bones on the dirty ass ground. It had been a familiar sight to them all.

Watching someone they love die.

Being the sole cause of her death.

Natalie, their savior and leader in those cold and lonely woods.

Natalie, their teammate.

Natalie, their hunter.

Natalie, their friend.

Taissa had tried so fucking hard to save her, had paid for rehab stint after failed rehab stint, had both forced her scrawny ass to sober up in jail on a few frustrated nights and dutifully bailed her out at least a dozen times more. She’d coddled her. Yelled at her. Given her a thousand-and-one stern talking-tos, perhaps thinking—(praying)—that at least one of these extraordinary measures would be enough to keep her alive. But in the end, even if it was Misty who shot her up with phenobarbital, it was Taissa who had called off the crisis team.

Which is to say that it was Taissa who made it permissible for their former equipment manager to wield a cocked and loaded gun.

Shauna’s face doesn’t exactly soften, but at the very least, she stops actively trying to amputate Taissa’s foot, and she takes desperate solace in that, in the fact that her friend still gets it—gets her—without a single syllable having to be said.

“Me neither,” the other woman finally admits in a quiet voice, leaning her cheek against the edge of the door. It doesn’t look comfortable, but then again, nothing about Shauna ever really does. “When I shut my eyes, all I can see is her.”

And then she does it.

She briefly closes her eyes, exhaling deeply, and Taissa knows that Nat is filling all of that empty space: her presence, her absence, her sunken-cheeked ghost. She was waxy in death, like a damaged doll. A marionette even. Limbs akimbo. All cut and broken strings.

“Yeah,” Taissa nods once, the column of her throat suddenly constricted. She blinks rapidly and swipes at the underside of her own heavy eyes with the heel of her hand.

“Rain,” she lies and doesn’t know why she does that either. Most of her actions are incomprehensible to her these days, even when she does feel present in her own body.

(Which is not as often as she’d care to admit.)

“Can I…” She hesitates, squirms, worries her chapped lower lip, and suddenly feels like a kid again, too little to be occupying such big shoes. “Uh… can I …come in?”

“No.”

Shauna straightens up and shakes her dark head. The lone syllable slashes through Taissa like a knife. She’d been counting on Shauna’s acquiescence—much more than she had even realized until this very moment.

She hadn’t anticipated a no.

Shauna has never fucking said no when she’s needed her.

But then, surprising her and simultaneously unknotting her where she stands, her friend reaches out and places a steadying hand on her arm.

“Stay here,” she says, fingertips gently curving over Taissa’s wrist. It’s still slightly banded with rope burn scars, all the nights her Other self had fought against containment, and all the nights that Van had valiantly fought back. She usually wears a watch over the spot, some expensive number, the kind lawyers like to wear when they’ve made it.

“I’ll grab us some blankets and something warm to drink,” Shauna continues in a voice that could almost be construed as kind. “We’ll, um, sit in your car, okay?”

“Okay,” Taissa croaks, devastated with relief, simply choking on it.

She doesn’t have to leave.

Shauna doesn’t exactly smile, but the corner of her lip slightly bends.

Just a little.

Taissa clings to this infinitesimal gesture like it’s a lifeline.

—

Ten minutes later, they’re both in Taissa’s idling car, sipping on boozy coffee, plaid throws draped around their shoulders like pelts. It’s still drizzling a little outside, the rain politely drumming its fingers against the steel roof of the car. Fleetwood Mac plays on the radio.

“Landslide.”

It’s depressing as hell, but neither of them make any move to change it. They both loved this song when they were kids. (Shauna dropped Tai off at her house after practice once when her own car was in the shop, and they listened to it on cassette, incorrectly half-remembering the lyrics to the song. They talked about MTV and stupid history pop quizzes. They pleasantly agreed that their calculus and English teachers were probably fucking behind the gym. They fantasized about what it would be like if they finally made it to Nationals. Shauna thought it was a long shot. Taissa bet her five whole dollars and a six-pack of beer that it was a guarantee.)

“I would have invited you in,” Shauna explains, lips nearly touching the rim of her thermos, “but I don’t think Callie would take too kindly to your presence right now. You made an… um… not-so-nice first impression.”

It’s a generous way of saying that she almost killed Shauna in an act of ritual violence.

“We don’t have to sugarcoat it,” Taissa mutters, even though she has to look away, staring out at the endless row of nice, suburban houses in this nice, respectable neighborhood that her friend who used to be their unflinching butcher lives in. It doesn’t feel real to her.

But then again, most things don’t.

“We don’t have to litigate it either,” comes a blunt reply—a warning tone even—punctuated by the precise thud of Shauna setting her coffee down.

Danger ahead.

Don’t cross this line.

Don’t burn this tentative bridge, Taissa.

This is all you’ve fucking got.

“I’m a lawyer,” she retorts all the same, perpetually one to greet a challenge with a handshake and a vicious smile. “That’s what I do for a living."

A beat—she inhales sharply through her nose.

"Well, did," she mumbles. "Did for a living anyway."

The slip-up briefly disorients her. She hasn’t spent an awful lot of time thinking about the fact that she’s a state senator now, not since her barely remembered excursion to a dusty video store in Ohio. Naturally, all of her aides were on the verge of a nervous breakdown after her week-long disappearance, freaking out about missed calls and panicked constituents, and in one assistant’s case, her lost car. She didn’t have much of an explanation for them then, nor can she barely bring herself to care about the less-than-stellar optics now. The election feels like it belongs to another lifetime.

Before Natalie.

And this is the After.

She will have to live in the After and with it for the rest of her godless days.

“What do you want then?” Shauna laughs bitterly. “To talk about how you called off the crisis team? To fondly reminisce about the fact that you picked up a knife? That’s not a conversation that’s going to end well for either of us, Tai.”

She briefly wonders if the other woman is being accusatory if it’s all true.

“I don’t fucking know, Shauna,” she grunts, defensive—always—and in this particular matter, far from deservedly so. “I just don’t want to… you know… do what we always do.”

“Fuck each other over?” The other woman snorts, crossing her arms over her chest. It’s petulant, a child’s gesture.

They’re both forty-two year old women who never stopped being seventeen.

“That,” Taissa agrees emphatically, “and sweep it all under the rug like it’s no big deal. We’ve both fucked each other over lately. Like, you and the whole Adam deal. What was that? What the hell were you even thinking?”

Maybe it’s a low blow, bringing up the fact that Shauna has been a piece of shit too while they’re sitting in her driveway, drinking her coffee that’s probably three-fourths booze, but Taissa isn’t above a little playing in the mud. Besides, she doesn’t want to be alone in the pit, ashamed by just how far she’s fallen. Hell is too awful of a place to be without a bosom friend.

Shauna immediately flushes.

“Don’t change the subject,” she snaps, every lineament in her body rigid with tension as she turns to fully face Taissa. “I mean, you and the other four dipshits were actually going to kill me. Like, you were literally gonna do it just because I drew that stupid card.”

“I thought you didn’t want to litigate it,” Taissa mocks her, and it’s clever. It’s scathing. It’s cruel. It’s how they sometimes talked to each other in the woods, and so maybe it’s a fucked up declaration of love too.

“Yeah, well…” Shauna starts heatedly, pink blotches feathering her cheeks, but then just as quickly fizzles out, visibly deflating. She’s got nothing, Taissa knows, because she doesn’t either.

What they’ve done is indefensible—the violence that they’ve inflicted upon others, the suffering, the horror, and the pain. They’re going to destroy their families and all the people that they’ve ever loved if they keep it up. They already decimated themselves in the wilderness a long time ago.

And they could blame evil forest spirits then; they could attribute their brutality, their monstrosity, and their madness to every creaking branch and volatile stirring of the breeze. Devoted worshippers, they could call their own depravity God and offer sacrifices to keep it alive in their chests.

But maybe Shauna was the one who screamed it best the other night.

You know there’s no It, right? It was just us.

And maybe Lottie, as unbalanced as she was, as fundamentally unwell, had a salient point too.

Is there a difference?

The end results are still the same. They’re abominations, each and every one of them; the blood on their hands keeps the score.

“You killed a man, and we almost killed you,” Taissa says matter-of-factly, and she almost remembers what it’s like to be a lawyer again, actually caring about justice in this world. “And, fuck, Shauna, that’s not even half of what we’ve done. We’re all messed up, and somehow, we’re not sharing a wall with Lottie in the psych ward.”

“Because we’re not like…” Shauna tries to protest, shaking her head, looking like a hunted animal and just as hurt. “We can’t be—“

“We can’t be? Or don’t want to be?” She cuts across her mercilessly, rubbing one of her brows with two fingers. “Because I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and I don’t know that it’s great that I can’t remember chasing you through the woods. I think the fact that I woke up holding a knife is fuckin’ terrifying.”

And maybe that’s one of the things—right next to Natalie’s death—that haunts and implicates Taissa most of all. The hypothetical reality where she could have slaughtered her best friend and not even realized it until after she’d done it. She looks over at Shauna, at the steady rise and fall of her chest, at the delicate flush coloring her bloodless face, and feels a rush of primal relief in her aliveness, in her hereness and her health.

Of course, being alive is not the same as being well—the survivors from the woods know that far more intimately than most—but it goddamn beats being dead. They’d sell their own souls just to keep their hearts pumping.

(They‘ve done it before.)

(Once, they watched a twelve-year old boy fucking drown.)

“Why are you even here, Tai?” Shauna groans, every syllable affected, injured and anguished on her tongue. “Why aren’t you talking about all this with… God, I don’t know… Van? I mean, where is she? I don’t even know what you want me to say.“

At the mention of her—well, she doesn’t exactly know what to call Van anymore because ex-girlfriend sounds juvenile, reductive, and now frankly untrue—Taissa shifts in her seat, a knot in her belly, a writhing worm.

She loves Van with every last molecule in her and Van loves her back, right down to the ghastly marrow of her bones. And when they kiss, when they talk, when they share space with each other, when they fuck, the entire world narrows down to just the two of them alone.

And that’s intoxicating, how consumed that they are by each other—fire and oxygen, burning and burning endlessly in the dark of the night.

But, Jesus, it’s breathtakingly dangerous too. It’s not lost on Taissa that Lottie hadn’t been the only one who had wanted to draw cards on the night that Natalie died. After all, it was Van who had convinced her to call off the crisis team; it was Van who had also wanted to play their most sacred and dangerous game.

For what reason?

Taissa’s got one hell of a good idea, and there’s an entirely selfish part of her that sympathizes—and more than that even—actually fucking understands.

(Survival is the one thing that any of them have ever really been good at besides soccer; in those godforsaken woods, there was never a cost they weren't eventually willing to pay.)

“She’s driving back from Ohio tonight for the funeral,” Taissa finally says, neglecting to mention that she’d had to go back for an appointment with her oncologist. Shauna doesn’t need to know. Shauna would immediately connect all the twisted puzzle pieces together and arrive at the big picture. Shauna would bristle. Shauna would judge. Shauna would blame the pair of them for Natalie’s death all over again. (Shauna would be right.) Shauna doesn’t need to know.

“And I don’t wanna talk to her about this,” she continues stubbornly, also setting her thermos in the empty cupholder with a decisive clunk. “I want to talk to you. Van and I… you know… it’s like we don’t know how to be straight with each other sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Shauna mutters under her breath, and Taissa laughs for the first time in what feels like days; it’s a coarse sound, unpleasant even, as though it’s been raked from the muck in her chest.

“Asshole. You know what I mean.”

“Not really,” comes a scoffing reply. “It’s not like we’ve been entirely straight with each other either lately…”

It’s true. They’ve both lied to one another’s faces and thought nothing about getting away with it. Taissa didn’t have a single qualm about sending a fixer after any of her fellow survivors, and Shauna, meanwhile, remorselessly made them all accomplices to manslaughter for Jeff Fucking Sadecki. The weight of those mutual violations currently electrifies the air between them—takes up oxygen, resources, energy, and precious space. It turns all of their words into live wires, each subtle shift of their bodies into the probable beginnings of a spark, an all-engulfing flame.

And both of them intimately know what it’s like to watch the world around them burn.

“No,” Taissa agrees tiredly, shrugging a hand across the back of her neck. “I guess we haven’t.”

Another long beat, a tortured silence, slumping between them like a body, a carcass, a bloody slab of meat. This is assuredly the part of the conversation where normal people say sorry and hug each other’s neck.

The problem is, they haven’t been normal people in a very long time.

“Lot’s locked up,” she finally breaks the silence, digging her nails into the fabric of her jeans. She clipped them short just last night. Couldn’t stand all the dirt that had gotten beneath her cuticles. “Van’s away, and Nat’s…”

She stumbles on the words, still can’t say it, still finds it impossible to articulate a reality where Natalie Scatorccio isn’t just down the road, probably snorting blow at some shitty motel.

But at least she was alive.

At least she was somewhere Taissa could always reach.

“... in a casket somewhere on the other side of town,” Shauna finishes for her, and the effort seems like it cost her. She shivers and suddenly looks ancient. Neither of them are even close to fifty-years old.

“Yeah,” Taissa just barely gets out, roughly scrubbing the side of her nose. “And I can’t stop thinking about how she hated small spaces.”

“Ha,” Shauna tuts, “don’t we all?”

And all she can do is nod in mute agreement. Before they’d been flown back to Wiskayok—nearly three months of recovery in a Canadian hospital later—doctors had been forced to sedate them all. Not a single one of them could bear the thought of being lucid on a goddamn plane. And to this day, Taissa can’t stand to be entrapped in a space any smaller than a bedroom. Elevators freak her out. Her closet door stays open when she’s scavenging for clothes. Simone always rode with Sammy on the Ferris wheel whenever they took him to the local fair. Those steel cages made a mockery and fool of her, but somehow, she had hated it even more when her wife looked at her with such tender concern in her eyes, with pity for this tragedy that she could never understand.

“But I know what you mean,” Shauna eventually adds in a less skeptical tone. “The thought of that makes me wanna shrivel up and, like… die.”

Maybe most other people would have flinched at such a brutal assertion.

But, of course, most other people haven't starved in the wilderness for nineteen goddamn months.

Taissa doesn't even blink.

“So many of our people are either dead, going, or gone, Shauna,” she half-whispers, staring out through the rain-lashed windows. The endless rows of amber street lights flicker like a hundred tiny fires in the night. “And I know we have our shit between us, but we have to get through it. No grudges or anything like that. I can’t… I don’t want to…

She struggles yet again; it’s hard to be honest about what she wants from Shauna.

Her attention. Her affection. The physical presence of her body right next to hers. The weight of her unconditional love. It’s not really romantic, but it sometimes absolutely is. It’s almost sisterly if it’s sisterly to want to lay another woman’s warm arms and feel safe there forever. Of course, at the same time, it’s an unrealistic expectation—not particularly because they’re both taken women per say—but because safety is the most temporary delusion in the world. So Shauna is safety. And Shauna is a delusion. And Shauna is temporary.

But fucking hell, they all are in the end.

“I’m terrified of being alone,” she eventually chokes out, sickened by every syllable, so goddamn ashamed. She resists the urge to close her eyes at the sudden rush of nausea and bile. “It’s stupid, I know—“

“No,” Shauna tries to interject, shaking her head. “Tai, it’s not—“

“—and, fuck, it’s needy,” she plows on anyway, afraid to stop, afraid to listen, unable to face even the barest possibility of rejection—not from anyone, really, but especially not from Shauna. She buries her face in her shivering hands, fingertips mashing down hard on her eyelids.

“Just don’t shut me out, Shauna. Please. I’m begging,” she finishes, and just as she does, a horrible thought—Jesus, one that she doesn’t even believe—suddenly erupts in her head.

Don’t make me another Jackie Taylor.

All-alone when she died, frozen, half-buried in the freshly fallen snow. They used to have a term for that when they played soccer.

Iced out.

She would know; she once broke a girl’s leg putting the phrase into good and practical use.

“Taissa.” Her own name lands upon her sharply, like the lash of an incisive blade, but then, directly on the very heels of it, there is a much softer sensation, right next to the crook of her elbow. A warm, scar-calloused hand. The hand of their butcher. The hand of her best friend. “Hey, look at me, okay?”

It takes her a few seconds, but in the end, she reluctantly drops her hands and finds that Shauna’s face is mere inches away from her own now, pale even in the growing darkness. She can discern every tired line and errant freckle, the faint etching of a scar running across the bridge of her nose that she earned in the woods long ago. She can see the resilient, seventeen-year old girl who almost fucking died in gruesome labor. And she can also see the forty-two year old wreck that Shauna has become now precisely because she didn't.

“Stop being a dumbass,” she says when she’s sure that she has Taissa’s attention. “I’m not going to shut you out or whatever. Alright? You tried to kill me. Fine. Both of us have done far worse.”

And she smiles at the end of this batshit insane—this unquestionably true—declaration. It’s a small, crooked little thing, but it’s more than that, really. It's an olive branch and a tiny kindness. It's an unspoken sign to let her know that everything is going to be okay.

Relief storms through Taissa Turner. It plunges through her like rain.

“Sooooo inappropriate,” she croaks, embarrassed when a tear slips from the corner of her eye. She jerks instinctively to mop herself up, but Shauna gets there first, reaching up to thumb it away with her free hand without saying a word. She almost wants to gasp at the touch, wants to shudder, wants to weep, wants to shatter into a million pieces on her Nissan’s well-kept floor.

She keeps it together anyway.

Shauna's tenderness is sweet anathema to her, an unholy cure.

“You say that like there’s anything appropriate about us,” the other woman says before letting her hand fall away. Taissa misses the warmth of her touch immediately. “Like we’ve got this normal thing down.”

“Wishful thinking, I guess,” she replies lamely.

Refuting her on that particular point is pretty useless.

“We all have stories that we tell ourselves in the dark,” Shauna shrugs right back, and with that, reaches down to grab her thermos from the cupholder. To Taissa’s surprise, she also grabs the one next to it.

“What are you doing?” She asks quickly, dreading that her friend has already decided to take her word back.

“What does it look like, dummy?" Shauna rolls her eyes in such a way that it's clear that she thinks she's doing something obvious. (Asshole.) "We’re going inside. There’s vegetable soup in the crockpot, and you can wear one of my t-shirts to bed. Well, um, put Jeff on the couch.” She snorts to herself at this last thought. “He kinda deserves it after all the shit he pulled."

Taissa’s body reacts to what her friend is suggesting before her mind catches up. She laughs aloud, a pleasant warmth percolating in her gut, a happiness that she's forgotten how to entirely feel. She only eventually remembers—

“Shit, wait, what about Callie? I thought you said she wouldn’t want to see me.”

“I’ll deal with my teenager. You’re coming in."

“But—”

"No buts," comes a fierce reply, a desperate one. Taissa flinches at the sudden change in tone, while her friend looks down, her dark hair eclipsing most of her face from view.

"It's mean, it's just... we need each other tonight, Tai. Tomorrow—" But it's Shauna’s turn to be repulsed by her own words, to anticipate the foregone conclusion to her sentence and call foul. Red card. Timeout. This isn’t right. It’s far from fucking fair.

But, of course, this has always been their shared reality.

Life isn't fucking fair.

“—we bury Nat,” Taissa finishes, remembering what it was like to be a closer in the game. One kick. A ball buried in the net. It had to be done.

As a teenager, she once lifted her arms in victory as her teammates crowded around her, shouting her name, embracing her, nearly knocking her to the ground. As an adult, she reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind Shauna's ear, knuckles skimming her smooth cheek, and knows that this, too, is love.

“Fuck,” Shauna exhales, closing her eyes.

“Fuck,” Taissa dully agrees just as it stops drizzling outside, as it begins to pour and endlessly pour.

#taissa turner #shauna shipman #yellowjackets #taishauna #s: yellowjackets #reginianwrites #I love shaunatai sooo much

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honeypiehotchner · 3 years

Text

Looking Too Closely (Bucky x Fem!Stark!Reader) -- part three

I did not expect to get so invested in this damn fic but here I am :))

Summary: The one in which Tony invites you to the “family dinner” but you sleep through it. Also, the “Father Test,” as Tony calls it.

Warnings: angst (what’s new?), talk of food/eating (so sorry, I should’ve tagged this a lot sooner!), medical stuffs (needles, blood being drawn)

A few hours pass by slowly as you doze, floating in between sleep and consciousness, both places completely unsoothing to you.

You wake abruptly when FRIDAY’s voice echoes throughout the room. “Do Not Disturb overridden by Tony Stark.”

With a groan, you sit up, listening to Tony knock — though surprised that he even does.

“Come in,” you sigh.

The door swings open and Tony opens his mouth to speak, but stops when he sees you on the floor. “What…” He glances between you and the bed, giving you an incredulous look. “What’s wrong with the perfectly new bed I gave you?”

“The least of your concerns should be that I’m taking a nap on the floor,” you deadpan. “What do you want?”

“Dinner will be ready in a few,” he says, still looking at you all concerned. “We have a family dinner once a week to...build rapport.”

You raise an eyebrow.

He continues. “You live here now, so...you’re invited. Wanda and Pepper will be there. Bucky, too.” Tony pauses. “Bucky didn’t bother you earlier, did he?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, good.”

“You bothered me, Tony.”

“Right,” Tony nods. “Sorry about that. I shouldn’t have brought that stuff up. I should’ve just been happy that you’re okay.” He pauses again, like he’s having trouble putting all the words together. “I am, by the way. Glad you’re okay. I’m sorry you went through that.”

“Thanks,” you say slowly. “You don’t have to worry about it.”

Tony offers a half-smile, half-grimace, because what you don’t know is that he has FRIDAY currently working on a full, extensive background check on your mom. And you, but your mom is top priority. Ever since the conversation in MedBay earlier, he’s been worried. For your safety — both past, present, and future. But he’s also worried about who you really are — and the worst worry of all is that you might not even know.

“Anyway, dinner in a few,” he says. “Nothing fancy. Come as you are, all that bullshit.”

You snicker at his reference.

He tries not to think of it as too much of a win. “Oh and,” he points to the bed, “it really is new. No one’s slept in it before you. And you can adjust the settings on it — softness, heating, cooling, all that. Just,” he pauses again. “FRIDAY, will you show Y/N the control panel?”

“Yes, Mr. Stark.”

Your eyes widen when a hologram appears next to the bed, projected onto the wall. There, all the settings — and many more — that Tony mentioned are shown.

“When you get it set where you like, FRIDAY can save it for you,” he explains. “Just for whenever you feel like sleeping in a bed again. I guess.”

“Thank you,” you murmur, looking over at him. “Really, thank you, Tony.”

“No problem, munchkin.” He smiles fully this time as he leaves, closing your door. And to your surprise, he activates Do Not Disturb again.

Food is the last thing on your mind, so instead you head over to the hologram on the wall.

You spend the next hour and a half fixing the settings. Once you get it just right, though, you lie down and you sleep.

Soundly. For five hours.

+++

When you wake again, you’re confused and disoriented to find yourself sleeping in a bed. But you love that your back, shoulders, and hips aren��t screaming in pain for once.

One glance out the window tells you that you’ve definitely missed the dinner Tony invited you to, but you don’t care all that much. You’ve met everyone individually. You didn’t really need or want to go to a big dinner. It seemed pointless.

But, unfortunately, you are hungry, so you drag yourself out of bed to go to the kitchen in search of something resembling food.

One glance at the clock in the hall tells you it’s just past midnight, so you relax even more, knowing you won’t encounter anyone.

Or at least, you hoped.

There, leaned against the kitchen counter, straight up guzzling a glass of water, is Bucky.

At least it’s him, you think.

Bucky smiles gently when he sees you coming. “Hey.”

You offer a slight nod and a quiet “Hey” in return, going straight to the fridge.

“Oh, the plate in there is yours,” he says. “Top shelf.”

You look up and spot it, your eyes widening as you grab it. Did they eat monstrous portions here or something? It must weigh five pounds or something crazy.

As if reading your mind, Bucky says, “Sorry there’s so much. I think Tony went overboard.”

You blink down at the food. Tony made you a plate? You expected Pepper to do it, if anyone. Quite frankly, you weren’t expecting it at all. You figured they wouldn’t even notice your absence.

Bucky wordlessly steps to the side, giving you access to the microwave. It even looks expensive, which makes you snort. It’s touchscreen. Of-fucking-course.

“We missed you at dinner,” Bucky says. You didn’t know he liked to talk this much.

“I fell asleep,” you confess with a laugh. “Tony uh, showed me the controls for the bed.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. “No more sleeping on the floor for you, then?”

You shrug.

“I sleep on the floor most nights, too,” Bucky continues, taking in a deep breath. “It’s just…”

“Normal,” you finish quietly.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “It feels normal.”

You turn back to the microwave, opening the door a second before it beeps. The food is warm enough now, you guess. Where the hell are the forks, though?

After opening two drawers, Bucky realizes what you’re looking for. “Here.” He opens the drawer across from you and pulls out a fork.

“Thanks,” you murmur, taking it from him. “Night.”

He nods and gives a slight wave. “Night.”

+++

The next day, Pepper stops by your room with a ton of clothes, shoes, and a phone.

“Uhm, thanks…”

“I know it’s a lot,” she smiles gently. “And if you don’t like anything, just let me know. Or if I didn’t get anything that you need, let me know, too.” She pauses. “You don’t have to do it now.”

“Okay,” you sigh, trying not to feel overwhelmed, but it’s hard. There’s like...fifteen bags on your bed right now. Not to mention the boxes of shoes that are stacked on the floor. And the new phone, still in the box, that you’re holding in your hand.

Pepper points to the phone. “It should have my number, Tony’s number, and the rest of the Avengers programmed in there. You’ll see one named Happy, that’s just Tony’s assistant, just in case. You don’t have to talk to everyone on there, but they do have your number as well. It’s all a precautionary thing. Oh, and the phone can be tracked.” She pauses, lowering her voice. “Just a heads up. In case Tony goes crazy.”

You smile at that. “Thanks.” As if he hasn’t already gone crazy and driven you closer to insanity, too.

“Speaking of Tony,” she says. “He’s willing to do the paternity test whenever you are.”

“Okay,” you nod. “Is today good?”

Pepper blinks. “I don’t see why not.”

“Okay, just...I’ll put some clothes on first.” You’re still wearing what Wanda gave you.

“Yeah, of course,” she nods. “I’ll let Tony know and whenever you’re ready, you can just ask FRIDAY to take you to the lab.”

“Okay.”

Pepper leaves you be, while you get dressed, and it takes you a lot longer than you were expecting.

There are so many clothes.

After finding something somewhat comfortable (and because you’re tired of looking through the bags), you grab your phone, though it feels foreign having it in your pocket.

“FRIDAY...where is the lab?”

“If you head to the elevator, I’ll take you there.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course, Y/N.”

Following FRIDAY’s orders, you head to the elevator and step inside. The doors close and the elevator begins to move, and when it stops, the doors behind you open.

“Welcome to Mr. Stark’s lab.”

Hesitantly, you step off, and you’re met with blaring music.

“Really?” You scream, and Tony lifts his head. “AC/DC? Really?”

The volume lowers a little while Tony replies. “You know your music. I’m impressed.”

“I’m disappointed,” you say. “I prefer Pink Floyd.”

Tony smirks. ‘Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2’ begins to play. You hate that you grin, but you do.

“Much better,” you comment. “Pepper told me to come here?”

He nods. “Right, the Father Test.”

You snort. Of course he calls it that.

“We’ll have to head down to MedBay to do it. I’ll be done in just a second.” He taps something on the screen before looking back up. “Did Pepper give you your phone?”

“Yeah.” You pull the device from your pocket and wave it. “Thanks. You didn’t have to.”

“I’m not gonna leave you stranded without a phone,” Tony replies. “Also, just for the foreseeable future, don’t leave the Tower without someone. Preferably without me.”

You furrow your eyebrows. You hadn’t thought about leaving and going anywhere until now. “Why?”

“Well, for one, you have an arrest warrant,” he reminds you. “They won’t question it if I’m with you. Which is why it needs to be me — Steve is also fine. But, let’s say, if you left with Bucky, they wouldn’t hesitate to grab both of you.”

“Wasn’t he pardoned or something?”

“Doesn’t mean no one holds a grudge against him.”

You nod. “Right.” Then, you reel back. “So you’re not going to turn me in?”

He shrugs. “I believe you. Even though you won’t tell me who stabbed you.” He taps something else, then drags the screen, and a hologram appears right in front of him.

You roll your eyes. “Because I don’t know who they were. I told you.”

“And I still think you’re lying,” he retorts.

You glare at him through the hologram.

A few more minutes pass where all that fills the silence is Pink Floyd. You’re not complaining, but even Tony’s breathing is grating to your ears.

Once he’s finally finished with whatever the hell he was doing, he heads to the elevator, and you silently follow him.

+++

This time when you enter MedBay, it’s empty, aside from the on-site doctor, Dr. Cho.

“Here for the Father Test,” Tony quips, smirking when Dr. Cho rolls her eyes at him.

You like Dr. Cho already.

“Alright,” she says, putting a pause on what she was doing. “It’s just a simple cheek swab and a little blood.”

“Blood?” You ask. You hate having your blood drawn. Not because of the needle, but because of the idea of your blood being drawn out of your body and used for things you’re unaware of.

It’s creepy.

“Just a small amount,” Dr. Cho assures you with a soft smile. “It acts as a double-check for the paternity test. The cheek swab can give us a general yes or no, but blood is definitive.”

You agree, you just hate it.

First is the cheek swab and Dr. Cho lets you do it, probably sensing your anxiety. She refuses to let Tony do his on his own, but that probably has something to do with how much of a child he is.

Tony gets his blood drawn first, and it is too short for your liking, because once he’s done, Dr. Cho preps you.

Your head is turned the other way while she wipes your skin. Tony moves into your line of vision, and you’re ready to tell him to fuck off before he teases you, but he doesn’t.

He just talks to you.

“Barnes told me you fell asleep yesterday.”

You furrow your eyebrows. “Yeah. That’s why I missed dinner. He said you made a plate for me?”

“I did,” Tony nods. “I didn’t want you to go hungry.”

“I could tell,” you snort. “There was enough food on the plate to feed four of me.”

He chuckles. “Did you at least eat?”

“Yeah, I did,” you say. “It was good.”

“Good. How’s the bed?”

“Really good,” you say. “Thanks for showing me the controls and stuff.”

“No problem,” he shrugs. “Nat asked me earlier if you’d like to train with her and Wanda.”

“Train?”

“Yeah, train, workout, whatever you want to call it. Barnes and Rogers usually run if that’s more your speed, Wilson, too, when he’s here.”

“Who’s Wilson?”

“Sam,” Tony fills in. “Falcon.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“He’s in...Louisiana right now, but he should be back here in a few days, so you’ll meet him.” He pauses. “But...stay away from him.”

“Why?”

“He’s...flirty.”

You nearly wheeze. “Are you joking?”

“Nope,” he shakes his head. “I’ve been meaning to say that about Barnes, too. I don’t care if you talk to him. I think it’s good for him — and you. But don’t…” He waves his hands in an ambiguous manner.

“Tony, the absolute last thing on my mind right now is a boyfriend, but even if it was, why would you have any say in it?” You counter.

“Because I know them, and I don’t want them anywhere near you,” he says, like that’s the end of it. “All done, Dr. Cho?”

“All done,” she confirms, and that’s when you feel her pressing a Band-Aid over your skin.

Your head whips around. You didn’t even feel the needle go in or out. What the fuck?

You look back at Tony with a small smile. “Well played.”

“You’re welcome,” he smirks. “Though, I wasn’t kidding.”

You roll your eyes. “Not even Nat or Wanda?”

He looks surprised, but still shakes his head. “Still no.”

“Darn. My plans have been foiled.”

This time when he looks at you, he smiles.

As the two of you are walking to the elevator, he says, “Want to help me in the lab? I’ll let you control the music — just this once.”

You almost say yes, but you’re not really in the mood. “No, thanks though. I really should go through all the clothes Pepper brought me.”

“Ah, right,” he nods. “She told me she went shopping.”

“Yeah…” You exhale. “She went.”

You step onto the elevator after him, and he presses the floors for you and the lab.

“You know, Wanda might help you sort through the clothes if you ask. She might wear whatever you don’t want.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll ask.”

“She’s training right now, though.”

You nod. “Okay. It can wait, I guess.”

Tony rocks on his heels. “I could really use an extra set of hands…”

You roll your eyes. “Fine.”

He grins. “You still want to control the music?”

“There’s no way I’m letting you play AC/DC the whole time.”

#looking too closely #tony stark #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x fem!reader #bucky barnes x stark!fem!reader #bucky barnes x fem!stark!reader #bucky barnes x stark!reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #james buchanan barnes #james buchanan bucky barnes #oooohhhh why the blood draw #oooohhhhh #interesting #i'm so sorry in advance LMFAO

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some-kindofgnome · 4 years

Text

Kinktober Thirty-One

On Halloween night, at a costume party on the edge of town, you find a Lost Boy to keep you company.

Characters: Mirio Togata x f!Reader

Warnings: smut (18+ please!) aged-up characters, vampire Mirio, drinking, mentions of smoking, blood, vampirism, deception, a little bit of mindfuckery and manipulation.

Notes: This is it, folks! Day thirty-one of Kinktober is here and with it, a very special little Halloween fic. Today’s prompt was “Dressed Up,” which I sort of did but also sorta didn’t.

This one is a little bit longer than my usual Kinktober fare, (~3.4k) but hopefully it’ll be worth the ride. It’s also, in the spirit of Halloween, a little on the darker side, so please do heed the warnings and don’t be afraid to skip this one if spooky stuff isn’t your thing.

This hmmmm didn’t show up in the tags when I posted it this aft (even though I couldn’ve sworn it did :C) soooo reuploading! gotta love tumblr

Kinktober Masterlist

It’s a bright, cold, clear Halloween night, and the parties are in full swing.

You’re at the only decent bar in town. Just like every other joint within a hundred-mile radius, tonight they’re throwing a costume party. Originally, you showed up with a friend, but she’s long gone now- drifted off with some punk sporting a chintzy werewolf costume. Ears covered in plastic fur, limp tail dangling from the back of his coat.

Whatever. At least she managed to find something fun to do.

You’re dressed like an angel, in a delicate white slip with feathered wings spreading from your back. In lieu of a real halo you’re wearing a dainty silver circlet. You’re sipping punch- pumpkin punch, says the chalkboard signs pinned up all over the bar- but to you, it tastes like vodka and orange-dyed sugar.

At least you can confirm it’s alcoholic.

You don’t recognize the song that’s thrumming through the rented, oversized party speakers, but it’s sort of catchy. You’re tapping your foot to the beat- or maybe you’re just jonesing- when there’s a lull in the surge of the crowd and you see him.

He’s a complete stranger to you- a rare commodity, in your isolated little town. He seems to tower above the other patrons, standing a head taller than most of the men on the dance floor. It’s humid and sticky inside the crowded party, but he’s wearing a leather jacket with the collar popped. His hair is a shock of mussed gold, and you almost miss the glint of a dangly earring in his right lobe.

He’s got something red smeared across one corner of his mouth. Fake blood, maybe? You’d like to find out.

His eyes are dark and deep. You know they are, because he’s staring intently at you, right across the party. Like he’s spotted you through the skulls of the crowd that separates you. Your gaze is drawn by his steady eyes. It feels like he’s not even blinking when you share a look.

You glance away. But he’s still looking- you can feel the pull of his gaze like a magnet. You lift your syrupy punch to your lips as you drag your eyes to the opposite side of the room.

No dice. When you look across at him again, he’s still there. Still looking.

The crowd passes between you. And when you find that empty spot on the bar, heavy disappointment settles into your gut. That’s what you get for wanting a little excitement.

“Hey.”

The low, unfamiliar rumble of a voice directly behind you shocks the base of your spine. You whip around with the weight of your wings bobbing against their elastic shoulder straps.

He’s even taller than you realized up close. His eyes still have that dark edge to them, but he’s grinning now. That’s not an expression you might have imagined him capable of, given the solemn way he’d stared across the bar at you.

His teeth are immaculate. He seems entirely flawless. You’re pretty sure you could cut your fingers on the sharp corners of his jaw.

“Vampire,” you quip, homing in on the smudge beneath his lip. “Very original.”

It’s definitely supposed to be fake blood. The leather jacket and dangly earring might not be a dead giveaway to anybody else, but it’s working for you.

He slips one hand into the pocket of his jeans, shooting you a low chuckle and a quiet little smirk. He reaches for you- you flinch, wings giving a telltale twitch as your shoulders bob. He catches the edge of one synthetic feather between his fingers and gives it a little rub.

“Almost as original as you, angel,” he teases. You can’t bring yourself to roll your eyes.

There’s something about him that makes everything feel more sincere than usual. He’s got an easygoing, sunny disposition, but he’s intoxicating to look at. The closer you stand, the headier you feel.

You put your cup down on the bar behind you, having had more than your fair share of vodka-with-orange-Jello-crystals Halloween punch.

“So, angel,” the vampire sighs. Both hands are in his pockets now, forcing you to come to terms with the broadness of his chest. He’s built like a brick wall, but it’s all firm muscle underneath his tight t-shirt.

Your chest goes tight as he digs one palm out of his pocket, extending it to you.

“How ‘bout a dance?”

You can’t turn him down. You can’t say anything, since your voice has died somewhere in the cavity of your chest. All you can do is give a muted little nod and slide your fingers into his.

His palm is devastatingly smooth and brisk to the touch. It’s impossible to picture anything cool at all, stuck under the relentless lights of the bar and crowded among so many sweaty, polyester-clad partygoers.

When he pulls you onto the floor, his body trickles over yours like water.

He holds you so delicately, and yet pulls you so close. Lifts your hands between his palms-massive- and draws you in by the waist.

You’d dare to say he’s graceful, dancing to the uneven beat of The Time Warp and Thriller and a half-dozen other songs that are only catchy through the month of October. His leather jacket is supple and soft beneath your touch, and you’re happy to finger the sleeves, grip the lapels as you sway and swirl.

He doesn’t pull his eyes from you once. Again, you’re overcome by that strange sensation. Like he hasn’t blinked the whole time. You can’t quite bring yourself to be freaked out by it.

“So,” you gasp, breathless and sweating by the time the music dulls enough to warrant conversation. “It’s not every day you meet a guy who can dance like that. You gonna tell me where you picked up your tricks?”

He laughs. It’s a rich, full sound, but musical. Enchanting. You’re spellbound by everything about him.

He seems entirely too good to be true. You’re just waiting to find out how.

“Practice,” he gushes, slipping a hand under your chin. You’re smiling. You’re woozy. He’s drawing you in.

He kisses you, so soft and unassuming you’re surprised he didn’t ask your permission first. His lips are as cool as his hands are, fresh and soft like a smooth mountain lake.

You dive in.

You kiss him back as best you can, twining your arms around his neck and letting him drag you close. The longer he kisses you, the hazier you feel, but there’s a taste of something on his tongue that you can’t quite figure out, and you’re determined to find out what it is.

Your vampire tangles his fingers in your hair and wrenches your mouth to his. He kisses you harder, bruisingly so, sucking and biting at your lower lip and pulling away, garishly wiping the back of his palm across his mouth.

“Come home with me,” he croons. He could have asked anything of you. Your response would have been the same.

You turn a vacant, woozy stare to him with the sound of his voice swimming in your ears. Your eyelashes bat heavily. You smile.

“Okay.”

He takes you to find your jacket, thrown over a stool somewhere. You shrug out of your wings and tuck them tightly against your chest. When you do, he eyes you with a sideways little grin.

“Damn,” he teases. “I thought those were real.”

You duck out of the place with his arm slung around your shoulders like he knows you.

The cold outside does nothing to sober you, but full moon is so bright, the cars in the parking lot cast stark shadows across the gravel. So bright, the light of the stars is drowned by it.

He leads you to a shiny Harley, parked in the last spot next to the grass.

“Whoa.”

Your vampire turns, eyebrow cocked. You realize you said that out loud. You also realize that you’ve never actually been on a motorcycle before.

“That… that’s yours?” You ask dumbly. He smirks, and your stomach goes icy.

“Hop on.”

He produces a glossy black helmet from somewhere along the bike’s gunmetal chassis and passes it to you. You slip it down over your head. The thick padding pushes your circlet painfully against your forehead. You’re sure it won’t be a long ride, though.

He stoops, reaching for your throat. For an instant you flinch, but as his fingertips brush the underside of your chin, you realize what he’s doing. You flush with heat.

He buckles the strap securely beneath your chin, making sure it’s tightened properly. His flaxen lashes give a little flutter as he finds your eyes, and he gives the side of the helmet an affectionate little tap.

You swing one leg over the rear of the bike seat as he climbs on in front of you. The leather presses cold and firm between your bare thighs. You slide a hand self-consciously over your back, making sure your dress gets tucked underneath your pelvis.

All good.

“Hold on tight,” he prompts, kicking the bike off its stand and starting the engine with a noisy rumble. You fall forward against his solid back- stronger than you anticipated- and wrap your arms firmly around his waist.

Your heart beats low and warm against his back, so solid you’re sure he can hear it. He peels out of the parking lot and onto the empty highway, and you close your eyes, warm and dark in the safety of your massive helmet.

There’s something immensely thrilling about the way the wind whips past your legs and through your clothing. It occurs to you just how stupid you are, climbing onto the back of a motorcycle with a man whose name you don’t even know.

Holy shit. You don’t even know his name.

When he pulls into the parking lot of the Day ‘n Night Motel on the edge of the highway, you don’t think to ask.

“This doesn’t look like home,” you brush. You fumble to get the strap of your helmet undone and tug it straight off your head. Your halo comes with it, bouncing across the pavement and rolling to a stop at his feet.

“It’s home for now,” he replies as he stoops. He picks the silver circlet up in both hands and presents it to you like a crown. You take it, self-conscious but not quite unsettled. There’s something about him that doesn’t seem to let you get that far.

He takes you up to the second floor and unlocks a door somewhere along the middle, shouldering it inwards. You feel a strange sort of comfort as you step over the threshold. You glance behind you, like the rest of the world might have been swallowed up as soon as you followed him.

But it’s still there. It even stays when you nudge the door closed behind you.

The curtains are drawn tightly shut, but he leaves you to throw them open now, letting silvery moonlight spill through the dirty glass like mercury.

“Let me have you,” he rasps as he comes back to you. He’s shrugging out of his jacket- his arms are way bigger than you anticipated- and he’s pulling you tightly to him. “Let me have you, let me taste you, let me wreck you, angel.”

“Okay,” you gasp. The only word you seem to manage with him around.

He kisses you just like he did at the bar, tight and urgent and needy and bruising. He walks you toward the bed, laying you down in a stark, gentle contrast to the rough way he’s kissing you.

Your coat’s fallen open and he helps you out of it, letting the fabric spread beneath you like a cloak. He doesn’t waste time at all- kissing his way down the curve of your jaw and pushing his palms under the hem of your dress.

Your skin is chilled from the wind, but it warms quickly beneath his cold fingers. You part your legs and he snags the top of your panties, tugging them harshly down your thighs. He discards them quickly and comes back to you, burying his face into the apex of your thighs.

“Oh!”

His tongue is surprisingly cool as he swipes it along your slit, but he’s gentle and attentive with his mouth, and you tangle your fingers eagerly into his mussed hair. Your pinky brushes over the edge of his pointy little earring as it bobs against his neck, and you let your head fall back against the mattress so you can lose yourself in the pleasure he offers you.

He braces icy palms against your thighs- sending goosebumps racing up your legs- and keeps his head buried beneath your skirt as he eats you out furiously. His tongue swirls coolly around the nub of your clit, then flicks it deftly.

“Stop,” you gasp, toes curling tightly in the blankets. “Please, I-I’ll…” You trail off. You can’t hold out any longer. But he heeds your warning and draws back from your body, licking his lips garishly.

There’s a carnal glint in his navy gaze that sets your nerves alight as he crawls atop your body. At some point, he’s shed his clothes- you didn’t even see him strip- but he’s wearing only a pair of tight black undershorts, and his cock stands prominently against the front of them, hard and heavy across one thigh.

“Angel,” he rasps, bending over your torso. He nuzzles the crook of your neck, nosing at your pulse point as he nibbles your flesh. For the first time he seems to lose himself, blowing a deep huff over your chest and shivering hard as his hips rock forward into yours.

“Let me feel you. Let me fuck you.” He growls. Unbridled and feral.

You tug furiously at the hem of your dress.

“Take it off,” you insist. He wedges his palms beneath the flimsy fabric, tearing a new slit up the side of the skirt in his haste to get it off you. But you’re not paying attention. You’re consumed by him. Drowned by him. In this moment, he is all you’ve ever needed.

He strips out of his shorts and comes back to you bare, palming the base of his thick shaft. He settles between your thighs and draws a thumb up your slit. Your body sings. You gasp.

A dull chill settles over your body as he lines himself up.

He slides home in one easy stroke, composed all over again as you fall to pieces beneath him. As he starts to fuck you- smooth, steady, easy- he gives you nothing more than soft huffs of effort. He’s thick and stretches you well, but his body seems to flow in and out of yours like a river. His touch spreads cool relief through your gut.

“There you go, angel,” he rumbles into your ear. He braces a hand on your belly, rutting into you and letting the gentle slap of your flesh punctuate every thrust.

Beneath him, you’re a mess. The pleasure is more than you’re prepared to handle. With every push of his hips, you feel yourself falling deeper and harder. You don’t even know his name, but with him stroking your side so tenderly, it feels like you could love him.

Somewhere along the way, his rhythm shifts. He becomes wild and brutal and relentless, fucking you deep and hard. You relish in the way the bed creaks beneath you. You cling tightly to him, mewling and howling your overstimulated pleasure into the night. Your nails rake hard over his back as you hit your peak with sobs of tight ecstasy.

Your pussy clamps down hard around his cock and he fucks you through it, pushing you further and further until you come apart, a trembling mess in his arms.

With a feral roar he draws himself back from you suddenly, spilling sticky spurts of cum across your belly and over your chest.

Your eyelashes flutter open. He’s staring down at you, cupping your cheek with that same intense look from the bar. You blink, letting your brain swim back to life.

“Your fangs,” you gasp, noticing the sharp glints as they protrude from the underside of his lip. You chuckle. “You never took them off?”

You reach up, thumbing the edge of his jaw. They align seamlessly with the rest of his teeth. The fact that they didn’t pop out on their own is impressive, if a bit strange.

“They’re good,” you confess. “They look real.”

He purses his lips tightly shut and folds his body over yours. He finds the curve of your jaw and nuzzles it. Finds the bare thrum of your pulse point and tongues it. He grins. You feel the sharp point of them against your skin- strong, surprisingly so.

He snarls.

“They are.”

You’re blinded by pain before another thought can cross you. He sinks his fangs into the flesh of your neck and you scream, clinging and clawing at his back. But he’s strong, inhumanly so, and his grip is iron as he grabs your wrists and pins them over your head. He’s patient, holding you fast.

There’s an ecstatic, heady sort of bliss bleeding about the edges of your suffering. You thrash and struggle, but eventually, you succumb to it. It’s sweet and distant and so, so, serene, and as he pulls his fangs from your neck and licks tenderly at the wound, it lingers.

“That’s it, angel,” he sooths. “That’s it. C’mere.”

He slides a hand under your back and lays you properly against the pillows. He smooths his palm over your forehead, tugging the sheets over your bare body. His face is doubled in your vision, but his lips and chin are stained garishly red. His fangs are even longer than before, but his dark gaze is peaceful.

“Sleep for me, angel,” he croons. He smooths your hair, and you’re too far gone not to listen.

When you come to, the room is empty. There’s a motel-issued glass sitting on the nightstand, filled with a thick liquid like raspberry compote.

It’s still dark out. The pain in your neck and shoulder is immense. You bolt upright, remembering all at once where you are. What you’ve seen.

It can’t have been. Your fingertips scrabble over your neck. The wounds are already starting to scar.

So it was.

You climb cautiously out of bed, grabbing your dress and hugging it tightly to his chest. The bathroom door is open and the lights are out, but you poke your head in anyway. He’s not there.

You tug the dress violently over your head. The fabric is split almost to your hip, but your jacket’ll cover it. With your shoes clutched tightly in your hand, you make for the door while you still can.

The filled glass stares from over your shoulder, halting your hand on the knob. You turn slowly toward it. Your limbs go cold.

You know what it is.

That doesn’t stop you from craving it.

You can smell it from here, sweet, rich, irresistible. You lick your dry lips and press your back hard against the door.

It’s not too late. You can leave. Right now. You can make it home, you can call somebody, you can get out.

You’re not going to.

In two strong steps, you cross the room. You grab the glass so quickly and so firmly that it cracks in your hand, but it does not shatter.

The blood of your vampire is just as sweet as you’d hoped. You take long, desperate gulps, draining the glass in an instant and swiping your palm across your stained mouth.

The door to the room sweeps open behind you. With the empty glass in your hand you whip around to face it, paralyzed and half-caught in desperate bliss.

“Angel,” he purrs. He smooths a hand over his hair and kicks the door shut with a hollow thud. He grins wickedly at you, setting ice and cool, firm desire into the deepest reaches of your heart.

“I’m so glad you decided to join me.”

#mirio togata x reader #my hero academia #mirio x reader #lemillion #mha #mha lemillion #kinktober #jbbkinktober2020 #mirio togata #mirio #mha fanfiction #boku no hero academia #bnha fanfiction #tw blood

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crystaljins · 4 years

Text

River lead me home | 02

Characters: Seokjin x Reader

Word count: 5.2k

Synopsis: Ever since coming to the human realm when you were child, nothing seems to fit, and this was just supposed to be a simple roadtrip to help you find yourself.

Is that too much to ask for?

Spin-off to A long journey home

Rating: Teens

Notes: I’ve gotten such a fantastic response to this!!! You guys have been so supportive and so thoughtful about my fic and I’m honestly so grateful! This chapter is a bit sad and angsty, but it’s necessary to launch into the adventure bit.

I hope continue to live up to expectations!!

Tags: @blue1928

Masterlist

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 FINAL

The portal to the other realm is located in a far, dark corner of the city you now call home. It is the only way between realms. No human technically knows about it (although you are aware of the incident about a month ago with Taehyung’s new girlfriend) and it’s in a shady enough corner of town that no one really stumbles upon it. The few that do are written off as high as a kite and probably hallucinating. And so the entrance remains unguarded and hidden in plain sight- a fake bathroom door in the back of an alley between a brothel and an antique store with creepy dolls in the window- literally the last public bathroom anyone would use even in emergencies. You tighten your backpack straps and hope the hello kitty on the front doesn’t look too out of place as you step into the alleyway.

Jungkook sits on your shoulders, kicking his legs idly. They bounce against the bright pink straps of your backpack as he glances around the dinghy alleyway. Even in the daytime, the place is a bit eerie and uncomfortable, like at any moment a rogue gang member may leap out and knife you.

“Scared?” Jungkook questions when the silence begins to stretch out between you for an uncomfortably long moment. You swallow past the dryness in your throat.

“N-no.” You say, but the stutter gives you away. You had snuck out of the house that morning under the guise of going to the part time job that you’d been fired from and your mother still felt too guilty about last night’s dinner fiasco to stop you. It’s only a five-day hike. There and back would only take two hours in this world. No one, not even Jin, would be able to work out that you’d ever gone over to the other world. But that’s only if you make it out alive. It’s been thirteen years since you crossed over to this world but as many fond memories as you have of your home realm, you have not forgotten the dangers it held.

Jungkook sighs in annoyance.

“Don’t tell me you’re backing out after thirteen years of angst-ing and being annoying.” He complains. He straights and launches himself off your shoulder to hover in front of you. “Shall I help you?” He asks, hands shoved in the pockets of his little jeans. You have a collection of naked dolls at home as you buy a doll whenever you see a cute outfit for him, and no one wants a doll without the accessories. This particular doll’s outfits consist of a fake blazer, a pair of jeans and a little white tshirt.

“How can you help?” You question, your voice as cautious as warranted when offered aid by a creature small enough to crush in your hand. Jungkook quirks a tiny brow and grins, fluttering closer.

“An old pixie charm for protection and luck.” He says and you miss the slight tick to his jaw as he mutters the words. He flies in close enough to press both hands to the space between your eyebrows. “Close your eyes.” He murmurs.

You follow his request, letting your lids flutter shut and inhaling deeply.

“You need an eyebrow wax. There are a lot of hairs here.” Jungkook mutters.

“Jungkook.” You grit out warningly. You feel his hands flinch in the slightest tickle.

“I’m just saying....” he defends himself before taking a deep breath. A little song that he sings fills your ears. You’ve heard Jungkook singing before- he likes to sing along to whatever comes on the old radio you keep on the roof and sometimes he comes across small mice or moths that are injured and he’ll sing them back to health. This song is different though- darker, and heavier. His voice is normally sweet, but this has an unusual edge to it- it doesn’t sound like a good luck charm. But honestly, you trust Jungkook with your life and so your eyes remain closed until the time peters out. Your eyes open as silence falls and the last of a faint glow to Jungkook’s form fades.

“There.” He says cheerfully. “Now you’ll see the river no matter what!”

You stare at Jungkook for a long moment and gather your courage. It’s stupid but a part of you knows that you won’t ever truly be happy if you don’t do this. It’s a lot to put on seeing a dumb river but as long as you cling to your home realm you will never truly feel settled here. You need a proper goodbye.

“Let’s go.” You say, clutching once more at the bright pink straps of your backpack and moving towards the dingy bathroom door that marks the entrance to a magical world. Jungkook nods and settles back on his favourite perch on your shoulder.

“Where are we going?” A familiar voice sounds from behind you.

If you’re being honest, you’re pretty sure your heart displaces from your chest to the base of your tongue for a moment. You blame being on edge in a dodgy part of town and nerves about travelling to a dangerous realm for the terrified screech you release.

By the time you recover, Jin has a hand clasped over his chest, also recovering from a terrified scream.

“I nearly had a heart attack!” He cries in outrage. Your eyes nearly bug out of your head.

“YOU NEARLY HAD A HEART ATTACK?!” You question incredulously. “What are you doing here?”

Jin blinks and glances around the alley in surprise as if he himself is only just registering where he is.

“I rang your boss.” He admits, folding his arms and leaning against the brick wall. He looks like a model, with the way he artfully deposits himself across the grimy red brick. “And she had some interesting news- that you had been fired almost two weeks ago. Which is weird, because I seem to remember you going to work every day this week. And when I called your mother, she said you had left early for work this morning without talking to her. Imagine my surprise and shock at hearing that!”

You swallow nervously, aware of the way Jin casually eyes you. His stance is relaxed and at ease, but his pose is deceptive. There is a slight tick to his jaw and an unamused glint to his eyes like at any moment he may grab you and launch into his most powerful Jant (Jin rant) yet.

“Oh, funny, that.” You say hesitantly, scrambling for an excuse. “You see, I-“

“You lied to me.” Jin cuts you off. The excuses die in your throat at the hurt in his voice. This... isn’t a Jant. With Jants, Jin’s anger boils over and you can’t get a word in edgewise. Instead, his voice wobbles and his words are slow and meaningful. Like the precise jabs of a needle. “I’ve been sitting here, feeling terrible for you, but this whole time you’ve been lying to me.”

“Jin, I-“ you say, finding your voice in an attempt to defend yourself, but he cuts you off.

“Save the excuses!” He practically snarls. “That’s how you always are! Always making excuses for your behaviour- you never take responsibility for the things you do! It’s like you’re not even trying.”

He kicks off the wall and strides towards you.

“And now? Now what? You were going to run away without telling any of us? None of us would have ever known what happened to you. All your mum would know was that you ran away after a fight with her and disappeared- did you really want that to be her last memory of you? How selfish can you be!” He scolds.

All the desperation to defend yourself drains out of you as the weight of Jin’s words hit you. That really had been what you were about to do. You feel Jungkook stiffen on his perch upon your shoulder and you drop your eyes in shame. He’s… he’s right.

“I’ve made excuses for you.” Jin is not finished. His voice cracks as he says the word. “Every time. Since coming here. I’ve always justified every stupid thing you’ve done- every mess you’ve made. ‘Her dad died, Jin. Of course she’s struggling to settle in.’ I’ve helped you every time because I felt bad for you. I could never stop you because I felt so guilty that my family was whole but yours was broken. And so, I’ve let you step all over me our whole lives, but this is enough. You’ve gone too far today. I’m not going to justify your immature and selfish behaviour anymore.”

Tears well up in your eyes at the mention of your father. You’ve never thought about how your actions may have affected Jin. But in hindsight you can see what it must have been like- having dates interrupted with calls from the hospital. Having to cancel plans with friends to pick you up from job interviews. Coming home from a long day at the hospital and being forced to make you a meal. You’ve been so preoccupied with how inadequate you feel next to him that you’d never considered how hard you were making his life.

“I’m sorry.” You say softly. Jin pauses, and the hard look in his eyes softens and he looks away.

“Look, don’t worry about it. Let’s just go home.” He tells you wearily. You nod meekly, with every intention of following him and putting this whole episode behind you like it’s nothing more than a delirious fever dream. But then something strange happens. Every muscle in your body locks up.

Panic races through you- you’re paralysed. Jin has already turned and is making his way back up towards the entrance to the alleyway, but your body won’t follow despite your desperate attempts to move.

“(Y/N),” Jungkook says urgently from your shoulder. “I have something to tell you-“

Jin interrupts him.

“What are you doing?” He demands. “Let’s go!”

“I can’t.” Is all you manage to choke out. There’s a weird tugging sensation in your body, like every molecule within you is being pulled. Jin’s eyes widen with anger.

“You’re kidding me!” He cries. “You mean after all of this, you’re still thinking of yourself?”

“It’s not that.” You protest pathetically. “Jin, I can’t move-“

“Save it!” Jin snaps. “For a moment I fooled myself again- I thought maybe you could be mature and I was almost ready to apologise, but as usual, I overestimated you. You really are the selfish brat I’ve always thought you were. Fine. Go to your stupid realm.”

Your eyes widen. Up until this point, you couldn’t get a word in to defend yourself because Jin was painfully right in everything he said. But... his final words are like a punch to your gut. Because, as much of a pain as you are, Jin has never given up on you before. Even the times where he would have been justified in doing so like the time you crashed his car trying to save a kitten on the side of the road. And even that day, back in highschool… that hadn’t been him giving up on you. But this time… all the warmth is gone from his eyes. He’s never looked at you quite like this before. The feeling is strange- like he’s torn open your rib cage with his hands and is snickering at your bruised heart. Until this moment you didn’t even know Jin had the power to hurt you in the way that he has.

“Jin.” You say softly. Tears stream down your face and you never get the chance to explain yourself.

“(Y/N)!” Jungkook cries again. “About the charm I just cast-“

A loud, eerie creaking cuts him off. Both you and Jin shift your gazes- the decrepit fake bathroom door slowly opens. The poorly oiled hinges release pained screeches as the darkness behind the door reveals itself. You both stare in confusion- the door doesn’t have the ability to open itself. One has to open it to be able to cross over into the other world. And though you’ve only seen the portal once before, you know it shouldn’t be black like that.

“What-“ Jin begins to ask, and then something horrible happens. A tendril of darkness shoots out like a whip and wraps around your wrist. You stare down in horror, but your body still will not obey- it does not allow you to attempt to wrench your hand free. Jin looks from you to the door, connected by the dark, rope like substance, and all the colour drains from his face.

Another whip like movement follows and suddenly your wrists and ankles are encircled by the same odd tendrils. You feel a powerful tug and your arms and legs are pulled backwards towards the portal.

“What’s going on?” Jin demands. Jungkook has been thrown off balance by the pull- he grips onto the material of your shirt and flaps his wings in an attempt to stay balanced.

“She has to see the river!” It’s Jungkook that calls, his voice high with distress. Jin turns a horrified look to the small pixie. Another yank has you stumbling backwards and then a steady pull slowly drags you to the door. “I... I put a spell on her!” He confesses.

Your heart drops in the same moment that Jin’s expression changes. You’ve never seen such an expression on his face. You’ve known him all your life, even when you lived in the other realm, and you thought you had seen every expression he had to give. But you have never seen such a look of pure, unadulterated fear on his handsome face before. You are a mere metre from the door now, still being dragged backwards and your body does not allow you to fight it.

“She has to see the river- the realm will not let her go until she does.” Jungkook cries, and Jin’s horrified expression changes. It sets with determination as he processes Jungkook’s words, like lava cooling into hard rock.

With long, sure strides, he turns back around and marches up the alley way, away from you. You are moved back, centimetre by centimetre and more tendrils snake out of the portal, wrapping around your arms, your torso, your legs, your throat. Gradually as you move closer the shadow seems to absorb your body into it. He’s… he’s leaving you, to get dragged forcefully into the other realm. To a place you could lose your life and he would never know. Panic fills you in a way it never has before- Jin has really, genuinely given up on you.

In your life, despite its ups and downs, there has always been one constant. And as much as you loathe to admit it, that constant has been Kim Seokjin. Even as a child, Jin was the one you’d drag along on adventures. He was the one you turned to when human children bullied you at school or when ex boyfriends dumped you. He was the one who held you in his arms every year on the anniversary of your father’s death. He drove you to school every day when he got his licence before you; he helped you move into your apartment when you were living away from home for college. Every step of your entire life, you’ve always had Jin there to support you. And you realise, for the first time, that he may not always be there- that Jin, just like anyone else out there, can and will give up on you.

But the day that he does that isn’t today, for right as he is about to step out of the alleyway, he pauses.

And then, in a burst of inhuman speed you’ve never seen him use in the thirteen years since coming to the human realm, he is before you. You are no more than a centimetre from the portal. but Jin does not hesitate as he wraps his arms around you. He pulls you in close and tight and his hands curve protectively around the back of your skull.

The last sensation you are aware of before the darkness envelops you is the steady rise and fall of his broad shoulders as he squeezes his eyes shut and falls into the darkness with you in his arms.

++++

When you finally rouse, it is to the distant sound of birdsong and the soft, earthy smell of a forest floor. As you blearily open your eyes, you find you are lying on your back, gazing at the way sunlight is filtered to emerald green through the luscious canopy above. The air is thick with a sensation you haven’t felt rush against your skin for thirteen years. The air writhes with the painfully familiar sensation of magic. It leaves you feeling more alive then you’ve felt in a long time.

Only, when you attempt to sit up, you find your body weighed down. Surprised, you gaze down as your midsection to find a masculine arm curled protectively over it. And your head does not press into the hard forest floor- instead it rests against the careful cushion of someone’s palm. You trace the arm thrown over your stomach with your eyes back up to its owner and register the broad shoulders. They slope towards a pale throat, a sharp jawline, familiar, full lips. Something molten bursts in your chest as you take in Jin’s face. It is similar to relief, but it burns hotter and more intensely. He didn’t leave you- he stayed with you. Despite how mad he was, despite your fight... Jin has chosen you. You swallow deeply and take a moment to soak in his features. It is rare that you get to study his features with such intensity- if he ever caught you staring, he would scowl. Jin loves when everyone except you appreciates his face. He lives for the ego boost other people can provide him but with you, your admiration has always been a burden to him.

He looks so peaceful, with his lashes fluttering gently against defined cheekbones, his face free of any scowl or frown. He looks young like this, and smaller than he is in your head. You’ve always thought of the three years between you as a huge amount- his personality is so big and so is his presence in your life. But seeing him small and vulnerable like this, you realise with a pang that Jin was only fourteen when you first arrived in the human realm. He was little more than a child as well yet since such a young age he’s had to play the role of mature adult for your sake. Your expression crumples with guilt. Have you really been that blind to how you were affecting him?

Jin’s lashes begin to flutter more, and you are seized with fear- you are not prepared to face him, after the things he has said to you. How can you be? Your heart throbs with shame and you are about to pull away from the safe embrace of his arms but as he rouses his arms tighten around you.

“Where’s the mosquito?” He groans. His eyes aren’t open, so you’re left staring in confusion.

“Huh?” You answer dumbly. He blinks one eye open and somehow, he manages to glare at you with just one eye. He seems completely unfazed by the way he holds you tightly in his arms.

“The. Mosquito.” He repeats darkly. A familiar fluttering sounds behind you and Jin’s hand shoots out using his enhanced-guardian reaction time.

“Ouch!” Jungkook cries and you crane your head to find Jin has easily seized the pixie in his fist. He yanks his arm out from underneath you and sits up, holding Jungkook before him. You wince when your head bangs against the ground, before following suit and sitting up. The forest air is oddly cool without his arms around you.

“You have five seconds to explain before I pull out the bug spray.” Jin snarls at the small creature. Jungkook struggles uselessly against Jin’s fist, pounding tiny hands against his knuckles.

“Let me go!” Jungkook cries. “You stupid big oaf! You’re going to crush me!”

You are about to rush to Jungkook’s aid but a firm glare from Jin has you freezing in your spot like a chastened puppy. You hang your head while Jungkook continues to attempt to squirm free.

“What did you do to her? So help me, you stupid cricket, tell me right now or I’m finding the nearest fly swatter.” Jin questions and there is a lethal fury to his tone that has never been there before.

“I already told you! I thought guardians were supposed to have good memory.” Jungkook whines, his wings flapping faster and faster until they are just a shimmering blur. Jin’s fist tightens just a fraction and Jungkook squeaks with pain.

“Jungkook.” Jin calls warning. Jungkook sighs and slumps defeatedly against the fist that holds him. His arms fall limply against Jin’s knuckles, which loosen at Jungkook’s defeat.

“A promise spell.” He finally says. “So that she can’t back out of seeing the river.”

“What river?” Jin demands. He whirls on you for explanation and you flinch.

“The Dancing River!” You confess fearfully. Jin glares for a moment longer- you briefly consider that maybe instead of being a doctor he should be a detective since he seems to be so good at getting confessions from people. Jin blinks in confusion and his expression fogs slightly as he struggles to recall the significance and existence of such a river.

“The… ‘the river loves those who take the plunge’.” He recalls. He frowns. “Why there?”

You flush and look away.

“He… he wanted me to see it.” You admit. Jin is silent- he does not need to ask who the ‘he’ is that you’re talking about. He bites his lip and scrubs a hand over his face. It is the hand that had been holding the back of your head when you fell. The knuckles of said hand are now scraped and bleeding- rivulets of blood trace paths over the back of his hand. It is already starting to heal, but the dried blood remains. Your heart squeezes in your chest at the sight- you did that to him. He is hurt because of your actions. It’s just another painful reminder of who you’ve been to Jin all these years.

“Why the hell would you cast a spell like that on her?” Jin finally asks, unable to face you. Instead he turns the force of his anger on the tiny pixie who has once again started attempting to break free from Jin’s iron hold.

“So that she would have to see the river. Obviously.” Jungkook spits at his captor. Jin’s eyes bug out of his head.

“YOU NINNY!” He shouts and both you and Jungkook flinch at the sudden boom of his voice cutting through the faint forest sounds. The birdsong goes eerily quiet in answer, but Jin does not notice. “DO YOU REALISE WHAT YOU’VE DONE? SHE CAN’T GO BACK HOME UNTIL SHE SEES THE RIVER NOW!”

“I mean… obviously I realise what I’ve done.” Jungkook sulks. He looks at Jin like Jin is stupid. “That’s why I put the spell on her. So that she couldn’t go home until she saw it.”

“Why?” Jin cries. “Why would you force her to see some stupid river?”

Jungkook pauses to consider why he would do such a strange thing, before pointing accusingly at you. You blink, staring in confusion at the tip of his tiny index finger.

“Because she won’t shut up until she does.” Jungkook says. “She’s going to keep being miserable and sulky and annoying until she gets what she wants- do you really want to put up with that for the rest of your life?”

Both Jin and Jungkook turn their heads in eerie unison to stare contemplatively at you. You shrink under their gaze. Jin sighs in defeat and releases Jungkook from his clutches. Jungkook crows in delight and darts away, flapping his wings cheerfully. Jin just continues to stare at you.

“Why didn’t you say something?” He asks quietly, almost drowned out beneath the sound of Jungkook celebrating his freedom. “If you were upset and you just wanted to come here for a quick trip, we could have told your mother and gone together. Instead, you lied to us and snuck off so that we’d never have known what happened to you! And I… I thought you were leaving forever. That you were running off without saying goodbye. I wouldn’t have… I wouldn’t have been as mad if I’d known it was just a quick trip.”

Jin’s heartfelt confession has you choked up and you duck your head to hide the guilty tears that well up in your eyes. In all honesty… You don’t really deserve a friend like him. The fact that he is here, with you, in this realm, is testament to the kind of person he is. He couldn’t leave you, even when you’d hurt him and that makes you feel sick to your stomach. Your eyes flick to where his hand rests at his side. It is completely healed now but the dried blood remains. Jin does not seem to have noticed he’s even injured.

“Well then let’s go!” Jungkook says, finally stilling from his excited zooming through the air. “Let’s see that river and get this over and done with!”

You nod, and get to your feet, dusting the dirt off your pants and stretching your hand out, towards Jin.

“Let’s go.” You tell him. Instead of accepting it and letting you pull him to his feet, however, Jin just stares at your hand in confusion. He gazes up at you and you don’t understand the expression on his face. He glances down at his apple watch, which has somehow survived the transition between realms unscathed. It lights up with the time back in the human realm. He swallows nervously.

“I… I actually had plans, (Y/N). In the other realm.” He says softly. You drop your hand when he gets to his feet himself and awkwardly dusts himself off. He spots the blood and winces, grabbing at the hem of his shirt in an attempt to wipe it off. He shoots a furtive look at you. “I… You didn’t even plan to have me along for this trip.” He points out. The blood smears across his shirt. Wordlessly, you pull off your backpack and pull out a bottle of water and a small towel. You dampen the towel and grab his hand, gently wiping off the dried blood without looking at him.

“Yeah.” You admit softly. “I was supposed to only be gone for two hours.” He nods and bites his lip as he watches you clean the last of the blood off.

“I’m not bound to this realm.” He says. “I can go back and wait for you. And if you… if you don’t come back, I can tell Auntie where you’ve gone.”

“You could.” You say softly. Jungkook has gone quiet, watching the exchange between the two of you. His wings hold him aloft in the air as he wisely chooses not to interfere. You release Jin’s hand, now clean of the blood. The skin under it is already fully healed- no one would ever know he had hurt himself in the first place apart from a faint discolouration.

“Then… it’s settled? You two can finish your journey and I can go back home?” He asks. You don’t respond for a moment, still scrutinising the faint, discoloured mark on the back of his hand. Finally, you look up and you can’t really explain the expression on his face. His eyes are sad, resigned. But he almost looks like he’s in pain- like he’s doing something that is hurting him. You suppose it’s always been like that for him- you, at the expense of himself. And you can’t keep asking him to do that anymore. Because Jin is just as important to you as you are to him, and for too long you’ve allowed your relationship to be too one-sided. It is well past the time Jin should have been allowed to live his own life, with his own friends. You shouldn’t have dragged him backwards while clinging as desperately to the past as you did.

“It’s settled.” You finally say. It’s weird- you don’t know why you just expected that he would come along with you. But obviously, if he’s not stuck here like you are, and if he has commitment back home… why would he come with you? He has far better things to do, and this can be your first step in being less selfish towards him. Letting him live his life. “Have fun with your plans.”

Jin nods, seeming mildly surprised, glancing over his shoulder where the portal back to the human realm is a few metres behind him. His eyebrows both fly up. It’s almost like he expected you to protest. He clears his throat awkwardly.

“Good! Good. I will. I’ll… I’ll have fun. So then… I’ll see you off and then I’ll go back.” He says quickly. You nod and glance at Jungkook, who continues to watch the two of you. He’s almost curious, in the way he watches the interaction between the two of you.

“Let’s go then.” You tell the pixie, who nods and lands on your shoulder, his favourite seat.

“See ya, Mr. Guardian.” He says, as a farewell to Jin. Jin squints at him and offers him an acknowledging nod.

“If anything happens to her, I’m tying you to a bug-zapper.” He tells Jungkook, almost cheerfully. He turns and regards you, with a half-smile. “And don’t think I won’t find out if you do anything stupid. Taehyung knows this realm very well and can definitely find your body.”

Despite the dark humour, you find yourself smiling. You shake your head.

“Just go, already.” You urge him. You hesitate for a moment, before stepping in close and pulling him into a hug. Jin smells familiar and warm- like the scent of home mixed with expensive cologne. You don’t know how long it will be before you see him again, but you don’t like leaving things between you on this note. Jungkook makes a noise of annoyance, launching himself backwards off your shoulder to avoid the hug. “I’m sorry. For everything.”

It takes Jin a moment, before he snakes his arms around your waist and pulls you in tightly. He tucks his face into the crook of your neck and shoulder.

“I know.” He answers, before pulling away. “Now hurry up. You’ve got to get back and apologise to your mother asap, you hear me?”

You nod, before retrieving your hello kitty backpack and slinging it once more over your shoulders. Jin watches the two of you with an unreadable expression as you finally turn away and begin to march eastwards, where you know you’ll find the first landmark on your hike.

He watches until you are both gone from view before turning back towards the portal.

After all, you both have separate paths to take.

#kim seokjin x reader #jin x reader #kim seokjin scenario #castlebangtan #bts scenario #writing

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thiswasinevitableid · 4 years

Text

Apology Flowers (Indruck)

@cyborgrabbit requested 63 from the meet uglies: “sometimes I steal flowers from your garden on my way to the cemetery, but today you’ve caught me and have demanded to come with me to make sure the “[person] is [attractive] enough to warrant flower theft” and I’m trying to figure out how to break it to you that we’re on our way to a graveyard.” They added, “If it wasn't a personal Garden but like a large private/public outdoor Garden that Duck was the main care giver for he absolutely would verbally attack anyone who touched his flowers”

Indrid considers the plants before him carefully; he wants variety, but he also wants flowers that fit the occasion and the setting. Roses would be nice, but as a human he can’t get them off the plant easily. He needs his mandibles for that.

He picks snapdragons, some lilies, some foxglove, and a smattering of pink and orange blossoms he can’t quite identify, wrapping them all in one big bouquet in a few sheets of USA Today. He’s so busy preparing himself for the hour ahead that he misses a change in the future and the figure stepping around the bushes.

“Hey man, you know you ain’t supposed to pick those, right?”

He whirls, ill-gotten blossoms clutched to his chest.

“I, ah, I, yes, I, I am aware it is frowned upon in a public garden but none of the ones in the store quite, ah, suited my needs.”

The man, clearly an employee, crosses his arms, “so you decided to take some from the botanical gardens?”

“Yes. You have so may, I assumed a few would not be missed.”

“Maybe they wouldn’t, but if everyone gets it into their heads to take just a few, suddenly whole chunks of the garden are missing and all our hard work is for nothin’. Besides, average folks can’t tell the difference between a common plant that’s easy to replace and one that was a pain in the ass to grow.” He doesn’t sound angry so much as tired, as if he’s had this conversation dozens of times.

“I see your point. I, ah, I can’t really put them back though. May I keep these?”

The man smirks, “sure thing. I’m comin’ with you though. I wanna see if the person you’re given ‘em too is good-lookin enough to warrant flower theft.”

Indrid has zero desire to admit where he’s actually going.

“Ah, but, you are clearly at work. And I’m in a hurry.”

“Lucky for you I just got off and can walk pretty fast.”

Indrid sighs, defeated, “Very well. And no need to walk, I have a car.”

The man follows him to the little sedan he’s been towing behind the ‘Bago. Indrid opens the doors, pausing before he gets in, “are you certain you wish to come with me, Duck Newton? It’s not going to be very entertaining.”

“I’m sure. And how’d you know my name?”

“Name-tag.” Indrid replies automatically, hoping the man is actually wearing one.

Duck shrugs, and climbs into the car. As Indrid turns onto the main road, the gardener asks, “you been to Point Pleasant before?”

“A few times.”

“You got family here?”

“No. My family lives rather far away. Ah, what about you?” His distracted state is a blessing, as it keeps him from accidentally saying Duck’s words along with him.

“I’m from Kepler originally, moved out here for this job. Uh-” Duck turns, looking back at the arch they just drove under, “you sure we’re goin’ the right way?”

“Yes.” He says tightly, pulling into the cemetery parking lot.

“Fuuck” Duck groans, smacking a hand onto his face in embarrassment, “why didn’t you tell me those were for this? Woulda eased up on you a little.”

“I wasn’t sure how to explain it.” He opens the door, “will you be joining me, or do you wish to wait here?”

“I’ll come help you pay your respects, seems the polite thing to do.”

They enter the grounds, Duck removing his hat as they do. There are a few other visitors scattered about, the sky blue above them and the grass pleasantly fresh cut.

Indrid finds the first grave, removes a snapdragon from the bouquet and sets it atop the stone. Stares at the name a moment, long enough to think the words he’d usually say aloud, then walks to the next grave he needs to visit. He knows their order by heart.

He’s expecting Duck to become bored with his wandering, or try to talk with him, or offer some thoughtful but useless platitudes. But the human simply follows him from grave to grave, keeping a respectful distance between them.

Indrid doesn’t cry, he never does during this. But with Duck near him, he feels like he should. A human would cry, would they not? Only a monster would remain so unmoved.

Not all of them are buried here, and so after a half hour they return to the car.

Indrid stares at the wheel, “I have one more stop to take flowers to. I can drop you somewhere else if you’d like.”

“I’ll come with you. Come this far. But uh…”

“Indrid. You were about to ask my name. It’s Indrid.”

“Right, yeah. Look, Indrid, you seem like you’re dealin with somethin heavy and, well, I don’t feel quite right leavin you to deal with it alone. But if you need me gone, I can go.”

“I’d very much like your company on this next part.”

“You got it.”

They drive in silence, and Indrid turns on the radio because human music is one of his favorite things. Duck hums along at one point, the noise off-key and charming enough to make Indrid forget what’s ahead of him.

When they approach the memorial, Duck says softly, “ah, thought I recognized some of the names, couldn’t place where. The Silver Bridge Collapse.”

“Yes.” Indrid sits down on the ground near the first row of bricks inscribed with names of those he failed to save. He sets the remaining flowers on a nearby stone, so it will be clear what they are for.

A scuff as Duck sits down next to him.

“Did you know someone on the bridge.”

“Not exactly, no” Indrid sets his hands on his knees, focuses his gaze on cracked ground.

“I, uh, I think what you doin’ is real noble. Most folks come and just visit the Mothman statue.”

“I’ve seen Mothman plenty of times, I do not need to see him anymore.”

“Nicest ass in West Virginia.”

Indrid snorts in surprise, glancing over at Duck.

“Sorry, tend to goof when I’m feelin’ awkward.”

“It’s alright. My actions are less noble than you perhaps think. I, ah, I was there. The day it happened. I suppose you could say I have a, ah, a very intense case of survivors guilt.”

“Oh, Indrid, I’m so fuckin sorry. That must have been terrifyin.” Duck rests his hand on his knee and Indrid starts. He hasn’t been touched on purpose in two years, maybe more.

“It was. I come back whenever I can, to, to pay my respects. To say I’m sorry. Sorry that I couldn’t save them. Sorry that I failed.”

“Hold up now, you didn’t fail no one. Bridge collapse was an accident.”

“But-”

“Let’s say even if you, I dunno, had some way of seein’ it comin, you’re just one guy. One guy can do a lot, but he can only do so much. Trust me, I know. Whatever happened on the bridge, it wasn’t your fault.”

“I…” no one’s ever said that to him so sincerely, so plainly. But as the story he’s told himself all these years starts to crumble, emotion seeps through the cracks.

He shudders, head collapsing into his hands. The strong arm wraps around his shoulders and he crumples, falling against Duck’s chest. Through the silent, sharp tears, he tries to be polite, tries not to make the man feel Indrid is any strnager than he already must.

“I’m s-sorry, I shouldn’t, you don’t need to-”

“Hush now” Duck murmurs, hugging him, “just get it all out.”

Indrid does, streaking his face with and wetting Duck’s shirt with tears. When they finally abate, his mind is pleasingly clear, save for one question.

“Why are you being so kind to me?”

“Because it seems like someone needs to be. Plus, was kinda a dick earlier.”

Indrid snickers at his candor, “You were right to scold me for picking those flowers. Perhaps I should grow my own. There must be a way to do so inside a small space.”

“Can think of a few.”

In all the futures, Duck clears his throat and says that even so, he should be going and that it was nice to meet Indrid.

“If you, uh, if you want, could brainstorm so with you over dinner.” A warm hand rubs his upper arm, soothing and protective.

He sits up but stays in Duck’s arms, looking down at him, “I would, but you do not need to ruin your evening for my sake.”

“Wouldn’t call gettin’ to know you more ‘ruinin’ somethin’. Plus, you’re still in a raw spot. You telling me you wanna spent the rest of your evenin’ with your own thou-”

“No, no I do not.” Indrid says flatly.

“C’mon, some friends of mine have a real nice place to eat near the gardens. French Onion Soup is to die for.”

“I have never had it.”

“Fuck, really? Well now we gotta go.” Duck smiles, his mellow enthusiasm contagious, and by the time they’re in the car Indrid is smiling too.

Dinner really is delicious, though Indrid prefers the pie to the soup (though he must admit he enjoys watching the pleasure on Duck’s face as he eats said soup). Duck asks him about his travels, eagerly shares stories about the garden, and shows him pictures of his cat. When Indrid mentions he draws, Duck asks to see the little pocket sketchbook he carries, and proceeds to tell him a half-dozen times how amazing it is. He also hears Duck laugh for the first time, a ridiculous sound that he wants to hear a hundred times more.

They talk until closing time, no longer across from each other but side by side, as Duck had hopped around to Indrid’s booth to show him more pictures of the gardens. The human offers his arm, and they walk at a leisurely pace. When he reaches the car he hesitates, then hugs Duck. The shorter man hugs him back.

“Thank you, Duck, for everything.”

“You’re welcome. You stayin in town?”

“For awhile, yes.”

“Well, hopefully I’ll see you around.” Duck slowly retracts from the hug, tips his hat with a wink and heads to his car. Indrid gets into his own, watches Duck drive away before heading towards the trailer park. As he reaches into his pocket for his keys, he finds a folded slip of paper with the words “dinner and movie tomorrow?” followed by a phone number.

He grabs his phone, and hurriedly dials.

And in every future, including the one that comes to pass, Duck answers the phone with a smile.

#Indruck #indrid cold/duck newton #meet ugly #TAZ Amnesty #prompt fills

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bubble-tea-bunny · 5 years

Text

sucker

[billy batson x reader]

author’s note: this was such a fun movie. enjoy <3

word count: 2,223

It’s official. Billy Batson is a living cliche.

In his defense, he didn’t mean to be one (though who the hell would ever?) and it just sort of… happened. He couldn’t just control that rumbling in the pit of his stomach, that was most certainly not hunger but something else, something like (oh hell here we go again)… like butterflies, when Mary introduced you as her friend and the tutor she’d agreed to help him find because without going into a lot of detail his French grade isn’t looking too great. Well, not yet anyway. That’s why you came into the picture.

He’d been thoroughly caught off guard by how pretty you were, and it hit him like a ton of bricks. Hard enough, it would seem, to turn him into a fucking poet because okay, yeah, sure, his French grade is questionable but his English grade is pretty good and he supposes he’s feeling that same surge of inspiration all those famous old writers did when they discovered the perfect muse. He could probably wax lyrical about the smile that seems to live on your face and has made a home alongside the rest of your soft features and he really needs to stop—

Frankly, it’s embarrassing, the way you make him feel. Teenaged boys having crushes is normal, it’s expected, it’s whatever, but he’s skeptical that an infatuation to this degree could be. When his English teacher assigns writing a poem as their homework one night, the first thoughts swirling through his head about what he could put on the paper involved you in some capacity. Of course, no matter what he wrote it wouldn’t be good since he doesn’t actually write poems, they’re not his thing, but his teacher might give him an A anyway because his rhymes and meter may be shit but the content is mushy and showcasing a range of feelings most don’t even think a teenaged boy can have but Billy can hear his teacher now, remarking that he didn’t peg Billy for such a romantic even though he’s not.

(Is it bad that you make him want to be?)

He doesn’t write about you. He thinks writing a poem about how much he likes you is going overboard, even for him. A walking, talking cliche has to have its limits too. Instead he writes about some stupid teen-angst bullshit that’s still textbook for a fourteen year old but it’s a cliche he’s more comfortable with putting out there. Besides, if you were the subject of his poem and his teacher tried to ask who he was writing about, he’d probably die right there. At least teenaged angst scrawled on a piece of notebook paper was enough to get an A and warranted no questions.

The only person he can’t hide it from is Freddy but that’s no surprise. Freddy figures it out by himself because he’s smart, sometimes too smart for his own good, and Billy doesn’t want to ask him why he’s staring at him like that so he doesn’t and all he says is Could you stop that? and Freddy says No because of course he does, and he plops down into his desk chair, the wheels rolling back slightly from his momentum.

“You like her, don’t you?”

Billy drops his backpack down onto his bed, having brought it back up after studying with you in the dining room for the past hour, and plops down next to it. “What? No.”

Freddy hums and he is not at all convinced and Damn it, Billy, you need to find a place to put your heart that isn’t your fucking sleeve. “Really? ‘cuz you perk up whenever you see her and watch her like a lovesick puppy.”

“I do not,” Billy shoots back, wishing this conversation would end. But he’s made a wish to a bad genie because the exact opposite happens.

“Do too. Thought I could see a tail wagging.”

“Shut up.”

“It’s almost kind of cute.”

“Shut up!” Billy groans and lays back on his bed, and his hands are over his face to conceal his reddening cheeks. Since they’re both preoccupied with that, he has nothing with which to cover his ears and so he hears clearly the sound of Freddy’s laughter.

“You’re too easy to break, dude,” Freddy states as he calms down and regathers his breath, though he still huffs out the occasional chuckle.

Billy’s hands drop back down to his sides and he does his best to angle his head to look at Freddy. “You can’t tell anyone, and you definitely cannot tell Mary.” Because if Mary knows, then you will know, because you’re best friends and she tells you everything.

Freddy holds his hands up, palms out. “I won’t. Promise.”

Billy knows Freddy will keep his promise, so now, the only way you could possibly learn about his feelings is if he confessed them to you. Which, for the record, he doesn’t plan to do, and the only way it would come out is by total accident. He doesn’t count on it coming to that because he has a good grip on himself when you’re around, and he does not stare at you like a lovesick puppy that’s ridiculous.

… He doesn’t, right?

Even when he’s flying around the city looking for crime to thwart, you don’t leave his mind. He daydreams about saving you and sweeping you off your feet. He imagines how thankful you’d be as you look up at him with bright eyes and he’ll say it’s just another day but it wouldn’t be, no; it’d be very special because he’s saved someone special to him.

But he’s never run across you when he’s assumed his alter ego, but he’s not at all bummed because it means you’re safe, and that matters more. He’s content to leave his daydreams as just that, and he can pretend that it’s your cat he’s coaxing out of a tree to bring to safety, that you’re the one who’d seen him walk past and offered to buy him an ice cream cone from the nearby parlour as your treat, that he’s helping you cross the street.

Well, okay, no, that last one doesn’t really make sense because you wouldn’t need assistance crossing a street and the old lady whose arm is hooked around his for balance is at least four times your age.

When they’re safely on the other side, she thanks him, and at that same moment, Billy notices a dog farther down the block running at full speed, harness around its chest and leash dragging on the ground behind it. He quickly bids goodbye to the old lady then zooms toward the escaped pet, managing to catch up to it before it tries to step onto the busy road.

“Hey there,” he murmurs quietly, kneeling down to scratch its head and also to make sure it doesn’t try to get away again. He spots the tag on the collar and turns it so he can see the name: Lucky. He looks up and glances around for any sign of the owner, but as of yet, there is none. Had Lucky been too fast? Not fast enough for his owner to lose sight of him, surely.

As if on cue, someone comes rushing around the corner, and Billy’s eyes widen when he realizes it’s you. He clears his throat and tries to act casual as you approach, thoroughly out of breath. Needing a few seconds to gather his composure, he looks away to find the end of Lucky’s leash and picks it up.

“Thank you so much,” you force out between breaths. Your chest is heaving from how hard you’d been running, and who knows how far you’d gone? Or how far you might have left to go if Billy hadn’t been here?

Billy smiles and stands, handing you the leash. “It’s no problem.”

You take it, slipping the loop around your wrist. “I went to get coffee and tied his leash to a pole, but I guess I hadn’t done it up tight enough since, well…” You trail off and shrug, wordlessly referring to your current situation.

You’re briefly distracted when you feel Lucky’s nose nudging at your leg, and you glance down at him. His mouth is open, tongue hanging out, and he looks like he’s smiling and his tail is wagging so rapidly it’s a blur. He probably doesn’t even realize what he’s just done, and it seems you can’t be mad at him when he’s staring up at you like that, for you sigh lightly and bend a bit at the knees to pet the fluffy canine behind the ears.

All the while, Billy is staring at you, then down at Lucky, then back again and is that what Freddy’s been talking about? That he watches you like that? Because Billy doesn’t think so. He doesn’t look like that at all—

You straighten up and turn to him and he grins automatically, feeling sheepish yet rather overjoyed to be the center of your attention and oh God Freddy is totally right. But he can’t choke now! He needs to be cool, needs to play it cool. He’s saved your dog and you’re watching him with the bright eyes he imagined you would have and he can’t ruin the moment.

“Well”—Think of something cool, Billy!—“it was lucky I got here just in time right?” He chuckles amusedly but on the inside he’s cringing, immediately regretting the decision to let that leave his mouth and you probably think he’s super lame but he won’t fault you for it because he thinks he’s super lame too.

However, it seems you share no such sentiments because you laugh, and as the sound graces his ears, Billy swears his heart does a flip. “Yeah, it was,” you agree with a nod.

Soon a silence settles between you and you’re simply watching each other, and honestly Billy’s okay with this because it’s an overcast day and the lighting is flattering on you and it’s day one all over again, the ton of bricks hitting him in the face because your eyes are gentle and your smile is charming and he is lovesick, he is, and you’re both what set the butterflies loose in the first place and the only thing that can get them to settle down.

“Um…” you interrupt the quiet, and Billy’s brows raise like he’s been broken from a trance as he waits for you to continue. “I should probably get going. My coffee is probably ready by now.” You point back over your shoulder and it looks like you aren’t pointing at anything, but he knows you’re talking about the cafe.

Billy grins, trying his best to hide his disappointment that his run-in with you is coming to an end already. “Oh. Yeah, no problem.”

You start taking a few steps backwards, lifting a hand to give a slight wave, smiling lopsidedly. “Thanks again.”

When you’ve twisted around, beginning to walk back the way you came, Billy doesn’t leave right away, merely watching you for some seconds and committing every detail of this encounter to memory: the weather and the street name and how sweet you’d been and he thinks he’s going to start dreaming of your smile but that’s not such a bad thing to dream of at all.

And so, with a small smile of his own, he takes a deep breath and turns his focus to the sky, prepared to set off and continue his route around the city. Just before his feet leave the concrete sidewalk, he hears a jingle, and it grows louder as whatever it belongs to gets closer to him. His eyes lower just in time to see that the jingle is from Lucky’s collar, and he’s running behind you as you come jogging back.

Billy opens his mouth, about to ask if something is wrong, but he doesn’t get the chance to. You don’t slow down the closer you get, coming right up to him so quickly he lifts his arms reflexively to steady you in case you actually do run into him. But you don’t, stopping right before you can do so and setting a hand on his shoulder to brace yourself as you tiptoe and kiss him on the cheek.

Your hand slips back down to your side and Billy’s eyes are wide like he can’t just believe what happened. He stares down at you, utterly speechless, but it seems you are too. At first your expression mimics his, eyes widened in shock, but then it melts away and you’re flashing a toothy grin up at him. Your cheeks warm and redden with a light blush and you divert your gaze, suddenly shy. Billy feels his chest tighten and he’s beginning to think he’s falling in love with you.

No words are exchanged as you make your leave a second time but they needn’t be. You look over your shoulder at him to give one last wave, and he returns the gesture. Once you and Lucky have disappeared around the corner, he takes off, feeling lighter than air and like the biggest, baddest monster could be thrown his way and he’d defeat it in a heartbeat because this is truly his lucky day.

#shazam imagine #shazam x reader #billy batson imagine #billy batson x reader #bubble-tea-bunny #queue

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lovelylogans · 5 years

Text

the worst in me

NARISSA: Ah, all this nauseating talk of true love's kiss, it really does bring out the worst in me. You know I've been thinking, if I'm going to remain Queen, I'm gonna need some sort of story when I go back. Hmm... What if a giant vicious beast showed up, and killed everyone? And poor defenseless Queen Narissa, she just couldn't save them! Let's begin with the girl who started it all, shall we?! ROBERT: Over my dead body. NARISSA: Alright. I'm flexible.

-enchanted, 2007

ao3 | read my other fics | coffee?

warnings: remus, maybe unsympathetic thomas?, confusion/bitterness, self doubt/hatred, mentions of animal cruelty

pairings: none

words: 1,548

notes: so, this is for the 13 days of halloween prompt over at @sanderssidescelebrations! today’s prompt is dragon witch! this is my first time writing the garbage man, so i hope i did him justice! also i better not see any remrom in the comments/tags!

R—No, no, it’s Roman now, Roman Roman Roman—tightens his fingers around the hilt of his sword, his free one into a fist. His hands shouldn’t be shaking. They shouldn’t.

He’s done this a hundred thousand million times before. The Imagination is still his realm, still his place, despite the fact that...

Well. Despite the fact that he didn’t feel like him very much, anymore.

But a jaunt into the Imagination could change that. He’ll run around, save some people, feel more like him again. Or, well. The him he’s supposed to be now. Right? Because he’s supposed to be the good part, isn’t he? He’s supposed to be all damsels and dragons and danger, outwitting the enemy and saving the day. That’s him. That’s Roman.

...Right?

He doesn’t know. He should know, but he doesn’t. Since The Split (it’s warranted capitals, in his mind, and he wonders if they’ve kept enough similarities that it’s warranted the same in his mind, too) Roman’s felt... off. Confused. He finds himself shying away from things he’d have fully enthused about before—now he hates things he’d liked, and he likes things he’d hated, and everything is upside-down and inside-out and it’s like his whole existence has been thrown into a maze in a fun-house full of distorted mirrors, and he can’t get out of it, but he’s trying.

So. Imagination. Damsels. Dragon-slaying. Dashing sword-fights, magic spells, a prince in disguise—but is that his thing now, or his? Is disguising himself good or bad? Is sword-fighting good or bad? Who’s got what?

Like he said—he’s trying.

He follows his lines, even if everything’s changed around him—some of his usual subjects have vanished, replaced by new ones, scrubbed clean, and they act like that’s the way it’s always been, so he does too. The whole thing is straight out of a storybook—a (new) page comes to his palace, tells him of a fair maiden who’s been abducted by a (new) dragon witch, in an (old) crumbling tower that’s been the set of a fair few dramatic reenactments before. So he gets on his (new) horse, which doesn’t stink of the stables like his old horse, Phillipe, did, doesn’t have the pretty, burnished copper coat Phillipe did, but rather this one is pure white and only tarnished by streaks of gold in its mane. He isn’t sure what to name it. Caspian? Gwendolyn? Something very fairytale and innocent and pure?

He gets on his unnamed horse. He examines his (new) sword in its (old) scabbard. He rides through the forest.

Some things have changed and he has no idea why—the flora and fauna swap between familiar and alien—and some things have changed and he knows only too well why they might have changed. But he doesn’t want to question it. He’s supposed to be the good one now. If he questions the status quo now, maybe there’ll be a new new one, who knows how to smile and wink just so and is always kind and gallant and never screws up and never comes up with nicknames that sound mean.

Maybe he’ll be called Romeo, or something equally saccharine.

Roman snorts, and then immediately shies away from the thought, like some bolt of lightning will come to strike him down, strike him in two—or would it be three, then? Because if the bad one is already taken and the good one isn’t good enough anymore, what’ll happen to that one? Will he just be thrown aside? Like a toy that’s lost all entertainment value, replaced by something newer and shinier?

He’ll try harder. He will. He’ll be the best, most perfect, most fairytale prince that ever walked the earth. He won’t ever, ever find out.

“Sorry,” he tells the too-blue sky above him, as if anyone is listening.

And maybe someone is—because he can hear a scream, and a distant, furious roar.

The dragon witch. Roman’s heartbeat starts to thunder and finally, finally, the fight, the rescue, that’s his favorite part, he’ll go out there and he won’t be able to think about being good or bad or right or wrong, he’ll only think about parries and ripostes and lunges, and he digs his heels into the horse’s side with a “HYAH!” and goes galloping further into the depth of these recognized-foreign woods, to the tower, to the climax of the story—

The (new) dragon witch is clutching to the tower, gouging out stones with its massive claws, sending dust and debris scattering upon the ground like snowfall. It roars, again—it has black scales, with almost sickly-green accents, two wings flapping, and massive, curving teeth that would surely gouge Roman right through, if he stepped wrong of them.

Well. It’s certainly a foreboding villain, for his first solo fray back into the imagination, but he mustn’t let any misgivings halt him—he urges the horse forward, and bellows up at the witch, “Unhand her, villain!”

Strangely, the dragon seems to frown at him, and he calls down, voice cartoonishly villainous, “What happened to Phillipe?”

Roman falters, as the horse cants in place. He knows that voice. It’s a new voice, but he knows it, knows it as it’d been the first thing he’d heard after the split.

“Is that... you?” He calls uncertainly.

The dragon seems to shudder, before abruptly, it’s shrinking, downsizing and downsizing and changing until it’s in the shape of a man—a familiar man, wearing black and an almost-sickly green, a demented grin, and a mustache. He’s got bags under his eyes that Roman can see, even from here, ones like Anxiety’s got, and he feels a traitorous spark of concern.

And, for an alarming moment, Roman is jealous. Why did he get the kickass transformation powers—into a dragon?! That’s so cool!

Or at least, that’s what he would have thought before The Split—now, his brain is tossing up example after example of villains transforming into animals—Ursula into Vanessa, Jafar into a genie, Maleficent into a dragon—it’s a sign of evil. It’s a sign of something Bad, and he’s supposed to be the Good One. But half his brain is still stuck on Before, while half of it is stuck on After, and he doesn’t know which thought is his, and he doesn’t know what he believes now, and—

“Did you send Phillipe to the glue factory?”

Roman recoils from the very thought—he’d spent days grooming Phillipe’s fur, feeding him apples and carrots and cubes of sugar, he’d loved Phillipe—and the other him laughs.

Or—no. The other Roman? The other twin? The other side? Is he technically his own side, now? If they were both Creativity, then what—

His confusion gets abruptly set to the side when there’s another, terrified scream within the tower. Roman shakes his head, hard, as if he’ll be able to dislodge this whole crisis of personality like he’s erasing an etch-a-sketch, and solidifies his grip on his sword’s handle, not quite bringing it out of the scabbard yet.

“Unhand her, foul beast!”

He blows a raspberry, swinging frightfully from the side of the tower, only held by his boot, lodged between where a brick had been dislodged and his grip on one of the (new) spires—he could fall, and what would happen then?

Is he supposed to care? The death of a villain would be a good thing now, wouldn’t it? But then if that was what was meant to happen, then why bother to keep them split in the first place, why not just divulge the bad, keep the good? Is it bad that he’s thinking about this? Murder is bad, it’s definitely bad, he shouldn’t be thinking about it, but—

“Boooorrrr-iiiiing. C’mon, give me an insult with some pep to it, aren’t you supposed to be Creativity now?!”

Roman grits his teeth, and snaps before he can even think of stopping himself, “Aren’t you supposed to be the scary one, Ja-nefarious?!”

For a moment, Roman thinks he’s gotten him, but that’s before that demented grin widens and that worrying crazed look in his eyes shines brighter.

“I said an insult, not a compliment!” He preens, and Roman scowls.

“What, you can do better?” He says scornfully.

“Well, duh,” he says, and then, gleefully, “You’re boring now—Roman, isn’t it?”

Roman forces his hackles not to rise.

“I mean, think about it,” he wheedles. “Which of us is more useful—the one who comes up with the original ideas, the unorthodox ones, or the one who comes up with the same—“ He flicks a dismissive hand, nose wrinkling. “White horse, sword, save-the-girl kind of story, over and over and over again?”

Roman feels an angry flush take over his cheeks. “Unorthodox doesn’t have to mean murder.”

“Why not?” He said, and he sounded genuinely curious—like a small child asking why the sky’s blue, not posing the question of if murder’s genuinely punishable or not. “Which one will make more of an impact—if I drop this sweet, innocent damsel from the tower, or you saving her?”

“Don’t you dare,” Roman snarls, and the other one—Remus—bares his still-animalistically-curved teeth in a grin.

“Watch me.”

With a wild yell, Roman unsheathes his sword, and charges.

(He wonders if it makes him bad that a fight and seeing his brother him is the first thing that’s made him feel semi-normal since The Split.)

#my post #text #my fic #this occurred to me..... pretty soon after remus' reveal?#and this gave me an opportunity to write about it #so #sanders sides spooky month

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angelitakundeus · 5 years

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Drop Ship Lifestyle Review

Anyone thinking about starting a business dropshipping online have likely come across Anton Kraly’s advertisements for his Drop Ship Lifestyle course. This course claims it’ll provide you with all the knowledge and training you’ll need to set up and run your dropshipping business; it’s also supposed to teach you how to expand your venture once successful.

Now, don’t expect me to sell you the course as a wonder, and I’m not affiliated to him in any way. You’ll learn about what it actually offers, and why it’s actually not what you want for your business.

It’s worth noting that Anton has seemingly started his marketing campaign all over again with full power, and this has included a new DSL version. Another interesting addition is an even more convoluted refunds policy, so expect even more troubles if you want to get a refund.

Reviewing the course

There are many resources online that can help you understand the business model a lot better. However, as a basic introduction, dropshipping is a business approach in which you sell products without having to purchase them to build a stock.

It removes the need for initial inventory investment, storing it somewhere, and hoping that you can sell them to earn a profit or at least get your money back.

Brick and mortar stores had been the norm until sales ventured into the internet through eCommerce sites. Still, owners still bought the products from a supplier, receive them, and offer them for a slightly higher price either on their websites or on their stores.

However, dropshipping bypasses the first and second steps by letting you list any product from any supplier at the moment. You only need to purchase the item once a customer places an order. Then, you contact your supplier, buy the product, and have it shipped to your customer’s address.

That way, if you don’t sell any of your items, you’re not risking or losing any money. You only lose the minutes you used to post the products, so you can even change your offers any time until you find a product that you can sell efficiently.

Who is Anton Kraly?

Anton says he’s another guy who was stuck in a regular job with the usual dead end back in the USA, and he chose to go to SE Asia. He went to experience the “digital nomad” lifestyle, so he decided to start a business.

He claims he was then introduced to the dropshipping business model thanks to a friend, so he started to create his own stores via online platforms like Shopify, which let him create his business within a few hours at most.

He then spent several years selling his dropshipping products successfully, and after that, he thought about creating his DSL course so that he could share what he knows with the rest of the world.

From then on, it appears a lot of affiliates got on board, so the course started growing a lot. Today, DSL is among the most recommended online programs for learning how to dropship on your own.

Our objective here is that you find out whether or not that’s actually true or just what the affiliates sell for a profit.

Among the most influential promoters behind the DSL course is Johnny FD. He’s a fellow digital nomad living in Chang Mai, and he constantly claims that this course was the inspiration that took him to creating his own business online; that’s why he dedicates himself to promote the course via the AntonMethod, an affiliate page he uses for that purpose.

Johnny says he made around $3,000 monthly thanks to his dropshipping business selling sun beds and massage tables, but he sold the business not too long ago for a bit over $60,000.

Do note that Johnny also has a course himself, and it’s called “Drop Ship Lab”. However, the course has been inactive for a really long time, so it’s safe to say it’s dead by now.

Why is it popular among reviews?

DSL came out almost 8 years ago, back in 2012. From the get-go, it sported an affiliate marketing program for different marketers to profit from promoting it.

These people would earn up to 50% of the course’s price for each referral. Back then, the entry price was almost a fourth part of what it costs now: $250, so that means each referral would net you $125; it’s a dream come true, even more so for people just starting.

People following John Chow and others who make $2,000 for each commission won’t be as surprised, especially today, but this was a huge deal back then.

Naturally, the course attracted countless affiliates who wanted to promote it through Clickbank from 2012’s December all the way to November 2014; most people didn’t even know whether or not the course was any good.

It showed on the different reviews made for the course. Virtually all of them were just promoting the same images available on the course’s sales page.

However, it has mostly died out until the recent release and seeming revamp of the course. Most reviews available on the internet are from before 2016, but many may start appearing with its revival.

Of course, Affiliates competed to get on the first results in Google searches, and they even headed over to YouTube and any channels that could get them the audience. Even CPA sites like Flexoffers brokered this offer to myriads of affiliates looking to build their links and handle all the traffic they could get.

As such, Anton ended up having a huge amount of people taking the course, and it got to the point that he claimed to be a multi-millionaire by the start of 2015. Of course, he said that it was from dropshipping, but once you multiply the course’s price by the course’s students count (over 2,500), it’s easy to determine what took him there.

At this moment, something really shady happens: Anton just got rid of all the affiliate marketers who had promoted his course and netted him the new members. In less than a day, the entire affiliate program vanished without any kind of warning, paying all pending commissions.

After doing this, he installed a new rule for people wanting to promote it: they had to pay and be a member if they wanted to promote it.

In other words, the course turned completely into an MLM business like Wealthy Affiliate or MOBE. Just look for any product available online and its reviews; odds are you’ll see that the writer rated it poorly and compared it to one of those two (or another) courses.

Of course, it’s not as big as other names, but it’s still an MLM network with an (at least) shady past.

When you pay for a subscription and become a DSL member, you can freely promote that course. That’s more enticing than it seems. Let’s say you paid $2,000 for it; that would mean that you just need to get 2 more people to sign up.

Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this approach. It’s a legitimate business practice, and it’s really efficient. However, it does provide you with an idea of how the course became so famous and filled with positive reviews, so don’t just assume it’s because of its quality.

Finally, note that getting refunds with MLM businesses is a real challenge. You need to read every single line on all contracts since most offer you a 30-day guarantee before asking you to follow annoying steps just to prove that you didn’t really benefit from it. Often times, the steps could even cost you or be impossible for some people.

What you really get

This course has grown a lot since it was first released, and it’s now on version 7.0, which was updated back in April of this year (2019). While it has changed quite a bit, and it’s certainly larger, the course is still presented like it was during its release: WordPress website with the Optimizepress add-on.

What did change a lot is the price. It was $250 back when it was release, or you could pay $2,997 for the ultimate offer, complete with a store already done for you. If you don’t really die over the main components, you can pay $1,997 for the first iteration of this course.

Back in January 2017, the lowest plan was priced at $997, so you can see it almost quadrupled. Furthermore, as of this article’s writing, the premium plan costs $2,997; the ultimate, done-for-you offer has reached the $4,997 mark.

What feels wrong with this is that most updates are just design changes, a few more videos, and some corrections. It’s not enough (in my opinion) to warrant such a high increase. Don’t take these numbers as give, either; the price is always changing, so if you read this in a few months, it’ll probably be higher.

Back in the 4th version of this course, the course split into 4 different plans. However, the 5th version then removed the basic plan, or at least it merged both the basic and premium plans together, so today, the cheapest plan is $2,997.

However, for the sake of keeping you in context, let’s go through the 3 plans as originally planned. That’ll help you have an idea of what was offered before compared to what is offered right now.

Basic plan

The basic plan started out at $250 during its release, and it was maintained for a few years. However, the last price tag it had was $997 right before it was merged into the premium plan. Version 4.0 had recreated videos, but the content overall was always the same, so it started feeling outdated quickly.

The content was mostly basic: the type of videos you could find online. However, the basic plan did include the entire video course, and it covered almost everything: from explaining the business model to finding your suppliers and growing your business. The problem was mostly whether or not the information was actually good.

The most recent videos added do include more modern concepts like Adwords and an entire design class for eCommerce not available until the 4th version.

Anton advises students to keep organic search away and instead just go to Google Adwords. That means pretty much just to forget about SEOn your website. That’s really a bad idea since you’re giving up free traffic, and using Adwords is also a fairly expensive method, especially for some niches like clothing and electronics.

You also got a custom theme for Shopify with the basic plan, and you could use it to create a store in minutes. The problem with this theme is that there are thousands of people taking the course, and all of them have access to this theme, so you’d risk your store looking too similar to your competition.

Besides, Google ranks duplicate websites lower, and the same is true for most search algorithms.

Premium plan

This subscription come with everything that the basic package included and a few additions. It used to cost $497, and it offered users 55 advanced modules for training as well as access to both the DSLabs and private apps, software and a supplier directory.

The DSLabs is a section with checklists, scripts for supplier contact, and some standard operation procedures ready for you. There’s also an app for Shopify; it automates several processes for your business, but it isn’t the best app available for that purpose.

This plan repeats the same problem as the template from the basic plan (which is also included here). The scripts are the same that thousands of businesses are getting as well, so you’ll just follow the herd if you decide to use them as is.

The best you can do is just call the supplier and request to speak with someone who can make business with you. Emailing is something everyone can do, but you want to show initiative and that you can “get things done”.

The directory does stand out; it’s surprising thanks to the large amount of suppliers you get. However, you can pay for a service like Salehoo to get thousands of suppliers anywhere around the world. Always remember that everyone taking this course will surely hit the same suppliers for business.

Salehoo is just $65, and it has more suppliers and details on each.

Since this plan already had everything from the basic plan, the team decided to just merge the two. As I’m writing this, this plan is the cheapest option, yet it costs $2,997.

Done for you plan

The last package started out at $2,997, and it was the most exclusive and expensive offer on the course. The fact that now the most accessible option has that same price could put a lot of people off.

This package has the DSL team setting up the website so that you don’t have to. You’re then able to use the free time for learning the content and growing your business without any distractions.

Aside from the website, it also offers 2 hours for you to call Anton directly and get coaching. You also get 2 exclusive tickets for a DSL yearly retreat that’s held in either Vietnam, Laos, or Thailand.

Thailand is the most common destination, and the retreats gather different nomads from anywhere around the globe for networking and sharing in general.

I didn’t pay for this package, so I can’t really tell you a lot about it. However, people signing up for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd versions of this course got their retreat tickets every year for a lot less (sever thousands).

You should try to hit Anton with an email, but you can definitely go to that retreat without paying the package’s price. It’s actually a bit unfair for some people, and I can understand that.

DSL version 5

The 5th version of the course is one of the most important changes it’s gotten since its release. For starters, it removed the basic plan and merged it with the premium package to make a single offer; however, it’s just removing the basic subscription since the premium already had everything from it.

It added a new module regarding a USA business setup if you’re overseas, which was actually a pretty good addition. It also raised the asking price to $1,997 for the package ($1,000 cheaper than today).

This version also emphasized the MLM aspect of the course. Even more so, the page where you sign up for the course doesn’t show any prices until about the 3rd sales video starts.

During the videos, the course promises a solid refunds policy with the 30-day guarantee, but you must read every detail carefully, for this is a catchy statement. All conditions are fairly reasonable, but you need to prove you completed the program before you ask for a refund. You won’t get it if you can’t show that.

The problem is how this is a contradiction to its 30-day guarantee.

The guarantee says that you get access to all the content without risks, and you can try all the content. You can email support if you aren’t satisfied within the first month, proving you’re completing tasks but not seeing results. The refund is 100% of what you paid.

It also says that you must only join if your intention is to complete the tasks since that’s necessary for getting the results advertised. If a refund is requested, you need to prove you’ve completed these tasks.

As you can see, the guarantee says that you can take the entire course for free, and you can cancel your subscription at any time as long as you can show you’ve been working on it and achieving the tasks.

There’s zero mentions on having to finish the complete course before you ask for a reason, so you’re left to guess which of the two conditions are worth following. Do note that taking the entire course may take you more than 30 days, so you can see how sketchy the whole policy is.

Reasons not to buy it

Now you know pretty much everything you can learn about the course itself and what you receive after signing up. You may have formed your own conclusions regarding if you want it or not, but let me explain why you should not buy the course before you make the final call.

Price

As with similar courses on similar topics, the price really goes beyond the content and value it actually offers. While it started off somewhat OK at $250 for the basic plan, the constant increases with each version took it far off from what it should actually cost, especially with so many resources available online for much less or for free.

So, no. This course isn’t worth more than what it asked at first, and it’s definitely not worth $2,997.

If you want to build a business on dropshipping, you want to take the time to analyze all the costs. Anton says you need hard work before you have a successful eCommerce and become rich; you need to invest your money if you want to make it.

Anton said his business started with just $29 before making him $1.8 million, but there are costs involved with building your site, hosting, marketing, etc. If you don’t know how to do something (and there’s always stuff you won’t know), then you can add hiring other people to that, and that’s a few thousands extra.

If you add this course’s price to all the investment you must make, then you’ll quickly inflate your budget, and it’ll reach unnecessarily high levels. Sellers definitely inflated the price thanks to its popularity, and it’s understandable.

However, the content and quality of the course itself hasn’t grown with its cost.

Shopify exclusive

This course assumes you’re going to build your store with Shopify. In fact, Anton has affiliates links to the platform, and he’ll make money from every purchase from his links. Additionally, the only training available on store building is for Shopify, so you’ll have to get extra knowledge from different sources if you want to use another platform.

Another problem behind that is the fact that Shopify can be quite expensive for a lot of people, especially for newcomers.

Hosting on Shopify costs about $300 every year. If you want a larger business, then you also want to invest on the standard plan for $79 each month, which makes it to about $900 every year. Add a transaction fee for every sale that can go up to 2% and the costs for additional apps you integrate into your store.

Outside from the fundamentals, the free templates on Shopify aren’t the best available, and most people will be using them. That means you want to get a premium theme as well or hire a developer. Getting a theme can add up to $100-200 more.

You can see how the exclusiveness is an issue. You’re paying for an overpriced the course that focuses only on methods requiring you spend more money.

Niche content

The knowledge offered on finding a niche for your business is just mediocre, and even free resources like YouTube videos and articles give you more depth and value. In fact, most negatives reviews for the DSL course will gravitate around this issue.

One of the most important steps to setting up your business is to know what you want to sell, and choosing a bad niche will kill your business from the first day. You want to take your time studying the market and find a niche that’s not oversaturated or already take by a giant like Amazon.

The only consolation is that Anton offers to validate your niche for you before you start your venture. The problem is that even this can be sketchy depending on how you look at it: it may be help, or you may give him a great idea, so he could easily tell you not to do it and keep the niche for himself.

Lack of SEO

As we already mentioned when describing the content in the course, Anton doesn’t endorse organic traffic on search engines, so you can forget about any knowledge regarding SEO and the like.

Anton often says that it simply takes too long to get sales if you take your time on SEO, and that’s why he recommends you go straight for Adwords. While it could make sense for some, it’s yet another hefty expense for many entrepreneurs.

Now, let’s paint a picture.

You just paid $2,997 for the course and $79 for your website. Well, you also need to spend around $500 on Google advertising. Now, a lot of people can do it, and many actually do, but there are people who will take the course just to realize that their venture is way out of their reach.

The sales video won’t state the costs for the methods taught by this course, and chances are you’re only going to find that out once you finished the course and started putting the lessons into practice.

Anton tries to lessen the pain by offering coupons and some training modules on the platform, but this approach is still difficult, and anyone without experience will probably just burn their budget quickly and get no sales or even leads.

Anton only teaches you about what worked for his business, and it seems SEO isn’t one of them, so you’re left to figure out if you’re as lucky as he was.

Other members joined for less

This is another issue I already mentioned: most people you see in the students’ community subscribed to it earlier and for a lot less than you. Since the course started getting upgraded, they stated that everyone who paid first would have free access to all versions. Anton set the price to $497 before version 3 closed so that he could have more money for developing the 4th version.

That means that all members got the content for $1,000 less than you (at least, remember it started out at $250). They also have free tickets for the retreat that would cost you almost $5,000.

This isn’t just paying more than others; it means you’re severely handicapped. Why?

First, your competitors started off with lower expenses, but that’s just the start. Remember that the content doesn’t really get updated with each version besides some design and retakes. The knowledge offered today is roughly the same available when it was released.

Think about the templates and directories again; other people got them years before you, so they’re probably saturated already. You won’t really get good results by using them.

As such, keep in mind that most people who have taken the course are probably inactive. They’ve either reached success and left the community, or they just bombed or realized dropshipping wasn’t the gold mine they expected.

Non-US students

Until nearly 3 years ago, the course didn’t offer any knowledge for people wanting to settle an overseas business or outside the country. It lacked nothing on the legal side of things and taxes, so students had to go to another source if they had doubts on these.

If you’re not from the US, then you need to qualify as a type of USA entity before working with dropshippers there. If you want to do the same with European dropshippers, then you want to be registered as a business or trader there with a VAT.

Anton simply skipped the overall legal side of things for US or European supplier, likely because of how popular is AliExpress. You can register in Delaware or Wyoming, but that would lead to an entirely new article.

Luckily, Anton decided to add a brief course on this matter starting 2017. It still isn’t the best you can get, and you’ll likely need other resources, but at least it’s there.

Is dropshipping a good business?

That’s a tricky answer depending on whom you ask. Dropshipping isn’t the same gold mine it was almost 10 years ago when people started getting into it, and Amazon wasn’t as huge as it is right now.

However, now it’s really hard to compete with the prices at Amazon, and you have to spend a lot of time and research to find a niche that you can take advantage of over Amazon. Just make sure to keep track of Best Buy or Walmart.

Most suppliers will also prefer to work with Amazon than smaller independent businesses like dropshippers. They can actually guarantee the sales suppliers want.

With the dozens of courses like DSL, hundreds of dropshipper now want to start the same business with the same niches, products, and suppliers –all at the same price.

Making money with dropshipping requires that you set your business apart from the rest; that’s how you can really make money with this model. The issue is how that means going against half the advice available with Drop Ship Lifestyle.

You need to find products and suppliers no one else knows, and that means forgetting about all directories, scripts and themes available in DSL.

So, to answer the question, you can make money from dropshipping, but you need to know how to do so in the right way.

Better resources for your money

If you’re not looking for just a community but to build a prosperous business, then you should look at the following options. For the price of a basic DSL plan, you can buy all of the following and still have something to spare.

eCom Elites

This is easily the best course available for people looking to dropship. You have more than 175 videos, adding up to around 40 hours covering the model, selecting products, marketing, and everything related.

I’ve seen many courses, and promoting a $2,000+ course would get me more money, but I’d rather recommend value, and eCom Elites gives you all you need for just $197. If you wanted the community, you have access to the private Facebook group and weekly videos.

If you’re looking for good information and training to do thigs yourself, then eCom Elites is the best choice, and you don’t even have to empty your bank account.

eCom Turbo (theme)

As I said before, the free Shopify templates aren’t the best you can get, and thousands are probably already using them.

Most people complaining about not getting sales despite the visitors is simply the esthetics of their business and zero mobile responsiveness. While it may look great on desktop, most sales will come from smartphone users.

eCom Turbo takes care of everything you expect from a theme and more. Visitors won’t have to scroll at all to know what they’re going to buy since all the details show above the fold.

You can also personalize this theme to fit any taste. You don’t have to spend hundreds and hours looking for a theme that goes with what you want since you can transform eCom Turbo any way you wish, and it’s just $97 for lifetime access to its updates.

Salehoo

Salehoo is a supplier directory for dropshippers and wholesale contacts. It’s been available for more than 10 years, and its reputation speaks for itself.

Salehoo gives you access to more than 10,000 different resources spread amongst many countries, including the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Europe, so you don’t have to look too hard to find the one that suits you best.

WooCommerce or Shopify

Finally, you need a platform for your website, and these two are the best options

WooCommerce is best for people with experience regarding WordPress and website hosting since it’s completely free. It comes from the folks at WooThemes, and you can customize this add-on however you want. If you want even more options, there are premium plugins for less than $15 on ThemeForest.

The only issue with WooCommerce is that you need to pay for your hosting separately.

Shopify is another choice for people with a bit more money at hand. The cheapest plan is $29, but as I said, you probably want to go for the $79 standard subscription. Besides the initial fee, make sure to take a look at the price structure since your sales volume will change according to it.

Final Verdict

Is It Worth It? Final Verdict

DSL is definitely a promising course, but the cost is simply too high. Besides its initial cost, it only covers the most expensive approaches like Shopify along with Adwords.

By going for the options below, you can start your business on the right foot for less than $1,000, and you can use the extra $2,000 for those Adwords if you want, which will be paired with a solid SEO for organic traffic.

I hope you found this review useful and if you have any questions, please comment down below. I’ll be more than happy to assist you.

Once again, thanks for reading my Dropship Lifestyle Review and I wish you the best of luck.

The post Drop Ship Lifestyle Review appeared first on Only Genuine Reviews.

source https://www.onlygenuinereviews.com/drop-ship-lifestyle-review/

source https://onlygenuinereviews.art.blog/2020/01/09/drop-ship-lifestyle-review/

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johnmuffus · 5 years

Text

Drop Ship Lifestyle Review

Reviewing the course

It removes the need for initial inventory investment, storing it somewhere, and hoping that you can sell them to earn a profit or at least get your money back.

Who is Anton Kraly?

He then spent several years selling his dropshipping products successfully, and after that, he thought about creating his DSL course so that he could share what he knows with the rest of the world.

From then on, it appears a lot of affiliates got on board, so the course started growing a lot. Today, DSL is among the most recommended online programs for learning how to dropship on your own.

Our objective here is that you find out whether or not that’s actually true or just what the affiliates sell for a profit.

Johnny says he made around $3,000 monthly thanks to his dropshipping business selling sun beds and massage tables, but he sold the business not too long ago for a bit over $60,000.

Do note that Johnny also has a course himself, and it’s called “Drop Ship Lab”. However, the course has been inactive for a really long time, so it’s safe to say it’s dead by now.

Why is it popular among reviews?

DSL came out almost 8 years ago, back in 2012. From the get-go, it sported an affiliate marketing program for different marketers to profit from promoting it.

People following John Chow and others who make $2,000 for each commission won’t be as surprised, especially today, but this was a huge deal back then.

It showed on the different reviews made for the course. Virtually all of them were just promoting the same images available on the course’s sales page.

However, it has mostly died out until the recent release and seeming revamp of the course. Most reviews available on the internet are from before 2016, but many may start appearing with its revival.

After doing this, he installed a new rule for people wanting to promote it: they had to pay and be a member if they wanted to promote it.

Of course, it’s not as big as other names, but it’s still an MLM network with an (at least) shady past.

What you really get

Basic plan

The most recent videos added do include more modern concepts like Adwords and an entire design class for eCommerce not available until the 4th version.

Besides, Google ranks duplicate websites lower, and the same is true for most search algorithms.

Premium plan

Salehoo is just $65, and it has more suppliers and details on each.

Since this plan already had everything from the basic plan, the team decided to just merge the two. As I’m writing this, this plan is the cheapest option, yet it costs $2,997.

Done for you plan

This package has the DSL team setting up the website so that you don’t have to. You’re then able to use the free time for learning the content and growing your business without any distractions.

Thailand is the most common destination, and the retreats gather different nomads from anywhere around the globe for networking and sharing in general.

You should try to hit Anton with an email, but you can definitely go to that retreat without paying the package’s price. It’s actually a bit unfair for some people, and I can understand that.

DSL version 5

This version also emphasized the MLM aspect of the course. Even more so, the page where you sign up for the course doesn’t show any prices until about the 3rd sales video starts.

The problem is how this is a contradiction to its 30-day guarantee.

Reasons not to buy it

Price

So, no. This course isn’t worth more than what it asked at first, and it’s definitely not worth $2,997.

However, the content and quality of the course itself hasn’t grown with its cost.

Shopify exclusive

Another problem behind that is the fact that Shopify can be quite expensive for a lot of people, especially for newcomers.

You can see how the exclusiveness is an issue. You’re paying for an overpriced the course that focuses only on methods requiring you spend more money.

Niche content

Lack of SEO

As we already mentioned when describing the content in the course, Anton doesn’t endorse organic traffic on search engines, so you can forget about any knowledge regarding SEO and the like.

Now, let’s paint a picture.

Anton only teaches you about what worked for his business, and it seems SEO isn’t one of them, so you’re left to figure out if you’re as lucky as he was.

Other members joined for less

That means that all members got the content for $1,000 less than you (at least, remember it started out at $250). They also have free tickets for the retreat that would cost you almost $5,000.

This isn’t just paying more than others; it means you’re severely handicapped. Why?

Think about the templates and directories again; other people got them years before you, so they’re probably saturated already. You won’t really get good results by using them.

Non-US students

Luckily, Anton decided to add a brief course on this matter starting 2017. It still isn’t the best you can get, and you’ll likely need other resources, but at least it’s there.

Is dropshipping a good business?

Most suppliers will also prefer to work with Amazon than smaller independent businesses like dropshippers. They can actually guarantee the sales suppliers want.

With the dozens of courses like DSL, hundreds of dropshipper now want to start the same business with the same niches, products, and suppliers –all at the same price.

You need to find products and suppliers no one else knows, and that means forgetting about all directories, scripts and themes available in DSL.

So, to answer the question, you can make money from dropshipping, but you need to know how to do so in the right way.

Better resources for your money

eCom Elites

If you’re looking for good information and training to do thigs yourself, then eCom Elites is the best choice, and you don’t even have to empty your bank account.

eCom Turbo (theme)

As I said before, the free Shopify templates aren’t the best you can get, and thousands are probably already using them.

eCom Turbo takes care of everything you expect from a theme and more. Visitors won’t have to scroll at all to know what they’re going to buy since all the details show above the fold.

Salehoo

Salehoo is a supplier directory for dropshippers and wholesale contacts. It’s been available for more than 10 years, and its reputation speaks for itself.

WooCommerce or Shopify

Finally, you need a platform for your website, and these two are the best options

The only issue with WooCommerce is that you need to pay for your hosting separately.

Final Verdict

Is It Worth It? Final Verdict

DSL is definitely a promising course, but the cost is simply too high. Besides its initial cost, it only covers the most expensive approaches like Shopify along with Adwords.

I hope you found this review useful and if you have any questions, please comment down below. I’ll be more than happy to assist you.

Once again, thanks for reading my Dropship Lifestyle Review and I wish you the best of luck.

The post Drop Ship Lifestyle Review appeared first on Only Genuine Reviews.

source https://www.onlygenuinereviews.com/drop-ship-lifestyle-review/ source https://onlygenuinereviews.tumblr.com/post/190167604772

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ednazermenous · 5 years

Text

Drop Ship Lifestyle Review

Reviewing the course

It removes the need for initial inventory investment, storing it somewhere, and hoping that you can sell them to earn a profit or at least get your money back.

Who is Anton Kraly?

He then spent several years selling his dropshipping products successfully, and after that, he thought about creating his DSL course so that he could share what he knows with the rest of the world.

From then on, it appears a lot of affiliates got on board, so the course started growing a lot. Today, DSL is among the most recommended online programs for learning how to dropship on your own.

Our objective here is that you find out whether or not that’s actually true or just what the affiliates sell for a profit.

Johnny says he made around $3,000 monthly thanks to his dropshipping business selling sun beds and massage tables, but he sold the business not too long ago for a bit over $60,000.

Do note that Johnny also has a course himself, and it’s called “Drop Ship Lab”. However, the course has been inactive for a really long time, so it’s safe to say it’s dead by now.

Why is it popular among reviews?

DSL came out almost 8 years ago, back in 2012. From the get-go, it sported an affiliate marketing program for different marketers to profit from promoting it.

People following John Chow and others who make $2,000 for each commission won’t be as surprised, especially today, but this was a huge deal back then.

It showed on the different reviews made for the course. Virtually all of them were just promoting the same images available on the course’s sales page.

However, it has mostly died out until the recent release and seeming revamp of the course. Most reviews available on the internet are from before 2016, but many may start appearing with its revival.

After doing this, he installed a new rule for people wanting to promote it: they had to pay and be a member if they wanted to promote it.

Of course, it’s not as big as other names, but it’s still an MLM network with an (at least) shady past.

What you really get

Basic plan

The most recent videos added do include more modern concepts like Adwords and an entire design class for eCommerce not available until the 4th version.

Besides, Google ranks duplicate websites lower, and the same is true for most search algorithms.

Premium plan

Salehoo is just $65, and it has more suppliers and details on each.

Since this plan already had everything from the basic plan, the team decided to just merge the two. As I’m writing this, this plan is the cheapest option, yet it costs $2,997.

Done for you plan

This package has the DSL team setting up the website so that you don’t have to. You’re then able to use the free time for learning the content and growing your business without any distractions.

Thailand is the most common destination, and the retreats gather different nomads from anywhere around the globe for networking and sharing in general.

You should try to hit Anton with an email, but you can definitely go to that retreat without paying the package’s price. It’s actually a bit unfair for some people, and I can understand that.

DSL version 5

This version also emphasized the MLM aspect of the course. Even more so, the page where you sign up for the course doesn’t show any prices until about the 3rd sales video starts.

The problem is how this is a contradiction to its 30-day guarantee.

Reasons not to buy it

Price

So, no. This course isn’t worth more than what it asked at first, and it’s definitely not worth $2,997.

However, the content and quality of the course itself hasn’t grown with its cost.

Shopify exclusive

Another problem behind that is the fact that Shopify can be quite expensive for a lot of people, especially for newcomers.

You can see how the exclusiveness is an issue. You’re paying for an overpriced the course that focuses only on methods requiring you spend more money.

Niche content

Lack of SEO

As we already mentioned when describing the content in the course, Anton doesn’t endorse organic traffic on search engines, so you can forget about any knowledge regarding SEO and the like.

Now, let’s paint a picture.

Anton only teaches you about what worked for his business, and it seems SEO isn’t one of them, so you’re left to figure out if you’re as lucky as he was.

Other members joined for less

That means that all members got the content for $1,000 less than you (at least, remember it started out at $250). They also have free tickets for the retreat that would cost you almost $5,000.

This isn’t just paying more than others; it means you’re severely handicapped. Why?

Think about the templates and directories again; other people got them years before you, so they’re probably saturated already. You won’t really get good results by using them.

Non-US students

Luckily, Anton decided to add a brief course on this matter starting 2017. It still isn’t the best you can get, and you’ll likely need other resources, but at least it’s there.

Is dropshipping a good business?

Most suppliers will also prefer to work with Amazon than smaller independent businesses like dropshippers. They can actually guarantee the sales suppliers want.

With the dozens of courses like DSL, hundreds of dropshipper now want to start the same business with the same niches, products, and suppliers –all at the same price.

You need to find products and suppliers no one else knows, and that means forgetting about all directories, scripts and themes available in DSL.

So, to answer the question, you can make money from dropshipping, but you need to know how to do so in the right way.

Better resources for your money

eCom Elites

If you’re looking for good information and training to do thigs yourself, then eCom Elites is the best choice, and you don’t even have to empty your bank account.

eCom Turbo (theme)

As I said before, the free Shopify templates aren’t the best you can get, and thousands are probably already using them.

eCom Turbo takes care of everything you expect from a theme and more. Visitors won’t have to scroll at all to know what they’re going to buy since all the details show above the fold.

Salehoo

Salehoo is a supplier directory for dropshippers and wholesale contacts. It’s been available for more than 10 years, and its reputation speaks for itself.

WooCommerce or Shopify

Finally, you need a platform for your website, and these two are the best options

The only issue with WooCommerce is that you need to pay for your hosting separately.

Final Verdict

Is It Worth It? Final Verdict

DSL is definitely a promising course, but the cost is simply too high. Besides its initial cost, it only covers the most expensive approaches like Shopify along with Adwords.

I hope you found this review useful and if you have any questions, please comment down below. I’ll be more than happy to assist you.

Once again, thanks for reading my Dropship Lifestyle Review and I wish you the best of luck.

The post Drop Ship Lifestyle Review appeared first on Only Genuine Reviews.

Via https://www.onlygenuinereviews.com/drop-ship-lifestyle-review/

source https://onlygenuinereviews.weebly.com/blog/drop-ship-lifestyle-review

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deputyash · 5 years

Text

The Dove & The Blue Jay Ch. 2

Chapter 2: Another Way

Pairing: Dovie Ash x John Seed

Word Count of Chapter: 1,954

Warnings for Chapter: Some Violence

Tagging: @xmisswolfx @sleepylunarwolf @krenee1drful @onl-you @deputyoneill

A/N: Part 2! I really like how this one came out! Its much longer as well! :)

Hope ya’ll Enjoy! :D

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dove stands just outside of the Lincoln Lookout Tower. She leans out against the railing, looking out at the sun as it begins to dip down below the rolling hills.

The tower had a decent enough view for her to see any oncoming threats. It’s a shame she even had to be on the lookout for anything like that.

She’s in what used to be Holland Valley. It’s a beautiful area filled with grassy fields and the occasional outcrop of full, deciduous forest. It’s a lovely place to live. There was only one, major downside to it.

It's currently occupied by a division of Eden’s Gate, the local...cult that’s taken over.

Dovie had been one of the deputies apart of the failed arrest of Joseph Seed. Unfortunately, the haughty US marshal had underestimated the situation and, well, the whole thing went south. The arrest was an absolute trainwreck, or more accurately, a helicopter crash. Everything went crashing down in a mess of fire and ash. In a matter of seconds, all of Dove’s coworkers were taken away to who knows where.

In the end, she was the only one to escape, and now, she was here, trying to figure out how to get her team back. Even now, as she stares out at the sunset, she continues mulling over any ideas that could possibly help her in this bad situation.

However, a bark and a following whimper comes from behind her. Dovie blinks, shaking away the thoughts for now, and turns around. She smiles as she sees Boomer, the golden-hearted cattle dog she had found at Rae Rae’s. He gives her a dopey dog smile and brushes up against her leg.

She reaches down and pets him. He gives her another bark before trotting towards the entrance of the lookout.

“You’re right boy. We should probably be getting to bed, hmm?” She says as she steps towards the door.

She opens the door and they both step inside. Boomer goes and sits next to the small bunk bed and watches Dovie as she glances around the small room.

The room was small and was made mostly of windows, one of which was shattered, but it offered some protection at least.

“I think it'll be okay for one night.” She says as she finally steps over to the bed.

She sits down and takes off her boots. She sets them aside and lays back on the worn, twin-size mattress. Boomer sits down beside the bed and stares up at her. She smiles and pats the open side of the bed.

“Come on, good boy.”

Boomer gives another bark before jumping up and laying down at the foot of the bed. Dove lets out a content yawn as she lays back on the pillow. The pillow was like a squishy brick, but it was better than the ground. Dovie closes her eyes and gently pets Boomer’s head.

Once Dove manages to drift off to sleep, her dreams begin to take hold. She was back in that church again. It was the night of the arrest. Dove would never forget the intense aura emanating from everyone. Fear. Anger. Tension. Everyone was so on edge.

Dove had intended to stay back and let her superiors handle the situation. After all, the marshal was in charge of the warrant. She hadn’t been expecting her name to be called.

“Rookie. Cuff this son of a bitch.”

Dovie’s eyes flickers over towards the marshal, then to Whitehorse. He gave her a sympathetic look, but otherwise said nothing.

She takes a step towards Joseph Seed, the man who started this whole fiasco. She slowly pulls her handcuffs from their holster. She brings them towards Joseph’s outstretched wrists, but she stops. She suddenly remembers that she was in a dream.

Dovie hesitates. She wonders what would’ve happened if she hadn’t arrested him. What would have happened if she had just walked away?

Dove takes a step back. She watches as Joseph lowers his arms slightly. He continues to stare at her, but she’s suddenly very aware of the other sets of eyes watching her.

She glances over towards the eldest brother, Jacob. His arms were still crossed, but his eyes held a cold curiosity that she couldn’t shake.

She looks the other way and sees Faith Seed. Her legs were crossed at her ankles. She had a sickly sweet smirk on her face. She tilts her head and looks back at Dove with deceptively kind eyes.

Lastly was John. He stood just behind Joseph. He stood proudly, his arms easily resting at his sides. He didn’t seem concerned at all. Except for his eyes. They held everything else. His eyes held a rush of energy that was just begging to be released.

Dove watches as he glances back at her. He seems to scoff internally before nodding just slightly to himself.

“Rook! What are you doing? I said cuff him!” The marshal’s voice cuts in.

Dove’s eyes snap back to Joseph’s. Her hands shake as she debates about what she should do. She knows what will happen if she places these cuffs on him. But...It's your job. You have to do it.

Dove closes her eyes and brings the cuffs forward. She clasps them shut as quickly as she can. She tries to step back just as quickly, but Joseph grabs her wrists before she can. He drags her forward, digging his fingers into her wrists roughly.

Dove tries to yank her hands away, but finds she can’t. “Let me go!” She says, trying to pull away from him.

“Rook!” Whitehorse yells from behind her.

She tries to call for their help, but as she turns her head, she sees nothing but bright orange flames starting to consume the church walls.

She tries to scream, but nothing comes from her mouth. Her voice was gone. She looks back at Joseph. He was the only one left standing on the stage.

“You will not take him from me.” Joseph says.

Before she could answer, he lets go and steps back into the ever growing flames. Dove stumbles back away from him. She turns and as she sees the flames crawl closer, she starts stepping further away from them as well.

However, a hard pull on her right arm makes her realize, she wasn’t just stepping back, she was being pulled back.

She goes to look at who was pulling at her when she realizes she was awake again. Boomer has his teeth firmly latched onto her sleeve and was pulling her off the bed.

It takes a quick moment for Dove to regain her senses, but when she does, she realized the flames weren’t just in her dream. The tower was on fire.

She lets out a cough as smoke begins rising from below the floorboards and the shattered window. She’s also made aware of the yelling and gunfire coming from down below.

Dove pulls herself to her feet and starts grabbing for her boots. She haphazardly puts them on and ties a quick knot on each. Boomer goes running out of the entrance and towards the cultists who were trying to flush her out.

Once she has her shoes on, she grabs her bag and yanks out her revolver before slinging the pack over her shoulders. She makes a dash for the door as the smoke and flames begin coming further and further up the lookout.

She looks towards the staircase. She sees several cultists, or peggies as the residents of Hope County call them, coming towards the staircase. The ones in the front fire a few rounds at her and she ducks back behind the wall of the lookout.

She readies her own weapon before turning and firing a couple shots back. She manages to knock a few down, but there were still more coming. She had to get off this tower. It wasn’t going to be standing for much longer.

Dove looks back at the railing of the tower. She sees a blue cable leading towards the treeline. She reaches back into her bag and pulls out a heavy duty climbing clip. She could use it as a zipline.

Before she rushes to the makeshift zipline, she searches around for Boomer. She sees him already on the ground near the treeline. He was on top of a cultist, tearing a chunk out of his neck. Okay, so he was safe at least.

Dovie runs over to the blue cable and hooks her clip over it. She turns her back towards where she was going to be ziplining to. She holds her gun and fires one last time at the cultists running up the staircase.

Once they were down, she calls for Boomer and takes the leap from the tower. He barks in reply and begins following her from below.

Wind whips around her face as she slides down towards a treestand. The line was wobbly, but it was stable enough to keep her from falling.

It doesn’t take long before she reaches a treestand. She lets go as she hovers above the stand safely. She looks back towards the tower. It was glowing as flames continue to engulf its supports. Well, so much for the lookout.

Dove climbs down from the treestand and meets Boomer at the bottom. She lets out an exhausted breath before reaching out and petting him. What a night. And it's not even over yet.

“Thanks for waking me up. You’re such a good boy. Let’s go find somewhere else to stay, hmm?”

Boomer barks before leading her through the forest. She follows him idly as she regains her breath from the adrenaline rush.

As she’s walking, she can’t help but loosely wrap her hand around one of her wrists. She could almost feel where Joseph had held on in her dream. She clears her throat as she shakes the memory of his intense, yellow-shielded gaze away from her mind and focuses instead on finding a place to stay. Again.

Lucky enough, only a few minutes later, Dovie and Boomer find a small house. She cautiously opens the backdoor and steps inside. She listens for any voices, but doesn’t hear any obvious signs of occupants. She locks the deadbolt on the door before looking for the other exits.

She makes sure they are all firmly closed before finding the bedroom. Inside there was a safe, a hiking pack, and a letter. Dove sits on the side of the bed and takes off her own backpack. She sets it on the ground and looks over towards the letter. She sets her pistol down on the nightstand and picks up the note instead.

It was from Joseph to whoever had lived in this house previously. Something about sins and cutting them away.

Dovie lets out a scoff and tosses it aside.

She lays back against the headboard of the bed and closes her eyes. She lets out another breath. She was so tired. She was planning on getting some more sleep if she could.

Unfortunately, her radio decided it was the perfect moment to speak.

“Sin is pervasive. It drives us to do unspeakable acts. I know the feelings that drive you. I know them...intimately. But I can help you, Deputy. I can wash away these sins. I can Cleanse your soul. It will be difficult and it will be painful, but...it will be worth it. My people will come for you. They will bring you to me. Don’t fight it. Because the harder you resist, well...the harder we’ll have to scrub your soul.”

Dove lets out a very loud, very annoyed groan. She tips her head back and it thuds against the headboard.

“Why?”

Previous Chapter --- Masterlist --- Next Chapter

#my writing #fc5 #fc5 fanfic #my ocs #dove ash #dovie ash #dovie ash x john seed #dove ash x john seed #the dove & the blue jay #the dove and the blue jay

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meetthetank · 5 years

Text

Peccatum Chapter 9: Fireside Chat

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14454675/chapters/43675304 Rating: Mature Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Category: F/M Fandom: NieR: Automata (Video Game) Relationships: 2B/9S (NieR: Automata), A2/A4 (NieR: Automata). Jackass/The Commander (NieR: Automata) Characters: 2B (NieR: Automata), 9S (NieR: Automata), A2 (NieR: Automata), A4 (NieR: Automata), 6O (NieR: Automata), 21O, Jackass (NieR: Automata), The Commander (NieR: Automata) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe, genre typical violence, long fic, Slow Burn, War

“Damnit!” 9S shouts, kicking a charred plank.

Ash billows out over the darkening sky as the wood crumbles into dust. A light gust carried the cloud of soot over what remains of the humble grain village; a few free standing bits of scaffolding, defaced statues of the region’s senator, and blackened remnants of stone structures.

“This is the fourth one in a row…” 32S mumbles, burying his head in his hands.

“But…” 801S stammers, “I was here not...a month ago! I was here and it was fine! Everyone was fine!”

He sinks to the ground, a cloud of ash billowing out around him. 9S wraps his arms around his friend’s shoulders as 801S lists the people he met (or at least he thinks they’re people he met...it’s impossible to one charred corpse from the next) who ended up in a vile mass grave burning in the center of town. His voice chokes on the name of a farmhand he had been writing to for some time.

“Why...Why would they attack here?!” 801S yells, “There’s nothing here but wheat! No soldiers lived here! There’s no walls, no battlements...They were just farmers!”

For a moment, a heavy silence fills the air between them.

“...The demons are trying to starve us out,” 11S growls, putting words to what they had realized when they arrived, “It isn’t just bloodlust that makes them target these defenseless towns. These farms supply food all across the Republic. Cut off the supply…”

“...And the capitols weaken,” 9S finishes. “The armies weaken.”

The scouts remain quiet, either out of respect for the dead or from the icy fear that grabs hold of their hearts. Somewhere in the back of all of their minds they knew they were fighting an uphill battle, but this is the first time where they fully realize they’re on the losing side of this war. Grossly outnumbered, outmaneuvered at every turn, unable to keep up with the rapid evolution of their enemy. The only ones that stood a chance were the Devoted, but none of the Theocratic clergymen were allowed within the ranks of a Republic army.

“...One of us should double back to the Commander,” 32S says, breaking the silence.

A low sigh escapes 9S. “No one’s gonna be happy about this. We’ve been marching for nearly three days straight.”

9S volunteers to be the one to go back while the other scouts press onward. A strictly maintained five mile gap separates the main force from the scouts, but with only flat farmland and open fields to cross, it doesn’t take long for him to see Commander White atop her warhorse leading the troops. He falls in step next to her and Lieutenant Jackass’ horses easily.

“Well?” White asks, exhaustion creeping into her normally level tone.

9S sighs. “No good. That town’s been razed too. No survivors either.”

“Damn…” Jackass rubs her face with one hand. “We can’t push them for much longer, White.”

“We can’t stop,” the Commander snaps and pulls a small map from her saddlebag. “It’s far too dangerous to halt everyone out in these open fields.”

“It’s also too dangerous to make exhausted soldiers try to defend anything. Look at them White, any longer than another day or so and they’ll start dropping.”

She gestures to the irregular lines of soldiers and carts, most nursing varying degrees of injury that come with days of nonstop movement. A few hitch rides on carts wherever they can find space, or double up on the back of a horse just to get some kind of reprieve. Even 2B, who 9S can see peeking around the bulk of the army, sits on the healer’s supply cart with 6O.

“Here,” White says, snapping 9S out of his thoughts. “There’s a proper town half a day beyond the one we’re about to pass. Walls and a militia. If that’s been razed too, we stop anyway.”

“Understood.”

With time of the essence Jackass loans 9S her horse, a brown stallion named Hort, to ride further ahead. With the speed of the ornery beast, he catches up to the other scouts within the hour. Relaying the information brings some light and hope back to the scouts. 801S hops on the back of Hort, sitting close behind him as they ride.

To pass the time, the pair chat idly about whatever crosses their mind, careful to avoid heavier subjects or politics. 801S teases 9S about 2B, and in turn 9S teases 801S about the archer boy he’s been eyeing for a while. They reminisce about old times, simpler times, till they see the turrets of the town’s walls.

“Their wall’s still standing!” 801S shouts, bouncing excitedly much to the displeasure of Hort.

9S is about speak, but the sight of a wooden sign with a crude depiction of a half-demon stops the words in his throat. Though it is devoid of words, the message is clear enough to him. A warning. A threat.

801S’ expression sours when he notices the tension creeping through 9S. “...Stop the horse here. I’ll go ahead inside and let the town know the main force is on its way.”

“Thanks,” 9S says with a shudder in his voice.

Uncertainty worms its way through his gut as he rides back towards the advancing army. It wouldn’t be the first time that he’s come across a town with that kind of mindset, but it always brings risk. It isn’t exactly like he can blame them, either. With the only thing separating the town from the demon hordes roaming around is a few stones, paranoia is to be expected.

At least within the ranks of an army he’s relatively safe.

The sun reaches its highest peak by the time 9S reaches White again, who announces the good news. Soldiers erupt into cheers, energy surging back through their exhausted bodies. They don’t even complain when she announces that the march will move into double time to reach the town before nightfall, in fact it seems to bolster their spirits further.

9S returns Hort to his owner and hops onto the healer’s wagon with 6O and 2B.

“So, what are you ladies talking about? Girl things?” he asks with a smirk.

6O snorts, “We have much better things to talk about than fashion and marriage.”

2B tilts her head to the side in a way that 9S can’t help but consider adorable. “Is that what humans consider feminine?”

“Well, yeah,” 9S says with as much confusion as is on 2B’s face, “What do Coatyls consider feminine?”

“Stoicism, well maintained weapons, and…” 2B pauses to think for a moment. “...A healthy amount of bloodlust.”

“Oh. That...explains some things.”

6O laughs at his expense. 2B just holds that same bewildered expression she has whenever she’s confronted with the novelties of human culture as 9S and 6O trade playful punches with each other.

“Anyway, 2B,” 6O begins once she’s had her fill of punching and laughing at 9S, “as I was saying, my patron god isn’t necessarily evil. None of the old gods are, they’re simply...forces of nature.”

“Oh no,” 9S groans. “She’s doing this again.”

“Quiet, you.”

He sticks his tongue out at her, but lets 6O continue.

“I’m familiar with the pantheon, but why...that one?” 2B asks.

“They’re representative of nature, decay, the cyclical aspects of life; that kind of thing. They’re a bit overlooked compared to some of the other, more powerful gods.”

“Wait, which one is this again?” 9S interrupts.

“Their name isn’t exactly pronounceable by the untrained tongue, and invoking it without warrant can have...nasty consequences. Roughly translated, the name is Infinite Equine, or Long Horse.”

“Ugh, right. That nasty horse skull thing. It’s so creepy!”

“I have to agree with 9S,” 2B says. “It is a bit...off-putting.”

“What did you think the manifestation of life, death, and rebirth was going to look like?!” 6O snaps. “A cute little rabbit?!”

“You’re a cute little rabbit!” 9S shouts, and bursts into laughter a second later.

“That...doesn’t seem like an insult,” 2B says through barely contained laughter.

True to the Commander’s word, the army arrives at the town’s gates as just as the moon begins to rise. 801S and the rest of the scouts, along with a few local guards, greet them as they pass through the walls. The townsfolk who are still wrapping up their daily routines stop and stare at the army nearly four times the size of their haphazard militia marching down their main street.

He knows it’s a fools game, but 9S can’t help but let his mind wander. This town is decently fortified, relatively clean, not destitute but not aristocratic...It’d be the perfect place to settle down once the war is over. To finally stop being a soldier, being a part of an army and live a simple life. Maybe even get married and start a family. His gaze wanders to 2B, who looks around the town and its well maintained brick buildings with wonder.

Well..so long as he’s fantasizing.

He must look like a blushing maid, but at the moment he doesn’t really care. It’s good for the mind to indulge in the ideal future every now and then. Images play across his mind in quick succession, each one more unobtainable than the last. It doesn’t stop his heart from fluttering at the thought.

What a silly daydream this is. Why would a warrior such as 2B have any desire to be a housewife, to raise children, or to settle down entirely? She probably intends to live and die on the battlefield, swathed in blood and glory. He doesn’t pay it too much mind, it is a simple daydream after all. No need to get too hung up on reality.

Until reality hits him square in the chest.

As the army passes through the center of town, 9S comes face to face with the grim truth of his life. In the middle of the open plaza, a crude wooden gallows looms over them, and from this morbid structure hangs a recent victim.

The body, whose face is obscured by a roughspun sack, appears fresh. The skin is only a pale shade of purple and rot has yet to set in. His hands are bound behind his back with thick rope that cuts into the skin, staining them black with dried blood. He’s stripped of clothing, revealing thick brown fur that covers him from the waist down, barely concealing the wound where his genitals would have been as well as the hooves in place of human feet. A length of parchment hangs from his chest, held in place by rusting iron hooks.

“Here hangs…..for the crime of Demonic Parentage.”

The name appears to have been vandalized, instead of identifying the victim, it instead reads slurs and obscenities 9S would rather not read in their entirety.

A number of soldiers, including 21O and Jackass, fidget and shy away as they pass the body. Tension worms its way through everyone, even the horses grumble with agitation.

He pulls his hood around his face and sinks into anonymity within the ranks of the army.

What a fool he is to dream.

The army pitches a slap-dash camp on the northern side of the town, a rough series of tents and bedrolls. It isn’t much, but it gives the soldiers a chance to sit down and rest within the safety of the walls. They eat and drink and sing bawdy songs around a small fire, and despite the dire state of the war levity and joy returns to the army. If only for a moment.

It all proves to be too much for 2B, who excuses herself to river a few miles away when the songs take a much louder and raunchier turn. She underestimated just how social humans were, the constant chatting and the way they move around in groups of three or more, groups of people who weren’t even related. The open air and quiet solitude is something she needed before she starts snapping at people.

This region’s fish are small, too small for her liking. She should have expected it: the water barely came up to her scaled ankles. They’re more like snacks than a proper meal, each one barely larger than her beak. 6O warned her about passersby that might see a giant white dragon and attack, but the only thing that catches her eye is a deer that gets a bit too close for her liking. She eats her fill of fresh fish, something she’s found herself longing for since falling in with White’s army, then flies back to the town.

2B perches on the top of the wall, taking a moment to preen her wings of dirt and grime. To her surprise the camp is silent, save for the snores of soldiers and the crackling of one remaining campfire. The way they were carrying on, she thought they were going to be at it all night. Their leader must have told them the march would resume early. To 2B, someone who possesses the gift of flight, the whole idea of an ordered march seems unnecessary. She chastises herself for thinking this way, these humans and their awful work beasts called horses don’t have the same abilities she does, so they must work around their faults.

The approaching footsteps of a local guard break her from her musings. Not wanting to attract unwanted attention herself, she hops from the top of the wall in the middle of a transformation. A swordswoman out for a quiet walk is more explainable than a feathered beast in a human’s eyes.

As 2B wanders past the last dying campfire, she notices a familiar face sitting alone. Curled into himself, sitting on the ground, is 9S. His face is buried in his arms, but the shock of white hair is unmistakable, even in the low light. A sharp pang shoots through 2B’s chest at the pathetic sight and finds herself walking over to him.

9S looks up at the sound of encroaching footsteps with fear in his eyes, though his features quickly soften once he realizes it’s only 2B. He gives her a half hearted wave before wrapping his arms around himself.

“You seem troubled,” 2B says, sitting on the ground next to him.

“Huh?” He rubs his face. “No, no I’m fine. I’m…”

“A poor liar.”

9S lets out a quiet chuckle. “Yeah. I guess so.”

2B gives him a moment to collect himself. He sits up straighter, kicking his legs out and letting himself stretch and get a few breaths of cool night air.

“I guess it’s...I’m…” He sighs. “You never really get used to seeing a body that…that could have been you.”

“Ah...I see,” 2B mutters.

How could she be so dense? Of course seeing something like that would affect him. She should try to comfort him.

She has no idea how to comfort humans.

“I’m sorry,” 9S says. “It’s...it’s silly to be scared. White’s army is one of the only safe places for people like me...For half-demons. We can live and work and fight without having to fear our friends turning on us. But…”

He swallows a lump forming in his throat and wipes his eyes. “But the moment I step outside the army, the moment I try and form a life outside combat and war...I could end up on the end of a rope. Or worse.”

“You look human, though. Your charm necklace conceals anything suspect.”

“Yeah, but it isn’t foolproof.” He turns the little charm in his fingers a few times. “It’s weak magic, something a child could pull off. Easily detected or disarmed, but discrete and easy to make. Mom-...21O made this for me, it’s like the one she’s got.”

9S taps the jewel twice. With a faint shimmer, small nub-like growths appear just below his hairline, parting his hair slightly. His thin tail curls around his leg, and his eyes fade to nearly pure white.

It’s odd, 2B has only seen this form only once before, but the shock is gone. It’s about as strange to her as seeing him with a different haircut. So instead of recoiling in fear, all she does is tilt her head a little.

He taps the jewel again and the demonic features disappear. “It’s so stupid...everyone’s so scared of a few weird additions. But...We’re capable of...gods know what.”

9S hangs his head in shame and curls back into himself. He rests his forehead on his knees. “Are you scared, too?”

She twists the end of her robe between her clawed fingers. “I...I’ve never met a half-demon before you, I must admit.”

“Really?”

2B shakes her head and stares into the embers. “I’ve only ever had...encounters...with proper demons.” Her hands curl into fists. “They attacked our village one day, without warning. Even our strongest warriors had trouble fighting them off. They killed…I don’t know how many of us. The village was devastated in just an hour.”

“Oh…”

An aching cold creeps its way through 9S’ chest, one that won’t leave no matter now tightly he pulls his cloak.

“I’ve never met a half-demon before,” 2B says again. “...But if they’re anything like you…”

Her fist unlocks itself, and with uncharacteristic trepidation, she places her hand on his shoulder. 9S doesn’t anticipate just how warm it was, its gentle weight more comforting than his old coat.

“Well...I think you’re a good person.”

9S smiles, just a little, and leans into her, his head resting on her shoulder.

“...Thanks, 2B.”

#nier automata fanfiction #nier atuomata #2b #9s #nier commander #nier jackass #fantasy au #fanfiction #Tanks fics

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darlingpetao3 · 6 years

Text

Primrose Path (Harry Wells x Reader, Chapter 15)

Rating: Explicit

Summary: When you, a lovely florist, move to Central City to open your flower shop, you had no idea you’d fall for such a complicated and dangerous man who deals in a less-than-legal business. Harrison Wells - a major player and powerhouse within the underground mafia world of the region - sweeps you off your feet as you quickly become his greatest weakness.

Warnings: Explicit Sexual Content, Mentions of War, Coarse Language, Blood and Violence, Minor Character Deaths

Tag List: @aryaarathornson @cursedfaechild @jadedragon1903 @disneyoncerlover815 @child-of-winter-1215 @thecaptainsgingersnap @miss--mercy @fireboltrose7559 @xccentriktigress @12monkees @harryisjustsocute @obsessedadryana @ill-breach-you-there-right-now

(please check to see if your Tumblr settings are set to receive mentions from us for future tag related purposes!)

(Chapter 1) (Chapter 2) (Chapter 3) (Chapter 4) (Chapter 5) (Chapter 6) (Chapter 7) (Chapter 8) (Chapter 9) (Chapter 10) (Chapter 11) (Chapter 12) (Chapter 13) (Chapter 14)

A/N: Sorry we’re 2 days late! Normally @letyourimaginationrun would post this week, but she’s been so busy and working so incredibly hard that she hasn’t had a moment to spare to post. Life is stressful, hope you understand ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Harry sits at his desk, working intently on some legal S.T.A.R. Labs business. He’s already had two people come and grovel to him over the fact that this newest piece of tech isn’t ready for manufacture yet and that the company was going to have to find the extra money for it somewhere. He’d only dropped you off at the shop just over two hours ago, but it seems that since then, everything has gone to shit.

Just as he thinks he’s beginning to solve the problem with the device’s schematics, there’s a knock on his office door and Matthew steps into the room.

“Yes?” Harry asks curtly, huffing that he’s being interrupted at such a crucial stage.

“Doctor Wells, there’s a detective here to see you. He says it’s urgent.”

“Send him in,” Harry orders, pinching the bridge of his nose. This is the last thing he needs. Matthew withdraws from the office and Harry hears him tell the detective to enter in his place.

A blond man steps into the room as Harry gets out of his chair, rounding the desk to shake the other man’s hand. But the resolute expression that he sees warns him that he needs to be very careful with what he says from here on out. This is a man on a mission.

“Detective Thawne, isn’t it? You’re West’s partner. What can I do for you?” he asks, trying to start this off civil.

Thawne stands in front of him as Harry leans back against the edge of his desk. “You might as well cut the niceties, Wells, I know you’re going to be as difficult as you can be,” he says, his smile telling Harry that he believes he has the upper hand here.

“And why’s that exactly?” Harry counters, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I’ve received a tip-off that something isn’t quite right with your accounts. I’m going to need to see your books,” Thawne tells him in a commanding tone, putting his hands on his hips to reveal his badge and gun.

Harry gives a wry smile and a small huff of laughter, glancing at the revealed items then raises an eyebrow. “If you think you scare me, Detective, you’re mistaken. I’ve dealt with people far more intimidating than you.” Harry follows this up with a look, heading back to his chair behind his desk and taking a seat. Without looking back up at the younger man, he says, “Come back with a warrant, and I’ll get you my books.”

“Got something to hide?” the detective pushes, taking a step closer to the desk and getting Harry to look at him again.

“I just don’t like people I don’t trust going through my things.”

“Well, it seems that someone you do trust is ballsing it up for you anyway. How else would I have gotten a tip?” He places his hands firmly on the desk’s surface and looks menacingly at Harry. “And I tell you now - if I find anything crooked in them when I get that warrant? Next time, I’ll be turning up on your doorstep to arrest you.”

Harry leans forwards in his chair, resting his elbows on the desk and tenting his fingers in front of him. “Is that a threat, Detective?”

“Everyone knows that you’re up to your neck in illegal activity. We just need someone who cares about justice enough to prove it.”

“And that’s you, is it?”

“Yes,” he replies immediately. “I’m working with this tip now, but I’ve got plenty more angles I can work it from. Your girlfriend seems to have a particularly soft spot for the metas. Maybe if I charged her with aiding and abetting fugitives of the law, we can see how quickly you’d cave then. Either that or she’s bound to know something, maybe enough to put you away for good.”

The mention of you makes all the civility fly out of Harry’s demeanour. He stands, anger almost visibly radiating from him. “She would have the best lawyer in this city at the snap of my fingers. You leave her alone,” he growls back.

“Way to show that you’re not corrupting her with all this, Wells.”

Harry pushes off from the desk, and in a few long strides, gets right in the detective’s face.

“If you even think about coming after me or my girlfriend without a warrant again, not having a job will be the least of your problems. Trust me.”

Thawne takes a step away, a small triumphant smile on his lips, knowing that he’s managed to find Harry’s pressure point.

“I’ll let that one slide, but sit tight, Wells. I’ll be back, and this palace of yours is going to come tumbling down, brick by brick.”

Harry watches as Detective Thawne leaves the room, throwing his fist down on the desktop after the door has closed.

But he doesn’t have time to linger on this threat right now. He has to check that the books aren’t going to reveal anything incriminating. This will certainly be a test of his new bookkeeper’s ability. Harry has maybe twenty-four hours before Thawne comes back with his warrant.

He calls Matthew back in and orders him to find James and have all the accounts brought up to his office. The possibility of a mole tipping off the police in the first place would also have to be dealt with.

After these actions have been set in motion, Harry takes a deep breath and runs a hand over his face. He knows what he needs right now, and he just hopes that you’ll be able to make some time for him.

Taking his phone from his pocket, he finds your contact and dials your number, waiting a few rings for you to pick up.

“Hey, Harry, everything okay?” He can hear the concern in your voice and smiles at your sweetness despite himself.

“Hey, Flower. I’m having a nightmare of a day and I wondered if you could spare half an hour to have lunch with me?”

You pause for a second, likely looking at the clock before answering. “Of course, baby, give me twenty minutes and I’ll be there.”

“You’re amazing,” he replies, feeling himself relax a little while you let out a small chuckle.

“I try,” you reply. “Hang in there.”

***

You end the call with Harry, looking at a couple of customers who were browsing the flowers. While you wait to be able to head to your lunch break, you make a little bundle out of the daisies you have near the counter. It sounds as though Harry could do with something to brighten his day besides having you pop in to see him.

You serve both the customers, doing up a quick bouquet for one and take an order down for the other. After making sure to grab your bag, you put the little sign in the window to say you were going to lunch, and head over on the road to the S.T.A.R. Labs building.

The people inside give you their polite greetings as you make your way to the elevator to head to Harry’s office. As soon as the doors open, you’re striding over to Harry’s door, lightly rapping your knuckles on it before opening it up.

“Harry?”

“(Y/N),” he replies, head snapping up at the sound of your voice. “Come on in.”

You grin back, but before closing the door, you take one of the daisies from the bundle and slide it into the lock as a message to everyone that Harry has you over. You want him to be able to tell you whatever is going on with him without interruption.

As you close the door, Harry, just in his shirtsleeves, gets up and meets you halfway across the room to take you in his arms, giving you a tight hug.

“That bad, huh?” you say, hugging him back and gently smoothing your hands up and down his back. He buries his face into your neck, and you reach one hand up to pull him closer to you, combing your fingers through his hair.

After a minute of standing in each other’s embrace, Harry pulls back and looks at you, studying your face. Your hands go to his cheeks as you let out a small sigh.

“Who hurt my man, hmm? Let me at ‘em,” you joke as Harry lets out a little hum of laughter.

“It’s err, it’s nothing for you to worry about, Flower, it’ll all be alright. As long as I have you by my side,” he replies, bringing his hands up to hold your own, a reassuring smile on his face. You study him for another second before moving around him to place the daisies in the vase you’d given him. You turn back around when they’re in place and you can see from his expression that he’s so grateful for the gesture.

He leads you over to the couches on the other side of the room where two paper bags emblazoned with ‘Big Belly Burger’ already sit waiting for you. Raising an eyebrow, you take a seat and pull one of the bags towards you, taking out the cartons of fries and pass one to Harry.

“I didn’t have you pegged as a fan of fast food, Mister Fine-Taste?” you tease, taking a fry and eating it as he sits down next to you.

“Sometimes I like a… change of pace,” he tells you with a smile, passing you a milkshake after poking the straw in it. You thank him and take a sip before bringing up the previous topic again.

“You know I’m not going to let it go that easily, right? You asked me over here to talk, I can tell, but now you’re trying to shut me out… Talk to me, Harry, whatever it is, I can take it.”

You put your hand over his on the table and look into his eyes, intently trying to get him to open up. He sighs and runs his free hand over his face before looking back at you.

“A detective came to see me… Thawne? He works with West. You might have come across him-“

“-we’ve had a couple of run-ins,” you mutter and Harry nods.

“Well, if you have any more, you need to call me immediately, okay, Flower?” Harry puts his hand over yours and looks intently into your eyes. “Thawne has a lead on me… but if that doesn’t work out, he’s threatened to come after you in order to bring me down. And I’m not going to let that happen.”

“But we’re together. Surely there has to be some sort of rule to stop him from doing that? You know I’d never willingly testify against you, right?”

“Of course I do… But no, sweetheart, that unfortunately only applies to spouses and you’re not my wife yet…”

“Yet? Someone’s keen,” you reply, trying to lighten the mood and Harry chuckles, but his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. This is too serious for joking around.

“I mean it, though, (Y/N). If Thawne starts trying to tempt you into selling me out or heaven forbid, he arrests you like he’s threatened, you call me, or this number right here.”

He takes a calling card out of his pocket, like the one he’d given you all those months ago and passes it to you. This one is cream with a decorative border around the edge and the words ‘Cecile Horton, Attorney at Law’ printed in the centre, accompanied by a phone number.

“Cecile Horton is the best lawyer I know, and if you need her, she’ll be there. I just want to keep you as protected as I can.”

You nod, squeezing his hand to reassure him that you understand. “I know you’re doing everything you can to keep me safe and I love you even more for it.”

You lean in and softly press your lips to his, and he lets out a small sigh of relief when you part.

“Come on, we need to eat before this goes cold,” you say, nudging his shoulder, “and there is nothing worse than cold fries.”

Harry gives an agreeing hum and pulls out the rest of the food to split between you. You eat your lunch, talking about making plans for the weekend and generally trying to lighten the mood after the threats of this morning.

And it seems as though your flower has been enough to keep everyone from opening the door and intrude on your private time. You’ve found one of the best parts of dating the CEO of a company/mob boss was that each one of the men who worked for him seemed to be afraid to interrupt him in his office when he was alone with you. When you’ve finished your food, Harry pulls you onto his lap to get you to straddle him, his hands going to your hips as he holds you close.

"Daddy wants some love."

"Does he indeed?" you ask, running your hands over his shoulders. You place a few kisses on his jaw and he lets out a content little sound. At this, you continue showering him with kisses, cupping his cheeks and nuzzling his nose. “It’s all going to be okay, Harry, I know it will.”

But before he can reply, there's a knock at the door to his office and a familiar face comes into the room. You blush a little at the intrusion and turn away because of the position you're currently in. Harry lets out a low growl and instantly appears pissed because it is the new bookkeeper that has interrupted your precious alone time.

“I’ve brought the files, Sir,” he says, taking a few hesitant steps forward with the documents in his hands.

"James, get out,” Harry says curtly.

“But, Sir, I-”

“-James, you’re new here, so I'm going to say this once and only once. Do not interrupt my time with my Flower." You forget that he's even capable of that deadly serious tone because you almost never hear it.

"I-I'm sorry, Sir," James cowers, “but you-”

“-Leave them here and get out,” Harry orders. The bookkeeper expeditiously removes himself from the room. You turn back to Harry and giggle embarrassedly into his shoulder.

"You're a very scary man, Harrison Wells."

"Hell yeah, I am. Now, where were we?" He pulls you back by hooking a finger underneath your chin, bringing you into a heated kiss and running his hands over your sides.

"I should leave you to get on with some work..." you say gently against his lips as you play with the hair at his nape. “It looks like you’re going to be busy with the books.”

“Mm, but I don't want you to go," he says, going in for another kiss only for Cisco and Barry, followed by Frost, to barge in with smug smiles. Only three people were allowed to interrupt you and Harry without suffering his wrath. You quickly climb out of Harry's lap and you both turn to the others.

"We have intel!" Barry announces.

"What have you got?" Harry asks.

"Okay, first- ew. Like please, we're at work, man," Cisco says gesturing a hand to both of you.

“I’m in my office, man,” Harry counters.

"Besides the point, bud," Barry says to Cisco before turning back to Harry. "We located Snart’s next heist. Oliver and his team are going to accompany us there to help." You can feel Harry study you from his seat because you've never been present for any of this particular business before. You’re well aware he wants to keep you safe, and as far as all this is concerned, it’s probably best if you know as little as possible about the specifics. Especially when Thawne is digging around in all this.

"What's this guy going after?" you ask, crossing your arms in front of you. You catch a small smile grace his handsome face.

"It's Leonard Snart, so definitely something cold related. I think it has to do with some sort of new gadget from Palmer Tech?" Barry says unsure, looking to Cisco for confirmation.

"Dude thinks he’s some kind of ice queen or something," Cisco says, giving Barry a side-eye.

“When really, that description belongs to me,” Frost remarks while making her fingertips blue.

"What are we going to do to stop him?" you inquire, finally learning a bit more about this side of Harry's life. Why not learn a little bit more about the business? Besides, Harry wasn't asking you to leave…

"We," Harry says, getting up from the couch and heading out of the office with you four in tow, "are going to come up with something crafty enough to catch him off guard. Can't have an egomaniac running around destroying cities. Mainly my city." Harry turns to you when you reach the elevator, blocking your path.

“Listen, I appreciate you trying to get involved, Flower, but I need you to go and finish up your day and then go home, it’s too dangerous,” he says, taking your hand.

"But I want to help. Even though it’s dangerous, it’s all for a good cause."

"I know, but I want, need, you to be safe, okay? Promise me you'll go home and wait for me there?"

You sigh in defeat. "Yeah, okay."

"If you really want to help... I suppose I could have our account books sent home to you to have a look over. That’s as far as I want you in with all of this, though. Just the paperwork. See if everything’s in order? Wouldn’t hurt to have another set of eyes check it through. Eyes I know I can trust… and that are so beautiful." A big smile works its way onto your face. He really couldn’t bear to see you unhappy. You nod quickly before kissing him.

"Just come back safe."

“Always. I’ll send a car to the shop at the end of the day to take you home,” he assures and you agree with his decision.

Harry and his trusted team head out just as you head back to Primrose Path to finish out the workday. Once you’re home later that evening, the account books get dropped off and within an hour or two of looking them over, you manage to track several errors and fix them promptly. Seeing everything spread out, it seems to you like the new bookkeeper wants Harry to get caught… Either that or he seriously wasn’t right for this job.

Could there be a spy in our midst?

Well, Harry's going to need to do something about that.

You peer up at the clock, noticing it's only half-past eight. You hold on to his dog tags which hang around your neck and hope that he's taking care of himself. You have no idea when to expect him home.

In the meantime, you decide to take a shower and start getting ready for bed, wearing one of Harry's shirts that he's basically had to surrender completely to you to use as pyjamas. You crawl into bed and start to read a book in order to take your mind off things, looking towards the door every so often.

It isn’t until you’re half-asleep hours later, lying against the plush pillows with your book next to you, that you register the sound of the bedroom door opening in the back of your mind. You half-hear Harry walk in, stumbling a bit and change out of his suit and into a pair of pyjama pants. Once he gets into bed, he takes you in his arms, causing you to stir fully.

"Harry...?"

"I'm here, baby," he whispers gently, kissing your forehead.

"Did you sort it out?" you ask sleepily.

"Yeah, Snart won't be a problem for a while," he replies, stroking your hair as you snuggle into his chest.

"That's good." You press a kiss over his heart. "Harry..." You pause to yawn. "I need to... tell you about the..."

"Shh, you can tell me about whatever it is tomorrow. Right now, we both need sleep. It’s been a long day,” he whispers to you, then kisses your lips. You nod and fall asleep, the warmth of your man surrounding you and filling your senses giving you a feeling of security.

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